Fifteen Minutes (Zarry AU)

Chapter 12

It’s fine. We’re fine. That’s all Zayn’s heard playing in a loop in his head for the last two weeks, like a jingle for car insurance he keeps singing in the shower. He hears it between heartbeats as he waits for the kettle to boil, between footsteps as he walks to the bus stop. He even wrote it in class yesterday. He didn’t realise he did it, not until he was flicking through his notebook this morning, looking for a clean page, and there it was – It’s fine. We’re fine. – scribbled among his notes about Jeff Koons.

As soon as he saw it, Zayn crossed it out, the tip of his pencil puncturing the page as he did, because it’s not fine. He hasn’t seen Harry since that night in the bar. One minute Harry was there, then he wasn’t and Zayn has no idea why. Actually, he can guess why – Harry’s seeing her, the blonde he hooked up with in the toilets – and while Zayn would be lying if he said that didn’t hurt, what hurts more is that after a month of all but living together, of playing rock paper scissors for the last piece of pizza and waking up half-covered by the same sheet, the sun in their eyes, Zayn is so easily forgotten.

The fucked up thing is, he isn’t even surprised. He knows what Harry’s like, he doesn’t fall in love with people, he falls into them. That’s what Harry told him one night as they walked home from the Superstore. He said that when he likes someone he lets it devour him. ‘There’s nothing like that feeling of being swallowed whole,’ Harry said, his lips parted, as Zayn stopped under the white shadow of a streetlamp to light a cigarette. ‘It’s like walking around the edge of a swimming pool and losing your footing.’

So that’s what happened, he’s lost his footing.

It was bound to happen eventually. Zayn knew that every time he came out of the toilet at a gig to find Harry talking to a girl. He’d see Harry do that half-arsed smile and shrug thing and Zayn’s heart would stop as he thought, Please don’t fall in love with her. Each time he didn’t it felt like a reprieve, but Zayn knew that one day one girl would hold Harry’s attention for more than fifteen minutes and that would be it. So it’s been like waiting for an axe to fall and it’s almost a relief because it feels like he’s been holding his breath since he met Harry. It’s kind of nice to let go of it.

Nice probably isn’t the right word, but there’s some satisfaction, painful as it is, in being right. Zayn knew Harry would go. They always do, so that’s why he tried not to tell him anything – not everything, at least – because they always take a bit of him when they do. Harry will, too, and that’s fine, he just hopes that whatever he took, he uses it wisely. Maybe Zayn taught him something. Maybe Harry will be more patient with his next girlfriend and won’t push her when she’s in a foul mood. It’s a pathetic thing to think, that he’s made Harry a better boyfriend for someone else, but Zayn’s done this enough times to know that he’s never the one, he’s always the one before the one. And that’s fine – actually it isn’t, it’s so far from fine, Zayn wishes his heart had a switch he could switch off – but he wishes Harry at least had the bollocks to be honest about it, not lie and promise to call him back when he knows that he’s not going to. Because that’s the cruellest thing, not being forgotten about, but not realising that he has been.

Zayn doesn’t know why it takes so long with Harry. He’s done this before. He knows when someone’s gone too far and has to pull away. But it usually isn’t as brutal as this. It’s more drawn out. There’s usually a few weeks of I’m fine-s or It’s not you, I’m just busy-sfirst. That’s what happened with Dan. First he stopped following Zayn outside when he went for a cigarette, then he stopped calling him back, then he stopped looking at him. Zayn knew it was over then – when Dan started looking everywhere but at him – because Dan used to stare at him, his eyes wide, as though he had no control over it. So that’s why Zayn let him pull him into the toilet that night. It wasn’t just to kiss him, to feel the warm curl of Dan’s tongue in his mouth or to give him that last desperate blow job, but because he wanted Dan to see him again.