Chapter Text
Ronan’s vision blurs, and he just manages to catch himself on the wall of the alley. His feet are fucking filthy. God knows what’s littering the ground out here, he needs to find shoes before he slices his feet up. He needs to Dream. He needs to fucking sleep, and more than any of that, he needs to keep moving.
He shoves himself off the wall, forces one foot in front of the other. It’s been—he doesn’t know how long it’s been since he actually slept. They’d kept an alarm, every twenty minutes like clockwork. No REM, no Dreaming. He’d only managed to slip in for a second after—however many days it’s been—and it’d been sheer luck that he’d been able to snag a box cutter before the alarm jolted him out.
Luck. Sure, Lady Luck was fucking smiling down on him. He has a box cutter, it’d helped while he was getting out. There’d been a struggle. Since he’s not there now, he assumes he won. But no shoes.
He blinks. The shadows are different. It’s—he’s losing time. He needs sleep. He needs to keep moving.
Sharp pain prickles the bottom of his foot as he steps on a ragged piece of gravel. He grinds his heel into it harder, til his vision clears. One foot in front of the fucking other.
When he glances up, he’s at the corner of a parking lot. Across the way, the words on the side of the building just barely glow in the morning light: MOTEL.
Thank fuck. He stares at it for a long moment. A place with a lock to crash. It’s perfect. But something niggles in the back of his mind. Something isn’t right. Something’s not—Lady Luck. He has a box cutter and no shoes. No money.
Shit. He could, he could figure out a way to break in. A back window or—something.
He walks closer. The parking lot is almost empty, so most of the rooms’ll be clear. It’s…sometime in the morning, he thinks. Everyone’s checked out already. The windows in the front aren’t an option for breaking in, somebody would notice. Maybe there’s some ‘round back—grab a brick and shatter it, slip in and lock everyone else out. It’s—would that set off an alarm?
He misses Gansey like a lung. Gansey would know what to do. Or, better yet, Parrish. What, what was the phrase? Declan’d said it the last Sunday, Adam was a—he was a ‘creepily clever fuck’. That’s it. He’d know what to do, if he was here.
He’s distracted, thinking about them. Stupid move. Doesn’t even realize he’s zoned the fuck out ‘til he shoulder checks a guy he hadn’t even seen coming. Big dude, solid enough that he doesn’t budge an inch while Ronan staggers.
“Sorry,” Ronan keeps walking. They’ll be looking for him. If this guy is one of theirs—Ronan’d already be fucked. The guy didn’t see his face, he won’t be able to snitch if someone comes asking. Nobody looks twice at strangers on the street. So long as he doesn’t—
“Woah, kid, you alright?”
Shit. Ronan doesn’t turn back, picking up the pace. The gravel crunches underfoot. Is it just his footsteps, or is the guy following? Ronan speeds up a little more. He’s almost at the corner of the building.
“Hey! You okay?” It’s distant, half-shouted. The guy isn’t following. Something in his chest loosens, and Ronan flips him the bird over his shoulder for good measure.
He rounds the corner, out of sight, and ducks behind a set of bushes. Waits. Nobody follows.
There’s space under the bushes, decently well-hidden from the road. He could sleep, right here. Figure shit out when his head’s screwed on right. But. There’s no lock. Someone just saw him. It’s not—it’s a last resort. Plan B.
Ronan is pretty sure he’s already on Plan Q.
Something rattles from around the corner, making him duck back. He can taste his heartbeat in the back of his throat, wound tighter than a spring, when the figure rounds the corner.
It’s a maid, pushing a cart full of supplies. The tension rushes out of Ronan so fast it knocks him back onto his ass. He stays there, watches the cleaner as she goes through her routine.
Unlock the door. Prop it open, leaves the cart and its mud-covered wheels outside. Strip sheets, dump into cart, grab vacuum. Back inside. Return vacuum, pick up cleaning spritzers. Back inside. Lock up. Next room. The pattern continues, and Ronan forces himself to come up with a plan.
When the maid reaches the door closest to him, Ronan crouches. Waits until the lady grabs the bleach and shit, giving her a solid minute to get into the bathroom. Once he’s reasonably sure the maid is absorbed in the task, he slips into the room, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice.
The beds have bedskirts on them. A grimy shade of green, ugly as fuck. Thank God. Ronan rolls underneath the bed closest to the wall. It’s a tight fit—he can barely get in a full breath, box springs digging into his back. His face is pressed into the carpet, musty-smelling and clogged with dust.
He barely manages to get himself situated when the maid stomps out of the bathroom. There’s no way she fully cleaned that thing. Zero stars on Yelp.
Ronan’s nose burns, eyes watering. He can’t sneeze, he can’t—he holds his breath. Prays.
The door closes behind the maid with a snick. Ronan doesn’t move until he hears the cart rattle away. The sneeze erupts out of him, catching him off-guard, and he slams his head painfully against the bedsprings above her.
Fuck, that hurt.
He crawls out from under the bed. Flips the deadbolt on the door, sealing it shut. Falls onto the bed. He doesn’t even bother to get under the covers, darkness rising as soon as his head hits the mattress.
~*~
He doesn’t Dream. Maybe Lady Luck actually is real, because Dreaming without a purpose right now would probably leave him eviscerated on the floor.
When he wakes, the motel room is unchanged. The door is still locked, windows still covered. More importantly, his head is clear.
