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Depending on where you began the story, it was about Orphan Girl.
Five weeks earlier she had been snatched from a nightmare, and when she opened her eyes again it was in the waking world. The real world. The Greywaren protected her there, as she had often protected him inside the dream space, and he renamed her Opal, although sometimes she still felt a lot like an orphan.
This was one of those times.
It was very early in the morning. The sun was just nudging above the bluish peaks of the mountains that were silhouetted outside the window, and Opal crouched over rather awkwardly on her hooves, leaning her elbows on the edge of the mattress where Ronan Lynch had finally passed out on top of the blankets. The sleeves of an oversized knit sweater purchased at Target fell across her hands, and pale hair stuck out in every direction underneath her mangy skullcap.
Unable to sleep, she had slipped out of the creepy old room on the other side of the wall where Ronan put her to bed every night. It was always cold in there, and Opal could smell death on the sheets.
Gansey did not stir when she had clomped past his mattress on her dainty little hooves. His wireframe glasses and cell phone were abandoned on the floor next to a battered leather journal, and his hand hung over the side of the bed, fingers curled loosely as he slept.
He looked almost peaceful like that—a regal king sprawled across his throne.
Ronan was deeply asleep in his room. The old speeding tickets and Irish band posters that he had taped up on his door fluttered lazily as Opal pushed it open. She crept inside. Chainsaw had recognized her immediately and let out a low croak. Her cage door hung wide on the rusted hinges, giving her the freedom to come and go from it during the night if she wanted to, although she was currently hunched low on her perch with her neck feathers ruffled sleepily.
Ronan dreamed.
He had not bothered to change out of his ripped black jeans and faded black tank top from the day before, although his feet were bare. The blankets were all tangled up underneath him. There was a scruffy shadow darkening his sharp jaw, and with his head tipped back just so he looked even more like his father.
Opal remembered Niall Lynch vaguely from the dream space, and more vividly from the reoccurring nightmares that Ronan had suffered with at night after he had been murdered.
Now she watched as the Greywaren slept and dreamed. He had started to twitch where he lounged on the mattress, a small gasp escaping past his cracked lips. His papery eyelids fluttered, not quite opening.
It was the first sign that he was waking up.
The second sign was the blood that trickled over his suddenly clenched fists, dripping thick and wet and starkly red between white fingers. It stained the sheets that were twisted up underneath him.
Chainsaw had noticed it too. She flapped her wings, unable to stretch them out fully inside the confines of her cage, and her beak parted to let out a warning shriek that Opal echoed. She scrambled across the mattress to kneel close to Ronan, her cold hands reaching out until she cupped his warm face in them. There was a knot creasing the pale skin between his eyebrows, and his teeth were gritted in either pain or distress. Opal could see the dark spots where more blood soaked through his tank top.
“Kerah!” she screamed.
~
Gansey woke up with a start. He was abruptly aware that something was wrong even while he moaned and squinted his sticky eyelids against the sharp burn of the sunlight that came through the windows. He felt on the floor beside the mattress for his glasses with one hand, but found his phone first.
It was silent and warm from the sun.
That was not the problem.
Gansey finally located his wireframes and jammed them on his face, forcing his reluctant spine into an upright position as he swung his legs over the side of the bed. He peered around Monmouth. The corners were still dull with morning shadows and the air that brushed across his bare arms was cool.
There was a terrific crash.
Ronan. Or quite possibly it was someone, something, else entirely.
The commotion had definitely come from his bedroom though, behind the firmly closed door, and Gansey felt his pulse jerk beneath the skin of his wrist as he scrambled to his feet. He barrelled across Monmouth Manufacturing with the kind of feral urgency that comes from knowing that your best friend can bring nightmare horrors back from his dreams.
Chainsaw shrieked on the other side of the door.
Gansey paused. He pressed one hand to the old chipped wood.
“Ronan?” he called uncertainly.
He was surprised by how much his voice shook over the familiar name.
“Kerah!” a pitched voice wailed inside the bedroom.
That was enough.
Gansey knew immediately that it was Opal who called out. He also knew that she had been the one to wake him earlier with the same distressed cry, and his sweaty fingers found the handle and turned it before he could think himself out of the action.
He yanked the door open.
The room was a mess, but as far as he could tell that was not because something hectic and terrifying had been dreamed up to tear it apart. Ronan was just a messy person in general. The floor was strewn all over with dirty clothes, and odd dream objects, and a dozen random electronics that trailed frayed cords in every possible direction.
Chainsaw streaked out of her cage and across the room. Gansey ducked to avoid her clawed feet as she soared right over his head, flapping up to land somewhere well out of reach in the rafters of the warehouse.
“Kerah!" Opal sobbed out her special name for Ronan. She was crouched beside him on the bed with his pale face clutched in her small hands, and her own cheeks were streaked with tears. Her skullcap had been knocked lopsided at some point, and there was something red smeared on her sweater.
It took Gansey a moment to realize that it was blood.
It took him another moment to realize that Ronan was covered in it.
“Oh, God.” His knees wobbled. “Jesus. What happened to him?” Nausea rose up in Gansey as he stumbled over to the bed. “Opal?” he said. “Opal. What happened? Is he—is that his?”
Ronan was as still as a corpse. Unmoving. Silent. Where Gansey stood next to the mattress, where he stood almost over the other boy, the whites of his eyes were barely visible past cracked lids.
