Archive of Our Own

Harry is nineteen, and thus, Harry thinks that he looks like a real rock star when he scoops back his curls with a scarf. The silk of it double knotted, with it’s tail trailing between his shoulder blades. Or in his mouth, sucked soggy. He’s not wrong about looking like a rock star, not really. At least, Zayn sees it, too. There’s a match spark of teenage millionaire something, hot orange between Zayn’s cupped palms, though perhaps it’s just the Harley Davidson logo emblazoned across Harry’s chest. How his favourite brown boots are awfully scuffed up, wanting to suggest they’ve had to tread the boards; boots that think they’ve sung the blues rather than bubblegum pop.


It’s when he sways in against doorways, expression hidden behind his favourite tortoiseshell Raybans, that he could be a frame pulled from an old music documentary. The filmed-on-a-shoe-string-budget-and-considered-significant sort; a memory of a hazy tour that took place decades before he was even a twinkle in Anne’s eye. Then, it’s not at all difficult to imagine him backstage at an Islington dive rather than an American arena. A whip-snap of a kid about to be adored and secretly more eager for what follows. The acid tab from the tongue of a girl wearing two fans of fake lashes, or perhaps a boy, Harry’s curious hands at the lapels of his switchblade sharp Saville Row tailoring.



Both, simultaneously- up against the wall of a London townhouse that stinks of Patchouli and free love. Zayn can’t quite decide if he’s there, too. Maybe he’s a dark artist type who kicks about with the rock stars, dizzy with his own drug-induced kaleidoscopes; painting portraits of Harry being ravaged by two sets of lips inside of them.



Fourteen year old Zayn never fell too hard for classic rock, wasn’t the type to have Smoke On The Water crawl up beneath a patched parker jacket and into the marrow of his teenage bones, but he loves to see how it swallows Harry whole. Is ever so endeared when he watches him from the other side of a dressing room- Harry drumming away on his skinny thighs to whatever old record he has playign, waiting for Niall to steal an earbud and harmonise with him.



They go to see the Rolling Stones together, him and Niall, but Zayn isn’t jealous about being left out. He only knows a couple of tracks, and besides, he’s there for firework show that crackles beneath Harry’s honeyed skin for days afterwards- tongue flat to the spitting of sparks. He gets his favourite post-coital Harry up on the bed beside him, coltish legs folded like a child, eyes hectic and his hands fidgeting with that they can of Zayn’s clothing. Truly a teenager. Ripe with stories that really ought to take only a minute but pad slowly into the early hours: legends and pyrotechnic explosions and Ronnie Wood in a rhinoceros t-shirt.



It’s after that that Zayn takes to calling him Jagger. Baby Jagger. Teasing mostly, with a heaping of affection that feeds on the pink that blooms over Harry’s cheeks. The pleased roll of his eyes. He says it when he bumps up behind him in corridors and catches his elbows, smirks it in bed to make Harry giggle above him as he rides his dick, whispers it soothingly when their hugs becoming swaying on the spot- eyes closed and fingers splaying over spines, so that Harry grins bashfully against his neck. 



Most mornings, he greets him with an alright, Jagger before cajoling him about Class As, Jim Beam binges and golf whilst Harry plumps for the healthy breakfast buffet options and flicks brown sugar at him with a huff. Zayn barely flinches, just watches the younger boy raptly as he sets the sugar pot aside to pour milk from the jug. Muses over the shame of him not actually being a sixties photograph, because he’d make for such gorgeous strip of glossy negatives. He’s a boy who ought to be flecked with film grain. Even as he scoffs through his almond muesli and scratches at his nose with the knob of his wrist, he’s special.



And okay, there’s no chance of Glastonbury wanting them to perform when they’re in their seventies. There wont be a need for them to rally up a mud-crusted crowd with What Makes You Beautiful, but Harry could definitely do it if a call came. Wearing the same damn boots, probably. Holes in the soles and the zipper teeth gnarled.

One morning, about a week after the Stones gig, Harry follows when Zayn heads out for a breakfast cigarette beside the hotel bins. Zayn doesn’t ask usually, because Harry has plenty of plans- Cal texts or Tom asks if he’ll fire Peppa Pig up on his Ipad for the baby- and he doesn’t like to intrude on that domesticity. There are days, however, when Harry calls himself to heel. He sits beside him at the table and excuses himself at almost the exact same moment- waaait waaaaait, ‘m comin’ - and Zayn can’t shake the splurge of something warm that maps it’s way through him. The display of obedience setting a tone, sticking in Zayn’s throat.



On account of his asthma, Harry doesn’t bum a cigarette, but he seems quite content just to hover close to Zayn. Hands tucked into his back pockets as he slouches against the wall and soaks up the wash of brief stillness that’s being away from the lads. There’s a distant rumble of early commuter traffic and the crisp crunch of gravel underfoot, but it’s low enough to just hum beneath their breathing. Zayn’s always thankful for quiet that lets his thoughts thread clearly through a buzz of nicotine. To Harry, for having the all the facets of a well cut diamond.
 
