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“This is so fucking stupid,” Ronan says, because that’s what Ronan usually says about this kind of thing.
“Perhaps,” Gansey agrees, but he still lifts the lid off of the Ouija board and places the bottom of the box inside of it. It’s a used one that they’d ordered off of Ebay, because the only ones they’d had at Target were pink and marketed towards young girls (because that’s what young girls should be doing with their time).
Ronan pinches the bridge of his nose, still in disbelief that they’ve stooped this low. Gansey’s spent a handful of years and thousands of dollars on dousing machines, psychic readings, and heavy-duty equipment meant to track energy patterns. But now they’re sitting on the floor of Monmouth, a board game in between them whose box gives a stern warning of AGES 8+.
“Why are we even doing this here?” he spits. The lights are all off and Gansey’s face looks more eerie than usual illuminated only by flickering candles.
Gansey glances up at him from behind his wire-frames, a spark of excitement in his eyes that can only come from something Glendower-related. “We’re testing it, Ronan,” he says, like it’s obvious. “If we get something here, we’ll know it works!”
“And if we don’t get anything here?”
“Well.” Gansey pauses. “That may just mean there’s nothing here, and we’ll try somewhere on the line regardless.”
Ronan rolls his eyes. Of course.
Gansey lifts the board and the planchette out of the box before setting it out of the way, careful not to knock into the candles. As he sets up the board so the letters are facing him, Ronan adjusts his position, tucking his knees underneath him rather than sitting cross-legged.
“Alright,” Gansey says, voice morphing into something Different, “put your fingers on the planchette.” Ronan does, and Gansey quickly amends, “Lightly, Ronan.”
Ronan doesn’t do anything lightly. Nonetheless, he tries to rest just the tips of his fingers against the plastic, growing irritated when his hands shake in response.
Gansey clears his throat, and when Ronan smirks at him, his face flushes.
“Ahem.” Looking down at the board, he says, “Are there any spirits present?”
Ronan resists the urge to roll his eyes again, instead focusing on not pressing down too hard on the planchette. He keeps the tips of two fingers pressed to it while his other hand moves to help steady him on the ground.
This is so fucking-
The planchette moves.
Ronan stares.
Y.
E.
S.
Gansey looks delighted, shooting Ronan a look that’s a cross between ’can you believe this’ and ’I told you so.’
Ronan continues to stare. This isn’t, he supposes, the strangest thing that’s happened to them.
Clearing his throat again, Gansey says, in his most polite voice, “You, er… you know that there’s a ‘yes’ option on the board, right? If you’re saying yes or no, you don’t need to spell out the whole word.”
There’s a pause, and then a single letter:
O.
When nothing else comes, Ronan snorts.
Gansey looks star-struck, as if finding out that a ghost has taken residence in their apartment is the best thing he’s heard all week.
“How many spirits are present right now?” Gansey asks, his voice still level despite the excitement that Ronan is sure he’s feeling.
Ronan has to lean forward and stretch his arms as the planchette moves to the ‘1’ at the bottom.
Gansey grins. “Do you have a name that you’d like for us to refer to you as?”
N-O-A-H
Noah. It has a name. He, probably. Ronan’s mind is running at a mile a minute at the knowledge that ghosts are, apparently, very real, and sentient enough that they can answer questions through board games designed for people ages eight and up.
“Do you live here? At Monmouth?”
YES.
“How old are you?” Gansey pauses. “Or, uh. Were you?”
1-7
“Seventeen,” Gansey breathes. Unlike his breathless excitement earlier, this word holds an entirely different purpose: mourning. It strikes Ronan, too, how young this spirit it. Seventeen and dead. Seventeen and trapped as a ghost. This ‘Noah’ could just as easily be Ronan. Be Gansey.
Gansey seems to be thinking, probably trying to come up with an important question, and in the moment of silence, Ronan interjects, “How did you die?”
Gansey hisses, “Ronan,” but Ronan hadn’t realized that that was an impolite question to ask.
There’s a long enough pause that Ronan starts to worry that maybe Noah doesn’t want to answer anymore, and then the planchette moves, faster than before.
M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D
Gansey’s eyes flick up to meet Ronan’s, but the planchette is already moving again.
M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D-M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D-M-U-R-D-
“Stop,” Gansey says suddenly, taking his fingers off the planchette. Ronan is frozen, unable to remove his own fingers, but the piece had ceased movement the moment that Gansey removed contact.
Gansey’s voice didn’t quiver, but Ronan can tell that he’s a bit shaken.
Gingerly placing his fingers back on the planchette, Gansey waits to see if it will move again. When it doesn’t, he asks, “Do you have… unfinished business? Is that why you’re still here?”
Ronan thinks that that’s pretty obvious. If Noah was murdered, of course he’s still sticking around.
The image of Niall Lynch, bloodied and with his brains spilling out over the driveway, flashes through his mind.
The planchette moves to GOODBYE.
Gansey looks up at him, and then takes his fingers off the planchette. Ronan no longer feels drawn to it; Noah’s spirit must have already left.
They don’t talk right away. When Gansey puts the board back in the box, he puts the planchette upside-down. Ronan blows the candles out and feels his way over to the lightswitch.
He expects the spell to be broken once the loft is once again flooded with light, but it isn’t. The air feels different. The idea that there’s a ghost here, that some invisible specter had seen him in moments of duress and coming out of nightmares and oh god, showering-
It’s unsettling.
But it has him thinking, wondering if this means his father’s ghost is still lingering. Niall Lynch was murdered. Certainly he has some unfinished business, too. Certainly he still needs to explain to Ronan what the fuck this dream power is.