Gansey could vividly remember how Ronan had shuddered and jerked the first time that he had brought back something this horrific from his dreams. The night that Noah found him curled up in the dust at the bottom of the stairs, before anyone knew what he could really do.
He could not think.
Opal leapt up from the bed and started babbling frantically to Gansey in a different language. It was either Latin, or the strange dream tongue that she still spoke sometimes, the ancient tree language that Ronan could only understand when he was asleep and dreaming. The unfamiliar sounds that spilled from her mouth made Gansey feel wretchedly useless.
His stomach churned with the heady smell of blood.
Not for the first time in his life, and certainly not for the first time in the last seven treacherous months, Gansey thought: Ronan is going to die.
Opal clutched at his hand. His shirt.
She was pleading with him and he had no way to help her.
“English,” Gansey said. His voice shook. “I need you to say it in English.”
Opal just wailed. It was such an animal sound that Gansey jerked his hand away from her, afraid for a second that she was going to bite him.
That was when Ronan woke up. Properly woke up. His eyes flicked all the way open and he gasped in a ragged breath, his chest heaving against the bloody tank top. As the paralysis that always followed a living dream wore off, he began to shake, and the spots of blood on his face streaked across his pale skin.
He was crying.
“Ronan,” Gansey said. Breathed. His was shaking rather a lot too. He dropped to his knees beside the mattress as Opal flung her arms wildly around Ronan with another pitched cry of Kerah!
Ronan recoiled. He wiped blood and tears and snot on his frayed shirt hem.
“Fuck. Shit. Fuck.”
Somehow his voice came out as both a snarl and a sob.
His bloodshot eyes moved to Gansey and Gansey stared back at him.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “Ronan. Jesus Christ. What happened to you?”
“Nothing. I’m fine. I’m not hurt. I was just there when it—fuck.” Ronan curled his knees up to his chest, the movement childlike and terrified. Shut his eyes tightly. He swallowed and breathed and then he opened his eyes again and scrambled slightly clumsily to his feet.
Gansey watched, transfixed and horrified, as blood dripped down his bare arms to splatter on the floor around his feet.
“We need to get this cleaned up,” he suggested shakily. The pale light that came through the open bedroom window made the blood look stark and bright against the white sheets.
He wanted to look away.
He could not look away.
“I can do it,” Ronan insisted. But his voice hitched a little as he said it.
“Ronan,” Gansey started.
“No,” Ronan snarled. “I mean it. I can do it alone, man. Just go. Get out of here before you get this shit all over you.”
Gansey opened his mouth. Hesitated. Closed it again. His legs were dangerously unsteady as he turned around and stumbled out of the bedroom. Ronan slammed the door shut behind him the moment that Gansey was on the other side, and he flinched at the abrupt bang before he could stop himself. Then he let out a long breath, and leaned back against the smooth wood.
Chainsaw croaked and rustled her feathers from her perch high above him.
Gansey could not stop seeing the blood. He could not stop seeing the way it was smeared all over Ronan.
He thought that he was going to be sick, but his stomach was hollow. Instead he stood there outside the bedroom for a while, breathing and shivering. He listened to Ronan stomping around on the other side of the door, swearing occasionally, the words thick and violent in his mouth.
Ronan. God.
He could have died.
The door was wrenched open suddenly, and Gansey was so distracted by his own whirling thoughts that he almost fell backwards. He managed to regain his balance and jump away at the last second, turning around to regard Ronan uncertainly. Nervously. The other boy was still mostly covered in blood, although the sheets had been stripped off the bed behind him and stuffed somewhere out of sight. The mattress was ruined. There was a dark brown stain that told Gansey where Ronan had been lying while he slept.
“What—” he started. Then he stopped. There was a lump in his throat.
Ronan scowled darkly at him for a moment and then brushed past in absolute silence, his shoulders knotted in agitation underneath the straps of his black tank top. He banged aggressively into the kitchen/bathroom/laundry and the door shut hard enough behind him that the rusty hinges rattled.
Opal appeared in his bedroom doorway.
She did not say anything and she did not look at Gansey. Instead she trotted over to the sagging couch that backed the high windows, tucking herself into one corner with her furry legs bent up strangely against her chest. Gansey watched with his heart in his throat as she lifted her left arm to her mouth and began to gnaw on the already frayed strap of the watch fastened around her wrist.
He did not know what to do.
Chainsaw seemed to realize this. The raven flapped down to settle just beside Opal on the couch, her claws scratching softly against the faded leather. She pecked at a loose thread that stuck out of the sweater Ronan had picked up at Target for Opal, and the little satire girl reached over to stroke at the ruffled feathers around her neck.
Gansey realized that he was entirely useless for the second time that morning.
And being a Gansey, this was not a good feeling.
He cleaned his glasses absently on his shirt hem, and then startled a little when the shower began to run in the kitchen/bathroom/laundry. Ronan, washing the blood away.
Stop thinking about it.
He wandered over to his desk and slumped down into the hard chair that was pushed in next to it, reaching out to flip absently through a book that sat on top of a slightly precarious stack. He tried to focus on the words there, but the black ink squirmed against the white of the page until he gave up.
No reading, then. And no breakfast either.
Gansey had initially planned on searching out something to eat before he had to go to school, something easy to make or already cooked and stored on the shelves of the clunky old refrigerator in the kitchen/bathroom/laundry, but that was before he had found Ronan on his bed, soaked in blood.
