Chapter Text
By all accounts, Ronan Lynch shouldn’t work at the Fox Way burlesque lounge. He shouldn’t work anywhere. Not with an inheritance with more money in it than most people would earn in an entire lifetime, with an entire sprawling property in the Virginian countryside to boot. Really, he should be living his life tending too his cows and fending off texts from his older brother about family dinners and church. But whatever people thought Ronan Lynch should do, he did the exact opposite, because he was pedantic by nature and by practice.
Plus, the look on Declan’s face when Ronan told him that slung drinks at a bar where men and women performed in various states of undress had been all worth it, practiced disapproval, lips pursed and eyes vaguely angry. As it was, however, a look Ronan had seen countless times in his life, it had lost any chastising effect.
Really, he shouldn’t be living with his high school best friend and his high school best friend’s five foot tall girlfriend, either. He had plenty of money to afford a place all by himself, where he wouldn’t disturb sleeping neighbours with his insomnia-fuelled late night gaming sessions (he was only five percent away from completing Assassin’s Creed, and it was the perfect distraction when his mind conjured up memories of a blooded tyre iron and his father’s head caved in), somewhere remote and alone where he could blast his heavy electronica at all hours of the day without Blue banging on the wall for him to shut up.
But Ronan hated being alone more than he loved being pedantic, which was saying something. Plus, the two things went hand in hand. No one expected ice-veined Ronan Lynch to care deeply about the domestic rituals him and his friends had made in their little Los Angeles apartment, so he proved them wrong. He was not as much a solitary creature as he liked to imagine, and the truth was that he’d quite certainly fallen down a spiral of self destruction without the crutches of his friends.
Ronan didn’t have to work, so he did, just because he could.
Ronan was expected to live in solitary, but didn’t.
Fuck everyone else, and fuck their expectations of him, right?
Besides, Fox Way were good people, not that he’d ever admit that. They cared for even the most inconsequential staff. Every position had full benefits, even though the cost must’ve been eating them out of house and home. He spent more time around his employers than most people would, by virtue of being so close to Blue, and by virtue of half the staff being related to her, and had been invited to multiple family holiday gatherings that had ended with him getting the wrong side of relaxed and admitting things he’d rather not admit, much to Blue’s glee. He was just glad he didn’t drink anymore, of he probably would’ve ended up admitting the Window Incident, which would stay between him and God forever and always.
The lights of the club were dim and low, but that didn’t do anything to disguise the blatant come-on attempt from the guy at the bar.
He wasn’t really Ronan’s type – too sleazy and slicked-back. His rumpled shirt and blazer said he’d just come from a day at the office to have a nice night of looking at scantily clad people without the low-class feel of going to a strip club. In fact, he was the absolute opposite of Ronan’s type. A fucking autocrat trying to play at rough and tumble by getting with the sharp-eyed punk behind the bar. Ronan despised him on principle.
“So,” The guy said, “Come here often?”
Down the bar, Ronan heard Blue snort in derisive laughter as she wiped down the bar during the lull in patrons, everybody too distracted by the dancers shining and grinding on stage, wearing gold PVC and waving spray-painted gold plastic guns.
Ronan didn’t bother disguises his glare or his blatant distaste for this conversation. He was momentarily very thankful that Calla, one of the three owners, was such a big advocate of the customer never being right, and that everyone had full liberty to be a dick to them. Especially when the customer was making unwanted advances.
We’re not a strip club, Calla had growled at a patron once.
And I am not a prostitute! Blue had tacked on, because that patron had been Gansey, who had stuck his foot in his mouth as he usually did. Nothing particular bad had happened though, because Gansey had been hired as a piano player for the club a mere three months later and, a month after that, actually scored a date with Blue.
Ronan raised his eyebrows and said, very slowly, like he was talking to a child, “Are you fucking dumb? I work here.”
Despite the club’s half-light, Ronan had the pleasure of watching the guy flush the deep red of embarrassment.
“I come in here quite often.” He tried to reason, “And I’ve never seen you before.”
“Then you’re obviously not fucking looking.” Ronan snapped, absolutely not in the mood for whatever this was. He’d gotten two hours of sleep, tops, last night, and his eyes were already trying to close despite the music and the sparkling dancers migrating across the stage every number. A Ronan with very little sleep was a grouchy Ronan, which explained a lot about his general demeanour and sleep schedule.
“Apparently so.” The guy leaned further across the bar, trying to get into Ronan’s space. He gave him a look that was probably supposed to be seductive but that just made Ronan’s skin crawl, “I definitely would’ve noticed you before. You’re just my type.”
Ronan’s already frayed patience snapped. He glared at the man, nothing but hostile, “I don’t care. Fuck off and move along before I kick you out.”
“You can’t talk to me –“
“Yes the fuck I can. Get out of my sight before I make you.”
The man slunk away from the bar with a death glare thrown over his shoulder.
Blue sidled up to him with the distinctive air of someone approaching a poisonous snake – curiosity airing on the side of caution, like he’d bite if she got too close, “Not that I’m complaining, because that was really funny, but you’re more bitchy than usual.”
Ronan scrubbed a hand across his eyes, trying in vain to rub his tiredness away, “Didn’t sleep.”
Blue pursed her lips in sympathy. Unlike both him and Gansey, Blue didn’t struggle with the eternal nightmare that was insomnia, because she’d grown up in an environment that wouldn’t allow for it. She always struggled to get to sleep (there was always too much noise, or too much light, or she was too warm or too cold, or too clothed, or not clothed enough) but once she was out she slept like a log. An air raid siren could sound and she still wouldn’t wake up.