When Ronan looks back, Gansey is sliding the Ouija board underneath his bed, as if that’s truly the best place to keep a piece of cardboard that can be used to communicate with the dead. He’s pale, and Ronan is sure that the encounter spooked him more than he’d admit.
Ronan feels different, too, but it’s not the same. For some reason, the existence of ghosts doesn’t really shock him that much. Maybe it’s the whole ‘being able to pull things out of dreams’ thing.
“So,” he says, trying to break the tense air, “do we call an exorcist?”
“Ronan!” Gansey snaps, and it doesn’t escape Ronan that that’s the only word that’s been directed at him in the last ten minutes. Gansey is looking around frantically, like Noah’s ghost is going to get angry at this comment and start knocking things off the walls. If he’s been around for a while and not hit poltergeist-levels based on Ronan’s rude comments before, then they’re probably fine.
Ronan ignores him and begins to pick up some of the papers scattered on the floor near Gansey’s desk. It’s a mixture of maps, articles printed from the internet, and handwritten notes ranging from facts about Glendower to a mixed playlist that Gansey made and decided to write out.
When he’s done with this task, he looks up to find Gansey with a hand pressed against a windowpane, staring at the fogged glass as if he could actually see outside. It’s a dramatic picture that has the hair standing up on the back of his neck.
“He’s seventeen, Ronan,” Gansey says suddenly, and Ronan is hit with how broken he sounds. Gansey looks over to him. “There must be some reason he’s here.”
Ronan leans against the desk, trying not to let it show how affected he is by this information. “Don’t ghosts usually stick around until they get justice or something? That’s probably why he’s-”
“I mean here, here,” Gansey interrupts, gesturing around them. “With us. In Monmouth. Maybe we were meant to find out about him. Maybe we’re supposed to help him… cross over, or whatever.”
Ronan isn’t sure what to say. Gansey is always like this, always on about a something more, always certain that everything is for a greater purpose. Gansey thinks he needs to find Glendower because he was born into privilege and given the ability to waste his money on something like that. Gansey, more than anything, is utterly afraid of becoming a byproduct of his family.
Instead of acknowledging this, Ronan says, “Still fuckin’ creepy, though.”
Gansey doesn’t disagree.
The next time they contact Noah, Gansey has a list of questions written out.
“How long has it been since you died?” he asks. Jumping right into it. The planchette moves to the 6. “Six?” Gansey asks. “Years, or months?”
The planchette moves to the ‘Y’ and stops.
“Years?” he prompts.
YES.
Gansey’s eyes flick up to Ronan. “I think he has… less energy, today, or something of the sort.”
Ronan nods as if he understands this, but really, ghost logistics go straight over his head. He doesn’t care about any of this. He wants to know if his dad is still hanging around. He wants to drive the board out to the Barns and-
“Can you tell us anything about yourself? About your life?” Gansey asks, cutting of Ronan’s thoughts. Ronan isn’t sure how any of that is important, but he’s sure Gansey thinks that figuring this ghost out will help them help him.
The planchette moves back and forth a bit, as if Noah is contemplating his answer. When it finally moves, it spells:
A-G-L-N-B-Y
Gansey repeats the letters quietly to himself, brow furrowed in confusion, and Ronan says, “Aglionby.” Gansey looks up at him. “You went to Aglionby?”
YES.
Gansey’s eyes light up in excitement. Ronan knows what he’s thinking: this is no coincidence. Gansey doesn’t believe in coincidences.
He opens his mouth to ask another question, but the planchette is already moving, a bit faster than before. It seems Noah found the energy to talk to them.
W-H-E-L-K
Ronan frowns, looking at Gansey and mouthing, ‘Whelk?’
Gansey makes a face at the board, as if he could read Noah’s expression just by looking at it. “Er… Barrington Whelk? He’s our Latin teacher.”
Noah is silent.
Gansey tries again. “How do you know him?”
There’s a pause that lasts exactly one second, and then the planchette is flying across the board.
M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D-M-U-R-D-E-R-E-D-M-U-R-
“This again,” Ronan sighs, lifting his fingers off the planchette. Gansey does the same, though he looks a bit pained.
They give Noah a moment to calm down before returning to the piece. “Are you saying that Whelk is the one who…” Gansey looks a little sick. “...killed you?”
YES.
Ronan thinks of their Latin teacher, who’s scrawny and pale and has overly-large facial features. He hardly looks like the type who could kill somebody, let alone a seventeen-year-old kid.
But he supposes Noah would know better than he would.
“Noah,” Gansey murmurs, and he breathes it like Noah is an old friend, like Gansey knows him too well. Ronan feels something similar, an ache in his chest like he’s mourning the loss of someone he never knew.
Ronan’s stomach lurches.
“Is there anything we can do?” Gansey asks quietly, and he sounds like he’s asking himself as much as he’s asking Noah.
The planchette moves immediately to NO.
Gansey frowns, obviously put off. “You don’t want us to help you? Maybe if we can… find your body, or something, we can get justice and-”
The movement of the planchette cuts him off.
D-N-T-G-E-T-I-N-V-O-L-V-D
“Don’t get involved,” Ronan says, once he’s worked out where the stream of letters breaks into separate words.
“But why?” Gansey asks, sounding frustrated. Ronan isn’t sure if he’s disappointed because he wanted to help Noah or because he wanted to feel like he was a part of something bigger.
G-E-T-H-U-R-T
Gansey is silent at this, like he, too, is marvelling at the fact that this ghost is concerned for their wellbeing. That he would rather they stay safe than help him get justice.
Gansey says, “Ronan, do you have anything you want to say?”
He doesn’t.
