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I.
Fatherhood is an oddly holy experience for Ronan. He finds he wants to exorcise himself of every demon he’s ever let crawl beneath his skin. He collects up all of the alcohol scattered around his and Adam’s apartment and the Barns and watches it swirl down the drain in toxic colours worthy of a nuclear waste warning. He finds Kavinsky’s drug cocktails under the mattress, left overs from the days when dreaming was synonymous with letting the nightmares out. This too swirls down a porcelain drain, never to be seen or spoken of again. He scours the apartment and the Barns from top to bottom for any traps a tiny human could get caught in. Not that his tiny human is capable of opening knife drawers or crawling into cupboards full of bleach yet. Not when she can barely lift her head on her own. But it puts Ronan’s mind at ease, knowing he’s created a safe environment for this new child in his life.
He seeks penitence for his sins at St. Agnes, rolling pearl white rosary beads between his fingers, one for every secret he ever kept, a private matter for no one’s ears but his own and God’s. He absolves himself with Hail Marys and Our Fathers, designated by the priest, who absolves him behind a screen of anonymity. Long hours he spends on Sunday nights, burning candles down to the wick for each of the souls he played a part in setting free from the mortal coil. His nights are full of genuflection and fingers pressed heavenward in prayer for his own soul. He hopes one day, it’ll be enough and he can protect his daughter from the monster he once was.
II.
“I’ve already told you,” Adam’s exasperated that they’re having this conversation one more time because he’s so tired of having it. “We’re not baptizing our daughter. I want her to be able to make decisions for herself, not force religion on her at a time in her life where she can’t consent.”
Ronan nudges his chin upward at him, eyes narrowed from beneath his long, dark eyelashes. “You’ve been talking to Maggot again.”
Adam rolls his eyes. “I’m always talking to Blue,” he huffs, drumming his fingers against his folded arms. “Besides, maybe it’s not such a bad thing.”
Ronan sighs, beginning to pace, his heavy tread shuffling against the tiles of their kitchen floor. The baby fusses with the softest of mewls from her perch against Ronan’s shoulder. Her nose is nestled safe and sound against his neck, his large hand cupping the back of her head. “I just want her to grow up knowing a tradition I grew up with. I need her to have faith in something, especially when she might think she has no other options. I need her to know she has the church to fall back on. It’s not a commitment. We’re not marrying her off to some strange sheep farmer way off in Dublin or anything.”
“Thank god for that…” Adam muses, his mouth ticking upward in a relenting smirk. He stands from his position at the kitchen table, arms raised to receive his child. Ronan hesitates, taking a step back on pure instinct built upon the many hours he spends alone, protecting, caring for her while Adam’s flat on his back beneath a mammoth truck or serving frappuccinos with complicated add-ons to unnecessarily irate coffee shop customers.
Adam’s brows knit together in a frown at the subtle gesture. Ronan clears his throat, obviously caught out. It’s not the first time. He passes the baby over, although undoubtedly reluctant about it. His hand darts out to cup her head when he expects Adam to simply let it hang limp against her neck and snap under the strain.
“I can do this, you know,” Adam reminds him, easing the palm of his hand to the crown of her head as if to prove a point.
Ronan coughs and avoids his eye. “I know.” Adam’s not sure he does. “I know!”
Adam passes him a withering look. He crowds into Ronan’s space, a single step, not even. His chin tilts upward, just so, and he deposits a kiss to the firm jawline of his hopeless husband. They’ll get there…
III.
Blue has sewn her a patchwork dress for the occasion, pure white with frets of pastel threads, glittering against the gold reflection of the tabernacle. It’s perhaps a little unorthodox for a baptism, but not a breath of this gathering is remotely orthodox…
Gansey and Blue stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the altar, each firmly grasping their son’s chubby little hands. Adam holds his daughter, more silky fabric than baby at this point, and swallows thickly, wondering just how he got here.
“I still can’t believe Ronan convinced you to go through with this,” Blue notes and there’s a subtle sting of bitterness in her voice, as if Ronan’s explicitly gone against her wishes just to annoy her. “I’m not happy about it, you know. But it’s what you both want, and I can’t begrudge you that.”
Gansey passes him a gleaming, presidential smile, full of pearly-whites and undertones of uncertainty. He lets his pride in his best friend settle in before grim, concerned Gansey shines through. His free hand reaches out to squeeze just below his shoulder. “Is it what you want?”
