It's what it comes down to, Adam's head tipping on his seat, and the BMW's ceiling branching out before him in dust, grit and bone-hard sturdiness — the kind of iron core evoking the real strength behind Niall Lynch's presence. Not his charm, not his magic tricks, not his artistry. Just this: metal in a thin dressing, brutality caged.
And then there's Adam, overwhelmed by it all, trapped in a car not his own, in a role that ill suits him. Every time, every fucking time, he has to play adult, put down his weapons, so Ronan doesn't cut them both with them. It's exhaustive. It's non-stop war. ]
Just drive, Ronan.
[ Ronan. Like it's a beggar's plea, not his right to ask his fucking boyfriend for amnesty. Ronan, if it pleases Mr. Lynch to please and thank you stop being a pain in the ass. Ronan, because it's serious, and Adam's reaching the wrong side of done now, rolling back towards the window and just — staring off again.
The truth is, he doesn't know where he's going after. He doesn't know if he'll need dropping off. He doesn't know if the moon is too far, or just close enough. All he knows is, that's not for deciding now, and he's grateful. ]
It's a scant half hour drive, a blessed half hour of silence, and more poison slips out of him, the speed sucking the pain out of him. He drives faster and pulls over suddenly, just a few miles from where they were, where Ronan dreamed and where Ronan felt it. Yesterday it was there. Today it's here.
He looks over at Adam, at his exhausted boyfriend, and the man who he tormented. He looks over at the man who agreed to marry him, horrified at what he said, at the torment he caused. They're here to destroy a monster that scared the shit out of Ronan and they're here to lu the things that Ronan allowed to haunt him to rest.
He turns the car off.
He looks over at Adam and then reaches over and takes Adam's head in his hand, doesn't kiss him, just presses their foreheads together and makes a small, tiny noise.]
I'm shit. All right?
[His fingers are up against the nape of his neck, and he nudges his nose against Adam's.]
[ He wants to say yes. Ronan pulls him close, and Adam meets him half way, covering the rest of the distance to close his eyes and dip his forehead onto Ronan's shoulder. And breathe in. Take the scent of Ronan's cologne, borrow some heat that Adam's body, deprived of its hoodie, was too quick to surrender. Eyes tightly shut, he knows the shape of Ronan's body better than the lines of his own palms.
It's nice. An hour after hell, it's so fucking pleasant. He shakes his head, snaps his eyes open and pulls away anyway. ]
This thing's in my hand.
[ The knife and the core of vines pierced by it. A physical inconvenience and an earnest, pulsing reminder that Ronan looked him in the eyes for week s and deliberately decided to hold back critical information about Cabeswater and its safety. That he prioritized, again and again, his personal angst and secrets over their communal welfare. That they're in it all together — except when the shame's Ronan's, and the barriers go up again. ]
Come on. [ He nudges the door open and starts to ease himself out. ] I need your help to find it. I'm not as connected to it.
[It snaps him back, his hands letting go. He knew for years, he handled that shit for years, and this is Adam punishing him for this. What a bitter pill to try and drink in. Ronan's lip curls in displeasure, more at himself than at Adam, but it's hard to tell.
He nods and gets out of the car. He feels, again, the depth of whatever it is, snarling and spitting underneath them. Ronan can feel the entirety of this shit, vast and monstrous and ready to eat the world.
Jesus, he hates this.
Ronan turns a circle and looks over at Adam. He takes a breath.]>/small>
You don't feel that?
You don't feel that shit?
[The hole that used to be Opal would be crying in fear by now. Ronan wonders what it is: something old and evil, or the ghost of a person who committed suicide - but that's Ronan projecting and he knows it. He knows that this is his own guilt sinking into the ground below them.
He knows that it's not the shit he's dealing with but it curdles his stomach anyway. He reaches for Adam, his fingers curving over his wrist.]
There.
[He stares at him, level and low, the blue of his eyes darkening.]
[ Out on the highway, he experiences the average density of the thing's panic and hate as they spider their way out, poisoning the air, trickle by trickle and infiltrating the edges of his awareness like a numb headache. No, like every notion Adam's ever held about the hangovers he never experienced.
It rushes over him, but he can't place the source with Ronan's precision, too easily overwhelmed. Not for the first time, he's in awe of mad racer, wannabe farmer, stay at home dad and god for hire Ronan Lynch and his surreal ability to achieve the impossible with a leisurely wink. Creating new worlds, exorcising evil, this is all recreational.
At first, Adam follows at a neat distance after Ronan, then dares to close in, prowling around the highway for an invisible evil under a faint layer of sleet. Better that the snow barely lingered, or the virginal look of it all might have coaxed Adam to despair. ]
I don't feel it localized, like you. I'm not as... [ A low shrug, because there's no other way to put it. ] Good at this as you are.
[ But it only takes the one, and so Ronan has delivered them. Here, then. This barren wasteland. Adam looks on, taking a decent assessment of the unseen and the inconceivable, then calmly nods Ronan's way. ]
Lynch.
[ He's not entirely sure what he's agreeing to, only that it matters to Ronan — and so it matters to Adam as well to reassure him, even as he starts stepping towards the epicenter of the flagged area, stopping briefly to take the measure of the view — and then moving on, a decent distance away, to the first crack in the road where summer melting and fall contraction must have taken a toll on the asphalt. There, he crouches, hissing lightly against the cold over his short-sleeved arms, and he spares a last glance at the heart on his knife before stabbing it into the rupture.
The vines take their time to slither and slip down, but the crack eats at them, until one by one they take refuge, drawn to the power of the latent ley line. Adam's hand comes weaker pulling the knife away, finding it oddly immaculate after, as if the ooze from Kavinsky's remains had stained too much of Ronan's soul to trouble themselves with tarnishing his effects as well.
He walks back after, stopping before Ronan to offer the knife by the blade, so Ronan can claim a tight grip on the handle. ]
With how weak it is now, if I put it where our other friend is, it'd get eaten. This way... they can both grow. Do some battling for territory. Keep each other busy. [ And never get the upper hand enough for one to absorb the other and come back as a single-minded, double-strengthened force. ] Should mean no killing them, either.
[Ronan watches this. He can't help it; he can't help but wonder if Adam gets it. If Adam understands the depths of what he's doing, the easy and casual claim that he makes. That they won't kill each other - better for the world if they do - but Ronan knows one thing. This is incompatible magic. They can't join together. Oil and water, dirt and fire. They contain each other and repel each other. It's as elegant a solution as anything.
And of course, It's Adam's solution, easy as solving a quadratic. All that Ronan does comes by instinct, by sense. Adam thinks it through. He looks at the knife, takes it, folds it back up, and then squats down and buries it. It's better if it doesn't come home. Things tainted like that don't ever bode well.
