Archive of Our Own

“Hey, Tommo.” Harry gets three steps into his room, and his shirt off, before he notices the other person sitting cross-legged on Louis’s bed. “Hey, Zayn.”

Zayn nods, but Louis instantly spins and jabs a finger at Harry. Harry freezes. He doesn’t think he did anything recently. He even made Louis brownies last week, not even the fun kind, and that usually puts Lou in a good mood for at least a week, and he’s sweaty and sticky because it is unseasonably hot out and now Zayn’s here so he probably shouldn’t take his jeans off, but if Louis’s angry he’d prefer to deal with it with less clothes on.

“Haz,” Louis proclaims, waving his arms dramatically, “Would you sleep with Zayn?”

“Lou—”

“Yes,” Harry answers immediately. He thinks Zayn is blushing. It’s adorable. “But I would sleep with most people, so that’s not really a good test.”

“I’m flattered,” Zayn drawls, but Louis nods sagely.

“A fair point. But still. He’s fit, right?”

“Of course.”

“See?” Louis turns his glare back to Zayn. “See!”

“What am I supposed to see?” Zayn counters, and rolls his eyes over Louis at Harry. Harry grins back. He doesn’t know Zayn very much, but he likes him as far as he knows him, and he’s pretty sure he’d like him more if he knew him better. He makes fun of Louis with Harry, and never complains if Harry is only in his boxers when he’s hanging out with Louis in their room, and sometimes Harry comes in and he and Louis are doing something really cool like sword-fighting with broomsticks or blowing up balloons to fill the shower stalls. And there was that time before school even started their first year when they got really drunk and made out for. like, an hour in a closet, but Harry’s not even sure Zayn remembers that, and the next time they had seen each other Zayn had had a girlfriend. Harry doesn’t hold it against him, especially because Louis said that it was a bi thing, not a closeted thing, even if it was in a closet. And even then, Harry’s not averse to being someone’s experiment, if it ends in orgasms with really hot people.

“You are supposed to see that people think you are extremely lovable,” Louis replies, then addresses Harry. “Zayn here is having a bit of a crisis.”

“A crisis?” Harry repeats. He had thought he had figured out the whole bi thing, and that was usually where people went with crises. He would definitely volunteer to help with that, though, if necessary. Because he’s such a good friend.

“Break-up,” Zayn clarifies. His face is all closed off, and he says it in a total monotone, like he doesn’t even care, when he clearly does.

“Was it bad?”

“We wanted different things,” Zayn answers. Harry considers asking more, because sometimes that means wanted different things like babies, and sometimes it means wanted different things like girls, and sometimes it means wanted different things like wanted that boy over there despite being exclusive. All three hurt in different ways, and he should probably figure out which one it is before he helps. He’ll ask Lou.

“And so now,” Louis picks up, because clearly no one was paying enough attention to him. Harry rectifies this by going over to his bed and throwing himself onto Louis’s lap. Louis immediately starts petting his hair, which yes, is the right reaction. “Zayn is worried that no one will ever want him again. Which is clearly stupid.”

Harry lifts himself up off of Louis’s lap so he can look right into Zayn’s eyes. He has nice eyes, he always remembers when he looks at them. Like whiskey. “People want you,” he says, as clearly as he can.

“I know that,” Zayn snaps. He looks awkward. He doesn’t really like talking about himself, Harry’s noticed, which usually works when you’re friends with Louis because he likes to talk about himself so much there’s not really time for anyone else, except that when he decides you’re talking about you, there’s no escape. “People always want me once.”

“Perrie wanted you more than once,” Louis points out. His fingers tangle back into Harry’s hair, and so Harry lies back down.

“But not for long,” Zayn spits back. He sounds a weird combination of bitter and sad and mad.

“But not forever,” Louis corrects. “It’s not the same thing.”

“I didn’t—no, you know what, it’s fine, Lou. I’m fine.”

“You’re really not.”

“I am. Breakups aren’t supposed to be easy, right?”

“They aren’t,” Harry agrees. He has a lot of experience in that. Not that they’ve ever been that hard, because somehow his relationships don’t usually last long—he thinks people tend to have problems with his flirting, but, like, they don’t understand that it doesn’t mean anything, he can wander around and kiss people and not wear clothes and only really want one person—but still, there have been a lot of break-ups.

“They aren’t supposed to kill your self-esteem, either,” Louis argues, “You do know you’re one of the fittest blokes on campus, right?”

“With you two in the room?”

“I—” Louis opens his mouth, then closes it again, deciding to think about it. “Well, we clearly can’t judge.”

“We need an outside judge,” Harry suggests. “Is there anyone in the hall?”

“You’ve hooked up with half the people on the hall, they won’t be impartial.”

“Does it really even—”

There’s a knock on the door, and Louis’s legs tense for a second in anticipation before he shoves Harry off his lap to pull it open. “El!” he exclaims, and pulls her into a hug. She goes willingly, nuzzling into him for a second. Harry watches as he makes himself more comfortable on the bed. Watching them together is good for the soul.

Then they separate. “So, El,” Louis asks immediately, “Who’s the fittest, between the three of us?”

“That’s not fair, she’s your girl—”

“Zayn,” Eleanor answers without hesitation, cutting off Zayn’s protest. He’s blushing again. Harry wishes he knew him a little better so he could lick the flush on those cheekbones. He grins at the thought, at the memory. “Or, I always forget Harry’s dimples…” she trails off, her eyes flicking between them.

“And what am I?” Louis protests, but he’s grinning.

“You’re very fit too, darling.” She wraps an arm around his waist. “But I think the only real way to test this is for neither of them to be wearing shirts. Because the tattoos are clearly part of Zayn’s charm, and I can only see some of them.”

“I second this motion!” Harry raises a hand into the air. He thinks no one should ever wear shirts.

“Shut up, you.” Louis hits at his hand, knocking it down. “And you, too,” he tells Eleanor, trying for sternness but only sounding fond, “You insatiable wench.”

Her lips curl, eyes going hot. “Why don’t you do something about it?”

“Maybe I will.”

“We can leave,” Zayn suggests, casually.

Louis flips him off. “After our date. I’ll see you both later!” He ushers Eleanor out of their room with a hand at the small of her back.

Harry grins soppily after them. He likes seeing True Love. It makes him feel all warm and melty on the inside. Even if it’s not something he’s ever really figured out for himself.

Then he rolls off of Louis’s bed and wanders over to his side of the room, snatching up his knapsack as he goes.

“I’ll go,” Zayn says. The bedsprings creak as he shifts, clearly starting to get up.

“Only if you want. I don’t really care. As long as you don’t care that I’m not going to put a shirt on.”

“Why would I care about that?” Harry looks over his shoulder. Zayn’s grinning at him, a little smirky and a little wicked. Harry grins back, puts a little bit of come hither into it, because he’s single again—but no. Bad Harry. He gives himself a mental slap, thinks about it, than slaps himself again. He’s fine being the rebound guy with most people, because rebound sex is usually pretty great and who cares why if everyone’s got their eyes open, but Zayn’s going through a crisis and he doesn’t want to mess that up. Crisises need to be respected.

“So, are you okay?” he asks, turning away from the pretty picture Zayn makes on Louis’s bed. He upends his bag onto his bed, because that’s the easiest way to find anything in it, and manages not to have everything fall off the bed, which he counts as a personal win.

“Yeah. Louis’s just blowing everything out of proportion.” There’s more creaking. Probably Zayn lying down, all spread out, maybe stretching so that there’s some skin showing between his t-shirt and his attractively tight jeans—no. Bad. Crisis.

“So there’s not a crisis?”

“Not a crisis.” Zayn pauses, turning the words over in his head. Harry likes that about Zayn, how he thinks about each word he says, because Harry forgets to do that sometimes and then it gets really embarrassing, even if he can usually get out of it. “Just—a thing.”

“A thing?”

A huff of air, something frustrated. “Look, I know I’m fit, right? I’m not blind or anything.” Good. Harry approves of pretty people knowing they’re pretty. It’s only fair, or something. “But I…” He makes that frustrated noise again. Harry does not imagine him making it because he’s frustrated by other things, like Harry’s teasing lips. “I don’t think I’m good at it.”

“What’s it? Sex?”

“The whole sex and relationship thing. I haven’t—not with many people, because I don’t—I can’t—I’m not sure how to approach people, or anything—and then, I think they can tell, because—well—”

He sounds really annoyed at himself, and at the world, and really sad, and Harry doesn’t like that. So he turns around, and slaps the part of himself that has been slapping him, because he is doing this for a good cause and only partly because Zayn is one of the few people who are prettier than him, and walks over to the bed where Zayn has sat up, and sits down right in Zayn’s lap.

Zayn freezes, for an instant, but then he just puts his hands on Harry’s hips and chuckles, low and deep in his throat. “Didn’t mean that as an invitation.” And Harry likes this about him too, that he’s willing to see where things take him without fighting it, not in a laid back way but in a what the hell way.

“Not exactly meaning this as one.” But Harry still leans forward, and carefully, very carefully, puts his lips on Zayn’s.

He doesn’t really mean it to be a thing, and it isn’t, because he keeps his hands on Zayn’s shoulders and is very careful about how much tongue he uses, as in only a little, just enough to flick across Zayn’s lips to keep it interesting. Zayn’s lips are a little rough, a little chapped, but he’s still moving them in all the right ways.

When Harry pulls back, Zayn’s eyes are a little darker than usual. Harry gives himself an imaginary pat on the back. “In my expert opinion,” Harry declares, “Not too bad.”

Zayn’s lips curl upwards. “Not too bad?”

“Well, I can’t judge based on a little kiss like that,” Harry retorts, and he knows it’s probably bad that he’s flirting but he’s also sitting in Zayn’s lap and he’s going to get to kiss him again, and Zayn’s smiling and not looking like he’s beating himself up, so he’s not much bothered by it.

“And what would it take to judge?”

“Are you rebounding?”

Zayn tilts his head to the side, but doesn’t move his hands from Harry’s hips. “Probably. Does that matter?”

“No.” And Harry leans in and really kisses him this time, with his hands on either side of Zayn’s face, thumbs running over those lovely cheekbones, and then he nips at Zayn’s lower lip and he opens his mouth instinctively and Harry takes full advantage of that, diving in so he can lick his way around Zayn’s mouth, explore it even as Zayn tilts his head up and matches him, his hips rolling as he groans. Harry likes that sound, the want and the need and the rumble of it against his chest, so he grinds his hips down too and Zayn makes that noise again.

Then he sits back again, and looks at Zayn with his eyes dark as his hair and his hair all mussed and his lips swollen. He looks good like this. He looks good like a lot of things, but like this too, and Harry thinks by the way his shoulders tense, he doesn’t know that.

“So?” he asks, though, and he sounds all casual like he does that every day.

“Pretty damn good,” Harry says, and climbs off of him. “So, there’s that. You don’t have to worry.”

“Now I’m relieved,” Zayn drawls, sarcasm dripping from his voice, so Harry throws a pillow at him and then Zayn throws one back and they nearly break Louis’s computer in the ensuing pillow fight.

----

The thing is, Harry’s good at no strings attached, at one time deals. He doesn’t particularly like it, or not really more than not one time deals, but he doesn’t mind it. Sex is connection but it isn’t always a lasting one, and he knows it and sometimes that’s what he wants and sometimes that’s what the other person wants and he can give it to them. And the thing with Zayn wasn’t even sex, just, like, a quick make out in what he thinks was a linen closet but honestly he hadn’t been paying much attention because, Zayn.

But he’s also pretty. And girlfriendless. And a good kisser, whatever he thinks. And apparently in need of someone to help him build up his confidence again.

Harry is willing to bite the bullet. He is such a good friend. Sort of friend. Acquaintance. More than acquaintance. He’s not quite sure. It doesn’t really matter. He is willing to take the hit of having to hook up with Zayn Malik again.

So when he sees Zayn at a party two days later, he throws himself over the back of the couch and almost onto his lap. He’s disappointed he missed. He’s usually good at aiming when it comes to laps. “So,” he says, when Zayn looks up from his study of his beer and at the boy who suddenly appeared next to him, “I’ve been thinking.”

Louis would make a comment, and Harry pauses for Zayn to do so, because he’s obliging like that, but Zayn only raises an eyebrow. So Harry steals Zayn’s cup and goes on, “We should keep doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where we hook up.” Harry takes a sip, nearly spits it out. “This is really shit beer.”

“There is a reason I’m not drinking it,” Zayn agrees. “How many times makes a thing?”

“As many times as I decide,” Harry decides, right then, as Zayn smiles fondly down at him, light playing through his lashes, that the number is however many times they have hooked up. “So, it’s a thing.”

“Really? Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Harry wriggles closer, so that he’s more on top of Zayn then not. He’s a little boney to be a good pillow, but he smells really nice, and he’s warm, and he’s got pretty eyes, so it’s really all Harry could ask for. “And we should start, like, now.”

“Even when there are all these prospects to choose from?”

He’s teasing more than not, Harry knows, because he might not know Zayn very well but he’s got a little smile on, that he usually wears when Louis’s doing something particularly Louis-ish, and Harry thinks he remembers that smile right before Harry pulled him into a bedroom. But still. He wouldn’t say it if he didn’t mean it, in some way, because that’s how teasing works. It’s like flirting, that way.

So Harry sits up so he can look Zayn right in the eyes. “You need to stop thinking you’re not the most awesome person here.”

“Harry—”

“No, really, you need to, because you are.” Harry’s eyes catch on his lips, and an idea comes to Harry then, a brilliant, brilliant idea, the best idea he’s ever had, other than the time he thought he should grow his hair out. “New plan. I’m going to kiss you every day until you start thinking you should be kissed every day.”

“That’s not actually—” Harry cuts him off by pressing their lips firmly together. The firm part lasts about two seconds, because that’s not the way to have a good kiss, and Zayn must agree because he doesn’t move but his mouth opens, and Harry takes that as an invitation.

When the catcalls start, he figures it’s time to stop. Zayn blinks at him a few times as they stop, and Harry likes that look on his face too, almost as much as he liked the kiss. “Every day?” Zayn asks, his voice a little hoarse.

“Every day,” Harry agrees. “You should probably give me your phone number, just in case I can’t find you.”

Zayn’s lips twitch. “Is this you pulling me?”

“Mate, if I were pulling you, you’d know. I am the best at it, I’ll have you know. I am bloody brilliant. That being said,” Harry leers cheerfully at Zayn. His lap is actually pretty comfortable, on second thought. “Do you want me to be?”

Zayn tips his head back to laugh. It’s a great sound, sort of sharp and rumbly all at once, and his face is bright with it and alcohol and the light from a streetlight outside. Harry watches him in a kind of awe. He’s really not used to not being the most attractive person in a room. “You’re ridiculous,” Zayn says, and grabs Harry’s wrist. He pulls a marker out of his pocket and scribbles something on Harry’s hand. “There.”

“Brilliant.” Harry thinks about staying, because he doesn’t think Zayn would mind and he really is comfy, but then he sees Nick across the room and leaps to his feet. “See you tomorrow!”

“Later,” Zayn chuckles, and Harry waves a hand at him as he goes.

----

On Sunday, Zayn comes to their room to hang out with Louis, so that’s convenient. Louis smirks when Harry tells him his plan, and wolf-whistles while they kiss, but then once Zayn leaves he shakes his head. “This is going to end so badly,” he says, and doesn’t even sound excited about it.

But he’s wrong. Because then on Monday Harry finds Zayn at the local café and gives him a quick, chaste peck as he runs by on his way to class. On Tuesday he decides yesterday’s was a little perfunctory, so he corners Zayn in the library and presses him against a shelf until Zayn swears at him that ‘we’re in a library, you fucker!’. On Wednesday he doesn’t see Zayn all day, so he calls him after dinner and then goes to meet him on the quad, and it’s so nice that even after he gives Zayn his kiss he stays, his head resting on Zayn’s thigh as Zayn reads and he plugs in his iPod. By Thursday, he’s finally gotten Louis to tell him at least part of Zayn’s schedule, so he’s waiting outside his Lit theory class to walk with him back to Zayn’s dorm, their hands brushing companionably as Zayn tells him about the lecture and Harry thinks he has very pretty lips and also Foucault is confusing, then he kisses Zayn as the sun sets over the university, his hands on Zayn’s waist, the gold catching in his eyes and hair and lashes, until Harry’s breathless with it, and then Zayn smiles and bumps his shoulder friendly-like as he leaves.

On Friday, Harry figures he needs to get the kiss in early, because he’s got a party to go to and he can’t count on Zayn being there because Zayn doesn’t actually go out very much despite the amount of people he could have swooning at his feet, because he doesn’t like talking to people, or more he never feels like he’s doing it right, which is utter bollocks but Harry’s working on it. So he texts Zayn, and then heads over to his room, because apparently Louis left Zayn there when he headed out for date night with Eleanor.

