thatsallthereis | And everything you've ever been is still there in the dark night

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And everything you've ever been is still there in the dark night

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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"Not me," Gansey corrected with a jab of his finger in the air. It was worth repeating. It was also another moment he could take before he had to tell Adam -- well, everything. It was what he expected. It was what he deserved. If Gansey were in Adam's place, he'd want the same.

"Parrish." Another breath, another space for Gansey to call himself a coward. On the road trip, he felt Cabeswater-infinite, and in the high walls and impossibly city lines of Hywel and Darrow, Gansey couldn't breathe. Information overload. Wings clipped out from underneath him.

"There's a lot," he continued, somewhat stricken, "some things I left out with the others." Like Ronan. He couldn't tell Ronan about Aurora. Not now. Not when it was clear he was barely hanging on already.

Edited 2016-07-28 05:52 (UTC)

"I know but..." Adam waved a hand in the air. But time was circular. But what else was he supposed to say? But they had lost him and now they had him again? But Adam hadn't had his first cup of coffee. How did he even begin with all those caveats?

He began with the dog, who had flopped onto the ground, making a C around Gansey's feet, tail still wagging. "Her name is Copper," he said. "I found her chained to a trailer in the woods."

There was a lot and the dog was the simplest place to start.

"Did you eat?"

Copper and Adam as a team did a lot to smooth out the edges of Gansey's consciousness. One lay nearly on his bare feet, regarding him expectantly. Lovingly. Copper trusted him. Gansey smiled and reached down to pat her gently. The idea of someone leaving her out in some trailer, abandoned made him feel ornery, but she didn't need to know that.

Adam was still standing there when he straightened, and Gansey went to drink his coffee despite the fact that there was nothing in it. "Must've left my appetite in Tulsa," he mused, looking over their friends. A lot of tension had dulled and for Gansey, that was perfect.

"It all happened the way Blue said it would." He thumbed the coffee cup down at his side and watched his people go about their lives around the table. His heart ached, but that wasn't all bad. "The details are all different. Glendower was dead. Piper Freemantle released a demon that was unmaking Cabeswater. It wanted to unmake all dream things. It possessed Noah. And you. It tried to unmake Ronan." He hoped somehow that Adam would catch that some of the dream things may have been lost -- an integral one. If he didn't have to say it, maybe he could get by without Ronan knowing entirely. He hoped Adam would figure out the rest. Suddenly, he felt tired.

"A life for a life." Gansey was going to die anyway and they all knew it. Ronan was never meant to be a part of that.

"Tulsa?" Adam's eyebrows pressed together before he asked, in a voice that seemed distinctly borrowed from Ronan, "What the fuck were you doing in Tulsa?"

It was like trying to read the summary of a two thousand page book in a single paragraph. Every single bullet point was a saga in itself and all of them combined made his head spin. His thoughts lingered on the idea of demonic possession. It was the kind of thing that preachers–when his parents bothered to put in appearances–warned about in church. Since his bargain with Cabeswater, Adam had figured that was the worst it could be. He had given up a little of his free will to fix things.

But possessed.

And Glendower? Dead. "I was going to ask him for your life," he said, stunned into admission. "I was going to ask Owen Glendower to make sure you lived..."

I was the voice Gansey heard.

I dreamed Cabeswater.

A little in love with all of them.

"Oh God," was all he could manage.

The colors in Adam's tone fluctuated. First, he was Ronan-colored, like rich leather and Earth tones. Then, he was Cabeswater, like the autumn leaves, a rich derivation of its maker. It mades the leaves of consciousness turn toward him. Gansey's affection and admiration for Adam was magnified by the bits of Cabeswater that re-formed him. Adam Parrish -- eyes and ears of Cabeswater, Gansey's idea of a truly admirable person -- would have asked Glendower for Gansey's life. Knowing that from before and hearing it here were apparently two different things.

