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"Seriously, though, have we considered just burning this place down." Blue sits back on her heels in Aurora Lynch's dining room, resting a hand on the wooden bench at the table. Her hair is sticking up on one side and plastered to her forehead on the other, and there's a streak of mud on along her jawline.
Gansey squints and wrinkles his nose. He hopes its mud.
Blue cuts her eyes to him and he sits up straighter, jamming a sheaf of papers into a manilla accordion folder. "I blame you. We could have wished for something practical," she says, "Like an on-call cleaning crew."
"Or a can of kerosene," Adam huffs, heaving a tire onto its side and freeing a family of chipmunks, who wriggle into the gaps between the floorboards.
Gansey snickers and Blue winks at him. They never talk about what happened, except when Blue uses it as a punchline. She's going back to school next month when the new semester starts and he already misses her.
A crash from the next room. "Can we all just please stop talking about burning my ancestral home to the ground?" Ronan leans around the corner and points at Blue, his face damp with sweat. "You're one to talk anyway, your house is a fucking hamster farm full of garbage."
Gansey had never pondered it, but of course the Barns itself is something out a dream. Looking back on it, when Ronan asked them all to help him clean out the property, to make it something he could live in now that Matthew had turned 18 and the will was straightened out (or would be once Ronan stopped avoiding his lawyer's phone calls and actually sat down with her to dot I's, etc.), he was a little too breezy, a thing Gansey had never known Ronan to be, not even before his father's death.
Too breezy because asking your friends to help sort through 25 years of a family's belongings is one thing — asking them to sort through 25 years of a family's belongings when that family can dream up anything whenever they want, including the storage space to house it all is a whole other thing to which the term breezy should never be applied.
The Barns is, basically, the estate equivalent of Hermione's purse: doors that open to new rooms that seem to be folded in the space between existing rooms, stairs going to floors you can't see from the outside, closets that are larger than bedrooms, with wardrobes that Noah joked probably do lead to Narnia, which Blue tried to crawl into and Ronan stopped her, his skin bleaching paper white.
How hadn't he realized any of this?
He and Ronan used to sword fight in the orchards behind the house, perfect, gleaming red winesap apples littering the ground; sneak beer into one of the more far flung barn lofts, lounging on overstuffed mattresses that smelled like hay and down; spend nights in Ronan's room, where the smell of spiced wood and grass was the strongest, a place his mother's lemon cleaner never managed to touch; eat dinner at Aurora Lynch's massive walnut dining room table and then play Halo on the XBox connected to the television currently occupying the corner of the room they're cleaning, never realizing that the television itself wasn't plugged in.
One day he noticed that there were different apples mixed into the winesaps — squat things with matte skin mottled brown and orange, and an outie where its stamen poked out. Gansey knew those apples: St. Edmund's Pippins (he loved the name, it was so ridiculously English), had eaten one every day at the West Cafe at Cambridge, from a basket next to the quite frankly horrible bagels that he wanted to slap out of the hands of every student who chose one.
"How…" he had trailed off, picking one off a branch otherwise overladen with winesaps.
"The fuck should I know. You a botanist, too?"
Gansey dropped it.
He thinks about those apples now, wonders if they came, somehow, from one of his dreams, and almost tips backward in his chair when Blue chucks a muddy rag at him with an eyebrow raised.
"There are actual chipmunks living in your den," Adam is pointing out, crouching and squinting down into the floorboards.
"Inside a tire," Blue further points out. "And go put your shirt back on, it's not that hot in here."
Adam clears his throat.
Gansey looks away from Ronan's answering shitty grin to see Blue looking at him speculatively.
"Hey, Ronan," Noah says, looking up from the possibly literal fuckton of papers he's nested into, "Why did you put a marriage clause into your dad's will?"
"What? I didn't."
Noah looks at the paper in his hand. "Oh."
Gansey has noticed that when Ronan's shoulders pull up like that, it's usually a precursor to a lot of yelling and Gansey needing to step in in a management capacity. "Noah," he says, "You're not a lawyer, I'm sure you're reading it wrong."
Noah's pinched little smile is one of Gansey's favorites, but he wishes the circumstances were different, "No, but before I died I was accepted into the poli-sci program at Berkely, on a track for law school, so."
Ronan shows all his teeth. "So."
"So I think I know how to read a contract. And it says pretty clearly that if you want to actually inherit all this junk, you have to get married. By next year."
After a silent beat, Blue laughs so hard she has to literally take a knee.
#
Ronan had snatched the paper from Noah, read it quickly, then passive-aggressively kicked them all out by opening a door that Gansey would swear hadn't existed before that exact second, stalking through it and slamming it behind him. So Adam takes Blue, Noah winks out after giving Blue a very brief hand squeeze and a very long and meaningful look, and Gansey ends up driving home alone.
The hot, jealous thing that used to live in his guts is gone now, and with some distance, Gansey thinks he felt jealous because he didn't want their relationship to change, because he loves Blue in a way he's never felt before. But it hasn't changed, not really: they still talk almost every night, and they probably will forever because Blue has an unending supply of things that she needs to complain very specifically to Gansey about, from her new roommate leaving open jars of salsa in the fridge to her intense hatred of the upcoming Pumpkin Spice Latte season (a rant that also required multiple days of texting, including a photo of a Starbucks ad in the subway and what about the salted caramel mocha, gansey? WHERES SCM SEASON??? Gansey had texted back Please stop defacing private property during rushhour, I'm not coming up there to bail you out, to which she replied with six money-with-wings emojis).
But really, his nights belong to Ronan again, who still hasn't moved out of Monmouth and has been dragging his feet over getting the will straightened out for an impressive almost three years.
But he dreamed them a kitchen on the first floor, with a table made out of the same planks of oak that make up the floor, teal, metal cabinets that look like oversized card catalog drawers and an industrial steel sink and matching fridge. An iron spiral staircase punches through the ceiling letting in light from the massive windows upstairs, and there are mismatched Persian rugs covering the sawdusted floor and a really, really good replica of Lucian Freud's Portrait of the Queen Elizabeth hanging above the table. It took him six months.
It's Gansey's favorite room in Monmouth, and the one where he and Ronan spend their approximately one to two am: in the half-dark they sit and talk, backs against the cabinets, or eat sandwiches that Gansey is getting really good at making, or Gansey reads while Ronan plays an old Nintendo DS that he didn't dream up but is the same one he bought when he and Gansey as a joke said they'd get into Pokemon but then they actually got into Pokemon. Gansey has a matching one in his desk upstairs.
Sometimes they don't do anything but try to doze, Gansey's long legs kicked up on the coffee table, and Ronan's head on his thigh, knees over the arm of the couch.
He lets himself in when he gets home and sits in one of the dark grey tweed wraparound chairs at the kitchen table and studies the Queen. She looks back.
Ronan doesn't come home and at 3am Gansey finally lays in his bed and stares at the ceiling until he falls asleep, dreaming he can see their solar system from a distance, tiny planets revolving around a sun with a white hot filament burning at its core.
#
After two days of trying to get in touch with Ronan to no avail, and Blue making plans to storm the Barns and "drag him out by his limp dick" (and here Adam had murmured, "Blue," so she furiously stewed in silence while Noah and Gansey searched every corner of the web for legal precedent. Gansey's still not sure when Adam had gotten so mellow, it must have been during his…sabbatical), Ronan sent Adam a text and they headed out.
Blue and Adam are on the maroon leather camelback couch in Niall's old office, her feet in his lap. She's wearing a black muscle tee with the collar ripped out and the words My girlfriend is a Slytherin in silver cursive across the front.
Before meeting Ronan and Blue, Gansey didn't know it was possible for people to want to be in Slytherin. They are literally, canonically, the worst. And the revelation that both Ronan and Blue identify as Slytherin has made them basically insufferable when the topic comes up. Which it does a lot.
(Meanwhile, Noah said he wasn't familiar because it was "after his time" and Adam said he had watched "one of the movies, I think".)
"Nice shirt," Gansey says.
Blue looks down and grins. "Thanks, Ronan made it for me."
Ronan shrugs from his spot on the floor, but he gives Blue one of his private smiles, barely a quirk of his mouth, soft around his eyes. "There's no good official Slytherin merch."
"Where's Noah?" Gansey asks.
"Here." Noah shuffles his feet in the doorway, holding a stack of legal binders, looking basically anywhere but at Ronan.
"Okay, so Noah couldn't find anything," Ronan says. "Anyone else?"
Adam raises his hand, "Yeah, I have a question. Isn't this the new will you made? Why is that line even still in there?"
Ronan's mouth is a razor blade and he stares back at Adam.
"Regardless," Gansey cuts in, "what did you lawyer say?"
"I don't know."
Gansey sighs. "Just call her already—"
"I can't. She's…" Ronan trails off and gestures to nothing in particular.
"She's…" Blue prompts.
"You know, like this. Asleep."
Blue barks out a laugh. "You guys know actual lawyers exist, right? And tvs and pens and cows?"
Ronan sighs and lays back, flopping an arm over his eyes. Outside, he can hear Chainsaw's throaty call, and a distant, answering one.
Gansey watches him and says, almost to himself, "Self-made men."
"Fuck you." Ronan's up on his elbows, "Suddenly you have a problem with it? I'm sorry, what was it you wanted me to dream you, once upon a time?"
Gansey presses his lips together and looks away.
Adam holds up his hands. "Okay, okay. So what do we do?"
Noah clears his throat. "Well, Declan is the executor, of course—"
Ronan groans and flops back.
"—So no help there. I honestly think Ronan just has to…" he waves his hands, "…get married."
Ronan groans again.
Gansey stands up and dusts invisible lint off his pants. "Then let's stop complaining about it. Let's just get it figured out. Blue, do you—"
Blue jerks around to look at him and Adam grabs her feet before they can catch him someplace uncomfortable. "Do I what? Because I'm the girl? A. No way and B. That doesn't even make any sense and C. No way! No offense, Ronan."
Ronan glares at her from under his arm.
Gansey watches Ronan's breath hitch slightly as silence descends on the group.
Dream me the world, was what Gansey had said. That moment comes back to him at the oddest times: he'll be making himself coffee or getting out of the shower or sitting at a red light and he'll be back in the small, hot space of Ronan's BMW after Kavinsky's substance party. It smelled like kerosene, like an electric fire, and the green and yellow lights from outside made everything feel unreal. His heart was slamming in his throat and wrists and dick, and his face and palms felt hot, and when Ronan asked him if he could see the appeal…of what? Kavinsky? Had he been asking for Gansey's permission?
He could see the appeal of what he and Ronan were, not whatever Kavinsky paraded around as brotherhood, and he didn't have to blow up cars or get high to prove it. But in that moment — Dream me the world, he'll remember himself saying and a flash of electricity will go through him, making him sweat — he wanted to make sure Ronan knew. But it was just out of reach, something he had put in a box years before.
Something new for every night, he had said, because he and Adam were leaving for his parents' and somehow he didn't know how to say come with us, he didn't know how to say I'll miss you. He didn't know how to say not him, please, anyone but him.
Before he met Ronan, he hadn't realized he was looking for a place to settle, how exhausting the travel was, how much of an adult he wasn't.
Before he met Ronan, he hadn't realized how much he hated being alone.
He steps over Ronan's head and looks at him upside down.
"Ronan," he says, quietly.
Ronan looks up at him, his eyes dark and suspicious. "What."
Gansey holds out his hand.
Blue squeaks and Gansey shoots her a stern look. Adam's mouth is half open in shock.
Ronan sits up slowly "What are you doing?" Gansey's never seen a look on Ronan's face like the one he sees now. Bewildered. Young.
"Will you do me the honor," Gansey says, smiles and feels that electric current light him up, right into the tips of his fingers.
What?" Ronan says again.
Gansey waggles his fingers at him.
Haltingly, Ronan reaches out and takes his hand.
Gansey hauls him to his feet. "Is that a yes?"
"Um."
"This is the lamest proposal I've ever seen," Blue says, but it's undercut by the silly grin overtaking her face.
Gansey pulls Ronan in for a hug and Ronan's left arm tentatively comes around his back, fist between his shoulder blades. Gansey lets his head rest briefly against Ronan's, the fine hairs brushing his ear.
"Thanks," Ronan says, low and gruff.
"It's the only thing that makes sense," Gansey says, smiling and pulling back. "I mean, Noah and Blue are out, and you and Adam…I mean, this way no one might end up getting hurt." He knocks his forehead against Ronan's. "It's just us."
Ronan exhales slowly. "Right."
"Right." Gansey looks over his shoulder at the other three. "Pizza?"
Adam looks at him (Gansey doesn't know how else to describe this) thoughtfully. "Pizza."
#
The fairytale ending of the Glendower Gang (don't tell Ronan he's still calling it that), went like this:
Ronan and Adam got together.
Blue kissed him.
Gansey made everyone swear not to use Glendower's wish to save his life when the time came, and when they finally found him, Gansey felt almost literally beside himself, like he was standing next to his body and watching it all happen. He and Adam and Ronan heaved the lid off Glendower's tomb, and the King himself stared back at them, sagging grey skin and rheumy eyes.
"You will get your wish," the King said, and even though he was speaking Welsh, Gansey could understand him perfectly in his head. "But first you must do something for me."
"We woke you!" Gansey said, stupidly.
Glendower smiled. He pressed a dagger into Gansey's hand.
"No, we woke you," Gansey said, again, "the texts say we needed to wake you."
"Not wake," Glendower's voice was low and soothing, “Release."
Gansey looked at the dagger, just a plain, seemingly unmagickal bit of steel. He didn’t think he could do it. Nothing had gone like it was supposed to. This wasn’t an adventure anymore, it was a slog, a march further and further into the ugliest parts of the world where Gansey never wanted to look. I can't, he said to himself, but his throat was so dry he couldn’t speak.
He looked at Adam, then Noah, then Blue, and finally Ronan, who held his eyes and nodded almost imperceptibly.
Noah, he told himself. For Noah. Before he could lose his nerve, Gansey lifted the knife over his head and plunged it into Glendower's chest, releasing a spectre of the man as Gansey remembered him from his books.
Glendower suddenly cocked his head, then turned to look at Adam. "Granted,” he sighed, and his form blew away in the drafty cave, nothing anymore but smoke.
"No!" Gansey turned to look at Adam. "What—"
Adam looked back at him calmly, his eyes clear.
Gansey blinked. All his work. All the isolation, the exile. All the relentless guilt and self-doubt and the years of telling himself it was all going to be for something: it coalesced in that moment as bright, hot rage and exploded. "What did you do!" he shouted. He lunged for Adam, who didn’t move, and Ronan stepped between them, one palm against Gansey's chest, the other bracing itself under his arm, "What did you do?!"
"It's okay," Ronan said in his ear.
"Why would you do this?" Gansey struggled against Ronan, clawing the air in front of Adam. "Why, Adam?"
"We're all in this together, and we all decided," Blue said.
"I didn't!"
Blue's dirty face was streaked with angry tears and she tried to get close, but Gansey couldn’t stand to look at them, couldn’t stand to be in his own skin. He thrashed and shoved Ronan, hard, throwing him into Blue and they both went down.
Without anyone holding him back, Gansey threw himself on Adam, clawed his hands into the flesh where his neck met his shoulders and shook him, hard. "This was mine, don't you understand?"
Ronan grabbed him from behind and Gansey lashed out blindly, hands skittering over Ronan's shaved head. Ronan tried to hold him off, caught Gansey's elbow in his nose, then jabbed him once in the face, hard.
Gansey went down, blinking away stars. When he could see again, Ronan was over him, a weight on his chest. "Dick," Ronan said, quietly, and put his hand on Gansey's sore cheek.
Something broke inside, and all the fight went out of him. He wiped away tears he didn't know he'd been crying and struggled to breathe.
Noah knelt next to him. "I agreed to this, too. I couldn't let it be you for me."
"But that's how it was supposed to go," Gansey said raggedly and turned to put his face against Ronan's knee, weeping so hard he thought he’d never stop, his brain battering against his skull.
When they left the cave, Gansey pridefully five steps in front of the rest of the group, it had started to rain, and Malory was waiting for them.
With a gun.
It was incongruous enough to be funny but Gansey was too wrecked to laugh. "It's okay, Mal, we found him, we—"
There was a sharp crack and the last thing Gansey saw was the sky, pink and orange with the rising sun, when his head snapped back.
Gansey doesn't remember dying, but he does remember the first breath of his third life, searing pain in his lungs and his brain like he was drowning on oxygen.
He remembers the metal smell of blood: Ronan's arm was bleeding through his jacket, torn and ragged flesh and leather almost indistinguishable from one another, Ronan’s face coming into focus. His mouth was moving and sounds were coming out, but Gansey literally couldn’t understand anything he was saying, pure panic clogging his throat.
