[ Light of both their eyes, sweet song of their hearts, stuff of their every pressed-collar nightmare — Gansey's due a birthday. Eighteenth by the fair count, the one he'd thought he might never reach. The same his family - as attentively overbearing as Adam has ever known them, by sheer proxy - want wined, dined, feted and remembered, for all of the Hill's finest to know.
Adam knows, because he's stared down a mind-dazzling collection of curly golden letters that carefully crafted an invitation. In English, the Gansey household is thrilled to ask the pleasure of his company... Blue's, too, turns out. Ronan's. Cheng's. There's not a soul in Henrietta that Gansey's cared for that the Ganseys have neglected to approach - all but the one too tattered to attend (they still don't speak of Noah.)
Any other occasion, Adam might have declined: school, senior year complications, the long trek, the longer repeat agony of a party he still recalls - but it's Gansey's birthday, and he looks, for the very first time, keen to enjoy it. It's his birthday, and it won't be his last, and so Adam suits up (teeth gritting) and goes.
He doesn't know what demons Helen pays off to drag Ronan into this same hell, but they come on their own at the start of evening, and end up inseparable within the hour. Mask on but strangely contented, Gansey looks good among his people. Blue - her ill-fitting formal navy dress aging her too sharply for Adam's taste - looks even better. And the rest of the bustling swarm look like their old menace, nonchalant, bustling and proud.
Adam can't say when they cut their way out of the garden area (where there are musicians) to the halls (where every other moron too deep in his wine is auditioning to be a musician), then to Gansey's private study — a beast of a room in a terror of a house, book-clad each way and reeking of old paper. Not every volume Adam thumbs at turns out to involve Welsh kings, but odds are good on one out of three.
It's impolite to steal off with your boyfriend - and, he suspects, some well-hidden supplies of the upstairs wine - in your best friend's personal library during his birthday party, but they've done worse.
Adam certainly plans to do no better, taking over Gansey's desk with an aggression that matches the pulse of his upcoming migraine. There're cards already there, a spread that he thinks must have gone for a reading, when Gansey still troubled himself with such things for the academic art. The display's wrong - Adam can tell now, but then Gansey had never had Persephone's hand to guide him.
With a shrug, he collects the cards, shuffles, then cuts then, showing off two of the pack for Ronan's consideration. ]
Poker or reading?
[ It'll be a poor game either way, with Adam's head pounding and his once skills drastically reduced, but it always pays to give Ronan Lynch his options. ]
[A sane person, given time and patience, given forewarning and knowledge, might start preparing themselves for things like their boyfriend moving to college and their boyfriend having a set sleep schedule and their boyfriend not being around to do things like, say.
Talk someone out of dropping their faun-footed inner child with a family that she doesn't belong to but love her for her weirdness anyway because said inner child cannot be trusted with things like the kitchen, buckling their raven familiar into the backseat of a BMW, and driving until that someone reached the parking lot of the dorm in which their boyfriend, unwitting and probably sleeping, lives. Naturally, Ronan Lynch, impulsive issues aside, would never do that, four weeks into the school year, around the same time as the start of midterms. Why would he do such a stupid and impulsive thing.
And yet there he is.
To his credit, he hasn't gone in yet. They (they being mostly Blue, shockingly) bullied Adam into using a piece of his absurd scholarship to buy a phone plan. As a result it wasn't like Ronan didn't have twenty four access to Adam Parrish.
But god he really fucking hates his phone.
Well.
Texting, in this situation, will have to do. In a fit of wisdom, he opts for that route, first.]
[ The thing about Disney princesses is, their princes end up dumb, dry, douchey or better off dead. The thing about dating a Disney princess is, you end up the prince. And the thing about Ronan Lynch infiltrating a really stretched out metaphor is, you end up toothless if you so much as point to him, then to the Mouse empire logo.
So, Adam's learned the ropes: he comes to the Barns — home, he's agreed to let himself call it provisionally, but only as long as it doesn't feel quite right, so he never gets so used to the places' privileges that he starts taking them for granted — from college during spring break, he doesn't ask why Ronan's got a pack of ducks, or deer, or otters, or some other woodland friends trailing after him in an orderly line. He doesn't look twice when Chainsaw diligently carries Ronan's keys. He even fails to do more than blink a few times in succession, when a litter of growing kittens race ahead, half running and half tumbling, pushing Ronan's doors open ahead of him as he walks into the barns themselves.
This is the dream ranch that subsists on real money earned off the illegal sale of dream things. These things happen.
And Adam, he doesn't often relate to living things, unless - like Cabeswater and Opal and the one St. Agnes volunteer who looked after him in soulless understanding each time he dragged his feet in after work – they have the decency to play dead most of the time. So maybe Adam, a relative intruder into the estate's newly-found balance, is just not getting the whole Barns vibe. Maybe it's a bonding thing.
He lets it go. He doesn't talk about it. He resists the itch that starts to contaminate his whole body unbearably for all of two days, until, on the third morning, a calf makes sure enough's enough. Patiently, he waits sat on a conveniently oversized upturned rock until Ronan joins him in the field at ten in the morning. Then, soberly, he points out the culprit cow – which wags its tail furiously at Ronan's arrival, like a damned terrier - with a firmly incriminating finger.
There. The cute wide-eyed one with the white spot. The one who's somehow tracked down Adam during his leisure hours, interrupting the cat nap he was definitely he was not going to take in the great outdoors behind his working boyfriend's back. ]
Lynch, your cow just delivered me a note.
[ Its teeth daintily set against the very edge of a fucking Post-It that Ronan, or Opal, or Aurora must have once scribbled, reading, FEED ME. Unless the cow learned to write. Adam wouldn't put it past the creature.
First thing was this: Ronan had to convince Cabeswater to understand the idea. To use Cabeswater as a place, as a place between worlds in the waking-dreaming sense of the word. He had to take Opal, a dream herself, a psychopomp, to help make it clear. The most important thing was that: he wanted to make it clear. Leaving any part of this to chance seemed like a recipe for disaster. Ronan's seen what happens to dreams and dreamers when they go awry; filthy memories of Kavinsky and Prokopenko stalk this interaction. But whatever; as long as Ronan can dream his way into Cabeswater, and Adam, all the way on the other side of the state is asleep, it can connect the two of them.
Well, that's the theory. In practice, they've never done this, and maybe they've only talked around it, or about it in very general terms. But Ronan likes to go from 0 to 100 in less than sixty seconds. He doesn't like to have to wait to push himself into high gear.
It might not work was the last thing that he said to Adam, before he said, I have to go, she needs to be put in bed, as if in bed is a place Opal sleeps. Instead of under the bed. In pile of hay and flowers. Dreams. What else can a person expect?
He falls asleep a little before eleven, and he doesn't know how much time has passed. It's a tree in the middle of a clearing that he sees, the kind of tree that's as much tree as it is a door. It's like his nightmare tree, the one that he neglectfully didn't explain to Adam or Gansey on the day that they used it, the first time they were in Cabeswater, except that instead of a nightmare, it's more like a cave.]
Parrish?
[He calls Adam's name, feeling his way into the tree. If Adam is here, how can he be sure it's him? Ronan knows when he's dreaming and he's awake, but what if he can't tell the difference between the dream and the waking reality of a boy?]
If he's wandering around out there, you'll let him know to come in, right?
[He's talking to the tree. The tree says nothing in return.]
[ Here's the thing about country boys: they think the physics in downtown, drawling Hickville translates to law and order anywhere with landlines and sense. Ronan Lynch, it turns out, is growing out his twang.
Back in Henrietta and its rural next door, a fast car's a badge of Aglionby pride, and a raven on your record says, mommy, daddy or the family dog need only snap a finger to rouse a seedy army of suits. It means the nice folks with the rusty sheriff's badge know better than to dance with you, even when you're burning tire at 120mph at prime time 5 a.m. on a yawning Saturday.
DC police don't give a fuck about birds, except to cautiously comment that the one on Ronan Lynch's shoulder looks lean and mean and lacks an exotic pet license. Ronan himself will soon be missing his papers, so, in that much, Chainsaw and he are well-married to minor illegality.
The way Adam hears it, a protocol pull-over deteriorated into a verbal spat and more attitude than a schooled man of the law knows to make sense of in the generous span of four minutes on the clock. They might have stopped Ronan for speeding, but they held him for his mouth. (Teaches Adam to ever text, Finals end this Friday. I miss you. Can you pick me up? over a nerve-wrecking call before his last spring exam. Teaches him to feed the fire. )
Adam gets the call, something suspiciously close to an apology, not for Ronan's fuss — never that, never for the violence of his public outbursts either — but because he'd been promised a ride out of the dorms, and right now, that's not happening. Stuck with jagged pieces, Adam takes the full five minutes to work out his puzzle, and then it's his turn for an awkward phone conversation.
Declan answers on the third 6 a.m. try, cursing up a storm. In a prettier world, this would be Gansey on the line, sighing and sober and disappointed, but armed to help. But Gansey's still stuck in travel limbo, and the odds of getting through to beg favors in the vast African — one continent was never going to be enough — unknown are slimmer than the tumbleweeds Adam's dining hall's still struggling to pass for salad. Declan it is, riding on his steely stallion at what-the-fuck-Parrish o'clock to produce the first wad of cash that'll gain them bail at the station, along with the second one of lawyer cards that'll pave a set a sweet carpet of legalease for dashing prince Ronan Lynch to daintily toe on, on his merry way to costly freedom.
Adam is dimly aware, as butter-smooth sycophancy turns to threat to bribe to coaxing, that some men have another layer of muscle on their persons, and this entire piece of police bullying showmanship is just Declan flexing at a casual pace. They don't need Adam in the room where the clean and dirty business both happen. Truth told, they probably hardly needed Adam at all once the alarm got raised, but a good man at least plays token spectator when his rogue beau gets finessed out of jail.
Surprisingly, they let him visit. Declan's cold cash must have oiled the right pockets, but Adam's long lost puppy eyes while he haunts the station halls can't have hurt diplomatic relations. Inevitably, he finds coffee on his way, nice, watered and cheap, from a machine that's seen about as good of a set of days as Adam's handed-down car and his tattered luck. And then, just as ordained, he finds Ronan — not in a venue as dramatic as actual cell, but in the nicely sterile enclosure where they detain would-be decent folks while they lay out a paper trail.
They let Adam in with his two plastic cups of coffee, the officer on call muttering about the practical use of third-degree burns in sewing some mouths shut. And then the door fights its stiff joints to shut behind him, and he's looking over at the hot mess of his boyfriend in a different, blindingly white light.
He's wild. Dangerous. Beautiful. Adam's. ]
You got caught?
[ One day, it might disturb him that these are the first, serene words out of his mouth. ]
[ The downside of their current predicament is, there's no exit without hurt feelings. Ronan's, for Adam's ingratitude. Cabeswater's, for his outright rejection. Opal's, for whatever will need doing in a world that was first hers to call her own, and that might not survive the divine Lynch-Parrish intervention.
The advantage is, no one else knows about it — yet. There's been no outburst, no questions, no disbelief, no accusations — yet. Ronan hasn't looked at Adam in that way that speaks of blood and battle, Cabeswater hasn't sent its tendrils of hate finding roots and surging, Opal hasn't politely chewed his shoes to their soles. Balance exists because Adam Parrish hasn't taken the necessary steps to curb it.
Until a tentative today. It starts with what a few days back at the Barns have stapled as the familiar coaxing: wake up at four to five in the a.m., when Ronan's barely just slipped into proper sleep. Roll over him, annoying him into waking as well. Drowsily kiss him senseless, murmuring requests to visit Cabeswater along the way. Receive a promise to do that, later. Withdraw to sleep after, successful and satisfied. Wake up again at a decent hour, and hold Ronan to his dazed promise by early afternoon, when farm chores have all wrapped up.
It's trickery more than fair negotiation, but it does the job. The impending summer's no friend even to townie boys, but Cabeswater's a generous host, its environment cycling to whatever conditions seem equipped to give Ronan Lynch relief. Its many eyes and ears listening to its Greywaren's soft sight, its heart beating with his pulse. They're in sync to an extent that used to please Adam and now privately disturbs him. Unexpectedly, the hot call of jealousy plays no part in his convictions.
No matter. Presumably, it ends today. Presumably, it all goes well. Presumably... he scoffs and runs ahead of Ronan in the woods, suspended at once in the twilight zone between shattered reality and half-shaped dream. Cabeswater's feeling blue today — soft gradients and pale lavender, river water pulled as fabric and spread liberally across the ground. A cluster of fireflies has made its home on every other tree, on the ground that feels less like grass and soil, and more like hard stone.
Blue and unyielding, then. Maybe, expecting an ugly conversation.
Adam feels not unlike a Virginian Cinderella, creeping back to his heart's home in his most honest form, with a scruffy leather satchel nicked from one of the barns and within it every questionable instrument the mind can summon and the hand won't burn to carry.
The magical flow of the nearest tree purrs neatly when Adam sets his hand on the old bark, at once endeared and ineffable. He caresses it once, then pulls away apologetically to finally look Ronan in the eye on approach. ]
I have a suspicion that this... isn't Cabeswater. [ Yet. Not yet. ] I know — I know it thinks it is. [ A pause. He gathers his breath. ] Because you think it should be. But it's not. Is it?
[It's been so lovely, which means shit is going to hit the fan any minute. If Ronan were a better person - that is to say, if Ronan were a sharper person, more aware of the patterns that their relationships follow, he would have smartened up that something was going to happen on the day that he wakes Ronan up in haze, promising to take Adam to Cabeswater, sandwiched by sweet kisses and soft touches. Ronan rolls back to sleep, hazy, and dreams of green and vines and trees shushing him back to soothing sleep.
He goes through his chores and drives him up to Cabeswater, and suspects nothing.
He's not paying attention at first, and then Adam looks him in the eye and he raises his eyebrows.
At first, he doesn't know what Adam is talking about. This isn't Cabeswater as he remembers it, this is Cabeswater as it is now, and Ronan has never really thought about it further than that. It's his dream, not the dream he had when he was a child, but his dream now, more protected, more capable, more aware of them on the leyline. Opal was precise in her demands, in the plants, in the flowers, but that doesn't mean-
-it's still the same thing that Cabeswater was. The magic on the leyline. The power, given shape.
But then he narrows his eyes.]
You have to be more specific than that, Parrish.
[Adam should know that those narrowed eyes mean more than just Ronan thinking. It means Ronan working through something.]
[It wasn't that it was difficult. Snow in July isn't an impossible proposition, when you're Ronan Lynch, even outside of Cabeswater. It's only been a few weeks, and navigating both versions - or maybe it's one version with two personalities? - isn't impossible, especially in his dreams. But Ronan had been thinking about this for the past two months, and for a moment he was worried that he was going to have to actually buy something and endure Adam's wrath - or at least a sullen thank you for something that he knew that Adam would never buy for himself and couldn't afford, or a genuine one for something Adam didn't need and therefore a gift was acceptable.
When money is plentiful it doesn't mean much, and while Adam doesn't realize that Ronan just doesn't care, Adam does.
So around six in the morning he slipped out of bed, drowsing and cranky, and got Opal, even more cranky (but so much more forgiving; her fight with Adam was a six year old's version of a fight, a screaming match that ended in weeping tears on Opal's end, finally, like a flood, and her gripping Adam's knees tightly and sobbing that really she had just been so afraid and she loved him too much to see him hurt. Ronan had witnessed the entire affair from the window, drinking his coffee and thinking that he wishes he could tell Adam what he felt with such clarity. But anyway.) out of bed to help. They had to feed everything before he could get back to sleep.
He went back to sleep in a hill near the house, under an enormous tree covered in kudzu.
The snow started at seven, flurries of it in the thick Virginia heat, prickles of cold that wouldn't melt no matter what until midnight. It came out of a clear sky, thick and thicker until it was a white out at seven thirty, and by the time Ronan woke up at eight, a good eight inches had fallen, blanketing everything in fluffy white snow. It was fiercely hot out, and cold around him, and Opal woke up too, poking her head out of the snow and then laughing infectiously, running through it, kicking snow up everywhere until Ronan caught her and told her not to fucking ruin the effect.
And then he came back to slip under the covers, around eight-fifteen, cold feet and all.
There's another present, too, something equally priceless.
[ Any other time of the year, Ronan's penchant for cuddling would be lightly begrudged but altogether tolerated, a necessary evil in a relationship that largely patchworks wrongs. But this is Virginia summer with Virginia heat waves and the Virginia fondness for driving out the air from Adam's lungs til he's gasping for more, drowsy and suffocated. He can't bear undue contact when the world has been reduced to points of scalding touch and the few seconds of relief from them.
Any other day, he'd be kicking at Ronan to exile him at the dead end of the bed, by now no stranger to the subtleties of acceptable Lynch violence. Ronan would grumble. Or laugh. Or do any other assortment of irritable things that would end in either Adam's indignation (and a prompt shove off the bed completely) or in a perfectly acceptable make-out.
Today's different, though Adam's sleep-addled brain isn't at first sure it can deal with the conflict. Ronan is sticking to his legs (he knows, because Opal has learned not to dare), but the touch isn't unpleasant. No. It's... cool. You'd think aircon would be an exorbitant expense on an estate of this side, unjustified with just three people residing — but a house that runs itself with no need to pay utilities does wonders for encouraging indulgence, and so Adam can't complain that his summer's been a boiling hell. The additional morning chill, though. He'll take it.
So, the lagging checklist: what day is today? Sa... turday. Meaning, time off the last-minute internship he's managed to wrestle from the single decent law firm based close enough to town. What day when? July... something. Two days after Gansey's princely return, when Ronan and he had once more returned to basic competitiveness for their unspoken master's favor. God, they'd missed Gansey. And Blue, and even Cheng, but Gansey was the light of every eye they hadn't clawed out of each other, and Adam couldn't get enough of absorbing his good will. Two days after, so... oh. Oh, his birthday. All right. Well.
He can - open his eyes. That's a thing, although his glance ends up a narrow slight, barely sharpened. He finally aims it over his shoulder, lazily turning around by degrees in a move that takes centuries and leaves him quietly exposing more untouched leg skin for Ronan's cold feet to grace. ]
Are you made of ice? [ A pause. ] Am I melting you?
[ Adam Parrish, first thing in the morning: a gift to the world. ]
[ Midway through Ronan's birthday blowathon, after the end-mark of Adam's fourth exercise at numbing his mouth against any decent, wholesome use over the next week or so, his manipulative streak strikes. He might have been waiting all afternoon for this, the combined effect of Ronan's excitement over his freshly inked tattoo, the adrenaline boost of his hurting arm, and the inevitable lethargy that followed getting off way too many times within twenty-four hours for anyone's health.
He starts easily, Happy birthday in bed, executing their new tradition to neglect the sentimental basics until the very last moment, like the douchebags they were always meant to be, but at some point maybe falsely feared they might not become.
Then, before Ronan can probably gather his bearings, Put your suit on.
The Sunday one, if need be, though Adam's surprisingly active sense of aesthetics bemoans the harsh, blunt cut and the stark black of it against Ronan's fair skin. He looks penitent in it, devout and sober — but Adam's just finished getting this paragon of virtue off, so he's a harder sell than most on the debated matter of Lynch modesty and innocence.
Besides, he's not done landing fatal hits til the whispered, I'm taking you out.
