Work Text:
It was interesting the way that endings had their own feel even when objectively not much was actually changing.
Blue’s bedroom was the as it had always been. In fact, the only thing different was the old duffle bag she’d dug out of the basement and stuffed full of clothes and toiletries and a blanket and a few other things she’d deemed necessary. It sat on the foot of her bed along with her school backpack, also stuffed full. Somehow that changed the whole feel of the room. It wasn’t like she was moving out of anything. She was just going to be gone for a little while, but it still felt like something was ending. Maybe it was. Maura had always been diligent about giving Blue her independence, but this would still be the first time Blue had spent any long period of time away from her mother and the other women of Fox Way. All that new independence was bound to change someone.
Still she was excited. Last year this trip had seemed like an impossibility. It was amazing to actually be able to do it.
“Blue!” Calla yelled up the stairs. “Your Raven Boy is outside!” As if Blue’s window wasn’t open and she hadn’t the Pig pull up outside.
“Coming!” she hollered back, stuffing her feet into combat boots and flying down the steps with the laces still untied. She left the duffle bag and backpack on the bed; those were for bright and early tomorrow morning.
She hurtled into the kitchen and retrieved the perfectly ordinary fruit salad she’d made that morning from the fridge. Calla and Maura were sitting at the kitchen table watching with fond smiles on their faces.
“Tie your shoes before you trip,” Calla said.
“I’ll tie them in the car!” Blue called over her shoulder as she raced out of the house and into the bright early summer sunlight. It was summer, everything was going to be alright.
Gansey was just getting out of the Pig to come knock on the door. Blue almost reached him before she stepped on her shoelace and tripped. Gansey’s eyes widened and he only barely managed to catch the fruit salad before it hit the pavement. They stared at each other for a minute then Blue burst into laughter. “Calla told me to tie my shoes before I tripped,” she told him.
Gansey grinned. “Then I guess it’s good that I was here.” He set the fruit salad in the driver’s seat and turned back to hug her. No kisses. Even though Gansey hadn’t shown on St. Mark’s Eve this year, neither of them was quite ready to confirm that meant they could kiss without him dying.
When they broke apart, Blue circled to the passenger seat and got in. Gansey handed the fruit salad to her and got in as well. Blue looked into the back seat. It was just the two of them. “Where’s Henry?”
“He wanted to drive himself,” Gansey said. “I think he wanted to take his car on one last spin.”
“Does he know where the Barns are?” Blue asked.
“I gave him directions,” Gansey said. Officially speaking the Barns didn’t exist so you couldn’t exactly find it using Google Maps. “He should be fine.”
Gansey pulled the Pig out into the street. Blue had offered to let him drive the car Ronan had given her—they’d started to call it the Green Pig—these last few months to get used to it but he’d refused. She got the feeling that he regretted not being able to take his Pig on this trip, but was too aware of the problems with taking a car that reliably broke down on the drive between home and school on a cross country trip to mention it.
“Did you tell Ronan we’re on our way?” she asked, rolling down the window and smiling as the wind blew through her hair.
“He said to be there by two,” Gansey said. “We’re going to be there a little bit after so it’ll be fine.”
“Your phone’s still off, isn’t it?” Blue asked. After winning the battle of wills and cited studies about the benefits of gap years with his parents, Gansey had turned off his phone so he had a valid reason to pretend not to have known if they changed their minds. Sometimes he turned it on to make important phone calls, but overall, he was harder to reach than Ronan these days. It had been sort of funny at first, but it was starting to get old. Blue was glad he’d probably turn the thing back on once they were on the road and his parents couldn’t stop him anymore.
Overall, though, Blue did her best not to think about the cultured but undeniably giant blowout which had happened in the Gansey family when Gansey had announced his intention to take a gap year. She especially tried not to think about the fact that Gansey had eventually won that argument by agreeing to start college the next fall—"probably at Yale, Mom and Dad, possibly Harvard, but probably Yale.” He confided in Blue that he still thought he’d won on that front too because, “Yale has a good history program and it’s not like they can force me to major in law or something else stupid like that.” Still, Blue tried not to think about it because she didn’t like to be reminded that this year was simply delaying the inevitable: next fall Gansey and Henry would go away to fancy colleges and Blue would still be stuck in Henrietta. She knew that Gansey would give her all the money she needed if she asked, but she didn’t want to be in his debt like that—especially since she was fairly certain he’d never let her pay him back—so she made sure not to bring it up.
