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It was unsurprisingly, really, that Ronan snapped.
He didn’t snap in the Ronan sense of the word – it wasn’t bruised knuckles and a scowl and half a bottle of scotch shattered on the ground next to shitkicker boots. It wasn’t Ronan’s eyes, heavy and dark, glaring into the horizon like it had personally insulted his honour, homeland and mother. It wasn’t whip-crack insults carefully crafted to rile you up enough to throw the first punch. It wasn’t the smell of burning rubber and gasoline, and the thumping of a tell-tale heart as he watched the traffic lights slowly tick down into green.
Instead, it was a half-hearted fight with Gansey that was started over something arbitrary and argued about before (‘just call him, Ronan’) that was basically resolved at midnight when neither of them could sleep, a wordless agreement that they were both being pedantic and childish, settled over glasses of orange juice and a cardboard town. It was like Ronan couldn’t put his full effort into fighting, like he’d wasted all his seemingly never-ending rage and come to a full, exhausted stop. Like he’d burned out.
Ronan’s energy wasn’t being used on his rage, because it was being used on his brittle self-control, a self-control that snapped after a particularly bad Mass and a particularly bad encounter with Declan.
Adam still didn’t know what happened. It hadn’t ended bloody, as many of the Lynch brother fights did, which meant it couldn’t have been truly insulting. The names Niall and Aurora weren’t thrown around, to the best of Adam’s guess.
He didn’t snap in the typical Ronan way, but his self control shattered like the empty booze bottles he’d smash at his feet whenever he got drunk and destructive, inwardly and outwardly.
Instead, he stormed into Monmouth in a truly foul mood and declared, “I’m dreaming you all fake IDs.”
And he did. He didn’t give any of them chance to argue (not that any of them were going to – Blue had never been in a club and was morbidly curious; Gansey knew Ronan enough to know that if it wasn’t this, it would be something worse; and the upcoming prospect of exams had been slowly loosening the pressurised cork of Adam’s stress, and this was just the distraction that he needed to stop himself exploding) and flung himself over the couch, uncaring that he accidentally elbowed Gansey in the ribs and put his foot through Noah’s incorporeal chest.
He fell asleep instantly. Adam knew it was a learned behaviour, and that his insomnia was as self-imposed as it was real, but he still found himself jealous at the ease in which Ronan fell into sleep.
Methodically, he stacked each sheet of paper that he’d been using to study for exams into a neat pile, then stacked them atop his textbook, then slid them all into the little plastic folder he’d designated them. He kept immense concentration at the task on hand, because otherwise, he’d stare, openly and without shame, at the relaxed, sprawled form of one of his best friends, and he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about how fucking beautiful Ronan was, with his surprisingly dainty eyelashes and the prominent veins in his hands as he balled them into fists as he slept.
Noah pressed his lips together in an aborted smile, and Adam flashed him a look that Noah avoided meeting by pointedly looking at the opposite wall.
Ronan’s body suddenly gained purpose again, though he didn’t move. Blue, who had become trapped under the weight of Ronan’s heavy, despondent body, said at a normal volume, “Gansey, can you get my bag? I can’t move.”
Gansey slipped off the couch and got both Blue and Adam’s bag. Adam was grateful for the distraction and started packing his things away. He would not look at the neat and intentional draw of Ronan’s eyebrows into that permanent scowl.
He unfurled his body a moment later, shifting away from Blue so she could get to her feet. He stretched, long and languid and cat-like, though he’d only been out for five minutes, before pulling his hands from his chest, three shiny ID cards stacked in his palm.
The Adam in the small ID photo wasn’t the Adam who looked back out of the mirror at him every morning. This Adam was coy and gaunt, his stare heavy-lidded and almost seductive. In this photo, his disinterested eyes and his too-prominent cheekbones became things of beauty.
“Hey!” Noah complained, “You didn’t get me one.”
“You don’t need one.” Ronan said, monotone and scathing, “You’re fucking dead.”
Adam wondered if the ID picture was how Ronan really thought of him, brought to fruition in the dream where he couldn’t lie to himself, and felt a secret little thrill at the idea that it was, that Ronan saw him as something to be desired, to be wanted.
He tucked the ID in his wallet. There was no question of it would work or not. A dreamt item was the most excellent forgery there could be.
“Are we going then?” He asked the group at large, to avoid having to think of Ronan’s perception of him any longer.
“I suppose.” Gansey stretched largely and made toward the door.
