#this is in great direct reference to The Full Moon and Apology Tour

[botanikos]

I haven't found a very articulate way of putting any of this, so bear with me if it seems chaotic. Much of what I'm about to talk about is very canon/in alignment with what we know and come to learn about Stolas, especially with The Full Moon & Apology Tour, but I am also going into length because of the relevance this all has with my portrayal at times. Apologies if you choose to read this and find it an absolute fucking MESS because I will do a lot of jumping and back-tracking.

This post also acts as a sort of "Do not ask me who I blame, I will point both fingers at Stolas and Blitz respectively. It takes two to Tango." Neither of them is exempt from the hurtful things they said and did. I said what I said.

I mentioned a while back and in my rules that this blog would include an exploration of emotional themes, including depression and anxiety. And yes, I will discuss and explore the abuse from Stella on occasion too. That being said, I want to take a minute and just let it really sink in that the Stolas we first come to know is such an actor, a (sometimes unwilling) participant in his very own play (life). He thrives in the theatrics he puts on and the telenovelas he watches because they are how he processes and copes.

Is Stolas a hypersexual innuendo slinging, touch-starved, love-bombing, thespian bird-nerd? Absolutely. That's who he is to the very heart and core (and more, but that isn't the point here). But I also think these elements are what he puts forward as a sort of armor. He makes sweeping motions and behaves a certain way to appear perfectly well kept and a little obnoxious. If it looks intentional, no one can/will know the truth. And that truth is that he is hurting. He is falling apart. Has been for some time, and especially is after The Full Moon & Apology Tour episodes. The truth is: he is either not enough, or is always far too much.

Now, reiterating that Stolas has A LOT to unpack, unlearn, and understand about his own actions and internalized conceptions. He has done a great deal of harm to Blitz and likely countless others, even if he didn't realize it at the time.

But in The Full Moon during WHEN I SEE HIM, Stolas literally mentions how nervous he is and that anything else is literally a disguise.

"I'll believe him and not the voice that says I'm not enough."

He actively begins to panic upon the realization that his medication is out. Stolas climbs into the refrigerator and says "I'll fucking die alone if this goes bad when I see him tonight."

To take this a step further, Stolas even equates himself to a monster with the line "Would he want me if he was free? And if he's only here as a prisoner, what kind of monster does that make me?"

He comes to terms with the fact that what they had going on was wrong, that he took advantage of a situation, of Blitz. And while Stolas harbored feelings for him for quite some time, it's obvious he never truly committed to the idea or possibility of a genuine relationship with him until much later (arguably, maybe, after the embarrassment for them both at Ozzie's).

So now we are witnessing Stolas unraveling. We are seeing him more thoroughly, for who he truly is, and the negative and flawed qualities he bears.

Feelings of inadequacy / insecurity

Anxiety

Impulsivity

Perfectionism

Selfishness

At a young age, we see a very eager-to-please and curious Stolas. He's excitable and even appears quite happy! But the crushing weight of his status and position quickly fell down fast when he was shown a picture of a young Stella, and told he would be marrying her. Basically, his entire life was lined up with purpose and expectations for him. Despite that, he still grew to be quite a character and I like to think he still catered to his individuality in some ways. This also supports his impulsivity, as a means to give some semblance of control back to himself. He very much acts in the moment and before fully fully analyzing anything, which brings us to The Full Moon, in which he's had time to realize and ruminate, and is now in a sort of distress about it all coming forward.

Now, I personally headcanon that even before Stella and Stolas started spending more time together that he already dealt with blows to his self-esteem and image. He was respected by name and rank alone, but not entirely liked. He also received quite a bit of open criticism and ridicule for his interests and mannerisms. Thus, he is far more comfortable in the seclusion of his home, surrounded by books and artifacts than the shimmering aristocracy of parties. There were times, however, where he could make a flourishing fool of himself in their favor, or charm people into small bursts of engagement, but he wore himself out quite quickly, and would have to find a way to retreat. Once Stella came into the picture, it was much easier to find these events loathsome in their entirety as he endured open harassment and personal jabs at even the most private of matters from her.

