So Long
eleven.
Claire still feels like warmed-over death when she wakes the next morning, and as much as she wants to lie in bed all day, she knows she has a job to do. She sighs, rolls over onto her back, and groans when her head spins with the movement. A soft knock sounds at the door; she manages to rasp out a Yeah?, and Niall’s head pokes into the room.
“Hey, how are you feeling today?”
She considers lying to him, telling him that she’s all better, but she can’t. “Awful, honestly. Not as bad as last night, but… still shit.”
“I’m sorry. Mind if I come in?”
She shrugs, pushing herself to sit up though it makes her want to puke. Niall steps through the door, closes it behind him with his foot. In one hand is a tray, a mug in the other. He sets the tray on the bed next to her, and she stares down at the toast and bacon on the plate. She blinks owlishly then turns her gaze to him. He smiles softly, handing over the mug, and Claire feels like bursting into tears. Her fingers shake as she wraps them around the ceramic, heat instantly leeching into her skin, and she sips carefully at the coffee he’s brought her. It’s sharp and rich on her tongue, the bitterness hidden by the way it scalds her mouth.
“I couldn’t remember how you liked it,” he says in lieu of apology, but the shrug he gives is good enough.
“It’s okay. This… I appreciate this.”
“Do you get migraines a lot?”
Claire swallows another mouthful of coffee before stretching to put the mug on the nightstand. Niall nudges the plate closer to her, and she huffs out a laugh but picks up a strip of bacon. “I used to get them more often, but I thought I’d grown out of them since I haven’t had one in a few months.”
He nods slowly, and Claire nibbles at the edges of the bacon. She wants to squirm as she eats, but the pounding in her head tells her it will be a terrible idea. Her stomach churns with each bite she takes; eating in front of Niall isn’t a new thing - they’ve shared plenty of meals during the time she’s worked for him - but it’s still an uncomfortable thing to eat when he isn’t, when he keeps giving her those worried looks.
“What time is it?” she asks suddenly, startling him, and he frowns but tells her it’s almost eight. “Are you serious? Fuck, why didn’t you wake me earlier?”
“Because you need the rest.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He rolls his eyes. “Claire, you showed up last night crying because you were in so much pain. You fell asleep almost as soon as you laid down. You just told me you’re still in pain. We don’t have anything today, so… I don’t want you doing anything but resting until you feel better.”
“Niall -”
“Nope. I’m your boss, you have to listen to me and do as I say.”
“That wasn’t in the contract.”
“I added it when you weren’t looking.”
She lets out a surprised laugh, shaking her head despite the pain of the migraine. His smile brightens his entire face, and she stares openly for a second. It really isn’t fair that he’s so attractive, she thinks. Him being good-looking on top of having a wonderful, charming, sweet personality makes it incredibly difficult to pretend that he doesn’t affect her. She rips her gaze away when he glances up at her, pretends she wasn’t being so shameless and creepy.
The pain Claire has been in disappears by the time she goes to sleep that night. She fell back asleep after Niall left the room to take the tray back to the kitchen, and he’d been upset when she appeared in the living room around eleven-thirty. She appeased him by lounging on the couch for the rest of the day, occasionally responding to text messages from her brother and Matt, who scolded her via text about not letting him know she made it to her boss’s safely last night. Guilt ate at her for a long time after that, but it was dislodged by her surprise when Niall left her alone in the house; she’s never been here without him, so the sudden lack of his presence was… disconcerting, to say the least. Thankfully, he came back within the hour carrying a McDonald’s bag in his hand.
Claire thinks she should have lied about whether her head still hurt or not as she’s crawling into the guest bed for the second night in a row. But she couldn’t not tell the truth when Niall was looking at her so intently. The words had just tumbled out of her without thought, without permission, and she wonders what it means that the subtle guilt-trip was so successful. All he’d said was that he didn’t feel right about her leaving while still in pain, and she was immediately accepting his suggestion of her staying again.
Their first fight as employer/employee occurs just a couple of weeks after the whole migraine incident. Claire is only at the grocery store because she’s grown tired of not having juice to drink while at his house; water is great and all, but sometimes, she just wants something sugary. She takes the receipt from the cashier with a smile and grabs up her bags full of juice, a bottle of Diet Coke, a tub of Oreo ice cream, and a package of the cookies themselves before making her way to the exit.
