Ronan was bored. There was nothing to do in this shithole town Gansey had dragged him to. He was supposed to be touring the college Gansey currently attended, something that Ronan was not interested in. Touring it or attending it. But it was better than spending another weekend with his brothers, or more specifically, his older one. They were on the outs as they say. They were always fighting, but last weekend's shit show took the fucking cake. It had come to blows, again, and it would come to that again if Ronan was forced to spend any amount of time with Declan right now.

Matthew was with Declan now, trying to convince him to smooth things over with Ronan. But things were never smooth with Ronan.

Ronan took a long pull from his beer that he had gotten from some upperclassmen that were sitting in lawn chairs outside a frat house. He had discreetly dipped out of the school tour while Gansey was in class, tired of listening to the droning of the student guide. Ronan ran into the frat boys while making his escape and had a few beers with them, until they had ran out of beer and then Ronan split. Now he was walking down a road with lots of shops targeted at students, selling university clothes, hats, books. Nothing interesting to him in the slightest. He turned down an alleyway, planning to loop around back to the room he was sharing with Gansey for the weekend and pass out until Gansey came back from his classes.

He immediately noticed someone else in the alley. He was leaning against a wall, hands in his pockets and staring up into the sky. The guy was a much shorter Ronan, but maybe it was just because he was slouching. Baggy clothes hung off him, but Ronan could see that his arms were leanly muscled. His brown hair was a mess, sticking up in the front like he'd been running his hand through it repeatedly. His blue eyes matched the sky they were looking at and there were a smattering of freckles over his cheeks and nose.

He was beautiful.

Ronan rarely thought anything was beautiful, because too few things were in his world. But this guy was. Ronan thought that if going here would mean he would get to look at something as beautiful as this boy, he would gladly fork over any amount from his exceedingly large trust fund.

He began to walk over to the other boy, but just as he reached speaking distance, the boy turned around and walked back through a door Ronan had not previously noticed. He tried to follow him through the door but it was locked. A sign above the handle declared it an employee only space. Ronan huffed a little and went around the side of the building to go through the front door.

A metallic smell and buzzing sound greeted him and a small tinkling bell announced him. A girl hopped down from her perch on a display case featuring all different kinds of body jewelry and came to greet him.

"Hello, how can I help you?" she asked. She was at least half a foot shorter than Ronan, but she had a large presence that would have intimidated him, had he been a lesser man. Her nose glittered with a delicate flower shaped piece of metal and all the way up both of her ears, silver flashed in the sun.

Ronan looked around the shop. There was one other boy in the room, but he was pale and blonde, with a tattoo near his hairline on the right side, the opposite of the one Ronan was looking for. He was tattooing what looked like an infinity sign on a girl's lower back. Her friend, who had a bandage on the inside of her wrist, held the girl's hand. There was no sign of the beautiful boy, though Ronan was sure this was the shop he had seen him go into.

"Hello?" the short girl asked, snapping her fingers in Ronan's face. He leaned back and smacked her hand away.

"I'm here for a tattoo," he said confidently, despite the fact that he had only decided this in the last ten seconds.

"Okay, let me get Adam for you and he can get you a quote." She made her way to the back of the shop and Ronan crossed his fingers that Adam was the person he was looking for. He had just guessed that the boy was a tattoo artist, he had no idea if there was another guy in the back that would come out to meet him. He hadn't seen any tattoos or even piercings on the guy, nothing that would make Ronan think he was a tattoo artist. For all he knew, the boy was just a piercer or maybe the usual front desk worker. But worst case, he could get a quote for a tattoo he didn't plan on getting and never come back.

He had already resigned himself to doing this when the girl came back, the beautiful boy, who apparently was Adam, trailing behind her.

The first thing Ronan noticed was that Adam was not actually as short as he'd thought, coming up to about his nose. The second things he noticed were his hands. One held a sketchbook probably full of designs. Ronan could imagine that delicate hand meticulously drawing client's tattoos, while the other ran through his hair like it was now, in just the way Ronan had imagined it had in the alleyway.

Adam extended his right hand and Ronan realized that he was trying to introduce himself while Ronan was drowning in thoughts of those hands running over him.

He cleared his throat. "What did you say?"

"I said I'm Adam and I can help you out today. What are you looking to get?"

"Oh, I'm Ronan. Ronan Lynch." He shook Adam's outstretched hand. He was surprised at how rough it felt compared to how delicate it looked. There were callouses on the palm and along the inside of his thumb, probably from constantly holding the tattoo needle. "I want a pretty extensive back piece done." Anything to keep those hands on his body as long as humanly possible.

"Okay, follow me back to my station," he beckoned Ronan across the room to the other tattoo chair.

Ronan started after him, so quickly that he tripped over the edge of the rug that covered the front desk area. "Fuck," he threw his hands out instinctively and caught Adam's shoulder with one and brushed his back with the other. He quickly withdrew his arms. "Fuck, sorry."

"You're good."

They sat down, Adam on a rolling stool and Ronan in the tattoo chair. Adam rolled up close to Ronan and plopped the sketchbook on his knees between them. He tapped his pencil on the book twice quickly.

"So what is your idea for this tattoo?" Adam asked.

It was a good question. "I have no idea."

"Oh. Okay. Well I can definitely help you think tank some ideas and draw it up over the weekend-"

"No. I want it tonight," Ronan said quickly.

Adam's eyebrows raised. "You want to start a large tattoo that you have no ideas for tonight?"

"No, I want to finish a large tattoo that I have no ideas for tonight."

Adam's eyebrows went impossibly further up. "I'm afraid that's not possible. Have you ever gotten a tattoo before?"

"Yes. I mean no. I mean, what? Why not?" Ronan stumbled over the words. Adam's eyes narrowed a little.

"A tattoo virgin? And you want to start off with a giant back piece all in one sitting?"

"Yes."

"Are you drunk?"

"What makes you think that?" Ronan asked indignantly.

"Well, you did trip over a rug and got confused when I asked you a yes or no question," Adam responded, unamused. "You're also slurring your words a little."

"I had a couple drinks but I'm good to-"

"Sorry, but we don't serve drunk people." Adam interrupted. "That leads to regrets. If you're serious about this tattoo come back tomorrow when you're sober with some ideas."

"But I-"

"Good bye." Adam got up and went back to one of the back rooms.

Ronan looked around and saw the short girl back on top of her display case. When he made eye contact she just shrugged and went back to flipping through a magazine.

Fine. Ronan would come back. He'd think of ideas. Fuck, he'd even give in to Gansey's constant harping to come to this college if it meant having Adam.

As a tattoo artist, of course.