#i'm at the point where i'm thinking this is either brilliant or total shite

[mildlymaddy]

Ask and you shall receive I guess. ;)

Lilo future!fic, in which both are single, Liam’s got two kids, and I end up calling Liam’s first-born “James” because the fucker still hasn’t shared his actual baby’s name with us.

Liam was in over his head. He knew it, and it only served to annoy him further. This was stupid. He was a grown-ass man. He had kids for Christ’s sake!

 There was absolutely no reason for him to angst over the meaning of a bloody text message.

 Especially not one that said, Im not gonna comment until Ive tried it myself.

 Louis had added the sunglasses emoji at the end, which was nice but didn’t help Liam figure out whether he was serious or not.

 And knowing whether Louis was serious or not felt quite bloody important, considering the message Liam had sent him right before had been: Then she said i was lousy in bed, like, can you believe?!

 Liam took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

The thing was, lately, there’d been quite a few of these messages from Louis. Like, Liam didn’t want to jump to conclusions or anything, but ever since Louis had come back to L.A., single and determined to take over the world with Liam (there’d never been any question of whether Liam might have other plans, but then again he’d only been too happy to join in. Endless touring was less appealing at 38 than it had been at 23, and writing for others with Louis had always been part of his dreams), they'd gotten… close.

 And they'd always been close, obviously, even once time and distance had made their friendship more quiet and soft, had turned cuddles and pranks into yearly birthday messages and dinners that had to be planned months in advance, but even in their hay days it had never been… it’d never been like this.

 Or maybe Liam was just too old to remember exactly how flirty Louis used to be. But he'd watched some old 1d interviews, just to see, and while Louis teased him a lot and touched him even more… it just wasn't the same. Liam was sure of it.

 Except, of course, for all the moments when he wasn't.

 He started typing a reply, then deleted it, staring at the blinking cursor on his screen with increasing desperation. It had been 10 minutes since Louis had sent his message and the longer Liam waited, the more awkward his reply would be, no matter what.

 “Daaad, can you stop jiggling your leg? I’m trying to watch my show!”

 Liam looked up from his phone to find his daughter glaring at him from behind her fringe, earbuds plugged firmly in her ears to listen to whatever she was watching on her phone, curled up on the other side of the couch. He wasn’t sure how him jiggling his leg two seats over was disrupting her focus, but clearly it was, and she huffed again before turning her attention back to her show, mumbling something Liam couldn’t make out but which was most probably along the lines of “grown-ups suck.”

 He’d never realized, back when he’d started a family, that that meant dealing with moody teenagers down the line, and not just adorable babies and cute 8-year-old kids. The wake-up call had been brutal (and his mother’s amused look the first time he’d complained to her about the ungratefulness of teens a little uncalled for). The fact that he only had them one month out of two since his divorce didn’t help things any.

 “Sorry, sorry,” he mumbled, leaving the living room to go lock himself in the first floor bathroom, phone clutched in one sweaty hand.

 He sat on the edge of the bathtub, legs resuming their nervous jiggling, and felt his heart doing a sickly somersault when he saw the notifications telling him Louis had sent another string of messages. That was it; he’d missed his shot by waiting too long. Louis had moved on to another subject and-

 That was a comeon, in case you cant tell.

I mean unles you CAN tell and yure not interested.

Which wouls explain why you havent written in 15mn i guess i should take the hint

Fuck thiss awkward forget i said anything.

 Liam read the words over and over again, just in case they’d morph into some inane discussion about playing dog sitter for Louis or setting up a writing session, but they remained the same.

 Louis had been hitting on him?

 Louis had been hitting on him.

 ...

 For all that Liam had been convinced something was going on, getting actual confirmation of it felt like taking a deep breath under water.

 “Fuck,” he muttered, desperately trying to keep his breathing under control.

 It wasn't until moving dots popped up on his screen to show Louis was writing yet another message that Liam finally sprung to action, clumsily typing his reply and sending it before he could second-guess himself, typos and all.

 I wqsnt sure yu were skirting

 He blinked at his screen. Fuck. Stupid predictive text. When had he even ever written the word “skirting”?!

