Noah Czerny (chair_knee) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-01-05 00:31:00 |
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Entry tags: | noah czerny, richard gansey iii |
WHO: Noah Czerny and Gansey
WHEN: December 30
WHERE: The Pig to an ice cream shop
WHAT: Getting ice cream and talking family~
WARNINGS: EMOTIONS
All told, it was quite different, a different town, different weather, a different shop, different them, and just the two of them, but in the little things, it felt awfully similar. The Pig started, barely, groaning and complaining and threatening simply to hibernate like large energy greedy creatures did or perhaps simply die until he found a proper part. His feet were too warm, the car shook around them, and Gansey moved them along three miles under the speed limit. His eyes flashed over to Noah, currently occupying the front seat (which had a distinctive lack of Ronan taking over the space, just then). Just being them, getting ice cream, was something worth celebrating.
Gansey considered turning on music, considered the likelihood the murder squash song would complete its crime against his eardrums, and drove them on in relative quiet. He didn’t know the streets as well as Henrietta, so his eyes stayed on the road, looking around them as good driving habits dictated. “I’d moved out of Monmouth, back home,” Gansey shared. He had graduated. Ronan hadn’t, but Monmouth had still belonged to Aglionby, which was… what it was. Gansey hadn’t been staying in town, and there had always been the Barns, when he visited. “It was good to find everything, back in its place.” Including Noah. Noah hadn’t lived there for some while, even before he left, but Gansey was glad to have him again.
Noah felt a very strange sort of uncertainty about his spot in the Pig. He’d never been allowed to sit in the front. He’d always been next to Blue or Adam. This felt dangerous, like Ronan might show up any minute and glare until he scrambled into the backseat. But Ronan never showed up and they were on their way to get ice cream. Not that he could eat it.
He sighed to himself at the thought. He missed Adele and his parents and his youngest sister too. But he had Gansey, Ronan, and Adam. “You did? Did everyone leave?” He wondered what a world without Glendower meant for them. Adam and Ronan would be together and Gansey and Blue. But he would miss all of it. It held a different sort of sadness. He didn’t express that to Gansey, however. “How’s Blue?” Was what he decided to go with anyway, even though he was sure that would be a different hurt.
Everyone had left before Gansey moved out. Adam had never truly lived there. Noah… had been unreliably present near the end and notably absent afterward, never appearing in doorways or under the pool table or walking out of his room. And Ronan had been able to go back to the Barns. Gansey didn’t regret that. But Monmouth, for all he had expected to live there alone, had felt lonelier for it, even with Blue coming over and Henry and everyone else too. They had visited, not stayed.
So Noah being back was truly the best part. And being next to the Barns, on the Barns, not a forty-five minute to an hour drive away. So Gansey nodded, though he had been the last to leave. “Blue’s been getting to see the world,” Gansey replied, “We’ve been traveling the scenic route, finding places to stop, food to try… It suits her, exploring the world.” And perhaps she would return to Henrietta, after their trip, after college, after some amount of wandering. But Gansey felt that way too. “If she comes here, you could see the world too,” Gansey suggested. Noah had always had an easier time being Noah around her.
Blue traveling sounded like a very Blue thing to do. She’d always wanted to be somewhere far away, exploring things. Noah was glad that she got to see new places. It was good. It was good that all of them were happy and growing. Noah decidedly did not let himself think about how he could never really grow. Maybe he had grown some, been better, but he would always be a seventeen year old boy in an Aglionby uniform. He peered down at his uniform then, fidgeting idly with the hem of his sweater.
“I don’t know if I could travel,” he said quietly. “But it’s nice to think it could be possible.” He smiled at Gansey then. “But I’m glad everyone is doing well. It sounds nice anyway.” He wondered what the world looked like and what interesting things had happened. What things had they found? What things had they done? It seemed like an overwhelming amount of stuff to imagine. The possibilities seemed endless. “I’m sorry you aren’t still exploring now, but I’m not sorry you’re here.”
Gansey felt mildly conscious of his bright sweater and boat shoes. Neither were remarkable items, especially on him, but they decidedly weren’t what he had worn to school, the timeless era of the Aglionby sweater. Since Henrietta did not exist in this world, naturally Aglionby didn’t either. So Noah was likely to be the only person wearing it. Definitely, year round. Gansey had his at Monmouth, though it had been months since he’d worn it. “You could at least travel along ley lines,” Gansey suggested. He’d done years of such travel and knew many of them.
