Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me. Boy, do I wish I could write like Maggie Stiefvater, but I can't, so this is just for entertainment purposes. Please don't sue me.
A/N: Let me know what you think if you have time! Feedback is always appreciated, even if it's just to say that you hated this.
Dreamers Never Sleep
August was beautiful, spent by the beach somewhere in South Carolina. Gansey had tucked Blue into his side and tugged at her wild hair when she laughed at the sight of him standing on the hot sand, a boy so out of place among the water and the sun, but he did not mind her laughter.
It was the happiest sound, to him, and he was here here here, nowhere else, and why would he mind anything when he had a beautiful girl by his side and a second rebirth, a second breath of life stirring within him?
Richard Gansey III led an extraordinary life, and he reveled in it.
"How do you think Cheng is?" Blue asked after she dropped a kiss somewhere on Gansey's shoulder, reminding him of the days when that was all that was allowed.
Now, now there was so much more.
He grinned, adjusting his wire frames as the sun caught them at an uncomfortable angle. "Halfway to Venezuela by now, I would bet," he answered her, remembering their parting ways back in July.
All dreamers like themselves looked toward the stars, but there were a lot of stars in the sky. It happened that they had been looking at different ones; Henry had wanted air beneath his wings to spur him towards adventure, while Blue and Gansey had wanted dust and roads and endless circles beneath their tires that would always lead them back home.
And so they had taken separate forks in the road, but no one minded. Henry made sure to keep them updated with obnoxiously beautiful pictures of the scenery around him as he explored, and in return Blue scribbled down pretty nothings on tourist postcards bought by Gansey, none of which would probably ever find him but were sent anyway.
Today it was just them, and so they splashed cold ocean water at each other and acquired atrocious sunburns together and then ate at the most bizarre place they could find.
Gansey was walking on air.
When his phone rang (though it might be mentioned that it was now mostly Blue's phone, as well, seeing as she refused to let him buy her one and instead preferred to leech off of his data so that she could call 300 Fox Way every now and then) he pressed it to his ear. "Adam?"
Across the table from him, Blue raised her eyebrows and stole a french fry off of his plate.
There had not been much bizarre food to find in this part of South Carolina.
"Ronan, actually," a cool voice said into his ear. Gansey blinked in surprise. This was a rare occurrence.
"Hold on," Gansey said, "I'm going to put you on speakerphone." Ronan, he mouthed at Blue, forgetting to press the speaker button for a moment as she smiled at him, her eyes alight and setting his heart aflutter.
He was pathetic, he knew.
He wouldn't have it any other way.
After some generously inventive expletives from Ronan's end, he remembered his job and hit the button, placing the phone on the table in between them. "Sargent, bro," Ronan said, "how are you handling Dick?"
"We're having a great time, thanks," she replied. "How's Adam?"
"That's why I called, actually." Ronan's voice was drowned out for a moment by the sound of traffic and shouting, and then it was quiet and clear again. "He's dragging me to yet another pretentious university he got accepted to, trying to make his decision still, and I am bored shitless."
"And so you called us," Gansey finished.
"Very good, Dick," Ronan said mockingly, sounding equal parts aggravated and amused. "I can see now why you were the golden boy of Aglionby."
Blue cleared her throat. "If you don't want to go, Ronan, just tell him that."
He made a noise that was not quite a whine, not quite a growl.
"You'll figure it out, Lynch," Gansey assured him, picking at a stray string on his turquoise polo. "Dream anything lately?"
There was a pause on the other end, a breath too long, before Ronan said, "No."
Blue shook her head when he opened his mouth, silently telling Gansey not to push it. Dreamers never really sleep, after all, and there would be plenty of time to find things out come tomorrow morning, or the morning after, or a morning in ten years.
They had all the mornings in the world; no curses or destinies chased at their heels at this moment in the grand circle that was time. There was only the restlessness of their own hearts to push them forward, now.
By the time night fell, the dream Camaro was churning up South Carolina dust beneath its tires, dead set on Henrietta. "Just to make sure he's alright," Gansey said from the passenger seat.
"Adam would tell us if he wasn't alright, President," Blue told him. "We're going home because you just aren't you without your mint plant." She smiled at him, a small and wicked thing that told him that she wasn't mad with him for worrying, that she understood it, and he allowed himself to smile back.
In this moment, all he wanted was to be best friends and a little more with Blue for the rest of his life, to catch up with his boys back home, to chew mint leaves and discover every hidden wonder he had missed in the years he was blindsided by Glendower.
Glendower.
As the night air rushed in the open windows, caressing his cheek and threading its way through Blue's hair, he considered the name he had not truly given thought to in months.
He thought of the many Ganseys he was in the past, the Gansey he was now, the Ganseys he could be in the future.
None of those future versions of himself, he knew, were obsessed with anything other than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The good old American dream.
Glendower was just another tally mark in his book, he decided then, like his rebirths and his insomnia and his hunting the world alone at fifteen. Glendower changed him, but Gansey wanted other things from life now, bigger things if that was possible, and that was alright.
He would always want more.
It was just how he was.
And because dreamers never sleep, they have all the time in the world to dream up new destinies for themselves - and then live them out.