Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ronan was sitting out on the back porch steps when Adam pulled up in the BMW. He was dangling what looked like a half-empty bottle of Tennessee Honey between his outstretched knees, and he looked like hell.

Adam took a moment to just close his eyes and take a deep breath before turning off the engine.

He needs you. He called you because he needs you. This isn't the time for—whatever.

Ronan didn't look up at the sound of the door clunking shut, or as he approached, still gazing out over the field behind the house with that thousand-yard stare. That made it a little easier. "Hey," Adam said.

Ronan lifted his chin. "How was the drive?"

Adam couldn't stop the start of a sarcastic laugh from huffing out of his mouth, but he tamped it down as soon as he could. "The drive—the drive was fine. Where's Opal?"

"Matthew and Declan took her camping for the weekend," Ronan said, and then shrugged. "Figured she can't do much damage tromping around in the woods."

"Yeah, I guess not."

Ronan's T-shirt was a shredded mess, and on this side it was plastered to his ribs with sticky, drying blood. There were bruises edging his jaw, puffy and painful-looking. His knuckles were white on the bottle as he took a slug from it, and his hand was shaking a little. Adam tried not to stare.

"Where is it?"

Ronan swallowed hard and pointed with the hand that held the bottle. There were marks on his knuckles that looked like they'd been torn with teeth. "It's locked in."

Adam followed the trajectory of Ronan's finger over the field to the long barn. The fog was just starting to burn off of the grass, but there were still pockets here and there where the morning sun didn't reach. It was the kind of Henrietta morning Adam missed, and hated that he missed. You didn't get them in DC.

"Okay." He let out a long breath. "How should I. . . do this?"

"There's, um. A gun. On top of the kitchen cabinets." Ronan finally looked up at him then, quick and glancing off like it hurt. "It's Dean's. I don't know if it's loaded."

"Dean?"

"Gray."

"Ah."

"I called him first," Ronan added, "but he and Maura are still honeymooning."

"Right."

Ronan was twisting his fingers around the neck of the bottle in a way that made Adam feel like he was the nerve-wracking factor here, not the nightmare taking up residence in the barn.

"Will that work? A gun?"

Another glance, up to Adam's eyes and away. Adam wanted to take Ronan's face in his hands and make him look. "In my experience. But you could—you could do something else. There's knives, or—I think there's rope in the barn. I know you hate—"

"It's fine."

Adam looked back out to the barn in the silence. As he watched, he heard a distant thump, and the door shook slightly.

"Thank you," Ronan said quietly, and Adam couldn't stand it anymore.

"God, Ronan," Adam said, clomping up the porch steps and yanking the door open, "just shut up."

The Lynch kitchen was dark, but it looked almost the exact same as it had the last time Adam had been in it over a year ago. Looking around was like a spot-the-differences picture—here a new toaster, there a colorful knife block Ronan almost certainly hadn't picked out himself. . . and, proudly displayed in splotchily painted frames in the window over the big farm sink, two perfect Ronan Lynch forgeries: Opal's birth certificate and adoption decree.

Something pushed its way up Adam's throat looking at them, so he looked away.

He felt around on top of the dusty cabinets until he found the gun. It was small and utilitarian, utterly unassuming in its quiet threat, and it was loaded. God, but he hated guns.

This isn't about you, it's about Ronan. He needs you to do this. Stop being such a whiny baby, you're not a teenager anymore.

He let the door clatter shut behind him as he stomped back on to the porch. Ronan looked up and winced at the sight of the gun in his hand. "Adam—"

"I said shut up, Lynch."

"You don't—you don't have to do this. I can do it."

"I just drove three hours to get here because you said you couldn't," Adam snapped, disengaging the safety. "Now you can do it?"

Ronan fell silent. Shame immediately washed over Adam. He needs you. You heard how he sounded. How would you feel, if it was the other way around? Why are you being such a dick?

What the hell is the matter with you?

He bit back on an apology and stepped down off the porch. "Are you coming, or no?"

Ronan sucked in his lower lip and shook his head, and Adam remembered how he had sounded on the phone, the way his voice broke over Adam's name. "I can't."

Instead of saying Fine—instead of biting, like his first instinct always was with Ronan—Adam said "Okay. I'll be back—I'll be back."

His sneakers were almost silent in the long grass. The soil underneath them was springy and warm, like a chocolate cake right out of the oven. The cicadas were starting to buzz. He could smell Aurora's tiger lilies blooming at the edge of the woods. It was almost disarmingly pastoral—the only thing grounding him was the weight of the gun, held in his sweaty right palm.

Adam laid his hand on the bar locking the steel door. There was a long, dried smear of blood on it. He leaned in close with his good ear to listen.

Inside the barn, something was breathing quietly.

Adam looked back at Ronan, swigging down whiskey on the porch. The marks on his face stood out even from here; his skin was deathly pale in comparison. He looked like a ghoul. Like a murder victim.

He pushed up the crossbar and slid the heavy door aside with a crash.

The barn was dark, shockingly dark against the bright golden light of the field, and it took a moment for Adam to even see what he was looking at. Then another moment to fully register what he was looking at.

Adam had seen a lot of the heavier stuff that Ronan dreamed. After his mom died and Gansey resurrected, after the acid pool and the strangling and his own dark dream blood bubbling out of his mouth and eyes, it was like a tap you couldn't turn off. He created things without meaning to, without control.

He'd thought Ronan would get a handle on it eventually. The evidence that he hadn't was staring him in the face. It's you, Ronan had said, but it's not you. At the time, he'd been stuttering, flustered, sounding so completely unlike himself that Adam had wondered for half a second who was calling him from Ronan's phone, and he hadn't been sure what Ronan meant—what, exactly, he was walking into—but now, he was hard-pressed to say how Ronan could have been more descriptive.

Adam Parrish gazed into the darkness of the long barn, and the wild, murderous eyes of his 18-year-old self gazed back.

A scream rang out in the quiet—Adam's voice, high and feral, shrieking, "Ronan! Ronan! Ronan!"

Then, three shots, followed by one of the loudest silences Ronan had ever heard. He finished off the bottle and dropped it into the grass, rising to his feet and stepping slowly toward the long barn.

