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ravenvsfox · 7 years

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Part two of my trc/tfc crossover extravaganza as requested by about 16 humans, this is going to be a trio, so wait for chapter 3 buddds

There’s a knock on the door two seconds before Ronan slits through the doorway shoulder first. Adam feels like the contents of a cardboard box, sliced and opened.

“I fucking hate this,” Ronan says, his whole presence bunched at the entrance, coiled. “Why do I feel like they have more secrets than we do?”

Adam shuffles his feet so he’s contained to one cushion, and Ronan sits down instantly, close enough that his waves eat Adam’s ripples.

“You wanted this.”

“I wanted to play exy.”

“You wanted all of us with you,” Adam adds. “You wanted to not be the most difficult person on a team. You wanted college to be easy and the games to be hard.”

Ronan looks at him closely, then kicks backward onto the couch, head on the far armrest, legs pushing at Adam’s so that they have to occupy some of the same space.

“I don’t need another gang of thugs to tell me what I have to be.”

“Kavinsky’s crew was—“

“I’m not talking about him,” Ronan says viciously. Adam eyes him, then looks at their legs, at Ronan’s hand, lax near his thigh.

“I think,” Adam says slowly, “that it’s too soon to tell.”

Ronan’s eyes are slitted blue when Adam looks down, peering past his own knees to meet his gaze.

“Yeah okay, diplomat. Tell me what you really think.”

Adam rolls his head back, flexing his hands to hear them crack, thinking of the way Neil and Andrew paired off and put their heads together, dark and light, speaking with gestures first, silences second, words last.

“I think that we’re trying to put two plugs together, and we don’t have any sockets.”

“Pretty,” Ronan snarks. Adam ignores him.

“They don’t trust us.”

“I don’t trust them,” Ronan replies easily, and takes Adam’s hand so he’ll stop cracking and wringing.

“I don’t think any of us would qualify for the foxes if we were—“

“Trustworthy?”

“Easy to understand,” Adam continues. “I’ve watched the tapes, Ronan. They’re still fractured at the best of times.”

“We’re stronger,” Ronan says quietly, playing with Adam’s fingers.

“We’re good together,” Adam agrees, and Ronan pulls him down on top of him. Adam falls, and enjoys the falling quite a lot, the way Ronan’s mouth changes when he’s close. “We haven’t always been.”

“That’s Gansey’s fault. He doesn’t know how to introduce people.”

“Meanwhile you made a great case for yourself,” Adam says sarcastically, grinning when Ronan does. “So personable.”

“Hey,” Ronan says, cupping Adam’s face with both hands and squeezing. “You wanna go see what we can do on this shit campus?”

“I want to get ahead on my readings, actually. My grades have to be better than my status, because PSU has zero prestige.”

Ronan rolls him into the back of the couch and kisses him fast, rubs a thumb over the sting on Adam’s lips. “No, you want to break into the court.”

“We have the keys.”

“You want to legally enter the court,” Ronan amends, pinching Adam’s side so that his ribcage cants up.

“Yeah,” Adam says after a moment. He thinks about the burnished wood of the court and the killing heft of a racquet. He pictures Ronan and Gansey next to him, crowing victory, the sweat and rush and pitch of the finite game, the deadline he can see and count on. Exy decks him and he hits back.

“Good,” Ronan says. “I want to put a dent in their fucking foxhole.”

_____

The lights are on when they get to the court at midnight, and Ronan lets the door fall closed hard behind them. There’s no movement, just miles of clean hallway and the hollow, lived-in feeling of a place that should be full.

They exchange looks, and walk steadily towards the heart of the building. They gear up quickly in the chill of the changing rooms, laughing at each other in their fiery oranges. Ronan musses the bandana from Adam’s hair.

They poke their way towards the court, and when they’re close enough, the screech and hammer of activity haunts the hallway.

“My bet’s on Day. He looks like he doesn’t sleep,” Ronan says, kicking the door open and catching it before it can swing back.

