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A Henrietta October is a storied thing: violently orange with autumn color, starch-stiff with tradition and ritual, stinking of pumpkin pie, rotten leaves, and pencil shavings. A Henrietta October was prone to worming into the heart of anybody susceptible to the allure of nostalgia.
Ronan Lynch was not one of those people.
Ronan Lynch was not susceptible to other people’s nostalgia; he had quite enough of his own to be getting along with. His brand of nostalgia was just as jagged and violent as the rest of him. It ate at him; it ravaged him. And it had nothing to do with pumpkin pie and pencil shavings.
One year and five months ago, Ronan had found his father’s body bloodied almost to the point of being unrecognizable. One year and five months ago, any nostalgia Ronan might have had was sharpened down to a fine, lethal point. One year and five months ago, Ronan left the Barns and his longing became just this: to go home, to go home, to go home.
Other people’s nostalgia paled in comparison. And the kind of vague, autumnal nostalgia that seemed to hang in the air in October—it sickened him.
“Gansey,” he said now, glaring towards where Gansey had just appeared at the entrance of Monmouth Manufacturing. “If that’s another pumpkin, I’m throwing it out the window.”
Gansey looked up guiltily. “It’s a gourd.” He had carried the thing in from his car, and now he was cradling it, looking defensive as a mother hen. Ronan wondered how early he had gotten up, and where he had managed to buy a pumpkin at seven in the morning. Probably he had found it by the side of the road: Gansey was very good at finding things, because things—even pumpkins—wanted him to find them.
“I know a fucking pumpkin when I see it.”
“Come on, Ronan,” Gansey said in his softly persuasive accent. “I love fall. I love pumpkins. Surely you guessed that when you moved in.”
“Never took you for such a basic bitch,” Ronan muttered, turning away. He sat down on the floor with his breakfast—a slice of cold pizza—and the only interesting reading material he’d been assigned all year: a copy of the Iliad in Latin.
Gansey thought by Ronan’s dismissal that he had won, and he lugged the pumpkin over to the window to place it lovingly on a stack of books, such that it was high enough to see from the street.
“For the trick-or-treaters,” he said, in Ronan’s direction. Ronan grunted.
“I’m surprised Halloween isn’t your thing, Lynch,” Gansey mused, as he collected his school things. “Everything’s dark and spooky. People want to be scared.”
“When they want to be scared, it’s no fun.”
“I’m sure you would find a way to make it fun,” Gansey said, dry as paper, and Ronan had to agree that he probably could, if he tried.
“Are you coming with me?” Gansey continued, throwing his bag heavily over one shoulder and shaking the keys of his Camaro. “I’m picking Parrish up on the way.”
“Pass,” said Ronan, injecting the words with as much bored disdain as he could muster. “Punch his dad for me.”
Gansey made a noise that might just have been acknowledgment, but for the soft note of helplessness at the core of it, and left.
Ronan remained on the floor for a few minutes, steeling himself for the day with difficulty. Nothing was pleasant about the morning, now that Gansey had left. The pumpkin looked at him smugly. When he finally got up, he walked over to where it sat precariously on the pile of old books, and poked it. It wobbled, treacherously. Ronan opened the window behind the pumpkin, leaned out, looked down at the parking lot below. It was empty except for his BMW—a bare lot, lonely and inviting. On some mornings, if he breathed in a huge lungful of the outside air, if he closed his eyes and blocked his ears, he could almost—almost—smell the air of the Barns. This was not one of those mornings.
Ronan pulled his head back in and considered the pumpkin. He poked it again; it wobbled again. He moved it to the windowsill, where it would be more stable. He poked it once more, and this time it toppled off the sill and smashed to the lot below: a riot of orange guts splashed out across the cement like a shout.
“Oops,” Ronan said to the empty room, and smiled.
#
School was a long, boring slog. It always was, but some days were worse than others. This long, boring slog seemed longer and more boring than any other day that month—the hours stretched ahead like desert sands under a baking sun.
“Wake up,” Adam said, poking him in the arm.
“No.” Ronan kept his eyes belligerently closed.
“This class is graded on participation, you know.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“I don’t think you know what participation is.”
