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New York City is nice. Adam thinks "nice” is the perfect word for it, more fitting than all the colourful descriptors thrown his way before moving. Wonderful, life changing, rat infested, lonely – he’s heard it all. It’s all those things, sure, but none of it describes the relief of having to move quickly and anonymously, of everyone being equally ignored, of being crammed into dirty subway cars with eclectic crowds. All these people wearing rags, wearing Gucci, reading People, reading David Foster Wallace, all in the same groaning tin-can. There’s an egalitarianism to it all. It’s just – nice.
“Nice!” Gansey exclaims on the phone, when Adam unpacks the last of his boxes in his musty, one-bedroom apartment. “Surely, you’ve got more stories. How’s your job! How are the hot-dogs! How’s cavorting in all the hipster bars!”
“Didn’t know you knew what a hipster was,” Adam replies, taking a bite of his dinner – an overpriced cheeseburger from the artisanal burger place next door. He felt dead inside buying it but, well, he lived in Brooklyn.
“I expect a Patti Smith-style memoir on your adventures the next time I call,” Gansey says, before pausing for a bit. It’s Gansey’s pauses that Adam always dreads because it means Gansey's going to bring up –
“How’s Ronan?”
“He’s fine,” Adam sighs, “He sent me a picture of a pink cow like an hour ago.”
“Oh, he told me about that beast. I think it squirts out strawberry milk.” Another pause. “You must miss him.”
“Eh,” Adam says, and finishes his burger.
*
Adam works at a successful litigation firm in Manhattan, his long days usually consisting of associates dumping files on his desk, and efficiently speeding through interviews with beleaguered clients. He spends every hour-long lunch break resisting the urge to buy subpar frozen yogurt and snapping pictures of pampered dogs to send to Ronan.
that last one looked fucked up, Ronan’s latest message reads, its like someone dipped a rat in chocolate sauce.
I think that’s shit on its mouth, Adam replies. Are we skyping tonight?
Three familiar dots linger at the bottom of the screen, and Adam can physically feel Ronan being caught between an eye-roll and genuine contemplation. Generally, Ronan is very against Skype – Adam had gotten an earful of run-on expletives back when Ronan was trying to install it on his computer. And yet Ronan used it almost nightly, which Adam considers a sign of true love.
yea whatever after i feed the cows, Ronan finally replies. After a few seconds he adds, see u then honey bunch!! just to be an asshole.
Adam smiles despite himself. Ronan’s shitty jokes would have annoyed him a couple of years ago, but they're now a welcome reminder that nothing’s really changed. Sighing, he puts his phone away and glances skyward. Blue sky. Pleasing, fat clouds. If Adam keeps his neck inclined, he can pretend that he's back at the Barns, surrounded by green knolls and bone-white sunlight filtered through dreamt-up branches.
He hates these breaks. Whenever he has free time to himself, unoccupied by calendar updates and admin, his thoughts wander to Henrietta. He thinks of the women of 300 Fox Way, sitting cross-legged and completely unchanged, fanning out their cards and pouring each other hybrid teas. He thinks of Blue, bursting through the door, stomping upstairs and collapsing in her cluttered bedroom for weeks at a time, when she isn’t out in tropical rainforests testing salinity levels. And Gansey, coming by to eat home-cooked stew with her, overflowing with updates on his archaeological digs.
Adam thinks of Cabeswater, its ancient trees rotting. Most of all, he thinks of Ronan.
He doesn’t miss Henrietta, because missing that shithole is a deeply offensive thought. But when he finally lowers his head, and his vision fills with concrete slopes, cluttered storefronts and strategically spaced trees, he feels an ache in his chest he can’t quite pin down.
*
That night, he has to ignore Ronan’s call because he’s stuck on the receiving end of a client’s tirade. Over the past few months, Adam had flexed his fearsome ability to land vast settlements. His growing reputation as a shark means that, nowadays, he's more of an agony aunt than a lawyer.
When he calls back, and Ronan’s face fills the screen, Adam can see he’s annoyed.
“If you’re going to be pissed the whole time, put Opal on,” he says placidly, “I miss your dream spawn.”
