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"How are you feeling today, Ronan?"
The psychotherapist’s perseverance would be impressive if it weren't so aggravating. This is Ronan's third appointment, and he's probably said a collective twenty words in all three, but the doctor continues to sit placidly across from him in his sweater vest and professor spectacles, waiting patiently for Ronan to – what? Cry? Break something? Confess his deep, tortured, inner anguish?
The only thing holding Ronan back from just outright fucking with the guy is the knowledge that he ultimately holds the power over whether Ronan gets to stay at Monmouth or has to move into the dorms with Declan. That had been the deal. Get a clean bill of mental health, keep attending class, and Declan will supposedly leave him be. For now.
Gansey has barely let Ronan out of his sight in the week since he's been out of the hospital. His concern is a sopping wet wool blanket and the other reason Ronan agreed to these pointless meetings: anything to stop Gansey from giving him that look all the time. If Ronan going to counseling for a few weeks is enough to make Gansey feel like he's in control of the situation, then Ronan will deal with it. It's probably for the best that Gansey doesn't know the truth.
When the pointless hour is finally up, Ronan peels out of the parking lot, running over a planter for good measure on his way out. His bandages itch, and crackling, impotent anger makes his veins ache. The thought of going back to Monmouth and to Gansey's worried gaze, which seems to bore even through his bedroom door, is unbearable.
It's only just dusk, but the highway isn't very busy, and Ronan leans on the accelerator. When he passes the familiar exit, the homing beacon of it like wasps in his veins, Ronan stares fixedly at the gathering dark of the horizon. He’s going to vibrate out of his fucking skin. Fuck this. Fuck this.
Defeat is the crisp white bandages that cling to his wrist like the hands of ghosts.
80 MPH creeps to 85, creeps to 90, and it's not nearly fast enough. Fuck this.
Aware of a speed trap up ahead, Ronan lets out a sharp breath through pursed lips and slams on the brakes, taking an exit that's a fair distance from Henrietta, but still not nearly far enough away. He drives aimlessly down a quiet, unpopulated road toward the Blue Ridges in the distance, hoping that maybe if he goes far enough, he'll be able to escape the crush of harsh anger in his veins.
The fake ID tucked into his wallet pops into his head as he passes a gas station, and doesn’t think twice as he pulls into the parking lot. He tosses the six-pack in the passenger seat when he’s done, and then he’s back on the road, chewing on his bracelets hard enough that his whole jaw aches. His shoulders are painful knots beneath the pull of his binder straps, and there's a sharp tightness in his ribs when he breathes that makes him hear his mother’s voice in his head, chastising him for wearing it for too long. Fuck it, though.
During a brief break in the deafening electronic pulse of the speakers, Ronan hears his phone buzzing on the passenger seat. He wonders if it would bounce at least once if tossed from the window at this speed, or if it would just shatter satisfyingly on the black pavement. Eyes only half on the road, Ronan thumbs at the screen to see if Gansey's panties are twisted enough yet to necessitate a reply.
There’s only one missed call. He's got at least another 30 minutes before he'll have to reply or risk Gansey calling in favors from the highway patrol. The feeling of the leash tight around Ronan's neck has a headache well on its way to battering ram level under Ronan's temples. Or it could be that he hasn’t eaten again today. Either way, the stabbing in his head is warring with the growing discomfort in his wrists, and he flicks open the glove box to look for the bottle of prescription painkillers. The hospital hadn’t let him have more than a paltry handful, too fearful he’d pull a Marilyn, and he’s almost out.
However, he must have left them at Monmouth, because the compartment is empty except for a folder of the BMW’s legal documents, a pair of aviators, and a small golden lighter inscribed with the letters NL. The sight of the lighter is a hot poker to his chest and Ronan slams the plastic door shut hard enough that the passenger door rattles.
Up ahead, a traffic light finally catches him, and Ronan lets the brakes drag him to a rough stop. His phone vibrates on the seat again and Ronan grits his teeth, patience abruptly lost, like a car spinning out on black ice. Liquid tar bubbles in his stomach and he grabs at his phone, shooting a glare at the name on the screen.
Declan this time, no doubt calling to threaten him with whatever is the guilty reminder du jour. Ronan stabs the ignore button with his thumb and uses the rest of the red light to pop open one of the cans of beer, drinking half of it before the light beams green.
