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Me and my habits and I // We love each other
Shake hands every evening // Disregard in the morning
As if I'll never die
daysormay - “Role Model”
The Barns in the summer was idyllic - everything that Ronan imagined it could be. For the first few weeks - still riding the high after whatever had gone down with the demon - Ronan basked in the unreality of his childhood home, warm and full of Adam’s company. The walls seemed to soak up Adam’s laughter, wild and loud and free, and draw out Ronan’s cheerful memories.
The fields buzzed with wildflowers and crickets, and there was always a new valley or grove or barn to explore together. Ronan coveted his time with Adam crammed as it was between shift work in town. Each afternoon together was a new jewel he collected in the nest of his mind. Each night together was a fumbling, awkward, wondrous memory for him to pull out and marvel at the facets when he was alone.
Those few weeks after Adam and Gansey and Blue’s triumphant graduation party were a fantasy, a daydream that Ronan didn’t want to wake up from. He was home and he had his family right where they belonged - coming and going from The Barns where Ronan could hear them celebrate and joke and bicker.
They fought - of course they did. There wasn’t a compromising personality among them, least of all Ronan’s. And there was a restlessness among them - some settling force was missing, and they all seemed eager to move on to the next stage of life. Ronan seemed to be the only one looking at the current moment and thinking - This is it. This is enough.
Ronan fought with Adam too - he always had - but it had always been trifling things. Small disagreements that came, at first, from jealousy over Gansey’s time, and then from knowing each other a bit too well, and then eventually just as an inside joke. Their jabs were blunt-edged weapons - two stubborn, loud personalities pushing up against each other, but ultimately harmless. Ronan had never needed to apologize to Adam before.
Standing on the back porch of The Barns, Ronan realized this. He had trembling fists clenched and pressed against the porch railing where he didn’t punch it. He could hear Adam walk across the creaky kitchen floors on the other side of the door he hadn’t slammed. Adam’s footsteps weren’t heavy - there was nothing to give voice to the way he had gone stiff and stern and red-faced and told Ronan to ‘go cool off, Lynch’.
The biting snarl of Adam’s mouth on ‘Lynch’ had been enough to startle Ronan out of his fuming mood. His feet had carried him out of the house before he even registered the action. Blood rushing through his ears, Ronan could hardly keep his thoughts straight - he couldn’t even remember what they’d said. The words had come so fast from each of them.
They had been joking until they hadn’t - a turn so sudden that it had shocked both of them.
The topic could have been any number of things that they had been dancing around - Adam’s stress over university applications, or how he was wasting his summer on working when he could be at The Barns. Or about the new symptoms of Ronan’s dreaming that gave him rattling headaches and dripped dark tears from his eyes that he tried to hide. Or any number of things that they didn’t agree on.
Ronan sucked in a staggered breath of the cool night air. He could feel the urge to fight, to run as unignorable waves rushed over him. Each time he felt the compulsion ebb, his heart would flare up again - a wildfire blazing ever higher. He kicked an old boot around the porch restlessly. He lost time to the circle of thoughts over and over - how bad was it? Had he imagined the stubborn hurt on Adam’s face? A year ago he would have gotten in his car and found a race or a drink or something stronger. It wasn’t a year ago - he didn’t want to run away.
But he’d never had to apologize to Adam before.
The house was quiet when Ronan stepped inside again. He could see Opal’s eyes, wide and reflective in the dark hallway where she peered around the corner at him. He ignored her and went up to bed. Adam was already asleep, curled up on his side in a tight knot in his usual way. Stripping down to boxers and slipping in beside him, Ronan was suddenly relieved that he hadn’t left.
Ronan slept carefully so as not to dream too deeply and bring anything out. He woke up to weak early morning light and Adam carefully sitting up on the mattress. Adam wasn’t looking at him and instead seemed to be turning off the alarm clock on the bedside.
Sleepy and warm, Ronan threw an arm over Adam’s waist and tried to pull him back down.
Adam let him pull them closely together, their knees fitted behind each other and Ronan’s mouth on the back of Adam’s neck. Adam had let him push closer, so he was probably in a better mood. Ronan’s hands wandered over Adam’s stomach lethargically, and then with purpose.
“Ronan.” Adam grumbled in protest. “I have work.”
Ronan tried to convince him to stay in bed with a biting kiss against the tender skin of his throat and dipping his hands under the elastic of Adam’s sweatpants.
Adam grabbed Ronan’s wrist and repeated himself. “I have work.”
“Fuck that,” Ronan teased, “I’ll show you work.”
