What Zayn expected to be just non-stop blabbering from Harry, turned out to be the opposite. Everything Harry wanted to share had real meaning behind it. Also, the list of things that made him happy wasn't as long as he said it would be either. Apparently that was just a joke. So Zayn knew he was going to have to do better about learning how to distinguish between when Harry was joking and when he was serious.

Of all the things Harry mentioned, Sunflowers really caught Zayn's attention. Why? It was "quite simple", Harry had told him. He liked to pluck the petals and feel the stem between his fingers.

If anybody else had said something like that to him, Zayn likely would have found it weird. He would've wondered why anyone would choose to destroy a flower rather than observe the beauty if it. But knowing that Harry was blind, allowed him to see it from a new perspective. Harry wasn't destroying a flower's beauty. He was just appreciating it in a different way.

For some reason, Zayn wanted to contribute to that. He wanted to go out and buy one or pick one to give to him. But at the present moment, sunflowers weren't blooming yet. Those wouldn't be available until summer and fall. So for the time being, he jotted that down in the little notepad Harry gave him. He couldn't wait to find out what Harry's reaction would be.

"Okay, Zayn. I'm done."

Zayn faced the open front door and was a little apprehensive about the smiling man in front of him. "Why do I feel like you're too happy? Are you up to something?"

"I'm not."

"Uh huh. Then why did I have to come outside while you hid the cigarettes?"

"Because if you didn't, it would have been easier for you to hear what room I went in and you'd just start there. This way, you have no choice but to guess which room you think they're in and where. Which means if you don't find it today, you'll have to go back out there when I get you your cigarettes for the week."

"Harry. For the last time, I'm no cheater."

"Great. So that means it's easier to remain that way as long as there is no opportunity to become one."

Well, that much was true. Zayn couldn't argue his reasoning there. "So..."

"So come on back in and let's try to do this before Mindy gets here. She'll be here soon."

Zayn leisurely walked in past him. "I'm in."

Harry locked the door. "Put your blindfold on."

He pulled it down over his eyes. "Done."

"Now do your thing."

"Do my thing?"

"Yes. Go in search of what you're looking for."

Zayn lifted his blindfold and looked at Harry. "What? I thought you were going to guide me."

"Huh?

"You weren't going to guide me around?"

"That's what you wanted?"

"Not that I wanted it. I just thought you were going to do that since I don't know my way around your house that well. I might run into a wall or knock something over and break it."

Harry was thinking. "So you want me to show you to where you want to go?"

He smiled a victorious smile. "Yes, please."

Harry felt for him and put an arm around his waist as he stood beside him. "Where do you want to start?"

"How about your candle room?"

"Okay. But here's a lesson you should learn for future purposes. From the front door to the end of the hallway and the back door is sixteen small steps. Walk with me and count out loud."

Zayn did just so, allowing Harry to be his guide.

"See?"

Zayn smiled. What an ironic word for two blinded people right now. "Yeah."

"Alright. Now I'm gonna let go and you face left and keep walking and you're in the room."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"Should I be concerned about knocking stuff over in here?"

"Nope. Just take your time and feel around before you go walking."

Zayn frowned. Maybe Harry misunderstood that he wanted him to guide him around the room too. But he wasn't about to ask him to do that. That would be embarrassing. So he walked in the room and used his hands to feel around by himself.

Picturing what the room looked like when Harry gave him a tour, he remembered the wall of shelves on the left. That's where Harry kept all his candles. Where would Harry hide a pack of cigarettes? It had to be some place he could reach if he was going to be blindfolded or else he couldn't see how to reach them. And he didn't see Harry as the type to deceive him either. So he figured he would start with all the shelves he felt candles on.

It took him a while to fiddle around because he was careful not to knock a candle onto the ground as he felt behind them and on top of them. But he had no luck. He did not feel a pack of cigarettes there. He moved on to the other parts of the room and felt around. He knew he was touching a desk and could feel books and the base of a lamp, but there weren't any small boxes the size of a cigarette carton. There wasn't even anything that resembled it in touch.