Ronan barked out a laugh, “No fucking way you’re wearing that, man. Change.”
Gansey looked down, plucking at the hem of his aquamarine polo shirt, “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing.” Blue said, “But by God, what’s right with it? I’m with Ronan for once, I don’t want to see that shirt anymore than I have to.”
Gansey almost pouted before Ronan laughed again, “Don’t even argue, man. If I have to wear a fucking tie when you want me to, so you have to wear something that isn’t those fucking khakis –“ he eyed Adam, critically scanning the baggy t-shirt and joggers he’d worn to study, and Adam couldn’t ignore the funny feeling in his stomach at Ronan looking him up and down, “- you too, Parrish. I don’t need you guys embarrassing me.”
Adam raised his eyebrows, “Embarrassing you?”
“Yeah. I go to this place a lot, and I don’t need Gansey’s fucking polos ruining it for me.”
Noah laughed his dry, gasping laugh and covered his mouth with his hand.
“I have clothes here.”
“Good for you. I didn’t ask.” Ronan said, raising a dark eyebrow, “Change out.”
“Where are you taking us?”
Ronan just grinned. His smile was as wickedly pleased as it always was when he was being – as proclaimed by all who met him – a shithead.
Adam mentally resigned himself to whatever was coming. He tried to feel dread, but Ronan’s smile was as electrifying as it was typical of him, and Adam found himself, regretfully, willing to do whatever stupid thing he suggested when he looked at Adam with his brazen smile and daring eyes. It was the same look that had Adam climbing into the body of a shopping cart so he could get pushed across a parking lot and end up sprawled in a tangle of Virginia-tan and Celtic-pale limbs, scabbed and bruised and laughing, and Ronan with the loose smile that he usually reserved for Matthew and small children, wheezing to himself as lay on the concrete side-by-side.
Ronan allowed him to let loose. Ronan made him loud.
Ronan turned to Blue, “You still got your shit here, Maggot?”
Blue hummed the affirmative, but didn’t elaborate on what her shit was, or how it ended up at Monmouth. It seemed that those two – Calla had once affectionately named them the Terror Twins – spent more time together than Adam anticipated. Blue slipped over to the half-assembled bookshelf in the corner and brought down a big plastic case from one of the reachable – to her – shelves. While he rummaged through it, Ronan went into his room and re-emerged with (surprisingly) not-black jeans, and a not-black top. He threw both of them at Adam, who caught them instinctively.
Ronan raised his eyebrows at him, almost making it a challenge, the way he raked his eyes judgementally down Adam’s sweats.
Adam huffed and got up to go change in the bathroom. He didn’t have any major objection to wearing Ronan’s clothes – they spent enough time at each other’s places that it wouldn’t be the first or last time – but there was something different about wearing Ronan’s clothes in order to go out. He was leaving the house like this, wearing Ronan’s absurdly tight jeans and tee with the sleeves miraculously still attached, with some black-and-white logo for a band that he’d never heard of emblazed on the front.
They – Jesus, they smelled like Ronan, like metallic blood, and shitty deodorant with a name like ‘RAGE’ or ‘BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA TO THE HEAD’, and the hickory smoke and lemon cleaner scent of the Barns. It was every late night together and every fight and every reconciliation. It was the soft imprint of Ronan’s silhouette when he went home, and it was the harsh outline of him at Aglionby. It was fucking everything. He had to get a grip.
He stepped out of the bathroom. In the time it had taken him to change and run a hand through his hair (and then give up on making it look anything but messy) Gansey had also changed into jeans and a t-shirt, and Ronan was sat, shirtless and cross-legged, on Gansey’s bed as Blue kneeled over him, eyeliner pencil in one hand and the other hand gripping his chin and tilting it up to the light.
No, no, no, no. He couldn’t do this again. His reaction had been extreme enough the first time Blue practiced her make-up skills, and he didn’t think he could handle it again. He’d be driven well and truly out of his mind, sent spiralling into a tornado funnel of thoughts that narrowed down to Ronan Lynch’s ice blue eyes ringed like a rockstar’s and his cliff-high cheekbones dashed in subtle glitter.
He cursed Blue, then Ronan, and then God, for extra measure.
He wouldn’t survive the night. He’d collapse if he looked at Ronan too much.
“Not a word, Parrish.” Ronan said, staying otherwise perfectly still under Blue’s ministrations. Not even a glance in his direction. With his head tilted toward the light the way it was, Adam could watch his throat work as he spoke, working like a python ingesting a mouse.
