rebel child and a preacher's son
title: rebel child and a preacher's son
pairings(s): Harry/Zayn
disclaimer: hilariously stupid
word count: 6.2k
summary: harry's the reverend's son trapped in the same tiny little town his whole life, waiting for something to change, when zayn rides in on his motorcycle with his cool leather jacket and his endless cigarettes.
notes: it's not really mentioned, but it's like around the seventies in this, okay? vaguely based on the song god love her by toby keith, which is where the title comes from as well.
For Julia.
The valley is wide and open, filled with thick yellowing grass at least a metre tall, sprinkled occasionally with vibrant purple wildflowers. The skies, a brilliant cornflower blue without a cloud in sight, seem to go on forever, stretching from horizon to horizon, only broken by the white-hot sun resting almost directly atop. In the farthest distance, a small house can scarcely be made out; the small village’s church standing proud next to the tiny home.
In the heart of the valley is a boy, moving swiftly through the grass with an ease that suggests he spends a lot of time there. He isn’t wearing a top, his long, lean torso gleaming with a fine sheen of sweat in the hot summer’s sun as he runs. A mop of floppy, curly brown hair, a shade lighter than normal from spending so much time outside, bounces with each stride.
Just before halting, he swings his head around to look at the church building once more, his swooping hair flipping slowly, exposing a pair of shocking green eyes. Harry stops at the familiar creek, stealthily hidden behind metres and metres worth of wild grass. Kicking off his tattered chucks, he dips his feet into the cool water, leaning forward and gathering some into his cupped hands, splashing it against his face. He's going to be in so much trouble when his father discovers that he’d escaped from Sunday school, but Harry doubts he’d have been able to sit in that stuffy old room for five more minutes without erupting.
He pulls his best shirt, wrinkled from being clutched his fist, and uses it to dry off his face, running his hand though his hair absentmindedly before shaking it out. Harry rolls up his smart pants until they're cuffed thickly at his knees before submerging his legs further into the clear water, letting an errant smile tug at his pretty pink lips. Out here, when he isn’t surrounded by the small-minded people of his village, he almost doesn’t mind living in such a tiny place. Any other time, though, all Harry wants is for his life to finally begin.
-
He’d been sent to his bedroom without supper that evening, when he finally returned from his solace in the valley to his house. His father had yelled for what felt like hours, and had even raised his hand against Harry, but his mum had stepped in then, telling her baby to just go to his room as she tried in vain to calm her raging husband. Gemma comes in very much later, carrying a chipped plate filled with the cold remains of supper and Harry eats ravenously, thanking his sister repeatedly as she sits perched on the edge of his tiny bed in his cramped bedroom, watching him with fond eyes.
“What is it, Gem?” Harry finally asks after she removes the fork that he was licking for any possible remains of food from his hand. He and his sister get along adequately at the best of times, but they’d always shared a close bond, buried underneath years of bickering and fighting. Harry always knew when Gemma had something on her mind, and he can tell that, this time, it was something big.
“I got accepted into university down in Stafford.” she tells him in a low whisper, only after glancing at his door to make sure there's no one passing by.
“Stafford?” Harry asks in a normal voice, only to be shushed frantically by his sister. He licks at the hand clutching his mouth and she scowls fiercely at him but does not remove her grip from his face.
“I haven’t told mum and dad,” she says quietly and his eyes widen. Girls from their village didn’t go to uni. Boys hardly went. Gemma hates the place nearly as much as Harry does, and she was doing something about it.
“How far away is that?” Harry whispers when she finally removes her hand.
“Fifty five kilometers,” she says. “Roughly.”
Harry considers that. It isn’t outrageous, but it's far enough away that Gemma couldn’t be pressured into returning for supper once a week. He’d always known she was smart, but Gemma is proving just how much she’d thought this all through.
“You’re leaving, then?” he asks, his voice and expression carefully neutral. He thinks he sounds pretty well convincing, but Gemma always knew. She sighs, smiling sadly at him again, swooping forward to pull his lanky body against hers, hugging him tightly in a way they hadn’t done since he’d been six years old and afraid of the thunder.
“You’ve grown so much, Haz,” she muses quietly, carding her fingers through his tangled hair as he rests his head in the crook between her chin and shoulder. “You’re bigger than I am now.”
“’M nearly seventeen,” he tells her gruffly even though he's not really, closing his eyes. He and Gemma are rotten to one another, but she's his most favourite person on the planet.
