Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ronan gets roped into going to prom the same way she gets roped into everything Gansey suggests, the same way she once found herself nodding in response to the question, “Do you want to help me find an ancient Welsh king who, by the way, I believe is still alive and waiting for me?” Which is to say she isn’t really roped into anything at all. Gansey is too classy for peer pressure, so she never makes a request more than once unless it’s something she thinks is truly important like, “Ronan, please endeavor to come to class more than once a week” or “Ronan, if you must smoke under the bleachers, properly extinguish your cigarettes so that the county isn’t risking a wildfire just because you’ve had a bad day.” Those are well-worn classics, but when it comes to the little things, Gansey doesn’t wheedle, and she doesn’t beg. She makes her request, and she states her case, and a no is a no. But Gansey tends to get what she wants, maybe because she’s able to make even the most absurd things sound normal, so that she says, “I’ve been thinking it would be nice if we all went to prom,” and Ronan is halfway through a mumbled affirmative before her brain catches up.

“Fucking no,” Ronan says. The way to get out of a conversation with Gansey without accidentally agreeing to accept tutoring or do Meals on Wheels is to just stay quiet, so Ronan knows she’s walking into a trap when she asks, “Did the rest of them already agree?” But she does it anyway, because if she had any real and functional sense of self-preservation, she wouldn’t be living in an abandoned factory and flirting with tetanus every time she lets Gansey drive her to school.

“I haven’t asked them yet,” Gansey says, and smiles, and Ronan is so, so gone. She puts on a good show, rolling her eyes and whining as Gansey explains that she would like them all to have one normal high school experience, one nice memory, but it’s a foregone conclusion because Gansey came to her first. It’s hardly even a victory, considering that Ava is busy doing whatever it is prospective valedictorians do, and Noa can’t be counted on to be solid and visible for more than an hour at a time, and Blue is Gansey’s ex of barely two seconds ago. (It turns out that the middle of an adolescent life-or-death situation is the wrong time to figure out that you’re into girls and that you have a soulmate, all at once. Then there was all this stuff, which Blue tried to say gently, about class differences and having to dumb down her “lived experiences” for the sake of palatability. The whole thing turned Gansey into a sad lump of boat shoes and salmon-colored shorts for about two days before her years of practice suppressing her feelings kicked in and she got back into the swing of things.)  So Ronan says yes, and her yes only gets more pronounced when everyone else refuses.

Before, no one would have guessed that Gansey was gay (“bi, I think,” she said placidly, like it was nothing), but she doesn’t do anything by halves, so when Blue finally owned up to the true love thing, she called her father and her mother and her mother’s campaign manager the very same night. It seemed to Ronan like skipping a bunch of steps, especially when Gansey said that she had never considered being attracted to girls before, but apparently she was, and that seemed fine.

(What Gansey said, actually, was that she hadn’t noticed because she’d found that female friendships could sometimes be quite intense, and since Ronan was fairly certain that everyone before her had barely even risen to the level of acquaintanceship, she didn’t quite know how to feel, beyond robbed.)

It turned out that she only needed to wait three weeks, and then Gansey’s stately moping made her regret ever having wished them ill. So she says yes to prom, and no to Gansey’s tailor, figuring that if she can dream a car, she can definitely manage a few yards of fabric.

Ronan dreams: her parents’ dead bodies, a giant Gansey scolding her for not doing her homework, a regular-sized Gansey telling her to enjoy summer school before fucking off on a road trip with two people who are still totally in love with her, and then eight or so nightmare creatures that she just barely stops from following her into her bedroom. The closest she comes is when she yanks a lump of black lace out of the mouth of a fanged tree, and then wakes up clutching it. It’s three a.m. the day of, and she finally accepts that she is completely and irrevocably fucked. She tosses an empty snow globe, dreamed up uselessly, out her window and listens to the sound of it shattering with less satisfaction than she'd expected. In under a month, they'll graduate, or not graduate, as the case may be. She’d thought prom was stupid, and it is, but if she has to go anyway, and she does, she’d like to leave Gansey with just one memory of her not fucking up royally.

Gansey isn’t around when Ronan enters the main room; dying seems to have exacerbated the night owl in her, and she’s taken to long, solitary drives that no one is supposed to know about. Noa is sitting on Gansey’s bed, picking things up and then letting them slip through, literally through, her fingers. Ronan can’t tell if it’s a game or an existential crisis. She ought to ask, but they’ve done the “I sure wish I weren’t a ghost” thing a couple times already, and she hasn’t gotten nearly enough sleep to make a fresh attempt at wrapping her head around the metaphysical implications of Noa’s condition. Anyway, it’ll keep until after she’s disappointed Gansey by showing up in sweatpants to a prom that costs more than most weddings.

