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one.
Monmouth always seems louder at night.
The first time Adam had stayed after dark, he had wondered if the place was alive. There was something about the way the fridge groaned as if it were breathing, or the way the stairs cracked like vertebrae when someone walked up them but not down. It had Adam convinced there was magic in the very foundation.
There wasn’t, of course. There isn’t. The building is not magic at all, only the boys inside.
Tonight, though, Monmouth is alive. Tonight, everything is alive.
“Lift your chin,” Adam says, not quite a whisper but it’s a near thing.
“Bossy." Ronan's voice is coated with the same thickness of someone who’s been crying, but he obliges anyways, hands pressed to the edge of the tub on either side of where he sits in the kitchen/laundry/bathroom. Adam steps between his legs, careful to not touch him, and raises damp cloth to Ronan’s cheek.
He’s a mess. They both are, but Ronan still has what looks like tar drying around his nose and streaking down his cheeks. His eyes are sad, defeated , when he looks up at Adam through his clumped together eyelashes.
He cradles Ronan’s cheek through the cloth, fingers as close to feather light as he can manage. He doesn’t touch him anywhere else, because it feels like it’s against some kind of rule tonight, but the safety of the cloth, the physicality of it between his skin and Ronan’s, makes him brave. Ronan blinks slowly at him as Adam gently swipes at the sludge beneath his eyes.
"Does that hurt?" he tries to ask, but it comes out a slurred d’s-at-hurt?
Ronan shakes his head, still staring with heavy lids at Adam’s face. Adam can’t bring himself to meet his gaze.
It hits him, then, that they’re just two boys in the bathroom together. Just two kids who have known too much death and so much life that they’re practically bursting with both in tandem — spilling all over the floor, bleeding all over each other.
Ronan’s eyelids become heavier with every swipe of Adam’s fingers, his blinks slow and languid until he blinks his eyes closed and doesn’t bother opening them again. That’s fine with Adam. He thinks Ronan deserves to rest for as long as he can.
He tries to make quick work of wiping the offending residue off of Ronan’s skin, holding his head still in his left hand as his right scrubs at the particularly thick accumulation around his nose. It’s stubborn, and congealed, and a complete pain to clean off but Adam tries to be gentle enough; laser focused on where his hands are and the way Ronan’s skin turns from sickly grey to pink with a couple swipes of his fingers.
There’s a particularly difficult patch just above Ronan’s lip that cracks and falls off in flakes. Adam is so focused on it he all but jumps when Ronan’s whole body lolls forward, boneless. His head drops right atop Adam’s sternum with a hollow thud. A knife cut clear through a flimsy piece of paper.
Adam freezes, hands in the air like a botched sort of surrender.
Ronan mumbles out what could be a, “M’not gonna bite, Parrish,” but it sounds distant, wrong. Like he’s speaking underwater.
The back and sides of his neck are a violent red that spreads down under the collar of his shirt, so much more apparent here, with Ronan’s head tilted forward and nothing else to look at. Fingerprints at the scene of a crime. He can still feel Ronan under his thumb, Ronan between his teeth, Ronan falling to pieces as he ground him to dust.
His hands are so, so heavy.
Adam scrambles to pull away with a weak excuse of wetting the cloth again, the words jumbling together in his mouth in their rush to pass over his tongue. Ronan’s right hand comes up to hold Adam still against him.
“I’m sorry,” Adam says, miserable to his own ears. He clears his throat and tries again. “I’m sorry.”
Ronan shakes his head, forehead rubbing against the soft fabric of Adam’s shirt. “Don’t,” Ronan practically pleads. “It was the demon, Parrish, not you.”
“But-”
“Adam. Please.” He says Adam like he means please, and please like he means stop.
Adam’s eyes close at the sound of his name. The image of Ronan’s discoloured neck is branded on the other side, not worse than seeing the real thing in front of him, but not better. “Ronan,” he whispers, unsure what he means by it. It could mean I’m sorry, or it could mean how do you know it wasn’t me? Or, perhaps, it means what his name always means when it comes from Adam’s mouth. A simple, unequivocal collection of sounds, a simple unequivocal meaning: Ronan.
Ronan’s other hand comes up to grip Adam around the middle, palms flat against his ribs, roping him down to the earth while he feels like he’s evaporating on the spot. Ronan’s hands move with each expansion of Adam’s lungs.
Ronan squeezes his waist, not unkindly, just enough for it to be felt, just enough for Adam to feel known. All Adam can do is bring his hands down — cloth long forgotten on the floor somewhere — and place them on the back of Ronan’s head, cradling his skull. His hands won’t travel any further down, anywhere that requires them to pass Ronan’s neck, but it’s enough for now.
He feels like he can protect Ronan here, in his head, where all his demons live.
Ronan sighs against him, sagging further forward. Adam moves with him, curving his spine backwards until Ronan is filling all the spaces he’s left for him.
Ronan whispers, “Gansey’s okay.”
Adam nods for a long moment. “Gansey’s okay.”
“Fuck.”
Adam huffs what would be a laugh on any other night, but what right now sounds closer to a sob. “I know,” he says, grazing a finger across the hairs on the back of Ronan's head. They’re rough to the touch, something that a younger Adam would have found fitting. But this Adam — the one who has Ronan practically melting into him, who has Ronan’s hands gripping securely to his sides, breath puffing out in warm huffs that Adam can feel through his shirt — this Adam knows better.
Comfort seems to emanate from Ronan Lynch, stitched somewhere in his very being, his cosmic makeup.
Ronan hums beneath him, Adam feels the sound under his palm.
“Adam.”
“Ronan.”
Tonight, Monmouth might just be magic, because the boys inside are overflowing with it — spilling all over the floor, bleeding all over each other.
…
two.
One thing about Adam Parrish is that he's perfectly fine on his own.
Loneliness was never something Adam had to learn. It wasn’t something he’d had some revelation about. His parents had shown him, at a very young age, what being alone looked like; and not very long after, they had shown him what it felt like. It was a simple truth, one of the simplest of Adam’s childhood, all things considered. He carried it with him wherever he went, that inundating feeling, because Adam Parrish did not believe in waste.
So, he’s perfectly fine all on his own.
So, when he goes back to school on Monday — because he can’t afford to take long weekends, even when his best friend dies and comes back, even when his hands are stolen, ripped right out from under him — he’s perfectly fine to sit in the classrooms on his own, Gansey and Ronan’s empty seats flanking him like a personal escort, a neon sign. Here’s Parrish, and the empty spots where the two people who can stand to talk to him usually are.
