In dreams I have watched it spin

[greywaren]

Who: Ronan Lynch (greywaren), Adam Parrish (unknowable), OPEN!
What: Open log for November!
Where: Raven House, Fear's temple, scavenging, etc!
When: Throughout November.
Warnings: Ronan Lynch is a warning tbh. Underage drinking and emotionally constipated teenage boys in the starters.


[Starters are in the top levels. Feel free to pick any and reply to them, or throw your own at me! c: ]

Comments

Scavenging

[greywaren]

[When you have the ability to make anything you want in the world appear, then scavenging for supplies can seem a little redundant. Still, Ronan doesn't exactly know what else to do in this hellhole- a few days after the Fear event, they'd gotten the books, and then after that- well, nothing. A new influx of people, a new creature in the shadows, but other than that, everything has been eerily quiet.

Ronan thinks it's building up to something, and that puts him on edge, so he leaves the comforts of their home and starts searching for more supplies- it's never too early to stockpile, right? Besides, there's no guarantee of his power, and just because he's not using Adam's energy now doesn't mean he never will again. He wants to be prepared to cut back when that happens, and that means having backup supplies.

There's a raven perched on his shoulder as he steps into one of the storefronts. Ronan isn't exactly what one would call respectful to the items inside- he rifles through the food on the shelves, looking for anything recognizable, anything easy to make, anything that looks like it'll keep for long. Every once in awhile, a box of something-or-other gets knocked to the floor and he doesn't stoop to pick it up, instead just leaving the shelves even more disheveled than before as he crams what little he can find that he deems suitable in his bag.]

[whichend]

[ Arya's looted that place before. There's a cellar, if you know where to look. It's got strange circular metal things inside. Steve calls them tinned beans. Arya's not sure what makes them tinned. They're just beans. They're a funny color, not like the black or brown beans at home, but they're filling and don't taste bad plain. They take even better when you drain the water out from them.

Ronan doesn't look like he has any tinned beans, though. And Arya does kind of owe him, you know, for stabbing him, so she pokes her head in the door. ]

Have you checked the cellar?

[greywaren]

[He starts a little at the sudden voice- damn, but the girl is quiet- and turns toward her, his shoulders tense. He recognizes the voice before he sees her and already the tension is starting to bleed away into- exasperation, maybe? Of course it's her. Of course the bears haven't eaten her yet.

Still, if she has useful advice...]

The cellar?

[No, he hasn't checked yet. He doesn't quite know where to look.]

[whichend]

[ Arya rolls her eyes. Yes, the cellar, that's what she said. Gods, she'd forgotten how stupid this boy was. Did his raven do all the thinking for him? Probably. Jon always said ravens were very smart. Smarter than even some people.

Arya bites her lip. No, no, can't think about Jon. She doesn't have a brother, remember? She steps inside and points at a patch of carpet towards the back of the shop. ]

There's a door under there. And there are no bears or anything else that can eat you. I have checked already.

[bekommen]

[Well, you know. When in Rome - or wherever the hell this is, Nick still isn't sure. But there are empty shops and she has to eat eventually, and it's not like she's any stranger to five finger discounting things.

Still, it's kind of blatant, this kid grabbing things and just knocking others over with wild abandon. So Nick decides to do a thing she frequently does - say something about it.]

Jesus, kid, you could at least pretend like you give a shit.

[greywaren]

[Ronan sees her, and for a moment, he thinks- but no, this isn't Blue, even if there are a few similarities. The woman in front of him is older, dresses differently, wears her hair a different way. Still, the similarity is enough to give him pause for a moment, before Ronan callously shrugs and- slowly, just so she knows it's because she said something- knocks something else off the shelf.]

Not really much point. Most of this stuff is crap anyway.

[bekommen]

So that's your excuse for trashing it?

[She folds her arms across her chest, leveling a singularly unimpressed stare at him.]

Might be crap somebody else could use. You think about that?

[Nick's no philanthropist, but she grew up poor enough and has struggled to make ends meet for enough of her adult life to find waste distasteful.]

Drinking

[greywaren]

[Of course, scavenging tires someone out after a time, and as much as he loves spending every waking second cooped up in a house with three other boys who all have some form of drama or another going on, sometimes he needs to get out on his own. Mostly when he wants to drink. Gansey never actively tries to stop him when he drinks at home, but it's obvious that he disapproves, that Noah wants to drink with him, that Adam doesn't know how to react when Ronan gets drunk.

So that sends him out, wandering with a bottle in his hand- though where he actually found alcohol here is anyone's guess. Wandering brings him to one of the strange temples they'd found earlier, already pleasantly buzzed, and he nudges the bird on his shoulder with his cheek and watches as she lifts herself off of his shoulder and moves to perch on the roof of the temple.

