#a whiny Ronan is a happy Ronan actually in case you didn't know

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Live A Little (Love A Lot)

some silly Bronan platonic bonding and bickering in honor of valentine's day, cuz they're just so much fun and i love them | Bronan | Gen | 3k | Banter | Fluff & Humor | Platonic Kisses | (also on AO3)

Blue wasn’t quite sure how she ended up alone at Monmouth Manufacturing with Ronan. Gansey was at a family function—a political function, rather, that happened to involve his family, and thus required his presence to complete the pretty picture—and Adam wouldn’t be back from his factory shift for another twenty minutes or so. She had a feeling that Noah might have been here at some point, but after his sacrifice and Cabeswater’s reconstitution of Gansey, their ability to keep track of him in their minds and their memories was a little hit or miss.

However it had started, now it was just Blue cross-legged on Gansey’s bed, being nosy and going through all the books he had stacked up on the floor beside it in a tower tall enough to act as a nightstand for yet more books, and Ronan, sprawled out on the main strip of miniature Henrietta and tossing bits of potato chip into the air for Chainsaw to swoop for. Half the time, she was too late to catch them and the bits fell back down to hit him in the face. He didn’t seem to mind much.

It was a drowsy, boring, waiting type of afternoon, but it was kind of nice too. Out of all her boys, Ronan was the one she’d spent the least amount of time with, and she wasn’t entirely sure she’d ever spent more than a few minutes with only him. Being trapped in a frightening mystical underground cavern in the dark together and tormented by images of their dead and potentially soon-to-be-dead loved ones, she thought, didn’t count.

She put down Rhiannon: An Inquiry into the Origins of the First and Third Branches of the Mabinogi and picked up Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology next. It had a candy bar wrapper stuffed in it as a bookmark, about thirty pages from the end. There had been ten books stacked on top of it. Blue wondered if Gansey remembered or had even noticed that he hadn’t gotten around to those last thirty pages. Probably not.

“Hey, maggot.”

A few months ago, this might have ruined her good mood. Now she just turned to the entry on Sasquatch—Gansey had doodled several footprints of varying sizes in the margins here—and said, “I’m not dignifying that by answering to it.”

“You just did, moron. Hey, would you date me?”

Blue put the book down. “Come again?”

Ronan had not unsprawled from downtown, one foot planted on Magnolia Drive so that his crooked knee towered over the drug store with the old-timey striped awning, the other elbow jutting out between the public library and the less respectable of Henrietta’s two Denny’s. Chainsaw seemed to have realized where all the chip bits were coming from. She’d stolen the bag right out of Ronan’s hand and was pecking covetously through its contents a few crossroads away. Ronan had to crane his head back, pale throat bared, to look at Blue upside down.

“Noah said you said you’d go out with him—” Well, that at least confirmed her suspicion about how they’d ended up in this position, though it smarted that Ronan seemed to remember something that she didn’t. “—you know, if he was alive and shit. What about me?”

“You are alive. And shit.”

“No duh, dumbass. I meant, would you go out with me? If I asked?”

Blue blinked at him. “Ronan, you don’t want to go out with me.”

Ronan’s eye roll was impressive in its thoroughness. “Yeah, yeah, but, you know. If I did.”

For a moment, Blue was stymied, both by the question itself and by the fact that Ronan had asked it. It struck her as nonsensical in a way that none of their wild, mind-bending, magical shenanigans ever had. Then she looked at Ronan again—at the sharp and graceful hooks of his elaborate tattoo, at the artfully distressed jeans that she knew he bought that way on purpose rather than letting them get ripped up organically, at the way he lounged like he was just waiting for somebody to paint him like one of their french girls. She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Is this a pride thing?”

Ronan grinned, sharp and unrepentant; she had him pegged and he seemed to like that. “Gotta make sure the chicks dig me.”

“Even if you don’t dig ‘em back?”

“Especially when I don’t dig ‘em back.”

Blue huffed. A piece of unruly hair, escaped from its clip, bounced haphazardly in front of her face. She ignored it in favor of grabbing another one of Gansey’s books without looking at its title. “Well, I am not a chick—” Her tone made very clear how unfeminist she considered the term to be. “—and I’m not dignifying that question with a response either.”

“Oh, come on.”

Ronan dragged out the last syllable for a day and a half. Maybe two days. There was a whole Daylight Saving’s Time trapped inside that syllable. He finally rolled himself out of the road to sit up, startling Chainsaw into flight and nearly knocking the painstakingly crafted popsicle stick awning off the drug store, just so he could make an entreating face at her. She ignored that too.

“You said you’d date Noah!” he whined. “You dated Parrish! You’re all up on Gansey’s d—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Ronan Lynch.”

“And now Cheng too!” Ronan scoffed spectacularly. “Not to be confused with Cheng Two, though at the rate you’re going—”

Blue snapped her book closed and said, “Quit being a shitbag, Lynch. I don’t date shitbags regardless of their sexuality.”

