Work Text:
twenty-two minutes
minute one
Ronan's blood was on his hand, his shirt, his shoes. It was a miraculous but not necessarily good that Ronan's blood wasn't black or thick or in any way as inhuman and impossible as it should be. It was simply thin and bright red, like everyone else's, like Ronan was normal, like the fact that Ronan had cut his wrists in an alley and Gansey's pretty boy rowing team muscles, as Ronan had once put it, had been called to the task of carrying a bloody Ronan all the three endless minutes to the small Henrietta hospital. This was all wrong.
"Young man, we have a hospital gown for you if you want to get rid of that bloody shirt," the receptionist said. She seemed only slightly thrown off by the fact that Ronan Lynch's blood was all over Gansey. This was also wrong.
"No, thank you," Gansey said automatically, defaulting to politely declining help as was proper. He had something to ask her, but he didn't know what, just that it was urgent. Finally, he said weakly, "Will he be okay?"
The receptionist looked at him with a little more pity.
"We have well-trained and dedicated staff here, and your friend will receive the best of care."
Gansey stared at her. She stared back. He couldn't muster a reaction. Why did all his upbringing, all his manners, all the conversations that were like little games, all the wisdoms his mother had shared on the noble art of communication, fail him now?
He opened his mouth and said, "Alright," which was barely a response, but he couldnt find it in him to care.
He slid into a seat.
minute two
The air was clean, so clean, stripped from the smell of perfume and champagne at parties, stripped from the smell of teenage boy sweat at Aglionby, stripped from the smell of dust at Monmouth, stripped of the smell of gasoline Adam carried with him, stripped from the smell of spruce-and-woodchips-and-general-masculinity from Ronan's aftershave and the smell of beer that sometimes hung around him. A little bit, Gansey realised with a twist in his stomach, like Noah, like nothingness, like the echo of life.
minute three
That was a strange thought. And besides, it didn't smell like Noah anyway, it smelled like desinfectant in this godforsaken place. Ronan was going to die in a place that smelled like desinfectant and nothing else.
minute four
Gansey was the only thing here that wasn't scrubbed clean white and beige death, the only thing that smelled like metallic blood and sweat, the only thing that was proof both of Ronan's life and Ronan's mortality. For once he wasn't the most polished thing in the room. If Adam was here he would find that amusing. Gansey imagined how the corners of Adam's mouth would twist up and his eyebrow would twitch slightly like it did when he was restraining himself from some mocking remark. Adam should be here. Adam and Ronan and Noah should be here to be proof of the fact that Gansey wasn't the only person in the world who wasn't clean, neat, glossy and alive, that he wasn't the only person in the world who was feeling sick to the stomach about Ronan in a pool of blood.
minute five
Dear heavens, Adam. He wasn't here yet, and Gansey believed he was resourceful enough to get out of his trailer, find Noah and be here already, except if someone got in his way, like his father. Gansey wasn't a complete fool.
minute six
Adam's father had gotten ahold of him and Noah would probably never recover from finding Ronan and Ronan himself was dying. Gansey's life was falling apart and none of this should be possible. He wished he could remember one of Ronan's long, compound swears. Those seemed like a good stress reliever.
minute seven
Once upon a time a much smaller Gansey had cried out from a nightmare, the hundreth time a hundred hornets had surrounded him, and the whole family rushed into his room and his mother had told him to breathe, fill himself with air instead of fear. He tried it now, clenching and unclenching his muscles, blank and cool like the even white walls. None of this was happening, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in
minute eight
minute nine
minute ten
breathe out
How much longer was he going to sit here and pretend nothing was going on?
Gansey felt he was alone in the world, holding a vigil for a boy who had been dying for so long. If only he had had a little more time, just a day more to pull Ronan a little further away from his father's dead body, just a minute more of having some semblance of control.
What was he thinking? Of course it wouldn't have helped, because Gansey, for all his worrying and all the times his thoughts slipped to his friends, had not realized the urgency of the situation. Just yesterday they'd all congregated at Nino's to chat and procrastinate on their homework, and Ronan's gruff laugh had echoed through the place, and Gansey had thought: this could be alright. This could be enough.
