Chapter Text
If Declan didn't want his identity stolen, he should have had an actual identity instead of a collection of smug habits.
"I love how you say that like it's an excuse," Noah says, but he forfeited the right to have opinions when he ordered a smoothie made out of kale.
"I know when the shit I'm doing is wrong," Ronan says. "Which puts me ahead of Declan."
"I guess the part I don't get is where being a member of a private social club is worse than identity theft."
"We're Irish."
"And yet you've never once worn the shirt I got you for St. Patrick's Day. It's like you don't want strangers to kiss you!"
"We're up next in the ring, you really want to piss me off?"
Noah shrugs. "You're gonna kick my ass anyway."
Ronan huffs. Noah is either his favorite or his least favorite opponent. He's a shitty boxer, so it's not much of a workout. On the other hand, he knows he's a shitty boxer, unlike the hordes of lawyers and doctors and hedge fund managers at the club who think that they're the hottest shit to ever step in a ring.
Back on the first hand, Ronan really likes beating lawyers and doctors and hedge fund managers who think that they're the hottest shit to ever step in a ring.
Noah slurps his kale smoothie. On the scale of moral failures that's probably only a rung or two below being a member of a private social club.
"Okay," Noah says. "Walk me through what your dad has to do with this, besides, you know, how everything comes back to your dad somehow."
"The whole point of clubs like this is having an elite little tower to hang out in to get away from commoners. Somewhere people have to fawn over you and lick your ass like you're a fucking aristocrat. It's a betrayal of our heritage every time he comes here and pretends he's some WASP dilettante."
He glares that last part at Noah, like Noah might be offended. He mostly doesn't want to offend Noah, which is a unique enough feeling that he doesn't know how to handle it. But he and Noah had been friends back in school, Ronan too fierce and angry and Noah too quiet and unsure to fit in with the upper crust of teenage society. They'd clung to each other out of a lack of better options, and then out of genuine affection, until Ronan turned eighteen and dropped out of school and cut off contact with everyone he knew for an entire year, just to really get the screw you, Declan point across.
He would have expected that, meeting again unexpectedly, Noah would either hate Ronan for leaving him to struggle through senior year alone, or he'd have forgotten all about him -- in either case, that he wouldn't want anything to do with Ronan.
Instead, the first time Noah saw Ronan in years, someone introduced him as "Declan," and his reaction was to laugh himself sick. Ronan had picked him up and carried him outside of the building, an offense which caused no reaction from the demure staff of the club but did make Noah insist that Ronan owed him a smoothie every time they met up to box, as well as an explanation.
The smoothies Ronan didn't begrudge him, especially since they got bundled up in the monthly bill that was sent to Declan. The whole story -- well, there was a reason he'd been putting it off.
"So if Declan comes here, he's a sellout. But if you come here, it's a blow to the establishment?"
"Yes."
Noah laughs.
"Christ, why do I bother," Ronan mutters. "I knew you wouldn't get it."
"You can just admit that you like the club," Noah says. "It's okay. The food's good. They have a spa and an Olympic-size pool. You're supposed to like it. They try really hard."
"They try too hard," Ronan snaps, "it's creepy. The staff here call me Mr. Lynch like a bunch of mindfucked servants from Downton Abbey."
"So go somewhere else."
"I got kicked out of my boxing gym."
"What do you call that thing, you know, that's the opposite of irony?"
"How would I know, I failed English."
"Only because you wanted to," Noah says. "You have the soul of a poet."
"I got kicked out of every other boxing gym in the city, too."
"The soul of a really angry poet," Noah amends, unfazed.
"I'm only here because I need to punch people. And it might as well be a bunch of elitist bastards."
"So you're here for violence, anarchy, and sibling rivalry." Noah looks thoughtful. "Destiny."
"What?"
"That's like the opposite of irony, right? I think that's your destiny."
"I think you want to settle this in the ring."
"Go easy on me," Noah says, lacing up his gloves. "I'm not Anglo Saxon but I am a dilettante."
Ronan lets him warm up before they start sparring, and tries to start off slow.
"Keep your gloves up."
"My arms get tired," Noah complains.
"Your face is going to get tired when someone hits you because you can't block." Ronan throws a punch to prove his point.
Instead of blocking, Noah ducks.
