Not Happening

Chapter 9

"Nice alpaca, Louis."

Louis glares at Harry and covers his picture. "It's a dog," he hisses. "Asshole."

Zayn's pencil brushes over the page, shading more than creating rough, sharp edges. The class is, just as he'd wanted, fun. It's not exactly challenging for him, the way it is for, say, Louis, but it's still enjoyable. And it's only for an hour and a half twice a week, which isn't fucking with his schedule as much as he'd worried it would. Plus, he gets to spend the whole time at a table with Louis and Harry, laughing at Louis' failed attempts at drawing, encouraging Harry's hesitant but fairly talented works. Trying to ignore the fact that Liam's sitting right beside him.

Liam is as hopeless as Louis. He'd looked completely lost through the original instructions and the demo. He'd looked lost when the art student that was assigned to help them with this part of the class tried to help him. He's possibly worse than Louis, actually, but where Louis gets annoyed and snappish, Liam gets... pouty and frustrated.

"This is so stupid," Liam mutters.

Zayn sneers at him. "Just because you're not good at it doesn't make it stupid."

"Easy for you to say," Liam grumbles. "I can actually tell what yours is supposed to be. I'm helpless."

It's true. One hundred percent true. Even the instructor had attempted to help Liam before making a face and wandering off when she realized there was no helping him. Whatever he's drawing right now, it looks like a sort of lopsided blob with a nose. Or he thinks that's a nose. It could very well be a penis.

"I agree with Liam," Louis decides. He puts down his pencil. "Drawing is stupid. I can't wait until Monday when we start sculpting."

"It's not completely stupid," Harry argues. "I mean, not completely, right?"

Louis grabs Harry's picture from him, holding it up to his face. "Okay, not completely," he relents. "But that's because you're talented. Really talented, Harry. We're hanging this up in the room, in fact. Maybe we'll put it on the door next to the whiteboard, for everyone to appreciate."

Harry beams. Zayn looks at the picture, opens his mouth, and Louis kicks him under the table before he can say anything. Not that Zayn would say something bad. It's not a bad drawing at all. It's fairly good, for someone who walked in here with no knowledge of what they were doing. But it's not exactly good enough to warrant Louis' reaction to it.

Liam makes an annoyed sound and scratches his pencil harshly across his paper, scribbling out the practise drawings they'd been instructed to work on.

"Stop thinking so much," Zayn finds himself saying to Liam. "You're trying so hard to be perfect at it, but that's not going to just happen."

Liam looks up at him, lips parted. He shakes his head and the look disappears. "I'm terrible at it, and I'm sure you know and you're just waiting for the right time to laugh at me about it."

Why does that make him feel bad? "You are terrible," Zayn admits, and Liam's eyes narrow. "No worse than Louis, though."

"Rude," Louis says from across the table. "Factual, but rude."

That doesn't seem to help Liam, who drops his pencil onto the table. "It's humiliating," he says. "I'm not just bad, it's -"

Zayn grabs a new piece of paper and shoves it at him. "So start over." Liam gingerly takes the paper from him. "Did you honestly think you could just, like, pick up a pencil and magically be perfect at it?"

"Maybe," Liam admits. "If I'm not good at it the first time around, I probably won't ever be. I'm shit at learning things."

Zayn snorts before he can stop himself. "That's not surprising at all."