Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Categories:
Fandom:
Relationships:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Collections:
My favorites
Stats:
Published:
2015-09-12
Completed:
2016-04-25
Words:
89,446
Chapters:
6/6
Comments:
378
Kudos:
3,538
Bookmarks:
1,050
Hits:
61,971

Time Isn't Real (but you're a constant)

Summary:

"Time is what prevents everything from happening at once." - Albert Einstein.

Adam wakes up in the future, learns a few things about himself, about time, and about his priorities. But mostly he just wishes that Time was doing it's job better.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter Text

Adam doesn’t dream often. He doesn’t dream pleasantly when he does. Sometimes he envies Ronan his living dreams, before his mind flashes back to memories of night terrors that can kill you in the real world. Sometimes, the flash memories of a large shape looming over him doesn’t seem so bad in comparison.

If he has more conventional dreams, of standing in front of a classroom in his boxers or of alligators that fly into the sunset, he can’t remember them.

Tonight, he dreams. Persephone stands in front of him, her hair a silver waterfall down her back. She stands in front of an old fashioned captain’s wheel, handles jutting out all around the rim, but the center is a clock. It’s the dull flatness of a school clock, perfectly marked and evenly spaced. Persephone wears a decadent evening gown, tip to toe white sequins. She smiles big and fake, like he never saw Persephone smile in real life. She gestures at the wheel like Vana White, like he saw on countless reruns of Wheel of Fortune, splashing bright colors onto the walls of their trailer while bottle after bottle fell to the floor.

Persephone flourishes at the wheel, then gives it a spin. He can’t look away from the way the wheel turns and turns and turns. It sucks him in, a spinning void of clock and wheel and darkness. Then the hands on the clock melt like a Dali painting and Adam is the one spinning. He spins around and around and Persephone is everywhere in her white evening gown, the sequins throwing off light like a disco ball. She tries to press a card into his hands as he spins. Wheel of Fortune. Persephone laughs and laughs and laughs.

Adam wakes up with a gasp, sitting bolt upright in bed. He sucks in breath like he’s drowning, trying to force air into lungs that feel weak and torn. He feels like he’s been running for miles, and he can’t get enough air. Persephone’s, dream Persephone’s, laugh rings in his ears.

It takes a moment to get his breathing to slow down, and another minute of counting slow breaths before his heart rate goes back to normal. Something is off, something is wrong, but sleep is sucking him back. When his head hits the pillow again, he thinks he hears someone else breathing. But he is so warm, and the bed is so soft. It must be the wind. And then he is asleep.

It’s the sun that wakes Adam up next, shining warm rays onto his eyes. He drifts for a moment, luxuring in an unusual sense of comfort. His attic room is always too hot or too cold, depending on the season, and he can’t remember his twin mattress ever feeling this soft.

Then, slowly, that sense of wrongness hits him again, creeping in on the edge of his consciousness, edging out the sleep fog in his brain. His bed shouldn’t be this soft. The light is usually brighter than this. Someone is breathing next to him. Someone is breathing next to him. Adam’s eyes shoot open. Ronan is sleeping next to him. Adam scrambles back, and is snagged by Ronan’s arm, resting across his stomach.

Adam yanks back and almost falls out of the bed. His heart is racing again. What happened last night? He racks his mind and comes up with studying. Latin conjugations and calculus homework. Ronan hadn’t even stopped by St. Agnes. No alcohol, no drugs. Nothing that could explain Ronan Lynch, shirtless in his bed.

Except. Except, as Adam looks around, it becomes more than clear that this is not his room. It’s not any room he knows, not Monmouth Manufacturing or even 300 Fox Way. It’s light and open and airy in a way that makes him think of the Barns. Except, of course, that they haven’t been to the Barns in weeks.

He reaches for Ronan’s shoulder and shakes him. Ronan is sleep-warm and soft skin under his hand. Adam ignores it. “Ronan,” he hisses. “Wake up! Something is wrong.” Cabeswater, he thinks. It has to be. Teleportation, or memory loss or dream landscape. It makes blood rish to his face to think that this could be a dream Cabeswater would put him in, in a soft bed, clutched close to Ronan’s chest, but it’s not- well. It’s not out of the question. It’s not, precisely, something that he’s never thought about.

He almost laughs. Most teens wake up with no memory and worrie about alcohol. He worries about magical sentient forests.

“Lynch!” He shakes Ronan’s shoulder.

“Fuck off, Adam,” Ronan bats at Adam’s hand sleepily, and the sound of his name on Ronan’s lips, sleep muddled and affectionate, makes him pause for a second.

Just a second though. “Get up, you asshole,” Adam snaps. “Something is wrong.” He pulls, rolling Ronan towards him. Ronan flings an arm up to cover his face and Adam is momentarily arrested by the span of muscles over his chest, in his arm. Ronan isn’t wearing his leather bands. It seems terribly important.

“Go away,” Ronan groans. Despite his urgency, Adam is oddly charmed by this sleepy Ronan. He’s only ever seen him snap awake, like a rubberband pulled too tight. This Ronan is unknown and soft. Then he is caught up again in the rush of what, why, how, and he shoves at Ronan’s arm. “Oh my god, this is your first day off in six months, can’t it wait?” Ronan turns his head to bury it in the pillow under him.

“Get the fuck up, Lynch, something is really wrong.”

Ronan rolls his head lazily to look at Adam. Their eyes meet. For a moment, they both stare. Then Ronan recoils, “Holy motherfucking Jesus Christ!" He sits upright and back so fast he almost smashes his skull on the headboard. Adam can relate.

The man is clearly Ronan, but he’s not the Ronan Adam knows. His hair is grown out, for one. Not much, not enough to tell from the back, but it curls ever so slightly on the top of his head, still shaved in the back and the sides. Undercut, Adam thinks, with the distant part of his mind that is still recording facts. There are unfamiliar lines on Ronan’s face, laughter and care and time carved into his skin. His stubble is more than the light shadow he grows to piss Gansey off but creeps something that could almost be called a beard. Unfamilar tattoos curl around his arm, the one that had been hidden under his body. He is, unmistakably, an adult. Not in the aged, tired way he sometimes seems too grown up for his skin, but in an unshakable way, marked by crows feet and laugh lines.

“What is happening?” Adam asks, and his voice is weak. Ronan reaches out with one hand, then pulls back before making contact.

“Parrish?” Ronan asks, like he can’t quite believe what he is seeing.