He is. He's planned this, and there's a reservation involved, promising more hurt in Adam Parrish's financial future than he's ever cared to contemplate. There's a secret to that — the money side of things — but he doesn't think Ronan is quite prepared to learn that his boyfriend may have started taking Tarot cues for race bets (at first) and a $300 stock purchase (this last time). The profit is small, because he lacks the Lynch balls to join the big boys' table and let his gains attract unwanted attention — but it's just enough to cover the rare indulgences, most of which involve Ronan in some way, shape or form.
Hooligans, both of them. Cabeswater should kick them out. That's another secret, but the second part of the planned night sends anticipation clawing at Adam's stomach in ways he isn't ready to explore just yet.
For now, they're wearing fancy suits at a fancy restaurant, fancily engrossed in their respective menu, until Adam — in a depressingly blue-collar twang — murmurs: ]
Bloody him on your own time, Lynch.
[ As if he could miss the glares shot between Ronan and the prissy waiter. Being Ronan's birthday, if it comes to back alley blows, Adam supposes he should take it upon himself to hold Ronan's coat. ]
[The thing about Ronan's birthday is that is isn't just Ronan's birthday anymore. It's two anniversaries, rolled into one; the day he first kissed Adam, so a kind of anniversary for them, if they got their shit together enough to celebrate past the gift of reciprocal blowjobs (because what, Ronan's monstrous but he's not totally uncivilized, here) and the next day is the anniversary of his mother's death.
It's the second one that he drinks to forget and the first one he tries to focus on, for all that sometimes he can't do it. But Adam is adept at making Ronan refocus his energy on shit that might not actually matter. His Armani suit, cut to make Ronan look more respectable than he is. His hair, freshly shaved in his mother's memory, for all that he's starting to think, he wouldn't mind so much if he let it grow, into one of those weird mohawks, the curls black and unruly. The look of him like he's off for war.
He should have known this would be a fancy affair from the word go and suit but he didn't think that Adam Parrish, poor little trailer trash boy, would have the gall to bring him to a place where the prices weren't printed on the menu.]
I think this is the definition of my time.
[The waiter is so fucking high and mighty for someone who doesn't know shit about Ronan. From the second they walked in the door, despite the fact that Ronan wears a suit like one might wear armor, he's been getting filthy looks, even though his tie is perfectly straight and knotted by an expert (Opal) and straightened by a master (Adam). Despite the fact that he is, by all accounts, richer than the required cost to be allowed entrance.
He doesn't mind being mistaken for a punk when he is one, but he doesn't like the look it.]
[First thing's first: Ronan isn't supposed to be here, here being Georgetown and now being a day that is most certainly not a weekend, but at least this time he texted first, around eight in the morning. need to drop off shit for declan, be in town all day, stay with you? came like a shot, right around the time that Adam was probably eating breakfast or studying or trying to focus on something that wasn't his boyfriend's neediness. It's only been a few days since Ronan's birthday, enough time for Adam to go back to school and enough time for them to breed that separation between them.
But the real crux of this matter; around four in the afternoon, just before he's supposed to meet Adam, Ronan is getting into a fight.
This wasn't an argument. This was a knock-down, no holds barred, punching bag sort of fight, and the strange thing is that this fight wasn't Declan; no, Declan was nowhere to be seen, just Ronan and another boy (man? no, boy) pacing around each other, Ronan's war face on, his fists already bloody and his lip split, but in the words of anyone who's been in a fight: you should see the other guy. The other guy, in this case, is an unknown entity, because Ronan isn't telling.
He didn't have time to clean up before he came to find Adam; he barely had time to find Adam. But there he is, meeting spot, right on time, his car behind him.
He licks his bottom lip - there's a smear of thick red blood there, on his tongue, he looks like an animal - and he lifts his head.
There's something dark in the way he's holding himself, but it isn't directed at anyone. It's just who Ronan is, right now.]
Maura and Calla sent you something.
[He says it casually, like hello, my lower lip isn't bloody and my knuckles haven't been skinned, but how are you? There is no circle of people complaining, there's no great group of gawkers. Just Ronan, looking like he's been to war and back, tasting blood and smelling like fire.]
It's an elephant. Thing. Fuck if I know.
[It belonged to Persephone, so now it belongs to Adam.]
[ Adam's pained wallet might disagree, but there are immediate advantages to a single: privacy is topmost, a prime commodity when you're looking to exert magical muscles the average young adult doesn't have. It isn't — necessary to cast out cards every time Ronan announces an unexpected visit, but Adam's never been hurt by precautions. This round, the deck keeps true to its traditional vagaries, and so Adam can expect some degree of unknown trouble when Ronan slips in, though the devil of the details has his tail out of sight.
Adam will know when he sees it. Criminology 210 drones on and on even worse than Professor Albrighton's self-important drawl should be allowed to.
And then it's afternoon, the secluded parking lot of the singles' house, and Adam rushes, books satchel hitting his legs, to find —
This. A mad storm reshaped as a nightmare, fooling around as a boy. Bruised in ways Adam knows and responds to, viscerally. Bloodied. Straight-backed and arrogantly stiff in a way that suggests no real joy in the fight, unlike Declan's and Ronan's latest encounters, only the casual posturing that follows a beat-down you might have lost.
Adam looks at him for a moment, breath knocked out and mouth gracelessly agape, before he simply nods once and covers their distance.
Swinging in, he catches the soft stretch of Ronan's nape, bringing their mouths tenderly together. Greeting your bloodied rebel without a cause boyfriend with slow kisses by the sleek shark of his car. James Dean and music video directors for alternative rock'n'roll bands would be getting hard for this.
Adam sighs, drawing the full line of Ronan's lower lip between his teeth, probing the blood at its edges. This is kissing and clean-up, an artificial excuse to keep Ronan from shrugging off help and accept instead kittenish licks and a breeze of fragile pat-downs. The blood tang rings sharply metallic on Adam's tongue, and a private past has taught him that means the wound can't have an hour on it, or the flavor would have gained depth, the texture crumbled. ]
Thanks. [ For whatever he's been sent. He's not even looking. ] Coming in?
[ Rule number on in dealing with Ronan like this: let him think he's calling the shots. Gansey lost too many battles by trying to dictate, where he should have coaxed, rousing Ronan's self-defensive growls. Silence and patience are the way now, coaxing grudging acceptance out of Ronan to guide him in, see his wounds, attend to them. ]
[ Blue Sargent is a beautiful creature, the fiercely loyal, witty and pretty paragon of human kindness every high school boy should be only too lucky to see smile, let alone call his girlfriend. Most days, Adam doesn’t resent her the desultory end of their relationship, as much as he quietly wonders how she ever agreed to hold his hand. She's gentle, insightful, the light of every room and the most enviable possession of Gansey's privileged life.
She's also a pain in the neck to scry around, when Adam's control averages out as 'tentative' during the best of sessions and 'irredeemable' when unexpected influences are running amok. She's not to blame for this rare hunter's moon witchery bullshit — which Maura has told Adam one time too many not to buy into, because astral effects are more miss than hit in their line of work, and there's no use getting your hopes up for Jupiter or Saturn or the moon or whoever up in the sky to deliver their end of the deal, when you can't get yourself up there to beat them into it.
But he still can't risk performing with Blue around, possibly magnifying any visiting forces that might care to nudge him even farther out of his shallow depth.
This means, practically, that when the most interesting day of the fall season brings out a red moon to play under, Adam's barred from taking up shop at the Barns and reaching out to Cabeswater from a slight, but safe distance. Weeks ago, when he'd okayed Blue's move-in, he'd expected the awkwardness of running into his ex naked, his ex and Gansey naked, or his ex, Gansey and Ronan all naked following a weird, but strangely predictable series of events. That would have been amusing. And mind-numbing. And on Youtube the next day somehow, because Cheng's got eyes everywhere.
What Adam hadn't factored into his decision had been the sheer inconvenience of pursuing withcraft 101 with Blue under Ronan's roof. All in all, he doesn't regret it: for all their bickering, Blue and Ronan get along like two peas in a deranged pod, and Ronan's temper seems improved for having the extra company.
This is fine. Mostly fine. Reasonably fine.
Until, that is, Adam takes his train ticket and his small bag of nothings to last him over the weekend to Cabeswater on the Thursday of the blood moon. And everything goes… not quite as planned. No crisis, no disaster, just the unfortunate knowledge that he'll be needing back-up to put things right, and his usual reinforcements hate this kind of business.
Adam also hates this part, tail heavy between his legs, fingertips still itching with something like residual power, electrically charged. In an ideal world, he'd have wrapped this up quick and easy, then gone up to the Barns and explained away a surprise visit to celebrate late October and the end of some of his midterms. No harm (in what Ronan doesn’t know), no foul.
In the real world, Cabeswater played hard ball and the night's taken a turn for flooding, Adam's jacket and effects so thoroughly drenched that by the time he arrives at the Barns, he doesn't even bother digging through his things for his spare keys (wet; gross). Instead, he creeps up to the house on the kitchen-side and politely knows on the window, like a vagrant banking on his boyfriend loitering around and cooking dinner for his faun and shortie family.
He tries very hard for a casual, level, mind-your-business look when the window is opened. Probably, he fails. ]
Hi. [ Rain burdens his lashes to the point of drawn-out blinks. ] I did something stupid you need to fix.
[At some point, later, Ronan will figure that if anyone deserves this, he does. After all, he's rolled up worse - jailed, bloody, and on a memorable occasion in the middle of Adam's freshman year when he was incredibly stupid, mostly drunk (but sober enough to wait until he was actually sober to knock on Adam's door). Ronan has been legitimately cooking dinner, because Blue and Opal went to town to do the shopping and see Maura for Blue's usual assistance session, and Chainsaw is crankily stealing bits of carrot and trying to hide them from Ronan so he can't take them away.
It's a typical night, which means when the knock comes at the window, the first thing Ronan does is tighten the grip on his kitchen knife, because people around here don't just pop into the Barns for tea. Blue may be a hundred times more charming, but Ronan's scowl still rules the reputation of this particular farm.
Adam looks like a drowned rat.
And Ronan will suppose he deserves it, but at the moment, he's way too surprised.]
Motherfucker, what the fuck-
[He sets his knife down, goes to the side door and opens it, and stares at Adam, who is coming up the steps and dripping water all over the floor.]
What the fuck happened to you? You look like you were hit by a fucking hurricane.
[He's already reaching for a kitchen towel, though God alone knows if it will help in this situation. Drowned rat isn't the best metaphor. Maybe he's more like a fish that's desperately trying to stay on land, but keeps producing water every time his gills open.]
Chainsaw-
[She's already swooping in to land at Adam's feet and nip, worriedly, at his heels.]
[When Blue heard the words we're going to Walmart when she arrived at the Barns, Opal in tow, she had looked at Ronan and then at Adam and made a curious face. We? she asked, but Opal had burst past his legs to say hello to Adam, asking to be picked up and prancing around him for long enough to distract, and then it was a few hours so that Adam and Opal could spend some real time together, so she could take him out and show him her new rocks and to chew on his shirtsleeve and so that she could play one game of hide and seek with Adam.
And so it's early afternoon when Adam and Ronan finally manage to get out, Opal tuckered out from the fact that she couldn't sleep the night before, and Blue said that despite the amusing image of Ronan going to a Walmart, offered to stay behind with her.
And so here they are.
At the entrance, Ronan balked, almost giving up entirely. There was a greeter. It was loud and there were bins of cheap fruit pies and eyeliner, and five dollar DVDs. There were piles and piles of obese and badly dressed people screaming at their children. Ronan is not afraid of poor people, and he's not afraid of poverty, nor is he fascinated by it. There's a certain amount of healthy consideration in the world of Ronan Lynch for the spinning reality around him, but he usually blocks out 90% of the shit that bothers him or that he finds generally uninteresting. He manages the dollar store and the dirt poor filth of Henrietta because it's home, because the people there are his.
The people here are not his. This has no charm and nothing Ronan finds fascinating or interesting. Even Ronan Lynch's general disinterest cannot live in a Walmart.
It doesn't help that he loses Adam about two minutes in. It takes him a full ten minutes of wandering to find him in the clothes section.]
[ Adam Parrish's loot in the crucial first fifteen minutes, an ongoing inventory: two HD pencil packs, a case, a sharpener, two erasers, a children's clay set, one short ruler, four neon-backed notebooks, a polka-dotted tin lunch box and a classically brazen yellow raincoat for little girls aged 6-9. A grand total of $18.99, which Adam recklessly tops up with the shameful indulgence of a set of cartoon stickers. (Something she can decorate her pencil case with.)
Some part of him will regret the excess later, when his his mind overtakes his heart again, dethroning the urgent impulse to run from the slimmest suggestion of a passing-by soccer mom's shadow. At school, crossing themselves before St. Agnes or crowding in the parking lot, these fine ladies are nothing short of picture-perfect Southern belles, all butter voices, clean manners, how do you dos and please and thank yous. Unleashed in Walmart, they run amok like banshees, trampling any innocent soul foolish enough not to clear their aisle.
Adam's survived enough of these incidents for healthy fear to guide him faithfully in supermarket traffic. It's with that inevitable panic that he first greets Ronan again in the suspiciously loosely-peopled clothes section, his generally ominous presence registering before his familiar particulars.
Relax. This is Adam's murderous-looking hooligan. No need to bolt. Instead, he hums along as he browses through the nearest stack of shirts, belatedly gracing Ronan with an absent-minded answer: ]
Because you live in Virginia.
[ At length, he holds up a set pair of black hoodies that, in their wildest dreams, wish to be cotton, featuring already scratched-off prints, one of a pot, the other of a kettle. He stares from one to the other, then to Ronan's distant silhouette, all too obviously guesstimating the fit.
He nods once to himself, satisfied and faintly smiling, the world his silent witness to the horror of his suggestion. Ronan Lynch in the Walmart $9.99 edit.
Gently, Adam sets the hoodies back down, taking exceeding care to fold them in something resembling their original order. They're all girls around his Aglionby age manning the sections here, tired-eyed and barely keeping up with their To-Do list, all for the privilege of a minimum wage. They don't deserve his disregard. ]
Buying a gun, Lynch? That the country boy cliche in you?
[ After, what surprises him isn't his own nerve of looking Ronan in the eye Thursday night, when he visits two weeks later, then setting him on his way to Jersey, unknowing and content the day after. It isn't bidding his hellos to Blue with a polite smile and a bashful offer to manage them breakfast when she turns out an even poorer cook than him, most mornings. It isn't taking Opal by the hand and dedicating Friday to quick, quiet, stolen trips downtown, then games of collecting the prettiest leaves in the afternoon. It isn't finding the patience to shed the BMW's old upholstery like an undesired skin on Saturday, pretending to know how the new leathers ought to fit around the seats by more than weary-eyed approximation and too much uncomfortable guesswork for the price tag on the vehicle that suffers his surgery.
It's that Cabeswater, on a charming Sunday morning, doesn't fight back. There's a deranged satisfaction in infiltrating the forest in Ronan's jacket like this, biding his time to find a comfortably smooth ground surface, then sit himself neatly down. Composure collects at every point of tension in him, burrows in his joints; he teases himself away from stiffness, back straight but not pained, eyes wide but clear. This isn't retaliation for the wrong done unto him, for the new Cabeswater taking his things because Ronan had deprived it of trust unto the one person it had owned fully and unrepentantly.
It's justice.
He breathes deeply through that reminder, through a full five minutes of paying sharp attention to every drop of water trickling down, the Latin-honeyed whisper of leaves. No, he won't answer today. He won't commune. He will sit and he will listen and he will control (does).
And then he kindly tells the young thing that is Cabeswater-reborn that their contract, as it was, has hereby been suspended.
If he is not trusted, he is not wanted. If he is not wanted, he is cut off. If he is cut off, then this Cabeswater's access to him, its nourishment, is also severed.
These things go both ways — and find a third, carefully planted route, when Adam starts the exercise of tricks and wards Maura's tried (but mostly failed) to teach him, good-natured witchery to keep the bad out. The bad is in him; it can't be extirpated. But Cabeswater's ugly tendrils can be subdued from waking him at night with its fears, or pursuing him during his day. It's like rejecting a call from someone you don't like, he'd had it explained to him, and Adam's owned a phone just long enough to know there's a perverse satisfaction in putting an urgent caller on an undetermined hold. Let the new forest try. Until Adam decides it's done it's thought its attitude over, it can go hungry of all the extra energy a willing host gave him.
This is a proper break up conversation, the words Blue never brought herself to say. This is the steel anger with which to say them, and he leaves to tremors of the healthier forest and subtle slivers of probing from the old forest that depends on him even more than its sister-dream. Will Adam abandon it too? He wishes he weren't so addicted to magic that he might entertain the thought of 'no'. Besides, their agreement is colder, different, personal. The entity Ronan dreamed to remember him might have mimicked that intimacy, but it never had the power of the ley line's claim. This Cabeswater is different, pettier, coyer. Like him. He agrees to keep it fed.
Later, he waits far too long for Ronan to come home that evening, before his train on Monday morning. His hands're November-chilled when he waves at his upcoming boyfriend from his seat on the porch, tossing Ronan the BMW's keys by way of greeting: ]
Think fast.
[ Harder in the dark, but Ronan likes a challenge. Truth be told, Adam doesn't know what to expect: Ronan isn't affected, but Cabeswater's inheritance of their worst traits makes it a natural tattletale. Though the morning's chat might have taught it some degree of discretion, and so maybe, just maybe, this will go not peacefully, but smoothly. ( It isn't war — just winning. ) ]
[It was a good kind of weekend except for where it wasn't - New Jersey, New York, New fucking everything about the north midatlantic was not Ronan's cup of tea, except that he had a good time with Gansey, even if most of it was spent trying to convince him that no he did not need to go to New York City to look at the museums, and no, he would be fine if they just hung out in the dorm and they didn't need to go out, and fuck, Gansey, why is Gansey such a fucking chore sometimes.
So all in all a success. He came home and half expected to see Opal charging down the steps in his direction, as she does when he abandons her (there's no other word for it) to see Adam, but no. It seems that Adam is a perfectly respectable substitute father, and so when Opal isn't barreling down the steps yelling Kerah! and reaching for him to pick her up, he's both somewhat pleased and also just a little (a lot) bitterly disappointed.
It feels like a betrayal.
He steps out into the darkness and Chainsaw is the first thing out of the car, flying up to the house, which distracts him for a moment, but not so much that his hand doesn't reach out into the dark and catch the keys to his car - his real car, not the borrowed orange Camaro that he thundered down the I-95 corridor up the coast. (Bless Blue. Really.)
He steps up to the porch, then, and feels something slot inside his heart. This is what was missing. He should have taken Adam with him, but Adam is not a dog to be toted around for emotional support.]
Hey.
[His voice is thick with pleasure, as he steps up.]
Where's the brat?
[Asleep, he should hope. Otherwise this lack of a welcome is really going to bite at him.]
[The promise was, twice a month, and Adam comes home once a month; it's Ronan's turn this time, midterms ending on a Wednesday and Ronan driving up on Thursday instead of Friday, which means that like an asshole, he's driving up without warning, to spend an extra day with Adam; like a desperate loser.
