#and I personally love blue hour when it’s really cloudy and drizzly out | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

in-madhouses · 6 years

Photo

a truth universally acknowledged

for @softlyziall who asked for birthday smut. and also because i’m niall trash. love you.

“If you don’t hurry up, I’m going to piss into your beer, Horan,” she yells, fists banging on the bathroom door.

“Don’t sass me when you’re in my flat,” Niall proclaims from the other side of the door.

She snorts, “Sass? I’ll do you one better and give you actual piss. In your beer.”

She pounds on the door one more time for dramatic effect.

There is a flush and the door swings open at the last bit.

“You’re a terrible host,” she says, pushing him out and shutting the bathroom door behind her.

The Irish lad yells through the door as she does to the toilet bowl what she was threatening to do to his drink just seconds ago, “Should I be worried that this is suspiciously warm?”

“Would I be in here if I’d already relieved myself into your beer?” She yells back.

He mumbles a response from the other side of the door and she proceeds to finish up her bathroom business.

As she washes her hands in the sink, Iliana stares at her own reflection, wondering how exactly she got herself into this situation. This situation being alone with Niall Horan in his flat on her birthday. (Not like he knows it’s her birthday, but does it really matter?)

She vaguely traces it back to her best friend Lucy dragging her out to a party. It’s a friend of a friend’s thing and Iliana’s birthday is remarkably just a few short hours away so why not revel in the free booze, right? Wrong. Approximately two minutes into the said house party, her best friend has disappeared and she’s left completely alone. Typical, really.

And Lucy wonders why Iliana pretty much blames her for everything. It’s always Lucy getting her into some kind of trouble or another. Like moving to one if the most expensive cities for school. Getting their electricity cut because she spent the money on this “absolutely divine” dress instead of paying the bills. It’s all just the tip of the iceberg of their friendship really. And this time is no different.

Her best friend drags her to this party because she knows that Zayn Malik would be there and presumably upon locating him, she’s disappeared. On the eve of her birthday. After said her boyfriend of six months has been caught cheating on her.

Iliana used to think that there’s a line to her best friend’s destructiveness. Clearly, she’d been wrong.

Or maybe she’s just being bitter. Who knows. Bring on the cusp of adulthood and being left to your own devices can do that to you.

“You’re crashing,” a bored voice comes from behind and who should she find but one Niall Horan there staring at her.

“I was invited,” she says as she crosses her arms, indignant, even though he was technically right.

“Sure you are.”

“Sod off.”

He laughs and just hands her a beer.

She hates the beer she’s just been handed. Actually, she hates all beer. They taste, in her humble opinion, of ass. But he’s actually talking to her very lost looking self and she doesn’t want to be rude to the only person making an effort to communicate with her, so she entertains it.

The beer, and his company, as it turns out, actually makes her feel less pathetic about her life.

University was a lot lonelier than she thought it would be. She’d dreamed all her life of leaving home and when finally did get away from home, it’s just a drizzly expensive mess that is London and she’s often stuck in situations she hates.

Like the one unfolding before her very eyes.

She didn’t quite expect to see Niall there to be honest, wearing an oversized jumper at some bloke she’s never met’s party. But her heart does a 180, seeing him, like it’s suddenly seeing the sun for the first time.

He had always been one of the cooler kids, the one who always seemed to be surrounded by a circle of friends and had it all figured out. Always laughing, never looking quite as left out as she often feels. They had a few classes together, maybe caught one another’s eyes in the hallways occasionally, never really meaning anything significant to the other. But suddenly she’s at this party alone and it’s two hours to midnight and it’s almost her birthday and she finds herself in his his car, driving around aimlessly and laughing so much that she’s demanding he pull over so she could get out and get away from his sappy indie song choices.

When he does just that, they’re parked at the side of a dead end street lying down and talking on the hood of his car.