Ronan snorts. “She’s sleeping. You’re crazy if you think I let her stay up past midnight.”
“If she’s anything like her father, I’d go double check she hasn’t snuck out the bedroom window by now. I heard he was a nightmare at that age.”
“God,” Ronan laughs, all traces of irritation suddenly gone at the thought of Opal. “Lately she’s been throwing these tantrums where she kicks all my shit over whenever I say it’s time for lessons. I’m sorta proud.”
Adam shakes his head. “I hope you’re not slacking off. We were making so much progress with our English lessons.”
"She ate all the books you gave her.”
“Well, she still read some of them.”
They talk about Opal for a while, both wishing they could send her to a real school, where she could mingle with other kids. Sadly, the Hoof Issue and Aggressive Biting Issue are topics that can’t be easily resolved. Ronan tells Adam that she’s much calmer these days, and spends most of her time helping him out with agricultural duties. Since inheriting the Barns, Ronan has turned the place into a farmer market’s dream – with only half the produce being magical in nature. Ronan’s particularly proud of his traditionally-grown tomatoes, which the whole of Henrietta is salivating over.
“I regret dreaming the pink cow though,” Ronan says, “I didn’t really think about its diet. It ate a fuckload of my strawberries.”
“Since when do you like strawberry milk?” Adam says, wrinkling his nose.
“I don’t. Just thought it’d be funny.”
Adam sighs, and they silently stare at each other for a while. Ronan’s features are as sharp as ever, but there’s something soft in his eyes these days, even when he’s mad at Adam for ignoring his calls.
“So,” Ronan says finally, “Are we jerking off or are you showing me the rest of your finished apartment?”
*
Every night, Adam spends a lot of time staring at Ronan’s pixelated collarbones, angry he can’t touch them. Every day, Adam’s reputation at the office grows, and he gets all-sorts milling around his desk – interns asking him about precedents, the partners briskly asking him about his day, everyone asking him out to drinks.
The admiration flatters him, as it always has. But he never accepts social invitations. It’s his feeling of rootlessness that helps him enjoy New York, and friends seem like unwieldy plants that require too much pruning.
One morning, when Adam is ambling to the break room for an espresso shot (or several), it happens. Instead of a sleek coffee island, Adam sees sprawling tree roots and clustered branches protruding from marble countertops. Thick layers of moss are spread out across the floor like homey green throw rugs. For a moment, he’s speechless. Then, there’s a firm and familiar tug inside him – a sensation Adam thought he’d lost for good. Cabeswater.
“You still with us, Parrish?” A co-worker asks, waving a hand in front of his face. The guy nonchalantly steps into the moss, which clings to the soles of his shining Thomas Birds.
He can’t see it, Adam realises.
“I’m fine,” Adam says immediately, “Just need to, uh, wake up a bit.”
“Know how you feel,” his co-worker says, sympathetic. “It’s such an ungodly hour. If I don’t get my fix, I’ll start hallucinating.”
“Ha,” Adam says and feels vines curl around his ankles, like a cat rubbing against an old friend.
*
He contemplates calling Ronan, but is instantly turned off by the idea of disrupting Ronan’s entire schedule so he can humour Adam’s meltdown. Instead he takes a deep breath, and rummages through his consciousness for Cabeswater. It’s there, a sharp and insistent presence. And, really, it isn’t that strange – he should have foreseen another Cabeswater existing somewhere or, at the very least, that the old one would have its roots still in him.
So he continues on with his week. He takes calls, reads through cases and organises the firm’s digital files. He tries his best to ignore the creeping vines and lush greenery crawling over doorjambs and cracks in the floor, eager to reach him. At closing, he spots more and more of those fluffy blue dream flowers from the Barns, blooming in orderly patterns across the receptionist’s desk and into the lobby like a fairy path.
“Have a good night, Mr. Parrish,” the receptionist says, more flowers bursting open in the spaces between her fingers.
“You too,” Adam says, in his most pleasant Dick the Third voice.
