feeling like a freight train

[thedreamthief]

At first, it didn't feel real. Nothing felt real. Even now, Ronan has no idea how many days he spent in and out of consciousness, riding out the continued effects of whatever fucking drugs they'd pumped into him, pulling useless, horrible, half-formed things from an overworked Cabeswater, waking up screaming, ripping at restraints that no longer held him.

Later, the clarity had settled in and, with it, the unavoidable truth.

Gansey's absence in Hywel is a palpable thing, as heavy as the sudden lack of his father in his life. This time there isn't so much as a fucking tire iron to blame, much less the hand holding it. This time there's nothing but a fucking hole. A void.

It eats away.

Blue's kept away. Kept to herself. Ronan can't say he misses her exactly, but her absence adds to the emptiness. Noah's still around for the most part, and Adam. Ronan isn't sure which of them is more ghost-like anymore.

Neither of them are there when Ronan steps into Gansey's bedroom. He takes in the queen-sized bed, the covers still rumpled and sheets creased, and his nerves start to itch. His hands curl into fists at the sight of the bookshelf nearly full of dozens of titles Ronan's seen scattered throughout Hywel, the shelves dusty. He Grits his teeth as he takes in the desk in the corner, the surface covered in scribbled-upon papers and little cardboard cut-outs.

There's a single mint plant on the corner, starving for water.

Ronan picks off a single leaf, lightly places it on his tongue. Closes his eyes.

And boils over.

The plant hits the far wall hard enough to dent the plaster, falling to the bed in a mess of dust, dirt, and ceramic. The papers on the desk are next, wiped clean off the desk with on furious swipe. The lamp soon follows, cord ripped from the wall with a sputter before being smashed to the floor. There's a dowsing rod rested against the side of the desk and Ronan snatches it up before cleaning snapping it in two, flinging both ends toward the window and then lunging for the bookshelf. The books fly off in clumps, dropping to the ground in a scatter of wounded spines and dented pages and none of it fucking matters, none of it ever fucking mattered. Gansey started looking for answers the moment he got here, started looking for a way out.

And he finally fucking found it.

Comments

[iwasmore]

Noah is staring listlessly at his rats, watching them sleep peacefully, curled up together seemingly without a care in the world. Sometimes he wonders if they miss Bay, if rats have the comprehension of such a thing. He sighs, and startles when he hears a crash.

And another. And again.

It's coming from the direction of Gansey's room, so Noah simply appears in there. He's not surprised at who he finds, but the sight of the room makes him balk.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan notices Noah a half a second before he speaks, just as he swipes a particularly heavy book off the highest shelf and sends it hurtling for Noah's foot.

He doesn't apologize. Doesn't see any reason to. Noah decided to show up here of his own goddamn free will.

Instead, he grabs another book, a red, leather-bound thing, twists enough to look Noah dead in the eyes as he sends it flying like a frisbee toward the far wall. A frisbee with violently flutter pages before it hits with a thud and falls to the bed.

[iwasmore]

Noah jumps when Ronan throws the book at him, and his hands flap in a worried gesture when the second book hits the wall, worry and anger swirling and filling him with a rising anxiety.

"Stop! These aren't yours!" he says, picking up the book at his feet and then the one by the wall, hugging them to his chest.

[thedreamthief]

Fury spikes, aflame inside him as Ronan grabs two books this time, turning on Noah with them clutched in either hand.

"They're not fucking anyone's anymore," he shouts before hurling them at the other wall this time, hard enough to leave dents before advancing the two feet into Noah's space. "Get the fuck out, Noah. None of this shit is yours either."

[iwasmore]

Noah cowers, cringing when Ronan throws more books. They slam into the wall with loud smacks and then thud to the floor, right near a shattered flower pot. Soil is spilled and scattered with Gansey's mint plant tipped in the middle.

Noah retaliates with a burst of indignant anger. "That doesn't mean you can destroy them! You get out!" he yells, and goes over to collect the plant.

[thedreamthief]

"Get the fuck out I'll fucking set fire to this piece of shit necklace," Ronan replies, pulling said necklace out from under his shirt, the line of it taut, metal digging into his neck.

His tone is almost eerily calm, belying the pure, unfiltered rage coiling through him before he turns back to the shelf, grabbing a heavy book end from the second shelf and hurling at the desk in the corner, knocking a dent into the edge of the hard wood.

[iwasmore]

Noah doesn't wince this time. He stares at Ronan and swallows past the urge to cry. "Fine, do it. It'd be better than being stuck here with you," he snaps, his voice angry, but his words wobbly and wet at the edges.

