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ravenvsfox · 3 years ago

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Things Fall Apart; the Centre Cannot Hold

Summary: He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.

(Adam's perspective throughout Mister Impossible, as his worry reaches a fever pitch, and the two versions of himself begin to converge)

Word Count: 9.5k

Warnings: mi spoilers, death/suicide mention

A/N: batshit middle books my beloveds. adam pov or bust 😌

Read on AO3

In high school, Gansey would very occasionally call Adam in the middle of the night.

He would speak low and fast, his panic pinched between thumb and forefinger and held at a respectable distance. Adam would smother the receiver with his palm and step outside of his family trailer, listening hard for movement at his back.

The news was always the same: Ronan Lynch was on his latest rampage or bender, exercising his dark talent for bullying his way into people’s lives and then breaking down all of their windows and doors trying to get out again.

Gansey would fret and apologize, guilty for luring Adam out of his wolf-den, guiltier for neglecting his duties as Ronan’s warden. Adam would wait tiredly on the line for Gansey’s anxiety to exhaust itself, and then dutifully join the search party.

He would step into his beaten tennis shoes and pry his bike from the fence, silencing the silvery shock of metal on metal, and avoiding the reedy whir of the spokes by holding the whole thing aloft until he reached the gravel road.

From there, he would venture out into the abandoned Henrietta streets, the crunch of his tires cutting clean through the woolly midnight silence. He often circled the perimeter of the park nearest Monmouth, stepped through the great dark portal into St. Agnes, and nipped under the old bridge, squinting into the darkness for the challenging shoulders, the oil-slick BMW gleam, the slump of a body or clatter of bottles.

This is a part of Gansey that I admire, he would think. And with equal fervour, this is a part of Gansey that I resent. This blood attachment to Ronan, who was not even attached to himself. The insomnia that seized two heads of the lopsided Cerberus that Adam, Ronan, and Gansey were all part of, a restlessness on either side of him that shook him awake over and over again.

He chased Ronan’s shadow, hating him. Hating his thoughtlessness, his privilege, his chokehold on Gansey’s interests, his purposefully and continuously ruined potential, and yet bristling with anxiety at the idea of finding him bleeding.

They hadn’t known then that he was a dreamer, but they’d felt the ear-popping pressure of his grief, glimpsed the hulking animal of his self-loathing, urged onwards by the twin spurs of Declan and Gansey, the past and the future, digging into his sides.

Adam had seen Ronan, teeth bared, hurling himself at rock bottom, and he had rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pulled him back by the collar.

Things are completely different now, but he still finds himself sleep-raw and petrified, reaching after Ronan in the dark.

He examines himself in the mirror of the communal bathroom in Thayer hall. The overhead lights are an unflattering yellow, the sink has a long dark hair stuck to its basin, and Adam’s face is gaunt and bruised with lack of sleep.

He’s losing it, a little bit.

He takes his own pulse, focusing on the faraway burble of the ley line. Everything, lately, seems far away.

As if through a stranger’s eyes, he slips from the seafoam tiling and bleach tang in Thayer’s North bathroom to the accordion door of the trailer toilet, the creaky cubicle shower, his gawky, hurt reflection in the burnt-out light. This version of Adam had to watch his best friend’s best friend escape suicide watch and get screaming drunk in public, treading mud and malicious dreams all over Monmouth manufacturing.

He can still smell the salt tang from teenaged Adam’s ocean of disdain.

Now that he loves Ronan, his irritation has only gotten sharper, more deadly. Ronan performs each perilous swan dive into the unknown, each foolhardy act of self-sacrifice, as if the people who care about him aren’t gasping spectators. It makes Adam furious.

Perhaps neither of them have changed as much as they wanted to believe. As Gillian keeps advising the crying club—with the confidence of a seasoned psychiatrist—progress isn’t linear.

He keeps remembering the chafe of Ronan’s shoulder against his ribs as they got oriented in his little bed, the glisten of tears and nightwash wringing his lovely eyes, the lonely twist in his unguarded late-night voice over the phone, the one that Adam had almost liked, because it meant that he was indisputably missed. It was worse, that Ronan had been trying so hard for Adam, because it was easier to tell when he stopped.

He slides fingers over his temples, smooths a knuckle over each eyebrow to ease the tension he always carries there. Sleep is a little knot of gristle lodged at the back of his throat; he can’t swallow it and he can’t spit it up. It never used to be this hard to put his problems to bed. He would worry the weight on his chest into small pieces, and go to sleep knowing that even the worst things about his life were organized correctly.

This time though, he’s out of sorts, divided, always busy but always spinning his wheels. He has a white-hot secret pressed to the roof of his mouth.

Every time he folds himself into bed, his subconscious helpfully reminds him that Ronan might be dead. And then a highlight reel plays in his head like an In Memoriam: Adam’s hand cupping Ronan’s nape, a barn silhouetted against a melancholy sky, a fistful of dreamt light, a dozen hard-won smiles and a hundred easy ones, a white handprint on a flushed thigh, a colourful joke to placate a brother, a kiss pressed to a dream’s forehead. All of that—gone. And Adam, at Harvard.

He highlights long patches of text in his sociology textbook, drinks a sensible amount of jack and coke at Eliot’s birthday party, declines Gansey’s calls by sending cheerful and conciliatory texts, and drifts through the library with his hand knotted in the strap of his satchel, looking for something that he can’t really articulate. He reads the same line of theory over and over and over and over, feeling like he’s scrying, like his focus isn’t his own.

He did all of this before Ronan went missing too, but now it’s a whole different class of performance. It used to be, I’m convincingly attentive, I’m sipping overpriced coffee on the way to class like a good Ivy leaguer, I’m making an impression on my professors, I’m forging friendships. Someday I will cash in these relationship tokens, and it all will have been worth it. It felt impossible that his life could be so simple and rewarding.

Now he thinks, I’m studying for finals and my boyfriend is being hunted by people whose job it is to kill him. I’m drinking a latte and the only people I’ve ever loved have left me, and I'm alone again. I’m putting my hand up in class and somewhere, Ronan’s life is changing, rapidly, dangerously, without me.

He lies to everyone, all the time, and tells himself that this life he’s building is more important than anything.

Once, as they cleared placemats and mugs full of stagnant coffee from the kitchen table, Ronan—still cobwebbed in his most recent dream—had detailed the sensation of hovering over himself afterwards. He was unable to manipulate his physical body or even really recognize it as his own, and his consciousness, detached, had its own limbs, its own intentions. He was like a parasite trying to wriggle back into its host.

Whenever Adam consults his double in a bit of glass, he imagines himself as a nimble dreamer, peering down, working to bring a fantasy to life. He can see his own outline, a slick college student with a flat, pleasant affect and a gaggle of soft-shelled friends. He plays his role impeccably well, but he can’t fit himself into it. If he passed himself in the hallway he would not stop.

Looking in the mirror now, he feels a red pang of fear, then a supercut of the ways he used to let himself love and be loved, then resentfulness hot on the heels of his worry.

His reflection withers, and he looks deliberately down at his hands. It’s a Tuesday, and he needs to sleep, or his tightly-scheduled Wednesday will be a misery. It’s a Tuesday, which means he hasn’t spoken to Ronan in—he stalls. Call me, he thinks, miserably. Just call me.

He can deal with a multitude of challenging and improbable situations if only he can see them clearly. Ronan is, for whatever reason, keeping him in the dark.

The not knowing is bad. It’s not how he functions. It’s not how they function. But instead of dwelling, he puts his back into the narrative that is now his reality: Impeccable student. Devoted friend-group. Tough break-up. Bright future.

Ronan isn’t here. Can’t ever be, physically, so far from the ley line. Adam has to be.

“Croissant, as ordered.” His gaze snaps up, connecting—not with his own image, but with clever, horn-rimmed Gillian. “They tried to foist it upon me without butter, if you can imagine that.” She deposits a crinkly brown and tan paper bag in front of him, and then two little plastic pots of butter. Adam regards the squashed shape of the bag’s contents with confusion.

It’s— “Is it Tuesday?”

“Wednesday,” Eliot corrects airily, licking jam from their thumb.

“My god, Adam. Whatever happened to your infallible circadian rhythm?” Fletcher asks. “You are the Swiss timepiece by which we measure our days.”

A terrible wave of vertigo strikes him, and he’s grateful to find himself sitting, at one of two conjoined wrought-iron tables in the courtyard near Thayer. He can feel the ley line breathing for the first time in a long time.

He must have gone to bed after his late-night breakdown in the bathroom. He must have. He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was. His hand strays to his hair. Wet. He’d woken, showered, and met his friends for breakfast, and he can barely remember it.

“Sorry,” he chokes. “Sleep deprivation is catching up to me, I think.”

“Aw, chicken,” Benjy says affectionately. “I’ve sung those end of term blues. The profs think we’re machines. Don’t even get me started on Dr. Fraundberg’s Lit Crit for assholes.”

“Whyever would we?” Eliot says. “We want to make it to class before noon.”

“Har-har. You wound me. Adam you’d better get a tissue ready, I’m about to tear up.”

“Also,” Gillian says, pointing her be-honeyed knife in Eliot’s direction. “Speak for yourself. I want to make it to class never.”

“Your presentation is going to be exceptional,” Fletcher tells her. “Your rough draft already drove me into paroxysms of jealousy. I don’t know why you’re so concerned.”

“I don’t just want to pass,” Gillian says. “I want to win.”

“Admirable,” Benjy sniffs.

“You’re being awfully quiet, Adam,” Eliot says, at length. He’s aware that they’re all trying very hard to act like they don’t notice how poorly composed he is.

“Can’t a man savour his pastry, Eli?” Fletcher rumbles.

“No, that’s fair,” Adam sighs. The four of them peer at him expectantly, eyebrows arranged into an array of benign and non-threatening shapes. “It’s possible I’m having a slight breakdown,” he says, adopting the grim hyperbole of a student for whom finals are the beginning and end of their emotional upset.

Everyone at the twin tables indulges in a bit of mild laughter.

“What a coincidence, so am I!”

“Well if it’s only slight, I’ll stow my concern.”

“Harvard or personal?”

He smiles faintly, and says, “kind of both. The personal is political, or something.”

He thinks he’s laying it on thick, but Gillian grins at him. “'Atta boy.”

Fletcher goes to take a sip of his tea, but chokes when his phone lights up with an incoming text message. “Criminy, is it eight already? Starting the day with a bang, as usual. I’ll meet you at Weld this evening, yes?” he asks, shaking out his tweed jacket and thrusting an arm through it, securing the remains of his bagel between his teeth with his other hand.

“Of course,” Adam says. Fletcher gives him a thumbs up, mouth charmingly stuffed, and sweeps away across the now bustling courtyard.

“Hey magic man,” Eliot says. “Will you do a reading for my sister tonight? The break-up with Margot is hitting her kind of hard. I’m pretty sure she just wants to be told she’ll find love again.”

Adam watches the juddering impact of Benjy kicking Eliot under the table.

He shrugs. “First come first serve, but I’ll give her the friends and family discount.”

“You’re a prince,” Eliot says, blowing him a kiss. Adam tries to imagine any of his friends from Henrietta doing such a thing, and can’t. “Come along Benjy. Bookstore or bust. They’re giving out discount computing textbook codes at sixty dollars a pop.”

A slip of paper for sixty American dollars. Adam’s head aches profoundly.

Gillian waggles her fingers at their friends as they depart, then she turns and fixes Adam with that familiar amateur therapist look.

“What?”

“Are you sleeping?” she asks bluntly.

“I’m a very good sleeper,” Adam says wryly. “Ask anyone.”

“But are you actually doing it?”

“Yes, Gillian.” Liar, liar. “Do you want me to keep a dream journal as evidence?”

“Oh, yes please.” That shark’s grin. “I’d pay to know what the fuck is going on up there.” She taps her own temple to indicate Adam's guarded mind.

He spreads his hands between them. “I’m an open book.”

She hums, only half-smiling now. “I dunno. That Southern charm. I’m never quite sure if I should trust a politeness that perfect.”

“On that note,” Adam says, standing. He’s relieved to find that he’s wearing matching socks, and his pant legs are rolled just so. There’s a tiny streak of yellow on one of his shoes, and with a jolt he realizes that it’s dream-crab guts. He presses on. “Thanks for the croissant. And the psychoanalysis. Send me the bill.”

She salutes him with her coffee cup. “You couldn’t afford me.”

He laughs, and turns, and then spends the whole walk to his 9 AM class trying to straighten all of the haywire compasses in his brain so they point due north.

His assignment is in his bag, pressed neatly into a navy blue folder. He has three classes today, a meeting with his supervisor at three, a study block set aside from four to six, then dinner, then tarot readings all evening—his phone rings. His treacherous heart leaps. Ronan.

He stops mid-stride, scrambling for his cell in the front pocket of his bag.

“Hello?”

“I—oh—Adam! I didn’t expect you to pick up. How on Earth are you?”

“Gansey.” He exhales through his nose. “I’m just on my way to class.”

“Fantastic to hear your voice. How’s—not that one, Jane, the I-90—exactly. How’s Harvard? Are you batting away job offers yet?”

“Constantly. How are your nature hikes and hippie communes? Contracted any backwoods diseases yet?”

“Charming. I’m actually in remarkably fine form, health-wise.”

“Is that a brag?”

A guffaw. “More of a curiosity. It’s actually part of the reason I’ve been trying to get in touch. Have you noticed any surges of power from the ley line lately? I mean, of course you have, but do you have any idea what’s causing them?”

He frowns, pinning his cellphone between his good ear and shoulder as he heaves open the ancient door to the physics building. “I could give you my best guess.”

A beat, and then, “I’m listening, Parrish.” Something about the way he says it makes homesickness pulse painfully in Adam’s chest.

He finds a semi-secluded stone slab bench behind an empty stairwell, and slings his belongings across it before he replies, “Dreamers.”

“Dreamers,” Gansey repeats, but it sounds like he’s saying of course! “Plural?”

“At least three.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure yet.”

“Ronan hasn’t spoken to you,” Gansey guesses.

“Not—in a few days.”

“Is everything alright?”

He swallows, and is horrified to find tears burning at the back of his throat. There’s no pretending with Gansey. It’s why he never calls him.

“Adam,” he says quietly. “Is he in trouble?”

He struggles with his composure for several long seconds. “Possibly.”

A world-weary sigh. “I really wish you had called.”

“Yeah, well,” he says vaguely. He checks his watch. 8:23.