Adam carries the feeling with him to all his classes that week.
His wrists are still raw and ripped open. He does his best not to look at them.
But Gansey and Blue go to Fox Way, and Ronan goes to the Barns, (and then to DC, and then back to the Barns), so Adam goes back to school, feeling raw and ripped open. And then he goes to work, where he stays a little too late each shift. Anything to keep his hands busy. Anything to keep his hands.
By Thursday, when he steps outside after his shift he’s almost startled to see that it’s dark. Time is still passing, then.
It’s cold in his apartment when he opens the front door. He stomps off as much of the snow on his shoes as he can in the hall before stepping inside — a futile attempt to leave the chill out there with it. He’s been meaning to buy more blankets, because they’re cheaper and more versatile than turning on the heater, but he hasn’t had the time. So, he turns up the old heating system and zips his jacket up before settling down to finish his homework.
At least it gives his hands something to do.
That’s where he is when an abrasive knock sounds from his door: still greasy and disgusting from the garage, feet hanging sideways off the bed with his notebook open to a half-finished essay on The June Rebellion.
He eyes the door, as if it can tell him who is on the other side from all the way over on the bed. It doesn’t, but strangely Adam has an idea of who it is anyways.
Ronan looks like he always does, standing on the other side of the door: rugged, stupidly attractive in his leather jacket, utterly untouchable.
“Hey,” Adam says, a punched-out sound.
“Hey,” Ronan says in return, then pushes inside.
He ducks below a particularly low-hanging beam, throwing his bag down beside Adam’s bed. And then he stands there, staring at the slumped backpack like it might grow legs.
Adam returns to his spot on the bed. Ronan does not move, shoulders hiked up minutely. His eyebrows are pulled down, teeth bared like he’s gearing for a fight, or like he’s just got back from losing one. "You look like shit," he remarks, then juts his chin out to Adam’s forgotten essay, “still working?”
Adam isn't sure what he wants from this. "I’m always working," is all he says.
Ronan scoffs, expression shifting from careful uninterest to disdain. “Yeah.” He eyes Adam’s work clothes, stained from who knows when. “I’m not burying your fucking body when you work yourself to death.”
Adam levels him a stare. He has to bite his tongue to keep himself from saying anything about dead bodies in this church. “I’m fine,” he says instead. “I have it under control.”
Ronan laughs, an unpleasant sound. “Sure fucking looks like it.” He looks pointedly at the thin blanket at the foot of Adam’s bed, folded haphazardly for nights when it’s too cold for just a sheet.
He knows Ronan is looking for something to throw matches at, and Adam’s apartment is the most likely culprit to catch flames. But Adam is saving up for a blanket, something Ronan has never done and will never have to do, and that makes pride swell in Adam’s chest for his little apartment with his little things that he has had the opportunity to accumulate.
And Adam is so, so tired.
Plus, he had missed him. In the kind of way you miss the rain when it’s sunny or the sun when it’s raining. Ronan Lynch is always an impossibility and an inevitability all at the same time. He can’t understand how after everything, Ronan came all the way over here just to throw words like knives in his little, frangible apartment.
“Did you fight with Gansey? Is that why you’re angry?” His voice is gentler than he feels. “Is that why you’re here?”
“Fuck you.” Ronan snarls.
“Original.”
Ronan practically seethes, all teeth and sharp claws.
“Why did you come here, then?” Adam continues, “other than to make slights against my apartment?”
Ronan looks like a hunting dog preparing to pounce. “I came to see if you were dead in a ditch somewhere,” he bites, “if I knew you were busy mopping the snow off the floor of this shithole, I wouldn’t have fucking bothered.”
“You were the one who came here, Ronan," Adam insists, affronted.
“Maybe I shouldn't have.”
Adam looks at him for a long moment. Ronan looks back, eyes ablaze.
“I have to finish my essay,” Adam finally says, disarming, “and I’m not going to entertain you if you just came here to be difficult.”
“I can leave if I’m not welcome.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“Ronan, Jesus, just shut up and come here.”
Ronan still stands floating in the middle of Adam’s small space. Like a holy being in his holy place. Adam has always known Ronan Lynch to be a creature of myth, but it’s never more apparent than when he’s in his own place of worship.
“You shut up,” Ronan attempts, frowning.
“Horrible comeback. What are we, five?”
Ronan just frowns some more. He still looks like he wants to punch something, and Adam briefly wonders if he really is going to turn around and leave.
But Ronan doesn’t leave, or assault his apartments for all it’s afflictions. Instead, he scuffs the toe of his boot on the floor like a little kid on his way over to sit down next to Adam. He stares at the wall. Adam stares at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Thought you didn’t have time for me tonight.”
“Don’t,” he says. Then, softer, “what’s wrong?”
Ronan swallows, looking down at his lap. “I saw my brothers today.”
Adam had not known they were even in town, but he nods anyway. There are a lot of things that Adam doesn’t understand about the Lynch brothers, but one thing they are not is solitary creatures.
Ronan brings his wrist to his mouth. “They want to have the funeral this weekend,” he says. Adam nods again, this time in understanding. “It’s supposed to be small, intimate and shit, here at church. Declan says it’s what she would’ve wanted.”
“And you don’t think so?”
“I don’t fucking know,” Ronan says know the way he says fuck.
“What do you want?”
Ronan just stares straight ahead.
Tentatively, Adam takes Ronan’s hand in his own. Ronan is warm, much too warm for someone wearing a leather jacket in the snow. Adam holds on a little tighter.
Ronan does his smoker’s breath, fingers stretching out so that Adam’s can slot between them. “The fucked part of me just wants this to be over.”
Adam hums. Their hands like this look like a knot, like something to behold, like the twists and bounds in Ronan’s tattoo. “It’s not fucked up to want to stop hurting, Lynch.”
Ronan is looking at their hands, too. Adam wonders if he’s thinking the same thing. “You would know,” he says, with no bite left in him.
Adam hums again. “Are your brothers still here?”
“They leave after church on Sunday.”
They lapse into a companionable silence after that, both boys staring at where their bodies are joined. It’s an innocent touch, far more innocent than the touches they’ve shared. Hell, Adam had gotten Ronan out of his shirt after the first kiss, but this feels significant; this feels monumental.
