WHAT. Four years of new memories. WHERE. Their bedroom, the Barns WHEN. Monday morning (as if Mondays weren’t already bad) WARNINGS. A lil doom & gloom but not all bad. FTB. Spoilers for Greywaren Epilogue! STATUS. Complete!
It was not the first time Gansey had felt the slip of time pull him awake. Or even the tenth, hundredth. It was something he’d lived for since his second death, the push and pull of being reborn and defeating fate. The payment of such a large undertaking, he’d come to view it as, so it didn’t bother him anymore. Just a little lightheaded deja-vu and Gansey was able to readjust.
It wasn’t usually accompanied by years worth of memories. That pull was something more, something far harsher.
Normally he was good at slipping out of bed without disturbing Blue - it happened often - but this time, he jolted awake and pulled the blankets with him as they jostled her around with his sudden movement. “Jesus Christ.” Gansey pressed the heels of his palms to his eyeballs as everything processed.
Vallo combined with Henrietta combined with Utah combined with the old Barns to the current Barns. Dorm rooms, a shitty tiny apartment recently rented in D.C., to a bedroom that felt unfamiliar yet theirs more than any other place had. Nearly three years of with living here, in one place, combined with another four of travel and college back home, and Gansey’s head felt like it might implode as they collided.
He turned and flopped back to the pillow and pressed his face into it before groaning loudly.
Nearly three years in Vallo, and Blue thought she had been through everything. Dinosaurs and time travel and magical beings set on devouring the very essence of what it meant to have magic. Each new natural (and unnatural) disaster paled in comparison. Was she jaded? Had she finally reached her physical and mental peak of the strange and unusual? Some part of her thought sure, and then the other part of her—the one that was somehow moving on and living her life in Henrietta, none the wiser to this life— decided pshaw, watch this.
Four years of memories crammed into her head suddenly, abruptly, was chaotic at best, exhausting at the worst. Her body and her mind were warring with trying to fit it all in, and she had woken up with little fanfare, only a headache. She wasn't sure how long she had been staring at the ceiling wondering if this was a dream, when Gansey startled awake beside her.
Oh, so this was how it was. There was no question that something similar had happened to Gansey.
When he fell back to his pillow, Blue rolled over and tightened her arms around his waist, pressing her face into his back, making him the little spoon—because height had nothing to do with spooning positions. Blue stayed like that between the space of one breath and the next, then sighed. "Please tell me you know what I mean when I say socioecological repair in contemporary urban agricultural communities."
“That the professor who nitpicked your thesis presentation should be fired for being a shitheel.” Gansey mumbled the response into his pillow at first, as his shoulders had relaxed the moment Blue wrapped around him. But then her question finally settled past his automatic answer and he left his head.
He couldn’t quite see her without twisting all the way around, and didn’t want to break their connection, so he just half-assed it. “You too?” That made things a little easier, at least, to have Blue aligned with him so well. He’d gotten memories before from home, but never anything so vast, or long.
Four years. Memories of two worlds, two different lives. Sometimes he asked himself if he was glad to be here - there was no question of it when Noah was here. Following Noah’s departure and with no return of Henry, he wondered if he wanted to be here rather than traveling the country with them. But it had been a selfish, fleeting thought, that had not stuck around to take root. He loved his life here just as much, so for them to merge-- Oof, it was a lot.
"He should have, but I made his life a living hell after I found out he supported fracking lobbyists on his social media," Blue said into Gansey's back. She wanted to keep complaining about her professor. She wanted to keep talking about socioeconomic benefits. She wanted to ask Gansey where they were going next—which was usually the question she posed in the soft mornings in their apartment right after they returned from another cross-country or cross-continental trip, because she felt like she had been traveling for years.
But no, that wasn't right. And so she slid free of Gansey to prop half herself up on her elbow in their shared bed. The one that used to be Declan's bed. Oh, this was weird to think about. Everything was mingling together. Blue made a face. "Me too. Holy— me too, ugh, ugh."
All of it seemed to be hitting her now, the more visceral reaction than her quiet one when she thought she might have been still dreaming. "We were at Declan's wedding. Here. In this house. Right? You remember that, right? Do you think we all—" Blue gestured in a circle, meaning everyone here. Everyone in the house. Being new to the memory updates meant she wasn't quite clear on protocol. "—know?"
