thatsallthereis | [Ronan's Birthday Gathering]

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[Ronan's Birthday Gathering]

"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."

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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.

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."

"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.

"Everything, from the minute you fucking showed up here again has been about Henry," Ronan snaps, ignoring the irritating plea in Gansey's voice, that fucking diplomatic, Presidential goddamn tone. The alcohol in his veins has caught flame, sparked by Gansey's selfish desire to bare his soul, the cold air not shrinking it in the slightest. "He brings in a woman to cook for us, into a place that's been my home for months, a woman he's not even related to and I'm expected to roll over and be happy. He decides we're all going in some stupid group costume for Halloween and you're all too eager to agree. You run after him when he gets a sniffle, wipe his ass for him when he can't reach, hold his dick for him when he pees. And then on the one fucking night where I might not have to actually deal with his face, he's still here. Because you brought him here."

He barely stops for a breath, every nerve in his body vibrating as he towers before Gansey, keys once again cutting lines into his palm.

"So don't fucking tell me what this is and isn't about, alright? You want to tell me you're suddenly gay for Henry Cheng, fine. But don't pretend that tonight is about anything but you."

"Adam agreed to it, too," Gansey countered over Ronan's tangle of words. He'd asked Ronan to talk, and he was talking. This was how Ronan talked.

Those long fingers crunched themselves around the key again and Gansey's mouth pressed into a frown. He wanted to ease the tension, there. To to uncurl Ronan's fingers. He started at Ronan's wrist, then pulled down gently. He'd think Gansey was trying to take the keys away. And he did want to. If Ronan couldn't hurt himself and Ronan couldn't leave, maybe all that would be left was to listen.

"Give me the keys, Ronan," Gansey said without leaving much room for argument. He wouldn't take them by force. There had been too much force already. "It's not some sudden thing, okay? I said that in there, it's new to deal with, but it's not new." Ronan knew that. He had to. There must have been something before Adam.

"Agreed to what? You wanting to dick Cheng?" Ronan replies, snarling in the face of Gansey's insufferable calm. The mention of Adam is a weapon, he knows. Defensive and offensive both at once Look, Ronan, Adam can be reasonable about this. Why can't you?

Gansey curls a hand around his wrist, clearly going for the keys and Ronan yanks away, falling back two steps and then spinning on one heel to hurl them across the street. He doesn't hear where they land. He doesn't particularly care anyway.

He's back in Gansey's face a moment later, every inch of his body still vibrating. But if Gansey wants to talk, then he'll fucking talk.

"If not new then when?" he snaps, his insides attempting to claw their way out. "Before or after you died? Before or after Kavinsky tried to kill my brother? Before or after you and Noah found me in a pool of my own blood?" It's the second time he's brought that back up and hurled it in Gansey's face, but it's not without purpose. Only one of those moments does he actually remember. Only one of them that still gives him nightmares. "And why him?"

At least the keys were out of his hand. At least they were talking. At least somewhere under all of the offensive defenses, Ronan was listening. Then, Ronan was falling back. Before Gansey could chase after him, he'd returned, closer than before and getting more twisted up every second. The time for oblique references to things he hadn't quite hashed out yet had passed.

"I don't know when it started," Gansey admitted, heart beating visibly faster thanks to the hurt being hurled at him and the cold nipping at him and the parts at the middle of him crying out to be spoken. How long had it been?

"It's like how you don't remember making Cabeswater," Gansey said after a moment, trying to walk the line between choosing his words carefully and being true to what was in his thumping heart. "I can't remember the first time I remember thinking it. I just remember feelings." Like seeing Adam sacrifice his free will for a cause greater than himself. Like holding Ronan after he found what remained of his father. Like sitting in a car with the silhouette of a boy as he rambled on about quantum theory while Blue slept peacefully in the back. It felt as old he was -- as old as time.

He felt he'd done fairly well, especially since every time Ronan talked about that day that none of them ever talked about unless it was a conversation like this. Ronan was stabbing to wound, and Gansey was parrying for his life.

"Why not him?"

"Why not me?"

The words are a clawing ache, wrenched from too deep under Ronan's skin, baring a twist of raw sinew and bone. They hang heavy in the air and Ronan nearly takes them back, wants to sew them back under his flesh, to ignore that they'd ever been spoken.

He can no longer register the cold, can no longer separate from the chilling fire in his own veins.

His throat tightens on a swallow, voice catching when he doesn't retreat but instead pushes forward. "What the fuck does he have? Why--"

This time he forces himself to stop, to catch the words before they pass his lips, to swallow them back where they can curdle. Because none of it fucking matters. Ronan has Adam. Ronan loves Adam. Desperately. Wholly. Adam is and should be more than enough. So why does he care? Why does he feel like everyone but Adam is slipping away from him little by little, piece by piece? And why can't he hold on?