“You’ve gotten so big,” she continues, as though he hadn’t spoken, and Harry lets her talk, knowing she needed to get all of her jumbled up thoughts out before it was time for her to leave. “You can take care of yourself now. Soon, you’ll have to. It wouldn’t hurt to stay out of trouble.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “You’re my baby brother,” she says after a long beat of silence, and he sucks in a sharp breath when her voice cracks. “You’ll always be my baby brother. No matter how long it goes since we’ve last spoken, all you have to do is show up at my house and I’ll take you in, okay, Harry?” Harry nods, but he knows she isn’t finished. “You could do great things, Haz. You will do great things. Don't drive dad into an early grave by misbehaving. You'll be out of here soon enough.”
“’M gonna miss you, Gem,” he mumbles gruffly against her skin, squeezing his eyes painfully tight when he feels one of her tears spatter on his cheek. Gemma was a girl; she was allowed to cry. He would not.
He should’ve known, just by the feel, that that had been goodbye. Harry wakes early the next morning to the church bells’ ringing that seems to vibrate straight through to his bones. He can hear his father shouting and stomping around and his mother crying and Harry knows without peeking into his sister’s room that she's gone. Their father wouldn’t have ever allowed her to go without a fight, and she’d saved herself the heartache and left without bothering to try.
She hadn’t been gone twelve hours and Harry can already feel her presence missing from his life. He already misses her.
-
Harry’s lounging against the stone steps in front of the church, waiting for his father to finish the weekly evening mass so they can head on across the path home. He’d been asked to remove himself from the room, and he wonders how much trouble he’ll be in. He wonders how much he cares.
Not much, he decides, wrinkling his nose as he draggs his fingers along the dry ground. The United Kingdom is having what they’ve declared as the hottest summer in a century, and he supposes that would be all fine and wonderful, but they’re also having one of the longest droughts in two decades. His mother’s garden is completely lifeless, and hers isn’t the only one.
The gritty sand gets underneath his fingernails and he knows his mum is going to admonish him for it when she notices at the supper table. He’s just trying to decide if he wants to clean his hands and save his mum a bit of stress for another day when a low rumbling noise pushes its way into his head. The small pebbles and stones at his feet are bouncing against the ground and Harry takes his time in looking up, trying very hard to hide his astonishment when he does.
In front of him, not even a metre away from his outstretched leg, is a sleek black motorcycle, covered in a fine layer of dust that doesn’t at all take away from the impressive image that it cuts. Astride it is a lean figure, a boy who is quite possibly thinner than Harry, but somehow less lanky. He’s wearing faded grey jeans tucked into loosely-tied, thick leather combat boots. They’re scuffed up quite a bit, but still manage to look rather intimidating.
The part about this boy that Harry can’t keep his eyes from, however, is the leather jacket he’s wearing over a black band shirt of some sort. It looks like the sort of band that plays what Harry’s father calls ‘the devil’s music’. His jacket sleeves are shoved up to his elbows, displaying two forearms covered in the swirling black ink of tattoos. There is a pair of black sunglasses on his face.
The motorcycle’s engine fades out and the boy atop it swings his leg over the side expertly, hopping off and striding toward Harry, raising his sunglasses from his face and looking down at him, his entire face silhouetted from the sun. Harry wasn’t positive, but from the shadowed features he could make out, this stranger seemed to be very handsome.
“You lost, kid?” the boy in the leather jacket asks and Harry scowls a bit.
“’M nearly seventeen,” he says matter-of-factly because he's not a kid, even though his birthday is in February and it’s only just turning into August. “And shouldn’t I be asking you that? Haven’t seen you ‘round this way before.”
“Oh, and you know everyone in this town?” the stranger scoffs and Harry shrugs.
“S’pose you could say that,” he says, lithely rising to his feet, pleased that he’s almost exactly the same height as the moron wearing a leather jacket in this weather. “M’dad’s the reverend of this ‘ere church.”
A smooth eyebrow raises from behind the sunglasses and Harry leans back against the wall.
“What’s your name, Reverend’s Son?” the new boy asks, and Harry notes that it’s deep and sounds like velvet or thick, melted chocolate.
“Harry,” Harry replies, “Harry Styles.”