He remembers Ronan and Adam holding him up as he puked and tried to breathe and puked some more, remembers something that felt like a steel rod through his skull over his left eye, which he'd later find out is where the bullet entered, and then, somehow, left.
He was alive.
And three feet away, clinging to Blue's hand, was Noah, still dead.
A last betrayal: Malory had wanted Glendower's wish, had been using Gansey the whole time. There was a struggle for the gun, hence Ronan's torn up arm, then Malory ran into the cave. The cairn that served as its entrance collapsed behind him, triggering a sinkhole that devoured 500 square feet of earth and Malory along with it.
Ronan spat into it before they left and when he looked up at Gansey his face was terrible, laid bare with some emotion Gansey couldn’t look at.
Gansey turned away.
Sick with rage and sorrow, Gansey didn't speak to them for six months, moving back into his parents' house. His mother gasped when she saw his black eye and the angry red gash on his forehead and Gansey shrugged and said, "Ronan," and ignored the look his mother exchanged with Helen.
He was depressed and anxiety-ridden and never left the grounds. His limbs felt like they didn't belong to him; sometimes he'd try to get out of bed and he'd fall, his legs folding under him like his strings had been cut. He'd stand in front of the bathroom mirror and prod his eye until it made him nauseous. One day he woke up and he could barely tell it was there at all.
Sometimes he thought he saw Chainsaw at the bird feeder in the garden.
Helen stacked books outside his bedroom door, ratty volumes from Sartre, Kafka, and Mann from dollar bins; his mother left pastries from his favorite bakery in DC.
He ran out of contacts and didn't bother to order a new prescription. He stopped cutting his hair. He lost a lot of weight.
He slept all day and on the good mornings he woke up remembering nothing. On the bad he remembered dreams that he didn't think belonged to him.
One morning he woke up ravenous, ate half a rotisserie chicken and three baked potatoes from the fridge but felt like he'd never be full. His father was standing there when he closed the fridge, and offered him a scotch. They watched college basketball and Duke won so they had another glass. It smelled like peat but tasted like vanilla.
He caught his mother looking at him sadly so he hugged her and she kissed his cheek, tugged a thick lock of hair. "I like it," she said, blinking away tears. After, he started pulling into a knot at the back of his head with one of Helen's discarded hairbands he found in medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom.
He read every book Helen left for him. He ran in the middle of the night when he couldn't sleep, and he lifted weights during the day when he didn't want to see anyone and he put on all the weight again, in lean, ropy muscles in his thighs and calves and shoulders.
He definitely saw Chainsaw at the feeder, but then he woke up and he wasn't sure if it was a dream.
The solar system spun and spun, lopsided, like it was attached to the sun by thin wires.
He decided to go home.
Back in Henrietta, Blue was packing up her room to go to school in New York, Noah had disappeared into Cabeswater, Adam saved up all his money to go to England to take over Mallory's work with the ley lines.
Ronan had built them a kitchen. He wouldn't say how or why he and Adam ended.
After some insistent texting, Blue agreed to come home on break and ended up bringing Noah with her. They arrived at Monmouth almost the same time Adam did, with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
Gansey and Blue and Noah lounged on floor pillows, while Adam and Ronan argued in the kitchen over Ronan's gas-line set up.
Noah sifted through Blue's hair with lazy fingers, and Blue tucked cold, bare feet under Gansey's thigh.
"We just needed you to come back," Noah said. "You're our center."
"Yeah, like a black hole."
Gansey tipped his head back to look at Ronan upside down, and Ronan smirked.
It took them less than a week to put themselves back together again. The same, but different. Older.
Here's their new beginning:
Adam has his research and a string of semi-serious relationships, and keeps up what Ronan uncovered is a years-long dirty correspondence with a girl in Berlin. Noah disappears every now and then, into Cabeswater or out along some leyline. Blue enters her senior year of college and Gansey catches her and Noah making out in the kitchen-bathroom-laundry at Monmouth ("Neither of you even live here anymore!" Gansey says.) Ronan gets a job at a local mechanic's, which Adam teases him about but seems somehow proud. He never brings anyone back to Monmouth but Gansey sees different cars sometimes parked next to the BMW and he seems to always be texting with someone.
And Gansey.
Gansey enrolled in the undergraduate English program at UVA and graduated in three years with a degree in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. His thesis was titled The Mythological Foundations of the United Kingdom and Their Impact on Modern Social Structures. He got offers to move to Oxford, do a research residency, but his heart wasn't in it anymore. Instead, he started as an adjunct at Aglionby, and is doing an online Masters in Education at the Curry School at UVA.
He doesn't really go out, unless it's with Ronan when he's around, or Noah, Blue or Adam when they're in town. He tried online dating but, as he remembers telling Ronan once, the girls he's meeting don't seem like they'd be interested in the only interesting thing about him.
Gansey's in his third life. But he doesn't know that he was done with his second one, yet.
#
This time Adam takes Blue and Noah, "See you crazy kids later," Blue calls, and Ronan follows Gansey to the Pig, leaning his hip against the back of the car while Gansey untangles his keys from his headphones.
"Seriously," Ronan says, and takes the knot of wires and metal from Gansey's hand, "You don't have to do this." He hands the keys back, and winds the white cord slowly around three fingers.
Gansey watches the cord, watches Ronan's long fingers. "I know I don't have to, dummy." He looks up but Ronan is resolutely looking down. "I want to. And it—"
"Makes sense, yeah, you said that." Ronan tucks the earbuds in between the neatly coiled cord and hands it to Gansey. "You're going to have to come out to your parents, have you thought about that?"
Gansey had not. "I'm sure they'll be fine with it."
Ronan’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes. "Sure. Coming out’s a piece of cake."
Gansey frowns, fighting defensiveness. "Hey, I know it wasn’t easy for you, I was there. I’m not trying to make light of it."
"Your dad—"
"My dad will have to deal with it." Gansey catches Ronan’s hand. "I’m not ashamed of you."
"Not even of our fake marriage?"
"Not even that."
Ronan looks down at their hands, but doesn’t pull it away. His right eye crinkles. "And hey, if they disown you, we can spend the money we would have spent on the wedding on a new television and surround sound."
Gansey laughs. "If you think that's all a wedding will cost, you're in for a surprise." He pauses, then rushes out, "Where are you staying tonight?"
Ronan smirks and glances up. "Don't worry, I'm a gentleman. Your pre-wedding virtue is safe with me."
He punches Ronan in the chest with their combined fist. "I'm serious!"
Ronan gives a half shrug. "Dunno. I have a lot of stuff to do here."
Gansey wants to replace the nonchalant look on Ronan's face with the one from earlier, the one where he looked happy and unguarded for a millisecond. "Come home."
They're silent for a moment, and Gansey worries the bundled cord between his thumb and index finger. Then Ronan smirks a little, the one that Gansey remembers from years ago, the one that he suspects only he gets to see.
"Race you," he says.
Gansey pulls at their joined hands so their chests bump, and Ronan's smirk slides into a lopsided grin. "You're on."
The backroads around the Barns are just barely wide enough for two cars, and they juggle the lead, the Camaro's engine roaring as it jumps ahead when he shifts gears. He imagines the smell of gasoline as a spectre, filling the car and his body and trailing out behind him to envelop the BMW, sneaking into the cockpit through the front vents and winding around Ronan's head.
Ronan's better at racing than he is, but for power he's got the BMW beat, so they're about evenly matched: Ronan pulls ahead around curves, sliding around them a powerful arc while Gansey struggles to pull the Pig's nose straight as his tires stutter in the gravel at the edge of the road. On the straightaways, Gansey salutes Ronan as he slots his car just ahead of the BMW, its nose almost kissing the Pig's tail.
In the rearview mirror, Ronan is laughing and whooping.
At the edge of town, Ronan, behind him, takes a sharp left and disappears around a corner. Gansey realizes now it's about who knows the streets the best, and he tries to visualize his Henrietta model as it was, before Ronan had taken over: he had built new, towering structures made of plexiglass; bridges with intricate wirework; enclaves of a mishmash of mid-century lofts, Tudors, and what looks like something that would be more at home in the 18th Arrondissement, the mansard roofs making Gansey feel a tug of longing when he looks at them. A new Henrietta, a dream-Henrietta, with Monmouth at the center.
He blinks hard, calculates and recalculates, taking turns and trying to remember detours.
Monmouth comes into view and Gansey floors it, but, "Jesus!", slams on the brakes and pulls the wheel right a second later as the BMW cuts him off, peeling out a blind alley behind the old sugar refinery across the street.
Ronan puts the car in park a good five seconds before Gansey rolls into the lot and he's out the car before Gansey can even push the parking break down.
He almost opens the door into him, as Ronan barrels across the asphalt.
He's sweating, can't catch his breath, and he sees Ronan's in the same shape. Ronan leans on the hood of the Pig gingerly, pulling his rolled up sleeves down over his forearms, the metal almost burning hot from exertion.
The grin on his face is infectious, and Gansey goes weak with laughter, bumping Ronan's hip with his own as he sits back on the hood.
"I shoulda bet you, made it worth my while," Ronan says, looking up at him and squinting against the setting sun.
Gansey tries to slow his breathing and his racing heart and says, "Next time."
"Next time?" Ronan's voice is skeptical and hopeful all at once.
Gansey pulls him up and shoves him towards the front door. "Get inside, you lunatic."
Ronan arches a brow. "Shall I carry you over the threshold?"
"I think that's the wedding night," Gansey says, unthinking, and then can't stop himself from blushing.
Ronan's answering laugh disturbs the pigeons roosting on the roof and grey and white feathers drift through the air after them.
#
His mother picks up first when he calls, and he can hear the blur in her voice as she fights back tears. Finally! Those tears say. Thank God!
Helen casually announcing last Thanksgiving that she and Tomer aren't interested in marriage or children, and Gansey himself having only had two girlfriends by the ripe old age of 21, his mother had resigned herself to the worst fate that could befall a WASP-mom: no marriages and no grandchildren.
"Mom, don't get ahead of yourself."
"Richard!" she yells, and then to Gansey: "I always knew there was something going on with you two boys."
Gansey feels a flush of something down his chest that he identifies as guilt, though that's not quite it. "Mom—"
"You have some secret language with that one, I know, Dickie, but don't think I didn't understand it the whole time anyway. Aurora and I both knew, I can't wait to see her. RICHARD!"
Gansey feels like coherence has been punched out of him, and he has no idea what to even say to that. He looks at Ronan, who's rummaging around the in the fridge to get to the beer, playing tetris with the dozens of styrofoam takeout containers that have been there for a month.
He thinks of the conversation between his parents about why he keeps the Pig: "Oh, I know why," his mother had said, with a soft laugh.
In the background, he can hear his father talking and his mother covers the phone with her palm so all her can hear is the muffled, excited tone of her voice. A scratching noise and her voice is clear, "Don't you dare, I ordered those for the VA care packages. Here," and then the phone is handed over.
"Cookies?" Gansey asks.
"Worse," his father huffs, "mini cheesecakes from Watergate Pastry."
Gansey laughs and he can hear his mother in the background, "they're for the VA."
"Yes, I understand," his father says and then to Gansey, "You didn't call to hear your mother torture me with cake I can't eat, though."
Giant horrific butterflies beat against Gansey's ribs. "No, tragic as it is."
"Richard…" There's some shuffling; Gansey can hear the sliding door in the kitchen drawn aside and the background noise changes as his father steps outside. "…are you okay?"
"Yeah, Dad, I—"
"This isn't for some insurance scheme, is it?"
"No, God."
"Don't read into my words, Richard, you know I like Ronan, but Niall was…" He breaks off, searching. "You get to know a lot of con artists in my line of work."
"Okay," Gansey says neutrally, because now Ronan is looking at him, an unopened beer in his hand, an eyebrow raised. Gansey shakes his head at him. Ronan holds out a second beer and shakes it a little. Gansey waves him off and twists around in his seat.
HRH looks down at him so he hunches a bit and stares at the floor.
His father is quiet and Gansey hears birds in the background. He loved that feeder when he was growing up, fascinated by the different birds they'd attract with different seed.
"Are you happy?" he asked finally. "Does this make you happy?"
"Yeah," he says automatically, because it's true. Making Ronan happy makes him happy.
"Well then that's all I need. And listen, son…"
Suddenly Gansey knows what's coming and he tries to stop it, "It's okay—"
"No, listen to me. I know we've never seen eye to eye on everything, and I know I don't always…understand your life. But I'm sorry for anything I did that made it hard for you to—"
"Please—"
"—You know, come out."
"Oh, my god, Dad—"
"Yes, I always imagined my son would settle down with a smart girl from a good family, and I might struggle with that over the next few months. But I love you. And Ronan is a good man."
Gansey's face is so hot, it's actually a relief that Ronan never listens to him and sets down a bottle of Goose Island IPA in front of him. "Thanks, that's…thanks."
"And I hope you had the high school experience you wanted. I'm sorry I assumed you'd want to watch college basketball with me every weekend."
Gansey's laugh is slightly hysterical. "Gay guys can like basketball, too."
"Yes," his father muses, "I suppose so."
"Oh, my god, I'm hanging up. Tell mom I love her."
"Love you, son."
Gansey doesn't remember the last time his father said that to him, and he has never meant it more when it says, "Love you, too, dad."
Ronan takes his phone and puts in his back pocket. "So that was fun," he says, "Wanna get pizza?"
"God, yes."
"And then we have to go tell my mom."
Gansey chugs half the beer in one go.
#
Things progress mostly unchanged in the weeks before the ceremony. Their schedules don't change, they still stay up too late playing Call of Duty and marathoning Supernatural. They still sleep in their own beds.
Sometimes Ganesy has to remind himself they're actually engaged, until Declan shows up while Gansey is trying on ties for the ceremony.
"This one?" Gansey is saying, holding up a skinny black tie with white pindots, when the buzzer sounds through Monmouth.
He goes to the window and looks down. Declan is looking up at him. Gansey smiles and holds up a finger, and he says through his teeth, "Your brother is here."
Ronan grunts from his position on Gansey's bed, where he's been camped out playing Destiny for the last approximately 27 hours.
"At least try not to punch him," Gansey says.
Ronan doesn't answer, but his shoulders are tense and Gansey doesn't like the impending combination of Declan, Ronan, and Hard Mode on the King's Fall raid.
Gansey goes downstairs, butterflies beating against his ribs, and opens the front door. "Hey, man! C'mon in."
Declan doesn't move, nor does he say anything.
"Ronan is upstairs," he tries.
"Actually, I'm here for you," Declan says, and Gansey grinds his teeth through his smile. Nothing good ever came from a sentence starting with "actually".
"Okay, well, still, come on in."
Declan looks past him, to the lived-in kitchen and the rumpled couches, their two mugs of coffee next to a half eaten bowl of Frankenberry. "I sort of though you'd know better than this," Declan says, still not looking at him.
Gansey sighs. They'd avoided talking about Declan, but as the executor (and considering his sometimes volatile relationship with Declan) he'd have to think it was real. "Look, Dec, I know it's hard to understand—"
Declan steps into his space, and Gansey forces himself not to move back. "It is. Do you think this is helping him? Letting him be a fucking kid forever because he'll always have you to bail him out? Or was this your idea?"
Gansey pulls himself up to his full height, not quite as tall as Declan but he knows how to take up space. "I don't think I like what you're implying."
"Implying? No, let me be perfectly clear: Ronan's a junkie, but it's not for drugs. I think you know it, and I think you like it, keeping him here under your thumb."
Uncharacteristically, Gansey wants to smash Declan's handsome face in. He makes a fist and steps so close his chest bumps Declan's.
"Babe," Ronan calls and Gansey reflexively turns to see Ronan slouched against the bannister at the bottom of the staircase to the second floor, overly casual. "Everything okay?"
Declan steps back, out from under the lintel.
Ronan slides an arm around Gansey's waist, rubbing a circle over his spine. "Declan. I assume you've heard and come to offer congratulations?"
"Ro, this is idiotic! Dad wanted you to grow up and get yourself out of here, out from under him, not dig yourself deeper."
Ronan laughs and slants what can only be described as a filthy look at Gansey, flicking his eyes down to his mouth then back up. "Can't get any deeper than I already do."
The words pluck a string, hard, inside Gansey's stomach. He has a brief, vivid memory of Ronan over him, and he knows a flush is creeping up his neck towards his ears. But he can't help but laugh, holding Ronan's gaze.
Declan makes a disgusted noise and crosses his arms. "Fine. You want to move on with this charade, I can't stop you. But I will be checking up on you."
Gansey clears his throat. "Would you like to stay for dinner?"
Declan shakes his head, but doesn't move.
"Go upstairs, Dick," Ronan says, not looking at Gansey at all.
Gansey inclines his head towards Ronan. "Are you sure?"