Noa looks at the fabric Ronan is clutching like a life preserver, and says, “Nightmare ate your dress?”

“Exactly,” she says, and tosses the wad away in disgust. It doesn’t sink the way it ought to, the way it would if it were real, instead floating through the air before eventually landing in Noa’s outstretched palm. Ronan rolls her eyes.

Noa unfurls the dress, making a face at Ronan through the hand-sized hole in the bodice. “The mall opens at ten.” The “mall” is two pretzel dog stands, an H&R block, and a bunch of stores that put up flashing signs advertising their frilly, sequined prom collections three months ago. At any other time, Ronan would rather be torn apart by nightmare wraiths than set foot in them, but almost anything is the lesser evil when compared to the prospect of disappointing the new, more brittle Gansey.

At the beginning of prom season, which is a phrase Ronan hates having allowed to enter her lexicon, the store Noa chooses was probably a maelstrom of brightly-colored taffeta, which would have been awful enough, but now it’s just the depressed and depressing leftovers. The floor is covered in rumpled dresses, several torn clean in half like they came out of Ronan’s head.  “This shithole was the best we could do, seriously?” she asks, loud enough for the salesgirl to hear her and promptly continue not to care because stores that specialize in selling mounds of taffeta to teenagers don’t generate much in the way of institutional loyalty. “Noa, you know I’m rich, right?”

Noa rolls her eyes. “Yeah, Ronan, I’ve seen you drive a BMW like a go-kart. But someone waited until the last minute, and so here we are, at the mall.” She gestures, arms spread to encompass the entire store in all of its vivid misery.

The already-limited selection is made worse by the fact that she obviously isn’t going to show up in something pink, or puffy, or doused in glitter. She makes one rotation through the store, Noa following and making unhelpful comments like, “Ooooh, I think lime green would really compliment your eyes,” and “Maybe you should get a tiara!” She grabs everything black that isn’t shiny without paying attention to size, and parks Noa on a bench outside of her dressing room.

Noa raises an eyebrow when Ronan comes out in the first dress that fits. “Gansey won’t like that,” she says, meaning the low neck and waist cut-outs. “Or she’ll like it too much.”

“Fuck off, Czerny. It’s not like we’re going together, we’re just going, together.” Ronan likes to pretend that being dead has given Noa a mild, very specific type of clairvoyance so that she doesn’t have to concede how transparent she is.

“Do you wish you were going together?” Noa calls as Ronan retreats into the dressing room.

“I’m going to bring you back to life, and then I’m going to murder you.” As if in retribution for being mean to her most harmless friend, the zipper gets stuck halfway down her back and she curses loudly enough that any reputable store would have an attendant checking on her. Since they’re at the mall, nothing happens.

Ronan pokes her head out from behind the curtain, the dress bunched around her wait. Noa has disappeared, wafting off in that way that she has, so that Ronan is never sure whether her absence is supernatural or simply the ordinary whim of an unordinary girl. Ronan leans out further, not particularly caring whether she flashes any of the harried moms looking for last-minute gowns, and spots Noa, her head just barely visible over the largely forgotten shelves of practical footwear shoved into the corner. Ronan fusses with the zipper for another moment before snapping out, “Hey, could you fucking help me? The grandma shoes will still be there after I have something to wear.”

Noa comes back over with a box of orthopedic clogs in her hands and a smile on her face. She holds the box out, and Ronan is reminded of the cats at the Barns, who made a practice of depositing half-digested mice and birds on the ledge of her window. She appreciates this offering a good deal less. “What the fuck,” she says, relishing the sting of profanity. “What the fuck am I supposed to do with those?”

“Don’t tell her I told you, but Gansey has a massive nurse fetish.” Noa rolls her eyes when Ronan doesn’t laugh immediately. “Kidding, kidding.” She whips the lid off of the box with an uncharacteristic flourish, and Ronan leans forward despite herself, watches as she lifts out folded fabric. “I thought this might happen, so.” Noa shrugs. “It’s easy enough to break into places when you’re not quite real, so I hid this where no one would look.”

“Shit.” Ronan has never been into fashion for fashion’s sake, likes her clothes to send a message and for that message to be “fuck off,” and this is perfect. Black and short with a partially sheer bodice and a complex series of straps across the back, dizzying and hard to follow like something she might have dreamt up. “Shit,” she repeats, which is as close as she’ll ever get to admitting fault. The dress fits perfectly, and she’s so relieved that she doesn’t think to berate Noa for the whole shopping charade until it’s too late.

