Archive of Our Own

Ronan Lynch had lived in Henrietta for twenty-one years, which was to say: all his life. He had left the state of Virginia only twice. The first time, his father dragged the whole family to upstate New York. Ronan’s greatest memory of the trip was getting in trouble for pushing Matthew into a lake. Matthew had asked him to, but their parents hadn’t cared much about the accuracy of blame when safety was involved. The second time, his father dragged the whole family across the Atlantic, to see the Cliffs of Moher and the River Shannon and all that Niall and Aurora Lynch had left behind. Ronan didn’t push any brothers off cliffs or into rivers, though part of him had wanted to. 

But upstate New York and Ireland were both a long time ago now. Ronan’s parents had been dead five years, and Declan and Matthew had moved out of Henrietta four years ago, and Ronan had been alone ever since. 

He sat outside Mountain View Urgent Care. He was in a wheelchair. Across the parking lot, ambulance lights blinked with red and blue. Ronan stared directly at the lights, even as they made his vision swim and his eyes ache. He didn’t want to look at Declan any longer: the dark circles, the frown at the corners of his mouth. 

Declan said again, “You’re coming with me to DC, and you’re staying with me at the town house.” 

Ronan did not want to do that. He wanted to return to the Barns. He wanted to recede into his solitude with a bottle cradled to his chest. Ronan wasn’t an idiot, so he didn’t say that to Declan. He said, instead, “You expect me to sit in a car for two and a half hours?” 

“Yes,” said Declan. 

“I can’t,” said Ronan.

“I don’t care,” and Declan was yelling now. They were causing a scene on the sidewalk, just out of view of the automatic door sensors. Ronan didn’t mind the attention, but it was the sort of thing Declan loathed. Declan carried on regardless. “You almost died. You were in a coma for three weeks. You have a concussion, you’re paralyzed, and—” 

“So?” Ronan asked. Declan was yelling, so he was not. His volume was perfectly even, his voice sitting low in his chest. “How many times do I have to tell you it wasn’t my fault? Kavinsky was—” 

“High as a kite,” Declan interrupted. Ronan looked at him now, and saw him nodding with his eyes closed and his jaw clenched. “And what about you? Am I just supposed to trust that you weren’t drinking?” 

Bile rose in Ronan’s throat, and he swallowed it down. “If not me, then the fucking cops who told you I was sober.” 

Ronan’s memories of the accident were blurred and bleary, but he hated cops, and so he remembered the breathalyzer pressed to his lips. He was hardly conscious, and he couldn’t wiggle his toes, and he was probably dying, but they had to test his blood alcohol levels before they let the EMTs near him. Fucking assholes. 

“Okay,” Declan said. He nodded again. He looked like a fucking bobble head, like one punch would decapitate him. Ronan would have tried it, if not for the fact that he couldn’t reach. Declan said, “Okay, I believe you. But it doesn’t matter. You were still street racing with Kavinsky. You still totaled the BMW. You— You can’t take care of yourself.” 

“I—” 

“No, Ronan. I’ve stayed out of your way for the last four years, thinking that you would get your shit together on your own, but this,” Declan pulled his car keys out of his pocket, “this is too much. Even for you.”

“Fuck you.” 

Declan nodded a third time. “Stay here, I’ll bring the car to you.” 

Ronan stayed where he was.

Gansey had lived in DC all his life. He struck out on his own, though, when he was sixteen and his parents’ attention started to stifle. He hadn’t been alone for long when Adam and Noah and Blue came along. He lived with two of them, now, in a three bedroom apartment they called Walter—because the building was designed by Walter Czerny’s architecture firm (of which his son would one day take over) and it also kind of looked like him with graying edges and bright window eyes. Gansey, Noah, and Blue had lived at Walt for four years—only a fraction of Gansey’s sixteen years at the mansion of the first and second before him, but this apartment felt more like home than anywhere else. 

It was certainly the company more than the building itself. 

In a room with walls covered in cardboard trees and cities, Gansey curled around Blue Sargent. Her back was pressed to his front, and he kissed patterns into the textured skin of her bony shoulders. They were tired in the dappled drapes of afternoon light, but neither fell into the grips of sleep, for there was no time for it. Blue had to leave for class within the hour; she was in her last semester of undergrad, studying environmental science. Gansey had not started college yet. 

“Jane,” Gansey whispered. His breath ghosted over Blue, and she giggled in that way she only allowed in the company of her friends. It was a girlish, careless sound. Gansey tumbled a little further into love with her. 

“Gansey,” Blue whispered in return. She caught one of his hands, pulling it from around her waist and to her mouth instead. She kissed his palm: his life line, his love line. She said again, “Gansey.” 

Blue let go of Gansey’s hand, and he flexed his fingers. Formed a fist, and then stretched every joint. It used to be an obsessive movement, but now it was only a tick or a spasm of sorts—done once, and then forgotten. Blue rolled over, then, mussing their shared patchwork quilt as she went. She kissed the bridge of Gansey’s nose where his glasses would rest if he was wearing them. He wasn’t wearing them, though. He didn’t even have his contacts in. 

“Are you taking the droid for a walk?” Blue asked. 

Artoo, Gansey’s labrador retriever, snuffled where he was curled up at the end of the bed. Gansey watched Blue stretch out a toe to poke at his fur; Gansey smiled helplessly. It was silly, of course. Artoo had been Gansey’s for five years, and Blue had known them both for less than a year less than that, but still it warmed him to watch Blue’s affection. 

“After you go to class,” he said. 

“Mm,” Blue hummed her reply. She kissed Gansey’s mouth, just a short press of lips, and then she flopped onto her back. She was staring at the ceiling with its glow in the dark stars. “Noah will be back from work then?” 

“Think so.” 

“I’ll make sure.” 

“Okay.”

Gansey stared at the dull, dazed stars overheard. He listened to the quiet sounds of Blue texting and Artoo breathing in the heavy way of dogs. Gansey flexed his fingers again. 

“I’m not a fucking dog,” Ronan complained. He threw a couch cushion at the wall, and when that wasn’t satisfactory, he threw the television remote. It didn’t do much damage, but the batteries did fly across the room and clatter to the ground like bullet casings. “You can’t keep me in a cage.” 

“Jesus Mary, quit being so dramatic,” said Declan. He took a long drag from his coffee cup, and Ronan was reminded of the long drags their father used to take from his cigarettes. “You’re not a prisoner. You can go wherever you want. If I come with you.” 

Ronan swore. It was brittle between his teeth, cracking like paper thin butterscotch—sickly sweet and sharp as glass. Ronan wished, idly, that Matthew was here. But he was in college like a good boy, living in the dorms and out from under Declan’s thumb. Ronan was choking beneath the noose—the leash—Delcan held him with. They were going on two weeks since Ronan was forced into the town house, and he hadn’t so much as been outside since. He chafed with the restrictions and he yearned for the Barns. The sprawling fields and the fresh air, the warm wooden floors and the purple curtains. Declan’s spare room had gray curtains, just as everything else was gray or white or fucking beige. 

“I can’t—” Ronan’s throat heaved with his desperation, and his words came out like a gag. “I just want to go for a walk without you breathing down my Goddamn neck.” 

“You can’t walk.” 

“Don’t be a bitch. You know what I meant.” 

“We can go together.” 

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Ronan spat. He wanted to swear again, but he also knew it wouldn’t have any impact on Declan, other than making his eyes roll. He kept his mouth clean. “I’m an adult.” 

“Are you?” 

Ronan let his head thunk against the back of the couch. The movement was a mistake, as it made pain flare behind his eyes and at the base of his skull. He suppressed a wince; if Declan noticed his discomfort, he didn’t mention it. Ronan said, “If you’re going to say no, just say no.” 

Ronan did not admit that he did not have the energy to fight with Declan, for he knew it would undermine whatever leg he had to stand on—neither, it seemed. 

“Thirty minutes,” said Declan. “Any longer and I call the police. Keep your phone on and share your location with me.” 

Ronan did not thank him, but he agreed to the terms.

It was easier getting out of the wheelchair than getting back in. The couch offered little leverage, and it took three minutes too long, and Ronan was sweating by the end of it. He only managed because he had spent years working the fields, building muscle in the way of manual labor. Ronan wiped sweat from his brow. When Declan tried to grab the handles to push him to the door, Ronan said, “Don’t you fucking dare.” 

The front steps posed a problem. The first night, Declan had carried Ronan up the stairs. Since then, Ronan had been confined to the first floor of the townhome. Now, he stopped at the threshold, staring at five steps between him and freedom. 

“Are you going to be an asshole about this?” asked Declan.

“No,” said Ronan. 

He let Declan guide his wheelchair down the stairs. It was a slow and vulnerable process that involved Ronan facing the townhome as Declan tipped the chair as much as he dared. Ronan was tempted to say something about how the Barns only had one step up to the front porch, but the point was moot when the Barns was only accessible by a winding gravel road. Ronan kept his mouth shut. 

Once on the sidewalk, Ronan let Declan remind him again of the rules, and he let Declan commandeer his phone to play with the settings. 

And then he slipped his leash. 

He gripped the handrims, and he propelled himself forward. He counted seconds in his head. He breathed in the fresh air. He felt the breeze ripple over his skin. He was so focused on not steering himself directly into oncoming traffic that he didn’t notice the stranger until they collided. 

The stranger swore as he bumped into Gansey. 

For a moment, there was chaos. The stranger and his wheelchair sat crooked and haphazard in the middle of the sidewalk; Gansey’s weakened muscles spasmed to catch himself. He was a tangle of teetering pendulums, but he had been doing this a long time. On instinct, Gansey pressed all his weight into Artoo’s stability harness. Artoo took his weight with ease, and Gansey steadied. 

He took a small step back, and he watched as the stranger fought to maneuver himself into some semblance of forward. His left foot had slipped off the footplate and he didn’t move it back into place. 

“Shit,” the guy said. He had blond hair cropped close to his scalp and bags under brilliant blue eyes and velcro sneakers on. He was wearing shorts, too, and Gansey shivered a little just looking at him. It was barely February. “Shit,” the guy repeated, eyes catching on Artoo, and his harness, and the words: SERVICE DOG.

Gansey waited for an apology, but it didn’t come; he was almost glad for it. He asked, “Are you okay?” 

“Shit, man, yeah,” said the stranger. But his chair jostled a little when a third or fourth party bustled by them, and his mouth pursed like something sour, and he clenched his jaw like a sharpened knife. Gansey knew anxiety, and so he knew what it looked like. 

“There’s a park around the corner,” said Gansey. He pointed back the way he had come, and he could have left it there. Probably he should have left it there, but he was nothing if not friendly to a fault. “I’ll show you.”

“I think I can find it myself,” said the stranger, but he didn’t protest when Gansey turned to lead the way. He followed him around the block. There was a small stretch of winter-gray greenery and, at its edges, a bench painted a vibrant and artificial green. The stranger was slow to park beside it. Gansey watched him pick up his left leg and manually readjust its position on the footplate. 

Again, Gansey could have left it there. Again, he probably should have left it there, but he needed a rest, too, after their near-tumble. Gansey sat on the bench, and Artoo sat in front of him, and Gansey fished a treat out of his pocket, and Artoo ate it gently from his palm. 

“I’m Gansey.” 

“Ronan.” 

“This is Artoo,” said Gansey. He placed his hand at the top of Artoo’s harness, right at the base of his skull. He didn’t pet him, just held him there. The tickling of his fur was a comfort to the tension locking in his limbs. 

“The fuck?” 

“Artoo,” Gansey repeated, a little slower this time. He was very used to this conversation. Only sometimes did he regret the name his sixteen year old self had chosen for his service dog. “Like R2-D2.” 

“Oh,” said Ronan. It came out a little like a laugh. “That’s fucking sick. What’s the dog for?” 

“That’s not really a question you’re supposed to ask,” said Gansey. He didn’t mind the bluntness, though. It was refreshing compared to the silent curiosity and prying looks he was used to. 

Ronan shrugged. Gansey laughed a little then too. 

“He’s a stability dog,” said Gansey. He noted the unusual timber of his voice, the slow way he pieced words together, the involuntary flinch of his hand not holding Artoo. He was always more aware of his peculiarities when with new people. He simplified, “He keeps me from being knocked on my ass when strangers run into me.” 

Ronan smirked, but that was the only approval he granted Gansey’s non-answer. His eyes flickered over Gansey, as if searching for visual clues as to what was actually wrong with him. Gansey waited for Ronan to ask, but he merely shrugged again. 

Ronan’s phone dinged out a text tone. Ronan glared at it, even as he typed out a hasty reply. He said, “I gotta go.” 

Gansey didn’t say anything. Ronan struggled to push himself back onto the sidewalk, but he didn’t ask for help, so Gansey didn’t offer. He just watched as Ronan figured it out on his own. 

Artoo turned to put his head in Gansey’s lap. Gansey said, “Yeah, buddy.” 

Ronan made it back to the townhome in one piece. Declan was waiting for him, leaning against the frame of his open front door. Declan came down the five steps with two working legs, and he pushed Ronan up the stairs. He said, “Maybe next time I should just carry you.” 

