𝕘𝕠𝕝𝕕𝕖𝕟 𝕓𝕠𝕪 // 𝕟𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕪

𝖙𝖜𝖔

If all of his wishes came true, Niall was certain that over half of his school's population would be dead and the other half shrunk to the size of ants so that Niall could have the pleasure of personally crushing them underfoot. One could assume that he severely disliked his classmates, and one would be correct. Most, if not all, were stuck-up, pompous arseholes who found happiness in putting others down.

Exhibit A: Liam Payne and his Band of Freaks.

Niall abhorred the way they strutted around the school as if they owned the place, picking on everyone they saw as lesser than them—which just so happened to be the majority of the student body. He turned his nose up in distaste as he caught Liam and his cronies ruffing up some blameless kid who's only offence was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Niall winced as the boy caught a solid blow to the stomach, a few of his supplies dropping noisily to the ground as he hunched over. Infuriatingly enough, the jackasses simply laughed and walked away just as a teacher rounded the corner and swept the corridor for any misconduct.

As terrible as he felt about it, Niall couldn't stop any of this from happening. He'd gotten his fair share of beatings, and something he'd learned over the course of studying with these idiots was that you never messed with them unless you wanted to become their personal punching bag. Knowing this, he'd adopted the ever-guilty title of 'bystander', shooting the kid an empathetic smile as he hobbled to his next class. The boy glared at him.

Back to his initial train of thought: arseholes. Every last one of them.

Niall could feel his eyebrows scrunch inward while he walked to his next period, which happened to be his least favourite: calculus. He didn't care if he looked like the spitting image of his regularly irritated grandfather. He was pissed, and he wanted everyone to know it.

And Niall had every intention of staying that way. That was until he saw him.

Harry Styles. The boy of his dreams, the man of his fantasies. The only angel one could find among this hellish landscape of constrictive classrooms and teen-aged devils. He was beautiful, absolutely stunning in a way that Niall was positive no one could ever even dream of being. Niall saw him, smiling so wide the corners of his eyes crinkled, and it was like all of his troubles just melted away, along with his heart which spontaneously transformed into a pile of pining goop. For a few seconds anyway.

As soon as he noticed Eleanor Calder amongst his tireless entourage, Niall's feeble, crippled heart sank to his stomach, goop and all. He could almost feel his own acids eating away at him.

The (admittedly) lovely girl was walking a step ahead of him, tapping away incessantly at her phone screen with daintily lacquered nails whilst Harry trailed after her like a love-sick puppy, holding her books as well as his own, and Niall swore he would give up almost anything to be in that girl's place.

It was common knowledge at that point that Harry was completely enamoured with Eleanor, and as much as Niall willed himself not to see it, it was close to impossible to miss the loving glances between the two, as one-sided as they may have been.

That was probably what hurt more. It also happened to be common knowledge that while Harry was hopelessly gone for Eleanor, she had taken a keen interest in his best mate, Louis, who seemed to reciprocate those feelings exactly, if not more so. This happened in secret, of course, through short, meaningful looks while Harry talked both of their heads off and maybe, Niall found himself imagining (much to his own dismay), through curious text conversations with an incredible amount of nuance. Despite their obvious feelings for one another, neither of them acted on them. At least, not publicly. Rarely did one find room in one's heart to hurt Harry's feelings, and bringing their current situation to light would definitely lead to a load of unneeded and unnecessary conflict, so it went unsaid.