“So he’s playing with others. Why would Ronan want to do that?”

“I think—he’ll do anything not to feel powerless.” He understands as soon as he says it that it’s the pockmark in the windshield from which all of the damage is splintering outwards. “And people take advantage of that.”

Gansey makes a thoughtful noise, somewhere a thousand miles away, and it clicks in a lock and opens Adam’s shoulders up. Maybe he doesn’t have to be alone in this fight. How could he have forgotten careful, persistent Gansey?

“Well. He’s certainly not powerless. I almost feel back to my pre-Cabeswater self. Everything is pleasantly linear. And Blue is—lighting up.” In the background, he hears her say supercharged with relish. “I can only imagine what it’s like for full-blooded dream stuff, with all of that energy at their disposal.”

“I don’t know if I like it,” Adam says carefully. “It’s good for a while, helping all the Matthew’s of the world, and then what? Where does all of that diverted power end up? What makes dreamers qualified to harness it without their worst nightmares manifesting?”

“You’re worried about the Lace.”

The last time they spoke, Adam had told them briefly about his last scrying session, warning them to look out for the hateful, faceless thing that had pierced his cells and magnified all of his pain and fear until all he could possibly do was scream.

“I’m worried about Ronan. I know he’s in over his head, and I know he won’t believe it until it’s too late.”

“Sounds like someone I know. Don’t bite off more than you can chew with this, Adam. I know you’re enormously busy.”

It stings, a little. “I’m still going to—I’m obviously still going to make time for him. Especially when he’s—“

“Struggling. Yes. I understand perfectly.” It occurs to Adam that, unlike his well-meaning Harvard friends, he actually might. A needling murmur in the background, and then, “listen, Blue’s telling me that you should get in touch with the psychics, and Mr. Gray.”

He nods. The rhythm of problem-solving is soothing his frazzled nerves. “I’ve been considering it. I’m also pretty sure that Declan has been keeping his own tabs on things.”

“My money’s on yes,” Gansey says. Adam half-smiles. His money has been on a lot of things. “Poke around when you can. See what turns up. I’ll give Ronan a call, not that it’s ever done me much good before.”

“I’m pretty sure he ditched his phone.” He checks his watch. 8:24. It feels like it’s been much, much longer than a minute. There is so much day ahead of him.

Ordinarily, he would be compartmentalizing better than this. No feverish Gansey phone calls directly before class. No pleasure with his business. No finesse when logic will do the job just as well. But the subterranean, black-eyed Adam is still within him, tethered to the ley line and to his friends, and he wants very badly to fix this.

“Ah, Ronan,” Gansey sighs. “It’s always got to be him, doesn’t it?”

“I know,” Adam says narrowly. “If he’s not looking for trouble it’s looking for him.”

“You sound like Declan.”

Adam makes an offended noise in the back of his throat. Blue must be leaning across Gansey, because she says “that’s a new low,” almost directly into the receiver.

“I’m hanging up now,” he says flatly.

“Update me if anything changes? We’ll come home the moment things go south.”

He resists the urge to check his watch again. “Don’t cut things short on my account.”

“Well. Don’t disrupt your studies on Ronan’s. I’ve never known you to put your future on hold for anything.”

“I’m not—“ he stops. “Ronan is a part of my future.”

“Good,” Gansey says warmly. A test, then. And like most tests, there was never even a possibility that Adam wouldn’t pass.

______

It’s easy to tell when a dreamer is suffering.

As the energy from the ley line ebbs, dreamt creations judder and bolt like horses loosed suddenly from the service of a carriage, galloping towards safer pastures. If the dreamer is in more immediate peril, the dream simply folds its limbs into an agreeable shape and passes into sleep.

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, Adam lies awake in bed, dangling his hand between the wall and his bed frame, feeling along the subtle unfilled crack in the plaster. A flagpole casualty, from the day that everything stopped being enough for Ronan, and he slipped away on a dreamt current like a dark Ophelia.

He’s being dramatic.

He feels the drywall flaking, and digs his thumbnail into the split, wanting to rip the whole wall open with his fingers.

He keeps picturing Matthew’s half-lidded eyes, cloudless and blue as a wide prairie sky. The slouch of his posture, the tarnished golden head, the body briefly without a pilot.

Matthew had looked—Adam turns in bed, taking his chalky hand from the wall and fisting it in the sheets. He had looked like a faded old pillow, tucked unobtrusively into the chair by the window. He wouldn’t respond to Declan’s call, fluttering his drowsy lashes, and Adam had thought, ah. This is how I find out. His heart slumped over in his chest, dizzy with sudden grief. The tarot cards in his hands were dead leaves.

This is what happens when your life is tied to my brother’s, Declan had said, diverting his horror into scorn as he often did. The death of any one member of his family ensured the destruction of another. It had always been that way.

Matthew eventually roused, and Adam had closed his eyes and turned his face towards the ceiling until he could be normal again. He felt suddenly foolish for peddling lies to college students when magic was so obviously in the room with him.

Earlier, he had called Maura over lunch, and she vaulted right over small talk to ask him, with concern, about his loosening grip on his psychic inclinations. She’d said, “You do know that the ley line isn’t the source of your problems, right? Give yourself some credit. You can fuck things up in a completely non-mystical way.”

She pulled the Magician, reversed, and the eight of wands, and then, without further comment, passed the phone to Mr. Gray.

Unexplained weaponry, he’d reported. The Lynch brothers loosed on two separate worlds at the same time. Buttoned-up Declan for the first time unbuttoned, schmoozing with an array of dangerous and connected people, trading in secrets just as his father had. Purposeless Ronan for the first time with a purpose, wading out from the murky waters of his dreamspace and bringing the tides with him.

Bryde, the name in the corner of everyone’s mouth, joined all at once by Ronan’s and Hennessy’s.

Renegades, liberators of dreams, scorchers of earth. He could see, easily, why this would appeal to Ronan. A mission, finally. A father figure to guide his hand. A world that wanted his dreams, and wouldn’t crumple under the weight of his unusual ambition.

When they were teenagers, Aglionby was just another one of Adam’s jobs, but it was one of Ronan’s nightmares. He would go to school, a hooded bird of prey, seething with resentment and squandered ability. He longed for the Barns because of what they represented: the childlike belief that his family would never die; the possibility for creatures like him to roam free; a landscape powered by unconditional love.

Bryde, Adam knows, must be offering him the same relief. Exquisite flight, after the cage.

It’s not possible, is the thing. It’s a pipe dream. A Niall Lynch fairytale.

Foresight has never been Ronan’s strong suit. He gets it into his head that a solution is right up until the point that it falls apart in his hands. He throws himself entirely into belief. It makes him an extraordinarily loyal and trusting person. It also makes him stubborn, rash, and susceptible to manipulation.

He believes in one facet of something, and the rest follows. He can’t just take a sip—he downs the bottle.

Adam is a boy on a bicycle in November, needing to find Ronan alive so that he can hate him without feeling guilty about it. He never stops oscillating between resentment and love, reality and unreality, understanding and disappointment. He wants to be normal so that he can choose to be abnormal. Sometimes he wants the cards without the magic.

He closes his eyes and remembers a slumbering mouse against an angular cheek. He imagines Matthew like that, perpetually immobile, perpetually innocent, like a taxidermied puppy. The pieces of Ronan’s consciousness that will linger after his death, statues in a graveyard. Tamquam—tamquam—

What would Ronan be without his dreams? Here, Adam thinks. He’d be here.

He stays in bed for another wasted hour, and then stands up, disoriented, in the dimness of the room. Fletcher is snoring softly. Someone outside their cracked window is shuffling over the concrete stoop. His upstairs neighbour is playing tinkling soundtracks while he sleeps. Adam can’t be here anymore.

He plucks Fletcher’s laptop silently from its charging station, tucks his bare feet into stiff leather shoes, drags the cardigan from his desk chair, and lets himself out into the hallway. The glare from the overhead light pins him against the wall for a moment.

He shuffles half-blind down the hall and upstairs to the solarium, nearly losing one of his unlaced shoes in the stairwell in the process. The lights are blessedly shut off up in the attic, and he feels his way to the nearest of the tables hunched in the shadows. Aching with fatigue, he sits, unfolds his stolen laptop, and gets quietly to work.

He’s never had the time nor means to be truly proficient with technology, but he extracted a handful of leads from Mr. Gray, and he’s been in touch with a friend of Benjy’s—a computer science grad student and hacking hobbyist.

He chases key phrases down rabbit holes and assembles news articles, tracking Ronan’s movement by his “unexplainable” signature (code for mind-fuckery, joyful innovation, and dark humour). Adam is a practiced note-taker and serial obsesser, so it’s barely a strain to find Ronan—whom he knows better than anyone—cropping up all over the continental United States.

“What are you doing,” Adam murmurs. The sky lightens gradually to periwinkle. He has work today, but his shift doesn’t start until noon. His mouth is bone-dry, and his head feels cotton-stuffed the way it always does when he’s pushing his body to its limit.

When it’s late enough in the morning to be socially acceptable, he messages Benjy’s friend with the bare bones of what he’s looking for: a project under wraps, a lonely last name, a suppressed pattern. They correspond, remotely, until Adam is reading government files over watery coffee, wearing sweatpants, dress shoes, and a cardigan with cracked elbow patches.

He pores over it all, cross-referencing dates, and ignoring the widening sink-hole in his chest.

Industrial espionage isn’t at all Ronan’s usual brand of destruction. Highly controlled, not much up-front gratification. A little more political than Ronan usually leans. A lot more ambitious. Whatever their agenda, ley energy is flowing more easily now that it's unobstructed on such a large scale. Adam has been feeling its effects rippling all the way out to Boston, a persistent background pressure, unavoidable as a migraine.

It’s clear that the Moderators are desperate to eliminate Bryde’s party. Their reports are a comedy of close calls.

Slowly, Adam begins to understand the scope of things.

Billions of dollars in damages, manmade structures ripped from their foundations. Magical fugitives hunted by a team that specializes in murdering the targets they call Zeds. Visionary headlights pointed towards certain apocalypse. A world that is always awake, but always, always feels like it’s dreaming.

It’s pretty much exactly as he feared. Night terrors. The Lace. Beasts and legends. Adam holds his head in his hands. It’s more than what Ronan must be imagining. It’s more than Aurora waking happily in Cabeswater, powered by the swaying trees. It’s the indiscriminate waking of every incredible thing that’s ever been dreamed.

He’s struck by a wave of hopelessness that rushes all around him and tears at his hair. Ronan, dreamer of baubles that dispense music and light, cars that go very fast, and menageries of curious creatures, recruited to a cause that transmutes creation into chaos. Ronan, promising to wait, and then running full tilt at a future that can’t possibly keep Adam in it.

His dream half is going to destroy his human half, and he’ll take everybody else down with him.

If he could just see him, maybe—

His jaw creaks, teeth clenched tight against the emotional groundswell. The late morning sunshine strikes him, and he feel more like a vague, pale shape than a person. Like a dream, maybe.

Alter idem.

If Adam can’t reach Ronan, maybe the Moderators should.

He feels the weight of that awful thought burning a hole through his stomach lining. He can’t think about it. He needs to go to work.

_____

The next evening, he experiences a surge of power so acute that it nearly puts him in a coma.

It’s another Wednesday night, and another batch of his peers hitch polite smiles to his heels as he passes them by, winding his way up into the high, arched sunroom at Weld hall. They’re all wishing for magical solutions for their mundane problems, the opposite of Adam in nearly every way.

He bumps knuckles with Benjy and Eliot in turn, pulls up his chair, and knocks his last reading from Persephone’s deck, mostly out of habit. He consults his phone idly as his friends try to make pleasant conversation, holding up a finger when he finds a new batch of texts from Gansey.

John Amos power plant in WV shut down Monday

Intense. maura said she could’ve brought HER dreams to life afterwards

no word from Ronan yet? Leads from Declan? pls advise

I’ll assume no news is good news

He puts his phone in his satchel and fastens it closed. Every new scrap of information he gets feels like a stroll through Ronan’s security system at the Barns—hopelessness compounding and compounding until he staggers out the far end weeping.

He needs to focus on something productive. He nods at Benjy to start letting people inside, straightening the notebook where he usually scribbles his observations. Here, he is an adjudicator: powerful, organized, and reserved, tallying points and offering constructive critique.

His curious audience starts pouring in then, amateur wiccans and wannabe believers, aggrieved last-resorters and skeptics following friends’ recommendations. It’s a brighter collection of characters than Aglionby could ever have hoped to foster.

Gillian texts him to say that she just passed Weld and his line-up was out the door. He is a prim and unobtrusive con artist, a false prophet, and business is booming.

Eventually, a bespectacled girl who looks anywhere from five to ten years his senior sits across from him, tucking a bag armoured to the teeth with candy-coloured enamel pins between her feet.

“Hi,” she says nervously. “Anna.” She stretches her hands out in front of her, then thinks better of it and drops them into her lap. “I’m not sure how this usually goes, so you might have to hold my hand a little bit.”

“No problem,” he says smoothly, passing his deck across the tabletop. “Just go ahead and shuffle. Concentrate on what you want to ask the cards.”

She does as directed, struggling a little to keep the papery stack in check. Not a natural born card sharp, then. He studies her neat black shirt, tucked precisely into a plaid skirt. A Marilyn mole drawn on just above the corner of her mouth. A pride flag pin he doesn’t recognize next to a cat wearing a cowboy hat, and the word “rude” in cursive.

She holds the deck fleetingly to her chest, eyes squeezed shut like a child making a birthday wish, and then plops it in the centre of the table. A card slips near the top, slightly uneven, and Adam plucks it free.

He hums thoughtfully. “Eight of cups. Okay. So you’re having some trouble with letting go.” She frowns and nods once, quick.

He lays out the rest of a simple five card spread neatly between them. A couple of stray swords, the chariot, a wand.

“It seems like things are stagnating in your personal life. Maybe your friend group used to feel like your family, but you feel like they’ve lost interest in you. And you love them, but Anna, if you’re being honest with yourself, you’re pretty sure you were done with them before they even started pulling away. Right now you’re kind of just going through the motions. A couple of years overdue to convocate, right? Everyone else moved on to greener pastures.” He taps his thumb thoughtfully against the bones of his opposite wrist. “It’s not even the loneliness that gets you. It’s the not knowing. Are you supposed to chase after them? Is there another community out there for you? There is, you know.”

