screaming color // n.h. au

part 19

time moves faster than cole can blink, and before she knows it, the term is ending, exams are approaching, and she's fallen in love with niall horan. the words – "i love you i love you i love you" – itch and scratch at the insides of her ears and the back of her throat like an incessant head cold with a terrible cough. every time she sees niall she goes warm all over, and she thinks it: i love you i love you i love you.

sometimes she thinks that niall feels it too, when he looks at her with a glint in his eye like he's never seen anything better, or when he wraps his arms tight around her and threatens in the gentlest voice to never let go. but then she thinks that it's too fast, it hasn't been long enough. feelings like that take time to grow and spread and swell till they overflow your heart and seep into your bloodstream and overwhelm you every time you breathe. but cole's already overwhelmed. this, she thinks, is the biggest, strongest feeling she's ever felt.

it's hard to describe, but cole tries. when it's late and she's lying sleepless in niall's arms, she tries to talk about it like auden would, i'll love you till africa and china meet. till the ocean is folded and hung up to dry. but cole's no auden. and to cole, it feels like this: being soaked to your skin from a rainstorm, only for the sun to come out and send you shivering as it seeps to your bones and makes rainbows in puddles. it feels like a million tiny butterfly kisses over every inch of her, inside and out, every time she looks at him. it feels like the first gasp of air you take after holding your breath in a contest with your little brother when you're eight years old and nothing but the bogeyman can scare you.

now, plenty of things are scary. exams and essays and niall's graduation, which is rushing at cole with full speed and keeps coming, no matter how hard she tries to ignore it. niall's starting a graduate program across the city in the fall, so he won't be far, but he won't be thisclose, his scent on cole's pillow on the rare night that she sleeps alone and the sound of his laugh always echo echo echoing in her head because she only just heard it. cole pretends she's not nervous about that, about the coming summer and the separation and the future, but she can't pretend away the feelings, the big, tingly ones that get caught in the back of her throat every time she looks at niall.

the words are there, right behind her tongue, and all cole has to do is say them. i love you. so she says it first, at 1 am as she sits on the floor of niall's room surrounded by her books, a highlighter holding up her hair.

"niall," she says, and he looks up from his book and meets her eyes. his eyes are so blue blue blue that cole thinks she won't say anything and she'll just stare at them forever, but then the feeling surges and the words press against her throat and– "i love you."

niall doesn't say anything for a minute, just looks at her like he's waiting for her to take it back, and when she doesn't, when she starts to bit at her bottom lip instead, wondering if the words she felt so strongly were wrong, he smiles.

"come here," he says from the bed. she gets to her feet, her legs shaking underneath her. but she can't resist the warmth of his voice or of his body. she climbs up on the bed and he pulls her against him, warm warm warm and solid and niall.

"i love you too," he whispers as his fingers slide under the hem of her shirt, brushing lightly against her back.

"yeah?" she asks, leaning into him, eager to feel his breath on her face, his aliveness so close to her aliveness that they're almost one. there's no such thing as too close when it comes to niall, and cole knows that's going to make the distance of next year hurt all the worse.

"of course," he says, moving the rest of the way to catch her in a kiss. it's soft and gentle and when he pulls back, he leans his forehead against cole's and his eyes are all she sees.

"i'm scared," she says. she pulls back a bit so she can see his whole face, the light freckles on his cheeks and the tiniest of dimples in his chin. she reaches up to brush the impossibly soft skin beside his eyes with her fingertips. she feels no evidence of wrinkles, though she can see them every time niall smiles. niall is impossibly resilient. "i'm scared of what's going to happen to us next year."

niall's mouth puckers into a frown and cole's sorry for just a second that she brought it up. but then niall tightens his hand on her back and kisses her nose so suddenly that she pulls away, startled.

"sorry," niall says. he's grinning now. "you're so cute, i couldn't resist."

"niall."

"right, right, sorry," he says, shaking his head. but cole knows that he knows that he doesn't have anything to be sorry for, not for the compliment, or the way it made cole's stomach flip and her cheeks redden. niall so rarely says things like that aloud, and cole's already committed it to memory so that she can go back to it on sad days.

sad days: like the ones she'll be spending alone in her uni dorm room while niall's across the city in a graduate flat doing who knows what. cole doesn't want to think about that.

as if sensing cole's thoughts drifting, niall taps her nose with a finger to bring her attention back to him. "we're going to be fine next year," he says, so sure of himself. "we're going to be great. you know why?"

he pauses just for a second, just so that cole can shake her head and wipe at a tear she didn't realize she'd shed.

"'cause i love ya," niall continues. "i love ya so much i can't breathe sometimes. and that's not going anywhere anytime soon."

cole wrinkles her nose. she knows how auden's poem ends: the clocks keep ticking and time keeps going, and not even the lovers can conquer it.

"you can't know that," she says.

"i dunno if i know it," niall says, "but i feel it. and that's enough."

cole looks at niall and chews on her bottom lip until niall's hand comes up to her cheek and stays there, soft and reassuring. she looks at niall and the feeling surges inside her like a monstrous ocean wave, and it barrels down on her and she can't help but say it again.

"i love you."

and she knows that it's the truest feeling she's ever felt, and the biggest one, and she knows that when niall kisses her, he's saying the same thing. i love you i love you i love you today and tomorrow and till the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.