When he was about twenty feet away, when he couldn't stand it anymore, he called out, "Adam?"

"Yeah," Adam answered, tight and thin on the morning breeze, and Ronan closed his eyes. "It's dead. I'm, uh—I'm gonna try to wrap it in something. Do you still have those feed bags?"

"Yeah, they're, um. Under Dad's work bench."

"Do you have a—a hole ready?"

A stab of guilt cut through Ronan, that he was once again counting on Adam to clean up his messes, that Adam Parrish was so practiced at burying bodies. "No. I'll get started."

For a long time—probably not as long as it felt like, but longer than he should have—Adam stared at the body, twisting one of the dusty feed bags in his hands.

It was so thin. Had he ever been that thin? Bones protruding like so many elbows, ribs visible through his skin, cheeks pinched in like a zombie's? He tried not to look at pictures from his teenage years, and had spent much of his life avoiding his own reflection whenever he could. But he supposed Ronan, if no one else, could be counted on for accuracy.

No seatbelt strap scar, though there wouldn't be. No twisting river dividing its right eyebrow neatly in two. That was a little jarring.

It—he—this Other Adam—was mostly naked, except for a pair of green plaid shorts Adam recognized, whose counterparts were now faded and all but frayed to shreds in the back of his underwear drawer. Its mouth was smeared with blood, and its fingernails were so caked with it they looked black. There were faint marks up by its shoulder—Adam's shoulder—purplish and round. It occurred to Adam that this particular dream probably hadn't started off as a nightmare.

He wasn't sure how he felt about that.

He knelt down next to it, and knocked something with his knee—the gun. He'd dropped it in the dirt when he saw the nightmare go down, almost thrown it, like his body had only been able to stand holding it as long as it was useful. He picked it up gingerly now, engaging the safety and laying it back down carefully, as far away as he could stretch.

All three of his shots had landed in the chest, and the first two hadn't been clean. Adam touched the edge of one of the ragged holes, feeling his mind bend. He felt like he should apologize, somehow. He wanted to scream, or cry, or laugh, or spit.

He heard the telltale sound of a shovel striking dirt and let out a long, shaky exhale, trying to shove the halves of his brain back together.

It's okay, he told himself. You've done this before. And it's not you, you know that. Just. . . dreamstuff. In a you shape.

He had done this before—a lot, actually—but it had only been human the one time, and he hadn't been able to handle it then, either. At least this time he'd been able to prepare. Sort of. A little.

And at least this time, Ronan was giving him space.

He took a few deep breaths, tried to picture the oxygen soaking out from his center into his arms, legs, fingers, toes, like Calla had taught him. Tried to picture himself changing colors. Stoplight red to functional green.

I'm cool, he told himself firmly. I'm cool.

Then he got to work.

Adam joined him a little bit later, when about a third of the grave was dug and Ronan was standing in the middle of it, looking muddy and strung out. He eyed the shovel in Adam's hands.

"You don't have to do this part," he said. Adam shrugged and got in the hole with him.

"I kinda thought you'd have it done before I got here," Adam said, pushing his shovel into the dirt. His hands felt too comfortable around the handle, like they remembered this was where they belonged, and the familiarity pricked at the life he'd made for himself like a needle tapping against a balloon.

Ronan took a long moment before answering, stomping the blade of his shovel down into some stubborn roots. "Didn't want to turn my back on it."

"Except to dig the whiskey out of the cellar, huh?"

Ronan's mirthless single ha blended with the loud crack of the root snapping. "Retract the claws, Parrish," he said. "Let's just get this thing dug and get you back on the road."

Adam heaved a shovelful of earth out of the hole and watched it explode a few feet away. "Sure," he said, knowing full well he shouldn't, "I know you're reaching your limit."

Ronan whirled to look at him, finally, full in the face. "Don't. Okay? Just don't."

"What? It's true. Can't stand to be around me more than an hour at a time—"

"I get it," Ronan said through his teeth. "This is hard. I get it, all right? I'm sorry I asked you to do this. I'm sorry I asked you to see me. It's fucked, I know. I'm sorry. I'm trying to make it as—as easy on you as I can."

Adam laughed then, too, loud and bitter. "Like you've ever cared if it was easy on me."

"What do you want from me here?" Ronan asked desperately, and Adam could remember another fight when Ronan had asked him that, but his face was different now, pleading instead of furious. It only incensed him more. "I'm not gonna fight you, Adam—"

"What do I—it's been two years, Ronan!" The warning lights were flashing in Adam's head (you swore you weren't going to do this, high road, high road) but he couldn’t stop himself. "You fucking. Owe me. I want—I deserve some kind of fucking explanation!"

"Yes!" Ronan shouted, and it caught Adam so unexpectedly he actually staggered backward. "Yes. You do. And you'll get it, I promise, just not—when I'm kind of drunk, and all torn up, and—and—digging a literal grave. For you."

The words left Adam reeling. He would have been less surprised if Ronan had actually hit him.

Yes.

You'll get it. I promise.

Ronan's mouth snapped shut almost audibly. He looked miserable. After a moment, he said again, "I'm sorry. Just. Let's finish this."

Adam's own mouth tasted like a battery. "Fine," he replied tonelessly, looking back down at his shovel.

It didn't feel like losing, but it didn't feel good, either.

The sun was high in the sky by the time Ronan and Adam were hefting the last of the dirt into Not-Adam's hasty grave, and the unpleasant film of sweat and earth baking into every exposed inch of Adam's skin was making him itchy and irritable.

This is what you came from, a nasty little voice in his head reminded him, lest you forget.

"Do you want to say something?"

Adam glanced over at him sharply. "What, am I supposed to thank you?"

"No—Jesus, no. I meant." Ronan gestured at the grave. "For him."

"Oh."

"You don't have to."

Adam swallowed hard. "Do you? Usually?"

Ronan rolled his neck and jammed his torn-up hands into his pockets, and nodded. Catholic.

Adam cast around in his mind for something, anything, that he could say in front of Ronan. "Okay. Um. I'm sorry—" sorry I shot you? sorry you were a rabid dog that had to be put down? sorry we're burying you wrapped in bags in a hole in the forest? "—about, um, this." He looked to Ronan. "Maybe it should be you."

