—

"You're a dumbass."

"So I've been told."

Blue huffed and dropped Gansey's sprite on the table with a clatter. It tipped dangerously but ultimately kept its metaphorical footing, though it wobbled again when Blue leaned heavily on the table's edge. She chewed on her bottom lip for a moment, considering him.

"It was sweet of you to offer," she mused eventually. "How's Declan feel about bacon?"

Gansey pulled his drink to safety, wrapping his hands around it to secure it. She had not given him a straw. "Bacon?"

"Yeah."

"I'm afraid I don't know Declan's opinion on bacon, precisely. I've never asked. I don't think I’ve ever seen him eat it."

Blue hmmed in disappointment. "Well, everything I know how to cook has bacon in it. Or lard."

"I don't think Declan is partial to lard."

Gansey didn't think he was partial to lard either. He didn't say as much; Blue was likely to ask him if he'd ever had lard, and Gansey would have to admit that he had not but was fairly certain anyway, and he wasn't in the mood for a lecture about premature judgments and the importance of trying new things.

She looked as though she might have heard his unspoken words anyway, but she graciously chose to let it go. Instead, she said, "You could buy something and pretend you made it."

Gansey blinked at her. "You, Blue Sargent, would advocate for using my wealth to deceive my boyfriend?"

Blue shrugged. "He's rich too."

"You're supremely unhelpful, and unsympathetic to boot."

"You could give him food poisoning instead." Blue dropped a straw on the table with a cheery customer service smile. "That'd be super romantic."

"I hate you," Gansey told her. She was unbothered.

—

Ronan laughed. Uproariously and for an insultingly long time. He had to lean on the door frame for support to stay upright.

Gansey crossed his arms over his chest and kept his head high. "It's not that funny."

"Dick, I've seen you set water on fire."

"That was one time! There were extenuating circumstances!"

The Barns echoed with Ronan's guffaws. It was a wonder the ruckus didn't wake the cows.

Gansey, who unfortunately was the type of person to blush on occasion, scowled through it. "Are you going to help me or not?"

Ronan wiped at his streaming eyes and finally tamed his amusement enough to say, "Nope."

Gansey's mouth fell open. "Ronan."

Ronan crossed his arms too, kicking one booted foot up on its toe. He blocked the entire doorway. "Absolutely the fuck not."

"That's not fair," Gansey asserted. "You're the only one of my friends who knows how to cook, so you have to help me. You're morally obligated."

Ronan was unmoved by this argument. "Look," he said, "I've been a really good sport about this whole thing you and D-bag have going on—"

"You slashed his tires when you found out we were dating."

"That was never confirmed to be me. And it was only three of them."

"Yes, and if you'd slashed all four, insurance would have covered it, which I know you knew."

Ronan barreled on. "The point is, I have accepted this relationship. Under great duress! But I have accepted it. That does not mean I have to be complicit in it."

Gansey rolled his eyes. "Complicit? Seriously?'

"I'm not helping you seduce my brother, man. Not doing it. No can do."

"It's not seduction," Gansey protested. "It's romance."

Ronan made a very juvenile gagging sound. He unfolded his long frame from its sprawl against the door jamb and stepped back into the house, already moving to swing the door closed in his wake. Gansey shoved his foot in the way.

"Ronan!" he tried again. "Would it help if I said please? I'm going to make a fool out of myself and Adam and Blue were of no use at all. I know you know your way around a kitchen! Help me, Obi-Wan, you're my only hope."

Ronan's response to this was a succinct, "Sucks to suck."

Gansey's foot was displaced from its position and the door slammed shut at last. He thought he even heard the click of the lock being turned. Gansey had never in his life felt the urge to stomp his foot in frustration, not even in years of arguing with Helen, but Ronan's particular brand of pig-headed childishness brought it out in him. He barely restrained himself.

"This is really very immature of you, Lynch," he yelled, loud enough to be sure Ronan could still hear him. "You're being a bad friend! A bad brother too!"

