Count On Me | Niam

Chapter Eighty-One

Liam

"Bye, Papa!"

"Laters, Li."

The front door slammed shut behind Niall, Chloe, and Sam as they left, and Liam let out a sigh as he glanced around his flat, wondering what to do with himself. In the four days that he'd been home, he'd had very little time to himself, having spent nearly every moment with Niall and Chloe, though now a whole day stretched out ahead of him with nothing to do. Niall had gone to work, Chloe was spending a half day trying out the private school they'd gotten her a place at, leaving Liam slightly at a loss as to how to occupy himself.

In past years, he'd spent tour breaks partying and holidaying in the sun, either with the boys or Sophia and, whilst he was far happier to be home with Niall and Chloe, he couldn't help but wish he had slightly more to do than rattle around his flat. He could go to the gym, true, but that was only downstairs and seemed sort of pointless, or he could go out and do something, but he was supposed to be keeping a low profile and there wasn't anywhere he wanted to go, not without Niall or Chloe.

Keeping a low profile was pointless anyway, his and Niall's social media accounts had been updated, letting fans know he was back in London for a few weeks, and fans had probably seen them whilst they'd been out, shopping or taking Chloe to the science museum like she'd begged, taking pictures despite Paddy and Sam's best efforts that would further fuel the rumours that still hadn't died down.

Half an hour having passed since everyone but him had left, Liam was sat with a mug of tea, staring out of the windows and contemplating the few other options he hadn't explored. There was always the boys, Louis and Harry would be in London, their families traveling up to see them for once instead of them going up to Doncaster, and Zayn was probably free, though he'd always joined Liam with the partying in the past.

He could inflict his company upon the boys for a day, though they probably wouldn't welcome it, and Liam would rather let them have their free time, given that they'd just spent months together and had another few months stretching ahead, and that conclusion left him back at square one.

Wandering around the flat, he found himself tidying up absentmindedly, a pointless task as his housekeeper was now coming by regularly again, her services having been dispensed of whilst he'd been away on tour, though she was now back and his fridge and freezer were full of her home cooked meals once again, food that Chloe turned her nose up at because it wasn't chicken nuggets and all contained vegetables.

His tidying eventually led him to begin unpacking the boxes that Paddy and Sam had helped Niall bring over from his and Chloe's flat, part of the slow process of them officially moving in with him, the latest batch of boxes having been dumped in his study the previous Saturday and ignored until now. Niall wouldn't mind him unpacking, he'd most likely be grateful, and Liam sorted through the boxes, sorting the belongings into Niall's, Chloe's and miscellaneous, with Chloe's pile seeming to be twice the size of the other two.

Chloe's pile consisted of toys, mostly action figures and bits of random plastic crap, along with jumpers and old school work that seemed to be random bits of paper and glue and powder paint imitations of book characters. Liam left it in her room, placed neatly at the foot of her bed for her to decide what to do with, straightening her duvet and looking around with a smile at the messy, disorganised space that had once been a painfully empty and bare spare room. The eight-year-old had stuck up posters, of swimming athletes, dinosaurs, and books, and had glow in the dark stars littering the ceiling, blankets piled up in the corner of the room, functioning as part of a den she'd constructed using the radiator and a chair.

Liam's boredom led him to want to tidy up, bring some order to the world Chloe had turned her bedroom into, though he forced himself to leave, muttering something about not disrupting whatever the road of socks she'd constructed was for.