Archive of Our Own ^beta

Harry hates his Volvo. It was a graduation gift, or maybe it was a reward for getting accepted into medical school, he's never been sure. It came with a red bow on the hood, because his parents like a show, like to feel good about themselves, so they couldn't just give him the keys and say, here you go son, you've done good. He always knew his car would come with a bow on the hood. And Harry loved that car. When it still smelled new and even when Gemma dropped the ketchup cup on the floor and the sweet tomato scent just wouldn’t air out. Harry lost his virginity in that red Volvo, had his first minor fender-bender with it. He drove himself to college, boxes on the passenger seats, the back seats and in the trunk. And then two years later, he drove himself to his sister's house with just as many boxes, but less naïve hopes and dreams, ideals about love he never really understood in the first place, all falling out the car’s window. He loved the car even when he couldn’t keep from closing his eyes against the sting of salty tears.

But now? Now he doesn’t love it anymore. He hasn't from the moment he found the red lipstick in the glove compartment yesterday. Not since two months ago, when he parked in front of the apartment he could barely afford even if he was splitting the rent with Lucy – beautiful, perfect, cheating Lucy. Because there's something so sour about walking in on your girlfriend fucking another guy on your living room floor that apparently transcends onto your car. Every time he’s sat in his Volvo since then, Harry’s had the image of Lucy sitting on the guy's lap and that – that can make anyone hate their car.

The paint on the steering wheel is chipping. Harry digs his thumb underneath a raised patch and flicks it up. The paint crumbles further along the curve, dissipating away as he keeps his eyes on it. Just one more thing to add to the list.

He puts his hand back in his lap and looks at his phone instead. It’s almost eleven by this point,  the sun in the sky when he parked now replaced by the moon and the stars and the quiet the nights bring. It’s almost eleven, which means Harry’s been sitting here for almost three hours, biting his nails, tearing holes into the upholstery and listening to the voicemail over and over again. He has it memorized by heart, because Harry’s pathetic and still a little sad even if he won’t ever admit to it, but that’s who he is now.

‘Harry,’ Lucy pants, all breath and no voice, winded from having sex. ‘I don’t know what to – what happened, it wasn’t – I’m so sorry,’ as if she can’t get through a sentence. She whimpers and Harry has to close his eyes, every time, because he isn’t a doctor-to-be anymore, and the whimper only reminds him of that. ‘It didn't mean anything, you have to believe it didn't mean anything, Harry. I'm so sorry, it's not what you think.’

Actually, Harry doesn't have to believe anything she says anymore and he isn't really sure why he ever trusted her in the first place. But that's not fair. Lucy was great. She was beautiful, smart, hot - and not in that way where you're attracted to the person you're dating, like it's necessary, logical, because of course they're hot. But in the way where she still is hot. Harry doesn't know what it means, but for those five seconds he stood there watching, he thought she looked hot. She was perfect. Better at the whole studying thing than Harry ever was and they both knew it, the difference between their grades showing exactly that. It's why Harry saw the situation as an opportunity to drop out and do something that wouldn't make his parents as proud, but would make him happy. For once Harry wanted to be happy. The torture he's putting himself through really reflects that, Louis will definitely agree. He took the shitty situation in stride and made something good with it. Or he will, as soon as Harry decides what that something good is.

‘Please, Harry, please come back,’ Lucy says at the end, followed by a dramatic pause where she breathes deeply, like she's sighing at her own stupid mistake, before she says, ‘Harry I love you,’ and the message cuts off.

Harry sighs too at that point, the silence inviting all kinds of thoughts he'd rather not have. He closes his eyes, thinks, I'm the stupid one and clicks on the message again, over and over, because he wants to hear Lucy apologize again, lie the way she always did, as easy as breathing, just for fun, little and white.

Ten minutes and then twenty go by, the windows of his Volvo fogging up with his breath when it hits him, something, he can't put his finger on it, doesn't know what it's called, what its name is, but it hits him. He gets to the end of the message again, the unnecessary I love you she tacked on at the end because she knew it would hurt more than the rest of it and clicks the delete button. His phone asks, Are you sure you want to delete this message? Like it's on Lucy's side. First his lipstick filled car and now his phone.

Harry looks at the question, the two options at the bottom of his screen and without a sigh, clicks the right button, the bold Yes and regrets it as soon as he does.

**

Louis loves the little colorful yoghurts meant for children, the creamy ones that come with jam at the bottom and magnet letters on the foil lid. It's three magnets with random words that you have no use of unless you buy countless yoghurts which Louis has obviously done, or Harry wouldn't have been able to play with them for the past forty minutes. He thought about counting them when he came to get beer, but got otherwise distracted, because who doesn't like leaving stupid messages on their friend’s fridge? Or phone.

He probably looks absolutely miserable. Or maybe be looks bored, that would be better, because if anyone feels the need to give Lucy the update, Harry would rather be bored without her than miserable. If someone is watching, not that they are, because why would they? No one cares what Lucy thinks of Harry anymore, there isn't a ‘Lucy and Harry’ anymore to care about. Harry needs to get used to that, enough time has passed.

As he reorganizes the magnets again, pulling love a row higher, Harry's sure he's losing it. What exactly, he isn't exactly sure, but he feels lighter, like he's just about to float away, his pockets empty, shoes slipping off his feet.

He takes another sip of beer and moves monkeys into the open space. Love is stupid monkeys dancing in space. It sums up his general mood quite nicely he thinks. But as he pulls on the muffin magnet, Harry senses someone standing right behind him, head over his shoulder and eyes clearly on his hand sliding the magnet in its place.

“Um, I thought the fridge magnet messages were anonymous?” Harry says without bothering to look at the intrusive stranger. People should learn the meaning of personal space. And to read tone, because this guy keeps standing there, humming and clearly not understanding Harry's less than polite question for what it means. So Harry clears his throat next. Maybe the guy got stuck, maybe Harry can unstick him from staring.

“Oh, don't mind me. I'll just stand here and judge you quietly. Promise to not make a peep.”

“You think you're being funny,” Harry’s in no mood for smart party-goers whose breath smells of stale beer and something disgustingly spicy, “but your breath stinks and I thrive off of judgment.”

“Well then,” the guy reaches for one of the beers sweating on the counter as he finally steps to Harry's side to say, “better not give you the satisfaction.” He clinks their bottles together, smiles stupidly wide and leaves Harry standing at the fridge, his finger pressed against ass.

Life imitating art, or the other way around, either way, Harry can't find it in himself to appreciate the irony of being an ass to a guy that looked like that – messy hair that looks purposeful, torn t-shirt and jeans but clearly bought that way, glasses that made him look like a nerd that could recite Shakespeare at any given moment. Harry thought his standards would lower since beautiful Lucy, because clearly he couldn't be with someone as beautiful as her, and they have. But he still wants a do-over. Maybe be less of an ass and put some of his charm to use - smile, wink, cock his hip out, unbutton his shirt like he used to back in the days when he still felt good about himself. Or maybe Harry doesn't want a do-over. Maybe he doesn't deserve one. He should keep lying in his self-pity for a little while longer. That sounds more like him.

He's looking over the fridge for the word hole, inspired by recent events, when he's pushed against it by a force of another human being hanging on to his back just like a monkey asshole Harry has in mind.

“Why do you keep doing that?” Harry whines, trying to shake Louis off, but the bastard has a good grip on his shoulders, so Harry gives in and stands there pathetically, shoulder slouched and lips pouting.

“Because to me you look like a tree I want to climb.”

“Thank you,” Harry grumbles. If he's ever not been in the mood for Louis, it's right now. “Now get off.”

“What's wrong with you?” Louis asks, seriously, not like he can sense Harry's distaste for tonight's party he was forced to attend, but more in a general way, like Harry has a dysfunctional arm, a heart defect, appendices.

Just as Harry wants to say something unwitty back that's sure to make Louis huff in his face and walk away so Harry can get back to the magnets, a voice from behind his back says, “He thrives off of judgment, didn't you know?”

“Oh, I knew,” Louis says unhelpfully. “I meant specifically today. Did somebody else dump you or something?”

“I'm so happy I came to your party.” Harry’s face splits in a forced grin just as the guy says, “Who else would play with the magnets if you hadn't?”

“Okay, who are you?” Harry turns around fast enough to give himself whiplash. He has to remember he's actually been drinking tonight.

“Harry, meet my cousin, Zayn.”

“You're related?” Harry looks at Louis and then at Zayn, eyebrows in the middle of his forehead. “You two? Is that why you're being mean to me? Does it run in the family or something?”

“We're not being mean,” Zayn says with his palms raised, but then Louis quips, “Just honest,” and when both of them grin at Harry, he knows they are definitely being mean and they're definitely related.

“Then you can both honestly just leave me alone.”

“Stop being so cranky.”

Harry opens his mouth to protest indignantly to his best friend and his beautiful cousin, when Zayn says, “He’s not cranky,” helpfully. Harry thinks he might grow to like Zayn. But then Zayn says, “Just brokenhearted,” crushing that thought.

“Liam, tell Harry to brighten up.”

“Zayn?” Louis’ the one with his eyebrow raised and pointed at Zayn while he looks at Liam, from head to toe. It looks like he’s evaluating a piece of meat but it’s not far from what he’s actually doing. “Who is this?”

“Liam, this is Louis.”

“Oh, the cousin,” Liam says as if he’s actually excited to meet Louis. First for everything. “And you’re Harry? Brighten up, I guess?” The chuckle that comes out of his mouth makes Harry want to wrap him up in cotton and never let Louis touch him.

But then before he knows it, Louis has his arm around Liam’s neck, leading him away so that he can defile Liam and his crinkly eyes.

“You don’t have to worry about Liam.”

“I’m not.” Harry shrugs unconvincingly. “Or I am.” He turns away from the party again and gets back to his magnets. He’s yet to find hole.

“So how do you know Louis?” Zayn’s perched against the side of the fridge, leaning the beer bottle against his lip and inspecting the place. His eyes drift over the people getting increasingly drunk, half of them strangers to Harry even if he’s known Louis enough time to recognize at least someone. He’s trying his hardest not to scoff at the magnets as Zayn starts nodding his head to some song playing from the living room. After Harry doesn’t say anything, moving head right next to ass, Zayn says, “You met through your sister, right?”

“Is this the part where you ask me questions you already know the answers to?” Harry finds a friends and adds it to the line of philosophy he’s creating, not bothering to look at Zayn as he talks to him.

And even without looking, Harry knows Zayn’s moving closer, turning on his heels to face Harry. “It doesn’t have to be,” he says into his beer.

“Fine.”

“Okay,” Zayn smiles at him. Harry tries not to swoon.

“So?”

“How monosyllabic of you.”

Harry grumbles something quietly to himself, because “I’m tired, okay? I had a late shift and I just want to go home as soon as I possibly can.”

“As ASAP as possible,” Zayn laughs at his own joke.

“Quoting TV shows.” Harry nods in appreciation, squinting to see what else Zayn comes up with.

