Count On Me | Niam

Chapter Five

Liam

There was something about the repetitive nothingness of running that relaxed him.

It didn't matter how shit his day had been, how many frustrating phone calls or how many meetings with his management he'd had to endure, the second he stepped on the treadmill, he forgot it all.

And it never failed to work.

He might've had a shit few days dealing with Sophia, but once he'd let his iPod begin to blast The Kings Of Leon, he managed to let go of the pent up anger and focused on the steady beat of his feet pounding against the treadmill and the slight burn in his legs as the treadmill program switched intensity, the pace and incline increasing drastically, distracting him until the songs blurred into one and he was out of breath.

Once he'd stopped and let his breathing ease off, he moved from the treadmill and continued with the rest of his workout, pushing himself harder than usual until he managed to completely forget about the latest demands put upon him.

Despite the freedom the switch of management and label after the break had afforded One Direction as a whole, the new reps were just as concerned about the bands public image as Modest! had been, and, despite the fact he no longer had any legal obligation, he'd been persuaded to spend a week at a 'romantic country side escape' with Sophia, the frustrations of which had led him to push himself harder than he normally would have.

He finally stopped, nearly two hours after he'd entered the gym, having gotten there as soon as it opened, pushing his hair out of his face and scrabbling around in his bag for his drink and his towel. The state of the changing room made him pull a face as usual, being dimly lighted and sort of disgusting compared to the relative luxury of the other gyms he could have attended, though he was reminded of the anonymity it gave him by the relative emptiness of the place for saying it was a Saturday morning, meaning he was highly unlikely to be recognised by anyone else using the gym unlike at some of the places he could have gone.

As he left, he collided with someone halfway up the stairs, dropping his bag and hearing his sunglasses take the brunt of the fall, bending down at the same time as the person did, too distracted and lost in his own thoughts to pay much attention to them.

On some level, he was aware of them saying his name, recognising him, but it didn't really compute and he gave the standard answer he gave when someone approached him on one of the days when he was stopped in public but wasn't in the mood to deal with fans. "Sorry mate, It's my day off, no signatures or photos."

The guy who'd run into him said something before he continued on downtime stairs and Liam was about to head on towards the exit when something about them seeming oddly familiar, his curiosity then making him turn back. Still looking down the stairs, Liam moved to one side as a stream of people passed him, struggling to search through the crowd of people as he tried to catch a glimpse of him once more.

Not to be disappointed, Liam's breath caught in his throat as the guy turned around, his arm wrapped around some kid, looking so similar to someone he used to know that he thought it couldn't have been anyone else.

There was no way it could be him. Really.

No way.

Liam was fairly certain he'd moved back to Ireland. And besides, it had been years. What were the odds that he'd go to the gym as he did? In a city as big as London, the chances were miniscule.

It would be the world's biggest coincidence.

However, looking at the guy as he made his way back upstairs, his arm still around the kid and his eyes shining as he laughed at something the little girl said, Liam was more than certain that he'd just run into his ex boyfriend, someone he hadn't seen since before his X Factor days.

Niall Horan.

Dropping his phone, Liam made no attempt to go after it as it crashed down the stairs, instead still stood staring at Niall.

*****

Ignoring Loki as he let himself into his flat, Liam dropped his bag, kicked his shoes of without paying attention to where they fell and stormed through the place, shedding the jumper he'd thrown on earlier somewhere between the living room and his office which was probably the room he used least and was really just a glorified storage space for all of the old belongings he'd moved out of his parents' house but had never gotten around to unpacking.

He knew what he was looking for but it took him a while to find it, pushing aside his guitars, several stacks of books and piles of paperwork out of the way and searching through shelves until he found the box he was looking for, something his sisters had put together when he officially moved out of his childhood home, sometime after One Direction's first tour but before their second.

The lid of the box ended up tossed somewhere, the contents scattered over the floor around where he'd sat, countless photographs that he'd forgotten about littering the space, cataloguing his teenage years and consisting of old polaroids from his sister's arty phase, low quality pictures from a Nokia camera phone or printouts from Myspace.

Old photos of him from his childhood distracted him for a long time and Liam didn't look up as Loki faded into the room, barking softly before settling down int the doorway, watching Liam as he sorted through the photographs, slowly building two piles, one of the photos he wasn't too bothered about, the other consisting of photo that documented his first proper relationship, roughly the last year of his life before he went off to The X Factor.

Once he'd found all the photos he'd wanted, he heaved himself up into his desk chair, leaning back as he looked through them, settling on one particular photo, a midsummer barbecue at his parents' house, after auditions but just before he'd gone away to bootcamp.

Sixteen-year-old him had an arm around the first person he'd ever liked enough to take home to his parents, the blurry polaroid a testament to the short-lived nature of Ruth's photography phase, his gaze fixed on the boy he had his am around, both of the smiling and looking way from the camera, both of them having pretended not to see Ruth.

The boy in the photograph had been Niall, and just remembering him made Liam's heart race a little. He'd been Liam's first boyfriend, had been the one to make Liam realise that it wasn't a phase, that it wasn't wrong to want to kiss boys and he'd been the first boy, the first person, that Liam had ever kissed.

In another photo, the two of them were laid side by side on the ground, a striped picnic blanket beneath, Niall's face pressed against Liam's. the photo taken on an old Nokia by Niall's older brother as they spent a rare afternoon together with the few members on Niall's family that hadn't turned their backs on him. The day itself, in early April, had been too cold for a picnic but they'd gone anyway, ending up taking shelter under the blanket when the rain began to pour.

He found another photo of the same day, taken as he walked Niall home and Liam recalled that it was then Niall had told him that he loved him for the first time, nearly eight months after Liam had kissed him outside the library at school.

Closing his eyes, Liam ran a hand over his face and dropped the photo, trying to reconcile the image of sixteen-year-old Niall with the man he ran into, swallowing for a moment before he opened his eyes and stared back down at the photo.

_________________________________

So... Liam recognised Niall.

And a little bit of backstory - if you squint for it.

More of Niall's p.o.v next chapter...

I'd love to see what you guys think...