Her car is in sight, so close yet so far, when she is abruptly surrounded by a group of people. Claire loses track of how many cameras are shoved into her face as she walks, but she forces herself to not focus on that. Her heart races in her chest, and she struggles to breathe properly. Her skin feels overly-hot while she pushes through the crowd asking questions. Her thoughts jumble in her brain; she manages to catch one inquiry that doesn’t seem so bad.
“Ma’am, you work for Niall Horan, right? What’s he like as a boss?”
She grits her teeth and plasters on a fake smile. “He’s great, fair. The kind of boss you’d kill to have.”
“Is it true you’re sleeping with him?” another asks, and Claire nearly trips over her feet in her shock at the audacity of the question.
“The fuck, dude, he’s my boss! No!”
“Can you tell us anything about his album that he’s been working on?”
“No comment, which you already knew that.”
“Are you sure you’re not sleeping with him?”
“Do you do everything for him?”
“Is there anything you can tell us about the music? His golf ventures? Anything?”
“Are you sure? After all, you’ve been spotted coming out of his house early in the morning a lot over the past few months, so excuse us for finding it hard to believe there’s nothing going on between the sheets!”
The man snickers at his own statement, but nobody else does. Claire exhales sharply, pivoting on her heel, and pins him with a dark, flat glare. His teeth clack together loudly as he stumbles to a stop. Her nails bite into her palm when she clenches her hands into fists at her side. She’s shaking, she knows she is, her anger is so close to the surface.
“I swear to everything you hold Holy in this world, if you ask me that one more goddamn time, I will make you eat that damn camera. Yes, I have to be at his house early in the morning because I am doing my job. Yes, I leave his house late at night because I am doing my job. Yes, sometimes, I have to sleep in his guest bedroom because I am doing my job. So yes, I am one hundred percent certain that I am not sleeping with Niall Horan. He is my boss. I am his employee. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, if you’ll kindly excuse me, I have a job to do that doesn’t require being asked crass, despicable questions like that from scum like you.”
She isn’t followed as she finally reaches her car. Her breaths are tremulous, and bile creeps up the back of her throat. She shoves the shopping bags into the backseat, slamming the door shut; how dare he imply there was more to her relationship with Niall than pure professionalism? Her brain whispers a fleeting, twisted hope that the asshole pap is behind her car as she reverses, but she blows out a breath and shakes it off. She doesn’t need to add vehicular homicide to the list of things she’s done wrong today.
Claire has never been more thankful for traffic than she is now. Though it means the ice cream is steadily melting in the bag, it also means that she has more time to calm down before reaching Niall’s house. The last thing she wants to do is bring that rage and disgust back with her. She waits until she’s had to come to a stop to scrub a hand over her face. This isn’t how she wanted the day to go.
Niall leans against the wall as soon as she walks in, and Claire knows he already knows about the blow-up. She breezes past him and sets about putting away the items she purchased, but he doesn’t let her ignore him for long. The instant she closes the refrigerator door, he beckons for her to follow him. She does. The barely-concealed anger on his face brooks no arguments, and she really does not want to make things worse. She collapses onto the far end of the couch, waits for him to speak. Instead, he passes over his laptop.
Claire clicks through the tabs, all of them containing articles about the incident. Most of the pieces are comprised of Tweets from fans who saw what happened, recognised her in the middle of the group, and overheard the conversation; photos and videos stare back at her, and she sighs as she reads the captions. She thanks the stars for small miracles when a majority of the reactions are positive and supportive of her, commending her on her poise in the face of such vile questioning.
“I get it,” Niall announces, and Claire drags her gaze away from the computer screen. He clasps his hands in front of him, elbows on his knees. “I do. I get it. His question was out of line. But Claire, you have to be more tactful when you respond. If you can’t do that, you need to stick with ‘No comment’.”
