Oh, Won't You Let Me Burn (Won't You Let Us Conquer) [Zarry]

Chapter Thirteen | Those Who Loved Apollo

"I really don't like you."

He'd heard those words a multitude of times before coming from Zayn, but that night was different. That night, Harry only laughed, not daring to look away from the golden boy in all his adorably stubborn inebriated glory.

"Yes, you've said," he smiled at him, not expecting the shift that came next, for Zayn's head dropped onto his shoulder a second later, and it caught him completely off guard, causing his body to go tense immediately.

"You're just so good, you know? You've always been so good, Harry. I wish I could be as good as you are."

His eyebrows knitted together then, because as much as those words meant, he wasn't about to go putting too much stock in them. After all, "You're drunk, Zayn."

But still, he claimed, "I know what I'm saying," and Harry definitively felt something shift within him too.

/

"You're a good person, Harry."

That's what Zayn had said the previous night as well. Did that mean that he remembered?

Harry fidgeted under his gaze, glimpsing downward. "So you've said," he murmured. "Though at the time, I was sure that you were only saying it because you were so plastered."

The golden boy seemed to wince at the memory. "Well, you know what they say." He tugged on his ear like he was wont to do whenever he was nervous. "Drunk words, sober thoughts."

Did that mean that he meant it when he said everything else too?

/

"I'm sorry for being overbearing. I just don't know what I'd do if anything happened to you because of me."

Zayn shot him a blinding smile that made him a little weak in the knees. He was doing that a lot lately. "I know. That's because you're a–"

"Good person, Harry?" Harry found himself completing for him, making the golden boy sigh around an even more breathtaking grin.

"Infuriatingly so."

/

If Zayn thinks that Harry is so good, why isn't he good enough then?

"Hey, are you okay?"

He looks up from where he's absentmindedly helping Catalina prepare the picnic that they're all having on the cliff that they've stopped on.

He runs a hand through his hair and shakes it out. "Yeah, why?"

Cat gives him a small shrug. "You just seem to be a bit... distracted, is all. Lost in your thoughts?"

"No." His gaze moves back downward, and he inclines his head. "No, I'm just..." He doesn't quite know how to finish that.

"Did something happen with you and Zayn?"

And he especially doesn't know how to answer that.

"Hey, is it weird that we keep finishing each other's sentences today?" He had asked Zayn once he realised that they'd been doing that since morning.