[for ronan]

[formicine]

It takes Blue a while to get to Cabeswater, and walking that length of time eases some of the frustration and second-hand hurt she's feeling under her skin. There's something about being alone outside that, when she isn't just getting herself home after a long day at work, eases the tension in her muscles and settles her thoughts.

She's angry with him: angry for him hurting Adam so badly, frustrated that he's sullenly avoiding everyone, that he can't see what he's doing. But she also has an idea of Ronan, and she's not going to let him build up his walls and drop out of their lives more and more, not without saying something.

"Ronan?" she calls, feeling the slightly weird shift as she steps across where the woodsy areas of Darrow end and the sentient forest begins. She can hear the leaves rustle; they always seem to be talking, to her, even when they're not.

"You know where he is, don't you?" she addresses the trees, grumbly, and not really expecting anything from them.

The cool air warms, a little, as she goes further in, peering around.

Comments

[thedreamthief]

The trees know before Ronan. They always do, their leaves rustling under an invisible breeze, whispering in shushed tones.

It's not Kavinsky, that much is obvious. The trees have a very particular tone and cadence when he comes wandering by, the agitation palpable. It's not Adam either, again obvious if for different reasons.

When Ronan looks up from where he's bent over to fiddle with the strings of a guitar, he isn't too surprised to see Blue. But surprised enough.

He arches an eyebrow. "Looking for something?"

[formicine]

Ronan's leaning over a guitar, restringing it, or something, brow furrowed in concentration, and Blue pauses for a moment when she comes around the corner. She's used to Ronan always doing something -- fiddling with his bracelets, fucking with the radio station, tossing something in his hands or to Chainsaw. But she's never seen him with musical instruments. Here, maybe especially here, in a magic wood, there's something very focused and almost timeless about the act.

Then he looks up, and gives her a look, and he's just a dumb snarky teenager, one she's sort of pissed at.

"You, actually," she says quietly, and sits down on the forest floor, ignoring the dirt on her jeans, across the guitar from him. "Can you play that thing?"

[thedreamthief]

Blue sits right in front of him, perched with her hands in his lap. Focused.

He continues twisting each tuner one by one, thumb plucking the corresponding string until he's satisfied, his eyes never leaving hers. Then he rests his hands across the body of it.

"There's a lot you don't know about me, Maggot," he tells her, but there's a hint of a smile on his lips. Just a hint. "What do you want?"

[formicine]

Blue looks right back, uncowed by Ronan's steady gaze, and listens instead as the strings resolve into fourths and thirds of each other. When he's done all five coordinate, resonating clear and harmonic against Cabeswater's echoing branches.

"Especially lately," she says, but it's without animosity. "You don't think it's subtle, you making yourself scarce, do you?"

She shakes her head. "Adam's pretending like he's not hurt, but he is; you're acting like we don't need you, and we do."

[thedreamthief]

"What exactly do you need me for?" Ronan asks, eyes narrowed now.

He ignores the first part completely, ignores the sharp twist of guilt in his gut. It's not like she's telling him anything he doesn't already know; Adam's hurt had been an obvious, palpable thing. Ronan has regrets, Ronan lives with fucking regrets, but his only regret right now is that he'd let himself ever take more than he should, more than was ever his to have.

"I'm not the fucking Greywaren here, man. Not really. There's nothing I can do, man."

[formicine]

"Is that why Gansey made friends with you?" she parries. "Because you were the Greywaren? We aren't co-workers.. Adam didn't talk to Cabeswater when we all met. We didn't even know Noah was dead."

"That's not what I mean when I say we need each other." She ducks across him to the guitar head boldly, tunes the second string from the top way down, loosening it with an audible twang as it goes flat.

"I'm getting really sick of people hanging onto how shitty they feel about themselves like it's more important than anything else."

[thedreamthief]

Scowling, Ronan yanks the guitar away from Blue's grip, fingers curling over the tuners protectively.

"And I'm getting sick of people not minding their own goddamn business," he snaps. It's unfounded, honestly. No one's really spoken to him about Adam since it happened, just shooting him vague glances of irritation and disappointment. She hasn't really said that's what this is about, but Ronan's not a fucking idiot. Why else would she care enough to come looking for him?

