everyone leaves [dated to 10/29/2015]

[thedreamthief]

By the time Ronan goes looking, he realizes he has no idea how long Adam has actually been gone. Maybe only hours, maybe a day or two. Maybe nearly a week.

After Noah's visit the other night, Ronan had made a decision. And, as necessary a decision as it is, Ronan is being an absolute coward in going through with it. Still, after three days of successful avoidance and not so much as a text from Parrish, Ronan starts to wonder.

He tries the sporting goods store first where he learns Adam hasn't been in since his last shift, which was days ago. The garage gives him the same news: no sign of Adam since Sunday.

Adam Parrish doesn't skip work. Ever.

Gut twisted in knots, Ronan swung by Adam's apartment, then his own. He tried Gansey's and Blue's (no answer), then Noah's (also no answer). He tried the fucking factory they haven't even moved into yet, the cat cafe, the park and the beach. He's called Parrish's phone at least three dozen times and Gansey's almost as many until Gansey had finally replied to say he hadn't seen or heard anything in days either, the carefully concealed worry only making Ronan's own spike white-hot.

Ronan slams on the brakes, tires squealing.

The realization is a punch to the gut, nearly knocking Ronan to his knees before turning into white hot flame as he does a U-turn in the middle of the road, heading toward the first place he can think to find Kavinsky.

He jumps out of the Pig when he gets there, nearly bangs down the door to the warehouse with his bare hands, rage and fear and desperation vibrating off his skin.

"Kavinsky! Kavinsky, you fucking cuntrag. I'm gonna kill you, I swear to God. I'm gonna fucking cut your head off and stick it on a goddamn pole."

Comments

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky was drifting. Not sleeping, not dreaming. He was drifting in a strange place, between wakefulness and exhaustion, that he would sometimes get to when he'd stretched himself too thin in creation. He hadn't been doing that recently. He'd been trying, trying to make, and make, and make, but the dream place wouldn't give. She vibrated and thrummed and laughed at him with it's whispering leaves, but she wouldn't give it up, like back in Henrietta where he'd simply took until his hands bled.

He had a window open in the office he kept in the warehouse, and he heard the rumble of the Pig before he heard Ronan's voice. He opened his eyes slowly and wondered when he'd moved to be laying on top of the desk. It didn't really matter, but he did like to know the progression of these things.

Ronan sounded pissed. This was going to be interesting, at least.

Kavinsky looked for his shirt and, incapable of finding it, shambled down to the ground floor. He rubbed his eyes a bit. There were still remnants of the substance party in the corners of the warehouse, the sound system and the flood lights and empty, overturned bottles. He rolled up the door.

"Good afternoon to you too, Lynch."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan ducks to slip beneath the door before it's even fully one, grabbing Kavinsky by the middle and knocking him to the ground and straddling him, one hand on his throat and the other raised in a fist trembling with rage.

"Where the fuck is he?" It's more demand than question, hand sliding up to grip Kavinsky's chin just enough to lift his head so he can smack it back down against hard cement. "Tell me, you Bulgarian fuckweasel or I swear to God, I'll gut you right now."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky let out an oomph as Ronan tackled him. His head thunked on the ground and he was dazed for a moment, blinking at the ceiling in the instant before Ronan's hand was around his throat in a vice grip. It did wonders to clearing Kavinsky's vision and mind, sharpening him to a moment of clarity.

It was all the moment he was given. Ronan's voice was a thunder, his fist a hammer overhead. The daze came back for a moment as Ronan slammed Kavinsky's head back against the concrete.

"Shit, man."

It was not their normal, almost playful brand of violence, the scrapes and Ronan's parking lot fights and Kavinsky's vehicular mayhem. This was danger, this was real, this was a memory of Kavinsky out of power and out of control. He brought his hands up toward Ronan's shoulders.

"Get the fuck off me."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan snarls, his hand sliding from Kavinsky's jaw to his hair, grabbing violently to keep Kavinsky's head down, his other hand grabbing one of Kavinsky's, fingers tight around his wrist.

"Tell me," he spits, shoving his knees in hard against Kavinsky's ribs. "I'm not fuckin' around, man. I will kill you. I wanna know where he is and I swear on every goddamn thing you call holy, if you did anything to him, I will cut off your dick and feed it to you."

He isn't much for threats normally, prefers to make promises with the curl of his fist. But Kavinsky won't be able to give up shit if he can't speak.

