title: it comes and goes (skin)
fandom: 1D
pairing: harry/zayn
rating: 15+
disclaimer: do not own the boys, no disrespect intended
summary: it comes and goes. harry's feelings.
It comes and goes. Harry’s feelings.
They come and go; ranging in intensity from a compilation of miscalculated thoughts and tingling fingertips, to a brush of hands. Slightly. Carefully. Only significant if the want in Harry’s eyes could be personified. Or translatable at all.
Sometimes it helped to write it down. So he started writing lyrics when everyone had retired to their beds. He’d start off with a predictable, formulaic string of words- something easy, indicative and simple.
But then his mind would detach itself from all physical reality and find Zayn, enveloped away neatly inside the cocoon of his subconscious. It would also find his eyes; the delicate splatter of yellow that danced around the hazel of his pupils, the way they hid whenever a smile or laugh overcame him. As if not to cause offence. As if they knew how much beauty they were capable of.
And once his mind found Zayn, he would realise.
He would realise there was nothing easy, indicative or simple about his feelings. They were excruciatingly complex, heartbreakingly consequential.
The boys had once teased him because of the intensity of his emotions. When Harry felt something, it tore holes and anchored itself somewhere deep. When Harry missed home, the sadness was etched across his skin like fresh scars. When he liked a girl, he’d surround himself with her until the likeness faded, and was replaced with goodbye.
There was no middle-ground, no half-way point or sense of balance. It was too much or not enough. All the way or nothing at all. He loved too hard and then lost too much. Sometimes.
So he had thought. Until Zayn.
Harry thinks that it’s a phase; he promises himself it some nights, at the witching hour. He tells himself that this is what happens when you’re in each other’s pockets, living inside each other’s coats. Sharing underwear, sharing thoughts, dreams, hopes and toothbrushes. Lines blur and boundaries cross into one dash of color.
White.
The possible, the vast potentiality of a blank page.
Harry tells himself that it’s not his fault, it’s just a temporary feeling, and the end of the tour will signify the end of all this possibility. All this...Zayn.
But it doesn’t.
The three-day break arrives and nothing changes. He continues to fail to pen his thoughts, and so adopts melodies instead. Zayn hums a lot, Harry realises one night in his bedroom. He hadn’t noticed until he’d been apart from it. Small, silent sounds which came from somewhere brighter, all naive and child-like and beautiful. Harry chokes up a bit when he understands that he misses it. He understands that it’s not a phase at all and he can’t stop sobbing.
When the tour rekindles, his fingers buzz for touch. He is last to be picked up by the car, and his heart is screaming because he needs that trail of puckered skin by his elbow, he needs the raised surface that his tattoo’s create and he needs it all too soon and too much.
Harry wasn't sure when his infatuation began. The feelings came and went when they pleased at the beginning, they didn't offer too much, they didn't commit to anything. Just hovered along the surface like smudges against glass. He could look past them, but they were always there. It was only recently that the feelings had taken up permanent residence inside his head.
He wondered whether it was all down to Zayn after all.
Zayn could be distant, yes, and quiet, sometimes- but that was just what he wanted people to see, that broody and complicated mask, all eyes and pouts and perfection. When the camera was away, he was alive and animated and his flaws appeared at every point. He was clumsy, awkward at times, with this incessant fear of being left out, fear of not fitting in. Harry only caught it fleetingly. But since his habit of watching Zayn had grown into a calculated routine, he noticed these things.
When the car arrived, Harry stumbled in clumsily. Somehow his biology had developed so that his limbs worked faster and more efficiently than his brain. He was all arms, legs and fingers, no thought. The boys cheered his entrance warmly and he cursed the empty seat between Niall and Louis. Zayn had slumped himself into Liam, almost in an attempt to blur the lines between them both, make them indistinct. Liam's hands curled around Zayns naked arms. Painting lines across his wrist with his fingertips.
Harry realizes at this point, that he's never felt so jealous, so nauseous and combustible in his life.
When the boys venture out for food at the service station, Zayn sleeps. Eyes closed, mouth shut, lashes splayed. Angelic. Harry forgoes his yearning stomach just for the sight of it, he's never seen a prettier boy. A prettier girl.