Zayn’s sitting cross-legged on Harry’s bed, staring out the window. His eyes are faraway, a little glazed, and his mouth’s relaxed but almost-frowny. Zayn does this, sometimes, Harry’s figured out, or maybe he’s always known; he gets lost in his own head, starts thinking about everything too much and then can’t get out. Harry gets it, because he’s sort of like that, sometimes, but then Louis calls or a butterfly comes by or there’s a really cool guitar riff on his iPod and he’s pulled back out. But Zayn doesn’t have that, can’t do it on his own. He was lost like that the first time Harry saw him, standing alone at a party and not exactly lonely looking just lovely and alone and unattached, so Harry had had to go over to him and introduce himself and make him smile, because that’s what Harry does. And that was even before Harry knew just how lovely his smile was, the way it lit up his face and made Harry’s stomach twist.

Now, Harry leaps onto the bed, bounces once, then collapses onto Zayn’s lap.

Zayn jumps, his eyes going wide but here, then he grins and shakes his head and ruffles Harry’s hair. “Hey babe.”

“Heya. Good day?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yep!” Zayn’s hand is still in Harry’s hair, but now he’s scratching. It’s even better than petting. Harry doesn’t care that it makes him a cat, he still arches into the touch. “Going to Niall’s tonight. You?”

“Nah, thought I’d stay in. Liam and I are gonna watch Batman.”

“Which one?”

“All three, probably?” Harry opens his eyes to see Zayn smiling sheepishly. “We do that sometimes.”

“Isn’t that long?”

“Yes, very,” Zayn agrees, “But it’s also good.” He pauses, then adds, a little slower, “You could join, if you want.”

Harry thinks about it. He’s not huge on Batman, and that does sound like a lot of TV, but Liam seems pretty cool from what he knows of him, kinda like Zayn’s Louis, and he thinks he could probably get away with just cuddling with Zayn the whole time, which is quickly becoming one of his new favorite things.

“Nah,” he says, instead, “Promised Niall I’d show up.”

Zayn’s hand doesn’t stop moving through Harry’s hair. “Okay.”

“Should probably go soon, actually,” Harry murmurs. “Told him I’d get there early.”

“You’re going to have to move to do that.”

“Give me a second.” But he does, eventually, lift his head out of Zayn’s lap. Zayn scoots back a little on the bed, puts his hands behind his hips and braces himself on them. He doesn’t look away when Harry strips off his shirt and throws it on the ground, or when Harry steps out of his trousers. Harry likes that about him too, that no matter what this thing is he’s not ashamed to look, because Harry’s never minded showing off.

But then Harry pulls a shirt out of his closet, and Zayn snorts.

“What?”

“You’re wearing that?”

“Yeah. It’s one of my favorites!”

“It’s atrocious.”

“Hey!”

“I think that’s actually a woman’s sweater, Harry.”

“Is—” He thinks about it for a second. He did pick it up at a thrift store, actually; he doesn’t really know. “It looks hot on me.”

“Burlap would look hot on you.” Harry grins brightly at the compliment. He knows it, but it’s always nice to hear. Especially from Zayn. “Wear the black button down.”

“Black? But it’s so—”

“Sexy,” Zayn interrupts, firmly.

“How about the purple?”

“Babe.” Something in Harry…stills, at the word. At the silly pet name. “Trust me on this, okay? The black shirt, but don’t button it all the way.”

“Like my chest, do you?” He doesn’t know what that would mean, given that they haven’t actually done anything more than kiss, this time around, but it’s still instinct the ask.

“Stop fishing, and put the shirt on.”

“Do I have to?” He shoves his arms into the sleeves, because he might really like the other shirt but Zayn’s Zayn, and no one knows how to look cool all the time like him.

“And—yeah, tuck it in a little, like that. And for god’s sake, no headbands.”

“What’s wrong with my headbands?”

“What isn’t?” Zayn groans, and grins when Harry wrinkles his nose.

“A lot of people like them.”

“A lot of people have no taste.”

“You’re mean, has anyone ever told you that?”

“All the time.” Harry looks over his shoulder at Zayn as he finishes dressing. He’s lounging on the bed like an invitation, one leg drawn up, the other straight, propped up on his elbows. He’s really devastatingly attractive, Harry realizes for the thousandth time. But it’s not just—people look at Zayn and see the cheekbones and the eyelashes and the tattoos and think that’s all there is to it. But there’s that smile, too, exasperated and fond and just a little mysterious, and it’s like he glows.

Harry is struck by the sudden—or not so sudden, maybe it’s just the weight of it that’s sudden—desire to taste that smile. And he’s allowed to, conveniently enough, so he toes on his boots and climbs onto the bed, then into Zayn’s lap. “Time for your kiss before I have to go!” he announces, and leans forward to do just that.

Zayn lets him, for a second, lets Harry lick the smile from his face, taste the smoke that’s always on his tongue. It’s soft and pleasant and friendly, and it’s not at all what Harry wants. So he nips at Zayn’s lip, plants his hands on either side of Zayn so that he can press against him, and pushes his tongue into Zayn’s mouth.

That gets a moan, then all at once Zayn’s rolling, flipping them over so Zayn’s got Harry pinned to the bed and he’s the one in control. Harry—Harry melts, because this is what he loves, the manhandling and getting held down and wanted, but he didn’t think Zayn would be into it even with the memories of being shoved against a wall and devoured. Zayn’s groans into Harry’s mouth and rolls his hips, long and slow, against Harry’s thigh, and Harry makes a noise that is more squeak than groan but he’s never liked dignity anyway and arches his hips into Zayn, trying desperately for more friction. Zayn trails his lips from Harry’s, down his jaw and onto his collarbone, biting and licking and sucking in a way Harry fucking hopes leaves a mark.

Then all at once Zayn’s pulled back, sits back on his heels. Harry meeps. Zayn looks gorgeous and wrecked and predatory, and it’s everything Harry’s ever wanted. His smile is more a smirk than a grin.

“Have fun at your party,” he says, then he’s getting off the bed, and leaving before Harry can even sit up.

Harry lies on the bed for a long moment after Zayn goes. That’s the first time—this time around—that Zayn actively participated in a kiss. That’s the first time Harry’s ever been thrown by one.

---

Harry goes to Niall’s party, and gets off with a blonde-haired blue-eyed girl with plenty of curves and no tattoos. He doesn’t think about Zayn. Not at all. Not one bit.

---

He spends most of Saturday in the library despite his hangover, working on a paper for his Victorian Literature class. By the time he’s given up, it’s almost dark out and he feels like crap. But he has to go find Zayn before going back to his room and making Louis get him food from the dining hall, and his phone is totally dead. So he looks up where Zayn lives and drags himself to the dorm. He stops in the bathroom before going to his room, shakes out his hair, splashes water on his face. Then he gets himself to Zayn’s room and knocks.

Harry is greeted by muscles. Very delightful looking muscles in a loose tanktop.

“Hello?” he looks up into a face then, and it’s quite a nice looking face as well. Unfortunately, it’s not quite as pretty as the face he was looking for.

“Hey, Liam, right? Is Zayn in?”

Liam narrows his eyes suspiciously. It’s not a natural look for him, Harry thinks. His eyes are sort of smiley. “Who’re you?”

“Harry, Harry Styles?” Harry’s not sure why it’s a question, but something about the way Liam’s looking at him makes him feel judged. Sort of like he needs to show his hands to show they’re empty. “I’m Louis Tomlinson’s friend, and Zayn’s I guess?” He gives his most winning smile, with all the charm he can muster, which is quite a lot. “I promise I’m not stalking him.”

“Oh, that Harry,” Liam replies, and crosses his arms over his chest. It’s a really impressive display. Harry takes a moment to try to remember if Zayn said anything about Liam being gay, or even bicurious, but then he thinks he hears movement inside.

“The one and only,” Harry says, “Is Zayn in?”

“He’s busy.”

“Really? Do you know where he is? Or can I call him on your phone, just mine’s dead and I need to find him to give him his daily kiss so I can go sleep.”

“I think you should go,” is all Liam replies, and he really does look menacing. But Harry thinks he can see something softening in his eyes—and also maybe muffled laughter from inside—so he gives another endearing smile, making sure to tilt his head so his dimples show to their best advantage.

“Please? I’m entirely harmless, really.”

Liam sighs, and uncrosses his arms. “Fine.” He steps aside, and Harry walks in to see Zayn at a desk, snorting over his computer.

“You’re evil,” he informs Zayn, and throws himself onto the bed. He doesn’t want to deal with this. He wants to nurse his headache and make Louis fuss over him, because Louis is much better at fussing then he wants people to believe.

“And you’re a shit bodyguard, Li,” Zayn tells Liam, “What was that, two minutes?”

“Look at him!” Liam gestures at the muddle that is Harry on the bed, and lies back down on his bed. “He’s pathetic.”

“I really am,” Harry agrees. “You should feel bad for me.”

“I’ll feel bad for you when I’m done with this paper,” Zayn tells him, and turns back to his computer, “I really am busy.”

“Too busy for me?”

“Definitely.” But he can hear the smile in it. Liam shakes his head as he picks up a textbook and props it on his knees as he starts to read.

“Well, tell me when you get to enough of a break to give me a kiss, then I’ll go.”

“I thought you were kissing me, not the other way around.”

Harry waves a hand. “I’ll be here when you need to be distracted.”

He can almost hear Zayn’s eyeroll, but then the sounds of typing picks up again.

Harry rolls over onto his back so he can look at the room. He’s never been in here before, never had a reason to. It’s about the same size as him and Louis’s room, with the same sort of furnishings—two beds, two wardrobes, two desks—but that’s where the similarities end. Whereas his and Louis’s room is a shitshow at the best of times, because Harry might have a bit of a homemaker in him but there’s no competing with Louis’s mess no matter how many time Harry scolds him, this room is pretty tidy, no dust bunnies or anything. There are superhero posters all over both walls, and enough stacks of comics that Harry can’t tell whom they belong to. They have a TV perched precariously on one of the wardrobes, and DVDs are piled up around it, a few on the floor. And where Louis and Harry tend to assume it’s one room, there’s a clear divide here. Not in a bad way, Harry thinks, just in a they have different tastes way. Liam’s side is terrifyingly neat, and he has some sports posters up as well, and a few business textbooks. Zayn’s got paintings up all over, wild abstract things with spray paint and bold lines that Harry immediately loves. And there are so many books, more than Harry thinks he has at home, and he’s got a lot of books. He’s even lying on some, like Zayn was reading them in bed and fell asleep before he could put them away. He digs one out from beneath him—Kafka—and another—Ishiguro—and another—The Half-Blood Prince.

Harry grins at the last one, and picks it up to page through while he waits. But it’s quiet in the room, like it never is with him and Louis because one of them’s always making noise or playing music, just the sounds of Liam’s pages turning and Zayn’s keyboard and occasional humming, and it’s warm, and the bed smells of smoke and Zayn’s cologne, and he doesn’t remember a word he reads before he drifts off to sleep.

He doesn’t bother opening his eyes as someone pushes at him. “Shove over.”

“Hm?” There’s no light beyond his eyelids, which means it must still be night.

“If you’re going to sleep in my bed you don’t get to hog it, move.” Harry likes Zayn’s voice, always has, the gravel in it, the way it goes hoarse and quick when he comes. So Harry wriggles over, and someone slips underneath the blankets with him. “If you steal the covers I will end you,” Zayn murmurs into his neck, and Harry shivers despite the heat, makes a grunt of comprehension, and goes back to sleep.

---

He wakes a second time to the sounds of someone moving around the room. This time, there is light outside, and there’s an arm over his waist and a head on his chest, and he’s pretty sure he didn’t make it home last night but he didn’t think he pulled, so he opens his eyes to check whose bed he ended up in.

Liam’s standing in the middle of the room, pulling a pair of gym shorts on. He’s shirtless, and—yes, Harry absolutely approves. He might need to stay here more often, if this is what Zayn gets to wake up to. He looks down, just to check, and he knows that dark hair, and the tattooed sleeve. He can’t help but grin.

“G’ morning,” he mutters, trying to stay quiet so he won’t wake Zayn, and Liam’s head jerks up. He smiles, but then seems to remember he doesn’t like Harry, and stops.

“Oh, you’re up,” Liam says, at full volume. A little reluctantly, he goes on, “Sorry if I woke you.”

“’s fine, I’ve been asleep for hours.” Harry pushes himself up to sitting; Zayn makes a snuffling sort of noise into Harry’s shoulder and presses into his stomach once he’s moved. It’s a little adorable, which isn’t something Harry often thinks of Zayn as but it’s true. “Sorry I crashed here and everything.”

Liam shrugs. “Not my problem, is it?”

There are a number of ways Harry could deal with Liam really obviously not liking him. Usually he would just be extra charming and make Liam like him, because he’s never met someone who could stand up to him really really really wanting them to like him, not when he tried over a long period of time and not, like, for a few hours in a bedroom where they spent most of their time getting off and it wasn’t really a fair cop to him then, was it? But this morning Harry’s still groggy from sleep, and Zayn’s pressed against him really close which isn’t helping the morning wood situation any, and he’s pretty sure Zayn hasn’t got a shirt on, which is something he needs to pay attention to, because that’s new and Liam’s fit and all but he’s caught glimpses of tattoos and he wants to see more of them, because if they’re anything like the ones on his arms Harry’s pretty sure he’s going to want to lick them and he thinks if Zayn’s sort of asleep he might get a chance, because never let it be said Harry doesn’t know how to plan.

So instead he whispers, or at least says quietly, “Why don’t you like me, Liam?”

“Hm?” Liam asks, emerging from the tank top he’s yanked on. Harry glances at Zayn. He doesn’t want to wake him up or anything, because he looks really peaceful like this, his hair soft and loose around his face, his eyelashes shadowing his cheekbones. Liam must guess what he’s thinking, because he laughs. “Don’t worry, he won’t wake up. Could sleep through the end of the world, that one.”

Liam grins like he’s remembering. Harry scowls. That’s fine, he gets it, they’re best friends. But Harry—he wants to know that. Wants to know how Zayn sleeps and what he dreams about and just how much he could sleep through. Because he’s curious. Because it’s not something he would expect of Zayn.

But that’s not the priority here, especially not when Liam is giving him a considering sort of look. “Why don’t you like me?” Harry asks again, louder this time.

Liam looks for a second like he’s going to deny it, then thinks better of it. “You scare me,” he says simply, slowly, almost as slowly as Harry.

“Me?” That’s the weirdest thing anyone’s ever said, hands down. Harry knows that the person he’s most likely to damage is himself, because that’s happened, but other than that he’s the least scary person he knows. And he knows Niall. “I’m not scary.”

Zayn makes another little noise, rubs his cheek into Harry’s skin. Harry grins down at him, lets his hands curl into his hair and scratch. It’s what Harry likes, maybe Zayn’ll like it too.

Liam shakes his head. “Just, it’s—look, he’s not—” he pauses, makes a face, and restarts. “He’s good at pretending, he is, at, like, saying he’s fine, but I just had to put him back together and I don’t want to do it again. And I know you, or I’ve heard about you, and, it’s fine, you can do what you want, I’m not judging you, but if you mess him about I don’t care how good a friend you are of Louis’s, I’ll be right pissed, yeah?”

Harry blinks. “We’re not fucking.”

“Exactly,” Liam says with a sigh. “You’re just kissing. A lot.”

“Have something against kissing?” Harry asks, “’cause I bet I could change that.”

Liam must be spending too much time with Zayn, because they roll their eyes the same way. “I’ve got something against you kissing my best mate then fucking other people,” Liam says, sharply. Then, before Harry has time to properly digest that statement, he looks at his watch. “Shit, brunch is almost over.”

He crosses the room, leans over Harry to pat at Zayn’s cheek like Harry isn’t even there. “Hey, Zayner, come on, time to get up.”

Zayn mumbles something into Harry’s ribs. Harry can feel the wetness of his lips, the heat of them.

“You wanted to get up and go to the studio, you told me.”

“was lying.” It’s a little more intelligible, this time. Harry snorts into his hand.

“No, you weren’t, I know what you lying looks like and that wasn’t it. Up you get.” Liam glances up at Harry, who is trying his best not to convulse in laughter. “See?”

“Tricked you.”

“I’ll set Louis on you again if you don’t get up, come on.”

“He’s far away.”

“I’ll make Niall frown.”

At that, Zayn grumbles, rolls over onto his back so he’s not pressed against Harry anymore. It’s cold without him, even under the blankets. “You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t try me.”

“Never have, babe” Zayn mutters, and blinks open his eyes, his eyelashes brush against cheeks flushed with sleep. And, okay, so the pet name thing isn’t just for Harry. That’s fine, he didn’t really think it was. He didn’t want it to be, or anything. They’re just kissing. “I’m up. Go be fit.”

Liam turns to Harry, gives him a stern look that makes Harry want to salute or something. “Make sure he’s out of bed before you leave.”

Harry gives into the urge and brings two fingers to his forehead. “Yes sir!”

Zayn rolls back up to laugh into Harry’s shoulder as Liam sighs again and jogs out of the room.

The instant Liam’s gone, Zayn yanks the blankets back up to his chin, and closes his eyes again. Harry has a moment where he thinks about letting him go back to sleep, just curling back up into Zayn’s warmth and spending the whole day warm and cozy like that, but he thinks of Liam’s disappointed face and Louis’s laughter and also that paper he still needs to do. “Nope, up!” he says instead, and pulls the blankets off both of them.

