WHO: Gansey & Ronan Lynch WHAT: Insomnia Bros with lots of feeling WHEN: June 27th, the wee hours WHERE: The open road WARNINGS: Anxiety, low self-esteem, references to death, dealing with mental health problems
It was late, but the night was still warm. Ronan was restless, for no particular reason. He had been out wandering in the fields for hours with Opal, and when he’d returned, he found that Adam had already gone to bed. He considered joining him, but then he heard a sound from outside the open window and glanced over to see Gansey in the driveway.
Ronan stuck his head out the window and whistled, low, to get his best friend’s attention without waking Adam. And then he disappeared from the window and headed downstairs, reappearing a minute later at the front door of the Barns.
“Going somewhere?” he asked, tilting his head to one side as he considered Gansey.
--
Gansey looked up at the sound, his eyes catching on Ronan’s head, a clear outlier in the farmhouse’s general appearance. He leaned against the car, the metal still fairly warm, so it was not a relaxing experience, from that point of view. But it was his car, and that was a comfort all its own. It made up for the stickiness along his skin, despite Gansey only wearing a shirt, no jacket.
He considered the question. Part of it was right. There was no location in mind, no destination, nowhere. “Going,” Gansey replied. Then in case that sounded like something he didn’t mean, “And coming back.” It wouldn’t even be the whole night. Just until he felt settled, until he would be able to sleep. And if he slept in the Camaro, it wouldn’t be that bad.
--
Ronan raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t suggesting you were leaving.” Though he understood why Gansey felt the need to specify, particularly to Ronan. There was a history there of Ronan hating it when Gansey left him behind. “Want company?”
He supposed he would take ‘no’ for an answer, but he didn’t really expect it. And it wasn’t the answer he wanted.
--
Gansey meant no offense. It had not been any sort of goodbye, something Gansey would give before leaving for any appreciable amount of time or serious reason. It was not like the night Gansey had driven off in the Pig, chasing an incredible stag-like being and birds so many birds, leaving Ronan sleeping in the BMW on the curb. There was no silently slinking out. His quiet had been meant not to wake Noah or, to a lesser extent, Adam or Ronan, were they asleep. But Ronan wasn’t asleep, something that felt familiar and comfortable. Gansey had not been sure how well Ronan was sleeping but assumed better than their quiet nights in wakeful coexistence.
So he nodded and unlocked the car, pressing the button on his door to unlock the passenger side for Ronan. Perhaps his mind would more easily get past stalling on thoughts of Blue, on memories of driving with her late at night, at the absence Gansey felt keenly in those moments and as a common thread of longing every moment of the day. It was a fine ache, healthy. One he had already spoken with Ronan about, back on the cruise. He glanced at his phone before sliding it back in his pocket. Still no call from Jane.
--
Ronan slid easily into the car with the ease of long practice. The passenger seat was comfortable and familiar. He loved this car, maybe even a little bit more than his own, not just for the extra horsepower under the hood but for everything about it that was so incredibly Gansey.
He buckled his seatbelt, which had historically sometimes required Gansey to tell him to do it, but he hadn’t really wanted to risk his life in a very long time, and he had recently promised Adam that he would try very hard not to die. It would be stupid if he died in a car crash, not that such a thing was likely to happen with Gansey driving, but sometimes things were outside their control.
He stretched out his legs and leaned back in his seat, looking briefly over at Gansey in the driver seat. “Excelsior,” he said, in a tone that was obviously making fun of the way Gansey usually said it.
--
Gansey sank into the seat, welcoming its embrace. It had long cooled its engine, so that his feet were not yet awash in its warmth. But he turned the key in the ignition, a few times before it took. By that time Ronan was looking at him, and Gansey met his gaze, curious. The word brought a smile to his lips. It had still been said. “Excelsior,” Gansey repeated while he put the Camaro in reverse and turned the car to face outward down the drive. He then drove a respectable fifteen miles an hour until he reached the main road, signaled his turn in the opposite direction as town, checked for any potential evening traffic and found none, and turned onto the road.
The Pig continued at a respectful two miles below the speed limit. Even with the window closed, Gansey felt the air passing around his shoulder, where the Pig let things in. He lowered his window further, so as to let the air properly whoosh past him. It possibly decreased his unimpressive mpg even further, but it felt right. His whole being thrummed with the car, and Gansey let out a small satisfied sigh. At least this one thing, this one thing, was right.
--
Ronan’s use of the word was mocking, but it had gotten a smile out of Gansey, which was just fine with Ronan too. One corner of his mouth quirked up, and then he leaned his head against the side of the seat closest to the window, and stared out.
For a while, he was silent, listening to the rumble of the Pig’s engine, the woosh of the air. He heard Gansey’s little contented sigh, and looked back over at him. But he still didn’t say anything.
--
The road continued straight, straighter than it would have in Virginia, in the hills and mountains around Henrietta. It gave the illusion of traveling faster and of not moving at all. This time, that was a good sense. That feeling had not always been, not when Gansey felt time hurtling him toward his death even as it slowed down and drew out each moment. That could have been that, just one throwaway thought. But Ronan was in the car with him, and they had broached the subject, brushed past it really. It had been on the network, on someone else’s post. Not the place to discuss such things.
“I knew,” Gansey said into the quiet of the night, “Since I heard my voice on the recorder. But it didn’t feel real, I didn’t believe it, until Persephone died.” What had he been supposed to think? What else could he have done? He could have told his friends, a small voice said. But Gansey still felt the instinctive recoil from the idea, the same instinct that had told him not to ruin the fundraiser for everyone else. It had felt an unnecessary burden, if his death were unstoppable, if it could not be helped. What could they have done? Part of him asked. But Gansey knew his friends well. A lot, was all he could think.
