thatsallthereis | [For Henry]

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henry

[For Henry]

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.

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Henry was flustered. He kept coming up breathless and his gaze was keen. At first, Gansey read it as guarded but that wasn't what it felt like in his chest. It felt quite the opposite of that.

In Henrietta -- Charlotte, Nashville, and most recently, Tulsa -- moments like this had come to pass. Sometimes Blue was there and sometimes they were alone, being young and (moderately) reckless. They'd spend their time talking about renting yachts on the west coast, at which point Gansey hoped he'd have known that the other boy could not swim. Often Gansey wondered what might have happened if he hadn't been here. Sometimes he wondered things he had never before thought to wonder. And sometimes the things he'd worked at in Henrietta were the same as the things he wondered while splashing at an extraordinary boy in a pool in a pocket universe.

"When I think of something to say, I'll let you know." It wasn't strictly the truth, but they were playing now, and the rules were looser. He struck out with a hand and captured Henry's risk, tugging him in closer to be more adequately splashed; the first attempt had been ineffecrual and not quite satisfying. He hauled him closer and swooped his arm under.

Henry let it slide. He wanted to push, to press. Maybe he didn't know any of them as well as they knew each other, but he knew when people were having him off, trying to distance themselves from something that didn't want to think about. Henry did a lot of that, after all; he was well versed in the shielding faces of avoiding discussion.

Whether or not Gansey was diverting him temporarily or permanently didn't matter. He was touching him, pulling him by the wrist. He was grinning and being playful. Henry squawked and splashed back at him again. The noise of the churning water filled up the space of the pool room, echoing off the walls and the high ceiling. This, Henry thought, was Gansey as youth, not the ageless forest he claimed to be.

They were awfully close together. Henry tried not to think about it. It was a task easier said than done, at the moment. He wasn't sure how he was going to keep this all out of his head.

The next natural course of action would be to dunk him under, but that was a dirty thing to do to a boy who couldn't swim, even if they were in shallower water. The only fair way to compensate was to keep Henry where he was. He curled his arm around Henry's shoulders and splashed him thoroughly, holding him there.

It wasn't that he didn't want to talk about Blue, because he did -- eventually. Henry and Adam were the people from whom Gansey gained the most insight. All Gansey could do was hope that Henry trusted him enough to know he wasn't quite hiding.

"You've started a fight you can't win, Cheng." He grinned.

Henry could see the moment where Gansey considered being rude, and the moment that he put it aside. At once, Henry was both grateful and deeply offended. Just because he couldn't swim didn't mean he was incapable of keeping up with this playful tussle. And besides, there was no sense in letting his discomfort control him.

Under the water, he poked and prodded at Gansey's ribs, looking for ticklish weakness.

"Says you, man," Henry said with a grin and a laugh as well. He felt just a little winded from working against the water, but he did his best to keep it part of his laugh rather than a sign of weakness here. After all, Henry was used to rumbling with siblings. He could absolutely keep up with this battle.

There was a tiny recoil that Gansey couldn't control. He wasn't embarrassingly ticklish, but certainly far more than he would like. He wasn't a person who was often poked or prodded. When people entered Gansey's personal space, it was for a handshake or a fistbump or a boyish shove. From someone else, it might have bothered him, not that anyone would have known. Since it was Henry, it was okay.

He swatted at Henry's arm above the water, springing back a step or two, taking care to splash as he landed. This felt something like flirting and Gansey was suddenly struck by that. This kind of horseplay was par for the course in crew, in any teenage boy's endeavors, but this was different. It was the two of them in the pool after hours, splashing around together and building something that, to Gansey, had already been constructed. Together, they could reinforce.

He submerged himself to the shoulders again and let himself float around. Maybe they should go home. Gansey didn't want to. The water and the company had him feeling comfortable. Tired, even. Maybe he would finally sleep when he got home. That was a comforting thought, too.