He slams his feet on the gas and clutch and drags the stick through the gears until he’s going recklessly fast again, winding past mountains that rise jagged and hungry into the night. When his headlights glint off the Welcome to Singer’s Falls sign, the homing beacon flares again in his blood, and he turns a sharp right, slicing through the town nestled in the foothills until he’s ascending toward home for the first time in four months.
The point at which the road starts to switchback up the mountain is like a broken spine, power lines hanging between the trees like sagging spinal cords, doing their best to transmit information to a brain that’s not responding anymore. Five minutes and seven and a half hairpin turns are all that separate him from the only place his heart has ever beat freely.
Everything about him feels wrong outside of it.
Just before he makes the final turn that will bring the Barns into view, he drags the car onto the shoulder of the road and kills the engine and stares at the wheel, listening to his heart pound in his ears.
He’s so close. All he wants is to see his mom again, just for a few minutes. He’d even settle just for a walk through the fields. No one would ever fucking know. How would they?
Don’t risk it, says Gansey’s voice in his head, and Ronan snarls at nothing and chugs the rest of the open can of beer. He’s not nearly drunk enough for this shit.
Ronan grabs the six-pack and drags it out of the car with him, striding a few feet away from the road and then collapsing onto the grass. He shotguns beer after beer, waiting for alcohol to dull the ragged tear in his chest, glaring up at the trees, which are stark silhouettes above him in the encroaching darkness. Anger continues to billow up inside him, filling all the gaps where there’s too much pain and fear.
When everything’s gone fuzzy around the edges and most of the beers are empty, Ronan collapses back onto the grass. The goddamn headache is still tearing its way through his head despite his self-medicating, and everything’s a little spinny. Ronan swallows a few times, willing himself not to pass out. Last time he’d blacked out, he’d woken up pouring his life out through his veins. He's always been able to outrun, outsmart, outmaneuver the night horrors in the past. But the person he is now either doesn't care enough or isn't whole enough to be safe from them.
Don’t fall asleep. Don’t fall asleep. The mantra continues until some dizzying amount of time later when it’s interrupted by the sound of a familiar engine curving up the road. He must’ve passed out after all and be dreaming, because how the hell would Gansey know to find him here?
But a few minutes later, he hears the engine cut out and then the familiar rhythm of Gansey’s gait walking toward him, too crisp and real to be a dream. Ronan’s eyes are closed, so he can’t see the expression on Gansey’s face, but he can hear it in the way he breathes, like some kind of bizarre echolocation bouncing back the shape of blatant anxiety.
“Ronan?”
Ronan doesn’t answer, just twitches and cracks his knuckles so Gansey knows he’s not a corpse.
“Were you going back to the Barns?”
Ronan still says nothing. It’s pretty fucking obvious that he was headed there, but he’s not there now. Gansey can draw his own conclusions.
“You can’t, Ronan,” Gansey adds, after another minute of silence. His voice is so gentle that Ronan wants to smash it to splinters.
Acid spits from Ronan’s mouth, making his lips tingle. “Tell me something I don’t fucking know.”
There’s quiet for long enough that Ronan wonders if he’s succeeded in steering Gansey away, and he waits for the quiet concession of the Pig’s door opening and closing, the engine coughing to reluctant life.
But it’s Gansey. He never leaves, even when he probably should.
Ronan feels more than hears him sit down on the grass nearby, and the quiet, terrified animal hidden beneath the layers of rage in his chest calms minutely.
“We’re going to have to talk about this at some point,” Gansey says quietly, and Ronan wonders which this he’s referring to. The drinking? The racing? How desperate Ronan is to outrun everything that he ends up on damp grass on the side of the road in a graveyard of empty beer cans like a gutter whore? “Ronan. Please.”
Ronan reluctantly swivels his head in Gansey’s direction and slowly cracks eyes that are glazed with cement. In the arc of the Pig’s still illuminated headlights, Ronan can see how hunched Gansey’s shoulders are. His eyes are trained on the bandages and he’s doing a poor job of hiding how terrified he is. Ronan’s stomach lurches. He closes his eyes again.
“What can I do?” Gansey tries, and the careful control around his syllables has been stripped away, Richard Campbell Gansey III dissolved down to the scared boy hiding behind the expectations. “Is it – was it your – ” Deep breath, measured and even like he’s counting, and Ronan stiffens at the forewarning of an anxiety attack. But he goes on, voice steady if a bit higher than usual, cutting directly to the point. “I've seen the statistics. You’re at such a high risk of suicide. Higher now.”
Oh, Jesus.