"How about you tell me what is important, maggot," he says, eyes piercing. "Bequeth all your fucking wisdom unto me."

[formicine]

Well, the guitar strings seem to be a metaphor that have flown right over Ronan's damn head.

"I guess we're both screwed, then," she says back in a deadpan that's usually reserved for the less creative pickup lines leveled at her at Nino's.

Blue rolls her eyes, incredibly close to losing her temper. "I thought friendship was important. I thought sticking this out was important. You don't care about me -- fine, you don't know me as well as you could -- but Gansey, Noah. Adam.. They love you and you're treating them like shit. For what. To prove what." She doesn't look away, though his eyes bore into her and she feels uncomfortably like she's gotten herself into a contest.

[thedreamthief]

"Gansey's just as fucking lost in this place as I am," Ronan snarls. The guitar in his lap feels like a shield. A shield against Blue of all people which is a fucking joke all by itself. "And Noah has Krem and half the fucking town to be his friend."

Adam, Ronan doesn't mention, the name sticking in his throat.

"It's not like I've fucking disappeared. I'm still here. I haven't gone anywhere. I'm around for the important shit, around when we need a new goddamn dryer or shower curtain or whatever. What the fuck is it you think I'm trying to prove? I'm here. That's all the fuck I can do."

[formicine]

He's not wrong about Gansey, probably. As much as Blue might try not to see it, might try to patch it or encourage him in his pursuits. It's true of all of them, maybe least Noah, finally in a place where people can see him. But they're foundering. Is this all they're good for? What the hell do seekers do at the end of a quest?

"Around," she echoes. "In that other city, I watched everyone - you, Gansey, my mom - everyone -- die. Noah had to kill Whelk with his own skateboard, Adam had to watch himself turn into his father and apologize to us for it, and now that we're back you're around for the important shit like picking out curtains."

She pushes herself to her feet in one motion, not going anywhere really, just too frustrated to stay still, and she reaches up to a low hanging branch, standing on tiptoes. She's still too short to reach it, fingertips scraping the lower part of the branch. If she imagines hard enough, maybe Cabeswater will drop it closer to her.

"You really hurt him, you know?" she says, and squints at the tree like maybe she's not talking to Ronan if she does that.

[thedreamthief]

Ronan knows about all of that, has heard bits and pieces from every one of them, their voices carrying and echoing in the huge space of Hywel when they either thought he was asleep or not around. And he's heard it directly from Noah and what little bit Adam shared before Ronan ruined fucking everything by, for once, trying to do the goddamn right thing.

He doesn't mention how he'd spent days and days lost in a drugged out stupor with fucking Kavinsky of all people because facing Adam's disappearance was too much for him to handle. He doesn't mention the days after that locked in fear that something even worse than just disappearing had happened, not just to Adam, but to Noah, too. He doesn't mention the crushing weight of pure helplessness because no one fucking cares.

After all, Ronan Lynch has dealt with worse, hasn't he? What's one more fucking thing.

So he shoves it all down, insides churning as he glares up at her. She isn't wrong, after all; he isn't about to argue.

Still, it's the allusion to Adam that has him looking away, lips still drawn in a thin line as he turns his glare down at the guitar in his lap. His bracelets graze across the frets and he re-tunes the string Blue's loosened.

"I know," he says, voice detached and stomach heavy. The trees shudder around him. "He'll get over it. He's endured worse."

[formicine]

The self-righteousness, the almost playful viciousness that she's used to seeing from Ronan isn't in his glare. She can't exactly place it, what he's thinking, what he wants to say if anything.

For once, Blue wishes a little that she had Calla's ability to touch someone and see what's in their history. Their future. She's grown to not care so much that she can't see the future, the ineffectual black sheep: less in her head, feet more solidly on the ground. But sometimes, interpreting people like Adam and Ronan...

She just doesn't get it right now: Adam's frustrated I hope the sex was good, maybe I'm just defective -- it doesn't map onto Ronan's expression, like this is some cross he has to bear. Ronan's a lieutenant by nature. She can't see him just messing around with Kavinsky because Adam wasn't here.

He's looking away, having surrendered their locked gaze, and tuning the strings back together.
She reminds herself that Ronan's not too different from the puzzle box: just takes looking, not overthinking. If it were yours, you'd have found it already, her mother had said about Gansey's journal.

