A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

You Are....

"Which singers did you choose?" Harry teased after their candlelit dinner as he slid CDs into the player. "Because if you picked out Mickey Mouse, I'm not going to dance with you."

"Yes, you will."

"What makes you so sure?"

"You like dancing with me."

Despite the playful exchange, Harry was well aware that his mood had been disintegrating during their meal. Although he'd specifically asked Harry to treat the evening as a festive occasion, there was an indefinable tension and a grimness in his features that were becoming more pronounced as the evening wore on. Harry told himself it was their discussion of the murder that had caused his strange mood, because the only other explanation that came to his mind was that Zayn was thinking about sending him away, and that he could not bear to consider. Despite his own desire to stay with Zayn, he knew perfectly well that the final decision was not going to be his to make. And even though he was in love with Zayn, he had no idea how Zayn really felt about him, except that he very much liked having him around. Here.

Behind him on the stereo, Barbra Streisand's voice lifted effortlessly into the first bars of an intensely romantic song, and Harry tried again to shake off his foreboding as Zayn opened his arms to him. "That's definitely not Mickey Mouse's voice," he pointed out. "Will she do?"

Harry nodded, smiling with pleasure. "Streisand is my absolute favorite singer."

"Mine, too." Zayn slid his arm around his waist, moving him closer to his own body.

"If I had a voice like hers," Harry said, talking to keep his worries at bay, "I'd sing just to hear myself. I'd sing when I answered the door and used the telephone."

"She's phenomenal," Zayn agreed. "Operatic sopranos are a dime a dozen, but Barbra is ... unique, incomparable."

Harry suddenly realized Zayn's hand was roving slowly up his bare back; he saw the banked fires in Zayn's eyes kindling slowly into flame, and deep within him, Harry felt the answering stirrings of longing begin again—a longing for the tormenting sweetness of his touch, for the stormy insistence of his kiss, and the shattering joy of his body possessing him. How thrilling it was to know he was going to have all that before the night ended and to be able to savor and prolong the moment, just as he sensed Zayn also wanted to do. But was he going to have all this tomorrow night and the night after, he wondered, struggling to hold down his panic over what his intuition was telling him was behind his somber mood. "Did you know her?" Harry asked.

"Barbra?"

Harry nodded.

"Yes, I used to know her."

"What is she like? I read somewhere that she isn't very nice to people who work with her."

Zayn thought for a moment, trying to explain. "She has a gift unlike anyone else's in the world," he said after a moment. "She knows how she wants to use it, and she doesn't like other people treating her as if they know better than she how to do that. In short, she doesn't suffer fools easily."

"You liked her, didn't you?"

"I liked her very much."

Harry listened to the poignant words of the song, wondering if he was noticing them, too, or if he, like most men, merely listened to the music and ignored lyrics. "Pretty song," Harry said because he desperately wanted Zayn to hear the words as if they came from him.

"Beautiful lyrics," Zayn agreed, trying to steady himself, to tell himself that what he was feeling would soon fade when he was away from Harry. He gazed at Harry's face, and the words of Streisand's song seem to pierce his heart:

Those tomorrows waiting deep in your eyes—

In the world of love you keep in your eyes—

I'll awaken what's asleep in your eyes.

It may take a kiss or two.

Through all of my life...

Summer, winter, spring, and fall of my life...

All I ever will recall of my life, is all of my life.

With you.

He was actually relieved when Streisand's voice faded and a Whitney Houston/Jermaine Jackson duet began to play. But Harry chose that moment to lift his cheek from his chest and look up at him, and as he looked into Harry's eyes and heard the lyrics of the song, he felt his chest tighten.

Like a candle burning bright—

Love is glowing in your eyes.

A flame to light our way

that burns brighter every day.

I was words without a tune,

I was a song still unsung.

A poem with no rhyme, a dancer out of time...

But now there's you.

And nobody loves me like you do.

When the song came to an end, Harry drew a shaky breath, and Zayn realized he was trying to pull out of the music's spell by picking up their conversation about their mutual favorites. "What's your favorite sport, Zayn?"

Zayn tipped his chin up. "My favorite sport," he said in an aching, husky voice he scarcely recognized as his own, "is making love to you."

Harry's eyes darkened with a love he wasn't trying to conceal from Zayn anymore. "What's your favorite food?" he asked shakily.

In answer, Zayn bent his head and touched his lips in a soft kiss. "You are." And in that moment, he realized that sending Harry out of his life tomorrow was going to be harder than it had been to hear the prison gates clanging shut behind him five years ago. Without realizing what he was doing, he tightened his arms around Harry, buried his face in the soft hair, and squeezed his eyes closed.

Harry's hand touched his face, his fingers spreading over his rigid jaw, and his voice was shattered. "You're planning to send me home tomorrow, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Harry heard the absolute finality in the word, and he was so attuned to Zayn that he knew it was going to be futile to argue, but he did it anyway. "I don't want to go!"

He lifted his head, and even though his voice was still soft, it was steadier and more resolute. "Don't make it harder than it already is."

Harry wondered desolately how it could possibly be any harder, but he swallowed back that futile protest and did as Zayn asked for the time being. He went to bed with him when he asked and tried to smile when he asked. After he'd brought them both to a shattering climax, Harry turned in his arms and whispered, "I love you. I love—"

Zayn's fingertips covered his lips, silencing the words when he tried to say them again. "Don't."

Harry dragged his gaze away from his and bent his head, staring at his chest. He wished Zayn would say it back to him even though he didn't mean it. Harry wanted to hear the words from him, but he didn't ask because he knew Zayn would refuse.