"Hey," he says as he pops back up. "How come everyone calls you Declan, though?"
"What?" That's distracting, but even distracted Ronan can block Noah's jab.
"I mean, you guys look alike in a photograph, maybe. But no one who's met you and met Declan is going to confuse the two of you."
Ronan feels oddly touched, until Noah strikes a lucky shot to his shoulder. Then he feels oddly proud and, less oddly, annoyed.
"Quit distracting me."
Noah grins, shameless. "I had to try, right?"
"No."
Noah signals for a time out and fumbles a water bottle up to his face. "Okay, I get why you're here, I guess, but I don't get why you're able to use Declan's membership."
"Declan lives in New York, he's never been to this chapter."
"So you just came in here and told them you were some guy from New York, and they believed you."
Ronan sighs. "If Declan doesn't want people to borrow his driver's license he shouldn't leave his wallet lying around."
Noah snorts water all over himself when he laughs, which is exactly what he deserves.
-
After a few months of regular sparring Noah manages to land a couple of hits in a row.
"Ha!" He beams, but the glow fades quickly. "Wait, are you going easy on me?"
"No."
Noah pulls a really obvious feint, which still isn't obvious enough for Ronan to block the cross that follows.
"Okay, now I'm worried." Noah drops his gloves to his sides. "Is something wrong?"
Ronan tries an uppercut, but it's slow, and Noah steps out of the way. "No. My stupid shoulder is throwing me off."
"Did you get hurt?"
"I'm fine," Ronan snaps. "It's just stiff, I slept on it weird or something."
Noah doesn't look convinced, but he puts his gloves back up and gives Ronan five more minutes of a legitimately challenging match before he calls it.
"Okay, you're way off. You're off enough that I can tell," and that is pretty damning evidence. Noah is neither particularly athletic nor particularly observant. "Did you stretch this morning?"
"Stretching is fake."
"No, it's fun!" and for no goddamn reason Noah bends in half, until the knuckles of his gloves are resting on the ground. "See? Everything's upside down."
"What was I thinking, that looks really helpful." Ronan casts an eye around the gym; there's a couple of bad toupees who look like they're thinking of asking for the ring. Ronan dissuades them.
Noah pops back upright and pesters Ronan into doing a couple of "basic, easy" stretches. He can get about halfway through them, but not without grimacing.
"Yeah, you really screwed up your arm somehow," Noah opines, because he became a Professor of Shoulderology at some point. "You should get it looked at."
"Doctors are fake," Ronan says. "I just need to tough it out."
"That's how Khal Drogo died, you know."
Ronan does not know, and Noah has to know that. "From a sore arm?"
"From not going to a doctor." He lights up again, like he's just had a brilliant idea. "Oh! You could get a massage."
"You could drop dead."
"I mean it," Noah says. "There's a spa right here at the club, it's great. They treat sports injuries all the time."
"I didn't know blue balls counted as a sports injury."
"They'd put it on your tab. Declan."
Ronan hesitates. The fact that Declan has yet to notice the charges Ronan runs up is just further proof that he deserves expensive retribution.
But a massage. That's deep into oligarch asshole territory, the kind of thing that real Declan would use the club for.
"Gloves up," and he throws a right hook just to prove he can.
-
Ronan's resolve lasts until he loses a match to a midlife crisis on his third divorce. Anything that can get his arm back in shape has to be better than that.
-
"One moment, please, Mr. Lynch," the spa receptionist tells him, obsequious, like she thinks he's going to be pissed off about waiting for one moment. She picks up her phone and makes low, practically subliminal conversation with the person on the other line. Ronan tunes her out, because the staff's trying as hard as possible not to exist mannerisms are freaky, and also because his shoulder is throbbing. Noah had taken one look at his face that morning and refused to spar with him, so he'd spent twice as long at the punching bag as he would have spent in the ring.
A guy comes through the door to the spa, wearing a shapeless scrubs-like uniform. It should be impossible to be hot in those clothes; it isn't.
"Mr. Lynch?" and okay, fuck that, it's bad enough when he gets called that by the lady at the smoothie stand who looks like she's someone's granny, he's not going to take that from a guy his own age.
"Just Lynch."
"All right, Lynch." For a split second he thinks the guy is rolling his eyes. That can't be right. No one who works here would dare have an opinion about the guests. "My name's Adam, I'll be your massage therapist today."
