Keep the Car Running (Zarry AU)

Chapter 35

There’s no need for Harry to leave the hospital via the car park, but maybe it’s a test, a test Zayn passes, because his Range Rover is still there. Harry hates the way his heart sings when he sees it and how he starts to walk a little faster, but before he can stop himself, he’s knocking on the window of the passenger door. Harry hears a thunk and when he opens the door, Zayn looks so wrung out he almost hugs him.

‘Do you live in your car now?’ Harry asks, climbing in.

‘Apparently,’ Zayn says, rubbing his face with his hands.

‘Have you been sitting here the whole time?’ When Zayn nods, Harry blinks at him. ‘You’ve been sitting here for three hours?’

‘How’s your dad?’

‘He’s in surgery,’ Harry says as breezily as he can. He even manages to shrug.

‘Is he okay?’

‘I don’t care.’ He shrugs again. ‘I hope he dies.’ Harry feels Zayn stiffen next to him and it makes the tops of his ear burn, but he lifts his chin. ‘I do. I hate him.’

‘Harry-’

‘You don’t know!’ he roars suddenly, so suddenly it makes his hands shake as he dumps the grey plastic bag the nurse gave him with his father’s belongings at his feet. There isn’t much, just whatever his father had on him when the paramedics found him. Not that Harry has checked, but the bag feels light and as it settles on the floor of the car, he can hear the rattle of keys and realises that he doesn’t even know where his father is living now. That should make him sad, but it just makes his cheeks burn as well as he wishes he’d never agreed to take the fucking bag because now he needs to come back. He didn’t want to take it, but they don’t have anywhere to keep it in the ICU and furious as he is, he still couldn’t bring himself to tell the nurse to chuck it out.

‘You don’t know,’ he says again, his voice lower but twice as hard with the effort of not losing his temper again. ‘You don’t know.’

‘What happened?’ Zayn asks carefully, as though Harry’s holding a gun to him.

‘He was beaten up.’

‘By the same guy who beat you up?’

‘Probably.’ Harry stops himself when he realises that he’s touching his chin. The bruise is long gone but he’s sure it still hurts, as though there’s something there, under his skin, that will never fully heal.

‘What’s going on?’

Harry turns his cheek away, letting his head tip against the car window and closing his eyes as his temple presses against the cold glass. He can feel Zayn looking at him and he can’t catch his breath because it feels like he’s running around, closing windows and doors as a storm approaches, but it isn’t enough.

‘He’s a gambler,’ he says, unable to shut that last window in time.

Zayn doesn’t flinch. ‘How much does he owe?’

‘Thirty grand.’

‘I can have it by morning.’

Harry shakes his head. ‘I’ve got it.’

‘You have £30,000?’

‘I’ve been saving up.’

‘For what?’

Harry sits up and rubs his mouth with his fingers. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does.’

‘I was going to move to Paris.’ He shrugs. ‘Write a book about the art of fellatio.’

He smiles but Zayn doesn’t. ‘I can have it by morning.’

‘It’s not even about the money.’ Harry sighs, letting his head tip back against the headrest. ‘I don’t care about the money.’

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘For as long as I can remember,’ Harry says, giving into it and wallowing in the satisfaction of finally being able to say it out loud. And in the end, he’s surprised how easy it is; he thought he’d be mortified, but the relief is exquisite. ‘When I was six, I saw him taking money out of my piggy bank,’ he goes on, and he hasn’t told anyone that, not even Gemma, but he can’t stop himself, like a pan boiling over. ‘I didn’t say anything, but two days later, the money was back so I didn’t think about it. I just thought that’s what parents did. So on my seventh birthday, when my godmother put £10 in my card, I was beside myself because I’d never had a £10 note before. So I turned to my dad and said that when he puts it back in my piggy bank I want a £10 note not two fives.’

Harry chuckles as he thinks about the look on his father’s face and the sharp silence that followed as everyone in the living room turned to look at each other. ‘I didn’t know what I’d done wrong,’ Harry says with a sniff. ‘But I went upstairs to apologise and he was in my parents bedroom. I’ll never forget it because he was sitting on the bed with his head in his hands, crying like a baby. I’d never seen him like that before. He’s my dad, you know?’ He turns to Zayn. ‘He was Superman.’ Zayn nods. ‘I didn’t know what to do, but then he saw me and walked over and kicked the door shut and-’ Harry stops to lick his lips. ‘He left the next day and for ages I thought it was my fault. That it was what I said that made him leave.’

‘Yeah, but it wasn’t. You know that now, right?’ Zayn says quietly.

‘Yeah, but then.’ Harry looks at his hands. ‘He came back a couple of weeks later, but it wasn’t the same. He was there, but he wasn’t. He came and went. Came and went.’

‘That isn’t your fault, either Harry.’

‘Yeah, but he missed it all. Every nativity play, every birthday party, every school dance. He didn’t even come to my graduation ceremony.’

Harry hears Zayn shift in his seat and tilts his cheek to find him turned towards him, his cheek on the leather headrest, watching Harry play with his bottom lip.

‘I don’t want him to die,’ Harry admits, and his voice sounds weak now, like a song fading out. ‘But he can’t keep coming and going.’ Zayn doesn’t say anything, just waits for him to catch his breath. ‘If he’s going to go, then I just want him to go.’

‘Have you told him?’

‘He doesn’t care.’ Harry laughs, pausing to chew his knuckle. ‘I gave him ten grand last month and he didn’t even ask where I got it.’

‘He does care.’

Harry wants to laugh – to shout, to scream – but he can’t breathe for the lump in his throat. ‘Don’t.’

When he closes his eyes and shakes his head, he feels Zayn’s hand on the back of his neck, pulling him to him until their foreheads are touching. And as soon as they do, something in him finally snaps. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’ Harry sobs and the sound he makes is terrifying, as though he’s splitting open. ‘I went to bed when I was told and ate my peas and did my homework. I didn’t even tell anyone I was gay until I was eighteen in case he never came back.’

‘Sssh,’ Zayn says into his hair, kissing the top of his head.

‘I did everything I was supposed to. Why wasn’t it enough?’

Zayn wraps his arms around him and pulls him closer as though there’s too much space between them and he needs to fill it until their chests are touching and he can feel Harry’s heart.

‘Why wasn’t I enough?’ Harry says into his neck and when he feels Zayn shiver, he should stop, but he can’t. ‘Why am I always the one left behind?’