--
Despite the contented sigh, Ronan had known there was something -- multiple things -- on Gansey’s mind. The insomnia, the late night drive, both of those were dead giveaways, but truthfully, Ronan didn’t even need those hints. There was always something on Gansey’s mind, and Ronan was even more tuned into it here, because Gansey was close by again, and Ronan was not so preoccupied by his own shit as he had been when they’d been living together.
He still wasn’t really ready for this topic of conversation. But he didn’t look away from Gansey right away, not until Gansey had gone quiet again, then only to think. Had he known? He had hated that damn recording -- he still hated it -- so yes, in some way, he had. But the thought hadn’t taken shape in any solid way for him either. Not because it didn’t feel real -- death had been very real to Ronan ever since he’d found his father’s dead body, and that had made the knowledge of the nearness of Gansey’s death very, very real long before that fateful St. Mark’s Eve -- but because Ronan had simply refused to accept the truth of it. Refused to believe that Gansey would die again. The way he’d reacted to the recording at the time could be summed up in retrospect as, basically, absolutely fucking not, not on my watch, and also, fuck you.
Now, he said simply, “Yeah.”
Because if he said nothing, he thought Gansey might take it to an end to the conversation, and if he said anything else, then the conversation became about him and not Gansey. And he didn’t want to talk about how he felt about this. But he did think Gansey needed to talk about it.
--
It had been enough to tell any of them, to tell all of them, if only they considered it. It had been easier to believe in a king buried centuries before - whose name Gansey had heard in his ear - than it had been to consider the consequences of not living to graduate high school. It had slid in nicely with the fact Gansey had been unable to imagine life after Glendower, life having found Glendower. Even if it had been everything he had thought and hoped for - they were living that version, in a way, now that Noah was himself again, needing to eat, sleep, and everything else - Gansey did not have an image of what his life would be without Glendower.
He still lacked that. But Gansey was living it anyway.
“I spent most of the time considering that I would be gone, that I would not be here to do anything, and planned for that, to do what I could now to affect then, to make it - well, it was always going to be painful - the best I could,” Gansey explained. He had spent so much time, so many hours, in Headmaster Child’s office, being at his most convincing, endearing, and wealthy, to give Ronan an opportunity he neither wanted nor needed. If Gansey ever had only hours to live, Child was not the person he would like to spend it with. But there was little he wouldn’t do for the chance to see his friends happy, even without him. He was not sure if that made him key or extraneous.
--
Anger filled Ronan, hot and defensive, much more satisfying than the hurt that had caused it. “As if there is a single. Goddamn. Thing. That could make that better.”
The words came out sharply enunciated and venomous. He wasn’t really angry at Gansey -- well, maybe a little, it depended on what stupid thing Gansey had done to try to ease the pain of his death. But his words always came out like weapons when he was hurting.
--
He only took a glance at Ronan, otherwise keeping his eyes on the road. The words washed over him, a fresh reminder of what Ronan’s reaction had been when it became clear there was only one way to stop the demon. Gansey, adamantly, did not want to die. He had not wanted to die when he was little, he hadn’t wanted to die the second time knowing it was coming, and he still did not want to die now. But then, it had felt like some kind of aneurysm diagnosis. Gansey was fine, in the peak of health. But one day, someday before St. Mark’s Eve, he was going to die. That pain had been bound to come, to all of them, when it happened. And Gansey had not been able to do anything about that.
Ronan had been the hardest to try to look after, the more so because of how pointless it had been. Adam and Blue, for all they would have iced him over with looks were he to attempt it while alive, could have had their lives positively impacted by his will. Ronan, Gansey still did not know what he could do for Ronan were the situation to happen again. He had never needed money, not in Henrietta, not in Texas. Nor could Gansey think much of something he could do with money that Ronan would not think of. Not that he had any money to speak of here.
“No,” Gansey said quietly. There was not. The best he could give were the parts of himself: Monmouth (when it was his again, he had thought to get it back) to Blue, the Pig to Adam, and his journal (it felt pitifully small and inadequate, for how much of him it held) to Ronan. Months had failed to find any significant measure. Gansey had only kept it in mind in his conversations, with Adam, with Blue… He had only hoped they would somehow stay together. And that somehow at some point he had said what needed to be said to make that easier.
None of it held up to Ronan and what he meant to Gansey. “I couldn’t imagine it, what you’d be like,” Gansey stopped. He was not trying to sound egotistical. Having seen Ronan fall apart once and having done everything he could to help Ronan piece himself back together, he did not know if Ronan could have done it again. He still felt guilty, having died on him. But it had been the only way to save Ronan, to save Matthew and Chainsaw and Opal and all those wondrous things that were part of his best friend. So he was not apologetic either.
“But I needed you to live,” Gansey said, so softly it was nearly under his breath. He needed Ronan to live as badly as Ronan needed him to live. He’d been able to do something about that, and as miserable as he had been, that had been something. To save Ronan.
--
Ronan struggled with his emotions for a moment. He had just enough of a handle on them, just enough of a clear head -- mainly because Gansey was alive and he wasn’t fated to die anymore, although that definitely didn’t mean he wasn’t at risk -- to know that his anger wasn’t useful. He didn’t want to be angry with Gansey for trying to deal with knowing that he was going to die and trying to make it better for Ronan. That was a shitty thing to be mad at him for, but it was hard not to be angry when it hurt so much.
