[4/15] not an ultimatum, but

[thedreamthief]

He's too tired to dream himself some kind of magical cast. Even if he wasn't, he's not sure he'd have the ability right now anyway as depleted as Cabeswater is. Has been.

But he still knows how to find the hospital.

Driving there is a bitch and, not for the first time, Ronan finds himself missing his BMW. The Pig squeals and aches with nearly every turn and something bitter churns in Ronan's belly. Even as broken as he is right now, a part of him wants to turn back and find that tire iron and use his last shred of energy to beat the shit out of this fucking car, just obliterate the last fucking memory tying Gansey here.

Instead, he drives himself to the hospital, shoving the car into park and slamming the door behind him. Every movement sends a fresh lash of pain through him until he's standing at the front of the ER line and getting ushered to the back.

Three hours later, he has a cast, a sling, and pain medication as well as ointment for his split lip and a bandage around his chest. He has every intention of ignoring their urging that he not drive home, but a nurse follows him outside, follows him with watchful suspicious eyes.

So he walks back instead, leaving the Pig parked in the lot.

Fuck it, he'll come back for it. Or he won't. What fucking difference does it make anymore.

There are lights on in Hywel when he makes it back and Ronan takes a breath, already bracing himself for the lecture, either from Noah or Adam or both. Blue's likely already told them everything. Hercules, at least, gives him a warm welcome, trotting up to the little barricade separating the entry way from the rest of the makeshift barn. Ronan reaches over to scratch his head, lets him nibble lightly at Ronan's fingers before he makes his way to the stairs.

A drink sounds good, he thinks. Then he remembers the narcotics.

Fuck.

Comments

[incognoscibilis]

Adam knows enough people who go to Fight Club to know what nights it's being held. When Ronan doesn't come home and it's later in the night, he's worried but not alarmed. Then the night gets later and his stomach starts to ache. Later still and he starts to get scared. The cell phone goes straight to voice mail like he knows it will and he stays up, waiting.

He hears the door open but not the telltale screech of the Pig and he jumps off the couch in the clothes he's worn all day, clothes not made for sleep. Heading downstairs, he's relieved at first to see Ronan until he notices the stiffness of his movements, the way his arm is misshapen in the dark.

"Ronan?"

[thedreamthief]

He isn't surprised to find Adam waiting up for him. He is surprised to find Adam looking more worried than angry.

Guilt, bright and piercing, stops him halfway across the common room. Adam's still feet away, still looking at him like he's some kind of spirit. Ronan had only gotten a glimpse of his face at the hospital, just enough to notice the swelling bruise across his cheek and around his eye, the deep cut in his lip.

His chest looks worse.

"I should've called," he says before Adam can. "Just. Lost track of time."

[incognoscibilis]

"At the hospital?" Adam asked. His voice didn't shake and he was proud of that, for all that his tone was tight, constricted. Like he couldn't breathe. "Did you lose track of time at the hospital?"

The first time they had a Fight Club, Ronan had climbed in his window for Adam to patch it up and he'd thought for a good long time about kissing Ronan there. Now, he was just frozen in place because he had never seen Ronan beat up like this in Darrow, had never seen Ronan Lynch with a broken arm after Fight Club.

"What happened."

[thedreamthief]

Here it is.

Adam's anger isn't the same as Ronan's. No less volatile, but more restrained. Well-contained. But even Adam has a boiling point.

"A baseball bat," Ronan says, frowning and watching Adam carefully. Waiting. "Kavinsky."

He doesn't mention the tire iron, or Krem. He doesn't mention that he'd gone looking for this, that the pain that's been medicated away is exactly what he'd been seeking. Adam already knows.

[incognoscibilis]

Adam's jaw clenched and he stared at Ronan's arm again. It wasn't the baseball bat but Kavinsky that had been the weapon, just like Mr. Gray and the tire iron. Ronan's own anger, his own grief, had been the weapon and he'd put Kavinsky in the chamber.

He didn't say anything, didn't know the word to use, to say. "Why" might have been a good start but he knew why.

"Gansey wouldn't want you to do this."

As he said it, Adam tensed, waiting for Ronan to explode in anger and grief. Waited for Robert Parrish to reign down blows on his head for insolence. Waited for the consequences of his words to teach him not to speak.

[thedreamthief]

Gansey's name is a more powerful weapon than Kavinsky's baseball bat and Ronan feels the blow, absorbs it. His jaw clenches and he stares down at the floor beneath Adam's feet. Weathers the wave of anger and guilt and despair that washes through him, his shoulders slumping.

Gansey should be here to fucking stop me then, he wants to say, but doesn't.

Instead, he pulls in a breath, tips his head up to meet Adam's eyes. "And what do you want?"

[incognoscibilis]

"I don't want you to come home with your arm in a damn cast," Adam says. Potential retorts pile up in his mind, those cruel barbs that he can dip in verbal poison if only he weren't so afraid of being the weapon that launches them.

He stares at Ronan, uncertain what to say.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan lifts his gaze then, meeting Adam's. He's still slumped, the spine curved under the weight of the cast and narcotics both.

"That's not what I asked," he says, his voice calm. A lie in itself. He pulls in a breath. "Tell me what you want because I don't--" He exhales in a rush, grimacing as he grabs the back of his neck with his good arm. "Fuck, I don't fucking know what to do anymore."

[incognoscibilis]

Why. Why that question? What does he want? What does he need? Why must everyone ask that when Adam barely knows under the best of circumstances?

He wants Ronan to stop hurting (impossible). He wants Ronan not to be angry (unlikely). He wants Ronan to be safe and happy (glimpsed once, maybe twice). He wants Ronan to not come home in a fucking cast after not telling anyone he went to the goddamned hospital (too late now).

"I want you to...Shit, Ronan," Adam says. He drops his face into his hand, dragging fingers through his hair. "You're scaring me."

The admission is weak, pathetic. It's the kind of thing that'd get his head bashed in for being a coward and even now he can't help holding himself tense. Just in case. Even when his mind knows better, his body still says prey.

[thedreamthief]

It's a similar sort of hit to mentioning Gansey, but different, too. Worse because it's not meant to be a weapon. It's truth, pure and simple, and Ronan feels like he can't breathe.

I want you to leave, would be easier than this.

He can't speak for long moment and the space between them seems to stretch, impossible and impassable.

Then, "I'm going to my room," he says, his voice still utterly clear and calm, belying the knotted roil of his stomach, the twisting ache the narcotics can't touch.

And he goes, moving slowly partially from sheer physical necessity, but mostly so Adam can track him, can move if Ronan dares to get too close, can protect himself. He goes to his bedroom. He closes the door. He sits on the edge of his bed and he wills the world to end.

[incognoscibilis]

He knows what Ronan's doing and hates himself for needing the accommodation, for breathing a little easier when there's more space. When Ronan goes upstairs, Adam stays behind and crouches next to Hercules for a few minutes, running his fingertips gently over the goat's silky ears while he butts lightly at his hands.

This isn't okay.

They have to be okay.

It's never going to be okay again.

Reluctantly, he climbs up to the stairs and goes to his room. Adam is acutely aware that there's only a thin wall separating them but it might as well be a universe.