Then he looks at Adam, his eyes dark.]
They all want you, you know.
[To possess, to own, to keep. A body like Adam's is better than any other, because it's uniquely suited to magic, because it channels it without fail, because Adam may have a will stronger than steel rebar, but he doesn't have a font of creation within him. That's why the demon chose him. That's why Cabeswater accepted him.
Because Adam is good for that.
And Ronan knows it like he knows how to shift gears and like he knows how to put his hands on his flute to get the timing just right. He slips his jacket off and throws it in Adam's direction.]
Here.
[And he heads back to the car, sits, and waits. To see. If Adam wants to come home, if he'll make up his mind.]
[ You want me more than they do. But there's no time for witty one-liners, because the full glory of Ronan's leather coat is coming at him, and he catches it at the last hasty moment on a shaky arm.
On a better day, he might object that Adam's no damsel in distress and Ronan will be just as cold as him without his coat — but his fingers can barely still manage a decent grasp, and his shoulders have too much difficulty with keeping a straight line beneath the generous cover. This isn't the time for pride.
December's an ugly month, absent of its festivities: too rushed in the beginning, too melancholic by the end. It shows its temper in whites and grays and the glistening malice of carefully strewn ice. The sky unlearned its colors. The highway never knew them. All around Adam, the world is deadened and bleak.
Except for one oasis, the BMW stranded on the road side, calling out all parched travelers to their likely dooms. Adam's lips feel impossibly dry as he walks numbly close, gently sweeping the driver's door open and leaning over the frame. ]
Can I kiss you?
[ Olive branch, for all they're both too tired to really enjoy the experience. ]
[Ronan tips his head up to watch Adam move, and he tips his head up even more when Adam is next to him. They are both bitter pills, children more than men on the worst of days, like today. Today is a bad day. Tomorrow might be better; tomorrow they may have forgiven each others trespasses again, forgotten because they wake up with the other in bed with them. Ronan likes to lift his head and look over and see Adam's eyelashes on his cheek, his hands holding tight to the pillow or the blanket or, in the winter, anyway, the shirt that Ronan goes to sleep in.
He likes to see Adam trust him, and he knows that for a while that'll only happen in his sleep, whether Adam wants it to or not.
He's only slightly surprised to hear Adam ask to kiss him, but he angles his head and nods a bit, his fingers going to grip on the ends of his jacket that is snug over Adam's shoulders.]
Yes.
[Yes, because he doesn't want to talk and yes because he doesn't want to fight, and maybe yes because a single kiss from Adam is worth the entire world and more, a thing to keep him, another memory to stow away and dream later when he's alone.]
Here-
[His hand goes up to assist, to press against Adam's cheekbone.]
[ Something about Ronan's desperately needy cling warms him, shoving an inch of levity to cherry-top the end of a shitty day. ( What end? It's barely lunch time. They've still got the trial of feeding Opal after excusing away their elopement later. )
He submits to a smile, one knee lifting to sit the edge of Ronan's seat and keep Adam pillared when he follows the tug and dips in. Nothing will ever feel as intimate as sharing magic, not sex and not kissing and not a verbal confession — but there's a charm to Ronan inescapably up close like this, where Adam can bask in every shade of blue experimenting with the fit of his boyfriend's eyes. It's a strong hue, usually, deep. Not the watery, undecided version of most Henrietta folk, or Adam's darker look. Pure blue. Stubborn. Proud.
Adam laughs, and their noses cross together. ]
Are you afraid I forgot how?
[ A reasonable concern, all things considered. Unlike Ronan, he doesn't have cow heads to bless when no one's looking, Opal's forehead to brush when she's fast asleep, some dingy animal to soothe down into petting. Hard work, keeping up an acceptable pout. ]
Let's see... [ Humming, he stalls for a second, then inches in to press a feathery kiss against Ronan's cheek. ] Was that how it went?
[Not about his sexuality, not anymore, but about Ronan, about this difficult and taciturn person who Adam agreed to love, as if he can just agree to unlove him. It's an acknowledgment that he knows, he knows that he's difficult and he's altogether sorry for it, but he can't help himself. He can't change for Adam.
(He's already changed for Adam. Everyone knows, and Gansey's as much as said it, in the nights when he prefers Adam's company.)
Ronan's eyes flutter closed, but his face tilts up like Adam is the sun. He seeks that affection, goes after it with unhesitating accuracy, his fingers finding their way under his own jacket now and to Adam's shirt. The material is thin and not warm at all, and Ronan is sorry for a minute that he doesn't have more in the way of warmth to give him.]
I want you to stay.
I always want you to-
I always want you.
[Not quite a secret. Anyone who spends more than twenty minutes with Ronan knows that. But he speaks it like a secret, something that would infuriate the vines that are blossoming under the earth now, that are finding something else to fight. It's was never going to be you and me he had said, once, to someone else. At the time he thought it was always going to be him and Gansey, because back then he thought Adam would never want him back, and that was enough.
[ He'd said it before: Ronan doesn't trust him. And the sad and gripping truth is, Adam trusts him so much more. He trusts Ronan, against his finer instincts, completely. He'd use Cabeswater for his own devices, but never like this, risking its safety. He'd never hide that from his partner.
It doesn't matter. (It does.)
They're over it. (They have to be over it.)
Adam will, not for the first time, let it go. (Adam's trying, he's been trying so hard to let so much shit go.)
For now, he tumbles over Ronan to the best of his ability in their restricted space, landing another kiss on his boyfriend's temple on the way up, then a third, squarely on the mouth, chaste and unassuming. Just, hello. Pushing himself back, he stumbles into bracing one arm against the back of Ronan's seat and keeping himself upright with breathless impotence. ]
You have me. But I think you might want me in a bigger car.
[ Excuse his blasphemy, but the driver's seat is just not cut for make-out shenanigans. ]
I'll dream one. Bigger on the inside than the outside. Take it to school with you and freak out your physics professor.
[A sign of how far apart they're moving, of the different circles the roll in. Ronan doesn't know that likely Adam won't take any more gen ed classes now, that everything has focused into prelaw and major-focused courses. Things Ronan does not and will not ever understand about college because he refuses to attend a proper school. Things that sometimes Declan brings up. You don't know anything about the way he lives when he's trying to be cruel and you should be grateful for him when he's trying to be kind. Things Gansey sees and doesn't say because he knows better. Things that all of them are noticing, how Ronan and Blue are living in a completely different universe.
But here they are.
Ronan lets go of Adam after that kiss, he nudges his head up, indicating to the passenger's side.]
If you get in I'll answer every question you have until we get home.
