The Beautiful Escape [ZARRY]

17

Harry, who hadn't been in a situation that made him blush for years, felt his colour rise for the second time today. 

"I wasn't spying."

"That's what all the peeping Toms say," Zayn cut back with a provoking little smile.

Harry gritted his teeth.

"I've been demoted from sex maniac, then?"

"You were eavesdropping!" Zayn exclaimed accusingly, a rush of colour flooding his cheeks. His memory in playback mode, he tried to recall exactly how bad what they'd said had been.

"It was hard not do, the way you were yelling."

"Yelling is better than spying," Zayn countered with undeniable accuracy.

"I was investigating the noise pollution," Harry gritted with the air of a  man on the brink of losing his temper.

At that moment, they approached a particularly savage bend in the road. Harry's knuckles whitened as he braced his good hand against the dashboard.

"Will you do me a favour and keep your eyes on the road?" he pleaded grimly as Zayn's smouldering eyes showed  tendency to linger indignantly on his face. 

"It's so hard," Zayn confessed with dripping sarcasm, "when there's you to look at." Zayn sighed soulfully, placing a hand momentarily on his strongly beating heart.

Actually it was getting increasingly hard to treat the fact that Zayn was a long way from immune to his raw brand of physical mangnetism as a joke.

Harry shifted in his seat once more, as if trying to relieve some discomfort, and his board shoulders nudged against Zayn's in the restricted space of the small car.

Zayn was conscious of a fleeting feeling of guilt that he was being so mean to someone who was injured and in pain. The other feeling the brief contact created was less fleeting and much more disturbing; the fluttery sensation low in his belly went into override, and pulses had started hammering a loud tattoo in places he didn't know he had pulses. His palms felt uncomfortably damp as he grimly gripped the cold steering wheel.

"Ha ha." Harry's nostrils flared as he watched the provoking wizard toss his head. "You were making a uproar and I came out here for peace and quiet."

Zayn had never claimed to be Prince or Beyoncé, but a uproar-- 

What a great confidence boost just when he needed it.

"If this is a sample of your usual behaviour I think I can guarantee you that," Zayn promised him dryly. "It's true that in the country we do take interest in what our friends and neighbours are doing; perhaps it can be intrusive sometimes..." he said. 

Harry found his wandering attention captured and held by the dramatic rise and fall of Zayn's chest. The fascination bothered Harry- it was totally irrational: he'd seen bosoms a lot more spectacular. He worriedly recalled reading somewhere that head injuries could totally alter someone's personality.

"... but I'd prefer that to indifference..."

"God!" Harry groaned as if in pain and rolled his head from side to side in an effort to alleviate the increasing stiffness in his neck. "I knew I should've taken a taxi."

"My driving is not that bad," Zayn muttered. The fact that he was treating the journey like a white-knuckle ride hadn't escaped Zayn's notice.

"I'm very grateful for what you've done," Harry ground out. He sounded like each syllable hurt. 

"Save it! I don't want your gratitude." With an airy gesture that caused the car to lurch slightly towards the centre of the road Zayn brushed aside his protest. "We may be nosy in the country, but we don't step over sick people yet, or ask for payment when we pick them up."

Zayn shot a disgusted glance at Harry's perfect, slightly bruised profile; anyone would think his movements were front page news, the way he was acting.

"I wouldn't like you to run away with the impression I give a damn if you get triple pneumonia. I was just making polite neighbourly conversation to take your mind off the pain." 

"I'm not in pain."

With a lofty sniff Zayn dismissed this transparent untruth. "You don't have to tell me anything if you don't want to." An expression of fierce concentration on Zayn's face, he stared unblinkingly through the rain-washed windshield.

Harry eyed the guy next to him, and muttered, "No, I don't, do I?"