He's scared, she had said to Adam without thinking, without rationalizing too much, and it had seemed right. Maybe being sensible is worth something after all.

When he speaks, her first instinct is anger, and she flares up for a second. "Who do you --" She can feel the worst of her ready to tumble, unfiltered and cruel like it did at Adam in St. Agnes. Who is Ronan that he gets to determine what Adam can still endure? One more dismissal in eighteen years of undermining; a shattered support that doesn't matter because he isn't in the hospital?

But the branch she's managed to rest her fingertips on shudders, like the uncontrollable muscle shake of repressed rage or tears. Leaves interrupt her in a sigh.

She takes a long breath, and sits, leaning back so the roots of the tree are on either side of her. "Yeah? What about you?"

[thedreamthief]

Blue nearly ignites, Ronan can see it. She whirls on him, eyes blazing and Ronan is ready, is eager take and absorb every bit of absolute truth she wants to throw at him. It won't be as satisfying as a physical punch, won't give him the same dangerous rush, but it'll be close enough. After weeks and weeks of keeping it all inside, the insistent hum of energy under his skin needs somewhere to go.

But just as Ronan's preparing himself for onslaught, shoulders hunched and teeth bared, Blue backs down, dropping to sit against the tree, nestled between the roots, sitting atop a grassy throne.

"What about me?" he shoots back, unmoored now, unsteady. "This isn't about me, remember?

[formicine]

She can see Ronan prepare for a fight, tense his shoulders, almost eager; and there's a part of her that -- still -- wants to give in to the temptation. To rage at him about -- Kavinsky, of all people; about his arrogance in thinking he can make decisions for other people. About thinking they'd be fine without him.

But she doesn't want to lose control of the situation. For one thing, if she yelled right now she'd probably cry, which is horrible. And she doesn't want to only confront Ronan's hard outer shell. That's the whole problem.

"No," she corrects him firmly, "it is about you. It was always about you." She's not in Cabeswater hunting down Adam or Noah or Gansey. She's not trying to convince anyone else they're useful for more than picking out dryers.

"What about what you can endure? For someone who was supposedly living it up, you look like someone just shot your dog, and I guess I don't understand why -- why any of this."

[thedreamthief]

"Jesus Christ, why does everyone think I was having a fucking party with Kavinsky?" Ronan snaps, the air around him turning cold as cloud cover rolls in. It's a useless question. Ronan knows why. Namely, because he never gave any of them reason to believe otherwise, least of all Adam. Because the longer Adam goes without knowing, the greater the chance he'll be able to move on. And then maybe Ronan can move on, bringing the sway of Cabeswater with him.

"He was teaching me how to control this... this fucked up thing, okay? I thought Adam was gone. I thought he went home. Hell, I fucking wanted him to be because there's fuck-all for him here. He's spent his whole life trying to get out of one prison only to be locked into another."

Into two, really. Darrow and Ronan, by way of Cabeswater's influence.

"I didn't fuck Kavinsky," he adds, his tone still biting as he pushes up to his feet, holding the guitar by its neck, muscles quivering. "I'm not with him, I'm not fucking dating him, and the fact that any of you believe I'd ever choose him over--"

A crack of thunder cuts Ronan off abruptly and the sky opens above their heads. Ronan doesn't shield himself from the downpour and every nerve and muscle in his body aches to shatter the guitar over his knee. "Whatever, you all know me so fucking well, don't you? The jury's already made it's fucking decision so just leave me alone."

[formicine]

Was he not with Kavinsky? Blue's eyes narrow, trying to read him, crossing her arms in the wake of the clouds that roll in and drop the temperature.

"When I asked him what happened, that's what Adam said. Almost literally."

She chews on her lip, taking that in; he's not wrong about what Darrow represents to them. It's maybe a little ironic, she thinks selfishly, that Adam, who has maybe the most set goals about what he wants to do with his life now that he's stuck in Darrow -- the best idea of what to do with a place he can't get out of -- is the one everyone's worried about. Gansey, Ronan, herself -- they're the ones that are struggling because their goals don't exist. College for her is just as meaningless here as it is in Henrietta; she can probably get a scholarship here, too, but she still can't get into a program that will let her see the world. Gansey doesn't have Glendower to resurrect. Ronan doesn't have the Barns or their quest to help with.

