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Adam’s phone rang at 3 AM, and Adam moaned before he pawed at his makeshift nightstand, nearly toppling the whole thing over. The phone’s screen read RONAN LYNCH, and he nearly laughed. Of course, Ronan would decide tonight of all nights to actually pick up his phone and call at an ungodly hour right before Adam needed to be up for a shift at work.
“Adam. Adam, you up?” The fact that he called him Adam and not Parrish came as another shock.
Adam heaved a sigh. “No.”
“Don’t dick around on me, man. I need you. I need your help.”
Adam opened his mouth, ready to make another quip and fall right back asleep, but something in Ronan’s voice made him hesitate.
“Yeah? What’d you do, Lynch?”
“I - ” Ronan trailed off, and Adam could visualize him, pacing the room, making some desperate, jerky hand movement. “I brought something back with me. From my dream.”
Adam was kicking the sheets off and feeling around for his lamp, searching for his jeans at the same time. “Shit. A night terror? Are you alright, are you hurt?”
“No. Just - get here as fast as you can.” And then, because things couldn’t get any weirder, he added, “Please.”
*
Adam trekked out to the barns, glancing down at the shitty little clock in his shitty little car. Why Ronan had called him out of all their friends, was beyond him. Maybe this was all a dream, Adam told himself.
It was long before the rest of Henrietta was awake, and Adam was completely alone except for the stars above his head, and the crickets chirping around him. In the dark and quiet of Virginia’s short summer night, Adam climbed out of his car and looked for his beleaguered friend.
Ronan was waiting at the front door, looking nervously over his shoulder. When he spotted Adam, something in his expression changed, and the look he gave him made Adam feel very important, like his presence changed things somehow. It nearly made Adam stumble.
Sometimes it was easy to forget Ronan’s hungry eyes; sometimes it was easy to forget that Adam liked the way those eyes always found him. And he realized with another thrill that Gansey was nowhere to be seen; that Ronan, vulnerable and scared, had called Adam, only Adam.
Ronan gave him a shaky nod, then jerked his head, wordlessly telling Adam to come in. Adam took careful steps forward, brushing past Ronan to see what was so damn urgent.
It wasn’t a night terror after all, but it still stopped Adam dead in his tracks.
It, straight out of Ronan’s dream, was peering back at Adam with murky blue, Henrietta deep-set eyes. A tiny baby, swaddled in pink, and cooing happily back at the two teenage boys staring at her with wide-eyed horror.
Oh no. “Ronan. You must be joking.”
“Does it look like I’m joking?” Ronan scowled, folding his arms.
“What, you been watching too much Teen Mom? This is what you dream up? And why would you call me?”
Ronan gave him a withering look. “I would’ve called Blue, but then she’d have called me a sexist pig, so.”
Adam snorted at that, because he didn’t believe for one second that Ronan would back down from any of Blue’s vitriol without giving it back ten times over.
Neither of them spoke for a long moment. “...Well?” Ronan demanded, as if Adam would know what the hell to do.
“Can you, like...take it back?”
“Jesus god, Parrish,” Ronan swore.
*
First thing in the morning - after a panicked stop by the nearest grocery store because the baby needed her first diaper change - the two of them headed to 300 Fox Way, Ronan sitting in the passenger seat very much illegally with the baby in his lap, despite Adam’s protests.
Blue answered the door, blinking when Ronan thrust the baby into her arms.
“You,” he said. “What do I do?”
Blue blinked again. Then: “Look here, you sexist pig.”
*
“What a curious little thing,” said Maura, putting her finger in the baby’s palm. The baby coo’d, her tiny fingers closing around Maura’s. “She came from a dream?”
Ronan nodded and Chainsaw went kraw! and Adam sighed.
“Does she have a name?” asked Mr. Gray, holding a steaming mug of tea.
Adam glanced at Ronan, who’d nodded again. He spared Adam a quick glance before he spoke, as if Adam was supposed to know something. Adam suddenly felt ashamed because he’d been so caught up with this whole thing, it hadn’t even occurred to him to ask.
“Lila,” Ronan said. “Her name’s Lila.”
