Ronan Lynch (alteridem) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-04-17 17:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, the raven cycle: adam parrish, the raven cycle: ronan lynch |
Log: Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish
But violence of any kind did not sit well in Adam's gut. Protection, defensive tactics, those were necessary evils that he was able to understand in an abstract way. If he placed them in a box, compartmentalized his feelings on the matter, taking down a beast that tore through the fields at the Barns was not the same as this.
By the time Ronan had stepped into the ring for his first match of the night, and Adam saw—heard—that initial knuckles-against-jaw hit, Adam couldn't do this. He simply stood up, and left. Something hard cracked against the memory of being on the receiving end of several similar punches. All that overanalyzing of the situation couldn't seem to separate the two halves.
So he waited in the car, behind the wheel of the BMW. Adam couldn't remember taking out his reading for class to pass the time; it wasn't as if he was going to retain anything. The words blurred into a mess on the page, and he couldn't tell if it was from the growing frustration from the situation or the anger that had always been there, always festering, his own type of brutality.
The immediate flood of light above him meant the car door was opening. The heavy presence of another body in the passenger seat meant the fights were over.
In tense silence, Adam shoved his book between the seats, and started the car. It was only as he turned, to back out of the space in front of the Underground did he catch Ronan's face—the dark swell of discoloration around his nose, the shadows of looming bruises, the cut by his eye. Adam shifted gears roughly into drive.
"How was it?"
Ronan knew Adam’s moods possibly better than he knew his own. He’d felt the storm of something this week, the tension building. The sniping about St. Mark's Eve. He wasn’t sure what was coming but he knew something was. He was close to the point where he’d smash buttons and see what happened - because sometimes you had to really piss Adam Parrish off to get him to take down his walls - but then it was time for fight club and Ronan had been eager to swing out some of the built-up aggression in his own bones.
What he hadn’t predicted was Adam leaving twenty seconds into his match. He’d taken a punch in his distraction, the one that opened up a tiny scratch next to his eye. The one he swiped at now with the back of his taped hand as he settled into his seat.
“What do you care?” Okay, so maybe he was ready to piss Adam off now. “You didn’t have to come if you had homework, you know. This shit isn’t mandatory.” Ronan started chewing at the ends of the tape on his hands, trying to get a starting point to pull it off.
Adam knew what Ronan was doing. It was easy to understand the tactics to navigate potential fights, and they had gotten so much better about letting the flash-in-the-pan anger come and go and not settle. But Adam, who should have known better, had been brewing in this feeling longer than he wanted to admit.
So, no, he wasn't going to back down. His attention snapped over to Ronan's hands, still wrapped, another reminder of what his boyfriend had just done, before back on the road. The streets were too quiet juxtaposed with the cacophony inside of him. His exhale was so loud at Ronan's question—why do you care? It felt like a challenge.
"I'm not allowed to ask you questions? You'd rather me not say anything?" Adam asked, sharp and even, his voice uncannily steady. But he hit the turn signal with too much force. "If it's not mandatory, why did you go?"
Ronan finally managed to get a grip on the end of the tape and he pulled upwards with his teeth before switching to unwinding the tape with his other hand. Adam was using that tone that Ronan heard a lot less these days. It wasn’t quite another hit in the ring, but it did leave him unsettled.
“I go because I like it,” he scowled. “Burns off all the excess shit…” He swirled a hand in front of his chest, like he was trying to put a name to all the reckless fire that burned inside of him still even now, when his life is actually pretty fucking settled and amazing. Some snooty fucker would say it’s trauma, honey and he’d probably want to punch that person in the face too, but he wouldn’t. Cause he was better at aiming that fire at willing targets and things that couldn’t be hurt.
“It feels good, I don’t know. Why’d you go if you had your own shit to do?” He nodded towards the homework behind the seats and finished unwinding one hand’s worth of tape, closing his hand into a fist and then stretching his fingers back out again.
Twisting his grip on the steering wheel did nothing to alleviate the feeling Ronan's words left behind—he liked, it felt good. The further the explanation went, the less it made sense to Adam, and confusion only made Adam frustrated. He knew that Ronan's previous altercations had been because of something deeper, an anger that came out literally swinging. This was harder to swallow.
"I didn't sit out in the car because I had other shit to do. I brought it as a distraction, Ronan. I was trying to—" The words were stuck. What was he trying to do? Some fucked up version of exposure therapy? His throat felt dry. He downshifted gears as they came up on a stoplight, and the car idled for one second, two seconds, before Adam turned to finally look at Ronan.
His expression was cold and severe, his mouth a hard line as he said, "I was trying to get why it's such a big deal for you. But there is nothing to like about watching your boyfriend get the shit kicked out of him or kicking the shit out of other people. You of all people should understand that."
Oh. There was probably something fundamentally wrong with Ronan that he hadn’t seen this coming. He’d just thought – well Adam had known this about him from the start, hadn’t he? The kind of person that he was? He’d thought this was such a fucking huge step up over wailing on his brother in a parking lot or drinking himself sick not to feel. It was a shock to the system to realize he’d gotten that so wrong.
