on broken backs we beg for mercy

[deerna]

Rating: NSFW
Fandom: the raven cycle / the dreamers trilogy
Relationship: ronan & hennessy
Tags: Vampire!AU, dub-con, blood drinking, background relationships (adam/ronan, ronan has feelings for gansey, past kavinsky/ronan), a shitton of bad flashbacks.
Wordcount: 13.022 / 12,577 on AO3
Notes: remix of i won't be left here behind closed doors by elliptical

Summary:
What if Hennessy had asked Ronan to come to the party?

Excerpt:

These were the facts: Hennessy was going to get him killed. She was going to ask him to die for her; Ronan was going to bitch about it, and then he was going to do it anyway. He dreamt about walking willingly into it too many times not to recognize it for the prophecy it was. He just hoped it wasn’t going to be that night.

{ read on AO3 | read here }

As a rule, parties were not Ronan’s scene.

Things he liked about parties: the booze. Things he didn’t like about parties: pretty much everything else. The music sucked, chatting with random people he didn’t know never made it on the list of things he did for fun, he didn’t dance in public, and he didn’t like strangers touching him or bumping into him. There had been very specific circumstances in the past, where he specifically turned himself into the approximation of a party person, but his reasons at the time had been very specific, and so were the parties he attended.

This wasn’t that. This was lame as shit, which Ronan was vaguely shocked about. A bunch of not-quite-young-adults scattered on a number of wrinkly blankets in the middle of a public park, a few of them were drunkenly swaying to the crackly beat of some cheap, portable speaker in the middle of the path, where the streetlight painted a yellowish circle of light. Red cups littered the grass and the benches and the trash cans, like some terrible movie. Not what he expected from a bloodsucker potluck.

“This shit is giving me high-school after-prom party vibes.” Ronan wrinkled his nose at the smell of stale weed that wafted in as he climbed out of the car. “What the fuck?”

Hennessy got out of the car so quickly she possibly phased through the door. She still slammed it to make a point, with good peace of Ronan’s fraying nerves. “This clearly isn’t them, shitstain. Can you imagine? We’re in full view of the parking lot. That’s how the hunters get you. It’s bad enough those losers organized this thing on the edge of a public park, of all places.”

“It’s a natural reserve.”

“You’re so fucking boring.”

Ronan fixed her with an unimpressed look. She looked very Hennessy in her tiny lacy top, painted on jeans, white leather jacket, too-high heeled platforms. She looked loud and dangerous and eye-catching, as always, but by now Ronan knew where to look. A tightness in the shoulders, her left thumb chewed to shreds, her smile, which was feral and brittle rather than cocky and bright. She avoided his gaze, her senses turned to something far too distant to be heard by human ears. The pale flowers on her throat moved when she swallowed.

Ronan stopped himself from pointing out how nervous she was.

“Show me to the real party then. I am your plus-one after all,” he said instead.

She bit anyway. Once again moving too quickly for Ronan’s eyes to follow, Hennessy was suddenly right in his face. “If you’re going to give me this attitude, mate,” she snarled, not bothering to hide her fangs, which shone brightly in the streetlights glare, “you can turn this bitch around and leave.”

He almost snarled back. It was such a lie; Ronan couldn’t just leave.

Despite knowing that parties were not Ronan’s scene, for some unfathomable reason Hennessy had wanted him there, with the dogged stubbornness she usually reserved for petty revenge and artistic endeavors. She hadn’t said so; not in so many words. But the fact alone that she’d told him about the party at all was symptomatic. She’d tried to play it down as something casual and random, while she fixed Ronan with a look as sharp as those needles moths were pinned with.

Hennessy knew that Ronan didn’t do parties, didn’t let people fuck with him, and definitely didn’t let unfamiliar vampires fuck with him.

And yet.

They never called, she’d sneered like it was a funny accident, loneliness threaded in every syllable. I didn’t even know they were still alive. Hunter bait, the lot of them, always been, she said while bleeding relief, relief, relief, and a hint of fear, maybe.

Of course I’m not going, how lame is that, she laughed, hollow and strained, the tinny sound ringing with the screech of the hangers she pulled in and out of the closet, while trying the same coats and jackets and dresses over and over. Although, I can just see their faces. They would shit themselves, if I brought something like you to their little shitty potluck.

It was a backhanded compliment, rare enough to give him whiplash. It hadn’t been the flattery that had given him pause. Something. Ronan had broken his teeth on that brand of manipulation over and over again, when it came to Hennessy. The more she pushed him away, the harder he bit down.

It hadn’t been the only reason. (There was a dog joke in there, somewhere.)

By the time she’d switched to pleading, please, please, Ronan, it would be so funny, and God knows you need out of your head sometimes, you should live a little, relax, Ronan had already known he was going to be there, whether he liked it or not.

So much for trying to shut out that part of the world for literally all his life. Hennessy brought that wall down with a rudely aimed kick at his soul. Or some shit. He was still trying to figure that one out.

So Ronan kept himself expressionless. He locked the BMW, shoved his keys into the inner pocket of his jacket, and checked that his boots were laced tightly. “I didn’t drive all this way for nothing. Show me a good time, shithead,” he drawled.

Then he breathed once, deliberately, in through the nose, out through the mouth.

Hennessy stared. She didn’t point out how nervous Ronan was.

*

They walked, and they walked, and they walked.

The trees and the shadows whispered, uncanny and familiar. It reminded Ronan of sleepless, restless summer nights of his childhood, which he spent running away from the twisted, sweaty sheets on his bed, to stomp his way through the woods on his family’s grounds. The only difference was that instead of branches snapping under the paws of unseen critters, the night was filled with Hennessy’s inane chatter and, as they walked closer and closer to their destination, the noise of distant laughter.

Like those nights, Ronan could hear the warning in his father’s voice all too well: These woods are full of vampires.

*

The actual party still looked, in all fairness, kind of lame; but Ronan was now burdened with knowledge, and couldn’t help but feel on edge.

It was like being at one of Kavinsky’s substance parties, with all the dread and none of the fire. Instead of being a parking lot in the middle of nowhere, it was a small clearing in the middle of the woods, not quite in the full wilderness but far enough that it couldn’t be seen from the path. Soft-looking rugs and throws and blankets on the forest’s floor, instead of metallic hoods and roofs, and polyester seats. Warm-toned fairy lights wrapped haphazardly around a few branches lighting up a small area at the front, instead of blinding headlights, unsafe bonfires and the occasional Molotov explosion.

But many things were the same. Ronan caught a whiff of weed, the cloying taste of adrenaline, sweat. Instead of danger and drugs, it was danger and blood.

As soon as they reached the front, half a dozen people excitedly crowded them to greet Hennessy. Vampires, all of them: mostly they were tall, extravagantly clad in leather, lace, tulle and silk, and astonishingly attractive, but in a way that failed to catch Ronan’s eye. There was no point in being so perfect if you looked boring.

“We’ve been waiting for ages!” a pair of women in purple cried at the same time. “Where the fuck were you?”

“Fucking your mom,” Hennessy replied, and everyone cheered. “This is it? How fucking lame.”

“Don’t be stupid, with these plebes? Olly set us up a little further in. But anyway—“

There was banter, some polite insults, some rude compliments, a couple of extremely specific jokes. Hennessy let them lavish her with attention and curiosity, and then she pulled Ronan in the spotlight.

Traitor.

“So this is Ronan. He’s cool.” Hennessy’s smile was wide and venomous.

The vampires tittered. They pressed closer, curious.

Hennessy also got in his business, fussy. A non-existent wrinkle on the front of Ronan’s dark gray sleeveless shirt was smoothed out with a quick touch of Hennessy’s tattooed knuckles, which happened to brush against his bare collarbone. A friendly pull on his jacket sleeve somehow turned his wrists into the light, whitish ancient scars and leather bracelets. A hand on his hip, pulling at his belt loop, revealing a sliver of skin.

Oh. She was showing him off.