“You wanna go home?”

“Did I not just say that?”

“Come on,” Zayn says before he takes a sip of his beer and thumps the bottle back on the counter, startling Harry. “You can walk me.”

“What…” Harry looks left and right, as if someone in the kitchen will pat him on the back and tell him it’s going to be okay, but no one does. There’s just Zayn smiling over his shoulder and walking towards the door. And well, if it wasn’t for that smile, Harry might have shook his head and turned down the stranger offering Harry to go for a walk around town to god knows where in the middle of the night. But that smile – Harry couldn’t let Zayn walk away.

**

Harry doesn’t remember the last time he wanted to walk someone home without holding their hand or stealing kisses along the way, wishing time could stop for just a minute so he could stand under a lamppost and do all the things people in romantic comedies do. He isn’t sure if he’s ever walked the streets with someone without wanting or expecting a goodnight kiss at the end, when it’s over and they stop in front of a building, looking expectedly at each other, laughing their blushes away. And Zayn is laughing, but it’s at his own joke again, because that’s something Zayn does, Harry knows that now, not that it changes anything.

Besides his eight year old nephew, Harry has trouble trusting people. It’s a new sensation that burns his palms, a knot in his stomach that came along with Lucy’s voicemail that makes Harry think someone’s promise of a simple lunch the next day is as void as the next thing that comes out of their mouth. His nephew doesn’t know how to hurt intentionally yet, that’s one of the reasons why Harry got his name inked on his forearm – to remember that some people out there are worth the jitters and the knots.

It’s why he says, “That was a really great walk,” when Zayn stops in front of an apartment building, pointing to it, saying, “This is me.” Because Harry has to relearn how to trust people and Zayn might just be the one to help him do it. Harry wouldn’t mind seeing Zayn again, going on another walk so he can finish his origin story, tell Harry more about his job, how he’s the head designer on a project. And Harry wouldn’t mind moving that conversation to a restaurant either, a quiet little place he knows downtown.

“We should, um, we should do it again. Sometimes, maybe.”

Zayn smiles at him, he does that a lot, hopefully attributing the stuttering to the late hour. “We should.” He digs through his messenger bad, coming up with a torn piece of paper and a pen. “I’m gonna give you my number.” He looks at Harry through his eyelashes. “Don’t go giving it around though.”

Harry crosses his heart, says, “Pinky promise,” but doesn’t actually offer his finger. It still counts.

“Okay,” Zayn yawns as he jots down the last digit. “I really didn’t plan on staying out this late.” He pulls out his phone that died as soon as they left Louis’ place. “My boyfriend is probably freaking out right about now.”

Of course he is.

“Don’t tell him I told you this, but he’s the biggest drama queen.”

Of course he is.

Harry thinks people can be split into two groups: the lucky and the unlucky ones. It all boils down to fortune. Harry always thought he was lucky – he wouldn’t get a Volvo for his eighteen birthday otherwise, wouldn’t have gotten into medical school without really trying. But in the past couple of months, he’s changed his mind. Watching your beautiful, perfect girlfriend screw a guy on your living room floor does that to a person. Apparently, that’s all it takes to change your luck.

So when Zayn walks up the steps into his building, climbing the stairs to get to his boyfriend, Harry goes back to Volvo with a promise that he’ll call, the piece of paper in his hand, wondering if he could un-delete Lucy’s message and listen to it just one more time.

He doesn’t though. Harry sits in his car in front of Gemma’s house in silence, watching the light flicker through the living room window, waiting for her to stop waiting up for him and go to bed. Harry changes gears and drives around the block until the lights go out. He keeps driving for another circle, thinking about Lucy’s message and the words she couldn’t say. About Zayn’s number.

Right before he turns onto Gemma’s street, he drops his hand out of the window with that piece of paper between two fingers. Maybe Harry wants to change his luck back or maybe he doesn’t want to ruin someone else’s. Zayn is already lucky as he is, with his boyfriend and his job and his put-together life that Harry can see in the way Zayn carries himself. He doesn't need Harry’s misfortune messing him up, throwing a curve ball towards his life. Even if Harry wants to be that ball flying directly towards Zayn and the sparkle that flashes in his eyes every time he smiles.

As the paper slips and flies away, Harry feels lighter. He doesn’t have to keep his promises either.

**

He missed the movie. Not the whole thing, which, frankly, would’ve made him feel better. Harry missed the first ten minutes. And even though the girl at the ticket booth insists the movie has a slow start, that he hasn’t really missed anything, he doesn’t want to see three quarters of it. Harry wants to see the entire thing, from beginning to end, like he’s supposed to. And he feels very strongly about this.

He keeps staring at his phone, like the time’s going to shift to fifteen minutes ago, when someone runs past him, almost jumping into the booth, breathing loud enough for Harry to hear. He also hears an exasperated, “Again?” and if there’s one thing Harry’s good at these days, it’s empathizing with the unlucky.

But then the guy turns around with a groan and a stomp, and Harry isn’t sure if he can empathize with Zayn, the guy with a job, an apartment and a boyfriend waiting for him to come home. And pretty eyes.

“Harry?”

If there was chance for him to shake his head and walk away, he’d do it, but Zayn is already covering the distance between them. Harry feels caged in as soon as Zayn says, “Why haven’t you called,” as easy as anything when he’s still a few steps away. He doesn’t give Harry a chance to blink.

“I’ve been busy,” Harry says before he actually thinks it over. He scratches the back of his neck, thinking of why he would be busy, making the lie believable without going too into details. But he’s overthinking it and maybe Zayn can tell by the way the corner of his mouth pulls to the side.

“It’s okay, I get it.”

“We can grab dinner?” Harry has to keep reminding himself how the process of talking works, that maybe thinking before he does it may be a good way to start. He looks at Zayn nervously, waiting to be politely turned down when he remembers the boyfriend and turns around, expecting someone to walk up to Zayn and twist their arm around his waist.

“Actually,” Zayn says, making Harry face him again. “Niall was supposed to meet me, but he kinda stood me up, so dinner sounds perfect.”

And that’s… perfect. Maybe it can be an apology for not calling, even if Harry doesn’t think he should be obligated to feel anything when it comes to Zayn. He doesn’t even know Zayn. But maybe he wants to.

**

“So you have been in love before?”

Harry nods, shrugs, shakes his head.

When Zayn asked, plain as day, “Who broke your heart?” right as their food arrived, the tomato salad and Scotch eggs with a side of fried pickles, Harry sputtered and almost choked on his own spit. Out of nowhere, Harry had to talk about the thing he liked pretending didn’t exists, like a unicorn only he couldn’t see. He said, “Specifically or generally over my lifetime,” to defuse his racing heart, but it didn’t do anything to deter Zayn.

“And now you’ve fallen out of love?”

“I didn’t fall out of love, I was forced out of it.” It’s as much as he can say and Zayn must get that at least.

“You never want to be in love again, though? You’re planning on being single for the rest of your life?”

“Why do you make it sound like it’s an awful thing?” Harry asks around a bite of his pickle, because he wants to say that he wouldn't mind calling this a date if Zayn wasn't already in a relationship, but he can't do that.

Zayn opens his mouth to say something, but on second thought, Harry doesn’t want to hear it, because “It’s not, you know? I’d rather be single than pretend like I’m in love with someone or hope that I am, or whatever. I’d rather have nothing than have someone claim they love me, when they don’t even know what that means.”

“I’m guessing a recent bad break-up?” Zayn’s voice is tinged with the tone of someone who’s Happy with a capital ‘H’. Harry doesn’t know if he hates how it drips from his mouth or if he’s jealous.

He makes the first cut into his egg, putting a small piece on his fork and saying, “These are delicious,” in lieu of an answer.

Zayn sighs around a smile. “It’s not good for your health.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“And how would you know?”

“I went to medical school.” Which is more of a reminder that he’s a disappointment than anything else. The last time they saw each other, Zayn couldn’t stop talking about his new project, the designs he’s making all on his own, his first time being a leader of something. It brought Harry down as much as he admired the spring in Zayn’s step as he talked about something he genuinely loves doing.

“Okay.” Zayn crosses his arms, forgetting all about his salad. “Tell me something interesting then, something a doctor would know.”

Harry hums for effect before he says, “Everything tastes better fried.” He looks at Zayn skeptically, but then a smile breaks through his challenging frown and Harry feels strangely pleased with himself.

“Not exactly what I was thinking…”

“It’s true.”

“Except for how it isn’t.” Zayn makes a show of putting more salad on his fork than he can carry.

“Don’t say that in front of my egg.”

“How can you even eat that?” Harry’s genuinely surprised by the look of pure disgust on Zayn’s face.

“Shush, you have a plate of raw vegetables.”

“Tomatoes are fruit,” Zayn says triumphantly. “What I’m eating is healthy, it won’t give me a heart attack at twenty-six.”

“Neither will an egg.”

“Are you really a doctor?” Zayn squints at him.

“I’m actually an assistant in a law firm’s mailroom. I went to medical school, just… didn’t finish it.” Harry can still hear his mother crying when he called to tell her. His dad wasn’t as emotional about it, even if he was more disappointed. Zayn just nods, maybe in understanding, maybe because Harry can feel himself slipping up, letting Zayn in a little.

“So is mail your newly discovered passion?” Zayn asks, not so much as a hint of wanting to mock. But it’s another one of those unicorns. If he doesn’t have to and Harry doesn’t, he would rather go without explaining how he went from being so close to interning, to one day packing his bags and asking his sister if she could get him a job at her work.

So Harry answers with, “Do you know what fool’s gold is?” because he’d rather talk about a sandwich.

But Zayn doesn’t seem bothered. He just sticks a broccoli on his fork and shakes his head, says, “No,” and looks up at Harry waiting for an explanation.

“So apparently,” Harry starts to emerge himself into the story of how he watched a fascinating documentary about Elvis a few nights ago, only stopping to says that, “No, Zayn, I wasn’t forced to watch it,” without mentioning Jackson throwing a tantrum when Harry changed the channel. Elvis is his new obsession, Gemma yelled from the kitchen, making them peanut butter and jam toast. “Elvis flew his private jet once from Memphis to Denver just because he wanted to eat a fool’s gold. It’s a loaf of white bread cut in half with the middles carved out. In one half, you pour peanut butter and the other jam. Put bacon in between and join the halves back together. Oh, and the bread needs to be glazed with butter. That’s important.”

“How can someone eat that?” Zayn looks horrified. His eyes wide and mouth open, twisting in a way that makes Harry think he isn’t going to touch his salad again. But Harry isn’t deterred, he bites into another pickle and shrugs.

“I bet it’s delicious.”

**

They’re standing in front of Zayn’s building again. Harry looks up towards the windows when they turn the corner and then again when Zayn says Niall is probably waiting up for him. He wonders which window is Zayn’s.

“So,” Zayn says with a nod. “Friends?” His eyes are bright, his smile small but there, at the hinges of his lips, drawing soft lines over his face.

