Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/3117131.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Raven_Cycle_-_Maggie_Stiefvater
  Relationship:
      Richard_Gansey_III/Ronan_Lynch
  Character:
      Richard_Gansey_III, Ronan_Lynch
  Additional Tags:
      Dom/sub, Daddy_Issues, Trans_Male_Character, this_isn't_daddy_kink_don't
      worry_i_wouldn't_do_that_to_you, it_just_deals_with_some_of_ronan's
      father_feelios
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-01-04 Words: 3761
****** lost kitten ******
by glitterforplaster_(ineffableangel)
Summary
     “Gansey,” Ronan said, abrupt, urgent, catching at the hem of Gansey’s
     shirt as he tried to walk away. “Wait. Please. I need—” He stopped.
     Gansey lingered. “What?”
     Ronan closed his eyes, still clutching Gansey’s t-shirt in one smooth
     brown hand, hands that Gansey admired, loved, hands he’d seen do
     beautiful and terrible things. Gansey was fairly sure this t-shirt
     belonged to Ronan, or had, at one point. It hung just a little too
     big on him, the shoulders a little too broad. “I need you,” he said,
     quiet.
Notes
     title from lost kitten by metric, which is so ronan/gansey,
     seriously, check it out. warnings for self-destruction, underage
     drinking, daddy issues, d/s, discussion of the death of a parent as
     per canon, and vague mentions of self-harm. don’t worry; this isn’t
     what you think it is. ronan is black and latino; niall lynch was
     latino (puerto rican, specifically, though he was born in ireland for
     some reason, thanks for that canon monkey wrench stiefvater); aurora
     lynch is black; gansey is white (at least this time). language key in
     the ending notes, though i think you can figure most of it out.
See the end of the work for more notes
It was not unusual for Ronan Lynch to come home late, either in the dead of
night or into the early hours of the morning; sometimes Gansey smelled cheap
beer on his breath, or cigarettes, or something else, and sometimes Ronan was
angry, or cried, or threw things, though not at Gansey, never at Gansey.
Sometimes he shut himself in his bedroom, and sometimes he had his fits out in
the open. Sometimes Gansey let him be, if that was what he wanted; sometimes
Ronan didn’t know what he wanted, didn’t care, hated himself more than
anything, pried his body open and tried to tear himself out, and Gansey was
there to pick up the pieces. He was accustomed to Ronan’s seemingly inherent
fucked-up-ness, the way he was accustomed to his own demons, his anxious
tremors. No— that was cruel. He wasn’t accustomed to it; he never would be. It
shook him down to his bones to see Ronan’s cool, disaffected façade so cracked,
his best friend and brother and the boy he loved so ripped apart by the terrors
that haunted his nights, monsters that he fed himself, monsters that were part
of him, belonged to him, like hunting dogs. No, Gansey had not made any
semblance of peace with Ronan’s frequent breakdowns. Perhaps it was more
accurate to say that he had come to expect them.
This, however, he had not expected: the moment Gansey opened the door for
Ronan, having heard the familiar scratching of a tipsy teenager trying to fit a
large and highly specific key into a small and highly specific lock, Ronan fell
into him.
“Christ!” Gansey cried, clutching Ronan to his chest, hands hooked under his
arms. Ronan’s head lolled forward onto Gansey’s shoulder, face pressed into his
neck. Gansey could feel his heart beating hard and fluttery through his shirt,
his breath shaky against the hollow of Gansey’s throat.
“Ronan, what’s wrong?” Gansey said, swallowing panic, and Ronan laughed, a
wild, high-pitched sound that petered out as abruptly as it had begun.
“Everything,” Ronan said, lifting his head so that he and Gansey were face to
face, chest to chest, inches apart. “Thanks for catching me. Sorry to be a
damsel in distress. I think my knees gave out. Slackers. Don’t they know they
don’t get vacation days? It’s not in the fuckin’ contract.”
