WHAT. Adam has some worries so he goes to Gansey to talk them out. WHERE. Library of Alexandria WHEN. Early afternoon today. WARNINGS. Spoilers for Greywaren. Angst~ ART CREDIT.here! STATUS. Complete!
Gansey would know. That was the phrase Adam played on loop in his head. If he got desperate, if the unknowing became all consuming for his constant information-seeking mind, then Adam would ask Gansey. It was almost unfair—cheating, his brain provided unhelpfully—to rely on the circumstantial situation in Vallo where Gansey's brain was crammed with four years of memories, and Adam's with a measly few weeks. But those weeks had been harrowing, the last few days of them nearly fatal, and Adam couldn't seem to wrap his head around the events.
He had spent most of the days after getting the memory update in a delirious, exhausted phase. But when Adam finally rose above the murky surface of his thoughts, his feelings about all of it had been sharp-focused, clear-cut, brutal in the way he had often used against his own self-esteem. Adam didn't want to put words to the memory, and allowed for the echo of the sweetmetal sea to scrape at the back of his mind until he could no longer stand it. Compartmentalizing was bullshit, but he was going to vehemently try anyway.
But Gansey would know. And Adam's logical, rational, absolutely not emotional sense during existential situations considered Gansey to be someone who could logically, rationally talk it out with him. Because they must have had this conversation before, right? Adam must have cornered him like he was doing now during his lunch break, right?
Being at the Great Library was not an uncommon occurrence, though Adam had spent his study time at home lately in order to maximize his exposure to his husband in the days leading up to finals. But Adam also knew Ronan wouldn't be lurking here randomly on a weekday afternoon.
Pointed in a vague direction by the library staff, Adam had wandered into the stacks. He watched Gansey shelve for much longer than was reasonable, before he cleared his throat. "The Goblin Revolution?"
Gansey was used to being interrupted when he was out on the floor, shelving books or sorting sections. In this atmosphere, he looked like a librarian. Button down, vest, pressed trousers, glasses on instead of his contacts. Even if he wasn't currently on a ladder putting books and tomes away, he looked the part.
He had not been expecting Adam, who didn’t often visit during the week when finals were approaching or he could have been at Boyd’s, so Gansey faltered a little on the ladder as he turned sharply. He recovered and shrugged as he slipped in the last book from his stack into it’s designated spot. “History of Vallo has been covering it for freshmen so it’s been a popular check out.”
Gansey readjusted his stance and rested a hand on the ladder so he could peer down at Adam safely. “Hi. Did you need a break from the chaos and wanted some peace and quiet? My office is empty if you need it.”
Adam was a freshman. Had been a freshman. Every so often his brain would flip between the reminders of being back in Boston and then here in Vallo. He hadn't been a first year student in years, but just the mention of it—even around Goblin Revolution, something he would have never studied at Harvard—caused him to falter, noticeably. This was, more or less, why he was here, to get some clarity.
He peered up at Gansey, but his face was twisted as if he was squinting at the sun. "Could I. Well, could we. Your office would be good, for some privacy? I need to talk to you about something and this felt like the only place I could corner you about it," Adam said, sounding just as exhausted as he did recovering on the couch.
His body may have adjusted and his mind all strung evenly together, but he was still all emotionally tangled. Knowing that asking Gansey if they could talk would set off anxiety alarms, Adam added, softly, "About home. And what Ronan or I might have told you after the almost-apocalypse."
Adam had been spot-on when he’d thought of the anxiety, as Gansey’s heartrate spiked immediately. He gripped the edge of the ladder a little tighter and nodded firmly even though he wasn’t really sure what he was nodding at. Just to agree? It could have been something as simple as trying to figure out what to get Ronan for Christmas (this was a debate they’d had several times over) but Adam’s clarification told Gansey that wasn’t the case.
He climbed down from the ladder immediately and rolled it to the end of the stacks. “This way,” as if Adam didn’t already know where it was. Still, Gansey’s nervous energy was obvious as he picked up a few stray books and brought them with him to give his hands something to do. Getting questions about home had been a standard occurrence that Gansey had both expected and also had not anticipated the level of.
None of them had ever been good at waiting around for information. His office was still empty, with no surprises waiting for them, and Gansey opted for immediately perching on the corner of his desk rather than sitting at the chair. “I noticed you two have been tense the last week or so. Is this about that?”