So he steals Liam's seat. Thinks that this is the only way to calm himself down. He needs to feel him, he needs his smell and his sound and his eyes.
Harry starts with his elbow, anticipates the sensation before it comes. The skin to skin. The delicacy of that little crevice, a thin layer separating veins and arteries from the outside. He presses his finger lightly, see's if he can feel them. His fingers stretch down to the small Ylang Ylang tattoo and he traces the image, his mind spills over at the contact. He doesn't think anything could be more rewarding than this; sex never felt this good.
Zayn stirs at the feel of a kiss at his wrist. He's not sure whether it's a dream, so upon waking and noticing Harry beside him, he thinks nothing.
"Hi", is all Harry whispers and Zayn is smiling, grinning because of it. Zayn catches Harry's jaw with his fingers, lightly brushing it as he'd done before and is laughing unexplainably.
"Hi", is all he replies, and drifts, goes back to sleep with his head on Harry's shoulder, elbow dug uncomfortably into Harry's crotch. Harry's fingers keep pressing feather-light indents into Zayn's skin- looking for something that isn't there yet.
Something changes after that. The tour kicks off in Toronto and Zayn is...changed somehow. On stage, he clings to Harry like the sweat of his nape. Wrapping his arm around Harry’s legs during Harry's solo, strokes across the cheek, endless whispering, any chance Zayn can get, he touches. The feeling is transcendent, the wetness of Zayn’s fingertips on his neck leave him writhing with images. Zayn’s fingers in his mouth. Zayn’s tongue in his mouth. Sucking every patch of skin. The images travel through his mind like a movie reel; snippets and scenes of lust and want and fuck, he thinks.
Because they’re on the tour bus, the show has finished and they’re all draped over sofas watching something irrelevant. Fuck, because Zayn has asked him something but he doesn’t know what. Because all realms of coherent speech and understanding are overwhelmed by Zayn’s hand on the small of his back, the pucker of his lips as he hums something.
“-did you?”, Zayn is saying but it doesn’t make sense. Everything is warped and upside down in Harry’s head, words come out like numbers, shapes and hieroglyphics.
Zayn’s lips part, flinch because Harry’s determined glare is so fixed upon them. They squirm under the heat, and Zayn licks them briefly.
“What-?”, Harry says quietly, but he doesn’t care. Fuck, he doesn’t even know what day it is. Zayn’s hands rub his sides and he looks away. Thinks that Zayn is nervous and that isn’t what he wants.
“Wer- did you”, Zayn struggles over unformulated words, “...want some tea”, he manages, “for your throat, did you want some?”.
Harry shakes his head, enjoys the sound of Zayn humming as it resonates through him. Feels fingers at his neck and wonders what they mean. He smiles in appreciation and turns, resting his lips against Zayn’s shoulder, half-placed, half-kissed motions which slip over the hem of sleeves and touch skin.
Muscles tighten and Harry feels him shift underneath his mouth. They’ve done this before, these simple touches, unspoken gestures which go unnoticed. But this is different, somehow. Harry stares up at him, head low, he finishes the kiss with a cottony pout. He thinks this is it, as close as the moment will get to perfection, sees yellow and hazel, lets the colors simmer and blend.
Gravity keeps their eyes locked together and they let it.
“-Harry...”, he’s saying.
Harry blinks a response.
“...what do you want?”, Zayn finishes, nothing moves but his lips and the pixels of the television screen and the whirr of the tyres beneath them.
Harry says nothing, just stares. He doesn’t know. He can’t think. Not now.
Zayn understands, holds Harry’s fingers in his, lets them slide and lock like Lego pieces. He trails his thumb across a faded inscription, a tattoo of black biro on Harry’s wrist.
Its faded, but somehow the letters fit- it comes and goes
They both watch as Zayn brings the words up to his mouth, presses a little, pauses for a moment and then lets tongue slip through. Slightly. Carefully.
it comes and goes.
it comes and goes- Harry repeats it in his head; the only lyrics he could muster all those nights ago, the only words that ever made sense.
And he could feel it now, brighter than ever.
The feelings.
Zayn sucks softly at the fragile skin of his wrist and he can feel them coming; stronger, faster, louder. Illuminated in this glow of euphoria.
This time they stay. The feelings never leave.
And they feel beautiful humming away inside of him,
so beautiful.