thatsallthereis | [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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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.

[For Henry]

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