Richard Campbell Gansey III

For a week, Gansey was on fire. It wasn't the kind that Ronan liked -- the one that sparked out from his eyes and the curled corner of his lips -- it was more urgent. Numb.

For a week, Ronan laid unmoving. Things were changing. Things were dying. Gansey wished he hadn't seen it before, but if he hadn't he wouldn't know what to do.

He needed an amplifier. Check. Blue sat thrumming in his front seat, as anxious and scared as the rest of them. He needed an EMF detector, and he needed his watch. Check and check. There was one thing missing now. Not a thing at all, really. Having Henry by his side meant working as efficiently and cleanly as possible. He was distraught; there was a small margin for error and a large chance of the error itself. Gansey had spent the last week all but shaking. He was a man on a mission. Were his eyes not open, he'd seem to be in some kind of coma of his own.

He asked Henry to be waiting when he arrived and he was. The Pig sputtered up, stopped, and Gansey slammed it to life again. There was no time.

He reached back to unlock the door for Henry. He'd wanted him up front, but he couldn't well tell Blue to get in Driving Miss Daisy position until they picked his boyfriend up. Gansey was mad at himself for taking this time to think such a trivial thing. For all they knew, Ronan's time was running out.

"Get in," Gansey said through the open window. It didn't need to be said, and Gansey didn't like the way it sounded at all -- harsh and distracted. He apologized with a little twitch of his lips. Henry looked good. He wished he could find the brainpower to think about anything else but Ronan.

"We're going to Cabeswater," Gansey said once everyone was settled. "We have to find a way to save Ronan."

[Order: Gansey, Henry, Blue]

There were maps, blueprints, pamphlets, magazine articles. The pile of things in his car were the useless ones. He never knew what he would come across something valuable, and he feared he might never know until someone saw it was worth stealing and did so. There had to be another way. Though the past few years had done their share to harden him, Gansey still had trouble with losing. Rather, losing was happening with ease and Gansey was still trying to find his coping rhythm. Because of him, Blue and Ronan had lost people they loved. Gansey had lost. Noah was lost. Gansey had been lost.

A boy who could not seem to stay dead was in a make-believe city with bogus plans in the backseat of his car because he didn't want anyone to know he was coming until it was too late to stop him.

The door of the Pig slammed home and it locked on the first try. Muscle memory shaped by adoration. Under a similar spell, he skipped up the stairs to Henry's apartment, his nose stuck in a book like he was rehearsing for a gender-swapped production of Beauty and the Beast. He plowed into someone and apologized profusely. She recognized him from the library at Barton. They talked. Gansey deflected attention away from the topic of Darrow history when his book gave him away. He sorely missed chattering excitedly about his finds and questions. Too much loss had come out of it. Things were -- as always -- different in Darrow.

Knock, knock, he rapped his knuckles gently on Henry's door and went back to his figuring. Once he was inside, he could tug his journal out and let out all of the chatter and conjecture his boyfriend could stand to listen to.

When there was nothing but leftover meat and beer, the crowd dwindled. They'd planned it well so that the last person was out before dinnertime and by 6pm, Hywel was bare bones. There was plenty of food to pick at, lots of beer for Ronan, and the gracious guests had done most of the cleanup. In the morning, Gansey had to call to get the picnic tables and heaters taken to the community center. He hadn't made arrangements for the grill; he'd meant to take it to the local shelter, but he was afraid he was attached to it. Keeping it, though, meant this was a selfish act. He didn't want that. That was not what this was about.

Now sans beer and plus water, Gansey lept over the back of the couch and landed himself at one side. This was even more like Gansey's kind of gathering: just the his royal court. They'd grown and gained some, but that was good too. If time wasn't here what it was in Henrietta, there was so much more to learn.

[Afterparty. Please use this as Gansey's TL as well.

"This is a night for truth."