 I meant flirtng*

flirting*

Fuck

 Liam groaned. Maybe if he chucked his phone into the toilets he could pretend that those last messages had been a bug.

 He'd always thought this kind of thing would get easier with age (well mostly he'd thought he would get married and live happily ever after...), but if anything, this felt worse than he remembered. How did anyone ever hook up with anyone without keeling over from the stress of it all?!

 The cheerful “blip!” of a new message brought his attention back to the screen.

 Does that mean you dont midn?

 Liam swallowed around the lump in his throat. He was pretty sure he was supposed to feel relief but for some reason all he could feel right now was rising panic. Surely this was a mistake, his brain pointed out. This was all a misunderstanding. He was getting Louis’s meaning completely wrong.

 Still, he made himself write back, I def dont mind. Imall for flirting.

 Dots came and went on Louis's side of the chat for quite a long time after that, leaving Liam ample time to worry about the ways in which he could have misunderstood Louis's messages (admittedly, he couldn't think of one, but that's how it worked, right? That’s the reason people felt so mortified afterwards), until finally Louis's answer popped up on his screen.

 Im gonna be horribly blunt here im sorry but i wanna make sure. So if i drop by your house tonight with two bottles of wine and push you against tye wall and snog you senseless youre ok with that right?

 The relieved laughter that burst out of Liam’s mouth surprised even him, and he let himself slide to the tiled ground, his heartbeat going wild with happiness as he tremblingly typed back, ive got the kids so might be best not to but i woudlnr say no to some snogging on the weekend?

 He pressed Send and rested his chin on his bent knees, staring at his phone like a lovesick teenager, which is exactly how he felt right now. This was ridiculous. It was also the best Liam had felt in months.

 A shriek coming from the ground floor dragged him out of his bubble and he struggled back to his feet, frowning, but the stomping of feet on the stairs and the vengeful “Emma I'll punch your teeth in!!” made him reconsider. Possibly staying in the bathroom was safest for now.

 A door slammed down the corridor, then he heard Emma yelling back, “I'll fucking tell mum, you tosser!” before another door slammed shut, a little closer.

 He really wished she’d stop using the mum card. First because that was unfair for Cheryl, and second because… well, he could be fearsome too, damnit. He wasn’t just the “hot, goofy dad” (as amusing as having Emma’s friends mooning at him was, mostly because his 20-year-old self had forever been preserved online).

 He had to go talk to them both, but a glance at his phone showed him Louis had sent another message.

 I dont know if ill still want to snog you then, payno. 3 days is a long time.

 Liam grinned. Far away from fighting teenagers, something warm was unfurling in his veins, spreading through his body, carrying with it a faint thrilling note, just enough to make his heartbeat a little irregular in the nicest of ways.

 Ill make it worth the wait, he typed back, biting his bottom lip around a smile. His heart was heavy with happiness in his chest and he never wanted the feeling to go away again.

 He’d never considered the possibility of falling for someone he’d known since he was a teenager, but now that he was, he was starting to wonder how it hadn’t happened earlier. How he’d gone without.

 I expect you to, Louis sent back.

 Count on it.

 There was renewed stomping in the corridor, then the noise of a door banging open and a shout. Liam sighed.

 Gotta mke sure the kids dont kill each othr. Talk later?

 He stared at the dots as Louis typed his answer, unwilling to get out into the fray just yet, unwilling to let go of his own slice of teenagehood. He couldn’t make out the words that were being yelled down in James’s room, but they clearly weren’t anything he could tolerate. He really needed to step in.

 Anytime.

…

<3

Oh god pretend i dind’t sent that.

You know what screw it.

<333

Liam beamed down at his phone, sent a heart back (or ten), and stepped out of the bathroom.

#lilo #tumblr ficlet #i'm at the point where i'm thinking this is either brilliant or total shite #but it's midnight and now i don't wanna go to sleep without posting it first #i hope it's nice #thank you for liking what i said #when i wrote it i was like 'this might be super sweet... or it's just pathetically trite' lol #i hope i did my own quote justice haha #and i really hope you like it <3 #thepainlessmoustache