Or he tries to, at least, but somehow his knees get caught and he ends up sending himself toppling over instead, right onto Zayn, with the blankets in a pile at their feet. But at least Zayn’s laughing, his body shaking with it beneath Harry, and Harry doesn’t really care what happens as long as Zayn keeps laughing like that, with his wrinkled nose and shaking shoulders and the way his eyes like, light up.

“You’re a menace,” he chuckles, and ruffles Harry’s hair. Harry makes to pout even though it’s pretty true.

“No, you are,” he retorts, and lifts himself up onto one arm. That’s definitely a good move, like, the best move, because then he can look down and see that Zayn is shirtless, and yep, Harry wants to lick every one of his tattoos, from the wings on his chest to the script curling over his collarbone to the heart low and tempting on his hip. It’s the first time he’s seen this, because last time—well, they didn’t really have time for things like nakedness—so he looks shamelessly.

Zayn doesn’t falter beneath his gaze, just shifts his hips a little in a way that Harry hopes is purposefully sexy because otherwise the heat that rockets through him is just uncool, and looks up at Harry through those lashes. “Like what you see?” he asks, and it would be a purr if he wasn’t grinning like he was making fun of himself for saying it.

It’s still way too hot to handle, goes straight to Harry’s dick so it’s like half-hard, but Zayn’s obviously teasing and Harry only gets one kiss and also he’s not sure Liam was kidding about being pissed if they hooked up, and also not even he’s up for that this early on a Sunday, so he wrinkles his nose. “No,” he replies, cheeky, “Look, I can see your ribs, do you even eat?”

“On occasion,” Zayn drawls, but Harry’s distracted himself by poking at him to count them.

“One, two, three—”

“They’re all there,” Zayn assures him, and reaches out to stop Harry. Harry bats his hand away. He likes this, playing around in the warmth of Zayn’s bed, with Zayn lazy and soft beneath him and laughing at him.

“Want to make sure, can’t be too careful.” Harry finishes up one side, his fingertips brushing right below Zayn’s heart, before going down the other. “Six, seven, eight…” His fingers look nice, he thinks, lighter against the burnished gold of Zayn’s skin. He has the urge to grab his phone and Instagram a picture, but he has a feeling Zayn wouldn’t be down for it, even if no one could identify him, or maybe they could if Harry got the angle right so they could see the tattoos—or the angle wrong, rather, because he doesn’t want people knowing it’s Zayn whose stomach he’s tracing—or maybe he doesn’t want them to know it’s Zayn whose stomach looks like this, the flat planes of it, the way ink curls into view in a purposeful way that’s totally different from Harry’s ragtag mess that he loves, because it’s spur of the moment and random and a lot like him, he’s always thought when people make fun of him for it, but sometimes he wishes he’d started off with a plan, or at least that Louis would stop making fun of him for being a doodle bear.

“Am I missing one?” Zayn asks, and Harry starts. Zayn snorts. Harry makes a face at him, because making fun, not cool, even if Zayn’s laughing apologetically. “You’re thinking hard about something,” he explains.

“Do you think I look like a doodle bear?” and okay, Harry hadn’t exactly meant to ask that, but whatever, Zayn’s clearly, like, the authority on tattoos, because his are all sick.

“Yeah,” Zayn says promptly, “I made up the name, remember?”

Harry does, actually, remembers stripping his shirt off in his room while Zayn and Louis played cards on Louis’s bed, and how Zayn had leaned back and flicked his eyes over Harry’s chest and something hot had started to curl in Harry before Zayn snorted and told him he looked like a doodle bear. He’d just—forgotten, or something.

“Oh, right,” he says, and lets his head fall so Zayn won’t see his face. Like, he knows he’s kind of all over the place sometimes, that people tend to not take him seriously because he talks slow and can’t tell stories, but—he doesn’t like remembering Zayn thinks that.

“What?” Zayn sounds honestly shocked. “Oh, no, babe.” A finger comes under his chin, tilts it back so he can look into Zayn’s face, into those big, fucking intense eyes. Zayn chews on his lower lip for a second, and Harry lets that distract him from the ‘babe’ that isn’t his, because Zayn’s lips are very pretty and it occurs to him he still gets to kiss Zayn today. Maybe twice, because he missed yesterday. “No, I mean—or, I didn’t mean, I guess—but doodle bears are adorable, right? Everyone loves them, they were, like, the sickest toy you could get. ‘s not a bad thing, right?”

He can feel his smile grow, the way it takes over his face so that he can’t feel anything else but that smile, and the way Zayn smiles back, small and tentative and hopeful and worried, still biting on his lip, so Harry leans down to kiss it.

Zayn wriggles away, though, before he can manage to catch him. “I’ve got morning breath, Haz, you don’t want to kiss me now.”

“Zayn,” Harry whines back, because he is spending time complaining he could be using kissing Harry, “When are you going to get that I always want to be kissing you?”

That makes Zayn freeze, and, okay, Harry hears it and he didn’t know it was true until just then, but Zayn being still means he can finally catch his lips and kiss him long and slow until he forgets about the stupid shit Harry says when he wants to kiss him.

---

“Walk of shame!” Louis chants when Harry walks into their room, “Walk of shame walk of shame walk of shame!” He bolts to his feet and stabs a finger in Harry’s direction. “Whose bed did you fall into this time?”

Eleanor looks up from his bed, where she’s got a book propped open on her knees. “Louis,” she chides, “Be nice.”

“Yeah, listen to—”

“He could have gotten there on purpose,” she finishes, and Harry pouts at her.

“You’re just as mean as him,” he whines, and drops his backpack on the floor.

Louis blows Eleanor a kiss. They’re sickeningly sweet, sometimes. Harry hates it. Especially when they’re being sweet at each other and mean to him. “So?” Louis asks, turning away from his girlfriend to give Harry his nosiest look, “Who?”

Harry thinks about lying, but he’s not sure why he would, and the fact that he wants to confuses him, so he doesn’t. and he’s not sure Louis would believe him, anyway. “Zayn,” he replies.

“Zayn!” Louis yelps. Harry collapses onto his bed rather than look at Louis’s reaction, but something bounces off his head a second later. “If you snuck out and now he hates me because you can’t figure your shit out—”

“I didn’t sneak out,” Harry protests. He doesn’t do that. He makes people breakfast, usually, if he can. He’s on good terms with most everyone he’s hooked up with. People he’s dated, less so, but he has a great track record with one night stands, and Louis knows that. Then it occurs to him he should probably clarify, “And we didn’t—”

“You and Zayn hooked up?” Eleanor interrupts. She sounds a little…dreamy. Harry smirks at her.

“Like the thought?” he asks, and licks his lips.

Another balled up piece of paper hits him on the head. “Stop flirting with my girlfriend,” Louis scolds. “And you,” he says to El, narrowing his eyes, “stop picturing my friends having sex, it’s disturbing.”

“It’s pretty,” Eleanor corrects. Louis makes a horrified, disgusted sound. “You know I love you best. But there’s a lot of pretty in one bed.”

Harry winks cheerfully at her, because it’s true. She grins back.

“You two are both horrible,” Louis moans, burying his face in his hands, but his need for gossip gets the better of him before long and his head pops back up, “So, was it good? As good as last time?”

“There was a last time!” Eleanor asks, at the same time as Harry corrects,

“We didn’t do anything.” He tries not to sound petulant about it, he does, but Zayn had just—kicked him out of bed after the kiss this morning, no matter how deep and long and draining Harry had made the kiss, let him go with a shove and a laugh and a playful slap on the ass that hadn’t really helped the boner kissing Zayn had given him.

“Really?”

“Yes, really, when have I ever lied about a hook up?”

“It’s true,” Louis tells El, like she was the one accusing Harry of lying, “He always errs on the side of TMI.” Then he turns back to Harry. “But, honestly, you were in Zayn Malik’s bed and didn’t even try?”

“I think that’s some sort of party foul,” Eleanor muses, tapping her chin, “Like, I think there’s a rule, one should always try to hook up with Zayn Malik if one can.”

“Why don’t you just hook up with him, then?” Louis asks, crossing his arms over his chest, and it sounds like he’s joking again, but Harry’s pretty sure there’s something real in the question. Eleanor must too, because she rolls her eyes, sets her book aside, and clambers down the bed to kiss Louis on the forehead.

“Because he’s not you,” she says, quiet and sincere and utterly, utterly lovely. Harry swallows. It’s not like he wants that, really, he’s happy with how things are, with hooking up and one night stands and relationships that never seem to get off the ground and flirting as a equal opportunity thing, but…Louis smiles up at Eleanor, that small, gentle smile only she really gets from him, and she runs a hand over his hair before tapping him lightly on the nose, and it’s…sweet, and Harry wishes he was still back in Zayn’s bed, counting his ribs with playful fingers.

Louis lets out a loud breath. “Well, then, we’ll call me the reason El gets a pass,” he announces, and reaches out to grab her hand. His eyes narrow at Harry. “What’s your excuse?”

“It’s just kissing,” Harry says for the second time that day, and that’s why he’s testy, okay, he just wants people to get that through their brain. He is capable of not having sex with people. Or more to the point, Zayn’s capable of not having sex with him, even if last time was, like, mind-blowing, or as mind-blowing as hand jobs in a closet could be, which wasn’t, like, anywhere near the level fucking long and hard and torturously slow in a bed could be, but still, it had been really good for getting off in a closet, good enough that sometimes when Harry’s bored he still wanks off to it, to the memory of Zayn’s voice whispering low and filthy in his ear, his fingers hot and rough over Harry’s cock.

For the second time that day, Harry thanks the hipster gods for skinny jeans, because it might hurt but at least his boner is less obvious. And it must be, because otherwise Louis would be mocking him for it.

Louis looks long and hard at him, and his face is doing that serious thing he does once in a while when Harry really needs him to or when it’s like the worst possible thing for Harry because he makes Harry actually think about what he’s doing, which isn’t always a bad thing except for when it is. “I know it’s just kissing, mate,” Louis says, and his blue eyes are kind, which is never a good thing, “But why is that?”

And Harry—well, Harry doesn’t really have an answer for that, so he just groans and rolls over, and that makes Louis take pity on him enough to only throw a few more pieces of paper at him rather than asking anything more.

---

On Monday, Harry presses a kiss to Zayn’s head literally as he dashes by on his way to class. On Tuesday, Zayn’s hanging out with Louis when Harry gets home, so Harry gives both of them a kiss before joining the poker game. He loses, horribly, and ends up having to streak down the hallway, but it’s not like Harry’s ever minded being naked, and maybe he stretches a little more so Zayn’s eyes follows the line of his ribs, then bites at his lips when Harry smirks at him.

On Wednesday, Harry really needs to finish his paper, so he closes himself off in the library, then spends most of his time finding the right playlist. By 11, it’s clear he’s pulling an all-nighter, so he texts Zayn to ask him to come to the library for his kiss. Zayn settles in next to him with a book, and Harry finishes his paper with Zayn’s feet tangled with his. Zayn proofreads his paper for him, talks to him seriously about proto-feminism and structure and whether Will Ladislaw deserves Dorothea—Harry’s anti, Zayn’s pro—and gives Zayn a sloppy, triumphant kiss with only a hint of tongue once Harry emails in the essay. Zayn pulls away with a laugh when Harry’s fingers start to dig into his hips, and he ruffles Harry’s hair like he does Louis’s, and the heat that had twisted into Harry’s belly goes cold, and he jams his beanie on his head and scowls at Zayn until Zayn laughs at him again and yanks on a curl.

On Thursday, Harry’s hanging out on the quad, fiddling on his phone and waiting for Nick, when arms slide around his waist and a chin hooks over Harry’s shoulder. He inhales cigarette smoke and Gucci scent, and doesn’t even need the “Vas happening, babe?” in his ear to know it’s Zayn. He thinks he could almost know it was him just from the feel of his arms.

As usual, the babe makes him frown, but having Zayn close makes him smile, and it’s confusing so he does what he usually does and settles on a grin. “Just hanging,” he says, and slides his phone into his pocket. “Well, waiting for Grimmy, because he promised he’d take me to the mall ‘cause he has a car and all, which he doesn’t even need, really, it’s not like he goes anywhere he couldn’t on the bus, but I think he’s just lazy, unless he buys a lot of big stuff, which I guess he does, so maybe there is a point to him having the car…” he feels himself rambling and trails off, because usually by now Niall would be laughing at him, or Louis would be mocking, or Nick would be rolling his eyes. But when he glances to the side Zayn’s just got this smile on, his eyes crinkling a little at the side.

Harry swallows. “Sorry, I ramble, I know I do, it’s a thing—”

“’s fine.” Zayn shrugs, so Harry can feel his chest move against his back, then lets go and takes a step around Harry so they’re facing each other. “You get to the point eventually, yeah?”

Harry—he just gapes, and he knows his jaw is sort of dropping open, but he’s not sure anyone’s ever told him that before, anyone’s ever not yelled at him or gotten annoyed or anything, and again, he defaults. He closes the distance between them, grabs Zayn’s hips and pulls him into a kiss. Zayn’s hands settle onto Harry’s waist easily enough, and he lets himself be drawn in, laughter on his lips as Harry catches them. And, it’s, he doesn’t just want that laughter, somehow, he wants that smile from before, not a grin but a smile, and he wants those eyes turning gold in the sun, and he wants that faraway look from the first party, and it distracts him, a little, from the kiss, no matter that Zayn still tastes of smoke and him and it’s lovely.

“Studio?” he asks, when he decides to give up on the kiss as a lost cause, because he’s too distracted for it, which isn’t something that happens often but Zayn isn’t something that happens often.

“Huh?” Zayn blinks, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

“What’s the studio? I mean, I know what a studio is, like, in artist sense, or the flat sense, and there are probably other senses, too, but which is it?”

Zayn’s lips are pressed together in a closed mouth smile that makes his eyes glint, and Harry grins back. He likes making Zayn smile. “So?” he prompts, though, when it looks like Zayn isn’t going to say anything.

Zayn rubs at the back of his neck and looks at the ground. “I had to finish a painting,” Zayn answers.

“You paint?”

“Art minor,” Zayn glances up at Harry from under his lashes, and there’s laughter in them again. “I’m specializing in being unemployed.”

Harry giggles, then remembers the important thing. “So those paintings in you room, did you do those? Because those were awesome.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, those were some. Just sketches and doodles and stuff, you know; most of the big stuff’s at the studio.”

“There’s big stuff too? What, like, murals or something? Tapestries? Sculptures? I knew there was a reason you lived with Liam.”

Zayn’s laughing properly now, the kind that wrinkles his eyes and his nose and makes him look younger, somehow, less like he’s some model or something. “Nah, none of those. I do, like, it’s basically graffiti? My final project’s this canvas spread over a whole wall.”

“Graffiti?” Harry echoes, because… Zayn doesn’t look like graffiti, he looks like delicate paintings and something that you need to have read a whole Great Books course to interpret properly. “Why?” he tries not to ask it like an accusation, just curiosity.

And Zayn—Zayn just lights up, like the sun came up in his face, and his hands start to wave a bit as he explains how graffiti is, like, the purest form of expression, and the contrast between licit and illicit styles, and rebellion and interpretation and class and commercialism, and Harry has to physically keep his jaw from dropping. He’s never seen Zayn like this before, so wholly enthusiastic, like he doesn’t care about anything more in the world, like talking about this makes him so happy he wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in the world. Than talking about art, not with Harry, but Harry’s not going to focus on that. He’d prefer to think he’s part of it, part of that grin. He put it there, at least, so it’s basically his.

Harry’s just nodding along to Zayn’s explanation of why the colors are so important when his phone buzzes in his pocket. Harry’s hand wavers over his pocket, because he really wants Zayn to keep talking, really wants Zayn to always be talking like this, but—it’s not cool to just let the phone go to voicemail when it’s probably Grimmy telling him he’s there.

Zayn must notice, because he cuts himself off and rubs at the back of his neck again. “’s fine, answer it. Sorry about the rant.”

“No! Not sorry. It’s fine, really, I just…” Harry trails off as he answers the phone. “Hey, Nick.”

“Get your ass over here, I’m double parked,” Nick says into the phone, and Harry makes a face at it.

“Hi, Nick,” he replies slowly, enunciating. “Nice to see you too. I’ll be there in a moment.”

“You better be. I can’t have another parking ticket. Tell pretty boy I say hi and get over here.” Nick hangs out without a goodbye, which is his habit. Harry’s pretty sure it’s to make sure he gets the last word, but as Harry doesn’t really care about getting the last word, it makes conversations a lot more efficient.

“Nick says hi,” Harry tells Zayn as he wedges the phone back into his pocket. His fingers trail across Zayn’s thigh as he does it, totally by accident, absolutely on accident, they just happen to be standing that close. Which wasn’t on accident.

“Tell him I say hello,” Zayn replies, and take a step back. “I should probably get to class anyway. See you later?”

“Definitely.” Harry grins, and he can’t help leaning in to peck Zayn on the lips before he leaves. Which he guesses is two kisses, but the first one didn’t count because he was distracted.

Nick’s waiting in the car, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Which is totally unfair, because Nick is late to everything.

“Having fun with Malik?” he asks, as he peels out onto the street.