For hours, the libations had flowed. That was thanks to Gansey's imaginary money and his relative fascination with what he couldn't help but think of as Supermarket Culture. There, he purchased a couple new pool cues (why would this place also have pool cues would be a question too logical for his new life; sometimes he thought seeking sleeping kings was the more gentle fate). Alcohol, pool, music, and -- thanks to Noah -- decoration. A great banner, capable of shedding more glitter than the local warlock -- screamed in cheerful swirling letters HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ASSHOLE!. Gansey loved it. It was just the right tone for a Ronan birthday. The array of spider-themed decor and the paper spiderweb banner that bordered the pool table reminded them not only that Halloween had just passed, but also that the leftover decorations were dirt cheap. Anything ghost shaped was carefully, politically polite to any ghosts that may have purchased them.

There was also cake. Noah made sure there was cake. It was a carrot cake that read Happy Birthday We All Love You. It was like Noah knew what was ahead.

So, with his free-flowing drinks and new pool cues and nothing but the five of them, they drank and they played and they tolerated Ronan's terrible electronica, and they laughed. They shot the shit. They got to be regular teenagers for a few hours.

So, when the most energetic part of the night was wending toward lethargy, Gansey took action.

"Nobody knows if we were plucked out of our old life or if we made some kind of unconscious choice to be here. We may never know." That didn't sit well with Gansey, so he perched himself on the coffee table, facing these people -- his people. "We can agree that time is messed up. I think we can all agree that's done something to spread us out." There was no one he looked at in particular. Life did that sometimes. Not to them.

So, he said again, "this is a night for truth. I'll go first."

More than a month had passed since Gansey talked to Henry. There was casual chit-chat: a text to check up here, an accidental run-in there. Darrow was small like that, and more and more, Gansey found himself on the Barton campus, seeking out his Professor friend and hoping to catch Adam or Henry on their way to class.

The thing was, they were still in a similar category, Henry and Adam. The one he avoided, the other he wondered about. The thing with Henry had opened up a whole slew of hindsight. Friends -- boys, especially -- didn't act like they all did. They didn't touch too much, but they did stand too close, get too defensive, stayed in too close contact. Helen loved to joke about it, didn't she?

Oh Jesus, Helen. His family. Helen trying to spin something like this for his family. Helen waving her cell phone at him, ranting about how he doesn't care about Senator Gansey's campaign. Dick Sr. shaking his head. Senator Gansey -- Mom -- wanting him in less and less family photos.

He shifted into 3rd. The rattle of the engine sounded like it was going to break apart. Gansey knew the feeling. He shifted into 4th and the revving of his engine finally drowned out the sound of his short, unsteady breath. By the time he reached Blue's complex, the bees had stopped crawling on his skin; the walls had receded. He turned the car off and so, too, did he almost lose his nerve.

Courage, he thought. The door swung open and he rocked himself to his feet. Slam. Lock. Pocket. Blue. Somehow, talking to her was less complicated than anyone else he could think of.

"Jane," he greeted, the panic bubbling up in him all over again. A hand tucked casually into a pocket, a seemingly innocent gesture that was something of a security thing for him. "Please excuse me for not calling ahead. Would you be willing to take a drive with me?" The formality was casual enough, but it still needed to be said. They were friends -- somewhat estranged, at that -- and this was all quite forward. Not, he hoped, too forward.

Silence, Gansey had told himself, was the thing that kept him up at night. When everything stopped, all that was left were questions, and when he was too tired to think of answers, it was (for lack of a better term) a shitstorm.

Great. Two weeks with Ronan and he was already thinking compound words with no Oxford English equal.

Silence, however, was hard to come by in Hywel. The animals shuffled and bleated below. There was a goat that Gansey swore was being bribed to keep him tense. The damn thing screamed, fainted, and the first time that happened, Gansey'd nearly had a heart attack. Strange city, no way out, weird things happened, and the thing that bothered Gansey the most was a goat with a name from the Greek pantheon. The whole thing, really, was quite unsettling.

