head in the clouds // niall horan au

part i

There is not a cloud in sight today.

The sky is endlessly blue, starting with a light, nearly white, color from the horizon that blends into the soft azure right over where Rory is sitting. It's beautiful, she thinks, how one simple color can blend seamlessly into the gradients that make up that sea of vast nothingness above her. But today, she wishes that there was at least one cloud floating by.

She sighs to herself, turning her gaze to the large resort pool in front of her, also a shade of blue, but one caused by the blue tiles at the bottom and not nature itself. There are two children near the shallow end bickering with each other. They couldn't be more than five and three years old. The oldest, a girl, shoves the youngest, a boy, causing him to wail in the direction of a woman who is presumably their mother. When she doesn't give him the attention, the boy turns back to the little girl, and even from the distance, Rory can see the angry flash in his eyes. She places her whistle between her lips, readying herself for what he might do next.

Sure enough, he charges at the little girl, jumping on her with such force that her head gets submerged under the water. Rory's whistle sounds off loudly, everyone's head jerking towards her, and when they are assured her warning is not for them, they return to their poolside shenanigans. "No dunking!" Rory yells at the two children, removing her sunglasses so they can see her eyes trained on them. "This is your first warning!"

Their maybe-mother notices this exchange and quickly breaks them apart, dragging them towards the pool stairs and scolding them all the way. By the time Rory pushes her sunglasses back up her nose, they're already walking towards a lounger where a man, presumably their father, is already watching them disapprovingly.

"No drawings today?" comes a voice from beside her, and she turns towards it only to find blue eyes that are entirely too close for comfort.

Niall Horan laughs when she flinches, and she rolls her eyes at the sound. But of course he cannot see that through her sunglasses, so he laughs even louder at her frown. He's standing on one of the rungs of her lifeguard chair, his face level with hers, and she has half a mind to reach out to shove him off.

She doesn't.

"Not inspired," is what she mumbles instead, turning her attention towards her sketchbook, which stares back at her, the open page unbearably blank. She brought her nice charcoal pencils with her today after waking up feeling like sketching the clouds. But when she looks up at the sky again, the endless chasm of blue taunts her.

Niall Horan, for his part, simply grins in that wide, obnoxious way of his and hops off the rung to round the corner to the front of the lifeguard chair. He always offers a hand when she steps down and she never takes it, and the same thing happens today. She's glaring at him now, as she always does when he does that, but she knows he can't see it through her sunglasses. He must know it's there though, because this exchange happens every single time, like clockwork.

Literally.

Niall has been behind her in the rotation for two whole weeks now, meaning he's always the one to nudge her out of this mind numbing job every twenty minutes when they have to move on to the next lifeguard chair.

"Well I'm sure you'll come up with something!" he says cheerfully, just as she's about to turn away to head over to the next chair. She chances a glance at him just in time to see him swing himself up onto the seat she just vacated, his sunnies, as he calls them, falling back onto his face. She rolls her eyes again, wondering how he manages to make everything seem so effortless yet so insufferably annoying.

She heads to her next post without another word.

***

Rory cannot stand Niall Horan.