Baby you're a firework [4th of July Gathering]

[jeongbro]

From Candlewood, Henry could hear the party going on northeast of town, the thud of distance bass and the pop of fireworks and the shrill of cars put to the test. And how shit was that?

He texted Blue, first. A soft, subtle inquiry, a joke of an invitation, but a broad one. One for all of them. He remembered Ronan's arm in that cast, and him saying it was from Kavinsky, and Henry had no duty to them, but it would be good to keep all of them away from the mess that was going on at that party outside of town. None of them had to come, of course. They were all their own people, adults--and a ghost who was as good as one, in Henry's eyes--and they were each allowed their own decisions.

So Henry texted Any plans for the 4th Wendybird? And then he followed it up, even before she could answer, I think my place could use some Virginian charms.

He had no decorations. Fourth of July over the past two years had become a thing tainted by Joseph Kavinsky. But he could, easily, go down a couple blocks and buy more two-liter bottles of Pipsy and lemon-lime soda than he could possibly need, and some liquor and mixers, and chips and dip. If he didn't use it all up, he'd bring it to Panoptes. And that seemed like a good enough way to ignore that Joseph Kavinsky was trying to blow himself up, to him.


[Running as a gathering]

Comments

[jeongbro]

Henry's stomach was tight, all balled up with nerves, because this was not a quiet, close pit in the basement of Borden House, telling Richard Gansey about these things in the dark where his face was concealed. It was hard to stay neutral and reserved in the face of Ronan Lynch's judgment.

"It was a bee," Henry said, but shook his head. "It was a robot of a bee. He told Seondeok, my mother, about it, and then he came to meet her before she bought it. I don't think he--" He stopped and breathed a laugh, shook his head. "He showed her one that day, showed us both one, but it was not my RoboBee. Later, when she went to get them, he had two.

"One was the one he had shown her: just a drone basically, it responds to particular radio signals. The other one was for me."

[thedreamthief]

For a moment, all Ronan can do is stare.

It doesn't make much sense for Cheng to lie about something like this. What the fuck good is there in lying about a robotic bee? All the same, it seems fucking bizarre and not just because Ronan's spent so much of the past several years dreaming up ways to resist actual bees.

And his father was dreaming new ones. Mechanical ones.

"So what did it do?" he asks, curiosity getting the better of him now. "Was it like a pet? I never saw you with it at Aglionby."

Then again, for that Ronan would've had to have actually been at Aglionby and paying attention.

[jeongbro]

"It did everything," Henry said, and his voice was a little pained, because RoboBee wasn't here, he couldn't show Ronan what it could do or how it reacted to him, the magic and the technology he'd made to help him understand it better.

All he could do was explain what made sense without a demonstration. "It was touch-activated, and then it would respond to the thoughts of that person. My RoboBee responds best to my thoughts over others because I--I think rather loudly. I think better than I speak, and I always have. I didn't speak at all, when my mother bought them from your father."

Henry held his hand up, as if RoboBee might appear, flying in and land on his palm. "I created an interface that took that RoboBee could see and hear and understand, and then, it and I could communicate. And it helped me. So, yes, a little like a pet. But more like--more like a service animal. Service robot. Powered by my own thoughts."

[thedreamthief]

"My father dreamed you a robotic bee and then you created software for it?" The first part isn't hard to imagine, but the latter is somehow. He doesn't know much about Cheng beyond his annoying proclivity toward petitions and social activism, and the fact that all of Ronan's friends seem eager to pull him into the fold. He doesn't know creating interfaces was something he could do. Did their school teach a fucking class for that?

He glances at Henry's upturned hand, finds himself wondering just how big this bee was, what all it could do, how long it took his father to dream it up and the size of the price tag.

Then he looks at Henry's face again, eyebrow arched. "A service bee. This have something to do with that hole in the ground?"

[jeongbro]

"It didn't come with an instruction manual, Lynch," Henry said, dryly. "I had to find a way to know what it saw, what it heard, if it understood me. And making the program helped it learn to understand me better as well. It knew my thoughts, but what good was that if it could not tell me that everything was safe when I asked that?"

Ronan was being flippant, dismissive, but Henry nodded. Rather, the bee had caused the hole in the ground, and then the hole in the ground had caused the program, and then--then, Henry had improved.

"I didn't speak, as a child," he confessed. "I spoke, after some time with RoboBee."