When Gansey thought about it, this was going a lot like the last one had. Ronan was explosive, but Adam had been able to reel him in. Things went unspoken about Blue, but their dynamic was obvious. Gansey did his best to keep his physical distance. Words like true love had a gravity that Gansey had to avoid getting pulled into. That night, they had been snuggled up together in solidarity. That was the same night Gansey found he understood something about Ronan, something obvious. Something familiar, but that didn't matter. His true love's head was in his lap and he would die by her kiss. That would be the end. It was supposed to be. It was by Ronan's hand that Gansey's story in Henrietta had a hopeful epilogue instead of an abrupt end.

"You have Adam," Gansey said, and that was a whole other thing. Beyond that, what did it matter if Ronan was the first person in Gansey's life to make him truly give a damn about now?

It's an obvious statement. A useless statement.

And it both is and isn't what Ronan's talking about. Adam is Ronan's now and hopefully his tomorrow for as long as Ronan can manage to not fuck it up. But Gansey is his then. His what if. Gansey is the first boy he ever thought of touching. Gansey is the first boy he ever thought of kissing. The first who ever made him feel human.

But Ronan hadn't been good enough for him. Of fucking course not. Gansey wants a nicely polished trust fund and someone he can bring home to his parents without worrying about broken vases or hiding tattoos.

In the end, Gansey's as much of a Raven Boy as the rest of them. And he got himself a fucking mirror to jerk off in front of.

Swallowing back the fresh ache under his chest, Ronan finally manages a smile then. It's all teeth, a flash of white in the darkness as he shakes his head. "Fuck you," he says, ignoring the catch in his own voice before turning right around to head back into Hywel. He slams the door on his way in loud enough to make the chickens squawk in their coop.

Yes, this had gone just how he thought it might. In Darrow, all Gansey seemed to see of Ronan was the back of him. Ronan retreating and Gansey reaching out, like it was too late. He thought about leaving. Not giving up, just leaving and removing himself from a situation that had never been in control in the first place. Going somewhere in the less busted of the two Pigs. To do that, he'd have to find the keys.

It took several moments -- Ronan had a good arm and the thing had either cleared the street entirely or bounced or skidded and wound up in the underbrush nearby. It took Gansey 10 minutes and his phone light to find it, but he did. Once they were in his hand, he knew he had no intention of leaving in the first place. Ronan didn't need the keys when he could just dream new ones, but this was what he did: clean up after Ronan. The place looked different to Ronan but it looked quite the same to Gansey in that respect.

"Ronan." It was an announcement of his presence, maybe even an answer to a few questioning eyebrows. He placed the keys on the coffee table without stopping. He approached. "I made a perfectly valid statement. Why did you see fit to walk out on it?" Emotional stunting wasn't a thing Gansey had come upon until Ronan's systematic self-destruction following the death of his father. The only thing he could do was have patience. Ronan tried his. Gansey would find new depths.

"When did you decide I wasn't going to be here for you? Why am I standing trial for the sins of a version of me I will never be?" The not talking made sense. He knew why Ronan hadn't said anything about his feelings; it was the same reason Gansey hadn't even allowed himself to entertain any such idea before.

Ronan's half finished his next bottle by the time Gansey steps back into Hywel and whatever half-assed calm he'd managed to find slips away the instant he sees that perfectly coiffed hair and shitty pastel shirt. The fingers of his free hand curl, white-knuckled over the lip of the pool table and his eyes turn dark, fixing on Gansey as he nears.

"Since you became the least reliable person in my life," Ronan replies, his voice cool and even now, words a sharper weapon than his tone. "I got here a year and a half ago. Alone. You were the first to show up after me and the first to fucking leave. And you spent most of the time you were here either stuck in the fucking library or chasing after Blue. And when I got kidnapped, you just-- you were fucking gone, man. Just-- pfft! Poof. Out of here."

He pauses then, just long enough to take another swig of his drink before he continues. "So then you come back, right? You come back like nothing ever happened, came back talking about how you died and we all brought you back to life. We did, Gansey," he adds for emphasis, gesturing at the room at large. "Me and Adam and Noah. Not Blue, she fucking killed you. And sure as shit not Henry fucking Cheng. So I don't know if you decided to gather us all here tonight to ask for our permission or our blessing or what, but you don't have it. Not from me."

"Listen to me!" Gansey protested. When one was upset, speaking louder was not usually the solution, but when one was being interrupted or ignored completely. Gansey had spent a good portion of his life chasing the impossible, trailing behind no one but Glendower. He didn't usually run after Ronan because he knew he'd come back. These days, Gansey wasn't so sure Ronan wanted to stay, anymore.

