WHO: Gansey & Adam Parrish WHAT: Bargain clothes shopping, bonding WHEN: Backdated. Late late June WHERE: Goodwill, mostly WARNINGS: Navigating privilege
One set of his clothes had already been stained and ruined beyond how Gansey knew how to treat them and his washing machine when the Pig had broken down and needed repairs. On the side of the road, there had not been much choice for what clothes Gansey worked in. So he accepted that as something that was. Having happened, he could not do much about it. However, Gansey recognized that his situation was different than it had been before. Plainly, his bank account did not support buying replacements for the trousers and shirt that had been stained, not with everything else Gansey needed to pay for. Gas was a continual need, given the Pig’s mpg had never been the best, even compared to the soulless Suburban.
If anyone were familiar with his problem, if anyone knew how best to handle living in his situation, it was Adam Parrish. His best friend still worked multiple jobs and had somehow been able to work on the Pig without getting grease on any of his clothes on multiple occasions. But Adam had always needed to have clothes that could get dirty (working as a mechanic was not kind to clothes). And he had made money go further than anyone else Gansey knew, even Blue. It had been a point of contention in the past, but as Gansey crossed the small distance between Monmouth and the farmhouse on the Barns, Gansey felt nothing but gratitude to have someone to go for help.
He knocked briefly before entering, just in case it was some private time. But Gansey was not entirely sure either Adam or Ronan were home, honestly. It felt mildly like trespassing to enter. But it was his friends, and Gansey felt silly standing on the front porch. “Adam?” Gansey called out. A feeling of home surrounded everything, even just in the entryway. It was far more lived in than the Gansey estate, where nothing was out of place.
Wandering around, he found the chocolate covered peanut plant and pulled a cluster off its branches to eat. Then he continued slowly, smiling at nearly everything he saw in the kitchen.
...
Adam wasn’t particularly surprised to hear his name called throughout the house, but the voice wasn’t Ronan, Opal, or Chainsaw.
Instead, it was Gansey.
Having Gansey and Noah here made everything feel a bit more like home. There were elements of his life that he missed, but it was eased by nearly all of his people being here. If Blue and Henry had been here, they would have had the whole family.
Adam padded out to the kitchen.
“Good morning, Gansey,” Adam greeted him.
...
Gansey smiled. He liked the way Adam fit into the Barns, as much a part of it as Ronan and everything Ronan dreamed. He had worried about them, when he thought he would die and not be there as their relationship formed. As it turned out, he had missed a good portion of it, after leaving for the summer, after they had come here for some time before he and Noah appeared. And they had done well. He set aside feelings of irrelevance. This morning was just about Adam and him.
“Good morning,” Gansey returned with manners before it even crossed his mind. “Are you working today?” He asked. It was a weekend, not the time most people worked. But he was used to timing outings around Adam’s work schedule. And they both worked jobs that made demands on their hours. School was out, now, but that only meant Gansey had less money to spare. The forge was not up and running yet, not yet selling the remarkable swords Fen knew how to make.
…
“No,” Adam answered, honestly, but he was also somewhat charmed by the question, if only because he knew that a request to do something was going to follow -- which quite felt like it had when Adam had first joined Gansey’s quest for Glendower.
“What do you have in mind?”
...
Gansey gave a small nod, with a pause after the question. Adam expected him to ask something. It was something Gansey had done all the time, having used his spare time to track down whatever lead or semblance of one he could find. But this request was much smaller, nothing grand. But important here.
“If you know the right place to go for it,” Gansey predicated the question, “somewhere to shop for clothes, for work clothes. I am going to be apprenticing with Fen.” That brought some of his smile to his eyes. “Blacksmithing.” It shared something in common with being a mechanic, at least when it came to clothes.
…
Adam was a bit surprised at the request, but he knew he shouldn’t have really been. Things were different here, and Gansey had already been different from when they had met. He was at least aware of how frequently his clothes got dirty now.
“We could go to Goodwill and find some things,” Adam suggested, already trying to process that he had just offered to take Richard Gansey III to a Goodwill.