Ronan turns to look at him and smiles tightly. "I'm sure."
Gansey hesitates for a second, but before he can lose his nerve, he darts a quick kiss against Ronan's mouth.
Ronan blinks, then slides a hand into Gansey's hair, under the knot at the back, pulling him in again.
Ronan's mouth against his is warm and soft and wet and Gansey opens his without thinking. Ronan's tongue touches his, briefly, expertly, then he pulls back.
It's nothing like Gansey remembers.
"I'll be up in a few," Ronan says, and licks his bottom lip.
Gansey nods at Ronan, then, "Declan," he says, giving Declan his best scathing look. He's halfway up the stairs when he looks back, but Ronan and Declan are in deep, heated conversation.
When Ronan returns, neither of them say anything, and why should they, Gansey thinks. This is the gig. It's what he signed up for. Gansey tries really hard not to check to see if Ronan's knuckles are bruised.
Ronan switches the game to PVE, "Fucking Warpriests" he says, by way of explanation. "Unless you want to try? I've got a pretty good team."
Gansey laughs, "No thanks, I don't do online multiplayer. If I wanted to spend my time getting called fag by a bunch of 13 year olds, I'd have you dream me a time machine and go back to grade school."
Ronan looks at him consideringly for a second, then turns back with a shrug. "Oh, hey," he adds, rooting in his pocket before pulling out a rolled up piece of fabric. "Catch."
Gansey snatches it out of the air, and see it's a tie, the end of it unravelling in his fist. He unrolls it, skinny black silk with a silver celtic knot embroidered on it, up near where it would knot.
He looks closer: the knot is actually a snake, with small, green eyes.
"Ronan," he says, "I'm not going to wear a Slytherin tie to our wedding.
Ronan is grinning, his tongue caught between his teeth, as he frags a group of shanks. "We'll see."
Gansey turns to the mirror and holds the tie up critically. "I'm serious."
"I believe you."
The little snake seems to move, the knot undulating when Gansey traces his finger over it.
He watches Ronan in the mirror and the ground seems to shift, almost unnoticeably, under his feet.
#
They were 15 when they met, and it was the Pig, of course, that introduced them. He pulled his bike into the parking lot behind Monmouth during the second month of Freshman year to find Ronan practically drooling over it. Gansey was delighted to meet someone who loved it as much as he did.
He was even more delighted that it was Ronan, who he had seen running the track from the window of his bio lab, long legs eating up ground, laughing as he lapped one of the older boys. More than the others, he looked free, he looked like knew something they didn't. Asking around about him, Gansey learned he was at the top of their class, he held the record for the 500 meter dash already, unheard of for a freshman, and everyone felt the need to mention that they didn't know what his father did for a living. Which Gansey found curious, to say the least.
"Ronan, right?" He walked his bike to where Ronan crouched in front of the Pig, running long, probing fingers over the mesh grill.
"1972 Z28?" Ronan asked by way of answer, standing and leaning in to inspect the hood, the ultra polished orange paint job.
"1973."
Ronan stepped back to look at the grill again, pushing thick black curls off his forehead and behind his ear. "Damn. The reinforced bumper."
"Mm." Gansey watched him for a second and then said, "I'm sorry, not trying to be rude, but what are you doing here?"
Ronan focused on him after a long moment of staring at the car, and smiled, holding out a hand, "Ronan Lynch."
"Yes, I know."
Ronan laughed. "You know?"
"Dick Gansey."
"Richard Campbell Gansey the Third."
Gansey grimaced. "Just Gansey will do, thanks."
Ronan grinned and said, "Nice to meet you, Dick."
For the first time ever, Gansey liked the way it sounded.
Ronan, it turned out, was on his way to the batting cages that were three blocks from the factory district, in a converted space that used to be an industrial bakery. The whole place smelled like an odd combination of sweat, old leather and yeast.
He and Gansey left their bikes locked up behind Monmouth, and walked there, Gansey probing Ronan about every student and faculty member.
It wasn't the last night Ronan had to stay over because it was too dark to bike home. It was, though, the only night they shared an air mattress, which by morning was half-deflated, pitching them into each other in the night where their bodies created a dip in the middle.
Gansey woke up half hard, and Ronan laughed, breaking the tension.
The next time, Gansey had a bed for himself, and one for Ronan, too.
Ronan invited him home to meet the rest of the Lynches. Declan didn't seem to like him ("he doesn't like anybody," Ronan said, "He's sad he missed the Gen-X window and he's trying to reclaim it through being an anti-social shitbag"), Matthew was adorable and clearly Ronan's favorite from the way he doted on him.
Mrs. Lynch was beautiful and had a dry sense of humor and she and Ronan spoke French to each other as their own secret language (Ronan, Gansey learned, was really good at picking up languages. He spoke English, French, Italian, Gaelic ("Irish," Ronan corrected him), and Latin — Latin! — and was learning Urdu).
And Mr. Lynch ("Niall!" he said, shaking Gansey's hand, "call me Niall.") was…he was cagey in some way Gansey couldn't pin down. Never looked you in the eye. Always late for dinner because he "had a thing with the guy from the other day."
"Your father's a congressman, eh?" he asked Gansey once, while Ronan was helping Matthew with his math homework.
"Yes, sir," Gansey replied, taking a sip of coke. "In Maryland's 5th District."
"We'll, I'd love to meet him one day, I always have business partners looking to contribute to campaigns."
Gansey did not shift in his chair. "And what is it you do, exactly?"
"Oh, this and that," Niall said, with a smile identical to Ronan's that could melt the icecaps.
And that was the thing with Niall. He was secretive and almost jumpy, but he was handsome and charismatic, two qualities that were only magnified by his Irish brogue. And Ronan idolized him, loved him so much he was bursting with it.
It made Gansey want to love him, too. So he looked the other way when Niall did; he whooped along with Ronan when Niall took them racing along the winding roads behind the Barns in his BMW; he diverted dinnertime conversation to other topics when Declan pressed his father about where he had been and why he was late.
Because the Barns were starting to surpass the label of second home, gradually swapping places with Monmouth as to where he was spending all his time.
He and Ronan spent countless hours in the orchards, in the hay lofts, in front of the television. They read comics and watched porn and chugged vodka from the cabinet above the sink, bottles with labels Gansey had never seen before, bottles that never seemed to go empty.
One night, while Gansey was reading some notes on the relative usefulness of astronomy in divining ley lines that Ronan had translated from Latin for him and Ronan was idly flipping through the latest issue of Über, Ronan said, "Have you ever wondered if we should be out trying to get girls instead of," and he waved his hand around.
Gansey snorted and adjusted his glasses. He had miscalculated and his new box of contacts wouldn't be there until next week. "Finding Glendower feels eminently more doable than trying to convince a girl that we might have anything in common."
Ronan laughed and rolled onto his stomach on the bed, his arms hanging down and his fingers brushing the book in Gansey's lap. "Honestly, man, I think at this point they don't care about talking, if you know what I mean. Girls aren't much different from us, at least if the ones who put themselves through the agony of dating Declan are anything to go by."
Gansey looked up at him. "Then why aren't you dating anyone?"
Ronan's eyes were dark in the soft glow of the orrery he used as a bedside lamp, "Dunno," only he said it like he might.
Gansey folded Ronan's notepaper and used it as bookmark, setting the book down.
"Have you ever kissed anyone?" Ronan asked.
"Uh, no, not as such." Gansey smiled and turned his head. Ronan was right there, half off the bed, bracing himself with one arm on the bedside table behind Gansey's head. "Getting married in fourth grade doesn't count, right?"
Ronan's tongue darted out to wet his lower lip. "No." He slowly took off Gansey's glasses and set them aside. "It doesn't."
"Um."
And then Ronan kissed him.
Gansey let himself be kissed for a moment, Ronan's chapped lips against his, before he jerked back. "What's happening?" he said, his voice catching.
Ronan half shrugged, and slid off the bed into Gansey's lap. "More efficient than trying to sweet talk the local girls with legends about English kings, right?"
"Welsh!" Gansey laughed, and Ronan kissed him again.
Something opened up in him, an emotion he'd never felt before, bigger than he could contain, and he kissed Ronan back.
It was close-mouthed and chaste, at least for a week or so, short, tentative sessions where they'd laugh into the hot space between their mouths after, then go downstairs to eat dinner or stay up arguing using modern technology versus old school divining rods to find the ley lines.
One night it changed, when Gansey's tongue crept out and touched Ronan's lower lip, the spot he always saw Ronan worrying. Ronan shuddered and smashed his mouth into Gansey's, their teeth clacking painfully, and suddenly Ronan's tongue was in his mouth.
He was instantly hard, and he made probably an incredibly embarrassing noise into Ronan's mouth, which Ronan answered with a rumble deep in his chest. Gansey pushed forward and they sprawled onto the rug, crushing notes and paper plates under Ronan's back.
Gansey could feel Ronan's cock through his jeans against his, and he ground down on him hard, almost painfully hard, but he couldn't stop, either. He tried to kiss him again, but his rhythm faltered, so he ended up pushing his face into the crook of Ronan's neck, his breath pooling humidly in the creases of his skin.
"Dick," Ronan tried, the first time either of them had ever spoken during; Everything in Gansey seized up, electricity exploding outward from his belly into the soles of his feet and the tips of his fingers, and he came so hard he saw stars.
"Oh, my god," he managed, trying to hold himself up on shaking arms.
Ronan shoved him off to the side, fumbled at his own belt buckle and fly and bit off a groan when he struggled his hand down his pants. Three hard jerks and his body hollowed out, his knees and shoulders pulling up as he came.
Gansey's dick stirred, almost painfully, and he pressed a hand low over his belly. Ronan looked at him and smirked, his breath shuddering out of him. "Yeah?"
Gansey laughed. "No. And I need to borrow pants if I'm going to stay for breakfast tomorrow morning."
Ronan dug underneath his lower back to pull out a pen he had been laying on, and chucked it onto the bed. "Jeans over chinos, bro. Hide a multitude of sins."
They carried on for almost a month, cleaning out Monmouth by day, where nothing ever happened or, to the outside observer, would even appear to be happening anywhere else, and heading to the Barns at dusk for dinner, video games and, sometimes, fooling around.
Ronan was the brother he never knew he wanted, the something more he never thought he’d have.
At the end of June, Gansey's parents met Ronan's over an excruciatingly long dinner at The Ivy Inn. His father hated Niall on sight, Gansey could tell because he had his campaign smile on the entire time.
To compensate, Ronan snuck vodka into their water glasses.
That night, Ronan swiftly closed the door to his bedroom and pushed Gansey down onto the bed. He straddled him, stripping off their shirts, then slid down, kissing Gansey's belly while he unbuckled Gansey's belt, making Gansey laugh, ticklish with drink.
"Ronan," he breathed, trying not to make any noise. The house was so silent tonight, it felt like every rattle of the bed would reverberate through the walls and along the pipes. So silent the zip of Gansey's chinos was almost deafening when Ronan drew it down. Gansey felt a fire roaring in his belly.
Ronan put his cheek against Gansey's thigh. "I don't think your father likes me."
Gansey imagined he could feel Ronan's hot breath on his dick through his boxers. He shivered and twisted his hips, his body searching for pressure. "What?"
"Your father. I don't think we're the kind of people he imagined a conservative congressman's son associating with. Especially me."
"Ronan, he's just glad I have a friend." Gansey laughed and reached down to pat Ronan's curls. "This might be hard to believe but I was a pretty awkward kid." He pushed himself up on his elbows. "Why would you think he specifically wouldn't like you?"
Ronan was silent a beat. Then, "Because he could see what I am."
Gansey blinked, his stomach doing a slow turn. Sweat prickled over his lower back and in his armpits. "And what are you?"
Ronan lifted his head and looked directly at Gansey. "Different. Not like you."
The air was so still around them, he could barely breathe. "Not like me how?"
"Like this." And holding Gansey's eyes, Ronan slid his hand into the opening of Gansey's boxers.
The fire in Gansey's belly leapt and crackled along his nerve endings and his elbows went out from under him. He slapped a hand over his mouth to keep from shouting.
Ronan jerked him slow and steady, just the way Gansey liked it, the way Gansey did it to himself.
He wanted to say Ronan's name, but his brain was shorting out. Ronan leaned over him, but too far away for Gansey's malfunctioning limbs to get to. Instead, Gansey's hands scrabbled to find purchase, and he twisted his fingers into the sheets.
His orgasm crashed over him too suddenly for him to do anything more than say, "It's—" and then he was gone, his heart beating hard in every organ, in every millimeter of his skin.
Ronan made a noise and fumbled at his own waistband, shoving his pants and briefs down his thighs.
"Wait," Gansey gasped, but Ronan was pulling himself off using Gansey's spunk as lube, his eyes squeezed shut, until he came with a sob and his body hunched in on itself.
Ronan knelt over Gansey for long minutes, both of them trying to catch their breath. Eventually he leaned over to get a pack of tissues from his nightstand, took out a few and chucked the rest to Gansey. Then he nudged Gansey over and collapsed next to him, back to front.
"Ronan," Gansey whispered to Ronan's bare back, after he cleaned up.
But Ronan's breath had evened out in the familiar pattern of sleep, and Gansey laid awake for a long time.
The next day they went back to Monmouth together, and wired a fridge into the bathroom.
He didn't see Ronan the next day, so he spent it poking at what was happening between them, and trying on the word "gay". He didn't know what he was, not with the same certainty Ronan had about himself, but he knew he loved Ronan, might be in love with him. He felt like something that had been trying to get out of him for years, since he came back to life, was coalescing, and for once he let it out. Maybe this was what was meant to happen, maybe this was part of what his search for Glendower was supposed to reveal.
The day after that, Niall Lynch was dead.
Ronan came to stay for a week while Declan handled the paperwork, and never left. He was silent and sober, going back and forth between the fridge and the Xbox he had set up in the main room, not speaking, not sleeping much.
In those early days, he would climb into Gansey's bed when he couldn't sleep, and they'd talk in the dark, Ronan's curls tickling Gansey's bicep where he kept it tucked behind his head, until they fell asleep. But they never touched each other; that's not what Ronan needed then and maybe would never need from Gansey again.
A month after that Noah moved in. Then Gansey met Adam, who Ronan was fairly awful to for the rest of August, and Gansey ping-ponged between the two of them, feeling stretched too thin.
Ronan shaved his head, and Gansey noticed his eyes had dark smudges under them. He stopped sharing the bed, but he still wasn't sleeping, so the two of them would sit up in the kitchen-bathroom-laundry instead.
Gansey bided his time. He ached to touch Ronan, the way you do when you're 15 and maybe in love for the first time, but he wanted Ronan to make the first move, thought it best to impose on Ronan the space he needed to grieve, because Gansey was afraid he wouldn't take it for himself.
School started. Three weeks later, Gansey saw Ronan and Skip Sutherland, a tall, broad-shouldered blond junior from the crew team behind the boathouse after practice. Ronan had Skip up against the boathouse wall, his hand down Skip's chinos.
Gansey felt his stomach bottom out.
Ronan's grades declined and he got threatened with suspension. He moved on from Skip to a local boy with tattoos and a septum ring, though Gansey wasn't supposed to know this. He skipped some classes and showed up to others with a Poland Spring bottle full of orange juice spiked with vodka.
Gansey was wrecked, anxiety a constant buzz in the back of his brain, but he couldn't let it show. Every day was a battle to keep Ronan on track, to make excuses to Declan, to smooth things out with the Dean. There was also Adam, who made it really difficult to take care of him, but Gansey did anyway, talking to Adam's guidance counselor to better arrange his schedule for the eventual college applications, making sure he wasn't burning himself out with overwork, setting up neutral ground for him and Ronan to hang out on, until they found stuff they had in common.
He chewed mint to combat his sour stomach, and meditated to fortify his nerves.
There wasn't time for Gansey's hurt feelings.
So Gansey packed it all into a box, his childish crush, anything beyond his love for Ronan as a brother, and tucked the box deep in his brain where he wouldn't see it every day.
Some nights, when he would wake to Ronan's dark form padding from his room to the kitchen-bathroom-laundry, catch a glimpse of Ronan's bare back illuminated by the dim light before the door closed, he would worry the edges of it, remembering Ronan and Skip and Ronan's wrist working in the open fly of Skip's pants.
He resolved to never open it up again. And eventually, he couldn't be sure it had ever really existed in the first place.
#
Blue is the first to the courthouse after Gansey, and they loiter in the foyer, three other couples and their families in tight groups waiting to be called in.
She laughs and taps a shiny black nail on the little snake on Gansey's tie. Around her neck, on a delicate silver chain, hangs a matching pendant. "Welcome to the family."
"There's still time for me to call it off," he says bitchily and she laughs again and hugs him.
"Where's Noah?"
