Old Money and New Crime

They meet Harry outside of AEPi the next morning for their 10:00 meeting. It's 9:55 when Zayn and Niall arrive, and Harry is already there, looking nervous and kind of tetchy.

"Oh, thank god. I thought you weren't coming," Harry admits. He looks like he hasn't slept, and his curls are a mess.

Zayn looks and feels distinctly unimpressed by the lack of faith in him. "It's five minutes before 10. We're not even late."

Harry at least has the decency to blush. "I know, I just-- I thought maybe you were one of the 'early is on time, and on time is late' kind of people? You said 10 pm sharp, so. I don't know-- I just. Yeah."

"I just don't like wasting my time," Zayn says pointedly. "Where is your friend?"

"He's, um-- He's inside. I'll, um. Yeah," Harry says, nonsensical; opening the door to the fraternity house and beckoning for Zayn and Niall to follow. The three of them go upstairs, and Harry leads them into one of the bedrooms.

Zayn recognizes Louis Tomlinson from his Facebook profile picture immediately. Sitting on the bed with his knees drawn up to his chest, he's even smaller than he'd looked online, especially in the giant ManU sweatshirt he's wearing with his plaid pajama pants. He looks as tired as Harry, with an added element of stress, and if Zayn had any reservations before about taking this case, they seem to fade away at once.

And he knows it's not the same person, okay? In logical terms, there were a lot of arrests in ADPhi last year when Zayn pulled the drug bust. It's fairly likely that whoever Zayn's... person was that night has been expelled and arrested. It's not... it's not a vendetta, or whatever the fuck Liam thinks it is. Not that Liam knows anything, other than the fact that Zayn has very negative opinions on fraternities. It's not personal-- it's business. It's easy to tell himself it's business.

Zayn sees nothing of himself in Louis Tomlinson. He's glad about that. Louis Tomlinson is the kind of boy who has been given everything he's ever wanted for his whole life. Louis Tomlinson may be the boy in the room now, the boy hunched in on himself like all he wants is to be smaller, nonexistent; but Louis Tomlinson is also the boy in his Facebook profile picture. The boy in the expensive polo shirt on his step dad's yacht, surrounded by friends and red solo cups.

He takes his laptop out of his bag and sits down on the couch across from Louis, ready to type everything. He has to know as much as possible. He has to know the facts. "Hi Louis, I'm Zayn. I'm sure Harry has mentioned I was coming. So I need you to tell me everything you remember from that night."

"I don't remember anything," Louis says, and his voice is small and quiet.

"Of course you do," Zayn says, annoyed. "You remember something--"

"Don't be mean to him," Harry says from the doorway, affronted.

"Maybe it's best you weren't in here, Harry," Niall says, suddenly. "Louis might feel less uncomfortable if you were here. He knows you too well."

And... that's exactly the way Zayn feels. The idea of telling Louis his own story isn't so daunting. The idea of telling Liam or Niall makes him want to throw up. "Harry, leave or I'm not taking the case."

Harry looks frustrated, but he nods, and closes the door behind him.

Louis sort of smiles, shakes his head. "I really don't remember much."

"Tell me what happened before you passed out, then."

Louis nods slowly. "I... was at the party. With Harry, Harry was there, we went together. Someone gave me a drink, and I didn't really look, you know, it's-- it's college, I didn't think anything of it. Someone gives you a drink, you drink it. But I finished it and I felt... drunker than I'd ever been before. Just, all at once, you know? I lost Harry somewhere along the way. And then I woke up, and I was all alone."

"That's all?" Zayn says, carefully typing it all into his laptop anyway.

"Yeah, that's...That's really it," Louis says, frowning. "I'm sorry I can't tell you much."

Niall smiles kindly at him. "It's okay--"

"Well, really, it's not," Zayn says, closing his laptop. "It's going to be near impossible to find this person with actually zero evidence, but--"

"We'll figure it out, Zayn," Niall says, his voice dropped to a soothing register. Zayn can't decide if it's meant for Louis, or for himself.

Zayn just takes a deep breath. He nods. "You're right. Louis, we'll figure it out."

--

"You didn't have to be so rude this morning," Niall says, later, a book open on his lap back in their dorm. Zayn's got his laptop open, checking to see if there's any of the same guys in ADPhi now as there were last year.

"You're right," Zayn scoffs, scrolling through the ADPhi registry, "because when you're trying to remember the worst night of your life, the one you blacked out during and even thinking about it makes you feel like a supreme fucking idiot, exactly what you want is to be fucking coddled and treated like a child."

Niall just frowns, staring at him questioningly.

They sit in silence for a few moments before Niall finally says, quietly, "Not everyone will let you walk all over them like Liam does, you know."

--

Zayn is frustrated. He's being asked to take on the hardest case of his life, with no useful evidence apart from a vague victim testimony, and he feels like he's been backed into a corner.

He had sort of thought that after the drug bust, things would be better. That he would be alright, and he could put everything behind him. Move on.

It hasn't worked out that way at all.

He feels the same. Maybe worse, since there's a possibility that his rapist is still there, still at the same fucking university as him, walking the same campus, possibly the same halls. He doesn't know where to go from here. There's only a few names on the list he's compiling of ADPhi guys who made it through the drug bust and returned for a second year, but it's all he has, so he clings to it.

--

A few weeks pass, and there is nothing, except from concerned text messages from Harry and a lot of time that Zayn spends coding. Liam is there, as always, prying him to drink some water, eat something, go the fuck to sleep.

He sees the campus therapist, a couple of times, asks her a few of the strange questions he's buried at the back of his mind, and she just responds with more questions instead of answering. They're questions he can't answer; as if he needs any more of those. He feels lost, more so than ever, weighed down by the case and the coding and, more than anything, the idleness, the feeling that he's useless, that he can't do anything about any of this and everything will remain the same.

Everything will remain the same: Until the next victim.

--
When the next victim comes, she doesn't fit the pattern, not that there is much of one. First of all, and most obviously, she's a girl. Secondly, she lives off campus. And unlike Zayn and Louis, she's involved with ADPhi.

Her name is Vivian, and she is a tall, thin, redheaded art major, and she is dating the fucking president of Alpha Delta Phi.

Zayn catches Vivian outside of one of her women's studies classes across the street at Barnard. She's standing with one of her friends, another girl just as tall and pretty as she is, and she smirks prettily when she sees him; rolls her big blue eyes.

"Columbia's favorite Hardy boy!" Vivian says, sardonic. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Zayn says, "You're...wearing a wig."

Vivian glares at him, flushes bright red, and grasps at her hair as though pulling it will make it any less clear it's not real.

"You said no one could tell," she says frustratedly to her friend, who just frowns.

"You can't!" she says.

"Then how the fuck did he notice it within thirty seconds of seeing me--"

"I actually have an agenda, and while this is riveting, I'm going to need you to save it for later--"

"Of course, Zayn, oh great one, how dare I waste your fucking precious time--"

Zayn sighs. "I'm here to talk about your rape at ADPhi."

There is a beat of silence, in which Vivian goes very, very pale. "I don't want to talk about it."

"I'm trying to find out more about your case and another case--"

"I don't want to be involved in your fucking.... revenge plot against ADPhi, Zayn," says Vivian, her voice grave. "I don't want to talk about this."

"This isn't a revenge plot," Zayn says, inanely.

"While I hate the cliche," says Vivian, "'whatever helps you sleep at night' is the phrase of the day."

Zayn thinks about telling her he hasn't slept in three days; decides against it. "Thanks for your time," he says, instead, and heads back to his dorm empty-handed and unfortunately far from empty-minded.