Ronan made a very put-upon noise, like she was being unreasonable about the whole thing and horribly unfair to boot. “If I was attracted to women, and neither of us was dating anybody else who would object, and I asked you out. Would you say yes? That’s all I’m asking!”

“You really want to know?”

Ronan frowned stubbornly at her in response. It wasn’t an angry kind of frown, though. She was very used to Ronan’s angry frowns, and his angry glares, and his angry smiles, and pretty much every other kind of angry expression, seeing as anger was his default emotion. This one looked more petulant than anything. Grumpy in a challenging kind of way, like a goat getting ready to butt heads, or like one of the toddlers that frequented 300 Fox Way when they wanted to stay up past bedtime and had a whole argument ready to present in favor of the idea and were just begging for somebody to try and tell them they shouldn’t.

This wasn’t an angry or upset Ronan, Blue realized. This was Ronan in a good mood. He was having fun arguing with her like this.

She bit down on a smile. “You really want to know?” She dragged out the word for a whole ‘nothing Daylight Saving’s Time.

Ronan picked up a stray chip and threw it in her direction. It bounced off her knee and fell down behind Gansey’s pillow. “Why would I ask a question if I didn’t want to know the answer, huh? Stupid.”

Blue put the book she’d been pretending to read back on its precarious tower—several books shorter now than it had been before she’d gotten nosy—and stood, hands on her hips. “Come on, then,” she said brusquely. “Get up.”

Ronan blinked up at her, taken aback. “What for?”

“I like to make informed decisions. Up! Let me get a look at you.”

For a second, she thought he might object to the idea of being examined and evaluated like livestock, but then another grin bloomed on his face, every bit as sharp and unrepentant as the last. He stood with the coiled grace of a pit viper ready to strike. His arms, bared by his black tank top, were impressively muscled, and his tattoo flirted over the edge of his solid shoulders. His thumbs found his belt loops, jeans low slung and hips jutting forward. His eyes really were some of the bluest Blue had ever seen, rivaled only by his own brothers. He was all sharp angles and contrast, danger and insouciance, like a cat on a tightrope casually licking its claws.

In short, he looked good, and it was obvious he knew it. Nobody adored a Lynch like a Lynch.

Blue kept her face impassive, lips pursed. She took her time circling him. He didn’t turn his head to watch her, content, apparently, to let her survey him from every angle. There was a smirk on his lips by the time she came back around to stand in front of him.

“So?” he asked, a laugh in his tone. Like he knew what her answer would be. Like he’d already won. “What’s the verdict?”

Blue hummed thoughtfully. “No.”

Ronan lost his smirk. “What?” His voice had jumped up at least half an octave, like he’d been shocked into forgetting it was supposed to be low and gruff and sexy.

“No,” Blue said again, breezily. “I wouldn’t date you. Sorry.”

There was a moment of silence while Ronan recalibrated. She’d never seen him speechless before, but she had really and truly caught him off guard. As his mouth opened and closed without any words coming out, Blue thought he might actually be a little hurt.

Finally, he said, “Why the fuck not? You’d date everybody else!”

Blue crossed her arms over her chest, hoping her cheeks weren’t pink, and shrugged. “Don’t feel bad about it. It’s nothing personal,” she said honestly. “It’s not because I don’t see the appeal or anything. It’s just… Well, frankly, you’re too tall for my tastes.”

Ronan scoffed at once. “Seriously?”

Blue raised an eyebrow at him. Then she dragged her eyes down to what was actually on her level, which were his pectorals, if she was standing up real straight. She didn’t even reach his clavicle. He was, quite literally, head and shoulders taller than her.

“Gansey and Henry are already bad enough,” she said. “And Adam was on thin ice back when we were together. I would break my damn neck trying to kiss you! No offense.”

“How is that not offensive? Not my fault you’re a midget.”

“Not my fault you’re the human equivalent of a telephone pole.”

“You should kiss me anyway.”

“What?” It was Blue’s turn to get squeaky with surprise.

Ronan had his smirk back, though. “I said you should kiss me anyway! You already kissed everybody else.”

Blue’s cheeks were definitely pink now, both at the reminder of the time she and Adam had ill-advisedly—AKA drunkenly—decided to finally have the kiss that had broken them up several months before, just for the sake of saying they’d done it, and at the realization that Ronan was right. What kind of cliche was she, the only girl in a group of boys, getting kissed by every one of them?

Well, almost every one.

“Ronan Lynch,” she said, indignant enough that nothing else needed to be said to make it known.

He was not shamed. “Come on, why not? I’m feeling very left out! One kiss. What, are you afraid you’ll fall desperately in love with me?”

Blue’s snort of laughter was so immediate and so strong that Ronan honestly should’ve been offended by it. He only grinned, though, and reached out to tug at the stray piece of hair in front of her face.

“Come on,” he said again. “Just one kiss. As a friend thing.”

Blue was pretty sure that wasn’t something normal friends did with each other. But, then, she was also aware that theirs was hardly a normal group of friends. She slapped his hand away and said, “A friend thing, really?”

“It’s only weird if we make it weird.”