"He and Adam are at Cabeswater, escorting Aurora. Should be here any minute." Last year, Adam and Ronan had had a breakthrough with the ley lines. They're fixed in place, of course, but the same way Adam had figured out how to direct the channel years ago using his tarot deck, they've figured out how to create a lightning rod of sorts, directing a frisson of the line into contact with it so the bearer of the rod (or, in actuality, a coin Ronan had dreamed) is still technically "on" the ley line. It won't keep the connection for more than a few days, but it's good enough for now, so Aurora can see her sons more often.
And Ronan seems less tense, now that there's a contingency plan for Matthew. Which is a nice side benefit.
"Where's Ronan?" Blue asks.
Gansey sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. "Matthew took him out for a stag party with him and Declan."
Blue wrinkles her nose. "Oh, that's…oh."
"Mm. Let's hope he only has one black eye for the pictures."
As if on cue, the front doors open and the Lynch brothers all enter one by one, not visibly bruised, so there's that.
Ronan looks, and there's no other word for this, dashing in a slim cut black suit, black shirt, and skinny black tie with a tie bar. But "You look like a hitman," is what he says when Ronan approaches him.
"That might just be him wishing murder on Declan, though," Blue says, straightening Ronan's tie. She stops and leans in to look at the tie bar.
The door opens again and Gansey's mother waves at them. "Dickie!" she says, rushing over. "Look who we found pulling up!"
She gestures to Ronan's mother, along with Adam and Noah. Aurora folds Ronan into her arms, and he hears Ronan rumble something, not English, and Aurora laughs.
Behind them is Gansey's father (who Gansey's still feeling prickly towards since, while being emotionally supportive, he had sat Gansey down last week to discuss a prenup, to which Gansey furiously snapped, "Absolutely not." And later Ronan said, "good meeting with The Second?" and handed Gansey the controller so he could mindlessly shoot zombies for a little while) and Helen. Helen winks at him. His father smiles like nothing had happened.
They're definitely the largest group there, which at one point in Gansey's life would have made him feel embarrassed, but not today. They wait for their number to be called and when it is, they all shuffle into one of the ceremony rooms.
The Justice of the Peace pronounces his name wrong every time she says it ("Gahn-say") and Ronan corrects her all three times, which sort of makes up for the fact that he has to hear his full name three times to begin with. Blue and Helen giggle uncontrollably, until Gansey's mother shoots Helen a look that would cut steel.
When Ronan slides the ring — a wide-banded claddagh — on his finger, Gansey looks up at him and Ronan's face suddenly looks unsure, asking him, is this still okay?
"Yes," Gansey says outloud, instead of I do and Blue and Helen snicker again.
And then it's over, except the kiss.
Ronan shrugs at Gansey with a little wry smile, and Gansey laughs and leans in. Ronan meets him halfway, his mouth firm and chaste. Gansey's heart stutters, and he tries to follow when Ronan pulls back — Matthew "woos" a little and everyone claps while Ronan laughs, kissing Gansey again on his burning hot cheek.
Gansey looks down, and his eyes fall on the tie bar. Slim and silver, there's a figure on it that Gansey had thought was identical to his and Blue's snakes. But it's not.
It's a tiny lion.
He blows out a breath on a soft laugh and looks up to lock eyes with Ronan.
"You like?" Ronan asks.
Very sincerely, very seriously, Gansey says, "I do."
#
"Who are all these people?" Noah asks, weaving back through the dance floor with two vodka tonics for Blue. Aurora, Helen, and Gansey's mother have transformed the bridge barn near the orchards into a reception hall, lit with dozens of edison-bulb string lights. There are long wooden farm tables with benches, set with low centerpieces full of wildflowers and fruit from the orchards.
Dinner was a barbecue buffet, and there's no wedding cake ("Tell her absolutely no cake, if she ever wants grandchildren," Ronan had said into the mouthpiece of the phone as he passed Gansey on his way to take a shower, on one of the approximately 460 phone calls she made to him about the reception), but instead there's a gelato truck parked outside.
"Half of Maryland, it looks like," Adam says wryly. He nods at a brunette with a peacock feathered fascinator and black lipstick, who he'd been dancing with earlier. "The good-looking, filthy-rich half."
Gansey laughs. "I'm sorry, weren't you just flirting with the bartender?"
Blue's straw makes a sucking noise as she finishes her drink. "You know how methodical our Adam is — he's just getting a lay of the land."
Noah groans but Adam smirks, a thing he learned from Ronan, and Gansey remembers suddenly his confused feelings for Adam when they first met. "When you spend six months backpacking in Europe you learn to pinpoint your options quick."
Blue squeezes a lemon into her second drink. "Gross, Adam, no one wants to hear about your continental sex vacation."
"I wouldn't mind."
"Noah!"
Gansey cranes his neck. "Has anyone seen Ronan?"
Adam tilts his head towards the open barn doors in the back, leading into the Orchard. "I think he stepped out for some fresh air."
"Or the opposite of?" Gansey nods towards Adam's inside jacket pocket, where he knows there's a pack of cigarettes.
Adam holds his hands up. "He told me to dole them out thoughtfully. I've only let him have two."
By the time Gansey had come back to Henrietta, Ronan had taken up smoking. Gansey kept up a steady non-smoking campaign (that included random room searches and really graphic informational flyers) for the next year and a half until Ronan agreed to quit. But he's stashed emergency cigarettes literally everywhere, which Gansey feels bad begrudging him because at least he's making an effort.
"But everything is good, right? We're doing the right thing."
Adam pulls him close and kisses him on the side of the head. He looks at Gansey for a long moment, then his eyes shift over his shoulder.
Gansey turns and sees the bartender at the entrance to the barn, lifting his chin at Adam. He claps Adam on the back, "Go on." Adam grins sheepishly and picks invisible lint off his lapel before heading over.
Gansey finds Ronan sitting with his back against one of the apple trees, knees drawn up and eyes closed, a cigarette burning between his fingers where his wrist rests on his knee. Gansey takes the opportunity to loosen his own tie, unbuttoning the top two buttons, and stands over him. "You okay?"
Ronan cracks open an eye and smiles. "Just needed a second. Your mom has a lot of friends." He takes one last drag and stubs the cigarette out on the heel of his boot.
Gansey laughs. "Yeah, when you run for congress everyone is your friend. Sorry, I should have warned you."
Ronan pushes himself up, brushing off the seat of his pants. "I've met your mom. I knew."
They walk under the heavy branches, the tart smell of apples weaving around them. "I haven't been out here in ages. We should do some harvesting, or this is all going to rot."
Suddenly, he realizes the trees have changed: no longer apples, the branches bend with ruby-colored, fat fruit.
Gansey reaches up to pluck off a pomegranate. He weighs it in his hand, turns it over to look at the tufted bottom. Ronan is always so literal and it makes Gansey feel something warm in his chest beyond the metric ton of vodka he's already drank. This is definitely not how he remembers it happening to Persephone. Less choice, for one thing. And Hades in his childhood books had never been as good-looking as Ronan. "A little on the nose, no?"
"Never been one for subtly," Ronan says, and grins, and it's different than Gansey's ever seen. It feels private, suddenly, like a secret.
Gansey presses the cool skin of the fruit to his cheek. "But I already came back from hell," he says.
Ronan looks at him very seriously and steps very close. "No," he says, "We got to you first."
It's the vodka, must be, when Gansey says roughly, "How do you know?"
There's a light touch on Gansey's collarbone where his shirt has sagged open, and then on his cheek and he opens his eyes, not even realizing he'd closed them. He feels like he's been asleep for hours.
Ronan's breath is warm on his face, his mouth. "I know."
Gansey feels flushed and jittery; want twists in him, right at the root of him, desire for something he can't name, hasn't thought about in a long time.
Ronan's hand is at his lower back, long fingers curving down his spine. The air between them is heavy and humid and Gansey can't breathe.
He throws the fruit at the ground hard enough so it cracks, and Ronan steps back as juice splashes his shoe.
Gansey crouches to pick it up, forcing himself to suck in air. He cracks it open with his hands and juice runs under his cuffs, staining his shirt, getting in between the links of his watch. The seeds wink up at him and he can't remember how many she ate. Four? Fuck it. He puts a chunk in his mouth and scrapes seeds off with his teeth.
He looks up at Ronan and smiles; Ronan's face is in shadow, his body limned in the gold light from the barn and he holds out his hand.
Ronan hauls him to his feet, plucking the pomegranate husk from his hand.
He's quiet for a second, then drops it on the ground and the spell is broken.
Gansey blinks. His cock is half-hard and his cheeks burn in the sudden slap of cool air.
Ronan looks him up and down, quick, and Gansey manages not to squirm. "Blast from the past."
Gansey laughs shakily. "Asshole."
"Hey, wanna go to Ireland for our honeymoon? Declan's paying."
"Sign me up," Gansey laughs again and throws his arm over Ronan's shoulder as Ronan guides them back to the party.
#
The bed and breakfast Declan had booked them into as his wedding gift was exactly the charming and idyllic place Gansey was hoping it would be, in the seaside town of Howth just north of Dublin.
Their room, however, has one less bed than he had been hoping and Gansey's stomach turns over.
"Fucking Declan," Ronan swears, with feeling, as he drops his bag. "And he told the proprietor that this was our honeymoon so we can't change it." He throws himself into one of the armchairs in front of the bay window and yanks off his sneakers. "He's probably one of Declan's little spies, checking up on us through the keyhole."
"Ronan, it's just a bed." Gansey fiddles with his ring and says, "Not like we haven't done it before."
Ronan looks at him with no expression for a second, then frowns. "I still don't like that old fucker."
Gansey laughs, almost with relief. "So I should cancel the dinner I invited him to tonight?"
Ronan throws wadded up socks at him. "I'm taking a shower."
Gansey takes off his shoes and lays down gingerly on the blue and white duvet. The bed isn't huge, but it's certainly bigger than the beds he and Ronan have shared in the past. He rolls on his side and closes his eyes, just for a minute.
When he wakes it's dark, moonlight streaming in the giant window facing the water. He thinks something might have woken him, but maybe the noise was from a dream. He reaches for what he was dreaming about, but it's gone.
The doorknob turns, and Ronan quietly lets himself in.
"What time is it," Gansey says, his voice rough.
"Seven." Ronan turns on a small lamp next to the door, and his face looks soft in the warm light. He holds up a plastic bag. "I brought dinner."
They sit crosslegged on the bed and eat fish and chips soaked in vinegar out of newspaper while Ronan reads from a bunch of tourist pamphlets he snagged from the proprietor ("he was giving me the eye," he says. "Which eye?" Ronan wrinkles his nose, "the sexy eye." And Gansey laughs so hard he inhales half a chip and almost chokes). They wash it down with shots of whiskey from Duty Free, but instead of making Gansey feel tipsy it just makes him tired.
That night in the dark, the bed dips under Ronan's weight, and the smell of cedar and toothpaste and soap is so familiar he thinks it could be six years ago, when they were just figuring things out. He turns his head and Ronan's eyes glint in the moonlight, watching him.
Gansey swallows hard.
"'Night, Dick," Ronan says and rolls over.
"Good night."
Ronan here is different. In contrast to the Ronan who complained about literally every single person on the flight with them and aggressively reclined his seat into the knees of the woman sitting behind them because he was convinced she was a homophobe, this Ronan is more like the first Ronan Gansey had met all those years ago. His shoulders are relaxed and his digs at the people they encounter are more like the shots you'd take at your siblings, almost said with love.
He smiles more, points out to Gansey places he remembers from family trips to see his uncle, who was a fisherman, and his voice is fond, instead of regretful. He talks about Niall, which he doesn't do at home, ever, anymore.
He lets his hand brush Gansey's as they walk through the city center, and though he mocks Gansey mercilessly for dragging them to possibly every haberdashery in Dublin (how are there so many?), it's Ronan who finds the perfect flat cap for him in salt and pepper grey tweed.
He takes Gansey down to Balscadden Bay, where he said he and Declan and Matthew would chase sandpipers along the shoreline. The air smells incongruously like coconut, and the salt spray from the ocean tangles Gansey's hair, makes Ronan's long eyelashes into wet spikes.
Ronan points out where Declan turned his ankle and slid down into a rock pool that opened up into a cave under the cliff. They take off their shoes and socks and roll up their pants and wade into the cave. The craggy ceiling soars above them, covered in glossy lichen, and Gansey imagines Ronan as a boy here, wonders if he was interested in the sealife or the make-up of the rocks or if he was just a boy, wrestling his brothers in the shallow water and sleeping hard that night from the wind and the sun.
It feels like a honeymoon, or what Gansey thinks a honeymoon should feel like: days spent sightseeing or hiking, dinners where they laugh and conspire and eat too much and drink more ("Hey," Ronan says, flagging down the waiter for another bottle of wine, "Declan's paying.")
Except:
Ronan never gets into bed before Gansey, lingering in the bathroom until Gansey is half-asleep. Most of the time Gansey wakes after Ronan is already up and out and he comes back with coffee and pastries. Once he woke early, that same noise from that same dream startling him to reality, and he lays awake and listens to Ronan breathe.
The fifth day Gansey wakes with Ronan pressed along his back, Ronan's arm warm and heavy on him. He feels an unspecific ache in his chest, where his heart is hammering against Ronan's wrist. He tries to stay still, but maybe that's what wakes Ronan, who mumbles something and rubs his nose into Gansey's hair before he stiffens, drawing back slowly.
"Sorry," he says, gravel in his voice.
Gansey rolls onto his back and looks up at him. "Ronan."
Ronan shrugs and flashes Gansey a little grin, swinging his legs out of bed. "Old habits. I'm showering first. Get coffee."
They spend the day in the library at Trinity, and that night they go to a bar in Dublin and Ronan, dressed in an obscenely tight black t-shirt and even tighter jeans, dances with local girls who lick their lips at the sight of his tattoo snaking out of his collar, then sigh dreamily when he introduces his husband.
Gansey's never seen Ronan dance — he didn't know he could dance, he wonders when he would have ever had opportunity to do it. He thinks of those six months, wonders what else he missed, wonders who Ronan was with, how many.
"Dance with your man," a girl shouts in his ear and shoves him into Ronan, who catches him around the waist.
"Wanna give 'em a show?" Ronan says, putting his mouth against Gansey's ear and unbuttoning the second button of Gansey’s henley.
Gansey laughs unsteadily when Ronan rolls his hips into him. "You're so predictable."
He smirks. "What can I say, I like a challenge." He turns and presses his back to Gansey's chest, sliding down and up, tilting his head back against Gansey's shoulder.
Gansey's burning up. He's too drunk and too hot and when Ronan turns around and puts his mouth back against Gansey's ear and says, "Loosen up, Dick, it's just me," he takes it as a dare and Gansey turns his head, his lips dragging over Ronan's cheek until he finds Ronan's mouth.
It's definitely nothing like he remembers, and nothing like the relatively sweet kiss Ronan gave him on their doorstep. Ronan's tongue fills his mouth, licking at the roof of it; the kiss is slow and deep, and it stokes something inside Gansey, who grabs Ronan's head hard, fingers digging into his skull and tilting it so he can get better access.
Suddenly, everything turns wet and almost frantic, and Gansey can feel Ronan hard against his thigh. Gansey presses forward, rocking his leg up and Ronan bites his lower lip, hard, making a pained noise into his mouth.
Gansey becomes aware of a high-pitched noise over his shoulder: One of the girls is whooping. Ronan breaks away, putting his forehead against Gansey's and breathing hard.
"You know, we only have to convince Declan's spy, not the entire city of Dublin," he says, and there's something strange and thick about the way he says it, but Gansey can't focus properly.
Ronan turns to the girls, slinging and arm around Gansey's shoulders. "Shots!" he yells and the girls cheer.
Later they take a cab back, the windows rolled down to let the sea air cool their hot faces, and they can't speak over the sound of the rushing wind.
Ronan crawls into bed without brushing his teeth, kicking the duvet onto the floor. Gansey collapses next to him, and Ronan wriggles an arm under his neck, pulling him in so Gansey curves against him, his head head on Ronan's shoulder.
Gansey thinks he should say something, but instead he lets the smell of Ronan's skin — warm juniper from too many gin and tonics — and the drunk feeling of the bed rocking back and forth lull him to sleep.
The next day is their last. Ronan sleeps in, keeping all the curtains drawn, and Gansey eats breakfast by himself. He walks through Howth Market and browses the jewelry stalls, finding a tiny pair of silver hoops threaded through skulls that he thinks Blue will like. He stops to eat lunch — a curry pasty and a bag of cheese and onion crisps — then passes a gelato shop. He feels a sudden wave of immense homesickness, and he spends an hour searching for the perfect gifts for Adam and Noah (a pair of butter soft leather driving gloves for Adam and a leather pouch for Noah to keep his Cabeswater coin in).
