Archive of Our Own

Ronan can tell by the tightness in his temples that he’s going to go to sleep angry. That in itself is not uncommon. It’s going to sleep angry with Adam that’s uncommon. It isn’t that they never fight—they fight constantly, about everything—it’s that their brand of disagreement is something of a comfort to Ronan. He wouldn’t dream up a more agreeable Adam Parrish if he could. Part of the heat that sits so close to the surface of his skin these days has to do with all of the ways in which Adam is disagreeable. All of the ways in which those match Ronan’s own difficult nature.

No, the heat Ronan feels around Adam is not usually anger, but tonight they’re both going for broke, and Adam has actually said the words ‘you wouldn’t understand.’

They sting like nothing anyone has ever said to Ronan. Not Declan’s taunts, not his father’s sarcastic comments when he was in his more surly moods, not even Kavinsky’s jabs about who he was. Ronan hasn’t ever wanted to know anyone else the way he wants to know Adam Parrish, and to be shut down so succinctly before he can even try hurts like a bitch.

He pulls his head back like he’s been slapped, nostrils flaring. “I wouldn’t understand? Why the fuck do you think I’m here? I’m trying to.”

“I don’t know,” Adam says. His arms are crossed over his chest defensively and one foot is tucked behind the other so that the fraying hems of his cotton pajama pants are kissing. He’s wound up, curled tight like Ronan’s anger, coiling and ready to strike. But his posture doesn't match how his voice has gone devoid of emotion. Like he's already made up his mind about this. “I don’t know why you’re here. It’s obviously not because you give a shit about what I think. Maybe you just like taking care of things. Why did you dream Chainsaw?”

They haven’t discussed what they’re doing, not with each other and not with the group. They seemed to have made a silent pact at the beginning not to talk about it, and Adam has been trying to break that pact for a week. Ronan is having none of it.

“Are you kidding me right now, asshole? You’re not my bird. You’re not something I dreamed up.” It doesn’t even make sense to Ronan to correlate the two of them. They’re from different worlds. They have different needs. Ronan wants different things from them. He doesn’t think he wants to feel like a god in either case.

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

The most frustrating thing is that Adam does not look like he’s kidding. He looks miserable. He looks lost in some terrible thought. He looks like he’s about to give away an integral piece of what little he has.

Ronan will be damned to a thousand years with his father’s devil if it’s going to be him. “Shut up,” he growls.

Adam closes his eyes. He inhales and exhales deeply, like he’s trying to ground something inside of him. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Parrish. Shut up before I say something I regret.”

Ronan clenches his jaw, trying hard not to clench his fingers into fists. He loathes the idea of being something Adam might come to fear. Instead of letting himself double into the weapon he feels most comfortable as, he stands up straight, leaving himself defenseless and open to whatever punch Adam wants to throw. His head brushes the support beam. They’re both too large for this place.

“You mean you haven’t already?” Adam says.

He’s so calm that for a moment Ronan thinks he’s going to explode. He’s seen it happen before. He knows Adam hates that he’s seen it. But the explosion doesn't happen. Adam only scrubs his hand over his face, twists around, and stomps the ten feet to his bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

Ronan does ball his hands into fists then and presses them up into the low ceiling as hard as he can, feeling the weight of God’s roof against his knuckles as the stress builds in his shoulders. Once he’s had enough of being pushed back he slides out of his jeans and sweatshirt and flops down onto Adam’s mattress. He curls onto his side, crowding near the wall with his nose inches from the cold plaster, and pulls the blankets up over his shoulders to stave off the goosebumps.

Violently, as if every word is a punch against a brick wall, he thinks, I love you. I love you. I love you. He’s hoping that if he thinks the words enough he can wear them smooth, take all of the pressure out of them and render them into nothing more than a layer of dust to collect at the core of him with the rest of the things he’s given up on. Anything to keep them from exploding out of him during one of their fights.

He’s afraid of Adam knowing. He's afraid Adam doesn't feel the same. He’s afraid that Adam does feel the same, but that his love is just as sharp as any other piece of him. Adam deserves better than that. He deserves not to hurt anymore, at the very least. He deserves not to have Ronan hurt him.

Adam comes out of the bathroom, feet slapping against the bare wood floor. He stops just short of the mattress and stands quietly for a moment. “We’re going to have to talk about this eventually,” he says.

Ronan grunts, because he knows it’s useless to pretend he’s already asleep. Adam climbs in behind him. He doesn’t lay as close as he usually does, but he does rest one cold hand against Ronan’s hip. Ronan waits for his breath to even out before pushing himself back up against Adam’s chest. Lately, any distance between them feels wild and bruised. Ronan can’t take it. Adam’s arm falls over Ronan’s waist and only then does Ronan think about sleeping.

When he dreams he’s stalking angrily through an autumn forest, kicking at the leaf clutter and watching the colors burst before him. There’s something very satisfying about upsetting the majestic beauty of nature. Above him the branches of the trees are almost bare. The skeleton tangles of them reach vainly for the blazing orange sky. Ronan feels like he can relate.

