Levirate [Haniaal/Zarry]

Chapter 21

Harry is different. Zayn sensed it immediately when he walked into the house following his short trip. He came back from Amsterdam with a dark aura. He is more irritable and goes out of his way to start arguments with him for some unknown reason. Two days ago he had gone to buy groceries for the house and Harry threw a tantrum, going on and on about how he can take care of himself and does not want to be fed by Zayn. Funny thing is it was not the first time that Zayn had bought groceries so the tantrum was peculiar. Zayn had categorized it as "pregnancy hormones" and moved on from it but when Harry flipped out today when Zayn had asked when his next prenatal appointment will be, he could not help but think that this is way beyond pregnancy.

 In order to avoid fights, Zayn has called his boss to request to work from the office. Unlike most computer geeks, Zayn prefers silence when coding. That is his favorite part of the job. He writes code that converts designs for games into instructions video game systems can read. People only get to see the noisy part of the job, no one understands the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes. Nothing in this world could beat the feeling of seeing something that you created come to life. He has heard from a lot of people that he has this gleam in his eyes whenever he explains what he does. People just assume that he is a lazy bum that spends the whole day playing games, they don't understand the level of pride he holds for what he does. 

The office is unfortunately not as quiet as it is at the house and there are constant interruptions from colleagues wanting to catch up but he will have to make do with what he can.  He would have gone to his old apartment if he had not stopped paying the rent a month ago. Living with Harry took up most of his budget and he could not afford to maintain two places with one salary. The funny thing is that Harry seems so oblivious to it all. It annoyed Zayn at first but after being around him for three months now, he has noticed that Harry lives his life in a protected bubble. He does not seem to have any knowledge on the running of the house. At first it was weird to him but knowing how Yaser had taught them to be the providers, he understood. Funny thing is he had assumed that Daniaal would have outgrown some of Yaser's teaching seeing that he was away for so long but clearly 18 years of information being drilled into the brain cannot be easily removed.

Zayn has taken over the duties of running the house to help ease the stress from Harry. Zayn had never realised how much hard work it is to own a stand alone property. He has been living in an apartment all along and did not pay too much attention to whatever was going on because the body corporate took care of everything. Now here in Harry's house, he has taken over the role of the body corporate because Harry is in no state at all to care about the upkeep of the house. It was a struggle to organise everything at first but now it is second nature to him. He had asked Harry for the numbers of the gardener and the pool cleaner but Harry seemed oblivious to what he was talking about. Must have been something else that Daniaal took care of.  He finally managed to get the necessary information, thanks to Fahima's involvement in Daniaal's household, and he has managed to organise that Paulos come every Tuesday to trim the grass and the trees while Vladimir cleans the pool every Thursday. The utility bills used to be delivered at the gallery and he has now switched them to be delivered at the house. Not that it matters though because Harry does not even open the mailbox. 

The time he spends at the office does him some good though. He has not shared his personal life with his colleagues since arriving at Sony a little over a year ago so it is easy to blend in and complain about the spouse like all the other guys do. There is no need for an explanation or justification. The team discusses games and animations over lunch and Zayn is not sure how but at the end of the day he has invited everybody over to the house for a Naruto movie premiere. Now all that is left is to convince Harry and that is not a small task at all given his attitude.