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Some days, Adam Parrish felt more like a cage and less like a cage bird. More like the thing that was holding down, and not the thing itself. It was unexplainable, even to himself. He could think it, conjure up the feeling, but as soon as he tried to speak it things got muddy and disoriented. It was like everything in Henrietta was a careful trap, and Adam had spent so much of his time trying to get out, he often forgot that he was a piece of this puzzle as well.
Then he went and plugged himself into a sentient forest, and the feeling only amplified. It brought to light everything Adam only ever looked at under shadow. It itched, in a way he couldn't scratch.
Ronan Lynch, ever present and edged, relished in the trap of Henrietta. From Adam's vantage point, Ronan was ready to revive the Barns, and never leave. Something Adam would never understand.
He was itchy. It could have been his terrible bedsheets, or something rough in his tshirt. But it felt like it was inside of him and he could feel Cabeswater around him like a running river of energy. Ronan was on the floor next to him, maybe he was amplifying Cabeswater, he could do that sometimes when they were together. The greywaren and the magician. Cabeswaters soliders.
Adam tried not to think of the way he kept becoming attractive to spiritual amplifying people. He tried not to think of the way he was becoming attracted to Ronan. Because he knew Ronan liked him, or at least liked the idea of him. He knew that meant something to Ronan, and he had to be sure it meant something to him before anything happened. He had to know.
But he was itchy, and he could tell from the way Ronan was breathing that he wasn't asleep. He tried to put into words what he had never been able to. "Do you ever feel shackled?" He asked, breaking the drone of silence between them.
"Physically," Ronan replied, "Or metaphorically?"
"Metaphorically," he answered, and then thought for a brief pause. Thought of the way Cabeswater sometimes felt like it was a real tangible tether, like he had a red string of fate tied around his finger. "Or both, maybe, I'm not sure."
"If you mean Cabeswater you can just say it," Ronan told him, not unkindly, "It's feelings won't be hurt."
"It's not Cabeswater," Adam said defensively, "Well, it's not just Cabeswater. I don't know, I don't know how to say what I mean. It's like there's an ache inside of me. It's like I want to leave here so bad, I don't know what happens if I can't, and I don't know if I ever will. What if it all ends and I'm still stuck in this shithole?"
Ronan is quiet for a moment, rustling and shifting on the noisy floorboards. "You're going to leave Parrish. You'll get out, you know you will. Nothing is going to force you to stay here. Not yourself or your actions, not Gansey and the quest, and not Cabeswater. You're going to graduate in a year, and you're going to be fine. You'll go off and live your ivy league life, and one day you'll think back to Henrietta and just remember the weird people you hung around when you were a teenager, doing silly rituals and playing treasure hunt. You're going to get out of here, and you're going to live."
Adam tries to hear it at face value, but he's too tuned in, and it's too quiet, and there's nothing to mask the edge of fear that laced Ronan's words. "I'm not going to suddenly drop off the face of the earth when I leave. I'm still the magician, and I'm still your friend. I'm not just going to leave and forget, college isn't amnesia."
Ronan chews his bracelets, Adam can hear the tug of the bands. "Might be better if it was. Don't you think? All that starting over bullshit. You wouldn't have to be the trailer park abused kid who lived in a church attic like he haunted it. Isn't that kinda the dream?"
"If I forget who I am or where I came from what different am I than any other of the rich ivy league students? Haven't you seen Lion King? Remember who you are, and all that bullshit." Adam sighed, because even in his daydreams he was still the trailer park kid. "It's not amnesia." He repeats, mostly for himself but also for Ronan.
"Why wouldn't you want to be a rich ivy league student?" Ronan asks, "Isn't that the point?"
"I worked my ass off my whole life to be worth a damn to any type of ivy league anything. I can't forget it because if I forget it, then it's useless to me. You can take the boy out of the abuse, but you can't take the abuse out of the boy. I can't be like them because I need to prove him wrong." And just like that, the words spoken into the dark night, Adam puts to words his itch. His shackles. His shame. Anytime he would get hurt at work, and hear his dad's voice call him a pussy. Anytime he looked at Ronan too long, thought about what his mouth would feel like, he heard his dad call him a fag. Anytime he failed himself, it was his own voice chanting that he didn't deserve it.
The itch wasn't Cabeswater, Cabeswater had been trying to soothe it. It wasn't the fear that he would never leave Henrietta, it was the fear that Henrietta would never leave him. Like if he looked at a sample of his blood it would be smudged with motor oil.
It hit him like a train and he didn't realize he had rolled onto his good ear until Ronan was talking and it was all muffled from his pillow. "-prove him wrong every god damn day. Parrish, you're not your piece of shit dad, and you're not what he did to you. You're not. You will leave this dump, you'll go off and be suma cum something and probably cure cancer and end all world war. You don't need to prove you're worth a damn, you already are, and you always have been."
Adam, in that moment with everything washing over him, wanted desperately to say screw it to waiting to be sure. He wanted to kiss Ronan senseless, just to know what it would feel like. He felt like a live wire.
The better part of his still working brain reminded him not to. Reminded him that Ronan was not a thing to be toyed with. Adam didn't think he was toying, but tonight had held enough truths for him already. He had finally put it to words. And that was enough of a start for him.
"Thanks Lynch," he said simply, swallowing back all his burning desire.
"Go the fuck to sleep Parrish," Ronan told him. Adam knew it was Ronan speak for you're welcome, and he let it go.
He took a breath and let it out, willing away the edges of himself that were fraying. Willing away his own brutal memories. He was Adam Parrish, and he was free, and one day that would feel true to him. One day, he actually would be.