He loses track, sometimes, of the people Harry’s learned how to be. Accumulating them since his very first audition, probably.

Half-awake Harry just watches him passively and Zayn watches back through the feathers of his expelled smoke, deciding that something in the delicacy of the pale light and smoke has Harry looking like a ghost of a boy. A specter. That sixties rock ‘n’ roller. His tan pales and his lashes drop, eyes on the peeling leather of his boots, one toe overlapping the other- sure to leave a dusty print from the gravel. He is too soft. He’s a dream Zayn has, often enough to rid him with guilt. 



He lets him be for that a bit: a glimpse of someone long lost, but it’s eery and he has to hip check him eventually, to know that he’s still very much corporal. Meat and bone birthed in ninety four, with spidery fingers that feel solid when they skim from Zayn’s palm, circling his wrist for a perfect second. Anchoring Harry to Zayn, because he does that. Wants Zayn’s pulse to cocoon his.



It feels a touch intense, which it shouldn’t, so Zayn slinks his arm away. Flexes his fingers, murmurs, “C’mon, baby Jagger,” and contends with the urge to manually guide Harry back the way they’d came, “Busy day today. Lux’s to cuddle and shit to Vine, eh?” 



Harry nods and nudges in to brush the downy hairs on his arm against Zayn’s before he gets going. He flashes him a proper smile, too- a slice of teeth and his dimple, before asking, “Hey. So. Do you wanna share tonight? My hotel room?” 



“You know I like sleeping in me bunk, Haz-” Zayn begins.

Harry, though, has eyes the colour of the grass in the park where Zayn used to walk his staffie as a kid and two little dashes above his nose when he considers frowning. Not that he’d truly let it show if he was crushed by a refusal- which is half the problem, really. Brave Harry, shrugging as if it’s nothing even as he crumples. 



“I’ll make it worth your while?” He adds, already flushing, and Zayn finds himself nodding despite himself-



“Okay. Just this once then, baby Jagger.”

Harry dies on his feet in the hotel elevator, slumps to the floor as though he’s had cement siphoned into his belly and it’s set. His chin knocks forwards onto his chest and his lashes flicker around a beast of a yawn, his hand up to hide it from Zayn. He looks devastatingly gorgeous with it- another photograph. Something unfocused this time, with a smeared light leak painted over the paneled mahogany behind him. It’d be a little inauthentic, because there isn’t the hedonistic scent of booze and groupies cloying the air around him, but then Zayn’s not feeling particularly anarchistic, either. He just wants to get Harry tucked up into bed and nip out for a one last cigarette on the balcony.



He sort of wants to get Harry tucked up into bed, burn through a smoke and then slip out of the hotel entirely- back to a bus. He wont though, because he’s rather fond of sleeping Harry, who breathes baritone deep and twitches when he dreams.

Zayn can see it even before the elevator’s at their floor, Harry stripped of his expensive jeans and clinging vintage t-shirt; left in just his boxers with all of his sun kissed monkey limbs and their scribbles of ink sinking into clouds of bedding. Gaudy American flag still threaded through his hair if Zayn isn’t nimble enough to unknot it without waking him, his cheeks as red as it’s stripes and hot under the back of Zayn’s palm. Pouting, brows drawn in. Real enough that Zayn will be able to dance his fingers down from the hem of his boxer shorts to the dip of his knee, but not have to hold on too tightly. 



Rather more hopeful, Harry cranes his head upwards to fix Zayn with a silly-come-sly slant of a smirk. The same smirk he’d shot at him onstage- eyebrows towards his hairline and the relish of a suggestive sparkle in his eyes. He’d been down on his knees, perfectly placed beneath a tunnel of white light that cut planes of muscle out of smokey shadow. A boy band messiah, with his arms opening grandly as though he was making the effort to embrace each of the fans in the crowd beyond. You can have me like this later, he’d promised Zayn, hotel carpeting’s plush, I’ll be able to take my time, yeah?



“Could blow you now?” He offers with a drawl, scrubbing the heel of his palm over his jaw and making a move that’s possibly an attempt lift up from his bum, “Do you think they have like, cameras in ‘ere? ‘s why I told security we was fine, yeah?” 



Zayn scoots his foot forward to meet the toe of Harry’s boot with his own, a suggestion that he ought to stay sitting where he is, “Probably, so save it, sleepyhead.”



“What!” Harry exclaims, waving his had in the air for the second that he can keep it upright, “No no, nooo, I wanna. I said, remember, worth your while?”



Zayn is quick to reassure him- “I remember, baby Jagger, and I’ll still remember in the morning, promise. But straight to bed tonight. You’re knackered, I have noticed.”