He looks around for the Orphan Girl. He wants to ask the forest about Adam. It has to know, right? If Ronan can’t read the mind of the boy he’s entirely too into, then the forest should be able to read its magician’s mind. He thinks, anyway. There’s no girl, no horrors, no animals, no wind, nothing. Just Ronan alone with the blazing sunset and his self-defeating thoughts. It’s no different than the waking world.

“What good are you?” he asks the nearest tree with contempt. The tree doesn’t answer.

He kicks at the next pile of leaves. Something hard bounces off his foot and skitters across the path. It takes him a good fifteen minutes of searching before he finally finds the marble-sized stone. It’s clear and roughly the shape of a turtle shell. The light of the setting sun catches in it like a prism, making it glitter and glow gold. Ronan bends down to pick it up.

As soon as his fingers touch the stone’s smooth surface all of the light is expelled from it and it goes black. He jerks his hand back. It’s golden. He reaches forward and strokes it with his thumb. It’s black. Ronan picks it up and turns it over in his hand. It’s like the light isn’t even touching it anymore, just rolling around the impenetrable dark.

It’s a curious thing. It makes him uncomfortable, so he thinks it must be important. He clutches it tight in his hand and keeps walking.

Ronan wakes up on his back with his feet sticking out from under the covers. He shivers and pulls them back in, trying to tuck the edge of the blanket under his toes. He slides down the bed, t-shirt bunching up around his chest, and pulls the blanket over his head to keep the early morning sun out of his face.

Adam rolled away from him in the night and is curled over on his side with his bare back to Ronan. His pajama pants are resting low on his hips. Ronan reaches out a finger and lightly traces the fine ridge of Adam’s spine down his back. He half expects to leave a sooty black line behind with his touch. Nothing appears. Adam is as pale and perfect as he always is when Ronan’s hand falls away.

Exactly what they are to each other has been in flux since they met and this thing isn’t outside of that, it’s just another part of it. It’s just more. Every awful, ugly, painful, beautiful, happy feeling they have is amplified between the two of them, so the hesitation in Adam is more noticeable now. Adam is trying to build the wall back up between them from his side and Ronan can feel it. He hates it.

If Ronan had been thinking clearly last night he would have cussed Adam out soundly and told him to lay off the martyr schtick, because there’s only room for one of them on this cross and Ronan’s already there. Adam thinks love has to come with blood. Ronan has already bled for the easiness of this, in dreams and in waking. Adam doesn’t have to.

Ronan is never thinking clearly around Adam.

And it’s not like Adam is thinking clearly either. Adam can be an idiot, which is the second most disastrous thing Ronan fears he might spit out one day, but at least they could come back from that. They’ve called each other worse. They’ve never called each other singular, irreplaceable. Ronan doesn’t know what to do with the twist in his gut when he simply touches Adam’s hand, or the anticipatory pre-withdrawal jitter he gets when he thinks about Adam going away to college. Because Adam is going to leave and this thing is going to end before it’s started, so what is the point? What is the point of I love you?

The point is that Ronan does love Adam, even though he doesn't know how to prove it to him or make Adam accept it. He wishes he knew how. Sometimes when Ronan wishes things they come true, so he makes a new wish with every breath. In the meantime, he’s going to take whatever it is Adam will give him until this thing runs out. He’ll happily, greedily take waking up with Adam’s lips against his shoulder, breath warm on his skin, his very presence throwing every part of Ronan into chaos.

Chaos, that’s what love is. That’s why Adam shies away from it, longing instead for stability and order. Ronan tries to imagine himself capable of giving Adam either of those things and comes up short. He rolls over, wraps himself around Adam, and kisses the nape of his neck.

Adam stirs. Ronan stretches his palm out flat against Adam’s chest. Something small and hard he hadn’t even realized he was holding falls out of his hand. Before he can scramble for it, Adam stretches and rolls onto his back under Ronan’s arm. He pulls the blanket up over his head so they’re both cocooned in shadow and warmth.

“Morning,” he whispers.

“Hey,” Ronan says. He kisses Adam on the shoulder and then the lips.

Adam rolls again so that they’re facing each other. He nuzzles Ronan’s cheek. He hasn’t shaved since Friday and his fair stubble scratches against Ronan’s skin pleasantly. Next to Adam and the power that thrums through him now, Ronan feels thin and insubstantial. He feels like those leaves in the dream forest, just waiting for something warm to come along and light them up. Adam’s breath is that spark. A lick of fire crawls through Ronan's veins as Adam moves in close, hands ghosting down his side and chest, smoothing out his shirt only to pull it up again. Ronan pushes against Adam with his hips, looking for more of the warmth.

“Ow!” Adam leans back and pulls his hand away from Ronan’s side to dig around under him in the sheets. When he finds what he’s looking for he holds it up between them. It’s the stone from Ronan’s dream, bright red and glowing faintly in Adam’s fingers. The light of it burns in the space between them. They both stare at it for a long moment.

“Is this some princess and the pea shit?” Adam asks. “Because I can already tell you I’m not delicate. There are lumps in this mattress more refined than me.”

“Ha. You’re telling me you couldn’t feel a rock under ten mattresses? You can feel rocks in the forest miles away.”

“They’re usually not digging into my ribs.”

“My point exactly.” Ronan leans around Adam’s hand to kiss him again as he nicks the stone from him.

