[Ronan's Birthday Gathering]

[thatsallthereis]

"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."

Comments

[thatsallthereis]

Despite his careful consideration, Gansey was nervous. This was good. Ronan loved truth. Ronan also hated talking. There was going to be a lot of it. Gansey didn't know how else to do it.

"I spent my time in the libraries. I've mentioned there is a professor I meet with. I've been eager to find out more about Darrow's history. This place is mysterious to the core, and my professor friend has suddenly decided it's not worth it to search anymore." He said the word friend like he wasn't. "His sudden, suspicious lack of interest was another door slammed in my face. It's not so intriguing to search, anymore. Looking for Glendower felt like a purpose, not a desk job." And that was where they were all headed, wasn't it? Five more cogs in the Darrow mystery machine. Gansey loathed the idea.

"There are many ways I don't want to reflect on what's happened at home, either," Gansey said, scratching a hand through his hair. At some point, he'd gotten up. He wasn't sure when. "I try not to think about the world as we left it. When I got here, all of you had lives past what you remember. Time was a weird thing to me in Henrietta since Cabeswater remade me. Here, it's linear. Monday to Tuesday, March, to April. One line. Maybe not even a circle. I feel disoriented. Confused. About a lot of things.

"Like Henry." He took a deep breath and stopped his feet. He'd been pacing. He didn't know when that had started, either. "I've told Blue this: on our road trip, something was happening. Feelings were developing, the three of us." He inclined his head politely to Blue. "Obviously many things are different here, but I don't --"

Once and many times, Senator Gansey had encouraged her son not to speak in the negative. She said it took power away, that a piece of the meaning was stripped down. People don't want to hear about what they aren't, she said. They were everything. Each and every one of them.

"I like him. I asked him out. I'm still processing." And Henry was patient. Gentle. Too good a soul for talking about what he wasn't. "And in my search, I've thought a lot about us. All of us. The way some of us might feel. The way I might feel." Shit, he was slipping into cowardice, scared because these weren't the words he'd planned out. In public, it was improvising; in private, it was free-falling. He lifted his chin. "I never would have given this thought in Henrietta. The way things were." But Darrow was different. It didn't fit. Just like all of them.

[thedreamthief]

The moment Gansey starts, Ronan feels his blood prickle.

He's floating on a steady stream of alcohol already, buzzed from at least half a dozen beers and the warmth of Adam's hand on his back, head on his shoulder throughout the night. Warmed by Noah's easy smiles and Gansey's easy laughter.

Not even Blue's presence has ticked him off all that much.

But when Gansey starts in, it all goes to shit.

He keeps his mouth shut, a Herculian effort given how many times he wants to interject. The number of times he wants to a throw a bottle against the wall and shout that the Gansey he remembers wouldn't be giving up, the Gansey he remembers doesn't belong to Cabeswater, the Gansey he remembers doesn't fucking like dick.

The longer Gansey talks, the worse it is, ears humming. Drowning.

A night of truth. Happy fucking birthday.

Without a word, Ronan pushes himself up from the couch, last beer still in hand. He takes a swig as he grabs the keys to the busted up Pig and heads for the door.

[thatsallthereis]

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst was another of his mother's oft-spoken reminders, and one that struck Gansey often. He'd hoped for a better reaction, but he'd been prepared to chase after Ronan. Enough that he was barely out the door when Gansey stopped him. Maybe he could have stopped him sooner, but maybe it would be better if they talked alone.

"Ronan!" Gansey called after him, pushing through the door and jogging to put himself next to Ronan. Then, he placed himself between Ronan and the Pig. "Stop. Come on." It was the second time Ronan had walked out on him in recent memory, and this time, Gansey wasn't going to let it happen. Ronan was drunk. Ronan was angry. Ronan was ablaze.

[thedreamthief]

The chill is biting, stealing the breath from Ronan's lungs when he walks out in nothing but his black tank. It's only the alcohol in his system keeping him warn, only that and the churning fire under his skin.

