NOTES:

(This was also posted in ao3)

DISCLAIMER 1: The Raven Cycle and its characters belong to Maggie Stiefvater, I'm just borrowing them because I'm bored.

DISCLAIMER 2: don't take anything written here as advice on how to give massages. I have no idea how to give massages and everything I wrote I read from dubious internet sources.

English is not my first language, sorry if there are mistakes .

Adam Parrish stopped reading his biology text with a sigh and stretched his neck once more, trying to get rid of the pain there. The folding chair and table he was working on creaked, as they did every time he moved. He had found them next to some dumpsters. They were cheap and old, but not broken, and it was definitely better than sitting on the floor while using some cardboard boxes as a desk, like he had been doing until then. Besides, when he finished studying he could fold them, thus not invading more space of his already small room above St. Agnes.

He heard a rustle behind him, and wondered for a second if it was Cabeswater wanting to communicate with him, but immediately identified the sound as Ronan moving against the wall he was leaning on, listening to music with his eyes closed.

The other boy had arrived an hour before, at 11pm, asking if he could hang out there. He had seemed restless. Adam, trying to find out the reason for his mood, had asked "where's Gansey?" Ronan had shrugged, but a muscle had tightened in his jaw, so their mutual friend was probably somehow the reason for Ronan to be there. Ronan didn't look like he wanted to talk about it, however, and Adam had things to do, so he hadn't asked further.

Adam kneaded his neck absently while he tried to focus again on his textbook. It's not like Ronan was distracting him. In fact, he usually behaved when he came to visit him. But he was tired and his concentration didn't come as easy as before.

"The hell is wrong with your neck?" Ronan's voice cut through the silence of the room.

"Mnh?" Adam said distractedly, but turned around to look at his friend. He hadn't moved from the spot against the wall he had claimed when he had first entered. One of his long, muscular legs stretched out in front of him, the other one bent enough for him to rest his arm on his knee. He looked like a model with his biker jacket open and his expensive jeans, and it pissed Adam off that he didn't even have to try.

"You haven't stopped rubbing it all evening... Heh." Ronan snorted after noticing how that sounded out loud, the immature idiot.

Adam shot him a dirty look. "It's nothing, just a bit of muscle pain." He didn't tell him how the pain had started three days before and didn't show any sign of stopping. Too many evenings hunched over car motors or textbooks; too many nights resting on a too thin mattress.

"You should get a massage."

It was Adam's turn to snort. "Yes, Lynch, I'll schedule it after my spa appointment," he said with sarcasm and just a tiny bit of bitterness. He didn't have energy for any more.

"I can give massages," Ronan said causally without looking at Adam.

Adam did a mental double take. Did Ronan Lynch just offer to give him a massage? Adam hesitated.

His first instinct was rejection. He'd been turning down offers of help for so long, that it was almost a knee-jerk reaction now... But lately he'd changed. And for the better, he thought. He didn't snap at his friends when they tried to do little nice things for him anymore, he'd been trusting them more with who he really was... It had been hard, but the result was that he felt better than he had been in a long time. Maybe this could be another exercise in trust.

But old habits died hard, and he couldn't help but question Ronan's motives. Why was Ronan offering? It was a bit strange, wasn't it? He knew Ronan wasn't as much of a shithead as he liked to seem, had been finding out more and more sides to him in the last month after they had gotten Blue's mom back from that cave and things had calmed down for a bit (only temporally, for sure;) but still, this felt a bit more personal than their normal interactions... Maybe he just wanted to prank him. Or maybe... maybe he had been right about Ronan's feelings? Was Ronan trying to flirt with him? He felt a flutter of nerves in his stomach, he didn't know what to think about that.

"The hell is that suspicious look for? I'm not trying to prank you, idiot."

Adam tried to school his expression. "Do you even know how to give proper massages?"

"My dad taught me and Declan how to fight and made us train whenever he was home, of course he had to teach us how to relieve muscle pain."

Adam almost asked if that meant that he used to give massages to Declan. The idea was so against the image he had of the Lynch brothers that he was having trouble processing it. Then again, he supposed, they probably hadn't always hated each other.

Adam still wasn't sure about the massage.

"I gave one to Gansey and he didn't die." Ronan's dry words had Adam containing a wince. The discovery of Gansey's predicted fate was still too fresh in his mind.

Wrongly predicted fate, Adam though, ferociously. He won't die. I won't let him.

He forced himself to focus on the conversation at hand.

"And when exactly did this happen?" he asked with pretend suspicion.

"When the moron found that old Welsh book a year ago and hurt his back by spending the whole night hunched over it, reading like a monk."

A memory of Gansey telling him about it came to him.

"Oh, yeah, I remember him mentioning the massage... I also remember him saying that it had made him wish he was dead because it had felt like you were trying to break his spine."

"That's because Gansey is a fucking baby who likes to whine too much. Stupid old man."

"That doesn't make sense, is he a baby or an old man? Pick an insult, he can't be both."

"Sure he can."

And Adam couldn't say anything to that because, well, yeah. He knew he wasn't the only person to see their friend that way. As both old and inexplicably new. People who had a conversation with Gansey for the first time ended up either fascinated by his agelessness or completely bemused by it. It never ceased to entertain Adam to watch their reactions.

He noticed that, while he had been pondering about Gansey's strange existence, a few seconds had passed in silence and that Ronan had apparently taken it as a no to his offer, since he had gone back to his headphones. Adam glanced back at his book, but even if he hadn't been hurting, his eyes were itching and the words had begun to blur with each blink.

