Nine Lives (Zarry Fan Fiction)

Chapter 2

By the time Louis tears out of Zayn’s drive way, the sun is coming up. It’s June and the sky should be the colour of peeled mangoes, but the rain is so heavy that he can barely see the sky as the windscreen wipers sweep back and forth. At least the sound of the rain beating down on the roof of the car is softening the silence as Zayn waits for Louis to say something. He keeps sneaking looks at him, but he hasn’t said a word, just told Zayn that he’d wait in the car while he got dressed. But then Zayn hasn’t asked, either, because he doesn’t want to know, his heart seizing up every time he thinks of Harry, broken and bleeding. He’s never seen Harry’s blood – not once, not even a cut – and he never wants to. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he gets to the hospital and finds out that it’s the same colour as his heart. So he wishes Louis would say something, tell him that it’s nothing, that Harry will be okay, anything to ease the tightness in his chest. But it’s Louis and he’d never lie to him, so he just drives, a little faster than he usually does, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel every time they have to stop at a red light.

Zayn has to fight the urge to get out of the car each time they do because he can’t take it. He wishes he was with someone else, like his mother who just told him to go and she’d meet him at the hospital between kisses on the cheek, or Liam who’d hug him and tell him that everything was going to be okay. Even Niall would be better than Louis; at least he’d make a joke about Harry’s hard head as he slung an arm around his shoulders. Actually, Harry’s the only one who knows how to calm him down when he’s like this, like when they’re on an aeroplane and it’s about to take off. Harry will start babbling about nothing or tell a shit joke and when Zayn lets go of the armrest between them, Harry knows to take his hand and not let go until Zayn does. But then only Louis has the bollocks to ring his mother at four-thirty in the morning and Zayn has never loved him more than he does then because he knows that Louis gets it. If this happened to Eleanor and he didn’t know, Louis would want Zayn to kick his fucking front door in.

They stop at another red light and when Louis leans forward to peer through the windscreen, Zayn knows that he’s considering going through it. He could, it’s almost five o’clock on a Sunday morning and the only people they’ve passed is a guy walking a scruffy dog and another sweeping the pavement near Regent’s Park. Louis’ hand hovers over the gear stick as he considers it and that scares Zayn more than anything, more than the thought of what’s awaiting him at the hospital, the fact that Louis thinks he has to jump a red light because whatever it is can’t wait a few moments for it to change. But then it does and they’re tearing around Trafalgar Square, a clump of pigeons scattering as they do.

They’re going so fast that Zayn tips his head back against the headrest and closes his eyes because he can’t look at Louis any more, at his jaw clenching and his hands wringing the steering wheel. At first Zayn thought he was mad – and maybe he was, when he first walked into his bedroom to find him half-asleep – but he’s scared, Zayn realises, as they swerve suddenly to avoid a bus. Louis isn’t scared of anything so Zayn tries to distract himself, but he doesn’t have a happy place, so he thinks of Harry, of the first time they met. Their paths almost crossed several times before then – at the auditions, Harry in that stupid scarf, then at boot camp, Harry in that stupid hat, then backstage, Harry crying and wiping his eyes with the stupid hat after they were made to line up on stage and hear everyone else’s names read out – but they never spoke.

They were aware of one another. Harry was the cute one everyone was sure would go through and Zayn was the mardy one who wouldn’t dance. For a moment, Zayn thought that’s all they’d ever be, but then a producer called out his name and he was following Harry and three other guys onstage. He and Harry didn’t even speak then, none of them did, too scared to jinx it as they waited for Simon to say something. That’s the last thing Zayn wanted more than Harry, for Simon to give him a second chance, and when he did, that’s when he and Harry met, when their futures knotted together.