Huh. Ronan'd been assuming that the masseuses in this creepy old boys' club would all be women. Maybe they have to keep a pretty boy on staff in case someone's mistress stops by.
Adam leads him through the spa to a secluded little room that smells like lavender and sounds like a babbling brook. Ronan gags.
"I understand you're having some shoulder pain?" Adam prompts.
"It's just stiff," Ronan says, more defensive than he meant to be.
"Oh," Adam says. "So this massage is just for fun, then."
Ronan hesitates. Which is worse: I'm in so much pain that I need a massage or I'm getting a massage for no reason?
"Which shoulder hurts?" Adam asks.
Ronan grits his teeth. "Right."
Adam makes him hold his right arm out, takes his wrist and turns and twists his arm this way and that. More fucking stretching, just what Ronan wanted.
"Okay," he says, after he's figured something out or just gotten bored of torturing Ronan. "I'll be back in a minute. Undress down to your comfort level and lie on the table, face down."
Adam leaves.
Ronan doesn't move. He knew spas were depraved, but he'd been too distracted by the pain in his fucking shoulder every time Adam the sadist made him move his arm; he hadn't thought about undressing. It sounds like a shitty idea, except leaving and telling the robot-bland receptionist actually I want a female masseuse sounds like a shittier idea. She'd probably get him one, too. This whole place is so fucked.
The door starts to open -- time's up. He rips his shirt off and bites his tongue to avoid swearing at how much his arm doesn't want to move like that.
Adam looks at Ronan for a second, half-dressed and standing in the middle of the room, and then looks down at the table. There's a deliberate sort of confusion on his face, was I not clear, except Ronan has a feeling it really means Jesus, how dumb can this guy be. He knows that look. He's given it to a lot of people.
Ronan lies down on the table.
So the bad news is that Ronan looks like an idiot. The good news is that Adam's hands on his bare skin aren't sexual at all, not when he doesn't know him and can't see him. It's too weird to be hot.
And even if it would be hot, it isn't, because it turns out that Adam is really annoying.
"How did you hurt your arm?"
"Don't remember."
Adam hms, like he doesn't believe that. "What kind of strain are you putting on your shoulders?"
"Being alive."
"I'm afraid I don't have a cure for that one." His fingers find a weird pressure point and dig in. Ronan grimaces, glad that his face is hidden out of sight. "What kind of physical activity do you do, lifting weights?"
"Boxing."
"Are you sleeping okay?"
"If I was sleeping okay then something'd really be wrong."
Adam turns Ronan's arm and lifts it, not far or fast, but it still makes Ronan hiss.
"I thought massages were supposed to be relaxing."
"It helps if you're not gritting your teeth and clenching every muscle in your body, but it's your money, do what you want."
Adam releases his arm. Ronan has a few seconds to appreciate that before Adam moves on -- past his shoulder, lower down his back, and this is starting to get into the uncomfortable territory he'd dreaded, being touched without pain or interrogation to distract him.
"I fucked up my shoulder," Ronan says, "not my entire body."
"Yes, you fucked up your shoulder and the rest of your body is compensating." Adam presses down on a horrible knot Ronan had been ignoring, below his shoulder blade.
"I don't need to compensate for anything."
"Of course not, and I'm sure you drive a Toyota Camry, too. Breathe in?"
Ronan breathes in and hates it; breathes out, and hates it. The rest of the massage is awful and awful and awful, until somehow they're done. Ronan stands up off the table and realizes that he does feel better, which makes him feel worse.
Adam says, "you should add some yoga to your workout routine."
"What the fuck did I do to offend you?"
"Well, you interrupted my lunch break," Adam answers without missing a beat, "but I wasn't actually trying to insult you. That's just easy to do, apparently."
Ronan scowls.
"Ice your shoulder and take it easy for the next couple of days. No boxing for a month."
"You're not a doctor."
"I'm aware," Adam says. "You could always try it your way. I'll laugh at you when you come back in more pain than last time."
-
Ronan's arm does feel better after a couple of days. Why wouldn't it? All that was wrong with it was that he slept on it weird. It's not a big deal.
-
"I've been practicing," Noah says. "You'll see. I've got moves."
He starts off with a jab -- not great, but not bad, either. Ronan blocks and throws a punch of his own.
