Deep (Zarry AU)

Rumours

January 2015

"It's the longest bloody engagement in history, that's what it is." 

 Louis was speaking on yet another day when the rest of the band were stood somewhere, in a dressing room, waiting for Zayn.  The story this time was that Zayn had had a bust-up with Perrie over announcing their wedding date. Apparently she wanted to, he didn't. The message his mum had passed on to Louis was that Zayn and Perrie had fought all evening about it and she had stormed off. Now he was desperately trying to make it up to her, apparently. How this made him late to shoot their perfume advert Harry couldn't quite work out, but any news of strife between Zayn and his fiancée always made his day lighter and brighter somehow, so he didn't really care.

"Well they're gonna get married at some point," Niall said, playing a drumbeat with two pencils on the wall of the dressing room.

"Really?" Louis said, into a mirror. "I'll believe it when I see it."

And Harry felt warm.

April 2015

Harry was standing at the bar, when he got Louis' message, a twenty pound note between his fingers and his hair tied back with a scarf. One of those pubs that weren't really pubs to Harry - all distressed wooden floors and reclaimed pews and tables the colour of iron. But it was kind of his local now, in this part of London where Harry was careful to be polite to everyone he accidentally bumped into or bashed opening a door - not just because, being Harry, he would do that anyway, but because he was likely to find himself working on a video with them the following week.

This was one of his precious few days off from the tour; Harry trying to pretend he was just another Londoner. As if meeting Ed Sheeran for a pint in Primrose Hill was the sort of thing ordinary London folk did.

Harry opened his WhatsApp. Louis had just messaged him.  Billboard award; look out for it on BBC news; Si keen we make a big deal about it to make up for recent "events". Harry closed the message. Time was he'd be thrilled about an award. Where did all that excitement go?

Beer in hand, Harry went to sit down on one of the reclaimed-pew-type-benches and placed his glass down carefully. The pub was almost empty; once Ed arrived they would virtually have the place to themselves and Harry liked it like that. Eleven in the morning and quiet. That feeling was more exotic to him now than any five star resort on a tropical beach.

As he checked his phone, Harry became aware of a song that was playing in the background: long, drawn-out notes weaving around the bartenders' slow clinking and shuffling. Harry stopped. What was that? It sounded like Zayn's voice. Over a track that Harry vaguely recognised, but it wasn't one of theirs. Harry stilled, like a cat sniffing the air. All his senses strained. The voice caught his stomach, made him feel something achy. It was painful, somehow, to hear a voice like Zayn's singing something that wasn't their own. He caught a few words: "mind" or "mine" or something. Probably someone else, he told himself. He went back to his phone. It was about to run out of battery.

The voice keened again, over the noise of some bar staff shifting tables in the far corner of the pub. Harry frowned. It really did sound like Zayn.

Slipping the phone into his back pocket, Harry walked to the bar where he stood for a moment, waiting for one of the staff to stop stocking the fridge and approach him.

After a minute he leaned over, his necklaces grazing the bar's smooth surface.

"Ian, can you turn that up, please mate?" he said, his voice just a touch too high.

Ian, the Scots bartender who always acted like Harry was just another punter, glanced at the music system then looked at Harry and smiled.

"Sure about that?"

Harry frowned. "Zayn, isn't it?"

Ian nodded. "Think so." Harry smiled. Guys like Ian always gave themselves away eventually.

Now he remembered. Louis had said something about it, buried in a string of expletives. Harry just about got the sense of it: "why'd he have to go an release something now with that [string of assorted swear words that even Harry couldn't remember]". Harry hadn't bothered to listen to the track, of course. It would be bloated, shouty hip hop: the stuff Zayn was always trying to inflict on them in the tour bus, the stuff that had Harry running straight back to his Bastille and his Lumineers. But this? It sounded slow and sweet and like something Harry would listen to himself. So it couldn't possibly be Zayn...

Ed had made it to the pub eventually and they'd caught up over a pint or three before he'd had to leave for a meeting with his manager, leaving Harry to walk the few yards home in a hooded jacket that kept the breeze out and his distinctive form in. He'd wanted to ask Ed if he'd heard Zayn's track and what he thought of it; but in the end he decided not to - in case it sounded like he cared.

*

At home later Harry heated the remains of a pad thai that his housekeeper had made. He usually ate perched on a bar stool at the breakfast bar in his newly-refurbished kitchen but today he wanted to look at his laptop as he ate so he transferred to the vast dining table in the ground floor living area. Sitting down to eat, he flicked on the news channel on the rarely-used TV which stood in the corner of the room. From the table where he was sitting he could see the top half of the TV screen over the long leather couch. It was enough: he only wanted to catch the entertainment section as Louis had suggested – and the sports report, of course. They were still showing the headlines, so while he waited he tested the dish of pad thai, still steaming from the microwave, with an authentic Thai spoon that his sister had got him when she'd gone on holiday there. It was too hot to eat yet and his phone had long since died and was only slowly coming to life on his charger, so he opened Google on the laptop that sat open on the table beside him and punched in the band's name to search for news of the Billboard nominations. He scanned the headlines and stopped dead on one he should have been expecting, but somehow hadn't: Zayn Malik's new release with Naughty; Listen.

He hesitated, rubbing his hand across his mouth two or three times. What the hell. He opened the link and waited while the youtube clip of the song buffered, his stomach grinding for a reason he couldn't name. As he waited, he glanced up at the TV. Something about a tube strike being called off.

The song started and Harry looked back down to see that it was playing over a lyric video. No official video then - oh, so the song probably wasn't worth bothering with, he thought. He looked back at the TV. A story about hospital waiting times was playing now. There was a shot of people queuing in an overcrowded Accident and Emergency Department. Harry stared at it for a moment. The TV's sound was interfering with the music coming through his earbuds so he tried to turn it down. But the button on the TV remote wasn't working very well and it took several attempts to make any difference. Once the TV quietened, Harry looked back down at the laptop, still playing the lyric video which he had decided to disregard. He was about to close the window when he saw the words, white on black:

I'm not allowed to talk about it

and hesitated.