He had barely been doing this for about ten minutes and had already become frustrated. Why did he ever agree to this? But then as he began to think more on it, he realized Harry would not have made this sort of deal with him if he thought it would be easy. Because how else could he learn to stop smoking? So this level of difficulty made sense.

After checking the desk drawers with no discovery, he ended up going into a closet but he was so concerned about messing things up that he didn't search too far inside. Plus, he figured that if Harry couldn't see, then he wouldn't know to hide the pack of cigarettes so deeply anyway. Unless he had help from Mindy, then yes, there was the possibility. So maybe Zayn should try to search further. After thinking for a while though, Zayn came to the conclusion that he was too lazy to dig through anyone else's things right now. So he decided to give up.

"Alright. I'm done for the day."

Harry was sitting on the couch in the living room, sipping from a mug when he returned. "What?"

"I'm done."

"Already?"

"Yep."

"Why? Did you find anything?"

"No."

"So why'd you give up so soon?"

Even though there was plenty of space in the living room, Zayn still chose his place as the space on the couch right next to Harry. "Because even though this is a fun idea, it's still really challenging and I don't have the patience to spend a long time depriving myself of something that isn't necessary to deprive myself of."

"What if you didn't have a choice? What if you were blind like me? You'd have to make it work then."

"But let's be real, I could never make it work the way you do. You use your situation to bring a whole new perspective to life. On the other hand, I'm just constantly in everyone else's way."

Harry faced him and laughed and that should've been offensive, but Zayn found it so alluring that he didn't disagree with him. "So you agree that I'm in your way, I see."

"Stop. I didn't say that. I just think you're a silly twenty four year old. That's all."

Zayn leaned upward and put his elbows on his knees. For him, the idea that Harry couldn't see the way he was looking at him was most comforting. Because he knew it would probably be weird for his next door neighbor to look at him in a way that seemed as if he was the most oddly perfect person he'd ever seen.

"I like how you hide how you really feel from me. Really makes me feel right at home." He said sarcastically although this type of sarcasm was easily detected as playful.

Harry played along well. "You do? Well I'm glad. I do try really hard."

Zayn just softly elbowed Harry in the side so as to acknowledge him without words but he did not expect Harry to respond by doing the same to him. And he certainly didn't expect the soft grin he gave him either. Zayn really wished he wasn't blind and that his eyes weren't covered by those blue sunglasses right now. Because if all he had to go by was his body language, then it surely seemed as if Harry might just be matching his new feelings of interest. And unmistakenly so.

➡➡➡

"That is how you complete a successful oil change. What do you think about that?"

Zayn groaned. "I thought I didn't have to do the dirty work. I'm getting paid to work the counter, aren't I?"

"Son, this is something for life. It's something that's great to know how to do. What are you going to do when I'm no longer around and you need an oil change? That's thirty dollars you can save and put elsewhere. And if you and your wife each have a car, sixty dollars."

"Who says I'm getting married?"

Yaser wiped his hands with a torn rag. "It's still something that's good to know. Married or not. But perhaps that temporary girlfriend you're talking about getting may want that some day."

Zayn chuckled. "Okay, I know what you're doing. I'm not going to fall into that trap."

"What am I doing?"

"You're going to go on about how I should finish what I've started and marry her. I know you."

"Then you know that I'm right as well."

"But maybe I want to do things differently."

"Doing things differently almost got you in trouble in the first place. You almost brought a child into this world with the wrong person. Find a life partner and you won't have to worry about that. If she really cares about you, she'll want to be with you and you don't have to find out later that she tricked you."

Zayn cringed as his father put his tools in the proper place. "Don't. Please don't."

"If it hurts for you to talk about it, then that'll help you to remember to avoid it happening again. That's the way I see it."

"You know..." Zayn wiped his hands on his mechanic suit. "I bet if I suddenly told you I was like... into my own sex, we'd never have these types of conversations." He said.

Yaser stopped putting up the tools and looked at him in shock. But he didn't say anything.

