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

Chapter Five | You Know About Apollo?

[Part 1 of 2]

"Zayn?" Harry scrambles to his feet with all the grace of a ten month old child as soon as he walks through the door.

"Thank fuck," he exhales. "I never thought that I'd be so happy to see you. Whatever you do, don't close the–" a slam at Zayn's back interrupts his sentence when he treads further into the storage room that Jas had sent him to to help Harry, and, "– door," Harry finishes, clenching his fists together, his voice sounding constrained. "Don't close the door," he repeats just in case Zayn didn't quite catch that.

He looks to the entrance and frowns, because that's exactly what he just did. Panic doesn't start to truly set in until his furious shaking of the doorknob comes up futile though, and unwelcome thoughts subsequently begin to invade his mind.

Harry's voice behind him isn't helping much either.

"I have never wanted to strangle you more, Zayn Malik," he's saying as he glares daggers at him, a neck vein popping out that Zayn's eyes fix on for some reason, "and I've thought about strangling you a lot."

That's kinky, Apollo, he thinks straight off the bat but doesn't say out loud. Harry would probably actually do it if he did.

"Should I be fearing for my life right now then?" He decides to weakly joke instead, turning to face him whilst raising a hand up to awkwardly rub at the back of his neck.

"Ha, ha. You're hilarious," Harry drones in response, the wide, false smile that's swiped across his face contrasting with his threatening timbre. "This– this is just brilliant," he goes on sardonically. "Really, it is, because now we're locked in here, together, and it's all thanks to you, Zayn. Isn't that wonderful?"

Zayn sort of feels sick to his stomach at just the thought of this whole thing, but not so sick that he can't come to his own defense, so, "Like hell it is," he instantly spits back, causing them to fall right back into their same old routine of bitching at each other. "How is this my fault? How was I supposed to know that the door had a shit lock?" He gestures wildly to it. "Jas didn't tell me that when she sent me to come rescue your ass."

Harry immediately scoffs derisively. "Yeah, well, some rescue this is," he waves his arms around frantically. "Now she needs to send someone to come save the both of us, so great going, Zayn." He slowly claps mockingly. "Did you not hear me when I was trying to tell you about the door, or did you just want to let it slam behind you like an absolute mad person?"

"Yes, Styles, that's exactly what I wanted to do," he scowls darkly at him, though his tone is sickly sweet, "bang the door shut so hard that I'd be stuck in here with you. Did it ever occur to you that maybe if you didn't talk so damn slow, I wouldn't have given the door a chance to slam in the first place?"

"Oh, so this is all my doing?" Harry demands disbelievingly.

"All I'm saying is that isn't mine," Zayn promptly replies simply.

He pinches his arm then to check that he isn't still dreaming. Or, in this case, to check, for the second time today, that he isn't having a horrid nightmare.

Unfortunately, he is not.

Harry tosses his arms up in frustration, turning away from him like he can't even look at him. "God, you are so infuriating, you know that?" He nearly growls, and now it's Zayn's turn to scoff.

"Oh, and I suppose that you think that you're a bed of roses?" He counters rhetorically, stepping closer to him. "Why are you even acting so stroppy right now anyway?" He kind of really wants to know. "Whatever happened to 'everyone deserves to be treated with kindness, even you, Zayn?'"