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Adam’s internal body clock wakes him just before dawn. It wakes him just as the heavy purples of night dissolve to a softer lilac, a gold hue of pink and orange following suit over the distant, looming silhouette of mountains hiding the returning sun.
Adam always forgets how quiet it is at the Barns in the morning, how quiet it is to be the only thing awake in this fantastical pocket of eternal sleep. In that moment, it’s only the birds rehearsing their morning chorus outside the window, migrants from the world outside of Niall Lynch’s dreams, that remind him such another world exists at all.
Adam shifts slightly beneath the heavy, homey comfort of the patchwork quilt twisted around him, pulling away layers of throws and afghans to roll onto his hip and glance over the slumbering heap next to him at the electric clock-face.
5:15 am.
He’d be rising up from his mattress at St. Agnes on any other morning. He’d be slumping to his bathroom, cramped in its half-a-person occupancy limit, the frayed ends of his sweatpants catching in the loose floorboards. He’d be looking himself over in the mirror above the sink, observing the water spots and cracked corners with the useless distain of the just-awaken. He’d be pulling his sleep shirt over his shoulders and stepping under the cold spray of water, counting minutes like dollar signs, switching off the tap after he'd gone through what he remembers of his wallet, what he can guess of the loose change in the back pocket of his coveralls, or what he might find under the passenger seat of his car.
Adam conducts the routine in his head, imagines himself fishing in his refrigerator for milk that expired the day before and in his cupboards for cereal he doesn’t have. When he closes his eyes, he can almost hear the sound of his radiator rattling, coughing up the same dollar signs he’d been counting in the shower, counting in his sleep like sheep.
Opening his eyes again, Adam breathes a long breath and looks at the clock-face again.
The numbers are briefly hidden from his view by the rising chest lying next to him. It’s only with a gentle exhale, chest falling with the motion that Adam can read the numbers again, a bright and assaulting red in the otherwise shadowed room.
5:17 am.
Blinking drowsy spots from the corners of his eyes, Adam allows his eyes to drift from the clock-face to the boy shifting slightly beside him, bare-chested and sleep-warm under the almost comical number of blankets like a dragon beneath its hoard.
Dawn breaks over Ronan Lynch like Adam imagines waves would crash over a shore if he’d ever seen them do so in person. Tentative sunlight washes through the curtains, collapses over the sharp edges of his jaw and cheekbones before receding as brisk, morning wind imitates the tides. Adam watches as the curtains dance, the wind its guiding partner. The sea and the moon.
Adam wonders which he is. Which Ronan is. The sea or the moon.
Ronan hasn’t said he sleeps better next to Adam. But Ronan doesn’t say much of anything that isn’t antagonizing, or combative, or generally shitty anyway.
Adam hasn’t said he sleeps worse. But Adam doesn’t mind the distraction of a warm body, of hands and mouths postponing their goodnights as much as he lets on anyway.
Adam toes between Ronan’s ankles, calf sliding against calf until they’re slotted together; a boyish puzzle for two puzzling boys.
Ronan is warm and Adam doesn’t think he’s ever experienced the other as anything but. Even now, in the tepid morning, Ronan still embodies the aftermath of last night’s inferno, burning both boys out to glowing embers, sweat-slick and panting curses like prayers against each other’s skin.
While the rest of Ronan lies spread out, indolent and princely, Adam notices the fingers of his right hand curled in a loose fist over his chest just over his heart. Curious, Adam shifts closer, chin settled between the valley of two ribs. His fingers curl against Ronan’s, prying them open to find tiny, impossible flower petals fluttering between his knuckles. They’re blue, or that’s the color Adam compromises on between the sensical part of his brain and the outlying knowledge that blue is simply an umbrella term for the strange and magical hue born in Ronan’s imagination.
Adam’s breath rustles the petals, dozens of them tumbling over each other across the lean, colored scape of Ronan’s breastbone. It’s as Adam settles back into the crook of Ronan’s arm, tracing idle patterns through the petals, that Ronan wakes with a heavy surge of his chest and deep inhale of breath, adjusting to bury his nose in Adam’s hair, exhaling between the uneven tangle of his bed-head.
“You got petals everywhere.” Adam says, watching the petals flutter from Ronan’s chest to the shadowed crevice between them. He feels the other’s brow furrow against the top of his head as the words penetrate, Ronan lifting his head to observe this claim with a frown already in place.
“Ah, shit.” He murmurs, the words fumbling between his lips as he sits up, tossing the blankets briefly to the side to sweep the petals from the mattress and himself onto the floor with the careless grace of someone who knows they won’t be the one to eventually clean them up.
