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]

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.