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Ronan sits in his car for twenty minutes listening to music as loud as he can stand it, trying to remember what it is Gansey said that made him so certain he shouldn't come to the funeral.
Eventually he thinks of it: Kavinsky doesn't matter. If Kavinsky doesn't matter, Gansey shouldn't fucking pretend he does for an hour at church for the sake of social niceties. The idea of it makes Ronan's skin crawl.
Kavinsky's family is Eastern Orthodox, but Catholic is the closest thing Henrietta can manage. Kavinsky's mom doesn't seem to mind. When Ronan walks into the church he experiences a weird sense of vertigo. The pews are mostly filled with kids from school, horsing around and being disrespectful to both their dead classmate and God, and Kavinsky’s mom is alone in the front row. She sits there with her collapsed nasal bridge and a dead-eyed stare, wearing a fancy black veil. Three pews have been left empty out of respect for the family, but no one has come. No grandparents, no cousins, not even his dad. Prokopenko would probably be up there if - if he had been a real person.
Ronan's stomach churns as he takes in the scene. There's something stark and awful about it. Something overwhelmingly lonely. Something that reminds him of Kavinsky's big, empty home theatre. The story he told about being sent away. The friend he dreamed for himself.
Ronan doesn't realize how long he's been standing frozen at the entrance of the church until someone approaches him and puts a hand on his shoulder. There are approximately three people on earth who are allowed to touch him without getting punched, so Ronan whirls on the intruder, ready to tear them a new one.
It's Matt.
"What the hell are you doing here?" He asks, astonished.
"I came to pray," Matt answers, as if everything is as simple as that. He looks around. "Where is everyone? Gansey and them?"
"I told them not to come." Ronan clenches his jaw, not willing to say anything else about it.
Matt knows enough not to press, though his eyebrows furrow slightly in concern. He takes Ronan's hand in his own gently. "Let's go sit down," he says, and he leads Ronan up the aisle. He goes all the way up to the empty third row of the pews, brazen as anything, genuflects, and takes a seat. Ronan is overwhelmed by a wave of gratitude. He can't think of anyone else he would rather have with him for this.
Matt lowers the kneeler and makes good on his mission statement, settling in to pray. Ronan finds that he can't. He sits back in the pew with his jaw clenched tightly, shutting any emotions out. He taps into a zen sort of numbness and clings to it even as the service begins, even as the priest begins to drone on about someone he didn't know anything about to an audience who doesn't care. He wills himself to stay numb even when his eyes drift to Kavinsky's mother, an island surrounded by nothing at all. She doesn't shed a single tear.
After the service, Ronan and Matt leave together.
"Did you know him?" Matt asks. "He... Talked about you a lot."
When he kidnapped me, is what he means.
Ronan shakes his head. Not, No, I didn't know him, but, No, I can't talk about this. Maybe not ever. Matt lets it go.
Matt trails after Ronan to his BMW.
"Do you want to get something to eat?" He asks. His eyebrows still have that concerned furrow to them.
Ronan doesn't want to eat, but he also doesn't want to go back to Monmouth. They go to Matt’s favourite diner and Ronan drinks Coke and says almost nothing while Matt eats and talks about everything he can think of. It's nice.
And afterwards, Ronan asks, "Can I sleep at your place tonight?"
Matt frowns a little. "My roommate will be there. You don't mind?"
"No," Ronan answers.
"You wanna share my bed?" Matt asks, starting to smile. Ronan can't help but return it, just a little. Matt would probably love that. A sleepover just like when they were kids.
"No. You still have a sleeping bag, right? I'll take the floor."
"It'll probably be pretty uncomfortable," Matt points out.
Ronan's smile flits away again, and he shrugs his shoulders. "I'll be fine."
***
That night he dreams of Kavinsky.
It goes the way dreams do: he knows he was doing something, but when he finds himself in the familiar clearing, he can't quite remember what it was.
There's a Mitsubishi parked in the middle of the forest, moonbeam bright. Kavinsky is sprawled across its hood wearing his douchey sunglasses.
"Are you real?" Ronan asks, sharp and urgent.
Kavinsky smiles his terrible, jagged smile, the one with too many teeth and too little humour. It's dark and wicked and dangerous. That smile is a lit cigarette in a flour mill. It has never failed to make Ronan's heart stutter, and this time is no exception.
"Do you want me to be?" Kavinsky asks.
***
Ronan wakes abruptly. It’s four in the morning. He decides not to go back to sleep. He gets out his phone and zones out, playing Solitaire for the hours and hours it takes Matt to roll out of bed. It’s almost noon. If Ronan’s phone hadn’t been plugged in, it would have died long since.
"Do you want to go to the diner for lunch?" Matt asks, and Ronan answers, "Yeah, okay."
"How about we get Reuben's, like we used to with dad?" Matt asks, and Ronan answers, "Yeah, okay."
"We should get our food to go," Matt says, and Ronan answers, "Yeah, okay."
They wander out of the diner and across the street, through a park full of kids playing. They walk further, through a soccer field, and they keep going until they get to some weather-worn metal bleachers. Matt climbs all the way to the highest row and sits there, tilting his head up toward the sun. Ronan sits on the row below him, mechanically unpacking their lunch from its paper bag.
Matt lets Ronan mull over his thoughts in silence as they eat, basking in the sun. Ronan isn't a big fan of the pastoral, but there's always been something cherubic about Matt, vital and bright and innocent; a little lamb if there ever was one. (Does that make Ronan the tiger?)
Matt eats, and Ronan mostly picks at his sandwich moodily. After a long time, Matt finally breaks the silence.
