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Ronan doesn’t know how long he’s been running for. His Cabeswater, once familiar and pliable in his mind, has turned into something darker; uncanny. He is silent as he runs, so as not to disturb what he knows lies deep within the recesses of his mind. Long, spindly tree branches sting his face like whips. The murkiness ahead of him is lit only by the shallow glow of hovering dream creatures-- almost like fireflies-- and Ronan doesn’t have any time to wonder about what it means because all he knows is that he needs to get out.
Maybe Ronan has been running in circles this whole time.
Orphan Girl is long gone-- Ronan had left her before it had gotten dark, for her protection (or did she sneak away from him? Did she know that wherever he goes, hurt follows?)-- and as always, this offers him no sense of solace.
He forgets, often, that he can be the master of his own dream. Or maybe he has never known.
Greywaren. The title is as unfamiliar to Ronan as his own father, which is to say, incredibly familiar. Or so he thinks.
All he knows, now, is that he has no power here; the ruinous forest he is racing through wants him dead, dead, dead. Thief! Thief! It screeches at him. Plunderer! Intruder!
He can’t summon the words within him to plead with the trees and creatures. He doesn’t contest their claims.
Ronan just runs, fueled by a panic he doesn’t even remember the origin of. His breath comes out foggy and uneven in front of him, socked feet slipping dangerously on the half-muddy, half-rock path behind him. He chances a quick look behind his left shoulder, and immediately trips over a fallen deadwood that had definitely not been there before he looked away.
He falls, his right elbow and hip smacking against the rocky ground. A dull, throbbing pain snakes its way up his arm, radiating from his elbow. His face is no better: Ronan’s earned an eyeful of goopy black mud that he’s straining to blink away, but can’t ignore the mud seeping into the stinging cuts from the branches on his face.
Unbidden tears cut through the thick mud in his eye, and Ronan oscillates wildly between wishing he would wake up and wishing he would die. He just wants this to be over. No sooner does he think this when he hears the one sound he wished he would never hear again, loud over the quiet in his mind.
tck-tck-tck
Terror, pure and animal, courses through Ronan at the sound. He scrambles off of the ground, despite his half-blindness and the sharp pains in his right arm, and begins to run again. But the night terror is faster than him, and unharmed, and Ronan doesn’t even have a chance to make it five paces before its snapping beak and sharp claws are close enough to reach out and touch.
He’s repeating a mantra like a prayer in his mind.
Wake up wake up wake up wakeupwakeupwakeupwakeup WAKE UP, RONAN WAKE UP--
“Ronan, wake up!”
Ronan comes to with dread swirling deep in his gut, tears on his stinging face, and an incredibly scratchy throat. Gansey’s tired wire-rimmed eyes stare deep into his own, filled with concern, panic, and- pain?
It’s then that Ronan recognizes that his fingernails are digging into Gansey’s biceps. He withdraws them immediately, placing his shaking and muddied hands onto the sweated-through blanket he’s underneath. “Sorry,” he mumbles, throat hoarse.
“You were screaming,” Gansey says quietly, pained. As if it were him that were caught in a hellscape instead of Ronan. As if the very thought of Ronan in pain hurt him. Gansey’s eyes latch onto Ronan’s face, where he vaguely registers mud, blood, and tears all caked together.
A thud in the other room has Ronan scrambling out of bed, heart pounding in his throat, mouth dry. “It’s here, Gansey-- followed me--” He can barely speak over the shallow breaths he’s taking.
Gansey’s suddenly beside him, a steadying hand on his shoulder. “It’s just Noah,” he says, and he’s right: Noah’s nervous, smudged face rounds the corner of Ronan’s cracked-open door. Ronan’s racing heart settles a bit, and he takes a deep breath.
“Okay.”
Noah disappears back out of the room again, but it doesn’t offend him-- Ronan knows how distressed he gets in times like this.
“Let’s get you cleaned up, okay?”
Ronan doesn’t argue; he lets Gansey lead him out the door, hovering behind him like he’s gone to kill a bug for him.
