Zarry Proofs You Gotta Believe

story time 0.3

Mistaken for Peace
By:heartofthesunrise

Summary: we nEVEr TaLKed wHEn wE wERe In The baNd

“We never talked?”

There is a rolling, green landscape on every side of Zayn’s house. The sun is high. The distant bleating of livestock filters through the still air. It smells of home.

Harry is sat on his front porch in a pair of floral trousers and a blouse with an odd, asymmetrical ruffle slashed across the chest, armed with a scowl that could drop lesser men.

“You know what I meant,” Zayn says, because there’s no use pretending he doesn’t know what Harry’s talking about, on account of how he showed up here and all. It had been a stupid thing to say, probably, in the moment. Of course they talked, they lived in one another’s pockets for four years. They couldn’t avoid it.

More like, there were certain barriers in place. Unstable bridges left uncrossed. Like when he’d left it had been like seeing Harry through the wrong end of a telescope, all that distance between them even when they stood right next to each other. And all that had seemed like too much to give a Billboard journo who was pitching him only softballs, so he’d said. Well.

Harry stands up and brushes off the front of his trousers. He’s an anachronism in this place, this simple life Zayn is hammering into place. Zayn looks down at his feet. Boots scabbed with dried mud. Blue jeans. His hands and arms, which have browned in the sun all summer, dark enough that his tattoos could almost be the suggestion of a pattern under his skin.

“So you’re… What. A farmer, now?” Harry asks. He’s following Zayn’s own gaze, taking in the lines of him.

What Harry doesn’t understand - what he has never seemed to grasp, in all their years as friends - is what a luxury it is to be able to define himself by what he does, rather than what he is. There are the obvious things: Zayn is Muslim, despite not having set foot in a mosque in more than a year; Zayn is Pakistani, he supposes, though he’s never been to Pakistan. He’s a singer, which is itself a kind of doing, but then, so much of it was decided for him and contracted out that it feels more like an assigned label anyway.

But he’s a farmer, because farming is what he’s doing right now. When he stops, he won’t be anymore. It’s a relief to deal in such absolutes.

“Guess so,” he tells Harry. He folds his work gloves together and tosses them onto the porch step. It would be peak Harry Styles to hunt down Zayn’s barely-known address, hire a car, and come out to deliver one wounded line before fucking off again. Zayn tries to pre-empt him, for what it’s worth. “Are you coming inside?”

And to his surprise, Harry brushes down the legs of his trousers one more time before giving a curt nod and following Zayn in.

-

Harry is let into a guest room with south-facing windows, which let in slats of buttery afternoon light. Zayn leaves him, then returns a few minutes later with a spare white t-shirt, a battered pair of sun-greyed Converse, and a pair of jeans that Harry already knows will be too short on him and will dig into his hips.

He changes clothes in silence. He leaves his trousers and shirt half-heartedly folded on the bedspread.

It’s bizarre to see Zayn in any context. Apart from Louis’ X-Factor performance last year, the great whirling machinery of celebrity life had been careful not to invite them to the same events, to force their respective hands. Harry had listened to Zayn’s record, of course, and declined to comment on it although it was littered with moments of true, multifaceted beauty. He expects Zayn has heard his album at least once, although who knows, with Zayn, anymore.