Chapter Text
Adam’s winter break is the only thing keeping Ronan from departing his corporeal form again. Because there’s a very real possibility that if Ronan had to turn around and go right back to long distance, with its missed phone calls and sporadic texts and unspoken I miss you’s , he’d never get out of bed.
“I don’t have to go back until January 10th,” Adam had told him on the drive back to the Barns. Ronan’s grip on Adam’s knee had tightened. He was so far beyond playing it cool.
“That gives us almost a full month.” Ronan turned a grin back to the road, shaking his head. “A full fucking month. Shit.” Adam smiled too, like even he couldn’t believe it.
Now, they’re laying in Ronan’s childhood bed. It’s the same bed they shared the summer before, and it smells like that summer too, all clean sheets and the musky scent of the shampoo they both used when they were both here. Adam’s got one hand tugging the quilts up over his chin and the other flung across Ronan’s bare waist, fingers grazing over the fresh tattoo on Ronan’s arm. The curtains are pulled aside, allowing swaths of moonlight to flood over the bed and across Adam’s face. Ronan can make out the freckles there, mourns how they’ve faded with distance from the sun. Distance from Ronan.
This isn’t the first night since everything ended, but it is the deepest Adam has slept since then. Something about this house. Something about being in Ronan’s arms without Declan’s footsteps padding alarmingly nearby or the seams of his soul feeling loose in connection to his body. He sleeps so soundly that Ronan runs the pad of his fingertip along the length of Adam’s elegant nose. The Adam who had once sacrificed his eyes and his hands to a magical forest, the Adam who could feel normal about touch, would have flinched awake. This Adam, the Adam that had killed all the others, sleeps and sleeps and sleeps. And oh, Ronan loves him.
He pauses the gentle strokes down Adam’s nose and looks at the watch on his wrist. The time is 3:37am, but Ronan doesn’t think about how early it is or about how tired he’ll be in the morning. Instead, he’s back on the ground, stuck in the lace and a molten hot misery, as Adam straps the watch around Ronan’s wrist.
Ronan’s eyes fall shut. He tries to call to memory how much nicer it had been to give Adam the watch in the first place. How beautiful it had looked against his boyish hand. How the strap was dreamt to be the perfect size and material to suit Adam. How even though the moving watch hands always told the right time, the ticking was in time with Ronan’s heartbeat. But the latest memory is stronger and Ronan feels like he is drowning in it.
Careful not to wake Adam, Ronan slips his fingers into the freckled hand holding the quilts. Adam stirs, but only for a second. Only to snuggle closer to Ronan, sighing lips pressed against Ronan’s shoulder. When he settles, Ronan tugs the hand into the cool air and presses it against his face. Palm to nose. Fingers to eyes. Lips to wrist. Then, he carefully returns the watch to its rightful place on Adam’s wrist. He presses a kiss to where the clasp sits against Adam’s skin.
“Don’t take it off this time,” Ronan whispers.
In his sleep, Adam’s hold on his waist tightens.
*
Around 5AM, Ronan slips out of bed and calls Gansey.
It’s 10AM wherever the Sarchengsey train is in Europe, so Ronan hopes that his late-rising friends will have a moment to spare.
Apparently, they don’t. Gansey rejects the call. Ronan doesn’t have time to let his heart sink, because Gansey is calling back only a few seconds later, this time on Facetime.
Ronan has a love-hate relationship with video calls. On one hand, Gansey and Blue’s faces are so supremely comforting, that they take Ronan right back to a time where everyone was in one place. A year when there were dead kings, thin-aired hikes, and so many boxes of pizza. A year when Ronan wasn’t sure who he was, but it didn’t matter because his friends knew him and that was good enough for him. But video-calls also mean seeing his own face, and seeing his own face means being reminded just how much he didn’t know. Just how alone he’d been.
Only, this time he isn’t alone, is he? Adam is just in the other room. Declan and Jordan and Hennessy and Carmen are all their way, would be there by dinnertime. And after traveling with Bryde, after talking with Declan, Ronan knows more about himself than he thinks he ever has in his life.
Ronan sits down on his porch steps. He accepts the call.
“You’ll never guess where we are,” Gansey says without preamble. His hair looks like it’s been through a wind storm and there’s a glossy bead of sweat on his brow. In the background, Ronan hears Blue telling Henry a story he can’t make out the words to. His gaze travels behind Gansey’s shoulder, as if he’ll find Thing Two and Thing Three there, but all he sees is a cliffside and a distant speck that might be castle ruins. Ronan’s heart becomes heavy with a not-unpleasant ache. They’re in Ireland.
