Count On Me | Niam

Chapter Seven

Niall

It had been a challenging weekend. The run in with Liam and the callous brush off he'd received had left him struggling and not even Chloe had been able to shift the grey that had been clouding his mind.

Dropping her off at school was a relief, and he sighed as Chloe waved him goodbye and headed into the classroom, leaving him in the cloakroom to sort out her bags. It was an opportunity to let the smile fall from his face, hanging Chloe's bags on her peg before leaving, ignoring the gaggle of other parents still crowding the playground as he always did, and they ignored him, meaning no one noticed as he allowed the scowl he'd been forcing away for days to fall over his features as he made his way towards the bus stop.

His bus was late, and he was glaring even more as he finally boarded the bus, handing over the fare and making his way to the back before he dropped into a seat, resting his head against the window and ignoring the other passengers, again thinking back to the previous Saturday, clenching his jaw as he replayed Liam's actions and words, the way he hadn't fucking recognised him at all. Niall would be the first to admit it had been years since they'd seen each other but, fuck, it made him angry to think that Liam could have forgotten him.

He'd spent the weekend swallowing any feelings he may have had, but even the day of board games and a rare trip to the cinema with Chloe to make up for the lack of a TV hadn't managed to make him feel better. If anything, it had only made him feel worse. He wasn't sure what exactly he was feeling anymore, instead focusing on the overriding anger and ignoring anything else, only smiling when Chloe was around to notice and only then because he wanted what every parent would want; to shield his daughter from the truth he'd avoided telling her for so long.

Maybe he should have told her about Liam, it was something he'd thought about doing for years, though he wasn't sure she could handle it or would understand. Hell, Niall didn't really understand it sometimes. How he could go from knowing everything about Liam to being so far removed from his life that he didn't even know if Liam still drank his tea with four sugars because he'd never learnt to drink it without.

Despite the fact that he was already running late, he got off the bus a stop early and walked the extra half mile to the shop where he worked, using the extra time to lock his feelings back up into the little cage they'd escaped from and school his features into something portraying a little less anger. Making his way into the shop, he headed for the back room and dropped off his coat before grabbing his name tag and switching with the person behind the till, giving the temp they had in for a few weeks a quiet nod as she left.

Work was a solace that he threw himself into, spending the morning serving the few customers they had and finally able to feel something resembling calm take over him, using the long periods between customers to sign up for yet more double shifts and reply to the texts he'd been ignoring from his brother.

If he was honest, Greg was the only family that he really had any more, and ignoring him probably wasn't wise, but it was difficult to talk sometimes. There were just some things that you couldn't say to your older brother and admitting that even the thought of your ex made you regress years of emotional progress was one of them. His lunch break was used to call Greg back, since he'd been forced to take an hour by his boss and get a sandwich and drink for once, instead of working through it, so Niall was sat in the back room, leaning against a battered old armchair placed there purely for the employees' use, his feet kicked up against a stack of old boxes. "Greg...hey. What's up? How're Theo and Denise?"

"That's good to hear. Me and Chlo can't wait to come down and see you guys at Christmas." Drumming his fingers against the arm of the chair, Niall only half listened as Greg continued to talk, half listening and half mentally planning the trip to his brother's house, almost dropping the phone as Greg said something that surprised him. "What? Say that again."

"Someone messaged you via myspace? Hang on, Greg, two things. You still have your myspace? I deleted mine years ago and I'm younger than you. And you're losing it, bro, I swear. That was...that had to be Liam's myspace...you have to be wrong." His voice trailing off, Niall tightened his grip on his phone, leaning his head against the back of the armchair before he repeated himself, thinking back to the years before he had all the responsibility that had ended up thrown at his feet when he was only sixteen, seventeen. "That was the name Liam had. But he had to have deleted his page. It makes no sense, I swear you've lost it...are you sure?"

The whole thing seemed absurd to Niall and he refused to even consider for a second that it would be worth giving his brother and the alleged message from Liam a chance to not be wrong, hanging up the phone once Greg had finished speaking, some random story about Theo's school that he made the obligatory noises of acknowledgment about before murmuring a goodbye.

Niall dropped his phone, aiming for seat opposite but missing, though the Nokia simply bounced against the floor and landing screen up. He ran a hand through his hair, muttering a whole string of curse words, edging up hiding his face in his hands and counting ten before he straightened up, shaking his head and heading out of the back room, intent on going back to work, though, despite his resolve, he was struggling to put the conversation out of his mind.

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Liam

Struggling with the door to his apartment, Liam shook his head as Loki bolted past him into the warm and dry the second the door opened, leaving Liam to follow behind him, hanging the dog leash on the peg before he let the door fall shut. He ignored his phone as it began to ring and continued to do so, making his way through to his office. If it was anyone really important, they'd keep calling, if it wasn't, the person would eventually give up.

He had to step over the pile of photographs still spread out over the floor, and dropped into his desk chair, grabbing at the laptop that he'd logged on and returned to the website he'd last looked at, easily logging back into the site and scrolling to his page.

No one had ever really understood why he'd kept his Myspace and had instead made a fake one public for the fans to see, but he'd wanted to keep some things private, and his Myspace had documented his relationship with Niall, as best two teenagers could document something on the early beginnings of social media. He wasn't sure why he was going back to it now, though, but he'd been struggling to think of any other way to talk to someone sixteen-year-old him had known and he'd never been more grateful that his old Myspace had survived the post X Factor deleting of his social media.

Taking a sip from the mug still left out on the desk, he winced and spluttered at the taste of cold coffee, pushing the mug away from him in disgust as he flicked through his last activity on the site, refreshing the page of the person he'd talked to last. If he'd remembered correctly and avoiding accidentally messaging a total stranger, he should have been messaging one of the few people he used to know in contact with Niall. He'd learned pretty quickly when he began his search of ex-boyfriends past that Niall was pretty much unfindable online and had been forced to search for old acquaintances or friends who might help or still be reachable. He'd ended up messaging the only person in the world who, besides from him, still had a Myspace page.

In a moment of curious desperation, he'd ended up messaging Niall's brother.

He was aware that his behaviour was borderline crazy and possibly interpreted as stalking, but it was Niall, and at the very least, he wanted a chance to apologise for dismissing him so casually.

Looking up, startled, as Loki flopped onto the floor outside the doorway, one of his rubber toys next to him, Liam checked the laptop one last time, closing it when there was still no response to his message. It was then that Liam noticed the general rubbish littering his office for the first, a room that hadn't been used properly for as long as he'd been living there that was now messier than the rest of his apartment combined, and he shook his head both at the mess and at himself before he got up, stepping over the photographs and shutting the door.

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And here we have another update.

Whilst I was researching this chapter, I learned that myspace is still very much a thing. It's really weird these days but, to my horror, the embarrassing page 12 year old me had still exists. *cringes*

But we have more insight into how Niall feels and a bit of progress. I'm playing a little bit with facts like Liam's myspace and Greg's but it kind of works.

Thoughts on the chapter?