Gansey took out his cell phone instead, his thumb hovering over the call button. He badly wanted to talk to Adam. To Blue. It was like a physical and desperate ache inside him, but it was still too early to call Fox Way, and Adam did not have a phone, refusing to even let Ronan dream him one to use in emergencies.
Either Opal or Chainsaw let out a lilting cry from the couch.
Gansey closed his eyes, reaching up the rub his fingertips over the lids.
He was still sitting rather despondently at his desk when Ronan reappeared ten minutes later. He had discarded his bloody clothes, and his skin was scrubbed clean. There was a towel wrapped around his waist instead, the vicious tattoo across his exposed back easy to see as he pushed into his bedroom and slammed the door.
He had not looked at Gansey, who decided that he might as well get dressed while he waited. He had class in an hour, and nothing better to do until then except listen as Ronan banged around in his room. He pulled on his uniform and buckled up his belt, and then he knotted his tie with the kind of easy precision that came from years of practice. He brushed his teeth and wet his hair with some cold water from the sink in the kitchen/bathroom/laundry. He was shrugging into his scarlet Aglionby sweater just as Ronan emerged from his room for the second time.
“What?” he snarled, when he saw that Gansey was looking at him. He had his boots on. Chainsaw flapped expectantly over to his shoulder and perched there, ruffling her neck feathers in pleasure when Ronan ran a pale finger over her head.
Gansey grabbed his school bag. It was still packed from yesterday, because he had not been in the mood for homework when he got back to the warehouse.
“Nothing. I have to go. I’m going to be late.”
This was a lie and Ronan knew it.
Gansey waited, but for whatever reason, Ronan decided not to call him on it.
“Are you coming with?” he added finally. Doubtfully.
He was surprised when Ronan nodded, a vicious jerk of his head.
“To class?” Gansey clarified.
Ronan was not wearing his Aglionby uniform. Instead he was dressed in his typical dark jeans and faded tank with a leather jacket shrugged on over it. The hooks of his black tattoo protruded just above the collar. He had left the laces of his boots untied, and they trailed on the floor.
Ronan smirked. “No.”
“Oh. Well. Then what are you—?”
“For fuck sake, Gansey. I’m coming to see Parrish.”
“Oh.” Gansey nodded. “Right. Of course.”
Ronan glowered at him, but his postured grumpiness was slightly undermined by the fact that his ears and neck were both tinged a faint shade of pink.
Gansey hooked the strap of his bag over his shoulder.
Ronan bared his teeth at him. “Don’t do that, man. Don’t give me that look.”
“What look?” Gansey asked innocently.
“That look. The one you’re giving me right now. It’s pissing me off—and I thought you said that you were going to be late for school?” Ronan stormed over to the door and threw it open, clattering out of sight down the stairs with Chainsaw flapping behind him. Opal cast Gansey a silent, albeit rather accusatory look as well from beneath her muddy skullcap and then followed them both, her hooves clomping on the hollow wooden steps.
Gansey sighed. Then he snatched up his silent phone from the desk, hooked his finger through the key ring for his beloved Camaro, and met Ronan in the parking lot.
He was already inside the BMW, and the engine growled underneath the hood.
Gansey walked over and tapped on the window, waiting patiently until Ronan had rolled it down out of the way before he said, “Okay, so you’re going to see Parrish. What else are you planning on doing today?”
He did not want to ask: and are you planning on getting rid of that mattress in your bedroom, but he hoped that the question was implied.
He could still smell the wet blood.
“No idea,” Ronan snapped. There was an abrupt pause during which Gansey considered walking away, but then Ronan added in a very quiet voice, “Hey. Uh. Don’t tell anyone about what happened in there, okay?”
Gansey frowned at him. “What about Adam—”
“I said, don’t tell anyone,” Ronan snarled. He revved the engine, leaning his elbow out the open window despite the winter cold. Gansey took that as his cue to get out of the way before he got gravel sprayed in his eye.
He stepped back, and watched Ronan tear out of the lot and down the road.
His heart was still pounding.
Gansey sighed again, for what seemed like the five hundredth time already that morning, and then he climbed into the driver seat of the Pig. He felt marginally better as soon as he started the engine. It rattled in a tired but familiar way, and the steering wheel felt smooth and cool in his hands.
It was just a dream, Gansey reminded himself firmly as he hit the gas pedal.
But did that really make a difference when it came to Ronan?
Opal and Chainsaw were both dream things. So was Matthew.
Dreams. Magic. Cabeswater.
Gansey had been dealing with this kind of stuff for more than ten years now, and he still could not quite manage to wrap his head around everything, even when he knew it was real, even when he had seen the evidence and felt it with both hands.
The slippery, but no less familiar sense of otherness sped with him down the slick road to Aglionby Academy, and Gansey felt it catching inside his heart, rattling around in the cage of his ribs like a strange kind of song.
He knew the tune. He loved the tune.
But somehow, he still had no idea how to sing along.
~
When Adam Parrish pulled into the student parking lot outside Aglionby Academy, the last thing he expected to see there was a charcoal BMW parked obnoxiously across two spaces on the other side of the Pig. Gansey was waiting on the perfectly mown lawn for him, looking just a little bit more exhausted than usual, which probably meant he had not slept much the night before. Students milled around behind him, shouting to friends or texting on their phones, every uniform identical and impeccable and expensive in a way that was pretending to be authentic instead.
