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Ronan had thought that he understood anger.
He had spent so much of his recent life seething with it, that it felt like an old friend. It was his second skin, his armor, his rock. And while he didn’t think himself an angry man, he knew that it was a part of him in ways he couldn't put into words.
So, when Adam had come to him with confessions of his own anger, he had not been surprised. Ronan had always known that deep inside the fragile boy there was that spark waiting to ignite and shatter the porcelain surface. But unlike Ronan, Adam’s anger was unsolved, all of his frustration and struggles gathered into complicated knots around his heart.
That’s why Ronan had taken Adam to the back yard of Monmouth Manufacturing and told him, “Punch me.”
Adam had been taken aback, his warm brown eyes widened in surprise and his posture slack. He had worn the oversized Coca-Cola shirt that was covered in spills of oil and dirt. Its collar had hung from the other side, revealing a stretch of his long neck covered in goosebumps from the chill of the afternoon.
His first attempt at a punch had been hesitant, as if expecting Ronan to bite his hand off. But Ronan had not budged. The feeble punch had landed square on his chest and stayed there for a prolonged moment.
“Really, Parrish? Try a little harder than that,” Ronan had scoffed.
It had been several months since that chilly day. Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish were again sparring inside the circular lot they had drawn on the dirt in the yard of Monmouth Manufacturing. It was located slightly behind the huge warehouse so that their friends couldn’t see them from inside.
At some point Ronan offering to help Adam vent his frustrations through them trying to punch the hell out of each other had turned into a twice-, or even a thrice-a-week event. The others still didn’t quite know where the two of them disappeared every now and then, but Ronan had been tight-lipped about it ever since the first time Adam had punched him like he meant it. He had yelled, too, an exasperated sigh of released anger that still sometimes echoed in Ronan’s dreams. Ronan had gotten a split lip for it. He had been in good spirits afterwards, until Adam had tapped his shoulder at the door of the warehouse. He had lifted his evasive eyes to face his grin that immediately dropped.
“Don’t tell Blue”, he had pleaded, quietly and voice almost breaking.
So, Ronan had told no one.
It was drizzling rain, in addition to it being chilly again. They had been at it for almost an hour already, both of them sweating and with fresh bruises aching. Adam laid there, breathing heavily, with Ronan holding him down with a knee on his chest. And still in Adam’s eyes there burned a furnace. He hadn’t said a word on the way there and had said nothing even when Ronan had tackled him down to the ground. His curly hair was a far cry from its usual softness, and instead framed his head in aggressive strands among the trails of water and sweat.
“What is it, Parrish?” Ronan asked and couldn’t help it escaping his mouth as a growl.
“Move,” Adam shot back. There was tension in his body that Ronan knew meant he wasn’t done, but for once Ronan was getting impatient with him.
“Hell no, man. The whole point we’re here for is to get it off your chest, not just to wear out your fists to stubs.”
Adam tried to move his knee, and while he had built some muscle with their sparring matches, Ronan was more adamant. He pressed his knee down harder, making Adam gasp for air.
“You’re suffocating me!”
“Quit being dramatic. I know how to suffocate a person, and this isn’t it,” Ronan said, trying for a calmer tone of voice. Failing at that, he continued, “I’m out of here if you don’t open your damn mouth.”
Adam frowned, and judging from the sharpness in his eyes he was thinking of saying something equally infuriating, but instead he swallowed it. Ronan felt his body relax with a sigh. All vigor and anger left him, and he was just Adam again. Fragile, beaten, and yet so graceful with how his head tilted against the ground.
Ronan suddenly felt wrong holding him down so violently, like he had been transformed into a predator holding a prey in its claws. The thought made him uncomfortable, and so he helped Adam up. Adam’s eyes loosely cast to where their hands intertwined. Ronan, as well, lingered his eyes there, and despite the thrill it gave him he cursed in his mind. He was quick to put his hands into the pockets of his jacket once they released each other.
They both had mud all over them, but the increasingly pouring rain did its best to wash it away. Ronan didn’t actually care much about it right now other than the fact that the dirt and water made Adam look even more miserable. Silently observing was all Ronan could do while Adam, a troubled frown on his face, battled with himself.