Ronan held his gaze for a moment, expression unreadable, and Adam thought surely this was when Ronan would tell him to fuck off; but then he dropped down into a squat, lowered his head, and laid his right hand on the mound of earth. "Bene valeas et placideque quiescas," he murmured.

Adam's eyes were on Ronan's mangled knuckles, and before he could stop himself he was saying, "Probably nicer than he deserves."

Ronan rose unsteadily, dusting off his hands. "Not his fault."

"I guess not."

Adam stood by the grave a little bit longer while Ronan brought the shovels back to the shed at the edge of the forest, arms gripped to his chest. He felt himself slipping, sliding desperately down the incline of what just a few hours ago had been the solid stone foundation of his better judgement.

Ronan cleared his throat behind Adam, and Adam turned to face him. His face was carefully arranged to give nothing away.

"Listen," he said, reaching up to scrub his hand through his too-long-for-Ronan hair, "I know you probably don't want to stick around, but, um. Do you want to come inside and sit down for a minute? I mean, I dragged you all the way out here, least I can do is make you some coffee or something."

Adam's fingers twitched. "Um."

"No is an option, Parrish."

"Yes," Adam blurted out. "That. . . would be good."

Ronan chewed at his lip and nodded once, twice, more to himself than Adam, then jerked his head toward the house.

Adam followed him back to the porch wordlessly, and when Ronan yanked the kitchen door open, he heard himself ask, "Do you think I could use your shower?"

Ronan's eyebrows flicked up for half a second. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, of course. I should've offered."

Inside, they sat down at the table to pull off their dirt-caked boots. Adam scratched at the filth on his hands, frowning to himself. He felt Ronan's eyes on him for a long moment before he cleared his throat and said, "Why don't you go do that, I'll put a pot on."

Adam looked up. Now that he was sitting in front of Ronan, under a proper light—out of the stark contrast of the forest's edge—he could see more ragged, sticky gouges beneath Ronan's right eye, spreading into deep purple bruising. And there, just under his ear on the same side, more bruises like the ones on Not-Adam's shoulder. Unmistakably bite marks. His insides did a complicated dance.

Ronan, as if noticing the line of Adam's eyes, touched his fingers self-consciously to his neck.

Adam pushed himself back from the table, hard, and stood. "Everything still in the same place?"

Ronan nodded.

"Awesome."

He did try not to stomp up the stairs. He tried really hard, even if it didn't sound like it.

The upstairs bathroom, like the kitchen, looked almost exactly the same—same latch-hook rug, same seashell soaps, same sign over the toilet reading "OFFICE"—but there were little traces of Opal here, too. Hair ties and clips in neat little cups by the sink. Sparkling bluebird sun-catchers in the window. A mossy green bathrobe hanging off the back of the door, dwarfed by the fluffy slate-gray one hanging next to it. For the millionth time that morning, Adam swallowed around the hard lump of bitterness in his throat.

He could have had this, if Ronan had let him. He could have had his own bathrobe hanging on the door, could've fussed over Opal's hair in the morning. He reached up to rub the sting out of his eyes, forgetting how grimy his hands were.

The water started off too cold and then got too hot, but Adam couldn’t bring himself to cringe away or turn the knob. He stood under the spray for a long time, motionless, watching his skin turn from pink to red, and he only picked up the soap—same big bottle of Dr. Bronner's on the corner of the tub, same almond scent—when the water started to get cold again. He scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed like he could scrub his skin clean off and emerge from it like a molted snake.

Adam had seen a lot of Ronan's nightmares—more than his fair share, really—and after that first shocking time in the church, he knew how. . . human. . . they could look. He'd wondered a long time ago if any of them ever looked like him.

Never, Ronan had murmured, rocked against him in the dark, mouth warm and wet against Adam's good ear. You're only in good dreams. And sometimes the hot ones.

Only sometimes? Adam had asked, smiling.

Only when you're not here. Rather have the real thing.

Another swallow, another fizz of acid. He turned the water off.

When he had toweled dry and sat on the lip of the tub, staring blankly at the Lynch family's toothbrush cup, there was a quiet knock on the door, and Ronan's voice, uncharacteristically gentle. "Adam?"

Adam didn't move.

"I uh, I left some clean clothes out here for you. I figured. . . you probably don't want to put the other ones back on."

He was right. Adam didn’t want to wear the other ones ever again. He didn't even want to look at them. He just wanted them to spontaneously combust in the corner of the bathroom.

"Anyway, there's, uh, coffee downstairs. And toast. And bacon. In case you're, you know. Hungry."

Adam nodded, knuckles pressed hard against his teeth. Then, because he realized Ronan couldn't see him, he said, in a rusty voice like he hadn't spoken in years, "Okay."

"Okay," Ronan said, and Adam knew he was looking down and rubbing the back of his head. "I'll see you downstairs."

He didn't know how long he sat there after that, listening to his drying hair drip on the porcelain, but when he finally got up, his fingers weren't pruny anymore.

Chapter Text

The clothes Ronan had left folded neatly on the hall carpet were his: red boxers that were a little too snug in the waist now, a soft blue T-shirt he'd missed, and a pair of gray sweats.  The lump started to rise into his mouth.

Ronan was standing at the counter when he padded back into the kitchen, looking no less worse for wear, but a little more relaxed.

"Hey," he said, setting his mug down. "I was gonna give you five more minutes. Thought maybe you had a stroke or something."

There was a stack of buttered toast and a jar of peanut butter with a knife stuck in it, and a platter—not a plate—of bacon. Adam sat and reached out with shaking hands for a piece of toast.

A steaming mug was placed in front of him, and Ronan sat. He pushed a cow-spotted creamer pitcher that rested on four ceramic udders and a covered sugar bowl shaped like a chick in an egg toward him wordlessly.

Adam found his voice looking at them. "Sugar comes from chickens?"

Ronan's mouth twitched up into a half-smile. "Opal picked 'em out."

"Could've guessed."

He felt untethered. Ronan had given him a stoneware mug that said High Octane, and he wrapped his hands around it like its warmth was the only thing anchoring him to his chair.

He looked up and found Ronan watching him, expression unreadable. "What?"

Ronan tapped his fingers against his own mug, a clay monstrosity Opal must have made. It looked like a mossy boulder. "Are you doing okay?"