Noah dances out of the way with a spin-twirl-roll like he thinks he's a fucking ballet ninja.
When he lands back on his feet facing Ronan, he finds him bent in half, clutching his arm
"I have more moves than I knew," Noah says, in a low astonished whisper.
-
"You've been boxing again," is the first thing Adam says to Ronan.
"There's no way you can tell that just from looking at me."
"Maybe I'm psychic," Adam says. "Maybe I'm capable of logical inference. Or maybe the old guys in the gym all think it's really funny that Lynch the boxing terror has been brought low."
"Goddammit."
"Are you ready to listen to my advice?"
"No," but Adam just looks amused.
The massage is a lot like the last one, except Adam doesn't ask a lot of stupid questions, and Ronan is able to just focus on lying on the table and not be so worked up about it. He'd be ready to admit it if Adam asked, now, that his shoulder is killing him. Adam doesn't ask.
He relaxes enough that at one point, to his own horror, he whimpers. It's not even his shoulder; he's ready for that. It's lower, some muscle he didn't know had tied itself into knots over his rib cage, that Adam has kneaded at just right or just wrong.
Adam stops.
"Too much?" The question is perfectly neutral.
"No."
"Forgive me if I don't trust you to be honest about your pain tolerance," and there's the judgment Ronan was expecting, returned to Adam's voice.
It hadn't even been pain; not exactly pain, or not only pain. "If it's too much I'll say so."
Adam just says "sure," but he doesn't ease off.
"Ice," he says at the end of the appointment. It's not a suggestion. "Stretching. No boxing. And make an appointment to come back in a week."
"Why should I?"
"Because you need it, and because I want to make sure you see me and not anyone else." Ronan burns, before Adam continues, "not everyone here has my sense of humor, I'd hate to inflict you on someone who'd take you personally."
-
Ronan comes back in a week.
Three massages. Three. He's disgusted.
At least he's made to suffer for his sins:
"My friend runs a guerrilla yoga class in the park," Adam says. "You should check it out."
He'd respond to that suggestion with the contempt it deserves, except -- "How is yoga illegal."
"They don't have a permit to be in the park."
That's what Ronan gets for thinking that pretentious stretching could be interesting.
"It'll do your shoulder good," Adam says, "and you can still get a workout."
"It's standing around funny, that's not a workout."
Adam doesn't even bother to argue. "Yoga's tomorrow at eleven, it's pay what you can. I'll let them know you can pay a lot."
-
Ronan decides that he isn't going to the park ten times, and then he shows up at the park.
It could have been worse. He almost invited Noah. A well-timed fit of sanity saved him from that, at least.
He runs into Adam pretty much as soon as he arrives. He's not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
"No mat?" Adam asks, looking Ronan over like he's committed some faux pas.
Like hell is he going to admit that the thought hadn't occurred to him. "I thought hippies loved dirt, doesn't it make you feel closer to the earth?"
"Yoga's mainstream at this point, you just sound cranky and old when you complain about hippies."
The instructor descends on them, disgustingly cheerful, to make them pay their way ("Adam says we should take you for everything you've got!") and Adam wheedles an extra mat out of him. Ronan does not thank him.
Adam unrolls his mat on the grass, near the back of the group. Ronan follows suit.
"I know you're a beginner, Lynch, so just ask me if you need any help."
The instructor is 'coming to the first pose,' if you can even call it that. Ronan doesn't.
"I know how to sit down."
"Do you, though?" Adam is somehow sitting better than Ronan is, which isn't even possible. It has to be his smug attitude creating an illusion of superiority. Sitting down is not something a person can be good at.
The instructor tells them to shut their eyes, and Adam does, focusing in like he's 'feeling the channel of energy' inside him, whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. Ronan does not close his eyes. How is he supposed to know what to do if he can't see anything?
Besides, this is the perfect chance to sneak the occasional glance at Adam without getting caught. As long as he's suffering through illegal yoga in the park he might as well have something nice to look at.
It's a good idea for all of five minutes, when Adam drops easily into a ridiculous pose and Ronan has to look away in a hurry. Adam's figure's a lot clearer in a t-shirt and sweats than in his work uniform. Ronan might not have thought this through.
The instructor moves on to a new pose before Ronan's even tried the last one, and of course that's when Adam remembers that he exists, now that Ronan's decided to ignore him.