But Adam was pulling away and shuffling out from under the covers. He busied himself with picking up clothes from where they’d ended up on the floor and the chair. He left to get changed in the bathroom.
Adam hadn’t looked at Ronan - Ronan knew this because he had been watching quietly through the whole process. Ronan rolled over and contemplated the narrow window in the room. A spider had begun to build a web there, but it must have gotten distracted because the web was a sparse, half-finished thing. Maybe it had died at the claws of one of the rangy barn-cats that roamed the property.
A knock on the frame of the door announced Adam’s return. He was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans - his usual for a shift at the factory. He didn’t come into the room. “I’ve got to head out.”
Ronan grunted.
Adam didn’t sigh, but his face briefly flickered into a set that reminded Ronan of a Gansey-ish expression. Adam said quietly. “Don’t.”
“Whatever.” Ronan fruitlessly rearranged the pillows and declared, “I’m going back to sleep.”
Dismissed, Adam left for work. Ronan hoped that the shitbox wouldn’t start - its battery had been acting up all summer - and that Adam would come back in to ask for help jump-starting it. But the roar of the shitbox choking on its own gas intake rattled the windows and then Adam was gone.
Ronan thought about the way his mom never properly fought with his dad. How she would never show him that she hated whenever he left on one of his trips - especially when he started taking Declan. As a little kid Ronan would mope inconsolably when his dad left, but his mom would always reassure him that he would be back and try to cheer him up with stories. Even though his mom clearly missed his dad, she would go on with the daily minutiae of running the house with a quiet sort of reserve that Ronan had always fancied as dignified. Her good-byes were never tearful or overwrought.
Laying in bed, feeling a bit petulant, Ronan didn’t think that he’d pulled it off and there was nothing particularly dignified feeling about it at all.
He didn’t even know if Adam had noticed, had cared, or even if he was still upset from the day before.
But surely this was better than bringing it up and shouting about it, right? The only sort of fighting Ronan had any practice in was loud and accusatory and usually ended with a fist in Declan’s face. As much as Ronan felt unsure what to do, he knew that he absolutely couldn’t do that.
So Ronan wouldn’t mention it, and Adam wouldn’t mention it, and tonight Adam would come back and smile his tired little smile and they would bitch about his coworkers while Ronan reheated some casserole. Everything would be fine.
Adam didn’t come back to The Barns that night.
When Ronan was eleven, his father had to leave for a business trip. Now, this was not unusual - Niall Lynch had been leaving tearful sons behind with a charming smile and encouraging ‘keep your chin up for your, Ma, understand?’ for years. But this was the first time he had taken Declan with him.
At eleven, Ronan thought himself very grown up and long past crying over anything. Matthew at a tender eight still cried at the sad parts of movies, but Ronan had learned how to take that lump of a feeling and keep it to himself like a grown up.
But seeing Declan getting to go with his dad had stirred up a maelstrom of emotion in Ronan.
“It’s not fair!” Ronan told his Ma over his cereal bowl. Declan was hardly older, and he hadn’t even seemed excited to go! Ronan would have been thrilled to spend all that time alone with Da.
“Eat your breakfast, dear.” Ma said gently. Matthew was still up in his room, crying because Da had left again, and with Declan gone, it was just the two of them. Ronan didn’t spend much time alone with Ma. The Barns was normally a loud mess of the three brothers all together.
Ma continued, “I know you miss Declan, but he’ll be back soon.”
“I don’t miss him.” Ronan complained. “He’s stupid and boring. Why’d he get to go?”
“Ronan.” Ma said and she meant ‘Don’t say rude words’.
“What?” Ronan whined. “He is.”
She explained, kindly, “Your father has important business, you know that. It’s our job to do our best here and be ready for when they come back.”
Ronan didn’t feel that this was very fair. “I guess.”
“How about this?” Ma offered, “You finish up your food like a big boy and you can help me make cookies to cheer up Matty. C’mon, I’ll let you lick the spoon.”
The next time Ronan saw Adam was later that week at Monmouth, and that was only because Gansey had procured fireworks as an excuse to have them all come by.
The evening had passed in a blur of Ronan setting off an inadvisable number of fireworks at once, Blue absently forcing her latest textile monstrosity onto Adam (a lumpily knitted green sweater), and Gansey looking between Ronan and Adam like they were more puzzling than the hunt for Glendower had ever been.
Ronan knew that Gansey’s puzzlement would come with questions, and so he spent his time avoiding Gansey and Adam both, finding himself inexplicably spending time with Cheng and allowing himself to be cajoled into shotgunning beers. Drunk and vascillating between destructively giddey and morose, Ronan crashed in his old bedroom and woke up to a quiet Monmouth in the early morning hours. To avoid Gansey’s questions, Ronan had driven himself home, fighting off a hang-over, and crashed in his own bed, alone.