He goes to the dorm and doesn't find Adam; the door is locked and there's no answer. He goes to the library, sort of offended that he knows where the library is at Georgetown, and that's where someone recognizes him and takes mercy on him for some stupid reason (it's not like he needs anyone's fucking pity) and bravely manages to not cry when Ronan turns his not-so-friendly look on them. I think Adam went to a party, midterms he says, and Ronan stares at him because he's pretty sure that the dude just said Adam and party and forced at gunpoint wasn't used to describe the series of events. Adam does not do people. He does not do music that drowns out his already shitty hearing. He does not do crowds.
Conclusion: he does not do parties.
And yet.
So that's how Ronan finds himself standing in front of someone's apartment, not far from campus, staring at the door. There isn't thumping music, but he can hear people talking inside, and the door opens to reveal the saddest party that Ronan, consumer of garish events where a substance is a requirement for entry or fancy ones where cheese is served as dessert, has ever seen.
Well, sort of. It's a bunch of undergraduates, hanging out, and there in a corner is Adam, looking engaged, talking to some girl with a smile on his face and an attitude of intellectual superiority and Ronan thinks that this is it, he's entered the twilight zone, he's hallucinating and he's going to need the interjection of every single saint to figure out how to make this not weird.
Someone spots him and asks if he can get Ronan's jacket, and Ronan just moves past him. There's a white-hot flare of jealousy in his stomach that he's trying to keep from making him say something stupid.]
You're looking perfectly fucking collegial.
[Nailed it.
He's suddenly absurdly aware of the dirt under his fingernails, the long scratches on his arms from untangling a pair of stupid foxes from his henhouse protection dream, and his healing split lip from his time at the boxing gym earlier. He wonders, briefly, if this is what Adam felt, back at Aglionby. Bruised and dirty from work.
[ By the third and last day of his midterm streak, Adam Parrish has reached the conclusion that his much-coveted college degree might not guarantee him a white-collar job, but goes very far in cementing his prospects as a serial killer. He has planned out, in disturbing detail, how to reduce or end the existence of every fucking freshman that's infested the library these past few days, only to dissolve in shrill laughter, first-exam meltdowns, or drunken revelry at the nearest opportunity.
How Adam's criminal record and his reputation both survived the ordeal, he can't tell, only that he emerged from his last criminology exam a better, more spiritually grounded man, too Zen by far to inflict bricks, gags and chainsaws on unsuspecting young adults.
It's over. Hell has washed over him and withdrawn all its flash card Satans. He can now retire to his humble dorm abode and indulge in the strangely satisfied gut pangs of his coffee overdose — at least, until his RA (his RA) takes him delicately by the hand as he walks in and informs him, in no uncertain terms, that books aren't natural human appendages, and also that most people think his room is empty and, on his rare returns, haunted.
As it turns out, the choice between embracing life as Georgetown Noah or lukewarm socializing at the first half-decent party proves not at all that difficult. And so, this is how he finds himself in a nearly-stranger's overcrowded apartment, joyfully nursing a glass of sparkling water that, like champagne, only really feels fancy for the kindergarten appeal of the six-seven stray bubbles rising to the surface.
There are people — actual human beings Adam does not turn homework with or tutor — and some of them even manage passable conversation. He is just thrilled enough to stay and even seek out friends, determined to A+ this latest assignment, even if it kills him.
Or the rest of the party guests, once Ronan stops his heart and unexpectedly spirits himself in.
No notice. No time for error. Not even a causal hello. Adam's seen party boy Lynch in worse wear, soaked in hard booze, fresh off a joy ride and accepting dubious pills with the reverence of communion. Adam has nothing to be ashamed of here &mdahs; still, he feels as if he's narrowly juggling a hot pan and his hand in the fire, as he takes the measure of Ronan's look (hot) and his temper (hotter, but not yet volcanic). Then, evenly: ]
Must be the college campus.
[ There's far too long a silence, during which strategy and survival instincts configure the best possible course of action to see the night through without a quick getaway or a Lynch outburst. In the midst of gears turning, Adam raises his hand to gently pause the host as he rushes to offer Ronan a beer can fresh off the frosted pack: ]
He's driving.
[ Or triggering the apocalypse, waging war on a third-world country, burning down the house. Either way, no alcohol. The can withdraws, though curiosity spreads like a cautious contagion, threadbare on sets of lips that part around him, but intelligently decide to tighten close. So, who is this, Adam?
Beasts suit their castles, but Adam's never made a point of hiding Ronan whenever he visits. It just so happens that fate, luck and a few minutes of tactical planning have conspired to keep Ronan away from most dorm fixtures at the times when they're at their busiest, whiniest and best-supplied with hipster privilege. The sight of him is a precious commodity, on par or exceeding the advent of unicorns.
In a gesture begging every saint to take pity on his no-good soul, Adam scoots takes a step away from Amy from Sociology and waves Ronan close in a clear invitation for him to descend from the wrathful heavens and park himself by.
The lady gets honors first, with a nod each way: ]
[ 'Twice a month here, once at the Barns' had been their draconian travel arrangement, but holiday months get a firm pass meant to ensure Adam actually pieces together enough study time to take the last of his exams without blowing away his dignity, his reputation, his scholarship and his good sense.
So, no visits between Ronan's early-November surprise appearance and Thanksgiving. Few calls, more so lessened by Adam's exasperated impatience whenever a new deadline joins the workload pile. Instead, they have sullen silences, frustrated calls, shameful shout sessions meant to explore anger at the world more than at each other — and bad ideas.
Terrible ones, Adam concedes in belated retrospect, because it hurts something wickedly fierce on the day, then stings with alarming rigor after. Then there's the peeling, snake unsaddled of his skin, and every Google reassurance that it should all be over within two weeks doesn't kindly coerce his agitated hand to take the hint. It's worth it, it'll be worth it, it's all worth it —
Were words, thoughts and fleeting fancies that never stumbled upon Adam Parrish during those two weeks.
And then it really is over, and he's cursing, groaning, packing his flimsy bag and boarding a train with far too much excitement for the traditional Lynch Thanksgiving fare: whatever sat still long enough to be caught, shoved in an oven without seasoning, nuked down to an apocalyptic crisp, left forgotten to sag overnight, then served the next day, somehow still rare in the middle. And Orla's pumpkin pie.
Like any good Southern boy, he grabs last-ditch gifts off the road to pay back the Barns' hospitality: for Opal, three different types of campus chocolate bars, all painstakingly searched for their expiry date. For Blue, the quarterly issue of Georgetown's environmental undergrad society mag, which features a disturbingly distraught weasel on the cover. For Gansey, if his family in DC can spare him a day for a Virginia trip, the difficultly gained syllabus of every history professor in this college. For Henry — who has officially earned a first-name basis after so many years now — one of the nearby frat's free oversized party hats.
And for Ronan, Adam's God damned presence, please and thank you.
He turns up late at the station come Wednesday morning, every train that wasn't canceled to celebrate an ugly DC storm, instead ending up indefinitely delayed. Injury joins insult, and the two cabs that usually bother with Henrietta traffic don't show up on the prowl for lost tourists. So, Adam is stuck stranded. Waiting. Sighing. Then, studiously shooting Ronan a text and hoping the stars have aligned enough for it to be a day when his boyfriend bothers to remember his phone.
Hi.
Then, I'm at the station.
And, Sorry. It was supposed to be a surprise. Can you come get me?
But he knows he's been an asshole these past few weeks, knows just as well that Ronan will be in the kitchen or an actual barn, rolling his eyes out of their sockets at Adam's newly-remembered courtesy, so he stacks on an obligatory, Please.
Obediently, he props his duffel bag on the platform, then leans his back on the nearest pillar and calmly sets out to — ...wait. And wait. And wait.
When Ronan shows up — because of course he does, Adam hardly deserves him — he pulls himself straight, rolls his shoulders to regain his posture, lifts his chin with cheaply-bought pride —
And raises his right hand, ring finger stubbornly upright to show off the fucking tattoo only a douchebag like ink-armored Ronan Lynch might have neglected to mention would hurt like a son of a howling bitch on a digit. It's a lightly sketched thing: two thinly defined raven claws, coming together for an inch's width around the base of his finger. Pretty work, price tag to match the skill. He doesn't want to talk about that $220, a luxury only justified by Adam-the-private-tutor's DC wage and the constant reminder that this is Ronan's Christmas and Easter and birthday gift combined, for the next five to ten years.
Instead, he manages a weak smile: ]
You'll see a beak if I ever hate myself enough to climb back in the chair.
[ Asshole, that hurt. And he's been told it'll fade faster than regular tattoos, to top it all. Useless. ]
[Its been a weird two weeks. First came the fighting, furious and howling and about nothing except Adam's stress and Ronan's loneliness and the space between finals and holidays, the prospect of a winter break that loomed but never came, the shifting weather and bad barometric pressure, and a forest distressed that God forgot it or will never forgive it, with Ronan latching firmly onto his Old Testament phase of young deityship. These are the times that try men's souls.
And then to add fuel to the fire: Thanksgiving, which meant Declan and Matthew and this year the witches are coming to the Barns with crew in hand, and they're eating outside on Aurora's fine old fold wooden out table (designed to fit 30, who would even come out here, they never had parties when Ronan was a child), which Blue decided needed to be decorated. Many turkeys lay in wait to die, garbling their last gobble-gobbles while Opal watches them with serious fascination. Ronan told her not to name them, so naturally she named every last motherfucking bird. The turkey slaughter began at dawn, with Opal's bored supervision.
The text came right during the great turkey plucking so it went unseen until Opal wailed that Kerah please don't fight with him again and so Abraham, local with an accent so thick it rivals Adam's said he'd take over and finish up (hired help for the genocide) and Ronan had the mercy and forethought to take a shower before he headed out.
The turkey massacre was supposed to be a surprise; Blue only approved because Ronan bought the birds from a local farmer and everything going into this meal was going to be locally sourced and green and all that hippie shit. Maura was going to actually oversee the cooking. Ronan was determined. No fucking it up this year.
So when he pulls in he is half exasperated - dead turkeys, traumatized children, witches, Declan - and half so pleased that it wraps his stomach in tight, winding knots.]
Why didn't you just drive in with my-
[That sentence is supposed to end with my brothers. Instead it ends with Ronan staring at Adam's hand. At first he thinks it's a ring and he's not sure how to take that.
[This is what Ronan expected out of the day: an exhausting morning, an exhausting dinner, a good night.
This is what he got: a big fucking mess.
Sure, the morning was exactly as anticipated: exhausting, yes, but also good in a lot of ways. They cooked. Adam slept, and Ronan, with Maura and some church ladies who were kind enough to bring pie, prepared and oversaw dinner. Calla watched and drank cocktails that got increasingly boozier as the night went on. Adam woke up and stayed out of the kitchen, and kept Opal entertained with secrets and whispers and things that they deserved to give to each other.
So that was a thing. Then Declan and Matthew showed up and as expected, Declan's new girlfriend made Opal jealous, and she wouldn't let Declan out of her sight all afternoon - also keeping Opal occupied, and giving Adam some downtime, as preparations advanced.
Even dinner, exhausting as it was, full up as it was, only involved all the Fox Way kids getting into one of the barns, only involved two screaming tantrums and two exhausted little girls fast asleep, curled up against each other behind a haybale, and Opal making noises about Declan letting her sleep in his arms, which only went to show that Ronan did, in fact, pass along the jealousy gene. Gansey came. Everyone had a good time.
No one expected, right when pie was being served and Matthew was falling asleep and Blue and Gansey were whispering about sneaking off, that Adam's mother would drive up, and come out of the car, and stare at everyone for a good minute before Adam noticed her.
There were awkward pauses and even more awkward and tense moments, and finally Ronan looked at Adam, and let him go, and then that's when things well and truly fell the fuck apart. But there was no yelling. There was no drama. There was no screaming or crying, just the psychics leaving and Declan picking Opal up and toting her inside and nudging Matthew along, along with the piece of the week, and minutes went by until all that was left at the long outdoor table was Ronan, watching like a lean and hungry wolf, as Adam spoke with his mother a way off under one of the huge trees decorated in Ronan's lights.
She didn't deserve to speak to him, Ronan thinks.
She doesn't deserve him now, he wants to say.
But he doesn't say anything. He sits and he watches and he waits and he doesn't anticipate anything good coming from this. She turns and looks at Ronan a moment, and he lifts his chin, the arrogant prince in his kingdom. She is there at his sufferance.
[ All in all, it's a good hellfire of a day for the first part, the usual entrapments of Opal and Doralene's merrymaking quietly avoided: no, Adam won't run the fields with them, where they can hide and scrape themselves and leave him wondering whether they've broken their necks. No, he won't help them light matches to see the shine at night (and then promptly set fire to the house). No, he won't play dress-up with them, because he's seen Opal drag away one of Orla's lipsticks, and he knows who'd end up wearing.
Meal prep is easy. Adam sleeps through it.
Hosting introduces some difficulty: Ronan's the master of the house, Blue is its live-in lady. Adam feels misplaced in whatever role he lands himself, until it becomes painfully apparent that Gansey — in late, flushed and a little disheveled for his fast drive — shares his confusion. It turns out, there's not much for significant others to do than sit there, look pretty, and give Calla something to laugh at (they vengefully add salt to her next cocktail, when she's not looking.)
Dinner is — acceptable. Declan's new girl is a Kate, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with dark intentions behind the easily pulled smile of her rich mouth. Adam spends an embarrassing amount of time talking to her, during which it's revealed she's probably smarter than everyone at this table combined, and she'll play Declan right back, for all he's worth. If he weren't helplessly in love already, Adam might be taken with her.
And then there's Adam's mother, somehow here, somehow with him, somehow holding him: a shadow of herself, diminished by the years and the countless kindnesses spelled on the back of Robert Parrish' hand. Bruise fade, but eat at the life in her eyes, hers surgically extinguished. He remembers her glance blue.
It doesn't matter. She's here not for Thanksgiving wishes, but a last-minute farewell. Her husband — it dawns on him, Adam's father — will be detained at the sheriff's another few days, til the man he bludgeoned at work gets a telling from the priest who kindly reminds him they're all sinners before the Lord, and they owe their brothers and sisters forgiveness.
In the meantime, Adam's mother has a window of opportunity only compounded by the timely drive-by of a childhood friend who made it out of Henrietta, who's only passing through to visit her folks for Thanksgiving, and who'll see them both back to Tennessee
His mother is leaving town. His mother is leaving his life.
Would she have done it, if Adam were still there to catch the fall of his father's fists instead of her? Was he always meant to be a sacri —
She doesn't have the time for that. Never did. She loves him. Always or never did. She's going, and she'll make her own way somehow, a middle-aged woman with nothing past high school learning, but no fear of honest work. She'll make a fresh start for herself.
Somehow, the fast flickers of her back, walking away, makes him think of fleeing.
And then he's alone — on a vast estate crammed with a crowd that knows or loves or cares for him. Mutely, he searches the horizon, then each Barn in kind, and his head is a symphony of shrill pulses and screeches. He can't gather his thoughts — until suddenly they swarm him.
It's plain what he has to do, and plainer still that Ronan will throw himself like a hurdle on that railway. Can't be helped.
Adam draws close to the table like a frenzy of sharks called to blood, to the breaking wound he knows his teeth will catch over Ronan's face and bared neck and fingers. ]
I need to go.
[ No malice or tension, no misgivings. Just Adam, standing and slouched, hands homed in his pockets and discreetly hiding the promise of his inked ring. A peasant at attention before his sitting prince. ]
And I need to borrow some money.
[ He thought the words might hurt, wrenched from his soul, but they hardly toll and tear. Another man speaks them. Another bloodless, numb mouth. On another make-believe day, naively extended after the clock ticks midnight at the ball. ]
[ It starts like their vintage stories: at the critical moment, a car engine rumbles its last. For once, it's not the Pig's fault.
As luck and dramatic momentum would have it, this particular ride's hit its stride, GPS happily pointing to 'the middle of fucking no where' on the long highway-side stretch between DC and Henrietta.
A handful of days to Christmas, the road should be cluttered with a few more gift-encumbered and family-maddened specters than the average ghost town — except they're traveling at Lynch hours, 5 in the a.m. and proud to escape holiday traffic. There's no one to interrupt their smooth sailing. At least, til the BMW croaks it.
This isn't how Adam had meant to kick off his Christmas break. That optimistic plan featured an indefinite extension to the back seat nap he's jolted from, one arm groggily shooting out to capture his phone and presumably turn off its alarm clock feature. No. No such luck. He has just enough awareness to review the basics — sleep, car, Ronan, Georgetown, pick up, break, sleep, going to Henrietta, sleep, Christmas, car moving, sleep, car no longer moving, sleep? — and identify something like a causal chain for their current mishap.
The BMW's stopped dead in its tracks. Outside, a light start announces the season's first regional snowfall, flakes crisp as Adam groans, but resigns himself to facing the great outdoors. Out of sleepy reflex, he's already stumbling out of the car, one hand anchored on the door handle and barely fighting gravity long enough to regain his footing once he hits ground. ]
...mmmmgetting it...
[ This, whispered back hopelessly towards Ronan, who can be trusted to father a dream world, rule as single sovereign of a sprawling farm estate and come out alive from racing Kavinsky and his wild dogs — but not to check out his own engine. That's what the barely wakeful, college harassed boyfriend is for.
First order of business: it's cold, a light tremor translating into an honest to God chill that claws at Adam's limbs, no sooner than he stays still long enough to pull up the hood. Second order of business: he might have cared to spare a moment and consult with Ronan's dashboard before galloping off and taking a hand to things.
Because, third order of business, as Adam knocks at the driver's window, mouth lightly agape in consternation at this tragic and anticlimactic turn of events: ]
You're out of juice.
[ Any other time and place, that would be a happy conclusion that at least saves them the prospective hassle of delicate repairs on a car make literally without earthly equal. Unfortunately, Adam knows his bag fit far too comfortably in the trunk for there to have been any road supplies piled with it.
They're not without options, but, between the abandoned road and the gaining sheet of snow, the odds are starting to look grim and accrue more filth by the moment. So, ever a practical soul, Adam slides carefully back in the car, this time in the front, where he can take Ronan by the hand and sweetly suggest the obvious: ]
Lynch, can you knock yourself out and dream us some gas?
[Here is the thing: Ronan knew they were out of juice before Adam toppled out of the backseat and to the front of the car, his sweater pathetic and not meant for the snowy and soon to be icy conditions outside. Ronan knew that, but let Adam go anyway, because he was so fucking cute and utterly eager to go in his sleepy gotta fix it way, Adam leading the charge against all things that could provide injury to Ronan, or, more importantly, to Ronan's car.
He knew he had been flirting with disaster when he saw the gas gauge at Georgetown the night before, but then he was asleep and curled up next to Adam, and it was the first honest-to-God sleep he had gotten in three weeks, since Thanksgiving break when they returned from Cabeswater to finish the weekend with Gansey and Blue, and with leftovers to last forever. After that Ronan thought sleep would come easy, or at least come like a shot to the heart, considering that Cabeswater had pulled out of him like a battery.
But no. Instead he faced insomnia of the Lynch order, and so the night before, warm and curled up against Adam, breathing in the smell of steamy anxious boy sweat, the terror of finals receding from his skin, he finally got more than a couple of hours of shut-eye. This provided nothing more than the ability to forget important details.
Details like not enough gas in the tank.]
You're going to fucking freeze.
