maskormenacelogs | Mexico shenanigans group log [OPEN]

[ Adam finds him later, as he's wandering down to the garden area with little purpose. He doesn't even know Gansey had been there at all, but he'd wanted some space to think and air to breathe and what better way to do that when the sky has gone all dark and clear. But his plans change when he sees the familiar angle of his friend's shoulders. He veers off towards him, dragging a chair out at the small metal table and sinking into it. Adam lifts the bottle curiously and then raises an eyebrow Gansey's way as he puts it back down. ]

Good?

[ He's usually uncomfortable around drinking. Actually, uncomfortable is a mild word. Adam often has a kneejerk reaction around drinking. Ronan he can sometimes tolerate, but it's rare. He's doesn't remember the last time he saw Gansey drunk though, and is surprised when he searches for a spark of fear inside himself and finds nothing. Gansey would not be a violent drunk, least of all around Adam. And so he orchestrates his intention to stay by putting his feet up on the chair beside Gansey. ]

[ By now, Gansey has enjoyed quite a few. Enough that enjoyment is something he can actually associate with it, now; the taste becomes more agreeable after a while.

He lifts his eyebrows at Adam and then salutes him with a shotglass, which he downs, and then improves with a bite of lime. ]

Getting there. I would’ve called you, but thought you’d prefer I didn’t. Do you want to try it?

[ Doubtful, he thinks, but he can’t see it there and not offer. ]

[ His answer is a quick shake of his head. If Adam did ever want to try alcohol, he should probably start somewhere safer. Beer instead of hard liquor. He doesn't want to try either way. Not now, at least. ]

Nah, I'm all right. But you can. [ Gansey is not the kind of person Adam would be afraid of, were they drunk. His best friend is careful in all things and the least likely out of the lot of them to throw a punch. And so Adam settles in, loose and relaxed in the Mexican heat. ]

You don't mind if I stick around though?

[ Gansey nods, and takes a quick shot. He makes a face as he drinks, wincing at the taste, and he gets rid of it with a bite of lemon. That's an improvement, and he sets the lemon wedge aside.

Moving the glass between his hands, he smiles at Adam. ]

I'm happy for you to stick around. Drinking alone is generally a bad idea.

[ Which he can acknowledge, even if he'd intended it. ]

Just stop me if I lose coherency. I might even fall asleep if I'm lucky.

[ Adam offers up a sad smile at Gansey's last comment. He knows more and more about his friend's sleeping habits now they live together. It's not surprising, they all have their issues with sleep. Adam is just greedy for it now that he's actually able to get more than a couple of hours a night. ]

I'll make sure it's not outside, when you do.

[ Because he is a good friend and sleeping in public is a bad idea. ] I bet Lynch is going crazy here. [ Because, lent. Actually, that reminds him. ] Do you have a fake I.D.? Or did you just use your senator power?

[ Gansey is already shaking his head before that properly goes in. ]

No, I used my –

[ Rude, Adam. ]

Jesus, is that what we’re calling it now? Legal age is eighteen here, anyway. I’m only a few months short. [ He shrugs. ] I just convinced them they didn’t need to see my I.D.

[ He only gets a smile in return. ]

Eighteen. [ Good, then Adam doesn't need Gansey's invisible fake I.D. or his power. ] I was thinking we should get a bottle and take it back for Lynch, since he's observing and all. [ And Adam is still hoping that they get to go back to De Chima soon. His Spanish isn't all that great.

Also, he's not in the habit of gift-giving and he seems to suddenly remember that, ducking his head a little. ] Otherwise he might just bitch about missing out.

[ Gansey lifts his eyebrows, and sends a little smirk in Adam's direction. ]

And do what, smuggle it across the border with us?

Assuming that we're back in time for Easter. [ He sighs, and then waves his hand. ] If you like. I don't honestly think Lynch is in need of our help when it comes to procuring alcohol, whether he's living in Mexico or not.

[ Oh, the border. ]

Damn. [ Adam will just have to think a little bit more carefully. ] I just owe him.

[ Technically, he doesn't. The chocolates were a gift from Ronan. But Adam hadn't figured out they were at that stage and he feels a little ... guilty? No. Lacking. He doesn't know how to do this. It's even harder than it was at the beginning with Blue, because he can't buy Ronan flowers without getting mocked. ]

[ Gansey looks up, eyebrows gently lifting. ]

Owe him? For what?