[mitsubishievo]

There was a hysterical spike in Kavinsky, and he thrashed for a second, tried to fight Ronan off him. They were normally evenly matched--same height and weight, same propensity for the occasional dirty tactics in their fighting--but Ronan was livid and feral in the moment, and Kavinsky, even with thrumming energy in his bones, was exhausted.

He grunted at the knee to his ribs, curling a little, driving the heel of his palm into Ronan's shoulder again.

"Who the fuck are you talking about?!" It was Dick or Parrish, or maybe someone else from the city that Ronan had grown an attachment for that Kavinsky hadn't pinged him for yet. His head was a wash, overwhelmed and battling back on something that might have been a real, legitimate fear for a moment.

[thedreamthief]

Kavinsky squirms, eyes wild, his free hand pushing at Ronan's shoulder. He looks frantic, almost legitimately scared, and Ronan keeps his hold, still seething.

And then it hits him... if Kavinsky did do something, he'd be owning it, he'd be proud of it. Hell, he probably would've come to Ronan first, smirking wide and practically twirling a fucking mustache. Not that he can even grow one. He'd be dangling it in front of Ronan's face like a fucking cat toy, eager to see the claws.

The Kavinsky beneath him, the one starting up at him wide-eyed, throat clutched in Ronan's grip has no fucking clue.

He lets go of Kavinsky's wrist, the wind knocked out of him all over again, chest heaving with useless breaths..

It's almost worse and almost better. Adam hasn't been kidnapped, isn't curled up in the trunk of some dream car. Or worse, Kavinsky's threats from before still ringing in Ronan's ears.

But if it had been Kavinsky, at least he'd know.

So what now?

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky let his hand drop, useless, to the concrete beside his head for a moment. He watched Ronan, leery and cautious like a kicked and cornered animal. There was fight in his eyes, but it was a measured thing. Kavinsky had never quite had the fight beaten out of him like Adam Parrish; where Parrish had sublimated that rage to avoid it, Kavinsky had swallowed it whole to embody it, had embraced it as a dark ally that would assist and defend him.

His hand shook on the concrete, on Ronan's shoulder.

"You need to take a step back, before we both fucking regret something, Lynch." Kavinsky was not often for talking his way out of his corners. He was fire and spit and punches. He had grown up with blood on his nose and knuckles and teeth.

This was about Dick or Parrish, about the thing that Kavinsky would do but had not done, about him and Ronan. It was about--

"This is about lover boy, isn't it?"

[thedreamthief]

It's a barb, mocking and taunting, and Ronan wants to snarl, wants to punch that growing twisted smirk off Kavinsky's face. Wants to keep going, not stopping until there's little more than a bloodied, busted slab of meat where Kavinsky's face used to be.

Instead, he pulls off, ignoring the shake of his own hands as he gets to his feet.

The girl with the purple hair had once told Ronan about how people disappear from here just as they'd arrived, without a single word of warning. It's the last shred of hope Ronan can cling to right now, that Adam isn't lying dead or wounded somewhere he just hasn't found, but that that he's gone back to Henrietta, back to the hunt for Glendower, back to a future at some Ivy league school, back to choices.

It's a hope, it's a good thing, but Ronan can't stop shaking.

He wipes the back of his hand across his brow, curls his fingers into a fist and then finds the nearest object -- a plastic and metal chair -- and hurls it at the window.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky sat up, slow deliberation and the caution of making sure he hadn't given himself another concussion from hitting the ground when Ronan tackled him, just in time to watch Ronan toss the chair at the window. The window was already half broken, and the display of childish upset at having lost his toy didn't bother Kavinsky so much.

He rubbed at his arm, scratched off the gravel from his shoulders, slowly rose to his chest. The world didn't spin. Probably no concussion. Ronan's fucking luck, then.

"Well, where's the last place you put his fucking leash down," Kavinsky said boredly, rolling his eyes a little. "Certainly wasn't around here. Did you check the dream place? Have you been putting out food and water, like a good boy?"

His smirk was more sneer now, offense at some unspoken assumption. Ronan had agreed to work with him, had promised that. Parrish was not a threat to that, would never be a threat to that, even if they were fucking around. Kavinsky could still win this game.

...or not. Suddenly, Kavinsky wasn't entirely sure he knew the steps to the dance anymore. There was a roiling tempest in Kavinsky that wished he knew where Parrish was, so he could hold it over Ronan and see him squirm for it.

[thedreamthief]

It's unsatisfying, the chair knocking only a few shards of glass to the ground before dropping with a clang. So Ronan picks it up by the legs and hurls it against the far wall instead, knocking it into a lead pipe that leads up toward the ceiling.