…Clear might be an overstatement. He’s gonna have to sleep for a fucking week to pay off the sleep debt he’s racked up, but this is the kind of tired he knows how to deal with. A headache, pressure behind the eyes, gravity tugging at his arms and legs. His head is buzzing, but blinks last a normal amount of time, and his thoughts stick in his head, rather than sliding like sand through an hourglass.
He glances through the blinds and swears.
It’s evening already, faint music playing from a roadhouse down the street. He’d slept all day, missed his chance to grab a taxi out of—wherever he is. There’s a stack of pamphlets on the bedside table, dumb tourist shit. Coldwater, Michigan. Looks like the kind of place you only stop at as a pitstop for where you’re actually going.
Someone walks down the path, footsteps crunching on gravel, and his heart makes a reappearance back in his throat, pressing himself flat to the floor. But they just walk on by.
The fear still keeps a clawed grip on his insides, the room’s walls closing in around him. He’s a sitting duck, here. There’s only so many places a kid can hide in a town like this, and they’re going to be looking for him.
He needs to get out of this town. But he’s got nothing on him, no money, no ID, no fucking shoes. He needs a phone, he needs to call—fuck, he wants to call Gansey, who’d come at the drop of a hat. Gansey, who’d be in just as far over his head.
He needs to call Declan.
Fuck.
Declan, who will be pissed off and self-righteous. Declan, who owns a gun and isn’t afraid to use it. Declan, who’s had Ronan’s passport confiscated since the time he tried to fly to Guatemala on a whim. They could get a flight out of here, easy, with none of the attention that Helen’s helicopter would bring. Ronan isn’t bringing this down on the heads of the rest of Gansey’s family.
He lies back down on the bed and prepares to Dream.
~*~
It goes about as well as one would expect. He’d barely in the dream-space for a minute, trees tall and straight and whispering in Latin, before blackened ooze starts to seep from the ground. Something chitters in the distance—a threatening, alien sound.
Ronan scoops up what he can and runs, branches curling into claws that scratch at his arms and catch on his clothes. The ooze on the ground clings to his bare feet, slowing him down.
Behind him, the alien clicking grows closer, and closer, and—Ronan opens his eyes.
He can’t move, same as always, eyes forced fixed and staring on the ceiling. He strains his ears, tries to figure out if he brought any of the chittering, toothy horrors back with him. It’s silent.
The paralysis loosens, all at once, and Ronan lunges for the light. He’s clumsy in his panic, knocking the lamp straight off the table and barely managing to catch it before it hits the ground.
He flicks it on. The room is empty.
The adrenaline bleeds out of Ronan so quickly it leaves him dizzy. He moves to rest his head in his hands, but something viscous and sticky clings to them, making him jerk them back almost immediately. They’re coated in that clammy black ooze. It’s gonna leave one hell of a stain on the bed. But nothing else alive is here, he isn’t bleeding, and there are several small objects scattered on the bed next to him. Something loosens in his chest at that. It wasn’t for nothing.
He wipes his hands on the comforter, checks to see what he managed to bring out. There’s a pair of boots, near-identical to the ones he has at home. Gonna be uncomfortable as shit without socks, he realizes. He hadn’t even thought to try and dream those.
His wallet is there, too. Ronan swears when he opens it. All that’s inside is a receipt from Nino’s, a couple of Monopoly bucks, and his fake ID.
The phone is even worse, because it isn’t a phone at all. Just a fucked-up looking apple. Jesus, Mary, fuck. He’s screwed himself.
It’s late. Nowhere else will be open in this Podunk of a town, and Ronan’s not willing to wander the streets asking random strangers for a phone. Not when he knows they’re after him. Can’t Dream again, not when the horrors are still chittering in the back of his mind. If he goes in again, he’ll get ripped apart. And he can’t just wait here, alone in this shitty motel room like a sitting duck.
He throws the apple at the wall, where it lands with an uncomfortable squelch. Curses himself for that, too, because he’s starving.
In the silence, the faint thrum of live music weaves its way under the door. The roadhouse. He’s got his fake. They won’t expect him to have that, won’t think to look in a bar. He can get some—no food, not without money, but a water at least—and ask to use the phone. Blend in until Declan gets here, somewhere public where he can make a hell of a lot of noise if anyone tries to grab her.
It’s better than waiting in an empty room.
~*~
The bar—Lola’s Roadhouse—is exactly the sort of hokey southern you’d expect from fucking Michigan. And it’s the kind of dive bar that actually checks IDs, the bouncer staring long and hard at him even after the ID checks positive before finally letting him through.
God, of all places, why Michigan?
He heads up to the bar, tugging his sleeves down and adjusting his bracelets to cover up the bruising on his wrists. Blend in.
The bartender takes one look at him and flags down the bartender. Ronan shoots the lady his best ‘fuck-you’ smile when the guy just shrugs.
“Don’t get yourself in a twist, I just want a water.” His voice grates painfully in his throat, but comes out only a little raspy through sheer force of will.
The bartender rolls her eyes, turning away. But there’s another set of eyes on him, someone who can’t mind their own fucking business.
Ronan glares. “What are you looking at?”
“Sorry.” The guy’s nondescript, looks like every other dude you’d find out in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere. Except his voice is familiar, and there’s no fucking reason Ronan should recognize someone in the middle of Michigan. He’d never even left Virginia, before this.