*
On his way home one night, Adam sees Burger King advertising fifty cent shakes. He remembers that when he first came to this city, when all he could afford were cheap burgers and watered-down Coke, he’d experienced a shameful thrill every time he saw food deals like this. Now that he can afford work dinners at swanky top tens every other week, he gets a little nostalgic for those humble discount meals and the different person he’d been then, just a few months ago.
So he gets a strawberry milkshake, and tells himself it’s for no particular reason. Thankfully, there’s not a single plant in sight, his only company being greasy table tops and the surrounding noisy kids who are stuffing their mouths with sober-up fries. Adam sits some ways off, watching pigeons flutter in and out of the doorway, feeling disappointed by his watery milkshake and longing for the ones Blue use to whip up at Nino’s. Everything feels blessedly normal and slightly hollow. It's what Adam’s used to.
But when he opens the door to the bathroom, he’s greeted by an entire forest. It’s vast – covered in sweeping fog that flows over clusters of moss-covered rocks and thick tufts of grass. The trees are whispering their familiar Latin song, so tall that Adam can’t make out the tops of them. In the centre of the forest, there’s Ronan, questionably dressed in duckling patterned boxers and Adam’s holey, grease-stained T-shirt.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Adam says, all casual.
Despite the strangeness of the situation, Ronan’s shoulders are completely relaxed. He watches Adam for a few seconds before stepping closer, each stride full of purpose.
Adam hasn’t had Ronan physically near him for so long that he feels his heart instantly jackhammer in his chest. Ronan reaches out to touch his face and Adam tilts his head, touching his mouth to familiar leather wristbands.
Ronan huffs, “Why does this feel so real?”
“I’m in a Burger King bathroom right now,” Adam says, firmly, to remind himself that this is all really happening. With Ronan so near, it's too easy to give into his thundering pulse, and accept this as a crazy dream. Adam knows better. Cabeswater’s whispers over the past week have led to this moment.
“Right,” Ronan says, whipping his head around at the dense cluster of trees. “Didn’t realise Burger King was so eco-friendly.”
“Shut up,” Adam says, and kisses Ronan violently. He feels hands slide into his hair, so gentle and familiar that he hurts all over. Ronan feels – electric, solid. There’s a strange, dream-like quality to his touch that reminds Adam this isn’t quite real, but it’s miles beyond the shitty webcam quality he’s used to. Filled with stupid passion, he bites down on Ronan’s lip, startling laugh from him. When they pull apart, Ronan’s hands slide down to frame his face.
“If I bring back something dumb, like a lock of your hair, I’m going to hate myself,” Ronan mumbles with a smile.
“Can you really not see that door?” Adam says, waving a few feet behind him at the door of the men’s room, floating in thin air, garishly out of place. “Ronan, this isn’t a dream. I’m real.”
“Well, I’m definitely asleep,” Ronan says mulishly, “I was re-growing my strawberries.”
“When are those things ever mutually exclusive with us?”
“Hmm,” Ronan hums, sliding his hand down to find Adam’s, “you feel a little fuzzy.”
“The signal’s not perfect,” Adam says, amused. They both tangle their fingers together at the same time; pure muscle memory. Ronan methodically rubs at each knuckle, as if he’s counting rosary beads, pressing callused skin against callused skin. He must miss these hands a lot, Adam thinks, smiling faintly. Pacified, he leans against Ronan’s chest, feeling strong arms brace him. All of a sudden, it seems like his bones can’t hold all of him up. “You smell like cow shit,” he says, cheerfully.
“Yeah, I’m passed out on a hay bale,” Ronan says into his hair, “Mucking pens is the worst. I feel like these cows shit more than they should be shitting.”
“I love how you’re spending our dream Skype session talking about shit.”
“Shit is my basically my life now,” Ronan replies, before adding, “and you.” Adam grins at the strange and shy way he says it. They’ve been dating for almost six years but here they are, tentatively hugging in a forest that may or may not be corporeal.
From where Adam’s hands are flat against Ronan’s shoulders, he swears he can feel all that twisting, familiar ink, radiating from under the thin cotton, brimming with so much life and presence that Adam forgot he hasn’t touched it in months.
That’s real enough for him.