Gansey gets ready in Noa’s room, which works because Noa is in Ronan’s room trying to figure out whether bronzer, highlighter, and illuminator at the same thing. “You’re taking this way too seriously,” Ronan says while Noa dusts something onto her eyelids. Ghosts make excellent makeup artists, even if Noa hasn’t done this in over a decade. It’s all in the light touch.

“I figure someone ought to be the midpoint between you and Gansey,” Noa says, voice muffled by the numerous brushes she’s apparently decided are best stored in her mouth. “She bought a minifridge that she’s hiding in my room just for your corsage.” Ronan’s eyes fly open, and she only avoids an iris full of kohl because Noa goes incorporeal at the same time. “Which I wasn’t supposed to tell you, obviously,” Noa adds from where she’s landed, halfway through the floor. Ronan wonders if her ghostly bottom half is hanging from the ceiling below, or if it has ceased to exist entirely.

“She got me a flower?” Gansey is, despite her best efforts, traditional, so it doesn’t mean anything that she bought Ronan a corsage, except that they’re two people who are leaving for prom from the same location. She knows that, but she can’t help the quivery feeling it gives her. To cover for the smile on her face, she says, “Gansey is such a loser,” and tries to sound like she means it.

“Gansey wants you to have a good time,” Noa says, in that quietly reproachful way of hers, so that Ronan feels like a total jerk.

That gives her no choice but to double down, and she does, scoffing, “She thinks giving me a carnation is going to do the trick?”

“She actually did well; it’s very you. So be nice and act surprised.” Noa waves the mascara wand like she’s going to jab it into Ronan’s eye.

Ronan pulls out her phone and stares down at it, knowing as she does that she couldn’t possibly have picked a less convincing distraction. Once Noa has moved on to holding three different wands between her fingers, alternating between pretending to be Wolverine and wondering how much of a difference the shape of the bristles can possibly make, Ronan finds it in herself to grit out, “It’s just Gansey.”

Noa flickers out for a second, scooping up the dropped wands once she’s corporeal again. “Five second rule,” she chirps, and then, just as cheerily, “’Just Gansey,’ my ghostly ass.” After a few more minutes, Noa takes a step back and looks Ronan over. “Not to toot my own horn, but you look really good. Like, Gansey might have a heart attack.” Noa looks around. “Do you own a mirror?” Ronan shrugs. Everything glass broke the last time something followed her out of her head, and she’s replaced things as they’ve come to her, which has mostly been not at all. Her dreams aren’t so practical right now, when she feels so directionless. There’s a mirror in the bathroom that’s like looking in the back of a soup spoon, and Gansey always has a compact on her, even if she usually takes about a half hour to find it. Noa huffs and says she’ll go borrow one, leaving Ronan to stew in anticipation and dread.

Noa returns quickly, smirking like she has a secret. “Do you want to know what Gansey looks like?” she asks, to which the answer is equal parts yes, duh and please hide me. Noa must know this, as she seems to know most things, because she makes Ronan wait for a long time before saying, “If the Gansey that Gansey pretends to be were a dress, it would be that dress. You look better, but about the same amount nervous, if that’s any comfort.” It is, kind of, but then Ronan remembers that Gansey has been tense every time she’s had to take Ronan with her anywhere fancier than a McDonald’s, and then it isn’t really any comfort at all. “Stop being dumb,” Noa says, apparently aware of, if not her specific train of thought, at least the general mood. She brandishes the mirror like a weapon, like she’s facing down Medusa.

Ronan has never been insecure, but she’s spent the last year comparing herself to Blue and coming out on top in anyone’s estimation but Gansey’s, which is the only one that matters. She’s tall where Blue is short, and if not well-dressed at least coherently so, where Blue always looks like she cut armholes in a dozen comforters and piled them all on mere seconds before leaving the house. It’s hard to muster up enthusiasm to match Noa’s when she knows it doesn’t matter. It hurt, badly, when she thought the vagaries of sexuality had put Gansey out of reach, but it hurt much worse to realize that she ought to have been in the running but, for some reason, wasn’t.

“Let’s just get this over with,” she says, and Noa droops, only to rally when she drags Ronan into the main room in time with Gansey’s entrance. Gansey is nearly always in control; Ronan has only seen her stumped by Blue, uncomfortable political discussions, hornets, and Ronan’s cleavage in this dress. Gansey’s mouth drops open, which Ronan tries not to feel too good about. They’re at the right age, after all, for rather indiscriminate attraction, and Gansey figured out that she liked girls and lost her outlet for expressing it in less than a month. Still, the dumb look on Gansey’s face makes Ronan feel better about what she’s sure is the matching one on her own. In a dark blue dress that hits at the knee and has no defining characteristics except expensive, Gansey looks like a Google Image search for the word ‘prom,’ blandly and inoffensively pretty.

