Collide, Ignite

Reilly had been sitting slouched against the wall in the entryway of Niall's house for over an hour when she got a text message from Liam asking how things were going. Instead of responding she slid her phone into her pocket and stood. Her eyes were bloodshot and her body felt weak both from the amount of crying she'd been doing and the lack of sleep she'd gotten the night before. Her arms were heavy and she slumped forward as she trudged up the stairs on wobbly legs.

When she got to the top of the stairs, she realized she had no idea which of the closed doors she would find Niall behind, but she started down the hall anyway. The first door she passed was open, and inside the room were many guitars. Some hung on the walls, some were in stands, and all were being displayed proudly. The next door was closed and she stopped in front of it for a moment before carefully twisting the knob and pushing it open to reveal a guest room. She pulled the door closed and continued past the bathroom until she came to the end of the hallway. There was a door at the very end of the hallway, which she assumed to be a closet, and a door on the opposite wall the others were on.

Her heart skipped a beat when she took hold of the door knob and then began beating wildly in her chest, just as it had been earlier. Slowly, she drew in a breath and pushed open the door. Niall was asleep in his bed, blankets covering only his bottom half. She leaned against the door frame for a moment, knowing that what she was considering doing was a bad idea. Eventually, she pushed all reason out of her head, and stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. She quietly kicked off her shoes and moved silently through the room until she was next to the bed.

She climbed in carefully, trying not to disturb the sleeping young man, and laid on her side. She was facing Niall, but left a good deal of space in between them, though the thoughts from earlier of being curled safe against him had returned. Her stomach jumped as she began to realize just how much she missed that intimacy. Just how much she missed him. His face, usually peaceful when he slept, looked almost troubled. She wanted nothing more than to reach out and gently brush away the expression, but she didn't. Instead she let her eyes fall shut and hugged her sweater tighter to her body.

Her eyes couldn't have been closed long when she heard a sleepy voice mutter her name. They fluttered open just in time to see Niall, who had rolled onto his side facing her, reaching up to rub the sleep from his own eye, as he mumbled for her to get out. But she didn't move, only watched him rub his eye harder, and harder, as if he thought if he rubbed hard enough she would just disappear.

She finally reached out and gently pulled his hand away from his face. His expression flickered from confusion, to contentment, to frustration, and then back to confusion, but he never once tried to take his hand away from hers. He just stared at her with empty eyes, waiting for whatever was going to happen next.

"I missed you," she said finally, her dark green eyes locked on his sad blues. Something seem to flash across his eyes, but he still stayed silent. "I miss you," she corrected, and that was when he pulled his hand out of the gentle hold she had on it.

"Maybe you should take that ring off before you say things like that," he said, his voice as expressionless as the majority of his face. His eyes, full of hurt, gave him away.

Reilly sighed softly and reached for his hand again, but he moved it from her reach. She retracted her hand and brought it up to the pillow next to her head, absentmindedly fiddling with the huge ring she'd been wearing for just over a week. "We used to be friends," she reminded him, eyes brimming with tears. She bit the inside of her lip and blinked in an attempt to keep them from falling. "Don't you miss that?" she asked.

Niall shrugged in response. "Am I supposed to miss someone shattering my heart every week?" he asked. His face still lacked emotion, his eyes still sad, but his words were venomous.

The feeling of defeat continued to settle in, but Reilly persisted. She hadn't come all the way to Ireland to get absolutely nowhere with Niall. Maybe they couldn't be friends just yet, but she wanted to try to begin the process of making amends. "If you would just let me explain-"

"Told ya, I don't want to hear it," he snapped, not letting her finish her thought. He rolled over and sat up so his back was to her. "You explainin' whatever it is you think you need to explain is only goin' to make you feel better. It's not goin' to help me in any way, and seeing's you're the one who messed up here, I'm not really in the mood to oblige you at the moment."

The silence that followed weighed on Reilly's shoulders. He was absolutely right. If he didn't want to hear what she had to say, it didn't matter how much she thought she needed to say it. She couldn't force him to listen.

She sat up and he glanced over his shoulder when he felt the movement on the bed behind him. "Besides," he went on, "I was your friend. Not sure you were ever really mine," he said.

Fresh tears fell from her eyes without warning. It didn't seem possible for her heart to break any more, but it did, sinking into her stomach as it did so. The butterflies swirled around the shards and sent them flying all throughout her abdomen. She felt like she might be sick. "That's not fair," she said unsteadily, so quietly she wasn't sure he would even hear.

"That's not fair?" he asked indignantly. "Please, tell me how that's not fair."

Reilly breathed in deeply, trying to calm her stomach, her racing heart, and her mind, but it didn't help. She was tired, and the last thing she wanted to do was fight with Niall. "You have this horrible tendency to hold things inside and let them fester until you blow up and say really awful things," she told him.

Niall let out a dry, unamused laugh. "You're going to get all Psych 101 on me now?" he asked. He stood and turned around to face her once again.

