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“Don’t fucking touch me.” Adam’s voice betrays him and breaks, leaving him feeling bare.
He knows how it looks. His too-worn clothes are covered in dust, the palms of his hands are scraped. His hair is ruffled (not in the artful way that Gansey’s always is) and he’s got bruises blooming at the top of his cheeks. Everything hurts.
His eyes are not welling up, but his insides are screaming with the shame of coming to Monmouth for help. He’s Adam. He makes it through on his own. He does not ask for help, he does not give in. His pride is all that he’s got, and not even that is enough to keep him away anymore.
Ronan is staring at him like he’s seen a ghost. Wait, fuck, no, he’s not. He wouldn’t stare like this at Noah. His eyes are huge, but his face is otherwise kept under control. There’s a twitch at the corner of his mouth; Adam exhales shakily, clenching his fists. Ronan’s are doing the same, having come up to try and put his hands on bony shoulders.
Adam can’t take it. Not right now. He’s weak and bruised and battered, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he doesn’t want to be pitied, he probably would have let Ronan touch him.
Ronan doesn’t touch a lot. He’s not a tactile kind of person on the best of days; in fact, most of the time he’s the kind of person you’d be afraid to touch, thinking he might bite. Like a snake - all eyes and teeth and quick venom. Still, he looks like he wants to touch Adam right now.
After another tense second of Adam looking to the side, feeling Ronan’s gaze burn a hole in the already torn skin of his left cheek, Ronan steps aside to let him in. Not until then does it hit him that Ronan was the one to open the door. Ronan never opens the door - in case it might be Declan. Or anyone, really.
The place smells like it always does; boys and gasoline, of dust and air and space. So much space, despite the amount of things Gansey buys and Ronan picks out of those dreams of his. Adam doesn’t think anyone really knows exactly what the factory holds. It’s too damn big.
“What the hell happened to you?” Ronan asks. It’s short, clipped; like he’s angry. It’s ironic, really, that Ronan’s mad. Ronan is always mad, except for when he’s been out fighting on his own. Then he’s all energy and adrenaline and giddiness, happy to have come out on the greener side of the grass (Adam’s no Gansey, nor are his metaphors).
Adam never comes out on the right side of anything, he thinks bitterly as he draws another breath. Tries to make sure it fills his lungs, dampens the need that’s tingling in the tips of his fingers. It hurts his ribs - the breathing. He’s got goosebumps and he doesn’t really know why, feeling out of his skin and strung too tight all at once.
“A nightmare.”
“That’s not fucking funny, Parrish,” Ronan snaps and walks up, grabs his chin to inspect the damage done. He’s not listening to Adam and Adam wants to yell at him for it, wants to push and punch until Ronan punches back.
Instead he clenches his jaw and lets himself be moved and tries not to think of how Ronan’s rough fingertips are making him feel more alive and real than he’s felt since he set up Cabeswater with Persephone. It’s been like something’s still been missing.
Then again, Adam has always felt like there’s been something missing.
Ronan lets go of Adam’s chin and does nothing to acknowledge that this is happening, steps back and turns to walk away and Adam’s left standing alone on the floor, feeling helpless. He might as well be, he thinks briefly.
Ronan says, “You want a beer?” and walks up to the fridge. Adam watches him go. Can’t help but follow the dark curls and cuts of the tattoo that runs down his spine, twisting while he walks, bends, opens the fridge. Like it’s nothing. Like this is normal. It’s not, and he can see the tension in Ronan’s shoulders, even as he tries to hide it. Can see it in the way he keeps his neck just slightly bowed.
Adam doesn’t answer in time, too busy imagining what it would feel like to touch, if the skin is slightly raised, if Ronan is warm or cold, shirtless that he is. Bare body in a bare room (it’s not actually bare, but it might as well be, with how all Adam can focus on is the boy in front of and so far away from him).
Ronan puts the cold bottle in Adam’s open hand and passes him without a second glance, back towards something standing a few feet away. He barely has the time to close his weak hand around it, curl his numb fingers around the neck and hold on. He has to hold on to something.
There’s a car there, Adam realises. It looks… bad, really. Bumped and faded, like it’s been old and worn down but, the model is new and modern. It looks black, and Adam swears there’s something red in it. The shine, maybe. Ronan walks up to the open bonnet with a frown. Adam realises that it’s Ronan’s. Not that it’s the BMW because it’s not. But it’s undoubtedly Ronan’s, the way Chainsaw is Ronan’s.