There were times during his childhood, their engagement, and their marriage in which Stolas dealt with the pressing weight of inadequacy. These feelings took the forefront as he assumed he simply wasn't enough of a partner, enough of a Goetia, enough of an astronomer, enough of a son, enough of anything, really. Nothing he ever did pleased her, and he was never quite sure where he fell in line with his father. So as time went on, he just cautiously assumed that he couldn't possibly live up to anyone's standards, regardless of their position in his life. It's true, he thinks highly of himself and of his abilities, but none of that is structurally sound where it matters most.

Stolas is selfish. This falls in line with the impulsivity, naturally, but he is absolutely selfish. He is always seeking attention, especially from Blitz and is inconsiderate of his boundaries in the beginning. This is especially present in just how often he seeks Blitz out, his continued sexual ramblings over the phone in the first episode, and the list goes on. I do not think his selfishness is done with malice, but it's no excuse, either. The initial transactional exchange between them is also not just selfish, but manipulative. And he comes to realize this! It's phenomenal development!

But it's still a fatal flaw, and as Stolas becomes more aware of himself and his own negative traits, it creates a sort of spiral. Returning us back to the center of it all with his feelings of inadequacy. Because of all of these flaws, because of everything he has said or done, even in taking that leap by freeing Blitz of that exchange and expressing his love for him, Stolas still doesn't believe himself worthy of Blitz's love, or anyone else's for that matter.

You know what I'm just ending this whole thing here coz I feel like I'm gonna go on a huge tangent and I'm not making any sense. I'll explain things in headcanons and asks if anyone's ever curious or when I wanna explore those moods. Lmao

[ronweasleyisourking]

This is How We Dance Chapter Four | Read on AO3 here

Gin was extremely uncomfortable. After Mary had cut off what her friend Sirius was saying, no one had said anything. He didn’t want to impose on what seemed like touchy subject matter, but he was also super curious. Plus, he really liked Mary and wanted to know everything about her. He decided to talk to her later, so that they would not be in a car when the discussion was happening. He had learned not to bring up touchy subject matter while in cars. He focused on not having a panic attack as he followed his phone’s directions to Mary’s house.

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Meanwhile in the other car, Hestia and Alice were discussing who was at fault for Gwenog never having watched Lemonade Mouth and also, not knowing who Hayley Kiyoko was. It began when Wanna Be Missed started playing on Alice’s phone, who had her Spotify playlist on shuffle.

“Wanna be loved every night, wanna know she's only mine, breathe her in, give me life, got all these hearts in line, they all wasting their time, ‘cause only you do me right…”

“Man, didn’t you love Hayley Kiyoko in Lemonade Mouth,” Alice asked the whole car when she recognized the song playing, not realizing what she was starting.

“What’s Lemonade Mouth,” Gwenog asked, sleepily. She loved hanging out with her cousin, but she never got her references, because they were all before her time.

Alice’s jaw dropped. “Tia, have you been depriving your little sister of one of the greatest Disney movies of all time? How can she not know what Lemonade Mouth is?”

“You watch her every day after school Lissy, you could show it to her anytime you want,” Hestia replied from the drivers seat, purposely using the nickname her cousin hated.

Alice glared at her and looked for backup in her significant others sitting next to her, but they were both asleep, Emmeline using Frank’s shoulder as a pillow. “What is the point in dating two people when they are both asleep when you need them?”

Hestia rolled her eyes, and glanced back at her cousin, “You love them.”

Alice looked at them sleeping again, and smiled, “Yeah, I do,” but then her tone changed quickly, “but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be backing me up right now.”

