Performing had always been a high for Niall. After the last couple of traumatic days (to say the very least) he had been eager to get back out on stage and do his thing. To get lost in the music and the screaming fans and forget about everything that was going on in his life for an hour and a half. That was a the rush that he lived for. He needed it, he craved it.

Liam glanced over at Niall as he sang Summer of 69. The blonde boy bounced around the stage like he hadn’t a care in the world. He belted out the lyrics and stuck his hand out to the crowd dramatically. Yes, he was a true performer in every sense of the word, and the song was made for him. Liam smiled to himself, thinking about how happy Niall had been when they’d agreed to add that to the setlist as their cover for the tour.

Clearly, the fans agreed. They always screamed the loudest when Niall held onto the long note before the bridge. When Niall pulled the microphone away from his mouth he glanced out at the crowd and smiled – a real, genuine smile. He felt on top of the world, like nothing could touch him.

Of course, as soon as the concert was over, and they were back in the hotel for the night, that feeling was gone. Because once again, there were no more screaming fans, there was no more music, no more rush of adrenaline. Just himself, four walls and the memories that haunted him.

He laid back down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop thinking about Alicia. It was strange – he hadn’t thought much about her since their breakup, but now that she was gone, she was always in the back of his mind.

He hated himself.

Six months after Niall and Alicia had made their relationship official, she had gone to the states to visit him on tour. She was to be there for the last week of the tour, and then Niall would travel back to London with her. The entire summer, she’d been excited for the trip, having never been to the USA before.

When she arrived at the boys’ hotel, she headed straight for the conference room Niall had told her they were rehearsing for their acoustic show in. She gave a quick nod to Paul when she entered the room, where the boys were sitting at the front, singing.

“Now I’m climbing the walls… but you don’t notice at all…” Niall sang, tensing up and embracing the microphone. Alicia giggled. He was always so dramatic on stage. “That I’m-” he looked up and saw Alicia standing there with a distraught look on her face, and the rest of the lyric was immediately forgotten.

“Lish,” he said, darting off the stage and running to her. He wasted no time in pulling her into his arms and kissing her forcefully.

“Oi, Niall!” Liam called. Niall broke away from Alicia and looked back. “We’re in the middle of the song.”

“Yeah,” Niall said, looking back at Alicia apologetically.

“Let’s take five,” Louis suggested, looking over at Liam. “He’s obviously more interested in seeing her than rehearsing with us, and I’m hungry.”

Niall ignored the mindless chatter that was going on behind him as he gingerly touched Alicia’s face. “Did you have a good flight?”

Alicia nodded. “I need to talk to you,” she said quietly. The scared look in her eyes was still there, and Niall didn’t have a clue what could possibly have been wrong. She hadn’t come all this way just to break up with him, had she? That wouldn’t have made any sense.

“Why? What’s up?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light, as though he wasn’t worried about what she might say.

Alicia bit her lip and shook her head. “Not here. Can we go back to your room?”

Niall glanced back at the others. They were probably going to have to get back to rehearsing shortly. He looked back at Alicia. She really did look distraught, and it was beginning to really scare him. “All right,” he nodded. “Hey, lads, we’re going up to the room for a minute,” he called out, taking Alicia’s hand.

“Don’t be too long,” Liam called after the two of them. Niall ignored the rest of the comments that were made.

He grabbed her suitcase and wheeled it down the hall as he led her to where his hotel room was. He shut the door behind him and looked at her. “So?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

Alicia looked at the floor and played with the straps on her purse. “I… well,”

Niall searched her face, trying to find something, anything that would give him an indication of what she was about to say. But nothing would prepare him for the words that came next as she looked up at him and sighed.

“I’m pregnant.”

Niall was certain he would never forget that moment, as it was when everything in his life had begun to change. He remembered the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and how he’d hugged Alicia in his arms as she cried, telling him that she hadn’t told anyone yet, and that she didn’t know what to do, and how sorry she was.