Claire hands him his laptop and shoves a hand through her hair. “I tried that. He asked the first time, I said no. He asked again, I said no. He asked a third time… That’s when I lost my temper. He couldn’t take my ‘no’ as an answer because what kind of fodder is no story. Do I regret snapping like that? No, I can’t say that I do.” Niall looks surprised at her candour, but she pushes on before he can speak. “It sucks, yes, that it’s going to reflect poorly on you, and I am sorry about that. But I’m not going to let them insinuate that I only have my job because I’m fucking my boss. Because that? That reflects poorly on me, and it will destroy any chances I’ll ever have at getting a job if I decide this one isn’t working out. So, sorry but I’m not sorry for standing up for myself.”
The room is doused in silence once she finishes, and Claire tries to relax the tension in her bones that prepares her for having to get up and walk away. Niall doesn’t say anything for a long while. The lack of response is hard to handle; she has just accepted that this is a lost job when he exhales heavily.
“I’m being an ass about this, aren’t I?”
“Damn skippy you’re being an ass,” she replies immediately, causing him to chuckle quietly.
“Lazy afternoon?”
“Only if you don’t mind that you technically paid for the Oreo ice cream I bought for myself while I was at the store.”
“Only if you share.”
Claire stares at him with narrowed eyes, pretends to be deep in thought. “You’re lucky you’re adorable,” she finally says, “because it’s the only thing keeping me from calling you an ass.”
“You already said I was an ass.”
“No, I said you were being an ass. Now, shush, or I won’t share my ice cream.”
His laughter follows her into the kitchen, and she does a little happy jig once she’s sure she isn’t in his sights any more. She busies herself with scooping the frozen dessert into two bowls, though all she wants to do is grab a spoon and eat directly from the carton. After she’s cleaned up the mess, she carries the bowls into the living room, passes him his, and settles in on the couch to watch Two and a Half Men.
Niall brings up the watchlist when they’ve watched two episodes, and Claire almost chokes on her tongue when she sees the title for her favourite movie on the menu. Niall gives her a questioning look, and all she can do is point at the screen, squeaking out the name. She turns to him, jutting out her lower lip and widening her eyes in an attempt to pout adorably. She knows she’s failed - after all, she’s nowhere near as cute as Minnie or Paul - but Niall rolls his eyes and changes to the movie. Claire is inordinately thankful for the lack of commercials as she pays full attention to the barracuda chasing the Marlin the clownfish across the screen.
“Hey, how are you feeling today?”
She considers lying to him, telling him that she’s all better, but she can’t. “Awful, honestly. Not as bad as last night, but… still shit.”
“I’m sorry. Mind if I come in?”
She shrugs, pushing herself to sit up though it makes her want to puke. Niall steps through the door, closes it behind him with his foot. In one hand is a tray, a mug in the other. He sets the tray on the bed next to her, and she stares down at the toast and bacon on the plate. She blinks owlishly then turns her gaze to him. He smiles softly, handing over the mug, and Claire feels like bursting into tears. Her fingers shake as she wraps them around the ceramic, heat instantly leeching into her skin, and she sips carefully at the coffee he’s brought her. It’s sharp and rich on her tongue, the bitterness hidden by the way it scalds her mouth.
“I couldn’t remember how you liked it,” he says in lieu of apology, but the shrug he gives is good enough.
“It’s okay. This… I appreciate this.”
“Do you get migraines a lot?”
Claire swallows another mouthful of coffee before stretching to put the mug on the nightstand. Niall nudges the plate closer to her, and she huffs out a laugh but picks up a strip of bacon. “I used to get them more often, but I thought I’d grown out of them since I haven’t had one in a few months.”
He nods slowly, and Claire nibbles at the edges of the bacon. She wants to squirm as she eats, but the pounding in her head tells her it will be a terrible idea. Her stomach churns with each bite she takes; eating in front of Niall isn’t a new thing - they’ve shared plenty of meals during the time she’s worked for him - but it’s still an uncomfortable thing to eat when he isn’t, when he keeps giving her those worried looks.
“What time is it?” she asks suddenly, startling him, and he frowns but tells her it’s almost eight. “Are you serious? Fuck, why didn’t you wake me earlier?”
“Because you need the rest.”
“I’ll be fine.”
He rolls his eyes. “Claire, you showed up last night crying because you were in so much pain. You fell asleep almost as soon as you laid down. You just told me you’re still in pain. We don’t have anything today, so… I don’t want you doing anything but resting until you feel better.”