Blind, foolish, stumbling Gansey.
Maybe this was Glendowers way of saying: no more second chances. Gansey didn't deserve a second life after all.
minute eleven
He really needed Adam or Ronan here to tell him he was being self-pitying.
minute twelve
Maybe he'd never leave this place, the frighteningly clean walls, the air devoid of life. Maybe he'd sit here forever, unable to reach his friends and save them, unable to do anything but think about them, forever waiting for the return of color and movement and another chance to squander.
minute thirteen
He just needed to think reasonably. His parents were ever so practiced at mapping out every possibility, ruthlessly considering plan B and C, and it was time he used that clever and successful Gansey blood of his.
If Ronan couldn't be saved. Meaning Ronan died. Meaning Ronan was dead. Meaning Ronan wasn't coming back. Meaning Gansey was going to walk out of this hospital alone. Alright, focus.
minute fourteen
Would he have to tell Adam and Noah what happened? Could he do that?
It would mean going home to a home with Noah only in it, Noah who had searched furiously for Ronan and finally found him in the worst way, all just to be told that Ronan Lynch, who spent his afternoons streetracing and glowering and skipping school and keeping Gansey company at 3am and bumping shoulders with Adam, was dead.
It would mean meeting Adam at the old and majestic doors to Aglionby, already standing strategically to shield his bruises from the other boys' view, and telling him he was caught sneaking out for nothing.
Would there be an announcement in the auditorium? He couldn't imagine it. How could it possibly be communicated what had happened? "Good morning, boys, the most brazen and honest and terrible of you is dead and no longer living and he had been dying the whole time and Gansey did fuckall to save him?
minute fifteen
It was impossible to imagine the absence of Ronan in his life. If there was no looking at Ronan from the corner of his eye while Ronan took a deep breath, the school day finally over, if there was no sitting next to Ronan on the kitchen counter and run his thumb over the curve of Ronan's wrist during one of their insomnia romps where nothing mattered anymore, if there was no silently passing Ronan a coffee in the morning while they got ready for school, what was there even?
minute sixteen
There would be a police investigation, a funeral. Gansey and Declan had come to a tentative understanding regarding Keep Ronan Out Of Trouble and now Gansey would have to look at Declan and tell him he failed.
Actually, staying in this hospital room forever was seeming more and more desirable.
minute seventeen
Gansey hated how little control he had over the situation, hated how he hadn't seen it coming. He tried to think back to any clue that Gansey was going to end up curled up in a hospital chair with blood over his shirt, but all he could think of was a conversation a few months ago.
The day before there had finally been a breakthrough in the search for Glendower. Or at least, Gansey considered it a breakthrough. Ronan thought that a brief anomaly in an electromagnetic frequency reading was not remarkable enough to justify him having to drive through the Henrietta mountains while Gansey sat in the passenger seat with his journal and fifteen-odd pieces of climbing and ley line-detection equipment and maps of Henrietta in his lap and rambled on and on.
Ronan, amidst a yawn that sounded a bit like a growl, had said he didn't see why Gansey was quite that excited, and Gansey had explained ley line theory and what this suggested about presences on the ley line, and why they needed to map out the anomalies as quickly as possible because the detectable part might only be temporary, and Ronan had muttered something about his beauty sleep.
"You don't sleep anyway," Gansey said.
Ronan shot him one of his less poisonous but still terrifying looks. "Like father, like son."
Gansey considered asking him when he was going to cut it with this particular joke, but the answer would probably be something juvenile and not even a little constructive.
"Doesn't it excite you at all? If we find Glendower, it means this is all real." Gansey gestured to the EMF reader and journal in his lap. "Imagine the effect such proof of the supernatural could have. Imagine the effect a king with mythical wisdom and power could have on the modern age." Imagine if Gansey was proven right. Imagine if Gansey could finally justify his own existence.
Ronan scoffed.
"Just because you find no difficulty believing in the paranormal doesn't mean it is so easy for everyone," Gansey said.