"Tell me about your internship." He smiled placidly, lacking pretense, and looked forward to Henry's diatribe. Gansey didn't feel like talking anymore, but he wasn't done with Henry's presence. A lot of time, there was silence in Hywel. Gansey preferred this: all quiet but the sound of the water displacing and replacing around them and passionate, loquacious Henry reminding him that home was all around him.

Henry was pursuant of Gansey, even when he pulled back, splashing a bit and trying to tickle him some more, now that he'd found a spot on his ribs to dig at him. It made him smile. Gansey, the ageless king-boy, was still Gansey, the person, and that came with all the pitfalls and trappings of humanity such as this. It was good to be reminded of it.

He could not go very deep, though, and so Gansey could easily escape him. Still, Henry smiled. He wished that Gansey would come in further again, but he would not ask for it. That wasn't his place.

"Business," he corrected. "I'm a business partner, in the think tank. My name is on the corporation documents and everything. It is...going, certainly. Things are, as ever, a maze of red tape, but they are in the works. And Mr Stark has been working hard on trying to make me a RoboBee. It won't be the same, but it will be something."

Partner. Of course. Gansey nodded his apology, his recollection. There was a distinct difference for more than one reason. Having a title like meant organizing oneself into the much-sought-after Young Professional category. To his parents -- to Henry's too -- this had been everything. Gansey was expected to uphold his family's standard, and Henry was expected to set it, to exceed it. Each of them knew well what it was like to work hard for something that was just to the left of what they wanted.

Here, though, they could be anything. Henry Cheng -- student activist and resident brightly-colored genius -- was choosing to be upwardly mobile, no matter where he was. Gansey was continuing with his planned gap year, and without the partner in it. For a moment, he wondered what his parents would think, how long into that impossible phone call it would be before his mother clucked her disapproval and said something like, maybe you could talk to that Economics professor and see if you can get a late start.

Excelsior, Dick, remember? He remembered. What was onward without upward?

"Oh," Gansey said, shaken out of his self-flagellation by this surprising piece of news. "Wow. That's quite an undertaking." He would imagine. Could he create something effective that had only existed through dream magic?

"Is it safe?" Underneath, there was a gnawing jealousy. Gansey had thought more than once about how to convince Ronan to produce that part of Henry that was missing. The boy was the same, but Henry didn't feel the same. Gansey could see it. This was another part of Henry's upwardly mobile life that had begun without Gansey and could very well have continued on without him. Maybe Henry was upward, and Gansey was just onward.

Something about what he'd said and what Gansey wasn't saying chewed at Henry for a moment. He felt cut loose and lost, incapable of pulling himself into the orbit of this boy when, really, that was all he needed. All either of them needed, perhaps. But, no, perhaps and definitely just him.

The worried speculation calmed the anxiety in a way. Henry could talk about the hows and whys of Tony Stark's ability to put technology into his head, into someone else's head, because he knew all about it. Comic books had been a backbone to his existence for so many years, and to have the man in the flesh was a startling revelation.

"Safe as life," Henry said with a shrug. He wove his hand through the water and, unthinkingly, moved himself closer to Gansey. The space between them felt like a thousand miles, a lifetime, and all Henry wanted was--well, something more. Something normal, or as normal as any of them seemed to have. Something like what Gansey had been having before he'd been brought here.

When they were close, Henry meekly reached for Gansey. He wasn't sure if this was allowed. He wished they were just two boys, heading out with a girl on a roadtrip for the year. None of that was a thing they could have here. It ached in Henry's chest, a physical thing.

His thoughts were spinning, spinning, and he was at a loss for words to explain anything going through his head. So he stood there, the water deep on his chest, until his fingers caught Gansey's under the water.

The turn of phrase caught Gansey. His mouth quirked into a half-smile, something perfected by a younger Gansey to serve a purpose that afterward, became a part of him. He looked at Henry sidelong. This boy belongs with us, he thought. Us and not me because if they were intact here, they belonged together. He'd known Henry's place in it for a while and even without the connection of finding Glendower together, Henry was a missing piece and he didn't even know how perfectly he fit.

