Louis continues to watch as the fit boy waggles his eyebrows dramatically at the penguin. Clearly, he's very invested in winning the staring contest, which means Louis still has time to come up with a plan of attack. He turns to his sisters. "Girls, look cute. You know how to snag a boy right?"
College Au where Harry leads an army of penguins and rocks purple penis headscarves, Louis is generally covered in pigeon shit and panicking over worm dissections, Liam just wants to save his pet bird from Harry's ill thought out sacrificial plans, and Niall and Zayn are definitely not dating.
.......
Louis is a saint. Practically a God among men. He is, in his own very modest opinion, the kind of son every mother ought to dream of having.
He has already survived what was possibly the worst week of midterms he has ever experienced. A week that had finished with him sobbing over a sink in the men's washroom of the Science Complex while Zayn and Niall attempted to reassure him that anyone could have have accidentally mistaken an Oligochaete for a Hirudinomorph. It did not do much to calm him down seeing as he hadn't slept in three days, hadn't left the library in just as long, and now he had incorrectly identified two very different worms on his invertebrate biology midterm. Whoever thought he would be mentally equipped to handle university anyway?
So, despite the fact that Louis should clearly be spending his Saturday sleeping, eating, and trying to piece together what's left of his sanity, he is instead at the zoo with his two youngest sisters. The blame for this, he concludes, rests squarely on the shoulders of Lottie and Fizzy. They're young and their lives are not stressful, surely they should be the ones saddled with babysitting duty when his mother decides to go have a life. Especially considering the fact that he doesn't even live in the same city as them anymore. Unfortunately, Lottie has snagged herself an acne riddled, beanpole of a boyfriend that takes up all her time, and frankly no one really trusts Fizzy with the twins since the hair cutting incident of last year.
"You're lucky you have me," he informs Daisy and Phoebe seriously as they drag him over to an aquarium full of brightly coloured fish. "If it wasn't for me, you two would be up for adoption by now. I drove two hours today to go collect you from home and bring you here. Who wants to go to the zoo on a Saturday anyway?"
"You love animals," Daisy stares at him in confusion. "Why are you in university for biology if you don't even like the zoo? And I thought you told mom you really missed us and wanted to take us to the zoo as a surprise?"
"Details," he responds with a vague wave of his hand. "You're smarter then you look, aren't you?"
She smirks at him, and for an eight year old he thinks Daisy is a worrying mixture of evil mastermind and adorable gremlin. "I look plenty smart as well," she informs him.
"Yes you do," he agrees easily. "You two about done though? We've been here all day, and I've still got to get you lot home before Mom gets anxious."
"No," Phoebe whines immediately. "We still haven't seen the penguins. You promised Lou. You promised we'd get to see the penguins."
Daisy immediately joins in on the pleas, and before long he is faced with two well-practised pouts. The twins' skills at guilt tripping and puppy dog eyes are truly remarkable. He's not sure anyone has ever said no to them their entire lives.
"Fine," he says with a sigh. "But ten minutes max, and this is the last exhibit we're doing."
Louis is actually quite excited for the penguin exhibit, despite his exhaustion and general longing to be tucked up in bed watching the latest season of Orange is the New Black. Penguins are a species of bird that is not typically covered in any of his ornithology based lectures, and now that he thinks about it, he has a serious lack of knowledge on the subject.
