Katalyst

Some People Are like the Literal Plague - Actually, No, It's Just One Person

The fists to which Ronan Lynch's hands were clenched did little to conceal the tremor in them, in his arms, his legs, his heart. It was not from exhaustion, although heaving a dead body of quite literally one's own weight outside a church and into one's car was indeed rather exhausting. It was not from anger, either, although it made him angry, and he had punched the steering wheel of his dangerously grey BMW quite a few times before slumping down in the seat. And it was not from fear, because there had been infinitely more terrible things he had dreamt to life, unconsciously or consciously, things that had made him vow not to ever sleep again. It was quite possibly a mix of all of those things. Or maybe watching another person die in front of you, watching someone you had killed die in front of you, watching yourself, whom you had killed, die in front of you, watching a person you'd sworn would never have to see that side of you watch you watching yourself, whom you had killed, die in front of you, was just a generally unsettling thing. Maybe it was Adam's expression that had shaken him so deep down that it still now resonated in his extremities or his words that seemed to imply what they always did when they fought. But it was no news that Adam Parrish stirred earthquakes within him.

It felt as if he'd only had half a second to breathe when what was probably one of the worst nights in Ronan's life turned into, well, the culmination of what he could only imagine was the worst night in the entire history of the universe. Headlights blinded him for a moment, and then he could make out a ghostly white car with black grilles like a gaping hole. It was a car that Ronan could pick out among a thousand other cars within a second, and not in a good way. When Joseph Kavinsky, exactly the sort of monstrosity that you would expect driving such a car, pulled up next to him, Ronan's anger boiled into exasperation. Kavinsky was like a parasite, you could ignore him all you wanted and he still wouldn't back off. There was nothing that would make him back off, except maybe death, and Kavinsky, like many pests, didn't die easily - a discovery that Ronan had made this summer and that he found infinitely enraging. On the Fourth of July, there had been a moment where, finally, it had seemed like Kavinsky would get what had been coming for him, and for that split second, Ronan had been afraid for him. But what had happened was worse. He had seen the events unfold before him like a nightmare, only that with a nightmare he knew that there was a chance it would stay in his head. This had been real, and he'd had no control over it. The world's a nightmare. Whatever fire and wrath Kavinsky had dreamed up, he seemed immune to it, and when he had emerged unscathed from the flames, all the wide feelings of horror, consternation, awe, had shriveled up into something equally as heavy but compressed to the size of Ronan's ribcage: disgust, rage, hatred. He would have taken him down himself if he could, but he couldn't, so he'd just held Matthew and watched as Kavinsky slid from his Mitsubishi like this was a playground and not a battlefield, while the albino night terror tore out the dragon's throat in the background.

Ronan would have loved to tear out Kavinsky's throat right now, as he rolled up next to him and lazily leaned out the open window, but showing him this anger was only like throwing gas at an open fire. Instead, he kept his gaze fixed straight ahead on an undefined point in the distance and the windows of his car closed. Through the glass, he heard the muffled sound of Kavinsky hollering at him, but he let the sound drip off him like rain off a fast car. Only when K started honking like a maniac, like he owned the city and like it wasn't the middle of the night, when people usually slept, Ronan rolled down the window on the passenger side. Out of having to talk to Kavinsky and not talking to him but having Adam look outside, see the two of them and potentially assume they were talking, he knew which one he preferred. He didn't say a word as he glared at the other driver. Only Kavinsky would honk his car in front of a church in the middle of the night like he was trying to wake the dead. God, Ronan hoped that the dead stayed dead.

"Ey, I'm talking to you!", K hollered, but his face betrayed no indignation. Instead, his thin grin was all smugness, like anything Ronan was doing played perfectly into his sick game.