He’s still angry he can’t read Adam’s mind, can’t know for sure how much of him Adam wants, but he pushes it down in favor of being pleased with the parts of him Adam wants right this moment. It’s difficult for Ronan to feel like he’s settling when what he’s presented with is wet lips, warm skin, soft hair, and the pressing weight of longing. Adam’s hard against Ronan’s thigh. Ronan arches into it and Adam inhales a shaking breath.

Ronan needs to put the stone down. It’s getting in the way of him being able to touch Adam in the ways he wants to. He slips out from under the blanket and reaches up to place it on the windowsill.

Adam tilts his head back to watch. The bared pale of his throat is beautiful and Ronan can’t take his eyes off it. He’s already planning what he’s going to do to it when he bends back down. Adam swallows. “Whoa,” he says, eyes trained on Ronan’s hand.

Ronan frowns and looks at the stone, which is black again now that Adam’s not touching it. “What the hell? Damn thing needs to make up its mind.”

Adam shoots a hand out and grabs the stone away. It’s red again. He turns it over in his fingers and then places it against Ronan’s jaw. It goes black and red. The two colors swirl around each other until they settle into a foggy blood color. “It can tell us apart. Cool.”

“That’s not cool,” Ronan says. “That’s useless. I can already tell us apart. I'm the one who’s about to blow you.”

Adam grins, easy and open. “How do you know I’m not the one who's about to blow you?”

“Because I’m faster than you?” Ronan shoves at Adam’s shoulder until he’s flat on his back and climbs over him to straddle his hips.

Adam runs the stone across Ronan’s jaw and down the side of his neck. The coolness of it etches a path through Ronan’s want that is the exact size and shape of his doubt. He grabs Adam’s wrist and tugs at it until their hands are dangling over the side of the mattress.

“Parrish, put down your god damned toy and get into this before I leave you here and go jack off in your shower.”

Adam laughs, breathy and quiet, and turns the stone loose. It falls to the wood with a dull ping. With neither of them touching it the stone goes clear. This perplexes Ronan, but Adam kisses his cheek and then his collarbone and Ronan figures he’ll have plenty of time to figure it out later.

Ronan makes it downstairs for church with ten minutes to spare. Declan looks him up and down, flicks his eyes in the direction of Adam’s apartment, and then turns to shake hands with another member of the congregation. He does all of this without slipping out of the carefully distant and polite mask he always adopts in public. Ronan glares at the back of his head and adjusts his tie. He knows there’s not a single piece of him out of place, not a wrinkle or a stain to be found.

In the days before this, when staying over at Adam’s had been an act of futility at best, Ronan relished in looking as haggard as possible on Sunday mornings. Nothing pleases him these days quite so much as antagonizing Declan. Ronan found early on, mostly by accident, that any insinuation of what he might be doing alone with Adam Parrish all night really goes the extra mile as far as antagonizing Declan is concerned.

Declan is always looking for a toe out of line. It doesn’t matter that for a long time Ronan was sure Adam didn't like boys and he’d never stand a chance. It doesn’t matter that Declan still doesn’t know for sure that Ronan does. Anything that isn’t the line from Aglionby to Monmouth to the sanctuary of St. Agnes is out of line.

Staying in the apartment over the church is a near thing, but somehow even worse in Declan’s eyes than all of Ronan's other mostly faceless transgressions. The drinking and the street racing and the propensity for fighting can be written off as a troubled young man acting out and trying to wound the world the way he’s been wounded. Love though, appreciation, friendship, desire, those are different sins altogether. Those are about who Ronan is and not what happened to him. Those are harder to forgive.

Now that this thing is running its course, it’s different. Whether or not Declan ever even finds out about it for real, it deserves to be handled with care. So Ronan buttons up, smooths out his edges, and tries to drive Declan’s attention as far away from Adam as possible. And well, if his sudden compliance also raises Declan’s suspicions, nothing can be done.

Ronan fiddles with the stone where it sits warming in his pocket and uses his free hand to ruffle Matthew’s hair. Matthew ducks away from the touch and shoves his hand into Ronan’s pocket too.

“What have you got?”

“Hey!” Ronan cries, trying to snatch the stone back. “That’s not for you.”

Matthew smirks up at him. Sometimes it hits Ronan square in the chest that even though Matthew is not their father's son, he’s been raised as a Lynch and as such has a whole list of characteristics and bad habits that make Ronan stupidly proud of his baby brother. That smirk that says ‘really, you have things that you wouldn’t just give to me?’ is one of them.

“You can’t keep it, anyway,” Ronan says, resigned.

Matthew turns it over and holds it up in the sunlight. It’s gold and glinting like it had in his dream. Ronan supposes that makes sense.

“Where’d you get it?” Matthew asks.

“Pyrite happens in the mountains,” Ronan says. “I found it on a hike.” Neither of those things is exactly a lie.

Declan spins around and looks at Ronan like he just claimed to have won the Nobel Prize in shit talk. “A hike?”

“I go outside,” Ronan says, spreading his arms to indicate the splendor of God all around them in the dusty parking lot and the hot sidewalk. “I’m outside right now.”

Declan raises his eyebrow.

Matthew presses the stone into Declan’s hand. “Look!”