They talk about what their lives will be like later. When they’re older. Whey they aren’t forced to go to classes they don’t like to get a piece of paper they don’t need. When they have money. When they have time. Niall says that he plans to buy a house in the wilderness so he can invite people over to his “cabin in the woods” and watch as they freak out. She says that she wants to buy a dog and name it something silly like ‘Fetch’ and drive it mad with instructions like, “Fetch, stay!”

He laughs at that, a look of something she can’t quite decipher plastered on his face.

“Why did you decide to talk to me?” She asks, slicing through the carefully comfortably curated camaraderie.

There’s a pause.

“I dunno. You looked… lonely,” he says, shrugging and leaning back against the hood of his car, one hand behind his head.

“Right, like you know what that’s like,” Iliana rolls her eyes.

He says nothing, takes a sip from the bottle of vodka they nicked on the way out from the party, and stares up at the cloudy sky.

“I fucking—” He starts, then stops.

He looked as though like he wants to tell her something but can’t seem to get the words out.

“I hated everybody there, he confesses unexpectedly, “Except you, obviously.”

She feels lightheaded. It’s the beer, she thinks, and the vodka.

“You don’t know me.”

“Like I said, you looked lonely.”

“And you know what that’s like.”

He sighs.

“Sometimes it just doesn’t feel real, you know?”

“What?”

“This life.”

He doesn’t elaborate further and she doesn’t ask. She thinks that maybe, just maybe, he chose to talk to her because he’s lonely too.

“My boyfriend of six months was cheating on me,” she blurts out of the blue.

“Prick!”

“And he had the audacity to text me for forgiveness. Can you believe that?”

They both start laughing, full belly aching laughs. Niall is a wonderful audience she realises, and they concoct terrible ways they could disfigure her ex-boyfriend together. When it starts to get too nippy, as it does in late London nights, he slides off the hood of the car with a flourish, “Come on, it’s way past your bedtime and what kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t send you straight home when it’s a quarter to midnight?”

“Piss. Off.” She says, enunciating both words while reaching to yank the Vodka bottle from him.

She feels rather emboldened. It could be the alcohol flowing through her veins, or it could just be that the casual friendship they have cultivated in the two short hours were as such; him being teasingly nice to her and her acting like she biting back at him.

The pressure of the bottle being pulled from his grip throws his off and she sees him go backwards. Like it’s caught on film or something, shot in high definition at 60 frames per second and slowed right down. Iliana reaches out like a shot, dropping the bottle and grabbing him by his jumper as she pulls him forward towards her to avoid a fall.

The whole thing lasts probably about two seconds but feels vastly longer.

Her heart is thudding, with her fingers a fist in the middle of his chest. She becomes inexplicably aware that he might just hear the dirty betrayal of her heart, her breathe, and her swallowing.

She lets go of the fabric of his shirt, fisted in her hand.

“You, should not be allowed to drive in this state,” she says, deflecting the electricity fissions that shooting up her spine.

“And you, should not be allowed to pick out male partners who cheat on you, yet here we are.”

She swats him right across the chest and he ends up driving them back to his place. He grabs them both beers from the fridge before disappearing into the bathroom when she says she needs to use the loo.

“I bet I wee a lot faster than you,” he says, running to the bathroom and shutting the door on her.

Iliana shakes her head at her own reflection and decides to get back out there before Niall starts to think she’s crawled out the window.

“Y’know what I need?” She asks as she walks out of the bathroom.

“A toe-curling and heart palpitating birthday snog?”

“I was going to go with a nice juicy hamburger,” she says, incredulous at his suggestion. It takes her a few seconds too long, but then it hits her, “Wait, how did you know it was my birthday?”

“Aaron called,” Niall says, tossing her her phone with a gleam in his eye before waltzing over to his fridge and offering her some birthday cheese after a short survey of its contents.

“And you thought it would be appropriate to pick up a call from a random girl’s ex-boyfriend?” Iliana asks, ignoring his cheese offering.

“We spent the past three hours, driving around and talking. Like actual conversation. At this point, I think you know me better than my mother does,” he laughs as he pulls out a plate.

