Deep (Zarry AU)

Feels

I won't mind....

2013

Zayn had said he wanted to talk. Just the two of them. Harry didn't have the time to feel nervous about it: Zayn had texted him while he was finishing up in the changing room, and it sounded urgent. Even if it hadn't been, Harry would have crawled over hot coals just to see him alone.

It was a day when the band were stuck in Covent Garden at a dance studio doing rehearsals for their next video. They had been given a couple of hours off before they had to return to the studio for wardrobe fittings. It didn't leave them many options for finding privacy close by. Even Nick's flat wasn't going to work: he was away filming some kpop documentary for the BBC and Harry didn't have a key since he'd moved into his own apartment in a less central part of London. So Harry pulled all the favours he still had with an actor friend to get a private dining room in the nearby Irving Club at short notice. He knew the staff there were discreet. He doubted that he would end up snogging Zayn's face off but if his fantasies did happen to come true again the staff would be cool about it and nothing would emerge in the papers. Or with the band's management.

*

"Mezze." Zayn knew his mind. "All of them. Ah'm starving."

Harry looked at him, the menu he was holding bowing out of his grasp.

"I'm hungry too."

Zayn didn't seem to pick up on the hint.

*

"Are we gonna talk about it then?" Zayn had his chin propped on his hand, his other hand playing with the small piece of flatbread left on his sideplate. Harry could tell he was nervous.

"Umm..." Harry said.

Harry wasn't sure why Zayn said what he said next. Harry thought about it a lot over the next few weeks. Wondered if he had taken it the right way, done the right thing. But of course he had. Because Zayn had smiled and said:

"Shall we just pretend it never happened?"

*

The words seemed to echo around the small room, off the dark wooden panelling and the depressing green wallpaper. Harry looked down at the perfect, thick, white tablecloth, set with heavy, shining cutlery.

"Umm... if you want."

Zayn hesitated for a minute.

"S'just. I don't really know what to do. Never been in this situation before."

Harry smiled. "You don't say."

Zayn laughed, briefly. He was tapping on the table with his finger. Harry could feel Zayn's knee bouncing, one foot propped on his toes, from the other side of the table. He always did that when he was nervous. In contrast, Harry sat very still. He was dipping his bread in the hummus, continuing to eat although his appetite had all but gone.

"So it won't... like.... affect our friendship, will it?"

"What? Noooo." Harry was shaking his head. " 'course not. Just a bit of fun. We were both off our heads weren't we? Don't think I can remember all of it, actually." Harry reached out and rubbed Zayn's upper arm, in that reassuring, mates-only way.  It took all his strength.

Zayn smiled a flat kind of smile. "So... what happens at the "M" stays at the "M"?"

"Yeah...." Harry shrugged one shoulder, concentrated on his bread.

"But it was...." Zayn's eyes were shining.

Harry coughed.

".... amazing."

"Yeah," Harry nodded. Amazing? He wanted to say. Amazing didn't even cover the first five minutes of it, you arsehole.

Harry concentrated hard on his plate and his food, wiped his mouth with the thick, smooth napkin, looked at everything he could think of looking at which was on or near the table. Everything he could think of looking at except Zayn.

He was going to make him uncomfortable. If that night was all the Zayn he was ever going to get, he was at least going to make him pay for it.

"I know we talked about this a bit already but – remind me again why you first started thinking about me that way? Started liking me, I mean. Something about pictures on the internet."

Zayn shifted. His turn to look everywhere else.

"Told ya. It was stupid, but...." Zayn's eyes flicked around the room. He smiled and nodded to himself. Took a deep breath.

"Ah found this fanfiction."