"Careful with this one," he says to Ronan, low under the sounds of the instructor telling them to press away from the earth, Jesus Christ.
"I've got it," Ronan says. His arm is almost shaking, which means that it isn't. He's fine.
"I'm serious," Adam says. "If you sprain your shoulder again that's more work for me."
"There's nothing wrong with my shoulder."
"Just shift your weight a little." With one swift graceful move he's on his feet and over to Ronan's mat. His hands rest lightly on Ronan's back, on his arm, guiding him in some way he can't even figure out.
It's not the first time Adam has touched him, but it's the first time where he wasn't expecting it, and it's overwhelming. He feels dizzy, from the touch, or from the blood going to his head because he's letting a guerrilla yoga instructor twist him around like a sadistic kid with a Barbie, or just from the fact that whatever tiny adjustment happened actually makes the pose feel better.
It's maddening, how good Adam is at making Ronan feel good.
"Aren't you tired of manhandling me?" Ronan asks. He can't catch his breath enough to sound offended.
"Not really," but then the instructor tells them to drop back down on their mats and Adam's gone, face hidden, before Ronan can see his expression or demand he explain himself.
-
Ronan goes to the gym late, gets on a treadmill and runs, endlessly. He doesn't love running -- it's not as good as a fight for hitting that place where his brain stops and just lets his body exist -- but it's better than nothing. It's something, at least, to wear him down until sleep becomes unlikely instead of impossible.
After who knows how long he looks up and sees Adam standing in the doorway.
Ronan kills the treadmill and slows down until he's at a stop.
"You don't listen to music or anything?" Adam asks.
"It's distracting."
"It doesn't get boring?"
Ronan steps off the machine and grabs a towel. "Not as boring as watching someone else run."
Adam looks away: touché. "I thought the gym was empty."
Ronan says, "can't sleep."
"Well, at least you're consistent," and it takes Ronan a second to remember that he'd told Adam that, the first time they met, if I could sleep then it'd mean something was wrong. He's surprised that Adam didn't forget.
"Sure," he says. "I'm a wreck, but at least I'm right about something."
"That's the best you can hope for, in my experience."
"Is that why you're still skulking around at midnight?"
Adam hesitates before he says, "I have to close the gym before I can leave for the night."
Oh. That's what this is. He's waiting for Ronan to fuck off so he can be done with work already.
Ronan leaves, tosses his towel in the bin and nods a farewell. He means to drive home, he does, but he only gets as far as the lobby before he thinks about Adam working through his lunch break, Adam not getting to leave for the night until all of the asshole guests like Ronan are already comfortable at home.
He swings through the kitchen. The restaurant's closed this late, but nothing's locked. He grabs some bread out of a bread box, cheese and fruit out of the fridge, and then he grabs a wad of kale that's destined to become someone's smoothie and throws that in the garbage.
Adam's dragging a gym mat across the floor when he comes back in. He startles when Ronan grabs the other end of it and lifts it up, like he didn't hear Ronan enter the room.
"What," Ronan asks, when Adam stops and stares. "Is this going to fuck up my shoulder again?"
Adam jerks a little, then plays it off like he was just readjusting his hold on the mat. "Probably."
They get the mats all piled up. Adam picks up a broom and then, after an indecipherable look at Ronan, holds it out to him, like he's expecting Ronan to say no.
Ronan sweeps. Adam follows after him with the mop, until they're painted into a corner, and then Ronan offers him the food.
Adam just stares at it, perplexed.
"Unless you just want to leave," Ronan adds.
"No," Adam says.
They eat like it's a picnic, sitting on a pile of mats that smell like old ball sweat. Ronan thinks he should talk, or be charming, except he's not really good at either of those, and the exhaustion from his run has chosen this exact moment to smack him in the face. Adam looks beat, too, leaning against the wall and eating like he's not really aware of what he's putting in his mouth. Ronan leans against the wall next to him, passes his water bottle back and forth until it's dry and the food's gone.
Adam stands up. Ronan follows him out of the gym, waits while he locks the door and then leads them through an employee exit to the parking lot. He's not really paying attention to where he's going; he's thinking too hard, come on, Lynch, say something, say something, too keenly aware of the moment ending before he's made anything from it.