“I want Ronan to feel secure in the choices he makes for our family,” he admits without second thought. A sigh erupts from him and he glances down at his daughter’s face. He knows his place in this family. His needs take a backseat to Ronan’s, to their daughters. It’s not just him and Ronan anymore. They have a child now, and suddenly those paychecks mean that much more. He’d willingly kill himself for the two of them, splay himself across the sacrificial altar and slice himself open from naval to chin; cradle his heart, bloody and still beating in his cupped hands, as his official offering if he had to.
Still, he wishes exhaustion wouldn’t creep into his bones at the end of the day. He wishes he didn’t have to return home at the witching hour to Ronan, still wide awake and pacing the floors to hush a fussy baby. He wishes he could relieve him of his burden after hours of their close proximity, instead of flopping down face first into his pillow and falling asleep within an instant. Because he knows the baby is already more fiercely bonded to Ronan than she ever would to him.
Adam’s a stranger to his own daughter most days. He can see it in the vacant look in her eyes as he holds her. Ronan insists that’s the look she gives everybody, she’s a baby for fuck’s sake, Parrish. But Adam sees the way she lights up around Ronan and he knows. He wishes he could be more to her, but they need the money; they can’t rely on Ronan’s trust fund forever...
IV.
Ronan enters St. Agnes through a side door, Aurora and Matthew in tow. He spent days grumbling about inviting Declan, but he lost that particular argument when Adam reminded him with swift precision what compromise looks like. Ronan wants a baptism. Adam does not. Adam wants to invite Declan. Ronan does not. They reach a moot point and meet halfway.
Declan joins them five minutes later.
Adam’s leaning over the baptismal font, Ronan’s gaze hasn’t left their daughter once. They’re standing shoulder to shoulder and still, Ronan watches the baby like a hawk, hands raised as if prepared to rescue her on the off-chance Adam accidentally makes holy water soup out of her. Adam knows he means well, but the hovering stifles him.
Cabeswater wends its way around them both, whispering tender songs against ticklish ears. Adam peers into the holy water and sees.
All else falls away, even the baby clutched firmly in his arms. Ronan nearly swears, right there, in the middle of service in front of God and his own family when Adam really does almost drop her. The images come to him in fractured fragments, impossible to piece together without a tarot deck in hand. But still, Cabeswater whispers, and the forest’s words give him peace and clarity for the first time since Ronan pulled their daughter out of his own head like Athena.
He knows what they must do.
V.
After the ceremony, they take to the road, forming a caravan of two: the Pig and the BMW, with an over-stimulated infant strapped into the back seat of each. Ronan’s gaze shifts to the rear view mirror again and again, if only to catch a glimpse of his little girl, safe and sound in her car seat. He’s grateful his daughter shares his affinity for cars. The purr of an engine and steady constant motion is enough to lull her out of a tantrum and into a deep slumber within a matter of minutes. He and Adam revel in the silence, Adam’s pinky finger teasing up over the back of his hand on the gear shift, just so.
When next Ronan sneaks a peak into the backseat, he’s accosted by a fourth passenger, one who shows up unannounced. The shock of the surprise visitor jars Ronan’s hands on the wheel and they swerve.
“Jesus Christ, Noah!” he swears in spite of himself as his heart hammers in his chest and he evens the BMW out on the road. It’s a small wonder the motion hasn’t awoken the tiny backseat dragon, curled up against herself, fists tightly clenched in a boxer’s stance. (Even in dreams, she takes after Ronan.) “There’s a child onboard! Are you trying to kill us all?”
Noah responds with a noncommittal single shoulder shrug. “It’d be nice to have some company…”
Adam’s mind is still focused on Ronan’s latest litany. “We’ve barely left the church. I thought you were trying to be a proper god-fearing Christian for your daughter.”
Ronan rolls his eyes with a snort. “No one ever said I had to be a good Christian. Do as I say, not as I do and all that shit.”
“Ronan,” Adam chastises, sneaking a glance behind him at the carrier beside Noah. She’s still fast asleep, oblivious to her father and his vulgarity-laced tongue.
“Stop dadding me, Parrish. You’re worse than Gansey!” Ronan leans into the steering wheel ever so slightly as he makes a left turn around a sweeping curve.
“And that’s saying something because Gansey’s had a ten year head start!” Noah chimes in with a laugh.