And then his father is walking out of the church, gripping his shoulder tightly, and pulling him away from the stranger and towards his house. His father looks furious and Harry sort of hopes it’s because he’d been disruptive during mass and not because he’d been talking to the very embodiment of everything his father hates in a young man.
-
It’s two days later and Harry is walking along the edge of the dirt road, kicking a rock ahead of him as he travels away from his house with no real destination in mind. It’s dusk and he can see dust floating in the air as the sun sets directly in front of him and he’s got a hand held over his eyes, hoping that he won’t lose his rock, because he didn’t have anything else to kick and he couldn’t stay cooped up in his bedroom for another moment.
Harry’s nearly a kilometre away from his house and the church building when he hears his name spoken to his left.
“Harry Styles,” says the horrifically familiar voice of the stranger and Harry’s embarrassed that he recognizes his lilting drawl immediately. They’d only shared a handful of words. He turns and veers towards the only motel in the town, rundown and grimy-looking, and there, leaning against the cinderblock wall that separates the tiny courtyard from the street, is the stranger in his leather jacket and jeans and combat boots, a different band shirt plastered tight against his abdomen.
Harry thinks he likes this shirt better, and it’s not at all because it shows off the stranger boy’s collar bones that have elegant script in a language Harry’s never seen tattooed across them. Really.
He’s got a fag hanging between his lips, smoke fanning from out of his nose and the part at the corner of his mouth and Harry’s never seen someone smoke before, but he thinks it might be the most gorgeous thing he’ll ever see in his life.
“You never told me your name,” Harry says after thirty seconds of staring as the stranger’s lips purse around one end of the fag, cheeks hollowing as he sucks in deeply before he removes the stick from his mouth and blows the smoke out in a long, thin stream.
“Never really had the chance, did I?” he replies, voice more gravely than before and Harry knows it’s from the smoke and he remembers reading somewhere that people were starting to discover that fags weren’t good for you, but he can’t help but want to hear this boy talk forever in that voice.
Harry waits, unwilling to ask again, and the two of them study one another as the sun inches further down the sky.
“My name’s Zayn,” the stranger says at last after taking another long pull of the fag. “Zayn Malik.”
They stand there until Zayn finishes his cigarette and Harry realises that he’s meant to be home for supper and he tells Zayn so, trying to keep the embarrassment out of his expression.
The look Zayn gives him is all too condescending and it makes Harry feel about five years old, but he does his best to shake it off as he walks away without another word.
-
Harry’s sitting in the pew furthest from the altar to the left of his mum, pretending to listen as his father preaches to the crowded room. His standard white button-down shirt feels as though it’s suffocating him and his smart pants are far too thick for the sweltering heat that the country is experiencing. He tugs at his collar not for the first time and his mum glances sideways at him, looking torn between concerned and exasperated.
“Just go,” she tells him in but a breath when he fidgets in his seat again, pulling almost desperately at his sleeves that go all the way down to his hands, buttoned at the wrists. He glances at her and she nods imperceptibly and then he’s up out of his seat, striding down the short length of the aisle, ignoring the eyes on him as he exits the church.
He knows that if he goes to his creek he might end up never returning, so he turns away from the field and strides down the sidewalk, unfastening the buttons of his cuffs and shoving them up his arms before moving his nimble fingers to the first button at his collar, doing it’s very best to strangle him.
“Harry Styles,” says Zayn’s embarrassingly familiar voice and Harry pauses in his quick walk to find that his feet had led him toward the dumpy motel that this boy evidently staying at. The courtyard is empty, but, then, the whole town looks deserted. Everyone’s in church, having just witnessed him nearly die at the hands of a measly dress shirt.
“Zayn,” Harry says, and he hates himself for how pleased his voice sounds, but Zayn doesn’t look creeped out.
“You weren’t having a laugh when you said everyone goes to your father’s church,” Zayn observes, eyes raking up the empty streets as his fingers fumble in his pockets. Harry watches as they extract a lighter and a pack of cigarettes from each pocket and he watches as Zayn pushes a fag into his mouth, resting it against his full bottom lip as he cups his hands around the end of it and lights up. Harry watches as Zayn’s eyelids flicker closed while he sucks in the first drag. Not for the first time, Harry’s curiosity licks up inside of him and his fingers itch to try one for himself. But Zayn doesn’t offer and Harry doesn’t ask.