It’s snowing outside again; Adam can just see the way it collects on the tiny sill outside his window. The stars are no longer visible overhead, choosing instead to fall from the sky and collect on the ground, but it’s no less bright. He would be annoyed, he has to get to work and school somehow tomorrow, but right now, it seems fitting.
The first snow of the year. A changing of the seasons.
Quietly, Ronan says, “I just want to go home,” like a secret, a confession.
It’s a familiar sentiment to Adam. He’s wanted to go home since before he knew what it meant.
“You can go,” Adam tells him, just as quiet. Ronan catches his eye, then, and Adam can practically feel the gaze all the way through to his stomach. “Or,” he says slowly, “you can stay. If you want.”
Ronan nods, as small as his voice when he mumbles an, “okay,” and brings his hands around Adam’s middle.
Adam has no choice — with Ronan’s weight falling against his body — but to fall backwards against the mattress. Ronan’s arms circle him almost immediately, hands finding their place between the grooves of his ribs, slotting together like they belong there. Adam brings one arm around Ronan’s shoulders, tugging him closer. Then, slowly and intently, his other hand falls against the back of Ronan’s skull. A horizontal recreation of their position from a few nights ago, this time with less fear and lighter bruises.
Adam stares at the ceiling, trying to hear the snowfall through the roof.
Hands run up and down his sides, lulling him into that space between sleep and wakefulness. In return Adam swipes his thumb back and forth across the base of Ronan’s skull; just to have something to do with his hands.
It’s nice like this, when there’s no threat of death looming in their immediate peripherals, when there’s no blood on their hands or their faces, to just hold each other. Ronan turns his head a little further into Adam’s chest and they do not move or speak for a very long while.
...
Adam has never enjoyed silence. It was a rarity growing up, and while some nights he’d prayed for anything, anything, other than the liquor-flavoured screaming his father subjected him to on the daily, silence was almost worse. Silence meant finding his dad passed out on the lawn. Silence meant Robert Parrish would be taking his particularly long day out on him tomorrow. Silence meant he was past angry, headed towards livid. That slow, growing kind of fear engulfed Adam on nights devoid of sound, not a snore or a scream passing through the thin walls of the trailer where he sat, waiting for them to collapse inward.
So, he's never particularly enjoyed silence, but with Ronan, he thinks he is willing to learn.
His hands are still rubbing absently at the nape of Ronan’s neck, the pads of his fingers tingly and almost numb with how long he's been repeating the motion. Adam brushes his knuckle down over Ronan’s cheekbone, a slow, unhurried caress because for the first time, Adam doesn’t feel like he’s in any kind of rush.
Ronan sighs against his chest, sinking further into him. “Lynch?”
“What.”
“Would now be a bad time to tell you I still need to shower?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I need to shower.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I smell like gasoline.”
Ronan’s arms tighten around him, “exactly.”
Adam laughs, too loud for the quiet of the night. “You’re so fucking weird,” he says, and pushes Ronan off of him.
Later, when Adam returns, hair still damp, Ronan is already asleep on the floor, and a blanket Adam has never seen is sitting folded at the foot of his bed. The world is quiet save for the steady tapping of the snow against his window, but even those seem to have slowed for the night, languid and lazy in the early hours of the morning.
Adam stands in the doorway for a beat, waiting for the leftover fear that Robert Parrish forced into him to engulf him; waiting for the walls to collapse.
It doesn’t; they don't. Adam goes to sleep perfectly warm, turned on his side so he can cup Ronan’s cheek, run his fingers over the short hair of his temples, until he can’t keep his eyes open any longer.
Ronan is still there when he wakes up. Adam carries whatever unidentifiable feeling that that ignites in him everywhere he goes. The old one is tucked safely in the corner of his apartment, because Adam Parrish knows better than to discard anything, but he doesn’t think he’ll be needing it any time soon.
...
three.
“Wanna go for a drive?”
Adam looks up from the soapy plate in his hand. Ronan doesn’t even wait for him to respond before snagging his keys from the kitchen table and heading for the front door of the Barns.
Adam watches him as he goes, newly dreamt washcloth still hanging from his hands.
Ronan’s been doing that a lot recently. Dreaming.
They were small things at first — in the early weeks of February when he’d finally brought himself to try again — blades of grass or pressed flowers that he’d leave on Adam’s desk when he slept over at St. Agnes. Adam kept every single thing, because his childhood had taught him the value of little things, and because his adolescence had taught him the value of Ronan Lynch.
His dream things are steadily becoming more complex. Adam is particularly fond of the washcloth that always stays clean and the little raven keychain that only attaches to keys to the Barns. Little things that feel entirely larger than the sun to Adam.
“Dreamt you something,” Ronan had said casually in lieu of greeting one night when Adam had decided to make the trek up to the Barns after work. The sun was still up (just barely) and Ronan had been waiting for him on the porch like he knew he was coming.
“That’s ominous,” Adam had said, leaning against one of the pillars.
“You’re a shithead, you know that?”
“You like it.”
Ronan handed him a leather-bound journal, already worn and clasped shut at the side. Adam ran his fingers over it, over the artificial scuff marks. He wondered who’d left them there, where they came from, how Ronan had dreamt this specific random pattern in particular.
“What’s the catch?”
Ronan slouched back. “There isn’t always a catch, man. It’s just a book.”
Adam narrowed his eyes at him, carefully unclasping the book. As soon as he opened it a loud screeching pulsed from the pages like a speaker, squawking out a squash one, squash two!- Adam slammed it shut, clutching his good ear.
Ronan’s laugh was happy and carefree, and Adam had to fight to keep the unhappy look on his face at the sound.
“You’re the fucking worst,” he’d said.
Ronan stood up, pressed a short kiss to the top of his head, said, “you like it,” then took him by the hand.
Adam pressed the flowers Ronan dreamt that night between the pages of the Murder Squash book.
The front door closes with an abrupt thud that makes Adam drop the cloth into the sink, eyes directed blankly at the doorway where Ronan had disappeared to, then the table, then the backdoor.
Everything about the Barns reminds him of Ronan. He's in the dream calendar on the wall with things like fucking cold, and boat shoe weather, written in place of the month, the rack of shoes by the backdoor that never runs out of space. Adam has two pairs of shoes, but the thought that Ronan had dreamt infinite space in his home for infinite people warms Adam from the tips of his ears to the tips of his toes.
