Chapter Text
“I heard from Farooq-Lane yesterday,” Declan Lynch says in lieu of greeting as his younger brother, Ronan, slides into the family’s usual pew one Sunday morning. Declan’s eyes stay forward
towards the altar as Ronan settles in on the other side of Matthew, the youngest Lynch. “There’s something we should talk about after mass.”
Ronan’s lips purse as he rolls a response around on his tongue. He knows his brother stays in touch with the former Moderator. Knows that Declan is doing his best to head off potential danger to the family by trying to keep tabs on the Moderators who went rogue after the collapse of their organization a decade ago. Hears the occasional snippet from Jordan, Matthew, and sometimes Adam, about those same rogue Moderators picking off a dreamer here or there. But it’s always on the periphery of Ronan’s life now. He’d wanted to, and had, for the most part, faded into the wings after all that shit went down over ten years ago. The fact that Declan is bringing it up now, while he’s a captive audience moments before mass starts, raises his hackles.
So Ronan just answers with a nod and the brothers Lynch lapse into silence as the door to the nave opens, the priest enters, and mass begins.
After mass, while Declan shakes hands and kisses babies in typical Declan fashion, the two other brothers linger by Ronan’s more recently dreamt BMW, an upgrade mostly out of spite to stop Adam ribbing him about which of them now had a nicer car.
“He won’t tell me,” Matthew sighs and his shoulders heave an emphatic shrug as Ronan tries to wheedle an answer out of him. “I don’t even think he said anything to Jordan.”
“What the hell, then?” Ronan furrows his brow and leans against the back bumper of his car. He mimics his older brother’s voice, “‘There’s something we should talk about after mass.’ Give a man a damn warning.”
“I don’t think it’s anything that bad, really,” Matthew leans beside him. “He wasn’t in an ‘I’m-Going-To-Kill-Ronan’ mood on the drive down. Just the normal ‘This-Is-A-Long-Ass-Drive-For-A-Familial-Obligation’ mood.”
Ronan laughs at this until he looks up and sees Declan walking towards them, seemingly done with his bi-weekly schmoozing of the local church ladies.
“Matty, can you wait in the car? I’ll tell you on the drive home,” Declan finally stops in front of them and pushes his hands into his pockets.
Matthew whines briefly but, ever acquiescent, he hugs Ronan goodbye before going to climb into the passenger seat of Declan’s Volvo across the lot.
Ronan remains leaning on the BMW’s bumper, “What did you want to talk about?”
Declan remains standing, “An old Moderator killed a dreamer in Colorado on Thursday. Angela Mendoza. Carmen’s people got there too late. For her.”
Ronan’s eyes flash to his older brother’s, “What do you mean, ‘for her’?”
Declan slides his phone from the inside pocket of his blazer, unlocks it, and swipes a few times before proffering the phone to Ronan. Ronan’s gaze turns wary for a half beat before he takes the phone and looks at the screen.
Looking back at him is a boy, not quite toddler, not quite school age, and Ronan feels like the wary expression on the boy’s olive-toned face is pretty close to his own. Green eyes weren’t looking at the camera when the photo was taken, and the way his thick, curly chestnut hair is mussed suggests he was woken up quickly and removed from wherever he’d been with haste.
“Cameron Mendoza. He’s four,” Declan fills in as Ronan continues to study the photo.
“And he’s…”
“From what Carmen has told me, yes.”
“His father?”
“Unknown.”
“Why are you showing him to me?”
Declan pauses here and reaches out for his phone. Ronan tips it into his hand and Declan clicks the screen off before sliding it into his pocket. In an un-Declan like move, he rocks onto the balls of his feet and then back onto his heels, just once, before he meets Ronan’s eyes, “I think you and Adam should think about adopting him.”
“That’s a little presumptuous.”
Declan fixes him with a look and his voice sounds almost pained, “I think you would be good for him.”
Ronan thinks his older brother is leaving out a piece of his response, and he fixes Declan with a mirroring look, “How long?”
“Answer? As soon as possible,” Declan replies. “When he would be with you? Within the month.”
“I take it he’s not going into the quote, unquote system? How would that work?”
Declan runs his tongue over his lower lip and clears his throat slightly, “Carmen, a few others, and I could… make it happen. It’d all look legitimate and aboveboard.”
Nodding, Ronan stands and steps to the driver’s side door of the BMW, regretting what he says next, “I’ll call you. I’ll talk to Adam. Text me that photo.”
Declan knocks twice on the trunk in response before he strides towards his own car. Ronan watches as Declan climbs in and he hears Matthew immediately start a conversation that’s soon muted when Declan closes his door. The brothers all raise hands in a goodbye gesture as Declan rolls out of the church parking lot, and Ronan spares a glance at the apartment above St. Agnes before he slides into the BMW and starts the drive out of Henrietta towards Singer’s Falls, towards the Barns.
Ronan’s body goes on autopilot, shifting through gears as the car coasts up and down the winding mountain roads taking him home, which lets his mind trip over how to even bring this up with Adam.
They’d talked over, under, and around the possibility of kids, but never through it. Never a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The distance of years and, for Adam, dozens of hours on therapists’ couches had made them both see that if the opportunity did arise, they wouldn’t be horrible at parenting. But...
