fluxscape | The Barns

Who: Gansey, Ronan, and Adam
What: Dealing with the latest Unseen Attacks
Where: The Barns
When: Before the 27th
Warnings: Will update as needed

To say that Gansey wasn't dealing well with Evie's transformation into a statue was an understatement. After texting Bruce and failed attempts at all the various Gansey family lessons for dealing with his emotions, he decided to practice something outside the usual Richard Gansey III methods.

This one resembled something the Gotham version of Gansey might do, or a Lynch.

Standing in front of Ronan's punching bag, he let his mind drift. He stopped considering technique and everything Ronan had tried to teach him about fighting. A hint of the other Gansey crept into his thoughts, accompanied by faint voices that he knew were Bruce and Alfred. Letting out a slow breath, he let his body respond instead of overthinking like he usually did.

Taking a swing at the bag, his fist connected without the expected bolt of pain from a damaged thumb. Satisfied by the thump of knuckles against bag, he continued punching, making frustrated sounds as he tried not to think of Evie, of her transformation, of what could happen to her, of how he'd failed her, hoping that physical activity would temporarily still his guilt.

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"But this is my fault. If I'd worked harder at it. If I'd treated it like Glendower..." Then Evie would be safe. He'd failed. No matter what Bruce and Adam said, he should have done more.

He should have involved Adam more, but their attempt at a trio was still new and Gansey was still trying to sift through all the information that he'd been bombarded with over the past few months. Adam dating Ronan. Trying to stay away from the two of them to give them a chance to develop a relationship. The guilt related to his relationship with Ronan. The complicated mess with Blue. Knowing that something precious would be sacrificed for his life and still not believing that his friends had made the right choice. Then everything with Gotham layered over that. Sometimes Gansey's head didn't feel like a place where he belonged.

When Adam took his hand, he didn't pull away, but he stared at their fingers, expecting Adam to reconsider and let go. His surprise turned to amusement and he let out a rude noise at the thought of being called perfect. "Are you sure you're not the other version of Adam? You've never thought of me as perfect."

Maybe that was another reason why things felt off balance with Adam. Adam was a year older at least. He'd changed in ways that Gansey didn't understand and he still expected the anger that he'd witnessed before arriving in this strange place. "That Gansey was freer than I am. He didn't have the Gansey family rules to follow." Pausing, he laughed softly at the first description that came to mind for the version of that Gansey that he could talk about.

"He was a lot like Ronan. He got into fights, but with people who were hurting others. He raced the Pig all over Gotham. And he - uh -" Did he really want to tell Adam that Gansey had been a playboy? "Had a certain reputation in the tabloids."

"Then let's treat it like Glendower now. It's not too late to save other people." And maybe it wasn't too late for Evie, either. He wanted to be hopeful, for Gansey's sake if nothing else. He couldn't stand to see Gansey beat himself up like this.

"The other version of me," he said quietly, "Had love his whole life, but it wasn't real. It was just something I used to dream about." Not the Dreamer part though; that had been a new twist. A way to better connect him with his father, maybe, to better connect him with Ronan. "What's real is that you're everything I want to be."

"If you don't like the rules, why follow them? Here, I mean. It's just the three of us."

He looked at Gansey out of the corner of his eye without turning his head, corners of his mouth twitching into a smile. "Uh-huh. A certain reputation." He couldn't imagine that, if he was coming to the proper conclusion. He could hardly imagine Gansey being like Ronan, even if defending people sounded like something Gansey would do. It was the fighting part of defending people that Adam had trouble wrapping his head around.

"Or save Evie." Bruce hadn't given up hope, and he had more experience with this type of situation. Relaxing against the wall, he brushed his thumb along Adam's hand, an absentminded gesture as he considered how this search could be like Glendower. "If we do it like Glendower, then it's going to be in Gansey-terms instead of those for general consumption."

Maybe that was why he'd struggled. He'd tried to make his research too user friendly when it just needed to be understood by two other people. He could translate that for Bruce.

"You should have had that other version to begin with." It was something that Gansey had always believed. It was one of the reasons he'd hated Adam's parents when he so rarely hated anyone. Everyone deserved love and the idea of Adam not being loved seemed so impossible to him until he'd seen the bruises.

Shaking his head, he leaned against Adam's shoulder. "No, I'm not. Everyone thinks my life perfect because - " He gestured vaguely with his free hand, implying the things that Adam and Blue had said about his entitlement. "But it's not true. I'm a mess." He'd never really admitted that to anyone except Malory. With him, it'd been difficult for Gansey to hide since the fact that he'd been so broken had been so obvious. "I still wake up screaming. There's days when the color of my sweater is the only thing keeping me from breaking down.

"I'm trying to stop following the rules. Maybe that's part of the reason the two sets of memories are getting tangled up. If I don't have the Gansey rules, then which do I follow?"

Noticing that Adam was looking at him, a very un-Gansey like flush crept across his face. "Some of it was true. Some of it wasn't. Bruce did remind me - him - regularly that he wasn't ready to be a grandfather." Despite his embarrassment, Gansey couldn't stop himself from smiling. "And he reminded Bruce that he was going to an all boys school. Then he'd sigh over Ronan. He was head over heels from the beginning even if he did like to look at the hot guys in class."

"Or save Evie," he agreed. "And there's nothing wrong with that; there are plenty of us who can relay information to other people." Adam might not have been as good with other people as he'd like to be, but he could at least put information into simple terms for other people when the time came.

He shrugged a shoulder, not weighing in about how he should have been loved from the start. He still grappled with that issue sometimes, especially since ending up here, and worried that maybe he didn't really deserve love. There was always going to be someone better than him, no matter how hard he tried.

Gansey's confession made Adam feel a little guilty about envying him. He knew Gansey wasn't really perfect, but he still had what Adam wanted most of all; almost limitless possibilities. Sometimes, Adam felt hideously selfish about the way he thought of things, and right now was one of those times. Wordlessly, he lifted their hands to kiss the back of Gansey's, hoping he could be a quiet comfort.

"Your heart?" he suggested, in response to Gansey's question about rules. "Deciding what path to follow isn't always easy." In fact, it was usually hard. "You have to pick what feels right."

He could hardly imagine Gansey as a playboy. He'd always been so busy trying to find Glendower to have time for relationships, even though he'd still dated more than Adam had. "So, who's Bruce?"

The Barns - Closed

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