“You could go on break.” She said, “Take a nap in the breakroom? I’m sure no one will disturb you.”
He shook his head, “Nah. If I sleep now, I won’t sleep later. I’ll just stick it out.”
“More fun for me.” She elbowed him playfully in the ribs, “I love it when you roast the customers.”
He pulled a face at her, “And you know that I only act with you in mind.”
She blew him a mocking kiss and moved a little bit away to continue polishing glasses, “Act with me in mind or don’t. I don’t care. Either way, you’re gonna keep being a bitch. So I win.”
He was too tired to be contrary, so he just shrugged, because he was also too tired to be nice to people. Blue was right, she won.
A new voice behind them laughed, “Terrorising customers again, Lynch?”
Ronan turned, filling with dread, and there he sat, sliding onto a bar stool with a half-cocked smile and the remnants of a glitter bomb clinging to his skin and hair, wearing a too-large t-shirt over tbe gold outfit he’d worn on stage. He wasn’t even aware that the number had ended, but sure enough, the club was once again alive with chatter and the seductive goth music of the intermission.
By all accounts, Ronan Lynch shouldn’t be infatuated with Adam Parrish. People saw him and imagined him with the rough-cut types – back-alley drug dealers, and punk rock stars, and every man with a criminal record and a hatred of cops.
In short, people assumed Ronan to date himself.
But, being as contradictory as he was by nature, that was his exact opposite of his type. Or it was after Kavinsky, anyway.
Something about Adam just drew him in and drove him entirely insane. Maybe it was the swathes of suntanned skin shown off nearly every night at the club. That would be any reasonable person’s reason – Adam was a dancer whose job was to evoke desire in the club goers, to twirl his hips and suggestively slide his hands. A normal person would be entranced by his coy stage-eyes and the erotic, graceful way he moved to the music. Ronan didn’t think that was what made him fall for Adam, though.
He liked the hungry look in Adam’s eyes; and the times after long nights where he got too tired to disguise the old Virginian twang to his accent; and the calluses on his hands that showed that he worked; and his hands, overall – workman’s hands, full of tiny little nicks and scrapes, the knuckles a shade more tan than the rest of him, protruding veins, knobbly knuckles. They were hands that should’ve been blessed to a pianist, but were given to an ex-mechanic turned burlesque dancer instead.
“You know him.” Blue joked after Ronan didn’t immediately respond to Adam’s little jibe, “Public enemy number one.”
Ronan managed to snap out of the weird trance he was put in my Adam’s presence and sneered in Blue’s general direction, “Fuck off, maggot. You’re literally five foot nothing. Nothing you say is valid.”
Blue, quite jovially, stuck her middle finger up at him and turned to Adam, one hand still flipping him off, “What can I get you?”
Adam pulled a receipt from God only knows where and slid it across the bar. It turned out to be a list of drinks written in a slanted, rushed hand, on the back of a CVS receipt for painkillers and caffeine tablets, “That’s everybody’s requests. Sorry, I know it’s a lot.”
Ronan didn’t understand seemingly everybody’s insistent need for apologising for things that weren’t their fault. He barely apologised for things that were his fault.
“The fuck you apologising for? Sargent, you take the first half, I’ll take the last.”
“What constitutes the first half?”
“The ones above the half way line, dickhead.”
Blue rolled her eyes at him but they both got to work anyway, moving around each other easily with only small touches to shoulders to warn the other of their presence. Adam watched them move and work and mix drinks, the barest hint of a smile playing across his lips at their hip checks and fingers poked jokingly into ribs, signs of their camaraderie.
“What did he do?” Adam asked as Ronan poured out (another) gin fizz.
“What?”
“The customer. The one you yelled at.”
“I didn’t yell at him.”
Adam tilted his head, because he was a fucking siren trying to get Ronan to crash into rocks and drown a painful death, “What did you do, then?”
“I told him to fuck off before I threw his ass outside.”
“That sounds like yelling to me. Blue?”
Blue, who was mid way through lining up four shotglasses, a bottle of Smirnoff in her hand, paused and looked up, “As much as it pains me to admit it, I have to side with Ronan. It wasn’t yelling, but it was still very hostile.”
Adam grinned, “I’d expect nothing less.”
Ronan just grunted and went back to pouring drinks, unsure on how to act himself with Adam’s attention on him. He felt the second skin of the self he’d built up after his dad’s death slipping off him like a too-large jacket. Better not to speak, lest he say something wrong, just in case he said something that didn’t fit with the image of himself he projected every morning in the mirror, enough that he’d managed to convince even himself that he’d always been that way – that the Ronan Lynch who had been before his father’s death had never exist. He’d played his part well enough that Gansey seemed to forget his child self most of the time, until he was hit with the smell of hickory smoke or Ronan smiled at Blue’s shenanigans just as he would Matthew’s.
Finally, Blue and Ronan finished making their drinks and loaded them up on a tray, all equidistant from each other so they wouldn’t fall or be imbalanced. Blue caught sight of her watch and said, “Adam? Aren’t you on soon?”
“What?”
She offered her wrist in his direction, and he looked at the watch carefully. There weren’t any clocks or windows (‘The best view on the sunset strip, with no windows’, as the local club ratings claimed) in the club because, like a casino, they wanted you to stay and spend the night and all your money, and so it was easy to lose track of time.
Adam’s eyes widened, “Shit. I’ve gotta go. I can’t – can you bring these backstage for me?”
Someone else came to the bar and signalled for Blue’s attention with a smile. To Adam, she said, “Sure. I’ve got drinks to make, though. Ronan, you can take them, right?”