He knows Gansey won’t approve, so he waits until his roommate is at rowing practice before he tugs the Ouija board out from underneath his bed, shuts off the lights, and tries to contact Noah by himself.
It makes him feel pretty fucking stupid, just talking out loud when there’s no one around to hear him, but he reminds himself that he pulls things out of dreams and so this is hardly the strangest thing about him.
Fingers balanced lightly against the planchette, Ronan says, “Are you here?”
There’s a pause, and then the planchette swivels around in circles a few times. Ronan takes that as a yes.
“Uh. Hey.” Gansey is so much better at this.
The planchette moves, a bit slower than it did when there were two people to suck energy from.
H-I
Ronan feels weird, like he should ask the ghost how he’s doing, but the answer would probably be ‘dead’ and so it’s not even worth it. Instead, he clears his throat and asks, “What happened when you died?”
It’s not a question he should be asking, and he knows that. Living people shouldn’t know what happens after death.
He thinks Noah agrees, because there’s a long wait before he spells out, D-A-R-K.
It frustrates Ronan, because that’s really not what he needs to know. “I mean, was there some- some other side? Or are all spirits just trapped here?”
Is my dad still here? Is there a way for me to contact him?
C-A-N-T
Ronan’s brow furrows and he presses his fingers slightly harder against the planchette. “Can’t what?”
T-E-L-L
Ronan’s hands come off the planchette and ball into fists.
“Can’t or won’t?” he spits, not putting his fingers back down but glaring at the board. It takes every ounce of his self-control not to just flip the board, to rip it in half and throw it across the room.
“Can’t,” a voice says, and Ronan jumps about a foot.
Resting against the side of Gansey’s bed, one foot crossed over the other, stands a smudgy blonde boy with a mark on his face and an Aglionby sweater.
“What the fuck,” Ronan says, because what the fuck.
“Hey,” the boy says, and grins. “I’m Noah.”
Gansey is pacing. Gansey paces a lot, but Ronan supposes it’s justified in this case.
“So you’re just-” at this, he gestures towards Noah, “-corporeal, now?”
Noah huffs. “Not corporeal. Just visible.”
“And you weren’t before.”
“Thanks for clarifying, Dick,” Ronan mutters. He’s got his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans and is pointedly not staring at Noah. Partially because if he stares for too long, Noah seems to fade out a bit, like he exists better in the corners of his vision.
Noah is sitting on the edge of Gansey’s desk, Ronan on the bed in the middle of the loft. The ghost boy is picking at his slacks as if he could pull a thread off of them. Ronan isn’t entirely sure that he can’t.
“I’ve always been…” Noah gestures vaguely as if he’s unable to articulate what he means. “I mean, I’ve always been able to be visible. It’s just- easier, now.”
At this, Gansey looks fascinated. He pauses in his pacing to dig his journal out of his messenger bag before resuming pacing, scribbling things down as he does. “And why is that, exactly?” he prompts, sounding too much like a therapist.
“Now that you know I’m here, it’s easier to-” Noah pauses, smiling sheepishly, “-er, to feed off of your energy.”
Great. So he and Gansey have been in a commensalistic relationship with a ghost and not even known it.
Noah is… not what he pictured. Seeing him like this, Ronan is unable to forget that Noah is seventeen, was only a teenager when he was killed. Murdered. By Whelk, apparently. A man who taught Ronan how to properly conjugate Latin verbs.
He doesn’t look like a corpse. He looks like a blonde teenager, whose palms are scraped up and Aglionby uniform is rumpled and untucked. He has a mark on his cheek like the bone’s been caved in, and he’s overall a bit smudgy.
He’s beautiful, and Ronan hates himself for thinking it.
Gansey is still asking questions, pen scribbling away, and Ronan wordlessly migrates to his bedroom and shuts the door behind him.
When Gansey knocks, he has headphones on and isn’t sure if the noise is part of the beat or not. When it comes again, he sighs, drops his headphones on the bed, and gets up to open the door.
Gansey is still in the clothes he wore to crew practice, though it’s hours later and the sun has long gone down. His hair is messy in the way that indicates he’s been running his hands through it nonstop, and there’s a smudge of what’s probably ink right below his bottom lip.
“Where’s Caspar?” Ronan asks in a deadpan, not moving out of the doorway. Gansey knows he doesn’t let others in his room, and that’s not about to change.
“He had to go,” Gansey says. When Ronan stares, he clarifies, “As in, he was fading. Because of a lack of energy. Not like he had errands to run, or anything.” He laughs, and it sounds slightly erratic. He’s more tired than he’s letting show.
Ronan nods. He waits.
“Ronan-” Gansey starts, and breaks off immediately. He seems unsure of how to say whatever’s going through his head. After a moment, he runs his hand through his hair and tries, “What were you talking to Noah about? When I was gone?”
Ronan had sort of hoped that the whole apparition-suddenly-becoming-visible thing would have distracted him from that.
There’s no point in trying to hide the truth from Gansey, so he says, “I thought maybe he could tell me something about my dad.”
Gansey’s face shifts to something like worry before the mask comes back on.
“Ronan,” he says, and this time, it just means Ronan.
There’s a stinging in his chest, something akin to guilt. He knows how Gansey will take this; he’ll blame himself for giving Ronan the idea in the first place, for insisting they use the Ouija board, for making them contact the dead and giving Ronan false hope.
He says, “It’s fine.”
Gansey shakes his head. “We don’t know why Noah is here. You know that he has unfinished business. Your dad might not have been the same way.”
Ronan isn’t sure how his dad, killed in the prime of his life and leaving behind a wife and three children, couldn’t have unfinished business.