[By any measure, a generous offer. This one is presented with Ronan's head ducked down, the bitter start of shame coating the back of his throat. This is an offer that comes by never, because Ronan is rarely so willing to give up so much of himself.
This is something he thinks Adam likely deserves. If he wants it. The power to hurt Ronan without Ronan being able to complain about the asking, the questions for the sake of it.
He pauses.]
I don't know-
[He doesn't have another more elegant way to apologize for this.]
[ He should shut up. It would be just that easy, laughing, then locking his jaw, peeling himself off Ronan and walking onto the passenger's side for a decent drive home. They have enough blood between them, more readying to spill underground. They don't need further casualties.
But Ronan had to try to cut a deal, obviously blind to how he reduced Adam's forgiveness to something that could be bartered — and he can't not retaliate, eyes steel sharp and unyielding. ]
I have accusations. I have reproaches. I have - I have a lot of cursing. [ He tips his head for a moment, taking Ronan in like fine ware, searching him for faults. ] But questions, not really. After a certain point, answers stop mattering.
[ This is that point. Lying to your boyfriend that everything is okay, while letting a foreign force wreak havoc in the one space you truly share. That's not the kind of thing excused by a Why? ]
So, don't try to bribe me, because you're out of leverage. I'm getting in your car because I want to get in your fucking car. Later, I'm going to give you a handjob because I'm concerned about your hands, and also because I want to give you a fucking handjob. Don't be a Dick — [ A light pause, for the appropriate word play. ] — Gansey about it.
[ Brandishing money left, right and center, trying to barter for Adam's attention with physical goods, as if young Parrish's interest in honest friendship can't be trusted to endure without stimulation. If Ronan can't develop the kind of self-confidence needed to believe Adam will keep coming back, he should learn to pretend.
Adam's demeanor changes like this, on thin whim, brow naturally lifted, eyes clear. ]
[He says it even though it's not, he says it and he can't, he can't, he can't. On the best day Ronan is terrible at hiding his emotions and today is not a good day. He doesn't lie, even if Adam thinks he does. He doesn't pretend well, no matter who does the asking. He says fine because Adam needs him to say it, even though it's not okay.]
Just.
I want to go home.
[He wants to go home. He wants to go to fucking bed, he's tired and he's annoyed and his hands hurt, and it's almost Christmas, and there is a monster under their feet. He thinks that Adam will leave in January for school and that he will be grateful for it, and they'll piece together their lives like two separate people for a while, and then Adam will abruptly see a pair of students, a couple, holding hands and making plans and he'll miss Ronan enough to forget that this happened.
He hates the way this shit plays out.
So he wants to go home. Home is safe. Home has Opal who will see that both of them are upset and choose to cuddle Adam, so Ronan doesn't have to. Home has Chainsaw.]
My hands are fine.
[So that doesn't need to be worried about. Really.]
[ This part goes whispered, coaxing, because maybe this isn't Ronan's stubbornness at play as much as shell shock over the intensity of his own injuries. And maybe Adam should be kind when he reaffirms the ugliness of the red sores on Ronan's skin, untamed by the thin sheen of moisturizer. ]
But they will be.
[ Even if Adam has to drip disinfectant by the drop over every inch of Ronan's hands, and Blue gets to break out her home-made hipster ointments. Even if, God help them all, they have to force a doctor on Ronan, despite his kicking and cursing.
Adam picks himself up, sliding Ronan's door shut and covering the distance to ease into the passenger's seat and belt up, set for an obedient ride. Moments later, his hand sneaks out, at first wayward, then committed, and he squeezes Ronan's thigh in passing. ]
He drives in silence, in fury, and in penance, and he thinks he wants to go to church, that the urge to confess is enormous even though Ronan is no great friend to the confessional. He drives and makes it home in record time, and Opal is zipping out of the house and right to the passengers side, like she knows that Ronan is in no mood for sweetness and she can try and get some love from Adam.
Ronan lets her distract him and heads away, fast, up the stairs. He wants to wrap his hands and go to town on a punching bag but instead he finds a warm spot in his bed and he closes his eyes, and he dreams of nothing and everything.
When Ronan sleeps and dreams he usually makes almost no noise, but he tosses and turns. This nap is something else. It's heavy EDM, it's a substance party from the led over drug on his hand, it's a white Mitsubishi and a boy with a gash for a mouth grinning up at him. You were supposed to bring me back he says, only then he turns into Noah and it's Noah saying the same thing, and then it turns into Niall, and he gets into the car with Kavinsky and Noah.
And meanwhile Opal tells Adam that 'he's dreaming about it' but doesn't clarify what that means.
He wakes a few hours later to see Adam standing and watching him.]
[ Home is a mad house, Opal at war with the world and acting out in bites and scratches in the early morning, according to a breathless Blue, who catches Adam as soon as he's set a foot in the door, and entrusts him with his own child's care. He thinks Opal's outburst must have coincided with the hour when Cabeswater was ridden of its corruption, when the woods strained to accommodate the incision and tear of Kavinsky's infectious remains.
She's at ease now, cuddled on the sofa, where Adam left her to nurse away a nap after an impromptu lunch comprising Adam's Christmas finest: pasta with sauce from a can. An absolute delight, the likes of which Blue beholds from the kitchen door as it's served into Opal's plate with horror and consternation. There's a bowl of it dropped off on Ronan's bedside table, its dangling fork hitting a collection of random dream findings. It'll be cool by now, Adam's heart not yet hardened enough to wake Ronan when he's finally chased a sliver of uninterrupted shuteye.
Truth be told, he isn't entirely sure how to go about it, either. Ronan sleeps restlessly and sound, and Adam at once wants to erase all his problems and let him decide when to call for help. Adam's just about to lean in and shake him awake when Ronan's eyes come alive on their own, sharp and searching. ]
You were shaking. [ A question dressed as a statement, because it's all the better for Ronan to unravel his mysteries at his own time. ] I love you.
[ And he nods to the bowl, quietly presenting lunch, as if it's all part of the same discussion: ]
[The words I had nightmares almost drips off his tongue, unguarded by his usual waking self, made comfortable by sleep and warmth and the words I love you, disarming him with the expertise usually only shown by Adam when he wants something. This doesn't put Ronan on his guard, though. He just squints at the food (that's a generous description of what that is) and then back at Adam, and then down at his hands, like maybe he forgot about them.
They still hurt. The chemical burn look is worsening, but that's not new. He touches them, tenderly, one on the other. No blisters. No bleeding. It's been worse.
He holds them out to Adam, holds them out as more than just look for yourself but as an invitation for touch, to be healed by the intimacy of his hands on Adam's skin. If he loves him, he should hold him. He wants to be held.]
I love you.