Later, when he steps outside into the balmy, still-teeming midnight streets of Manhattan, the scent of mist inexplicably wafting from his clothes, he dials the Barns’ landline. Although Ronan has been more amenable to his cell lately, Adam’s not taking chances. The line goes through almost immediately.
“Cute ducklings,” Adam says as greeting, “Are those boxers new?”
There’s silence for a while, filling Adam with slow satisfaction. “Admit I was right,” he says, when Ronan’s remains stubbornly silent.
“I never said you were wrong.”
“Okay, but what’s going on?” Adam says, breathless and impatient, “Are you messing with Cabeswater again?”
“If you mean, am I trying to fix it – duh,” Ronan says stiffly, “I’m always dreaming about it.”
Adam knows. To him and Ronan, Cabeswater is an old, slippery lover that forever shadows their dreams. He’d tried to pack this part of him away neatly, the way Gansey and Blue had; happy to race towards the promise of fresh discovery with the guile of new-borns, whether they did it together or not. The future sprawls in endless directions when one escapes death. But for Adam, even racing seven hours up the coast couldn’t shake the forest’s caress.
“Maybe it’s trying to tell me something again. These visions.”
“When did you start seeing them?” There’s an unusual edge of excitement to his voice. Adam wonders if long distance astral projection was one of the stealth improvements he’d been trying to introduce all along. “What were you feeling, then?”
“Last week,” Adam replies. He thinks of the single, sterile coffee island. His aggressively air-conditioned office. The swoop of Ronan’s dumb, blurry shoulders. Lonesome. “I was feelin’ bored, I guess.”
“Bored?” Ronan says, in the same tone he’d usually say bullshit.
“Tired. Hungry. Annoyed. I don’t know. I work in litigation; I’m feeling a lot of mildly negative emotions at any given time.”
“Then maybe you should make friends instead of being a fucking loner.”
Adam snorts. “Says you. “When’s last time you talked to someone who wasn’t me?”
“Gansey calls me, like, every night.”
“He doesn’t count. He’s more like your personal barnacle than a friend.”
“I don’t need friends – I have Opal, Chainsaw and my tomatoes. Meanwhile, you’re manifesting a forest in Burger King ’cause you don’t have anyone to distract you from being horny for me.”
“Thank you,” Adam snaps, “I feel so supported right now.”
“You’re welcome, babe.”
Adam sighs, and observes the throng of bar patrons shuffling past him, smelling strongly of whiskey, tobacco, and hot-dog stand chilli. They smell of the city, faces flushed with pleasure. One of the guys has a shaved head, but the barely discernible fuzz there is honey-coloured. It’s all wrong. But if Adam squints, he can pretend that the buzzed forehead and slouching carelessness is as familiar as day.
“Ronan,” he says into the phone, “D’you think I could bring you here again?”
“Dunno why the hell you’re asking me,” Ronan says, and Adam can hear the grin in his voice, “If you’ve already decided to do it, it’ll happen.”
“I’ll give you that apartment tour,” Adam promises, beginning the slow trundle home, “considering we got distracted last time.”
*
New York becomes forever different, but Adam’s not as weirded out as he’d expected. His routine hasn’t changed, nor has the charm of the city’s bizarre patchwork bustle. It’s just that, now, everything comes with a generous helping of kaleidoscopic flowers and an unstoppable growth of alien trees, all anxious to get near him, craving his attention.
Unlike back in Henrietta, where Cabeswater’s visions were a mode of communication, here the forest seems to sprout and flower with little rhyme or reason. The vines in his office grow thicker, beginning to attract Ulysses butterflies and tiny spiders that skirt around him when he moves to gather case files. On his walks home, he instinctively ducks around towering whitewood trees, and holds his hand in front of him to part sheets of swirling fog.
He grows used to it. He even gains a strange sort of peace from glancing outside the thirtieth storey window during meetings, observing the vast, mist-wreathed canopies. It keeps him from turning into his greying peers from the office, lulling him into a magical world where Ronan could appear at any moment.
*
“Are you sticking around?”
Adam looks up from his meeting notes. The office is fuller than usual at this hour, filled with a lively din of chatter. The receptionist is smiling at Adam expectantly, and hands him a bottle of Schnapps. For the first time, his eyes zero in on her name tag. Ivy.