“Ronan?” Gansey asks, because Ronan still hasn’t said anything.
Then, Ronan covers his face with his hand and starts to cry.
“Oh, oh Ronan,” Gansey murmurs. There’s some awkward fumbling as Gansey pulls out his wireless headphones and puts them in his ears. “What’s the matter?”
“God Gansey,” is all Ronan can say. His voice is all hitches and scratches. He cries so honestly, he wonders for a moment if he’ll ever speak normally again. “God.”
Gansey is an expert in comforting Ronan, but being half a world away brings a unique challenge. If he was here, he’d pull Ronan’s shorn head to his shoulder and run his hand up and down his back. He’d tell Ronan some silly story about a time he’d been in England with Mallory, until Ronan was ready to speak. But here, it’s just Ronan, the sleeping cows, and a fickle full moon.
“Ronan,” says Gansey in a voice that woke the dead. “What’s going on? Do we need to come home?”
With the back of his hand, Ronan wipes the tears on his cheeks into dried smears.
“No, don’t come home,” he says. The thought of Gansey coming home just so they could take more drives through the mountain in the Camaro is so tempting, it makes Ronan’s face crumple again.
“That doesn’t look very certain,” Gansey falters.
Stronger this time, “Don’t come home. Just.” Ronan wipes at his face again. “Everything was so close to just falling completely apart and I think it’s all just hitting me now. Like I had to choose between Adam’s life and saving the world. Who fucking put me in charge of saving the goddamn planet? And Jesus Gansey, I hesitated. I hesitated because I wasn’t sure I wanted the world if it didn’t have Adam in it.But then I knew that he would have never forgiven me if I had chosen his soul over everything else. I keep picturing an existence where even one thing had gone differently and we failed and—” He draws a deep breath in, forcing himself to breathe. Breathe. Breathe. “Why should I get so many second chances, you know? What have I done to deserve another chance?”
Gansey is sitting now, resting his chin on the heel of his hand. He says exactly what Ronan hopes he will.
“Because even though you hesitated, you made the right choice,” he says simply. “I don’t know what you’ve been going through. I expect it’ll take more than a single phone call to catch me up. But I do know that you are good, Ronan. You sometimes make mistakes, but you always do the right thing. You shoulder more responsibility than any other human has, and you do your best. I really admire that about you. I hope you know that.”
Another stray tear slides down the side of Ronan’s nose and onto the wooden step before him. The strong winter chill bites his damp cheeks and Ronan gnaws on his lip so hard he tastes blood. He hasn’t told Gansey everything. The look on Ganseys face tells Ronan he almost doesn’t want to ask.
“And…Adam?”
“He’s okay. Hennessey — my friend, another dreamer — she knew that…She saved him. He was lost, but she brought him back to himself. He’s exactly the same, Gansey. He’s alive.”
Gansey nods, words unable to cover his relief, but his jaw is tense. “What else? There’s something you need to say.”
If Declan can tell him without breaking apart, Ronan can tell Gansey.
“Matthew’s dead.”
A stunned breath whooshes out of Gansey. “What?” he whispers, voice cracking.
“There was an attack on a hospital. An explosion. He was there.”
Now Gansey is trying to be the strong one, but his eyes are wet and Ronan can see the news has pierced him down to old roots of this soul. He knows the feeling.
“Ronan, God. No wonder. I’m so sorry.” He presses his lips together, bolsters himself. “Is everyone else okay? Declan? Your friend Hennessy?”
“Yes.”
“And—and Bryde?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay.” There’s a beat of silence where Gansey’s audio wooshes with the thunder of wind. Blue isn’t telling her story anymore. “I’m coming home. I know Adam is probably going back to school soon and I don’t want you to be alone at the Barns.”
Ronan opens his mouth to argue, but Gansey cuts him off. “This is not up for debate.” Ronan hears the unspoken You’re my priority. You’re my highest priority and I need to be there with you.
“Okay,” he says again. “I’m going to go back to bed. I don’t want Adam to wake up alone.”
“Good. You both sleep in, okay?” Ronan nods, but his head feels like it’s filled with cotton. “Listen. I love you, man. You’re going to be okay.”
There were days when a sixteen-year-old Ronan would’ve rolled his eyes and told Gansey to go fuck himself. But this Ronan only runs a hand over the skin around his new tattoo and swallows the rock in his throat.
