Work Text:
Zayn sighs and removes the hat that’s been weighing him down all morning.
“Bzzz ?” Louis buzzes questioningly, flitting around Zayn’s head , careful to avoid his flattened quiff. Zayn absentmindedly flicks his hand and shoos him away with a
“Sorry mate, not feelin’ up to it” he says while digging out a crumpled cigarette and a highlighter yellow lighter someone gave to him as a joke after finding out about the bee population in his garden.
Louis takes it as his cue to leave and goes to bother Liam, who’s actually doing his job pollinating flowers and who knows what a bee’s job actually is. Liam putters about the marigolds and the sunflowers with the diligence only given to Very Important Matters, completely ignoring Louis and his efforts to get Liam to lighten up and have fun. He huffs and tries to find Harry, zipping about his garden and completely ignoring the flowers Zayn had specifically Googled were bees’ favorites.
Zayn slowly exhales smoke and watches his bees sluggishly move about his garden in the noon heat, wondering when his life became a nature documentary. In his head he hears David Attenborough listing useless bee facts and remarking how the world’s bee population has been on a rapid decline. Since when did he think of them as his own they’re just a bunch of weird bees that took up residence in a stack of his spare tires he left lying about in his garden?
He remembers the first time he saw the five bees harmlessly buzzing about his nearly-deserted garden, he remembers watching them out his window and wondering what they were doing in a place with no flowers or honey or anything interesting to a bee. He recalls the first time he saw Harry do his “Elvis Dance” when Zayn accidentally played “Poor Boy” a little too loud through the screen door, watching Harry do intricate figure eights and zip about the weeds and mildewed rabbit statues.
He remembers naming each bee and being able to recognize them off-hand and remembers the first time Louis almost landed in his hair and Zayn freaked out and definitely did not shriek and run inside. Do bees like Elvis? he types into Google later that night before heading to bed. All that gives him is a bunch of pointless lyric sites mentioning the word “bees”, so he does the next logical move which is to see if bees like any type of music. That leads him into a labyrinth of beekeeping forums and bad bee jokes that he actually understands and eventually he realizes oh shit it’s one a.m. and he’s been on beesbwelcum.net laughing at an ms paint drawing of a bee in knee socks for almost forty minutes. He shuts down his laptop and rubs his face, swandives into bed after stripping into his boxers and feels it in his bones that he’ll regret this in the morning.
Of course the first thing Zayn sees the next morning is his window ominously buzzing. He startles and rolls out of bed with a quiet “oh shit!”. Upon closer inspection he sees that his window is not, in fact, buzzing but is instead covered in his bees. Glancing at the second-hand radio on the floor tells him that he is four hours late to his daily smoke and conversation with the bees.
“Hey guys sorry I’m late I got caught up researching your favorite music”, he says loping out to the garden and squinting into the sun. They all buzz around him worriedly and eventually fly off to pollinate flowers or whatever it is these special bees of his do exactly. Zayn sits down on the stoop, pulls out his phone, and plays some Buddy Holly. As Buddy starts to sing about days getting longer and true love and all the soppy shit, Zayn starts to notice Niall and Louis flying closer and closer to each other , almost dancing together. Which is impossible, bees don’t dance none of the forums said anything about bees dancing besides to point out the better spots for nectar. Here they are though, darting around each other and buzzing happily as bees can while Buddy Holly plays. Zayn shakes his head and watches Harry pause at every bloom and Liam stare at any flower that catches his gaze with such focus that if he had eyebrows Zayn’s sure that they’d be constantly bunched together.
The sun sets, the bees go to their tire, and Zayn quietly packs up and says goodnight and prepares to introduce them to the Chordettes tomorrow, smiling in his sleep.