Gansey took the opportunity of her propping up to slip himself over so he could settle on his back, better to see her. He stacked one hand behind his head and the other drifted towards Blue. He started with a light touch and let his finger run along her jaw, taking in the similarities and differences as his head sorted out here and there. It wasn’t unfamiliar to get to touch her like this, that happened whenever the opportunity presented itself.
But right now the sudden urge to kiss her was presenting itself, though he held off. They’d been able to do so in Vallo for quite some time, but at home it was a more recent development of practiced magic to counteract the worry of killing him again with the curse. He could be good for a few more minutes.
“I remember Declan’s wedding, and spending time with both Adam and Ronan. Last time they got memories without us, it could either be reverse or everyone all together.” And if it didn’t include their best friends, what then? All of the late-night conversations he’d had with them over events over the last few years? To share, or not share? Gansey sighed. He wasn’t very good at keeping secrets.
Tension slipped almost instantly with Gansey's touch. They hadn't had enough soft mornings like this for ages. The trip to Singer's Falls from DC for the wedding had been meticulously planned, in between classes, extensive digs, and ecological and magical mishaps that only their skill set seemed to be adept at handling.
But no, wait, that wasn't right. She had been here in Vallo, still working as a waitress. Maintaining the fiber arts table at the market. Becoming proficient in throwing axes, among other things. She closed her eyes, and pressed her mouth to Gansey's knuckles—not a kiss, not really. They had still been so careful after, and that hesitancy seemed to be winning over her conviction from Vallo where kissing wasn't so taboo.
"Four years is so long, they can't not know. It can't be reverse. So much happened and—" She sighed, and opened her eyes, looking for Gansey for answers, a natural instinct. She could see him working out a hundred scenarios, all where they failed miserably at keeping the information to themselves. Blue wasted all her efforts in her teenage years keeping one major secret; she had progressively been more honest since then.
"They're going to know. Gansey," Blue said, her voice was louder than she intended. Her freehand went to his chest—for comfort and to remind him about his leyline heart. She was quieter, more stage-whisper, when she said again, "Gansey. We have to lie, just until we know for sure. We can't be the ones to tell him."
“Uh-” Gansey did very well with a great many things. Leadership! He was a natural leader, good at keeping a cool head in times of distress and adventure. He liked to think he was of above-average intelligence, though that was often debatable depending on the situation. But history, he did well with that!
Lying to his best friends? Not one of his skills. In fact he was probably blotchy right now just from thinking about it. “Blue, love of my life, soulmate,” he started off the words with a hand over her own on his chest, and an earnest expression on his face. “Adam Pa- Lynch-” He winced over the slip up, “is the best liar I’ve ever met in my life, he will know immediately if I try to lie to him and what would I even say? We can avoid, perhaps, and buy us a little time but--”
Now he was shaking his head, for all the good it would do if she was determined. He tried to keep his voice a whisper even if the whispering was getting louder. “There’s no way I can lie to them if they ask. Ronan will feel betrayed! Adam would be disappointed in my terrible lying! A no-win situation if I ever had one.”
Blotchy Gansey was the worst Gansey. Not because he was terrible, but because it was almost difficult to say no to him because he was being so flustered and endearing. The equivalent of pouting and puppy dog eyes, except that Gansey didn't know he was doing it. He was getting worked up over hypothetical situations, and she wanted to kiss him right then. Blue could, she could, but she just twisted her hand around so that they were palm-to-palm, and she squeezed it tight.
"Then don't lie-lie. Do the thing that both of those tricky assholes do all the time. Lie by omission. Plead the fifth. Leave the room or something." All of those were awful options, Blue could sense it as they spilled out of her mouth. And she was as subtle as a brick. For all of Gansey's efforts to not lie to his best friends, Blue would also ruin it by slipping up. They were screwed.
"Fine, fine. We don't lie. What's the other option? We weren't there for half the stuff that happened back in—" Oh, years were fuzzy. Was that because she was just getting older or that she had been older by being here? "And everything after, that's just what they told us. And then there's the fact that you and I are well traveled. How are we going to keep that from creeping into conversation?"
Blue wasn't being accusatory, more like concerned, because they needed a plan before they even considered leaving this room.
“We could--” Gansey let out a loud sigh and then brought his hand around to rub against his eyes. He was conflicted, since all of that sounded-- well, like it could go badly either way. “At the very least I want to reassure them. If Ronan isn’t caught up.” He remembered when that had been a worry. When they had known Ronan was asleep, apart from Adam.