Everything about Ronan reminds him of the Barns, too. Not for the first time Adam wonders if that’s what magic is — a continuous loop. A mobius strip with dreamer and dream on opposite ends.
It’s still light out, a rare occurrence this late into the evening, even now, a week before Spring break.
Adam puts down the plate and follows Ronan out the door.
…
They drive out past Singer’s Falls mostly in silence. Adam watches his boyfriend shamelessly from the passenger seat. His shoulders are hiked up, a frown line between his eyebrows, less like he’s just lost a fight and more like he’s marching to battle.
"You're staring."
Adam smiles. "Karma."
Ronan laughs like he's trying not to, it echoes around them like a bird in a cage. Adam smiles in return, puts his hand on top of Ronan's on the gear shift for just a moment before pulling away and facing forward.
Eventually, Ronan pulls off the road onto a dirt trail. Or maybe that's generous. It's more of a dirt field with no turn off that Ronan turns into anyways. He barely has the car thrown in park before he’s swinging the door open and stepping out.
Adam stares blankly from the passenger seat, three steps behind, it seems. “I can’t tell if this is romantic or creepy.”
“None of your dates ever took you out to the woods to suck face before?”
“Just one.”
Ronan gives him a look through the open car door. He waits for Adam to get out before heading for the forested area just ahead.
“Are you really going to try and seduce me in the woods?” Adam slips his hand into Ronan’s. “Because you don’t have to.”
“I know you find me irresistible, Parrish, no need to embarrass yourself.”
“Yeah, I’m the embarrassing one in this relationship.” He ducks under a low hanging branch. “You’re taking me to the woods to romance me.”
Ronan wrinkles his nose. “ Romance you. Jesus Christ, you sound like Gansey.”
“No, Gansey was romanced in the woods, by someone who was supposedly already there, and dead. That’s different.”
“I didn’t take you here to seduce you, fucking nerd.”
“That’s good, cause if you did, you’d be doing an awful bad job at it.”
“Fuck you.”
“I thought you just said we weren’t doing that.”
Ronan doesn’t answer, just leads him through a particularly dense forested area, past a cluster of rocks and down a pathway of trees. The earth seems more alive here than ever, an observation that leaves Adam painfully longing for Cabeswater and something else he can’t name.
“Here,” Ronan says, tugging Adam’s hand to pull him to a stop in the middle of a clearing.
Adam looks around. Trees and moss and grass and sky. “Well,” he says, “it’s certainly unconventional.”
At the look on Ronan’s face, though, Adam falls silent. His gaze is intent, searching. Adam has the distinct feeling that he’s missing something; that this is a puzzle Ronan has already put together, and now he's waiting for Adam to follow suit.
“Ronan…?”
Slowly, like a rush of air, like a tidal wave, like summer rain evaporating, Adam feels the earth shift beneath his feet. The sky rumbles, clouds parting and dissipating with the noise. Falling apart and stitching together at the same time. It sounds like thunder; it feels like a storm. The sun shines brighter, warmer, as it passes just enough over the horizon to cast an orange hue over everything.
Ronan is still looking at him, that same searching expression on his face, but Adam is too busy looking to the ground, where the dirt beneath the soles of his shoes seems to be coming to life. Adam has seen a lot of things come back to life — and isn’t that something monumental, just how right it feels to think that the dirt is coming back to life — but this is something different, something bigger than resurrection.
It's a rebirth. Not a new life, but one that has lived before, in Ronan’s head and out.
Trees are being pulled up out of the dirt, fully grown and aged around them. Adam is so in love with Ronan Lynch in this moment that it spills all over his mouth and onto the grass.
The rumbling stops. Like a puff of smoke, a candle being blown out. Adam’s ears ring. Both of them.
“Ronan ,” Adam says, a little breathless, a little wild, a lot happy. “Cabeswater?”
Ronan shakes his head. “I couldn’t,” he says, “it’s not the same.”
“It’s just as good,” Adam says in a rush.
He cups Ronan’s face between his hands.
"Fuck, Ronan."
Ronan’s face shifts all at once, the whole thing lifting into what Adam can only describe as joy, in its simplest form.
Roan turns his head in Adam’s palm to kiss the heel of it, eyes shining. “I’ve been trying for weeks,” he says, “It wasn’t- I had to make sure it was good.”
“Oh, it’s good.”
Ronan smiles, the curve of his cheeks fitting sweetly into Adam’s palm. “It didn’t feel real, at first.”
“And now?” Ronan’s eyes really are very pretty.
Ronan’s hands come up to grab him around the middle and draw him close. “It’s a little more believable,” he says, “now.”
Adam kisses him then, hard and fast. Adrenaline races through his blood . He drinks the happiness right off of Ronan’s lips, then realizes the kind that settles in his stomach is his own joy, not Ronan’s. Maybe it doesn’t matter where it comes from, maybe they’re the same thing.
Adam’s first thought when they pull apart is I’ve been here, and then I never want to leave. Ronan Lynch’s mind is a messy place, but at the centre, there’s a clearing. Adam knows it well. Magical forests that speak in tongues, a sky that looks like it’s rising and falling at the same time, and a place for Adam, always. Like a mobius strip with Ronan on one end and Adam on the other.
Ronan presses their foreheads together, far more tender than the pulsing of Adam’s blood can manage right now. Adam presses his lips hastily to Ronan’s mouth in quick pecks.
Ronan pulls away then, whispers Lindenmere in his right ear, and something whispers a reply in his left.
His deaf ear all but sings with it.
Ronan smiles at him, uninhibited and dangerous before he takes off running, following the small circle of trees and whooping in exhilaration. Like anything else, Adam follows his lead.
Leaves fall around them like rain even though it’s the middle of Spring, bearing witness to two boys as they rediscover magic. Ronan's smile is almost feral as Adam chases him through the trees. He suspects his own might look the same.
That’s what they do for the next hour until the sun has fully gone down. They chase each other through the trees like children, at one point Adam tries to push him into the creek and at another Ronan succeeds in pushing him back. Adam catches Ronan by the sleeve, laughing into his open mouth in a sad parody of a kiss as he pulls him down with him.
He brings his hands up around Ronan again, his jeans muddy and wet but he doesn’t care. Ronan is on top of him, falling into him, his arms wrapping around Adam’s middle. Their bodies slot together easily, like a puzzle they'd both put together long ago. Slowly, their laughter subsides and something gentler takes over.
Adam’s hand finds its place on the back of Ronan’s skull, cradling the place just above his neck out of habit.