“Where have you been? Have you been drinking?” Gansey asked, breath warm on
Ronan’s cheek. He feared the answer.
Ronan shook his head. His fingernails dug into Gansey’s biceps through his
shirt. “Dreaming,” he said, eyes unfocused, looking at something past Gansey’s
head, something he couldn’t see.
“Nightmares again?” Gansey asked. He hated to see Ronan like this, hated the
way dreaming took him out of himself, away from reality and from Gansey. He
went somewhere, when he was like this, somewhere Gansey couldn’t reach,
couldn’t even hope of imagining; it wasn’t Monmouth, and it wasn’t Cabeswater.
It wasn’t even the Barns. It was a place only dreamers could touch, and Gansey
was terrified that, one day, he wouldn’t be able to call Ronan back from it.
“I think,” Ronan answered. He sighed. “I don’t know. It’s so hard to tell,
anymore, what’s a nightmare and what’s... They keep changing. I dreamt about
him this time. He won’t wake up. I keep trying to wake him up and he won’t wake
up.”
Gansey didn’t have to ask who Ronan meant; he knew, just as surely as he knew
Ronan would not, perhaps could not, speak his father’s name. Not here.
Ronan shifted, tried to stand, and Gansey wrapped an arm around his waist,
helping him to his feet. Ronan slung his arm round Gansey’s neck, and,
together, they shuffled forward into the living room, where Ronan collapsed on
the couch, head in his hands.
“He won’t wake up,” he said, the words muffled against his palms. “He just lies
there in a pool of his own brains like a bastard, because he was a bastard. You
know he never told me or Declan or Matthew he loved us? Not once. That was
Mom’s job. She was the nurturer. He just spun his fucking webs and his stories
and his lies and said my name like he meant to say something else entirely,
every time. Asshole.”
Gansey knew Ronan meant it. He also knew that Ronan was born already in his
father’s pocket, the favorite son, the heir, the dream prodigy. Ronan forgot:
Gansey had seen Niall Lynch in action, a summer and a lifetime ago, and the
love that man harbored for his middle child like a ship never set out to sea
was a love that would have moved mountains. Ronan was always saying he hated
liars, but he lied every moment, spun the same webs Niall Lynch had, tapestries
of the finest side-steps and thread omissions, and then he lied about that,
too. Gansey often wondered if someday they would find the missing pieces of all
the half-truths Ronan told, the abandoned remains of a laugh or a reckless
midnight drive or a Why, no, Gansey, I’ve no earthly idea how I suddenly
acquired this split lip, these bruised knuckles, this bleeding temple. Perhaps
they were stuffed away in the walls of the attic at the Barns, collecting dust,
waiting to be claimed. After all, dreaming was a sort of lying; it was pure
creation, fabrication, and Ronan, its reluctant architect.
“I’m going to get you a glass of water,” Gansey said. Despite what Ronan had
told him, he wasn’t convinced there hadn’t been drinking involved, either way.
Ronan often used alcohol to numb his nerves before he dreamt. “Stay right here,
okay? Don’t go running off on me, now.”
“Gansey,” Ronan said, abrupt, urgent, catching at the hem of Gansey’s shirt as
he tried to walk away. “Wait. Please. I need—” He stopped.
Gansey lingered. “What?”
Ronan closed his eyes, still clutching Gansey’s t-shirt in one smooth brown
hand, hands that Gansey admired, loved, hands he’d seen do beautiful and
terrible things. Gansey was fairly sure this t-shirt belonged to Ronan, or had,
at one point. It hung just a little too big on him, the shoulders just a little
too broad. “I need you,” Ronan said, quiet. “Can you— I need— I need you to
fuck me. Please.”
All at once, Gansey understood. It was an arrangement they had, of a sorts, a
game they played, though they both knew there was nothing pretend about it.
