super mild tw for very (very) brief implication of domestic abuse at the end of the chapter

𓃢𓃢𓃢

The walk to the shop took them down a lengthy stretch of the alley and past an increasingly bizarre array of vendors. The last: a lanky man with skin mottled by scars and four huge bats hanging from his upturned arms, asleep. He had one eye permanently clawed shut and clusters of twin puncture marks over his neck and wrists.

One bat unfurled its wings to reveal a cute, pinched face and beady black eyes.

Amir stared too close and too long, and Ronan opened his mouth to warn him too late. The bat bared its teeth in a hiss and its entire face transformed; the skin drew taut over its skull, the whites of its eyes bulged, and two front teeth stretched into fangs as long as Ronan's little finger. Amir jumped and whipped his gaze straight ahead, his shoulders hiked up to his ears.

"Vampire bats," said Tony. She was definitely laughing.

They came to a stop at one of the alley's many dead ends, where a pair of windows looked into a nondescript shop. Between them was a rotting wooden door, and above that, what might have once been a sign.

Amir took a bracing breath. It left him all at once when they stepped through a doorway to a shop that was oddly . . . normal.

But if one looked closer, the shelves lining the grease-stained walls carried a decidedly strange assortment of items: pocket watches and daggers and animal claws, mysterious pouches and throwing stars and small jars full of toxic-looking fluids. No item appeared twice, and each was marked with a price.

Two men in sharp suits stood behind a counter, the shorter of them engaged in a passionate bargaining match with the only other customer over the small animal skull in her hand. It wasn't any animal with which Ronan was familiar.

"What is this place?" Amir stared, transfixed, at a clear bowl of murky water where a fish swam idly, changing colors and patterns with a pop and a flurry of bubbles every few seconds - purple and spotted to orange and striped to pink and plain.

"Delancey's Pawn Shop for Illicit Odds and Ends," Tony recited in sing-song.

At the sound of his name, the taller of the pawnbrokers looked up. His face, as well as his partner's, hid behind a scarf, but his eyes were visible, and they brightened when he spotted them.

"If it isn't my favorite customers!" He clapped his hands together and stepped out from behind the counter, utterly ignoring his seller.

"Customer, you mean," Ronan grumbled under his breath. Next to him, Tony's eyes glittered beneath her hood.

Delancey didn't bother with pleasantries; the backdoor was unlocked and propped open by the time they reached him. They were swallowed into a small office space with a single table at the center, one chair tucked into either side, and a bookshelf against one wall stocked with pawned items. Delancey pulled the nearest seat out for Tony before easing down across from her, and just like that, Ronan and Amir were forgotten.

"I've been waiting since I saw the morning papers," said Delancey. He had a voice like honey, rich and smooth and sugary sweet. Tony leaned in willingly as he reached for her across the table. Hands cloaked in silk pushed back her hood, then reached behind her to pull the cloth from her face. "You've outdone yourself this time, darling."

Tony's smile turned immodest. Ronan wanted to leave.

"Sorry to interrupt-" he was not, "-but you may have noticed, we have a new member."

They both turned to look at him - Tony with an irritable glare, Delancey with a vaguely curious lift to his brow. "So you do," he acknowledged. "My apologies if I was, ah, distracted," he gave Tony a purposeful look. Ronan very much wanted to leave. "Your name?"

"A-"

"Mercenary," Ronan interjected. In the years they had worked together, names had remained their one resolute boundary.

Delancey pushed down his own scarf to reveal a sharp grin. "Chilling," he said, but his eyes were already drifting back to Tony. "Tell me about last night," he invited.

Tony bloomed like a spring blossom under his attention. She eased back in her seat and cocked her head, allowing dark hair to cascade over one shoulder. He watched it fall, as she'd surely known he would. "What would you like to know?" she purred.

Delancey pretended to ponder this with a hand on his chin. He was criminally handsome, all dark hair and crystal eyes and rosy lips. That had to be the reason he could get away with saying things like, "I should like to hear about your dress, I think."

Ronan truly, desperately wanted to leave.

