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It had been nearly four months since Ronan’s nightmare creature had visited Adam at Boyd’s, likely taking ten years off his life from the shock. He didn’t often think about it. The hours upon hundreds of hours of uneventful nights at the shop provided a thick layer of monotony that drowned out that old terror. And yet it apparently wasn’t too far buried because the clicking sound he thought he heard that cold December night immediately made all the hairs on his body stand at attention.
Adam turned the volume down on the crappy radio that sat on the tool bench and listened harder with his good ear. He was alone in the shop and it was late enough that there weren’t competing sounds outside. He heard the tapping again and was able to trace the sound to the pane of glass on the rusty garage door. Years of exhaust and oil and dust made it impossible to see through so he grabbed one of the shop rags to wipe off the grime. It was too cold outside to risk opening up the whole door if it was just Adam’s imagination. He jumped back a foot when he could see out the pane well enough to make out a sharp nose and a blue eye rimmed with dark lashes. Adam quickly figured out that peering back at him was the dreamer, not the nightmare but, he wasn’t sure which was less welcome at that point.
He let out a muffled curse and opened the door enough for Ronan to slip in.
“What are you doing here, Ronan?” He didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. It helped to disguise the curiosity and hope that were also vying to reveal themselves.
“I should be asking you that. It’s 9pm on Christmas Eve. Boyd couldn’t possibly have scheduled you a shift for this hour.”
“Just working on the shitbox while the shop is closed.”
In truth, Adam had been desperate to get out of his tiny apartment above the church. The past month had been a litany of overheard choir practice after choir practice rehearsing every Christmas carol under the sun. And now that it was Christmas Eve the church had been running a mass service every two hours. While he was spared being able to hear any of the sermons, he was privy to every note of the new organ they’d so diligently fund-raised for and he was sick to death of it.
From the looks of Ronan in his suit, he must’ve just come from the latest service. He looked aggravatingly good.
“You weren’t at your apartment so when I saw the lights on here I figured it had to be you.”
Adam heaved a sigh and rubbed a hand over his eyes. He wasn’t going to repeat himself and ask why Ronan had come at all. He hadn’t seen him in almost two months, since just after that terrible day finding Glendower and the demon and the rest. But Ronan never answered questions he wasn’t ready to answer even if an explanation was clearly in order.
“You look like shit,” Ronan mumbled.
Adam huffed out an irritated sigh and stooped down to warm his hands in front of the small space heater humming away on the floor. It did nothing to heat up the cavernous space of the shop but it helped with frigid extremities when you got within six inches of it.
Adam knew he looked bad. He hadn’t been sleeping well. Even though finals were over and there was a two week winter break from Aglionby, he hadn’t been able to shut off his brain. Deadlines were looming for the last of his college applications and he’d been working on writing essays every spare minute. His guidance counselor and every online essay writing tip advised to make those personal, anecdotal, detailed.‘Tell us about a time when you had to overcome an obstacle to get something you wanted.’ How about every minute of his entire life, thank you very much. ‘We believe every student has a meaningful background. Please share a story that illuminates your past.’ How about none of your goddamned business. All the introspection and dredging up of old trauma wasn’t helping his mental health.
Add to that the church singing, the incessant blinking of the ridiculous amount of Christmas lights on the building across the street from his apartment, and now the threat of a snowstorm. He swore he’d heard ‘do you think we’ll have a white Christmas?’ a thousand times in the last three days. It was like the universe wanted to force him into acknowledging the imminent dreaded holiday.
“Shouldn’t you be off celebrating with your brothers?” Adam asked bitterly, glancing over his shoulder to where Ronan hovered.
Ronan looked away quickly. “They’re heading back to D.C. We did dinner and mass earlier. Declan is supposed to do Christmas day with his girlfriend’s family and Matthew is heading out on a ski trip with friends. They wanted to get back before the storm hit.”
And Gansey was with his family, Adam knew. He’d been invited to accompany him but had respectfully declined. So Ronan was what….lonely or something? Adam suddenly felt so tired. He sat the rest of the way down on the cold concrete floor and leaned against the cabinets. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. “What do you want, Ronan?”
“To see you.”
Adam huffed out an aggravated sigh and opened his eyes to glare at him. "I've been right here. For two goddamned months. Why now? The Christmas spirit moving you or something?”
Ronan let out a competing sigh. “Maybe,” he grumbled.
Adam scrunched his nose and rolled his eyes. “Just…fuck off.” It sounded much sadder than he intended.
But, instead of following his request, Ronan shuffled over and slid down the wall to sit beside him, paying no attention to ruining his nice suit.
“I brought you a gift,” Ronan said after a long, somber stretch of minutes.
Adam thought of objecting through his weariness but was interrupted when a ball of faded red fabric hit him in the face. It took him just a moment to figure out it was his old coca cola t-shirt.
“Thanks, Lynch,” he drawled, as sarcastic as possible.
“You left yours at the Barns.”