[His scowl is impressive, but then Adam is coming into the car. Chainsaw, the ever awake co-pilot, ruffles up to give Adam room then finds herself in Adam's lap, eyes closing for another birdie nap. Stalled cars are human problems. Her only worry is if there will be shiny things to ruin in the morning. Tinsel, man.
Fuck tinsel.]
I slept a lot last night.
[Which means, probably not. Shit. He looks out the windshield. It's a perfectly fluffy kind of snow coming down.]
[There is a certain pleasure in doing nothing. It's been a day of doing nothing, at least, for Adam, who is on break and who doesn't need to deal with things like feeding cows and goats and ducks, and staying in bed until late. They're supposed to go to Cabeswater later on, but Ronan had things to do so he got up in bed and then ended up doing what he needed to do, knowing that Adam would wake up and find him when he was ready to go.
He's in the rehab barn.
The rehab barn is only half redone, but there's already a cage, and in the cage is a half-grown fox that Ronan found skinny and huddled and scared, that wasn't here at Thanksgiving. He must have been a late bloom, because he still has the weird half-growth of a baby, but none of the sweet sympathetic cuteness. The entire place smells like fox piss, but Ronan doesn't care. He gave him his shots (rabies, distemper, things that he could give some other poor creature or Ronan and Opal and Blue) and as the days wore on, the fox started to like him.
It's just that Ronan is good with animals.
He's currently sitting on the floor, checking a bandaged paw, and muttering curses. Fucko, you fucked up, asshole he says, and the fox makes whimpery noises.
When he found him almost two weeks ago his paw had been bloody and raw, the victim of some unseen trap laid by human hands. When he had found him nearly two weeks ago, he had been so afraid of Ronan he could barely tolerate his presence. But here they are, the fox with his head in Ronan's lap, where Adam's head was just the night before while watching bad television, and here they are now.
[ He's seen this before: Ronan coaxing young lambs to their slumber, Ronan nursing a new litter of kittens, Ronan stalked by one of the sweeter cows. He's seen this before, and each time he's paralyzed by the eerie sensation of witnessing something he shouldn't be privy to.
This is Ronan's soul, nude before a segment of the animal world in its raw, primal kindness. This is the sensitivity of the boy he once was, coupled with the practicality of the man he is now, and the gentleness that hid all along, but never eroded.
An hour of convincing himself there's a world that won't freeze him outside of bed, Adam navigated his way to the actual barns, thinking to find Ronan at some mundane chore that the promise of coffee and a lazy make-out session can surely interrupt. (Surely.) He'd even dressed for the occasion, lazily sunken in Ronan's clothes of yesterday, retaining his scent and hoping to return its favor.
He wasn't prepared for the sight of Ronan and the sobbing kit in his arms, fur so new on it, it's still pale and blonde, while its ears overtake its head. Adam grins down at it, then the line of his lips tightens in a grimace once the stench hits. Ah. A recent foundling, then. Not housebroken. For all their wildness, Ronan's guests always seem to develop a disturbing commitment to never relieving themselves indoors, after a few weeks of the Barns' hospitality.
The door stays lightly ajar as Adam slinks in, barely raising the coffee cup in his hand to draw Ronan's attention that, yes, caffeine exists, and yes, he can have some of it. ]
[ It turns out, miracles happen — and they come in threes. One a month, all geared to guarantee survival, by the skin of steel-gritting teeth and the scratch of Adam's claws on his unending pile of textbooks.
It's a tight call, but his luck pulls at the last minute, and he nets in a second part-time job. Something hands-on: tech support on campus. Not the pretty, computer stuff that would leave him puzzling the innards of a device he only glared at on Aglionby desks for the earlier part of his life — actual tech, screens and electrics. It keeps his fingers working and his mind empty, and his account building. It keeps the blood pumping in his veins.
Christmas at the Barns, in negotiated silence and wistful glances, is brutal. The first week back to campus, cut off from the Henrietta world, is slaughter. He's eviscerated. Reduced. Belittled. He'd never thought a narrow standard issue bed could feel so lonely, but three months make him the wiser.
Opal visits, starting mute and ending in whimpers, but offering her eyes, her ears, her observations. It takes integrity to refuse her, knowing Ronan will likely expect her to spy and report in. Gansey drops by, now and then, somehow eerily conspicuous even at the grown-ups table of DC's finest college. Blue drives in, mouth a thin line, arms consumed by an ice cream vat she devours alone while pretending to ignore the uncertainty of their one-bed arrangement. Cheng turns up, wide-eyed and easily amused, impressed with the Instagram potential of the encampment.
And then there's Declan, once. With stories. With laughter. With pats on the back and more alcohol than Adam can comfortably home in his room under the nose of his RA. With a quiet plea, once the night's over, to put things right, because this entire thing's wrong.
Declan takes three cups of weak coffee to piece back together in the morning and a week of doubt and devastation to fully escort out of Adam's life.
Like any good lead, Ronan makes his entrance last. March rolls in first, then midterms, then an ugly reminder that distraction's a vicious beast and Adam's barely clinging to his school game. He pulls through, but it's a messier ordeal than he likes them, more blood than comfort. Too much is at stake for his mind to stay in the clouds. Georgetown moves up the ranks in his priorities —
After. After, because now spring break's made a tidy debut, and exactly five terse texts have brokered the first meeting and real interaction Adam's had with his alleged boyfriend since the start of the year. He'd thought it would be painful — as one day parades after the other, it's mostly awkward, a weight in Adam's stomach that doesn't bear lifting through any alternative way. He wants this done. Ended. He needs every hope abolished and Ronan telling him straight to his face that they've reached as far as their conjugal journey will take them.
As Cabeswater notices in hummed approval, he dreams about this moment too much.
It ends up anticlimactic, Ronan driving in on a bright Saturday morning, no guns blazing, no open fanfare. Those of Adam's dorm mates who spot the BMW's familiar nose first try not to make too big of a deal of its appearance, same as they diplomatically refrained from mentioning Ronan's absence over the semester. Adam's RA smiles when she pops her head in to break the news.
The good news of not having packed yet is, Adam's small wardrobe is entirely at his discretion, and he can spend approximately two minutes on stitching himself up to look like a real boy, and not a caffeine-sustained simulation that will recite half of Unorthodox Lawmaking: New Legislative Processes in the U.S. Congress at the push of a button.
He stumbles down into the main yard, privately whistles at Ronan's dumb luck to always find parking, and then —
He freezes. Middle of the road, deer in headlights, hands stiff beside him, voice drained. There's a person he's meant to be now, calm, collected, cool and look what you're missing out on. He forgets that costume. Instead, all he manages is a breathless: ]
[Miracles happen with buttery slow precision. It turns out that Ronan Lynch, prone to fits of rage and fits of unkindness and fits of depressive sleep, is fooling exactly no one. No one is kind to him when Adam leaves, because everyone and anyone with eyes knows exactly what the hell happened (or, they have their ideas of it). Opal doesn't talk to him for two weeks, but like a pissy cat, also refuses to let him leave her sight, so that he knows she's mad at him and giving him the silent treatment, until one day he can't take it so he takes her out to the back forty and tells her that this needed to happen.
And she bit him, hard, which he supposes that he deserved, and finally she breaks down sobbing and even under torture he would not admit that he does the same, and he and Opal make up, sort of. She's still furious at him, but at least she'll speak to him.
Blue threatens to move out if you don't fix this, Ronan Lynch and then realizes that's a bad idea when she finds him drunk and on his back. She gets him standing up again. He makes her promise to not tell Adam.
The only thing that loves him without fail is Chainsaw, who can't fill that space.
And he sleeps a lot.
He thought he understood loneliness but he didn't, he thought he understood misery, but that was a lie, too. Grief, though. He and grief were old friends before and like an old friend, grief fits right back into his life. He and Declan fight. He gives Declan a black eye. He and Declan make up. Declan tells him that Adam is okay, and Ronan says, without pausing, that he both doesn't want to know, and that he doesn't care about the lies.
Because he doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to know if Adam is doing badly because that would be painful, and he doesn't want to know if Adam is doing well because that would be worse. But mostly he doesn't want to know because he doesn't want anyone to spy for him, and he says so. I'll ask him myself, he says, because at least if he's going to be a coward, he's going to only admit it to one person.
And he dreams.
He dreams, and dreams, and dreams. He has nightmares about everyone leaving him and he has nightmares about Cabeswater falling apart and he has nightmares of demons. He wakes up the entire psychic community in Virginia and Maryland, and Calla comes over, tight-lipped and oddly sympathetic, with a bottle of something disgusting that he's forced to drink, and for a while, he doesn't dream at all. It makes him think, instead, out on the hills and the valleys and the places in his heart that he thought of as home.
Finally, one sunny Saturday that's been marked on his calendar for the past three months, he drives. He drives and parks and sits in the car a minute before he realizes he's been spotted and snitched on, so he gets out of his car and sits on the hood. His hair is longer now, the curl more distinctive, and he looks more like his father and Declan than ever, except that he's not smiling. He looks like he did the day that Adam left, in a way, a little gaunter, maybe, his wide shoulders still broad but the disaster lining his face.
[The moment they got home it was immediately Opal's time; this was something that Ronan had not only anticipated but had pretty much predicted. She saw Adam in the car and then even Kerch was forgotten, because she attached herself to him, reached for his attention and refused to let go, didn't let him out of her sight until she fell asleep (in his arms) and whimpered when he put her in bed. It was a strange thing, the usurping of his love. Ronan had never felt jealous of Opal before, of her attention or her position, but there he was, watching her focus on Adam with all intensity.
And then it was the usual series of events: Adam asleep soon and deeply, although Ronan would argue that he finally managed sleep of his own. The next morning waking up and not waking Adam as he got ready for church, too early for anyone in the household to give a shit, and coming back after lunch with his brothers, as of nothing in the world changed. Opal, satisfied that Adam wasn't leaving anytime soon when she saw him asleep, agreed to go out and make a mess outside, her own war wounds either forgotten or just deeply accepted as part of her, now.
Life back to normal.
Except that normal never involved lambs before. It's early still for sheep, but three days into the spring break, into learning each other again, into slow touches and sweet kisses and mild arguments, into I know you didn't use any of the money I get the bank balance, remember? and stubborn refusals to give back certain items belonging to Adam, and a single buzzing fight about did you kiss someone else and vague consolations and Ronan's general personality disorder, and Ronan announces that actually, it's spring fair season.
The annual spring fair is not the late summer county fair. Instead it's a smaller event with sheep and wool and people spinning yarn, an agricultural wonderland with a modestly appealing carnival. Gansey is coming, Blue is going, and Opal is actually spending it with friends from school, which means after all the shit of wool and sheep and lambs, after dealing (in a shockingly competent fashion) with the local farmers who vacillate between liking Ronan and treating Ronan like an interloper, he comes to find Adam at the fried food booth.]
I dare you to eat the one with mealworms in it.
[Because gross out food is popular for this very reason. Deep fried cheese with mealworms, a delicacy at the fairgrounds.]
[ Altogether, it's a pretty reunion, only improved by Opal's clingy affection, Blue's good will and Gansey's coincidental visit. They distract him at times when he still navigates his revitalized relationship with Ronan with uncertainty.
It isn't — organic. Ronan finds his footing with the grace of every soldier fighting on home ground, while Adam wobbles for any measure of poise. He thinks this might have been easier if they were both on neutral territory, but the Barns was always going to see Adam at disadvantage, and he'd made his peace with it when he'd agreed to go.
Happily, they've always been two ships with a strange ability to find their way home without wrecking each other in passage. Adam bites at times, Ronan soothes at others. Ronan bristles, Adam plays ball. They make a new routine happen.
Then there's the curve ball of the spring fair, and Adam wants very badly to say he's got it covered, but he spends the longest stretch of his time wistful and wide-eyed.
In theory, these should be his people: hard workers making ends meet on harder ground, friends of 30-hour days of bone-shattering labor. He has more in common with them than with the likes of Ronan and Gansey, for all they once wore the same high school shirt. But farmers are their own subspecies, with their own privilege: they've got land, where all Robert Parrish had was his shadow.
So, Adam applies the one wisdom that's guarded him for most of his life: when in doubt, stay out of it. The safest spot ended up the most familiar — you can't go wrong with food. At least, this would have been his instinct on any other day, when he weren't flinching before displays of dishes that looked either rotten or steadfastly heading in that direction.
He flinches when Ronan creeps by, briefly paranoid that he might be pushed towards the cheesy delicacies. Seconds ago, he thought he saw one moving. ]
I've... had worse.
[ The going assumption should be, Adam's always had worse, scavenged from public school food halls, processed delights and from the otherworldly remains of his mother's cooking. Still, he sounds hesitant. ]
I'll do it if you do it.
[ Bad wager: Opal's cooking experiments must have left Ronan immune to mealworms by now. ]
Theory says, nothing is untouchable in this world, except for make-up sex, which God and human decency hold should never be disrupted. Adam's a believer in that — really. Hand on his black, shrunken heart, hoping to die. When they finally roll back home, to the chorus of bleating sheep and distraught lambs and Opal trying to mimic them, the base priority is throwing his clothes on the floor and his boyfriend on the nearest flat surface.
Except, Blue interjects. Family meeting. ( They are apparently a family now. )
And then, before he knows it, Adam's somehow a hostage audience to an hour-long presentation about regional wildlife, protecting the environment and the Barns' future as a shelter, crowned by Gansey's offer to make a donation, start a charity, or otherwise propel his money at the growing problem of his girlfriend's enthusiasm.
The coast is clear after. Adam's already nudging Ronan the way of upstairs for a moment, please, when Opal releases the one cry Adam can never hope to ignore: she's hungry. Famished. Tank completely dry. Which means, of course, that Ronan's abducted to the kitchen, where he achieves the impossible of putting together a decent meal out of scraps, too much hot sauce and a bit of good will.
Blue's relieved. Opal's jubilant. Adam's never hated a bowl of noodles so passionately before.
Nothing else can go wrong after that. Adam physically ensures it, luring Ronan for kissing and kissing and kissing that starts at the door, only teases more speed inside and accelerates once they inch closer to the bed —
Until his vision clouds, then fades completely, interrupted by flashes of green, a glimpse of branches, a quickening, then lack of sound. Recklessly, he ignores it at first, and so the starting nudge of pressure in his head intensifies to solid tension, his temples quaking under a hard beat. His teeth grit, discomfort building to nausea, frustration climaxing in a pained sigh.
Fuck's sake. ]
Hey. [ Another kiss, competent before anlther whisper of rustling leaves strikes him. ] Can I... [ And another. ] ...have the car for an hour? [ And the last. ] Cabeswater's calling.
[ Yes. Right now.
There are probably iron rules set down in this world saying you can't blue ball your boyfriend twice in the same day. And they are now broken. ]
First the lambs were convinced they were going to die and that was an adventure on its own, but he thought that once he got them in their pen, once they were bedded down with their placid parents, he could go into the house and finally resolve the day with some really stellar reunion sex. That was his goal.
And then Blue called a family meeting (they are not a fucking family) and Ronan vaguely thinks he agreed to Blue making a solar factory or something on his land, he doesn't know because he was too busy focused on the way Adam's hands were winding around each other. His hands should be a sin, listed in the Bible as a temptation to lead boys into depravity and lust and also friendlessness because who had friends when he could have sex instead?
And then Opal got hungry.
And then finally, like a fucking balm, he managed to be slammed against a door and he thought yes, this is it, finally, and he was in the middle of a really excellent kiss, his hips slotted up against Adam's, his entire being pushed there into a single point of pleasure, when he thought Adam might have lost his attention.
The moment lasted only and instant, though, and now another kiss comes and it happens again, and Ronan feels it in his gut.
Here it comes.
And there it is.]
Parrish. Tell me you're being a fucking dickhead right now.
[If this is a joke Ronan can grab him and put him on his back and say fuck Cabeswater and it might be hot and sexy and the reunion sex - three months and counting - will still be superb.
But he sees that look in Adam's eye, like a storm. Not anger, but like magic is brewing and he needs to be there. Fuck.]
Jesus motherfucking-
[The expletives comes out in a frustrated swirl, nothing angry as much as blue balls are a fucking bitch and this is twice in less than six hours.]
[The week passes too quickly; but for the first time in a while, Ronan isn't going to just drop him off at school, and it isn't going to end up driving home and being miserable after four hours of driving and looking forward to two weeks of time alone. Ronan suggests they leave early - after he feeds all the animals and leaves instructions, and lets Opal kiss Adam goodbye with a desperate you promise you'll call me when you get lonely from Opal, and a sweet affirmation from Adam.
But here's the thing.
They're driving, heading up, and instead of going north, Ronan starts to veer relentlessly east. And south. He can do this because in hour one of the drive Adam predictably fell asleep, and he drives with an intention to make sure that Adam doesn't wake up until they hit their detour's final stop.
It's almost noon when they get there; Chincoteague Island isn't very close, but if they leave by six they'll be back at Adam's dorm by nine and that makes it almost an entire half a day on the beach. It's always a risk where Adam is concerned; he might just make noises about how he had been planning on studying, but it's a warm day for March, the sun is bright and glittering off the sea, and more than that, because spring break is ending today, almost everyone is gone.
Ronan parks in the beach parking, sits back a minute. Takes a breath.]
Hey, sleeping beauty.
[He leans over and shakes Adam awake.
So this isn't really a vacation. This is a half day at a quiet beach, this is a neutral place. But after the week they had - near drownings and fights and no sex until just the previous night (when Ronan practically bribed, threatened, and blackmailed Gansey into taking Blue and Opal out for a night on the town and don't fucking come back until I text you - Ronan thought that this might at least be something nice.
A beach for Adam.
He reaches back and pulls out actual, hand to god sunscreen.]
I'm going to need this.
[Chainsaw, liberated from the car a moment sooner, has already gone out to make friends with the local birdlife.]
[ In quiet defencesof Adam's nap, the rags and riches of their tumultuous relationship have been building up to his exhaustion over the past few days. First, Opal needing him constantly, her clingy little hands hunting for him wherever they might be found. Then, Blue and Cheng and Gansey, each demanding their turn for a one-on-one catch-up for the past three months, interspersed with long drives, alcohol or generous turns galloping through copious volumes of literature about other dead Welsh kings.
Then sex happened, which deserves its own entry in the registry of miracles Adam Parrish has witnessed, up there with Gansey's revival — by day four of their celibate holiday, he'd lost faith in their chances, resigned to his right hand never giving up its soreness again. Then Ronan pulled through for them, and by God, make-up sex is soul-tearing and possessive and needy and complete. They need to start putting it into their fighting rota.
So, maybe Adam crashes as soon as the BMW finds its way to a healthy purr and a good pace towards Georgetown. Who can blame him? ( Ronan, jealously. Ronan never keeps a vicious tally of each and every one of Adam's naps, as if they slight him. )
Inevitably, the car comes to a halt, Ronan's waking him, and Adam, broken from deep sleep, defaults to his routine reaction of fishing for the door handle: ]
I'll go check the en... gine...
[ Except his eyes singe from the sudden burst of sunlight, and he blinks away wetly the lingering traces of eye strain. Hard sun, the likes of which the Barns' foliage has been sculpted too neatly to allow in uncurbed — and something DC won't be welcoming in for months now, despite the fast advent of summer.