“You really should turn your phone back on,” she told him. “You’re eighteen now; it’s not like they can stop you.”
Gansey just shrugged and focused on the road.
~~~~
Even if you hadn’t known the Barns was literally magic, you would have felt something different about it. Being there felt a little like how you’d imagine stepping into a fairy tale did. It was the sort of place that radiated a feeling that here all things were possible.
Blue loved it. She’d grown up surrounded by magic, but the kind of magic the psychics of Fox Way practiced was a different kind of magic than the magic of the Barns. The magic of Fox Way was subtle and careful. It was easy to miss or brush aside as a lucky guess. The magic of the Barns was loud and ostentatious and uncanny. It was glorious and Blue loved it.
When she and Gansey arrived, preparations for a picnic were well underway. Ronan was in charge because it turned out he was the only one of the Raven Boys who could cook (Adam had been informed that knowing fifteen different spices to mix with rice did not count as cooking). Blue was a better baker than cook anyway, so she didn’t complain. She did question why Ronan and Gansey had subsisted on take-out, cereal, ramen and microwavable mac-n-cheese cups while living at Monmouth if Ronan had been able to cook the whole time.
“There’s no stove there,” Ronan explained, taking the fruit salad from her and somehow conjuring a place for it in the overpacked fridge. “How was I supposed to cook?”
“You could have bought one,” Adam spoke up from where he was shucking corn at the kitchen table. “It’s not like you two don’t have the money.”
Ronan and Gansey both shrugged like the idea had never occurred to them. Maybe it hadn’t.
Henry was a bit late. Turned out he had managed to get lost despite following Gansey’s directions to the letter. He first called Gansey and when Gansey obviously didn’t answer because his phone was off he called Ronan and Adam answered. Despite first Adam and then Gansey’s best efforts, Henry wasn’t able to find his way to the Barns despite it sounding like he was in the right place. Eventually, Ronan took the phone from Gansey, and Henry was arrived in five minutes. This led Blue to believe the Barns hid itself from new people, which was at once both utterly ridiculous and utterly unsurprising given the feel of the place.
Once Henry arrived things kicked into high gear. Adam and Ronan pulled a grill out of one of the outbuildings. It had no charcoal and no propane tank, but somehow it lit right up when Ronan tossed a match into it. No one questioned it.
Blue was put in charge of the other food while Ronan grilled because Ronan (correctly) judged her as the only other person who could be trusted not to accidently make the food inedible. Adam was pressed into service as the fetching things, so he spent a lot of time running back and forth. Gansey and Henry were (also correctly) judged as the most incompetent where food was concerned so they stayed out of everyone else’s way by attempting to teach Opal to play catch in the driveway. That ended rather quickly when they realized Opal was perfectly capable of taking a bite out of a baseball like it was an apple.
“Does she have guts?” Henry asked when he and Gansey finished relaying the story to Blue in the kitchen.
“I don’t think I want to know,” Blue said and set them to work cutting vegetables for the veggie plate that Ronan insisted was a vital part of any picnic. Who would have thought Ronan Lynch would ever be in the position of advocating for people eating their vegetables?
When all the food was done they laid it out on the kitchen table and countertops and filled their plates before going to sit on the front porch. The weather was beautiful and the air smelled like hope and new beginnings. The food was very good too—it turned out Ronan really did know how to cook.
Everyone went back for seconds and thirds—Opal went back for fourths and then ate her paper plate too. While they ate they talked only about good things. No mention was made of demons or death prophecies or dead fathers. It was good.
After lunch, they put the food away and went on a walk around the full perimeter of the Barns. Walking the Barns was not quite as uncanny was walking in Cabeswater had been—the Barns was not alive—but you still came across a number of odd, obviously dreamed features. For a start there were the sleeping cows. Most of them were still in the fields where they’d fallen asleep upon Niall Lynch’s death. None of the Lynch brothers had been at the Barns long enough afterwards to figure out how to move them—the cows might be dreams but they were just as heavy as real cows—but now that he was living at the Barns again, Ronan had plans to dream something that would make them easier to move.
“It feels wrong to leave them outside in the elements,” he mentioned.
