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]

The smugness didn't suit Ronan, and Kavinsky had an awful, terrible moment where he worried that he had dreamt up a Ronan, that he had made a forgery, and it was this--that, like Prokopenko, it had come out almost-but-not-quite how it should have; instead of replacing bigotry for blind obedience, he had replaced cynical passion for domineering pride.

Ronan's hand on his cock made Kavinsky's hips jump a little. He arched into the contact of it, imagining a world where Ronan were even capable of begging. That wasn't what he'd wanted at all.

He leaned his temple against Ronan's forehead. Lies were an easy sort of thing, protective and insulating, because they were not truths. Ronan Lynch liked to say he wasn't a liar, and that was the biggest lie of all, but Kavinsky even said he wasn't a liar; people assumed he was, and he let the assumption stand. Really, he just avoided the truth when the truth was a barby, thorny thing that liked to bite him.

"If I wanted you begging on your knees," he said, cagey, thick with desire because he had a hand on his cock and too many emotions to handle right now and he was going to hit Ronan, if he kept talking, "don't you think you would be?"

[thedreamthief]

"You might have tried," Ronan says, leaning in closer to sink his teeth onto Kavinsky's earlobe as his thumb slides over the wet, sensitive skin of Kavinsky's tip. It's a purely teasing touch, circling and lingering over the slit before tapping lightly and then sliding away.

Kavinsky has an arm around his waist, holding him in closer and Ronan, despite himself, can feel his body reacting to the heat of another body and the weight of a dick in his hand. He breathes out hot against Kavinsky's ear and tries to fight the heat coiling through him, tries to override it with the irritation and anger and fucking grief that's been simmering all fucking day.

"I'm not what you want me to be," he says, his voice lower and darker as he speeds up the pace of his hand, not giving a shit if it's harder than Kavinsky likes it. Hell, it's probably not hard enough. "I'm never gonna be what you want me to be."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky hissed a little at the teasing touch. He let Ronan whisper at him, let him breathe on his skin. He could feel Ronan's rushing breath and could almost feel the stutter of his heartbeat, real, concrete and real, behind two sets of ribcages.

He turned his head, mouth almost touching Ronan's. Ronan's eyes were dark and sharp, but Kavinsky knew him, knew the secrets in his head, knew what it felt like to hold onto all those secrets and try to not let them slip away like water. Their noses brushed. He breathed, like life, against Ronan's mouth. His arm tightened around Ronan's waist.

"Who says you're not?" He rocked up into Ronan's jerking hand and brought his other hand to grasp the side of Ronan's face, to hold him. Their mouths were so close together, and he grinned, a complete disaster. "He never would have wanted all of this."

[thedreamthief]

The words are sharp as a knife and stab right through Ronan's ribcage, the truth a serrated edge. It cuts the breath from his lungs, slices sinew and bone to obliterate the meat beneath.

"Fuck you," Ronan snarls, fighting the pain of his shredded insides, funneling it all into the grip of his hand as he ducks into Kavinsky's neck and bites down. It's not a love bite, not tender in the fucking least. He wants to rip a chunk of Kavinsky's skin off, wants to fucking pummel him, wants to destroy.

His breath is ragged, labored as he pulls his hand away from Kavinsky's cock to grab his face instead, fingers digging into the skin of his jaw and cheek as he shifts to straddle Kavinsky, eyes wild as he holds him down. He wraps one hand around Kavinsky's neck, fingers digging into the mark he's left there with his teeth. "You say one more fucking word about him and I'll kill you right now."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky managed to laugh, or at least a breathless noise that might have tried to be a laugh, somewhere in his concave ribcage, as Ronan went for his throat like the dog he was. He squirmed and fought underneath him, arm still imperiously wrapped around Ronan's waist like he could draw him in, like he had an ounce of control in this mad situation that had, at some point, spiraled wildly out of his control.

Even with Ronan's fingers pressed into all the worst possible places, Kavinsky grinned up at him. He licked his lips and dug his fingers into Ronan's side, still and almost placid as Ronan held him down except for his urgent, fluttering pulse and his jagged breathing and the twitch of his cock.

He grinned at Ronan. He tilted his head back and pressed his neck up into Ronan's hand.

"Go on, then, big boy. He's not here to see you get your hands dirty. Maybe you can dream me up better."

He grinned, sharp and feral, face a challenge but eyes deep and hollow and exhausted, like when Ronan came in at first. Not startled, like when Ronan first lunged for him. But even with the arousal and all the dreaming and drugs and alcohol still making them, the exhaustion had slipped back in so that the challenging smile did not meet his eyes.

[thedreamthief]

It's not like Ronan to not make good on his promises and the temptation to squeeze until Kavinsky's gasping and choking, eyes bugged wide, is overwhelming. He could do it, he knows. Kavinsky can dream better than him, can manipulate, but Ronan has size, muscle, and positioning on his side. He could snap Kavinsky's neck or rip out his tongue.

