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Ronan wasn't beautiful so much as he was dangerous-- like a favorite vase that had fallen and landed in a hundred painful pieces. Their edges still shone in the light but no longer did they welcome you to wrap your hands around their form.
Gansey and Ronan were never something. There was a time when Ronan had looked at him like there was something more he wanted to say, as though it burned his tongue, but then there'd been hurt and Ronan bleeding out on the floor, and Gansey's anger for Ronan to promise him, promise him it would never happen again.
There was something wretched about Gansey. His eyes were made for wonder and curiosity, and the mundane was lost to him, slipping between the chapters of his books. There wasn't a single note in his journal about a person he'd met before Ronan, and there'd hardly be one after Blue.
But still he promised there were no standards, just open appreciation and acceptance and when things had dragged on too long and the permanence had started to weigh so heavily that Gansey was sure it had him struggling to breathe, when he woke gasping from sleep, he wondered if he remembered how hard goodbyes were and whether he'd ever said the words 'I promise'.
When had it begun? This heaving anxiety, like dread permanently pitted in his stomach, like it had found it's newest home and Ganseys nights became shorter in his urgency to ease that jitteriness, the soothing calm of production he knew so well.
It was his third night awake, third night stagnating in his own thoughts of how far away he could still possibly be, whether a sleeping king could ever be found at all, fingers slipping tirelessly along even lines of his own memorized scrawl, like there was something he could have missed.
It was all a ruse, one clever distraction from the way he shook ever so slightly from exhaustion, the struggle to keep his mind from drifting off, like he could even concentrate enough to follow one single line of thinking.
"What are you doing?"
Ronan's voice wasn't enough to startle him, oddly soft in his rumpled state. Ganseys eyes drifted to him, took in the way he stretched and the angle of his jaw as he yawned.
"Couldn't sleep." It came out mumbled, distracted, and his eyes diverted back to the page, as though the swimming of the letters didn't distract him from formulating a single hypothesis. The hot dread had returned, in combination from his vulnerabilities at being caught, from his utter exhaustion and uselessness. Mostly, from his lack of sleep.
Ronan was so quiet he chanced another glance up to find the other hadn't moved, was watching him in a considering way, perhaps weighing his choices in his mind. It was a displeased look, one Gansey was very familiar with, the lightest downcurve of his lips that hinted at annoyance but Gansey knew to be only as thought.
"You haven't been sleeping."
Gansey's brows drew together in confusion at the observation, "I never do."
"It's worse."
"--...Yes."
"Why?"
The question came without pause, like it was thrown to gain attention. It did just that-- Gansey shut the journal in front of him, finally giving Ronan his full undivided attention. He'd opened his mouth to speak before he realized he'd been intending to tell the truth, and that in all his truthfulness, he had hardly a clue. Instead, he shrugged before following with a question of his own.
"You're awake as well."
"Your light was bugging me."
The annoyance in his tone meant he was lying, like he'd already suspected Gansey might ask. Or maybe that was just the tired way Ganseys mind was looking for trickery in this, some sharp-edged end game from Ronan. He could hardly predict the boy anymore.
"You could have asked me to turn it off."
"Well it doesn't matter now."
They were at some weird, impractical impasse, and Gansey waited for Ronan to turn around, go back to bed or maybe go to the fridge and grab a beer. He did neither.
Instead, he just stood and watched. And kept watching until Gansey stood, awkward and unsure of himself in a way he never was, and moved towards his bed. He reached back to tug his shirt off and flicked off the lamplight before sitting stiffly on the edge of his mattress, scrubbing at his eyes with the palms of his hands.
"This is the part where you lay down and close your eyes." Ronan's voice was a lot nearer than Gansey was expecting, voice sharp-edged as though he were talking to a toddler, forced to do something he didn't want. There was another pause where Gansey still hesitated to move.
"Fucking lay down already, christ." This time there was the shift of an imprint on his mattress and Gansey easily shifted to lay back and slip over to give the other boy more room. It was an oddly intimate situation that Gansey hadn't been fully prepared for, and he let out the lightest of awkward coughs before he was shifting closer to Ronan's form, arm slow to slip around his bare waist from behind.
"Are you sure you're okay with this?"
He was met with only silence, but when he didn't shift away, Gansey leaned in closer, nudged his forehead to the nape of Ronan's neck-- he felt him freeze for a moment, those sharp edges in perfect alignment to pierce Gansey's heart-- before he relaxed again in silence.
He offered nothing else, but it was enough to be distracted just long enough to fall asleep, that the fluttery, pained feeling in his stomach softened pressed against the reality of Ronan's broken form. He was a brick wall Gansey could throw himself against until he was tired and still always reveal himself to be horrifically more whole in comparison, and Ronan knew it.
Self-pity was an ugly thing but Ronan's curious existence was sometimes just enough to keep him sane.