“Participate in this, Parrish,” Ronan muttered, and flipped him the finger. Adam rolled his eyes and turned to his other side to join whichever group was sitting there, instead. Ronan couldn’t bring himself to care.
After lunch, Ronan walked across the grounds with Gansey, lead in his feet and an anvil on his shoulders. The day itself seemed to press him into the ground. All of it: the endless time between the start of a class and its end; the empty conversations around him; the mass of identical boys in identical uniforms wearing identical expressions; the heat of too many people breathing in small spaces. Only the grounds were a breath of fresh air, and even then, it was precious little time to take in the expanse of sky between squat brick buildings. He could feel how much Gansey loved this place, could feel it in every sigh Gansey let himself release at the sight of it, every muscle he let relax in every classroom. But he couldn’t make himself do the same. He felt only weighed down.
“Dick!” came a voice, and Ronan stiffened. The voice had come loud and arrogant and poisonous, like exhaust, and Ronan would have known that exhaust anywhere. Gansey looked up, his eyes narrowing. He didn’t like Kavinsky. Very few people did.
Ronan felt his heart speed up as Kavinsky approached. A vision of the white Mitsubishi disappearing in his rearview mirror flashed unbidden through his head—Ronan had raced him for the first time, last Friday. He had won handily, and the resulting adrenaline, he now realized, had never truly dissipated, had just gone dormant until Kavinsky reappeared.
“I heard you’re getting trick-or-treaters this year, Dick Dick Dick!” said Kavinsky, striding over with his hands in his pocket and Prokopenko close behind. His smile was a wide pane of glass revealing nothing on the other side, and his walk was an arrogant strut.
Gansey looked confused, and then annoyed.
“I don’t suppose you have younger siblings,” he said, coldly.
Kavinsky’s smile widened. “Nah,” he drawled, pulling the word out long and sticky, leaning back on his heels. “Just me, Dick. Always looking for something sweet.” He leered on the word “sweet” in a way that made Ronan’s teeth ache.
“I suggest you go elsewhere,” said Gansey, in that maddeningly regal, frosty tone that made even Ronan hate him a little. That wasn’t the real Gansey: it was the aristocratic, false Gansey that made Ronan want to throw him into the grime of Monmouth’s side-lot and roll him around, just to see his crisp white shirt dirtied.
“Don’t think I will, numero tres,” said Kavinsky, slowly. “But I take it this means you won’t be putting candy out for me?” He was talking to Gansey, but he was looking at Ronan. Ronan looked back, making his mouth a narrow line and his eyes narrower still. “You know what they say: if it’s not a treat, it’s a trick.” He grinned: teeth of nails and glass. “Maybe I’ll feel like a trick tonight.”
“Stay away from my place,” Gansey said. “Or—”
“Or what, Dick?” interrupted Kavinsky, turning to him abruptly, a laugh already in his voice. “You’ve got nothing I want. You’ve got nothing over me. I’m a free agent, baby,” he said, raising his arms over his head, his laugh rising unpleasantly from his chest like sewage from a broken line.
Gansey hesitated. “You’re right,” he said, finally. “And you’ve got nothing I want, either.”
Kavinsky stopped laughing, looked at him. His eyes narrowed. “Never said I did,” he said, the words hard.
“You don’t understand, Kavinsky,” said Gansey, cold as ice. “You’ve. Got. Nothing. Stay out of my way.” He pushed past him, his shoulder colliding hard with Kavinsky’s on his way through. Ronan’s heart juddered, deliciously, all his nerves suddenly perilously close to the surface. His hands flexed involuntarily.
“I’ve got tricks up my sleeve!” shouted Kavinsky after Gansey, his smile gone cruel and crooked. “Maybe I’ll give them to you tonight, all gift-wrapped and shit. Since you aren’t doing the neighborly thing.” Gansey had paused, and now he turned. He eyed Kavinsky up and down, critically. Ronan knew the look: he was looking for truth. He was judging the statement, and judging the statement-giver, and he was determining if they were worth his time.
