Ziam oneshots ✔️

Bones and shit

Author: firethesound

Source: Archive Of Our Own

Summary:

Zayn's idea for helping Liam study is the most brilliant thing he's ever come up with, and Liam discovers that studying can be fun when one has the right study partner.

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Liam clapped his hands over his eyes. "Occipital. Parietal. Frontal. Temporal. Er, temporal, and... And..." He frowned. "And..." His frown deepened and he bit his lower lip. "Something with an S... The... Fuck. Fucking fuck." He peeked through his fingers at the book lying open on the table before him. "Sphenoid," he hissed as he slapped his hands down on the tabletop. "Frontal. Temporal. Sphenoid. That fucking cunt."

A shadow fell over the page of the book. "I'm not sure what you've been learning in that anatomy class of yours, but I'm pretty sure that last one's not part of the skull."

Liam twisted in his seat to glare up at Zayn. "Fuck off," he grumbled, but accepted the light kiss Zayn brushed over his mouth. "Mrs. McQuillen is a bloody madwoman." He huffed and folded his arms over his chest. "Do you know what she did today?"

"No," Zayn said, picking up Liam's mug of tea to steal a sip. "But I've got a feeling you're about to tell me."

For a moment, Liam considered scolding Zayn for stealing his tea, but decided it would interrupt the flow of his rant. "Today she informed us that tomorrowthere will be an exam. And on this exam we will have to name all the parts of the body." He waited for Zayn to join him in the throes righteous outrage.

Zayn, being the difficult fucking bastard that he was, did no such thing. He just raised his eyebrows at Liam and said, "So I guess you're going to be too busy studying to go out tonight?"

"On all the parts of the body," Liam repeated. "All of them." He waited, and still Zayn didn't react. "All of them, all the bones and muscles and organs and—Do you know how many bones there are in the human body? Two hundred and six! And there are six hundred and—"

"Wow," Zayn said, and Liam broke off mid-rant, waiting for the rest of his reaction.

Because surely he would agree with Liam that McQuillen had clearly taken leave of her senses and ought to be removed immediately on the basis of being bloody well insane. He already had to deal with her annoying American accent – and why they couldn't have found a proper British instructor for the class, Liam had no earthly idea – but her being a complete nutter on top of it was just too much for him to be expected to deal with. Deranged was where Liam drew the line.

"Just one day to study?" Zayn went on. "That's rather ambitious." He sipped more of Liam's tea.

"That's rather mental," Liam snapped at him. "She went off on about some rubbish about separating the wheat from the chaff and seeing which of us truly deserve to become doctors."

"Well, I'm sure you'll do fine," Zayn said, leaning down to press a smacking kiss to Liam's forehead. "You're wheat if I ever saw it. Or should you be chaff? Which is the good one, actually?" His mouth pursed into a small frown. "I've got no idea what chaff is, but you'd probably want to be wheat because it can make bread and things."

"I..." Liam hesitated, unwilling to admit that he didn't know. He didn't even know what chaff bloody well was – what did he look like, a bloody farmer? – and at this point he didn't even care to find out. He had no room in his brain for extraneous information.

"What else is wheat used for? I feel like there's more..." Zayn continued, his nose scrunching up as he thought hard. He clapped his hands together. "Pasta! It can also make pasta. Hey, do you feel like spaghetti tonight?"