“Who else would I be?” Adam snaps, and Ronan’s face goes closed. He stands up, throwing the blanket off him as he goes. Adam goes furiously red and tries to pretend that he’s not when he sees that Ronan is naked. There are more unfamiliar tattoos on Ronan’s legs and, Adam goes even more red, on his ass. Adam averts his eyes before he can see what they are.

“Adam?” Ronan calls, sticking his head into the open doorway across the room. Tiled floors. Adam is willing to put money on bathroom.

“I’m right here.”

“Not you,” Ronan says shortly. He calls again, pulling the bedroom door open. “Adam?”

“Who else then?” he grits out. His interest in Ronan being naked is starting to fade, replaced with the familiar rush of irritation.

“Adam,” Ronan says nonsensically, still not looking at him. He pads out into the hall, completely unconcerned with his own nakedness. Adam bites his lip to keep from screaming and follows him.

“I’m right here!” he says again. Ronan ignores him, wandering around house, for it is a house, Adam can see that now. Not the Barns though. Every now and then, Ronan will call for him again, and Adam is seriously debating punching him. He finally loses his temper when Ronan checks, off all things, a cell phone.

Adam walks up and yanks it out of his hands. “Look at me, you colossal asshole.”

Ronan just looks at him, coolly amused. His eyes are still distant and Adam wants to push and push until Ronan gives him that seared to the bone look Adam has become accustomed to. Then Ronan gives him a slow once over, head to toes. Adam is abruptly aware of his ratty, faded boxers and his sleep shirt with the holes in the shoulder and hem. He feels naked, and he has to clench his hands at his side to stop from covering himself. Ronan, the Ronan he knows, has seen him like this a hundred times and never had any complaints.

“I’m looking,” Ronan drawls, slow as honey and sarcastic as hell. Adam wants to punch him. There is something different about him. More than the hair and the tattoos and the age. Something sure. Adam crosses his arms across his chest. There is nothing sure about Adam himself, and he has never been more aware of it.

“Do you know what is happening?” he asks.

Ronan glances down at his phone, then back up. He laughs ruefully. “Adam isn’t here.” Adam opens his mouth to snap, to yell, something, and Ronan cuts him off. “Not you. Other you. Future you.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Maybe. Probably.”

“What,” Adam says slowly, “the fuck.”

Ronan shakes his head. “Would you believe I totally forgot about it? I bet Adam had it marked in his calendar, that fucking asshole.”

“Forgot about what?” Adam snaps, reaching the end of his patience.

Ronan gives him a look. It’s still shuttered, still distant, but at least now Adam sees something like affection. “It’s 2025. Welcome to your future, Parrish.”

 


 

It feels surreal, Adam sitting at the kitchen table, head in his hands, trying to take deep breaths while Ronan makes pancakes in sweatpants that slip distracting low on his hips.

“Syrup?” Ronan asks shortly, practically dropping the plate in front of Adam. In contrast to his tone, there is a whipped cream smiley face on the top pancake and it makes Adam smile.

“Yeah. Thanks.” He nudges the pancakes a few times with his fork, watching as the whipped cream slowly melts into the heat of the pancakes. “Are we going to talk about this?”

Ronan slides a jar of peanut butter over to him, and sits down. “Eat your damn breakfast.”

Adam slowly spreads peanut butter over his pancakes, trying not to stare too obviously. Ronan makes no such attempt, taking slow measured bites and watching as Adam scrapes the excess peanut butter onto the edge of his plate, then reaches for the syrup.

“I love peanut butter,” Adam admits. It’s as much of a thank you as he’s willing to give now, with how uncommunicative Ronan is being. The pancakes are perfect, the heat of the syrup and the rich taste of the peanut butter. It reminds him of the few good days, when his mom would make pancakes and his dad would ruffle his hair genially. Back when he was still his father’s idea of a good son.

Ronan’s mouth twitches upwards. “I know.”

Adam ducks his head. This Ronan has spent a life with him. He must know that Adam prefers his syrup heated. That he hates citrus, and loves pumpkin pie. It’s terrifying.
I am unknowable, Adam thinks, on reflex. He feels like an idiot. He finishes his pancakes in silence, pressed under the hot weight of Ronan’s eyes.

“What?” he snaps, after he’s done eating. He learned young not to start anything, or start something that could be anything, while he was eating. Not if he wanted to finish his meal. He hates how the memory has stuck with him, that is infecting this warm and sunlit place.

“You’re so young,” Ronan’s voice is thoughtful. “I had forgotten.”

Adam bristles. “I’m 18!”

Ronan grins his sharp grin, and there is something comforting about how little that has changed. “Exactly.”

Adam lets his knife and fork clatter to his plate. “Cut the crap, Lynch. What the fuck is going on.”

The room is brightly lit, sunlight coming in from wide windows around the kitchen. It’s exactly the kind of place that Adam has always wanted to live, as far from the cramped, dark kitchen he was raised in as it was possible to get. Adam is abruptly aware of how much of a home this is as Ronan takes his dishes and dumps them in the sink. His home. Ronan’s home. Their home, apparently.

“You’re not going to believe me,” Ronan says, leaning on the counter. He is one long slant of muscle and shadow, a slash mark in the clean light of the kitchen.

Adam gives him a flat look. “You would be surprised by my threshold for belief.” He’s pleased when it makes Ronan bark a laugh.

Ronan runs a hand over the back of his head, an wrenchingly familiar gesture. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I was in bed. I had a fucked up dream, and then I was here.”

“No, asshole. In your, fuck, I don’t know, your timeline or some shit. When are you from?”

“Christ.” Adam scrubs his hands over his face. He can’t believe he is even having this conversation. “We just got Maura back. From Cabeswater. Or, not Cabeswater, I guess. Persephone is dead and no one has any answers and Gansey is supposed to die and everything is fucked all to hell and even with all of that, I'm still wondering if my college admission essay will be good enough to get me into Harvard!”

“It will,” Ronan says absently. This his eyes sharpen back on Adam's face. “Ignore that. At least I know when that is. Senior year. We're looking for Glendower. You're still in love with Blue Sargent.”

“I am not!” Of all the things that Ronan has said, that somehow feels the most immediate. The most pressing. Maybe it's the way Ronan says it, bitter even though it's been ten years. Closed, even in the middle of his own home.

“No?” Ronan tilts his head, in a way that makes Adam abruptly wonder where Chainsaw is, in this time. His eyes are knowing and sharp.

Adam stands with his own plate, and washes it off in the sink. It's only polite. “I don't love her. Or- I'm not in love with her.” He doesn't want to look at Ronan for this, for this discussion he hasn't had with anyone yet. “I never was.” He’d thought he was, for a few sunlit days. But it was always more about him than it had ever been about Blue. His own desire to love and be loved in return.