…
Gansey knew about Goodwill. It was the sort of place Helen had prepared to donate the car she had purchased for Adam, just so that the story about it held up. Their actual cars were so well cared for and kept so as not to be Goodwill donations. Gansey had even donated good portions of his belongings to places like Goodwill, when he left one place for another. But he had never shopped there, never entered the store portion of such a place. Just the donation entrance.
He had never known what prices they offered on their goods, but receiving them for free, he supposed that they were cheaper than even the warehouse size outlet malls with excess product he saw along highways. “That would be great,” Gansey accepted. He could imagine what Helen would say about whatever he ended up wearing. It came with laughter.
…
“All right,” Adam answered, imagining Ronan’s reaction to hearing that he had taken Gansey to a Goodwill.
“Are you going to drive?” he asked.
...
“I can,” Gansey agreed. The trip was for his benefit. His long night time drives, going nowhere in particular, had decreased with the subsistence level of his bank account, but this drive had purpose. It was worth doing. No matter how much less money Blue’s Pig would have cost him, Gansey wouldn’t have taken it over his.
It would be hot, especially on their feet, but Gansey was used to it. He glanced around the kitchen, considering the time. “Have you had breakfast?” he asked. Gansey supposed he should look up where the Goodwill was and when it opened. But it was not so early in the morning that it would likely be closed. He ate another of the chocolate covered peanuts, which was more of a snack. He’d made his breakfast in the bathroom-kitchen-laundry at Monmouth earlier.
…
“I have,” Adam said with a nod. He’d even managed to convince Opal to have some eggs along with her sticks. Sometimes, that just felt like a losing battle. She was a dream thing, he knew. She probably didn’t need nutrients like they did. Still. It seemed bad for her not to occasionally eat something that was intended to be eaten.
“Have you?” Adam asked.
…
Gansey nodded in return and offered Adam a fist bump. It was an adventure for just the two of them. Now that Noah was a real boy, he was less likely to show up unexpectedly in the backseat of the Pig. Or walking with them down the sidewalk. Pluses and minuses to that.
“Excelsior!” he offered as he led the way out of the farmhouse. It was no further to the Pig than it had been in the parking lot next to Monmouth, in Henrietta. Having eaten all the peanuts, he quickly googled Goodwill on his phone. It was a small town, so he knew his way most anywhere.
…
Adam couldn’t quite hide his smile at Gansey’s familiar call to arms. It was strange that it was almost becoming a sort of nostalgia now. And perhaps stranger still that it was being used in the context of a Goodwill run.
Nonetheless, Adam followed out after Gansey, hauling himself inside the gasoline-stenched Pig.
...
Gansey sank into the seat, his shirt already sticking. The key turned, nearly a false start, but the engine rumbled beneath his feet. He pulled out away from the Barns, then accelerated to the speed limit on the empty road, the river shimmering beside them. It looked much more comfortable than being in the car, but clothes were a priority because the Pig could throw a fit anytime.
He smiled at Adam, enjoying even the experience of driving somewhere, anywhere, together, the Pig’s heat washing over his shoes. “I ruined a pair of pants, working on the Pig,” Gansey admitted. Adam didn’t ruin his clothes when he helped Gansey out, when he had taught Gansey everything that Gansey now knew about fixing his car. But Gansey hadn’t been paying attention, having figured out what the problem was and starting to fix it before he thought about what he had done. No amount of laundering had removed the stain.
…
That wasn’t a surprise in the slightest. He supposed that Gansey had ruined dozens of pants working on the Pig.
“I can give you some tips on how to get stains out,” Adam offered, although he knew well enough that there was only so much that could be done.
“How’s the Pig been running?” Adam asked, although he didn’t expect the Camaro to have had a sudden change of heart when it came to its mechanical innards.
...
Gansey gave a nod, acceptance. Google had offered him a few suggestions, including some with more regular household items (though what constituted a regular household item in Monmouth and the rest of the world was not always in agreement). But Adam had far more experience than Gansey expected of the various hands and arms he had seen cleaning stains with friendly voiceovers.
“As well and as poorly as ever,” Gansey replied with a satisfied grin. It was the Pig, it was his, and it was everything he had always loved about it, even after Ronan had dreamt it anew and a portal had dragged it across an even greater divide. It was not costing him as much now, though, since he didn’t have money and Ronan had been dreaming the parts Gansey needed, just like they were. It was more of a hassle than Blue’s Pig, but that was the point. “I’ve been wearing that pair of pants to do repairs, since the initial damage was dealt.”