Gansey continues, “Plus, it may be a random thing. An energy thing. Until I’ve studied Noah more I won’t be able to determine what-”
“It’s fine,” Ronan says again. The words come out emotionless, but his throat stings with the effort. “Goodnight, Gansey.”
He opens his mouth to argue, then snaps it shut. After a moment, his expression softens and he says, “Goodnight, Ronan.”
When Ronan comes out of a dream holding a sword that looks massive but weighs about as much as a feather, his first thought is, Cool.
Whatever his second thought would be is cut off, because a voice says, “That’s neat.”
The sword clatters to the ground and Ronan nearly falls out of bed in the process, shouting, “Jesus, what the fuck.”
Noah is sitting at the chair by his desk shoved in the far corner, swivelling back and forth. He looks exactly the same as he did the day before, and Ronan isn’t sure why he expected him to look any different; he’s not a person, but rather the imagine of a boy frozen in time.
Something like guilt flashes across the ghost’s face before he’s grinning, and he says, “Sorry, did I scare you?”
Ronan stomps over to his door, face warming at the realization that he’s only in boxer briefs. He throws the door open, and Noah jumps when it slams against the wall.
“Out,” Ronan spits.
Instead of getting up and walking out the door, Noah fades from existence.
This becomes routine, somehow. Noah showing up at random times, fading into existence and acting as if he’d been there the entire time. Maybe he had, just watching silently from whatever plane of existence it is that he’s on.
Gansey has less of a problem with it than Ronan does, and it’s weird to him that Gansey is the one who’s less affected by supernatural things. He also suspects that Gansey is oddly charmed by Noah’s quiet yet eager personality, as if that’s not the kind of thing he ever suspected to see in a ghost. As if he ever expected to meet a ghost and get to know its personality at all.
But Ronan slowly grows used to his presence, to there being three people in the apartment. He warms up to Noah once he realizes that the ghost boy has no trouble coming up with witty retorts to Ronan’s comments.
He’s fascinated by the BMW and convinces Ronan to let him drive it one day. He only allows it around the parking lot, because Noah’s existence is never perfectly consistent and it would be a pretty big trainwreck if he disappeared while out in traffic.
He listens to Gansey talk about Glendower with more rapt attention than Ronan has ever seen before, and he occasionally brings up things about Welsh history that Gansey didn’t even know and they both end up wondering what this kid’s story is.
Gansey looks him up, one day. Shows Ronan his memorial page on the Aglionby website, which brags that Noah was a straight-A student, that he started Raven Day, and that him suddenly going missing was a tragic loss that would be forever grieved.
Noah’s hair shines in the sunlight as he laughs and feeds birds in the Monmouth parking lot. Somewhere, there’s a family that’s still wondering what happened to their son. Ronan’s stomach hurts.
“He’s just creepy.” Talking about Noah as if he’s not in earshot has become one of Ronan’s favorite activities.
“He’s not creepy,” Gansey huffs. “He’s just dead.”
Ronan rolls his eyes. “Sorry, right. That’s not creepy at all.”
“You guys do know that I can hear you, right?” Noah chimes from the backseat, having to yell to be heard over the roar of the Pig. “I’m dead, not deaf.”
Ronan smirks, dropping his head back against the leather headrest.
In the back, Noah has his hands and face pressed against the window, looking like a child seeing snow for the first time. When they go past Aglionby, he perks up, chattering aimlessly about his time there. He had a few teachers that Ronan and Gansey still have now, and it’s weird to think about how they were six years ago.
Noah gives Gansey directions on where to turn, though he seems very unsure about it himself and Ronan isn’t sure how trustworthy his navigating skills are. He justifies his uncertainty with the explanation that “everything looks different now,” which Ronan supposes is understandable.
Ronan isn’t sure how long they’re driving before Noah says, suddenly, “Turn here!” Ronan stares warily at the beaten path that Gansey turns down.
They end up driving straight into a field before Gansey isn’t sure the Pig will make it any further and they get out to walk on foot. As they approach a looming wooded area, Ronan looks around at the field around them, literally in the middle of nowhere, and thinks that this would be a place that somebody would get murdered.
He immediately feels guilty about the thought.
They’re wandering for long enough that Ronan is pretty sure they’re in the wrong spot, and then Noah is stopping in his tracks and Gansey is inhaling sharply and Ronan sees the car.
It’s bright red and obvious, and he has no idea how he didn’t spot it before. It’s like it wasn’t there one second and then it was, something out of a storybook.
Actually, this entire area feels slightly… off. Ronan’s chest is stirring with the same feeling as when he wakes up clutching a dream sword.
Magic. Energy. Something.
Gansey and Ronan approach the car, but Noah hangs back. There’s a layer of dirt and dust coating the hood of the Mustang, and inside, what looks to be a half-eaten burger lays forgotten on the passenger seat.
Evidence of Noah’s life cut short. Ronan’s stomach turns.
Noah is still lingering about ten feet away, seemingly refusing to even look at the car. He gestures vaguely in a direction that he’s not even looking in, and he chokingly says, “It should be- somewhere over there.”
He and Gansey look around for a while. At some point, Noah finally approaches the car, running his fingers over the hood and looking paler than usual, as if that’s possible.
It’s Ronan who finds the body. Noah’s body.
It’s a skeleton now, bones in a half-there Aglionby uniform. The second Ronan kicks the leaves off of it, he hears Noah retching behind him, and he only has half a second of warning before his own stomach is giving out and he empties its contents into the bushes.
This isn’t like finding his dad. Finding Niall Lynch with his brains splattered on their driveway was such a shock that he simply didn’t react at all. He thinks he stood there, staring at him, for a long time before he eventually screamed for his mom, for Declan, and fell to his knees and shouted his dad’s name over and over and over. He didn’t cry, he didn’t throw up, and he didn’t react beyond shock until much later.