Adam got out of the car.
He glanced at Gansey, smiling briefly, slightly in his direction, and then ducked back inside the rusted Hondayota to grab his messenger bag. It was no heavier than he was used to, the seams straining against second hand textbooks and completed school assignments and half started projects, but recently Adam felt the weight of it more.
He slung the strap over his shoulder and emerged at exactly the right moment to see Ronan Lynch clamber out of the BMW.
Adam did not think that this was an accident.
Ronan was not dressed for Aglionby, which indicated that he had no intention of going to class that day. Not that he ever had any intention of going to class. He slammed the door of the BMW behind him, stuck his hands deep inside the pockets of his artfully scuffed leather jacket, and then strode purposefully around the front of the Pig.
He met Adam near the abrasively orange hood.
“Lynch?” Adam said, a question.
Ronan had become even less predictable in his moods since the Glendower search had ended with a hole in the ground and a pile of ancient bones, since his mother was unmade by the demon, and they asked Cabeswater to sacrifice itself to bring Gansey back from the dead.
Sometimes, Adam thought that he knew Ronan. Thought that he understood him. But then the other boy would lash out in a sudden and unexpected way, leaving Adam to get caught in the crosshairs.
He was learning, though.
“Parrish,” Ronan replied.
His expression was cool and bored, but it was probably for show. There was definitely something off about his eyes—the way they roamed over Adam, skimming over the bare skin above the collar of his shirt and then dipping down to find his hands, one curled around the strap of his bag, the other hanging at his side.
Normally Adam would have been flattered by the careful attention, but today he suspected Ronan of a different motive. Something that was possibly more sinister.
“Are you okay?” he said carefully.
He could feel Gansey watching them both from the lawn, and wished that the other boy would look away, or at least pretend to be occupied with his phone instead. More than that, he wished Ronan had come to his apartment earlier if something really was wrong. Adam did not think that he could handle any version of Ronan Lynch’s grief here, just outside the front doors of Aglionby Academy, where there was sure to be a curious audience.
Ronan stiffened slightly at the question, pulling his shoulders back. Adam could see the sharp hooks of his black tattoo poking out above the collar of his jacket, and was distracted for a moment by just how good it looked on him.
He could smell Chainsaw all over it, and wanted to kiss Ronan anyway.
His cheeks flushed with a sudden heat at the thought.
“I have to get to class,” he muttered, distracted, and annoyed that the distraction had come so easily. That he had allowed it to take precedence over everything else that was going on in his insane life.
Ronan shrugged. He did not say anything.
“I’m assuming that you’re not coming in?” Adam added. “You’re obviously not dressed for it.”
Ronan laughed then, the sound sharp and raw.
There was definitely something wrong.
Adam hesitated. “You could tell me,” he said quietly. “If you wanted to.”
He did not really have time for Ronan to tell him anything, but he could not quite bring himself to ignore the awful distance in Ronan’s eyes. The way his shoulders created a tense line through his jacket. His eyes flicked to Gansey behind them, and then to the BMW, where he caught sight of Opal with her face pressed curiously to the back window. Chainsaw was picking irritably at a blanket that had been discarded on the passenger seat.
“Look,” Adam said finally, when Ronan remained silent and unconvincingly stoic where he stood next to the Camaro. “I have to go in, but come find me later, maybe? What are you doing for lunch?”
“I’ll have to feed Opal,” Ronan said.
Replying, finally, although it sounded a lot like an excuse to Adam.
He shrugged, his feelings dented by the sharp dismissal. “Alright, then. So I guess I’ll see you when I see you.” He started over to Gansey, but Ronan reached out and grabbed into his wrist before he had gone more than a few steps. Adam paused with one foot planted on the immaculate front lawn and the other on hard cement.
“What?” he said. Uncertain. Slow.
His terrible Henrietta drawl snaked out before he could clip it back.
Ronan ducked his head, but he held on.
Adam waited. His pulse tapped beneath his skin.
“Are you working tonight?” Ronan muttered.
“Yeah.” Adam did not know why Ronan asked that, really. He was pretty sure that the other boy had his schedule memorized.
“Okay.” Ronan released his wrist. Wiped his sweaty hand on his jeans. “Okay.”
“You can pick me up after, if you want?” Adam suggested, a peace offering. He was getting better that those.
Ronan instantly looked back up at him, his expression brightening infinitesimally with something that seemed like hope to Adam. “Yeah?” he asked. Cautious.
“Yeah,” Adam said. “I’m at the factory tonight, done at nine.”
He could feel Ronan staring after him as he approached Gansey, holding out one fist so that they could bump knuckles in their usual greeting. He did not glance back over his shoulder, afraid of what his heart would do in his chest if he dared it, but Gansey did.
“What did he say?” he asked.
On any other day, Adam would have assumed that Gansey was just being irritatingly curious about their relationship—if relationship was even the right word for what he had right now with Ronan. But this morning, he could not forget the careful way that Ronan had looked at him next to the Pig, almost like he was checking Adam over for injuries or something.
“Did he dream last night?” Adam pressed.
Gansey was looking too hard at the grass between his shoes.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
Adam knew instantly that this was a lie.
“Did he bring something back with him?” he continued, although he already suspected what the answer would be. “Come on, Gansey. Just tell me what happened. I need to know if I’m going to get him to talk about it.”