That's not enough to quell the rage though and he turns to Kavinsky, vibrating, as he takes two steps toward him.

"You're the only one here who sees his friends as fucking dogs, Kavinsky," he says, his voice utterly calm, masking the despair boiling beneath his veins. And it feels like a lie, not in the statement, but the implication. Adam is his friend, will always be his friend regardless of where he is, regardless of dimension or time or circumstance. But he's more, too. To Ronan. He's so much more.

And this is it, he thinks. End of discussion. He's not talking about Adam anymore, not with Kavinsky and maybe not with anyone. Adam's gone, Adam has to be gone - the alternative is impossible for Ronan to even breathe through.

So he squares his shoulders as he takes a step closer, glaring at Kavinsky down the line of his nose. "You look like shit," he says, noting the shadows under Kavinsky's eyes, the hollowness in his cheeks.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky watched Ronan work at his rage, chip and scrape at it. He pulled at the pockets of his pants, searching for a pack of cigarettes, a pill, something that would edge off the anxious spike that had consumed his chest for a moment there, while Ronan worked through himself.

The barb caught for a moment, deep in Kavinsky's ribs, but Kavinsky only gave Ronan a bored expression. He knew Ronan could come back at him with better than that, if he really wanted. Instead of a response, he lazily flipped him off, and then closed his eyes as Ronan approached, vinegar in his voice.

"You're the sweetest. Sorry I didn't get dolled up for your impromptu visit, Lynch."

The dream place did not like him, but it could fuck right off. He was in and out like a flash, standing there in the warehouse, swaying on his feet, and when he opened his eyes, he withdrew his hands ichor-dark from his pockets and had a pack of cigarettes--an unknown brand with unknowable writing on it. His fingers tingled with pins and needles.

He laid back down on the concrete, pulling one of the cigarettes out to ritualistically flip it filter down. He pulled the next one out for himself, giving it a sniff. Clove and piney tobacco filled his nose.

"You got a light?"

[thedreamthief]

Ronan doesn't look away, brow furrowing as he watches Kavinsky close his eyes and sway right in front of him, a packet of cigarettes materializing in his palm out of nowhere. The rage under Ronan's skin morphs then into something no less uneasy but a good deal more anxious.

Thieving only comes in sleep. Kavinsky had only closed his eyes.

"Why the fuck would I have a light?" he answers, gaze locking on Kavinsky's hands. "What's with your hands?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky sighed a little and rolled to his feet again, heading to the stairs to the second floor and his office and, hopefully, his lighter. He left Ronan there, to follow or not.

"You're a bomb, remember? Figured you might carry something to light yourself." At the stairs, he raised his voice just a touch, so it wasn't a whispering mumble, so it was less laced with sarcastic exhaustion and more with bereft cynicism. He flicked his black fingers. The ichor dropped off it, greasy, muddy; it clung to the hand rail and slipped off.

"Didn't I tell you, I'm taking up part time as one of your dream things? It's a classy gig." He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. "You decide what it is, Lynch. Good Lord knows you will."

Whatever the ichor was, it was exhausting. He'd ruined things that were pristine in the dream place, pulling them out and watching the ichor collect on his hands as he came out, incapable of dropping the items fast enough.

[Several Hours Later]

[thedreamthief]

Barefoot and stretched back on the obscenely large couch Kavinsky had dreamed up an hour ago, Ronan closes his eyes and lets himself fall, a bottle of beer -- also a dream thing -- rests against his side, condensation cool against his bare side.

He's getting the hang of this, slowly. The trick is to think of what he wants before he goes under, to picture it in as much detail as possible. Kavinsky seems to be a master of making up the details when he has none to draw from, but Ronan isn't that good yet. He's tried, but the items he pulls out or either warped or missing something integral, something he'd forgotten to think up.

Right now, he's stretching, working on a credit card that can be used in Darrow, a flimsy piece of plastic with the right numbers attached to an unlimited bank account that only he can access. As small a thing as it is, it shouldn't be too hard.

When hurls back into consciousness, it's rested atop his chest, a flat silver card with gold lettering. After the in-between moment passes, he lifts a hand to pick it up, squinting at the numbers and the name, the phone number on the back for a customer service line that doesn't actually exists.