“That’s a pretty ironic insult, coming from you,” Adam says pointedly, and Ronan grumbles something about involuntary insomnia, but they’re already spilling out into the central court.

He regrets making it this far. He feels so blatantly redundant, a meal that’s mistakenly been delivered to a table of people who’ve already eaten.

It is Day, but it’s also Minyard and Josten, running drills as seriously as they seem to do everything, full gear, full focus. Adam can taste the sweat in the air from outside the plexiglass that swallows the action.

“Fuck,” Ronan says.

“So much for that,” Adam says, drooping and trying to pin himself back up.

Ronan, of course, strides forward and opens the door anyway. Kevin perks up first, holding out a hand to halt the action that Andrew ignores and Neil stares at.

“Did you come to practice?”

“Well we didn’t come to bask in your mediocrity, did we?” Ronan says, and Adam sighs. He has the unsettled feeling that Ronan sincerely enjoys this room full of abrasive personalities. Poison doesn’t pose a threat to more poison. Adam worries for Ronan’s thin armour though, the weak points that grow every day.

“That would imply that you even know what proper exy looks like, which I doubt,” Neil calls.

Adam grabs for Ronan, but he slips from his hands. He looks miles taller than Neil by the time he reaches him, but somehow narrowly less threatening. Andrew bristles and hefts his racquet up, and Adam sees black.

“Can we play?” Adam asks quickly, sifting panic out of his voice. “We want to get ahead.”

“We’re already ahead,” Ronan spits, looking down into Neil’s steady eyes. His scars preserve his intimidation like plastic wrap, but Ronan is one big scar: painful to look at, more painful to have.

“Good,” Kevin says. “Ronan and Neil can play against me. Adam, get in their goal, Andrew in mine.”

Ronan and Neil squint at each other. Adam bristles at being ordered around; Kevin’s authority grates in a way that Gansey’s only sometimes does. It’s strange, watching everyone line themselves up and sink into their roles like they were already wading into water and just found that they couldn’t reach the bottom with their toes anymore.

Ronan and Neil fall into twin positions. Adam stares at Andrew’s apathetic racquet twirling and thinks Okay. Yes. He can read the mislead in Andrew’s stance, the power in his arms. He can understand Andrew’s faulty concentration, the broken pipe connecting him to Neil.

“Try not to prove Neil right,” Kevin yells, and Andrew hammers the ball all the way downcourt. The rush is instant for Adam, ropes and ropes of adrenaline in front of him, and it all moves so fast that Palmetto and Henrietta and Cabeswater are blurred landmarks outside of his car window.

Neil’s tricky, slippery fast, never trusting Ronan with the ball, goading him back and forth. Kevin has ambidextrous power all the way up his arms and legs, he’s a tank that also did all of his calculations. Andrew is immovable, and unmistakably natural.

Ronan is gorgeous when he plays -- sleek as a BMW, cruel as a hockey player, and he always has more to prove than anyone on court. He steals the ball from his own teammate and makes it look like an act of mercy. He’s the lightning strike and the thunder and the rain all at once.

Adam’s track record is impeccable, but he knows that Andrew is better. Adam pitches a ball at Neil’s legs and Andrew twitches for long enough that Ronan can scoop the ball and slide it home in the corner of Andrew’s goal.

It’s the only goal he sinks. Neil manages one half an hour later, but the opposite side of the court with its two players feels like a concrete wall they’re bouncing practice balls off of.

The way Andrew plays is monstrous, and Adam fights humiliation as he always does, saving face with all of his thin, patchy energy, and his vein-deep desire to win.

Kevin gets four shots past him, all told, making Adam’s failure rate double Andrew’s.

Adam throws his racquet down, regrets it, and feels shame join exhaustion on his face. He senses Andrew watching him from across the court, and the feeling scuttles under his skin. Ronan jogs up to him with some unfathomable remaining energy stores, and waits for him to take off his helmet. He doesn’t try to help him or touch him or comfort him.