Only thing that keeps him from turning straight back around and finding somewhere else to hunker down is the fact that his dude was in here before him, three-quarters of the way through his beer. Running would be conspicuous as hell, too.
The man’s looking at him, still, which is bad. Ronan doesn’t want anyone here remembering him if those guys come sniffing ‘round. “I said, the fuck you looking at, rough road?”
The guy has the nerve to look nonplussed. “Rough road?”
“As in, ‘forty miles of’, ‘face like’.” Ronan places him, then.
It’s the dude he bumped into on his way to the motel. So almost definitely not with them, since they haven’t tracked Ronan down yet. But it’s too much of a coincidence to ignore. Did this guy follow him?
He’s still staring.
“What?”
“Hey, look, you’re the one staring at me,” the guy says, not fucking minding his own business, “Everything alright?”
“Fuck off.” Ronan bites the words out, snags his water from the bartender. He pointedly turns his shoulder to the guy. “Y’all got a phone?”
“Yeah, by the bathrooms.” The bartender points towards a hallway near the stage. She has a pretty sweet tattoo winding her way up her arm, all sharp lines mixed with floral swirls. Clean as hell line work. “Back there.”
Ronan spins on his heel and stalks in that direction, shouldering his way through the crowd.
He doesn’t go straight to the phone. He can feel eyes on his back, either the bartender or the bouncer or that nosy fucker, and he doesn’t want to draw their attention any more than he already has. There’s a bunch of tables in the back, including one behind a support pillar. Gives a good view of the place, out of sight from the door. Ronan sits, chugs the water in one go.
It tastes fucking divine.
He watches the crowd for a bit, makes sure there’s no one else watching him. The guy at the front isn’t, not anymore, chatting up the bartender like he thinks he has a chance. Maybe he does. There’s a sort of familiarity there, an easy back-and-forth while he works that’s visible even from where Ronan’s camped out.
He’s probably just a regular, some asshole sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. He probably doesn’t even recognize Ronan from earlier, either, else he would’ve said something. Done something.
No one else in the bar stands out all that much. A bunch of thirty somethings mixed with the alcoholics and truckers that litter every dive bar in the country. Everyone’s focused on each other, or their drinks, or the stage. Once he’s satisfied that no one’s gonna sneak up on him, he heads to the payphone.
It’s in a grimy-ass, piss-smelling hallway, covered in graffiti. David fucked your mom, Liz Sucks Cock, the sort of dumb shit Ronan’s scrawled on bathroom stalls dozens of times.
The phone itself is old as shit and strained red with rust. He’s probably getting herpes just touching it, and somehow it still manages to be the best goddamn sight he’s seen in a good long while. It’s only when he’s already picked up the receiver that he realizes—
He doesn’t have any quarters.
Ronan kicks the wall, hard as he can. It hurts like hell, so he kicks it again. Slams the receiver back into place, hopefully breaking the piece of shit, smacking the phone cage with his other hand hard enough that the whole frame rattles. He rests his forehead against it, letting the reverberations vibrate through his skull.
Goddamnit. It’s been a fucking shitty however-many-days, and apparently the universe hates Ronan just as much as he hates it. He’s gonna die in this shitty-ass town.
“You need some change?”
The voice startles Ronan badly enough that he whacks his elbow off the phone box in his rush to spin around.
“Jesus fucking Christ, hasn’t anyone every told you not to sneak—” He gets an eyeful of the speaker, and of-fucking-course, it’s the same guy from earlier. “Are you fucking following me?”
“Why would I be following you?” The man’s still got his beer in his hand, leaning up against the wall. Big guy, got that posture that screams ‘boxer’ in neon letters all over him, with a crookedly broken nose to match. Looks like a goddamn bull terrier.
He shifts slightly when Ronan doesn’t answer, gestures towards the bathroom. “I was heading thataways, saw you were having trouble. Everything okay?”
“I’m fine.” Ronan spits. He’s about ready to tell this guy to fuck right off, but the Gansey in his head reminds him that he really needs those fucking quarters. His head throbs. He rests the back of his skull against the wall, shuts his eyes for a moment. “I just—fuck, I really need to call my brother.”
The guy digs in his pocket, pulls out a handful of coins. As he sorts through them, he says, “You were looking pretty rough, earlier.”
Shit. He was hoping the guy hadn’t got a good enough look to recognize him.
“That’s none of your fucking business,” he snaps, then, because the Gansey in his head reminds him that sounds suspicious as hell, he adds, “Got a little too trashed last night, is all.”
“Sure.” The guy stares at Ronan for a long moment, before holding out a couple of quarters.
Ronan snatches them out of his hand and turns back to the phone. After a beat, he hears the guy move away.
Ronan dials Declan’s number, plugs in the quarters. He’d refused to save Declan’s number in his contacts, after…everything. Declan had bitched about it being petty at the time, but Ronan’s grateful now that it forced him to memorize it. The phone rings once, twice, three times.
“Declan Lynch speaking.”
Ronan exhales. It’s not fucking relief. It’s just—it’s just been a long week.
“Hey, shithead.”
“Ronan? Where the hell are you, we’ve been—”
“I need you to pick me up. Now.”
“Where are you.” Declan doesn’t miss a beat. He can do one thing right, at least.
