WHO: Ronan Lynch & Noah Czerny WHAT: awake at night, talking about teleporter bracelets WHEN: backdated to like a week or two ago WHERE: Barns/Monmouth WARNINGS: I don't think there are any.
It was late, or early, depending upon your perspective. Ronan was having trouble dreaming.
He eventually stopped trying to sleep and got up, leaving Adam asleep in his bed. He pulled on the pants and shirt that he’d left on the floor and padded out into the quiet of the farmhouse. He peeked into Matthew’s old room; Opal was asleep too. He closed the door quietly and headed outside.
He had been planning to head out into the field, but he found himself looking up at Monmouth. He didn’t see a light on, which meant Gansey was - hopefully - actually sleeping.
Quietly, he asked the night air, “Noah, you around?”
--
Noah wasn’t sleeping. Not that Noah was ever sleeping. It was difficult to do that when you were a ghost. Mostly because he didn’t need to. He didn’t get tired, he didn’t need to eat. All he needed was a serious amount of energy. It was hard to be a ghost boy without energy. Luckily he had a lot of it. Some from Ronan, but most of it was from Pixie. He could tell the difference between them. Running on energy meant he could tell the differences between it.
He felt the inevitability of Ronan coming, like it had already happened, but he knew it hadn’t. Things weren’t nearly as circuitus as they’d been at home. He could see the linear fashion and he didn’t know everything that the boys had experienced, but it was possible he’d just sensed the energy radiating off of Ronan. It was hard to be sure. He wasn’t as on with things as he had been before.
“Ronan.” He didn’t remember going outside, but he was there all the same, slowly materializing in front of his friend. “They were egging on demons on the TV. Supposed demons.”
--
Ronan was unsurprised when Noah materialized. Somehow he always managed to do that, called by words or thoughts or feelings or the importance of a moment that he had already lived and made sure to be present whenever time circled around again. Noah said that time worked differently here, but Noah still operated in much the same way Ronan remembered.
“TV is dumb,” he answered. “I’m working on important things.”
He headed out into the fields. It was quiet there, not even his small herd of dream animals were awake, but the fireflies lifted off from the grass and the trees as he walked. “What do you think a transporter bracelet should look like?”
--
“Probably, yeah.” Noah smiled a little. He could watch Netflix on end, but he didn’t really know if there was anything he wanted to watch there. The ghost shows still spooked him. Except the one with the guys that challenged ghosts and demons and all manner of things. They seemed mostly stupid, so it was funny when they were affected by their own nonsense.
He followed quietly after Ronan, trying to figure out exactly what the meeting was about, but it hadn’t hit him entirely. Once Ronan said, he smiled a little at the reason for it. “I guess it depends. Do you want them all to look the same or to be different?” Not that he thought it mattered much to him at that moment because he was very much dead. He could probably just appear where he needed to be.
“I think something simple would probably work out fine. It might take less effort to make. Why?”
--
Ronan shrugged. He had mostly worked out how he wanted the thing to work - he wanted it to be painless, he wanted it to have multiple ways it could be activated - touch, speech, or thought - and he wanted the bracelets not to drop everyone on the island on top of each other. He had some specific ideas of what he wanted to make them look like for his friends. Everybody else was a different story.
“I don’t like making boring things,” he said. He fiddled with the bracelets around his wrist. He liked them, but they didn’t suit everybody. “And people are going to be wearing them for more than just the length of a cruise. I want them to be… interesting.”
He was aware that this would probably sound very similar to how he’d said he wanted Cabeswater to not suck, if he said it to someone like Adam or Opal, which was mainly why he hadn’t said it to them. Noah hadn’t been around for that, though.
--
Noah hadn’t been around for that part. He’d started over or gone away. Either way, he’d gone back to the beginning. He quietly considered Ronan’s words. It made sense for Ronan. He liked things loud and different. Nothing was really simple for Ronan. Still, it would have made it easier. Noah didn’t want to make things more difficult.
