Okay so I did a thing. @passivenovember made an excellent post on twitter about kindergarten teacher!Steve and I indulged.
• • • • •
The first day of school should have been the red flag. Day One of kindergarten was technically a half-day, because the little ones might find their first day of school to be overwhelming. It was a fifty-fifty chance that a student had done preschool before kindergarten, so the day was only from 8am to noon.
Steve had been doing this job for long enough that he had developed a good eye for which kids would be problematic. It was never indicated by the children, themselves.
It was the parents.
The first day of school was an unofficial parent-teacher conference, with Steve meeting every parent and introducing himself and his classroom to them. Plenty of parents were sweet as could be and profusely grateful, because they had been waiting four or five years for this day: the day they’d finally get to have more hours to themselves. Hours for self-care. Hours at their workplace to make better money. An overall passing of the baton to someone else to raise their kid.
As for the kids themselves, they were easy to read in regards to who’d been in daycare or not. They were either very social or immediately minded their own business. The kids who looked around like they were lost were where he devoted the most of his time on the first day.
Lila Hargrove was one of the latter. She walked in, holding her dad’s hand next to her head while the other fiddled close to her mouth. She didn’t suck her thumb, but she seemed to be thinking about it.
Steve stood up from where he crouched next to a table, getting the others settled and extended a hand. “Good morning! I’m Steve Harrington.”
The father was able to shake his hand since he carried his daughter’s purple backpack on one shoulder. “Billy Hargrove. This is my cupcake, Lila."
Hearing her name, her head jerked up, but Steve smoothly knelt on one knee for her level. “Hi, Lila. I’m Mr. Steve. What’s your favorite thing to do?”
He liked giving the kids options on the first day. Coloring? Reading? Blocks? Anything to help them establish a comfort level with the room.
Lila hesitated for a long moment, long enough for Steve to almost stand back up to address her father, but she murmured, “I don’t know.”
“That’s okay,” he reassured. There was nothing wrong with being shy or anxious. Usually mothers or both parents brought their kids in for the big day. A dad on his own…Hargrove was hardly the first, but they were always a bit special. “I made a present for everyone on their first day. Do you and your daddy want to open it together?”
She sure did, looking up at her father with the most hopeful expression, it made Steve’s heart pinch. Billy smiled down at her but prompted, “I see name plates.”
Steve guided them through the room with a brief glance at his other students to make sure they were behaving and occupied. He’d gathered them in one spot, but for lessons, they’d sit in their designated seating arrangement. Pulling out Lila’s chair for her, he explained, “I folded construction paper for everyone’s name plate. One of your first projects, Lila, will be decorating yours. After that, I’ll have them laminated so you can collect stickers on it throughout the year.”
Lila’s name stood on a table in the corner of the room. The nook was framed by cubic shelves and hooks mounted on the walls, which also had names over them: less glamorous marker written on masking tape. Colorful backpacks featuring action figures already hung from some of the hooks. Hargrove took his daughter’s backpack off and set it on her table. “Everything on the school supply list is in here.”
“Great!” Steve said as he took a box bound up with ribbon from one of the shelves. “I try to supply some of the stuff myself, but the school always gives out the same list. Do you want to do the honors?”
Again, Lila looked to her father. Disciplined, Steve wondered in the back of his mind, but the alert didn’t go off in his head. Far from it, he smiled as Hargrove knelt beside her chair and pinched one end of the ribbon bow.
“One? Two…” he counted, and the smile that his daughter blossomed with gave Steve a wave of relief; both in the comfort she had with her father as well as a knowledge of numbers. She took the other ribbon tail and they pulled on three. Lila whipped off the box lid to reveal a small stuffed lion, a Lego block the size of her hand, and a box of glitter crayons.
Hargrove pulled out the soft lion and poised it on the table that she’d be sharing with three other students. “Well, look at him. Does he have a name?”
Steve opened his mouth to prompt Lila to name him, but she piped, “Panthera leo! Like daddy!”
Steve’s mouth froze open around a, “Huh?”
Hargrove grinned as his daughter shoved her hand into his dark blond hair, and then ruffled the lion’s mane. Then he looked up at Steve. “The lion was a good choice. She loves animals right now. She only knows like six, but that includes their Latin name.”
“I…’ve never met a kid who knew Latin,” Steve recovered. “I have a confession, though. The lion and crayons are for you, Lila, but the block is for me. I like for all my kids to write their names on a block so I can build something with them at the end of the year.”
