Chapter Text
Ronan is cursing vehemently in the driver’s seat, and Adam hates to interrupt what almost sounds like poetry, but he finally does and asks, “Can you pop the hood?”
Abruptly stopping his tirade, Ronan turns to look at him. “I thought you said you were an architect.”
“I am, but I was a mechanic when I was younger. I should be able to figure out what’s wrong." Adam opens his door, climbing out of the car and stepping around to the front of the Mini.
“You.” Ronan peaks his eyebrows as he gets out of the driver’s seat. “You were a mechanic.”
Sighing, Adam tips his head back and gazes skyward for a moment before looking back at Ronan. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“But you. You.” Ronan jabs his finger in Adam’s direction, “were a mechanic.”
“Is it so hard to believe?”
Ronan nods once and says matter-of-factly, “Yes.”
“Why?” Adam huffs out a laugh.
“Because if you look up ‘white collar’ in the dictionary, there’s no definition.” Ronan’s pointing finger turns into a flat palm and he waves his hand up and down at Adam's body a few times. “It’s just your picture.”
Adam should probably take offense at this, but Ronan’s delivery of the remark makes him laugh. And projecting a white collar image was something he’d been trying to do for over ten years, so while he thinks he should take offense, he’s also somewhat pleased that he has somehow faked it until he made it. Shaking his head, he pushes up his sleeves, looking at Ronan. “Pop the hood.”
Ronan lets out a distinctly Irish noise before he reaches into the footwell of the driver’s side of the Mini and pulls the lever to pop the hood. Adam wrenches the hood up and props it open before he pulls out his phone, turning on the flashlight app and using it as he starts looking over the engine. He looks for the large, trip-wrecking things first, the things that would keep the car in a shop for days, but when he finally finds the issue, Adam nearly sighs in relief. “It’s your fan belt.”
“You act like I know what that means. I run a pub,” Ronan deadpans.
Adam gently tugs the broken belt from around its maze of pulleys in the engine compartment and holds it up to show Ronan. “This. It’s broken.”
“Well, that’s easy to see now." Ronan rolls his eyes. “And what do we do about it?”
“I can fix it pretty easily, if there’s an auto shop around here that has one in stock and can lend me some tools.” Adam turns his phone’s flashlight off and slips it back into his pocket, then he shuts the hood.
Ronan gives him a skeptical look. “You can fix that.”
Adam gives him a dry look right back, “Look, do you want me to do it or not? If you have to take it to a shop, you’re going to have to get it towed, when really it’ll take me an hour…”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want you to fix it,” Ronan interrupts and opens the driver’s door again, finding his phone in the side pocket. He taps at the screen for a few moments before he looks up at Adam, “There’s an auto shop in the center of town. Five minute walk.”
So Adam grabs his messenger bag and they walk. They find the auto shop in a small strip of stores that look more like cottages than stores, and the man working the counter is overly helpful, telling them he’ll lend them tools without them even having to ask, until he comes back from checking the stockroom with a frown on his face.
“I don’t have one in stock, but I can call one in from Kildare right now and they can drop it off first thing in the morning, if that works for you lads,” the shopkeep offers.
Adam and Ronan exchange a look and Adam shrugs. “I just need to be there sometime tomorrow.”
Mulling this over for a moment, Ronan nods and turns back to the shopkeep. “That would be grand.”
Ronan leaves the man his phone number, and then asks if there’s any place in town they can spend the night. The man directs them to the town’s only hotel, Delaney’s Bed & Breakfast, and after retrieving their bags from the Mini, that’s where Adam and Ronan go. Mrs. Delaney herself is as helpful as the man at the auto shop, until she’s clicking away at her computer and checking her availability and then a frown starts pulling at her lips, too.
“Well, lads, I do have a room left.” She turns her frown into an apologetic smile. “But it only has a queen bed.”
Adam and Ronan exchange another look, and this time it’s Ronan who shrugs. “You’re paying. I’ll take the floor. You get the bed. We call it square and that’s that.”
Adam mulls this over for a moment and then turns back to Mrs. Delaney. “We’ll take it. Thank you.”
He and Ronan graciously accept sets of keys from her and then follow her directions back outside and across the small parking lot to their room. Adam unlocks the door and leads Ronan inside, and they both stand just over the threshold, taking in the hotel room.