Harry can do that. He can be friends with Zayn. It will be easy to pretend he doesn’t want to kiss Zayn goodnight instead of watch him wave or shake his hand. That won't send electricity through his fingers and make Harry want to pull Zayn closer. There's none of that.

Easy. Just friends.

“Yeah, friends.”

Three days and a lunch spent bickering over the possible repercussions of eating an entire fool’s gold, Harry’s phone buzzes on his stomach. Jackson is half asleep next to him, barely paying attention to the horror movie he insisted on watching since Gemma was out, but Harry knows that even touching the remote would result in screaming and yelling and not falling asleep before Gemma gets back, so he lets it play in the background as he picks up his phone, expecting a spam email at best or another invitation to Louis’ party next week.

It’s Zayn though, Harry’s newest friend. After all the bubbles of the conversation they had before Zayn said he had to go on a ‘hot date with my boyfriend tonight’ and Harry proceeded to scream into his pillow with a new sense of self-pity, Zayn texts him a simple

Hey! Do you wanna come by our place for dinner tomorrow?

**

“Do you know how early it is?” is how Louis answers his phone at two o’clock in the afternoon. Judging by the sound of his voice though, the rasp he gets after drinking and smoking the night before, Harry finds it in himself to feel bad, if barely.

“I need advice.”

“Liam might be better at this.”

“I don’t want to talk to my best friend’s boyfriend about Zayn inviting me to have dinner with him and his boyfriend.” It’s the best thing to do in situations where Louis is barely paying attention. Get him hooked as soon as possible, because once he’s intrigued, Louis has to get personally involved.

There’s a pause and a groan, a rustle of sheets and then Louis says, “Okay, tell me everything.”

“That’s it.”

“Why are you panicking then?”

Harry may have forgotten to tell Louis about how he has a crush on Zayn, who is weirdly related to Louis and sadly in a relationship, and also a new friend Harry actually managed to make all on his own. So he does it now.

“But you’re friends?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then go have dinner with them, Harry, don’t try to complicate this,” Louis sighs. Harry thought he’d be more interested. “And if the dinner turns into a threesome, please spare me the details.”

The line goes dead and even more than before, Harry isn’t convinced it’s a good idea. But for some reason, he finds himself baking cookies two hours later, showering and putting on a silk shirt if the dinner is meant to be more sophisticated than baked potatoes and beers – he doesn’t know anything about ‘Zayn and Niall’ – climbing into his Volvo and driving off to their apartment on the streets he’s only ever walked before.

The second thing Niall says to him after a one armed hug and a loud ‘welcome’, is “Are you trying to sleep with my boyfriend?” between cutting up a tomato and duping it in the pasta sauce. Zayn’s sitting on the couch with Ben, who introduced himself with a wink Harry isn’t sure what to do with, watching a trailer for some movie he didn’t catch the name of.

Harry hopes they can’t hear them, as he sputters out a, “What?” and tries to keep breathing.

“As one guy to another.”

“Um…” He shouldn’t have come. This was not his brightest idea. Or it wasn’t Zayn’s brightest idea. “I’m not…”

“I mean I get if you’d want to, Zayn is great, but I’d appreciate it if you don’t, you know,” Niall wields a knife towards Harry. “I would really appreciate it if you don’t. Just, one guy to another.” Niall grins and nods to himself, giving a pat on his own back for this, before he goes back to the sauce on the stove.

At the same time, Harry gets the sense that Niall’s had this little talk before and that it’s something special only meant for Harry, because maybe his crush can be smelled in the air. Maybe it’s a thought bubble hanging over his head.

Harry’s still trying to catch his breath when Zayn comes over, humming over the pots and the smells, wrapping his arm around Niall and hooking his chin over his shoulder. They’re the picture of Happiness. They’re an almost exact copy of Harry three months ago, when Lucy was cooking and he was near her, always near her, either a hand on her lower back, his fingers at the ends of her hair or just a step away. Now Harry feels like he has to avoid Ben if he doesn’t want to know why he’s smirking at him like that.

“Hey, Harry?” Niall calls him back to where they’re all standing. He’s holding a spoon in one hand and one of Harry’s cookies in the other. “What, um, what did you put in these?”

By the way Niall fixes his collar and tries to clear his throat, Harry already knows he doesn’t like them. It’s a recipe he found online, so he doesn’t know exactly how much of what he put in the batter. “Well, there’s oatmeal, flour, milk, some yoghurt I think? Then pecans, cashews, peanuts –”

“Peanuts?”

“Yes?”

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”

“What – what’s happening?” Harry’s feet are glued to the hardwood as Niall spits the cookie into the sink and Zayn’s eyes widen, looking over their faces to try and figure out what is going on. Ben looks just as confused, following Zayn to the bathroom and around the apartment in a circle, Niall screaming ‘oh my god’ while they do it. “Did I do something?”

“What?” Zayn stops in front of him. “Oh, no. I mean, Niall is severely allergic to peanuts, but you didn’t know that.” He walks over to the kitchen counter, opening the cupboards, one after the other. “And it would be fine if I could find his EpiPen, but… wait.” Harry blinks, Ben stops and Niall tries to say something but by the sound of it, his tongue has swollen and all that comes out is a mumble of sounds. “You’re a doctor, or almost one, it doesn’t matter,” Zayn says when Harry shakes his head. “What should we do? Can you do something?”

Niall looks blue in the face. His eyes are blown out and open wide. Harry takes his head in his hands and leans it back, making Niall choke only slightly as he does, and listens for his breathing. All eyes are on him, Zayn standing half on top of him, and Harry’s never been under so much pressure to perform. He listens, but doesn’t hear anything and the next thing he knows, Niall is slipping out of his hands and to the floor, and Harry’s yelling to call an ambulance.

**

“Here.” Harry hands a cup of coffee over to Zayn. He doesn’t know how he takes it, but in moments like these, coffee orders don’t matter. As long as it’s strong and hot. That’s one of the things you learn walking down these halls. The world outside the walls of a hospital stop mattering as soon as someone you care about is lying in one of the beds. The world outside stops existing.

“Thanks.”

Harry smiles, watches Zayn blow into the cup for a second. “He’s gonna be okay.” It was stupid. Harry doesn’t even know why he put peanuts into the cookies, why he didn’t grab a tab of chocolate instead. All of this could’ve been avoided if Harry didn’t say yes to the dinner in the first place.

Zayn sighs at his cup. “I know, I just… need to calm myself down.”

Harry walks over to the opposite wall Zayn’s leaning against and perches his shoulder there. “I don’t like hospitals.”

Zayn snorts. “Weren’t you trying to be a doctor?”

“Well, yeah… but I think it’s a human reaction to not like them. I don’t think even doctors like them.”

“I’ve never been, you know, for me. I’ve had family members in the hospital for, for a while before they, um,” Zayn clears his throat. It’s like a bubble expands around him, untouchable to the memory trying to force its way in. Harry’s never had someone die. There are family members he never got to meet, but the ones he has are still around. He doesn’t know what it feels like waiting around in a hospital for it to happen. Really just waiting because there’s nothing left to do. He doesn’t know why he thought he could’ve been a doctor. “I don’t like hospitals either.”

“My parents – they’re doctors – got engaged in one.” It’s less romantic when Harry thinks about the school plays and recitals they missed because they had other people to look after besides their children. They couldn’t even get engaged somewhere away from the sterilized walls.

“How Grey’s Anatomy of them.”

“Yeah, they followed the plot of that show down to the affairs and everything.” Zayn gives him the kind of look Harry knows all the divorce kids get, the I’m so sorry, that must’ve been rough look that neither him nor Gemma ever knew what to do with. It wasn’t anything in particular, just another email sent from their phones, like a memo. Your father and I are getting divorced. That was it.

Kind of like what happened with Lucy. One day, they were having lunch over textbooks, prepping for an anatomy exam that was kicking Harry’s ass, and then the next day, Lucy was riding some other guy on his carpet. Just like that. Except that instead of before, he got a memo afterwards.

And because his theory of luck is being constantly proven in shitty little things that happen to him throughout the day, the group of interns turning the corner right in front of them, their scrubs with iron pressed lines because most live at home with their parents, their nails bitten raw, should’ve been Harry’s group. His scrubs wouldn’t have been pressed, but his nails would have been chipped away, his hair greasy from running his hands through it so much too.

Harry guesses his hair would’ve looked a lot like Lucy’s does now, in an awkward bun that’s fallen apart, tangled into the stethoscope around her neck if he hasn’t cut it. He wishes this could’ve been different, that he wasn’t standing next to Zayn the first time he sees his ex-girlfriend again for the first time in months, the first time since then.

He sighs, because he knows there’s nothing he can do about it, not when she looks right at him as soon she’s around the corner. Her eyes used to do that – find Harry whenever they were close enough to look. “I’m really sorry about this,” Harry mumbles.

Zayn hums with a raised brow and then before Harry can even begin to panic and run away from them both, Lucy is frowning at him, saying an awkward, “Hey, what are you doing here?” as she stops right in front of them.

“Zayn, this is…” What is she? A friend? An ex? Harry doesn’t even want to think about it. “My nothing in particular,” he mumbles again, clearly to the confusion of both Zayn and her.

“Oh, hi, I guess,” Zayn’s polite. “Nice to meet you.”

“Harry, what are you doing here?”

But Harry meant what he said. Lucy isn’t his friend, he doesn’t even want to think about the years they were to together, the memories he has to share with her not because he wants to, but because she’s in them. And if he doesn’t want to pretend he skipped half of medical school, striking an imaginary case of amnesia, Lucy is going to stay right where she is, in everything good and everything bad Harry’s ever been through.

Thankfully, Zayn doesn’t let his silence grow heavier than it already has, jumping in with a quick, “My boyfriend had a bad allergic reaction.”

As much as Lucy might know Harry, he knows her just as well, so it isn’t hard to see how her shoulder slump by just that much, her eyes flying over Harry’s face for a second. “Do you want me to check on him?”

“You’re an intern,” Harry grunts. It takes some air out of her lungs. Good.

“Thanks, he’s gonna be okay.” Zayn manages a smile, but Harry doesn’t think he’ll ever stop frowning when Lucy is around. It’s going to be his natural reaction to her from now on.

“Oh, that’s great to hear,” Lucy tells Zayn with her eyes on Harry. She jumps on her feet a little, rocks back and forth, because she’s running on coffee by this point. Her restless fingers say as much. “I was kind of worried something happened to you and that you two were together, but I guess you’re not, so that’s good. Or not good,” she blushes. “I just… I think I need to go to sleep soon or drink some more coffee.” Harry almost takes her to a bed himself, but then he remembers again and crosses his arms instead. “It was nice meeting you Zayn, I hope Harry hasn’t said anything too bad about me.”

Lucy’s probably beginning for something with her pretty blue eyes, maybe she thinks that’s what it’ll take to get a reaction out of Harry. But it only prompts Zayn to say, “Actually, he hasn’t mentioned you before,” quizzically.

