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[thedreamthief]

It's not that Ronan hadn't considered Tris a fighter. It'd been obvious from his first day here that she could hold her own, just in the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her jaw. There's a little too much about Tris that reminds him of himself, in ways he finds entirely uncomfortable.

Which probably explains why he doesn't particularly like her.

And now, with aching sides and a bruised stomach, not to mention the gash across his brow from a well-placed knee, Ronan really doesn't like her. Ronan at least had gotten in some good hits of his own, but it'd been obvious right from the start that she'd been trained, and trained well. Ronan took boxing lessons when he was a kid, but he's never been trained in mixed fucking martial arts.

From what he can remember, Adam's scheduled at the garage for a few more hours so, using the key he'd dreamt up a week ago, Ronan lets himself in, quiet and efficient. There's no point going to his own allotted apartment, not when there's next to nothing in it in the way of first aid equipment and there's not a chance in hell he's risking Gansey seeing before he has to. Definitely not before he's no longer bleeding.

He doesn't particularly want Adam to see either if he can help it.

Which is unfortunate.

The door clicks closed behind him and scowls at Adam. "Aren't you supposed to be working right now?"

Comments

[thedreamthief]

"It's not breaking and entering if I have a key," Ronan points out, barely managing a smirk. It actually hurts to smile right now and his head is pounding. It's not entirely a bad feeling, the pain just enough to keep Ronan's blood pumping, to make his nerves sing.

He drops said key on the counter next to Adam's and leans back heavily against the lip, one hand gingerly touching the bruise he knows is forming on his side. "Would you believe me if I told you a girl bullied me into it?"

[incognoscibilis]

"A key I didn't give you," Adam said. He put the ice pack on Ronan's shoulder, looking him over. It was tempting to ask what he'd done to infuriate Blue so badly, but he'd already born the brunt of her anger. It resulted in scars, not bruises.

"So you're saying she got to know you?"

Already, he was ordering pizza. It already looked like one of those nights.

[thedreamthief]

"She came to me with beer, Parrish," Ronan says, flinching just a little as Adam presses the ice to Ronan's shoulder. "Couldn't say no."

He wonders if Adam keeps a pack in his fridge for just these sorts of situations, just in case Ronan might show up bloodied and bruised. Or if it's a carry-over from home, a lingering habit from caring for his own bruises.

Ronan decides he probably doesn't want to know the answer.

His lips tug into a frown as Adam picks up the phone, sure for a second that he's going to call Gansey and relaxing only slightly when it turns out he's call for pizza. "Hey, you don't have to stay," he says once he knows Adam's on hold. "I just came in to get some ointment and shit, I didn't think you'd be here."

[incognoscibilis]

"So you're beat up and drunk," he observed. Then, out of morbid curiosity, because it was so unlike Ronan to come off the worse in a fight and to fight with girls at all, he asked, "Did you win?"

He wasn't sure what answer he preferred. Either Ronan had come out the victor and beaten the crap out of some belligerent and unsuspecting girl or a girl who was probably half Ronan's size had pounded the shit out of him for cheap beer.

"Don't have to stay?" Adam gave Ronan a look that resided in the hallway between disbelief and bone-dry sarcasm. "Ronan, I live here."

[thedreamthief]

"Wasn't much in the mood for drinking after getting my ass kicked," Ronan replies with a faint glare. Hopefully that's enough to answer both of Adam's questions though he doesn't mention that he'd gotten a few solid hits on Tris as well, that he'd at least been able to hold his own.

Instead, he feels something tighten in his gut, lips curving into a deeper scowl before he pulls the ice pack off his shoulder and drops it to the counter.

"Fuck it, I'll go see if the ghost has some fucking peroxide."

[incognoscibilis]

"I hope Blue never meets her then. She'll probably give that girl five dollars every week just to make it a regular thing." It wasn't a very good joke and Adam knew it. Sealing his mouth in a thin line, he went into the bathroom to hand over a tube of bacitracin.