“We held our own,” he says eventually. “They beat the best team in the world last spring, and we held our fucking own.”

Adam nods, too overwhelmed to respond.

“What happened to you being ahead?” Neil wanders up to ask, and Ronan breathes out, turns around, and punches him clean across the face.

He stands over him after, looking vengeful and strong, and says, “You lost too.”

Blood pumps, their breathing huffs and trips, runners thud closer, and then Andrew delivers a right hook so brutal that anyone else might have been knocked out. Ronan sprawls, but rolls into a crouch almost immediately, looking thunderstruck. It reminds Adam of his brawls with Declan, the bloody mouth with the devastation behind it.

It’s horrifying, seeing it surface so quickly, blood welling up even after you’ve cleaned the wound.

“Hey,” Adam says viciously, putting himself between Andrew and Ronan.

“Hey,” Andrew replies, looking past him to Ronan. “Do not touch him again.”

“Same to you,” Adam says, trying to get maneuver so that Andrew has to meet his eye.

“I’m shocked that you can speak,” Ronan says, staggering upright, purposefully not checking for damage in his face or hand.

“I’m shocked that you can stand,” Andrew tells him. “Now tell me if you heard me.”

“I heard you. You’re blindly defending your boyfriend when he’s trying to start shit.”

“Is that not what you’re doing?” Andrew asks evenly. When Ronan hesitates he continues, “you lied. Neil called your bluff, you lost your temper. Do you feel like more of a winner now?”

“I don’t lie,” Ronan grits, and Andrew cocks his head at him. He looks mildly surprised by the concept.

“Let’s just change out and go home,” Adam murmurs, temples throbbing. “This isn’t productive.”

“The practice was decent,” Kevin announces. “But the summer made you slow.”

“Insult to injury,” Adam says under his breath, and Andrew looks piercingly in his direction again. Adam doesn’t look away. He’s heard the rumours, read the articles, but he’s not unsettled by them. He’s familiar with the way fear can look so convincingly like anger — there’s no reason it can’t look like apathy too.

“You’re not ready to be a team,” Neil says.

“That’s some bullshit, coming from you,” Ronan says, thick through the blood muddying his lips.

“We take care of foxes, not any asshole who steps on the court. Ae you ready to make an effort? Let any of that glittering narcissism go? Because until you do, I keep critiquing you, and you keep losing that paper-thin temper of yours.”

“We’re serious about this,” Adam says. “We wouldn’t have come here as a unit if we weren’t used to teamwork and sacrifice.”

“You’re a long way from home,” Andrew says. “Teams break.”

“I’m not,” Adam says, instinctive and bitter. “And we won’t.”

Andrew’s eyes are darkly intense, and they stick all over Adam’s face, his ear, his sweaty hair.

“You’re coming to Columbia this weekend, both of you.” His gaze slides to Ronan. Adam feels sickly, like he wants to peel his eyes off of him.

“There’s a club,” Neil explains, watching Andrew closely, his face a flip-book of reactions to the tiniest gestures.

“Was that an invitation?”

Andrew considers. “It’s not optional.”

“Fuck you,” Ronan says.

Adam says, “We’ll go,” without getting all the way through his furious mental gymnastics routine. He’s curious enough about the foxes that he’s willing to disguise himself as one. Another city, another costume, another scholarship, another sacrifice.

Andrew doesn’t react, just walks away with Neil a pace in front of him. It’s like they’re both listening to the same strange set of headphones, and no one else knows what’s feeding into that connection all day.

Ronan tugs Adam by his single, neat leather wristband, tucked secretly underneath his gloves, and Adam considers that they might have the same thing.

Part One Part Three

#a real live fic golly and also goodness #aftg #trc #pynch #andreil #tfc fanfic #the foxhole court #the raven cycle #prompt #mine #im sorry i made you wait so long and this is like 2000 words of filler

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