"It was never supposed to be Ronan." It wasn't supposed to be Persephone or Neeve or Aurora or Cabeswater or anyone but Gansey.

"He asked Cabewater for a sacrifice. It remade me from itself. For Ronan and Blue and you." From them. Sometimes he thought he could feel the vines looping through his being. Something remarkable had died so Gansey could live.

He had no choice but to be remarkable or Cabeswater's sacrifice was for nothing.

"And here I am." He corrected, "actually, I don't know how I'm here."

Adam's brows knit together and he looked at Gansey again, tried to really look. He was his own eyes and he was Cabeswater's eyes too and with that filter over his vision, he could see the chlorophyl in Gansey's skin, the tree roots in his hair, the thorns in his bones. They were Cabeswater.

What could he even say? There were no words in English profound enough for that realization. Was there a word for realizing that you breathed the same air as someone else? Looked at the same moon and had the same magic in their veins?

"Wow," he said, because something had to come out.

And then Gansey spoke on particulars. Facts. Adam could at least respond to facts with facts. "I've been here since July, twenty-fifteen. It's July again, twenty-sixteen. I..." Adam gave Gansey another stunned look. "You missed my birthday."

Understanding passed between them, too real to muddy with words. Adam saw Cabeswater and Gansey could feel Cabeswater looking back, recognizing him. Pride swelled in Gansey's chest. He'd never wanted anything to be simple in the first place. Nothing with them ever was.

"Oh." Gansey was distressed, suddenly guilty over the missed day. There was nothing he could have done about it, but it had been important to Adam and that made Gansey want to change it. He wished he could. He made a note to find a way to make it up to him. As soon as he'd said it, Gansey begun wishing he'd been there.

"Cheng said everyone is assigned an apartment." Without looking at it, the place sounded dreadful. Some tiny little closet of a space crammed in with dozens of other strangers, piled literally on top of each other. Gansey felt claustrophobic just thinking about it. "Did you all get assigned here?" And if they had, why the hell hadn't Gansey been, too?

They understood one another in a way that had nothing to do with words. Hell, talking made things more difficult and more complicated than they needed to be. Adam was Cabeswater's vessel and so was Gansey and they were together two parts of something larger and more complicated, paired together like lungs.

It made words seem odd. Adam shrugged off Gansey's guilt. "Not like you could help it," he said, wishing now that he hadn't brought it up. "You know I don't actually care." This had been the first year he'd had a reason to celebrate but that didn't account for much compared to Gansey.

"We bought this place. The other Gansey and I. So your name's still on the title, if you want it. Hywel," he said, because if someone had told Gansey its Welsh name he would already have used it, known there were no coincidences.

Or maybe, with Glendower dead and dusty, he just didn't care. Adam didn't know what to make of a Gansey not in pursuit of Glendower.

Gansey cared, and he was tempted to say so. With Ronan's explosion, Henry's gentle sense of displacement, Blue's dissonance and finding out the voice he'd heard had never been Glendower at all, Gansey was feeling incredibly tired. With Adam, it was easy. Adam listened and learned like Gansey did. Better.

So, Adam had offered Gansey something that wasn't his. His, but not his. Theirs. Gansey made a small noise in his throat that was agreement, but he couldn't find words to express his gratitude. Thanking a stranger for their time was easy; thanking a friend for giving you everything was much harder.

It was lame. It was reductive. It wasn't enough. Still, Gansey offered a fist to Adam. It had been good enough for "good-bye," so he hoped it would be a good enough "thank you" until he could figure out how to say it.

"Coincidence." He smiled because it wasn't.

The language of the fist bump was a subtle and varied art with thousands of possible meanings. In this context, Adam took it to mean a thank you for not freaking out with possible compliments to Adam and his past self for finding a building with a name not dissimilar to that of Glendower's cousin, Howell. He tapped his fist against Gansey's and the moment was sealed.