“I, uh—Michigan. Clearwater.”
The clack of a keyboard filters through the phone. “I swear to God, Ronan, if you went on a bender and dragged us through hell for the last two weeks, I’m going to kick your—”
“Two weeks?” It hadn’t—it’d only been a couple of days. He could’ve sworn it’d only been—
“Ten days,” Declan says, voice going strange. It makes Ronan bristle. “Ronan, what—"
“Fuck off with your fucking lectures, Declan.” Ronan snaps, “Someone knows, alright? I don’t got much time.”
Declan is silent for a long moment. “Shit.”
“Yeah. I need to not be here, right now.”
“I’m looking up flights. You still with them?”
“Yeah, dumbass, they let me use their phone because I asked real nice.”
“Ronan.”
“Declan.” He says, in his snottiest voice. Exhales. “I got away. I don’t have shit on me, though, I’m fucking stuck, and they’re—” A groups shoulders their way past, a couple of girls and that stupid fucking guy. Ronan drops his voice to a whisper, “They’re fucking looking for me, okay? I need to not be here.”
“I know.” Declan’s voice clipped and pompous, all politician and unbreaking calm, which means he’s halfway towards losing his shit. “I got the tickets, and I’ll be there—with the Uber, I’ll be there by two. Where are you?”
“Jesus, Mary, shit, that’s not—”
“That’s the fastest I can make it happen.” Something rustles as Declan moves, probably grabbing his coat, “Where are you? An actual address.”
“Lola’s Roadhouse. Last call will probably happen before you get here, if it’s closed I’ll be at the motel. Number 6.”
Declan’s voice goes sharp. “Tell me you didn’t use your name for the room.”
“Of course I fucking didn’t! I don’t have any money, dipshit. I broke in. No one knows I’m here.”
“Then, Jesus, why the fuck would you go to a bar?”
“Cause I wanted a drink.” Declan inhales slowly, a sure sign of an explosion. Ronan cuts across him, “Because it’s somewhere that had a phone and it's public enough that people’ll notice if I get fucking kidnapped.”
A woman’s voice rings through, cool and automated. “One minute remaining.”
“Okay.” Declan’s keys jangle, “Okay, I’m heading out the door now. Stick close to the bartenders, make sure they’re keeping an eye on you. Don’t go anywhere, Ronan. Stay put.”
Ronan bites back the sarcasm trying to drip from his tongue. “I will.”
“I’ll be there soon. Two o’clock.”
Ronan shoves the phone back onto the cradle. Checks the time on the clock over the bar. Eleven o’clock. Three hours.
He heads back to the bar, taking a seat at the very end where he’s mostly hidden by the shelf. Pulling the bowl of peanuts towards himself, he settles in to wait.
~*~
Everything goes great, right up until it doesn’t. Right around one o’clock, when Ronan is starting to struggle to push off his looming sleep debt, he notices the weird fuck sitting up, ramrod straight, from where he’d been chatting with the bartender.
He’s looking at the group that just came in through the doors. Bunch of folk, all looking normal enough. None of them look familiar to Ronan, which is almost enough to make him turn away. If that dude’s got problems, it’s his own business.
Except. They way they’re fanning out and scanning the bar puts him on edge. They’re looking for someone.
Coincidence, Gansey’s voice says in his head, because it isn’t.
Ronan slides off his seat, slipping into a pack of semi-drunk girls and stepping out once they get near the bathroom hallway. There are normally windows in bathrooms, hopefully big enough for him to shimmy out of and head back into the motel. Declan’s not gonna be here for another hour. Better safe than sorry.
He pushes past a pair of guys leaving the bathroom. By some miracle, once they clear out, it’s empty.
Those miracles dry up real quick when he scans the bathroom. There’s no fucking window. Shit, if he just trapped himself like a fox in a hole, he’s dead.
He slams one of the stalls, the one farthest from the door, open. It’s more from frustration than any sort of plan, but it turns out the miracles haven’t dried up yet. There’s a window above the toilet. It’s high up, and small enough that it’ll be a tight squeeze. But it’s better than nothing.
Ronan steps up onto the toilet, hoists himself up by the fingertips.
The door to the bathroom opens.
Fuck. Ronan scrambles, gets his head and shoulders out the window before an iron grip lands on the back of his coat and heaves him back into the room. He’s off-balance, can’t land a kick or reach around as he’s hauled backwards out of the stall, then slammed face-first into it, hard.
The pressure eases up quickly, and Ronan spins around. He’s outnumbered. Two women, between him and the exit. Something in Ronan’s stomach sinks when he gets a good look at them.
They’ve both got that military-straight posture that screams training. One’s got a jean jacket and a smirk bigger than Texas, the other with bleached hair. Two against one isn’t the worst odds he’s ever faced, that’s not the issue. The problem is that they’re relaxed. Completely. Like this is a Tuesday at the park—like this is what they do on the daily.
“I think you have the wrong person.” Ronan tries, trying to make himself seem…less, as he wraps his fingers around the box cutter tucked in his sleeve. It’s the opposite of his usual tactic, and it goes about as well as he’d expect.
The shorter woman, the one with a jean jacket, rolls her eyes. “You wish we did.”
Yeah. Yeah, he does. Ronan whips the box cutter out of his sleeve, and they back up real quick.