“You got her flowers,” Ronan delivers this like a scoring point. The fact that he apparently cares, ten years after the fact, makes Adam drop his plate into the sink and spin around.

“Hell, Lynch, I'm a teenager. I liked a girl, so yeah, I got her fucking flowers. Not a goddamn wedding ring. We dated. We broke up. I moved on. To say nothing of the fact that if Blue and Gansey think they are hiding their looks than they're both more stupid than I ever thought.”

Ronan steps forward in two long strides, pressing Adam against the counter. They are the same height, or near enough, but Adam has never felt smaller beside him. “You knew about Blue and Gansey?” Knew. Past tense. God.

Adam shoves him back, because he's never let Ronan bully him into submission and he sure as hell isn't starting now. “I'd have to be blind not to. Have you really not discussed this with future me?”

For the first time, Ronan looks uneasy. “It never came up.”

Never came up. Adam rolls his eyes so hard it actually hurts. It’s pretty obvious that Ronan and he live here together, in whatever state of domestic bliss that implies. And it’s never come up. Of course. “I'm not here to be your relationship counselor. How do I get back? There is something- it's important.”

“Gansey,” Ronan says knowingly. “And Glendower.” Then, thoughtfully. “And the third sleeper. She should be awake now, right?”

Adam goes rigid. “What.” It's not a question. Ronan goes tense all over, like a nervous horse. Adam studies him, and it's almost a relief to find that this Ronan is not as unreadable as he had first thought. “You don't mean Gwenllian. You mean the other one. The terrible one. The one that should never, ever be woken.”

Ronan tilts his jaw up, another achingly familiar gesture. Defensive. Posturing. He isn’t such a stranger afterall. “You're the genius.”

“Christ.” Adam runs fingers through his hair and sags against the counter. “Christ. I have to get back. I need to let them know. Ganey could-”

“I know.”

Adam can hardly look at him. “Does Gansey live? Do we make it through this?”

The snort Ronan makes causes anger to surge through him. This is serious, so serious. “You know I can't tell you that.”

“Do I?” Adam snaps. He turns around and scrubs furiously at the peanut butter left on his plate. “How would I know that? All my vast experience with time travel?”

Ronan comes up and gently takes the plate from him. “You're asking the wrong questions.”

“Fuck off,” Adam snaps.

Ronan ignores him, putting the plate in the dishwasher. Adam watches him do it. Then, “You can't put it in like that. The peanut butter will-”

“Magic dishwasher,” Ronan interrupts him.

Adam studies it in a new light. “Really?”

Ronan flashes him a grin. “No.”

Adam shoves him, hard. That too is familiar. He watches without comment as Ronan loads the rest of the dishes the dishwasher and tries to pretend that the sheer domesticity of it doesn't freak him out. He mostly fails.

When the dishwasher closes, Ronan puts his back to it and just looks at him. “When was the last time you ate?”

“This morning. Pancakes. Some weirdo with tattoos made them for me,” Adam quips. Ronan just fixes him with a hard look, made all the harder by the lines of what look like kindness etched into his face. Adam looks away first. “I'm not sure.”

“Jesus, Parrish,” Ronan snaps. “I'm amazed you even made it to this point.” Adam isn’t sure if he means to 18, or to the point where the other Adam is, living in a sunlit house with Ronan Lynch. Adam isn’t sure himself.

Ronan watches him, fiddling with something on his fingers, perhaps in liu of the absentee leather bands. Adam drops his gaze to it and his stomach drops when he sees Ronan is spinning a silver ring, working it back and forth on his left ring finger.

Ronan follows his gaze, and his gaze sharpens, his smirk widens. It's the face he makes when he's about to fuck with someone, and get a lot of pleasure out of the experience. He displays his hand, palm down. It is a disturbingly feminine gesture that is all for Adam's benefit. He thinks of his father and his jokes about faggots and how to be a man.

“You like it, Parrish?” he asks. “You picked it out.”

Adam can feel his heart in his stomach, in his ears, a rushing drop in his cheeks. He stands and reaches for Ronan's hand before he can think better of it. Ronan lets him, still and quiet. Adam tilts his hand this way and that, studying the ring. It's simple, elegant. A light engraving traces the edge, and he angles it towards the light. It's in latin, he can't make it out. He isn't sure he wants to. He doesn't want to know what sweet nothings his future self thought worth carving into a wedding ring.

Slowly, Ronan grips Adam's hand in his own, interlacing their fingers. It's a jarringly intimate motion, and Adam recoils, tugging free.

“I want to go back,” he says. “I don't want to be here.”

“Yeah, well, I don't really want you here,” Ronan snaps. He curls his left hand into a fist and let's it fall to his side. “But if memory serves, you have at least three days with me. Lucky us.”

“Memory? This has happened before?”

Ronan crosses his arms over his chest, and if he leans on the counter any harder, it might just fall in on itself. “Wrong question.” Adam wants to shout, wants to shake him until the answers fall out. Ronan throws his hands up, like he's just done with this whole mess. He’s not the only one. “That's how time travel works, Einstein. It's already happened, or is happening, or some new age bullshit like that. We're all connected and time is a circle and hakuna matata or some shit.”

“This isn't funny!”

Ronan meets his eyes, and the intensity in them almost takes his breath away. “No. It's not.”

Adam leans on the counter beside him, and he's unsettled enough that he let himself take comfort by pressing ever so slightly against Ronan. It's a game he plays, to himself. When he is tired, or hungry, or just needing something more than sleep or food or time. How much can he take, before Ronan will notice. How much comfort can he draw before it becomes obvious. How long before Ronan confronts him, and starts asking for more Adam can give. Ronan takes from dreams. Adam takes from Ronan.

Ronan, this Ronan, not his Ronan, gives him the slightest of looks out of the corner of his eye, but says nothing. He leans into Adam just a bit, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder. Neither of them say anything, just stare straight ahead.

“If I'm here,” Adam says slowly. The way that Ronan had wandered from room to room, calling for someone he knew wasn't going to answer, is starting to trickle through his mind. “Does that mean that future me is there? Then? In the past, or whatever?”

Ronan smiles his shark smile, and there is nothing warm in it. “Now, Parrish, you are asking the right questions.”

 


 

Ronan wakes from a dream with fresh grass clenched in his fists, dirt under his fingernails, and the sense memory of lips on his neck, a warm weight pressing him down. He lets the grass fall to the ground the scrubs his hands over his face. Fuck.

