he don't like the lights ♡ ziall/zustin/jiall au [COMPLETE]

ten

"are you ready?" justin asks niall. the house has been a mess for the past few weeks, because all three of them having been packing for the tour. the bedroom (that they all share now) is a disaster, the carpet barely visible amongst all the piles of clothing.

"i think so," niall answers, "i just have to grab mr. dynamite."

justin snorts. "babe, you don't need to bring mr. dynamite."

niall glares at you. "either mr. dynamite comes or i stay here."

"whoa, an ultimatum," justin replies, smiling, hands up to prove his innocence. "okay, sweetheart. bring him if you must. finding room for him on the tour bus will be interesting."

"he'll fit," niall responds confidently, struggling to carry both his bear and his suitcase.

zayn, peeking his head in the bedroom to see if they're done, stifles a laugh. "here, babe, let me take that from you."

"are you excited?" niall asks as zayn takes the suitcase from his hand. zayn makes a move to take the bear, too, but niall squishes it to his chest.

"i'm super excited." zayn is smiling his real smile, too, and niall can see that he means it. 

"me, too," justin grins, hugging niall from behind. just as niall is nuzzling into the hug, he hears a honk. "the bus is here!"

niall's heart rate speeds up. "oh!" he gasps, suddenly very nervous.

"don't you worry," zayn smiles, kissing him quickly. "everything will be just fine, i promise."

- - -

niall feels like he's going to throw up when they get to the studio. after much deliberation, they decided to come out on an interview this morning, and niall had done his very best not to think about it until he had to. but now that they're there, he feels like he's going to throw up or maybe even die.

"baby," zayn's voice says, snapping niall out of his despair-filled trance. "we're gonna be okay." he grabs niall by the elbow and pulls him over the touch and sits, niall falling a bit chaotically into his lap. "do you hear me? we are going to be okay." he cups niall's face in his hands and makes his sweet, frantic boy look at him. "we are going to be okay."

"okay," niall manages weakly. he still looks pale, but he curls up closer into zayn's lap and nuzzles into his neck. zayn strokes his hair as they wait for justin to come out of hair and makeup, and not much later, he joins them on the couch.

"you ready, darling?" justin asks gently.

niall nods. honestly, he's as far from ready as he thinks is humanly possible, but he can do this for them. because he loves them, honestly. he knows he does, and even if he hasn't told justin he loves him yet, he has an inkling that justin knows. and he knows if the situation were flipped, justin would do it for him.

"okay," he says, after taking a few deep breaths. he still feels like he's going to throw up. "okay, let's do this."

- - -

"so," the interviewer says, smiling at them. "i hear you have some news for me and for your fans."

niall is sandwiched in between justin and zayn. justin was going to sit in the middle, but niall went pale as a sheet, needing desperately to be in constant contact with both of them, so justin quickly moved and let niall sit in the middle.

"yes," zayn answers. he wraps an arm around niall's waist, and justin interlocks his fingers with niall's. he feels a bit like he can breathe again. "as many of you know, justin and i are dating...and have been for a long time now."

"almost a year," justin adds, smiling. zayn smiles back at him.

"well," zayn continues, "we left out a huge part of our relationship. niall here is our boyfriend, too."

the room is eerily silent; neither the interviewer nor the fans in the crowd make a sound.

"zayn was dating him first," justin adds. "they'd been dating for a long time before i even came into the picture, and eventually the relationship morphed to include a third person. that being me."

"obviously," zayn says dryly, earning himself a flick on the ear from justin, which makes niall giggle. it's the first sound he's made since being on the show.

"okay," the interviewer says slowly. "so...all three of you are dating each other?"

"yes," zayn answers.

"zayn, were you cheating on niall with justin?"

"no," zayn responds, sounding offended. "it started off as him being my beard."

"oh, okay. so it started off being nothing, and then you cheated on your boyfriend, and it just happened to work out for you."

"no!"

zayn is starting to get angry, and niall's gaze suddenly goes blurry with tears. he'd never thought of the relationship with that mindset, and suddenly he feels like the floor has been ripped out from under him. his chest is heaving and his ears are ringing.

"so you cheated on your poor boyfriend, who was waiting at home, trusting you, and then you included him on this sick threesome fantasy?" the interviewer continues. he has a sick, drama-hungry mind, and a sick expression on his face.

"you shut the fuck up," zayn snarls, inches from losing it.

"zayn," justin calls, noticing that niall has suddenly gone very still. zayn whips around, expression still enraged, until he sees the devastated expression on niall's face.

"was it like that?" niall asks quietly. he doesn't sound angry, just like he wants to know.

zayn hesitates. it wasn't, but he doesn't know how to tell niall that, and niall decides that that hesitation tells him everything he needs to know.

he gets up and walks offstage. justin tries to stop him, but he snatches his arm out of his grasp. he doesn't run. he doesn't scream, or make a scene. he just leaves, silently, wiping tears off his face, and neither zayn nor justin chase him. he catches the first cab he sees and just blurts out an address, not sure of what he even wants. 

a part of him felt insecure in the three-way relationship, not that it kept him from loving being a part of it. in the backseat of the cab it hits him -- he point-blank asked zayn if what the interviewer said was the truth, and zayn didn't deny it. niall doesn't want to cry, but it seems all of a sudden like he can't stop.