Adam at least, has college to cross off the list: early graduation, an aspirational lifestyle. His history neatly erased. He'd told her as much.

But he hadn't wanted that like he wanted Ronan.

"He wasn't home," she says, unnecessary and perhaps a little cruel. Blue looks back up at him after a minute and spreads her hands. "Why did you let him think so, then? If you just -- wanted him to get to go home, when you found out he wasn't, why the hell would you let him think that you were -- That you didn't care?? That what he wanted didn't matter?"

The sky opens up with a crack, and she jumps, but doesn't back away as the trees turn their leaves silver-side up and Cabeswater lets loose in a thunderstorm. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, not having to listen to me" she snaps, letting herself get soaked in the physical manifestation of Ronan's anger. Her hair is sticking to her face; her tunic is immediately sodden through, and she lifts her chin, squinting in the sheets of rain through at him.

An irrational part of her thinks the guitar's going to get ruined.

"I came here because I do know you better than that," Blue protests. "Because I couldn't believe you'd swap out Adam for Kavinsky. If I thought -- if I realy thought you'd chosen, I'd have written you off already." Her jaw is set. She hates Kavinsky; hates him, as much for Ronan's panicked face when he and Gansey stepped into Fox Way on July 4th as for the countless sins against her gender he commits just by existing or for specifically making her uncomfortable. "You want to believe you're so poor and misunderstood, then tell me how to understand. But I came looking for the Ronan Lynch I know, because he cares about the damn collateral."

[thedreamthief]

It's pouring now, droplets fat and heavy as they land on Ronan's head and shoulders, striking the chords of the guitar and splattering against the mossy ground. It's a roar of sound, Blue having to shout to be heard and Ronan steps toward her, partially to hear her better but mostly as an intimidation tactic. He has a foot on her, easy, but she's never backed down before.

He has no idea why this time might be different.

"Because I wanted him to hate me!" Ronan shouts, needing to be heard above the downpour both inside and out. "I need him to hate me. You don't think this goddamn fucking forest knows exactly what I want and how to give it to me?" As if summoned, the trees suddenly shudder hard enough to drop leaves soaked in rainwater, their whispers like a swarm irate bees. "Did you really never question why Adam suddenly wanted me when he could barely fucking tolerate me before he showed up here? He wasn't even into guys, he was into... into you," Ronan snarls, gesturing angrily with he guitar.

"So no, I didn't fuck Kavinsky," Ronan adds, his voice dropping now, back to venemous. "I can give you all the sordid details of what we did do if you want, but I'm completely fucking clean of any Bulgarian STDs and the worse Adam thinks of me the better."

[formicine]

Blue tips her head up as he steps toward her, squaring her shoulders, raising herself as tall as she can manage at just over 5 feet in Docs. The rain is incessant, lightning crackling ozone-fresh in the air, beating muted melodies out of the guitar strings, her hair drizzling it straight down onto her face and curling wetly.

She's all ready to shout back, but his yell stuns her into silence, and only gets worse as she tries desperately to make sense of what he's saying and then does. "Ronan -- stop --" she tries to interrupt. It feels like someone's clawed into her stomach; it's horrifying, what he's saying. She's horrified. For him, but then, abruptly, for Adam; angry even. These stupid, stupid boys.

"Stop," she repeats, as his voice turns cold and mean and intent. "Ronan Lynch, you idiot," she yells, covered in the leaves that his anger has shaken free.

"First off," she snaps, stepping up to lean up face to face, "he is entirely capable of liking guys and liking me, but this is not about bisexuality. And no, I didn't question him liking you, because I have seen him more than tolerate you, at home and here. You weren't there for all of it, and maybe you're too busy with hating yourself, but you obviously haven't been here for all of it either.

