Count On Me | Niam

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Niall/Liam

Liam was phenomenal on stage.

It was a fact he'd always known, really, and it would be impossible for Liam not to be so, but it was a fact that Niall was once again realising to be true, having spent the first three evenings of their stay backstage, watching the band's performances from the side of the stage, allowing him to see everything far better than when he'd stood further back with the other boys' families. He got to see Liam up close, living his dream, having the time of his life with the boys, and, from where he was stood, the crowd turned into an ever-changing sea of voices, uncountable and unimaginable.

Chloe was amazed, too. She'd missed the first performance in Miami they could have been there for, having fallen asleep before the show started and spending the entire night asleep on the sofa in the boys' dressing room, exhausted from the jet lag, though she'd tried to deny it, and Paddy had volunteered to carry her back to her room Liam's suite whilst Liam took Niall to the hotel's bar for an hour in lieu of going out with the others, and there had been nothing Niall could say to prepare her for the experience.

Being stood where they had been for the London performance meant they had been part of the crowd, unable to comprehend what it must have looked like to anyone not crammed in the center of it, but the outside perspective gave the impression that the stage was surrounded by a never-ending ocean of adoring fans. The fact that it was the last night in Miami, the crowd seemed even louder as someone had had the foresight to give Chloe a pair of noise canceling headphones so her hearing wasn't completely ruined.

It was completely surreal for Niall to even think about, but Liam, Liam seemed completely at home up there and once again reminded Niall of how incredible he was at what he did. It was also kind of jarring to reconcile the image of Liam, up on that stage, with the Liam he knew, and, more specifically, the Liam who, that afternoon at the beach, had let Chloe bury him in sand only to later confess to Niall, somewhat unhappily, that he had sand everywhere, like everywhere, everywhere.

Niall could only think that it was even more surreal for him to later be stood out on a street corner, in the middle of Miami, in the middle of the night, gripping Liam's hands like it was the only thing keeping him grounded. He blindly followed Liam through a crowd of photographers and fans, on his first ever pap walk, as Liam had called it, infinitely grateful that they weren't just out by themselves, but were instead accompanied by the full force of Liam's security as well as Louis, Harry, and Zayn, but the attention seemed alien to him.

The Liam who'd surfaced then had kept his fingers linked with Niall's at all times, artfully avoiding answering the question thrown at him whilst still looking at the cameras, seeming more like the Liam who could dominate a stage than the Liam who burnt pancakes, though that Liam resurfaced once they'd forced their way through the crowd, collapsing into the backseat of the car waiting for them, giving Niall a sympathetic smile and closing any distance between them, muttering about how nervous he'd been when he'd first faced such a crowd, murmuring that Niall had been brilliant, making Niall wonder for a moment how Liam seemed to flip between both sides of himself like that.

He left that thought hanging though, and leaned into Liam's side, grateful that he was there when the car stopped and they were forced to face a similar crowd outside their hotel, flinching a little as someone directed a question at him, waving a camera in his face and taking the photo before he could look away, the brightness of the flash temporarily blinding him, rooting him to the spot until Liam reached for him, wrapping an arm around his waist and leading him along, kissing his cheek the second they were inside and away from all the cameras.

Liam seemed genuinely sincere, no teasing quality to his tone or smirk lighting up his eyes as he kissed Niall again, saying, "You survived, thank Christ. And you didn't run a mile."