…
The Pig’s diagnosis came as no surprise. As Gansey had thought, it wouldn't be the Pig otherwise.
“That's a good decision,” Adam said, nodding his head. It was still bizarre the things that he took for granted as common sense not being remotely so in the worlds of Gansey and Ronan.
…
His smile grew a little more proud with Adam’s approval. His first instinct had been to throw the pants away, but Gansey could not afford to replace them, not with something of equal quality. They had, fortunately, belonged to his Aglionby uniform, not something he needed to wear in this place, even as they worked as a quality pair of trousers for nearly any casual occasion. But he had set aside his parents’ quietly astonished looks (imagined) and used them whenever working on the Pig at Monmouth. It was only one of tens, hundreds, of decisions that had changed since Gansey had arrived where he had no money.
They approached the Goodwill, with all the untroubling traffic that accompanied a small town. Gansey used his turn indicator, followed by the neatly executed turn, and found a decent parking spot for the Pig in front of the blandly walled store, marked with a large blue G. “These look the same everywhere,” Gansey commented. His model Henrietta had held one, before it had been trampled.
…
“And yet all different on the inside,” Adam answered, perhaps a bit dryly. He knew the practicality of Goodwills, but he couldn’t help but despise them. It probably came from the majority of his clothing coming from. Even the name was deprecating. But he was no longer in quite the same position as he had been before coming to Tumbleweed, so that lessened the sting at least a little.
He opened the door to the Pig and let himself out.
...
Gansey slid easily from the Pig and closed the door with just the amount of force required, nothing more. Adam had a point. Most stores sold items from regular lines and inventories that shuttled off the same clothes across the country, if not the world. But Goodwill came from the hodge podge of donations, whatever the local population had given it. Perhaps it was distributed regionally but certainly not wider than that. Which begged the question what used clothes did Texans give to charity?
He walked up to the door and opened it, entering the rush of air conditioning with only a light layer of perspiration. Gansey looked out of place, in his current clothes. But unless he had come wearing the stained pants, Gansey was not sure what he could have done. Perhaps a t-shirt. But he had liked the bright polo. The men’s section was relatively easy to spot, both pants and shirts. So Gansey headed in that direction. But quietly, to Adam, he asked, “Any tips?”
…
“You’re going to have to dig,” Adam answered. He figured that was a broad enough way to explain something that Gansey had likely never experienced: At most stores, you could find something you liked and then found a way to match it to you. Gansey had grown up in a world where everything was custom made for you. Here, it was more like the items found you.
...
Gansey found it an odd sentiment toward clothes. It more closely resembled their time chasing Glendower. That was something he liked more than most clothes shopping. Or rather, the two had never been anywhere near the same category. “Hmm,” Gansey turned down the aisle where slacks and those sorts of trousers hung, leaving the jeans behind. He had looked through at least ten pairs of trousers, at least two of them hung in the wrong section, and pulled out one before he looked at Adam thoughtfully. “Would you recommend the jeans over these?” It went against his natural inclination. But jeans had a purpose to them. Sometimes.
…
Adam eyed the rack that Gansey wandered over, quietly amused that Gansey had made the decision to skip over the jeans. It was very Gansey of him.
“Probably,” Adam said, nodding his head. It was hard to beat jeans when it came to clothing that existed mostly to take a beating. He paused and then added, half smirking, “Just remind yourself that Blue likes how you look in jeans.”
...
He held onto the pair of pants he had already taken off the rack as a possibility. There was no point in putting it back without trying it on. Perhaps it served the purpose of something vaguely closer to what he was used to. But with them on his arm, Gansey retreated back down the aisle and to the jeans section separated only by a few feet of clothes.
Gansey could not immediately remember when Blue had seen him in jeans. It was a rare occurrence. But Adam was right, and that did make it easier. Fixing the Pig was not quite the same as burying the corpse of a dreamt night horror. But both were dirty. “What do you think,” Gansey suggested lightly, “will she show up a little sooner if I start wearing jeans?” Some of them had abysmal washes, but Gansey chose the best of them that he could. There would be some natural variation in mass produced denim. They would have to work with that.
