#bludam

anyway before adam brings the tow truck he's like "i need to look at him" re: ronan because he can see that the guy in the passenger seat is Fucked Up and while it could be an infected wound — anyone with a survival instinct would not sit in a car with a bitten person for hours on end -- it sure wouldn't be the first time adam's seen someone get themselves chomped because they're too fuckdeep in denial to admit their loved one is a lost cause

gansey's like "he's not bit" and adam's like "i hear you but i'm not bringing you anywhere til i know for sure" 

and gansey has this moment of realization that this guy is currently ready to kill ronan and will not hesitate to do it and probably has a backup plan for handling gansey too if it comes to that

the difference between adam and gansey as people is much more quickly illustrated in this scenario than in canon

gansey has no plan for what he's gonna do if adam turns out to be one of those "can't risk it, gotta kill everyone with a stubbed toe" types but fortunately for everyone adam doesn't do wanton mass murder for the sake of murder he's just honed himself razor-thin into something extremely callous and practical

adam opens the passenger door and peels away what's left of ronan's tank top and the horribly old horribly unsanitary worn through bandages and he concludes pretty quick that this isn't a case of someone turning zombie but from the look on his face it's pretty fckn clear he doesn't consider the current situation much more hopeful than a turning zombie case

adam's seen the way gansey's called for help and has waited until dark to be sneaky helpful because reasons which means he already knows ronan means a lot to gansey and he already has a preemptive headache about it but he's like

"okay. don't be offended. but. scale of one to ten. how... attached are you to him"

"Excuse Me"

the ensuing whisper-hissed argument basically boils down to gansey going "i don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people" 

and adam going "i don't know how to explain to you that wasting limited medical supplies on people who are gonna die anyway is bad"

 and gansey going "okay well i'm not going anywhere without him and i die if he dies so you can leave actually" 

and adam being like [most longsuffering person in the universe] "i'll take you guys back to my place"

adam tows them to an old auto body shop that seems to still be serving its pre-apocalypse purpose because when you're a car mechanic who's survived the apocalypse it makes sense to settle down in a structure that's at least optimized for you to work efficiently

as soon as the bmw is safely inside the garage and the door is closed there's a tiny girl there opening the passenger door to look at ronan 

(gansey and ronan have remained in the car during the tow instead of being in the tow truck because adam didn't want to move ronan and gansey was not going to leave him)

 and she kind of sucks her teeth like she's appraising an unfortunate car wreck like "that's gotta hurt"

gansey's coiled up with adrenaline and ready to have the exact same fight he just had with adam except then she's like "okay let me grab my mom and persephone and whatever medications i can scrounge up hm. this does look really bad"

adam's very tired and in a mood and as he's getting out of the truck he's like "yeah well i tried" and gansey's about to be extremely uncharitable except the girl zeroes the fuck in on this like "you tried what, adam"

adam's like oh my god.  am i really gonna have to get it from all sides tonight and she's like "well i know you didn't try fixing him because it's a little more than a bandaid situation" 

and adam's like wow i sure have other things to be doing with my time and she's like "you didn't"

 and he's like "well look, the guy's ALIVE and HERE isn't he, so if you're gonna accuse me of something let's at least focus on that"

 and she's like "ADAM."

gansey immediately likes her

gansey’s also grappling with powerful relief because he and ronan haven’t seen another person in weeks and oh there are people here who can HELP

adam and blue continue fighting literally the entire time they're going to get maura and persephone and when they come back and when they're helping get a semiconscious ronan out of the car

they pretty clearly do this a lot because somehow even as they're each ripping into the other about their flaws they're also working together and with maura and persephone in terms of taking physical positions to move ronan and keep him stable and like.  they're not interrupting their argument with ronan-positioning commentary they're just managing to argue and instinctively move with each other anyway with no pause

gansey feels one grudging half smidgen iota of gratefulness (which would be full-blown gratefulness if he wasn't determined to have a grudge) at one point which is 

when they're moving ronan onto a makeshift stretcher or w/e and there's really no painless way to do it no matter how gentle and careful they are and ronan YELLS and tries to sit up like what the FUCK is happening

