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Ronan was careful to be quiet as he returned to Monmouth Manufacturing. It was late, around three in the morning, and he had been out racing. All he wanted to do was sneak back in and go to bed unnoticed so that he could proceed to sleep through his morning classes tomorrow. Lord knows Aglionby would survive a morning without Ronan Lynch.
Except, when he walked inside, Gansey was still awake, reading the book under a single lamp, the only light in the room. Next to him, on the side table, there was a pen and a notebook with notes scribbled on it in his messy scrawl.
He wasn’t exactly surprised to see that he was still awake. Both of them often struggled with falling asleep more often than not and, while Ronan often spent those late hours tossing and turning in his room or getting up and leaving entirely, sometimes they spent that time together, talking or, more often, just sitting silently in the same place.
Gansey still hadn’t noticed Ronan walk in, due to his absorption in his book, but it was likely only a matter of time, so he flipped the switch and turned on the rest of the lights, making Gansey jump slightly in his seat.
“Christ, you snuck up on me,” Gansey said, clutching a hand to his chest before sticking the pen he had out in his book to keep his place and putting it on top of the notebook.
“Wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t sitting in the dark like a creep,” Ronan replied. “Seriously, can you even fucking see with just that lamp? It’s dim enough with the rest of the lights on.”
“I could see perfectly fine,” he informed him. “I merely didn’t want to wake you which clearly wasn’t a problem since you weren’t here. Where were you anyway?”
“Even if I was here, my door would have been closed,” he pointed out. “You can turn on the fucking lights.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” Gansey adjusted his glasses and looked at him pointedly, like a concerned parent or some shit.
“Out,” he said with a shrug.
“Were you getting into trouble?” he asked. “Ronan, you shouldn’t be out so late when we have school tomorrow as it is, much less-”
“Jesus, Gansey, you’re not my fucking mother. Or Declan," he grumbled, half wishing Noah would choose this moment to materialize and save him from round 500 of this conversation but, as usual, he seemingly didn’t want to get involved in their drama.
“You’re right. I’m not,” Gansey said with a sigh. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to worry about one of my best friends.”
'One of‘ rang in the back of his head. Because, as long as they’d known one another and as much as they’d been through together, Adam always seemed to come first. And now Sargent did too. He hated that he got jealous about it because he genuinely liked both of them, even if he would never admit that to Sargent’s face and he really had no reason to give a shit. Still, it seemed that every one-on-one conversation they’d had recently either directly related to the Glendower or, more frequently, was about Gansey getting on his ass about his academics which was frankly none of his fucking business.
“Worry more quietly,” he snapped. “I’m going to bed.”
And then he stormed off toward his room.
“You’re mad,” Gansey inferred aloud.
Ronan didn’t turn around. “I’m always mad.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But you’re mad at me.”
He crossed his arms and slowly turned toward him. “It’s nothing personal. I just don’t want to talk to you about the same bullshit over and over.”
Gansey’s shoulders sagged and he looked to Ronan with something that looking annoyingly like guilt in his eyes. “We can talk about something else if you want to. If you can’t sleep.”
Ronan sighed and let his arms drop to his sides. He hadn’t meant to upset Gansey. That was the last thing that he wanted to do.
He walked across the room and flopped onto the couch. “What are you reading?”
“It’s a local history book. I was hoping to find something that might point to any sort of weird occurrences here that we weren’t aware of,” he explained. “I haven’t found much thus far and it’s not a particularly interesting read. Maybe that will change.”
Ronan seriously doubted it, given the subject matter and the fact that Gansey of all people was bored by it, but he thought it best not to voice his concern.
“At least you’ve found something worth writing about,” he offered instead.
Gansey raised an eyebrow. “This?” he asked, picking up the notebook. “A cow went missing in 1823. It was probably the guy on the neighboring farm that the owner had a long-lasting rivalry with. It’s still worth looking into, probably. I was hoping for anything on the forest, normal or strange, but I’ve had no luck thus far.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while after that, which wasn’t at all unusual for them. Ronan wasn’t much of a talker and Gansey usually had a purpose in mind when he opened his mouth. It was nice, sitting back as the seconds ticked by together, gazing at the bright moon shining in through the window.
It was Gansey that finally broke that silence. “I’m sorry for bringing up school so often when I know that it’s a conversation you don’t enjoy having,” he said. “It’s just that I don’t particularly want to lose you.”
“Lose me?” he raised an eyebrow and turned to the other boy.
He nodded, not quite meeting Ronan’s eyes. “We’ve been through a lot together, you and I. And you’ve been drinking a lot more lately and somehow more reckless than usual. I guess I just supposed that if you found something to be passionate about, you might not do something reckless enough to get yourself killed.”
Ronan snorted. “As if you could get rid of me so easily. And do you really think school is going to be something I’m passionate about? Come on, Gansey.”
He shrugged. “You like Latin. Besides, you’ve got a far better chance of finding something there than holed up here.”
“I have things worth living for,” he said.
What he didn’t say was that his passions laid with the people that he loved. With Matthew and his mother. Reluctantly, with Declan. With Noah and Adam and Blue. And, in a way that was similar yet vastly different from each of the others, with Gansey himself.
Gansey was looking at him now, an unreadable expression on his face. He had a feeling his response hadn’t quite quelled his worry. “Promise me that you won’t do something so monumentally stupid that I lose you.”
“I can’t promise you that I won’t do anything stupid,” he replied. “But you know I’d never let anything tear me from you without putting up a fight. I’m not going anywhere, not as long as you’ll still have me at your side.”
“I always will,” he told him. “I love you, Ronan.”
His heart clenched in his chest, but he pushed it aside. He hadn’t meant it like that. He couldn’t have.
“Of course,” he replied. “We’re friends. I love you too, I guess.”
Gansey opened his mouth to say something more but promptly closed it.
“I’m going to go to bed,” he told him, standing up and starting toward his room. “Don’t wake me up tomorrow. I’m not going to class.”
He expected Gansey to respond, to tell him that he was being unreasonable, but he remained silent and, when Ronan spared one last glance over his shoulder, his gaze was still fixed upon him.
Ronan didn’t sleep at all that night and the beginning of the school day came and went without Gansey coming to wake him. It was then he wondered if he had said something wrong when Gansey told him that he loved him, that perhaps he had meant it like he hoped after all.
But Ronan hadn’t made it this far by relying on hope in a life where he had so often been presented with disappointment. He’d just have to see how things played out.