Keep the Car Running (Zarry AU)

Half an hour later and Charlotte’s housekeeper, Marla, answers the door looking more frantic than usual. She takes Harry by the arm and literally pulls him inside, the wreath banging against the door as she shuts it and looks over her shoulder at the staircase. Harry holds his breath, expecting to see Charlotte sweep down the stairs with a tight smile, but the house is perfectly still except for the idle flicker of the church candles dotted around. He shouldn’t be surprised by how festive it looks, but it makes his stomach twist. The house is always beautiful, but today it’s particularly so, the hall looking like something from a BBC period drama with it’s clumps of candles and ivy garlands. It even smells like home, which it never does, of oranges and cloves and sticks of cinnamon. It makes him think of his mother again, of her standing at the cooker fussing over a stewpot of mulled wine, and he suddenly doesn’t know how he got there, to Charlotte’s grand hall with a backpack full of money.

‘How is she?’ Harry whispers when Marla turns to look at him again.

‘Very, very bad.’

‘Worse than last time?’

‘She sing.’ Marla nods solemnly. ‘All morning. Sing like bird.’

Harry’s heart starts to throb. ‘Oh Jesus.’

Marla makes the sign of the cross then leads him into the drawing room where Charlotte is sitting quietly, her eyes closed and her knees turned towards the fire as she listens to Handel’s Messiah. There’s a tree in the corner, a lavish spruce that looks like it should be in the lobby of hotel. It’s so perfectly balanced with it’s matching gold and glass baubles and delicate white lights that it couldn’t be more different from their one at home with it’s trails of tinsel and Gemma’s balding angel.

Charlotte would be horrified.

‘Mr Styles,’ she smiles serenely, eyelashes fluttering as she opens her eyes to look at him. ‘Thank you for coming to see me at such short notice.’

‘No problem.’

She looks him up and down as she always does, starting with his unwashed hair and moving down to his coat and jeans before stopping at his feet. He waits for her to look up again, but when she doesn’t he looks down and bites his lip when he sees the snow rimming his Converse like salt around a margarita glass.

‘Do you want me to take them off?’

Charlotte waves her hand. ‘No. No. Of course not.’

But he does, his toes curling in his damp socks as Marla bends down to pick them up. She scurries off and returns as Harry is shrugging off his coat and backpack, taking those too as Charlotte gestures at him to sit in the chair opposite his.

‘Would you like some tea?’ she asks and suddenly Marla is there, pouring them each a cup before retreating from the room with all the grace of a ninja.

In a break with tradition, the delicate petit fours and sandwiches she usually serves at this time have been replaced with mince pies and some sort of cheese board. Harry doesn’t even like cheese that much, but as soon as he looks at it, he realises that he hasn’t eaten yet and would quite happily eat the round of brie whole – rind and all – if he thought that Charlotte wouldn’t have him committed. So, as usual, everything goes untouched as she holds her cup and saucer and looks at him from under her eyelashes.

‘How are you, Harry?’

He isn’t brave enough to pick up his cup yet, his hands shaking as he grips the seat of his chair to stop himself from playing with his bottom lip. ‘Alright, thanks.’ He nods then shakes his head. ‘I’m so sorry about yesterday.’