#is he pitching this to Gansey. No I think he’s roped them into pitching it to Adam or Blue

[happikattwuzheere]

the one where gansey befriends a deer: the au

hey remember that time ronan dreamed up a deer that was described with language suspiciously similar to how adam’s described, because i sure do!!! anyway

OK.

ok. so. this au’s actually evolved a lot since its initial already-pretty-fleshed-out inception one sleepless night, so me talking about it’s gonna be more than one post, but here’s the first one well actually the second technically yesterday’s warmup doodles were also from this au but i didnt talk about it at all so

and I’m gonna start with more or less the same pitch I gave to a couple people on discord

SO. starting out: it’s standard fantasy times, vaguely medieval but no specific time period because I don’t care enough to be digging into that quite frankly, but it is somewhere in England where this is happening. Story starts with just Gansey, Ronan, and Noah. Fey are very real and known entities and there’s been a conflict in England between the fey and humans, if not in the whole country then at least in the lands that the Ganseys are the lords of but probably the whole island tbh, and Gansey’s not inherited the lands yet but he’s going to and wants to maybe find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. It’s not open warfare by any means but it’s been a big problem. 

To the effect of solving that, he heads to some little village that I haven’t named but it’s right next to a known fey forest called Cabeswater. This village has avoided being stomped by the local fey because, despite witches not being particularly liked by the nobility of the time, there’s a big old coven (the psychics of Fox Way, essentially) situated right by this village that’s kept things in check. Gansey’s made his excuses to his parents about why he’s officially going there but really he wants to talk to the witches and get a better grasp of the conflict from the people actually dealing with it.  He and Ronan set out from home together, pick up Noah along the way--who is not a ghost in this AU, he’s a fey who owes Gansey a life debt, that’s a whole other post and THIS post is mostly about gansey and adam--but anyway they get to this village and NOBODY gives gansey the time of day. 

the witches don’t let him into their house because they don’t like the nobility right back thanks and the next time he tries to visit Cabeswater won’t even let him get to the coven’s dwelling, the one witch’s daughter who regularly stops by the village for supplies and to check if anyone needs anything has a big argument with him the first time he talks to her so that’s going nowhere, and, well, the villagers are polite, but they clearly don’t take him seriously. He’s just the lordling playing at things and potentially meddling in their business to them.

So he starts hanging out just barely within Cabeswater, even though he knows that’s not wise, because he finds this perfect spot by a stream, and he’ll sit out there and think and work on the journal he keeps of all his thoughts and plans, and one day while he’s there has a straight up Disney princess experience when a deer stops by the stream and seems incredibly unafraid of him. he cherishes the experience but accepts that it probably won’t happen again.

and then it does. several times. gansey’s losing his mind. this deer??? apparently likes listening to him info dump?? it’s very therapeutic and also very magical and he’s amazed 

a few times in, he names the deer “Pryderi” after a character from a welsh legend, because “such a handsome creature deserves a princely name,” [[muffled blue laughing and whispering “princely” in the distance]], and he tells ronan and noah about this experience but ronan doesn’t believe him at ALL. 

one time after gansey’s particularly upset at how bad his attempts at getting along with the villagers, Pryderi actually lets Gansey touch him for the first time and gansey cannot shut up about it to ronan who’s finally like “i think you’re bullshitting me about this deer thing. im coming with you next time” and gansey’s like “well he’s a deer he might not show up if a stranger’s around and he doesn’t come every time i go down there anyway” and ronan’s like “this sounds like a lot of excuses, dick, you’re not making me believe you any more with this” and gansey’s like “>8\” 

but pryderi does show up, and gansey is delighted, and ronan stares really hard at him and then goes 

and gansey’s like what? nooo. but ronan keeps arguing it for the duration of the visit and the deer actually starts to look annoyed and at the end ganseys like ok maybe but i doubt it. and then hes like “well since you are a fey apparently (/sarcasm) i ought to say farewell with respect” and bows very mockingly and then the deer makes direct eye contact with ronan and bows back and gansey loses his shit

gansey continues meeting up with pryderi but even while his infodumping still happens it does so now with the knowledge that He Does Actually Understand What Im Saying, he may be a fey but he seems like a friendly one and hey that’s way more than gansey thought he would get out here, and also this deer is his friend now thanks, 

he, ronan, and noah (who’s amused by Pryderi but keeps his main thoughts to himself for now) make some excursions into cabeswater, but the thing is noah’s not really native to england, he’s from the european mainland, again i’ll get to it in another post sometime, but. he can sort of help navigate cabeswater but not all THAT well so they get lost a couple times, and every time it does happen pryderi shows up and helps guide them out. there’s some very funny moments of a very jealous ronan getting into weird conflict w/ a very smug deer 

anyWAY one day there’s like a festival, everyone’s drunk because its the middle ages and there’s not really a drinking age, gansey’s making another effort to make friends with anyone, and this one guy about his own age is like “ok look here i’ll teach you the folk dance everyone’s doing ok?” and gansey spends the night dancing w/ a handsome stranger, yes he will recognize the irony in the morning, but for now it goes. well badly because they’re both drunk but it’s fun, and then the guy says “ah, fuck it, i’ll finish teaching you next time we see each other” and gansey’s like “thats a little forward but ok!” and the guy (adam. its adam) panics and leaves while gansey’s back is turned and gansey doesn’t remember that last snippet of conversation the next day nor can he quite recall the stranger’s face. ronan does, because he was watching and not sure which of the two he was jealous of, but neither of them has any idea who the guy actually was. 

and then like, 3 days later, gansey falls asleep at the spot he usually hangs out in in cabeswater and wakes up in the early evening just in time to hear people yelling and for Pryderi to burst into view with an arrow in his flank. he collapses in a bush. gansey snaps into “protect friend” mode and gets the hunters off his trail by being all “oh a strange buck? i saw it pass that way over there friend!” and then when they’re gone he comes back and is all “alright pryderi they’re gone, let me just--” except pryderi’s not a deer anymore. it’s a boy. 

(Adam. its adam. the deer is adam.) 

gansey takes him home, gets the arrow out, noah’s like “i mean he’s not a fey, i dont know what turning into a deer is about but if he were fey the iron in that arrow would already have him dead. he might be partially fey but so little that he’s human in the ways that really matter”, over the next couple days they figure out that pryderi is in fact from the village and is a young man named adam parrish who’s been labelled a changeling and is assumed dead since he was yknow shot, gansey decides for now its probably best to keep him that way, but adam’s not getting better--apparently even having had the arrow in him as briefly as he did has poisoned him, he’s desperately ill and on the third day is finally like “get persephone” so gansey tries again (he’s tried several times over these days, they’d worked out that to have survived this long he must have someone else with a small degree of fey blood teaching him the ropes and the most likely suspects are the witches, but he’s hoping adam specifically asking him to will grant him permission enough to go in) and runs into a very frantic blue en route who as soon as he makes it clear he’s got adam is like “move your ass over on that horse im climbing on too” 

they get persephone, who turns into a fox rather than a deer, she saves adam, everythings cool except adam’s pissy now because he cant go back to the village and he has to give up on the attempts he had in the works to get out of town by working his way out and he takes it out on gansey who doesnt deserve it because this friendship is a mess, he’ll feel bad and take it back eventually but thats yet more posts ANYWAY YEAH theres our starting point 

(also worth noting: due to cabeswater being Right There,  p much everyone in this village actually has a small degree of fey blood, adam just won the genetic lottery) 

tl;dr adam’s a fey-blooded witch’s apprentice and he’s been the deer the whole time and thats the start of this au ty for coming to this ramble 

[ravenvsfox]

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