Chapter Text
Ronan Lynch is not lonely.
The thing is, he wasn’t lonely a year ago. He still believes that. He was happy with his life. It hadn’t been lacking, despite what Declan and Ned and Matthew and Jordan all seemed to think. It was wilder in his youth, sure, but it had settled into something quiet and rich and a little bit wonderful. He had family who loved him, and he had friends who were there when he needed them and only occasionally annoyed him when he didn’t, and that wasn’t even close to nothing.
He’s not lonely now, for all of the same reasons, and also because Adam Parrish is sitting next to him, holding his hand.
At the kids table.
Because apparently, some things don’t change even when you do get yourself a boyfriend.
“Didn’t you work the Christmas shift last year?” Jordan asks Adam. “Do you guys not switch years or something? They should owe you time off.”
Adam chews a bit of ham before speaking. “I volunteered. I usually do. You get to call in favors all year for stuff like this. And it was before…” he trails off with a quick glance in Ronan’s direction, then finishes with, “Spending Christmas behind the bar is always better than spending it alone in my apartment.”
Ronan squeezes Adam’s hand under the table.
They’d taken Ronan’s car down to the Barns that morning. Adam tried to argue that it made more sense to drive separately so that Ronan could spend more time with his family. Ronan, naturally, decided that was a stupid idea. He’s not spending one second of a single holiday apart from Adam, not now. They’ll stay the night, and stick around in the morning for stockings and presents and baked eggs, and then they’ll hit the road north together. Ronan’s actually looking forward to a little time away from everyone, if he’s honest. They have years of holidays ahead of them to spend with his stupid family.
Dinner on Christmas Eve is early, and relatively subdued for a Lynch family affair. They pass around Virginia baked ham and scalloped potatoes and a winter squash salad, and then they get back to the real work before the sun goes down. Jordan and Ned fight over kitchen space for gingerbread and snowballs, while Marie gathers wood for the fire.
Ronan steps out onto the porch. The air outside tingles his nose and the bare arms of the trees grasp upwards like witch’s fingers. Of course there’s no snow yet, but the sky teases at the possibility. This far south, the snow rarely shows up before the new year. They’d had a white Christmas, once; the storm came early and hard, blanketing the country in a foot of soft powder. The kind to sled on, to form into snowballs, to dig into forts. Ronan remembers it like a dream, fuzzy and magic and prone to disappear if he looks directly at it.
The ordinary, everyday magic of the season comes from putting out the luminaries. They’ll hug the sides of the road, transforming the long, winding driveway to the Barns into a fairy path out of one of Niall’s stories. The votives flicker and dance, setting the bags glowing with an unearthly light as soon as the winter sun sets. Ronan loves luminaries in a way he can’t quite explain. It’s always seemed as if God belongs there, in that space between the lights, warmly welcoming them home from midnight Mass, even more than He belongs in the church itself.
What Ronan decidedly does not love is folding the stupid white paper bags in preparation for laying the lights. He could never get the hang of it, growing up. Declan’s careful hands would produce perfect bags, the lines precise and the folds a uniform width. Ronan’s clumsy, impatient fingers always ripped the edges. Somehow he and Adam had gotten bag duty anyways, so he reluctantly steps back inside to set up camp in the den.
It turns out that Adam, being perfect, is a bag folding wizard. Ronan crumples up his shitty attempts with a grumble and dumps the rest of his pile on top of Adam’s.
“Ass.” Adam doesn’t look up from where his slender, clever fingers are busy crimping.
“You’re better than me,” Ronan argues.
“Classic weaponized incompetence,” Adam says. “Next you’ll tell me you can’t do laundry because I’m so much better at that, too.”
Ronan laughs. “You can’t do laundry. You’ve shrunk, like, three shirts in a month.”
Strange that it’s only been a month since they started dating and their clothes are already getting mixed up. It’s endearing, really, the way Adam refuses to take the dry-clean-only instructions on the tags seriously because he claims it’s a waste of time and money. Ronan doesn’t own any dry-clean only clothes, so it’s not his problem. He mostly just likes to watch Adam rush around, pissed off and shirtless, searching for something to wear that he hasn’t ruined.