Adam tried to summon up any incredulity at all, but his voice just came out like it had in the bathroom, cobwebby and creaky. "Am I doing okay?"

Ronan ducked his head. "Stupid question. Sorry."

Adam shoved a whole piece of peanut butter toast into his mouth and washed it down with too-sweet coffee. After three more pieces of bacon and another piece of toast, he heard himself say, "I need you to ask you something, and I need you to be honest."

Ronan nodded, as if to say that was a given. It probably was. Adam's fingers tightened around his mug.

"That. . . nightmare," he started slowly. "That didn't start off as a nightmare, did it."

Ronan's eyes were on him, terribly blue and unblinking. "No."

"You were dreaming," Adam went on, his voice string-thin, "about me. About. . . " He was choking on it, and Ronan wasn't looking away. "About—"

"Yes," Ronan said simply.

Him and that word. Yes. For the second time it struck Adam like a point-blank shot to the head. He should need a license to say that word. There should at least be some sort of strike system. "What—what does that mean?"

Ronan looked down into his mug. "Usually it means I miss you."

Half of Adam's coffee came up through his nose. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and said hoarsely, "What. The fuck." 

Ronan shifted in his seat, the only physical sign that he was even slightly uncomfortable with the conversation.

"Jesus Christ, Ronan—" Adam thumped himself on the chest, trying to clear his burning throat. "You can't just say shit like that."

"You wanted me to be honest," Ronan said quietly.

"That doesn't make it okay!" Adam croaked. He felt like his heart was trying to climb out of his mouth and his stomach was trying to fall out his ass. "You left me. Not even left me, you ghosted me. Dropped me. You don't get to—to dream up versions of me to fuck because you miss me, when you threw me away. That's such a—"

The word violation died on the tip of his tongue, but Ronan seemed to hear it anyway. He was turning pink, blotches of color spreading high on his cheeks and at the tips of his ears. "Look, I'm sorry. I don't do it on purpose. It just happens, okay—"

Adam laughed helplessly, and it came out as more of a wheeze. "Of course, everything just happens to you."

"I swear," Ronan said desperately, "I don't try to—I don't seek it out. I promise. And I never bring you back. It's never more than just a dream."

"Just a dream. Ronan Lynch says it's just a dream." Adam jabbed his finger at the kitchen window, curtained against the midmorning sun. "Tell that to the body we just buried. How many other Discount Adam Parrishes have you brought back?"

It was a cheap shot and he knew it (oh, you asshole, you monumental asshole, what is wrong with you?) but it landed just the same. Ronan looked sick. "Adam, I wouldn't."

It didn't feel good, seeing him like that. Adam let out a long, deep sigh, feeling the anger melt out of his bones and leave behind an empty, aching exhaustion.

"I know," he said, because he did.

"Adam," Ronan said, pleading.

"Ronan. I know."

Ronan looked down at his hands, squeezing tightly around his mug. After a moment he said, "I didn't—I didn't think before I said that."

"When have you ever," Adam muttered.

There was no bite in it. He said it purely out of habit—a barb he'd thrown at Ronan dozens of times without thinking, just part of their once-habitual sniping—but Ronan's face contorted and he looked back up at Adam, pained. "Can you stop with that shit?"

Adam swallowed, feeling his own face grow hot. "I," he said, then stopped.

"I told you, I know this is fucked." Ronan got up, took Adam's empty mug from the table in front of him, and brought it and his own to the counter for a refill. "I know you don't want to be here, I have no illusions about that. But I'm not gonna fight with you, Adam. I don't have it in me anymore."

Shame washed over Adam in a prickly wave. It genuinely hadn't struck him until just now that Ronan hadn't bitten back at him once since he'd got here. Things were tense, things were strained—that was the nature of the beast—but for once it was Ronan trying to ease them, and Adam trying to see how far they could stretch before they snapped.

Besides that—he knew how much Ronan always hated to ask for help with his nightmares. A fleeting vision struck him: Ronan in the wee hours of the morning, collapsed and bloody against the door of the long barn, trying not to let his legs give out, hands shaking as he dialed Adam.

And what had been the first thing he said?

Adam, please, don't hang up.

The lump settled down somewhere in his chest.

"I don't—I don't want to fight with you."

"Then for Christ's sake," Ronan said matter-of-factly as he poured, "quit acting like it."

He handed Adam's mug back and Adam took it, feeling properly scolded. He stirred in cream and sugar slowly while Ronan leaned back against the counter.

"I'm sorry," he said after a moment. "I guess I'm not used to you being the grown-up out of the two of us."

Ronan shrugged. "Had to happen sometime."

He even looked more grown-up, as surely as Adam must. Older. Wiser. His shoulders set differently. Even the tattoo, bursting vinelike out from beneath the collar of his shirt as it always had, didn't seem like a symbol of boyhood impulse anymore; he looked like a man changed by his child.

Which he was.

He lifted his cup to his mouth, and Adam saw where his shirt was stuck to his ribs, stiff and dark with blood.

That. That was something he could do.

"You want me to fix that up?"

"Hm?" Ronan glanced down. "Oh. No, I'll just. . . get it later."

Adam raised an eyebrow. "Really?" 

"Really. Don't worry about it."

"You gotten any better at it?"

Ronan huffed, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. "Well, if you must know," he drawled, "no, I'm still complete garbage."

"The more things change." Adam rose to his feet. "Come on, Scarecrow, let's put you back together."

"Adam, you don't have to—"

"Yes," Adam said, swiftly cutting off his protest, "I do."

He didn't say I've been a complete fuckwit since I got here. He probably didn't really have to, and he was already at the bottom of the stairs. He headed up, trusting that Ronan would follow.

A few seconds later he heard the solid clink of Ronan's mug being set down on the counter.

Ronan eyed him through the steam that filled the bathroom. "How long has it been since you did this last?"

"On a person? A while." Adam nodded. "C'mon, put 'em back up."

Ronan lifted his arm, wincing, and crossed if over his chest, holding it at the elbow like he was stretching. His T-shirt had come loose under hot water without ripping off any more of his skin, and the gashes were clean, but deep and ugly, crawling almost up to his armpit in one place and just kissing the edge his tattoo in another.

