Count On Me | Niam

Chapter Eighty-Three

Niall/Liam

"Li. I swear to God. Stop fidgeting. Christ, you're worse than Chloe would have been. It's nearly my appointment, just give it a minute."

Rolling his eyes, Niall glared over at Liam and sighed as Liam looked back at him with a petulant frown on his face. He resisted the urge to stand up and sit somewhere else and instead glanced around the doctor's waiting room and noticing for the first time how empty it was, probably a result of Liam pulling strings for them, despite Niall telling him not to.

That had been Liam's offer, brought up over dinner last week at a restaurant they'd picked at random, a smart jeans type place, and Liam had ordered a bottle of wine before he'd realised and asked the waitress to bring over two waters instead. He'd made the offer when Niall asked if he wanted to accompany him to the doctors, at least for the first appointments and the ones he'd be home for, only Liam had somehow started talking about private doctors and shorter waiting times and total discretion, and there they were.

Comfortingly, though, a private clinic had very similar decor and staff as a regular NHS GP's surgery did, down to the ancient magazines, dubiously stained chairs, and bored receptionists. It was so familiar Niall was taken back to the moments seventeen-year-old him had sat in very similar places, waiting for appointments for the same reason they were there now. Only now, he wasn't sat alone or with Missy, but with Liam, even if Liam was behaving like a child.

He couldn't really blame Liam, he'd fidgeted similarly the first time he'd done this, nervous and unsure of what would happen, and this was all new to Liam. It was, he might have wanted this, but the reality was different. He'd mentioned to Niall over breakfast that he thought today would have been an abdominal ultrasound scan, like it was on TV, and Niall had then had to enlighten him that no, it wasn't nearly as nice as that.

This appointment was the twelve-week scan, though he wasn't quite that far along, known as an NT scan and, for him, couldn't be done as a transabdominal test. Liam had paled when Niall had told him why they did the test, to test for genetic deformations and conditions such as Downs syndrome, and he'd looked like Niall had felt aged seventeen and having all this information thrown at him. Only, Liam didn't suit looking haunted and terrified, so Niall had kissed him and then pointed out how rare the odds were of the scan detecting anything, and mentioning that Chloe's test results had been abnormal but she was fine.

The appointment was the only thing either of them had to do, Niall having taken the day off of work, and there were tentative plans of going out for lunch afterwards, continuing the trend of making the most of the time they had until tour started up again. It meant that they'd spent the week slacking off from life and managing to fit more into a week than was probably possible, but they'd done it. Asides from taking Niall on actual dates, Liam had visited him at work, at first sneaking him away, then sneaking into the back room to surprise him, putting the battered old couch to good use.

It was the most...reckless Niall had been for...well, ever. One could argue that this particular branch of recklessness was in a roundabout way the reason they were sat there, in the doctor's waiting room, but they were overlooking that fact.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity, they were called into an examination room, where they were met by a doctor who looked a lot less stressed, over worked and exhausted than your typical NHS doctor might. She introduced herself as Doctor Jones and didn't seem at all surprised by Liam, which Niall figured was what they were paying for.

Since this was technically Niall's first appointment, they also ended up covering all the basic details, such as 'was this his first pregnancy?', 'had he experienced any nausea, hormones, etcetera?' and 'how far along did he think he was?' the answers to which Niall gave whilst Liam looked like he might have done back when they were kids and he'd walk into exams having done no revision whatsoever.