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Swimming was deafening, in a way. When Gansey felt water rush into his ears and fill up his head with the encompassing sensation-sound of nothing, he remembered exactly why he used to spend his sleepless nights and early mornings here.
Really, that was about all he remembered, right then.
The water, the motion – it left no room for anything else. Anxiety oozed out of him in each underwater breath, dissipating into the space around him; not gone, but so diluted that he could no longer feel it.
In the pool, Gansey could drop his weight, just for a little while. He could let the water take his burdens, knowing it wouldn’t carry them so far that he couldn’t retrieve them when he was done.
It gave him a few minutes to be just Gansey. The real Gansey – not the body that housed him, with its practiced smile and straight white teeth, and not all the different Ganseys he was to everyone else; not Glendower’s Gansey, with his relentless quest and endless fountain of unanswered questions; not Adam’s Gansey, with his wealth and clumsy understanding of the way the world worked; not Ronan’s Gansey, with the responsibility of being one of Ronan’s few tethers to a life worth living; not even Blue’s Gansey, with the title of True Love, with the promise of his second death laced on her lips.
Here, he didn’t have to be anyone for anyone. He didn’t even have to be anyone for himself. He could just be.
Lap after lap, line after line, he swam – water and limbs and a soul too big for one boy to contain. He swam until his muscles ached, until his eyes stung, until the weightlessness began to feel more like emptiness.
And then he broke through the surface and braced himself up on to the edge by his elbows, breaths pulling fast, blinking away chlorine and tears.
As his vision cleared, he realized he was sitting right in front of Noah. Or maybe Noah had just materialized right in front of him. It was so hard to tell sometimes.
“Sorry,” Noah greeted, and Gansey wasn’t sure what for, but he didn’t ask. Noah’s whole presence often seemed apologetic – the roll of his shoulders, the fluttering of his hands.
Now, though, his fingers were drumming the ground next to him, not in a restless, nervous way like they often did, but with intention; he had some beat going, even though Gansey couldn’t keep up with it – a straining, messy beat, clearly both rhythmic and lost in equal measure.
“It’s okay,” Gansey said, pulling himself all the way out of the pool and seating himself next to Noah, legs still dangling into the water.
Neither of them said anything as the pool and Gansey’s breaths grew calm, until the only movement left in the room was Noah’s drumming fingers.
“There’s so much, Noah,” Gansey said, surprising himself by breaking the silence.
Noah gave an understanding nod.
“But right now, I think, there is only right now.” In the dim room, looking over the dim water, Gansey felt authentic. Like being exposed and vulnerable but without any fear.
Whatever this feeling was, he liked it.
Water swished around his calves, anchoring him to the moments before, when he felt profoundly himself. He thought he ought not feel that way anymore – Noah was here, now, which meant he should now be Noah’s Gansey.
But who was Noah’s Gansey?
A lifeline? A king? A bundle of fear, buried under mask after mask after mask? A friend? A ten-year-old boy, stung to death by hornets?
No, Gansey thought, none of that.
With Noah, there was no one to be but himself.
Noah dropped his legs into the water, sending ripples over the surface and darkening his khaki pants.
Gansey usually made a concerted effort not to mention Noah’s ghostliness, especially to Noah himself, but the safeguards that usually protected him from saying inadvisable things were disengaged by the lateness of the hour. “Can you feel it?” he asked.
Noah glanced from the water to Gansey and then back to the water, and he gave a shrug. “I think it’s cold, but also I’m cold, so…” He put on a wry smile. “Chicken or egg.”
“It is cold,” Gansey confirmed, and after a moment, he added, “But cold’s not bad at all.”
Noah’s smile softened and he glanced away, his fingers continuing to percuss against the ground.
“What is that?” Gansey asked, “That rhythm.”
Noah considered for a minute, eyes focused on nothing in the distance, and then said, “Your heartbeat, I think.”
Sure enough, Noah’s fingers quickened to match the sudden stammer of his heart. Concern and curiosity edged his voice when he asked, “Why are you doing that?”
Noah either didn’t have an answer or wasn’t willing to give it, so he returned, “Should I stop?”
Just a little too quickly, in a way that very closely resembled begging and would’ve been horrendously embarrassing in the presence of anyone but Noah, Gansey said, “Please don’t.”
Noah didn’t.
Gansey put his damp palm against the fabric of Noah’s sleeve, touching the elbow of his immortal Aglionby sweater. By all logic, Noah shouldn’t be cold. He was all bundled up. But, by all logic, Noah shouldn’t have been here at all. Neither of them should’ve.