Gansey sighed and then shook his head. “Blood,” he said heavily. “That’s all I know. Jesus Christ, Adam. There was just so much of it, and it was all over him—all over the sheets. But he wouldn’t tell me where it was from, or who it belonged to.”
The way his eyes skipped nervously over to Adam before darting away again, told him that Gansey had his own suspicions about that particular aspect.
He reached up to rub absently at a faded hickey that was tucked just beneath the collar of his white shirt. He was already so tired, and it was only the beginning of the week. It was just Tuesday. He still had another four days of this to go before the weekend finally came, and even then Adam knew that he would not been able to relax completely, because he still had work.
Adam had thought his life would get easier after Glendower was discovered, but reality was as bitter as the Henrietta winter. He did not feel any less tired. His three jobs had become more of a chore than usual, especially when Adam longed to spend all of his time with Gansey and Blue and Ronan instead.
Particularly Ronan, who swung wildly between grief and anger and a kind of terribly awkward shyness, but always seemed to appreciate Adam’s presence, even if it came in the form of companionable silence while he studied at his desk, and Ronan sprawled on his shitty mattress in the cramped room above St. Agnes church.
Adam wished they could have time for other things. Better things.
When he kissed Ronan, all he could taste were memories that had turned sour.
“What are you thinking about?” Gansey said, giving him a careful look as the two of them approached Borden House.
Adam shrugged and then sighed. “Everything,” he muttered.
~
Blue Sargent had just finished seating a table of obnoxiously loud Aglionby boys when another, rather more subdued Aglionby boy stepped through the front door of Nino’s. Gansey had removed his school tie, but other than that his uniform appeared as impeccable as it always was, his hands wandering absently at his sides as Blue headed over to the front door to meet him.
The other waitresses already knew to let her handle this particular Raven Boy, which was both a source of relief and disgruntled frustration for Blue.
“Hey,” she said, when Gansey spotted her.
He smiled, and happiness bubbled up in her when she saw that it was not his President Cell Phone smile. Instead it was his Gansey smile, softer and easier around the edges of his mouth. “Hello, Jane.”
Blue reached up to tuck some stray pieces of dark hair behind her ear. She noticed that Gansey tracked the motion carefully, almost hungrily, and she suddenly wished that they could be alone. She settled for letting her fingers brush lightly over the back of his wrist when she handed him a sticky menu.
Gansey followed her over to their usual booth near the window and sat down.
“Is it just you tonight?” Blue said, as he casually leaned his elbows on the edge of the table. “Where is everyone else?”
“Adam had to work,” Gansey explained. “So Ronan went to the Barns.”
Blue did not miss that these two things seemed intrinsically linked together in Gansey’s mind, although it was true that Ronan and Adam had been a lot more like RonanandAdam since Gansey came back to life for the second time.
“Henry?” she added.
Gansey shrugged. It was almost a forlorn gesture, something that belonged inexplicably to her Gansey, and it was strange to see it in such a public place where other Aglionby boys could be watching. “He said that he had some kind of negotiation with the school board to take care of. I think he still wants to organize a student council.”
“Oh. Right.”
Blue glanced around to make sure that none of the surrounding tables needed to be bussed before she slid into the booth next to Gansey. He shifted over at once to leave room for her on the cracked vinyl seat, and Blue pressed up against him all the way from her shoulder to her wrist.
Gansey turned his hand over and threaded their fingers together, their palms sweaty and warm where they touched, his thumb stroking lightly over her knuckles.
“What about you?” he said, in a rather hopeful voice.
“What about me?” Blue prompted.
“Well. I was just thinking, if you had some time after your shift…”
“Yes,” Blue said at once. “I can call my mom. I’ll tell her that I’ll be back late.”
Gansey squeezed her hand with his fingers. His smile was just this side of shy as he said, “That sounds wonderful.”
~
At the end of her shift, Blue called 300 Fox Way from the phone in the back room at Nino’s to let her mom know that she would be home late, and then she gratefully pulled off her apron and used the spotted mirror over the sink in the staff bathroom to adjust the clips in her hair.
Gansey was already waiting for her when she emerged into the cool night air, leaning up against the side of the Pig, which he had parked neatly on the edge of the dusty gravel lot.
“Hey,” Blue said.
“Hey,” he echoed, and then he went around and held open the passenger door for her, which Blue allowed without complaint only because it would have started an unnecessary argument that she was too tired to deal with so late on a Tuesday night.
While Gansey slid into the driver seat and coaxed the engine to sputtering, roaring life, Blue picked absently at a dangling thread in her sweater and stared out the streaked passenger window. They drove back to Monmouth Manufacturing without talking, the dark pressed in against the hideous orange paint that made the Camaro so completely Gansey, and then waded through the trampled weeds to the front door of the hulking warehouse. The stairs creaked underneath their feet as Gansey led the way up to the second floor, and then he slotted the key into the lock and jiggled it around until the catch snapped back.
There were no lights on, and it was very quiet, so Blue assumed that Ronan was still at the Barns. They stepped inside, and Gansey dropped his keys onto his desk and shrugged out of his jacket.