It’s then that Harry finally shrugs at her, maybe saying a half-hearted sorry that he doesn’t mean by even that much. She whimpers, because she does that when something stabs at her chest, it’s the sound she left in his voicemail, the sound he’s listened to over and over again.

“I’ll just…” Lucy squeezes between them and rushes off without looking back. Harry hopes that’s the last memory he makes with her.

When the air is clear and easier to take in again, Harry turns over to Zayn with a quiet, “That was my ex-girlfriend,” that’s not as hard to say as he thought it would be.

Zayn shakes his head at him with a smile, saying, “Yeah, I got that,” around a laugh before he turns around and walks back to Niall’s room.

**

Harry doesn’t really know that much about Liam. He knows he’s tall and build well, arms twice the size of Louis’. He knows his eyes almost close shut when he’s smiling and that Louis loves him enough to ask Liam to move in with him. And Harry knows enough about a person if they’re willing to do that.

“Maybe we should talk about something important instead,” Liam mumbles around his glass before taking a drink. Tonight is supposed to be a ‘bonding experience for you and Liam,’ that’s how Louis phrased it. “Like global warming or politics. Or whale hunting, that’s still a huge issue. As is you wanting to sleep with Zayn.”

Harry is physically pushed back into his seat. “What?” His eyes dart over to Louis, who shrugs and sips his beer. Harry will get him back for this.

“You almost killed his boyfriend.”

“Okay, that was accident.” Harry’s pointing his finger at Liam. If his hands would stop shaking maybe it would be more convincing.

“Everyone knows Miles is allergic to peanuts.”

“It’s Niall, babe,” Louis says softly.

“Whatever,” Liam waves him off, his eyebrows pulling close together. His entire being gives off the vibe of care, even with his bulky arms and eyes that sparkle without worry, but only when he’s looking at Louis. “Niall is moving to Switzerland, so your whole, ‘they’re so lucky’ shtick is pretty stupid, because it turns out they’re not. And besides, just because you got cheated on once doesn’t mean it’ll happen every time.”

“Did you tell him everything?”

Louis shrugs again, but at least he looks apologetic this time.

“Wait, what? Niall is moving?”

“Yeah,” Louis sighs. “He got a promotion, there’s something about Switzerland. I didn’t really listen to Zayn. He’s going though.”

“Oh, that’s…”

“Look,” Liam brings him back to the bar. Harry’s mind was flying away from him, thinking about what this means, what Zayn is thinking, why he’s letting Niall move, if he’s going with him. “If you’re gonna go around telling everyone how unlucky you are, they’re gonna believe you. And no one wants to hang around a downer.” Liam has a good point. Harry’s going to pretend like he doesn’t see it. “Change your attitude.”

“So,” he scratches his chin, trying to put his words in order. “You’re encouraging me to encourage Zayn to cheat on his boyfriend. Is that it?”

Liam says, “No,” just as Louis says an enthusiastic, “Yeah.”

“No, Louis, I’m not. But I am encouraging you to encourage Zayn to break up with Niall, if you want to be with him as badly as Louis says.”

“That’s insane.”

“It’s honest.”

“It’s a bit insane, babe,” Louis coos, crawling under Liam’s arm. “But I love ya for it.”

**

“What do you think about this one?”

It’s a simple black shirt with golden buttons and a golden chain over the shoulders to match. The gold looks precious, but the fact that it’s a chain and that Harry is picturing it hanging over Zayn’s bare shoulders instead of a flimsy piece of fabric, how it would sit over his collarbones, how Harry could pull on it, hold onto it – it turns it into something else.

“It’s um…” he clears his throat. “It’s pretty.”

“It wouldn’t be too much for a work party?”

It wouldn’t be too much if you’re coming over my place after it. Harry can picture it so well, how good Zayn will look with that shirt and the chains and a jacket over it, hiding most of it away. He can feel it in his fingers, the weight of the links, if he’d be allowed to take it off for him later. Harry can hear the sound of the metal and he has to bite his lips to not say as much.

Instead he says, “No, not with a jacket.”

Zayn gives him a bright smile before he leads them to the changing rooms, a promise of “You’ll tell me how it looks,” thrown over his shoulder as he disappears behind the changing room’s curtain, so Harry can think about all the inappropriate things he wants to do to Zayn wearing that chain.

But Harry can still feel the pinch in his chest, Lucy’s bitten nails dragging over his skin with what she did. Even if he could, Harry doesn’t think he’d want to forget that part. Remembering how it felt to walk in on her, the sight of carpet burns over her back – that’s something Harry could never do to a person. He just doesn’t know what’s worse, knowing how it happened, being able to hear both of them moan with his own ears, or if he would have to imagine something up himself. He’d probably have liked to pretend it never got so close to his apartment, so close to happening in his bed. Though he’s still not sure about that part, but he’s happy to shrug that possibility away.

There’s a quiet whimper that comes out from behind the thick curtain. Harry doesn’t know if he should walk closer and listen for it again. He doesn’t know what to do.

“Zayn? Are you okay?” Harry takes a step forwards and then a step back when Zayn says a timid, “No.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m stuck.”

“Stuck?” He does come to stand right in front of the curtain then, biting at his finger to not pull it back.

“I couldn’t undo the buttons to take it off, but when I tried to lift it up the chain got all twisted and now I can’t – Harry, just come in here, please.”

There’s only so much Harry can do before he’s pulling the curtain back and sliding into the cramped space right next to Zayn, where he has his arms lifted up in the air, the shirt stuck around his shoulder and head. He looks… well, Harry bites his lip again, because Zayn looks adorable.

“Oh, babe.”

“Don’t laugh at me!”

“No, no, I’m not.” Harry stifles his chuckle behind a fist. But it dies as quick as he actually looks at Zayn anyway. There isn’t a chain around his shoulders, but they are bare, and so is everything above his waist. It only takes a second for Harry to trail his eyes up from Zayn’s sharp hips to his chest, losing his breath along the way the more tattoos he takes in. He’s seen glimpses of Zayn’s arms, the patterns on his hands and over his knuckles, but these are different. Harry wants to run his tongue over these, the wings and the lips, the solid black heart, something at his side that Harry doesn’t care about in this moment, preoccupied with what he’d do if he got the chance, instead of what the designs mean. But he thinks he’d want to know that too.

“Harry,” Zayn grumbles, hopefully unaware of what’s been going through Harry’s mind. “Please.”

“Yeah, sorry. Come here.”

“Where?” Zayn whines, because Harry forgot he can’t actually see anything.

“Just…” He has to prepare himself for this. Harry need to be ready for covering Zayn back up, because it’s not something he’s particularly wanting to do. So he takes a deep breath and says, “Okay, stay still,” as he tries to see what got caught into what.

In the end, it’s just a pull and a tug that does it, freeing Zayn’s arms and head. And Harry thought that having more skin to see for the first time, even an extra inch or two, would occupy every part of his brain, clogging up his system with information he’s desperately grasping at. But the only place his eyes can look at, as if they’re stuck with an intention of their own, are Zayn’s lips.

The dip of his cupid’s bow, the curve of his bottom lip, how Zayn runs his tongue over it. It almost feels like they’re falling closer to each other, as if something is forcing them to lean together, the world spinning in a foreign angle, but as Harry rips his eyes away and looks about two inches higher, he sees that Zayn’s are stuck as well and he’s the one leaning in, like there’s something he wants to do but can’t quite make himself do it.

And that would be perfect wouldn’t it. If they had a small inconspicuous moment in a random changing room because Zayn can’t undress himself properly. That really would make their worlds spin a bit differently.

As much as Harry wants Zayn to lean in, licking his own lips in anticipation of what he’s willing to happen, it’s a good thing he doesn’t. It’s better this way. It keeps things as they are. Zayn turns around with his head down and Harry can slip back out into the hall. If he knows what the look in Zayn’s eyes meant, if Harry knows it isn’t just him that feels something, even if he has to hold his hands behind his back and lean against the wall so he doesn’t go back into the changing room – nothing’s changed.

**

Their lunches have transformed into Harry watching his food go cold and Zayn’s salad wilt on their table as Zayn paces a few feet away from him, tucking his phone close to his ear as he laughs sometimes, shakes his head, stands there with his back to Harry even when his phone is at his side.

Since Niall moved to Switzerland, Zayn’s been talking on the phone more times than not, and at the same time, he hasn’t been on his phone as much, like he was ignoring it some days, pretending he had no one to call. Harry tries to think of jokes whenever that happens.

“You know,” Zayn starts before he even sits back down. He pulls his chair out, falls onto it and grabs his fork, sticking it into the salad with more anger than it deserves. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Never a good idea,” Harry says around a bite of his chicken.

Zayn scowls, apparently not appreciating Harry’s try to ease the tension blooming around him. “I’ve been thinking,” he says again, “Maybe I should just, I don’t know, start drinking.”

“Mmm.” Harry can’t really see Zayn as a belligerent drunk holed up in some bar downtown, crying to strangers and spilling his heart to them.

“Or I could start smoking again…”

“But, don’t you –”

“Weed, Harry.” There are people around them, having their own platonic lunch dates and this isn’t a conversation Harry feels comfortable having in public. “I used to smoke a lot in college,” Zayn goes on, more subdued this time. “And Niall did too. We actually met over a shared bong.”

It’s not something Harry’s particularly interested in hearing, how it only took one look or one inhale of weed for them to fall in love and be together till the end of their days, not exactly happily ever after, but ever after nonetheless. Zayn smiles though, a private upturn of his lips that makes something rumble in Harry’s stomach but that warms his chest at the same time too. It’s that smile of remembering how great it was, how young they were, how in love. Zayn’s probably replaying the first time they met in his head while Harry tries to not strangle his fried chicken.

“I could join you if you want some company?”

Zayn hums and looks up, back in the present. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, not the weed part,” he shakes his head, “I have terrible asthma. But the drinking part, that I can do.”

And Harry can do it, he went to college, he’s friends with Louis – both classify him as an experienced drinker. But he hasn’t gone out with the intention to drink for a long time.

First it was a light beer over nachos. Then it was a shot, to get things going and that made Zayn’s intentions of getting drunk pretty clear. They had another beer and then Harry switched to sweet cocktails instead, begging the bartender to ‘please don’t make it strong’ and getting juice out of his plea. By the feel of his wobbly legs and loose tongue though, the bartender just knows what he’s doing.

“Come on, don’t be shy.” Zayn’s smirking at him, winking for good measure, as if that’s going to make him walk up to the girl at the bar. Zayn’s idea was to get Harry someone. Which, as an idea, Harry has nothing against, but as an actual thing happening, Harry just wants to stay where he is, standing at a table opposite Zayn. That’s all he wants.