He glared at her from the side of his eye but she kept her sweetly smiling face pasted on.
“Whatever.”
“Thanks.” Adam said, then slid down from his stool and hurried through the club to the stage wings with long, almost graceful strides, neatly side-stepping anyone stood in his way.
Ronan carefully shouldered the drinks tray, a task that had to be treated with the utmost caution, and shot one last dirty look over his shoulder at Blue before weaving through the people standing in the way of him and the door, snapping at anyone who didn’t move and glaring at them until they did.
Maura Sargent, with a broken fan between her teeth and a hot glue gun in her hand, held the door open for him to let him pass into the wings. She winked at him as he passed. Adam had already disappeared out of sight, presumably past the trailing wires and vaulting lights of the first floor and up the spiral staircase onto the second floor, where the dancers got ready.
Ronan ascended up behind him, taking each step carefully as to not spill everything. The second floor was always bustling and full of noise, warm from body heat and the glaring lights of mirrored make-up stations. Calla saw him coming and cleared enough room off a make-up cluttered surface so he could put the drinks down.
“Drinks!” He called, stepping back slightly as to not be swarmed by half-naked women – something he’d never wanted in his entire life – and watched the bedlam as drinks were snatched and sipped on and debated over, waiting until they’d all done and flocked away to continue preening themselves so he could take the tray down to the bar.
Adam was the last to arrive. Ronan hadn’t paid attention to what he was wearing beforehand, but he did now because wow was it – well. It was something, to say the least. It didn’t constitute clothes, exactly, but seemed to be a rather elaborate necklace that dripped pearls from tight around his neck down to covering the tops of his thighs. When he moved, flashes of sun-drenched skin were visible, the slight difference in tone in his subtle tan lines frustratingly endearing, and Ronan was pretty sure some sort of glitter had been rubbed into the rest of his exposed skin, because it gleamed much more than any non-Twilight vampire’s should.
It was -
Ronan was -
Jesus. His brain couldn’t function. Not with Parrish wearing that and wrapping his lips around the straw of his scotch and soda. He drank deeply, not looking away from Ronan’s eyes.
He finally swallowed down his drink and said, “Thanks. For bringing up the drinks, I mean.”
Ronan half-heartedly grunted in acknowledgement, “Whatever, man.”
Adam smiled. One of his front teeth was endearingly shipped, and his incisors pushed out in front of his other teeth just the slightest. It was almost cute.
Adam looked down and circled a finger around the rim of his glass. Christ. None of this should be allowed. Ronan simultaneously wanted to haul ass out of there, and stay forever to look at Parrish’s pretty hands. Adam said, “You could stay back here. Get a front row seat to the performance.”
Ronan froze. What did that mean? Did it mean anything? Was Adam just being friendly, or did he want Ronan to watch? It didn’t sound like flirting, but Adam was also looking at him like that, but Ronan could also just be reading into it and -
Another one of the dancers clapped Adam on the shoulder, making his costume of pearls clack together musically, “Come on, Adam, you’re on in three.”
He nodded at her and touched the hand on her shoulder as she moved past him to dab more glitter on her cleavage.
“I should go. Will you-“ Adam broke off, clearly wanting Ronan to fill in the words for him.
“Yeah.” He found himself saying, though he hadn’t put any conscious thought into the words coming out of his mouth, “Yeah, I’ll stay and watch.”
Adam gave him a quick, alarmingly genuine smile, and went about the process of getting ready, pushing his eyelashes up in the nearest mirror, trading a complicated handshake with one of the twins, getting the okay from Persephone at the wings. Ronan felt awkward standing around like some kind of menace, but no one noticed – or, if they did, they never said anything. The only person who paid him any heed was Hennessy, wearing a silk robe so clearly not on for this number but still rushing about. She paused only to punch him in the arm and call him a dick for not texting her back before dashing off again, probably to find Jordan.
He wasn’t waiting around long before Calla was grabbing him by the arm and dragging him right to the side of the stage with a muttered curse on his name, “Stupid boy. How do you expect to watch from there?”
He didn’t ask how she knew of Adam’s request – she’d been standing nowhere near them and there was no way for the sound to travel in such a loud space – because the three women of Fox Way just seemed to know things.
Adam was already on stage, but it was dark and the curtain was down so Ronan couldn’t say anything apart from the hulking shadow of the grand piano having been dragged onto the main stage.
Calla counted down into an ear piece, talking to Noah up in sound and lights, and the band started the opening notes as the curtain lifted and the lights sparked to life, revealing a pearl encrusted Adam lounging on the closed lid on the piano, like Venus reclining on her seashell. Ronan was only mildly surprised to see Gansey seated at the piano – he’d known he had a shift tonight, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about being on stage when they’d left the house earlier. There was an uncorked bottle of champagne by his arm that probably aligned in a euphemistic way to those watching the show from their seats instead of the wings.
Ronan must’ve seen every number over a dozen times, but he’d never seen Adam perform this specific one. It was one of the striptease acts, and Ronan knew he was entirely unprepared to witness it, but by God was he going to try.
He shifted on his feet and crossed his arms over his chest, ignoring the knowing, if slightly mean-hearted look Calla shot him.
Adam lip-synced along to the song as the backing dancers fluttered giant ostrich feather fans over him. He propped himself up into a sitting position, his movements sinuous and graceful and practiced. In a quick motion, he flung Gansey’s hat from his head over his shoulder, and danced his fingers across Gansey’s scalp until he had a loose grip of the back of his skull, pushing his supplicant head down in the same motion as he spread his legs suggestively.
Jesus.