He is knackered, and set bedtimes do inexplicably wonderful things to his insides, but Harry huffs up as though Zayn’s really ruffled his feathers. Pinches his bottom lip between two fingers, digging in sharply, and gets to wallowing. 



“I see,” Zayn says, referring to more than the LED number pad that flashes up blue at the floor of Harry’s suite. He knows where the night’s going soon as the obscene pink of Harry’s inner lip rolls out, what he had been angling for when he’d slipped into Zayn’s shadow that morning, why he’d uncapped his water bottle for him onstage, “Your floor kid, come on. Y’alright? Looking particularly pouty.”



Harry shrugs and purposefully drags his toes against the carpet as he steps out from the elevator, shuffling towards his own door with the slow, endearing grace of a petulant child. Too moody to pick up his feet, a symptom of being overtired.



“Harry, your words. Use ‘em. I don’t want to sleep next to your scowl all night long. Is there something you need me to do?”



Harry goes to shrug again- Zayn spots the beginnings of it flexing in the bones of his shoulders, showing shallowly through his t-shirt- but quickly thinks better of it, “‘m gross,” He grunts instead, coming to a stop outside of his suite door- having handed Zayn the keycard when he’d been collecting his things backstage.



“Gross?” Zayn presses, rooting out the card with one hand, resting the other at the small of Harry’s back.



“Sweaty and stuff, didn’t get to shower back at the arena-” Harry explains, turning to Zayn with a blink that softens his scowl.



“Ah. Well then, I understand. Would you like a bath before bed?”



The half-nod Harry gives makes Zayn smile just a little, furiously fond of every atom that comes together to make Harry who he is. He doesn’t leave it at that, though, “Words, again please? I know you’re tired, but they’re much appreciated.”



“Yeah- yeah. Bath then bed, Daddy."

The bath tub is a pristine porcelain pool, sat in the very center of a floor-to-ceiling imported Italian marble bathroom. Six foot something in diameter, easily big enough for the both of them, with a path of dotted lights set into it’s curved perimeter and a faucet with four spouts. A chandelier worthy of the Palace Of Versailles hovers above it and no less than four vases of bouquets perfume the room with Lily of the Valley. Luxury they barely blink at two years in- which is a shame, to be jaded enough that bathrooms worthy of Greek goddesses don’t deserve any overt reaction.



Neither of the boys gasp at it at all- not until they’re immersed in the water [which is almost scorching hot and pinches for the first few seconds]- Harry slotted between Zayn’s splayed legs, Zayn’s fingers linked across Harry’s butterfly, beneath the froth of bubbles. Their skin made silky by the water so that they slide easily against one another- Harry’s cheek slipping over Zayn’s shoulder until his nose meets his throat and his eyes fall closed. He utters only a pleased murmur and although he has an I love you on the tip of his tongue, Zayn’s thumbnail traces a heart and arrow into glisten of soap on water on Harry’s abdomen, instead.



To the right of the tub, dark against the uniform cream and pale gold of the room, their abandoned clothes lay in two pools. Ruined chelsea boots and heavyset combat boots pressed as close as the boys who own them. Zayn had undressed Harry without the other boy having to ask, taking great care in the way that he eased his jeans and socks from his pointed toes, kissing his forehead after the neck of his t-shirt had caught on it. He had even made sure to sit him on the rim of the bath before he’d gotten to yanking off his own shirt and pants; clumsy with them because he’d been unable to tear his eyes off of the weary slope of Harry’s shoulders and the fold of his arms in his lap. 
 


Mellow Harry, a ghost again, cloaked in steam from the bath water. 



“Should I wash you?” He whispers and Harry squirms to press a please, Daddy beside his ear, his breathing dropping as Zayn’s hand smooth over all that they can reach, not bothering with a flannel.

From his biceps to the tender, virginally white insides of his elbows; lengths of collarbone and birds above the peaks of his nipples, the subtle bow of his ribs below them. The toned landscape of his belly spanning towards the shivering horizon of the water, the stubble of his treasure trail and his hipbones beneath it’s surface, bracketing the sharp v that narrows towards his thighs. Zayn kneads the flesh there and they both moan. The water rolling around their bodies with their next exhales, lapping up at them, as soothing as a lullaby. 



When Zayn’s fingers dip into the backs of Harry’s knees they jut up into the crisp air- ripples breaking around them- and with his legs pulled in, Zayn can reach his long, long calves and the bitable tendons threaded through the back of each Harry’s skinny ankles. It’s quite different to foreplay- in that it is no means to an end. Zayn would be content to just keep touching quite innocently until the water cooled, long after all of the grime had been swilled away. Harry floats in and out of sleep and his mouth works lazily beneath Zayn’s earlobe in sporadic little almost kisses; nothing rushed other than an occasional wave of water that swallow their movements.