“I’m not shy,” Harry scoffs, but he blushes at the same time. He’s never had a problem getting someone to slink around his arm and follow him home, that was never an issue. But he isn’t interested in bringing someone home and not have them there when he wakes up, just like he wouldn’t want them to stick around for breakfast. There’s no win-win situation here, so he’d rather not, but Zayn’s laughing as he jumps around to the music, his head thrown back, the hem of his shirt jumping up with him. It’s hard to tell him no. “Fine. Hold my drink.”

Zayn grabs his glass and spills half of it in the first second, but Harry doesn’t notice. He’s looking at the girl, smirking as he walks over, something sly ready on the tip of his tongue.

“What happened?” Zayn attacks him as soon as Harry’s back on the dance floor, holding a fresh cocktail.

He leans down to get closer to Zayn, saying, “She wasn’t interested,” into his neck, right where he must’ve sprayed some cologne before they went out. Harry lingers for as long as Zayn lets him, thinking she wanted to leave, but I didn’t.

“Oh,” Zayn pouts at him. “You’ll get the next one.”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

“Don’t give up now.” Jumping with is hands thrown out, barely holding onto their drinks, Zayn looks so young. With sweat beads on his forehead, his wrinkled sleeveless t-shirt and that grin on his face, Harry can almost imagine being back at college, dancing around in a club on the nights he couldn’t stare at his textbooks anymore and meeting this Zayn, the one that doesn’t eat salads for lunch or carries his work bag around when he goes out for walks, the one that hasn’t met Niall yet. Everything would be so much easier if that was the case.

“Come on, let’s just dance.” Harry throws back the sweet drink before he’s grabbing Zayn’s arm and dragging him closer to the DJ, already jumping as they walk through the mass of people.

“I thought you’d want to meet someone tonight,” Zayn yells over the thumping music. “Don’t you want to meet someone?”

“Not really, no.” Harry sways his hips left and right, as offbeat as he possibly could, ignoring the look on Zayn’s face, because he doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Is it because of Lucy?”

It’s unsettling to have that yelled right into his face with innocent wide eyes, but then they’ve both had enough to drink to not be entirely in control of what their limbs or faces are doing. “Maybe? But I don’t think so.” It happened. It’s over. Harry isn’t thinking about that anymore. “No.”

“What happened with her?”

Harry jumps up once, then twice and before he does it again, he screams out as loud as he possibly can, “She cheated on me,” looking for some sort of catharsis in the middle of a club he doesn’t even remember the name of.

“Harry.”

“I’m okay.” He gives Zayn his most open smile, grinning until his cheeks hurt. Zayn looks at him skeptically for a moment, but smiles back just as bright. And it would be great if they could just jump around until their legs give out, crawling back home on all fours and wake up the next morning with a pretty clear idea of what happened last night, only a hint of a hangover lacing their heads. It would be great, but Harry likes to think he knows Zayn by this point, so when he looks at the floor and only barely manages a slow-step while everybody else is yelling for the DJ to turn the music on, Harry knows there’s something he isn’t saying. And he thinks he knows what it is too.

“He won’t do it to you,” he says quieter this time, leaning closer to Zayn again. “He’s not that guy.”

Zayn raises his head, but doesn’t look up. “He is, though,” he says towards Harry’s chest, bringing back those bitten nails scratching over his skin. “Niall does stupid shit all the time.”

“That doesn’t mean he’ll do anything stupid now.”

“Yeah.” Zayn’s nodding, but it isn’t getting through to him, and Harry doesn’t want to be in this position, he doesn’t want to be the one to convince Zayn that Niall will be faithful so that they can be happy together when he comes back, happier than they were before.

But it’s Zayn and he looks like he’s about to cry in the middle of the dance floor, so Harry reminds him that, “Niall loves you,” because maybe Zayn’s forgotten this part. “And you love him too.”

It takes a second, but Zayn’s nods go from weak and limp to assured, strong, because he knows it’s true, they both do. So after a miniature lapse in their night out on the town, the mood turns back around, even if it is slightly murky now on Harry’s part.

“Have you ever, you know… cheated on someone?” Zayn asks and Harry indulges him, because he’s trying to think about other people’s problems to not focus on his own.

“No, never.” Harry’s many things, but he’s not a cheater. He still gets mad when Gemma encourages Jackson to rearrange the letters on the Scrabble board. It’s not how it works. “You?”

“Almost.” Zayn shrugs nonchalantly. Harry wants to know more. “I was kind of seeing someone when I met Niall.”

“Oh.”

“But I broke up with them before anything happened, so I don’t know if it counts.”

“Probably doesn’t.”

“Probably not.”

“I’ve been with like, five people, so I haven’t had a lot of opportunities, you know?” Zayn says, his feet leaving the floor a bit, barely there, but back to dancing, his arms moving along with him. He dances better than he said he does.

Harry tries to find the beat of the song as he sways his hips. “I think one person is enough of an opportunity.”

“How many have you been with then?” Zayn smirks, stepping closer to Harry and dancing a few feet away, twirling back again, his eyes bright with some of that glow.

“More than five,” Harry drawls, twirling too. It’s too much for the amount of drinks he’s had, so he stops himself mid-step, a stupid smile on his face. “Not a lot more than five.”

“That could mean ten or fifty.”

“Less than fifty.” He jumps in a circle around Zayn, even though the music calls for a slower movement. “A few more than ten.”

“You dated all of them or…”

“I dated three of them.”

“That’s a good statistic.” Zayn grins, laughing to himself or at Harry’s ridiculous hand wave he’s trying to pull off as a dance move.

“Ever dumped someone?” Harry’s moving his head from side to side, seeing double of everything, blurring the other people dancing around them.

“I’m the guy that sticks around,” Zayn explains, doing a rendition of a robot. “I try to make it work until it really doesn’t. You?”

“Usually I can tell when I need to get out.”

“You didn’t with…”

“I was too busy,” Harry shrugs it off. He’s tried, but he can’t put all the blame on her. Especially since he’s too busy laughing at Zayn. “Probably wasn’t the best boyfriend if I’m honest.”

“Weird thing you’re taking responsibility for.”

Harry shrugs and doesn’t stop dancing, he can’t.

“Okay, weirdest place you’ve ever had sex with one of those fewer than fifty people?”

“It’s a few more than ten,” Harry laughs. “And I used to be a baker, so one time after my shift,” he shakes his head, dancing closer to Zayn. “We did it against the ovens. I quit afterwards, I can’t look at pastries in the same way since then. You?”

Zayn grabs for his hips, shaking his head at Harry’s high school adventure. “A house of mirrors.”

“How does that work?” Harry puts his hands around Zayn’s neck as they dance in sync for the first time tonight.

“It was closing, we were alone, but it was really weird. I don’t recommend it.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

“Don’t judge me, pastry boy.”

Harry laughs, throws his head back with it. He squeezes Zayn’s shoulders just as Zayn tightens his hold on Harry’s hips, and they just keep on dancing. Swaying off beat and jumping when no one else is, laughing when Harry calls Zayn mirror boy and shaking their heads at each other when they almost fall over.

It isn’t until they’re walking down Zayn’s street, just like the first night that they catch their breath again. They keep the game going, spilling a secret and asking for one in return, like they’re collecting fireflies along the way, putting one after the other in a jar.

“The worst thing that ever happened to me was probably Lucy cheating on me. But that’s also the best.”

“Both?” Zayn asks, clearly doubting Harry’s comprehension skills.

“For a while, the best was getting into medical school, and you can see how that turned out,” Harry jokes, not meaning to sound so deprecating. But it’s true, because if anyone had asked before he dropped out, he’d say that, that he was lucky to get into that kind of program. But now, “She made me realize I knew nothing about love. So, yeah.”

“You didn’t? Love her?”

“I guess not.”

Zayn bumps their shoulders together, giving Harry a look not unlike the one he usually gets for his parents’ divorce. It doesn’t feel as uncomfortable coming from Zayn.

“So what’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?” Harry asks. He doesn’t know how he’d answer that one without meeting Lucy. He either has too much to choose from or nothing at all, he still hasn’t decided.

“My, um, my mom died when I was in high school,” Zayn says at the ground, looking up at the starry sky a breath later. Harry regrets asking the question, he regrets ever playing this game. He wants to free all the fireflies if it means Zayn doesn’t have to catch this one. “She had cancer,” he still goes on, breathing a deep sigh. “It wasn’t quick but it didn’t drag out, so, that was good. It’s still hard on my dad, I think you never get over something like that, not if you actually love the person. It’s… You realize everything can fall apart in a second and that makes you never want to give up anything good ever again.”

“Zayn, I’m so sorry,” Harry whispers, barely even says. “Can I change my answer now? Wow, I feel like shit.” Harry never had a close relationship with his mom, or his dad – can’t have a relationship with someone who isn’t even there – but Gemma. He never wants to think about the possibility of – of her not being there, just that, even alive and well somewhere on the other side of the world. Harry wouldn’t know what to do with himself. “I’m really sorry.”

“It happened.” Zayn shrugs, bumping their shoulders together again. “I’m not gonna say I’m over it, because I won’t ever be, but it happened.”

“I’m…” Harry feels the need to say sorry again, and then again and again, because he has nothing else to say, not to this. He can’t possibly make Zayn feel better and he wants to. Harry wants to make Zayn smile in that way where you almost miss it if you’re not fast enough, just a lighting of a small twist of his lips and then it’s gone, but not before it makes the butterflies in Harry’s stomach flutter.

“Yeah,” Zayn breaths and does smile, even if it’s laced with something else too, something besides the beers he drank tonight. “So.”

It takes Harry a second too long to figure out they’re back where they started, standing in front of Zayn’s building, facing each other, while the moon throws shadows over their faces. It’s probably later than what he feels, but not nearly late enough for Harry to want to say goodnight and tread his way across town to his own bed. He doesn’t want to say goodnight to Zayn yet.

“So.” They stand there awkwardly, just looking at each other and smiling stupidly, thinking if there’s something else to say when they both know there’s so much that they couldn’t possibly cover it in one night. So, Harry nods his head, tries to shake the stale air away and grins a bit, just to see it reflected back to him. “I guess this is it.”

“I guess so,” Zayn’s nodding back at him, biting his lip as he takes a step closer and keeps his eyes on Harry. “Goodnight.”

Harry’s feet are rooted to the ground. He can’t feel his legs. He wonders if he still has legs as he takes in Zayn’s look and tries to see what’s behind it. What is he thinking? Clasping his hands in front of him, Harry bites his lip and says, “Goodnight,” in return, just waiting, watching for what happens next.

It’s then that Zayn takes another step forward, coming close enough so that the hairs on their arms touch, electrified with the brush of a soft wind and something else, something Harry can feel sinking to his stomach the longer they stand there, looking at each other like they’re a little lost and a little found.

Zayn leans in and Harry closes his eyes. In the suspenseful moment, the butterflies take flight, shifting into hummingbirds, fluttering in his fingers and then all the way up to the tips of his ears when he feels Zayn’s cheek graze his own.

Zayn places a kiss there, barely heard, barely felt, and then Harry’s watching the back of his head as he climbs the stairs two at the time, disappearing behind those doors like he does every time.

