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It was a fairly nice day in Doncaster. It was seventy-one degrees and mostly sunny, according to the weather forecast that Louis had playing in the background. He was making cupcakes for his sisters, considering the fact that it was almost Easter and his parents still weren’t home. His mom and dad worked a lot, leaving Louis, at twenty-three, to look after his four year old twin sisters. He didn’t mind very much though. He was never very close to his parents, and with Daisy and Phoebe being so young, they had never gotten the chance to interact with their parents. It was okay, though. Louis was the closest thing they had to a parent, and he took great pride in raising his sisters in a way that he had never gotten to be raised.
The front door opened and closed, and suddenly, there was a four year old attached to Louis’ stomach. “Lou!” Daisy screamed, her voice full of energy after a long day of sitting still. Preschool, as she often reminded her older brother, was very difficult.
Louis heard the television switch from the weather channel to one of those children’s television channels that Phoebe was so fond of. The sound of forest animals singing filled the room. Louis supposed that it should have been annoying, but it wasn’t. Nothing his sisters did could ever be annoying. He was utterly smitten with the twins.
“Hey cupcake!” Louis greeted Daisy. The blonde smiled at her brother before letting go of him. She dumped her bag onto the floor beside the kitchen table before sitting, watching her older brother as he baked. “How was your day?” Louis asked.
“Good!” Daisy answered. “Oh, I have a paper for you!” She reached into her backpack, a mess of pink and glitter that would make any tomboy shout in terror, and grabbed her folder. She opened the kitten littered thing and took out a piece of paper. She carefully put her folder back into her backpack before jumping up and handing Louis the paper in her hands. Louis wiped his hands of frosting before reading the letter over.
Dear Student’s Guardian,
With our Easter party coming up, I am asking for volunteers to help your children with crafts, dyeing Easter eggs, and passing out dessert. I would also ask that parents bring water bottles, desserts, paper plates, and napkins. Please email me as soon as possible if you are bringing something. The party will be the day before school lets out for spring break, at nine in the morning. Thank you all in advance.
Mr. Styles
Louis sighed, putting the note down on the counter. He wasn’t sure if his parents would be back before the twins’ preschool let out for spring break, but he was almost certain they wouldn’t want to show up to volunteer. If there was one thing they couldn’t stand, it was other people’s children.
However, with the way Daisy was looking up at Louis, so full of hope at the prospect of getting to share her preschool class with her parents. He would hate to let her down. Louis mentally cursed his weakness for his younger sisters before asking. “Hey, Daisy. How about I go to your Easter party to help out?”
Daisy’s face lit up at the information. “Really?” She asked, excitement evident in her voice. Louis nodded in confirmation and Daisy hugged him quickly before rushing over to tell her sister the news. Louis rolled his eyes as he continued to bake the cupcakes. How hard could it be to watch a group of kids like his sisters for a few hours?
-
Daisy and Phoebe were dragging Louis through a tiny school building at eight in the morning that Monday. The school building was littered in children’s artwork, much of which Daisy and Phoebe had identified to Louis as theirs. Louis could have sworn the twins were the best artists in the entire preschool class, but he may just be a little prejudice.
And then they were dragging Louis outside a classroom door. The door was labeled Mr. Styles, the twins’ teacher whom Louis had never actually interacted with, and was not very excited to interact with at the current moment. He could imagine Mr. Styles now: a balding, middle age men who had no liking for children and was only a teacher because it was the only job he could get. The twins had assured Louis that their teacher was lovely, but then again, they were four. They tended to think that everything was lovely.
The twins were pushing the door open then, calling out a good morning to the man crouched on the ground, speaking to other children. Mr. Styles stood up to greet the girls, and Louis nearly passed out on the spot. Mr. Styles was, and if there were a better way to say this, Louis would use it, hot. He had long curly hair that reached to his shoulders. He was taller than Louis, but didn’t tower over him. He had gorgeous green eyes that seemed lit up, like he was full of energy. His lips were full and red, like he had been making out with someone only seconds before. He seemed almost younger than Louis, younger than Louis had ever seen a teacher, and he mentally cursed out and thanked the gods for putting this man in front of him.
“Hello,” Mr. Styles greeted Louis, his voice deeper and rougher than Louis would have thought possible. “I’m Harry Styles, the teacher here. Are you Daisy and Phoebe’s father?”
“Brother, actually,” Louis said. He mentally thanked every deity he could think of that he had managed to regain his voice as he stepped forward to shake Harry’s hand. His large hand, Louis took note mentally. Everything about Harry seemed too large for a preschool teacher. He wondered how the hell someone so young had ended up working for kids. “My name is Louis.”
