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“When your heart releases
You won’t fall to pieces
You’ll let those old diseases lie”
Porcelain – Marianas Trench
Knock, knock, knock.
“Liam…” Niall’s throat is all closed up from trying (and failing) to stop crying for six blocks, his voice coming out in splintered bits of sound. Please be home, Li. Even the voice in his head is a pathetic whimper.
He knocks again. And waits again.
The door swings open to reveal a very sleepy-looking Liam, “Niall?” His deep voice is somehow made deeper from the sleep. Figures Liam would be lights out before nine.
“Liam,” Niall repeats with a sob.
Liam straightens up at the sound of Niall crying. Niall crying. It almost sounds unnatural to say that. For as long as Liam’s known Niall, he’s only been able to associate the boy with the feeling of relaxing on a sunny beach. He’s never seen Niall so in touch with the overcast skies of England.
“What’s happened?” Liam asks, trying to appear calm and collected for Niall’s sake. After all, the boy has come to him probably in the pursuit of solace.
The next sounds to come out of Niall’s mouth are naught but tear-coated, choked whines. Of course, when he comes to realise that Liam can’t even understand him, he just cries harder and tries to lower himself to the ground like a plane not crashing in slow motion but forlornly giving up flight.
Liam’s hands reach out quickly and hook under Niall’s arms, hauling his nearly limp figure into a hug as he pulls Niall over the threshold. He mumbles little things like don’t cry and just let it out. Liam can’t be bothered to make sense right now. Between the swelling in his chest and the boy in his arms, there’s no more of himself to rely on.
He hurriedly guides Niall inside and goes to make him some tea, but not before settling him on the sofa with a big fleece throw and the sweatshirt right off his back.
Once Liam is back with the tea, he sits down next to a more calm but still sniffling Niall. He’s hiccupping and wiping his nose with his sleeve. Liam would scold Niall about how unsanitary that is if he wasn’t so torn up at the sight before him. How would you feel if the boy you loved showed up on your doorstep full of tears, making sounds level with utter despair? Well, you just might feel like your entire world’s hanging in the balance.
Liam waits for Niall to finish his tea, before giving him the ‘tell Liam what to kiss’ look. He’s generally used to counselling everyone else. He’s always been there to make other people feel better even if he can’t fix himself.
“I fucked up.” Niall’s voice is hoarse and to-the-top with regret.
Liam tilts his head unable to decipher exactly what Niall means, looking too much like Zayn, and Niall wants to disappear into the giant, navy blanket. He’s never felt so exposed, so ashamed of what people may see. Niall hates that it has to be Liam to deal with him in this state. Liam doesn’t deserve this. Liam is too kind and too caring and too acceptant of Niall. Liam’s too good for him, just like Zayn.
Liam pulls Niall in for a hug as some sorrowful panic has clouded Niall’s eyes and Liam loves him too much to let him run on broken legs. Liam would carry Niall— never let his feet touch the ground for as long as he lives— if Niall would just feel the same. But Liam knows better than anyone how much it hurts to have feelings forced into a heart that’s already full.
“What happened?” Liam replies, careful not to say that Niall ‘fucked up’ anything. Liam knows that Niall isn’t perfect, but he also knows that Niall’s natural disposition has to have been influenced by an outside force because Niall has always been too content to care about his own shortcomings.
“Zayn knows.”
“What we did to his toothbrush?”
Somehow, Niall manages to look at Liam like he’s a fucking invalid despite the fact that he’s in the process of falling apart. “No…?” Niall asks, not quite sure if Liam is being serious or trying to make a joke.
“Oh… Ohhhh,” Liam says, finally getting it. “You mean he knows about… the uh… thingy.”
Niall can’t hold back a small smirk at Liam’s awkward attempt at being sensitive. “Yeah, the ‘thingy,’” he confirms with a bittersweet curve of the lips. This is exactly why he chose Liam to confide in when he first realised how he felt about Zayn. Liam’s so protective and understanding and just the right side of naïve. There’s nothing to fear with Liam at his side—neither harm nor judgement.
“I take it he didn’t react well.”
“The fucker didn’t even say anything. That is after he got through barkin at me about his stupid girlfriend. He had the nerve to say that I was a terrible friend for having feelings for him. Like, fuck, I can’t exactly control em, now can I? Hell, if you were in love with me, I’d want to know, right? And I’d respect that, right? Because you’d have the nerve to put up with me being with someone else and the nads to even fucking tell me, RIGHT?” Niall rants, the frustration of it all flooding back as he relives the fight.