**

“You have options.”

“Louis…” They’ve been over this twice now. Harry does not have any options.

“Harry…” Louis mocks him, mimicking some form of a constipated facial expression. “You can either sleep with Zayn –”

“No, that’s –”

“You,” Louis talks over him, “Can either sleep with him and Zayn will see the light or something, break up with Niall and voila, you’re together and everyone’s happy.”

“Except Niall.”

“Whatever. Or, you could try to sleep with him, he hates you for it and you never see him again.”

“How is that a valid option?”

“Because it could happen,” Louis shrugs. Harry wants to throw something at him.

“I don’t want to do either.”

“You could always be his friend and manipulate him into dumping Niall.”

“How are you even coming up with this stuff?”

“If you don’t mind some moral baggage, I have plenty more where that came from.”

“No, thank you, I’ll pass on that.”

There’s a pregnant pause where Louis must think something over before he sighs and says, “Okay, so as I see it, you’ll just have to wait it out.”

Harry’s quick to make a face at that. Is there really nothing else he could do? Maybe if he just tells Zayn how he feels, no pretense or long hard stares that will make him combust one of these days, just plain old, ‘hey, I think I’m in love with you’ that usually works in movies. Honesty is supposed to be best policy, right?

“I mean, the distance could get to them and they could breakup all on their own, which is where you swoop in. Or, they’re actually meant to be together, stick through this Switzerland crap and you’re forever left as an outsider looking into their perfect relationship.”

 “I don’t want to do that,” Harry whines.

“Well, it’s either morally corrupt or pathetic.” Louis looks at him, his face wanting a decision from Harry. “It’s up to you.”

“You suck at giving advice.”

“You asked for it,” Louis says, breaking into a smile as soon as the lady comes from the back with a small red velvet box in her hands. “Is that it?”

“Silver band with diamonds all around.” The lady nods her head with a smile that tells Harry she’s actually excited for Louis. It must be great, working in the ring business, you get to meet so many people with love on their minds. But with all of those people buying engagement and wedding rings, there must be some returns as well. Harry doubts he’d be able to handle those.

“It’s perfect,” Louis awes. “It’s perfect, right?”

“Liam’s gonna love it.”

“Yeah, he better,” he smirks at Harry and then looks back down at the ring. “You have another option.”

“What?”

Louis straightens up and takes out his wallet, slides his credit card over the counter. He doesn’t even look at Harry when he says, “You move on.”

**

The engagement party Louis and Liam throw themselves is just like Harry pictured it: people in suits and dresses drinking cheap champagne and eating miniature hotdogs. In his lifetime, Harry hasn’t been invited to many engagement parties, or none if he’s being exact. Couples don’t throw these anymore, settling down for the long run, because they need to finish school or get promoted, have a kid before they tie the knot, whatever it is, this is the first time he’s at one and he doesn’t really get it.

They’re all gathered in Louis’ backyard, lanterns hanging off of the porch, candles on the tables and Louis being one of the best dressed attendee there. Harry’s looking at him suspiciously while Zayn talks to Ben and some relatives that were, surprisingly, also invited to what was supposed to be a small get-together.

It clicks into the place, the flower arrangements and the inconspicuous but still noticeable arch at the end of the backyard, just positioned there for some reason. That reason is made clear as soon as Louis’ standing on the porch, clinking a knife against a plastic champagne flute.

“Hey everyone!” Louis yells out. If people didn’t know what would happen if they don’t pay attention to Louis, they wouldn’t all turn towards him and stop talking, like they’re back in school, ten year olds listening to their teacher. “We want to thank everyone for coming. If means everything to us that we can share this day with you. I can honestly say,” Louis says just when Liam joins him on the porch, wrapping his arm around his waist. “I never thought I’d get to be this happy.”

People make the noise Louis was aiming for. This really will be his day.

“But,” mischief sparkles in his eyes as Liam blushes, “I get to be happier, because we decided to get married here, tonight!”

There’s an audible gasp heard around the backyard, a tangible pause before everyone starts cheering and screaming their congratulations for the happy couple. It’s an impromptu thing, spontaneous but somehow planned and that encompasses Louis in the best possible way. Harry can imagine someone having interjections about the wedding happening, but they all know how in love those two are, that Louis has never been this stupidly in love with someone. And Liam isn’t doing any better.

An hour later, Harry’s the one clinking on a plastic flute. They had turned their chairs towards the arch where Louis and Liam stood, promising forever and always, saying their I do’s with smiles on their faces and glimmers in their eyes, a tear running down a cheek or two. Harry needed a tissue by the end of it.

Now he needs to focus, because as the ring boy, no matter how ridiculous that sounded to him, Liam asked him to make the speech, the big wedding speech that’s supposed to be beautiful and take everyone’s breath away, but not as much as the wedding itself.

“I remember the night Louis and Liam met. It was at another one of Louis’ random house parties, because we all know he thinks you can never be too old to throw one. Hopefully, after tonight, those are a thing of the past.” The small crowd laughs, only spurring Harry on. “But I was there, so I felt that instant connection between them,” he says, looking at the floor, his shoes, straight at Liam, because he can’t quite make himself look at where he should. “And that’s rare. See, I have a theory.” Louis rolls his eyes and groans loud enough to garner a couple of looks his way, but he’ll just have to listen to what Harry has to say. He just hopes everyone is listening. “It might sound a little pessimistic, but love is all about luck. If you’re lucky enough, you meet some stranger and have an instant connection with them at a house party of all places. If you’re lucky you turn your engagement party into a wedding and live happily ever after. If you’re lucky, it’s easy. If you’re not,” Harry moves his eyes to the left, barely seeing the faces until he lands right on Zayn’s. “Then you’re left giving the speech at the fortunate ones’ wedding, wishing it was you that was lucky enough to have met someone and fall in love that easily.” He keeps his eyes steady, doesn’t even know if he blinks, isn’t sure if Zayn does either. “But you two are the luckiest of us all.” Harry raises his glass and says, “To Louis and Liam,” triumphantly, because some people are courageous enough to get down on one knee or say ‘I do’ in front of friends and family. Some people say how they feel.

**

Louis is sitting on a bench at the beach, bitching at the volleyball players with a beer in his hand, as if he knows anything about the sport. He’s yelling something about kicking the ball when Harry sits down. Football, Harry would say Louis knows what he’s talking about, but this – they’re mostly here for the bikinis and speedos.

“Why are you drinking at noon?”

Louis gives him a long hard look, draining his beer in record time before he passes it on to Harry. “Liam and I had a fight yesterday.” He grabs another can from the six-pack at his feet, opens it and drinks half of that one too. “He said some things, I threw some things,” Louis sighs. “It was a mess and now Liam is staying at his sister’s place.”

The sun’s beating down on them, and it’s getting too hot to breathe, so Harry takes a sip of the beer to think about what he’s supposed to say. What if Louis and Liam aren’t as lucky as Harry gave them credit for? “Do you think this is karmic retribution for how you guys started out?”

“Well now I am,” Louis scoffs. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know, it just sounds like karma was waiting to come and bite you in the ass.”

“Why are you being mean to me?” Louis whines, throwing his head back and spilling beer all over his pants. “I didn’t ask for you to come so you could bring me down. I want you to make me feel better.”

“Cheating sucks,” Harry says, more stern than he usually does to Louis, because, “Cheating sucks. It wasn’t okay when my parents did it to each other and it wasn’t okay when you hooked up with Liam even though he was already in a relationship. You suck. You deserve bad karma.”

“We got married afterwards,” Louis throws his hands up. “That makes it better in the end.”

“It really fucking doesn’t.”

Louis is left with his jaw hanging open, because Harry never curses. He didn’t before and he especially doesn’t know, living with an impressionable ten year old. It sounds foreign coming out of his mouth, but it has the desired effect on Louis.

“That’s – he’s my husband.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t cheat on you. Or that you wouldn’t if the opportunity arises.”

“Except that Liam wouldn’t and neither would I. I’m not excusing what happened – let me finish. His ex was a shitty person and what we did to him was, okay, it was pretty shitty too, but the guy – it’s complicated.” Louis leans back again, squeezing the beer can between his thighs as he sighs and says, “But it has to be complicated. Because if it’s too simple you have no reason to try and if you don’t have a reason to try, you don’t,” because sometimes, Louis knows what he’s talking about and this might just be one of those times. But then he says, “I don’t know what’s going on with you and Zayn, but whatever it is, don’t claim you’re not a shitty person or that you wouldn’t be if Zayn felt the same way about you as you do about him,” and ruins the moment.

“From one shitty person to another, huh?” Harry drains his beer, gets up and leaves Louis to yell his frustration on the volleyball players instead.

**

Harry knocks on the door once and then again, gathering the words that have been floating around his head for months. Now is the time to string them together in a neat, comprehensive, convincing line. This is it. He knocks again and schools his face into his best smile.

“Ben?”

“Oh,” Ben rolls his eyes, stepping from behind the door with nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. “It’s you.”

“Um.” Harry tries to lean around him to see inside Zayn’s apartment. “Is Zayn here?”

“I’m just feeding the fish.” Ben steps back, maybe letting Harry in, maybe not. Harry still walks right past him, circling around his axis when he’s standing in the living room, noticing the fish bowl. “The shower was a split second decision.”

“What?” He takes Ben’s appearance in again. His chest is dripping wet, his hair a mess and the towel. Harry’s never noticed Ben or his muscles, he never appreciated his beard. “Oh, yeah, I don’t care. Where’s Zayn?”

“In Switzerland.”

Harry’s head drops back as he breathes out through his nose, groaning internally. “Of course he is.”

“Oh my god,” Ben points a finger right in Harry’s face. “You like him. You like Zayn.”

“Just…” This is why he’s never paid attention to Ben, the laughter in his voice as he grins at him, because he’s happy Harry is so pathetic. “Just feed the fish.”

“No, no, you can’t just run away.”

“I,” Harry gathers some of his dwindling patience and enunciates, “Am not in love with Zayn.”

“I didn’t say anything about love, but that’s good to know. Or maybe it isn’t, because Zayn loves Niall, you do know that, right?”

“Yes, I do.” Harry is painfully aware of that fact.

“And all you’re going to be is Zayn’s friend, hanging on the outskirts of their relationship, wishing one day Zayn will change his mind, but he won’t. I know Zayn, trust me.”

A light bulb switches in his head then, because Harry knows Zayn too, he actually knows him, not like a cousin or a boyfriend he met in college. But he knows him like Harry, like the one Zayn let catch his fireflies as they walked along the lampposts, even when it was complicated and they shouldn’t even thought about having those jars. Even if they didn’t stop at the lampposts to have a movie moment. And it’s like Louis’ words sink in then. It is complicated, it has been since that first night when Zayn gave him his number and Harry threw it away, but somehow, they managed to pull together again, and somehow, they got over the complicated bits.

