No Fear of Falling (Zarry AU)

Chapter 8

It went on for weeks. Weeks and weeks. Each time they went a little further, they’d kiss for a little longer or take off another item clothing until there was nothing left, just them and however long it was until Zayn’s mother got home from work. And it wasn’t just about that – about touching each other, about seeing how much of each other that they could touch – it was like Zayn was getting to know him all over again. Harry, who he’d known his whole life. It was like having another person in his room, in his bed, this stranger with perfect pale skin and tea-coloured nipples he liked to circle with his finger. Zayn didn’t think there was anything he didn’t already know about Harry, but he didn’t know that – that Harry liked it when he circled his nipples with his finger – and he didn’t know about all the sounds he made, the sighs and moans and sudden gasps that he probably hadn’t made for anyone. That Zayn hoped he hadn’t made for anyone.

Zayn had never felt that before. It was the sort of thing people wrote books about and sung songs about. They talked about everything. Not just the silly stuff they always talked about – school and homework and what film to watch – but the big stuff as well as they sat in Zayn’s treehouse, the day dying around them, in that way you only can when you’re fifteen and have the whole world at your feet.

Harry found an old pickle jar in his kitchen and brought it up to the treehouse one afternoon after he school. He emptied the loose change from his pockets into it then made Zayn do the same. When he did, he took the Sharpie Zayn had been doodling in his notebook with and wrote TOMORROW across the jar. Every night they did the same thing, they emptied the loose change from their pockets into the jar and talked about what they were going to do when they left school. They wanted to do everything, to move to London, to hitchhike to Glastonbury, to buy a car and drive across America, living on hamburgers and apple pie. One more year and they’d be free, Harry would say, as though they were a couple of birds considering breaking free from the flock to fly North instead.

Zayn thought they’d do it, too. It didn’t occur to him for a second that the jar they were hiding in the treehouse that was getting heavier and heavier each week wouldn’t get emptied eventually. He’d pick it up and look at it sometimes, try to guess how much was in it as he imagined what their flat in London would be like. Somewhere near the tube with posters on the walls to hide the water stains on the wallpaper and a battered Chesterfield sofa. But one night, they were at a party, Harry giving him a smile that told him that he didn’t know what they were doing there, and as Zayn smiled back, he was aware of Melanie Munro next to them, flicking her hair in Harry’s direction.

‘Who Harry? Don’t bother with him,’ she said to the girl she was talking to, making sure she said it loud enough for Harry to hear. ‘We went out last year and he didn’t even try to touch me. I think he’s, like, gay or something.’

Zayn watched Harry go rigid. He said that he was okay when he asked, but when Zayn suggested they get out of there, he looked relieved. So when Zayn managed to get his jacket from under the couple shagging on the pile in the spare room and walked back into the kitchen to find Harry trying to kiss Melanie through a wall, he knew Harry well enough not to be surprised. It still hurt, though. Hurt like his heart had snapped in two.