After an extended moment of silence, he finally asked in a slightly strained voice, “What did you do?”
--
Another mile slipped away beneath them, the sounds of the engine a roar that silenced anything else coming in the night. It was just the two of them and the Pig soaring down the two lane road toward nowhere, miles to go before Gansey could even consider turning back. They put no more distance between Gansey and what he had done, what he had felt. But it soothed the pain in his heart, just a touch. He felt more himself.
Gansey sighed, and he did not immediately answer the question. Hours in Headmaster Childs’s office, hours with his phone turned off, hours that had wrung the most Ganseying out of Gansey than he had ever done, hours the closest he had ever come to feeling like his father and mother. No one could have loathed them more. “Something foolish and something impossibly small,” Gansey said at first. The financial moves Gansey had made, none of them felt like things he could tell his friends, tied as they all were to things they would have rejected him doing had they known. But what was the point to being as rich as he was if it could not help his friends?
“Your Aglionby diploma,” Gansey pointedly did not look at Ronan. “And my journal.” Admitting as much was not really about trying to get anything to do with Ronan and Aglionby. He had just wanted Ronan to have every opportunity, whenever he wanted any of them, still open. The latter had been an urge for his friends to have part of himself. The journal was nothing, of no value. But it was part of him, through and through, one of only a few things that felt him.
--
Ronan scoffed at the first suggestion, but before he could say anything else, the second one brought him up short. It was a jagged knife in his chest, cutting through sinew and bone, tearing and ripping into his heart. He knew the significance of Gansey’s journal, understood on a very basic level what it meant for Gansey to give it to him. He couldn’t have put it into words, especially not in the exact way that Gansey would have, but he knew Gansey. He knew.
“Oh, fuck you,” he whispered, without venom. He couldn’t look at Gansey, either. His eyes were full of tears, his jaw tensed with the effort of keeping himself from weeping.
--
His eye looked at the speedometer, just to make sure that he had not accelerated along the straight road, while distracted by giving Ronan privacy but barely managing words of his own. There were few things that Gansey truly loved. His travels around the world had been littered with detritus, things left behind. Places had been kept either as entries in his journal or as boxes of what little artifacts had been of no public value, which had come with him. Little else had mattered. They had been replaced, time and again.
Something small in him eased, a fear Gansey had felt despite how fallible it had been - that Ronan wouldn’t have understood, that in the wake of what it had been supposed to follow, it would have been too little. It still was, to some extent. The journal was a part of him, but it would never make up for Gansey dying. It was the part of Gansey that still felt Gansey when he imagined it in Ronan’s hands. Not a place of grief and horror. Not the parts of the Pig that were not Gansey.
Tears quietly dripped behind his wire frame glasses. At least that small thing had been the right choice. Gansey focused on the road, not trusting himself to look at Ronan. “I’ll always be with you,” Gansey said, forcing himself to speak at a conversational volume, “even when it feels like I am not.” Whether that was death or Venezuela or college or a universe or anything else. Ronan was a part of him, as much as the journal.
--
Shut up, Gansey. The words were on the tip of Ronan’s tongue; he wanted to say them. Instead, what came out of his mouth was a choked sob. And then he was crying, the same way he’d cried over Gansey’s dead body. He tried to make himself stop, raising his hands to his face, wiping the tears away. But they kept coming anyway.
--
One hand reached out, but touching Ronan’s arm, his shoulder, was not much of anything. Gansey only felt what little control over himself he had, so close to being raw, an exposed wire, because he was driving the Pig, because the wind whipped across his left shoulder and cooled it, because his feet were just too warm, because the car shook and groaned beneath him. It did nothing for Ronan. Gansey could do nothing for Ronan just then and there.
He slowed in a tremendously short period of time and rolled onto the shoulder, just enough so as not to block the road. Gansey turned the key, shutting off the ignition and crying harder already. But having committed to his decision, he pushed open his door and pulled himself out roughly, slamming the door behind him. Pocketing the keys, Gansey went around to the passenger side and yanked the door open. It was quickly followed by pulling Ronan out of the open door and holding Ronan against him, himself against Ronan. Momentum had kept him up so far. Now the edge of the door dug into his back, but Gansey didn’t care. It was still inadequate. But it was more.
--
Ronan heard Gansey crying, too, and so barely processed the car stopping. He heard Gansey getting out, and then his door was opening and he was being pulled out of the car. The suddenness and strangeness of it slowed his tears more than the actual gesture of Gansey stopping to comfort him. But he didn’t have the will to resist being pulled into the hug even if he’d wanted to, and he wrapped his arms around Gansey in return, and let his head bow forward to rest against Gansey’s shoulder. He was no longer actively crying, but there were still tears in his eyes, and they dripped slowly down his cheeks.
“You goddamn asshole,” he murmured, muffled, into Gansey’s shoulder.
--
The night air was a cold shock, and Gansey felt burnt out. The tears stopped coming, as though there were no more. Instead he felt hollow and empty. As much in need of the comfort he was offering as he had to give. His head leaned against Ronan’s, and he tried just to breath. His breathing was too shallow, labored without great benefit. But Gansey tried to slow that down too until it reached his frantic heart. When they slowed to fit the land around them, Gansey felt small in an immense space.
“I am still here,” Gansey said in return. He was there, he was with Ronan, and he always would be. As it turned out, not even death could keep them apart. So it was difficult imagining anything had the ability to do so.