Ronan watched the vampires watch him, trying to see what they were seeing: no fresh marks, no bruises, Hennessy’s arm comfortably wrapped around his waist. An offering, but well taken care of. Tame, willing to put up with Hennessy’s shit and her difficult self. Something treasured?. Something. A luxury item, a status symbol. A delicacy, perhaps. Christ.

There was some cooing, some elbowing, miscellaneous commentary. She always knew how to pick them, except Ronan wasn’t her usual type at all, was he? (He didn’t have tits, for one.) (Nothing wrong with that, Calhoun himself had been trying new things lately.) How interesting! How novel. How long did she have him? Did she dress him? How basic she was turning in her old age. Did he talk—?

“No, I’m all bite and no bark,” Ronan snapped, unthinkingly.

Baffled silence. Hennessy’s hand tight around his hip, like a warning.

Apparently he was going off script. Ronan’s guts turned on her like rabid dogs.

One of Hennessy’s friends, a smaller guy in a soft-looking blue suede jacket that had been hanging at the edge of the little crowd, burst out laughing before Ronan could go as far as clenching his jaw.

The baffled looks moved to him, but he didn’t seem worried.

“Well, this makes more sense,” the vampire said in a shockingly familiar, lilting accent. He tilted his head, shaking out a tumbling mess of curls, long just enough to hide sharp, interestingly asymmetrical cheekbones. A pearl earring glinted in the dim light.

He smiled at Ronan.

“Good to know you think I’m still on brand, Calhoun,” Hennessy cut in, a strip of burnt sugar. “So I showed you mine. Where’s yours?”

“You know I don’t kiss and tell.” Calhoun touched a graceful finger to his mouth. He didn’t take his eyes off Ronan. “Let’s do this properly. Show us there, Olympia.”

The party started moving. Ronan’s car keys were burning a hole in his pocket.

*

“When I called it a potluck, I was mostly talking shit,” Hennessy had said earlier while getting in the car, a hour, a geologic era ago. “It’s more like a—tasting. You know, the fancy ones with wine and cheese and shit? Probably not that fancy. That’s beside the point. The point is, are you coming dressed like that? Is that your idea of cleaning up? You might meet something interesting. Someone interested. Have you ever been to a party?”

“I don’t do parties. Fancy or otherwise,” Ronan had reminded her.

“You’re going to make me look bad.”

“Boo-fucking-hoo. Get in the car or you’ll walk to your fancy tasting.”

The night beyond the fairy-light adorned trees was dark, except for the starlight that filtered through the foliage, and Ronan, dressed in blacks and dark grays, was glad to be disappearing into it. Hennessy was a floating mass of white leather next to him, bright even in the gloom; her nerves seemed to have burned away like vampires in the daylight (another lie for the history books), and she chatted and joked with her friends, who surrounded them like glittery, jewel-toned shadows.

“Sure hope to see some flashy cars where we’re going,” Ronan muttered right into her ear, during a lull in the conversation. Hennessy turned just enough so he could see her roll her eyes at him. He blinked back.

They kept walking, brushing against damp bark and stepping over unseen roots. Then the night parted unexpectedly, a blade of warm light cutting through the dark undergrowth around their feet: a tent. Olympia, the tall vampire dressed in brown and dark gold lace-trimmed things who had been leading the party, stopped at the entrance to hold the flap open as she ushered the rest of the group inside.

“Come in, come in, make yourselves comfortable,” she welcomed Hennessy and Ronan. “There’s extra pillows for everyone. Do you drink alcohol, Ronan? My Victoria brought something special for our human friends.”

Ronan carefully avoided jumping out of his own skin when her heavy arm draped around his shoulders. She was so tall she didn’t have to strain at all to reach, which didn’t happen often. “Sure.”

Inside, it was darker than it had seemed from the outside. It once again reminded Ronan of Kavinsky’s substance parties, in mood if not in appearance, except even worse than before. All the dread, and none of the fire; gaudy, rather than fancy. An impression of bodies moving together in the mellow light. Too much skin. No safe place for Ronan to turn his gaze to without getting an eyeful of something he wasn’t comfortable witnessing, without accidentally challenging someone, without making an unwitting advance.

It bothered him. Normally, Ronan would have leaned into the defiance, looking for a fight, to kindle the spark that eventually bloomed into all sorts of reckless behaviors. After enduring a whole night of boredom, gossip and lame chatter, he finally could come alive, and live to regret it.

And he had lived for that kind of adrenaline, the normal kind, the kind that made sense. He’d been hungry for it, to burn the guilty hitch in the back of his brain, the dread that came when you knew you’d been born to die.

At the time, he had thought he would rather die wrapped around a tree in a pile of smoking plastic and metal, fire and alcohol burning in his veins as he bled out on the asphalt, rather than getting torn apart on his family home’s driveway by a litter of vengeful vampires.

And yet there he was. In the beasts’ den. Cowed. Tamed.

Another Hennessy-shaped exception in Ronan’s life.

*

Pillows, blankets. A glass (an actual glass, not a plastic cup) of something golden and fragrant and slightly boozy was shoved in Ronan’s hand. When he tried it, he found it too sweet and much less strong than it could’ve been, which he was simultaneously grateful and upset about. He wanted his wits about him; he wanted to forget about this night as soon as possible.

There was another round of introductions. A few of them were familiar faces at this point: Olympia, still tall and brown and golden, still too close for comfort; Calhoun, now in a very worn out t-shirt with a faded print, which struck Ronan as strangely un-vampire-like, sitting at the very edge of the cushion circle like he didn’t want to be mistaken for one of them; a guy that looked like every douchebag vampire dude in every movie ever made about vampires; the two women in purple that had been bantering back and forth with Hennessy on the way to the tent. They were still at it. Hennessy was so engrossed in whatever it was, she seemed to have forgotten about Ronan completely. His mouth felt full of cotton as he repeated his name over and over.

It was a potluck, as Hennessy had put it, so there were humans in the circle, too. Mostly girls. Mostly half-naked. Mostly uninterested in Ronan, thank God. The only other human boy was asleep, half-hidden in a pile of pillows just out of the way; his shirt was unbuttoned down to the navel, framing the unsightly mess of bruises on his chest like a painting, and he looked dead.

Ronan averted his eyes. He took another swig of his drink so he didn’t have to look at that gratuitous picture of something that felt like it belonged to a mirror, and accidentally drained the glass.

“Do you like it?” Olympia chirped at his side. “Victoria’s cousins brew their own stuff! We have plenty if you want a refill.”

He kept his eyes on the empty glass. “It’s not very strong. What is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know anything about liquor. Some kind of honey-based thing? They’re beekeepers. It’s light, so it doesn’t ruin your blood.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “Hard liquor makes it taste bad.”

Ronan swallowed. Right. Vampires. “Wouldn’t a lot of this make it taste bad anyway?”

She hummed. “It should give you a buzz in a short enough time to be fun for you guys, without making it disgusting for us. A good compromise.”

Her hand landed on his arm, cold even through the leather, and Ronan was startled into looking at her. She pinned him with her gaze; her fangs when she smiled were very visible against her brown lipstick. She reached for the collar of his jacket and started pulling the material away from his skin.

Ronan’s throat closed. His fingers clenched around the cold glass. He could not move.

“Olly.” Hennessy’s voice carried, honey-sweet and marble-cold. “What are you doing?”

Olympia looked away to raise her eyebrows at Hennessy, and Ronan breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth, annoyed at himself. Christ. He knew why he’d come here, what was he shitting himself for?

“You’re such a funny bitch.” Hennessy materialized in Ronan’s space, pushing the taller vampire away with a pointed finger pressed against the copious layers of brown lace on her flat chest. “Did you change the rules on me while I was on my gap year? Last time I came to one of these things, the owner had dibs on the first bite. Granted, it was like, a couple decades ago, and Calhoun never fucking put me on the goddamn newsletter, I always have to network that crap through the grapevine like a fucking animal, but not even the High Council is too high up their own asses to just make away without fucking manners.”

