Zouis One Shots

Oh Love Don't Let Me Go

Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/846864?view_adult=true

Summary:

And Zayn thinks that he gets it. Because when he closes his eyes, he can almost feel the sun on his skin and the warm breeze blowing past him while they drive down American roads in Louis’s hand-me-down Jeep with the top off. In his mind, he’s warm and sweat-sticky, singing at the top of his lungs.

It doesn’t even matter that it’s twenty below freezing and they’re probably getting frostbite.

Louis finds his hand and they twine their fingers together. Zayn squeezes and Louis squeezes back. He thinks maybe he can feel the cold grey-blues of the winter fading into bright turquoise like the water on sunny ocean beaches through the warmth of Louis’s fingertips.

Zayn gets it – maybe it’s not where you are, but where you’re going.

Canadian high school AU in which Zayn is an art kid and Louis is a drama kid and there is unnecessary sadness. But that’s OK because Zayn paints beautiful pictures and Louis comes back.

~*~

It’s like this;

Zayn meets Louis a week before he’s set to start high school. Louis is a year ahead of him and Liam and Niall. Zayn knew of Louis back in middle school too, but in middle school it’s hard to make friends with the older kids. In high school, Louis who’s a sophomore, gives Zayn, a freshman, a tour of the school. Well, not only Zayn, Liam and Niall and a bunch of other kids are there too, but the point is that Louis is enthusiastic and leads them around the building showing the best places to eat lunch and which areas to avoid when and he even zeroes in on the fact that Zayn is a bit quiet and doesn’t like people very much so he pulls him aside and mentions that the photography teacher doesn’t mind having kids hang around in her studio.

Zayn’s high school is specialized towards the arts – divided up into four departments, visual, dance, drama, and music. The thing is, the school is an hour’s drive away from his house and Zayn would have totally gone to his local which is a ten minute walk away, if it hadn’t been for the fact that some kid totally got stabbed in a bathroom stall there. But he’s got a school bus that picks him up at a stop two minutes from his house at seven in the morning and on the first day Zayn sits in a middle seat not wanting to seem like a delinquent in the back or a keener in the front. He falls asleep ten minutes into the ride and stays that way until they’re fifteen minutes from the school and someone slips into the empty space beside him.

“Hey,” the boy says, “Sorry this was the only seat left, I hope you don’t mind.” He smiles blindingly at Zayn and he’s far too awake for this early in the morning.

Zayn squints at the boy, belatedly realizing that this is Louis from orientation. “Yeah, sure, no problem,” he stutters along.

“Cool,” Louis grins.

They’re silent for a bit, and Zayn’s contemplating sleeping for another five minutes before the bus reaches the school when Louis says, “So listen; don’t worry too much about your first day of classes, alright? I know that they tell you all this scary stuff about high school, but it’s really not that big of a deal. And also, people aren’t nearly as shitty as they make it out to be – in my experience, middle school was a lot worse. Everyone here is here to do something they love and no one’s going to get on your case about whatever it is that you do because they all know how that goes. So yeah, don’t like, freak out or anything. Sorry, you didn’t even ask for my advice – it’s only that I wish someone had told me before I started.”