“You’re a miracle, Ronan Lynch,” he says, gaze flowing the way the stars freckle Ronan’s dilated pupils. He’s so proud he’s practically bleeding all over Ronan with it, spilling onto the leaves and wet earth that surrounds them.
Ronan tips his head down, knocking their foreheads together. “You’re alright,” he says, but he’s smiling still. Ronan brings their mouths back together before Adam can think of a retort. That’s okay though, Adam is alright, after all. More than.
...
four.
Gansey, Blue and Henry wait until the second weekend of July to leave for their road trip.
“For the fireworks, of course,” Henry had explained when Adam asked why they didn't just leave right after graduation. “And the parties, if you know what I mean,” he’d added with a wink.
Adam had known it was probably because Gansey didn’t want to leave until after his birthday, but he didn’t know how to bring it up, so instead he'd clapped Henry on the back with a smile. “Just promise me you won’t partake in both of those things at the same time,” he said. Henry just laughed.
"I make no promises."
Truthfully, Adam is glad they’re sticking around a little into the summer. He knows Ronan feels the same. It’s in everything he does, this delicate feeling like the whole world is about to shift off its axis. Adam knows he’s thinking about how he’ll have to do this all over again come September. It seems as though they’re all just saying goodbye all the time nowadays.
It's a funny thing, to watch Ronan say goodbye for months before anyone actually leaves. It’s an even funnier thing to realize that he’s doing the same.
Ronan doesn’t tell Gansey that he’ll miss him, though Gansey probably already knows. That's the thing about them — all of them, even Blue and, strangely, even Henry — Gansey knows what Ronan is saying without him having to speak, that his quiet is just another part of Ronan's prolonged goodbye.
Adam watches Ronan act like he’s fine, like he doesn't even remember Gansey is leaving for a year. But on the day before the trio’s departure, he agrees to go check out a new spot on the ley line, and then he agrees to go to Nino’s for dinner without so much as a roll of his eyes. He even takes the backseat in the Camaro with only a “you’re lucky you’re hot,” muttered into Adam’s shoulder as they squish together next to Blue.
So, it’s in everything he does. Like most of the things Ronan feels.
“You can’t expect me to actually believe you went through an emo phase.” Blue looks at Gansey, exasperated.
Ronan fiddles with Adam’s hand under the table, rubbing absently across the knuckles of his right hand where it cups Ronan’s knee. “That wasn’t even the worst of it,” Ronan interjects, Gansey sends him a pained expression from across the booth that goes ignored. “Wait til’ you hear about the horses.”
Gansey squeezes his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Gansey was a horse girl?” Blue looks utterly delighted at the news.
“Lord have mercy.”
“Are you meaning to tell me Ganseyman didn’t pop out of the womb fully grown?” Henry says, “Are you also going to tell me that they sent you home from the hospital in a blanket and not a polo?”
Gansey laughs good naturedly, shoulders bumping both Blue’s and Henry’s on either side of him with every exhale.
It’s not a sad thing, but it makes Adam feel a funny sort of sorrow.
Ronan pulls Adam’s middle finger up off the fabric of his jeans, wiggling it around like the adult he is. Adam wants to kiss him about it.
“Well, we haven’t even talked about Ronan’s emo phase.”
Ronan drops Adam’s finger, then immediately picks it back up again. “Don’t,” he says.
“It coincided perfectly with my own, in fact,” Gansey continues, unperturbed, “though Ronan’s was far more severe, and enduring.”
“Dick,” Ronan warns, “don't.”
A charming grin stretches across Gansey’s handsome features in response.
“Well,” Henry says with a dramatic maneuver of his eyebrows, “I for one am enthralled with the escalation of this conversation.”
“I’m gonna spit on your pizza.”
“Ronan.”
“He grew his hair out and everything,” Gansey does not stop, “we used to borrow Helen’s straightening iron so that Ronan could pretend he had bangs without having to undergo any lasting damage with a haircut.” Blue cackles loudly. Adam, too, has to pull his lips inwards and bite them together to suppress his own laugh.
The idea of pre-teen Ronan Lynch straightening his curly hair over his eyes is quite the image, indeed.
Ronan groans, a pretty red flush rising from his neck over his cheekbones and to the tips of his ears. He releases Adam’s hand to flip Gansey off. “Eat shit, Dick.”
“Aww, it’s okay, Lynch,” Blue says.
"Fuck off, maggot."
"At least you didn’t have a horse girl phase," she continues, unperturbed.
“Actually, now that you mention it-”
Ronan groans again, louder this time and more of a disgusted argh sound, to try and drown Gansey out. The whole table laughs, even Ronan. Adam can feel it where they’re pressed together.
So, it’s in everything he does, even allowing Gansey to tease him at the dinner table. That funny sort of sorrow climbs back up Adam’s throat. He swallows it down with a sip of Ronan’s coke.
Adam laughs extra loud for the rest of the night, wanting the walls to soak up as much of them as possible, wanting them to be remembered, missed, when they’re apart.
Later, after the food has arrived and the conversation has shifted to their road trip schedule, Henry says, “sorry, I know it should probably be obvious, but I can’t get over the fact that Lynch had an actual emo emo phase.”
“It’s not a phase, mom!” Blue exclaims. Ronan flips her off.
“Arguably his really wasn’t,” Adam says.
Ronan makes a noise Adam would assume resembles something of a dying animal, head smacking against his hand on the table so forcefully what’s left of the pizza bounces. Gansey’s smile is jubilant, uninhibited, something that soothes the swelling sorrow in Adam’s stomach, even just a little bit.
“Fuck you,” Ronan mutters into the table. “You were supposed to be on my side.”
“But you make it so easy.”
Ronan turns his head to catch his eye, forehead still pressed against the back of his hand. “You're such a little shit.”
“You like it.”
Adam puts his hand on the back of Ronan’s skull, because it’s right there and his hand fits so well curved around the short hairs at the base of his skull. It’s not reassurance, Ronan is saying goodbye to his friends in his own way. (not goodbye. Farewell. See you soon, don’t forget me while you’re away.) And, besides, Adam doesn’t think it’s a sad thing, to want to see what else is out there. It’s more so because Adam knows Ronan is thinking what he’s thinking, sat here, all together in their booth at Nino’s for probably the last time until at least Christmas.
He’s going to miss this when the three of them leave tomorrow. He misses it already and they’re sitting less than two feet away from him. Like a tire popped on the freeway, stopped abruptly right in the middle of here and there.
