niall/barry misfits au - niall POV, part 2/3

[saysthemagpie]

OK SO. NOW THAT THE SAD NIALL BACKSTORY IS ESTABLISHED, LET'S JUST RAMP UP THAT ANGST SHALL WE??? (previous parts: barry POV/general plot outline is here, part 1 of the niall POV/outline is here.) content warnings in this section for dubcon, emotional manipulation/abuse, and brief, nongraphic mention of physical abuse.

as Meghan suggested, when he meets the older guy at first it’s incredible. maybe he meets him when he’s taken the train into the city or something to go to this record shop, and he’s sitting out in the park or in a café or something, looking at the CDs/records he’s just bought and daydreaming, pretending that he lives in the big city, maybe watching some boys skateboarding across the street or something and imagining what it’d be like if he went to uni here and they were his friends. idk how exactly their first encounter goes but the rich old guy starts talking to him somehow, and realizes pretty fast that niall’s a lonely, lonely kid, and that nobody’s ever really listened to him before. I don’t know how exactly he chooses him, if it’s just luck or chance or whatever, but he keeps asking him questions, drawing him out, seeming interested in the answers.

they talk for so long that niall winds missing his train. the guy offers to drive him home in his fancy car, and then he suggests that they stop for dinner or something, maybe, gets niall a little drunk. niall’s just, like, totally dazed by it all, sort of intoxicated on the interest this guy’s showing him, and the guy’s obviously so rich and well-connected, he’s telling niall all about his collection of records and about the artists he knows, saying casually that he could introduce niall to some of them, maybe, if niall’s ever in the city again… etc. he’s not outright hitting on him, but it’s very suggestive, and he sort of lets his gaze linger, and when he drops niall off he gives niall his business card and maybe writes his home address on the back, tells him to drop by the next weekend and he’ll show him that autographed record he was telling him about or something like that. niall thinks he must just be joking, this guy can’t honestly want to see him again, but then the guy’s like, I’ll send a car for you on Saturday, how does that sound, and niall’s dazedly like, okay, yeah. no, I don’t have any plans.

and at first it’s good! niall’s completely swept off his feet, it’s like his whole world’s been turned upside down, he can’t understand what’s happening and he knows it can’t last but he’s just.. so swept up in it, and the guy’s so smart and sophisticated and worldly, and he’s just.. he knows things, and he takes niall to these places he’d never dreamed of going and buys him all these things, these albums and a fancy record player that he lets niall keep in his apartment and a cell phone so he can text or call niall whenever he wants to get ahold of him. and pretty soon the guy starts making it clear that he’s interested in more from niall. and maybe niall’s a bit uncomfortable with it at first, like doesn’t know how to respond or pulls back a little, and then the guy just like…goes cold on him, maybe doesn’t call or text him or send a car round for a week, and niall starts feeling panicky, like he’s going to lose all of this for reasons that don’t even seem that well-formed in his mind, and he turns up on the guy’s front door and begs to be forgiven, and the guy lets him grovel for a while and then lets him in, and they kiss, and niall lets the guy take his clothes off and take him to bed. it’s okay. it’s not so bad. he doesn’t know why he was being so selfish, when the guy’s been so nice to him and asked for so little in return. and it’s sort of nice to feel taken care of. nobody’s ever wanted him like that before, or held him and told him he’s beautiful, special, sexy.

It goes on for months, and it sort of keeps happening like that, where something will change in the dynamic that niall feels weird about, and then the guy will respond by withdrawing or going cold on him, and niall will start feeling desperate and panicky, ashamed of himself for being so selfish, and anyway it’s not like there’s anything wrong with it, they don’t fight like his parents do, the guy doesn’t treat him badly, and niall ought to be more grateful. Idk how he leaves home—maybe his parents find out somehow and they kick him out, or maybe the guy persuades him to move into a flat he outfits for him in the city or something. anyway his life just becomes more and more entangled with this guy’s, and he becomes more and more dependent on him, and the guy’s just sort of slowly but surely eroding his ability to set boundaries for himself. and maybe the nice things aren’t happening as often as they used to, and maybe the guy’s not interested anymore in hearing what niall has to say. maybe niall finds himself having to apologize more often, to efface himself more frequently. but he’s so isolated from other people and has such a warped sense of what kinds of objections he’s allowed to voice, or even what he’s allowed to feel, and he just sort of fades into it.