He walks the grounds of Howth Castle and comes across a cairn, four huge stones, as tall as he is and set into a dome, just off the path through the woods behind the castle. He remembers Ronan reading aloud from the pamphlets: it's said to be the final resting place of Aideen, the wife of a long lost Irish kingslayer. She died of grief after he fell in battle, and she was given a royal burial.
Gansey stands looking at it for a long time.
When he gets back to the B&B, Ronan is freshly showered and lacing up his boots. He looks down at Gansey's Topsiders.
"Put on boots. We're going on a haunted hike up Montpelier Hill."
Gansey laughs and the self-pitying feeling that had come over him dissipates. He drops his messenger bag next to the bed. "Of course we are."
The hike takes about an hour, up a heavily wooded hill that Gansey can tell is going to seem steeper going down than it was coming up. Ronan booked them on a ghost tour, which seems ridiculous: Gansey feels done with ghost-hunting himself, but he has to admit this is different. The stories the guide tells seem like quaint old wives' tales and the setting sun casts long shadows from the trees.
He and Ronan trail behind the group, snickering at the stories, and every now and then Ronan, cheeks pink from the cold wind coming down the rocky path from the top, veers off into the woods after some bit of rubble or a shadow of movement.
Towards the top, the stories get a little darker: kidnappings and children turning up dead in the woods; serial killers; mob burial grounds. Ronan sticks to the path and tenses when Gansey strays near the edge.
"This seems less about hauntings and more about people being horrible," Gansey says under his breath.
Ronan doesn't answer him.
The hill flattens out into an expanse of grass, interrupted only by a massive stone structure, a fire-blackened ruin of a mansion, with gaping black holes cut into the front. The sun dips below the horizon and the structure is backlit with the sickly yellow glow thrown against the clouds from Dublin's lights, the city spread out below them where the hill drops off into a sheer cliff.
This is what the guide calls the Hellfire Club.
Ronan shuffles a little closer to him.
In the dim glow, his face looks drawn. Gansey raises an eyebrow at him, "Is this for show? Am I supposed to take your hand."
Ronan spits on the ground and crosses himself quickly. "I don't like the feel of this place."
"We could stay outside."
Ronan sets his jaw and zips his leather jacket up to his chin, striding ahead of Gansey towards the house.
It's almost pitch-black on the inside, the city light barely making it to the slashes cut into the stone for windows. The guide has one flashlight, and the rest of them use their cellphones to see ("Hey, look," Gansey points out. "A crumpled cheetos bag. Very creepy." And Ronan glares at him, even though a smile tugs on the corner of his mouth).
The walls are covered in slime and moss, graffiti here and there. Pigeons roost above the windows, and even Gansey has to admit the beat of their wings and clack of their claws on stone sound creepy by the light of an iPhone.
The thing is, Gansey feels completely cut off from magic. He's never felt anything otherworldly, even when it was standing right in front of him. Blue, Noah (obviously), Ronan, Adam…they all seemed to have a sixth sense about the bad things they had been up against. Blue could always tell when something was close-by. Adam literally bonded with Cabeswater. Ronan can talk to the trees. Noah has seen the other side.
But not Gansey. The only "bad feelings" he ever has comes from logic, never from his gut. He's never felt the prickle of magic. He's died twice, and the jump from death to life felt like an instant: he blinked and took his first breath of his new life. No white light. No life flashing before his eyes. Not even any brimstone.
He's never asked the others what it was like the second time. How long he was dead for. He doesn't want to know.
So he doesn't feel anything here, except thinking this would be an excellent place for a murderer to get victims if he was so inclined.
The flat, round scar on his forehead feels tight and he rubs it, quickly, pretending to push his hair back from his eyes.
Down in the basement, there's one room. The guide tells them it's where the Hellfire Club kept their sacrifices chained before killing them in service of the devil, in the dark with no air, no food. He asks everyone to turn their cellphones off, to stand in silence, in the pitch, for a full minute, to feel what those people must have felt.
Then his flashlight winks off, and Gansey's eyes strain to see something in the blackness.
Ronan's shoulder brushes his, then his hand. He gropes his fingers around Gansey's in the dark and squeezes hard. His breath sounds quick and Gansey moves closer, putting his head against Ronan's shoulder. The silence is deafening, and Ronan is tense, wound tight, almost vibrating.
"Okay!" the guide chirps, thumbing the flashlight back on. "Topside we go!"
Gansey and Ronan are silent all the way down the hill, through the busride back into the city, and then the cabride to Howth.
Laying in bed that night, Ronan curls up behind Gansey. "Is this okay?"
Gansey scoots back against him. "Are you okay?"
The silence stretches for a long moment. "That house was…wrong. Something lives there."
"Who?"
"Not who." Ronan rubs his nose against the pillow then sighs, his breath warm against Gansey's neck. "The trees told me."
Gansey half-turns in question and Ronan shrugs.
"They're old," he says. "As old as Cabeswater. And there's a lot of magic here. It happens sometimes, that's what Adam says."
Gansey turns back.
Ronan is quiet another long minute, and then, "I thought we screwed up, that Adam wished wrong."
Gansey's blood runs to ice through his chest and out into his hands. "What?"
"You were…gone. For a long time."
"No one ever told me that."
Ronan blows out another big breath. "I don't think any of us like to think about it."
"How long."
"Too long." Ronan rolls onto his back. "I thought we lost you."
"But you didn't."
Ronan makes a sad noise. "We did, for a little bit."
"But I came back."
Ronan's eyes glint in the dark as he looks at Gansey. "You always do."
Gansey tries to lighten the mood, calm his jangling nerves. "And you made us a kitchen."
"Mm. A new thing every night."
Gansey's breath hitches. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ever said that. I don't even know why I did." Which is a lie. He's thought about it enough that he realizes now how big a lie it is.
Ronan sighs. "It's okay." Then, after a second, "Do you remember anything? From when Malory…" and he trails off.
Gansey rolls on his back and tries to pick out the overhead light, a dark blur against the dark ceiling without his glasses. "No. I wish I did."
"Does it—do you feel different? Since you came back again?"
Gansey struggles to put it into words. He usually tries not to think about it; he was so low those six months, he doesn't know what was his brain trying to repair broken synapses from the bullet and what was just outright depression. Who was that other boy, the boy who travelled the world looking for a mythical king to grant him a wish? And who is he now?
Finally, he says, hushed, "I feel…more."
Ronan is quiet, and Gansey realizes he's asleep.
In the morning they pack in silence and take a cab to the airport. Ronan puts on headphones and Gansey puts his head against the porthole window, watches the ocean open up under them as they head home.
#
Domesticity with Ronan goes like this:
Ronan wakes up first and goes downstairs to put the coffee on. Gansey likes to lay in bed and read, one of three books he has on his nightstand, until he hears the coffeepot bubbling.
Sometimes Ronan comes back upstairs with two steaming mugs, and Gansey follows him around as he gets ready to go to work if he has the morning shift, talking at him about plans for the weekend, and can Ronan please pick up cereal after work because the bodega that carries it closes before school is out.
Ronan gets dressed (he showers at night, when he gets home) and heads out early to catch the bus (he doesn't like to take his car to the shop) and with no one to talk to Gansey is bored so he takes a shower and then goes to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf that opened around the corner from Aglionby to talk at some more people before class starts.
Ronan gets home first, and he's usually playing video games when Gansey gets home, so Gansey starts dinner, and the two of them eat at their kitchen table, Ronan regaling him with stories of idiot customers and the insane things they manage to do to their cars.
Sometimes they work on the model Henrietta, Ronan having dreamt something the night before that he wanted to see in the landscape, or Gansey reads student papers aloud to him, and they laugh at how stupid they also used to be.
They meet each other in the kitchen at 1am, where Ronan tells Gansey about a dream he was having, and Gansey pretends he dreamed something different than he actually did, because he doesn't really remember, but he knows, deep down, it wasn't his. He thinks Ronan knows, but he has't said anything to him so they both keep pretending.
Sometimes they doze downstairs, sometimes they make it back to their beds.
On the weekends they head for the Barns, slowly, excruciatingly, cleaning out each room in the main house, trying to make it livable.
And this is before they get married.
After they get back from their honeymoon, they decide to get rid of Ronan's bed, put it out on the curb so Declan can see it on one of his weirdo drivebys.
"Amy dumped him," Ronan says, face red with exertion as his shoulders strain under the weight of the bed frame, biceps bulging. Gansey guides a bed leg out the window, and below, Blue is shouting, "Left! To the left!"
"So his next best thing is perving on his little brother and his new husband?" Adam tries to laugh but his grip almost slips.
"He's dedicated."
Adam adjusts his stance. "How did you get this thing up here in the first place? And was it easier than trying to go through the window?"
"Dumb waiter," Gansey says through clenched teeth. "But I thought this would be easier than breaking it down again."
"Ronan, you're the closest we have to an engineer, next time you're in charge of logistics."
That night Declan does drive by, and Gansey, siting at his desk in the window, salutes him.
They move Gansey's bed — now "their" bed — into Ronan's room and Ronan moves into Noah's room, though to keep up pretenses they call it the guest room. Though after three nights of Ronan accidentally climbing into bed next to Gansey after coming back from the bathroom or kitchen in the middle of the night, pretense becomes reality and Ronan moves back into his room.
For a week, Gansey spends the minutes between waking and sleeping waiting for Ronan to say something about it, but he never does. So he doesn't, either.
They find a deep, soft couch in the basement in the main house at the Barns that they load onto a trailer and haul back to Monmouth to put in the living room.
He likes sharing a bed with Ronan, it's comfortable and familiar, and they're spending so much time at the Barns now, that the smell clings to Ronan's hair and skin.
"Remember when I used to sleep over in your room," Gansey says one night and Ronan hms, moonlight edging along the muscles shifting in his shoulders as he tries to get comfortable.
"What happened to that orrery you had?" Gansey sees it against the backs of his eyelids when he closes his eyes, the delicate filament of the sun burning hot behind frosted golden glass, the planets tiny metal spheres with chipping paint.
Ronan doesn't answer for a long time. They don't talk about that time — Gansey had mostly forgotten the bulk of it, small details springing to mind while the full picture eludes him. He knows they practiced kissing, he's always remembered that, but the kiss in Dublin has sparked a fire of memories that pop up at awkward times. The orrery is at the center of a lot of them, Ronan's face soft and open in the glow of it.
He wonders if Ronan ever thinks about it. Thinks about them. He wonders if Adam knows. He had told Blue when they started dating, and he could see something in her eyes that she swears was nothing, though her friendship with Ronan really started then, he thinks, right before they found Glendower.
Finally, Ronan says, "I think I got rid of it. I don't remember."
If Gansey has his online class after school, Ronan gets take-out and they sit and eat in front of the television when he's done. Ronan never has to ask, he always seems to know what Gansey wants: tonight it's Drunken Noodles from the Thai place on First, so spicy he can't taste anything for an hour after, and Ronan recoils when Gansey offers him a forkful. "Fool me once," he says, and Gansey laughs thinking of last week, when Ronan had leaned across the table and wiped a smudge of dark orange chili oil off Gansey's chin with his thumb then popped it in his mouth. He had drank the remains of a carton of half and half in one gulp.
Two days later Ronan asks Gansey to help him shave his head, after he comes home with a rag tied around his hand from a muffler burn.
Ronan sits on the lip of the tub and pulls his shirt off. "You have to click it in like this," he says, showing Gansey where the guide comb clips above the edge of the razor.
He swings his legs over into the tub, and Gansey rubs tentative fingers over the crown of Ronan's head, along his widow's peak, before clicking the clippers on.
Ronan's eyes close, dark lashes laying against his cheeks.
Ronan's head feels warm and delicate under Gansey's fingers, as he negotiates it this way and that, sliding the clippers up from the base of it and around his ears. It's almost painfully intimate, all of who Ronan is enclosed in the shell of his skull, cradled in Gansey's palm.
Fine black hairs fall to dust Ronan's shoulders and Gansey brushes them off, raising gooseflesh down Ronan's spine, under the tattoo that seems to sprawl further down Ronan's back and up his neck every time Gansey sees it. Muscles shift along his ribs as he adjusts his seat on the tub and Gansey wets his dry lips.
He's never let himself really look at Ronan's body, not even when they were experimenting at the Barns, averting his eyes when Ronan gets out of the shower, and looking elsewhere when he strips to get into bed. He's long and lean with narrow shoulders that are dotted with a handful of dark moles, and Gansey vividly remembers the feel of the ropy muscles there under his hands.
Ronan tips his head back and opens his eyes halfway. He has a freckle in his left iris.
"Almost done," Gansey says, clearing his throat, and he finishes quickly.
He turns to leave, and accidentally catches Ronan's eyes in the mirror.
Ronan's face is flushed, maybe from the heat of the windowless bathroom and there's a red mark under his chin, like a bite mark. He holds Gansey's eyes for a beat too long before leaning over to turn on the shower, ducking his head to stick it under the spray, rubbing his hand over it to rinse out the loose hair.
It feels like the edges of something are fraying, but Gansey shies away from inspecting that thought too closely.
Not much longer, he assures himself, though he doesn't like thinking about that, either.
They go on a double-date with Adam and the bartender, whose name is Tim, to see the new Star Wars movie, and then out to dinner.
"Not pizza," Adam had said, so Ronan brings them to a new place that just opened in the town center, some gastropub that serves deconstructed pub food, and Ronan hooks his arm over the back of Gansey's chair, runs his fingers along the collar of Gansey's sweater, making gooseflesh prickle along his arms.
Ronan smiles at him, one of his full grins that still makes Gansey's stomach flip (still?) and orders for him when the waitress comes. By the time the food arrives they've drank an entire bottle of wine and Gansey is feeling warm and happy.
After dinner they walk to a cab stand.
"Tim is probably coming home with us," Gansey says, watching Adam do his sheepish feet-shuffling, neck rubbing thing he does when he's pulling.
Ronan cocks an eyebrow sardonically, "You think?"
Gansey laughs, and Ronan puts an arm around him to steady him, though he's not exactly a rock right now. Gansey stumbles, and leans on Ronan's chest.
A movement catches his eye: it's Declan, a blond girl on his arm. It could be coincidence, he's not looking at them. But still.
"Kiss me," he murmurs to Ronan, and Ronan blinks down at him.
"Just—" Gansey leans up and brushes his mouth over Ronan's.
Ronan seems like he's not going to react, until his arms come up and he takes Gansey's head in his hands, gently, and kisses back. He backs Gansey against the cabstand, pressing himself along Gansey's body, and kisses him excruciatingly slow and soft.
When he breaks away, they're both breathing hard and Ronan smiles slowly, tucking an escaped strand of hair over Gansey's ear. "I like your hair like this," he murmurs, and in his voice is a secret.
Next to them, Declan says, "Gentleman," and Ronan whips his head around.
"Dec," Gansey says, ultra polite, his hands still fisted in the lapels of Ronan's jacket.
Ronan's face has gone neutral and his body sways away from Gansey's, not enough that anyone but Gansey would notice. He gives the girl a once over. "Did he make you dye your hair blond to match his last one?" he says, cruel and unlike himself.
The girl's cheeks go a dull red and Declan shoves Ronan. "Fuck you, Ro."
A cab comes and Ronan opens the passenger door and gets in.
From the backseat, Gansey sees him pull out his phone, texting briefly with someone.
When they get back, there's an unfamiliar car in the parking lot. Adam takes Tim up to the guest room, and Ronan seems suddenly jittery. "Wait here," he says, and Gansey lingers in the doorway, watching Ronan lean into the driver's side window, his body loose, one hip cocked.
When he comes back he smiles apologetically at Gansey. "Night shift," he says, "they got the days mixed up." He kisses Gansey's cheek, "Don't wait up," and he trots off to the car, sliding in the passenger side with a laugh that Gansey hasn't heard in a long time.
Gansey lays awake waiting for him, listening to the bed thump in the other room.
Just the night shift? the voice in his gut says.
When Ronan gets home Gansey can hear him tugging off his boots, the jangle of his belt buckle and rustle of clothes hitting the floor. The shower comes on, and ten minutes later he slides into bed, damp heat rolling off him.
"Dick, you awake?"
"Yeah."
"Look, I'm sorry," and Gansey's stomach flipflops, desperately not wanting to hear about the black car that comes to get him sometimes, "about the thing with Declan," Ronan goes on. "He's an asshole, and I…really appreciate what you're doing for me."
Gansey gropes his mouth onto Ronan's prickly head and kisses his temple fiercely. "It's his weird way of showing he cares about you. And don't thank me," he says, gruffly. "Please."
"It'll be done soon," Ronan says, "I think I can sign the papers in a few weeks."
Gansey nods. "Good, that's good."
Ronan doesn't answer, though they're both awake for a long time after that.