“Love you too, Gans. See you soon.”
Then he hangs up. Ronan sits there for a few seconds, unsure if his legs will carry him back upstairs if he stands.
A warm, comforting hand finds Ronan’s shoulder blade. He knows Adam’s touch without even turning around, leans into the steadfast comfort the simple gesture brings. The hand is joined by the other, sliding firmly over Ronan’s tense muscles and across his shoulders. Adam’s lips find his hair, a single press, then another, then another, until the kiss is at the nape of Ronan’s neck and he feels like he might start crying again.
Adam seems to sense this, because he pulls back and moves to Ronan’s front. He says nothing about Ronan’s bloodshot eyes, or the deep frown on his face. He doesn’t complain about how cold it is, or the fact that he isn’t wearing any socks. The lines of his face, beautiful in the daytime and the waking, are somehow even lovelier in the night’s darkness. His lips move around a single word, so quiet it’s lost in another strong breeze. But Ronan already knows what word it is. He’s whispering back the answer.
“Alter idem.”
*
They sleep until noon. Adam hasn’t moved much since he wrapped himself around Ronan in an attempt to warm him up. The cold aching that had seemed so unconquerable just a few hours ago is dull and distant now, replaced by the heat of Adam’s body. Chest against chest, pulse falling into sync. Ronan is awake, but it’s only a few minutes before Adam is nuzzling his dusty curls into the skin above Ronan’s heart.
“What are you thinking about so loudly?” Adam grumbles.
“If it’s so loud, you tell me,” Ronan answers, the words tangling in Adam’s hair.
Adam hums, the sound not too far off from another throaty sound Ronan has heard him make before. It turns his insides to something molten and soft.
“You’re thinking that you’re crazy about me. So crazy, that you’re going to write a poem in latin about my eyes. Or you’ll commission Hennessy to paint a nude portrait of me just so you can stare at it while I’m away, and people will think you’ve become a hermit, but really you’re just—”
“Alright asshole,” Ronan growls. He wraps both arms around him, rolling them until he’s hovering above Adam. The air between them is so thick, Ronan thinks he’d be able to stick his tongue out and taste the need there. Adam’s hands are above his head, pliant and trusting. Ronan makes no move, so Adam smiles. Then, the leash snaps and suddenly Ronan is kissing Adam within an inch of his life.
It’s not the first kiss they’ve had since Adam’s surprise visit to the Barns, but it’s the first one that Ronan doesn’t worry about.
There had been a kiss minutes after Ronan had woken up, something so tender and quick, Hennessy had teased them and called them virgins. Then there’d been a kiss goodnight their last evening in Boston, clumsy enough that Ronan felt shaky and out of practice. At the time, he’d been so desperate for another chance, but too outside of himself to feel steady enough to try it.
This kiss is the one with their names scribed into it with red, soulmate string. It tastes like kisses used to before Bryde, before Moderators, before the end of the world. It tastes like Ronan’s prayers for a boy on a bike and every long car ride Adam ever made to the Barns. It tastes different than a second secret, better than snowfall at the Barns, warmer than anything Ronan has ever felt.
And oh, Ronan loves him, loves him, loves him.
Adam’s legs fall open, cradling Ronan’s body with needy, tender care.
Just like that, Ronan feels like he’s been struck and rolls away. His chest is heaving, and though he wants nothing more than to press rewind and situate himself where Adam is hard and aching, he finds he cannot breathe.
What the fuck is wrong with him? He wants this. In the months of separation, in the days on the run, the only real thing Ronan wanted was to be with Adam — kissing him, holding him, making him feel more loved than anyone else in a 500 mile radius. Now that they’re here, why does Ronan feel like he’ll die if he touches Adam for too long like this?
It’s in the silent space Adam gives him that Ronan remembers they haven’t had sex in nearly a month. And it’s not the quantity of the separation that turns Ronan’s stomach sour — the piled up number of days — but the reasons . The way he’s changed. The way Adam’s changed. It feels like he’s been doused in ice water to realize that the man he loves — here, right now — is not the same man he’d last made love to. He doesn’t know what sex with this Adam looks like. He doesn’t know how it’s different because of him, either. Are they compatible? Will Adam still love what he sees when he strips Ronan bare, knowing what Ronan is?
But Adam doesn’t blame him for it—for any of it. Maybe he’s wondering the same thing. If he is, he’s coming to a much more optimistic conclusion. He runs his thumb under the dark circles beneath Ronan’s eyes and gives a gentle smile.
