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.

[thedreamthief]

Kavinsky wants to be followed, Ronan knows that much, and he indulges as far as the bottom of the stairs, watching as black drops from Kavinsky's fingers, splattering and sticking to the stair rail.

"Like I'd ever dream up something as sick as you," Ronan says -- sarcasm, not a lie -- as he props one foot on the first step. "That happen every time you steal something now?"

It doesn't seem impossible is the thing. Cabeswater has made it clear it doesn't like Kavinsky, that he's unwanted. Maybe the blackness is like ink, an identifying mark to fingerprint the burglar.

That's far from the most pressing matter, though.

Frowning, Ronan pitches his voice louder, making sure to be heard. "How the fuck do you do it without sleeping?"

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky didn't answer for a moment. He'd heard Ronan--of course. The warehouse was empty and cavernous and gaping, an echo-chamber. In the office, he tried to wipe the ichor off his hand as best he could. It clung and smeared, his hand dyed off-color and still tingling like he'd got the circulation cut off. He went in search of his lighter and finally came up with it, the stupid Bic with the dumb, cartoonish drawing on it of a half-naked woman that Proko had given to him for his fourteenth birthday, shortly after he'd moved to Virginia and they had met.

He stepped back out of the office and sat at the top of the stairs. He lit one of the black paper dream cigarettes. It burned hot, the smoke paper-white as he breathed it out slowly.

"You just have to want it enough." It was half an answer. The thrum of the energies here was deep and alluring and dangerous. He constantly felt like he was sleeping, like he was drained and at odds with the over-active energy he had back in Henrietta. "Who says I'm not? You could be a dream. I could still be on top of that P-O-S Camaro while you're trying to pull it out like your life depends on it."

He knew Ronan wasn't a dream. Ronan in his dreams was violent, but never without direction. Ronan in his dreams was a marvelous, leering thing. Ronan in his dreams was impossible.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan knew he wasn't a dream because, even as a dream, he would remember doing what Kavinsky desecribes, and he doesn't. He never got that far. Kavinsky can tell himself whatever he wants, can pretend Ronan is a dream if it makes him feel better, but Ronan knows the truth.

Or maybe he only knows his version of it.

Kavinsky isn't a dream, though. Not because Ronan's incapable of dreaming up something so despicable, but because he's too complicated, certainly far beyond Ronan's meager capabilities.

"I definitely wouldn't want you enough to dream you," Ronan points out, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the wall. "So I guess that answers that."

[mitsubishievo]

They were not dream things because if they were, there would be some sense to, at least, the two of them. Some anticipation between them. Back in Henrietta, they were a wealth of anticipation--the next race, the next challenge, the next slew of barbarous words on campus. Here, both of them were adrift. Neither of them were dream things, but maybe both of them were dreaming. What an awful way to go.

Kavinsky laughed a billow of white smoke. He rose from the top of the stars and descended, heavy-footed and slow, deliberate. The clove-smoke was rich and sweet and spicy. It would cling to his skin for a day, no matter how he scrubbed it away. He felt like he was smoking incense.

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to dream me, either," Kavinsky said, a moment of raw honesty that he was sure would be taken for anything but. He hurried the last few steps of the stairs, let the cigarette droop from his lips, stepped past Ronan carelessly. There was a scrape on his still-naked shoulder from their tussle on the ground. It leaked sluggishly, not quite bloody.

[thedreamthief]

If Ronan hadn't witnessed the cigarettes brought into reality, the smell of them would've confirmed it. There's no sign of nicotine, the scent instead lingering and spicy-sweet. It wafts under Ronan's nose as Kavinsky nears, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth in a way that makes heat curdle in Ronan's veins.

He won't speak any more of Adam, but he can't stop thinking. Right now it's about all of the differences and all of the similarities.

It's the differences Ronan clings to though.

He reaches out as Kavinsky passes, presses his thumb to the scrape of Kavinsky's shoulder, the wound he put there, and presses. "We had a deal," he says, considering for a moment, considering and almost letting his fingers slide down Kavinsky's spine before pulling back. "Unless you're too fucked up."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky pulled up short, brought himself just outside of Ronan's reach. He looked up at the ceiling above them, the beams and struts of the building. He breathed in the thick, sweet smoke of his cigarette, the burning too-hot flavor of it, and let it linger like it was weed for a moment too long for his lungs to stand, then breathed it out slowly.

"A hot second ago," he said slowly, smile gracing into his voice, "you'd rather paint the floor with my face. Now you're worried I'm too fucked up to hold your hand through the training wheels, Lynch?"

He turned on his heels to face Ronan, spreading his arms wide. "The problem here, really, is I'm not fucked up enough."

[thedreamthief]

The smoke curls and slips upward, tendrils highlighting the harsh angles of Kavinsky's jaw and cheekbones before fading into nothing, slipping away like Noah at the fall festival.

Kavinsky's expression twists into a grimace, teeth bared in a sneer Ronan recognizes all too well. He doesn't bother defending his actions - there's no need to. He's not sorry, he's not regretful. And he has a feeling Kavinsky got some sick enjoyment out of it anyway.

And he's not mentioning Adam again.

