my Saddest Ronan/Gansey Idea is the one where they were like on the verge of being together pre niall’s death and then niall died and gansey was like “oh man i can’t be selfish, i’ve gotta just be his friend and look out for him” and ronan took it as “i’m damaged fucking goods and gansey will never want me like that again and maybe he never did in the first place” rip
ok im going to make coffee and eat a meal bar and... give myself 40 minutes to read anne carson and cry and then i have to Work once the calories and caffeine have kicked in
i just spent 45 minutes crying about Who is in Charge of Shaving Ronan’s Head this is like, not a Good post with Reasoned Meta and Character Analysis it’s just designed to make me as emotional as possible, and also it’s long
the first time, he does it himself, with a single-blade disposable razor he got out of the aglionby locker rooms at 3 am. he broke into the locker room and the razor blade dispenser and left the doors swinging open, the razor’s little plastic wrapper in the sink, hair all over the floor.
he cut his scalp himself in half a dozen places where he couldn’t see well enough and there’s little wisps of hair sticking to the back of his skull.
there was a “ne’er-do-wells come forth” type announcement at morning assembly about the mess; ronan slid into the desk next to gansey’s late for second period with a shaved head and a sullen expression
the administration shut up about it. certain allowances have to be made, given the circumstances, boys will be boys, perhaps, and all that.
declan tells ronan he looks like a hoodlum and tries to talk him into getting it cleaned up; there is a Fight
within 10 hours gansey has bought a bunch of razors and a $10 thing of AAA battery powered clippers from the local dollar store and sat ronan down and done his best to clean up the back and disinfect all the cuts
ronan tolerates it coming from gansey
ronan has a weird shaped skull so clippers work best and mostly he just buzzes it super short but occasionally he wants it properly shaved like with shaving cream and everything and gansey does his best and is terrified of hurting ronan the whole time
it is mostly an excuse for scared mentally ill touch-starved kids to touch each other
if you don’t like to think there was some kissing or equivalent fumbling teen-boy intimacy here i’m not the boss of you but also, you’re wrong, they were in love
gansey doesn’t know what he’s doing so he just shaves ronan’s head into the sink
this goes on for like, idk i’m not about to double check the timelines but in my head it’s like six months, at which point the sink gets blocked and stops draining because it gets so totally clogged with little snippets of ronan hair
they’re disgusting teenage boys so they just let the sink sit half-full of water until it starts to go kind of pre-moldy
noah unclogs it with ghost powers and collects all the little bits of hair and puts the soggy clump of hair shavings on gansey’s favorite plate and sticks it into the bathroom fridge
gansey finds it when he gets home from crew practice and shrieks and yells at ronan; noah cackles & lets them think he paid a plumber
after that gansey puts newspaper down and makes ronan sit in a chair
probably noah likes feeling ronan’s hair grow out, touches his skull all the time
once or twice ronan’s let him cut weird patterns into the half-inch-long buzz cut before gansey gets home, on haircut day
they stopped doing that after noah found ronan in the church
& it starts happening again, & more often, after ronan finds out noah’s a ghost
noah’s not great with the clippers but he likes cutting ronan’s hair short with little nail scissors, funny patterns first and then just short all over (but because it’s with scissors it comes out all patchy and gansey still has to buzz it)
blue is flatly disallowed from anything to do with ronan’s hair on the basis of he thinks her hair is stupid
obviously eventually adam gets to help ronan with his hair.
probably during one of the sleepovers at the church that we never got to see ronan brought the clippers with him
ronan acts like it’s no big deal but obviously it is a huge deal to him and adam has at this point been Staring at ronan for long enough to get it
i am unsure whether adam realizes what he’s signing on for here, like, i don’t think he’s unobservant enough to notice that ronan’s hair grows for a bit and then gets shorter, but also, i don’t know that he’s been Staring at ronan for long enough to have picked up on the fact that someone’s gotta be helping him buzz his head
he probably thought it was a one-time deal but no ronan’s showing up all the time
i think earlier he may have just not given it much thought? shaved head is just Part Of Ronan and by the time he started paying attention everything was going to hell and gansey was all rattled and all that and ronan wasn’t getting regular maintenance on his hair anyway
anyway ronan starts getting adam to help him with his hair, like, twice as often as gansey did it, because, you see, the boy is gay,, and gansey now has a girlfriend, and ronan has a crush, all that,
after they get together adam likes it a lot more bc before they were together it kind of stressed him out a little. like before he knew what he was going to do about ronan’s crush.
he knew ronan liked him and he knew ronan was being vulnerable with him and also having your hair fussed with or head buzzed is just, like, pleasant, and ronan got all quiet and shut his eyes and it gave adam a couple funny feelings.
but once they’re together it’s just n*ce. and hot. there’s a lot of kissing
gansey maybe feels a little bittersweet about it when he finally notices, like, the torch has been passed, but he doesn’t really get what the torch being passed means, exactly, like,
at that point he sort of gets that ronan likes adam though maybe not the depth, and he isn’t sure the feeling is reciprocated by adam, so it’s a big confusing bundle of emotions for him that he just Does Not Deal With Or Think About
except to vaguely worry that they were going to leave him because gansey is constantly like “what if they don’t love me like i love them”
also it is a sure sign that he and ronan are Over like they were totally in love AND NOW SOMEONE ELSE GETS TO TOUCH RONAN’S HEAD
post-series henry is like “lynch you are the only person in this crew with any kind of a hair maintenance routine, let’s talk”
(sometimes henry thinks about how pretty blue’s hair would be if she didn’t insist on doing The Things She Does to it. “that’s not a maintenance routine, blue. that’s hair neglect. hair brutalization. hair murder.”)
(gansey too he just lets it AIR DRY and then it flops into his face all the time and he won’t get it cut or put it back and then he COMPLAINS about his hair being in his eyes. henry’s partners cause him such suffering)
henry introduces ronan to like, fancy scrubs for his scalp, and really nice scented thick shaving cream, and good quality razors and clippers instead of the same flimsy plastic thing he’s been using ritually for like 3 years at that point
ronan dreams better versions of everything
he and henry get into a weird Products War of pranking and one-upmanship and this is how they bond. ronan dreams hairspray that makes all of henry’s hair go straight up, which is fine on his head but it makes his eyebrows stick out too. henry buys ronan weird honey and pollen serums and ronan tries to dream an apiary where the bees skip honey and go straight to producing face cream.
opal eats all of it
opal has 100% eaten an entire container of $800 an ounce of henry’s favorite Something and ronan had to pretend (badly) that he lost it
just sittin on the floor scooping beauty products out of their little containers with her fingers and then licking the containers clean
she tries to eat @ least one of the lids too
opal also has short hair and probably adam clips her hair for her too. longer than he cuts ronan’s but when ronan sees that happening for the first time he has Physical Pangs in his chest
opal is allowed to help adam shave ronan’s hair Exactly Once
areudirty
germansingergirl
snowghoul
gummygunk
yousharknotpass