“Yeah.” Harry waits a second, but then, he needs to ask someone, and Nick’s got his shit together more than anyone he knows other than, like Niall, and that’s not even really having his shit together and more just not having shit. “Should I have known he did art? We’ve been sort of friends for more than a year.”

Nick shrugs. “Did you ask? Because Zayn doesn’t seem like a sharer, to me.”

“No, I mean—I didn’t—”

“Didn’t?” Nick prompts with a raised eyebrow. He looks a little terrifying like that. Harry scoots back in the seat.

“Didn’t think he’d answer, I guess? I mean, I wondered why he carried around paper, or sometimes had, like, colors on his hands, but it could have been highlighter, you know? And I knew he did English and he takes a lot of courses, so I didn’t think he’d have time for more, and he does drink a lot of coffee, I guess, and it’s always black, but—what?”

Nick is rolling his eyes at Harry. “Oh, Harold,” he laughs, and it’s a nice laugh, but it’s also his condescending I know something you don’t know laugh, which isn’t Harry’s favorite. And it’s not at all like Zayn’s laugh from before, the one that just was like light and smoke and made Harry just want to take a bath in the sound. “I hope you’re enjoying your kisses.”

“I am, thank you very much,” Harry replies. He crosses his arms over his chest and pouts when Nick refuses to say anything more about it even when he begs until they get to the mall.

---

Harry doesn’t ask Louis if he knew Zayn painted when he gets back from the mall. He probably did, but Harry doesn’t want to know. It doesn’t even make sense, why it hit Harry like a punch, the fact that he hadn’t known, because they hadn’t been friends, really. Not, like, talk about their feelings friends. Maybe giggle into each other’s shoulders if they were nearest at Louis’s antics sort of friends, or whisper commentary into each other’s ears, or maybe try to get Louis to calm down if Zayn was in their room and it was clear he wasn’t having a hyper sort of day, or listen to what he has to say about that lit class he took last year because Louis always gives Harry funny looks if he uses words that end in ism and Nick laughs at him and tells him he doesn’t know what he’s talking about but Zayn just nods and agrees or at least explains why he disagrees without laughing. But it’s not like they cuddled and told each other their secrets. Except they did cuddle now. But still. He’s kissed Zayn every day for two weeks. He knows the taste of him, the feel of him, how his eyes looked when he pressed Harry into the mattress and bit into his neck. He knows the lines at the corners of Zayn’s eyes when he laughs and the way his lips curve when he smiles. And that’s not enough.

So on Friday, after Harry has pressed a long, careful kiss onto Zayn’s lips and flopped boneless back down onto his bed, his head in Zayn’s lap so Zayn’s fingers could run over his hair and he could look up at Zayn and see all the expressions on his face, he asks about his home, and doesn’t even wince when Zayn accidentally pulls his hair telling him about his middle sister’s latest recital.

On Saturday, he brings Zayn a mug of black coffee in the library then kisses the taste from his lips, mixing with smoke and that Zayn-taste that Harry never quite managed to forget. Then he sits in the chair across from him and looks at the book Zayn’s reading—A Farewell to Arms. Zayn finishes it in the library, and Harry picks it up when he puts it into his bag, to see what made Zayn nod so appreciatively over it.

Sunday, Zayn’s already in his room playing video games with Louis, and Harry sprawls over both their laps (to make it even, he explains when Louis whines) and laughs as Zayn swears at the screen, Louis, Harry, the controller, and everything in between, then gets shoved off when the video games battle devolves into a slap fight that ends with Zayn straddling Louis, his hands pinned, and Zayn laughing into his face. Harry picks himself up and laughs too, and ignores the part of him that wants to be mad at Louis. Instead, he waits patiently until Louis laughingly cries uncle and Zayn gets off before he pushes Zayn into a wall to kiss him thoroughly, his hands sinking into Zayn’s hair and his tongue delving into his mouth, teeth nipping at his lower lip until Louis throws a pillow at them and Zayn pulls back, something between laughter and confusion in his eyes. Harry just grins at him, and throws the pillow back at Louis, which starts a pillow war that only ends when they almost break Louis’s computer again, and only then because El came in and yelled at them for it.

Harry happens to be in the library near Zayn before his 19th century history midterm on Monday, so Zayn walks with him to the building, heir hands brushing between them, their shoulder bumping companionably. Harry wastes most of the walk freaking out about the test, repeating facts under his breath until his stomach hurts and he thinks his brain is going to explode. About a block away, though, all of those thoughts are blown out of his head by the feel of warm fingers wrapping around his wrist. Harry looks down, to where Zayn’s fingers are wrapped around him, dark gold against his pallor, then up at Zayn.

Zayn’s looking at him with all the intensity he sometimes gets, but not the hot thing he got before he made out with him that one time, or maybe those two times. Just something infinitely deep and nice and something else that looks like belief. “Hey. Hey, Harry,” he says, and the way he says Harry’s name is a constant thrum in Harry’s heart. “You’ve got this.”

“But I should have studied more, shouldn’t have gone to that party on Saturday and spent Sunday playing with you and—”

“Harry,” Zayn interrupts him, his voice some weird combination of sharp and gentle. “You’re going to kill it.”

“But…”

“No buts.” Zayn leans forward and presses his lips to Harry’s. They’re soft and a little dry, taste like cherries somehow, and Harry just wants to sink into them, to eat up that faith and surety, but Zayn’s pulling away before Harry can chase it. “Now get in there, yeah?”

He lets go of Harry’s wrist and pushes him towards the building. Harry takes on last look at him before he goes, at the deceptive nonchalance of him, at how he looks at Harry like he could do anything.

After the test, he tracks Zayn down to his room, plants himself in Zayn’s lap in his desk chair after Liam lets him in with a still-disapproving frown, and kisses Zayn until neither of them can breathe anymore and Liam’s clearing his throat pointedly in the background.

Zayn smiles up at Harry when Harry sits back, still straddling Zayn’s thighs. “Thought I already had my kiss for today.”

“You kissed me, ‘s different.” Harry can’t help his grin, at how deliciously mussed Zayn looks, with his careful quiff all messed up by Harry’s fingers and his lips swollen and pinker than usual and his cheeks all red. “Test wasn’t so bad.”

“See” Zayn pinches Harry in the side. “Told you so.”

“You did,” Harry can admit, and doesn’t say that he’s never been so calm going into an exam as he was for this one. But he doesn’t move off of Zayn’s lap either, just smiles at him until Zayn raises both his eyebrows.

“Gonna get off me?”

“Nope!”

“I can’t exactly write my paper with you in the way,” Zayn points out, all logic, and Harry sticks out his lower lip in an exaggeration of a pout.

“You saying you don’t want me here?”

“No one’s said that to you in your life, babe,” Zayn laughs back, and Harry can’t even really deny it, even though he shakes his head, but to be fair that’s partly at the name. “But if I fail out of school I’m blaming you.”

“Blame Louis, ‘s what I always do.” Zayn laughs at that, and Harry can feel it, how it makes him shake as much as it makes him glow, like his whole body is part of it, and it lights up Harry too, until he wants to take a picture of it and show it to the world and point to it and say I did that, that was me.

“You’ll crush him if you stay there much longer,” Liam points out, quietly, breaking into Zayn’s laughter.

Harry hadn’t even really thought about it, because he knows Zayn’s smaller than him by, like, a decent amount, but he never really noticed ‘cause he was so much larger than life, filled up so much space in Harry’s head that he could have been a giant. But it’s true, Zayn was smaller than him, small enough to fit under his chin if they cuddled, probably, or maybe so that Harry could pick him up if he was sleeping and had to be carried to bed, though honestly that probably wasn’t a good idea because Harry’d almost certainly drop him. But he’d try. He could probably lift him up, anyway. Could wrap himself around him and keep out all those thoughts he knew Zayn still had about not being enough for Perrie or people not wanting him or whatever silly things he thought when Harry caught him looking into the distance with a little frown on his face, even though Harry’s been doing his best to kiss it out of him.

It’s not enough to make him get off of Zayn, because Zayn is surprisingly comfortable for someone so bony. But when Zayn rolls his eyes at Liam and says, “C’mon, babe, like you haven’t sat in my lap before,” Harry gets up.

He can feel Liam’s eyes on him when he smirks at Zayn. “Don’t want to make you even smaller,” he teases, and doesn’t kiss away the pout Zayn makes, which he takes as a sign that he has finally gotten some sort of self-control. He blames Zayn. It’s difficult wanting to kiss someone all the time but only being allowed to once a day.

Which isn’t—it’s not like he would kiss Zayn more, if he could. Because he couldn’t. Because he was kissing him because it was part of the deal, and because he was helping a friend, and because Zayn was a good kisser and it was fun. Yeah, he wants him, because he’s got eyes. But that’s not the same. It isn’t.

---

Tuesday Harry finds Zayn curled up with a book in the library and settles down with his own reading on the other end of the couch, so that their feet tangle in the middle. Zayn’d found a good nook, hidden from most of the rest of the library but with a window to the outside, and it’s cozy with rain pouring down the windowpanes and the overstuffed couch. Somehow, by the time an hour’s past, they’ve shifted so Harry’s head is propped up on Zayn’s shoulder and Zayn’s arm is around Harry’s shoulders, tracing absent circles onto his sleeve. Harry doesn’t get much reading done, but he drifts off to the feel of that motion, to Zayn’s chest rising and falling beneath him. When he wakes up Zayn’s asleep, his head tipped back and his mouth a little open. It’s adorable, which always takes Harry by surprise, how Zayn goes from the hottest thing on the planet to the most adorable so quickly. And it’s really only to be expected that Harry tilts his head to press a kiss to the underside of that jaw, because he expects anyone who’s seen Zayn’s jawline wanted to do the same. And then he apparently hasn’t gotten much self-control, because he follows it up with another kiss, and another, tasting the line between his jaw and his lips like he hasn’t gotten to do yet, like he didn’t even get to do last time because it had been too fast. It’s all basically one kiss, he figures. Like a set. But when Zayn wakes up, he’s reading again, still warm against Zayn, and when Zayn raises his eyebrows expectantly when Harry finally has to go he gives him a long, slow kiss. Because if Zayn didn’t remember because he was asleep it couldn’t count.

Wednesday Harry doesn’t have much time, so he trades another cup of coffee for a kiss as he passes the coffeeshop Zayn likes to work in before his morning class. Thursday is Zayn’s busy day, and he’s looking a little manic when Harry finds him in the quad, his hair disarranged like he’d been pulling at it, his eyes wide and bloodshot. Harry wants to cuddle him up and carry him off (it’s a thing, maybe, a little, that he’s been thinking about since Monday. That he could) and feed him or just hug him until he stopped looking so worried and sad. But instead he just drags him close, presses a kiss into the side of his mouth, just shy of his lips because for some reason he feels like this isn’t a time for a real kiss, and then pulls back and starts making all the jokes he can remember until Zayn is shaking his head and laughing incredulously and muttering something about so bad it’s good. But he’s smiling, so Harry walks away from it feeling kind of like he’s walking on air.

Friday Harry’s last class is at three, and he doesn’t feel like going to his room, because he knows Louis’s out until at least five, and Zayn’s done with all his craziness by noon, so ends up at Zayn’s dorm. He passes Liam on the way out; the other boy gives him something like an odd cross between a glare and a smile that Harry really doesn’t know what to do with, so he grins back and then turns it over in his head as he goes up the stairs. He doesn’t get it. He’s quite a likeable person, really, everyone says so. People love him. And he might get it if he was going out with Zayn or something, but—they’re quite clear about where they stand. Painfully clear, really. Harry gets one kiss a day. That’s all. Zayn knows that. Zayn doesn’t want more. So Liam doesn’t really have a reason to be mad at him.

“Why doesn’t Liam like me?” Harry asks when Zayn opens his door. Then he looks at him—sleep rumpled, because Zayn’s somehow almost always asleep when he’s in his room, only wearing a pair of sweatpants slung low on his hips. It gives Harry a lovely view of his chest, all those tattoos there that haunt his dreams (literally; the number of times this week he’s woken up from a heated dream where Zayn’s shoving him into things and having his way with him would be embarrassing, if Harry had shame left) perfectly on display for Harry to ogle. “Hey.”

Zayn steps back so Harry can come in, then shrugs on his way back to hop on the bed. “Because he’s an overprotective, overbearing git sometimes. He’s not being mean, is he?”

Harry hesitates before he answers. “No? I think he might be trying to, though.”

That gets a snort out of Zayn, and one of his wrinkley-eyed smiles. Harry grins back at him, proud, and sprawls himself over the bed so his head ends up in Zayn’s lap. It’s the comfiest way to be, he’s discovered, other than actually snuggled up next to Zayn, which he only did the once when they shared a bed and hasn’t figured out a way to replicate. He’s working on it, though.

“I’ll talk to him,” Zayn says, and immediately starts petting Harry, which, yes. “He’s being stupid. He does that sometimes.”

“If it’s to make sure you’re alright, I’m okay with it,” Harry mumbles. He can feel himself blush after he says it, because he doesn’t usually do sap like that. Or not with anyone other than his mum or sister. Or maybe Louis, on a bad day.

“That’s sweet. But he still shouldn’t.” Zayn’s fingers rub against a sensitive spot behind Harry’s ear and he moans into it a little before he can stop himself, his hips arching unconsciously. Zayn’s fingers slow for a second, then move on, back to scratching his head.

To fill the silence, and to distract himself from the heat slowly working its way down Harry’s body, like arousal was seeping out of Zayn and into him, and because he wants to know, wants to know all of the secret parts of Zayn that hide in the corners of his lips when he smiles and the depths of his eyes when he gazes into the distance, Harry asks, “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

Zayn hums out a breath. “I’m probably going to be a teacher—”

“No, not, like, what are you going to do now, I know that.” Zayn moves his leg, jostling Harry’s head; he makes an annoyed sound and Zayn settles back down. He’s got a weird look on, staring at the other wall, one Harry can’t read from here. He doesn’t like those expressions. Well, they’re sexy, he knows that, but he doesn’t like not knowing what Zayn’s thinking, because what Zayn’s thinking is usually really interesting. “I mean, what did you want to be when you were three? Like, I wanted to be a rock star.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Being surprised isn’t the point. What did little Zayn want to be?”

Harry feels Zayn’s shrug. “A superhero.”

“A superhero?” Harry arches back so he can get a good look at Zayn’s face. “Really?” Again, he can’t quite get a read on the smile on Zayn’s face. It’s a little fond and a little sad and a little something else he doesn’t get. Resigned, maybe?

“What, you think all these are Liam’s?” Zayn gestures, Harry guesses, at the comic books.

“Yeah? I mean, not that it’s bad that you’re into them, just—you don’t look like the kind of guy who would be.” He makes another mewling noise when Zayn stops petting him, but then he looks up and Zayn’s arm is shoved into his face.

“Really?” Zayn asks, sharply, and Harry looks down to the ZAP inked across Zayn’s forearm. Which is a good point, Harry can admit. But instead of admitting that, that there was another whole side of Zayn he overlooked, or didn’t care to look for even though it’s probably just as brilliant as all the other sides, he gives into the temptation that’s been nagging at him since the last time they were in this bed together and bites at his arm, teeth nipping at the edge of ink.

“Fuck, Harry!” Zayn yelps and pulls back, but he’s laughing, his ‘you’re ridiculous’ laugh, but it’s a little different from the one he gives Louis, Harry thinks, and can be satisfied with that.

“You weren’t petting me any more,” he explains with a cheeky grin, and Zayn shakes his head with one of his fond smiles that Harry wants to lick off his face. But he does start petting again, so, win.

Harry doesn’t fall asleep like that, but he drifts, he thinks; at some point he puts in his head phones and Zayn gets a book and they just sit like that, in the quiet, Zayn’s hand tangled in Harry’s hair and Harry inhaling Zayn’s scent from the way his head is nestled in the crook over Zayn’s hip. Harry’s not sure he’s ever been so relaxed as this; he loves Louis but he’s always moving, always excitable or worried or doing something, and he makes Harry want to too, which is good, because he likes the motion and the movement and the excitement. And Zayn can be like that too, matches Louis sword for sword in their fights or is right there beside him in the water balloon war they started on the quad last spring that ended in Zayn’s white shirt soaked enough that his tattoos showed through, but he’s also got this quiet to him, that Harry feels like he can sink into and wrap around him and not need to move.

Hours later, Zayn puts down his book and pokes him in the nose. “You going to Niall’s party?” he asks. Harry pulls out his earbuds and nods.

“Yeah, ‘course. Are you going!” he sits up at that. Zayn never goes to parties, or maybe just not the ones Harry goes to, but it’s awful. Harry wants Zayn at all the parties. Wants to be able to point at him when he smiles and say ‘me, I did that.’ And also his hermitting is not helping the remember-he’s-desirable thing Harry’s definitely remembered he’s doing.

“Thought I would,” Zayn admits. Harry tries to do a victory dance, but is hampered by the fact that he’s sitting down and also holding himself up with one hand, and kinda falls into Zayn on accident. Zayn just laughs, though, as Harry blinks up at him. “That shocking?”