"This isn't about something else because you say it is, Ronan! If I messed up your birthday thing for you, I apologize." There was still some fire behind it, but he meant it. "Things came off half-cocked. That's what I was saying. I don't feel right here. I don't know what to do." So, in his desperation, he'd done what he'd always wanted to: dove in head-first and hoped that if he swam hard enough, the tide would take him away. So far away that indecision didn't look so much like all-out failure.

Edited 2016-12-01 23:56 (UTC)

Gansey shouts and Ronan arches an eyebrow. It's a sign that he's finally needling beneath that condescending, superior exterior. A sign that maybe they're finally getting somewhere. It calms him a bit, just long enough to catch his breath before Gansey's pushing right on, tying it all back in knots again.

"And Henry Cheng makes you feel right? Is that what you're telling me?" he says, though he's not snapping now. His tone is calm. Cool. Hiding the turmoil underneath.

Because this isn't about Henry Cheng. And it's not about wanting to date Gansey or what-the-fuck-ever. Because, maybe Ronan's in love with Gansey, but Ronan's been in love with Gansey for years, whether he could face it or not. He's dealt with it and will continue to for the rest of his life, probably.

"Fuck, man, I just." He waves his hand in front of himself then, a vague, helpless gesture. "Maybe I'm just not ready to be done, you know? Like, I get it. Back home, some part of me was preparing for finding Glendower. The fuck knows what you would've asked for, but I figured it'd take you away from Henrietta. And I always knew Parrish would go off to college. But even when I knew we were getting close to that, it still felt months and months away. But now we're there, aren't we?" he asks, looking at Gansey again. "I guess this is fucking growing up."

"I don't know. Yes. No." Gansey said, and it smacked so much of the conversation he'd had with Adam at home that he nearly winced. There was so much that Gansey didn't understand. Nothing from home looked the same but Henry Cheng. "Nothing feels right." Right was not a feeling any of them had been afforded in some time. With the exception of finding Glendower, of fulfilling a prophecy and saving his best friend, Gansey didn't remember something as concrete as right. They'd come back from the dead, dreamed miracles, and spoke for a magical forest. Was any of that right?

"No one can leave." He was relaxing, relieved that, at least for the moment, Ronan was present in their conversation. "If we break apart here, we have no one to blame but ourselves." Gansey was more than willing to take his share of the blame. That kind of purposeful arrogance was not something Gansey would afford himself.

"I'm sorry. I haven't been honest." They were lies of omission, half-truths bred to toxicity by leaving them unexamined. He did not make this excuse. "You haven't either." Until tonight. That was what tonight was supposed to be about, right or not.

"It's not just you, Ronan." He exhaled, scratching a hand carelessly through his hair. He leaned against the pool table, next to Ronan. "I think it's all of us. Like Blue said."

"People fucking leave all the time," Ronan replies, his voice sharp yet again, a cut inflicted by the chiseled edge of a shield. Whether or not the leaving is by choice hardly matters, Ronan thinks. People leave. Gansey has once already and sometimes Ronan feels like it's only a matter of time before Adam or Noah slips away, too.

Maybe it's just a question of who will be first.

A moment later, Gansey's leaning against the edge of the pool table, the nearness both a relief and a suffocation. Ronan takes another sip of his drink, shoulders still hunched under invisible armor. Gansey's still talking in fucking loops, in half-assed Presidential mode, talking like a politician with words that don't reveal jackshit but probably at least assuage his guilt.

"What's not just me?" he asks, only half following along, the rage under his skin at least simmering for now. "I sure as shit seem to be the only one who doesn't want things to change. And maybe that's the problem, but I'm not fucking ready, alright?"

"People don't want to leave, they just do," Gansey reasoned, his arms crossing loosely over his chest. Ronan was in a similar posture, guarded to Gansey's thoughtful. "When people try to leave, they can't." He shrugged and murmured, "I guess we're both right." Semantics, of course. It was easier to argue the finer points, to pick at logic than to talk about something like this. Something so misrepresented and messy and stigmatized.

"Friends aren't usually like we are," Gansey said, raising his eyes to Ronan's because talking was all they had. Ronan could say he hated it all he wanted -- he was afraid of it. They all were. Words could be terrible. "All of us."

"Yeah, no shit," Ronan replies, still irritated by Gansey's inability to just say what he actually means. If they're going to use words then they'll use words. They're not Ronan's usual choice of weapon, but this is the game Gansey apparently wants to play today so he'll play it. "People aren't like we are. Two of us in this room have died, one of them more than once. Blue's some kind of psychic battery bullshit, Adam is linked to a fucking mystical forest, and I'm a goddamn monster. We're not normal, dicksmack, but that's not the fucking point."