--
What broke Ronan’s heart all over again was the realization that Gansey was falling apart too. Ronan had already cried over Gansey’s death once, but he didn’t think that Gansey had. Certainly not where anyone else would know about it.
“I know,” he managed to say, and then, “Shit, man.” The words were more just a release of tension and emotion than they were an expression of them.
He had finally stopped crying, too, and he didn’t really need the hug for his own comfort any longer, but he held on anyway. “I’m still here too. Not going anywhere.”
--
He exhaled and breathed in again deeply. It was so much, just thinking about it. More words, about his death and his dying, did not feel like they would say anything more. But perhaps they would cut the both of them. Ronan’s words did better than anything Gansey knew to say. Though Gansey swearing would not have had the same effect.
There was so much to Ronan Lynch most people did not see. And this was part of it. They could see and hear the same things Gansey did, but they wouldn’t understand how deeply he felt, how wondrous and incredible he was. Perhaps they might see his strong unbreakable loyalty, but that had often been misunderstood. Gansey had always liked having Ronan around when he was awake at midnight, at one, at two, unable to sleep. He needed Ronan as much as Ronan needed him. Gansey understood that much.
“It’s really a good thing my parents could be convinced I should have a year off, between high school and college,” Gansey shared, “I did not complete any of the applications before they agreed.” By the time they would have been relevant, it was too late. Gansey had not been able to skip school altogether. But he had chosen something of what to do with his time, and it had not been to live life the Gansey he was expected to be. Venezuela had been a breather from that. This, here, was all a break from it.
The statement hadn’t really been about his parents. “They all want to know who I am,” Gansey said. “I would like to know, too.”
--
It seemed like a non sequitur, but it was just so goddamn Gansey of him to be thinking about applications for college when they were talking about his death. He had fucking died, of course he deserved a year off from worrying about school. But of course Gansey’s family probably didn’t know, because Gansey wouldn’t have wanted to upset them.
Under other circumstances, Ronan might have laughed at him, or scoffed again. But at least one of them had to give the conversation the appropriate seriousness, and it clearly wasn’t going to be Gansey, so that meant it had to be Ronan. So he stayed quiet.
And he was glad he did, because the next thing that Gansey said was yet another non sequitur, but it was so sad and it rang so heartbreakingly true that Ronan almost couldn’t bear it.
“I know who you are,” he said. “You know who you are. Just tell them.”
--
Colleges wanted hopes and dreams, aspirations and ambitions, something that prospective students were striving for. For most his life, or so it felt, Gansey had had that. People did not always understand, or they thought they did and only glimpsed a part of it. But Glendower was something that Gansey could have written about, that met the energy they were looking for. But Gansey had found Glendower, a steep disappointment after everything. That left him, just him, as something Gansey did not know how to put into words. If he knew at all.
He permitted the hug to lapse, then, turning as it was to conversation. Gansey leaned against the open car door, the metal pivoting a little farther back at his weight. “I do not know that I do,” Gansey spoke softly. “I certainly do not know what I am doing or what I would like to do.” That he wanted something more, that he listened and looked for things others had forgotten, that he sought things he had to prove himself to… those concepts were not easy to explain, not to quantify in a way that made sense to colleges. Gansey knew he could put charming meaningless answers to it all and still likely be accepted many places. But the question asked made him want an answer.
--
“You,” Ronan said, looking at him intently, “Are Dick fucking Gansey. You know what you’re really good at? Finding shit that’s hidden and hard to find. So you’re gonna find something to do, you just have to start looking for it.”
He didn’t know exactly what that would end up being, but that wasn’t the point. Gansey wasn’t going to do what anyone thought he should do, he was going to do exactly what he wanted to do. Maybe his lack of confidence was from the disappointment of not being able to wake Glendower, maybe it was from his death, maybe it went farther back, to the way his parents had always expected him to be and the things they wanted him to do.
Ronan, for one, trusted with one hundred percent confidence that whatever Gansey settled on doing would be the exact right thing for him. There was a reason he had always been willing to follow Gansey anywhere, no questions asked.
But he wasn’t sure a pep talk was really what Gansey was looking for. He paused, then asked, “You felt like this just since you came back, or longer?”
--
Ronan was not saying much Gansey did not know. In fact, his thoughts had run along similar lines, save with perhaps less certainty on the final note. That was because he did not feel as though he had anything to go on. Anywhere to look. To start looking. Once he had a thread to pull on, even if it were the slimmest of whisperings, Gansey could commit to it fully, until there was something more to go on. It was starting over from scratch, without any more answers, that was so difficult.
The question made Gansey think. So many contradictory feelings mixed inside him, had as long as he could remember, that it was difficult to easily say. It was a matter of perspective. But some questions had loomed before him since those words had been muttered in his ears, since Noah had whispered them. It seemed impossible, now, not to recognize Noah’s voice. Glendower had taken on so many meanings, so many hopes and dreams.
“Since I came back,” Gansey said, “the first time. I suppose. What answers I have now does not really answer all the questions it raised.” Even if a few, more surface level questions had been answered. Noah, then the rest of his friends, had chosen to save him. “Why should I deserve a second and third chance at life when” - it would have been easy, before, to say almost no one, but this place was unusual for that on many grounds - “so few do. What have I accomplished that is worth it?” Who was he, really, deep inside?
--
“First of all,” Ronan answered, “It’s not about what you’ve accomplished, or at least not by the stupid standards of colleges and politicians.” He had not been prepared to answer this question, and although he knew the answer, he had to stop and think about how to put it into words. “If Noah, or Cabeswater, or whoever, actually had a choice in saving you, it was because of the whole circular time thing, and they already knew who you were going to be and what you were going to do when you came back, and that it would be a complete fucking waste of all that -- everything that’s happened, everything we’ve all been through -- if you just up and died -- and stayed dead -- before any of it could happen.”