"Get the fuck out of the way," Ronan snarls, already reaching past Gansey to get to the door handle, prepared to fucking rip it off the door itself if necessary. "Just-- Go back to your party, man. Or, better yet, go back to your precious fucking Henry. But do me a favor and keep your shit to yourself."

[thatsallthereis]

"It's freezing out here," Gansey said, not at all moving the fuck out of the way. Trying to reason with Ronan was useless right now, but Gansey was standing his ground, patient. This was always going to happen this way. No matter how he prepped, this was where this had always been headed.

There he was again, Ronan spitting ire at an imaginary Henry that Gansey could not see. This was a thing that was ever-present at their table. Gansey could no longer count how many times they'd talked about Henry and around everything else.

"Don't tell me this is about Henry," Gansey said softly, since it was just the two of them, and since he was between Ronan and his getaway vehicle. He searched Ronan's expression, trying to see beyond the barbed wire and chainlink fence he'd shrugged up. "If I knew how to do this without having to talk, I would." Gansey had no problem talking. It was comfortable to him. On the one hand, silence was a welcome stranger to Gansey. On the other, Gansey always had something to say, however mundane or pedantic.

"Talk to me, Ronan. Please." All he could do was ask. The door handle was easily reachable just behind Gansey's arm and he wasn't standing solid. Gansey wouldn't force Ronan to stay. He hoped he would.

[incognoscibilis]

Adam tried not to look too pleased with himself. He didn't have the money to make smug a good look for him but he did nod. Ever since he brought it up in the grocery store, he'd wondered what would come of it. A lot of trite ideas came to mind and Adam's secondary thoughts overrode every instinct. A territorial, trailer-park version of Adam suggested that he ought to be giving Henry a shovel talk right now before the real Adam realized that it was a nasty thing to think and that the notion was entirely patriarchal and demeaning. That last thought sounded more like Blue, actually.

Besides all of that, Henry Cheng was careful. Adam had seen it in their previous interactions, aside from letting Iron-Man put a chip in his head. Henry was not the kind of person to recklessly break hearts just because he could.

"Did he say yes?"

[thatsallthereis]

Gansey had already chased after Ronan twice, hunted down a set of keys, and returned to a house of loved ones strung up with tension. Noah was trying to ease it with humor. Gansey didn't appreciate that. This was a grumpy thought and one that didn't need to see the daylight, so he let it disappear. Humor as a coping mechanism was a time-honored tradition of teenage boys, and Noah was forever exactly that. He was more, too.

Adam was calm as ever. Focused. Careful and effortless and patient.

"He did," Gansey said. When his own voice hit his ear, he sounded sort of exhausted, possibly bewildered. He scratched a hand through his hair, peered around like he was surveying wreckage. In his second glance, he realized Adam also looked somewhat smug. Gansey cracked a smile despite himself. He didn't let it last.

"Are we allowed to call this a disaster even if it went like I thought it might?" Gansey asked, ducking his head in something like humility. No, he was hanging his head, like mourning. "I don't think he heard a word I said." That was Gansey's fault, wasn't it? If it was his idea, he shouldn't have pitched it until he was confident about the execution.

[incognoscibilis]

"Good," Adam said. He focused on that, on Henry and Gansey and the slow but natural absorption of Henry into their lives. At least, it had felt natural to him but he had once been an outsider, an entity that had been slowly accepted and adjusted to, a lemon tree branch carefully grafted onto an orange tree. Ronan had gotten used to him. Ronan had gotten used to Blue.

He'd thought..well. He'd thought.

"He's...taking this real personal." Damn that accent, damn that slow and plodding gathering of words that made him sound philosophically stupid.

[iwasmore]

Noah wishes Ronan would dream a magic wand to fix all this. He thinks things might be cooling down now as Ronan drifts over to Adam and gets rid of his beer. At least, Noah hopes so. Blue's gone off to the bathroom, or maybe to her bedroom to take a breather, so Noah manifests next to Gansey.

"I already knew," he says with a small, maybe slightly cheeky, smile.

[thatsallthereis]

Gansey stood, surveying the damage. Not so long ago, Hywel had been a battleground. Adam might as well have been tending to the wounded, and Blue was simply not there. A shadow. He was just at the point in his personal inventory where he wondered where Noah was. He didn't have to wonder long. Noah materialized and Gansey laughed.

