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Ronan was a dreamer – there was no denying this statement, not after everything that had happened during his senior year of high school. He was also a thief – this statement was a little more flexible to debate. Before he had understood Cabeswater, before he had truly accepted that it was his own manifestation, there had been Kavinsky. They were not friends, but they had been something – they had been alike creatures. But Kavinsky had been an asshole who taught Ronan how to be a good thief. Of course then Kavinsky had gotten greedy and lost his wits and perished in a ball of flame, as one does.
So yes, it was debatable as to whether or not Ronan Lynch was a thief, but that he was a dreamer: indisputable.
To dream was to be free and imprisoned in the same breath. One had the entire capacity of their imagination to wander through, but found that the limitations often dead ended against the inside of the human skull. Scattered thoughts and wild imagery raced and tangled together through synapses and neurons and created a scape so graphic that the inexperienced would struggle to identify imaginary from reality.
But Ronan was no amateur. Ronan’s thoughts could be drawn into order and arranged like a perfect symphony on a sheet of music notes, everything exactly where it should be to make the entire world sound absolutely right. And if he wanted to pluck a certain note from the lines and shape its sound into physical form, than so be it.
Ronan could dream up many wild things, most often things that did not exist in his world, but there was nothing to stop him from dreaming them up and dragging them into his reality. Not all of his creations were perfect, seldom few looked as if they had actually been created in this plane of existence, which is exactly how Ronan knew that he had not dreamed up one Adam Parrish.
They joked about it sometimes, Ronan pretending to be cheesy on nights when Adam was visiting the Barns, their limbs tangled together in a messy knot of Adam and Ronan until they were more like Adam and Ronan as one conjoined being. Adam would usually be dragging calloused fingertips over the dips and rises of Ronan’s collarbones, blue eyes tracing the movement of his fingers. Ronan would often be studiously memorizing the constellations of Adam’s freckles and the curve of his nose, the slight pout of his lips and the angled line of his jaw. Nowadays they often went months without seeing each other, Adam furiously studying his way through college and Ronan dedicated to the upkeep of the Barns and making sure Opal didn’t eat an entire tree. But on nights like these, they would simply lay with each other, listening to the soft cadence of spring rain on the windows and the roof and study one another.
“Sometimes I wonder if I dreamt you,” Ronan whispered into the dim room, his breath fanning over Adam’s face, making his eyelashes flutter as he blinked. Usually he sounded like he was joking, but tonight he sounded soft and serious and timid.
“Ronan,” Adam said quietly, fingers stilling in the groove of Ronan’s collarbone. Shit. He had heard more than Ronan said; Adam heard what he meant. “You know I’m real.”
“Matthew is real, Opal is real,” Ronan said in return, his tone quiet and resigned. “I dreamt them but they’re real. It could be the same with you, just like how my father dreamt my mother.”
“Ronan,” Adam said again, his voice still quiet, still soft, but firmer than the first time. Ronan lifted his eyes from the freckles on Adam’s cheeks to his blue eyes. That stunning, flawless blue that Ronan had to convince himself was real and not a product of his own mind. He did this often with himself whenever Adam was tangled in his limbs, or hundreds of miles away at school. Ronan had to convince himself that the things he saw in Adam that he thought were too perfect to be real were indeed real and not dreamt up from the chaos of his thoughts.
“Ronan,” Adam repeated a third time, pulling Ronan back from wandering thoughts. “I am real. My mom and dad live in a trailer park just a few miles from here. Remember? My parents? Dream things don’t have parents because you are the one that created them.”
Adam sat up and dragged Ronan up with him. They were still tangled together, more Adam and Ronan as one than Adam and Ronan separately. Adam was practically in Ronan’s lap and Ronan was more than happy to drag Adam closer to him among the messy bed sheets. He was about to do just that when Adam’s hand was suddenly between them and grasping Ronan’s wrist with his slender, nimble fingers.
“Here,” Adam breathed, guiding Ronan’s hand to Adam’s naked chest and settling Ronan’s palm over where his heart was. Both of them knew that the steady, rhythmic beat of Adam’s heart pumping beneath Ronan’s fingers was no guarantee or proof that Adam was not a dreamt thing, but it was reassurance of Adam’s presence.
A heartbeat was such a fragile thing. Ronan’s fingers curled inward over Adam’s warm skin and he leaned in to tuck his head against the curve of Adam’s neck, pressing close and relishing in the warmth of life and love radiating from his boyfriend’s skin.
They were so young, both of them were, and so were Blue and Gansey. And Gansey. Ronan didn’t like to admit it, not even to Adam let alone himself, that losing Gansey for those brief few hiccupping minutes had been the most terrifying thing Ronan had ever experienced. He had found his father murdered in their backyard, had seen the horrific entrails of his beloved, beautiful mother splattered over the dying ground of Cabeswater, had almost lost Adam to a demon keen on unmaking existence, had seen too much and lost too much and yet it was Gansey, Gansey, Gansey. It had been watching Gansey of all people, a king among men, Ronan’s best friend who had never given up on him despite every shitty, awful thing Ronan had done, collapse in Blue’s arms, dead, and still, and cold, and dead that had finally ruined him. Even if it had lasted for only a few stuttering minutes, Ronan had shattered and left more than a few pieces of himself behind on the side of that quiet road.
They were – all of them – too young for this, too young for everything and Ronan tried desperately to focus on the gentle warmth of Adam’s skin instead of on the crushing weight of what he didn’t want to remember. But it wasn’t working, it wasn’t working, it wasn’t working, it wasn’t—
“Ronan? Hey, hey hey hey, Ronan,” Adam’s voice sounded muffled and distant and Ronan could barely feel Adam against him, could barely tell if they were still Adam and Ronan as one or Adam and Ronan as two. His senses weren’t working right and he wondered if he had actually been dreaming this whole time and this was just the paralysis stage that followed his waking.