He shrugged, helplessly. “Shit, man, how can you not know how much you’ve done? You traveled the world and discovered so many cool things, even before you met any of us. You fucking died and then you went right back out into the world and did that. And then you came to Henrietta and befriended all of us. You know where we’d be without you? Noah wouldn’t have bothered to be a ghost, he’d just be fucking dead, for no good reason. I’d be dead, too, because you wouldn’t have been there to keep me alive. And Adam…” He trailed off, because he didn’t really know where Adam would be without Gansey. Maybe not dead, because of all of them, Adam was the best at surviving. “His life would be a whole lot shittier, without you. Blue’s, too.”
Blue’s life actually might’ve been pretty similar, what with the whole psychic family and all, and Ronan had a feeling she’d have ended up traveling one way or another. But he thought she would still agree with his assessment that her life wouldn’t have been nearly as good without Gansey in it.
He shrugged. “Maybe Henry’s too. I don’t fucking know.” The point was -- the point was-- “The whole world might’ve actually fucking ended when the demon showed up, without you there to stop it. The world still fucking needs you, okay? And we need you. How can you live through all of that, do all of those things, and still not think you’re worth it?”
--
A flattering picture was painted with those words. It was of little relevance, most of it, to the wider world. Gansey loved and valued each of his friends, thought they deserved far more than life had given them: Noah’s betrayal and murder, Ronan’s robbed innocence, Adam a sense of home while he was growing up, Blue’s life defined by something she was not. Just pieces of them and everything they had been through. Had he not followed up the lead pointing toward Henrietta, had he not convinced his father over a phone call, he would have missed all of that, all of them. Gansey was immeasurably glad he had gone.
Until Ronan had reached the possible end of the world, however, none of it had truly measured up to anything per the standard generations of Ganseys had set, had it held much water compared to remarkable people every day around the globe, a small number of which Gansey had met. The demon had been something different. The Gray Man was dealing with people, with the people of the magical artifact black market world, nasty people many of them. But then, for his part, all Gansey had really done was died, which was something people did every day. Even the number of those who sacrificed themselves for others was enough that a few likely died the same day Gansey had. But they had stayed dead, when Gansey had not.
It was so easy for him to brush aside what points Ronan made, or at least, his mind questioned them in a way that made them suspect. But it was hard to say any of it. What words he could think of just sounded as though he were asking Ronan to continue to say nice things about how much he was needed. His sacrifice had not even been that much, given he had stayed dead for something like fifteen minutes. Gansey shrugged, slightly. No answer he gave would be satisfactory for Ronan.
Instead he focused on something that felt a little smaller, even if it was just as heavy. “Perhaps you all needed me then,” Gansey admitted. “But you are doing well. Adam’s doing well. Noah’s a real boy again. Why - how do you need me now?” He understood Ronan wanted him around. That had been clear from the moment they had laid eyes on each other through a window. But he couldn’t shake the feeling of needing Ronan more, now, than Ronan needed him.
--
“Oh my God, Gansey.” Ronan could tell he hadn’t gotten through, just from the shrug, the lack of response. It left Ronan at a loss for words to continue; he felt he’d already articulated Gansey’s importance and worth quite clearly, and Gansey wasn’t telling him why it hadn’t been enough. He had just fucking shrugged it off, as though it meant so little to him, as if it was all worthless. “If all of that isn’t good enough for you, what else possibly could be? How many people do you have to save, or make better, how many times to you need to save the world just to feel like you deserve to live? What else could possibly be more important than all of that?”
The things that Gansey actually did deign to say were almost, somehow, even worse than the silent dismissal of everything Ronan had said. He was not only shrugging off everything that was in the past, but apparently the present was worthless to him, too. That hurt, because the present was worth everything to Ronan, especially because everything in the past had been so hard.
He crossed his arms over his chest to protect himself against the pain of it, and looked away from Gansey, off into the distance. “All of that might not mean jack shit to you, but it means everything to me. No one else could have done what you did, for me or for anyone. And I don’t need you to save me anymore, but — actually, that's not even true. I needed you to help me when I turned into a ghost. Noah needed your help coming back to life. We still need you, I still fucking need you, maybe not for life or death reasons all the time, but I still need you even when I’m doing well. I don’t have a reason that would hold up to whatever your stupid standards are. I just do.”
And then, because he was hurting, he added petulantly, “Even when you’re being a dumbass piece of shit.”
—
Gansey did not know what he expected in response to the questions. He had never known any particularly good answers. He had not done much since coming to Tumbleweed, had not done much on the cruise. Ronan brought up the one point Gansey could hold onto, adrift in his sea of thoughts - helping bring Noah back, something that soothed Gansey immensely to know had happened, to know he’d had a part in - but Ronan was also right. He had not, was not, saying anything that relieved the stress wrapped around Gansey at nearly all times. That ate at him with unanswered questions. Gansey knew that Ronan loved him, that Ronan felt he needed him.
That was all there was. All there was against everything Gansey struggled with. The look on Ronan’s face seeing him through the glass, the out of breath gasps for air, his whistle from the window…
He sighed again. But this time it was at himself. He could not readily define what standards he held, what would make him sure of himself in these moments, when very little was happening, when he felt unsure of himself. The thoughts had wrapped around him when he was not aware that was what they were doing. Or, if he saw it, Gansey had not been able to drive them back. “I guess… it’s hard to see when I am, still, being foolish about certain things,” Gansey replied. He had worked on some issues he had been made aware of, those he unleashed by opening his mouth. But with this one, usually Gansey simply did not open it.
