Work Text:
It was a Saturday morning, and Adam was lying on Ronan's bed, propped up against the pillows with Ronan's laptop on his chest. Ronan's head was in Adam's lap, his eyes closed, one of his headphone speakers twisted off his ear. He'd gotten tired of taking the headphones off entirely every time Adam read a sentence of the English paper he was working on out loud and asked Ronan if it sounded stupid.
He'd turned the volume down low, too, and he looked, miraculously, content. Ronan carried tension in his face, even when he was sleeping, a wrinkle in his brow that made him keep a bottle of Advil on his nightstand, two pills every morning to deal with the daily headaches. Adam was intimately familiar with this tension because he often held his own in the same place. But, now, the tension wasn't there. Ronan's face was framed by a square of early spring sun, his cheek warm whenever Adam placed the back of his hand against it. He was mostly still except for the fingers of his left hand, tapping a rhythm against the waistband of his jeans.
Then there was a knock on Monmouth's front door. Adam stopped typing and looked at Ronan. Ronan opened his eyes and frowned, pressing buttons on his MP3 player until the low blare in his headphones dulled into silence. They both listened through Ronan's closed bedroom door. There was a creak of squeaky hinges before Gansey said, loudly, "Oh." Then: "Sorry. I meant to answer your texts."
A second voice responded, dry and annoyed and getting closer, and Ronan sat straight up, dragging the headphones down around his neck. Adam hit the Save button on his document and gingerly closed the laptop. The peaceful look on Ronan's face was gone, shuttered behind something much darker.
His lip curled before he spat, "He better fucking not—"
The door to the bedroom burst open. Declan stood in the threshold, one hand still on the knob and the other pulling at the collar of his crisp, button-down shirt. His eyes glinted wildly before they landed on Ronan. Adam watched Declan look his brother up and down, quickly, barely perceptible, before his shoulders dropped from his ears, just a little bit.
"Good to see you're alive," he said coolly. He didn't acknowledge Adam.
"Thanks for barging in." Ronan's voice was steady, but it was a low, dangerous thing. He gestured at Adam. "We could've been—"
He didn't finish his sentence, but Adam felt his cheeks flush at the same moment Declan's ears went pink. "Hi, Declan," Adam said after a beat, just to say anything at all and maybe, partially, to be an asshole.
Declan finally looked at him. He didn't return the greeting, asking, instead, "Could you give us a moment, please?"
Before Adam could even open his mouth to respond, Ronan said, forcefully, "No. He's not going anywhere."
He didn't look at Adam when he said it, but Adam heard the silent request, so he kept his mouth shut and didn't move. He just shrugged slightly, looking at Declan with a raised eyebrow, a What can you do? Ronan was not the type to want his hand held at a moment like this, so Adam just moved his foot a tiny bit to the left, tucking it under Ronan's hip.
Declan closed his eyes, his chest rising and falling before he opened them again. "Fine. Four days." He took a step forward, shutting the door behind him, and pointed a stern finger at Ronan. Adam thought that maybe it shook a little. "Four days you haven't answered your phone."
"So?" Ronan asked incredulously. Said phone, Adam thought, was buried in the pocket of a pair of jeans Ronan had worn a week earlier. They lay crumpled on the floor near his overflowing hamper. Ronan spread his arms out wide. "Not the first time, and it sure as hell won't be the last."
Declan stared at him. He tucked his finger in with the rest, his hand held in a tight, clenched fist. "Do you know what tomorrow is?"
Brief recognition fluttered across Ronan's face. He tugged on the laptop in Adam's hands and held it open on his own hand, palm spread wide. He scribbled wildly on the touchpad until the screen lit up. Then he squinted at the date in the corner and said, softly, "Oh." It was the closest thing to an admission of guilt Adam had ever heard come out of Ronan's mouth during an argument with Declan, and he'd been present for many of them.
"Oh," Declan repeated sarcastically. Then, to Adam: "Tomorrow's the day our father was born, in case Ronan never clued you in."
He hadn't. Adam looked at Ronan.
"Can't you just call it a birthday like a normal human being?" Ronan asked, still staring at the screen, but there was no heat behind his question. His expression had softened from anger into something much more complicated. "I didn't forget," he added, defensive. Having to be reminded of his dad's birthday by Declan, of all people, was a harsh blow. Adam could see it in the tense muscles of his back, the hunched way he sat. "I just. I guess I lost track of time."
He put the laptop down on the bed beside him and absentmindedly slid a finger under the leather bands on his wrist, rubbing his skin with his knuckle. There would be no apology, but the bits of Ronan that had been poised for a fight had fizzled out.
But then Declan, still riled, crossed his arms over his chest and said, "Forgive me. I should have realized that a high school dropout who does nothing but sit on his ass all day has no reason to keep up with the days of the week," and Adam swore he felt the air crackle.