For a moment, Ronan thinks Adam is about to ask, Are you okay? Or Will you tell me when you’re ready to try again?
He’s relieved to find the question isn’t either of these things. It isn’t a question at all, really.
“You must be hungry.”
I am hungry, Ronan thinks. Hungry to be able to breathe in air and not feel it burn. Hungry to feel equal parts dreamer and dreamt in his own skin. Hungry for more time. Hungry for the memories of days when he and his brothers were all alive, were friends. Hungry for every trace of skin on Adam’s body and every square inch below it, as far deep into him as he’d let Ronan go.
Ronan answers honestly. “I’m starving.”
In the kitchen, Ronan flips store-bought eggs because the chickens stopped laying in the wintertime. Across the counter, Adam is sipping his coffee (black, two ice cubes, and a splash and a half of creamer — like an insane person), munching on some toast. Without the stress of sleeping boyfriends and lost souls, the color has started to return to his face and his cheeks are almost back to their usual fullness. Ronan still has plans to fatten him up with a make-up Thanksgiving feast and a full Christmas dinner.
Then, Ronan catches Adam looking at the watch on his wrist. He’s frozen, as if he just noticed it was there. Or, more accurately, as if he’d been so used to it being there in the first place that he’d forgotten it wasn’t supposed to be there. Because he’d taken it off when he tried to leave Ronan.
The eggs on the stove burned at the edges.
“I can…take it back. If you don’t want it,” Ronan hears himself say. This is a courtesy, something Ronan very seriously does not want to do. Surely Adam can tell this. Because if the watch had meant Remember me, think of me, Ronan does not want Adam to return that affection, those feelings, to sender. He does not want to move backwards with Adam. Not after everything.
“I want it,” Adam replies quietly, easily. There’s something hooking back all of what Adam wants to say, but it doesn’t have to do with Ronan. Adam is frustrated with himself.
Ronan wants to cross the room. To pull Adam’s hands into his pockets to warm them. To wrap himself so completely around Adam’s frame that Adam becomes incapable of holding any negative feeling for himself. To speak in clear, articulate words just how highly Ronan regards him, how he believes to his core that Adam is even more magical and beautiful than he is.
He does none of these things. But he does turn off the stove to keep the eggs from starting a campfire and gives his full attention to Adam.
“Do you remember in the sweetmetal sea when we were…communicating? Share our, uh, thoughts?” Adam asks. The pit of Ronan’s stomach sinks and suddenly, he isn’t hungry for breakfast anymore. Whatever Adam is trying to get at, it isn’t about bliss of being one soul, or the awe of simply knowing the truth.
Ronan nods, pressing his lips into a thin line to keep from frowning.
“You showed me that memory of the way you felt when I took the watch off and left. And I keep seeing it. Ronan, I’ve felt pain and despair, but…” I never wanted to make you feel that way, Ronan hears in the silence. “If it had been the other way around…”
If it had been the other way around, Adam’s trust would have been broken forever. If Ronan had left Adam sleeping, alone, in the dark, even a shared swim in the sweetmetal sea wouldn’t have been enough to repair the betrayal.
“But you didn’t leave. You came back. I knew every time you came back,” Ronan says. “We already apologized and forgave each other.”
“But you still think there’s a chance I’ll return this to you, like I don’t know what it means.” Adam holds up his wrist. Ronan sees his reflection in the clear glass, has to look away. “I do know what it means. I’m not giving it back.”
There had been a time just four months ago when Ronan would have tried desperately to believe him. Then, he would’ve come to the conclusion that Adam believed his own words for now, and Ronan just had to be thankful for what he had before he lost it.
Now, Ronan believes it, because he is well acquainted with the truth and he is even better acquainted with Adam. He loves both.
“Okay,” says Ronan finally. “Don’t give it back. Come here instead.”
He opens his arms and Adam falls into them. He smells like their bed and that strange, watered down coffee concoction he likes, and for the first time in several hours, Ronan feels like he can breathe again.
Adam snuggles further into Ronan, sliding his hands down into the waist of Ronan’s pants so they can rest on the dip before his ass swells. It sends a bolt of electricity from the base of Ronan’s spine to the rest of his body. And in that moment, they are Ronan-and-Adam who survived the end of the world. But they are also Ronan-and-Adam who slow danced on Ronan’s birthday. They are Ronan-and-Adam who plan to fight tooth and nail for this Ronan-and-Adam thing they have. They are each other’s second self.
