Fifteen Minutes (Zarry AU)

Prologue (Harry)

Harry has never been dumped. It’s not a fact he’s particularly proud of, it’s not like he swaggers around the morning after he breaks up with someone smirking and saying, ‘I wish she’d get the message and stop calling’ like the other boys at school. But then, it isn’t something he’s ashamed of, either. After all, there’s a certain satisfaction in knowing that someone’s thinking about you even if you’re not thinking about them.

That’s an awful thing to say, he knows, but he’d never say it out loud, not when he prides himself on being such a nice guy. Nice guys don’t say things like that; they hold the door open for you and stop to help if you have a flat tire. And he kind of likes it - being the nice guy - not the best looking one, the one girls lose their virginity to on top of a pile of coats at a party, but the one those girls go to when that guy doesn’t call.

‘You’re so sweet, Harry,’ they tell him between sobs as he kisses their forehead and tells them that it’ll be okay. And he is sweet, too sweet sometimes. He’ll go hungry giving his lunch to a friend just to prove that she doesn’t need to go on a diet and always makes up the difference when old ladies give him the wrong change in the bakery.

But his intentions aren’t always pure. Sometimes, when his fingers sweep across a girl’s cheek, it isn’t just to wipe away her tears, it’s so he can feel the heat of her skin as well. That’s only natural, he supposes, he’s sixteen and those curiosities – like if a girl’s cheek is as warm as it looks – are becoming harder to ignore. And it’s not like he’s taking advantage, but he kind of is, because he knows that when he’s comforting a girl in a dark corner of a party, far away from where her boyfriend is sloppily kissing someone else, Harry knows that when she stops crying and lifts her wet eyelashes to look at him, she doesn’t see that skinny kid from school any more, the one with too much hair. Harry knows that he’s growing into his looks. Every day he fills out a little more and feels a little less awkward. He’s still clumsy, of course (if he only knocks over one cup of tea a day, he’s doing well), but he knows that girls look at his big eyes and curls and find it endearing now.

He felt it – the shift – as soon as White Eskimo won Battle of the Bands, but it got worse when word got around that he was auditioning for X Factor. It used to be that he was lucky to find anyone to kiss at a party, but now girls pull him into the spare room and lick their way into his mouth. Last month, a girl called Laura Mann, who had a pink mouth and a turquoise bra with butterflies on it, gave him a hand job. ‘You gonna write me a song, Harry?’ she panted into his ear and he came so hard he nearly blacked out.

Something changed after that. Now he wants to touch every girl he sees. He’ll be standing next to a girl at the bus stop and be in love with her by the time the bus comes or be sitting next to someone at Fortune City, waiting for his crispy beef, and his hand will move along the sofa until his little finger and her little finger are almost touching.

He has a nice smile, he’s been told, and he knows what to say when she looks up, to compliment her nail varnish or ask what perfume she’s wearing, and it’s as if all those years of being a nice guy has paid off. His friend Nick says that he’s been in training and Harry laughs, but he kind of has, because every time a girl cries on his shoulder he learns another thing to say to make her feel better and how to touch her so she feels comforted, not groped. He knows to call when he says he will and to buy her flowers and send text messages for no reason and he loves it. He loves the ceremony of it, of cooking a girl dinner and lighting candles, loves being a dork and putting the napkin on her lap and pouring Diet Coke into her wine glass. All the things her last boyfriend never did.

So maybe this nice guy thing ain’t so bad because the kisses on the forehead are straying, lower – lower – and it’s almost too easy, like a skateboard trick he’s mastered. And he’d never say that out loud, either, how much he enjoys the thrill of whispering, ‘You deserve so much more than him’ to a girl as she looks up and fists her hands in his shirt. It shouldn’t, but it kind of feels like winning when their mouths meet, and while he denies it every time Nick says it, Harry always gets what he wants.

It’s because he’s a brat, apparently. He has a greedy heart. That’s what Laura Mann told him when he broke up with her. He didn’t think about it too much at the time, dismissing it as one of those things someone says when they’re being dumped, a rhetorical kick in the bollocks before they walk away, but that night, he couldn’t sleep because it was digging into him, like the proverbial pea under his mattress.

Maybe he does have a greedy heart. He wants everyone to love him. Everyone. Every girl at school. Every girl who serves him in a shop. Even the women with prams he holds the door open for, he wants them to see his smile and remember when their husbands were that young and spend the rest of the week wondering what his name is.

Is that greedy? Probably, but he always loves them back, even if it’s just for a minute. He’ll pass a girl in the street and fall in and out of love with her in the time it takes to watch her walk away. He’s addicted to it, he thinks, to that feeling, to falling for someone. Actually, it’s more than that, it feels more like falling into them, like walking around the edge of a swimming pool and losing your footing. He savours the shock of it – of being swallowed whole – but even that doesn’t come close to what he’s feeling now, standing by himself in the middle of a stage, the echo of Isn’t She Lovely?in his ears as he waits for one of the three judges in front of him to say something.

He’s trying not to look at Simon in case he starts begging because Harry wants this, wants it more than any girl he’s stood next to at a bus stop or passed on the street. Wants it so much that want doesn’t feel like a big enough word. He needs a whole new one – something big enough to describe the pain in his chest – and that feels kind of greedy as well, like he hasn’t eaten for a week. He’s weak with it.

Mad with it.

The closest thing he can think to compare it to is leaning in to kiss someone and waiting for her to kiss you back. It’s the same agony, the same dizzying clash of panic and hope as Harry holds his breath and thinks of his family backstage and his friends who’ve been texting all day to tell him that he’ll definitely go through to the next round.

Nicole says something nice, but Harry isn’t looking at her, he’s looking at Louis, who’s shaking his head. Then Louis says it – ‘I think you’re so young. I don’t think you have enough experience or confidence yet’ – and it’s as if Louis’s rolled up a newspaper and smacked Harry in the heart. The disappointment is crushing. He’s heard people say that before, but he’s never really felt it. He’s felt the sting of a girl not liking him back and the shame of failing a test, but he’s never felt that before and it is crushing. He’s sure that he can feel his bones detaching – one by one – and dropping to pile at his feet.

Usually he’d do what he always does when he’s late for class or he’s trying to get a girl to go out with him – say something charming or do that thing Nick says he does, where he tilts his head with a slow smile – but he’s in shock. He can’t move, every bit of him shaking as he realises that it’s too late, there’s nothing he can do. He just has to wait.

So he doesn’t hear what Louis says after that, not over the sound of his heart in his ears, his cheeks burning as he thinks about his family backstage in their WE THINK HARRY HAS THE X FACTOR t-shirts and he can’t go back there without this. He can’t.

Then Simon raises his hand to silence the crowd and when everything goes quiet – even the sound of Harry’s heart in his ears – there’s a sweet second of hope, before Simon says, ‘I have to agree with Louis. I don’t think you’re ready for this, Harry.’

And it’s over.