That funny sort of sorrow is back, this time Adam allows himself to sit in it. Ronan places a hand on his leg under the table. It feels like understanding. It feels like being known.
Ronan raises an eyebrow at him when Adam looks at his face, still hidden, again. Adam nods in reply and hopes he's understood. The hand on his thigh squeezes.
Tamquam, Ronan mouths.
Alter idem, he mouths back.
Yes, Adam thinks, smoothing a finger over the back of Ronan’s neck. Most of the things Ronan feels are in everything he does.
...
five.
Adam pushes the front door of the Barns open, the weight of the key still foreign in his hands. Ronan had given it to him months ago, (“For emergencies, shithead, no need to look like I just pulled a knife on you.”) but it had taken Adam this long to feel comfortable letting himself in without knocking first.
He comes to the Barns almost every day now — as intent on memorizing the floorplan of the house as he is on memorizing the shape of Ronan’s lips when they’re tilted downward in sleep before he leaves in just a few short weeks. Far too often, now, then, to not use the damn key.
“Ronan?” he calls from the foyer.
The lack of reply is not unusual for this time of evening. A place like the Barns doesn't seem like one that abides by rules of night and day.
Adam pads his way through the house, looking to the living room, then the kitchen before finally out the backdoor when both turn up empty of dreamer or dreams.
Opal’s little head pops out of the tall grass at the sound of the screen door.
“Atom!” he hears, and looks up just in time for Chainsaw to land on his shoulder.
“Hi, ”he pets her wing. “Good evening, Opal.”
“Adam,” she says happily, flashing a toothy smile. There’s bark in between her teeth.
Adam raises an eyebrow. “Have you been eating sticks again?”
“Sticks,” she says in lieu of answering. She holds her hand up, what looks like a tree branch is clenched in her little fist.
Adam pets under Chainsaw’s beak, an easy smile on his face. “Sure is.”
“Adam,” she says again, beaming. Chainsaw squawks into his good ear. “Look what we found.” She holds her other hand out, in it what looks like a rock. It’s jagged edges sparkle in the moonlight like shards of glass when Adam takes it from her.
“Where’d you get this?”
“The trees. There’s lots of them.”
A dream, then, and to Adam there’s no question as to whose dream it is. Only his dreamer would spend his time dreaming glittery rocks for his raven and his half-human half-goat dream creature. Only his dreamer would want enough for something that has no purpose other than to be found.
Adam smiles at her, tossing the rock in the air and catching it again. “You’ll have to show me them sometime,” he says, but the weight of the stone in his hands reminds him why he’s out here in the first place. So he asks, “do you know where Ronan is?”
The dream creature’s movements still, her face falling like a stone sinking in a lake. Something far too somber and grown for a little girl’s face passes over her features. “Kerah,” she says, then points the stick to the second floor of the house — at Ronan’s bedroom window.
Adam frowns. “Is he dreaming?”
Opal shakes her head, trotting over to him to tug at the fabric of his pants. “He’s not dreaming, but it’s a nightmare.”
...
Ronan is not in his room when Adam goes up to check. The door is not locked, a telling sign that if he is having a nightmare, he hadn’t come up here with the explicit purpose of dreaming.
He’s not in the bathroom, or Declan’s old room, or Matthew’s. Adam checks even the closets for his over six-foot boyfriend, just because he can. He’s about to extend his efforts to the main floor again when something makes him stop at the top of the stairs.
He’s not dreaming, but it’s a nightmare.
There are things about the Barns that Adam has come to know after almost a year of dating the dreamer who lives here.
About the Barns and about Ronan, though one of the things he’s learned is that there isn’t much of a distinction between the two. If Adam was Cabeswater’s hands and eyes, Ronan is the Barn’s soul; its head and its heart and its hands.
Niall may have bred the Barns, but Ronan was the one who gave it life.
Adam is just trying to catch up. There are two lifetimes of secrets he’s attempting to learn now.
Secrets like the fact that the third step on the back porch creaks, and Ronan will never fix it because it reminds him of when he was a kid, his brothers and him barreling up and down the stairs to set up picnics and smores around the fire pit. He says it wouldn't feel right, if one day he went out there and didn’t hear the familiar thunk thunk creak. Adam thinks it’s absurdly endearing. Ronan hand shoved him when he told him as much.
Adam has learned that Ronan likes to use the biggest cutting board for dinner, so Adam has taken to always using the smallest one he can find in the cupboard. He’s learned that Ronan’s very superstitious about things like opening umbrellas indoors (“What the fuck is that, Parrish? Are you trying to psychic hex my house or something?”) but not about broken mirrors. He’s learned that none of the Barns’ appliances or pieces of furniture are dreamt except for the fireplace. The flame burns above the wood so it never needs to be replaced.
And he’s learned that Ronan doesn’t go into the master bedroom. Ever.
Not even to clean it. It could be covered in dust or crawling with nightmares and Adam would never know.
“Why the fuck would we need to clean it, Parrish? No one even goes in there,” Ronan had said the first and only time Adam had asked and that had been that.
Sometimes, though, Adam catches him outside of it, staring mournfully at the closed door at the end of the hall before steeling himself and moving on. He’s yet to bring it up.
Adam knocks first, because if Ronan is in there, he wants to give him the opportunity to say fuck off, and if Ronan is not there, he wants Niall and Aurora to know he’s on the other side, looking to finally come in after all this time.
He feels silly about the second thought, the idea that ghosts would care if he knocked or not, but then a feeling of inexplicable emptiness passes over him, foggy and too distorted for him to catch.
“Lynch?” he calls, pushing the door open slowly.
It’s clear that it hasn’t been cleaned since Aurora was still living here, stray mugs, old trinkets that Adam assumes had come from a dream, and stray piles of laundry are scattered around the room. Ronan stands in the middle of it all, shoulder hunched. He looks very small, indeed. He hadn’t turned on the light, the glow from the hallway illuminating him in the large, barren room.
In the moonlight, Ronan looks almost ethereal, like a creature of myth, all harsh edges and stark features and ink curling around his shoulders. Adam often wonders if he, too, would be tempted if Ronan Lynch at midnight was the one tempting him.
He doesn’t look at Adam standing stagnant in the doorway. Instead, his glassy eyes are trained on the stack of books on the window sill.
“Have you read them?” Adam asks, stepping into the room.