"You think this forest gives a shit about any of us enough to give you some sort of love slave in the form of Adam? And if it did that it would think you wanted that? God --" Blue scrubs at her face. "Get over yourself," she says, and it's meant to be angry, but it's just upset. "Stop being a shithead for two minutes and open your eyes. If you give a single shit about Adam and what his life could be, then don't be another person in his life telling him what choices he gets to make. He cares about you, he's --" She can't even breathe; she just thinks about Adam looking totally wrecked on her couch while they talked, talking about wanting to sleep forever. "You're telling him that -- that -- not only that he can't, but that you don't even believe him. That you know how he thinks better than he does. That it's so unbelievable you'd rather fuck someone he hates than trust him."

She's staring at him, eyes alight. "You wanted to convince someone you weren't the person they thought you were, you've convinced me. But if you won't believe you deserve to be liked, at least believe he deserves better than that."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan doesn't interrupt. The rain pelts against his head and shoulders, soaks through every inch of fabric on his body and Blue rails, a windstorm all by herself. He could argue every statement, he could clarify. He could tell her, again, that he pulled away specifically to give Adam the choice, that it's not Adam he doesn't believe but fucking Cabeswater's intentions, that Ronan doesn't deserve to be liked or loved, definitely not by Adam Parrish.

But he doesn't.

"He deserves better than me," he finally manages once she's done, blinking against bitter rain water. The guitar is ruined, for now, so Ronan hurls it away, the body hitting a nearby tree with a musical thud. "He deserves better than here and better than me. I can't get him home, but I can at least leave him the fuck alone."

There's a part of him that's latching onto her singular comment, lost in the barrage of anger thrown at him, the idea that maybe Adam had wanted him back in Henrietta, too. Wanted him after Ronan had disappeared into Darrow. But then, Cabeswater would've influenced him there, too.

And, for once, he wants Blue to be right. He wants to believe Cabeswater really doesn't give a shit about any of them, not in this. But it doesn't make sense to him that it wouldn't, not when he can come in here and make it do whatever he wants, not when it speaks to him when no one will, not when it lets him take whatever his heart desires so long as he asks for it.

He'd asked for Adam, in his dreams. He's been asking. And Cabeswater delivered.

[formicine]

Blue flinches, and she's not sure if it's at the almost violent discarding of the guitar, or the vicious statement about himself. Or maybe they're the same thing. In her head, the instrument's sort of turned into a metaphor, at least, she's been using it to illustrate one, and it's very probably pulled straight out of his mind, too.

She can only look at him, anger fading into something else. Not pity, the same way she doesn't pity Adam for all he's been through. More like -- frustrated pain.

"The alternative to this isn't home," she says carefully, repressing a shudder in the wet, "and the alternative to you isn't some hypothetical person that Adam doesn't want. It's not me, it's not some guy from some other universe, it's just not you."

She frowns. "I can't tell you that you're worth Adam loving you. You know? I can't tell Gansey that he's more than Glendower, that people need him. I can't tell Adam that he's not his father and he's never going to be. I can't tell you you're enough." She shrugs, frustrated with a losing game. "But if Adam deserves better then be better for him."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan crosses his arms over his chest as Blue speaks, the rain unrelenting now, painful against Ronan's bare arms and bare head. The water floods over his eyes, thick enough Ronan can barely see Blue through it.

But he can hear her every word, each one cutting.

It's a simple phrase and for a simple enough idea. Adam deserves better so give him what he deserves. But Adam deserves not to have had to lead the life he has, he deserves a better family, better opportunities, better living conditions. He deserves the future he's worked so hard for, an Ivy league education and career. Ronan can't give him anything but shoddy dream things he usually doesn't even want.

"And how the fuck do you propose I do that?" he replies eventually, scowling at the way the words catch in his throat. For the first time in a long time, he's getting tired of fighting. "Dream up a better me?"

[formicine]

Blue sighs. The torrent is unending, like a hurricane: she's cold and her whole body just feels tired. Defeated, drowned out. She doesn't want to be fighting with Ronan: she came looking for him because she missed him. Because she missed them all being a them.

"No, asshole," she says, but asshole sounds a lot like something more affectionate, and she clomps past him in squelchy boots, plus or minus an inch of water, to crouch next to the guitar where it sits sadly at the bottom of a tree. See what damage has been done.

Blue runs a hand back through her hair, slicking it back out of her face, and squints through the rain. "You don't want a dream Adam, you want the real one," she points out. "You make yourself on your own, a little at a time. That's the only way anyone can do it."