"Could've saved me a lot of trouble by telling me it was a bad idea," Gansey joked, nudging the very-real form beside him with his elbow gently.

[iwasmore]

Noah huffs out a tiny laugh. "No, no, I didn't know you were going to do this." He realizes, then, that maybe this Gansey doesn't know how he works. Back in Henrietta he'd sometimes seem know things he shouldn't, but that was only because time was different. Here, he doesn't know anything is going to happen unless he somehow hears someone's intentions before they act. But now isn't the time to talk about logistics.

"I mean, I knew about Henry."

[iwasmore]

Noah had decorated the crap out of Hywel, though he thought Chainsaw was enjoying it more than any of the humans. She especially liked the dangling plastic spiders, diving down every so often to grab at one with her beak and then flying off to hide it somewhere. Noah was having fun taking turns playing pool (badly) and had kept to root beers and pop for Adam's sake. Ronan liked to drink, and they were all used to it, even Adam, maybe, but it was a different atmosphere when you had a lot of people drinking as opposed to just one or two, so he stayed straight at the party. This wasn't the sort of party that needed drinking anyway, at least not for him.

When Gansey called them all to the middle of the room for a pow wow, Noah drifted over with a small bowl of popcorn and sat pretzel-style on the floor.

This is a night for truth, he'd said, and as Noah munched his pop corn he was pretty sure he knew all of their truths. So at first he simply listened, and then when things got tense and there was a silence between speakers, he finally piped up.

"Okay, I have a confession," he said, waiting for all eyes to fall on him. He let it stretch a little for dramatic effect before continuing.

"Blue and I got married on Halloween. I think she ate her wedding ring, though."

[formicine]

Blue has been sitting, tensely, turning over what might be truths and what people don't know about her since Gansey said this is a night for truth, and she looks over at Noah, as he starts to speak. It prickles down her skin a little, the importance. The sacredness of this space and the many many ways in which it could break everything.

But Noah says Blue and I got married and she giggles then, abruptly, and leans into Noah's shoulder.

"It's true," she says, "but I still have it." Weirdly, she'd hung on to the thing. She digs the blue plastic out of her pocket and puts the ring on, now just a base with a tiny upright pole.

[iwasmore]

"Oh my god," Noah says, eyes widening in surprise, not only that she still has it, but that she has it with her. But then his smile is back, replaced by one of affection, because she has it with her.

"I definitely need to upgrade that for you. I don't think the rock is big enough."

[incognoscibilis]

In this house, the truth was a precious quantity for all of them, though it was weighed on different measures. Adam's truths were knowledge and integrity. Gansey's truth was gilded and perfectly polished. Blue's was augmented. Noah's was heartbreaking. Ronan's was hard and unvarnished.

When too many of their truths combined, the chemical reaction became volatile. Ronan was seething and Gansey was hurting. Blue and Noah tried to make if funny.

Adam didn't even know what truths he could share. What did everyone already know about him and what truths did he still want to hide? What would it cost to part with secrecy?

He could still remember the words on Blue's back, the ones that had redefined everything for them. For him. A little in love with all of them.

"I..."

[iwasmore]

Noah waits for Adam to continue, or anyone else to speak up, so when no one does he tilts toward Adam and says quietly, "You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."

It's probably not his call, but Adam seems uncomfortable. Of everyone, Noah honestly doesn't know what Adam would say, and he might be wrong, but he thinks this whole impromptu truth telling meeting is more for Gansey to get some things off his chest anyway.

[incognoscibilis]

"It's a night for truth," Adam said. Truth meant so much to them, a difficult thing when all of them also kept many secrets. Ever kind of secret. Truth was so important and he couldn't find a thing to say. By now, he thought that all of them were visible, no matter how he tried to hide them.

"But I don't know what truth matters from me."

[iwasmore]

Noah wants to ask what makes it so. Because it's Ronan's birthday? Because they're all here? He looks around, he takes in the way everything feels, but it's the same energy. It's a night like any other.