It appeared they weren’t. “Come to my place,” he said, carefully, “and I’ll show you exactly what I have—what you don’t have. I’ll give you a hint, Kavinsky. It isn’t candy. It’s a place where they want you to be there.”
Ronan didn't get it. How could Gansey be so utterly unaware of the fact that Kavinsky was about to punch him? Ronan could see it in the set of Kavinsky’s shoulders, in the tautness of the skin at his knuckles, in his narrowed eyes. He could feel the punch in the air like an incoming storm.
Gansey turned away, and Kavinsky pulled back his fist.
Somebody said something—a warning—but Ronan was there before Gansey had time to react to it. Ronan pulled up his own fist and let it fly, feeling it land with a satisfying thwunk in Kavinsky's gut. Kavinsky doubled over immediately, presumably more from shock and defense against further attack than from actual pain—if Ronan knew anything about Kavinsky, it was that Kavinsky was probably drugged to the point of invulnerability by this time of day.
"Christ, Lynch," Kavinsky wheezed, somehow managing to sound both contemptuous and pleased through the gasp. "That all you got?”
"It'll be your nose next.”
"Ronan—” said Gansey, sharply. He looked white, but steady. "Enough. We're leaving."
"Better follow your better half, Lynch," crowed Kavinsky, straightening as Gansey pulled Ronan away, towards Latin. “I’ll see you tonight, bitches!”
#
Gansey was very quiet in Latin, and very quiet when they walked to the car park. Adam looked at Ronan, as if for an explanation, but Ronan just shrugged and turned away. He didn’t want to explain what had happened after lunch: Adam wouldn’t appreciate the fight, if you could call it that. His face would go tight and he would look away, like he was disappointed in them both. Ronan could play the whole scene out in his head without saying a word—Adam was predictable like that. Ronan let the other two climb into the Pig so that Gansey could take Adam to whatever miserable job he was working that night—if Gansey wanted to explain, he would.
Ronan went straight back to Monmouth and lay down on the floor next to the carboard Henrietta with headphones on, trying to get the stink of the school day off of him. He was still lying there when Gansey came in, alone. He had another pumpkin with him.
“Gansey,” Ronan said warningly.
“Ronan.” They looked at one another, then Gansey balanced the pumpkin on the pile of books where the other had been that morning.
“You and your fucking pumpkins,” Ronan muttered. He had pulled his headphones off, but now he moved to put them back.
“Wait.” Gansey reached over and pulled the headphones back off of Ronan’s head. He had a determined look to him, now that Ronan was paying attention. It wasn’t about the pumpkin, it was about something else. Gansey wanted something.
Ronan sat up. Gansey so rarely wanted anything that Ronan could give him, besides his time and company, but if Gansey was about to ask him for something, it meant he knew that Ronan could give it. Ronan already knew that whatever it was, he would give it to Gansey—no questions asked.
“I want you to show me how to fight.”
Well, maybe a few questions asked.
“Fuck you.” Gansey blinked. He was crouching in front of Ronan, and now he cocked his head to one side, looking just the tiniest bit hurt. He looked like a confused puppy.
“I’m fighting,” Ronan said helpfully.
Gansey laughed. “No, I mean fight fight. Throw a punch. You knew what I meant.”
Ronan had known, but he was trying to decide how to respond. The request wasn’t what he had expected, at all.
“If this is about Kavinksy—” he started, but Gansey interrupted.
“It’s not about Kavinsky.” He stopped, thought for a beat: “Well, it’s only a little about Kavinsky.”
“You can’t fucking fight him. It’ll make him worse.”
“It’s not just Kavinsky, Ronan,” Gansey said, and his face had gone thoughtful and speculative. “I think something… big is about to happen. Can't you feel it?”
Ronan could not.
“Something is coming,” Gansey said, and then he stood up, restlessly walking around the model of Henrietta and then moving to the window to look out across the street. “Something—I don’t know. Important. It feels like I need to be… ready. To fight.”
“Those pumpkin-spiced lattes are rotting your brain,” called Ronan, across the cardboard streets and buildings. “You ever think about switching to something with less sugar? Espresso? Tequila?”
