WHO Richard Gansey & Ronan Lynch WHERE The Barns driveway WHEN Tonight, April 17th WHAT Gansey goes from dropping Adam off to sitting with Ronan and giving a little advice. STATUS Complete! WARNINGS Heavy references to alcoholism and almost (but not) falling off the wagon. References to abusive childhoods.
Ronan wasn’t sure what time it was. Late as shit for sure. He could look at his phone but it had taken all of his cohesive thought to text an SOS to Gansey a minute ago and he had nothing left. His mind was a wash of regret and fear and self-loathing. There were other emotions in there - hurt, disappointment, dread - but everything kept banging around like bumper cars full of acid and he couldn’t make much sense of it.
Adam had left him standing in the street and he’d stayed there for at least an hour before finally racing the BMW to the house. He’d parked it in a spray of rocks and stormed around the long barn for a while until he’d finally ended up back at the car with a bottle of stolen rum from the house.
It was sitting next to his hip on the ground, unopened.
His knees were bent up to his chest and he crossed his arms over them, scowling out into the darkness. He hoped Gansey had gotten Adam somewhere safe. That Adam had let him. Ronan lifted his leather wrapped wrist to his mouth to chew on the straps there for the first time in weeks. Maybe even months.
His eyes felt damp but he wasn’t going to fucking cry in his driveway like a sloppy loser. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands into them instead.
Gansey hadn’t wanted to split between the two of them - it was a natural inclination to go to Ronan first, it always had been. But the call was one he took seriously, even knowing that there was always a much higher chance that Adam would push him away and not accept anything out of sheer stubbornness. It had happened before, and it would no doubt happen again someday.
He’d found Adam at Fox Way, and left Adam at Fox Way, confident that even with the anger and the sadness, he was in good hands. Their conversation at least left him prepared for his next stop, as he sped home, thankful to whatever god was overlooking him that the Pig cooperated and there were no road breakdowns.
He parked a few feet from the BMW, having spotted Ronan in the glare of his headlights before he made it close. Gansey hadn’t seen the bottle until he walked up, and sucked in a sharp breath.
Silently, he reached down to snag the bottle, and took its place, planting his pajama pant clad ass down on the gravel next to Ronan. “He’s at Fox Way.”
Just the sound of Gansey’s dumb, serious voice was a balm on Ronan’s raw heart. The words helped too. Ronan dropped his hands but kept his eyes shut as he thunked his head back against the door of the car.
“Good.” Literally nothing was good but his vocabulary was cut off at the knees right now. “Thanks.” There, two whole words, and this one said with feeling. He scraped the bottom of his boot across the gravel and looked up at the night sky.
“I didn’t drink any,” he murmured, rolling a tired stare over to Gansey’s face. “Turns out there’s a limit on how much I’m willing to fuck up in one day now. Who knew?”
Gansey considered the fact that he got more than two words out of Ronan to be a win. He set the bottle down and away from him, out of sight and hopefully mind, glad for small favors. “Good,” he echoed right back, but could agree nothing was good about this.
“I knew.” Gansey was frustrated and sad, but he knew it was nothing compared to what his two best friends were going through. He didn’t even bother to mask his relief that this rock bottom was still a far cry from the days when it had been much, much worse. “You both just need a little time to cool off, I think.”
If there was one thing he knew, it was that none of them were reliable narrators, lost in their own thoughts and their own versions. Adam’s words had been still laced in poison, but Ronan had seemingly hit his wall and was sinking. “What happened?”
Ronan scoffed at Gansey’s assurance but it was a halfhearted sound. He slumped against the car. A lot of his defensiveness from earlier had abandoned him but not all of it. He couldn’t imagine he’d look very good in Gansey’s eyes once he knew what had happened. But he deserved that anyway.
“He’s upset about me being in fight club. And upset that I didn’t know he was upset about me being in fight club.” He wished he hadn’t let Gansey take the bottle. Not because he wanted to drink it - well, he did - but because he really wanted something to do with his hands. He settled for scooping up some gravel and tossing it into the nearby grass. His hands hurt from fight club. How fucking stupid. “I was predictably shit at handling it.”