It dawns on him, white of his eyes hurting from the spread on the ground, that the BMW's slipped down the highway rabbit hole to a different destination than the one intended. That's sand there, past the asphalt enclosure of a disturbingly pristine lot.
Has to be. Has to — but Adam's glance falls short and curious on the ongoing enigma of Ronan's expression, and he daintily opens the car door and tries the ground. It comes away with the predictable cement burn and, smoother than he'd expected, a few stray grains of sand. Oh — ]
Lynch?
[ It's the beach. It's meant to be their last spring break day off to spend as they will, and Ronan had promised to ferry him to the dorms before ten days of what Adam's privately started to think of as campus honeymooning — cuddling in a narrow bed, being obnoxiously tender over cheap cafeteria dinners, stalking each other down college halls and trailing hand in hand like one of those couples on the street.
And yet he's grinning at this unplanned interruption, far too easily pleased that there're the vestiges of sand in his hand, that there's an afternoon of wondering the beach ahead of them. He'd meant it before, about wanting to see this. To share it with Ronan, one of their few untarnished firsts.
Then there's the nefarious white tube of sunscreen, and it's all Adam can do to avoid bursting into gulps of laughter. ]
I'm so glad you're taking protection seriously, man. Safety first.
[ Things that happen within twenty minutes each way of arriving at Georgetown: road head (hot, dangerous, possibly never happening again, probably up for debate), the glimpse-and-miss-it appearance of the dark knight himself in the student hall (widely acclaimed, dreaded by security, the evening talk of the dorm Facebook page), smuggling piles and piles of tall, dark, handsome Ronan Lynch in a tiny room without rousing more than a small gaggle's delighted attentions (a feat, a triumph, Adam's best magic yet).
It's a strenuous arrangement after, a room always small for two grown men's weekend stay turning claustrophobic over a full week's companionship. Adam's schedule is no fast friend to distractions, not when the overdose of work, classes and extracurriculars that saved him when he was licking his break-up wounds now comes in hard to decimate every second of his availability. And Ronan's always scavenging for Adam's time.
In the end, they have nights together: rushed, cheap dinners on campus fare, the rare extravagance on Ronan's dime. Moonlight walks, less romantic than driven to scour every inch of Georgetown for its secrets, its hidden views, its bolted doors, its back windows. The one time Adam stupidly takes Ronan to a party, where he's exposed to people and locked in for an hour to socialize, and then the even more foolish episode when brilliance strikes Adam long enough to share a joint.
They barely catch a wink. Sex has nothing to do with it.
Instead, it's the kingly coke can that's taken high office on Adam's desk, basking in fresh sunlight over the morning and drinking in the moon's spillage at night. Adam's scientific streak obliges him to admit (enjoy) that the little braid of Cabeswater and the ocean's vines has miraculously taken root and seems, despite all odds, to be thriving. He's even gone as far as to change the water now and then, only to find the — plant all the more grateful for it. Its little creepers extend at night, leaf stubs reaching out for the white, cold light in the sky.
It would all warm Adam's heart, if he didn't lay breathless and still for three hours of each night, a silent captive to the pulses of raw, misguided magic bursting from the plant. It calls to him chaotically, like a sick child who can't speak its wants, but knows a private need compels it to summon its caretaker. Adam can't negotiate its meaning. Cabeswater, who usually delivers its instructions in calm, clear terms, has fallen deafeningly quiet. And Ronan, for once not the insomniac in their narrow bed, sleeps the night away.
At least, until Adam, rolling and kicking and groaning at four a.m., finally bruises his peace with a gentle shake of Ronan's shoulder. Fuck it. All Ronan has to do at Georgeown is nap, wander and apparently devise new and interesting ways to piss off Adam at night. He can catch up on his beauty sleep when Adam's drifting off in early-morning sociology. ]
I can't sleep.
[ And throwing away the plant, an earlier argument has decided, isn’t an option. Every line of Adam's body welds fine points of tension as he sits at the edge of the bed, waiting for Ronan to somehow solve the unsolvable in the middle of the night. Isn't couple life great. ]
It's hard to say when he realized that there was no point where there was enough exposure to Adam to inoculate him against the feeling of not having Adam, but this week, tied together, with barely any privacy (Adam caught Ronan jerking off exactly two times, because his schedule isn't nearly as concrete as he says, for instance) barely any time apart, really, even with Adam's load of extra curricular activities and classes is like a balm to the wounds of the past three months.
Sometimes he feels their separation, keenly, like a deep injury. Other times, though, most times, honestly, he thinks that they were barely apart, for all that they are tied together now. Ronan still gets looks in the hall, from people who call him Batman or from Adam's RA who stares at him like maybe she hasn't ever seen a young man before. Any way it's cut, it's weird.
But right now Ronan dreams.
It was never hard to dream in Adam's room before, but now it's so much easier; he dreams and dreams and dreams, and comes back with small things that he hides for Adam to find later. He brought back strange toys and funny lights and benign, stupid things. He dreams now, and then he's bolted awake, stupidly, breathing like he's been running (and he has).
The magic manifests the second that his eyes open; a pile of books, all written in Latin (good Latin, Ronan's Latin is always perfect in his sleep) spills from him hands. He thinks that they're magic books. He thinks that there are secrets in them that Adam would like. He doesn't say this; instead he's frozen for that minute, breathing hard, until his heart stops racing and he looks placidly up at his boyfriend.]
So you wake me up?
[That shouldn't be a shock. Of course he does. As soon as Ronan can move, he sits up, but then he sees the tension and he frowns.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
and a prompt;
no subject
Adam knows, because he's stared down a mind-dazzling collection of curly golden letters that carefully crafted an invitation. In English, the Gansey household is thrilled to ask the pleasure of his company... Blue's, too, turns out. Ronan's. Cheng's. There's not a soul in Henrietta that Gansey's cared for that the Ganseys have neglected to approach - all but the one too tattered to attend (they still don't speak of Noah.)
Any other occasion, Adam might have declined: school, senior year complications, the long trek, the longer repeat agony of a party he still recalls - but it's Gansey's birthday, and he looks, for the very first time, keen to enjoy it. It's his birthday, and it won't be his last, and so Adam suits up (teeth gritting) and goes.
He doesn't know what demons Helen pays off to drag Ronan into this same hell, but they come on their own at the start of evening, and end up inseparable within the hour. Mask on but strangely contented, Gansey looks good among his people. Blue - her ill-fitting formal navy dress aging her too sharply for Adam's taste - looks even better. And the rest of the bustling swarm look like their old menace, nonchalant, bustling and proud.
Adam can't say when they cut their way out of the garden area (where there are musicians) to the halls (where every other moron too deep in his wine is auditioning to be a musician), then to Gansey's private study — a beast of a room in a terror of a house, book-clad each way and reeking of old paper. Not every volume Adam thumbs at turns out to involve Welsh kings, but odds are good on one out of three.
It's impolite to steal off with your boyfriend - and, he suspects, some well-hidden supplies of the upstairs wine - in your best friend's personal library during his birthday party, but they've done worse.
Adam certainly plans to do no better, taking over Gansey's desk with an aggression that matches the pulse of his upcoming migraine. There're cards already there, a spread that he thinks must have gone for a reading, when Gansey still troubled himself with such things for the academic art. The display's wrong - Adam can tell now, but then Gansey had never had Persephone's hand to guide him.
With a shrug, he collects the cards, shuffles, then cuts then, showing off two of the pack for Ronan's consideration. ]
Poker or reading?
[ It'll be a poor game either way, with Adam's head pounding and his once skills drastically reduced, but it always pays to give Ronan Lynch his options. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
no subject
Talk someone out of dropping their faun-footed inner child with a family that she doesn't belong to but love her for her weirdness anyway because said inner child cannot be trusted with things like the kitchen, buckling their raven familiar into the backseat of a BMW, and driving until that someone reached the parking lot of the dorm in which their boyfriend, unwitting and probably sleeping, lives. Naturally, Ronan Lynch, impulsive issues aside, would never do that, four weeks into the school year, around the same time as the start of midterms. Why would he do such a stupid and impulsive thing.
And yet there he is.
To his credit, he hasn't gone in yet. They (they being mostly Blue, shockingly) bullied Adam into using a piece of his absurd scholarship to buy a phone plan. As a result it wasn't like Ronan didn't have twenty four access to Adam Parrish.
But god he really fucking hates his phone.
Well.
Texting, in this situation, will have to do. In a fit of wisdom, he opts for that route, first.]
u wake
[ It is exactly 4:26 am. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
no subject
So, Adam's learned the ropes: he comes to the Barns — home, he's agreed to let himself call it provisionally, but only as long as it doesn't feel quite right, so he never gets so used to the places' privileges that he starts taking them for granted — from college during spring break, he doesn't ask why Ronan's got a pack of ducks, or deer, or otters, or some other woodland friends trailing after him in an orderly line. He doesn't look twice when Chainsaw diligently carries Ronan's keys. He even fails to do more than blink a few times in succession, when a litter of growing kittens race ahead, half running and half tumbling, pushing Ronan's doors open ahead of him as he walks into the barns themselves.
This is the dream ranch that subsists on real money earned off the illegal sale of dream things. These things happen.
And Adam, he doesn't often relate to living things, unless - like Cabeswater and Opal and the one St. Agnes volunteer who looked after him in soulless understanding each time he dragged his feet in after work – they have the decency to play dead most of the time. So maybe Adam, a relative intruder into the estate's newly-found balance, is just not getting the whole Barns vibe. Maybe it's a bonding thing.
He lets it go. He doesn't talk about it. He resists the itch that starts to contaminate his whole body unbearably for all of two days, until, on the third morning, a calf makes sure enough's enough. Patiently, he waits sat on a conveniently oversized upturned rock until Ronan joins him in the field at ten in the morning. Then, soberly, he points out the culprit cow – which wags its tail furiously at Ronan's arrival, like a damned terrier - with a firmly incriminating finger.
There. The cute wide-eyed one with the white spot. The one who's somehow tracked down Adam during his leisure hours, interrupting the cat nap he was definitely he was not going to take in the great outdoors behind his working boyfriend's back. ]
Lynch, your cow just delivered me a note.
[ Its teeth daintily set against the very edge of a fucking Post-It that Ronan, or Opal, or Aurora must have once scribbled, reading, FEED ME. Unless the cow learned to write. Adam wouldn't put it past the creature.
The fuck is wrong with this place. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
no subject
First thing was this: Ronan had to convince Cabeswater to understand the idea. To use Cabeswater as a place, as a place between worlds in the waking-dreaming sense of the word. He had to take Opal, a dream herself, a psychopomp, to help make it clear. The most important thing was that: he wanted to make it clear. Leaving any part of this to chance seemed like a recipe for disaster. Ronan's seen what happens to dreams and dreamers when they go awry; filthy memories of Kavinsky and Prokopenko stalk this interaction. But whatever; as long as Ronan can dream his way into Cabeswater, and Adam, all the way on the other side of the state is asleep, it can connect the two of them.
Well, that's the theory. In practice, they've never done this, and maybe they've only talked around it, or about it in very general terms. But Ronan likes to go from 0 to 100 in less than sixty seconds. He doesn't like to have to wait to push himself into high gear.
It might not work was the last thing that he said to Adam, before he said, I have to go, she needs to be put in bed, as if in bed is a place Opal sleeps. Instead of under the bed. In pile of hay and flowers. Dreams. What else can a person expect?
He falls asleep a little before eleven, and he doesn't know how much time has passed. It's a tree in the middle of a clearing that he sees, the kind of tree that's as much tree as it is a door. It's like his nightmare tree, the one that he neglectfully didn't explain to Adam or Gansey on the day that they used it, the first time they were in Cabeswater, except that instead of a nightmare, it's more like a cave.]
Parrish?
[He calls Adam's name, feeling his way into the tree. If Adam is here, how can he be sure it's him? Ronan knows when he's dreaming and he's awake, but what if he can't tell the difference between the dream and the waking reality of a boy?]
If he's wandering around out there, you'll let him know to come in, right?
[He's talking to the tree. The tree says nothing in return.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
no subject
Back in Henrietta and its rural next door, a fast car's a badge of Aglionby pride, and a raven on your record says, mommy, daddy or the family dog need only snap a finger to rouse a seedy army of suits. It means the nice folks with the rusty sheriff's badge know better than to dance with you, even when you're burning tire at 120mph at prime time 5 a.m. on a yawning Saturday.
DC police don't give a fuck about birds, except to cautiously comment that the one on Ronan Lynch's shoulder looks lean and mean and lacks an exotic pet license. Ronan himself will soon be missing his papers, so, in that much, Chainsaw and he are well-married to minor illegality.
The way Adam hears it, a protocol pull-over deteriorated into a verbal spat and more attitude than a schooled man of the law knows to make sense of in the generous span of four minutes on the clock. They might have stopped Ronan for speeding, but they held him for his mouth. (Teaches Adam to ever text, Finals end this Friday. I miss you. Can you pick me up? over a nerve-wrecking call before his last spring exam. Teaches him to feed the fire. )
Adam gets the call, something suspiciously close to an apology, not for Ronan's fuss — never that, never for the violence of his public outbursts either — but because he'd been promised a ride out of the dorms, and right now, that's not happening. Stuck with jagged pieces, Adam takes the full five minutes to work out his puzzle, and then it's his turn for an awkward phone conversation.
Declan answers on the third 6 a.m. try, cursing up a storm. In a prettier world, this would be Gansey on the line, sighing and sober and disappointed, but armed to help. But Gansey's still stuck in travel limbo, and the odds of getting through to beg favors in the vast African — one continent was never going to be enough — unknown are slimmer than the tumbleweeds Adam's dining hall's still struggling to pass for salad. Declan it is, riding on his steely stallion at what-the-fuck-Parrish o'clock to produce the first wad of cash that'll gain them bail at the station, along with the second one of lawyer cards that'll pave a set a sweet carpet of legalease for dashing prince Ronan Lynch to daintily toe on, on his merry way to costly freedom.
Adam is dimly aware, as butter-smooth sycophancy turns to threat to bribe to coaxing, that some men have another layer of muscle on their persons, and this entire piece of police bullying showmanship is just Declan flexing at a casual pace. They don't need Adam in the room where the clean and dirty business both happen. Truth told, they probably hardly needed Adam at all once the alarm got raised, but a good man at least plays token spectator when his rogue beau gets finessed out of jail.
Surprisingly, they let him visit. Declan's cold cash must have oiled the right pockets, but Adam's long lost puppy eyes while he haunts the station halls can't have hurt diplomatic relations. Inevitably, he finds coffee on his way, nice, watered and cheap, from a machine that's seen about as good of a set of days as Adam's handed-down car and his tattered luck. And then, just as ordained, he finds Ronan — not in a venue as dramatic as actual cell, but in the nicely sterile enclosure where they detain would-be decent folks while they lay out a paper trail.
They let Adam in with his two plastic cups of coffee, the officer on call muttering about the practical use of third-degree burns in sewing some mouths shut. And then the door fights its stiff joints to shut behind him, and he's looking over at the hot mess of his boyfriend in a different, blindingly white light.
He's wild. Dangerous. Beautiful. Adam's. ]
You got caught?
[ One day, it might disturb him that these are the first, serene words out of his mouth. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
The advantage is, no one else knows about it — yet. There's been no outburst, no questions, no disbelief, no accusations — yet. Ronan hasn't looked at Adam in that way that speaks of blood and battle, Cabeswater hasn't sent its tendrils of hate finding roots and surging, Opal hasn't politely chewed his shoes to their soles. Balance exists because Adam Parrish hasn't taken the necessary steps to curb it.
Until a tentative today. It starts with what a few days back at the Barns have stapled as the familiar coaxing: wake up at four to five in the a.m., when Ronan's barely just slipped into proper sleep. Roll over him, annoying him into waking as well. Drowsily kiss him senseless, murmuring requests to visit Cabeswater along the way. Receive a promise to do that, later. Withdraw to sleep after, successful and satisfied. Wake up again at a decent hour, and hold Ronan to his dazed promise by early afternoon, when farm chores have all wrapped up.
It's trickery more than fair negotiation, but it does the job. The impending summer's no friend even to townie boys, but Cabeswater's a generous host, its environment cycling to whatever conditions seem equipped to give Ronan Lynch relief. Its many eyes and ears listening to its Greywaren's soft sight, its heart beating with his pulse. They're in sync to an extent that used to please Adam and now privately disturbs him. Unexpectedly, the hot call of jealousy plays no part in his convictions.
No matter. Presumably, it ends today. Presumably, it all goes well. Presumably... he scoffs and runs ahead of Ronan in the woods, suspended at once in the twilight zone between shattered reality and half-shaped dream. Cabeswater's feeling blue today — soft gradients and pale lavender, river water pulled as fabric and spread liberally across the ground. A cluster of fireflies has made its home on every other tree, on the ground that feels less like grass and soil, and more like hard stone.
Blue and unyielding, then. Maybe, expecting an ugly conversation.
Adam feels not unlike a Virginian Cinderella, creeping back to his heart's home in his most honest form, with a scruffy leather satchel nicked from one of the barns and within it every questionable instrument the mind can summon and the hand won't burn to carry.
The magical flow of the nearest tree purrs neatly when Adam sets his hand on the old bark, at once endeared and ineffable. He caresses it once, then pulls away apologetically to finally look Ronan in the eye on approach. ]
I have a suspicion that this... isn't Cabeswater. [ Yet. Not yet. ] I know — I know it thinks it is. [ A pause. He gathers his breath. ] Because you think it should be. But it's not. Is it?
no subject
He goes through his chores and drives him up to Cabeswater, and suspects nothing.
He's not paying attention at first, and then Adam looks him in the eye and he raises his eyebrows.
At first, he doesn't know what Adam is talking about. This isn't Cabeswater as he remembers it, this is Cabeswater as it is now, and Ronan has never really thought about it further than that. It's his dream, not the dream he had when he was a child, but his dream now, more protected, more capable, more aware of them on the leyline. Opal was precise in her demands, in the plants, in the flowers, but that doesn't mean-
-it's still the same thing that Cabeswater was. The magic on the leyline. The power, given shape.
But then he narrows his eyes.]
You have to be more specific than that, Parrish.
[Adam should know that those narrowed eyes mean more than just Ronan thinking. It means Ronan working through something.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
When money is plentiful it doesn't mean much, and while Adam doesn't realize that Ronan just doesn't care, Adam does.
So around six in the morning he slipped out of bed, drowsing and cranky, and got Opal, even more cranky (but so much more forgiving; her fight with Adam was a six year old's version of a fight, a screaming match that ended in weeping tears on Opal's end, finally, like a flood, and her gripping Adam's knees tightly and sobbing that really she had just been so afraid and she loved him too much to see him hurt. Ronan had witnessed the entire affair from the window, drinking his coffee and thinking that he wishes he could tell Adam what he felt with such clarity. But anyway.) out of bed to help. They had to feed everything before he could get back to sleep.
He went back to sleep in a hill near the house, under an enormous tree covered in kudzu.
The snow started at seven, flurries of it in the thick Virginia heat, prickles of cold that wouldn't melt no matter what until midnight. It came out of a clear sky, thick and thicker until it was a white out at seven thirty, and by the time Ronan woke up at eight, a good eight inches had fallen, blanketing everything in fluffy white snow. It was fiercely hot out, and cold around him, and Opal woke up too, poking her head out of the snow and then laughing infectiously, running through it, kicking snow up everywhere until Ronan caught her and told her not to fucking ruin the effect.
