dust-and-oil scent

[thedreamthief]

"Yo, Parrish," Ronan says, recognizing that pair of grease-stained, overall-clad legs peeking out from under the hood of a Corolla anywhere.

This is a new thing for him. He'd never bothered Adam at work back in Henrietta, always too aware of how important it was to Adam, how he absolutely needed to keep his job in order to maintain any sort of livelihood whatsoever. Back there, Ronan could content himself with keeping an eye on Adam via St. Agnes and doing whatever he could to make sure shit didn't get too overwhelming.

Here though, things are a little different. Here, Adam doesn't have Aglionby tuition to worry about, and already has a nice cushion of money in the bank. Here he can afford to pay the rent and feed himself with one job instead of three and, as Ronan has actually had a fairly good professional interaction with the manager of this establishment, he assumes he has some leeway when he walks into the garage bay. In the very least, his presence can be attributed as his own lack of character and not fault of Adam's.

He could wait, probably, until Adam's shift is over. But Ronan has no idea when that might be and he hasn't seen all that much of Adam since he got here. Mostly because Adam outright refuses to stay with him and Gansey, and Ronan outright refuses to spend more time in the city than absolutely necessary.

Hooking a thumb in his jeans pocket, Ronan nods back at the Pig parked a few yards behind him. "You available for an oil change?"

It's not why he's here, of course. But it's as good an excuse as any.

Comments

[thedreamthief]

Part of Ronan wants to ask Adam what he does mean, how else he's supposed to take that comment. He feels shitty every day, every minute, because he can't do what their other Ronan can do, didn't live through Persephone dying and Blue's mom disappearing, or any of that shit. Gansey's told him some things, but they all just feel like stories, each one completely disassociated from Ronan's own experiences.

He's been here, alone and angry and useless.

Adam's tone cuts under his skin, but Ronan keeps his eyes focused straight ahead, searching. He wonders how badly their break-up had been, if the ache is still fresh. He's not going to ask.

A whisper of white up ahead catches his eye and he finally relaxes a little, nodding toward it. Toward her. "Up there," he says, changing their route just a little as Chainsaw comes swooping back, her job done.

[incognoscibilis]

In another boy, Adam thought he would have read Ronan's expression as melancholy, but he didn't know what to call it on him. Or maybe he just didn't know how to interpret Ronan's mood with the anger peeled off. It was the same kind of significant and yet inscrutable look that he'd caught at the Barns.

What were they doing? They were strange and broken things, trying to shove the puzzle pieces into fitting without knowing how.

This Ronan didn't remember Colin Greenmantle saying that Adam was no better than a cuckoo, put in the wrong nest.

Adam looked up, following Ronan's gaze and all his comparisons of Ronan of a few months earlier and Ronan of a few months later came to a halt. There was something white and beautiful in the trees. "You dreamed that?"

[thedreamthief]

"Her," Ronan corrects, but there's no heat behind it, just a proud sort of smirk.

He leads Adam further up the hill and can't help the smile that breaks across his face as Verity, upon noticing them, slowly lumbers closer. Sunlight breaks through the trees in beams, making her look even more mystical and beautiful than normal and Ronan mentally kicks himself for not having thought to grab an apple.

"Don't ask me how; I still don't get it," Ronan continues, reaching a hand out to pet her flank as he grins at Adam. "It's kind of fucked up. There's a guy here called Dorian. He's from a place where dream walking is a thing or whatever. Well, he walked into mine. Or rode in, I guess. On her." He turns his head then, turns his smile back on Verity as he gives her side a gentle pat. "And I brought her out."

[incognoscibilis]

"Her," Adam agreed. He looked between Ronan and the approaching elk. Gansey would have said something bright and praising in his place, called Ronan a wondrous creature or something. Adam could only take in a long breath and stare, hands raised but uncertain if he should touch her.

If she was worthy.

Crumpling the remainder of his lunch bag, Adam thought of the apple he'd been saving for later. "Does she eat apples?" He listened to Ronan but found he just couldn't tear his gaze away. She was too beautiful.

"Yeah. I met him. We're...kind of the same."

