Keep the Car Running (Zarry AU)

Prologue

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

~ e. e. cummings

Believe none of what you hear and only half of what you see. That’s what his father always tells him with that smile of his, the one that says, I’ll tell you that much, but the rest will cost you. Harry never knew what he meant, but he gets it now that he’s sitting in the dim bar of another hotel he won’t sleep in, the ice melting in his £18 gin and tonic. He doesn’t even like gin and tonic, but it’s all part of the game. And it is a game. It has to be, because if it isn’t that means he doesn’t enjoy it and he does. He doesn’t just enjoy it, he loves it. He loves the theatrics of it, of shaving carefully and layering on cologne, something different every night – Floris on Tuesday nights, Acqua di Parma on Thursdays – and picking which suit he’s going to wear. The pinstripe one that makes him look older, maybe the black one that makes him look taller. He doesn’t care what your last name is and he won’t remember your birthday, but Harry always remembers those things, like who likes him to wear Floris. And he keeps track of the gifts as well; who gave him which watch and who gave him the monogrammed cufflinks with the wrong initials on them. That’s part of the game, too: being a different person every night. He’ll be whoever you want him to be. He’ll be your date for your cousin’s wedding and smile for photographs as he tells the story of how you met in a bookshop, reaching for the same copy of Middlesex. Or he’ll lick his lips and call you Daddy if that’s what you want. Anything so he doesn’t have to be himself. So maybe you should believe none of what you see, either.