#
Declan is waiting for Gansey when class lets out. He's leaning his hip on the driver's side door of the Pig, and Gansey has to blink hard, he looks like a buttoned-up version of Ronan.
"Hey, big brother," Gansey says, because he knows it annoys him, and Declan's constant monitoring is starting to get to him a little.
Ever since he came back, Gansey's patience isn't what it used to be. No, he corrects himself, it was never good, but he was good at pretending that it was until even he believed it.
"I need to talk to you."
"You know where I live."
"Uninterrupted."
Gansey rubs his eyes under the bridge of his glasses. "Look, Dec, you know I've always tried to mediate between the two of you because I think your relationship is important, but we're all adults and it's time to move on. Ronan can make his own decisions."
Declan smiles thinly. "I know he can. But we both know those decisions aren't always the greatest even in the best of times."
"Still," Gansey says, and he jingles his keys. "I think this has gone on long enough."
Declan moves enough to let Gansey open the door, but he puts his hand on it so he can't close it. "It has. I'll be upfront with you, Gansey. Obviously the past few months have shown I can't put a stop to this charade, and eventually Ronan is going to get his part of the trust, as he should."
He looks sad and angry and Gansey has never seen Declan look like this before. "But I don't want him to get hurt. And he's going to if you don't end this."
"I love Ronan," Gansey says, and though it's true it feels to Gansey almost like a lie. I always have, he wants to say, and though this is also true, it also feels not entirely so. He plows on, "I would never hurt him."
Declan looks past Gansey to the school, where boys are milling on the front lawn. "Do you know where he goes at night?"
Gansey gets in the Pig and tugs on the door. Declan lets go, and it slams shut. "I'm not doing this."
Declan leans down and talks to Gansey through the half-open window. "Have you ever asked him? You should."
Gansey thinks of the cars he used to see in the parking lot at Monmouth, how Ronan has the same red marks on his throat sometimes that he did then, the same chafed skin on the back of his neck that looks like beard burn.
He skin feels too hot and a headache has started over his left eye.
He starts the car with a rumble. "Don’t come around anymore.”
“Is that a threat?” Declan laughs, mocking.
Gansey throws the gearshift into reverse. “Yes.”
Ronan smiles at him over dinner that night, chicken saltimbocca with polenta from the recipe book that Gansey's mother gave him, the recipe book that was meant for Helen.
Gansey smiles back, and doesn't bring it up.
After, while Ronan is washing the dishes, Gansey picks a piece of mint off the plant on the table and chews it, thinking about tracing his finger over Ronan's tattoo where it curls around his shoulder and up his neck.
Outside, a car honks. Ronan shuts off the water and dries his hand on a towel. "Late shift, someone cancelled." Ronan comes around the edge of the table and smirks, "Don't wait up," their little joke. He leans down and goes to give Gansey a peck on his cheek.
Gansey turns his head and kisses his mouth, tender and chaste, and it goes on a beat longer than he means it to.
Ronan pulls back, puzzled, and Gansey immediately feels awful, feels petty. "Don't work too hard, honey," he says, lamely.
Ronan gives him a strange look, and grabs his jacket off the back of a chair. "Back by 3."
"Yeah."
The door closes behind him.
Gansey listens to the clock above the stove tick, and HRH is giving him a pitying look. She's right. If Ronan wants to see other people, he should be able to.
This isn't real. This was never real.
But that feels like the biggest lie yet.
#
"…And even though they're not chronological, you really should watch them in release order. Some people say otherwise, but basically my rule is to do the opposite of what Adam does when it comes to movies or books or anything other than cars or being emotionally repressed."
Gansey nods and tries to poke his straw into the holes in the ice in his iced coffee. Houston Street is packed with people today, groups of prospective NYU students and their teary-eyed parents, and Gansey leans back against the bench outside Starbucks, keeping his legs crossed so no one trips over his feet.
Blue has no class for the next two days, and Ronan is working double shifts, so Gansey decided to come up to visit.
Over Blue's shoulder, there's a woman struggling to hold the door to Starbucks open while juggling a venti latte and the leash to a puggle that seems to be doing its best to trip her. Anxiety prickles up his back, he can't decide whether to get up and offer help. "Why didn't we work out, do you think?"
Blue looks up, shading her eyes against the sun slanting across West Broadway. "You mean besides the fact that we were in high school and you were obsessed with a dead English guy—"
"Welsh."
"—a dead Welsh guy and there was a good period there where I made out with one of your best friends because I couldn't make out with you and then it turned out that maybe I was a little in love with him?"
The straw folds under the sudden and extreme pressure and it flicks an ice cube onto the bench between them. "It's not my fault it's easier for Noah to get to New York than it is for the Pig."
Blue's left eyebrow raises impressively high to be seen over her Jackie O sunglasses. "There's also the small matter of that of which we usually do not speak, when you effectively dumped me and disappeared for six months."
"Yeah, well," he mumbles.
Blue takes off her sunglasses and then takes his hand. The sky is clear and the air is warm in the sun but crisp in the shade, and her rings are cool against his fingers. "I think we all had the sword of fate hanging over us for way too long, when we were way too young. I mean, not everything had to be about Cabeswater or Glendower."
Gansey can't help but smile a little. "Just most things."
Blue laughs. "Yeah, most things. But not all things. It just seemed that way at the time."
They're quiet a second, Blue's thumb rubbing circles over the back of Gansey's hand. He wanted this to be it. It's not really that in practice he and Blue were so great together, it's that he just wanted them to be because that was how the story was supposed to go.
She's smart and funny and beautiful and likes cars and can do an academic tarot reading and when they finally said fuck it and decided to kiss each other he felt like his heart was going to pound out of his chest and when they had sex it was awkward and over too fast but the next few times were really fun and he wanted her to be the one.
But she wasn't.
"Also," she says, "You weren't in love with me."
"I wasn't?"
"No," she says. "Maybe a little, maybe enough for the time, but not really."
Gansey's quiet a second. "Why not?"
Blue looks at him frankly, a look that Gansey valiantly manages to not squirm under. Finally, she says, "I think that's something only you can answer, Dick."
He's tried to do that a million times. He's tried to figure out where it went wrong, when he realized he loved her but wasn't in love with her, what is has to do with Adam, what it has to do with Ronan, why the idea of him touching other men, other men touching him, makes him want to punch something, maybe punch Ronan. He wonders why he can still see Skip Sutherland so clearly sometimes, so many years later, the look on his face when Ronan was getting him off behind the boathouse.
He wonders what's wrong with him.
He sees a box in his mind that he had almost forgotten about. He thinks it used to be taped up tight but now the edges are starting to peel.
He scrubs a hand over his face. "Okay."
She leans in to give him a soft kiss on the corner of his mouth, then settles back, sliding on her sunglasses.
"Thanks, Jane," he says roughly.
"Thank me with another coffee."
He laughs and stands. "Sure. What do you want?"
"I dunno," she says, fishing out a cube of ice from his cup and crunching down on it. "Surprise me."
He turns at the door, palm on the handle. "So…venti PSL?"
He just barely ducks a facefull of ice.
#
Ronan signs the papers at the bank on a Monday, and by Thursday the money has been transferred into Ronan's account.
The car has come to get him twice in those four days, and Gansey forces himself not to sit by the window in the dark like a stalker, instead grading papers until the font blurs.
Declan comes by on Friday and gives Ronan an actual set of keys, what looks like twenty of them, that will open every lock on the Barns' grounds.
Gansey stays upstairs and watches through the window (still not like a stalker, he hopes). Declan talks for a long time, then hands Ronan a manila envelope. Ronan looks at it a second, then slowly takes it.
They shake hands.
There's a hot coal of anger burning in the pit of Gansey's stomach. He feels sick at the thought the next few days, waiting on pins and needles for Ronan to tell him he's moving out, and throws himself on the couch, booting up Call of Duty.
Ronan bounds back upstairs. "Finally!" he says with a huge grin and goes into the bedroom. "My brother is the world's biggest asshole but he's also the world's biggest stickler." He jingles the keys merrily. "Every key is here, and the deeds are all in my name, though they won't be able to get me copies until next week."
The envelope is folded lengthways, stuck in his back pocket.
Gansey pauses the game, and hears papers shuffling in the bedroom, the closet door opening and closing.
When Ronan comes back out, he stops at the look on Gansey's face. "What's wrong with you?"
"Class was a nightmare," Gansey says, and cleans his glasses on the edge of his shirt.
"Bunch of little shits. Are they getting worse?"
It's too hot in the apartment and Gansey tilts his head pretending to consider. "At least none of them show up to class drunk."
Ronan blinks and his eyebrows pull together in confusion. He shakes it off with an uneasy laugh. "Yeah, I guess after me a class full of bratty millennials is nothing."
Gansey nods at the keys Ronan is still holding. "Should we celebrate?"
"Yeah. Call Adam? Order pizza?"
Gansey leans all the way into the anger. "I was thinking we could do some shots then go see Declan's lawyer and file for separation."
Ronan stops in his tracks to the stairs. "What?"
Gansey shrugs expansively. "We could plead no fault, but then we couldn't really start proceedings for another six months. Or, maybe we could just, oh I don't know, make up a problem, then we'd be able to file right away."
Ronan pushes his tongue into his lower lip, his jaw jutting out.
His skin feels like it's stretched too tight over his bones, and Gansey stands slowly. "It's brilliant, really. Is he on retainer? You text him every few days and then we have a clear path to a quickie divorce. No separation period needed for prolonged infidelity."
Ronan blanches, but there are two spots of color burning on his sharp cheekbones. "Fuck you." And he turns his back, making fists at his sides, his shoulders heaving.
"I hope you're being safe, at least."
Gansey is rooted to the floor when Ronan turns back and throws the keys at the opposite wall, his face contorted and almost ugly. Gansey suddenly realizes how much bigger Ronan is than him, how much muscle he's put on over the years.
"Fuck you," Ronan says again, "And fuck your holier than thou, good little rich boy hetero bullshit. Of course I'm safe, not that is has anything to do with you."
The rich line hurts. Ronan wasn't supposed to think that of him, too. "Doesn't it? Who's bed do you sleep in every night?"
"Yeah, for show, or to make some point," Ronan spits. "I know what you're actually mad about. You hate that I don't need you anymore, that I have a life I decided on."
Pettiness flashes through him. "With money and land you only have because of me."
Ronan stares. "You want gratitude? Don't hold your breath. I don't owe you anything more than I've already given you. Six years of my life as your fucking lapdog."
"Don't make this about me or about Glendower, that's ancient history. You could have walked away, you had six months where I wasn't keeping you here, slumming it as a mechanic in some backwoods auto body shop instead of trying to live up to your potential."
"Tell me more about my potential, Adjunct Gansey."
Gansey bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes blood. "There's nothing wrong with teaching."
Ronan laughs at him, and it's discordant and mean. "No, and you're probably good at it, too. An entire classroom of budding personalities under your thumb, for you to shape into what you think they should be."
"At least I'm doing something. You build us a kitchen, build cars and skyscrapers and entire city blocks from nothing but your mind and they're visionary! It's your real legacy, and you're wasting it!"
Ronan roars, grabs one of the skyscrapers from the model Henrietta and smashes it over his knee. What looked like sleek glass and metal turns back into cardboard and Ronan crushes one half in his grip.
Both of them are breathing hard, and Gansey feels wild-eyed, hyper aware of every dust mote kicked up by the model breaking, the vein ticking in Ronan's throat, the stinging on the backs of his own eyes. "I was trying to help you—"
Ronan eyes are red-rimmed and sad. "I know. But you can't fix everything."
"And he can?" Gansey gestures to the window.
Ronan scrubs a hand over his face and laughs humorlessly. "Jesus fucking Christ, let it go."
"No, why him?" Gansey asks miserably. "I don't understand—"
"Because I needed something more!" Ronan shouts. He jabs his finger into the air between them. "I can't do this! This, this fucking playacting with you is killing me. Yeah, I sleep in your bed and you make dinner and we go on dates and sometimes you let me kiss you for the official record and it's meaningless! I need something real, and this shit with you isn't real!"
It's a punch in the stomach, an echo of the little voice that lives deep in Gansey's gut, but Gansey barrels on, through clenched teeth. "He's not real."
"He's not pretending to be! What do you want? You want an actual relationship, with compromises and fighting? You'd hate that."
"Ronan..." Gansey can feel all his blood pumping through his brain, too much, too fast, and he's punch drunk with it, like when Ronan hit him in the face years ago, knocking something loose inside him.
"That's not what you want?" Ronan gets in his space, so close Gansey has to tip his head back to look at him. "So what do you want? You want me to fuck you? Is that it?"
Gansey's eyes blink rapidly. "That's not—" he says, uncertainly. "We're more than that—"
Ronan grabs his upper arms, hard, and shakes him. "What is it, Dick? Tell me what we have is real, lie to me like you lie to everyone else, I'll knock you right the fuck out."
There's only one way to answer him.
Gansey lunges forward and crashes his mouth into Ronan's, grabbing Ronan's wrists and squeezing. Ronan makes a noise, a keen, into him and slides his hands into Gansey's hair, making fists so tight it hurts, pain singing along Gansey's scalp and down his spine, straight into his dick.
Gansey scrabbles at the waist of Ronan's shirt, and Ronan breaks away only for as long as it takes to get it up over his head, then he's back on him, biting at Gansey's mouth, licking into it, his fingers working the buttons on Gansey's shirt.
"Fuck," Ronan swears breathlessly when he gets to Gansey's A-frame under his button down, and Gansey laughs, a little hysterically.
"Sorry," he breathes.
Ronan slides his palms up under it, slow, making Gansey shudder. "I can work with it," he says and rolls a thumb over Gansey's left nipple.
Gansey bites off a groan and his knees go weak. He backs Ronan into the couch and they go down hard, Gansey straddling him. He bites Ronan's collarbone where his tattoo winds over his shoulder, grinding his hips down into him.
"Get this off," Ronan says and they struggle to get Gansey's layers off. Ronan flips them over and he sucks Gansey's right nipple into his mouth.
Gansey bangs his head against the arm of the couch, strange electricity arcing through him as Ronan sucks kisses against his chest and his belly, and he tugs on Ronan's head to get him to move back up. Ronan looks up with a question and practically slinks up Gansey's body, and Gansey wonders how on earth he's going to last more than a minute.
"I just, I want to—" Gansey kisses his throat, bites his chin, lets his hands trace the knobs on Ronan's spine, his fingers finding the places in Ronan's tattoo that healed slightly raised, the places he realizes now he's been dying to touch: the branch of an apple tree that forms one arm of a cross, a raven's beak, the celtic knot that matches the tiny snake on Gansey's tie, the one that moved when he touched it.
Ronan jerks at the pads of Gansey's fingers on the knot and Gansey puts his face into the crook of Ronan's shoulder and breathes him in, familiar scent of cedar and grass and sweat.
He slides his hands around the waistband of Ronan's jeans and urges him onto his knees to get better access. Ronan locks eyes with him, electric blue, and Gansey unbuckles Ronan's belt, the buttons of his jeans opening with one hard tug.
And then Ronan's cock is in Gansey's hand, hard and hot and Ronan's arms are shaking, his whole body is shaking, as Gansey jerks him off. His palm is slippery with precome, and he squeezes at the top, hard. He feels powerful, holding Ronan on the edge.
"Dick," Ronan says and kisses him softly, slowly, and there's always been something about his name in Ronan's mouth, like it's a secret only Ronan knows; it sends a dart of pleasure right through Gansey's cortex and into his brain stem. Gansey rewards him, sliding his hand down and up and Ronan goes blurry, panting into Gansey's mouth and making quiet, desperate noises, until he goes stiff, goosebumps prickling over his chest, and he comes all over Gansey's fist, his belly.
"Oh, fuck." Ronan is the hottest thing he's ever seen in his life, and Gansey has never been more turned on. He feels like he's having one, long orgasm that he doesn't remember the start of.
Ronan struggles to catch his breath, and when he lifts his head his eyes are almost black, the pupils blown out and soft. "Language, Dickie," he says, a lazy grin blurring the words.
Gansey is unsteady and burning hot and he claws at his own zipper, trying to get his pants off, caught under Ronan's weight. "Shut up and help me."
With shaking hands, Ronan bats Gansey's away, unzips Gansey's jeans and pulls them down and off, tugging his ass to the edge of the couch as he slides to his knees on the hardwood. He palms Gansey's thighs, his hands rough and hot, and Gansey feels like he might die if Ronan doesn't touch him soon.
"Please," he croaks, and Ronan's smile is a slow burn as he leans forward, breathing on the head of his cock.
"Please, what?"