Gansey didn’t stop playing – he way too professional for that – even as Adam let his head up and shook his shoulders to the slow beat of the song, causing the peals drenching him to clatter against each other.
Every movement he made was nonchalant in a deliberate way, even as he leaned over to uncork the bottle of champagne with his thumb, hands moving up and down the stem of the bottle almost lewdly. He winked at the audience, and carelessly poured the champagne into a waiting glass Ronan hadn’t noticed before – complete with a skewered cherry for garnish – splashing a liberal amount all over the piano, Gansey, and himself, leaving little wet droplets on his shining thighs. Ronan wanted to lick them up. He wanted to survive only off the spilled champagne that resided on Adam Parrish’s skin. He wanted to be in Gansey’s place, pushed and pulled around and ever willing to bend to the whims of Adam Parrish. Something twisted in his belly, something akin to the omni-present jealousy that thrived under his skin.
He took a sip from the glass and stood up, beginning to descend the small stairs that led down from the piano, stopping only to check his hip into Gansey’s head as one of the band members hit a triangle., making people in the audience laugh and making something funny and off-putting happen to Ronan’s skin.
Adam moved between the people playing instruments, leaning over shoulders and rubbing his back down their sides, fucking resplendent in the shining spotlight. He walked – no, he strutted closer to the stage, hands roving from his hair to his neck to his pearl-adorned chest. When he turned, one of the band members hastily pulled the front of his pearly get-up and the top half collapsed around him in strings of pearls. The audience crowed and wolf-whistled, and Adam had the audacity to look at them, half-coy and half-sheepish, all endearing like, before grabbing the big feather fan off one of the back-up girls so he could flutter it around his now naked chest, giving only teasing glimpses of his slightly freckled skin.
He moved the fan around, twisting and turning and showing himself off and wiggling his fingers in a wave. He sauntered behind the seated cello player just as the bottom half of his outfit collapsed, leaving him fully fucking nude (Ronan thought he might lose his mind – it was a near thing, at any rate).
Adam grabbed the other fan off the other dancer as she pulled an exaggerated shocked face, really playing it up for the audience. He used the fans to cover up his front and backside as he twisted around to give the crowd a playfully put-out, ‘who did that?’ sort of stare. People laughed and whistled and cheered at his undressed state.
He frolicked around stage a little bit more, always covered but always showing teasing glimpses – the kind of thing meant to have you mentally picturing what he looked like without the feathers in the way. He trailed fingers of the shoulders of band members and caressed feather fans down Gansey’s back.
At the end of the song, during the last drawn out, almost moaning ‘oh’, he ascended the stairs back up to the piano and lay down, the two back-up dancers taking the fans off him while easily keeping him covered. The music came to a slow end as the girls revealed Adam, one knee hitched up to cover himself, but all of his Virginian tanned skin on display, back arched against the piano, one arm draped across his brow.
Ronan closed his eyes. The image of Adam Parrish, the suggestion of his nakedness, was going to live in his frontal cortex for the rest of his life. And, he was definitely sporting a semi, which was a major fucking problem.
The stage curtain came down to tumultuous applause, and the back up dancers were already fetching a robe for Adam to wear, and Ronan had to get out of there fucking yesterday, because there was no way he was making stilted, half-flirting small talk with Adam while all the blood in his body was rushing to his dick and his thoughts were entirely compromised of: Adam, skin, Adam, hands, Adam, feathers? Adam-
“I’m taking my break.” He said to Calla, then practically fucking sprinted down the spiral staircase. He didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing; he just knew that he wanted to get out of this place. Outside, maybe, so he could panic in the fresh air and crave a cigarette that he hadn’t wanted to smoke in years. Or he could go to the bathroom so he could stare into the mirror as he willed himself into not-horniness. Or -
He caught sight of the guy from before, the business man with the sleazy smile, sitting at a table alone, and diverted his route through the tables until he could grasp his shirtsleeve, “Come with me.”
The guy looked way too pleased at being forcibly grabbed by the shirt and commanded to follow. Ronan was second guessing this before this even started, “What changed your mind?”
“None of your fucking business.” Ronan hissed, keeping his voice low so none of the surrounding tables would hear, “Do you want your dick sucked or not?”
The guy got to his feet and brushed pretend dirt off his pants, “Good. I like them angry.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you like. Get to the bathroom.”
He gave Ronan a lazy smile, “Sir, yes sir.”
Ronan growled, giving him a look that threatened violence, and began stalking his way over to the men’s bathroom, firmly not looking at Blue, who was trying desperately to catch his eye over the top of a customer’s head. He didn’t need her opinion, or the judgement that was bound to be in her eyes.
Listen, he knew it was a bad idea to hook up with some random guy just to get himself out of the situation of heated blood and the thought of the large swathes of Adam Parrish’s exposed skin, but he’d never been a stranger to knowing something was a bad idea and doing it anyway. He was well acquainted with the phrase ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’.
He’d been stood in the bathroom alone for two minutes, staring at the flushed cheeks of his reflection before the businessman walked in.
Ronan whirled, took a split second to say, “Don’t you dare fucking kiss me.”, and then he was pressing the guy into a cubicle and pushing him against the wall, locking the door behind them. It was a tight fit, but it also wasn’t the first time Ronan had been in this situation, so he managed to manoeuvre them so it was the least amount of discomfort, despite the hard tile biting into his knees.
He wanted this to be quick, and he wanted it to be dirty, so he was pulling the guy’s dick out his pants and spitting on his hand before he’d fully finished situating himself against the door.