Zayn’s awed by all of it, but especially the ropes of muscle Harry has now that still seem ever so new and strange beneath his skin, as sweet as buds that have time to blossom still. He never quite expects them when they shift beneath his palms or show beneath Harry’s shirt and it’s even stranger to imagine what kind of man he’ll be. If he’ll simply wake up sturdier on his twentieth birthday, fitting differently inside of jeans and unbuttoned shirts and the classic rock fantasies Zayn spins out around him. If he’ll eventually let his curls grow wild and untamed again. 

If he’ll still come to him sometimes, with his lip tugged away from his pretty teeth and a need to call him Daddy while he makes sense of some secret struggle. Rarely voiced but easy to read, for Zayn at least.



Before they clamber out from the tub, Zayn eases Harry up until he’s sitting. Carefully, slowly, brushes the tail of his headband aside and leans in to kiss up each and every drop of water clinging to his back; lips parted, tongue tasting fresh, clean skin. Musky vanilla and the familiarity of boy that Zayn hums against, smiling when Harry hums, too. A gentle current of electricity that they both survive, even as it sinks into the water.



“Should I wash your hair baby Jagger, can you stay awake for five more minutes?” Zayn asks as he settles Harry’s waist into the crook of his arm and reaches across for the complimentary shampoo balanced on the bath’s edge. An organic brand, in Green Apple- not Harry’s usual, but hopefully gentle enough, “Yeah? I think this stuff smells really good.”



Harry just nods and Zayn doesn’t attempt to coax anymore words from him. Rather, he makes a great ceremony of being the one to untie the scarf. Two sets of fiddling fingers and a nail digging deep beneath the knot. With his eyes narrowed, he blows a delicate stream of hot air against the nape of Harry’s neck as he concentrates, catches the shiver down the pattern of Harry’s spine that follows and lets his lips kiss against his teeth when he finally manages to unfurl the red, white and blue fabric. He considers it once he’s pulled it free, draping it over his palm and thumbing over the wrinkles where it had been pulled tight.



He let’s it go into the water and the colours deepen as it swirls beneath it

.

Without it, Harry is different.



There isn’t a vessel for the water, so Zayn has to cup what he can up into his hands. Working quickly to scoop it from beside their bodies and dump it over Harry, who keeps his head down and eyes squeezed shut. Harry grasps idly at Zayn’s thigh and Zayn tips the bathwater from his hands, over and over until the top of his boy’s hair is as wet as the fraying split ends of his curls. 



“There we go,” He says finally- squirting ten pence worth of the shampoo into his palm and running his hands through Harry’s soaked hair in the scarf’s place, “You’re such a good, good boy. Less of a rock star without that thing, eh.” 



His touch works the day’s build up of tension out from Harry’s scalp, where the expectations of being an international idol had pulled far too insistently at his roots. The shampoo foams up in to peaks of glittering bubbles and as he massages through them, the pads of his fingers melting even the pulsing aches behind Harry’s scrunched up eyes, Harry’s murmurs tell Zayn that he’s adoring the attention; that he drifts somewhere new whenever Zayn has the patience to pause the turnings of his own world and redirect it to revolve around his. 



Sometimes, all that Harry needs is someone else to lather up his soap for him, and Zayn has some wise old owl way of knowing when that is.

As expected, Harry passes out as soon as his head hits the pillow. He snorts once, wrinkling his nose, and then he is gone- with apple-scented water dripping down around the shells of his ears. It’s the plastic apple of neon Hubba Bubba bubblegum, picked up with pocket money at the corner shop. Out of time enough to make Zayn’s shoulders shrug up and his tummy curl as he plants a tender kiss to Harry’s temple; to make him chew on his own lip and rub his thumb against the younger boy’s exposed palm after that, before he pads out on the balcony, his towel around him like a sarong, his cigarettes and Harry’s iphone, chosen over his, in hand. 



From the balcony spot that he chooses, Zayn can see just a slither of Harry in the bed. Whether it’s still his Harry, he isn’t so sure, having never asked if he’s Daddy even when Harry sleeps. He chooses to imagine that he might be, as he admires the the length of him stretched from beneath the mop of his Hubba Bubba hair, his body like the wispy lines of the sketch that comes before a portrait. An artist’s study; shoulders, back, bum, thighs, bent knees, the heel of one foot. The paint brushed over them would have to be burnished gold because of how Harry’s Summer tour tan is made richer by the one wall light a-glow in the room. 



If Zayn leans against the slatted wall of the balcony instead, to squint through a gap in the stone, he can see their tour busses. With the three of them in his eye line, shadow dark out in the parking lot, he can’t not think of his beloved bunk. For a brief moment, he considers hurrying off to it, but he doesn’t actually make a move. Doesn’t even twitch, but feels guilty enough for imagining the familiarity of his own blanket, the scent of his designer aftershave embedded into it’s threads.