“I wanna be missed like every night, I wanna be kissed like it's the last time, say you can't eat, can't sleep, can't breathe without me, I wanna be held, fragile like glass, ‘cause I've never felt nothing like that, say you can't walk, can't talk, go on without me…”

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Mary stepped out of the car, breathing in the fresh air, which was thankfully not as tense as the air in the car, where her best friend almost revealed her not so great past with relationships. She stretched out her arms and cracked the joints of her back - the air wasn’t the only thing that was tense.

Sirius got out of the car and immediately tried to apologize to Mary. “I’m really sorry, Mary, it just slipped out, I shouldn’t have said –”. Mary cut them off again with a cold glare, and headed towards the house. Gin followed behind her, walking with the cane again.

Sirius just stood there, blinking back tears.

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After Mary got into the house, she set up Gwenog in her room, knowing that it was the cleanest of all the bedrooms due to obvious reasons. She gave Frank, Emmeline, Alice, and Hestia (the former two looked like they had just woken up) a tour of the house, and finally she collapsed on the couch next to Gin with a huge bag of crisps (that she really didn’t want to share).

She didn’t see Sirius, which meant they were probably in their room.

“I’m sorry that I left you sitting here alone,” Mary said, with an almost convincing forced smile. Gin smiled at her in return, and she could see he looked worried… or anxious. “I’m also sorry for what happened in your car too. Sometimes Si doesn’t know when to shut up.”

“You can tell me about it, you know,” Gin replied, looking at her, “I’m not easily scared off. I have some not so great exes as well.” He wasn’t planning on sharing this with her tonight, but he felt like she needed a push to open up about whatever Sirius had been talking about. “When I told my ex about me being trans, he wasn’t too happy. He was driving, and while he was scolding me for not telling him before, for tricking or whatever… he drove off the side of the road. We hit a tree. He walked away with some bruised ribs, but I ended up with old Janie here because of the injuries to my spine and legs,” Gin said, lifting his cane when he said Janie.

“You named your cane Janie,” Mary asked, chuckling a little bit before continuing, “Sorry, that’s not the point at all, I know. That’s horrible though. I can’t believe he reacted so badly.” Gin smiled softly at her when she put her hand over his, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

“Well, I’ve told you my bad ex story, would you be willing to tell me yours,” Gin asked, full of hope.

Mary took a long breath before starting, “Peter was Sirius’s friend before mine. They had been friends since they were eleven. I met Sirius around sixteen, back when they were dating Marlene, and they introduced me to Peter. And Peter was nice – he didn’t mind me being trans or queer. But when we started dating, he got a little aggressive. It was nothing bad, not really, just him grabbing my arm a lot, sometimes leaving bruises. But when I confronted him about him outing Sirius and Marlene, he gave me a black eye. When Sirius found out, they threatened Peter, said if he ever came near any of us again, they would call up their uncle and make sure Peter was charged with harassment.” Mary was rubbing her wrists throughout the story, still feeling his hands on her years later.

Gin pulled Mary into a hug and whispered, “I’ll never do anything like that to you. Or anyone.”

Mary smiled at him, setting the bag of crisps down and began leaning into the hug.

Gin continued when they pulled apart, “You need to talk to Sirius though, I can tell they’re sorry.”

Mary nodded, thanked him, and went off to find Sirius.

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Sirius was lying in their bed, waiting for Remus to get home. They were sick to their stomach, and felt like they had ruined Mary’s chance with the fanboy – who from the little interaction they had, seemed like a great guy for her. Better than Peter.

Sirius still felt guilty about that.

They heard a knock at the door, and then it opening. They turned in their bed to see Mary, anxiously smiling at him and looking at them as if she wanted to know if she could come in. They sat up, and gestured for her to come in. Mary joined them on the bed.

Sirius turned to her and said, “I really am sorry. About everything. From introducing you to Peter at all to bringing it up tonight.” Mary smiled and shook her head at them.

“You have nothing to be sorry about, Si,” she said, “I however should apologize for getting so mad at you.” She pulled them closer to her, falling back on the bed. She then sighed and asked, “How badly do I want to take a shower now that I’m on your bed?”