[He doesn't sit up, though.]
They look like shit but don't feel as bad as they look. No blisters.
[Part of this is machismo downplaying, but part of this - probably the bigger part, truth be told - is simply and honestly Ronan being a boxer. His hands have scars on them, the kinds of scars that are layered over more scars, the kinds of scars one only gets from years of fighting and punching to the point where even wrapping his hands doesn't do much to protect them.
He just has no real solid grasp on pain in them anymore. He knows he won't be able to play the flute a few days. That's fine.]
[ The siren call of Ronan's hands out, searching without purchase, was never meant to go unanswered. Adam stalls for an ephemeral moment, wondering whether he can marry the apparent sensitivity of Ronan's skin with the single-minded eagerness of their master. In the end, he takes the risk, sighing with parental exasperation and lowering himself in bed beside Ronan, poised towards him on his side.
Now, the difficult part: he's never had to worry about handling Ronan like a precious, brittle thing before. The first attempt is puerile, Adam's grasp on one of Ronan's hands so gentle at first that the trapped fingers slip free. After, Adam arrests the same hand with more conviction, slipping it under his shirt and onto his lower back, where Ronan's fingers so often seem to drift when they're like this, peacefully settled.
On bare skin, Ronan's touch feels flagrantly hardened, abrasive and borderline unpleasant, though Adam can't say which of them two is more inconvenienced by the contact. Probably Ronan, his palms tender and his fingers suffering. But time has taught Adam not to expect an admission of weakness, when ten manly grunts, a snarl and two dozen insults will do. ]
You're right. They feel better than they look.
[ Ronan's specialty returned to him, a lie by careful omission. Seconds trickling lazily into the afternoon, with the entire house dozing as the winter sun already ponders its set, they have as much privacy in Ronan's invaded home as they can hope for. There's no need to whisper, but Adam does it anyway, faintly raspy. ]
[In comparison to Ronan's hands, Adam's back is smooth and soft, unravaged by war or by Ronan's bad hand habits. He ignores the food and prefers the ease of hunger of affection. Ronan might be a ravaged thing, a monster of bad decisions and poorly considered the keeping of secrets. He keeps quiet for another moment.
Adam is warm and more than that he's affectionate and shockingly tender. Ronan knows that Adam is probably still angry, considering the fact that he had to essentially kill the nightmare of the one person whose death Ronan felt almost directly responsible for for longer than he would like to admit.
How's your heart, he asks, as if the question is easy.
He nudges a little closer and presses his face into Adam's thigh, his hands tightening a little against Adam's back. He smells like Adam, and Opal, mossy and strange and green.]
[ A fair bit of studied squirming and shifting later, Adam carefully eases Ronan away just long enough to slip down the bed and spread beside him, until they're eye to eye, limb to limb, breath shared between them. At some point, their mouths press together shallowly, kiss held away from filth, Adam's nose nudging Ronan's cheek after. He settles.
Not for the first time, he can't put in words what he wants. This, fundamentally, is wrong. They should talk about it. About Ronan's unease to share his burden. About Adam's heady bewilderment every time he wonders where he fits in Ronan's life and comes up with a role at once ornamental and chaotic. About Cabeswater and what other destructive secrets Ronan might have buried in its depths. About the dark age of Kavinsky's magnetic pull, the gilded cage of his trembling white lines and powders, the key to his self-destructive disaster. About everything.
The troubling thing is, Adam thought he'd be angrier, betrayal stabbing deep and bleeding him out. Instead, he's strangely numbed to the occasion, accepting Ronan's faithlessness with a gutting discovery that he'd never really expected better. Ronan Lynch doesn't trust him. Thank God. Thank God he's not the better man, the more gracious lover, the kinder person. Thank God he's just as bad as the rest of them, and now Adam can move the fuck on, rushing to fill in the gashes of his shell shock with forced intimacy and meaningless affection.
He can fake their happy ending til it happens. No problem. ]
Kavinsky's boys? [ So many years later, Adam can still name them, each conspicuous glare, each desperate call for attention. He tips his head away, eyes blinking closed as he tries to reconstitute each face, finding his memory less adept at reviving all the necessary features. ] What was your dream about?
[Here is Adam, right here, and here is Ronan's heart, right at his fingertips, barely held back. Ronan is a tired creature, carnal brutality barely held together by the strength of his hands and the conviction of his character. He could hand his heart over, he thinks. He thought he had but he hadn't.
Once upon a time, Ronan would have kept his mouth shut, upon waking from a dream like that one. He would have held it close and let it flutter in his chest, he would have quashed the feeling and killed the grief. It would have manifested in other ways. It would have been pushed out into a fight, into shaving his skull clean, into a car race, into a slamming of doors and the satisfaction of breaking something precious, like a family heirloom or Gansey's trust.
This is different.]
Not those assholes.
Everyone who died.
[This is a bit of honesty that's presented in the crook of Adam's tender shoulder, just where his neck meets his body. This is a reason as to why Ronan hides shit in his forest, in the dream of it. He doesn't know how to say this shit because it was always so shameful.
A dream about people who-]
They wanted me to bring them back. To wake them up.
[You were supposed to bring me back. It could have been you and me.]
[ A wisp of air tickles his skin where Ronan murmurs his confession, and he teethes at his own lower lip to keep from laughter. It's not the right atmosphere for levity. Even worse of an occasion.
Reining himself in, he sends wavering fingers over Ronan's scalp, trying the new hair for its yield, for softness and friction. It'll be different when the curls come in fully, a tangle of them to stay his hand's advance. He realizes he'd always taken for granted that Ronan would grow them, that Adam would be here to see them. ]
That's not how you work.
[ Here: absolution. Adam supplying much-needed reassurance that this isn't Ronan's unwillingness or incompetence denying his father and mother, but the tick-tock of his dreaming gear. They only have each other to lie to and for. It's Adam's due, all of it. ]
It's not how I work either.
[ Here, again: a sharing of the fault. Ronan might be unable to produce a revival, but he's not alone. For all their weapons, for all their bonds, for all their natural or gained abilities. They're sailors on the stormy sea of their own magic, constantly at danger to drown. ]
[Ronan pacifies a bit, if he needed more reason (which he doesn't, not really). He closes his eyes and thinks of nothing for a moment, but the image of Noah is in his head. You were supposed to bring me back, says Kavinsky, who turns into Noah, who turns into Niall. His mother, blessed as she is, never features. The guilt is sudden and shockingly bitter in the back of his throat. He keeps himself there, luxuriating in the feeling of Adam's fingers in his short hair.
He thinks he won't grow it out much, enough for it to curl, enough for Adam to tangle his hands in it.]
Adam.
