I'll Get Over The Way You Got Over Me

Chapter 7

They do an interview a few days later, and Paul tells them to split up again. (He knows the fans complain about them all not being together, he says, but he also knows splitting them up makes the interviewers' jobs about a million times easier, and there's really nothing they can honestly say to deny that). Liam leans into Niall's side before Zayn or Louis can tug him towards them, pretends not to notice the way they don't seem to think much of it.

Niall puts a hand on his waist, squeezes gently. "Switching sides, are we, Payno?" he teases, softly, and Liam hides his face in his neck so he won't have to show his face. Niall squeezes a bit tighter. "Good choice," he says, conversationally, "me and Harry are the better ones, anyway." Liam smiles into his skin, bites down on his shoulder, and Niall doesn't even shout at him for it.

He's asked about the stolen underwear, and those rather unfortunate pictures of him with his dick almost all the way out of his sweats, and Niall teases him endlessly, Harry laughing and smirking and nudging him with his elbow, and Liam thinks, sort of dizzily, that he has no idea why he didn't do this sooner, why he didn't latch on to them faster.

(He still misses them, Zayn and Louis both. Because Zayn is special, yes, but there was a period where he'd have put Louis down as the person he was the closest to aside from Zayn, and he thinks Louis might've done the same. But that's in the past, and he's done all of this to forget about it all, to not care because they don't, and he's not sure how well it's working, still misses them both like something fiercely awful, but.

Niall and Harry are warm and welcoming and unassuming, and it's so easy to fall into them, to forget about Louis and Zayn for a few minutes, to pretend that his two best mates didn't decide that he wasn't interesting enough for them to bother with. To pretend that the boy he's in love with doesn't want nothing to do with him outside those few times when he's bored or has nothing else better to do or—and it's not fair to Zayn, probably, but that's what it feels like.

So Liam pretends, and Harry and Niall let him).

~

He starts clubbing, a lot.

He doesn't really mean to, but it just sort of happens. He's always liked going to clubs, (at least since he re-grew that kidney, or whatever, and didn't have to watch what he drank quite as much anymore), has always enjoyed losing himself in the music and the people and the drinks and all, and he's probably always done it as some sort of coping mechanism, maybe, (he remembers how, after Danielle dumped him, for real, how he couldn't stop, not until Zayn stopped it for him, but Zayn's not going to this time, is he), and it's so, so easy to fall back into that, now.

Because, the thing is, no matter how warm and welcoming Harry and Niall are, they're still Harry and Niall, and they've still got their little bond and their array of inside jokes, and Liam can tell they try really hard not to be too obnoxious about it when he's around, but that just makes him feel worse, honestly.

So he starts going out, instead. Sitting by himself is only making him miserable, and being around Harry and Niall, however wonderful they are, occasionally makes him feel a bit like a selfish, stupid idiot, and being around Louis and Zayn is impossible because they don't bloody let him, which was the whole problem to begin with, and, well. Going out is the only thing left to do, so that's what he does.

He goes out, and he gets spectacularly drunk, and he dances with a lot of people, and he has a great time, and then he does it all over again the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that. Niall gives him a few odd looks, sometimes, but he doesn't ask, and the others don't seem to think much of it; Liam has become a bit of a party animal, honestly, and it's probably not that weird to, well, anyone at all that he's out so often. It still stings a little, somewhere, that they're not—but then, he supposes, that was sort of the point, wasn't it? To not need them. To not need Zayn.