“Don’t.” Ronan says before Adam gets the chance to open his mouth. Adam wasn’t going to say anything, but he doesn’t argue. Instead, sits down on the hard floor far enough away that he knows they could reach each other if they tried. Not that they would, but if.
“Why don’t you just hand it in?” Adam asks quietly. The bottle’s been opened for him, he thinks, sneaking a look at the shaved head of his current company. Takes a swig and lets his eyes close to think of nothing but the slightly familiar taste.
Ronan doesn’t roll his eyes. “Why don’t you just hand in yours?”
Adam, in turn, doesn’t answer. Because he knows Ronan knows and really, Adam knows too. Instead, watches Ronan curl his hands around the metal edge, leaning his back against the cold surface pulling his legs up to his chest. He knows it’s pathetic, that it’s one of those obvious ‘I’m scared and lonely’ positions but he just wants to feel safe. Let himself be weak.
“Hand me one of those wrenches.”
Had it been any other day, Adam would have said something along the lines of ‘you could at least say please sometime, Lynch.’ But had it been any other day Ronan wouldn’t be asking anything of him at all.
So he grabs for one of the silver tools currently by his feet and turns to face the suddenly-mechanic, and he sees the pale hand coming. Feels the fingertips overlap his. But then Ronan pulls it out of his hand with a quick tug, like he’s been burned. Adam’s hangs empty in the air for just too long, shaking, and then he turns his face away, pulling it back to his body.
Another sip of the beer trickles down his throat, in his neck, where the hairs are standing out.
The air is charged around them, and neither of them say a thing. Ronan, who makes fun of everyone for everything, remains silent. There’s no ‘scared are we’, no ‘calm down, Parrish’ and even if he tries, Adam can’t think of somewhere he’d rather be.
His hands are getting clammy around the bottle. Breathing hurts his bruised chest but there’s clinking in his ears; Ronan’s quiet-but-still-there breathing and Adam thanks God (if he exists) that it’s just the two of them.
So it goes. Adam gets up when he’s finished his beer and stands as close as he dares - an arm-length away. Ronan looks at him for a second, grabs the bottle and gets another one. Hands it to Adam and gets back to work. Doesn’t ask Adam to hand him anything again, just lets him stand there. Lets him watch.
“Does Gansey know?” Adam breathes and carefully looks for any sign of anger, or annoyance. Ronan’s face is blank. His eyes flicker to meet Adam’s own at the sound of his voice. It’s gentler now, Adam feels it when his tongue curls around the sounds. He’s far from where he should be, far from fine, but he’s better.
“No.” The reply is calm, matter-of-fact. Adam knows something Gansey doesn’t, just like that. Knows something of Ronan’s that Gansey doesn’t. He eyes the car again, catches his own reflection in the windshield and looks away just as fast, putting the glass mouth of the bottle to his lips and tipping it.
Ronan’s looking at his throat from the corner of his eye - Adam can tell. He can’t tell whether it’s the look that makes fire burn in his cheeks, or if it’s the drink. Easier to pretend it could be either.
“You’re not helping me. Why don’t you just go sit on the couch or something?” Ronan suddenly says, and it’s colder this time. Adam pretends not to care, rolls his eyes with attitude, as if he’s the one who’s in control of what he does and doesn’t do right now.
“Whatever, Ronan.”
Adam, however much he might wish he wouldn’t, does as Ronan says. And it’s a relief, to sink down onto the cushions and put the bottle on the floor. To stare up at the high ceiling, once he’s lying down.
He knows that Gansey and Ronan both suffer from insomnia, but doesn’t understand it. He’s so used to being exhausted, working full days and coming back to fall asleep the moment that his head hits the pillow, to think that he couldn’t is torture.
The exhaustion is creeping up on him now, and not the kind that makes him feel sick of himself and everything around him, but the kind where he knows that he’s about to fall asleep any second. Idly, he wonders what the others would think, if they suddenly turned up and found him lying there.
Adam doesn’t want to think about it. He’s being weak, and hates that, but for the first time in what feels like forever he feels like he’s… not home, but more home than before. Like maybe he’ll sleep and wake up feeling better, the way he did after the ritual.
Ronan’s muttering something to himself, unless Noah’s turned up. Adam falls asleep on the couch, still tasting beer on his tongue and with blood drying on his skin. Warmth pooling in his chest, fire burning where he can still feel Ronan’s skin.
He doesn’t dream. Or maybe he does. Someone comes up, drops a blanket on his skinny frame. There are fingers in his hair, maybe, a hand barely-there on his chest.
He doesn’t dream, but Ronan does. Only this time he doesn’t have to dream Adam.