He notices another card spilling loose, and he grabs it without thinking. The Magician again. He thinks, huh, caught in the coils and dust of Persephone’s overturned cards.

And then the waking world disappears.

Adam is airborne, tumbling up into the atmosphere on a geyser of ley energy, whipped by branches and light. He throws his arms out to stop himself, but he’s only a projection, so his momentum doesn’t slow.

Something—Lindenmere? The cosmos?—shows him a series of images: an upturned nose made from oil and turpentine, a coiled old tree stump, a red-haired woman grinning toothily and then exploding, a rose the colour of warm dark skin, a pale scar-split hand cradling a silky head, the animal haunch of something black, a terrible voice booming turn back—

He skitters away, panicked, and bumps into his own body. Or not his own body. A double, blinking confusedly in the bathroom mirror.

His doppelgänger turns to leave, and Adam reaches after him, through the mirror, following himself into a version of Thayer which is not Thayer. Everything is alive, in this reality. Energy sings and saws its fingers together.

It’s a memory, but it’s also the present, and it’s also a nightmare. Wake up!

Obediently, the city wakes.

He gasps, although he doesn’t have a mouth. It’s the heaving first breath of a sleeping witch, like Gwenllian turning in her grave.

Adam struggles against the current of wild power, thick and pungent as gasoline. Everything feels more intense near magical artifacts, dream stuff, supernatural fault lines, and it is with great effort that he hunts for something familiar, something heavy enough to bind him. He was unprepared for this, and although everything around him is bitingly familiar, he's lost. He wheels around and around, reaching for his most trusted tethers—Gansey, Ronan, Blue, Persephone—

Persephone.

He follows the lingering perfume of her intuition, feeling blindly for those old handholds in her tarot deck, that familiar grip, like the hilt of a trusted weapon.

And then he finds himself looking again at the girl, Anna, her fate bunched around her narrow shoulders. And then at his own empty body, a glowing card clamped between his fingers. As soon as he’s aware of looking at himself, he’s looking out of himself, and he stands up quickly, overturning his chair.

“—Adam? Jesus Christ, are you okay?”

“What on God’s green Earth was that?”

A palm between his shoulder blades.

“Don’t touch me,” he chokes.

The hand retreats. A murmur: I’ve never seen him like this.

“Is it—is it bad? Am I going to be okay? Is it bad?” Anna keeps asking, horrified.

“You’re fine,” he manages to say. “I’m sorry.” The ‘o’ in sorry comes out a little wide and swerving.

“You went blank,” Benjy says, voice high with residual panic. “For like—ten minutes. Beyond hyper-focus.”

“I thought it was a gimmick,” Eliot says. “But a ten minute gimmick? What is this, Las Vegas?”

“I got carried away. I have to,” he swallows. “I need a minute. I promise everything’s fine.”

“Do whatever you need to do,” Eliot says quickly. “But, fair warning, I’m going to ask you a hundred questions when you get back.”

“And then I’m going to ask another hundred,” Benjy says. “Magic man.”

“A riddle, inside an enigma, wrapped in a sweater vest,” Eliot muses. He can tell they’re still shaken. He’ll have to deal with that, later.

“I'll be right back,” Adam says, touching them very lightly on the shoulder as he passes. The ley line is bursting, and he feels so flushed with its vitality that it almost makes him sick.

He stumbles past them, all the way out of the building and into the street. The winter air tears at his thin shirtsleeves, nips at his sock-less ankles. He shields his eyes against the sun, watching a bird swoop low overhead. A silvery, seagull-sized thing, but with knobby legs that taper into—he squints. Hooves?

He keeps moving, propelled by the mad urge to catch the bird, to pin the wild magic down so he can understand it.

Adam walks for what feels like a long time, trying to find the source of all of this haemorrhaging power. He spots a couple of fidgety-looking students, a few more curious creatures. Somewhere, faraway, there’s music crooning, and it sounds exactly the way a hot shower feels.

He stops in the middle of Oxford street, head cocked towards the natural history museum across the way, the orderly buildings, the sparse evening foot traffic. Business as usual. All of it screaming with energy.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a parade of scuttling creatures marching towards an invisible destination. Frowning, Adam crosses the street, chasing the peacock blue shimmer from an unfurled wing. He slows, stooping in the alley to pick one of the strange insects from the stream. He peers through a nail-sized hole in its head. Its spindly legs wave fearfully for a moment, and then it goes limp in his hand.

The ley energy punches out of him, and he sits back on his ankles, winded.

Adam gazes down at the jewelled beetle in his palm, its siblings scattered out like shell casings around his knees. Dreams, all of them. Briefly, impossibly roused in a dead city. He stands, letting the beetle drop from his hand and bounce across the concrete. He kicks them all hurriedly behind a nearby bench, mind racing. Bugs from an exhibit next door, no doubt. Dormant animals, transplanted from their habitats and pinned in place for decades.

What kind of ecoterror was wrought to bring about a flash flood of energy in a drought? How must Ronan be feeling, out there in the world, wracked with waking dreams? What unimaginable monsters were just stirring in the shadows because of him? Is Bryde one of them?

His lives are merging. The distant rumbling of thunder is overhead now, and the downpour is rolling in. There’s no way he’ll be able to keep dry.

Standing in that alleyway by himself, drained and ordinary again, he feels terribly alone.

He weighs his feelings against his logic for several agonizing minutes, standing still and watchful as a predator. He recalls the jarringly clinical accounts of Ronan's most intimate dreams, the sparsely encoded language in those government files outlining the world-ending dangers of something Adam had, for a long time, shared a bed with.

If something happens to Ronan now, it might kill Adam. If something happens because of Ronan, it might kill everybody.

Another minute, and he has his phone out and ringing.

“Hello?” Declan answers. Oddly, it’s not his usual prickly greeting. He sounds almost jovial.

Adam looks out into the darkening street, feeling like a death omen, a shadow across someone’s doorstep. “We really need to talk about Bryde.”

______

It’s the worst possible time for Declan to be withholding information from him.

Adam had graciously tipped his hand and Declan was, infuriatingly, holding back, as if this was a low grade in Ronan’s high school algebra class, and not the cataclysmic fuck-up of a powerful dreamer.

Declan, so uncannily like his brother in vulnerable moments like this, had thought of Matthew first. A world where dreams could stay awake, he’d marvelled. As if they could afford to think so small.

Once, Adam had awoken to find his arm glued to the bedspread. Ronan had dreamt a bee-less hive in the night, and it was oozing a steady stream of honey into the sheets between them.

“Score,” Ronan had said, when he’d rolled back into his body. “Sting-free. Fucking vegan.”

“What happens when we don’t want any more honey?” Adam had asked, critically. Ingesting dreams always felt like a slippery subject. “Does it shut off like a faucet?”

It didn’t. Ronan filled a dozen amber jars full, and then abandoned the hive in a dusty kiddy pool in one of the barns near the back of his family property.

A month later, Opal had crept in through a window looking for trouble, and emerged, shrieking, in a viscous flood of syrup.

Combing the mess out of Opal’s fur, her little legs slung across his lap, Ronan had complained about the magnitude of the clean-up job he would have to do, the special honey hoover he would have to create, what a waste of a dream it would be. Adam reminded him of his faucet idea.

“Too late for that, Parrish,” he’d griped.

It was their pattern. A marvel, too good to be true. Adam, the skeptic. Ronan, too in love with creation to care about consequences.

Eventually, it will all be too late.

Ronan will pursue this liberation fantasy, this golden daydream, even if it never stops oozing. Even if it makes the whole world uninhabitable.

______

That night, Adam tries to scry for the first time in months.

He gently pushes the crying club—only tenuously placated after the tarot incident—to have drinks without him, claiming stress-induced fatigue. He leaves his study notes open and blinking on the bed, lights a sad little tea light, and casts himself out into the ether.

Straining hard, he searches for the familiar contours of Ronan’s dreamspace, plucking the distant strings of the ley line and listening for the particular timbre of Ronan’s consciousness.

He doesn’t like walking this tightrope without a net, but Harvard isn’t exactly flush with psychic spotters. He keeps a delicate balance, far from his body, inching closer and closer to Ronan’s mind, the safe plateau at the end of this rope.

Eventually, he finds himself in a grey bedroom. It's full to the gills with water, there's a toy sailboat bobbing past at chest height, and storm clouds huddling nervously on the ceiling. Adam’s hair plasters instantly to his scalp.

“Ronan?” he calls, sloshing through the curiously luminous water. It starts raining harder. A familiar, curly-headed child stares at him through the darkness, eyes sharpened into silver points in the moonlight. “Ronan?” he asks again, gently this time.

A muffled sentence, a sad, crumpled expression, and then Adam is staring at a closed door.

“What—let me in! Ronan!” He pounds at the door. “Come on!” He can still feel rainwater, unnaturally warm on his neck.

A voice in his head, not Ronan, whispers, turn back.

“No,” he snaps, knocking harder. “Just let me—“ A sudden gust of wind in his sails, and he’s ejected from the dream altogether.

He pinwheels for a horrifying, weightless moment, struggling to tune back in to the feeble light from his stubby candle, and then dragging himself, hand over fist, back to his dorm room.

“Fuck, Lynch,” he says, when he has a voice. “Don’t be stupid.” He recrosses his legs, shaking off the pointless, clinging feeling of rejection.

When he tries to reach out again, searching, searching, Ronan’s expecting him. He never makes it past the threshold.

Back in his body, he knocks his candle over, relishing the controlled destruction, the spill of wax, the sizzle of the squashed wick. A fire he can actually put out.

______

The next time Adam scrys, Ronan looks like himself. Maybe a little scruffier, with what looks like a tunnel piercing on his right ear, and a rare openness to his posture. He’s lounging in a pasture up against a sleeping cow, boots up.

As Adam watches, he tips his shaved head back into its mottled hide, and the sun makes his eyelashes into lit matchsticks. He loves him very much. He’d almost forgotten.

“Don’t lock me out,” he says quickly. Ronan opens his eyes, and when he sees him he smiles instinctively.

“Adam,” he says, vaguely. And then he locks him out.

“No,” he cries. “Would you listen to me.” He feels for the fissure in space and time, the pocket where Ronan is dreaming, sweetly and inaccessibly, about the only home Adam has ever known.

Nothing gives. Nobody replies. He crawls back to Harvard, weak with misery.

In the next dream, Ronan is older, driving a boxy jeep over a foreign landscape. Rolling Irish hills, skies humming with artificial energy. A woman who can only be Jordan Hennessy, chattering in the passenger seat.

Then it’s Ronan with his head in his dead mother’s lap, stroking the downy wing of a black swan.

Then Ronan and Hennessy again, opposite one another in a sunny gallery. One of them examining an impressionist portrait no bigger than a postcard, the other examining the exit.

Then Ronan, discovering Matthew’s corpse in a dim hallway, blinking furiously at the stranger crouched over his prone body. “What did you do?” He sounds like a kid reprimanding his sibling for getting them both in trouble.

Every time Adam gets close, some defence mechanism stops him, like a firm hand against his chest, pushing him away again and again.

He doesn't know what to do except keep trying.

______

Blankly, he looks down at a sink full of tinfoil and uneasy water. In pieces, he becomes aware of his surroundings—green stalls and laminate countertops, a row of hundred-watt lightbulbs, and somebody rattling the locked doorknob.

“Adam, are you in there?” Fletcher. “We’re going to be late. It’s nearly ten. Adam?”

“Just a minute, sorry,” Adam slurs. He stares closely at his face in the mirror until he recognizes his own features. He has an exam at 10:30. He glances down at his watch. 9:52. He had been so sure that he could just drift for a few minutes, maybe catch Ronan before he woke up. That was almost an hour ago.

He drains the sink, hands shaking, cuffs getting damp. The lightbulb filaments float behind his eyelids when he blinks. He throws his satchel over his shoulder, smooths his hair up and out of his eyes, and rubs the bags under his eyes until they hurt.

When he lets himself out of the bathroom, Fletcher is directly outside, tapping a nervous rhythm on his hips. His hands fly from his body and into the air at the sight of him.

“Adam! Thank god. I’ll cancel the search party.”

“I got lost in my notes,” Adam says, as they both make for the stairs.

“Of course you did,” Fletcher says warmly. “A supremely Adam move. I just hope you’re taking care of yourself. Gillian thinks you might be—well—not spiralling, but—“

“I’m handling it.” He takes several mental paces backwards. “Uh—poorly, clearly. I’m sorry Fletcher, I didn’t mean to snap.”

Fletcher, to his credit, recovers quickly. “I can’t imagine going through my first semester of college and a break-up at the same time. You’re a stronger man than I.”

Adam rather doubts that Fletcher can imagine going through a break-up at all, but he nods conspiratorially. They hop down the last few steps and out into the chilly sunshine together.

“You’d be amazed what one can do out of necessity.”

“Too true. We all have our hidden depths, don’t we,” Fletcher says thoughtfully. For a moment, Adam considers telling him—something, looping him into this tangled web with him, but then he says, “now, chapter twenty-three wasn’t on the outline, was it? I beg you to say no. Lie, if you must.”

And Adam is a student again. He doesn’t have out of body episodes. He doesn’t carry wads of tinfoil in his trouser pockets. He doesn’t keep deadly secrets from people whom he is mostly pretending to like and understand.

They walk onwards, towards a test which Adam will rouse himself for long enough to ace. Then he will think of the next thing, and the next. Appease these school acquaintances of his. Tinker with finicky car engines. Make flash cards. Drift into the beyond using one of Fletcher’s three-wick candles from pottery barn. Text Declan, who activates Ronan’s accountability in a way that Adam does not. Call Gansey, if he can bring himself to face his disappointment.

And clear away his feelings, which keep pouring out of him like so much honey.

______

Ronan hangs up on him, and Adam holds himself in the biting wind outside the library for a very long time.

He’d thought, if he could only speak to him, that he could begin to undo Bryde’s poisonous influence. They know each other. They’ve known each other. Ronan would listen to Adam’s fears as he always does. Adam would appeal to Ronan’s heart, which tends to ache for helpless things. They would see how lost they had become without each other. Adam would be allowed back into Ronan’s dreams, and Ronan would be allowed back into Adam’s future.

Why didn’t you text back?

As if they’ve been suspended in time since Ronan’s last tamquam, and none of it—the running away, warding his dreams against Adam, abandoning his phone, trusting a complete stranger over his friends and family—had ever happened.