[He says this carefully.]
I don't know how to talk about this shit.
[He feels like his heart is tumbling, gracelessly and thoughtlessly, right into Adam's hands. Adam's hands, which he can't help but fetishize, which he thinks about and it makes him hot under the collar. This isn't an excuse or an apology. But it explains it. He doesn't know how to talk about this shit. About how to handle his feelings, when it was easier to just punch them through someone's teeth.
This is too much softness for him. But here he is, a boy who tends wild animals into trusting him, who tames his wild half-monster girl.]
I can bring them back but I won't. And I can't fucking talk about it with anyone.
[ I can bring them back. I can bring them back. I can bring them back.
On its footsteps: How? Since when? How do you know? Why? Have you tried? On anything? Anyone? ( God damn it, Ronan Lynch, God fucking damn it. )
Adam's hand stills in its attentions, and he only notices the breath he'd been holding back when it shreds his lungs, heat overfilling them. Noah. Persephone. Ronan's family. It's a fool's dream to think death could be so easily defeated, but Adam's seen Ronan pull off heavier odds against the laws of reality. It could happen. A Lynch could make it so. ]
I'm here. But I can't move your mouth for you.
[ And he won't try. This needs to come on Ronan's time and on the precious dime of his frail soul. Like his fox kit, Ronan will only withdraw at the smallest sign of pressure, the lightest trace of force. Adam can't push him.
The most he can do is offer options, ways to ease Ronan's conscience into accepting the inevitable. ]
Write me a cheesy letter. You can stamp it. Send it all the way to DC.
[ Add another entry to the growing list of offenses against technology, along with neglecting a phone and keeping healthily ignorant of Twitter and Facebook. Adam's received the rare e-mail from the Barns, but Ronan's just enough of a tactile creature that he might feel more drawn to paper.
Adam's hand resumes its strokes over Ronan's forehead, kindly and keen. ]
Or speak it to me while I'm asleep. Fire off some smoke signals. Play charades after I get you off. Dream me a story.
[ Young adults and obscenely well-educated, they can't possibly fail so much at finding ways to communicate. Something's got to give. ]
I don't know. Want to tell me while I feed you awful pasta, man?
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It's what it comes down to, Adam's head tipping on his seat, and the BMW's ceiling branching out before him in dust, grit and bone-hard sturdiness — the kind of iron core evoking the real strength behind Niall Lynch's presence. Not his charm, not his magic tricks, not his artistry. Just this: metal in a thin dressing, brutality caged.
And then there's Adam, overwhelmed by it all, trapped in a car not his own, in a role that ill suits him. Every time, every fucking time, he has to play adult, put down his weapons, so Ronan doesn't cut them both with them. It's exhaustive. It's non-stop war. ]
Just drive, Ronan.
[ Ronan. Like it's a beggar's plea, not his right to ask his fucking boyfriend for amnesty. Ronan, if it pleases Mr. Lynch to please and thank you stop being a pain in the ass. Ronan, because it's serious, and Adam's reaching the wrong side of done now, rolling back towards the window and just — staring off again.
The truth is, he doesn't know where he's going after. He doesn't know if he'll need dropping off. He doesn't know if the moon is too far, or just close enough. All he knows is, that's not for deciding now, and he's grateful. ]
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It's a scant half hour drive, a blessed half hour of silence, and more poison slips out of him, the speed sucking the pain out of him. He drives faster and pulls over suddenly, just a few miles from where they were, where Ronan dreamed and where Ronan felt it. Yesterday it was there. Today it's here.
He looks over at Adam, at his exhausted boyfriend, and the man who he tormented. He looks over at the man who agreed to marry him, horrified at what he said, at the torment he caused. They're here to destroy a monster that scared the shit out of Ronan and they're here to lu the things that Ronan allowed to haunt him to rest.
He turns the car off.
He looks over at Adam and then reaches over and takes Adam's head in his hand, doesn't kiss him, just presses their foreheads together and makes a small, tiny noise.]
I'm shit. All right?
[His fingers are up against the nape of his neck, and he nudges his nose against Adam's.]
Can I kiss you?
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It's nice. An hour after hell, it's so fucking pleasant. He shakes his head, snaps his eyes open and pulls away anyway. ]
This thing's in my hand.
[ The knife and the core of vines pierced by it. A physical inconvenience and an earnest, pulsing reminder that Ronan looked him in the eyes for week s and deliberately decided to hold back critical information about Cabeswater and its safety. That he prioritized, again and again, his personal angst and secrets over their communal welfare. That they're in it all together — except when the shame's Ronan's, and the barriers go up again. ]
Come on. [ He nudges the door open and starts to ease himself out. ] I need your help to find it. I'm not as connected to it.
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He nods and gets out of the car. He feels, again, the depth of whatever it is, snarling and spitting underneath them. Ronan can feel the entirety of this shit, vast and monstrous and ready to eat the world.
Jesus, he hates this.
Ronan turns a circle and looks over at Adam. He takes a breath.]>/small>
You don't feel that?
You don't feel that shit?
[The hole that used to be Opal would be crying in fear by now. Ronan wonders what it is: something old and evil, or the ghost of a person who committed suicide - but that's Ronan projecting and he knows it. He knows that this is his own guilt sinking into the ground below them.
He knows that it's not the shit he's dealing with but it curdles his stomach anyway. He reaches for Adam, his fingers curving over his wrist.]
There.
[He stares at him, level and low, the blue of his eyes darkening.]
Parrish.
[Don't let it possess you.]
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It rushes over him, but he can't place the source with Ronan's precision, too easily overwhelmed. Not for the first time, he's in awe of mad racer, wannabe farmer, stay at home dad and god for hire Ronan Lynch and his surreal ability to achieve the impossible with a leisurely wink. Creating new worlds, exorcising evil, this is all recreational.
At first, Adam follows at a neat distance after Ronan, then dares to close in, prowling around the highway for an invisible evil under a faint layer of sleet. Better that the snow barely lingered, or the virginal look of it all might have coaxed Adam to despair. ]
I don't feel it localized, like you. I'm not as... [ A low shrug, because there's no other way to put it. ] Good at this as you are.
[ But it only takes the one, and so Ronan has delivered them. Here, then. This barren wasteland. Adam looks on, taking a decent assessment of the unseen and the inconceivable, then calmly nods Ronan's way. ]
Lynch.
[ He's not entirely sure what he's agreeing to, only that it matters to Ronan — and so it matters to Adam as well to reassure him, even as he starts stepping towards the epicenter of the flagged area, stopping briefly to take the measure of the view — and then moving on, a decent distance away, to the first crack in the road where summer melting and fall contraction must have taken a toll on the asphalt. There, he crouches, hissing lightly against the cold over his short-sleeved arms, and he spares a last glance at the heart on his knife before stabbing it into the rupture.