Awful electronic music blared to life on the other side of the door—the Ronan equivalent of sticking his fingers in his ears and going la la la I can't hear you.

Gansey cursed colorfully in true Ronan style. That didn't wake the cows either.

—

"Oh, Richardman." Henry was draped upside down on his bed, head hanging off the edge to peer at Gansey. "First rule of negotiation: never promise anything you don't have. Unless you have a very sound strategy on how to bait-and-switch your opponent into accepting something different that you do have. Can you bait-and-switch your beau into accepting Indian takeout?"

"First of all, he's not my opponent," Gansey said wryly. "I think perhaps you have a skewed perception of relationships."

Henry shrugged; it was an ungainly motion upside down. "If I do, it's one Lynch, The First, shares."

That was fair, and a block upon which Gansey had stumbled more than once in the past. They were working on it. It wasn't the point.

"Second of all," Gansey continued, "Indian isn't good for his stomach. Third of all, that would completely undermine the point of the endeavor."

"Which is?"

"It's, you know…a gesture."

Henry hmmed knowingly. "Romance."

"Yes!" Gansey threw out a hand in his direction, emphatically relieved that someone at last seemed to understand. "Exactly!"

Henry rolled over, feet kicking up behind him like a gossiping girl in one of those '50s movies. Or was it '60s? Irrelevant; the effect was the same. He propped his chin on his hands and said, "If it's merely a sentiment you're trying to convey, then perhaps the quality of the food doesn't matter. May the thought, for once, truly be what counts?"

Gansey deflated. "Is that your way of saying that you can't cook either and thus cannot help me any more than the rest?"

Henry's shrug, when upright, was loose and easy. "I've got a dish or two," he said, "but I don't think Lynch's delicate constitution could handle how much gochujang they contain. Beyond that, I will admit to being something of a rich boy cliché. We had staff for that."

Gansey's family had had staff for that too. If they hadn't, he wouldn't be in this embarrassing of a position. Henry clearly felt far less guilty about it than he did.

Gansey slumped against Henry's desk with a force that nearly sent his rolly chair rolling out from under him. The noise he made was pathetic; Blue would have liked it.

A ruckus of shuffling sounds signaled Henry achieving a properly upright position.

"Gansey Boy," he said, "maybe the real gesture is in the trying. This could be a learning opportunity for you. Resources abound."

"Adam did say I should google for recipe blogs," Gansey muttered against Henry's monogrammed stationary.

"There are dishes so simple even you couldn't wreak havoc on them! What's the worst that could happen?"

"Blue mentioned food poisoning."

"Wendybird is a pessimist," Henry sniffed. "You can't let her win. What sort of precedent would that set?"

"I think your perspective on friendships could use some work too."

Henry abandoned the bed in favor of crossing the room to pat Gansey comfortingly on the head. "I, for one, believe in you," he said, clearly aiming for inspirational. "You've thwarted death itself, twice! Surely, one meal will not defeat you. Go forth and conquer, my little king."

As patronizing as that pronouncement was, it was also the only thing anyone had said so far that actually made him feel better about the situation. He had faced far worse trials and tribulations in the past and come out victorious. He could handle this.

Surely, he could handle this.

—

Something was burning. Something, somewhere, was burning, even though Gansey couldn’t think of anything that should be burning right now, and he didn’t remember putting anything where it shouldn’t have been that could lead to it burning, but there was smoke and and burning-smell and a very shrill and persistent beeping that Gansey couldn’t make stop because he couldn’t see the burning thing that he assumed was probably somewhere on the stove because of all the smoke, and that had to mean that he had—

“What in God’s name is happening in here?”