Following Gansey was natural, especially in moments where Adam was feeling incredibly unmoored. He had always been so determined to stand on his own two feet, make his own decisions, and independently live his life, but days like these? He had never been more thankful to nod curtly back to Gansey and be led to a familiar place.
Once inside his empty office, Adam closed the door, but he didn't sit. He simply relieved himself of his school bag in the chair. He already felt the restlessness in his legs and in his cheat to pace.
Adam opened his mouth a few times and closed it, with a heavy sigh. He was trying to be particular about his question to Gansey without being blunt, but Adam was not known to be kind when it came to desperation. And the answers he needed from Gansey felt urgent. "Yes, no. I don't know. Maybe. Probably," Adam said, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Did he—or did I ever tell you what happened? Aside from saving the world and dreamers and waking the leylines back up?" There was a long, pointed silence, and then, "Did either of us ever tell you why it was Hennessy who brought me back and not him?"
Now Gansey was more worried than anxious. It wasn’t like Adam to take on his office with all this nervous energy, though admittedly finals week had a tendency to change that. He opted to take the calmer side of things, and just waited for Adam to talk himself around to the actual question he wanted to ask.
Then he exhaled. “That’s-- heavy thinking.” He had talked to both Ronan and Adam plenty of times about everything after, after he’d come back from the trip, knowing some of it but only having partial knowledge from texts or demanding answers from Declan. There had been a lot going on in the first days back, when Adam was weak and Ronan was adjusting and Matthew had only just gotten back.
“I know some of it, yes.” He felt almost apprehensive to answer that loaded question, but Gansey didn’t like lying to Adam and had gotten better at facing him head on. Especially where Ronan was concerned. “Ronan’s talked to me about how it all went down, but I know things were pretty chaotic during all of that. Why do you ask?” He could guess, but he figured Adam needed to talk it through, and if Gansey could take the opportunity to divert things, he would.
Adam did need to talk it through. Not just with himself, because that had clearly not been working. He was still feeling this confusion, this indescribable need to know why despite the fact that he knew why. Rationally, logically, the math of the situation was objective; there was only one right answer. The world or Adam, and that wasn't much of a choice at all. Adam wouldn't have chosen himself either if those were the only options.
He wondered, briefly—when Gansey said he knew some of it—if this was a conversation he had with Gansey before. If Gansey was getting a second chance to explain it or if this was his first shot where Adam came to him. They were different people here in Vallo than they were back home, so either scenario was possible.
"I'm only asking because as much as I've tried to stop thinking about it, I can't stop thinking about it," Adam said, sounding incredibly frustrated. But it was clearly directed at himself as he ran an irritated, impatient hand through his hair. "He made a choice, the right choice, in the end but it still—I don't know how to live with that knowledge, that I was left behind, like mentally reconcile it."
Adam squeezed his eyes shut, as though he was forcibly trying to accept it now. "And I need to know if I do, if we do. I can't second guess him forever."
Gansey frowned. He’d figured that was the direction this was going, and he’d helped the pair of them work through issues before, but it was always tricker when it was something as heavy as this. Something with the potential to throw things into shambles.
He knew it had taken Adam and Ronan a while to get back to where they had been before. Trust had been broken but there was still a lot of love there. But all of that baggage was back home. Learning to blend the two of them together was likely no easy task.
“Adam, if Ronan hadn’t made that choice, that was it. There wouldn’t have even been a chance to get you back at all. So ultimately what you’re second guessing-- he made the right choice, yes, but I don’t think he made it as a you-or-something else choice.” That he could feel confident in, at least, having listened to Ronan’s guilt through the years. “Are you doubting Ronan’s choices there because you’re worried he wouldn’t pick you in the future for something else? Because I don’t believe that. I think he had to make an impossible choice and went with what would have the best chance of getting you back at the same time as saving the world.”
"You make it sound like I'm being selfish. That I would rather have Ronan pick me over the world, and that's not—I know my worth, Gansey. I know where I factor into the universe. I know that I am one person versus hundreds of thousands, of millions of people. I'm not delusional." And there, Adam began to pace. Just one step, then another. But the space wasn't large enough for Adam to wear a deep track into the ground and he stopped as quickly as he started, staring at some indiscriminate picture on Gansey's office wall.
