Larry Stylinson ~ Poor Little Rich Boy AU

20. :-)

She turned to look at him reproachfully, silently berating him for scaring her. Her eyes were pale blue in contrast to his own deep cerulean irises, which more resembled the colour of the pool in front of them, but they seemed far more intense, and it took Niall’s breath away. Since her mouth had become a pout and her forehead was creased, he was already sensing the danger signs, and when she raised a delicate hand as if to slap him on the arm, he decided to stop her in her tracks; he yanked her against him with an arm looped around her waist and kissed her abruptly on the mouth, and the hand which had been about to hit him rested gently on his arm, her fingers sculpting around his bicep as she held him, surprised but pleased.

Niall could feel the stares of the guys on the other side of the pool burning into his side, and he wasn’t sure what he was enjoying more; their envy or the feel of Hannah’s lips on his. A few loose strands of her golden hair were tickling his neck, and with one hand he pushed them away, smiling in spite of himself at the sensation of locks of long hair sliding through his fingers. Her mouth was small and warm and seemed to fit against his perfectly, her hand (ridiculously small in comparison to his) was perfectly moulded around his bicep.

It all ended far too quickly for his liking, although any longer and he’d have been struggling to breathe. It still didn’t feel like long enough. Pulling away, he sifted through the blonde hair tumbling across her shoulders, pushed a few locks behind her ear, and then looked at her, examining her and taking in her softened expression, trying to judge her reaction. She stroked a hand down his arm, grabbed his waist, and then all of a sudden she was pushing forwards and he was staggering a few steps back, the ground vanished from underneath his Supra-clad feet and he only realized that she had pushed him into the pool when he was hitting the water with a splash and sinking like a stone, fully-clothed with his peach-coloured shirt billowing in the water and his camel-coloured Chinos filling with water as he sank.

It was disorientating, sinking in that way, especially because once he’d hit the freezing cold surface of the water and gone straight through it, the bitter chill of it slicing through him so that it felt like he’d landed flat on his back on top of a glass table and it had shattered, sending spikes of shocking coldness shooting through his shoulder blades and slicing right through his vertebrae. His eyes had closed and when he opened them all he could see was the deep ultramarine blue of the walls and floor of the pool, reflecting through the water so that everything around him looked to be the same colour. He groped wildly in the water for a moment or so, grabbing at nothing, and then his fingers burst through the surface and he clawed at the air, kicking upwards with the frantic human survival instinct even though he could probably have quite easily touched the bottom and then swam back up again in twice the amount of time he took and still had plenty of breath left.

His head broke the surface of the water and although he hadn’t thought it was possible, the air above the water felt even colder than the water itself. Spluttering with both indignation and the intention of choking up all the water he’d inhaled, he grabbed the poolside with both hands and hoisted himself up a little so that he could glare at Hannah, who had her hands on her hips and was smirking down at him.

He had to flip a few sopping wet strands of hair off his forehead and spit some more water out before he let out an indignant, “Hey!”

“Hay is for horses,” Hannah said infuriatingly, grinning all over her face. “You’re a bit wet, aren’t you?” she said innocently.

Niall growled at her. “Funny! What the hell was that for?”

Hannah dropped to her knees and leaned over so that she could look down on him from a closer vantage point, close enough that she could say “Never dump a girl in freezing water, or even threaten to, if you value your life. But that wasn’t why I did it. If you wanted to kiss me, why didn’t you just ask, idiot? I’ve been waiting long enough.”