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

[thatsallthereis]

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.

Comments

[incognoscibilis]

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."

[thatsallthereis]

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.

[incognoscibilis]

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."

[thatsallthereis]

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.

[incognoscibilis]

"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.

[thatsallthereis]

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.

[incognoscibilis]

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.

[thatsallthereis]

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.

[incognoscibilis]

"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."

[thatsallthereis]

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."

[incognoscibilis]

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.