He mulled over Noah’s words. “It’s another sort of exploring,” Gansey replied warmly. He filled his voice with that familiar sense of yearning, of curiosity, of searching. There hadn’t been even a full week yet, and Gansey had learned more new and wondrous things than he had often seen in a year, before Henrietta. Even those were hardly researched, not explored and recorded and understood. Not fully. No this place had that in common with Henrietta. It had taken him years, and many of the right people. He had that. “I’m not sorry I’m here either. It feels right.” And he didn’t need more than that.
Noah liked Gansey’s clothes. They weren’t the clothes he would choose. Not now. But he’d never get to choose his clothes again. He wondered idly if the things that happened here meant that he could have showed up alive. Only if he’d been alive, he wouldn’t know Gansey or Blue or Ronan or Adam. It was better to be a dead boy than an alive boy with no friends. Whelk didn’t count anymore. He was desperate, but Noah wouldn’t have killed him for the same thing.
“I guess you’re right.” He looked out the window of the car, tilting his head a little as he watched buildings he’d never seen before pass by. “Do you think I would really be able to travel on the ley lines?” Maybe with Blue. He wasn’t sure, but he’d try if Blue would let him come. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt anything, though.”
Certainly, part of Gansey simply wished to say yes, to believe it without further thought, to feel Noah gain some greater, if measured, freedom. It was a softer way of living. But Gansey had made ley lines a topic of great study for years. And while he would appreciate the opportunity to discuss such possibilities with Malory, his own made made due well enough, for all those years. Ley lines supplied energy. Theirs more than most, being awakened and stabilized (courtesy of Adam, greatly). That line was a long one, part of a strong system of ley lines. And like Aurora outside of Cabeswater, Noah had some ability to materialize even shortly away from the ley line. So certainly, it seemed possible. “Easier with Blue, naturally. And easier with your bones on the ley line,” Gansey replied. He wasn’t certain whether Noah’s bones being on a ley line of another earth counted for these ley lines, for Noah here.
“But the concept is sound,” Gansey stated more firmly. “It’d take some work to make certain of, to see how much leeway we had with it and how drowsy or awake of a line it needed to be… but it’s certainly possible, and there’s much of the world you could see that way.” He smiled. “Journeys, when done to their best, are full of interruptions, detours, whole other adventures, even when you stay true to them. So even should it interrupt, it’s not a bad thing.” That was what made an adventure something.
The mention of his bones made him flicker for a moment, but he came back. “Do you think it’s still the same here? Like...it won’t matter if my bones aren’t here?” He hoped it would still work just the same. He wasn’t completely Noah now, but he’d never been able to draw much from Gansey before. The energy was mostly from the ley line now. There were a lot of people with energy all over, though. Noah could sense them. He felt the occasional tug toward something, but he forced himself to stay where he was. This was for him after all.
“I hope that it will work.” Not that he was sure here was the same. Maybe there weren’t ley lines here. Maybe he’d have to stay in...Texas. His nose scrunched up as he looked out over all the...dust. “I miss Virginia,” he said after a moment. “At least there was some green things around. It seems so dead here.” There was a pause before the unintentional joke caught up with him and he laughed. “Guess I fit right in.”
A small exhale. Noah was still there. He didn’t quite know if it were the same, if they were, ley speaking, on a line with their own ley line, with Noah’s bones. None of them, save Noah, had been taken from the ley line. So far as energy and lines went, something crossing between… what, realities? Was fairly powerful. Possibly Noah was still able to keep a connection to his bones. But it resembled a Rube Goldberg machine of energies. It greatly appealed to Gansey, but not being able to construct a machine at those levels, it was decidedly difficult to be sure of anything. “The same… that’s difficult to promise, but something possible, something we can work with,” Gansey looked over at Noah, “Yes I’m confident in that.” Because it simply had to be true.
As Gansey started looking for parking, it was a small town, he sighed along with Noah’s wish. His heart, if not his bones, were in Virginia. “They’re a very different sort of place, deserts,” Gansey agreed. Whether or not this truly qualified as one, it felt like one. It mattered more. “But with human occupation, thankfully, they still come with ice cream.” He wrestled the Pig toward the side of the road, a couple blocks away from the promised ice cream parlor. But he didn’t mind the walk. Even in the cold, it wasn’t much of anything. “Shall we?” he grinned.
