Fifteen Minutes (Zarry AU)

Chapter 16

By the time Zayn gets back to the loft, he’s much calmer. He shouldn’t, but he starts making excuses for Harry again. He’s out of credit. He forgot to charge his phone. He got chatting to the woman in the café on the corner and by the time he got back, Zayn had gone. He’s halfway up the stairs when it occurs to him that Harry might be waiting for him, equally anxious. Zayn’s heart hiccups at the thought as he runs up the rest of them expecting to find Harry sitting in the corridor by the front door, complaining that he had to eat the fried egg sandwich he bought him.

When Zayn gets to the top of the stairs, Harry isn’t there and the disappointment almost makes his legs give way. His fingers are trembling so much that it takes a few attempts to get the door open and when he does, he looks down for a note. WHERE ARE YOU, SHITHEAD? CALL ME. H x but there’s nothing and it’s all Zayn can do not to collapse into a heap on the floor.

He doesn’t know what to do and paces towards the dining table as he checks his phone. It’s futile, but he calls him and when it goes to voicemail, panic plucks at his nerves again. Something’s wrong. This is more than Harry freaking out. Something’s wrong. Harry wouldn’t just say what he said last night then leave. Something’s wrong.

So he calls him again. ‘Harry, it’s me,’ he breathes into the phone when he gets his voicemail. ‘Zayn,’ he adds, squeezing his eyes shut because he doesn’t know if he’s Harry’s me. If he ever was. ‘I, um,’ he has to stop again and sits on the stool by the drafting table. ‘Look. If you’re freaking out about last night, don’t. Don’t run away again. Just talk to me, okay? Just talk to me. It’s okay. Just talk to me. Talk-’

His throat is so tight that he can’t say any more, so Zayn hangs up and covers his eyes with his hand as he tries to catch his breath. He doesn’t know what it is, if it’s having his eyes closed or focusing on his breathing for a moment – the in out, in out, in out that suddenly feels so difficult – but he notices that the loft smells different. He didn’t know it had a smell – cigarettes and white spirit, his mother tells him every time she comes to visit as she empties the ashtray with a sneer, counting each butt before she does – but he can smell something else. Not Harry, something new. Them, he realises as he looks at the bed. Then all he can think about is last night, Harry beneath him, his eyes closed and his mouth open as Zayn reached for his hands. His hips faltered when their palms touched, before he held Harry’s wrists to the bed and thrust into him again.

One corner of the sheet has pulled away to expose the mattress underneath and Zayn wonders if the sheets are still warm, if they smell of them, of Harry’s skin and the aftershave Zayn put on before the exhibition. Is that what he can smell? The two of them melting together, mouths on mouths, palms on palms? Then he sees the indent from Harry’s head in the pillow, as though it remembers him, and Zayn has to look away because he can’t keep doing this. How long’s it going to be this time? Is Harry going to leave him hanging for two weeks again? Three? A month?

Zayn gets it, he gets that Harry’s confused and scared and thrown, but he can’t keep being the one who’s left behind, the one who has to wait and hope that he’s worth being confused and scared and thrown for. He never is and he keeps forgetting that. It’s as if every time his heart breaks, it heals back twice as strong, like a bone, and he forgets.

He should have known, so maybe this is his fault, too. He should have just accepted it and enjoyed last night for what it was: a desperate fuck neither of them could avoid. But he didn’t know. There are so many things he didn’t do in his haste – his thirst – to taste Harry’s skin. There are huge patches of it that he neglected – his back, behind his ear, the space between his eyebrows – but he thought they had time.

He thought they had time.

The sad thing is, Harry did mean everything he said. He’s heard it all before – the I’m so scared, Zayn-s and the I love you, Zayn-s and the Show me, Zayn-s – so he knows that Harry meant it. He meant every word he gasped, every word he breathed into his neck. They always do, when it’s just them and the curiosity burning through them like a fever. Harry would have said anything to feel Zayn’s tongue in his mouth again, on his collarbones, his stomach, so it’s not that he was lying, it’s that his curiosity has been quenched and the reality of being gay (or bi or whatever the fuck he is) and coming out to his parents and being called a faggot in the street suddenly isn’t worth the blow jobs, good as they are. It really is as simple as that and Zayn can sit there making excuses about how scared Harry is and how confused he is, but the truth is: When you love someone, you run to them, not away from them.