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The first time Ronan dragged himself back to Monmouth drunk and beat up in the wee hours of the morning, he was looking to get caught.
Luckily for him, when he cracked the door and peered into the room, he knew immediately that Gansey was still awake. Warm light emanated from a lamp at the desk, and Gansey sat beside it, hunched intently over what seemed to Ronan an absurdly massive tome. Books and papers encircled the desk like debris sprayed from a crash sight. It was, however, far more benign than most images of violent collisions Ronan could call to mind. Less gruesome, and with fewer sharp edges. In fact, it was a picturesque scene in it’s way. Cozy. And Ronan was going to get blood all over it.
He knocked something over on his way in, and it hit the floor with an impressive crash.
Eyes trained on the floor, Ronan felt rather than saw Gansey startle and then stare. He knew he looked a mess.
“Ronan, Jesus,” Gansey said. He peered out of the rooms bright center into the shadowy corner where Ronan slouched. “What happened to your face ?”
Ronan searched his rattled and hazy brain for a scornful remark, and when none surfaced, produced instead a laugh that sounded painful and unwell to his own ears. Also, it split his lip open wider.
“Jesus,” Gansey said again, and for a brief, terrifying instant, he looked at a loss. A scared and bewildered sixteen year old, confronted with a profoundly broken thing and without a repair manual.
Then, quickly as it had been visible, it was gone. He straightened, his shoulders squared and his mildly exasperated problem-solving face on, and closed his book with a definitive thump . Ronan breathed again.
He let himself be steered into the bathroom, where Gansey propped him up against the mini fridge. He hoisted himself up to sit atop it, surprised with himself for keeping his balance long enough to do so. He watched as Gansey rearranged their collection of soap and detergent slightly, confirming their lack of any first aid supplies to himself, and then moved to dampen a wad of paper towels in the sink.
Ronan wondered if this looked scary. It didn’t feel scary. His right eye was swelling shut slightly, and a scrape from his eyebrow to his temple was bleeding into it. He had a split lip which had bled a lot, a couple of nasty bruises on his arms and shoulders, assorted nicks and scrapes. His hands ached. It was probably the worst collection of injuries he’d ever had, and it hurt all over, but it didn’t frighten him. Instead, he found he felt a certain dark satisfaction in it. This, he realized retroactively, was an goal accomplished.
Gansey moved to him and leaned in close to assess the damage. He made low humming noise, (whether disapproving or soothing, for Ronan’s benefit or his own, Ronan couldn’t say,) and began sponging the blood out of his eyebrow. Gansey was painstakingly gentle, and it was only water, but it stung nevertheless. Ronan closed his eye the rest of the way. He wondered if it was bad enough to turn any really interesting colors.
When he was satisfied with the scrape, Gansey put one hand under Ronan’s jaw and tilted his chin up. Ronan knew there was blood all over it from his lip. He thought vaguely he should let Gansey know there wasn’t any actual injury, he didn’t need to fuss over it, it was worse than it looked. Instead, he stayed quiet. It was too easy to simply sit and let Gansey do what he judged appropriate. Between the two of them, an active interest in Ronan’s well being no longer felt like Ronan’s territory.
Gansey got more paper towels, cleaned the worst of the blood from Ronan’s chin, and then coaxed his mouth open slightly to dab clean the split in his lip. Probably has a lot of dust and shit in it , Ronan thought, distracted by the infinitesimal pressure of Gansey’s thumb against his lower lip. He was pained by the carefulness of it. It would be easier to be manhandled right now.
There was a tiny furrow of concentration between Gansey’s eyebrows as he finished cleaning the cut and stood back to look at Ronan. Ronan tried to follow his face, to read his expression, but he only managed to make out the troubled line of Gansey’s mouth before his head swam and balance abandoned him.
He swung forward against Gansey’s chest, and felt Gansey’s hand on his shoulder, steadying him even as he stumbled slightly under the Ronan’s unexpected weight. Gansey righted him, pushing him back into a sitting position on the mini-fridge, and muttered something under his breath that Ronan didn’t catch. It sounded reproving. Ronan guessed it’d have to be.
When he looked back up at Gansey, though, the expression he met with was anything but irritable. Gansey shook his head very slightly, as if at himself, one hand still resting on Ronan’s shoulder. Then, he moved the other to the side of Ronan’s face, and softly, gingerly brushed his fingers along a stretch of uninjured skin.
It was an intimate, tactile thing, not contextualized by any medical necessity, and Ronan was suddenly intensely aware of what such a gesture would have provoked in him a few month earlier. It was an absence of sensation so precise and acute it could almost pass for the genuine feeling. A tiny butterfly shaped void in his stomach.
Gansey’s hand moved up to brush one hand over Ronan’s forehead, as though smoothing back imaginary unruly bangs. The motion tilted Ronan’s head back slightly, and he looked up to meet Gansey’s eyes. They were slightly distant even as they returned his gaze. Oh, Ronan , they seemed to say. What’s going to become of you?
I don’t know , Ronan thought, looking away. I wish I did, though, just so I could tell you.
“Well,” Gansey said, suddenly, dropping his hand. His eyes broke contact, slid to the floor, and he was businesslike once more. “I guess you’re as fixed up as you’re going to be for now.”
He glanced back up at Ronan, who held his gaze, and for an instant he looked a little rueful, almost shy, before the mask snapped into place. Then:
“Why don’t we get you to bed?” he said, offering his hand.
Ronan considered a moment from his perch atop the fridge, then accepted, slinging an arm haphazardly across Gansey’s shoulders. As they made their stumbling way to Ronan’s bedroom door, Ronan’s cheek bumped against the top of Gansey’s head, and for a single moment he let it rest there before jerking back up and yawning theatrically. It wasn’t a gesture of affection or comfort. It wasn’t a thank you. It wasn’t any of the things Gansey had done for him, and would continue to do. But maybe, drunk and clumsy and full of numb, broken places, it was the closest he could get. Maybe this, for him, was as close as it came.