…
“I hope so,” Adam answered as he also went through the racks, picking out anything that looked like it might be Gansey’s size and that he might be likely to wear without flinching.
Adam missed Blue. Their little group felt incomplete without her, and he could only wonder over what she would think of the entirety of the universe they saw here. Probably, like everyone else, there would be bits she liked better than others.
...
While other stores may have had as many pairs of pants, as many pairs of jeans, physically on the shelves, they certainly did not have the same variety and diversity among them. So Gansey found himself with a larger pile of trousers than he had expected, upon seeing the size of the rack. It had been a guess based on a faulty premise. “She might be upset at how much we’ve gone and done without her,” Gansey considered aloud. Not so much angry at them so much as at the universe in general. Which meant it needed to watch out.
But he led the way toward some dressing rooms that looked to be in the same family of ‘room’ as the kitchen bathroom laundry at Monmouth. A small sign limited it to six items, of which Gansey had far more. He pulled off the first six and looked at Adam. “Would you be so kind as to hold onto these?” he asked. It wasn’t Adam’s place to serve him or anything like that. But the pants Adam had been pulling off the rack were more Gansey’s size than Adam’s. So he had been helping.
…
“I assume she would,” Adam answered, faintly amused at the idea of Blue showing up here and telling the portal and all things associated with it exactly how she felt. It would be too good if, after every powerful being that was here, Blue was the one who worked out how everything worked and made it work in her favor.
“Of course,” Adam answered, gamely taking all the pants Gansey handed him and stationing himself outside of Gansey’s dressing room.
…
He smiled, thinking about everyone and everything that would hear Blue’s opinion. First the guards at the portal, then Medical, then all of them, the boys, and with everything in this town, everything odd that happened, Gansey wondered whether Blue would be able to control, better, whether something affected her or not. She was a mirror. There was so much more to reflect than they had encountered before.
It nearly distracted from how poorly most of the pairs of jeans fit. Some of them, despite their sizing, did not work even nominally. But even those that did, Gansey could hardly imagine wearing. The fourth pair, however, seemed to work. Gansey put it through the same paces he would any other foreign and totally unknown source of trousers, though that usually only came when he shopped for the first time in a new country. He opened the door to the changing room, one hand resting on his hip, and grinned at Adam, with enough confidence to blind most. But he knew Adam better than that. Giving a slow turn as he dropped his hand, Gansey looked across at him. “I may have found one.” Dependable, quality Levi’s.
…
Adam’s amusement came back in full force when Gansey opened the door -- still looking, for all the world, like an All-American model. He half wished that Ronan was here to enjoy this, too, but at least he would have the story to regal him with later.
Adam, leaving the other jeans draped across one arm, golf clapped for Gansey.
“Looks good,” he said.
...
He exhaled slightly, relieved to have succeeded here. It felt more official with Adam’s approval, much as he had tested them before showing them to anyone. The price tag hung right there, off to the side, but Gansey resolved to wait a little longer before looking. He pulled out the rejected pairs (still two more to go) and hung them up on the rack next to the dressing room.
“These will be the first clothes I buy since coming here,” Gansey admitted. His closet had come with him, and even with his accidents fixing the Pig, he had enough to spare, for now. That was going to be measured ever more closely with each lost article of clothing (he was trying to be better, this was part of being better). He motioned toward and took most of the remaining pairs of pants. “I’ve been focusing more on food and gas,” he continued. Because he still drove the Pig, which was not built to eke the most out of a gallon of gas, and because now there were two mouths to feed at Monmouth. Even if they ate sometimes at the farmhouse. And housing was free.
He closed the door to change, glanced at the price of jeans (both amazed at how low the price was and perhaps, for Goodwill?, also at it being double digits of any kind). But he could wrangle that. Gansey continued to try on the other pairs of jeans. “I’ve actually started making a budget, tracking expenses,” he shared where the door prevented Adam from seeing the slight embarrassment with that statement. Gansey had never needed to think about that before.