When the bags are ready, Ronan and Adam (but mostly Adam) pass them off to Declan and his team of tiny assistants to begin filling with sand and candles. The girls load up an ancient red-painted wagon and trundle down the driveway.
“Come on,” Ronan says, tapping his knuckles into Adam’s arm. “Let’s get out of here before we get roped into anything else.”
Ronan shows Adam the Barns. He’s been here before, of course, but it was different before. Now, Ronan shows him the corner stall he tripped into that left him with three stitches and the small scar on his upper lip, and the gallery Wall of Shame featuring the most hideous pieces Niall had acquired over the decades, and the smaller, tucked away corner with Niall’s own half-baked creations, and the bare patch of earth that used to be their boxing ring, watered with years of Lynch blood. Adam kisses him in his childhood bedroom and again on the flat-topped roof of the barn where Ronan used to hide, scared and ashamed of what he thought he might be.
They resurface in time for a supper of leftover ham sandwiches, and then Ronan helps Ned start a fire while Declan passes out the hot chocolate and Christmas cookies. The girls jump around and shriek until Jordan passes them each a small gift, which they descend on in rabid fever.
“Wouldn’t have pegged you guys for a presents on Christmas Eve kind of family,” Adam whispers. “That’s, like, against all traditions of God and Man.”
Ronan can’t help a grin. He feels incredibly known. “We aren’t, really; it’s only to prevent a meltdown. It was the same with us when we were kids. The one-present-before-Mass rule was implemented just so we’d shut up and actually get some sleep.”
“Are they not a little young for that, too?” Adam asks.
“For what?”
“Staying up all night for a church service.”
Ronan looks at him in disbelief. “It’s midnight Mass. No one’s too young for it.”
Adam grimaces. “Just saying. It’s past their bedtime. They’re gonna sleep through the whole thing.”
“Rite of passage,” Ronan shrugs. He’d never fallen asleep, with his head overfull of lights and carols and presents and Christmas cookies, but Matthew conked out every year.
In the end, Adam is the one they lose during the service at St. Agnes. His head nods down toward Ronan’s shoulder as his breathing evens out. Ronan takes a moment to wonder what his younger self would think at the picture. He remembers all the fear and uncertainty and terrible guilt he’d grappled with for years in this very pew, and he smiles. He doesn’t look around to see if anyone else in the congregation minds. His cheek drops down to rest on top of Adam’s head, and he closes his eyes dutifully as the choir intones, sleep in heavenly peace!
When Mass is over, Ronan herds Adam up the stairs to the hall bathroom. Adam mechanically washes his face and brushes his teeth, eyes blinking drowsily, while Ronan intervenes to stop him slathering his toothbrush with soap.
“Jesus, Parrish, did someone put valium in your hot chocolate?”
“Shut up,” Adam says around a mouthful of toothbrush. “’m cozy.”
“Cozy?” Ronan laughs.
Adam spits. “Yeah. You know. This whole day has been, all, warm and soft, and I’m in fuzzy socks and my head’s all twinkling lights. Cozy. It always makes me tired.”
Ronan kisses the side of his twinkling-lights head. “Alright, let’s get you to bed, you invalid.”
Something else Ronan likes about having a boyfriend is the casual mundanity of contact. Whenever he wants, he can just reach out and touch. He doesn’t even have to think about it, and he’s never denied. He couldn’t have guessed a year ago that quiet, straight-laced, put-together Adam Parrish would be this way. He presses into every touch, he tangles their legs together when they’re sitting and fits his arms under Ronan’s when they’re in the kitchen. In bed, Adam curls around Ronan like a bony squid. Ronan knows what he meant, earlier, about being cozy; his entire chest is warm with it. Still, he has a job to do. He waits to hear Adam’s breathing even out again, and then slithers out of his grasp and tiptoes downstairs.
He finds Declan in the living room, putting the finishing touches and “From: Santa” labels on a small mountain of presents. Declan nods at him, and gestures to the empty stockings over the fireplace. Ronan sits down to begin filling them with the toys and candy laid out on the table.
“Your kids are spoiled. They’re gonna grow up to be assholes.”
Declan doesn’t stop writing, but the corners of his mouth twitch. “We were spoiled.”
