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When Gansey first collects Adam, Ronan is certain he’s going to contract something from the sheer increase in Gansey’s daily sigh-count.
“Jesus, Mary and fucking Joseph,” he grits out, as Gansey sinks heavily into the mattress next to him, exhaling heavily. Even his posture looks pitiful. He’s a crumpled napkin. “What’s Parrish said to you this time?”
“Ronan, dear,” he says. “I’ve asked him to hang out eight times this week.” He lays down and covers his eyes with the backs of his hands. “It’s not even Friday. Everytime I talk to him I feel like he’s trying to shove me out a catflap. What about my shoulders?” He sinks down further, despondent. “He hasn’t thought of my shoulders.”
The straps of Gansey’s wristwatch stand out against the pale skin of his arm. The sight of it is like a magnet. Ronan wants to reach over and chew on the straps like they’re his own leather bracelets.
Instead, he says, “I thought you said you were friends now. In Latin you said those exact words. ‘Parrish and I are friends now, how marvelous’,” he affects his voice, pitches it high in his throat. Gansey glares at him through his fingers for his trouble. “I remember because I threw up in my mouth.”
“Well,” Gansey says. “Well, it’s like I’ve said. We’ve started to study together in fifth period. He even let me look at his Calculus notes today.”
“Scandalous,” Ronan mutters.
“But,” he sighs. “He doesn’t seem to want to hang out outside of school.”
Gansey pouts as he says this, and the pull of it creases his boyking face. Ronan has to lean forward slightly to press a kiss to his forehead. Gansey grins up at him, quietly delighted at the affection.
As he pulls away, he asks, “What do you say to him when you ask to hang out?”
“Today, I asked him if he wanted to join me at Nino’s,” Gansey says, despairing. “It’s Two-for-One Thursday. I thought everyone loved Two-for-One Thursday.”
Ronan hums.
“Maybe it’s too formal,” he says.
“How’d you mean,” asks Gansey. “Nino’s is not formal.”
“Well,” he says. “If you’re only ever studying and shit, just do that outside of school. Not just some random thing. Like pizza or whatever.”
“You think?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Ronan rolls his eyes. “He’s your pet or whatever. Maybe.”
Gansey groans and practically slides onto the floor.
“I thought I knew him,” he says, mostly ignoring Ronan.
Ronan rolls his eyes. “So fucking dramatic,” he says. “It’s just a simple conclusion. You know what classes he takes, not his life story. You’re friends because of nerd shit. Ergo, ask him to hang out and do nerd shit.”
“So, I should just ask him to study with me after school?” Gansey takes his hands away from his eyes to look at Ronan. Seeking confirmation, comfort.
“I think so,” Ronan shrugs. In Gansey’s dramatics, his pristine hair has become disheveled. Ronan tucks a stray lock behind his ear. “Or…”
“What?”
“Is he into nerd shit like history?” He shrugs again. “Like your King shit? Glendower?”
“Oh!” Gansey exclaims. “You think I should invite him this weekend? You’d be okay with that?”
Ronan ducks his head and kicks at Gansey’s ankle.
“I don’t fucking know,” he mutters, shy suddenly. The mystery of Glendower has only ever reached the edges of their tight circle. Gansey let him in and it was just theirs for a while. Awfully, brilliantly, theirs. And then Gansey had mentioned that Noah was interested, and that had been fine, because Noah could dart in and out of the secret like a firefly, so it still felt like theirs. But Adam? Adam was solid. Sturdy. He wasn’t someone to do things half-heartedly. He’d put his foot down. Settle right into it, brushing shoulders and knocking knees. “Maybe.”
Gansey is beaming. Ronan can feel the brightness of it shining towards his face.
“Excellent,” he says, thrilled. “I’ll ask him tomorrow,”
He gets up, stretching. Ronan watches his back. He reaches out to touch his shoulder blade absentmindedly, just because he can. Just before Gansey leaves the mattress, presumably to piss or to look for a milk carton to drink directly out of, he leans over and presses a soft kiss to his lips.
“Thank you, Ronan,” he says as he pulls away, smiling.
“Whatever, Dick,” Ronan scowls, blushing. He is not immune to Gansey.
--
Adam Parrish is in the back seat of the Pig.
Ronan engineered this specifically, by commandeering the passenger seat that morning, getting into the car before even Gansey, waiting like a kid excited for a road trip.
