zarry! au: harry is a preschool teacher & zayns a hot dad. that's all i need
1) Harry never really set out to be a preschool teacher. He’s still not entirely sure if that’s where he’s going to be forever–he likes kids, and he especially likes kids at this age, but sometimes he wonders if this is all there is to life and if he doesn’t have more to do. But he’s comfortable at his preschool, and he has been for years, and it’s all settled and easy, basically the same every year except for new kids.
2) Zayn is not the first hot parent Harry’s ever met. He’s maybe the hottest of the hot parents, but he’s met other hot parents before. Maybe none of the other hot parents had cheekbones quite that sharp, or eyelashes quite that long, or wore leather jackets like they were designed perfectly for him, but he’s become inured, over the years. He’s laughed at other teachers who got crushes on parents, lectured them about how risky it is. It is risky. He knows it is. It’s easy for it to get complicated. But it’s hard to remember that when Zayn’s picking up his son and listening intently to the boy’s retelling of the day and throws a smile over his shoulder to Harry.
3) It’s not that Harry flirts. He wouldn’t do that, because he is a professional. Or well, he doesn’t flirt more than he flirts with all the parents, because it tends ot make harried moms and dads smile. But he doesn’t even know if Zayn is single, so he is not flirting, as he tells Niall, who works with him. It’s a lie of course, but if he says it enough it might be true. It’s always Zayn who picks up his son, anyway, but as he has very sneakily established that Zayn works from home, that could just be convenience. Zayn wears too many rings for that to help. Zayn might be flirting back, when they chat at pick up, but Harry can’t quite tell how serious he is about it.
4) It’s not why he has the kids draw pictures of their families, but it is why he leans over Zayn’s son’s drawing for a moment more. Just to see who’s in the picture. He sees a man with dark hair and some squiggles on his arms– “Daddy’s tattoos,” Harry’s informed, and doesn’t swoon at all at the knowledge that there are so many of them–and what looks like three dogs, and that’s it. “That’s your family?” Harry asks, and the boys nods. Which doesn’t give Harry the full picture, but it does seem to imply singleness. Which implies that flirting isn’t really that risky.
5) He runs into Zayn and his son at a pizza place, a few weeks later. It’s total coincidence (Or maybe fate, he’ll later insist), but definitely not something he planned. Just like he didn’t plan the excited, “Mr. Harry!” or getting called over and somehow they’re all eating together and Zayn is grinning at him as he wipes sauce off his son’s face and beaming at his child and Harry is almost certain he watches when Harry licks the excess sauce off his lips. It’s at the end of that night, when the adults have been abandoned in favor of riding the mechanical horse at the entrance, that Harry decides fuck it, he’s doing it. If it gets weird it gets weird. He’s been wanting something new to happen. This is certainly it. So he asks Zayn on a date, and Zayn bites his lip and grins and tells him, “I was wondering when you’d make a move.”
6) All the other teachers laugh at him and lecture him in revenge. But Harry gets to keep Zayn and his son long past the year he’d been his teacher, so really, he thinks he can stand a bit of teasing.
