The Beautiful Escape [ZARRY]

19

It was with mixed feelings that Zayn finally presented himself at the reception desk.

"I'm enquiring about a Mr Styles," he began tentatively as he approached the smart-looking female who managed over the empty waiting area. "I came in wit--"

"Did you really?" The young woman blushed and continued in voice absent of wistful desire this time. "I mean, they're expecting you." 

Zayn looked blank. "They are?" he asked doubtfully. It occurred to him this might be a case of mistaken identity.

"They said to send you in right away. John!" The receptionist flagged down a white-jacketed young nurse. "Will you take Mr Styles' spouse through to cubicle two?" 

Wait, Mr Styles' spouse...? Oh God, they're thinking...

"I'm NOT! " Zayn denied hoarsely, but nobody seemed to be listening to him as he trotted obediently along beside the young nurse. 

F**king hell, this was so embarrassing. Zayn just hoped Harry Styles didn't think the mistake was any of his doing. 

"I think there's been a mistake," Zayn began firmly as the young man drew back a curtain and stood to one side. 

"Here he is... Zayn, darling."

Zayn forgot to shut his gaping mouth. Darling?!

"Oh, God!" Zayn breathed, his eyes nailed on the bare torso of the man who had greeted him with such a highly unreliable degree of warmth.

Harry was standing there, stripped, to the waist, in the process of zipping up his trousers one-handed; Zayn's makeshift sling had been replaced by a more professional-looking collar and cuff arrangement. 

Zayn didn't make a habit of mentally stripping casual acquaintances, but it seemed he must have made an exception with Harry because he found himself comparing the reality to the mental image stored in his head and finding it had hardly done him justice. With wide shoulders, amply endowed with muscle in a lean, athletic, unbulky way, his body was way better than good, it was sensational!

Zayn's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth as his eyes went into exploration mode. No wonder Zayn's emergency stop had made him cranky; there were spectacular darkish-blue bruises all the way down one side of his rib-cage. 

"It looks a lot worse than it is," Harry comforted him.

Blushing wildly, Zayn tore his eyes from Harry's body. "Good," he croaked.

"I could do with a hand here."

Zayn almost choked when he realised Harry was talking about his zip. Eyes wide, he mutely shook his head. The alarmed backward step he took brought him into abrupt contact with a second person in the tiny cubicle, who until that moment he hadn't even been aware of. 

No, I was too busy leeching over Harry Styles, he thought shamefully. 

"Sorry," he mumbled incoherently.

"No harm done," the white-coated figure assured him cheerfully. "Just a few cracked ribs, lots of bruising and the dislocated shoulder, of course."

"What?"

The doctor looked bemused for a moment by Zayn's alarm, then he grinned. "I see what you mean... no, I'm talking about your husband, not me." Chuckling over their crossed lines, the doctor held an X-ray film up to the light. 

There was that husband-thing again. Zayn waited expectantly, sure than Harry would take this opportunity to correct the error- he didn't, and Zayn's confusion deepened.

Zayn felt obligated to respond. "A few seems a bit vague." Even as he spoke, he was overpoweringly aware of the tall, scantily clad figure who had moved behind him. 

"Point taken." With an unoffended grin, the medic clipped the film onto an illuminated screen and pointed out the defects with his pen. "One, two and here's number three."

"I thought he might have broken his collar-bone."

"I can see how you might, but no. It was a dislocation. Agony to pop back, of course." The disgusting, bloodthirsty popping sound he made to illustrate the point name Zayn shudder,

"It sounds awfully painful," Zayn protested.

"It was," Harry volunteered.

"We offered him an anaesthetic, but your husband insisted we do it right away." The doctor hastily defended his actions. "A few days and the shoulder should be back to normal," he promised. "Actually, its on account of the head injury we'd like to keep him in overnight. But he doesn't seem too keen. If you could talk to your husband about it..."

"I'm not..."

"He's not surprised, are you, darling?"

The warm, caressing note froze Zayn to the spot without the added trauma of hearing him addressed again as 'darling'. 

"He knows how much I hate hospitals."

Zayn felt a large competent hand push its way to his waist. The exposed skin of the nape of his neck rose in continuos wave of goosebumps. This was definitely not good.

Zayn's breath expelled in a soft hiss as he felt the unmistakable touch of soft lips against the sensitive flesh of his exposed nape. His eyes closed and the strength drained from his body.

The doctor only gave a slightly benevolent smile as he watched them. "Of course, if he hadn't been going home in the care of an experienced nurse I'd have insisted..."

Zayn's eyes flickered open. He's married, married to a nurse, was Zayn's first thought. Then it clicked- Me, he's talking about me!

"Where are you working at the moment, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I... I'm..." It was bad enough realising he had a whole new identity created by this madman without being expected to act in character too.

"Zayn is staying at home. Making a home is a full-time job as far as we're concerned, isn't it, darling...?" A firm hand beneath his jaw turned Zayn's head so that he was exposed to the full intensity of Harry's green eyes. No desperate appeal for his co-operation there- on the contrary; if anything, there was a hint of challenge.

"You're a full-time job!" Zayn breathed incredulously.

The doctor laughed. "I'll send a nurse in to suture up that head wound," he explained, scribbling rapidly on the sheet in front of him.

Zayn waited until the doctor left before he exploded.

"Are you mad?!" he fumed. Why hadn't he just told the doctor he was lying through his teeth when he'd had the chance.