Work Text:
Noah doesn’t know what he is, now.
A ghost, a spirit, an avatar of Cabeswater (that was its name; that was what he and Barry had worked so hard to find; that’s what Barry had given Noah’s life to know), a demon, a lost shadow.
He’s not a real boy anymore. He knows that, at least.
He is static, his thoughts circling each other and never moving forward, and as time goes on for everyone else, he can feel himself fading.
He knows everything and nothing at all and he does and doesn’t know how that can be.
No one can see him. Noah can see them, of course. He can see everything now, and whether that’s because of whatever his blood awakened in the forest or just being dead, he doesn’t know. (He knows, and he doesn’t, and he does and doesn’t know what it means to look at a person and see their past and present and future, to see more than what he should, to see so much that he wishes he could just close his eyes because it’s too much too much too much—)
He can see the boy in the warehouse.
He’s younger than Noah is, or was, but he feels older than Noah will ever be, and Noah’s drawn to him in a way he hasn’t been drawn to someone since before his death. His name is Gansey. That’s what’s in his brain. Gansey. Not Dick, not Richard, just Gansey, Gansey, Gansey, because that’s all there is and all he wants to be. He is fifteen and charismatic and charming and so very, very alone that Noah can’t stop watching him.
He doesn’t see Noah.
Noah sits on the corner of Gansey’s bed, watching him methodically trace the wings of a wasp into a notebook, eyes glazed and a crease appearing between his eyebrows. He can see, as if he’s lived it, all of the moments where Gansey’s mother has pressed a thumb to that crease, whispering that everything is okay, baby, it was just a dream.
There’s no mother here to try to calm him now. Noah can see the long nights spent in hostels and tents around the world, the days this boy has worried himself into unconsciousness only to come screaming back to life an hour later.
(Noah is sure that if he could sleep, he would have nightmares, too. Sometimes, his thoughts, his memories, are enough to qualify. Like the one where Barry is standing over him, knuckles white on Noah’s skateboard, blood spattered across his face like freckles, and his chest heaves as the ground beneath them rolls. Noah can see the guilt, the sorrow, the regret. Can’t he?)
He wants to stop the dreams that leave Gansey clutching at his sheets and shaking, face pressed into his pillow. He wants to reach out and quiet his mind, to take the memories (his skin is alive, it’s alive, he can feel it crawling and blooming and burning, can feel the legs of hundreds of creatures crawling over his arms and toward his mouth and into his ears, oh god, oh god, oh god—)
He can’t take it away.
So he blows a small torrent of air over Gansey’s ear when the nightmare starts up, and he whispers, “Everything is okay. It’s just a dream. They can’t hurt you here.”
The sleeping boy shudders, stills.
Ronan’s dreams can hurt him.
Gansey doesn’t know this yet, but Noah does. Ronan thinks about it constantly, when his attention isn’t snagging on things like Gansey’s car or Gansey’s quest or Gansey’s mouth—his thoughts always abruptly end there, shifting back to the bouquet of strange orange flowers clutched tightly in his hand that morning, or a countdown to his father’s next projected visit.
Ronan is magical in the way that Noah is magical, and Gansey doesn’t know it, but he sees magic in him all the same. There’s something intoxicating in the way that Gansey loves—he adopts Ronan as his best friend, his partner, his brother, so quickly that it leaves both of them stunned. It pleases Ronan, though, and Noah doesn’t have to hear his thoughts to know. Every laugh, every time Ronan smiles and tugs a hand through his dark curls, every hour he spends in the woods with Gansey as his fair skin burns is confirmation enough.
Noah remembers what it was like, having a best friend. Or maybe he doesn’t—he can’t remember a time when Barry actually smiled at him the way Gansey smiles at Ronan. He knows that he looked at Barry with the same overwhelming, consuming awe that Ronan directs at Gansey, though. He sees that look in Barry’s thoughts, on the days that Noah sits on the counter in Barry’s shitty apartment. Barry sees that look, that loyalty and blind obedience, everywhere he looks, and when Noah feels disgust in the pit of his metaphorical stomach, he’s not sure which of them it’s coming from.
The point is—Ronan is special, both because he is and because Gansey sees him as so. Noah is only a little caught off guard when Ronan turns to him one day, squints, and says, “Does your roommate ever fucking talk, Gansey?”