“I don’t know your name.” The guy said, the second half of his sentence turning into moan as Ronan wrapped his spit-slick hand around his cock, jerking him into hardness.
“You don’t need to.” Ronan grunted.
“I’m Michael.” The guy tried again.
“I don’t care.” Ronan rebuffed him again, then sunk down on his cock, needing the aching in his jaw to shut him up.
It was sloppy and quick, and probably wasn’t all that good, but the guy – Michael – moaned and blabbered on about ‘you’re so fucking good at that’ like Ronan was putting a thesis in dick-sucking to good use, but that was probably just the thrill of getting semi-public head from a visibly furious bartender who refused to tell you him his name.
Ronan closed his eyes. He wished Michael would shut the fuck up so he could sink into his fantasies uninterrupted, but he didn’t, so Ronan just tuned him out and imagined Adam in all his shining, confident glory up on stage. It wasn’t quite right – Michael’s hips were much too muscled to be Adam’s, and Ronan thought that Adam would have a nicer cock, somehow, but he was a dreamer at heart and could lie to himself to suspend disbelief when he had to.
So he pretended. He pretended he felt sweat sticky, bony hipbones under his hands instead of the course material of this guy’s slacks. He pretended that he could hear Adam’s country accent slipping out between moans, and not the incoherent ramblings of some guy called Michael. He pretended that there was springy mattress between his knees instead of hard tile. He pretended it wasn’t everything that it was, and zoned out so far that it was a complete shock when Michael fucking came in his mouth without warning.
Ronan choked but manage to swallow the majority of it down, wishing he didn’t have to. He glared up at Michael and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, “Give a guy some fucking warning, would you?”
Michael shrugged and tucked himself back into his pants. He gestured down at where Ronan’s dick was a hard outline against his tight jeans, “Need me to take care of that for you?”
Ronan stood up wordlessly, letting Michael slide to the floor with a frown, like it was going to somehow infect his amazingly boring slacks.
It was mediocre head, really, but what else could be expected from an anonymous bathroom fuck? It did the job, and Ronan got to imagine Adam on his knees, and he came (after giving the guy warning, thank you very much) and therefore expelled all of his misplaced lust for Adam, and that was that. Absolutely nothing special. Just a tingling feeling all over his body that faded to nothing.
And yet Adam still dogged on his mind.
He tucked himself back up, checked his all-black clothes for any stray splashes of cum. Michael left the bathroom first after a brief look that probably meant something Ronan was too lazy to interpret. Ronan washed his hands and splashed the cold water on his face for good measure, to cool the warmth of his cheeks.
He looked in the mirror. He was much too informal most of the time to look properly ruffled, but the club-mandated eyeliner he wore had smudged from when he’d teared up after choking on cum, and his clothes seemed a bit out of place. He straightened himself up as best he could and smudged the eyeliner around until it looked intentional, then returned back to his post at the bar.
Gansey was sat opposite Blue, looking sickeningly love-struck (he had to deal with those two everyday which rubbed his unintentionally single nose in it constantly) and the looks on their faces when they spotted him said that they’d definitely just been talking about them.
“Sargent. Dick.” He greeted them, with minor hostility – more a warning not to talk about it than anything else. Internally, he winced at the scratchy sound of his voice, the remnants from having a dick down his fucking tonsils ten minutes earlier.
Blue schooled her face into something innocuous that didn’t fool Ronan in the slightest, “Need a cough drop, Lynch? You’re sounding a little scratchy there.”
_____
It wasn’t until they were all piling out of Ronan’s BMW (he’d won the literal toss of the dice for who got to drive them all to work that day) and Gansey was striding to unlock the front door that Blue finally addressed it, though she’d clearly been wanting to for hours.
“So.” She said, the side of too casual that morphed into suspicious, “What was all that about?”
Gansey paused, key half-way to the door, then evidently felt Ronan’s white-hot glare on his back and busied himself with the lock. He was still clearly listening in.
“No idea what you mean.” Ronan said, busying himself with fetching his jacket from the backseat and folding it over his arm. It was unusually muggy for a late September night (or morning, dependant on how you think about it) and he was sweating slightly.
Gansey got the door unlocked and they all stepped into the entryway. Gansey could just slide his stupid boat shoes off, but Blue and Ronan had to stoop over and lean against walls to begin the rigorous process of taking their Docs off. Ronan nearly ripped his boots of his feet in a desperate attempt to escape this conversation with Blue before they could even have it.
He kicked his shoes off and began making his way into the rest of the house, toward the tell-tale sounds of Gansey preparing his usual mint tea in the kitchen – when Blue caught his arm. Her grip was easy and there was something earnest in her face.
“I’m not prying. Just – are you okay?” She let go of his arm, allowing him to leave without a word if he wanted to.
He knew what she was asking – if he was still okay working behind the bar, dealing with his fury and all his repressed issues, being reminded everyday of his own fuck-ups.
“Yeah.” He said, looking away from her wide eyes and kicking one of his shoes into submission against the wall, “Yeah. I’m fine. Whatever.”
Blue leaned down again to continue taking off her boots, the conversation, thankfully, ended.
Ronan was still slightly too warm when he nipped into his room to change, so he elected to bypass the joggers he usually wore before bed and just changed into a baggy, oversized ‘the Prodigy’ t-shirt that Blue had thrifted for him once, wearing nothing else but his boxers and the flip-flops he wore around the house so his feet wouldn’t get all gravelly and weird.
Gansey had evidently had the same idea as him, and had changed into plaid pyjama pants and an old undershirt while he waited for his tea to brew. Blue had had less inclination to change, but had shed her bra, which now lay over the banister. She was curled on the couch with the TV remote already in hand.