He was sure he’d done all of those things automatically, because he’d been in shock.

He shook his head, getting up off the hotel room bed and running a hand through his hair. It did him no use to think about such things. They only made him upset, and he couldn’t change the past. He grabbed his room key and wallet off the table and left the room, putting his hands in his pockets as he walked through the halls.

“Hey mate,” Harry said to him, as they passed in the hall. “Where’re you off to?”

“Going out,” Niall said shortly.

“I’ll go with you,” Harry said, looking at him hopefully. Over the past little while, the two of them had become something of a unit, hitting up the clubs together and being each other’s wingmen.

But not that night. Niall didn’t want any of the other boys to go with him. He wanted to go alone. To get lost in the music in a club and possibly find another girl and take his mind off everything by clouding it with alcohol and endorphins. “No, that’s all right,” Niall said, trying to fake a smile. “I’m goin’ to meet someone,” he lied. “Next time though, Haz,” he nodded at him as he walked off.

“Right,” Harry said, looking at the Irish boy strangely as he walked off. Something seemed off about him, but he disregarded it. Understandably so, Niall had been in a weird mood for the past couple of days and all of the boys were giving him the space he needed. “Next time, then.”

***

The music in the club was loud, and Niall was easily able to lose himself in it. There were a lot of people in the club, and though most of them knew who he was, they let him be. Just as they always did. That was the nice thing about being in the UK – people were more chill. They let him do his thing, especially when he was out at the bar having a good time.

It also helped that he was able to easily get into the VIP section. Which he often did. It took a lot for him to get drunk, and after a few beers, he switched to Jack Daniel’s. That always helped to get him buzzed and feeling good. But that day, the alcohol was not helping him, and it was only making him feel slightly sick. He tried his best to dance and shake it off, but it wasn’t working. The high that he needed wasn’t happening.

“Hey Niall,” one of the guys in the little group he’d found said to him. “Come over here for a sec.”

He downed the rest of his drink and set the glass down on a random table while he followed him over to the secluded area. “Yeah?”

“You look like you need a pick me up,” he said, taking a small plastic bag out of his pockets, filled with white powder. “You know what this is?”

Niall gulped. Yes, he knew what that was. He’d been in the music industry long enough to know. Hell, he’d been going to clubs and parties long enough to know. “Yeah,” he said, shrugging as though it wasn’t a big deal. Even though he’d never done cocaine before and had always sworn he wouldn’t, seeing what it had done to other musicians.

The guy nodded, bopping his head to the beat of the music and poured some onto the small table, separating it out with a credit card into two thin lines. “You wanna do a hit?”

“Yeah,” Niall said, against his better judgement. One time wasn’t going to hurt anything. One time would give him the energy he needed to recapture the high that he missed when he wasn’t on stage.

The guy grinned, taking a hollowed out pen out of his pockets, leaned over the table and snorted the first of the two lines. He sat back up with a satisfied look on his face and held out the pen to Niall.

Niall grabbed it from him with fake confidence, as though he’d done this a million times before. Without thinking about it, he leaned over and breathed in the last of the powder that was thinly lined up on the surface. His heart was pounding, and as the drugs entered his system, began pounding even harder still. He swallowed slightly, and looked up, blinking and taking in his surroundings.

Suddenly, he began to feel a lot better.

“Yeah, that’s good shit,” the guy said with a laugh.

Yes, Niall had to agree with that. The music seemed to get better, the dark atmosphere in the club seemed to get brighter. He tapped his foot to the beat and grinned, singing along to the old Rihanna song that was playing.

“’Cause I may be bad, but I’m perfectly good at it, sex in the air, I don’t care, I love the smell of it…”he sang loudly, as he laughed to himself.

The guy patted Niall on the back as he got up and walked away. Just as he did this, one of the girls Niall had been dancing with sat down beside him, trailing her hand along his back.

