InsaneJournal

WHO: Adam. Ronan, and Gansey
WHAT: These three possibly being more co-dependent than strictly necessary (Asking Gansey to be best man).
WHEN: Backdated to Sunday night?
WARNINGS: Some thoughts of death, otherwise tame.
STATUS: Complete!

Agreeing to ask Gansey and then actually asking Gansey were two separate things. Adam had come to a unanimous decision with Ronan on the wedding party early on, but he had then gotten wrapped up in school, work, planning, magic, magic, magic. It had only occurred that after their engagement party that Gansey wasn't aware that they were holding onto this information which caused Adam to have a small spiral. He had whispered frantically with Ronan the evening before in their bed, we have to tell him and we have to make it special.

But finding the right moment to make it special seemed impossible. Their schedules overlapped in strange and unusual times, and over the kitchen table after dinner was as special as it was going to get.

Adam was giving Ronan a Look behind Gansey's back—Now? We should do it now, right?—as he carefully put the last baking pan away. Usually, they would then disperse, to do homework or research, to read, or (in Adam's case) go back to Boyd's. But he was quick to cut off the exit to the kitchen before Gansey could leave.

Adam felt a little manic—how long had Gansey fretted over this? The anxiety they might have caused? He could feel his self-made headache coming on like a freight train.

"Ronan and I have to talk to you, if you have a second?" Adam asked. He exchanged another glance to Ronan and then immediately followed it with, "Nothing bad." Because ambiguous "talks" were their own type of anxiety-inducing.

Ronan was mostly at ease. But he was enjoying Adam's tension about it all. He was reasonably sure they could ask Gansey to dress up in a horse costume and neigh his way through the ceremony and Gansey would just ask what color horse. Still, there was always a chance Gansey wanted some specific role in their nuptials and this wasn't it, he supposed. And besides, it was nice to have a little dumbass pomp to the whole thing.

They loved him and he was a big dweeb; he deserved some nerdy showmanship. That didn't mean Ronan wasn't going to have a little fun with it too.

He dried off his hands with a dish towel and set it aside. "You should sit down though," he said seriously. He even pulled out a chair at the table. "This floor is hard and we don't want you to hit your head."

“Uhhh,” Gansey was admittedly one for fumbling over words too often, especially when it came to the rising anxiety in his chest just at being cornered by his best friends. He’d already been worrying too much when it came to the dumbest things, and had to remind himself numerous times now that it wasn’t his wedding and Adam and Ronan were welcome to do what made them happy.

He nearly clonked his head on the fridge door before closing it before he hurt himself further. He knew Ronan well enough to know he was probably just trolling along, but his face still flushed with worry even though Adam had said nothing bad.

There were a lot of ways that some people felt something wasn’t bad where others did not agree, and Richard Gansey’s head just filled with every single one of those ways. He sat down before it got worse, against his better judgement. “Okay? What’s up?”

Following Gansey, Adam took a seat across from him at the table. He didn't necessarily need to sit, but he didn't want to loom over Gansey. He was already critically assessing how they should have done this, earlier for sure—but there was no point in storing away those mental notes for the future. Adam had no intention of ever asking anyone again to be his best man.

"You've been my best friend for years. Ronan's for longer than that," Adam said, already hating how this sounded like an ending rather than a beginning. The speech would never be right for Gansey, never expressing how much Adam had come to rely on him for so much more than just high school friendship.

"And we tried to go through a complicated series of questions to determine whose side you would be on at the wedding, and what made the most sense. Neither side, really. And we didn't want you to have to pick."

He reached for Ronan to take his hand, wanting to present a united front. "Ronan and I want you to be the best man in our wedding." There was a beat, and added. "For both of us, that is. It's a little unconventional but everything about us has been." Adam smiled a small private smile to Ronan then.

Ronan thought about standing through the whole thing, just to keep that nervous glint in Gansey's eye, but ultimately he decided he wasn't that big of an asshole. He pulled out a chair next to Adam instead and jokingly clasped his hands together on the table like a dad about to impart serious news. Well not his dad. His dad had imparted news with cavalier disregard for the consequences or a tall tale to hide the important parts.

Adam taking his hand snapped his thoughts out of a spiral that was bound to go somewhere bad. They were here for something good.

"What he means is he tried to go through a complicated series of questions and I tried to arm wrestle him for it." He raised an eyebrow at Gansey and gave him a soft smile. "I told you we'd end up fighting over you. But before you start worrying about where that leaves Matty, I'm gonna ask him to walk me down the aisle. I thought...I don't know." Ronan shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. "That felt right."