But he felt the thrill of Gansey’s premonition, like a razor scraped close over skin. It sent a shiver down his spine. He hadn’t felt anything, but now he did, was the thing. Now that Gansey had said something, he had the impression of something looming on the horizon.
“Anyway, if Kavinksy does come around tonight, I want to not be completely useless.” Gansey turned away from the window, breaking the spell.
Ronan arched an eyebrow. “You think you can learn how to throw a punch in an afternoon?”
“Why not?”
“Fuck, man, I’m not Frankie Dunn.”
Gansey looked blank.
“Jesus. First we’re going to watch Million Dollar Baby, then I’ll teach you how to throw a punch.”
#
In the end they skipped watching Million Dollar Baby in favor of catching the last light of the October day. They stood in the parking lot of Monmouth, in front of the pumpkin, which they had placed with care on the roof of Ronan’s BMW. Ronan demonstrated how to throw a decent punch: hit with your body, not just your fist. Look where you're punching. Elbow at ninety degrees. Don't think about how much it will hurt.
When Gansey attempted to copy the movement, Ronan clicked his tongue. He was leaning against the Pig, his arms folded into his body against the slight evening chill.
“Keep your elbow up,” he said, crossly. “You’re flailing. And loosen up—you look like you’ve got a stick up your ass.”
“How could I possibly flail and look like I have a stick up my ass?” Gansey asked with exasperation. But he obligingly shook himself loose, like a wet dog, then balled up his fist and swung at the pumpkin again. “Like this?”
“No. And you’re gonna want to keep your thumb out, underneath the knuckles.”
Gansey removed his thumb from under his fingers and swung again. Ronan clicked his tongue again, and rolled his eyes.
“No—you—Gansey, your form is diabolical.”
“Well, aren’t you supposed to be teaching me?”
“Well, aren’t you supposed to be listening to me?” asked Ronan, in a high-pitched mimic of Gansey’s tone. “You want to defend yourself against more than a bee, don’t you?” he said, in his normal voice.
“Ronan. This is not very encouraging.”
“Okay, fine, here, let me just—” Ronan stepped forward until he was standing behind Gansey and took hold of him: one hand on his shoulder and one on his right arm. He pulled Gansey into position. As he did so, he had a sudden crashing sensation of all the years folding in on themselves like an accordion: he watched himself as a ten-year old be pulled into the same position by his father, in the driveway in front of the Barns. Love and familiarity and grief and horror overwhelmed him—he flinched, almost pulled back, almost dove into the BMW and drove away, could feel how close the Barns were, he could be there in twenty minutes—
And then Gansey threw a punch, and Ronan was dragged back to the present. The years unfolded again; it was just him and Gansey in the Monmouth parking lot. He wasn’t his father, he wasn’t ten years old, he was standing in the parking lot in front of his BMW and a pumpkin, and Gansey had just thrown a very bad punch.
“Like that?” Gansey asked. Ronan’s hands were still on his shoulder and arm.
“A little higher.”
#
#
Ronan coached Gansey for another thirty minutes before he let Gansey hit the pumpkin. It wasn’t bad, really: Gansey’s form wasn’t as terrible as it had been when they started and he managed to remember most of what Ronan had told him to do even when he was aiming for an actual object. But the pumpkin barely wobbled.
“Great,” Ronan said flatly. “And after you’ve tapped Kavinsky lightly on the cheek, you can kiss it better.”
Gansey looked affronted. “It was my first try.”
“Well, do it again. Harder this time.”
Gansey did it again. The pumpkin wobbled a little more this time, but Ronan caught Gansey’s expression just before he made contact: a wince of anticipation.
“Don't think about how much it’ll hurt,” Ronan said.
Gansey did it again; it wasn’t much better.
“Gansey,” growled Ronan, “Don’t think about how much it’ll hurt.”
“All very well and good for you,” Gansey said, resetting to a passable imitation of a boxer’s stance. “You probably have knuckle callouses, or whatever you get from boxing since the age of eight.”
Ronan rolled his eyes and marched over. He grabbed Gansey’s hand and held it flat, knuckles up, holding his other hand up next to it. Gansey’s hand was elegant and brown, Ronan’s just as elegant but paler.