Now, Henry was sure, that in Ronan Lynch's opinion he spoke too much.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan frowns as Cheng explains, his tone wounded, almost. Defensive. Something prickles under Ronan's skin and he snarls a little.

"Hey, calm the fuck down," he says, words sharp but tone uncharacteristically soft. At least as far as Henry Cheng is concerned. "I'm not judging you, man. I'm impressed. I didn't know you could do that shit."

For the first time possibly ever, it makes Ronan what else he can do, what other little tricks he has hidden up his sleeves. If maybe that's why Gansey was, supposedly, so eager to pull Cheng into their group back home. If he helped the search for Glendower somehow. Noah hadn't said anything about it, but Noah's been notoriously and frustratingly vague about everything lately.

His lips quirk then, nearly a smile. "RoboBee, huh. That's creative. How old were you?"

[jeongbro]

Henry shrugged a little bit. "It was just a phone application. Open-source Java Script and C-language. I read a lot of books." It had taken him years to make.

Ronan was giving him a slightly speculative look for a moment, considering, and Henry met his gaze. He wondered what it was he was considering, exactly. If he knew something that Henry didn't, somehow--that would be an interesting twist, some strange circuity to everything. It would serve Henry right.

"Nearly ten," Henry deadpanned. "I was still learning English."

[thedreamthief]

"I don't know what the fuck any of that means," Ronan admits, his tone somewhere between impressed and condescending.

He pauses for another moment, considering Cheng and Cheng considers him. Then, "You created a program to control a robotic bee with your mind before you even knew English."

It's a question even if it comes out as a statement and he lets out a laugh before Cheng can say anything else, shaking his head. "So was that it then? Is this fucking Robobee why Gansey decided he liked you? Because it was the one bee in the whole world that wouldn't kill him?"

[jeongbro]

"I created a program to interpret a magical robotic bee's connection with my thoughts while I was learning English, yes," Henry clarified, because his and Ronan's phrases had important semantic differences. Ronan's, after all, implied that Henry could not control RoboBee without the program; Henry's, of course, was the truth.

It also helped to cover the smart of discomfort that bringing up Gansey put in Henry's chest. He and Gansey had been casual acquaintances at school long before those past days before Henry's arrival. But the shift--the hopeful shift--was a deliberate one.

"Because I gave him all my secrets," Henry said, meeting Ronan's gaze, because that seemed terribly important right now. A test. "And asked nothing more valuable of him than trust. I stood in a hole in the ground, barely big enough for him and I, and told him about being held in a hole in the ground because awful men who hated my mother water RoboBee, because your father hadn't sold it to them. He held the tangible link, a thing that looks most terrifying to him. And I--knowing he would tell you all everything I told him in that hole, knowing he would give you my secrets--asked him if he could trust me."

Henry shrugged. "But I was here, in Darrow, before he could say. And he is not. So now, I work for it."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan's lips curl into a frown again, unsure whether Cheng is trying to clarify or purposefully trying to be condescending. There's a rawness as he continues though, a vulnerability he exposes that makes Ronan instantly uncomfortable. This doesn't feel like it's his to hear.

Gansey's always been better with people than Ronan. All that fucking diplomacy.

"Working for what?" he asks, his tone sharp again. "His trust? He's not here, Cheng. Figured you fucking noticed that by now. You're too late."

[jeongbro]

Henry sighed and scrubbed at the back of his neck. It didn't matter, ultimately. There were bridges not meant to be crossed, and Henry could respect that. He wasn't sure, though, if Ronan Lynch's particular bridge was a draw bridge--like Adam's, carefully and cautiously lowered--or if this bridge had been burnt without the means for repair.

"Yes, thank you, I had cottoned on to that."

Because Ronan was either deliberately missing the point--that Gansey would have given away these secrets, as freely as Henry was trying to--or he just didn't care for them. They meant nothing, either way. Because, of course, Gansey wasn't here.

"You can't stop me from talking to them," Henry said, honest but not threatening. "But I am not trying to take them from you."

[thedreamthief]

"Does it look like I'm stopping you?" Ronan replies, eyebrow arched and lips curled into a sneer.

Hand still wrapped around his beer, he holds his arm out, vaguely indicating the expanse of Cheng's living room. The fact that he's here he figures says something. And he hadn't even bitched all that much about coming.