“What d’you mean?” Iliana asks, putting her phone away and joining him in the kitchen area. (It’s less a kitchen area as it is a space with a fridge, a hotplate, and a sink. But it’s still miles better than the mess that she and Lucy call a kitchen back at their flat.)

“I mean, don’t you notice that most conversation that you have with the people you call your friends are kind of hollow?” Niall absentmindedly drawls as he lays of some crackers next to the cheese, “Like they’re vapid and meaningless most of the time, people don’t really talk anymore, you know?”

It’s strange, he’s gentle and like an earthquake all at once, Iliana thinks.

“Why do you do it then?” She asks, but he’s distracted with the little platter he’s putting together.

Ten seconds later, he’s handing her the plate and she can’t deny it, the cheese and crackers, although a little strange to eat at a practical stranger’s house, does look rather appealing.

He’s grinning at her, clearly well aware that he’s causing her stomach to flop up and down. She pops the some of the crackers and cheese into her mouth and they avoid eye contact for a bit. When she catches him staring at her, they both burst out into giggles, unsure of what’s actually happening.

If she liked him before, she’s definitely some kind of bone-crushingly in love with him now. (Not that she’s about to admit it to him, she’s not that unhinged… yet)

She’s halfway through the final cracker, pacing around the cramped living room when she finds the courage to speak again.

“You never answered my question… about why do it?” She swivels around to see him closely behind her, following her movements as she roams the small space and silently judge his posters on the walls. She almost feels rude asking such a personal question, in his personal space, eating his crackers and cheese, but she feels as if she’s knows him well enough for it to be okay.

“What, the parties and stuff?” He cocks an eyebrow, “I dunno, really. I guess it’s just easy. Being empty and vapid, until it’s not.”

Iliana tries to talk herself out of it, she really does. She thinks about all the reasons why she shouldn’t lean in and kiss him, but all the arguments seem weak and flimsy against one overwhelming reason to do it; she really really wants to.

They are both a little intoxicated and if anything, that only makes for things to end up more complicated that they already are. (Spending the night not having sex with someone will do that to you, who woulda thunk?)

She wants him, but she hangs on to any semblance of sanity by the skin of her teeth. So they talk some more, they talk about school and about the vapid parties and she realises she did hate him when she saw him on the first day of classes. Hated the idea of him. The idea of him being another one of them rich London boys who had everything handed to him on a platter. The idea of the pretentious faux intellectual party boy who cheats on his girlfriends.

The actual Niall is far from the pretend version of him she dreamt him up to be. The down to earth boy she consciously decided to align herself with ended up being the prick who cheats on his girlfriend for months before she finds out and confronts him about it.

And If that isn’t some life imitating art Pride and Prejudice shit, she’s not sure what is.

She tells him just that and he admits that maybe he’s a bit posher than he’d care to admit. She laughs at that as he starts making all kinds of confessions to push her buttons. Admissions like, “I peel the skin off of apples before eating them,” and, “I don’t fuck with insects, that’s a poor people problem.”

She’s laughing so hard that it rattles through her chest cavity.

“Oh, and I play golf. Like me still?”

“No, you’re right, that is the absolute worst, I don’t know why I’m even here anymore,” she shrugs, biting back a smile.

He laughs at that and it rumbles something deep within her, feels it wake something in her tired tired bones. It’s as endearing as it is painful and Iliana isn’t sure which is more overwhelming, the desire or the frustration, because she’s feeling it all.

And if the looks he’s giving her coupled with the increasingly frequent casual displays of affection and multiple subject changes are anything to go by, he is, too.

The talking and teasing and laughing is easy and natural, but she has never been so aware of someone’s proximity in her life and it is equal parts terrifying and exhilarating. He stops talking, noticing her silence, and he’s looking at her with an expression she can’t quite place.

“Sick of me yet?” He asks, voice hoarse and barely above a whisper.

“Don’t let it get to your head… but I don’t think that’s possible.”

She can’t help it, in a split second of thoughtlessness, she leans in and kisses him, their lips soft as they brush up against one another.

