Gansey/Ronan
The summer before she comes to Aglionby, Gansey’s visits to the Barns are frequent and extended, especially before she buys Monmouth. She’s there under the pretense of familiarizing herself with Henrietta before the start of the school year, but in truth she spends more time in Singer’s Falls with the Lynch family. Her family have more or less accepted her transition -- after she’d secured a letter from her therapist, they’d been able to view it as a medical issue, something that could be fixed with surgery and hormones and a trip to court to have the gender marker on her I.D. changed. In their eyes, once all this is accomplished she is simply a girl and ceases to be trans. Gansey knows it shouldn’t bother her, that there are trans people who think of their experiences exactly as her parents do, that she is lucky to have a family that didn’t kick her out on the street, but she is bothered, and not for reasons she can easily express. She doesn’t like finding herself inarticulate. But she knows that whether she’s taking pride in it or feeling the persistent, aching bitterness that sometimes comes over her, she’ll always think of herself as trans, that it will always be a part of her identity. It feels strange, then, to be with a family who carefully pretend that her transition, because it is in their eyes complete, never happened. It’s a feeling like vertigo, she thinks, to be among people who don’t understand that there is innate trauma in the years she spent presenting as male. Maybe it’s because they have Ronan, who Gansey can only describe as aggressively lesbian, but her friend’s family never make her feel secret or hidden, swept under the rug. The Lynches with their rough-and-tumble affection, their noise and their frequent if amicable fights, are refreshing. Nora, Ronan’s mother, pulls her aside to tell her to call if any of the Aglionby girls give her any shit. Her own parents would never say something like that, not because they’re unwilling to protect their daughter but because they would never allude to the fact that there is anything about Gansey that makes her likely to be bullied. She thanks Nora and says she’ll keep her on speed dial, but the truth is, she doesn’t think she’d ever need at adult to intervene. She and Ronan are already fast friends and she’s seen Ronan’s right hook. It feels good to know she’s going to a new school with guaranteed protection.
On her visits, Gansey sleeps in Ronan’s room, but they spend most nights awake, going out to the visit the animals or lie in the tall grass and look at the stars. It’s shocking to Gansey, that Ronan doesn’t even tip-toe on her way out, doesn’t cringe at the swinging of the liquor cabinet door, and she comes to realize that it’s not so much that Ronan has never been in trouble, it’s just that she knows what the punishment would be for a night spent outside with a bottle of whiskey, and she’s decided it’s a fair trade. All her life, Gansey has been kept in such awe of the repercussions of poor behavior that she’s never put a toe out of line -- not until she came out, and that went poorly enough that she can’t imagine doing something actually wrong. She likes these nights, the hum of alcohol in her blood, the Virginia warmth, how Ronan catches her hand as they walk and holds it. For a while, she’d thought that since she’s a girl, she must like boys, but she’s beginning to doubt that now. She isn’t completely oblivious, she notices the way Ronan watches her, knows that while other girls might hold hands platonically, Ronan doesn’t. At first she’d ignored it, assumed that mentioning it or even acknowledging it would mean ruining something about their friendship, but over the course of the summer, she’s less and less able to convince herself that the pleasure she takes from being watched by Ronan is simply the pleasure of a flattered ego. And it gets harder to convince herself that she doesn’t want to watch Ronan.