“Niall -”
“Nope. I’m your boss, you have to listen to me and do as I say.”
“That wasn’t in the contract.”
“I added it when you weren’t looking.”
She lets out a surprised laugh, shaking her head despite the pain of the migraine. His smile brightens his entire face, and she stares openly for a second. It really isn’t fair that he’s so attractive, she thinks. Him being good-looking on top of having a wonderful, charming, sweet personality makes it incredibly difficult to pretend that he doesn’t affect her. She rips her gaze away when he glances up at her, pretends she wasn’t being so shameless and creepy.
The pain Claire has been in disappears by the time she goes to sleep that night. She fell back asleep after Niall left the room to take the tray back to the kitchen, and he’d been upset when she appeared in the living room around eleven-thirty. She appeased him by lounging on the couch for the rest of the day, occasionally responding to text messages from her brother and Matt, who scolded her via text about not letting him know she made it to her boss’s safely last night. Guilt ate at her for a long time after that, but it was dislodged by her surprise when Niall left her alone in the house; she’s never been here without him, so the sudden lack of his presence was… disconcerting, to say the least. Thankfully, he came back within the hour carrying a McDonald’s bag in his hand.
Claire thinks she should have lied about whether her head still hurt or not as she’s crawling into the guest bed for the second night in a row. But she couldn’t not tell the truth when Niall was looking at her so intently. The words had just tumbled out of her without thought, without permission, and she wonders what it means that the subtle guilt-trip was so successful. All he’d said was that he didn’t feel right about her leaving while still in pain, and she was immediately accepting his suggestion of her staying again.
Their first fight as employer/employee occurs just a couple of weeks after the whole migraine incident. Claire is only at the grocery store because she’s grown tired of not having juice to drink while at his house; water is great and all, but sometimes, she just wants something sugary. She takes the receipt from the cashier with a smile and grabs up her bags full of juice, a bottle of Diet Coke, a tub of Oreo ice cream, and a package of the cookies themselves before making her way to the exit.
Her car is in sight, so close yet so far, when she is abruptly surrounded by a group of people. Claire loses track of how many cameras are shoved into her face as she walks, but she forces herself to not focus on that. Her heart races in her chest, and she struggles to breathe properly. Her skin feels overly-hot while she pushes through the crowd asking questions. Her thoughts jumble in her brain; she manages to catch one inquiry that doesn’t seem so bad.
“Ma’am, you work for Niall Horan, right? What’s he like as a boss?”
She grits her teeth and plasters on a fake smile. “He’s great, fair. The kind of boss you’d kill to have.”
“Is it true you’re sleeping with him?” another asks, and Claire nearly trips over her feet in her shock at the audacity of the question.
“The fuck, dude, he’s my boss! No!”
“Can you tell us anything about his album that he’s been working on?”
“No comment, which you already knew that.”
“Are you sure you’re not sleeping with him?”
“Do you do everything for him?”
“Is there anything you can tell us about the music? His golf ventures? Anything?”
“Are you sure? After all, you’ve been spotted coming out of his house early in the morning a lot over the past few months, so excuse us for finding it hard to believe there’s nothing going on between the sheets!”
The man snickers at his own statement, but nobody else does. Claire exhales sharply, pivoting on her heel, and pins him with a dark, flat glare. His teeth clack together loudly as he stumbles to a stop. Her nails bite into her palm when she clenches her hands into fists at her side. She’s shaking, she knows she is, her anger is so close to the surface.
“I swear to everything you hold Holy in this world, if you ask me that one more goddamn time, I will make you eat that damn camera. Yes, I have to be at his house early in the morning because I am doing my job. Yes, I leave his house late at night because I am doing my job. Yes, sometimes, I have to sleep in his guest bedroom because I am doing my job. So yes, I am one hundred percent certain that I am not sleeping with Niall Horan. He is my boss. I am his employee. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, if you’ll kindly excuse me, I have a job to do that doesn’t require being asked crass, despicable questions like that from scum like you.”