They were always real with each other; raw and honest and open with how they
felt about each other. This was merely an extension of their relationship,
however they defined it, attached at the hip and the heart and the hands and
the soul. All else fell away. Their daily hang-ups — Ronan’s thing for Adam,
Gansey’s thing for Blue, Noah’s thing for Ronan — seemed childish and
inconsequential compared to what they were to each other.
Sometimes, Ronan wanted to hurt himself; sometimes, Gansey had to pick up the
pieces. It was better that way, for Ronan to give up control, to let someone
else lead, to save him from himself. It was safer. Gansey would do anything for
Ronan, and Ronan would do anything for Gansey, especially if he was ordered to.
“You need me,” Gansey said softly, gently uncurling Ronan’s fingers from his
shirt.
“I need you. Take me out of my head. It’s dark in here.”
“Okay, then,” Gansey said, and led Ronan by the hand down the dark hallway.
Ronan stumbled only once, on their way into his bedroom, neatly missing a
skateboard with two wheels, an object he’d dreamt and discarded. His room was
full of them. They crowded his shelves and his floor, were stuffed under his
bed, made homes in his corners, misshapen and misplaced, misfit toys without
sense or rationality. Gansey suspected his closet might contain an actual
skeleton. It was macabre poetry; Ronan kept the junk around because he
understood it, had created it. It was like introducing the most secret parts of
himself to every visitor, showing them his innermost workings, the things he
thought up when he was alone, the gears that made him tick, though they would
never know it.
And there the true Ronan stood, in the middle of it all. King.
“How do you want me?” he asked. Gansey, still holding his hand, brushed a thumb
across his knuckles, and nodded silently at the bed.
“On your back. Shirt and socks off. Pants unbuttoned, but you can keep them
on.”
Ronan nodded, and stripped, leaving his shirt crumpled in a pile of grey fabric
on the floor. He splayed out across the bed, long legs falling open. His thin,
elegant fingers unhooked the button of his jeans with ease, like he’d done this
for Gansey a thousand times, instead of only five. He was a different person,
when he needed this; his ingrained distrust of authority didn’t seem to extend
to Gansey.
“Good boy,” Gansey said, closing the door behind him. He crossed the room and
leant against the bed frame, sliding off his own shirt and socks, and his worn
flannel pajama pants, last years’ Christmas gift from Aurora Lynch— she claimed
everyone should have a good pair of flannel pajama pants, not the frivolous
silk sets his family had been fond of buying him, when he still lived at home.
He laid all of his clothes on the desk, beside pens and paper and more
miscellaneous dream objects, taking his time. He left his binder on; he knew he
shouldn’t, but it made him feel better, more himself.
“Gansey,” Ronan said. He didn’t beg, but Gansey heard it in his voice, rough
and desperate.
Gansey didn’t answer him, but he moved closer, sitting on the edge of the bed
beside Ronan’s thigh, fingertips tracing the V of his hips, the flat, firm
muscle of his stomach. Ronan was beautiful. This was a fact, though not
everyone saw it that way. The harsh glint of his perfectly straight teeth, his
shaved head and dark skin, the cracks of his palms, the ever-changing rotation
of bruises and scrapes from boxing and fighting and being generally reckless
with his body; all these Gansey knew intimately. He was shorter than Ronan by a
few inches, but from this position, he held the cards, and Ronan knew it,
relished in it. His hands looked big and pale curled around Ronan’s hips.
“You have hands like him,” Ronan said, arms stretched behind his head, watching
Gansey touch him. He was breathing shallowly, already vulnerable, overwhelmed,
hard and aching in the confines of his jeans. “Like my father. I mean, you’re a
white boy, obviously, but— You touch me so delicately, like I’ll break. Like he
did. Is that weird? That I want that? It’s not a kink thing. You’re nothing
like him, and thank God. But you have his hands.”
“It’s not weird,” Gansey said, tugging Ronan’s jeans down his thighs. Ronan
lifted his hips to help. “You just want someone to take care of you the way
your father never did.”