"You want something to bite down on?"

"Ha." Ronan closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall. "Just do it."

"All right, count of three. One, two—"

"Oh, fuck you," Ronan ground out through his teeth.

"Sorry."

He was careful with the needle and clamps, and Ronan's face smoothed out after a few stitches. He even opened his eyes a little to look down at Adam, cross-legged in his shorts on the floor of the tub while Ronan sat astride the lip. "Thank you," he said.

"Least I could do."

"No, the least you could do was answer the phone. You didn't have to be here."

Adam's hands stilled for a minute, and his eyes flicked up to Ronan. He felt his cheeks turn pink.

"Ronan," he said quietly, "there isn't a universe that exists where I didn't have to be here."

Ronan stared at him until he dropped his head again, self-conscious, and said, "Then the least I could do is give you that explanation."

Poke in. Quick dip under the skin and up through the other side. Tie. Snip. "I think it's kinda water under the bridge at this point."

"You said I owe you."

"I was mad."

"You were right."

Something fluttered at the bottom of Adam's guts. He'd forgotten how warm Ronan could get—he tried not to think about how this was the most he'd touched Ronan in years. "You sure you want to get into this now?" he asked. "I could do some real damage here."

The skin under Adam's hands flexed as Ronan shrugged as much as his position allowed. "Dunno when I'll get a chance like this again."

"I wouldn't think you'd want one," Adam said conversationally. Poke. Dip. "This hasn't exactly been a barrel of laughs."

"Adam."

That same something deep in his intestines started to bubble. He had wanted an explanation for so long. Now he was finally going to get one, and he was finding himself a little terrified. If Ronan finally told him why, after all this time, he wouldn't have any reason to hate him any more.

And if he couldn't hate Ronan. . .

But then he glanced up to see Ronan's face reflecting all the tension and worry he felt, then back down. Quietly, he said, "All right."

Up and out.

"The accident," Ronan started.

Tie, snip. He nodded.

"You remember what happened?"

There was something in how he said it that made Adam pause, needle just pressed into Ronan's skin. Then he pushed, and it was through. "Of course," he said. "Hit a deer."

"That's what you told me happened."

"Because it's what happened."

"You and I both know it's not."

Adam felt hot and cold all at once, as if Ronan had dunked him headfirst into a barrel of ice water with a high fever. He finished the stitches of the first gash in silence, and then looked up at Ronan again.

He didn't look hurt, or upset. This wasn't new information. "How long have you known?"

"Paramedics told me," Ronan said. It sounded like a confession.

Any anger Adam might feel at this was almost immediately extinguished by shame. Of course, of course. How many failures would it take before Adam got it through his head that he never could keep a secret from Ronan?

He felt his jaw straining, and Ronan watching him, waiting for the outburst. Adam started to reach up and scrub his bloody hands over his face, out of sheer force of habit, but stopped himself just in time. "Why—" He sighed. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"There were bigger things going on at the time." Ronan hitched his elbow back into place.

"Ronan—"

"Adam. It's okay. And that's not even. . . the point, really. I knew why you lied. I wasn't mad then, and I'm not now."

"Then why bring it up?" he snapped. "Just to make me feel like garbage, I guess."

Ronan was making that pained face again, and though Adam was starting to get familiar with it he was still reminded that not that long ago it would have been replaced with a snarl and a Forget it, Parrish. "No," he said. "Please, just. . . I've never said all of this out loud before, okay? Just. . . let me say it." He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "And keep going. I can't—I can't get this out if you're gonna look at me like that."

Adam stared at him, his mouth growing thinner and gluing itself shut against the things he wanted to say—things he shouldn't say right now, or maybe ever—and then he looked back down, and tied off his stitch.

"All right," he said. "I'm listening."

Chapter Text

Ronan tried to focus on the small things while he took himself back. The cool tile on his overheated back, the suture needle creating neat rows from ragged gorges. Adam's fingers, practiced and precise and gentle, even now.

"That night," he began, "when you fell asleep at the wheel. The paramedics called me—they said I was your emergency contact. They were already carting you off when I got there. I followed you to the hospital. It was a long time before they let me back to see you."

He exhaled, squeezing his eyes shut. Slipping into the Ronan Lynch of over two years ago. He could almost feel the hard hospital chair under his ass instead of the tub; could almost imagine the quiet, steady breathing to his left was coming from Adam's sleeping form in his hospital bed.

"You looked. . . " He shook his head. "So small. And so guilty. You said you hit a deer, and I didn't want to tell you I knew that wasn't the truth, that you were burning yourself out, coming home to me every weekend."

Adam's fingers were shaky, his stitches jerky. It hurt a little more now, and that was good. The pain grounded him. He forged ahead.

"I had known for a while. How. . . fragile, it all was. You were fucking up your assignments, and then bombing tests, and then skipping classes altogether, and. . . everything you'd worked so hard to build for yourself was. . . I could see it, on the edge of collapse. But I told myself, you seemed happy, and you'd get it together. You'd tell me if it was a problem. But then the accident."

He looked down at Adam in the tub. His lips were pressed together into a thin line.

"And then your dad called," he said. Adam looked up sharply, and Ronan clarified, "My phone, not the hospital. The paramedics left him a voicemail. He wanted to know where you were. I wouldn't tell him, obviously."

Adam said, barely audible, "God."

"I was so—" Ronan exhaled. "Stuck. One slipup, that's all it took. One mistake and you were back on their radar. That. . . was when I made the decision."

Adam's fingers stilled.

Ronan said, "This is the shitty part."

You wanted this, his Catholic guilt hissed from somewhere deep in his brainstem. He gave you an out, but you, you just had to push. You owe him.

"It was. . . hard. I couldn't stand to be the reason you were falling, but I—god. I didn't want to leave. Especially not when you were hurting. So I. . . waited."

"Remind me," Adam said, deadly quiet, "exactly how long."

Ronan swallowed hard, then swallowed again. "Two and a half months."

Adam closed his eyes.

"I," Ronan started, and then he stopped, throat working. "I didn’t want to do it. God, Adam. You were. . . the brightest thing in my life. I couldn’t work up the nerve, and I knew if I told you what I was thinking, you'd talk me out of it, and I would be so. . . I've always been so weak when it comes to you. So I told myself, I'll do it tomorrow. And then tomorrow, and then tomorrow."