Olympia gracefully gathered herself at a safe distance. “Untwist your panties, my dear. You were busy, and Ronan was nervous. I was just trying to make him feel welcome before the rounds start.” She shrugged pointedly. “You seemed busy. I was just trying to be a good host. Of course you have dibs.”

Hennessy bared her fangs in a silent snarl, and then her face went back to her usual bored, long-suffering smirk. “Fine, since you’re all itching to put your paws all over my shit. Let’s get this show on the road.”

She took the glass from Ronan’s hand, climbed in his lap, straddling his hips, and started pushing his jacket off his shoulders. “Come on, french fry, shit’s in the way.”

Ronan wanted to throw up. “I’m drawing a line at you calling me food-based nicknames while you’re gearing up to actually eat me.”

“Bzzt. Wrong safeword.” She was rolling her eyes at him, but hands were uncharacteristically gentle as she helped him peel the jacket off; she smoothed her cool palms up the sides of his neck, cradled his jaw in both hands.

She looked down at him. Her expression was undecipherable.

Ronan’s sight went blurry. Unexplored territory. They didn’t really touch like that, at home.

Getting her to feed from him usually involved a fight that lasted a couple hours; he’d call her a selfish, spoiled priss, she’d slam the door on her way out of Ronan’s apartment, and she’d open it again five minutes later, cowed and unhappy and too hungry to protest again.

She usually drew blood from the inside of his elbow, clinical and clean and quick about it even when she was starving, the world’s worst nurse. When she finished, she always wore the delicately annoyed expression of a cat that didn’t find their meal up to their standards but that still came meowing loudly if their bowl was empty at dinnertime, and curled up against him to sleep. He’d eventually learned to draw and bag his own blood, since she seemed to put up less of a fuss if she could feed in the privacy of her own apartment. But Ronan sometimes found himself thinking about her, unconscious against his shoulder, boneless and trusting and so, so vulnerable.

Ronan swallowed against her palms. She slipped her fingers to the sides of his throat, and made a thoughtful sound. He still couldn’t read her expression. His blood rushed to his ears.

“Actually,” she announced. “I think I’ll take you from behind.”

Ronan groaned. “Jesus Mary.” Amazing how Hennessy could get him from tense to irritated in a single breath, how she could make relief feel like a pool of hot piss.

Her smile was blinding. “I promise I’ll be gentle. This would be your first time, right?”

She had never bit him on the neck, not really except the one half-attempt: Ronan had flinched so hard, out of some deeply-buried instinct rearing its head, she’d never tried it again. He forbade himself from wondering if she had forgotten, or if she didn’t care anymore.

“Please, stop talking.”

“Alright, alright. Scoot forward a little, I need some room.” He missed her, while she got up and maneuvered herself at his back. Without her hiding him from the room, every single gaze was turned on them. Vampires apparently liked to watch, even if they tried to keep an appearance of indifference. When Hennessy had said Let’s get this show on the road, he hadn’t realized how literal she was being.

The bite came without warning: the world’s worst nurse had turned into a real vampire while Ronan wasn’t looking, with fangs sharp and long and lethal. He choked.

It hurt. It hurt, but it also burned clean, like a swig of clear alcohol, like the smell of tires heating on the road, like the whoop that burst from your lungs when you sped above the limit. Time tilted, collapsed on itself, caving in like rotten wood. It morphed into long nights of shared loneliness and unprecedented belonging. Ronan let himself sink into the tar-pit, joyous, ferocious oblivion of it. Then, an ice-cold surface of (fire, screams, vampires) hit him at neck-breaking speed; his body, disconnected, seized. Panic tasted sour at the bottom of his lungs. Ronan inhaled, quick and sharp through his nose; forgot to exhale. Hennessy’s hand cradled his throat, while the other pressed up against his stomach. I got you. You’re not going anywhere. A promise, and a threat. Ronan was trapped, and he was safe.

He came to with a sob caught in his throat and shivers wrecking his spine. Hennessy licked his neck one last time, then pulled him against her side with an arm wrapped around his waist. He gritted his teeth, trying and failing to stop the trembling, refusing himself the comfort of her solid, if cold, presence. His fingers were claws tangled in the material of his jacket.

She gave him a squeeze. “Hey loser, remember to breathe.”

Air rushed out of Ronan’s lungs, out of his mouth. He forced himself to blink, instead of squeezing his eyes shut and never opening them again like he wanted to.

He touched his neck, afraid of what he would find; but the wound was small and shallow, the blood on his fingers thin and barely there. He’d been nibbled on. Why did he feel like he’d been turned inside out like a dirty sock? He had no idea what was happening on his face right now. Everyone was still watching, burning eyes and shining fangs. Even Calhoun had excused himself from his self-imposed exile of indifference.

Ronan opened his mouth, and shut it again, so stiffly that his jaw clicked.

Smooth.

He tried to come up with a sarcastic comeback. He could not. A variety of truthful remarks pushed against his teeth: that was different, that was terrifying, what the fuck was that, that changed me fundamentally as a person and I’m not even sure if I’m being ironic, that was something that definitely shouldn’t have happened in public, especially in the presence of hungry vampires, Jesus God, Hennessy. He was angry, in a very distant way that he couldn’t quite access. Which was as well, since he couldn’t afford to be angry right now.

“That was all?” he settled on, making an effort to sound as rude as humanly possible. The shakiness in his voice ruined it.

Hennessy’s expression was once again a blank mask. She slapped on a cocky smile that looked like a crappy bumper sticker. “Are you disappointed?”

“Still waiting for you to show me the good time I was promised.” That was possibly too honest. There were only so many jokes he could varnish on top of the truth.

“I’m sure someone will manage to get your rocks off, the queue of people that want to try you on is longer than Starbucks’.” She gave him a pat on the back, and knelt up on the cushions. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back later for a romantic, passionate blood-letting. Be good now, daddy’s got stuff to do.”

Ronan stared at her. “You have blood on your top.”

The smear on the white lace was brilliant and vivid like a brushstroke. She dabbed at it with her already bloody ring finger, and made a show of licking it off. “For the journey.”

It was hard not to feel like he was being left behind for the millionth time, as he watched her stand up and walk away.

*

For someone who had tried to jump Ronan’s bones not a minute earlier, Olympia was oddly polite about her turn.

She asked him permission to bite him on the wrist, because she had noticed the scars on his arms while Hennessy was “having him” (her words), and she had taken a liking to them. When Ronan had allowed her to, she’d touched the marks with reverent, lingering fingers, before putting her teeth into them.

Ronan rarely thought about the cuts anymore, hidden by leather bands and the passing of time, but it was as if Olympia’s bite had impossibly pulled the scabs off. Gravel embedded itself in his bones, acid burned his tongue, silver flashed cold and sharp against his flesh with slick echoes of warmth. Declan’s expensive jacket soaked black with blood. It left Ronan with tears in his eyes, shaking, disturbingly, with relief.

Olympia didn’t notice that Ronan was struggling to catch his breath again, or possibly she didn’t care. “You bruise beautifully,” she praised him instead, in a conversational tone. Her fingers went back to his scars, smearing a few drops of blood. Dark halos were already forming around the bite marks; Ronan’s neck must have been a sight. “You’re awfully sensitive, too. Hennessy doesn’t bite you all that often, does she?”

“She does,” Ronan lied, defensive. He flinched at the croak in his voice. He pressed the heel of his hand against his face, willing his eyes dry. “Not just for fun, I guess.”

She seemed surprised, almost impressed; then she schooled her expression into something more long-suffering. “What a waste. Intact skin is beautiful, but if you were mine I wouldn’t let an inch of your body go unmarked. On the other hand, such flavor, so close to the surface after just one bite… She’s probably right in wanting to savor it. Still…” She seemed wistful for a moment, but then she shook herself off. “You look like you could use something else to drink. Why don’t I get you a refill?”

“Thank you,” he said, quickly. He hoped it didn’t sound too much like he was trying to get her to leave.

Her smile was knowing, still stained pink with Ronan’s blood. “You’re too tense. You’re supposed to let it flow through, feel the rush. It’s worse if you try to step away from it,” she advised, pitched low just for him.