Matthew was horizontal on the floor, surrounded by notebooks and pens and his laptop open to a Word Document and also a YouTube video—the video had nothing to do with school, but Matthew could only function through ten layers of stimulation. It was a Friday afternoon, which meant Matthew should have been getting ready for a party, but he was here instead. Ronan understood it was because of him. He wondered if this had been Matthew’s plan all along, or if Declan had called for backup after he left. 

“Hey,” Matthew said, smiling that smile that made old women cry and young women swoon. He paused his video, and the infomercial tone of voice dropped from the room. Ronan didn’t realize how much it was grating on him until it was gone. His head panged with relief. “Declan said you went for a walk?” 

“Yeah.” Ronan wanted to close his eyes and sleep the rest of the day away, but he also wanted Matthew. His cheery disposition and the geometric neons of his jacket were a breath of home in the wake of all that was alien in DC.

“Did you have fun?” asked Matthew. He put his pen between his teeth, and Ronan told him to spit out, and Matthew dropped the pen. He repeated, “Did you?” 

“A fucking blast,” said Ronan, reluctant to answer one of Matthew’s questions because one always lead to twenty. He was not in the mood to be interviewed. He looked for Declan, hoping he would tell Matthew to sit quietly so Ronan wouldn’t have to. But Declan had brought Ronan inside, taken off his shoes, left his wheelchair right next to the couch, and fucking disappeared. Ronan hated him. 

“Where did you go?” 

“Just around the block, Matty.” 

“Did you see any dogs? There’re a lot of dogs here. Way more than back home.” 

Ronan bristled at the mention of Henrietta. Probably he would have stormed out of the room, if not for the swimming in his skull and his inability to storm much of anywhere. He wanted to throw things again, but he kept his hands in his lap. 

“Yeah,” said Ronan. “Met a dog called Artoo. Like the fucking—” 

“Like the robot?” Matthew asked. He laughed the way he did before their parents died because Matthew’s laugh and light had never changed. “That’s awesome. Did you take a picture for me?” 

“No,” said Ronan. “I forgot.” 

Matthew pouted, and he put the sleeve of his jacket between his teeth, and Ronan wanted to cry. He pressed two fists to two eyes, hard enough that all light was drowned out. The pressure did little to alleviate the pain. He had another hour before he was allowed another Tylenol; Declan was hoarding the bottle like dragons hoarded jewels, or as if it was something far more addictive than fucking Tylenol. He was the same with the Baclofen and Gabapentin. 

“Matthew.” 

“Yeah?” 

“Close the blinds.” 

“Okay!” 

Matthew closed the blinds, and Ronan threw an elbow over his eyes, and he listened to the quiet sound of Matthew muttering to himself. Matthew did not put his video back on; Ronan loved him. 

Gansey was smart enough to know when to push himself and when to call it quits. He sat on the shamrock green bench for five minutes after Ronan left, and then he pulled his own phone out of his pocket. Noah was closer and home from work, but Gansey called Adam instead. The dial tone rang out three times before he answered. 

“Hey.” 

“Hi. Can you come pick me up?” 

“Where are you?” 

“At the corner of happy and healthy.” 

“Very funny. Share your location. I’ll be there soon.”

“Thank you.” 

Gansey hung up before Adam could tell him a thank you wasn’t necessary, and then he waited. Adam showed up in another five minutes. Gansey braced himself on Artoo’s harness, and he got in the passenger seat of Adam’s car with its blinking hazards and a single taxi honking behind them. Artoo curled up at Gansey’s feet as Adam swerved back onto the road. 

“My place or Walter?” asked Adam. 

“Yours,” said Gansey. He didn’t explain why, and Adam didn’t ask why. It was a good thing, too, because Gansey had no answers. He just didn’t want to go home yet. 

“What happened?” asked Adam. 

It had been over a month since the last time Gansey had needed to call one of them for a dog walk rescue. The questions hadn’t changed in their absence. “This guy ran into me.” 

“For fuck’s sake,” said Adam. His grip on the wheel tightened until his knuckles bled with white. 

“It wasn’t really his fault. He was in a wheelchair.” 

“Being disabled doesn’t absolve someone of blame.”

Gansey didn’t respond, and neither boy said anything else for the remainder of the drive. 

Gansey hated Adam’s apartment building. It had only two front access doors. One was the kind that spun like a revolver and the other was heavy as sin with no handicap push button. Today, at least, Adam was there to hold the heavy door open for Gansey and Artoo. Inside, there was an elevator that was out of service more often than it was operating. They managed to coax the doors to prying open by repeatedly jabbing at the up button. One of these days Gansey was going to get stuck in the elevator. 

Adam’s apartment was fine, though. He had a couch, bought for fifty bucks at a thrift store, that Gansey could lay out on. He exhaled as his muscles let go of his weight. They were still tense from their spastic attempt at rescuing him. Without being prompted, Artoo laid out on Gansey’s legs, offering deep pressure therapy. Gansey ruffled his fingers between Artoo’s ears, and he closed his eyes. 

He listened to Adam padding around the apartment. He came back with a clink of plastic against coaster, and Gansey knew Adam had brought him water. He would drink some when he trusted himself not to spill all down his front. 

“Pain?” asked Adam. 

“No,” said Gansey. “Just tired.” 

He did not mean tired like he could sleep. He meant tired like his body had no strength left to muster. Adam understood. 

“Stressed?” asked Adam. 

“A little,” said Gansey. It was not that meeting Ronan had been a terrible experience. Ronan was brash and abrasive and blunt, but it had been pleasant to sit on the bench next to him. It was just that the come down from adrenaline was harder for Gansey than most. “No hives yet.” 

“Hungry?” asked Adam. 

“No.”

“Do you want the blinds shut?” asked Adam. 

“No.”

“Okay,” said Adam. “I already texted Blue and Noah. I’ll drive you home when I finish my assignment.” 

Gansey squeaked an eye open. Adam’s apartment didn’t have rooms so much as it was a tiny studio where everything bled together, which meant Gansey had an excellent view of Adam sitting in a hardback chair at his kitchen table. He felt a little guilty for taking up the entire couch. 

“Thank you,” he said for a second time. 

“No problem,” said Adam. 

More than anything, it was annoying. Ronan couldn’t so much as sit up in bed—bed rails could only do so much—or take a piss—intermittent catheterization was Ronan’s new arch nemesis—without struggle. His arms were in a constant state of ache from the way he heaved himself up and into his chair, and then the way he pushed himself through the townhome, and then the way he punched walls when no one was looking, and then the way he heaved himself up and out of his chair. But it wasn’t just the paralysis. It was the disorientation of having been in a coma, and now being awake, but not feeling awake. He was tired all the time. He was numb all the time. 

Ronan wheeled himself into the bathroom, and he stretched to flick on the lights, and then he flicked them off again even faster. The harsh, cool blue lighting of Declan’s harsh, cool apartment burned in his retinas. As of two days ago, he didn’t have a concussion anymore, technically, but it didn’t seem to matter. Ronan had to squeeze his eyes closed for a count of five: one, two, three, four, fuck. 

He opened his eyes. 

“Ready?” Declan asked, appearing behind Ronan with such soft footfall Ronan hadn’t noticed. He pointedly did not flinch, just pushed further into the cramped bathroom. He let Declan move around him to pull back the shower curtain, meanwhile pulling his shirt off. He started on his shorts next, feeling no shame in his nudity. Necessity had boiled away any awkwardness Ronan might have felt—still, he did not ask for help from Declan, even as difficult as it was to get his clothes off on his own. There had to be a line drawn somewhere. 

Declan turned the shower on. Inside, a shower stool and a shower bar with suction grips posed as accessible. But it wasn’t really accessible at all when the shower had a horrible lip like a tub. Ronan could not transfer himself to the stool. 

When the water was warm but not hot—Ronan would turn it up when Declan left—the eldest Lynch helped the middle into the shower. He lifted him over the tub’s lip, and Ronan grabbed the shower bar Declan had installed, and together they settled him onto the stool. Lukewarm water crashed over his scalp and ran lines down his face, and Ronan breathed steady through it. 

“I’ll be right outside,” said Declan, and then he left the bathroom. Ronan cranked up the hot water. 

He washed his hair first. It was getting long enough to nearly curl, but Ronan wasn’t sure if he cared enough to ask Declan to shave it again. Maybe he would shave it himself. The buzzcut had always been, at least in part, about the aesthetic of it all; Ronan was pretty sure being in a wheelchair didn’t disqualify him from being punk rock. The shampoo got in his eyes a little, but Ronan just blinked through it with teardrops clinging to his lashes. The pain was nothing compared to the nothing of the rest of him. 

Ronan only bothered with conditioner because these were his mother’s blond curls, and it was his job to look after them now. 

Ronan grabbed a charcoal gray bottle of body wash that smelled like a noxious mixture of pear and coconut. He dumped it directly in his palm, and it ran down his arm to settle in the crook of his elbow. He slapped the soap into his skin. When he got to his legs, he could not feel the slimy lather of the soap or the possibly too hot water that pooled at his feet. He could not feel a Goddamn thing. 

Ronan shut the water off, and the door opened as Declan entered. Steam and fog tumbled out of the bathroom to greet him, but Declan didn’t comment. He allowed Ronan his small act of rebellion. He shoved a towel into Ronan’s hands, and he turned politely away as Ronan patted himself dry as best as he could. Declan handed him his clean clothes, and he turned away again as Ronan struggled into his boxers. 

Declan fitted his hands under Ronan’s arms and hoisted him back into the wheelchair. 

Gansey had taken a day off, and Noah had gone in his stead, but now Gansey was back to walking Artoo. February’s chill rippled over him, ghosting goosebumps over his skin and turning the tip of his nose pink. Gansey regretted foregoing gloves as one bare hand held onto Artoo’s harness. The other, at least, was shoved deep into his jacket pocket. Still, the fresh air did him good. He breathed deep and long and slow, and his bones settled into place. 

These walks with Artoo were always good for Gansey. First, they forced him out of the house and into the world. Second, they forced him out of stasis and into movement. Third, they reminded him, again and again and again, how grateful he was. How he loved life. 

His eyes traveled the streets as he walked. There, an old man was feeding a pigeon bread crumbs. And over there, a girl was buying a bouquet of flowers. Gansey wondered if they were for a lover or a friend or a family member. And there, a dad was pushing two children in a stroller, and the children were giggling in delight. And over there—

Ronan was headed towards him. 

It was a coincidence, of course, but it didn’t feel like happenstance when their paths collided once again. Ronan stopped in front of Gansey; Gansey stopped in front of Ronan. They hesitated, going still as the world rushed around them. Business women clicked passed in high heels; snippets of conversation rushed by; strollers pushed around their sidewalk obstruction. Then, without discussion, Gansey turned to join Ronan, and they continued going in one direction instead of two. 

“You stalking me or something?” asked Ronan. 

“No,” said Gansey. And then, because they were close to the Georgetown campus, he asked, “Are you a student?” 

Ronan laughed. Raucous and raging he laughed so hard his eyes crinkled at the corners, so hard he gasped a little. Gansey held tighter to Artoo as if he were the one out of breath. “No,” said Ronan. “Fuck no. I’m a high school drop out.” 

“Oh,” said Gansey. There was a story there, and Gansey wanted to pry, but he was wary of asking questions. Adam and Blue had each told him, on more than one occasion, that his curiosity was sometimes lethal. 

“Are you a student?” Ronan countered. 

“No,” said Gansey. He didn’t tell Ronan that he had graduated from a highly prestigious high school with highly impressive grades. He didn’t know if Ronan knew better than to ask invasive questions. “I live with a couple of friends in the area, though. You?” 

“Staying with my brother,” said Ronan. His lip curled into something like a snarl, and he glanced pointedly down at his legs and the wheelchair. “While I deal with this shit.” 

They carried on, and they carried on talking, and then an alarm sounded from Ronan’s phone. He swore, and he sent off a text before he bothered to disable the blaring. The noise earned them a few dirty looks from passersby. Ronan didn’t seem to notice, but Gansey did, so he smiled at them as politely as he could. 

“Hey,” said Gansey. 

Ronan looked up at him. 

“Do you want my number?” asked Gansey. He was thinking it would be good for Ronan and his recovery if he knew people in the city besides the brother that made him snarl and the brother that made him grin. He didn’t say any of that aloud, though. 

Ronan looked at him. He blinked, and then he blinked again. “Sure.” 

Gansey took Ronan’s phone when it was offered, and he put in his number, and then he sent a text to himself. His own phone dinged in his pocket. 

“I gotta get back,” said Ronan. 

“Okay,” said Gansey. 

Gansey: Hey

Ronan despised his phone. He always had, and he probably always would. But. Despite having more company than he was used to, Ronan was lonely in the city. He missed his sleeping cows, his clucking chickens, his young mice. He was homesick, and he felt like he was coming undone, and he couldn’t remember the last time he wanted to talk to someone that didn’t share his last name. But. 

Ronan: yo

Gansey: Friends and I need a tiebreaker. Pineapple on pizza, yes or no?

Ronan: fuck no

Gansey: Dammit, Ronan. I trusted you. 