And as Ben stands there, next to a foreign address pinned to the fridge, all Harry can think of is, if they did it once, they can do it again.

**

Harry’s walking on pebbles. They’re crunching beneath hit feet, sticking up into his shoes as he walks across the garden and up to the double doors. He breathes in, shakes his head and rings the doorbell. There’s an echo of bang-bang sounding through the house, something to announce his arrival.

He’s biting his lip when the door swings open and Niall steps right into his face. His eyes are more red than blue, his hair a brown mess and Harry can smell his stale breath – he isn’t sure he’s ever been this close to somebody before in his life.

It’s like they’re waiting for the other to do something, say or move the wrong way, eyeing each other up from head to toe when Niall says, “Zayn left,” in a measured voice before he slams the door in Harry’s face.

**

That’s what happens when you don’t think it through, Harry keeps telling himself, sitting on the curb in front of the airport he ran out of just hours before, when he couldn’t contain his smile to himself, his hands shaking. Now he’s looking at the back of his phone, wondering how everything went so wrong, if Gemma will make him cry it out.

He flicked that piece of paint off so easily, Harry didn’t even think about doing it, just dug his nail underneath it and did it, chipped it off. Some things are so easy to do, you don’t really have to think about them. This shouldn’t have been one of those things. Waiting for his plane back home in Switzerland just confirms that.

Harry sits there when his phone buzzes. He lets it, feeling the vibrations in his fingers until it stops. And then it buzzes again, letting him know that whoever called, whoever doesn’t know Harry won’t be picking up many calls in the near future left him a message. The last time he felt this way before listening to a voicemail, his life has just ended crumbling in front of his eyes, like a dry piece of moldy bread.

So he sighs, like he did last time and makes himself listen to it, wondering for some reason, if it’s Lucy apologizing again.

Hey, Harry? I was wondering if we could have lunch tomorrow at the Box? There’s something we need to talk about. Oh, and it’s Zayn. Okay, bye.

Harry doesn’t think he’s ever moved as fast.

**

It’s their regular table, the one they’ve almost come to call their own for how many lunches they spent sitting there in the shade of the vines while Zayn had his salads and Harry ate something greasy and salty. As soon as he rounds the corner, Harry spots the wide shouldered back and head of black hair, buzzed at the sides and trimmed on the top. And then, like Zayn can hear the hummingbirds in Harry’s stomach, he turns in his seat and smiles as soon as he sees Harry walking towards the café.

“Hey, what’s with the luggage?”

“Oh.” Maybe that’s what Zayn heard. “Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“No, no.” First, Harry needs to sit down and drink some water, because running through the airport, hailing a cab and running down the last two blocks because he thought it would be faster that way really took a lot out of him. He takes a deep breath, gets a good look of Zayn’s face – it feels like he hasn’t seen him for years, not a week – and breathes out, feeling better already. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

Zayn smiles at him again and then frowns, like he’s pulled back into some train of thought he paused for two minutes. “Okay, well. I had to take some time to think things through, because you know that –” Zayn bites his lip and shakes his head. “Really, Harry, are you going on vacation after lunch or something?”

“No, I – um. I just came home, actually.”

“Where were you?” Zayn’s smiling when he asks, this bright twist of his lips that Harry always gets stuck on, like it’s a light to a moth in his head, glued to the glow. Harry can picture how the smile will spread over Zayn’s face up to his eyes, making them sparkle as well, but he can picture it dropping in a matter of a single second too, which is exactly what happens when he says, “Switzerland.”

“What?” But Harry doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t know what he should say. “Why were you in Switzerland, Harry?”

“I went to see you.” There I said it. “But you were already gone, so…”

Zayn laughs, no real joy in the sound of it. “Why?”

“I, um…” As Harry’s trying to put together a puzzle of words in his head, he sees the wheels turning in Zayn’s, calculating the math of what Harry’s trying to telepathically tell him if he never manages to put all the pieces together.

“Did you – do you – ?”

“I went to tell you how that, you know… How I feel.” It’s like he’s just spilled his insides out onto the table, his guts in front of Zayn to either leave or take. It’s all there. It’s the best Harry can do.

Zayn closes his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose and it looks like he’s going to stay like that indefinitely. Or maybe until Harry takes his bags and leaves, which is going to be in about a minute if Zayn doesn’t say something.

If only he ran, Harry thinks when Zayn exhales around, “You went to Switzerland to break me and Niall up?”

“No.” Harry says it before he even realizes what he’s saying. “I mean, yeah? But not in a –”

“Since when – when did you know that you –”

They need to finish a sentence soon or someone will overhear them and think they have lost it. They’d be half right. “Pretty much since the first time we met.” Harry thinks about the speech he gave at Louis’ and Liam’s wedding, how he felt the words vibrate in his chest. The lucky and unlucky ones. The look on Zayn’s face tells him his luck hasn’t changed yet.

“So the whole ‘Let’s be friends’ thing was a lie?”

“No,” now Harry’s getting offended. “It wasn’t like I was trying to get close to you and wait to make my move. And,” he raises his hands at Zayn, “I know it looks like that now. But that really wasn’t what I was doing.”

“But you never wanted to be just friends.” Zayn says it matter-of-factly, like it’s all clicking into place, when nothing should be clicking, Harry doesn’t want anything to click for him, not while he’s looking at Harry like he’s done something wrong.

“Of course I did. I just had some non-platonic feelings for you along with it.” Zayn’s face doesn’t change, his eyes void of anything but anger, and it’s transferring onto Harry, the smell of it wafting through the air, so Harry mumbles, “It’s not like you’re completely innocent in all of this.”

“What?” Zayn is decisively outraged. “You’re not saying I led you on. Please tell me that’s not what you’re saying.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Harry crosses his arms, almost nods his head. “Except that I was single and you weren’t.”

Zayn gapes at him, mouth open, eyes wide.

“The changing room,” Harry points his index finger, “And don’t try to say that was nothing,” he adds when Zayn starts shaking his head. “Don’t act all innocent. That kiss on the cheek? How many people thought we were together at the wedding?” he points two other finger, bringing his hand close to Zayn’s face so he doesn’t miss it. “Does Niall know about any of that? Yeah, I didn’t think so,” he says when Zayn looks down.

But when Zayn looks back up, Harry regrets listing those things off, coming here, ever going to Switzerland. He regrets having fingers to point in Zayn’s face. Those are moments he wanted to keep for himself, just between them, not throw them in Zayn’s face as if there was anything wrong with any of them. The hot blush on Zayn’s cheeks when his aunt asked if he broke up with Niall – Harry doesn’t want to take anything of it back.

“It was a mistake,” Zayn’s voice stays calm and monotone. “This – it was all a mistake.” He stands up, leaving Harry with a mouth that’s hard to close. “I’m leaving the country.”

“What, are you going back to Switzerland?” Harry snips, trying to suppress the knot forming in his throat.

“No, I’m moving to France. I’m putting my job first. My boss offered me a promotion and I’ve just decided to take it.” He picks up his bag from the floor, puts the strap over his shoulder and sighs at his feet. “I’ll be gone for a year, maybe more.”

Harry swallows before he can say, “Congratulations,” his voice wet.

If there was a way Harry saw today going, this wasn’t it.

Zayn says, “Bye, Harry,” and Harry doesn’t say anything. He sits at their table and watches Zayn walk away from him. Again.

**

“You bought a house? Like an actual real-life house?” Harry’s looking from Louis to Liam, seeing two identical grins on their faces as they both nod, their heads swooshing up and down, up and down.

“We have.” Louis raises his glass, Liam clinks his against it, they yell out, “Cheers!” to each other and drink, all the while Harry keeps staring at them, waiting for one of them to grow an extra head.

“When?”

“When you were busy flying to Europe.”

“But didn’t you have a fight or something?” Harry wants to blame Louis whole ‘it’s worth a try if it’s complicated’ speech on why he did what he did, but if he took some of the responsibility for Lucy’s mistakes, he’s going to take all of it for what he did to Zayn.

“We worked it out,” Liam says, draping his arm over Louis’ shoulders and kissing the top of his head. The jealousy for what they have roars in Harry’s head. He blows it away, wills it to never come back again.

“That’s good.” Harry grabs his bottle by the neck and places it in his lap, leaning against his chair and tries to pretend he isn’t looking at their soft touches or listening to their murmured whispers. “So a house, huh?”

“We’re having a going away party.” Louis turns away from giving Liam all of his attention for just a moment. “Err, or a ‘goodbye old house’ party, we still don’t know what to call it.”

“I think I’m gonna skip it.” Harry knows it’s going to be both, everyone’s going to come to congratulate Louis and Liam on their new house and to say goodbye to Zayn, because he’s leaving, for a year or maybe more. Harry’s can’t really think about it yet, he’ll do it when it’s too late.

“Come on, for us?”

Harry smiles at Liam.

“Or for Zayn, whatever.”

He frowns at Louis and looks down at his bottle. Harry wants to go for them and he wants to go for Zayn too, but it’s just going to be unnecessarily more awkward than it needs to be. And it’s going to be awkward as it is, Harry knows. Zayn’s going to tell everyone, each one separately why Niall isn’t there, that he’s still in Switzerland and that no, Zayn won’t be going to visit any time soon.

Harry did exactly what he didn’t want to do. He met someone happy, someone lucky and he changed their luck. Niall and Zayn will both be living in Europe, practically a train ride away, but it won’t matter now. Because Harry took care of that.

“No, we already said our goodbyes.”

**

Harry’s sitting in his Volvo, the window rolled down just enough to have air drifting in and out. He’s been hovering his thumb over the delete contact option for a couple of minutes. There were people parking cars up and down the street when he was just sitting there, at the end of the street, taking his phone out of his pocket, and now the same people are walking back to their cars, a little less sober in a little less of a straight line. He recognizes some and knows the names of others, while the rest could just be random strangers Louis saw once and decided to invite to their party.

He presses his temple against the glass and keeps his thumb where it is, right above the screen of his phone. The first time he threw the number out of the window, just like that, barely a thought behind the decision. But now Harry doesn’t know if he can do it again, if he can let himself press his finger down and hope he can somehow forget the past year, throw it all out of the window.

He can’t. Instead, he knocks on Louis’ door and opens it a fraction, the words, “Sorry I’m late,” spilling out of his mouth as soon as he sees Zayn turn towards him, smiling the bright smile Harry still chases after on a field of all the other fireflies.

“So. France.”

“Yeah, France.”

“They have good pastries,” Harry says with his lips pressed tight, breaking into laughter when Zayn side-eyes him. “So… about Switzerland.”

“No, listen –”

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Harry says before Zayn can get his words out. He presses a finger against a random magnet, sliding it up and down. “And I’m sorry.”

Zayn nods, maybe saying ‘It’s okay’ or maybe not. “Hey,” he opens the fridge, dislodging Harry from his comfortable perching nook. “I was cleaning out my apartment and throwing away a lot of food, but then I remembered.” Zayn grabs a lump of foil and presents it to Harry with a bright grin. “It’s fool’s gold.”