He rolls over to look at his alarm clock, an absurdly luxurious contraption that would make Adam scowl just to look at it. Ronan uses it, exclusively, to tell the time, and mostly not even that. He isn’t entirely sure what the rest of the buttons even do.

It’s almost noon, later than he is usually able to sleep. Usually his own dreams, or Gansey, or Gansey’s weekend plans to find Glendower have woken him up before ten. Distantly, he can hear voices in the main area.

Reluctantly, he pulls himself out of bed. There is a discarded tank next to the bed, and he pulls it on before he staggers out. He doesn’t give a fuck who is talking with Gansey, there isn’t anyone in the world he would care about seeing him in his boxers.

To his surprise, Gansey is talking to someone Ronan doesn’t know. He had expected Blue, or maybe Adam, though Adam usually has work on Saturday mornings. The man reminds him of Adam a bit, something in the color of his hair, the way he tilts his head. But the posture is all wrong, and the breadth of his shoulders is too great. He is also wearing an eye-searingly blue polo shirt, the type Gansey favors.

Ronan leans on the doorway and watching him talk with Gansey. Gansey, who looks like he is having an actual religious experience. For a moment, Ronan actually wonders if this is Glendower. If, somehow, Glendower has woken himself up and, against all odds, come stumbling into their home. He hopes not. He likes to think that mythical undead kings have better fashion sense.

The man is gesturing as he talks, and it reminds Ronan again of Adam, the way every word is punctuated by motion. Too many things remind him of Adam, lately. He wipes his hands on his boxers, wiping off phantom traces of Cabeswater dirt from his dreams.

Gansey sees him first. “Ah, Ronan! Good. You should meet,” his eyes flick to the stranger. “Ah. Our guest.”

The man laughs softly and Ronan knows that laugh, he knows it. He’s half braced for it when the man turns and Ronan sees his face, but he can’t stop his knees from wavering anyway.

It’s Adam, but it’s not. It’s Adam, done wrong. For one terrible, awful moment, Ronan is afraid that he has pulled this fake-Adam from his dreams. An Adam made strong and confident, with his lips curving up more naturally and hair that has the clean cut of someone who can afford regular trims.

Then reality catches up, because at the very least he would not dream an Adam that wears Gansey’s clothing.

Adam, fake-Adam, wrong-Adam, gives him a self-conscious wave. “Hey.”

“Are you alright?” Gansey peers at him in concern and Ronan half-staggers over to the couch and sinks down onto it.

“What,” he says with feeling, “the fuck.”

Gansey’s expression clears, and he actually rubs his hands together in glee. “Well, Adam here- can I call you Adam?”

Wrong-Adam gives him a baffled look. “What else would you call me?”

“Right.” Gansey looks momentarily wrongfooted, and Ronan is selfishly glad that even Gansey is rattled by whatever the fuck is happening. “Adam is from the future!”

“2025,” Adam adds. He’s watching Ronan carefully, and Ronan feels a bit faint.

“What,” he doesn’t know what questions to ask. “How?”

Adam bites his lip and exchanges a look with Gansey. “I’m not sure, exactly. Cabeswater? Maybe? It might not even be something from your time. It might be something from mine.”

“But this is wonderful!” Gansey bursts out. “You can help us find Glendower!” Frankly, Ronan is amazed that this is apparently only just coming up. Adam has clearly been here for awhile.

Adam give Gansey a look of such open affection that Ronan feels his breath catch and hates himself for it. “Never change, Gansey.” He shakes his head ruefully. “And I’m really sorry, but I can’t. I’ve given it a lot of thought, and it would probably be really bad if I tell you anything about the future.”

“But the psychics tell the future all the time,” Gansey protests.

“It’s different,” Adam says slowly. “No, I know it sounds stupid, but it really is. The psychics, fuck, how do I put this. The psychics are from the same plain as you, the same time. They can look forward, but they see paths. Possibilities. It is their gifts that help them know which path is the most likely. Nothing,” and he puts so much emphasis on this that Ronan knows he means something specific, “is set in stone. But me, I am from the future. Those paths have already happened. To give you too much information- it could fuck everything up.”

“You’re worried about changing the future?”

Adam’s lips twitch. “Not really. The future is more resilient that bad sci-fi gives it credit for. No, I’m worried about changing you.” He glances over at Ronan. “Any of you. If you know too much, it could drive you insane. What if this isn’t the right choice? What if I missed the moment? How will we get back there there?” He shakes his head. “And I’d like to at least maintain the illusion of free will. You need to make your choices, and hope for the best. I won’t take that from you.”

“You’re awfully knowledgeable about this shit,” Ronan snaps, irritated by the high handed way this fake-Adam delivers information.

Adam grins at him. “I am, aren’t I?”

Ronan glowers at him. “Don’t you have anything fucking useful to offer?”

“Ronan!” Gansey snaps.

“It’s fine,” Adam laughs. “I’m used to it.”

Ronan bares his teeth at this stranger wearing his friends face, and Adam just winks at him. It’s so unexpected that Ronan flinches.

“I should call Blue,” Gansey says. “She’ll want to know.”

“Sounds good to me,” Adam replies amiably. “Ronan?”

“I don’t give a fuck.”

Gansey pushes off the wall. “I’ll just go,” he jerks a thumb at the door, “call her then?”

There is no earthly reason that he should need to leave the room to call his midget girlfriend, and everything about the two of them is so obvious that Ronan can’t believe that Adam, his Adam, the real Adam, doesn’t know yet.

This Adam just grins. “I’ll be here.”

“Ronan?” Gansey asks. Ronan stares at him. What, does he want company on his phone call?

“Same,” he grunts.

And then Gansey is gone. Leaving Ronan with the pressing awareness of fake-Adam. Fake-Adam stares around Monmouth like he’s never seen anything like it.

“How do I know you’re real?” he asks. Adam flicks a glance over to him, then back to the pool table he is perched on.

“How do I know you’re real?” Adam replies. He absently lines the pool balls into their triangle, carefully putting them in numerical order. His Adam does the same.

“Of course I’m fucking real.” It comes out harsher than he intends, because sometimes he isn’t sure. Is there someone out there, who will take his mind with them when they die. Is he a dream or a person or something else entirely. A creature, Gansey had named him.

Fake-Adam’s eyes are suddenly hot on his face, and Ronan doesn’t meet his eyes.

“I know that,” Adam says softly.

“Well, I don’t.” It takes him less than a second to realize how that could sound. “About you. I don’t know if you’re real.”