Having escorted Adam to Fox Way, Gansey came a little more prepared to this than he would have normally. About the upsets being a little less as they appeared on the surface. But he had been in the situation before where anger had taken hold of them both, and adjusted the narrative in their own heads.
“You’re both particularly skilled at saying just the thing, and occasionally being shit about it after.” There was no point in sugarcoating it for Ronan, lying or making things seem not as bad never went over well. That was also why they did so well together, because Ronan knew when Gansey was lying through his teeth, and Gansey tried to be as honest as Ronan needed him to be in return.
To Gansey, it felt like it was a miracle they didn’t all explode a lot more often. But Adam kept everything pushed down so far-- Well. He sighed and reached over to just gently bump Ronan’s leg. “I didn’t realize Fight Club was something that upset him, either.”
Ronan hated that it was a relief to hear Gansey hadn’t realized the problem either. But if the second foremost expert on Adam Parrish hadn’t caught it, then that was saying something. Gansey’s anxious ass worried about that kind of shit a lot more than Ronan. He bumped Gansey’s leg back and grunted in lieu of a proper thank you.
“He said all violence is the same. That kind of fucked me up,” he admitted, starting to pick at the frayed edges of his jeans. “Guess it wasn’t fair to think I had some kind of pass.”
Gansey had hated Adam’s parents hundreds of times over the years. Thousands, maybe, if it were possible. Everytime his brain glossed over a thought of Robert Parrish, he hated, fiercely and loudly. But it had been a while since he’d even spared a thought for that terrible, odious man. Vallo had put them far from his memory, and it had-- ugh, been easier.
He’d felt a little low-key nauseous at the thought that he’d been able to forget. But it wasn’t about him.
“I think maybe--” Gansey blew out a breath and reached down to rake his fingers across the gravel. “You’re safe? He knows he can yell at you. I don’t know if he means it about the violence, but I’d venture a guess that he was just speaking out of anger? Reacting without thinking.” He winced at the immediate image of both of them pointing those sharp edges at each other.
“There was a lot of that.” Ronan felt the worst about that, the reacting without thinking part. He’d gotten better at that. At least he thought he had. But defensiveness and guilt had won out in the face of feeling like he’d inadvertently been hurting Adam the entire time they’d been together. The feeling of being lumped in with Robert fucking Parrish. The fact that Ronan would go back in time and hit that bastard again, harder this time, probably didn’t help his case. He scowled out into the night.
“What if...what if I’m not built to be not violent anymore, Gansey?” he whispered. The thought of Adam ever looking at him again like he had tonight was horrific. The thought that he might deserve it was worse. He swung a haunted glance towards his best friend. “What if this is the thing I can’t kick and he’s right to be afraid?”
“What- Ronan.” There was not much more alarming to him than to hear that self-doubt, that worry. The fact that it had gotten this bad, so quickly, made his head spin. This wasn’t the first time Ronan had shifted that far, but it was the first in a long time.
He’d been taking for granted what a change there had been in his best friend, the last year in Vallo had been that change he’d long to see, and he damn well wasn’t going to let either of them beat themselves up, because coupled with Adam’s self-doubt-- “Jesus. No. I don’t and will never believe the low opinions both of you have of yourselves. You are a good man, one of the best i know, Ronan Lynch, and Adam knows it too.”
He’d push that certainty through lead walls if he could, with that voice. “Adam needs to sort through his trauma reaction, but that doesn’t--” He shifted, slightly, voice still sure and firm. “You were processing in a safer environment for violence, he didn’t expect to react the way he did. It doesn’t mean you’re both broken or violent or fucked up. It means you’re human--” He paused, almost comically. “Ish.”
Ronan brought his knees up to his chest and crossed his arms over them, pressing his face down into his forearms. All the adrenaline from the fight and the near miss with the alcohol was finally leaving him and his muscles trembled with the stress of it. He hated that he needed Gansey’s assurances. But Gansey had always been good at shoring him back up when he was at his most broken. At least he wasn’t passed out in a pool of sick or bleeding to death this time. Progress.