Ronan joined her, sprawling as much as he could without flashing someone, “What’re we watching then, maggot?”
Blue picked up the other remote, the one for the DVD player, and changed the sources over. The intro screen for Buffy the Vampire Slayer blazed to life on the TV, with the accompanying guitar solo. They’d been on a re-watching binge lately, and had just gotten up to season three after a long effort of coming home after shifts to calm down and watch an episode together before trudging off to bed and collapsing.
They loaded up the episode (‘Faith, Hope, and Trick’) and waited for Gansey to join them with his mug of mint tea cradled in one hand, a bag of Doritos and a carton of Mike&Ike’s in the other. He set his mug down on the coffee table and tossed the snacks to Ronan and Blue, respectively, as was typical for them after they’d shared a shift – which they did often, because Persephone (who made the rota) liked to make sure they were all on time when getting home together, even if she didn’t say so outloud.
Blue hit play as Gansey tucked himself up with her, and Ronan ripped open his chips with as much noise as he could, just so he could smirk at Blue’s dirty look.
As they’d all seen the episodes before (more than once, in Ronan’s case, as was his rite of passage as a gay teenager who’d just figured out that he liked guys and was not happy about it) they talked through them - commenting on the clear stunt-doubles in the fight scenes, and Blue envying whatever Willow wore, and Gansey and Ronan debating over whether Spike or Angel was better.
They’d only gotten to just over halfway through the episode before there was a knock on the door.
“Who the fuck is that? It’s like three in the fucking morning.” Ronan said, glaring through the wall at the front door.
Blue heaved herself up, leaving her half-eaten jellybeans on the coffee table, “I’ll get it. I’m more dressed than you two.”
She wasn’t wrong, so they both let her go, pausing Buffy so they could eavesdrop on what was happening. There was a rattle of the key in the door before Blue’s voice, shocked said, “Can I – Adam? What are you doing here?”
Ronan and Gansey looked between each other, knowing they were both thinking, “Adam?”
Adam responded, his voice to low to be anything but an indistinct murmur to the men in the other room.
Blue said, “No, don’t be stupid. What happened?”
More incomprehensible words from Adam. Ronan looked to Gansey to see if he could make anything out, but he just shrugged.
Blue exhaled loudly, “Shit. Right. Okay. Yeah, okay. Come in.”
There was some shuffling around, likely Adam taking his shoes off because he was never anything but aggravatingly polite. Blue rounded the corner first, looking grim, and Adam followed – he was dressed in the basic sweats he wore too and from the club and there were still tell-tale specks of glitter dotted about his exposed skin. He looked, for all intents and purposes, like he’d just arrived home after a long night dancing, except for the bloody lip and the slowly swelling bruise coming up on his cheekbone.
“So.” Adam said, sounding more apologetic than anyway with facial wounds had any right to sound, “My apartment got broken into.”
Ronan was on his feet in half a second, spitting dirty curses through his teeth as he marched over to Adam and took his face in intentionally gentle hands.
“We’ve got first aid stuff. Stay there.”
He didn’t give Adam a chance to argue, already turning to the kitchen to grab the first aid kit, only remembering his pants-less state when he caught sight of himself in the hallway mirror. But he couldn’t bring himself to care, not when Adam was standing in the living room looking like someone had just thrown a good few punches at him and apologising for it.
He should -
Someone should -
“Fuck.” He spat the curse with vehemence, but it didn’t do anything to assuage the steady rage rising through his blood and taking over his senses like the first ket bump of the night.
He stood in the middle of the kitchen for a moment, flexing and unflexing his hands and trying to grapple his anger into something useful instead of letting it form into it’s usual self-destructive glory. It didn’t help much, but by the time he’s grabbed the first aid kit from under the sink and made his way back to the living room, his fury had settled over him like a familiar leather jacket, curving over his shoulders and moulded to the shape of his body – it didn’t consume him, it just accompanied him.
When he returned to the living room, Adam was perched on the edge of the couch, looking profoundly uncomfortable. He seemed to be recounting the events of the night, tongue unconsciously prodding against the bloody split in his lip. On the TV screen, Faith was paused just as her stake entered the heart of a vampire. Ronan thought that was a pretty accurate summary of what he felt like doing to whoever had the fucking gall to break into Adam’s house.
“Shove up, Parrish.” Ronan said, tapping his foot against Adam’s calf, “I need to check that shit on your face out.”
Blue shot him a look over Adam’s shoulder like, very tactful, dickface.
Adam shuffled up the couch enough for Ronan to fit on, though he stayed close to the edge, like he wasn’t fully decided on whether he was going to run or not.
Ronan’s hand paused before touching Adam’s face, hovering, unsure, in the air between them, “Can I?”
Adam seemed surprised he asked, “Go ahead.”
Ronan turned Adam’s head toward him so he could get a good look at the cut and was suddenly hit by the full fucking force of Adam’s eyes. He had central heterochromia, Ronan realised. From faraway his eyes looked brown, but there was invading edges of summer-lake blue infringing around his pupil. And those eyes were staring down at Ronan like he trusted him. Ronan swallowed instinctively and darted his tongue out to wet his lips, which had become very dry all of a sudden, and -
And Adam’s eyes darted down to Ronan’s lips and back to his eyes.
Okay.
Okay, well that was -
What was that?
Ronan tore his eyes and busied his hands with ripping open the anti-septic wipes. Adam was looking at the ceiling when Ronan returned to his lip. Really, the cut was more dried blood than actual wound, as was the way with facial wounds. They bled a lot and healed quickly. Ronan took his time making sure Adam was at no risk of infection, then balled the wipe up and trick-shotted it into the waste paper basket by the TV stand.