It's not easy. Blue knows it's easier said than done, or she wouldn't be standing here stubbornly shivering through a rain of Ronan's imagining. But it isn't supposed to be easy. "Don't dream it, be it," she mutters to the guitar sarcastically, pretty sure Ronan has never in his life deigned to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

She plucks across the strings; it echoes, melancholy. "If you're gonna dream anything, you could dream up some sun."

[thedreamthief]

Ronan won't admit how accidentally dreaming up a fake Adam has long been one of his biggest fears. He won't mention how many times he's dreamt Adam's shirt or boxers or overalls by mistake, how every single time, he's awoken equal parts aroused, panicked, and guilt-striken.

But she's right, as much as it pains him to admit it. He's never wanted a dream version of Adam. No matter his ability, no matter how much he might practice, he could never in a million years dream up any person, animal, or thing as complex, nuanced, and beautiful as Adam Parrish.

He watches as Blue grabs the rain-sodden and splintered guitar. It sings quietly at the brush of her fingers, a sad note, but no less beautiful than if it had encouraged no damage at all.

"I don't have to dream it in here," he tells her and there's a tinge of pride in his voice.

A blink and the rain stops, almost as fast as turning off a switch. The clouds break, letting a small glimmer of sun peak through.

Ronan holds his arms out in presentation. He shrugs. "Anything I want, remember?"

But he isn't fighting anymore.

[formicine]

Blue blinks as the rain just stops, at Ronan's will. Abrupt, almost as if it were never there. She tips her head up to watch the light filtering in.

Blue's only been able to bring something to being once in Cabeswater just by thinking -- or maybe earned its favor; she's still not sure how it works, just that it's unsettling, the visions in the water. Not knowing what operates its magic is a little eerie, if a sort of eerie she understands, like nighttime in Henrietta. It's not limited to Ronan, but Ronan can wield it in a way she won't ever quite get.

"Neat trick," she says, instead of any of that.

The rain might as well have never been there, but her clothes are still sodden and she rings out the bottom of her dress onto the forest floor, standing slowly with the guitar. All of a sudden her teeth threaten to chatter, badly, as though her body has just figured out she's been drenched and stressed, and she tries to repress it and mostly fails.

Blue holds the guitar out to him, gentle with it where he hasn't been. "Can you fix it?"

[thedreamthief]

Ronan watches Blue carefully as she wrings out her dress, wonders what Gansey or Adam would think to see her like this, if they'd find it as appealing as Ronan would find Adam soaked to the bone in only a single clingy shirt and jeans.

She holds out the guitar to him and Ronan eyes it skeptically. "Why? You wanna keep it for something?"

Before she can answer, though, he takes it, grabbing it by the dented body, smoothing a hand over the splintered wood. "I could just dream up a new one," he tells her, but he's holding this one possessively. Protectively. "A better one."

[formicine]

Blue's a little glad she didn't wear something sheerer today, and a little annoyed, pragmatically, that it's Ronan she's with and not a member of her family, because she'd be stripping down to her underwear if she were at home and had gotten caught in the rain. After a minute she settles on taking off her boots. The ground's dry with a thought, but it's still cool.

"I like it," she says belatedly, stubbornly, watching him run his fingers over the wood. "There was nothing wrong with this one." Her brow furrows. She can feel how stupid it all sounds, but she feels defensive and cross about it. "Anyway, I didn't ask you if you could dream up a new one, I asked if you can fix it."

"At very least, you owe me a song after all that rain," she adds after a moment, expression softening.

[thedreamthief]

There's a metaphor here, Ronan knows, and he isn't if he appreciates it.

But there's something in her tone that almost sounds like a challenge and Ronan's never been one to back down from that. So, glaring at her, he pulls in a breath and forces himself to focus. He's not as good at this as he is actually dreaming, not as good as Kavinsky, though he never comes away with his fingers dripping in black.

There's a tug in his chest, in his gut and he breathes through it, finds what he's looking for, and... asks.

When he opens his eyes, the guitar is as whole as when Blue had first arrived and there's an inlay of blue and green twining ivy around the sound hole.

"You're not getting a song," he says, but he holds out the guitar, offering. "Do you play?"