“You’re really hot,” she whispered into his ear, looking at him lustfully.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, not caring about his obvious cocky attitude. Because he was really hot, and he knew it. Everyone in the club knew it.

She put her hand underneath his chin and tilted his head towards hers. She looked different than Alicia – different than the leggy brunette type he usually went for. She was shorter than him, her hair was bleached blonde, but he didn’t care. He didn’t need to stay with her forever – only for the night.

He kissed her forcefully, adrenaline racing through his veins as he put her hands on him. He slid over closer to her, not caring who saw them or paid attention. He kept his eyes firmly closed as his lips moved against hers roughly.

“You got a hotel around here?” she asked, pulling away from him slightly.

Yes, he did have a hotel around there. No, he wasn’t about to take her to it. For some reason, through all the intoxicants that were running through his system, his mind very clearly screamed at him to not take any girls back to his hotel room. To have to sleep next to someone once it was over, or to have to go through the hassle of kicking her out once they were finished just wasn’t something Niall wanted to deal with at all.

“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and dragging her through the club to one of the bathrooms. He didn’t pay any attention to the fact that there were other people in there as he pulled her into one of the stalls and latched the door.

He pushed her up against the wall and kissed her again. “Ugh,” he moaned, as he took her hand and placed it on his jeans, overtop of his throbbing crotch.

“Fuck me, Niall,” she said, unzipping his fly and moving to hike up her skirt.

“No,” he grunted, breathing heavily and pushing her head downwards. He didn’t want to do any of the work – and he knew he wouldn’t have to.

She rolled her eyes a little, but obliged. Niall couldn’t care less about her obvious attitude as she knelt down in front of him and took his cock in her mouth. He tangled his hands in her short blonde hair as she sucked on him, swirling her tongue around the tip before taking in his entire length.

“Ugh,” he groaned, digging his hands into the back of her head as he fucked her mouth. He’d never felt anything like this before and could barely contain himself. “Harder,” he groaned, and she did as she was told, slightly raking her teeth against him.

“Oh God.” he leaned back against the wall as she did that, not caring who heard him. It was loud enough in the club anyway, and the bass of the music could be heard thumping around them. He closed his eyes as pleasure and adrenaline ran through his body. “Ah, fuck,” he moaned, his toes curling up inside his shoes. He put one hand on the stall door to stabilize himself.

His breathing got heavier and heavier and everything around him heightened his senses. The girl’s mouth around his dick, the music, even the light lemon scent in the bathroom was strong. He squeezed his eyes shut, almost unable to handle all of what was happening at once. He tried his best to concentrate on the blow job he nearly forgot he was getting, but it was difficult with so much going on.

He put his hands back on the back of her head and thrust into her mouth forcefully. If the girl was in pain at all, she didn’t show it and took everything he was doing in stride. He groaned, concentrating as hard as he could on the tingling sensation she was giving him.

She took his length out of her mouth and concentrated just on the tip, flicking her tongue against it. That was enough to finally send him over the edge after what seemed like forever. “Fuck,” he groaned, thrusting back into her mouth as he came. “Swallow it all,” he moaned, leaning his head back.

And she did. The girls always did as he said, and though he was a selfish dick in bed lately, they didn’t seem to care. Any chance to be with him, they would take. “Ugh,” he sighed, leaning backwards, his heart still pounding, not slowing down as it normally did once he was done. “You can go now,” he said, opening his eyes slightly.

And she did, just like they always did. No one ever dared argue with him, and he didn’t care. He liked it better that way. He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself down, but with no avail. After the girl left, he closed the stall door again, zipping his pants back up and continuing to lean against the wall.

His mouth hung open and he blinked several times. He swallowed, trying to steady himself, but his heart raced and he couldn’t come down from the high that he was on. And, quite frankly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

As he tilted his head back, he looked up at the dark ceiling.

What the fuck was he doing?