Big Brother- A Niam Fanfiction

Chapter 25

Niall looks up from his textbook as the door of the classroom opens slowly, Brooks silently stepping inside.

His eyes glance around quickly, and when they land on Niall, Brooks side smiles lightly, his hand slowly starting to close the door.

"You're late, Betts. Why?"

Brooks stops for a second, his eyes flicking to the teacher, who is staring at him while hovering his hands above his keyboard.

His fingers dip down sometimes, softly stroking the buttons on the keyboard, but never really pushing one down properly to type a word.

"Sorry, I overslept."

It's silent in the class as everybody just kind of stares at the conversation, only two girls in the back whispering a bit, but they have been the entire time.

The teacher sighs, taking off his glasses to scratch behind his ear, and then putting them on again.

"Because this is your first time, I will leave you be. Sit down quickly before I change my mind."

Brooks smiles, closes the door behind him softly, nods his head as a 'thank-you' towards the teacher, and then shuffles over to his place next to Niall, his hands hidden in the long sleeves of his grey shirt.

When Brooks sits down, Niall softly smiles at him, clicking with his pen.

"Overslept?"

Brooks isn't looking at him, but instead is searching through his bag, trying to find the right books.

"Yeah-um Niall? I forgot my books, can you share?"

He grabs a pen out of his front pocket, and then watches as Niall pushes his book towards him, so it is laying in the middle of both of them.

"Today is going well with you already." Niall chuckles lightly, watching as Brooks turns towards his bag again to find a piece of paper to write on.

When he looks back up, Niall has already ripped out a page from his notebook, placing it on top of the book in between them.

"Thanks."

"You're very welcome."

Brooks just smiles softly, turning his attention towards the whiteboard with notes scribbled down on it while digging his pen into the palm of his hand.

Niall watches Brooks' hands for a while, as they nervously play around with the pen, and then takes a glance at Brooks' face for a second.

He looks terrible.

The wound in his lip has turned into a blue-ish kind of purple, and the skin around the gash on Brooks' cheek looks more red and swollen.

Niall can see that Brooks has tried covering it up with something, but it didn't really work.

He suddenly feels terrible about not being there for him enough.

Brooks seems distant.

He's different, all of a sudden, different from before.

Leaning over, and nudging Brooks' shoulder, Niall smiles again and whispers, "How was the party?"

Brooks looks away from the board, his pen slipping out of his hands and landing on the floor with a small noise.

He doesn't move to pick it up.

"What party? Oh, you mean...that- I didn't really...have the party."

Brooks seems nervous because of no particular reason, his eyes flickering down to his fingers every few seconds and his lips twitching.

"What, why?"