“I'm not a goddamn percentage point,” Ronan snaps, but he’s more tired than angry. He forces himself to sit up even as the world lurches around him, and a brief flare of focus makes him turn toward Gansey and stare at him intently. “Christ, Gansey. This has nothing to do with me being trans.”
Gansey meets his gaze, and he’s got that same glazed terror about him that he had in the hospital. Ronan’s not sure if he’s reassured, or even more scared now, but he knows either way it’s not enough. He sighs heavily, the disgusting aftertaste of beer like diesel fumes on his tongue, and scrubs a hand over his face.
“Look. Fucking listen.” He’d promised Matthew immediately, but he’d been putting off telling Gansey, knowing it will be harder to convince him. Guilt prickles like fire ants over his skin and he ignores it. “It’s not going to happen again.”
Gansey winces, as if Ronan had said the opposite. Ronan wishes for the hundredth time he could just tell Gansey that he hadn’t been the one to slash his wrists to ribbons, that it had been a monster, something he couldn’t control, even though a deeper, secret part of him isn’t sure that’s true. But every time he considers telling Gansey about his dreams, he hears his father’s voice swearing him to silence, and he knows he can’t.
“Gansey. Do I fucking lie?”
Gansey takes in a shaky breath, and he’s clearly edging closer to panic. Ronan reaches out and grabs his hand, squeezing tightly enough that they’ll both feel it down to the bone, and forces everything but the two of them to fade away into the background, the way it did when Gansey would sleep over at the Barns and they’d lie facing each other in Ronan’s bed, talking until dawn brushed through the curtains. Ronan may be irreparably damaged now, but they’re still bound together, a two-headed creature facing the world, and it matters when nothing else does.
Eventually, Gansey shakes his head, fingers twitching against Ronan’s palm. “You don’t lie.”
“Then believe me. It’s not going to happen again.” Ronan’s skin is clammy, but he feels feverish. He looks into Gansey’s eyes until he could point out every speck of green in the hazel, and until Gansey finally closes his eyes, nodding once.
“Thank you,” he says quietly, and Ronan thinks don’t fucking thank me, throat dry as burnt wood raked into coals. Gansey squeezes Ronan’s hand, and then lets it go, reaching over to brush twigs and dirt from the back of his shirt.
Some of the vicious clamor in Ronan’s head seems to have dulled in its sharpness, and Ronan finds himself leaning toward Gansey, his hand snaking around Gansey's waist and curling in the soft fabric of his shirt. His head touches Gansey's shoulder, and then hangs heavy on it. “I'm tired,” he admits, barely a whisper.
Gansey’s arm wraps around him and squeezes briefly. “I know.” The sky has begun to mist, the roil of night clouds overhead too heavy to keep the damp from seeping through, and Ronan shivers. “Let’s go home.”
Gansey gets to his feet and pulls Ronan up, and Ronan only sways a little. They leave the BMW by the side of the road in unspoken agreement, and Ronan finds his way into the passenger seat of the Pig, the leather of the seats gentle against his tense muscles. He glances back up the road, toward home, and then across the center console, toward his other home, who’s buckling his seatbelt. “How’d you know where I was?” Ronan asks, shrugging his own seatbelt across his chest, because Gansey won’t leave until he does.
Gansey taps two fingers against the gearshift and then the wheel, his strange ritual for helping the Camaro’s engine coax to life, and then turns the key in the ignition. “Noah,” he says simply, and Ronan doesn’t ask, even though Noah had no reason to know where Ronan would be. He’d somehow found Ronan bleeding out on the edge of a strange neighborhood, after all; guessing he was up by the Barns probably wasn't that much of a stretch.
The Pig’s lights cut a bright swath of light into the darkness, and Ronan sinks his head back against the headrest as they pull onto the road. Getting this close to the Barns makes being taken away from them even worse. He takes an unsteady breath through his nose, hands tightly pressed to his thighs. Everything hurts, his head most of all; skull full of sharp metal edges. "Gansey," he murmurs, and then he doesn't know what else to say.
Gansey reaches over and takes Ronan’s hand. His palm is warm against Ronan’s clammy fingers. “You’re alright.”
Ronan wonders if Gansey actually believes that. Ronan himself does not.
Still, as they spool back around the curves, the silk of the night curling around the quiet in the car, the promise Ronan made seems to settle between his ribs, burning in a way that feels oddly like hope. It's not going to happen again, Matthew. It's not going to happen again, Gansey.
It's not going to happen again.