He dropped the knapsack onto the table, held out his hand, and demanded, "Key."

Delancey reached inside his coat, never once moving his gaze, and tossed Ronan a single key on a ring. As Tony gave an unnecessarily detailed description of what she wore to the masquerade, down to the corset, Ronan crossed the room with a very confused Amir in tow and pushed the bookshelf along the wall, gradually revealing the wooden trapdoor hidden beneath.

"What is this place?" Amir asked again.

Contrary to what the peculiar upper level of the pawn shop might suggest, Delancey was not, by any means, from their side of the island. The specifics were kept safely under wraps, but Ronan knew he was the twenty-something year-old son of an exorbitantly wealthy family, and the man who ran the place with him was part of his house's staff. The pawn shop was, at most, a cover - a front-row seat to the spectacle of the kingdom's blackest market and a place to house Delancey's true hustle.

Ronan explained as much as they descended the stairs to the basement. He knew the place well enough to find the closest candelabra in the dark; with its light, he traversed the room until each wick bore a flame and the basement glowed dim orange.

This was Delancey's treasure chest.

A room full of trinkets and charms that had once belonged in somebody else's home, its design had little rhyme or reason. Mounted on the walls were portraits of noblemen and women and landscapes of foreign destinations, gold-framed mirrors and carved candelabras and foreign tapestries. The floorspace was a litter of dressers, tables, and shelves, each cluttered with stolen brooches and lamps and watches and dolls, porcelain china sets stacked next to gold chalices on top of custom jewelry boxes in front of marble busts. The only place to relax was a camelback sofa against one wall, overshadowed by an overstuffed coat rack.

Nearly every item they'd ever stolen was in this room, and that probably didn't account for even half of what stood before Ronan now. He had never understood why Delancey was so hell-bent on acquiring stolen items that he could easily afford for himself, but it wasn't his business to ask, not when Delancey paid so well.

Still, he wondered - could it be that he saw the world the same way they did? Was collecting what was stolen from the Diverran rich some twisted form of mutiny?

Ronan thought it more likely that Delancey was the type of man to view possessions as power. He wanted endlessly and arrogantly; rather than desire everything he couldn't have, he craved everything that wasn't his.

"Does he always allow you down here unsupervised?" Amir asked from across the room, sifting loudly through the clutter atop a mahogany table. "What's stopping you from taking anything you'd like?"

"I think he would know," said Ronan. Delancey played the easygoing act well, but unlike the main shop, every item in this room was spotless. Ronan would bet he kept a closely-monitored inventory. "I don't care to wrong a man of his position who knows my face. And besides, why risk an important relationship?"

Amir drifted off into his exploration, and Ronan saw an opportunity.

"Say," he began, feigning nonchalance as he held a ruby hairpin to the candlelight. "Where did you learn how to waltz? And to tie a cravat?"

The sound of Amir's rummaging paused. "I wondered when someone would ask," he admitted. Ronan scowled at the hairpin and at his own foolishness for hoping to catch him off guard. "I grew up a servant to a very wealthy family. Some things I picked up, some things I learned from the children and their trainers. That's where I learned to wield a blade, as well."

Blurry as it was, this was the first glimpse Ronan had ever gotten into Amir's past.

"And Carmichael?"

"Did you notice the green and white emblem on his mask? That's the Carmichael family crest. Can't say I ever imagined I'd need that piece of information, but- oh my," he broke off into a laugh.

When Ronan turned, Amir stood before the coat rack. There was some rustling, then he held up a violently red velvet robe with goldwork embroidery along the seams. It must have been imported, because the spotted furs lining the cuffs and chest didn't belong to any Diverran creature.

Ronan watched in mingled horror and amusement as Amir slipped the robe over his shoulders. He left it open over his shirt, pulled his scarf off with a flourish, and dropped himself onto the sofa, assuming the most imperious posture he could manage. Legs thrown wide, arms draped over the back of the couch, chin raised high so that he somehow still looked down on Ronan from below. With a put-on haughty smirk, he said, "Well? Do I look the part of the vain nobleman?"

