seasons of love | Narry Storan AU

chapter 38 [the end].

2032

To be back in New York after so many years running away from it feels like a personal hell for Niall Horan. He left the town after realizing he couldn't live near the man who suddenly forgot everything they had together. He couldn't be there if Harry wasn't there, too, so he left New York for good.

At least, it was supposed to be for good. But he's back. Aided by Louis and Liam's insistent urges to go back and try to rewrite a page from his past that he just tried to hide from the public eye, Niall faces the fact that he will see Harold again. There is no big plan. He will just find him and try to talk as if they were strangers.

Which, actually, they are now.

"Are you sure he's in this building?" Niall asks Liam, who looks up from his phone to face his friend.

"Google told me he works here", he answers, with a tone of assurance in his voice. "It's his father's business. He's an executive."

"Fuck. So he gave up and worked with what he hated the most?"

"Maybe he likes it now", Louis says, immediately regretting his own words as his friend and his boyfriend look over to him. "Okay, sorry 'bout that."

"There must be something inside him that reminds him of his past life, Niall. Right?" Liam wonders out loud.

"I don't know. It's been a really long time since it all happened." Niall mourns verbally.

"You've got to have faith", Louis hugs him from behind. "We're already here. The worst thing that can happen is a 'no' from him."

The plan is simple in their heads. Niall just has to wait at the reception of the company where Harry Styles works, and try to talk to him about some publicity things he wants to do with him. Or something like that. After this first moment, nothing is promised, nothing is specific. Niall will have to improvise if he wants to capture Harry's heart for a second time.

Louis and Liam wave at him, in a see you later meaning, and then they let Niall follow his own way to the building. The Irish lad walks alone, his breath getting heavier with each step he takes and his thoughts getting deeper at the same frequency.

As soon as his feet get into the Styles Company, which is run by Harry's father, Niall gets scared. He starts believing the plan is weak as fuck, that it will never work out and that Harry perhaps will remember that one time when Niall found him after the accident and had a breakdown over the fact that their entire story was erased so easily. This is so fucked up, he whispers to himself, while still walking over to the hallway. This will never work out.

He sits at one of the chairs and waits. And he waits. And he waits a little longer. And he waits more. 10 minutes. 20. 30. 40. An entire hour. Then, 2 hours. 3 hours. 

When it's almost 5PM, Niall decides it's time to give up. He decides that it wasn't meant to happen, that they were meant to be just a fling from their younger days, and that fate took care of them very well. He was so afraid of meeting Harry again, so afraid of failing on everything after that, that he totally ignored the possibility of never finding him again. 

But, again, the thought of fighting for the love he felt for Harry Styles is what made him take a flight to the big town after all those years. It's the strength of the feeling that made Niall still think about them together. He's giving up, but he cannot say he didn't fight.

Niall walks out of the Styles Company and decides to just take a walk around the town. His feet lead him to the Central Park without thinking twice. The place reminds him of the day when he told Harry about his feelings for his roommate, and the fact that those feelings were once reciprocated. 

Once the memories hit Niall's mind, he allows himself to cry. Alone. Hiding his face between his hands. He doesn't know what to do without the hopes he kept hiding for more than 15 years. He just wants to cry.

"Sir, are you okay?" A man's voice pulls him out of his own thoughts.

Niall does his best to keep a straight face while looking up to whoever is trying to talk to him in the middle of the park.

"I'll be fine, don't worry about me." His voice sounds weak, just like his heart at the moment.

It's just when his eyes focus on the face of that man that Niall feels a sudden realization. He knows that man. Of course he knows. 

He would recognize Harold Edward Styles in a fucking crowded room.

"What's making you cry?"

"I... I..." 

Niall soon remembers that Harry doesn't remember their time together, and that it would be useless to pick up from where they stopped before. The things they wrote before don't matter anymore. It's all just a blank page.

A page Niall feels relieved he can write again. To make Harold fall in love with him again, Niall has to make himself fall for Harry, too. At the right time. In the right space. Because this is just another season in life.

Let it be the spring season, then. Let the flowers grow again, then, he concludes, before properly answering Harry's question.

"I lost someone I loved once."

"Is she dead? He? They?"

"Sort of", Niall shrugs, still feeling like he could cry at any moment, but with a sense of hope lighting up inside him while he's talking. "But I have to move on."

"Is there any way I could help you?" Harold asks, gently patting Niall's shoulders.

"I think I'll only recover if I fall for someone else again. Which I think... I think it will take a long ass time to happen."

"Never say never", Harry's smirk on his lips makes Niall feel, again, the butterflies on his body. "Do you have somewhere to go now?"

"Not at all, why?"

"Let me pay you an ice cream."

Just like the old times.