As sweet as Sugar

Chapter 8

Fuck fuck fuck. Why he had to forget his keys today of all days. To start with, Niall had taken one car to get Ed and his brother to the X-Factor Auditions and Liam took the second as it was his turn to pick up Harry from the bakery in the evening.

Cherry on the cake, his professor let them go home early today. So Zayn had to wait for the bus for like thirty two minutes and then when he walked down to the door , he reckoned that he was going to be first one to get home. He would have been happy to wait for any of his boyfriends to come home. But now he knew that he was not going to be alone, there is one other person already inside, with whom he has no plan of having any business.

It was not like he didn't like Louis. He was too cute to be hated by someone. But then who likes intrusions? And that too unexpectedly making the youngest of his lovers so insecure. He knew that Louis could hardly hurt an ant but when he had seen the look on Niall's face, he couldn't bring himself to like Louis. He felt like he was betraying.

Reluctantly he rang the doorbell and waited for Louis to open the door. It took several minutes for Louis to come and peek through the window curtains to see who was there outside the door. When he saw Zayn standing there, with the 'I would give anything to be somewhere else' look, he was not sure if he should open the door. But it was their house, he had to open.

Louis slowly opened the door and gave an unsure smile. He noticed how amazingly tired Zayn was looking, though he was very early than every other day. Sweat covering his forehead, neck and even his t-shirt clinging to his chest with a big wet patch.

Zayn stared at Louis. He felt like he was towering over some fucking child. I mean who wears white shorts which are actually too short with a baby blue shirt? Does he know how to not look cute? The blue of his shirt making blue of his eyes stand out and sparkle. Zayn found himself getting lost in staring at the beauty in front of him but soon he gathered his shit together and walked past Louis and left the door to be closed by him.

Instead of going to his room, he sat down on the sofa and started surfing through TV channels. It was not even couple of minutes when he heard noise of glass breaking followed by a squeak. He ran into the kitchen to see Louis on his knees, collecting pieces of broken glass with bleeding fingers.

"Fucking hell. Stop it, Louis. Get up and come here", shouted Zayn, "What were you doing?"

Louis tried not to cry and followed Zayn's instructions and held his hands under the water tab. Zayn picked him up by his waist and propped on the kitchen counter. He ran out of the kitchen and returned with handful of cotton balls. Zayn dabbed Louis' fingers with the cotton balls and hurriedly took out a small container of turmeric from the shelf.

Louis just followed Zayn's actions with his eyes. He got little confused when Zayn covered the cuts of his fingers with turmeric powder, "What are you doing?", asked Louis in a timid voice.

"Turmeric is a natural antibiotic. It will help you stop bleeding. I will get the floor cleaned and then will put a bandage on you. Till then don't you dare to set your feet down on floor. And why don't you wear fucking shoes?"

Louis knew he was not supposed to answer that question so he just bowed his head and looked down at his turmeric covered fingers.

Zayn quickly cleaned the pieces of glass from the floor and ran down to the bathroom to get first aid box. When he returned to the kitchen, he noticed the drops that wear making their way down from Louis' eyes to his cheeks. He walked to Louis, who was still looking down at his injured hand and sniffling.

He was not sure why he was feeling so protective over Louis. He was not supposed to be. But when he saw him crying he couldn't help himself but cup Louis' face and swipe the tears off with his thumb pad.

"Why are you crying?", Zayn found his own voice cracking a bit.

When Louis didn't say anything he asked once again and asked him not to be scared of him. Louis stared into Zayn's eyes for a minute before looking down again and spoke, "You looked tired. So I was getting you a glass of water. But then the chair came in my way and made me stumble".

Zayn couldn't help but laugh a little at Louis' cuteness. Chair came in his way? And made him stumble? Oh my.

"I am sorry, Aladdin. Oops, I mean Zayn. I wil.. just.. Sorry", Louis covered his blushing face with his hands, getting yellow stains on his face in the process.

"It's ok Louis. Chairs make people stumble sometimes", Louis thought he had got away with calling Zayn Aladdin until Zayn took his hand away from his face and continued, "And what was it? Aladdin? So I look like Aladdin to you?"

Louis decided to be little brave and look at Zayn. After all this was the longest conversation he had had with Zayn in last couple of week apart from yes, no and thank you. Louis took a chance and nodded his head. He was relieved when he saw a small smile playing on Zayn's lips.

"Are you mad at me? For calling you Aladdin?", Louis asked in a whisper.

"Not until you let me call you my Little Bird."