How to Forget (Zarry Fan Fiction)

We’re just friends. Zayn needs to get that tattooed somewhere so he never forgets. He needs Harry to scratch it across his back the next time they’re tangled up on another bed in another hotel room in another city because every time Harry looks at him when he’s on his third drink, his eyelids a little heavier and his mouth a little wetter, he forgets.

Zayn almost asks him sometimes, when Harry’s clinging to him and panting into his neck, he almost grabs his hair and tells Harry to bite it into him so he doesn’t forget again, to spell it out in the tiny cuts that his nails leave on his hips when he comes.

We’re just friends.

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Zayn doesn’t know when it starts, only when he can’t stop it, when he’s so far gone that he’d follow Harry off a fucking cliff if he asked him to. He’s tried, usually when he’s in bed, staring at the ceiling so he doesn’t have to watch Harry get dressed, he tries to trace a line back to when it started and can’t. There was no one thing, no fight that dissolved into a kiss, no drunken night that ended with them having a clumsy, breathless shag in a pub toilet. Those things happened but it started long before then, the moment Zayn saw Harry at the auditions, he knows now. All of those people in the queue – thousands and thousands of them – and Zayn saw Harry. He didn’t know it at the time, but Zayn was done for then, the moment he saw Harry ahead of him and rolled his eyes at his stupid scarf but then couldn’t look away as he watched his curls collapse in the rain.

Zayn knows now that he didn’t stand a chance – Harry the tornado and him the wooden house in his path – but at the time he thought it was nothing, that Harry was just a face in the crowd. But then Simon was putting them in a band together and before he could catch his breath, Harry was hugging him. A guy had never hugged him like that. Harry held on, his cheekbone digging into Zayn’s, and when Zayn tried to hold on, too, it started then, he thinks, because it feels like he hasn’t been able to catch his breath since.

He still thought it was nothing, though, that Harry hugged everyone like that. It didn’t mean anything. That’s what he told himself every time Harry hugged him or every time he pulled him into the corner of a club. Zayn blamed the free drinks and told himself that Harry didn’t realise that he was holding on so tight, that his fingers had slipped under the collar of his shirt to stroke the tattoo running along his collarbone. But then Harry would pull him closer and press his mouth to his ear, his breath hot and quick, making Zayn shiver at the tickle of each word and the promise of his tongue if he just leaned an inch closer. Then Harry would look at him, mouth curling into a smile that was kind of sweet but mostly not, and Zayn would tell himself that it was nothing.

He thought it was nothing.

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Zayn doesn’t know if they’re getting braver or more stupid, but he suspects the latter as he lets Harry lead him towards the front of the yacht. ‘Here?’ he frowns, when Harry stops at the bow and looks out at the flat blue ocean stretching out to touch the even bluer sky. There’s a burst of laughter and Zayn’s nerves jump up as he looks over his shoulder, but Harry just grins and when Zayn turns back, he presses a kiss to his mouth.

The shock of it makes him gasp and step on his toes as Harry pulls him to him, but when he recovers, Zayn takes his face in his hands. Harry’s just been for a swim, so Zayn can taste the salt on his lips and it makes his mouth water as he runs his tongue along his bottom lip. Harry takes the hint, parting them, and when their tongues touch, Zayn immediately forgets about the huddle of people at the stern and just kisses him.

Zayn’s known Harry for so long now that he’s stopped counting, but he still surprises him. Like then, usually they’d be kissing fiercely, Harry’s hand in his shorts stroking Zayn until he was panting against his mouth and his nails were leaving dents on Harry’s shoulders, tiny half-moons that disappear a few second later. But they kiss slowly, as though they have all the time in the world and can’t hear their friends laughing and jumping into the water. And Zayn can’t hear them, all he can hear is Harry and that noise he makes when he kisses him – somewhere between a gasp and a sigh – and that’s all he wants to hear as he slides his tongue over Harry’s so he makes it again.