[ He knows that Adam keeps a close account on who has paid for what, but that has seemed less important now that they’re all here, and all earning. And alcohol, after all, would not be money. It would have value, but it wouldn’t pay that sort of debt. ]

Nothing really.

[ He shrugs, as if he has always been the kind of boy to be uncaring. But of course, this is Adam, and everything he does is important.

He should probably lie. Say that Ronan had given him something once. But he can't think of anything above and beyond the pounding of his heart. Instead of focusing on that, he gives Gansey a look. ]

You okay?

[ Tequila seems like it's a forgetting kind of drink. ]

[ Tequila is a forgetting kind of drink. Gansey pours one, and uses it to blur heat behind his eyes. Enough of this and he'll fall asleep.

That's something of the plan. ]

Fine. It's just been a long...few weeks.

[ They were kidnapped, and then invaded. It hasn't exactly been fun.

Gansey pushes himself past that. ]

Come on, Parrish. I know you. You don't say owe unless you mean it, so tell me. What's going on with you and Lynch?

[ That's the world's biggest understatement and Adam finds himself frowning at it.

But then Gansey's turning the subject back to Ronan and something heavy and unforgiving thumps against his ribs. He can feel the weight of the revelation in his throat, full and difficult to swallow down. But Adam won't tell him, not when Ronan wants to.

( Privately, he isn't sure he'd even have wanted to, if Ronan hadn't been adamant. His best friend is not his father and yet there is an age old fear in his bones. ) ]

Why would anything be going on?

[ Gansey spends a moment just looking, flatly, at Adam.

He feels as though he's had this same conversation a thousand times since they arrived in this world. Adam and Ronan were fighting. One of them didn't like the other. One of them was worried that the other didn't like them. But of course there was nothing going on, why would Gansey think so? Why would he think it was strange that Adam might consider he owed Ronan something? Surely there's nothing to talk about there, because whatever's going on, there's certainly nothing to be gained in resolving it.

There's a moment where he considers voicing this, and then a second moment where he reminds himself of how much he doesn't want to fight with Adam. And another moment, still, when he remembers why there's a drink in his hand, and forces his own frustration back into its box.

This isn't going to help him. He breathes through it, and then downs a shot that burns it away. ]

No reason. Forget I mentioned it.

[ Even though it was Adam that mentioned it. He pours a fresh shot. ]

Let's talk about something else, then. Have you had word from anyone back in the States?

[ Sometimes, in the dead of night, Adam wishes he could just bundle up all of his issues and dump them in a trashcan somewhere. His life would be a lot better if he weren't full of conflicting emotions. He wants to not care, he cares too much. He wants to be the kind of boy who could be loud and obnoxious without concern, and he wants to be a different animal entirely.

He wants to tell Gansey, he doesn't want to tell Gansey.

Adam lets out a slow breath, because if anything he doesn't want to start summoning cacti to his hands ( and that had been fun to find out, the way his power reacts to the place ) and is grateful when the subject is changed for him. ]

Kitty. [ He says it carefully, because he knows Gansey is unhappy with her siding with the Russians. ] No one else.

[ Kitty.

Tension doesn’t show in Gansey’s face. It’s a perfect mask, better in quality than it was when they were (trying) to talk about Adam, and lacking any sign of fracture. This is Gansey at his best, all negative emotion contained and his expression clear, almost to the point where it seems unconcerned.

He lifts the salt shaker and decorates the back of his hand. ]

I saw her post.

[ And then talked to her. Tried to talk to her. And she’d shut him out and hung up the phone and left a cloud inside him. Either she’s not what he thought, or she’s what he thought exactly, and doesn’t trust him enough to say so.

Sometimes Gansey feels completely impotent when it comes to his friends. Kitty had trivialised what they went through in Antarctica, and then thrown her lot in with the people who did it to them. Gansey wanted her to tell him it wasn’t real, and she wouldn’t. Perhaps the worst part of it is that he knows it’s not personal. It hasn’t been, from the beginning of this, and he wants it to be because that’s what friendship means to him.

It’s never not personal. Not to him. He remembers arguing with Adam once about sacrificing to Cabeswater, asking him why he’d done it and Adam saying it hadn’t had anything to do with Gansey. It had never felt like that. It always feels personal and it always feels like they’re trying to pull away from him.