This way, he can watch Parrish through the wing mirror, covert as he likes.
It’s not a crush, not exactly. More of a curiosity. Parrish has piqued his interest.
Parrish continues to keep Ronan’s interest steady in the palm of his hands when he breaks the silence of the car ride to ask a question.
“So,” he says, casually. “When did y’all get together?”
Ronan raises his brows. He turns to Gansey, easy reflex.
Gansey is holding Adam’s gaze in the rearview mirror, tongue poised between his teeth. He’s making a judgment, surveying his court. Ronan tilts his head slightly in approval, and knows that Gansey will catch the movement in his periphery.
“Last year,” he says, finally. “Officially, anyway.”
Adam nods. Something about the way he moves is guarded. He rests his head against the window.
“And unofficially?”
Ronan smirks.
“Wouldn’t you like to know Parrish?”
“I would,” he replies, sure in himself. He meets Ronan’s eyes in the wing mirror. “That’s why I asked.”
“About six months before that,” Gansey answers, an unavoidable quirk to his lips. “Though I believe there was a lot of quote unquote practice kissing involved before either of us voiced any actual interest in each other.”
A snort from the backseat.
“Very rom-com of you,” Adam says, running a finger along the window. He makes a clean path in the light layer of dust, a window within the window, that he peers out of.
“What’s funny,” Ronan scowls. “Are you homophobic or something?”
Adam laughs brightly. It fills the car, electric.
“Obviously not,” he says, eyes squinting with mirth.
“Why’s that obvious?”
Adam holds his gaze in the wing mirror, still grinning.
“No reason,” he says.
--
After the trip into the forest, Adam does slip easily into their duo as he’d expected.
Their outing had been mostly uneventful. Adam and Gansey had crowded around a map as Ronan had sat on the hood of the Pig watching them, feigning disinterest. They were easy people to watch. They were both handsome, boyishly so. Gansey was, of course, clean-cut and princely, and he had pulled out his a thousand-watt smile for the occasion. Next to him, though, Adam was just as strikingly beautiful, like a model from an obscure magazine. It was clear that he wasn’t exactly aware of just how attractive he was -- the way he carried himself gave it away. Every once in a while he would rub at his forehead where sweat was beading slowly across his hairline, and something in Ronan’s gut would lurch, the same way it did when he had a sudden urge to touch, kiss, or be near Gansey.
Ronan had pushed the feeling down, tired of his traitorous body. He didn’t like feeling greedy. But it was hard not to, when Adam was there, right there.
Ronan already knew that Gansey had a crush on Adam. That ship had sailed. What was strange though, Ronan felt, was how he couldn’t find it in himself to be envious of Adam. Maybe it was because he was already the object of Gansey’s affections, maybe he was settled and comfortable in that role already. What he did feel though, bizarrely, was envious of Gansey.
Where Ronan and Gansey were comfortable in each other’s presence, so much so that Gansey made as much an impression on him as an armchair if he was to walk into a room with him in it, Ronan and Adam were constantly at odds with one another.
The air between them was constantly tense, the words between them often biting. It was like as soon as they got a good look at each other they found something to comment on, snarling at each other like bad dogs off the leash.
But it was obvious to Ronan that Adam was preening under Gansey’s approval. He hid it well, in extremely artful calculations. But like recognises like. Ronan frequently caught Adam’s under-brow glances that he shot at Gansey, once he had turned away. They were hungry looks, they wanted more. Ronan saw himself in those looks, as if Adam himself was a glassy mirror pane.
Despite everything in him that told him to be happy with his lot, he couldn’t help himself. Hewanted to be the object of Adam’s hunger. Hewanted to feel those eyes on the back of his neck.
--
One night, Ronan leaves his headphones in his room and walks out into the center of Monmouth like a flower turning toward the sun.
Gansey is, as expected, kneeling at the site of worship, cardboard and scissors and Elmer’s glue settled around him. His hands are deft, cutting and sticking. A precise routine. Ronan moves quietly so as to not disturb him, watching him all the while.
He grabs a mug from the kitchen (they own no glasses) and fills it with tap water.
“Can’t sleep,” Gansey says, and it’s both a question and a statement of fact. He’s taken out his left headphone, the ear that’s facing the impression of a kitchen that Monmouth is putting on for them, and the tinny sounds of Billie Armstrong echo along wood floors and the concrete ceilings.