Adam’s lips quirk up, and it’s disconcerting how easy that expression comes to him. He looks tired, but not beaten down. There is a light in his eyes that Ronan hasn’t seen on his Adam, and the stress lines around his mouth are gone. Somehow, even with the markers of age around his eyes and mouth, this Adam manages to look younger than the Adam he knows. More carefree.

“I’m not a dream, Ronan. Not yours, or anyone else’s.”

“Fuck off,” Ronan snaps. “I didn’t say you were.”

Adam lifts his hands, as if showing that he is unarmed. “Of course not.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re real. What if you’re a faker. You could be pretending to be Adam. Some kind of,” he gesutres vaguley, “magic shapeshifting Cabeswater monster.”

The way Adam’s eyebrow lifts sarcastically is new, but the message is clear. He thinks Ronan is being ridiculous, but is willing to indulge him. “Pretending to be Adam from the future? That seems a bit convoluted.”

“Maybe you knew that we would know if our Adam was an imposter.”

“Your Adam?” Adam asks with a grin. Ronan wants to smack it off his face. Or kiss it. Fuck.

“Fuck you,” Ronan snarls. “The Adam from this time. The real Adam.”

Fake-Adam taps his chin with his hand. The gesture is incredibly sarcastic, to the point that Ronan has to wonder where he learned to be this effortlessly communicative with his body. All his Adam knows how to do is look uncomfortable or painfully disdainful. “How can I prove it to you?”

“Tell me something only Adam would know.”

“Ah, but if I’m a dream, I would know what you would know.”

“You are not my dream.” The words feel torn out of him. It’s not a lie. This Adam has never been in his dreams. Not this confident, cocksure, teasing Adam. Not an Adam at almost 30, easy in himself and the terrible blue shirt.

“I’ll tell you one thing that only you and I know, and one thing that you don’t know but is true,” Adam suggests. “Will that help?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Ronan bites out.

Adam ignores him. “You gave me lotion. For my hands. I’m not sure how long ago it was, or when we are right now, but I’m pretty sure that has happened. I think you dreamed it, but I never asked.”

Ronan can feel himself going a bright, furious red. His Adam had never mentioned it either, and he had really prefered it stay that way for possibly the rest of his life. It had been an indulgence, and he shouldn’t have done it. He didn’t regret it. This Adam is from ten years in the future. That he would still remember that, after all that time. He can’t get his brain to wrap around the idea.

“What’s something I don’t know?”

Adam returns his gaze back to the pool table. “It would have to be something you could verify,” he says, almost to himself. After a moment, he laughs. “You know, I can’t think of anything that one of the others know that I haven’t told you as well. Told you first.” When he looks back up at Adam, his eyes are shockingly blue. It has to be the shirt- reflected light and other science shit. The expression on his face, that can’t be explained. Ronan has no words for it. It makes him edgy and nervous.

Ronan’s heart flips at, at the fond expression, at the words, and the sheer intimacy of the moment. He ignores it. “Tell me if you and Blue ever kissed.” He doesn’t look at Adam when he says it. That expression, whatever is means, is for him. He doesn’t want to see it applied to Blue’s memory.

He doesn’t know what makes him say it. He doesn’t want to know. He really doesn’t want to know. And yet. It must be that masochistic side that Gansey is always complaining about.

“You mean you don’t know?” Adam demands, and the tone in his voice makes Ronan jerk his gaze back to Adam’s face. He sounds urgent and shocked and it’s all disproportionate to their conversation about kissing.

“Know what?”

Adam only shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing. God. Ah. No.”

“What?”

“No, Blue and I never kissed.”

Ronan scowls, even as he feels so, so relieved and hates himself for it. “What don’t I know?”

“It’s not my secret to tell.”

It’s Blue’s, is what he means. There are some hidden depths there after all. It’s an uncharitable thought, and he feels bad as soon as he thinks it. He likes Blue, even against his better judgement. What he doesn’t like is her dating Adam. He doesn’t like her running around on Adam with whatever her disaster with Gansey is. And he can’t hate Gansey, so he tries to hate Blue.

“I’m not dating her either,” Adam says carefully, watching his face. “I mean, like I said, I have no fucking clue where we are, timeline wise. But I woke up in at St. Agnes, so I can guarantee I’m not dating her.”

“That long?” Ronan frowns. Adam hadn’t mentioned a breakup. Ronan had been mentally crowing about all the times that Adam had spent with him instead of Blue, when it turns out he was just Adam’s rebound. His shitty, platonic rebound.

Adam shrugs. “Give or take a few weeks, yeah. I thought you knew.”

“I didn’t… not know,” Ronan says slowly. It’s true. He must have known. It’s obvious now. He hadn’t wanted to think about it. Adam has a girlfriend was always an easier mantra than Adam will never want me.

“Blue is on her way over!” Gansey says, bursting back into the room. “What are we talking about?”

“Nothing,” Adam says blithely, at the same time that Ronan says

“Blue.”

Gansey’s politician smile falls for just a second before he pastes it back on. “Oh?”

Adam looks just uncomfortable as their Adam always does when confronted with other people’s emotions. “Nothing to worry about.”

Gansey’s face clearly says that he disagrees, but he doesn’t press, thank god. The last thing Ronan wants is to be caught up in some kind of Gansey-Blue-Adam triangle.

“Have you asked Cabeswater about what’s happened?’ Gansey asks instead. Adam spreads his hand wide. Ronan’s mouth twitches at how much like a magician he looks. See, nothing up my sleeves.

“No tarot cards. I did try scrying back at St. Agnes, but whatever did this has tapped out the power. I’ll have to go there at some point. But there is some chance,” he bites his lip. “Well. There are extenuating circumstances.”

“Extenuating circumstances,” Ronan repeats flatly. Adam looks at him, then away. He shrugs, uncomfortable.

“I can’t-”

“Tell us. Right. Is there anything you can do?”

Adam thinks it over like it’s a real question. “You still drive the BMW? I could give it a tune-up.”

“Parrish can already do that.”

Adam just smirks at him. “Can he? Yes. Will he? No. Because you won’t ask, because he won’t take your money, and you won’t take his time.”

Ronan looks away first. his hands clenching into fists. He feels exposed, here before this adult who wears his friend’s face. He wishes he had put pants on over his boxers afterall. It probably wouldn’t help. He always feels naked in front of Adam. “If you weren’t a stubborn fucker,” he mutters.

“He’d do it,” Adam says softly. “He’d be happy that you asked him.”

Ronan wants to leave. He wants to get into the BMW and race until he can’t even hear himself think. The moment stretches out between them.