There were lots of other things to discover as well. In the far back of the property they found a camouflaged wooden cover hiding a dark shaft that vanished into the ground. Henry kicked a rock into it and it fell out of sight before a horrible, hair-raising grinding emanated from the depths of the pit like the rock was being ground to bits. Ronan didn’t know what the pit was and admitted that he and Matthew hadn’t been allowed this far from the house so it was likely it had been here since Niall was alive. Given the horrible noise, they all decided they didn’t want to know what it did so they covered it up again so nothing fell into it and headed off again.
The rest of the walk was much less exciting and by the time they got back to the house the shaft had mostly faded in favor of ideas for what to do next. Unsurprisingly, there was a large assortment of lawn games in one of the outbuildings—Blue was fast realizing that just about anything could be found at the Barns if you knew where to look. They divided into teams—a feat that ended up requiring them to all take turns being the judge which in turn rendered the concept of teams rather useless. Still, time flew by until dusk when it was getting too dark to play anymore. They were just beginning to get set up for a bonfire and S’mores when a car pulled into the driveway.
Henry was the first to notice because he was in the process of carrying things outside. “Are we expecting anyone else?” he called through the screen door. “Because someone’s here. It’s a gray Volvo.”
Everyone else paused. Ronan and Adam looked at each other. “Told you he’d come if you asked him to,” Adam said quietly.
“It’s been hours; you’d decided he wasn’t going to show too,” Ronan growled. “Don’t kid yourself.”
Adam didn’t deny it.
A car door slammed and then someone was pounding up the steps and across the porch. The screen door banged against the wall and Matthew threw himself at Ronan in a full-on leap that nearly knocked Ronan off his feet. “Ronan!” Matthew squealed. “It’s so good to see you!”
“Good to see you too,” Ronan said, sounding a little like he’d gotten the wind knocked out of him.
“I’m sorry we’re so late,” Matthew said, speaking so fast Blue had a hard time understanding him. “I had to retake a test for school. Ms. Fischer said that if I didn’t retake it I’d fail sophomore year and Declan said that wasn’t acceptable so he helped me study real hard and then I went into school today and Ms. Fischer came in so I could take the test again and then when I was done we went back to the house to pick some things and came right here! How much did I miss?”
“Well you didn’t miss the bonfire and S’mores,” Ronan said. “I’m glad you made it.”
“I brought popcorn, jellybeans and chocolate chips,” Declan said from the kitchen doorway. Blue jumped. She’d been so focused on Ronan and Matthew’s reunion that she hadn’t even noticed the oldest Lynch brother come in. He was dressed in a suit as always and holding a Walmart bag that did indeed appear to contain popcorn kernels, jellybeans and chocolate chips.
“That’s an interesting combination,” Henry said.
“It’s hideous,” Gansey said. “Really, Ronan? You let me go all this time thinking that monstrosity was a you thing not a Lynch thing?”
“It’s even better when you mix caramel sauce and chocolate sauce in too,” Matthew said emerging from Ronan’s arms with a huge smile. Ronan and Declan at least had the decency to look a bit grossed out by that proposed addition.
“Alright, it’s good you came,” Ronan said to Declan his voice much more level that it usually was when the two brothers met. “We’re going to be starting the bonfire so if you’re making popcorn, you should start it now.”
“Alright,” Declan echoed with a nod and that was that.
~~~~
Blue half suspected the bonfire to be lit with some kind of dreamthing, but it turned out that Ronan and Adam planned to light the fire the old-fashioned way—at least it seemed like the old-fashioned way, though she supposed there was no guarantee the matches or firewood weren’t dreamed. In a surprisingly short time the fire was blazing.
Blue went inside to use the bathroom. On her way back out she peaked into the kitchen where Declan was hard at work making two huge vats of popcorn. A paper plate with some of the leftovers from their picnic feast was sitting on the counter next to him. Blue was going to continue on outside, but then Declan looked over his shoulder. “Can you take that out to Matthew?” he asked pointing at the plate. “I want him to eat some actual food before all this junk.”
“Sure,” she crossed the kitchen and picked up the plate.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Declan called after her as left the kitchen. “The popcorn’s almost done.”
Blue made her way back to the bonfire and handed the plate over to Matthew who pouted a bit but started eating when Blue told him that Declan said he should. Matthew listened to Declan like he was his father not his older brother, it was a bit unexpected, especially given the state of Declan and Ronan’s relationship. Blue had gotten used to thinking of Declan as the hated outsider of the Lynch family; Matthew’s obvious adoration of him was disconcerting.