The box cutter is unwieldy and foreign in his hands. He’s gotten into his fair share of fights, but those—those were schoolyard brawls. Never with a weapon. Never like this.
“Back the fuck up!” He says, trying to keep them both in his line of sight. The one with the jean jacket shifts, and he whips the box cutter towards her.
Big mistake. Fucking fatal mistake. The other woman grabs his arm while he’s distracted, and before Ronan can blink, his arm is screaming, twisted nearly out of its socket. He yells, and the sound barely covers the box cutter’s clatter against the tile.
The woman—strong as fuck—slams his against the wall, stars bursting across Ronan’s vision as his head knocks back against the shittily-painted cinderblock. Something sharp pricks against his throat, followed by a warm trickling, and Ronan goes very, very still.
This is it, he realizes. Right back where he started, like a fucking—
The door crashes open, dumping a man onto the floor. And a guy—the fucking quarters guy, is standing over him as he scrambles to his feet. He was fucking with them, Ronan should’ve trusted his gut and ran as soon as he recognized him at the bar.
The man on the floor rolls to his feet, shoving back his coat. Ronan can barely see it from the corner of his eye, can’t turn his head, but he knows a gun when he sees one. What the fuck is going on? Is he an undercover cop?
Ronan’s hope, tenuous as it is, is dashed when the lady who doesn’t have his pinned to a wall snaps, “No shots!”
The guy shrugs his coat back into place. “Nobody mentioned a guy with him.”
Ronan realizes that the gunman’s not on his side, here. They want this quiet, want him to disappear without so much as a police report. Quarters guy, then, is the one in the running for Good Samaritan of the year.
Ronan prays to God that it doesn’t get the man killed.
He can hear the knives when the two goons pull them out. They’re loud, in the silence. He can’t quite see the expression on Quarter Guy’s face, but he doesn’t back up at all, just whips off his belt and starts wrapping it around his arm, methodological and slow.
He knows what he’s doing, Ronan realizes. Forget boxing, this guy is like them.
Ronan tries to shift, maybe get some leverage, but the knife digs harder into his throat. A fresh wave of blood runs down his neck, forcing him onto his toes, head tilted up at an awkward angle to keep it from slicing further.
Between one heartbeat and the next, the room explodes into movement. It’s—Ronan can’t move, can barely see what’s happening from where he’s pinned. But the woman lunges forward, knife glinting in the light. Quarters grabs her and shoves her into the other guy, slamming them both into the wall and sending the woman tumbling.
The man with the knife kicks off the wall, slashing. He misses—he must miss, because Quarters doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t make any noise when the guy cracks his knuckles across his face, either, instead slamming the other man’s head against the door and sending the knife clattering across the tile.
Quarters yells wordlessly as the woman nails him; one, two, three times in the back.
That hurts, Ronan knows from firsthand experience that it feels like you’re dying when someone goes for your kidneys like that. But Quarters doesn’t pause for a moment, smacking the woman across the face hard enough that she staggers into the wall. He uses the momentum to spin, nailing the other man’s face with his elbow, just as he was getting to his feet.
Ronan’s never seen anyone move like that. It’s almost like a dance, intentional, smooth, choreographed. Lightning fast. It’s impossible. The woman holding the knife to Ronan’s throat shifts.
The other woman charges with a cry, and Quarters catches her around the waist, slamming her onto the ground so hard Ronan can almost feel it. Just as quick, he rolls, barely missing a knife to the back curtesy of the other man. There’s a scuffle, both landing hits to the other’s face with meaty thuds, but eventually the other guy falls to the ground and doesn’t get back up.
The woman lunges again, but Quarters catches her arm, uses the leverage to slam her into the wall, then through one of the bathroom stalls, the entire stall crumbling around her with a crash.
The woman holding Ronan swears, then slams him back against the wall so hard it knocks the air right out of Ronan’s lungs. Before he can blink, he’s sprawled on the floor, pain bursting where elbows and knees cracked across the linoleum. Without even thinking, Ronan rolls back, as far away from the psychos with knives as he can get.
It’s not far. It’s a small bathroom.
By the time Ronan refocuses on the fight, the woman with the bleached hair is slashing at Quarters, who catches the knife on the belt wrapped around his arm. He grabs her, full-body, and throws her at the wall.
The guy’s already on Quarters before he can follow through on the throw, landing a solid punch to the gut. But Quarters is a fucking terminator, apparently, and he shoves the man hard enough into the wall that the mirror shatters. But the other guy, he’s not stopping, either, landing a punch to Quarter’s face that’s strong enough to knock him off. He presses the advantage, shoving Quarters into a stall door, and keeps hitting. Just when Ronan’s sure it’s all going to be over, Quarters wraps a hand around the guy’s skull and slams it into the sink with a sickening crack. The porcelain shatters, red staining pearlescent white.
The room is silent.
Quarters crosses the bathroom in a few quick steps, until he’s next to Ronan. The guy doesn’t look at him, focused on the slowly moving bodies on the floor, but he holds out a hand.
It takes Ronan a long moment to realize it’s for him.
He grabs it, lets the guy haul him to his feet. His hands are calloused, in the same way Declan’s had been when Dad was teaching him how to shoot. It was the last summer Ronan can remember Declan holding his hand, before they both decided it was too embarrassing to continue. Declan’s hands had always been dry. Never tacky with blood.
