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

[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.