It was like they didn’t want to destroy this perfect little bubble they’d built for two where things were finally easy after they’d been so, so hard. Where Adam had found a career that let him work from home most days, only leaving to go as far as Roanoke or Harrisonburg or Winchester for construction site visits to whatever bridge or overpass or bypass he’d engineered to not only improve the flow of traffic but to also maintain the integrity of the ley line. Where Ronan had stalls at three different local farmers’ markets every week and he sold produce and eggs and honey from bees dreamt without stingers and with an innate sense to stay away from Gansey when he visited. Where things were quiet and comfortable under a lull of contentment, expressed in casual touches, soft kisses, and presses into mattresses, couches, and the occasional barn wall or truck bed.
There’s nothing missing, Ronan thinks, but there could be… more. And here was an opportunity looking them in the face.
Ronan parks next to Adam’s Subaru after he navigates the winding driveway up to the Barns. He stays in the driver’s seat for a minute looking up at the main house, where Adam had thrown open the windows to let in the early Spring air and sun, to get more of the outside in. The quick buzz of a text alert on his phone pushes Ronan to get out of the BMW, and he climbs the front steps, makes his way through the screen door, and wanders through the first floor until he finds his husband in the kitchen.
Adam looks up from where he’s leaned over the island, work tablet in front of him and stylus perched against the screen. The corners of his eyes crinkle as he smiles at Ronan and stands fully, palms bracing against the countertop, “How was mass?”
Ronan gives a non-committal noise in response and steps to wrap his arms around Adam from behind, pushing his nose into the space at the corner of Adam’s jaw, under Adam’s right ear. He stays like that for a few moments, taking in Adam’s evergreen scent.
Adam knows him too well to accept his non-vocal response, “What? What did Declan say or do now?”
“Farooq-Lane called him yesterday,” Ronan speaks against Adam’s skin before shifting to rest his chin on Adam’s shoulder. Reaching under his husband’s arm, he moves his fingers over the screen of Adam’s tablet to zoom out on the technical drawing Adam had been working on, turning the blueprints left and right to give his hands something to do as he continues. “One of those leftover Moderator shits got a dreamer out in Colorado.”
“Did we know them?” Adam asks as he sets his stylus down and rests his fingers on Ronan’s wrist.
“I don’t think so. Angela Mendoza? She didn’t sound familiar.”
Adam hums and then speaks again after a beat, “What else?”
Damn Adam’s intuition. Ronan pulls his phone from his pocket and unlocks it, tapping on the notification for Declan’s picture message. Once the photo is on the screen, he sets the phone on the counter in front of them. They stand silent, Adam only moving to tap the screen a few times to bring it back to life after it dims.
Finally letting the phone go to sleep, Adam draws a deep breath, “And Declan thinks…”
“Mmhm,” Ronan turns his head to press his nose into Adam’s neck again.
“Why? Eighty percent of the time he thinks I’m a frigid bastard.”
“Must see something in the other twenty, then. Don’t know what,” Ronan smirks, which earns him a light elbow jab to the ribs.
“Jackass,” Adam retorts and then falls into a pensive silence. Reaching out, he wakes Ronan’s phone back up and taps in the pass code to unlock it, looking at the photo again. “Who is he?”
“Cameron. He’s four,” Ronan reaches out and lets his fingers hover over the photo until the screen times out again. “Dreamer, obviously.”
Adam nods and turns around to lean back against the counter, still in the circle of Ronan’s arms. He reaches out to toy with Ronan’s tie briefly before saying, “Give me some time to think about it.”
Ronan leans in and kisses him sweetly, “You’ve got all the time you need.”
They fall into their quiet domesticity after that; Adam finishes what he was planning out for work, Ronan goes out to the long barn to dream, Adam checks a belt that had started to squeal on one of the farms’ trucks, Ronan introduces a newly-dreamt hen to their ever-expanding coop before quickly de-introducing her after a tussle with a real-from-an-egg chicken. Drifting back together around dusk, they make and eat dinner together in quiet company before Ronan goes out for his evening rounds to settle the animals in for the night.
He lets himself back into the house afterwards, shucking his boots and barn coat off as he locks up. There’s silence where Ronan usually hears keyboard tapping or a 24-hour news network from the den, but he finds Adam where he left him, on the couch with a book. While the book is open in his hands, though, Adam looks like he’s almost trying to scry into the pages, gaze unfocused, and he doesn’t react to Ronan sinking down on the couch beside him.
“Power down, your processor’s going to overheat,” Ronan murmurs against his husband’s temple before pressing a kiss to the same spot.
This earns a huff of a laugh and a twitch of a lip from Adam. Marking his page and discarding his book to the coffee table, he folds Ronan’s left hand between both of his. Ronan watches as Adam’s lithe fingers rub over his wedding band for a few moments before Adam stills and slots his fingers between Ronan’s. Tightening his grip ever-so-slightly, Adam looks over at the man beside him and draws in a breath before stating simply, “Okay.”
Ronan turns this one-word response over in his head and he looks back at Adam as it clicks into place, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Adam nods. He squeezes his hands more firmly around Ronan’s, the motion seeming to capture both of their timidity and fear, but also anticipation. “I already knew the answer this morning, I
just had to get myself there.”