[thedreamthief]

"She loves apples," Ronan says. "Fucking addicted to them." His hand remains on her side even as his gaze turns to Adam, taking in the shadows that fall across his face from the beam of sunlight, the angle of his jaw and brow. It's been only a few months since Ronan saw him last; it's ridiculous to think he's changed at all.

But he can't quite shake it.

His brow furrows when Adam continues though. Furrows, then creases as Ronan lets out a scoff. "Please tell me you're not planning on a getting all pretentious and growing a shitty mustache."

[incognoscibilis]

He shot a glance back at Ronan, uncertain of what to do or say. Was there even anything to say?

"Do I look like I'm about to grow facial hair?" Adam asked. He couldn't really even imagine it, couldn't reconcile that image of himself, stubbornly and fastidiously tidy, with a bearded one. A bearded Adam would be someone who'd given up and accepted he was a hick, untidy. The mental image threatened to spiral him down into his own hatred again.

"Here you are," he said instead, holding out a red apple for the elk.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan doesn't look away when Adam glances back at him, but he lifts his chin a little higher, his grin gaining its typical edge.

"You're more likely than Gansey," Ronan points out, but it's still difficult to contemplate. He wonders if a little of stubble would make Adam's jaw even more pronounced, if he'll think of growing it out later, when he goes off to some Ivy League school somewhere.

Except, that won't be happening anymore. Not unless Adam finds a way of escaping.

If anyone can, it's probably him.

Reluctantly, he shifts his attention from Adam's face to where Verity is carefully taking the apple from the palm of his hand. She's always gentle and this time is no different, one huge eye staring directly at Adam as she takes the fruit between her teeth, smashing it easily in her giant mouth then sniffing his hand either in search for more or, more likely, in silent thanks.

"How the hell are you like Dorian?" Ronan finally asks, crossing his arms over his chest. A horrifying thought occurs to him and he immediately goes tense, then immediately tries to hide it. "You can't walk through dreams, can you?"

[incognoscibilis]

"I'm pretty sure that if Gansey tried to grow a beard, his mother would open a hole into this dimension and just drag him the hell out," he said. If they were smart and lucky, they would have rushed out after.

Cautiously, he held his hand flat, uncertain of whether Verity would allow him to pet her. Or was she like a unicorn who refused touch from the impure? Could she sense the terribleness that lurked under his skin, passed to him from Robert Parrish?

The nose that pressed gently into his palm was as soft as velvet, her press gentle. Adam dared to cautiously run fingers over her muzzle.

"We have the same card. Persephone helped me understand Cabeswater and she did it using tarot cards. My card is the Magician. So is his."

[thedreamthief]

Verity presses into Adam's hand, as gentle with him as she is every other human Ronan's seen her with. She doesn't seem to be too discerning in her appreciation but then, Ronan's only ever introduced her to a small handful of people. He has no idea if she's met others on her own, others she maybe didn't like as much.

Adam's slender fingers work up over muzzle and Ronan ignores the absolutely ridiculous stab of jealousy in his gut.

"Still don't understand that tarot bullshit," Ronan admits, tearing his eyes away from Adam's hand. "What the fuck does that even mean? Magician. You can pull a rabbit out of a hat? Make the Statue of Liberty disappear?"

[incognoscibilis]

Adam slowly ran hands over Verity's muzzle, down her cheeks and under her chin, again and again with hands that hadn't realized they could be so gentle. The tiny field mouse from the Barns came back to his mind, a moment he knew Ronan would remember. "This is a hell of a lot bigger than a field mouse."

Ronan's stare burned through his hands like wounds and he was frozen there, looking at him and observing again that Ronan had nice eyelashes.

"Cabeswater uses the cards to talk to me. I have to interpret what it means through them." Like talking through a translator. It was clumsy and took thought, but it could be managed. "I've been helping to strengthen the line. The first time I did it was to help you."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan's hard-edged grin softens then and he looks to Verity, still petting her enormous side gently as Adam's fingers run over her face and muzzle. She seems to be soaking up the attention, happy to let them touch.

