Downfall [Punk Niall Horan]

11

My heart thundered rapidly in my chest. Was this where he was going to kill me? Oh god, I kissed him and he was going to kill me for it! The irony was not lost on me either. Uneven pants wracked through me and I started to get dizzy. Oh no, not this, not now.

Stars started to blur my vision and I fell against the muddy wall, clutching onto my spasmodic chest. Finally my panic attack caught Niall's attention, and I guess he decided he was done with my silent treatment. Niall immediately came towards me and looped a strong arm around my waist. "Tylie, Tylie calm down," he demanded, pulling my falling body up.

I tried to claw him away, but he stayed put for some reason. Breaths escaped me in short, deep intervals. Specks prickled across my vision and I knew I would pass out soon if I couldn't calm down. "Get. It. Over. With," I choked out, grabbing my throat and giving him a death glare. Confusion flew across his face, then it registered what I had meant and his face immediately hardened.

"Are you fucking crazy? I'm not going to kill you," he almost screamed, letting go of me momentarily. Relieved tears ran from my eyes and I shrunk back into the wall, not having time to decide whether I believed him or not. Niall's words didn't do much to console me though, because I was still heavily breathing and teetering on the brink of unconsciousness.

"Shit, what did he say to do again," Niall murmured to himself, threading his hands through his messy hair. Who the hell was he talking about? He walked away from me, paced in quick circles, then came back and grabbed me by the shoulders. "Okay, shit, look at me Tylie," Niall demanded quickly, shaking me a bit.

Quietly, my eyes locked onto his. Those baby blue eyes bored into mine, and I calmed down some but nowhere near enough. "Match my breathing," Niall whispered, his breath lightly hitting my face. The faint mint smell calmed me, and I tried my best to match his breathing. His hands grabbed each side of my face, and we breathed in and out together. A few minutes later, and he had almost calmed me down completely. My lungs could finally expand again, and my throat was no longer closing in on me.

Yet his warm hands still stayed gripped tightly on my face. Niall tried to lean in to get a closer look at me, probably at my dilated pupils, but he stopped himself. A scowl etched back onto his blank face, and he stepped away running a hand through his already tangled hair. A hidden breath I didn't know I was holding escaped me. For some reason I was... disappointed? Whatever I felt I didn't expect to feel on top of everything else.

My back arched off the wall, and I pushed myself off slowly. I just regained my footing when Niall started to walk off again, barely giving me a moment to catch my breath. Following behind Niall, we made our way back to the door with the plaque. I didn't have an attack this time. They were getting fewer and fewer, but in the past couple of months I had started to have more again. My dreams had gotten worse, and I felt sick constantly. It was probably because I hadn't took my medicine.

But I couldn't take it now because it burned down along with my house.

Niall's back was toward me as he placed a hand on the silver doorknob. "You need to stay close by me, do you understand?" Niall asked me quickly, still not facing me. "Yes. I understand," I breathed shakily towards his back. With a nod, he shoved the door open with a loud creak. A flashlight was pulled from his pocket and he clicked it on, illuminating limited space in front of us.

The surroundings registered in my brain, and I gasped. This was the subway that had gotten closed down years ago. Apparently we didn't have enough money to keep the trains rolling, and many people had gone missing down here for no reason. They just up and vanished, but most people blamed it on the hooligans that took up residence in here. So they shut it the place down, and it has been abandoned ever since.