Ronan gritted his teeth, but nodded.

It was such a stupid thing, getting angry at someone’s kindness.

*

It was a bit of a blur after that. He would have blamed the drinking, but it was mostly because Ronan didn’t want to focus on anything hard enough for it to make an impression on his mind, and because everything was happening so much.

Hennessy’s banter twins had grown bored of her at some point, and had decided to come over and check Ronan out instead. There had been no sparkling conversation with them; they had barely addressed him at all, before pushing him chest down onto the pillows to press symmetrical pin-pricks of pain into his shoulder blades. Their afterimage tasted, inexplicably, like the bubble of alienation that came with every lunch break at Aglionby during the spring months, sour after-shave and nerve-grating shitty pop music.

Douchebag dude stopped squeezing girls long enough to grab Ronan by the shoulders and manhandle him flat on his back. Rough hands lifted his top, fangs sank into his hip bone, and then it was Kavinsky pressing him in the seat of his Mitsubishi, knee heavy against his crotch, the buckle of his belt biting his sternum, sweat and shame fogging up the car windows. Ronan drank more, to wash down the bitter aftertaste of powerlessness, and remembered the dead-looking boy laid across the pillows.

Vampires from other corners of the tent had started coming closer, curious about the commotion. Most of them seemed content to watch, to press curious hands against his tattoo while someone else dug out ghosts of some terrible, forgotten scrap of emotion from Ronan’s past with their teeth.

Time turned kind of meaningless. It was probably going much quicker than it seemed, but Ronan really couldn’t keep it straight, between the sting of pain and the emotional whiplash. Hennessy had been watching earlier, he could feel her gaze on him from time to time, but he couldn’t anymore.

Strangers, and vaguely familiar faces, and strangers again. His ears pounded so hard he couldn’t hear his own thoughts. Let it flow through you, had advised Olympia, but Ronan could never take the dive, chickening out at the last second when he saw the deep waters.

At least no one was biting him on the neck, Hennessy’s ugly bruise keeping everyone away like a curse, or a blessing.

A tiny girl bit him on the pad of his thumb; it made his breath catch, as he and Matthew tumbled through the grass with the cows, sharp blades of fragrant vegetation staining his fingers, Latin bursting on his tongue with green verses. A blond woman spilled all the memories of his mother carding her fingers through his curls from a wound in his shoulder. An older man with intense eyes held his hand and looked at his fingernails for a full minute, then pricked the flesh of his palm, sending a spasm of pain up his whole arm. Ronan’s heart pounded in time with skinned knuckles and cocked guns and free your mind of whimsy, Ronan.

Ronan whimpered.

“Alright, alright, folks, halftime. Everyone, take a step back, or I’ll make you!” Hennessy’s voice sing-song-ed in his ear. He turned his head towards the sound, and a stained lacy white top filled Ronan’s vision. “We’ll resume content shortly, hit the like button, don’t forget to subscribe, et cetera. Piss off and thank you!”

Ronan’s ears rang with a strange silence as the vampire crowd backed off.

“Jesus wept,” Hennessy hissed. Her palm was cold on his cheek. “Come on, stud, get up.”

She sat him up with no effort at all (he didn’t remember lying down), helped him back into his shirt (he didn’t remember taking it off) and draped his jacket over his shoulders (he hadn’t noticed she had it).

(Were his boots still laced? They were. Thank Christ.)

One moment she was frog-marching him through a sea of pillows and people, and the next they were outside, really outside, in the open cotton-y summer night, under the stars.

Ronan crouched on the forest floor, not caring about the damp leaves sticking to his pants. He wrapped both hands behind his neck, and breathed, in and out, in and out, open mouthed and half drowned. His ears were still ringing. His mouth tasted like remembered bruises and blood.

Hennessy’s long, white-clad leg pressed against his shoulder, cool and comforting.

“Try not to hyperventilate, shithead. You good?”

Despite everything, her voice calmed him down a little. He leaned against her leg, and touched the fish scales on her ankle. “I’ll live.” He felt so pathetic. So pathetic. “Good thing I gave up on my dignity somewhere on the drive here.”

“I appreciate it.” She reached out and brushed the buzzed hair at the back of his head. “I’m sorry my friends freaked you out for a moment there. I forgot you’re not used to it, should’ve kept an eye closer.” Her concern sounded genuine. “What was it?”

Ronan bristled, too seen. He considered lying, just to balance things out.

“My dad,” he admitted. His voice was a ruin.

“Oof, yikes.”

“What’s up with the boulevard of broken memories?”

“I thought growing up in a family of nerds like yours would have given you special insight.”

“It didn’t,” he snapped, like every time she thought she could just mention his family. He forced himself to let it pass. “It’s fine. I would’ve liked a warning, that’s all.”

Hennessy hummed, noncommittally.

“Ah.” Ronan smiled, mirthless. “You’ve done it on purpose.”

“I did say I appreciate it, didn’t I?”

The stars above them lit up the sky. It was very pretty, very familiar. Very alien, too. He missed home.

“Was it worth it?”

Hennessy paused. “I probably will never be able to repay you, honestly.”

Truth. Ronan’s bones itched and his guts flowed with ashes, but something inside him unclenched, satisfied. “Don’t get mushy on me,” he mumbled, leaning his temple against her leg and closing his eyes.

*

Ronan still didn’t fully understand the thing he had with Hennessy.

Obviously it wasn’t sexual, nor romantic; there had been absolutely zero doubts about that. He could hear Niall sneering about vampire pheromones, but even Ronan, who had never really paid attention to his father’s lessons, knew that those were old wives’ tales. Besides, he had known that there was something weird about them even before the first bloodletting; something deep in Ronan saw Hennessy and swore his blood and his life to her.

It didn’t make sense until it fucking did, and that was all there was.

These were the facts: Hennessy was going to get him killed. She was going to ask him to die for her; Ronan was going to bitch about it, and then he was going to do it anyway. He dreamt about walking willingly into it too many times not to recognize it for the prophecy it was.

He just hoped it wasn’t going to be that night.

*

Against Ronan’s every prediction, talking to Hennessy had actually done him good. He felt stronger, more centered, though his skin still crawled when the vampires touched him, though he still had to focus on his breathing when their teeth sank in his flesh.

So of course, three bites in, Ronan’s sanity was threatening to leak out of his ears again.

He didn’t know if it depended on him, whose walls had been crumpling on themselves like cheap foil since the evening started (since the week started, since the month started, since the year started); he didn’t know if it depended on vampire instincts that naturally drew them to the deepest membranes of his subconscious (don’t think about it, just live your life, don’t think about it). With each drop of blood, new emotions, sharper and more difficult to ignore, spilled into his mind. For some goddamn reason, dreams of light and laughter and love left him shakier than gritty, gory, painful ones.

Ronan ran. He managed to stop the next vampire in line, pulled himself on his feet almost without help, found and put his jacket back on on his own, and ran. A little dazed, with a rude fist squeezing his insides at every step (waving away Hennessy’s questioning looks from a distance, he was fine), the ground wobbling under the soles of his (still safely and properly laced) boots, Ronan took himself outside.

He only took a few steps away from the entrance, sitting just at the edge of the square of warm light projected on the forest floor. Beyond, darkness. He almost regretted leaving his phone in the car.

It really was a nice summer night. The air felt good against Ronan’s skin; like when he used to lie on the hood of his father’s stolen BMW after getting too much to drink. Making him feel light-headed, breaking up his blood. Thinning his juices.

Ha. Juice. He’d been dreaming of juice, hadn’t he?

Orange juice, and mint, and old paper. Boyish hands and motor oil and green growing things. Cars, cars, cars. Light and laughter and giant windows. Hands on his neck and palms against his mouth. Road trips and long distances. One-sided phone calls (you cannot lie if you don’t speak). Shapeless promises. (Love.)

Ronan’s heart ached. (Don’t think about it.)

He breathed in, he breathed out. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

“Ah, there you are.”