Sitting up a little, he takes a sip of his beer, flashing the card at Kavinsky with a proud grin. "Think it works?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky looked up from where he was trying to get the cable box, for the television he'd brought out while Ronan was sleeping, to work. Whatever magic the cosmic rope had that kept them from dreaming their way out of Darrow, or simply walking or taking the train or anything else, seemed to work similarly on him trying to get any regular cable, even though he'd dreamed the box from his house back in Henrietta and it should have worked perfectly.

He was tempted to destroy the cable box.

Instead, he rolled to his feet, picking through the myriad scattering of things they'd managed to pull out and create. They'd turned the music down, though it was still thumping in the background. On his way to the couch, he picked up a beer for himself--ice cold without a cooler, neat trick, he'd told Ronan--and then crashed down onto the couch and half-sprawled onto Ronan's naked chest to pluck the card out of his fingers.

"You gonna order the hookers and find out, or me? Do they even have hookers in Darrow?" Kavinsky took a sip of his beer. "Do hookers even take card?"

[thedreamthief]

Kavinsky is heavy against his side, his skin warm, and Ronan feels an undeniable thrill roll through him. Paired with power buzzing under his skin and the slight haze of alcohol, it's almost intoxicating, and he makes no move to push Kavinsky off him.

"Pretty sure it's cash only," Ronan remarks with a smirk as he takes another sip of his beer, wiping a stray drop away with the flick of his thumb. "No paper trail."

Though if anyone is going to know anything about hookers, it's Kavinsky. Ronan decides he's not about to ask. "You could probably dream up a hooker if you wanted to," he remarks, confident in the fact that he's not telling Kavinsky anything he doesn't already know. Ronan's certainly not putting ideas into his head that haven't already long been there.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky licked his own lips, tracking Ronan's mouth, his thumb, that drop of beer. He grinned a little, let the implication of his experiences and knowledge settle peaceably between them with no assertion or denial either way. He was a master of omission.

Instead, he contemplated what they could use a credit card on when they could dream up anything else they wanted. It was a neat trick, of course, but ultimately fruitless in the grand scheme of things. When all your wants and needs were covered, money was never an object to begin with.

Instead, he pressed his bottle casually against Ronan's chest, rolled it gently down xylophone of his ribcage then looked over at the television and the cable box.

"I think we should be pay-per-view now. It's still fucking me on getting anything good because, you know, cosmic fucking vortex in Jersey--" He grinned widely at that. "--but we might get movies, ya know. Could see if your platinum shit is any good for that."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan reaches over to steal the card back, brushing a thumb over the raised numbers and letters before glancing up at the huge, blank television. He doesn't know all the parameters of it, if it operates any differently than a normal television or if there are tricks to it as directed by Kavinsky's dreaming.

"You think being able to pay for that will do shit?" Ronan says with a smirk, though he sets his bottle against his side long enough to reach for the remote.

He isn't dumb enough to wonder what types of movies Kavinsky has in mind and he also can't deny the excited thrum of his pulse at the idea. This isn't something he's ever done with Adam or Gansey or even Noah.

Then again, this whole day is full of firsts.

"Fuck, I don't even know how this shit works," he admits, surfing through the channels with a flick of his thumb, brow furrowed. "Do we have to call?"

[mitsubishievo]

"Hey, I'm living the honest life, over here, making sure the stars get paid and all that shit. With your dream-opoly money and whatever." Kavinsky grinned. He squirmed around a little, settling a little more, threw back another swallow of beer. He contemplated the small bag of green pills that had been deposited on the floor, replenished graciously and bountifully at some point that he could only vaguely remember in the past hours.

Everything was a haze of electric energy, bubbling and crackling and higher than it had been in the Mitsubishi. More honest, more real. Kavinsky skirted a hand up Ronan's spine as he channel surfed, higher and higher, toward the pay-per-view channels.

"Nah, man. Seriously, you never snuck a pay-per-view back home? Call. Christ, Lynch, we're getting porn, not talking to a hotline."

[thedreamthief]

Kavinsky's fingers skim up Ronan's back, smooth and soft and warm, completely unlike Adam's callused fingertips. He suppresses a shiver as he flips through the channels, slowing when he reaches the pay-per-view channels with titles like Thirsty Sluts 3 and Sucked Off and Schoolboy Fantasies.

"The fuck do you think the internet is for, man?" Ronan replies, rolling his eyes as he flips through a few more channels and then tosses the remote to Kavinsky to make him choose.

He leans back, trapping Kavinsky's hand between his back and the couch and takes another swig of his drink, eyes still on the screen.