It’s cozy, to say the least. A little dated, but it looks clean, and there’s a broad window letting in the last of the day’s light through open curtains. As Mrs. Delaney had mentioned, there’s a single queen-sized bed, which takes up a good amount of space in the small room. Other than that, there’s not much. A wardrobe, a tiny desk, two bedside tables, and a chair, and through a door, a small bathroom. It’s a place made for sleeping and not much more.
“Guess it’ll do.” Ronan finally steps further into the room, throwing his backpack down beside the bed and then throwing himself into the wingback chair tucked into a corner.
Shrugging, Adam shuts the door and then opens the wardrobe to hang up his garment bag. “I’ve stayed worse places.”
They fall into silence as Adam lifts his suitcase onto the bed and starts to rearrange the contents. He makes sure the bag of muddy clothes is secure and hasn’t gotten on anything else, pulls out clothes for the next day, packs and repacks, and tries to generally not be idle as the quiet between him and Ronan remains. Ronan seems to text someone for a while before he just stares out the window, considering the room doesn’t have anything else for entertainment, and his fingers toy with the intricate web of leather bands he wears around his wrists.
Finally, it’s Ronan who speaks up, his gaze shifting from the darkening parking lot to Adam. “I’m beginning to think this is all your fault.”
Coming out of nowhere, this confounds Adam, and he furrows his eyebrows. “What do you even mean by that?”
“Look, all I’m saying is I’ve driven to Dublin plenty of times and nothing like this has ever happened to me,” Ronan starts and there’s a bit of ire in his voice. “Sure, I’ve gotten a flat, gotten speeding tickets, those things happen over the course of a dozen years driving between cities. But shite happening three times on a single, four hour drive? I’m thinking it’s you. You’re just bad luck all over.”
Without knowing it, Ronan has just struck a match, and Adam's tinder has been itching for a fire all day. Adam reels around to face the other man, and he can feel the hardness in his eyes, hear the edge in his voice as he says, scathing, “How can all this be my fault?”
“You’re why we’re here. Not me. You needing to get to Dublin is why all of this has happened. The sheep, the mud, the car.” Ronan counts out on his fingers. “If it weren’t for you, I’d be back in my pub, minding my own business. So, therefore, your fault.”
Incredulous, Adam gapes at him. Everything Ronan had just named had been entirely out of his control, and now he was getting blamed for their entire predicament. He was why they were driving to Dublin, yes, but everything else has just happened. They were things he had absolutely no say in. He hadn’t asked for this. His scathing tone remains as he defends himself, “So I’m supposed to make sure all your Irish farm animals stay out of the road? I’m the one that’s supposed to take your car in for a tune up to make sure your belts don’t break in the middle of driving?"
Ronan just cocks an eyebrow. “If I wasn’t driving you three hundred kilometers, it wouldn’t have broken, would it?”
A short burst of near-maniacal laughter leaves Adam. “What happened to all your fate and destiny and God’s plan bullshit?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know what he planned, bringing you to me," Ronan mutters darkly.
Adam's eyebrows shoot up his forehead and he thinks what the hell , but his mouth says, “And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing." Ronan pushes himself to his feet and stalks to the door, which is all of three steps away from him and would be laughable if their hackles weren't raised and they weren't on the verge of yelling. "But I won’t have you ruining my night, so I’m going down to the pub we passed. Join me if you’d like, or don’t, but I’m not going to stay here with your boring work shite and bad juju.”
Studying the other man with narrowed eyes, Adam spits, “Just go.”
And Ronan takes this as gospel, because he’s out the door two seconds later, slamming it behind himself.
Sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed as the echo of the slamming door lingers in the room, Adam puts his head in his hands and then scrubs his hands through his hair. He takes a few deep, even breaths to settle himself down, and he can’t remember the last time he’d let his anger get the best of him. At the last time he’d directed that anger at anyone other than himself.
After calming slightly, he pulls out his laptop and sets it up on the room’s small desk, getting out an adaptor and plugging the computer in to charge before he sinks into the chair in front of it. He needs to review his speaking notes, continue research on the other four panelists so he doesn’t make an ass of himself, check in with his boss, but the only thing he can do is stew over his argument with Ronan.