*
Adam, on more than one occasion, was very tempted to ask Ronan why Lila was so familiar - with her deep-set blue eyes, her patch of dark hair, her sweet, chubby little face with a dusting of freckles; and of course, Adam was asking himself why he was going along with this whole thing. He worked three jobs, and even though school was out, it wasn’t like that made things any easier on him. The last thing he needed was to pick up a parenting gig, yet somehow, though Ronan didn’t ask and Adam didn’t offer, here they were in Babies-R-Us, picking up toys and diapers and formula and Mozart-for-babies-on-CD, thanks to a suggestion from Gansey (“You don’t want your baby to be uncultured, do you?” he’d said, not realizing how much he sounded like Richard Gansey the second.)
Ronan dreamt up the rest. A bassinet, a binky, a sippy cup, a carseat - thank god, because every time she rode in that BMW with nothing but Ronan’s arms around her, it took three years off Adam’s life -
Something occurred to him during their drive back to the barns. He was looking at Lila in the rearview mirror, and he felt Ronan’s eyes on him as he spoke. “Doesn’t she need to have a birth certificate or something? A social security number? I dunno.”
“Oh. Right,” said Ronan. And the next morning, he showed up at Adam’s place with Lila in his arm, a birth certificate, and a smirk.
Adam rolled his eyes. “World’s Best Dad, Ronan Lynch.”
*
Adam would’ve thought a dream baby might at least come without the inconveniences of a real baby - but no, little Lila woke up every three hours, and burped up disgusting things, and made a mess of every meal, and got diaper rash, and cried so loud and so long, it was a wonder that such tiny lungs could produce such noise.
There was one night Adam fell asleep at the barns - the smallest, oldest couch in the Lynchs’ den was a luxury compared to the mattress in the room above St. Agnes’ - and he woke abruptly to Lila’s crying. Chainsaw came awake too, her feathers ruffling, and she uttered an agitated kraw!. Adam groaned and went walking on something that felt like instinct.
By the time he’d reached Lila’s bassinet, Ronan, wearing nothing but his boxers, had already picked her up and was cradling her. She lay against his shoulder, fussing, while he rubbed her back. Adam paused by the doorway, unnoticed. He hadn’t seen this, this sort of delicate, careless kindness from Ronan since Chainsaw had been small enough to fit in his hand. Adam found himself staring, and again, he wondered why he’d been the first one Ronan had called. Why Lila looked so familiar.
“Hey,” Ronan said, his back still turned to Adam.
Adam jumped a little. “Hey. Yeah.”
Ronan peeked at him over the top of Lila’s head and gave him a look that made his cheeks go red. “You gonna stare all night, or you gonna make yourself useful?”
Adam rolled his eyes, leaned back. “Bottle?”
“You got it.”
Adam gazed at him a moment longer. “Ronan, just - have you actually thought this through? It’s one thing to dream up a bird, but this...”
“I can handle it,” he shrugged, careless. “I dreamed Matthew. And he’s perfectly fine.”
“You had your parents to take care of him,” Adam said softly. “You ever stop and think you might be in over your head here? This is the rest of your life we’re talking about. And the rest of your life is the rest of her life.”
Ronan had gone tense, but he was still rubbing Lila’s back. “What the hell am I supposed to do, Parrish? She’s mine, she’s - ” He stopped himself, looking like something in him had nearly unwound; for an instant, he looked lost, a little helpless. Then his expression cooled and he turned away. “You don’t have to be here.”
The words stung like a slap, and Adam clenched his jaw. No, he didn’t need to be here - hell, he needed this like a hole in the head. But getting angry, yelling, storming out - that was something Robert Parrish would do, not Adam.
Ronan was trying to give him an out; relieving him of any sense of responsibility, but he hadn’t realized it wasn’t his place to do so.
“Bottle,” Adam said again, voice heavy with exhaustion, before turning to head to the kitchen.
*
By mid-July, Adam was at the barns so often that Ronan had dreamed him a spare key, which was accepted with little question, from Adam of all people, who didn’t like when people gave him things.
And Ronan didn’t question Adam when he brought a spare toothbrush, or used his razor (though Adam pretended valiantly like he wasn’t, but Ronan could always tell - he spent enough time looking at Adam that he could appreciate the clean-shaven line of his jaw, the way his hair curled at his nape, the way his cheeks freckled and reddened under Henrietta’s sun - )
Because Ronan, for all his independent streak, was getting more and more used to Adam’s presence, and so was Lila. He’d even caught Adam playing Gansey’s Mozart-CD for her, but only after he’d already gone through Ronan’s mixtape.