His eyes met hers, blazing with anger. Five years ago she probably would have backed down, but she held his gaze. "No, but you seem like you have something you want to say to me. So why don't you stop being such a jerk and just say it," she challenged, folding her arms across her chest.

He laughed again and she climbed down off his bed. "Not everyone is a damn headcase like you, Reilly. I don't need a therapist, and you don't get to come in here and act like I do. I know exactly why I'm angry with you, and I also know that I have every right to be, but trust me, you don't want to hear what I have to say," he told her.

Frustration bubbled inside of her, and it took everything in her not to stamp her foot or throw something at him. "You think I can't take it?" she asked. "I'm not that fragile girl you all thought I was five years ago!" she yelled.

"That's exactly what you are!" Niall yelled back. "You're the same lost, confused, fragile, scared little girl you were back then. You've learned how to hide her better, but I can still see her in your eyes, crying for help. You may have everyone else fooled, but I can see that you're fighting yourself just as much as you always have," he said.

Reilly closed her eyes and shook her head. "How dare you," she said, opening her eyes again. "How dare you act like you know anything about me anymore. Because you don't."

Niall folded his arms across his chest and took a step to the side, so he was at the end of the bed. "I know more about you than you think, Darlin'," he said. For so long he had called her that as though it was her name, but something about the way he said it this time almost stung her. She flinched noticeably, and he took a step toward her. "For instance, I know you hate that ring you're wearin' by the way you always mess with it," he said, taking another step toward her. "I know you're not excited about this fella you're engaged to," he continued, taking another step. "But something in that messed up little head of yours is tellin' you that being with him makes sense."

With the next step he took, he was directly in front of Reilly. She was frozen in place, unable to move away from him. He leaned down and pushed her hair away from her face, behind her ear, and spoke quietly into it. "I know you're not happy," he told her. His breath on her skin sent a shiver down her spine.

Anger was still radiating off him, despite how calm his tone had become. Reilly looked up into his eyes as he straightened to his full height. There was a fire behind her own eyes and she wanted to scream at him that he was wrong, that he didn't know what he was talking about. Owen did make sense to her. Their relationship made sense because they wanted the same things. But it didn't matter how much she screamed at Niall, he would never see what she saw.

His eyes drilled into hers, waiting for a response. Her heart raced and her mind wandered back to all the other times they'd fought. The time after Louis' twenty first birthday party, when she'd screamed at him until she had no energy and ran home afterward, only to end up in his bed the next night, curled safely against his side. She recalled his lips on her skin the morning after, his body against hers, with no words exchanged. There was the time he'd shown up on her doorstep after ignoring her for a week after they got back from Ireland, when she'd screamed at him and then broke down completely and fell asleep in his arms. The time he'd gone on a multi-day bender and they screamed at each other until she had to leave because she was getting nowhere. But the day after, when he had sobered up, they talked it out and things were okay again.

This time it didn't feel like things would be okay. This time it didn't matter how much they yelled, how angry they were, falling asleep together wasn't an option. There would be no talking it out later. This time it felt like it was really broken, and that hurt in a way that didn't make sense to Reilly. They'd just spent five years apart from each other, it shouldn't feel like this.

"I think I've made a really big mistake," Reilly said. Niall's eyebrows raised, and his face softened the tiniest bit, like maybe he thought an apology was next. "I shouldn't have come here," she continued. His expression hardened again and a darkness crossed his eyes. "I should leave," she finished, and then sidestepped him and headed toward the bedroom door.

She was reaching for the knob when he finally spoke. "You're really good at walking away when things get a little too real for you," he commented. She wanted to turn around and glare at him, but was afraid that if she did that it wouldn't be a glare at all, but instead a waterfall of tears cascading down her face. Her hand closed around the doorknob and she twisted it. "It won't work this time," he informed her.

She drew in a deep breath and turned around to face him. He was standing in exactly the same spot he'd been in, but had turned so he was facing the bedroom door. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his gray sweatpants. "Why's that?" she croaked, her voice gravelly from the emotions she was choking back.

"Checked for flights when I first came up here earlier. Sometime between when you left London and arrived in Dublin, massive storm rolled in. All flights into and out of Heathrow have been cancelled," he said. She stared at him in disbelief. "Trust me, I'm not happy about it either, but it looks like you're stuck here for now."

She shook her head and turned to reach for the doorknob again. "I'll go check into a hotel then," she said. She didn't want to be around Niall anymore with the anger he was spewing at her. It wasn't that she blamed him, but she hadn't prepared herself for this scenario.

Niall laughed, but this time it wasn't the dry, humorless laugh it had been before. It was almost like someone had tickled him. "You're jokin', right? It's Christmas. There's no way you'll find a vacancy anywhere other than my guest room," he said. "No way."