"Anything," Gansey whispers, but that's a lie, and Ronan knows it. "Your mouth—"
Ronan wraps a hand around the root of him, then licks a long stripe up his dick before closing his lips over the head of it. He bobs his head slow and steady, and Gansey bites his palm to stop himself from grabbing Ronan's head and shoving himself as deep as he can go.
The world narrows to Ronan's tight, hot mouth around him, the dangerous edge of his teeth, Ronan's spit dribbling down his dick to pool in his pubic hair. The air is literally steamy and smells like sex and something greedy has broken open inside Gansey, needing more, more, something more he can't name.
He spreads his legs and makes a broken noise and Ronan looks up through those long, black lashes at him, before pulling off with a wet pop. "I know what you need," he says, his voice jagged, and he sucks his own middle finger until it's dripping, runs it through a slick of precome.
He puts his cheek against Gansey's dick and slides his finger behind Gansey's balls, which are so high and tight they're practically crawling back inside him, until he touches the pad of it, lightly, against the pucker of Gansey's asshole, stroking it until it's wet, too.
There's a question in Ronan's eyes.
Gansey feels empty, feels that greedy thing searching for something, and he nods frantically, gripping the back of the couch behind his head so hard that the frame creaks.
Ronan presses firmly, rhythmically, and Gansey squirms. "Breathe," Ronan says, "relax," and he slips his mouth around the head of Gansey's cock
Suddenly Gansey's body opens, just a little, and pulls the tip of Ronan's finger inside; it feels strange and full and Gansey sobs, a circuit closing, finally.
Ronan fucks him carefully and sucks him hard and Gansey grits his teeth and forces all his breath from his lungs, trying to last. He's caught between Ronan's hand, literally pinning him down, and Ronan's mouth, flaying him open.
"Ronan—" he says and Ronan swallows around him, the head of Gansey's cock bumping the back of Ronan's throat, and then Gansey is coming, harder than he ever has in his life, his body curling over Ronan's head as he digs his fingers into Ronan's shoulders.
It's a long, long minute before Gansey's body can relax, and he feels Ronan pull his finger out, slow, circling his hole, bringing him down.
Gansey's literally never felt better, ever, in any of his lives.
He pulls Ronan up and onto the couch, scooting over as far as he can to give Ronan some room.
Ronan is beaming, his eyes glittering, and Gansey pulls him in for a kiss.
Ronan tries to pull away, laughing, "You won't like that," with a rough, scratchy voice, but Gansey knows he will, and he's right, licking into Ronan's mouth to find that Ronan tastes like him, a little bitter, but also like himself still.
His cock gives a weak little twitch and Ronan laughs again, pushing Gansey's sweaty hair off his forehead.
"So how do I rate," Gansey says, teasing, and he's already drifting away, the weight of Ronan on top of him combining with possibly the greatest orgasm any man has ever had to make a powerful narcotic.
Ronan makes a strange noise, but then Gansey feels a soft, soft kiss on his eyelid and Ronan pushes his face into his neck.
He sleeps.
#
Gansey wakes up with sunlight hitting him square in the face and he screws his eyes shut again, struggling to sit up, the comforter from the bed sliding half off of him and onto the floor.
He's sore all over from sleeping on the couch and his insides feels strange, over-full and hollow at the same time.
He thinks of Ronan's mouth on him, Ronan's finger pressing up inside him, and his whole body blushes.
He could jerk off now, really, and the thought of it could probably get him off in about point five seconds, but he'd rather enlist Ronan again, and he wouldn't mind turning the tables, either. He wonders what Ronan will taste like, he wonders what noises Ronan will make.
His body misses Ronan, and when he thinks about Ronan slicking his hand up, stretching him out, sliding two fingers inside him, three…
He snatches his hand away from his dick and breathes out, hard. He needs coffee and he wants Ronan.
The sound of the coffeemaker puffing and hissing draws him downstairs almost as much as the smell of coffee itself. He pulls on his jeans and his button down and pads downstairs.
"I'll make bacon if you do the eggs," he says, but Ronan isn't there. He goes back upstairs and knocks on the bathroom door, but it swings open, the room empty.
Same thing in the bedroom. The bed is mostly made, except for the comforter, and nothing seems out of place.
Maybe he went out to get doughnuts. Maybe he wanted to let Gansey sleep so he went to run errands. Maybe he picked up an early shift so they could spend the evening together.
Maybe.
And yet.
For the first time in his life, Gansey understands the meaning of the phrase "gut feeling". It's ice spreading out inside him, literally from his gut, and his fingers and toes feel numb as he forces himself to walk in, to slide open Ronan's side of the closet.
It's empty.
Gansey sits on the edge of the bed because his legs won't support him anymore.
Ronan is gone.
He starts calling Blue five times, finger hovering over her name in his favorites, before putting the phone back on the desk. He doesn't know what he would even say.
Ronan and I had sex and then he dumped me, either six hours after we started dating or six years, I can't tell what the beginning actually was.
He doesn't know how he thought this would all go, anyway. He wanders Monmouth, and everything in it is something he and Ronan built, something that was for them. He'll probably have to burn the place to the ground after this is over. He has a good insurance policy, at least.
His insides feel like one huge, raw wound, and everything makes pain prickle along his nerve endings.
He picks the phone up again and looks at Ronan's name at the top of his favorites list, a small photo of him scowling next to his name. He presses it, then immediately hangs up.
He thinks of Ronan inside him and he takes a long, scalding hot shower, sitting under the spray until his back and chest and knees are pink and raw.
Six hours later he's in front of Blue's apartment on 7th Street, and this time he punches her number.
"I'm downstairs," he says, miserably, when she answers, and in five minutes she's there, reaching up to wind her arms around his shoulders and tucking herself close.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs. "What happened?"
Gansey puts his face on the crown of her head. "I—" He thinks of the fight, the sex, Ronan's heavy arm across his chest on the couch and his warm breath on his throat. "I don't know."
Blue sighs. "Are you sure about that?"
He stays with her and Noah for three days. They go to The Strand and to Film Forum and work their way through the beer menu at the Belgian, and for three days Gansey convinces himself that he's not thinking about Ronan, that he doesn't wake up and reach for him, that his heart doesn’t dive-bomb his toes whenever he sees a shaved head in the crowd.
"Talk to him," she says, leaning into the window of the Pig as Gansey starts the car.
Gansey runs a hand through his hair, snagging his ring in a knot and smiles thinly. "He literally disappeared in the night. I think that's a pretty clear sign he's done with me."
Blue presses her lips together and looks like she's going to say something, then shakes her head. "So what are you going to do?"
He does what he always does: he crams everything back down as best he can and plows ahead, pretending to be okay until he is okay.
He goes to class, he grades papers, he has lunch with Andy Nichols, the new Latin teacher this semester, who's a little older and a lot handsome and definitely flirting with him in a very non-threatening way.
That night, while he's making dinner, he takes his ring off and puts it in the junk drawer in the kitchen.
He works on his Masters thesis (Masculinities, Gendered Expression, and the Social, Emotional, and Academic Well-Being of High School Boys) on the weekends. He cooks his way through the cookbook his mother had given him. He sleeps on an air mattress in the main room, flipping through channels and marathoning the saddest Tenth Doctor episodes of Doctor Who because he's a five foot ten walking cliche.
Sometimes when he gets home from school, another small thing is missing from Monmouth: a print Ronan had put up, Ronan's copy of Star Wars: Battlefront, the bird friendly coffee he orders in bulk from Canada.
On bad days, he has setbacks: he drives past the auto body shop at night, when the orange of the Pig won't be so noticeable, and parks with a clear sightline. Sometimes he watches Ronan work, putting a car up on lifts or leaning under a hood. He takes coffee breaks (no smoke breaks, so that's good), one night with another mechanic, blond and tall and broad-shouldered and they laugh with their heads close to each other, the man's hand lingering on Ronan's knee.
Gansey can almost feel the guy's nose breaking under his fist, so he drives home, slowly and carefully.
Noah is there when he gets home, sitting on the couch and reading one of the beat-up paperbacks from Helen, a slim, cracked copy of Kafka's "The Judgement."
"He just needs some time," Noah says, looking up at Gansey, who knows he must look crazy, hair free from it's knot, tangled from the wind rushing into the open windows on the drive home. Also, it's 2:30 in the morning.
Gansey strips off his button-down and toes off his shoes, crawling onto the air mattress. He should have grabbed some mint on the way upstairs. "You've seen him?"
Noah nods. "He's okay, if that's what you're wondering."
He has wondered. He wonders if he’s sleeping, if he’s dreaming; Gansey’s have stopped, there’s just a void where his dreams used to be. He wonders if he’s started smoking again, if he’s sleeping in his old room, if he touches that other guy the way he touched Gansey.
He nods, a lump the size of a peach pit stuck in his throat.
Noah sighs and puts the book down. He curls up behind Gansey on the air mattress and strokes his hair and says again, "He just needs some time."
Gansey feels it when he leaves, the air going hot and still in his aftermath.
Christmas comes and Blue and Noah stay with him on break. He buys Blue a navy Italian stadium wool cocoon coat and Noah a set of cashmere mittens and matching hat and they both kiss him, trying not to be sad. Gansey has to go sit in the bathroom because he feels a panic attack coming on. He splashes water on his face then goes back out and they all drink champagne until they fall asleep in Gansey's bed in Ronan's room.
A month goes by. He goes to his barber and asks him to cut it all off, short on the sides and a little longer on top. The next day Andy blinks when he sees him in the hall and licks his lips quickly, like he doesn't know he's doing it. When he asks Gansey out after lunch, Gansey says yes.
They get drinks with the possibility of dinner ("No pressure!"), but never make it to actual dinner, instead making out in Andy's car, across the street from Monmouth.
Gansey pulls away and puts his hand over Andy's when Andy slides it over his inner thigh. "Sorry, I—"
Andy blows out a hard breath, his face apologetic and a little wry. "No, I know. I'm sorry. You're just…" he laughs, "The way you look right now, well all the time, really. You know. I got carried away."
Gansey, in fact, does not know. He thinks he's young and stupid with hair he hasn't figured out how to style yet and owlish, unfocused eyes because Andy took his glasses off and he still hasn't filled his prescription for contacts. He thinks he's foolish because he is foolish.
"Look," Andy takes his hand, this thumb stroking the bare, thin skin on his ring finger. "I know it's still new. Let me know when you're ready."
Gansey leans in to kiss him again, deeply, just to make sure. When he pulls back, he can see on Andy's face that he knows, too, that Gansey won't be ready, at least not with Andy.
Andy smiles at him anyway, and Gansey slides out of the car.
Inside, he looks at himself in the huge gothic mirror that Ronan found in the basement of Monmouth years ago, leaning against the wall next to the door. His mouth is red and swollen and his clothes are rumpled and his face is sad.
"Hot date?"
Gansey spins around, his heart rattling his ribs, and Adam is there, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the paper.
Gansey glares at him. "Do you guys ever call ahead?"
Adam laughs. "Why? We all have keys."
Gansey loosens his tie and collapses into an armchair. "Starting to feel like A Christmas Carol in here."
"Yeah, I'm the ghost of Getting Your Shit Together."
"Ha ha." Gansey's hands shake as he rolls the tie into a neat spiral then unrolls it again.
Adam folds the paper and brings his coffee into the sitting area, taking a spot on the couch. "So."
Gansey wipes a hand over his mouth. "I was on a date."
"I can see. How did it go?"
"I'm probably going to die whatever the male version of a spinster is."
Adam rolls his eyes. "I hate to be the one to say this because Blue will probably kick my ass for doing it first, but you really have no one to blame but yourself."
"Thank you, your kindness is much appreciated." Gansey chucks the tie on the coffee table and it rolls off the edge.
"No, really." Adam puts his coffee down and leans forward. "This seems willfully blind, even for you."
"What do you mean?" Gansey is affronted. He always takes everything head on.
"I mean that the martyr schtick is getting a little old. We get it, we all get it, you want everyone to be happy and fulfilled. But you can't keep making decisions for us, we have our own lives now."
It's uncomfortably close to the fight he and Ronan had had, and Gansey forces himself not to shift in his chair. "I don't make decisions for everyone."
"No, you create situations where the only solution is your solution. You don't let anyone have all the information so they can maybe find a different one, one you haven't thought of."
They're quiet for a moment, and Adam looks at his hands in his lap. "Blue said she thought you wanted to die, that I stole your ultimate sacrifice for your friends from you."
"I did want to die," Gansey says softly. He's never said it outloud to anyone, not even to himself, but, "I don't anymore."
"Do you know why Ronan and I broke up?"
Gansey shakes his head, suddenly dreading the answer to a question he's been dying to ask for three years.
Adam looks up at him, his eyes flickering to his forehead, the scar there. "I think you do."
Gansey remembers Ronan asking him about dying, about how he was gone for a long time, too long, about how he thought Adam wished wrong. "Me?"
Adam nods.
"But I came back. Your wish worked."
"That was just the tipping point. You’re wrapped up in everything, inseparable, since we met.”
“That’s not fair,” Gansey says, before he can stop himself. “That can’t be my fault, too.”
“None of it is your fault, Gansey. That’s the point.”
Gansey stares at the frayed collar of Adam’s Dropkick Murphys t-shirt, follows the seam over his shoulder and down to where it lays against his bicep. There are spots of grey paint there, old. Gansey remembers Ronan wearing it when they painted the main room at Monmouth six years ago, before Adam, before Blue, before all of it.
"I don't understand,” he says slowly. “Ronan doesn't even...he never wanted me like that."
Adam laughs sadly. "You're never as big a liar to anyone else as you are to yourself, Gansey."
"I'm not—" Gansey stops himself. Because he really is.
His heart has started thumping erratically, his temples and eyeballs throb with it. "Does he? Want me?"
"That's not my secret to tell."
"But why wouldn't he tell me?"
Adam sighs. "Oh, Gansey."
Gansey shakes his head. He's always lived his life through sheer will, anything that he wants to happen he can make happen, and anything he doesn't like he makes disappear. He doesn't believe in failure: he's Captain Fucking Kirk, he doesn't believe in the no-win scenario.
He compartmentalizes: he has a filing system in his head and he neatly organizes events and feelings and categorizes them as helpful or irrelevant, and the irrelevant stuff he doesn't look at anymore.
But there's a box that has churned its way to the surface, and when he touches it it dissolves, leaking its contents into every fold of his brain, turning memories on their sides so they suddenly look different, rewriting history:
Ronan telling him he was gay, telling him he knew Gansey wasn't, and Gansey was afraid to tell him he wasn't sure, that it would break them somehow.
Ronan sleeping in his bed when he came to Monmouth. One night he kissed the back of Gansey's neck and Gansey pretended he was asleep, because he knew Ronan was grieving, and needed time to sort out his feelings.
The fact that Ronan knew Gansey was supposed to meet him after practice the day he saw him with Skip, that he was supposed to give Gansey a ride because Gansey didn't have his license yet.
That the night of the substance party, he knew Ronan wanted Kavinsky, but he left with Gansey anyway, without hesitation, and Gansey had wanted to kiss him, after, lick the slick of sweat from his neck, remind him of what they were on the verge of when they were 15, but he didn't, because Ronan wanted Kavinsky. Didn't he?
Ronan is in almost every memory he has, next to him, at his back, watching.
Waiting for him to wake up.
"I was trying to give him what he wanted. But if he wants me, why would he leave? I told him I—" he suddenly remembers that he didn't, actually, tell him anything, because he had barely known himself. He thought he could trace it onto Ronan's skin and breathe it into his lungs and Ronan would just understand.
But that's not Ronan, and Gansey knows that. Ronan needs to be told. He needs to be reassured. Especially by the people closest to him, because he doesn't understand why anyone would love him in the first place.
And what Gansey had said, instead, was—
"Oh. Shit."
Adam has moved to kneel at Gansey's feet, and he takes Gansey's hands in his. "You total idiot," he says, tenderly, and Gansey has never agreed with anyone more.
#
It's late when he gets to the Barns, and there's something almost menacing about the grounds, suddenly. He's never felt more welcomed anywhere in his life than here, but of course Gansey knows now it's because it's made of dreams, bits of Niall and Ronan's subconscious, by now mostly Ronan's.
So it would make sense that it's rejecting him right now, attacking a virus it thinks is killing the host.
He walks up the path to the front door, but it's already open. Ronan is slouching in the doorway in a black A-frame and black jeans. He's backlit, making it impossible for Gansey to see his face.
"Hey," he calls, and Ronan doesn't move.
"What do you want?" Ronan's voice is ice, and Gansey feels a little shiver go down his spine.
"I just want to talk. Ten minutes."
"No."
"Five."
Ronan starts to close the door, and Gansey holds up his hands, palms out. "Two. Please."
Ronan's eyes dart to Gansey's left hand and he breathes heavily, his thick eyebrows knitting together for a moment.