Ronan then situates himself on the steps for the foreseeable future, where he will continue taking short swigs from the bottle in his hand until he's good and intoxicated, or- you know, until someone happens by him.]

u know it buddy

[casperdisaster]

[Noah is looking for Ronan when he peeks into the church, shuffling in when he sees the boy he's looking for. He has his arms wrapped tightly around himself.

Temples like this make him uncomfortable. Especially this one.]

Ronan?

[Noah calls out as he approaches to make sure Ronan is, in fact, awake.]

[greywaren]

Mmyeah.

[He's not asleep, wonder of wonders. Ronan had been mostly slumped over on the stairwell, but when he hears Noah's voice, he comes back to life, blinking away the haze and looking back up toward him with a slight nod.]

What is it?

[casperdisaster]

Just seeing if you were awake. [Since he is, Noah comes by to sit next to him on the stairs. He'said got his arms around himself still. It's been a wild couple weeks.]

This is a creepy place to nap.

[mintly]

[gansey doesn't really know how he feels lately. after everything that happened...well, it was all awful, basically. days and days of seeing his friends dead and dying in every likely way, and then encountering adam's father and whelk have profoundly shaken him, left him almost entirely sleepless and beginning to suffer for it. every time he closes his eyes, someone is bleeding behind his eyelids.

and then there was the person who looked exactly like ramsey, even acted quite a bit like ramsey, but wasn't ramsey at all.

in summary, gansey feels as though he's one enormous bruise, or perhaps a weakened vessel just waiting to burst. going to seek out ronan in this condition probably isn't the smartest thing he could do, but it's better than staring at the walls.

he doesn't really like the temples, but he sits wearily down beside ronan anyway, elbows on his knees. besides the bruise from whelk on the side of his face, gansey just plain looks exhausted. uncharacteristically, he holds a hand out, hoping for the bottle.]

[greywaren]

[Ronan isn't expecting Gansey to follow him, and so it's something of a surprise when the other boy finds him out near the temples and sits near him. Drunk as he is, Ronan's thoughts are pleasantly sluggish as he hands over the bottle and he drags his shoes across the dust of the stairwell, unable to keep still now that he's been roused out of his stupor.

He lets Gansey drink without warning, though the stuff is rather vile, and leans back on the stairs, resting his elbows a few steps higher.]

Did you bring any water?

[mintly]

'Course I brought water. I drink responsibly.

[it's a highly sarcastic declaration, accompanying a grand gesture with the bottle. but he really does have water in his bag, and he hands it over to ronan while he takes a slug from the bottle and then makes a very impressive series of grimaces. whatever it is, it's awful.]

Jesus Christ, Ronan, there's a guy here who can make top shelf alcohol appear from nowhere and you're drinking this?

[he takes another swig.]

Drinking because of course

[notjustinthemirror]

[The Demon is bored. Sure there's new things to fight but even that tires after a while. So he's lit some shit on fire, broken some things, made a mess that someone who isn't him is going to have to clean up. Or not, whatever.

And then he happens upon something intensely familiar. Not the person, this place seems to be crawling with teenagers though, but the action itself. Sitting alone, drinking to get drunk. And in public. Probably because there's a reason this guy can't do it at home. So he wanders over there. To give a helping hand of course.]

What are you drinking?

of course

[greywaren]

[Ronan is drunk by this point, but he's not entirely sure if he's quite to the 'doubting reality' stage of drunk yet. This guy doesn't look human- something about him is just off, and Ronan thinks it's the face maybe, the eyes, and he looks like something that Ronan has seen before- in a dream, maybe, but it's difficult to be sure.

He blinks, the movement drawn-out and exaggerated, like he's trying to force his eyes to focus, before slowly, he lifts the bottle in his hand, demonstratively. It has no label, but it's a murky brownish color, and he shrugs.]

Whiskey, I think. I found it.

[Which is technically true. It's the where that would raise a few more questions.]

Who the hell are you?

[notjustinthemirror]

You think?

[Oh this is already going splendidly. If he could, he'd be smirking. He plunks himself down next to Ronan, looming over people when you were well over six feet tall and build like a linebacker tended to be a good way to get them to run away.]

A purveyor of what you're looking for.

[That being another bottle of whiskey. Fancy that. He sets it on the ground by the kids' feet.]

Closed to Adam

[greywaren]

[It's been a few days now, since the Fear event. Doctor Banner had seen to Ronan's injuries then, not Adam. Noah and Gansey had gone with him to find new supplies, but not Adam. As much as they're not ignoring each other, they also don't seem to be keen on talking any time soon. It's not difficult to realize why, either- what had happened was fucking awful, and Ronan doesn't really know how to deal with it any more than Adam probably does.