Ronan nods once. “Dad used to read them to us.”
Adam tries for a smile. “That’s cool.”
“Yeah. It was.”
Adam has no memories of the like, but he did used to spend his days at the public library where he’d plough through any book he could get his hands on. He had tried Alice in Wonderland once, when he was thirteen, but the unconventional language and speech patterns were enough for him to determine that the book was not for him. The next time he visited he’d moved on to Goosebumps and read through three of them in two weeks . He hadn’t picked up Alice in Wonderland since.
Adam looks at Ronan for a beat. Two. He doesn’t look back.
“I installed a new microwave today,” Ronan tells the window. “And I know I’ve done other things that they’d… I mean I fixed the whole goddamn fence for fuck’s sake. That thing’s been in pieces since I was a kid.“ Ronan’s lips turn up scornfully at the corners. Adam makes an aborted motion towards him. “And yesterday I got Dad’s old tractor in the far barn to work,” he continues, “just by turning the key a couple more times.”
Adam knows this, because he had been in the kitchen when Ronan had come inside with a dazzling smile on his face and said “you’re not the only one who can work cars, Parrish”. But Ronan knows this, too, and Adam wonders if he’s not telling this to either of them at all.
“I’ve done way bigger things,” Ronan repeats, suddenly annoyed. “Nevermind. It's fucking stupid. It's not important.” He brings his wrist up to his mouth.
“It is,” Adam says. Ronan still doesn’t look at him. “It is,” he insists.
“I don’t know-” Ronan says all in a rush around his leather bracelets, then stops to frown at his feet. “I don’t feel closer to them here.” His voice is almost as small as he looks.
Here , their room, their home. It doesn’t strike Adam as intensely as it probably should. Maybe because this home is as much Ronan’s as it was Niall and Aurora’s. Maybe because Ronan has dreamt glittering rocks and novelty calendars and a shoe rack that never ceases for this place. Adam feels closer to Ronan here, always has.
“Did you think you would?”
Ronan exhales through his teeth. “Kind of, yeah.”
The confession hangs heavy in the room with the rest of the ghosts. Truthfully, Adam doesn’t feel closer to Ronan’s parents here, either, though that may be more closely attributed to the fact that he’s a stranger in a house that belonged to them long before he stepped foot inside. The energy of the room feels entirely static, no hum of the ley lines any more enhanced than in the rest of the house.
He doesn’t say this, of course, he doesn’t say anything. They stand there in the echo of Ronan’s voice until it seeps entirely into the walls.
Eventually Adam breaks the silence. “They’d be really happy you finally replaced the microwave,” he lets one side of his mouth quirk up, “the last one was shit.”
Ronan laughs, a broken thing. Adam takes his hand, then, and Ronan comes easily.
Adam’s hands move instinctively now, one up and around Ronan’s back and the other to the base of his skull, sliding gently back and forth against the short hairs there.
Ronan tucks his head under Adam’s chin, which can’t be comfortable given that he’s at least half a head taller. But Adam knows he likes to get as close as he can to Adam’s heart, to Adam’s lungs; like he’s memorizing him from the inside out. And Adam doesn’t mind it either, when Ronan’s hands come up around his middle, his ribs slotting between the spaces in Adam’s like they belong there, like the channels were carved to one day accommodate Ronan Lynch holding him. Maybe they were.
“Fuck,” Ronan says, voice muffled by how hard he’s pressing against Adam’s chest. “My boyfriend’s going to fucking Harvard.”
Adam’s fingers rub firmer against Ronan’s neck. “I’m coming back, though.”
Ronan inhales for a long time. A reverse smoker’s breath. “I know,” he says, “and I’ll be here waiting for you when you do.”
Adam kisses the top of his head. “You’ll be doing a lot more than just waiting ,” he rolls his eyes fondly, Henrietta accent comfortable on his tongue in the presence of the Lynchs, however many of them are listening. “I mean, you got a whole barn to fix, and a satyr child, and a sentient forest.” Ronan pinches his side. “Pretty soon you won’t even notice I’m gone anymore; and then it’ll be winter break, and I really won’t be.”
Ronan untucks his head, Adam’s hand moving with it, still cupping the back of it. Ronan’s eyes are more focused, now, present. There’s still a fog, a cloudiness blurring the blue of his eyes, turning them almost grey; but like summer rain evaporating, it’ll pass.
Ronan looks back towards the king-sized bed, the chestnut dresser with the folded shirts on top of it, waiting to be put away, the copy of Alice in Wonderland sitting untouched for years in the glow of the moon. His face is carefully neutral, unaffected.
Adam loves him so fiercely right now it hurts.
Ronan whispers, “they would’ve loved you.”
Adam says, “they loved you enough for the both of us.”
...
six.
“Adam?”
A hand on his shoulder makes Adam jolt, belatedly registering the ache in his neck. His face is squished against his psychology textbook, the page a little creased where it folded under his cheek.
“Huh?” he says stupidly, lifting his head from his desk. He feels heavy all over, that kind of fogginess that comes with three days without sleep slowing him down to his bones. His roommate is standing over him, offering him an almost pained half-smile at the way Adam rubs harshly the back of his neck. Adam looks away.
“Your phone rang a couple times,” he says, “could be important.”
Adam taps his phone awake with a long exhale. 4am. 3 missed calls.
“Shit.” His roommate laughs through his nose. “Thanks for letting me know,” he says, as he tries to unlock his phone with one hand, absently rubbing the crease out of the page with the other. There’s probably a mark on his face, too. “And sorry,” he adds with a grimace, “for waking you.”
His roommate just shrugs, retreating back to his side of the room, warm light coming from the lamp on his desk and the laptop piled over with three open books. “It’s not like anyone on the floor was asleep anyways.” Adam nods solemnly.
His phone rings again, so loud he nearly drops it before answering.
“Ronan?”
“‘Bout time.” He sounds gruff, but Adam can hear the slight amusement at the edges of his words; even through the hum of the phone. It makes the tension in his shoulders dissipate just the slightest bit. “Open the door, Parrish, it’s cold out here.”
Adam blanks. “What?”
“You know what a door is, Adam, or did the Ivy League really drain whatever was left of your brain?”
“It’s four in the morning.”
“I take it back. College really is teaching you the important shit.”
Adam scrubs a hand down his face and around the back of his neck. “You’re…?”
“Here. And freezing my balls off. Now come let me in, dickhead."