"Take it easy, man. That's not what I meant anyway."
"Really? Because it seemed like you were being an insolent ass again. You might want to try having a constructive conversation. It's not all terrible."
Ronan rolled his eyes at this. "I just think you're expecting some sort of fucking fairytale. But whatever, I'm sure you have more authority here than I do, Dad."
Gansey pursed his lips. "I do think that, having been working on this for years, I am justified in demanding you don't talk to me as if- as if i have no idea what is going."
Ronan was not swayed. Gansey could see in his eyes that there was something Ronan wasn't saying, but he was too upset to ask for clarification.
What he should have done was wonder a little more about Ronan's unwavering belief both that the supernatural existed and that it was so undesirable. What he should have done was talk it out. What he should have done was gently fold his hand over Ronan's white knuckles on the steering wheel. Gansey always felt like he was almost at a point where he could really communicate with Ronan, where Ronan was not just honest but also open. Now he might be too late.
minute eighteen
If he'd paid better attention to those first aid guides Aglionby sent to curious students he would have been able to tell if those wounds were at all survivable. He wasn't sure how that would help, but maybe he would be able to prepare himself better for whatever the outcome was going to be tonight. Adam would have the information ready so that he could adjust his strategy for the next day accordingly, and while Adam might not be a perfect example of mental stability, he certainly looked better having a nervous breakdown than Gansey.
minute nineteen
Impossibly, his phone rang. Gansey spent one, two, three rings staring at the wall before taking it out of his pocket.
"Gansey?" Gansey didn't think he'd ever heard Declan growl like that.
"I take it you saw my text? Ronan's in the emergency room right now."
"Son of a bitch," Declan murmured. Declan was one of those people whose curses had power because he didn't swear often, whereas Ronan's curses had power because no matter how much he said something vulgar (and he said vulgar things often) his swearing never lost that rage.
"Gansey, we had an agreement, did we not?" There was definitely a dangerous undertone in there.
"I don't know what to say, Declan," Gansey said lamely. "I didn't see... this... coming any more than you did."
For a few seconds, there was only the sound of Declan's shaky breath and what sounded like a bottle of pills being opened. He had never felt more awkward, but couldn't think of anything to say. The Lynch brothers loved eachother in strange, hateful ways, and Gansey for the life of him didn't know what Declan was going to do next or how to calm him down.
Finally, Declan spoke again. "I'm going to call Matthew now. Keep me updated."
"Yes. Will do. Got... it." Gansey pressed end call like a starving man would grab the first bit of food he's seen in days.
minute twenty
He could now add that conversation to the second most stressful thing that had happened to him ever in his entire life (the most stressful thing having happened about twenty minutes ago when he was dragging Ronan to the hospital, but at least that situation involved him holding Ronan very tightly.)
minute twenty-one
He was becoming aware of someone standing before him, which might be the third most stressful thing that had happened to him ever, since he had slid on the floor somewhere in the last nineteen minutes and he was covered in blood and the person standing before him was a medical professional who was presumably going to tell him whether Ronan was alive or dead.
Gansey stood up.
minute twenty-two
"You can visit him now," the nurse said. Gansey had devolved enough that he was perceiving the nurse (who really looked like a plain young man) as an angel descending from heaven. In his defense, it was really late and the nurse was wearing all white. He silently followed the man.
"Jesus-shitting-Mary-fuck, you look pathetic," Ronan said. He was huddled under the blankets, had ten-odd tubes attached to him, and looked mostly irritated, and Gansey had to fight the urge to kiss him.
"A thank you for saving my life would be appreciated, Lynch." He said it more out of principle than anything: he knew Ronan would never express such emotion, and Gansey didn't need a thank you anyway.
Ronan went off on a minor tirade about how the blankets were piss-coloured and looked and felt like towels and what a disgrace it all was, and Gansey had never heard a sweeter sound. He was already worrying about contacting Declan and convincing Ronan to go to therapy, but it all felt a little less urgent, because he would have that second chance and he wouldn't waste it.