screaming color // n.h. au

part 8

winter arrives with the harshest of dry, cold winds, threatening to rip the skin from cole's nose and crack her fingertips. her dad sends her a hat with a blue pompom in the mail, and inside it is a note from her little brother: see you at christmas, coley! she tapes the note up on the wall beside her bed and wears the hat constantly, so much so that niall begins to roll his eyes every time he sees it.

"forget to wash your hair again, cole?" he asks her, swatting at the pompom.

cole jabs her elbow at him, but misses. niall laughs and reaches for her hat again, but cole cole ducks away. she woke up this morning with the kind of feeling in the pit of her stomach that signals a bad day, and it's now noon and today has been terrible. at breakfast, she spilled her orange juice on her jeans and barely made it to her first class in time because she rushed back to her room to change, and when she finally arrived at her poetry class, someone else was in her seat beside niall.

niall'd shrugged at her apologetically as she slid into the only chair left in the room, right next to the professor, whose glasses were hanging precariously from one ear as he shuffled through a pile of notes. across the table, charlotte watson leaned closer to niall and flipped her hair over her shoulder.

after class, niall waited for cole outside just as he always does, and he swung his arm around her shoulder and her heart sped up just as it always does, even though she was mad at him. she's still mad at him: he's sitting beside her in the dining hall eating french fries off of her plate and occasionally throwing one at zayn, who's sitting across the table next to april and not paying him any mind, and cole wants to kill him. or herself, or run a mile or or break something or scream as loud everybody in the city can hear her.

"hey cole, can you believe that?" niall asks as he reaches for another fry. cole can't believe it, because she has no idea what niall is talking about, and because her blood is boiling.

"god, niall, just take the whole damn plate!" cole shoves the plate across the table toward niall and stands up from her seat. "i'm leaving anyway."

"cole?"

she doesn't look back as she leaves the dining hall, buttoning her coat and pulling her hat down over her ears as she goes. outside, she barely notices the biting wind as she heads to the library. she's got a new book on the plantagenets in her bag, and it's exactly the sort of thing she needs to distract her from her terrible mood.

after her last class, cole grabs her food at the dining hall to go and takes it back to her room with her. she doesn't want to see april, who's always chipper, or niall, who always looks at her like he knows something she doesn't. she wants to sit in her dimly lit bedroom and read her book and not think about niall horan.

sometimes, when cole's about to fall asleep and she can't control her thoughts, she wonders if maybe she and niall are magnetic, but just for each other, so it doesn't surprise her when niall shows up just before 8 o'clock. he knocks one, two, three times, his signature, but she doesn't move.

"cooooole," niall whines when she doesn't open the door. "come on cole, lemme in!"

cole gets up, but she doesn't open the door, not yet, because she remembers niall sitting next to charlotte watson in class today, laughing at something she said. charlotte watson probably never has bad days.

"come on, cole! i brought you a cupcake!"

cole can't say no to a cupcake, or the smile she's sure will be on niall's face when he gives it to her. but when she opens the door, his hands are empty.

"niall! i can't believe you'd lie about a cupcake!"

niall shrugs, and before cole can step back, he wraps his arms around her and pulls her against him.

"i'm sorry you had a bad day," he says softly as cole relaxes against him, wrapping her arms around his neck. he is warm and he smells good, and all thoughts of this morning disappear. "and i'm sorry i lied about the cupcake."

"'s okay," cole mutters into niall's shoulder. what cupcake?