“No! Well, yes, it is. But a good one! When are you going? I should probably change, first, and I told Louis I’d get him and El before I went, but that won’t take long, or I could steal something from you and Lou and El can meet us there—”

“Can’t, sorry.” Harry’s heart skips a beat, and not in a good way. “I’m getting dinner with some mates, first, then I need to dress Li or he’ll show up in a jersey or something.” Zayn shakes his head despairingly.

“Oh. Right.” That’s fine. Harry doesn’t really care. He’ll see Zayn there, after all.

“Actually, I’ve got to get to dinner…” Zayn wriggles his hand under Harry’s shoulder to pull out his phone. It doesn’t spark little bits of heat at all. “Way too soon, shit. I should probably leave soon.” He pauses, then, not looking at Harry, “You should probably give me my kiss now, right? So you don’t have to do it at the party and make people think things.”

“Right,” Harry says again, slowly. People think things. Right. Like that he and Zayn have actually fucked, like he has some sort of claim on Zayn. Which isn’t a good thing. Because he doesn’t. And because he obviously really needs to find someone to hook up with at this party.

Zayn twists a little, tilts his head down, obviously waiting for whatever kiss Harry gives him. But Harry—he thinks about it, for a second. He wants…he doesn’t know what he wants, but he wants Zayn to remember it. He wants it to throb on his lips and in his dick and in his fucking veins for all of tonight, so that no matter who else he kisses he can’t help but compare him to Harry. He wants to bite into his neck and leave a mark. He wants that with a fervor that freaks him out, that’s so overwhelming and visceral it scares him.

So instead, and instead of whatever kiss Zayn expects, Harry leans over to kiss Zayn on the cheek, as soft and sweet as he can make it with blood pounding in his ears. “I hope you have fun tonight,” he says, sincerely. He thinks. No, it is sincerely. He wants Zayn to have fun. He wants Zayn not to have that pensive, vaguely unhappy look in his eyes, like he had that day Perrie broke up with him. He wants Zayn to smile all the time. He just wants him to smile at Harry all the time, too.

But Zayn is smiling at him now, that inexpressibly sweet smile Harry’s only seen a few times, like when he woke up, or when Louis finally asked El out after months of Harry and Zayn urging him, together and separate.

“Thanks,” he says. “I think it’ll be good for me, you know? Get out some.”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees. “Good.”

---

It’s not good. It’s the farthest from good it could possibly. It’s so far from good that good doesn’t even know its name. Can’t even see it. It’s on the other side of the world from good. It’s so not good it’s the worst.

Because Zayn is having fun. Zayn is smiling and laughing and chatting and he looks devastating, even more so than usual, in a leather jacket over white t-shirt and dark jeans that he makes look like a fucking photoshoot, a beer bottle hanging from two fingers, or sometimes he wraps his lips around the bottle and his cheeks hollow out and it is the worst. And Harry knows he’s not the only one who’s noticed. Zayn’s been at the party for an hour, has moved between a bunch of different groups, and people keep on looking at him. Looking at him like they want him, like they want to devour him, or maybe be devoured by him, and that’s not okay. It’s not. And Zayn doesn’t notice, or something, because he just smiles back at them or ignores them if they’re fucking leering at him from across the room, and when a girl wraps her hair around a finger and bats her eyelashes at him he doesn’t laugh at how ridiculous and cliché she is, he grins at her and keeps talking.

Harry knows he’s pouting, and doesn’t care. Knows that he hasn’t left this couch in like forty-five minutes, except to get more of that lethal punch Niall mixed. Knows that he is so fucking drunk he can barely think with it. Knows that he usually likes this, would usually be throwing himself into everyone. Doesn’t care. Because people are looking at Zayn. And that’s his look, that’s how he looks at Zayn, and how dare they look at him like that because they don’t even know him, they’re just seeing this fit bloke, they don’t know how his nose crinkles when he laughs or the sweetness of his smile or how his lips taste like smoke and cherry. Harry knows that. Harry wants all of that.

“They’re always going to look at him like that, you know.”

“What?” Harry gives Liam a confused look as Liam plops onto the couch next to him. On his other side, Louis throws an arm around his shoulder.

“’s true, Haz,” Louis agrees.

“What is?” he’s not drunk enough for this. He’s too drunk for it.

“That it’s no use getting jealous over Zayn,” Liam explains simply. “People are going to look at him, because he’s gorgeous. People look at you like that. You can’t do anything about it, and it’s not his fault.”

“I know it’s not,” Harry whines. He’s not mad at Zayn, except for existing and having those cheekbones and that ass and those eyes and those fucking eyelashes, but if he didn’t have them then Harry wouldn’t get to look at them either and that’s just as tragic. “’m not mad at him, why would I be mad at him?”

“Because you’re glaring, dear.” Harry pouts at Louis. Louis just laughs back.

“’m not glaring at him,” Harry says, stubbornly. He’s not. Or, he is, but he’s not. “I’m glaring ‘cause he’s so Zayn. And ‘course they’re not going to resist him, ‘s impossible, but it’s not his fault for being him.”

“Glad you understand,” Louis laughs again. But Liam’s not laughing. He’s kind of glaring too, and there isn’t really a smile to go along with it.

“Do you want him?” Liam asks, bluntly. Harry blinks.

“Doesn’t everyone?” he asks, with a wave of his hand that nearly knocks over three glasses and swipes someone’s bum.

“They do,” Liam answers. He sounds stern. It’s a little scary and a little silly. “You should remember that.”

“Stop being a dick, Liam,” Louis complains, and Harry turns to nestle into Louis because yeah, people should stop being mean to him. People should stop looking at Zayn, too. He should never have wanted Zayn to come out tonight. He should have bitten his mark into Zayn’s throat, just there above the collar of his jacket, so people would know not to look at him. So the girls he’s talking to would know, because of course there are girls around him, and Harry ignores the fact that he usually has girls around him, would have them now if he wanted them, but one of them reaches out and drags a hand down Zayn’s sleeve, and that’s—

Harry gets boldly to his feet, or maybe he stumbles, he can’t tell and he doesn’t care. He ignores Liam’s “Harry,” and even Louis, “Hazza, that might not be—” in order to go over to Zayn and throw himself on his back, wrapping both arms around his waist and pulling him back so Harry’s wrapped around him.

Zayn staggers a little, because he probably wasn’t expecting it, but then he just laughs, gives the girls an apologetic look, and reaches back to ruffle Harry’s hair. “Hey, babe,” he laughs in Harry’s face, “How are you?”

“Harry.”

“That’s who, not how.”

“I’m Harry,” Harry repeats, firmly. “Or Haz, or Hazza. Or Styles.” He can smell Zayn here, smoke and Gucci and a little bit of paint fumes. He could get high on the scent alone, he thinks vaguely, on Zayn.

“Yes, thank you, I know,” Zayn replies, and Harry huffs out a breath. He doesn’t get it. “You’re quite pissed, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Harry agrees, because he is, and because it gets Zayn to smile at him like it’s a secret, like it’s something all the girls don’t get to know. “You’re not.”

“I’m not,” Zayn confirms. “I just—wanted to take it easy, yeah?”

“Easy, yeah,” Harry echoes. Easy. This isn’t easy. This burns, not the good burn of weed sliding down his throat, or the lead-up to a kiss but a painful, cruel burn that Harry doesn’t recognize but doesn’t like. “No. You should drink more.”

“Think that’s peer pressure, and it’s not cool,” Zayn teases, and one of the girls laughs with a note of flirtation in it, and the burns rises up in his throat, and Harry’s going to say it takes over his limbs because he smiles at the other people like he’s charming but it’s not, and says,

“Sorry, girls, I think our Zaynie here needs to relax a little more,” and lets go with one hand so he can drag Zayn away.

“Harry, what the fuck—” Zayn cuts off on a breath when Harry finds an empty room that might be a bedroom if he spent time looking at it instead of shoving Zayn in. Zayn goes with a confused sounding ‘umph’, then makes that noise again when Harry uses his hand on Zayn’s wrist to spin him until he’s against the door, until Harry’s pressed against him thigh to chest. “Fuck, Harry.”

On the sound of that, of Zayn saying his name, the way only he says it, Harry leans in. It’s harsh and a little cruel, all teeth and tongue and Harry thrusting his tongue in and out of Zayn’s mouth like it’d bruise, and Harry’s fingers tight enough on Zayn’s hips that they just might. He hopes they do, wants them to, trails his lips down from Zayn’s lips onto his jaw and down his throat, nipping and sucking and licking so that it’s there, he’s there.

“Fuck,” Zayn breathes again, as Harry sets to work biting a mark into his collarbone, right over the script, his tongue flicking at the edge of it as he pushes Zayn’s jacket out of the way. Then he adds, a little teasingly, “Thought I already got my kiss today.”

It shocks Harry into pulling back, the mark half-made against Zayn’s skin. His eyes are glinting in the dark, half-gold and half-brown. He already got his kiss. He’s going to leave. Harry only gets one kiss per day, and this is two, he can’t—

“Missed a day!” he announces triumphantly, “That one, with the paper. Need to pay you back.”

“You really—”

“Do,” Harry says. He’s hard, and he can feel Zayn’s cock pressed against his thigh, hard too, and he looks down for an instant at his flowered shirt against Zayn’s leather and has the best idea in the world. “With interest, too, right?”

“Interest?” Zayn asks, then chokes on it as Harry sinks to his knees with unmistakable intent. “Harry, you don’t—”

“Part of the rules,” Harry murmurs. He runs a hand over the bulge in Zayn’s jeans, just to feel it, to watch Zayn’s hips stutter.

“Not sure it was.”

“Is now.” Ha pauses, then, looks up. Zayn’s lips are red with being bitten and there’s red on those cheekbones, like he’s on the way to coming apart, which, good. “You want this, right?” He doesn’t know what he’ll do if Zayn says no, scream or cry or something else.

“What? Yeah, of course, God, Harry, but you’re drunk and you—” Harry ignores him, because this is. It’s part of the rules, or it should have been, and he gets this. Gets to undo the button of Zayn’s jeans and pull them down, gets to run a finger over Zayn’s pants and watch as his dick twitches through the cotton. Gets to watch Zayn’s eyes go molten and hear him groan at it, then hear that groan go into a low, deep rasp as Harry pushes the pants down too so he can wrap his fingers around Zayn’s cock. Harry looks up from under his lashes to look at Zayn, to see him staring down with eyes half awestruck and half clouded, then takes Zayn into his mouth.

Zayn moans, a sound that ricochets through Harry and lands in his dick, but he teases. He wants to tease, wants Zayn to remember how he ached for it, how this was everything he ever wanted. So he runs his tongue over the tip, tastes the precum on it, then starts to lick little kitten kisses up the side, as his fingers feather over the base, just light enough to hurt. Then, when Zayn’s hands move onto his shoulders like they’re helpless, like one wraps in his hair so that Harry goes a little boneless and his dick throbs against his jeans, he takes Zayn into his mouth again. But even then he goes slow, because this needs to last, he needs this to last even if he’s not going to, not going to last against the taste and weight of Zayn in his mouth, against Zayn coming apart above him.

“Fuck, babe, hurry up, I—”

Harry pulls off with a wet pop. Zayn fucking keens, but Harry just says, “Harry.”

“What?”

“Harry,” he repeats. He doesn’t know why it’s so important, maybe he should, maybe he should think about it, but not right now. “Not babe, Harry.”

“Right, Harry, fuck, just—” Harry takes him into his mouth again, and any thought of teasing is gone. He shoves down his own jeans and boxers with a single hand, starts to fist himself in the rhythm he moves on Zayn. He needs to fuck the ‘babe’ out of Zayn, take any thought that isn’t him and throw it away, and it’s not long before Zayn is stuttering “Fuck, I’m going to come, Harry, shit, Harry—”

And he comes into Harry’s mouth on the edge of that, with Harry’s name on his lips, and at the sound of it Harry’s gone.

---

It doesn’t come to him until the next morning, when he’s waking up and trying to figure out if he has a hangover or not. Or, more importantly, if he just dreamed up hooking up with Zayn or not. He’s going for not, because his subconscious usually quite likes him and isn’t mean and doesn’t dream about things like the after, when Zayn had pulled him up and kissed him so sweetly Harry thought he might melt from it, then grinned at him, asked on a scale of one to ten, how obvious he looked, and just went right back out. Ten, Harry had wanted to say, even though honestly it was probably only a four. Ten ten ten and let me do it more so it’ll be one million, so everyone will know what we were doing, know how I had my mouth on you and your hands were in my hair and everyone who talks to you from now until forever will know that my name was the last thing you said before you fell apart.

It jolts Harry upright—and, oh, yeah, maybe he does have a hangover. But not enough for him not to roll out of bed so he can rush across the room and shake Louis awake. “Louis!” he hisses, his hand on Louis’s shoulder. Louis groans.

“Fuck off.”

“Louis!” Harry says, louder, because this is important. “Is this what it’s like?”

“What what’s like?” Louis blinks at him, but he’s always been good at waking up quickly.

“Why everyone I’ve gone out with was always so mad at me!”

Louis just stares, again, then slowly starts to smile. It’s the kind of smile that makes Harry back away slowly before he gets tackled or gets water poured on his head or something, so he does that. “Oh, look at my boy, all grown up,” he coos, bringing his hands to his heart, “I’m so proud. I think I need to call your mum. I think I need to call Grimshaw, just so we can take pride in how well our child grew up despite being the product of our divorce.”

“Can’t be divorced if you never liked each other,” Harry tosses back, but he’s still caught up in the realization. In thinking, in knowing, how it felt to be dragged away from a party and claimed like that, like they were trying to imprint themselves on his skin. Harry had wanted to do that, he thinks. To write himself in next to the heart on Zayn’s hips, or the wing above his heart. It terrifies him a little, actually, how much he had wanted that, how much it burnt in him. He gets it now, he thinks. Why they had to break up with him, if this is what they felt all the time. He doesn’t think he could bear it. He had only dealt with it for a night and he had ended up giving Zayn a blowjob in some random room. Or maybe he could bear it, if he was allowed to, but he isn’t, so—so he doesn’t know what.

“He’s a real boy, though!” Louis cackles, “Feeling jealous and everything. Next thing you know you’ll be dealing with emotions. Or maybe even—gasp—in a relationship.”

“Hey! I’ve been in relationships,” Harry retorts, lying back down on his bed. “I’ve been in loads of relationships.”

Louis makes a noncommittal snorting noise.

“I have!” he insists, “There was Sarah and Matt and James and Becky and the other James—do you think part of the reason he ended up not liking us is because we always called him that?—and Clara and David.”

“Fine. But did you deal with emotions with any of them?”

“Not dealing with emotions now,” Harry shoots back. He’s not good with emotions. Or not his own. It’s just he always has so many and they’re always so mixed up and how’s he supposed to keep track when he doesn’t know what he’s saying half the time anyway?

Louis makes that snorting noise again.

“He’s just pretty, okay?” Harry says. He closes his eyes instead of staring at the ceiling, and tries not to remember the burning, or the other, good sort of burn that had been the taste of Zayn coming in his mouth. “I like pretty things.” He just wants to keep them all to himself, apparently.

---

But somehow, there isn’t a change. Even Saturday, when Harry finally drags himself into the dining hall to find Liam, Niall, and Zayn already there eating dinner, Zayn gives him the same smile he gave on Thursday, like he didn’t even remember what had happened Friday. But he hadn’t been that drunk, Harry knows that. He could probably say how many drinks Zayn had had that night. There’s no way he didn’t remember. But he acts like he doesn’t, or like it never happened, leaning his head on Harry’s shoulder when Harry sits down next to him then slapping at Liam when Liam starts to glare again, even harder than usual. Harry gives him a real kiss after dinner, tucked against the wall of the building, just to see if it makes Zayn do something different, to acknowledge what had happened at all, but it doesn’t. He kisses back like he’d always kissed back, enthusiastic enough but casual in a way that makes Harry want to scream. Zayn gives him a friendly pat on the bum when they’re done, then jogs off to catch up with Liam. Harry refrains from hitting something because the only thing nearby is a wall and that would probably hurt.

Sunday, Harry interrupts what is apparently a very serious conversation between Louis and Zayn, because they both look up with wide eyes when he walks in the door. He doesn’t ask what it was about, because he’s terrified they won’t tell him, so instead he drops his bag on the floor and dives in between them, ending up with his nose in Zayn’s chest and an arm around Louis’s waist. They both laugh, and Harry can hear their eyes meeting over his head, but he doesn’t care. He lifts up his head and presses his lips to Zayn’s jaw, because it’s the part he could reach, then nuzzles back into is shoulder as Louis and Zayn discuss comics or something over him. It’s the comfiest he’s ever been, he thinks, curled up between his two favorite boys. And if he maybe spends a lot of time inhaling to try to memorize Zayn’s scent more than he already has, and licks at the bit of exposed skin at his collarbone when he finally gets up, well, that’s no one’s business but his own.

Harry’s not paying the most attention to what he’s doing on his way home from class on Monday, because he’s trying to choose the next album to listen to on his ipod and it’s important, so he’s scrolling through the list and looking at the screen as he walks down the sidewalk.

Then all at once someone’s got his hand in the back of Harry’s jacket and he’s being yanked backwards just as a car rushes past inches from his face. Harry yelps and stumbles back even farther, into someone’s body, and he only needs the smell of it to know who it is.