“It’s just…” Adam started, followed with a frustrated sigh and a string of seething words. “It’s been months since Blue and I… She acts like it’s all in the past, like nothing bad ever happened and we just had a small fight – and when I see her with Gansey, I can’t help it, it makes me so infuriated . How can she be like that? How easily she went back to us being just friends again?”
Ronan felt his own anger leave him in parts, with each word that Adam said. Instead, he became tired, though for him, the two emotions were usually intertwined. Adam mistakenly took his silence as a sign to continue.
“Truth is, I know I was a prick. I feel like shit about it, alright. I know I was never good enough, I couldn’t be, not when Gansey… I just… Sometimes I wonder if she ever really cared about me like-“
“Of course, she did”, Ronan said curtly, to silence him more than anything. He didn’t want to hear this again, all this talk about Blue, Blue, Blue. He loved Blue as much as the next guy. Well, not as much or in the same way when the next guy happened to be Adam. To Ronan, Blue was the sister he never had. And yet, lately, he had found himself frustrated with just the concept of her. Face to face with her he would have no problem, but anytime Adam mentioned her name, it irked him. Because he wasn’t talking about Blue. He was talking about his hurt, and Adam didn’t seem to even realize the distinction himself.
This was the one thing he didn’t know how to solve in the case of Adam Parrish. He could let him punch him until he broke, but when it came to heartbreak, Ronan couldn’t think of anything else than shaking Adam by the shoulders and telling him it was over and in the past. Shaking him until there was no thought of Blue Sargent left in his head. Of course, he never did that. His anger, while often solving his own problems, was not for others. It was infectious, and he didn’t want Adam to have it.
But sometimes, he was tempted, when all Adam could think about was Blue. Or when he talked over and over how he hated himself for what had transpired between the two. Ronan didn’t want him to hate himself, especially for something like that. No, self-hate was his deal. Not Adam’s, who was beautiful in his kindness, delicate in his temper and so, so very raw with his emotions. To Ronan, he was something inexplicable; to Ronan, he was the road to the Barns.
He didn't know how to say this to Adam, or if saying it out loud would do either of them any good at all. He didn't have a silver tongue like Gansey. He didn't have compassion like Blue. He wasn't sincere like Noah. Anything he could do wouldn’t be anything else than continuation of his poisonous anger.
He had once grumbled when Adam had brought up Blue for a fifth time during a day. Something along the lines of "Shut up about her, man. Get over it." And the hurt in Adam's eyes from back then froze him in place when he thought about it.
Adam was still standing close to him. He was fiddling with his fingers now, nervously. Ronan's hands tensed into fists inside his pockets as his pulse quickened against his will. Adam had always invoked certain protectiveness in him, but as of late the feeling had shifted more towards… intrigue? Excitement? It was the same feeling that he got when he revved up the engine of the Pig in his dreams, speeding ahead fuelled by adrenaline. The same feeling as moments before he had thrown the Molotov cocktail into Kavinsky’s Mitsubishi.
It was the tension and thrill of chance, Ronan had sometimes mused when he laid on his bed in the dead of night, music blasting from his headphones and Chainsaw tenderly pecking at his clothes. It was still not quite a sufficient answer, since he couldn’t really explain what the cause of the feeling was, but he couldn’t come up with anything better.
The way Adam shook his head pulled Ronan back into the moment. The rain was still beating the both of them. The droplets drummed against Ronan's leather jacket harmlessly but soaked into Adam's figure hungrily. The sound of it almost made it impossible to hear what Adam said next. "Don't look at me like that. I don't know why I always talk to you about this - You obviously don't care-"
But the truth was, Ronan cared a lot. "Don't let me being pissy stop you. If you need to vent, you need to vent. I just usually prefer it if you did it by punching."
The corners of Adam's mouth lifted up ever so slightly as he raised his gaze to look him in the eye, and Ronan felt that maybe he had said the right thing after all.
"That's probably the nicest thing you've ever said."
"I'm not a nice person." Ronan couldn’t help a smile, and for a fleeting moment the two of them just stared at each other with that hesitant smile. The moment was so uncharacteristic for the both of them, but it didn’t make Ronan feel uncomfortable. The heavy rainfall made everything around them look greyish blue. Not quite grey, not entirely blue. The spell was broken when Adam shook his head again.
