Count On Me | Niam

Chapter Twenty-One

Liam

"Yeah, see you later, Zee."

Shutting his apartment door once his bandmate had left, Liam reached down and scratched Loki behind his ears, leading him away from the foyer and back into the kitchen, slipping a couple of biscuits to the dog as he settled down into his bed under the radiator. Dropping back into his seat at the breakfast bar, Liam looked back at the pictures of Niall that he'd finally shown Zayn, gathering them up and stacking them in a pile, smoothing out a creased corner as he looked down at them.

Zayn had let him hijack their planned writing session to try and make sense of everything, the two of them finally talking about the fact that, at some point, Liam had become a father by someone who was not his fiancé without even knowing. Zayn had let him talk, only occasionally interrupting, and Liam had finally told someone everything Niall had told him about his daughter. Zayn had been the only one of his bandmates willing to listen to him about Chloe, Louis and Harry still avoiding the issue, and it made Liam feel like he was seventeen again, unsure of where he stood with Louis and Harry but already on common ground with Zayn.

Though in all honesty, Liam had felt like he was seventeen again since he'd ran into Niall for the first time. Seventeen-year-old him had always been captivated by Niall. Hell, fifteen-year-old him, who had been adamant that the 'being gay' thing was more theoretical than anything else, had been captivated by Niall from the minute he'd walked into the math classroom and glared at everyone. He'd been captivated by Niall from the word go and it had always been that way.

Niall had arrived at his school in the middle of the term, shrouded in mystery. All anyone knew about him was that he was not a natural blonde and had moved to Wolverhampton after being forced to leave his old school. Anything else, like the fact he was probably the best guitarist out of anyone in their school or was great at playing football until he first dislocated his knee, remained unknown until he finally shared that information with Liam over anyone else. Rumours had said he'd been forced to leave because he was gay but Liam hadn't cared about that. He'd simply been captivated by Niall from the beginning, had been since he'd walked Niall to one of his class and watched him piss off everyone in the class but Liam before the lesson was over.

Liam felt like he was seventeen again, only, this time, it was a million times more complicated than it had been the first time around.

Aged seventeen, whilst being completely, ridiculously, head over heels, in love with Niall, Liam had been shown what happened when people, more specifically the media and the controlling, over-involved management types, knew you were gay. He'd watched as two of his bandmates, newfound friends and brothers were told that what they were, who they were and who they liked, was wrong and it had terrified him. It had taken him long enough to admit to the three of them that he was not completely straight and then he saw what happened if you tried to be who you really were, watching Louis and Harry get dragged apart and shoved further into the closet than the two of them had ever wanted to be.

So when he'd been called into a private meeting with management and had had Danielle and then Sophia foisted upon him, he'd agreed and signed on the dotted line. He'd very briefly tried things with Danielle before breaking off any ties, realising that the two of them would never be anything more than friends and that he was ridiculous to even think she was what he wanted over Niall, but he'd then been given no choice. He'd signed over his freedom to avoid being treated like there was something wrong with him, and, in return, he'd spent a year or so going on awkward dates and sharing kisses with Danielle that reminded him of being fourteen and trying to convince himself that he was straight. Then there had been the six plus years he'd spent doing similar things with Sophia, a situation that had escalated until he was back in Modest!'s boardroom with a newer, different contract in front of him and an engagement ring. He'd never mentioned Niall to anyone, never saying anything specific about him to anyone who was a part of this new chapter of his life, never mentioning anything about the times before he stopped being Niall's boyfriend and became someone else entirely.