It takes every scrap of will power Ronan has not to surge forward and yank it from Declan’s fist. Declan smiles at Matthew, automatic and absent, and looks down.

The stone is a swirl of burgundy and grey smoke now that Declan’s holding it. It’s close to the color it was when Adam held it against Ronan’s skin. Declan’s defenses fall away. His eyes stare at something far off, like Adam’s eyes do when he’s scrying. After a few seconds Declan frowns, his face shutters back up, and he holds it out for Ronan to take back.

Ronan snatches the stone away from him and tucks it back into his pocket before either of his brothers can see how black it becomes when he’s holding it. That feels too significant. It feels like something they wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t understand and he’s the one who made the damn thing.

“I wish you wouldn’t bring these things to church,” Declan says, voice strained. He avoids looking Ronan in the eye.

Declan very carefully doesn’t say that dream things have no place here, because Matthew is standing between them and Declan loves Matthew unconditionally. Matthew belongs at church because he breathes, because he’s probably autonomous. The rest of Ronan’s dreams belong elsewhere, some place where they can remain unseen. Some dark, quiet place where Ronan can’t use them to disrupt the life Declan is trying to make appear as stable as possible. Where Ronan won’t contaminate that life with the pieces of his soul he’s scattering about.

“I’ll just take it back up to Parrish, shall I?” he asks, voice flat.

Declan sneers. “I think it’s time for us to go in, you do what you like.”

There’s half a second where Ronan is ready to walk away. He’s not here for Declan and he’s not here for God. He’s here out of loyalty. He’s here because Matthew wants him here, because his father would want him here. Though, if he’s perfectly honest with himself, his loyalty to the things he thinks his father might have wanted are starting to feel more distant by the day.

“Pal?” Matthew says, grasping Ronan’s wrist with warm fingers. It’s not fair. It’s a kill word. It’s their thing and Matthew knows he won’t turn away from it.

“Sure,” Ronan says. He shrugs away from the touch, but tucks his arm over Matthew’s shoulders and turns him toward the church.

Ronan spends the entirety of the service thinking about how some colors are so alike and also so far apart. He studies Jesus’ wane, drawn face as He looks down on them from His place on the cross. Ronan wonders if blood meant something else to the people who demanded it of Him.

Declan doesn’t look at Ronan during the service or during the small talk the congregation makes after. Ronan walks them out to Declan’s car and Matthew gives Ronan a quick hug around the shoulder before slipping into it. Declan pauses at the driver’s side door, holding his keys in his hand. His eyes dart up, quick and curious, to where Ronan is standing on the sidewalk with his hands in the pockets of his slacks. For a moment he looks young and unsure. He looks like the Declan Ronan misses.

Then his expression hardens into familiar contempt. “Mind yourself,” he says, and ducks into the car before Ronan can reply.

Ronan rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck to try and temper the frustration that’s always crouched there, heavy like Chainsaw and just as loud when it’s being ignored. Adam’s gone to work, so Ronan walks to his car to head back to Monmouth. The stone feels like it gets heavier the farther he gets from the church.

His bedroom is freezing inside when he gets back to it. Chainsaw is perched on the sill of the window Ronan left open for her. He drops his jacket on the floor and climbs over his bed to close out the cool late autumn air. Chainsaw croaks at him, indignant.

“Yeah, some of us don't like freezing to death,” he says, and scoops her up to carry to the bathroom/laundry/kitchen. “Have you eaten?” She burrows into the crook of his elbow and doesn't answer.

Outside of his room Monmouth is silent. He’d thought Gansey would be here at his desk, nose buried in some difficult book or another, but he’s not and Ronan is alone. Ronan sets Chainsaw on the edge of the sink and pours orange juice into a glass that looks more or less clean. He downs it in one go, pours some more, and then takes a swig from the bottle before closing it up, just to be a jerk. A lot may have changed over the last year, but Ronan still relishes in his small rebellions.

“Well?” he says to her. When she doesn't hop over to the fridge he decides she must be fine. He heads back into the main room. She flaps noisily past him and into his bedroom and he follows after.

Ronan places the glass on his desk and removes his tie. He digs into the pockets of his slacks and tosses the stone and his keys onto his bed. They land in the middle of a nest of blankets. Chainsaw flies over to pick at them as he unbuttons his shirt. She pushes the stone over the keys a few times just to listen to the clatter. Then she picks it up in her beak. She drops it, squawks, picks it up again, and hops to the edge of the bed to hold it out to him.

“I know,” he says, kicking off his shoes. “Magic is being a dick, no one is surprised.” Ronan bends over and runs a finger down her beak. She drops the stone onto the mattress and places a foot on top of it protectively. With Chainsaw touching it the stone is unevenly striped in mottled pinks and greys.

“What does this shit even mean?” he asks her, because he has to ask someone and she’s the only one who might know. He wishes the puzzle box would translate raven.

Chainsaw tilts her head to one side and then the other and steps back. It goes clear again.

Ronan ghosts a finger over it, testing how close he can get before it changes. Nothing happens unless he's touching it. “Is this supposed to drive home the great indifference of the universe? Because I already know none of this gives a shit about me.”