"Your room's still free, if you want it. I think Noah rescued your mint plant," Adam offered. That seemed like a good place to start. He did not say that Ronan had trashed the room or that it had driven a wedge between him and Adam that had been temporarily been insurmountable. He did not say that losing Gansey before had affected Ronan so badly that he got his arm broken at Fight Club.

What he did say–blurted, really–was, "I'm dating Ronan now."

Gansey's lips quirked into an involuntary smile. He would have laughed, had Adam not looked so much like the words had been involuntary, themselves. They'd had this conversation almost exactly back home, and Adam had no idea. If nothing else, Gansey knew Adam was his authentic self in this place.

"I know," he said, patient and a touch too amused to bother hiding it. "Rather, I figured. It's been you and Ronan for a while now." Back in Henrietta, he meant. Adam and Ronan had figured themselves out just around the time Blue and Gansey had. It was another way all of them were all tied together.

"I'd like to stay." He said it like he'd just decided, but he was sure Adam knew the decision had been made before Gansey had even known the name of his new home. Or which of the inhabitants were residents.

"Does Blue live here?" Even if he'd tried to sound disinterested (he hadn't), he would have failed.

Adam hadn't quite known what to expect. He'd worn enough red ties to enough Gansey parties that he'd had a real fear that he'd finally found a line that couldn't be crossed. To see Gansey smiling was a strange and crashing relief and Adam let out his breath.

"It's been since September. It's July now." Adam wasn't entirely sure why the chronology felt necessary; he wasn't expecting Gansey to send anniversary flowers. "It's not, you know, some thing." The word was both inadequate and all-encompassing.

Gansey saying he wanted to stay was the first piece of normalcy Adam thought he'd had all morning. "I don't know if this is the kind of thing we're supposed to have a house meeting over, but you've got my vote," Adam said.

"She has a room here but she goes to her apartment sometimes too. Free spirit. Also we're a bunch of assholes."

Nearly a year. In linear time, it seemed Ronan and Adam had worked things out faster in Darrow than they had at home. Gansey was glad for that. It told him something about the climate of the Darrow people and how comfortable they felt. In a strange city that plucked a person (any number of them) from their place in time and space might have an uneasy feeling. Either people were being systematically brainwashed or things were alright. Gansey would make the judgement for himself, but he hoped for the latter.

"It's not?" Gansey echoed, raising a brows in his interest. Ronan and Adam seemed very much like a thing in Henrietta and Gansey was happy for them, the way he hoped Adam was happy for him and Blue. Or had been, back home. Whatever was happening wasn't yet happening here. And where Adam came from they still hadn't quite talked about it, had they?

"Blue and I were seeing each other." It felt the right time to say it, since they were on the subject of such things. "It's not the same here, but we were." Gansey stopped surveying the land and looked at Adam. Really looked, like when Cabeswater had recognized itself moments ago. The only reason they'd gotten through the stretch of time leading up to Gansey's death was because they'd dropped pretense and linked together. He and Adam were two parts of one magic whole. They had to be. Gansey needed them to be.

"I mean, it's not..." Among the people that knew them both, there was rarely a need to perfectly articulate what they were and so Adam didn't quite know how to say it when it mattered. "It's a relationship. We're not experimenting or toying with each other or...whatever." Adam wasn't sure what made him feel most protective, the thought that Gansey might assume the worst of Adam or assume that they were being frivolous.

Gansey mentioned Blue and Adam smiled, warm if a little uncertain. Gansey's loss had hit them all in different, terrible ways but Adam thought that Blue had suffered it the most quietly and in a way none of them understood. For all that Ronan and Adam loved Gansey in a way that was more than brotherly, Blue had Loved him in a way that Adam couldn't touch.

"I figured you would eventually," he said, hoping it sounded even, not dismissive.

Was it because of who they were or was it because of Cabeswater that they were drawn close like magnets? Adam hadn't realized just how much he'd lacked for the Gansey-shaped hole in his life and now that he was back, he could only now realize just how much they'd lost.