In the morning, he’d be woken by Louis, loud enough to cause tinnitus but eager to cuddle, and Harry would be woken by his own goosebumps; his chin quilting and his vision blurring when he remembered to fish his American flag bandana out from their stagnant bath water. 



So, Zayn just taps a cigarette from his pack as intended. Sways away from the balcony wall and grins a melancholy grin at the lighter’s flame flashing up through the gloom; leaves it to lick greedily towards his thumb even after he’s sucked down his first drag of smoke. It’s the sort of thing that ought to be intense- the night, the burn, the unplaced nostalgia- and Zayn isn’t sure what to feel when it isn’t acute. When he’s quite sure there’s supposed to be an impact, an everything- but there is simply the hollow of smoke in, smoke out. The faint niggle of the cold beginning to nip at his air dried skin. 



He is sad he decides, with the reflection of the flame bright in his eyes, but not horrendously so. Not in any crashing, dramatic manner that can’t be soothed by the instantaneous hit of nicotine and counting backwards from ten. Twenty, perhaps. He begins counting and unwraps the headphone chord from around Harry's phone simultaneously. It’s a fair distraction- his cigarette balanced between pursed lips so that he has two free hands to tackle the puzzle of wires in the same way that he’d worked on Harry’s grimy headband. Fingers methodical, counting predictable, cloud of cigarette smoke clumsy and coarse enough to burn beneath his eyelashes.



Harry’s passcode as familiar to him as his own, Zayn taps through to his music files and the very last track the younger boy had been listening to: Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond, paused far enough in for Gilmour to have started singing. Zayn slips on the headphones and thumbs over the play button, but the song restarts the roaring in his brain that he’d managed to hush. A static wave of panic held in by too tight skin. 

A flashback to Harry’s fingers ringed around his wrist by the hotel bins, morning sun catching something like quicksilver in his green eyes and Zayn feeling overly aware of the rise and fall of his chest, trying to keep his nasty smoke from Harry’s asthmatic lungs.



So, the headphones come off again. They clatter to the ground and Zayn goes to light up a second cigarette, one to singe the ends of his nerves, numb them nicely. He’s interrupted by the rustling of thick hotel quilt, the messy lines that make up Harry sitting themselves up. From what Zayn can see, he’s not entirely awake, but clearly wanting something-



“Daddy?” He croaks, squinting towards the parted French doors, “You comin’ to bed?”

Once upon a time, Daddy had been chosen to be very deliberately dirty. A name reserved for sleazing up their quick fucks, to be snuck in when they were tipping across to the wrong side of vanilla.



Wink-quick, it would be exhaled shyly over the tip of Zayn’s fattened cock or mouthed against the juncture between his neck and shoulder. As sharp as the crack of a whip and with a taste like calfskin leather, it had felt as though it wasn’t quite allowed. A secret that they were both in on and yet were scared to divulge to one another at any audible volume. One that became a touch too taboo when Harry would repeat it with the stickiness of Zayn’s come smeared from his pout to his cheek; when the whisper of it as he popped off of him would make the strands of spit between his mouth and Zayn’s dick quiver. 



The first time Zayn had been confident enough to initiate it, he’d been mid-way through easing off his belt- already having demanded that Harry drop to his knees, an inch from the capped toes of his boots. The boy had been down there, his lashes spiked with wet, his teeth fastened to his lip in a weak attempt at quelling his whimpering, and Zayn hadn’t been able to help himself from shifting his stance into something uncharacteristically menacing. Boots further apart and set solidly in place. He’d flexed his knuckles around the leather length of the belt- turn around for Daddy, Harry, bum up. You wont backtalk me again, not after I’ve finished belting your arse, yeah? 



The belt, Zayn, had left Harry’s behind raw with angry welts- swollen slashes raised between the bottom of his back and the tops of his thighs. Painfully bold where his skin was usually creamy. It had been, at that point, the harshest punishment Zayn had ever dared to administer, but Harry had taken it with a steady-breathed patience Zayn had rather admired as he’d towered above the boy, belt snapping viciously between them. 



Harry had arched further into the burning licks of it, even. It wasn’t until afterwards that he had cried. Then, once he had started, he couldn’t quite stop. Low to the floor, with his head bowed in defeat and tears colouring blotchy tracks over his cheeks in the same red as the tiger stripes over his backside. The sobs, amplified by his dropped jaw and the ever so pink insides of his mouth, wrecking the work he’d done on his careful breathing, until Zayn crouched to his level, cuddled him to his chest and patiently rocked the stuttering of sobs away.



The first time Daddy had been spoken with entirely different connotations had been in the early hours after the Rolling Stones concert. An all too excitable Harry cross-legged atop his bed, his hair tugged into a wild halo and his long fingers bunching the hem of Zayn’s t-shirt, eyes looking like they had bulbs backlighting them. He’d been all rock ‘n’ roll with it, but it hadn’t been particularly appropriate at three am, not after over an hour of minute details.

