Holding Out For a Hero DVD commentary for @glitterandheatlightning:
“I do,” he says, finally. Zayn tilts his head, so Harry barrels on. “I do. I want to make you happy. That’s all I want.”
Zayn crosses his arms over his chest, like Laela had. “You’ve got an interesting way of doing that.”
“I know.” Harry pushes his hair back, shifts on his feet. This is hard. This is harder than an interview, because he knows—he can’t lie anymore. He can’t lie, or divert, or not say what he means. He needs Zayn to understand everything, like no one has for years. “I…” He has to figure out how to say this, how to phrase it right so Zayn understands.
Instead, Zayn sighs. “Look, I get it, okay? I don’t expect anything from you. I didn’t expect anything. You don’t have to feel bad about it. I just…needed space, and you were safe, so I left. I should have said something, so I’m sorry about that. But you didn’t need to come.”
“Why didn’t you expect anything?” Harry asks. He wishes he could demand it, could be angry—but what if Harry was reading this wrong? What if Zayn didn’t expect anything, if Zayn did think he was just a kid, who was hot enough to sleep with and to be fond of but not to commit to, to help raise his daughter and be in his life and come home to.
“Like you said, hero gets his reward.” It hits Harry like a knife, the bitterness in the words, the way it twists at Zayn’s face so Harry clenches his fists against the urge to rush over there and kiss Zayn’s cheeks until it goes away. “I knew it wasn’t any more than that, or I should have, and—”
“But it was!”
“And,” Zayn goes on, like he didn’t hear Harry, “And that’s on me, because I know, I’m just some guy who hits things for a living, and you’re—you’re famous and beautiful and lovely and nice and I—shouldn’t have thought—I couldn’t have imagined—it was stupid. And that’s on me.”
That’s it, they’re too far away, and Zayn is hurting and Harry can’t stand for that. He sets the flowers down on a table, then takes a few strides closer to Zayn. He’s still not touching Zayn, but he doesn’t want to do that before Zayn wants him to, before he’s explained. Zayn sways back, but he doesn’t retreat, and that’s something.
“It’s not. I was the one who said those things, but I was lying, Zayn.” Harry tries to put all the earnestness he’s ever known into the words, all the honesty he’s maybe never shown. “It meant—it meant everything to me. You’re everything. And you aren’t just some bloke who hits things,” Harry adds, and this he can be fiery about. “You’re who kept me safe and sane and you’re an amazing dad and an amazing person and you’re—” Harry gulps down air, but he has to say it, has to get it out there, even if Zayn doesn’t reciprocate. “And I’m so in love with you.
This is one of my favorite sort of scenes to write--the scene at the end where we finally get to see what’s going on in the non-POV character’s head. There are hints of it, but this is the first time Zayn gets a chance to articulate all the shit he’s been going through while we’ve been with Harry.
But to begin, it starts with Harry finally saying everything--and saying what he means. he’d said at the beginning that he’s the openest of books written in invisible ink, but this is him writing in real ink--him finally not performing, not playing an angle with what he’s saying. It’s not an interview, like he thinks of so many other conversations as. It’s just him laying everything on the line, in a way that’s not natural for him.
But before he can, of course, Zayn jumps in, and that’s where we see him--see all his insecurities, see how he’s been falling into Harry but known he’d never have a chance. See how Harry unintentionally played into all of that when he’d said what he had before. He’s not even angry, of course--he’s just resigned, because he’d never really expected anything different. Harry hadn’t noticed any of that throughout the fic, because he sees what he wants to see, and he’d assumed Zayn had kept his distance because Harry wasn’t enough, but now suddenly he’s seeing the other side that he’d never conceived of.
And then--then Harry has to really stop lying. Has to say the things he’d never said before, but commitment is scary, because this is him taking on responsibility in a way he never had before, in a way he’s still afraid he won’t be able to. But it’s Zayn’s own self-deprecation that drives him there: he loves Zayn so much and he can’t stand the idea that Zayn thinks so little of himself. But he’s not pushing really, and that’s important--he’s not encroaching on Zayn’s space, not seducing him, like he had before, more or less. He’s giving Zayn space and distance to hear him, to make his decision clear-headed. And that terrifies Harry, because it’s not what he does, he doesn’t live in a world where things are that simple. but Zayn does, and he needs to as well, for this moment. At least once. At least long enough to say what he needs to say, to take the risk he’s never dared to before. To be brave, because in so many ways this fic is about Harry learning to be brave--and that means more than not cowering in the face of threats.