“Dooo-ba,” Lila babbled, while Adam bounced her on his knee in time with the music.
“Turn that shit off, let’s go for a drive,” said Ronan, pulling on a shirt. He felt Adam’s eyes on him, and grinned to himself.
“Lila’s gonna be as foul-mouthed as you are at this rate.”
“Hey, apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Ronan smirked.
“God help her,” Adam mumbled.
They stopped by 300 Fox Way again, where Calla was waiting for them with fresh lemonade, complete with little mint sprigs and striped straws. She flashed Ronan her most charming smile before she took Lila from him, closing her eyes.
The next time she looked at Ronan, she gave him a look that made him nervous; her grin now was too wide, her eyes too knowing.
“Oh, you,” she said, wiggling her perfectly plucked eyebrows.
Adam was looking between the two of them, like there was some joke he didn’t get.
“...What?”
“Nothing,” said Ronan, a little too forcefully. “Thanks for the lemonade,” he all but snarled, getting to his feet. His face softened when he looked at Adam, who was reaching for Lila. “C’mon, we got one more stop.”
*
In the forest, Aurora held Lila in her arms, face bright and eyes glistening.
Ronan Lynch took after his father, but there were times - when he was at ease, when he was vulnerable, when he tilted his head just so - that Adam could see some of Aurora’s looks. The sort of effortless beauty that drew the eye. He saw it more and more these days, and he wasn’t sure if it was because Ronan had softened, or because Adam was looking for it.
“She looks like you. Can you see it?” Aurora said to neither one of them in particular. Then she gave Ronan a knowing sort of smile, not dissimilar to the one he’d received from Calla, and something thumped in Adam’s chest.
*
“She’s asleep,” said Adam triumphantly, finding Ronan sitting in the den. Chainsaw sat perched on the armrest, and Ronan was stroking her absentmindedly.
“Hm? Oh. Good, thanks.” Ronan gave him a taut grin. “You headed home?”
Adam fiddled with his watch. “Nah, it’s late, I figured I’d just crash here. If that’s cool with you.” Like he hadn’t done it dozens of nights before. He was watching Ronan carefully, heart thumping.
“Whatever,” Ronan shrugged. He heaved a sigh and slumped back abruptly enough it sent Chainsaw flying. She headed for the bassinet; she liked doing that, perching on its edge and watching Lila sleep.
“I gotta say, that’s creepy as hell, man.”
“What, Chainsaw?”
“A raven at your bed, watching you sleep - doesn’t that seem a little ominous?”
Ronan barked out a laugh. “She’s just being a mother hen. A mother raven. Whatever. Besides, Lila’s good company. When she’s not screaming or puking, anyway.”
“Yeah, she is,” Adam agreed, sitting beside him. They fell into a comfortable silence, Adam picking at a fray in his jeans while Ronan gazed at something in the distance. After several long moments, out of the corner of his eyes, Adam saw Ronan tip his head back and close his eyes, sighing deeply.
“No, don’t - don’t fall asleep.”
Ronan’s head jerked back forward and he looked at Adam, nonplussed. He laughed, “Hard not to.”
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
“Go for it.”
“Is there a reason your dream-baby looks like me?”
Ronan didn’t miss a beat. “You’re not half as cute, Parrish.”
“I’m serious. I feel like that’s half the reason I’ve been here all this time, Ronan. I’ve been racking my brain, trying to think of why you would come to me of all people - not Gansey, not Noah, not Matthew - but then I look at her, and it feels like there’s a part of me that’s just - ” Adam trailed off, waving his hand helplessly. He was watching Ronan for his reaction, the inside of his cheek clamped between his teeth. “Well?”
Finally, a heavy sigh. “Yeah. Yeah, she looks like you. That was why I called you. I dreamed she was yours, too.”
Somehow hearing the words made it all the more real, made this situation both a relief and a burden; she was his, she was Adam’s just as much as she was Ronan’s.
