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Ronan stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking at the colorful display of candy. He used to shoplift from here, years ago, when he had little else to do but count crows streaking across the sky and make mayhem in this small town. He even remembers his father, holding him roughly by a pinched ear out to the teller like an offering, like evidence. It wasn’t me, Lord. It was this hellion you sent to test me, and by God, I have failed. Ronan didn’t apologize then either and he got a spanking for it.
He wonders what form of punishment this would be. Surely one much crueler. Adulthood seemed to stack his discretions up like past due bills, retribution paid with interest. God had even sent him a hellion of his very own in the form of the orphan girl Opal. He would think more about cycles and fathers if he wanted to give himself a migraine. For now, though, he had an angry boy in front of him and this strange urge to keep staring until the world went quiet.
The boy looks unimpressed. “She’s got to pay for them.” His tone is flat, the lack of an accent even more glaring than if he had kept his hidden one.
Ronan shrugs. The boy’s blonde, tan, and very pretty. Freckles dot his face, faint shadows of them like ghostly afterimages splashed across his cheekbones. Even his fucking eyelashes are blonde. Ronan makes a point not to notice the color of his eyes, pale and blue, and jerks his head toward where he suspects Opal might be. She’s not looking an ounce sorry, not that Ronan expected her to.
“Kid. You got money?”
Opal snorts. She’s the only one who finds him funny these days.
He eyes the enormous amount of candy in her arms. Contrary to his lack of a high school diploma Ronan’s not stupid, and he has some suspicions about how much candy an eight-year-old should have on a daily basis. He knows Opal’s consumption is far beyond that. He also knows that he’s fucking nineteen so he gives himself a break. “Put the Jolly Ranchers and caramels away. They’re for babies.”
Opal finds the clear logic in his argument and walks off to return the offending articles. Ronan knows there’s a twenty percent chance she will come back with even more shit, but honestly, if it means he can argue with the cashier more he wouldn’t care.
The boy, Adam by the name neatly stitched on his coveralls, has the same flat expression he did when he first looked away. Adam looks like a mirror image of the landscape outside, sepia-toned and unchanging. Ronan wouldn’t be surprised if he had crawled straight out from the Earth instead of being born.
“Is she yours?” Adam asks, eyes tracking behind Ronan’s left shoulder, surely watching Opal with those haunted eyes. He is relieved and annoyed in equal measure Adam has not turned his gaze back onto him.
“Nah, runaway.” Ronan likes to tell the truth in a way that sounds like a lie, and it seems to catch Adam off guard. Adam licks his lips, Jesus fucking Christ, his brow furrowed.
“Both of you?”
Ronan does not get the sense the boy asks many questions, so he's pleased to be the exception. He scoffs though, caught by the strange urge to say yes, and decides to just shrug.
Opal returns with an added pack of cookies, but she doesn’t try to escape the store without paying again so she’s an angel in his book. Ronan, however, does not want to leave. He wants to watch Adam’s hands as they scan the items, movements rote but the way the knobs of his knuckles curl around the wrappers give the actions a whole new light.
Ronan’s not sure he has ever felt this type of need.
The closest thing he could remember was when they were wheeling her away and suddenly he had to see her one more time before she was gone and buried forever. It was like it was written into his DNA or something.
“That’s $18.74—”
“Is the shop open?”
Adam looks around in a deliciously deadpan display of sarcasm. Ronan wants to shove him (then maybe reel him back in and grasp his waist—)
“The mechanic.” He tries again. He hands Adam the card so it’s clear he means to pay. Adam uses the distraction to look away, his blond hair obscuring those stupid eyes of his.
“We’re open. What’s the problem?”
Opal is glued to the television. Adam had set her up with the waiting room TV and a VCR of The Land Before Time. She’s more fascinated by the mechanics of the television than the movie itself, rewinding and fast forwarding and pressing eject. Ronan hopes she doesn’t break it but there’s no telling what she’ll do. Adam is sweating slightly in the garage's heat, his coveralls unzipped and tied at the waist, as he leans over Ronan’s car. It was nearing six and the fireflies were getting ready to wink across the landscape, the low hum of cicadas beginning a drone through the trees out past the wheat fields.
Adam had taken one look at his BMW, the toddler princess Ariel safety seat strapped neatly across the passenger side, and promptly got to work on the invisible knocking sound Ronan made up in a mad dash to keep talking to him.
Ronan finds he likes watching Adam work. He’s methodical with it, slow and precise. Ronan wonders not for the first time why this creature has ended up in this gas station/car wash/mechanic shop between hollers in Lewis County.
“You from around here?”
Adam doesn’t stop, but he speaks after a pause. “Yeah. Henrietta.” Maybe he likes that he can focus on something else and not Ronan. Ronan wishes he would look at him again. Ronan crosses his arms in an attempt to ward off the feeling.
Ronan’s heard of Henrietta, thirty minutes due West of here. He’s even been there a few times to visit Gansey. Ronan suddenly wants to know if they exist in the same universe. He dismisses that thought quickly, suddenly not interested in making this moment permanent. In his experience, permanent things are much easier for him to ruin. He glances at Adam’s ass as he bends over the car, he shouldn’t he knows that but he can’t stop looking at him. He shouldn’t be here, doing this. The pastor is going to need to put in overtime for his reconciliation this week.
“Does she talk?” Adam says into the engine block. For a wild second Ronan wonders if Adam is the type of boy that calls cars she but then he gets it. He glances at Opal, enraptured by the TV. He shakes his head, then sighs when he realizes Adam wouldn’t know what he said cause he won’t fucking look at him.