But Adam was happy. Ronan was happy. Noah was happy and he was there. He couldn't tell if Blue was happy, but she was there and he hoped he could have a stake in her happiness. Hywel was incomplete without her. Without Henry.

Gansey sat up. It was nearly 4am and that meant that he'd missed his chance to sleep. Usually he was up around 6 regardless of variables. This was a time of night that made him tense when he saw it, because he could anticipate the fatigue of the next day. Not that he had anything to be doing other than what he was doing: pacing the corridor around his bed, stepping over books and recently-purchased-and-carelessly-discarded clothing. Those things made him want to check his bank account balance. He was afraid to. That was not something he'd ever done before.

Are you awake? Gansey fingers hesitated over the new keyboard and he had to pause to remember how to find Cheng in his contacts.

Gansey was dreaming.

He was in Monmouth -- no, he was in a hotel room. Monmouth stood empty in Henrietta, with Adam and Ronan tucked away at the Barns and Noah at rest. Gansey was only dreaming he was in Monmouth, but when he dreamed, he was never asleep enough to confuse it for reality. Much like in his waking hours, he kept one foot on the ground, checked in with himself to make sure he knew where he was. Tulsa, not Henrietta. Some hotel, not Monmouth. Home, but not those safe walls. After years of traveling and seeking, Gansey was relieved that he'd found a sort of peace that made him feel that home was wherever he, Henry, and Blue laid their heads for the night. Home was his Camaro, buzzing down interstate highways noisily despite the fact that there was no machinery to whir, no head gasket to blow every 45 minutes. Another thing he and his precious Pig had in common: a separation from time and the laws of the universe proper. Neither of them made any sense. No one Gansey loved did.

Gansey was awake. Calling what he was doing "dreaming" was a bit of a leap anyway. It was more like he was looking at Monmouth and noticing how empty it was. There wasn't even a ghost to haunt its empty halls.

Blue was gone. Henry was gone. A few moments ago, Gansey swore he felt Blue exhale a sleepy sigh against his neck, close enough to notice and far enough away to wonder if it had happened at all.

There was a vast expanse of a window spilling bright light into the room. Tulsa's forecast showed rain for days, heavy enough that Gansey had been able to convince Blue to let him get a hotel for a few days rather than risk flying off the road trying to flee the downpour. Gansey liked the rain. The sound of it on the roof had been one of his only companions in times of sleeplessness on his travels.

The sun was out and Gansey was alone. It sat wrong in his chest. Then, he looked around.

Books. Books he might read. A desk. A desk with knots in it the size of fists, all knuckle and no regard for bone. It made him think of Ronan, much the way gasoline smelled like Adam and the cold reminded him of Noah. This room was stark. The books were stacked in a way that felt familiar to him.

Then, he heard voices. The walls of this room didn't reach the ceiling and Gansey could hear the sounds of someone banging around in the kitchen, could smell their cooking. Occasionally someone would speak, and Gansey's heart was pounding too hard in his ears to find the voices familiar. What if he'd been kidnapped? What if Henry and Blue weren't safe? Some uninformed idiot might have traced some of Gansey's research and thought there was something to find, as Gansey once had. Though never, ever would he have tried to find it like this.

Still, the smell of breakfast was not very menacing. Gansey took the space of a few breaths to calm himself, work through some rational thought, and push himself to his feet. Distressingly, he was only dressed from the waist down, glasses still on his face. He looked around fruitlessly for a shirt. Unless he fashioned one out of a nearby book titled Questioning Darrow's History, that wouldn't change. He decided not to harm the book in any way and headed for the door. He pushed it open. He had no idea what he might find on the other side.

Ceilings, high as the ones in Monmouth. Maybe higher. There were several bedrooms, laid about a very open floorplan. There was some shuffling below that suggested activity beneath, a table set, some more ruckus in the kitchen. No one seemed to be guarding the door. This wasn't a kidnapping. What the hell was it then? His brows knitted deeply over the tips of his wire frames and he skidded a thumb over his lip as he rounded the corner to the kitchen.

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