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“Stop staring at me, Parrish,” Ronan grunted, his face half smushed into the pillow, voice muffled and groggy from sleep.
Adam was lying beside him, definitely staring. He had been for the past twenty minutes. It would probably be creepy, probably is a bit creepy, but who wouldn’t stare at Ronan Lynch when he dreamed? The boy who could bring back dreams into the waking world. The boy who dreamt a sentient forest, a pet raven who enunciated their crows better than the real thing, a hooved-girl who liked to crunch on styrofoam, a blonde-haired blue-eyed always-happy younger brother, the list goes on.
After not answering him and continuing to stare, Ronan opened his eyes, bloodshot and squinty. His cheeks flushed and he ducked his face further into the pillow to hide a growing smile, grumbling affectionately, “weirdo.”
“Did you sleep?” Adam asked, having to start again after clearing his throat. His fingertips were running over Ronan’s exposed torso, skating up his side, enjoying the warmth of his skin despite the cold air coming in through the cracked window.
They were at the Barns, they were always at the Barns, but whenever they slept here in Ronan’s room, he needed the window open. No matter how cold it was outside, Ronan always ran warm, his body radiating heat. It was nice to have him at St. Agnes on nights when the draft was too biting and Adam struggled to find warmth under his one duvet and thin sheet.
Ronan didn’t answer, just grabbed Adam’s hand when his touch started to drift toward ticklish and brought it to his lips, kissing his palm. It had been months since everything happened and it took a long while for Ronan to sleep again.
The first time he had just fallen asleep from exhaustion, sprawled out on the couch at Monmouth and Adam quickly snatched up his phone to turn off the alarm meant to wake him, stop him from dreaming. He thought about scrying, but instead he gently adjusted Ronan’s headphones to cover his ears, queued up some thrashing metal at a lower volume than he was used to, and just sat beside him, history textbook in his lap. Hours later, when Ronan woke with a small gasp, he hadn’t brought anything back with him. He reached for Adam’s hand and brought it to his lips, like he always did. After that, sleeping came easier.
“What’s it like?” asked Adam. He thought it was probably a stupid question, but it was morning and Ronan was soft and sleepy and too tired to really give him shit for it.
“What?”
“Bringing something back.”
Ronan exhaled long and loud. He rubbed his cheek against the pillow and readjusted, scooting a bit closer to Adam, without touching him. “You’ve seen me do it.”
“I’ve seen you go to sleep and wake up,” Adam replied carefully.
This was a fine line to tread; one wrong move and Ronan’s walls would be up, locking Adam out for the day or maybe longer. The only time Adam had been present when Ronan dreamt and brought something back was in St. Agnes all those months ago, when Ronan brought back a copy of himself, a corpse of himself. He wasn’t there for any of the good bits, like Chainsaw or Opal or the stupid little flying toy plane with no batteries in the receiver.
“I told you what it's like,” Ronan grunted, turning on his back to stare at the ceiling, avoiding Adam’s gaze. “You have to really like… feel it in your hands or something. You have to know it. If it’s not clear enough then I can’t bring it back… or I can, but it’ll be all wrong. Fucked up somehow.”
It was true, Ronan had told Adam what it was like when he had to falsify documents and evidence to incriminate Greenmantle. He had to live through what Adam suggested in order to make something believable. Although he told Adam this after the fact, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth and gut wrenching guilt that lasted for a week. If he thought about it, Ronan wouldn’t do what Ronan didn’t want to do so there was no real reason for Adam to feel guilty, but that reasoning didn’t take away the ache.
“Is it the same with people?” Adam asked, trying to shift his mind from the memory of Greenmantle, but then quickly rushed to explain. “Like Matthew… and Opal? You had to know them to…”
Ronan huffed a humorless laugh. “I don’t fucking know.”
“You know Gansey,” Adam continued. “Ever bring Gansey back by accident?”
This made Ronan actually laugh and Adam couldn’t help but grin in triumph. It was a rare thing, seeing Ronan unarmored, genuine, what Gansey described as the Ronan-before, the Ronan Adam didn’t know. The Ronan who had been staring at Adam for months the way Adam had been staring at Ronan for months; guard-down, knowable.
“Thanks for that,” Ronan sighed, laughter dying down. “I needed a laugh.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
Ronan kicked him.
They fell into a bit of a wrestling match, sheets tangled around limbs making it hard to gain the upper hand until they kicked them down off the bed. Adam ended up on top of Ronan, hovering above him, attempting to pin his arms down at his sides, but Ronan caught each of his wrists and tugged, sending Adam falling down chest-to-chest, his cheek squished to Ronan’s bare shoulder. Smiling, satisfied, Ronan kissed the inside of each wrist at his pulsepoint and then wrapped his arms around Adam’s waist to keep him right where he was.
“Back to sleep,” Ronan hummed, voice vibrating, rumbling, their chests glued together with warmth and a thin sticky layer of cool sweat.
Adam groaned and tried to sit up, but Ronan’s grip was firm. “Ronan.”
“Adam,” Ronan echoed, voice now sounding bored. With a little more wiggling, Adam managed to escape the embrace and fell to his side.
Ronan’s eyes were closed again, still on his back facing the ceiling. He didn’t move except for when his hand reached for Adam’s and tangled their fingers together, giving it a gentle squeeze. Adam kept their hands together, but rolled over to blindly reach for a blanket tossed on the floor, draping it over them, greedily slipping under most of it and turning to lay on his side and watch Ronan again.
A beat passed. A moment… two… then-
“You’ve been in my head before and it wasn’t pretty,” Ronan said, eyes still closed.