Adam stares blankly at the wall for two seconds, then he makes for the door before he can even really register what he’s doing, hastily grabbing the sweater he leaves on the back of his desk chair. His roommate smiles at him from across the room. Adam doesn’t have time to return it, but he grins to himself on his way down the stairs and out the building.
The ground is frozen under his feet, stabbing up into him like little knives in the bumpy gravel. In his half-awake rush he’d forgotten shoes, but he doesn’t spare enough time on the thought to care, because Ronan is right there. Close enough to touch. The thought makes what little resolve he’s been holding onto for the past week almost break entirely.
Ronan’s smile is practically blinding in the shitty parking-lot light. Adam doesn’t jump into his arms, because he’s an adult and this is his school campus, but he flings his arms around Ronan’s neck hard enough to almost knock them off balance, and in an attempt to keep them upright Ronan has to grab him around the waist, lifting his frozen feet off the ground.
“You’re here,” Adam says into the collar of Ronan’s coat.
“Yeah, yeah, pretend to be surprised. Whatever.”
But Adam is surprised is the thing, though now that he thinks about it he feels silly for it. Besides move-in day, Ronan had come up one time before, in October. Adam had called him in the middle of the day panicking about a near-failed midterm, and ten hours later Ronan was outside his lecture hall.
It’s not inconceivable, then, that he’d do the same thing when Adam had called him earlier today, panicking over his upcoming final exam for a class that he has absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on in, Ronan, I’m serious this time. He’d spent so much of the past two days pouring over his notes they’re starting to bleed together.
Adam squeezes him a little tighter, hand fitting against the back of his head. His hair has grown out a little for the winter. The texture is softer than Adam is expecting but no less welcome.
“Where’s Opal?” he asks absently.
Ronan laughs through his nose. “I didn’t ditch her, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“That’s exactly what I’m wondering.”
“I’m not about to trust her to look after the fucking Barns.” Ronan pauses. “Or herself. I dropped her and Chainsaw off with the witches.”
Adam hums. “Poor Maura.”
“Poor Opal.”
Adam wants to ask about the Barns, about who’s going to feed the cows and tend to the vegetables in Ronan’s absence — it is his home, too, after all — but the Barns and the cows and the tomatoes get Ronan every other day of the year, so Adam won’t feel bad about having him today.
Ronan clears his throat. ”As much as I missed your cold ass hands on my neck,” he says, still holding Adam hovering off the ground, “I’ve been out here for ten minutes, Parrish. It’s cold as all fuck.”
Adam smiles for what feels like the first time in a week.
…
His roommate is suspiciously missing when Adam drags Ronan back up to his room, along with his laptop and all his books. Maybe that’s what his smile had meant, Adam doesn’t have the mental energy to work it out at the moment.
As soon as the door is closed Adam is stepping back into the circle of Ronan’s arms. Because Ronan Lynch is right there, and Adam hasn’t seen him since Thanksgiving, and he’d just driven for ten hours straight through below freezing temperatures just because Adam was making himself sick over an exam.
Adam hooks his arms up around Ronan’s back, and in return Ronan’s hands smooth across his shoulder blades, holding him close. He doesn’t ask if he’s okay, because Ronan wouldn’t be here if he were. So instead he holds him as Adam breathes in the scent of the Barns. It feels like understanding. It feels like being known.
“Christ, Parrish.” Ronan says, rubbing out the stiffness in his neck, down his back. “When’s the last time you took a fucking break?”
Adam shrugs.
“We’re taking one. Right now.”
Adam sighs, pulling back, “I still need to-”
“Right now.”
“Ronan, I can’t just… stop whenever I want.”
“Yes, you can.”
Adam exhales. Ronan’s hands on him are making it exceedingly hard to think. “Just,” he looks over at his desk, “let me finish going over these notes. I’ll be half an hour max.”
Ronan’s hands are reluctant to stop moving, to let go, but he’s also the one who showed up unannounced, and as happy as Adam is to be near him again, he still has an exam to worry about. He still has a schedule to stick to. If he doesn’t finish revising this chapter tonight, he won’t have any time to even glance at them before his exam on Saturday.
“Half an hour,” Ronan agrees, releasing him, “and then you’re gonna fucking sit down.” He flops onto Adam’s bed, chucking his boots unceremoniously off the foot of it.
Adam situates himself back at his desk, his back to his boyfriend because he can’t be certain he’ll be able to finish studying if Ronan is in his peripherals. It doesn’t really matter, because he can feel him there, but he’d rather not have the reminder of what’s waiting for him in his line of vision.
He finishes twenty-eight minutes later with no more but no less worry than before and an exacerbated ache in his neck. He turns around in his chair, rubbing harshly at his shoulder, and just looks.
Ronan is sprawled out on Adam’s little mattress, back propped upright on the wall with his eyes closed and his headphones in. It’s eerily similar to their setup at St. Agnes, except now Ronan is in his bed, and Adam is allowed to climb in next to him. The thought is warm.
Ronan’s eyes blink open when he feels Adam’s knees press into the mattress, scooting to the side as Adam crawls over him, in his lap. The bed is far too small for two fully grown boys, but the fit is fine enough for Adam.
“Fucking finally,” Ronan says, mouth full of cotton. His eyes are so blue. Bluer than Adam thinks should be possible. “S’cold,” Ronan grumbles, and he pulls Adam towards him until his head falls against his chest. Exhaustion falls over Adam in waves, built up over the days and now seeping out all over Ronan’s body. He exhales, deflating into his boyfriend’s chest.
Ronan’s hands come up, one around his back to resume his gentle soothing of Adam’s muscles, and the other into his hair. He gently scratches his fingers on Adam’s scalp, holding his head into the crook of his neck. Adam understands now why Ronan likes this so much. He wants to hold this feeling in his hands.
Adam sighs. “Thank you for coming.”
“Fuck you. I was always gonna come.”
Adam grins. “Sure are.”
“Don’t ruin it.”
“Sorry.” He’s not sorry at all.
Ronan laughs. “Thought you were tired, shithead.”
Adam lifts his head. “No, I said I was stressed. There are more ways to relieve stress than just sleep, Ronan.”
Ronan’s laugh is happier than his eyes are blue.
Later, when Adam feels a little lighter and his roommate still hasn’t returned, Ronan lies with his head pillowed on his chest, ear pressed right above his heart.
Adam places his hand on the back of Ronan’s skull, the way he always did when they hugged, and they do not move for a very long time.