Should he apologize for beating Adam's father to death in front of him? Probably. But Ronan finds that he's not particularly sorry that he did it- maybe only that Adam had to see it happen. Does Adam love his father? He shouldn't, but Ronan knows that he misses home, and if Robert Parrish was the only thing from that shithouse of a trailer that could make it into this god forsaken city, then maybe he'd be horrified at what Ronan had done to the man.

He wonders if this changes things between them- if maybe now that Adam has seen the sort of monster he can be, he would change his mind, pull away and take everything back. Ronan thinks that maybe, he could understand that. It would be fair. He's not quite self deprecating enough to think himself unworthy of affection, but he also has no false ideas about what kind of person he is, how difficult it must be to be close to him and see what sort of creature he really is, with everything else stripped away. Adam wanted to wait, wanted to be sure. How can he not be sure now?

All of this makes him hesitate- outside on the balcony that the two of them share, in front of Adam's sliding glass door. The curtains are drawn, but the artificial light from the cave casts his shadow through the window against them. This isn't something that they can go on forever without discussing, but it's also not a conversation that he's looking forward to having.

Ronan stands there for almost a full minute, trying to think over everything he wants to say, everything he wants to do- before finally, he lifts a hand and taps gently on the glass.]

[unknowable]

[He knows it's Ronan. It couldn't be anyone else, not at that door, even if Adam couldn't see his shadow moving against the curtains. He hesitates.

Adam doesn't want to see him, but at the same time he wants nothing more. His guilt has been weighing on his shoulders since it ended, since they walked away from the bodies of Matthew and Robert Parrish. He knows it's his fault. It was his fear that brought forth his father, and his father killed Matthew. It wasn't really Matthew, none of it was real, but that doesn't change the effect it had on Ronan. That doesn't make it better, not really. That doesn't take away the fact that Adam is the one ultimately responsible.

He's been keeping his distance from Ronan in particular, but the others as well. Adam has never known how to unburden himself on others, not really, and this was too much for that anyway. He should have known that getting close to Ronan would hurt him - he did know that, he knew that he's not good for anything but hurting the people around him. He's not as bad as his father, he doesn't do it on purpose, but that doesn't make it any less painful for the people it affects.

If he'd talked to Gansey or Noah, they'd have told him it wasn't his fault, he knows. But they weren't there. They didn't see the shattered look on Ronan's face when Matthew died. Was killed. They can't understand.

But Adam knows they can't avoid this forever. If nothing else, he owes Ronan an apology. And more than that - whatever he can do to make up for the pain he's caused Ronan. If there is any way to do that.

He gets up, opens the door.]

Hey.

[greywaren]

[Ronan knows that Adam is in his room- he's only left it to run off scavenging by himself, to shower or eat quickly and then slide back behind his door like he was never out at all. Uninviting, secluded. Ronan knows that game all too well and as much as it frustrates him, he also understands what it's like to feel the need to lock yourself away, isolated from the people you've hurt or the people who wouldn't understand what you're feeling.

Hell, Ronan isn't even sure if he understands what Adam is feeling, but that's part of the reason for all of this, isn't it? They need to level with one another again, to identify what's shifted between the two of them and adjust. If they can't do that, then... well, things will change. Ronan almost expects them to at this point.

Still, it's something of a surprise that Adam opens the door at all and Ronan tilts his head up a little at the sudden appearance from where he's been leaning on his forearm against the frame. On anyone else, the stance would seem out of place, tryhard- on Ronan, it just serves to make him look profoundly casual, if not somewhat domineering. It makes up for the unease he'd been feeling about this whole thing and gives him a good shot of trying to block the door if Adam moves to close it on him.]

Hey.

[He doesn't try to go in. He doesn't want to invade Adam's space- but this is alright, like this. Ronan is almost expecting Adam to balk and shut down at the next few words, but he's straightforward and blunt all the same, in typical Ronan Lynch fashion.]

You've been avoiding me.

[It's... accusatory, actually, but not really in an aggressive way. It's a statement of fact, a request for clarification- but it's Ronan, so it's not entirely gentle.]

[unknowable]

[He closes his eyes for a moment, takes a breath, and when he opens them again he looks at Ronan, as steady as he can.]

Yeah. I was.

[What point is there in lying? They both know what Adam's been doing. He needed time - time to try to get his head straight, even though that meant time where he saw visions of his father, telling him exactly what he is. That's over, at least, and it wasn't real. It wasn't real, and if Adam repeats that enough, eventually he'll believe it.

He also knows he can't avoid this conversation. Ronan isn't fucking around, he isn't going to let Adam slip out of this with a few distracting words, some careful lies, or an attempt to start a fight instead. And that's okay. Distantly, Adam is maybe a little pleased by it, though he wouldn't be able to put his finger on why.