Gansey takes him past his beloved cardboard Henrietta to the bathroom/kitchen/laundry room, switching on the light. Ronan squeezes his eyes shut at the brightness, letting Gansey remove his sweated-through tank top and toss it on the floor. Gansey sits him down on the toilet while he rummages for the first aid kit in the cabinet above the sink. “Want to tell me about it?” he asks quietly, taking a washcloth and running it under the warm water in the sink before wringing it out.
Ronan debates with himself. When he goes over the events of the dream-- nightmare-- it doesn’t even seem that terrifying. But he can still feel the bone-deep terror, the anguish, the sharp pains, the crushing loneliness of it all. He dips his head and turns his gaze to the tiled floor, unable to bear to look at Gansey’s caring hands, the faint streaks of mud on his biceps, the worry lines carved into his simultaneously youthful and wizened face.
“I was running,” he says simply, as if that fully explains the dream. It does, in a way. He was running. He’s been running. He only knows how to run.
He feels Gansey’s gaze on him, but doesn’t offer anything else. Ronan’s not sure if he even has anything else to offer.
A warm and damp cloth on his forehead grounds him, forces him to look up into Gansey’s careful expression. He’s dabbing away at the mud on Ronan’s face, his thumb and forefinger caught onto Ronan’s chin, turning his face ever-so-gently.
Ronan is so overcome by his exhaustion, fear, and the care he’s being shown that he starts to cry. He blinks the tears away. If Gansey sees him crying, he doesn’t show it, instead continuing to wipe away the goopy mud that had plastered itself onto Ronan’s face.
The washcloth has turned completely black by the time Gansey’s done, and he moves to toss it in the sink, washing his hands thoroughly before getting another dry cloth, antibiotic ointment, and band-aids from the first aid kit.
Ronan’s breath hitches as Gansey gingerly dabs ointment with his finger onto the long cuts on Ronan’s face. He’s so close that Ronan can taste the mint on Gansey’s breath. Gansey clears his throat, cheeks tinged darkly in the dim light, and starts applying the band-aids, smoothing the edges down with a careful fingertip.
Ronan doesn’t dare say anything, instead just watches as Gansey straightens up, heads to the sink, and throws the band-aid wrappers away.
Ronan holds his breath as Gansey grips the sink with his hands, exhaling quietly and picking up a bar of soap. The air feels almost charged between them. “Come here,” Gansey says, “and wash your hands.”
Ronan obeys, because he’ll always do what Gansey asks of him, and joins him at the sink. Ronan pretends to ignore the way that Gansey is standing taut, and instead holds his grimy hands out under the faucet. Gansey leans over him, holding his breath, to turn the handles of the sink. Warm water gushes out onto Ronan’s shaky hands, and he basks in the feeling, before Gansey soaps his own hands up and slips the bar onto Ronan’s palms. Ronan stares at the bar of soap for a little too long before moving to soap his hands, but it slips out, and Gansey grabs it.
“Let me,” he says gently, and before Ronan can register anything, Gansey’s behind him, his slick hands grasping Ronan’s, running the bar of soap gently over each knuckle, crevice, palm, and fingernail. He massages the soap in with his own hands, and Ronan takes a shaky breath that he thinks is awfully reminiscent of one of Declan’s Ashleys whenever his brother mentions something like lobster or Rolex or you’re so beautiful, baby.
Gansey is washing Ronan’s hands for him, until he isn’t anymore. Now he’s toweling them off for him and leading him out the bathroom/kitchen/laundry room to his bed in the middle of Monmouth, which Ronan is more than familiar with. Whenever Ronan has had a nightmare, Gansey has always been more than happy to share his bed with Ronan, allowing him to slip under the covers with him until his quiet cries subside and his furrowed brow evens out.
Sometimes, Gansey’ll even hold him.
But tonight, Gansey holds open the covers for him, waits until he’s in bed, and tucks him in. He clears his throat. “I’m-- I’ll be back in a moment.” Ronan watches, heart in his throat, as Gansey steps away from the bed, grabbing something from his desk drawer before exiting the apartment completely.