Gansey shakes her head, and then smiles, apparently recovered. “You look very nice.” Noa elbows her in the stomach, looking at Ronan conspiratorially, and makes a weird, twisting gesture that must signify “corsage,” because Gansey jumps a little and says, “Oh, I got you—” and disappears into Noa’s room. She returns with something hidden behind her back. “I know you think this whole thing is stupid, and I guess maybe it is. But if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it right, so.” She pulls her hands from behind her back. Ronan looks down at what’s being offered, a massive black flower with arching petals like Chainsaw’s wings. It looks like something she might have dreamt up, except that if she had, it would probably start snarling or bleeding right about now, but instead it just sits in Gansey’s palms, demanding a response. The flower is attached to one of two leather cuffs, exactly like Ronan’s usual set but in black. She had been prepared to strike the right balance of scornful and grudgingly appreciative when she'd imagined it as something stupid, something with no value except that it originated with Gansey. Now, faced with the reality that Gansey knows her as well as anyone ever has, she just holds out her hand, made mute by feelings she ought to know better than to have.

It would be less uncomfortable, or else infinitely more so, if they were alone, instead of being watched by both of their exes and a ghost. But they aren't alone, are being watched, because two break-ups and one death later, being together has remained a habit. Neither Ava nor Blue seems to find the situation as odd as Ronan does, but then, neither Ava nor Blue has Gansey trying to secure a massive black arrangement to her wrist. Ronan feels like she’s playacting at being royal, like Gansey might suddenly genuflect and kiss the back of her hand. It doesn’t help that Gansey is looking at her hand with the same precise focus she gives to everything that matters. Finally, Gansey decides that the corsage is straight and planning to stay that way, and lets go, leaving Ronan shocked by the feeling of having to support all of her appendages again.

“It was between this and a pink rose,” Gansey says, as if this isn’t very obviously custom. “It was a tough choice, you know; I ended up flipping a coin.”

“It’s—” Ronan starts, meaning to say “perfect,” but remembering her audience, and herself, at the last second. She clears her throat and tries again. “As far as corsages go, it’s not bad.” Gansey beams like she can hear Ronan’s real feelings underneath what she said.

Noa insists on taking photos with an old Polaroid camera whose provenance Ronan can’t account for. She keeps up a constant stream of stupid commentary, transitioning seamlessly from proud parent to paparazzo. Ronan would ordinarily find the whole thing a bit irritating, but she’s grateful for something to distract her from staring at Gansey like a love-struck idiot.

Gansey pulls Blue aside once Noa finally decides that she has enough shots. They gravitate toward each other with the same awkward intensity Ronan had a front row seat to before they started dating. She assumes it's Gansey's last-ditch attempt to talk Blue into coming; there's probably a much-larger, tie-dye corsage meant for her, a just-in-case. Noa ambles over to Ronan, once again displaying her uncanny ability to tell when something is wrong. She slips Ronan a photo from the stack of about a hundred she’s shuffling in her ominously-translucent fingers, despite her earlier insistence that “it’s bad luck to see the pictures before the prom.” It’s one of the earnest ones from early on, before Noa lost focus and started yelling out poses that Gansey attempted gamely and Ronan pretended not to hear. She remembers trying to figure out a platonic way to put her arm around Gansey’s waist, but instead of looking casually, appropriately distant, she just looks nervous, the way someone might look immediately after being handed a Ming vase or the Mona Lisa, just to hold. Even in the foggy, partially-developed photo, her static self is clearly on the verge of something stupid. “Burn this,” she says, and hands it back.

Gansey and Blue hug, and Ronan's heart sinks, but then Gansey walks over alone, and Blue doesn't rush to change into whatever the hippie version of a prom dress is. Still, Ronan can't stop herself from asking, "Are you and the littlest witch getting back together?"

Gansey rolls her eyes. "Try to be positive, Ronan, for once." Which isn't an answer, and Ronan wants to push, but the corsage flutters when she moves to cross her arms. Positivity is out of reach, but she might be able to manage neutrality, for a couple hours at least. Gansey smiles when Ronan doesn’t say anything, correctly interpreting silence as acquiescence. “Good. I’ll be ready to go in just a moment.”