“Welcome,” Harry said, shaking Louis’ hand. “I think we’ll have you helping the kids dye eggs. Are you familiar with how it works?” He asked. Louis nodded, even though he had never really dyed eggs before.
“Oh yeah, I’m a pro at this.” Louis regretted the words almost the second that they came out of his mouth, considering he had no idea how to dye eggs.
“Excellent!” Harry said, throwing Louis a big dumb smile that made his heart melt. “Well, you can sit over there and start dyeing eggs!”
Louis sat in a little corner of the classroom, in a chair that was brightly colored and the size of a four year old and therefore, way too small and short for Louis to sit in. The table with egg dyeing materials, an empty bucket, a bunch of things that resembled brightly colored pills, a few dozen eggs and a sort of scooping tool, was covered with a large paper towel.
The corner itself was covered with motivational posters. Phrases like, you can do it, and hang it there, littered the walls surrounded Louis. Even so, Louis was not so confident that he would actually be able to do it. He picked up the directions that were left next to the egg dyeing kit.
For Ultra-Vibrant Colored Eggs-add a tablet and three teaspoons of vinegar to a one cup container.
Louis grabbedthe container of vinegar and the bucket in front of him and decided that he would take it a step further by doubling the recipe, therefore giving him the brightest eggs possible. He poured six teaspoons, or what looked to be six teaspoons, of vinegar into the bucket before adding one of the odd tablet things in. After stirring it for a while, the vinegar turned a bright blue color. Louis smirked to himself as he opened the carton of eggs. This was sure to impress both his sisters and Mr. Styles.
He took an egg from the cartoon, and then contemplated the egg scooping tool. It seemed like a good way to dunk the egg into the mixture, however, it seemed a little flimsy. Louis took it into consideration before just deciding to dunk it in with his hands. Rolling up the sleeve of his t-shirt, he dunked the egg into the mixture. The directions didn’t say how long to leave the egg in for, but it did mention that the longer you leave it in, the darker the color will be.
Louis decided to leave the egg in the water for fifteen minutes in order to obtain the ultimate egg shade and impress the preschool teacher. As Louis added six more teaspoons of vinegar and another tablet to a separate bowl, it occurred to him how distressing it was that he was willing to go through all of this trouble to impress a preschool teacher. He decided that he didn’t necessarily care as he dunked another egg into the mixture.
Louis watched as all of the rest of the parents slowly but surely poured into the classroom, each being greeted by Harry and his magnificent smile. Louis may have gone a little overboard with staring at Harry, but who could blame him? The way that Harry’s eyes lit up as he talked to the children proved that he really had a genuine interest in the kids. Louis couldn’t help but wonder what else made Harry’s eyes light up like that. He wondered what kind of movies Harry liked to watch, if he was one of those people that needed to read the book before seeing the movie, if he preferred soup or salad, and he kind of lost track of the time.
It wasn’t until halfway through Harry’s welcome speech to the parents, telling them how wonderful it was to teach their children, how much fun they had in the classroom, and even having a few of the children come up to demonstrate what they had learned that Louis realized that he had his hands in the dye for almost an hour. But he wasn’t going to risk interrupting Harry’s speech to take the eggs out of the mixture, so he sat still, with his hands on the eggs in the mixture, and continued to listen to Harry talk.
As soon as Harry was done speaking and all of the parents were off helping children with their tasks, most opting to help their own children instead of others, Louis took his hands and the eggs of the mixture. Upon examining the eggs, Louis was actually quite proud of himself. They turned out a fairly decent shade. He tried wiping his hands on the towel in front of him, only to find that the dye wouldn’t come out of his skin. He didn’t allow himself to panic at this knowledge, though. He would just go to the bathroom, wash off his hands, and everything would be okay.
He had Phoebe point him to the bathroom, because how embarrassing would it be if he had to ask Harry where the bathroom was because he couldn’t get dye off of his hands like some kind of child, and he quickly made his way over. It was really tiny, and again littered with signs, this time about the proper one to wash one’s hands. Louis paid those no mind as he started vigorously scrubbing his hands with the water. The color faded off of his hands, but it was still a deep color, like he had painted his hands and the paint wouldn’t come off. He looked like some kind of child’s drawing that he had seen in the hallways, but brighter.
Louis stopped attempting to scrub the dye off his hands, and opted instead for sitting on the floor and contemplating how idiotic he had been. There would honestly be no way to live this down. How was he supposed to say that he needed to go home to see if any of his female friends and/or the internet could figure out how to wash dye off of his hands? What sort of idiot couldn’t figure out how to get dye off of their hands? Why hadn’t he just used the dumb egg scooping tool? Breaking an egg would be far less embarrassing than sitting in a tiny preschool bathroom with blue and red hands, contemplating his life.