“Every time I closed my eyes,” Ronan says. It leaves something unsaid, but it is still a complete sentence. Gansey knows this, and inclines his head slightly. He’s a young animal communicating with another. Words need not be spoken. No amount of I’m sorrys would ever fill a God-shaped hole.
And it might be hard to explain, to some, why Niall Lynch’s death was a cataclysmic event, why it was seismic. That what it left behind was bigger than a boy without a father, but a boy without a landscape to grow up in. That it wasn’t just that his future was now uncertain, but that the fate he’d always been prophesied having had been torn, cruelly and cleanly out of reality.
But Gansey knew, because Gansey just knew things. He just did.
“You look handsome,” Ronan says, now, very quietly. Because it’s easy. Because they can’t sleep. Because this, of all things, is never a question.
“You look like you just woke up,” Gansey says, sighing slightly, and rubbing his eyes like he just realized that he, in fact, would not look like he just woke up until the afternoon. Not during class, but likely in a twenty-minute window that would be bookmarked either side of it.
“You’re welcome,” Ronan replies, because he knows that Gansey finds sleep attractive on anyone. A kind of coveting that bleeds into a tendency to want to kiss softly. “Dick.”
“C’mere,” Gansey says, quietly, turning fully towards Ronan and reaching out his hand for him to fit his jaw to.
Ronan lets himself be beckoned, following like there’s a ribbon around his middle tying him to Gansey, and lets himself be kissed. Because it’s Gansey. It’s nighttime, he’s tired, and it’s Gansey. His is the only love he can live in.
His is the only love he could ever let himself taint.
--
“Oh, hello Parrish.”
Ronan waits in the bathtub, watching the cold tap leak lazily onto the white porcelain. Adam’s muffled voice sounds in reply, the lilt and valleys of his accent still discernible when even words were not.
“Well,” came Gansey’s drawn-out reply. He tugs the 'e' out, Weeeeellllll. Ronan grips the tap and twists it tightly. The drip still does not stop. Drip drip drip. It’s starting to pool in the bottom of the bath. Ronan tucks his legs under him, so he’s kneeling instead of sitting cross-legged. It hurts his knees a little. “I was about to shave Ronan’s head, but you can come in and wait if you’d like.”
Ronan feels himself flush at the way Gansey says it, and hopes it won’t be noticeable in the dim lighting of Monmouth. I was about to shave Ronan’s head. Like Ronan couldn’t shave it himself. The idea of Adam knowing just how much he allowed himself to be taken care of by Gansey was suddenly, startlingly embarrassing.
“Can I watch?” Adam asks curiously, filling up the spacious room with his presence as soon as he passes the threshold of the door.
“Take us out to dinner, first,” Ronan replies, raising his voice ever so slightly so he can be heard. He turns his head back to face them, no longer bending it forwards in prayer.
“I thought we had surpassed your three date rule by now,” Adam says, dumping his sorry-looking bag on the floor. He beelines towards Ronan, pulling both the toilet seat and lid down, and sitting on top of the tank, his feet on the lid. His dusty hair flops in his eyes, and he just out his bottom lip and puffs air upwards to push it out of the way.
Gansey smiles at the two of them, the fond look of someone proud that their two pets are being introduced without bloodshed. He scratches his right palm with his left hand like he’s trying to remember something. Maybe the whereabouts of his camera. Ronan turns back towards the taps to avoid the moment being captured on film. My Boys, Gansey would likely scrawl on the back of it, slipping it into his journal. Ronan’s teeth grind at the thought.
“Now where were we,” Gansey mumbles to himself, reaching towards the clippers where they were perched on the corner of the bath. He fiddles with the settings with one hand, and scratches absentmindedly at Ronan’s scalp without even looking at him. The sensation of his blunt nails soothes Ronan, but unlike Gansey, he’s still alert in the company of Adam. His presence glares at him like a firefly.
“Not now, Dick,” he says, only a little affectionate. The idea of Adam being privy to their relationship doesn’t unnerve him, but the very fact that it doesn’t, does. “We have a guest.”
“I don’t mind,” Adam says.
“See, Ronan,” Gansey comments, still twisting the settings of the clippers back and forth. “Don’t be such a stick in the mud.”
“Just switch it to six millimeters,” Ronan says, ignoring him. “Grade two.”