Adam can’t help but shake his head. “I am a dad, aren’t I?” The simple fact never ceases to amaze him, no matter how often he holds his daughter, or wakes up in the middle of the night to warm a bottle, or takes an extra shift at work to support this tiny family of three they’ve created together. He’s someone’s father. This wonderful, beautiful, tiny person will know him for the rest of her life as her dad. He’s bursting with the weight of it, every time, like a well-loved teddy bear, its stuffing spilling out the seams from being squeezed too often and too tight.
“Observant as ever, Parrish,” Ronan retorts, breaking the moment, although nothing could quite extinguish the colony of butterflies taking up residence in his chest at his newfound title. Dad.
They fall into a companionable silence, the soft purr of the BMW’s engine a comforting lull. As if to defy the dangers he brings to the vehicle, Noah doesn’t bother to pull the seat belt taut against himself, and instead opts to smile serenely down at the baby. “She’s lovely,” he observes, as if he’s seeing her for the first time. Of everyone outside the tight-knit Parrish-Lynch clan, Noah’s the one who still looks to her with absolute awe and wonderment at what his two friends have created, even more so than he had when Blue and Gansey brought Sargent into the world nearly a year before. He runs a finger gently gently gently along the soft, barely-there peach fuzz of her head, a gesture he ordinarily saved for one Blue Sargent and her hair spikes.
“Little fae,” Noah coos affectionately down at her. Adam’s head is turned to watch the two of them and he can’t help the fond grin that spreads across his mouth at the pet name. He turns back to face the windshield, and this time, his whole hand envelopes Ronan’s fingers on the shift. It’s moments like these where he knows, he knows he’s incredibly lucky.
VI.
Gansey’s holding the baby now, cashing in his first act as godfather while the five of them stand in a ring at the river’s edge. Cabeswater’s murmurs led them here. The forest slips into a peaceful silence, content with the rustle of trees above them and the distant bird’s call. Chainsaw swoops in for a graceful landing on the shoulder of Ronan’s well-tailored jacket. She teeters forward for a moment while she catches her balance and Ronan rolls his shoulder to accommodate her weight. They fit together nicely, in a way Adam’s still learning to fit into their family.
“Kerah!” she calls out, her beady black eyes locked in on the infant, asleep in her godfather’s arms.
Ronan lets out a hum of agreement, reaching up to stroke her beak, from base to tip. She nips playfully at his fingers.
Gansey clears his throat as the start to what can only be a lovingly thought out speech. “We are gathered here today to celebrate a miracle,” he begins. Adam sidles up next to Ronan, their bodies brushing one another from wrist to shoulder. His fingers run along the calloused heart lines of Ronan’s palms, caressing each straying path like a kiss. Ronan’s fingers curl around his in response. “We five were brought together by a wish. A wish kept us together, and it’s only apt that a wish brings us together today. Ronan and Adam, you two wanted something so badly, something you could share between you so badly, Ronan dreamt one up. She came to being of her own volition, a dream one minute, a living, breathing person the next.”
Gansey pauses now, his gaze lifting to the trees, bowing around them like a protective bubble, keeping them in, keeping them all safe. “The ley lines brought her to you. The magic it wields produced Cabeswater, and Cabeswater… Cabeswater reached out to you both, and gave you a miracle.
“Violet Aurora Lynch, may you be blessed by the magic that made you. May Cabeswater whisper nothing but kind truths in your ear. And may your dads behave themselves long enough to mold you into the kind, gentle, driven, fierce human being I know you’ll one day become.”
Carefully, oh so carefully, Gansey crouches down along the waterline, Ronan, Adam, Blue, and Noah following suit. They each dip their hands into the cold, coursing current of the river. They nudge gentle knuckles, soaked in water against her soft cheeks, trickling water against her forehead. Blue holds Sargent in her lap and helps him reach a tiny hand out to smudge clumsily along the side of his tiny friend’s face. Noah refrains from engaging his whole icy hand, and instead opts to press a single fingertip to her button nose.
She’s wide awake by the time Gansey straightens and her fathers swoop down upon her. They move in tandem, leaning in to press a kiss to either cheek in perfect synchronicity. The afternoon sunlight gleams through the trees, dappling those big blue eyes as if adorning an entire ocean. When the pair of them pull away, the two most important people in his life are looking at him with their shared stormy gaze. He doesn’t know what the future holds for them, but at this singular moment, they are his and he is theirs.