Lights, Camera, Action [N.H]

32

apologies for my absence and for this short filler chapter!!! I have ideas coming, but I've been having some writer's block atm bcs I'm back at uni again, so writing is kinda taking the back burner atm. sorry! I will do my very best to keep it up, but sorry in advance if the wait is longer between chapters! I also just wanna say thankyou for 4000 reads, it actually means so much to know so many people have read thus far and actually give a crap abt my writing :,) we are just under a thousand words away from 300k word count, so i am beyond words. (sorry for being sappy, ill let you enjoy the chapter now...)

"Can we please talk about it, at least?" I asked for what felt like the millionth time in the past few weeks. My head on the floor, I laid down on the stage while crew members set up around us.

"Nope."

"Why not, Niall? We have to eventually."

He shuffled over to me, we were laying with our heads next to each other but our feet in the opposite direction. He army crawled over to me, stopping when his head hovered above mine, blocking out the yellow-toned lights in the arena.

"Because."

"That's not an answer." I pouted. He leant down and pecked my lips, they didn't lock together quite as well as they usually would, because I was technically upside-down. But it was sweet. He always was. I was just nervous.

"Because I'm enjoying just being us two." He smiled down at me and elaborated.

"I know, and so am I." I frowned, "But we have to talk about it eventually. There's already stuff coming out from the show. And the afterparty."

His look stiffened at me, his eyebrows furrowed.

"I told you not to look at that stuff, Daph." He spoke with annoyance. Not at me. It was never at me, he was just being protective. I appreciated it, but I couldn't avoid the entire internet for the rest of my life.

"I can't not look. I have to use my phone at some point." I reassured him by reaching up and grabbing his hand, softly stroking the skin between his thumb and pointer finger, "I don't go out of my way to look, it just pops up sometimes."

He sighed.

"I wish you wouldn't see it at all."

I grabbed his wrist more forcefully, pulling him to lie down next to me. He obliged, laying with our hands intertwined like normal. I scooted slightly closer to him, leaning my head on his chest but still looking up at the roof. It was weirdly calming and fascinating to me. I spotted stray balloons, strings of confetti that never made it to the ground, and a sports ball stuck within the intricate metalwork that held the arena together.

"It's not even bad stuff. Just photos. Articles." I stated factually.

"There's always bad stuff, though."

"You know I literally write articles in my spare time, right? I take everything with a grain of salt." I tried to laugh it off. He seemed so tense, though. I knew exactly why he was avoiding me and my questions. The second we talked about it, we had to discuss when.

When do we go public? When do we tell people? Who do we tell first?

We were still in a little bubble. It was fun, light, and airy. Claire knew, but after she knew, she returned to her normal self, and so did everything else. It helped that our punishment was finally over, too, so she loosened up after the fashion show finished as well. We barely even saw her at the afterparty; she was busy talking to everyone and anyone she knew, which was a lot of people. We lost her early on in the night, but I got pretty drunk pretty quickly, so as much as I felt bad, I practically forgot I came with anyone else but Niall.