He must have been contemplating his life for a while, because suddenly, there was a gentle knock on the door. Louis was just going to ignore it, he had locked the bathroom door and the kid could find somewhere else to wee, but then there was a gentle voice which had only been familiar to Louis as of a few hours prior. “Louis?” Harry called through the door, “Are you alright in there?”
“Uh,” Louis tried to make his voice sound like he hadn’t been on the verge of frustrated tears no more than a few seconds before. “Yeah.” Louis coughed awkwardly, then mentally cursed himself out for being so awkward. He swore, his life was no more than a series of awkward moments. “Yeah,” he repeated, “I’m just trying to get the dye off of my hands.”
“Well, you’ve been in there a while.” If Louis didn’t know any better, he would say that Harry sounded almost amused. The color of Louis’ hands was not something to gain amusement off of, thank you very much. “Let me come in there and see if I can help any.”
And Louis would have rejected the teacher’s offer, because honestly, how embarrassing is it that he couldn’t get dye off of his hands like a child, but it was too late because Harry had someone found a key for the bathroom, unlocked the door, and stepped in. He closed the door behind him, giving the two of them a privacy that was new, but not unwanted.
“Look at your hands,” Harry said, a bit in awe. He touched Louis’ wrists to bring his hands up for closer inspection, and though the touch was solely platonic, it still made electricity shoot up Louis’ spine. God, he was absolutely smitten with Phoebe and Daisy’s preschool teacher. He was totally screwed.
“How much of the dye did you use?” Harry asked, his face breaking into a smile at Louis’ childish pout.
“Only one tablet,” Louis said. He contemplated not telling Harry how much vinegar he had used, but he was already embarrassed enough, why not just go all the way and ruin every chance that he had with the preschool teacher? “But I may have used double the amount of vinegar that they told me to and then proceeded to dunk my hands in it for nearly an hour.”
Harry laughed softly. He gently led Louis over to the sink and turned the tab on, checking first to make sure it wasn’t too hot or too cold before brining Louis’ hands under the water. “Did no one ever tell you how to wash your hands?” He asked in amusement as he grabbed a pink bottle that Louis hadn’t thought to pink up. Liquid soap. And apparently it was scented like strawberries. How nice.
Harry poured some into his hands, and Louis attempted not to look mesmerized as Harry rubbed it in a bit to spread it over both hands. He took Louis’ hands in his own and started to massage the soap into them. Louis had to bite back a whimper at the sensation. Every time that Harry touched him felt like a jolt of electricity had been sent through his body.
Louis honestly didn’t know what was wrong with him. He thought the days of crushing on someone so hard that just the very thought of their presence made his heart hurt had been left behind when he graduated high school, but with Harry, his twin sisters’ preschool teacher, no less, the feelings came back full force.
And it was so stupid. Harry was probably straight. And, with how attractive he was, he probably had a girlfriend. Or a wife. Harry didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would be married though. He didn’t seem like someone who was tied down, either. He had an air around him like someone who was single. If they were both wolves, Harry would be an alpha who was putting out the scent of a wolf looking to mate. What a weird metaphor, Louis thought to himself.
“So why did you come instead of your parents?” Harry asked, breaking Louis out of his thoughts.
Louis frowned at the mention of his parents. He didn’t like to speak about them very much to anyone, much less strangers, but Harry seemed like the kind of guy who could be trusted. “My parents aren’t around very much. It doesn’t really affect us. I’m more of a parent to Phoebe and Daisy than they ever were, anyway.”
Harry hummed in understanding, still rubbing Louis’ hands firmly. “They talk about you a lot, the twins,” Harry said conversationally. The mention of Louis’ little sisters made him smile. He loved them to death, and to know that he was loved back was always nice to hear. “They look up to you, a lot. You’ve done a good job on them, too. They’re excellent children.”
“What about you?” Louis asked, suddenly feeling a surge of confidence at being so close to the teacher.
“What about me?” Harry asked, not looking up from the work he was doing on Louis’ hands.
“Why did you decide to be a teacher?” Louis asked. He chuckled softly. “As much as I love my little sisters, I could never dedicate my life to teaching other people’s bratty kids.”
Harry chuckled in tandem, which was a good thing. Louis was half afraid that he would be offended that he had just called his students bratty children. “It can be a challenge, sometimes, yes,” Harry admitted, rubbing his fingers through the creases in Louis’. “But it’s rewarding. To be able to see the smile on a child’s face when they finally understand something you’ve been trying to teach to them, it’s a blessing. And at this age, you really get to see them mature and grow, you know? It’s like I can see myself making a difference in their lives. Granted, it’s not for everyone, but for me? It’s the greatest feeling in the world.” Louis chuckled again and Harry looked up at him with a smile on his face. “What?”
