I find it very upsetting that Louis will always have the shadow of this sordid little episode following him. Even if he were able to say "yeah, Eleanor and Danielle were just PR, I was with Harry the whole time" there's this little matter of paternity, the result of a drunken fumble with a barchick. And when he turns out not to be the father? No help there: he thought he was the father (according to the official narrative). And he wouldn't think that unless he slept with her. Ergo, he slept with her. Or did he? There is one scenario that would solve the problem nicely, make Louis look like the good guy and make Banana look ... not very nice. What if the PR narrative went something like this: ------------- Party Louis went out to a club and got proper smashed, completely blotto, so much so that when he woke up the next morning, he has no memory of leaving the club, no memory of driving home, and certainly no memory of this naked woman in his bed. She sure does, though. She informs him that he was hanging all over her at the bar, invited her to come home with them (Oli and Calvin and a bunch of other barchix) and hustled her into his bedroom where he made mad, passionate love to her. It was phenomenal. And now he doesn't even remember?! Hmph! And she stalks out. Louis tries to make sense of this bizarre turn of events and simply cannot. The last thing he remembers is Oli and Calvin and a truly obscene amount of alcohol. And then... and then it was now, and he was waking up... naked? He checked. Yep, naked as the day, with a woman who was equally naked, and who he had apparently schtupped. But, hey. Such is the life of an "in fact straight" party boy. He put the episode out of his mind. Until. A few weeks later, whatshername calls (how she got his number he has no idea) and informs him that she was late and she's never late so she peed on a stick and there were two lines and it's definitely his and she wants 80,000 per month and a condo and a car. "Oh, fuck off, that's the oldest scam in the book. Bye." He hangs up and puts her out of his mind again. Until. He starts to see photos of her in the tabloids and, damn, she sure does look pregnant. And continues to look pregnant. And it's probably still a scam, a paternity test will clear all this up. But he has to wait until the baby is born because the only way to do it during pregnancy isn't 100% safe for the baby. Finally he gets a message that whatshername is in labor and he'd better get down there if he wants to see his son born. "My son." He thinks, and the thought echoes in his head all the way to the hospital. It's having a strange effect on him - he feels a bit woozy. On reaching the hospital, he is told he will have to wait until whatshername is settled in her room before he can see the baby. Which is absolutely fine with him because eew. He finally gets the word and goes in. Whatshername's family is standing around the bed where she is sitting up holding a ridiculously small bundle. "Hello." He says, feeling like an idiot. "Hi, Lewis. This is YOUR baby. Here, hold him." He takes the bundle and looks down into the red, wizened face of a typically unlovely newborn baby boy. My son, he thinks. Every rational impulse in his being says Oh, fuck off, it is not -- this is a scam. I don't care, he thinks. And he doesn't. He's always wanted kids, hundred percent, and here's a baby who could be his -- well? He could be! -- and he wants to keep him. A nurse comes in with a little tray and a clipboard. On the tray are some alcohol pads, curettes, and test tubes. "I have the paperwork for our records, and I have a note here, Mr. Tomlinson... you called ahead to request a paternity test? Oh, fuck you, Oli, he thinks. He looks up at the nurse briefly, then back down at the baby. "No. We don't need to do that, that's fine, thank you." Because the baby could be his. After all, he did sleep with this woman, right? She said so. But the baby could be someone else's. And he doesn't want to think about that. *** 14 months later, Louis sits alone in his lawyer's conference room, turning over the events of the past hour in his mind. Eleanor had finally convinced him to take the paternity test and, as he feared. The baby is not his. The real father is someone named Luke Poole. And it turns out that, surprise surprise, Briana and Luke have pulled this scam before. They'd never taken it this far, but this time Briana had actually been pregnant. Whoopsie. They realized, though, that if they hooked the right fish, they could be set not just for a few months but for 18 years at least. And Briana hadn't even had to have sex with him. Oh, she'd tried. "You couldn't even get it up! When you didn't even know who I was in the morning, I realized you'd been in a blackout the whole time. It was perfect. I didn't have to do a thing." Louis opted not to press charges. What good would it do? He didn't need the money back, and Freddie needed his parents, such as they were. If he couldn't be one of them, well, that's life. A mousy legal assistant skittered into the room with an armload of papers and squealed when she saw him. "Oh! I didn't... I was just... there's a meeting..." "It's ok, love. I was just going." Riding down in the elevator, he suddenly felt utterly alone. It was a pain he couldn't reach, an ache in his chest. In the lobby, he took out his phone and dialed the number he knew by heart. "Hello? "Hey Hazza." --------- And voila! No baby, no sex, no sordid shadow. Evil scammers took advantage of a good guy, who then, devastated, turned to his best laddy bro pal for solace. And then they fell in love and got married... ...as far as we know.
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
prguitarman
gracieabrams
romaincrisis
snowghoul