Sirius thought for a moment and said, “Very badly, you want to take a shower very badly.”

They both laughed as Mary sat up and brushed off her clothes.

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Once everyone else got home, the afterparty began and of course, Marlene was the first to go up for karaoke. “I read the signs, I got all my stars aligned, my amulets, my charms, I set all my false alarms, so I’ll be someone who be forgotten, I’ve got a question and you’ve got an answer…”

Dorcas was sitting on the couch next to Alice, and both were drinking a fruity alcohol that neither could remember the name of at this point, and Alice said, “She sounds exactly like St. Vincent, she even gives off the same vibes.”

“I do a dance to make the rain come, smile to keep the sky from falling down down down down, collect the love that I've been given, build a nest for us to sleep in here, you know it's real…” Dorcas’s mind raced, thinking about what Alice was saying and what album this song was from, and whispered, “Annie Clark…”

“What,” Alice asked, turning towards Dorcas.

“Annie Clark. That’s St. Vincent’s real name,” Dorcas said, her mind still racing. She opened the notes app in her phone and began writing as many of her thoughts down as she could.

“I know, isn’t that the softest name for a rock star ever,” Alice said, her eyes wide as she saw some of the words on Dorcas’s phone. She couldn’t put it all together but she was excited nevertheless.

“I check my palms, the cracks in the sidewalk, my visions and my dreams, I cross all my fingers, that you'll be someone that won't be forgotten, what was your question, I've got the answer…”

Dorcas looked up, only having eyes for Marlene, and finally replied, “Yeah, yeah it is.”

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Regulus went up to bed with Lily around 2 AM and shortly after, James and Gin were both on the couch drinking a mixture of the alcohols that were in the kitchen and trying to convince Mary to sing. Sirius took a break from making out with Remus in a chair to encourage them and that was when Mary finally realized she had lost the battle.

Mary went to the front of the room and said, “I don’t know a whole lot of songs but here’s one that I’ve listened to hundreds of times and memorized.” She took a breath. “She's got me going crazy, talking to the, talking to the moon. adrenaline starts to overtake me when she. walks into the, walks into the room, at first I wasn't sure of it, then I was just ok with it, I cannot get enough of it. now I love it.” Sirius, James, and Gin cheered.

Mary looked at Gin when she sung the lyrics, “He shows me things I can't see, I like this feeling, like this feeling free, I feel no shame, not guilty, no I just feel more, I just feel more me…”

She felt so free while singing, though that could be the weed she and Sirius had broke out once Lily went upstairs, the smell of which they would have to clear up with Febreeze before they went to bed.

When she was done, she flopped down on the couch and said, “I’m sleeping here, I guess.”

“Same,” said James, “but I can sleep on the floor,” he continued, looking at Gin.

“Yeah, we’re going to bed,” Remus said, dragging Sirius upstairs.

“Be quiet,” Mary said to them, “there is a twelve-year-old sleeping in my room and I do not want her traumatized because of how loud you guys are.”

“We’ll just use the gags,” Remus said, clearly drunk.

Mary shivered, acting disgusted, before curling up against the couch, ready to fall asleep, “I did not need to know that.” James and Gin laughed.

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Lily and Regulus woke up around nine the next morning and began making cheese toasties for all the inhabitants of the house, knowing that it was at least James’s favorite hangover food. Regulus pulled out the jumbo pack of Ribena juice boxes out of the fridge, setting it on the counter.

“It’s time to wake them up,” he said, his eyes wide. Hungover twenty-year-olds were scary.

“Should we use the tuba or just the cymbals,” Lily asked evilly.

