“Please, don’t leave.” Ronan/Gansey, The Raven Cycle
Richard Gansey III wakes in the morning, light pale yellow over his bed, unsure of when he’d finally fallen asleep. It’s never reliable anymore; he’s as likely to find himself building tiny street lamps and storefronts at 4am as to turn in early. He wonders what had woken him now, knows he can’t have been asleep for long– but he shifts, blinking, and it’s easy to tell.
Ronan makes a dark slash against the light of the window, perching on Gansey’s bed. He’s close enough for Gansey to press a finger lightly against the knob of his wrist, trace the fine bones of his hand, trace out across his fingers one by one. Ronan sighs, ducking his head, Chainsaw quiet on his far shoulder. He looks as though he’s missing a pair of wings, hunched over and solemn, graveyard-quiet.
It’s easier for Gansey to panic when he’s this close to the other side of sleep, for the fiction of his dreams to seep over into possibility in the early hours, and he doesn’t recognize his own voice when it says, “Please, don’t leave.”
Ronan is still, like he rarely is, held close and brittle in contrast to his usual razor-edge slouch. He grips the side of the thin mattress, closes his eyes against the sun, and Chainsaw hops down, making a black smudge at the foot of the bed as Ronan shifts. Gansey’s heart lurches, because Ronan is always the unpredictable variable, his plans made and broken in an instant. But Ronan slings his jacket down to the floor and crawls forward, tucking himself under the covers and lying back quietly next to Gansey, sleep-soft and careful.
Gansey doesn’t dare move more than his arm, slinging it low over Ronan’s hips, feeling his belly rise and fall there with slow breaths. He feels Ronan sneak the arm between them up enough to press a palm, careful, over Gansey’s wrist, and Gansey’s chest flutters briefly like Ronan’s dreamed something into it, warm and tentative and stirring in the morning light.