Kick, Push

Competition Day: +9

With no clouds floating through the sky, the sun feels extra powerful the next morning. He'd be sweating from exertion anyway, with or without the shade, but Zayn's glad he picked a dark coloured shirt to hide the perspiration marks that are worsened by the temperature. Thankfully he's adjusted to the humidity by now, otherwise practicing advanced tricks in whatever random Tokyo suburb he and Niall were in would be infinitely more rigorous.

For a few weeks now, they had been putting together shots for a sponsor video. Being this close to The Games makes for ideal filming time, seeing as though Zayn shouldn't be messing up any tricks. At least not any that he planned on performing. If he got a spark of creativity from seeing something in a public space, of course he dared to try something new, so some spills did occur, but they were worth the risk. A promo piece needed its wow moments after all. Not challenging himself with spur of the moment finds in a new city was ludicrous to Zayn. He just wishes there wasn't the added pressure of having to come off as appealing for it. Not with this scorching heat.

"You look good," Niall comments as they take a break from filming to sit on the grass under a nearby tree and escape the heat.

Swallowing his water, Zayn nods, "Thanks."

"Feel alright?"

The words are code for: how's your anxiety? It's a language that Zayn's grateful his best friend came up with when they were teens, has saved him a lot of aggravation at having to hear things be spelled out. They both know what he struggles with, Zayn doesn't want to have it said out loud more than is absolutely necessary.

"Not really," he says stoically. "But that's not going to stop me from getting what needs to be done, done."

A brown bird lands nearby, stealing Zayn's attention and causing the boy to wish he had something to throw for it to eat.

"Knees ok?"

"Same as always." Without anything to scavenge, the bird flies away. "Did Liam ever ask you if you had the footage from it?" Zayn asks, eyes turning back to Niall.

The Irishman starts to unwrap a protein bar from his bag, throwing one at Zayn. "Yeah. Took me a while, but I found it in the cloud." He bites off a corner of the rectangle. "So Liam, huh?"

"The girl from last night, huh?"

Zayn peeks up from where he's opening the snack, smirking at Niall. It was only a matter of time before either his best friend or Louis bugged him about the physio, but with the latter busy in his own fairytale, it makes sense that the male next to him beat Louis to it.

Niall brings his knees up to his chest, arms resting on top. "I've got to pick up your slack, remember?"

"As long as you're being careful," Zayn shrugs in a carefree manner, "more power to ya."

"Anyone who's not is a fuckin' moron." Tossing the rest of his wrapper into his backpack, Niall looks out at the passersby. "Have you seen the condoms near every lift? It's like a goddamn Trojan factory at the Village."

He's midchew, but Zayn still laughs at the analogy. "I've seen them yeah. Guess the rumours really are true about what goes on between events." Swallowing, he reaches for more water and takes another long pull before continuing. "I'm just glad Harry lives off site so I don't have to deal with that. Basically got the room to myself."

"More reason to ask why you haven't taken advantage of it," Niall nags, teetering the line between annoying and acting in candid interest.

Resisting the urge to check his phone, Zayn takes another bite out of the protein bar. "He likes followin' the rules."