[mitsubishievo]

"You've got no flavor for risk, man, sometimes. Christ." There was a layer of dark affection. Ronan had at least had some flavor for risk, letting Kavinsky drape on top of him, teeth near his skin and fingers near his spine.

Kavinsky flipped through the channels, contemplative, agitated a little that it was straight shit or bored looking guys twice their age trying to pass off as teenagers. He lingered briefly on something called Rough Gangbang Masters where someone suspiciously Parrish-esque looked dubious about the amount of dicks he was about to suck.

Maybe not.

Eventually, he picked at random--not Rough Gangbang Masters. At worst, they would laugh. At best, Kavinsky was already sprawled dangerous on Ronan, head half pillowed on his chest. Poised.

"See, and then it asks for your credit and billing info, blah blah. Because you're and adult now, paying for your porn and everything."

[thedreamthief]

For a moment, Ronan's worried Kavinsky's going to choose the gangbang one, something in his gut twisting at how similar the guy on screen looks like Adam. It's about the last way he ever wants to picture that face even if it might be something Adam could choose. His jaw twitches and he only relaxes when Kavinsky pulls up a new one, two beefy older guys gracing the cover.

Rolling his eyes, he grabs the remote back from Kavinsky and meticulously enters the information from his card. There's a moment of quiet as it's processed and Ronan finds himself holding his breath. Not because he has a burning desire to watch what they've chosen, but because he wants to know if this dream thing actually works.

When it eventually goes through, Ronan lets out a laugh, relief and pride washing over him both at once.

"Fuck me, it works." He grins down at the card, already imagining just paying outright for Hywell. If Adam's really gone -- and he has to be, he has to be -- they're not going to have the income to keep it. Now that problem's solved.

He's pulled out of his thoughts as the movie starts, but he keeps the card in his hand, flipping the plastic in his hand over and over.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky kept some smart ass comment to himself, eyes sharp and wicked, tucked down on Ronan's chest still. He sipped his beer and slipped the hand that was under Ronan's spine out from underneath him to rest between his ribs and the back of the couch.

Even before the porn started, Kavinsky was bored. He'd never really seen the appeal in it, watching something so obviously staged and only half enjoyable for the people involved. It was different, amateur stuff, but this was professional grade and it was almost painful how bad it was, even if the guys were sort of nice to look at. From time to time he'd look at the screen, but mostly, mostly he looked at Ronan.

Ronan, so proud of himself for his successful dream thing, linked to successful dream money, in a place that refused to let them go. Ronan, with so much capability and creativity and still occasionally a lack of the finite details that it took to make a whole thing. Ronan, with his growing-out hair and his heavy-lidded eyes and his sharp jaw line.

Kavinsky crept up Ronan's chest like a snake, looking more at Ronan than the screen, and pressed a kiss against the dip of Ronan's collarbone.

[thedreamthief]

It isn't good, the movie. Not that Ronan had expected it to be. No one watches porn for the acting or production value. Still, he keeps his eyes straight ahead, listening to the terrible dialogue between the two main actors before they almost inexplicably start making out.

Even as bad as it is, Ronan can't help being affected, a slow heat working through him when the slightly smaller one drops to his knees, pulling the other guy's jeans down with him.

He's all too aware of Kavinsky next to him, the heat of his skin and breath, the fact that they're both shirtless and stretched out on a couch. The air around them is practically crackling, drawing tight and thin, and Ronan brings his bottle up for another drink, nearly to the bottom of it now.

Setting it back down, he feels the press of warm lips against his collarbone. Ronan feels it in his toes. In his stomach. In his balls. He thinks about the pills Kavinsky's been supplying as he closes his eyes and tips his head back, wonders if he's still stuck in a dream even now, if he's completely lost sight of what's real and what's not in the past several hours.

He wonders if he even cares anymore.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky crept his kisses, slow and a little beer-wet, across Ronan's skin. There was possession behind it, but not the same as in the dream place that had driven him to bite, to mark, to claim. He was lazy and unafraid for the moment, confident, sprawled across Ronan and feeling the gentle, subtle stir of interest that was, no doubt, purely physical.

Kavinsky could work with physical. He'd grown used to physical. Dreams were for things more intimate than just the physical, and he had a wealth of those. But this--reality, or as near to it as either of them were capable of getting with all this energy, all this potential, under their skin--was nowhere near a dream.

He could hear, on screen, the slick noises of someone being sucked off. He looked up from Ronan's neck and grinned at him, cat-like, for a moment. His hand slid down Ronan's ribs, down, down to his hip, to his thigh, and squeezed.