Really though, it’s not the clarity of the untouched stone that bothers him. It’s the black, weighty void it becomes when he’s holding it and how it threatens to suck him up into the darkness he knows is inside of him. It’s the flaring red of Adam’s touch. Ronan was still angry this morning and decided to ignore it. Was Adam also angry? Is Adam always angry with him, somewhere beneath the layers of exhaustion and friendly bickering? That would make sense with Declan’s color. Declan who Ronan knows is always darkly angry with and deeply disappointed in him. Of course he’s the color of both Ronan’s own fear that he’s an empty pit and Adam’s anger.

“Can I try?” Noah asks, appearing over his shoulder.

“You’re not even really here,” Ronan says.

Noah pouts.

Ronan doesn’t say it to be mean, not this time. He says it because he’s still trying to work out how this thing even works and what it means. Chainsaw and Matthew were not born, but they exist. Noah was born, but he no longer exists. Not really. He’s an echo and there’s no way to know what the real Noah would have thought of Ronan. Probably.

Ronan picks up the stone and holds it out on his open palm so that it’s perched in the middle. Noah concentrates, brow furrowed and lips pursed, and reaches out to touch it gently. Ronan holds his breath.

Nothing happens for a moment, then slowly, small specks of silver start to roll across the empty dark, like stars wheeling through the night sky. Ronan exhales in relief. The specks stay sparse, not overwhelming or filling in Ronan’s black, just marking it with a small brightness Ronan knows he doesn’t have within himself.

Noah smiles, faint and watery, and pulls his hand away. “Am too here.”

Ronan rolls his eyes and closes his fist around the stone. “You’re spooky on every plane of existence, congratu-fucking-lations.”

Noah ignores him. “You’re wrong about Adam,” he says. “It’s not anger.”

“I think I know Parrish better than you.” This Ronan does say to hurt, because the thought of him being wrong about something that came from his own head hurts him.

“Maybe, but I listen to him.”

“I’m not his therapist,” Ronan spits. “I’m his—” and here he stops short, because he doesn’t know what he is. Because they haven’t talked about this. Because Adam keeps trying to and Ronan won’t let him. Because Ronan is so fucking afraid to lose this thing he’s finally got before he’s really had a chance to enjoy it.

“Uh huh,” says Noah.

Ronan shrugs and tosses the stone onto his bed. Chainsaw picks it up and flutters over to her cage with it. “You wanna go see how many donuts we can do in that new subdivision before we get the cops called on us?”

“Yes!” Noah fades out to wait for Ronan by the car. Ronan changes into jeans and thunders down the stairs after him, hoping if he leaves the stone behind his worry will stay with it.

When Ronan makes it home that evening it’s about midnight. Blue and Gansey are sitting on the foot of Gansey’s bed talking in quiet voices. He catches the shift when they lean away from each other.

“Does the maggot have permission for sleepovers on a school night?” Ronan asks, slamming the door behind him. “Do any of her moms need to call yours?”

“Good evening to you too, asshole,” Blue says.

Gansey looks between them, obviously pleased they’re getting along so well. “Adam just left,” he says. “Said to let you know he’d be up for a while if you need help with that physics thing.”

“Why the fuck do I need Parrish’s schedule?” He tries to lay an acidic annoyance over his obvious interest.

Ronan does need help with ‘that physics thing’, because it’s code for all sorts of things having to do with colliding bodies, but he has a feeling that the next time he sees Adam it’s not going to go easily. So he’s putting it off, which is what he does best. Adam is going to be pissed. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Why the fuck wouldn’t you want his schedule?” Blue asks, mimicking his venom. The curious look she’s giving him reminds him too much of Chainsaw. He scrunches his nose up and makes a face at her. Gansey frowns.

As Ronan ducks into his room he hears Blue say, “What? It’s not like it’s subtle, right?” He slams his second door of the evening.

Chainsaw croaks from her cage and Ronan climbs across his bed to open the window. She shakes, hops about a bit, and then takes off into the night. Ronan wishes he could follow her, figure out a way to get her view of the world, clear and laid out plainly below her. It might help. He’d settle for a clear view of himself, though.

He checks her cage for the stone, but it’s not there. He pulls the blanket and top sheet off his bed, digs through the mess on his desk, kicks the pile of dirty laundry on his floor, and rucks around in his sock drawer. It’s nowhere to be found. He’s about to stick his head out the window and call after Chainsaw when there’s a light knock on his door.

“What?” he shouts.

Gansey turns the knob and slowly opens the door. He sticks his head around it, glasses slipping down his nose. “I have something that I think is yours.”

Ronan pulls his arms out of the junk drawer at the bottom of his dresser. His hand catches on a small accordion and it lets out a dramatic wheeze. He glares at it. Gansey comes in and holds his hand out.

He’s holding the stone. It’s a deep, royal blue, and it’s the first thing that’s made sense to Ronan all day, because of course. Of course Gansey, his best friend, his brother, the boy he’s spent so many early mornings next to watching the sun break through the night, would turn the damn thing the color of the sky in those moments of pure contentment that pass between them.

Gansey looks sheepish. He scratches the back of his neck with his free hand. “Chainsaw brought it out to us,” he says. “I wouldn’t ever just take something from you.”