Seeing Noah’s corpse is so much different.
He knew that Noah is dead, he knows that, so this shouldn’t come as such a shock. But it does, seeing the boy who he’s gotten to know as a person, dead on the ground when he’s also standing just a few feet away.
Noah. Murdered and left alone in the woods. Forgotten.
Hatred burns in Ronan’s chest for Barrington Whelk.
Gansey comes over and rubs his back. He can’t seem to look at Noah’s body. Noah himself has disappeared again, and Ronan can’t blame him; he isn’t sure he’d want to look at his own remains, either.
Ronan thinks about how weird of a group the three of them make: Gansey, having been stung to death by hornets and living to tell the tale; Ronan, finding his father’s body and knowing it’s because his father had the same ability that he himself possesses; Noah, murdered and left in the woods. All three of them touched by death.
He thinks back to Gansey saying that them contacting Noah wasn’t a coincidence, and he begins to believe it.
“What do we do?” Gansey asks softly, and it’s weird, to hear Gansey without a plan. There’s not much they can do. Noah doesn’t want them to call the police, not yet. He says it’s because he’s worried about them, about Whelk, but Ronan suspects it has a bit to do with him not wanting to face his own funeral yet.
Ronan turns his back on the body, looking around for Noah. He isn’t sure if Noah has left completely or just made himself invisible to them, but he says, “What’s the usual course of action in a situation like this?”
Gansey grimaces. “I suppose we give him the best afterlife we can.”
Over the next few weeks, Noah’s presence becomes more regular. Something about Gansey and Ronan recognizing his existence makes it easier for him to stick around, and he takes advantage of that. Most days when they get home from school, Noah is lounging on Gansey’s bed or watching Youtube videos on Ronan’s laptop. He’ll join Gansey in pouring over books and he asks Ronan to play his music out loud instead of through headphones (which Ronan delights in simply because of how much Gansey hates it, and Gansey refuses to deny Noah anything).
On a rainy Saturday morning, Gansey is a hundred pages into an old scholar’s journal that Malory sent him in the mail and Noah is helping Ronan tack up a handful of recently-acquired speeding tickets on his door.
Someone knocks at the door, and Ronan and Gansey say, “Not it,” at the same time.
Gansey looks up from his journal and Ronan looks over from his room. They lock eyes for a long time, a silent conversation, before Ronan sighs and stands up.
Standing on the other side of the door is Declan Lynch.
Ronan immediately slams the door.
“Ronan,” Gansey says, and he sighs and opens the door.
Declan doesn’t wait to be invited in; he pushes past Ronan and looks around, eyes widening as he looks up at the high ceiling, the mismatched window panes, and the general clutter and disarray making up the entirety of Monmouth.
With contempt, he says, “So, this is where you’re holed up at.”
Ronan slams the door angrily behind him.
Gansey has gotten up off the floor, kicking the journal underneath his desk and approaching Ronan’s brother. “Declan,” he greets, all faux smiles and old-money accent.
Ignoring him, Declan says, “Is this even legal?” Gansey opens his mouth to reply, but Declan cuts him off as he spots Noah, pointing to him (quite rudely) and saying, “Who is this?”
Noah freezes by Ronan’s door, a ticket in one hand and a thumbtack in another. Ronan can see Gansey floundering slightly, and he tries to think of an identity for Noah other than ’the ghost haunting our apartment.’
Friend, he thinks. Just say he’s a friend!
“This is Noah, our other roommate,” Gansey blurts, gesturing at him.
Noah’s face melts into an easy smile. “Hey.”
Ronan hasn’t moved from his spot from the door, but he can see that Declan is tense and suspicious. “You go to Aglionby? I’ve never seen you around.” An unspoken question of why Noah is wearing his uniform on the weekend hangs heavily in the air.
Seeing panic form on Noah’s face, Ronan moves forward, grabs Declan by the arm, and spins him roughly. “Did you need something or are you just here to gawk at my roommates and start shit?”
A look of annoyance comes over Declan’s face - it’s the face he usually makes at Ronan. “Your grades are slipping.” It’s said more as a matter-of-fact than an accusation, as if it was obvious to Declan that it would happen. “The dean talked to me.”
“What the fuck,” Ronan says, but he doesn’t actually care enough about the situation to get angry over it. He’s more relieved to have the spotlight off of Noah. “It’s not any of your fucking business.”
He also knows that that’s not the real reason Declan’s here - it’s just an excuse for him to check in on Ronan, as if he’s a child who’s unable to take care of himself.
“It is, though.” Declan shifts his weight, crossing his arms over his chest. “If you get kicked out of Aglionby, you can’t live in your…” he glances around, considering what to call Monmouth, “... warehouse. And then it’ll be on me to find somewhere for you to live.”
Right. Because Ronan is technically homeless outside of Monmouth.
He opens his mouth to bite back a venomous comment, then snaps it shut when he locks eyes with Noah across the room, who looks startled. Grinding his teeth together, he locks eyes with Declan and levelly says, “I’ll handle it.”
Declan looks like he has more to say, but is overly conscious of the other two people in the room. He walks past Ronan to the door, letting himself out before turning back around. Straightening his back, he stiffly says, “You should call Matthew.”
Ronan pauses, and then nods. “See you in church.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Noah asks. Ronan brought Noah with him because he knew Gansey wouldn’t approve.
“As sure as I can be,” Ronan mutters. His face is pressed against the headrest of the reclining seat, his shirt balled in Noah’s hands where the ghost is sitting backwards in a chair.