"I don't have any peroxide. Noah probably won't either. This okay?"

[thedreamthief]

Ronan stops at the door, eyes dropping to the proffered tube and back up to Adam's eyes again, wary.

"I'm not keeping you from work," he says, not a question but a statement, brooking no argument. "I'll lock up when I leave and everything. I'm a big boy."

[incognoscibilis]

Adam shook his head, finally getting a chance to toe off his shoes. "I'm done for today." He'd have to be at the garage by seven tomorrow morning, but that was for after sleep. Hopefully, even with Ronan here, he'd still get a few hours of sleep.

"You might as well stay. Gansey would freak out if he saw you right now." He scrutinized Ronan's brow anew. "You might need stitches."

[thedreamthief]

"I don't need fucking stitches," Ronan growls, but he lifts a hand to his brow all the same, touching the split skin there tentatively. He honestly has no idea what it even looks like, but his fingertip still comes away bloody.

Throwing Adam one last glare, he heads for Adam's bathroom, tube of bacitracin still in hand. "And don't tell Gansey. He doesn't need to know."

[incognoscibilis]

"It's your face," Adam said mildly, using a voice borrowed from his mother, the kind that placated policemen and convinced her husband that her son had learned his lesson and wasn't it time for him to go away now?

"What good would it do to tell him?"

[thedreamthief]

"Exactly," Ronan replies, pushing his way into Adam's bathroom and immediately leaning over the skin to inspect said face.

It looks... worse than he'd thought, honestly.

Frowning, Ronan drops the ointment and wets a wad of toilet paper and starts wiping at the blood around the cut, swallowing a hiss when he gets a little too close to the cut.

[incognoscibilis]

Adam's hands stretched out for a second, the offer to help forming, until he realized that Ronan probably didn't want his help and Adam only wanted an excuse to touch him. Even if Ronan did desire him, there was no way he'd want this.

He did, at least, take a step closer, leaning on the door frame. "Careful with that. You push it too hard, you'll just make it worse."

[thedreamthief]

Scowling, Ronan meets Adam's eyes through the mirror. Adam looks casual, maybe even a little smug from where he's leaning against the door frame, lean muscle relaxed under his t-shirt.

"Surprised you think I could fuck up my face anymore than it already is," he replies, his tone far more bitter and raw than he'd been intending. It makes his lips thin and he quickly turns his gaze back on his own reflection, leaning closer as he nears the cut itself.

[incognoscibilis]

Adam gave Ronan a faint, tired look. It spoke volumes about things he didn't know how to say. "Your face," Adam pronounced slowly, "is very nice. I don't like seeing you hurt."

A knock sounded at the door and Adam startled up like a rabbit before remembering the pizza and turning back to the door.

[thedreamthief]

Meeting Adam's eyes in the mirror again, Ronan can only stare. There's something about Adam's tone he isn't sure how to read. It feels too bare, too honest, and Ronan feels a familiar clench of hope in his gut.

He thinks about Krem, about the ideas that asshole had planted, and fuck, he wonders.

And he almost says something. A knock on the door stops him short and he watches, instead, as Adam hurries away, defeat and reality filling in the space he leaves behind before Ronan returns to cleaning his face.

[incognoscibilis]

Adam left the pizza on the kitchen counter, waiting for them to eat later.

If he were braver, Adam Parrish would close the space between them once again, reach out to touch Ronan. He did not know how to be wanted or how to have something he wanted. With Blue, it had been disastrous. To make that mistake with Ronan...The fear of it left him petrified.

But still the question needled him.

"Can I take a look?"

[thedreamthief]

Dutifully, Ronan dabs at his face, exchanging the soiled paper for clean after a moment. He can hear Adam taking care of the pizza in the other room and hears his footsteps when he returns.

Gaze flicking to Adam's in the mirror, Ronan frowns as he considers. And wants.