“Jesus Christ.” Gansey slumped in his chair, eternally grateful that he didn’t just fall out of it. They’d built all that up to him, but also Gansey’s own mind had done its fair share of building to go along with it. His face was flushed and he honestly felt like he could use a drink.

But then all the words settled on him, and their collective decision reached his brain, and Gansey sat up again. “Wait, really?” He clamped his mouth shut after that stupid question, and then opened it again almost immediately before Ronan could call him out on said stupid question. “I mean-- Yes. Of course. Obviously. Obviously.” Now he was doing the thing he did where he rushed words out without thinking them over, but that felt more right to him than when he took it easy, and slowed down. This was authentic, and enthusiastic.

Gansey’s smile grew to a wide grin as that enthusiasm started to reach his face. “I’d thought you weren’t going to at all- and then I figured Matthew made an obvious choice, of course. And there’s Blue and Noah, as well, not to mention everyone you’ve met here, and--” He looked a little embarrassed as he shrugged at the pair of them across the table. “I didn’t want to make any assumptions. But there’s never been any other answer than yes, of course.”

As Gansey started to realize the weight of what Adam and Ronan were saying, Adam felt the contagious elation of that comprehension. He smiled, predictably pleased. He didn't think Gansey would say no, but the responsibility tended to be a lot to ask of someone, even their best friend. Even more so when it was on a truncated time frame.

"It comes with duties," Adam said, a little quieter. Because being just the best man wasn't about standing beside the both of them during the ceremony and maybe wrangling a speech at some point during the reception. Adam almost looked worried about breaching the rest of the conversation when Gansey had been so surprised that he was even in contention for the spot. As if there could have been anyone else.

"The usual kind of duties, but most of them don't apply to what we have planned. We're not going to exchange rings again." With his hand still in Ronan's, he managed to touch his ring, spinning it once around, a gentle reminder. "And I'm not particularly religious, but we wanted to incorporate something more, uh, spiritual outside of the legal things Blue is going to do as our officiant."

Ronan gave Gansey a gentle kick under the table. "There's a whole city full of people, yeah, we know, dumbass. But obviously it's you."

They'd talked about the religious aspect before the engagement even happened and he knew Adam would have married him with the full Catholic drudgery if Ronan wanted. But he didn't particularly care for fighting St. Agnes on gay rights and what the bible does and doesn't say. Not here, where he could have this and not have it tangled up in evangelical politics.

"Noah's a flower boy if there ever was one anyway," he added with a shrug. Lifted their joined hands to his mouth, Ronan kissed Adam's wrist and then tried not to look embarrassed about it as he scowled across the table at Gansey. "We thought maybe you could do a handfasting. It's a little pagan but at least it's the Celtic kind," he joked.

Gansey grinned across at them, and kicked right back. His kick was probably far more gentle than it deserved, however, half-assing it just on principle. “Someone might just need to convince Opal not to eat the plants, too.” Might was understating it, he was sure. They’d already had a few talks about decorations not being edible, though Gansey was never quite sure how much of it stuck.

He could pretend to ignore Ronan’s embarrassment, but instead took a little pleasure in it and smiled. To Adam, Gansey went more serious, mentally making notes. “I can handle duties. That makes sense, even if it’s a little surprising.” Back to Ronan once more, he winked. “I promise to not even call you a heathen as revenge. I’ll have to practice my hand knots. And read up more on it as a whole. Actually-”

True to a very Gansey-form, he pulled out the small notebook in his back pocket and started making a few messy notes for himself to reference later. He glanced up at them just long enough to grin. “Can I just stand behind you two the whole time? I’ll be an awkward third just in time for the wedding.”

Even still, even now, even in front of Gansey where Adam might have been a bit more reserved, there was still a swoop in his gut and a fluttering in his chest as Ronan kissed his wrist. Affection would never stop being a special kind of novelty, and the unfiltered look of adoration was directed at Ronan as he explained the handfasting to Gansey.

"I can't believe the two of you are playing footsie under the table when I'm right here," Adam said, finally pulling his gaze away from Ronan to Gansey and his procured notebook. "I know it might be pointless for me to say so, but do not stress about getting it right. There's not really a right way, there's just your way. And what it means for you to do it. A tangible, visual display of what you did for us, for all of us."