Gansey clears his throat, the falls quiet. He clears his throat again, and Ronan finally looks at him. Adam rubs his arms like he’s cold and gives the air beside him a dirty look. Gansey is looking between them with raised eyebrows, and he gives Ronan a capital L Look when Ronan meets his eyes.

The sound of bike tires on gravel into their awkward silence heralds Blue’s arrival before her impatient knock. The way that Gansey’s head whips around is hilariously Pavlovian. Typically, Blue doesn’t wait for any of them to answer, just pushes the door open with her hip. Her hands are full with tupperware containers.

“Take these.” She slams them down on the table. “If my mom keeps making food, we won’t all be able to fit into the house. She’s been stress baking. You’ll have to roll me to school.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true,” Gansey says immediately. Ronan, looking at her towering pile of tupperware, isn’t so sure.

“What’s so urgent?” Blue handles Ganey’s remarks in her usual way of totally ignoring them. “I was in the middle of something.”

From the looks of her, that something was ‘getting caught in the middle of a tornado,’ but Ronan keeps his mouth shut.

“We have a visitor, Jane.” Gansey gestures at Adam with a little flourish. For his part, Adam just lets his feet dangle off the floor, watching the two of them interact with a small smile.

“Is it another scientist friend, because,” she trails off as she takes in Adam. He just grins under her astonishment, and Ronan is amazed all over again at how naturally the expression comes to him now. “Adam.”

“Hey.”

Blue turns to Gansey. “What did you do?”

Gansey puts his hands up immediately. “Nothing! This was entirely not my fault.”

“Not him,” Adam interrupts. “It has something to do with Cabeswater and the third sleeper.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know anything,” Ronan says suspiciously.

“And I don’t. But I have some theories.”

Ronan grits his teeth. “Then why didn’t you share them with us before?”

“I wanted to wait for everyone. And now Noah can participate. He’s been poking me for the last ten minutes.”

Noah fades into a more corporeal form with a sheepish look. “I didn’t think you’d be able to feel it.”

“I could.”

Noah shrugs, totally unrepentant. “Sorry.” He hops lightly onto the pool table next to Adam and crosses his legs under him.

“Where is Adam? The real Adam, I mean.” Blue asks suddenly.

Ronan goes tense all over. He hadn’t even- the thought hadn’t even- He’s on his feet before he can think it through. “What did you do to him?”

Adam gives him another look that Ronan can’t read. It’s not quite amusement, but there is some sort of satisfaction in it. He is pleased. “He’s fine. He’s, ah, he’s in the future. At my house. It was a switch.”

The clamor is instantaneous. Blue and Gansey start talking at once, their words blurring together into incomprehensibility. Ronan just strides forward with two large steps and puts his fists down on either side of future Adam. “If he is in any danger,” he says menacingly.

“He’s fine,” Adam says. “Or don’t you trust yourself?” The words take a moment to sink in, and Ronan jerks back when they do. This close, he can see a hickey worked into Adam’s skin, dark and vivid.

“What?” he asks, and it comes out as a choked whisper. Blue and Gansey have both fallen quiet. They can’t have heard what Adam said, but they’re listening now.

Adam just raises an eyebrow at him. “You heard me.”

“Is he ok?” Blue demands, cutting through Ronan’s own attempts to muster words past the sudden lump in his throat.

“How would he know?” Gansey asks. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

Blue gives him a withering look. “Time isn’t a straight line. If this Adam is here, and our Adam is there, that means that at some point, this Adam was our Adam, and was there.” She hesitates for a moment. “Right?”

The expression on Adam’s is scarily reminiscent of a teacher with a bright student. “Yes. Ish. All this has already happened. For a little over three days in 2015, I was stuck in my own future. It was,” he makes a face, “a learning experience.”

“So all the bullshit you’ve been giving us about not knowing our own future has been just that.” Ronan snaps. “A lot of hypocritical shit to keep us busy while you get a free peek at your future?”

“I didn’t think it would happen again!” Adam bursts out. “I thought I had fixed the disturbance, whatever it was that pulled us out of sync the first time.” For a moment, he looks more like the Adam Ronan knows, tired and worn down. “I thought I had done things differently.”

For a moment, they all watch him, weary and drawn against the pool table.

“You were expecting this?” Noah asks. He sounds kind. Ronan isn’t sure he has any kindness in him at the moment.

Adam hesitates. “Sort of? I wasn’t sure if it would happen the same way, or the exact date. But yeah. Ro- You guys will kill me when I get back, for not warning you.”

Blue gives him a considering look, but it’s Gansey who asks, heart in his voice. “We’re all together then? We’re still friends?”

Sometimes, even Ronan forgets how insecure Gansey can be. All of them would die for him, would follow him into the darkest cave in Cabeswater, into the underworld itself, Greek-myth style. It makes it hard to remember that Gansey has never seen it like that.

Adam runs a hand through his hair, ruffling the perfect cut of it. “He’ll just tell you when he gets back,” he says, almost to himself. To Ronan’s surprise, it’s Blue that Adam looks at first. “I can’t give you any details. That would be bad. Probably. But yeah.”

Blue’s knees give out. She drops to the floor like a puppet with cut strings, and even Ronan stands to go to her side. Gansey is there first, helping her up by putting her arm around his shoulder. He has to stay bent over just to keep her on her feet. Ronan feels some satisfaction in getting some kind of reaction out of this stupid overly confident version of Adam, the look of concern on his face a reminder that this is still his friend.

“I’m fine,” Blue shoves herself off Gansey, but her voice sounds weak. Then she almost lunges at Adam, who catches her easily. She looks ever more tiny than usual next to him. “Thank you,” she says into his chest. “Thank you, thank you.”

Carefully, Adam pushes her back so that he can look at her face. “It’s not easy, Blue. It’s something you have to fight for. Do you understand me? You never stop fighting. It’s not set in stone, just because I say it is.”

She gives him a watery smile. “When have I ever stopped fighting.”

Adam grins and ruffles her hair. “That’s my girl.”

“Get off.” She fixes her hair, even though there is no visible difference between messy and fixed. “I’m no one’s girl.”

“Would you believe me if I told you you’re married?”

“I am not!” Blue shouts.

To Ronan, Noah mutters, “So much for not telling us anything.”

“Maybe Blue is special,” Ronan mutters back, as though he doesn’t care. Privately, he thinks that Adam’s secret desire to be a little shit is just winning out over his common sense.

“I’m never getting married,” Blue protests. “It’s an archaic institution designed to brand women as property and limit their personal freedom.”

“Uh-huh,” Adam replies agreeably. “If you say so.”