"What are you thinking about?"
Ronan continues to disassemble his bread for a little while longer before he answers, "Redemption."
"What do you mean?" Matt asks, blinking. It's obviously not the answer he was expecting.
"Do you forgive Kavinsky for what he did to you?" Ronan asks bluntly, turning to look directly at Matt.
Matt scrunches his nose up and turns back towards the sky.
"I thought I was going to die, you know." Ronan's hands clench into fists reflexively, anger surging through him. "He was acting like a real crazy person, you know. I couldn't really tell what he was saying for most of it, but I knew he was talking about you. And I knew you would come and rescue me, obviously, but I was really scared. And when he locked me in that trunk it just seemed impossible. It really seemed like the end. I was pretty sure I was going to die.
“I always kind of imagined that when I faced death, I would make peace with it, you know? I would, like, put my trust in God and it wouldn't be so bad. But in reality, when I was lying in that car thinking I was going to die, I was pleading with God to let me live. I was praying harder than I'd ever prayed that you would come and save me. I was bargaining and everything, saying things like "if You let me live I'll go to church five times a week." That was pretty much the worst moment of my life."
Ronan feels helpless, listening to this. He feels guilty. He feels angry. He feels powerless. He may have saved Matt, in the end, but he should have done better. He should have been able to protect Matt in the first place. This never should have happened.
"That's why I went to the funeral. I was keeping my promise to God. He let me live, so now I actually have to try and be a better person." Matt smiles sort of self-deprecatingly, and Ronan's heart twists in his chest. He cannot think of a single person on Earth better than his brother. In his eyes, there is no room for improvement.
"How can you forgive him, though?" Ronan asks, and he's surprised at how gravelly his voice comes out.
Matt looks at him thoughtfully. "I don't know yet," he says. "The funeral helped. It was so sad..." He trails off, looking for the right way, maybe seeing the picture of those empty pews in his head again. "When he was acting all crazy, Kavinsky seemed like this big, evil guy. Just like you always seem really grown up to me, 'cause you're two years older. But then I remember that he was only 17, and that's so young. It's too young to be dead. I keep thinking about his gravestone. Like when you see someone who only lived from 1900-1917. It just doesn't feel right."
Ronan closes his eyes against that. "If he was alive, wouldn't you want him to be in jail though?"
Matt chews the top of his thumb. "Maybe. Sometimes it's hard to decide how serious he was. I don't think he ever thought I would actually die. I don't think he wanted me to."
Ronan makes a disbelieving sound. "You almost did die, though. He almost killed you."
"He knew you would save me," Matt says, dead certain as he looks at Ronan with his clear blue eyes. "I think he wished you would save him too."
Ronan's heart clenches in his chest, suddenly hard and heavy as a stone. He clenches his jaw tight and turns his body away, becoming remote and searching for the refuge of numbness he knows exists inside himself somewhere.
Matt lets him go. He starts gathering up their napkins and wrappers and dumps the remains of Ronan's mostly untouched lunch back into the paper bag, crumpling it all up and carrying it to a nearby garbage. Ronan watches him go, but he doesn't get up to follow until Matt returns to the bleachers and puts one foot up on the first one, waiting.
The silence continues between them until they're sitting in Ronan's BMW again.
"What he did was fucked up," Ronan says, not turning the car on.
"Yeah," Matt agrees softly.
"I don't forgive him," Ronan says, his voice hard at the edges but shamefully soft in the middle.
"You don't have to," Matt tells him.
Ronan doesn't say, I wish I could.
And when he dreams that night, Kavinsky is there again.
***
The third time Ronan dreams of Kavinsky he climbs onto the hood of the car next to him and it feels like a memory. He remembers it blurred around the edges: the sticky, hazy heat of summer; taking his shirt off and swallowing pills, awake and asleep in a minute-by-minute cycle; Kavinsky's fingers on his back so light they must have been a dream.
But he remembers it differently, now. Those light fingers and that jagged smile.
He leans forward and kisses Kavinsky, hard, so hard Kavinsky’s sunglasses press against Ronan's cheek. He takes them off and tosses them aside. He climbs over Kavinsky, presses him back against the windshield, feels Kavinsky gasp underneath him.
Ronan pulls back, straddling Kavinsky's hips, glaring down at him.
“Is this what you wanted all along?” Ronan asks, scornful and cruel.
Kavinsky looks stricken. He closes his eyes, and a tear slides down his cheek.
Ronan capitulates immediately. He puts a hand on Kavinsky's cheek, gentle.
Comforting the ghost of a dead boy in the clearing from his dreams, he feels more lonely than he ever has in his whole life.
“Did you love me?” Ronan asks.
“Yes,” Kavinsky answers.
Ronan kneels on the hood of the car and wonders if Kavinsky would recognize love if he saw it. Wonders about Kavinsky's mom, and Prokopenko. About Kavinsky's father. About Matt. About what love looks, like; about the shape of it, the feel.
***
“You should go,” Kavinsky says. “They're waiting for you.”
“Who?”
“Gansey. Parrish. That girl you're always hanging out with.”
Ronan doesn't answer for a while. It's Kavinsky who breaks the silence.
“I'm dead, Lynch.”
Ronan turns to look at Kavinsky, with his narrow face half-obscured by his giant sunglasses and his sleeveless shirt.
Ronan presses his forehead against Kavinsky's. “I'm going to miss you,” he whispers.
Kavinsky smiles a tiny, crooked little smile. “Wake up,” he whispers.
***
Ronan wakes up.