Reilly let out a heavy sigh and pulled open the door. Without a word, she exited the room and walked down the hallway to the spare bedroom she'd peeked inside of earlier. If she wasn't so exhausted, she would have slammed the door behind her to let Niall know she wasn't happy about the situation. Instead she let it swing slowly shut behind her and it barely latched. She didn't even have the energy to push it shut the last tiny bit.

The next thing she knew, she was being woken up by Niall yelling through the door. For a minute, she was so disoriented from sleeping so hard she couldn't remember where she was and why Niall would be there. She rubbed her eyes and reached for her phone that she didn't remember setting on the night stand next to the bed and turned on the screen. The clock told her that it was late afternoon, and the date told her it was Christmas day.

From there, she quickly recalled that she was in Niall's house in Mullingar, which fully explained Niall on the other side of the door. He'd stopped yelling for a moment, and she thought he might have walked away. Then the pounding started. Reilly rolled out of bed and stalked over to the door, ripping it open.

He was mid-pound before he realized the door had opened and Reilly had quickly duck to keep from being hit in the face. Being half asleep still, she wobbled as she narrowly avoided his swinging hand. A look of horror crossed Niall's face and he reached out to steady her. Electricity charged through her body at his touch, leaving her skin tingling after he quickly retracted his hands.

"What?" she snapped at him, her voice low and laden with sleep.

He grinned at her, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Christmas dinner with the family starts soon. Looks like you're coming since there's still no flights," he said. The grin still stretched across his face, but his tone didn't match it.

"I didn't bring anything to wear to Christmas dinner," she argued.

Niall rolled his eyes. "Look, I know we're not exactly each other's favorite people right now, but I still like to think I'm a decent enough human being that I'm not going to leave you to spend Christmas day alone in a strange house in Ireland. I did that five years ago in London, and I've never really forgiven meself for it," he said. His confession caught Reilly by surprise, but she couldn't think of a way to respond fast enough to interrupt him. "So quit tryin' to argue, figure out what to wear, and get dressed because we gotta go soon. Granny's dinner waits for no one," he told her, not giving her any time to object before he turned and disappeared down the stairs.

With a heavy sigh, she looked down at the jeans and sweater she was wearing. It was completely unacceptable for Christmas dinner, given the pants and button down shirt Niall had been wearing. He'd brought her bag upstairs, however, and left it sitting just outside the door. She grabbed it and rifled through it, but still came up short of an acceptable outfit.

Unsure what to do, she made her way down the hall to Niall's room and opened his closet. There were a lot more clothes in it than she expected to find, given that his main residence was in London. But then she vaguely recalled him mentioning that he'd been spending more time in Ireland recently. In any case, it worked to her advantage and she reached for the shirt she was fairly certain he'd worn when he was one of the groomsmen in Liam's wedding.

The only problem was that thin as Niall was a the waist, his shoulders were broad, and she would absolutely drown in the shirt, even wearing it as a dress. She was looking around for something to pinch the shirt with in the back when she remembered that she might have brought a travel sized sewing kit with her. It only took a moment of searching through her bag to find it, and she pulled several safety pins from it.

Taking a seat on Niall's bed, she carefully made small folds in the dark red fabric and slid a pin through it. She did that a few more times until it looked as though it might fit her. She stood and changed from her jeans into a pair of leggings she'd brought with her. Just as she pulled her sweater over her head, the bedroom door opened.

"Jesus Christ," Niall said quickly, startled to not only find her in his room, but also that she was half naked. "Sorry. I didn't know you were in here. Just needed to grab a few things before we go," he said, his voice shaking ever so slightly.

Reilly just shrugged as she slid her arms into the shirt and pulled it up to her shoulders. Dressing in front of other people, even the opposite sex, had never bothered her. Having been a dancer from a young age, it was something she'd always done.

"Is that my shirt?" Niall questioned as Reilly closed the buttons and rolled the sleeves to her elbows, like he hadn't even considered why she would be in his room.

She nodded and looked in the mirror once she finished. It was missing something. She glanced into his closet again. His belts would be too long around her narrow waist, and any of his other shirts would look the same. "Don't you have something I could put around my waist," she asked, stepping into his closet pushing his clothes from one side to the other, "like some ribbon from wrapping gifts, or a shoelace, or-" she cut herself off when she came across a thin black tie that had to be several years old. "Nevermind," she mumbled, taking a step backward.

It only took a minute for her to slip the tie around her waist and tie it in a fancy knot. When she finished, she turned to find Niall looking at her like she'd grown another head. "What?" she asked, but he said nothing in response. "Okay," she said, dragging out the beginning of the word, her eyes widening for only a moment. "Well, let's go. You said Granny's dinner doesn't wait. I know how you get when you don't eat, and you're already grumpy enough," she said, slipping her feet into her shoes on her way of his room.

She could tell he was still angry with her by the way he was so tense as he walked behind her. He kept his distance, and when they got to his car he didn't open the door for her, though she hadn't really expected him to. The air between them was thick with tension, and it was clear they were in for an incredibly awkward night.