“Don’t you condescend to me, you son of a-” her gaze catches on Adam’s hand and she stops. “Oh God.” She grabs his hand, and Ronan, feigning disinterest, feels his stomach drop. There is a wedding band on Adam’s finger.

“Oh, Lord,” Gansey mutters.

“Please, please tell me that we didn’t get married.” The amount of horror in her voice is a little offensive, Ronan thinks. “I really need to know that I do not marry you in the future.”

“Well,” Adam says slowly, and Blue goes pale. Beside her, Gansey makes a choked off noise. Noah ducks his head to hide a grin, even though Ronan can’t see anything funny about this. “There was this weekend in Vegas that I still can’t remember, so I wouldn’t rule it out.”

Blue punches Adam hard enough that he rocks back, and he laughs. “No, Blue. I did not marry you in the future.”

“But you married someone,” Ronan blurts out.

Adam gives him a slow, considering look. “Problem, Lynch?”

“Fuck no,” Ronan snaps. “You can chain yourself to whatever poor woman you want. I can’t imagine what kind of girl would want to put up with you for a lifetime.”

Adam raises his eyebrow again, and Ronan hates whoever teaches him that in the future. “I never said it was a girl.”

Blue lets out a victory crowe, Noah makes a choked sounding laugh and Gansey says “Adam!” like he does when Adam and Ronan are about to start another fight. Ronan just feels dizzy and flushed. Adam has to be fucking with him. Adam’s inner little shit at work again. Adam is straight. He is certain that Adam is straight.

“That explains your shirt,” Blue quips.

“Hey!” Gansey protests. “That is my shirt!”

“Oh, really?” Noah says archly, then dissolves into giggles at the face that Blue and Gansey make at almost the same time.

“Not like that!” Gansey says, flushing and looking at Blue entreatingly.

“Why not, Dick?” Adam rolls Gansey’s name in his mouth for a long moment, all long vowels and hard consonants, and Ronan watches in fascination as Gansey goes red to the very tips of his ears. “I’m hurt, frankly.”

Gansey’s mouth works, opening and closing. Then he rolls his eyes and says, at his very primest, “I am sorry, Adam, but you just aren’t my type. It’s nothing personal, but I hope that we can still be friends.” He almost ruins the effect by cracking a grin halfway through. Adam just laughs and laughs, holding his stomach like he can’t stop himself.

“None of my old clothes fit me,” Adam explains, through gasps of air. Ronan gives Adam a speculative look. The way Adam is lying makes his borrowed shirt ride up, exposing a line of skin and a well-muscled torso. His shoulders are obviously more broad than the Adam Ronan knows, and his clothes barely fit him now. He regrets sleeping in as late as he did, if it means missing Adam in a shirt several sizes too small.

“You didn’t come in your own clothes?” Blue asks curiously. “Is it like the Terminator? No inorganic material?”

“No,” Adam says, still laughing. “It’s more of a, ‘I was sleeping peacefully in my own bed and not expecting to be interrupted’ thing.”

Oh god. Ronan’s mind makes an effort to picture that, then fizzles out.

Blue gives Adam an obvious once over then flushes. “Oh,” she says.

“Wait,” Noah says. “I thought you said that our Adam switched places with you? Does that mean that he-”

“Will wake up with unexpected company?” Adam asks. “Yes. I doubt he or my husband will be very pleased about it.”

Husband. His husband. God.

“You ok over there, Ronan?” Noah asks. Ronan gives Noah his dirtiest look, and Noah only gives his Casper the friendly ghost smile in return.

“Fine,” he grits out, because now everyone is looking at him. “Like I give two fucks who Parrish wants to bang in the future.”

Adam snorts, and the look on his face is saying that whatever comes out his mouth will be sarcastic and probably make Ronan want to hit him.

Gansey, observant in the way that he is when a fight is about to break out between his friends, jumps in.

“I didn’t know that you were a fan of Schwarzenegger films, Jane.” He says it with all the casual swagger of someone who had only seen any of the Terminator movies two months ago..

Blue gives him a look that is all mischief. “Oh, I’m a fan of any film with naked men it.”

Gansey splutters and Noah almost howls with laughter, grabbing at Adam’s shoulder to stay upright. Adam doesn’t provide much support, rocking with his own laughter.

Ronan chuckles himself, but he can’t take his eyes off of Adam, carefree and wild and confident.

 


 

Adam opens the cabinet doors then closes them pointedly. Ronan doesn’t react. Adam opens them again and lets them close louder. He pairs it with a loud sigh. Ronan ignores him. He can see Ronan clearly from the kitchen, which means that Ronan can definetly hear him.

Ronan is stretched out on the couch in a room across the hall, and the unlikely sight of Ronan reading a book with what are clearly reading glasses perched on his nose is enough to make Adam with he had a camera. Maybe he should have let Gansey buy him a phone, just to capture this moment.

Through the window, he sees leaves flutter, and he is done being charmed by Ronan’s domestic future self.

He strides over to where Ronan is sitting and grabs the book out of his hands. “Are you going to let me out of this house?”

Ronan gives him a measured look over the top of his glasses, and god, Adam can not believe this is rea.. “I forgot what a little shit you were at 18.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s a lie,” Ronan grins. “I didn’t forget. You’re still a shit.” He holds his hand. “I was reading that.”

Adam looks at the cover in his hands. “It’s about health standards in modern animal shelters.”

“Yep.”

“And you’re, what, reading this for fun?”

Ronan gives him a dirty look and grabs his glasses off of his face, putting them on the coffee table. Presumably, this is to give his glare more effect. “I’m reading this so that my animal shelters will by up to code and I won’t get shut down.”

For one shocked moment, Adam can only stare at him. “Your?”

“The pound, Parrish. That I run. Keep up.”

He’s embarrassed, Adam realized. It’s like seeing him with Chainsaw, or with a baby mouse pressed to his cheek. This is a soft point, and Adam has his hands pressed directly to it. He doesn’t truly think that he can hurt this older, stronger Ronan, but he doesn’t want to try.

“Right. Your pet shelter,” he hesitates. “Thank god. The one in Henrietta is a disaster.”

There is something distinctly satisfied in Ronan’s smile. “It used to be.”

It’s a revelation. Ronan, like this. It’s been a long time since Adam was truly fooled by Ronan’s bark, not when he bites so rarely, but this is different. This is Ronan with his edges sanded down. Not removed, but polished to a touchable softness. This is Ronan happy.

He wants more.

Adam lets himself sink down next to Ronan. “How long have you owned a the shelter?”

“Spoilers,” Ronan says, reaching for the book again.

“What did you mean when you said it was my first day off in months? What do I do?”

“You’re a stripper.”