"For two and a half months," Adam said in that same low, colorless voice.

"Yes."

Time all seemed to be running together. Ronan could recall having lived this particular moment a dozen times before—delivering Adam a fatal blow he'd convinced himself was kinder than the alternative, waiting for Adam's heart to start again, bracing for Adam to walk out and live to hate Ronan another day rather than stay and let the wound turn septic.

The voice of his guilt was sounding horribly like Declan, both in its pitch and its trademark disappointment. When will you ever learn?

Adam's voice cut through his thoughts. "What, um." He shook his head and let out a hard breath. "What did it?"

Ronan flexed his tingling fingers, thinking.

"Nothing 'did it'," he said, and it was true. "You started going back to classes and I couldn’t justify it to myself anymore."

"God," Adam said.

"I know."

He watched Adam's face, tight and still, as he worked through this information. After a moment, Adam's eyes opened, and they went back to Ronan's side. He reset the curved suture needle and pushed it through skin.

"Adam—"

"Don't," Adam said.

Ronan didn’t. He let Adam finish his stitches in agonizing, brittle silence.

When he was done, Adam took the squirt bottle from the old toolbox that served as Ronan's field kit, and stood on shaky knees. Ronan tried not to stare at him as he went to the sink.

"I'm—" He swallowed. "I'm sorry."

"God, Ronan," Adam said, his voice raspy. He stood hunched over the basin, shoulders raised up around his ears. He looked like a fighter on his last legs. "Just fucking give me a minute, okay?"

Ronan clamped his mouth shut and nodded. He felt a hard pit of guilt forming at the bottom of his stomach.

Adam filled the bottle and returned to the tub, settling down cross-legged. He flushed Ronan's side with the lukewarm water, and then covered his ribs with gauze pads and tape from the kit. When he was done, he sat back against the wall. 

Ronan let go of his arm and let it drop slowly. The wounds felt tight, but better. The stinging had subsided to a dull ache. "Thanks."

"You're a coward," Adam said.

"I know."

"That was the shittiest possible thing you could have done."

Ronan privately disagreed, but he wasn't about to say so; it was a fair point. He nodded and repeated, miserably, "I know."

"But. . . " Adam made a small noise and dropped his head forward, scrubbing his hands over his face. "I don’t. . . think I have it in me to be angry about it. Maybe I could have, if I knew before, but now. . . "

He sighed deeply.

"I'm sorry," Ronan said, again. "If it helps, Opal was mad enough for both of you."

Adam snorted. "Good."

"You should've—" Ronan swallowed the words seen her. "She was furious, when she found out. She said I didn't let you have your feelings. She said just because I thought I knew what was best didn't mean I just got to do it."

"Smart kid."

Ronan eyed the set of Adam's shoulders, the tightness at the edges of his mouth.

"I understand why you did it," Adam said after a moment, surprising him. He finally looked up at Ronan again, and it was true, there was no anger there. Just—exhaustion. "I just wish you'd said something. Even though, you're right, I would have tried to talk you out of it."

Ronan tried to choose his words very carefully. "I can't. . . regret it," he said quietly. "I can’t, because it needed to happen. I was only holding you back. But how I did it. . . Adam. I'm sorry. There aren't words for how sorry I am."

Adam's whole face crunched up, the way it used to whenever Ronan had said some truly choice shitty thing. He brought his hands to his face and pressed the tips of his long, elegant fingers into his eyes.

"You don't," he started, then stopped. "You just—you still just don't—get it. Jesus Christ, Ronan. You never held me back, never. I can't believe I'm still—when are you going to stop being such a fucking martyr?"

Ronan felt his ears flare hot at the word. "You said you—"

"Yeah, I said I understood," Adam snapped, "not that you were right."

Ronan had rehearsed this conversation with himself a lot over the past two years; never once had it taken this particular track. He'd always figured that, as undeniably shitty as the execution had been, once he'd laid out the logic, Adam would have to agree (however grudgingly) that it had been for the best. The Lynches, as they went, were not the most fertile soil in which to grow. Adam knew that better than anyone.

And look—it had been for the best, in the end, hadn't it? Look at Adam now, he was getting his Master's, he had a paid internship at a top law firm, he was dating normal people who didn't bring death into his bed every night—

"I get why you did it," Adam said again, popping the rapidly inflating bubble of Ronan's thoughts, "and you can say all you want how you did it for me, but you and I both know you didn't. You were scared."

All the air left Ronan's lungs in a single hard current. Because Adam was right. As usual. As always.

Ronan had been more than scared, in point of fact; he'd been terrified. He and Adam had loved each other with the sharp, single-minded brilliance of a knife, and he had been scared absolutely shitless that he would end up carving Adam to ribbons with it.

(And then Adam, being Adam, would offer Ronan his own with the handle out and say here, I trust you.)

"Yes," he agreed, and saw how Adam's mouth puckered around the single word like a lemon. "I was. . . afraid."

There was a soft thud as Adam tipped his head back against the tile. It struck Ronan then how tired he must be, first burying one body and now exhuming another, and a fresh wave of guilt crested over him.

"I'm going to say this," Adam said, his tone deliberate and brooking no debate (though the words wavered a little), "once. I. . . loved you. I loved being with you. I loved this house, and Opal, and the life we were building together. It was mine. And it was not. . . what I always thought I wanted for myself, but it was okay, because it was better, and it was mine. And if it came down to it, and something else had to be sacrificed to keep it. . ."

Here he took a shaky breath, and his voice started to crack, not like a teenager's but like the lacy ice-brittle at the edges of a pond. "That was okay. I would have made that decision, if you'd let me. I would have chosen this, you, over everything. And I have never. . . gotten over you leaving like that."

He broke off, gnawing at his lower lip, and trained his eyes at the ceiling.

"Adam," Ronan said, when he felt like he could say something, "I'm sorry. I didn't—I didn't think, I didn’t know, I just—" He swallowed. "I panicked."

Adam nodded slowly, and Ronan knew the set of his jaw and the deliberate widening of his eyes for what they were. "Now you know."

