screaming color // n.h. au

part 1

history major cole jacobs thinks she's nothing but 5'3 with freckles and bad eyes. on the walls of her dorm next to her world map are pictures of her dad and her little brother, alfie, and on her bookshelf is the journal she doesn't write in often enough. cole's always wished to be the type of person who can say, "i keep a journal," but instead she's the type of person who keeps a mostly-empty journal on her shelf in the hopes that she'll write in it someday.

freshman year, cole jacobs breaks the heart of a silly boy who wears his heart on his sleeve. he takes her on a date to a crepe restaurant and tells her jokes that don't make her laugh, and when he goes to kiss her goodnight outside her dorm, she turns her cheek like she's seen in the movies. cole jacobs does not realize it then, but she is a heartbreaker.

niall horan knows that cole jacobs will break his heart from the first time he sees her. it's the first day of junior year and he sees her before she sees him, in an intro level poetry class that he needs to take for his degree even though he hates poetry. he's sitting outside the classroom playing on his phone because he's early for once (it'll never happen again) when she walks past him, tiny and blond and green-eyed, and if he hadn't known that you had to be a sophomore to get into this class, he'd've guessed she was a freshman.

niall horan does not talk to cole jacobs that day, or in class on wednesday, or on friday. he does not talk to her on friday night, when he sees her leaving the dining hall with a redheaded girl who looks like exactly his least-favorite type of human being, the kind who talks to much. he doesn't talk to her on saturday either, when he and zayn stop by the dining hall for breakfast around 11 am.

niall does not talk to cole until the following tuesday, and it's completely on accident and almost entirely her fault. she's the one who sets off the fire alarm in the dorm just after 10 pm, forcing everyone outside in the dark while they wait for campus police to come shut off the alarm.

she's standing just a few feet away from him on the lawn in front of their building, shifting back and forth on her bare feet, and he can tell from the way she's biting her lip that it was her fault.

"what were you cooking?"

she glances up and looks around, but doesn't seem to realize he was talking to her. so he takes a step closer.

"what were you cooking?" he repeats.

she blushes red as a tomato and that makes him laugh, which makes her blush harder. he thinks he could have fun with this.

"well?"

"i was baking," she says. "cookies."

now that he's closer, he can see that her mascara is blurred underneath her eyes. she's wearing a worn sweatshirt with the letters "ucla" on the front. (he will ask about this later, but not tonight.)

"i'm niall," he says, grins down at her.

she raises an eyebrow. it's almost cartoonish. "you can't have one of my cookies, niall."

niall laughs, surprised. "maybe i just wanted your name."

"oh." she blushes again, cocks her head at him. "it's cole."

"i–" he's interrupted by the sudden silence that surrounds them as the fire alarm is finally switched off.

everyone who's milling about on the lawn suddenly rushes for the door. niall manages to stay behind cole as they're swept along. only when they both exit the stairwell on the second floor does he realize that they must be neighbors.

she pauses halfway down the hall, at a door that says, "nicole." she glances over her shoulder at him as she pushes it open, but she doesn't say anything. he will swear later that she smiled. the fact is debatable.

"see you tomorrow," he says at her closing door.

and see her tomorrow, he does.