“It’s fine,” Ronan says. Nothing is fine.

He takes a deep breath and accepts the stone. It goes black while Gansey watches. Ronan isn't nearly as anxious about Gansey seeing it as he was about his brothers or Adam. Gansey’s already seen the darkest of him and he’s still here. The darkness in Ronan doesn’t change the way Gansey feels about him. Maybe his life would be easier if he could just want Gansey instead.

Gansey rubs his thumb across his bottom lip. “Have you been documenting these changes?”

Nope, Ronan thinks. Just kidding.

“No, nerd,” he says. “I have not been documenting it. I’ve been having a crazy existential crisis about it that I have absolutely not been documenting.”

Gansey nods. “Jane was green. In case you want to continue not documenting your existential crisis. Light green.”

“Is she jealous of all the times I’ve seen you in your underwear?” Ronan asks, raising an eyebrow and biting back a laugh.

“God, I hope not,” Gansy says. He grimaces. “Or, well…”

“I know. It’s, whatever,” Ronan says, because that’s as close as his words get to comforting or encouraging. “Parrish knows, too. It’s kind of painful that you two think we don’t.”

“Ah.” Gansey pushes his glasses up his nose. “And your physics homework?”

“It’ll keep.”

“That’s what I thought.” Gansey grins at him and backs out the door. “Night, Lynch.” He pulls it softly closed behind him.

Ronan balls his hands into fists and silently shakes them at the ceiling in frustration. Then he falls onto his bed face first, propping his forehead on the fist holding the stone. The night gets colder around him as the air slips in. When Chainsaw returns it’s close to one. He gets up and closes the window behind her before going through the motions of getting ready for bed.

He’s so caught up in the racing of his waking mind that Ronan honestly doesn’t expect to dream, so it’s a surprise when he finds himself sitting on a fence rail at The Barns. It overlooks the pastures and the main driveway. He and his brothers used to sit on it and wait for their father to come home when he was away. Sometimes they’d come out every afternoon for days. He doesn’t have to wait days this time. He has about twenty minutes of time to gaze at the clouds in the wide blue sky before his father comes walking up the drive.

It’s a young, sure version of his father. Not that his father had been old when he’d been killed. He’d been just the other side of forty and still playfully admonishing their mother whenever she reminded him. But this version is less wary. His blue eyes are clear and his back is straight. He has no need to look over his shoulder constantly. It’s the Niall Lynch who used to toss Ronan into the air and pretend like he might not manage to catch him this time. There was never a time when Ronan’s father didn’t catch him.

Niall leans against a post next to where Ronan is sitting. They’re closer in age than ever would have been possible in real life. Ronan can see very plainly how his bravado and his cocksure nature is just another thing he’s stolen from his father. It’s surreal for Ronan to realize that they’re the same height, that he’s managed to usurp more than his father’s power and his smile. He’s somehow managed his stature and the black gulf of his fear as well.

The last time Ronan dreamed of his father he got The Barns back. What could he possibly ask for this time that would outstrip that and make this pain worth it?

“For once,” Niall says, Irish accent slight and curling like the breeze, “there is no storm coming.”

“It’d be a hell of a cliche if there was,” Ronan says. “You taught me to dream better than that.”

Niall shrugs. “You taught yourself. I’m afraid the things I ended up teaching you weren’t as useful as all that.”

“You did what you could.”

“I could have done more.” He says it like he’s saying he could have done the dishes after breakfast if only he’d had the time, like it’s just another thing that was left undone and not something that weighs on Ronan daily.

Ronan grips the rough rail with his hands and lets his legs swing. They almost touch the ground. He kicks at the sun bleached wood. “We have that in common,” he says.

“We don’t have to have that much in common.” Niall reaches out and grips Ronan’s knee. He gives it a brief squeeze and lets his hand rest there.

Ronan wants so much to be able to touch his father again. They’d never been big on hugs, but there are a million other careless ways to brush against someone and remind them that you're there. He remembers the sour, wet smell his father sometimes had after he’d come in from working with the cattle. As he remembers he conjures. He can feel a sob building in his throat. He swallows it down. “I don’t know what I am.”

“No one knows what they are, Ronan.”

Ronan closes his eyes at the sound of his father saying his name. It sounds like he means ‘possibility’.

“That’s not how life works,” Niall continues. “You don’t know what a book is while you’re reading it. You don’t know what a song is while you’re learning it. And you don’t know what a life is until you’ve lived it. There’s so much more of you yet to come, just let it come. Don’t fight it.”

“I don’t know how not to fight anymore.”

Niall looks up at him, eyes narrowing against the sun setting over Ronan’s shoulder. “I wanted you to be tough, because the world is cruel, but I never got around to showing you that not everyone is cruel.”

“Mother’s not cruel. Matthew isn’t.”

“No, I don’t suppose they were made to be. But people are, Ronan. People are made to survive. You can’t begrudge them that.”

Ronan thinks of survival. He thinks of Adam. He thinks of how selfish he is to want all of Adam immediately. No, not all of him, just the parts of him that benefit Ronan. Just his warmth and his caustic moods, his curiosity and his pride. Ronan hasn’t stopped to consider Adam’s fear or his doubts. He’s been so wrapped up in his own, so terrified of tainting whatever it is that he and Adam have.