Ronan: sorry dude

“Are you texting?” Matthew asked through a mouthful of food. He was eating cold, leftover spaghetti for lunch. It was sort of disgusting, but Ronan was also sort of hoping Matthew would drop marinara on Declan’s expensive white rug. 

Ronan was aware that he was being babysat. Declan had things to do outside of the townhome—whatever that meant—so Matthew was here. Watching over Ronan and making sure he didn’t get into Declan’s wine or fall out of his chair to break his face. Both were possible, Ronan could admit.

“Yes.” 

Matthew choked a little. “Who are you texting?” 

And because it was Matthew, Ronan granted him an honest answer. “Remember Artoo? The dog?” 

Matthew nodded. He had sauce on his chin and the sun in his eyes. 

“Ran into him and his owner again,” Ronan explained. He looked down at his phone where a gray typing bubble exposed Gansey’s incessant need to continue the conversation. It was always Ronan who stopped responding first. “His name’s Gansey and he’s about my age.” 

“You made a friend?” asked Matthew. His sunshine eyes widened and he bounced up and down where he sat on his knees. He dropped his fork, but it landed in his lap instead of on the carpet. Ronan was disappointed. 

“I guess.” 

“That’s awesome!” 

“I guess.” 

Gansey: Do you want to join us for lunch? There’s a terrible pizza place we all love. It’s a ten minute drive. 

Ronan: can’t

Ronan didn’t explain that he couldn’t because he couldn’t drive anymore and because Matthew had never gotten his license. He understood Gansey well enough, now, to know he would offer to pick Ronan up on the way. If Gansey offered to pick him up, then Ronan would have to explain that he couldn’t go anywhere without his older brother’s permission. He understood Gansey well enough, now, to know that he would tell Ronan to just ask. But Ronan didn’t want to ask, so he merely said he couldn’t. 

Gansey: Okay

Gansey: Thoughts on avocado on pizza? 

Ronan: what the fuck is wrong with you

Gansey: Many things, I think. 

Ronan laughed, and he chucked his phone to the floor, and he heard it buzz again. He would check it later. Gansey wasn’t going anywhere, it seemed. 

Gansey was a late riser, and so, by the time he was awake and padding into the living room, Noah was already sitting cross legged at the coffee table with a sprawl of blueprints spilling over the edges. His neck was ducked in thought and his eraser was caught between his teeth. 

“What are you working on?” Gansey asked. He settled on the couch behind Noah, calling Artoo up to curl up beside him. Artoo laid his head on Gansey’s knee; Gansey was forever comforted by his soft fur and his familiar weight. 

“Editing a design of my dad’s,” said Noah. He took the eraser out of his mouth, and he rubbed away part of a line that Gansey assumed was supposed to denote a wall. “Trying to increase the building’s accessibility.” 

Gansey smiled something tender and fond. 

Quiet stretched between them as Noah worked. Gansey scrubbed at his eyes and ignored the hunger panging low in his gut. He should not have sat down without getting food first. 

“Where’s Blue?” asked Gansey. She wasn’t there, in their shared bed, when Gansey woke up. But that wasn’t unusual. Blue loved the morning, said she felt more productive when the day was new and fresh. Gansey didn’t share her preference. 

“Went to see Maura on her lunch break,” Noah said, all the while taking notes in his scribbling, practically illegible handwriting in a notebook worn nearly to threads. Probably it would have been more efficient to work on the building plans electronically, but Noah was like Gansey in that he liked the tangible. He liked to reach out and touch. 

“Is it lunchtime already?” 

“Yes. Have you taken your meds?” 

“No.” Gansey had a terrible memory. Usually, it was remedied by routine. For instance, he could not forget to feed and water Artoo because he always fed and watered Artoo between getting out of bed and brushing his teeth. His medication, though, was one he could never seem to keep track of. Blue told him it should be the first thing he did when his eyes opened, but the first thing Gansey did when his eyes opened was look for her. He either wouldn’t or couldn’t break that routine. 

“Go take your meds, and I’ll make you food in three minutes. Deal?”

“Deal,” Gansey said to Noah. Then to Artoo, “stand,” followed by, “brace.” With his dog’s help, Gansey pushed up from the couch and made his way back to their room. 

His meds waited for him on the bedside table in the kind of easy to open bottles that didn’t hinder him with child lock measures. Zyrtec: for the stress hives he needed so badly to avoid. Metoprolol: for the tremors. Baclofen: for the loosening of his spastic muscles. Prednisone: for the protection of his spastic muscles. Pregabalin: for the chronic pain. Zoloft: for the PTSD. Gansey swallowed all six pills at once. 

By the time Gansey was finished, Noah was already in the kitchen. He was scrambling a pan of eggs, and he told Gansey to start the toast, and Gansey did. Together at the kitchen table, they ate eggs loaded with salt and bread piled with butter—Gansey’s breakfast and Noah’s lunch. 

“Thank you,” said Gansey. 

“I needed to eat too,” said Noah. 

Their walks became a daily thing. 

It only made sense when Ronan needed to get out of the town house and Gansey needed to walk his dog. They managed about a week of shared time and getting to know each other—Gansey was applying to an online program with the intention of studying history; his long term girlfriend was named Blue, of all things; he had a sister who could fly a fucking helicopter—before Matthew accidentally let it slip to Declan that Ronan had made a friend. Declan, of course, started interrogating Ronan about the wrong sorts of friends. 

“He’s nothing like Kavinsky,” said Ronan. He had to bite back a smirk at the thought of a world where K and Gansey met. The image boomed like an explosion in his mind, like fireworks painting the sky or car engines backfiring. The horror of it was amusing. 

“And I’m just supposed to believe you?” asked Declan. “Why were you keeping this friend—” Ronan did not like the emphasis there “—a secret?” 

“Maybe because I knew you would react like this.” 

“How convenient.” 

“For fuck’s sake,” said Ronan. He scrubbed a hand through hair he still hadn’t gotten around to buzzing, and he yanked at the roots hard enough to hurt. It was starting to piss him off that he was in no position to be throwing punches. Ronan and Declan had always communicated better through touch than language. When they were kids, that meant curling into Declan’s side after a nightmare or falling asleep on his shoulder during church or tussling in the fields as black birds swooped overhead. In the first year after their parents’ murder, when Declan was still trying to play dad, that meant fists flying in the Nino’s parking lot. It meant nothing now. “He wears fucking boat shoes and aquamarine polos, Declan. He has a service dog named Artoo, after the Goddamn robot from Star Wars. Can you just trust me for once? He’s nothing like Kavinsky.” 

Declan crossed his arms and then uncrossed them and then recrossed them. “Fine.” 

Ronan had another line of ridiculous facts about Gansey queued up: his full name was Richard Campbell Gansey the Third, he was obsessed with a long dead Welsh king, he liked pineapple and avocado on pizza. But his words stalled on his lips. He grit his teeth together. “Fine?” 

“I will trust you this once,” said Declan, “but I’m not fucking around. You do anything to make me even slightly worried, and I will put you on house arrest.” 

Ronan blew out a slow and even breath. “Fine” 

Declan huffed a messy and noisy breath. “It’s for your own good. Someone has to protect you, even if you’re insistent on throwing your life away.” 

“Yeah, whatever, I said fine,” said Ronan. He was already five minutes late to meet Gansey; he was going to have to text him. “Can I go now?” 

Declan allowed it, and he helped Ronan down the front steps, and he reminded Ronan to back in half an hour. 

“So, why Artoo?” asked Ronan as they traversed the city sidewalks. He was getting better at maneuvering his chair through the crowds of DC foot traffic. “Why not literally any other Star Wars character?” 

Gansey looked down at Artoo. For a moment, he saw the dog through a stranger’s eyes: white-ish fur and a black and red hardness decorated with round blue patches indicating his job as a stability and PTSD dog. “I’ve always— felt a certain kinship with C-3PO. His best friend is R2; man’s best friend is dog. It made sense.” 

“Oh. Oh, fuck me, you’re exactly like that fucking robot,” said Ronan, and he was laughing. Ronan’s laugh fascinated Gansey. There was something dark to it—something sharp and scathing. 

“I take it you've seen the movies then?” 

“Who hasn’t?” 

“Adam,” said Gansey. He was well aware that he spent too much time talking about his friends, but he couldn’t stop himself. It seemed, at least, that Ronan didn’t mind. Yet. 

“Loser,” said Ronan. Then, “My parents were big fans, so my brothers and I watched the original trilogy a lot growing up.” 

“Have you seen the prequels?” 

“Only the first one. Jar Jar made me want to kill myself.” 

“He’s not really in the other two. Meesa thinks you should check them out.” 

“Fuck off.” 

Gansey laughed. He was, unfortunately, unable to shut up where his interests were involved, so he kept talking. “But no seriously, it’s worth it for the politics and the themes of exploration and the searching for religion that isn’t actually there and—” Gansey took a breath. “Obi Wan Kenobi.” 

Ronan spared him a sideways glance, something amused fluttering in ice blue irises. That was the next step down from those uproarious laughs, Gansey was discovering, there was nothing in between. Ronan looked forward again and said, “Yeah, but they killed off Liam Neeson, so fuck that.” 

“What about the sequels? My girlfriend, Blue—” 

“I know who Blue is. You don’t have to introduce her as your girlfriend every time.” 

“Right,” said Gansey. He nodded. “Blue loves the sequels. It is the one weak spot in our marriage.”

“You’re not married.” 

“Not yet,” said Gansey. He felt the muscles in his face twitch towards a smile, and because it was only Ronan, he allowed himself to beam. 

“Jesus Mary,” said Ronan. “You’re fucking gone on her, huh?” 

“Yeah. I don’t know. Haven’t you ever loved someone so much it feels like you would die if you didn’t get to spend the rest of your lives together?” 

“No,” said Ronan. 

“Oh. Well. That’s how I feel about Blue,” said Gansey. His face was definitely going red, and a throbbing pulse of anxiety rippled under his skin. He was reminded of the first few months—or years—of friendship with Adam Parrish, when he never knew where he was or wasn’t allowed to step. “You didn’t answer the question. Sequels?” 

“Haven’t seen them,” said Ronan. He was quiet, nearly whispering. “The Force Awakens came out the same year my parents died. I couldn’t ever bring myself to return to that world without them.” 

Now Gansey really felt unsure. Tentative as ever, he said, “They’re awful films. You’re not missing out.” 

Ronan laughed, loud and flushed with shadows, and that was that. 

There were hundreds of physical therapists in DC. Declan had scoured the internet for the best of the best, and he had given Ronan three names to choose from, and Ronan had denied all three. He did his own research, looking at one and two star reviews instead of four and five. He found Fox Way Physical Therapy through a review that complained the place always smelled like oregano; oregano reminded Ronan of his mother’s cooking. He found his particular therapist from a review that said she sometimes yelled and always took no shit; Ronan needed accountability and kind words weren’t going to do it for him.

So. Calla Johnson. She was a plump black woman with a mean vocabulary and a meaner smile. Ronan didn’t like her, but she was good at her job, and she was good at wrangling him. Once a week (Calla and the doctors wanted twice, but Declan could only spare so much time) Ronan went to Fox Way Physical Therapy. He was never late. 

He flashed Declan’s credit card at the receptionist’s desk, and he wheeled himself into the middle of the room to wait. There was no point getting out of the way. 

Like clockwork, a guy in pale blue scrubs called, “Ronan Lynch?” 

Ronan wheeled himself closer. He liked Fox Way because, though fluorescent lights hung overheard, they were never turned on. The space was lit only by warm toned lamps and strings of rainbow lights. It meant he didn’t notice, until he got closer, that the guy’s eyes were the same blue as his powder blue scrubs. He also had a smattering of freckles across his nose like stardust, and a haircut he clearly did himself, and a clipboard in his hands. His hands, fuck. 

“Mr Lynch?” he asked. 

Ronan nodded, and he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t string two words together if he tried.

“Come on back,” the pretty nurse said. Ronan followed him deeper into Fox Way, to one of the patient rooms. It bothered Ronan that he was in a different room nearly every week. He complained to Calla once, and she told him to suck it up. Pretty nurse took Ronan to a warm room that smelled like oregano and danced with the light of a lava lamp. “Calla will be with you shortly.” 

“Yeah,” said Ronan. “Thanks, man.” 

Ronan heaved himself up onto the pleather-lined patient bed in the middle of the room. Because he knew Calla would ask him to, and he liked stealing some of her power by not letting her spectate. The first time Ronan came here, Calla had to help him lean back with a hand between his shoulder blades, reassuring more than actually supporting. Now, Ronan managed on his own. Lying there, though, he felt like a child at the pediatrician. 

Ronan was never late, but Calla always was. She showed up nine minutes after the hour, and she did not apologize for the delay. Instead, she stood with her arms crossed over her chest. Ronan watched muscles bulge in her arms; probably she could beat him at an arm wrestle. Calla asked questions, and she did not take notes. She never did. 

“Any new symptoms?” 

“No.”

“Any pain today?” 

“Yes.”

“On a scale of 1-10?” 

“Fuck off.” 

“Ronan.” 

“You know I hate that pain scale shit.” 