“Are you ready?” the artist asks from behind him. At Ronan’s grunt of approval, she brings the needle down to Ronan’s back.
It stings at first, worse than he expected, and he lets out a hiss of pain. His hands bite into the back of the chair and he grinds his teeth together.
Something cold brushes against his hand, causing him to jerk slightly and the artist to make a small tut of disapproval. He glances up to where Noah is extending a ghostly hand, a raised eyebrow and a small smile in place on his face.
Ronan scoffs. He makes a face, and Noah’s smile just grows, his hand still extended.
For some reason, Ronan flushes. He looks away and lets his fingers curl slightly against Noah’s.
It feels like holding hands with a corpse.
“How you doin’, kiddo?” the artist asks.
Better, now.
“Fine,” he grunts. The pain actually isn’t bad now that he’s gotten over the initial shock of it. It’ll all be worth it in the end, too. The idea of seeing his brother’s face when he finds out that Ronan dropped nine hundred dollars on a tattoo he only had a vague design for distracts him from the sensation of the needle. Fuck Declan.
She laughs, probably not believing him. “We’re gonna be here for a long while, so better get comfortable.”
Noah’s fingers curl tighter around his.
Ronan is quick to forget that Noah isn’t actually their roommate. With the amount of time that Noah spends visible, hanging around them at Monmouth or tagging along to trips to Nino’s or riding in the back of the Pig when they go on Glendower hunts, he’s become the third person in what’s now a trio.
When Ronan spots a mouse in the loft on a Friday night, he cracks down and enlists both Gansey and Noah in cleaning up the apartment. Gansey complains about being made to put his books away, insisting that he has some system of organization amongst the disorganization, and Noah protests, “I don’t even live here.”
“You don’t live anywhere,” Ronan retorts.
Noah opens his mouth to respond, then snaps it back shut when he can’t think of a comeback. Ronan snickers and Gansey shakes his head at them as if they’re children.
He gets started with a trash bag, walking around the loft and picking up crumpled-up papers, empty soda cans, and discarded mint leaves. Noah hums loudly as he picks up Gansey’s scattered laundry, depositing it all neatly into a laundry basket that Ronan wasn’t aware they had.
Ronan drops his trash bag when there’s a loud clutter behind him, Noah falling to the floor.
Gansey shouts, “Noah!” at the same time that Ronan says, “Czerny, are you alright?”
Noah doesn’t seem to hear him. He’s too busy clutching at his face, holding his arms over his head to protect him from an unseen threat. He lets out a scream horrible enough that Ronan’s stomach drops.
Gansey continues to say his name, both of them too afraid to approach him. It only takes Ronan a moment to understand what this act is: Noah reenacting his death.
It’s several long minutes, with Noah curling in on himself and grabbing his face and letting out whimpers, invisible tears streaming from his eyes. He says, “Why,” in a voice that has Ronan’s throat clenching up.
And then it’s over, and Noah is pushing himself to his feet and staring at them in confusion.
“What?” he asks. “Something on my face?”
It’s a joke, kind of, in the way that it’s not really funny but it has potential to be. Ronan is too shocked to make a witty comeback.
Instead, he says, “I’m going to fucking kill Whelk.”
Noah frowns, obviously confused. Gansey, looking ill, doesn’t object.
Ronan’s hands are balled into fists, the trash forgotten on the floor. He’s not sure if he wants to throw up or have a fucking drink.
He turns and grabs his keys off the rack by the door.
“Woah, hey, wait!” Noah says, and cold fingers grab his arm. Ronan shivers, and he’s not sure if it’s from the cold or the contact.
He whirls around. “He deserves to fucking die, Noah.” He’s sure his eyes are burning; he’s shaking from how angry he is, unable to get the searing image of Noah’s trembling body on the floor out of his head.
Noah drops his wrist. He’s shaking his head, eyes full of worry. “It’s not worth it, Ronan.”
“He killed you!”
Noah continues to shake his head. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“You think I give a shit about-”
“I give a shit about it!” Noah interrupts, and hearing Noah swear shuts him up.
His throat burns in the way that means he’s choking back more emotion than he can handle. “We’re just trying to help you,” he hisses. It comes out much more venomous than intended, and Noah flinches.
“I don’t need your help,” Noah says. His voice wobbles and it’s clear he doesn’t want to say it, but he’s trying to prove a point. He gestures down at himself. “I’m already dead. Not much you can do to fix it.”
Ronan grinds his teeth together. He drops his keys back onto the rack but ducks out of the apartment.
He slams the door to Noah’s heartbroken face.
Ronan’s fake ID sucks, but that doesn’t stop the bored-looking cashier at the liquor store from selling to him. He turns his music up in his headphones, finds a place in the park to sit and drink, and thanks the world that Henrietta cops patrol a lot less this late into the winter.
It’s freezing but Ronan’s wearing leather and plus, the vodka warms him from the inside-out. He knows, vaguely, that this isn’t a good course of action. Fighting with Noah, mourning over Noah, isn’t a good excuse to get drunk. Temporarily forgetting his problems won’t make them any less present.
But it sure feels nice to stop thinking for a few hours.
By the time he’s finally cold enough to think about stumbling home, it’s late at night. Maybe early morning. Ronan is a shot away from alcohol poisoning but he’s out of booze and doesn’t have any more cash on him and plus, Gansey is probably worried out of his mind.
On the way home, he thinks about Noah, about the sounds he made as he recreated his final moments. It makes the liquor in his stomach rise into his throat before he chokes it back down.
He makes it about halfway home before he has to sit on the curb and rest. His head is pounding, now, vision a bit blurry.
He drops his head back against a pole and lets his eyes slip closed.