“Do they look any different to you?” Ronan asked, his voice low and rough.
“…no.”
“It’s not about being tougher,” Ronan snarled. “It’s about looking at that fucking—pumpkin—and not thinking about how much it will hurt.”
He stepped back, arms crossed, and scowled at Gansey. Gansey looked flustered for all of two seconds, then he turned towards the pumpkin and threw his punch. He hit it true and hard: the pumpkin tipped over and rolled drunkenly off the car, hitting the ground with a thwump. It had cracked in two, so that Ronan could see the guts of it glistening through a crack in the rind.
“Good,” he said. “Next you can hit Kavinsky.”
#
Except, Kavinsky didn’t come.
They got some trick-or-treaters: kids driven up in minivans by moms who had heard, somehow, that an Aglionby boy was giving out candy and were just brave enough or curious enough to want to see it for themselves. Noah appeared at some point, gawked at the pumpkin guts in the driveway and then cheerfully helped to string fake spiderwebs across the length of the Camaro. And Adam appeared, too, eyed the pumpkin guts and then Ronan, before stealing three mini Snickers and pulling out his Calculus textbook. Ronan kept a wide berth; he didn’t want to be asked about the pumpkins or why Gansey was taking absentminded swings at the air when he wasn’t handing kids chocolate or peering around for a white Mitsubishi.
Gansey had spirited up another pumpkin from somewhere—Ronan hadn’t seen it happen, so hadn’t been able to object until it was too late. It sat resentfully next to the door of the large building. Gansey had also disappeared early in the night to put on his Halloween costume: a Jedi robe that made Ronan scoff, Adam roll his eyes, and Noah laugh delightedly. The kids loved it; several of them went wide-eyed at the sight of Gansey turning on the blue lightsaber he had—Ronan shuddered at the thought—purchased the week before. Gansey gave out chocolate to children that Ronan tried not to glare at for the sin of being young, and Ronan leaned on the back of the BMW and watched the street. He felt like a compressed spring—aware, always, of Gansey’s elbow, kept at ninety degrees as he popped an imaginary Kavinsky in the nose, of Adam’s furrowed brow over his Calculus notes, of Noah furtively stringing spiderwebs over the mirror of the BMW when he thought Ronan wasn’t looking, and of the empty, stretching street.
Long after the last mom in a minivan had driven away slowly, looking back at the Monmouth Manufacturing with a not-unreasonable amount of confusion, the four of them remained in the parking lot, eating a pizza that Gansey had ordered and listening to Gansey talk about his next plan for the ley line hunt. Ronan wasn’t listening. His whole body was tuned to the sound of the traffic down adjacent streets, and to the shape of Gansey’s fingers curling around his thumb. (He glared at it, and Gansey, as if aware he was looking, stretched his hand out and reformed the fist with his thumb over the knuckles.)
After a while, Adam gathered his books and left the lot on his old bike. He paused on the street, head turned just barely towards the other three, wanting to know but unwilling to ask. Ronan watched him go; Gansey didn’t. Gansey hadn’t said anything about Kavinsky—he seemed to anticipate, just as Ronan had, what Adam’s reaction would be. When Adam finally leaned into his pedals and squeaked down the street towards home, Ronan took a slow breath. Now, Kavinsky would come.
But he didn’t.
Noah disappeared, too. Ronan forgot to watch him leave. It was just Ronan and Gansey, and the night felt like it was contracting to a point. Gansey stripped off the ridiculous Jedi robe in one smooth motion, moved to stand with Ronan against the BMW, and they looked out into the night, down the black stretch of empty street. It was very late.
“Not that I expected him to be punctual,” said Gansey, mildly. He said it like there had been a first part of the sentence. Maybe there had been.
Ronan opened the passenger seat door of the BMW and fumbled in the glove compartment. He found what he was looking for, slammed the door satisfyingly behind him. He took a swig from the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and then offered it to Gansey, who wrinkled his nose.
“Come on,” said Ronan, pushing the bottle at him. “Numbs your knuckles.”
“I suppose I don’t want to know why you’re keeping this in your car,” said Gansey, taking the bottle but holding it at arm’s length.
