Nine Lives (Zarry Fan Fiction)

Epilogue

It’s been a year, but Harry is still inordinately proud of the scar on his leg. He tells Lux it’s a shark bite the first time she sees it. They’re in Jamaica and as soon as Lux sees it, she climbs out of Zayn’s lap to trace it with her finger, her little mouth opening into an O when Harry tells her that he had to punch the shark on the nose. If her Uncle Harry wasn’t already the coolest person she knew, he goes to the top of the list then.

Harry’s never needed an excuse to undress, so he happily rolls up the leg of his jeans any chance he gets to show it off. His war wound, he calls it when he tells the story of the time he had a fight with a black cab and won. But only Zayn sees the other scars, the neat one on his side from the chest tube, the not so neat one under his chin, the vein on his right hand that he swears is still sore from having a cannula embedded in it for so long. His back is covered them. They’re so small that most people don’t notice them, but Zayn can feel them, dozens of tiny bumps scattered across his back from the broken glass on the road. Zayn spends hours tracing lines between each one with his finger as though he’s seeking out constellations. Pegasus. Cepheus. Draco. Ursa Minor. An entire universe to explore on those rare Sunday morning lie ins or when they’re in Harry’s bunk, rolling on to another venue in another city they won’t remember an hour after they leave.

Everything has changed, but nothing has, all at once. Zayn still won’t jump into swimming pools and Harry still holds on too tight sometimes, but it doesn’t matter any more because they both broke that day. And while Zayn wishes that it didn’t take Harry being hit by a cab, now his broken bits fit perfectly with Harry’s broken bits and Zayn doesn't know if that's fate or destiny or just dumb luck, but Harry says it’s normal. ‘This is it,’ he hears him say sometimes before he falls asleep and Zayn smiles because it can’t be normal, it feels anything but.