Lying on the roof with a flask of rum between them, looking up at the stars and the milky way spanning the sky above, Gansey is the one to reach for Ronan’s hand. Out of her peripheral vision, she sees Ronan’s head jerk to look at her, but she stays still, suddenly brimming with jittery nerves. It isn’t like the straining anxiety of her everyday life -- instead of a racing heart and a light head and a creeping terror it’s butterflies in her stomach and her toes getting cold. She laces her fingers into Ronan’s and squeezes a little. Ronan squeezes back. Gansey fixes her eyes on Orion and as she names the stars in the back of her mind, Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, she considers the potential consequences of kissing Ronan Lynch. She’s almost certain that Ronan likes her, so in some sense, there isn’t much risk at all. Saiph, Rigel. But she’s learned that there are always risks with Ronan, because Ronan loves doing stupid stuff, likes to climb up onto the roof and get drunk, likes to drive way too fast on the twisting mountain roads, likes to goad people into fights. Ronan’s joy thrives on danger, and there’s something a little scary about how much Gansey loves the wild, loose-limbed Ronan made up entirely of adrenaline. Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak. There’s part of her that wonders if that’s what Ronan would be like if Gansey kissed her. There’s part of her that wonders it would be even better.
Experimentally, still not sure what she’ll do, Gansey lifts Ronan’s hand to her mouth and kisses her knuckles very gently. Just a brush of the lips. She’s aware that Ronan hasn’t stopped looking at her since they started holding hands.
Gansey thinks she can hear the effort Ronan is putting into keeping her voice steady when she asks, “What are you doing?”
Gansey doesn’t answer right away, takes a moment first to kiss the broad expanse of the back of Ronan’s hand. Ronan likes honesty. “I’m thinking about kissing you.” She feels more than she sees Ronan going tense as she turns over her hand to kiss her palm. Closing her eyes, she imagines Ronan’s palm on the side of her face, her shoulder, her waist. She opens her eyes and looks at Ronan. “Would you like that?”
Ronan nods, the gesture barely perceptible. Gansey wonders if she’s holding her breath. Lifting the flask and setting it down on her other side, Gansey rolls over tilts Ronan’s face up to kiss her. Ronan’s hands come up to hold Gansey’s hips with an unexpected gentleness. She should have expected it, though, she thinks to herself. She’s seen the way Ronan holds small animals and her younger sister. But there is something new, she thinks, in the way Ronan’s body is moving underneath her. Something like reverence, she thinks. Even then, it’s maybe not something she’s never seen before. The family has taken her with them to St. Agnes on several occasions. She’s seen Ronan before the altar.
This Ronan is soft and pliable beneath Gansey, making very small sounds, her fingertips barely pressing at her hips. Gentle, she thinks, not out of a lack of desire but an excess of love. It’s sweet and it’s touching, and some demon in Gansey prompts her to try to break through this softness. She trails a line of kisses across Ronan’s face and down her neck, biting gently. Ronan makes a sharp, high noise and Gansey grins against the delicate skin just above Ronan’s collarbones. She bites harder and this time the sound is more of a whimper as Ronan clutches at the back of Gansey’s shirt, her feet scrabbling against the the surface of the roof and Gansey likes this Ronan, maybe a little too much, maybe the perfect amount. She likes that this Ronan is private and new and hers. She slips her hand under Ronan’s shirt and runs her nails over her stomach and Ronan whispers “Fuck” into Gansey’s ear. Pulling back, she looks down at Ronan, who catches hold of the front hem of Gansey’s shirt, tugging uselessly at her.
“Is that okay?” She asks, already certain of the answer but wanting confirmation, wanting to hear Ronan say it.
Ronan’s words come out in one breath, a jumble of sound. “Fuck please yes Gansey please,” and Gansey leans back down to kiss her hard and put her hand up Ronan’s shirt again. Because yes, she likes this Ronan, wanting and needing and out of control (or perhaps more precisely, under Gansey’s control) and all of it for her. All of it for Gansey. Her hands pressing down on Ronan’s shoulders, she sucks a hickey onto her neck, eliciting a lovely string of profanities.
When she sits up and moves away, Ronan looks at her like a kicked dog. Lying on her stomach, propped on her elbows, she says conversationally, “You know, it occurs to me that the roof of your house might not be the wisest place to make out.
Ronan rolls her eyes but grins too and rolls over to punch Gansey lightly on the arm before kissing her again. “Okay,” she says quietly against Gansey’s mouth. “Race you to my bedroom.”