He doesn't know what to say, either. Part of him had always felt on the outside looking in, because he'd been there and hadn't. He'd weaved in and out, back and forth through time, like a long dream. It's different here, but he's still just a specter. He isn't even sure what truths he knows that are or aren't known to others.

"I think it all matters, probably," he says.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan heads straight for the kitchen, grabbing himself yet another beer from the fridge, popping the cap off with the lip of the counter, a long-practiced move that sends the cap skittering across the floor. He makes no move to retrieve it, instead tipping his head back for a healthy swallow. He takes a minute then, forcing himself to take a breath. And then another. He takes another drink, licks the drops off his lip.

Then he walks back into the main room.

Adam, Noah, and Blue are all still there, eyes on him. Expectant.

He has no idea how much of the conversation they'd heard, if Noah had popped in to spy and then popped out to let Adam and Blue know. He doesn't care either way. Nothing he'd said to Gansey had been any sort of secret.

"We still fucking doing this?" he asks, his tone no less combative even as he rests against the edge of the pool table, one hand curled just over the lip of it. Inviting and challenging both at once. "Anyone else got anything they want to get off their chest? Let's do this."

[iwasmore]

Noah makes a face, mouth briefly an innocuous sneer and nose wrinkled. "I wouldn't do that," he mumbles, looking away from Ronan to play with the lace of his sneaker. He doesn't like it when Ronan gets like this, it makes him nervous, like watching a cat threaten to knock a glass off the edge of a table and being too far away to intervene.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan's gaze swings to Noah, staring hard as Noah carefully avoids his gaze to instead frown down at the laces of his shoes.

"That your truth?" he asks, lips curling in a near-sneer. "Come on, man, that's fucking weak. You got something juicier in you, I know it." He takes another sip of his drink, again wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Or shit, wanna play Twenty Questions? I'll give you any fucking truth you want to know. Just ask."

[iwasmore]

Noah looks back up at Ronan, his gaze solemn, listening. But Ronan isn't thinking anything, he's all mouth, hiding behind his aggression. "Fine, you want the truth?" He nods toward the bottle in Ronan's hand. "You've had too much to drink."

[incognoscibilis]

It's terrible of him but Adam is guarded now. He hadn't heard all of it but he'd heard enough. It doesn't surprise him, not really. How many times have he and Ronan admitted the desire they'd once had for Gansey. The desire that Adam had given up, dandelion seeds pulled away by a wind of something greater.

And for everything he's said, for all those pronouncements of if it's one of us, it's okay, Adam feels so much less okay than he should after Ronan's anger. Everything feels brittle. He feels brittle, splintered, in a way that feels like everything is cracking through him. In a moment he'll split open and vines will wrap around him, carry him away from the confusion and hurt.

An unfair thought snakes through him, wraps around Adam's throat and tongue. Isn't he enough? Shouldn't he be enough? If he's enough, shouldn't that be enough to keep Ronan calm.

He looks up at Ronan, face on the verge of a thousand, undecided expressions.

[thedreamthief]

It's Adam that Ronan's gaze catches on first.

He has a difficult time reading the expression there, each one splintering into another one by one, on loop. Hurt. Confusion. Anger. Lost.

The beer is suddenly cloying at the back of his throat. Ronan's blood goes cold. He has no idea how much Adam heard of the argument, has no idea what he'd said that Adam hadn't already known. But surprise isn't one of the emotions shattering Adam's face. Not exactly.

"What?" he manages finally because he can't begin to guess what he's done. It comes off defensive. Abrasive. An instinctive response he can't seem to shake. After all, he's the same shit he's always been. The busted up Pig outside is evidence enough of that. Not to mention fucking everything else.

[incognoscibilis]

"I don't know if I get to say it," Adam said, not when it hadn't bothered him before. When it was talking about kisses with Noah, it had seemed distanced from him, innocent. Watching Ronan blow up at Gansey was something else. Knowing that he had encouraged Gansey toward Henry felt like a betrayal, even though Adam knew it shouldn't have.

Most of all, he just didn't feel enough if Ronan needed Noah and Gansey too.