After watching Gansey puzzle himself to death, Ronan wasn’t surprised to see The Pig rattle up The Barns’ long driveway late in the afternoon.
Still feeling the familiar lethargy of a hang-over, Ronan had spent hours lazing on the wicker furniture that crowded the front porch. The muggy air sat oppressively over him in a way that felt appropriate to his mood. Chainsaw had visited him briefly to scatter cracker crumbs over his lap. She only did this when she thought he needed cheering up and it was really annoying, but Ronan felt too piteous to stop her.
Ronan heard The Pig before he saw it come around the trees planted in the bend of the driveway. Gansey had so rarely visited The Barns alone that summer that Ronan couldn’t help but feel a little excited to see him. Then he remembered the way his friend had looked fretfully between him and Adam the night before and Ronan dreaded the lecture he was sure would come. Or the well-meaning attempts to fix what was wrong. There was nothing wrong - nothing Ronan wanted help with anyway.
Ronan didn’t have to work up defensive tactics against Gansey, however, because though The Pig did pull up carefully alongside the porch, it was Blue’s wild head of curls that poked out the driver door.
“Get in.” Blue instructed him.
In a mixture of dread, curiosity and jealousy, Ronan found himself stuffing his feet into his combat boots and sliding into the passenger seat of The Pig. Blue was alone, and she wasn’t as confident a driver as Gansey, but she managed to handle the slow curves of the drive back out to the road without stalling the car.
“What’s this?” Ronan asked acidically over the sound of the tires on gravel. “An intervention?”
“Yes.” Blue agreed, flicking on the blinkers to change lanes in an overabundance of caution. “And also you’re buying me gelato.”
“Where’s Dick?”
Blue set off on a long explanation that included Cheng and their plans for their trip that would start only a few short weeks away. She lit up with every detail even if she was describing set-backs. So Gansey had let her take out The Pig without supervision.
Ronan regretted asking.
True to her word, Blue took them to the gelato place on the closest edge of Henrietta and easily told the bored attendant - that she seemed to know from school as they commiserated about a teacher - that Ronan would be paying. She bought an ungodly combination of technicolour flavours and then led the way to the back of the building to sit on some sagging picnic tables.
“So.” Blue told him, her tongue already turning purple from the gelato. “I’m intervening.”
“Nosy asshole.” Ronan agreed. He remembered when she had first been brought into the group. He had seen how easily she integrated herself into their time, inviting herself along and even setting plans with them individually. Her ease of making friends had been something Adam admired in her, Ronan knew. She hadn’t needed to try the same tactics on Ronan since he would show up if Gansey asked, or not at all. Now, Ronan found himself under the full force of Blue’s practical friendship.
She continued, “I’m not here to tell you what to do-”
“Hah.” Ronan doubted it.
Blue leveled her best no-nonsense glare at him. Ronan was impressed. “You can mope alone all you like. But I figured it would suck less if you had some gelato while you did it. Also, I’m here to listen or whatever.”
Ronan raised his eyebrows derisively at her.
“Yeah, blegh, I know. ‘Feelings are gross!’ Am I getting it right?” Blue teased, eating a prodigious spoonful of gelato.
Ronan stoically ate his gelato. His tactic of keeping quiet worked a lot better when everyone was distracted by their own problems.
Blue said, “You’re gonna have to say words out loud eventually.”
At that challenge, Ronan stubbornly shoved more gelato into his mouth. He didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to.
“Adam’s going to want to talk about whatever you fought about.” Blue told him plainly. “And you don’t want to let him stew in it too long beforehand. He’s good at convincing himself that something is more unfixable than it really is.” She shrugged. “Give him space, sure, but don’t make him think he’s alone in it, ok?”
Ronan didn’t want to hear this from her. He didn’t want to be reminded of the fledgling almost-something Adam had with her. “Shut the fuck up.”
Blue wasn’t put off by the warning in his voice. “He shouldn’t be avoiding you either. I don’t care about the drama of who’s right or wrong. I just don’t want you to feel miserable about a good thing.”
This defense should have warmed Ronan to the situation, but he still felt prickly and defensive. How could she possibly understand? She had a home full of family and plans for after the summer and, hell, she’d been allowed the coveted right of driving The Pig without Gansey hovering fretfully. Ronan viciously stabbed his spoon into his sadly melting lump of gelato.
