Work Text:
Zayn ran a hand through his hair and let out a groan of frustration as his eyes traced the page in front of him. He’d been working for hours, trying to perfect the sketches for his Form & Space class. Frustrated, he ripped the page out and crumbled it, throwing it across the room in the direction of the rubbish bin that was already overflowing with similar failed attempts.
Staring at the new blank page, he twirled the pencil in his fingers, trying to figure out how to get the drawing absolutely perfect. He glanced at the strange stack of toys on the table that Nora had left behind because she’d wanted to help Baba with his homework. The pile was interesting, and his mind wandered to whether he should start her on sculpting as well as drawing.
He glanced at the refrigerator, covered with the childish drawings of his boyfriend’s daughter. There was a drawing of the three of them in front of a house. The furniture inside was visible like someone had taken an x-ray of the building. He shook his head at the dog bed next to the child-size bed in one of the upper rooms. Nora had been begging for a puppy, but Liam said they couldn’t have one in their flat.
Shaking his head, he turned his mind back to the sketchbook. He really needed to finish this assignment, hopefully before Liam and Nora returned from the shops. They had plans for a picnic and movie night. Zayn didn’t want to miss out on the family fun because he couldn’t finish his homework, but he’d barely slept the night before trying to get it done, and he thought he might not even make it through the first movie.
Between one blink staring at the page and the next, Zayn fell asleep, the pencil in his hand falling out and rolling to the floor. He was still in that position when Liam and Nora came home. The little girl tumbled through the door and started to race towards her Baba. Liam spotted Zayn’s sleeping form and caught her by the strap on the back of her dungarees. He held a finger to his lips, and Nora glanced at Zayn asleep on the sofa and mirrored the gesture with a tiny nod.
Liam left Nora sitting on the floor of the sitting room with her toys. She kept telling her dolls to be quiet, or they would wake Baba. Liam shook his head with a fond smile before turning a concerned frown on Zayn. He’d noticed the crumpled papers surrounding the bin and the stress on his boyfriend’s face, even in sleep. He remembered when his own face wore a similar look, back when he and Zayn had first started dating and had been working himself to death.
Rubbing a hand through his hair, Liam moved a couple of Nora’s pictures on the fridge to reveal the calendar beneath it. The different colours of markers indicating their schedule were beginning to overlap each other, and Liam tried to remember the last time the three of them had a family night like they’d been planning. Zayn’s school schedule had picked up, and the job he’d taken at the coffee shop when he wasn’t in classes and Liam was home to take care of Nora was taking up more and more time.
Liam moved to the drawer where they kept the bills and budgeting information, wondering if there was a way for Zayn to cut back on his hours while still paying the bills. Liam had already managed to make arrangements to free up some time for Zayn during exams, but he wanted to do more.
Liam reached for the drawer’s handle when he heard giggling coming from the sitting room. Glancing over the island that separated the spaces, he spotted Nora by the window, a piece of crumpled paper in her hands.
He watched as she flattened out the paper on the floor in front of her, her tiny hands smoothing it out. Her eyes scanned the page before nodding with a giggle and moving onto the next one. Liam leaned on the counter and watched her, noticing when Zayn began to stir. He sat up, looking around, rubbing his eyes. He spotted Liam, a smile spreading across his face before Nora’s giggles pulled his attention away.
Nora moved closer to Zayn, holding a paper in her hand. She laid it across his knees like she would with her own drawings. “Tell me ‘bout this,” she said, looking up at Zayn, the question identical to the one Zayn always asked when she showed him her drawings.
Zayn sighed and reached for the paper, drawing his hand back when Nora slapped at it. “Nora, this is rubbish. I can’t turn it in to my professor.”
“You had fun with the lines,” she said, her small hand tracing over and smudging them, softening the edges and increasing the shadows in a way that Zayn hadn’t thought to have done. “I show Dada.”
She picked it off his knees before Zayn could snatch it away from her and carried it over to the kitchen. “Dada, look at what Baba drawed!” she announced, holding it out to Liam, who took it with pride.
“Wow, Princess, this is really good, isn’t it?” Liam studied the drawing. He could see what parts of it Zayn probably wasn’t happy with, but it looked terrific to his untrained eye. He hated that Zayn was so hard on himself, and he knew he wouldn’t be nearly as bad if he weren’t exhausted. “What do you think we should do with this? Baba can’t turn it in all crumply.”
“Press it!” Nora called, heading towards the cupboard where they kept the iron.
“No!” Liam shouted, startling her and feeling badly as her lower lip began to tremble.
Zayn leapt to his feet and scooped Nora up into his arms, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “The iron will scorch it, babe,” he explained. “We don’t want the smoke alarm screaming at us like when your dad tried to make chicken curry.”
“Hush,” Liam said, smiling when Nora giggled and shook her head.
“Fridge!” she shouted, pointing at the drawing.
“Oh no, babe,” Zayn argued. “The fridge is for your artwork.” She smacked Zayn’s shoulders until he set her on the ground so she could reach for the paper again.
Liam ignored Zayn and moved over to grab the magnet that Nora had made in school. It was a lacy heart with a photo of the three of them in the centre of it. He used it to hang the drawing near the calendar. Then he picked up the eraser and glanced at the calendar. He erased three of Zayn’s commitments, knowing that he could rearrange his own schedule rearranged so that Zayn could spend more time on his homework.
“Liam,” Zayn said. “You can’t do that. I need to watch Nora.”
“I talked to mum earlier today. She’s going to come to visit for the week and will take care of Nora while you finish your exams and I work,” he explained.
“Nana coming!” Nora shouted and hurried out of the kitchen, mumbling to herself about Nana coming to visit.
“Plus, I thought you and I might go out for dinner, just the two of us on Friday after exams.”
“Like a real date?” Zayn asked, and Liam nodded, smiling. They’d only ever been out alone a couple of times in the three years they’d been together, mainly because they were both too stubborn to leave Nora with a sitter. Still, if Karen was willing to do it, he wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity for an actual date.
“And I got us a hotel room as well,” Liam said, biting into his lower lip as a grin grew across Zayn’s face. “Thought we could use some real alone time.”
“I think I’d like that,” Zayn said, smiling. He stepped closer to Liam being pulled into his arms.
Liam leaned in for a kiss, thinking about the box in his wardrobe that he would finally give to Zayn on Friday night. He would finally ask Zayn to be his husband, even though he’d been his forever since the first night they had gotten together to study, and Zayn had welcomed Nora without question.
They kissed for a moment before Liam realised it had gotten far too quiet in the flat. Pulling away, he looked around, trying to find Nora. Zayn did the same, and when they heard giggling coming from Nora’s room just as Zayn discovered his charcoals missing, they broke apart and hurried down the hallway.
Skidding to a stop in the doorway, the both of them had to hold back their own laughter when they saw Nora’s walls. In the short bit of time that Liam and Zayn had been talking, Nora had managed a small mural on the wall of her room. Zayn recognised the figures representing the three of them, as well as the puppy she always included.
As they watched, she started talking about her Nana and added another woman with long hair. “We should probably stop her,” Zayn said, thinking about the security deposit.
Liam shook his head. “We’ll just paint over it if we ever move,” he said, wrapping an arm around Zayn and pulling him to his side. “Besides, it’s bad luck to disturb an artist at work.”
Zayn chuckled and leaned his head on Liam’s shoulder, enjoying the snuggles even as he felt himself drifting into an exhausted daze again. He still had to finish his homework but found he couldn’t muster the energy to worry about it at the moment.