“Holy fuck, Harry,” Zayn spits out, sounding somewhere between mad and terrified, “The hell? You need a fucking keeper, don’t you? Why didn’t you look?”

“Was distracted,” Harry answers, a little vaguely. He’s turned around so he can look at Zayn. Zayn’s eyes are wide and sharp with something that looks like fear, and his hand is still clutched into Harry’s jacket. The other one’s come down to land on his hip, clutching at it like if he lets go Harry will fall over. Which he feels like he might, his heart beating a little too fast, a little too hard. Their legs are tangled together and Harry could count every one of Zayn’s eyelashes if he wanted to and had infinite amounts of time. “You saved me.”

He can see the tension leave Zayn, can feel it as his shoulders relax and he grins, his tongue pressing against his teeth. “I’m a proper superhero now, aren’t I?”

“My hero,” Harry agrees, and throws his arms around him, pulls him in for a hug that makes him feel like he’s going to tug Zayn into him completely. It’s all he wants, really. Because Zayn saved him, and wants to be a superhero, and looked so scared when he thought Harry might not be okay. “And you know what a hero gets?”

“What?” Zayn pulls back, and he’s grinning into Harry’s cheeky smile.

Harry can’t quite keep his smile, somehow, though, not as he slides his hands up so he can hold Zayn’s face in both of his, as Zayn’s smile dies too into something softer, something Harry wants to taste and see all the time and never let anyone else see ever. He pulls them together slowly, like he’s giving Zayn time to object even though he never has before, given him time or objected, and when they kiss somehow it’s different. Or it feels different to Harry, anyway, even though he’s not sure it is, even though he’s pretty sure they’re doing everything the same they’ve always done, lips and tongue and a hint of teeth, and Zayn still tastes like smoke and cherry and him, but it thrums through Harry not like arousal, although there’s that too, obviously, always, because Zayn is eternally too pretty and pressed against Harry he can feel the bits of muscle hidden beneath his smooth skin, but it’s something different too, that wraps around his heart and squeezes, the sweetness of it, the tender, the familiarity. It’s a kiss like they’ve done it a thousand times and plan on doing it a thousand more, like thank you and please and yes and more.

They pull back at the same time, even if it’s too short a time, and Zayn rests his forehead against Harry’s. “So, yeah, thank you,” Harry says, because it feels like he should say something. “For not letting me get run over by a car.”

“Any time.” Zayn’s smile makes his heart thump again. “Always. I like being your hero.” And his eyes are bright beneath those long, long lashes, and his nose is wrinkling a little with his smile.

And Harry—he knows. He doesn’t know why it strikes him then, of all times, why he gets it in the middle of a street after nearly dying, although maybe that does make sense, because of course one realizes these things after one almost dies, but still, it’s out of nowhere, out of the blue. And with the shock of it Harry lets go of Zayn and reels back, even though that’s a silly thing for his body to do, because he wants to wrap himself in Zayn and not let go. But he does let go, mumbles something about having to get home and thank you and see you later and bye, and runs off without checking the road for cars again.

Luckily, Louis is in their room when he bursts in. He can hardly breathe, because he is not meant for running this much, and he’s feeling too much, but he manages to get out with a dramatic point, “I’m in love with him!”

Louis—doesn’t react. He barely even puts down his pen.

“Didn’t you hear?” Harry asks. He topples onto the bed, rolls onto his stomach, and fixes Louis with a glare that he probably doesn’t see because his desk chair faces the other way so Harry’s glaring at his back. “I’m in love with Zayn.”

“Shall we call out the parade?” Louis drawls. He does set down his pen, and turn around, but he still does not look excited enough for such a huge revelation. “I can go find some confetti, probably.”

“Louis,” Harry whines. “Stop. This is big. This is possibly bad. This is—it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Is it supposed to hurt?” Is it supposed to feel like his heart is going to fall out of his chest, like he’s going to burn up, like he’s going to melt if Zayn looks at him or if he doesn’t look at him?

“Love hurts, Haz. It’s a thing.”

“No, I mean—he doesn’t—I don’t—we don’t—” He doesn’t even know what he’s trying to say. Doesn’t know what he’s trying to feel, really, because he’s feeling too much and all of it sounds like Zayn.

Louis’s eyebrows draw together. “Wait, You’re actually freaking out, aren’t you?”

“I’ve never been in love before,” Harry explains, and drops his face into the blankets. How do people deal with all these feelings?

“You haven’t?” Louis sounds honestly confused, and when Harry looks up he looks it too, his lips drawn together and the glint in his eyes dimmed.

“Of course not.” Then, “Why, did you think I was?”

“Hazza—” Louis pauses, like he’s actually thinking about his words, which makes Harry sit up and take notice, even through the mixed-upness in his brain. “Haven’t you been in love with Zayn since you met him?”

“What?”

“I thought you knew and just, like, hid it or something to respect him and Perrie!”

“How would I know? How do you know? Was I?”

Louis holds out a hand to count off points on his fingers, which feels unfair and mean when Harry is in crisis. “You ask about him all the time, you’ve smiled at him constantly ever since he mentioned once he liked dimples, whenever he’s here you’re always paying attention to him, you sometimes get drunk and rhapsodize about his cheekbones.” Which, okay, maybe not so unfair, because Harry is pretty sure that’s all true, looking back, but he hadn’t noticed. “And, like, I figured the kissing thing was part of a nefarious plan on your part to get him to fall for you. It’s not—that’s not a mate thing, Haz, not even for you.”

“How could I not?” Harry moans, and flops back down onto his back. “He was just sitting there being all Zaynie and looking sad and how could I not?”

“Somehow, I managed to try to cheer him up without volunteering to kiss him.”

“How?” Harry is curious. It’s actually kind of an ongoing mystery to him, why everyone isn’t constantly trying to kiss Zayn all the time. Maybe it’s just because they don’t know how good it is. And it’s not that Harry’s complaining, because he quite likes being the only one allowed to kiss Zayn, or at least required to, but he just doesn’t get it.

“Not being in love with him helps. You really only got that now? What’d he do, sweep you off your feet?”

“Saved me from a car.”

Harry wonders if it says something about him that Louis isn’t surprised at all he’d need saving from a car. “That’s all it got you to notice? Him saving your life? Pretty high standards you’ve got there, Styles.”

“Louis,” Harry whines. Again. “Stop being mean. I’m having a crisis.”

“You’re having an epiphany, not a crisis. Get your terms right”

“Well it hurts.” Harry pouts, then stops. This is too serious for pouting. Because he has to say, as he looks up at the ceiling, traces the cracks in it and tries not to remember the ceiling above Zayn’s bed, when he was all wrapped in Zayn’s scent and his hand in his hair and taste on his lips. “He doesn’t love me, does he?”

There’s another one of those ominous pauses that say way too much. “He wouldn’t tell me if he did,” Louis says, slowly, carefully. Harry hates it when he’s careful. It makes him feel too much like Louis has to be, makes him feel breakable. Zayn doesn’t do that, or he’s always careful enough that Harry doesn’t notice the difference. He just looks at Harry like he can do anything so Harry can. “But, I mean, you’re you. And he’s—well, you know, he’s Zayn. He’s hard to read. He might.”

It sounds a lot like Louis’s just placating him. Harry scowls up at the ceiling, because it’s better to get angry at Louis then to burst into tears, and it feels like those are his only options. “You mean he doesn’t.”

“I mean I don’t know, don’t put words into my mouth. For all I know he’s been pining after you for decades. Maybe he dreamed about you before he even met you. Maybe he wanks off to the thought of you in the shower every night and every morning. Maybe he doodles Zayn Styles in all his notebooks with little hearts. I’m not the one he talks to about shit like that. Liam probably knows.”

“This is why Liam doesn’t like me!” It’s a stroke of brilliance, a little bit of a balm to soothe the aching rip in his chest that is knowing he’s going to kiss Zayn tomorrow and Zayn won’t be in love with him when he does. “Because he noticed I’m in love with Zayn and thinks I’m taking advantage of his breaking up to kiss him!”

Something about that makes Louis lunge over and plop on top of Harry, driving the breath out of him with an oof. “Mate,” he says into Harry’s ear, and it doesn’t do anything for Harry, really, not like the gravel of Zayn’s voice that always makes him shiver, but Louis’s weight is comfortable and familiar and grounding. “I think that is the exact opposite of why Liam doesn’t like you.”

“What does that mean?” Harry moans, because it’s not fair for Louis to start being enigmatic too, not if he’s already in love with the most fucking mysterious person in the world, even if Zayn only pretends to be mysterious, and really has those smiles and those eyes and makes faces Harry wants to lick.

But Louis doesn’t answer, just rolls over so they can cuddle properly, and Harry takes some comfort in that. At least Louis will always love him. He thinks he can kiss Zayn if he remembers that.

---

Harry spends most of Monday night freaking out about Tuesday’s kiss, because how is he supposed to kiss Zayn knowing he’s in love with him? What if he does it wrong? What if he does it right enough that Zayn realizes and has to let him down easy? What if he starts really going crazy and grabs on to Zayn and refuses to let him go until they’re married? Or no, not married, that’s—that still sends chills down Harry’s spine—but until Zayn has promised never to go away and never get a girlfriend or boyfriend ever again unless it’s Harry.

But in the end, it’s easy. Zayn’s waiting outside his classroom and falls into step with him easy as anything, and their hands brush as they walk, and Harry talks about Nick’s latest radio show, which leads to a story about Louis and his summer vacation last year, and how he caught El and Louis doing some questionable things with a textbook last month, and when he dares a glance at Zayn Zayn’s smiling back with a little smile and that look in his eyes, so Harry has to lean over and kiss him. He pulls away quickly, too quickly, probably, but Zayn doesn’t even blink, just picks up the conversation with his story about Louis and the carrot, until Harry’s got to curl into his shoulder to muffle his laughter so people don’t think he’s a crazy person.

Of course it’s easy, though, he thinks as he climbs the stairs to his room after leaving Zayn to go wherever he’s going. It’s the same thing he’s been doing for ages. Weeks, at least. Just now he knows the word to put to the feeling curling in his belly whenever Zayn’s around.

On Wednesday, Harry happens to be walking back to his dorm before dinner when he passes Zayn’s dorm. It’s so serendipitous, because he usually doesn’t even go this way but Niall had dragged him to a café after class and then he had to go to the library while he was there, that he goes in, goes up to knock on the door before he realizes he decided to.

Liam answers, with his usual attempt at a smile. “Zayn’s not here.”

“I know,” Harry says, smiling his most harmless smile back. “He’s at the studio. I wanted to talk to you, though. Can I come in, please?”

“Sure.” Liam steps back, a little reluctantly, Harry thinks, but still enough that Harry can go in. He eyes Zayn’s bed, but he doesn’t think he can do that, doesn’t know if Zayn would like it when he’s not here and also if he has the emotional capacity to deal with it, so he sits in Zayn’s chair instead, leaning forward so he can look at Liam.

Then he starts trying to figure out what he wants to say, and that takes long enough that eventually Liam leans back against the door and crosses his very impressive arms over his chest. “Why did you want to talk to me?”

“I’m not going to hurt him,” Harry blurts out. Which was not exactly what he meant to say, but it’s close enough, so he goes on. “Really, I know you think I used the fact that he just broke up with Perrie to get kisses, but I won’t. I promise. And if you could like me that would be great because I think he still needs kisses but he loves you and if you keep not liking me he might stop.”

Liam sighs, a big sigh that moves his whole body. He uncrosses his arms to rub one across the back of his neck. Zayn does that a lot, Harry’s noticed; he wonders who gave the mannerism to the other. He wants to start biting his lips like Zayn, or make Zayn start flipping his hair like him.

“I told you, Harry, I don’t dislike you.”

“I know, you said I scare you, but it looks like you dislike me, so—but I won’t hurt him, I promise.”

“It’s not that. I never thought you were going to hurt him on purpose. Louis wouldn’t be friends with that much of an ass.” Harry purses his lips, because he’s not entirely sure that’s true, but he’ll take what he can get. “I just—you’ve got a reputation, you know? For always thinking things are more casual than they are.”

“I—I do that, sometimes,” Harry admits. He can, he knows his own faults. “Or they think things are more serious than they are, which is really just as fair. But—we made rules. It’s pretty clear how serious things aren’t.” He hopes his voice doesn’t waver on the words.

“And hooking up with him at the party on Friday was in those rules?”

“Yes!” Harry snaps. “Or, no, not really, but it was interest because I missed one, and because—because I wanted to. Because he’s fit as hell and he’s Zayn and I want to all the time. Because—” And it’s harder to say now, maybe because Liam isn’t Louis, doesn’t know him as well, but he needs this. Needs Liam to understand, so he won’t stop Harry from getting the parts of Zayn he’s allowed. Needs Liam to understand because he’s Zayn’s best friend and him liking Harry feels important. “I’m in love with him, Liam. So I wouldn’t hurt him, I swear, I’d do anything not to hurt him, I want to make sure no one ever hurts him again.”

Liam’s eyes are soft and kind and utterly unrelenting. Harry hopes he’s studying to be a judge or something, because he’s terrifying. “Are you sure?”

“Of what?”

“That you’re in love with him. Because if you aren’t sure, if you think you are but it’s only his face you’re after—”

“It’s not! Or, I don’t think so?” He tries to imagine Zayn without his pretty, pretty face, but can’t. His face is so much a part of him, not just the sharp cheekbones and long eyelashes and pink lips, but the tilt of his eyebrows, the lines at the corners of his eyes, the way he smiles when he looks at Harry sometimes, with his tongue tucked against his teeth. But he tries to imagine him with some disfiguring scar, or something, which isn’t nice but is at least possible, and—yes. He’d still want him just as much, would want to lick the edges of the scar and make Zayn smile around it and watch it move as he laughed and talked about art or comics or anything. “It’s not.”

Liam sighs again, and moves over to his own chair. He sits on it so he’s facing Harry, leans over so he can look Harry in the eyes. His arm muscles bulge intimidatingly, but also really nicely. “I do like you, Harry. I even think you could be good for Zayn, if you really are in love with him. But before you make any moves on him—has he told you why he and Perrie broke up?”

“No.” He’d meant to ask, Harry remembers, back when all this started, but then he’d started kissing Zayn and he’d forgotten. Tried to forget about her altogether, to be honest, to pretend that Zayn wasn’t just rebounding. “I think he said something about wanting different things, but that’s just one of those things you say.”

“Different things.” Liam snorts. “Ask him sometime. He might tell you—he’d kill me if I did. But that’s something you should know before you try to woo him, or whatever.”

Harry nods, but his brain catches on the last words of that. Woo him. Of course! He doesn’t know how he didn’t think of it. Zayn doesn’t love him right now, but Harry’s never met anyone who wouldn’t love him if he really, really tried. And he doesn’t think he’ll ever try harder than now. Woo him. He’ll be an ace wooer, really. Especially if he gets Louis and Nick to help him, because Louis got Eleanor, somehow, and everyone says Nick is charming.

“Harry?” Liam asks, a little warily. It might be because Harry’s grinning like a lunatic. He will be the most romantic ever. It’ll be romantic comedy romantic. Valentine’s Day romantic. “You okay?”

“I am good. Great.” He springs to his feet. Clearly this must start being implemented right away. He wonders if Louis knows where one can get a bag of rose petals on short notice. “I’m glad you don’t hate me.”

“Be careful with him,” is all Liam says, or starts to say, before the door opens and Zayn is there. He’s framed by the hall light and drooping a little, his hair soft around his face and a hoodie loose around his shoulders. His eyebrows rise when he sees Harry, and his lips twitch.

But, “Hey,” is all he says, then, “Should I be scared?”

“Maybe?”

“Absolutely not!” Harry chirps, bounces over to Zayn and pulls him in for a loud, smacking kiss on the lips, just to seal his deal with himself. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks, Liam!”

Then he dashes out the door, his backpack banging against his hip. He has plans to make.

---

Thursday Harry gives Zayn a rose and a coffee when he sees him dashing between classes. Zayn drains the coffee in three long gulps that have Harry following the line of his throat helplessly, gives the rose a confused look before tucking it into his bag, then leans over to kiss Harry on the cheek with a “Thanks, Haz,” before running off again. Harry takes it as a win, because usually he’d have used a pet name instead of Harry’s.

Harry shows up at Zayn’s dorm bright and early on Friday, then waits there for half an hour before Zayn comes out on his way to class. He doesn’t look terribly surprised when Harry pops up beside him, just gives him a sleepy smile that Harry wants every morning of every day of his life, Zayn soft and open and welcoming, and keeps walking. Harry hands him the coffee he had brought, and takes his bag off his shoulder. Because that is a wooing thing, he had noticed in the romantic comedy/teen movie marathon he and Louis had had last night. As research.

That gets him a tilted-head, confused look, especially as Harry nearly drops it in his attempt to juggle it with his own overstuffed backpack, but eventually he ends up with a bag over each shoulder. He is really the best at this wooing thing. And if Zayn is laughing at him, at least he’s laughing, which isn’t an easy thing in the mornings. It’s so adorable Harry almost forgets to kiss him when they get to Zayn’s class, just hands back his backpack with a bashful grin and turns to leave—then remembers, turns back, and pulls Zayn into a gentle, wake-up kiss, coaxing the taste of coffee off his lips.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asks, a breath away from Zayn. His fingers are still on Zayn’s chin from where he tipped it up to kiss him.