Monmouth was like a different world in the dark. Pale moonlight splashed across the floor, pooling around the miniature Henrietta. Precarious stacks of books and the pool table cast strange shadows across the walls. Blue wandered up Main Street, and sat down in a space that was just big enough for her to not crush any of the cardboard buildings. Gansey took the dented spot on the edge of his mattress, rubbing his thumb across his lower lip. He had changed out of his Aglionby uniform since he had been in the diner earlier. His slacks and awful boat shoes and the aquamarine polo shirt he had on made him look like he was modelling for a fancy magazine.
“Oh, Jane,” he said absently, leaning back on his hands.
Blue straightened the tiny steeple of St. Agnes. She felt the absence of everyone else like a physical thing, a surprisingly sharp ache inside her. Gansey shifted over on the mattress, making room for her beside him, and she stood up to join him. He put his arm around her shoulder, and Blue rested her head against his chest. She closed her eyes and breathed. This close Gansey smelled like the dusty apartment and gasoline and mint.
“How was school?” she said, already knowing the answer.
“Oh. You know. It was alright.”
His voice was on the edge of Richard Campbell Gansey III and just Gansey.
Her Gansey.
Blue bit down on her bottom lip. She curved her warm body into his, fitting them both together like matching pieces in a complex puzzle. His hand found her wrist, and she let him trace hot fingertips along her arm, from the crook of her elbow to her shoulder. Her skin tingled at his touch.
“Blue,” he whispered, murmured. She could feel his breath on her neck.
“I know,” she whispered back.
She always thought that she was getting used to it, to the idea of not being able to kiss him, but then moments like this snuck in and burrowed underneath her skin. Blue twisted around and hooked both of her arms around his neck, pressing her face to the smooth junction between his neck and shoulder. He was very warm. The collar of his polo shirt rubbed gently against her cheek.
“Ronan dreamed last night,” Gansey muttered finally.
Blue stroked her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. “Oh?” she said.
Gansey sighed. His entire body slumped a little closer to her. “I wasn’t supposed to say that,” he added. “He asked me not to tell anyone.” His voice was so low and weary and worried and undone that it was lovely. Blue hurt with it. She could feel his warm breath on her cheek.
“I won’t tell,” she promised.
Gansey let out an almost laughed. “God,” he said. “If you had seen him. He was covered in blood, Jane. It was all over the sheets and on his clothes and just—it was absolutely everywhere. I could smell it.” There was a pause. “I really hope that he got rid of the mattress.”
Blue did not know what to say.
“I want him to be okay,” Gansey continued after a moment. “I want him to be happy and to live at The Barns and have Matthew and—I want all that so much for him that it hurts, because I don’t even know if he can be happy anymore. At least, not like he used to be. He acts like everything is fine. He wants me to believe it, but I know the difference. I still remember how he was. He was actually getting better—and then his mother died, and right after that we lost Cabeswater. And Noah. Jesus Christ. He lost everything.”
His voice wavered, and Blue felt a tug inside her chest. Inside her heart.
She clutched Gansey closer. Tighter.
There was nothing else that she could do.
“Not everything,” she whispered. “He still has you. He has all of us."
“Yes,” Gansey said bitterly. “All of us. What a tragic disaster.”
Blue swallowed, but there was a lump in her throat. “Not really,” she said, and then she sat back and looked at Gansey right in the face. His eyes were so wild and tired and serious underneath his perfect hair. His polo shirt was so bright that it was almost luminous in the dark.
She pressed her hand over his chest, over his heart, and felt it beating there steadily beneath her fingers.
“Blue,” Gansey said.
She loved the way her name sounded in his mouth. She closed her eyes.
“We’re going to be okay,” she whispered.
~
Ronan was waiting for Adam when he stepped out of the factory later that night. The BMW was parked at a casual angle that suggested it had skidded to a quick stop, and Ronan lounged back against the sleek hood, both arms crossed over his chest and his expression carefully impassive.
“Parrish,” he said, as Adam walked towards him. The floodlights outside the old factory made pools of yellow light on the gravel, but everything outside them was black and gray shadow. Ronan was somewhere in between, his features illuminated faintly by the headlights of the BMW, which he had left on with the growling engine.
Adam stopped in front of him, breathing a little faster than usual.
His heart was a wild animal inside the cage of his ribs when he looked at Ronan, and Ronan looked back at him.
“Hey,” he said, too tired to clip back his Henrietta drawl completely.
Ronan smirked. “Hey,” he echoed, letting his own non-accent curl around the word in a way that made Adam shiver a little bit anyway. To distract himself, he glanced through the windshield of the BMW, where he could just make out the empty seats.
“Where’s Opal?”
“The Barns,” Ronan said at once. “I thought…” he hesitated and then kept on hesitating, clearly not sure how to say exactly what he wanted to when Adam was standing in front of him.
Adam frowned. “She’s there alone?”
“No, asshole. I left Chainsaw with her.”
“You left a bird to babysit? Is that okay?”
Ronan kicked absently at one of his tires. “She’s smart.”
Adam was not sure if he was referring to Chainsaw or Opal in this instance, but it was dubiously productive to argue with Ronan about the situation. The other boy seemed to want to be alone with him, and Adam had no problem with that. Until now he had just assumed it was too good to be true.
Besides, Opal had survived in his head for years before Ronan took her out, and if you could do that, you could do almost anything.
So Adam shrugged and said, “Okay,” and then he added, “So, um, what do you want to do? Where are we going? I’m guessing not to the Barns.”