Adam welcomes to heavy warmth of the blankets as they’re reapplied, Ronan following like one of them as he lays himself over Adam, chest to chest, knees between knees. Adam loops his arms around Ronan’s neck, fingers tracing over each tendril of tattoo that curls around his nape. Ronan allows himself to be pulled down, lips finding Adam’s pulse where it beats a lazy, morning rhythm.
“Why the hell are you awake?” Ronan groans into Adam’s neck, nosing at the bend where Adam’s neck meets his shoulder, “Did I not tire you out enough last night?” Adam lets out a short breath of laughter and Ronan lifts his head with a slightly affronted expression, “Alright, Parrish. Let me wake the fuck up first—“
“I’m always awake at this time.” Adam interrupts, an amused smile still playing on his lips. He lifts his hands to cup the base of Ronan’s skull in his hands, “What did you dream about?” He asks suddenly, fingernails drawing figure eights at the buzzed edge of Ronan’s hairline. Ronan drops his head to hum against a small cluster of freckles near the hinge of Adam’s jaw.
“Cabeswater.” Ronan murmurs eventually, following each freckles like an individual clue to the location of Adam’s mouth, “Matthew and I were putting the flowers in mom’s hair. Like when we were kids.” His lips finally make purchase on Adam’s, kissing him with the lack of urgency he can only seem to find at the break of dawn, when everything is quiet and dark and Adam is the realest thing in his world.
“Your morning breath is awful.” Adam comments, crinkling his nose as Ronan acknowledges said comment by blowing a puff of the offending odor over Adam’s face until the other is swatting a hand at him, “God. Ronan, stop. You’re awful.”
“From sucking you off all night, babe.” Ronan counters, characteristically vulgar even before the rest of him has made a conscious appearance, “And anyway, you’re just as guilty.”
“Of sucking you off or the morning breath?”
“Both.” Ronan replies, catching Adam’s bottom lip between his again, Adam opening his mouth to glide his tongue against the back of Ronan’s teeth, swallowing humming breaths like the white walls around them swallow the sunlight as it steadily fills the room.
“You can go back to sleep, you know.” Adam says, thumbing under the cutting edge of Ronan’s cheekbones, moving to the other’s jawline as Ronan bends to kiss a line down Adam's sternum, settling where the cliff of Adam’s ribs drops to the valley of his stomach.
“And leave you to your own devices in this big ass house?” Ronan asks, lifting an eyebrow, “I don’t think so.”
“Right. I forgot that I’m actually a dog and will go chew on the furniture and sift through the garbage if you leave me alone for two seconds.” Adam scoffs, rolling his eyes as Ronan grins and slides up Adam’s body to plant a last, quick kiss on his lips before rolling off the side of the bed and standing to his feet.
Adam sits up, watching as Ronan bends to rifle through the bottom drawer of the dresser, fishing out two pairs of sweatpants. He tosses a navy pair at Adam’s face while he keeps the grey for himself, slipping them on just above his hipbones.
“C’mon. Matthew keeps poptarts in the cupboard above the oven and he doesn’t know I know.” Ronan says as Adam stands and slips one leg after another into the sweatpants only for Ronan to hook his finger in the waistband and pull them swiftly down to his ankles on his way around the foot of the bed to the door.
Adam makes a noise of indignation, bending to pull them up again with one hand as the other pushes Ronan away, the other laughing wickedly as he leans against the door jamb.
“Had to get one last look.” Ronan admits, looking at him with and open-mouthed grin threatening more laughter as Adam stares him down with a challenge, though his expression eventually breaks to match Ronan’s grin.
“Are the poptarts strawberry flavored?” Adam asked, slipping past him into the hall, making a quick grab at Ronan’s ass in retribution. Ronan sounds an affronted exclamation, reaching too slow to repay the action, and the two of them stumble out of the room and into the hall in a tussle of limbs.
“God, no.” Ronan replies when he has Adam’s hips pinned against the wooden banister above the stairs, scrunching his nose as if the suggestion has personally offended him, “They’re smores flavored. Only heathens like strawberry.”
“Blue likes the strawberry flavored ones.”
“You say that like it doesn’t prove my point.”
Adam’s laugh startles out of him, short and sweet, before he reaches forward to pinch Ronan swiftly in the sides. The other boy lets out a surprised yelp, leaving enough room for Adam to slip out from beneath his hips and start down the stairs two at a time. Ronan, grinning and overflowing with the love of this game of theirs, spins away from the banister, leaping down after him.
5:48 am.
Ronan catches Adam at the bottom of the stairs, arms slung around the other’s waist from behind. The pulse in Adam’s neck, thrown back as Ronan’s fingers crawl up his sides, and the beat of Ronan’s heart against Adam’s back, thrill in their wakefulness.
5:49 am.
Alive and apart from the dream things in this imagined world. Awake enough for them all.