He listens as Adam explains, feeling oddly unsettled. It's not that he doesn't believe in it, not after Calla grabbed him by the arm and knew him, but it's not something he's entirely comfortable with either. Though he probably should be. Especially if it's as important to Adam as it seems to be.

"Me?" he asks, his thoughts stopping short and eyebrows shooting upward. "Why would that help me?"

Even after he asks it, he thinks maybe he already knows. Ronan is intrinsically linked to Cabeswater even he still isn't sure exactly how. He means something to it, he's their Greywaren, whatever the fuck that even is. If the ley line was weak and Cabeswater was weak, does that mean he was, too? The still-healing cuts in his shoulders and back twinge at the thought and, not for the first time, Ronan wonders how much Gansey still hasn't told him.

[incognoscibilis]

Adam looked back to Ronan and resisted the urge to bite his lip or pull on a loose thread in his coveralls. "You and Kavinsky were dreaming too much, taking stuff out and draining the ley line. It's why Cabeswater disappeared."

The words were out of his mouth and Adam sensed, already, that he'd said too much. How did he explain that lost weekend? Ronan had given up the time to fall into his dream and Adam had turned his mind to Cabeswater and walked miles and miles with no memory.

Time was circular, that much they already knew. What was Adam disturbing by telling Ronan? How much was he supposed to tell when it was Adam's past, Ronan's future, and Ronan's temper?

God. He didn't even know about Matthew. He didn't know that Matthew was one of his.

"Cabeswater told me where to go and what to do to fix the line. Like fixing a frayed cable, place by place."

[thedreamthief]

"Kavinsky?" Ronan asks, balking.

True, the last thing Ronan remembers of Henrietta is a black streak of asphalt and Kavinsky's fucking Mitsubishi disappearing like a cannon. And the night terror, of course. How could he and Kavinsky been--

His eyes widen briefly with a dawning horror, blood turning cold.

Verity, as though sensing the shift, swings her head back to look nuzzle at his cheek. He reaches up, grateful for the distraction, though his mind is whirling.

"Wait, is he a Greywaren?" He dreads the answer even as he knows it's true. The bracelets. The IDs. The fact that his car blasted into the night like goddamn spaceship. Fuck, of course. Fuck.

He's not even processing the rest of Adam's words, something about frayed lines and cables. Something about him draining Cabeswater. Christ.

[incognoscibilis]

"No," Adam says. "Cabeswater told you and I think it told me too. There are many thieves and only one Greywaren. Kavinsky only thought he was as good as you." Ronan was better. Ronan was always better.

"When you told him to leave you alone, he wouldn't take the hint."

He remembered the texts that Ronan would receive, read, and then put away. The white Mitsubishi with the enormous spoiler and the license plate that read thief and given away because none of the wanted it, not really.

Looking fraught and feeling more uncertain than he had when he first saw Cabeswater's apparitions, Adam debated the last weighty secret. What was he supposed to do about Joseph Kavinsky's greatest crime?

"When you still ignored him, he took something from you. Someone."

[thedreamthief]

At first, all Ronan can hear is 'many thieves.' Many. Ronan lived a good portion of his life believing he was a freak, a monster, that what he could do was something to be hidden at all costs. Then he discovered his father could do it too, that maybe it was passed on.

But many? So where are the others?

Not for the first time, Ronan wishes his father would have told him a fucking thing before he died. Anything at all.

Shaking his head, Ronan keeps his hands on Verity's face, using her to ground himself as that pit in his stomach yawns wide. He has no idea why Kavinsky would be hounding him (yes, he does) or why he wouldn't give up (that's a lie, too) but the idea of Kavinsky taking someone, presumably one of the few people he actually cares about is terrifying.

He swallows, afraid to ask. Then, "You?"

[incognoscibilis]

"Me? No. What the hell would Kavinsky want with me?" He didn't quite know what to make of that. No, he knew but he didn't know what to do with that idea. He looked at Ronan, his lash-framed eyes. Why would Kavinsky steal him? He wasn't the most precious thing to Ronan, not by a long shot.

He wasn't anyone's most precious thing. He was born from dust with a jagged, broken core.

