The Gifts -Narry & Ziam- (AU) *Completed*

Chapter 1

The Gifts -Narry Storan-

Chapter 1

Harry was the first to wake up. It was dim where he lay, and he could hear the sound of other people breathing around him. He sat up so fast he hit his head on the bed above him, and his forehead throbbed along with his chest, which was tight from the gas and the anxiety and the pressure of the events. He didn’t know what to do, so he rolled quickly, and found himself on his feet in a padded room.  He didn’t realize that he was barefoot until his feet hit cold, tiled ground. He looked down at himself, and saw he was dressed in a one piece long sleeve and long pant legged green onesie. He reached up and was relieved to feel his familiar bunching curls and when he ran his hands down his face he found his small little nose and his arching eyebrows. He was even delighted to feel the little pizza face pimples that are hidden by his fringe and covered with spot cream at night.

He finally looked around him. The walls were the color of marshmallows, and the tile was the color of clouds, a kind of white like milk but not solid. In then he noticed the bunk beds. Two sets, and one set was triple layered, and every single bunk was occupied by a sleeping person. Their eyes were closed, and their arms lay atop the covers, and everything was without worry or wrinkle. Their faces were slack, and their mouths were closed, and their eyelashes lay like crescents on their cheeks.  Harry stood in the middle of the room, spinning with his mouth agape and looking at the group of boys surrounding him.

“Hello, ace, where the hell are we?” A voice asked, and a blond sat up from the bunk on the far left wall, he was the top most, third bunk. His hair was disheveled, and his eyes were a little too wide and they were just a little too big for is slim face, and he was sort of pale too.

The silence was shattered, and Harry watched as the boy descended the ladder hooked onto his bunk and dropped lightly onto his feet. In then he tripped, stumbling over his own toes and Harry held out his hand without a thought. Niall stopped mid-fall, with his arms wind-milling, and to anyone looking it might appear someone had stuck out their arm and it had hit the blonds’ chest, but Harry just flexed his index finger and forced the boy back into a standing position.

Niall stood with his hands fisted by his side in a puzzled amazement, and his eyes accented the royal blue color of his onesie. It made him look thinner and willower than he was in originality, and his little stick arms looked even smaller in the too-big clothing, and Harry looked at him like he might a child.

“What’s your name?” Harry whispered, and noticed the welt on the back of Niall’s head, it was swollen and purple, but it had been cleaned up and an ace bandage taped onto it, wrapping around his whole head with a safety pin clipping it together near his left ear.

“Niall, and, you ace, what’s yours?” Niall asked, his voice a little weaker than before, his eyes scanning the bunks and the tile, and then trailing up the wall towards the ceiling and for a second a silence settled on the pairs shoulders.

“Harry, where are we?” Harry questioned, and watched the little blond in front of him with curious eyes. The blond was searching, looking at the other boys with an unreadable expression.

“I have no idea, ace.” Niall said, and his little face was just this swirl of misplaced information. “Ace, I want you to look me, right in my eyes, alright?” And when Harry gave him a strange look Niall grabbed both of his shoulders in his small hands, and narrowed his doe eyes, “Okay, please, don’t look away.” And Niall looked right into Harry’s eyes, the color of gems and grass and the ocean when the sun filters through it and mixes with the mud that coats the ground thickly. And Harry doesn’t know what’s going on, but his body is engulfed in fire, in then dunked into ice water, and his body is tingling and full of fear and hope and he can do nothing but look right into Niall’s eyes and listen to his heart pounding hard in his chest. When it stops, and he can feel Niall’s hands digging into his shoulders, a wave of relief washes over him and drowns him as he stands in front of the shorter, smaller boy and tries to pick up the pieces of what just happened.