Smoke & Mirrors • Zarry

17. Dance again

Smoke and Mirrors: plural noun. definition: someone or something that deceives or distorts the truth.

"You...you cut your hair!?" Zayn exclaimed with surprised eyes as Harry traipsed into the living room of Zayn's flat one evening later that following week and he ran his hand delicately through the top of it, which was much shorter, just above his ears now, but still a bit longer on top with a subtle wave.

Zayn hadn't been expecting to see Harry walk in out of the blue with a new transformation because he had become so used to Harry's personified, signature long locks, which he often let fall in his face, messy and unkempt, and he hadn't been prepared to see him waltzing in looking so clean cut, so put together.

But the more Zayn studied him, the more handsome and distinguished he thought it made him, but Zayn also thought that Harry would continue to look amazing regardless of such trivial things like hair, because in reality his most attractive qualities weren't even physical. And Harry smiled shyly in return, as if he was a little unsure himself of whether or not he liked it that way.

"I had to cut it for the film role," Harry explained as he tossed his suede bag onto the couch and then laid on Zayn's living room floor, staring up at the ceiling as if he was tired, or perhaps just lost in his own thoughts.

"Do you like it like this?" Harry then asked, looking over at Zayn, who had been sitting cross legged on his leather couch playing Zombie Army on his Playstation.

"Yeah I do," Zayn answered, pressing pause on his controller. "You look fresh, quite dapper really. I think it suits you," he went on, smiling a little and Harry returned with one of his own, his dimple poking through his cheek as he sat up with folded knees, his tattooed arms lounging over them.

"So, I'm leaving for LA after I finish Dunkirk," Harry said with this slight apprehensive tone to his voice, as if he wasn't too excited about it, and Zayn felt his heart sink just a bit, because it was the one thing that he had been trying to avoid thinking about.

Ever since that stormy night weeks ago Zayn and Harry had become practically inseparable, spending every minute of their free time together just lazying around watching films, playing video games, smoking joints, and having a lot of sex, a lot.

And during it all Zayn had somehow completely lost control in every sense of the word and he found himself gradually getting sucked deeper into Harry's energy, completely entranced by his touch, aching to feel his body at every given moment, feeling this deep-seated urge to just be near Harry, to look at him, to reach out and grab onto him any and everywhere.

It was almost like being addicted to something, like the nicotine in cigarettes, or a stiff drink, like some serious, mind-altering drug that you can never just have one hit of. And it continued to frighten Zayn every time that he really sat and thought about it, and yet he couldn't seem to keep himself restrained long enough because the connection between them started to feel more natural, as if it were just automatic all the time.

And Zayn found it daunting to just know in the back of his mind that Harry wasn't planning on staying in London, that this feeling Zayn had was going to leave him at some point and he had not anticipated on becoming attached to it, that he started to feel troubled by the idea that he'd suffer some withdrawal from not having Harry around anymore.

And in the midst of these weeks Zayn was also starting to notice that he wasn't the same anymore when he considered what was running through his mind, because this wasn't the persona that he once created years ago for protection.

No, this was someone else, some new, rearranged version of him that almost felt like the old Zayn again, but still not quite the same. Zayn was younger then and had once thrown himself into love as a teenager, falling headfirst, fast, diving deep into its murky waters without ever once testing them. But it was different with Harry.