“Can we please get to sleep now, Haz? I’m like, proper knackered.” 



“Jumping Jack Flash though, Zayn, it was on fire, I swear.”



“I’m sure it was but, mate- I’m gonna pass out. Sleep now, tell us the rest in the mornin'?"

“But Daddy-”



“Daddy will go back to the bus, Harry, if you do not get yourself under the covers and shut your eyes, yeah? I haven’t even got the energy to spank you right now. Good night, sweet dreams.”

When Harry next wakes, it is not to Zayn blowing smoke out on the balcony, but to his easy elegance curving across the mattress towards him.



Long toes brushing against his ankle, protective fingers splayed over his ribs; slats of bones beneath Zayn’s touch, a slat of sunshine beaming, bold and bright, through the gap in the curtains at the French doors. He’s royally beautiful, with his dark hair tousled and his eyelashes weighted with sleep, but that comes as no surprise to Harry. Zayn Malik, whatever his state, in either moonlight or morning light, is never anything but. More importantly to Harry, Zayn’s close enough for him to smell his stale night-before cigarettes. For him to be able to count all of the bristles of his stubble.



When Zayn wakes, Harry is still close but he’s half dressed, too- in a t-shirt, boxers and socks as old as his favourite boots. He is sat in a position which somehow makes him seem smaller and yet emphasises the lankiness of his limbs also, with legs tucked up to his chest, toes overlapping, chin resting atop roughed-up knees. Through a squint, he looks like a boy Zayn remembers as being huddled up beside a crackling bonfire, with shadows shaped by flames flitting across his cherubic face. One who had been engulfed by an oversized Hollister hoodie and the jittery strangeness of anticipated change. 



Harry’s fingers are curled around something Zayn can’t make out first- too distracted by the far-away gleam in his eyes, the downturn of his lips and his clean hair that has been left to fall as it pleases. His fingers glide through the nest of it when he finally pries himself up from his pillow, wanting to capture the corner of Harry’s concerned mouth in a kiss-



“Is that my Sharpie?” He says, before mornin’, or hey or fuck, you look sixteen and I don’t know how to deal with that, and Harry, rolling the pen in his grasp, nods, “Thought so. Been writing in your journal?” Harry shakes his head and Zayn sits up further, skates the side of his thumb over a childhood scar on Harry’s bare leg, “You feelin’ okay, baby Jagger? Anything you want to talk about?”



There is. It’s clear from the pull in of Harry’s brow line and the way his toes fidget inside the bobbled wool of his socks. All boy. Little boy; grazed knees, ruddy cheeks, errant curls, shy eyes- Zayn itemises it all before pressing his next kiss to the tip of Harry’s nose. He wrinkles like a rabbit but Zayn is a little crestfallen when he doesn’t quite smile with it. 



“Hm, need a fuck?” He tries casually, thumb nail at the scar now, digging into the knitted together flesh, newer than the skin around it but not new. 



Harry looks very much like he’s about to say yes, tongue swiping quickly across his bottom lip, eyes scanning Zayn’s nakedness, but instead he mumbles, “I’ve been feeling a bit lost within myself, here and there. It’s weird. Too much and too empty all at that same time. I don’t know what to do. It makes me feel not like me.”



“Ah,” Zayn nods knowingly, realising that their night together hadn’t fixed everything that made Harry shadow him- that he’d only soothed it enough for the other boy to simmer down and get himself a full night’s rest, “Is there something you need from me, then? What can I do? Why did you go rooting for my pen, babe?”



“You do loads for me, Zayn-”



“I do a bit, yeah but you do loads for me too, you know. You do loads for everyone.” Zayn counters, thinking of how Harry packs more good deeds into a day than most do a month, “I’m your Daddy, right? So just tell me what you need.”



Harry loosens at the reminder, at the okay Zayn gives for them to be that for a while longer. He is indulged and a honey drizzle warms through his chest, giving him the confidence to shift into sitting cross-legged. Less guarded. Zayn smiles broadly at the change in him and kisses Harry once more- on the very center of his lips this time. Harry is the one who lets it become a proper slotting together of their mouths and Zayn’s fingers delve into the thick of his hair again; mint meeting morning breath, though Harry doesn’t complain. 

It’s just Zayn that he needs. His amazing, unending patience.



“So, hmmm, the pen?” Post-kiss, Zayn holds Harry’s jaw in his hands and pets the striking blooms of blush over both of his cheeks. A happy heat born from being cosseted, “I know you, Haz. There was a plan.” 



There was. 

Harry nods, sits back an inch and catches the marker lid between his teeth to uncap it. Zayn swallows hard. Pink lemonade lips, pearly teeth, a fresh wave of determination brimming from Harry. He passes the open pen across to Zayn with a little dip down of his chin, his curls a brief sweep, before he proceeds to drag off his form fitting t-shirt. His hands tug from the back of it’s neck and his biceps flex, his tummy muscles undulating just before he’s free of it. The t-shirt is a wrung ball in his big hands and then a forgotten rag tossed to the floor so that Harry can catch Zayn’s wrist instead. The one belonging to the hand holding the Sharpie.