“I don’t care.” 

“Six.” 

“Okay. Where is the pain?” 

“Headache.” 

“Okay. Still going for walks with your friend?” 

“Yeah, sure, walks.” 

Calla ignored his snark. “Are you?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good. Fresh air is good for your recovery.” When Calla said recovery, she meant it differently than most would. She meant it in the way of rehabilitation and building a life worth living within new parameters. “So is human interaction, which we both know you’re not very good at.” 

“I’m not paying you to psychoanalyze me.” 

“Your brother pays me. Let’s get to work.” 

They got to work. Calla mucked with the muscles of his legs with a cream that smelled like lavender, even though she knew he hated the smell. Then she made him use the leg lifter for passive movement (Calla never used the word exercise) like side lifts and knees to chest—he hated that too. Then she made him lift weights to strengthen his arms. Then she made him work his core. Then she made him practice wheelchair management. Then she made him do the upper body ergometer for cardio that didn’t involve his legs. 

Ronan sweated through the exertion and Calla offered no words of encouragement. It was a good session. 

It was terrible to admit, but Gansey hated visiting his parents’ house. He avoided it as much as possible by layering on excuses about doctor’s appointments and fatigue, but he could never manage more than two months without being roped in. Tonight, it was a dinner party to begin his mother’s campaign for Congressional reelection.

Blue tied his tie for him—offensively red as it was—and she kissed him soft. “Stay an hour, and then slip out, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” said Gansey, and he kissed her again. 

Helen picked Gansey up from Walt. She always came to collect Gansey when he had to come home. It was easier than risking a ride from Blue or Noah or Adam becoming a plus one from Blue or Noah or Adam. 

In the car, Artoo curled up at Gansey’s feet, and Helen cooed. “Don’t you two look smart.” 

The party was hosted in the ballroom—because the Gansey estate had a ballroom. Chandeliers danced overhead and a small string orchestra sat in the corner and waiters walked by with trays of champagne and men in identical suits touched the lower backs of women in cinched dresses. Gansey immediately felt warm. A pit sat heavy and low in his stomach. One hand held, held, held on to Artoo and the other twitched at his side. Open and closed, open and closed, open and—

Helen looped her arm through Gansey’s, and they stepped further into the party as a pair. 

Every time Gansey came home, he was reminded of all that he was not. Helen Gansey was everything one would expect of a privileged kid with the world at her fingertips. She had her pilot’s license and a Master’s in International Finance and a second on the way in Digital Marketing and she flitted from job to job like a bored genius. She looked the part, too, in a slinky but classy red dress and dark heels that let her tower over every man whose desire she caught but wouldn’t return. 

Gansey was nothing like Helen. He had no degrees and no work history. He had a service dog at his side and a voice that could only go three syllables without stumbling and muscles that twitched and spasmed. He was not the picture of success, but rather a pitiful prince. Gansey wore his best suit and he gave Artoo a bath the day before, but it was never enough. White dog hair clung to his pant legs and a white dog clung to his side and curious eyes clung to the both of them. 

Intellectually, Gansey understood. His was the only dog in a room of priceless plates and expensive wine. Of course that would draw attention. Irrationally, Gansey wanted to glare at everyone who looked at him. He smiled politely instead. 

It took five minutes for Gansey to lose Helen to the party, and he didn’t mind. He adored his sister—she was the only person in this entire crowd who treated him like a person—but standing by her side made his misgivings all the more obvious. Made the attention they garnered greater. Without Helen’s arm looped through his, Gansey could blend a little better into the background. 

It took thirty minutes for Gansey’s father to find him. He clapped his son on the shoulder, and he asked about his gap year. It would have been an innocuous ask, if not for the fact that Gansey’s gap year had lingered for three and a half years. If not for the vanilla sweet way he spoke with wrinkles between his eyebrows. Gansey told his father he had put in an application. He’d been intentionally withholding the information for weeks, keeping it as a trump card for a moment like this one. It didn’t work the way he thought it would. Rather than receiving relief or pride, Gansey was only berated about the failings of online school. 

It took forty-three minutes for Gansey’s mother to find him. She wore white and her mauve lipstick was smudged onto the champagne flute that dangled between her fingers. That probably meant it was her fourth or fifth glass, though the number made no difference. His mother was the same drunk as she was sober. Heather Gansey kissed her son’s cheek, but it was a ruse more than it was affection. 

“You brought the dog?” she asked, whispered low in his ear. “This is the most important night of my career, Richard.” She had claimed as much at least twelve times in Gansey’s lifetime, and so the phrase had lost its power. 

“Yes, Mother. I brought the dog,” said Gansey. He didn’t bother explaining that Artoo was a service dog and, thus, went everywhere with Gansey. His mother knew that already—she would have to when it was her money and her contacts that brought Artoo into Gansey’s life. This was only condescension. 

“Hm.” His mother pulled back, and she pushed Gansey’s hair away from his forehead. “How are your roommates?” 

This was condescension, too. Helen closed on a house two months ago, though she hadn’t yet moved in; Gansey lived with two roommates. It was never enough. He was never enough. “They’re well. Blue graduates in May, and Noah is working hard at his father’s firm.” 

Gansey envied Noah, a little. His parents were wealthy, but they were a different kind of wealthy than Richard Senior and Heather Gansey. The Czernys got rich off of ideas; the Ganseys were rich by inheritance and happenstance. There was no family business for Gansey to join. There was no path he was supposed to follow, and so he was left treading water. He was left disappointing everyone.

“How lovely,” said Mrs Gansey. “How’s the—” she clicked two fingers together twice, and then pointed at him. For all her flaws, Heather Gansey never forgot a name. “Adam Parrish. How is he?” 

“He’s working on his Doctorate in Physical Therapy,” said Gansey.

His mother tutted. “What a shame.”

“What do you mean?” Gansey asked, even though he already knew. His parents had never met Blue or Noah, but they had met Adam Parrish. When Adam and Gansey were both students at a prestigious boarding school just outside the city, Adam had come with Gansey to a party or two. He had made connections in hopes of an internship and he had been open about his desires to go to Harvard—when asked, he said he wanted to study finance, but Gansey knew he had wondered about law school back then too. 

But that was before they met Blue Sargent and the women of Fox Way. Maura, Calla, and especially Persephone had offered Adam a kind of familial love he had never been allowed before, and it changed things. When Adam’s father knocked the hearing out of his left ear, Adam moved in with Blue and her family, and it changed him. His ambitions shifted, and he got into Harvard, but he didn’t go. He went to Georgetown instead, and he majored in Biology, and he graduated a year early. He was in his second semester of his DPT program now. 

“Oh, it’s just sad to see someone’s potential go to waste, that’s all,” said Mrs Gansey, and she wasn’t just talking about Adam Parrish. 

“Adam Parrish’s potential isn’t wasted, Mother. He’s going to help a lot of people,” said Gansey. If he thought it would make a difference, he would tell her the help and benefit he had received from the women of Fox Way Physical Therapy. At the very least, their services had introduced him to the love of his life. At most, their services gave him strength in his body enough to wake up each day and feel alive. But it wouldn’t matter to Heather Gansey, so her son just said, “Excuse me.” 

He slipped into the crowd before she could stop him, and he slipped out of the house before anyone could stop him. He found himself sitting on the stone of a fountain, water trickling and splashing behind him. He patted his pockets for his EpiPens—a nervous tick more than actually checking they were there—and he settled in to wait. Helen would find him here soon enough, and she would drive him home. 

Until then, Gansey stared up at the moon, and he missed the stars. 

Ronan fucked up. And he had no one to blame but himself. He scheduled his physical therapy appointment for four, neglecting to realize that, by the time he finished at quarter past five, the winter sun would have already set. Now, Ronan was staring into the face of his blunder as Declan’s Volvo idled at the curb, headlights shining through the darkened world. Ronan refused to get in the car. 

“Ronan,” said Declan, window cranked down so he could speak to his stubborn brother from the driver’s seat. The engine was still rumbling but the car was in park. The car was in park. The car was in park. Declan’s jaw was clenched and his words came through bitten teeth. They had been at this for a few minutes already, and Declan’s patience had always been thin. “It’s a ten minute drive. We’ll be fine. Just get in the car.” 

A dog barked and a horn blared two streets over and the door of the horribly blue-painted Fox Way opened and closed behind Ronan. It was all white noise to him. Ronan engaged the brakes of his wheelchair and he buried his head in his hands. It came back to him in flashes. 

It had started as most nights started. Ronan sat behind the wheel of the BMW and he sped away from the Barns, chased by memories and grief. He left Singer’s Falls for Henrietta, and he found the Mitsubishi as easily as he always did. Even at night, Kavinsky was wearing the stupid sunglasses he had been wearing since high school. Except unlike high school, Kavinsky was alone, no more rat pack clipping at his heels. It was just the two of them. Kavinsky revved his engine; Ronan smiled like sin. 

They raced, tearing through streets Ronan knew better than his own mind, his own hands. Kavinsky shouted a slur through his open window, and Ronan didn’t react. Kavinsky shouted something else in garbled Bulgarian, and Ronan answered in Latin, and neither understood the other. Kavinsky turned early, and his car slammed into the driver’s side of Ronan’s, and—

The sound of it. There was no sound in the world like a car crash. Ronan lost all control of the BMW, and Kavinsky wasn’t hitting the brakes hard enough, if at all, and they toppled together into a telephone pole. Ronan—the BMW—Ronan—the BMW was pinned between the Evo and the pole. He blacked out. 

He came around again quickly. Kavinsky had stumbled out of his car, and he laid on his back on the asphalt, and he laughed with blood on his teeth. Ronan was crying, and he couldn’t move, but he fumbled for his phone. He thanked God that he hadn’t left it at the Barns. There was no one around to witness this. No one was going to save him, so he had to save himself. 

He called Declan first. Then he called 911. Declan lived two hours away, but Ronan was still surprised when the ambulance beat his brother to the scene. 

Ronan cursed at the cops, and he screamed when the paramedics pulled him from the car. They immobilized him so he wouldn’t worsen the injury to his sacral spine. He felt like the moth in the glass box given from Niall Lynch to eldest son: pinned in place and displayed. The whole world was narrowed down to what he could see above him. Stars. Tree canopies. Paramedics like swooping black birds. Ronan wondered whether he would join his father in hell or find his mother in heaven.

Kavinsky was still laughing—the sound of it. There was no sound in the world like that laugh. The mere memory of it made Ronan gag, and then gag again, and then he threw up on the street. He barely managed to avoid getting puke on his wheels. 

When he came back to himself, the Volvo was still in front of him, but the engine had been cut and the headlights were dead. Declan stood beside him with a hand on the back of his neck. He squeezed intermittently, and it was sort of annoying, but Ronan didn’t brush Declan off. The touch said more than Ronan knew how to comprehend. 

Declan pressed a bottle of water into Ronan’s hands, and Ronan drank the whole thing in four swallows. He choked a little, but Declan didn’t scold him or fuss. He just asked, “What do you want to do?” 

Ronan didn’t answer. His teeth were chattering. 

“I’ll wheel you back to the town house and come back for the Volvo in the morning. Or we can sit here all night, if you want,” said Declan. “Just tell me what to do. Tell me how to help.” 

Ronan didn’t answer, but he scrubbed at his damp eyes, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket. Declan kept his hand on the back of Ronan’s neck. 

Gansey was still sitting at the fountain, Artoo curled up at his feet, when his phone rang. He fished it out of his suit pocket, hoping it was Helen looking for him, but knowing it wouldn’t be. She had at least another hour of responsibility to contend with. 

It was Ronan. 

Gansey and Ronan, though they had seen each other every day for weeks and texted often, had never called. It struck Gansey as something of a friendship milestone. He smiled his first smile of the night as he answered, “Hey.” 

“Hey,” said Ronan. He cleared his throat twice, but he didn’t say anything else. 

“What’s up, man?” 

“I, uh, well—” Ronan cleared his throat again. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Gansey. 

Ronan breathed a sound that was almost laughter, but it was too hollow to be true. It lacked all of the sharpness Gansey was used to. “I fucked up,” Ronan said. His voice lacked all its sharpness too, leaving him painfully neutral. Ronan was never neutral. “I booked my physical therapy too fucking late in the day and now I can’t fucking get home.” 

The explanation was vague, but it was enough. Something tickled at the back of Gansey’s neck, making the hair there stand up straight. It was the sort of something he would have called magic or fate if Blue or Noah or Adam were around to hear him say it. “You wouldn’t happen to be a patient at Fox Way PT, would you?” 

“Shit,” Ronan swore. “Yeah. I am.”

Gansey smiled a little. “My apartment is about five minutes from Fox Way.” 

“Shit,” Ronan swore again. “You serious?”

“As life,” said Gansey. And because he was lacking in the details—the source—that made it so Ronan couldn’t return to his brother’s townhome, he asked, “Can you make it that far? Or do you need a ride?” 

“I can make it.” 

“Okay. I’m not there at the moment, but Blue and Noah are. One of them will let you in, okay?” Ronan didn’t say anything. “I sent you the address. Did you get it?” 

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “Yeah. Thank you, Gansey.” 