“Speaking of church,” Zayn says after a long period of silence in which Harry pretends he’s not soaking up every detail of him smoking and Zayn pretends he doesn’t notice as they both lean against the wall, the sun beating down heavily on them. “Why aren’t you there, Reverend’s Son?”
“Felt like I was being suffocated,” Harry says honestly and Zayn pauses in his drag, eyes flickering over to Harry consideringly.
“’M having a small gathering in my room tonight,” Zayn finally says, his voice gravely like it always gets after he finishes his first fag. “Few mates, nothing special. If you’re not doing anything, you should come.”
Harry’s immediate reaction is to blurt that his father would kill him. His dad would probably skin him alive for even associating with someone like Zayn Malik, but going to a gathering with him and his mates? If Harry’s dad didn’t have a heart attack upon hearing that, Harry was dead.
But Zayn’s looking at him like he already knows that Harry’s going to reject the offer and Harry remembers how suffocated he’d felt during mass and Harry thinks of Gemma who’s been gone for nearly a month now, escaped from this tiny prison of a town that was the only place Harry’s ever been. Harry bets Zayn’s been all over the country, shooting down endless streets night and day on his motorcycle, wearing his leather jacket and his combat boots.
“I’ll be there,” Harry says, already considering the window in his bedroom and trying to mentally calculate whether or not he’d be able to squeeze out of it.
Zayn looks surprised, but not in a bad way. The corner of his mouth quirks up for a split second, as though he’d been about to smile but thought better of it, but Harry’d seen it and suddenly the idea that his father was probably getting some sort of terrible premonition that his son was about to do something reckless tonight isn’t so bad.
Harry stands with Zayn against the wall for two more cigarettes before he started making his way back to his house, Zayn’s parting ‘see you later, Harry, Harry Styles’ reverberating around in the younger boy’s head all the way home.
-
The night isn’t much cooler than the day, but without the sun hanging above, it’s almost nice. Harry’s wearing his only pair of jeans, once thick and dark blue, but worn through enough that they were rather thin and far lighter than he would have liked. He’d tugged on a plain white tee-shirt and shook out his hair six times before putting out the light and stuffing himself out of his window, worn through chucks smacking against the sidewalk as he walked quickly down the street towards the motel.
It’s late enough that the dark should be able to wipe out most of his features from nosy neighbors who could go inform his father that he was wandering around at night, and Harry wishes he’d thought of wandering around the tiny town at night ages ago. It’s far nicer with no one to stare at the reverend’s rebellious son making his way through town.
He makes it to the motel and fingers the key Zayn’d given him earlier in the day, tucked safely in his pocket. Room 17, Harry thinks, wondering if there even were seventeen rooms in the motel. They started counting at ten, he discovers as he walks through the courtyard towards the door marked with a faded black seventeen at the farthest end from the entranceway.
Harry lets himself in, frowning when the door sticks and closing it behind him, eyes taking in the dim room. There’s a lumpy-looking mattress in the center, a few yellowing sheets tangled atop it, a desk pushed against the opposite wall, and a narrow doorway that Harry supposes leads to the loo. There are six other boys inside the room, Zayn included. A blonde one and a boy with sandy hair are in the far corner, half under the desk, passing a bottle of clear liquid that Harry knows isn’t as innocent as it looks back and forth. A couple darker haired boys are leaning over the desk, using a piece of card board to divide a small pile of white powder into two equal-length lines. Zayn’s on the floor on the other side of the bed with a small feather-haired boy, the pair of them conversing in low tones, a fag hanging from Zayn’s pretty mouth.
Harry has a flash of doubt; maybe he shouldn’t have come here, he thinks, but before he can make an escape, the blonde boy on the floor notices his presence and shouts gleefully.
“Zee!” he says, cheeks flushed, smile bright and genuine, “Your boy toy is here!”
“Fuck off, Nialler,” Zayn says as he rises to his feet in one graceful swoop and steps over the sandy-haired boy’s legs on his way to Harry, still stuck at the door. “Hi,” he says quietly to Harry and Harry takes in his features, noting that he’s got huge brown eyes and his shoulders are narrow without the thick leather jacket.
“Hi,” Harry says back just as quietly and Zayn’s lips quirk up again for half a second before he’s yanking Harry in front of him and shoving him forward.