“Parents’ Night,” Ronan replied, baring his teeth.
“No,” said Gansey. “I don’t want to know.” He hesitated, then took a swallow. “Jesus Christ—" he choked out between coughs. “That’s vile.”
Ronan took back the bottle. “Drink to forget.” He grinned a real grin this time.
“What’s Kavinsky got against you, anyway?” Gansey asked abruptly.
“Fuck if I know,” said Ronan, on instinct. Then he frowned. “What do you mean, against me? You’re the one he threatened to gift-wrap, or whatever the fuck.”
Gansey looked thoughtful. “He only says that stuff when you’re there.”
Ronan took a gulp of whiskey. He hadn’t known that. He’d always thought Kavinsky hated Gansey with the specific kind of hatred that one kind of rich asshole had for Gansey’s kind of rich asshole. Which was to say: Gansey wasn’t enough of a rich asshole for Kavinsky’s taste.
“Dunno,” he said, finally. “He’s a fucking retard, what do I know what he’s thinking.”
Ronan felt Gansey’s wince without needing to see his face.
“Jesus, Lynch. Just when I thought you couldn’t get more offensive.”
“I can always get more offensive.” But when Gansey didn’t say anything, Ronan felt the shame creep in. “Whatever,” he said, finally, grudgingly. “He’s a fucking dumbass, then.” It was as close to an apology as he could bear to get, and he felt Gansey relax next to him.
They didn’t say anything for a while. Still, Kavinsky didn’t come. But the night had expanded again, while Ronan wasn’t looking. Time seemed to wheel away from them, like Adam on his squeaky bike, like the minivans with squealing children packed into the bench seats, like the stars overhead. Suddenly the Henrietta nights didn’t seem so bad, seemed almost bearable, even. He couldn’t smell the Barns, but he could smell smashed pumpkin and whiskey and chocolate and whatever expensive cologne Gansey was wearing. It didn’t smell like nostalgia; it smelled like the present.
“Let’s practice,” Gansey said suddenly. He pushed off the BMW and turned to face Ronan, fists in front of his face.
Ronan regarded him, letting his head tilt back lazily. “You’re drunk, shithead,” he said, although Gansey hadn’t had more than a few swallows of whiskey.
“I’m not,” Gansey said. “I’m sotally tober,” he added, and laughed.
“I wish I was drunk,” muttered Ronan, and took another swallow to prove his point. Then he put down the bottle and pushed off the car. Gansey backed away, his eyes now revealing just a touch of wild-eyed panic, although he was grinning even more wildly.
“Pretend to be Kavinsky,” he said, hopping up and down on the balls of his feet.
Ronan thought for a second. “Where’s your girlfriend, Dick?” he said, letting his lips curl. “Fucking his gearshift?”
Gansey let his fists drop and cocked his head to one side. “That was… frighteningly accurate.”
Ronan punched him in the gut. It was quick but not hard, and when Gansey doubled in on himself it was more from surprise than anything else.
“What—the hell!” Gansey wheezed, still doubled over and backing away a few steps.
“I’m Kavinsky. And you gave me an opening.”
“You’re an ass,” Gansey said, coming back up to a boxer’s stance more warily.
“You wanted to practice.”
They circled each other, fists up. Gansey looked tentative now, more on-guard. Ronan was grinning; he couldn’t help it. His pulse was racing, he felt drunk. A part of him was still listening for the white Mitsu, but it was a rapidly diminishing part of his attention.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” confessed Gansey, when they had been circling for a few moments.
“Throw a punch.”
“Now?” asked Gansey, warily.
“Do it,” Ronan said sharply. Gansey darted a fist forward and Ronan slipped it. Gansey, emboldened, tried the one-two combo that Ronan had taught him earlier.
“Elbow up.”
Gansey did the same one-two punch, but kept his elbow up.
“Good,” Ronan said, bobbing back up from his dodge, then let his own fist fly, tapping Gansey on the shoulder. Then, while Gansey was distracted, he punched him on the forearm that was still blocking his face.
“Ow.” Gansey hastened backwards. Ronan grinned with all his teeth.
