It shouldn't be easy, he thinks. It should be hard, like everything else is hard - like life, love, responsibility, caring about anything other than this, now, between them. Because, it was them, wasn't it? Had been them from the start, always, just the two - then Adam, then Blue, and at some point Noah, but from the start it was them,

desperate,

tangled,

caught between two points.

Point one: they are in the Pig;

they are driving, for no real reason other than that they want to. Probably, someone somewhere had said "Glendower" and "Cabeswater" (it was probably Gansey) and they had got in the car, driven, driven, just driven.

Ronan breathes, in and out and in again (somehow the air feels thicker with every breath), leans his head back, bares his neck, scratches a line down his arm because he can, deliberately avoids catching Gansey's eyes because

he doesn't know what he's doing, not really. He knows the mechanism of it, knows that he could reach over and put his hand over Gansey's or tell him to pull over and lean over and kiss him or build up the tension and break it back at Monmouth or

sure, he knows the mechanism. Knows how it feels how to kiss, feel clothing bunched under his fingers, know how the expanse of skin looks and feels and slips under his hands.

But not Gansey. Not this creature, being, golden boy beside him, so he leans his head against the window and wets his lips and doesn't catch Gansey's eyes when they flick over to him.

'Were we going somewhere?' Gansey asks.

'I don't think so,' he replies, and somehow it doesn't feel like it's just about the drive, somehow it feels like it's about their quest and their life.

So, 'let's just keep driving,' and 'okay,' and they continue, though the sky is darkening and Chainsaw at home is probably hankering for food, and the phone might ring and Adam might get the night off and they might go to Nino's and they might might might disappear into the fucking fog that's growing slowly in front of them.

Gansey looks at him again, and the car jerks, and the start of a swear word forms on the tip of his tongue (he knows, knows the shape of his mouth when he's about to swear) but Ronan cuts him off with 'eyes on the road, Dick' and Gansey rolls his eyes, but keeps them on the road. Which makes this difficult, because on the one hand, he can hint so much better when he doesn't know that Gansey's eyes are all over him, but on the other hand, if Gansey doesn't see a thing all his hints will come to naught and he'll be left feeling like he performed for nothing so-

it twists in his mind, and when he chases the threads of thought they come down to 'what if the answer's no' which is remarkably simple for something that's been simmering for so long. And again - sides: this is Gansey, he's beginning to realise he loves Blue, there's Adam to think of, and whatever he may objectively feel about Ronan, it is not just about the two of them; this is Gansey, he will always say yes because he knows better than anyone what Ronan needs, if it will help him - and it will, God, it will - he will say yes, and they can deal with Adam and Blue and Adam-Blue some other time. Which leads to some pretty interesting thoughts and the hint of a smile starts to crawl onto his face, and he tries to kill it, but it just won't go so

he slumps into his seat and breathes in deeply and rolls his eyes over onto Gansey, who chooses that moment to look over at him, and Ronan wets his lips, which has Gansey's eyes locked onto them instead and the start of a blush that crawls up from his neck. Unconsciously, he does the same in return, eyes locked onto Ronan's, so he makes a decision, so (apparently) does Gansey and they both try to speak at the same time and 'Ronan-' 'pull over-'

Point 1 and a half: Gansey pulls over;

somewhere, he's not sure where. He does it suddenly, and takes a few turns until they're somewhere secluded, with no houses nearby, and a spark catches in Ronan's mind and travels down the length of his body until it ends in a thought, and the thought makes him sit up and say 'here' and the Pig stops like it starts - explosively, alongside several thoughts, all of which end in 'here'.

So he swings the door open and pulls himself out and then he strides over to Gansey's side of the car and pushes his head through the open window so his breath is practically mingling with Gansey's, and he says the first thing that pops into his mind which is 'at least I can kiss you', which is...

wrong perhaps, but when he leans back and pulls open Gansey's door, Gansey follows and when he slams the door Gansey lets himself be pushed against it, and there's a moment, and then

Gansey's hands are reaching up to his scalp and pulling him in for

yeah, alright. It was a kiss. It was a pretty damn good one. Gansey was pretty popular and definitely good-looking, he could definitely catch a bit of skirt (or trousers, now that Ronan thinks about it) and that thought inspires him to deepen the kiss, to run hands down Gansey's back where it arches into his chest, to slip fingers up his shirt and curl them in, to leave little nail marks, to prove that Gansey is his now.

His to kiss, his to take from and give to, his to breathe in, and breathe he does, between kisses, which start off chaste and pretty quickly devolve into not so chaste, because he wants, he wants, he wants.

And Gansey seems to want too, because his hands also slide down Ronan's back and splay up underneath his shirt, rucking it up, and when Ronan gets it together enough to lean back and look at him, his eyes are bright, cheeks flushed, lips puffy, and he looks straight back into Ronan's eyes, daring him to say something.

Ronan can see words practically on his tongue, so he kisses them off, because it's so much easier not to speak with tongues when they can speak in bodies, and because it's so much easier to lose himself in the slip and slide of tongues, in the way that Gansey's hands tense on his back when Ronan presses him just a bit more into the car. Ronan kisses across his cheek then moves to neck, because it's there, and then he slips Gansey's shirt off because he can, lets Gansey slip his off because he can, returns to kissing his neck because he can, moves down because he can.

Kisses his chest, because it's there. Drops to his knees, looks at up at him, runs his hands over him reverentially, because he can, presses questing lips to the bit of him barely covered by his zipper, because he can, starts to unzip it, because he can. Gansey stops him by tilting his neck up, which feels a lot hotter than it should, and says 'you don't have to-'

'but I can?'