He frowned - at Adam, at the stop light overhead, at the dashboard. “It’s not a big deal, it’s not even—it’s not like that. We’re not kicking the shit out of each other.” God, he fucking hated that phrasing and it made his blood run cold. “We’re just goofing off. Do you really--Jesus, Parrish.”
Ronan started unwrapping his other hand but it was a tense process now. Small, sharp movements. “Is that what you think I’m doing in there? Just beating the crap out of people?”
Adam should not have been driving the car. He realized this distantly, belatedly, when he made a small, harsh noise at goofing off, just as the light turned to green and he nearly stalled out the car. That was the last thing he needed right now, proving just how not in control he was. His temper was there, sizzling underneath in his skin. He gripped the gearshift tighter to keep his hands from shaking.
"What else are you doing in there, Lynch? Playing cards? Doing cross stitch? God forbid you actually do something with your freetime that isn't punching other people for fun," Adam said. And there it was, that nastiness that he couldn't keep down, that part of him he had bottled so neatly away because that wasn't him. At least that was what he told himself, that was what Ronan told him.
His foot was heavy on the gas, accelerating from one gear to the next clumsily. He was one wrong shift from owing Ronan a transmission. But he just wanted to not be in this car when he eventually, inevitably, exploded. Too much collateral damage.
"What do you want me to say?" Adam gave a quick but searing look; it hurt to see Ronan's face mirror blossoming injuries Adam was acutely familiar with. "Just shut up and let you do what you want? Not give you shit because it's not a big deal? To you. It's not a big deal to you."
Fuck. This was turning into a real fight and, worse, Ronan could feel his blood heating in an old familiar way. The defensive core of him, the part of him that didn’t think very highly of himself, started to ruffle up inside of him like Chainsaw when she was getting ready to do something really fucking irritating.
“I do plenty of shit with my freetime that isn’t punching other people for fun, asshole. Stop grinding the fuck out of my gears and pull over.” They weren’t far from home. The old defense system line was up ahead; he’d changed it since they got here. Added in runes and a dreamt version that recognized the Barns residents and a short list of approved visitors. He almost wished it was the old defense system though. Feeling the worst thing ever right about now might put this oncoming fight in perspective.
“What the fuck even is this? What, Adam? Do you…” His voice caught. “Are you worried I'm gonna go back to hitting people who aren't so willing?"
If asked, Adam would deny that he pulled over because Ronan asked him to. He would say he didn't want to be driving anymore, he didn't want to be in this car anymore, the fight was like a vice grip around his throat choking whatever sense of rationality he had. What was left was a version of Adam that Adam hated, but what was a little more self-loathing added to the mix?
Once the BMW was in park, with the engine still running, there wasn't anything to steal his focus. Adam turned the full force of his attention on Ronan. It was an ugly look, his temper right there, and Adam reached blindly for it, like a protective blanket. If he went for the jugular first, then he couldn't get hurt—it was survival instincts.
"Is that something I should be worried about? You hitting unwilling people?" Adam asked, without the kindness that should have been there. He knew it was a cruel question, despite knowing deep down it was untrue. There was a long painfully tense beat of silence before Adam spoke again. "The fact that you don't get it, is so—" Adam made a strangled, frustrated noise.
"Watching you hit people and get hit by people is not fun for me. Listening to you talk about fighting as goofing off is not fun for me. If you need some way to burn off steam or energy or whatever you want to call your need to throw fists, do it to a punching bag. Because this—" Adam waved his hand around to encompass the intangibility of the argument, "And this—" He gestured to the bruises on Ronan's face. "—was not fun when it was happening to me."
Ronan pulled back sharply, feeling the sting of that first strike like a physical blow. He had to look out the window into the night to stop the hurt from coming out of him in an acidic backlash. He wasn’t entirely successful.
“I mean, I thought that was an easy question but apparently you’re the only one is this car who gets shit, so I don’t know. Maybe I am just a ticking time bomb. Jesus, fuck. You could’ve just—it didn’t have to be--I just fucking--” Ronan made a wordless noise when the words wouldn’t form in the right order, in the right shape. The door opened silently but it slammed loud. Dark road stretched back towards the well-lit city and wound into the forest in the opposite direction, towards the Barns. Towards home.
The truth was, Ronan felt like a heartless asshole for not thinking about how Adam might see these fights, but the idea that Adam thought less of him for the misstep cut deep. The idea that Adam thought Ronan might ever take a swing at him was worse. He resisted the urge to kick the tire of his car. That was the old Ronan. That would be proving Adam right. He linked his fingers behind his head instead.
Adam didn't need to watch Ronan leave to feel it. He flinched against the slammed door; he was no stranger to that sound. He could have—should have—stayed in the car. But this argument, this fight, this whatever it was between them, cracked a dam of memories that Adam felt were drowning him. He needed the open air just as much as Ronan did. He climbed out only a split second after.