"I guess it's time to go," he says abruptly. Too abrupt. He tries to soften it with a shrug, except that just makes him remember I'm supposed to be taking it easy on my stupid fucking shoulder. His hand comes up to rub at it. "Unless you want to do something."
Adam grimaces. "I have to be up at six."
Ronan nods. What else is he supposed to do? Ask is that just an excuse, push him to go out anyway, say the club isn't open at six --
Or just stand there, mute, while Adam leans in and kisses him. That works.
The first kiss is light, short, little more than a suggestion. Adam ends it, but he doesn't move away, still close enough that Ronan can feel the warmth coming off of him in the cool night air. Close enough that it would be the easiest thing in the world for Ronan to take over, and he swallows hard when he realizes that that's the whole point.
He kisses Adam back, and Adam gives him more than before, more pressure more heat more contact, hands grabbing the front of his shirt, teeth scrapping at his lip. Ronan could stand here kissing Adam all night, cataloging every small sound that escapes from him, getting lost in the swipe of his tongue, and then he swears against Adam's mouth, because he remembers that, no, he can't do this all night.
Adam leans away, like he's had the same realization. His eyes blink open and his hands flatten out, releasing Ronan, but still resting against his chest. Ronan gives into temptation just enough to rest one of his hands over Adam's, breathes deep and ragged when Adam's fingers clench briefly, digging in and then letting him go.
"I have to get home." Adam meets his eyes, not asking if that's okay but still checking how Ronan feels. He's just going to have to settle for whatever he can get from Ronan's face, because he has no goddamn idea what to say.
Adam grins after a second, and leans in close again to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
His voice is both cheerful and smug when he whispers against Ronan's skin, "see you around, Declan."
Ronan stands frozen until long after Adam has disappeared into the night.
Well, shit.
-
Adam's not at the spa the next day, though the receptionist assures him that they have other massage therapists who would be totally happy to rub their hands all over him. Ronan flees.
He winds up at the gym, the only part of the club he ever liked, the only part of it he ever would have set foot in if his body hadn't betrayed him and blackmailed him into getting a massage.
But if it hadn't...
"Fuck it," Ronan mutters, and heads for the boxing ring.
It's in use already, he can see that from a distance, but that just means there's two potential opponents waiting for him.
When he gets closer he realizes that one of the boxers is Noah, who still sucks at keeping his gloves up where they should be. His footwork's as fast as Ronan's ever seen, though. He's basically running away from his opponent.
Ronan stops.
Noah is running away from his opponent, signalling for a time out, and if Ronan can see that from thirty feet away there's no reason the asswipe in the ring can't see it, which means he's bearing down on Noah, cornering him and pounding on him, on purpose.
Ronan's across the room and in the ring before he has to think about it. He grabs the boxer by the shoulder and yanks him around, recognizes him, all talk, hates losing, can't block an uppercut if his life depended on it, so he throws the heaviest uppercut of his life.
The boxer goes down hard.
Ronan grabs Noah, drags him over to see he's okay.
Noah yelps.
Ronan lets him go.
"Are you okay?" he asks, and then asks it again when Noah doesn't react.
"I'm fine." Noah does not sound fine. "What did you do?"
Ronan decides that has to be a rhetorical question. The other boxer is struggling up to his feet, one of the club staff bending down to help him up. Two more staff descend on Ronan.
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step outside."
Ronan thinks about making him ask twice, and then he decides he doesn't want to inflict himself on any of the staff who really would rather not be here in the first place.
"Yeah, yeah." He shrugs off the hand that tries to take his arm. "I'm going."
Noah doesn't follow immediately, but when he does come after Ronan it's at a run. He catches up to Ronan on the sidewalk outside the club, not quite stopping in time to prevent a collision. Ronan takes him gently by the shoulders and stabilizes him.
"What was that?"
"A fucking monster of an uppercut." Ronan clenches his hand into a fist and then flexes it open a couple of times. It's been a while since he punched someone, without a glove, like he meant it.
"I know that," Noah says. "What did you do it for?"
"He wasn't stopping. I stopped him."
"You can't punch Whelk, he's the club's membership chair."
"Ask me if I care."
"Ronan, you're gonna get -- "
"Noah," Ronan says, slow and deliberate. "Ask me if I care."
Noah sighs. "Ronan, do you care?"