Fic Playlist

Lying is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off by Panic! At the Disco

Wild Things by Alessia Cara

Too Good at Goodbyes by Sam Smith

Wanna Be Missed by Hayley Kiyoko

All My Stars Aligned by St. Vincent

Not a Phase by Jessie Paege ft. Lucy & La Mer

[1dreality]

It must have been well over a year ago now, when Liam Payne realised he had absolutely nothing interesting to say. The singer, known to most as ‘Liam from One Direction’ until the group’s indefinite hiatus in January 2016, had returned to the studio, settled into the idea of being a solo artist for the rest of his days, and promptly drawn a blank. He was, he says, just too darned happy to think of anything.

Everything in his life had fallen into place. He’d found love, moving in with Cheryl (formerly Cole), a fellow junior royal of the Top 40. Their first child, a son named Bear, was well on the way. He had signed a huge record deal with Capitol. He felt fitter and healthier than he had in years. And, yes, there’s no denying it: he was pretty pleased that he no longer had to be in the biggest boyband in the world.

‘I had a bit of a problem formulating what was going on in my brain into the music at first,’ he says, ‘because I was so content with everything in my personal life. It’s easy to spill your guts out on a ballad. But I was thinking, “Oh God, I’m really happy – what am I going to write about?!”’

More than 12 months on, the answer to that question still isn’t entirely clear. Payne’s debut album, as yet untitled, won’t be released until early 2018. There have been two singles, though, with a third, the unsubtly titled Bedroom Floor, arriving next month.

Of those we’ve heard, the first, Strip That Down, a R&B-inflected club hit released in May and co-written with Ed Sheeran, marked a departure from One Direction’s stadium pop-rock. It was also chock-full of hoary by-the-way-I’m-an-adult-now signposts: there are references to nightclubs, drinking rum and coke, driving Ferraris and having girls ‘grind’ on him. And mixed in with all that were lyrics that caused a minor stir among his acolytes: ‘You know I used to be in 1D, now I’m out, free / people want me for one thing, that’s not me’. Payne, it seems, is keen to reintroduce himself.

‘When I left the band, I felt a bit stranded,’ he says, when we meet in an enormous boardroom at his management’s offices. ‘It took time, but I know as an artist I am starting fresh now.’ He slaps the table with melodrama. ‘This is Moment One. It’s the start line.’

Liam Payne is 24 years old. He is athletically built, as anyone who has seen his shirtless Instagram posts will know, and kind of everyday handsome, in a Love Island, former-youth-footballer way. Both his arms and hands are almost entirely upholstered in tattoos, highlights of which include some thick black arrows on one forearm that look like road markings; the number ‘4’, in reference to One Direction’s 2014 album of the same name, on his ring finger; and, on his left arm, a scale depiction of Cheryl’s eye, that appears to follow you around the room as he gesticulates. ‘It’s so my missus can always keep an eye on me,’ he likes to say about that one.

He is impossibly nice. Before we meet, he plods through the office, saying hello to everybody in the building individually, and in most cases remembering something about them: that they beat him at Fifa last time he dropped by, so they must have a rematch before he leaves (‘I’ll whoop ya with West Brom!’), or they’ve surely had a haircut, haven’t they? (‘It looks really great anyway, man!’). It is the manner of somebody both impeccably raised and intensely keen for people to like him, and it appears genuine and successful.

To an extent, Payne says, the five members of One Direction – or four, after Zayn Malik left the band in 2015 – ended up playing characters over the six years they were together. Whereas the Beatles (arguably the only other group with a comparable scale and speed of world domination), grew increasingly cantankerous towards the end of the 1960s, One Direction stuck resolutely to the caricatures that fans and management assigned them right to the end.

Malik was brooding and mercurial, Harry Styles was a cool, flamboyant ladies’ man, Niall Horan was charming and laid-back, and Louis Tomlinson, who has since admitted to feeling a little redundant, was fun and energetic. And Payne? Well, Payne was The Responsible One.

‘I’ve always been a bit of an older soul,’ he says, mulling over his place. ‘It’s funny: there’s a thing on the net where the fans put what they think are our mental ages. All the boys were around their real ones, but then they put me at about 37.’