“I kinda miss that weird sweetmetal communication thing we did,” Adam mumbles into Ronan’s neck. His breath is damp and hot where Ronan is sensitive, so he can only respond after a few moments of pulling himself together. He wants Adam’s breath, his feelings, his thoughts everywhere. Just the way it had been.
“Yeah,” Ronan concurs, drawing a finger up Adam’s spine. “Me too.”
*
Declan, the twins, and Carmen arrive as planned for dinner time. The first thing Ronan feels when they drop their luggage in the entryway is regret that he and Adam never did take advantage of having the house to themselves. But they have time. They have years. An eternity, if their souls wind up in the same place.
Ronan is too busy mourning the solitude to notice the way Declan drops his last bag and marches toward him. Ronan is engulfed in the second brotherly hug he’s had in the last seventy-two hours, which is two more than he’s had in the last five years.
“Don’t mind him,” Jordan says, hanging up her coat and scarf. The edges around each of her words are softer than the ones around Hennessy’s. It makes it easier to tell them apart. “He spiraled on the car ride down. Full on mental collapse. I think he very nearly convinced himself that you were still asleep and that he’d hallucinated the last three days.”
Ronan digs his fingers further into Declan, then. He can’t blame his brother for the disbelief. There’s been a fair share in his own chest.
“Hi Deklo,” Ronan murmurs, patting his brother hard on the shoulder. Declan mumbles something about how next time, he’s flying down. But he doesn’t let Ronan go.
“Actually, I think I’m the one who’s hallucinating,” says a familiar voice in the doorway.
Ronan jolts back and there is Richard Campbell Gansey III, beautiful and familiar and so much older than Ronan remembered him being. Maybe it’s the travel, maybe it’s the sun, maybe it’s living without fear of death. Beside him is Blue Sargeant, holding onto Gansey’s shoulder as she kicks snow off her heels.
“My god, Gans, no one asked you,” she says. Then she’s sliding across the hardwood in her fuzzy socks into a hug of her own. Ronan catches her before she can glide right into the Christmas tree he and Adam spent the day putting up, hoisting her up so she can place the obligatory kiss on his cheek. Gansey falls to his other side, kissing his other cheek, creating a very misshapan Ronan sandwich. Blue reaches her hand for Adam, who rolls his eyes and joins the pile. And Ronan…Ronan holds on as tight as he can.
Because there’s a lot that’s gone wrong over the last several days, weeks, months. During the moments he remembers Matthew, he feels so desperate for a redo that he wonders if a person can physically cut themselves on grief.
But a lot has gone right too. And really? He’s just thankful his friends are home.
*
Every time there’s a gathering at the Barns, the group just gets stranger and stranger. Three days after the world almost ended, the Barns is hosting its strangest group yet.
There’s Carmen, the woman who tried multiple times to kill, then save Ronan. She’s sitting mulled wine they picked up in Henrietta on the way in, counting the number of trees covered in snow she can see from the window. She does not know what family looks like anymore, but Hennessy says she’s willing to learn with her.
There’s Gansey and Blue, napping on the loveseat across from the fireplace.
There’s Hennessy at Carmen’s side. Ronan found her one of his old sketchbooks, and it sits in her lap like it had been destined to be there since he dreamt it up in middle school. Her eyes open and close as she sketches what the lace looked like before the memory is erased from unpleasant history forever.
There’s Jordan, sitting on the ground in front of the coffee table looking through the old Lynch photo album. She doesn’t say anything about how most of the pictures are of Matthew, or how the most creative captions are written in Niall’s script next to pictures of Ronan. She only runs her finger delicately over images of Declan, smiles, and says, “My, how dauntless you look.”
There’s Declan beside her, careful not to look at the album for fear he’ll see a picture of Matthew that breaks through his careful resolve. Instead, he lays his head on her shoulder, rubbing her left ring finger, trying to imagine the ring he wants to buy her.
There’s Adam in Ronan’s lap. He’s halfway through some book on government intelligence and how it can aid American social work, undisturbed by Jordan’s chuckling or Gansey’s snoring.
There’s Ronan carding his fingers through Adam’s hair, also trying not to think about Matthew. Or the ornaments they’d put on the tree that day that Matthew had made in school. Or Matthew’s portrait on the banister. Ronan has to close his eyes.
Then, there’s Matthew, coming in the back door as if he had only been out for groceries and not presumed dead.