'always'

which sounds a lot like something else, but then Gansey's saying something that sounds a lot like 'but not today' and he doesn't get up, barely moves back, lets himself be held in place like he deserves it, lets the question in his eyes speak for the one he can't spit out, so Gansey pulls him up, pulls him close.

'I want you, any way you want it, but not on your knees. Not here,' which he's pretty certain is code for 'some things are best kept at home' so he says

'Fine'

and then

'the minute we get back to Monmouth, you're unplugging the phone and locking the door. I'll suck you off on my knees, with your back against the wall, like you want, and then together we're gonna explore the rest of the joys of gay sex.'

To his credit, Gansey doesn't blush. To his discredit, Ronan's pretty sure the blood rushing downwards doesn't spare much to rush upwards, as it were.

'The rest?' he says, like maybe 60% evenly, and Ronan lets a wicked smile slide across his face, the sort he saves for fights and boys, and whenever those two clash.

'You're hard,' he says, as a statement of fact, 'and so am I, and as we happen to be here with a pretty serviceable wall behind us, and nobody else around, and as I happen to have some experience in these matters and also pretty damn into making you come, you should let me do something about that. Let me...give you a hand.' His smile grows a little wider and he punctuates his speech with a kiss that turns into a bite and then a suck and when he lets go, he's pretty certain Gansey's in no state to say no, which is good because he doesn't think he can bear it if he does.

So, point two: their trousers are shoved open enough to suggest just the hint of naughty things, one of his hands is on Gansey's back, pulling them together at the hips, one of Gansey's is on his head, making sure he can't pull away;

their other hands are

knocking knuckles

Gansey's hand is wrapped around his cock, and his is wrapped around Gansey's.

It feels,

strange; not to have someone else there, but to have Gansey there - because never in his wildest dreams was this a reality. Sure, he fantasised about this, but he never dreamed about it, because his dreams were wicked wild places and Gansey never belonged there. But he belongs here now, because-

Because it's infinitely simple between them in the end: because they have never needed words and this feels like nothing more than the end of a road they were always going down, because no matter what else, there would always be the two of them, so here they are, now.

Lips unlock in desperation, Gansey leans his head back to breathe and maybe moan a bit, and Ronan lets his lips follow the skin of his neck, because there's no way in hell he's giving up just yet, and there's a bit, in the hollow where neck meets chest, that makes him shake in interesting ways, so he bites there because he can and,

well

it starts with a breath, a sharp one, shocked out of him like a swear word, and his whole body quivers, and his hands clench, by which point Ronan's worked out what's going on, and now he knows how Gansey looks when he comes (which is pretty fucking hot, for the record). He also knows something that he probably should have worked out before, which is that Gansey, when he's fucking someone, doesn't let his own orgasm stop him, but returns the favour as soon as he comes back down to earth.

He's even more energetic just after he's come, which Ronan doesn't think is right, but the fingers on his head dig in and his nails scratch just a bit, which has Ronan coming, and Gansey's eyes slide down his body so he can take in the whole thing, which makes Ronan feel

good.

Surprisingly.

In his head, Gansey is the one who zips up first, the one who swings into the Pig first, who drives them back in silence, unable to keep standing where's he's just come, facing Ronan, not ashamed nor embarrassed, but simply together enough to notice that they've just come all over each other and that there's damage control to be had in the form of the rest of the world, but it's not like that in reality at all.

In reality, Gansey relaxes back against the Pig, but doesn't let him go, and instead pulls his head so that they're practically lip to lip, without kissing. His eyes are hooded, barely open, but when he does open them he's looking right into Ronan's eyes. He bites his lip, which makes Ronan want to kiss him, so he does, which gets pretty interesting pretty quickly, but then they pull back from breath and Gansey says 'Monmouth' so 'Monmouth' he replies and then

'Monmouth'

'Monmouth, yeah'

'Kiss me again?'

'I need some time to recover'

'I'm not fucking you on a hill in the middle of the nowhere, or in the Pig. At least, not for now,' which sounds a lot like a promise, so he steps back and picks up one of their shirts, uses it to clean himself and then Gansey up. To his belated relief, it is not, in fact, Gansey's, and when he thrusts his head into the back to throw it on the floor, he finds another one of his on the seat, which should be a question, but he really doesn't care.

Were their positions swapped, he probably would have slapped Gansey's ass. As it is, Gansey just says 'no amount of sex is going to make me let you drive' which sounds a lot like a challenge.

It gratifies Ronan that, to his knowledge, he's the only one to see this Gansey, this wild, unashamed, fiery Gansey, this Gansey who talks about sex and bodies and locations for the above without a blush. So he sits down and slides over to the passenger seat, seeing, maybe for the first time, the way Gansey's eyes catch on all the skin that's not hidden by his shirt.

When Gansey's sitting down, the engine's going and they're beginning to wind their way back to the real world, an idea strikes him. 'Wind your window up,' he says, and to his immensive delight, Gansey does it immediately.

'Challenge for you. I describe in detail what I'm going to do to you when we get home. You keep your eyes on the road, hands on the wheel, and get us home in one piece.'

It's a dare. And Gansey proves again that he gives as good as he gets.

'Challenge for you. Work out exactly what I like during aforementioned acts and descriptions thereof, maybe I do the same to you. I'm sure you can give me some hints.'

It's a dare and a promise and a challenge all rolled into one.