He tilted his head slightly as he tried to think of something. “I like glitter,” he said after a moment. “But maybe not for everyone.” He shrugged. “But I’m not sure I need one. Even if something happens, I’m already dead, so I don’t need to run to save myself and I can probably just show up anyway, right?” Unless there was some sort of protection against ghosts on the island or they really couldn’t get there without the bracelet.” He considered that for a moment. “But if there was one and I needed it, I like glitter.” He flickered briefly as he thought about whether or not he’d even be able to wear it. “And it would have to be able to be worn by me. It might not stay on.”
He thought Ronan’s dream magic was probably better spent on other people, though. He was a ghost boy. He knew he was their ghost boy, but that didn’t change the truth of it.
--
Ronan snorted, but then frowned, and reached out and shoved at Noah’s shoulder. “Of course you’re getting one. You think I’m leaving you behind if this place gets dangerous?” He knew logically that Noah wouldn’t be hurt by any monsters or wars or whatever else might happen here, and Ronan often acted as if it was funny that Noah couldn’t get hurt - by throwing him out a window or shoving him at a shark - but that was different from leaving him behind to fend for himself if things went to shit. And the fake joke deaths were only funny because he actually did care about not seeing Noah genuinely hurt or scared. “And obviously it’s going to be glitter.”
He loved dreaming about light, and glitter counted as a part of that category. Actually, Noah’s bracelet might be his favorite one to make. He was thinking about whether he could add in some other benefits, too, like having the bracelet be a source of energy when Ronan wasn’t around. Or maybe he didn’t even have to make it an energy source, he could just will it to make Noah solid and real. Whether that would work was another question entirely, but he could certainly try.
“It’ll stay on. Don’t worry.” That was one of the most important things about the bracelet, making sure it didn’t get lost. Ronan was not sure how it was going to work precisely, because he didn’t want people to be unable to take it off when they wanted to, but he also wanted to make sure they always had it when they needed it.
“I would make customized ones for everyone, but I don’t know if I want to dream half the shit that these people would like, either.” He shrugged. “Or I could dream something that can change shape, to look however people want. But I’m already asking it to teleport. That seems like a lot to ask from a bracelet.” He considered. “Maybe I’ll just make it so that it can be invisible, if they don’t want it to be seen.”
--
Noah was jostled a little. He looked over at Ronan with a momentary flash of betrayal on his face. It disappeared shortly after it appeared because this was the way they operated. Ronan shoved him and he called Ronan out on his bullshit. “I’m safe from dangerous things. Even you and your window obsession.” He stuck his tongue out. Clearly the most mature ghost boy. He smiled then at the mention of getting glitter.
Glitter was just something that made him feel happy like the fireflies. The sparkle of glitter, the way that fireflies seemed to sparkle and made trees light up. He liked the feeling of happiness that came with it. Like something inside him was light, too. Even if he wasn’t sure a ghost boy could be light. He wasn’t sure that he wasn’t a dark creature sometimes, but that was possibly a side effect of being possessed.
“It sounds like a lot,” he agreed. “Maybe just friendship bracelets or something. Those should be easy to explain away.” He shrugged slightly. “And they don’t have to be super customized. People can take what they get. Like if you make a bunch, they can choose the one they want.”
--
Noah called him on his bullshit, so the deal was, if he really wanted Ronan to stop pushing him out of windows, all he had to do was say so. He complained about it, but not in a way that Ronan thought was meant seriously. Especially when Noah had offered for Ronan to push him out a window or something when he had thought Ronan was angry at him. It was okay as long as it was funny, as long as Ronan never did it when he was angry, as long as Noah never got the impression that Ronan actually wanted to hurt him. He was very protective of Noah, really.
“If this place was destroyed and you couldn’t get out, you wouldn’t have any energy here to draw from,” he pointed out. “It might not hurt and it might not technically be dying, but you wouldn’t be around.”