“It is.” Unwrapping it, Harry can see the shine of the butter on the loaf of bread, the peanut butter and jam leaking at the sides of it and over Harry’s hand, bacon barely peeking out. “I can’t believe you did this.” He puts the loaf down and takes off his backpack. Unzipping it with shaky hands, Harry brings out a paper-wrapped lump, a loaf of bread with peanut butter and jam inside.

“You –”

“I thought a lot about something you said. That how when you realize everything can fall apart in a second, it makes you never want to give up anything good ever again. And whatever this is between us, it’s good. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” Just the best. Harry looks at the ground, thinking about the number in his phone, the last one in his list of contacts. He wouldn’t let himself throw it away, not again. “And I don’t, I don’t want to give it up.”

“I don’t want to give it up either,” Zayn says, taking a step closer to Harry, sending his hummingbirds into flight. “Makes me wish we could time-travel.”

“If we could time-travel,” Harry starts, placing a hand on Zayn’s waist. “I’d go back to the night we met.”

“What would you change?”

Harry puts his other hand on the hinge of Zayn’s jaw, runs his thumb over his cheek as he leans in and says, “Nothing,” onto his lips.

Harry always thought it would feel wrong, like he’d be doing something he shouldn’t if he had leaned in that time in the changing room, did what he could see was flashing in Zayn’s eyes. Or if he had dragged him away from the wedding into a nook at the side of the house, because Harry could see it, could feel it in the way Zayn kept his hands around his waist as they danced. Harry knew he could’ve, but he didn’t want to. Because it wouldn’t feel like it does now, Zayn licking over his bottom lip, biting into it with a smirk Harry can feel against his mouth.

The sound Zayn makes, the huff and groan, when Harry lifts him up to the counter so he can stand between his legs doesn’t sounds right, it sounds absolutely perfect, so he presses closer to him, licks into his mouth and promises to himself to never ever move again.

But Zayn groans out, “Harry,” like he’s trying to ruin it. “Harry, we need to move.”

“Why?” he whines, pressing his lips against Zayn’s jaw, down to his chin and lower to get to his neck. Harry’s fingers itch with the thought of getting to Zayn’s tattoos finally.

“Because we’re in Louis’ kitchen.”

“And?”

“And,” Zayn brings Harry’s face up to look at him, “There’s an empty bedroom down the hall.”

Harry huffs out a breath, because Zayn is right, of course he is, but in lieu of shortening the time they’d spend stumbling down that hall, Harry grabs the back of Zayn’s thighs and whispers to, “Hold on,” as he picks him up and carries him right to the bed.

The room is bare, the empty drawers left open, no sheets on the bed, just the two lonely pillows without their covers either.

“They’re fast,” Zayn says, his head twisting behind himself when Harry puts him down on the bed. “That’s…” He looks up at Harry hovering above him and says, “Yeah, whatever,” before he’s pulling him down and kissing him again.

Between kissing and touching as much of exposed skin as they possibly can, Harry mesmerized by Zayn’s inked chest again, just like he knew he would be given the chance, their clothes slip off one by one until Zayn’s rolling them over and kneeling between Harry’s feet, his back hunched, hands splayed over his thighs as he brings guttural moans out of Harry’s with his mouth and tongue and this thing Harry can’t even bring himself to look down at because he might just come all over himself right when Zayn does it.

“Do you have…”

“Shit.” For how right it feels, there are too many complications. All Harry needs now is for someone to burst in the door yelling Fire! “In my bag,” Harry groans, barely gets the words out as his head swings back on the bed, eyes rolling to the back of his head because Zayn sucks him down until his nose is touching skin and Harry’s propelled somewhere out of his body. “Zayn.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Zayn jumps up with a nasty grin and flitters out of the room. There’s a fifty percent chance Harry isn’t going to survive this. He twists a hand around himself and pulls himself off to ease his heartbeat back to normal before Zayn comes rushing into the bedroom, shutting the door behind himself.

“What?” Harry waits for some sort of explosion. Zayn’s back is pressed against the door, the packets of lube and the condom tight in his hands, like he’s clutching them for life when he burst out laughing, wheezing with it. “What?”

“I think I just scarred Liam for life.”

Harry’s eyes bulge out. “He saw you?” Taking in Zayn’s bare chest, bare thighs, bare everything as he stumbles back to the bed, all Harry does is thank his lucky stars and appreciates the view. Liam may not be so inclined.

“He kinda saw all of me, as in –”

“I get it,” Harry rushes. “I get it. Now, come here.”

Zayn balances himself over Harry’s chest, sitting on his hips as he smirks down. And it’s then that Harry realizes he really can count his lucky stars again, because they’re all there, shining as bright as they did once, because now he’s the one with a job and a boy on his lap, Happy with a capital ‘h’.

Zayn’s throwing his head back when Harry eases another finger into him, scissoring them apart, keeping the pace of his hand slow and easy because that’s what makes Zayn shut his eyes and moan out his name. But it doesn’t send shivers down his back as the silence when Zayn sinks down on him does, like the air is sucked out of their lungs as Zayn settles down, sits on Harry’s hips again.

“Can I?” Harry asks tentatively. He can feel Zayn’s thighs shaking beneath his fingers as he rolls his hips down onto Harry. Zayn groans, moves himself up and down, up and down, like he’s determined, like he wants to ruin Harry. And he is. Every time he so much as scrapes his nails down Harry’s chest, Harry thinks he’s going to come. When Zayn perches his hands on Harry’s thighs and keeps undulating his hips, Harry has to hold himself off with everything he has to not just roll them over and ruin Zayn too.

“Fuck, yeah, Harry,” Zayn breathes out. He moves his hands back on Harry’s chest and waits for Harry to do something now, like he’s passing on the torch Harry’s been itching to get a hold of.

He puts his feet flat on the mattress, brings his knees up and grabs Zayn’s waist, just as Zayn leans down to kiss him. Their teeth clash, Zayn’s hands running aimlessly over his chest, because Harry lets him for a second before he’s thrusting his hips up to bring a wrecked moan out of Zayn.

“God, yes,” he moans.

“Harry, I’m gonna…” And Zayn does. As Harry thrusts his hips once, twice and then again, Zayn’s trembling in his hands as he comes between them, eyes closed and his lips between his teeth.

Harry keeps his eyes open as long as he can, moving his hips, pushing his hips up and up as Zayn runs after his breath, but then he’s being pulled over the ledge too, coming apart right when Zayn collapses on top of him.

**

They’re lying on the bed, each on one side, not a sliver of their skin touching like there’s a barricade between them now. Harry puts a hand on his stomach, his skin hot and sticky, but he doesn’t mind. He’s thinking about the first night he met Zayn, looking for that one magnet to keep him occupied from the people looking at him, because he knew they were reporting back to Lucy, he just knew it, even if they probably never met her before and weren’t paying him as much attention as he thought they were.

That night, he wanted Zayn to invite him up when they came to stand in front of his building, do what they did now, ruin each other for fun, because they like it and they would let the other do it. He got a number instead, a piece of paper that floated into the air like his life was then too, drifting away from him on a single breath of air.

But Harry didn’t just want that one night, he wanted lunches and movie nights where Zayn wouldn’t get stood up and Harry wouldn’t go alone – Harry wanted it all and in a way, he got it. He got all of it, just not how he wanted, because he didn’t hand holding or the kiss right before you start eating or the goodnights said in bed instead of a dimly lit street. And now – now Harry a sliver away from having that too.

He turns his head on the pillow to look at Zayn, lying next to him with his legs spread apart, come drying on his stomach, looking back with a frown on his face.

“What are you smiling at?”

“I’m just thinking.” Harry shrugs awkwardly, his shoulders dragging on the mattress. “What happens now?”

“Right now or future now?”

Harry hums. It probably matters which one Harry means. Whether right now, if they just get dressed and leave Louis to console a scandalized Liam or in a week, a month, after Zayn leaves for France. It matters more than Harry cares to think about right now, so instead of answering, he rolls onto his side and pulls at Zayn’s hand until he scoots closer to him.

“I guess we can sleep before anything has to happen.”

Zayn sighs. He closes his eyes and smiles too, that bright flash of his that you almost miss if you’re not fast enough, except that this time, the butterflies in Harry’s stomach don’t spring into flight because of it.

He whispers, “I guess we can,” before he kisses the side of Harry’s head and settles next to him, wrapping an arm around his waist.

**

A Year Later

Harry’s shivering in his Volvo. The heating doesn’t work, because he keeps putting it off, like it’s not the middle of winter and his fingers freeze every time he touched the steering wheel. But he came prepared today, half of his face wrapped in a thick woven scarf, his jacket closed and pulled underneath it, his fingers shaking in gloves. His breath still fogs up the windows, but Harry can draw on them while he waits, so it’s not completely horrible. By now, he has a deformed dog and what should be a flower.

Someone knocks on the door just as he’s about to add a sun in the corner, so he reaches over to open it, because that’s the only way to open the passenger’s side. He barely even has time to move his arms out of the way when a similarly dressed body falls into the seat next to him and shuts the door with a bang.

“It’s so cold!”

“I’m sorry.” Harry pulls down his scarf. “I’m waiting for my fiancé and he’s going to show up in less than a minute, so I’d appreciate it if you’d get out of my car.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Zayn scoffs behind his scarf of his own. “Why haven’t you fixed the heating?”

“No, seriously, my fiancé’s going to be here really soon.”

“The flight was long and uncomfortable.” Zayn shuffles in his seat and starts to take off his gloves. “The food was disgusting,” he says, pulling off his hat and messing up his hair so it sticks in every direction. “And I’m really tired.” He finally unwraps his scarf and unzips the top of his jacket. Turning to face Harry, he brings his hands up and scoots the material covering his face down. “So I’d appreciate it if you’d shut up and kiss me.”

Harry hums and does just that. Their lips are cold, but they warm up as soon as Zayn dips his tongue past Harry’s lips, smiling into the kiss like they haven’t seen each other in two months and this is all they’ve been waiting to do. It feels exactly like that.

“We’re gonna be late,” Zayn mumbles into Harry’s mouth, pressing closer between words. “We should go.”

Harry tries to feel Zayn’s form through the layers of clothes and his gloves, but he gives up and brings his padded hand to Zayn’s face instead, humming again his lips and not giving a single care if they’re late to every single event if it’s because he has Zayn this close.

“We can’t be late, Harry.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s our wedding.”

“Exactly, they have to wait for us.” Harry kisses Zayn’s cheek, his chin, his lips again.

“Or everyone could leave.”

“They’re not gonna leave.” He leans back from Zayn but changes his mind as soon as he does and kisses him again. “We have like five minutes.”

“The sooner the wedding is over, the sooner we get to be alone, in our apartment, in our bed.”

“Fine,” Harry grumbles. “Fine, we get married and that’s it, no party afterwards.”

“Whatever you say, babe.”

**

FIN