The woman with the bleached hair shoves herself to her feet, right when Quarters starts to move forward. Ronan freezes. The lady looks rough, face bloody and shaky on her feet, so maybe it’ll be okay.
As if summoned by the thought, the other woman bursts out of the rubble of the middle stall. She cracks her neck, smiling at the two of them. It’s gruesome, teeth stained red and bloody. One of her incisors is missing, leaving a gaping hole.
The guy stays on the ground, unmoving. Small miracles.
Quarters exhales sharply through his nose. The women both step forward. The guy grabs Ronan’s arm, hard, before Ronan is thrown headfirst into the nearest stall. The door slams shut behind him.
Outside of the stall, one of the women yells, followed by a meaty thud. Ronan backs up. There’s no window in this stall. He isn’t waiting around in case Quarters gets finished off, either.
He crawls under the stall wall, shifting his way through the wreckage. Someone slams into the stall he was just in with a crash, and he crawls faster. It only takes a few moments before he’s at the last stall, just across from the door. Ronan slides out from the stall, nearly tripping over the cracked piece of sink on the floor. He glances back.
Quarters has got the blonde lady pinned to the stall door he’d shoved Ronan into. The woman with the jean jacket is heaving herself off the ground behind him.
The knife in her hand glints off the fluorescents. Quarters slams his fist across the blonde woman’s face, and she crumples to the floor. He doesn’t turn.
Ronan can’t leave him to die.
He grabs the chunk of sink from the floor and cracks it across the woman’s head. The feeling reverberates through his hands, vibrates up his wrists and elbows.
The woman doesn’t get up.
Ronan drops the chunk of porcelain and it shatters, spraying shards across his shoes. A distant part of him is glad he Dreamed the boots, because between the splinters and the glass, his bare feet would’ve been shredded. But he also wouldn’t have been let into the roadhouse at all if he hadn’t Dreamed the shoes, so. There’s that.
Quarters is standing in the center of the bathroom, watching Ronan, surrounded by wreckage with three bodies sprawled unmoving on the floor.
He barely has a scratch on him.
“Who are you?” Ronan asks. It’s a dumb question. He’s known the answer since the first punch was thrown. He’s someone trained. Someone who does this kind of shit for a living.
“Why are they after you?” Quarters shoots back.
“No,” Ronan says, because he’s not launching himself straight from the frying pan into the fire, “I’m fucking out of here, I’m—"
“You stay where you are.” Quarters snaps. Ronan is immediately and unpleasantly reminded that this man is fucking dangerous, even if he helped him out. “Who are they?”
“I don’t know!” Ronan says. It’s not a lie. He only knows what they want. How would a normal teenager get in a situation like this? He draws on every wild rumor he’s heard about Kavinsky. “Shit, man, I don't know. I came in here, and they asked me if I wanted to party, and then I said no, and they just fucking freaked out on me. I don't know. Chicks can be rough.”
“Bullshit. There's more of 'em out there.”
Shit. He’d thought it was just these three.
“And what? You... You're just some Good Samaritan who couldn't stand by?” A handful of quarters is one thing, but this is different. What does this guy get out of this?
“I'm just an asshole who couldn't stay out of trouble, that's all. “ Quarters says, which has to be bullshit, before turning that sharp gaze straight back at Ronan. “I'm gonna ask you one more time, kid. You tell me who they are.”
Ronan doesn’t answer. He can’t.
“No? Okay.” The guy turns for the door.
“Fuck, wait!” Ronan has no way out of this. They know he’s here, at the roadhouse. He won’t make it to the door, and even if he does, it wouldn’t be hard to comb the area for him. If they catch him, he’s worse than dead.
And this guy, he risked his life to help him. He clearly doesn’t have a clue on what this is about, else he’d know who the goons are. The other times Ronan and him have run into each other, he hadn’t done anything, just asked if Ronan was okay, so maybe—maybe he really is just some asshole who can’t keep his nose out of other people’s business. Ronan can’t think of another reason he’d step in.
Either way, Ronan doesn’t have a choice, not if he wants to walk out of this bar on his own power. He takes a deep breath.
“You said there’s more of them out there. I can’t—I have to get out of here.” There’s a long silence, the guy just staring at him.
The guy nods, and Ronan exhales sharply. Use him to get out of here, call Declan again once this town is in the rearview. One foot in front of the fucking other.
He nearly jumps out of his skin when the guy grabs his arm, barely holds himself back from throwing a punch on instinct alone.
“Let's go.” Quarters says, low, as he guides him out of the bathroom into the dimly lit hallway. “Just do exactly what I say.”
“Okay.” It’s not okay. The grip on his arm makes his skin crawl.
They weave through the crowd surrounding the stage. How can he tell who’s a patron and who’s a hunter?
“Easy,” The guy mutters, like Ronan is a fucking horse, “It’s okay. Go this way.”
He lets go of his arm. When Ronan turns, he’s gone.
Ronan whips around, scanning the crowd, but the guy is nowhere to be seen. Fuck.
Some grabs his arm, hard, spinning him around. He thinks its Quarters for a split second, until he gets gets an eyeful of dark black hair and realizes he’s fucked up.
Ronan yells, hoping to get someone, anyone, to fucking help him.
Quarters charges out of nowhere like a fucking bull, catching the guy by the back of the neck. The iron grip on his arm loosens, and Ronan bolts.