Gansey makes one last lap around Monmouth like she’s trying to memorize it, like they’re never coming back. Ronan wants to ask if she’s about to be kidnapped, or murdered and stowed in the Pig’s trunk, and if so, whether she can change into more practical shoes before they go. At the last second, her mouth already open, she remembers her expression in the photo Noa showed her and decides to set a precedent of gracious silence.

Chapter Text

Ronan slips off her shoes the second she’s shut the door of the Pig behind her. Noa helped her pick out a pair of heels to match the dress, black and spiky. They put her head and shoulders above Gansey in a demure pair of kitten heels, but the effect is weakened by the willpower it takes to keep from limping. Gansey glances over at her. “You do look very nice,” she says, as if she can paper over her initial reaction by delivering a more even-keeled compliment. Ronan swallows down several rude comments and is just about ready to force out something reciprocal when Gansey continues, with the air of an ordinary person forced to make small talk, “Did you dream your dress?”

“There are these things called stores, Regina, maybe you’ve heard of them. Most of us use them instead of having a weird old Italian man hand-sew our polos.” Gansey sighs. Ronan likes to think of herself as immune to the sting of Gansey’s disappointment, but she relents. “Noa and I went to the mall this morning.”

“Well, at least you missed class for a reason this time.” Gansey must realize that this is the kind of sanctimonious comment which would ordinarily have the potential to ruin the entire evening because she rushes to continue, her voice the slightest bit high, “I’m glad it’s just us. I would have been thrilled, of course, if everyone could have made it, but this feels right.” She takes one hand off the wheel to gesture broadly. “I just mean that you were the first, so it makes sense that it would be you and me here, at the end.”

“Are you breaking up with me?” Ronan asks, meaning for it to sound like a joke. It doesn’t.

“Be serious.” Gansey drums her fingers against the steering wheel. “I just wanted to thank you for coming. I know it’s pretty far outside of your wheelhouse, and it means a lot to me.” She manages here a level of sincerity that strikes Ronan as not only unnecessary but unsafe, a bit too close to the kind of emotional intimacy she has always striven to avoid. When she doesn’t respond, Gansey says, with the intensity of someone trying to convince herself, “This is going to be fun.” Ronan rolls her eyes, and they subside into a silence only interrupted by the Pig’s groans.

When they walk into the ballroom, they’re immediately swarmed by well-wishers and hangers-on. About a dozen people want to talk to Gansey every time she enters a room, and that’s a dozen more people than Ronan has ever wanted to speak to in her life. There is something a bit thrilling about it, like walking in on the arm of a celebrity. Ronan has never been particularly humble, but even before life shattered her into several jagged pieces, she knew Gansey was too good for her. It’s like walking around next to the sun and having to pretend everything’s normal, stumbling along like she isn’t blinded by the glare. They make a couple of rounds, Gansey networking like she was born shaking hands and giving vapid compliments, Ronan striving to look angry without seeming personally so. So much, she thinks, for one last good memory. Finally, they’ve worked their way to a table at the back, where Gansey speaks briefly to the only two people not occupied by the inside of someone else’s mouth before thanking them and dropping what Ronan realizes are two place cards in front of their newly-vacated seats. "We wouldn't have had a second alone at the table where they put us. Now I'm all yours."

Ronan eats slowly because she isn’t sure what they’ll do once the meal is over, cutting her steak into pieces too small to be speared easily. Gansey, who finished promptly, as if lingering over her food might be an insult to the caterer, watches her stall for twenty minutes before finally giving in. “Would you like to dance?”

Ronan scrapes the tines of her fork against her plate. “Are you asking me to dance because we’re at prom, and people dance at proms?”

Gansey smiles. Most of Gansey’s smiles, her real ones, look the slightest bit smug, like she’s on the verge of laughing at whoever she’s speaking to. It would probably get her into trouble if the world didn’t, as a rule, concede her right to do so. She grabs Ronan by the arm and yanks her out of her seat. “That’s not why I’m asking,” she says, still with the same smile, like there’s a joke Ronan isn’t in on. It’s enough to parse that Ronan allows herself to be situated on the edge of the dance floor, her arms draped over Gansey’s shoulders. There’s a slow song playing, something she remembers hearing through the crackle of the Pig’s speakers, but she can’t focus enough to identify the words. “I talked to Jane,” Gansey says, her voice cutting through the fog of her hands on the bare skin at Ronan’s waist. “And to Ava.”

“I assume that’s true every day,” Ronan says. She can’t think of a single reason for this introduction that doesn’t end with rank humiliation, a fight, and her wandering the streets of Henrietta alone in twenty-five-dollar heels. “What are you going to say next, that you ironed your underwear? Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I know it doesn’t come naturally to you, Ronan, but don’t be a dick. Now are you done? I’m trying to say something important, and you’re being very difficult.”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” Ronan says, because she has to say something, because Gansey hasn’t broken eye contact once and the look on her face has shifted to something softer, despite her tone.

