tintedglasses

While sitting in my freezing cold car for two and a half hours waiting for someone from AAA to come change my tire (which I could have done myself if I had thought to bring gloves and boots) and while waiting another half hour for someone to come pick me up five minutes from home because my spare tire had a hole in it, too, I had a LOT of time to go through the writing prompts tumblr.

One that stuck out to me was this one:

"You stumble upon your ex on a dating site. Your ex that's been dead for two years."

I'm thinking it would be narry ideally and maybe Harry is the one that's back from the dead. And Niall didn't even make the dating profile, Louis did, and he thought it was so stupid, but he finds himself scrolling through sometimes when it's late and he can't sleep (also, I don't think him and Harry were broken up when Harry died, so he has a hard time dating still). But he's scrolling aimlessly, just about to put the phone down when a picture of Harry pops up. He has much shorter hair than when Niall had last seen him, but it's undeniably him. Niall doesn't know what to do, so he doesn't do anything at first (plus what if it's not even Harry? It looks just like him, but that's crazy, right? He died.)

But then, he gets drunk one night and decides fuck it, he's going to message Harry and he does. I think there are two ways that it could go after that:

1) Harry remembers Niall, but he hadn't contacted him because he thought it might be too weird or that maybe Niall had moved on. He didn't know how to face the possibility that his second chance might not work out so he just...didn't face it. But he agrees to meet up and Niall cries a lot when he sees Harry again and is almost afraid to touch him, in case he's not real.

Or

2) Harry doesn't remember Niall or much about his life, really. Niall goes along with it, not mentioning anything about their relationship at first (and Harry thankfully doesn't mention anything about Niall crying when they see each other in person for the first time---though, to be fair, he seems to be bringing that reaction out of a lot of people lately). But then something happens, like maybe Harry finds an engagement ring and is like 'what the hell?' and Niall tries to convince him that they were together but Harry freaks out.


I don't know how Harry came back to life or why, but neither do the characters, I think, which leads to crushing anxiety on Niall's part, because what if he disappears again and what if this time, it's forever? It takes him a long time to come to terms with that, and it never really goes away, but he learns to live life in the moment with Harry while he still has him.

(P.s. this is kind of like one of my favorite gryles fics, Lost Coastlines, which you should definitely read, where Harry and Niall are presumed to be dead for a year after their plane goes missing, but then get found stranded on an island. But for the narry one, I'd like a little more sci-fi, with like actually dying and coming back to life).