psl for louder.

[boatshoes]

[Henrietta hasn't changed at all. It's been five years since he last stepped foot in this town, when he graduated from Aglionby and Cabeswater changed its mind or something and pointed him away from the small Virginia town to find Glendower and of course he followed it. There's never been a question that he would. The question, it turned out, is who would come with him. Besides Ronan, he's always been a given. They don't talk about it but where Gansey goes, so does Ronan even if he sounds like he's throwing a fit about it the entire way. Because they're really, at the end of it, best friends and the only thing that can be counted on forever.

Gansey can only hear the word never so many times before even he believes it. Blue said it to him so many times that he started to think it was his name.

Couldn't we just--

--never, never I won't be the one to kill you, never--

But what about--

-- no no no

So that's that. She stays and he goes when the chase for Glendower leads somewhere else. Adam goes to college but he doesn't begrudge him that at all. Adam got a scholarship and he deserves it and Gansey isn't going to stand in his way. It's just Gansey, Ronan and Chainsaw in the Pig, at least for a couple years or so. And then he meets her.

She's nothing at all like Blue and that's probably why he's drawn to her because she's so different. There's nothing when he looks at her that makes him wish he was back in Henrietta more than he already wished it. One thing leads to another and six months later, she tells him she's pregnant and Gansey does the Right Thing. Of course he does. He's a Gansey, his mother would never tolerate anything less and he marries her. Has a little baby girl seven months later. They call her something Very Proper, Elizabeth plus a thousand nicknames Gansey (and thank God they didn't have a boy so he doesn't have to have the argument about a Richard Campbell Gansey IV because the talk about having a child at all at his age was already too much fun) but he calls her Elle and he's barely old enough to drink but he's a father too. He's got no fucking clue what he's doing. Especially after her mother passes and it's just him and Elle and his best friend and a fucking crow and a car that only works seventy percent of the time.

It's harder than finding a centuries dead Welsh king and somehow more amazing.

They're back in Henrietta now for Ronan-- not Glendower. Not Blue. But fate and magic have a funny way of stalking his footsteps and without even trying, he crosses paths with her. Gansey makes a point to go nowhere near 300 Fox Way or Nino's and yet-- there she is. It's obviously her. She's older and her hair looks different, longer maybe or she's found a new way to clip it but it's her.

And this is him. Same chinos, same polo, same mussed brown hair, same air of money and an eighteen month old on his hip and a wedding ring (maybe he's forgotten about it, maybe he still wears it out of some misplaced dedication to a woman he never really loved, maybe he uses it as a shield) still on his finger.]

Jane-- Blue. Hello. I didn't-- how are you?

Comments

[louder]

You still own Monmouth, don't you? Is that where you're staying? ( maybe after this extremely awkward meeting she can avoid seeing you again by avoiding monmouth and other places you may frequent... much as it hurts her heart to think about not seeing him anymore, seeing him with a child in tow and a life lived well without her hurts just as much. ) Ah -- I wonder if Ronan -- ( would like to see her again? she stops dead in her tracks and chuckles, shaking her head. ) Probably not. I'm glad he's still around, though. Follows you everywhere, right?

[boatshoes]

[Gansey nods that careless kind of nod that only people who own more than one property can do with ease. But then his family has always had places all around the globe and where they don't, their youngest has a habit of buying something if he stays there for longer than a week.

It's a good investment, what can he say. It's for Elle.]

Travels everywhere with me and Elle, yes. [It's important to him, that slight correction. Ronan isn't a dog. He doesn't follow anyone. He makes his own choices.]

And you're wrong. He would like to see you.