“That wasn’t you,” argued Adam, echoing the words Ronan repeated too often to him as the bruises were healing around his neck. That wasn’t you, Adam. That was a demon. For fuck’s sake.
What he really meant to say was: that wasn’t you, that was the demon, that was trauma, that was unmaking, that was a corrupted mind, a withering imagination, a destroyed dreamspace. That wasn’t the Ronan of now, the Ronan smiling and whispering sleepy secrets in the morning with flushed cheeks and shy glances, wandering hands and warm touch. That was the mind he wanted to know. To visit. To explore.
Ronan sighed and rolled over onto his side, tucking their joined hands under his chin, meeting his eyes. “If you want to know how it works so badly, I can show you…”
This was how Adam found himself scrying into Ronan’s dreams. There wasn’t much there, but he expected that. The ley line was still recovering, his mind was still recovering, hesitant to rebuild when it was so easily and quickly taken from him not too long ago. Adam eased open the folds, ducking into a sort of shadow realm. There were no colors, no real detail, but there was light and shadow, the forms of tree branches reaching out, grass brushing against bare feet. When he closed his eyes, he smelled the air of the Barns, the open fields, the sun-soaked grass, the dirt and hay and pollen. He felt the breeze on his cheeks, he felt a hand slip into his own. He opened his eyes.
“Come on,” Ronan said, tugging him along.
They wandered along further into the darkness, hand in hand. He could make out the outline, the shape of the house, further along, a couple dozen feet away. They were definitely at the Barns, everything so familiar and yet indistinguishable. After a moment or two, Adam realized the light causing the shadow was coming from Ronan. He wasn’t glowing and he was as indiscernible as everything else, but he was undoubtedly the source of the light, causing the shadowed detail.
The ground sloped down and the grass turned wet with morning dew, chilling his feet and making a faint squelching sound with each of their footsteps. Adam hadn’t realized his gaze had been at his feet until Ronan came to an abrupt stop and he looked up and oh.
The dark field in front of them was completely black, no outlines, no trees, almost as if the light emanating from Ronan had dimmed. He clenched Adam’s hand a little tighter and exhaled, muttering a low, frustrated, “come on .”
The dark sky illuminated immediately with flickering lights, darting back and forth seemingly at random, like fireflies, but then they shifted, twinkling just right, brightening to resemble stars in the Henrietta night sky. It was as if they were standing on a cloud in the middle of the stars or sat on top the roof of the highest barn, so close to the stars they could almost reach out and touch them and-
Ronan did just that. He reached out a hand, only visible due to its close proximity to the light source, and caught one star, easily in his hand. It glowed in his palm as he brought it closer for Adam to inspect. Adam cupped his hands over Ronan’s, feeling the heat of the star radiating from his skin. Adam turned his hand over, gently opening his fist to reveal the star.
It was gone.
Ronan whistled low. “Well that was anticlimactic.”
Adam snorted. “What else ya got, Lynch?”
“What am I, a fucking circus animal?” Ronan asked, though his voice was teasing.
“No,” said Adam slowly, genuinely. “You’re magic.”
Ronan kissed him. They kissed long, needy, thoroughly. Ronan’s arm slipped around his lower back, pulling them flush together; Adam’s hand cradled the back of Ronan’s head, keeping them close. When they broke apart, it was just warm breaths and smiles between them.
“Alright, magician,” Ronan quipped, huffing a laugh. “What do you wanna bring back?”
Adam smiled.
When he came back to himself, blinking clearly, light still burning behind his eyes, he immediately scrambled closer to Ronan’s side. Ronan was motionless, but he always was for a moment or two after bringing something back, the dream paralyzing him for a few minutes as payment for what he took. Adam blinked again, once, twice, and when he focused again, Ronan had that same radiating light cupped in his palms, this time contained in a glass jar like the ones Opal would use to catch fireflies. This time, however, this jar was used to contain a night sky. It was filled with an inky black, the same from Ronan’s head, but the stars blinked through the haze, an occasional shooting star or cloud passing through giving the scene more depth.
He had held it in his hands, had collected the stars and felt the magic of it in the dream. He could sense most dreamt things at the Barns, could notice that something seemed extraordinary about each item: a plugless toaster, a working remote without batteries. But this was different. He could really feel it, he could feel the ley’s energy here, cupped in the palms of Ronan’s hands, contained in a little glass jar, but still emanating from within.
Adam hadn’t noticed Ronan had woken up, until he saw his hands move, passing over the dreamt object carefully. Adam took it with reverence, turning it gently this way and that to inspect it. They were silent, swept up in the magic of it all, the intimacy of it. That is until Adam heard Ronan’s stomach rumble.
“Should’ve dreamt breakfast,” said Adam, looking up with a smile.
Ronan scrunched up his nose. “Dreamt food never tastes right.”
That intrigued Adam; there was still so much more he wanted to know, to ask, and he was hungry for it, now that he knew he could and Ronan would share. “Why not?”
Ronan sighed and sat up, rolling out of bed. He threw on a t-shirt and slipped his feet into his boots beside the bed. He bent down and tossed the sheet they kicked off earlier onto the bed and at Adam’s face.
“Ronan,” Adam said, half-laughing, half-annoyed at him deflecting again.
“Ronan can’t come to the phone right now,” replied Ronan, already heading toward the door. “Some asshole woke him up this morning. He’s tired as shit and hungry and needs some bacon.” He left the door open behind him, calling over his shoulder. “Want coffee?”
Adam smiled, looking down at his glass jar. “Yeah, thanks.”
“Uh-huh.”