“Those twats under the desk are Niall and Josh,” Zayn says, gesturing vaguely to the pair of boys who are far too close together to be just mates. The boy raised by a reverend deep inside Harry is curious at this new sight-he’d never seen boys together, but Harry ignores it. “Those ones trying to get me arrested for illegal drug possession are Grimmy and Greg.” Nick and Greg ignore them and Zayn leads Harry to the corner where the feather-haired boy is waiting and they sit down next to him in a bit of a triangle. “And this,” Zayn says, gesturing needlessly, “Is Louis.”
“Zee’s best mate,” says Louis proudly, shaking Harry’s hand ridiculously. “Don’t mind those old cunts by the desk,” he continues as though Harry had expressed some sort of opinion on them, “They’re far older than we are, so they snort that crap in efforts to keep up.”
“We can’t all be teenagers with endless libido, love,” says one of the men, Grimmy, Harry thinks it is. Louis wrinkles his nose.
“’M almost twenty,” Louis spits back and Grimmy shrugs.
“Almost doesn’t quite cut it, hotstuff.”
Louis shoots Grimmy the bird and Harry looks over at Zayn, only to find the older boy staring back at him.
Zayn catches his gaze and pointedly raises a new cigarette to his lips, pursing them around the filtered end of the cylinder, slowly lighting it. Louis breaks the spell by scoffing loudly.
“Disgusting habit,” says the blue-eyed boy, sniffing indignantly as he sips at a beer.
“I don’t mind,” Harry says, eyes never once leaving Zayn’s and Louis snorts again.
“’Course you don’t.”
Zayn leans closer to Harry and blows out the smoke in his face and Harry feels his eyes water a bit but for all the disgust that Louis seems to have for smoking, Harry can’t find anything wrong with it as he watches Zayn’s pink lips in a perfect circle, not ten centimeters from his own.
The room is dim and the smoke makes it feel hazy and there is an ancient radio in the corner, crackling more than it plays music, turned low enough so as to not disturb the other patrons. The music, though, is dark and dirty and Harry can feel it lick up his soul as he watches Zayn smoke with a sort of artistic flair.
Louis rises to his feet some time later and heads off to the loo and Zayn scoots even closer to Harry the minute his mate’s gone, taking another long drag from the dwindling fag, leaning forward and gripping Harry’s jaw, fixing him with a pointed look that lets Harry know something’s about to happen.
Zayn moves forward without exhaling and presses his lips against Harry’s, taking advantage of Harry’s gasp of surprise and blowing all of the smoke from his mouth to Harry’s. Harry feels the smoke swirl up inside, filling his lungs and he exhales slowly, trying not to cough at the sudden dryness of his tongue and throat. It burns a bit, but he can feel the sharp tang of nicotine already curling into his senses and he can sort of see why Zayn’s so attached to the things.
“Yeah?” Zayn asks quietly after a beat of silence and Harry nods thickly, meeting Zayn’s heavily intense look with one of his own.
Harry has a much harder time scrambling back through the window into his bedroom some four hours later. His head is swimming, because after he and Zayn had finished off the pack of fags, something a bit more illegal had somehow showed up and the pair of them had spent the rest of the night half in each other’s laps, alternating between spilling smoke through each other’s lips and licking into each other’s mouths. Harry can’t quite distinguish what was kissing and what was shotgunning, as Louis had called it when he’d come out of the loo.
He knows his clothes reek with smoke but his head is buzzing and his eyelids feel heavier than he’d ever felt them before and Harry falls into bed without even bothering to remove his jeans.
He wakes to his mum pounding on the door for breakfast and his tongue feels like he’d fallen asleep sucking on lint, but Harry can’t quite contain the smile from his lips as he dresses in new clothing and does his best to pat down his hair that’s sticking up on one side from sleeping on it. His father isn’t in the kitchen when he gets there and his mum informs him that he’d gone into town for groceries and Harry merely nods, picking at his breakfast and entirely unable to remove Zayn’s eyes and Zayn’s lips and Zayn from his thoughts.
-
It’s ten days until Harry sees Zayn again and he spends the entire time pretending as though there’s nothing wrong. His mum can tell that there’s something different about him, though. Says he seems a bit blue, but he does his best to keep her distracted, helping her with her garden and assisting his dad in replacing the broken window in the basement of the church.
Harry’s wandering down the street aimlessly, passing the motel for what must be the fiftieth time that week, not that he’d ever admit that out loud to anyone, when he hears Zayn’s familiar voice.