Zayn shrugs. “Dunno. Probably reading? Maybe video games?”

“Louis ‘n I were going to watch his Iron Man movies. Want to come?”

“You don’t like Iron Man.”

It sends a thrill through Harry to hear Zayn say that, to know he knows, that he’s been paying attention. But that’s Zayn. He listens. “Louis’s good at convincing people,” he says. Then adds, so Zayn knows he’s interested in his hobbies. “And I don’t mind him. Superheroes can be cool. I’m trying to learn more about them.”

“Be careful saying that, babe. I might drown you in comics.” Harry overlooks the ‘babe’ for his smile, fond and a little wicked. “But yeah, I’ll come by. What time?”

“We’ll start eightish, I think?”

“Great. Later, love.” For a second, Harry thinks he’s going to get another kiss, that Zayn’s going to brush his lips against his cheek in good-bye, but then he thinks better of it, or maybe he was never planning to do it, and he leaves. Harry watches him go for a second, admires the way his leather jacket stretches against his shoulders, how it draws together into his slim hips—then dashes off , back to the café. He needs to bribe Louis into having a movie night tonight.

Louis’s surprisingly easy to convince, and when he invites Eleanor it’s all very double-dateish in a way Harry didn’t even plan, Eleanor and Louis on his bed, Harry and Zayn on his, the computer on the desk that gives them all the best view. It’s not really anything Harry’s interested in—he doesn’t think he’ll ever like comics, or comic book movies—but he likes how into it Zayn gets, how he twitches and mouths along with lines and laughs with his whole body. And he likes how Zayn doesn’t mind it when Harry curls into him, tucks his head under Zayn’s chin and his arm around his waist, like how Zayn just rests his head in Harry’s curls and lets his hand go around Harry’s shoulders and tangles their feet together.

Harry makes sure to stay awake for all three movies, so he can talk about them to Zayn later if he wants, but by midway through the third Zayn’s sagging against him and his head is heavy on Harry’s in a way that isn’t really comfortable. So he shifts around, so that Zayn’s asleep against his chest and he can wrap both of his arms around him, and if he’s getting illicit sleep-cuddles no one will know except Eleanor and Louis, who are too distracted pretending they’re not making out to notice anyway.

Zayn doesn’t wake up when the movie ends, even when Louis leaves to “walk Eleanor home”, which Harry interprets as stay the night at hers. If he’s out that much, Harry figures that waking him up would just be mean, and sleeping in skinny jeans isn’t that uncomfortable except for how it is, so he just pulls them both back down onto Harry’s pillows and drifts off to sleep to Zayn’s slow breathing in his ear. And if he kisses him on the forehead after he smoothes Zayn’s hair off of it, it’s too soft to count as one of his kisses.

Even though Zayn went to sleep first, Harry still wakes up first. Zayn is the best sleep-cuddler, because they wake up even more tangled, spooning even, with Zayn’s chest pressed against his back and a hand on his hip and—

Harry swallows abruptly. Because he can feel Zayn’s erection pressing against his arse, and that’s—it’s just morning wood, he tells himself. Who knows what he’s dreaming about. It’s not like Harry’s dick, which is suddenly hard with the feel of Zayn against him, with the dream of pushing back and grinding into Zayn. Or maybe of waking Zayn up with his dick in Harry’s mouth again, moaning Harry’s name. But—that feels, wrong, somehow. Harry’ll steal kisses, will see how Zayn tastes at every time, in every moment, but not—he won’t. And not only because it might ruin him. But because it might not be Harry Zayn’s wanting right now, might be Perrie or a thousand other people, and he won’t force him.

So Harry wriggles out of Zayn’s grip, grabs his computer and starts working on a paper that’s due in two weeks that he hadn’t planned to look at for a week and a half. When Zayn blinks himself awake, Harry’s got a lot of nonsense words on a page, and a half-formed poem to Zayn’s eyelashes soft against his cheek. But it isn’t awkward, is the thing; Zayn just sits up, yawns, apologizes for falling asleep, and suggests breakfast, which Harry agrees to enthusiastically. He wishes it could have been a little awkward, almost. Wishes Zayn cared enough about sleeping in Harry’s bed to make it awkward.

He pulls Zayn into a blind alley before he goes back to his room and kisses him, the kind of kiss he wishes he could have woken him with, lips dirty on his and hand wrapped around his cock. He doesn’t get the latter, isn’t allowed it, but he gets to attack Zayn’s lips like he could get off on just this, gets to kiss him until Harry stumbles back and Zayn pushes him against the wall and Zayn’s fingers are gripping his hips hard enough to bruise and Harry’s lip will sting with Zayn’s teeth forever.

Then Harry goes back to his room to plan.

Here’s the thing, he decides. Zayn likes him. He knows he does. Zayn likes to think he’s all mysterious and stoic and stuff, but Harry’s seen him, Harry’s watched him, Harry knows him, and he’s easier read than Louis, even. And Zayn is fond of Harry, at the very least. And he wants him. Or, Harry can make him want him. But the sexual chemistry is there, definitely. So why isn’t he in love with Harry?

Harry doesn’t have an answer. His wooing, he can admit, probably isn’t going so well. The rose just confused him. Carrying his bag was heavy when he was going to his Russian Lit seminar. Harry’s pretty sure he wouldn’t actually want a big scene, because Zayn doesn’t like scenes, really, doesn’t like attention like that. He’d prefer to be behind the art than the art itself. So he’s got nothing. And meanwhile Harry’s full to bursting with the words, ready to blurt them out every time Zayn looks at him, smiles at him, touches him.

The puzzle isn’t resolved on Sunday, when Zayn mentions, off-hand but really in an asking sort of way, that he’ll be camped out at a café all day, and Harry could join him, so he does, Zayn typing on his computer with his tongue peeking out from between his lips, Harry puzzling through his econ reading. Sometimes he looks up and Zayn’s looking at him, and that would be a good thing, but it’s as confused as it is tender, like he doesn’t understand him. Harry doesn’t get it. He’s the simplest person out there, he thinks. But he grabs at Zayn’s hand when they leave, intertwine their fingers, Harry’s big, pale hand against the delicacy of Zayn’s olive skin. Zayn doesn’t object, either, so Harry grins wide enough their whole way home to scare passers-by and then kisses Zayn long enough that they get wolf-whistles.

It’s still going on Monday, too, the evening of which Harry spends reading on Zayn’s bed as Zayn fiddles on his computer until he gets bored and starts poking at Harry until Harry puts his book down to swat at him, and it devolves into a tickle war that ends with Zayn collapsed on top of Harry, both of them giggling too hard to breathe. Then Harry arches up to kiss the mirth out of Zayn, and they’re kissing too hard to breathe. It’s very nearly perfect, and the words almost come out then. But it’s too perfect to let go of, to risk, so he instead he sticks his tongue into Zayn’s mouth. It’s a pretty okay substitute.

Tuesday, Harry mentions over lunch that he has this party thing to go to that Nick’s throwing, even though it’s in the middle of the week. Zayn looks up from under his eyelashes, in one of those sudden, devastating looks that steals all of Harry’s breath away.

“On a Tuesday?” he asks, a little skeptical.

“Yeah, it’s like, this dinner party-fashion show-concert mix? I dunno, Nick had some cool name for it. But it’s going to be pretty cool, Nick always gets the coolest people to come. Like, Alexa Chung, do you know her? She’s super cool. Probably as cool as you look, except really. And Matt Finch’s awesome, and—” he pauses, because there’s something in Zayn’s face he can’t interpret. It’s like he’s going mysterious again, and Harry doesn’t like that, so he interrupts himself. “You could come, if you want.”

Zayn draws in a long breath. “I don’t think so, thanks. I’ve got dinner plans, and…”

He trails off rather than finish his excuse.

Harry shrugs. “That’s what I thought, it’s why I didn’t ask you earlier.” He wishes Zayn would want to go, wishes he had the right to ask Zayn to go so he could point to him and be like see this, see how pretty he is, he’s mine, or to see him and Alexa talk fashion and him and Grimmy snark at each other or hear him debate Usher versus whatever indie band Clark is into this week, but he knows Zayn would prefer to stay in, usually, and he’s okay with that. It’s the first time he’s been with someone—or wanted to be with someone—where he thinks it’d be okay to go to a party and flirt and joke and play and know none of it mattered, because he wasn’t really looking at any of them. He’d know that he’d be allowed to come back and curl up in Zayn’s warmth, feel Zayn’s arm around him and the quiet he brings with him, like a home Harry can always come back to.

And that’s pretty much how the party goes. Nick’s friends sometimes like to treat Harry as their personal pet, so they get him spectacularly drunk, and he spends most of it, from what he can remember the next day, waxing rhapsodic about Zayn’s eyelashes. He also, from Nick’s texts, tells Alexa Zayn should model for her—which, he totally stands by sober, too—and that their souls are aligned or some shit like that, to quote Nick—which he’s not entirely sure of, mainly because he’s not sure what that means.

But he wakes up hangoverless despite how drunk he was, laughs at the texts Nick sent him, shares the best of the quotes with Louis, then rolls out of bed to get lunch before class. The sun is shining out, a bird flies across the sky in a picturesque enough way to instagram, and it’s warm enough in this Indian summer for him to wear his flannel shirt with the ripped off sleeves, which he knows makes him look very fit because a girl in his Victorian Lit class tells him so after class, which compliment he returns with a wink and a cheeky grin that gets her giggling back to her friends, so he’s in a pretty good mood.

His mood only gets better when he sees Zayn standing in the quad, staring out at the sky. It takes a brief turn for the worst when he sees Zayn’s expression, the far away sort of glare that’s halfway between pensive and sad, but it’s only momentary, because if Zayn is in one of his moods Harry’ll cheer him up. It’s what he does. Or what he wants to do. Because he loves Zayn smiling and laughing, but he loves it even more if he’s the one who put the smiling-laughter on his face.

“Hey, Zayner,” he says, throwing an arm around Zayn so his hand rests over Zayn’s heart and he can press his nose into Zayn’s cheek, “Are you okay?”

He can feel Zayn’s smile against his skin, but he doesn’t think it’s a happy smile, and Zayn feels tense against him. But still, Zayn answers, “Yeah, fine. Hey Harry.”

“No you aren’t,” Harry contradicts. He manfully resists the urge to lick Zayn’s ear, even though it’s right there and all tempting and earlobey. He didn’t know he had a thing for guys with earrings until right now, apparently he does. “You’ve got your faraway look on.”

“My what?”

Harry shakes his head, which has the happy consequence of letting him smush his skin into Zayn’s hair. “You’re not okay. What’s wrong? Should I beat someone up?” Zayn snorts at that, so Harry keeps going, faux-offended, “Hey, I’m large and fit. I could totally beat someone up!”

“Okay, love, whatever you say.” Harry doesn’t know if Zayn’s noticed he’s started calling him that, but it sends shiver-warmth through him every time, because he’s pretty sure no one else gets that name. Pretty sure only Harry gets ‘love’. “But if I need someone beat up, I’m going to Liam.”

Harry squeezes, slightly, so Zayn’s pulled back against him, then pouts. “You don’t trust me, I get it.”

“Liam could break you in half,” Zayn retorts, but he’s laughing, a little, so Harry takes it as a win. Also, it’s true.

“Well, I could break you in half,” he still shoots back, just to save some pride.

“Oh could you?” Zayn’s smile flashes, and Harry doesn’t have the best angle to see it from but it looks sharp and dirty, and Harry is so absolutely okay with this.

He leans in, so he’s more whispering into the side of Zayn’s mouth than his ear, so he’s crowding totally into Zayn’s space and they’re touching thigh to chest, “I could take you apart.”

He hears Zayn’s breath catch, can see his eyes go all black, pupils huge, and yes, this is happening, it is, his jeans are already too tight and he’s trying to figure out whose room is closer and more likely to be empty and whether he has a condom in his pocket when someone wolf whistles. Zayn goes all tense again, and he pulls away a little, and Harry knows the moment’s lost. Well, he thinks, fuck. Or not, which is the problem.

But he also feels Zayn start up his look again, a little, which is not okay, because Harry did all this work to make him happy again. Which mainly meant flirting, which isn’t exactly hard for Harry, but it’s the principle of the thing. “Really, Zayn. What’s wrong? Not that you have to talk about it with me, although, obviously I’ll listen, I’d love to, not that I’d love something to be wrong I’d just be totally willing to hear you talk about it, but you should say something to somebody.”

Zayn’s shoulders deflate in a sigh. “I had dinner with Perrie last night,” he admits, and this time it’s Harry who goes all tense.

“And?” he asks, slowly. If they did something like get back together, he’s going to scream. Or throw himself at Zayn’s feet and confess his love before the wooing has time to take effect, which might also involve screaming and some crying and possibly a blow job right here in the middle of the quad.

“And…it was good, I think.” Zayn rolls the words around in his tongue. “Yeah, good. Like, awkward as fuck, but—good.”

“Did you—was there—”

“We didn’t fuck.” He thinks Zayn raises his eyebrows, but it’s actually really hard to have a conversation like this. So Harry lets go, tries to move around Zayn so he stays as close to him as he can and still look at him. But Zayn’s not giving him the unimpressed look Harry was expecting. Instead, his eyes are shuttered, and he’s chewing on his lower lip like he’s nervous. “I didn’t—I didn’t even really want to. Other than she’s still hot. But it was just like…” he trails off, but in the way that means he’s finding the right word, so Harry manages to wait until he continues, “I’m not in love with her anymore. Like, I’m over her. I didn’t think I would be.”

Harry does an internal cheer, complete with fireworks that come out as a gleeful squirm. They’re done they’re done they’re done is pounding through his veins like a heartbeat, he’s not rebounding I wouldn’t just be a replacement—but then Zayn keeps talking.

“So I guess we’re done, right?”

“What?” It comes out as more of a yelp, or maybe a screech.

Zayn shrugs. Harry still can’t read the look in his eyes and it’s freaking him out, he thought he had found them, all the little pockets of Zayn, or the most important ones. He didn’t know there was this, more of him he couldn’t see past, more walls he couldn’t break through. “The kiss a day thing. It was to get me over Perrie, yeah? So if I’m over her…”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, slowly. “Or, no, it was—you were having a crisis—” He doesn’t even know anymore, now that it’s all tied up in his desire to kiss Zayn all the time.

“Crisis over, though. So we should—I think it’s best if we stop,” Zayn says, and each word is a like a bullet through Harry’s heart. “Means you don’t have to hunt me down every day, right?”

“I like hunting you down, though,” Harry says before he thinks better of it. But he doesn’t care. He does. He likes finding Zayn and curling up next to him and inserting himself into his life. “I—” The words are there, on the tip of his tongue, but what’s the point? Zayn clearly doesn’t love him back, or he wouldn’t want to stop kissing Harry, and Harry thinks he will really scream if Zayn says something sweet to let him down. It’s why he doesn’t do this, usually, he thinks; he can feel his heart beating with Zayn’s name and he doesn’t know how that will stop. “I,” he starts again, “Do I get a final kiss for today, then?”

He doesn’t give Zayn a chance to respond. He’ll get one. He needs it. Needs a final kiss to remember him by, needs one to memorize his taste and the feel of his lips and the curve of his cheek and the feel of his cheekbones under Harry’s fingers. So he takes. He pulls Zayn into him, then walks them backwards until he’s against a tree, and he takes. He takes the roof of Zayn’s mouth and the slide of his tongue and the blood in his lips and his hips engulfed in Harry’s hands and his jacket against Harry’s chest and his jeans against Harry’s and his stubble scraping against Harry’s jaw, takes his smoke-spicy scent and the unutterable Zayn-ness of him, his eyelashes and his jaw and the tattoos Harry trace with his fingers, all the things that make up Zayn so Harry can hold onto them when he can’t do this anymore. He doesn’t care that people are staring, that someone’s started to clap, that he might not have said the words but this is as good as. He just takes and takes and takes until his heart will explode with it, then takes until it does.

Then he steps back, or pushes Zayn back. His eyes are wide and glinting gold in the sun, his lips red and swollen, and he’s never looked more beautiful, Harry thinks, then in that moment when his eyes are soft and a little astonished and still turned on, and he looks at Harry like he’s all he wants in the world.

Then that look disappears with a swallow of his throat. “See ya, Harry,” he says, and walks away. Harry hides his face in his hands rather than watch him go, and tells himself in vain not to cry.

---

He does cry when he makes it back to his room, huge rasping sobs that shake his whole body so he curls up on his bed and tries not to remember when Zayn was in it. He’s still there when Louis comes in, makes a concerned noise, and immediately throws himself onto the bed next to Harry, cuddles up next to him so Harry can hide his red-rimmed eyes in his shoulder.

“Oh, Harry,” Louis says, and he’s in big brother mode. He doesn’t sound the least bit gleeful. “I knew this would end badly.”

Harry sniffs. “’s so stupid, though,” he manages to get out, shaking his head against Louis, “It’s not like we broke up or anything. He just wants me to stop kissing him. I can still woo him.”