“Okay, Freud,” Ronan said, sort of gasping, halfway gone, although Gansey had
done nothing but undress him. “Can you suck me off now, or are we going to talk
out my issues with my big brother, too?”
“You are not calling me Daddy,” Gansey said firmly, in case Ronan was getting
ideas.
“Wow, buzzkill. How do you feel about sir? Or something kingly. Your Highness?
No? Damn.”
Gansey brushed the backs of his fingers across the bulge in Ronan’s underwear,
until his breath hitched, a warning as much as a reward. Ronan reached down and
clenched his fingers in Gansey’s hair. When Gansey spoke, it was soft. “You can
make noise, but you can’t direct, do you understand? You’ll take what I give
you. Everything I give you. What’s your safeword?”
“Desino,” Ronan recited obediently. “Latin for cease and desist. Or murder
squash. English for irritating. In case I forget the first one. Can I speak
otherwise?”
“You can,” Gansey allowed, “but you won’t, unless it’s to beg me for more. I’m
going to take you apart at the seams. I’m going to make you scream. Okay?”
Ronan swallowed hard. “Okay."
Gansey tugged Ronan’s boxers down. His cock curved against his thigh, flushed
and pearling with pre-come. Gansey kissed the inside of Ronan’s thigh. He
leaned forward and pressed another kiss to the tip of his cock, open-mouthed
and wet, dragging his tongue against sensitive skin, inhaling the scent of
sweat and sex and Ronan, who always smelled like the green leaves of that first
summer, the summer they met. Ronan sucked in a breath, fingers tightening in
Gansey’s hair, hips pushing upward, desperate for something more substantial.
Gansey held him down with one hand, settled steady and firm on his leg.
“Don’t,” Gansey said. Ronan stilled immediately. “Good boy.”
“Hazme el amor,” Ronan said, letting his head fall back against the pillows.
“Please. Fuck me. Querido.”
Gansey felt his heart skip. Ronan rarely called him pet names, except when they
were together like this, and even then he did it in Latin or Spanish, languages
that, the first handful of times, Gansey had trouble understanding. It wasn’t
that he was embarrassed. Ronan was never embarrassed. It was that he felt
uncomfortable expressing feelings as private and pure as the ones he had for
Gansey in English. The language his father had spoken at home, before Ronan’s
life fell to pieces, and the language they all spoke in his dreams, where he
could pretend he still had a family— these suited him better, te quiero and te
amo more real to him thanI love you, more honest. He was always saying he hated
lies, and liars.
“Gansey,” Ronan said, and Gansey touched the scar that hugged the curve of his
knee, just once, like a promise, before he leaned forward again and took Ronan
into his mouth. Ronan whimpered, high and involuntary, biting his knuckle to
keep quiet as Gansey went down on him.
“Gansey,” Ronan said again, gasping it, trembling with the effort of keeping
his hips still. “Shit. Mi tesoro, mi corazón. So good, come on. Give it to me.”
Gansey breathed deep and shaky, making a huffed, wet sound around Ronan’s cock.
He loved Ronan’s voice, the lilt of his accent, the way he quivered when Gansey
sucked at the head of his dick. No one else had heard him like this; no one
else knew him the way Gansey did. The thought made a wicked, covetous pleasure
curl in his belly. Contrary to popular belief, or perhaps, considering Adam’s
feelings on the matter, and likely their classmates’ at Aglionby, perfectly in
keeping with popular belief, when it came to the things that he loved and the
ideals he strived for, Richard Gansey III was an incredibly selfish person. He
wanted Glendower for himself; he wanted that favor for himself; he wanted Ronan
for himself.
“No one else touches you like this, do you understand?” Gansey said, pulling
off, voice husky from cock-sucking. “No one else.”
“Yes,” Ronan said. “Yes. No one else. No one else. You’re mi cielo, my world,
my sky. My brother. Tell me you love me.”