“Sure. I’ll see you in a couple hours.” 

“See ya.” 

Ronan hung up, and Gansey stared down at his phone. Curiosity twisted in his veins at the same time that fondness pulsed in his heart. He did not like the idea that Ronan was struggling, but he liked that Ronan trusted him enough to call him. He liked that he could help, too.

Ronan had no reason to call Gansey and no reason to believe that he would be able to help, but Gansey had come through. Now, as evening settled heavy over DC, Ronan could see his way through this night. His panic eased and his hands stopped shaking and his teeth stopped shivering—it had never been because of the cold. He filled Declan in, and he assumed that Declan would drive off in the Volvo, but of course he didn’t. He insisted on walking the seven blocks with Ronan.

“I’m sorry,” said Declan. 

“Why the fuck are you sorry?” asked Ronan. He wanted to shoot Declan a dirty look, but he kept his eyes pinned to the sidewalk instead. The last thing he needed was to misjudge his chair and run into something. 

“I shouldn’t have left Henrietta,” said Declan. When he said Henrietta, he meant you. “And I should’ve realized the poor timing of your appointment.” 

“Fuck off.” Ronan could not bring himself to acknowledge that Declan had taken Matthew and left Henrietta behind. If he did, he would have to acknowledge that Declan had asked him to come too, and he had declined. He would have to acknowledge the loneliness and the pain—that when Declan gave up on Ronan, Ronan gave up on himself. He said only, “It was my mistake.” 

Neither said anything else on the matter. Lynches were not good at apologizing and they were even worse at accepting apologies. Both brothers knew this was the best they were—probably ever—going to get. 

“I’ll have to bring you your meds,” said Declan. Ronan had long since stopped taking routine Tylenol, but he was still on Gabapentin and Baclofen. “Follow the instructions on the bottles, yeah?” 

“Yeah,” said Ronan. He ignored the fact that Declan was planning to walk seven blocks to Gansey’s apartment, and then walk seven blocks back to the Volvo, and then drive to the town house, and then drive to Gansey’s apartment, and then drive home again. “Bring me a toothbrush, too?” 

Declan agreed, “Sure.” 

Another minute and another block and a half passed, and then the brothers arrived at the correct address. They were buzzed into the building and they rode the elevator up to the sixth floor. Ronan double checked Gansey’s apartment number, and he knocked on twenty-one. A girl with pink glitter on her eyelids and tightly coiled hair pinned back in butterfly clips opened the door to them. She smiled instantly; her front two teeth were crookedly pushed together. “Ronan?” 

“Blue?” 

“Hey, yeah, that’s me,” she said. “Come on in.” 

Ronan did not come on in. He looked over his shoulder at Declan, and Declan looked down at him. Something silent passed between them. The curl of Ronan’s lips confessed that he was nervous of these strangers; Declan’s eyebrows told him they had no better options. 

Blue misread the exchange, thinking it was Declan holding Ronan back instead of Ronan holding himself back. “We’ll return him to you in one piece tomorrow morning, I promise. Noah can drop him off on the way to work. Right, Noah?” 

A head of blond hair appeared over the couch. He flashed a thumbs up. 

“Thank you,” said Declan. Because he knew Ronan wouldn’t, probably. “I’ll be back in—” he checked his watch, and he thought it over “—half an hour with your things.” 

“Okay,” said Ronan. 

Declan took to the stairs rather than the elevator, and Ronan let himself into Richard Gansey the Third’s apartment. It sprawled out before him in a wide open space of big windows and exposed brick walls and bookshelves and a pair of mismatched sofas. There were three dog beds in Ronan’s line of sight, which was endearing, if not excessive. It was strange to see the place in Gansey’s absence when it was so him. There was a Star Wars poster hanging beside a clock warped like The Persistence of Memory. 

Blue led Ronan further into the apartment, and Ronan stayed in his chair while she made herself comfortable on the brown leather couch. Noah and his long limbs remained splayed across the sage green fabric couch—Ronan appreciated his nonchalance, that he didn’t get up to greet Ronan formally. 

“So,” said Ronan, “you’re the famous girlfriend?” 

Blue stared at him blankly. Which was almost worse than being glared at because staring blankly was Ronan’s game. He wasn’t sure what to do when someone else initiated it. He decided on staring back, and then he decided not to blink, and he smirked when Blue blinked first. 

“My name is Blue,” she said. “Call me anything else and I’ll gouge your eyes out.” 

Ronan brought a leather bracelet up to his mouth, and he chewed at it. He spoke around the band, “Alright.” 

They both went quiet after that, and the room fell into awkwardness, and Ronan wished that Gansey was here. Or he wished that he had just got in the Volvo and suffered the subsequent panic attack. He forgot how much he hated people. 

“Hey,” said Noah. He didn’t look up from his phone, which was held horizontal. Ronan knew from his time spent with Matthew that this meant he was either watching something or playing something. By the concentrated furrow between Noah’s brows, Ronan guessed it was the latter. “Why are you here?” 

“Noah,” Blue scolded, but Ronan wasn’t bothered by his directness. He appreciated, at least, the implications of Gansey’s discretion; it seemed he had kept Ronan’s secrets.

“Had PT and couldn’t get home,” said Ronan, giving them away. He offered as little context as he offered Gansey. It was none of their business that he couldn’t get in a car at night without remembering being sandwiched between a dumbass and a telephone pole. Again, blood stained teeth flashed in his mind. Ronan clenched his hands into fists. 

“Oh,” said Blue. “Oh, are you a patient at Fox Way?” 

“Yeah,” said Ronan. 

Blue grinned. “That’s my family’s business.” 

Ronan tilted his head to one side, and he squinted one eye closed, and he tilted his head the other way, and he squinted the other eye closed. He supposed he could see the resemblance. “Calla’s your mom?” 

“No,” said Blue, “but she might as well be my second mom. Or my third, depending how you count it.” She didn’t give Ronan any time to ask any follow up questions, which was fine because he didn’t have any. “Makes sense that she’s your therapist, though.” 

Ronan shrugged. “She’s cool.” 

Blue laughed. “I’m telling her you said that.” 

Ronan shrugged again. “Which came first? You or the awful paint?” 

Blue flipped him off. Ronan scratched at his knee even though he couldn’t feel it, and Noah offered to go pick up a pizza sans pineapple, and Ronan regretted coming here a little less. 

Gansey arrived home to find Blue, Noah, and Ronan engaged in a very competitive round of Mario Kart. Blue and Ronan were both cursing and Noah was laughing like a banshee or a devil. The three of them hardly noticed his return, but that was alright. Gansey enjoyed having a moment to himself—tie hanging limp from his throat and suit cuffs unbuttoned—to just watch. To remember that, as awful as his parents’ parties made him feel, that place wasn’t his home anymore. This was. 

“Hey,” said Gansey. 

Noah paused the game, and Ronan turned to look at Gansey, and Blue unpaused the game when the boys were distracted. She earned herself a quick victory, and Ronan yelled something about cheating assholes, and Noah turned the television off. 

“There’s pizza,” said Blue, “if you’re hungry.” 

Gansey hadn’t eaten all evening, and he was hungry. He let Artoo guide him to the kitchen, and he stole two slices of cheese and avocado. It was cold now and the avocado was mushy and tinting brown, but Gansey didn’t really care. He shoved half a slice in his mouth before he even made it to the kitchen table. 

“How was Congress?” asked Ronan, which meant he had been informed of Heather Gansey and all her ambitions. 

“Worse than hell,” said Gansey, and he didn’t apologize for who his mother was. It never did him any good; it was either a deal breaker or it wasn’t. That Ronan was smirking at him seemed to lend itself to forgiveness. 

Blue came into the kitchen, and she stood behind him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed a kiss to Gansey’s hair. Gansey leaned into her as much as the back of his chair would allow. 

“Does Artoo need to go out?” she asked. 

“Probably,” he answered. 

“I’ll take him,” she said. 

“Thank you, Jane,” he said. 

Ronan cleared his throat, and it was more a call for attention than it had been on the phone when it was raw and breaking, and three pairs of eyes landed on him. Artoo did not look at him, but that was only because the dog was too busy eyeing Gansey’s half-eaten pizza. He had never had a drop of human food in his life, but he still whined like he was starving for it. 

“What happened to ‘call me anything other than Blue and I’ll slit your throat’?” asked Ronan. 

“That’s not what I said. I said: call me anything other than Blue and I’ll gouge your eyes out.” 

Ronan flashed her a middle finger, and Blue shot one back. Gansey wanted to ask why Blue was threatening their guest, but he also didn’t want to reignite whatever bickering had befallen them. He was too tired, and they seemed fine now, with the way their eyes were both gleaming. 

Gansey ate his pizza, and Blue took Artoo out, and Noah set up the guest room for Ronan, and Ronan sat in wait. 

“Come on, Ronan,” said Gansey. He wanted to take his suit off and get in bed, but he was nothing if not a dutiful host. Gansey showed Ronan to the bathroom, and he waited outside while he changed and brushed his teeth. And then Gansey showed Ronan to the guest room. 

Ronan paused in the middle of the room. “You’re going to have to help me.” 

Gansey helped Ronan into bed, and he spent half a second resisting the urge to tuck him in, and then he gave in to the instinct. Ronan laughed at him. Gansey sat at the end of the bed. 

“Are you going to ask?” 

“No,” said Gansey. He wanted to. He wanted to ask why exactly Ronan couldn’t make it home when, as Blue and Noah had reported, his brother’s car had been perfectly capable of making the drive to the townhome. Twice. “Can I tell you a story?” 

Ronan swallowed thickly. His voice cracked a little when he said, “Okay.” 

So, Gansey told him the story. It was about a young boy with a wasp allergy, who got stung when he was ten years old, and then died. Gansey left out most of the details: the party, the kids he didn’t want to play with but played with anyway, his sister being the one to find him, the EpiPen that didn’t save him. But he told Ronan the important parts. He was stung twice—not just once, but not quite a swarm either—which was rare. His heart stopped, and the paramedics that just happened to be in the neighborhood started it again, which was even rarer. 

He explained that this boy was never the same again. He was dead for three minutes, and in those three minutes, permanent damage was done. Three minutes was such a short amount of time, but it was an eternity when the heart had stopped. Cardiac arrest and a lack of oxygen to the brain had caused Gansey to suffer movement disorders and memory loss and speech difficulties and brain fog and chronic pain and PTSD. 

When he was finished his story, Gansey pulled the EpiPen out of his pocket, and he handed it to Ronan. Ronan twisted it in his grip. 

“I was street racing,” he said, “and I got in an accident. A bad one. Totaled my dad’s car and everything. I should have— I should have died. But I didn’t. I was in a coma for three weeks and I damaged my spinal cord, but that’s all. I was lucky.” 

Gansey had spent many years considering what it meant to survive when you shouldn’t have survived. Sometimes he thought it was luck, and sometimes he thought it was something more, and mostly he just thought it was hard. It was hard to be entirely changed in such a split second moment, forced to spend the rest of your life catching up. It was an impossible thing, to be so grateful and yet so angry at the same time. 

“That’s why I couldn’t go back to Declan’s,” said Ronan. “I can’t get in a car at night. Fuck, I can barely get in a car at noon. You should’ve seen me on the drive from Henrietta. I tore through my lips until they were bloody, and I blared electronica in my ears for two hours despite the concussion, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about it.” 

“I didn’t step foot outside for the first two summers after,” said Gansey. He watched Ronan scrape at his thumbnail with his pointer finger. “It doesn’t get easier,” he admitted, “but you only have two options: live or let it kill you. I chose to live, so I learned to deal with the fear. You’ll learn too.” 

“I don’t know,” said Ronan, “the second option doesn’t sound so bad.” 

“You don’t mean that,” said Gansey. 

“No,” said Ronan. “I don’t.” 

Gansey called him an asshole, and Ronan told him not to swear, and Gansey told him to go to bed. Ronan popped two pills and swallowed them dry. Gansey hit the lights, but he lingered for a moment, just watching Ronan close his eyes. Watching his chest rise and fall, and feeling grateful that he still had breath. That he hadn’t died before they ever met. 

Noah Czerny drove a bright red Mustang. Because, as much as he was weird, he was also cool. Ronan was infinitely and horrifically jealous of his car, and infinitely and horrifically aware that he would never drive again. It took all of Ronan’s willpower not to punch through his windshield or clip his front bumper with the wheels of his chair. 

“Nice car,” he told Noah instead. 

When Noah looked at him, his face was split with a smile. His grin was incongruous with the rest of his features, something too wide and too straight. It was also infectious; Ronan bit at the inside of his cheek so as not to smile back. Noah said, “You like cars?” 

“Sure,” said Ronan. What he really meant was that he liked one car, and he had killed that car, and there was no point in ever wanting to drive again if he couldn’t drive his father’s beamer. 

“It’s impractical for the city,” said Noah, “but it’s better than that piece of shit Parrish drives.” 

Ronan didn’t ask what kind of car Adam drove because he didn’t care. Noah opened the door for him, and Ronan heaved himself into the passenger seat. He had been in a car less than a dozen times since the accident, and so he was not yet practiced in this maneuver. When Noah reached out to steady him, it was Ronan’s instinct to posture. To bat him away. He choked down the impulse in favor of letting Noah help. He meant well, after all. 