They'd had this conversation before, but not. In the conversation, Gansey had made a request, one that he'd wished he'd worded differently. When he'd said don't break him, that had only been a fraction of what he meant. Gansey was a boy who had been as privileged in second choices as he had been in anything else he'd known, and it was his responsibility not to waste it. If he had another shot at this conversation, he would say what he meant.

"Be good to each other." He trusted they would. they'd both endured enough that Gansey hoped neither of themselves would stay in another uncomfortable situation for too long. Anyway, Gansey had seen them together. They made sense, like him and Blue.

"I suppose I should go out exploring," Gansey said, half to himself and half as a weak invitation. Since he'd quite literally interrupted breakfast unannounced, he didn't want to assume Adam had nothing to do. If he knew Adam, he had nearly 100 things to do.

It was a meager selection of words but it also encompassed a lot of warnings and encouragement. It was neither a shovel talk nor an offer to walk someone down the aisle. It was quiet, reserved. Coming from Gansey, it offered a lot of things.

"We have two Camaros and a Harley to choose from, but you'd have to bring the bike back by two." Adam raised his brows, finding himself oddly more concerned about Gansey's reaction to the Harley than to Ronan. Its acquisition was a long story, tangled up in a different incarnation of the autoshop where he'd worked, inspired by its owner, Jax.

Except then Jax had gotten murdered and Adam had still had a motorcycle, one that he used as his main transportation and on which he'd conveyed every member of their circle. And Henry.

Gansey's brows knitted over his wire frames. Did he mean they had purchased 2 Camaros or that Gansey's precious Pig was there? What was the second one? Who the hell was driving a Harley around?

Ronan, Gansey figured, but without Declan to irritate, Gansey wasn't sure why Ronan would spring for such an ostentatious thing. It could have been Noah because Gansey supposed he didn't quite know what Noah was like. Maybe Blue. Seeing a tiny human being on a monster of a Harley was something Gansey would have liked to see.

"What happens at 2?" Maybe the bike was Adam's. That made the most sense. If there was anyone that could maintain it, it was Adam. The line of Gansey's lips curved a bit. Adam and a Harley wouldn't have been too bad a fit.

"You mean the Pig? The Pig is here?" He tried (and failed) not to sound too excited but if the Pig was there and all of his people were there, this place was home. Period.

"I have to take back my bike and go to work, is what," Adam said. There was an edge of humor that sharpened the corner of his mouth as he said, "Things cost money, Gansey." Some of them had to earn it.

"Ronan crashed the Pig into here before the rest of us showed. Then the...other you drove in the Pig. If we get a few more, we could make you a house like you planned."

Gansey looked sidelong, grinned at Adam like he was impressed. The moment he was left to his own devices, Adam made himself the life he'd said he would. Adam was more a man of his word than Gansey had known. He was proud of his friend, thrilled that he was so willing to let Gansey come back in and be a part of all of it. Just like that. A fistbump was no way to show appreciation for that. Adam's kindness and endless understanding had finally exceeded Gansey's capability to express his gratitude. He decided to devote time to figuring out how to fix that. Without money. It was the least he could do.

"Mm," was the displeased noise that crept out from behind where his thumb had perched itself at his mouth. He didn't like to think about Ronan driving the Pig and that was exactly the reason why. If there were two, maybe it didn't matter so much.

And Ronan could drive the broken one.

"Show me your bike, Parrish." He clasped his shoulder, something like a litmus test. "Ah," he added, "also a shirt, if you'd be so kind."

It was appreciably a very Aglionby gesture, the patrician clasp of the shoulder, a reminder of who Adam was to Gansey. He smiled and accepted it, mouth twitching again into a smile.

"You might not like the shirts I have," he warned. "None of them are turquoise."

But, he supposed, shirtless Ganseys could not be choosers and his motorcycle didn't care what you wore to see it, so it would be all right.

They would be all right.

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And everything you've ever been is still there in the dark night

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