“Breathe, Ronan,” Adam’s distant voice was in Ronan’s ear and there was a warm solid weight against Ronan’s back that he wasn’t sure when it had gotten there. But it was real, it was real, it was real and that was all Ronan needed right now. Something real.
“Ronan,” came Adam’s voice again, softer, a little clearer, but Ronan’s chest was aching and he couldn’t tell how much of him was conscious and how much of him was paralyzed. There was a small, centered weight right on Ronan’s chest and it moved slowly but with warm, grounding pressure up and down the valley of Ronan’s sternum.
“Respirare,” Adam murmured as the soothing pressure continued to move steadily, up and down, up and down. Ronan’s chest didn’t hurt so much now. “Reversus est ad me.”
He tried. Ronan really tried to breathe and find his way back into all of his limbs. Adam was there – the weight against his back was Adam’s chest and the warm pressure on Ronan’s chest was Adam’s hand, his calloused knuckles moving in a pattern to encourage steadier breaths. It was enough, it was enough, it was real and it was enough. Ronan found his breath and he found his limbs, his fingers and toes, and he found his way back. Once he found his way back, Ronan settled into his limbs and uncoiled his muscles sagging against Adam’s chest and heaving out a breath of air that had been trapped in his lungs. Sucking in a new lungful of the warm air in the bedroom had never given Ronan such a euphoric feeling as it did now.
Adam’s nose pressed gently into the dip behind Ronan’s ear and his warm breath burrowed and fanned over the skin there as he pushed out a relieved sigh. It tickled a little, but Ronan didn’t move away from the gesture, limbs exhausted and spirit tired.
“This is a stupid question,” Adam murmured against Ronan’s neck. “But are you okay?”
“Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit,” Ronan said quietly instead of answering, lifting one hand to wrap around the hand Adam had settled against his chest. Adam’s hands were warm and steady, and Ronan wondered often if he could find a whole new universe hidden in the shallow lines of Adam’s palms. He clumsily braided their fingers among each other, holding Adam’s hand in silence.
“Ronan,” Adam tried again – and Ronan really loved the way Adam said his name – sounding a little worried and a little exasperated. But Ronan simply murmured a very quiet affection and brought Adam’s fingers to his mouth. He didn’t put them lovingly between his lips as he so often dreamt of doing and more and more often did when awake; he instead pressed his dry lips to Adam’s even drier fingers and simply studied. Adam’s knuckle nestled perfectly between the crease of Ronan’s lips meeting and he merely kissed and held Adam’s fingers there.
Adam didn’t try to make Ronan talk. Ronan appreciated it. But after a moment, he spoke anyway.
“We’re so young,” Ronan said softly, staring across the room at his bookshelf. It had more dream trinkets on it than books. “We’re so young and we’ve all died somehow. It’s fucking stupid.”
The fingers around Ronan’s hand tightened in a reassuring, grounding squeeze. Ronan loved Adam’s hands. He especially loved his fingers. They were the perfect embodiment of who Adam was as a person. He had tried to explain this to Adam once, but his words hadn’t come out right and he had stopped before he made a fool of himself, blushing hard anyway.
Adam didn’t understand, but he did, and he never teased Ronan about it. They teased about a lot of things, but this was not one of them.
“Is that what made you panic just now?” Adam asked, quick to the point but gentle nonetheless. Ronan thought Adam was too good for him, but the last time he had said this to Adam, it had ended in a quiet, loving lecture and a kiss Ronan would never forget.
Ronan didn’t trust his voice and merely nodded. Adam’s arms around Ronan’s slumped figure tightened ever so slightly. He squeezed Adam’s hand in return.
“We’re alive, we’re okay,” Adam stated clearly, as if Ronan didn’t already know these facts. “Gansey, Blue, Opal, Matthew, me and you, we’re all alive. We’re going to be okay now. All that mess is over.”
“I know,” Ronan said softly, because he did know.
“We’re both okay,” Adam murmured into Ronan’s skin, because they were okay.
“I love you,” Ronan said with his fingers tangled in Adam’s, because he did love him.
They were tangled limbs and dreams and thoughts shared in whispers, they were magician and dreamer, they were reckless and wild beings, they were broken and reassembled, damaged but functional. They were something more and they were everything they needed to be but ever growing. They were Adam and Ronan separately and they were Adam and Ronan whole. Ronan had spoken because he felt he should in that moment, but he didn’t mind if Adam didn’t answer, because he knew Adam felt the same. Neither of them ever felt obligated to put their love into words every time they felt it. Ronan and Adam felt love for each other several times a day and to say it every moment they felt it would leave them with seldom other words passed between them. So they only said it when feeling love became so overwhelming it had to be released.
Adam’s smile pressed against Ronan’s skin and he bent his head to kiss Ronan’s shoulder and whisper a full and fond, “I love you too,” against the fringes of Ronan’s expansive tattoo.
Ronan Lynch could dream up a lot of things, but he knew for certain that he could not dream up someone like Adam Parrish. Ronan knew his own mind well enough to know that someone as beautiful and complex and broken but still functional as Adam could be nothing but a natural human.
Besides, Ronan’s first kiss had been Adam Parrish, and Adam Parrish had existed long before Ronan had even known the idea of kissing him. And anyway, it was one thing to have an idea of kissing Adam Parrish, and it was another thing – another thing entirely too real to be a dream – to kiss Adam Parrish and feel him set Ronan’s soul on fire.