Chapter Text
Ronan Lynch’s night passed in a blur—and then it didn’t.
Ronan barely remembered making a shitty bowl of instant ramen for dinner despite having the money to get much, much more.
He watched shitty movies on his very not-shitty television while ignoring calls from his shitty brother on his hardly used and not-shitty phone.
Then he ignored Gansey, banging on his door and shouting for Ronan to come out for the night, and Ronan just slammed his fist into the hardwood back. He didn’t leave until one of his neighbors hit a shared wall and told them to shut the fuck up.
Gansey left with an apology. Ronan held up a silent finger to the empty wall, sneering at a man that couldn’t see him.
Then, he ignored a single call from Kavinsky and a single text that read, “I get it now. He’s wonderful.”
Ronan might’ve understood what the message meant, could’ve grasped the surface what Kavinsky was implying, but he didn’t want to. He was tired of it, of Kavinsky and his antics. He just wanted to wallow in his self pity alone.
He was a recent college dropout. He wanted the freedom to act like it, goddammit, and no one would leave him alone.
And then someone knocked on his door again—quite a while later but still too soon—hurried but less insistent. With newfound frustration and anger simmering beneath his skin, Ronan found he couldn’t ignore it that time.
He ripped open his front door, vicious and fully prepared to sink his teeth into whomever it was that had decided to interrupt his night again. He snarled into the dark, expecting his self righteous brother or an overly well-meaning Gansey.
Instead, he got Adam Parrish, looking dazed and unsteady on his ratty doormat. Adam’s eyes were cloudy and unfocused, blood from a split lip smeared on his chin, his pale throat littered with fresh bruises.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said in a hoarse voice. “I didn’t know where else to go.”