“Shit, I don’t - ” Adam laughed desperately. “I’m not ready, I don’t exactly have a lot to go on in terms of what makes a good father.” His throat clenched at this, and his cheeks burned, and he felt Ronan’s eyes on the side of his face.
And then Ronan’s hand was on his knee, and that brought him back. “Adam. Your dad couldn’t do in eighteen years what it took you six weeks to learn. I’m not - look, I’m the one who dreamed her, I’m the one who’s responsible for her. I know you’ve got big plans, Ivy League school and Capitol Hill and all that shit, so don’t feel obligated, but man, there’s no one else I would dream about.” He finished like he was holding a breath, and watched Adam nervously, expression taut.
Adam reached for Ronan’s hand, held it in place as he looked up. Ronan’s brow was furrowed, his eyes intent, and Adam thought, Oh, just screw it, and leaned forward.
Ronan met him halfway, tipping his chin to catch Adam’s mouth. It felt like they’d been skirting around this for months, long before Lila.
With a soft moan, Adam leaned over him, and Ronan slid onto his back, warm and malleable beneath Adam. Ronan’s fingers were on his sides, snaking under his shirt to trace lines across his bare skin.
He swallowed Adam’s next moan, opening his mouth to deepen the kiss. His hand moved languidly up the notches of his spine, coming to curl at the nape of his neck, and Adam, out of pure need, rolled his hips against Ronan’s. They both gasped.
“Again,” Ronan breathed, legs splayed.
Adam complied, again and again, face pressed to Ronan’s neck, the two of them breathing hard, moving in tandem. A little voice in the back of Adam’s head told him he was being reckless, that they were moving too fast. It certainly wasn’t enough to stop him. Ronan gripped his shoulders, and for a terrifying instant, Adam thought he was shoving him away. But Ronan only pulled him back to take his face in his hands, to kiss him again. They kissed frantically, Ronan’s hand on the back of his neck.
For several moments, Adam couldn’t think of anything but Ronan’s fingers in his hair, Ronan’s foot digging into the small of his back, Ronan’s mouth pressed to his left ear - if Ronan was saying anything, Adam didn’t know, but all he could focus on was the pleasure building between his legs. He groaned and quickened, rutting harder and harder against Ronan, who gasped - Adam felt it more than heard it - his hips jerking. He looked down, almost in wonder, twitching with the aftershocks as Adam kept moving against him.
“Here,” said Ronan, stilling him with a hand on his hip. With deft fingers, he undid Adam’s belt, then his jeans, pulling them far enough down his hips, fingers hooked in the waistband of his boxers, to expose his cock. Adam shuddered, resting his face at the juncture of Ronan’s neck and shoulder. It took just a touch - calloused fingers on bare skin - for him to come.
He was breathing like he’d ran a mile, and he didn’t even notice the mess he’d made on Ronan’s shirt until Ronan laughed and muttered, “A heads-up’d be nice.” His fingers curled low on Adam’s back. “I dreamed this, too.”
Adam glanced up, cheeks flushed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He saw Ronan swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “More times than I can count.”
Adam sat up on his elbows, leaning so his forehead rested on Ronan’s. “How’d it compare?”
“Not bad.” Ronan gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder, making him laugh. “In my dreams, you touch my tattoo. You put your mouth on it, you - ” He trailed off, face reddening. Adam grinned back at him, elated.
“Alright, then,” he said, giving him a lopsided smile. “Let’s see it.”
Ronan smirked, pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside. Adam sat up to let him turn over onto his stomach, and he leaned back over him, taking in the sight of him - the splay of black knots across his broad shoulders, inching up his neck. Adam started at the top, traced the designs with his fingers, and then his mouth.
By the time he made it halfway down Ronan’s spine, he was half-hard again, and Ronan was shuddering beneath him, when a little cry came from the next room over. The two of them froze.
Neither of them made to get off the couch; maybe she’d fall back asleep, maybe -
But then Chainsaw uttered a great kraw! and came flying out toward them, and they knew it was over. Lila began to cry, and Adam and Ronan groaned in unison before they peeled apart.
“You couldn’t’ve dreamt a baby that sleeps through the night?” mumbled Adam.
“Don’t worry.” Ronan gave him a good-natured thump on the back as he stood up. “I’ll get it right next time.”