Hey do you ever think about Noah being Alive again, them bringing him All the way back, and them finally seeing what he meant about being More before? Him bouncy and full of energy and always fucking happy and seeming half-stoned even when he’s not and driving like it’s fuckin chill if he lives or dies and it fucking Hurts Ronan’s heart to know that this is who Noah could have been the whole time, but this is Not the friend he knows
And it would be enough if he had to Relearn this version of Noah, but
Noah can’t remember being a ghost
Doesn’t remember any of them
Has no memory from the last seven years
As far as he knows, yesterday his friend Barry took him out into the woods
Do you ever think about Ronan trying to reconnect with him, slowly realizing that those memories are not buried, it’s like a hard reset, they’re all gone
Ronan trying to connect with this more Alive version of Noah and just being
The ghost of who he was when Ronan met him
Finding that over time his memories of Noah’s ghost are slipping away from him
And he feels like he’s failing by not remembering him
And he’s caught between letting go of his friend forever and not trying to force something between him and this Stranger, and feeling like that would be a betrayal of his promise to remember
Noah who gets used to having Ronan around
Who only starts to realize that they’re friends when Ronan drops off the face of the earth, stops coming around to see if he wants to hit the skatepark or get diner fries
Noah who seeks Ronan out, not because he’s familiar, but because the whole world has changed for him overnight and what he needs is one thing that won’t change
One person who’s been coming to see him day after day
Noah sitting on the roof with Ronan at the Barns and letting Ronan talk himself hoarse, talk them both through sunset into dark into Darkness, telling him about a boy Noah doesn’t remember being
And Ronan pulls a little bug-less firefly from his pocket and lets Noah hold it and both of them feel less alone