Instead he throws a punch.

It's more satisfying, the blossom of pain across his knuckles, the drop of blood that falls from Kavinsky's nose. Snarling, Ronan glares down at him. "Why the fuck would I ever want to dream you? You think I care if anyone knows I killed you? "

Because Ronan could do it. He could kill Kavinsky right now and turn himself in. He'd be locked up for life, thrown into just another prison inside a prison. And no one would give a damn.

[mitsubishievo]

There was a moment, one hysterical moment, where Ronan's hand tightened on Kavinsky's throat, and Kavinsky thought, this is it. He shut his eyes in some blissful anticipation, heart pounding up against his chest and--

He swore, powerful and prophetic, in Bulgarian, as Ronan slammed his fist into his nose. He moved his arms swiftly, windmilling them, so he could press his hands to Ronan's chest and shove him off him and onto the floor. He rocketed to his feet while he did it, anger and resentment compensating for Ronan's slightly superior weight.

For a moment, he stood there, blood on his face, cock only half flagged. He swore again and yanked his shorts up, stepping away from the couch.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan almost laughs as Kavinsky shoves him away, blood singing at the force of Kavinsky's anger. He drops onto the floor ungracefully, grinning wild and rabid as he pushes himself up to his feet slowly, hiking his shorts up as he eyes Kavinsky.

"Thought you'd like it rough," he says, gaze dropping briefly to Kavinsky's flagging erection a second before Kavinsky pulls his shorts up to hide it. "Just trying to make it good for you, baby."

He's taunting now, fingers itching to claw, punch, pummel. He wants Kavinsky angry, wants to feed on it, wants to set this entire town on fire and burn in the middle of it. He and Kavinsky can be the kindling, Cabeswater the fuel. They could do it, he knows. It wouldn't even be hard.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky turned off the movie on the television, in the midst of the smaller guy taking a facial too reminiscent of the one Kavinsky had just received. He seethed quietly for a moment, willing his cock back down and into submission, and, when it disagreed with him, just gave up and stomped back over to the couch to grab his jeans.

He stood behind Ronan for a moment, heat in his veins, jeans clenched in his fist. It would be easy to pick up one of the bottles from the floor, one of the full ones, and bash Ronan over the head. They didn't shatter like they did in the movies. It would be easy to wrap the leg of his jeans around his throat and pull, keep it tight until his eyes fluttered. It would be easy--

He leaned down, fingers pressed to Ronan's scalp. For a moment, his hands were claws. For a moment, he imagined himself as one of Kavinsky's black, black nighthorrors--claws and beak and all. His lips were against Ronan's ear.

"Gimme a little warning next time, at least," he murmured. "It's like trying to do anal dry, Lynch. Not even I like that."

[thedreamthief]

"A warning before I punch you in the face?" Ronan says, scowling as he ducks his head and turns to swat Kavinsky's hand away. "And ruin the surprise? Fuck that."

He makes no remark on the rest of Kavinsky's words, not letting himself think about just how much experience Kavinsky has with that particular act, whether Kavinsky prefers to top or bottom.

Instead, he steps away, quickly buttoning up his jeans before grabbing another bottle from the floor. He uses the lip of a nearby table to pry off the lid and takes a deep swig before walking through the mess of dream objects to hunt out a shirt.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky pulled on his pants and crashed onto the couch. He was still fucking hard, though only half there, and but the want to get off had ebbed out of him now that Ronan had made it clear they were neither going to fuck nor fight in earnest.

He watched Ronan's back across the room, the muscle and the bone under his skin, and the dark ink tattoo across his shoulders and back in an intricate mess of lines and shapes. One minute, a celtic knot; the next minute, a mess of ravens; then, a clutch of thorns. He looked away and at the disarray of dream things.

"You sticking around, then?" The words stuck to the roof of his mouth for no discernible reason, like a hundred times he'd argued with Prokopenko before the event horizon had changed everything, and then there was no need to ask if Prokopenko was sticking around, but more if he was leaving.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan finds a shirt, the one he'd worn here in fact, under a pile of magazines and slips into it, tugging the hem down over his waist as he turns around. Kavinsky's stretched back out on the couch, the front of his underwear only slightly tented.

"Where the fuck else am I gonna go?" Ronan asks, grabbing a green pill from the box still lying open.

He wanders back to the couch, sitting on the opposite end from Kavinsky, back against the arm of it as he props his legs up on Kavinsky's thighs. Tipping his head back, he tosses the pill into his mouth and swallows it down with another gulp of beer.

[mitsubishievo]

The touch was acidic, as burning as the cosmic rope to escape this place, like a liquor fire, and that was without the heady skin to skin contact of only minutes before. His nose was a dull ache, radiating pain throughout his whole face. He didn't think it was broken, but it was hard to tell through the haze of everything else in his system.

