Count On Me | Niam

Chapter Ninety

Niall

He didn't quite know what to with himself anymore. He was almost...at a loss, really; unsure of what to do and how he should be feeling.

The first time Liam had left, they'd built it up for weeks, talked about it constantly, until it was big sort of event, a moment to be dreaded until it actually occurred, at which point, it Niall had wanted to skip right past it, live out those moments in fast forward. This time, even though it had been sort of different — only a brief break, a respite from the months of being apart — and they'd known that they'd have less time, it was sort of anticlimactic, where Liam was just gone, at some godforsaken hour of the early morning, no fuss, no big goodbye, just a brief kiss in the doorway before he went.

That had been it, and it had left Niall feeling sort of lost, unsure of whether to make a big deal of him being gone again, or let his absence gnaw away at him quietly until Liam was home again. In the end, he'd decided to carry on as normal, as he had in the months Liam had been away, rather that than risk upsetting Chloe again, especially as there had been enough disturbance and upheaval for her, with Liam's arrival into her life, departure and arrival, and departure again. And there'd soon be more change for her to come to terms with.

Actually, in all honesty, it was partially that news that had Niall at a loss as to what to do, along with a few other matters, and he was really, really trying not to start living in the past again, coping by himself the way he had with Chloe, especially since it wasn't truly how things currently were. But it did sort of feel like it, waking up alone every morning, with a slowly growing list taking up space in his head of everything he'd need to start sorting. Calling Liam helped erase that feeling, though, and distracted him enough that the first week after Liam had left passed leaving him feeling only slightly...grey.

It also made him focus on the realisation that he'd have to tell Chloe, both by himself and soon, before his next appointment, so she'd have time to come to terms with the news and they could avoid another instance of her hiding herself away as she had done in February. Privately, Niall was hoping that she'd accept the latest change as easily as she'd accepted them moving in officially with Liam, and take the news that she'd soon have a baby brother or sister well.

And he would have to tell her soon, not just because he had a doctors appointment already scheduled, but because it wasn't going to be long before it became obvious, or that someone mentioned the baby in her presence and the truth came out before he'd told her. That would be the worst thing that could possibly happen, and was the main motivation behind his decision to finally tell her, nearly three days after he'd initially suggested to Liam that they do so.

He let work distract him in the meantime, eking out his shifts until it got the point where his boss was unwilling to assign him any more overtime and the backlist of work — filing, restocking, filling out order forms — was no more, and at that point, he was forced to metaphorically man up, unable to spend any longer figuring out how he wanted to tell Chloe.

The rational, grown up and surprisingly parent-y part of him knew he was being ridiculous, but it was drowned out by the part of him that was freaking out over Chloe's potential reaction and what the fuck he was supposed to do if she took the news badly. What was there he could do, if Chloe took exception to the fact that she would be an only child no longer? It's not like there was any going back, and he wanted this, another baby, and Liam did too. It was an actual question he was struggling with, along with his difficulty predicting how the conversation with Chloe would go.

He and Liam had first broached that subject weeks ago, but they'd never really dealt with it, and all the things they'd brought up then were starting to haunt him now. Apart from Toby and his admittedly sudden inheritance of three younger sisters, Chloe had no real knowledge of siblings and younger children and there would be quite a large age gap. Eight, nearly nine years was quite the difference, and that thought kept nagging at Niall until he was seconds away from calling Liam and making a big deal out of what should be nothing.