Gansey swung around to see Declan in the doorway of the kitchen. Declan’s own kitchen, because Monmouth Manufacturing had no kitchen to speak of, so Gansey couldn’t very well have cooked them dinner there. Declan’s kitchen, which was not quite on fire but was not entirely not on fire either, judging by the shrieking fire alarm. Was it 8 o’clock already? Declan wasn’t supposed to be home until 8, by which time Gansey had planned to have a lovely meal on the table in the dining room, ready for eating. He would’ve checked the time, but the digital clock on the oven was obscured by the aforementioned smoke, and it didn’t really matter anyway because Declan was already here and there was not a lovely meal on the table or in the kitchen or anywhere else.

Gansey meant to say something like “welcome home!” or “don’t worry, I’ve got everything under control!” or “dinner will be ready in a minute, honey!” Instead, he opened his mouth, choked on smoke, and croaked, “I fear that I am less intelligent than a hamster.”

Declan’s bafflement was overridden by his instinct for crisis management. Face still scrunched up in confusion, he nonetheless stepped around Gansey and retrieved something from the stove—ah, yes, that was the fish. Gansey remembered putting it in the pan. Surely it hadn’t been in there long enough to warrant all this mess. He would swear he’d only just taken the time to put the other thing—some kind of tuber vegetable, he couldn’t remember which, there were so many different kinds—into the oven, which Declan was now taking out again with great haste. Was there smoke in there too? Why?

In short order, everything was safely corralled. Declan flipped some tiny little switch over the oven that Gansey had never seen before and the smoke began to disperse. He had to climb up onto a stool borrowed from the breakfast nook in order to kill the fire alarm—had it called the fire department? Was that something that fire alarms did on their own? Monmouth didn’t have any installed so Gansey couldn’t say, but he certainly hoped not—but that seemed to be the last of it because then he was turning to Gansey.

“Okay,” Declan said with remarkable aplomb for someone who had just walked into his own home to find a disaster zone. “What exactly happened here?”

Gansey eyed the smoking wreckage of the pan on the stove top. The fish was no longer recognizable as such. “The blog said this recipe was so easy a hamster could do it.” The tuber-thing had turned a color he would never have expected it to turn. Was it supposed to do that? He had to assume that it was not supposed to have done that.

Gansey would’ve put his head in his hands but there was something on them—sauce? He’d mixed up some kind of sauce or drizzle or whatever it was suppose to be, and that part had seemed to go fine. He wasn’t entirely sure when he’d gotten it all over himself, though it felt safe to assume it had been in the mad scramble to figure out what was burning. Whenever and however it had happened, it prevented him from hiding his face in shame the way he would have liked to.

“I don’t know what I did,” he said miserably. “I swear I was following the recipe. You know me, Declan, I’m normally very good at following directions! I swear I did everything it told me to and nothing else. It was supposed to be an easy one! It was even labeled ‘beginner friendly’!”

Declan caught one of his saucy hands halfway through a gesture made wild by frustration. He snagged a dish towel from the counter where it had been buried under a heap of measuring cups and wiped Gansey’s palm clean for him. “You got a recipe off the internet,” he summarized. “Things did not go as planned.”

“Clearly not!” Gansey took his hand back and this time there was no impediment to hiding behind it. “I don’t understand how this always happens, and I mean always. I must be cursed. Genuinely cursed! At some point in my travels, I inadvertently offended some witch or another, and she put a hex on me such that I can’t set foot in a kitchen without incurring the gods’ wrath. That’s the only logical explanation, but I can’t imagine what I could possibly have done to deserve it! I just wanted to cook a nice dinner for my boyfriend. Was that really too much to ask?”

A noise interrupted Gansey’s lamentations. One that sounded suspiciously like a smothered laugh. Gansey emerged from dubious shelter of his palm to find Declan’s face perfectly straight and expressionless. That lasted for approximately two seconds. He tried valiantly to fight it off, but even Declan Lynch’s infamous poker face was no match in the end, and he quickly devolved into a fit of giggles so strong that he nearly doubled over.

“You’re laughing,” Gansey said, affronted. “I am cursed by the gods, I ruined our date night, I nearly burned your house to the ground, and you’re laughing!”

