corporate affairs [Niall Horan AU]

T W E N T Y T W O

He gets a glass of water from his refrigerator, noticing the only misplaced item in the whole penthouse probably is the yellow sticky note on the stainless steel door.

Niall-

I quit.

- Phyllis

That makes it more real.

Phyllis had quit? She'd been working for him for more than half a decade. She'd become his second-mother in America. It scares him. He dials her number with the sleek phone that had been built into the wall for kitchen calls. As he waits for her to answer, he paces, walking from the kitchen into the his bedroom. The dial tone is still trilling as his eyes sweep over his room, flickering over a glittering shadow on his nightstand and then back to the kitchen...and then back to the... glittering shadow on his nightstand.

"Hello, Niall," Phyllis's tired voice murmurs into the phone, but the only sound Niall can hear is the muted noise of it clattering to the ground behind his feet as he slowly drifts towards that glittering shadow on the nightstand. With a rush of weakness, he collapses to his knees, his fingers reaching out to pluck the ring that should have been joined by another and never taken off. It glitters in the light and glints as he turns it in his hand.

"Oh God," he heaves, his eyes blurring. Something tears inside of him. It makes him question everything. It's not something he's ever felt before. It's a burning sensation that ricochets in tidal waves inside him, until a loud, wet choking noise echoes in the room around him and he realizes with blurry eyes and a distorted mind that he is crying-no, sobbing. He slumps against the bed and smacks his hand against mouth to try to stop the pathetic noise from inside of him, but the waves from inside are too strong, and he lays there for God knows how long-heaving and sobbing with one small ring clutched in his hand.

This makes it real.

He gives in, finally. And his mind gushes with memories of her. Her laugh, her voice, her eye roll. The exact color of pink her eyelids turn when she cries. The way her eyes had begged him silently to fight for her-the way he had refused. He realizes now that his days of being king are over. He was a king-but never the way he planned. He wasn't a king when The Economist crowned him the most successful man under thirty. He wasn't a king the night he spent four million dollars in celebrations for turning the company into an internationally known billion dollar corporation. He was a king when he was a common man. He had been a king when he had kissed her for the first time in the rain, when he knew he was asking too much of her and quite possibly ruining her. He was a king the night he rolled over after having-making love to her in the back of the limo and felt something very strong pull in the base of his stomach. He had been a God when she had told him-somehow-she loved him. But he had become a mere mortal when he let her go, his crown and his heart, locked somewhere deep in the recesses of her heart.

She deserves so much more. He knows he's the scum of the Earth for carrying on with Gillian when she'd put her heart on the platter. And for all the good world was worth, he couldn't quite figure out why he'd done it. At some point in his life, he'd become more content with always having the upper hand in the game and being safe than putting himself at risk. He'd closed off his heart and he'd muted the world.

At some point he gets up. He dumps everything out of his suitcase and grabs the journal he'd bought at that dingy cafe in London. Nearly every page is filled. He uses the same stolen pen to write explanations of the photos. Some of them make no sense, he knows that. Their vague and stupid mostly. But for some reason he knows that they belong in her hands. On the last page he writes the only thing he can think of that could possibly explain to her how he feels.

Then he shuts the book and heads for the private bar in his kitchen, grabbing the first bottle of liquor he can find. He drinks it down as fast as he can, waiting for the world to collapse unto itself.