The sincerity of his words hit Adam only after he had said them—all feeling, all emotion, none of his overanalyzing. Gansey was the reason they were here, having this conversation at all. And Adam couldn't seem to figure out a way where without Gansey this could have happened. He exhaled heavily, with a soft swear. "There's not going to be anything awkward about it, Gansey."

Now that the hard part was done, Ronan sank down into his seat and tangled his long legs with both of theirs. He let go of Adam's hand but it was only to loop an arm around the back of his chair and lean into his side instead. There were a lot of points of contact now at the table and it soothed something he hadn't realized was unsettled inside of him. Maybe he'd been more nervous than he'd wanted to admit, even to himself. Stupid, really.

"Do whatever research you want, old man. Make stuff up if you like. We're writing our own rules here." He said it like he meant more than just the wedding. "The only thing that matters to me is that it means something to us." His affectionate gaze drifted to Adam and then back to Gansey with a troublemaker's gleam. "Maybe we should slap Glendower's face on the binding cloth. Without him, Gansey's obsessive ass might not have found a quest to pull us all together."

Without him, and without Noah, Gansey’s obsessive ass might not have been alive to even bother. He didn’t say the dark thought out loud, instead opting to just shift a little uncomfortably in his seat and laugh at Ronan’s joke. “Please, don’t actually do that.” He was still going to make things right, which didn’t involve making things up, as much as Ronan could offer that suggestion out to him.

As if a direct response to Adam’s joke, Gansey bumped Ronan’s foot with his once more. “What about braiding something of Adam’s and something of yours together? Leather bracelets woven together, combined with one of Adam’s shirts? Or Cabeswater could provide vines?”

He wrote down a few more notes before finally shoving it to the side, not wanting to overdo it. Yet. “I just want this to be good for both of you, so whatever I have to do to make that happen, I’ll do.” They had enough worries and problems at home that he had to force himself to not think about the options where this might not happen there, or even that there was always the possibility Gansey wouldn’t be involved if it did. It was better to keep it on the here and now, where even though things were strange, Vallo had ended up a better option for them all.

As Ronan leaned into him, Adam leaned right back. And if his free hand happened to sneak under the table and rest heavily on his knee just to squeeze in order to return the point of contact, well—he didn't make a big show of it.

"I know you do, we both know, whether that's knotting a specific rope or putting Glendower's face on the cloth," Adam said, sensing that undercurrent shift. Having unfettered access to Gansey's emotions, thanks to Cabeswater, was a testament to upkeep their privacy. Adam was always willing to give it, because he would want the same thing. But sometimes, ignoring it was a different story entirely.

"We might not have gotten to this point, or been with the people we want to be with. Certain people might not even be—" Adam tripped over the word alive, and he glanced at Ronan then, whispering in Latin: It won't be what you imagined but it will be just as good.

"You just can't ruin one of my shirts for it," Adam said, sounding gravely serious, before he grinned at Gansey, conspiratorially. "You can ruin one of Ronan's."

Ronan laughed and pulled his small sketchbook out of his pocket. It had turned into the wedding sketchbook. Well first it had been the engagement sketchbook and now it was the wedding sketchbook. He was a little disgusted with himself for being this guy but it was hard to stick with that feeling with Adam tucked against his side and Gansey jotting down ideas.

"I like that. The braiding something of mine with something of his thing. Doesn't have to be a shirt if he's going to be a little baby about it," he teased, pulling Adam's head closer with the arm he had looped around him. "One of you grab your laptop. We'll do some stupid research and brainstorm cheesy shit to your heart's content." He said it to Gansey, but it was aimed more at himself anyway. He was already disengaging from Adam so he could properly sketch a handfasting braid with a Celtic vibe.

His gaze drifted up from the page though, and he caught Gansey's eyes over the table. "And hey. Thanks. You know we love you, right?"

“Automotive rags?” Gansey shot back, and wrinkled his nose at the thought. He still would have gone with shirt, but if Adam was going to be difficult about it, he could be a small shithead and strike back fondly. “Or socks. Underwear. Swim trunks…” At Ronan’s suggestion, he shoved his chair back. “Mine’s in my backpack, give me a moment.”

It was just in the living room, but it gave Gansey a second to loop around the table and press a kiss to Ronan’s fuzzy head while moving his hand to Adam’s shoulder for a light squeeze, before either of them could pull away. “Love you too. Don’t get indecent before I get back!”