It’s a thing that upsets him deeply, and he conceals that with everything he has. He doesn’t know how to tell them how much he needs them. ]

How is she? It’s not the safest thing, what she’s doing.

[ Gansey is good at acting.

It means that most of the time, even those who are closest to him don't know what's going on under the surface. ] I don't know. We spoke once.

[ And after he told her to be careful, he hadn't made a point to do it again. While he may not necessarily agree with her motivations and he definitely does not agree with what she's doing, he still worried. It draws a complicated frown between his brows. ] I just hope she'll be careful.

[ Gansey looks up, watching Adam's face through a building haze of tequila. His fingers tap against his glass. ]

Careful.

[ A breath leaves him, low and hot and tired, most of all. ]

Do you think she's truly defected? Billy says he's staying with his grandfather.

I think she's doing what she can. [ Adam doesn't expect Gansey to understand it. He's always chosen the good path, the righteous one. But Adam does. Adam has snuck away in the dead of night with a gun that was not his to wrest power back. He gets making the unpopular call.

He's still doing it to this day. ]

We won't know until we can talk to her properly. And we can't do that until the Russians are pushed back. I guess we're just going to have to hope that she hasn't lost her mind.

That's exactly what I'm worried about.

[ Losing her mind. Being compromised in that way. Gansey doesn't doubt that Kitty would make the best choice available for helping the people around her. It's what she's always done.

But if her mind is not in the right place, how can she be trusted to make that call? ]

When I was in that submarine, their AI told me all about how they wanted to use imports. How the Americans weren't using us properly, and how the Russians intended to. They're making all of them attend this seminar, getting into their heads.

If she's been compromised, Adam...

I just don't like it. I want to have more faith in her than that.

[ Even as he says that, Gansey feels the wrongness of it. He is not a person who generally struggles to have faith in anyone. Either because of this situation, or because his trust in Kitty has already been shaken, he's having doubts now, and it doesn't sit well with him.

Unhappy, he reaches to take a shot, and burns some of his stress away with it. ]

[ His stomach twists unhappily. Adam had chosen to believe that everything Kitty was doing was by her own volition. To consider the fact that she could be being warped into it is an entirely different beast.

He watches Gansey drink, his own fingers tapping out an unsteady beat against his knee. Not for the first time he wishes he could be normal. And that does include being able to drink his problems away for a little while. ]

Then we get her back.

[ He says it like it's simple, like they're not hiding out over the border to protect themselves. A dull pain throbs behind his temples. ]

[ Gansey makes a noncommittal sound. They're talking about brainwashing, after all. That's the real worry here. They don't know how easy it would be to reverse that at all. He wishes his friends had escaped the cities when they had the chance. He knows it's imports the Russians are after. ]

How, Adam? This is...

[ He gestures expansively. There's something miserable about Gansey's expression, something tied directly to what he'd been through in Antarctica. ]

This is bigger than us. This is war.

[ He taps his glass against the table. ]

I always wanted to believe we'd be safe.

We were never going to be safe.

[ He doesn't mean to sound harsh, but there's no other way around it. ] They were talking about war long before we got here. It was just a matter of time before we got caught up in the crossfire. [ He leans back, his head tipped in the direction of the sky. It's inky dark and speckled with stars. It makes him feel small and insignificant. ]

All we can do is what we're able. Protecting ourselves. Protecting our friends. But if she chooses to do something then we can't stop her? It's her life. She knows what she's getting in to the same as we all do.

Does she?

[ Gansey arches one brow. There's something almost desperate about his face, though the expression is a subtle one. Most people wouldn't see anything strange there; but Adam knows him well. He just might. ]

I wouldn't, in her place. I know we can't stop her.

[ He drops his head into his hand, fingers dragging over his chin. ]

I know we can't stop her. I'm just worried about her. That's all.

She thinks she does. [ It's a careful amendedment. Adam won't pretend to speak for Kitty when she's not here to do it herself. ]

I know you are. I am too. But we can't do anything here. [ Then, more gently. ] And worrying yourself sick won't do anyone her any good. She might need us when we get back.

Mexico shenanigans group log [OPEN]

( b. ) sort've.

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