“I love you.” Gansey didn’t hesitate; it was the truth. Ronan hated liars. He
reached up and caught Ronan’s hand from his hair, turning it over to press a
kiss to his wrist, where faint white scars still clung from so many night
terrors, reminders of a time before Ronan understood how to rule them. “I love
you. I love the way you laugh. I love the way you sing when I suck you off. I
love your hands.”
Ronan didn’t respond, but he closed his eyes, satisfied with this, combing his
fingers through Gansey’s hair as Gansey returned to sucking him off. On a night
like tonight, when the moon was full and the air hummed with potential, with
magic and with secrets and with shadows, Ronan had bared his soul to Gansey not
once, but twice; first, in the living room, with talk of his father, and now
here, in his bedroom, in the house they shared together, with a declaration of
love. It was not the first time he had said it, nor was it the first time
Gansey had returned the sentiment, but something about it felt different. Ronan
was rarely completely sincere, always masking his truths beneath ironies and
cynicisms, but there could be no doubt that this, he meant completely.
Gansey thought it was about time Ronan was rewarded.
Gansey sat up, Ronan’s legs still stretched out on either side of his waist.
His packer rubbed against his arousal with every movement, sending sparks
shivering up his spine. He pushed it out of the way and pressed a desperate
finger to his clit, eyes fluttering closed. He’d been wet since Ronan had
propositioned him, but this had been for Ronan, and not for him, so he’d held
back. Ronan watched him, now, silent but hyper-attentive, eyes tracking every
twitch of Gansey’s hand.
When Gansey had regained some of his composure, he swung his legs over the edge
of the bed and patted his thigh. “Come here,” he said. Ronan slid off the bed
and onto the floor, on his knees in front of Gansey. He looked up expectantly.
“Eat me out,” Gansey ordered, and Ronan’s eyes glinted. This was his favorite
thing to do in the bedroom, and Gansey rarely felt in the mood to let him;
gender dysphoria was a fickle and unpredictable mistress.
Ronan slipped off Gansey’s boxers, setting his packer aside. He pressed a thumb
to Gansey’s clit, grinning when Gansey whined, hips jerking. Ronan leaned
forward and dragged his tongue roughly against Gansey. Gansey sucked in a
breath and dug his nails into Ronan’s bare shoulders, rocked forward onto his
tongue. Ronan moaned against Gansey, soft and breathy, reaching down to squeeze
himself.
“Good boy,” Gansey gasped, ragged, fucking Ronan’s face. “Good boy, sweet boy,
yeah, touch yourself, just like that, come on, Ronan. You love this, don’t you?
Love taking orders, fuck, such a good boy for me. You gonna come for me?”
Ronan shuddered and came in his hand, still worked up from earlier. Gansey
followed soon after, legs shaking. Ronan kept dragging his tongue over Gansey’s
over-sensitive clit, relentless, until Gansey cried out and pushed his head
away. Ronan, still on his knees, leant forward and rested his cheek on the edge
of the bed, fucked out and faraway. His face was wet, his eyes glassy.
“Was I okay?” he asked, voice hoarse.
“Yeah,” Gansey said softly, fondly, brushing a hand over the baby fuzz at the
nape of Ronan’s neck. “You were perfect. You feeling alright?”
“Tired,” Ronan said.
Gansey nodded. “Let’s get you to bed, yeah?”
Gansey helped Ronan to his feet, setting him on the bed and fetching a warm
washcloth from Monmouth’s joint-bathroom-kitchen monstrosity. By the time he
came back a few minutes later, Ronan seemed more coherent. He was wearing
Gansey’s pajama pants, which made Gansey grin for some disgusting, domestic
reason he could not explain, even though it meant he’d have to wash them
tomorrow. He opened Ronan’s dresser and tugged on a pair of his pajama pants,
as revenge.