…
Adam stilled a little when Gansey began to run through his financial situation. He knew that things weren’t the same here, and Gansey hadn’t indicated that he was struggling, so Adam hadn’t worried. He still didn’t seem as if he was struggling to be fair.
Just seeing the world through new eyes.
Adam wasn’t entirely sure how he was supposed to feel about all of this. There had been so many times that he had wished that Gansey could just understand. There was probably a time when Adam would have been savagely and quietly pleased about Gansey being temporarily forced into this situation. Now, it just felt odd, especially when things felt relatively stable for him. Particularly because he was living with Ronan. Not that Adam didn’t have his own income, but he had quickly learned that having a second person to work alongside made things a lot easier. And dating Ronan had meant letting go of some of those insecurities when it came to money. He was never going to let Ronan blindly pamper him, but he knew well enough that it would be foolish to let a misguided sense of independence forbid him from being in a romantic relationship because of finances.
“Do you want help going over any budget stuff?” Adam asked, horribly aware that if Gansey had asked him this question when he was struggling, he would have bitten Gansey’s head off.
...
Gansey was not entirely sure how Adam was reacting to what he said, not visibly, not where Gansey could have read his reaction. It felt safer, for both of them, to allow this little portion of privacy, so that they could start talking about these things. This whole trip related to it. It was not entirely a new topic. But it was one that Gansey had not much discussed with anyone. Since Noah got his life back, he had spoken about getting a job, and Gansey had so wanted more for him, an open future to do anything he wanted. That would have been easy, back home. Gansey could have set Noah up for as long as he needed, even without free rent and anything else.
But the food budget had doubled. And Noah did not have as many clothes as Gansey did, not having needed them before. So there was more to balance, and what Gansey had been managing so far had grown much more difficult on his teaching salary. The blacksmithing had not taken off yet.
“I would appreciate that,” Gansey replied. He sighed at another pair of ill-fitting jeans. But the attempt to determine his fiscal priorities coopted the exhalation to release some tension with it, with the acceptance of help. “I’ve been trying to save money, too,” he frowned at himself, as he removed them, “It hasn’t been as much as I hoped.”
…
“It usually isn’t,” Adam said, a bit more quietly, because he didn’t know what else there was to say about that. That was the trick of money, he supposed. It never seemed like there was enough -- or maybe that wasn’t true. Maybe the Ganseys and the Lynches of the world did think they had enough money. Adam didn’t really know yet. He knew they didn’t think about it in the same way he did, but he supposed that nobody really ever felt like they had enough money.
It wasn’t in that negative way that Adam meant it though -- it was more just a sympathetic gesture toward Gansey, that what he was feeling wasn’t all that uncommon.
...
He was not entirely sure what an unexpected financial hit resembled in this world. It was not a rise in rent. Were Monmouth to disappear, he and Noah would likely move into one of Ronan’s barns, remodeling it to fit their dreams and whimsy. Nor was it terribly prone to be an unexpected medical expense. People here had all sorts of means beyond the usual healthcare system to treat problems and the generosity of spirit that came from being refugees floating on a raft across an ocean together, were that ocean time and space itself.
With a thought and a well fitting if tighter than Gansey usually preferred to wear pair of jeans, Gansey supposed Noah becoming a real boy and another mouth to feed qualified. It was where a good portion of the money that had previously been marked for savings had gone. But he didn’t regret it. Not one bit. Perhaps he had something in common with the single mothers his father sometimes discussed as financially irresponsible. As though a little more common sense and a few less poor children would solve all their problems. Gansey had once pondered that idea seriously. Now he had lived in the world and thought better of it.
He opened the door, not sure whether these jeans made the cut. Technically they fit, and that was what Gansey was here for. “At least, when it comes to friends, I am one of the richest men in the world,” Gansey declared happily.
…
Adam was distracted away from his appraisal of the jeans by Gansey’s overly corny and yet, because it came from Gansey, strangely genuine statement. He made an amused sound.
“You make sure to tell Ronan and Noah that next time you see them,” Adam commented.
His eyes dropped back down to the jeans.
“Are those comfortable?” he asked.
