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Richard Campbell Gansey III did not want to be in this tiny, musty dorm room. The sign on the door read Chivalry, but Richard could not imagine a less heroic place to start this new phase of his quest. At least it was only for a few months, he thought as he dropped his bags on one of the narrow twin beds.
There was shouting from the room across the hall and Gansey turned to look. The door (Patience) slammed open and then just as quickly shut, leaving a boy standing in the hallway glaring at Richard. Or rather, simply glaring and Richard happened to be in the way.
“The hell do you want?”
Richard raised his hands in what was meant to be a pacifying way and the boy rolled his eyes. Unexpectedly, the boy stomped into the room and threw himself onto the empty bed.
“Hello?” Richard tried.
“My brother can be a dick sometimes.”
Ah, sibling woes. Richard had a little bit of experience there. “Older or younger?” he asked, settling himself down on the plastic wrapped mattress.
“Older. So he thinks he knows everything.” The boy sighed. “At least I don’t have to live with him.”
“Do you go to Aglionby?” Richard asked.
“Unfortunately.” He was prodding at the tag on Richard’s suitcase. “What kind of name is Richard Campbell Gansey the third? Your roommate must be a huge tool.”
“Uh… Hi, I’m Richard.”
“Oh, shit. Uh, Ronan. Ronan Lynch.”
He stretched across the room to shake Richard’s hand.
“Richard. Dick. Hah. I’m gonna call you Dick.”
“Please- please don’t.”
“Yeah, alright, Gansey.”
Richard paused. Malory had called him that, but he’d never thought of it as a nickname before. He’d just written it off as one of the many unusual Britishisms the man had. He fiddled with the loose papers in his journal, feeling the edges of his smile tilting up.
“Alright.”
---
The second the paperwork came through on Monmouth Manufacturing Gansey moved out of the dorms. He slept on a mattress in the foreman’s office; it was dark and airless but at least it was protected from the elements. Ronan was over all the time, clearing the second and more salvageable floor of junk and complaining about the dust. Gansey had hired a few contractors to do the things he was absolutely sure he couldn’t do, like roofing and electricity, but he wanted to do everything else himself.
They shouted across the building to each other as they worked. Declan, the irritating older brother, had recently been caught with a girl and Ronan hated her.
“-rubbing it in my face. Just cause he’s finally kissed someone.”
Gansey took a second to parse that statement, as Ronan grumbled on.
“Have you ever-?” Gansey trailed off.
Ronan shrugged and it was a complicated thing, both a minor movement and somehow involving every muscle of his upper body.
“I wonder what it’s like,” Gansey said, half idle wondering and half calculated response.
Ronan shrugged again, a more fluid motion this time.
They worked in silence for a while; heaving loads of garbage out of the huge windows and gleefully watching it smash to pieces on the weed studded asphalt.
“I want my first kiss to be with someone I really like,” Ronan said suddenly. “That sounds really lame, but it’s how I feel.”
Gansey nodded. “No. I get it. I feel the same way.”
Ronan nodded back with a small smile, and Gansey felt something change.
---
The entire Gansey clan came to Henrietta for the Manufacturing Plant Warming Party. Ronan had invited his parents and younger brother, but Niall Lynch was out of the country and Matthew had an away soccer game, so Aurora Lynch was the only representative from The Barns. There were a handful of other Aglionby students there, boys Gansey had a class or two with or who he’d thought it might be beneficial to befriend. Ronan was studiously ignoring all of them, a fact which Gansey had only noticed because he was equally studiously studying Ronan.
Ronan had so far only really talked to three people at this party. Gansey, Richard Campbell Gansey II, and his mother. There wasn’t much of Aurora Lynch in Ronan, but what there was was entirely in the eyes and the smile. Gansey couldn’t take his eyes away.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Helen said, appearing behind him and slinging an arm around his shoulder. “Looks good.”
“Thank you, Helen.”
“That the roommate?” she asked, nodding towards Ronan. “He’s not bad looking either.”
“He is considerably younger than you,” Gansey pointed out, feeling more up in arms than he’d expected. Helen had always been like this.
“Alright, alright. Did you invite any teachers to this shindig?”
Gansey spoke briefly with the other boy he was thinking about inviting to share the space in Monmouth, but his attention kept slipping away from Noah and back to Ronan. One person should not be able to take up that much mental focus.
Ronan glanced up, caught Gansey’s eye, and smiled, and Gansey forgot his name, quest, and favorite color.
---
It was the third night of insomnia in a row, and Gansey officially considered himself settled into Monmouth Manufacturing. He always slept well in unfamiliar beds, it was his own that never felt right. Besides, Glendower was close; he could feel it.
The scattered lights of Henrietta shone through the wall of windows. The town was mostly dark at this hour, only street lamps illuminating the rough shapes of buildings, already familiar despite how short a time he’d been in town. Gansey ate the last cracker in the box, and held the cardboard up to the skyline. Yes, that was just about right.
When Ronan came out of his room an hour later, Gansey had all the major streets laid out on the floor and a decent start on Town Hall.
“Tricky Dick,” Ronan said, slumping down beside Gansey and bumping their knees together to show he meant no harm.
Gansey let him stay there, their bodies touching at one point, the huge dark room expanding out around them.
“I had a dream you kissed me,” Ronan blurted.
Gansey said nothing and let him continue.
“We were sitting right here. There was almost no moon, just the streetlights. Your little town wasn’t here though.”
“Does the town make it better or worse?”
“More real,” Ronan replied, before he leaned in and kissed Gansey.
It wasn’t anything Gansey had expected of his first kiss, and it was so much better. Ronan’s mouth was hard and insistent, like Gansey was land to be claimed, and for once, Gansey was content to let someone else do the exploring. For a while anyway. He worked a hand into Ronan’s hair, just long enough that it was starting to curl, and held Ronan to him.
This was the place. Gansey felt it in his bones, this was the place where everything would happen.
---
END