Hargrove’s eyes immediately swept up to the Lego sculptures on top of the arts and crafts cabinets. A small smile ghosted over his face, but he didn’t point them out to his daughter. “Lila can write most of her name but struggles a little with round letters.”
“That’s okay. We do a lot of practice with writing. The block is a promise: I’ll keep it safe for you, and you’ll be able to write your name and help me build something in the spring. How’s that sound?”
Whether or not parents understood the promise didn’t really matter. It was always worth it by the end of the year to remind the kids of their first presents, and seeing their excitement at such a long awaited activity.
Hargrove got it, though. “You play the long game.”
Steve looked up and smiled, only to face the full brunt of Billy Hargrove’s gaze. Attractive was an understatement. Water blue eyes pinned Steve in place, a chiseled jaw but full cheeks giving the man a stop-traffic appeal as well as an approachable softness. His short hair was long enough to imply that he was due for a haircut or in between styles; the broken and wonky curls had been haphazardly shoved to one side of his head. The man wore an ironed button-up, but his shoes gave him away: dirty black Converse with ombré pink and purple shoelaces.
Steve responded on autopilot. “Delayed gratification can be a doozy. Might as well make it fun.”
Hargrove didn’t really answer. He just sort of nodded and returned his attention to his daughter.
Lila Hargrove was a good girl. She loved animals, showed an early propensity for math, and carried the collective sweetness, observation, and behavior skills that teachers longed for.
Billy Hargrove was a red flag. He exhibited over-protective, analytical habits alongside a bizarre talent for filling every minute of Steve’s time when he wasn’t directly managing the kids or other parents coming and going.
Going, being the key word.
Hargrove stayed at the school all the way until noon. Then he donned the purple backpack and carried his daughter out, encouraging her tiny fists into the air for completing her first day.
“Donalds! M’Donalds!” she chanted.
Some time later, as Steve cleaned his classroom, vacuuming the reading time rugs, disinfecting each table, and tagging each Lego block with another masking tape label—so nobody had a crisis in May like, “But my block was Blue in August! Why’s it yellow now?”—a knock sounded on his doorframe.
Steve looked up, prompting Billy Hargrove to stroll in with a familiar paper bag. “Delivery for Mr. Steve. One Oreo McFlurry with a medium fry.”
Steve leaned back in his seat. He’d been standing for most of the morning, he couldn’t be bothered anymore. “Uh, thanks. You didn’t have to do that.”
“Are you lactose intolerant?”
“No?”
“Then it’s my pleasure,” he said with finality, giving the bag a shove to be a few inches closer to Steve. With the smell permeating the room, he couldn’t say no.
He asked while unpacking the bag, “Where’s Lila?”
“Her dance class. My P.A.’s got her while I get some work done. I just wanted to say thanks for catering today for the kids.”
Steve used the time to bite through four fries at once while he formulated an answer. This guy’s got a personal assistant?
“I’m happy to. Their first day in here is kind of the first day of the rest of their lives. It’s my job to help them feel safe and confident in here.”
A smile twitched on Hargrove’s face. “You’re playing nice, but I did notice the other parents leaving their kids in your hands.”
Steve allowed himself a harmless glare. “I can deal with a helicopter dad for a few hours. But after today, it won’t be up to me.”
The man held up a hand as if to gently move that aside. “I won’t need the principal escorting me out. I’m too busy to be here all day, anyhow. I just needed the full measure of the person who would be here with my girl.”
Steve looked up with the massive McFlurry spoon in his mouth. “Anph?”
Billy’s stoic bravado visibly dented as a laugh blurt out of him. “And you’re all right. But if my kid comes home crying, you might not be.”
Steve let exactly what he thought about being threatened ripple under his features as they steeled into what his best friend called, “Customer Service Harrington.”
And yet…he felt pinned in place again...because Billy’s eyes flashed, his expression opening as if he were intrigued—excited—by pissing Steve off. The spark settled as quickly as it manifested, making Steve wonder if he’d imagined it.
“The kids go home everyday with a progress folder. You’ll have my notes on the hottest kindergarten gossip.”
Billy laughed breathily, but it wasn’t as real as the rest of his emotive gestures. He lightly slapped the surface of the desk and dragged his hand away as he pivoted toward the door. “I’m looking forward to it, Harrington.”