“Can you feel it?” Noah asked him. He said ‘it’ like ‘me.’
Gansey was relieved to be able to nod his head. He always worried that one day, his hand would pass straight through his friend – that he’d go from being only vaguely phantasmal to being mostly apparition. “Can you?” he asked.
Noah shrugged once more.
“This?” Gansey tried again, lightly pressing his chilly knuckles against Noah’s chilly jaw. Gansey could feel it, certainly – smooth skin, no stubble. Noah had died freshly-shaven, baby-faced.
Noah turned his head to look at him, as though this would help him answer. Tonight, his caved-in cheek just looked like the smudge Gansey had grown accustomed to for all these years. Tonight, Noah just looked like Noah.
He reached up to push Gansey’s slicked hair off of his forehead with his free hand – with his other, he continued to tap out Gansey’s heartbeat, making the gentlest splashing sound against the wet pavement, amplifying the pitter-patter quality in a way that made it difficult for Gansey to distinguish from the blood rushing in his ears.
“Almost,” Noah finally decided, and Gansey let his fingers fall an inch, resting against the soft skin of Noah’s throat.
That’s where his pulse should’ve been.
He put his hand back down by his side.
His eyes, though, were harder to pull away. Noah simply looked at him, and Gansey simply looked back, and for a moment, that was all there was.
But there was something more, too. Something between the two of them, like there was something between stars in the sky or mountains against low clouds. A something that looked like vacant space until examined more closely.
Between the two of them, they had one life. Noah’s ended when Gansey’s began, and time lapsed between them – both of them, both unlikely and impossible.
Gansey dreaded his death for countless reasons, but above most others, he dreaded what it meant for Noah. It was only fair that if he could no longer use the gift of Noah’s life that he should be able to return it to him – that Noah should get a chance to pick up where he left off if Gansey’s story had to end.
Right then, though, Gansey couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t think about anything except the way Noah looked back at him as he tapped his hastening, fluttering heartbeat against the floor.
And then the drumming stopped, and for a moment, Gansey’s heart surged in silence. His eyes dropped from Noah’s, suddenly abandoned by the sound he’d grown fond of and planning to search whole world for it if he had to, only to see that Noah’s fingers hadn’t stopped tapping at all. Instead, they were in the air, momentarily silenced as Noah moved his hand, and then, they were against Gansey's bare chest, still tapping perfectly in time with his heart.
Noah peeked back up at him through careful lashes. “Can you feel that?”
Gansey said, “I suppose I can.”
But it sounded like a question, even to his own ears.
At this distance, Gansey could feel Noah's breath, inexplicably warm against the cold of everything else. Time seemed a phenomenon from another world, something that couldn't touch them now.
The undefined question hung in the frozen, shrinking space between them.
Finally, Noah nodded.
With an exhale of relief, Gansey leaned forward and kissed him.
Noah’s lips slid into place lightly against his – the pressure almost imperceptible compared to the steady, firm tapping of his fingers against his chest, where his heart threatened to burst through his sternum, wanting terribly to be as cold and vulnerable as the rest of him.
So Gansey kissed him a little more surely, and Noah kissed him back with equal enthusiasm, until Gansey’s heart and Noah’s drumming had leveled off into something more sustainable than cardiac arrest – until Gansey had no choice but to sit back and breathe.
“Could you feel that?” Gansey asked, voice little more than air, pulling his hand out of Noah’s hair and then carefully smoothing it back into place. He leaned back a little more and slid his thumb over his bottom lip, which was now damp from more than just the pool water.
With a heartbreaking smile and an impish little laugh, Noah confirmed, “Yeah.”
“Good,” Gansey said with a laugh in return. “So could I.”
He let out a long, light breath as Noah dropped his head to rest on Gansey's bare shoulder, dropped his fingers to drum against Gansey's bare knee.
Together, they looked over the still water – Gansey, shivering slightly from the dampness of the pool amplified by the cold body resting on his side. Despite this quaking, his heart finally settled into a cadence he recognized. A strong, calm beat. He hadn’t realized how jumpy and thready it had been until it was corrected.
“Thank you, Noah,” Gansey said, placing his hand over Noah’s and finally stilling his fingers.
“I used to swim,” Noah said, voice still soft – not in the fading-spirit way, but in the peaceful way; he didn’t need to be any louder than that. He peered up at Gansey as he asked, “Will you swim with me?”
Lacing their fingers together and smiling into the top of Noah’s head, Gansey agreed, “I’d love to.”