"Of course I don't care, how could you ask me that?"
Noah sighs again. There's blood on his teeth; his lip split open at some point. "You're a good friend, Lynch, but you're a weird friend. A very good, very weird friend."
"Gee, thanks, that's great." He turns to go.
Noah puts a hand on his arm -- right between his problem shoulder and his problem hand, the no-man's land of pain.
"Thank you," Noah says. "For standing up for me."
Ronan clears his throat. "Yeah, whatever. It's not a big deal."
"It is, though," Noah says. "It -- kinda felt like old times, you know?"
Ronan just shrugs. There's not any amount of throat clearing that will get words out of him.
"C'mon." Noah smiles away the darkness. "Let's get out of here, I'll buy you a smoothie."
"Fuck that, buy me a steak," and Noah doesn't argue the point.
-
The phone call comes the next day. Ronan could ignore it, but it's not that long of a drive from New York, and anyway he's in the mood for a disaster.
"Apparently I've been regularly attending the Boston branch of the club," Declan says. "Care to explain?"
"I wanted to ask you about that," Ronan says. "Don't you check your bill when you pay? How did you miss all those extra expenses?"
"Fantastic, this has become my fault already. I was wondering when that would happen."
"It was always your fault. You're the one that joined that fucking club."
"It was a business decision," Declan says wearily, because he's said this before.
"How is this about business? You're not a hundred-year-old asshole cheating on his wife with his nanny."
"No, but I do business with those assholes. I have to network."
"Or you could just not do business with soulless fuckheads."
Declan sighs, his my brother is too stupid to understand simple facts sigh. "You'll be happy to know you're timing sucks. I was this close to scoring a date with the hostess at the restaurant. She's a redhead with blue eyes."
Ronan's been trying not to think about how he got himself cut off from Adam and his stupid goddamn attitude and his stupid goddamn magic hands, so no, he's not happy to hear about his timing. Like he's so sad about cockblocking Declan.
"It's not a fucking tragedy," he snaps. "You never belonged there anyway, you're a better person than that."
"Uh," Declan starts.
Ronan bangs his fist against his forehead. "Fuck."
"That's..." Declan trails off. Apparently he is as unnerved by Ronan complimenting him as Ronan is. Small fucking consolation. "You know, I was going to bitch at you some more, but this got weird, I'm just going to go. Stop impersonating me."
Ronan hangs up. Dammit, he needs to get his head on right.
He jogs down the stairs to the ground floor, tells himself he's just going for a run. And if he happens to pass by the park and there happens to be illegal yoga...
Fuck, he's really going to become the kind of person who hangs around a public park waiting for a yoga class.
Except -- he isn't, because he steps outside and finds Adam leaning against a planter in front of his building.
Ronan freezes.
"Did you know," Adam says, voice deceptively casual, "on the phone your brother sounds exactly like you?"
"That fucker," Ronan marvels. Declan hadn't bothered to mention how he'd heard about Ronan getting kicked out of the club, and he hadn't thought to ask.
Adam watches Ronan for a second. "That's all the explanation I get?"
He considers saying it's Declan's fault for not being a real person, but he can picture exactly how impressed Adam would be with that statement. It'd be I didn't ice my shoulder but I did take a cold shower, that's the same thing all over again.
"There isn't really an explanation," he admits. "I needed a gym and I wanted to fuck with my brother." He manages to not scuff his feet like a flustered six-year-old, but it's close. "Are you pissed?"
"At Declan, absolutely. He let me think that he was you for several minutes."
Ronan frowns. "It took you several minutes to figure out he wasn't me?"
"You don't have the moral high ground here, don't try," Adam says, but the mockery drains out of him. "I was nervous. And for good reason, it turns out. There's a special kind of mortification in asking out the wrong person."
"You could try again," Ronan suggests. "With the right person."
Adam narrows his eyes. "I should leave you hanging. You deserve it."
"Right, because it's really ambiguous why you showed up on my doorstep."
"Maybe I just want to yell at you in person."
"Do you?"
Adam sighs. "Sadly, the fact that you were defrauding my employers the whole time just makes me like you more."
Ronan takes a step forward, and another, until he's right in front of Adam. "I'm going to kiss you," he says. "Don't call me Declan this time."
Adam smiles, but only halfway, like he's trying to stop it and can't. "But is your name actually Ronan or is that another alias? How am I supposed to know?"