And Ronan was in need of some serious self-reflection, because the robe was the most obnoxious thing he'd ever seen and the pose was deeply condescending, but in that moment, he was acutely aware of how attractive Amir was. It was the cut of his face when he lifted his chin and the darkness of his eyes when they narrowed at him and the strain of his chest and his legs against his clothes when he spread himself so wide and . . .

"No," Ronan choked out. "Too rough around the edges."

Amir puzzled at this. After a moment's thought, he raked a hand through his hair. Ronan wondered what dark spirit he had sold his soul to for his hair to obey him so readily, all but a couple strands sweeping back out of his face. Like whoosh. It wasn't helping Ronan's situation.

"And now?"

"Mhm," Ronan hummed, then cleared his throat when it came out high-pitched. Good god he needed to get into bed with someone soon; it had been far too long if he was losing his wits over a man in a fur robe. "All you're missing is an adoring wife half your age on your arm."

Amir leaned his head back when he laughed, and Ronan thought it might be best to look away at this point, so he busied himself fiddling with the hairpin. "Close - I doubt there's any love there. That's what the mistress is for."

Ronan doubted there was much love there, either - Reason #4 - but he snickered regardless. "All you're missing is a mistress, then."

The drop of footsteps told him Amir was up and about again. The next time Ronan heard his voice, it was right behind him. "I think that can be achieved."

Ronan whirled around to Amir standing there with a second robe, this one clearly intended for a woman. It was the same red as the one he wore, woven from silk and patterned with unfamiliar flowers framed in gold thread.

It was . . . pretty.

"Matching set," Amir coaxed.

"What do you want me to do with that?" Ronan said skeptically. Amir held the robe closer. "Excuse me?"

"Help me complete the image, won't you?"

Ronan couldn't fathom how Amir said this with a straight face. His own neck burned hot at the insinuation. "You can't be serious," he said, even as his fingers twitched with longing to reach out and trace delicate flowers.

Amir nudged the robe even closer. With a muttered laugh and a shake of his head, Ronan gave in and snatched the robe. He pushed past Amir to perch on the sofa with his legs crossed and his hands folded over his knee. Leaning forward, he leveled Amir with an expectant stare. "Well?" He tilted his head, smiling beneath gray cloth. "A mistress is to be spoiled, isn't she?"

Amir grinned right back, delighted at Ronan's participation in his odd little game. Ronan watched as he fluttered around the room and wondered if there would ever be a moment when he didn't confuse him.

He had been friendly since he joined the team, but his amity had always been a subtle kind. He blended into a group to the point of almost disappearing; he laughed and hummed along and spoke when spoken to, never standing out as too loud or too quiet. His performance the night before was the most Ronan had ever heard him speak at once.

Amir was one to ward off attention, yet he seemed to bask in it now that they were alone.

"I come bearing gifts," he said, back from his hunt with no gifts in sight. He sank to a knee before Ronan and beckoned with a finger. "Come closer?"

Playful was a color Ronan had yet to see on him. What was real, then - the deceitful charm he had used to wheedle his way into the Van Doren home, or the spirit he wore now?

Regardless, Ronan couldn't resist playing along.

He leaned onto his forearms and tried not to squirm when Amir reached up and behind him to the knot at the back of his head. The bandana was swiped from his face and folded into the pocket of Amir's trousers.

For a moment, all Amir did was study him. Ronan withstood the urge to hide his face, but it was a near thing.

"It's odd," said Amir, "to see you without your earrings for so long."

Ronan ghosted his fingers over his left ear. He never liked to be without the pearl normally nestled there, but,

"We can't wear anything that might be used to identify us during a heist," he explained. "And this isn't the greatest place to brandish fine jewelry."

The pearls had been a gift from his father, worn by his mother every day without fail despite Ronan's paranoia that she would be robbed for them. She never was, but she did lose one eventually, and after two days of frantically scouring the town for it, she had put the remaining stud back in its original box, never to adorn her ear again.

Whenever he'd had the house to himself, Ronan had held it up to his reflection and imagined how its weight might feel on his lobe.