"Neither am I," he said, "Especially not after…"
Adam didn't need to say it. Ronan knew what he meant. Cabeswater. What had happened in the forest all those months ago had done a number on all of them, to be fair, but Adam the most of all. Ronan didn't think the incident had necessarily changed him in a bad way. Of course, it could never be good in the long run that you sacrificed yourself and made a pact with ancient powers, but… it was after Cabeswater that Adam had become more genuinely Adam.
In Ronan’s perspective, before Cabeswater he had been tame, unable to pull himself out of dark waters that had drowned him day after day. He had been the Adam who stopped by the road to help Gansey, the Adam who timidly steered out of Ronan's way, and silently kept struggling. Ronan had seen the first spark of what was to come the night Ronan had tried to beat up Adam’s father. He distinctly remembered the defiant yet grieved look on Adam’s face from that night. And after Cabeswater, he had little by little pulled himself to the shore, and true Adam had emerged. Adam, who in all his gentleness was not tame at all.
It wasn't Adam that had driven Blue away since she had not known the true Adam at all. Unlike her, Ronan knew both Adams, and that’s why he was now here.
"It's not like that," Ronan said, startling himself. Could his voice be so quiet, so soft? He cleared his throat to be heard through the rain. "I mean, you fuck up a little, but who doesn't? It doesn't make you. Honestly, you're one of the kindest people I know."
Adam chuckled awkwardly, and then looked away with a sigh. "I don't know. Why doesn't she see it like that?"
Ronan grimaced. The softness he had thought he could try to hold on to for Adam's sake left him, like it was never there. He was just Ronan again. Indestructible, beastly, and fire framing his every bone.
"She does, but of course you don’t want to hear that. It’s easier to just blame her."
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
The fire had returned to Adam. To both of them. Ronan’s previously relaxed posture tensed up to hover above the short space between them, but Adam didn’t back down. He stood squarely in front of him and seemed ready to punch him again. Ronan hoped he would.
“You’re blind,” Ronan spat, the words finding their way out all on their own. “In addition to being deaf. She’s all good without you. She doesn’t need you. You needed her, because you’re so fucking afraid of yourself-“
Adam swung at him. Ronan didn’t try to dodge, and Adam’s knuckles hit him right at the corner of his mouth. Despite the impact and the following pain, he was barely fazed as he continued, “You don’t even have the guts to face it-“
This time, when Adam swung, Ronan stepped aside and grabbed his arm mid-air. He twisted it until Adam yelled in pain, and turned his back against his chest. It was only to restrain him, but Ronan knew he was going too far. Yet he didn’t let go.
“Fuck off,” Adam hissed and tried to yank himself free.
“Language,” Ronan said poisonously.
“No, really, Lynch, fuck off. I don’t need you saying all that, I’m well aware already. You think I’ve never thought about that? I know I’m a monster. But… she made me feel, I don't know, that I could be better.” The emerging Henrietta accent and the change of the tone of his voice made Ronan’s anger less volatile, and all the more desperate.
He twirled Adam around and pushed him away by the chest. He swiped his mouth and spat to the ground, mixing his blood with a rain puddle. "Really, no-one else but Blue? Where is she now? Somewhere off with Gansey, as always.”
“It’s not like I want her nor anyone else – Gansey the least of all – to see what… what I am. When I’m here.”
Ronan barked a bitter laugh. “But I’m fine?”
“Yeah… You’re safe.”
There was a new kind of bewilderment in Adam’s eyes that Ronan hadn’t seen before. The way he had said what he did, the way his eyes quickly evaded to the side of Ronan’s face instead of his eyes, it ached Ronan more than the punch had.
Adam's eyes still didn’t lock with his when he said, “You’re the only one I feel safe seeing me like this.”
Ronan had thought he understood anger, but it turned out that it confused him more than he had thought it ever would. What he felt right now was more than he could wrap his head around. It was a pain similar to his rage, a feeling that ate away at him and at the same time it elevated him. He grunted to shake off the discomforting feeling and to keep his own momentum. Safe was synonymous with invisible in his head right now, as irrational as he knew he was being.
“There’s my problem with you, Parrish,” he said, “I don’t give a crap what you or anyone else thinks you are. If we're both monsters, fine by me. But you don't care about what I think. Despite me being here, always right in fucking front of you, you never, ever, see me. I’m done with that.”