And that was unacceptable. They had lost Noah once already, and Ronan didn’t want any of them to have to go through that again.
He rubbed a hand over his shaved head, trying to turn his mind back towards the bracelets. Noah’s was easy to imagine what it looked like, harder to make it do what he really wanted it to do, which was to make Noah more real again. Ghost-life and sleeping-life were similar; as a ghost, at least Noah could be aware of and interact with things around him, but it wasn’t a proper life and it wasn’t what Ronan wanted for him. He wasn’t sure a bracelet was the best way to do that, but he wanted Noah to have a bracelet. He’d been thinking about dreaming Noah’s bones, and/or using his weird dream word thing, and maybe seeing if Gansey could order Noah to be alive again, the way he’d done with the animal skeletons… but they didn’t know how long that had lasted, because the animals had all disappeared.
Ronan sighed. He wasn’t thinking about bracelets anymore, and the idea of something to make Noah alive again was one that drove him round in even more frustrated circles. He definitely wasn’t going to be going back to sleep anytime soon; he would only have frustration dreams waiting for him.
“I don’t like making things for so many people,” he complained, although it was not a true complaint. He had enjoyed making the flowers for everyone on the ship, and had been gratified that they had made so many people feel better. He wanted a simple way for the bracelets to be equally personalized, like the flowers with their scent. But in order to make them able to change shape, Ronan had to be able to imagine all the shapes they could take. Which seemed like even more of a headache than customizing each one individually.
Even Ditto sucked at transforming into things if it wasn’t looking right at them. And Ronan really didn’t want the bracelets to suck. Even if it mattered to no one else, it mattered to him.
--
Noah studied Ronan quietly for a moment. He couldn’t read minds, so he didn’t know what was going on in his head. It was hard to read minds. He seemed to be concerned about something, thinking about something that he couldn’t quite figure out, but Noah didn’t know what.
He didn’t believe in the dream that he’d get to come back as more than what he was. He’d been a ghost for this long. He didn’t expect to be more because it felt like an impossible sort of thing. Not that they didn’t have a lot of experience with impossible things. He just didn’t want to want anything that wouldn’t happen. It was too much to want something and end up not getting it. So he didn’t allow himself to think on it too often. Except when there was nothing else to think about. Luckily all the homework he had was easily stretched out over the hours.
“Liar.” Noah smiled a little and looked out at the space around them. “That argument would have worked a lot better before you made flowers all over the ship.” He paused, as if considering something. “But I still wouldn’t have believed you.”
--
“Shut up,” Ronan said, but he was unable to summon much irritation. “I did that for myself. Everyone was being really fucking depressing and I couldn’t stand it.”
It was not untrue, even if it was not the whole truth. Saying that he didn’t like dreaming things for a lot of people was not entirely untrue either. He liked making smaller things, beautiful things, either to make himself happy, or perfectly customized for someone else. But also this group of people seemed to accept him, for all that they had a relatively limited understanding of him, and they had protected him and Adam and Gansey and Noah when things got dangerous on multiple occasions now. If he could use his magic to protect them in return, without having to make them weapons, he wanted to do it.
--
Noah gave him a sort of side look and smiled. “Never!” Noah understood a lot of how Ronan worked, but he didn’t mind teasing him a little. Ronan was Ronan. He came with sharp edges and sharp teeth and the general demeanor of a boy that would fight you sooner than talk to you. But Noah knew the softer side, which made things different. He saw both boys layered on top of each other. Even when he messed up, Ronan blew up and came back. He just shrunk when he was upset. Or flickered. Or stopped existing. Ronan at least was never afraid to be who he was. Noah was afraid to be who he used to be. He was afraid of becoming a boy who didn’t care and wasn’t great. He liked himself better dead.
“Sure you did, big, bad, and surly.” His smile grew and he lightly bumped himself into Ronan. “We all believe you.”