Gansey clucks his tongue between his teeth at Ronan’s impatience, but he hears the switch of the clippers, and the plastic sound of the guard being slipped onto them.
“Wait,” Ronan says. “Let me just take my shirt off.”
“Wow,” Adam drawls immediately. “Remember you have guests present.”
Ronan rolls his eyes, tugging at the back of his tank top. He folds it, and leans to put it down next to the tub. If Adam raises an eyebrow at his neatness, Ronan doesn’t see it, because he’s facing the taps again steadfastly within seconds.
“Don’t want hair in my shirt,” he says to the wall. “It’s itchy.”
This time, when Gansey puts his hand on the back of Ronan’s head, he lets himself be guided. The clippers buzz on, and the cool cut of them glides against his nape so gently that he closes his eyes. It always makes sense to close his eyes when Gansey shaves his head. This is an easy routine. Adam, who had been standing out to Ronan like a sore thumb, quiets. Somehow, there’s no problem in relaxing, even when he knows he’s being watched.
“Does it feel colder?” Adam asks, breaking the silence.
“Hm?” Gansey pauses, the clippers still buzzing above Ronan’s head.
“Lynch,” Adam redirects. “Does it feel cold after he buzzes it?”
Ronan still doesn’t answer for a moment, before he realizes the question is directed at him. Before he realizes that Adam is asking him, meaning Ronan, whether it is cold after he, meaning Gansey, buzzes his hair for him.
The innocuousness of the question surprises him.
“No,” he says, honestly. “Well, kind of. I don’t think I notice as much anymore.”
It’s not his usual biting reply, but having his hair cut always makes him tired. The cool metal of the razor against his scalp relaxes him.
“I think I would get too cold,” Adam comments.
“We live in Virginia,” Ronan snorts, but allows himself to be guided back into position when Gansey tuts and taps at his neck, two fingers on his pulse point. “Plus, your hair is like, soft, anyway. It can’t be that warm. You wouldn’t be losing much protection.”
“His hair is soft?” Gansey asks, the quirk of his mouth audible.
“Softer than yours,” Ronan grumbles immediately, looking for someone to poke fun at.
Gansey hums again and, finished, clicks the clippers off. He runs his palm over the back of Ronan’s head.
“Yours is soft too,” he says, and Ronan can hear the lick of something mischievous in his voice before he acts on it. “Always is, after a buzz. Feel, Parrish.”
“What?” Adam says, startled.
Ronan glances back to see Gansey beckoning Adam over from the toilet, watches how he puts his steady hand over the back of Adam’s angular one.
Gansey guides Adam’s head to Ronan’s neck. He moves slowly, coyly, making sure either of them have the chance to voice an objection if they want to. They both remain quiet, unwilling to break the dreamlike quality of the moment. Neither of them want to.
Adam’s hand is cautious, unsure. He brushes it up and down, quickly, under Gansey’s observation. Its glancing with Ronan’s head is brief.
“Huh,” he says, quietly. “It is soft.”
The three of them stay still, their breathing the only soft sounds in the room. It’s a stalemate. Nobody wants to break first.
“I would have thought,” Adam says, finally, “that it’d be prickly.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Gansey replies. He lets go of Adam’s hand and squeezes Ronan’s shoulder once, twice, before heading towards his bedroom.
Ronan stands and shakes the hair off his body, before stepping out of the tub. He reaches down to grab the tank top, pulling it on. Afterwards, he finds that Adam’s eyes are still, unquestionably, on him.
“What are you looking at, Parrish,” he says, just to have something to say.
Adam’s gaze meets his after a few lazy moments.
“You,” he says, his lips twitching like he’s trying not to smile. And then, he turns and heads to Gansey’s room.
And Ronan is the one left like a boat in the ocean, untethered and unsure.
--
“Lynch,” Adam says, grabbing his arm as he leaves Latin. Gansey wasn’t there due to some previous engagement involving rowing or track or being the future president’s son. This left Whelk without a reliable teacher’s pet and Ronan without a reliable shoulder to hide behind.
“What,” he says, deadpan. Adam sure is pretty up close. Ronan had tried so hard to make sure he never had to see him up close.
Adam drags him to an empty classroom and, still with his hand clasped around Ronan’s bicep, pushes him to sit on a table. Ronan feels like his dog.