“You’re really something, you know that?” Louis asked. Harry smiled at that and blushed, looking back at his work. He continued washing the dye off of Louis’ hand in a comfortable silence. Louis watched as the color slowly washed away from his hands, coloring the soap on Harry’s until it was ultimately washed down the drain. This continued on until Louis’ hands returned to the color they were before, though maybe still a little tinted and red from the amount of attention Harry had been paying them.
“All done,” Harry proclaimed, shutting off the water. He washed the soap from his hands, only to find that he had accidentally dyed one of his hands blue from the soap running off of Louis’. “Look, now my hand is blue.”
He held his hand up for Louis to see. Louis stared at Harry’s hand in a way that was so intense that Harry was almost afraid to drop his hand, in fear of somehow accidentally ruining the moment between them. The air in the room suddenly grew heavy between the two of them. Louis lifted his own hand, still dyed red, and brought it to Harry’s, entwining their fingers. He used the newfound leverage to pull Harry closer until the preschool teacher against his chest.
Both of their foreheads were nearly touching as they stood, their eyes locked on each other, searching. Searching for answers, questions left unanswered, permission to do what they both knew was going to happen. Both of the men could feel the other breathing in their personal space in a way that should have been frightening, should have been disturbing due to our natural instinct to not share a space so intimate with someone we’ve just met, but wasn’t. When their eyes met, it was like they were old friends reunited. It was like they had lost each other for a thousand years, only to meet again in this one location. In the other’s eyes, both of the men could find something familiar, something that had seen before, yet in a completely different light in the face of another they had never studied so personally before. It was like they could see into the other’s soul, pick out every little thing about the other, study it and capture it for their own soul.
Louis was the first to make a move beyond romantically staring into each other’s eyes. He connected their lips, almost chuckling at Harry’s small, surprised jump and tiny gasp. When their lips touched, it was like time stopped. In all of the fairytales and love stories that Phoebe and Daisy liked so much, they always talked about true love’s kiss, but Louis had never believed anything like that existed until that one second. He finally understand the expression butterflies in your stomach as he felt like passing out from lack of oxygen, not from the short-lived kiss itself, but just from being near Harry, feeling everything that the preschool teacher had to offer in the span of a few seconds. It was mind-numbing and dizzying and every single cliché emotion that Louis had always read from Phoebe and Daisy’s fairytales in real life.
And, when they broke away, Louis didn’t even need Harry’s startled little “wow” to tell him that the teacher had felt the same way. The way that Harry’s beautiful cheeks were flushed a dark shade of pink, the way that his eyes had dilated like he had been to the eye doctor and they had put those horrible drops in his eyes to do more tests, the way that his palm was sweaty in a way that should have been gross but was not ultimately because it was Harry’s hand secured a theory in Louis’ mind. Harry had felt the kiss in the same way Louis did. He felt the same things about Louis that Louis felt about him. And that thought, however real or not it may have been, was wonderful.
Harry finished wiping down the counter from the water that had spilled when he was cleaning Louis’ hands. He threw the paper towels in the garbage can and kissed Louis once more. This kiss, though far less intense than the one they had shared just moments before, was still cliché and magical. Louis only hoped that they could have more in the future.
The pair broke apart before they got to the classroom, so as not to start rumors among the parents. Harry apologized for being away for so long and went back to helping the children with their Easter themed crafts and treats. Louis sat back down at the egg-dyeing station, where Phoebe and Daisy now sat, dyeing eggs in a way that was much more productive than Louis’ strategy.
Phoebe caught sight of Louis’ hands and gave him a perplexed look. “Lou?” She asked.
“Yeah?” Louis answered. He grabbed an egg as he spoke and started to place various stickers on them, each with different Easter themed icons. It was almost amusing to watch, a grown man placing tiny stickers on a tiny egg.
“Where did you get the purple dye?” Phoebe asked, still staring at Louis’ hands as he worked.
“What do you mean?” Louis asked. He looked up at his sister with a similar, perplexed emotion written across his face as she had written across hers.
“Your hands are purple.”
And sure enough, as Louis looked down at his hands, they were dyed a bright purple. They must have been dyed when Louis grabbed Harry’s hand, as both of their hands had been wet. Sure enough, as Louis looked over at the teacher, his hand was purple as well. Louis smiled to himself. He would have to come to help with Phoebe and Daisy’s class parties much more often.