Declan tried to say something, but all that came out of his mouth was a wheeze. He had to brace himself on the counter, shoulders heaving, eyes crinkled up from the width of his smile until they almost disappeared. Beneath the indignation, of which there was plenty, Gansey was forced to admit that the sight made his heart do horribly cliché things in his chest cavity. There were very few sights that he considered more beautiful than when Declan Lynch smiled at him.

That did not stop him from snatching up the discarded dish towel and hitting Declan with it. Declan did not protest this, possibly because he was too busy laughing and possibly because he knew he deserved it. He did eventually grab onto the weapon himself and use it to haul Gansey in, close enough to wrap strong arms around his waist. The adrenaline of the whole ordeal was finally starting to wear off for Gansey, taking the panic with it and leaving embarrassment and bitterness and that shaky kind of leftover anxiety in its wake. Declan’s weight bearing him back into the counter was grounding, at least. He buried his face in Gansey’s shoulder and, when he emerged, he was pink-faced and winded and grinning madly but finally stable enough to speak.

“I’m not laughing at your apparent curse,” he said, laughing. “I’m really not! I just—”

He had to take another minute. Gansey pinched him in the side, which did not help with the overwhelming mirth but did make him feel a little better in a petty sort of way. “What? What about this situation could possibly be this funny?”

“It’s just that—” One more deep, steadying breath. The grin remained, irksomely dazzling. “Ronan texted me earlier,” Declan informed him, “telling me not to eat any food you made. I thought he was just trying to sabotage us, like usual.” He cast his eyes around the kitchen. The charred lump of fish was still smoking. “But now I think maybe it was motivated by genuine fear for my life. It might be the most real concern that he’s ever shown for my health and safety.”

Gansey took a moment to process this, during which Declan managed to contain himself. Then: “That son of a bitch!”

Declan lost his composure again, though this time he muffled it in the crook of Gansey’s neck. Under any other circumstance, this would’ve distracted Gansey, but the inherent eroticism of Declan’s warm breath against the sensitive skin of his throat took a backseat to his betrayal.

“Ronan is such an asshole!” he declared. “If he had just helped me when I asked him to, maybe this entire disaster could’ve been averted, but no! He didn’t want to be ‘complicit’ in my ‘seduction’!”

Gansey wasn’t usually the type of person to employ air quotes, but he felt this was an occasion that warranted them. The force of his scoff ruffled Declan’s hair. He would’ve said more, with even greater derision, but the warm breath on his throat became warm lips instead and the betrayal suddenly tripped and stumbled before it could reach the finish line, eroticism coming up quick on its heels.

“Is that what this is?” Declan asked him. “A seduction?”

He placed another kiss on Gansey’s neck, lingering. Gansey flushed. His hands abandoned their gesticulations in favor of Declan’s hips. With as much dignity as he could muster, which was not very much at all for a wide variety of reasons, he said, “It was meant to be a romantic gesture.”

Declan’s kisses followed a meandering path up Gansey’s throat, across his jaw, to the corner of his mouth. Once there, he hummed thoughtfully. Gansey could feel the vibration of it in his own chest where they were pressed together. Declan was warm and solid and present, pinning him down in the most reassuring and promising of ways, smiling against his cheek, and it would’ve been perfect if not for the scent of culinary failure still permeating the room.

Gansey evaded Declan’s kiss with a noise of frustration. “I really wanted to make this perfect for you. Instead, I destroyed your kitchen and I don’t even have anything to show for it. We have no dinner. That was the whole point of the endeavor—dinner!”

With a sigh that somehow managed to convey both exasperation and a deep fondness, Declan pulled back enough to look him in the eye. “The point of it,” he reminded him, “was to spend time together. Because we missed each other.”

Gansey pursed his lips, fighting stubbornly against his own instinct to melt. “I promised you a meal I couldn't deliver. You sacrificed a whole evening for it.”

Declan merely rolled his eyes. He slid out of their embrace, much to Gansey's chagrin, and reached for one of the lower cabinets. “It's not like we're going to starve.”