Concentrating as hard as he can, he disappears with Gansey's mint plant cupped between his hands. The books he had tucked under his arm fall to the floor with a dull thump.

[thedreamthief]

There's only the slightest waver in Noah's voice, but his throat is tight and his eyes are cold and Ronan instantly feels a twist under his skin, a rash of shame that slips into a deeper rage as Noah easily blips into the ether once more.

Letting out a growl, Ronan grabs the whole fucking bookshelf next, fingers hooking around the back corner of one end. He puts all his weight into pulling it away from the wall, sending it crashing into the foot of the bed, what remains of the books, toppling onto the bed and the floor before he uses one booted foot to kick at the shelf itself with a fury he hasn't felt in years.

[incognoscibilis]

When Copper trots her way up, Adam follows slowly behind. There's the sound of something crashing from Gansey's room and his heart stops faintly, all the worst case scenarios filling up Adam's mind. They're being broken into. KIRIN is back. Someone is hurting Ronan or Noah.

Truly afraid, he flings open he door to Gansey's room and can only stare. The source of the destruction is internal, is Ronan. So much of it is broken, destroyed, and Ronan looks fit to carry on.

"Ronan..."

[thedreamthief]

It's not a high-quality bookshelf, but a fucking plywood piece of shit from a big box store on the other side of town. There's no satisfying break, no immediately crumple from a hard kick. Instead it falls apart in chips and pieces from the feel of Ronan's boot, each kick shoving the shelf thunking against the wall.

He doesn't register the sound of the door open, doesn't register anything at all until he hears Adam's voice behind him.

Stopping abruptly, Ronan spins around, still breathing hard, his hands clenched into fists.

And suddenly, he's just fucking tired. He's tired of Darrow, tired of feeling useless, tired of being homesick. Tired of wishing Gansey would've just fucking taken Ronan with him.

[incognoscibilis]

Ronan has a temper. Knowing that is like knowing that the rain falls. Adam takes in the destruction around him and then averts his eyes from Ronan, keeps his gaze from being too defiant, too angry, too hurt, too rich with any emotion that could get the anger turned on him. Instinct told him to shut down, to find what made Ronan angry and give him the answer he wanted to ebb it away.

His mind, the controlled part, was trying to tell him that Ronan was grieving. That Ronan would never hurt him.

None of those thoughts verbalize. Adam just stares at the destruction, tries to breathe.

Please don't. Gansey would hate this. I own the building now and I don't want it this way.

None of those come out.

[thedreamthief]

Adam doesn't say a word. He's looking at Ronan but he's miles away. He's back in Henrietta, back in that fucking ugly little double-wide and Ronan lets out a breath like he's the one who's been punched, guilt and shame boiling over the despair and outright rage, twisting in his gut.

He holds his hands up, palms empty, bearing gouges and scrapes of his own making as he takes a step back, further into the mess, also of his own making.

"I'm done," he says, not an apology or even a truth, but a promise.

[incognoscibilis]

"Okay," Adam says, because it's what he has to say. He turns his gaze on the tumbled over items, the splintered pegboard of the bookcase, Gansey's cultivated shelf of books, and wonders where to start. The overturned soil will have to be swept away. The books straightened out. There's no salvaging the bookshelf; they can burn it.

He looks at and thinks about every object and thing in the room except Ronan.

Something in his stomach feels watery, threatens to turn to bile in his mouth. It erodes at the memory of pride that Adam had had when he and Gansey and Ronan had paid for the building, when his name had been on the deed alongside Richard Campbell Gansey III. He'd felt, then, as if he'd had ownership of something in his life. It wasn't rent to be paid like St. Agnes. This had been Hywel, Monmouth but somehow better because Adam had finally been allowed to live there.

And now it's in shambles.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan watches Adam as Adam looks from the desk to the dented walls, the scattered books and busted shelf. He doesn't once look at Ronan, but the guilt in Ronan's belly only grows hotter.

Adam Parrish has owned very few things in his life. He doesn't own Hywel, not yet, but his name is now the only one on the mortgage and it's a home in a way nothing ever has been for him ever before. And Ronan's single-handedly destroyed part of it.

There's no way for Ronan to leave without passing Adam, without getting close enough to possibly be mistaken as a threat.

For one brief, thrilling moment, he considers jumping out the window.

He looks around instead, at the bed, at the desk, at the wall. There's still too much Gansey here even now, the evidence of his absence too great, and Ronan's stomach draws up tight inside him, twists and flares and he said he was done, he promised, but there's still too much and he crumples instead, back thunking against the wall by the window before he drops, an arm curled over the top of his head, fuzzy from lack of care, knees drawn up.