They might end up fighting anyway, he knows. Ronan deserves his anger, if he has it, after what he went through, but Adam's never been one to just take it. Not from him, anyway. There's a strange freedom in arguing with someone when you know they aren't going to end the argument with a sudden backhand.

Not that Adam wants to argue.]

I needed time. I just -

[He stops, closes his eyes again. He needs to do this, he owes Ronan this. It's just there's no possible way to express it properly. Anything he says will be inadequate, hollow. Nothing that could touch what Adam was responsible for.]

I'm sorry. For - for everything. For what happened. I'm - so fucking sorry.

[He looks at Ronan, just long enough to say that, then he looks away, hand tightening on the door.]

Front Doors are Myths, okay?

[fuwatokurage]

[Since Noah and Adam have given Clear the privilege of being his friend, he wanted to surprise them with something tasty. He knew that he couldn't give them something as wonderful as their own kindness and wisdom of being human, but he still wanted to do something for them. He didn't find he was good at much else other than cooking, cleaning, and singing, so he decided to use one of his skills to their fullest potential even if this place had really weird food.

He had tried for a whole day (the whole 30 hour cycle) to make something akin to a pizza. With a lot of hard work, frustration, trying very awful "vegetable" combinations, and having to find something that worked as flour, he finally did it. He finally made something like a pizza. The color was all wrong and it was hard to tell what the toppings were, but it tasted like a delicious pizza straight from...Japan.

Now it was time to deliver said pizza to the boys. But instead of using the front door like a normal delivery boy, he decided the use the window...again.

Simply opening the window, he made his way inside and started prowling around silently to find the kitchen to cut the pizza into slices and arrange it nicely on the table.]

[greywaren]

[Adam is out scavenging, and he's not quite sure where Gansey and Noah trickled off to. Still, when Ronan hears someone else in the house, he assumes that one of his friends had returned or something and pays it no mind. It's not until he gets up and leaves his room that he realizes that something is wrong- that the guy in their apartment is not one of them.

Ronan goes tense and then drops down lower, hiding himself from view as he creeps toward the kitchen. Chainsaw makes a move to follow him, but he stops her with a quick signal from his hand and she hops back into his room, a little ruffled, but ultimately not concerned. He can hear the intruder now, puttering around in the kitchen. Is he stealing something? Waiting for them to come home to attack? Ronan isn't sure- he keeps the front door locked, but maybe one of the others left it open on accident, and either way, that doesn't change the fact that someone is here now and needs to be dealt with.

He moves as close to the kitchen as he can without showing himself- pressed flat against the wall and right around the corner, and he waits, every bit of him on edge, a spring coiled to snapping as he listens for a moment when he can be reasonably sure that Clear's back is turned.

When it is, he moves, shifting from stillness to a flurry of motion so fast that it should be disorienting. He goes for the other man's shoulder first, gripping tightly at it and spinning him, slamming Clear hard against the refrigerator. He holds him there for only a moment before his gaze slips to the side slightly and he finds the knife that Clear was using to cut the pizza- a little too far away to grab immediately, but good to know about.]

What the fuck are you doing here?

[His voice is a loud, snarling thing, his expression nothing short of an animalistic fury. He presses a forearm against Clear's throat, holding him there tight while he tries to figure out what the hell is going on.]

[fuwatokurage]

[Since Clear is caught totally off guard, there is a moment of panic in his face which is visible this time. He squirms and wiggles around underneath the hold. It hurts, sort of. His pain receptors are telling his brain that he is in pain, but in reality, this isn't doing much damage to him. But still, he is definitely panicking. He makes a small choking noise.]

P-please stop it! Please let go of me...! I am here for Adam and Noah!

[Sneaking in, the knife in his hand, and the fact that he came through the window doesn't exactly speak well for him.]

[greywaren]

[Clear is much more... solid than Ronan had thought. He has a weight to him that doesn't feel like just bones- but that doesn't matter right now. What does matter is the response- I'm here for Adam and Noah- which is possibly the worst thing that Clear could be saying right now.

Of course, there's the implication that he's here for something kinder than- whatever the hell it looks like he's planning with the knife in the kitchen- but Ronan doesn't think the best of people. Instead, it's easy to misconstrue, because this guy broke in and is now doing who-the-fuck knows what.

Ronan makes a quick calculation before shoving Clear hard against the fridge to knock him off balance- just enough to let him shift his feet slightly and reach for the knife- before he's right back where he was, this time with a weapon.]

What do you mean? Why the fuck would you break in to our house?

[You might want to choose your words a bit more wisely, Clear- Ronan isn't quite holding the knife to his throat, but it's definitely present in the hand that he's not using to pin the other boy to the fridge.]