Ronan was abruptly aware of the fact that they were incredibly close. Close enough for their thighs to be pressed together lightly.
He moved away, ignoring Gansey and Blue’s eyes. He cleared his throat awkwardly, “It’ll heal in like three days, but it’ll’ve developed a new skin by morning. Face wounds heal quickly.”
“I know.” Adam said quietly.
Blue looked between Ronan and Gansey, clearly questioning something. Gansey nodded, but Ronan was still avoiding her eyes. She tried in vain to catch his eye for an uncomfortably long moment of silence before just speaking anyway.
“I think you should stay here with us. Move in.”
Despite not being asked to weigh in on the subject, Ronan agreed. He knew at his heart that he could be territorial, but he didn’t think that was what this was – in truth, he feared for Adam. A break in had happened once, and therefore it could happen again, and Ronan didn’t think he could handle Adam being hurt this way again. Maybe that made him selfish. Maybe he didn’t care.
Adam opened his mouth to protest, something flinty, almost angry, sparking in his eyes, but Blue cut him off before he could argue against them, holding one hand out in supplication, “Listen, please, before you get mad? This isn’t pity. You can pay a portion of the rent just like we all do, and you can take a share of the chores, but –“ she faltered slightly, pursing her lips together, “We just want you to be safe.”
Ronan saw Adam’s whole body tense. A muscle in his jaw ticked with the visible effort it was taking to keep him calm.
“Blue.” He said, voice strained, “I can’t. I’m not going to-“
“Fuck off with that shit, Parrish.” Ronan interrupted, predicting the self pitying bullshit Adam was about to say, “Yes you fucking can. You’ve got nowhere to go and we’ve got a spare room.”
Adam turned to him. He looked angry, almost wrathful, but then he faltered, blinking, at something on Ronan’s face – and what on Earth did that mean? What about Ronan made Adam react that way?
He realised that he’d let the carefully constructed wall that he’d built around himself fall, just for a moment – years of defences taken away brick-by-brick and laid to the side. Mentally, he built back up that wall and hid away his infatuation with Adam behind it. Outwardly, he rearranged his features into his usual scowl.
But the damage was already done.
Adam’s fingers twitched nervously in his lap. His face had gone entirely flat, though his eyes moved as if he was reading something. His thoughts were permeable in the room, and the three roommates looked between each other with emotions ranging from anxiety (Gansey) to hope (Blue) to carefully arranged scorn (Ronan).
“Okay.” Adam said after a while. He said it quietly, too quietly for anyone but Ronan, who was still sat just that bit too close to him, to hear, so he cleared his throat and repeated himself, “Okay, But I’m moving out again as soon as I’ve saved up enough money for a new apartment.”
Triumph arched across Blue’s face. Gansey, who had been trained in the arts of knowing showing his real emotions since he was old enough to be seen as senatorial parties, gave a small but incredibly pleased smile, “I’ll go and make you some space. Tomorrow we can go and pick up your things, if that suits you?”
Adam nodded. His face was still flat, unfeeling.
Ronan stood up and followed Gansey out of the room, intending to put the First Aid kit back under the sink, just as Blue reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. He continued to listen to her voice even as he made his way into the kitchen, though he did pause on the threshold so he wouldn’t exit eavesdropping range.
“You’ve changed.” Blue’s faint voice said. Ronan couldn’t see either of them, but he could envision them perfectly in his head – Blue, calming and genuine, Adam hunched over and guilty-looking, “It’s a good thing.”
Ronan moved away, and whatever Adam said in response was lost to a murmur. It was too personal, maybe, to listen to that.
Ronan tucked the First Aid kit back in it’s rightful place and ran a glass of water, then made his way back to the living room, intentionally clattering against the doorframe so they’d have a warning of his entrance. He put the water on a coaster on the coffee table, silently daring Adam to object. He didn’t.
“Anyway.” Blue was saying. She’d moved back into her place in the curved section of the L-shaped sofa, her knees brought up to her chest. Adam had relaxed slightly, no longer looking to run at the slightest loud noise, but he still didn’t look entirely comfortable, “We’re re-watching Buffy – wait, have you seen it?”
Adam smiled, a small, rueful thing, “Of course I’ve seen it. I was a bisexual teenager.”
Blue snapped her fingers excitably, “That’s exactly my point! I’ve never met a queer man who didn’t have a Buffy phase. Ronan, tell him.”
Ronan paused on his way back to the couch, looking at her like a startled animal, “Fucking what?”
“You had a Buffy phase, didn’t you?”
He flopped back on the couch, intentionally catching her in the thigh with his foot. She swatted at his ankle playfully.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He said.
Adam looked at him with his impassive eyes, “I thought you didn’t lie, Lynch?”
Blue cackled, loud and victorious and gleeful, “Ha! Tell the truth!”
Ronan rolled her eyes and fought away the tiny little hands poking into his ribs, smacking Blue away in the sort of playful roughhousing that he’d once engaged in with his brothers. In some ways, Blue was like an annoying little sister that was raised in a burlesque lounge, not a farm.
“God.” He complained, pushing her away and jostling her shoulder just to piss her off, “Jesus Christ. Fine – fine, you win. Yes, I had a Buffy phase. Are you happy now, maggot?”
She cackled again, “I bet you had a poster above your bed!”
He kicked her, scowling but unable to stop the savage smile of enjoyment that was carving itself into his face, “Wrong, dickhead. It was on my door.”