Maybe he could put out his own feelers. It would probably be easy to find his own body in this place. He just hadn’t tried because he was afraid the answer was no and that that meant that he would fade soon. It was too much to think about. He knew there were people here with energy everywhere, but he didn’t know them, so it seemed rude to just take their energy.
They were very different things and Noah found himself missing Virginia, but at least here came with Ronan and his fireflies. He nodded at Gansey’s question, opening the door and getting out. It took a couple tries, but he managed well enough. Then he made his way next to Gansey. “I’m glad you’re here. I wish I remembered what ice cream tasted like. I forget weird things.”
Gansey’s door slammed back to the Pig, making it stay shut on the first try. His smile deepened, as the keys slipped familiarly into his left hand pocket. While his breath struggled either to hide itself or to make a grand appearance, Gansey lightly bumped his shoulder against Noah’s as they walked side by side. While he wasn’t Blue, he still wished to make Noah feel present. Emotionally if not energetically.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten cucumber sandwiches outside of a political fundraiser,” he commented, “So I don’t remember what they taste like. Cucumber, presumably. But that’s never what it’s about.” No, it was about where the cucumbers came from, whether there was any guilt associated with them, and how readily they could be consumed without disrupting his tending to the conversation. Even living, Gansey forgot so many things.
He reached the door and held it open for Noah. “But I can tell you as I eat it, today,” Gansey smiled. Perhaps with words better than creamy or sweet. Noah hadn’t eaten anything in seven to eight years.
Noah forgot the way things tasted. He felt like maybe he over romanticized the experience of eating. Like he’d gone so long that the concept seemed rosier or better somehow than maybe it was. Like food must be really great. But he couldn’t really remember it.
Still it was nice to be with his friends like a normal boy. Even if he was a ghost boy. He walked through the door, relaxed in the knowing that he didn’t have to explain to anyone why he wasn’t eating again. Even if he’d been telling everyone for a while before they found his body. “Okay.” There was a smile as he thought about the cucumber sandwiches. “I don’t think I can help you with the cucumber sandwiches. Though, I’m pretty sure I’ve had them before.”
There was a shrug at that. He wasn’t as saddened by the idea of not remembering cucumber sandwiches as he was ice cream. Gelato most specifically. But that was all tied to his younger sister. He wished he could tell her somehow that he was okay, but he’d sort of forgotten all of that over the seven years of his being dead. Time got away from him and he had other things to focus on. There’d been so much. Then he’d seen his family at the graveyard and made Blue talk to his mom. At least there was a feeling like closure, an appearance of it.
The shop was not particularly well populated, it being winter, the weather being cold, the hour being before school let out, had school been in. Still. Gansey moved up to the counter, his eyes glancing that Noah was as fully visible to others as to his friends, and ordered the ice cream without considering any of the myriad flavors quietly calling for attention. It wasn’t about the ice cream. But unlike the cucumber sandwiches, that made Gansey more fond of it.
“Even here, I am sure they would taste of polite conversation, politics, and poll numbers,” Gansey replied softly. After so long an association, it was merely a matter of fact. Gansey noted to avoid cucumber scented soap or lotion. On the safe side.
At the other end of the counter, a blink later, Gansey pulled out his wallet with long habit, his fingers reaching for a debit card. They paused, and Gansey took a slow breath in. His face looked the same as before, light and warm, nothing like the stubborn look Blue got when she demanded to pay for things herself. But Gansey felt his realization waiting for a more private setting, somewhere more suitable to consideration. His mother’s face appeared over it, looking down at him, gently but firmly.
He pulled out a couple bills from the soft leather and wondered, for the first time, whether that had always been the price of ice cream. Gansey focused on Noah, the smile genuine on his face. It was worth it, to do this together. Gansey understood having a sister, on the unique relationship that was. He took the ice cream and moved toward the front of the shop, despite the chill that came through the windows. “Vanilla bean was my sister’s favorite,” Gansey shared. “She said she could always tell the difference.” From vanilla, from the ice cream whose flavoring came out of a lab, instead of all the impurities contributing to the bean.
Noah laughed at that. “Probably,” he said. When they got to the end of the counter, Noah studied Gansey for a moment, wondering if he’d figured out the secret about money yet. It was why he had taken the chance that he’d have to go to school and be counted as a minor. If he was getting money, at least he could help Gansey. If this had been Blue, he wouldn’t have considered the offer. He wouldn’t have for Adam either. He figured Gansey just needed more help than the others.