“Oh boy.” Blue muttered to herself and rolled her eyes dramatically. “Look, there’s still some fireworks in the trunk. You want to go blow some stuff up?”
Ronan wanted to keep being mad at her, jealous of her, but he really did want to set off fireworks in inadvisable places.
“C’mon squirt.” He dumped the rest of his gelato in the trash and set off towards The Pig, calling back sarcastically. “I’ve got just the idea for how you can ‘cheer me up’.”
“Blue said you set off explosives on the Aglionby tennis courts.” Adam announced his return to The Barns the next day with little fanfare, depositing his keys on the kitchen counter. He had caught Ronan banging about the kitchen, pretending to cook, but really just irritably taking things down from the cup boards and then putting them back in a different place.
Ronan was fiercely glad that Adam came to The Barns himself and parked his shitty car alongside the sagging front porch. That Adam knew he was always welcome back. His eyes eagerly drank in the sight of Adam, solid and real and looking back, in the golden afternoon light of The Barns. He looked tired, but he was close enough for Ronan to touch.
“The coach left me a set of keys for ‘recreational purposes’.” Ronan informed him. If this is what they were going to do - just slip right back into joking - then he’d do it.
“I think they meant for you to keep up practicing with the hope that you’d rejoin the team.” Adam
Ronan shrugged. “Fine print.”
He stayed planted firmly, leaning back against the counters, as Adam approached. The steps were slow, but sure. Adam was looking him over too, as though more time had passed than just a week. As though they had been apart for years. Ronan missed him as though the separation had been that long and just as unbearable.
“I called you.” Adam said, hovering close to Ronan, but not reaching out for him in an awkward half-respect of personal space. “To say I was coming over.”
Ronan didn’t want Adam to have to ask to come by. He wanted Adam to treat The Barns as his own. “Didn’t get the message.”
“Sorry for bothering you.”
Ronan knew his expression was thunderous, so he tried to hide it by turning away. “Don’t fucking-”
Adam gently put a hand on his arm, in the crook of his elbow right where the skin was soft and thin against Adam’s calluses. Ronan froze, breath caught heavily in his chest.
“No, listen. I’m going to leave sometimes,” Adam said, quiet and firm. “I have something I’ve got to do.” He continued more urgently now - uncharacteristically rushed. “I’ve got things I need to leave Henrietta to do. You’ve gotten what you needed. You’ve got your dreams here.”
The words dropped as cold stones inside the abyss of Ronan’s chest. The truth had never felt more like a lie.
Ronan couldn’t look at Adam. Ronan wanted to ask what he had done, what had gotten Adam upset - would he leave again and would Ronan be the one who kept him away? The words wouldn’t come, because they weren’t the ones Ronan knew. He hoped Adam would look at him and figure him out.
“I’ve got to leave.” Adam’s familiar voice made his tender words nearly unbearable. “But I’ll always come back.”
Adam’s hand was large and warm on Ronan’s shoulder, the nape of his neck. He murmured, “Look at me, Ronan.”
When Adam said ‘Ronan’, it just sounded like his name. Called to him, Ronan was helpless to the urge to move closer. He tipped his head towards Adam. “Parrish.” The name a quiet hiss between his teeth.
Adam tipped their foreheads together, palm warm against the knobs of Ronan’s spine where it laddered down the back of his neck. Each fingertip a firm press, reassuring and confident. “I’ll always come back to you.”
Ronan witnessed the shape of Adam’s mouth as he said this. His lips were horribly chapped. “Gay.”
Adam laughed and kissed him - slowly at first, just pressing closer hesitantly as though he might not be welcome. Ronan wanted him to be sure that he was always welcome. And even as Adam promised to return, there was a small, loud part of Ronan that wanted to beg don’t leave don’t leave don’t leave.
When Adam came back to Ronan it was to find him in such an un-Ronan-like state, that it nearly drove him back out of The Barns. He was so hesitant and hiding it poorly behind caustic jokes. He had swayed so easily back into Adam’s orbit, grateful and quiet just because Adam had returned.
I did this to him. Adam knew, thinking about their fight and the way he couldn’t help but freeze up in the wake of it. How his mother would do the same - at the barest hint of a confrontation, she was frigid and unseeing. He hadn’t known what to say to Ronan, and he hadn’t known what to do. He just knew that he was doing it all wrong - too quiet and too angry and too strange. Adam couldn’t stand himself. So he’d gone away and thought about that night until the edges of the memory had worn smooth and warped, like a river stone. And once he had an answer, he’d come back. He would always come back.
Adam hoped that Ronan believed him.