"Are you going to card me before I can kiss you?"
Adam smiles the rest of the way. "I wasn't planning to, but I'm definitely going to do it now."
Ronan digs his wallet out of his pocket but holds it in front of him. Adam comes a step closer; Ronan pulls it away, up and over his shoulder, so that Adam has to take another step closer, until they're practically touching.
Ronan lets him take the wallet and then he closes the distance between them, places his hands on Adam's sides and presses his face into Adam's neck. Deliberately not kissing him, yet; a promise is a promise
"Is this supposed to be your wallet?" and the heavy judgment contained in those words makes Ronan's heart leap.
"It's not supposed to be, it is my wallet."
"It's a twenty dollar bill wrapped around a driver's license and a credit card."
"What else would I need?" Ronan runs his nose up the side of Adam's neck. Away from the cloying lavender lotions at the spa, Adam smells amazing, like grass and paper and something mechanical.
"Oh, this has to be fake," Adam says. "No one looks this hot in their driver's license photo."
Hot is not the usual response when people see Ronan's license. Angry, maybe, if someone's trying to be polite. "I look like a serial killer."
"Yeah, but a hot serial killer. One of those ones that women write letters to on death row."
Ronan breathes out; half laughing, half preparing to argue with the weirdest compliment of all time. He decides, instead, to take advantage of the very interesting way that Adam shivered at the feeling of Ronan's breath on his skin.
He slides a hand from Adam's hip around to his back and works his nose along Adam's jaw. He breathes into his ear just to feel him shiver again, before he asks, "satisfied?"
"Not even close," Adam says and turns his face to kiss him.
-
Adam's schedule is a lot more complicated than Ronan's, a patchwork of jobs, classes, and workouts, the latter of which are, he ruefully admits, essential because they help him with his anger issues. If Ronan held out for occasions that Adam was completely free to go out on an official date, he would get to see Adam for a couple of hours once a week. It takes all of one week for him to get sick of that.
"You have the worst fucking posture," Ronan says. "I'm going to tell your yoga friends that you're a fraud."
They do this, instead. Ronan hangs around Adam's apartment while he's studying and makes sure he doesn't forget to eat. Ronan grits his teeth through yoga, not because it's too hard for him, just because it's pointless and boring and he hates it. Ronan drops in on Adam at work and interrupts him exactly as much as he can without getting him in trouble (except at the club, "you are banned, banned, banned for life from the club," and if he has nowhere to box these days he also doesn't have to watch Noah drink kale smoothies, either, so it's not like it's some fucking hardship).
"Your opinion will count when you can hold Warrior I without wobbling, maybe." Adam types a sentence one-handed. He's holding a book in the other hand, which does not strike Ronan as an efficient way of either reading or taking notes. It definitely can't be good for him, the way he's scrunched over his work.
Ronan walks up to Adam from behind the couch and puts his hands on his shoulders. Adam tenses up even more than he was already, which is kind of impressive.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm worried about your back." Ronan adopts his warmest, most earnest tone. "You need to lift up through the heart -- "
"I going to kick you out of yoga, you don't deserve it." Adam drops his shoulders a quarter of an inch, mulishly. Ronan kneads at them. It's like massaging a steel beam.
"No you won't. When the war comes the yoga guerrillas are going to need me."
Adam turns his face up; he's smiling, half-amused, half-indulgent, and Ronan's struck still by that expression.
Adam shuts his laptop and snakes an arm up around Ronan's neck, pulls him low. "You," he murmurs into Ronan's ear, "are really bad at that, this is the worst massage of all time."
Ronan gives up. He doesn't generally like giving up on anything before Adam does, or at least before making Adam work for it, but laptop is shut means Adam is ready to give Ronan his full attention and that's even better than winning.
He puts up a front, though. "You are really bad at relaxing," he says. "I definitely thought you had your shit together better than this when I first met you."
"Of course, you were also a fraud. I'd say you got what you deserve."
"Yeah I did," Ronan gloats.
Adam tugs down on his neck. Ronan takes the hint and climbs over the back of the couch.
"Careful."
"I'm always careful."
"Liar," Adam says.
Ronan climbs into Adam's lap, since he went to all the trouble of making room. "I'm careful enough."
Adam has no argument for that.