Chapter Text
Ronan sank deeper into the plush couch and, as he slipped into a mellow high, had to admit he wasn’t having an awful time. The room he sat in was cavernous, but the smoke still managed to put a hazy mist on the dimly lit basement, indicating just how much had been imbibed in at the party. That may have been why he felt like a large weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Even as he knew it was temporary, he was grateful.
It wasn’t the first time Ronan had attended one of Kavinsky’s home parties, but it was the first time he’d stayed more than an hour. He couldn’t put his finger on the why behind it all, but he didn’t feel the itch to leave that he usually got after spending too long with Kavinsky. If he had to guess he’d say it was because Kavinsky was being strangely tolerable. He hadn’t mention Gansey or made any similarly bitter jabs all night. He’d actually been fairly quiet. There was definitely something going on with Kavinsky, and it slightly unnerved Ronan, but the weed took the edge off and allowed him to ignore whatever malaise it caused.
As people trickled out of the room, leaving Ronan and Kavinsky alone, Ronan kept subtly glancing at him, trying to figure it out. Any other time, Kavinsky would have noticed, commented on it, and caused Ronan to flee, but that didn’t happen. Kavinsky just sat silently, staring off in the distance, only paying attention to Ronan as far as passing the blunt back and forth. Taking the rare opportunity to examine Kavinsky only led to more questions. Like why he was wearing a hoodie.
On anyone else it would’ve been an absurd thing to question, the house’s high ceilings created a draft after all, but on Kavinsky it was fair. He had various forms of one outfit as far as Ronan was aware, so he didn’t know what to think of the hoodie that practically swallowed Kavinsky’s alarmingly thin frame. His glances grew longer and longer, and he couldn’t help but think Kavinsky looked soft. He knew Kavinsky would’ve pulled a gun on him if he mentioned as much (and God – how fucked up was it that he found that attractive) but there was no other word for it.
He wasn’t ready for any of those thoughts though, especially as high as he was, so he tried to come up with something – anything – to make the normal Kavinsky come back. Casually, he demanded, “Tell me a secret.” Ronan had asked in the hopes that Kavinsky would laugh at him or snap something cutting in response, but neither happened. Instead, Kavinsky looked at him in consideration. Ronan felt pinned on the spot, instinctually still, but unable to tell whether he was the predator or the prey.
Then Kavinsky looked away, picking at a string on his sweatpants (another anomaly Ronan was just noticing), and answered quietly, seriously, “I’ve never had real sex.” He looked back up, daring Ronan to respond, but Ronan was just relieved that some of the normal steel had returned to his eyes
Still, as visions of various girls sitting shotgun in the Evo flashed in his head, he had to ask, “What?”
Kavinsky’s response was defensive, “What?”
“What’s ‘real sex’?” Ronan felt like a middle schooler, but he shook it off, pretending the question was more mockery than confusion.
Kavinsky gave undue attention to flicking the ash off the end of the blunt but eventually looked at Ronan and answered. “You know ‘consensual’ or whatever.”
His use of air quotes temporarily distracted Ronan, but when he fully comprehended what Kavinsky had admitted he was overwhelmed with disgust and rage. He stood up abruptly and spun to face him. “What the fuck?!” He didn’t give him a chance to respond. “You sick piece of shit!” Without thinking about it he punched Kavinsky in the jaw before grabbing him by the collar and throwing him to the ground.
When Kavinsky didn’t move to fight back Ronan just stared down at him in revulsion. The vents hummed, the veins of the house, and Ronan took deep breaths but they didn’t help when all he could think was that Kavinsky more than likely blamed his victims. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t call him out on it. “You may tell yourself it’s not your fault, but I want you to know there’s no one to blame but yourself.”
He knew Blue would have been proud of his integrity, but Ronan could only focus on the fact that he’d been falling for a rapist. He hadn’t been prepared for the burning feeling it brought. “Die and go back to Hell.” He meant to leave it at that, walk away and never look back, but as Kavinsky refused to look at him Ronan fell further from the edge of sanity. He started beating him some more, unable to contain his anger, and still Kavinsky didn’t fight back. Ronan only stopped when Kavinsky curled in on himself, blood slicking his face, and even then, it was difficult. Just as he reached the stairs he turned back and said one last thing. “If I ever fucking see your face again I might fucking kill you.”
Ronan wasn’t a liar.
The trip back to Monmouth was a blur, but he was pretty sure he’d be getting a nasty letter from Henrietta’s transportation department in the mail. With his stomach feeling as heavy as it did, that was the least of his worries. He made it up to the bathroom, for once glad Gansey was visiting his family, and threw up. It wasn’t like he’d been in love with Kavinsky, but he’d definitely felt something. Worse still was that, that very night, he’d been considering confessing as much. Now, he was ever grateful for his hesitance as he climbed into bed and tried to ignore what he’d learned.
