925 miles | z.m. au

xv.

“We’re fucking lost,” Zayn says through clenched teeth, tightening his grip on the steering wheel so that his knuckles are as white as the clouds that have been following them the past ten miles.

“No”—Harry begins uselessly, attempting to read the signs through squinted eyes, “Um, well...okay. Yeah. Maybe we are lost.” He tips his curly head in confusion and takes a looks at Zayn’s map—the one that’s creased and splitting and covered in red pen. He scratches his scalp, “ ‘M not too sure where we went wrong, honestly...what road is this?”

Zayn grimaces and curses under his breath for good measure, “We’re taking the next exit.”

“To where?”

The raven-haired boy shrugs violently like his shoulders are loose out of their sockets and yeah, maybe he’s a bit tired. “Does it really matter at this point? Somewhere with a fucking bar.”

Harry gives him a scolding look that is laced with parental exasperation, “You know, you should really get a handle on your language. I mean, you get used to swearing so often and you stop realizing when you’re doing it—that’s probably the reason you’re unemployed.”

Zayn rolls his eyes, “Please. And what’s your shitty excuse, then?”

The curly-haired boy grins and it’s like clockwork, the way they erupt in mirrored laughter, Harry letting his head fall back and Zayn trying to mind the road. It’s stupid and hardly funny but they’re pissing themselves and shit. What has Zayn gotten himself into?

...

The bar they pull into is a hole in the wall, honestly. The bricks are crumbing and the wood is rotting and it reeks of stale liquor and cigarette smoke. Harry is a bit hesitant to walk inside, muttering something about ‘bikers’ and ‘we’re just little boy’s from England and we’re going to die here’, which. For someone with impeccable manners and the audacity to tell Zayn Malik to be kinder to people, Harry doesn’t have much faith in the human race.

“Keep talkin’ like that and they’ll get you, eh? The bikers’ll take your curly locks,” Zayn warns him in the most serious voice he can muster.

Harry smiles half-heartedly but he’s pale as a ghost and the older boy swears he can hear his heart beating against his sternum.

He grins, “Calm down there mate, nothing to worry about.” And there really is nothing to worry about, much to both of their surprise. The bar is oddly clean, despite the smell, and there isn’t a biker in sight. A few of the patrons are dressed in suits—the kind only mass amounts of spare money can afford and Zayn wonders where exactly he is. Harry offers that this is the kind of hideaway rich husbands come to escape their better halves and for some reason finds it rather hilarious.

“You’ve got a weird sense of humour, you know that?”

Harry laughs as Zayn orders them some drinks and revels in the fact that he could quite possibly get drunk tonight. And it’s a stupid thing to cherish, really, because harmful impairment is not something he should find relief in at such a young age. His father would be angry and his mother would be frustrated and his sisters would be forgiving and Zayn’s a proper asshole. Fuck.

He downs his first shot without so much as a wince and Harry admires is tolerance from the corner of his eye. It rather burns on the way down and he is a mess of cringes and tiny coughs. Zayn tries not to pay attention as he lights a cigarette, taking one long, exuberant drag like his lungs have been yearning for it. And, like any addict’s dying, masochistic cells, they are.

Harry has given him the speech, of course—the bit about how harmful smoking is and that it makes him taste and smell like an ashtray. Zayn listens, because he always listens, but can only imagine filling his lungs with smoke to eliminate the hollowness that his eating away at his insides. He figures by the time the gaping hole grows to its full potential, it will be human-size and that he’ll have to find the missing piece. Until then, however, he will continue going through half a pack a day and sparing tiny seconds to remember to care.