He pushed past Adam, who stumbled upon impact. Ronan didn’t look at his face and most certainly didn’t look for his reaction. He knew that he would find that paralyzing hurt there again. With all that he had said and done in a moment that had lasted a century but happened fast like rapid fire, he had fucked up. He had let the venom into his veins, and Adam had paid the price.
He had made it beyond the dirt lot, almost to the corner of the warehouse, when a broken plea reached him. “Ronan.”
Ronan didn’t want to listen. He wanted to break something, and he didn’t want it to be Adam. He kept walking, but heavy footsteps against the bleeding earth followed him. A hand grabbed his leather-clad arm. He could've easily shook it off, but something in that desperate clutch tempted the beast inside of him, and he stopped. That didn’t mean he didn’t exude with the opposite intention.
There was a heavy, wavering inhale, and then a slow exhale behind him. "Please don't leave."
"Give me a reason not to. See, I'm fucking pissed right now which means I don't want to talk."
Adam tried to turn him around, with no success. Ronan had rooted himself into place like a mountain. Adam resolved to instead of trying to move the mountain to walk around it. He came to face Ronan and grabbed his arms with both hands. His amber eyes were wide, the slight red around them highlighting their intensity, and his freckles were magnified by raindrops running down his face. He considered Ronan with great detail, his mouth opening many times to form words, but trailing off before anything could come out.
"Time to get creative, Parrish,” Ronan said, “Tick tock.”
He was being unfair, perhaps, but the poisonous side of him was pleased to see Adam fumble for words because of him. Guiltily, he thought that if breaking Adam into pieces was all it took to have him hold him like this, it would be a kill well worth it. He banished the thought as soon as it entered. It was hauntingly similar to the nightmares he often woke up from in cold sweat.
He didn’t want to see Adam broken. He wanted to see him whole.
Adam’s hands loosened their grip slightly, and slid to softly grip Ronan’s forearms. Closer to his hands, but not all the way down as if consciously stopping just a few inches shy. A pained cry crossed his face, silently, when he came empty with words again. “Look at me. I’m monstrous, even to you.”
“You’re saying that to the person most monstrous of them all.”
“That’s not true.”
Any other day this would have amused Ronan, but now it just sounded hollow when he remarked, “It’s not a competition.”
“It’s… not,” Adam agreed, and then huffed in frustration and closed his eyes tightly. “That's not the point. The point is… I’m sorry I can’t forget Blue. I really, really want to. There’s a reason I keep coming here with you, you know. And it’s not fair to you at all. It’s just me being selfish again.”
Ronan’s anger stilled, and for the first time he registered the taste of blood on his lips. “So… why do you keep coming here with me?”
Adam slowly opened his eyes, barely breathing as he said, “I can’t say it.”
“Finish what you started, Parrish.” Ronan’s tone was getting insistent, ever so slightly animated. There it was again, the hope he always built up on any sight of Adam, and always tore down on slight mention of anything Blue.
“But I’m afraid,” Adam said, and it was more of a confession than any yell or utterance made in the heat of violence. “Of facing you, if I let her… let that pain go. I wouldn’t have a reason to come here anymore. I can’t come here just to punch you.”
Ronan could feel Adam’s hands tremble, see the weak apologetic smile on his face plain as day. Ronan was desperate to come up with a reply, anything at all, but karma was a bitch, and he was just as worldless as Adam had been before. Adam expected a reply, too, but not insistently like Ronan had. He only waited.
Words that eventually found him were something he had never thought of putting into words, but they didn't come as a surprise, because in truth he had pondered it himself at nights when the thoughts of Adam wouldn't let him sleep.
“What if I kissed you?” His voice was almost a whisper, his eyes glued to Adam’s. “Would you forget her then?”
Adam’s lips slightly parted, a cavalcade of emotions crossing his face in a matter of moments. It was an equal whisper when Adam said, “Maybe.”
It took Ronan a skipped heartbeat to react, and then he reached his hand, his heart beating again in a new and raw rhythm, and then he was kissing Adam.
A dream could’ve never quite matched the realness of Adam; the sensation of his rain-chilled lips, the intimacy of their noses touching, nor the absolute, electrifying bliss that washed over Ronan. It was better than the high he got from racing cars, much more concrete and palpable, an impossible ignition becoming reality. Like fire in the rain.