“Sticking around for what?” Adam asks, cautiously.
“Oh, that party everyone’s been talking about for weeks,” Ivy says wryly, “It’s Pete’s birthday — half the office has gone off on a pilgrimage to find an extravagant, three-tiered sponge cake. You know how ridiculous Pete is about his food.”
Adam, in fact, doesn't know how Peter is about anything. He suddenly feels shamed for not knowing it's his birthday; the only time he’d spoken to Peter all day was to chastise him for his sloppy record-keeping habits.
He hands back the bottle. “Sorry, I don’t drink.”
“Oh! Sorry for assuming!” Ivy grabs the bottle quickly, her bob flouncing around her ears when she moves. She reminds Adam of a neater, golden version of Blue, something familiar in the briskness and warmth of her manner. “You should hang around anyway — we don’t see enough of you around here, Mr. Parrish.”
“Adam,” he says firmly, wondering if Ronan was right and he really was manifesting vines in the place of friends. “I’d definitely like to…hang.”
“Adam, then,” Ivy says, smiling. “By the way, in the future, you can bring your family to these sorts of things.” At Adam’s furrowed brow, she suddenly looks panicked. “I’m sorry, we’ve always assumed — that picture on your desk of the little girl and the biker dude —”
"It’s okay, you assumed right. They live in Virginia. And he’s a farmer, not a biker.”
“Oh,” Ivy says, clearly pleased at this crumb of information, "Sorry, there’s been a fair bit of mythologizing about you. When you put up that picture, everyone in the office went wild. You’d think we were a bunch of suburban moms.”
“I’ll introduce them when they come visit," Adam says, bewildered. He swivels his head around at the people in the office, and their mild, disinterested faces. Do they really all have such keen interest in his life? He imagines bringing Ronan and Opal to the office, and watching Ronan grunt awkwardly through small talk while Opal kicks off her rain boots, gallops free and eats all their staplers.
He almost bursts into laughter.
*
When Adam pushes his door open that night, he finds the place bursting with abundant emerald vines. Ronan’s on the couch, once again in his pajamas, regarding the flora with quiet wonder. He’s holding a watering can and a cluster of impossibly vibrant figs, plainly from the dream he’d been brought out of. When he spots Adam, the grin that spreads across his face is helpless, and Adam beams back.
“So these are your digs?”
“Home sweet home. Clearly I need to buy some weed killer.”
As Adam dumps his keys and moves to hang up his coat, he casts a sidelong glance at Ronan, who has gotten up to shuffle slowly around the apartment, poking his head curiously in every bursting, mossy corner. When he sees a dense bed of shrub, he tips his watering can dutifully, smirking a little.
“Before you make some asshole comment about how I live in a hovel – save it,” Adam says, “I’m moving out in a few months.”
“Jesus, Parrish, what do you think of me,” Ronan laughs, throwing up his hands.
“I’m thinking that you’re an asshole.”
“I was about to say that it’s nice. Y’know, besides the nature documentary thing.” Ronan throws open the fridge door and pokes his head in there too, "Even your rows of chocolate milk are lined up perfectly. Down to the inch.”
“I’m logging that as a asshole comment. Got any more?”
“Yep,” Ronan says, letting the ‘p’ pop. Then, he’s crowding Adam’s space and kissing him, his shaved face rough and familiar. Just as Adam begins to wind his arms around his neck, Ronan leans back, expression curious. “You smell like —,” an accusing grin spreads across his face, “whiskey.”
"I had a little,” Adam says sheepishly, “There was a birthday party.”
“I told you to make friends two days ago and you’re already a social butterfly. Figures.”
“Hardly,” Adam says, embarrassed, “It was a work thing.”
“Yeah, like everyone from work isn’t falling over themselves for you, Mr. Parrish —,”
“If you don’t shut the hell up —,”
“You’ll what?” Ronan’s gaze is suddenly laser-focused. His skin is significantly sun-warmed from days spent toiling outdoors, making the blue of his eyes even more intense than they used to be. Adam feels a little sad about suddenly noticing the difference, rather than having been eased into it by days of living shoulder to shoulder. With a curt nod, Ronan drops to his knees and presses his face against Adam.