“As I was saying, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about—” Gansey’s fingers tense against Ronan’s waist. “About obligation. About what we owe each other.”

“If this is you gearing up to ask me for two years of backrent, forget about it. I’ve got plans for that money, and I don’t want to give too much away, but there several face tattoos involved.”

Gansey sighs but otherwise pretends Ronan hasn’t spoken. “I’ve been thinking a lot about timing, also. About how some things have to happen to make way for other things.”

“Gansey, if you don’t spit it out, I swear I’m going to go figure out who replaced Kavinsky as the Aglionby drug kingpin.” Ronan cracks her neck, trying and failing to get rid of the pain that surfaced as soon as Gansey started fidgeting like she had something important to say. “Actually, would you mind if I did that anyway? I don’t want to sit through whatever philosophical circle jerk you have in mind sober.”

Gansey turns light pink, which Ronan has always liked because it’s one of the few things about her that doesn’t seem perfect, a mottled flush that looks almost like rosacea. She chews on her bottom lip, which was painted red when they left Monmouth but has since returned to its usual color. She spits out, “I’m trying to ask you if you want to have dinner together, you absolute ass!” Ronan freezes, disrupting the unspoken rhythm of bodies on a crowded dance floor, and someone’s date careens into her. She lashes out automatically, landing an elbow to his gut. Gansey smiles and apologizes. When she turns back to Ronan, she makes the seamless transition from Regina Camille Gansey III to just Gansey, and Ronan has never been so happy to be frowned at. “What I mean, before you say something insufferable about how we eat together all the time, is that I want to take you on a date, okay?”

The person Gansey wants to be is gracious, and patient, and kind, and she achieves these qualities most of the time, give or take what Blue called her “perpetual sense of entitlement.” But now she lets a flash of irritation show, her lip curling, her teeth gritting. This is the version of Gansey that Ronan loves best, the one too caught up in something to remember to hide that she feels, just like the rest of them. It makes her feel almost accessible, the way she did on rare occasions before their friendship expanded to contain what seemed, at the time, to be too many people. But she isn’t accessible. She wasn’t then, and she certainly isn’t now, with a true love in tow. It seems deeply unfair of her to do this on what was supposed to be a night to ignore everything between them, the two break-ups and Ronan’s increasingly spotty transcript and refusal to attend summer school. They’re a year past Kavinsky asking which of them strapped it on in bed, crudely getting at the heart of a dynamic no one else had the guts to point out seemed a bit off. She’d imagined that they had agreed, without ever acknowledging it to each other, to simply ignore what they both knew to be true. But now Gansey is going back on her word.

Ronan pulls away, mourning the feeling of Gansey’s skin on hers. “I need some air,” she says, and heads for the door, meaning for Gansey to follow but feeling dogged when she does.

She’s sapped of energy by the time she draws even with the Pig, parked on the outskirts of the lot. Gansey lets herself in without saying anything even though they’ve only been at the dance for maybe an hour, by any metric an unsatisfactory resolution to her weeks of planning. Ronan pulls herself onto the hood, conscious of the paint job. The sun is setting, its weak gaze filtered through the leaves of the tree Gansey parked under, so the metal is just warm instead of burning, like something alive. “I never thought you were such a cynic,” she says, loud enough for Gansey to hear her but too low to be understood. Gansey gets the message and climbs up to sit beside her, keeping a careful distance between them. Ronan repeats herself, adding, “You’re awfully young to have given up on true love.” She wishes as she does that she were the kind of person who could accept good things when they come, instead of being unerringly aware of how their loss will shatter her.

Gansey receives this argument as if it has never occurred to her before, her eyes wide and her lips pursed. “I think some risks are worth taking,” she says, after a pause long enough that Ronan thinks she ought to have come up with something better.

Ronan scoffs, aiming for contemptuous and falling short. She’d hoped that Gansey would somehow have an answer, something that would make a yes feel less self-destructive. “That’s easy for you to say.”