Gansey had managed to keep his smile on, but Noah knew he’d never really thought about how much things cost before. People had pointed it out on various occasions and Noah remembered being like that, too. It was easy not to think about money when you have it. “Vanilla bean is pretty good. At least, I think so.” The last part was said quieter because he felt eyes on him. He was sure that it was just because he wasn’t usually around there. He knew he was still visible.
“I think so too,” Gansey agreed. Then he considered the frozen dessert before him. Although it represented so much beyond itself, the purpose, the very thing Gansey had said he would do was to describe the mundane physical experience of eating it, with a particular focus on taste. But Gansey could not rule out the other senses. Noah could see and hear, touch (sometimes) but not taste. The last seemed to be more a matter of lacking the means to physically consume something, than anything else. So while Gansey had never asked, he supposed, were he a betting man, he would bet Noah could smell things too. It wasn’t the strongest smell, being cold, but Gansey felt it nonetheless.
“Here we go,” he said, “Excelsior!” With as much cheer as the situation deserved, and Gansey felt it move him too. Time slowed, a touch, like a spoon in cream instead of water. His spoon dipped into the top, freeing a delicious bite, and Gansey sucked it off the spoon, intensely aware of Noah sitting there, watching him. But he had done decidedly odder things in front of Noah (or discovered by Noah, in the case of those clandestine phone calls with Blue), so he focused instead on the cold, sweet delicious treat. “Mmm,” he let it linger, before attempting to describe it, though he cupped the memory much as Ronan had Chainsaw, when she was young. “Sweet, creamy, still a touch… sharp, that really reminds me of the berry,” Gansey started. “It’s quite good here.”
Noah felt a little weird just sitting there and watching him eat. It wasn’t like he could really do anything else, though. He couldn’t eat. Still, it felt a little weird without the other boys to eat around them. The call made him smile, though. It reminded him of before. He’d forgotten what it felt like, the call to adventure big or small. This did seem a little small, though, to be counted as an adventure. He had a feeling the show was mostly for him.
“Raspberries,” he said quietly. For a moment, he felt like maybe he could almost remember how it tasted and he closed his eyes in an effort to keep that memory there, but it escaped before long. Opening his eyes, he looked at his friend, smiling a little. “I almost remembered. You don’t have to describe past that, though. You can just eat it.” He propped his chin on one hand, eyes focused on the ice cream. “Thank you, for this.”
Gansey had waited, watching; his spoon had lightly whirled around the scoop, picking up the thinnest of layers. He ate it, the flavors standing out more for having given them name. There was its own lesson there, beyond helping Noah, beyond memories. An appreciation for something in and of itself, to be found in something more and something simply itself. Perhaps something that Gansey would make an effort to remember toward more around here.
“For a long time,” Gansey shared, “Helen was the main person I had.” He paused. It wasn’t that his parents were absent or hadn’t cared. But no matter how grown up Gansey had been at four or six or ten, they were remarkably different and more different from him than Helen had been. Even though, for most of that time, she too had been at least twice his age. “We still have each other,” or had, given Helen wasn’t here. But there was some time until the lack of her texts would settle in and longer still until it felt quite odd not to have had a phone call. And eventually, though he had tried to do better before graduation and the trip, he would feel her absence more keenly. “We are always simply ourselves around each other,” Gansey said, “There is no point to being anything else. The other would see right through it.” There was something of a blessing in that. A respite. That sense of each other they’d had and the relationship it formed the basis for. He loved Helen for that, and she did too, in return.
Noah felt something warm inside him. Gansey was sharing. He leaned forward just a little bit so Gansey might understand that this meant he was listening. Helen had been talked about by the others, but he hadn’t really been around both Ganseys. It was interesting to hear about how Gansey and his sister interacted because he didn’t really have a lot of people to talk to about his family. He knew enough about Ronan’s family, he’d met Declan. He didn’t mind. It was just that Ronan and Gansey didn’t really talk about family too often, so it was nice to hear Gansey opening up a little bit.
