Keep the Car Running (Zarry AU)

Harry met Ash on his first day at Cambridge. With hindsight, they didn’t so much meet as collide. It was a few hours after Harry’s family left, albeit reluctantly, Gemma repositioning the furniture before Harry had even put down his suitcase while his stepfather, Robin, checked the lock on the window with a frown. But to his surprise, it was his mother who was the first to say that they should leave him to it, telling Gemma that Harry was perfectly capable of deciding which drawer to put his socks in.

They were all stunned, but in the end, she was the one who hugged him for the longest, so tightly she left creases in his t-shirt. Harry almost asked her to stay, but just let her hug him until she could let go before rolling his eyes when Gemma reminded him to turn off his charger when he wasn’t using it. His mother rolled her eyes, too, but Robin nodded solemnly, much to Gemma’s satisfaction, telling them about a story he read in the paper about a family dying in a house fire after leaving their mobile phone charger plugged in, which left them all a little paler.

‘Um, cheers, Robin,’ Harry mumbled as his mother and sister wandered into the corridor, but before Robin followed, he pressed a folded up fifty pound note into Harry’s palm. He tried to give it back, but Robin shook his head and squeezed Harry’s shoulder with one of his big hands. ‘You can pay me back when you write that book,’ he said with a smile and of all the things, that’s what made Harry cry. Not the thought of sleeping in that strange bed in that strange room in that strange world he had wanted to be a part of so much but was suddenly terrified of, but that he had never said it out loud – I want to write a book – and Robin knew. Robin who takes the bins out every Tuesday night and sings Jumpin' Jack Flash when he’s drunk, knew before Harry did.

His eyes were still stinging an hour later when he was unpacking the last of his boxes and humming along to Iron & Wine. Harry was being ambitious and trying to carry an armful of books that were so heavy they almost made his knees buckle when Ash charged in. Harry didn’t know him then, though, so almost lost his grip on the books. ‘Hide me!’ Ash gasped, diving under the desk and pressing a finger to his lips. A moment later, the door swung open again and when it hit the wall (hard enough to leave a handle-shaped dent in the plaster) the shock of it made Harry lose his grip on the books.

‘Where is he?’ a girl asked as the books flew up into the air and hung there for a second before falling around him like confetti. He recognised her, but he was so bewildered that it took him a moment longer than it should have to remember that he’d helped her up the stairs with a battered leather trunk earlier that morning.

‘I know he’s in here,’ she said with a wild smile, her cola coloured curls shivering as she ran into the room, shaving foam melting into her denim shirt like clumps of snow. ‘Where’s he hiding?’ Harry put up his hands as she pointed the shampoo bottle she was holding at him, but before he could respond, she was gone, the sound of her trainers squeaking on the parquet floor in the corridor fading as she ran towards the staircase.

‘Thanks, man,’ Ash said, crawling out from under the desk holding a can of Gillette. But again, before Harry could respond, Ash clambered to his feet and frowned at him. ‘What the hell are you listening to? I almost slipped into a coma down there.’

‘Iron & Wine,’ Harry muttered, still unsure what was going on.

‘Well it’s fucking depressing. I want to kill myself,’ he said with a theatrical sigh.

Harry told himself not to stare, but Ash was everywhere, this blur of eyelashes and fidgety fingers as he paced around Harry’s room, sniffing his deodorant and tearing into one of the bananas Gemma had warned him not to leave in the kitchen. Looking back on it now, Harry can see the resemblance. Ash and Zayn are around the same height, both lean and broad with the same colour hair, that watermelon seed black, but Ash’s skin was slightly darker. Not by much but by enough for someone who has stared at it as much as Harry has to notice. But where Zayn is smooth, everything he does from checking his watch to licking his bottom lip done with a quiet elegance that Harry could never hope to imitate, Ash was restless, like a dog that needs a walk. But before Harry could gather his wits and ask him what he was doing there, he was in front of him again.