Ronan didn’t even flinch when Calhoun emerged from the shadows, more wraith than vampire. He walked up to where Ronan was, unhurriedly, and then sat himself cross-legged right next to him, getting his light-wash jeans dirty. The blue suede jacket draped over his shoulders looked more purple than blue in the yellowish light from the tent, and it made him look unreal and bold at the same time, like Hennessy’s strangest paintings.

“Already needed a break?” Calhoun said, teasing. He tucked a few curls behind his ear. The light glinted off the pearl earring half hidden in the shadowy halo of his gold-touched hair, off the rings on his fingers. He had really nice hands.

Ronan was staring. He looked away. “Everyone knows smokers need to take breaks every half hour.”

“Huh. Do you smoke?”

Ronan grimaced. “No.”

He didn’t know why he said it. Many people assumed incorrectly that he did; Gansey used to find it hilarious for some reason. He often teased him for it; Ronan often punched him in the shoulder, told him that no vice was worth having if it didn’t come with hangovers. That’s why I have you. And Adam. He never said that part aloud.

(Don’t think about it.)

Calhoun snorted. “I really don’t know why everyone was so surprised that Hennessy likes you.”

“Stop insulting me,” Ronan replied, mildly. “Are you trying to get me to go back inside so you can keep watching the show, or are you here so you can skip the line?”

Again that explosive, surprising laughter. The vampire leaned closer to whisper into Ronan’s ear, hair brushing against his neck. “See, this is why I like you.”

Ronan repressed a shiver. He cocked his head, bravado and sneer. “You like them rude?”

Calhoun smirked. “You actually use your brain and you’re not afraid to speak your mind.”

“I’m not sure my professors at Aglionby would agree with that first part. I’m a high school dropout, you know.” What the fuck, Ronan, shut up. The words stuck in his throat, jokes cutting at his vocal chords.

“I’ve been a scholar for longer than you’ve been alive, and I can safely tell you that school doesn’t matter all that much.” Calhoun’s eyes twinkled. His beautiful hand touched Ronan’s arm. “May I show you something that really matters?”

Normally, Ronan would’ve laughed himself sick over such a cheesy line, just before punching the guy in the teeth. Tonight, all he could think of was how Gansey had knocked their shoulders together when Ronan had told him something along the same lines (school isn’t all that important, you’re so talented in other ways, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine, Ronan—), how Adam had shaken his head while he sheepishly played with the corner of his acceptance letter to Harvard (just because it’s my thing, it doesn’t have to be your thing, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine, you’re going to be fine, Ro—)

“Knock my boots off,” Ronan croaked, in the yawning absence.

He accepted the help of Calhoun’s hand to pull himself on his feet, and to be led into the absolute darkness. They walked, Calhoun’s steps sure through the undergrowth, and Ronan’s uncertain behind him; from time to time his feet caught on invisible roots, cold fingers tightening around overheated knuckles the only thing helping him to keep his balance. For a few minutes, Ronan’s world was only that touch, the sound of twigs snapping below, the creak of trees above and around. Even the blood rushing in his ears sounded far away.

By the time they arrived at the clearing, the same place Hennessy had dragged him to earlier, where the trees gave way to the sky, where the stars shone so bright Ronan’s eyes could actually focus on the shapes of things, Ronan was (tired, scared, on edge) wrung out.

The edges of Calhoun’s rings carving grooves in his palm as he squeezed his hand.

“Isn’t it nice? You can’t see these many stars in the city, nowadays.”

It was nice. “Reminds me of home.”

Calhoun’s thumb ran over his knuckles. “Yeah?”

Ronan pulled his hand away, uneasy. He sat down, his back against a tree; he pushed himself against the bark, sharp and rough and grounding, feet on the ground and bent knees, knuckles white around his kneecaps. The laces on his boots were coming undone. He ignored them. He looked at the sky.

“Where’s that?” Calhoun’s voice was the wind whispering in the trees. “Your home?”

Split between Harvard, some forest in the middle of nowhere Utah, and a tent two hundred feet away.

“West Virginia,” Ronan enunciated carefully. “Family farm out of town. Big property.” He didn’t look at Calhoun as the vampire slowly knelt between his bent legs. He didn’t move, even if he wanted to. His voice cracked just slightly. He looked at the sky. “Stars like that, if you aren’t afraid to walk in the dark for a while.”

“Are you afraid?” Calhoun asked. His hands were on Ronan’s wrists.

“No,” Ronan lied. “I do it all the time.”

Calhoun huffed a chuckle. “I know you have no reason to believe me, but I am not going to hurt you.”

Ronan scoffed, pretending he couldn’t feel his own blood pulse against the vampire’s fingertips. “Listen, man. It’s fine, you’re very much not the first one to bite me tonight and you won’t be the last, there is no need to butter me up. I am not afraid, it’s just been a long night. Let’s get this over with.”

Calhoun cooed, and his thumb traced the bump on Ronan’s wrist. “You haven’t enjoyed yourself at all tonight, have you?” The sympathy in his voice seemed genuine. “I know you saw me look at you. You don’t like getting bitten in front of people, do you? But it’s okay. You can relax. Nobody is here, see? Just us, and the stars.”

He pressed closer, bringing Ronan’s hands against his thin chest. “It’s not supposed to hurt,” he told him in a low voice, like he was sharing a secret. He touched Ronan’s face with light, careful, cold fingers. “Let me make you feel good, Ronan.”

The bark at the back of his head was sharp and rough and grounding. Restless memories pressed against his ribcage, tantalizing and razor sharp. Calhoun was cold and immovable against his bones. Ronan looked at the sky, eyes stinging, and nodded.

Calhoun ran a palm over Hennessy’s bite, immune to whatever superstition had made all the other vampires avoid it, before gently turning Ronan’s head to expose the unmarked side of his neck. Ronan felt him brush his lips against the skin there, soft and ticklish and nerve-shattering; then his teeth sank into his flesh.

A burst of blinding pain.

Gansey found him in the bathroom. He took the scissors from his hand, careful and firm, the muscles of his face avoiding doing complicated things under the skin. He pushed Ronan to sit on the closed toilet, and started working at the mess of his once-curls, now a ruin of cropped hair, soon to be buzzed stubble. The blades brushed close to his skin at each snip—

Adam talked over him with a perfect translation, the Latin rolling off his tongue like he’d practiced in his sleep; he turned towards Ronan, colorless and blinding in his carefully maintained Aglionby uniform, a fox-like smile on his dry lips. That smile chasing Ronan home, inside his car, under the shower—

Gansey’s hair were soft under Ronan’s hand, a forbidden touch encouraged by the sleeping head leaning on his thigh at fuck ass o’clock in the morning. A glimpse of tan collarbones down the neck of his polo. Ronan breathed, in through the nose and out through the mouth, took Gansey’s glasses off, and ached—

Adam’s face went slack under his lips when Ronan closed the distance and finally kissed him. His childhood bedroom didn’t seem big enough to contain the emotion that was bursting from his chest. They kissed again. Warmth burned in his guts, and lower. They kissed again—

Ronan sprawled artfully behind the wheel of the Pig just as Gansey pulled the door open, a scolding ready on his tongue. He watched him take him in, he watched him find out that he didn’t mind what he was looking at with a thrill in his stomach. Gansey’s hand clasping the nape of Ronan’s neck—

“Fuck, Ronan,” Calhoun gasped and laughed against his skin. “I barely tasted you. Look at you.”

Ronan wanted to scream. His lungs were uselessly collapsed in his chest. His heart and his head pounded so hard he couldn’t tell which one was going to explode first. He couldn’t feel his hands, or his legs.

There was a cold hand slipping in the waistband of his pants.

“Wait—” He grasped at Calhoun’s wrist. It was like trying to dislodge a ten ton marble statue. “Wait—”

“Are you close? You felt pretty close.” The vampire licked his neck. His hand found Ronan’s dick (he was hard, how didn’t he realize he was hard?) and he yelped, surprised. “Oh, my. Forgive me, I don’t do this with men a lot.”

