how to be still when the world whirls on
Adam kicks the door shut behind them and pushes Ronan against the wall in two swift movements. Hands pull at shirts and slide against skin, but it turns out they can’t actually go farther than that because it would require Adam to stop kissing Ronan and that’s just not a sacrifice he’s willing to make yet.
Then Ronan says his name into the kiss, Adam murmured against his mouth, and, yeah, okay. Ronan’s hands slide under his shirt and Adam breaks the kiss, leans their foreheads together. Ronan huffs a breath and grins at him, and Adam can’t help but grin back as he fumbles for Ronan’s belt.
The change is immediate and violent. Ronan’s hands vanish from Adam’s skin and shove at his chest, the word “ Stop, ” cutting through the air like it was punched out of him, like he was the one hit.
Adam stumbles back first from the force and then backs up even further, holding his hands up in a careful gesture of surrender. “Okay.”
Ronan’s breathing hard, way harder than he was just a minute ago. Both hands are pressed to the wall behind him, his face turned away and his clothes rumpled, a picture of tension and taut muscles and predatory fear. Adam aches .
“Ronan?” he ventures, lowering his hands and taking one wary step forward.
He growls, “Don’t touch me,” and rakes a hand over his shaved head, pushing sharply away from the wall to pace like a caged animal.
Adam has no idea what to do.
-0-0-0-
Ronan doesn’t know how it happened. One minute he was fine, they were fine , okay, so maybe he had to make himself touch Adam and say his name so he could remember that he was in goddamn Cambridge and not Henrietta anymore, but it was still. Fine.
And then Adam reached for his belt and everything in his head became hands that wouldn’t let up and breathy snarled insults and fighting and fighting until it wasn’t worth it anymore and it was going to happen anyway so just. Let it happen. But it was Adam and Ronan was, maybe, a bit out of practice with letting it go so he pushed. And now everything is out of control. The only thing keeping the choking feeling like black sludge climbing up his throat at bay is Adam halfway across the room and pacing, pacing, pacing.
“Ronan,” Adam says again, and there’s so much careful gentleness in his voice, like Ronan is a wounded thing, and he can’t tell if he wants him to stop it or never shut up. He slows his pacing a little.
“Ronan, talk to me. Was it...what did I do wrong?”
He wants to hit something. “ Fuck , Parrish, nothing. Nothing.”
He glances over in time to see hurt flash across Adam’s face, fleeting, before he says, “If it was me, I can fix it. I just want you to tell me -“
“It isn’t you!” Ronan shouts, twisting on his heel so he’s facing Adam. Adam takes a step back and his raised hands jerk, just slightly, towards his face, and that’s when Ronan realizes his hands are curled into fists at his sides. He releases them, closes his eyes. “It isn’t you. You can’t fix this.”
He’s too many black and broken things, and everyone who comes near him just gets cut open on the edges.
-0-0-0-
Watching Ronan slump, defeated, is the worst thing Adam can imagine. Every cell in his body is screaming at him to go to him, hold him, fix it somehow, but he remembers in time Ronan told him not to. So he settles for one small step closer and asks, “If it wasn't me…?”
“Ancient fucking history is what it is,” Ronan softly growls at the floor. “Over. Done.”
“Mhm,” Adam says. “And that’s why we’re standing here now and you won’t talk to me about it, right?”
A tremor runs under Ronan’s skin. One of his hands keeps flexing in a fist, like he’s holding himself still by sheer force of will. Adam tips his head. He and Ronan are opposites in this, at least: Adam’s instincts have always taught him to freeze, while Ronan prefers a fight. Except this time there’s nothing to fight with , just whatever monster exists in his past.
“I didn’t mean to...make you stop moving. If that helps.”
Ronan glances up at him, blue eyes lighting with some emotion Adam can’t identify, and he starts walking again, lacing his fingers behind his head.
“Is this going to be one of the things we talk about, or one of the things we ignore until it explodes?” Adam asks. Ronan hasn’t said a word in two minutes, so it looks like it might be the latter.
“Kavinsky,” he says, instead of answering, or maybe it is an answer. His steps falter for a second and Adam, stupidly, moves to catch him, like he might fall. “I don’t—shit—I’ve never. Not even Gansey.”
Adam is nodding and nodding and nodding, which is useless because Ronan isn’t looking at him, but there is nothing in his head but a high whine of rage and Kavinsky, Kavinsky, Kavinsky.
“How many times?” he says before he can think about the words. His voice sounds foreign to his own ears.
“Adam-“
“How many times did he touch you , Ronan?” Adam asks.
“ Adam .”