He reached across Ronan, laid across his legs, and reached for the bottle in his hand. Not to take, but to grip and hold.

If Ronan would dream, Kavinsky had no qualms of gracelessly draping over him. He remembered their weekend, back in Henrietta, and Ronan on the hood of the Camaro. It had been an effort of will and danger to touch Ronan while he was under the red pill. Now, there was only the danger of the touch.

That, the danger, was the thrill itself. Like dreaming. Like creation. He wondered, suddenly, if it was the same for Ronan, even in the slightest. It all seemed terribly out of sorts all of a sudden.

[thedreamthief]

He's under almost before his head nestles into the soft back cushion of the couch. He only has a vague idea of what he's going in for this time, but in no time he's on the tennis court back at Aglionby, crouched forward and ready, his feet pounding on the pavement as he keeps on the balls of his feet, swinging his racket.

He can feel the sweat running down his back and the tightness in his lungs as he swats at the ball, each one coming faster than the last. He doesn't miss a single one. They fly high, too high to feasibly reach, but he's there all the same, batting them across the net, somehow managing to keep every single one in bounds.

It's impossible. Or should be.

The racquet is solid in his hands and feather light. It's the same one from home, the same one he's had for years, re-stringed to perfection, singing through the air with every swipe.

The muscles in Ronan's thighs and calves burn and the balls keep coming - thwap, thwap, thwap - Ronan launches them right back.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky watched Ronan dream. He watched the slow, slower, slowest movement of his chest, the rapid movement of his eyes, the slight quiver of his stomach. The racket appeared in fits and starts to begin with, flicking like bad reception, like it wasn't sure it wanted to be Ronan's dream thing or not.

Kavinsky wanted to touch it. He'd never touched a dream thing in the midst of being made, and he wondered if it would undo him in some fundamental capacity, like touching the cosmic rope had burned him, or if it would simply do nothing. If his hands would deflect from a physical object on one glance and not, on the next. String theory in action. Infinite posibilities, infinite universes. And in this one, Ronan was pulling his tennis racket out of a dream.

There was a patch of skin visible above the waist of his jeans, and Kavinsky stared at it, like he was offended or trying to be. Mostly, he wanted to run his fingers or his tongue against it, to see if he could startle Ronan awake. Instead, he pillowed his head, briefly, on Ronan's hip and stared at his beer bottle.

[thedreamthief]

When Ronan comes to, he's holding the racquet, the grip warm in his palm. His heart is still beating fast, like he's brought the physical exertion out as well and he frowns down at Kavinsky, an eyebrow arched.

"Not bad," he says, twisting his wrist this way and that to show it off. He doesn't think for a second that Kavinsky would recognize a good tennis racquet if it smacked him in the face, but Ronan's pleased with it. As much as it looks like the one from home, Ronan knows it's different. It's a true a dream thing, possessing that little extra something.

This is a racquet that will never miss.

Still holding it in one hand, Ronan jostles his beer bottle with the other, Kavinsky's hand still around his own. He doesn't acknowledge the weight of Kavinsky draped half over him.

Doesn't tell him to move either.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky looked up, like he'd been jostled from a dream of his own, though his eyes hadn't been closed and he hadn't even been resting them. He watched Ronan with the racket, contemplative still. When Ronan jostled the beer, he moved his hand, slid it across Ronan's stomach slowly. He could feel the flutter of his breath under his shirt, under his ribs, already slowing back down.

He could dream himself golf clubs, but that had been his father's sport, with drunken business associates back in New Jersey. He could dream himself a baseball bat, but except for the inexpertness of a batting cage and a few times taking a bat to a car, he had no expertise in the sport. He had seen Ronan play tennis, as he'd seen Dick on the row team. Sportly distractions had simply not been a part of Kavinsky's life.

"Not bad," he agreed. His hand rested over Ronan's heart now, feeling it continue to thunder. "You gonna start a country club?"

[thedreamthief]

"Fuck that," Ronan replies with a huff of a laugh. He'll happily leave that for Gansey to own and Adam to--

Kavinsky's hand lies heavy on his chest, right over his heartbeat. It feels like a strangely tender touch and he wonders if Kavinsky is actually capable of any sort of gentleness.

Not that he wants it.

With a grunt, Ronan reaches over to gently balance his racquet on the ground, handle resting against the arm of the couch before he sinks back again, lifting his beer for another long sip. Swallowing, he licks his lips, glancing down at Kavinsky. He wonders why Kavinsky is being quiet, why he's being almost fucking civil.

Frowning a little, he jostles his leg where Kavinsky's half laying on him, not to dislodge so much as to just call attention to it. Kavinsky this quiet is nothing short of worrying. "Are you trying to fucking cuddle? What is this?"

