Lights, Camera, Action [N.H]

30

i think this is my longest chapter to date. it's more of a two-parter, but this is the majority of it i believe. sorry for the delay, i wanted to upload 30+31 together so they took forever to edit. it's about 30k words altogether, so thankyou for being patient :)

A show like no other, the entire world had been anxiously waiting for another Victoria's Secret show for years after their scandals had rendered them 'too controversial' to continue. They practically went bankrupt, but this show was going to pull their social standing from the gutter. Rumours had spread that another artist had dropped out two weeks prior to the show, and the race was on to find a replacement. Lucky for Niall, Claire happened to be in the right place at the right time, and like a knight in shining armour, the opportunity to fix Niall's problem and torture him at the same time presented itself to her.

Just under a week of preparation, it was the most rushed show Niall had ever prepared for. His tour alone took months, if not years, to plan. I was only included in the preparation a few months prior to his first show, but it was in the making far before I was in the picture.

This situation was different than the way he liked it - and it wasn't just because he despised the idea entirely. He had many criticisms, many of which boiled down to how anti-Niall the show was. He pestered Claire that it 'wasn't his style' and that it wouldn't resonate - that his fans would see right through the plastered-on facade and could just tell that he didn't want to be there. These criticisms were only responded to in one way - by Claire - usually to the effect of 'I don't care, smile, grit your teeth, and pray the journalists write something about you'. She was desperate to pull his reputation and place it right on top - just like Victoria's Secret. It was the perfect fit if you stepped back and looked at it over top of all Niall's whining. The main priority by the end of the weekend was to get people talking about Niall. We had several different after-parties to choose from, but I had a feeling Niall wouldn't want to stay anywhere near the idea once he was no longer contractually obligated to.

"Aren't you worried about like... a scandal or something?"

"You've been watching too much Bridgeton if you think a scandal is a bad thing," Claire responded, her eyes locked on her laptop in front of her.

"I know, I just know the phrase 'any publicity is good publicity' isn't really the case - and we don't know how Niall is going to come across this weekend." I reasoned. I didn't want Claire to get caught in an uncomfortable situation where all her work would be for nothing. If she fixed his reputation and relevancy only to have it destroyed mere hours or days later at an afterparty, the whole thing would have been a waste of time. That would be the only thing more annoying to Niall, doing this all for nothing.

"I know. I've been doing this a long time, don't you worry. Niall doesn't even go to parties like that. If he does, I've never seen him do any drugs." She spoke absentmindedly. I scoffed.

"Oh, pfft. You're joking." She looked at me, removing her gaze from her laptop. Her eyes didn't give me any indication of any feeling. They were blank. "Oh, seriously. Nothing? He's never done any drugs?"

"Oh! No, probably. I just mean I've never seen it. Which is good. If I haven't seen it, it means photos don't exist, which means I'm in the clear, and so is he."

"Okay, that makes more sense. Never seen a celebrity without a little snow." I nudged her like a frat boy.

"Yeah. They take it too casually."

"So you've never..."

"No interest."

"Huh." I crossed my arms. Not that I'd ever done any hardcore drugs; I didn't see an interest either. I just assumed that Claire and Niall, and every other person residing in the music and film industry, had racked lines up ten times over. It was a cruel assumption, one I was happy she realigned. It was slightly shocking to hear Niall had engaged, but to give him the benefit of the doubt, Claire never outright said it. She didn't even seem to know herself, I almost laughed at that. She liked to live in bliss over the weirdest topics. She picked random hills to die on, it was confusing sometimes.