He stops. Runs a hand through his hair. Jesus, he’s awful at this. Ronan is so much better at this than him, but he needs to be better because Ronan needs him , so.
“Fuck,” Adam says. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t push.”
“It’s….” Ronan doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t talk at all for a long moment until he drops his arms and stops, staring at the wall and not at Adam. “It. It was. More than once.”
Adam sucks in a breath, holds it. He’s never liked violence, always thought he would die before he raised a hand to another person of his own free will, but right then? If Joseph Kavinsky appeared in their apartment right now Adam doesn’t think he would stop himself punching him in the face.
Get a goddamn grip , Parrish.
He doesn’t say I’m sorry, he doesn’t say I’ll kill him , he just stands there and holds himself until he can speak without screaming.
“It doesn’t change anything,” Ronan says fiercely, and Adam realizes he’s been quiet too long. “I don’t want you to look at me like, like-“
“No, Ronan, Jesus, that’s not…” the words punch out of Adam before he knows what he’s going to say. “I’m just. What do you need from me right now?”
Ronan turns to him, slowly, and, staring at Adam’s shoes, he says, “You can touch me, I think. If you want.”
“If I want ,” Adam repeats, fondly exasperated despite himself. As if he hasn’t been itching to do that from the start.
He comes over, slow, careful, and reaches for Ronan’s hand, watching his eyes while he does. Ronan jerks his head away at the exact same time he grabs Adam’s hand. Squeezes once. Adam squeezes back. A language they’re both still learning, but he thinks the message comes across this time: I’ve got you.
“We never...we never held hands,” Ronan says eventually. “So.”
“So,” Adam agrees. Then, “Do you want to t-“
“The tattoo,” Ronan cuts him off, his breathing coming harsh again. “It wasn’t. Just to piss off Declan. It’s covering...look.”
He rips his hand away from Adam and yanks his shirt off, two powerful and violent motions. He turns his back to Adam, and beneath the muscles taut with tension Adam can see, twisting under the lines of a celtic knot: scar tissue. Faintly raised and disfigured from the work done over top of it, or maybe from the beginning, but it’s there. A single K.
“Home tattoo job,” Ronan growls, and pulls his shirt back on. “Fucking marking me. Like I belong to him.”
“And you wrote over it,” Adam says slowly, still staring at Ronan’s back like he could see the ink through his shirt. Celtic knots and ravens and forests and dreams. “The only thing you belong to is yourself.”
Ronan’s shoulders shake, and a sound comes out of him that might be a laugh or a sob. Impulsively Adam grabs his hand again, and Ronan grips it tightly, uses it to pull him forward as he turns around, and suddenly they’re hugging. Or Ronan is holding him. Adam’s brain takes a second to catch up with the proceedings before he wraps his arms around him.
They stand there, for a long, unmoving moment. Ronan’s breath is shuddering in his body, so Adam does the best thing he can think to do and holds him tighter and breathes, deep and slow and even. He doesn’t dare speak.
“This isn’t fair,” Ronan hisses in his ear, and Adam opens his mouth, you’re right, it’s not, you don’t deserve this, but Ronan beats him to it. “It’s shitty to ask you to, to wait, for me, that’s fine, okay, it’s fucking understandable, I—I get it.”
It takes Adam an embarrassingly long time to realize Ronan thinks he’s going to break up with him. Over this. Like it’s some massive dealbreaker, some horrible weight to bear that Adam can’t tear his clothes off right this second. Jesus.
“Jesus, Ronan,” he says out loud, and Ronan stiffens. “I’m not going to leave you , what the hell?”
“What, am I just supposed to assume everything is sunshine and goddamn rainbows now? ‘Hey, by the way, I might freak out if you kiss me, that’s totally cool right?’” Ronan asks, his voice scathing.
They’re still hugging. Adam wonders if this is turning into a fight, if they should be holding each other and having a fight. He sighs and holds Ronan that little bit tighter.
“Ro,” he says. “You see who you’re talking to, right? We’ve both got issues. I don’t care if you don’t want to kiss me, or go any further than that, right now, or, or ever. I won’t die.”
“You shouldn’t have to sacrifice -“
Adam digs his forehead into Ronan’s collarbone, hard. “Shut up. I meant, if the choice is having sex or having you...I pick you. Every time.”
Ronan is tense against him for another long second before he sags. “Yeah?”
Adam nods into his skin. “Yeah.”
“I…” Ronan swallows. “I pick you, too. Asshole.”
Adam laughs against him. “Way to ruin the moment.”
“Ask anyone,” Ronan says, with a laugh that comes out a little wet. “I can only do so much emoting in one day.”