“Hey, I said I was giving you a tour!”
“Can we skip to the bedroom portion of this tour,” Ronan mumbles against his dick.
“Wow and I’m the horny one,” Adam quips, but he smiles down at him, brushing his hand against Ronan’s cheekbone. He decides that this astral projection thing is pretty awesome.
*
Ronan’s appearances are as haphazard as the forest visions, and are not subject at all to Adam’s will, to both their disappointment. Adam goes for days without seeing him, to abruptly having to deal with mother-hennish fussing when Ronan catches him eating spam for dinner. The visits happen often enough that they decide to forego Skype, however, and Ronan is able to teach Adam how to whip up fifteen different tomato-based dishes.
“Do you think the reason for all this is just Cabeswater being really invested in our relationship?” Adam asks, in the middle of sautéing some tomatoes, “Like, it really wants its weird human friends to stick together, long distance struggles be damned.”
“Why the fuck does it have to step in?” Ronan asks. His tone is all casual, but its uncertain foundations are obvious. Adam glances over, wary, seeing that he’s walked himself into a trap.
“Come on,” he says, trying for playfulness, “You’re allergic to any forms of practical communication. A magical landline wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to us.”
It doesn’t work. Ronan’s face is all shuttered up, his mouth an inscrutable line. “I got a computer for you, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did,” Adam says flatly.
Like always, he doesn’t quite know how to verbalise the tumult of emotions that plague him. Ronan and him had gotten better at talking over the years, but never about the one thing that’s eclipsed them – that Ronan has always known where his home was, while Adam is perennially drifting towards the golden horizon, unmoored. So maybe before this strange, miraculous thing, Adam had been wondering about how they’d last, even though the thought of being without Ronan was like being without a limb, without the most essential core of him.
“You’ve burnt your tomatoes,” Ronan snaps, in a tone that signals the end of the conversation. Adam sighs and dumps the tomatoes in the trash, and when he turns back, Ronan is gone.
He doesn’t appear for the entirety of the following week, and Adam feels too sour to call. He wonders if maybe Ronan’s appearances really are tied to his moods in some way.
His life is markedly more empty without Ronan’s brusque daily updates and broad, shit-eating grins, and Adam finds himself turning more grey despite the increased friendliness at work.
*
It’s not until Adam walks into the bathroom to brush his teeth one night that Ronan appears again.
He has his night horrors in tow.
There are about five of them, crouched in a wide circle, eerily unmoving. In the centre Ronan is breathing hard, pinning down a thrashing figure, trying to pry a knife out of its hand. Vitrified, Adam forces himself to move, the night horrors inclining their beaks towards him as he steps forward. He weaves around them and into the heart of the circle. None of the bird-men reach for him, their dripping, black feathers merely brushing against his boxers, staining cotton with tar. Adam feels nauseous.
He can now see that, pinned beneath Ronan, is a version of him. A dream Adam. One of his irises is pin-balling wildly, glaring at Ronan’s hands before landing reproachfully on Adam.
“Ronan,” Adam croaks out, “Ronan, that’s not me.”
Ronan doesn’t seem to hear him. His face is slack and wide-eyed with horror, and he doubles his efforts, locking his wrists around dream Adam’s wrists and pressing them down into the bathroom tiles. Dream Adam is strong, and he slips free of the vice intermittently, slashing at Ronan hard with the knife. Red ribbons blossom over Ronan’s skin but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t even seem to notice.
Adam rushes forward and grabs his face with both hands, “Look at me. I’m here.”
Ronan’s gaze, trapped in an expression of immense terror, suddenly snaps into focus. “Adam,” he says, voice full of fractures. Below him dream Adam slashes at thin air, before Adam steps on his hand and sends the knife skittering under the sink.
“Come on,” he says, grabbing Ronan’s hand and tugging him urgently towards the door. The door suddenly seems far away, and they have to break into a run. After a few paces, Ronan stops stumbling, and the door handle is right where it should be. Adam pushes them out and slams the door shut.