“But?” Louis asks, patiently. Sometimes Louis is the best.

“But why doesn’t he want to kiss me, Lou?” Harry asks plaintively. He just—he doesn’t get it. “He wants me, I know he does. He likes kissing me. He likes me. Even if he doesn’t love me. Why does he want to stop?”

“I don’t know,” Louis murmurs, running his hand through Harry’s hair. He’s not as good at it as Zayn, but it’s almost enough. “But it’ll be okay, promise.”

---

It isn’t. Or at least, it isn’t the next day, when Harry wakes up and instinctively considers where he’ll find Zayn today, then remembers he won’t. He knows it’s not a break up, is the thing, but it feels like one. Feels worse than one, because he doesn’t even get the good parts to remember, or the big fight to feel angry about, he just has want and need and this inexplicable finishedness.

He doesn’t go to the café, because that’s where he got Zayn his coffee. He takes a different route to class, so he won’t have to pass the alley where he kissed Zayn after they hooked up the second time. But he gets through the day on chocolate and willpower alone—as well as a good amount of petting from Louis and bracing laughter from Nick—until he finds Zayn’s Hemingway in his bag when he’s packing up to leave the library.

He needs to return it. And he needs to return it now, because Zayn’s still in class, he knows, looking at his phone for the time, so he can just leave it with Liam or outside the door and not have to see Zayn because he doesn’t think he can do it without bursting into tears. He doesn’t care that it’s pathetic, because it probably is, but it’s also the only way he knows how to deal with this aching weight that is the lack of Zayn.

So he drags himself to Zayn’s dorm, trying to focus on the floor as much as possible so he doesn’t count out the places where they kissed, or where their hands touched, or where Zayn had been particularly adorable as he explained the Marvel Civil War or Tolstoy or Rothko. He might pout a little harder, look a little extra pathetic, as he knocks on Zayn’s door, though, just so Liam will see and can tell Zayn and maybe Zayn will hear and relent and give Harry kisses to cheer him up.

Liam opens the door, and immediately sighs. “Shit,” he says, “You—”

“I’m just—here’s Zayn’s book,” Harry replies, holding out like an offering, or a shield. “I just wanted to drop it off.”

“He’s not here.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here now.”

Liam sighs again—he seems to spend a lot of time doing that—but he puts a hand on Harry’s shoulder and squeezes. It’s surprisingly comforting. “You look miserable.”

“That’s ‘cause I am miserable,” Harry explains. He can feel himself starting to tear up again under Liam’s niceness, and dashes the tears away with one hand. It wasn’t even a break up, he tells himself again. It wasn’t even an anything. “He just—stopped it.”

“And of course he didn’t explain why.”

“’course not, it’s Zayn.” And Harry even manages to laugh at that, a little.

“Did you—” Liam pauses, thinks about it, then, “Did you do what I told you last time? Asked him?”

“What?” Oh, the thing about Perrie. “No, didn’t get a chance before he—well—I was going to, but then he was talking about how he had dinner with Perrie and we should stop this and he looked really pretty and really sad and I just wanted him to be happy and—”

“Oh, fuck.” It’s not angry, so Harry looks up at Liam to see him running a hand over his hair. “Just—stay here a second, okay?” Harry nods, and Liam disappears into his room. He comes out a second later with a key. “Zayn’s going to kill me, but—this is the key to the studio Zayn uses. 4c, in the Art Building, you know where that is?” Harry nods. “He’ll be there in about half an hour. You should ask him. Really. He might tell you. And then kill me.”

“I don’t think I can see him without crying,” Harry admits, softly. “And I don’t want to—I don’t want him—” He doesn’t want Zayn to know he made Harry cry, Harry thinks. Even now, doesn’t want Zayn to know that, because it will cut him to ribbons inside and Harry can’t bring himself to want that, even if he knows he’s supposed to.

“Do you have anything to lose?” Liam asks. It’s kind, but firm, and Harry—

“No.” He’s already lost. Except—Liam doesn’t seem to think so. Liam seems to think there’s still some sort of hope, and Liam knows Zayn best, and Harry’s never been much good at pessimism. Something that almost feels like hope starts up underneath his ribs.

“Then, just—it might help.”

“Okay.” He thinks about it for a second, then throws caution to the wind and pulls Liam into a hug. Liam comes willingly enough, which makes sense for someone who lives with the cuddle-monster that is Zayn, and when he wraps his arms around Harry he feels solid and reassuring and it’s kind of brilliant. He hopes that even if Zayn doesn’t—even if it doesn’t work out, he doesn’t lose Liam, or the bit of him he’s started to have, too. “Thanks,” he whispers in his ear, and Liam’s smile is sunshine bright.

“Talk to him,” is all he says, though, and closes the door.

Harry goes. It takes him fifteen minutes to walk to the art building, another ten to find the room. Then he doesn’t want to wait outside, and if Zayn was meant to be there in half an hour it’ll be at least an hour and he doesn’t want people to think about him sitting outside warn Zayn, so he unlocks the door and twists the handle, but then he pauses.

It’s hard not to think of this like a metaphor, or something, is the thing. This is the place he does his art, the place he does the parts of him Harry didn’t see, the parts of him Harry tried so hard to see even though Zayn liked to hide them. But Harry wants to see, he wants to see so badly, so he pushes open the door.

It’s a normal enough looking art studio, for the most part. There are easels set up on one corner with paintings on them, what looks like a sculpture in another corner, a whole wall of windows that light up the mess of paint brushes and tools and things Harry doesn’t have names for but are probably very important and artisty—and Zayn’s wall.

It’s a swirl of color at one end of the room, huge bright lines of red and yellow and orange mixing with rich blues and purples and dark browns and blacks, all swirling together in something abstract that Harry thinks looks like people blending together, like they’re colors and they’re bleeding into each other, or maybe it’s the sun that set over the school two weeks ago Harry had seen coming back from dinner with Zayn and Louis when Zayn had slid an arm around his waist and grinned at him until his eyes were the color of the sky, or maybe it’s that scene from Iron Man where Tony Stark sweeps Pepper off the ground before the robot explodes. But this—this, Harry thinks, is why he’s in love with Zayn. Because he looks cool and mysterious and holds all of this inside him, because he can see this even while he’s smoking a cigarette and smirking at the world.

“Hey, I reserved this—Harry?”

Harry turns, and he can’t help the stars in his eyes, he thinks. Maybe it’s a good thing, because they’re crowding out tears. Zayn is standing in the doorway, a denim jacket on over an Usher t-shirt and dark jeans, and Harry wants him. He wants all of him, the face and the body and everything behind those eyes, more than he thought possible.

“Why did you break up with Perrie?” he blurts out.

“What?”

“Why did you break up with Perrie,” he repeats, “Only, Liam said I should ask you, and that’s why he sent me here, but don’t kill him for it, and why? You said you wanted different things, but what things did you want?” Me, ask me for them, could I give them to you? he doesn’t ask, but he wants to.

Zayn closes the door softly behind him, then walks over to the wall of windows to look outside. He very carefully doesn’t look at Harry.

“Please tell me,” Harry says, begs, when Zayn doesn’t say anything. “I know you don’t like to talk about it but I want to understand, I want to help, I want to know.”

He hears the breath Zayn lets out, knows it by the rise and fall of his shoulders. “I…” Zayn starts, pauses, then starts again. Harry holds his breath. “I fall in love too easily, is the thing,” he says, slowly, as slow as Harry usually talks, “Or too hard, maybe.” He shrugs, and runs a finger over the glass of the window. “But either way, I wanted more than she did. I was in it for the long haul, for the—the everything. She was in it for the fun.” He stops talking, and Harry holds his breath, because that was important but he’s over Perrie, that’s done. This—what’s coming is the most important, he can feel it in his bones. “It’s what always happens. I fall in love. They think they do.”

Harry makes a confused noise, because he knows it’s bad, but he doesn’t know exactly, why, because Zayn’s talking in circles and usually it’s fun, the puzzle of figuring him out, because Harry talks in circles too sometimes, but not right now. Not when Zayn sounds so sad Harry wants to kiss the sad right out of him except that he’s got too much sad in him to do it properly.

“You know,” Zayn explains. Then he turns, and something is burning in his eyes. But his face is so very calm and resigned, like this is all he’s ever known. “You know. You all fall in love with, I dunno, my face and the fact that I smoke and have tattoos and do art and don’t say much and am mysterious, I guess? That’s what Liam calls it. But then they learn more about me and they aren’t in love anymore. I’m easy to fall in love with when you don’t know my favorite book or movie or pastime or what I do on Saturday nights or what I want to do with my life or how I sleep.” He shrugs again. “It’s okay, I get it. But—by that time I’m in too deep. So—you see why I had to stop, right? It’s self-preservation, really.”

And he’s got that faraway look on, sort of, the one he gets when he’s trying not to look afraid. And Harry has a sudden flashback to the first time he saw him, standing alone in a party, afraid and awkward despite his pretty face, and Harry had just wanted to fill up all those afraid and empty parts of him. Now he’s still afraid, Harry thinks, still afraid and so is Harry but Harry still wants to make him strong. Still wants to chase away the fear and sadness and make him smile all the time and get to show him off at parties and come home to him and see his fond smile when he’s rambling and meet the sisters he loves so much and kiss him as many times as he wants every day.

“Harry Potter,” he says, and Zayn’s head jerks up and towards him.

“What?”

Harry takes a step forward, dodges some sort of table thing, and takes another one. “Your favorite book is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, unless you count comic books, in which case it’s anything by that guy who did the last Civil War one where Captain America died, because you cry every time you read it.” Zayn’s eyes are almost as wide as his face, and he’s tensed like he’s going to run, but Harry keeps on walking forward, slowly, like he’s hunting or something. “Your favorite movie is The Dark Knight Rises, on Saturday nights you’re usually asleep or watching movies with friends, you want to be an English teacher but you’re actually a superhero in disguise, you take your coffee black because you’re always tired despite how much sleep you get and I really think you should go to a doctor for that because it’s probably not healthy, and you’re a giant geek and a total sap and you cuddle whenever you have the chance and you’re not scary at all or mysterious except for sometimes and I love you.”

“What?” Zayn says again, and Harry is only a few feet away, now, and he tries to make his face as sincere as possible.

“I love you. I know all that, and I still love you, or, I love you because of it, I guess?” Harry waves his hand, because that’s important but not the most important, “Louis says I’ve loved you since the first time we hooked up before our first year, and I don’t really know if that’s true but I love you and if you make me stop kissing you I’m probably going to ignore it and keep kissing you every day until you give in and fall in love with me just so it isn’t so annoying. I will probably kiss you all the time in front of everyone so they all think we’re going out anyway and then they won’t try to go out with you, because apparently I’m kind of possessive when I’m in love, which is why you got that blow job last week, by the way.”

“Wha—”

“And if you say ‘what’ again,” Harry warns, and he’s failing to fight back a grin because Zayn isn’t pulling away, doesn’t look horrified or pitying or any of the thing’s Harry’s had nightmares about, just bewildered“I’m definitely going to kiss you because that word isn’t getting us anywhere.”

Harry can see Zayn make the decision, and he’s said it before and he has a feeling he’ll say it again, but it’s the most gorgeous Zayn’s ever been, the moment the confusion clears from Zayn’s face and his smile blooms, sweet and slow and big enough to fill up every part of Harry. “What?”

Harry lunges, trips over a low-lying chair, and pinwheels for a second, then tumbles into Zayn, who stumbles but catches him with his hands on Harry’s waist. Which puts Harry conveniently looming over Zayn, whose smile has turned into giggles that shake through his arms and into Harry. Harry pouts.

“I’m confessing my love, and you’re giggling,” he complains, “Zayn.”

“Sorry, love.” Zayn makes a manful effort not to laugh anymore, but the endearment and the smile and the way his eyes are bright are too much for Harry, and he leans in for the kiss.

It’s soft, this kiss. Soft like a promise, like a dream, like Zayn sucking on Harry’s lip and Harry’s fingers making circles on Zayn’s back, slipping onto the skin between his jeans and his t-shirt. Then,

“Oh,” Zayn breathes into Harry’s mouth, and pulls back. He still keeps his grip on Harry, though, so he’s not that afraid. “I love you too, by the way.”

“You do?” Harry squeaks, but he’s surprised he can get out sound, from the way those words took his breath away. From the memory of ‘I fall too fast’ and his pleased smile when they wake up together.

“Not since that first time, I don’t think, but—you’re a hard person not to love, Harry Styles, you know that?”

“A hard person for you not to love,” Harry clarifies, because that’s the important thing, and dives back into the kiss. It’s funny, how kissing should be boring by now, or at least it shouldn’t feel new, but it does, like fireworks and just fire.

But this time, it’s Harry who pulls back, looks worryingly into Zayn’s eyes. “I’m not good at not flirting,” he says, because he owes it to Zayn to be honest, “I like going to parties and I’ll probably flirt with people and it doesn’t mean anything but people have gotten jealous before and—”

“As long as you always come back to me,” Zayn interrupts him, “Managed to fall in love with you despite you hooking up with people all around me, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t—” Harry starts to argue, then thinks better of it, because why argue when they could be kissing? “So we’re—you’re my boyfriend now, right?”

Zayn bites at his lower lip in a really distracting way. “If, I mean, if you want—”

“I want,” Harry says, and punctuates it by nipping at his jaw. Because he’s allowed to, now. Because it won’t use anything up. “I want to all the time.”

---

Thursday, Louis’s stayed over at Eleanor’s ‘to give them a honeymoon period’, so Harry gets to finally wake Zayn up with a long, lazy blow job that has Zayn gasping his name with his eyes still closed. Zayn returns the favor, then, and none of Harry’s dreams ever matched up to the reality of Zayn smirking around his cock through those too-long eyelashes. On Friday, Harry sits next to Zayn at lunch with an arm around his shoulder and Zayn’s hand on his hip, and he pecks at Zayn’s shoulder between bites until Zayn is giggling and Louis is throwing bits of his napkin at them. That night, Zayn and Harry and Louis and Liam and Niall, because Niall threw the party where Harry had his brilliant idea, all get together in Zayn and Liam’s room to watch Pacific Rim, and Harry spends the whole movie wrapped into Zayn with Zayn murmuring idle comments into his ear. Later, when everyone leaves, including Liam who goes with Louis to sleep in his room with a very pointed roll of his eyes and sigh, Zayn grins at Harry with that hint of tongue and says, “you mentioned something about taking me apart,” so Harry does, with tongue and fingers and the irresistible friction between their dicks rubbing together, until Zayn takes over and rolls them over and bites hard into Harry’s neck as he brings them off, both of them clutched together in his hand.

Saturday Harry drags Zayn to one of Nick’s parties to show him off, and Nick rolls his eyes but is pleasant enough, and Zayn gets into a really intense conversation with a bunch of people about some sort of art Harry doesn’t understand while Harry’s discussing the band Nick just saw, and they don’t spend all their time together or most of it but Harry always seems to know where Zayn is, so whenever he looks over he sees him, and sometimes he’s looking back and they grin or make a face and then go back to their conversations. It’s nice until it’s not, until Harry’s drunk enough that he keeps looking at Zayn and just seeing his hands and ass and shoulders and the prettiness of him. Louis is conveniently at Eleanor’s again—Harry’ll have to send her a fruit basket—so when Harry leans over Zayn’s shoulder, presses his hand against his heart again, and whispers, “I think it’s time to go back so you can fuck me,” and Zayn bolts to his feet, they can go back there. It’s messy and sloppy, like all first times are, and they start giggling halfway through and honestly Harry’s probably been with people who are better at sex, but it’s the most perfect thing Harry’s ever done, and he’s sobbing Zayn’s name by the end of it. They fall asleep tangled together as usual, and he thinks he hears Zayn whispering things like “love you,” and “always” and “yes” into his skin as he drifts off.

Harry wakes up to see Zayn awake, for once, smiling at him from a foot away. It’s clearly too far, even if their legs are tangled together and Zayn probably just turned over so he could look at Harry. But Harry’s got this new thing, or not so new thing, where any minute not spent touching Zayn is one wasted, so he wriggles closer.

“Have you read any Catullus?” Zayn asks, his voice still sleep-rough.

Harry wrinkles his nose. “No. Why?” He doesn’t get why they’d be talking about old Roman guys when they could be kissing, but if Zayn’s into it he’ll go along.

Zayn shrugs, which is a pretty impressive feat on his side. “He’s got a poem, is all.” Something about the way he says it, dismissive but nervous, his eyes crinkling into fond half-moons, means that Harry has to close the distance between them despite the morning breath.

When they separate, Zayn’s still got that smile on, the one that should taste like honey but doesn’t. Harry knows, because he’s tasted every one of Zayn’s smiles by now, he thinks. If not, he’s willing to keep trying. “Was that my kiss for the day?” he asks, teasing.

“First kiss of the day,” Harry corrects, and because it’s Sunday, he pulls at Zayn until they’re tucked together again, and closes his eyes so he can fall back asleep. He presses an absentminded kiss to Zayn’s shoulder before he does, though. Just because it’s there. “Because I get as many as I want.”

“And how many do you want?”

“Infinity, I think,” Harry hums into Zayn’s skin, “Or maybe infinity plus one.”