Ronan nodded. He did not answer the question, but before Adam could press him he wrenched open the driver side door and slid inside the BMW. Adam went around to the other side, and got in too. It smelled like leather and bird and Ronan.
He buckled up, because you always needed to buckle up when it was Ronan who was driving, and then settled back into the leather seat while the engine roared happily beneath the hood.
Ronan tore out of the lot, spraying gravel and dust.
~
He drove. With one foot planted on the gas pedal and right his hand fisted on the gearstick, Ronan felt like part of the car, or maybe like the car was part of him. They were one being, synched together perfectly, their pulses beating together to the bass of the stereo. The tires hummed on the slick tarmac and the wheel was cool underneath the warm fingers of his other hand.
Ronan was happy.
He drove until the BMW reached a stretch of blank highway unobstructed by traffic lights or parked cars, and then he drove some more, faster now, pounding the gas pedal to the floor. The tachometer needle was travelling above four, then five, blurred in the red zone. His music blasted around him.
“Ronan!” Adam said. Shouted, really, to be heard over everything in the car that was roaring and whirring and shattering apart.
Ronan jerked his head around to look at him, just for a second, taking his eyes off the road long enough to see that Adam was clutching the handle above the passenger door in a frantic grip. His face was splashed all over with blue from the pale light of the moon and yellow from the street lamps that flashed past outside the windows.
Ronan expected him to be angry, but Adam just looked… very Adam.
He yanked on the wheel, downshifting the car too fast, almost stalling it in the middle of the road. The engine groaned in protest, then adjusted, and Ronan brought the BMW into a messy skid in the gravel shoulder.
Adam’s knuckles burned white as he tightened his grip on the handle.
Ronan’s seatbelt was pulled taught across his chest, and the moment the car was motionless, he released the buckle. The music was still blaring between them as Adam stared at him, but then the other boy reached over and turned it down, his fingers trembling slightly on the volume dial.
He seemed to be waiting for Ronan to stop him, but Ronan just sat there and watched, waiting to see what Adam would do next, his heart beating in his throat and blood pounding in his ears, a roar of incoherent sound.
Adam shifted the car into park, knocking Ronan’s hand off the gearstick.
Ronan release the clutch and brake at the same time.
“Come here,” Adam said, but did not wait for Ronan to lean across the console before he unsnapped his own seatbelt and reached over. His hands found Ronan’s shoulders, his face, his neck. He traced the skin there like he could still see the bruises that Ronan had come away with when the demon possessed him.
Ronan swallowed. He closed his eyes.
“Parrish,” he muttered, his voice rough. “Adam.”
“I said, come here,” Adam whispered, and then he had closed the distance left between them and was kissing Ronan on the mouth, his lips soft and warm and perfect, and also, wonderfully, incredibly, familiar after several weeks.
Ronan could feel the insides unwinding. He was already coming undone.
He kissed Adam back, softly, and then more hungrily when Adam scrambled over the centre console to straddle him in the driver seat of the BMW. There was almost no room between Ronan and the steering wheel, but somehow Adam made it work, his knees fitting perfectly around Ronan’s thighs and his hands moving to cup his face as they kissed again, and again, and again, their mouths becoming numb long before they were ready to stop.
Ronan gasped when they finally did pull back, and tipped his head to look up at the ceiling of the BMW. Adam, tall and lanky and beautiful in this light—in any light, really, if Ronan was being completely honest—had to bend over so that his head did not brush the worn felt above the visor.
“Fuck,” Ronan muttered, nonsensical and breathless.
His heart crashed between his ribs, untethered in his chest, barely confined.
Adam pressed a hand over the pulse at his throat. “Are you okay?” he said, looking a little bit pleased with himself.
Ronan tried to scowl, but he did not think that it looked convincing. He was still too winded. His body thrummed with heat and terror and wonder at what had just happened, and what was still happening at this very second. He never wanted Adam Parrish to stop kissing him. He never wanted Adam Parrish to stop looking at him like that either, one eyebrow slightly raised and his perfect mouth quirked up to the side in a genuine smile that was edged with satisfaction.
Fucking Christ. He was so far gone that it wasn’t even funny.
“Adam,” he said, his voice absent even though his intention was not.
His mind was spinning. It was searching for a place to put down.
Adam moved the hand on his throat down to his chest, fingers brushing lightly across the jut of his collarbone, warm skin on warm skin. Ronan swallowed again. He took a breath and then let it out, wanting to stretch up and kiss Adam again, just for a second, gentle and teasing, but once again Adam came to him first.
His lips mashed into Ronan’s, the kiss clumsier than either of them had intended. Ronan felt Adam’s smirk on his own tentative smile.
“Are you going to tell me?” Adam said, when he finally pulled back again.
“What?” Ronan said, still slightly dazed.
“About last night,” Adam added. “Did you dream? You seemed… different this morning when I saw you at school, and I just—I thought that maybe you had a nightmare or something.”
His voice was too certain. Too steady.
Ronan felt betrayal flicker dully inside his ribs.
“What did Gansey tell you?” he challenged.
“Nothing.”
“Why are you even fucking bothering to lie, Parrish?”
“Oh, so now I’m Parrish again, am I?” Adam said.
“Fuck. Come on. I call you Parrish all the fucking time.”
“I like it better when you call me Adam,” Adam admitted, his voice threaded through first and foremost with hurt, and secondly with something that could have been an embarrassed vulnerability.