When he wakes up, he’s on the street in a pool of his own blood and Noah is hovering over him, shouting.
“Ronan,” he says, and when that doesn’t do anything, reiterates, “Ronan!”
Ronan’s only vaguely aware of the situation, his head aching too hard for him to try and sit up or move or speak or do anything. He thinks he’s still drunk, but more of the focus is on his wrist, which is screaming with pain, feeling like it’s been ripped to shreds.
He curls his fingers, blanching when he realizes that they’re dripping in blood. Meaning his wrist really was ripped to shreds by the night terror.
“Ronan, oh my god,” Noah sounds hysterical, dropping to his knees. Maybe he has no knowledge of basic first aid or maybe he’s already assessed the situation enough to figure out the problem, but he has no problem in moving Ronan so that he can pull his leather jacket off.
The fabric clings to his skin, held there by the blood, and Ronan groans at the sensation of it being peeled off.
“Ronan, Ronan, Ronan,” Noah says frantically, like a mantra, moving to pull off his shirt as if it can be used to stop the bleeding and then looking dejected when he realizes it’s stuck to his body. He doesn’t look happy but he says, “I’m going to take this off, Ronan, okay?” He tugs at the bottom of Ronan’s muscle tank and Ronan can’t find the words to tell him not to.
His head is swimming too much to understand what’s really going on, but suddenly he’s shirtless on the cold street and he’s half-resting in Noah’s lap and Noah is frantically pressing his muscle tank onto the cuts. Cold fingers wrap tightly around Ronan’s wrists, applying pressure in hopes of stopping the bleeding.
“Where’s your phone,” Noah says, but it’s not really directed at him - Noah is already shaking out Ronan’s jacket and, when he doesn’t find it there, shoving his hand into the pockets of Ronan’s jeans.
Ronan lets his eyes slip closed again, for some reason comforted by how he can feel the cool of Noah through his slacks. He hears Noah’s panicked fumbling with the phone, uncertain of how to use it - “Why are phones so different now, what the heck, Ronan”- and then, finally, his voice saying, “Gansey.”
Ronan slips halfway out of consciousness. When Noah ends the phone call, he continues to talk, mostly a stream of, “Ronan, stay with me, talk to me, Ronan, Ronan, Ronan.”
Gansey arrives before the ambulance does; the familiar roar of the Pig pulls Ronan back to consciousness. He’s pretty sure his wrist has stopped bleeding, the fabric of his shirt sopping up the blood, but it still stings and he feels like if he moves it, his skin will fall apart like ribbons.
Gansey says, “Good god, Ronan,” and for the first time, Ronan considers how this probably looks.
By the time the EMTs arrive, Ronan is slightly more conscious and has sobered up quite a bit. His head is still spinning but he’s more of himself now, and he snaps at the EMTs when they try to lift him onto a stretcher.
Noah disappears somewhere in the process, and Ronan doesn’t even realize until they’re at the hospital that he’s not with them.
They stitch Ronan up, and he struggles to find the words to explain what happened. Gansey stays by his side the entire time, but he also calls Declan, against Ronan’s wishes. He also gives Ronan the literal shirt off his back (exchanging it for a wrinkled sweater that he’d kept in the back of the Pig), so Ronan can’t really hold it over him.
When his wrist has been sewed back together and bandaged up, a doctor tells him that they’re going to keep him for psychological evaluation. That he’s a danger to himself, and that they need to figure out what they’re going to do with him.
Ronan begs Gansey with his eyes until Gansey talks them out of it and Ronan offers a generous bribe.
Gansey’s stare burns into his back on the way out of the hospital.
The drive home is silent.
Ronan is slumped in the passenger seat of the Pig, fingers worrying at the bandages wrapped around his wrist. Gansey’s stare is focused on the road, fingers tight and tense around the wheel.
It’s not until they’re back at Monmouth, the apartment cold and empty without Noah’s ever-present self, that Gansey speaks.
“I didn’t know how bad it was.” Gansey’s voice comes out choked, like his mouth is dry. “Why didn’t you talk to me?”
Ronan pauses in the middle of the loft. “It’s not what you think.”
It’s really not, but he doesn’t know what he can tell him to prove this.
“Ronan.” God, he hates hearing Gansey’s voice like that. “Talk to me.”
He can’t turn to face him. “It’s nothing,” he snaps.
There’s a sharp inhale of breath, and then Gansey says, “Fine.” It’s more icy than usual, and Ronan flinches. “But I hope you realize how hard it was on Noah to find you bleeding out on the street.”
It hits Ronan, then, that Noah also probably thinks he was witnessing a botched suicide attempt. Noah, who would give anything to be alive himself.
He’s hit with a wave of nausea that has nothing to do with the alcohol still in his system or whatever it was they gave him at the hospital to take the edge off.
Voice a word away from breaking, he says, “Goodnight, Gansey.”
He doesn’t sleep.
A week passes with no word from Noah. The apartment is too silent without him, the air too tense between Ronan and Gansey for casual conversation to be made. Ronan spends most of his time holed up in his room, and Gansey makes excuses to study at the library.
Ronan sleeps in small bursts. He’s terrified to fall into a deep sleep, something long enough for a nightmare. It haunts him even during his waking hours. What if he brings one of the night terrors out of the dream with him and it hurts Gansey? Or Noah?
(Noah would probably be fine, considering he’s dead, but the idea of Noah knowing what’s in his head is bad enough on its own.)
So he lays on his bed, music blasting from his headphones, and stares at the ceiling.
When he feels the air shift around him, at first he’s pretty sure it’s just his exhaustion kicking in. The second time it happens, he sits up, tugs his headphones down, and says, “Noah?”