And now Gansey and Blue knew how that worked out. There was still a possibility that Adam and Ronan also knew how that worked out, but they were clearly swimming through worst case scenario here right now. “After that, we could keep it to us? Our lives, as they’ve gone. Nothing too specific for now, but what if Vallo doesn’t give them new memories for a long time?”
It was a very real possibility, given how little Blue and Gansey had learned from home over the years, when there were times Adam and Ronan and Matthew had all gotten new memories. “We can be vague at first but it won’t hold up. Not over time.”
"There's always that chance that life is going to be exceptionally unfair," Blue said, worrying at her lower lip. They may not get memories for a long time, and Blue had never required such a long-term avoidance of a topic. Gansey was right, over time this wouldn't keep, but they could try. They had to try. The outcome from Moderators and ley lines and world ending apocalypses, from what they had gleaned years ago, was the best of many terrible ones. Blue wouldn't risk it changing, even if nothing could be done in Vallo.
She lifted her hand to brush back some of his hair, shorter than she remembered—hadn't she just been joking about him needing a haircut back home? No, this was home. They both were home.
"You know that means we can't talk about how we actually made it to Venezuela." Blue looked particularly aggrieved about that one. "I loved Venezuela." She tipped her head down to press against his forehead, an old maneuver when kissing wasn't on the table. "I'm glad I got these years with you."
Gansey smoothed a hand down her side. He knew full well for all the talking they were doing now, these plans would likely get thrown out the window. He didn’t have the same worry that things wouldn’t turn out - they had already, hadn’t they?
And yes, multiple universes and outcomes were enough of a thing that could have been a worry, but Gansey wouldn’t let himself worry about the potential that Adam and Ronan were suddenly from a different version of their world than Blue and Gansey were. That thought made his stomach clench. “I’ll be shocked if you manage to not talk about how much you miss arepas.” Joking now, before any more worry settled into his core.
Just as he was leaning up to turn that forehead press into a kiss, his watch began buzzing from its place on his wrist. Alarm. Gansey fell back with a groan with the sudden reminder that things existed outside of the Anthropology department at the Smithsonian. “Oh, god .Work. Or school? What day is it? Can I call in?”
Blue stayed hovering over Gansey, one of the few times their heights didn't matter because they were equal when they were horizontal. But she gave his watch an comparably annoyed huff, and clamped her hand over his wrist.
"Monday? Thursday? Your guess is as good as mine. Not a market day or we would have been up sooner, so you can definitely call out of whatever you have going on. It's not important today," Blue said, even if she would have suggested calling out regardless of new memories.
And then she kissed him because they had been dancing around it too long. A phantom fear, a fresh one, ran quickly through her nerves. He wasn't going to die from a kiss—not anymore, not ever—but warring between two different versions of herself was incredibly complicated. She didn't like the feeling; her own uncertainty was going to do more damage than an accidental verbal slip up.
"Maybe we can get arepas, anyway. Get us out of the house, more thinking time, since your schedule is now suddenly free."
It was easy to get caught up in Blue’s kisses, always. Everything settled in his chest being this close to her. It was both exhilarating and relaxing all at once, when his heart beat a little faster each time because of the small part of him that didn’t worry it was going to be the last, but did wonder.
It didn’t stop him, as he trusted her wholeheartedly, but there was just something rare and very them, that this situation involved the very sliver of chance to it. Not many people could say that.
He didn’t even argue with calling in, though it was an easy sell given the headache that was threatening to pop out at any moment if he let him think about it too long. Instead, after losing himself in her thoroughly, Gansey came back from it with an easy, lazy smile. “I don’t know if I would consider my schedule suddenly free, Blue.” He edged a hand around her leg and flipped them in response, that lazy smile morphing to something a little more feral, not often seen on the face of Richard Campbell Gansey the third.
Blue let out a small noise of surprise when he flipped their positions—she was always caught off guard when this unguarded Gansey made a visit. Gansey on Fire, the colloquial name passed around each other. And part of her was relieved that even amidst this mess of memories and how they would approach the coming day, that he still was him, through and through. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad, maybe they could make a sensible solution for a ridiculous situation.
"It is because I say it is," Blue said, as her hands came up to card through his hair and pull him back into her. "But I can think of a few more ways to fill up the time before we have to be reasonable and responsible. Let's leave that to everyone else who doesn't have four years of memories dumped in their brains." She kissed him again, and said no more.