Zouis One Shots

Rise From Your Burning Fiat

Link: http://dangerbears.livejournal.com/7227.html

Summary: AU of the high school variety. louis and zayn have always been best friends and they always will be, no matter how much time they let pass.

~*~

Zayn's sitting at the stadium, high up. Everyone else is on the bleachers next to the pitch, but Zayn's in the stadium seats that no one actually uses. High up at the top, near the roof. He's drawing something undefined, some elaborate designs involving some cliches that he hates himself for: flames and bones and screaming mouths. Like, okay. The slightly faded noises of the crowd grows, grows to fever pitch, and he looks up. Louis has the ball, slaloming between defenders, nutmegging some massive guy who probably thinks he's Gattuso. Louis's eyes burn, focused on the only two things he's ever focused on: soccer and Harry. The cross comes off Louis's right foot, like everyone knows it would, high and arcing and so Hollywood that Zayn smiles. Harry chests it down, steps over – Zayn rolls his eyes, because, like, fuck step-overs – and goes for the far post. Not a doubt. Tomlinson to Styles to goal. Always.

Harry takes a few steps, a quick leap into the air and stops. Turns and opens his smile as his eyes find Louis and Louis is there, always, leaping into his arms, wrapping his legs around Harry's waist, his arms around Harry's neck. Louis buries his face in Harry's hair and Harry's hands come around Louis's thighs, holding him up. Zayn allows himself a small, proud smile, and takes out his phone. gorgeous assist, lou, he sends.

*

Louis and Zayn haven't been proper friends in years. Four years, Zayn thinks. Three and a half, maybe. It was never a thing, really. They grew up together, the Maliks moving in next door to the Tomlinsons when Zayn and Louis were three, and that was that. They spent every moment together, building forts in the trees behind their houses, kicking a soccer ball across their adjoining lawns, playing some convoluted game of war throughout the entire neighbourhood, sleepovers in the winter, campouts in the summer, snow forts, skateboards, runaway attempts – Louis was there for all of it.

When they were five, and Zayn was getting ready for his first year of kindergarten with his Hulk lunchbox and his Iron Man backpack and his new pair of sneakers, Louis was getting ready for his own first day of kindergarten, with his uniform trousers and his pressed button up shirts and his ties and his combed hair. They'd meet outside their houses and Louis would walk with Zayn to the bus stop and Zayn would wave goodbye and bite his lip and Louis would give him a sort of sad smile and keep walking on to his private, Catholic fortress. Louis would walk on that way for nine years.

But it was fine, all fine, because for nine years, Louis would be waiting at the bus stop when Zayn stepped off and his tie would be loose and his shirt would be unbuttoned three down his chest and his hair would be sticking up and he'd grin all bright and big as Zayn punched him in the shoulder and they'd race home, gangly limbs and small hands pushing and grabbing at each other, until they fell on their adjoining lawn, breathless and laughing.

"Missed you," Louis would mutter.

"Missed you back," Zayn would say.

In the fall of eighth grade, Zayn was mindlessly watching television and Louis was exiled to his bedroom to work on high school applications. Louis was expected to go to another private, Catholic fortress – another four years of choir and mass and rich assholes who wouldn't acknowledge Zayn, the public school friend. Which was fine, because Zayn wasn't very interested in Louis's douchebag private school friends, either, it just stung a little, because. Just. What if Louis had to choose? And what if Louis didn't choose him? And he was laying on the couch, watching television, and Louis was applying away another four years of his life in a different direction than Zayn and it was hard enough to find time to be with Louis now, with all those fucking extracurriculars private school boys were expected to excel at, and just. What was it going to be like in high school, when life gets so much more complicated? So, like, yeah, Zayn was worried.