Adam made a feathery noise of protest in the back of his throat, “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
Ronan sneered.
“Stay still.” Blue scolded, and Ronan resumed his frozen position, looking for all the world like a marble bust of a Greek god – a renaissance sculptor’s lifes work. Michelangelo’s David and Botticelli’s Venus rolled into one glorious human form.
Adam turned away, sitting on the couch as he waited to go, trying desperately not to glance over his shoulder at Ronan with his head tilted up, supplicant, with his fallen angel eyes half-closed and the smooth silhouette of his buzzed hair running into the sweet C-curve of his neck. How could one person look so good all the time?
He was walking temptation, Lucifer and the Fruit wrapped in an anarchic jacket and a Hell-bent smile.
_____
It was his own fault. Adam leaned heavily into his arm, cheeks rosy flushed and eyes hooded and hazy. It was his own fault for dreaming Adam an ID, and it was his own fault for buying the first round of shots, because that led to Adam and Blue repaying him and buying a round each, and Gansey not wanting to be left out and buying a fourth round.
He leaned further into Ronan, like he was trying to connect them at every possible point of contact without fusing into each other’s skin.
“Thank you.” Adam said, words syrup-thick and seemingly heavy on his tongue.
Ronan made the mistake of turning to look at him. They were that close that their noses nearly bumped together. Adam smiled lazily but made no attempt to move back.
Adam moved to speak into Ronan’s ear again, and the feel of their cheeks brushing together – even worse, the feel of Adam’s chapped lips brushing against the shell of his ear – was going to drive him to the brink of madness. The intimacy of it was the straw collapsing the camel’s back that was his self-control, “For letting me let loose.”
“I didn’t let you do shit, Parrish.” Ronan said back, “You did it yourself.”
But it was true enough. This was the loosest Ronan had ever seen him. A sober Adam would never let himself thank somebody this whole-heartedly, nor would he allow himself to touch without hesitancy, but here he was, his accent thick and sweet in Ronan’s ear and his body pressed against his every way possible. At their sides, Adam brushed the back of his hand over Ronan’s, and Ronan thought, too tipsy and high off Adam’s presence to push it down, that he should grab Adam’s perfect hand and press it to his mouth and show it the reverence it deserved.
“You gave me the tools.”
“And you chose to come along.”
Adam tilted his head in allowance and looked up at Ronan through pale, dainty eyelashes, the kind that had old women tutting that they were wasted on a fella, “I needed a break. You did too.”
Ronan didn’t argue that, because Adam wasn’t wrong. He just clenched his jaw and looked away, unwilling to admit it.
Luckily, he didn’t have to, because Blue, giggling and dragging Gansey by the sleeve of his little-worn t-shirt, and flinging her arm around Adam’s shoulders and butting her hip into Ronan’s.
“You two.” She demanded jovially, “Come dance with me.”
Ronan had, truthfully, forgotten that dancing and music were a thing, too wound up in the heavy feeling of Adam’s body pressed into his.
“I don’t dance.” Ronan said, like this needed saying at all. One only had to look at him to make the inference that Ronan Lynch didn’t dance, except for when he was sleep-deprived and Noah put ABBA on at three in the morning, or when so thoroughly sloshed that he wouldn’t remember it the day after. He was not quite either, and so: he did not dance.
“Boooooo.” Blue jabbed him in the side, and he swatted his hand away scowling, “Stop being boring.”
Ronan manoeuvred Adam into her grip and neatly side-stepped out of grabbing range in one move, “Take Adam instead.”
“Yay.” Adam intoned flatly, shooting a spiteful look over his shoulder that didn’t quite land, “I’m a sacrifice.”
Ronan shrugged, “Sorry man.”
Blue didn’t see a problem with Adam’s sacrifice, and simply hooked her arm through his, abandoning Gansey so she could pull Adam onto the part of the room empty of tables that constituted a dance floor.
Gansey took up Adam’s abandoned post by Ronan’s side. It didn’t escape Ronan that he hadn’t been left alone all night, something that agitated him to no end, even if he knew that their caution was warranted. He hadn’t exactly exhibited self control in the past, and he’d been known to do stupid things for stupid reasons while he was drunk and too busy hating himself and everyone else to think about it.
Still -
Still. He liked the company anyway.
Blue laughed and whooped as the dissonant chords of a new song started over the speakers, and she spun around Adam in a whirl of brightly coloured layers and spiky hair. Adam was just stood there, a hand outstretched, a hazy smile on his face, letting himself be danced around until Blue got fed up and put her hands on his waist, making him move with her.