--
Ronan stayed where he was, arms crossed, his head turned to the side and lowered so that he was looking down at the ground. He didn’t say anything immediately. Truthfully, he didn’t really know what to say. He was still hurt, but as he’d just said, he loved Gansey anyway, wanted Gansey to figure this shit out, because nothing else was going to make either of them feel better.
“This because of your parents?” he asked. “What they want from you? Their standards or whatever?”
He looked back over at Gansey. “Cause their kind of accomplishment doesn’t mean jack shit, not really. If that’s the way you’re looking at it, I can’t help you with that. I mean, look at me. All I want to do is run my farm and dream up pretty things and hang out with you guys.” He paused. “You should be talking to Adam, probably. He gets it. But he also gets all that other stupid stuff.”
--
Ronan’s posture said he was hurt, even when he didn’t say another word. He’d said as much before, and Gansey wanted to be able to say the right thing. To mix apology with self-confidence and assurance, to balm the wounds his doubts had inflicted. He wanted to be able to say all that and to mean it. But just then, after revealing that uneasiness he felt, it would have been a lie. Some people needed those, and Gansey was good at being Gansey. But here, he felt as though they had somehow swapped places, and Gansey’s words had been cruel and harsh and biting. If unfortunately honest.
“I may not know what I want,” Gansey replied, “but I am quite sure I do not want to do politics. I do not want to be my parents.” Even if his mother was the one holding office, his father supported her and worked the same functions and crowds, holding conversations about the value of local craft beer instead of cucumbers but the experience being about the same.
Gansey was fairly certain that running a farm was not a part of his future either. “They have their expectations. Everyone does,” he half-waved it off. “So long as my career can come with a degree and some communicable signs of success…” He waved the end of the sentence away. There were ways of meeting those expectations. Helen simply worked on people, any number of ways, but she still had everyone’s support and approval.
There was a reason this conversation had not happened with Adam, at least not yet. Gansey had not shaped the words well enough for that. “I have been given… everything,” Gansey looked at Ronan. “Wealth, a loving family, even a second and a third chance at life, two more than even most people in my shoes would receive. Shouldn’t that lead to something? Shouldn’t I do something with that?” Because he could do more, with half a thought, than most people could through anything but extreme diligence, resilience, and some matter of luck.
--
“That’s all just random, man,” Ronan said. “People get what they get in life. Everything you were given, you didn’t ask for that. I didn’t ask to be a dreamer. As I’ve already told you, it did lead to something. Why doesn’t any of that mean anything to you?”
He shrugged, dropping his arms at his sides, and stuck his hands in his pockets. “You can still do more, too, nobody’s stopping you.”
--
But Gansey had been given it. And having been given so much, he would think absolutely poorly of himself for being selfish with it, for only doing things for himself. Which was not to say he judged Ronan for his choices. Ronan had been through enough; living on a farm and dreaming was enough. And those dreams… Ronan brought such light into the world. So many incredible things. Cabeswater.
“It mattered,” Gansey agreed. He hadn’t wanted to die, but at least his second death had accomplished something. It had saved Ronan. It had stopped the demon. Had he stayed dead, that would have been enough. Because there wouldn’t have been a chance to do more. “I did something with my death. It was neither pointless nor meaningless… But that’s not my life. Cabeswater died to bring me back. I have to be worth it.” Worth Noah dying and sacrificing himself. Worth Cabeswater sacrificing itself and all its wonders. Worth all of the opportunities that he had.
“I am going to do more,” Gansey replied, determined despite his lack of direction. Something that made a difference, something with his life, not just his death. That was harder, something day in and day out, rather than a single moment. But Gansey needed it.
--
“Cabeswater,” Ronan said, “Doesn’t give a shit about what you do with your life, I promise you. You saved it from the demon. Cabeswater’s good now, it’ll be good for… fucking ever, probably.”
He doubted that would help either, but it seemed worth saying. It also reminded him of something. He scuffed his foot against the ground. “You remember how I told you… when I was supposed to dream up Cabeswater again, I kept putting it off, and then I almost died? I think that was… the closest I’ve ever felt to what you’re describing. I wanted it to be perfect, I wanted it to be… everything, to make everything work out how I wanted it. It’s not exactly the same, but… it was stupid, and it almost killed me. It’s great to have… things you wanna do, just… find a way to quit doing it in a way that’s hurting you. Even if that’s just… you beating yourself up on the inside.”
Was this helping? He had no clue. He just kept talking. “Just because you don’t have a subconscious that can actually hurt you when you don’t like yourself, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.”
--
Gansey still had unanswered questions when it came to parts of his deaths, questions he did not expect to receive any answers for. Gansey had told Noah what he heard when he died, so Noah knew what to whisper when he saved Gansey’s life. But Gansey had only known what was said because Noah said it. So who first chose those words? Who had thought Gansey had not deserved to live then? Gansey was the easy answer, but those words had long gone under his skin, so he felt uneasy about simply laying the blame at his own feet.
He kept listening. It was much easier to see that Ronan had been being stupid, that there would not be any manifested Cabeswater that any of them would enjoy without Ronan. And so long as he knew they would all be trampling through it, Ronan could avoid the pitfalls from before. And probably it would lead to some new ones. Though, at least Ronan knew what he wanted to do. “Not a fan of that stupid,” Gansey said quietly. He then nearly laughed, at himself. “I did warn that I could be stupid too.” That warning was coming due.