Helplessness to Ronan already tasted like gasoline and illegal drugs. He didn’t need blood added to the mix. “Please—”

“Shh, it’s alright.” Fingers wrapped around him, jerking him off with a little awkwardness. Every stroke was both relief and agony. A whisper against his lips: “I got you.”

In hindsight, the kiss was the worst part. Ronan would remember it later, in excruciating, guilty detail. How wonderful it had felt, for a smattering of seconds, relaxing into it, moaning into it, opening up for it. Hunger and desperation and loneliness were momentarily erased by the easy physicality of it. And then he had tasted the emptiness, the lack of mint and green growing things, (the shame, the shame, the shame—).

Ronan jerked beneath Calhoun, uselessly attempting to curl away from his touch, away from his preternaturally steel-solid grip. He rubbed, kicked, toed at the soil with his foot until his boot came off, until he saw a tell-tale glint tumble out from beneath the laces.

His fingers wrapped around the hilt of the needle-thin silver dagger, and stabbed the blade deep in Calhoun’s thigh.

The vampire’s screech reverberated through the trees as Ronan sped away in the woods, death on his heels.

*

All Ronan could do was run.

It was useless. It was so dark he almost rammed into a tree multiple times. His right boot was missing, left behind. Vampires could move so quickly it basically counted as them being able to teleport.

All Ronan could do was run.

It was doomed. His neck bled. His back bled. His arms bled. Training warned that bleeding was lethal, during a hunt. If you were bleeding, it was no use to hide. If you were bleeding, your last chance was to fight for your life.

All Ronan could do was run.

Every single fiber of his body told him to. Half an hour ago he could barely hold himself upright; now he was prey. High on adrenaline. Hysterical with panic. Death nipping at his heels. A terror so profound it didn’t even register as fear. Beyond consciousness.

His body gave up, eventually; he stumbled, grabbed a tree to keep himself from faceplanting in the undergrowth, his hand sticking to the bark like glue. His back hurt, his foot hurt, his neck hurt. He was shivering so hard his teeth chattered. His brain was white noise. His brain was howls. His brain was stuck in a litany that sounded a lot like a string of Hail Mary.

Next to him, a voice said: “Hey, shithead.”

A dying animal’s last bet: Ronan swung in the dark.

He missed, but Hennessy still yelped. “Woah, Jesus! It’s me, you asshole. Shit, you’re bleeding worse than I thought, I knew that Calhoun was a pig, but—”

Ronan tried to say something, but his throat closed before he could articulate. A horrible choked sound came out instead, a bad mix between a sob and agony. Christ.

“Okay,” Hennessy said. It didn’t sound okay. “Okay. I’m bringing you to the car.” Ronan could not see her, beyond a blue-black shape in the blue-black darkness. “I’m going to touch you. Try not to bite my head off and keep a handle on your dinner.”

Her hands on his shoulders were as cold as Calhoun’s had been, and Ronan panicked, tried to jump away from her hold . She didn’t relent; her grip tightened. Ronan’s stomach swooped.

When he blinked next, his eyes opened on the parking lot outside the natural reserve.

“Well done,” Hennessy said, exaggeratedly chipper, releasing him. “You can puke now. Away from me and my nice white outfit, if you can.”

The harsh glare of street lights glinting off the BMW’s windshield hurt Ronan’s dark-dilated pupils. He closed his eyes again. He focused on balancing on uneven footing. “I don’t need to.” The asphalt under his socked foot was smoother than Ronan’s voice, but at least it was words.

“Be my guest. Last chance not to paint the insides of your car, but hey, it is your car.”

His car. He watched Hennessy unlock it, open the passenger door and hold it open for him, expectant. He could see her face now, her eyebrows raised at him.

“My keys,” he said.

“I have them. I also have your jacket.”

“You’re not driving my car.”

“You currently can’t tell your ass from your elbow. I’m driving your car. Get in.”

Ronan didn’t budge. He was afraid that if he moved one step in any direction he would just crumple in a messy heap of something extremely pathetic, but she didn’t need to know that. “You’re not driving my car.”

She didn’t like that. Her patience fizzled out. “Get in the car before I make you, Lynch.”

Ronan managed to fold himself into the passenger seat without accident, and kept very still when Hennessy slammed the door closed. His pulse throbbed in his throat.

She climbed into the car next to him. “Seatbelt.”

“Seriously? Fuck off.”

“Seriously. If you pass out and you fall on me I’ll crash the goddamn car. Seatbelt.”

Ronan gritted his teeth and pulled on the seatbelt. He could feel Hennessy’s eyes on him as he struggled and failed to fasten it. A scream of frustration buried itself in his lungs. Hennessy leaned over and fastened it for him. She started the car.

Nobody spoke for a long time. Ronan leaned back against the headrest with his eyes closed until the itch on his skin turned into a sting. He glanced at Hennessy, her white outfit pristine and blinding except for the bloody smear on the curve of her neckline. Ronan’s blood.

“Did you kill them?”

She cursed, and roughed the gear change. “I thought you were asleep.” She glanced back at him, a wrinkle between her eyebrows. “Who?”

Curly hair and blue suede. Kind smiles and brown lacy shawls. Purple twin dresses. Ronan swallowed. “Them.”

Her frown deepened for a moment, then smoothed out in understanding. “Should I be flattered that you thought I might be able to take the whole coven by myself, or should I be worried about blood loss-induced brain damage?”

She didn’t kill them, then. “Where. Where are they?”

“I don’t care? Probably still at the party. We’re the ones who bounced early.”

As if they’d just decided to go. Because they were bored. As if she hadn’t had to come looking for him in the middle of the woods. He sank back in the seat, focusing on his hitching breath until it smoothed out. A spidery ache crawled across his skin, from bite to bite, joining the puncture wounds like a strange constellation.

“I stabbed Calhoun.”

Saying it out loud made it somehow more real. The hitch in his breath wasn’t leaving.

Hennessy snorted. “Oh, I know. Trust me, everybody knows.”

Everybody knew, and Ronan was trapped in a moving car with another vampire, and couldn’t fasten his own seatbelt. His nose dripped. He dried it on his wrist with an angry swipe. “Am I–?” Dead. “–in danger?”

“What?” Hennessy laughed, the sound more open and then suddenly more strained. “Are you kidding? Everyone loved that! Buddy, you stabbed a member of the high council, those musty old fucks haven’t seen this much excitement since the Boston Tea Party. You’ll be the talk of the decade! Hell, of the century! Sure, everyone briefly freaked out because smell of vampire blood all of a sudden, but then Calhoun walked in holding up this silver dagger like it was the best thing he ever touched like, Hennessy oh my God, I think I’m in love. By the way, what the fuck, I know your family was all hunters but where were you keeping that?”

A member of the council. Jesus Christ. “I wasn’t going to come to a place full of vampires unharmed,” he snapped. Drip. Wipe. “That’s just plain stupid.”

“I absolutely agree and you actually did awesome, good job,” she said too quickly, the praise weird in the strained, frantic voice that was pouring out of her. “No, really, that was fucking awesome, although when I decided to bring you with me I was just hoping for you to make me look good, not steal my thunder.”

Ronan sniffled angrily. “Fuck off.”

“Sorry, I’m being a dickhead because you’re freaking me out. I’ve never seen you cry, please tell me you’re fine.”

His whole face and hands were wet at this point. “I’m fine,” he said, obediently.

Hennessy politely didn’t scoff. “Right. Thank you.” Conversational, low, almost soft for her standards. Good thing Ronan was already crying. “Listen, will you tell me what really happened? Calhoun didn’t say. Did he startle you when he bit you? Did you have a bad flashback, is that why you stabbed him?”

“No, I stabbed him because his hand was on my fucking dick, his tongue was in my fucking mouth, and he wasn’t taking no for a fucking answer.”

Hennessy slammed the brakes. She stared ahead for a moment before fully turning towards Ronan.

“What the fuck.”

Ronan bit his tongue, immediately regretful. He turned away. “Don’t make it weird, man.”

“It’s already weird. What the fuck. Christ. Really?”

“I said, don’t make it weird. Drive.”