Ronan looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. Fingers that were only just now learning how to build instead of break, and even still didn’t get it right all the time. He had felt something small and fragile between them through the awfulness of this morning, finally let out and given room to breathe, and he knew if he pushed too hard it would snap. Like one of Opal's toys, brought to him with tears in her eyes, that he wanted so stupidly, desperately, to fix for her.

"When I. When I said before, that usually I dream about you when I miss you—it doesn't go like that. I dream. . . What if I did it differently, or, what it would be like now, if I hadn’t done it. I dream it's—it's years later, like now, and we're still. . . Or, I dream about the night I left. Sometimes." He swallowed. "Sometimes I can't make myself do it, and I just stand there trying to make myself move, toward you or away from you. . . And I wait too long, and I wake up holding my clothes."

He looked back at Adam's wet and shining eyes, at his clenched hands and the almost visible shaky plumes of breath he was putting out. He thought maybe that small, fragile thing was an ember, trapped under years of damp decay. Alive, but only just.

He saw it. And he wanted so stupidly, desperately, to blow on it.

To make it catch.

The breath he took before speaking again felt a thousand years long, and it still wasn't long enough to figure out what he actually wanted to say.

"Do you—" He swallowed again, hard. "Do you think. We."

It wasn't even a sentence, barely even a formed thought.

But Adam's head snapped down and he stared with his eyes perfectly round at Ronan like this, right now, was the first time he was actually seeing Ronan properly after all this time apart. "What?"

"If I could promise" he said, and it wasn't enough, but Adam's mouth was trembling like he knew what Ronan meant, "could we—"

"No," Adam said.

He said, "Please," but Adam was shaking his head with increasing vehemence.

"No," he said again. "No. No, no—" He cut himself off, rubbing his hands over his face like he could rub the sight of Ronan clean out of his eyes. "God, Ronan, I just—no, no. I can't do this. I have to—I have to go."

He said, "Adam," but Adam was already pushing himself him to his feet, clambering past Ronan and out of the tub. "Adam, I know now. Please—"

He commanded his hands to reach out and grab him, to pull Adam back, but they were useless dead things in his lap. "Adam, wait."

"I can't—" Adam shook his head again, violently, like he was trying to rid his ears of water. "I can't be here. Like this. With you. I just can't."

He snatched up his sweatpants and socks from the floor and didn’t pull them on but stood hunched over for a moment, panting. He looked like a cornered animal. The sight wounded Ronan to his bones.

Ronan's mouth felt full of cotton as he said, pleading, "Adam."

Adam's eyes fell on him, full of something naked and raw and pulsing. 

"I have to go," he said again, and rushed from the room.

Adam hadn't stopped to put on his boots, just dipped down swiftly to grab them up on his way out the kitchen door. The gravel of the drive bit into his feet, but he couldn't stop, and he didn't stop, until he'd reached the BMW. The door sprang open at his touch and he fell, thankfully, into the sun-warmed bucket seat.

He tugged on his sweats so viciously his foot missed the ankle hole.

Ronan Lynch. Ronan fucking Lynch. Where did he get off—how could he—never mind that, never mind any of it. This didn’t change anything, not a single goddamn thing.

You were. . . the brightest thing in my life. Such a fucking martyr.

I didn't think. I didn't know, I just—

Panicked. Right! The fucking Ronan Lynch M.O., the only other rule he lived by, Instinct Above All Else.

Do you think—

Could we—

I've always been so weak when it comes to you.

Adam lashed out with both fists and grabbed the steering wheel viciously on either side, trying to stop his hands from shaking.

If I could promise.

Ronan's promises, his treasured honesty—hadn't he long since proven that they meant nothing? Wasn't that the whole reason why they were even here, reduced to exes after so long knowing each other inside and out?

Adam refused to entertain it. There was nothing to entertain! There was no more we, no more this; there was just Adam, separate from Ronan, cut off from Ronan, as all of him had been for the past two years. Even (especially) the part that had always stayed behind, kneeling on the floor of his first shitty campus studio, clutching the one black T-shirt Ronan had left behind.

He thumped the steering wheel once, hard. The BMW's horn gave a short sharp blast.

If I could promise. . .

Fuck this. Fuck this.

Ronan's stricken face, looking up at him from the tub as he ran out.

I dream what it would be like if I'd never done it at all.

Adam jammed the keys into the ignition. The BMW rumbled to life around him.

He wrenched the shifter into reverse, and told himself that he was ready to put the Barns, and Ronan Lynch and all his dreaming, behind him for good.

After Adam rushed out, after he crashed down the stairs, after the screen door in the kitchen banged shut, Ronan sat in the silence of the bathroom for what felt like a very long time.

Well, Declan's voice said, that could have gone better.

It was worth a try.

Was it?

He sat there, arms wrapped loosely around his newly remade ribs, until the plink – plink – plink of the dripping faucet over the sink got too loud to hear anything, even (especially) the BMW driving away.

He let out the breath he'd been holding and inhaled, tentatively, like the air might not be safe to breathe now that Adam was gone again. He rubbed his eyes, scrubbed his hands over his face once, twice. He glanced at Opal's solar clock on the windowsill, the little sunflower on top swaying merrily back and forth, unperturbed.

Time, somehow—unthinkably—moved forward.

He stood, gingerly, testing the strength of Adam's repair job, and bent to put the field kit back together. He put it away on the highest shelf in the little linen closet, pushing it back far enough that Opal wouldn't be able to reach. He picked up the bloody towels and the soaked remains of his shirt, put them in the wastebin. Tied the bag up tightly and set it in the hallway to take out later. Washed his hands. Looked over the bathroom one last time before turning off the light.

It didn’t look like a crime scene, but it felt like one.

Then he plodded, slowly, up the narrow stairs to the master bedroom to try and get some sleep before Opal came home.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why was he still in the driveway?

The BMW was running. His hands were tight on the wheel, his foot heavy on the brake. He'd gotten as far as angling the car to pull straight out of the drive and shifting into Drive, and then he'd just. Stopped.

Stupid. Just GO.

His eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror, at the patch of forest where they'd buried Not-Adam. The sun burned bright overhead, but the space between the dense trees was almost black.

A short, violent gasp of a life, brought to a short, violent end.