[formicine]

Ronan looks at her as though doing what she's asked is a triumph somehow, over the obstacle she's made of herself. She finds herself holding her breath a little as he closes his eyes, unsure if she's trying to hope the guitar better with him or just waiting with her challenge.

Blue doesn't know what she's expecting to happen, if she thinks she's going to see some gradual change or healing but that's not exactly how it happens. It's not something she watches happen. Instead, between one breath and another, there's a whole guitar in Ronan's hands -- the same guitar, only whole and with a new shiny inlay. The other one doesn't disappear, it just isn't, like this one is.

She blinks at it.

Blue reaches to take it, her hands small next to Ronan's. "Not ...well. Jimi does, though." She sits down with it anyway and curls her hand into an "A", one-two-three across the second fret and strums her thumb across it. "Put it on the list of things I'll do one day, I guess," she says with a little wryness, picking the chord apart, one string at a time.

[thedreamthief]

Taking the guitar from him, Blue trums an A chord and Ronan's pleased to find he'd managed to make it tuned this time, at least. The note hangs in the air for a moment before drifting into silence before she starts picking, soft and slow.

"This place gives you nothing but time," Ronan points out with a shrug. "Why wait?"

He realizes, belatedly, that they've both calmed the hell down, as though Cabeswater's parting storm clouds took the mood with it. Not entirely, though. There's still an itch under Ronan's skin and there's still a sharpness in Blue's eyes. This isn't a truce, not exactly.

Still, it's a little too close to one so Ronan smirks. "Maybe you could write Gansey a love song."

[formicine]

Blue had been a little bitter, grouping guitar in with the things she'll never do someday: be a cultural anthropologist, backpack through Poland, save her mother, meet her father or decide she doesn't care, not go to prom, kiss Gansey, make up her own future stubbornly.

But guitar is far from one of those things.

Blue can't just admit that Ronan's right though, so she says "is that an offer?" with an arched eyebrow.

She hasn't quite forgiven him, but she understands it. That might be worse, in a way, but a less angry one. She takes a second to press down on random notes, frowning as she picks at the strings. They sound a little dull under unpracticed fingers.

Ronan's smirk is sudden and sharp and she flushes, scowling. "You're not supposed to know about that," she protests. It's sort of nice, though, that it's coming up like this, and not in a fit of jealousy.

"It'd have to have a verse in Welsh," she jokes, tucking at her hair. "Or I don't have a shot."

[thedreamthief]

"There's a lot of shit I'm not supposed to know about," Ronan points, a swell of bitterness overriding the calm. He's spent the past five or six months being told stories about himself, struggling to catch up, to be the Ronan his friends and Blue remember and failing at every step. He's not supposed to know what Kavinsky did, he's not supposed to know Kavinsky's dead, he's not supposed to know Maura's gone or that Parrish won his case.

But he does. He didn't live a fucking minute of it, but he knows it's true. At least for some other Ronan out there.

He scowls a little as she plucks at the strings, but the heat in it is already starting to fade as he drops to the log he'd been sitting on before, legs tucked up close. "You and Dick aren't exactly fucking subtle. There a reason you're trying to be?"

[formicine]

Blue tips her head at that, because she thinks he's not referring to the same sort of shit she means. Other-Ronan didn't know about them, either, because it's the sort of thing they're not supposed to be making obvious.

She's a little pink, looking down at the guitar as if she can figure it out by staring at it. "It started right after I broke up with Adam," she says, and makes a face because she doesn't feel like she broke up with Adam; he didn't really break up with her, but she's not sure the whole thing didn't collapse, maybe never existed at all. It just stopped being, slowly and all at once. Like Noah, or the broken guitar.

"We didn't want to hurt him," she says, and even that sounds stupid. "Or you --" She glances up. That doesn't sound stupid, it sounds awful, because it bares an inevitable truth: that Ronan is possessive of everyone. He has to know that about himself, though.

"I don't know why we keep doing it," she admits. "Gansey doesn't think he gets to have favorites," she shrugs one shoulder. "And there's not -- I'm not sure what we're doing," she admits to her fingers on the strings. "I don't think there's any way this ends well. But --" She hits each of the two E strings, an octave fit together in an oh-well.