The Man Who Sold the World (Zarry AU)

Chapter 1

It’s a running joke now, Zayn’s ability to attract the drunkest person in a ten-mile radius. It used to just be at parties when he’s cornered by a sobbing girl who’s broken up with her boyfriend or at gigs when the bloke next to him at the bar wants to fight him because he thinks Zayn’s trying to jump the queue, but now it happens everywhere. In the street, on the bus, at the ATM. Last week it happened in McDonald’s. Not on a Saturday night when everyone’s drunk, but at eight-thirty on a Wednesday morning. He was just standing there, waiting for the dude to come back with his hash brown, when all of a sudden there was a guy next to him, reeking of beer and defeat, his eyes wide as he offered to suck Zayn’s dick for it.

It’s a gift, his mother says (that Zayn’s so approachable, not that strangers offer to suck his dick for hash browns, which is one benefit to all this) but as super powers go, he’d much rather be able to fly. He can’t, though, so this is his cross to bear, it seems, being a magnet for drunk people. So when he gets back to his motel to find a guy asleep outside his room, he isn’t entirely surprised, because of all the rooms he could have passed out outside of, of course it’s Zayn’s. But then it’s Friday night – and not any Friday night, the last Friday of South by Southwest – so this guy isn’t even the first person Zayn’s seen passed out tonight, the streets littered as a day of drinking and going to one gig after another takes its toll.

It’s the first time Zayn’s been to South by Southwest. He’d heard it was like this; Austin invaded once a year by skinny kids in skinnier jeans who can’t take their drink and sleep where they fall, like the one currently at his feet. Mardi Gras meets Woodstock, his editor calls it, but it’s more like Glastonbury with pavements. It has the same atmosphere, that same restlessness that makes Zayn’s stomach turn inside out every time a band comes on stage because they could be the band and this could be the night he tells stories about in ten years. But there are no fields, no tents, no trudging around in Hunter wellies caked in mud. There are no flower crowns, either, or bindis like at Coachella. It’s just gig after gig after gig, so between the jet lag and the long walk back to the motel, Zayn’s about ready to collapse.

This is what he has to do, though. His editor at The Guardian told him that if he wants off the blog than he’d better write something worth putting in print so Zayn has been to every gig he can get into in the hopes of finding a story other than the Meet [enter band name here], the next Arctic Monkeys ones that everyone else is writing.

That’s how he ended up at the Petite Noir show, which he shouldn’t have gone to, he knows, because it was already arse o’clock and he knew that whatever he told himself about setting his alarm for 4 a.m. so that he could write his piece wasn’t going to happen as soon as he saw his bed. So he has to do it now, even though it’s going to be shit because it’s 2 a.m. and he’s had 172 beers and can’t remember who he’s seen today. But he has to try because if he has to write another quiz about album covers he’s going on a rampage around The Guardian offices, knocking over pot plants and hiding the Fair Trade peppermint green tea.

So fuck it. If this guy wants to sleep outside his room, he can have at it. Zayn has neither the time nor the energy to cajole him back to his own, especially in a motel like this, which isn’t the sort of place you want to be hanging around outside of at two in the morning. It’s not that easy, of course, because as soon as Zayn leans over him and opens the door, the guy stirs and rolls onto his front so he’s half in and half out of the room. When he presses his cheek to the carpet and starts snoring again, Zayn curses under his breath. ‘Alright, mate. Time to go back to your own room.’ He nudges him with the toe of his Converse but the guy just mutters at him to fuck off then curls up into the foetal position. He looks so content – a mess of hair and limbs, his hand balled into a fist on the floor next to his cheek – that it’s all Zayn can do not to boot him in the arse. But as he considers it, the guy lifts his head and cracks his eye open to peer at him through his hair. ‘The fuck you doing in my room, man?’

‘This is my room, actually,’ Zayn insists, then huffs because he can’t believe that it’s two in the morning and he’s arguing with a stranger over a piece of shit motel room that smells of Cheez-Its and perfume. Not even nice perfume, the cheap stuff you buy from blokes down the pub – Channel no. 7 and Yves Saint Laurence. But given that all he does is write quizzes for the blog, referring to himself as a staffer at The Guardian is stretching it. He doesn’t even have his own desk so they weren’t going to pay for him to go to Texas, were they? His editor agreed to get him accreditation, but the rest was up to Zayn, so after rinsing his credit card on the flight, this piece of shit motel room he’s fighting for, is all he can afford.

Not that he had much choice; everywhere in Austin booked for the festival. Zayn was sure he’d be sleeping on a park bench but then he found this place the night before he flew out. It doesn’t even have a website, just a string of one-star reviews on TripAdvisor, but it has a bed and right now that’s all he wants so if he has to fight this guy for it, he will. But the guy pays no attention, just sniffs and clambers to his feet. ‘Don’t you fucking-’ Zayn starts to say as he turns and stumbles into the room, but it’s too late as he falls back onto the bed.

In the few seconds it takes Zayn to get to him, the guy is sparko again and lying on his back, spread-eagle on the middle of the bed like a hairy, tattooed starfish. ‘Oi!’ Zayn kicks him this time. ‘Get up.’ When he doesn’t respond, Zayn reaches for his wrist and pulls but it’s like when he was a kid and his Mum would try to make him go to bed and he’d turn into dead weight. If the neighbours had looked in, it must have looked like she was dragging a dead body across the living room. Trying to get the guy to move is much the same. Worse, actually, because he’s not ten-years old, he’s a grown man with heavy limbs and a floppy head and he will not budge, no matter how much Zayn pulls and tugs and swears at him.

After a few minutes, Zayn’s breathless and sweating, his leather jacket a little heavier on his shoulders as he gives up and steps back to shrug it off. When he throws it on the end of the bed, he looks at the bedside table, considering calling reception to complain. But this is a $40 a night motel off Interstate 35, the sort of place with cigarette burns in the carpet and a funky smell in the fridge that you see on the news under the banner, The 8-hour siege ended here so of course it doesn’t have a phone. Or a reception, just a woman in a DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS t-shirt who only looked away from the TV long enough to give him his key.

Zayn’s about to take the ice bucket into the bathroom and fill it with cold water when he looks at him – really looks at him for the first time – and takes a step back. It can’t be, Zayn thinks, covering his mouth with his hand to stop himself laughing, but it fucking is.

It’s Harry Styles.