#but the garage and little yard were on the opposite end of her condo

[cesium-sheep]

when we were little we had a game where hitting the other person with the beam of a flashlight made them 'fall asleep', and our fake sleep sound of choice was "ka-sleep! ka-sleep!"

I remember playing at nana's, in the room with the tv and the old yellow armchair we didn't keep.

[kelliealtogether]

I'm deep in the Bloom feels 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 🌱 🪴 Do you have any more info about them in this AU?

Hi anon,

You're in luck! This is the AU I think about every night when I'm trying to fall asleep, so there. is. a. lot. Pull up a chair, because this is gonna get long.

At the end of Grow, it's decided Ronan's moving to DC, but full-time cohabitation in a one-bedroom condo is an adjustment. There are many arguments over not replacing empty toothpaste, dwindling space because of Adam's habit of rescuing half-dead plants people left out with their trash, and the fair and equitable splitting of bills. But there's nothing Adam likes more than waking up every morning with his arm trapped and numb beneath Ronan because Ronan slept on it all night.

On Adam's fortieth birthday, they go out to dinner with Gansey and Blue, and on the drive home (Adam's driving the BMW, the only present he'd accept from Ronan) when they're stopped at a red light, Ronan takes Adam's hand, turns it over, and puts a ring in Adam's palm. Adam puts it on and keeps driving when the light turns green. They have a small little thing at the Barns a few weeks later.

They do move to a house, because you can't really raise a kid in a one-bedroom condo and Ronan kind of hates the landlord where he's renting space for his woodshop, so he wants a basement/garage where he can work. Finding a house is a whole thing (because have you seen house prices recently?), and Adam goes into "finance spirals" (as Ronan calls them) while he's doing everyday tasks, which result in the kitchen sink overflowing while he's washing dishes and burnt scrambled eggs while he's making Saturday morning breakfast. Ronan just turns the sink off/turns the stove off, takes Adam's face in his hands, and says, "We will be fine," until Adam believes it. They eventually find something in their price range in Northwest DC, because Ronan's mantra throughout their house hunt was, "I am not moving to Maryland."

When they turn their attention to acquiring a child, Adam's already prepared with legal contacts, paperwork on what his benefits from work cover, and details on every different type of adoption. The latter goes out the window when Ronan says, "I want them to be a Lynch." They find a surrogate and an egg donor, and, after nine months of Adam and Ronan being equally both excited and terrified, Maeve Parrish-Lynch arrives with a Lynch's blue eyes and curls, except her hair is brilliantly and shockingly orange. Ronan holds her first and cries, and Adam takes a lot of photos he'll never share with anyone.

Then there's a lot of them being girl dads as Maeve grows up, and Adam being an awkward (at first) and adoring parent, the exact opposite of what he feared he'd be. They go to story time at the library. They hunt for caterpillars on walks around the neighborhood and sometimes make homes for them in old tupperware so Maeve can see the caterpillar make a chrysalis, then they go out in their tiny yard and let the butterfly go once it emerges. They build paper mache volcanoes and make them explode with red food coloring, baking soda, and vinegar. (They do a lot of messy arts and crafts and Adam and Ronan probably have more fun than Maeve.) They get a cat (named Chainsaw, of course) when Maeve asks for one, and she and Chainsaw become thick as thieves. And (this is the first scene that came to be outside the bounds of the fics in the series) they take Maeve to see a blooming corpse flower at the USBG conservatory, and when Adam picks her up to take a whiff of it, she pinches her nose and says, "Ew, daddy," then she looks at Ronan and says, "Smell that."

That's probably far, far more than you were looking for, anon, but this AU lives rent free in my head all day, every day. I love it so much.