“Um,” Liam says breathlessly, feeling like a fox staring down the barrel of a hunter’s loaded rifle. “I don’t know,” he adds timidly when Niall gives him an agitated look at the absence of immediate agreement. “Like… what if I’m– you’re trying to like… you know… not make the other person feel bad or like… leave… because they don’t like… feel the same maybe…?”
“That’s bullshit,” Niall grumbles. “You shouldn’t worry about making anyone feel bad for not loving you or whatever. And if they even care about you at all, then they wouldn’t leave either. Only a total prick would choose themselves over you if they knew something like that. You don’t need people like that anyway.”
“You know, you were afraid when you told him the truth, who’s to say that it wouldn’t scare the other person as well?” Liam lets out in a suddenly defensive huff. “Sometimes, you have to keep secrets to protect the things you care about, Niall, because nobody’s going to react just the perfect way that you think they should. Honestly, I bet that if I were to tell you right here and now that I was in love with you, you’d react just like Zayn did. It would fuck everything up, and then I’d be left without you even as a friend. That’s not something that I’m willing to let happen.”
Niall can feel the tips of his ears burning in anger, his words laced with betrayal. What happened to Liam being on his side? Liam was supposed to be on his side. Liam’s always on his side. “Yeah, well how’s anyone supposed to know what to do when you don’t tell them a fucking thing?”
“How you didn’t?”
“That’s different, Liam! He should’ve known. I’ve only been dropping hints for the past two years!”
Liam scoffs. What a perfect example of irony. “Yeah, and obviously it hasn’t been working out well for either of us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
This is what Niall wants, Liam reminds himself before diving into the most dangerous waters he’s ever dared to swim in. On top of wanting to prove a point, he’d hate to see Niall’s relationship with Zayn end so terribly as it is so obviously important to Niall. Maybe if he can give Niall a way to identify with Zayn, the two might be able to patch things up, even if it must be at the expense of Liam’s own relationship with Niall. Anything to keep Niall happy.
“It means that while you’ve been pining for Sean and pining for Josh and pining for Zayn, I’ve been patiently waiting for you to realise that I’ve wanted you all along. I’ve always put your feelings first, and I’ve always let you do whatever you want with whoever you want without bothering you—not one damn time—with my stupid feelings. They won’t go away, and they haven’t gone away. And it just really sucks that I’m too afraid of losing you to do anything about it. This is exactly the same as what happened with Zayn. The only difference is I haven’t got anyone to fall back on when I find out you don’t feel the same. It sucks, Niall. It really fucking sucks. It just… it sucks,” Liam finishes weakly, finding within himself too much emotion and not enough words.
Niall just stares at Liam with wide, rabbit-like eyes, then suddenly it all clicks: the kindness, the care, the acceptance, the sweetness, the protectiveness, the sensitivity, the unconditional affection, the constantly open arms. Liam has never been too good for Niall. He’s been good enough for him. It is, in the greatest form of truth, a fact that Liam is a generally benign person, but there’s just something different about the way Liam would lay his coat on a puddle for an old woman but his heart on the line for Niall. And never before in Niall’s life has he been so overwhelmed at the idea of a person feeling so strongly for him. He thinks not even Zayn could devastate him as much as Liam could. All at once, Niall knows where he belongs.
[][][][]
“And your heart releases
You won’t fall to pieces
And your breath comes crashing in
Like perfect porcelain”
There are a lot of things that Zayn regrets. He regrets not trying harder in school. He regrets ever picking up a cigarette. He regrets getting that one tattoo of the anarchy symbol in plain sight on his right hand. But he just can’t bring himself to regret letting Niall slip away. Yeah, he’s been through his more-than-fair share of people since breaking up with Akita four years ago. Yeah, it’s really fucking frustrating that his relationships always seem to fail nowadays. And of fucking course it’s because he’s all hung up on Niall, has been since the night he left. But there’s something that makes it all worth it in the way Niall smiles when he’s with Liam that keeps him from regretting it all.
That’s not to say it isn’t hard as hell to see Niall and Liam so happy together and starting a family and doing all that bullshit Zayn’s mum will most likely never see her son doing. He’s jealous as fuck and sad and angry. If the whole tortured artist thing wasn’t going for Zayn before, it definitely is now. And what better way to support that cliché than by spending Christmas alone in his cold little flat with a half-empty bottle of liquor he’s determined to finish so that he can hammer it into more coloured glass for his mosaic? He just needs a little more glass to assemble the clear blue eyes with more cracks than the ones he can feel himself falling through.