[mitsubishievo]

Ronan moving was more of a jostle than Ronan actually jostling his leg. He looked up at Ronan, fitting himself back against the back of the sofa. Where Ronan had turned into fire and brimstone, Kavinsky had a slow burn, kindling that was sparking and smoldering. He felt like he might smoke into a thousand pieces, given a chance at it, a strange sort of shattering.

"I'm sizing you up," Kavinsky said after a moment. He leaned over the edge of the couch, searching for a beer or a pill or something. "To see if I could eat you. Like a snake."

He found a discarded dimebag near the box of pills and picked it up. The cocaine inside glistened like snow, like diamonds, like ground up bones. Kavinsky looked at Ronan and slid his hand down to Ronan's stomach, to the hem of his shirt, and pushed it up.

"Hold still. I'm not high enough for this shit."

[thedreamthief]

Kavinsky's words paint a strange and vivid image in Ronan's mind: a snake circling, coiling, entwining like a python, slow and dangerous and sensual. He imagines glittering scales and a clever tongue, and a wide, gaping mouth.

Appropriate.

Ronan takes another drink of his beer as Kavinsky reaches back behind the couch, arches an eyebrow at the bag of white powder he grabs. Cocaine, Ronan thinks, and wonders if it works the exact same as normal cocaine or if Kavinsky's dreamed up different effects. He sure as hell isn't about to find out for himself. And he wouldn't know how to compare it anyway.

A heat licks up his spine as Kavinsky pushes Ronan's shirt up, muscles in his abdomen twitching, though he doesn't push Kavinsky away.

He takes another drink instead.

"Feel like you're working on another hooker analogy," Ronan remarks after he swallows, licking his lips. "You're not doing a line off my ass. Don't care how much you pay me."

[mitsubishievo]

"You've probably got a pimply goddamn ass, anyway, even if it is flat as a goddamn board, Lynch," Kavinsky said, mild and bored, as he swept his hand back down Ronan's stomach. He could feel the fine hair on Ronan's skin, and the coarser ones of his happy trail, as the muscles of Ronan's stomach shifted and twitched under his palm on reflex.

He opened the dime bag and tapped out some of the cocaine. After a moment of settling it on Ronan's skin--it was paler than him, considerably, too purely white to be mistaken for skin, but it reminded him of the snow he'd made in the dream place out of the broken glass--he pulled out his wallet. A card, to scrap lines straight and narrow onto Ronan's skin. He wondered if this pure, snow-white cocaine would burn like fire or ice; either way, he knew it would burn.

He leaned in, taking up the first line. His eyes water, burned, blurred. The smell of Ronan's skin lingered with the powder, overwhelming with the powder in his sinuses. Without thought, Kavinsky reached up and fisted Ronan's shirt, then bent his head back down and took the second line. His pulse thudded in his temples, fast and alert.

[thedreamthief]

Brow furrowed, Ronan watches as Kavinsky taps out the cocaine across his stomach than carefully scrapes the powder into two straight lines. Ronan considers inhaling deep or shifting his hips, anything to dislodge the dust and piss off Kavinsky.

Instead, he keeps still, almost fascinated by the way Kavinsky leans over him to sniff first one line and then the other, his hand a tight fight in the fabric of Ronan's shirt.

Once he's done, Ronan cards the fingers of his free hand into Kavinsky's hair and tilts his head upward so Ronan can look down at him. "This all that's left?" he asks, lips curled into a frown. His stomach is tight again, twisting. "We can do almost fucking anything we want and this is what you live for?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky's eyes were still swimming, still burning, and Ronan's hand in his hair was not rough but it startled him, almost made him jerk at the contact. Perhaps, though, he just wanted the grounding brutality of it, the proof of reality. His words did not sink, did not settle, for the longest moment, as time seemed to stretch and stretch, and then snap back at him, hitting him in the chest.

He wiped his nose, and was unsure if the blood was from Ronan hitting him before, or from the insufflation.

He sat up, fist unclenching from Ronan's shirt, eyes focused into the middle distance. Some noise came out of him, almost a laugh, but mostly a wet sound, like there were tears in his past or his future and he was floating, somewhere, out of time itself, because time was meaningless and circular.

"Who the fuck said I was living for anything?" It was a sharp and carelessly honest thing, and he laughed again, actually laughed, without the wet sound in his voice. "Life's fucking meaningless and we're all careening toward the inevitable heat-death of the universe, right? And I'm just some Slavic mobster faggot out of Jersey, just like you're some Mick--"

Kavinsky inhaled, or sniffled, or choked on the words. He tilted his head back. He realized, too late, that he had made himself angel dust at some point, stashed it in a dime bag like his regular cocaine, and it was singing through him, already brutally fast. With his eyes closed, the world was moving, hurtling through space at whatever speed the world moved at, and his breath felt caught.

"...shit."