“I feel like we should talk about how you don’t like me,” Adam says directly. “Gansey keeps asking me to hang out. And you’re always there. So, we need to figure something out.”
He’s Adam, all the way down. Step after step after step.
Despite himself, Ronan’s eyes are caught on Adam’s freckles, his soft brow. His brain takes a second to catch up, but when it does:
“Are you stupid?”
Adam meets his gaze, calm.
“Is that a stupid assumption?”
“I don’t dislike you,” Ronan says. “And I’m not always with Gansey. We’re our own people or whatever.”
“Okay,” Adam nods, reassessing. He watches Ronan for a moment. “We need to talk about your ambivalence towards me.”
“I’m not ambivalent, either,” Ronan says. “I’m --,” he pauses. “I guess I don’t really know what I feel towards you.”
“I’m just curious,” Adam says. “You don’t seem to care when…” He trails off. Now it’s his time to pause, working his throat a couple times, looking uncomfortable.
“What,” Ronan says, biting his lip, smirking, doing all manner of inappropriate things with his face that should not fit into this kind of conversation. “I don’t care when you flirt with my boyfriend in front of me?”
Adam, seemingly put out for the first time in his life, flushes. His mouth opens and closes. Something in Ronan thrills.
“I don’t flirt with your boyfriend in front of you,” he says, finally. “Or behind you, either. Ever, in fact. I have never flirted with Gansey.”
Ronan hums, comfortable with his position on the high ground.
“You have,” he says. “But don’t worry, he likes it.”
Adam looks terribly confused. Ronan half wants to put him out of his misery, but a bigger part of him wants to see how it all pans out.
“What kind of arrangement do the two of you have?” The not-knowing is killing him.
“Arrangement,” Ronan repeats. “Arrangement. You make it sound so conniving. It’s just a relationship.”
“Conniving. That’s a long word,” Adam says. “Did Gansey teach it to you?”
“No,” Ronan says, reflexively. And struck by the need to be vulgar: “I heard it in a porno.”
“Right,” Adam says, still on his toes, still somehow on-balance. “So, Gansey taught it to you.”
“Parrish,” Ronan lets himself smile a little, disbelieving. “Are you flirting with me?”
“Gansey does not treat you well enough if you think that was flirting.”
“Gansey treats me very well, Parrish.”
Adam’s eyes flick to the clock above the whiteboard, seemingly satisfied with where the conversation headed. Ronan doesn’t hate him -- he’s sure the relief must be so great he must feel like he’s walking on the moon. He releases Ronan’s arm, finally.
Ronan had hardly noticed that he’d kept a hold of him for that long.
“You like the sound of my name in your mouth, don’t you Lynch,” he says, clambering for the high ground again.
“Still not flirting with me?” Ronan asks, as Adam turns to leave the classroom.
“No,” Adam says, standing in the doorway. Before he leaves, he taps the frame twice and says, “That last bit was flirting.”
--
“Your boyfriend flirted with me, today,” Ronan immediately says from the couch, when Gansey gets into Monmouth that evening. He’s wearing a suit, rumpled from the drive back. His bowtie sits, undone, unevenly around his neck. He hangs his blazer on the hazardous little nail that pokes out of their wall. He looks awfully, brilliantly attractive. Being the future president’s son agrees with him.
Gansey toes off his smart shoes and walks over the couch, collapsing on it. He grabs Ronan's jaw and turns his face towards him. Kisses him like a man starved. When he pulls back, he’s out of breath, and he wipes his thumb at Ronan’s bottom lip to get rid of spit.
“Did you hear me,” Ronan says, blinking to orient himself.
“You flirted with yourself,” Gansey mumbles. “Congratulations. Does this mean you don’t have self-esteem issues anymore? We should call the Pope, report a miracle.”
“Not me,” Ronan hits his shoulder, lightly. Gansey -- honest to God -- giggles, completely delirious. “Dipshit. Your other boyfriend.”
“Oh,” Gansey sighs, sobering, furrowing his brows. “You mean Parrish?”
“Unless you have a third boyfriend,” Ronan rolls his eyes. “Yes, I mean Parrish.”
“Oh,” Gansey says again. “Good, I was hoping he would.”
“You were?”