Declan sees him first, a broken sort of wail falling out of his lips. It’s enough to make Ronan open his eyes, before a shattered cry of his own has interrupted Matthew saying, “Hey, I’m home.”
No one moves. Matthew’s shoulders droop.
“I walked,” he says simply.
Adam moves out of the way just in time to avoid being flung on the floor as Ronan practically tackles Matthew to the ground. His hold around Matthew’s back is crushing, and it doesn’t matter that he’s in front of a woman who tried to kill him or his brother’s girlfriend — he’s weeping. Declan comes to the back side of Ronan where Matthew’s face is squished up over Ronan’s shoulder. He twists his fingers into Matthew’s hair and presses his lips to his forehead.
Their knees hit the ground in an unattractive heap, but Ronan feels like he’s finally learned to breathe on his own and the air is fresh, fresh, fresh.
There’s questions about Bryde, questions about where Matthew has been, apologies, more tears. Then Blue Sargeant is wiping her eyes on the sleeves on her sweater and caressing the side of Matthew’s face.
“Well, Matty, are you hungry? There are leftovers.”
Matthew practically sprints to the kitchen and it’s Dinner 2.0. Matthew eats two helpings of leftovers and gets to have as much dessert as he wants. Declan doesn’t stop him from talking with his mouth full. Ronan doesn’t shrug him off when he insists on eating with one arm hooked through his. All that matters is Matthew came home.
Matthew came home, Matthew came home, Matthew came home.
*
When the commotion has ended, Ronan does the dishes, makes sure everyone has enough blankets, then slips out the back door. He can feel Adam’s gaze on him, even as the screen door screeches to a close. But he needs to get out of the house and if Adam wants to come, then Adam will follow. He always does.
The frost stiff grass cracks beneath his feet. Cold seeps in through the soles of his boots, but the sensation is so grounding that it takes everything in Ronan to stop from stripping his coat off and lying in the dirt. He can’t remember when he began to feel numb, didn’t even realize how dazed he’d become, until it began to melt away.
A few paces behind, the grass crunches as another person joins him in the middle of his empty field.
Ronan turns to Adam, blue eyes bright and crystalline. He’s grinning so hard his cheeks hurt, so he grins some more. There’s laughter teeming at his lips, like a boiling pot about to spill over. Through the patchy moonlight, Adam raises a brow.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Post tenebras lux,” Ronan says. And then he does laugh. He laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs, because there has to be a sound for all this overwhelming joy and it can’t be tears. He’s cried enough.
It ends up being a failed effort, because once Adam joins in the laughter, they’re both doubled over in the field, wiping tears from their eyes. Hands clutch into stomachs, lungs heave in desperation to get ahead of the laughter, but they can’t stop. In the mess, their knees knock together and they tumble into the snowy mud. Ronan doesn’t care if they look crazy from the house window. He wants to live in this moment as long as he can — he doesn’t think he’s ever been so happy in his life.
Eventually, the laughter dies down but the joy doesn’t. Ronan reaches for Adam, but finds that Adam is already reaching for him. They embrace — this new Adam, this new Ronan. They fit so perfectly together, it was a wonder Ronan ever doubted they would.
“I don’t think I’ve ever believed until now that I had the rest of my life ahead of me, you know?” he admits, swaying blissfully in Adam’s arms. “Especially when Glendower ended. Especially when the nightwash started. I was so angry and so lonely because I had it in my head that I had like, a year left. And a part of me was holding out for the future we talked about, but the more it crumbled about, the more I just resigned myself to the fact that I’d never be happy. No matter how hard I tried.”
“And now?” Adam whispers.
“And now I’m so fucking happy I feel like I’m gonna puke rainbows.”
Adam groans. “Ugh, please don’t.” He presses a kiss to the underside of Ronan’s jaw, lingering longer than he probably planned to. “I know the feeling. When I lost my hearing and I left home, it felt like all my efforts were just worthless. But then someone helped me find an apartment, and then someone paid my rent, and I was on my feet again. But the best part was, I got to find out what it felt like to fall in love. That’s when I knew I could be happy.” This time he kissed Ronan’s mouth. “Now I get to help return the favor. But Ronan, you deserve to be happy, because you’ve worked for it. Those people in that house wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you.”
For the first time, Ronan feels himself believing it. Just a little.
“Okay,” he says.
Is it normal, he wonders, to adore a person so much? To feel your own blood, equal parts red and longing? It’s making his skin itch to be touched and his soul press hard against his ribs, trying an escape. But god, the ache is so nice. He wants more. He wants to feel Adam under his skin.