It’s absurd. He should have expected it. Ronan was searching for a reason to stay, and when he looked for his reflection, his second self, Adam wasn’t there. For a single moment, he wasn’t there, and now he’s paying for it.

Impatient, wrathful Ronan. Leaping from the moving vehicle because Adam was going the speed limit. Going rogue, and then calling Adam with all of these stinging accusations, like he was the one who’d been abandoned.

He thinks again of Bryde manipulating Ronan, preying on his loneliness, his love for his brothers, his fear of himself. This big bad rumour, older and crueler than the Lace itself.

And Ronan letting himself be manipulated, putting on blinders, using Adam’s brief silence as an endorsement for a glorified joyride with unthinkable global ramifications. Self-destructing because things got a little too quiet.

Adam feels hot rage taking ahold of him with its sticky fingers.

Then he thinks of Ronan saying I need to see you, his thin, frightened voice finding Adam from somewhere out there in the city, and his anger goes clammy.

There’s no way Ronan will call again. Negotiations were off as soon as Adam refused to house them both from the Moderators.

And now, without Hennessy, Ronan is the last arrow in Bryde’s quiver. He’s going to be the explosive that brings everything down. He’s going to be buried at ground zero.

If I'd replied an hour sooner, would he really have waited? If I’d gone to school closer, would I have noticed him disintegrating? If I explained that my dream isn’t what I thought it would be either, that he’s the only thing that feels real, would he have said it back to me?

After everything that’s happened, am I going to be the one who gives up on Ronan Lynch?

Everything is so fucked.

He calls Declan.

He picks up on the first ring. “Parrish—”

“He hung up on me,” they both say at the same time.

“Mother of God,” Declan moans. “Then there’s no hope. He thinks I sold him out to the Mods.”

“Did you?”

“No. I did exactly as we discussed. I negotiated for his safety. I thought—I mean, you said it yourself, Adam. Being anti-apocalypse is a pretty solid platform.”

He shakes his head. “Ronan won’t see it that way. He’s not like us. He doesn’t want to be moderated even a little bit.”

“Believe me, I know that. The way he was talking—about the world screwing them over, all of them, dreamers. That’s not the way my brother thinks. That’s all Bryde. And now he’s taken him—Christ—Christ knows where.”

“He wanted to see me,” Adam feels compelled to say. “He was trying to come here.”

“He said that? That's good,” Declan says, relieved. “Where—“

“I let him get away,” Adam says, through numb lips. “I let him go.”

______

He texts Gansey, things have gone south, and then he turns his phone on silent.

His puts his fingertips to the floorboards, a knobbly hand on either side of a scrying tableau: the leaping flame of a candle, a well-organized pile of cards, his overturned phone and discarded tie. He’s just finished crying, and he feels volatile and ill-prepared even as he ties himself to the flickering light.

His mind races through the night like a skipped stone. Vaguely, he pictures a vast body of water and a glittering mountain range, with no horizon line in-between. Darkness reflected in darkness.

“Ronan,” he calls. The dreamspace whirs and grinds its gears and won’t reply. “You know this is wrong. You know, or you wouldn't be hiding from me.”

It’s all water out here in this sublime mirror-space, but it’s also warm, like the steam rising from a hot spring. Something is moving, changing things on a chemical level.

For a moment he thinks he sees himself, a wan doppelgänger with its hands raised. But it’s not Adam. It’s Bryde. Cool, sturdy, a pale Atlas holding the dream together on his back. He recognizes him instinctively.

Adam deliberately throws his mind closer, into the terrible heart of this fire Ronan is creating. Smoke whispers and catches all around him, and it’s even harder to tell the difference between things now. No horizon, no seam, no reality, no death.

What have you done? What are you doing?

The heat is quickly becoming unbearable. Adam is stretched too thin, and the fire is fraying him, eating through each fibre of his connection to reality.

Ronan, please, I need you to stop. I’m losing my grip. Listen to me.

And then, without any warning at all, he collapses on his dorm room floor.

He hacks and retches, lungs full of phantom smoke. Everything feels very wrong. He thinks for a second that he’s blind, but it’s not his vision, it’s another, less tangible sense, it’s—

He scrambles backwards on his hands, heaving. He tries to pull himself up onto his bed, head first, then chest, but he has to stop with his face buried in the comforter.

Ronan is—he must be—he’s—

“God, no, oh my god, no, no.”

He needs to throw up. He needs to call somebody. There’s complete silence in his head.

He was slingshotted back to Cambridge, swatted back along the zipline to his body, because there was nowhere else for him to go.

He’s sure, in a very non-magical, intuitive way, that every dream in the world has just collectively collapsed. Adam staggers to his feet. There’s a smoke alarm going off, somewhere. A background hum of electricity groaning as it shuts off. A high, scared voice.

As if in a trance, he goes to the window.

There are five dead lightbulbs in the nearest row of street lamps, what looks like a sleeping child out in the middle of the square, and a woman clutching her chest and sitting slowly on a bench.

Panic is deadening his senses, crawling blackly into his mouth and nose and eyes. He thinks of Matthew sitting weakly by the window. Opal slumped over a stump in the woods. Chainsaw falling from the sky like a stone. Gansey’s Cabeswater heart decaying in his chest. Ronan, either dissolving into nightwash or felled by a Moderator’s bullet, dead, lost, or powerless.

Every morsel of magic, every innovation, every cherished friend, every sacred place, turned off like a faucet.

The world outside, drooping and disconnected, is now exactly as ordinary as Adam has been pretending it is.

The ley line is gone.

#mister impossible #the dreamer trilogy #mi spoilers #tdt #adam parrish #trc #trc fanfic #pynch #mine #my tfc besties...... soon #in the meantime. here's some adam pov please clap

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edelwoodsouls · 3 years ago

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can you explain why you think Mister Impossible is the perfect title? i just went through the tag and saw your post and I was like what did i miss?

hey yeah of course!

okay so bear in mind that this was not a coherent thought cos it was 2am and ms stiefvater had just shot me point blank in the head

but it IS the perfect title. because it fits so many different characters in the book, and also encapsulates the key struggle that everyone is going through.

at first you think its gotta be bryde, because he's the suave, powerful, confident hero who's going to lead the dreamers to salvation. he's impossible because he's everything they've ever wanted, and because of his general control/power over situations.

but then you get to the reveal and oh! if bryde is impossible then what the fuck does that make ronan. the king of impossibility, the boy who can dream anything and control nothing but is, by the mundane standard, utterly impossible.

you could also say that ronan thinks he is impossible to love.

adam isn't in this book much, but he does a lot in the periphery. he's impossible because he loves ronan so damn much, something that ronan doesn't think possible, especially at the end of the book. his powers make him impossible, and his unknowability too.

matthew, of course, is impossible simply by being a living dream.

but then you have declan! this man - still a boy, really - who is totally impossible because how can someone be so cookie cutter boring and yet completely intrriguing.

which leads me onto the next point - this whole book is about impossiblities. about dichotomies: how the characters perceive themselves, and how others perceive them. who they think they are, and who they want to be.

matthew perceives himself as unreal, thinks everyone else does to, but they don't. matthew thinks he is nothing more than a dream, and wants nothing more than to be real, to feel real, to be free.

declan perceives himself as the adult, the boring one who can keep his family safe by staying in the shadows- but jordan makes quick work of that grey armour and reveals the boy who loves the enigma he's made himself, who has depth and colour beneath. declan thinks he is straight laced, begins the book thinking he wants to be straight laced, but he absolutely doesn't.

adam is an interesting one, because he perceives himself as nothing at all, as a chameleon with shifting faces which others interpret as he wants them too. even ronan falls for it, which is what makes him all the more impossible. he contains multitudes, and he likes it that way- but he wants some form of stability, and ronan, and the world - and that might be impossible, too.

liliana and carmen are impossible in how they define themselves. liliana, the time bending exploding woman who knew all along that the woman in front of her was the love of her life. carmen, the serial killer's sister, actually developing a functioning moral compass and getting positive character growth, unlike the decay and conflict of most of the characters in this book.

i won't talk about jordan because she's possibly the only mentally stable character in this book (good for her! she had her crisis last book and she deserves her growth) but hennessy. who has lived with this impossible, awful thing in her head all this time. who is impossible, but never thought of herself that way because she's been so goddamn tired this whole time. she perceives herself first as uncovering a new, beautiful power, then suddenly as this broken, useless thing. she thinks she must be unloveable and hated, so she goes out of her way to try and make people treat her how she thinks they should.

we don't really get any of bryde's psychology - perhaps we'll get more insight in the final book.

and that leaves ronan. who is an enigma even to himself, who can't quite find his way back to his own goals, own motives. he wants change, wants better, but the world is so much, so impossible. ronan is the ultimate bundle of dichotomies wrapped in a trenchcoat. he perceives himself as always wrong, abandoned, unloved, but also always right, and explosively reactive when challenged. he thinks he's unloveable, but has all these people terrified for him. he wants to save the world; now he's the thing that destroys it. he is, possibly, the most powerful being in the entire world. how impossible is that, a teenage farmboy having all that inside their head? and how utterly, impossibly isolating?

everything about everything is impossible when you look at the right angle. the magic is impossible, the characters believe so many things are impossible - love, safety, freedom. and ultimate, i think that "mr impossible" is ronan, because everything in these books revolves around him. because he creates the plot and the conflict of other characters and has some form of connection to every other key player. because he's the greywaren, whatever that means. because he created the hero and probably the villain, and just dreamt the fire to end the world. because he's the most powerful dreamer we know of and created two of the other main characters out of his own damn head.

but impossible is the key word baked into the very fabric of this book, so it's only right it should be on the cover.

#wow this got so fucking long #mister impossible #the dreamer trilogy #mister impossible spoilers #ronan lynch #morgan's asks #itsybitsywidow #mi spoilers #mi

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pastelle-pvnk · 5 years ago

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Hey your writing is great! If you take requests, could you write something with Ronan finding out about Adam's situation at home for the first time and like his reaction to that? Set before The Raven boys?

(omg thank you, nonny, you’re the best) I do take requests and I will absolutely write that.

TW: mentions of child abuse, bruises

</>

Growing up, Ronan has his fair share of bruises.

He’s seven when he trips over the top stair and busts his lip on the banister. He has a fat lip and a chipped tooth for his trouble; Niall spends a month calling him “Champ.”

He’s (“You fell!” “You pushed me!”) pushed off the porch when he and Declan are ten. He lands hard enough that his shoulder is black and blue for a week. The grudge against Declan lasts longer.

He’s fourteen when he catches a soccer ball in the eye – all Matthew had asked for was a little help with his shots – and Aurora cheerily slaps a steak over it as Matthew apologizes profusely.

Ronan’s taken boxing lessons, jumped from high bridges, and generally been careless with his personal space. Bruises don’t bother him; on the worst days, the aches remind him he’s still alive, even when he’s not sure if he wants to be. Half the time he picks a fight with Declan, it’s for the sheer blood rush of knowing that any bruise he gets – and lands – is a fucked-up love language that neither of them can escape.

When he’s sixteen, Ronan looks back just as Adam’s pulling off his Aglionby sweater in the back of the Pig (stop looking, stop being so obvious, stop before he notices, just stop) and notices a wide, gorgeous purple swath over his ribs. It’s beautiful in its ugliness, a perfect painting of violence. Ronan had one like that over his ribs the summer he’d learned how to take a man down with the strength of his body – one wrong move and he’d broken a rib. He’d had trouble breathing for a month.

“Christ, Parrish,” he says scornfully. “What happened to you?”

Adam’s blue eyes, normally so brilliant and alert at school, have faded to an exhausted shine; Ronan’s question turns them positively distrustful.

“Nothing,” he says, tugging his white t-shirt down around his hips. “I slept funny.”

“The fuck—” “Ronan, language, please,” “—that’s the least funny thing I’ve ever seen.”

Really, Ronan knows he should just let it go. The more attention he draws to Parrish, the more attention he draws to himself and that sends DANGER, WILL ROBINSON signals pulsing nauseatingly through his brain.

“It’s nothing,” Adam says again, vicious, and Ronan winds up, ready to fight again but Gansey makes a disapproving noise in the back of his throat. Adam’s eyes spark, Ronan’s lip curls, and the Pig makes a grinding noise that makes them all glance hastily at out the windshield at the hood.

</>

He’d seen Niall slap Declan, once, when he was thirteen. Declan had just stood there afterward, mulish fury etched across his forehead as his right cheek flushed a darker red than the rest of his face.

Niall never hit him or Matthew.

</>

Ronan doesn’t ask again but he sees more bruises. A red, raw ring around Adam’s wrist that gets hastily tucked under a sleeve; yellow, mottled circles that dot Adam’s shoulder when Ronan catches a glimpse of him changing into his jumpsuit for Boyd’s garage. He turns away before Adam finishes dressing, something unfamiliar and hot in his stomach.

He worries, silently, through October and November. It’s not like Parrish has been around their group long enough to get truly attached, but Ronan still thinks about the way he flushes red when he pulls the arms of his sweater down or doesn’t let Gansey get close enough to clap him on the shoulder, the only love language Gansey knows, and he feels sick. Parrish has always been a jumpy fucker but after seeing pieces, the whole puzzle lurks unpleasantly at the edge of his subconscious and Ronan’s not sure how to feel.

It comes to head right before Christmas. Gansey goes up to D.C. for some family thing and the snows keep Adam off his bike so Ronan gives him a ride home. He can see the refusal in Adam’s eyes so he makes an offhand comment about going to find Declan for a little brotherly bonding and that threat of a Lynch brawl is enough to get Adam’s butt in gear. Ronan refuses to feel guilty for the emotional manipulation. After all, he’s doing it for Adam’s own good.

They keep quiet as Ronan navigates the BMW down Henrietta’s county roads and it feels like he’s holding his breath once they reach the trailer park.

“Here’s good,” Adam says quietly, shamefully, and Ronan pulls to an easy stop before one trailer that looks indistinguishable from the rest. He takes in the way Adam’s curled in on himself, at the rusty truck parked under the carport, at the way the curtains twitch suspiciously in the living room window. The whole things look abysmal.

The puzzle solves itself and Ronan feels very cold.

“Parrish,” he says carefully. “Don’t go in there.”

Adam’s eyes are exhausted again when he glances over at Ronan. “Lynch. Fuck off.”

Ronan could bristle, but he’s suddenly very afraid. It makes his hands tremble. “Seriously, man. Come crash at Monmouth while Gansey’s gone.”