Noah and Gansey both stare at him, open-mouthed and startled. When Noah turns to Gansey, Gansey is looking right back at him, and Noah feels the floorboards of Monmouth creak beneath his feet for the first time in years. The line between Gansey’s eyes smooths out after a moment, and his face settles back into some semblance of normal. “Noah’s just shy,” he says, waving off Ronan’s concerns. It’s incredible, the way Gansey’s mind works Noah into his memory. There’s so many long nights of studying together on Gansey’s bed, early morning pranks, long car rides to school full of companionable silences. None of it’s true, but Noah can remember being present while Gansey did these sorts of things, and it’s possible that Gansey’s always been more aware of him than either of them realized.
He gives Noah an encouraging smile, one that would’ve made Noah’s hear skip a beat if it were still beating at all. Noah says to Ronan, “The dead don’t do a lot of talking.”
Ronan pulls a face that says what the fuck loud enough that he doesn’t have to.
Monmouth is large, drafty, and full of so many nooks and crannies that it terrifies Noah, who, as the resident ghost, should probably have been gifted with the absence of fear.
It gets to Gansey, too. Some days, he lies awake, eyes squeezed shut, trying to imagine that the first floor is a garage full of expensive cars, but only managing to get stuck with the image of thousands of wasps shifting in the darkness. His thoughts are so loud, so scared, that Noah is infected with his fear.
Gansey’s sixteen, now, and Noah is seventeen, because he will always be seventeen. They’re both too old to be afraid of the dark. They’re both too young to know that the light isn’t much better.
“Gansey?” Noah’s voice echoes in the main room, coming back to him hollow. Gansey is laying on the bed, earbuds planted securely into his ears, but he looks over all the same. He sees something in Noah’s face that makes him tug out the earbuds and prop himself up on an elbow.
Sometimes Noah wonders if he is afraid because Gansey needs to be fearless. He can’t remember ever being afraid of the dark before. Still, he’s relieved when Gansey speaks up, his voice pushing back the ever-present darkness that seems to consume Noah. “Are you alright?” He shifts, leaving room for Noah on the bed, and Noah takes him up on the invitation, tugging his knees up to his chest and resting his chin on them.
“This place gives me the creeps,” he says. Gansey is still looking at him, almost expectantly, and Noah lets out a ragged sigh. “And I’m homesick,” he says.
It’s not a lie.
He misses his sisters, with their shrieking glee and open adoration. He misses losing to his father every time they play chess. He misses his mother, misses hearing murmured endearments in English and shouted complaints in Polish. He misses his guitar, the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, his record collection, his blink182 t-shirts, his skateboard. He misses opening his eyes in the middle of the night and seeing the rise and fall of Barry’s chest across the room, misses not knowing just how worthless and pathetic his best friend found him.
He is homesick for a life he didn’t live properly, for a family that hasn’t stopped waiting for him to come home, for a body he never appreciated until it was broken and left to rot unburied in the woods.
“Noah,” Gansey says softly, and it’s only then that Noah realizes he’s been crying.
Noah wipes his face with the collar of his sweater, a weak laugh bubbling up from somewhere deep inside of him. “I’m not even real, Gansey,” he says. “I’m nothing. How am I crying if I’m not even here?” Gansey doesn’t get it, because his mind won’t let him see the horrible things right in front of him. He can see the armies of wasps in the basement, but he can’t see the cracked bones in Noah’s face, the rot and the decay and the nothingness that is Noah’s everything.
He just sees Noah, the boy, smudgy and forgettable and strange, and he sees something worth saving. “You’re not nothing,” Gansey says with the same sort of conviction that he usually saves for talking about Glendower. “Noah, look at me.” He grabs Noah’s wrist, light but firm, and meets Noah’s eyes when he turns his head. “You are not nothing. You’re Noah. You’re right here, and you’re very real.”
Noah sniffles, and then, before he can make the conscious decision to do so, he is laying down with his head on Gansey’s shoulder, the touch stabilizing him. Gansey stills, processing their new proximity, and then wraps an arm around Noah, his fingers curling lightly in Noah’s hair.
“Gansey?” His voice is muffled by the other boy’s shirt. Gansey hums his acknowledgment, and Noah murmurs, “You’re not nothing, either.”