Before Gansey had left, he had dug frantically in the junk drawer in the kitchen, looking for his ring. He ripped it out of the counter and dumped the contents all over the floor, and it rolled out from under a notepad, platinum singing when it hit one of the nails in the wooden floor, falling onto its side.
Ronan doesn't say anything, but after a moment he steps aside to let Gansey in.
They had done some good work in here over the past few months. The main floor is more than livable, it's cozy. Gansey sees the prints that disappeared from Monmouth hung in the living room, the afghan Aurora had knitted them draped over the couch.
Ronan drops into the club chair in front of the television, where a black Impala is crawling along a wooded road, a full moon reflected in its windshield. "Talk."
"Ronan."
Ronan turns off the television. "I saw you at the auto body shop," he says.
"Oh."
Ronan sneers, his lip curling. "Checking out the competition? Or making notes for the divorce-lawyer?"
Guilt creeps up the back of Gansey's neck, and he remembers exactly what he said, laying on the couch with Ronan half on top of him, So how do I rate, and he remembers, suddenly, the noise Ronan made.
Disappointment.
"I shouldn't have said that. I don't know why I did."
Ronan looks at him sharply. There are dark smudges under his eyes and brackets around his mouth, which is pressed into a thin, hard edge.
"Okay, I do. I was being self-deprecating, I…I don't know. It was stupid." Gansey rubs a hand through his hair. "You know me, it's like a defense mechanism. And I felt…" stripped bare, down to my bones, like you burned me clean, "…vulnerable."
Ronan sighs and stands, side-stepping Gansey into the dining room. "Fine, it's forgotten."
"Just like that?"
"Sure, Gansey, just like that."
Gansey's stomach knots and he follows Ronan to the dining room. "Wait."
Ronan slides a manila envelope, creased down the middle, off the dining room table and holds it out wordlessly.
"I don't want that," Gansey says frantically, like it's a hornet, and Ronan jabs him in the chest with it.
"Yes, you do."
Gansey takes the envelope and looks inside. Divorce papers. "Ronan, wait."
"Just like you asked."
"Ronan, is this what you want?"
Ronan scrubs a hand over his head, all the way down his face. "Honestly, I want to move on. From all of it. My dad, Declan, Cabeswater." He looks up. "You."
Gansey stares at him, hollowed out inside.
"It just…it's not enough, what you were willing to give me. I thought I could do this. But it's not enough for me anymore." He opens a drawer in the rolltop desk that used to serve as a buffet and pulls out a pen.
"I love you," Gansey blurts, and Ronan freezes, a muscle ticking in his jaw, the plastic pen creaking in his grip.
"Don't," he grits out.
"I love you," Gansey says again, "I'm in love with you."
Ronan's face is cracked open, angry and agonized. "Don't do this to me, I'm fucking begging you."
Gansey take the pen from Ronan's hand. "I'll sign this right now and walk away if that's what you want. One day we'll put it back together and be brothers again, I can live with that, if it's what you want."
He draws in a breath and takes a half step towards Ronan. "But I'm done lying, and I'm done making unilateral decisions. You have to have all the facts, and the fact is that I'm so in love with you that it's killing me. I'm so in love with you I have your dreams for you, I run down the night horrors and slaughter them with my bare hands. I'm in love with you and I think I have been since you first kissed me and I've been an idiot for six years but I don't want to make your decisions for you anymore.
"Do you—" Gansey clears his throat. "Do you love me?"
Ronan shakes his head. "Dick," he says, brokenly, and Gansey feels his legs go wobbly.
Gansey nods and flips the folder open, laying it on the table. He finds the red "sign here" arrow and tuns to the page, willing his hands steady and signing his name three times.
He looks up and Ronan's eyes are red-rimmed, his chin jutting out. "Thank you," Ronan says.
Gansey can barely speak, his fingers feel like ice and something is stuck in his throat, something really must be stuck in his throat. He swallows hard and says raggedly, "Yeah, okay."
He wants to weep, but his eyes are dry and dusty. So instead he puts the pen down deliberately and forces himself to the door. He stops at the lintel, puts his hand on the frame above a familiar crack in the wood, a spot worn with the amount of times Gansey has touched it over the years.
"You're wrong about one thing," he says, not looking back, "That you think we're not the same. We are. We always have been. I just didn't know how to say it. And of everything, that's what I'm the most sorry about."
He's almost to the car when the tears hit, burning and blurring his eyes.
This is what it feels like to be a human, he thinks, and maybe this is what he was supposed to find when he woke Glendower. Maybe he was supposed to lay himself bare for once, so his third life could be true.
"Dick!"
Gansey turns to see Ronan running down the path towards him, flannel jacket flapping around him, and his heart leaps into his throat.
Please, is all he has time to think, before Ronan is on him, warm mouth against Gansey's cold face, his temples, the streaks of tears on his cheeks, and Gansey's legs give out, tumbling them both to the hard grass.
"Don't go," Ronan says, holding himself up on hands and knees above him.
Gansey grips Ronan's hips hard. "What—"
"I think about that night a lot." Ronan pulls in a shaky breath. "When I told you what I am. Who I am. I thought, I thought all this time there was a part of me you didn't understand."
"I understand you, Ronan. It was me I was getting wrong."
"Don't go," he says again, "I don't want you to go."
"Are you sure?"
"I've been sure since we were 15. I've been sure since I first saw you. I want to actually try this, I want…all of you. Your whole, true self."
"I swear, this is me. All of me." And Gansey kisses him, licking his mouth open, as Ronan hitches a thigh between Gansey's.
"I've been going crazy," Gansey says, when Ronan nips at the soft underside of his chin and sucks kisses onto his throat. "I can't stop thinking about you, about your hands…"
Ronan licks at Gansey's open mouth. "You have no idea what I want to do to you," and he cups Gansey's dick through his jeans, rubbing the heel of his hand against it.
"I want to find out," Gansey says, and he feels his body pulse, can almost feel Ronan's fingers on him, in him, opening him up.
Ronan tears his mouth away from Gansey's throat, breathing hard. "Okay, hang on," he says, "I think I need…I'm not going to fuck you on my front lawn in the middle of winter."
He definitely feels it then, a hard pulse, right at his center. "But you are going to. Fuck me."
The look Ronan gives him is the definition of smoldering. "Oh, yeah."
They lay back in the grass, and after a second, when he's somewhat composed himself, Gansey says, cautiously, "Don't take this the wrong way, but what about the papers?"
Ronan rolls his head to look at him. "I burned them."
Gansey can't help the stupid grin on his face and he kisses Ronan's chin. "Thank goodness, because the tax ramifications for reconciliation after a divorce looks like a nightmare."
Ronan laughs so hard he jostles Gansey's head onto the grass from where it was laying on his bicep. "Sorry, sorry," he says, pulling Gansey against him.
"I'd do it if you wanted us to, though," Gansey says, just to be sure Ronan knows.
Ronan squeezes his shoulder. "I know."
Gansey puts his head on Ronan's shoulder and the wind rattles through the bare branches arching above them. "What are they saying," he asks after a minute, "the trees?"
Ronan chuckles and trails a hand down Gansey's back, slipping cold fingers under his sweater, making him start. "Nothing," he says, "they're just trees. But I know what they would say."
Gansey cranes his neck to look up at him. "What?"
Ronan smiles and rolls Gansey under him. "Took you long enough."
Gansey picks a leaf off Ronan's prickly crown. "I just like to be thorough."
"So do I," Ronan rumbles and his eyes are full of heat.
Up in Ronan's room, Ronan undresses him in the light of the orrery that's still on his bedside table, kissing every newly revealed bit of skin. When he's naked and Ronan is still fully dressed, Ronan guides him to the bed, and slides his hands down Gansey's chest and belly, over his ribs. "I wanted you like this when we were kids," he says in a low voice, "so bad. But I don't think I even would have known what to do with you if I got you."
Gansey shivers and reaches out to smooth a hand over Ronan's skull. "But you do now."
Ronan's laugh is throaty. "Now it's a matter of what to do to you first."
"I have some ideas."
Ronan urges Gansey's onto his hands and knees, presses himself along Gansey's back, rough fabric of his jeans against Gansey's ass, and puts his mouth against his ear. "I promise you, mine are better."
He's right.
Gansey presses his hot face into the pillow underneath him, searching for relief, his hips stuttering in Ronan's hands as Ronan spreads him open, lapping slowly, excruciatingly slowly, at the tight pucker of his hole.
"Ronan," he says again, the only word he's been able to scrape together the brain cells for in the last ten minutes, and Ronan's low laugh vibrates along Gansey's dick before he presses his tongue hard against the tight ring of muscle, working it inside.
Gansey shorts out. The entire world is Ronan's tongue inside him, Ronan's thumbs holding him open, the slippery rhythm of overfull and woefully empty. His dick is rock hard and jerks precome onto the sheets. He tries to touch himself, but Ronan bats his hand away.
"My rules this time," Ronan says, and Gansey instantly misses his tongue, his body loose and soft and fucked open.
Ronan rubs two slicked up fingers against the thin skin there but doesn't breach it and Gansey tilts his hips, desperate for that strange pressure to fill him up again. "C'mon," he whines, and Ronan doesn't even laugh at him, just stokes his lower back and then pushes hard, sinking his fingers inside, up to the second knuckle.
Gansey makes a strangled noise of relief and Ronan hisses, "Yes." Ronan's fingers roll against each other, stretching him, slide all the way out before pressing back in.
Gansey's entire body is one huge nerve-ending and he struggles to keep his knees under him. "Faster," he pleads, shoving back, trying to assert his own rhythm.
"No." Ronan fucks him slow and steady, leaning in to kiss his shoulder, the back of his neck. Gansey has never felt so out of control before, literally, his body clamoring for release he can't find.
Ronan pulls his fingers out and flips Gansey onto his back, who can't help but whine a little at the loss of pressure.
"Fuck," Ronan says, almost to himself and with feeling, "fuck," and strips himself frantically, then slides his cock alongside Gansey's, palming them both in one big hand and pulling.
Gansey comes so hard it almost hurts. Ronan's hand slows and Gansey grits out, "Don't stop," even though the friction of Ronan's palm and Ronan's cock bring Gansey past the edge of pain. A moment later, Ronan's rhythm falters and Gansey feels wet heat on his belly as Ronan comes.
Ronan puts his forehead against Gansey's collarbone, and Gansey fumbles thick, nerveless fingers around his head, urging him up to kiss him.
Ronan tastes dark and bitter and it calms Gansey's jangling nerves.
They lay in quiet until Gansey's heart rate slows enough for him to form words again. "Okay," he says, "Okay, you were right. Your way was better." And Ronan's snorted laugh is almost as good as anything else.
Later, after they sleep, after the sun comes up, Ronan is buttoning himself back into his jeans while Gansey stands, shrugging into his shirt, in front of Ronan's desk. There's a photo there of Ronan and Niall, grinning out at Gansey, not a care in the world.
Gansey feels a pang. In every corner of this room, the house, the entire estate, are memories, reminders of the way things were supposed to be. Even the smell, you can still smell Aurora's lemon cleaner, like she's just downstairs.
And all of it, structures and fields and cows and dreams and ghosts, everything Ronan had been clawing his way back to for six years, is Ronan's now.
Ronan touches his shoulder, meets his eye in the mirror, his right eyebrow raised.
Gansey turns. "Are you happy to be home?"
Ronan's face softens. "This isn't my home."
Gansey's heart leaps. "It isn't?"
"No," Ronan says, simply, and kisses him.
#
Seven months later.
Gansey is still barefoot and struggling to button his shirt when he answers the door. Blue and Noah are standing there; Blue is holding two bottles of wine and Noah is leaning on a rolling suitcase, a duffel slung over one shoulder, Blue's backpack on the other.
Maura honks the car and waves frantically. "Have fun!"
"We will!" Blue calls back, rolling her eyes.
"Promise me Ronan's not going to get you all in trouble."
Gansey squints a little and says, "Yes, ma'am," which is figures is neutral enough that it's not a lie.
Maura sees right through it and glares at him. "Call me before you take off. And when you land!"
"We're going inside, bye!" Blue shouts and hustles them all in, Noah almost tripping over the rolling suitcase and trying to go non-corporeal to avoid a pile-up.
Blue graduated a few months ago and told Gansey that as a present, he could take her to France. He wanted to say that his present to her was not standing up and whooping like a lunatic when she had walked across the stage, like Ronan and Adam did. Gansey had slouched in his chair and said to the woman glaring at them from three people over, "I'm not with them."
Ronan almost got into a fight with the security guard who told them to sit down, but it was a good day and his heart wasn't really in it so he just sat down instead.
Gansey suspected that trip was actually Ronan's doing, who, when Gansey told him, said too casually, "Great idea, we should all go." Ronan, who is just now slinking his way down the stairs, his shirt flapping open, his mouth obscenely red and swollen.
Blue rolls her eyes. "For god's sake, Lynch, we get it, you have a great body." Then she looks at Gansey's bare feet and and back at Ronan's mouth and gets a little lecherous glint in her eyes. "Oh, no, I actually get it now."
Ronan grins with all his teeth and pads into the kitchen, grabbing a glass and filling it with water from the tap, twice.
Gansey shrugs noncommittally, in a way that he hopes communicates the possibility that he was, in fact, just minutes ago on the receiving end of one of the greatest blowjobs of all time, but doesn't actually confirm it.
He can't get enough of Ronan's mouth, to be honest, and Ronan edged him for what felt like an hour before he let him come. He's amazed they can't see him glowing from space.
"Where's Adam?"
"He went to pick up snacks for the plane."
Noah snickers. "What if he came back early?"
This time it's Ronan who gives the noncommittal shrug and Gansey smacks him on the back of the head.
Blue is rummaging in the fridge, trying to decide on a yogurt. "You're somehow the only one who hasn't walked in on them, Noah, I think Adam and I are immune at this point."
"Close the door, you'll let out the cold," Gansey says and Blue opens the door wider.
"You have your coin?" Ronan asks Noah, and Noah pulls out the leather bag Gansey had gotten him in Ireland.
"Never leave home without it."
Noah and Ronan and Adam have been experimenting, and the coin can hook up to other ley lines, grounding the wearer. Noah doesn't think he'll need it, but Adam wants to make sure. Ronan also thinks Adam just wants to prove his theory right.
The front door rattles and Adam lets himself in, his arms loaded with plastic Target bags. "I think I'm ready." For all his traveling, Adam is a nervous flier, and needs to have anything he can possibly think that he might need in his carry on. Gansey thinks it's because the first time he ever flew was when he was 17, and he's naturally distrustful of machines he can't examine himself firsthand.
"Okay, okay," Blue says, chucking a half eaten yogurt in the sink. "A toast!"
She gets juice glasses out and lines them up on the kitchen table and Gansey pours them all wine. He raises his glass. "To Jane," he says, "Congratulations on finally graduating, even though it took you all four years!"
She cackles, "Fuck off, Harry Potter!"
Ronan kisses the scar on his head and Gansey huffs. Of all of it, the Harry Potter comparisons ended up being the worst thing about the entire endeavor.
"No, seriously," Ronan says, tilting his glass in a salute. "Congratulations, Blue. We're really proud of you." He leans over the table to kiss her and she blushes to the roots of her newly dyed platinum hair.
"I was going to say the same thing about you guys," Blue says.
"Yeah," Adam raises his glass again. "Congratulations to you two, for not murdering each other for over an entire year."
"Or any of us when we interrupt you," Blue adds.
"I'll drink to that," says Gansey, nudging Ronan's hip with his own.
Their flight is at 8:30 the next morning, so Blue and Noah head up to Noah's room, and Adam lingers for a moment, while Ronan goes to hunt down extra sheets and a pillow.
He doesn't say anything, just looks and looks at Gansey before leaning in to kiss the side of Gansey's head, tucking a lock of hair back behind his ear. He's growing it out for Ronan.
Gansey grins sheepishly.
Ronan shoves a crumpled up ball of sheets at Adam. "This is the best we've got."
"We're at a laundry stalemate," Gansey says by way of explanation and Adam laughs.
"It's fine," he says and heads upstairs to make up the couch. "See you in the morning."
The clock above the stove ticks and Ronan pulls Gansey onto the couch facing the Queen. He kisses Gansey's neck, then huffs a sigh into his shoulder.
"Finally all back under one roof," Ronan says.
Gansey feels warm and full and content and he tips Ronan back onto the couch, "Thank you for doing this."
"Blue's very suggestible." Ronan nips Gansey's lower lip. "You're happy?"
Gansey smiles. "I am."
Ronan tilts his head to look at the clock. "If we're asleep in an hour, tomorrow won't too epically suck." His hand creeps under the waistband of Gansey's sweats, "Wanna fool around?"
Gansey's heart quickens, like it always does, and he says very sincerely, very seriously:
"I do."