It felt impossible to sleep and it hurt to try, but he must have been successful, as he was woken up. He would have ignored the person pounding on the door, but then he heard Jiang call out to him unkindly. His anger from the prior night, mixed with a new sense of curiosity, propelled him out of bed.
As soon as he opened the door Jiang barged in and slammed Ronan against the nearest wall, as if Ronan was in the wrong. Jiang, though larger than Kavinsky, was vastly outweighed by Ronan. Unfortunately for Ronan that didn’t mean much when he had a knife placed right over his kidney. Ronan snarled at him but before he could say anything he was shouting.
“What did you say to him?! What did you say?!”
Ronan wanted to refuse to respond out of spite, but his anger wouldn’t let him. “The truth! That he’s fucking disgusting!” When Jiang pushed the knife in slightly, Ronan eyes narrowed dangerously. “Stop fucking defending him! It’s his own damn fault!” At the look in Jiang’s eyes Ronan’s anger flickered like a candle in the wind, tempered by a genuine concern for his life, but it was only temporary. “Why the fuck are you defending a motherfucking rapist?!”
Jiang looked at him like he was crazy. “K’s not a rapist!”
The superiority Ronan felt from knowing more than Jiang was sick. “He fucking told me himself!”
“What exactly did he say?”
Ronan was begrudgingly impressed by the way Jiang’s words went from violently angry to stone cold. Still, he was sick of the position and Jiang’s slight distraction gave him the upper hand. In one sharp twist he switched their places and held Jiang to the wall by his throat. “He said he’d never had ‘consensual’ sex. What the fuck do you call someone like that? A friend?”
Then, for the first time in a while, Ronan got the wind knocked out of him as he was shoved onto the hard floor. No one else would’ve been able to best Ronan like that, not even Declan, but Jiang was skilled. He also had a knife, as Ronan was unkindly reminded by its uncomfortable proximity to his dick.
Jiang gritted his teeth so intensely that Ronan could hear them creak. His words dripped ice. “He told you about his father and you said it was his fault?” Ronan was very confused, but Jiang didn’t pause to explain. His voice rose, and the ice flamed. “You said he was disgusting?!”
“What the hell are you talking about?! He didn’t say shit about his dad!”
The punch Ronan got in response didn’t clear anything up, but when Jiang spoke, voice no less toxic, it started to click into place. “No wonder he tried to off himself as soon as you left.” Jiang then took his knife and slammed it down right next to Ronan’s head, nicking his ear in the process, and stood. He dusted off his jeans and grabbed the switchblade from where it had slid on the cement, kicking Ronan viciously for good measure, before storming out.
Ronan heard Jiang’s car screech away, but he stayed on the floor, staring over at Gansey’s Monmouth model. It was crystal clear what Jiang had implied, but Ronan’s mind refused to cooperate. He watched the dust motes float around the small town and, only when he remembered Kavinsky’s earlier comment, did the truth hit home.
Some nights you just take it.
Maybe he hadn’t meant stealing.
Consent is overrated.
Maybe he’d been trying to tell Ronan the entire goddamn time.
He ran to the bathroom for the second time in less than 24 hours and was sick again, but for a very different reason. If it was true, if Kavinsky’s father had done … that … and Ronan had responded how he had, then he was an objectively terrible person. As he knelt over the toilet, he debated whether or not he should pay Kavinsky a visit.
On the one hand, Kavinsky probably – definitely – didn’t want to see Ronan, but on the other Ronan needed to clear things up. In the end, after too much soul searching, he decided to go see him. He would have liked to believe it was because he thought explaining the misunderstanding would make K feel better, but it was by-and-large a selfish decision. The truth was that, though it’d only been an hour, the guilt was eating him alive. He knew in his marrow that he wouldn’t be able to take much more.
Though he drove to Kavinsky’s house slower than usual in an attempt to come up with something to say, he arrived with no idea how to go about apologizing. Gathering his resolve, he exited his car and walked up the driveway. He was reaching for the door handle when it suddenly moved backwards. Swan walked out, soccer-duffle bag slung over one of his shoulders and paused mid-step when he saw Ronan. Without hesitating, he dropped the navy-blue bag and lunged. The opposite of Jiang, he was powerful but unskilled and Ronan didn’t have much trouble pulling him off and gaining distance.