They lean against it, panting, and Adam listens as the sounds of his dream self’s frantic convulsing fade into silence. He feels the cool shock of relief, before remembering the blood.
“Christ, Ronan. You’ve got cuts all over – will you – are you going to –,”
“It’s nothing,” Ronan says, evenly. It’s almost like he popped in for a regular visit, if not for the sweat dripping down his temples and gashes on his forearms. “I’ll deal with it.”
“Jesus,” Adam says, letting his breath out in one shuddering go, “You still have nightmares about – about that?”
“What the fuck do you think?”
Adam is taken aback by the sudden, white-hot hostility. “Why the hell are you mad at me? You were the one who –”
“I was the one who what, Parrish? Do you think I wanna be dreaming about that shit all the time? Usually I have the privacy of my own fucking head, but you’re the one who dragged me here. “
“Fine,” Adam bit out coldly, “Wake up if you’re so desperate to leave.”
“Sure thing,” Ronan says, his smile cruel, “See ya.”
And like that, he’s gone, as if he’d never been there at all. When Adam edges open the bathroom door, there are no traces of blood, or feathers, or any struggle at all. The knife is gone from under the sink, the tiles shine a bright blue. It’s pristine.
“Fuck,” Adam says, quietly. A powerless and violent wave of anger bubbles inside him, and he kicks the bathroom door, hard. Then, as quickly as it came, the feeling subsides. Adam thinks of Ronan, waking up now, a world away. Covered in blood, Ronan will crawl out of bed, creeping gingerly over the landing so he doesn’t wake Opal. He’ll disinfect his wounds with the dreamt-up scotch he keeps on the coffee table, before fumbling for the first aid kit they keep in the third drawer of the kitchenette. He’ll be slow at it, alone and silent in the gloom of small hours.
It’s not nothing. Adam examines the quiet ache that’s been growing inside him for months and finds that he can only think of Ronan’s hands desperately gripping his dream self’s wrists, an unshakable anchor. He picks up his phone and dials the Barns.
“What?” Ronan snaps after three rings. It’s such a relief to hear his voice, his real one, tactile and crackling with static, that Adam forgets what to say.
“Are you okay?” he asks eventually.
“I’m fine. I told you it was nothing.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” Adam bites out, and finds himself genuinely mad. Maybe more at himself than Ronan. “I hate that you’ve been having that dream for all these years, while I was right next you, and I didn’t even know.”
Ronan pauses for a few moments and, when he speaks, his voice is gentler. Tired. “It’s my problem, not yours.”
“It is my problem, stupid. And I wish you’d at least let me make a fuss, when I let you yell at me about dumb shit like eating spam and feeling lonely.”
“You were the one who kicked me out,” Ronan reminds him.
“I didn’t really want you to go. I never do. You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” Ronan says unconvincingly.
Adam feels his stomach churn with a deadly cocktail of frustration and tenderness. “I’m sorry for being an idiot,” he says, and hears for the first time that his voice is all Henrietta, even after a year in New York. “But you’re stuck with me for good, so you’ll have to deal.”
For a while, they’re both silent, just listening to each other’s breathing. Adam wonders when they became the type of freakish couple that enjoyed this sort of thing. He doesn’t resent it.
"Adam?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m going back to sleep. You should practice your forest-manifesting.”
“Okay. Hopefully, I’ll see you soon.”
“You will,” Ronan replies, “And you better be eating actual food when you do, I swear to God.”
*
The next time Ronan pops up with Chainsaw on his shoulder, the vines in his apartment have settled into pleasing shapes around doorjambs and window frames, unfurling gently towards the sun. Adam’s in the middle of purchasing his ticket to Virginia, and Ronan leans over so he can read the minuscule digits indicating flight times, while Chainsaw bounces back and forth between their laps with excited kerahs. For once, they don’t say much, and barely touch as Adam fills the air with little clicks, each one more satisfying than the last.
Finally, Ronan pitches his voice to a girlish register and says, “Guess I’ll see you in July, sugarplum.”
“You know, I think you use that shitty voice so you can hide how much you love using pet names.”
When Ronan laughs, it’s the bright, full-throated one that Adam loves the most.
He can’t wait to hear it for real.