…
“I would hope you all know that,” Gansey replied. The sentiment, if not the particular wording he could only imagine himself using. He would consider saying it, if the moment felt right. Like this one had. Gansey was not feeling sorry for himself, for being poor now. For not being able to shop his way out of dark depressive moods. For not being able to solve so many problems that easy way that money did. There was plenty money did and plenty it had enabled him to do. But here, at least, Gansey did not have to worry that people’s opinion of him came from his money. That was not enough to make it worth it to be poor, were there another obtainable morally clear option. But it was one upside to all this.
He lifted one leg up and down, then the other. “They have some sort of stretchy polymer in them that I previously associated with women’s jeans,” Gansey said. “Any discomfort is not… physical.”
…
“Oh, I know we all know that,” Adam confirmed with a bit of a smile. He didn’t point out that he suspected it was the wording that Ronan and Noah would appreciate in an entirely different way.
Adam bit back a laugh when Gansey described the jeans as having a “stretchy polymer.” Only now that he had some distance from everything that had happened back in their world was Adam fully able to be grateful for the fact that money hadn’t gotten in the way of their friendship. Gansey wore a lot of masks. There was no denying that. But Adam liked it. None of them were fake -- there was simply almost always more than what met the eye with Gansey while at the same time, he was exactly as he seemed. It was the same with Ronan and Noah, he supposed.
“From your assessment, I would put those in the no,” Adam informed him.
...
Gansey made a note to consider doing just that around the others. It took a certain delivery to pull off. Even so, he expected some laughter. That was okay. It was partly meant to do something like that, sincerity and levity all at once. And a touch of self-deprecation. That always made him feel more comfortable.
He was relieved that there were still reasons to turn jeans down. It helped Gansey had found another, better pair first. Or he could have pressured himself into these skinny jeans. Slim was more his style. But he had pulled anything and everything off the rack. If it might fit. “You’re a good check for me,” Gansey said. “I could have logic-ed circles around these.” Had, in a short manner.
…
“You’re not that desperate for jeans, Gansey,” Adam told him, although not without warmth. He’d had to make plenty of decisions to buy things he didn’t want, but with something like this, he knew well enough that it made little sense to buy the item if he already felt dread about it inside the store. They would just end up being a waste of money.
...
“‘Desperate for jeans’ sounds like something that would end up on a patch on a pair of jeans,” Gansey replied. Possibly for the irony. But he felt better nonetheless. It was an entirely different shopping experience than he had ever known.
There was one other pair that fit well, which Gansey showed Adam. Out of all that, out of this whole store, two was not bad. Two could last a while against the Pig, ven if they ended up stained. Neither was the sort of designer jean Gansey already owned. He fist bumped Adam when he came out of the dressing room the final time, the two pairs over one arm.
“Mission success,” he declared.
…
Adam fist bumped Gansey in return, glad that they had found something that Gansey was pleased with.
“How are you going to celebrate?” Adam asked, half joking but also half hoping that Gansey would come back with him to the Barns for the afternoon or something like that.
…
Gansey considered the question. What naturally came to mind with the verb celebrate were activities and actions which cost money: buying a special treat, going to a movie, ordering a few more books off his wanted list. However, he had been watching his food spending, was now mindboggled at the price of movie theater tickets, and had been making great use of the library. None of those things really tied back to the jeans, however. So he reconsidered.
“It wouldn’t be bad to give the Pig an oil change. Ronan’s dreamt everything it takes,” he had been putting it off, just slightly, due to the clothes issue. “Put these jeans to work,” he said with more enthusiasm. And if he found other work to do on the Pig in the meantime, that was all right too. It was better to find the problem when he was not stranded, without Ronan or the proper parts on hand.
…
“Do the oil change at the Barns and stay for dinner,” Adam recommended with a grin. It came as no surprise, really, that Gansey had given such a responsible answer, but he knew that Ronan would probably want to see Gansey too, and it seemed a bit too responsible just to go clothes shopping.
…
A great deal more car care happened in the driveway at the Barns. Between the Pig and Adam’s car, something always needed to be done. Gansey looked forward to afternoons where they worked on their cars side by side or close enough to it. Adam’s suggestion felt similarly homely, comfortable, and theirs. So he raised his hand to fistbump Adam, with a grin that matched Adam’s. “It’s a plan,” Gansey agreed.