The vines take their time to slither and slip down, but the crack eats at them, until one by one they take refuge, drawn to the power of the latent ley line. Adam's hand comes weaker pulling the knife away, finding it oddly immaculate after, as if the ooze from Kavinsky's remains had stained too much of Ronan's soul to trouble themselves with tarnishing his effects as well.
He walks back after, stopping before Ronan to offer the knife by the blade, so Ronan can claim a tight grip on the handle. ]
With how weak it is now, if I put it where our other friend is, it'd get eaten. This way... they can both grow. Do some battling for territory. Keep each other busy. [ And never get the upper hand enough for one to absorb the other and come back as a single-minded, double-strengthened force. ] Should mean no killing them, either.
[ Which matters, he thinks, for both of them. ]
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And of course, It's Adam's solution, easy as solving a quadratic. All that Ronan does comes by instinct, by sense. Adam thinks it through. He looks at the knife, takes it, folds it back up, and then squats down and buries it. It's better if it doesn't come home. Things tainted like that don't ever bode well.
Then he looks at Adam, his eyes dark.]
They all want you, you know.
[To possess, to own, to keep. A body like Adam's is better than any other, because it's uniquely suited to magic, because it channels it without fail, because Adam may have a will stronger than steel rebar, but he doesn't have a font of creation within him. That's why the demon chose him. That's why Cabeswater accepted him.
Because Adam is good for that.
And Ronan knows it like he knows how to shift gears and like he knows how to put his hands on his flute to get the timing just right. He slips his jacket off and throws it in Adam's direction.]
Here.
[And he heads back to the car, sits, and waits. To see. If Adam wants to come home, if he'll make up his mind.]
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On a better day, he might object that Adam's no damsel in distress and Ronan will be just as cold as him without his coat — but his fingers can barely still manage a decent grasp, and his shoulders have too much difficulty with keeping a straight line beneath the generous cover. This isn't the time for pride.
December's an ugly month, absent of its festivities: too rushed in the beginning, too melancholic by the end. It shows its temper in whites and grays and the glistening malice of carefully strewn ice. The sky unlearned its colors. The highway never knew them. All around Adam, the world is deadened and bleak.
Except for one oasis, the BMW stranded on the road side, calling out all parched travelers to their likely dooms. Adam's lips feel impossibly dry as he walks numbly close, gently sweeping the driver's door open and leaning over the frame. ]
Can I kiss you?
[ Olive branch, for all they're both too tired to really enjoy the experience. ]
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He likes to see Adam trust him, and he knows that for a while that'll only happen in his sleep, whether Adam wants it to or not.
He's only slightly surprised to hear Adam ask to kiss him, but he angles his head and nods a bit, his fingers going to grip on the ends of his jacket that is snug over Adam's shoulders.]
Yes.
[Yes, because he doesn't want to talk and yes because he doesn't want to fight, and maybe yes because a single kiss from Adam is worth the entire world and more, a thing to keep him, another memory to stow away and dream later when he's alone.]
Here-
[His hand goes up to assist, to press against Adam's cheekbone.]
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He submits to a smile, one knee lifting to sit the edge of Ronan's seat and keep Adam pillared when he follows the tug and dips in. Nothing will ever feel as intimate as sharing magic, not sex and not kissing and not a verbal confession — but there's a charm to Ronan inescapably up close like this, where Adam can bask in every shade of blue experimenting with the fit of his boyfriend's eyes. It's a strong hue, usually, deep. Not the watery, undecided version of most Henrietta folk, or Adam's darker look. Pure blue. Stubborn. Proud.
Adam laughs, and their noses cross together. ]
Are you afraid I forgot how?
[ A reasonable concern, all things considered. Unlike Ronan, he doesn't have cow heads to bless when no one's looking, Opal's forehead to brush when she's fast asleep, some dingy animal to soothe down into petting. Hard work, keeping up an acceptable pout. ]
Let's see... [ Humming, he stalls for a second, then inches in to press a feathery kiss against Ronan's cheek. ] Was that how it went?
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[Not about his sexuality, not anymore, but about Ronan, about this difficult and taciturn person who Adam agreed to love, as if he can just agree to unlove him. It's an acknowledgment that he knows, he knows that he's difficult and he's altogether sorry for it, but he can't help himself. He can't change for Adam.
(He's already changed for Adam. Everyone knows, and Gansey's as much as said it, in the nights when he prefers Adam's company.)
Ronan's eyes flutter closed, but his face tilts up like Adam is the sun. He seeks that affection, goes after it with unhesitating accuracy, his fingers finding their way under his own jacket now and to Adam's shirt. The material is thin and not warm at all, and Ronan is sorry for a minute that he doesn't have more in the way of warmth to give him.]
I want you to stay.
I always want you to-
I always want you.
[Not quite a secret. Anyone who spends more than twenty minutes with Ronan knows that. But he speaks it like a secret, something that would infuriate the vines that are blossoming under the earth now, that are finding something else to fight. It's was never going to be you and me he had said, once, to someone else. At the time he thought it was always going to be him and Gansey, because back then he thought Adam would never want him back, and that was enough.
He was wrong then.]
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It doesn't matter. (It does.)
They're over it. (They have to be over it.)
Adam will, not for the first time, let it go. (Adam's trying, he's been trying so hard to let so much shit go.)
For now, he tumbles over Ronan to the best of his ability in their restricted space, landing another kiss on his boyfriend's temple on the way up, then a third, squarely on the mouth, chaste and unassuming. Just, hello. Pushing himself back, he stumbles into bracing one arm against the back of Ronan's seat and keeping himself upright with breathless impotence. ]
You have me. But I think you might want me in a bigger car.
[ Excuse his blasphemy, but the driver's seat is just not cut for make-out shenanigans. ]
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[A sign of how far apart they're moving, of the different circles the roll in. Ronan doesn't know that likely Adam won't take any more gen ed classes now, that everything has focused into prelaw and major-focused courses. Things Ronan does not and will not ever understand about college because he refuses to attend a proper school. Things that sometimes Declan brings up. You don't know anything about the way he lives when he's trying to be cruel and you should be grateful for him when he's trying to be kind. Things Gansey sees and doesn't say because he knows better. Things that all of them are noticing, how Ronan and Blue are living in a completely different universe.
But here they are.
Ronan lets go of Adam after that kiss, he nudges his head up, indicating to the passenger's side.]
If you get in I'll answer every question you have until we get home.
[By any measure, a generous offer. This one is presented with Ronan's head ducked down, the bitter start of shame coating the back of his throat. This is an offer that comes by never, because Ronan is rarely so willing to give up so much of himself.