“It is probably a good thing I don’t though,” Gansey agreed hastily, having seen what had come from Ronan’s. No doubt his mind would have been able to conjure up something else. He rubbed his thumb against his lip. How long had he felt this way? Since he died? Since before then… since he died the first time? Then he sighed. “I can only work on it.” He could not promise he was going to feel better about all of this… on any sort of time scale. “I do feel awfully stupid right now.”
--
“You’re a dumbass,” Ronan agreed, but it was clear that he meant it lovingly. “Did some of that finally make it through your thick skull?”
He certainly wouldn’t have wished any dreamer ability on Gansey, knowing now the way his friend’s mind treated him. Maybe it was lucky that Ronan’s magic had been given to Noah instead of Gansey, for that reason. But… having everything so real in his dreams had helped him to put himself back together, too. Opal, primarily, had been responsible for that. Ronan still wasn’t sure precisely how Opal had first appeared, if she was really some part of his subconscious or some part of Cabeswater, or both. Ultimately it didn’t really matter.
“You can tell me your stupid shit,” he added, after a beat. “Keeping it to yourself doesn’t help. I know that much. And I’ll remind you that you’re a dumbass,” he continued, “But also that you’re my dumbass.”
--
“A little,” Gansey replied. Ronan’s abrupt shocked reaction, especially coming from Ronan, had made as much of an impression as what words he chose. As much sense that Gansey had made of anything yet, he had to work to maintain a hold on. It would be so easy to lose the thread of it.
He thought, then, about the fact that he rarely spoke about it, with anyone. Helen saw through much of it. But Gansey was not sure, with his friends, whether he said nothing because some part of him knew it was stupid or because he feared they would confirm it was true. Perhaps both at once. As though, somehow, it would not be quite so true if it were true but no one said as much. Forcing himself to look at the thought like that, it seemed silly. But Gansey was not sure. He could simply be missing some salient point.
“All right,” Gansey agreed. “I know you’ll do that.” As much trouble as he felt, sometimes, trying to explain why Ronan cared about him, he knew - even if he had to tell himself - that Ronan loved him.
--
“I’m with you, man,” Ronan said, just to drive the point home. “Even when I do stupid shit, even when it’s just your stupid brain telling you I’m not. I’d do anything for you, you should know that.”
He had truly thought Gansey had known that all along. But something about Gansey’s life had made him insecure, or at least unsure, of what his friendships meant. Adam had taken a lot less convincing to be sure of Ronan’s love for him, but in fairness to Gansey, it was a different kind of love, a different kind of relationship, one that naturally led to Ronan offering that kind of reinforcement. And throughout most of the closest years that Ronan and Gansey had been living together, Ronan had been a total mess, barely able to keep himself from spinning off the rails, much less be able to do anything about Gansey’s insecurities.
For good measure -- and because Ronan had always expressed himself better with action than with words -- he stepped forward and hugged Gansey again.
--
A lot was included in anything. Possibly some things Gansey wouldn’t want Ronan to do for him, which now included getting that damned diploma. Even here, without the same resources (the Barns did not have a money tree), Ronan had thrived, emotionally and financially. He entertained half a thought his father might approve of it, but as soon as he was aware of the thought, it vanished in the face of his father’s reactions to his friends. Well, that was nothing new.
Gansey hugged Ronan back, this one a very different hug. In the motions, it was similar enough. They stood in the same spots, and Gansey still clung tightly to Ronan. He hoped it offered some comfort in return, but Gansey acknowledged he was the one being comforted. And he was glad to have it. He exhaled a little easier and took his time ending the hug.
It had gotten chilly, stopped in the middle of the night, in the desert. Gansey had not dressed for a long talk where the Pig’s heat did not wash over them. So when it ended, he returned to his side of the car, slipping into the seat, and turning the key in the ignition, to less than a desired effect. Gansey frowned as he listened to the noise. “Give me a minute,” he told Ronan.
Once he pulled the hood up, Gansey inspected the regularly maintained engine for the latest flaw. The engine had turned over but failed to start, which meant it hadn’t been receiving enough power before the gas would kick in and power itself. Which meant the battery. It was not quite dead but close enough. Gansey checked his phone. One bar of service. But it was late, and they were far from town.
Instead he came back, pushing the wire frames of his glasses up, and looked at Ronan. “Could you dream me a battery?” Gansey asked. “Here?” It was not the Barns. It was not on the ley line. But they were not going to reach either location without a new battery first.
--
Ronan was just really damn glad that something he’d said had worked, finally. The hug did make him feel better, but he was just as glad to get back into the Pig. He lay back in his seat, emotionally exhausted.
And of course the car didn’t start. He was too amused to be annoyed about it; besides, they weren’t in any rush, nowhere important they immediately needed to be. He wasn’t overly eager to get home, but didn’t mind heading back there either.
He closed his eyes when Gansey got out to look under the hood. He opened them halfway when Gansey returned. And burst out laughing at the question. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You want a normal battery or one that’ll actually last?”
--
Gansey dropped his shoulders and looked at Ronan intently. This was the Pig they were talking about, his Pig. Even if the whole car had been dreamt into existence and was not the original one, it was still the same car. Gansey supposed he did not have much of a leg to stand on, to think any less of this version of the Pig, all things considered. But even when it was damaging his clothes, that were in more limited supply, even as he had less free time to divide how he wished, even as the price of gas was unbelievable, Gansey had never once asked Ronan to make anything work ’better’ for him.