“I think kissing my ex-boyfriend’s gay current boyfriend is weird by definition, no matter why I do it.”

Ronan’s grin widened. “Live a little, Sargent.”

There was a dare in that smile. It was the kind of smile Ronan gave to Adam that convinced Adam to tie himself to the back of the Pig and see if he could skateboard behind it like he was waterskiing because if he didn’t do it then it meant he was scared, and, if you asked Ronan, there was nothing worse than being scared. It was the kind of smile you rose to the challenge of or you risked losing Ronan Lynch’s respect, and, if you asked Blue, there was nothing worse than losing Ronan Lynch’s respect.

Blue kicked Ronan in the shin. Hard.

He yelped, as much out of surprise as from pain, and pitched forward to protect the area under attack. Blue only had to give him a little push to get him down on one knee.

“Fuckshit, maggot, what was that f—”

Blue caught his face in her hands and cut off his question with a kiss. It was a proper one, too, not one of those chaste little grandma-pecks. If Ronan Lynch wanted a kiss, then she was damn well going to give him one. There was only a split second of bafflement before he was giving back as good as he got, never one to lose or be outdone. Blue had to acknowledge, at least to herself and never ever out loud where anyone else could hear, that Adam was a lucky man.

When she was certain that the challenge had been met to everybody’s satisfaction, she pulled back to pat Ronan on the cheek. Stunned, Ronan let her get away with it.

In answer to his interrupted question, she said, “I told you you’re too tall. As nice a kiss as that was, I wasn’t about to break my neck for it. And anyway, I think I like you better like this.”

The sharklike look on his face was all the warning she had. In a split second, Ronan was on his feet again, one arm wrapped around her to keep her in place, ruffling her hair so aggressively that it sent clips ricocheting around the room. Chainsaw immediately started snatching them up and spiriting them away.

“Lynch, you asshole!”

Ronan released her with a peal of laughter. He dodged her attempt to grab him back and made good use of his significantly longer legs to book it to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. She could still hear him laughing in there.

“Yeah, yuck it up, chucklefuck,” she yelled. “See if I ever kiss you again!”

“What’s going on here?”

Blue spun around to see Adam, bleary-eyed and grimy, paused in the entrance. She hadn’t heard the heavy door open over all the commotion. Straightening out the rumpled mess of her outfit and also, hopefully, her dignity, she said, “Your boyfriend’s cheating on you with me.”

There were several seconds where Adam tried to make sense of those words. Eventually, it seemed, he gave up. “Okay. I need a shower.”

He disappeared into the godforsaken bathroom-laundry-kitchen monstrosity. Blue huffed and threw herself back down onto Gansey’s bed. The chip Ronan had thrown at her earlier bounced out with the motion to nudge at her hand. She snatched it up, ate it, and only then remembered that it had been on the floor before it had become a projectile. Oh well. It was probably more sanitary than anything that had been prepared in that bathroom anyway.

“You lied.”

Blue spun around again, only this time it was Noah, smudgy and pale and half-there, that she found this time. He was lying on his stomach down the main strip of miniature Henrietta, poking at the drug store awning like it fascinated him. It felt, in that moment, like he’d been there the whole time.

“What d’you mean?” Blue asked him. “About what?”

“When you said you wouldn’t date Ronan if he asked. You totally would. No matter how tall he is.” He said it like a statement of fact. Like there was no doubt in his mind.

Blue stuck out her chin in defiance. “Oh yeah? Why are you so sure about that?”

Noah shrugged. “He’s one of your boys.”

Blue deflated. She made a very put-upon noise, but she could hardly argue. Not against Noah. “I guess. Don’t tell him, though. It would go straight to his head, I’d never hear the end of it.”

Noah mimed zipping up his mouth and throwing away the key. Chainsaw, returned from hiding Blue’s hairclips where no one would ever find them again, chased the motion like she thought he’d really thrown something and made a distinctly plaintive noise when she realized he hadn’t. He offered her a stray piece of cardboard in apology.

Blue settled back down into Gansey’s bed. She picked up The Welsh Kings: Warriors, Warlords And Princes and flipped to where a gas station receipt marked the day Gansey had forgotten he was reading it. The noise of the shower running was soft and soothing. Noah was humming something she was almost certain he’d learned from Ronan. Everything smelled like mint and dust and old paper.

Soon enough, she thought, Ronan would probably judge the coast clear. He’d emerge carefully, watching her for any sign that she was mad and preparing to launch another sneak attack on him. She was willing to bet he would be sharp-eyed and thrilled the entire time, delighted by the game. A sudden fondness filled her up so much she thought she might burst with it.

Noah was right. No matter how obnoxiously tall he was, no matter what a shithead he could be, no matter the nature of the relationship—Blue still loved Ronan more than words could say. How could she not? He was one of her boys.

#Bronan #Blue Sargent #Ronan Lynch #TRC #fics by me #i just love them so much ok they're adorable #a whiny Ronan is a happy Ronan actually in case you didn't know #he's is like a puppy he just wants to bite things but like affectionately all the time #he wants to PLAY