Adam’s mouth puckers and Ronan is tired. He’s tired of fighting this beautiful boy; he’s tired of pretending like he likes to fight him.

Wordlessly, Adam gathers up his secondhand sweater, his beaten-up book bag. “You’d better go,” he says. His accent isn’t nearly so crisp as it is when they’re with Gansey and Ronan’s heart skips. Ronan feels lost; he hears the crack of Niall’s palm against Declan’s check and sees the dark, deep circles under Adam’s eyes.

“Don’t come back. You’ll make it worse,” Adam says as he shuts the door and then he’s gone, trudging through the snow to the trailer steps. He disappears inside and a moment later, a man’s head is poking out, glaring at Ronan and his fancy car.

Ronan resists the temptation to flip the man off and carefully navigates his way out of the park. His knuckles tighten over the steering wheel. The leather creaks under his hands and he beats his palms against it, uselessly, as he drives away from Adam Parrish and the worst secret Ronan’s ever heard.

Now available on AO3

#am writing #trc #the raven cycle #tw: child abuse #tw: bruises #adam parrish #ronan lynch #prompts #hokay writes

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toast-the-unknowing · 5 years ago

Note

What are the #thots on CDTH?

This is begging for one of those “edgy/depressed/dumbass bitch/thot/bastard” memes, but sadly you sent it to someone with no patience for slapping together graphics, so you get a lot of words instead. Behind a cut, for length and SPOILERS.

I really enjoyed this book, my reactions to most of the additions to canon were positive, it felt a wide range of emotions while reading it and upon finishing I found that it had knocked me sort of off center in that way where I don’t want to write anything ever again, or read anything, or really do much but stare out of windows. I know that feeling will pass, but I’m soaking in it for now. I haven’t yet discerned if there are going to be any substantial changes to the ways that I write these characters, when I write these characters again.

I loved Ronan in this book, which was a relief. I had been a bit worried that Maggie intended for him to end up as Lonely God Ronan, isolated and just too damn special for the rest of humanity, but it now appears that is very much not the plan. It hurt watching him be trapped at the Barns, wanting something different from life and not knowing how to get it, and it was amazing to watch him forge a connection with someone new and find the capability that he has to help other people, instead of just kind of thinking of himself as the fuck-up.

Holy Shit I felt emotions about Matthew, that was unexpected and unprecedented. Fuck did that boy make me sad. I am greatly looking forward to seeing where his story goes, now that he actually has one. I want some quality Matthew & Jordan dream duo bonding time.

I want, just, quality Jordan content in general, I love Jordan, I need more of her, she was wonderful.

Hennessy leaves me cold, but I had a very similar reaction to Ronan until most of the way through The Dream Thieves, so I am giving her the benefit of the doubt and waiting to see what happens in the future.

HOLY SHIT I LOVED EVERYTHING ABOUT DECLAN.

It did crack me up that it literally took one page for the book to start talking shit about him, but I also found the whole “Declan is deliberately, crushingly boring” idea interesting. It surprised me but still makes sense in retrospect, which is the best kind of surprise. I hadn’t pictured him as the kind of guy who would go to work and let people snap at him and call him by the wrong name, but I think my understanding might have been a little closer to the version of Declan that still thought he could have Senator or Congressman in front of his name. I think Declan might be the character I most have to reconsider, but I’m happy with how he was portrayed here and I’m looking forward to doing that reconsideration, and to seeing what happens to him next in canon.

God but he just continues to be the hardest working brother, and he still fucks it up, but he doesn’t want to fuck up, but he just shouldn’t have to deal with all of this shit, and ow, ow, my heart.

I adored Declan/Jordan and every moment where she delights in surprising an honest reaction out of him. “I see the real you when no one else does” is EXACTLY my kind of ship.

I had really wanted this trilogy to force Ronan to reexamine his understanding of his father, but getting to see Declan do some actual work on processing his pain is fantastic too. I love all of the moments where he admits that he hates Niall. It fucked me up so bad, because it’s like he doesn’t want to be thinking or saying it but he just cannot keep it in. It’s like his emotional nightwash, but he doesn’t get to dream it away.

@comicsohwhyohwhy and I once discussed the problem of Ashley, and we JOKINGLY suggested that maybe the Ashley from TRB and the Ashley mentioned in TRK are two different Ashleys, that maybe Declan has just dated a string of women named Ashley, and then we had a good laugh about how absurd that would be, and I cannot fucking believe that that has turned out to be canon. I am oddly delighted with this development.

I am happy with the Adam content that we got and with the size of his role. I felt like the book did a good job of honoring his importance in Ronan’s life, letting him be present and matter and affect Ronan (and disagree with him in productive ways where they didn’t just argue and where he wasn’t just Declan 2.0), while still keeping him in a support role, since that was apparently the goal. I’m unclear on what kind of role he’s going to have going forward, but it looks like he’s being set up to have some kind of character arc, with the “Adam is lying to everyone who knows him” situation, so I really do want that to pay out and go somewhere, even if he does continue to be a supporting rather than featured character.

That whole Harvard situation breaks my heart: Adam’s friends think that his family is wonderful and that his boyfriend is a violent drunk. I can’t imagine any interactions around that that aren’t fucked up. Adam having to defend Ronan to his friends any time he comes up, but not being able to tell the truth, so he just sounds like he’s making empty excuses for someone that’s bad for him…which is something that he has in fact had to do, but not about Ronan, about the parents that all of his friends are “jealous” of him for having. Fuck. FUCK.

I loved every mention of Gansey and Blue. I can understand why Maggie doesn’t want to include them as characters, but that could have easily ended in a situation where they’re just…noticeably absent, and instead we got this, confirmation that they still talk to their friends and love them and are involved in their lives, plus we got A+ Gansey-texts-like-an-old-man content.

I enjoyed Farooq-Lane a lot just from a standpoint of being an ordinary normal person who gets put into a weird as shit situation and then…continues to be an ordinary normal person who has ordinary normal reactions to things. I find that kind of shit fascinating – it’s the kind of thing that makes for great comedy and improv, but it can also be very effective in drama, and we really got to see a wide range here.

What. the actual. fuck. is up with the New Fenian and Mor O Corra. Like I mean okay the Lynches have to live through all their parent trauma again, yeah I get that, okay Niall apparently made a dream double of an actual woman he’d slept with which like, wow I didn’t think Aurora could be retroactively creepier but damn if Niall didn’t find a way, blah blah I get all that. But like. What is – what is that relationship, exactly? Between them? Niall’s ex made a dream copy of him, too, but like…as a kid? Or one that doesn’t age? Has Mor O Corra out-creepered Niall Lynch? What the actual fuck is up with those two. I almost don’t want to know. I kind of love being this weirded out.

Bryde is really goddamn tiresome. I am expecting he’s going to turn out to be a villain and honestly that can’t happen fast enough for me. Although I anticipate that we’ll see Ronan buying into his crap more before that happens, so, it looks like we get to look forward to a lot more overblown insufferable monologues about how “special” we are and how we’re better than those gross boring mundane people. Blah.

I’m kind of disappointed that this is apparently a series where the stakes are THE END OF THE WORLD and where the protagonists have to fight a SHADOWY INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION that can send ARMIES of WELL-ARMED HIGHLY TRAINED OPERATIVES to HUNT DOWN THE PEOPLE WITH SUPERPOWERS – this is 90% of all fantasy stories, and it’s boring, and I’m tired of it. I like that the stakes in The Raven Cycle are small but still immensely meaningful. What happens in The Raven Cycle if the characters don’t succeed? Gansey dies. Ronan dies and Matthew falls asleep. Adam doesn’t go to college. Blue doesn’t get to travel the world. The world doesn’t explode, but we still care so so much about seeing them succeed, because we care so much about those characters living and getting to build the future they want. That’s a thousand times more interesting to me than “we have to…[dramatic music, put on sunglasses] SAVE THE WORLD.” Spare me.

I’m still going to read the other two, obviously, and I’m not even really mad about this, mostly just rolling my eyes. But I expect that Maggie is going to use this plot device I don’t care about to do things emotionally and character-wise that I do care about, and that’s the important part.

There is one actual thing that pisses me off with this book, that I actively hate and wish was not a part of canon, that I will probably just ignore and pretend isn’t canon, at least once I have wrapped my head around the fact that it even happened in the first place: why the fuck does Ronan go to confession.

I was willing to accept in The Raven Cycle that Maggie had no interest in doing anything with the fact that she had made the Catholic character and the gay character the same character, because Ronan is actively figuring himself out in the course of that series, because there’s so much else going on in his head and his life that I can buy that religion isn’t his top priority, because hey, I kind of liked that the series wasn’t one more Sad Story About A Sad Gay Who Is Sad Because Homophobia. I can accept a Ronan who goes to mass every week because that’s family time, because that’s tradition, because that’s what Lynches do.

But going to confession – with some degree of regularity! – is not going through the motions. When I was a Catholic school girl and an ALTAR SERVER who went to mass twice a week, confession was still a “maybe once during Lent, if we get around to it” kind of deal. What the hell does Ronan say in confession, exactly? He’s not confessing to the shit that he actually feels guilty about, playing god and creating life, because that’s a secret. He’s not confessing to the thing that he’s getting told every week is going to send him to hell. So what is he doing there?

This ceases to be “skipping past homophobia so we can just have a nice happy gay story for once (or at least a story that’s unhappy for other reasons)”. This is firmly into “deliberately and cruelly ignoring the real pain and suffering that the Catholic Church inflicts on oppressed people every single day” and I think it was a grave, grave misstep.

So my super general #thots: loved it, largely positive, some things I’m iffy on but excited to see where they go, a couple of plot elements/characters I don’t care for but can put up with for the sake of all of the good, one big negative that will probably feature only very very sparingly in canon.

#cdth spoilers #call down the hawk #the raven cycle #catholicism I guess #Anonymous #the dreamer trilogy #trc meta

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human-trash-fire · 5 years ago

Text

Beautiful Disaster: Chapter 3

Alright my loves! The following is the chapter I’m most proud of producing so far in all of my writing. I’m not saying it’s good, only that I’m proud of it lol.

I created a playlist, aka “THE EMFS” from this fic, you can find it HERE if you want to give it a listen. As usual, you can find this mess on Ao3 @glam_reaper2 <3

For Ronan Lynch the following days that week were a blur. Anger, loathing, and cravings in equal measure, hammering his mind and body like waves upon the shore. He was restless, more so than normal, as if the hours of drug induced sleep he had in hospital were all he was allotted. His insomnia was a creature, angered by his reprieve and back with a vengeance.

The only freedom from the endless nights living in fog, was music. Though Ronan would never share this fact with anyone -being known for his raucous electronic tastes- but he had a fondness for music of all genres. Declan had apparently convinced the illustrious Dr. Allen to allow him use of an old ipod loaded with his entire music library, and Airpods (because headphones were banned) to aid in “healing.” Loath as he was to admit it, he was grateful.

The brothers Lynch were raised in lyrics. Songs for sleep, for tradition, for quiet nights in, for time alone, for long drives and heartbreak. Aurora and Niall had a mix-CD (and later a playlist) for every hour of the day, it seemed. It was a habit bred into the boys, and though they never spoke of it, Ronan knew it was something they all still did. And so Declan had fought for him. Ronan was given the Ipod, charger, and Airpods on the morning of his fifth day, during his one-on-one session with Dr. Allen. They came in a small black box, with a letter attached.

Ronan,

I know that, as I write this, my words will more than likely fall upon deaf ears. Shatter on the rocks of our hostility and history, and yet… I hope. I hope that, with time you can come to understand a profound truth I have long since come to terms with, in relation to us. We two, know what it is to love a Lynch. The difficulty and pain our family brings to those around us under the guise of caring. We have also had the privilege to see the beauty in that specific brand of love. Mathew may be the best of us, a point not even you will argue, but you Ronan…

You’re the soul of this family.

From the day I first saw you, small and wild in Mom’s arms, I knew that you would change everything. I had never seen so much spirit, so much life. You came into the world with purpose, and it blew me away.

We used to be inseparable, do you remember? Your laugh is the soundtrack to my greatest childhood memories, your smile the image that gives me strength to make a daring choice. I know, I know, me? Daring? You’re rolling your eyes right now, and that’s okay. My brand of daring has long since veered from your particular brand of stupid, but I swear to you that in my own way, I do still hold onto that. Your sharp smile in moments when I’m scared. So I thank you for that. I’m so sorry, Ronan. I’ve never been able to balance properly on the knifes-edge that is my life after our parents. I wish to try and explain my actions, and then maybe you can have some understanding as you begin to heal. I knew that you needed freedom to grieve, Matthew needed to be held, but you needed to run wild. I tried to be okay with that, but I failed because I was scared. You see, my greatest fear has always been losing one of you. Matthew stayed close-by, still so young, we all were, but he was still naive and so for him I needed to be a father. It seemed easier at the time to just take that approach universally, and the more it backfired, the more I pushed. I didn’t know how to grieve myself.

My relationship with Dad was complicated at times, and when he was gone, it was like he took the air from the world. He stole you too. That’s how I felt. My heart, Matthew was broken. But my soul? He was just gone. I thought that structure would help, because I need to control things to feel okay. I needed you with me because I was scarcely able to breath. I realized too late that I was smothering you, and by that time the damage was done. I wish I could go back and give you what you needed. I was selfish with you, and I’m sorry.

I’m aware of where you currently are, and what I had to do to get you here, and therefore how this whole letter might seem like bullshit. Hell, you may not even read a single line, but I needed to do this. Ronan, I’m not going to fill this with platitudes about how you could do so much, you’ve heard my opinions on the matter. But I’ve realized there is something I’ve never told you in regards to my opinions on your life: I’m fucking proud of you. This situation we are currently in may be my nightmare; literally. I’ve had this nightmare, what almost happened, almost every night (that I could actually sleep) since Dad. But, that’s not what I’m talking about now.

You, Ronan. Your art. You’re incredible you know? I don’t think I’ve ever truly talked to you about this, and for that I take full responsibility. It’s come to my attention that you’ve always believed I thought you were wasting money and time on a degree that I “wouldn’t approve of.” And maybe, you even did it partially for spite. Which makes me laugh because, and here’s a secret: I always dreamed you would.

I see you, in every piece you create. Not just the ones you’ve chosen to share with me either. Yes, I will admit that I’ve snuck peeks at the art you hide in that closet at Monmouth. Fun fact, I am extremely useful with a lock pick. I’m not apologizing for that.

