it’s a few weeks after they’ve just started speaking again, their exchanges still tentative and unsure, when harry proposes it..
“hey,” he says, and his voice is as mischievous as the smile on his face, his eyes glassy from the bottle of wine they’d steadily been polishing off during the night. “wanna go to jamaica?”
and the thing is, (and he’d be hard-pressed to admit it), zayn isn’t in the habit of saying no to harry. had found it hard to, even, ever since harry had darted up to him all those years ago, wild curls flopping around, signature dimples etched on the roundness of his cheeks.
so zayn goes.
—
jamaica is hot; the sun scorching enough that heat waves seem to emanate from the ground, distorting everything in view. zayn shies away from it, but for some reason, harry seems to thrive on it, jumping into crystal blue waters and drinking and laughing with his band. it’s a bit strange, zayn thinks, that harry was born during the coldest months of the year and yet he seamlessly adapts to the summer, to the beach and the waves and the heat.
but then again, it’s harry. harry was always a bit strange.
he’s always writing too, verses in the studio, melodies scratched in his beaten-down leather notebook. lines scribbled on the napkins from the restaurant they went out to on dinner, words mouthed against the dip of zayn’s hip, his mouth pressed against zayn’s skin, sinful and dirty. sonatinas composed on the hollows of zayn’s spine. g-chord shaped bruises blooming on his hips.
(and always, always–harry’s lyrics whispered into his mouth, wet and filthy and good. really good.)
in total, harry wrote about a hundred songs while in jamaica. half of them for the album. and half of them only for zayn to hear, words murmured against lips, against skin; lyrics sighed in the dead of night with zayn smoking and harry fast asleep in the bed.
zayn thinks he likes those last ones the most; harry just sounds beautiful dreaming.
as for zayn, he doesn’t end up writing much; he ends up having more pressing matters to attend to.
(but. one morning, right before daybreak. zayn had stayed up way too late again, smoking and thinking, and harry had shifted on the bed, all mussed-up hair and milky skin. “zayn,” he’d whispered, clear as a bell, and zayn looked at him, at all the bruises shaped like zayn’s fingers on his body, thought, i wanna see the sunrise, and your sins, just me and you.)