After the team's first big break-in some five years later, he had approached Tony with the pearl, a needle, and the small amethyst teardrop he had plucked from a jewelry box in the Churchill family's master bedroom.

He'd worn them every day he could since.

Amir held up two opal girandoles. They were elegant little things, and Ronan yearned. "Might I offer a temporary replacement?"

Ronan was helpless to react as Amir rose just enough to slip one through the hole in his right ear. He was painstakingly careful, a knot between his brows that might have been endearing if Ronan wasn't so focused on the way he so fully and wholeheartedly took up his space.

He smelled good. Christ.

"You're very committed to this role," he managed as Amir worked the second earring through.

He finally leaned away, easing back into a smile. "I'm having fun," he said. "Your hand?"

"My-"

Amir used one hand to lift Ronan's until his sleeves fell away from his wrist, and the other to rummage in the pocket of his robe for a woven pearl bracelet. All Ronan could do was watch as Amir rolled it over his wrist, followed by a gold bangle and a string of charms. His other hand was given much the same treatment, and then came the rings - an emerald cabochon and a serpentine band on his little fingers, masculine onyx and bulky silver over his pointers.

Ronan didn't utter a word (hardly even breathed, really) throughout the charade, but Amir occasionally looked up from his work with the same smile that had disarmed Eliza Van Doren and muttered something ridiculous like, "For you, my love."

When he was satisfied, he smoothed a hand over decorated knuckles, looked up through his eyelashes, and brought Ronan's hand toward his lips.

Ronan's yelp was probably loud enough to disrupt Tony and Delancey's heavy petting upstairs. He shoved Amir's face on instinct and Amir fell back willingly, cackling all the way down.

"You're ridiculous!" Ronan snapped, hoping against hope that Amir would stay down long enough for the red to bleed from his cheeks.

"And you," Amir said between deep breaths, "are magnificent."

Ronan deigned not to respond to that. He stood and started to remove the first ring, but Amir pushed to his feet and pretended he was done laughing long enough to say, "Wait, wait, one more."

Ronan glared. Amir wagged the cameo pendant in his hand invitingly. Before Ronan had even sighed his defeat, Amir was behind him.

For the second time in twenty-four hours, his hands grazed Ronan's neck, this time without the barrier of gloves. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Ronan stiffened marginally at the feeling.

He felt the clasp click, felt the weight of the pendant settle against his chest, but Amir's fingers stalled against his spine.

"Amir?" Ronan said when the moment had stretched on too long.

"Hm?" It was distracted, placating at best. Ronan got the impression that their game had come to an abrupt end.

"Is everything alright?"

Amir said nothing in the time it took to drop his hands and take a step back. Then, "When will you stop acting like I might stab you in the back if you let me walk behind you?"

It came as no shock that Amir was the observant type - you had to be, to keep a secret - but it was unnerving to be confronted with so suddenly.

"When I stop thinking it, probably."

Amir hummed again. He didn't sound surprised.

"What can I do to get you to trust me?"

"The others trust you," Ronan deflected. "What does it matter what I think?"

"I don't know."

"But you want me to trust you anyway."

It was unfair, maybe. Amir had proven himself on his very first night - he had obeyed Vito's demands that he drop his weapons and hadn't uttered a single complaint as Mitch patted him down and pulled the scarf away from his face. He had sworn loyalty, secrecy, and good intentions without hesitation, even as Vito pointed his own gun to his chest. At the least, he'd shown that he was serious about joining their team.

"I would like you to, yes. But- it hasn't been very long, has it? Perhaps I am too impatient."

"Mm, perhaps."

Ronan tugged off the rings one by one, then the bracelets. Turning on his heel, he held them out to Amir. "It's a one-sided request, isn't it?" He unclasped the necklace. "You want me to trust you, but you won't trust me with the truth." Tugged out the earrings. "You want to know me, but you're . . ."

Unknowable.

Amir took each item in turn. "There are," he paused, considering, "many things I am afraid to tell you. That's true, and I suppose it makes me a coward, but it isn't because- it doesn't mean I won't tell you anything. You can have everything else, if you ask."