Zayn folded his arms. "Obviously, I'm not into it. I'm just saying I know we wouldn't. That's all."

Yaser still had that look of suspicion, like he was reading Zayn for guilt.

"I'm not." Zayn repeated. "It was only an example."

"Boys, lunch is heated up. Put down your tools, wash your hands and come eat."

The door to the waiting room was open and Zayn's mother was there smiling at them.

"Alright, Patricia. We'll be there in a minute." Yaser looked back at Zayn. "I'll finish putting all the tools away and give the keys to the customer. You can change back into your other clothes and don't forget to flip the sign that says we're on lunch break."

"Yes sir."

Yaser watched his son go inside with his mother and returned to putting the tools away. He wondered where a thought like that could have come from. Zayn's mind was much too busy these days. It was always as if he was trying to figure something out. He really worried for him. Zayn was twenty four and still wasn't sure about where he was going with his life. But he was hoping that he could figure it out soon. Because he knew that in doing so, it would mean that Zayn also finally found himself.

* * *

"Hello?"

Zayn pulled his feet underneath him in the bed. "Hey, Harry."

"Hey, Zayn. Are you ready?"

"Yeah. I am. Are you?"

"I think so. It was interesting of you to suggest doing this over the phone this time. Why is that?"

There were a couple different reasons if he was being honest. First, today's colors were definitely not something he wanted to be face to face with Harry for when they were discussing them. And secondly, it might have had something to do with a sudden and very strange urge to have Harry's voice directly in his ear again but that was neither here nor there.

"I just thought it'd be good to try something different. You're not offended by that, are you?"

He could hear Harry smiling in the phone as he responded. "No. I love it. Different is good."

"Good. So I wrote down the meaning to the colors and I'm ready to share with you. Just... I hope it doesn't make you uncomfortable."

"Why would it do that?"

"I don't know. Just cause... It could get weird. That's all."

It took a few seconds for Harry to finally answer. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say to that. But I guess I'll find out once we go over this. I'm ready."

Zayn cleared his throat and picked up the paper he'd jotted down the information on. "So uh... There's Gold."

"Gold."

"Yes. Gold is wisdom and wealth and it often symbolizes high quality. I'm sure you've heard of the expression 'like fine gold'."

"I heard it in an audio book once."

"So that just means it's close to pure. Gold is most expensive when pure. So if something is like fine gold, that means it's so high in quality that it doesn't get much better than it is. And then of course most of us like to associate it with luxury and expensive jewelry, which would be nice to have."

Harry hummed. "You know something... I never wanted to be rich."

"You didn't?"

"Nope. I never had a goal of wanting to make a lot of money. That's not something Grandma really talked about. She just wanted me to learn to survive and take care of myself. And that's all I wanted to do too."

"That's a first. I've never met anyone who never wanted to make a lot of money. You're so different."

"Yeah. So I take it you did want to make a lot then?"

"Of course. And I still do. It's probably not a reality anymore but it doesn't hurt to dream either."

"No. Definitely not. It never hurts to dream. I dream all the time."

Zayn lay back in the bed and held the paper up over his face. "So this next one is pretty intense. Caught me off guard, really."

"Okay."

"This is Red Orange."

When Zayn took too long to go further, Harry spoke up. "And what does it say?"

"It says it corresponds to desire... Um... Just all that type of stuff."

"Is that all it says?"

"Um... no?"

"Well, read all of it. I want to know about all of it."

At first, Zayn was going to pick and choose from what he wrote down. But he knew that if he wasn't completely honest, he wouldn't be fulfilling his promise. Doing so would not only disappoint Harry, it would leave him with a guilty conscience. So he exhaled slowly. "Okay. It says that Red Orange is... it's 'sexual passion, pleasure, domination, aggression and a thirst for action'. And that's it. So we can do your little Q and A thing you like to do now."

His eagerness to move on made Harry laugh into the phone. "That's it?"

"Yeah. That's all."

"No, I mean that's what you were afraid to talk about? What's wrong with either of those things that you read?"