“Yeah. It’s easier to be yourself with someone that knows you for who you are.” Which was more than just his sister. Both of his sisters had been very dear to him, but Adele had been his closest friend. Then he met Ronan, Gansey, and Adam and that circle of people grew. Then Blue came along and everything just...fit. He felt like he belonged, like people were glad to have him around and he could be himself. Even though himself was a ghost by then. He decidedly didn’t mention his friendship with Whelk. It was a bad subject. “Adele was the one I talked to about everything. Almost everything. I didn’t talk to her about the ley lines and stuff. Sometimes I wish that I had. Maybe then she’d have known…” He trailed off for a moment. That was a sad subject. He didn’t want to make this sad. “I don’t know why people complain about having sisters all the time. They’re pretty great. I mean, I guess sometimes they can be bad, but not in my experience.”
He reached out for a moment, putting a hand on Gansey’s arm. “It was hard to be able to see them and have them not see me, so it’s probably difficult not to be able to see your sister at all. Even if she can still see you. Maybe not right now, but she could find a way to get to where you are back home if she wanted to.”
The way Noah put it, they all were, in a way, ghosts. They were themselves disconnected from their lives, disconnected from most everyone they knew as they had been known. These experiences were beyond life, beyond their lives and outside of them. Quite the ghost town.
Still, Gansey had spent enough time running that it had not felt hard yet. That thought made his phone burn a small hole in his pocket; it felt as though that was all he needed. His phone and the desire to engage on family matters. “I am sorry not to have her,” Gansey said. That he could manage that feeling, for a great long while, made it no less true. “I do believe you know me better than I realized,” Gansey said. Back then, before Noah had left them. Here, now. Noah pointing out something about him before Gansey did. Noah had never been pushy, with anything he knew, and he wasn’t now. But it only underscored how much he’d seen, how much he understood.
Perhaps Noah saw through him too? Through all the Ganseys he wore and was, much in the way Helen had. Gansey wasn’t quite certain, though, and still it wasn’t the place (even if it were a person) to discuss every subject. But it too merited greater thought. “And I have no doubt, if Helen truly wanted to, she could fly near wherever I am and charter a helicopter for the rest of the way.” He smiled. When Helen wished to make herself part of someone’s life, it was a herculean feat to stop it. Sisters, truly remarkable.
The thing about being dead was that it was easy to see things. It was easy to see variations of Gansey and put them all together into the very real Gansey in front of him. Even if he put on his smile and his brave face, Noah could still see Gansey. It was the same for all of his friends. He’d know them no matter what face they wore or what disguise they donned to keep others from seeing them. When you were dead, people didn’t always see you, so people let their guard down. He also had a general understanding of them as people, as individuals.
“I’ve had a lot of time to know you,” he said quietly, like that the the simplest and most obvious explanation. “Circular time fixes all things. Well, not really. I guess I just...know you guys.” It was hard to explain knowing the others. He wanted to blame it all on his habit of relating to time in a circular fashion. He knew it was more than that, but he couldn’t really explain the more. So he just...let it be.
“She’d bully people into telling her where you were, too. Probably. From what you’ve said of her.” Noah liked the vision. He liked to think his sister would do the same, but Adele wasn’t really that kind of person. She’d just have called and told him to come home and stop being an idiot.
Noah’s words weren’t quite adequate, didn’t cover the whole of how he knew them, of his knowledge of them, of what it was like to see something, early, with the knowledge and understanding of what came later. Certainly, it was a different experience, and Gansey didn’t mind being seen through so much, not when it was Helen, not when it was Noah. And that, in the end, mattered more than how Noah managed it.
He smiled, shaking his head just a little. “Almost, good man, almost. She would do it without it becoming bullying,” Gansey grinned. “She’s quite good like that.” Indeed, it was somewhat of the Gansey way, but Helen had perfected a little part of it. He still preferred her efforts out of the lives of people he knew, people he cared about. And she had spared them, mostly.
Another bite, larger this time so that the ice cream didn’t melt, burst in his mouth. And Gansey, waiting until he’d savored it some, swallowed. “Your sister, too, has excellent taste.”
Noah smiled at the words about Helen. “So she’d just Gansey it.” It seemed fitting to turn Gansey’s name into a verb. It probably explained the majority of the family anyway. Ronan’s family fought things out. Maybe Gansey’s just talked their way out of all their problems. Only he hoped that Helen was better at her words.
There was a smile at that. “Adele had excellent taste,” he agreed, flickering for a moment once more. “She always did.”
“And she still does,” Gansey said immediately. It hadn’t been hard to keep minimal tabs on Noah’s family. Both their sisters were doing well.