Work Text:
Ronan Lynch had acquired mythical status at Yale without knowing it. People couldn’t help but talk about the guy who looked like an omen of death pulling up in his BMW every weekend and disappearing into Adam’s room, only to speed his way back to wherever he came from on Monday morning.
He was a puzzle no one could solve. Apparently he lived on a farm. He brought his organic produce for Adam to try each week: jars of plum jam, boxes of speckled eggs, sourdough bread. But apparently he was also a criminal. Rumours changed regularly: sometimes he was a champion of street racing; sometimes he was wanted by the FBI.
And then there were the companions he kept. Why was that raven always with him? And what about the girl in the beanie: surely he was too young to be a dad? Not to mention Adam himself: Adam was reasonably well liked by his peers, but he wasn’t exactly the sort of person one would associate with Ronan. Adam was quiet, sensible, and devoted to his studies. Ronan was devoted to Adam, and his organic produce, and looking dangerous in the college foyer.
Over time, Ronan’s unsettling presence became a regular fixture. To everyone at college, he was a mystery. To Adam’s roommate, Nick, he was Adam’s slightly terrifying boyfriend.
To Adam, though, he was just Ronan. Ronan, who calmed him down, who knew all the best spots to kiss him, who had dreamt him a fountain pen that never ran out of ink. Ronan, who was his .
“You look like Noah on a bad day,” was Ronan’s greeting this time. He walked into Adam’s room without knocking (he’d dreamt a keycard to the building, of course) and threw himself down on his bed. Chainsaw alighted from his shoulder and flapped across the room, resting on the top of the wardrobe.
“Hey.” Said a small voice from somewhere behind Adam.
Adam closed his laptop gently and set it aside, swivelling round to catch Ronan’s eye. “Noah?” he said experimentally.
The faint idea of Noah hovered somewhere between the desk and the bed. “Sup.”
“‘Sup’?” said Ronan. “You hijack my car all the way here without telling me and that’s all you have to say for yourself?”
“He’s happy to see you,” Adam translated for Noah.
“Shut the fuck up.” Ronan’s face was stormy.
Adam reached out his hand to Ronan, gently pulling him onto his lap. Ronan was too big to sit on Adam’s lap, but he did it anyway, his expression still terrifying.
“You forgot to change your face,” whispered Adam.
Ronan’s frown lines disappeared. Sometimes he forgot to communicate between his thoughts and his face, and Adam was one of the only people who understood that. The only person who made him acceptable for the outside world.
“Can I have some toast?” asked Noah.
“Noah, you can’t eat,” said Adam from behind Ronan’s shoulder blades. His legs were starting to go numb, but he knew Ronan was comfortable, so he wasn’t going to move for the world.
“Yeah, but I like the smell.”
“Don’t indulge him, Adam.”
Adam laughed quietly - at the absurdity of both of them - and nudged Ronan off him, getting up to put two slices of bread in the toaster. Noah beamed. Ronan scowled.
“Where’s Opal?” Adam asked, his back to Ronan, who had stolen his chair. Opal usually accompanied Ronan on his visits - sitting contentedly on Adam’s shoulders when they went on walks, tugging on Ronan’s sleeve during mealtimes, sleeping in the nook under the window.
“She’s with Declan for the weekend.”
Adam turned around. “And you’re sure that’s a good idea?”
Ronan was smiling now. Think of the shark from Finding Nemo , and you’ll get some idea of what that might look like. “It’s a terrible one. Are you done?”
“Toast only takes, like, a minute.”
“Yeah, but I’m bored.”
Adam crossed the space between them in two easy strides, lifting a hand to Ronan’s face and gently brushing his jawbone with his knuckle. “You’re impatient.”
Ronan closed his eyes. Adam brought up his other hand to cup his face, tracing invisible lines up and down with his thumbs. He noticed that Ronan hadn’t shaved since the last time he’d visited.
“You haven’t shaved. Let me take care of it later,” he said. Adam drew him in for an I-missed-you kiss. The kind of kiss that promised more to come, that said, later, later . Ronan pulled at Adam’s hair, the bit that stuck up no matter how hard he tried to brush it down.
“Um,” said Noah. “The toast.”
The toast was on the verge of burning, so Adam avoided that and took them out. He handed a piece to Ronan, who’d already brandished a jar of honey and a spreading knife. This time it was Adam’s turn to sit on his lap. “Honey?”