It was a bit too much, all at once. Ronan wanted to go back to five minutes ago.

"You're real strange, you know that?"

To his relief, Amir huffed a laugh. "I might be. Think they've had enough time?"

𓃥𓃥𓃥

Ronan was drunk.

This was not surprising. A night of celebration had become a post-job standard ever since their first big win, and sure enough, Vito and Mitch had skipped through the door as the sun crawled toward the horizon lugging whiskey and ale like groceries.

The night was winding down, the buzz of mosquitos replaced by the chirp of frogs as loopy zeal simmered to lightheaded drowsing. Mitch and Vito had stopped goading each other to jump off the roof and Ronan had stopped frantically talking them down; the three of them lounged there now, looking up at a moon that, right then, seemed closer than the ground two stories below. Raucous laughter had faded into muttered conversation between them and to nothing at all down below, where Amir and Tony lay side-by-side in the grass. Felix had tucked himself in a few minutes before, still a novice with his liquor.

It was a cool night, refreshing against the heat in Ronan's stomach. He lay stretched against the slanted roof next to Mitch, Mitch lay next to Vito, and Vito sat with his forearms braced behind him, his head tilted up to the small patch of night visible between the treetops.

Vito's hair was rarely loose, but he'd given up on the tie after it came undone a second time. He was so lovely, it hurt to look. Hurt even more not to say it.

Ronan tucked his face into his arm and pressed his lips tight before he said something stupid. Sorting through his thoughts was hard like this.

He'd had too much to drink.

Now that the night had turned quiet and the shouting, jeering, and storytelling had dulled to nothing, Ronan was left with a queasy stomach and flushed cheeks and an aching heart and thoughts with no shepherd to herd them. His head was so, so full.

The smell of liquor made him sick.

The night around him was empty, and he was starting to feel that way, too. He squeezed his eyes shut against the feeling as if it was something he could simply ward off, even though he had known better for quite some time.

The exhilaration of their triumph the night before had finally faded, leaving behind the vacant reminder of everything they hadn't done and would never do. It was a feeling so heavy, Ronan struggled to breathe through it on a normal night. Drinking made it worse, but he drank anyway, if only to hold on to the high a little longer.

But with every high came a low.

"Can I share something with you two?"

It seemed impossible, how dearly Ronan craved that voice. To grant someone automatic passage through the noise in your head was to give that person far too much power, but Ronan was learning he had little choice in the matter.

"'Course," he mumbled, right as Mitch said, "Existential fuck."

Vito breathed a laugh. "Nothing like that, I promise. But I've felt- well, I guess it's more what I haven't felt, lately. These last few heists, I mean. Something hasn't felt quite right to me, you know?"

Ronan sat up and sent his head spinning, but the dizziness wasn't nearly enough to quell the beating of his heart, because, yes, he knew. "I've been feeling the same." His words tumbled together in his rush, and the look he turned on Vito bordered on frantic, but he needed this, needed to have this conversation. "The rush is there, and it's incredible while it lasts, but then it's over 'n you feel like-"

"Like you needed more," Vito finished.

Ronan's mouth fell shut.

"This thing we've been doing," Vito continued. "It's fantastic, but it's- well, it's getting boring, isn't it? We sneak in, sneak out, nobody knows we've been there until we're long gone. Something's been bothering me for some time, and it wasn't until last night that it clicked for me: we need to go bigger."

Mitch clapped his hands, and he was grinning now, too. "You really are something, Robin Hood."

And Ronan felt like he was tilting, knocked off balance, because no, he didn't know. "Last night? Last night we were almost caught."

"But we weren't!" Vito laughed like it was all a game, not their lives on the line. "Have you ever known such a thrill?"

"We poisoned people."

"And what a scene! Oh, don't look at me like that. Felix said he minded the dosage; nobody was hurt."

"You don't know that! Christ, Vito, some of those people were about a thousand years old! That was a last resort, not something to strive for."

Vito scoffed. He shared a look with Mitch, and suddenly, Ronan was the butt of some joke. "Fine, then," he said. "What was it you were going to say?"