“I don’t think it qualifies as a gift if you’re just returning my old used crap.”
“I dreamed that one. And like 30 more. Apparently my subconscious is trying to tell me something.”
“What, that I have shitty taste in clothes?”
“That you left something with me at the Barns. That I should pay attention to that. That I should fix it.”
Adam had no idea how to respond to that. He just looked down at the ball of fabric in his lap and tried to steady his breathing, sort through his chaotic emotions.
“Look,” Ronan continued. “I'm sorry I haven’t been around.”
And that tipped Adam into knowing exactly how he felt. Anger dripped on his every word. “Oh fuck that. ‘haven’t been around’,” he mocked. “You ghosted me Ronan! You quit school. You didn’t answer my calls. You wouldn’t even answer the door when I came out to the Barns to find you. Four times, Ronan. I drove out there four times and knocked my knuckles bloody on your fucking door. You wouldn’t even let me see your face.”
Ronan was hunched over, his elbows resting on his bent legs, his hands covering his face. “You didn’t want to be with me after all that shit went down.”
“Oh no. Don’t you dare put this on me. You can change your mind and not want to be with me but don’t you dare say it was my choice. I was ready, Ronan. I’d known you were looking at me for months. I’d known about your crush. But I waited. I waited until I knew I was ready. Until I was 100% sure I could do it right.” Somewhere in the back of his mind Adam noted that his voice that had started shaky and harsh had become high and cracked. That his face was wet. He didn’t care and continued anyway. “That night of your birthday? When I kissed you back? That was me being all in. I was finally ready and I made the leap. But you? You’re the one that backed away and just let me fall. So fuck you and your ‘sorry I haven’t been around’. Fuck all of that.” He wiped his tears angrily.
Ronan’s exhale sounded every bit as wet and fragile as Adam’s. “I didn’t answer the door because I didn’t trust myself not to ruin this. To ruin you. I lost my mom, Adam and I… I was wrecked.”
Adam closed his eyes and let himself wallow in the awfulness. “I know you lost your mom. God I know. I wanted to be there for you. I was ready to help.”
“I wasn’t ready for the help.” Ronan took three long shaky smoker’s breaths that did nothing to hide his anguish. “Do you remember that black muck that streamed out of me when I was being unmade? I was that shit. I was this toxic seething sludge that was hell bent on ruining everything I came in contact with.” He swallowed audibly then continued. “And you. This new thing with you was so…. god it was beautiful and fragile, and everything I’d wanted for so long. And I knew I had to keep it away from the ruin I’d become. I… fuck, Adam. I didn’t know how to be with you after all that.”
Adam pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. He hated this. He hated everything that had transpired since that awful day on the side of that road. He wanted to still hate Ronan, too, but found he couldn’t. Finally he found some words to continue. “So what’s changed?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can understand what you were feeling. I don’t like it. It still hurt like hell. But, I can accept it. So…..why are you here now? What’s changed?”
Ronan tipped his head back against the cabinets and closed his eyes. “Opal.”
“What?”
“When I was fucked up after my dad died, I coped by being selfish and drowning my anger and generally being a dick to avoid feeling anything real. But this time…” He let out a sad, half-hearted laugh, “…I’ve got Opal. And goddamn if that little imp doesn’t make it fucking impossible not to feel things. Not all of it’s good. Most days I want to shout profanities at her or lock her out of the fucking house until she can act even somewhat like a normal…. person. But I'm always feeling something. The other day she brought in a dead rabbit and wanted me to fix it. I don’t even know how it died. It was probably her, the little monster. But I had to explain to her about animals and death in this world and fuck if we weren’t both crying on the kitchen floor over this ugly, mangy, dead thing by the end of it. So she taught me.… that maybe I'm not all black sludge. Maybe I can take care of fragile beautiful things and not ruin them.”
Adam understood that Ronan wasn’t calling him fragile. That he was describing their newfound relationship. And that was an accurate description. They’d stumbled into it in the middle of a crisis. A time when those they loved were likely to die. A time when the whole world could come crashing down. Adam could forgive him for not being able to handle it well, or at all, for a time.
“So what happens now?” he asked, too tired to make any decision on his own. Too tired to be angry anymore.
“Fuck I don’t know. Can we just get out of here? I think my ball sack is about frozen to this goddamned floor.”
Adam tried to hide his fond smile. “My apartment isn’t much warmer.”
“And the church’ll be playing that motherfucking organ until 1 a.m.”
Adam huffed out half a laugh. “Oh my god, it’s so awful!”
Ronan swiveled his head against the cabinet to look directly at Adam. His expression was so soft that Adam’s heart may have melted in his chest.
“Come to the Barns. Opal will want to see you. Declan left four pies. There’s a storm coming.”
Adam let himself grin. “Do you think we’ll have a white Christmas?”
Ronan grinned back. “Fuck if I know. Let’s just go home.” Then he held out his hand. Adam took it.