The problem is, there’s nowhere to go. Quarters guy is his only way out. Ronan ends up crouched, back to the bar, where he can see the fight but is hopefully far enough out of the way that nobody else spots him.
There’s a crowd forming around the fight, one man who Ronan hadn’t even fucking seen already lying senseless on the floor. Quarters has the guy who grabbed him by the back of his head, landing blow after blow to his face. This will be over quickly, it has to.
The bouncer runs into the fray, grabs the arm of another guy who Ronan hadn’t clocked. The knife in his hand glints against the stage lights as the bouncer yanks him back. Someone else has Quarters by the throat—how many of these people are there?
The bouncer runs the man with the knife straight into the counter of the bar, forcing Ronan to roll away. Glass shatters from the other side of the room, and when Ronan glances over, the guy who’d had Quarters by the neck is unmoving on the floor, surrounded by broken glass, and Quarters is already back to wrestling with the guy who’d first grabbed Ronan.
A girl screams, high and sharp and near, and the bouncer’s facing off with a dark-haired woman, the back of his white shirt stained with blood. Ronan backs up, quick. The bouncer is big, and fast, but the woman moves like a fucking Olympian, jumping onto his back and stabbing twice more. But the bouncer is built like a fucking tank and doesn’t go down, tossing her off and—
Someone grabs Ronan from behind, lifting him clear off the ground before he can even get a kick in. He shouts, snapping his elbow back until it cracks off the person’s skull, but the guy only heaves him higher, half over his shoulder where Ronan has no fucking leverage to land a hit. He tries his damnedest anyways, clawing at the man’s ear hard enough to make him stagger. When Ronan’s boots connect with the wall, he kicks as hard as he can, sending them both tumbling to the floor.
The guy doesn’t fucking let go, weight crushing Ronan's ribs as he tries to throw him off. He gets a grip on one of Ronan's wrists, pain bursting through the already aggravated bruises, and Ronan yells wordlessly, legs scabbling against the floor. He lunges up, as far as he can, and sinks his teeth into the guy’s arm.
Iron floods his mouth, and he bites down harder.
Pain explodes across his cheekbone, sending his head slamming back down onto the floor. He doesn’t let up. The second strike shakes him loose, black starbursts exploding and spreading across his vision like fireworks in reverse. The guy hits again, and again, and then he’s just—gone.
Ronan rolls over, the bar spinning around him as he drags himself up into a crouch. The bar is in chaos, people tripping over each other and the still bodies scattering the floor as they run for the exit.
Quarters has the guy who’d beat the shit out of him pinned against a table a few feet away, slamming the man’s arm against the edge, trying to get the knife out of his hand. Why do all these fuckers have knives?
A shot rings out, sending Ronan straight back to the floor. Someone thuds to the ground nearby, dark eyes glazed and empty. It’s not Quarters. Ronan tears his eyes away as more shots sound, staying low and fumbling back towards one of the support columns, trying to keep everything in his line of sight. The bouncer slams a man’s head off a table, shirt more red than white, then jerks.
He hits the ground hard enough for the floor to shake. He doesn’t get back up.
Someone grabs Ronan by the back of the coat, forcing him up and forwards before he can even get his feet under him. Ronan twists, connects hand-to-arm-to-shoulder-to-face—it’s Quarters, thank fuck—just as more shots sound, deafeningly close.
He’s flying through the air before he can blink, crashing into the wall before slamming straight to the floor. He chokes, struggling to draw in air through spasming lungs. His back is soaked, broken glass poking through his jeans.
He landed behind the bar. Out of the line of fire for the bullets, if he keeps low.
Ronan rolls over, glass crunching beneath him. Someone groans next to him, startling him hard enough that he narrowly avoids slamming his head against the wall.
It’s the bartender. She’s propped up against the wall, her tattoo glistening dark in the low light. Except it’s not a tattoo, spreading slowly down her arm and onto the floor. Blood.
Quarters yells from somewhere, sharp and pained, and the sound shocks Ronan into motion. He lunges, grabbing a towel from the floor and crawling to where the woman lies.
She’s clutching her shoulder, which is—that’s good, right? No vital organs in the shoulder. Ronan presses the towel against the woman’s shoulder, hunches down as more shots ring out. There’s a lot of blood. Ronan’s not a fucking doctor, but the last time he saw this much blood, it was soaked into the gravel on his front driveway. He shakes the thought out of his head.
“Hey, hey, hey, it’s—” He doesn’t know if this woman will be alright. “I got you. Okay. Okay?”
The woman shouts as Ronan presses harder. “I’m sorry, I’m—” The words ring in sudden silence.
Fuck, Quarters better still be alive.
As if summoned by the thought, the guy jumps over the bar. His face drains of color when he spots the bartender.
“No, no, no—” He shoves Ronan aside, presses both hands down on the towel. “Hey, hey, Beth—I got you. I got you. Okay? I’m right here. We’re gonna get out of here. I’m gonna pick you up, alright? I need you to hold this down, hard as you can.”
The bartender—Beth—moves sluggishly, but he follows his orders. Quarters scoops her up off the floor, stumbles. He’s covered in blood. Ronan can’t tell how much is his.
“Move!” He snaps, over his shoulder.
Ronan moves.