Declan came out of the house about five minutes later, carrying two large bowls—turned out he’d thought of those who didn’t think the popcorn, jellybeans and chocolate concoction was edible. Matthew immediately held out his hands for the bowl with jellybeans and chocolate. Declan raised an eyebrow Matthew showed him the plate Blue had brought out which was somehow already empty. Declan handed the bowl over without comment and gave the other bowl to Gansey who looked very relieved to have some normal popcorn. Ronan passed sticks and marshmallows around and the bonfire was on for real.
There was a lot of talking and laughing and many sticky fingers. Blue and Henry tried Declan’s popcorn concoction and it turned out to actually be pretty good. Gansey jokingly muttered about being betrayed and took the normal popcorn over to sit with Adam who had said he, “abstained from that kind of culinary insanity on principle.”
Eventually, Gansey and Adam headed off to get more wood for the fire. Matthew jumped to his feet and announced that he was going inside for caramel sauce and chocolate sauce. He vaulted over his bench and bolted for the house. This left Declan and Ronan—who moved so he could better talk to Matthew—sitting on the same bench with no buffer between them. Both brothers fidgeted and avoided making eye contact.
“Thank you for inviting us,” Declan said after a while, his tone slow and halting. “It made Matthew really happy.”
“No problem,” Ronan said, equally slow and halting. “I’m glad he’s here.”
They lapsed back into silence until Ronan ventured, “Is he doing alright at his new school? He said he was flunking.”
“He didn’t study for a final,” Declan said. He was sitting very rigidly, staring into the fire. “Some of his friends decided they were going to go on some kind of trip instead of studying and talked him into coming with them. I was able to smooth things over with his teacher and he says the retake he did today was better.”
He lapsed into silence for a moment then went on, “I’m a bit worried about him actually. It’s not that he bends to peer pressure, it’s that I don’t think he knows was peer pressure even is. He believes the best in everyone, and I don’t want to know what would happen if he fell in with someone who wanted to manipulate him. We talked about it on the way down here, but I can’t tell if he listens to me half the time.”
Privately Blue thought that tonight she’d seen plenty of indication that Matthew listened to what Declan said to him, but she didn’t think it was her place to say.
“I could say something to him if you’d like,” Ronan ventured sounding like even he was a little surprised he was even offering. “Tell him about the importance of being your own person and not letting other people make your decisions for you.”
There was a long pause. “Sure,” Declan said right when Blue started to think he wasn’t going to respond at all. “If you would do that, that would be helpful.”
“Okay,” Ronan said. He looked like he was going to say something else but then the screen door slammed and Matthew pelted back across the dark grass, clutching two bottles to his chest. Blue wasn’t sure where he’d been able to find them. Caramel sauce and chocolate sauce didn’t seem like the kind of things Ronan would buy for himself; maybe he’d bought them knowing Matthew might be here today. Declan took another handful of the popcorn concoction and held the bowl out to Ronan who did the same. Then Declan offered the bowl to Blue and Henry. “Last chance,” he said quietly. “It only gets worse from here.” Blue and Henry took handfuls as well, just as Matthew leaped back over the bench.
“I’m back!” he announced the world’s biggest smile gracing his face.
Matthew joyously squirted the sauces into the bowl of popcorn and mixed it together with a spoon he conjured from his back pocket. They all watched in growing horror as the bowl turned into a sticky mess and Matthew dug in with relish. After a minute he realized everyone was staring at him. “What?” he asked. “Would you like some?”
Before anyone figured out how to say no without hurting his feelings Adam and Gansey were back, only they didn’t appear to have any wood. Instead they were lugging a large crate between them.
“What’s that?” Henry asked, looking a bit confused.
Adam and Gansey heaved the crate up onto the bench. “Fireworks,” Adam said grinning. “Are they dreamed or regular, Lynch?”
“I have no idea,” Ronan said, which answered the “does Ronan know everything you can find in the Barns” question. Then he grinned back. “Do you want to find out?”
“You bet we do!” Matthew plotted the popcorn concoction bowl into Declan’s lap and leaped to his feet. “Where did the matches go, Ronan? Where should we set them off?!”