Keep This Love (In a Photograph)

Chapter 2

Zayn gives himself a day to clean up his photos before he sends them over to Ed. He wanders around his house and makes a list of things that need to be fixed, including the downstairs faucet which is leaking and a curtain rail upstairs that's hanging to the wall by a thread. Not that he'll fix them. He wouldn't know how to. He's not sure he even owns a toolbox. But he'll make a call eventually to someone who does own a toolbox and can even name all the tools inside. Zayn gets stuck after spanner, hammer and screwdriver.

He scribbles some more sketches but decides to keep none of them.

He watches five seconds of Jeremy Kyle before he has to turn over for his own sanity and ends up watching eight straight episodes of Catfish before he finally gives in and calls Harry.

"Enjoying your day off?" Zayn asks when Harry answers.

"Sure am, boss," Harry says cheerfully. "I'm in my pants and I've got a box of Frosties in one hand, the telly remote in the other and I'm catching up on an entire season of the Kardashians."

Zayn rolls his eyes, safe in the knowledge that Harry can't see him. "I'm going to the fire station tomorrow for a pre-shoot interview with the Captain."

"Yeah? You want me to come with you?" Harry asks. There's both excitement and dread in his tone and Zayn fully understands the feeling.

"Nah, not for this one, you enjoy your time off, yeah? But we'll probably start working on this properly in a week or so."

"A whole week," Harry sighs teasingly. "What will you do without me?"

"I'm sure I'll manage," Zayn says dryly. But there's a lump in his throat that he has to swallow down hard because there's a nugget of truth in that teasing.

"Well, at least try and get laid, okay?" Harry says solemnly. Zayn's pretty sure that Harry's not even teasing now. He's been on at Zayn to hook up with someone since he and Perrie broke up about six months ago. It's been a bit of a dry spell.

"I'll do my best," Zayn says even though they both know he doesn't mean it. Zayn hasn't had the energy for dating for a long time. Perhaps even before Perrie. He's never been much of a partier, just the occasional club when he was younger. He'd met Perrie on assignment, she'd been the assistant on a fashion shoot and they'd managed a seven month relationship that was, in hindsight, perhaps about five months longer than it should have been. Zayn's pretty sure he wasn't nearly good enough to be with someone as great as she was.

The thought of dipping his toes back in the world of dating makes him nervous, if he's being honest. He's definitely not cut out for commitment and he has the dating history to prove it. There's been relationships, but Perrie was his longest by some distance.

"Well, let me know how it goes with the cute firemen tomorrow, okay?" Harry says, interrupting his thoughts. He can hear some rustling in the background like Harry's shaking his cereal box around. "And send me pictures of the cutest ones, okay?" he says around a mouthful of Frosties.

"Sure, because the cute firemen will definitely want to meet the guy who sits around in his pants eating dry cereal all day," Zayn says gravely.

"Exactly. I'm a catch, Zaynie. A catch."

Zayn's still laughing when he hangs up and settles back against the sofa, Tiger curled on his lap this time and they watch an old rerun of Friends.

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