They’ve known each other for all of seven hours at this point, and they’ve spent a good amount of that time bickering and fighting. Far more time than people who just met should be arguing. But there’s something enthralling to Adam about it. The way that they go toe to toe without backing down, the way they almost seem to be pushing each other’s buttons on purpose. It kind of makes Adam more attracted to Ronan, because Ronan seems like he wouldn’t let Adam win easily, if he let Adam win at all. Most people just let Adam win. They back down when they see he’s digging his feet in, but for Adam, most of the thrill is in the fight, the taunting, the antagonizing, even if it’s good natured.
God, he needs to tamp down whatever this feeling is rising in his chest because this is not why he came to Ireland. To have a schoolgirl crush on an incredibly handsome Irishman who he had roped into driving him across the country. Adam’s plan was to come to Dublin, do his panel, go home, get promoted, and go from there. Everything that had happened since he landed had thrown a wrench in the gears of that plan, but he’d managed, and was managing through the bumps in the road. And while whatever he was feeling for Ronan wasn’t throwing him completely off track, it was complicating things, and Adam didn’t want to complicate things.
Realizing he’s not going to get any meaningful work done while he’s in this mood, Adam shuts his laptop and gets out of the chair. He plugs his phone into the socket next to the bed and leaves it on the bedside table to charge, and then he heads out of the room, out of the bed and breakfast, and starts through Ballybrittas to the bar he and Ronan had walked past while they were heading to the bed and breakfast.
When Adam steps into the pub, it’s livelier than he thought a bar in a small Irish village, a village smaller than Dingle, would be. A trio is in the corner, two fiddles and a bodhrán, and a few tables have been pushed to the walls to make an impromptu dance floor. On the dance floor are a middle aged couple, Mrs. Delaney, and Ronan, who is spinning Mrs. Delaney, stomping, and clapping to the jig the trio is playing.
Sinking into a chair at a table near the door, Adam watches as Mrs. Delaney delights in Ronan’s attention, her cheeks red as she positively beams while they dance. When the song ends, they part, and when Ronan notices Adam has come into the pub, he takes a few steps closer to where Adam’s sitting. He looks completely unphased by Adam’s presence, like they hadn’t fought less than an hour ago in the room at the bed and breakfast, and Adam finds himself letting it go, too.
“Come on. Up you get.” Ronan raises both eyebrows, waving towards the dance floor and extending his hand to Adam. “Dance with me.”
This complete turn of events stuns Adam for a picosecond before he shakes his head adamantly. “I can’t. I have two left feet. You don’t want to see me out there”
“You can’t come to Ireland for the first time and not do a set dance in a pub. Even if it’s only four people. Come on.” Ronan continues to hold his hand out to Adam and Adam doesn’t think he’s going to relent.
“Okay.” Adam finally stands and steps onto the makeshift dance floor, stopping in front of Ronan. “Show me.”
A smile twitches Ronan’s lips and he reaches out, taking Adam’s left hand and moving it to rest on his shoulder. Then he slips his right hand around Adam to rest on Adam’s back, just below Adam’s shoulder blade. Finally, he takes Adam’s right hand in his left and raises their joined hands to shoulder height. “Don’t worry about your feet, just turn about with me. The clapping and the stomping’s the important bit.”
“I think you greatly underestimate my ability to dance,” Adam says flatly, but then Ronan’s nodding to the trio to start playing and they’re counting themselves down just before the wail of fiddles starts ringing through the room again.
Ronan starts guiding Adam in circles around the dance floor, his feet doing some complicated stepping that Adam can’t keep up with, so Adam stops bothering to look down as they rotate around themselves and the middle aged couple dancing, too. Instead, Adam focuses on Ronan’s face, watching as the other man’s mouth counts the beat of the music out sotto voce for the first few bars of music. He takes in Ronan’s long, dark eyelashes, the faint dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and he’s so drawn in that when Ronan stops to drop Adam’s hand, clap three times, and stomp four, Adam misses it completely.
“I told you that was the important bit. Glad to see you weren’t paying attention.” Ronan has a shark-like grin on his face as he catches Adam’s hand in his again.