All at once, a hand was in his. Henry's hand was in his. They were swimming (sort of) and talking and considering and now Henry's fingers were tugging Gansey's into a messy little knot. He didn't look. The view of it would be obscured by the water and he didn't know what it would mean to look. What was happening? How had they gotten there? Gansey retraced the steps.

They'd been talking about RoboBee, and Gansey asked if it was safe. Henry shrugged. Gansey had been so lost in some tiny loop about a few words that he hadn't considered Henry. The boy might have been scared. There was no way to fit something to him that was completely safe, was there? RoboBee was a thing made possibly by magic; it was a thing that wasn't meant to be duplicated in that way. Yet, it was a part of him that was missing, and Gansey could understand how the desire to be whole might outweigh the risk.

He squeezed Henry's fingers to let him know he was there. If this made him feel better, that was something he could do.

"School is starting soon. Are you ready for it?" It was a small-talk type of topic, something Gansey might use to get a stranger talking. With Henry, the difference was that Gansey was especially interested in the answer.

Gansey did not retract his hand, and so Henry did not either. This was a point of contact that was allowed. It felt hallowed, for a moment. Quite possibly, this was the most romantic thing to happen to Henry in--ever? Just this: brushing his toes on the bottom of a pool and touching another boy's fingertips like it meant something when Gansey's heart belonged to someone else.

"Yes," Henry said, because that was the right answer. Then, more realistically, Henry said, "Not at all. I wasn't planning on school, the year after graduation--well, you know. We were in--what was it, Tuskegee? But, without you, and with Blue working, I thought--"

Henry was quiet a moment. In the water, he drifted a little nearer Gansey. His heart felt percussive in his chest. He was amazed it wasn't causing ripples.

"I'll get used to it, quickly enough."

"Tulsa," Gansey interjected with a gentle chuckle. He let Henry continue only for the boy to cut himself off shortly thereafter. Gansey felt for Henry. This uncertainty wasn't something Henry had gone through at home, but Gansey sure had, and in the end, Henry had brought him over to the light side. This wasn't the place for that. Henry needed a different kind of support.

"You will." His hand moved from Henry's to sling over his shoulder where he gave him a reassuring squeeze. "Things are different here." There was a lot less to fear in the way of failure.

"Tulsa, yes," Henry corrected. And then--then Gansey was drawing him close, and everything was water-slick chest with a firm core and wiry, strong arms, the warmth of skin touching skin and the slight ruffle of breaths too close together.

Gansey's words were calm and reassuring, but Henry knew Gansey well enough to know that sometimes he spoke those reassurances even when he was not himself reassured. Henry wondered what a disappointment he might look like in Gansey's eyes, settling into his education because of lack of any other option.

The thought didn't last very long. His toes were scraping the bottom of the pool, and he, all casual, slung his arm around Gansey's shoulders as well to support himself. Their noses nearly brushed. It would be so easy--

Henry leaned in and pressed his mouth to Gansey's in a gentle kiss.

Somewhere, Gansey had miscalculated.

The hand-holding had probably been the first clue. This was not an Aglionby boy thing, but Henry was not a typical Aglionby boy. Gansey had known that from the moment he'd changed into a toga at the most civilized party he'd ever seen a bunch of teenage boys (and Blue) attend. RoboBee was the next clue, the magic robotic creature that had given Gansey something of a new lease on that shape of creature. Bees still terrified him, but RoboBee wasn't the kick in the stomach he had been that first day. So much had changed since then.

Like the way he thought about Henry. There was no one else in the world like Henry Cheng; that, a fierce sense of loyalty, and the incredible ways he proved himself were the things that landed him in Gansey's circle. Like Adam, his insight was worth the world to Gansey. Like Ronan, he was a power, a force that could not be understood by a layperson. Like Blue, he had wriggled his way into Gansey's heart by being unabashedly himself, by making Gansey question everything, and by wrapping himself so completely around Gansey's heart that his lips were a ley line, sparking up energy that rustled the trees in the forest within him.