“Harry Styles,” Zayn says, and something about his voice is different. It sounds almost as though he’s calling Harry over specifically, rather than just saying his name out loud as though it’s a passing thought. Harry veers towards him, leaning against the wall next to the boy in the leather jacket and tries not to be too surprised when Zayn turns his head with his thumb and forefinger and presses his lips wetly to Harry’s, sucking at the bottom lip for just a moment before he’s pulling away and slipping the fag back into his mouth as though nothing out of the ordinary had just happened.
Harry stares at Zayn, and his cheeks feel warm in a way that has nothing to do with the stifling heat that hasn’t yet left. His astonishment melts away quickly, however, when he notices that Zayn’s left eye is bruised and his lip is only just healing from what appears to be a pretty horrific cut.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” Harry says in his best casual voice and he can see Zayn nod out of the corner of his eye, the pair of them facing forward, looking across the street at nothing really.
“Got in a bit of a tiff with Greg,” Zayn says and Harry wants to say that that looks like more than a bit of a tiff, but Zayn’s fingers are lacing through his and Zayn’s tugging him through the entranceway of the courtyard and toward the door emblazoned with a fading 17.
And then it’s a common occurrence. Harry spends every free second he’s got with Zayn, usually in his room, the pair of them alternating between smoking through his seemingly endless packs of cigarettes and kissing furiously on his mattress that feels as lumpy as it’d looked, the blinds pulled down tight. Sometimes, when Harry’s parents are out, or conducting mass, they’re in Harry’s room.
Zayn never says, but Harry can tell that the older boy loves his room, from the fading blue sheets and the few pictures of Gemma and he and his mate Liam who’s in Wolverhampton the entire summer visiting his grandparents tacked on the walls and the small stack of old books that are at the foot of his bed. Harry’s room isn’t much, but whenever he drags Zayn into it, the boy spends a good thirty seconds absorbing everything about it before Harry manages to distract him.
-
Harry’s pouting. He knows he’s pouting and he knows soon Zayn is going to get tired of trying to figure out why he’s pouting and just leave, but he can’t seem to get himself to stop. Zayn’s mates had been over for another party the previous night and Louis and Zayn had been talking about the pair of them going back to London at the end of September.
Zayn hadn’t even seemed to spare a fleeting thought about the boy he’d been holding during the conversation and Harry shouldn’t have expected him to, because he knows how boys like Zayn work. Gemma had been in a similar situation years ago and it had ended very ugly and Harry had known, but he was still hurt and sulking and shaking off any and every attempt Zayn made to touch him as they sat on Harry’s tiny bed in Harry’s tiny room.
“If you’re not going to tell me what the matter is, Harry,” Zayn finally says, pulling away from the younger boy and sitting upright, “I’m just going to make my leave.”
And Harry was going to let him, really, he was, but suddenly his mouth is working against is brain and he’s blurting out, “You leave in two weeks.” And Zayn is pausing in his place, half off the bed, one of his boots on his foot, the other one still in his hand.
“London is where my life is, Harry,” Zayn says carefully. “I was just visiting here for a few days. I didn’t even expect to stay as long as I did.”
“So-what?” Harry demands, his voice quiet even though he wants to yell. He doesn’t know when his parents are due home. “You’ll just leave and I’ll be some stupid boy you had a spot of fun with this summer?”
“I’d visit you,” Zayn says, but it’s not very convincing and he seems to realise it because he blinks and repeats himself more firmly.
“You won’t,” Harry says matter-of-factly and Zayn scoffs.
“What makes you so sure?” the older boy asks, running his hands through his hair and thoroughly destroying his perfect quaff.
“Once you get back to London,” Harry says, deciding that if he’s already this far, he might as well go all the way, “You won’t ever want to come back to a dinky little town like this.”
“I’d have you to come back to,” Zayn says quietly and Harry pauses, letting his eyes drift over to Zayn, who’s still holding his one combat boot in his hand, unsure of whether or not he wants to put it on and leave or set it down and stay forever.
“What if that’s not enough?” Harry asks and Zayn seems to make the decision then, setting the boot down carefully and crawling over to Harry, scooping up the younger boy in his arms, pressing him to his body.
Zayn doesn’t say anything, but he shifts Harry about a bit until he has clear access of the boy’s pretty pink lips and he licks into them languidly, his hands sliding down the ridges of Harry’s rib cage and settling at Harry’s hips, fiddling with the waistline of his trousers. Harry unbuttons them in a silent encouragement to keep going and Zayn tries to conceal his hitched breath as he slowly peels Harry’s trousers off.
