it was starting

"What?" Ronan looked up, brow furrowing with sweat in the face of the beating the Barns was presently enduring by way of the sun, and wiped his forehead on his sleeve.

Gansey held a perspiring glass of iced tea out in offering, stepping around the warped line of the fence. "Nothing," he said passively, tipping his head in response to Ronan's nod of thanks. "How's it coming?"

Ronan drank greedily, the sweet, sticky liquid running in thin rivulets down his throat and pooling in the hollow between his collarbones. "It's the prettiest princess at the fence cotillion," he intoned, handing the half-empty glass back. "Like shit, is how it's coming. But we'll get there."

"I'm sure you will."

"Gotta fix the fucking roof on the long barn after this, too. You gonna stand there and watch the whole time, or would you like to do something useful?"

"I brought you a drink," Gansey defended, tipping the glass to his own lips. There was a visible semicircle adorning the edge of it, wet with Ronan's saliva, and he watched as Gansey turned it to match his mouth up precisely before taking a second longer, slower sip.

"Thanks," Ronan deadpanned, just caustic enough that, had an outsider been listening, they likely would not have picked up on the fondness lying sleepily beneath. "I'm sure that tea's gonna do a stellar job of holding this line tight while I sleeve it."

Gansey, thumb to his lower lip, crouched next to Ronan. "Do you need help?"

Ronan glanced sideways at him, eyes narrowed to slits, annoyance radiating from him in waves. "No, I don't fucking need help. Fuck off."

Gansey did not fuck off. Instead, he fell back gracefully onto the grass, propping himself on his elbows, legs crossed at the ankles. He was going to stain the elbows of his dress shirt, but he had enough of his faculties about him, Ronan reckoned, to figure that out for himself, so he didn't say as much.

Didn't say anything. Just kept plugging along, pulling the wire taut with one hand, tightening down the crimping sleeve via a pair of vice grips with the other.

After a lengthy moment of quiet, save for the lowing of cattle and the occasional, screeching shrill of cicadas, he flicked his attention toward Gansey again, just to determine whether he'd so much as shifted; whether his gameplan was to spend the evening observing Ronan while he sat around doing fuck-all.

What he found, however, stopped him in his tracks.

Not at all shyly, Gansey was palming himself through his chinos, lips pressed into a tight line, hips barely leaving the ground every few seconds, chasing the friction.

"Jesus," Ronan said, and then, for good measure, "Mary. What are you—do you not want to, like—take it inside?"

Gansey's pupils were blown wide despite the sun, and Ronan noted now that he'd popped the top button on his collar, allowing for a sliver of glistening, reddening skin to peek through. "No," he said, cool, despite his general disposition. "No, I think I'd like to keep it right here, if it's all the same to you."

Ronan blinked rapidly, brain running on dial-up, vying to catch the proverbial train. "Okay," he assented finally. "What is this—why are you—? Mother of fucking god. Okay."

It didn't fully register to him, the nature of the situation, until, several minutes later, hand working beneath his pants, Gansey prompted, "Tell me what you're doing. Just—talk me through the process."

"I'm." Ronan stopped. Swallowed. He was going to hurt himself if he wasn't careful—get too distracted with half (or three quarters, or all) his attention on Gansey and catch his fingers with his clamps, grab hold of a barb, grip the wire so hard he cut straight through his palm. "Uh. This little metal piece is called a crimp sleeve and it—it splices the two broken pieces of fencing back together. It's a pain in the ass to fasten it with a vice; there's a tool for it, which I had, but it fucking busted and I haven't replaced it yet, so I'm just. Making it work, I guess."

Gansey made a quiet, contented sound. Ronan didn't dare look at him.

"The line has ratchet tighteners," he continued, a little less steadily than he'd have cared to cop to. "They're next to the posts; those things that look like spurs. But I can't feed the wire through the sleeve without some slack, so I just have to hold it in place until it's set and then I can tighten it back down. Too much tension on either side of a post will cause it to lean, even if you can't see it with the naked eye, and it'll eventually come loose enough that the bulls can butt it over if they decide they've got a vendetta, so you have to be really, um. Vigilant. About making sure the wire's pulling the same weight on both sides."

Gansey was breathier, slightly less composed, when he asked, "What if it does come loose? How do you fix it?"

Ronan was sweating so heavily he could taste the salt on his tongue, and, gun to his head, he couldn't have determined what degree of the heat could be attributed to the sun. "Pull it," he managed, "if it's loose enough. If it's still pretty well in there you can pack around it with a slurry of something that'll dry down nice and solid, like clay soil. But if it's not, you have to rip it out of the ground. And that can be a son of a bitch, if it's not ready to come up on its own—like pulling a stubborn tooth with pliers. Have to dig it out, sometimes."

He wasn't looking. He was not looking. There was an audible swishing of fabric now, rhythmic, cadent, and Ronan wanted to seek out the source so badly his muscles ached, but he didn't.

Gansey said, "Tell me how you put it back in."

Ronan cleared his throat. Shook his head to urge a fly off his cheek. "You have to dig deeper. Just a little; if you go too far it'll offset the height from the posts on either side and fuck with the tension. But enough that the ground underneath it gives it room to settle. Otherwise it's just a point sitting on a flat surface trying to carve out a hole. Defeats the entire purpose. And then you have to clear out the dirt—so go wider than the post. You want to leave yourself room to make sure it's not leaning. Use a level, too, obviously, but your job's a hell of a lot easier if you've got a clean foundation."

A choked noise—something between a laugh and a moan—floated airily into Ronan's perception, and he took a moment to steady himself, counting off five Mississippis in his head.