The look he leveled Ronan with wasn't a new one, but it felt like a slap every time, the reminder that the person who lived so large in his head could make him feel so unbearably small.

"Just that, well," Ronan started, more timid than he'd wanted. It was hard to speak up under a look like that, but he tried anyway. "I think we could find another way."

"Another way to what?"

"To live."

Because Ronan was nineteen years old and already so, so tired.

Vito flopped back against the shingles, groaning. Mitch groused, "Not this shit again," and both of them cracked up.

"We can't do this forever," Ronan persisted despite the humiliation burning him from the inside out. "If we saved up to leave, we could make something of ourselves somewhere else- drop the hiding and actually be somebody- with our skillset-"

"And if I want to do this forever?" Vito said.

"Then nothing will ever satisfy you."

"So I'll keep doing more." He watched the sky, tucking his hands behind his head. "And more and more, until I die."

"You have never once heard me out on this." Ronan was pleading at this point, sitting up straighter like it might make them respect what he had to say. But they lay back, hardly even looking at him, and he didn't know why he bothered when not even their body language would take him seriously.

"And I won't." Vito admitted it like it was nothing, but his voice steeled over as he added, "I don't want to be somebody, Ronan. Neither do you. I want to be everybody, and you want to be nobody. We'll never agree, so why waste time arguing?"

Vito was a rousing force of beauty, brilliant and strong-willed and so devoted to the life he'd built, no one could blame themselves for getting swept away in his inspiration. It was impossible to come near him without being trapped in his orbit.

But he was only kind when he cared to be.

"I think," Ronan tried, then started again when his voice was lost on the breeze, "I think I should go to bed. I'm- I'll- goodnight."

He rose to a squat, bracing a hand on the roof when the head-rush sent him wobbling. "Hey, hold on," said Vito. "You're drunk, you should wait to climb down."

"I'm fine," said Ronan. Vito finally sat up - you pay attention now, do you? - distress etched into his forehead.

"You're going to hurt yourself- seriously!"

"If he wants to fuck himself up, let him."

"Don't be an idiot, Mitch," he chastised. "Ronan, just- can you just wait?"

Ronan found a foothold on the second floor trimming. "See? Fine."

He managed the next step down, and Vito's resigned sigh disappeared behind the muddy green wall.

Ronan took the descent slower than usual, but he still teetered between climbing and wobbling in place. By the time he reached the first floor, his impatience got the better of him and he pushed off the wall, dropping the rest of the way. His knees gave out on impact, but a pair of hands came up to steady him before he could crash painfully onto his ass. Instead, he stumbled back into a sturdy chest.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Amir hissed from behind him. When he let go, Ronan's last drink hit him all at once. He stumbled in place, and those hands came right back up to steady him.

"Wasn't," he grumbled. His ankles were on fire. "My ankles are on fire."

"I think it's time for bed." Ronan was steered inside by his shoulders. He didn't fight it, happy to lean more of his weight back. "You're not being very helpful."

The front door fell shut behind them. Felix must have doused the lamps when he came in; the only light filtered through the windows. "I think you should leave."

"Just let me get you to bed first-"

"No, I think you should leave."

Amir faltered in his efforts to push Ronan forward. His hands slipped down to Ronan's shoulder blades. "I know you don't like me very much, but . . ."

"Who said that? Just because I don't trust you doesn't mean I can't like you." Ronan turned to face him, too out of focus to consider their proximity. Amir retreated one step and met the door against his back. "I like you just fine."

He hadn't known that was true until he said it, but it felt right on his tongue.

"Oh." Amir sounded a little dazed. Ronan wondered if he was drunker than he'd let on.

"I'm trying to help you," he said. "I know you're here for the anonymity and whatnot, I know last night must've been the time of your life, but this isn't good, Amir. It's . . . it's . . ."

"Bad?"

"Please, for the love of god, take me seriously right now," Ronan demanded and watched Amir's eyes go wide. He needed someone to take him seriously tonight. "'Cause the thrill's gonna wear off someday, and you're gonna realize this is a shit way to live, and it's gonna weigh on my fucking conscious that I never warned you."