Instead, he takes another step closer as Kavinsky throws his arms out wide. "So get fucked up then," he says, pitching his voice low as he reaches a hand forward, presses too fingers against Kavinsky's bare chest. "Shouldn't be hard, right? I know it's your favorite past time."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky wanted to mention Parrish again. He wanted to pry it apart, pick at the wound, make it keep bleeding. He wanted to know what he does that made dusty Adam Parrish think he had any right to act the leash holder for Ronan Lynch on any occasion than Dick Gansey handing it over to him.

More than that, he wanted to give Ronan back a piece but something more of their weekend together. There was no fucked Camaro, no horror to dispose of, no dreamed of movie theater in Kavinsky's house to get shitfaced in while he admired the lines of Ronan's face and took an illicit picture while he was passed out drunk. All there was was them.

He snatched at Ronan's fingers like a bear trap, still vibrating from the assault, still vibrating from Ronan's own mixed emotions. He stepped in toward him.

"They'll never understand it anyway," he said, pained and soft. Nonspecific if he meant the dreams or the demons or needing to get fucked up in some way to manage it. He still had Ronan's hand in his possession. "You gonna join me? You liked it last time."

[thedreamthief]

Kavinsky grabs Ronan's fingers in a tight grip, but doesn't push. And doesn't pull.

Ronan stays exactly where he is, gaze dropping to the dangerous curve of Kavinsky's lips. There's something in Kavinsky's tone, something raw and uncharacteristically broken that catches Ronan's attention. It's too easy to recognize, too easy to understand.

Maybe that's always been the issue here, the reason Ronan finds himself so drawn. They understand each other in a way nobody else ever could.

"I was desperate last time," Ronan says because that feels true. He knows about the Pig, can imagine how anxious he might have been then to get it fixed before Gansey and Adam returned from DC. Kavinsky's probably lying, he almost always is, but Ronan knows there's a possibility that, even desperate, Ronan had liked it. This churning, uncontrollable power in his veins is maddening. He's tired of being scared to sleep, tired of waking up panicked, tired of the fucking things that shred him to pieces when he's not careful.

So maybe he's still desperate after all.

Ronan lowers his hand, dragging his fingers down Kavinsky's chest and stomach as he does so, pulling his fingers back just shy of Kavinsky's waistband, but still keeping close. His eyes drop again and then back up to meet Kavinsky's.

"Show me."

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky wanted to correct him, wanted to point out that there was a time between the last time and the last time, wanted to fill in all the details and pot holes in Ronan's memories that nobody else could until the pavement was black and smooth as silk, as ice, wanted to remind Ronan that there was a difference between their dreaming weekend and the slick moment they'd had in the office, and their agreement under beer and duress in the dream place.

Ronan's fingers felt as much like the thorns of the dream place as the actual thorns felt like fingers. They could tear him apart. Kavinsky's jaw clenched for a moment. He looked toward the ceiling again, putting a word up to a God he no longer believed in and had stopped believing in a long time ago. Ronan Lynch was something like the serpent, where normally that was Kavinsky. He didn't know how he felt about all that.

When he looked back down, Ronan was just looking up. Their eyes met and locked.

Kavinsky affected his best casual, flippant smile. Unlike Ronan's burning fingers leaving his skin just below his navel, Kavinsky reached out and hooked a finger into the waistband of his jeans to drag him the half step closer until they were nearly touching. The cigarette smoldered and smoked between them.

"Come up to my office."

[thedreamthief]

A tug and Ronan's pulled in, close enough to nearly take the cigarette smoke straight from Kavinsky's mouth. The scent of it is still sweet and rich and Ronan breathes it in before he nods.

He remember Kavinsky's "office" from the substance party, remembers the tab Kavinsky had fed him, and the subsequent high. He remembers feeling it all night, every sensation heightened for hours, remembers finding Adam, going back to the apartment on his bike, remembers the hard linoleum of the kitchen floor beneath his knees and the weight of Adam's dick in his mouth.

That hadn't been the last time, but nearly. And Ronan remembers it all.

He doesn't push Kavinsky's hand away, but he does turn to head back toward the stairs, buzzing exhilaration thrumming through his veins as he takes one step at a time. At the top, he glances back, catching Kavinsky's hungry eyes again, imagines he can hear Gansey's voice of warning in his head, imagines it going quiet.

Ronan's made his choice.

[mitsubishievo]

Kavinsky was a lingering wraith, half a step behind Ronan. Not out of lack of resolve or confidence, but there was a certain dubiousness in the situation. They had an agreement, made in the dream place and sealed however briefly with the trees to watch that promise made, that Ronan would give him time to teach him. But Ronan's urgency, here, now was a dangerous thing. It was a thing not unlike what had made the Kavinsky pater familias or Prokopenko, an urgency of desperation in the face of terrifying lose.

Ronan Lynch didn't want to be here; he was here because he had nowhere else to go. Kavinsky wasn't a balm, an oasis, some harbor in the tumult of torturous creativity that they were; he was a splinter that had to be suffered because it was too deep to be excised.

If all he got was to chew Ronan up and spit him back out, he would make the most of it.

At the top of the stairs, he slung a casual arm over Ronan's shoulders, dragging him toward the door to the office.