Swallowing, he throws the newest wad of toilet paper in the trash and turns, leaning back, his hands against the sink and regarding Adam carefully. It feels like a challenge when he says, "If you want to."

[incognoscibilis]

Adam grabs the tissues and dampens them with warm water again, dabbing at the skin around Ronan's eyebrow but not at the cut itself. The clean skin gave him room to properly ascertain how much it was bleeding. If his thumb might brush against Ronan's uninjured brow, it was in the process of helping check him for injury.

"It's not so bad, but it sure is bleeding," he said, holding tissue to his brow now in hopes of staunching the blood.

[thedreamthief]

Adam's careful, his touch gentle but purposeful. Ronan carefully keeps his face neutral, holds his breath when Adam's thumb brushes along his uninjured brow.

"Head wounds usually do," he points out once he can trust himself to speak, gaze flicking up to Adam's eyes briefly. He grabs the ointment off the counter and holds it up to Adam.

[incognoscibilis]

"I know." He didn't expand on that, didn't have to. Ronan was probably the one who knew best just how many reprisals had come down on Adam's head. He'd seen the worst of it. Saved his life.

Adam was careful with the ointment, leaning a little too close and too long as he soothed it across the cut.

"You'll be okay."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan hasn't known Adam long in the scheme of things. They haven't discovered all there is to know about each other which, obviously, is certainly for the best. But it does make Ronan wonder just how much he's missed, how much he's imagined based solely on the little he's seen, the little Adam has allowed to be seen.

Again, Adam's touch is gentle and careful, spreading the ointment over Ronan's cut. Ronan keeps his eyes upward, locked on the nearness of Adam's jaw, the fall of eyelashes across pale cheeks. He holds his breath.

He thinks of what Grantaire had said days ago, the idea of everything being temporary, fleeting, no time to waste questioning thought processes or motivation. It'd felt like bullshit at the time, bullshit weighted down by Grantaire's own issues. He hadn't wanted to see much beyond that.

"I know you know," he says, his voice somewhere between raw and accusatory. He swallows and balls one hand into a tight fist. "We don't have to dance around this shit anymore."

[incognoscibilis]

He could be coy, ask exactly what it is that Ronan knows he knows, but Ronan doesn't lie and he doesn't play games, not like this. "I know," he agreed. "I've known for a long time." Adam shifted his hand, sliding from Ronan's uninjured side and down the shape of his face until the pad of his thumb was on the corner of Ronan's mouth.

Inaction didn't suit either of them.

"I know," he said once more.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan's breath catches, his stomach twisting as Adam's fingers graze along the side of his face, thumb touching just the corner of his mouth. A part of him is tempted to bite, a snake coiled in the grass. His heartbeat thuds in his ears.

He isn't entirely surprised. Adam sees things, things Ronan would rather he not. But whether he sees and whether he welcomes are two entirely different things.

"You didn't say anything," he points out, turning his face lightly into the palm of Adam's hand, unable to help himself.

[incognoscibilis]

He could see the tension and worried for a second that Ronan really would snap at him, but Adam didn't actually flinch. This was Ronan and Ronan could be hard and angry and frightening, but Adam wasn't frightened of him.

"No, I didn't," he said. Neither of them was Gansey, who could persuade straw to turn itself into gold. Maybe it was better that he saw the truth unadorned anyway.

Stepping past him, hand still on Ronan's face, Adam sat heavily on the edge of the tub so that they were on the same level. So that he could lean forward, halfway to a kiss, and let Ronan close the space if he wanted.

[thedreamthief]

Adam moves slowly to sit on the tub and Ronan watches him the entire time, half expecting him to turn and leave, shut the door on the entire conversation. Instead, Adam leans forward, expectantly, and Ronan can't breathe.

His eyes dart downward to the soft swell of Adam's lips. They look even better close up than he'd imagined.

Drawn in, Ronan leans forward, but only barely, glancing up to meet Adam's eyes. Says, "This feels like a dream."