“I’m not making it weird, I’m just going to tear him apart limb by limb.” She said it very calmly, which was somewhat worse than her cheerfully frantic distress from earlier. “You know, like that cheesy garlic bread thing? I know you saw it, it was very popular on Youtube.”

She was probably kidding, but Ronan couldn’t help the ice flooding his lungs. He was already failing at keeping himself together, he really didn’t have it in him to deescalate a murderous vampire. “God. It doesn’t matter.”

“Ronan.” His name in her mouth was such a rare occurrence, it shut him up more effectively than anything else she could’ve said. “Of course it fucking matters.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he insisted. “I could be dead. You could be dead. I’m still not convinced we’re not on borrowed time and that we’re not getting hunted for sport later, but I trust you know your—friends better than I do. I’ll believe you if you say we’re going to be fine.”

“Ronan—”

“I am upset,” he admitted, “but that’s all.”

“Okay, let me put it in asshole vampire terms: you’re not his. He shouldn’t have touched you. Not in that way. None of the guests had permission to do more than drinking from you. It was evil, it was rude, and it was illegal.” She pointed a finger at him. “And the fact that you are upset just gives me more ground to have him punished.”

But Calhoun had asked, and Ronan had said yes. Ronan had said, Knock my boots off, and Calhoun had done just that. It wasn’t Calhoun’s fault, if Ronan had panicked in the middle of things. Admitting that felt even worse than admitting that Calhoun had touched him at all.

“Let me put it in asshole human terms: I prefer upset to dead.” He let out a shaky breath. His face had finally stopped leaking for the moment, it seemed. “I don’t want you to go against the fucking high council because some guy touched my dick for two seconds and I wasn’t into it. Could’ve been much worse.” He wasn’t going to mention the kiss. “Let’s just go home.”

Hennessy’s face did something extremely complicated, but she didn’t comment. She gripped the wheel, pale tattoos and gray knuckles, and started the car again.

*

Ronan punched the release on the seatbelt as soon as he glimpsed their building from the window. He pushed the door open before the car stopped moving, and Hennessy slammed the brakes on instinct with a stream of confused noises and curses. Ronan climbed out, slammed the door behind himself, shutting Hennessy’s alarmed yelps behind him.

The sky above the town was devoid of stars, milky with light pollution and the threat of dawn. Impossible to say what time it was (Ronan’s phone was still somewhere in the car), but he hoped it was late enough, not early enough for him to meet people on the stairs.

The climb was agony. His body complained at him at every step. The deep exhaustion that had cut his legs in the woods had lifted somewhat, but different discomforts pulled his awareness in different directions: his skin was splitting along invisible seams, his stomach churned with a nausea that hadn’t ruined Hennessy’s outfit or his father’s car’s expensive upholstery, but was threatening to make a mess of his boot-and-sock, and his clothes felt disgusting, soaked with things he didn’t even want to think too hard about.

By the time he arrived on his floor, two flights of stairs later that had felt more like two hundreds, Ronan was sweating so cold he was shivering with it.

Hennessy was already there, leaning against the door to Ronan’s place with her arms crossed on her chest, indolent and unimpressed, his apartment keys dangling from her little finger. “You forgot these.”

Ronan crossed the six feet between the last step and her smug boredom, grabbed the keys from her hand as pointedly as he could without looking into her face, shouldered her aside, and finally got into his goddamn apartment. He tried to pull the door closed behind him, but Hennessy slid in after him.

“Fuck off, Hennessy,” he said, too tired to put any real heat behind the words.

“What, are you angry at me now?”

Nevermind that, the heat was on. “Yeah,” he snapped, pushing at her. The untruth immediately stung. “No,” he tried again. That didn’t sound true, either. “Fuck, I don’t know. I’m just pissed, can you— can you fucking leave me alone?”

She didn’t budge. She closed the door behind her, pointedly, choking out the light from the hallway. Creeped out by the complete darkness, Ronan blindly smacked the light switch on.

“Fuck!” Hennessy cursed behind him, startled by the sudden brightness.

“Fuck,” Ronan muttered, also startled. His knuckles were covered in a thin, flaky crust of dried blood. He couldn’t tell if it was his or not. Had it been there the whole time? He couldn’t think about it.

He bent down to unlace his surviving boot (breathe in, breathe out, do not vomit, do not think), toed it off, kicked it next to the wall where it usually lived with its now lost twin, and made his way inside the apartment. If he ignored the blood, it was just another late night return; if he ignored the squelch of his wet sock against the floor, it was just another sleepless night; even with Hennessy muttering behind him, it was just another night Ronan spent thinking about everything he was denying himself.

“Hey.”

It was routine, automatic gestures he could do in his sleep: walk to the kitchen, get a cup from above the sink (real glass, cold against his hand, a smile coated in brown lipstick—stop thinking about it), fill it with water from the tap, drink. Leave the empty glass on the counter, seven steps to his room, two steps to the bathroom, click the lights on as he goes.

“Dipshit, are you listening to me?”

Peel one sock off (a little sweaty, mostly clean), peel the other sock off (dirty, soaked in grime and mud and—not blood, surely), ball them up, throw them in the laundry bin. Take off his shirt (ignore the ache in his shoulders), throw it in the laundry bin. Push jeans past his hips (forget the feeling of cold fingers below his belly button), throw in the laundry bin. A responsible human being, an adult.

Another sleepless night, a little sweaty, mostly clean.

A corpse looked back at him in the mirror over the bathroom sink. Blood and bruises on his neck, down his chest. He looked dead, half-hidden in a pile of pillows just out on the driveway, surrounded by bloody clumps of hair, shreds of fabric, fragments of the bathroom’s cold light bouncing off the tiles. Gansey wasn’t there to cut his hair for him, to hold his hand, to grip his throat. Ronan turned the tap on, washed his hands. Left a smear of dirt on the sink. Turned it off. Stepped away and out, walked right into Hennessy.

“The fuck are you doing still here?” he snapped, startled. He’d forgotten she’d followed him in. He’d forgotten where he was.

Hennessy frowned at him. Her outfit was dirty now, a vague stain of whatever grime Ronan was covered in. “Are you going to let me help you, or not?”

“I’m fine.”

“For someone who never lies, you sure are full of shit. Come on.”

He didn’t put up a fight this time, when she put a hand on his arm and pushed him back into the bathroom. She sat him on the edge of the bathtub, his feet inside, right-foot muddy imprints on the white porcelain. He let her bully him into pulling the shower head down for her, and he let her turn the water too cold, before smacking her away and adjusting it himself.

“Do you have some disinfectant? Plasters?”

“Plasters,” Ronan echoed, shaping his mouth around the unfamiliar word with a sneer. It came out in his father’s accent. The joke wasn’t funny anymore. “Over the sink.”

He listened to her rummage in the cupboard behind the mirror, felt her cold hands on the nape of his neck. He made the water hotter, watched his skin turn pink in the steam. A drop of blood beaded up from the bite mark on his wrist, sluggish but present. “Why am I still bleeding?”

“Vampire spit thing, don’t worry about it. Are you trying to hard boil yourself? You egg.”

Ronan lost himself in her swift, light-handed motions: a swipe of warm wet cloth over grimy skin, the sting of disinfectant, papery noises of band aids being unpackaged and peeled, the aching pressure of their sticky, rubbery material sealing over wounds. He dripped water on the tiles when she had him turn around to do his front.

He couldn’t remember when he'd started feeling so comfortable about having her in his space.

She was bent over the bite on his hip — an ugly dash that had blossomed in a bruise that made Ronan’s stomach flip — when she spoke again. “I told them who you were, you know.”

He stared at the pale tattoos on her knuckles, at her fingers smoothing out the bandage over his hip bone. “What?”

Hennessy straightened up, turned to the sink to wash her hands, and leaned into the mirror to fix her lipstick. The reflection of her face was hidden by the span of her tight shoulders. “I told them I was bringing Niall Lynch’s son to the party.”

