Fifteen Minutes (Zarry AU)

Chapter 10

When Harry wakes up, Zayn is getting ready for work.

‘What time is it?’ he mumbles, rubbing his eyes.

‘Nearly five o’clock,’ Zayn says as he crouches down to lace his DMs.

He must have showered. The loft smells of his shampoo and Palmer’s cocoa butter and there’s steam drifting out of the open bathroom door. It makes Harry feel more lightheaded so he has to wait a moment until he can haul himself off the mattress.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he says, tugging down his t-shirt.

‘Okay. But hurry up,’ Zayn tells him as he grabs his backpack. ‘I’m late.’

Harry keeps looking at the moon on his arm as they walk to the Superstore. He’s glad it didn’t smudge when he was asleep and tentatively touches it as he wonders if it will endure a shower. When Zayn sees him do it, he laughs and nudges him with his hip.

‘I can’t believe you like it so much. It’s just a doodle.’

‘That’s why I like it,’ Harry tells him, following him into the bar and nodding at Dixie, who’s heaving her record box towards the decks. ‘’Cos you didn’t think about it.’

‘Alright,’ Zayn says, unconvinced, as he disappears into the office.

When he ambles back, Harry is behind the bar with Ruth who’s complaining that the till drawer has been sticking all day. Zayn’s hand trails across his back as he slides past and the shock of it makes Harry jump and hit the till at just the right angle that it pops open. Ruth throws her arms up and cheers when it does, then cheers again when Harry pulls out the two pence piece that’s been causing the trouble.

‘Finders keepers,’ Zayn tells him with a smile, squeezing Harry’s shoulder as he hands him a bag of tealights. ‘Don’t spend it all at once.’

‘Put it towards my tab,’ Harry says with a wink, pressing the coin into Zayn’s palm. But he just laughs and drops it into the purple charity tin by the beer pumps.

‘You two are so cute,’ Ruth says when she gets back from the office with her bag.

They exchange a glance and laugh.

Zayn shakes his head. ‘Cute is not a word I’d use to describe him.’

‘Excuse you,’ Harry says, tearing into the bag of tealights. ‘I’m fucking adorable.’

‘Yes you are! You’re like an old married couple.’ She grins and points at Harry dropping the tealights into the candleholders. ‘You even have a routine.’

Harry’s never thought about it before, but he hangs out at the bar so much now that they do have a routine: when they get in, Zayn checks the float while Harry lights the candles, then they put them on the tables together. When they’ve done that, Harry cuts the limes while Zayn refills the fridge and bloody hell Ruth’s right. He might as well work there, but given all the free drinks Zayn slips him, it evens out in the end.

‘Less of the old, you,’ Harry tells her with a chuckle when she says goodbye.

He turns to smile at Zayn, but he’s not there. He assumes that he’s gone down to the cellar, but when he turns to grab the lighter from the drawer under the till, he sees him at the other end of the bar, talking to a guy. He’s probably serving him, Harry thinks, but when he sees Zayn lick his lips and tilt his head, his heart clenches like a fist.

He’s seen Zayn do it enough times to know that Zayn likes him – this guy, whoever he is – and Harry can’t help but stop and stare as that thing happens in his head again where everything jumps up and lands in a different place. The guy says something and when Zayn throws his head back and laughs, Harry frowns. There’s something kind of helpless about it – kind of silly – that makes Zayn look about five years younger and it makes Harry think of the photograph, the one of Adam, and when Zayn laughs again, it’s like a door shutting between them. Harry puts the candles on the tables by himself and when he’s cut the limes, he puts them in the container himself because Zayn is leaning over the bar and going through the cocktail menu with the guy who is deliberating over what to have with the sort of concern usually reserved for disarming a bomb. And that’s how it is for the rest of the evening, Zayn lingering at the other end of the bar, his smile getting looser and looser as Harry’s muscles get tighter and tighter.