Count On Me | Niam

Chapter Three

Liam

Letting himself and the dog at his feet into his flat, Liam kicked his shoes in the general direction of the shoe rack he generally forgot to use, bending down to let the dog off his leash before hanging the lead on the wall and sighing as he saw what was currently happening to the shoes he'd just put away.

"No, Loki. We don't eat shoes. Especially not two-hundred-pound converse. For fucks sake." Liam winced as he prised the shoe out of the dog's mouth and saw the new scratches and teeth marks and drool covering what had, merely moments before, been perfectly good shoes but now resembled the chew toy he'd thrown out yesterday. Maybe it was Loki's way of getting revenge. He glared down at the dog, only to sigh as Loki whined and wagged his tail, his expression softening as he bent down, tickling the dog behind his ears before reaching into his pocket, digging out one of the treats he'd wanted to avoid feeding Loki, giving the biscuit to the husky before scratching his ears again.

Once Loki had padded away, Liam stood up and turned to face the gym bag he'd left slung by the door, unwilling to delve into the bag and instead emptying its contents out on to the floor, kicking the dirty clothing over to the doorway of his laundry room, freeing his iPod from the tangle of headphones and shoelaces and inspecting it for damage before finding his phone.

He then followed Loki into the kitchen, collapsing into one of the stools around the island unit and leaning against the cool marble, reaching down and petting Loki as he went through his apps until he found the one he wanted, thinking for a moment before recording the mornings data from the gym and noting down a new personal best.

Turning to his social media, Liam scrolled absentmindedly through his Twitter feed, making sure to favourite a tweet of Sophia's every now and then as instructed lest he anger his PR team and force them to resume control of his accounts once more, reading through various mentions from his sister, companies, some of his friends and fans before he noticed a tweet from the gym he currently went to, advertising a new swimming club for under fifteens in the same complex as the gym itself, the tweet making Liam think back to earlier, the unusual number of kids and adults there stupidly early on a Saturday morning beginning to make sense.

Bored with twitter, he turned to his coffee maker, shoving in a pod and person what he hoped was the right combination of buttons to make it work before he braved the rest of his gym debris, throwing his trainers in the general direction of his sneakers and dealing with the tangled mess that was his headphones, making a mental note to stop randomly shoving them in his bag as he struggled. Shoving his bag into a cupboard, he turned back to his phone, ignoring the texts from his management, him other and the daily bad joke from Harry, remembering his coffee slightly too late and looking upas he heard his coffee maker splutter, the mug he'd placed underneath it overflowing, a pool of coffee slowly dripping down the front of the worktop.

He swore loudly as Loki sat in the puddle slowly forming on the floor and finally moved into action, dealing with the coffee maker by randomly pressing buttons until it stopped before grabbing a cloth, intending to have it properly cleaned to spare his cleaning lady from having to deal with the coffee stains on white marble, only he ineffectually wiped at the spill before giving up, collapsing back into his stool. He jumped as he heard a key in the lock, dropping the cloths onto the island unit with his phone as the front door opened and relaxing as a familiar figure made her way into the apartment, Loki leaving the kitchen to meet her in the corridor, with Liam following behind the dog.

"What are you doing here?" Half-smiling as Loki rolled over for them, Liam shook his head as the dog exposed his stomach to Sophia and panted, Sophia struggling out of her boots before petting him, looking up at Liam with a slight frown as she said, "I'm supposed to live here, remember?"

"I know. I just thought you were busy this weekend. And just because you're supposed to, doesn't mean you actually do. I haven't been given a schedule of public events for us to attend or anything." Liam stared at her somewhat dubiously, taking her jacket from her before he followed Sophia back to his kitchen, standing in the doorway and shrugging as she surveyed the disaster that dominated the room. "I was intending clean that."

Grabbing the abandoned cloth, Sophia nodded, shooing Loki away from the mess before kneeling down and making a start on the coffee spill, giving Liam a wry smile. "Sure you were."

He couldn't really let her clean for him, so Liam found another cloth, joining her and wincing as coffee seeped through the knees of his jeans. "So what's the plan for this evening? I thought the first thing was us going for brunch in public somewhere, but that's not until next week."

"I got an email from Richard. They want us to go slightly bigger and get more press before they release the single. Meaning, we're spending this evening tweeting about a meal we're meant to make together and posting photos of us giving Loki a bath before we get seen at brunch." Her voice remained light as she spoke, though Sophia was aware of the look of dictate that flashed across Liam's features, standing and rinsing her cloth out over a sink, not needing to look at Liam to know that he was still scowling. She spun around so that she was facing him anyway, threw the cloth she was holding at Liam and gave him a small smile that she hoped conveyed everything she wanted to say but couldn't before she continued. "We've been doing this for long enough, surely an extra evening bathing your dog and giving me food poisoning isn't that hard?"

Throwing the cloth back at her, Liam turned on the brown stains covering the cupboard doors, attacking the stains in what he hoped was an effectual manner before nodding reluctantly. They had been doing this dance for years now and it wasn't really her choice. She was closeted as much as he was and she was genuinely a friend so he shouldn't take it out on her. "You make a good point. I'm not sure Loki is going to enjoy this evening, though. He just had a bath last week at Ruth's, when we were away."

"Then we'll have to find something else to do." Loki seemed to whine at her as she spoke and Sophia reached down to pet him again, making nonsense conversation with the dog and leaving Liam finish cleaning up before she offered him a hand up off the floor, hiding a smirk at the stains on his jeans that he glanced down and glared at. He was still glaring when she turned to his fridge, pulling out the ingredients for spaghetti bolognese as he sighed, rummaging through his cupboards until he found a suitable pan, staring at her stubbornly as he said, "I'm not cooking. I cooked last time and you complained."

Liam folded his arms, meeting Sophia's gaze and not looking away until she shrugged, pulled her hair out of her face and nodded, turning to the ingredients in front of her and grabbing a chopping board. "I figured. I'll cook and you can post the photos online later. You may want to change, by the way."

Glancing down at his jeans, Liam nodded, leaving Sophia in the kitchen to go and change, finding Loki sprawled out in front of the fireplace in his living room despite the fact that the fire wasn't even on. He changed his clothes, abandoning his damp jeans on the his bedroom floor, not bothering to drop them into his laundry basket and stopping on his way back to the living to fiddle with the fire until it came to life, pushing the fire guard in front of it as Loki sat up, moving closer to the fire and flopping over, causing Liam to shake his head at the dog. 

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So...here we are at last.

This was a very Sophiam chapter for saying this is meant to be Niam but I swear it's important for eventual plot related reasons.

I do have to say that if any of you picked up on the actual relationship between Liam and Sophia in this, I don't mean to offend anyone or anything by it, it just fits my plot....

With that out of the way, I'd love to see what you guys think...