And then he came back to slip under the covers, around eight-fifteen, cold feet and all.
There's another present, too, something equally priceless.
But first.
Cold feet against warm calves, activate.]
no subject
Any other day, he'd be kicking at Ronan to exile him at the dead end of the bed, by now no stranger to the subtleties of acceptable Lynch violence. Ronan would grumble. Or laugh. Or do any other assortment of irritable things that would end in either Adam's indignation (and a prompt shove off the bed completely) or in a perfectly acceptable make-out.
Today's different, though Adam's sleep-addled brain isn't at first sure it can deal with the conflict. Ronan is sticking to his legs (he knows, because Opal has learned not to dare), but the touch isn't unpleasant. No. It's... cool. You'd think aircon would be an exorbitant expense on an estate of this side, unjustified with just three people residing — but a house that runs itself with no need to pay utilities does wonders for encouraging indulgence, and so Adam can't complain that his summer's been a boiling hell. The additional morning chill, though. He'll take it.
So, the lagging checklist: what day is today? Sa... turday. Meaning, time off the last-minute internship he's managed to wrestle from the single decent law firm based close enough to town. What day when? July... something. Two days after Gansey's princely return, when Ronan and he had once more returned to basic competitiveness for their unspoken master's favor. God, they'd missed Gansey. And Blue, and even Cheng, but Gansey was the light of every eye they hadn't clawed out of each other, and Adam couldn't get enough of absorbing his good will. Two days after, so... oh. Oh, his birthday. All right. Well.
He can - open his eyes. That's a thing, although his glance ends up a narrow slight, barely sharpened. He finally aims it over his shoulder, lazily turning around by degrees in a move that takes centuries and leaves him quietly exposing more untouched leg skin for Ronan's cold feet to grace. ]
Are you made of ice? [ A pause. ] Am I melting you?
[ Adam Parrish, first thing in the morning: a gift to the world. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
He starts easily, Happy birthday in bed, executing their new tradition to neglect the sentimental basics until the very last moment, like the douchebags they were always meant to be, but at some point maybe falsely feared they might not become.
Then, before Ronan can probably gather his bearings, Put your suit on.
The Sunday one, if need be, though Adam's surprisingly active sense of aesthetics bemoans the harsh, blunt cut and the stark black of it against Ronan's fair skin. He looks penitent in it, devout and sober — but Adam's just finished getting this paragon of virtue off, so he's a harder sell than most on the debated matter of Lynch modesty and innocence.
Besides, he's not done landing fatal hits til the whispered, I'm taking you out.
He is. He's planned this, and there's a reservation involved, promising more hurt in Adam Parrish's financial future than he's ever cared to contemplate. There's a secret to that — the money side of things — but he doesn't think Ronan is quite prepared to learn that his boyfriend may have started taking Tarot cues for race bets (at first) and a $300 stock purchase (this last time). The profit is small, because he lacks the Lynch balls to join the big boys' table and let his gains attract unwanted attention — but it's just enough to cover the rare indulgences, most of which involve Ronan in some way, shape or form.
Hooligans, both of them. Cabeswater should kick them out. That's another secret, but the second part of the planned night sends anticipation clawing at Adam's stomach in ways he isn't ready to explore just yet.
For now, they're wearing fancy suits at a fancy restaurant, fancily engrossed in their respective menu, until Adam — in a depressingly blue-collar twang — murmurs: ]
Bloody him on your own time, Lynch.
[ As if he could miss the glares shot between Ronan and the prissy waiter. Being Ronan's birthday, if it comes to back alley blows, Adam supposes he should take it upon himself to hold Ronan's coat. ]
no subject
It's the second one that he drinks to forget and the first one he tries to focus on, for all that sometimes he can't do it. But Adam is adept at making Ronan refocus his energy on shit that might not actually matter. His Armani suit, cut to make Ronan look more respectable than he is. His hair, freshly shaved in his mother's memory, for all that he's starting to think, he wouldn't mind so much if he let it grow, into one of those weird mohawks, the curls black and unruly. The look of him like he's off for war.
He should have known this would be a fancy affair from the word go and suit but he didn't think that Adam Parrish, poor little trailer trash boy, would have the gall to bring him to a place where the prices weren't printed on the menu.]
I think this is the definition of my time.
[The waiter is so fucking high and mighty for someone who doesn't know shit about Ronan. From the second they walked in the door, despite the fact that Ronan wears a suit like one might wear armor, he's been getting filthy looks, even though his tie is perfectly straight and knotted by an expert (Opal) and straightened by a master (Adam). Despite the fact that he is, by all accounts, richer than the required cost to be allowed entrance.
He doesn't mind being mistaken for a punk when he is one, but he doesn't like the look it.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
But the real crux of this matter; around four in the afternoon, just before he's supposed to meet Adam, Ronan is getting into a fight.
This wasn't an argument. This was a knock-down, no holds barred, punching bag sort of fight, and the strange thing is that this fight wasn't Declan; no, Declan was nowhere to be seen, just Ronan and another boy (man? no, boy) pacing around each other, Ronan's war face on, his fists already bloody and his lip split, but in the words of anyone who's been in a fight: you should see the other guy. The other guy, in this case, is an unknown entity, because Ronan isn't telling.
He didn't have time to clean up before he came to find Adam; he barely had time to find Adam. But there he is, meeting spot, right on time, his car behind him.
He licks his bottom lip - there's a smear of thick red blood there, on his tongue, he looks like an animal - and he lifts his head.
There's something dark in the way he's holding himself, but it isn't directed at anyone. It's just who Ronan is, right now.]
Maura and Calla sent you something.
[He says it casually, like hello, my lower lip isn't bloody and my knuckles haven't been skinned, but how are you? There is no circle of people complaining, there's no great group of gawkers. Just Ronan, looking like he's been to war and back, tasting blood and smelling like fire.]
It's an elephant. Thing. Fuck if I know.
[It belonged to Persephone, so now it belongs to Adam.]
no subject
Adam will know when he sees it. Criminology 210 drones on and on even worse than Professor Albrighton's self-important drawl should be allowed to.
And then it's afternoon, the secluded parking lot of the singles' house, and Adam rushes, books satchel hitting his legs, to find —
This. A mad storm reshaped as a nightmare, fooling around as a boy. Bruised in ways Adam knows and responds to, viscerally. Bloodied. Straight-backed and arrogantly stiff in a way that suggests no real joy in the fight, unlike Declan's and Ronan's latest encounters, only the casual posturing that follows a beat-down you might have lost.
Adam looks at him for a moment, breath knocked out and mouth gracelessly agape, before he simply nods once and covers their distance.
Swinging in, he catches the soft stretch of Ronan's nape, bringing their mouths tenderly together. Greeting your bloodied rebel without a cause boyfriend with slow kisses by the sleek shark of his car. James Dean and music video directors for alternative rock'n'roll bands would be getting hard for this.
Adam sighs, drawing the full line of Ronan's lower lip between his teeth, probing the blood at its edges. This is kissing and clean-up, an artificial excuse to keep Ronan from shrugging off help and accept instead kittenish licks and a breeze of fragile pat-downs. The blood tang rings sharply metallic on Adam's tongue, and a private past has taught him that means the wound can't have an hour on it, or the flavor would have gained depth, the texture crumbled. ]
Thanks. [ For whatever he's been sent. He's not even looking. ] Coming in?
[ Rule number on in dealing with Ronan like this: let him think he's calling the shots. Gansey lost too many battles by trying to dictate, where he should have coaxed, rousing Ronan's self-defensive growls. Silence and patience are the way now, coaxing grudging acceptance out of Ronan to guide him in, see his wounds, attend to them. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
She's also a pain in the neck to scry around, when Adam's control averages out as 'tentative' during the best of sessions and 'irredeemable' when unexpected influences are running amok. She's not to blame for this rare hunter's moon witchery bullshit — which Maura has told Adam one time too many not to buy into, because astral effects are more miss than hit in their line of work, and there's no use getting your hopes up for Jupiter or Saturn or the moon or whoever up in the sky to deliver their end of the deal, when you can't get yourself up there to beat them into it.
But he still can't risk performing with Blue around, possibly magnifying any visiting forces that might care to nudge him even farther out of his shallow depth.
This means, practically, that when the most interesting day of the fall season brings out a red moon to play under, Adam's barred from taking up shop at the Barns and reaching out to Cabeswater from a slight, but safe distance. Weeks ago, when he'd okayed Blue's move-in, he'd expected the awkwardness of running into his ex naked, his ex and Gansey naked, or his ex, Gansey and Ronan all naked following a weird, but strangely predictable series of events. That would have been amusing. And mind-numbing. And on Youtube the next day somehow, because Cheng's got eyes everywhere.
What Adam hadn't factored into his decision had been the sheer inconvenience of pursuing withcraft 101 with Blue under Ronan's roof. All in all, he doesn't regret it: for all their bickering, Blue and Ronan get along like two peas in a deranged pod, and Ronan's temper seems improved for having the extra company.
This is fine. Mostly fine. Reasonably fine.
Until, that is, Adam takes his train ticket and his small bag of nothings to last him over the weekend to Cabeswater on the Thursday of the blood moon. And everything goes… not quite as planned. No crisis, no disaster, just the unfortunate knowledge that he'll be needing back-up to put things right, and his usual reinforcements hate this kind of business.
Adam also hates this part, tail heavy between his legs, fingertips still itching with something like residual power, electrically charged. In an ideal world, he'd have wrapped this up quick and easy, then gone up to the Barns and explained away a surprise visit to celebrate late October and the end of some of his midterms. No harm (in what Ronan doesn’t know), no foul.
In the real world, Cabeswater played hard ball and the night's taken a turn for flooding, Adam's jacket and effects so thoroughly drenched that by the time he arrives at the Barns, he doesn't even bother digging through his things for his spare keys (wet; gross). Instead, he creeps up to the house on the kitchen-side and politely knows on the window, like a vagrant banking on his boyfriend loitering around and cooking dinner for his faun and shortie family.
He tries very hard for a casual, level, mind-your-business look when the window is opened. Probably, he fails. ]
Hi. [ Rain burdens his lashes to the point of drawn-out blinks. ] I did something stupid you need to fix.
no subject
It's a typical night, which means when the knock comes at the window, the first thing Ronan does is tighten the grip on his kitchen knife, because people around here don't just pop into the Barns for tea. Blue may be a hundred times more charming, but Ronan's scowl still rules the reputation of this particular farm.
Adam looks like a drowned rat.
And Ronan will suppose he deserves it, but at the moment, he's way too surprised.]
Motherfucker, what the fuck-
[He sets his knife down, goes to the side door and opens it, and stares at Adam, who is coming up the steps and dripping water all over the floor.]
What the fuck happened to you? You look like you were hit by a fucking hurricane.
[He's already reaching for a kitchen towel, though God alone knows if it will help in this situation. Drowned rat isn't the best metaphor. Maybe he's more like a fish that's desperately trying to stay on land, but keeps producing water every time his gills open.]
Chainsaw-
[She's already swooping in to land at Adam's feet and nip, worriedly, at his heels.]
Jesus Fuck.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
And so it's early afternoon when Adam and Ronan finally manage to get out, Opal tuckered out from the fact that she couldn't sleep the night before, and Blue said that despite the amusing image of Ronan going to a Walmart, offered to stay behind with her.
And so here they are.
At the entrance, Ronan balked, almost giving up entirely. There was a greeter. It was loud and there were bins of cheap fruit pies and eyeliner, and five dollar DVDs. There were piles and piles of obese and badly dressed people screaming at their children. Ronan is not afraid of poor people, and he's not afraid of poverty, nor is he fascinated by it. There's a certain amount of healthy consideration in the world of Ronan Lynch for the spinning reality around him, but he usually blocks out 90% of the shit that bothers him or that he finds generally uninteresting. He manages the dollar store and the dirt poor filth of Henrietta because it's home, because the people there are his.
The people here are not his. This has no charm and nothing Ronan finds fascinating or interesting. Even Ronan Lynch's general disinterest cannot live in a Walmart.
It doesn't help that he loses Adam about two minutes in. It takes him a full ten minutes of wandering to find him in the clothes section.]
Parrish, why the fuck do they sell guns here.
[He says it like he knows the answer already.]
no subject
Some part of him will regret the excess later, when his his mind overtakes his heart again, dethroning the urgent impulse to run from the slimmest suggestion of a passing-by soccer mom's shadow. At school, crossing themselves before St. Agnes or crowding in the parking lot, these fine ladies are nothing short of picture-perfect Southern belles, all butter voices, clean manners, how do you dos and please and thank yous. Unleashed in Walmart, they run amok like banshees, trampling any innocent soul foolish enough not to clear their aisle.
Adam's survived enough of these incidents for healthy fear to guide him faithfully in supermarket traffic. It's with that inevitable panic that he first greets Ronan again in the suspiciously loosely-peopled clothes section, his generally ominous presence registering before his familiar particulars.
Relax. This is Adam's murderous-looking hooligan. No need to bolt. Instead, he hums along as he browses through the nearest stack of shirts, belatedly gracing Ronan with an absent-minded answer: ]
Because you live in Virginia.
[ At length, he holds up a set pair of black hoodies that, in their wildest dreams, wish to be cotton, featuring already scratched-off prints, one of a pot, the other of a kettle. He stares from one to the other, then to Ronan's distant silhouette, all too obviously guesstimating the fit.
He nods once to himself, satisfied and faintly smiling, the world his silent witness to the horror of his suggestion. Ronan Lynch in the Walmart $9.99 edit.
Gently, Adam sets the hoodies back down, taking exceeding care to fold them in something resembling their original order. They're all girls around his Aglionby age manning the sections here, tired-eyed and barely keeping up with their To-Do list, all for the privilege of a minimum wage. They don't deserve his disregard. ]
Buying a gun, Lynch? That the country boy cliche in you?
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
It's that Cabeswater, on a charming Sunday morning, doesn't fight back. There's a deranged satisfaction in infiltrating the forest in Ronan's jacket like this, biding his time to find a comfortably smooth ground surface, then sit himself neatly down. Composure collects at every point of tension in him, burrows in his joints; he teases himself away from stiffness, back straight but not pained, eyes wide but clear. This isn't retaliation for the wrong done unto him, for the new Cabeswater taking his things because Ronan had deprived it of trust unto the one person it had owned fully and unrepentantly.
It's justice.
He breathes deeply through that reminder, through a full five minutes of paying sharp attention to every drop of water trickling down, the Latin-honeyed whisper of leaves. No, he won't answer today. He won't commune. He will sit and he will listen and he will control (does).
And then he kindly tells the young thing that is Cabeswater-reborn that their contract, as it was, has hereby been suspended.
If he is not trusted, he is not wanted. If he is not wanted, he is cut off. If he is cut off, then this Cabeswater's access to him, its nourishment, is also severed.
These things go both ways — and find a third, carefully planted route, when Adam starts the exercise of tricks and wards Maura's tried (but mostly failed) to teach him, good-natured witchery to keep the bad out. The bad is in him; it can't be extirpated. But Cabeswater's ugly tendrils can be subdued from waking him at night with its fears, or pursuing him during his day. It's like rejecting a call from someone you don't like, he'd had it explained to him, and Adam's owned a phone just long enough to know there's a perverse satisfaction in putting an urgent caller on an undetermined hold. Let the new forest try. Until Adam decides it's done it's thought its attitude over, it can go hungry of all the extra energy a willing host gave him.
This is a proper break up conversation, the words Blue never brought herself to say. This is the steel anger with which to say them, and he leaves to tremors of the healthier forest and subtle slivers of probing from the old forest that depends on him even more than its sister-dream. Will Adam abandon it too? He wishes he weren't so addicted to magic that he might entertain the thought of 'no'. Besides, their agreement is colder, different, personal. The entity Ronan dreamed to remember him might have mimicked that intimacy, but it never had the power of the ley line's claim. This Cabeswater is different, pettier, coyer. Like him. He agrees to keep it fed.
Later, he waits far too long for Ronan to come home that evening, before his train on Monday morning. His hands're November-chilled when he waves at his upcoming boyfriend from his seat on the porch, tossing Ronan the BMW's keys by way of greeting: ]
Think fast.
[ Harder in the dark, but Ronan likes a challenge. Truth be told, Adam doesn't know what to expect: Ronan isn't affected, but Cabeswater's inheritance of their worst traits makes it a natural tattletale. Though the morning's chat might have taught it some degree of discretion, and so maybe, just maybe, this will go not peacefully, but smoothly. ( It isn't war — just winning. ) ]
no subject
So all in all a success. He came home and half expected to see Opal charging down the steps in his direction, as she does when he abandons her (there's no other word for it) to see Adam, but no. It seems that Adam is a perfectly respectable substitute father, and so when Opal isn't barreling down the steps yelling Kerah! and reaching for him to pick her up, he's both somewhat pleased and also just a little (a lot) bitterly disappointed.
It feels like a betrayal.
He steps out into the darkness and Chainsaw is the first thing out of the car, flying up to the house, which distracts him for a moment, but not so much that his hand doesn't reach out into the dark and catch the keys to his car - his real car, not the borrowed orange Camaro that he thundered down the I-95 corridor up the coast. (Bless Blue. Really.)
He steps up to the porch, then, and feels something slot inside his heart. This is what was missing. He should have taken Adam with him, but Adam is not a dog to be toted around for emotional support.]
Hey.
[His voice is thick with pleasure, as he steps up.]
Where's the brat?
[Asleep, he should hope. Otherwise this lack of a welcome is really going to bite at him.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
He goes to the dorm and doesn't find Adam; the door is locked and there's no answer. He goes to the library, sort of offended that he knows where the library is at Georgetown, and that's where someone recognizes him and takes mercy on him for some stupid reason (it's not like he needs anyone's fucking pity) and bravely manages to not cry when Ronan turns his not-so-friendly look on them. I think Adam went to a party, midterms he says, and Ronan stares at him because he's pretty sure that the dude just said Adam and party and forced at gunpoint wasn't used to describe the series of events. Adam does not do people. He does not do music that drowns out his already shitty hearing. He does not do crowds.
Conclusion: he does not do parties.
And yet.
So that's how Ronan finds himself standing in front of someone's apartment, not far from campus, staring at the door. There isn't thumping music, but he can hear people talking inside, and the door opens to reveal the saddest party that Ronan, consumer of garish events where a substance is a requirement for entry or fancy ones where cheese is served as dessert, has ever seen.
Well, sort of. It's a bunch of undergraduates, hanging out, and there in a corner is Adam, looking engaged, talking to some girl with a smile on his face and an attitude of intellectual superiority and Ronan thinks that this is it, he's entered the twilight zone, he's hallucinating and he's going to need the interjection of every single saint to figure out how to make this not weird.
Someone spots him and asks if he can get Ronan's jacket, and Ronan just moves past him. There's a white-hot flare of jealousy in his stomach that he's trying to keep from making him say something stupid.]
You're looking perfectly fucking collegial.
[Nailed it.
He's suddenly absurdly aware of the dirt under his fingernails, the long scratches on his arms from untangling a pair of stupid foxes from his henhouse protection dream, and his healing split lip from his time at the boxing gym earlier. He wonders, briefly, if this is what Adam felt, back at Aglionby. Bruised and dirty from work.
