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When Ronan slammed Kavinsky against the hood of the Mitsubishi, following with his fist to Kavinsky’s nose in quick succession, Gansey guessed that he was meant to be surprised. Meant to hiss, “ Ronan ,” an admonition that even if this was Kavinsky, even if he was an asshole, there was something too vulgar about the blood staining Ronan’s knuckles, dripping over Kavinsky’s lips.
But most of Gansey wished that he’d been the one to do it.
Many things were sacred to Gansey: his journal, his memories of who Ronan had been before Niall’s death, the Camaro, the feeling he got sitting in the kitchen of 300 Fox Way, the time Adam had allowed him to give the gift of a leather messenger bag.
But Henrietta was the umbrella, the hands that held them all, held their friendships and the search from Glendower close and safe. Henrietta was a whisper when Gansey was trying to fall asleep, the sun hot on his back as he traversed the parking lot at Aglionby, the magic humming beneath Cabeswater.
And Kavinsky had gone and destroyed the version of it that Gansey could keep under his roof, that could comfort him when he felt alone. Kavinsky was tormenting Ronan in a way that Gansey couldn’t understand, with leather bands and forged driver’s licenses and street races that Gansey couldn’t stop.
Gansey wasn’t Ronan. He didn’t press the Pig’s gas to the floor when he felt tight and broken inside, he didn’t punch walls or other people or get drunk on the beers in the fridge when he wanted to escape the coiffed skin that he knew Adam and Blue had to hate, when all he could feel were the hornets in his ears and the way Adam’s voice had been tight and high when he’d said Fuck you. Fuck you, Gansey .
Sometimes, Gansey wished he was Ronan. He wanted to be the one wiping bloody knuckles on his pants, wanted to climb back in the car and drive it head on at someone else, hold on until the last minute when someone swerved, maybe even let the cars crash and find out what it felt like to have your body tossed around, what it would feel like to die with a crash and a whole lot of blood, instead of slowly stung to death, alone and terrified.
Gansey wasn’t Ronan. He couldn’t find a savage smile and throw things around. But he could be something else, something condescending and sharp and deplorable to the right people.
He held his hand up, not joining but not quite discouraging Ronan either.
Kavinsky made his denials and Gansey laughed at his attempts. While Kavinsky was being a cokehead and an asshole, Gansey was pursuing something honest and true and he knew something Kavinsky didn’t. Magic was real and Gansey belonged when he was hunting it, and all Kavinsky had was stupid drugs and inconsequential explosives.
And then there were two cars crashing into each other and Gansey felt Ronan tensing with anticipation, Ronan set ablaze. Gansey usually prided himself on how he avoided temptations like this but tonight- he was ablaze, too. It frightened him.
He tried to cover by asking about the drivers’ origins, watching Kavinsky and Ronan discuss Alice in Wonderland, entertained the possibility that it was, in fact, a non-Kavinsky who had trashed his Henrietta.
“I know what your dog wants,” Kavinsky said, and his sneer and his mocking accent made Gansey feel sharper, prouder, lifted his condescension into his shoulders and the way he felt his chin work. Kavinsky thought he could needle them, thought he could dissect what made Gansey and Ronan Gansey and Ronan, push a button or two, maybe entice Ronan further away, deeper into the streets.
Joseph Kavinsky knew nothing.
“And what is it my dog needs?” Gansey asked. He saw Ronan’s smile, and, in the look they exchanged, knew what Ronan was thinking. This was a Gansey that Adam would hate.
It was. Adam would detest the way Gansey was wearing his superiority, the way he reminded everyone of his power and his future, reminding everyone that they didn’t have any of it. Adam would only see it as superiority coming from money, from a name that the right people in the right circles knew, from the freedom to spend sixty-five hundred dollars on something that may have been crap.
But what Adam would have failed to realize, and what Ronan was succeeding in understanding, was that superiority over Kavinsky was deserved. Kavinsky was a piece of shit. Gansey was someone surrounded by incredible creatures he probably didn’t deserve. Gansey was someone with a purpose that he was going to damn well succeed in. Gansey didn’t destroy himself and the people around him for no reason. He hungered for things worth hungering for.
So, when Prokopenko handed Gansey the Molotov cocktail, he took it. And, when Kavinsky turned, expectant, to watch Gansey hurl it at the Mitsubishi, Gansey disobeyed.
He decided that the far-off Volvo was going to be Adam leaving to wake the ley line at his own, the silence, the too-wide gulf between them. The stupid way he and Blue had not-fought about Orla’s orange bikini, the idea that maybe what Adam and Blue were doing together was something part of Gansey coveted. It was whoever destroyed his apartment.
He let the bottle fly, heard the Woop Woop Gansey Boy! like it existed in a different dimension, tried to ignore the thought that ran through his head, fleeting: it’d be easier if Adam had never stopped his bike by the Camaro . It was an awful thought and he hated it, but the thing was that it felt almost true.
When Gansey and Ronan fought, it was because of things that he couldn’t change about Ronan and that was something that Gansey could accept. When he fought with Adam, though, it always felt fundamentally because of him, because of his incompetence when it came to everything real about the world that Adam represented. When he fought with Adam, it was Gansey’s fault, but he still couldn’t fix it.
He heart the glass breaking when Ronan threw his cocktail, the heat and roar of the flames as the Mitsubishi was eaten from the inside-out. He turned away.
Adam would hate me, right now , Gansey thought with the same kind of savage pleasure that etched Ronan’s face when he smiled that certain way. It wasn’t self-deprecation the way 300 Fox Way made him want to be, in the face of all of the energy and magic that made him feel eager and inconsequential.
It was, rather, a sort of masochistic joy that came from self-hatred, the catharsis of feeling entirely detested.
“Lynch,” he said, wondering if this was why Ronan dreamed his skin shredding. “We’re gone.” It felt like a declaration, a warning to outsiders, a promise, He felt the heat of Ronan walking close behind him, closer and more important than the inferno of Kavinsky’s cursed car.
He got in the BMW. Ronan revved the engine and the part of Gansey that was still ablaze roared with approval. He dismissed Kavinsky’s superficial dream: neon lights and pounding bass, the idea that such silly pursuits could be considered a life.
“You don’t see the appeal?” Ronan asked, and Gansey for a moment was back to wishing that he’d been the one to punch Kavinsky, remembered the incredible vision of the Molotov cocktail arcing through the air, the glorious orange flames spilling everywhere like a biblical flood.
But then he remembered walking through four seasons on one afternoon, standing, head bowed, in the tree’s great crevice, seeing the faint gleam of Glendower’s armor. Joy and anticipation tripping over one another in Gansey’s heart as he listened to the trees whisper in his head, Ronan’s furrowed brow as he struggled to translate.
They mattered. They were going to get Cabeswater back and Gansey was going to get Adam back while they were at his parents’. They were going to find Glendower.
Gansey glanced over at Ronan, this brother of his, this incredible creature. He desperately wanted to skip the weekend at his parents’, go back to where Cabeswater had been, tonight, and plead with the hot summer midnight to bring it back to him, to take him to Glendower. Maybe, since he was feeling selfish tonight, he’d make the request that always existed in the recesses of his mind, tormenting him with its blackness.
“When I’m gone,” he said instead, “dream me the world. Something new for every night.”