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

[thedreamthief]

That's enough to get Ronan's attention. Cheng had made clear his distaste of Kavinsky the first time they'd spoken at the grocery store, but in the mess of everything else Cheng had revealed, Ronan had nearly forgotten.

He takes another drink of his beer then, head tipped back before he swallows and wipes at the side of his mouth with the back of his thumb.

"I don't get it, you know," he says, his tone almost conversational now. "How that fuckhole gets to be here, alive, while Gansey--" He cuts himself off then, scowling a little. Cheng can likely figure out the rest anyway. His thumbnail catches on the label of the bottle as he leans heavier into the wall. "Whatever. Just a matter of time before he lights himself up."

[jeongbro]

Henry was distinctly aware that, where Gansey was concerned, Ronan could be speaking of anyone in the city, of the unfairness of their presence while one of his most important people was not here, and it would work just as well.

That was, after all, part of why Henry was glad Ronan was here and not wallowing or trying to start something. He was not Gansey. But he hated this place and the fact that Gansey was not here.

So he nodded in commiseration and lifted his glass in a silent sort of salute, gave a bitter sort of laugh. "Sooner, rather than later, hopefully. That Mitsubishi is an eyesore."

[thedreamthief]

"His whole fucking face is an eyesore," Ronan argues with a sneer.

Though it's a sneer that falters only a moment later when he realizes what exactly it is he's said, his lips twitching into something that's almost a smile instead. He eyes the glass in Cheng's hand then reaches up to tap the neck of his bottle against it before taking another swig.

"So what the fuck did he do to you?" he asks, licking the beer from his lips. "Or do you just see whatever one else here is too fucking blind to figure out?"

[jeongbro]

The moment is, at least, a moment. They were on the level about something, and that something was an understanding that Joseph Kavinsky was a damn menace that neither of them liked--though, as Henry understood it from Noah, Ronan was from before everything went bitterly sour and wrong at last year's Fourth of July. Kavinsky was still a wretched creature, though.

"He tried to kill one of my friends," Henry said. "Just for the hell of it. Nearly ran him down in the street. I don't know if he even knew what or who he was chasing--and it doesn't matter."

[thedreamthief]

That's not a story Ronan's heard before, but it's also not one he has any difficulty believing. If anything, he can picture it perfectly, Kavinsky howling behind the wheel of his shitty Mitsubishi, Prokopenko snickering in the passenger seat.

He tips his chin then, an acknowledgment.

"He tries to kill my brother," he says. It's not intended as a comparison. At least not entirely. He shrugs then. "Or so I hear, at least. I wasn't there. Have to say though, I'm fucking pissed he hasn't manage to kill himself here yet."

[jeongbro]

Henry nodded, an acknowledgement as well. The exact details of last year's Fourth were shrouded to Henry--he had not been at the party, his mother had not known them exactly; all he had known was what he could see from a distance, and what he could glean through rumor mills and his own truth seeking. To hear it from Ronan was to hear a bit of truth that grounded everything else.

"He didn't manage it, just blew himself up," Henry assured, because he had seen Matthew Lynch at Raven Day, only in passing. But that didn't change that Ronan wasn't home, and Henry knew it.

Henry offered a smile that was as polite as it was catty. "One can only dream, yes? Maybe he will do it tonight."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan nods because he knows that much, too. It's about the only thing that's kept Ronan from killing Kavinsky with his bare hands, the idea that he hadn't succeeded. It doesn't make him trust the shitstain any, but it's something.

Then again, maybe there's a reason Ronan's let him live.

"If he does, I want a front row seat," Ronan remarks. There's no smile on his face, no hint that he might be joking in any way. He tips his chin up then, looking at Cheng with narrowed eyes. "This gonna be our bonding moment? Agreeing that Kavinsky is human trash?"

[jeongbro]

Henry managed to not wince, but it was a narrow thing. He had no real stomach for the sort of visceral violence that Ronan seemed to relish, even if he was a child of deep resentment. He wondered if it stemmed from five days spent screaming in a tiny pit.

"And here I thought you almost starting a fight with me in a grocery store was our bonding moment," Henry said, light as good be, as if he had not been on an edge of hysteria that day. "Anyone with sense in their head knows Kavinsky is trash."

[thedreamthief]

"Apparently this city is full of fucking morons," Ronan replies, though his sneer this time isn't intended for Cheng. "There's a whole field full of them out there right now. Little screaming minions."

His disgust is obvious, not even thinly veiled. He changes tracts though, remembering the grocery store, lips curving into a deeper frown. He isn't about to apologize, of course. He stands by what he'd said. But he's had some time to think about shit since then.

"Do you remember any of this shit your mom bought off my dad? She ever tell you about any of it?"

[jeongbro]

Henry didn't know if minions was the right word for it, exactly. The people that had attended Kavinsky's substance parties back in Henrietta hadn't been sycophantic to him, either; not precisely. Not, except, that he was some raucous pied piper. People liked distraction. But Henry did agree about the easily duped. His heart went out to that poor boy, Newt, that he'd met when he'd first arrived who was even dating the guy.

But Ronan had moved on. This was a point that they agreed on, and Henry saw no more reason to pick at it than Ronan, apparently. The question, though, begged careful footing. Henry didn't want to accidentally spring another fight.

"A handful of things," he admitted. "She didn't buy for herself. She bought to sell to other people--a third party dealer. Some times, though, he would have something especially remarkable. But the one--the one I knew best was the one he sold my mother for me."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan can't help but wonder what things Cheng or his mother might consider especially remarkable. Not everything Ronan pulled from his dreams was worth having, he could admit that easy enough. Some of it was just shit, pure and simple. Some if it failed attempts or just fucking accidents, things he'd never intended on bringing out in the first place.

Some of it, like Cinnamon and Hercules, Chainsaw and Verity... some if was incredible.

Idly, Ronan wondered if Cheng really knew the extent of what he could create, if he knew Ronan's items, like his fathers, were sometimes more than just seemingly magical objects.

His brow furrows, curious, head cocked. "For you? Special order?"

[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."