“Yeah,” Ronan agrees. “And look how we turned out.”
“Jordan knows how to put her foot down.”
Ronan snorts, disbelieving. Jordan talks a big game, but she’s worse than Declan.
“She asleep?”
“Yeah, she agreed to wake up early,” Declan says softly. “I doubt anyone will be able to sleep in much, but I’m hoping to get to at least eight o’clock.”
Ronan hangs the stuffed stockings back up over the fireplace, then puts the present he’d brought downstairs underneath the tree. In the morning, he’ll watch Adam’s face as he finds it nestled in with all the others addressed to the Lynches, another datapoint to add to the growing pile: I’m thinking about you. I always think about you. For now, though, he’s wanted upstairs.
*
They’re practically the only car on the road as they drive back into the city. Ronan loves this part of the season, too: the stillness of the city streets as they hold their breath for a few days before the crowds pour over them to celebrate the new year.
In his apartment, Adam quickly showers and changes for his shift. As he heads toward the door, Ronan grabs his coat and fits a beanie on his head.
“Where are you going?” Adam asks.
“With you.”
Adam looks at him. “You don’t need to keep me company. It'll be really boring. I thought you were just gonna wait here.”
“You think I want to spend Christmas alone? This is for me, Parrish, not you.”
Adam’s eyes narrow. “If you say so.”
He doesn’t put up any more of an argument, though, just holds the door open and lets Ronan lock it behind them.
The evening passes quietly. Ronan takes his usual stool at the side of the bar farthest from the door, and Adam spends his time wiping down the bottles on the back shelf. Once, he lets out a small, disbelieving laugh as he turns back around and catches Ronan’s eye.
Ronan gets it. It’s a freaky sort of déjà-vu, sitting here on Christmas with no one else around, watching the pretty bartender with the narrow eyes and jutting wrists and wondering what it might feel like to be in love.
“Weird year, huh?” he says, starting to smile too.
Adam presses his lips together and nods, eyes shining.
“Need a date for New Year’s Eve?”
“Oh, damn,” he says, “sorry. I’ve already got a boyfriend.”
Ronan frowns. “He must be something, for you to turn me down. I’ve been told I’m a pretty big catch. Hot, too.”
“He’s kind of a dick, actually. Unfortunately, I kinda love him.”
“Oh, you kinda do, huh?” Ronan grins.
Adam pushes a glass of whiskey, neat, toward him. “Don’t push it.”
Of course Ronan is going to push it. That’s what they do. He feels the warmth spreading inside before he even takes a sip.
At last, Adam calls it a night. Ronan waits around as he closes up and they take their time walking back to his apartment. They kiss on the streetcorner until the walk sign beeps, and then they kiss for longer in front of the darkened window of the neighborhood weed store. Improbably, a few snowflakes begin to fall, like some stupid rom-com. When they get back inside, Ronan fiddles with the key on the side of the gas fireplace while Adam sets cider to simmer on the stove.
They find each other again in front of the crackling fire, sinking to the floor with their backs against the couch. They’d learned the hard way that Adam’s shitty secondhand couch is not up to having two six-foot-plus grown men piled together on it. Ronan pulls the throw blanket down and wraps them in it.
“We need, like, a bearskin rug to complete the picture,” Adam muses.
“That’s what does it for you, huh? Me, naked, rolling around on an animal skin? Have you been reading those romance novels again?”
“Only if you shoot and skin it yourself. Otherwise you’re just a poser.”
“I’m not shooting a poor, cute, defenseless little bear for you.”
“Well, I’m not gonna fuck you on the floor in front of a fire, then.”
Ronan grabs Adam’s chin to turn his head. He grins as he leans in. “Wanna bet?”
+ New Year's Eve, again
Six days later, Ronan’s sorting laundry when his phone buzzes.
Hennessy: are you guys really not coming out tonight?
Ronan: really not. enjoy your sparkly loud bullshit party
Hennessy: you’re both dickheads
Ronan puts the phone down at the sound of a knock. He should really get an extra key made already.
On the other side of the door, Adam Parrish is wearing sweatpants and holding up two plastic bags. “I got Duke’s.”
“I love you.” Ronan reels him in by his ratty t shirt and kisses him. “Happy New Year.”