Gansey tucks himself into Ronan’s side, his limbs splaying out ridiculously. He’s frozen in time. He looks like a star fell out of the sky and became a person. Meaning, he looks like a person who is maybe a bit magic and also doesn’t exactly know how to sit as people sit. He’s restless, electric. Finally, he achieves what he wanted, his face resting softly against Ronan’s shoulder.
“Hmmm,” Gansey says into his shirt. “Yeah. He has a big crush on you, I think.”
Ronan rolls his eyes again.
“He absolutely does not.”
“Yeah, he does,” Gansey laughs. “He does. It’s sort of cute, actually.”
“Whatever,” Ronan grumbles. “This was supposed to be a confession. I was worried you’d get mad at me, for like. Pissing all over your territory or whatever.”
“Ask me how I know,” Gansey says, ignoring him. “Ronan.”
“Know what?”
“Ask me how I know he has a crush on you.”
Ronan tilts his head to look at Gansey. He’s looking right back, grinning.
“No,” he says. Gansey raises an eyebrow. Gives it a moment. They both know he only has to wait. “Alright, fine. How do you know?”
“He was asking me about you.”
“No he wasn’t,” Ronan says. “He absolutely fucking wasn’t.”
“Ronan,” Gansey says.
“What was he asking?”
“A number of things,” he says vaguely. “Some things not suitable for polite company,” Ronan snorts. “Most recently he asked if I know what classes you’re taking next semester.”
Ronan huffs, confused. “What,” he says. “Why would he want to know that?”
“So he can take the same classes as you, idiot.” Gansey kisses his shoulder. He’s so cute like this, Ronan thinks, and then silences the thought, mortified. But it’s true. Sleepy, finally. Instead of achingly, horrifyingly tired. “He wants to sit next to you and play footsie and hold your hand under the table.”
“He wouldn’t play footsie with me,” Ronan says. “He’d stamp on my feet every five minutes thinking I was trying to cheat off him.”
“Why would you be even looking in his direction,” Gansey says slyly.
“He’s pretty,” Ronan says, unashamed. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Gansey hums in response.
“You’re pretty,” he says. “And I heard you didn’t skip today.”
“Who told you that,” Ronan sighs. “Do you have informants all over the school?”
“Our boyfriend told me that. I stopped by Boyd’s to bring him a sandwich”
Our. Ronan flickers at the pronoun. He imagines that it is Adam’s fault that Gansey’s bowtie has been tampered with, imagines that it was his hands that untucked his shirt ever so slightly in the back.
“Jumping the gun a little there, Gans,” he says.
“Don’t care,” Gansey yawns. “I’m living in the future I want to see. Anyway, just wanted to say. Well done for not skipping.”
“What do I get,” Ronan says. “A fucking gold star?”
“You should,” Gansey mumbles. “Was awfully good of you.”
Gansey the star, he thinks. Gansey the superfuckingnova.
—
“Should we talk about it?” Gansey calls the next morning, tying and retying his tie in the kitchen as he waits for Ronan to decide whether he’s skipping that day.
Ronan stumbles out of his room, waylaid, following the sound of Gansey’s voice.
“About what?” He says, and then coughs. His voice is gravelly from disuse. The cough is loud and wet. Gansey wrinkles his nose, so Ronan coughs again.
“Ronan,” he admonishes. “About Adam.”
Adam’s hands, Adam’s freckles. His smirk, the way he traps Ronan under his gaze, like he’s examining an insect. Like Ronan is something interesting. Like Ronan’s worth looking at.
“What about him?”
“Do you want to ask him about us?”
“Like,” Ronan raises his eyebrows, runs his tongue along his teeth in a show, “if he wants to be our third.”
Gansey looks at him, unimpressed. He undoes his tie again and flicks it purposely. It almost takes Ronan’s eye out, also purposely.
“Well,” Ronan says, ducking. “Isn't that what you meant?”
“You’re disgusting,” Gansey says. “But…” he tilts his head, “Yes. I suppose it is.”
“Disgusting?” Ronan darts away from Gansey, as he raises his tie again. “Disgusting!? What’s disgusting about a man loving men?”
“When you’re the man?” Gansey sighs. “Everything.”
Later, when Ronan is slouched half-asleep in the passenger seat of the Pig, he answers.
“Yes,” he says, to the window. “To what you said earlier. About the…” He waves his hand vaguely, still not watching Gansey. "But only if you do most of the talking.”
Gansey says nothing in return, but he reaches over and pats his thigh in answer.