The sun glared at Ronan through the windshield, and so he closed his eyes. He sat strangely vulnerable while Noah battled Ronan’s chair to convince it to fold and fit in the backseat. Noah won in the end, and he started the car, and he said, “Buckle up.”

Ronan buckled his seat belt. 

“Music?” asked Noah. 

Ronan shrugged, and Noah told him to open the glove compartment, and Ronan was met with the most impressive collection of CDs he had ever seen in his life. He found one he didn’t recognize and he popped it in. The opening synth shocked him. It didn’t really suit his own taste in music, but he left it playing anyway. 

Noah asked for the townhome’s address, and Ronan prattled it off quickly, and Noah said, “Sick. That’s actually on my way to work.” 

Ronan hated small talk, and so he did not ask where Noah worked. Instead, he let Noah ramble about how this album was by Gansey’s sister’s girlfriend’s band. He said, too, that their parents didn’t know Helen was dating a woman, and Helen would probably never tell them, and Gansey made himself sick about it sometimes. Ronan didn’t interject, but he thought about his own parents—dead in the driveway. He never got to come out to them. He never properly came out to anyone, just assumed everyone knew and moved on. 

Eventually, they made it back to the town house. Declan was already standing out front, waiting for them with his arms crossed over his chest and wrinkles in forehead. Declan was a year younger than Noah, but the inverse could not look more true now. Noah was all shining smiles and youthful blond hair and dimples and big ears and a hundred CDs in every genre. Ronan was pretty sure Declan never listened to music, and if he did it was some classical Beethoven bullshit. 

Noah put his hazards on, and he didn’t bother cutting the engine as he got Ronan’s chair from the backseat. Again, Ronan heaved himself out of one seat and into another. Again, he let Noah put his hands on his biceps to smooth the transition. 

“Need any help?” asked Noah, when Ronan approached the stairs. 

But Declan was already at the bottom. “We’re good. Thank you for driving him and hosting him last night.” 

“Oh, but of course,” Noah said in an exaggeratedly posh British accent. Ronan barked a laugh and Noah threw him a wink before throwing himself back in the car. He tore off down the street before anything else could be said. 

Declan must have known he was being made fun of, but he didn’t bluster. He merely watched Noah’s fast and bright car drive away fast and bright. When he faded from sight, he made no snide comments about the previous night and asked no prying questions about the impromptu sleepover. He just grasped the handles of Ronan’s chair and asked, “Good?” 

“Good,” said Ronan. 

Things changed after Ronan spent the night at Walter. Their friendship had deepened through their confessions—their stories shared side by side on the guest bedroom’s mattress. It wasn’t that they hadn’t already known that the other had health issues to contend with, but there was something about knowing the origin of a thing that made it real. That made a rope catch between them, tied together by their throats and breathing even despite it all. 

It also helped that Ronan had met Blue and Noah, and Blue and Noah had met him, and now Blue and Noah were intent on adopting him into their little group. Gansey did not admit how much it pleased him, but he welcomed Ronan with invitations, and he beamed bright when he accepted. He grinned even brighter when Blue greeted Ronan with a rude gesture and Noah greeted him with a high five. 

More often than not, Ronan came over after PT or after their daily walk or before their daily walk or with no excuse at all. Today was one of those days with no excuse, and Gansey put on Attack of the Clones even though his scratched and ancient disc skipped frantically and frustratingly back and forth. They weren’t really watching anyway—the movie was merely background noise as Blue tried to teach Ronan to crochet and Noah stole two crochet hooks to drum a rhythm on the coffee table and Gansey, patiently, explained space politics to three sets of non-listening ears. 

They had just arrived at The First Battle of Geonosis when stomachs started to grumble. They settled on Chinese delivery, and then Noah used his chopsticks to drum, too. He wasn’t very skilled, but the clatter was familiar to Gansey’s ears. 

Ronan’s wheels sat parked beside the green couch, meanwhile he had lifted himself onto the cushions and sprawled out. It had taken much trial and error for Ronan to find himself fully horizontal with his feet propped up on the arm—enough so that, when their food arrived, he didn’t sit up. He ate his dumplings on his back and he dribbled sauce down his chin. Gansey wanted to scold him about choking hazards, but he left him alone. Ronan caught him looking and flashed a shark-like grin. It looked meaner than it was. 

“Is Adam coming over after work?” asked Blue. Her eyes flicked to the watch she always wore—she had swapped out the original black leather strap for one of fraying, braided threads. Gansey liked when she took the watch off at the end of the day, and he liked to kiss the skin of the inside of her wrist. 

“Don’t think so,” said Gansey. He found himself on the floor, for some reason, with Artoo’s head firmly planted on his chest. His dog was the only one still watching the movie. “He has an exam tomorrow.” 

Blue hummed her response. 

Adam and Ronan still hadn’t met yet, by coincidence rather than choice, but Gansey wasn’t worried about it. He was certain everything would click together given time. 

“Fucking hell, Sargent,” said Ronan. He had taken to calling her anything but Blue, which usually meant Sargent and once it meant maggot. The crochet hook was back in one hand and a mass of fuzzy soft yarn sat in the other. Blue wouldn’t stand for anything that was scratchy. “I thought you said this shit was supposed to be relaxing.” 

Blue took one look at the knotted mess on his lap and laughed. 

In truth, it felt like Ronan had been here—at Walt and among their crowd—all along, forever. It was the same feeling when Gansey met Adam, and Noah, and Blue. He never noticed that a piece of him was missing, and yet he kept collecting parts. He wondered if this was whole, or if there was more still to discover. 

It took Ronan and Gansey a collective ten minutes to get into Adam Parrish’s apartment. Ronan spent nine of these minutes alternating between cursing and telling Gansey to give it a rest, to give it up, to give Adam a call to meet them outside. It started with a door that Gansey and Artoo could barely manage on their own; Gansey had to hold the door open for Ronan. Twice he almost slammed the door into Ronan’s deadened feet. 

It escalated with the elevator. Gansey kept jamming his finger against the up button. The doors opened to halfway apart, and then they shuddered closed again. Artoo tried to help, pressing his nose to the button on Gansey’s behalf. The result was the same. 

“For fuck’s sake,” said Ronan. “How fucking old is this building?” 

“At least a hundred years,” said Gansey. “They had to add the second door, like, ten years ago when the DC building codes changed. Adam thinks the door is intentionally impossibly heavy as some sort of punishment.” 

“Jesus,” said Ronan. He tried the elevator button, and this time the doors didn’t even attempt to open. He said again, “For fuck’s sake. Just fucking call him. He can meet me in this fucking lobby. I don’t give a fuck.” 

“That was an impressive number of fucks.” 

“Fuck off,” said Ronan. He jabbed the elevator button again, and by some divine intervention, the doors opened fully. Ronan wheeled himself into the cramped metal square and Gansey and Artoo followed his lead. “What floor?” 

“Three,” said Gansey, but then he pressed the button before Ronan could. The elevator shook as it heaved in an attempt to ascend. Ronan’s breath caught. 

“Just so you know, if we get stuck in here, I won’t hesitate to eat you to survive.” 

“Duly noted.” 

But they did not get stuck, and Gansey opened the door to Adam’s apartment with a key of his own. It was the sort of thing that should have drawn intrigue, but it was Gansey, so Ronan just shrugged it off. Of course he had a key. 

Adam’s apartment was much smaller and simpler than Walt. Rather than a sprawling main room and three bedrooms, it was a living room-kitchen-bedroom combo. In the left corner, a twin mattress sat directly on the floor. In the right corner, a couple of chipped cabinets and laminate counters and a skinny fridge made up the kitchen. Between the two corners sat a fraying navy couch with flaccid pillows. The entire room was distinctly bare with the only decorations coming in the form of a bulletin board of polaroids and a collection of Legos—that, at least, was something charming. Still Ronan Lynch was not a liar, and so he would not call the place nice. 

“Hey,” said Gansey.

Adam Parrish stood from the couch. His hair was a rumpled mess of bedhead and he was wearing jeans patched at the knee and a fading Coca-Cola t-shirt, but Ronan recognized him anyway. He didn’t need the scrubs to know those blue eyes like a dwindling purple-blue sky at dusk. 

“Free,” said Gansey, and Artoo slipped from his side to bound over to Adam. Adam bent over to pet the dog, hands—his hands—ruffling at the crown of Artoo’s head. Artoo snuffled happily. 

“Hi, puppy,” said Adam in a sleep-worn voice so different from the professional tone Ronan had heard before.

“What the fuck,” said Ronan. He blinked, and he blinked again, but the image before him did not change. Adam Parrish—Richard Campbell Gansey the Third’s best friend, Adam Parrish—was the pretty nurse from Fox Way, and no one had told him. No one had warned him. 

Adam looked up, ignoring Artoo in favor of looking at Ronan. He had the decency to, at the very least, appear nervous. Though that might have just been his face and the crease between his fair eyebrows. “Hey,” he said. “I’m Adam.” 

“No fucking shit,” said Ronan. “What the hell, man?” 

Adam smiled now, both rows of teeth on display. Ronan felt distinctly sick. “Sorry. I couldn’t tell you without risking my job. HIPAA, y’know.” 

“Oh,” Gansey interrupted. His eyes darted between Ronan and Adam, something fascinated twinkling in their hazel depths, obscured only by his wireframes. “Oh, of course. I should have known you two would’ve met already.” 

“You didn’t tell me he worked there,” said Ronan to Gansey. Then back to Adam, “I thought you were still in school.” 

“I am,” said Adam. “I’m just an assistant at Fox Way, and even that job I’m not technically qualified for. It’s a horrible display of nepotism in the workplace, really.” 

Ronan wasn’t sure if he was supposed to laugh, but he did. A tiny spark of a smirk flirted with Adam’s features, and that was that. The three of them settled into Adam’s cramped living room. They ate box mix macaroni and cheese—on the couch, because Adam’s dining room table, which looked like it had been plucked from the side of the road, was too tall for Ronan’s wheelchair. Ronan and Adam bickered about the merits of elbows versus shells. Adam didn’t have a TV, so Gansey played an episode of Spongebob from his phone, and Adam and Ronan complained loudly when autoplay queued up a video about an ancient Italian dude who changed the world or something. Gansey let it play anyway, and Adam took to flipping through flashcards, and Ronan stole them in turn. He purposely mispronounced every term, but nodded when Adam got every definition correct.

They stayed until the sun got a little too close to setting and Declan got impatient in texting Ronan every five minutes asking for updates. Once again, they fought with the elevator, but the heavy door was easier when Adam was accompanying them. He drove Gansey home first because Walt was closer, and then he drove Ronan back to the townhome. Noah was right about Adam’s car being a piece of shit, but it was a manual, and Ronan enjoyed watching Adam’s hand on the gearstick. 

“I still think you should’ve told me,” said Ronan. 

“It’s against the law,” said Adam. 

“Fuck the law,” said Ronan. 

“Not all of us can afford anarchy,” said Adam. 

“Loser,” said Ronan. 

Adam pulled up in front of the town house, and he got Ronan’s wheelchair from the trunk of his shitty car, and he didn’t stick around to introduce himself to Declan. Ronan didn’t blame him. 

Ronan: dbag wants to meet you

Gansey: Declan?

Ronan: duh

Gansey: I’d be perfectly agreeable. 

Ronan: hes being so intense hes acting like ur my fucking bf or smth

Gansey: Is this your coming out? I hate to say it, Ronan, but I’ve known for weeks. 

Ronan: fuck you

Gansey: No thanks. Adultery is a sin. 

Ronan: stfu asshole. tomorrow?

Gansey: Sure

The following day, Gansey knocked on the door of the townhome of the brothers Lynch. His hand trembled a little, though he couldn’t tell if it was his usual tremor or the nerves. Probably he had no need to be nervous, but Declan and Matthew were the only characters in Ronan’s life. The part of Gansey that still answered his parents’ calls surged with the desire to impress. 

The youngest Lynch brother opened the door, a head of golden curls turning to flame in the sun. “Hi,” said Matthew, but he wasn’t talking to Gansey. His eyes had locked with Artoo’s, and he was waving at the dog. 

“C’mon, Matty,” Ronan complained. The sound of his approach came from wheels gliding over shiny, dark wood floors. “What did I fucking tell you? Service dogs are not pets. Don’t fucking distract him.” 

Matthew pouted, but he stopped waving, and he said, “Sorry. I forgot. I was just saying hi.” 

“It’s fine,” said Gansey. It really was against every tenet of service dog etiquette, but Gansey couldn’t find his usual frustration when faced with Matthew and his genuine apology. 

Matthew beamed again. “Hi, Gansey. I’m Matthew. Are you coming in?” 

“If you move out of the way, shitstain,” said Ronan, and Matthew did move out of the way, and Gansey did enter the town house. Everything was gray and tan and white, just as Ronan had told him it would be. Gansey wasn’t a fan, but he tried not to judge. He would be home to his mismatched couches and cardboard cities soon enough. “Yo, Deklo,” Ronan shouted. He, essentially, rode Matthew’s bumper as they slipped further inside, biting at his heels with the edges of his footplates. Matthew laughed joyously. “Are you greeting our guest or what?” 