Ronan looked away, ordered another drink (Jack and coke, double shot) and downed half of the glass in one go to give himself something to do that wasn’t watching Adam trying not to fall over himself as Blue danced him about to the sounds of Electric Six. He was so carefree. Adam was rarely anything but tense or tired or both, and watching him loose and happy was like watching a meteor shower – it demanded to be paid attention to it lest it be missed.
Electric Six switched to the Battle Tapes, seductive bass beat boosting through the floor. Ronan could feel it in his bones, rattling around his skull. He couldn’t form a thought around the too-loud thumping of EDM loops. He kept his drink in his hand as he watched Blue and Adam switch their dance style, knuckles white with how hard he gripped the glass,
Appropriate to the song, Adam was all slow, seductive movements. Each roll of his hips was sinuous and slow and fucking torturous with the way his borrowed shit rode up across the plane of his stomach, revealing the most beautiful line of midriff Ronan had ever seen (so what if he intentionally gave Adam a tight tee shirt. Sue him.). Would ever see, probably, considering that he felt like he was going to die at the sight of Adam’s head tilted back to the music, entire body moving with it.
He finished his drink and signalled the bartender for another. A lot of people were watching Adam, which was unfair because usually it was only him watching Adam, and he felt like people with niche hobbies did when they suddenly became mainstream. He wanted to go over there and -
Fuck. He wanted to go over there and do what, exactly? He couldn’t have Adam. Adam was his friend and nothing more, and it didn’t matter how pretty Ronan thought he was on that dancefloor because a dozen other guys were thinking the same thing, and Ronan had no more claim over Adam than any of them, but that didn’t matter because he was a real jealous fuck -
“Ronan!” Gansey shouted over the music, his expression making it abundantly clear that it wasn’t the first time his name had been called, “Are you quite alright?”
“Jesus, man. I’m fine.” He shouted back, taking another long drink. He hadn’t had enough to properly get drunk, but he had had enough that the edge was neatly taken off.
It was hard to explain when he got like this. It was like everything he got mad about stacked on top of each other (arguing with Gansey about Declan, missed calls from Kavinsky, a waspish comment whispered behind his back in the Aglionby changing rooms, Declan with his bullshit) and one final thing (Adam sat at the 300 Fox Way dining table the other day, so still and poised, one hand pointed up, the other below, pupils the size of pinpricks, looking like the fairies in Niall Lynch’s stories, malevolent and tricky and life-ruiningly beautiful) had pushed the teetering stack of his problems, sending it all careening down around him and leaving only his soft-ball ways of dealing with things that went wrong.
Usually he’d go to Mass, but that was off the table after his explosive argument with Declan. He’d have to wait at least a week before he could convince himself to do confession for that. Talking about it was never on the table, and neither were any healthy outlets for the all-consuming rage that burrowed it’s way into his flesh constantly.
It was either drinking or driving, or both, or both and Kavinsky, but none of his options sounded like they’d help. He was either alone or with someone he hated.
For someone who so often isolated himself so often, he sure hated being alone.
So here he was, in one of his favourite bars to drink alone and uninterrupted in, with all of his friends – well, most of his friends, Noah had disappeared in the car ride over – which turned out not to be a good thing because Adam Parrish was looking to send Ronan to an early grave with the way his hipbones jutted out from just over the waistband of his jeans. Ronan wanted to bite down on the bone, wanted to press his thumbs into the curve, wanted to leave his permanent fingerprints there.
Frankly, it was all ridiculous. Blue whooping as Adam danced; the careful way Gansey watched her with a small, pleasant smile on his face; Adam’s circling hips and the sliver of stomach skin; the way Ronan watched him, like he’d been put under a spell and would die if he looked away.
Ronan took a deep breath and blew it out dramatically. To Gansey, in the faintest acknowledgement that they were both hopelessly, pathetically pining, he said, “We’re such losers.”
Gansey tore his eyes away from Blue and the darkish shimmy she was doing, laughing, and said, “I don’t think we are. I think we’re great.”
“You only think that because you’re disastrously uncool, old man.” Ronan said back, sticking his tongue out petulantly.
Gansey rolled his eyes and bumped his shoulder into Ronan’s.
“Guys!” Blue called, nearly incoherent with the music surrounding her, “Come on!”
Gansey looked to Ronan, who shrugged, giving up. As one, they went to join their friends on the dancefloor.