The tables turned.]
no subject
How Adam's criminal record and his reputation both survived the ordeal, he can't tell, only that he emerged from his last criminology exam a better, more spiritually grounded man, too Zen by far to inflict bricks, gags and chainsaws on unsuspecting young adults.
It's over. Hell has washed over him and withdrawn all its flash card Satans. He can now retire to his humble dorm abode and indulge in the strangely satisfied gut pangs of his coffee overdose — at least, until his RA (his RA) takes him delicately by the hand as he walks in and informs him, in no uncertain terms, that books aren't natural human appendages, and also that most people think his room is empty and, on his rare returns, haunted.
As it turns out, the choice between embracing life as Georgetown Noah or lukewarm socializing at the first half-decent party proves not at all that difficult. And so, this is how he finds himself in a nearly-stranger's overcrowded apartment, joyfully nursing a glass of sparkling water that, like champagne, only really feels fancy for the kindergarten appeal of the six-seven stray bubbles rising to the surface.
There are people — actual human beings Adam does not turn homework with or tutor — and some of them even manage passable conversation. He is just thrilled enough to stay and even seek out friends, determined to A+ this latest assignment, even if it kills him.
Or the rest of the party guests, once Ronan stops his heart and unexpectedly spirits himself in.
No notice. No time for error. Not even a causal hello. Adam's seen party boy Lynch in worse wear, soaked in hard booze, fresh off a joy ride and accepting dubious pills with the reverence of communion. Adam has nothing to be ashamed of here &mdahs; still, he feels as if he's narrowly juggling a hot pan and his hand in the fire, as he takes the measure of Ronan's look (hot) and his temper (hotter, but not yet volcanic). Then, evenly: ]
Must be the college campus.
[ There's far too long a silence, during which strategy and survival instincts configure the best possible course of action to see the night through without a quick getaway or a Lynch outburst. In the midst of gears turning, Adam raises his hand to gently pause the host as he rushes to offer Ronan a beer can fresh off the frosted pack: ]
He's driving.
[ Or triggering the apocalypse, waging war on a third-world country, burning down the house. Either way, no alcohol. The can withdraws, though curiosity spreads like a cautious contagion, threadbare on sets of lips that part around him, but intelligently decide to tighten close. So, who is this, Adam?
Beasts suit their castles, but Adam's never made a point of hiding Ronan whenever he visits. It just so happens that fate, luck and a few minutes of tactical planning have conspired to keep Ronan away from most dorm fixtures at the times when they're at their busiest, whiniest and best-supplied with hipster privilege. The sight of him is a precious commodity, on par or exceeding the advent of unicorns.
In a gesture begging every saint to take pity on his no-good soul, Adam scoots takes a step away from Amy from Sociology and waves Ronan close in a clear invitation for him to descend from the wrathful heavens and park himself by.
The lady gets honors first, with a nod each way: ]
Amy, Ronan. Ronan, Amy.
[ Congrats. You're now best friends. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
So, no visits between Ronan's early-November surprise appearance and Thanksgiving. Few calls, more so lessened by Adam's exasperated impatience whenever a new deadline joins the workload pile. Instead, they have sullen silences, frustrated calls, shameful shout sessions meant to explore anger at the world more than at each other — and bad ideas.
Terrible ones, Adam concedes in belated retrospect, because it hurts something wickedly fierce on the day, then stings with alarming rigor after. Then there's the peeling, snake unsaddled of his skin, and every Google reassurance that it should all be over within two weeks doesn't kindly coerce his agitated hand to take the hint. It's worth it, it'll be worth it, it's all worth it —
Were words, thoughts and fleeting fancies that never stumbled upon Adam Parrish during those two weeks.
And then it really is over, and he's cursing, groaning, packing his flimsy bag and boarding a train with far too much excitement for the traditional Lynch Thanksgiving fare: whatever sat still long enough to be caught, shoved in an oven without seasoning, nuked down to an apocalyptic crisp, left forgotten to sag overnight, then served the next day, somehow still rare in the middle. And Orla's pumpkin pie.
Like any good Southern boy, he grabs last-ditch gifts off the road to pay back the Barns' hospitality: for Opal, three different types of campus chocolate bars, all painstakingly searched for their expiry date. For Blue, the quarterly issue of Georgetown's environmental undergrad society mag, which features a disturbingly distraught weasel on the cover. For Gansey, if his family in DC can spare him a day for a Virginia trip, the difficultly gained syllabus of every history professor in this college. For Henry — who has officially earned a first-name basis after so many years now — one of the nearby frat's free oversized party hats.
And for Ronan, Adam's God damned presence, please and thank you.
He turns up late at the station come Wednesday morning, every train that wasn't canceled to celebrate an ugly DC storm, instead ending up indefinitely delayed. Injury joins insult, and the two cabs that usually bother with Henrietta traffic don't show up on the prowl for lost tourists. So, Adam is stuck stranded. Waiting. Sighing. Then, studiously shooting Ronan a text and hoping the stars have aligned enough for it to be a day when his boyfriend bothers to remember his phone.
Hi.
Then, I'm at the station.
And, Sorry. It was supposed to be a surprise. Can you come get me?
But he knows he's been an asshole these past few weeks, knows just as well that Ronan will be in the kitchen or an actual barn, rolling his eyes out of their sockets at Adam's newly-remembered courtesy, so he stacks on an obligatory, Please.
Obediently, he props his duffel bag on the platform, then leans his back on the nearest pillar and calmly sets out to — ...wait. And wait. And wait.
When Ronan shows up — because of course he does, Adam hardly deserves him — he pulls himself straight, rolls his shoulders to regain his posture, lifts his chin with cheaply-bought pride —
And raises his right hand, ring finger stubbornly upright to show off the fucking tattoo only a douchebag like ink-armored Ronan Lynch might have neglected to mention would hurt like a son of a howling bitch on a digit. It's a lightly sketched thing: two thinly defined raven claws, coming together for an inch's width around the base of his finger. Pretty work, price tag to match the skill. He doesn't want to talk about that $220, a luxury only justified by Adam-the-private-tutor's DC wage and the constant reminder that this is Ronan's Christmas and Easter and birthday gift combined, for the next five to ten years.
Instead, he manages a weak smile: ]
You'll see a beak if I ever hate myself enough to climb back in the chair.
[ Asshole, that hurt. And he's been told it'll fade faster than regular tattoos, to top it all. Useless. ]
no subject
And then to add fuel to the fire: Thanksgiving, which meant Declan and Matthew and this year the witches are coming to the Barns with crew in hand, and they're eating outside on Aurora's fine old fold wooden out table (designed to fit 30, who would even come out here, they never had parties when Ronan was a child), which Blue decided needed to be decorated. Many turkeys lay in wait to die, garbling their last gobble-gobbles while Opal watches them with serious fascination. Ronan told her not to name them, so naturally she named every last motherfucking bird. The turkey slaughter began at dawn, with Opal's bored supervision.
The text came right during the great turkey plucking so it went unseen until Opal wailed that Kerah please don't fight with him again and so Abraham, local with an accent so thick it rivals Adam's said he'd take over and finish up (hired help for the genocide) and Ronan had the mercy and forethought to take a shower before he headed out.
The turkey massacre was supposed to be a surprise; Blue only approved because Ronan bought the birds from a local farmer and everything going into this meal was going to be locally sourced and green and all that hippie shit. Maura was going to actually oversee the cooking. Ronan was determined. No fucking it up this year.
So when he pulls in he is half exasperated - dead turkeys, traumatized children, witches, Declan - and half so pleased that it wraps his stomach in tight, winding knots.]
Why didn't you just drive in with my-
[That sentence is supposed to end with my brothers. Instead it ends with Ronan staring at Adam's hand. At first he thinks it's a ring and he's not sure how to take that.
But then.
He smiles. Slowly. Fuck.
He missed him.]
On your hand, you ballsy motherfucker, here-
[He reaches for it. Let him see, let him see.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
This is what he got: a big fucking mess.
Sure, the morning was exactly as anticipated: exhausting, yes, but also good in a lot of ways. They cooked. Adam slept, and Ronan, with Maura and some church ladies who were kind enough to bring pie, prepared and oversaw dinner. Calla watched and drank cocktails that got increasingly boozier as the night went on. Adam woke up and stayed out of the kitchen, and kept Opal entertained with secrets and whispers and things that they deserved to give to each other.
So that was a thing. Then Declan and Matthew showed up and as expected, Declan's new girlfriend made Opal jealous, and she wouldn't let Declan out of her sight all afternoon - also keeping Opal occupied, and giving Adam some downtime, as preparations advanced.
Even dinner, exhausting as it was, full up as it was, only involved all the Fox Way kids getting into one of the barns, only involved two screaming tantrums and two exhausted little girls fast asleep, curled up against each other behind a haybale, and Opal making noises about Declan letting her sleep in his arms, which only went to show that Ronan did, in fact, pass along the jealousy gene. Gansey came. Everyone had a good time.
No one expected, right when pie was being served and Matthew was falling asleep and Blue and Gansey were whispering about sneaking off, that Adam's mother would drive up, and come out of the car, and stare at everyone for a good minute before Adam noticed her.
There were awkward pauses and even more awkward and tense moments, and finally Ronan looked at Adam, and let him go, and then that's when things well and truly fell the fuck apart. But there was no yelling. There was no drama. There was no screaming or crying, just the psychics leaving and Declan picking Opal up and toting her inside and nudging Matthew along, along with the piece of the week, and minutes went by until all that was left at the long outdoor table was Ronan, watching like a lean and hungry wolf, as Adam spoke with his mother a way off under one of the huge trees decorated in Ronan's lights.
She didn't deserve to speak to him, Ronan thinks.
She doesn't deserve him now, he wants to say.
But he doesn't say anything. He sits and he watches and he waits and he doesn't anticipate anything good coming from this. She turns and looks at Ronan a moment, and he lifts his chin, the arrogant prince in his kingdom. She is there at his sufferance.
And then she leaves.
And Ronan waits.]
no subject
Meal prep is easy. Adam sleeps through it.
Hosting introduces some difficulty: Ronan's the master of the house, Blue is its live-in lady. Adam feels misplaced in whatever role he lands himself, until it becomes painfully apparent that Gansey — in late, flushed and a little disheveled for his fast drive — shares his confusion. It turns out, there's not much for significant others to do than sit there, look pretty, and give Calla something to laugh at (they vengefully add salt to her next cocktail, when she's not looking.)
Dinner is — acceptable. Declan's new girl is a Kate, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with dark intentions behind the easily pulled smile of her rich mouth. Adam spends an embarrassing amount of time talking to her, during which it's revealed she's probably smarter than everyone at this table combined, and she'll play Declan right back, for all he's worth. If he weren't helplessly in love already, Adam might be taken with her.
And then there's Adam's mother, somehow here, somehow with him, somehow holding him: a shadow of herself, diminished by the years and the countless kindnesses spelled on the back of Robert Parrish' hand. Bruise fade, but eat at the life in her eyes, hers surgically extinguished. He remembers her glance blue.
It doesn't matter. She's here not for Thanksgiving wishes, but a last-minute farewell. Her husband — it dawns on him, Adam's father — will be detained at the sheriff's another few days, til the man he bludgeoned at work gets a telling from the priest who kindly reminds him they're all sinners before the Lord, and they owe their brothers and sisters forgiveness.
In the meantime, Adam's mother has a window of opportunity only compounded by the timely drive-by of a childhood friend who made it out of Henrietta, who's only passing through to visit her folks for Thanksgiving, and who'll see them both back to Tennessee
His mother is leaving town. His mother is leaving his life.
Would she have done it, if Adam were still there to catch the fall of his father's fists instead of her? Was he always meant to be a sacri —
She doesn't have the time for that. Never did. She loves him. Always or never did. She's going, and she'll make her own way somehow, a middle-aged woman with nothing past high school learning, but no fear of honest work. She'll make a fresh start for herself.
Somehow, the fast flickers of her back, walking away, makes him think of fleeing.
And then he's alone — on a vast estate crammed with a crowd that knows or loves or cares for him. Mutely, he searches the horizon, then each Barn in kind, and his head is a symphony of shrill pulses and screeches. He can't gather his thoughts — until suddenly they swarm him.
It's plain what he has to do, and plainer still that Ronan will throw himself like a hurdle on that railway. Can't be helped.
Adam draws close to the table like a frenzy of sharks called to blood, to the breaking wound he knows his teeth will catch over Ronan's face and bared neck and fingers. ]
I need to go.
[ No malice or tension, no misgivings. Just Adam, standing and slouched, hands homed in his pockets and discreetly hiding the promise of his inked ring. A peasant at attention before his sitting prince. ]
And I need to borrow some money.
[ He thought the words might hurt, wrenched from his soul, but they hardly toll and tear. Another man speaks them. Another bloodless, numb mouth. On another make-believe day, naively extended after the clock ticks midnight at the ball. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
As luck and dramatic momentum would have it, this particular ride's hit its stride, GPS happily pointing to 'the middle of fucking no where' on the long highway-side stretch between DC and Henrietta.
A handful of days to Christmas, the road should be cluttered with a few more gift-encumbered and family-maddened specters than the average ghost town — except they're traveling at Lynch hours, 5 in the a.m. and proud to escape holiday traffic. There's no one to interrupt their smooth sailing. At least, til the BMW croaks it.
This isn't how Adam had meant to kick off his Christmas break. That optimistic plan featured an indefinite extension to the back seat nap he's jolted from, one arm groggily shooting out to capture his phone and presumably turn off its alarm clock feature. No. No such luck. He has just enough awareness to review the basics — sleep, car, Ronan, Georgetown, pick up, break, sleep, going to Henrietta, sleep, Christmas, car moving, sleep, car no longer moving, sleep? — and identify something like a causal chain for their current mishap.
The BMW's stopped dead in its tracks. Outside, a light start announces the season's first regional snowfall, flakes crisp as Adam groans, but resigns himself to facing the great outdoors. Out of sleepy reflex, he's already stumbling out of the car, one hand anchored on the door handle and barely fighting gravity long enough to regain his footing once he hits ground. ]
...mmmmgetting it...
[ This, whispered back hopelessly towards Ronan, who can be trusted to father a dream world, rule as single sovereign of a sprawling farm estate and come out alive from racing Kavinsky and his wild dogs — but not to check out his own engine. That's what the barely wakeful, college harassed boyfriend is for.
First order of business: it's cold, a light tremor translating into an honest to God chill that claws at Adam's limbs, no sooner than he stays still long enough to pull up the hood. Second order of business: he might have cared to spare a moment and consult with Ronan's dashboard before galloping off and taking a hand to things.
Because, third order of business, as Adam knocks at the driver's window, mouth lightly agape in consternation at this tragic and anticlimactic turn of events: ]
You're out of juice.
[ Any other time and place, that would be a happy conclusion that at least saves them the prospective hassle of delicate repairs on a car make literally without earthly equal. Unfortunately, Adam knows his bag fit far too comfortably in the trunk for there to have been any road supplies piled with it.
They're not without options, but, between the abandoned road and the gaining sheet of snow, the odds are starting to look grim and accrue more filth by the moment. So, ever a practical soul, Adam slides carefully back in the car, this time in the front, where he can take Ronan by the hand and sweetly suggest the obvious: ]
Lynch, can you knock yourself out and dream us some gas?
[ Like normal folk do. ]
no subject
[Here is the thing: Ronan knew they were out of juice before Adam toppled out of the backseat and to the front of the car, his sweater pathetic and not meant for the snowy and soon to be icy conditions outside. Ronan knew that, but let Adam go anyway, because he was so fucking cute and utterly eager to go in his sleepy gotta fix it way, Adam leading the charge against all things that could provide injury to Ronan, or, more importantly, to Ronan's car.
He knew he had been flirting with disaster when he saw the gas gauge at Georgetown the night before, but then he was asleep and curled up next to Adam, and it was the first honest-to-God sleep he had gotten in three weeks, since Thanksgiving break when they returned from Cabeswater to finish the weekend with Gansey and Blue, and with leftovers to last forever. After that Ronan thought sleep would come easy, or at least come like a shot to the heart, considering that Cabeswater had pulled out of him like a battery.
But no. Instead he faced insomnia of the Lynch order, and so the night before, warm and curled up against Adam, breathing in the smell of steamy anxious boy sweat, the terror of finals receding from his skin, he finally got more than a couple of hours of shut-eye. This provided nothing more than the ability to forget important details.
Details like not enough gas in the tank.]
You're going to fucking freeze.
[His scowl is impressive, but then Adam is coming into the car. Chainsaw, the ever awake co-pilot, ruffles up to give Adam room then finds herself in Adam's lap, eyes closing for another birdie nap. Stalled cars are human problems. Her only worry is if there will be shiny things to ruin in the morning. Tinsel, man.
Fuck tinsel.]
I slept a lot last night.
[Which means, probably not. Shit. He looks out the windshield. It's a perfectly fluffy kind of snow coming down.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
He's in the rehab barn.
The rehab barn is only half redone, but there's already a cage, and in the cage is a half-grown fox that Ronan found skinny and huddled and scared, that wasn't here at Thanksgiving. He must have been a late bloom, because he still has the weird half-growth of a baby, but none of the sweet sympathetic cuteness. The entire place smells like fox piss, but Ronan doesn't care. He gave him his shots (rabies, distemper, things that he could give some other poor creature or Ronan and Opal and Blue) and as the days wore on, the fox started to like him.
It's just that Ronan is good with animals.
He's currently sitting on the floor, checking a bandaged paw, and muttering curses. Fucko, you fucked up, asshole he says, and the fox makes whimpery noises.
When he found him almost two weeks ago his paw had been bloody and raw, the victim of some unseen trap laid by human hands. When he had found him nearly two weeks ago, he had been so afraid of Ronan he could barely tolerate his presence. But here they are, the fox with his head in Ronan's lap, where Adam's head was just the night before while watching bad television, and here they are now.
He hears the barn door open.]
Don't make too much noise.
[His voice is deep and careful.]
no subject
This is Ronan's soul, nude before a segment of the animal world in its raw, primal kindness. This is the sensitivity of the boy he once was, coupled with the practicality of the man he is now, and the gentleness that hid all along, but never eroded.
An hour of convincing himself there's a world that won't freeze him outside of bed, Adam navigated his way to the actual barns, thinking to find Ronan at some mundane chore that the promise of coffee and a lazy make-out session can surely interrupt. (Surely.) He'd even dressed for the occasion, lazily sunken in Ronan's clothes of yesterday, retaining his scent and hoping to return its favor.
He wasn't prepared for the sight of Ronan and the sobbing kit in his arms, fur so new on it, it's still pale and blonde, while its ears overtake its head. Adam grins down at it, then the line of his lips tightens in a grimace once the stench hits. Ah. A recent foundling, then. Not housebroken. For all their wildness, Ronan's guests always seem to develop a disturbing commitment to never relieving themselves indoors, after a few weeks of the Barns' hospitality.
The door stays lightly ajar as Adam slinks in, barely raising the coffee cup in his hand to draw Ronan's attention that, yes, caffeine exists, and yes, he can have some of it. ]
Who's your friend this time?