Declan appeared wearing a pure white apron—it wasn’t stained at all. Despite being told by his father that he had a horrible hand shake, Gansey allowed Declan to clasp their hands together. The formality of it wrinkled discomfort in Gansey’s stomach. He felt better when he noticed Ronan’s eye roll in his peripherals. 

“Gansey,” said Gansey. 

“Declan,” said Declan. “I hope you like spaghetti. It’s one of three things I know how to cook.” 

“Spaghetti is good,” said Gansey. 

Declan returned to the kitchen, and Ronan rolled his eyes again, and the three remaining boys took over the living room. Thinking it wise not to invite Artoo up onto Declan’s sofa, Gansey prompted Artoo to sit at his feet. It took only a word. 

“How long have you had him?” asked Matthew. His fingers twitched in his lap, and Gansey was endlessly endeared by the extent of his restraint.

“Five years,” said Gansey. It seemed not long enough, and yet also too big a number. 

“He’s cute,” said Matthew. His head tipped to one side. “And I like his name.” 

“Thank you,” said Gansey. Matthew asked several more questions, and Ronan told him to take it easy, but Gansey answered them all happily. His nerves eased in the present company. 

Soon enough, Declan called Matthew to set the table, and the four of them were sitting down to eat. It was almost the formal dinners Gansey was used to from his parents. Except that Ronan hoarded the parmesan cheese and wouldn’t pass it no matter how many times Declan asked. And Matthew chewed with his mouth open and talked through strands of pasta about his degree in Women and Gender Studies. And no one told him that was an unrealistic, aimless pursuit—though perhaps that was because Matthew’s main focus was the soccer team which had earned him his acceptance and the scholarship he hardly needed. And Declan settled once he lost the apron and had half a glass of wine, and he engaged Gansey in a conversation about art history. 

It was as nice an evening as Gansey could have asked for, if he was honest. 

Ronan had met Dr Shania twice. The first time, it was only a few days after the accident. Ronan made a joke about Shania Twain (“Do you feel like a woman, doc?”) and he had not yet been forgiven. The second time, the older gentleman with the stupid half-beard declared him cleared of his concussion, all the while looking him over with something like scorn, a derisive slide of his lips and a squinting of his eyes. Declan insisted that was just what Dr Shania looked like, but Ronan knew better. 

The doctor pulled up today’s x-ray, and he zoomed in on his sacral spine. With a pudgy finger, he pointed to the place where Ronan’s spinal cord was shredded. Looking at it made Ronan’s stomach spin, so he didn’t look. He stared at his hands and twisted a leather band around his wrist. Around, around, around. Ronan felt dizzy. 

Eventually, Shania put the x-ray away. He didn’t ask Ronan’s permission to take his shoes off, just fought with the laces of his combat boots. He had started wearing them again a couple weeks ago. It was a stupid thing to insist upon, but, at the very least, Ronan appreciated inconveniencing men in white lab coats. Ronan watched that same pudgy finger poke at his feet. He wouldn’t have believed it was happening if he wasn’t watching.

“Anything?” asked Shania. 

“No,” said Ronan. His voice came out thick and raw, so he swallowed. Then, he swallowed again.

Shania continued poking Ronan until he got a yes somewhere just below his naval. He put Ronan’s shoes back on, but left the laces undone. The detail of it made unexplainable anger swell between Ronan’s ribs. He wanted to kick Shania in the face, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t.

“Well, Mr Lynch, I think you’re doing as well as can be expected,” said Shania. He folded his hands in his lap and the curve of his mouth straightened out. “I will keep prescribing your medications, and I am happy to help if anything comes up, but otherwise I’ll see you in six months. Okay?” 

Static. For a moment, there was just static. 

Then, Declan was thanking Dr Shania for his time, and Shania was leading them back to the waiting room, and Declan was pressing the button for the elevator. Then, they were in the elevator, and then they were in the parking garage, and then Ronan was in the fuck ass Volvo. He wanted to scream, but he stayed perfectly silent. It wasn’t that he was expecting a different outcome today. He knew his sensation wasn’t coming back; he knew he wasn’t walking again. It was more so that Ronan hadn’t snapped yet—since the accident. 

Declan must have seen it in him because he said, “Let’s have ice cream for dinner.” 

But they did not have ice cream for dinner. They went back to the town house, and Ronan lost it. In a tantrum choreographed with spinning wheels, he pulled the cushions off the couch, and he threw them at the wall. He punched the wall, and then he punched the TV, too. In the kitchen, he couldn’t reach the cabinets, but he could reach the fridge, and he threw a protein shake at Declan’s head when he tried to approach. He heaved himself up and out of the chair, and the fall to the ground didn’t hurt the way it should have. He couldn’t curl into a ball the way he wanted. He shouted every curse word he knew, and then he just screamed, and then he clawed lines down his arms just to feel something. 

Ronan couldn’t go home. Ronan couldn’t ever go home. 

Declan intervened, then. He laid down on the floor next to Ronan, and he grabbed one of his wrists. He didn’t quite pin him to the tile of the kitchen, but he held firm. The pad of his thumb stroked circled into Ronan’s skin, and he could feel that.

Ronan’s chest heaved, and he realized he was crying. Tears of saltwater pain dripped down his cheeks, his chin, his throat. Little lines of sensations were left in their wake, and Ronan could feel that. He could feel that. 

“Ronan,” said Declan. 

“What,” said Ronan. 

“I’m so sorry,” said Declan. 

“Fuck off,” said Ronan. 

“We’re going to figure this out, I promise,” said Declan. 

But there was nothing to figure out; there was nothing to fix. This was it. Ronan’s ability to feel stopped somewhere around the jut of his hip bones, and his ability to walk was forever gone, and he couldn’t go home. He could never go home. There was nothing else.

“Will you shave my head?” asked Ronan. 

“Whatever you want,” said Declan. 

The bathroom was lit by warm vanity lighting. On the sink, a candle danced to music no one could hear and the scent of mint and sugar wafted from its plumes. Everything was calm and still and easy in the bathroom. 

Gansey sat on the closed toilet lid with shaving cream smeared across his jaw. Blue stood in front of him, holding a razor in a hand steadier than Gansey’s could ever be. He used to try to do this himself, but he always ended up with nicks and cuts and blood on his face. There were a few months, back in high school, when he had given up and let his patchy facial hair run wild. But then Adam had offered to help, and Gansey had said yes. Eventually, Blue had taken over. 

She put one hand on the side of Gansey’s throat, keeping herself in balance and keeping Gansey still. His pulse thudded against her palm. They had been together a long time, he and Blue, and so he should have been desensitized to her touch. But it always felt like the first time: a spark of warmth and an ease of right. With her other hand, Blue scratched the razor down Gansey’s jaw. 

It was a slow and quiet process. Neither said a thing as Blue bit her lip in concentration, as Gansey closed his eyes. There was just the sound of the razor scraping gently against Gansey’s skin. There would be no nicks or cuts or blood when Blue was finished. She had been doing this for Gansey long enough, now, that she was skilled. She was an expert at taking care of him. 

After, Blue rinsed the razor in the sink, and she patted aftershave onto Gansey’s cheeks, and he only winced a little. He caught Blue around the waist, and he dragged her close. She stood between his legs and Gansey rested his head against her chest. Her pulse thudded against his ear. He loved her heart so much, so much. 

“Thank you,” he said. He always thanked her, even when this had become routine more than any act of service. 

Blue didn’t answer, but she threaded her fingers through Gansey’s hair. With a gentle grip, she tilted his head back and back and back. She kissed his forehead, the gap between his eyebrows, his nose. His lips. Blue was an inherently tactile person. She was always throwing her arm around Noah, or nudging Adam with a gentle elbow, or holding her mother’s hand. It came simple and easy to her, and it was just touch. It wasn’t words expressed in silence or something to be awarded only when earned. It was just touch, and her kisses were the same. It was just a kiss. 

But it was everything, too. Gansey hummed against her mouth, and he whispered, “I love you,” against her lips. 

Blue pulled back, and she held Gansey by the chin. Her eyes scraped over him, admiring her work and checking for any places she might have neglected. When she was satisfied, she kissed him again, and she said, “Love you, too.” 

Ronan laid on a patient bed in another room he had never seen before—he was starting to question the vastness of Fox Way, despite how small the blue building looked from the outside. As always, Calla showed up late, but Ronan wasn’t annoyed this time. He understood, now that he knew Blue, that Calla was late because she was determined to give each of her patients a full hour, regardless of setbacks. 

Calla asked the same questions she always asked. When she asked about new symptoms, Ronan said there were none, and there would not ever be any. 

“Saw Dr Shania yesterday,” he explained. The words were barbed wire caught in his vocal cords. He felt bloodied. “I’m not— He said I’m not going to get better or worse, so I don’t have to see him for a while.”

“Okay,” said Calla, and she didn’t say anything else. She carried onto the rest of her questions, but Ronan was hardly listening. Anger flared in his chest like something aflame and destructive. He wanted to trash this same room the same as he had trashed Declan’s townhome. 

“Any pain to—”

“The fuck do you mean okay?” Ronan spat. Venom spilled over his lips, poison sprayed from his tongue. “I just told you I’m never gonna fucking walk again and all you have to say is okay? Jesus Christ. Fuck you.” 

Calla raised one thin eyebrow. “Ronan,” she said. “We already knew you weren’t going to walk again.” 

Ronan swore. He swore again. He thought about the Barns, and all that could be changed to make it accessible, and how much he didn’t want to change a thing. That place was his parents, and building ramps and tearing down kitchens and taking over the first floor master bedroom was something Ronan couldn’t stomach. And so he couldn’t go home, and it was all he had thought about for days. In his mind’s eye, he drove the winding road back to the farmhouse. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Calla pointed it out. 

“Take a breath.” 

“No.” 

“Take a breath.” 

Ronan took a breath. And another, and another, and another until his lungs stopped burning and his vision stopped swimming. He pressed the heels of his hands to eyes, pressing down hard enough he thought they might explode. When they didn’t, he dropped his hands to his lap. He stared right at Calla, defiant in his unwillingness to be embarrassed or ashamed. 

“Welcome to reality,” said Calla. “Might I suggest you get a therapist?” 

Ronan flashed her a middle finger, and Calla laughed. Ronan allowed himself the smallest of smiles in return. 

“I said okay because this doesn’t change anything for us,” Calla said. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, and you’re going to figure out how to live your life as a paraplegic. Okay?” 

“Okay,” said Ronan, and then they got to work. For the next hour, Calla put him through the wringer. She did not go easy on him, and Ronan was glad for it. He didn’t need pity or sympathy. He needed reality. 

At the end, when Ronan was sweaty and Declan was surely waiting outside, he ran into Adam in the lobby. Adam greeted him, tone lilting somewhere between professional and tired, “Hey, Ronan. How’re you?” 

They had hung out a few times since the day they officially met, but this was the first time that they had seen each other here—at Fox Way. It could have been awkward, but it was alright. “Are you even allowed to talk to me? What happened to HIPAA?” 

Adam smirked. “Do you even know what HIPAA is?” 

“Stops people like you from fucking over people like me,” said Ronan.

Adam laughed. “Close enough.” 

They lingered a quiet moment longer, and then someone called Adam’s name, and he threw a thumb over his shoulder. Ronan nodded, and he pointed at the door, to the sidewalk where the Volvo was idling. Adam smiled. 

“See you around, Lynch.” 

“Sure, Parrish.”

It caught Gansey off guard every time. Between flare ups, he forgot what it was like for his already limited functionality to become further limited. But then his symptoms swelled and he remembered. It knocked him off his feet every time. 

Gansey had been stuck in bed all day, and he would be stuck in bed for at least two days more, and he texted Ronan. He had to cancel their daily walk. Ronan said okay, and Gansey rolled over in bed. It should not have been so difficult, but his body was a hodge podge thing of mismatched pieces. His muscles did not work well with his joints and his joints did not work well with his brain. It took three tries to turn to face the wall. He closed his eyes. 

He didn’t fall asleep, but it was a near thing. 

The worst part of his flares was the way his brain tilted sideways. He fell back into the mind of a ten year old who had just met death and who was terrified to meet it again. He started to itch, and he couldn’t take a Zyrtec because he couldn’t remember if he had taken one already or not. He couldn’t reach the bottle anyway. His hands weren’t his; he couldn’t even scratch at the hives decorating his skin. 

The first day was a blur. Noah brought him water, and he helped him drink a little. Blue returned from class, and she curled around him for as long as she could before her evening lecture beckoned her away again. When she left, Artoo took her place. Artoo brought him pre-packaged snacks, but Gansey didn’t eat. He didn’t sleep. He just thought about wasps. 

The second day was a little better. His head ached with hunger, but Blue made him breakfast and he could hold his fork—kind of. He managed a few bites, and then the fork clattered to his lap. Blue stole the utensil, and they played here comes the airplane. The second day was better mostly because Blue didn’t have class at all, so she stayed with him, and her touch kept him from falling back in time. It was harder to think about wasps in the present.