Everything you create is like air back in my lungs. It’s my soul on a canvas, the words I can’t seem to find for fear of drawing attention. And I’ve never seen them in color. I pray for that, did you know? At mass, I always take a moment to pray for my soulmate. Not because I want that connection, well not only. But because there is nothing I wouldn’t give in this world to see you create in all the colors I’ve only read of.

You have that chance now. Here, while you heal. Here while you find yourself again, you have that chance. We will find him Ronan. We will. I will tear D.C. down until I do. I’ll do that for you, but promise me you’ll try too.

I have arranged for not only access to this Ipod (I did push for a phone, but apparently that’s something even our money can’t buy from Allen) but for access to whatever materials you will need to be delivered to your room. The first delivery will arrive as soon as you provide Dr. Allen with a list of what you’d like. I can bring it personally, though I’ll understand if you’re not ready for that. But promise me you’ll create.

I love you. I know it’s not really something we say. It may not even be something you wish to hear now, or ever. And that’s fair. However, while I have the nerve now, I’m saying it. I love you, little brother. Always.

Declan.

P.S. In keeping with Mom and Dad’s “official letter writing tradition” here’s a song for you.

Outnumbered- Dermot Kennedy. (I’ve already added it to the library.)

The letter was an intimate and bottomless kindness from a brother he’d forgotten how to love properly. It broke his heart.

Ronan drew a shaking breath, and clamped his eyes together, willing tears away. He would not cry in front of Dr. Allen. He couldn’t. He folded it back up, sliding it underneath the contents of the box carefully and, gathering all the strength he had, made eye contact with the good doctor.

“So…” Dr. Allen began, “I don’t wish to drag out this session. While I don’t know what was written in that letter, I can judge based off of your current body language that you need some time. I respect that, so we’ll end today early.”

Ronan stood immediately, box in hand, he was halfway to the door before he heard Dr. Allen cleared his throat. He turned slowly, muscles taut, glare acidic, and stared down at Allen behind his desk. Dr. Allen stared back, the poster-child for neutrality. It only angered Ronan further, he didn’t have time for this. He was a damn about to burst, if he didn’t get the fuck out of this scholastic-shithole of an office he was going to break something.

“Fuck. What?” he snarled.

“Your homework.”

“Ex-fucking-scuse me?”

“You’re leaving early, which I’ve condoned. But… I have homework for you. This is day 5 Mr. Lynch. We aren’t going to play the silent game for an hour each day and then let you hide away without something to work on. So here it is…”

Ronan seethed.

“I don’t do homework,” he spat.

“You’ll do this. Or I’ll take that.” Dr. Allen motioned halfheartedly towards the box in Ronan’s hands. He reflexively brought it close to his chest.

“Fine.” He growled. He couldn’t lose this. He needed this. He nee-

“A playlist, Mr. Lynch. That’s your homework. I understand your family has something of a tradition? Therefore, I’ve concluded that the first thing I wish for you to work on is a playlist. I will not ask to see which songs you have chosen, only that you make one. I want you to focus on what you feel, stuck here. And create. We’ll discuss more tomorrow. Have a nice day.” And with that, Dr. Allen closed the file in his hands, and turned to his computer. Ronan showed himself out, making sure to slam the office door with all the force he could muster. He winced when the muscles in his wrists strained.

And so, here he was. In the early hours of his 5th night interned in his “suite”, Ronan compiled a playlist. He spent hours searching through his library, pouring every fucking feeling his therapist suggested he confront into the song selections. No one would ever be allowed access to what he was now calling the “Embarrassing- Melancholy- Feelings- Shitfest” or EMFS playlist. He even added Declan’s song. When he finished it, he put his Airpods in, laid down on his bed, closed his eyes, and pressed play.

As Between the Bars by Elliot Smith began, Ronan took his first deep breath in a week and finally allowed himself to cry.

The rest of the first week, and much of the second passed just as the first 5 days had. Sleepless nights (now thankfully filled with music), breakfast, group therapy, “personal reflection”, lunch, one-on-one therapy, 1 hour of freezing your ass off outdoors, dinner, then back to bed. It was… exhausting.

By the end of the first week Ronan’s first supplies were delivered, he’d reluctantly informed Dr. Allen that he didn’t wish to see Declan yet, though avoided telling him why. He wasn’t ready to see that look in his brother’s blue eyes, the one that shattered him in his hospital bed. So he passed along a simple note to be given to Declan when he arrived. An exchange. Ronan received a simple sketch pad, and charcoals (he wasn’t ready to use color). Declan was given a piece of notebook paper with the following printed in Ronan’s signature chicken scratch:

Thank you.

Brother- Kodaline

Ronan would never know what happened when his brother left that day. Declan made his way to his car slowly, the note clenched in his shaking fist. He preferred his feelings in private. As he slid into the driver’s seat, and turned on his car, he pulled up the song Ronan had given him, turned up the volume and closed his eyes. By the time the chorus arrived, Declan’s knuckles were white, hands strangling his steering wheel. Great sobs, a moment of earth-shattering weakness, wracking his body.

If I was dying on my knees,

You would be the one to rescue me,

And if you would drown at sea,

I’d give you my lungs so you could breathe,

I’ve got you brother,

I’ve got you brother.

In that moment, Declan knew, with a certainty only a Lynch could have, that Ronan would be okay. And so he listened; he cried. And When the song ended, bowed his head, gave thanks to God then put his car in reverse and drove home.

At the end of the second week, Ronan was allowed his first visit from someone who wasn’t a familial relation. He was in his room, EMFS playlist blasting in his ears as he hunched over his latest piece of art - mess of dark lines, shadows, and chaos- When Gansey strolled in. He wasn’t sure how long Gansey had been standing at his door, watching him when he finally looked up, and double-tapped his left Airpod to pause Mr. Rattlebone.

For a moment, they remained silent. Hazel eyes boring into blue. Gansey wore a lilac button down tucked neatly into navy slacks, light-brown leather boots to match his belt and watch poking beneath the hem, and a pea-coat slung neatly over his left arm. In his right he held two gift bags.

“Hey,” Gansey spoke softly, breaking the silence.

“Hey.”

“Would you mind terribly if I-” He motioned to the end of Ronan’s bed.

Ronan cleared his throat, closed his sketch pad, pulled out his Airpods and brought his long legs up to his chest. “No, for sure, yeah, sit.” He sounded like an idiot to his own ears.

“So…” Gansey began after sitting down and turning to face Ronan. “How, are you?” The question wasn’t unexpected but irritated Ronan nevertheless.

“Living the fucking dream, Dick.”

“Ronan,” Gansey sighed. “You’re right. That was a stupid question, I apologize. It’s just… I haven’t spoken to you in weeks, and it’s not something I’m accustomed to. I won’t pretend I haven’t been worried, and while I am genuinely curious how you are I’ll refrain fro-”

“Gans, it’s fine. I’m… sorry, that was…. Rude. I’m handling it. I’m fine. Bored as all shit, but fine.”

“Okay. Good. Wonderful. Spec-”

“Dick”

“Right, right. Sorry.”

“So,” Ronan prodded, needing desperately to get off this currently painful attempt at feelings and small talk. “What’ve you got there Dick? Please say it’s drugs.”

“That’s not at all funny, Ronan.”

“Shit… I’m, yeah you’re right. That was…” Ronan trailed off. He knew that it was probably the wrong thing to say. He’d said it anyways, to gauge where Gansey was with him. Apparently, not there. Got it. He cleared his throat a second time, hands wrapping themselves tighter around his knees. “Well… Then what is it?”

“This first one is from Noah,” Gansey said softly, as he pushed a bright pink gift bag in front of Ronan. He adjusted, bringing his legs into a criss-cross and pulling the obnoxious bag into his lap.

“How… How is he Gans? I never, he wasn’t at the hospital. I haven’t been able to talk to him, and I-” Gansey held up a hand to stop his rambling, then gently brought it down to Ronan’s wrist. Ronan stared at the tan hand gently resting over his angry scar, then brought his eyes up to Gansey.

“He’s handling it. It was, a lot for him Ronan. But, he loves you. That hasn’t changed. He wanted me to tell you that he misses you. And- that he’s sorry.”

“He has nothing t-”

“I know, but he made me promise to tell you anyways.”

“Okay,” Ronan whispered, closing his burning eyes for a moment. He removed his hand from under Gansey’s and reached into the bag. The first item he pulled out was a box. He looked expectantly at Gansey who shook his head slightly, brows drawn together he opened the lid. Inside were two bracelets made of 5 black bands of leather each. Embossed at the clasp of each was a semicolon. The tears he hadn’t wanted to shed in front of Gansey today made their way slowly down his face.

“Let me…” Gansey whispered, and removed the first bracelet. Ronan shook as Gansey slowly slid the sleeve of his hoodie up his forearm, then gently brought the bracelet around his wrist. He repeated the motion with the second, then leaned forward to brush a stray tear off of Ronan’s chin.

“Thank you,” he rasped. Gansey nodded. Ronan, reached back into the pink bag and from it pulled an old copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. He knew this copy intimately, it was Noah’s favorite book and could always be found resting on his nightstand, or in his hands on a bad day. He opened the book with a reverence he usually reserved for the bible, and inside found an inscription:

“This moment will just be another story someday.” -Stephen Chbosky

Never forget that you are loved.

You are wanted.

You are needed.

-Noah

Ronan closed the book and moved it to his nightstand. He took a deep steadying breath, and nodded.

Gansey asked, “Okay?”

“Okay,” he replied.

Gansey moved the second bag onto his lap. This one, a tasteful charcoal grey with blue tissue paper. The bag itself was larger and heavier than the first, and his confusion must have been evident when Gansey spoke again, “Oh, just open it would you?” Ronan snorted, the first smile he’d felt on his face in weeks, making an appearance.

“Fuck okay, sorry.” He ripped the tissues from the bag with the enthusiasm of a 4 year old high on confectioners sugar, and Christmas cheer. The blue sheets flying around his bed, one even landing on Gansey’s head before sliding off on an imperceptible wind.

“Gans….” He whispered, slowly sliding the first gift from the bag. It was a black leather-bound sketchbook. Larger than the one he had requested from Declan, the paper, a higher quality than he had used in a long time. “I can’t-”

“You can, and you will. So shut up and open it.”

The front cover of the book had an embossed raven in the center. The side folded over the top and tied off with a small leather eyelet, which he unhooked and slowly opened the masterpiece in his lap. On the inside of the front cover was a second embossing, this one read:

Excelsior

R.N.L

He shook his head, and found Gansey’s eyes. “Onward and upward.”

“Onward and upward,” Gansey nodded. “There is more, but before you open it, let me say this. You’ve been given a gift. I know it doesn’t feel like that, but for someone with talent like yours, you… more than anyone I know, deserved color. I know that you asked Dec for charcoal, I’m assuming it’s because you weren’t ready-” Ronan was reaching into the bag again as he spoke, pulling out a cherrywood box, and shaking his head.

“- but I think maybe you could be. If not now, then soon. Regardless,” he gestured for Ronan to open the box, “I wanted to bring you a rainbow.” The latch was simple and as Ronan lifted the lid he was met with rows and rows of colored pastels. Every color he’d read about and tenfold more he’d never seen.

He choked on a sob, “Gans… Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now, I do hope you use these soon because this room is awfully boring.”

“You’re fucking telling me,” Ronan quipped, smiling though his damn eyes wouldn’t stop their relentless downpour. It was fucking embarrassing, and yet, beautiful. A world of color at his fingertips.

“They’re all labeled, so you can learn the ones they never taught us. The colors I mean, and if you have a favorite, or run out while you’re here don’t hesitate to tell me. I’ll bring you replacements.”

Ronan reached forward, one arm cradling this box of dreams, the other hand coming to Gansey’s arm. “I’m sorry Gansey, for all of it. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“I know you are, but thank you.”

Ronan and gansey sat in silence for a while, a comfortable camaraderie. And when the nurse came to collect Gansey at the end of the hour, the two men, close as brothers, hugged in the middle of the room. They held on, like the other was the foundation upon which their world was built, and stayed that way until the nurse cleared her throat.

“Oh fuck off,” Ronan growled.

“Ronan!” Gansey chided, “I’m so sorry ma’am, I will of course hurry along, if you wouldn’t mind pointing me in the proper direction?” Ronan rolled his eyes, the senator’s son making an appearance yet again. As he made his way back to his bed, Gansey stopped at the door.

“I’ve been told that you’re allowed visits on Mondays and fridays. I assure you I’ll be here for each and every one.”

“You don’t have t-”

“I’ll see you Monday.” Gansey punctuated his statement with two sharp knocks against the door frame, and a dip of his head; then disappeared around the corner and Ronan was left alone once more.

“Excelsior.” He whispered to no one, and picked up his sketchbook.

#BD au #pynch #pynch fic #pynch au #ronan lynch #adam parrish #ronan x adam #trc #trc fanfiction #au #ao3fic

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cc-kouga-blog · 7 years ago

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These Are The Days 4/9

For @quietrook

Adam got swept into Orientation Days so it was two days later that he found the box shoved under his bed. He thought it was an empty one he forgot to put away, but as he pulled it out, he noticed that it was heavy. Adam gasped in delighted surprise when he saw the contents of the box. He took them out and marveled at each one.

A metal pencil case which contained mechanical pencils, pens and highlighters of all colors. A white mug with a raven in flight printed on the side. Stack of notebooks and writing pads. The toy car from Ronan’s bedroom. Several jars of the hand cream Ronan dreamt up for him. A photo album which he set aside to look at later. A leather messenger bag. A gray zip up hoodie. A set of deep green bed linens with a matching quilt that smelled like forest after the rain. And at the very bottom, a black box with a note attached on the lid.

Adam opened the note and grinned as he read it.

‘Something to help you sleep. I know you’re not gonna get much of it since you’ll be up all night doing shit.’

Adam lifted the lid and laughed. Inside, were Ronan’s sleep shirts. He took one out and brought it to his face. It smelled like Ronan and Adam had to fight back the tears prickling at his eyes. He shrugged out of his shirt and put on one of Ronan’s instead. He grabbed the photo album and started to look through them.

The first page only had a picture of a forest. It took Adam a while to recognize it as the forest surrounding The Barns. It was a reminiscence of Cabeswater and it gave Adam a twinge of loss. The next page had a group pic of the five of them. Adam couldn’t remember when the pic was taken, but in there Gansey had one arm slung around Blue’s shoulder while Henry clung to the other. The three of them were sporting cheerful smile and facing the camera. Ronan were standing next to Blue with his arms crossed over his chest. He was scowling at something off camera. And next to Ronan was Adam.

