Lance forces a smile, but because he isn’t completely sure what it looks like, he aims his stare out the window to be safe. He hopes the averted look can pass as embarrassment or shyness, and that Niall won’t feel the tension that’s filling Lance through the hand on his leg. He doesn’t think Niall will. Niall has had his hands all over Lance when Lance’s body was rigid with discomfort of various kinds, and it’s never seemed to faze him.

“I still don’t understand, though,” Lance says as evenly as he can manage. “No one told me I don’t have to come to court. Should we still go to my hearing, just in case?”

Niall snatches his hand back from Lance’s leg, his voice laced with frustration when he answers, “Haven’t you been listening? I told you it’s taken care of.”

“But, how—?”

“I added your name to the title a few months ago. It’s something Lindsay suggested, for tax reasons. All I had to do was send them the documents and they no longer had a case, you see.”

Lance’s skin is crawling. There have been worse moments than this, he knows. Much worse. But the contrast of how he feels right now, so small and twisted, compared to how he felt at this time yesterday, makes the familiar feeling even harder to bear.

But he bears it anyway. Summoning all of his composure derived from years of practice and grim determination, he swallows and turns from the window to Niall with the most earnest face he can put on, and looks up at him through his lashes, reaching slowly for his hand.

“Thank you, Niall.”

Niall’s stormy expression clears at once, and his benevolent smile is back in place. He takes Lance’s outstretched hand and laces their fingers together.

“You’re welcome, Angel,” he says approvingly, and kisses Lance’s knuckles. His carefully conditioned beard is objectively softer than Robbie’s, and yet it feels like thorns raking Lance’s skin. “Now, we’ll go pick up the car, and then you can follow me back to the hotel, and we’ll have a long talk.” He squeezes Lance’s hand and lets go of it, voice lowering again. “I may have forgiven you, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few things I expect you to learn from this experience.”

“Yes, Niall,” Lance says, with a faint smile that he hopes looks abashed instead of nauseated. He should be relieved that everything has been dealt with, but he can’t help feeling the strange depression of an anticlimax, instead. He’d thought he would untangle the mess Niall had gotten him into through his wits and ingenuity; instead, Niall made it go away as easily as he created it.

Or did he? Niall has a bad habit of overestimating his own understanding of a situation—a symptom of his arrogance. Lance worries the inside of his lip, which is a mostly invisible tic when he’s nervous, and then swallows and dares to ask, “Did they give you any papers that I should have? About the case being dismissed?”