Swan panted, not in exertion but rage, and yelled at Ronan. His booming voice shocked Ronan. As laid back as Swan was, he shouted like a man possessed. “What the fuck, Lynch?! What the absolute fuck?” They were questions, but they weren’t. “Who the hell do you think you are showing up here?” He stepped forward and shoved Ronan roughly. Ronan stumbled back but didn’t retaliate, letting Swan yell. “He’s in the hospital because of you and you show up to his house?”
“What?” Ronan felt dumb.
“He’s in the hospital because you made him want to die.” Swan’s hysterical laugh was humorless. “It’s almost like you told him to kill himself!”
Ronan had forgotten about that until then and he must have been unsuccessful at hiding his guilt, if the way Swan shook with fury meant anything. “Tell me you didn’t, Lynch.” Ronan couldn’t lie, but he didn’t respond. “Tell me you didn’t!” When Ronan still didn’t reply Swan accepted his silence as an admission. “If I’d been two minutes later, he would’ve bled out and you’d be a murderer.” The anger hadn’t dissipated at all from Swan’s tense form, but he just rammed his shoulder into Ronan hard enough to bruise and went to his car.
It screeched away, drifting around the corner, and Ronan sat down hard on the front porch. He put his head in his hands and his palms grew wet with the tears that slipped out, unbidden. Before last night he had had enough guilt to last him the rest of his life. Now he had enough guilt to live twice and not be free. He felt his phone buzz and checked it, hoping against hope that Kavinsky had called to forgive him, to remove the boulder from his chest, but it was just Gansey. Thinking of how Gansey’s face would twist if he knew what Ronan had done just made everything that much worse. He rejected the call and turned his phone off before anyone else could call.
He sat there for a long time, until the sun was high in the sky, and replayed what Swan and Jiang had said. It swirled in his mind, creating a twisted headache, but eventually he realized Kavinsky might not come back that day. He remembered the bag Swan had taken from Kavinsky’s house and felt like an idiot.
A pit formed in his stomach as he realized he’d have to visit Kavinsky in the hospital if he wanted to see him. For a moment he considered abandoning his plans, but he knew that he’d simply suffer until he returned to the same verdict. He fought the weight that had settled in his bones and pulled himself up.
The walk to his car was difficult and starting the engine was arduous, but he did it and somehow made it to the hospital. He sat in his idling car doing his smoker breath and then pulled himself out violently when it became obvious, he was as prepared as he would ever be.
It had been a long time, but not quite long enough, since he’d been at the hospital, and even longer still since he’d been there as a visitor, but he knew the routine. He got his badge and followed the signs to the room number the suspicious receptionist had reluctantly given him. The room was situated at a corner and as he rounded the hall he almost ran into Jiang. He and Proko stood outside the entrance to the room and glared at Ronan, tense as guard dogs.
It was clear that Jiang was still livid, a live wire and an obvious threat, but Proko was even more troubling. In all their interactions Prokopenko had been nothing more than a dull drone, content to spinelessly follow orders. Now, though, he looked like a different person. He was silent but his hyperventilating, shoulder shaking, barely suppressed rage, let Ronan know he was only quiet because he was too angry to speak.
Jiang had no such problem. “Leave.”
“No. I need to see K.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you ‘need’’, Lynch.”
“He deserves to know I didn’t mean it!”
“He deserves to never have to see your face again.”
“After I tell him.”
“Oh, fuck off! You don’t get to apologize to make yourself feel better and fuck him up even more.”
Ronan winced at the truth behind the statement but didn’t give up. “I have as much a right to be here as you!”
Prokopenko found his voice and spoke before Jiang could respond. It was low, conscientious of being overheard, but it was no less intense for it. “You know you may have broken him, right?” He glared at Ronan until they locked eyes. “After everything that’s happened to him, its you.” It was painful to be compared to all the other villains in Kavinsky’s life, but it wasn’t inaccurate. “It’s almost impressive, honestly. You should be proud.” The words felt like a punch to the solar plexus, their truth winded him, and it showed. Proko was merciless. “Better yet, you should take your own advice and fucking kill yourself.”
Ronan couldn’t respond, choking on his shame, but it became unnecessary as Skov joined them in the hall. The disgust with which he looked at Ronan reminded him of how he’d felt about Kavinsky the night before. His words made him feel like vermin. “For some fucked up reason he wants to see you.”
Jiang looked surprised. “He spoke?”
Skov huffed disparagingly. “Barely.”
Their talk created an opportunity for Ronan to enter Kavinsky’s room, but they’d purposefully spread out and didn’t move to let him by; he squeezed by them without mentioning it and entered the room anyway. He couldn’t see Kavinsky behind Swan’s large form, but soon enough Swan turned to glare daggers at him and ‘accidentally’ step on his foot on his way out. He’d left them alone though, so Ronan couldn’t complain.