Which hasn't stopped all three of them from shooting Ronan looks all night, each of them clearly expecting him to do something. Not that Ronan has a fucking clue what. He may not trust Cheng so readily as Noah and Blue, may not be so willing to give him a chance as Adam, but of all the fucking Aglionby dickbags that could've shown up, Cheng is one of the least dangerous.

Until someone hands him a clipboard.

"I'm not just gonna fall to my knees and start sucking your dick, man. I don't care how much Gansey liked you. I don't care what you did in some other dimension. None of that shit matters here. And you said it yourself," Ronan adds, tipping his head back for a quick drink of his beer, his smile all teeth then. "You have to work for it."

[jeongbro]

Henry said nothing, because Ronan could stop him, physically, if he really wanted to. And Henry did not want to provoke that. He crossed his arms over his chest, because that had been the end of their last argument--Ronan storming off, overturning a display, and saying to stay away from his friends.

But, here they were. Ronan begrudgingly standing in Henry's apartment, not starting shit--with him, or going out to start shit with Kavinsky--and that may or may not have been part of this harebrained idea in the first place.

The choice of analogy that Ronan went for didn't surprise Henry, for all its crudeness, but it still made his ears hot with distraction. He scoffed a little, arms a little tighter wound across his chest.

"I think Noah's the only one I haven't been working for," Henry confessed. His chipper camaraderie had fallen easily and unexpectedly on Henry's shoulders. Henry shook his head. There was no point placing that at Ronan's feet.

[thedreamthief]

"Yeah, well that's Noah," Ronan says with a shrug. "He likes everyone." His eyes are still locked on Cheng's though it's not as hard a look as it could be, not aggressive.

Or at least not too aggressive.

"And, apparently, he fucking remembers you. Somehow. I still don't get it, but it's some ghost, time thing. I remember you, but only as an annoying little shit forcing people to sign useless petitions. You're not the worst Aglionby shitstain by far, but you're still not the first person I'd choose to be stuck with in a shitty magical city. Something tells me the feeling there is at least fucking mutual."

[jeongbro]

Henry huffed a noise, maybe a laugh, because Noah did seem to like everyone, and because he didn't really understand this whole ghost thing. He was standing by his maybe Noah's an x-men theory, from when they first met.

"Asking people, and they weren't useless. Or they wouldn't be, if people would take them seriously, instead of writing 'anarchy' across three slots of a petition form." That was after the summer, though, after when Noah had said Ronan was from. He still gave Ronan a look for it, because Ronan had never been respectful of the process.

Being told, though, how he ought to feel about who was or was not here grated at him. Henry did his best to shrug it off and away. "I'd prefer none of us were stuck in a shitty multidimensional pocket universe, you're right."

[thedreamthief]

Cheng's statement seems to speak from experience and Ronan's eyebrow arches when he wonders who at Aglionby had been the one to scrawl across Cheng's precious petition. Kavinsky, maybe. It's pretty fucking mild compared to Kavinsky's usual method of pissing people off, but it would explain why Cheng seems to hate him almost as much as Ronan. On top of the more obvious reasons, of course.

"How very magnanimous of you," Ronan says instead, steering the conversation away from thoughts of Kavinsky with a dry tone. "You can't tell me that you'd want fucking anything to do with me if these three losers weren't here. I just come with the package."

[jeongbro]

Henry stared at Ronan, pointedly, trying to get the point across without having to be accusatory about it. The thing of it was that the rest of the Vancouver crowd had thought the whole mess of it was terribly funny, and Henry wasn't even really smarted about it any more.

"The package helps. I know how to talk to the three of them, and generally not step on toes," he admitted, but he shrugged that off as well. "That isn't what you asked me, anyway. I know I'm not who you want here, but I can't change that I am, so it would be better if none of us were. In the meantime, I suppose I'll enjoy that I can drink without being carded."

[thedreamthief]

"None of us belong here," Ronan agrees because that much is at least true.

It's pretty shit, honestly, to want Gansey here. Aside from Adam, it's Gansey who has the most to lose by being stuck here. There is no Glendower, of that Ronan is pretty fucking certain. If he was, Gansey would've found him the last time or, at the very least, would've found some lead, some clue.

There's nothing here. Nothing for any of them, but especially not Gansey or Parrish.

Despite himself, his lips twitch into nearly a grin. "Take your wins where you fucking can, right? And weed's legal here. Noah's pretty happy about that one."