There’s a pause before the ghost materializes at the end of his bed. Like always, Ronan doesn’t exactly see it happen. It’s like he blinks, and Noah is suddenly there. For once, he’s expecting it.
Ronan shuts off his music and tosses his headphones to the floor, scooting back on the bed and drawing his legs up to his chest, a silent invitation. After a moment, Noah hesitantly climbs onto the bed, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap as he stares levelly at Ronan.
“So, you’re dead,” Ronan says. Noah stares. “Does that mean I could throw you out the window and you’d be fine?”
Noah stares, then grins, and then forces a faux-angry look onto his face. “You wouldn’t dare,” he says.
Ronan lifts an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t I?”
Noah holds a serious expression for a moment longer, then dissolves into giggles. It has a grin tugging at Ronan’s lips.
“You’re such a person, Ronan,” he says, laughing, and Ronan isn’t entirely sure what that means.
Still, he responds, “You’re such a ghost.”
“It is what I do best.”
“I thought that was being obnoxious?”
He laughs again. “Screw you, Lynch.”
The air between them is charged, and Ronan isn’t sure how much of it has to do with Noah being purely a creature of energy. It catches him off-guard and he ends up staring at Noah’s mouth, Noah’s hair, Noah’s everything.
“There’s something I should tell you,” Noah says, which also catched him off guard. Noah’s expression has shifted into something more serious than Ronan is used to from him, and he doesn’t think he likes it. When Ronan nods for him to go on, he continues, “It’s about the search for Glendower.”
And that… was not what Ronan was expecting.
“Okay,” he says, frowning in confusion.
Noah uncrosses his legs, pulling them against his chest instead, mirroring Ronan’s own position. He runs his fingers through his hair and then does it again, his fingers looking a little shaky. Ronan wants to reach out and grab them.
So he does.
Noah stares down at their fingers intertwined between them, something that Ronan is pointedly not looking at, and he says, “When Whelk... when he did what he did. It was to wake the ley line.”
Ronan jerks back. Noah’s grip has tightened on his fingers, the only thing that keeps him from unintentionally ripping his hand away.
“What?” he says, because really, what. “Whelk knew about the ley line? About Glendower?” It’s two questions out of many. Is Noah implying that he was used as a human sacrifice? Is the ley line already active? Does this mean Noah knew about Glendower and the line already?
Noah’s nod is jerky. “It’s… he was obsessed with it, but not in the same way Gansey is.” His thumb strokes over the back of Ronan’s hand, and Ronan is almost certain the move is unconscious. “Anyways, I- I’m going to tell Gansey. That that’s the place he should start.”
There’s still a dark look on Noah’s face, so Ronan prompts, “But…?”
His expression grows somber. “Be careful.”
Ronan’s fingers twitch against against Noah’s, turning the ghost boy’s hand over in his own. He runs his thumb over the abrasion on Noah’s palm, remembering noticing it the first time he met him. He’d learned at some point that Noah was a skateboarder when he was alive, and a fall the day before his death had led to him having perpetual scrapes.
He looks at Noah, processing all of this new information. Noah is connected to them in more ways than they knew. Gansey’s voice in his head says coincidence, because it’s not.
Noah’s moved closer to him at some point, and he uses his free hand to reach out and fiddle with the new leather bands wrapped around Ronan’s wrist. Ronan tenses up immediately, remembering that the last time Noah saw him, he’d been getting in an ambulance.
He wonders if an apology would be appropriate in this scenario, but chokes on the words.
Noah’s fingers slip underneath the bracelets and trace over the skin. Ronan had the stitches removed yesterday, and Noah’s light touch is only the hint of a sting (and part of that may just be the cold).
Before he can say anything, Noah looks at him and says, “I know that you didn’t do this, Ronan.” At Ronan’s surprised stare, he says, “I saw.”
A silent conversation passes between them. Noah saw, and there’s no way he can understand what happened and he’s not pressing for information, either. Ronan knows he won’t tell Gansey, and he appreciates that; he’ll tell Gansey, eventually. He just needs to wait for the right time.
Noah’s slack-clad knee brushes against his bare one.
“Noah,” he says, and Noah leans forward and kisses him.
It’s quick and chaste, but not in an awkward, uncomfortable way. It’s shocking more than anything, because Ronan hadn’t been expecting it but he had, and because Noah’s lips are so cold that it’s impossible to pretend he’s kissing a living person. And somehow that’s okay, because it’s Noah, and Noah may be dead but he’s still Noah.
When the ghost boy pulls back, there’s nervousness and apprehension on his face. His eyes are wide but his voice is level as he asks, “Was that okay?”
Because he’s Ronan, he replies, “If by ‘okay’ you mean ‘cold as fuck,’ then yeah, it was okay.” There’s a smile tugging at his lips, though, and he knows that Noah knows what he means.
Noah blinks, then grins, then says, “You jerk,” before he’s pushing Ronan back and kissing him again.
And this is so fucking weird, but somehow, it works. He’s never been in a stranger spot in his life before, with being able to pull things out of his dreams and occasionally being mauled by the creatures of his head. With searching for a long-dead king with a boy who seems to be the reincarnate of one. With kissing a boy who’s been dead for six years.
Somehow, it’s all so perfect. He’s fighting with Gansey but he knows they’ll be over it within a few days, as they always are. He can’t stand Declan but he loves Matthew enough that he’ll tolerate him, put on whatever face he needs to. Somewhere, out in the woods, Noah’s bones are still thrown out carelessly, but that’ll change. Sometime soon, they’ll get justice for him.
Noah’s lips are cold against his and somehow, Ronan has never felt warmer.