“Centre me,” He whispers, “Remind me that I’m yours. Please.”



Of course, a pen between his fingers is familiar enough to Zayn. As is Harry barely clothed before him, legs spread and inviting, but the coming together of the two is new. The younger boy like a canvas for him- though not as naked as something cream and rectangular from an art shop. Harry has lots of stories staining inches of him already and Zayn cocks his head to drink his favorites in, slicks his tongue against his teeth and moves in closer. The pen is poised in mid-air and then pressed to Harry’s taught belly, a dot of black seeping into the skin. Harry hisses and nods and Zayn begins.



He traces broad, bold strokes with the ink-wet felt nib. From Harry’s left side to his right, letters loop around his belly button until Zayn has written baby Jagger in his very best cursive. Harry melts deeper into the bed as they form and has to lift himself up on his elbows to peer down at the sweeping end result. Ten letters, ever so black and and tall. He smiles softly before his teeth take in his pink lemonade lip as they had the pen lid and Zayn exhales over the drying ink; lays his hand over Harry’s chest, fingers spread to steady him, and starts again: the four letters of Zayn for the jut of Harry’s hip.  



“My baby Jagger,” He says with an utmost sincerity emphasised by his adoring grin, “You wont forget now, right? If you need to remember?”



As he nods along, Harry looks quite dazed. His eyes misted and wonderingly wide, his shallow breathing showing in the quick flickers of his chest- “Y-yeah, Daddy,” He says, and Zayn kisses the y of Daddy away and drops the pen in order to palm at Harry’s cock through jersey cotton.



When he squeezes, he’s unsure if it’s his own blood pulsing beneath his touch or Harry’s- whose hips lift clear off of the bed. A little desperate, a little cheeky, definitely wanting the way Zayn knows how to tease him just so. Even through the barrier of his boxers, Zayn knows how to make his Harry see stars. Taunting, tightening touches along his shaft; the suggestion of his thumb where his his tip is trapped beneath his waistband, making the skin there sticky, staining the fabric with something like another ink splotch.  



Long artist’s fingers wrapped around the girth of the other boy, Zayn rocks even closer towards him. Intoxicatingly close, until all that Harry can see of him is the blurred brown of his skin and ribbons of black hair. Until all he can feel is the insistence of Zayn’s hand at his dick and the contrast of his tongue curling feather-light against his the shell of his ear- 

“Want me to go down on you, babe? Use your words, yeah? Like I told you last night?”



“Please, Daddy.”



“Yeah? Good boy. Best boy.”



Fired up with impatience, Zayn’s doesn’t quite manage to pull Harry’s boxers down before he’s sucking at him for the bitter taste of his arousal; mouthing at the swelling outline of him through his underwear. He leaves it damp whilst his fingers scrabble at the waistband and Harry whimpers impatient nonsense at the ceiling. Daddy, shit, Daddy, shit, becoming a pining chant until Zayn finally yanks down his boxers to lap hurriedly at his him with flat-tongued strokes, his fist tight at his base to keep Harry’s cock right where he wants it. Flesh to flesh, finally.



Harry’s Daddy, shit becomes oh, and then something close to a hurt grunt when Zayn’s cheeks go dramatically hollow around several inches of him. 



“Is that good, does Daddy blow you the best?” Zayn asks, kind enough to jack Harry off while he pauses to speak, “Is my mouth your favourite, kid?” In response, Harry’s breathing shivers and his fingers curl into fists atop the askew sheets. Zayn grins fondly, enjoys the sight of them, “Yeah? Good. I love you Harry, I fuckin’ love you.”
 


Admittedly, it’s not an uncomplicated love but it’s as true as it is intense. Ready and willing to spoil, listen and learn. A unique love well versed with the numerous boys in Harry’s one body, how they tick. What it is that they crave.With that in mind, Zayn snatches the pen again up before he sinks back down over Harry length. It’s clumsy, drawn blindly as Zayn swallows Harry almost to his balls, but he scrawls something over his boy’s inner thigh- an uneven heart that he breaks away from his cock to suck a bruise over. 



Harry comes with Zayn’s face still burrowed down between his parted thighs, teeth nipping into the marked heart, and Zayn’s hand milking his ejaculation from him. Zayn kisses a little of it up from Harry’s graffiti’d belly, but he doesn’t linger there long. He hitches himself up onto his knees instead. Straddling higher over Harry until he can nudge the tip of his own dark erection to the boys plump pout- 



“Daddy deserves a thank you then, doesn’t he, baby Jagger?”