[incognoscibilis]

It's strange and awful to see Ronan crumple like that. Ronan Lynch is the kind to explode outward, to leave bruises and scorch marks on the walls throughout the blast radius. This is different. This is an implosion, a crushing inward. The strangeness of Ronan looking so vulnerable shocks Adam out of the fog and he stares at Ronan before taking a step closer.

They're a few feet apart, two or three, and Adam sits down on the floor across from Ronan. He mimics his pose, drawing his knees up to his chest, hugging them close. His eyes are uncertain but awake and intent as he looks at Ronan and waits until one of them figures out what to say.

[thedreamthief]

It isn't that Ronan expects Adam to leave, but some part of him doesn't expect Adam to stay either.

He's aware of Adam lowering himself to the floor to sit across from him, only feet away, lifts his head just enough to see Adam's shoes and the line of his legs where he has his knees drawn up in a mirror of Ronan's.

Vaguely, he's is aware he should apologize. But apologizing in the broad sense would mean lying and what he's sorry for is very particular.

The words won't come.

Instead, he takes a breath. Or tries to. His fingers dig into the skin at the nape of his own neck, like he might be able to claw the anger and betrayal and hurt right out of him, tear off the piece of himself that ever believed Gansey could stay, that anyone could stay.

"Didn't know you'd be back so soon," is what he manages instead, head still tipped toward his knees. I didn't want you to see this, is what he means. I'm sorry for scaring you. I'm sorry for being me.

[incognoscibilis]

"Well, I was." What does it matter, Adam wonders. If he'd come back ten minutes later, an hour later. Gansey's room would still be in disarray and Ronan's black mood would still be obvious. He stares at the top of Ronan's head more than at Ronan himself, noting that his head is stubbly. Touching it will be like a cat's tongue.

He doesn't touch.

Touch is such a frightening, weighted thing in the world of Adam Parrish.

"What does this fix?"

[thedreamthief]

"It's not about fixing," Ronan shoots back, the snap of a wounded and trapped animal.

He doesn't expect Adam to understand. Adam, who can detach himself from all that hurts him, Adam who can pull away and rebuild from a distance, make himself stronger and sturdier than ever.

But there is no fixing this, just as there's no fixing Ronan Lynch.

He swallows, runs a hand over the prickly hairs covering the dome of his head. Lets out a heavy breath as he squeezes his eyes shut. "He was--" Ronan starts, but he rest won't come out. There are too many ways to finish. He was supposed to stay. He was my best friend. He was supposed to fucking take us with him.

But, in the end, none of it fucking matters. None of it ever did.

[incognoscibilis]

"I know." Because it's never really about fixing, because there's so much shit that won't, can't be fixed. Gansey's loss is one of them. Adam's past–for all that he wishes it could be fixed, filed away–is another. Those two problems collide now in this room.

Ronan begins that sentence and for a second, Adam tenses horribly. Does Ronan know? Has Blue told him too or has he figured it out? The tension of Ronan knowing or not knowing terrifies him into inaction once again.

"If he were here, he'd know how to fix this." But that's the problem, isn't it?

Adam leans his head down, forehead to knees, and wishes.

[thedreamthief]

"If he were here there wouldn't be anything to fucking fix," Ronan snaps, but feels like only a half-truth on his tongue. Gansey's disappearance is a palpable thing, evident in every in of Hywel, in the identical Pigs parked out front, unmoving, in the debris scattered at Ronan's feet.

But his absence is far from the only thing that's broken.

"It's been a fucking year now, you know that?" he says then, resting his chin on his arms where they're crossed over his knees, regarding Adam over the stretch of space between them. "And I was here for nearly two months without any of you. Gansey came first and I thought... fuck, man. I thought he'd figure it out. I thought he'd know how to get us the fuck out of here, get us home."

It sounds petulant even to his own ears, his stomach twisting and voice faltering at the end. He doesn't know how to make it stop.

[incognoscibilis]

Adam doesn't flinch, even when Ronan raises his voice. It's not a threat. It's not directed at him, not really. Ronan Lynch snaps and snarls, bursts into fits of anger that are as frightening as they are justified. It's still one thing to see him beat the shit out of Declan–someone who is definitively not on Their Side–and to see him destroying Gansey's room.

Gansey would have never stood for it, which makes his absence that much more tangible.

Maybe it's better this way. Maybe, back in Henrietta, they've found Glendower and Adam has asked–begged, pleaded–for Gansey's life. Maybe, there, he has a chance.

But how can he say that to Ronan?