She isn’t followed as she finally reaches her car. Her breaths are tremulous, and bile creeps up the back of her throat. She shoves the shopping bags into the backseat, slamming the door shut; how dare he imply there was more to her relationship with Niall than pure professionalism? Her brain whispers a fleeting, twisted hope that the asshole pap is behind her car as she reverses, but she blows out a breath and shakes it off. She doesn’t need to add vehicular homicide to the list of things she’s done wrong today.
Claire has never been more thankful for traffic than she is now. Though it means the ice cream is steadily melting in the bag, it also means that she has more time to calm down before reaching Niall’s house. The last thing she wants to do is bring that rage and disgust back with her. She waits until she’s had to come to a stop to scrub a hand over her face. This isn’t how she wanted the day to go.
Niall leans against the wall as soon as she walks in, and Claire knows he already knows about the blow-up. She breezes past him and sets about putting away the items she purchased, but he doesn’t let her ignore him for long. The instant she closes the refrigerator door, he beckons for her to follow him. She does. The barely-concealed anger on his face brooks no arguments, and she really does not want to make things worse. She collapses onto the far end of the couch, waits for him to speak. Instead, he passes over his laptop.
Claire clicks through the tabs, all of them containing articles about the incident. Most of the pieces are comprised of Tweets from fans who saw what happened, recognised her in the middle of the group, and overheard the conversation; photos and videos stare back at her, and she sighs as she reads the captions. She thanks the stars for small miracles when a majority of the reactions are positive and supportive of her, commending her on her poise in the face of such vile questioning.
“I get it,” Niall announces, and Claire drags her gaze away from the computer screen. He clasps his hands in front of him, elbows on his knees. “I do. I get it. His question was out of line. But Claire, you have to be more tactful when you respond. If you can’t do that, you need to stick with ‘No comment’.”
Claire hands him his laptop and shoves a hand through her hair. “I tried that. He asked the first time, I said no. He asked again, I said no. He asked a third time… That’s when I lost my temper. He couldn’t take my ‘no’ as an answer because what kind of fodder is no story. Do I regret snapping like that? No, I can’t say that I do.” Niall looks surprised at her candour, but she pushes on before he can speak. “It sucks, yes, that it’s going to reflect poorly on you, and I am sorry about that. But I’m not going to let them insinuate that I only have my job because I’m fucking my boss. Because that? That reflects poorly on me, and it will destroy any chances I’ll ever have at getting a job if I decide this one isn’t working out. So, sorry but I’m not sorry for standing up for myself.”
The room is doused in silence once she finishes, and Claire tries to relax the tension in her bones that prepares her for having to get up and walk away. Niall doesn’t say anything for a long while. The lack of response is hard to handle; she has just accepted that this is a lost job when he exhales heavily.
“I’m being an ass about this, aren’t I?”
“Damn skippy you’re being an ass,” she replies immediately, causing him to chuckle quietly.
“Lazy afternoon?”
“Only if you don’t mind that you technically paid for the Oreo ice cream I bought for myself while I was at the store.”
“Only if you share.”
Claire stares at him with narrowed eyes, pretends to be deep in thought. “You’re lucky you’re adorable,” she finally says, “because it’s the only thing keeping me from calling you an ass.”
“You already said I was an ass.”
“No, I said you were being an ass. Now, shush, or I won’t share my ice cream.”
His laughter follows her into the kitchen, and she does a little happy jig once she’s sure she isn’t in his sights any more. She busies herself with scooping the frozen dessert into two bowls, though all she wants to do is grab a spoon and eat directly from the carton. After she’s cleaned up the mess, she carries the bowls into the living room, passes him his, and settles in on the couch to watch Two and a Half Men.
Niall brings up the watchlist when they’ve watched two episodes, and Claire almost chokes on her tongue when she sees the title for her favourite movie on the menu. Niall gives her a questioning look, and all she can do is point at the screen, squeaking out the name. She turns to him, jutting out her lower lip and widening her eyes in an attempt to pout adorably. She knows she’s failed - after all, she’s nowhere near as cute as Minnie or Paul - but Niall rolls his eyes and changes to the movie. Claire is inordinately thankful for the lack of commercials as she pays full attention to the barracuda chasing the Marlin the clownfish across the screen.