He wants Adam to touch him.
Across the field, the wind rustles the treetops into a quiet shhh noise. The apples of Adam’s cheek had turned bright red from the wintry bite. Ronan’s own are stinging. He tangles their fingers together in the cold dirt.
“Let’s go to bed,” he says, love in every vowel and consonant.
“We should probably take a hot shower. We’re filthy,” Adam laughs.
“Okay,” Ronan agrees. “We’ll take a shower and then we’ll go to bed.”
Now Adam’s face is red for a different reason. His eyes dart to Ronan’s chapped lips, then back up to his eyes. He doesn’t speak — only stands up, pulls Ronan up after him, and leads him into the house.
The house is quiet in a way only Springer’s Falls can be as the extended Lynch family finds some well deserved rest. Ronan’s heart tugs hard when Adam navigates the house, successfully avoiding every creaky floorboard, every squeaky stair. He belongs here, Ronan’s heart sings. He’s always coming back. This is his home. He belongs here.
When the bathroom door clicks locked, Adam undresses Ronan in the dark. He’s done this dozens of times — in bright summer morning light, in the dusky orange of the sunset, and in the blackness of their room. His movements are confident and faultless as Ronan’s shirt drops to the floor, then his pants, then his boxers. Adam’s touch is running up and down the length of Ronan’s strong thighs, dangerously close to where Ronan wants him. Adam reaches for him, ready to take him into his mouth, but Ronan drags him up by the chin. They’re eye to eye now, chests heaving.
“You next,” Ronan murmurs, but he’s already tugging Adam’s shirt over his head. He takes his time, the way people unwrap Christmas presents when they know something fragile is waiting for them. His hands slide flat across Adam’s ribs and he can feel the racing of his heart underneath. His breaths come out in hot puffs against Adam’s bare shoulder. “Do you know that when I first saw you, I asked for divine intervention?”
A shiver trails through Adam, but he laughs. “You what?”
“You became the subject of many, many desperate prayers” Ronan says, trailing his lips across Adam’s collarbone and up his neck. “Tell me, Parrish, do you think they were answered?”
This time it’s Adam tugging Ronan by the jaw, pulling him into a sloppy kiss that’s all groans and tongue.
“Not sure,” Adam replies, breathless. “But I want to give you everything, just to be sure.”
He turns on the water almost as hot as it will go and pulls them both under the steaming spray. Ronan lets Adam fuck his hand until he’s gasping and teetering on a dangerous edge, switching out Adam’s painfully hard cock for a bar of soap. Adam sags against the tile with a frustrated moan, though he leans into Ronan as he runs the soap up and down his back.
For once, Ronan can take his time. They had fucked slow before, made love so tenderly it would’ve made Cupid cry. But in all those other instances, there’d been a quiet thought in his mind that he was taking his time because one day, he’d run out of it.
Now they have forever.
When they’re bare, under the quilts they woke up in that morning, Ronan feels that soul-deep longing under his skin once more. Adam is too far, he thinks. There’s barely an inch between them and they’re too far apart.
“Touch me,” Ronan begs. Laughter trickles out of Adam because he already is touching him — up and down his legs, along his sides, across the swell of his ass. But Ronan can’t think straight, can’t hold onto words that are more than just mush in his mouth. “God, don’t stop touching me. Adam, please. ”
Adam takes Ronan into his hand, giving a few perfect tugs. It feels unbearably good. It feels like Ronan is possibly on the verge of death. It feels like it isn’t nearly enough.
With a snarl, Ronan fills his hands with Adam’s bare ass and tugs him into his lap. Caught off guard, Adam falls forward, chest to chest — just as they had been that morning. Ronan catches Adam’s mouth, paying him back tenfold for the filthy kiss he’d gotten earlier. How could he ever want anyone other than Adam Parrish? How could anyone in the world want someone who isn’t Adam Parrish? Each bite of lips in teeth is a staked claim, tossed back and forth between them until the message is unmistakable: I am yours, you are mine, I am yours, you are mine.
The weight of Adam laying across him is still not enough. Ronan’s fingers tangle in the hand Adam is holding the back of his neck with, guiding it down between his legs. Adam mistakes the gesture, almost wrapping his beautiful hand around Ronan’s weeping dick. But Ronan shifts the lower, making Adam drop his face into Ronan’s chest.
“God, yes. Whatever you want. Ronan, whatever you want. Ronan, Ronan, Ronan.”