Ronan can’t help but feel pushed aside, sidelined, despite the memory of Gansey’s fingers ghosting over his face just minutes ago. He turns away from the view he has of the illuminated door to the kitchen/bathroom/laundry room, facing one of Monmouth’s many multicolored glass windows. The slightest dip in the bed from where he had just turned away from sends a sharp pang of panic through his chest, and he turns quickly, hands flying out in preparation.
His hands meet a strong, cold resistance, a high-pitched yelp emanating from the darkness around the bed. “Ronan! Jesus, it’s me.”
Oh. It’s just Noah.
Part of Ronan wants to apologize, but with Noah, his racing heart finds a steady rhythm again. Somehow, Noah’s presence allows Ronan to return to himself. He quirks his mouth into a smile, and the words find their way out of his mouth with ease.
“Don’t invoke the Lord’s name in vain.”
Noah laughs at that, bouncing a bit closer to Ronan on the bed. Noah’s laugh always sounds like it’s being ripped out of him in a fit of glee. Ronan finds himself thinking he could never tire of the sound.
The two of them lie in wait-- for Gansey, Ronan thinks-- until Noah lets out a small, unhappy sigh. Ronan latches onto the sound, eyebrows questioning as he turns to Noah.
Noah’s big eyes stare right back at him, the smudge on his cheekbone almost invisible in the dim light. He frowns unhappily at the bandages on Ronan’s face. “You were calling for him, you know. In your sleep.”
Ronan didn’t know. He didn’t have to ask who Noah was talking about.
“Really?” He pretends that this doesn’t affect him in any way whatsoever. That it hadn’t affected Gansey in any way whatsoever.
“I mean. You’ve done it before,” Noah says quietly, as if it were a secret. It wasn’t, not really. “But you just sounded…” Noah shivers. “I dunno. Desperate. Like if he hadn’t gotten to you, you wouldn’t have woken up.”
A chill runs through Ronan at Noah’s words. He doesn’t have time to process what it means before the door to Monmouth creaks open and Gansey steps through it, the perfect portrait of all that he is in this moment: weary, questioning, caring, ashamed. Beautiful. The word rises, unbidden, to Ronan’s mind.
Gansey looks a bit startled to find Noah in his bed with Ronan, but schools his expression into a careful smile.
“Come back to bed, baby,” Ronan teases with a smirk, although his cheeks are warm with the idea that this is forbidden. Noah lets out a sputter of a laugh next to him, and Gansey, who looks like a deer caught in headlights, tests the waters by chuckling, as if this is just another one of Ronan’s antics. But Gansey can’t tear his gaze away from Ronan as he places a mint leaf in his mouth. Ronan’s breath catches as he sees that Gansey hadn’t cleaned away the streaks of dirt on his biceps. In a way, Ronan’s branded him, and Gansey has allowed it.
Gansey crosses the room, slipping into his bed so that Ronan is caught in between him and Noah. Before Ronan can think anything of it, Gansey squeezes Noah’s hand once and presses a soft kiss onto Ronan’s forehead. Ronan closes his eyes and inhales, the familiar scent of Gansey encircling him. Mint and old books and sweat and the faint smell of cigarettes. Ronan feels dizzy from the Gansey-ness of it all, the proximity.
One of Noah’s hands rests on the elbow that Ronan had injured in his dream. The coolness of his ghostly form provides Ronan with a sense of comfort and clarity. Gansey takes off his glasses, placing them on the bedside table, and scoots closer to Ronan, grasping his hand with his own. He lets Ronan’s shaved head rest on his chest, and Ronan hears Gansey’s steady, quick heartbeat under the thin layer of cotton that Gansey wears to sleep.
“Goodnight,” Gansey murmurs quietly. Ronan feels the rumble of his words in his chest and smiles.
“Sweet dreams,” Noah whispers. After a moment, he says, “Let the bedbugs bite a little, they’re hungry.”
Gansey lets out a thoughtful and pleased, “hmm,” as if he’d never considered this perspective before.
A quiet snort bursts from Ronan’s nose, but his chest warms at the words. He’ll never want to run away from them.
Please, God, he prays, help me not to run.