Like A Hole In The Head → [Lilo] ✔️

Chapter 3

Liam gives in around hour nine, when it starts to rain.

"Hey, come in," he tells the woman, who's looking like a drowned whippet in her stylish London suit. She'd probably paid a lot for that, and Liam's struck, again, by just how little him and Louis's lives have in common now. Maybe they never had; maybe Lou had always wanted to be pursued by rail-thin ladies in expensive couture who wanted a piece of his personal life, but when Liam had known him it'd been nothing fancier than thrift-store T-shirts and Vans and an unwillingness to get out of bed before eleven of a Sunday. It's painful to see this woman drenched and haunting the doorstep of a Wolverhampton police precinct for a lot of reasons, but the one Liam feels most keenly right now is the uncrossable gulf that exists between the present and the past.

"Hello, Mr. Payne," she says gamely.

"What's it going to take to get you back in your car and on the road to someplace dry?" he asks her. He's not capable of being pushy enough to actually throw her out, but he thinks she might leave if he gives her something, and she needs to leave. It's wet.

"I'm here to talk about Louis Tomlinson. What do you think about his Oscar nod?" she starts, and he tries to keep his face civil.

"How about this," he suggests, because, really, he does have a job, "I'll do one question, alright? And then I've got to -- I'm sorry, but I've got to work."

She looks at him like she's counting her choices, and then she pulls out a small recorder.

"Can I get a bit of audio, then?" she says.

"Yeah, alright," he says. "Fine." It's not like his voice is particularly interesting or something, but he's sure there's already pictures of him on the internet somewhere. He's not been hiding.

"Right, okay," she gets it running, pointing it at his face. It's between her eyes and his, and he wants to tell her that that makes the interview even harder, not easier, but she's recording and he doesn't have a chance before she says, "What led to the breakup between yourself and Louis Tomlinson?"

Wow, okay. That's direct.

"I guess -- it just didn't work out," Liam says. "We, uh, we were only together for a bit, and we got married way too young, obviously. It was," he realises he's chewing his lip and quickly drops it, "it was a lot of fun, while it lasted," he says, because that's the absolute nicest thing he can think of to characterise him and Lou's complete shipwreck of a marriage. "But in the end we just didn't work out." He smiles, aiming for finality.

She puts her stuff away and goes. She thanks him, and he tells her she's welcome even though she's really not. She's going, and that's what counts.

"Rid of her then?" Niall says when Liam gets back into the office.

"Yeah," Liam says. It's embarrassing, and stupid, that anyone would want an interview with him about anything. Standing out there with the woman, thinking about Louis, it had seemed only slightly absurd, but now that he's all the way back in reality it's just cripplingly dumb. "That's done with."

"D'you think you'll be givin' autographs soon?" Niall laughs. "There gonna be girls drivin' down from London to see you?"

"God, I hope not," Liam says, quellingly, not that it does much to Niall's grin. Whatever; they really do have work to do.

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SO LIAM IS TALKING TO PAPARAZZI NICE LIAM. VOTE AND COMMENT LOVE YA
-MAY