“You wanna order pizza and watch a bad 80s movie?” Adam asks.
“Please.”
Adam goes and orders the pizza, half cheese for normal humans like Adam, anchovies and pineapple for Ronan, because he likes to destroy his taste buds, apparently. Ronan pulls out the running list of terrible 80s movies they have yet to watch, and by the time Adam comes back into the living room he’s got Weekend at Bernie’s queued up.
“Is this the one with the dead guy that totally ignores all the rules of how death works?” Adam asks as he perches on the armrest.
It gets a smile out of Ronan, which was the point. Half the talking they do during movies is him shouting at the TV about how absolutely nothing works that way. “It’s movie magic,” Adam always says, “suspension of disbelief.” But it is more fun when Ronan is cussing some dude out because “I didn’t even graduate high school and I know that’s not how science works.”
They sit in quiet for a few more minutes while they wait for the pizza. It might’ve been awkward, with anyone else, but the two of them learned a long time ago how to communicate without words, how to be there without touching, so they sit. Adam scrolls through their to-watch list for a bit. Debates texting Gansey, and then wonders what he would even say. He’s the first person Ronan has told about this. He can tell the others on his own. If his mood is bad tomorrow everyone will just assume that’s the way Ronan is.
That thought makes his stomach curl as he wonders how many times he saw Ronan’s moodiness and assumed it was trivial. He glances over at him surreptitiously, but he’s not subtle enough or Ronan is too good at noticing him, because he looks over too.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Adam says. “I’m just thinking.”
“Well, stop.” Ronan smiles at him. “Very annoying for the rest of us that don’t go to Harvard.”
Adam grins and is about to shoot back when someone knocks on the door. It’s their pizza; Adam gets it and sets it on the coffee table, and before he can go for plates Ronan has one slice of Hell Pizza folded in half and shoved into his mouth. Adam just sighs and flops down on the couch—the opposite end, as far from Ronan as he can get, because he’s still not sure how much space they need right now.
The movie starts playing. Somewhere around the time the idiot main characters find their dead boss and assume he’s sleeping, Adam glances over at Ronan. He looks, to all the world, like he’s fine, relaxing, watching a movie. But Adam knows what Ronan, relaxed, looks like, and he’s not fooled.
“You can put your head on my lap, if you want,” he says. It’s something Ronan does often, usually to annoy Adam when he studies on the couch but sometimes just because he can.
For a second he thinks Ronan will just grunt and stay where he is, and then he scoots down the couch and tips sideways with as little grace as possible to sprawl across Adam’s legs.
“Get off me, you big lug,” he says, shoving at Ronan’s shoulder.
“I’m not the lug. Dead guy’s the lug. Still not how rigor mortis works, everyone on that island should be able to smell him by now. Gross.” Ronan wiggles around into a more comfortable position, and Adam’s hand falls to pet his hair.
When the credits finally roll, neither of them move.
“That was terrible ,” Ronan says. “Wasn’t even funny. What were people on in the 80s.”
“Crack cocaine,” Adam says blandly. “And it was on the list for a reason. Noah told you it sucked. Did The Twins teach you nothing? You could really pitch anything and make a trilogy.”
“Hey, Twins had a sweet ending, though,” Ronan retorts, swatting lazily at Adam. “Love me some of that found family shit.”
“Point,” Adam agrees, and moves his legs around to jostle Ronan. “Now get up. I’m not sleeping on the couch again ‘cause you fell asleep on me.”
“No one asked you to,” Ronan mutters, but starts to sit up anyway.
“You’re like a little cat. If you sleep on me I’m legally obligated to never move until you get up,” Adam declares. “I’m the lawyer, I say so.”
“I am not a cat,” Ronan says, and flops back onto Adam’s lap just to be contrary. “I am a big angry guard dog and you will fear my wrath.”
“Hisses, claws people, sits in weird places, has never made a compromise ever in his life….” Adam ticks off on his fingers. “That’s a cat.”
Ronan hits him lightly but gets up, kicks off the boots he’s still wearing for some reason and wanders into their bedroom. Adam turns off the TV, shoves what remains of the pizza in the fridge, and follows him. Neither of them speaks as they get ready for bed, except for Adam telling Ronan he’s sleeping on the couch if his breath still smells like fish and Ronan saying “F’ck ‘oo” around a mouthful of toothpaste.
Adam is in bed first, and when Ronan lays down facing him he bullies and nudges him over to his other side so they can spoon.
“Goodnight,” he whispers to the back of Ronan’s head. Then, carefully, “ Tanquam -“
“- alter idem ,” Ronan replies, softly.
They sleep.