His tone turns sharper then as he holds Gansey's gaze, his eyes dark. "We're not normal. None of us are normal. Is that why you want Cheng so bad? Because he's finally something normal? Or is it just because Blue's delusional enough to reject you?"

"You are not a monster," Gansey said firmly, the importance of it booming in his chest. He paused there because no matter what happened, Gansey would not let Ronan think for a second that he was anything like what the things that lurked in the dream place. Whether he believed it or not, Gansey would make sure Ronan heard it in Gansey's voice. Maybe if everything else deserted him, the boom of Gansey's intention would resonate, and Ronan would remember what he had, what he was, and what he wasn't.

"And Henry is not normal. His mother did business with your father." And with Declan but that name was worth very little in the way of comfort for anyone that knew him. "He's been tangled up with us for longer than we knew." Ronan at home knew this, but that was not this Ronan -- no more than the last Gansey was this one.

"Yes, you're right: that's not the point." Gansey took a deep breath in his chest, letting the air fill his lungs. There was clarity at the apex of breath, usually. "We're -- all of us, Ronan: Adam, Noah, Blue, you, me and even Henry -- are something more. We've all felt it in one way or another. Me, I was sure.

"I feel wrong here, too." He swiped the pad of his thumb over his lip. His arms crossed back, looser.

There's a conviction in Gansey's voice that, months ago, might have made Ronan feel better. Now, it felt placating, like Gansey might be trying to convince himself as much as Ronan, like they're both ignoring the fact that Ronan was made of the same stock as Joseph Kavinsky, one breath from total self-destruction.

"Dozens of people who did business with my father," Ronan counters, ignoring the distaste at the back of his throat when he thinks of it. "You want to fuck all their kids, too?"

It's just another sharp swipe, he knows, but he still doesn't understand the fucking appeal, doesn't understand how this particular Aglionby dickwipe is any better than Adam or Noah or him. Doesn't understand why Ronan seems to be the only one content with what they have together as a group, the only one who doesn't feel the need to go out and make dozens of new friends in a place none of them are meant to even be in.

He finally pushes himself away from the pool table, somehow jittery and worn in equal amounts as he shakes his head. "Fuck it, it doesn't matter. Go sew your new gay seeds or whatever the fuck it is you need to do. I'm not your goddamn keeper."

"Stop it!" What boomed in his chest bloomed forth from his throat. The noise of it jolted him, send warmth to his face and a chill down through his fingers. Each petty swipe was another flick in the temple -- some insolent, tiny thing that amounted to not much on its own and could accumulate to something disintegrating. His voice rang off the walls and back. Hercules bleated miserably.

"I expected you to be angry," Gansey said, measured and rattled and holding it together only by the squaring of his shoulders, the knowledge that they were family, and that Ronan was a flighty thing. Gansey toed the line for his friend because of what he'd been through, because they loved each other, because their support never wavered.

"I expected you might explode," Gansey continued. "I thought you might be crass. Jesus, Ronan. I didn't think you'd want me to feel--" The corners of his vision swam, colorless waves that obscured the walls of Hywel. Gansey clenched his jaw. Hard. if Ronan was belittling him in this time of incredible, existential uncertainty, what would he say if he saw Gansey on the edge of tears? Wasn't there a word Virginians liked to use for a boy like that?

"--ashamed." That was a much better word than the one he was afraid was going to come out of Ronan's mouth next.

There's something wholly satisfying in the way Gansey suddenly explodes and Ronan finds himself grinning in response, a quiet show of teeth as their eyes meet. It takes a lot to get under Gansey's skin, he's found. Ronan's managed it more than most, but Gansey also puts up with more of Ronan's shit that most. More than just about anyone, Ronan would assume.

And yet, even in expecting Ronan to be angry or crass or whatever he'd assumed, he still had the bright fucking idea to drop this bombshell on Ronan's fucking birthday of all days. That said more than anything else. It's just another indication of how very much has changed in the whatever time that's passed between them -- the Gansey Ronan remembered was a little more strategic about picking his dates of battle.

"What do you want me to say, man?" he replies finally, turning to hold his hands up in some meaningless gesture of surrender. "You can't tell me this Night of Truth bullshit has anything to do with me. I'm not the same Ronan you remember, am I? And you're not the same Gansey. The only thing that's the same for you here is Henry and... sure, okay. Fuck it, I get it. You've moved on. Shit, I've moved on. I moved on years ago when I had every reason to believe you would never feel what I did. I didn't take it personally -- you were still the best friend I'd ever had, the only person who wasn't lying to me.

"Except I guess you were, huh? Least you could've done back then is told me it was just my dick specifically you weren't interested in."

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[Ronan's Birthday Gathering]

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