This is something he thinks Adam likely deserves. If he wants it. The power to hurt Ronan without Ronan being able to complain about the asking, the questions for the sake of it.
He pauses.]
I don't know-
[He doesn't have another more elegant way to apologize for this.]
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[ He should shut up. It would be just that easy, laughing, then locking his jaw, peeling himself off Ronan and walking onto the passenger's side for a decent drive home. They have enough blood between them, more readying to spill underground. They don't need further casualties.
But Ronan had to try to cut a deal, obviously blind to how he reduced Adam's forgiveness to something that could be bartered — and he can't not retaliate, eyes steel sharp and unyielding. ]
I have accusations. I have reproaches. I have - I have a lot of cursing. [ He tips his head for a moment, taking Ronan in like fine ware, searching him for faults. ] But questions, not really. After a certain point, answers stop mattering.
[ This is that point. Lying to your boyfriend that everything is okay, while letting a foreign force wreak havoc in the one space you truly share. That's not the kind of thing excused by a Why? ]
So, don't try to bribe me, because you're out of leverage. I'm getting in your car because I want to get in your fucking car. Later, I'm going to give you a handjob because I'm concerned about your hands, and also because I want to give you a fucking handjob. Don't be a Dick — [ A light pause, for the appropriate word play. ] — Gansey about it.
[ Brandishing money left, right and center, trying to barter for Adam's attention with physical goods, as if young Parrish's interest in honest friendship can't be trusted to endure without stimulation. If Ronan can't develop the kind of self-confidence needed to believe Adam will keep coming back, he should learn to pretend.
Adam's demeanor changes like this, on thin whim, brow naturally lifted, eyes clear. ]
Okay?
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[He says it even though it's not, he says it and he can't, he can't, he can't. On the best day Ronan is terrible at hiding his emotions and today is not a good day. He doesn't lie, even if Adam thinks he does. He doesn't pretend well, no matter who does the asking. He says fine because Adam needs him to say it, even though it's not okay.]
Just.
I want to go home.
[He wants to go home. He wants to go to fucking bed, he's tired and he's annoyed and his hands hurt, and it's almost Christmas, and there is a monster under their feet. He thinks that Adam will leave in January for school and that he will be grateful for it, and they'll piece together their lives like two separate people for a while, and then Adam will abruptly see a pair of students, a couple, holding hands and making plans and he'll miss Ronan enough to forget that this happened.
He hates the way this shit plays out.
So he wants to go home. Home is safe. Home has Opal who will see that both of them are upset and choose to cuddle Adam, so Ronan doesn't have to. Home has Chainsaw.]
My hands are fine.
[So that doesn't need to be worried about. Really.]
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[ This part goes whispered, coaxing, because maybe this isn't Ronan's stubbornness at play as much as shell shock over the intensity of his own injuries. And maybe Adam should be kind when he reaffirms the ugliness of the red sores on Ronan's skin, untamed by the thin sheen of moisturizer. ]
But they will be.
[ Even if Adam has to drip disinfectant by the drop over every inch of Ronan's hands, and Blue gets to break out her home-made hipster ointments. Even if, God help them all, they have to force a doctor on Ronan, despite his kicking and cursing.
Adam picks himself up, sliding Ronan's door shut and covering the distance to ease into the passenger's seat and belt up, set for an obedient ride. Moments later, his hand sneaks out, at first wayward, then committed, and he squeezes Ronan's thigh in passing. ]
Let's go home.
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He drives in silence, in fury, and in penance, and he thinks he wants to go to church, that the urge to confess is enormous even though Ronan is no great friend to the confessional. He drives and makes it home in record time, and Opal is zipping out of the house and right to the passengers side, like she knows that Ronan is in no mood for sweetness and she can try and get some love from Adam.
Ronan lets her distract him and heads away, fast, up the stairs. He wants to wrap his hands and go to town on a punching bag but instead he finds a warm spot in his bed and he closes his eyes, and he dreams of nothing and everything.
When Ronan sleeps and dreams he usually makes almost no noise, but he tosses and turns. This nap is something else. It's heavy EDM, it's a substance party from the led over drug on his hand, it's a white Mitsubishi and a boy with a gash for a mouth grinning up at him. You were supposed to bring me back he says, only then he turns into Noah and it's Noah saying the same thing, and then it turns into Niall, and he gets into the car with Kavinsky and Noah.
And meanwhile Opal tells Adam that 'he's dreaming about it' but doesn't clarify what that means.
He wakes a few hours later to see Adam standing and watching him.]
You're a fucking creep.
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She's at ease now, cuddled on the sofa, where Adam left her to nurse away a nap after an impromptu lunch comprising Adam's Christmas finest: pasta with sauce from a can. An absolute delight, the likes of which Blue beholds from the kitchen door as it's served into Opal's plate with horror and consternation. There's a bowl of it dropped off on Ronan's bedside table, its dangling fork hitting a collection of random dream findings. It'll be cool by now, Adam's heart not yet hardened enough to wake Ronan when he's finally chased a sliver of uninterrupted shuteye.
Truth be told, he isn't entirely sure how to go about it, either. Ronan sleeps restlessly and sound, and Adam at once wants to erase all his problems and let him decide when to call for help. Adam's just about to lean in and shake him awake when Ronan's eyes come alive on their own, sharp and searching. ]
You were shaking. [ A question dressed as a statement, because it's all the better for Ronan to unravel his mysteries at his own time. ] I love you.
[ And he nods to the bowl, quietly presenting lunch, as if it's all part of the same discussion: ]
There's... food. How are your hands?
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They still hurt. The chemical burn look is worsening, but that's not new. He touches them, tenderly, one on the other. No blisters. No bleeding. It's been worse.
He holds them out to Adam, holds them out as more than just look for yourself but as an invitation for touch, to be healed by the intimacy of his hands on Adam's skin. If he loves him, he should hold him. He wants to be held.]
I love you.
[He doesn't sit up, though.]
They look like shit but don't feel as bad as they look. No blisters.
[Part of this is machismo downplaying, but part of this - probably the bigger part, truth be told - is simply and honestly Ronan being a boxer. His hands have scars on them, the kinds of scars that are layered over more scars, the kinds of scars one only gets from years of fighting and punching to the point where even wrapping his hands doesn't do much to protect them.
He just has no real solid grasp on pain in them anymore. He knows he won't be able to play the flute a few days. That's fine.]
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Now, the difficult part: he's never had to worry about handling Ronan like a precious, brittle thing before. The first attempt is puerile, Adam's grasp on one of Ronan's hands so gentle at first that the trapped fingers slip free. After, Adam arrests the same hand with more conviction, slipping it under his shirt and onto his lower back, where Ronan's fingers so often seem to drift when they're like this, peacefully settled.