They circled each other a bit longer, then Gansey darted forward and jabbed with his left arm. Ronan hadn’t been expecting it; he swayed, but it was a close miss. When he came back up, he pulled the same trick—jabbed forward with his left hand, hitting Gansey’s other forearm.
“Ow!” Gansey said again.
“Better learn how to dodge, shithead,” Ronan crowed. He had forgotten about Kavinsky; Gansey was all he could see, all he could hear. They were panting, the rapidly cooling night air was a tonic to hot skin, Ronan felt alive for the first time in months. They were truly sparring now; it wasn’t a matched fight, but Gansey was taking it seriously and Ronan couldn’t let his guard down. The only sounds were the scuffing of their shoes and their own breathing, and the occasional soft thunks of Ronan’s fists against Gansey’s forearms or shoulder.
When Gansey finally landed a punch, he laughed. It hadn’t been hard, but it had been fair, and it had been solid. Ronan skipped back a step but he hadn’t had to: Gansey laughed, and then he stepped back and let his fists drop.
“Ow,” he said, for the third time, stretching out his fingers and wincing. Ronan knew Gansey would be bruised tomorrow—not terribly, but noticeably. He felt a strange kind of knifing pleasure, knowing that he’d see it under the cuffs of Gansey’s school shirt in the morning, before Gansey pulled down his sleeves for class. The pleasure was almost immediately followed by a wave of hot guilt.
“Aren’t we supposed to be wearing gloves, or something?” Gansey asked, examining his knuckles and wincing when he prodded the tender skin between wrist and elbow.
“You gonna make Kavinsky put on gloves before you miss his nose by a yard?” Ronan asked scornfully. He regretted the words as soon as he said them: just saying Kavinsky’s name brought the boy back, made the moment about him.
“I just don’t want my wrists to feel like they’re falling off,” Gansey said, shaking his hands out. “Maybe you just get used to it?” He looked hopeful.
“I know a good wrist exercise,” Ronan said, and leered.
Gansey rolled his eyes. “I don’t get as many bruises from—that—” he said, and went a little pink.
After a moment they returned to lean against the car, and Ronan picked up the bottle of whiskey. He felt like he had worked something out of himself, over the sparring. He felt a little looser in his skin, in a way that didn’t have anything to do with drinking. They passed the bottle of whiskey back and forth, and although Ronan began to suspect that Gansey wasn’t drinking as much as Ronan was when he had the bottle, Gansey did eventually slide down the side of the BMW to sit on the ground with a pleasantly addled expression of contentment.
“You’re quite good at it, you know,” he said suddenly, his eyes barely open.
“Boxing?” Ronan scoffed. “I’d better be. My dad’s only been teaching me how to do it half my life.” Those words, without warning, cut him open—quickly and cleanly. They flayed him neck to pelvis, like a fish, every bone exposed, the soft flesh of him ready for eating. His father had started teaching him how to box when he was seven or eight; that was half his life now, but it wouldn’t be, on his next birthday. He would never box with his father again, and soon the time his father had spent with him would be a short part of his life swimming in the ocean of years. Ronan quivered under the weight of the realization.
But Gansey hadn’t meant that.
“No, not boxing. Teaching. You’re good at teaching. Better than you’ve got any right to be.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” spat Ronan, the anger at himself, and at his father for dying, and at the world for killing him, coming out as poison-tipped arrows aimed at the wrong enemy.
“Oh, you know,” Gansey said lightly, ignoring the misdirected venom, letting his hand wander around his head in bizarre, aimless shapes. “You’re so… angry.” Ronan glared at him. “Like that! Exactly. But you taught me so well! You only got a little angry!”
Ronan looked away, suddenly finding that he had to suppress a smile. It was true. His anger was cooling already, under Gansey’s impenetrable tipsy mildness. He slid down the side of the car to sit next to him.
“I’m a regular Sean Maguire,” he muttered.
“Who?”
“Jesus, Gansey. From Good Will Hunting?” At Gansey’s shrug, Ronan rolled his eyes. “And people think my family kept me under a rock.”