He waited to be brushed off- for Amir to roll his eyes or laugh or start pushing him toward his bed again. But Amir nodded understanding and encouragement and kept his eyes on Ronan's face like what he had to say might actually matter, and it was such a jarring feeling, Ronan struggled for a moment to find his words.

"We . . . we don the Robin Hood name like we've earned it but we haven't given back a day in our lives, and we treat all this like some great retaliation when really we're just lashing out in spite, and it's like- it's like stealing a single brick from a tower wall and expecting the entire castle to crumble."

He could barely speak without slurring, but he felt oddly clear-headed. It might've had something to do with finally having somebody listen.

"Then we do it again, 'til we've got enough bricks to build a shitty little shed, and maybe in twenty years we'll make a cottage, but that's as far as we'll ever get. We don't create anything, we won't become anything, we just take and waste and repeat, over and over."

Until the high gets shorter and shorter, until a bigger dose is needed for any high at all.

This was the worst part of the job. The crash.

"And we're all fucking caught in this cycle, 'cause it's been so long we don't know any other way to be. I was thirteen years old and desperate for some sorta home, and now this is the only life I know and the only family I've got."

He had forgotten what it meant to be by himself, and at the same time, he was the loneliest he'd ever been.

"But you," he said, raising a fist to Amir's chest. He misjudged the distance between them and stumbled forward. For the third time that night, he was caught. Blinking down into the thin space between their bodies, he thumped his fist over Amir's heart and tried to think through the dizzy spell. "You're twenty-one and still good enough to stand on your own, 'n there's nothing keeping you here 'cept the fear you're gonna get caught, so find another way to keep your damn secret and take your share of the cash and go somewhere else before you're stuck."

Amir held firm to Ronan's upper arms. When it was clear Ronan had run out of things to say or the energy to say them, he spoke up at last.

"And what if there is something else keeping me here?"

Ronan took a long, heavy breath. "Then 'm sorry for you."

"Don't be. I think I'm okay with it."

At the drum of footsteps coming down the hall, Ronan finally pried himself from Amir's hands. He turned just in time to see Felix appear in his nightclothes, silhouetted in shadow.

"Sorry," Felix said, just loud enough to carry. He wrung his fingers together anxiously. "Ronan, can we, um, talk?"

Ronan was already halfway down the foyer; he knew that voice. Bidding Amir goodnight over his shoulder was an afterthought, and he didn't wait around for a response.

"Trouble sleeping?" he asked softly.

Felix's nod was all it took; Ronan searched for his wrist in the dark and led the way to their bedroom. It took more focus than he had to walk steadily, but he managed anyway. He could feel Felix's pulse hammering in his wrist, and he knew the kid would brush off his own needs the moment he realized how off-balance Ronan really was.

He wasn't entirely sure how he'd become Felix's comfort on nights like these. It could have been the simple matter of having shared a room for years and spent every night with just each other. But Ronan thought it might have to do with the fact that they were the only members of their group who still had living family, and yet had ended up in this life all the same, hurt by the very people who were supposed to love them the most.

Felix had never shared the full story, and Ronan would never ask, but he knew enough. A house draped permanently in nightime, curtains never drawn and candles rarely lit. A father who took his anger out on his wife and a mother who took her sadness out on her child. The dim glow of a cigar casting shadows in a dark home, the stench of its smoke in a cramped space, and the burn of its foot pressed punishingly into young skin.

Felix was more accustomed to the dark than any of them. He wasn't afraid of it, until some nights, he was.

So Ronan lit the candle at Felix's bedside and crawled under the sheets next to him. He sat upright and pulled the covers up to Felix's chin, promised not to let the room burn down, and fought the heaviness of his own eyelids until he was sure Felix was fast asleep, then for a little while longer. The wait was sobering.

𓃢𓃢𓃢

Song for this chapter - Sober II (Melodrama) by Lorde

Honorable mention: Summer Child by Conan Gray (this is my song for felix :'))