Payne admits to feeling a little daunted in 2010, when Simon Cowell thrust the band together on X Factor after they’d auditioned as solo artists. Keeping up with the other personalities in the gang was exhausting, so his coping mechanism was to attempt to rein them in as best he could, and work with management in doing so. Like the popular schoolboy teachers identify as mature enough to be a trusted emissary for his recalcitrant friends, Payne carved himself a valuable niche.

‘I was put with a group of rowdy teenagers, and when I was a teenager, I had mates, but I was always with my dad. I’d go out to the pub and chat with him. So when I was stuck with these boys I was thinking, “F— me, I don’t know how to do it.”

‘When something was going wrong, I’d get a phone call. If there was an apology needed, it was me. I was the spokesperson for the band, as it were, with the press and the label.’

Along with Tomlinson, Payne shares comfortably the most writing credits of the band on One Direction songs. Over their five albums, dozens of songwriting collaborators contributed to the group’s success, but it seems nobody worked harder than the two least-heralded members. Neither was the showiest or best singer; but they kept things ticking over.

One Direction’s hordes of fans around the world noticed the assumed roles, and nicknamed Payne ‘Daddy Directioner’. He lived up to it with them, too. In 2013, on tour in Australia, Payne tweeted a message to warn girls waiting outside the band’s hotel of snakes living in the surrounding fields. ‘It’s just not worth it someone’s gunna get hurt [sic],’ he pleaded.

Two years later, he gave an interview lamenting the fact he and the other boys were being sent sexually explicit pictures of themselves drawn by underage admirers. While the rest of the band seemed to find that funny, Payne called it ‘the sad and sorry side of what we’ve done.’ Yeah, all right, Dad.

Becoming a real-life father has at least given the nickname some purchase. Rumours swirled at the end of 2015 that he had started dating Cheryl – formerly Fernandez-Versini and Cole, née Tweedy – after her second marriage ended in divorce. By the next summer, she was pregnant with the second One Direction baby (Tomlinson, the eldest of the bunch, had one first).

The couple live in a mansion near Woking, Surrey, and aren’t married, but he considers them ‘basically at that stage’. Bear, with whom Payne is besotted, was born in March, and named for the growling noises he was making during his first sleeps. So far, no photographs have been released, but he instantly shows me one on his phone. And here, I can exclusively reveal that the heir Bear is – as you’d expect of a baby with that name, born of two professionally good-looking parents – very cute.

‘We’ve only shown him in glimpses,’ Payne says, explaining their decision to shield him. ‘We don’t want him to have the pressure that me and Cheryl have, as household names. We want him to enjoy himself first and then figure it out.’

Born and raised in Wolverhampton, Payne has an unexpectedly thick Midlands accent that gets thicker the longer he talks – which is a lot. His preferred conversational feature is the anecdote, resulting in a version of the phrase, ‘I remember, there was this one time…’ prefixing the majority of his utterances, which are in turn regularly punctuated with singular handclaps of self-incredulity. It can be mildly alarming, like interviewing a young, heavily-tattooed Ronnie Corbett, but I suppose it speaks to the amount of life experience he has already accrued.

Growing up, Payne’s father, Geoff, worked as a fitter, while his mother, Karen, was a nursery nurse. Money was tight and the house small, but he remembers it as a happy one.

‘My place was on the floor with the dog, there was no space on the sofa. It was great, though we didn’t have much. Dad was in debt, but they did the best they could. It makes you dream a bit, you know?’

As a child, he had two routes to possible stardom, both of which Geoff pushed hard for. One was singing, the other was long-distance running. For a time in his teens, Payne was one of the fastest 1500m runners in the country, getting up to train before school and seconds from qualifying for the London 2012 squad. It was before that, as a 14-year-old in 2008, that he first applied for X Factor.