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
It's a tight call, but his luck pulls at the last minute, and he nets in a second part-time job. Something hands-on: tech support on campus. Not the pretty, computer stuff that would leave him puzzling the innards of a device he only glared at on Aglionby desks for the earlier part of his life — actual tech, screens and electrics. It keeps his fingers working and his mind empty, and his account building. It keeps the blood pumping in his veins.
Christmas at the Barns, in negotiated silence and wistful glances, is brutal. The first week back to campus, cut off from the Henrietta world, is slaughter. He's eviscerated. Reduced. Belittled. He'd never thought a narrow standard issue bed could feel so lonely, but three months make him the wiser.
Opal visits, starting mute and ending in whimpers, but offering her eyes, her ears, her observations. It takes integrity to refuse her, knowing Ronan will likely expect her to spy and report in. Gansey drops by, now and then, somehow eerily conspicuous even at the grown-ups table of DC's finest college. Blue drives in, mouth a thin line, arms consumed by an ice cream vat she devours alone while pretending to ignore the uncertainty of their one-bed arrangement. Cheng turns up, wide-eyed and easily amused, impressed with the Instagram potential of the encampment.
And then there's Declan, once. With stories. With laughter. With pats on the back and more alcohol than Adam can comfortably home in his room under the nose of his RA. With a quiet plea, once the night's over, to put things right, because this entire thing's wrong.
Declan takes three cups of weak coffee to piece back together in the morning and a week of doubt and devastation to fully escort out of Adam's life.
Like any good lead, Ronan makes his entrance last. March rolls in first, then midterms, then an ugly reminder that distraction's a vicious beast and Adam's barely clinging to his school game. He pulls through, but it's a messier ordeal than he likes them, more blood than comfort. Too much is at stake for his mind to stay in the clouds. Georgetown moves up the ranks in his priorities —
After. After, because now spring break's made a tidy debut, and exactly five terse texts have brokered the first meeting and real interaction Adam's had with his alleged boyfriend since the start of the year. He'd thought it would be painful — as one day parades after the other, it's mostly awkward, a weight in Adam's stomach that doesn't bear lifting through any alternative way. He wants this done. Ended. He needs every hope abolished and Ronan telling him straight to his face that they've reached as far as their conjugal journey will take them.
As Cabeswater notices in hummed approval, he dreams about this moment too much.
It ends up anticlimactic, Ronan driving in on a bright Saturday morning, no guns blazing, no open fanfare. Those of Adam's dorm mates who spot the BMW's familiar nose first try not to make too big of a deal of its appearance, same as they diplomatically refrained from mentioning Ronan's absence over the semester. Adam's RA smiles when she pops her head in to break the news.
The good news of not having packed yet is, Adam's small wardrobe is entirely at his discretion, and he can spend approximately two minutes on stitching himself up to look like a real boy, and not a caffeine-sustained simulation that will recite half of Unorthodox Lawmaking: New Legislative Processes in the U.S. Congress at the push of a button.
He stumbles down into the main yard, privately whistles at Ronan's dumb luck to always find parking, and then —
He freezes. Middle of the road, deer in headlights, hands stiff beside him, voice drained. There's a person he's meant to be now, calm, collected, cool and look what you're missing out on. He forgets that costume. Instead, all he manages is a breathless: ]
Hey.
no subject
And she bit him, hard, which he supposes that he deserved, and finally she breaks down sobbing and even under torture he would not admit that he does the same, and he and Opal make up, sort of. She's still furious at him, but at least she'll speak to him.
Blue threatens to move out if you don't fix this, Ronan Lynch and then realizes that's a bad idea when she finds him drunk and on his back. She gets him standing up again. He makes her promise to not tell Adam.
The only thing that loves him without fail is Chainsaw, who can't fill that space.
And he sleeps a lot.
He thought he understood loneliness but he didn't, he thought he understood misery, but that was a lie, too. Grief, though. He and grief were old friends before and like an old friend, grief fits right back into his life. He and Declan fight. He gives Declan a black eye. He and Declan make up. Declan tells him that Adam is okay, and Ronan says, without pausing, that he both doesn't want to know, and that he doesn't care about the lies.
Because he doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to know if Adam is doing badly because that would be painful, and he doesn't want to know if Adam is doing well because that would be worse. But mostly he doesn't want to know because he doesn't want anyone to spy for him, and he says so. I'll ask him myself, he says, because at least if he's going to be a coward, he's going to only admit it to one person.
And he dreams.
He dreams, and dreams, and dreams. He has nightmares about everyone leaving him and he has nightmares about Cabeswater falling apart and he has nightmares of demons. He wakes up the entire psychic community in Virginia and Maryland, and Calla comes over, tight-lipped and oddly sympathetic, with a bottle of something disgusting that he's forced to drink, and for a while, he doesn't dream at all. It makes him think, instead, out on the hills and the valleys and the places in his heart that he thought of as home.
Finally, one sunny Saturday that's been marked on his calendar for the past three months, he drives. He drives and parks and sits in the car a minute before he realizes he's been spotted and snitched on, so he gets out of his car and sits on the hood. His hair is longer now, the curl more distinctive, and he looks more like his father and Declan than ever, except that he's not smiling. He looks like he did the day that Adam left, in a way, a little gaunter, maybe, his wide shoulders still broad but the disaster lining his face.
And there's Adam.
There's Adam, brilliant, beautiful, and Ronan thinks, yes, there, home, home, home.]
Come home.
[Cut the bullshit. Cut the pointless heys and how are yous and you look good. Cut the crap. Get to the meat of it.]
I'm sorry. I'm an asshole. But I'm going to fucking try.
[Words that mean something; the way Ronan says them.]
Come home.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
And then it was the usual series of events: Adam asleep soon and deeply, although Ronan would argue that he finally managed sleep of his own. The next morning waking up and not waking Adam as he got ready for church, too early for anyone in the household to give a shit, and coming back after lunch with his brothers, as of nothing in the world changed. Opal, satisfied that Adam wasn't leaving anytime soon when she saw him asleep, agreed to go out and make a mess outside, her own war wounds either forgotten or just deeply accepted as part of her, now.
Life back to normal.
Except that normal never involved lambs before. It's early still for sheep, but three days into the spring break, into learning each other again, into slow touches and sweet kisses and mild arguments, into I know you didn't use any of the money I get the bank balance, remember? and stubborn refusals to give back certain items belonging to Adam, and a single buzzing fight about did you kiss someone else and vague consolations and Ronan's general personality disorder, and Ronan announces that actually, it's spring fair season.
The annual spring fair is not the late summer county fair. Instead it's a smaller event with sheep and wool and people spinning yarn, an agricultural wonderland with a modestly appealing carnival. Gansey is coming, Blue is going, and Opal is actually spending it with friends from school, which means after all the shit of wool and sheep and lambs, after dealing (in a shockingly competent fashion) with the local farmers who vacillate between liking Ronan and treating Ronan like an interloper, he comes to find Adam at the fried food booth.]
I dare you to eat the one with mealworms in it.
[Because gross out food is popular for this very reason. Deep fried cheese with mealworms, a delicacy at the fairgrounds.]
no subject
It isn't — organic. Ronan finds his footing with the grace of every soldier fighting on home ground, while Adam wobbles for any measure of poise. He thinks this might have been easier if they were both on neutral territory, but the Barns was always going to see Adam at disadvantage, and he'd made his peace with it when he'd agreed to go.
Happily, they've always been two ships with a strange ability to find their way home without wrecking each other in passage. Adam bites at times, Ronan soothes at others. Ronan bristles, Adam plays ball. They make a new routine happen.
Then there's the curve ball of the spring fair, and Adam wants very badly to say he's got it covered, but he spends the longest stretch of his time wistful and wide-eyed.
In theory, these should be his people: hard workers making ends meet on harder ground, friends of 30-hour days of bone-shattering labor. He has more in common with them than with the likes of Ronan and Gansey, for all they once wore the same high school shirt. But farmers are their own subspecies, with their own privilege: they've got land, where all Robert Parrish had was his shadow.
So, Adam applies the one wisdom that's guarded him for most of his life: when in doubt, stay out of it. The safest spot ended up the most familiar — you can't go wrong with food. At least, this would have been his instinct on any other day, when he weren't flinching before displays of dishes that looked either rotten or steadfastly heading in that direction.
He flinches when Ronan creeps by, briefly paranoid that he might be pushed towards the cheesy delicacies. Seconds ago, he thought he saw one moving. ]
I've... had worse.
[ The going assumption should be, Adam's always had worse, scavenged from public school food halls, processed delights and from the otherworldly remains of his mother's cooking. Still, he sounds hesitant. ]
I'll do it if you do it.
[ Bad wager: Opal's cooking experiments must have left Ronan immune to mealworms by now. ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
Theory says, nothing is untouchable in this world, except for make-up sex, which God and human decency hold should never be disrupted. Adam's a believer in that — really. Hand on his black, shrunken heart, hoping to die. When they finally roll back home, to the chorus of bleating sheep and distraught lambs and Opal trying to mimic them, the base priority is throwing his clothes on the floor and his boyfriend on the nearest flat surface.
Except, Blue interjects. Family meeting. ( They are apparently a family now. )
And then, before he knows it, Adam's somehow a hostage audience to an hour-long presentation about regional wildlife, protecting the environment and the Barns' future as a shelter, crowned by Gansey's offer to make a donation, start a charity, or otherwise propel his money at the growing problem of his girlfriend's enthusiasm.
The coast is clear after. Adam's already nudging Ronan the way of upstairs for a moment, please, when Opal releases the one cry Adam can never hope to ignore: she's hungry. Famished. Tank completely dry. Which means, of course, that Ronan's abducted to the kitchen, where he achieves the impossible of putting together a decent meal out of scraps, too much hot sauce and a bit of good will.
Blue's relieved. Opal's jubilant. Adam's never hated a bowl of noodles so passionately before.
Nothing else can go wrong after that. Adam physically ensures it, luring Ronan for kissing and kissing and kissing that starts at the door, only teases more speed inside and accelerates once they inch closer to the bed —
Until his vision clouds, then fades completely, interrupted by flashes of green, a glimpse of branches, a quickening, then lack of sound. Recklessly, he ignores it at first, and so the starting nudge of pressure in his head intensifies to solid tension, his temples quaking under a hard beat. His teeth grit, discomfort building to nausea, frustration climaxing in a pained sigh.
Fuck's sake. ]
Hey. [ Another kiss, competent before anlther whisper of rustling leaves strikes him. ] Can I... [ And another. ] ...have the car for an hour? [ And the last. ] Cabeswater's calling.
[ Yes. Right now.
There are probably iron rules set down in this world saying you can't blue ball your boyfriend twice in the same day. And they are now broken. ]
no subject
First the lambs were convinced they were going to die and that was an adventure on its own, but he thought that once he got them in their pen, once they were bedded down with their placid parents, he could go into the house and finally resolve the day with some really stellar reunion sex. That was his goal.
And then Blue called a family meeting (they are not a fucking family) and Ronan vaguely thinks he agreed to Blue making a solar factory or something on his land, he doesn't know because he was too busy focused on the way Adam's hands were winding around each other. His hands should be a sin, listed in the Bible as a temptation to lead boys into depravity and lust and also friendlessness because who had friends when he could have sex instead?
And then Opal got hungry.
And then finally, like a fucking balm, he managed to be slammed against a door and he thought yes, this is it, finally, and he was in the middle of a really excellent kiss, his hips slotted up against Adam's, his entire being pushed there into a single point of pleasure, when he thought Adam might have lost his attention.
The moment lasted only and instant, though, and now another kiss comes and it happens again, and Ronan feels it in his gut.
Here it comes.
And there it is.]
Parrish. Tell me you're being a fucking dickhead right now.
[If this is a joke Ronan can grab him and put him on his back and say fuck Cabeswater and it might be hot and sexy and the reunion sex - three months and counting - will still be superb.
But he sees that look in Adam's eye, like a storm. Not anger, but like magic is brewing and he needs to be there. Fuck.]
Jesus motherfucking-
[The expletives comes out in a frustrated swirl, nothing angry as much as blue balls are a fucking bitch and this is twice in less than six hours.]
I'm going with you.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
But here's the thing.
They're driving, heading up, and instead of going north, Ronan starts to veer relentlessly east. And south. He can do this because in hour one of the drive Adam predictably fell asleep, and he drives with an intention to make sure that Adam doesn't wake up until they hit their detour's final stop.
It's almost noon when they get there; Chincoteague Island isn't very close, but if they leave by six they'll be back at Adam's dorm by nine and that makes it almost an entire half a day on the beach. It's always a risk where Adam is concerned; he might just make noises about how he had been planning on studying, but it's a warm day for March, the sun is bright and glittering off the sea, and more than that, because spring break is ending today, almost everyone is gone.
Ronan parks in the beach parking, sits back a minute. Takes a breath.]
Hey, sleeping beauty.
[He leans over and shakes Adam awake.
So this isn't really a vacation. This is a half day at a quiet beach, this is a neutral place. But after the week they had - near drownings and fights and no sex until just the previous night (when Ronan practically bribed, threatened, and blackmailed Gansey into taking Blue and Opal out for a night on the town and don't fucking come back until I text you - Ronan thought that this might at least be something nice.
A beach for Adam.
He reaches back and pulls out actual, hand to god sunscreen.]
I'm going to need this.
[Chainsaw, liberated from the car a moment sooner, has already gone out to make friends with the local birdlife.]
no subject
Then sex happened, which deserves its own entry in the registry of miracles Adam Parrish has witnessed, up there with Gansey's revival — by day four of their celibate holiday, he'd lost faith in their chances, resigned to his right hand never giving up its soreness again. Then Ronan pulled through for them, and by God, make-up sex is soul-tearing and possessive and needy and complete. They need to start putting it into their fighting rota.
So, maybe Adam crashes as soon as the BMW finds its way to a healthy purr and a good pace towards Georgetown. Who can blame him? ( Ronan, jealously. Ronan never keeps a vicious tally of each and every one of Adam's naps, as if they slight him. )
Inevitably, the car comes to a halt, Ronan's waking him, and Adam, broken from deep sleep, defaults to his routine reaction of fishing for the door handle: ]
I'll go check the en... gine...
[ Except his eyes singe from the sudden burst of sunlight, and he blinks away wetly the lingering traces of eye strain. Hard sun, the likes of which the Barns' foliage has been sculpted too neatly to allow in uncurbed — and something DC won't be welcoming in for months now, despite the fast advent of summer.
It dawns on him, white of his eyes hurting from the spread on the ground, that the BMW's slipped down the highway rabbit hole to a different destination than the one intended. That's sand there, past the asphalt enclosure of a disturbingly pristine lot.
Has to be. Has to — but Adam's glance falls short and curious on the ongoing enigma of Ronan's expression, and he daintily opens the car door and tries the ground. It comes away with the predictable cement burn and, smoother than he'd expected, a few stray grains of sand. Oh — ]
Lynch?
[ It's the beach. It's meant to be their last spring break day off to spend as they will, and Ronan had promised to ferry him to the dorms before ten days of what Adam's privately started to think of as campus honeymooning — cuddling in a narrow bed, being obnoxiously tender over cheap cafeteria dinners, stalking each other down college halls and trailing hand in hand like one of those couples on the street.
And yet he's grinning at this unplanned interruption, far too easily pleased that there're the vestiges of sand in his hand, that there's an afternoon of wondering the beach ahead of them. He'd meant it before, about wanting to see this. To share it with Ronan, one of their few untarnished firsts.
Then there's the nefarious white tube of sunscreen, and it's all Adam can do to avoid bursting into gulps of laughter. ]
I'm so glad you're taking protection seriously, man. Safety first.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
no subject
It's a strenuous arrangement after, a room always small for two grown men's weekend stay turning claustrophobic over a full week's companionship. Adam's schedule is no fast friend to distractions, not when the overdose of work, classes and extracurriculars that saved him when he was licking his break-up wounds now comes in hard to decimate every second of his availability. And Ronan's always scavenging for Adam's time.
In the end, they have nights together: rushed, cheap dinners on campus fare, the rare extravagance on Ronan's dime. Moonlight walks, less romantic than driven to scour every inch of Georgetown for its secrets, its hidden views, its bolted doors, its back windows. The one time Adam stupidly takes Ronan to a party, where he's exposed to people and locked in for an hour to socialize, and then the even more foolish episode when brilliance strikes Adam long enough to share a joint.
They barely catch a wink. Sex has nothing to do with it.
Instead, it's the kingly coke can that's taken high office on Adam's desk, basking in fresh sunlight over the morning and drinking in the moon's spillage at night. Adam's scientific streak obliges him to admit (enjoy) that the little braid of Cabeswater and the ocean's vines has miraculously taken root and seems, despite all odds, to be thriving. He's even gone as far as to change the water now and then, only to find the — plant all the more grateful for it. Its little creepers extend at night, leaf stubs reaching out for the white, cold light in the sky.
It would all warm Adam's heart, if he didn't lay breathless and still for three hours of each night, a silent captive to the pulses of raw, misguided magic bursting from the plant. It calls to him chaotically, like a sick child who can't speak its wants, but knows a private need compels it to summon its caretaker. Adam can't negotiate its meaning. Cabeswater, who usually delivers its instructions in calm, clear terms, has fallen deafeningly quiet. And Ronan, for once not the insomniac in their narrow bed, sleeps the night away.
At least, until Adam, rolling and kicking and groaning at four a.m., finally bruises his peace with a gentle shake of Ronan's shoulder. Fuck it. All Ronan has to do at Georgeown is nap, wander and apparently devise new and interesting ways to piss off Adam at night. He can catch up on his beauty sleep when Adam's drifting off in early-morning sociology. ]
I can't sleep.
[ And throwing away the plant, an earlier argument has decided, isn’t an option. Every line of Adam's body welds fine points of tension as he sits at the edge of the bed, waiting for Ronan to somehow solve the unsolvable in the middle of the night. Isn't couple life great. ]
no subject
It's hard to say when he realized that there was no point where there was enough exposure to Adam to inoculate him against the feeling of not having Adam, but this week, tied together, with barely any privacy (Adam caught Ronan jerking off exactly two times, because his schedule isn't nearly as concrete as he says, for instance) barely any time apart, really, even with Adam's load of extra curricular activities and classes is like a balm to the wounds of the past three months.
Sometimes he feels their separation, keenly, like a deep injury. Other times, though, most times, honestly, he thinks that they were barely apart, for all that they are tied together now. Ronan still gets looks in the hall, from people who call him Batman or from Adam's RA who stares at him like maybe she hasn't ever seen a young man before. Any way it's cut, it's weird.
But right now Ronan dreams.
It was never hard to dream in Adam's room before, but now it's so much easier; he dreams and dreams and dreams, and comes back with small things that he hides for Adam to find later. He brought back strange toys and funny lights and benign, stupid things. He dreams now, and then he's bolted awake, stupidly, breathing like he's been running (and he has).
The magic manifests the second that his eyes open; a pile of books, all written in Latin (good Latin, Ronan's Latin is always perfect in his sleep) spills from him hands. He thinks that they're magic books. He thinks that there are secrets in them that Adam would like. He doesn't say this; instead he's frozen for that minute, breathing hard, until his heart stops racing and he looks placidly up at his boyfriend.]
So you wake me up?
[That shouldn't be a shock. Of course he does. As soon as Ronan can move, he sits up, but then he sees the tension and he frowns.]
What happened.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...