“I promise you, none of this is easy to say.” Gansey takes one of Ronan's hands in hers. The gesture feels practiced, very slightly artificial, though it isn't the first time. Sometimes, when their schedules line up exactly right, she and Gansey go for night rides in the Pig, or else they squeeze together on Gansey’s bed and watch weird indie documentaries, or else they lie on the floor with their faces turned toward each other and Gansey talks about What I’ll Do Now or What True Love Means to Me, like an elementary schooler explaining what she did over summer break, and Ronan talks about God and her family that isn’t anymore. Sometimes, when they’re both feeling the isolation of the world Gansey has built, Gansey rubs her fingers along the scars on whichever wrist is closer to her, and looks tender and sad and impossibly beautiful. She doesn't do that now, instead holding Ronan's hand limply between both of hers, her freshly-manicured nails somehow already chipping. People don’t doubt Gansey very often; she doesn’t seem to like it. "You know me better than that. You know I don't take these things lightly."

Ronan slides down on the hood until she’s fully horizontal, pretending the hand Gansey is holding is part of someone else’s body. She wants to say yes. She wants to throw up. She wants her mom, who was never her favorite but was soft and kind and left to be torn apart in a collapsing dreamland. "It isn't a risk for you." Every part of her feels like an open wound, raw and pulsating, and she decided a long time ago that that was fine, or at least moderately livable, as long as she fashioned herself a protective shell out of leather and ink. Vulnerability doesn’t come easily to her because it comes too easily, and even though this is what she’s wanted, with a brief intermission, since they met, she certainly isn’t going to admit it. Gansey can go home and run for city council, or she can make up with Blue and they can both hook up with Harriett, or she can become a professional spelunker and eventually wind up with her own reality show. Gansey can do whatever, get whoever, she wants, and eventually she’s going to realize that and move on.

Gansey laughs, again with the air that she knows something Ronan doesn’t. “That’s a really stupid thing to say.”

Ronan has been, she believes, incredibly gracious about Gansey’s break-up. She thinks that this is true even going by an ordinary standard and not the generously adjusted one that has been in use for her since her father died. But Gansey’s response is so intolerable that she breaks her streak. “You have a soulmate, asshole. Just because you broke up over, I don’t know, her idea of a hot date being anything other than a day in the Henrietta archives or a tea party with your parents, doesn’t mean you aren’t meant to be together. So no, there’s no fucking risk for you.”

“Jane and Harriett have been talking a lot,” Gansey says, very suddenly, the words bubbling out of her. The fact that she’s now going off-script intrigues Ronan enough that she sits up again, opens her eyes. The road trip is not off, was not off even in the immediate aftermath of the breakup, when Blue couldn’t look at Gansey and Gansey couldn’t stop looking at her, but it won’t be quite the triumphant victory lap Ronan has been imagining, not if Gansey’s playing third wheel. “That’s fine, of course. I hope they’re very happy together.” Ronan knows from experience that there is no way to say that and sound sincere, but Gansey attempts it gamely, and very nearly manages it.

“Oh, so it’s definitely a rebound.” Ronan makes herself laugh like her heart hasn’t just broken. “You could have just said that. Your ex is dating your back-up, and you’re scrambling. I get it.”

Gansey drops Ronan’s hand, and Ronan is relieved to be able to think clearly again. "Jane and I agreed that if we weren't going to try to make it work, and we aren't, that we had to close that door permanently. Or at least as permanently as anything can be, with the understanding that people grow and change. I don't suppose I can make you a guarantee, you're right about that. But no one can do that. If it weren't Jane, it would be something else. Love is scary, Ronan, and there's no getting around it." Ronan doesn’t say anything. She can’t change the self-destructive part of her that wants to say yes, the same part that still edges the BMW up to cars at stoplights and exchanges challenging looks with other drivers, but she can at least keep her mouth shut. Gansey waits a long time before giving in. “All right then.” Her voice comes out tight, strangled, and for a moment, Ronan is terrified that she means, “All right, fine, let’s go home.” But if there’s anything Gansey is well below average at, it’s walking away when she should. “I suppose since I know why you got dumped, you ought to know why I did.” Ronan makes a small noise, the instinctual kind ordinarily reserved for animals that have just been kicked. “Ava told me when I gave her a heads-up about what I was planning.”

“What did she tell you?” Ronan and Ava are still in the awkward, ill-defined post-break-up stage where they know they’ll return to being friends, but haven’t yet figured out how. Still, the betrayal stings, the very definition of insult to injury.