The third day was Gansey’s least favorite. His mind was his own again, but his body still wasn’t, and it frustrated him. Artoo fetched him snacks and water and helped him to the bathroom. Gansey felt sticky, and he wanted to shower, but he knew he wouldn’t yet be able to. He went back to bed, and Artoo laid on top of him, and Gansey tried to tell himself this wouldn’t last. But just as he could not remember the flare ups when they were gone, he could not remember the good days during the bad ones. 

Ronan showed up on the third day. Noah had let him in—Gansey assumed—and he sat in his wheelchair at Gansey’s bedside. Ronan wasn’t much of a talker, and Gansey didn’t have it in him to carry the conversation right now, so they sat mostly in silence. It was nice regardless. To not be alone. 

Ronan had been there for a few hours—Gansey thought—when he brought it up. “How do you do it?” 

“What?” 

“This,” said Ronan. “How do you live with this without losing your damn mind?” 

Gansey laughed. “I’m pretty much always losing my mind, Ronan.” 

Ronan didn’t laugh, and he didn’t say anything. He tipped his head back, staring at the glow in the dark stars that sat dull in the afternoon light. Gansey wondered if Ronan recognized any of the constellations he and Blue had tried to replicate: the big dipper, canis major, pegasus. When Ronan looked down again, his blue eyes were damp. 

“What’s going on?” asked Gansey. 

“I’m not—” Ronan started and stopped. “I was supposed to be a fucking farmer and live in my family home until I got old and fucking died, and now— now none of that is possible.” 

Normally Gansey would have held his questions for a later time, but he had been in bed for three days and his judgment was skewed. He lacked the wherewithal to bite his tongue. “What are you going to do instead?” 

“I don’t know,” said Ronan. He ran a hand over his skull, and it was then that Gansey noticed it was freshly buzzed. That meant something, but the meaning was lost on him. “I don’t fucking know, but I know Declan doesn’t want me on my own, so I’m sure I’ll keep living with him in that gray fucking prison forever. Fuck.” 

“You could move in with us.” Gansey said it without thinking, but he knew at once that he meant it. 

“What?” 

“You can take the guest bedroom. We got a three bedroom in the hopes that, one day, Adam would move in, but he—” 

“Shit,” Ronan interrupted. “Shit, you’re serious? You’re serious.” 

“Yeah,” said Gansey. Probably he should have talked to Blue and Noah before making such a finite and concrete offer, but he knew them, and he knew already what they would say. There would be no turning away of Ronan Lynch. “Yeah, I’m serious.” 

“Holy shit.” 

Ronan forced Gansey to talk to Blue and Noah before he talked to Declan. The conversation with Blue and Noah was easy. Blue just said sure, lower rent for me and Noah started rambling about the game nights they could have now that they had the numbers. The conversation with Declan was, unsurprisingly, more difficult. He was taking shit personally as he always fucking was. 

Ronan didn’t want to say it, but he did. “It’s not about you. But this—” he gestured at gray walls and spotless surfaces and the TV that had already been fixed “—is never going to be my home.” 

“I apologize if I haven’t done enough to welcome you,” said Declan. “We can redecorate, if you want, starting with your room.” 

Ronan made a noise of complaint. “Fucking— okay. Dad left you the town house in his will. He left me the Barns. Tell me you would want to live at the Barns.” 

Declan Lynch was a liar, but he did not lie now. “I wouldn’t want to.” 

“Exactly,” said Ronan. “Look: you’ve met them, you’ve seen the apartment. They’re good people and it’s a good place, and I— I could survive there.” He didn’t say he might also be happy there because hope was a fickle, dangerous thing. 

“Okay,” said Declan. 

“Okay?” asked Ronan. 

“Yes, okay, but I have some stipulations,” Declan said. “And it’s not some ableist bullshit. I’d— I’d want you to do these things disabled or not because you’re you, and I still don’t trust you to take care of yourself, alright?” 

“Alright. Hit me with the terms and conditions.”

“We have dinner once a week. We find a church in DC. You start picking up your phone when Matthew or I call. You stay sober.” 

“Deal, done, fine, whatever.”

And a week later, Ronan moved into Walt. Ronan didn’t have much stuff because most of his shit was still at the Barns—Declan had offered, twice now, to drive down to Henrietta to pick up anything he might want; Ronan had yet to take him up on it—but there were ample accommodations to be made. 

Walter had two bathrooms. One was an ensuite attached to Blue and Gansey’s bedroom and the other had previously been only Noah’s, but would now be shared with Ronan. It was Noah who installed the shower bars, though, so it seemed he didn’t mind. Fortunately, unlike the townhome, the shower had a sliding glass door. It wasn’t quite a roll in, but Ronan could make do with the bars and the shower stool. It helped, too, that the shower head had a detachable nozzle. Also installed—in both bathrooms, not just the one Ronan was more likely to use—were handle bars next to the toilets. 

There were other smaller changes to be made. The floors had once been crowded with rugs that only Blue Sargent could’ve found appealing, but the rugs were rolled up and packed away. The bed in Ronan’s room had been equipped with half side bed rails. The height of the kitchen counters could not be remedied without sledgehammers, but a low shelving unit had been added to the space. Plates and glasses and silverware and the toaster and the microwave and other essentials were lined up neatly. The middle shelf of the fridge, too, had been cleared out for Ronan’s things. 

There were also accommodations that didn’t need to be made because they had already been adapted for Gansey’s sake. Like lever handles on every door instead of knobs and wide spaces between pieces of furniture to allow for Gansey and Artoo and Ronan and his wheelchair to pass through. 

It wasn’t perfect, but it was nearly perfect. It wasn’t the Barns, but it was a better alternative than Ronan would have known how to ask for. 

Noah insisted on a welcoming party, and since it was Noah, no one disagreed. It was nothing like the parties of his parents that Gansey was so used to and so hated. He wasn’t even sure if it counted as a party when the guest list was so limited. It was the four people that lived at Walter, Adam, Ronan’s brothers, Henry Cheng, and Orla—she wasn’t actually invited, but she overheard Blue and Adam talking about it, and she invited herself. Gansey had also welcomed Helen, but she was in Detroit with her girlfriend and the band, so she couldn’t come. 

Mostly, the party was an assembly of bodies in the living room of Walt while music churned from the record player. Someone had hung streamers from the curtain rods, but most had fallen to the floor by now. At the moment, Blue was scolding Henry, a high school peer of Adam and Gansey’s, for flirting with her cousin. 

“Come on,” Henry complained, “it’s a party. Besides, she could be the love of my life.” 

And there was Henry Cheng’s familiar nonsense. Gansey was pretty sure he knew who the love of Henry’s life was, and it definitely wasn’t the girl who hadn’t taken her eyes off Ronan all night—someone was going to have to tell her he played for the other team, though whose place it was to share such a thing, Gansey wasn’t sure. He slid an arm around Blue and asked Henry, aptly, “Where is Broadway?”

“Taking an interest in the arts, are you, Gansey boy? You can find Broadway in NYC. The Big Apple. The city that never sleeps,” said Henry. He threw back a drink as if it was alcohol, but it was only orange juice. They were keeping the party dry for Ronan’s sake, which Gansey didn’t mind. He didn’t like to drink much, and it was inadvisable with most of his meds anyway. 

“Very funny,” said Gansey. “Where’s Henry?”

Henry giggled. “You’re looking at him.” 

Gansey gave in. “Where is Cheng2?” 

“Left him shacked up with some girl in Sydney. We’ll reconvene in Greece or Venezuela or something.” 

Henry Cheng and Henry Broadway had been traveling together since the moment they graduated. Henry had asked Gansey and Blue to accompany him first. But Blue had gotten a scholarship she couldn’t turn down and Gansey was certain that he, with all his excess needs, would not make a good travel partner. Still, he found himself jealous, sometimes, of how much of the world Henry had seen. But then he looked around: at Matthew and Noah caught in what appeared to be a handstand competition while Ronan cackled in watch, at Adam boring Orla with talks of work, at Blue nestled under his arm, at Declan standing off to the side. And then he didn’t quite mind where he was. 

Kissing Blue’s cheek and promising Henry they’d catch up properly before he left town again, Gansey ducked out of one conversation to step into another. He joined Declan at the edge of the room. Declan was spinning a drink in his hand—it looked like plain carbonated water, which was possibly the worst thing Gansey had ever witnessed. 

“Hello,” Gansey greeted him. He prompted Artoo to sit, and Artoo sat. 

“This really is a nice place,” said Declan, but he didn’t look around at the apartment. His eyes were pinned to Matthew and Ronan. He looked seconds away from shouting at his youngest brother to be careful. 

“Thank you,” said Gansey.

“Has Ronan signed the lease yet?” asked Declan. 

“Yesterday,” said Gansey. Last night, they’d ordered five pizzas to celebrate, and Ronan had bet Blue he could eat more slices than she could, and she put him to shame. She was still waiting for her twenty bucks. 

“So, it’s official,” Declan said. His voice was perfectly neutral, but when Gansey glanced up at him, he saw the slightest downturn to his lips. The slightest shade of sadness in the gray-blue of his eyes. 

Gansey didn’t know what to say. 

Declan turned away from his brothers, and he looked Gansey in the eye. “I don’t know how much Ronan has told you, but he’s been through a lot,” said Declan. “He’s not as tough as he wants you to think he is. You’ll look out for him, won’t you?” 

“Of course,” said Gansey. “That’s what we do. We take care of each other.” 

Declan nodded, and he excused himself. He joined his brothers, and he warned Matthew not to break his neck, and Gansey stood alone, then. Once more, he looked around at his friends. Smiles and laughter and joy were shared in Gansey’s home—not the only one he had ever known, but his favorite by far. This was a good day. 

This was a good day, and Gansey intended to remember it. 

The party was dying down when Adam approached him—Declan and Matthew had already left, and Orla was on her way out, thank God. It was only Adam and Henry who didn’t live here but stayed. In turn, the energy in the room shifted. The atmosphere calmed to nonchalance, to casual. 

“Hey,” Adam said. He was wearing blue, but dark like something royal rather than the cornflower pallor of his scrubs. The effect was much the same; he was still beautiful. 

“Can I ask you a question?” asked Ronan, skipping pleasantries entirely. 

“Sure.” 

“The third bedroom,” said Ronan. He had slept in that third bedroom for four nights now. Slowly, he was learning this space, getting used to the way the air con whistled and the way the sun shone through the windows to wake him in the morning and the way there was almost always someone in the kitchen. He had never lived with anyone who didn’t share his blood, and it was peculiar and strange, but Ronan liked it. He liked the person he thought he could be here. “Why didn’t you ever move in?” 

“One day I’ll tell you,” said Adam, “but not tonight.” 

“Sure,” said Ronan. He let Adam keep his secrets, and he wheeled himself into the living room proper where the group had gathered as one. 

Blue threw a piece of popcorn at him, and it bounced off his skull and to the ground. She asked when she was getting her money, and Ronan said tomorrow, and she complained that he had said the same thing yesterday. He had every intention of paying her—her ability to eat a pizza and a half was impressive and deserving of the agreed upon prize—but he also had every intention of pissing her off a little bit first. He told her patience was a virtue; she answered with words that weren’t repeatable, but ended with —ck and —ou. 

Noah put on a record. It was another album Ronan had never heard of, but it started with a song called “Drive” and that was ironic enough to be just slightly funny. The rest of the evening passed just like that: the six of them listening to music and chatting quietly. Ronan didn’t realize he fell asleep in his wheelchair until Gansey started poking his face. 

He stirred, and he immediately smacked Gansey away, and Gansey said, “C’mon. Bedtime, Lynch.” 

Ronan didn’t protest when Gansey followed him to the third bedroom. When he got in bed, Gansey followed him still, inviting himself and Artoo up onto the mattress. Ronan didn’t protest that either. 

“Good party?” Gansey asked. 

“Yeah,” Ronan said. Gansey handed him his two pills, and a gulp of water sent the medicine to his stomach. “You?” 

“Yeah,” Gansey agreed. “It was nice.” 

He turned to leave, but Ronan reached out and caught his wrist. His hold was gentle but lingering. His middle finger and his thumb nail just barely touched. “Hey. Thank you.” 

In the warmth of the room, Gansey’s face broke with a warm smile. He broke free of Ronan’s grip and held up a fist instead. Ronan allowed their knuckles to bump. It felt like something out of a long dead, long forgotten language. 

Ronan watched Artoo licked his knee. He couldn’t feel the, presumably, slobbery wet trail of a kiss left behind, but it still made him smile. He pet him, scratching gently at white fur. “Thank you, too,” he told Artoo. 

Gansey laughed, and he called his dog down from the bed, and this time when he turned to leave, Ronan let him go. Standing at the doorway with the droid at his side, Gansey said, “Good night, Ronan.” 

“Good night, old man.” 

Gansey switched off the light, and he closed the door behind him with a quiet click of the latch sliding into place. The room descended into darkness. Ronan looked up at the ceiling, and he thought he would have to get himself some of those glow in the dark stars.