He still hadn’t thought of anything to say and, when he saw Kavinsky, he rued that fact. It had been hard enough imaging talking, apologizing, when he was alone, but this was so much worse. He really needed something to fall back on.
Kavinsky sat in the bed, knees pulled up to his chest, and looked even more foreign to Ronan than Proko had. The usual bravado, the grandness that was Kavinsky, was gone. In its place sat a boy, bruises and cuts made all the more pitiful by how pale he was.
Just mere hours ago, Ronan wouldn’t have ever even considered considering Kavinsky fragile. Now, seeing him with an IV pumping fluid into his veins, bandages wrapped on both forearms tellingly, it was impossible to deny. Ronan’s eyes couldn’t help but focus on the colors bruising Kavinsky’s gaunt cheeks, courtesy of last night’s misplaced anger.
Time ticked on and Ronan felt the pressure to speak, but apologizing was hard. Still, he’d seen movies. He could start simply. “I’m sorry.”
Kavinsky snorted mirthlessly. “Don’t be.”
“K –”
“You were right. There’s nothing to fucking apologize for, so drop it.” Kavinsky still hadn’t met his eyes, but it was obvious he meant what he said.
“I didn’t know, I didn’t mean it … I just thought you were saying you did that to other people, not –“
Kavinsky laughed, surprised and deranged, “That’s so much fucking worse.”
“What -”
When Kavinsky finally looked at him his eyes were filled with more pain than Ronan could stomach. His voice was too quiet, too young to be the Kavinsky Ronan knew. “You honestly thought I’d do that?”
“No, I was just high.” The snort he received told him Kavinsky, intimately familiar with all types of intoxication, didn’t buy the excuse. He had to say something to make him understand it had been a mistake. “How was I supposed to know what you meant?”
Kavinsky spoke more to himself than Ronan. “You thought I could do that.”
He didn’t sound angry, instead resigned. Ronan wished he would yell or scream, blame Ronan for all he was worth, but he didn’t. Listening to how empty Kavinsky sounded clawed at Ronan’s rib cage like a night terror had burrowed there. “I couldn’t just guess your father had raped you.”
Ronan had spoken as gently, as empathetically, as he knew how, but Kavinsky screeched as if he’d been mocking him, “Shut up!”
Ronan’s eyes widened, and he tried to back pedal. “I didn’t mean it was your fault. Fuck. K, I just said that cause I –“
“Shut up about shit you don’t know!”
That was a hard point to argue, but Ronan felt obligated to say something after the damage he’d caused. “It couldn’t have been your fault. That’s what I was getting at last night … just … I just had it the wrong way.” It felt awkward to say, but Ronan knew he was right. “Rape victims never –”
As soon as the words left Ronan’s mouth, Kavinsky put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes, blocking him out.
Ronan was dumbfounded by the reaction, completely lost. Before he could try to dig his way out of the hole he was in, a nurse and an orderly came rushing in. The nurse hurried to Kavinsky’s side and the orderly walked up to Ronan.
“Time to leave.” The threat wasn’t glaring, but there was no mistaking the orderly’s tone.
With one last glance back at Kavinsky, Ronan walked out, followed closely by the man in white. He didn’t argue the matter, secretly, guiltily, grateful to have an excuse to leave. It was hard to gain his bearings, as adrift as he was in these foreign waters, but he found enough control to walk through the tribunal of Kavinsky’s friends without looking at them.
The orderly marched him outside and stood, arms crossed, by the door until Ronan made it to his car. When he got back to Monmouth, a shell of himself, he made it to his room and locked the door behind him. After using all his energy to close the black-out curtains and kill the lights, he crawled into bed and hid under the covers.
Some hours later he heard Gansey return, let him knock on his door and try to cajole him out, but didn’t move. He wanted to reach for the liquor under his bed, but he didn’t. Or maybe he couldn’t. He didn’t deserve the reprieve it would bring. He had tried to pay penance to Kavinsky, but how could he be forgiven if Kavinsky refused to blame him for what he’d done? Later, he’d go to church and try to repent, but he knew God would never forgive him until he made amends with K. A passage echoed in his mind.
Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you//leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
It had always been the hardest verse for him to follow (especially with a brother like Declan clouding his mind), but now he couldn’t bear the pain of being left without forgiveness. More words cluttered his mind and felt like scripture.
After everything that’s happened to him, its you. He deserves to never have to see your face again. It’s you. That’s so much fucking worse. It’s you. It’s you. It’s you.
Eventually, he gave in, too weak to bear the pain, and grabbed some bottles from his stash and drank deeply. He passed out and the nightmares were as bad as ever, but he didn’t regret sleeping. Given the choice he’d stay there and ignore reality and the worm of self-hatred devouring him from his very core.