“We can watch it later,” Gansey said happily. Then, “I don’t think Kavinsky’s coming.”
It was late—early—and Ronan had to agree. Either Kavinsky was planning to arrive with the sun, or he had blown them off. But Ronan didn’t want to give up quite yet—or rather, he wasn’t ready to go inside. The night was a little cool, but the asphalt under them was warm, and the bottle of whiskey wasn’t empty, and Gansey was drinking for once. He felt like he had reached out for Kavinsky’s shirt lapels and grabbed something else: something that was alive and warm; something that mattered. He wrapped his fingers in it and held it close.
They sat under the starving sky and Gansey dropped his head on Ronan’s shoulder and they looked up together.
“Something big is coming, though,” Gansey said, seriously. He was looking up at the stars, picking at his shirt sleeve, poking at the bruises on his forearms absently. He had taken up the thread of a conversation from earlier in the day. “I think—I think I was supposed to do this, even if it isn’t for Kavinsky’s sake.”
Ronan stayed quiet. He didn’t usually understand Gansey’s premonitions and prophecies, but he felt this one swell in his chest like the first gush of snowmelt flowing into a dry riverbed. It threatened to burst the banks; he thought he wouldn’t be able to contain the hope that soared through him. It was too much, too fast. He pushed it away. Whatever big thing was coming, he wouldn’t guess at it. For now, he was content with this: whiskey, stars, Gansey’s head on his shoulder. He put a careful finger on Gansey’s wrist, over one of the blossoming bruises. He could feel Gansey’s pulse beating under his finger. Gansey’s pulse was speeding up.
“Yeah,” said Ronan, finally. “I think you were, too.”
#
That night, in the two hours of sleep he fell into before Gansey pounded on his door to wake him up for school, Ronan dreamt of boxing. He was boxing with Gansey—or at least, he thought they must have been—he fell into the middle of the scene, he and Gansey facing off in twin boxers’ stances, hands bruised and bloodied. They stood like that, the dream pulsing around them, until Ronan reached forward and took hold of Gansey’s hands. He took them and turned them around and looked at them, and then he reached into—he didn’t know, the ether, the dream space, nothingness—and pulled out a pair of leather boxing gloves.
The gloves were soft brown leather: used already, worn to softness. Ronan knew they would fit Gansey perfectly. Dream Gansey was watching him.
“You’re so angry,” he said.
Ronan frowned, looking at him.
“You’d be a better teacher if you weren’t so angry.” Dream Gansey’s head was cocked to one side, in a surreal imitation of Gansey’s familiar gesture.
Ronan shook his head. “You didn’t say that,” he said, to Dream Gansey. Then to the dream: “That’s not what he said.”
The dream mutated, went dark and muddy. There was a sound behind him. When Ronan looked, there was a creature coming towards him—awful and black and beaked.
“No,” said Ronan—whispered it, then shouted it: “No!”
But the creature came for him, and, bizarrely, snapped for the leather gloves in Ronan’s hands. Ronan yanked them back, wishing desperately for wakefulness—the creature snapped forward again, tearing at the gloves—Ronan tore them back, was unwilling to give the gloves up, they were perfect, he wanted them—
The sound of Gansey knocking on his bedroom door pulled him gasping out of sleep. His first thought was the night horror—he looked around the room from where he was floating above his paralyzed body, but it hadn’t come with him. He would have breathed a sigh of relief, if he could have.
It wasn’t until he could move his hands again that he felt them: soft leather between his fingers. He allowed himself to hope right up until the moment he held his hand up to see what he had brought back. Clutched between his fingers were not gloves, but the scraps of gloves; he held a pile of ragged strips, mutilated pieces of soft brown leather.
He dropped his hand and stared at the ceiling until he could sit up, disappointment like a bitter poison in his belly. Why had he thought he could bring those back? He had never been able to choose. He was never enough. It was always this: scraps of something, of himself, wrested from something bigger.
When, later, Gansey commented on the leather bands wrapped around his wrist, Ronan didn’t explain. He only let the anger burn deep and hot, and wished for more of something he couldn’t name, and for Gansey’s premonition to come true, and for the chance to go home.