 and gansey's been keeping out of the way but he's like oh okay i am needed now and it's maybe three seconds before he's at ronan's side

 but in that span of time adam's managed to push ronan back down and is very quietly calmly explaining the situation to him without any hint of his earlier irritation or exasperation

and gansey's like so relieved that this guy is apparently practiced enough with injured people to have developed a calm bedside manner but he's also like fuck that i'm mad at you and you're a dick

the interior of the shop has been converted into an apartment space that didn't technically have two floors at first but sort of does now thanks to the miracle of loft construction and having too much time on ur hands

maura and persephone have the stretcher w/ adam spotting and blue drags gansey inside so they'll be out of the way

there's a blonde kid wearing a t-shirt and boxers with naruto bedhead who has the wide-eyed alertness of someone who woke up five minutes ago but now must be part of the adventure 

and blue's like "this is noah, he FAINTS AT THE SIGHT OF BLOOD" 

and noah's like "oh yeah i do don't i" and scampers up to the loft and disappears before the stretcher can enter

up in the loft a different voice says "THAT IS MY RIB" and then an entirely new guy (how many are they keeping up there) descends also in boxers and a t-shirt like "will someone please inform the resident golden retriever that i am a fragile waif who must not be disturbed" 

he reaches the landing just in time to see the stretcher being carried in.  

gansey's not really focused on him because he's watching ronan. anyway instead of reacting like a normal human being to the sudden appearance of drama the guy leans against blue's shoulder and in the most put-upon tone imaginable is like "blue you must start informing me when half-naked attractive wounded men are being carried through the kitchen so i can do my hair"

blue's like "this is henry. he's returning to the void now. henry get out"

the thing is after this expression of apparently complete disinterest in the ronan situation henry touches blue's elbow and the two of them exchange a quick look that gansey catches despite his focus on ronan 

because gansey is exquisitely versed in the language of subtle glances and very slightly angled eyebrows or mouths

ronan's getting successfully laid out on the couch and persephone's about to do what she can (in my head she's a medical doctor in this au bc can u imagine) and the situation is about as handled as it can be for now and there's nothing gansey can do except get in the way

 and he does have the presence of mind to realize he doesn't know much about these people yet and should be cautious and learn what he can

so when henry and blue casually walk out the back door into the much cooler evening gansey..... sort of follows them

there's not a lot of room to do hardcore sneaking so he can't get close enough to hear all of the conversation but he sure can see that henry looks more worried than the flippant cool boy he was just introduced to 

and he thinks he might hear henry mention someone named "kay"??

and then he most fucking definitely hears blue's snapped reply of "don't even start, adam's bad enough, i'm NOT putting up with it from you" and then gansey has to very quickly duck back inside because the pair of them are turning back toward the house

that’s about all i’ve got for this scene but here’s additional important content

eventually gansey asks blue why so many people drop in and out of the auto shop all the time because there's clearly not room for literally all of them to be sleeping there permanently and no one except adam seems all that interested in mechanics

 and what he's really asking but trying to be polite about is "you clearly don't agree with this asshole's principles so how are so many seemingly normal people giving him the time of day"

 (gansey is used to being on the receiving end of this conversation wrt ronan, he's never been the one asking before, it's weird, he's puzzled) 

and he gets SUCH fucking whiplash when the answer turns out to be "because adam's saved every single one of our lives"

blue's like "also he's my best friend and i love him i'm not enslaved via blood debt or something but y'know. the loyalty is hard to shake"

gansey has a very unpleasant realization of "adam protects these people like ronan protects me" and wants to unrealize it because that makes it a lot harder to hold a grudge suddenly

adam has no way of gauging how far is too far or how callous is too callous except that blue's there to be like "you sound like a supervillain and should take a nap" at any given moment

ronan has to take a while recovering and the fact that he sleeps a lot and slips in and out of consciousness means plenty of people have partial or full conversations in his earshot assuming he's not listening

 so he's gleaning a lot about these people and how they function and what's up with kavinsky’s stranglehold on the town and adam’s proximity to him

 which means the first time he's clear-headed enough to have a lucid conversation with adam the first words out of his mouth are "so who's holding your leash"

the second words out of his mouth are “are they gonna hurt gansey”