Mission Impossible ➳ HS. AG. AU

File 34: The One with the Night Out

Harry

After an hour of driving around, we decided to settle on a bar at the corner of a street.

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"My absolute goal for tonight is to get you fucking wasted. Numb to the pain and distracted from your thoughts." He tips his glass in my direction, lifting the drink up to his mouth and taking large gulps of it. I lean over, staring into the cup in front of me, untouched since it was given to me half an hour ago.

"If it was just that easy," He looks over to me, putting his empty glass onto the bar-top, calling to the bartender for a fourth one.

"Nonsense! It is that easy and you're going to make it happen tonight. Come on, lad. Drink up! I just want us to have fun tonight, just like old times." He nudges my arm, "All I'm asking for is one night. I just want one night to relax and take a breather from all of this. All we do is work, train, and repeat the damn process. What happened to our fucking pact? It wasn't supposed to turn out this way, we promised to stick together, no matter what." I watched him intently, taking in every word that he had said.

You can hear the hurt, the sound of being let down and disappointed in his friends leaking through his words. "It's like... I just—" He pauses, ruffling a hand through his hair, "Sometimes it's like I don't even exist, you know? I'm starting to have conversations with myself. Zayn and Liam just sit there whispering, writing, mapping, like they're in their own world. They leave me out of everything, even when they go out, they never mention anything to me."

My silence seems to be beckoning more and more out of him as time flies, "I think about leaving sometimes, very often actually. Quitting and moving on to do something else with my life, I mean I know I signed up for this type of work, but I didn't apply for this job to watch my friends change right before me eyes." He sighs.

I finally wrap my hand around my glass and lift it into the air, "Tell me about it, but don't worry about it, Niall... You you can stay with me and everyone else if you'd like to." I say, bringing the cup up to my lips and drinking. My face turns in discomfort due to the burning sensation the liquid had left behind.

"Really?" He turns to me and I nod my head with a smile, "Sick."

The corner of my mouth turns upward before tilting my head upward, sniffing my drink, "Bro, what the fuck is in this cup?" I take a small sip to try and give it another chance but nearly gag at the taste of it. Wiping the corners of my mouth, "It's not gross, gross,... But it's really strong, like fuck."

He looks back in my direction and shrugs his shoulders before burying his face within the curve of his arm, letting out loud laughter while pounding his fist against the counter. He lifts his head up and wiped the happy tears from his eyes, another hand grasping at his stomach from laughing hard. He finally quiets himself and takes a deep breath, "Honestly, I have no fucking idea, I gold that hot bartender to give us something strong, and this was the outcome of my request."

I finish the last of my first drink while Niall finishes his fifth; he was definitely a drinker. He always knew how to hang loose, get drunk, and have the time of his life - maybe I should just follow in his steps tonight.

Niall orders another tray of drinks without an ounce of hesitation, the boy clearly past drunk by the time I'm on my eighth and he's lost count. At this point, he's speaking words that I can't seem to understand and asking the most random questions, and laughing at every little thing there is to say.

Two hours later and we're both fucked up and cracking up about something we had talked about fifteen minutes ago. The tray of shots we had ordered arrives and we instantly take our share, holding three small glasses in between my fingers in my hands while Niall holds two in both of his.