When she pulls away from the kiss, the plate of cheese and cracker crumbs drop to the ground with a crash and suddenly there isn’t anything to do but stare at each other with their breath caught in their respective throats.

There is a certain trepidation in his eyes, as though to say not here. Not now. Not like this.

As though he’s not quite willing to gamble this new… whatever it is that they are for the sake of some short term gratification.

But he cracks after a second that almost draws out to feel like forever, hoarsely saying, “Fuck it.”

Niall leans in to capture her lips softly, his hands caressing her and she feels him everywhere. On her skin, in her veins, in the stars that fills her eyes. She kisses back, her hands finding the nape of his neck and playing with the hair there.

They start off slowly, patiently, reverently, until it all becomes too much. His hands slip under her clothes and she trails hers down his shoulder blades before tugging at the soft jumper edges, pulling it over his head and gently scratching down his back.

He’s been gradually walking them backwards, and when her back finally hits the door to, she assumes his bedroom, it’s all the leverage he needs to pull her up and trap her between the wall and him, grinding his erection into her.

Her legs wrap instinctively around his waist, drawing him closer. She grinds against him greedily, wanting more, needing more. A hiss escapes from his throat and his hand reaches blindly for the door knob, swinging the door open behind her.

He all but carries her to the bed and places her down, gentler than she expects. His lips crash down onto hers again and she eagerly matches his intensity, their tongues and teeth dancing and bumping in the pursuit of more.

They fumble around with the remnants of their clothing and she scoots backward once she’s bare, moving closer to be headboard. He leans in to runs his hands up the curves of her legs, dipping into the sweet spot while her lips greedily work its way down his neck.

There’s no space between their gasps of breath, no break in their continuous of searing skin on skin exploration.

She lets out a moan as his fingers continue their planned ministrations, squirming at the mercy of his hands, slow and torturous, the calm before the storm.

Prior experience led her to expect that he would slip on a condom and proceed thereon out, but the boy with his hand between her legs surprised her in more ways that one as the night progresses. Instead, when his hands withdrew, it is to spread her legs open wider.

She didn’t even realise how much she’d been looking forward to feeling his mouth on her center until he’d moved down to the bottom of the bed and bent forward to trail a series of wet kisses on her thigh.

The moans and groans tumble out of her mouth far louder than she’d expected at the feel of his lips.

Her eyes flutter shut despite wanting to watch him between her legs. Before long, her hips are bucking off the mattress of their own accord, desperately seeking more friction against his mouth.

“Easy, petal.”

He places both hands on either side of her hips to continue devouring her, and it sends her reeling, her nerves soaring and her mind remarkably blank.

All the words she knows are fuck, and yes. (Not as though she’s capable of verbalising them.)

He doesn’t stop, not when her fingers roam restlessly over his scalp. Not when she tugs desperately on his hair, and not when she arches her back deeper into him and gasps his name over and over between a string of obscenities.

By the time he slides in, stretching her out deliciously with each inch, she is almost fully unravelled. His thrusts are slow and deliberate, driving her alarmingly close to the orgasm simmering below the surface of her skin.

They kiss hungrily as they continue to fuck, slow and dirty, until she throws her head back in a silent scream as their pelvis continues to push and pull together, accelerating to a frantic tempo.

And then at once, they are both lost to the moment.

“Fuck,” Niall all but grunts.

“Are you using that as an inflection or an exclamation?” Iliana asks between breaths.

“I dunno, what’s an inflection again? The latter? Both?”

She giggles at that and they fall into silence again, sleep creeping in and enveloping them.

“Remember when you hated me?” He tries to joke, half smiling and out of breath from their exertion just minutes ago.

“No.” She says, truthfully. His hands are on her stomach and hip bones and she’s pretty sure her lungs have forgotten what oxygen is, let alone the assumptions she had about him years ago.

Who can even remember that long ago? Who can remember a time before they were this gelatinous mess of tangled limbs?

They laugh into the night, wrapped up in one another.

#yes im aware your birthday was days ago #i'm just trash like that okay #niall horan fanfiction #niall horan smut #a university au

59 notes · View notes