Light On {Niam Love Story}

Twenty-Four.

A/N: Hi everyone. First off, I wanted to apologize for the waiting. There are so many stories out there that are a million times better than mine, that are updated frequently mind you, and for those still reading this one...wow, you're patient. I feel like this non-updating stuff bothers people. Maybe it's just me. It just takes me a while, you know? I'm more open as of the moment, because I can't play LaCrosse until next season, but there's been a lot of shit going on in my life. Excuses, huh? Either way, I'm trying my best, and I thank you guys for being patient with me. Right, so this chapter is dedicated to all of you lovely people, because this story got farther than I had expected it to, and it's crazy. The song for this chapter is Build You Up by Kim Taylor, because I think it's fitting. I might have used it in a previous chapter, but I don't think it matters much. This note has gone on long enough, so I hereby present you with chapter twenty-four.

"I'll be the one to never doubt...I'll never doubt..."

You know, the funniest thing about all of this is the fact that it wasn’t supposed to happen.

And, yeah, it’s pretty much a given – but it’s not just the fact that this wasn’t right; it was the fact that no one really wanted it to be this way. It was crazy, and everything was going so fast it was almost too hard to keep up because it just wasn’t…wasn’t right.

Niall was never meant to get raped – and it happened, inevitably, but you really can’t say that it was his fault. He didn’t want it, but he couldn’t fight it and that just wasn’t right. He should have been perfectly safe, perfectly fine – he should have been leading his life as normally as he could, but he couldn’t because everything always turned to shit when he tried.

It’s not that he doesn’t want help; it’s just that he doesn’t want to talk about it. Liam got mad at him at times like those – when Niall would wake up in the middle of the night, terrified out of his wits, but he wouldn’t talk about what was troubling. Liam was almost positive that he knew, but he wanted to help – he wanted Niall to be happy again, he really did.

And sometimes, that was hard to see.

There were nights that Niall would wake up at three in the morning, crawl out of the safety of their bed, and go downstairs to sit on the couch. Sometimes he would cry, other’s he would try to clear his head, and there were even nights when he would sit there and stare at the wall until he was blank.

You see, Niall wasn’t unhappy with Liam’s and his relationship, he just didn’t think it was healthy. It wasn’t really what he needed in his state – but he had wanted to be with Liam ever since the days when they were only aspiring singers and this just happened to be when he had finally got to. Believe it, he questioned that a lot.

The thing is, Niall started realizing that maybe this wasn’t because Liam loved him. Maybe – just maybe – Liam was being nice to him because he felt that he had to. Niall knew that Liam didn’t like it when he cried – maybe he was just doing it to stop the tears. Liam also didn’t like watching the band crumble, and maybe he was just trying to keep Niall in line so he could be the best damn performer he could be. So, no, Niall wasn’t oblivious – paranoid, maybe, but not oblivious.

Liam’s behavior on its’ own was honorable, how he was trying to keep everything together – and he could do that, Niall encouraged him to do that. He just wished that Liam wouldn’t lie to him. He wanted blatant honesty – good or bad, he didn’t care; he just wanted to know what people really thought about him. Thinking about Liam lying to him was stressful for Niall, sometimes so stressful that it hurt.