&&. GANSEY BY @ownlore, continued from here.
he shouldn't have been surprised by the pig sputtering its last breath before they reached their destination; the event had already occurred so many times that its opposite happening would have warranted more of a fanfare. that fact, however, did not stop resentment from growing. nothing ever stopped it. he could be sitting on his bed, doing nothing but throwing pieces of paper for chainsaw to pick up mid-air, and the ball of anger would assault his throat, descend to his chest, and stay there, lodged between two ribs. it didn't matter that gansey was already trying to calm him down with pure, terrible logic. none of it mattered once the ball had started rolling.
the most immediate issue with gansey's approach was that ronan did not respond well to rationality. to him, it felt like a cheap trick: words that held meaning because you trusted that the world wouldn't shift mid-sentence. but that reality did not exist for him. ronan lynch fell asleep, and upon waking, he would lie in a tangible dream. rationality was worthless, held together by a belief that he could simply not subscribe to. anything could happen. catastrophe was always a minute early, and it would meet you mid-sentence. a nightmare was nothing but a dressed-up dream, which in turn was nothing but a wish for the sleeping.
he didn't stop to think of his actions. the anger started emitting its own static noise and ronan let it lead him away from the fuming pig. that car wouldn't start again, which meant that they were fucked. he registered the opening & closing of the driver's door, could hear gansey's rushed steps, but none of it made him slow down. blood was rushing near his temples, faster & faster, while gansey started a rant on ley lines and mechanical disturbances, as if the pig wasn't well-known for breaking down at random times, often when its occupants really, really needed to keep going. in that aspect, perhaps ronan and the pig were similar. he, too, could not prevent himself from his equivalent of a break down: simmering anger, a 'fuck' or two hurled at a friend, regardless of the feelings he was bound to hurt.
"there's no need to think: we're fucked.", was ronan's ever helpful comeback. he didn't know how gansey did it, how he managed to convince himself that if he thought hard enough then perhaps the world would align perfectly. maybe it was the rationality thing: maybe he was deluding himself into thinking everything would be okay, because that's how the world usually reacted to him. gansey liked old books with stories that had already happened, their issues already solved by the time he heard of them. that enjoyment of things past correlated with his present: things tended to solve themselves when they concerned richard campbell gansey the third. ronan always tried not to resent him for that, but in moments like these, it was harder-- perhaps gansey had forgotten yet again that the current equation of his reality involved ronan, which meant than a happy ever after was completely out of the question.
"what's the plan, then?", he asked, his voice the croak of a vulture or the hissing of a snake, dangerous in its threatening presence rather than in the hideousity of the sound. no one would mention the way ronan was deliberately asking gansey to talk more, only orienting him toward a subject that he could stomach: an active to-do list. "'cause from where i'm standing, we're pretty much out of fucking options."