The smile that spread over Blue’s face was more devious than it had any right to be, but before she could continue jeering at him, Gansey walked back into the room, carrying a small stack of fabric with him.
“Adam –“ Gansey paused to give a small reproachful look at Ronan and Blue, who had both froze when he walked in, like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. With a pang, Ronan realised that he’d actually forgotten about Adam for a moment, too caught up in the routine of his almost daily play-fighting with Blue. When he darted his eyes over, Adam’s head was turned toward Gansey, but his eyes were on Ronan and Blue. There was a small, almost soft, smile on his face. Gansey continued, “Adam, I took the liberty of getting you some sleep clothes. I hope that’s alright?”
“Thanks, Gansey.” Adam nodded, taking the clothes of Gansey gratefully. He turned to all of them, “Thanks.”
Blue smiled at him. Ronan just nodded back at him, understanding.
Maybe it was a bad idea to have Adam move in. It’s not like he could do anything about it now. Not when Adam was going upstairs to get acquainted with what was from then on his room, and changing into the pyjamas Gansey had lent him – taken directly from the last pile of laundry, so freshly clean that when Adam sat down and sent a wave of the peony scent Blue used on their laundry mixed with his usual grass and honey smell, Ronan felt like he’d been part of their dynamic for years.
It was natural for Adam to curl up on the sofa, tucking his legs to the side, entreating slightly on Ronan’s space as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Gansey picked up the TV remote and clicked play. Vampire-themed action spurred to life in the screen and, for the first time since Ronan had known him, Adam relaxed.
_____
Ronan smacked his head down on the clean bar top with a dramatic groan, “This was the worst decision of my entire life.”
Noah looked up from his laptop, drum beats echoing from his headphones. He was sat at a vacant table, trying to arrange the set of music that was to play in between acts at the club tonight, legs propped up on a pulled out chair and laptop balanced precariously on his knee., “I don’t think you made much of a decision in the first place.”
Ronan ignored him, “Shut up. He keeps practicing while doing the fucking dishes and it’s driving me insane. I’m being attacked in my own fucking house.”
Noah hummed and clicked something on his laptop. He didn’t look away from the screen but turned his face toward Ronan with a boyish smile, “For someone who claims to be so stoic, you sure are working up a big fuss over his.”
“Fuck off.” Ronan lifted his face from the bar top to glare at his friend. Noah just raised an incredibly pale eyebrow, “I’m under fucking siege here.”
Noah sighed and put his laptop on the table so he could turn his full attention to Ronan’s dramatics.
“He’s just existing.”
“I know. That’s what’s so frustrating. He’s not even putting effort into it, he’s just... like that. It’s awful. I hate him. I fucking loathe him.”
“No you don’t.”
No, he didn’t. He just hated what he did to him. Realistically, he knew that he was being ridiculous. None of this was Adam’s fault, it was Ronan’s – Blue would say he was being a pig, blaming the object of his desire for simply existing in the same way for him.
It was Ronan’s fault, but it was so much easy to blame someone else.
If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.
Gouge it out indeed. He was one more day of Adam moving along to the music as he folded loads of laundry or helped Blue cook up whatever deep-fried abomination they’d grown up eating in the south away from taking Matthew seriously and taking a melon baller to his eye.
He was an unknowing temptation, the fruit of knowledge incarnate, and Ronan had no way of staying ignorant any longer. He fought the urge to knock his head down on the bar again, and instead moved to continue cutting up limes like he was doing before. Adam wasn’t working today, instead studying for a chemistry exam for his college course, which is why Ronan felt comfortable enough talking to Noah. Or, rather, talking at Noah, because he was giving rather short answers to Ronan’s desperate longing.
On the stage, dancers rehearsed to a song playing shallowly from a phone stood up in a glass emptied of the vodka soda Ronan had mixed half an hour earlier. Cleaners moved around, making sure everything was shining (more than it usually did, anyway, the club being as covered in glitter and rhinestones as it was) before opening. Other bartenders stocked bottles, and musicians tuned instruments and played little ditties that made passing by waitresses laugh and lean on upright pianos to talk before going back to table-cleaning duty.
The club was a well oiled machine, practically a family. Then there was the family – Maura calling out for Persephone with her phone lodged by her ear, Persephone with needles held between her lips as she sewed up minor tears in costumes, Calla barking orders at floor workers who rolled their eyes with a smile but did as they were told.
“Czerny!” Calla shouted from just below the stage, “Get back to that sound booth! We’re running checks!”
Noah closed the lid of his laptop and stretched languidly, like a cat, shooting Calla a lazy thumbs-up. He tucked his laptop under one of his arms and made to leave, hesitated, and then stalled by the bar where Ronan was putting way too much concentration into cutting limes as to stop himself thinking about Adam when he just woke up, soft and boyish looking, still scrubbing at his eyes. He rapped his knuckles on the bar top.
“Listen.” He said. Ronan looked up, “I know you’d much rather wallow in your own self pity than do anything to make your life easier, but for what it’s worth, I think you should just... ask him out. It’ll do you both some good.”
With that he left, up to the sound booth. A few minutes later, the typical background music blared to life from the club’s speakers – something dark and sexy, with the kind of twisting bass line that sounded like it was trying to seduce you.
Ronan reached behind him to the fridge stocked with soft drinks and cracked open a Coke, taking a long drink. He shoved one hand into his jeans pocket so he could smooth his thumb over the sobriety token he’d kept on his person for the last few years. Noah was probably right. But that didn’t mean that he was going to do anything about it. For all his foolhardy bravery, he was a coward at heart, and he wasn’t going to change any time soon.