Ronan was quite. His face felt warm.
Adam climbed awkwardly out of his lap, and Ronan instantly missed his warmth, but he tried not to look that disappointed as he watched Adam slide back over to his side of the car. He thought that Adam would just buckle up and tell him to start driving again, but instead he pushed open the passenger door and then climbed out. The cool night air trickled in before he could shut the door behind him.
Ronan reached up, scraping fingers through the short hair on his scalp. It was actually a little longer today then he had let it grow in a while, the ends starting to curl like it had when he was younger.
He was not sure why he had let it get this long.
Maybe he was waiting for Gansey to notice.
Maybe he was waiting for Adam to notice.
He watched as the other boy leaned against the side of the car, his arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted back to look at the sky stretching black and silky above the BMW. He had parked on the edge of a cornfield, and the dry husks that were left after harvest swayed back and forth in the cool November breeze.
Ronan reached for the door handle, and then hesitated. He sighed. Shook his head. Then he reached out again and pushed the driver side door open and got out. He went around to stand next Adam, not quite looking at him, feeling his face grow warm again despite the distinct chill that had come with the descent of the sun behind the distant mountains.
“Adam,” he said, softer than before.
Adam looked at him, his face twisted and unhappy, but also strangely happy.
Ronan had no idea what that meant.
“It was just a nightmare,” he muttered. “It was nothing. Just a fucking dream.”
“Gansey said that you brought back blood. Lots of it.”
“He—I fucking asked him not to tell you,” Ronan snarled.
“Why shouldn’t he tell me?” Adam said. “You weren’t going to say anything.”
“You were in a hurry. You had to get to class.”
“Oh, come on. You weren’t going to tell me tonight either,” Adam countered. “The only reason we’re talking about this right now is because I brought it up, and even then you still tried to sabotage the conversation.”
Ronan could not argue with that. He decided not to say anything.
Adam reached up and touched his face, fingertips grazing over his jaw. “It must have been awful,” he muttered.
Ronan tried to twitch away from him, but Adam grabbed him around the neck and held him still. Stared hard into his face. Ronan had never wanted Adam to look at him less. He felt shaky and sick from the memory of the nightmare. He could smell the blood on his skin even though he had washed it off hours ago.
“Ronan,” Adam said, and his voice was so soft that it made Ronan hurt a bit inside when he took his next shuddering breath. “You don’t have to face this shit all by yourself anymore. I want to help.”
There was a beat. A quick breathe between them.
Ronan wondered if Adam was going to kiss him again, but instead Adam pressed forward until their hips were locked together, their chests flush, and Ronan could feel Adam’s heartbeat pounding a bruise into his skin next to his own. Adam tucked his face into the junction between Ronan’s neck and his shoulder, the tip of his nose cold against the sensitive skin there. Adam’s hands locked behind his neck, fingers twisting in the soft leather of his jacket.
“Tell me what to do,” Adam whispered.
Ronan felt undone again. His knees were horribly unsteady as he leaned into the other boy, letting Adam take his weight, letting him take each breath. Adam closed his eyes, dusty lashes tickling against his throat.
“I watch you die,” Ronan muttered finally, his voice hoarse. “You and Gansey and Sargent. Opal. Sometimes Matthew. It’s fucking awful, and I never get there in time to stop it from happening, or when I do get there, I can’t do anything about it. I just end up frozen or something. I have to stand there and see it. I can never fucking stop it and it fucking makes me sick. I wanna wake up, but I can’t do that either.”
He shrugged closer into Adam, and after a moment the other boy overbalanced slightly. He stumbled and landed back against the car, letting out a small huff of air before he tightened his arms around Ronan.
After that, they didn’t move for a long time.
Ronan listened to the quiet rumble of the BMW, which he had left running.
Not that it mattered. Not that he could ever empty the tank. He had never needed to fill up on gas before, in all the years he had been driving it, racing it against Kavinsky or teaching Adam to drive stick in the gravel lot outside Monmouth or weaving between the other, slower cars on his way to Singers Falls.
Adam slipped one hand up underneath his jacket, and then his shirt, cold fingers pressed to warm skin. He traced the lines and hooks of the tattoo there even though he couldn’t see it, and Ronan almost felt like Adam was drawing it all over again, making the ink on his back twist to form a new shape.
He squeezes his eyes shut tightly, and breathed, and Adam breathed next to him.
Finally, after what seemed simultaneously like forever and almost no time at all, when Ronan had started to shiver and his cheeks were going numb with the Henrietta chill, Adam put a hand on his chest to push him back.
“We should get back in the car,” he said, and then he did, sliding easily into the passenger seat while Ronan stumbled around the hood to climb in on the other side.
His foot found the clutch, all instinct, and his hand fisted over the gearstick, but this time Adam reached over and touched his knuckles, gently, his thumb skimming over each one. Then his hand settled there, fingers threaded in between each one of Ronan’s and guiding him to put the stick in first gear.
Ronan eased off the clutch, and slammed on the gas hard enough to make the tires screech satisfyingly on the tarmac beneath the car. The BMW screamed back into the road, headlight beams bouncing off distant trees and the dried husks of the corn stalks and the pavement.
Adam’s hand tightened over his infinitesimally. His other hand stayed in his lap, ignoring the handle above the door.
Ronan could not stop the smile that pulled at his mouth.
He drove.