It feels like taunting the universe to let Adam have his weaknesses as well. Like maybe they’ll collapse under the weight of it. Like they’re not strong enough to take it. Which isn’t fair. Adam is strong enough, at least. Adam has taken so much worse than Ronan Lynch and his shitty moods. Adam doesn’t fear him. Adam, Ronan realizes, has been trying to take them past this the whole time and Ronan’s been digging in his heels because...why? Because change is terrifying? Because change means loss and he can’t lose anyone else. He especially can’t lose Adam.

Ronan has another thought. “Would you have cared?” he asks. “About…” he doesn’t finish his question. Even here he can’t say it to family. Not yet. Even here he’s afraid of losing someone. Someone he’s already lost.

“It doesn’t matter what I would have cared about,” Niall says quietly. “I don’t care about anything anymore. Don’t let what I might have thought rule you. I wouldn’t have wanted you to do that if I were alive, either. A man isn’t his father. A man is himself in spite of his father.”

Ronan tucks that away for later, to share with Adam when he’s feeling particularly beat up about who he’s becoming.

“Would you look at that?” Niall says.

Ronan cranes his neck around to look over his shoulder. All across the gently rolling horizon created by the fields, the sunset is blanketing the world in rose-gold. The sky is striped with lines of pink and mottled grey clouds. It’s incredible. It’s Chainsaw, painted here across a sky where she can no longer fly. It’s his father reaching out in the only place he can anymore.

When Ronan turns back his father is gone. It’s only fitting, really, he’d never been good at goodbyes. Ronan hops off the fence. He looks up the drive at where the house sits perched against the purpling sky. He looks in the other direction, where the sky is already deep blue, poised to slip into black. In one direction he’ll find what he knows. In the other he’ll find the rest of the world. He turns toward the night. The stars spring up over him, reassuring and bright, to remind him that he’s not alone.

Ronan sleeps through his alarm and misses Latin. From there it’s easy to skulk around the school and avoid Adam for most of the day. It’s not that he doesn’t want to see him—he always wants to see Adam—it’s that he’s not quite ready yet. He hasn’t figured out what he wants to say when he burdens Adam with every last horrible bit of him that Adam’ll take. He has to be prepared for Adam to not want to accept it.

He slips into Economics late and sits in the empty desk behind Adam. Adam shoots him a dirty look over his shoulder, but doesn’t say anything. Ronan spends the whole lecture staring at the back of Adam’s head thinking I love you. I love you. I love you. Hoping to take the frustration and fear out of the words. Hoping that when he can finally say them they'll be a surrender, not a fight.

When the bell rings Ronan leans forward and whispers, “I’ll see you tonight,” into Adam’s good ear. Then he collects his books and bolts out the door as quickly as he can, hoping Adam won't chase him down.

That evening he’s waiting in front of Adam’s door with a pizza when Adam gets off work. Ronan has a key. He’s had one for months, but he doesn’t want this offering to be misinterpreted as a takeover, so he waits to be invited in. The stone is in his pocket. It feels lighter today. It looks lighter too, more like the dark center of a storm than the all-encompassing emptiness of a void. He’ll shy away from cliches in his dreams when he can, but there’s no way he can avoid them in his real life.

Adam lets them in and looks at him warily for a moment before taking a slice of pizza into the bathroom with him to change out of his work clothes. When he comes out he drops the pizza crust into the box where it sits open on one of his plastic bins. He stands just outside of Ronan’s reach in a clean pair of jeans and a plain white t-shirt, his hair ruffled and sticking up at odd angles.

He looks quintessentially male in a way makes Ronan's chest heave with want. Not rugged, but cool, like all those old photos of Paul Newman Ronan remembers from the covers of his mother’s favorite movies. He looks like everything Ronan has ever wanted and has always told himself he was never allowed to have.

Ronan holds the stone out. Adam lets Ronan drop it into his palm. It’s so, so red against Adam’s skin. Ronan might as well have just pressed his own fucking heart into Adam’s hands. It’s hard for Ronan to look at it.

“I thought it meant that you were angry with me,” he says.

Adam rolls his eyes. He shakes the stone around in his loosely cupped fingers, like he’s getting ready to roll a die, try his luck. Ronan does not feel like a prize.

“I am angry with you, you shithead. You’ve been ignoring me when I talk all week. The only way to get your attention anymore is to put my dick in your mouth, which I’m seriously not ever complaining about, but it’s not exactly what I was hoping we’d be.”

“We,” Ronan says, his carefully prepared speech falling apart in his head. We.

“Yes, we, you idiot. You and me.” Adam throws his hands in the air and starts pacing back and forth along the edge of the mattress. “I really like you, though God only knows why. You’re the absolute worst. I want us to be a thing. A real thing, not a thing you hide from Gansey because you’re embarrassed or whatever. And okay, obviously we can’t like, make out in public or anything. I’m not ready for that yet, and my dad. I. Anyway, our friends could know. And then maybe when you try to play with my feet under the table at Nino’s I won’t have to pretend I don’t want to kick you as hard as I fucking can, because you, Ronan Lynch, deserve to be kicked so fucking hard, all of the god damned time. It’s like you don’t even—mmf.”