“And I told you I was no good at dancing." Adam smiles back, but he lets Ronan sweep him around in circles again, and then next time there’s the break to clap and stomp, he mirrors Ronan perfectly.
One song turns into three turns into six, and Adam alternately dances with Mrs. Delaney and the wife from the middle aged couple and Ronan. Each time he’s partnered with Ronan, they’re marginally closer together, until by the last reel of the night, they’re almost chest to chest. The echo of the fiddles and the bodhrán linger for a few moments after the trio plays their last note, and Adan and Ronan stop on the dance floor, staring back at one another in silence. There's a look Adam can't put a name to on Ronan’s face, and Adam has the feeling a similar look is mirrored on his own.
After a few long, taut moments, Adam finally steps back and awkwardly pushes his hand through his hair, catching a look at his watch. “Shit, it’s later than I thought it’d be.”
“We should go. The belt for the car will be in early tomorrow and I’m sure you’ll want to get back on the road straight away.” Ronan keeps his eyes everywhere but on Adam.
Adam just nods and as Ronan goes to the bar to settle his tab, Adam steps outside and leans against the wall of the pub, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths to calm himself down. He opens his eyes and pushes himself away from the wall when the door opens and Ronan exits the bar, pausing for a moment to look at Adam. “Ready?”
“Yeah.” Adam nods, and he hesitates for a moment before adding, “Thank you for making me dance.”
Ronan pushes his hands into his pockets and starts ambling in the direction of the bed and breakfast. “Just making sure you get the authentic Irish experience.”
They walk back to the bed and breakfast in silence, sliding back into the cool detachment they’d been keeping between them instead of letting whatever had passed between them in the pub linger. Once they’re back in the room, Adam lets Ronan wash up in the bathroom first before he, too, gets ready for bed. By the time he steps out of the bathroom, Ronan has commandeered one of the pillows from the bed and he’s lying on the floor under a thin quilt he’d taken from the cupboard. Adam climbs onto the bed and mutters a quiet good night before turning off the lamp beside the bed.
But sleep doesn’t come easy to him, and by the sounds of it, it’s not paying Ronan any favors, either. Adam stares towards the ceiling for a long while, listening for Ronan’s breathing to even out in the telltale signs of sleep, but even after what Adam thinks has to be close to an hour, there’s still the sounds of shifting and wide-awake breathing coming from the man on the floor.
“Ronan?” Adam finally asks into the darkness. When he only receives an unintelligible noise in response, Adam turns over and pulls the cord on the light on the bedside table, bathing the room in a yellow glow. He props himself up on his elbow, looking over the side of the bed at Ronan curled on his side, facing away from the bed. “Ronan, I know you’re not comfortable. Get in the bed.”
“I’m not getting in the bed,” Ronan says, still turned away from the mattress.
Adam does his best to try to sound authoritative, but it just comes out tired and tinged with the Virginia accent that he always does his best to clip and hide. “I swear, if you wake up with a kink in your neck or a back so sore you can’t drive, I’m going to kill you. Get in the bed.”
Ronan turns then and looks up at Adam, a furrow in his brow. “Where are you from?”
Sighing, Adam falls back to lie on the bed. “I told you. Boston.”
“No, where are you really from?” Ronan pushes himself up to sitting and peers over the edge of the mattress at Adam.
Adam turns his head and meets the other’s man’s eyes. He’s quiet for a few moments, mulling over whether to allow his accent show itself again, and he eventually lets it, his vowels elongating and his consonants softening as he says, “Virginia. A little town called Henrietta.”
“What’s it like?” Ronan rests his forearm on the mattress and sets his chin atop it.
Ronan’s question takes Adam aback slightly, but he answers, “It’s not much of a place. If anything, it’s a place made for leaving. Get in the bed.”
“Fine." Ronan rolls his eyes harder than Adam thinks he’s ever seen someone roll their eyes before. Standing up, Ronan throws his pillow down on the mattress and he keeps his own quilt, wrapping it around himself as he lies down. He leaves as much space between them as possible and he turns so his back is to Adam. “Good night.”
Adam watches Ronan’s back for a few moments, his eyes glancing over the tattoo peeking from under Ronan’s shirt, and then he finally reaches over and turns the light off before lying down. “Good night.”