and then I think something happens that kind of startles him awake, idk what exactly but it might involve finding out that the guy’s married and has a family that he’s never told niall about, or something like that, combined with the guy maybe crossing some boundary that niall feels like is a pretty hard boundary. and I think maybe niall also has some kind of brief encounter with someone else—I’m thinking louis, but it could maybe also be nick and harry—that somehow gives him this tiny, tiny flicker of realizing that maybe this isn’t the only option, maybe it’s not just this or going back to his parents’ house. (I think that one aspect of this fic is going to be that many of the characters’ paths have crossed before, in small ways that seem insignificant or not memorable at the time but actually wind up sort of setting them on their current trajectories.)

so I think he texts his cousin deo to ask if he can come stay with him for a little while, just to clear his head. except that the rich older guy finds out somehow—maybe he makes a habit of searching through niall’s things, or reading his texts, and confronts niall about it. he’s furious, and Niall’s trying to pacify him, saying like, ‘we can still see each other, I just think maybe I could live somewhere else for a little bit.’ but the guy goes berserk. it gets violent, fast. niall’s terrified, apologizing, pleading with him to calm down, but it isn’t helping. and maybe the guy really is pretty powerful, a politician or a rich businessman or something who’s got connections with the police, and he’s saying stuff like, ‘if you disappeared do you think anyone would even come looking for you? do you think anyone would even notice you were gone?’ he makes niall text deo back and tell him that he’s fine, actually, and he’s going to go out of town with some friends of his for a while. deo texts back, something vague and unconcerned like, sick mate, have a good trip.

then maybe the guy gets some kind of urgent work-related phone call, something he has to go deal with right that second. so he leaves, but he takes niall’s phone, his wallet with his ID, and his keys with him, tells him he’ll be back to deal with him later, and locks the front door of the flat from the outside so niall can’t get out.

some part of niall’s brain, the do-what-you’re-told, the don’t-make-a-fuss part, is like, you should just wait for him to come back, you can explain everything then, he just overreacted, it’s not a big deal. but some other part of his brain is slowly waking up, some long-dormant instinct for self-preservation, and he realizes he needs to get the fuck out now, while there’s still a chance for him to walk out of here. I think he’s hurt, too, and it’s bad enough that he can’t just pass it off as an accident, or convince himself that it just got out of hand. it’s clear that the guy wanted to hurt him and had zero qualms about doing so, and that if he hadn’t gotten that call at just that moment he might’ve done a lot worse. maybe in a twisted way it even sort of helps that niall’s watched his parents fight for years, bitterly and with so much loathing and contempt for each other, but they’ve never once laid hands on each other, not even when they’ve been drinking.

so he gets out. he has no idea how long he’s got before the guy comes back, so he packs a rucksack with some clothes and what little cash he’s got. he forces open one of the bedroom windows, climbing out onto the rickety fire escape, trying his best not to look down, wincing every time he jars his bruised rib/wrist/whatever.

the storm comes out of nowhere. one second it’s a dull grey day, early evening, and the next minute the weak sunlight’s gone, the sky gone dark and brooding, the wind whipping so hard around him it almost knocks him off balance. the lightning strikes him as he’s dropping from the fire escape onto the ground, and it hits him so hard he blacks out for a moment, comes to lying facedown in a puddle in the alleyway. he lies there for a moment, dazed, before he sees the charred, smoking wreckage of his rucksack lying a few meters away.

niall has no idea why he isn’t dead. but he’s alive—aching all over, but alive—and there’s no sense lying around waiting for something or someone to come finish the job. so he picks himself up and takes off, with only the clothes on his back and a twenty-pound note he’d shoved into the back pocket of his jeans.