[jeongbro]

Henry laughed, brief and bright, caring, and shook his head a little bit, because could ghosts even get high? Apparently, in Darrow, they could. What a strange place. Then again, Henry didn't really understand the mechanics of corporeal manifestations of the dead.

"Ryang and Rutherford would have gotten on with Noah well. Just for the weed, if nothing else. And the skateboarding." Henry rubbed the back of his neck. Darrow was good, at least, because Noah seemed bright and happy, and Henry didn't know, didn't know how to ask, if he had been like that back in Henrietta.

"Maybe we'll go home soon," he said with a shrug. "Or at least figure out a way to talk with home. Know everyone's alright."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan can't even picture Ryang or Rutherford when Cheng mentions them. He has a vague sort of mental picture, just two more faces in Aglionby sweaters, but that's it. In his defense, he hasn't attented Aglionby now in over a year and, even then, he'd barely shown up to classes.

He frowns a little at Cheng's idea, head cocking curiously. "You think that's possible? To be able to talk to people back home?"

Because Ronan's been here well over a year now with no luck. He hasn't tried all that hard in months, hasn't since well before Gansey disappeared. Couldn't even fucking dream anything. But shit, if Cheng can create software to better understand a robotic fucking bee, maybe he can figure out something.

[jeongbro]

Even if Ronan had been on campus with any consistency in the past couple months before Henry had arrived--and he hadn't, with increasing irregularity--he didn't expect that the other boy would know any of the Vancouver crowd. But Henry did, and his comment had been more speculative for himself than it had been informative to Ronan, anyway.

The edge of curiosity in Ronan's voice made Henry perk, just a little. While his brief, earlier prattle about coding languages had been dismissed out of hand, this was another small thing that, at least, he could theoretically discuss.

"Well, there's that cable programming--the one that gets channels from all over, all those fucking ridiculous things, mostly, but--theoretically, with some sort of reverse algorithm, someone could use the signal that's coming in to go out. It would be a bit of an imperfect system, I think. There's delays on programming we receive. Out of space and time."

Henry shrugged. "It might be something worth bringing up at work. What's the worst that could happen? Wormholes, probably."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan doesn't know a whole lot about technology. He's always hated using his own fucking phone, much more content to just talk to someone's face-to-face or, better yet, not talk to anyone at all. The idea of going off the fucking grid has a lot of fucking appeal, he's always thought. Especially here in Darrow, especially with Cabeswater. Ronan could live pretty fucking comfortably under those trees -- has, even -- with no fucking reason to come out.

But Cheng's idea is intriguing. And probably a little optimistic.

His eyebrow twitches as Cheng answers his own question, tone light enough, offhand enough, to nearly make Ronan grin. "Could argue we've already hit one of those," he points out. "And isn't it easier to pull in frequencies than to broadcast? What fucking direction do we send them anyway? And how would we know if they're getting anywhere useful?"

[jeongbro]

"Pocket universe isn't really a wormhole," Henry said, but it wasn't an argument so much as a clarification, and he didn't voice the theory that Tony Stark had come up with, that Darrow wasn't even a pocket universe.

"And broadcasting isn't hard at all. We're all constantly broadcasting. Radio signals, microwaves, natural and artificial radiations, whatever. It would be a little more difficult to figure out how to direct it, how to tell if a signal got picked up--less radio signal, more phone call?"

Henry stared into his cup and shrugged.

[thedreamthief]

Correction or clarification, Ronan only arches an eyebrow in response, a silent indication that he honestly doesn't give a shit what it is they're stuck in. Whatever name Cheng wants to throw on it won't make them any fucking likelier to get home.

"But you think it's possible," he says again, not looking away even as Cheng does, curious despite himself. "Just-- what, hijack the cable signal and throw a mirror on it to send it back wherever it came from?"

[jeongbro]

"Sort of," Henry said, then frowned at his drink. It was empty. He held up a finger and turned away long enough to grab himself one of the beers. He probably shouldn't have been drinking liquor and beer, but it was too late now.

"I mean, I haven't thought on the technicalities, really. But I was thinking less just flipping the signal back around and more--more using the signal to trace back to where it had come from? If we could find one from home, somehow, we could embed something into the signal?"

Henry snorted. "But that also makes me sound like a full blown crazy sort."