"It's not going to reach them Haz."
Harry doesn't care. The dark blue ink smears on the tips of his fingers as he scribbles down a note with the sound of his pounding heart filling the nighttime air. Zayn watches him as he smokes, close enough for Harry to smell tobacco blown in the wind, and he lets it brush Zayn's outstretched hand before he flings it to the side.
"Really now?" Harry just nods.
He knows Zayn doesn't expect an answer. The paper flutters on the way down but lands, caught like the lump in his throat, on a ledge. The fans yell from below but all Harry can hear is the way Zayn takes a few slow, deep, breaths before finally asking - "What'd it say?"
It was written seconds ago but Harry can't even remember the words because they weren't just words they were the night encapsulated into one short, overused, phrase. They were the bright lights of Miami glittering in the horizon, the gradient of lemon yellow to cherry red in the drink that stained his tongue with the bitter tang of alcohol, the soft pink of Zayn's lips, and the molten gold that glinted in Zayn's eyes.
"S' Nothing. Nothing." Harry shakes his head and his heart seems to stop, just for a moment, so he can savor the silence between them. The night only amplifies Zayn's laugh that fills it like the way Harry wants the kiss the deepest corners of his mouth, loud and brazen for once as if he's offering Harry something so honest, so pure, and Harry never wants the sun to rise again if it means tonight will end.
"Alright."
Harry stares. It sounds like a yes but that might just be him reading into things - again.
"Alright."
Zayn tastes like tobacco and cardamom. Like the promise of tonight because there is no tomorrow, not for them. He tastes like Miami and its gilded edges stunning enough to distract him from the hollow inside of obligation and expectations; Harry tells himself to write it all in his journal and save it tomorrow, tomorrow, like a drum beating in his head.
"You taste like Miami," Harry says instead of a truth so raw it aches, and he can't see the exact curve of Zayn's mouth in the shadows that wrap them together - fills in the spaces between them where it isn't quite right - but he knows Zayn is smiling as if he knows exactly what Harry wrote.
Harry plans to trace it into Zayn's mouth with his tongue, map them across Zayn's waist with his wandering hands, and burn it into his skin like the scars and inked birds neither of them can forget.
Because if Zayn knows, he can't forget.
He can't.
