Something About You

Fourteen. March, 2013.

*This chapter contains smut. 18+ only, please*

Niall was fourteen years old the first time he thought about standing at the altar and locking eyes with Isla. When it actually happens, he's 19.

Except when he imagined it, he was wearing a black groom's suit, and Isla was wearing a white dress and she was walking toward him while the organist played Pachelbel's Canon and she tried not to cry from happiness. When it actually does happen, he's wearing an usher's suit and Isla is standing up in the pews wearing a blue satin dress, smiling softly as Denise walks down the aisle toward Niall's brother.

He's supposed to be watching Denise, he knows—it's her moment, and she's spent ages picking out the perfect dress—but he can't keep his eyes off Isla, her skin tanner than it was the last time he saw her, her baby blue dress cut low enough to show off her necklace, a solitary pearl in the middle of a dainty silver chain. It feels like a cruel punch in the gut, an intentional twist of fate, that this is how things turned out.

Denise reaches the altar as all eyes—and the set of cameras, filming for This Is Us—turn towards them. It's so quick that Niall doesn't have the time to turn away, to pretend like he wasn't openly staring at Isla when he should have been fawning over Denise. They catch each other's eyes for a second and it's enough: enough to set Niall's heart off on a runaway, enough to wake up the butterflies in his stomach, enough to bring a red flush to his cheeks, enough to make him swallow thick, to hope he can pass this all off as nerves.

Isla smiles at him, dimples and pink lipstick and big brown eyes and Niall feels that familiar kick in his stomach, that fire in his lower belly. Isla's biting back a giggle and Niall shakes his head at her, as subtle as he can manage, smile tugging at his cheeks.

She still has him.

--

He doesn't get to see her until the reception. The party is massive and Niall's getting pulled in every single direction: grannies and aunties who want to pinch his cheeks, grandads and uncles who want a beer, cousins who want to know if Harry Styles is really dating Taylor Swift or not. He doesn't get a moment to himself for hours, until his mam swoops into a conversation between him and a curious cousin, barrages her with questions about uni, and gives Niall a knowing look. He drops her a kiss on her cheek as a thank you and slips out unnoticed, escaping up the stairs and into the residential hallway of the old inn they've transformed into a stunning reception venue.

He leans against one of the walls and breathes out, listening to the muffled hum of the party downstairs. Even after three years of this it doesn't get any easier, having to talk to people all the time. Always being on. It's fucking exhausting, actually, and he very suddenly wants to go to sleep.

'Nialler?' Mully's poking his head out of one of the bedrooms, a smile on his face. 'Thought we heard you coming up the stairs. You wanna come in, mate?'

'What the fuck are you lot doing up here?' Niall asks, but the answer is yes, of course he does. Fuck sleep if the other option is getting into trouble with his friends.

'Just having a bit of craic,' Mully says, and Niall slips into the bedroom, air thick with smoke, lights turned down low, windows cracked open. They're there, the three of them: Emilia sitting on the bed, Mully with him by the door, Isla on a cushy armchair that she's dragged to the edge of the bed, her feet resting on the mattress. This is bad for his voice and he shouldn't be here but fuck it, he thinks, letting the door close softly behind him. This is where he wants to be.

'Heya, Niall,' Emilia holds the joint out toward him as a greeting. 'You did so well today! I bet that was super nerve wracking, being up there for all that.'