#[gestures blankly] have at it if there are any trc crew amongst u

[billdenbrough]

“We’re out of juice,” is what Ronan says when he sits down beside Gansey, legs sprawling across the floor in contrast to Gansey’s carefully-crossed ones. Their knees still touch, like Ronan has been pulled into Gansey’s orbit so completely that it extends even to his limbs, a fact of the universe written out even on the most mundane of scales.

It’s a good representation of them: Gansey, cross-legged in soft cotton sweatpants, as if the lack of visible branding will make it any less evident to someone like Ronan—or Parrish, if he were here, but he’d know that the way he always does, the differences between him and Gansey mapped out on that invisible layer Adam holds between them, the one Gansey likes to pretend doesn’t exist—that they cost at least three figures; Ronan, leaning back a little, wearing his shitty expensive jeans that Parrish hates so much, the ones that cost at least four figures and Ronan doesn’t care about the washing instructions for, the ones fraying at the knee that Ronan has pressed up against the junction of where Gansey’s knee meets thigh.

This is the truth of things: two boys who look very, very different, but are more connected than you’d think, if you look closely enough. If it’s not their eyes, it’s their knees. If it’s not their knees, it’s their souls.

Ronan’s opinion on his soul’s eternal state is a complicated thing, but the way it matches Gansey’s is never in doubt. Not to him.

A two-headed-beast, Ronan thinks, staring out at Gansey’s insomnia-driven cardboard rendition of Henrietta. Gansey says excelsior, and Ronan’s the fucking sword cutting through. Onwards and upwards, no matter what.

“What, again?” Gansey replies.

Gansey looks like shit, so Ronan tells him so instead of answering. 

He also looks like a king, handsome and regal and untouchable. He also looks like a boy, young and soft around the edges, like how ink fades with time. He also looks like everything Ronan has ever believed in, like a room in Monmouth Manufacturing and driving to the Barns and chasing down Glendower and needing help with Latin, like the gasoline-lit curve of his mouth saying the difference is we matter / dream me the world / ronan, like Ronan’s name is somehow worth holding safe in his mouth.

Ronan does not tell him any of those things.

“It’s hard to meet the standards for male beauty without juice,” Gansey remarks.

Adam says that Ronan isn’t as honest as he says he is; that telling the truth is not the same as being honest, and that Ronan might not lie, but that’s not the same thing. He says this a lot, in various ways, but especially he says it when Ronan is looking at Gansey, and Adam is watching the way they move around each other.

He’s probably right. Otherwise Ronan would tell Gansey that there’s no version of him that isn’t beautiful, and not just because of his inherited pretty face and nice clothes. It’s the kind of knowledge that just is, the sort of thing you live with and learn to move around, like how a punch to the chest leaves an ache throbbing through your entire rib cage. Ronan is bruised with it, the knowledge of all Gansey is, how impossible and exquisite and fucking fundamental he is to Ronan’s continued existence.

“Sounds like a you problem, Dick,” Ronan replies. Gansey makes a face, always hearing the capital letter when Ronan says it, and Ronan grins at him, like always. It’s a routine, this; there is a rhythm to the way they co-exist, one that had been established prior to Ronan moving into Monmouth, but has only become more entrenched in their bones in the time since. “We could get some more.”

Gansey considers this. It’s a common occurrence, these two a.m. juice runs. It’s a wonder they never realised Noah was fucking dead, honestly, considering he never came with them but never gave any indication of sleeping either.

Then again, rituals leave little room for doubt, and nights like this are a ritual for them. They always have been, even before Monmouth, and Niall Lynch’s death, and Ronan forgetting how to smile without his mouth turning into a knife. Ronan-and-Gansey, always up against the world together, whether it be ley lines and dead fathers or an inability to sleep and a lack of acceptable beverage options.

There aren’t many things Ronan relies on. Richard Gansey III—all the versions of him, including his annoying Congresswoman’s son one, and the one that holds all the wild burning pieces inside him so the other Ganseys may remain contained and safe for consumption, and the one he has right now, this teenage boy with grand goals and hair mussed from tossing and turning on his pillow before he gave up—is one of them.

Nights like this, with the Henrietta air sweet with past rain and no fucking juice in the fridge but four of Blue’s favourite yoghurt for some goddamn reason and Gansey right beside him, are another.

“Okay,” Gansey says finally, pressing his knee a little deeper into Ronan’s in a bump of warmth and acknowledgement and something that burns quietly in that part of Ronan’s chest he does his best not to name. “Let’s go get some juice.”

#trc #ronan lynch #gansey #ronan x gansey #ronsey #richard gansey #the raven cycle #this is definitely not the longest thing i've put here lol but for once i am not writing on my phone so we get to use a read more <3 #these tags are a fucking wreck bc of gansey's ridiculous name #anyway i wrote this for a flash exchange and thought it kinda fit the bill of the stuff i normally put here so #[gestures blankly] have at it if there are any trc crew amongst u #ara is the only one i can be sure of and idk if you'll even see this babes but if u do [blows kiss to the sky] #jane writes sometimes