On bare skin, Ronan's touch feels flagrantly hardened, abrasive and borderline unpleasant, though Adam can't say which of them two is more inconvenienced by the contact. Probably Ronan, his palms tender and his fingers suffering. But time has taught Adam not to expect an admission of weakness, when ten manly grunts, a snarl and two dozen insults will do. ]
You're right. They feel better than they look.
[ Ronan's specialty returned to him, a lie by careful omission. Seconds trickling lazily into the afternoon, with the entire house dozing as the winter sun already ponders its set, they have as much privacy in Ronan's invaded home as they can hope for. There's no need to whisper, but Adam does it anyway, faintly raspy. ]
How's your heart?
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Adam is warm and more than that he's affectionate and shockingly tender. Ronan knows that Adam is probably still angry, considering the fact that he had to essentially kill the nightmare of the one person whose death Ronan felt almost directly responsible for for longer than he would like to admit.
How's your heart, he asks, as if the question is easy.
He nudges a little closer and presses his face into Adam's thigh, his hands tightening a little against Adam's back. He smells like Adam, and Opal, mossy and strange and green.]
I don't fucking know.
[Honesty in its most brutal form.
He doesn't know how his heart feels.]
I dreamed of all of them.
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Not for the first time, he can't put in words what he wants. This, fundamentally, is wrong. They should talk about it. About Ronan's unease to share his burden. About Adam's heady bewilderment every time he wonders where he fits in Ronan's life and comes up with a role at once ornamental and chaotic. About Cabeswater and what other destructive secrets Ronan might have buried in its depths. About the dark age of Kavinsky's magnetic pull, the gilded cage of his trembling white lines and powders, the key to his self-destructive disaster. About everything.
The troubling thing is, Adam thought he'd be angrier, betrayal stabbing deep and bleeding him out. Instead, he's strangely numbed to the occasion, accepting Ronan's faithlessness with a gutting discovery that he'd never really expected better. Ronan Lynch doesn't trust him. Thank God. Thank God he's not the better man, the more gracious lover, the kinder person. Thank God he's just as bad as the rest of them, and now Adam can move the fuck on, rushing to fill in the gashes of his shell shock with forced intimacy and meaningless affection.
He can fake their happy ending til it happens. No problem. ]
Kavinsky's boys? [ So many years later, Adam can still name them, each conspicuous glare, each desperate call for attention. He tips his head away, eyes blinking closed as he tries to reconstitute each face, finding his memory less adept at reviving all the necessary features. ] What was your dream about?
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[Here is Adam, right here, and here is Ronan's heart, right at his fingertips, barely held back. Ronan is a tired creature, carnal brutality barely held together by the strength of his hands and the conviction of his character. He could hand his heart over, he thinks. He thought he had but he hadn't.
Once upon a time, Ronan would have kept his mouth shut, upon waking from a dream like that one. He would have held it close and let it flutter in his chest, he would have quashed the feeling and killed the grief. It would have manifested in other ways. It would have been pushed out into a fight, into shaving his skull clean, into a car race, into a slamming of doors and the satisfaction of breaking something precious, like a family heirloom or Gansey's trust.
This is different.]
Not those assholes.
Everyone who died.
[This is a bit of honesty that's presented in the crook of Adam's tender shoulder, just where his neck meets his body. This is a reason as to why Ronan hides shit in his forest, in the dream of it. He doesn't know how to say this shit because it was always so shameful.
A dream about people who-]
They wanted me to bring them back. To wake them up.
[You were supposed to bring me back. It could have been you and me.]
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Reining himself in, he sends wavering fingers over Ronan's scalp, trying the new hair for its yield, for softness and friction. It'll be different when the curls come in fully, a tangle of them to stay his hand's advance. He realizes he'd always taken for granted that Ronan would grow them, that Adam would be here to see them. ]
That's not how you work.
[ Here: absolution. Adam supplying much-needed reassurance that this isn't Ronan's unwillingness or incompetence denying his father and mother, but the tick-tock of his dreaming gear. They only have each other to lie to and for. It's Adam's due, all of it. ]
It's not how I work either.
[ Here, again: a sharing of the fault. Ronan might be unable to produce a revival, but he's not alone. For all their weapons, for all their bonds, for all their natural or gained abilities. They're sailors on the stormy sea of their own magic, constantly at danger to drown. ]
I wish it were. Noah could be here.
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He thinks he won't grow it out much, enough for it to curl, enough for Adam to tangle his hands in it.]
Adam.
[He says this carefully.]
I don't know how to talk about this shit.
[He feels like his heart is tumbling, gracelessly and thoughtlessly, right into Adam's hands. Adam's hands, which he can't help but fetishize, which he thinks about and it makes him hot under the collar. This isn't an excuse or an apology. But it explains it. He doesn't know how to talk about this shit. About how to handle his feelings, when it was easier to just punch them through someone's teeth.
This is too much softness for him. But here he is, a boy who tends wild animals into trusting him, who tames his wild half-monster girl.]
I can bring them back but I won't. And I can't fucking talk about it with anyone.
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On its footsteps: How? Since when? How do you know? Why? Have you tried? On anything? Anyone? ( God damn it, Ronan Lynch, God fucking damn it. )
Adam's hand stills in its attentions, and he only notices the breath he'd been holding back when it shreds his lungs, heat overfilling them. Noah. Persephone. Ronan's family. It's a fool's dream to think death could be so easily defeated, but Adam's seen Ronan pull off heavier odds against the laws of reality. It could happen. A Lynch could make it so. ]
I'm here. But I can't move your mouth for you.
[ And he won't try. This needs to come on Ronan's time and on the precious dime of his frail soul. Like his fox kit, Ronan will only withdraw at the smallest sign of pressure, the lightest trace of force. Adam can't push him.
The most he can do is offer options, ways to ease Ronan's conscience into accepting the inevitable. ]
Write me a cheesy letter. You can stamp it. Send it all the way to DC.
[ Add another entry to the growing list of offenses against technology, along with neglecting a phone and keeping healthily ignorant of Twitter and Facebook. Adam's received the rare e-mail from the Barns, but Ronan's just enough of a tactile creature that he might feel more drawn to paper.
Adam's hand resumes its strokes over Ronan's forehead, kindly and keen. ]
Or speak it to me while I'm asleep. Fire off some smoke signals. Play charades after I get you off. Dream me a story.
[ Young adults and obscenely well-educated, they can't possibly fail so much at finding ways to communicate. Something's got to give. ]
I don't know. Want to tell me while I feed you awful pasta, man?
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