Louis: His baby boy was his heart and soul, the only thing that kept him going on days when he didn’t even want to drag himself out of his bed. Louis had been in love, really, really in love with the boy’s mother, but then she’d died in childbirth and left him with their son. Now here he was, struggling through the depression day by day, having to survive for his son, for the baby boy who had her eyes and her nose and her laugh and her cry. Sometimes it was just so hard, like the first time that he had to change the diaper or feed him. The hardest was the day when he finally had to leave, get back to working on the new album, and he had to leave the little guy with a babysitter because his mum was busy and so were his sisters, and no one had ever told him that being a dad would be so hard. But then you stepped into the picture, just at the perfect time. He’d been at the grocery, juggling a fussy baby and the basket in his hands, and when you saw that he was either going to drop his son or the carton of eggs, you hurried over to help him. It was with a sigh of relief and hurried thank you that he passed you his basket, holding his son closer to him as he cooed and sang quietly, trying to comfort the boy. It was obvious to you that both of the boys needed comforting because Louis’ eyes were sunken into shadows, red and tired, and his mouth was a tight, grim line. You helped him through the rest of the store, helping him keep his son happy and laughing - you even drew a laugh from Louis once - and when he was finally ready to make his purchase, you offered him your number. “Call me if you ever need help with him.” He nodded gratefully and accepted the number, watching you as you walked away to finish your own shopping.
Niall: When he got the call it was four o’clock in the morning and he was on the other side of the world. To say he was surprised was an understatement. Surprises are usually based in something that a person had been subconsciously been expecting or hoping for, but this call was not anything Niall had been remotely expecting or hoping for. Not that it wasn’t a good thing, in the long run, it did turn out to be good, but at that moment when he got the abrupt and frightening telephone call, it was one of the worst moments of his life. The voice on the other end of the line was telling him that he was a father, that the girl he’d slept with a few times back at the start of the band had had his daughter and kept it a secret from him for the past four years. The voice told him that Kelly had passed away in a car accident and that he was the only living relative to their daughter. “I’ll be there in 12 hours.” was all he could say before the call was ended and he was curling in on himself. A daughter. He had a daughter and she was out there without a mother and he was all that she had now. In the blink of an eye, he was out of the hotel bed and throwing things into a bag, rushing down the hall towards the doors their security team were sleeping behind, and then he blinked again and he was on a flight back to England. Another blink and he was walking down a brightly lit corridor that smelled much too sterile, and there was a little girl in a Frozen nightgown with tear tracks on her cheeks. She was squished between a grim man in a gray suit and you, her godmother. He was breathless and it wasn’t just because he’d run up here from the car park, but it was because that little girl had his hair and when she looked up at him, she had his eyes, and he couldn’t really remember what Kelly had looked like all that clearly, but when he looked at his daughter, he suddenly remembered that she was beautiful, so beautiful, and Niall cried.
Harry: The mother had been out of the picture since the day she gave birth to the little lad. She hadn’t wanted a child, but she hadn’t wanted an abortion, so she went through with the whole pregnancy and told Harry that either he’d have to take the kid or she was giving it away for adoption. As if the second choice was really an option for him, he agreed to raise their son to which she replied that it was his kid and she wanted nothing to do with it. The media and the fans were surprised by the sudden addition to the One Direction tour family. When the first few pictures of the baby boy surfaced, people mostly just thought that it was Harry being Harry and making friends with a new mother just for her baby, others speculated that it was someone’s that worked with them. After a few weeks, the boys did a live interview and that’s when the question was finally asked. Harry confirmed that the baby was his and he wanted to be as involved as possible with his son’s life, so he’d brought him on the road because the mother was entirely out of the picture. Of course, he was criticized by mother’s groups and traditionalists and all sorts of media outlets; all of them were saying that raising a child on the hectic schedule that came with their touring was a terrible idea, that the poor boy would turn out strange. Harry disagreed with all they were saying, informing everyone that he did have a babysitter for his son. You’d been an assistant for the band originally but when Harry showed up for the first day of rehearsals with a three week old baby in his arms and a diaper bag over his shoulder, you were reassigned to Styles 2 babysitter. And you couldn’t deny that it was actually a really decent job.
Liam: He certainly wasn’t expecting to be a father anytime soon, but then he was handed the girl by the crying mother. She couldn’t support their daughter and she was working and at school all the time, she couldn’t raise their daughter like she needed to be raised. Liam would have to do it. Before he could argue with her and hand her baby back - surely it couldn’t be his, he was always so careful - she was gone and he was standing there with a tiny human being that was half him staring up at him. The first thing he did was call his Mum and ask her what he should do as he tried to suppress the panic. She started crying and he could hear her smile through the phone while she told him that she’d be there as soon as possible, “I can’t believe that you gave me a granddaughter before either of your sisters.” Liam almost started crying too because the little girl in his arms started to whimper and her whole face was scrunching up and this was too much and he didn’t know what to do. His mum was helpful once she arrived, she went out shopping for him and bought all of the things that he would need, she taught him how to change a diaper and how to make a bottle. And then she told him to go get a paternity test, just to make sure that she was his daughter. Of course she was and some part of him was disappointed by that, but for the most part he was astoundingly pleased that she was his daughter. As the days and weeks and months passed by quickly, Liam learned how to be a father, how to cope with another person being completely dependent on him while he was busy writing and working on the new album and their next tour, and mostly he learned how to entertain her and draw that smile and laugh that led to a squishy grin just like his.
Zayn: Their daughter was three months old, and Zayn was happily married to her mother. Apparently she wasn’t happily married to him. The day she left them was terrible. He woke up late in the morning, head pounding with a migraine already and he couldn’t wait to get out of bed and down to the kitchen where she’d surely made breakfast by then. But when he rolled over in bed, her side looked like it hadn’t been slept in, there was a note folded on the pillow, and their daughter was just beginning to howl from inside her crib down the hallway. Zayn pushed himself out of bed and found her standing up with her fists curled around the bars of her crib, tears pouring down her pinched face. He quickly scooped her out of the bed, shushing her and rocking her, hoping that it would work because it always worked when his wife did it, and he walked back towards their bedroom to pick up the note. Before he read the words, he just thought that maybe she’d run to the store and she would be back and she was just letting him know, but instead he read the words “I don’t want to live this way” and “I’m leaving.” He read the words over and over until they echoed in his head; the part about not wanting to have to raise a child especially repeated in Zayn’s head as he looked down at their daughter, her wide, wet eyes gazing right back at him. His wife was filing for a divorce - the kind of divorce where she could completely pretend that she’d never been married to him or known him at all, the kind where he could keep everything, including their daughter. “We’re going to be alright.” He promised his daughter. “Even if it’s just you and me, we’ll make mistakes, but we’ll be fine.” But it wasn’t just the two of them because it wasn’t even a week later when he met you.