Zayn hadn't realized how sweaty his hands were until he rubbed his face in frustration. "Nothing is wrong with them..."

"Then why are you nervous?"

"Who says I'm nervous?"

"The shakiness of your voice does. The hesitation to even talk about it does."

Zayn turned over on his side. "You're not uncomfortable?"

"Nope. I'm quite comfortable."

Those four words were scary coming from him and they did not help Zayn relax at all. He was hoping Harry would have wanted to skip over the conversation. "Oh."

"But I don't understand. Why are you so uncomfortable with it? Is there something I don't know?"

Yes. There was. He couldn't tell Harry, but it stemmed from the day Louis made that bondage joke about his blindfold a few weeks ago. He shot that idea down very quickly but the way he was aroused by Harry's gentle hand when it touched down his arm and then even Harry's voice in his ear that night, it kind of made that not so much just a joke anymore. Now it had settled in the back of his mind as a nagging thought. There was a measure of desire for it again and he couldn't deny that words like pleasure and domination really fit that whole bondage scenario superbly. Clearly his nervousness came from his own guilt. And his own guilt came from the fact that in its own uncanny way, some sort of sexual arousal did come from that, even if it wasn't felt in his underwear at the time.

"Well, it is just a color. I shouldn't even be worried about it." He finally said.

"Yeah. I think we're both mature enough to talk about sex and not cringe."

True, they were mature enough to talk about sex in general. But how would Harry feel about these specific thoughts? Because there was the possibility that what occupied his mind could run Harry away. And if Zayn were in his shoes and he knew what he was thinking, he'd definitely be trying to get away. Those types of thoughts made Zayn feel guilty so he took the phone from his ear and put it on speaker phone. Having Harry in his ear at the moment only increased that feeling. Poor Harry didn't even know what was happening.

"So um, what are you doing?" Harry questioned.

"Just lying in bed. You?"

"Yeah, me too."

"Are you bored?"

"Not anymore."

Zayn smiled. His choice of words made it seem as though he might have been bored before Zayn called him. That meant that Harry found him entertaining. Or if not entertaining, at least he was decent enough to be considered capable of keeping him occupied. He'll take it.

"So I just saved your evening then?" He asked curiously.

"Maybe."

"Just maybe?"

"Maybe." He repeated. "You're cute but I'm not about to feed your ego. That wouldn't make you attractive anymore."

Zayn was about to laugh but he stopped himself fast. Attractive? That, of course, could mean so much more. Since Harry was blind, he probably was not implying anything more than just that Zayn's personality was attractive. But was that usually accompanied with being called cute too? He didn't think so.

Then again, he probably was thinking too much on this. This wasn't the first time Harry called him cute so perhaps that was just something Harry liked to say. And why was he worried anyway? He was attracted to women. Sure, that realization about what Harry's voice and hands did to him was a surprise. But that was it. That wasn't real. Was it?

"You're really quiet. I must already be feeding it then, huh?"

Zayn came to his senses and he did finally let out that laugh. "Nah, I was just thinking."

"About me?"

"I can't say. I'm afraid I'll feed your ego."

"You think you're clever by using my own words against me but that just sounds like a yes to me."

"Then by that reasoning, my earlier question has just been answered. I did save your evening."

"Wow." Harry said as he laughed quietly into the phone and lowered his voice. "You are so not modest."

For some reason, that low tone had sent small shivers through Zayn's body. He turned over on his back and lay against the pillow with a smile. "So... does that mean I'm not attractive to you anymore?"

"Duh, you're so unattractive right now, it's not even funny."

Zayn knew he didn't mean it but he'd come to enjoy Harry's playful banter. "That's too bad. I really thought I had something going here."

"Shut up. You still do."

However, the way Harry had said that really caught his attention and he couldn't help but let his imagination run wild about what his facial expression might have looked like as he said it. There could have been many different expressions but he could only see dimpled cheeks as a product of a fond smile. And regardless of if it was strange or not, a large part of him was hoping that he wasn't just imagining it but that it was something that had really occurred.