“What?”

Ronan uses his distraction to grab the book back. “A stripper. You take off clothes for money. Surely even you have heard of them, Parrish.”

“I have- what do you mean, even me?”

Ronan gives him another once over, a head to toe look that leaves Adam feeling flushed and dizzy. The look says it all.

“I am not a stripper!”

“You’re a supernatural themed stripper.”

Adam can’t help but laugh. “Supernatural?”

“Mermaids, vampires, fauns. Chicks love that shit. You were a werewolf once. Ripped your fursuit right off on stage.”

Adam can’t stop laughing. “Dracula vampire or Twilight vampire?”

“Parrish, you should be ashamed you even know enough to ask that question.”

Sitting here like this, he feels daring. Ronan is so close, and this Ronan isn’t something to be afraid of. This Ronan already belongs to an Adam Parrish, even if it isn’t him. He’ll go back and he’ll lose this anyway and it won’t be because he fucked up, so there is nothing to fear.

He turns to face Ronan, and at this distance Ronan is all blue eyes and dark curls and a soft, full mouth. “What is your favorite?” he asks, and his voice comes out soft.

Ronan, still laughing, turns to face him. When their eyes meet, the moment stretches. Ronan stops laughing. “My favorite what?”

“Stripper costume. Obviously.”

Ronan pretends to think about it, but it doesn’t do anything to take away the tension of the moment. He wonders if Ronan is thinking about it now, of Adam shirtless in shorts, or whatever the hell strippers wear. He flushes.

“The fairy,” Ronan says finally. “Obviously.”

It feels almost like a disappointment. He lets himself fall back against the back of the couch. Obviously. Just another joke. What else would it be? Obviously.

“Do you like working at the shelter?” he asks softly.

Ronan follows his lead, and Adam is starting to think that he always will. “I love it. It’s good to do something with all this fucking money.”

“Careful,” Adam says, “You’re starting to sound like Gansey.” He watches Ronan carefully, for a strike of grief or loss or anger. There is nothing, but he doesn’t know what that means.

“I don’t hate having money,” Ronan protests. “I just want to use it. Not sit around in some fancy house all day.”

Adam looks around at the brightly lit room, what can only be called a foyer. It’s not a living room, because he past that on the second floor. It’s near the front door, and across from the kitchen. Maybe it’s a sitting room. Either way, it is not the kind of room he has ever had occasion to sit in before.

“Yeah, you’re really living in squalor.”

Ronan snorts. “Hey, this place is half yours. Split the price down the middle, just like your stubborn ass insisted.”

Adam looks around with fresh eyes. “No fucking way.”

Ronan actually laughs at that. “Way.” Then, mimicking the way that Gansey says it, like it is a foreign tongue he hasn’t mastered yet, he adds. “Dude.”

“Stripping is more lucrative than I thought.”

“The vampire costume is a big hit.”

Adam laughs and lets himself sink further into the couch. His shoulder is pressed up against Ronan’s, and he wonders if his future self ever sits here with Ronan, laughing like this. If Ronan ever puts his arm around Adam’s shoulders while he reads. He leans in just a little. One more thing to take. Stolen moments that he hasn’t actually earned.

Suddenly, it’s not as funny. This life isn’t his to take.

He pushes himself back, to the opposite side of the couch. “What can you tell me about what is happening in my time.”

Ronan lets out an exasperated breath like he wants to say, this again. “It was ten years ago. You might not know this, being an infant yourself, but ten years is a long time.”

“Hey!”

Ronan shrugs, totally unconcerned. “I call it like I see it. Can you even vote?”

“I know you know what the voting age is, asshole.”

“Nope. America abolished the democratic system in 2020. Now the president is decided by the outcome of a Brazilian mud wrestling contest.”

“How unAmerican.”

“It caused some controversy, but you should have seen Hillary going at it. Woman has some elbows on her.”

Adam nods knowingly. “She seems pretty scrappy.”

“She’s not the only one,” Ronann says. Adam flinches back, unnerved by the softness of Ronan’s voice, the way his eyes trace over Adam’s face.

“Fuck off,” he mutters, staring at their mantle. A mantle, jesus. For a fireplace. He can see Ronan grin out of the corner of his eye.

“Yep. Still an infant.”

Adam stands. “Will you cut it out? I just want to find out what is going on and get back home. Things are bad back there. Worse than we know, if you’re right about the third sleeper. I can’t be here playing house in your gay dream barbie fantasy life. They need me.” It’s a step too far. He knows that as soon as the word’s leave his mouth.

How does he always do this? Always ruin things that are good? The room had been filled with laughter, until Adam had opened his mouth.

“Do they?” Ronan asks. It’s so matterafact that Adam goes cold. He can only stare at Ronan, shocked and hurt. What he forgets, sometimes, is that Ronan doesn’t bite much, but when he does it is so much worse than his bark.

“I,” he wants to say yes, of course. He is the magician. But that was power he stole against Gansey’s wishes. It’s a tether, not an asset. They have Ronan to control Cabeswater and Blue to explain the mystical world and Gansey to lead them and Noah to guide them. What does Adam offer, in all of that?

“Oh, Adam,” Ronan must see something in his face, because he reaches for him, and Adam shoves him away.

“Fuck you very much, Ronan Lynch.”

The door to the house is right in front of him, so he walks through it. Ronan doesn’t try to stop him. Adam isn’t sure he wouldn’t hit him if he tried.

After a few steps, he sees why. Their house is in the middle of fucking nowhere. It looks like the Barns, surrounded by trees and grass and long driveways. He heads down the driveway and keeps walking and walking and walking. He’s still wearing his boxers and a tshirt and he doesn’t give a shit.

The driveway is hot under his barefeet, and he doesn’t care about that either. Pain makes things real, makes them true.

He’s pretty sure this is still Virginia, the trees that line the vast property are the ones he’s known all his life. He can feel the leyline around him, thrumming and powerful. He can’t have gone far. It’s his worst nightmare. He’s traded one cage for another, trapped in Virginia as Ronan Lynch’s trophy husband.

The trees whisper to him, and it takes him a long time to realize that it’s not metaphorical. The trees are calling to him, humming in his deaf ear.

The grass is a soft, cool contrast to the driveway, and the trees sound louder as soon as his feet touch down.

He isn’t as good at Latin as Ronan is, but he understands his name. He understands Magician. He understands home.

It isn’t Cabeswater, not quite, but it’s something like it. It calls to him, deep and inexplicable. It’s a feeling he’s learned to trust, in the last few months.

Without looking back towards the house, Adam heads towards the trees.