"We're still here," he says. It's not meant as a consolation so much as a statement of fact. There's still a we. There's still a Noah-Ronan-Adam-and-Blue left.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan honestly isn't sure whether or not that's a good thing. They're still here, still stuck in this prison disguised as a town. Adam still can't get his Ivy League education, Blue can't travel, Ronan can't visit the fucking Barns, can't ever his mother or Matthew again. The only one it's maybe better for is Noah, but Ronan figures death is its own prison.

But at least he isn't here alone.

"You're still here," he finally says, not quite an agreement to Adam's words. A correction. An amendment.

He wants to order, wants to beg Adam not leave this place, not without him, but he bites back the words. No one knows where people go when they leave Darrow, but Ronan wants to believe they return home. There's so much more for Adam there than here.

Instead, he lets out a breath and digs the heel of his hand against his eye. "Noah took the mint plant," he says eventually.

[incognoscibilis]

"Probably good that he did," Adam says. The thought of the little plant, so vulnerable in the midst of Ronan's destruction, makes him prefer that it stay in Noah's care.

Tipping his head up, Adam leaves his chin on his knees and makes watery, tired eye contact. There are so many questions. What do we do now? How do we fix this? Can we fix this? He doesn't have an answer to any of those.

Scooting along the concrete floor, he lets the toes of his shoes touch Ronan's and looks back at him again.

What now?

[thedreamthief]

Ronan nods because there's really no probably about it. In his rage, the plant likely would've ended up unsalavageable, and as he sits now, surrounded in his own destruction, Ronan already has regrets.

The plant will be safe in Noah's care. As safe as it had ever been in Gansey's.

Adam moves closer, the tips of their shoes touching and Ronan reaches down to gently untie Adam's laces.

"He's all that got me through that shit," he says, concentrating on looping the laces of Adam's left shoe with the laces of Adam's right shoe. There's no question who or what he's talking about. "Pretty sure he and Noah are the only reasons I'm even fucking alive. And I just told Noah I'd burn his necklace."

[incognoscibilis]

Adam watches for a second, just focuses on the patterns made from his knotted and then unknotted laces. This time, his meditation isn't focused on them as a path to retreat, to locking himself away in his own mind, but an anchor, keeping him attuned to the motions of the hands at his feet.

"Don't tie them together," he says. It's a bad joke at a bad time, but he can't help trying, if only so he can remember how to speak.

"You're not alone. I'm not Gansey. Neither are Noah and Blue. But you're not alone." He's not alone either, Adam tries to remind himself. Adam Parrish, army of one, doesn't have to go alone.

It's so much easier to tell Ronan than himself.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan isn't sure if Adam's trying to joke or not, but the corner of his mouth tugs upward faintly all the same and he lets out a quiet breath. He doesn't until Adam's laces though, not yet, instead curling a finger in the loop and giving a light tug, clinging to the connection of himself to Adam, however feeble it might be right now. Physically.

"You either," he says eventually, lifting his gaze to meet Adam's.

He uncurls his finger then to instead wrap them around Adam's hand where it dangles over his knees. He squeezes lightly, brushes his thumb up over the ridge of knuckles.

"I'll clean this, okay?" he says and he doesn't have to motion at the mess around them to know Adam will understand what he's talking about. "Give me a few days and I'll fix it."

[incognoscibilis]

He just watches Ronan's hand slip into his, takes in the familiar calloused fingertips and split or scabbed knuckles. Fighter's hands. Ronan's hands. Slowly, he squeezes back and tries to figure out what to do next. There's a precedent for everything else, for fighting and yelling, a routine that tells him how to proceed. There isn't one for Ronan's unspoken apology, his obvious regret.

He's already coming unglued and having no point of reference only makes it worse.

"I'll check on the animals," he said finally. It was a gentler way of saying, We need space.

[thedreamthief]

It isn't quite acceptance or forgiveness, but it isn't rejection either and Ronan only smooths his thumb once more over Adam's fingers before letting go with a nod.

He drops his hand to the laces, silently untying the loop he's made and retying them correctly before pulling away entirely, his hands curled once more around his own calves.

"Hercules hates loud noises," he manages eventually, unmoving from his spot on the floor. "Tell him I'll make it up to him."

[incognoscibilis]

The same hands that destroyed this room are now tying his laces, gently and into perfect bows. The kind of precision that he's only seen from Ronan once before, in his tie on the day of his father's trial. Then his hands are gone and Adam nods.

"I'll give him something to eat," he says. Leaning forward, Adam swipes a thumb over Ronan's wrist, a small gesture, and then stands up.