“When she wants to.”
“Isn’t she in school?”
Ronan plants himself in the one plastic chair in the garage, happy it faces away from the window. He doesn't like talking about Opal and looking at her at the same time. “It’s the summer." He wipes his face. "What’s with the twenty questions? I didn’t know you were fucking CPS.” Ronan wants to talk to this descended being about anything other than the devil that binds him to this planet. He doesn’t ever want to speak about her because she makes his ribcage feel too tight.
The hood of the car slams shut and Ronan finally gets what he wants, Adam’s glare on him. He feels gooseflesh erupt over his forearms. “Sue me. Not like you seem like a model parent, encouraging shoplifting and all.”
“I didn’t ask you for parenting advice, Alan.” Ronan stands, suddenly needing to get in Adam’s face.
“It’s Adam, but you know that don’t you? Cause you’ve been staring at me since you walked in.” His accent is there and it's long vowels and twang and Ronan wants to murder him and pin him down in equal measure. It’s not confusing— Ronan is used to the pure and utter violence of his want. But even Ronan’s dick isn’t interested if this boy keeps asking after Opal like that.
They’re nearly chest to chest, and Adam’s a nice height for kissing. Instead, Ronan sucks in a breath and takes a step back, able to swallow defeat by clinging to his anger. “Are we fucking done here or what?”
Adam looks dazed-- like his brain is just catching up with him. He throws his grease rag with a loud clatter into the toolbox and walks off towards the desk to write up the invoice. “Yeah, we’re done.”
Opal had destroyed the VHS when Ronan gets in there, which he’s angry about cause now he has to replace that shit. But she brandishes the thing like it’s a new planetary discovery and shouts “The movie’s on the tape Ronan! Fucking cool.” So Ronan lets it slide.
Adam comes back with that stupid placid expression on his face, and Ronan’s only known him for about an hour but he knows that Adam hates that face but won’t admit it. He hands over the invoice and says stonily “$133.”
Ronan tosses the card on the counter, frustrated at the situation, frustrated that even impermanent things get ruined by him, that his ink-stained hands leave everything he touches fucking black. But there are cows to be tended to, and Opal must be hungry, and he supposes this is what life is for him now. Fucking shit.
He feels a sharp tug on his sleeve and he looks down to see Opal staring daggers at Adam. She waits patiently until Adam is done checking them out. Waits until she catches his gaze and then slowly lifts a small middle finger and holds it up to him like a weapon. “Stop being mean to my dad.”
According to the government, he’s had Opal since he was eighteen years old. It's a lie though. She actually showed up at his door a whole two years before that, sullen and angry and half-wild. Ronan felt half wild himself at sixteen, left alone in the big empty Barns to haunt it, so he didn’t mind having another ghost around.
Now, to anyone else but Adam, Opal casually flipping the bird would be one of Ronan’s proudest moments as a newly dubbed father fuck that’s crazy he’s no dad— he doesn’t know how to make milkshakes or tell bedtimes stories or even how to say the words ‘I love you’ anymore. However this is Adam, and he was looking shocked and strange at her outburst. Adam’s eyes flick to Ronan’s and then away as fast as humanly possible as if to say I’m sorry. Ronan had nothing to say to that, he somehow knows neither he nor Adam is the type to apologize.
Ronan pays and tries to leave as fast as he can. He buckles Opal’s seatbelt and closes her door when a sun-tanned hand lands on top of the car. It’s connected to Adam, who looks strangely contrite.
“Look, I— I was asking because I just wanted to make sure she’s alright.” Adam's accent is back, and it feels like a peace offering to be consciously given this piece of his life.
Opal is watching them with her bright green eyes. Ronan lets her. “She seems fine to me.”
Adam glances at her as if he expects her to flip him off again. She doesn't and he looks back at Ronan. His answering smirk is lovely. Ronan wants to fit his tongue in the quirk of it. “I can see that,” Adam says mildly. They stand awkwardly for a moment before Ronan decides he feels like he wants to get the fuck out of there. He’s had enough of Adam. (No he hasn’t. Not for a lifetime.)
“I’m going now,” Ronan announces to the planet at large and Adam is still fucking looking at him.
“DoYouWantDinner?” Adam spits out, and Ronan’s eyebrows raise of their own accord. Adam is turning red (it’s a lovely shade on him). “I mean, I know you made up that shit about the car.” He snaps, as if that will save face. It won’t, but Ronan crosses his arms and leans against the car anyway.
“And I know you charged me $133 and spent an hour on what was basically a twenty-minute oil change.”
Adam breathes out through his nose in one big huff. “Seems like we’re both on the same page then.” He challenges. Ronan knows this can’t be happening. The things he wants never find their way to him. But Adam was a contradiction in the dying light. Stubborn and accusatory and somehow making the act of asking him out on a date into an argument. Ronan might be a little bit in love.
He shrugs, looks back at Opal which— mistake she’s still staring at him, judging— and looks out into the treeline instead. “Come to mine after your shift's done.”
“Today?” Adam looks dubious someone would be that keen to have him, which is a little bit insane.
“No, next fucking year. Of course today.” He snipes, relishing the furrowed brow from Adam but not sure if it's pure anger or just him being pissy. He kind of likes him indignant. “I’ve got stuff for spaghetti.” He adds, like it doesn't mean anything at all.
A small, incredulous laugh escapes Adam’s lips then, and he does actually look like an angel in the last embers of the July sunlight. Ronan’s not sure what he did to make this boy laugh but he wants to do it again. And again. And again. And again, and again and again and again and ag—
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Sure. I get off at nine.”