"I'm not doubting Ronan's choice, I would have made the same one. It would be hypocritical of me to say I would have chosen differently," Adam said, his voice taking on a somber tone. It was easier to put his back to Gansey. "I've been trying to figure out if there was another option, another choice, another, I don't know, path to success. He didn't know Hennessy would be there when he made that choice. In that moment, I don't know if he hesitated. If I was enough to hesitate for."
He glanced over his shoulder, not really making eye contact. "It's the not knowing that's going to eat at me. Did he say goodbye to me then? Did he know it was going to be the last time? Did I ever factor in at all? Do I need that information to move past it or am I just trying to find something to make me more comfortable with my almost-mortality."
There was no part of Gansey that would have ever called Adam selfish. Not a particle of magic or forest or human or whatever made up his rebuilt body would have gone to that part, and he just stared, letting his eyes follow Adam as he paced and wouldn’t meet Gansey’s eye contact. He often wished he knew what was going on in Adam’s head, and now that Adam was being forthcoming with exactly what was rattling around up there, he wished he could soothe it with only a few words.
But it would never be as easy as that. “Adam,” At this point he wasn’t sure any reasonable discussion might be listened to, but Gansey had to try anyway. “There is no part of me that would ever think Ronan would ever just leave you without second-guessing it. That he would have made that choice if there was any other option. Ronan would do anything for you.”
Ronan was always far more selfless than he gave himself credit, but even with that, Gansey knew there were few people he’d burn the world down for and Adam was the top of that list, right by Declan and Matthew. “I know the Lace fucked with both of you during this. Don’t let it make you second-guess everything here, too. Don’t let it win.”
Now that Adam was clear-minded, and not dragged down the fractured pieces of his being it was easier to see what Gansey was saying. The Lace had been brutal, stripping Adam of all the things he liked about himself, until he was left with all the vicious, awful parts, screaming endlessly into a void. Ronan had been a bright spot in the darkness, only to disappear without a hand outstretched to him.
Adam wasn't supposed to let it win, but that was difficult when his own traitorous mind and the Lace sounded so maliciously alike. He thought in Vallo he was free from the doubt that had started to fester in Henrietta, that had idled in Cambridge. These new memories had started to unravel all that great work.
He could hear the reasonable tension in Gansey's voice. Adam had heard that voice before when he was being irrational. But usually Adam was angry, feeling particularly vicious. It was different coming from Gansey now. He sighed.
"So what do I do?" Adam asked. "I know that if our roles were reversed, I would be a hypocrite. It's just that the longer I sit with it, the more I can't stop trying to figure it out. I want there to be an answer. One where I don't feel like neither of us had to give anything up." He turned back toward Gansey again, with a bitter unkind laugh. "I don't even know if he thinks about it now, here. If it bothers him. And I don't know if I want it to or not."
There was a beat, before Adam added, "What would you do?"
Gansey huffed a humorless laugh right back. “Have an anxiety attack about it.” Which was the partial truth, at the very least. Confrontation was only a half-issue for him, depending on who it was and what the topic at hand involved. With Blue and Ronan, he didn’t hold back. With Adam, he did. Not as much now, he had experience under his belt for the knowledge that Adam wasn’t going to cut off their friendship superficially, but there was always a small worry to that.
“But really-- talk to him? I think it’s okay to tell yourself that there was a part of you that wanted him to pick you damn the consequences, while still not wanting the world to end because of that choice.” Gansey was serious and quiet, but he kept himself open to the conversation, open to Adam.
They’d unraveled the world for him and Gansey likely would’ve done the same right back, but it was a tough call to make. “Just don’t make him the enemy here. Don’t let your brain trick you. We know who the enemy was and he’s gone. There isn’t anything in this world Ronan wouldn’t do for you, for his brothers, for family.”
Adam chewed on his lower lip, working his tense jaw back and forth, as if trapped in indecision. His mind wanted to overanalyze—like it was wont to do—because he had the luxury of time to do so. He could find reasons Gansey was wrong, he could find more to explain why he was right, and Adam was trapped in the middle, wanting to make the correct assessment for his feelings. But Adam should have known that emotions, the subjective, wasn't going to be clear cut. His gut was a better indicator than his brain.