Auditioning with Fly Me To The Moon, since it was one of the few songs he could manage while his voice was breaking, that year he got as far as the ‘judge’s houses’, before Simon Cowell told him to come back in two years and try again. He became a mini-celebrity back home in that between-period, and carried on performing around town. The adulation was short-lived, though.

Once, performing a Justin Timberlake cover at an under-18s gig in Oceana Wolverhampton, somebody lobbed a coin at his face and managed to draw blood. He laughs about it now. These days – admittedly a largely cashless society – it’s only bras and knickers they fling.

‘I had become less and less famous. One time, I was in McDonald’s with a girlfriend and someone shouted ‘X Factor reject!’ at me. The whole restaurant turned. It was like coming out of fame. So I knew what it was like at 15, and it helped me.’

Following Cowell’s advice, he returned to X Factor in 2010 and found himself shoved into One Direction with the four other boys, eventually finishing the competition in third place, but with easily the brightest future. Within weeks, he had moved out of his Wolverhampton bedroom and into a penthouse apartment in Canary Wharf.

And six years later, One Direction had sold more than 20 million records, become the first band in history to have their first four albums go to number one in the US, touring the world numerous times, and earned a preposterous amount of money in the process. Payne is now estimated to be worth £40 million. He hasn’t been back to Wolverhampton in a long time, but he paid off his father’s debts years ago, and bought his parents a new house in addition to funding the renovation of their family home. He refers to his time spent in One Direction as ‘like uni’.

When they were in the thick of things, all the boys used to obey Cowell’s omertà – relentless enthusiasm at all times, please – and never discussed any negative aspects of their experience. Now safely out the other side, Payne is frank on matters of burnout and claustrophobia.

‘Cabin fever. It sent me a bit AWOL at one point, if I’m honest. I can remember when there were 10,000 people outside our hotel. We couldn’t go anywhere. It was just gig to hotel, gig to hotel. And you couldn’t sleep, because they’d still be outside,’ he says, before telling several stories of how he and Tomlinson would sneak out of hotels just to feel freedom, only to find themselves bored once they got out.

‘People were speaking to me about mental health in music the other day, and that’s a big issue. Sometimes you just need some sun, or a walk.’

Every stop on tour became the same. Earlier this year, Payne was asked which was his favourite city of those he visited with One Direction. ‘One in Italy with a big white cathedral,’ he responded.(The band performed in Milan at least five times.)

‘One of the problems was that we never stopped to celebrate what we’d done. I remember us winning loads of American Music Awards and then having to get on a plane straight away. It got to the point where success was so fluid. I don’t even know what happened to our songs, we just sang them, then sang some more. It was like a proper, hard job. Non-stop. I can concentrate a lot more now.’

The paparazzi and fan attention sounds just as draining. It must feel weird having a Twitter following larger than the population of Australia, as he does, but especially odd to have fans so obsessed that they’ve set up multiple fake profiles pretending to be your mother, for some reason.

Moreover, footage of One Direction out and about makes A Hard Day’s Night look tame: thousands of screaming fans all over them, police escorts everywhere they went, an unending run of selfie requests... It came to a head in New York in 2012, when Payne was walking to a restaurant with his parents and a paparazzo accidentally pushed his mother over. He was incensed.

‘I was like, “Oh, f— this. F— this s—t.” There was a swarm of them and I just wanted a burger with my parents,’ he says, unsmiling for a moment. ‘I cried my eyes out. I thought, “I can’t do this”, and really hated my life.’

He soldiered on, but it wasn’t a healthy lifestyle; none of them seems to miss it now the ‘break’ is on.

‘It’s great that people can see what we’re really like away from each other,’ Payne says. ‘It got to a point in the band where we were just playing characters, and I was tired of my character. Apart from the daddy thing, I was really loud and bubbly. There were a lot of personalities in the band to keep up with, so I had to be all, ‘Ey!’, the rowdy lad, and I don’t have to now.’