So Adam got up from his chair and nudged his friend's side with his foot. Ronan glared at him and took off his headphones.

"Yeah, okay... where should I sit?"

Ronan's eyebrows jumped slightly, apparently surprised that he had accepted the offer.

"Oh. Um. Backwards on the chair will do." Then he got up and passed him the pillow from the bed. "Here. Put it between your chest and the back of the chair. Use it to rest your chin."

Adam followed his friend's instructions, even though doubts were still festering in the back of his mind.

"This feels wrong."

"The fuck are you talking about?" Ronan asked. Did he sound a bit offended?

"It's just that turning my back at something so mean-looking is kind of counter-intuitive."

He could hear the smirk on Ronan's voice when he answered, "Don't worry, Parrish, you look like too much of a wimp for me to want to fight you."

Adam's lips twitched in amusement. The familiar insults managing to calm him down. He was making a big deal out of nothing, this was just Ronan. And, granted, lately just Ronan had started to become someone different in Adam's mind. Someone with more depth, more complicated, more intriguing. But he forced himself to ignore all that and think of him as how he used to see him; Ronan: that circumstantial friend he had been during the first few months after Adam had met Gansey.

He heard Ronan stand behind him and felt the other's hands rest on his shoulders. The warmth of them through his t-shirt surprised Adam. He started to do light strokes from his spine to his shoulders with the whole palm.

"I see, so you have some kind of honor code to not fight people weaker than you?" Adam continued their conversation, feeling a bit better if he talked.

"It's got nothing to do with honor, it's that I'd have you surrendering in under a minute, and where's the fun in that? That'd be just sad."

Next, Ronan started to rub small circles with the tips of his fingers from the back of Adam's neck to his shoulders.

"Overconfidence has often been the downfall of many great people, you know?"

"It's not overconfidence if you can back it up, and I can. Now shut up. This is supposed to be relaxing, how are you going to relax when you can hear your own irritating voice?"

"Aren't you talking about your voice?"

"My voice's a fucking delight."

"Sing me a lullaby, then."

"I'll sing the Murder Squash if you don't shut up already."

"Please don't. My apologies."

He heard Ronan mutter something about teenagers who didn't listen to the authority and Adam had to bite his lip in order not to retort to that one.

Ronan continued the massage, alternating between strokes to his neck and the soft kneading of shoulder muscles. It felt good. Too good, maybe. He couldn't remember the last time anyone had touched him for so long like this, without any violence. Definitely since he stopped being a little boy who could climb on his mother's lap. Without the bickering to distracting him from the gentle touches, he was starting to feel a little overwhelmed, a bit vulnerable... But at the same time, he didn't want it to stop.

Just when Adam was feeling warm and relaxed, sinking more into the pillow and wondering distantly what Gansey had been complaining about, Ronan dug his thumb mercilessly against a point in Adam's neck.

"Ow!" Adam complained while turning his head enough to glare at his friend from the corner of his eye. "Ronan, what the hell!"

"Hey, this is how you get rid of knots, which are what's making you ache. It's not my fault your neck and back are literally shit right now."

Adam settled back into the pillow with one final glare. "I don't think 'literally' means what you think it means, Lynch," he grumbled.

"Don't get smart with me, Parrish... your neck is on the line."

"Oh my God."

Luckily, Ronan decided to spare him from any more terrible jokes and proceeded to ruthlessly attack any tension knots he found in his way. At least that's what Adam thought he was doing. He could also be torturing him to take revenge for whatever it was Adam had done to deserve this.

Adam grunted after a especially uncomfortable squeeze at the side of his neck. He had gotten way worse than this throughout his life, but that didn't mean that this was pleasant.

"Just tell me what you want to know, I'll tell you. You don't need this Torture and Interrogation crap."

"Spoken like a true wimp. Okay, then. Is it true that you wet your bed until you were 12? It's true, isn't it?"

"You are hilarious."

"I know. Anyway, there's only one more to go, so..."

"But is it a real 'just one more' though? Or is it like when P.E. teachers say 'just one more lap' and then make us run five more?"

"You should know already that I never lie, Parrish."

Adam made a non-committal sound.

Just like he promised, Ronan soon stopped digging his thumbs in the other's muscles and started once again the light kneading and stroking from the beginning. Adam let out a breath of relief and sank a bit in the pillow he was using.

However, with this kind of contact, the vulnerable feeling came back. Ronan's soothing touches were beginning to unwind something that had been burrowing in his chest perhaps for too long. It was a strange sensation. Like the disinfection of a wound. Like he was being forced to acknowledge and feel the loneliness inside him while at the same time Ronan's touch told him time and again a comforting message: you are not alone.

Something trembled in Adam's chest and he couldn't contain a slightly shaky sigh. He prayed to the heavens that Ronan hadn't heard it. Maybe life was willing to give him a break for once, because the other teenager didn't make any sign of having heard it and continued the massage for a few more minutes. He was getting so terribly sleepy.

Then Ronan broke the silence. "I actually have a question for you, even though I've stopped the torture part of the interrogation."

"Yes?" Adam tried to say, although it sounded more like, 'mmrnh?'

"Can I sleep here tonight?"

"Sure."

Adam thought for a second about asking why he wanted to stay, even though Ronan had stayed the night more than once without any need for explanations. But then he remember Ronan saying that he never lied, and it somehow felt dangerous to ask. If he had been more awake, he would have questioned that feeling. He never let instinct lead him- except for Cabeswater matters,- he always rationalized everything. But right then, his rational mind was putty beneath Ronan's hands. So he just agreed and let himself enjoy the end of the massage.