Gansey watched in horror as he retrieved a plastic mixing bowl and, from a higher cabinet, a box of cheap pasta. Water entered the bowl, the noodles entered the water, the bowl entered the microwave. Gallingly, nothing caught on fire for him, but more importantly—

“No, don’t do it yourself! You weren't supposed to have to lift a finger! It was supposed to be me treating you, not the other way around! And microwavables are woefully unsexy.”

Declan pulled milk and butter out of the fridge, depositing them on the ten square inches of clean counter space that remained, and turned to smirk at him. “I thought this was a romantic gesture,” he said, “not a seductive one.”

“Well, I—” Gansey huffed. “Well, okay, so I wanted it to also be at least a little bit seductive.”

Declan sauntered closer again, tugging at Gansey's defensively crossed arms until he dropped them and then insinuating himself into his space. He placed a soft, easy kiss on Gansey's lips. “Consider me seduced.”

The microwave whirred away in the background, much more cooperative for Declan than it ever was for Gansey. He wanted badly to resent it, but Declan kissed him again, and again, and any second spent not appreciating Declan’s kisses seemed a wasteful one, and thus Gansey was forced to let it all go.

His attempt at being romantic had been a miserable failure—so what? There was no permanent property damage, probably. Nobody had food poisoning. They were still going to eat something at some point, even if Declan had to make it himself. The important thing was that they were both here, at the same time, and at least for this one evening neither of them had anywhere else to rush off to. If they wanted to, they could stay right where they were, kissing languidly against the kitchen counter in the midst of all the mess, for the whole night! There was nothing stopping them!

Except for the beep of the microwave, of course, followed almost immediately by the ping of an incoming text on Declan’s phone. The phone was passed over for him to check while Declan went to stir the pasta. It was Ronan inquiring as to whether or not Declan was dead. Two texts, in one day, of his own volition. He actually was worried. Bastard.

Declan plucked the phone back out of his hand. He read the text, snorted, shook his head. Then he began tapping at the screen. “I’m telling him you cooked a lovely meal,” he said. “Simple, but effective. A little heavy on the salt, maybe, for realism’s sake. Can’t make it sound too good to be true.”

“A sound strategy for any good lie,” Gansey said wryly. “Now tell him not to panic but you won’t be responding anymore because you’re turning your phone off.”

Declan’s eyebrow quirked up. “Why?”

“He’ll assume it’s because we’re going to have sex.”

A smirk pulled up the corner of Declan’s mouth. “Is that part of the lie?”

“It is not,” Gansey said with the weight of promise. “But it serves the dual purpose of supporting the lie in making it look like my sudden surprise culinary skills were simply irresistible and also grossing him out. Which he deserves.”

Declan hummed appreciatively. “Two birds with one stone.” He typed out the message and sent it with obvious relish. Then, as promised, he turned the device off. “Now that that’s out of the way,” he announced, “we have a dinner to eat.”

“We have to finish making it first,” Gansey pointed out. “Or, I should say, you have to finish making it first. If I tried to help, something else would go disastrously wrong, and we’d have to start all over again on a third dinner attempt. Nobody has time for that.”

On the canvas, a woman in a white dress floated down a river. Tragic, beautiful, cursed. The Lady of Shalott.

"She looks so sad, doesn't she?" Gansey murmured.

Declan studied her face. Later that night, lying sleepless in his hotel bed, heater clanking, eyes open in the dark, he'd see that small, parted mouth and the unfocused eyes—the expression of someone who understood, with awful clarity, that she was past saving.

Declan agreed. "She does."

They walked together, slipping from gallery to gallery, their coats brushing as they went. They hadn’t been anything resembling friends for years—Gansey was Ronan's first and Declan was not built for friendship—, but Declan,to his own surprise, felt a flicker of relief at how easily they fell into step. He wasn’t sure who Gansey was anymore, but he still had that unique force, a gravitational pull. If Declan was grey, Gansey was golden.