“The truth, I assume. That she broke up with you over me. That a relationship with three people in it is fine if that’s what you’re into, but that she isn’t.” Gansey shrugs. “She didn’t seem angry. Or very surprised. Neither did Jane. I think that should be a sign, don’t you?” Ronan decides to return to not speaking. She has come to terms with her obvious need, but she doesn’t enjoy being reminded of it. “Jane said that she felt like I resented it, having my life decided for me. Which would make sense. As she and Ava have pointed out to me, repeatedly, the world has been opened to me in ways it ordinarily isn’t. And maybe I don’t take direction so well. But it’s just as true that I’ve been blocked from a lot. Personal things, I mean. Ways I might have been, if my parents were less…” She thinks this over for a moment, fidgeting with the hem of her dress. “Less socially conscious, if you see what I did there. She said we were both too young to be trapped in a relationship we’d grow to resent. I don’t know if it would have been quite as apocalyptic as the picture she painted, but she was right that I’d liked you, which seemed impossible, and I’d liked her, which seemed for whatever reason less so, and I didn’t particularly appreciate the universe’s commentary on my dilemma. I could have spent my life with Jane and been very happy, but—and as I’ve died twice now, you’ll forgive me for being maybe a bit too forward— I could very easily do that with you too.”

Ronan feels like a child holding its breath in hopes of passing out. She wants to ask what seemed so impossible about her, but can’t stand the thought of hearing how she looks to Gansey. It’s true that she might have said no before, when her father was alive and she was the unambiguous favorite, disinterested in doing anything to jeopardize that status. She hadn’t ever thought about girls because she hadn’t needed to, because she had her father and her mother and her sisters, the animals and the land. “Maybe not easily,” Gansey continues, “because nothing with you ever has been, but then, Jane isn’t particularly either. I suppose I’ve developed a taste for difficult people.” She seems to think this is a very charming thing to say, and it is.

Ronan feels the tiny part of her with an instinct for self-preservation wither up. Noa talked her out of bringing a flask, and if she weren’t already dead, Ronan would kill her for that. “Fine,” she says, feeling the significance of it and trying very hard to sound like she doesn’t.

“Fine? Ronan, this isn’t schoolwork; I don’t want to guilt you into it.” Ronan sits up but keeps her eyes resolutely trained on the sky. She can imagine the look on Gansey’s face well enough, projecting unthreatening sympathy clearly enough to be read from space. “If you’re worried about saying no, don’t be. It won’t change anything between us.”

“This is stupid. You know my answer; I don’t see why I have to say it. Especially at prom, which is so embarrassing, by the way.” Ronan twists her corsage around on her wrist. It’s lost a couple of petals, and the band has been scratching against the still-sensitive skin of her wrist all night, but she can’t imagine ever taking it off.

“I don’t know your answer, because you haven’t said anything. I know what I thought you would say, when I was planning this, but I was off by about five minutes of legitimate concerns and a solid ten of avoidant behavior, so I’m not hugely confident in my ability to anticipate you right now.”

The stars are particularly bright tonight, and seem to be shining just for them. Gansey isn’t religious, except in the half-hearted, unobjectionable way of all WASPs everywhere, so Ronan doesn’t tell her that she feels profoundly blessed, that sitting on the hood of the Pig has brought her the same warm, lifting sensation she gets sometimes during Mass, when something feels particularly right. She gets a glimpse of the person she might be if absolutely everything were different, and wants very badly to be that girl. She turns toward Gansey, making eye contact for the first time since she fled the ballroom. “Yes, I would like to go to dinner with you.”

“Excellent. Okay.” Gansey is best when there’s something to be done, some plan to execute, the more steps the better. But now, sapped of direction, she deflates slightly. She nods to herself, seeming to have forgotten what to do with her body, with her hands. Ronan is as in love with her as she’s ever been. “Well, this is about where I stopped working on my flowchart. It started to seem presumptuous. We could go back inside?”

Ronan leans in before she can lose her nerve, pressing her lips against Gansey’s. She’s only kissed one person before, and then not often enough for the act to become second nature, for her to have any idea how to adjust it to someone new. But when she pulls back, Gansey looks at her like she’s done something incredible, rather than slobber all over her chin. It reminds Ronan of when she finally admitted to being able to pull things from dreams, when Gansey’s worldview seemed simultaneously to have shifted on its axis and been validated on some level too profound for the rest of them to grasp. Never one to leave things to chance, Gansey says, “That was amazing. You’re amazing.” Ronan would feel annoyed, the slightest bit handled, if she weren’t desperate for it, irrationally terrified that Gansey might decide, after all of this, that sub-par kissing was the one thing she couldn’t get past. Gansey smiles, small and genuine, a look in her eyes like she doesn’t quite believe that she’s allowed to have something good. She made that face at Blue a lot, and when she’d had a particularly amazing breakthrough on Glendower. Ronan is grateful to be counted amongst these good things, and wants to say so, but the weight of the gift she’s been given leaves her mute. She kisses Gansey again, one hand tangled in her hair and the other clenching the back of her dress, and hopes it gets her point across.