Ronan spread a generous amount on his toast, doing the same to Adam’s. It was thick and golden, and tasted incredible . “I keep bees now,” he said, like it was no big deal. To Ronan, nothing was a big deal. That was what Adam loved about him.
They ate their toast and honey in comfortable silence. For all his promises of thereness, Noah seemed to have gone somewhere else, wherever he went to be dead or whatever. “Now will you let me?” said Adam.
Instead of protesting, Ronan nodded his head slowly. (Ronan was always protesting, against reality, against everything the world gave him, but never Adam.) Adam got up and led him to his tiny ensuite, the light flickering sporadically. It made the shadows on Ronan’s face longer and more unreal.
Ronan sat on the toilet seat and closed his eyes again. (Ronan never closed his eyes, not really, especially when he was dreaming. But Adam was safe. Adam was good.) Adam ran the tap until it was warm, then soaked a face cloth in the water. He applied it to Ronan’s face, making the gentlest circular movement as he did so. Ronan trusted those hands: steady, soft.
Next, Adam lathered some cream onto his hand, putting it on bit by bit. Then he took up the blade, holding Ronan’s face still. “I wouldn’t trust me if I were you,” he whispered.
“I would concentrate, if I were you,” Ronan answered back.
Moments like these were so intimate they scared him. Adam had more power than he knew what to do with, power over an ancient, magical forest - and Ronan knew that, and yet. And yet, he offered him his bare neck, trusted him completely. Maybe love was this: a relinquishing of power. A giving in.
Adam began with the neck, the softest part. Stretched the skin, barely. Drew the blade upwards, watched the shadow turn to white. Then there were the tricky corners, the places where his jawbone jutted out like a car crash. He navigated them carefully, imagined that he was completing a puzzle. Ronan’s eyes flickered open for a moment, and Adam passed a hand over them to close them again, eyelashes brushing his palm.
As soon as he was done, Ronan kissed him, roughly and tenderly all at once. His face was still damp and warm, and his breath tasted like dream honey. Adam melted into it and forgot that he had a roommate who had just come in.
Nick - the roommate - cleared his throat. Adam and Ronan sprang apart, Adam blushing so hard his freckles all but disappeared, Ronan slipping into a default glare.
“Uh,” said Nick. “Hi Ronan.”
Nick and Adam coexisted most of the time. Adam kept himself - and his scary boyfriend - to himself, spending most of his time in the library. Nick operated by pretty much the same rules, staying in the lab (he majored in biochemistry) or going to block parties and getting stoned. They orbited around each other, rarely making contact. The only inconvenience that existed between them was the inescapable fact of Ronan, who you couldn’t really skirt around or ignore.
Adam nudged Ronan with his elbow, which meant, say hi back .
“Hi,” said Ronan, eyeing Chainsaw, who was peering down at Nick with beady-eyed curiosity.
“We were just...shaving,” said Adam, then immediately hated himself for saying something so dumb.
“Oh.” Nick shrugged. “Do you guys, uh, wanna play MarioKart?”
Adam and Ronan stared as one, as if they’d forgotten how to interact with anyone other than each other and a ghost who liked the smell of toast. Finally, Ronan said, “I’m warning you, I’m really good.”
The stormy boy Adam thought he knew never would have said yes. But then again, maybe Ronan was coming out of hiding. Maybe he had always been the person who played MarioKart with a stranger, and it had taken Adam to coax that person out of him.
They sat down in front of the Switch: Nick on the beanbag, Ronan on the floor with his back to Adam’s bed, Adam nestled in Ronan’s lap. Ronan rested his chin on Adam’s head, and it fit perfectly.
“You can’t be Bowser,” Ronan whispered in Adam’s ear. “He’s my character.”
Adam felt a laugh welling up inside of him. “Fine. I’ll be Bowser Jr.”
“Would that make you...his child?” Said Nick.
Ronan laughed, and Adam felt it travel through his whole body. “Can’t be too specific about the family dynamics of MarioKart.”
As they played, Adam cast his mind back to the Ronan he’d first met. When his words had been like tangles of barbed wire, his eyebrows had been perpetually pushed down in a scowl, and his anger at the world was too big to fit inside the few square miles that made up Henrietta. When had that changed? Since when had Ronan softened to the touch, like honey falling away from the comb?
Bowser Jr fell off the track.
“Loser,” said Ronan affectionately.
Adam grinned. He’d take Ronan as he came, every weekend, forever.