“A normal one,” Gansey bothered to say aloud. Even as it was a problem Blue never faced with her car - it made for a cheap roadtrip - Gansey didn’t want to change a thing about it. Just to change its battery with a new one. What money it took - what parts of it Ronan could not dream up for him - he would figure out a way to handle. Adam had driven that crappy car Helen had given him, working two jobs. Gansey could certainly do the same for his vehicle.
--
Ronan just laughed again. He had known exactly what the answer would be, but he liked to ask sometimes anyway -- partially just in case Gansey ever changed his mind, and partially because it amused him. He understood Gansey’s devotion to the Pig exactly as it was, but it was just a little absurd now that he kept having Ronan dream parts for it.
“I guess I did say anything,” he said, amused; and then, “Give me a minute.”
He fell asleep, and dreamed. A short while later, he woke, frozen and numb from bringing back the new car battery held loosely in his hands where they rested in his lap.
--
While Gansey had not been leaning on the offer that Ronan would do anything for him, that felt uncomfortable to draw on implicitly, much less explicitly, Gansey supposed that it fit. That discomforted him for a minute. Much as Gansey knew Ronan was willing to dream these parts for him because they were friends, it felt as though, looked at through another lens, it was something problematic. Most of the time, Gansey would not have asked, it was not the Gansey way. But Ronan had to know what to dream, even if he were willing… and that Gansey needed something.
He used the time Ronan slept to remind himself that Ronan clearly didn’t mind. Ronan had no problem telling people to shove off and refusing to do things for them when he didn’t want to. Even the evacuation bracelets, Gansey turned his over on one wrist, Ronan had asked for money if they wanted something special.
One moment, Ronan was laying there with empty hands. The next a car battery was there, something his mind soothed over the way it often had Noah. Gansey waited until Ronan started to move before he did anything with the battery. And these clothes not being cheap ones, Gansey removed the old battery with care, not getting grease on his trousers.
He dumped that in the backseat, through the driver’s side, before he took the battery from Ronan. “Thank you,” he said because he was grateful. Because Ronan’s dreams had not always been so kind. Because, even when Ronan had healed, his dreams had become a dangerous place because of the demon. “Good as new,” Gansey said to himself, as he finished making the connections and closed the hood.
--
Ronan really wouldn’t have cared if Gansey had taken the battery before he could move again, but it was very Gansey of him to wait. He managed to open his eyes and lift it a little in offering. And then he relaxed back against his seat.
“You’re welcome,” he said easily. “Anytime.” He certainly did not mind doing things for Gansey, it was just that dreaming normal car parts was, well, a little boring. He wanted to dream Gansey something better. But Gansey did not want better, and Ronan wasn’t going to try to sneak something better by him, because that would be a lie, and Gansey would find out, and he would be pissed. Really pissed, especially because it was the Pig. Ronan knew better than to mess with that (... again).
Besides, it struck kind of a nice balance, with the Pig regularly needing parts and Ronan regularly needing to make something in order to not start coming undone. He still wasn’t sure if that had always been the way his dreaming worked or if the demon had undone something, fundamentally, inside him. He owed the Pig, anyway, for having broken it before.
His fingers stroked the seat next to him, and then brushed against the edge of Gansey’s journal, crammed between the seats. He swallowed, and pressed his hand against the cover, then pulled it back. “Where are we going next?”
--
There was such a feeling of rightness when Gansey finished caring for the Pig again. His hands pressed against the hood of the car, only faintly warm. And as he returned to the driver’s seat, Gansey could also be proud that he had not ruined another set of clothes just then. It was a good moment, a time he was glad to be himself.
The engine started the second time Gansey turned the key, and, seatbelt fastened, Gansey took them back on the small highway, continuing in the same direction as before. It took a few moments to get situated with where he was, much of it looking the same to him. But Gansey oriented himself, glanced at the clock, gave up on most of his sleep for the night, and drove them further.
“While the road is mostly straight,” Gansey replied, “the river is not. So eventually they cross paths. There are some good areas to just sit.” To sit and look around them, to look at the sky. To contemplate what they had learned about each other. And the drive was long enough that the battery would receive what charge it needed to start up the engine again.
Gansey pondered things a few moments more before speaking again. “I don’t believe we have this river in our world,” he said.
--
So they weren’t going home. That was fine by Ronan. He’d had plenty of sleepless nights in his time, and his schedule these days was at his own pace, which was to say the leisurely pace at which time moved at the Barns, so he could easily sleep in and still get everything done that needed to be done, and probably more. He relaxed into the seat and watched the world go by outside the window.
“I dunno if any of this city exists in our world,” he answered. “I haven’t ever been to Texas before.”
He huffed a breath at the window to fog up the glass, and drew a little smiley face with its tongue sticking out.
--
The road, again, soothed him. Despite sitting in a seat, using mostly his limbs (and minimally at that) to direct them, Gansey felt the movement of the car, felt the speed at which they drove down the highway, felt the freedom of driving for something but with nothing in particular. It was a good feeling.
“I am not sure,” Gansey replied, having thought about it before. “It is small enough, I may have never encountered it. I haven’t spent significant time in Texas, but my feeling is that it does not. A place that changes, like this, feels more unique than… say London.” Which did not make London the same everywhere. But it stuck out as a familiar landmark. It was easier for the edges, the softer spots, to change without as much notice. Though Gansey was not sure who there was to notice all such things.
“It’s a little like Henrietta that way,” Gansey commented, making the face Ronan drew at Ronan for a moment as they drove on in the night.