Oh.

Adam had to take a deep breath as he saw himself. He was looking at Ronan with an expression he didn’t think he could make. He had a soft smile on his face and there was no mistaking the adoration in his eyes. Adam looked at Ronan as if he hung the moon. Honestly, it was embarrassing to look at, but Ronan looked at him the exact same way, so Adam guessed they were even.

The next page finally made Adam shed a tear. It was an old and faded picture of Noah, taken when he was still alive and vibrant and more. Noah was wearing his Aglionby uniform and for once it was unwrinkled. There was no smudge on his face. His eyes still held youthful innocence and his smile was a happy one. This was Noah before.

Adam ran his fingertips across Noah’s face. ‘Remembered’ he thought hard, hoping it would somehow reach Noah.

The following pages were full of faces Adam held dear. Opal, Ronan and Chainsaw in front of the Barns. Blue with her hair clips and colorful skirt. Gansey reading a book. Henry wearing a Madonna shirt. More pictures of Opal and Chainsaw, more pictures of Ronan, there was even one where he was sleeping, his mouth slightly open, face relaxed. More pictures of the gang doing various things with various expressions. A laughing Blue, a scowling Gansey, a pensive Henry, a pouting Opal, a flying Chainsaw and a smiling Ronan. Pictures of the Fox Way ladies, of Matthew grinning while holding a sign ‘You’re the best Adam!!’ with Declan in the background talking on the phone.

There were pictures of Nino’s, Boyd’s, Aglionby Academy, 300 Fox Way, Monmouth and St. Agnes. Pictures of the abandoned parking lot where Ronan and Adam pulled their reckless stunts, the Dollar City where they did their groceries, the gas station, the stretch of dirt road where Ronan taught Adam how to drive stick. There was a picture of the Hondayota parked between the Pig and the BMW. A picture of a moving dolly and a shopping cart. And on the last page was the picture of Henrietta’s welcome sign side by side with a picture of Widener Library. Underneath both, Ronan had written; ‘What matters isn’t where you’re from. It’s where you’re going.’

Adam closed the album and held it close to his heart. Inside this album were Adam’s home and family. Inside this album were all of the good memories he had of Henrietta. Above all that, it was something Ronan did for him. He imagined Ronan running around Henrietta, collecting pictures and taking some of his own. He might have even dreamt up some of them. In that moment, Adam Parrish realized that the one standing at the centre stage of Ronan’s attention was himself. This was what it felt like to be the object of Ronan’s affection. Such gentle devotion and selfless loyalty.

Adam picked up his phone and send a single text to Ronan.

‘Thx for the box. Loved it.’

Adam didn’t wait for a reply. He put away everything that was inside the box then went to sleep surrounded by Ronan’s smell and happy memories. When he woke up in the morning, there was a text waiting for him. He opened it and smiled. It was a selfie of Ronan in bed, wearing Adam’s shirt. His visible hand had the middle finger raised.

‘Whatever Parrish.’

As it turned out, apart from the photo album, everything else were dream things. The pencil never ran out of lead, the pens and highlighters never ran out of ink. The notebooks and writing pads were stain resistant, Adam once spilled coffee over his notes and had three seconds of panic before realizing that they were as pristine as before. The messenger bag never got full no matter how many books Adam shoved inside, but it still got heavy so Adam tried no to carry too many. The mug kept whatever liquid inside warm throughout the day, which was very convenient during the cold days. The hoodie kept him warm even in the middle of winter, same with the quilt. And the shirts never lost their Ronan’s smell.

It might not look like much, but Ronan’s dream things made Adam’s college life so much easier.

***

The first month after Adam left for college, Ronan spent most of his time dreaming up new Cabeswater. It was still a seedling, not big enough to really be anything. Ronan refrained from pulling it out of his dreams. He didn’t want to rush either, he wanted it to be better and safer than the previous one.

But he couldn’t spend all his time dreaming and since he was already living in a farm, he decided to look into the farming business. In some ways, it was easy enough. He had the land and the funds. In other ways, it was complicated. He had no real knowledge of how to properly run a farm.

So between late night Skype calls with Adam, dreaming a new Cabeswater and teaching Opal the English language, Ronan signed up for an online Farmer’s Academy. He did well enough, since he could learn at his own leisure. There wasn’t any boring classroom where he had to sit and listen to the teacher drone on and on about topics that didn’t interest him. It was another plus that he could do it while lounging shirtless on his comfy couch with a bottle of cold beer within reach.

He had a plan to start a farm and Adam was enthusiastically supportive. Ronan knew that Adam was honestly excited for him, because few days after he brought it up, his boyfriend sent him a reading list suggestion and links to some online resources.

‘Nerd.’ He texted.

‘Farmer boy.’ Adam replied.

***

Adam was qualified for the need based financial aid that Harvard offered and it reduced his tuition greatly. He didn’t have to pick up three jobs just to get by. He still needed income though, so he picked up a part time job at the library and another at a small café not far from campus. Once or twice, he helped his entryway buddies who had car trouble. Words got around and Adam found himself to be the go to guy whenever a car emergency cropped up on campus. He declined monetary payment, but happy to accept book store coupons or box of pizza. One of the student he helped hooked him up with her uncle who owned an auto shop where Adam was able to pick up some shifts on the weekend.

His jobs took most of his free time, but he still had some left for social life. Sometimes he hung around the common room with his dorm mates or played frisbee on the quad. Sometimes he went out to watch movies with his new friends. Mostly, he stayed in his room to Skype with Ronan and Opal.

On one outing with his friends, they went to a hole in the wall burger joint. It was situated between a video game store and a tiny shop that sold candles and incenses. Adam felt a gentle tug in his belly when he passed the candle shop. Out of curiosity, Adam followed it all the way to the back of the shop. He ended up in front of a shelf full of small jars, delicate glass bottles and other trinkets.

On the middle row, was a deck of Tarot cards. A rising tide of nostalgia washed over Adam. Memories of Persephone’s wild hair and soft voice filled his mind. With trembling fingers, Adam touched the deck.

There was a spark.

Without hesitation, Adam picked up the deck and brought it up front to pay. The man behind the register was slightly older than Adam. His whiskey brown eyes widened slightly as he took in Adam.

“You have the spark.” He smiled knowingly as he rang up Adam’s purchase.

Something in the man’s demeanor told Adam that this man familiar with magic.

“Uh, yeah.” Adam replied as he paid, not entirely comfortable with the admission.

The man took out a black velvet pouch from a drawer and gently slide Adam’s deck inside. He put the velvet pouch, a small candle and a business card inside a paper bag.

“The candle’s on the house. It’s great for calm and concentration.” He nodded sagely to Adam.

“Thanks.” Adam took the bag and his change.

“Thanks for your patronage.” The man grinned.

“Anytime.” Adam half smiled and exited the shop.

When he got back to his room, he took out the velvet pouch and just held it in his palm. He had returned Persephone’s deck to Maura and Calla, thinking that it was of no use to him anymore. But this deck. It had felt right in his hands. Like it was meant to be handled by his bony fingers.

Adam took the deck out and went through the cards carefully. The back of the card was a deep emerald green. The illustrations weren’t elaborate, only minimal drawings, clean lines and neat fonts. There weren’t many colors either, only varying shades of green and brown.

This deck was simple, Adam could get on board with that. He concentrated for a moment, focusing on a question, then he shuffled the card and fanned them out. He let his right hand hovered the spread and deftly pulled out three cards that felt right.

He turned them, one by one. The Fool, The Magician and The Lovers.

Adam smiled and packed up the deck. It seemed like he still had a touch of magic left in him.

#pynch secret santa #quietrook #tatd

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swimmingwolf59 · 7 years ago

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Baby Makes Four

(A/N) Accidental baby acquisition is one of my absolute favorite tropes EVER so I had to write it for today's prompt! XD There are no warnings here, just pure teeth-rotting fluff. Also, this takes place in the same universe as Of BMWs and Cadillacs, in case you were wondering c: I hope you guys enjoy!!

P.S. I will be writing something for day 8, but I probably won't be able to get it up tomorrow so it'll be there for you guys on Sunday :') Until then, happy pynch week! It's been so much writing for it this year~

Admittedly, Ronan has been thinking about this for a while now.

The idea had wriggled into his head a few years ago, when he’d been coming to terms with the fact that Opal would be going off to college soon. It was like the situation with Adam all over again, except Ronan felt especially ill-equipped to handle it a second time. Four years of undergrad and two years for a master’s degree away from an integral member of Ronan’s family was enough to last a lifetime – Ronan had no idea what to do about the fact that he’d have to do it again.

It was almost harder with Opal, really. She’d been around as long as Ronan could remember, assisting him in his dreamscape and protecting him from his nightmares. While he was guiltily a little excited about having the entire Barns alone with Adam, he found the idea of Opal being gone for so long unbearable.

But he didn’t want to be in the way of her dreams either, so he knew he would have to let her go.

So then he started wondering what could possibly fill the void of Opal’s absence.

And then he started wondering what it would be like to raise a child for real.

Opal is his daughter, they’d signed the papers to make it official a while back, but she had come out of his head mostly functional and already fiercely independent. Once they’d taught her to stop gnawing on sticks and how to walk in boots to hide her hoofs, she pretty much didn’t need them anymore. She was more like another adult living in their house than anything. (Ronan had even taken an amusing snapshot (amusing to him) of Opal and Adam both hunched over their respective homework at the dining room table, sticking their tongues out in concentration in comically similar fashions.) She just needed to be calmed down from horrific nightmares as often as Ronan did and sometimes a harsh reminder not to eat the wrapper on her granola bars. It had been easy, once Opal had adjusted to the waking world.

And all of it just made Ronan wonder what it would be like to start from scratch.

For a long time, Ronan hadn’t thought he wanted kids. But hell, he’d thought he’d be alone for the rest of his life, and look where he is now. He’d just been worried that he’d never be able to control his dreams, that eventually people would come after him and attack him and destroy his family, just like his had been destroyed so many years ago.

But nobody came. Ronan and Adam have lived off the grid as far as the magic business goes for years, and no one has bothered them since the Gray Man had contacted them a couple of years back to say that he was successfully diverting attention away from Henrietta.

So now Ronan feels safe to ponder the idea of children. He’d loved growing up in a big family, with his two brothers to tumble around with, and he likes the idea of having a big family again. He also kind of wants to prove that he can be a good dad, or at least a better dad than Niall had ever been. He’s finally old enough to acknowledge that his dad had been a shit dad, though he still holds his intense love for him, and he wants to make it up to the next generation. He doesn’t want anyone feeling neglected and insufficient just because they weren’t a dreamer, like Declan must have felt. He doesn’t want anyone to sit around and wonder if their dad will ever come back home, and then have to find out one day that he won’t ever be coming home again.

And, for a more screwed up reason, Ronan kind of finds the idea of Adam as a dad stupidly attractive.

But it’s Adam himself that makes Ronan hesitate about bringing it up. It’s no secret that Adam’s worst fear is that one day he’ll wake up and find that he’s turned into his father. It’s why he still hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol besides the occasional glass of wine Ronan forces on him when he’s especially tired and stressed. It’s why Adam still flinches sometimes when he touches Opal, like he’s afraid he’ll somehow accidentally hurt her.

Ronan doesn’t want to make him feel pressured to overcome that fear just because he so badly wants another child. He and Adam decide things together, with no one’s opinion meaning more than the other’s. He figures that the safest option for now is to just leave things be. Their life is good right now – there’s no need to add a sudden change.

Which is great, until it suddenly escalates out of his control.

The way it starts is rather ironic, as they do have sex right before. Adam had gotten home late and angry because someone on his team had made critical mistakes in their math and he’d had to stay late at the office to correct them. He has deep bags under his eyes, his usually perfect tie is crooked, and he’s in a horrible mood.

Ronan has learned that the best approach to dealing with an angry Adam is to say nothing at all. Probing at him only makes him explode in his face. So he just wordlessly slides a cup of black coffee over to him when he sits down at the kitchen table with an irritated sigh. Adam downs the whole thing, wordlessly demands another, and then launches into an hour long rant about how shitty everyone at his work is.

“And don’t even get me started on that fucktard Scott; he always does everything wrong and yet somehow still gets away with—why are you looking at me like that?” Adam’s eyes are suddenly piercing into Ronan, who realizes he’d been unsuccessful at hiding his amused smirk behind his cup.

He quickly wipes the smirk away, leaning back against the counter. “No reason.” And then, against better judgement, “You’re just hot when you’re mad.”

“Of all the—!” Adam looks about ready to detonate, but after a second his shoulders loosen and he rolls his eyes. Ronan would be richer than he already is if he had a dollar for every time Adam has rolled his eyes at him. “You’re impossible.”

Ronan grins wolfishly. “At least I’m better than fucking Scott.”

It’s the right thing to say. Adam grins before standing up, abandoning his half-finished coffee and walking over to Ronan. He stops when their chests touch, wrapping his arms around Ronan’s neck and leaning in for a sweet kiss. Ronan hums, settling his hands on Adam’s hips as he kisses him back.

He’s survived this round.

“How was your day?” Adam asks between kisses.

Ronan shrugs, moving down to kiss Adam’s jaw. “Fine. Just farm stuff. Set up at the farmer’s market. Sold some shit. Nothing eventful.” He raises his eyebrows suggestively at Adam. “Yet.”

Adam snorts, but he also tends to be in the mood for sex when he’s had a bad day at work so he leads Ronan up to the bedroom anyway.

Once they’re done, spent and happy once more, Adam gets up to let the dogs into the room before trotting back to the bed and opening his book. He always reads before bed, so Ronan, as always, tucks his arm around his waist and rolls onto his stomach, getting comfortable for an attempt at easy sleep. He goes to bed earlier now than he did as a teen since he has to get up early for farming work.

Just as he’s sinking into his pillow and Adam’s warmth, however, their three hounds climb onto the bed and immediately flop onto his back.

“Fucking…! Your dog-children are suffocating me!” Ronan groans under the weight. Misty, their Australian Shepherd, licks at the back of his neck, making him shiver violently. He tries half-heartedly to roll her off of him, but Ray the golden retriever and Chip the husky have dutifully pinned down Ronan’s legs.