"He took Matthew. Stuffed him into the trunk of one of his endless fucking Mitsubishis." God, he sounded like a pale imitation of Ronan. Curses sounded harsh and pedestrian from him; Ronan made them into a kind of poetry.

"He took Matthew and then he went into his dreams and took out a dragon. You needed to go into the ley line too. I had to give you more power."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan only has a few seconds to feel a tight fist of guilt before it's washed away in a flood of terror. It isn't hard to picture, Matthew curled up in the trunk of Kavinksy's white piece of shit (endless Mitsubishis, fuck is that mean what he thinks it means?), Kavinsky's sadistic face hovering over him.

It sends a chill straight through him, makes every scratch and puncture on his body ache all over again.

He has no fucking clue how a dragon fits into this, can't even fathom how Adam's still alive if Kavinsky really has that sort of power. If--

Oh God.

"Did it work?" he asks, barely able to find his voice at all. "Adam, is Matthew--"

He cuts off, question unfinished. Stuck. He's bleeding out all over again, the world shrinking in around him, cutting off his breath, his ears ringing.

[incognoscibilis]

"He's fine. More than fine." And he was a dream thing, made perfect and alive by a three-year-old Ronan. Did he tell him? This secret weighed on Adam more than any he could think of. Although he was used to secrets and their keeping, Adam wasn't used to keeping secrets from Ronan and Gansey. At least, not when they were of this magnitude.

The look on Ronan's face, the distraught worry without disguise, seemed more unlike him than Adam thought was possible.

"You went in too. You took out one of your night horrors and it fought for you." Even afterward, it obeyed Ronan. Adam could still remember it, a ragged and filthy white creature with two terrible beaks, beautiful in its horror.

[thedreamthief]

Relief floods in like a tidal wave and in seconds Ronan's managed to clear his expression, though his heart continues to thud in his chest. Gansey hadn't spoken a fucking word of any of this and Ronan knows he and Adam aren't very far apart as far as timeline.

He has no idea whether to be pissed at Gansey for keeping him in the dark, or grateful.

"I did-- how the fuck did I do that?" Even the mention of one of those things makes his skin crawl, the wounds from their last attack still healing. He's starting to think Adam's full of shit.

But why the hell would Adam have reason to lie to him?

"They attack me. They always attack me."

[incognoscibilis]

He couldn't speak for Gansey's motivations, though Adam instinctively knew why people kept secrets. He was, after all, secretive himself and saw no reason to change that. It was just that keeping secrets from Ronan was different, the same way that Blue keeping secrets about Gansey was different.

"I think you asked nicely," Adam said, putting on the smirk he learned from Ronan. "That's the difference, I guess, that makes you the Greywaren. I'm not exactly an expert."

He tried not to think about the copy of Ronan that had provoked the ire of the night horrors when they sat in St. Agnes. Still, Adam could vividly recall the identical copy, bleeding to death and convulsing.

"They don't always like you though."

[thedreamthief]

None of it makes sense. Who is he supposedly asking? Cabeswater? The Orphan Girl? The terrors themselves? Did he ask them to help him? How the fuck did Kavinsky make a dragon?

Once again, it feels like a story, a tale of things that maybe could've happened, but didn't happen to him.

"No shit they don't like me," Ronan says with an almost defensive sort of laugh. He pulls at the sleeve of his shirt to show off his newest stitches, him smile as vicious as the marks themselves before he uncurls it back into place and turns his attention back to Verity. His mind is still whirling. He feels like punching something.

[incognoscibilis]

"Jesus," Adam said. Before he could think not to, he reached out and touched Ronan's arm, fingertips tracing the new scars with the same gentleness that he'd used on Verity. His stomach turned again as he thought of the fake Ronan.

"You dreamed a fake version of yourself, once. The night terrors attacked it instead of you." But then he'd brought it back with him to the waking world, bleeding ad dying in front of the altar of St. Agnes like some twisted offering to God.

His fingers rested a second to long on Ronan's bicep before Adam remembered himself. This Ronan couldn't feel the same as the one who'd looked at him askance in the Barns. It was too long of a touch and he was, himself, still uncertain of what his own feelings were and how they might upset the balance of the group. He'd done it once, with Blue. He couldn't do that to them again.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan isn't expecting Adam to touch him, his sleeve already partially back in place when he feels the gentle warmth of fingertips on skin. It doesn't last long (why would it?) but he doesn't think Adam misses the surprised look on his face before Ronan can mask it.