-
“I was thinking,” Zayn says in a low whisper as he holds Harry close, the pair of them under nothing but a thin blue sheet, the duvet strewn across the floor, “and this is just an errant thought, but come autumn, when it’s time for me to make my way back to London, you should come with me.”
And they’d never said it, but Harry had been pretty sure he’d been in love with Zayn since the older boy had mentioned missing his little sisters at home in passing conversation. He didn’t expect Zayn to ever say it, but this, an invitation to go with him when he left, this was the same thing.
“You want me to go with you to London?” Harry asks and Zayn sucks in a nervous breath because this is not at all what he’d planned when he’d gotten to this tiny town however many weeks earlier. Harry’s back is to his front, but he can clearly imagine the guarded hope in the younger boy’s striking green eyes and suddenly Zayn’s old plans seem to pale in comparison to this idea.
“More than anything else,” Zayn mumbles against Harry’s shoulder blade and Harry turned around in Zayn’s arms, pulling Zayn’s face up so he could press their lips together.
“Of course,” Harry keeps saying in between kisses, and Zayn’s overwhelmed with an unfamiliar sort of joy that’s swelling inside of him when Harry’s bedroom door slams open.
“I knew it,” Harry’s father half-growls, half-shouts and Zayn is amazed at how quickly the happiness in Harry’s eyes is replaced with genuine fear. Behind Harry’s dad is Harry’s mum who looks so completely shocked and horrified that Zayn instantly hates himself for being the reason that Harry should ever have to see that expression twisting his mum’s features.
“Get up,” Harry’s dad bites and Zayn complies quickly, pulling one of the blue sheets around his waist as he rises. Harry’s father stalks towards them and Zayn doesn’t know what’s happening, but when he sees the fist hurling towards Harry’s face, he puts himself in between the two without a second thought.
Harry’s mom is screaming and crying for her baby, her poor baby who was a faggot and how the Lord would forgive him if he just stopped right this instant, but the absolute disgust on his father’s face is what stops Harry cold. Zayn’s clutching at his jaw and Harry wants desperately to aid him, but he’s frozen in place by the look on his father’s face. They’d never quite gotten along, but he doesn’t think he’d ever seen his father look like that at anyone.
“Get out of my house,” Harry’s dad finally says and his voice is low and filled with a coldness that would suggest Harry had just murdered the entire town and not just fallen in love with a boy. “You have ten minutes and then I never want to see your face again.”
And Zayn’s smart enough to wait until Harry’s parents are gone before he pulls Harry’s trembling body into his own.
-
Harry’s rucksack is stuffed full, his pictures of Gemma and Liam wrapped carefully in two shirts and his pair of jeans. His savings, all fifty six pounds of it, is folded up and hidden in the lining of the bag, and Zayn’s holding the bag as Harry surveys the room with an unreadable expression on his face.
“I’ve always hated it here,” Harry says quietly, “But I used to think that leaving would be on my terms.”
“I’m sorry,” Zayn says, because he is. Harry had told him from the beginning that his father was a reverend. Zayn’d seen the man-he was absolutely intolerant. Zayn didn’t know much of Harry’s childhood, but he knew enough. Harry had told him that his band shirts were what he’d been raised to call devil’s music, for bloody sake. But he was still Harry’s father and Zayn would never stop being surprised that parents could just disown their children as though it was nothing.
“Don’t be,” Harry says at last, and, as though on second thought, he scoops up the tattered bible at the very top of his small stack of books and holds it tight in his hands as he follows Zayn out of the room, closing the door softly behind him.
When they get to the motel, Zayn secures Harry’s rusksack and his pillow sheet to the back of the motorcycle and hands Harry his only helmet.
“Let’s get out of here,” Zayn says firmly. His mates will know when they get into the room to see his stuff gone.
Zayn mounts the bike and helps Harry on behind him before twisting hard at the clutch and flicking the kickstand up with his foot in one clean move. “Ready?” Zayn asks and he hears Harry’s half-pleased grunt of approval that lets him release the break and allow the bike to start moving with a familiar jerk forward.
Harry wraps one long arm around Zayn’s middle, his other hand clutching tightly at his bible as they shoot off down the dusty road, the town fading behind them within minutes.
-
oh.