There were times when the band would celebrate hard, and in that, Payne had catching up to do: as a child, he was diagnosed with a scarred kidney, meaning he didn’t taste alcohol until he was given the all-clear at 19. Tell a teenage millionaire they can now safely drink, and they’ll go for it. He admits ‘the floodgates opened’ that year.

‘I wasn’t happy. I went through a real drinking stage, and sometimes you take things too far. Everyone’s been that guy at the party where you’re the only one having fun, and there were points when that was me. I got to 13 stone, just eating crap. I got fat jibes, and it affects your head. I have nothing to hide about it…

‘As I say, it was like a musical university. We were pretty reckless, but I got it out of my system. I had my fun.’

The hiatus seems to have come at just the right time. But before he could take a breath, Payne lurched on in life, becoming involved with Cheryl almost at once.

Nobody asks how they met; their introduction is on YouTube for all to see. Ten years his senior, she was an X Factor judge in 2008 when the 14-year-old Payne shuffled in, all mop-hair and waistcoat, to perform his Sinatra number. He winked at her, she called him ‘cute’, they bumped into one another over the years, ended up working on a remix of one of her songs in 2014, and the rest is recent pop history.

Not everybody was happy when the relationship was initially confirmed. That Cheryl was in a quasi-pastoral role when they met raised eyebrows in the usual eyebrow-raising camps, as did the couple’s decade-wide age gap. Liam doesn’t care. In fact, he can still barely get over the fact she’s his girlfriend.

‘It’s a ridiculous place to be in,’ he says. ‘She’s even more amazing than I thought. I was watching her do Fight For This Love [her debut solo single, from 2009] when I was a kid, and now we’re together with a kid. I feel like I’m X Factor’s biggest winner.’

It helps having Cheryl around to ask about business matters. Like Payne, she was scouted on a TV pop contest (2002’s Popstars: The Rivals), had massive success in a group (Girls Aloud), and then went solo with a more urban sound. She is also the unlikely possessor of the record for number-one singles by a British woman.

‘We think about the same things. She understands what my life is like. She knows what it’s like to sit on the Graham Norton couch [or] we can talk about her L’Oréal work. It’s not that we’re “a brand” as a family, but we can help each other.’

In Who We Are, one of One Direction’s seven books, published in 2014, Payne writes in his chapter that he’s ‘worried about the idea of failing outside of this band’ and declared he’d become a low-key songwriter, because ‘there would be less attention on my life’.

The opposite of that is what’s happening, I inform him.

‘Yeah, that was a point when I was scared of our success, and we didn’t want to take a step back from it,’ he says. ‘I just wanted to be a songwriter and not be famous, but happy. Then Simon and Cheryl told me this is where I am supposed to be, and I’d miss the stage. The pressure of what was coming next was scary, but they talked me down.’

The solo product he’s come up with is the sort of music he’d always wanted to make: radio-friendly R&B in the style of his heroes, Justin Timberlake, Usher and Pharrell Williams, and more informed by the rap music he listens to than the pop he’s famous for. Who knows if he can shake the ‘embarrassing dad’ brand to pull it off, but the signs point to success. Strip That Down has been streamed more than 300 million times on Spotify alone.

‘I wanted this to be for people my age. The themes are a bit older, but you have to grow up with your fans. I can’t make bubblegum pop any more,’ he says.

One Direction fans needn’t despair. They might have dispersed and almost all signed elsewhere, but Payne is excited about the idea of a comeback gig in years to come. As, I’m sure, are the band’s accountants.

But that won’t be for a little while, if Payne has it his way, because – as he keeps on telling me – he is just far too happy with his lot at the moment to take a step backwards. When it reaches our time to wrap up, he’s still at it.

‘I feel great about what’s going on in my life,’ he says, giving it one last handclap and springing to his feet. ‘I’m extremely lucky. I feel like I’m in a comatose dream. I’m like, “when did I last bump my head?” because I can’t believe this…’

Liam Payne’s next single, Bedroom Floor, is out on 20 October