“Hey,” Ronan said, pointedly not commenting on the stolen pajamas. Gansey
handed him the washcloth, sitting beside him on the bed. Ronan swiped it across
his cheek, where a streak of come still remained, and then tossed it onto on
the floor across the room, with the rest of his clothes.
“How do you feel?” Gansey asked quietly, hand on Ronan’s knee.
Ronan hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know. Weird. Ashamed.”
“Yeah,” Gansey said, because he always did, after. “Come on, grumpy. Snuggle
time.”
Ronan folded gratefully into Gansey’s arms, arm slung around his waist, face
buried in his neck. His skin was hot, almost feverish. “I’m sorry,” he said
into Gansey’s throat, shaky.
“Don’t apologize,” Gansey said, kissing the top of his head. “You have nothing
to be sorry for. You didn’t ask me for anything I wasn’t completely willing to
give, okay? I wanted it.”
“But—”
“Ronan.” Gansey said it in his order-giving voice, leaving no room for
argument, and Ronan fell silent.
After a moment, he said, hushed, on the verge of tears, like he was divulging a
secret, “I miss him, Gansey. I miss him so much. How can I miss someone I’m so
fucking angry at all the time? He left me nothing but a house I couldn’t visit
and a puzzle I couldn’t figure out and a messed-up head full of his stories,
but, God, I miss him. He was my father.”
“I know,” Gansey said, running his thumb across Ronan’s hip in circles. “I
know. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay. He’d be so proud of you, Ronan, if he
could see you.”
Ronan snorted. “What, in bed with my best friend? I don’t know if you know
this, Gansey, but you’re a boy. Mom’s okay with it, but I don’t think my dad
would’ve been. A street-racing suicidal semi-alcoholic who likes getting fucked
by other guys, oh, yeah, that’s the kind of son he only ever dreamt of. Not to
mention I’m failing ninety percent of my classes, currently, I’m sure you’ve
heard about that.”
“Okay, shut up now,” Gansey said. “Your sexuality is not a flaw. As for the
other stuff, I think it’s pretty well cancelled out by you being fucking
amazing. I’ve traveled all over the world, Ronan, and I’ve never met anyone
like you.”
“Mm.”
“I’m serious.” Gansey caught Ronan’s jaw, turning it gently so that they were
eye-to-eye. “Who else do you know that can speak to trees, huh? Who else can
pull objects from the edge of perception and turn them into something real? It
doesn’t matter if you’re failing your classes. You’ve fought a dragon, and
saved your brother's life, and— and whistled Irish jigs in a fucking scary dark
cave. You’re incredibly strong. And I love you. I might have your father's
hands, at least according to you, but you have his gift, and his heart. Okay?”
Ronan swallowed hard, looked away. “Okay,” he said, but even he didn’t sound as
though he believed it. “Will you— Will you stay? Just for tonight. I don’t want
to be alone with my thoughts, not right now.”
“Yeah,” Gansey said, pressing a kiss to Ronan’s forehead. “Yeah, of course.
Always. Always.”
 
 
End Notes
     desino (latin) - cease, desist, stop
     hazme el amor (spanish) - make love to me
     querido (spanish) - sweetheart, darling
     te quiero (spanish) - i want you
     te amo (spanish) - i love you
     mi tesoro (spanish) - my treasure
     mi corazón (spanish) - my sweetheart, my love
     mi cielo (spanish) - my heaven, my sky, my world
     it's my ultimate headcanon that niall lynch spoke spanish to his
     family at home; aurora's spanish was broken at best, but ronan often
     spoke it with him, and continues to speak it after he dies. matthew,
     being the youngest and having the least amount of time with his
     father, speaks very little, mostly what he's picked up or what ronan
     has taught him. declan flat-out refused to learn it, due to it being
     his father's language, as well as racist shit he listened to at
     school and internalized; he regrets this desperately after niall's
     death, though he'd never admit it to his siblings.
     maybe i'll write another fic about it.
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