Ronan cuts Adam off by grabbing one of his waving hands out of the air, hauling him close, and kissing him. Adam tenses up for a moment, then relaxes into it. He opens his mouth to Ronan’s tongue and Ronan wonders why he ever thought there were parts of him that Adam wouldn’t accept. Adam who’s only ever taken his venom in stride. Adam who watched him die on the floor of St. Agnes and can still look at him with fond annoyance. Adam who helped him blackmail the man who orchestrated his father’s murder and was coming for him as well. All Adam has ever done is let Ronan know that no matter how far he feels he needs to stray, Adam will be here when he gets back.

“You're right, I am an idiot,” Ronan mumbles against Adam’s lips.

“Yes you are. I lo-,” Adam stutters, falters, swallows. “I think you’re okay anyway, though.”

Ronan pulls back, eyes wide.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Adam says. “Pretend I didn’t almost say that?”

“Um,” Ronan says eloquently. He slides his hand down Adam’s arm until he can grab his wrist and pull it up. Ronan pries Adam’s fingers open and they both look down at the red bit of dream stuff cupped in Adam’s palm. “I think I already knew.”

“Leave it to you to dream up some sort of weird feelings barometer to divine that I’m angry with you instead of just listening to me when I tell you I’m angry with you.”

“That wasn’t why I dreamed it,” Ronan says defensively.

“No?”

“Okay, maybe a bit.”

Adam looks smug. Ronan wants to kiss the satisfied grin right off of him.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, all right? I don't read minds. I’ve never. I don’t. I didn’t want to be too much.”

Adam closes his eyes. Ronan counts to ten in his head and then Adam opens them again. He steadies himself with a hand against Ronan’s shoulder. “This is what I meant when I said you wouldn't understand.”

“Yeah well, that's a shit thing to say.”

Adam snorts. “Maybe, but it's true, isn't it? You bleed feelings all over everything all of the time and I'm, I'm not good with those. I can’t do that. I don't know how to be what you want.”

“You already are,” Ronan says, entirely too earnest. He screws his face up and cringes at the sound of himself giving everything away.

“Gross, shut up,” Adam says. He shoves Ronan’s shoulders.

Ronan trips back a step, barely holding in a laugh. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Lynch.” Adam crosses his arms and tries to look intimidating. “Shut up before I say something I regret.”

“You mean you haven’t already?” Ronan crowds into Adam’s space, pushing him back towards the mattress.

“Shut up,” Adam says again, but there’s no conviction behind it. It’s almost resigned.

“Because you basically just said you loved me. It’s only been a month. When do I get my promise ring?”

Adam’s calf hits the edge of his mattress and he topples over backwards in a sprawl of gangly limbs. “I fucking hate you,” he says.

Ronan drops down over him, crawling up Adam’s body until he’s straddling his hips. He kisses Adam again and again. Every place he puts his lips he leaves behind a small promise to himself to come back and collect later. He kisses his forehead and nose and chin. I do not cut him. He kisses against his neck and the underside of his jaw. Adam chose me because he wants me. He kisses the spot behind his ear. Adam loves me.

“I said I hate you,” Adam says, weakly. He hisses as Ronan’s cold fingers find their way under his shirt.

“You love me.”

“You’re going to hold this against me forever, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

Ronan shakes the stone from Adam’s grasp. He catches it in his palm, leans back so that he's sitting on Adam’s thighs, and reaches up to place it on the windowsill. Adam tilts his head back to watch and the curve of his throat reminds Ronan of gently sloping hills. It’s almost like he has a bird’s eye view, Adam laid out beneath him, warm and solid and steady. He pushes Adam’s hair away from his face with one hand and traces the shape of his jaw and his throat with the other.

Adam sits up and tugs at Ronan's hips until Ronan is sitting flush in his lap. He runs his hands up under Ronan's shirt and lightly drags his nails down Ronan's back. “When are you dreaming me up a magic rock so I know how people feel about me?”

“You don’t need one.” Ronan pulls Adam's shirt off altogether. His skin is so warm and soft. Ronan never wants to let him go.

“I don’t?” Adam asks. “I'm the one who just told some jerk I love him and didn't get it back.” He fakes a pout for effect. It is very effective.

Ronan leans forward and presses his face into the crook of Adam’s neck. He inhales the scent of oil and gasoline and shampoo deep into his lungs and holds it for as long as he can. “Can you keep a secret?” he asks as he exhales.

Adam scoffs. “I can’t believe you just asked me that. It's like you don't even know me.”

“Shut up, Adam.” Ronan kisses him. He takes his time, steeling himself and trying to convey to Adam how much this means to him. Ronan pulls back ever so slightly. Their noses are still touching. Gently, as if each word is a finger he’s skating across Adam’s skin, he says, “I love you.”

“Thanks, I think you’re alright too. Can we eat now?”

“In a minute.” Ronan nips at Adam’s jaw and slides his hands down into the back of Adam's jeans. “First, I think someone was just complaining I don’t pay enough attention to what he says, and I have a week’s worth of demands to make up for.”

"Ugh," Adam says. It's the last complaint of the evening.