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[meatbrained]

( five + one )

how it works:

i. post a comment with the characters you play.
ii. go around and prompt other players with a 5 + 1 prompt (e.g. "Five times Hope said sorry and one time he didn't")
iii. write a fic for the prompts people leave you!
iv. enjoy your fic? we hope?

Comments

[unknowable]

Five times Adam refused help and one time he didn't.

one.

Adam is eleven years old. His teacher asks him to stay after class, and for a moment he's terrified. Are his grades not good enough? Has he done something wrong? His heart is not yet set on success at any cost, but it's a kernel in the back of his mind, something he will soon devote himself too. Even now he knows that he can't slip, not too badly, not if he wants to get out somehow.

But it's not that. She is carefully, awkwardly kind. She sits him down and asks about the bruise on his arm, and he knows she's also asking about the cut above his eyebrow from the week before, the slight limp from last month, the three missed days of school. He doesn't think she's ever done this before, because she doesn't seem to know what to say.

"Is someone hurting you?" she asks, and there's a set to her mouth, unspoken words in the way her eyes flicker away. She pities him. She doesn't want this to be her problem. Adam is only a child, but he knows what it looks like. He's seen it before.

He thinks of the pity in her eyes, the cold way his mother looks when she tells him it's a family problem, the anger in his father's voice when he tells Adam it's Adam's fault.

Then he says no, and she looks relieved.

She doesn't ask again.

two.

It's the second week of classes at Aglionby. Adam feels out of place every day, sticking out like a sore thumb. A duckling among swans, a Pinto among Ferarris. Everyone knows, just by looking at him, but none of them say anything.

Until Tad Carruthers leans over the desk Adam is sitting at and laughs.

"Hey, man, I got an old Aglionby sweater I could give you if you need a spare. Doesn't fit me anymore, but you're pretty skinny."

He laughs again, like an asshole. His eyes catch on the frayed edge of Adam's sweater.

Adam hates him.

In another world, it would be a kind offer, perhaps. Tad may even have meant it as one. But in this world, it instantly cements Adam's dislike of him.

He doesn't respond. He feels frozen, angry, ashamed. He collects his books and leaves, hearing Tad laughing with his rich bastard friends as he does. Laughing at him, or just laughing. It doesn't matter. There's no difference.

three.

"How about I buy you a sandwich?" Jerry-the-lift-operator says, looking at Adam with a poorly-concealed expression of worry.

It's their lunch break - or dinner break, maybe, since it's 11 at night. Adam looks up from the history paper he was writing, looks at his coworker, doesn't say anything for a moment.

He doesn't have money for lunch, of course. Sometimes he brings it, leftovers from home, but he doesn't get paid for another three days and his dad is out of work and their groceries are stretched thin. Adam did the math in his head, he always does, and his choices were bringing something to work tonight or bringing something to school tomorrow.

He doesn't want to see that furrow in Gansey's brow. He didn't think anyone would notice here.

Lunch was half a sandwich, an apple, and an energy bar. It was hours ago. Adam is hungry.

"I'm fine," he says, and turns back to his homework.

Jerry looks at him for a moment longer, then shrugs and walks away.

four.

They've had this argument a million times, or at least that's what it feels like. Adam comes to school with a new bruise, Gansey stews over it for a few hours or, at most, a day, and then they argue.

"You can stay at Monmouth," Gansey says, and Adam feels that familiar anger coil inside him. Gansey doesn't understand, could never understand. He's never been controlled the way Adam has.

He can't trade his father's control for Gansey's. He wishes he had the words to express that in a way Gansey could comprehend, wishes it didn't always turn to sharp words and distance between them. But he doesn't know how, and neither does Gansey.

He doesn't want this help, this pity. He doesn't want to be just another one of Gansey's things

He wants to be Adam Parrish. He wants to walk away on his own two feet, relying on nothing but himself. He wants to not fight with his friends.

He wants too much.

five.

It's not anger he feels when Ronan offers to teach him to fight. It's weariness, maybe, or even hollow amusement. What good would it do, except to get him hurt more? What good would it do to fight back, when his father is bigger and stronger and better with his fists?

He doesn't tell Ronan his father has a gun. He doesn't think a creature like Ronan would care, and he doesn't want to give Gansey one more thing to worry over.

Adam doesn't think any of it matters, in the end. He has to survive. That's all he has to do. Fighting back won't help with that - it'll only put him in more danger, make his father angrier, turn it into a real fight that Adam would inevitably lose.

Ronan is only offering to appease Gansey, anyway. He doesn't like Adam, is only barely beginning to accept him. When his eyes rest on Adam's bruises, it's not worry in them. Adam thinks it might be disgust, but he doesn't have a guide for Ronan Lynch, he doesn't know how to read him. He only knows that Ronan feels something when he looks at the wreck that is Adam Parrish.

So when Ronan offers, Adam shrugs it off. He doesn't get angry. He doesn't let it bother him. It isn't pity that Ronan feels, and that's all he can be thankful for.

+ one.

He wakes with a jolt, a choked gasp, the remains of his nightmare clinging to him.

For a moment Adam is frozen, not so unlike Ronan after he dreams, but it's fear that freezes him this time. His father's hands, his own hands, bruising blows. It's not the first time he's had this dream, it won't be the last, but it's the first time he's had it when he wasn't alone.

"Hey."

Ronan's voice is quiet, his body warm, his arms as they slide around Adam's waist solid and real. Adam's instinct is to pull away, hide his vulnerability, even lash out with a sharp word. But that's not him, that's not who he wants to be. He shivers, briefly, shaking off the last of the dream, and no sharp words spill forth.

"I've got you," Ronan says, and it's sort of meaningless, because Adam knows he really has nothing to be afraid of. It's only his past, clinging to him, the monsters he hasn't quite vanquished.

But he takes a breath. He leans against Ronan. He lets himself accept the offered comfort, lets himself exist in the moment, lets his thoughts quiet.

It gets easier every time.