The kiss tasted of rain, sweat, and blood. Adam’s grip tightened around Ronan’s arm, and his other hand came up to Ronan’s neck, the cold fingers prickling the shaved skin of his head, making Ronan shiver. Every area where their bodies touched, there opened burning wounds incomparable to any pain or pleasure. More precisely, the sensation was incomparable to anything Ronan had ever experienced, and it made him all the hungrier the more he lingered on it. It was a feeling he wanted to get drunk on.
It was a fleeting moment, however. He was consciously dreading the breath that would eventually pull them apart. He couldn’t let go of Adam, couldn’t consider separating and realizing it had been a distant dream after all. If this was a dream, he wouldn't mind never waking up. But like any dream, the kiss had to come to an end.
Despite the rainfall being the loudest sound around them, it was only Adam’s breathing Ronan heard once he pulled away reluctantly. Adam’s eyes remained closed, but the previous frown on his face had smoothed away and he looked almost tranquil. Ronan wondered what he was listening to. His breathing, heavy and expectant? The rhythm of the rain? His heartbeats that boomed like church bells on a Sunday? Ronan could only guess, and the longer the silence went on, the tighter he found his hand holding onto Adam’s, where it had found its way, though Ronan didn’t remember when or how.
“Kiss me again”, Adam said quietly, never opening his eyes. “Like you mean it.”
It sounded like a challenge, and well, Ronan was easily challenged, especially by the people he was attracted to. It overpowered every other thought. He leaned closer again, but stopped an inch away from his lips. It would be too little for it to only be one kiss. So, he kissed his forehead first, then pressed a pointed kiss on both of his eyes. Finally, he came back to kiss the sides of his mouth, and locked their lips together. He wasn’t quite aware of what he was doing, mostly because the drum of his pulse was overwhelming, but it was almost like he was in a trance - searching for a reason to stay as much as Adam was searching for oblivion.
This kiss he poured himself into, hoping to say everything he couldn’t in words. Unlike the icy rain that had been devouring Adam, Ronan wanted to keep him like an ember. With similar passion, Adam seemed determined to feed that ember until it burst to flames. And this time, Ronan wasn’t dreading it to end, because he already knew that it wouldn’t become a fading dream. He knew it from the hand that still held onto his, from the lips that wanted to devour him, from the heart that beat against his own.
If the first kiss had been the adrenaline high, this was the overdose. Staying still was impossible and moving felt like a haze. Adam’s hand searched for him, feeling the shape of the nape of his neck and sliding down his back to pull him closer. It was not just the touch that set Ronan alight, it was the devoutness in which their bodies fell into place like puzzle pieces.
By the time Ronan inched away to catch his breath, the rain was still beating the both of them, but it was only a comforting veil for the space around them.
“At least you kiss like a monster,” he said with a sobering grin. He was pleased by the red that had gathered around the tips of Adam’s ears, and the flush that appeared on his cheeks. He offhandedly wondered if his pale face burned the same because that's what it felt like.
“It’s not a bad thing, is it,” Adam breathed, targeting the words vaguely to Ronan’s collarbone.
Ronan placed his hand under his chin, and lifted it slightly. He wasn’t superstitious, but the third time’s the charm, as they say. He kissed him again, for a heartbeat's length and with a tease different from the kisses before, and then released him slowly. “Would you prefer whatever that was?”
A smile broke on Adam’s lips, a smile born out of this moment and from nowhere else, only for Ronan to see. There was no hesitation behind it. “I liked them all.”
That smile would be his secret to keep. The true smile of the fragile boy who was not fragile at all, only a keeper of secrets like anyone else. And while Ronan had secrets himself, he now knew at least two of Adam’s. Firstly, that he had been afraid. Secondly, the smile that was meant for no-one else than him.
A secret known to two people, kept in the heart of one.
A secret he had been there to create, and not by taking it from a dream. It was something their own and something inexplicably only his. Something real like Adam Parrish, because it was part of Adam Parrish as much as it was now part of Ronan Lynch. It would be hidden carefully among the hooks and claws of his being, kept there safely as a flame he had already seen in Adam a long time ago.
Cloaking them inside a world of their own, the rain was reaching its crescendo, insistently painting away any blue tones and only leaving behind shades of grey.