"I know," Adam said, finally, nodding his head in agreement. "I know he's not the enemy. It was never about that." The real one wasn't even Nathan Farooq-Lane, even if he was the harbinger of the end of the world. Adam's worst antagonist was himself. Sometimes he needed someone else to give him direction, and as he looked at Gansey now, he exhaled, his shoulders sagging a little.
He couldn't easily be convinced against the stubbornness of himself, but the small punctures that Gansey could give to his metaphorical walls helped.
"He'd do it for you, you know," Adam said after a tense stretch of silence. "You're his family. I know he tells you now, but I hope he told it to you all the time at home too." He stepped to pick up his bag from the seat, but paused with his hand on the strap. "You were part of the humanity that he was saving and I think that's worth reminding you, too."
With Adam’s nod, Gansey lost some of the tension he was holding in his own shoulders. He had at least been relatively confident that if they could both survive through the apocalypse, Ronan and Adam could handle the after-effects too.
And selfishly it always felt good to feel like he got through to Adam, even just a little. A full win would come later when there was less arguing and more joy around all of them for Christmas. He let himself smile, fondly and openly. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty confident in my place for both of you these days. I promise.”
It was always nice to hear, he was past the years of modestly objecting or worrying about his level of friendship. That confidence grew over time and experience. The fact that he could travel with Blue and Henry and slot right back into their lives meant a lot to Gansey these days. “He’s gotten very tired of being reminded that he brought me back from death number three so I had to stop. I’m getting too far ahead.”
Adam gave Gansey a returning smile; it was not nearly as bright or close to a genuine one he reserved for special moments, but a ghost of one. It was a win all the same. Adam felt like he hadn't smiled even a little bit in ages. That felt too reminiscent of the times before Gansey, Ronan, and the quest for Glendower. Adam didn't want to go backwards.
"Let's not make almost dying a competition. It's not one any of us should win," Adam said, slinging his bag on his shoulder. If he thought too hard about it, he could start recounting all the ways he could have and should have saved Gansey from his second death. Having a third close call rolled something terrible in Adam's stomach.
He stared at Gansey, obviously working over something in his head. Adam was never ashamed to show his overthinking, and consideration had always been given speaking clearly to Gansey. In order not to fight, or at least, try to avoid one. This was not an argument, as he finally said, "Thanks for listening, Gansey. I'll stop keeping you from work now."
Gansey shrugged almost casually. He knew making jokes about it didn’t make it much easier for others, but that type of gallows humor had settled into him as a way of coping with the PTSD. It had oddly worked well, he just had to get everyone re-acclimated to the idea of that. But his hypocrite was bound to show anytime anyone else tried the same with their own mortality.
He reached over to squeeze Adam’s shoulder, not the hug he wanted to go for but comforting nonetheless. “Hey, listening to you is always more important than any job. Even one at the Library of Alexandria.” While a joke, it was still true, and would be until Gansey was gone for real. Adam and Ronan were right next to Blue in terms of things he would do anything for, and work, even as lucrative as the Great Library was, sat where it could and would easily be tossed for any of them. “Thank you for coming to me to talk about it instead of letting it fester. I’m always here for you, alright?”
"I know," Adam said, putting his hand on top of Gansey's on his shoulder. "I'm sure I will say that to you a lot in the future too, but I know you are. You always have been, I haven't forgotten it."
Adam was glad he didn't let it fester either, more than it already had. Another version of himself might have bottled it all up until he let it poison him from the inside out because of some sense of misplaced pride. And that was not a life Adam wanted to live—and not one he promised to live to Ronan or Gansey, not after everything they had been through.
Adam wasn't completely rid of that uncertainty that he came into the office with, but he felt a little more on solid ground when it came to, eventually and inevitably, talking to Ronan about it. "See you at home later? I have to study for finals, but—actually, can you help me find a book? I need another source for my public policy paper."
Gansey squeezed again before letting his hand drop away. Sometimes it was hard for him to believe that his friendship with Adam had come this far, to them being this close and honest over things instead of constantly on edge. No one could pay him any amount in the universe to go back to that stage of friendship. “You can bet on it that I’ll remind you again, don’t worry.”
At public policy paper, his face lit up as his brain searched it’s own archives. “Oh! Yes! I just shelved Evidence-Based Policy: A Realist Perspective In a Magical World earlier today. I meant to tell you about it so this is well-timed. Come on.”
Just as he so often did, Gansey didn’t even wait before leading the way towards their goal, sure stride and squared shoulders.