They work in tandem — Ronan pulling one of his pillows to rest beneath his hips, Adam leaning over to the bedside drawer for a condom and the bottle of lube.
Their foreheads are pressed tight together when Adam slips the first finger inside Ronan. The sensation is good, like the first piece of Adam’s being has begun to meld into him. The second finger brings some bite with it — it’s been too long since Ronan has had the privacy to do this himself. Too long since Adam has been around to help him. But eventually the muscle gives, and with the last finger, Ronan is writhing and ready.
Ronan thinks there’s rustling as Adam puts the condom on and gives himself a few strong, lubed strokes, but he can barely focus over the roaring in his ears. Everything is Adam, Adam, Adam. He wonders if this is what it feels like to drown. To let your body go lax and slip deeper under a force that won’t let you breathe. If it is, it’s an awfully good way to go.
Adam is lined up into place — one arm propped up next to Ronan’s head, the other guiding himself at the right angle. But before he can drift forward, Ronan grabs his cheeks.
He’s overwhelmed, he thinks. If he doesn’t say this, he’ll start to cry. Or maybe he’ll cry either way.
“I love you,” Ronan gasps. The tingling longing under his skin is finally breaking out. “I love you so much, Adam Parrish. Tamquam alter idem and all that shit, okay? I really love you.”
With a single push, Adam presses in. Ronan bites his knuckles to keep from keening, but Adam brushes the hand away and kisses him.
“I love you too, weirdo.”
Then he’s moving slow and hard. What a fucking miracle, Ronan thinks, that this is all his. He gets to have this . What a miracle that he’s in Adam’s arms and he gets to just be Ronan Lynch. Not the Greywaren, not the Zed responsible for the end of the world, not the dreamer who brought so much good and bad into existence. Just Adam’s Ronan.
Adam fucks Ronan with precision Ronan forget he had. But how could he have forgotten? Adam is studious about the things he likes. And this? This might’ve been one of Adam’s favorite things to learn.
He tugs Ronan’s knee up, changing the angle, immediately hitting the spot that makes Ronan forget he’s a person. With Adam like this, he’s just energy of a man, not unlike the Lace, only purer and safer. Adam is muttering with each push forward. Something about how fucking beautiful you are, Ronan Lynch. I just can’t get over how much I love seeing you like this, gasping and begging for it. You’ll always let me have you like this, won’t you? Shit fucking damn.
He must be getting close, because he reaches down and clasps his hand tight over Ronan’s cock. Ronan gasps, fisting his hands into the sheets and letting himself give in to every last burst of pleasure as it swells and swells and finally crests over. Adam muffles Ronan’s broken cry with his mouth, lips on lips for the sake of contact, but too far gone for a real kiss. Ronan wraps his legs tight around Adam’s ass, holding him in place and they both spend themselves.
Ronan doesn’t want Adam to move, but he’s too sensitive to lay like this forever. Adam seems to sense this and carefully pulls himself away. He shifts to the edge of the bed to dispose of the condom, but Ronan doesn’t let him get very far.
“I’m just going to get a washcloth,” Adam says, pressing his lips to Ronan’s forehead.
It’s only when the door clicks shut behind Adam that Ronan covers his face with his hands and ponders how supremely fucked he is. But when Adam returns with a smile and a towel, Ronan opens his arms and decides he doesn’t want it any other way.
*
According to the watch on Adam’s wrist, it’s 3:37AM. Adam is fast asleep and naked pressed up against Ronan. It’s convenient, Ronan thinks, that he found a life partner who looks so pretty when he sleeps. Otherwise being an insomniac would be pretty boring.
Only, this isn’t one of the sleepless nights. Up until about two minutes ago, Ronan had been sleeping just as peacefully as Adam. There were dreams, of what though, he can’t quite remember. All he does know is that when he woke, there was a thin gold ring in his hand. Somehow, even in the dark, Ronan knows that the etchings he feels on the surface are mountains and trees — a recall to this place, to the Blue Ridge, to Cabeswater, to Lindenmere, to the Forest that dreamt him.
It’s too early to give it to Adam yet, though. He still has three and a half years of college, and after that, who knew? But he’d give it to Adam — someday.
Ronan slipped out of bed, just as he had the night before. Only this time, it’s to hide the ring away in a drawer of his father’s clothes.
When he returns to bed, Adam stirs.
“You alright?” he rasps, running a hand over Ronan’s chest.
“Yeah,” Ronan says truthfully. “I’m alright.”