“Ish.” He huffed out a wet little laugh and swiped his arm across his eyes. He wasn’t sure when they’d started to leak. “Good or not, I gotta stop thinking I’m the exception to shit. But I need to know when I’m fucking up too, not when I’ve already fucked up several times and it’s been eating away at him.” His glance was dark and pleading. “I need to be the place he feels fucking safest, not the other way around, Gansey.”
Gansey didn’t comment on the suspicious eye leak coming from Ronan - he knew better - but he did reach over and wrap an arm around his friend’s shoulder to give it a comforting squeeze. And he left it there. If Ronan called him on it, he already half-formulated an argument about how it was still April and he was sitting on cold gravel in flannel pajama pants, but he got the squeeze in, anyway.
“It’s always been hard for him to talk about things. So I think that’s a good conversation for you to both have after a day or two passes and there’s less likely to be yelling.” He hoped, anyway. His conversation with Adam had left him feeling a little more confident that is what would happen, but also worried that they were both going to get stuck in a self-loathing pattern.
Gansey just had to be confident in their abilities to work it out. “It may not happen immediately but-- that’s a good goal to work at? For both of you? Him talking more and you listening and working on some non-violent methods?”
There was no one around so Ronan didn’t second guess resting his head on Gansey and closing his eyes for a moment. He sniffed and sighed, suddenly tired in a way he hadn’t felt in a while.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Mature and open conversation and all that shit. Can you do the listening for me anyway?” he joked. Before any time for a reply had passed, Ronan blindly palmed a hand over Gansey’s face. “I’m kidding. Don’t make the disappointed dad face.” He sat up but it was with exhaustion plainly evident in the slump of his shoulders. Too bad he knew damn well he wasn’t getting any sleep tonight. Insomnia could be predictable every once in a while.
“You should go to bed,” he mumbled. “It’s late as fuck.”
“I don’t make a--” There was a hand in his face and his next words of objection were muffled, and Gansey pulled Ronan’s hand down with a frown. So maybe he had pulled a little face, a minor one. Just a small frown, before Ronan was already objecting. “--disappointed dad face.” He finished it lamely, couldn’t even really make it count.
He still knew neither of them were going to get any sleep tonight. Even if he’d gone up to bed, where Blue was waiting, he’d lay awake frustrated and trying to figure out how to fix things for them in his brain, despite knowing he couldn’t. Adam’s words were a callback to him, and Gansey shrugged off Ronan’s suggestion. “Can’t. We’re out of orange juice, so I was going to go get some before breakfast.” He fished his keys out of his pocket. “Want to come with?”
Ronan’s smirk was somber but there nonetheless. Any other day, he might’ve reached for the keys and joked about driving. Slung an arm around Gansey’s head and given him a noogie. But he didn’t have any of that in him. The best he could manage was squeezing Gansey’s forearm.
He felt empty and faded as he rolled to his feet.
“Sure. Whatever.” His gaze tripped over the bottle next to Gansey’s hip. “Get rid of that first.” He kicked at the gravel as he turned towards the Pig.
“One moment,” He snagged it and quickly jogged it over to the corner of the porch, and made a note to have Blue come down to grab it and dispose of it while they were at the store. As tempting as it was to just chuck it into the forest.
He jogged back, unnecessarily, as Ronan didn’t make a move to try and take over the driving - Gansey wouldn’t have let him in this case, but he also wasn’t leaving Ronan alone tonight. He faltered when he reached Ronan’s back, before reaching out to grab his friend and turn him into a proper hug at the last minute.
Gansey clung for a few long seconds, before finally-- “Excelsior, Ronan. Shall we?”
Ronan tensed for half a heartbeat, but then he sagged into the hug and curled his fingers into Gansey's shirt. He was relieved with Gansey broke the vulnerable moment with nerdiness. Rolling his eyes, he elbowed Gansey off of him.