But once he was out of the car, staring at Ronan with his hands on the back of his neck, Adam pressed his hands against the hood of the car, his shoulders to his ears, doing that unintentional curling into himself.
"I could have just what? It didn't have to be what? Say it, just say it. We've already come this far, and you usually just say whatever you want, fuck it, right?" Adam was pushing, he knew he was, but he wanted Ronan to say the things Adam said to himself too much, too many times, even now. For someone who felt incredibly in control of his anger, Adam was doing a piss-poor job at keeping the rest of his emotions in check. Maybe that was the problem, holding it all in, pretending he wasn't a shitty, ugly, unworthy human being underneath all those other layers he had painted over and over and over himself.
"Because for some reason, violence doesn't seem to matter to you. I should be more like you. All of this would be easier if it wasn't a problem, huh? If my—my trauma didn't put a damper on things for you."
Ronan made a frustrated noise and threw his hands up in the air. “Holy shit. You could have just told me it was hurting you. You’re talking to me like you think I’m just some violent shithead who wouldn’t care. Have we gone back in fucking time here?”
He stalked out into the road and then paced back towards the car. It was unlikely anyone would drive this road at this hour, but Ronan didn’t bother looking anyway. Getting hit by a car felt distantly less horrible than Adam acting like his abusive childhood was just an inconvenience for his thug boyfriend.
“I don’t belittle the shit you went through,” he bit out quietly, the words a little pissed, a lot hurt. “I just thought this was different. It’s a sport, it’s not me trying to break some asshole’s nose in the street.”
"Why do I have to spell everything out for you?" Adam bit back, just as frustrated, slamming his hand on the hood of the car. "Why can't it be obvious to you that it's hurting me? I don't like violence, Ronan, I never have." Maybe it was stupid, and selfish, to think Ronan thought about these things as much as Adam did. He didn't get to tune it out; there wasn't a day that went by where Adam didn't get to not think about it.
His eyes tracked Ronan's pacing. It was too easy to want to walk and keep walking. "You thought about it enough to figure out a difference, but did it ever cross your mind that it's all the same? Or were you just trying to make yourself feel better about choosing violence? Punching people isn't so bad as long as it's not some stranger on the street?"
Adam hadn't been some asshole, and while Robert Parrish wouldn't have called it a sport, he would have diminished it by calling it discipline. Adam's mother had. There was always an excuse to not call it what it was. But Adam couldn't find the words to make that distinction out loud.
What came out instead was something nastier, "If I didn't say anything, what was going to be your excuse next time to make it okay?”
“My excuse?” Ronan scoffed, hoping the burning behind his eyes would just wait a few minutes. Was he even allowed to feel this hurt or was he co-opting Adam’s pain? He didn’t fucking know. His emotions kept spilling up out of him as defensive anger anyway so what did it matter. “I guess my excuse would’ve been that I’m not a fucking mind reader! You have to tell me shit sometimes! I know, it’s a real fucking bummer.”
He kicked a few rocks across the road and watched them scatter. “You knew I was a violent asshole from the start, Adam. This was me trying to…channel that shit into something healthy.” His whole chest burned. He spun back towards Adam and lifted his arms, standing there in the middle of the road. “But I guess if the psychic thinks all violence is the same, I must be on the road to becoming your dad, huh?”
Adam worked his jaw at Ronan's words. He had gotten better about talking about things, and Adam wanted nothing more than to shout it over and over at Ronan. But it felt so childish to try and defend himself over something Ronan should have been aware of—did he even know him? Was Adam just fooling himself because he wanted desperately to be a person who deserved being known?
"No, you weren't a violent asshole, you had bad coping mechanisms and poor anger management skills. I thought you were past that. Am I wrong?" Adam asked in a way that didn't need an answer. But before he could open his mouth to keep fighting—keep this argument spiraling until stubbornness burned through itself and that profound personal pain leaked out—Ronan hit a nerve. The most sensitive, the one Adam didn't even realize was dangerously exposed.
He was done.
Adam took a deep breath. Another sharp inhale. Another, another, another. A steely silence falling over him. Everything that had been building up, completely shut down; the cord was cut, the switch was thrown. Adam was there physically, but everything else about him mentally disconnected and disassociated, because of the anger or the hurt or both—it was just too much.
He took one aborted step, before turning and walking away. Away from the car, from the Barns, from Ronan, from home.
Regret flared behind Ronan’s ribs, instant and painful. He dropped his arms like bricks at his sides. “It’s the middle of the night. Where are you going?”
Adam just kept walking. Ronan tried one more time. “Adam!”
No response.
The fire in Ronan’s blood was quickly replaced with ice and he cursed under his breath as he dug out his phone. He didn’t make phone calls. Which meant that Gansey would likely pick up afraid to death to hear a cop on the other end. Oh fucking well. He’d screwed up but he wasn’t going to let Adam disappear down a dark road and suffer some terrible fate just because his boyfriend was a fucking idiot.
As soon as the call connected, he talked over Gansey. “Hey - shut up - get in your car. Right now, Gansey. Please.”