All the Leaves are Brown (Zarry AU)

Chapter 22

It’s the last weekend in August. Zayn knows it’s his imagination but he’s sure he feels the shift. It’s still hot, the sun just as loud, burning through his curtains in the morning to wake him up, but it doesn’t linger like it used to. Each day is a little shorter, or maybe it just feels that way as Zayn feels the threat of September, of going back to uni and not waking up to find Harry’s leg slung over his hip, coming at him like a freight train.

The thought keeps him awake most nights as he tugs on the tuft of hair under his bottom lip so hard that he doesn’t know how there’s any left. He’s already had a text about the first back to uni party and last week he gave his reading list to Carla in the Oxfam bookshop. They have a deal where he DJs at her birthday and she puts aside the books he needs when they come in. His mother was mortified when she found out he was using second-hand ones. She threatened to get a second job, but Zayn told her not to be silly. Yeah he gets them because they’re cheap, but he likes used books, likes the smell of them and the things people leave inside, receipts and bus tickets and photographs. And he likes that sometimes he doesn’t need to highlight something because the person who read it before him did. It’s like he’s part of a book club of people he’ll never meet.

But going to see Carla means the summer is over. Soon the sun won’t be as loud and the trees will rust over and Zayn will be able to wear his leather jacket again. It’s time to start thinking about stuff like reading lists and back to uni parties and not seeing Harry every day and Zayn knew it was coming, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready. That’s why he can’t sleep, because he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to without Harry there. Zayn’s got used to his snoring and to sleeping with one pillow. Got used to finding Harry’s hair on everything, like a fucking cat. Thin, dark strands that let Zayn know that Harry was here and here and here. It’s strange thing, to miss someone when they’re lying next to you, but Zayn already does. Misses how his deodorant smells different on Harry and how he has to watch the news before he goes to bed. Stupid things that shouldn’t mean as much but will feel like bullet holes when he’s gone.

But if Harry notices, he doesn’t say anything. He could sleep through a fucking tsunami so he doesn’t know Zayn’s awake most nights, and when he does, he’s appeased when he says he needs a piss or tells him off for hogging the duvet. But that’s what Zayn loves most about Harry, how he doesn’t think past the end of the day, let alone the end of the week. Every moment is brand new, the start of another adventure, however small. This morning it was making French toast for the first time and yesterday it was taking Jude to the park so Karen could get some sleep. They only went for half an hour, but Zayn missed Harry the whole time, even though he was right there, because he knew he’d never do something like that again, never take Jude to the park to feed the ducks even though he could, because only Harry would think of doing something like that on a Thursday afternoon.

Harry’s next to him now, lying on his back on the picnic bench in the beer garden at the Hat and Stick, hands on his stomach and his chin tilted up towards the sun. Zayn is lying next to him, the pair of them wearing the sunglasses they bought in the 99p shop last week – Zayn’s green and Harry’s red – and when Zayn catches himself missing him, he sits up because he’s fucking doing it again.

He’s thinking too much.

‘Do you want to do something tomorrow?’

Harry doesn’t hesitate. ‘Always.’

‘Let’s just fuck off somewhere.’

‘Bali?’

‘I was thinking more like Blackpool.’

‘The Bali of the North.’

‘We,’ Zayn starts to say then stops to shrug so he at least looks nonchalant even if he sounds anything but. ‘We could stay the night.’

Harry sits up and takes his sunglasses off. ‘Are we finally going to fuck, Malik?’

Sid stubs out his cigarette and goes back into the pub.