"A fake?" Ronan asks, still watching Adam carefully. He can still feel the ghost of the touch, like a brand on his shoulder. His lips twitch into nearly a smile. "That's... actually pretty fucking smart." And powerful. Verity is easily the biggest thing he's ever brought out of his dreams, but as majestic as she is, he hadn't been working alone. Ronan has no doubt he ever could have brought her out without Dorian. And he sure as hell doesn't know how to do it again.

But his smile fades with a tumble of new questions. "I brought all of that out? Me and the terrors? Is it... did that version of me live?"

And if not, what did they do with the body? Take it to the Barns again to rot with the sleeping cows and his mother?

[incognoscibilis]

Adam found himself wishing he hadn't touched Ronan, uncertain of how to interpret the look on his face. He was surprised and Adam couldn't tell what else. Wanting? Angry? Adam curled his hands and pushed them into the pockets of his coveralls.

"You brought the fake you out, not the horrors." Not the physical horrors, anyway, though Adam didn't think he'd ever forget the sight of Ronan, bloody and dying. "You let them kill it. It wasn't fun to watch." He probably should have listened when Ronan told him to go to his apartment and wait.

What was even less fun was the information that he'd brought out, the grisly crimes that Adam had invented. Because Ronan thought of miraculous devices, spheres of dream power, and delicate creatures. And Adam asked him to create a string of perverse murders.

This Ronan didn't know that of him. Didn't know the horrors of Adam's own mind.

"Should probably get back to work," he said, reluctant.

[thedreamthief]

"It's not fun to live," Ronan says with no hint of an apology. It's still nearly impossible to believe these things, to picture himself doing what he's being told he's done.

He still has so many questions.

Adam looks away, but Ronan watches him for a few moments longer and, not for the first time, he wonders how sacrificing himself for Cabeswater has changed Adam. Because he has changed. He's undeniably different from the Adam Ronan remembers and not just because of the whole magician thing, which he still doesn't fully understand.

Maybe just living on his own, away from the fist of Robert Parrish, is enough to make him stand so much taller and surer.

Or maybe being the hands and eyes of a sentient forest lends a certain kind of confidence.

Knocked out of his thoughts, Ronan tears his gaze away to look up at Verity, smoothing his hands over her soft coat in a silent goodbye. "I'll be back later," he tells her though he seriously doubt she gives a shit. "Gotta take care of this loser first."

[incognoscibilis]

Adam didn't wince, but he recognized Ronan's point and nodded at it. He'd had to watch it, but he'd also been the one who chose not to leave. Ronan had been the one to make and deal with the consequences of a sadistic choice. One that had been Adam's fault, in a way.

One last time, he reached out to stroke Verity's muzzle and privately factored in the cost of a few extra apples to his weekly budget. "She's beautiful," he said to Ronan, because Ronan needed to know that what he created was delicate and amazing, unearthly and powerful.

Adam threw himself into the passenger seat of the Pig and stared out the empty front window.

"There's only one Greywaren," he reminded Ronan. "And it's you."

[thedreamthief]

It doesn't sound like an entirely simple comment, Adam's voice too low and sincere for there not to be a deeper meaning behind it. Ronan doesn't flush, but he feels something inside his chest warm and expand all the same. Verity isn't his alone, but he did have a hand in bringing her here and she is beautiful. Stunning, even.

They head back toward the Pig in silence, Ronan's mind still whirling with information. He should probably talk to Gansey about some of it, but he's not likely to.

What does it matter anyway? All of it happened to someone else.

Adam speaks once they're back in the car, his words quiet as Ronan slips the keys into the ignition. Ronan glances over at him. There's a smudge of grease just below Adam's left ear.

"Maybe," he says, turning the key and pumping at the brake as he looks back through the windshield-less windshield. "Trouble is, Parrish, I still don't know what the fuck that even means."

The Pig roars to life beneath him.