╠ Shared! ╣

Ziall - Can't Hide The Way It Makes Us Glow

“Bunk off with me today,” Zayn whines. “I don’t think I can stand another lecture on Sophocles.”

Niall rolls his eyes. “Yeah, except you bunked off on the last lecture too, so it wouldn’t really be another lecture if you haven’t actually sat through one yet.”

“Still,” Zayn whines. “Come on, s’no fun without you mate, I’ll be so bored, why do you want me to suffer?”

“Have I told you how unattractive it is when you whine?” Niall lies, because Zayn is basically never unattractive, which he knows full well.

“Heaps of times, yeah,” Zayn says casually. He pulls off his uniform’s jumper and shirt, pauses long enough for Niall to get a good look. Niall rolls his eyes and thinks shameless, really.

“You getting naked isn’t going to convince me to skive off with you,” Niall says, which is another lie, but a man needs a little dignity, he reasons.

“Sure,” Zayn says, eyes crinkling as he smiles smugly, and he pulls a ratty t-shirt and plaid shirt with a torn elbow out of his wardrobe and over his head. “Oh look,” he says, feigning surprise. “Lost my uniform somehow. Can’t go to lecture now, out of uniform and in rags and all that. Terrible tragedy.”

“Absolutely not,” Niall protests. “We can’t ditch again. Not after Hennings went berserk last time. No.”

Zayn just smirks.

-

In the end, Nialls skives off, because Zayn is good at a lot of things, and one of them is getting Niall to do pretty much whatever he wants.

They trudge across the grounds to a little games shed set off a footpath. There’s a creek behind it that trickles a little, and enough trees around that they’re out of sight even if anyone happens to walk near.

Zayn pulls out his crumpled pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his jumper as he sits down on the grass.

“Headmaster’ll have a fit,” Niall chides, sitting next to him, although they both know that Zayn’s contraband cigarettes are the least well kept secret in history, and the Headmaster actually couldn’t be arsed to send Zayn to detention like he ought to for smoking on the grounds. But this is what they do, Zayn pretends to be a rebel by breaking a rule no one enforces, and Niall pretends to give him shit for it. The system works well enough for them.

“Headmaster’s not here, is he, though,” Zayn smiles, and blows a column of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. Niall swallows a little harder than normal.

“End of term soon, then,” Zayn continues.

“Praise the gods,” Niall murmurs.

“Pining for Erin, then?” Zayn asks, knocking his shoulder against Niall’s.

And it’s not like Niall’s homesick, or anything, it’s just that Ireland’s a long ways away, isn’t it? And okay, he might miss his mam’s cooking and his dad listening to footie matches in the den, and it’s been ages since he talked to his mates from his old school, but that’s natural, isn’t it? He just misses them a bit, he’d never been to a board school before last year, and it’s just different.

He forgets to miss it all a little easier when Zayn’s around, though.

“Suppose, yeah,” he admits. “You know how mam gets when I’ve not been home in a while too,” and Zayn nods. “She told me to tell you you’re always welcome, too,” Niall says. His mum’s been on a mission to kidnap Zayn over the hols, threatening to “feed him proper,” ever since Niall’s first term.