It took Ronan a moment. His father’s name always worked like a spell, like ancient words belonging to a dead language; it had unpredictable effects on him, but he could imagine that mentioning it to a vampire would make the temperature of the room drop drastically. Too many of them had lost kin to Niall Lynch’s hands.

He hadn’t cared to hide from Hennessy, at the time. She’d been dying, and he hadn’t cared about staying alive.

(It seemed so long ago. It wasn’t.)

“To be fair, they probably knew already. I don’t think they would’ve bothered reaching out otherwise,” she continued. “But I went along with it because I knew they weren’t going to kill you.”

Her bored, matter-of-fact drawl wasn’t as smooth as it usually was.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re being all quiet and mulish and shit. I hate that brand of anger on you, it’s fucking with me.”

Ronan laughed. It wasn’t an amused sound. “You want me angrier? Make me yell at you?”

“No,” Hennessy said, a bit more like herself, cocksure and infuriating. “I’m just telling you the truth.”

Ronan was truly wearing only a pair of boxer briefs and a bunch of sticky bandages.

“How did you know they weren’t going to kill me?”

“How can I put this? You’re some good kush.” She was still pretending to fix her makeup in the mirror. “Vampires are a vengeful bunch, but most of all we’re opportunistic. Sure your dad’s body count is the stuff of nightmares, but you wear emotions just right under your skin. One nibble can get a motherfucker high for hours. There’s no vampire who loves killing more than getting a good hit.”

“You hate biting me,” Ronan pointed out. “And it never felt like— until tonight.”

“I lied! And I was being polite! You were keeping me fed, I wasn’t going to take advantage and scare you off.”

“Ah, so that’s why you took a chance on your murderous friends, and let them do it instead.”

“Whatever, God forbid girls do anything. Listen, believe it or not, we had the upper hand there. We could’ve put up tickets to sell and everybody would’ve paid up without even blinking. You did me a huge service, I wasn’t fucking kidding when I said I appreciate it.” She finally turned around. She looked embarrassed, which wasn’t something Ronan had ever seen before, and which made him feel embarrassed in turn, like he was witnessing something he shouldn’t. “They were all so impressed. Calhoun was so impressed and envious he went and committed a crime— fuck, that is still fucking me up, are you sure I can’t murder him? Not even a little?”

“I’m sure.” Ronan let out a shaky breath. “I never thought I was going to end up as a vampire’s beard. Declan’s going to have a stroke.”

Hennessy snorted, closed the toilet’s lid, and sat on it like a queen on her throne. “What Declan doesn’t know, won’t kill him.” She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. “Now out with it.”

Ronan carefully got up. His legs held. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Hennessy pointed a finger at him. “It’s that Latin thing you said the other day, isn’t it? Do ut des.” Her lips bent awkwardly around the words.

Ronan pressed his lips together. A favor for a favor. “I hate when you do that.”

“Because I’m pretty and talented, and you’re a sad, angry hater!” Hennessy hollered, tossing her hair.

“Yeah, it’s because of that,” he muttered, unwittingly shaken up. Latin didn’t belong to Hennessy’s world—it was Ronan’s, and Gansey’s, and Adam’s, and he didn’t know what to do with her creeping in.

He stepped over to the sink, taking a deep breath as he made himself look. The face inside the mirror was just Ronan’s. Alive, if barely. He had ugly, fresh bruises down both sides of his neck, on his chest, on both arms, and if he glanced down he could see more mottled marks down his chest, down his stomach, half hidden by little beige-colored strips of bandaid. It was a much better sight now that the dried blood had been cleaned off his skin.

“So, are you going to tell me who you’re angry at?”

Ronan shrugged. “Myself, I guess.”

He waited for Hennessy to ask another question, but the only sounds in the bathroom were the inaudible fizz of the shitty light bulb overhead and Ronan’s blood drumming in his ears.

He kept staring at himself in the mirror. One of the bandages, the one just below his jaw, the one that covered the most recent bite, was already peeling a little. His skin itched, Ronan’s fingers itched to pull it off, to see the damage under it, to make it bleed again.

“I know it’s my fault,” he snapped. “I could’ve told you to shove it, but I didn’t.”

As a rule, parties were not Ronan’s scene— because shit always happened at parties. He went to parties because he wanted to feel alive, because he wanted to set himself on fire, and he always came back with a new wound to lick instead, a new scab to pull out over and over, a new scar to hide under the leather. It was always the same, but Ronan never learned.

“It’s not your fault,” Hennessy said. “Why did you come to the party?”

What a fucking stupid question. “Because you asked.”

It was so quiet, Ronan could swear he heard Hennessy blink. “Really?”

“Yeah.” He smiled at his reflection, a painful show of teeth that looked more like a snarl. It didn’t reach his eyes. His face was still vaguely blotchy from before. “I guess it’s been too long since anyone needed me for anything, so I got excited.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “Look, this is stupid. I’m going to bed.”

Hennessy’s gaze burned a hole in his back as he left the bathroom. He turned all the lights off as he went. In the blinds-filtered streetlight glare, he shuffled towards the unmade bed, throwing himself on it without bothering to straighten the sheets. It was kind of uncomfortable, with the bedding half-balled up under him like that, pressing into the tender spots on his skin, but something about the self-inflicted discomfort felt right, righteous, familiar.

The mattress dipped. “You’re going to catch a cold. At least wear a goddamn shirt.”

“Shut up,” Ronan mumbled in the sheet.

Cold fingers cupped the back of his head, dug into the tendons at the top of his neck.

“Spill it, chips,” she said, gently. Too gently.

Ronan’s throat felt tight again. “Hennessy.”

“Share the drama or choke on it. I tasted loneliness when I bit you earlier. Is this about one of your boyfriends? Both of them?”

Ronan closed his eyes, curling up on himself tighter.

It was about his boyfriends. It was about wishing that it was Gansey’s hand on his neck. It was about Gansey not being his boyfriend. It was about dreaming about Adam’s boyish hands on his mouth. It was about Adam being his boyfriend. It was about Hennessy guessing there were two of them. It was about Hennessy being right about something that was wrong.

It was about Adam and Gansey texting him. It was about Ronan typing a reply (it sucks, I miss you, please come back) and deleting it. It was about Ronan sending the same five texts over and over (tamquam, alter idem, bored but also busy, busy but also bored, im sorry). It was about Ronan answering a call, and not really speaking at all. It was about having been a dead weight in Adam and Gansey’s life for so long, he didn’t know how to be anything else. It was about feeling needy and clingy and guilty.

It was about drinking and lying about it. It was about not being at the farm, and lying about it. It was about living with a vampire, and lying about it.

It was about loneliness and safety. It was about almost succeeding to erase oneself, and getting impossibly scared about it, and regretting it. It was about his father dying, his family crumbling, his teenage years fading. It was about life lessons delivered through punches and unwanted touches. It was about light and laughter and love and loss.

It was about wanting someone to kiss him so he could have an excuse to hate himself.

It was about—

“I miss them,” Ronan croaked, and it was the worst thing he could have possibly said. It didn’t even start covering the issue. It described the issue too perfectly and too honestly.

“I know how this sounds like, coming from me,” Hennessy said, her thumb stroking the bristly stubble on Ronan’s head, “but maybe you should call them?”

Unthinkable. Impossible. Highway to the apocalypse. “You’re right. You sound like a goddamn joke.” He dragged himself in a kneeling position, and batted her hand away. The sudden change of direction made him dizzy. “Shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my apartment. I want to sleep.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Hennessy said, kicking her heels off and sprawling on her back on Ronan’s comforter. “Go drink some water first, or you’ll have a hangover from hell tomorrow, mark my words. The crap flowing through your system now is not just alcohol.”

“Terrifying, thank you. I didn’t want to know.”

“Ronan.”

“I had some water earlier. Get out.”

He glared down at her. She stared up at him. He breathed in. He breathed out. He lied back down. Hennessy pulled a blanket up, and covered him with it before wrapping her arms around him, one hand pressing up against his throat, the other against his stomach. I got you. You’re not going anywhere. A promise, and a threat. Trapped and safe.

Ronan closed his eyes, and went to sleep.