Then he soldiered on.

"It's tricky," he continued, "to hold it upright on your own. Helps if you take a mallet to it first, just to drive it in far enough to keep it stable. And then you fill in around it, a layer at a time. Few inches of dirt, then tamp it down. You can use a compactor, or you can just stomp on it until there's no more give. You just have to learn exactly what you're feeling for."

"Oh," Gansey breathed, "I'm sure you know exactly what you're feeling for."

Finally, finally, Ronan allowed himself the indulgence of laying his eyes on the mess Gansey was making of himself—that Ronan was making of him.

His cock was out now, pants and underwear rucked down just low enough to expose it, the head appearing and disappearing from within the cage of his fist. He was flushed, panting, so viscerally beautiful Ronan felt it welling behind his lashes.

“Yeah,” he agreed, allowing himself a rare moment of self-assured pride, because he knew it was what Gansey wanted—what he was looking for. “Yeah. I know what I’m doing.”

That was all it took. Stares impenetrably locked, Gansey was off like a shot, stripping himself so hard Ronan wondered if it had to hurt, pearly, gauzy white spilling over his knuckles and onto his lap.

The throbbing between Ronan’s own legs was almost easy to ignore like this, watching Gansey come apart in front of him, for him, but it became insistent once again with startling clarity when Gansey urged, “You can finish up here later. I’ll race you back to the house. If you win, I’ll blow you.”

Ronan dropped the vice. “And if you win?”

It’s late, when Matthew gets home. He’s been out with work friends, for trivia they’re all abysmal at, and by the time he pulls into the driveway of the townhouse, it’s deep enough into the evening that he isn’t surprised to find all the lights off. Probably, he muses, Declan has taken advantage of his preoccupation and gone to bed at a not unreasonable hour for once in his life.

Inside, he is met, true to his suspicions, with a brother-shaped mass occupying the center of the mattress.

He smiles fondly, shimmying out of his jeans, and draws back the edge of the blanket, intent on slipping in next to Declan and kissing him awake. Before he makes it quite that far, however, he freezes.

Beneath the duvet, Declan is curled in on himself, arms wound tightly around his middle, brows pulled together as if in pain, or, at the least, discomfort.

Gently, he settles onto the edge of the bed, resting a hand on Declan’s bare shoulder. “Hey,” he says, quietly, and then, when that isn’t enough to rouse him, “Deklo.”

Declan’s slower to wake than usual, coming to in stages rather than all at once and rearing for a fight, and something in the apparent serenity of it is disconcerting. “Hi,” he says, voice thick, reaching for Matthew on instinct and pressing a close-mouthed kiss to his forearm once he’s gotten ahold of it. “Have fun?”

“Yeah,” Matthew tells him, brushing his hair back from his forehead in what he hopes is an inconspicuous attempt to check for a fever. He’s a little sweaty, but no warmer than he ever is in sleep. “Lost by a landslide. It was a blast.” He gives it a beat, lets Declan’s acknowledging hum pass between them. Then, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Declan says, and then, because he knows Matthew will worm his way to the bottom of the situation if he doesn’t elaborate on his own, “My stomach’s just… It’s been a day. But it’s alright.”

Matthew does lay down now, slotting his right arm beneath Declan’s head to manhandle him into position, pillowed on Matthew’s chest. Concern, familiar and insistent, wells behind his ribs, but it’s a diluted beast now compared to when he was younger, before he had a solid grasp on the fact that Declan being sick did not mean the same thing as Matthew being sick, that Declan was sick always and that some days it affected him more heavily than others.

“Have you been able to eat anything?” he asks, fairly confident that he knows the answer already.

Predictably, Declan shakes his head.

“Did you have coffee this morning?”

A nod this time, and even without the ability to see Declan’s face, Matthew knows he looks guilty. “I was exhausted,” he defends weakly. “And I had a presentation today, and I—”

“It’s okay,” Matthew interjects, and presses a kiss to his curls. “Do you think you could eat now? Just a little?”

The whir of the ceiling fan is marginally louder in Declan’s hesitation. Eventually he says, “I don’t know.”

“Have you thrown up any?”

“When I got home,” he admits, hooking his leg over Matthew’s waist. “Just once.”

“Did it help?”

“Some. Mostly just feels like I’m on fire now.”

“Oh,” Matthew intones agreeably, soothing over the tense muscles of Declan’s back with his palm. “Well, as long as that’s all.”

Declan tilts his head back and laughs—soft, just a breath—against the side of Matthew’s neck. “I’m okay,” he says. “I’ll try to eat something. Yeah?”

Matthew knows he’s okay, that he’s used to this, that it’s nothing more than going through the motions, but still, he feels a small flicker of relief at the offering. “Yeah,” he echoes.

In the kitchen, Matthew keeps it light. When he returns to the bedroom, it’s with two pieces of buttered toast, half a banana, and a glass of water (no ice, because sometimes it causes Declan to cramp), and the light is still off, but Declan’s sitting up against the headboard, looking mostly like an entire human being.

Matthew hands him the plate but holds onto the glass; tells him he can have it when he’s ready, just to say so.

Declan doesn’t quite finish, but he gives it a valiant effort, and he keeps it down, so Matthew takes it as a win.

“You know I would’ve come home, right?” he says, once they’re settled in again, Declan propped up a little because the goal is to keep him keeping it down, Matthew curled around his side. “You could’ve told me you were having a rough day.”

“I know, baby.” Declan tucks a finger under his chin, tips his head up to kiss him on the mouth for the first time since he’s been home. “There wasn’t really anything to be done about it. I just needed to sleep the worst of it off. But I know you would’ve.”