Adam snorts and doesn’t even look up from his book as he reaches out to scratch Misty’s ears. “They’re your dog-children, too.”

“So when a gay man and a bi man love each other very much…”

Adam chokes out a laugh and shoves a pillow into Ronan’s face. “Apparently they make three dog-children. But the real question is: who gives birth to them?”

Ronan laughs so hard his sides hurt. God Adam is the most amazing human being he has ever met in his entire life. Pushing the dogs off of him, the action easy now with his sudden surge of motivation, Ronan scrambles over to tackle Adam down onto the mattress. Adam lets out a surprised yelp, his book tumbling onto the floor as Ronan nuzzles into his neck. “Hey! You made me lose my page!”

“Oh please, you have the whole damn thing memorized anyway.” Ronan rolls his eyes and leans back to press a soft kiss to Adam’s lips. He lets himself smile a little, lost in the shining amusement in Adam’s blue eyes. “I love you.”

Adam reaches up to stroke his cheek. “I love you too. Even if you did give birth to three dog-children.”

“Hey, who’s to say it wasn’t you?” Ronan growls, but he’s laughing again as he rolls over to lie next to Adam. He watches his husband, mesmerized by the way his dimples show when he laughs.

Adam smirks and shoves his cold feet in between Ronan’s legs. “Because I think I would remember something like that.”

“They say some women don’t remember the pain of childbirth,” Ronan says as he wraps his arm around Adam’s waist and pulls him in tighter.

Adam raises a playful eyebrow. “Yes, but they don’t say that some men don’t remember the pain of dog-childbirth.”

“God I fucking hate you!” Ronan laughs, but he’s happy and warm and still hopelessly in love. He falls asleep staring at Adam’s smile and rubbing lazy circles into his hip.

As usual, he falls into a dream. With all of the thoughts and discussions of children and birthing lately, Ronan is only mildly surprised when he walks around a tree in Cabeswater and stumbles across a crib. His breath still leaves him though, and for a long time he just stands there, staring at it. He knows he shouldn’t go over to it, that if he does he won’t be able to stop himself from doing something irreversible.

And yet he finds himself walking over anyway, like something is drawing him forward. There’s a soft crying now, and Ronan can see the gentle flailing of tiny limbs over the lip of the crib. He catches a glimpse of one of the baby’s limbs before it falls back down again.

A pale, freckled arm.

Ronan curses his overactive brain for doing this to himself, but by now he’s already standing next to the crib. He tries not to look in, he really does, but the freckled arm had attracted his attention and now he can’t not look in at it.

Just one peek. That’s all.

It’s a mistake.

Ronan doesn’t even remember grabbing the baby, but when he wakes from the dream there is loud, shrilling crying in his ear and a hand violently shaking his shoulder. “Ronan, Ronan! Ronan, wake up!”

Ronan is awake, but he can’t do anything to prove it. He can’t move a finger, his body paralyzed from bringing the little bundle in his arms out of his dream. He wishes he could move, though, because he can roll his eyes around and see that Adam is panicking and that the bundle in his arms is actually what he thinks it is and that he has royally fucked everything up.

When he can finally move again, he rolls over with a groan, clutching the bundle tighter in his arms. Adam can most definitely see what he’s brought out now, and his eyes are as wide as saucers as he stares at Ronan like he has three heads. “Ronan, that’s—!”

Ronan closes his eyes and heaves a big sigh. “A fucking baby. Yeah.”

Adam is mad.

“I can’t believe you didn’t consult me about this!” he fumes, though the effect is immediately canceled out by the little baby boy cocked on his hip. Ronan is melting.

“It’s not like I brought him back on purpose!” he whispers back, not wanting to alarm the baby as he steps forward to ease a bottle of milk to his lips. The baby drinks eagerly, to Ronan’s relief. “I was going to talk to you about it! I’ve just been thinking about it a lot lately, and when I stumbled across him in my dream…”

He trails off, still uncomfortable with stating his feelings outright. About how he’d fallen in love with the baby on first sight. About how he’d seen Adam’s blue eyes and his own curly hair on that little baby and couldn’t just not pick him up.

Adam scoffs and rolls his eyes, but his expression is softer now, more understanding. “I know you didn’t bring him back on purpose, but I would’ve still liked to be part of the process. You should’ve told me when you first started thinking about it.”

Ronan looks away. He should’ve, but he’d thought Adam wouldn’t want to. Adam has trouble seeing how good he is with Opal, no matter how much Ronan tries to show him, no matter how well Opal has turned out because of him. Adam obviously loves Opal, and Opal obviously loves him, but it’s apparently not enough to fully dissipate Adam’s fears. Ronan hadn’t brought it up with him because he hadn’t wanted to get into a fight over it.

The idea seems stupid now.

“I…I didn’t think you’d want to…” he admits, rubbing a hand over his head. It’s still a habit, even though he actually has hair now to get caught in his fingers.

“You’re an idiot,” Adam says bluntly, and Ronan flinches. For a moment, he feels angry. Why does he always get in trouble for trying to do the right thing? It’s like he’s just one big fuck-up no matter what his intentions are.

But then Adam walks closer to him, shifting the baby into Ronan’s arms. Ronan hugs him tightly, so he won’t fall. He’s staring so intensely at the little boy, awestruck, that Adam has to place his hands on Ronan’s cheeks to force him to look at him. It’s the first time in over twelve years that Ronan has to be made to look at Adam, and the idea amuses him slightly.

“The truth is, I’ve…been looking into adoption,” Adam says quietly, running his thumb down Ronan’s jaw.

Ronan just stares at him. “Adam, I love you, but we have three dogs already – you seriously want to get another one…?”

“No you idiot,” Adam snaps, but a smile is twitching at the corners of his lips. Ronan grins back. “Human adoption. I’ve been thinking about getting a baby too, Ronan.”

For a moment, the words don’t even process. Ronan just blinks at Adam in shock, convinced he hasn’t heard right. “Wh-what? But I thought—?”

Adam suddenly seems embarrassed as he stares down at the baby, a small smile gracing his lips as the boy reaches for him. Adam hands him a finger in return, and when the baby grasps at it with a cry of delight Ronan nearly explodes from the cuteness overload. “Look, I know I’ve been…hesitant for a long time about this, and God I’m still terrified, but…You’ve always wanted kids. You love Opal, but she was never going to be enough for you. So I thought…I thought we could give it a try… And before you say anything, I want this too. I want…I want to try having a family with you, Ronan.”

Ronan is gaping for a completely different reason now. He never realized how…known he is. He always seems to forget that Adam can see right through him, that he doesn’t even have to learn to be comfortable with stating his feelings out loud because often Adam just knows. Ronan can do the same for Adam, but now he’s starting to realize why Adam was always so freaked out about it.

It’s scary being so transparent, even to the man he’s been together with for ten years.

Adam is looking at him again, and he looks so terrified that Ronan wants to wrap his arms tightly around him and never let go. “You’ll stop me if I ever try to hurt them, won’t you?”

“God, Adam,” Ronan murmurs, shifting the baby to one arm so he can cup Adam’s cheek with his palm. “Listen to me – you will never be like that piece of shit, alright? I’ve seen you Adam, we’ve lived together for ten years; I’ve seen how good you are with Opal. Who was the one who sat up with her and helped her with her homework? Who was the one who made her a makeshift sling and called the ambulance while I did nothing but freak the fuck out when she broke her elbow? Who was the one who toured colleges with her, made sure she had all of her shots, made her wear her safety gear when we went spelunking, combed and braided her hair all this time?”

“Me,” Adam says quietly, but it comes out cracked. He leans into Ronan’s palm and reaches up to cover it with his own; Ronan can feel his hand shaking. “But just in case—”

“You would never hurt them,” Ronan says firmly, leaving no room for misunderstandings.

But Adam is still shaking his head, looking very much like he’s trying not to cry. “You don’t know that—”

“I do know that,” Ronan interrupts. “And you wanna know why? Because I’ve been staring at your dumb ass for twelve years and you have never hurt anyone. Because you love Opal so damn much that you flew all the way to Seattle just to help her move into her dorm. And you hate flying.”

Adam laughs a little before that beautiful small smile comes back onto his lips. A stray tear runs down his cheek, and Ronan swipes it away with his thumb. “I can’t believe you’ve been staring at my ass for twelve years.”

Ronan scowls before playfully swatting at Adam’s head. “Be flattered you shit.”

“Thank you, Ronan,” he murmurs quietly, suddenly serious.

Ronan hugs him tightly with his free arm, and doesn’t even comment on the tears he can feel soaking into his tank. “You’re going to be the best damn dad anyone has ever seen.”

“Daddy, I wanna lick the bowl!” Ken Niall Lynch-Parrish, barely 5, says, holding up his chubby arms towards Adam. Adam is more the baker of the family, Ronan prefers cooking dinner-type foods, and he stands at the counter mixing a cake. It’s Ken’s birthday, and all of their friends and family are coming over that night to celebrate. Even Opal is flying home from Seattle, though her quickly approaching finals means she can’t stay for more than two days.

But it’ll be alright. Ronan is just happy to have all his kids in the same place again.

“It’s bad for you, Ken,” Adam chides, but when the toddler’s face falls he rolls his eyes fondly and stoops down to pick Ken up in his arms, holding him so that he can reach the bowl on the counter. “Only because it’s your birthday.”

Ken squeals with delight as he reaches for the bowl, grasping the spoon and licking from it eagerly. Ronan, seated at the table, can’t stop grinning. It’s been five years of raising their boys, and he will never get tired of watching Adam be a dad. It’s his absolute favorite thing.

“Papa?” A small hand suddenly tugs at Ronan’s pant leg, and he looks down to find their dream boy, Jerome Noah Lynch-Parrish, also 5, staring up at him. His fist is clenched tightly, as if holding something in his hand.

“What’s up, squirt?” Ronan asks, pulling the boy into his lap.

Jerome looks down shyly before opening his fist and offering the object to Ronan. “Papa, I think it turned out right this time…”

Inside the toddler’s palm is a toy car, one that suspiciously looks like Adam’s Cadillac. When Ronan spins the front wheel, a familiar song begins to play: “Squash one, squash two—”

Ronan quickly stops the wheel, muting the tune. He glances sharply up at Adam, but his husband is too busy helping Ken clean off the rest of the bowl that it looks like he hadn’t heard anything. For once, Ronan thanks the fact that Adam is half-deaf.

Grinning, Ronan places a messy kiss on Jerome’s temple. “It’s perfect. Why don’t you go give it to your Daddy?”

“Okay!” The toddler grins before carefully climbing down from Ronan’s lap and running to Adam.

Jerome is unique in the fact that he is both a dreamer and a dream. Ronan hasn’t noticed anything other than that that differentiates him from non-dream babies, like his brother Ken who they had adopted from Japan, which had been a relief for both him and Adam. While they would’ve loved him either way, it’s just easier on Ronan not having to dream up all of his pairs of shoes and such like he has to do for Opal. He also hopes that someday he’ll be able to work with Jerome to improve Cabeswater and find a more permanent solution for dreams that no longer have their dreamer.

It’s of even more importance now that they find the answer.

But that’s a long ways away. For now, Ronan is content to sport a shit-eating grin as he watches Jerome tug on Adam’s pant leg. “Daddy, I dreamt this for you!”

“Oh?” Adam has to set Ken down to accept the car from Jerome, and Ken crowds next to his brother to also get a look at what he’d presented Adam.

“No fair Jerome, where’s my dream present? It’s my birthday!” Ken whines.

Jerome, a surprisingly gentle-natured child considering he’d come out of Ronan’s head, smiles and says, “I already dreamed your present! Papa just won’t let me give it to you until Aunty Blue, Uncle Dick, Uncle Henry, Uncle Declan, and Uncle Matthew are here.”

Ken sulks, but the answer seems to satisfy him. Ronan counts it a mental win that his son had called Gansey ‘Dick’ instead of ‘Gansey’, but he doesn’t bask in the glory of it for long. Right now he has more important things to witness.

Adam smiles as he inspects the tiny model of his own car, obviously touched. It makes Ronan feel a bit bad for what he’s about to do to him. “Thank you, Jerome! It looks just like our Cadillac.”

“Spin the wheel!” Jerome chirps, a huge grin on his face. Ronan has to bite his lip to prevent himself from barking out a loud laugh.

“Alright…” Adam, obviously having no suspicions whatsoever, spins the wheel.

“Squash one, squash two—”

Adam stalls the wheel on his palm immediately before whirling to face Ronan, comically furious. “Of all of the beautiful and innovative things you could be teaching our son how to make, why did you decide to teach him how to make this?! This song died ten years ago!!”

“That song is a fucking classic!” Ronan barks, leaning back in his chair and roaring with laughter. Adam looks ready to strike back with a scathing retort to that, but their son interrupts him.

“You don’t like it, Daddy?” Jerome asks, the poor boy sounding absolutely crushed.

Adam falters. “No, Jerome, it’s great! Thank you. You’re getting so much better at controlling your dreaming.” Ronan snickers at the fact that he got Adam to admit the Murder Squash Song was great, and Adam points at him in a scarily accurate imitation of Gansey. “This isn’t over, Lynch.”

“That’s Lynch-Parrish to you!” Ronan says cheekily, and just laughs as Adam throws a dish towel at him.

Later, when the rest of their crazy family is all together and watching Ken open his presents, Ronan is suddenly struck with how amazing this all is. That he, Ronan Lynch-Parrish, is lucky enough to have stumbled upon such an incredibly strange and incredibly amazing group of people who make him feel loved and accepted every day. It’s a long cry away from where he was as a teenager, and honestly it’s a goddamn miracle.

He even has a soft smile on his face as he watches Ken unwrap the little stuffed animal that Jerome had dreamed for him, one that lights up like a night light in all sorts of fantastical colors. Ken absolutely loves it, and he’s grinning from ear to ear as he tackles his brother in a hug.

As if reading Ronan’s thoughts, Adam squeezes his knee and leans over to whisper in his ear, his breath warm on his skin, “Can you believe this is our family? Our family??”

Ronan breaks his gaze from their sons for a moment to grin fondly at Adam. He cups his cheek gently before leaning in to leave a quick peck on his lips. “Not at all, no. It’s like a goddamn dream.”

Adam grins at him, happy and awake and finally filled out in his form, and kisses Ronan back. “Well, if it is, then I never want to wake up.”

#pynchweek17 #pynchweek #pynch #ronan lynch #adam parrish #day 7 #accidental baby acquisition #OCs #my writing

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