He didn't pull away and he didn't quite kiss back. He told himself that he didn't want to spook Henry, that the progression of hands to mouth had been something designed to sooth Gansey into the idea. It wasn't working. At home, Henry and Gansey had a literal roadmap, things they'd done to get to a place where Gansey thought about something like this sometimes late at night when Blue and Henry were both sleeping and Gansey wasn't. This Henry didn't know the things the other Henry knew, so how could he be at this place? What had Gansey done to earn this kind of trust?

He cleared his throat finally, pulling his neck back just a touch, just enough to let Henry know that they weren't on the same page. Gansey's heart ached, but it had to be sympathy for Henry.

"We should go."

Henry had read the moment wrong. Of course he had. He'd spent months, years, working himself into the frenzy of giving Gansey himself. It had been steps and metaphors and quiet understanding in the dark where no one could see or hear them. It had come with the knowledge that Richard Campbell Gansey III was a part of a whole, over and over again. It had never been completed, but it had been a slide toward something more that was colored by observation and knowledge.

But Gansey had only been here a few weeks. This was not the careful building of something more. This was an attention that prayed on Gansey's sadness and frustration and loss.

Gansey was pulling back, clearing his throat. He had not disentangled himself, but Henry did. He put a bit of space between them and cleared his throat as well, looking around at everything--the water, and far edge of the pool, the walls, the ceiling; everywhere but at Gansey. Gansey said something, but the words didn't register for a moment, a breath, one nervous but made-calm inhale and exhale.

How stupid of him. It would figure, of all the people he could start to develop feelings for, it would be a girl that was finding herself and carving out her identity, and a boy that wasn't interested. Henry felt he had never read a situation so incorrectly in his life.

The words processed through him. Henry had so ruined the moment, Gansey's joy of this place and having Henry with him, that it was impossible to move around this disruption. Henry took another made-calm breath.

"You shouldn't let me spoil your good time," Henry said. He was impressed to hear that his voice was calm and reassuring. "You wanted to come swimming."

It was at Gansey's lips to apologize, but he wasn't sure what for. Some wires had been crossed, but both parties were innocent of any wrongdoing. Gansey hoped Henry realized that.

At the same time, there was a part of him that was irrationally angry for the presumption, but that was not a thought that deserved to meet daylight. Henry's breath was measured, but the pulse in his neck pointed toward terrified. Barely holding it together. Gansey knew the feeling, like the pool was smaller, now and the water had legs. Billions of tiny, insect-like legs.

He listened to the whistle of wind within him and found his breath. One. Two. That would have to be enough.

"I can always come back." What a terse, awful way to respond. No matter how much malice it lacked, it looked so weak. So perfunctory. But Gansey needed to get away from water that crawled. "Come on." Even weaker, and Gansey's hope was deflating. He pushed his way toward the stairs. He couldn't swim away; that would be like he was trying to lose Henry and he wasn't. He just needed to get out of there. Now.

The sheer, pacific nature of Gansey's voice would have told Henry he'd done wrong even if the moment hadn't gone so sideways. Henry watched Gansey for a moment, and then told himself that he could not. Watching would only make this weird.

He wondered, suddenly and irrationally, if Gansey even knew that Henry liked both boys and girls. Not that it made a difference, but what an extra shock it would be to have this be his coming out. He hoped it had come up in some conversation between their moment in Borden House and the moment Gansey had woken, not in a bed in Tulsa, but in Hywell Industry's converted apartment.

He moved to the ladder he'd let himself down into the pool on, and hauled himself back out of the pool. The water dripped sluggishly around his legs, sloughing off from his trunks. He stared at his feet and hated himself for being so foolish and impulsive.

Think, said a voice in his head, suspiciously like Seondeok's. Think before you act. Use that bright-burning head of yours. Henry did not feel very bright-burning. He put the self-loathing aside. It could wait. It had no place here.

He twisted the sides of his trunks to wring out some of the water.

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[For Henry]

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