It struck him then that, as much damage as Not-Adam had caused Ronan, he hadn’t seen a scratch on his own thin body. Not while he was kneeling in the dirt next to it, trying not to scream. Not while he was jostling the body into two burlap feed bags, trying not to hurl up his own lungs.

Ronan. . . hadn’t fought back, even as the dream went sideways and he had to know there was no Adam left in Not-Adam. Hadn’t even tied Not-Adam up.

Even with all his long years of practice dealing with nightmares quickly, efficiently, quietly, on his own, Ronan hadn’t been able to bring himself to hurt Adam.

His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard they hurt, prominent knuckles turning white.

So Ronan couldn't hit him, or restrain him, or kill him. That had to be the lowest bar Adam had set for anyone, ever.

Could we—

His eyes slid over, just to the left, to the light that had just clicked on in the highest window of the quiet main house. His parents' bedroom, he thought nonsensically. It must be Ronan's now.

It was madness, nothing short of madness, to even think about.

He closed his eyes, and the little flare of lamplight was a bright spot in the back of his eyelids as he loosed his hands from the wheel and shifted back into Park.

Ronan's energy, for all that it had rallied while Adam was here, had finally given out on him. He'd barely clicked the bedside lamp on, and resolved not to sleep long enough to dream, before falling face-first into the old king-sized bed.

He had been drifting for a little while, slipping in and out in the springtime stuffiness of the room, when he heard the kitchen door thrown open with a crash, and the telltale thunder of Opal's ill-fitted boots on the stairs.

He turned his face out of the pillow to yell, "Shoes off in the house, goblin!", though his heart warmed fractionally at her return, and how eager she always was to see him, even if he'd never say it to her.

He made himself sit up, wincing, and leaned down to grab a shirt out of the laundry basket. He could hear her climbing the stairs to the master bedroom and bit back a smile as he slipped it over his head. "Did your loser uncle catch anything?"

But it was Adam's voice that answered, breathlessly, shocking Ronan into falling off the edge of the mattress.

"I want to see her," he said.

"Jesus shit, Parrish," Ronan gasped, clutching his side. "I thought you were her."

Ronan leveraged himself up from the floor with some difficulty. Adam was planted firmly in the doorway, chest heaving, eyes a little wild, all beautiful willowy angles like a tree in a storm. So gloriously Adam it almost hurt to look at.

"She's mine too, Ronan. I want to see her."

Something like shame caught in Ronan's chest and twisted. "Okay," he conceded, ducking his head in a quick nod. "She'll be home soon, you can wait if you—"

"And you can't make all the decisions," Adam said. He took two long steps into the room.

Ronan nodded more, like a bobblehead. "Right, okay."

"I mean it." When did he get so close? "You have to talk to me."

"Okay," he repeated, feeling like he was missing something.

"Even when you don't want to. Or you think I won't understand."

He was close, so close. Close enough to reach out and touch, without even much effort. He could see all of Adam's eyelashes, gathered in wet clumps along his waterlines.

"If we're in this together," Adam said, "we have to be in this together. It can’t be Ronan Lynch versus the world."

Lightning cracked behind his eyelids.

"Parrish," he said, dizzily, "what are you saying?"

Adam stepped forward, closing the gap between them. He bunched the front of Ronan's shirt in his hands, and looked down at them like he couldn’t believe what they were doing.

He swallowed thickly and his voice was suddenly hushed, hesitant. "I'm saying, in spite of. . . I want this. I want you." He lifted his face and Ronan was struck by the full weight of that absurdly green gaze as he asked, "Can I have you?"

Ronan couldn't speak. His throat was bone dry, a bottomless well.

"I said I'd choose you over everything," Adam said. He gave a little tug to Ronan's shirt. "Will you let me?"

Fuck. "Yes," Ronan breathed, more air than sound.

"You said you'd promise."

"Yes," he said again, louder, and he surged up, forward, his arms moving on their own to wrap around Adam and haul him close, "yes, fuck, I promise—"

Adam's mouth crashed against his, open and hot and perfect, rolling forward and tugging back like a wave, and every time it receded Ronan whispered yes, yes I promise, and their teeth clicked together and Adam's tongue was in his mouth and on his lips and sliding along his jaw as he said yes Adam I promise, and Adam's hands were on his back, his ribs, his stomach, pushing up under his already ruined shirt to hold and grip him tight.

He didn't even realize Adam was moving him backward until his back was flat on the mattress and Adam's warm weight settled over him, onto him, comforting and solid and real, so real. His legs parted to let Adam slot in between them, his back arched to let Adam pull his shirt up and off and Adam sank down to press his mouth over the marks that dream-Adam had left and leave his own bruises there. His hands tangled in Adam's hair and he was dizzy, shapeless, formless, floating, and he kept pulling Adam back up to taste him again, to anchor himself, to remind himself this is real, this is happening, it's not a dream—

Adam's fingers grazed the gauze over his stitches and he hissed, and Adam reared back to breathe out half an apology before Ronan tugged him back down and pressed his own fingers to Adam's swollen lips. Adam held his hand against his face and kissed his palm, the tips of his fingers, slid Ronan's thumb between his teeth, and it was too much, all too much, and at the same time horribly not enough—

And as Adam rose up a second time to pull his own shirt over his head and Ronan gripped his hips and rolled them over to slide down and worship the real Adam's body for the incredible, breathing, living, real-not-dream thing it was, leaving breathless prayerful kisses on his jaw and throat and the thick strap-scarred flesh of his chest and into the dips of his hipbones, as Adam kept one of Ronan's hands pressed to his mouth and breathed hotly against the palm and hooked his legs behind Ronan's back, Ronan whispered yes, yes Adam, I promise.

Later, when Declan and Opal did arrive back at the Barns, and Opal did come crashing up the stairs with Declan shouting behind her to slow down shoes off, running running through the house looking in every room for Ronan until she heard voices from his nest at the top of the stairs, she dropped into a crouch to crawl like an animal to the tippy-topmost step, and crept across the small landing to peek through the cracked door at the two of them piled among the blankets like an island in a stormy sea, facing each other with Adam's fingers pressed to Ronan's mouth, and his voice low like a promise, and she grinned so fiercely her face felt like it would split.