Baby, It's Cold Outside | Ziall Christmas AU

Day One (Part One)

Okay, so for starters, Zayn totally did not want today to go this way.

The Christmas season is always sort of a disaster for him. His kids, twins, had been begging him for three hours to run to the store to get cookie mix. He knows it's tradition for them to make Christmas cookies every day during the week leading up to Christmas, but...that's a lot of cookie mix. Like, a lot. And every year they end up with an insane surplus of cookies, and they give some away, but most just end up sitting around the apartment for a few weeks until they inevitably get thrown away.

But...his kids are cute, and tradition is tradition, so he shrugs on his coat and makes his way up the steps.

"Hazel," Zayn calls, knocking on the door of his oldest daughter's bedroom. She's thirteen, just reaching the age where she should start to be snarky as hell, but she's honestly an angel, the apple of her father's eye. "Hey, sweetheart, I have to run to the store to grab cookie mix for Leo and Aurora. Can you keep an eye on them?"

Hazel nods, pulling one of the earbuds out of her ears. "Sure. Can you get oatmeal, please? That's my favorite."

Zayn nods, already remembering. "Yeah, oatmeal, sugar, and monster. Got it. I should be back within an hour."

"Sounds good," she smiles, and Zayn makes his way back down the stairs to the kitchen, where Leo and Aurora are watching Moana. He kisses both four-year-olds on the top of their heads.

"I'll be back. Be good for Hazel, please. Any acting out will result in no cookies, am I understood?"

"Got it, Daddy," Leo beams, and Aurora just nods, distracted by the television.

It's not until he leaves the house that everything starts going south.

- - -

"Alright, Caleb, I'm running to the store, yeah? You're fine with staying at Grandma's for a while, right?" Niall confirms, digging through his pocket for the key to his mom's house.

"Uh-huh," Caleb confirms, two fingers in his mouth. Momentarily, the three-year-old gets distracted by a loose string on his coat, and then the door is being unlocked and Caleb bounds inside. "Can have cookie?" he asks, pointing to the cookie jar Niall's mom keeps on the countertop.

Niall reaches in and fishes out two Oreos, one for each of them. "Mom?" he calls into the house.

"Living room," she calls back, and Caleb literally runs off toward the sound. Niall can't help but laugh.

"I'll be back within the hour," Niall calls. He hears a vague sound of assent, and then he turns back around and heads to the car. The drive to the grocery store is uninteresting, Christmas music playing lowly on the radio. He stops at a red light, braking early since the road is a bit icy...but it ends up being worthless anyway, since two cars back, they don't stop early enough and crash into the car in front of them. The natural reaction, then, is for the car behind Niall's to crash into his. The car that caused the accident in the first place, swerves into the next lane and speeds off when the light turns green.

Niall turns to get out of the car when he hears a knock at the window. "Hey, are you okay? I'm so sorry, the car behind me rammed into me and I couldn't stop!"

Niall looks up at the speaker and is both surprised and horrified that they are unreasonably attractive. His hair is a bit messed up (reasonably), and his glasses have slipped down his nose, but he's still so attractive that Niall wants to punch himself. His eyes are a gorgeous gold-brown color, and it makes Niall nervous that he's staring at him so concernedly.

"I got the license plate," he adds, since Niall hasn't said anything. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, sorry, sorry," Niall says quickly, shaking his head as if to clear his thoughts. "Just a bit shaken up, I guess." He gets out of the car, figuring that his next steps should be to see how bad the damage is, and as soon as he sees, he turns away, hissing out, "Fuck!"

"Hey, it's not too bad," the other guy says quickly. "I mean...it's not great, but...I've got the license plate number. We won't have to pay a thing."

Niall nods. That's good news, he knows that, but he can't really focus on it. He puts a hand up to scratch his nose and is appalled to find blood covering his fingers as soon as he does so. "I'm bleeding!"

The guy turns to look. It's strangely intimate to Niall to have someone he's never met cup his face in their hands to look at his bloody nose, but, well, here they are. "It doesn't look too bad," he assures Niall. "I guess we should call the police."

Niall nods, and as the other guy calls, he goes off to tell the other people who have stopped along the street that they're both okay.

"Hey, they need to know what your name is," the guy tells Niall once he's made his way back over.

"Niall Horan," Niall relays, and the guy repeats it into the phone.

"I'm Zayn, by the way," Zayn says, putting a hand out for Niall to shake.

"Niall," Niall says, and shakes his hand. He sits at the curb, not caring that he's just sat in a pile of snow. "I can't believe this," he mumbles.

Zayn sits beside him. "Yeah, me neither. I just wanted to buy some freaking cookie mix for my kids and I get into a hit-and-run fender bender."

Niall's eyebrows go up. "You're buying cookie mix for your kids? I'm buying cookie mix for my kid!"

Zayn stares at Niall with the same surprise. "Are you serious?"

"Yeah, I'm serious! How weird!"

Zayn nods. "How freaking weird."

And it's not even that weird of a thing to be doing, not really, but something about the fact that they're doing it at the same time and ended up in the same place because of it...something about that feels magical.