The bar is empty, aside from the bodies littering the floor. He can’t tell if whether they’re unconscious or dead. Blood and broken glass glints on the floor, just like it had when—just like last year. Ronan’s feet slow without his permission.
“Goddamnit, kid!” The words are sharp enough to make Ronan jerk his head up. The bar swims slightly, at the corners of his vision. “We gotta move, go!”
Ronan forces one foot forward, then the other.
Quarters moves quick, especially for a guy limping hard enough that Ronan is half-afraid the guy's leg is just going to give out. It doesn’t, and he makes a beeline for a big white van. He kicks the bag open, sets the bartender down with a gentleness at odds with the sharpness of his movement.
They skid out of the parking lot like the hounds of Hell themselves are after them, leaving nothing but the smell of burning rubber behind.
~*~
They barely make it three streets before headlights appear behind them.
Coincidence, the Gansey in his head says, because it isn’t.
Quarters swears under his breath, skids left through a red light.
Two cars skid out of a side road, right in their path. The seatbelt knocks the air straight out of Ronan’s lungs as Quarters stomps on the brakes. There’s nowhere to go.
Three people pile out of the cars. They all have guns trained straight at them.
Quarters puts the car in reverse. Rolls down the window. There’s nowhere for them to go, they’re pinned—
Quarters whips something dark from behind his seat, faster than Ronan can follow. He doesn’t clock what it was until he’s half blinded by muzzle fire, the sound so loud he swears his ears are bleeding.
The people in front of them crumple.
The truck jerks as they reverse straight into the car behind them, sending it spinning.
Quarters stops the car and steps out. Without even hesitating, he sends a spray of bullets through the other car’s windshield. The windshield turns a splattered white and red, splintered glass and blood.
Something icy closes up Ronan’s throat.
He pops open the car door and slides out. Fighting is one thing. But this—Quarters just had that lying in his car. This is way bigger than Ronan had thought, some mob level shit or—or something worse. And they clearly know he's with him, so Ronan can split and they can follow Quarters and Ronan—Ronan will find somewhere to hide out, away from the psychos with knives and this fucking psycho with a fucking AK.
He barely makes it ‘round the back of the car before there’s an iron grip on the back of his neck, his arm twisted painfully behind his back. He's staggering before he even realizes he's moving, forced back towards the car.
“Fuck, get off! Let me go!” The grip doesn’t let up, not even when he stumbles. Quarters shoves Ronan headfirst into the passenger seat, slams the door shut behind him.
By the time Ronan gets his bearings, the car is already moving too fast to jump from.
“Let me out, I swear to—"
“Shut up!”
Ronan shuts up, because the guy is still holding the AK in the hand that’s not on the wheel.
Quarters glances in the rearview. “Find the closest hospital.”
“I don’t—”
“Find it, now!”
“I don’t have a fucking phone!”
The guy takes his hand off the wheel and tosses one in his lap. Ronan wants to throw it out the window. But the bartender needs help. He fumbles with the thing with clumsy fingers.
“Let’s go! Now!”
“It’s, it’s—up three blocks, left at the light.”
“Beth?” The guy shoots the words over his shoulder, “Beth, can you hear me?”
There’s a long silence, before a groan and a slurred acknowledgement.
Ronan turns to the back. The lady is curled on the floor, still holding the towel to her shoulder. The dim lights turn the blood black, nightwash staining the towel, her hands, the floor.
“I know it hurts,” Quarters says, eyes fixed on the rearview. “But you’re gonna be alright. Okay? You need to know that.”
Beth starts to say something, but Quarters has already turned back to the road ahead. “Where’s the turn? I don’t see any goddamn turn!”
“It’s—” Ronan scans the dark, “Here! Left, right here!”
They almost miss it, the speed of the turn sending Ronan slamming into the door of the van. Behind him, the bartender shouts.
They skid into the ambulance bay, Quarters parking haphazardly across three slots and jumping out the front before the car has even fully stopped. He slams the door shut behind him.
Ronan tries his side. It’s locked.
Quarters is shouting at the EMTs in the lot. The bartender hasn’t moved from where she’s curled on the floor. The towel is lying limp and stained on the floor a few feet away.
Ronan climbs over the console and into the back, grabbing the towel as he crawls over.
The woman—Beth, he reminds himself, her name is Beth—groans as Ronan presses the towel back onto her shoulder. Then, the back doors pop open, EMTs shouldering Ronan aside.
He lets them, because what the fuck can he do?
Beth puts up a fight as they finagle her onto a stretcher, shouting about a kid. A kid, at home.
Quarters slams the backdoors shut as soon as they get Beth out, leaving Ronan sitting in the dark. Something his stomach sinks as he climbs back over the console. If Beth dies, because of Ronan, her kid will—no. Beth is going to be okay. They got her to the hospital, she’s still moving, still alive enough to shout. She’ll be okay.
Quarters, standing next to the driver’s side door, stares after Beth for a long moment, chest rising and falling visibly. He—he knows her. Cares about her. Not just a bartender to him, then, but—someone. To him.
Ronan hopes Beth will be okay.
He hopes someone, anyone will walk out of this okay. Doesn’t bother to try the door again, breathing deep to slow the pounding of his heart. This guy didn’t save his ass to skin him in the woods. He’ll use him to get the hell out of dodge, then call Declan.
Leave all of this behind him.
From the seat beside him, Quarters starts the car and peels off into the night.