Harry answers by opening his mouth wide and Zayn slides himself inside. Grabs at a good handful of Harry’s hair and growls at the eager heat around dick. He’d been anxious when they’d first began sneaking off to get off, about pushing the younger boy too far- but he knows better now. Rocks his hips after just a mere head tip of warning and marvels over how deftly Harry takes his cock. How his eyes beg for his throat to be thoroughly fucked; how they roll back when Zayn obliges with the first burst of thrusts. Harry sucks when he can, with concave cheeks and the sloppy slurp of his eager tongue, and simply takes it when he cannot.



He is as impressive beneath Zayn as he is onstage, if a little more debauched faunlet than rock star. Smiling a magenta smile when Zayn gives him a chance to breathe, tongue chasing what had been taken from him.



“You’re looking cheerier,” Zayn remarks gently, “Now keep that tongue out for me kid, yeah?”



He finishes himself off, his hand pumping with purpose. The slick sound of it loud in the room, with Harry barely breathing and not even a analogue clock to tick the seconds away. Not many go by, that Zayn can gage, between the order he extends to Harry and the bolt of his orgasm that jolts through him, sending ropes of his release to pool on the waiting tongue. Barely any more going by between that and Harry sucking his tongue back into his mouth with slutty relish, either.



He smirks again, eyelids slipping shut and head dropping back against the pillow. Blissed. Used. Fixed. 



Sort of sixteen.



“Thanks, daddy,” He whispers.



“‘s my job, baby Jagger,” Zayn replies.

By the time they’re in a fit state to head down and join the band for breakfast, Harry is very much nineteen years old again. All in black other than over his over-priced, over-worn boots; t-shirt sleeves cutting over muscle, pads of his fingers idly riffing on his thigh.

He is reassuringly real boy solid, with his hip hitched up against the wall and his favoured tortoiseshell Raybans swinging casually between two fingers. He possesses the amber aura of someone with places to go, legends to meet, and the easy going grin of a best friend ready for a cup of tea before the adventure that’ll take him there. You wouldn't know that he'd been catching come on this tongue not an hour earlier. Or that there were Sharpie words holding him together like glue beneath his torn up denim and half-buttoned plaid.

As if on cue, a shaft of mote-speckled sunlight falls right over Harry, peeping in from the opening in the curtains, and it deprives Zayn of a breath- just how gorgeous Harry is. Mick but softer, prettier. Like his amber aura cracked through the middle and something shone even brighter from inside of it. Yet another vintage photograph, something from the camera of a fan or a band mate- light leak bleeding over a quarter of it, fuzzy edges. To be dated and kept in a keepsakes box, or between the pages of a book, rather than framed.  

Zayn smiles as much as he can, but it doesn't quite curve all the way up to his eyes. It's like being out on the balcony in the dark again; warily waiting for ten tonnes to crash over his head and instead just itching terribly for nicotine. Avoiding actually figuring anything out. He has no idea what they have, is the thing, once he’s on the periphery of it. It only makes sense at it’s core, when they’re purging their guts of certain secrets.  

To scratch the itch, which is the that most he can do, he reaches for his cigarette carton from the bureau. Directly beside them is the room phone, but beside that is a neatly folded scarf. Not the American flag, but definitely belonging to Harry. Zayn traces the edging of it once he’s pocketed his smokes, gnawing at his lip, and then scoops it up. He dangles the length of it in front of the other boy when he turns back to him-

"Forget this, Haz?"

"Oh! I-" Harry drops his hip and closes the arms of his sunglasses with a quiet snap, inexplicably bumblingly shy, "I was gonna ask if you would-?"

"If I would?"

"Put it on for me? On me I mean, not yourself. Please?"

Harry sits himself on the edge of bed to make it easier for Zayn, keeping his head slightly bowed, with his eyes on his own pigeon toes, and the hem of Zayn’s t-shirt between the tips of his fingers. Above him, Zayn combs his quiff back from his forehead, taking care with each single strand, fussing over what he should flick in front of Harry’s ears and what he should tuck behind them. It’s not of huge importance, other than to waste time- to soak up two more minutes of the faded scent of apple Hubba Bubba and questionably deviant sex. While he does so, Zayn can feel himself swaying forward- back into the depths of them and it feels like an easing embrace.

He exhales flumes of hot air over Harry’s forehead as he fixes the scarf into place and Harry returns puffs of his own against Zayn’s front. Both hitch a little at the ends and both boys blink slowly, too.

Once the scarf’s tied, Zayn eases it until the knot sits at the nape of Harry’s neck. He wastes another second smoothing out it’s ripples and then takes a decisive step back, hands finding their way into his pockets immediately. All in black himself, and with the stoop of someone who’d been especially shy as a teenager, he resembles the sixties artist from his day dreams. Until he smiles again, his eyes finally shining as the tip of the scarf disappears between Harry’s lips.

“You almost have me convinced that you’re a rock star, baby Jagger,” He tells him and Harry beams, fabric falling away from his teeth-

“Love you, too.”