Adam put a hand on Ronan's shoulder and said, quietly, "Ronan," but Ronan shrugged out of his grip and the rest happened too fast for Adam to do anything about.
Ronan was on his feet, and he and Declan were in each other's faces, saying words Adam couldn’t keep up with, and Adam was on his feet, too, but useless. The door was open again and Gansey stood there, worried, but he got pushed out of the way, unapologetically, when Ronan stormed out, muttering a loud, furious string of vulgar profanities. Declan tried to stomp after him, and Gansey held him off for a little while with his hands on Declan's chest and a stern, "Declan, don't," but Declan was taller and nimbler and managed to slip past. Adam and Gansey stared at each other, concerned and exasperated, as Declan swore nastily, enraged, the word foreign and disconcerting coming from his lips.
They listened as Declan sprinted down the stairs. When he came back a minute later, his previously pristine shirt was rumpled, his fingers curled and clutched in his hair. "He took my goddamn keys."
Ronan had picked Adam up the night before, Adam's shitty Hondayota still on the street outside St. Agnes. Gansey sighed and asked Adam, "You wanna take the Pig?" He didn't offer it to Declan.
Adam bit his lip, glancing at Declan again. Then he shook his head and said, "You go." There were things about Ronan that Gansey would always understand a little bit better than Adam could. Niall Lynch was the most important of them.
Gansey looked between Adam and Declan, then nodded once, shrugged on a sweatshirt, and rummaged through a pile of shit on the floor until he emerged with his key ring on his index finger.
When he left, casting one more frustrated glance at Declan on his way out, Adam stared at Declan and Declan stared at his shoes. Then Declan exhaled, went back into Ronan's room, and sat, slumped, in Ronan's desk chair. Adam followed and sat on the end of Ronan's bed. Declan scrubbed a weary hand across his face.
"If you hadn't said that," Adam told him dully, "it probably would have been fine."
"I'm well aware," Declan said, equally as dull. He thumbed through a stack of yellow sticky notes that Ronan kept on his desk and used for nothing other than angry doodles, sharp, intricate lines in thick, dark ink that resembled the tattoo on his back. Then he picked up the ballpoint pen sitting nearby, the one that Ronan had chewed on so much its cap was warped with his teeth marks, and twirled it between his fingers.
Adam felt like he was intruding on something private. He had never seen Declan fidget with anything before. Normally, if his hands weren't balled up in fists, they were clasped tightly together, at his waist or behind his back or between his knees, if he was sitting.
Declan's leg was bouncing, too. He put the pen down and said, "It used to be me, you know. I used to be the one who had to go find him."
The idea of having a heart to heart with Declan made Adam profoundly uncomfortable. But Adam also loved Ronan so much it made his whole body ache, and he knew Declan, as shitty as he was at showing it, also cared about few things more than he cared about Ronan's safety. He and Declan were both, he knew, thinking about Ronan, hurt and aggravated and grieving, behind the wheel of Niall's BMW. They were both hoping Gansey would catch up with him before he did any permanent damage — to anyone or anything or to himself —and they were both, though neither of them would say it, afraid.
Sometimes Adam held Ronan close at night, one palm splayed between his shoulder blades and the other on the back of his head, and Ronan would lean all his weight against him and his breathing would slow and he would tell Adam about a fence he'd mended at the Barns that day or something bizarrely profound Opal had said or a dream he'd had the night before. In those moments, Ronan's breath hot on the skin below Adam's ear, his hands gentle and steady on Adam's waist, Adam could feel Ronan healing. It was a feeling in his chest like the time he and Ronan had stopped on the way to the Barns and bought homemade honey from a man at the side of the road, drizzling it on buttered toast when they got home and eating it over the sink so they wouldn't get crumbs everywhere. It was warm and golden and real and rare. It made Adam feel like he was healing, too.
But it was slow. Ronan would be healing for the rest of his life, because that was how it worked, and loving him meant knowing that. Declan knew that — he'd been trying, in his own fucked up, misguided way, to help Ronan heal since before Adam even started at Aglionby. If Adam-and-Ronan was going to be a lifelong thing — and Adam really, really wanted it to be — then Adam had to start getting used to the fact that he and Declan both just wanted Ronan to be happy.
So he scooted himself backwards until his back was comfortably against the wall, his heels dangling over the edge of the bed, and he asked, "When?"
Declan looked at him for a long moment, and his expression didn't change but something between them, Adam could tell, was fundamentally altered. He leaned back in his seat. "When we were kids," he said.
And then he told Adam about how, when the Lynch brothers were little, Ronan had a bad habit of running away when he got upset. His single attempt to leave the Barns, ambling down the long, empty road towards Henrietta until Declan, huffing and puffing on his bicycle, found him, sat him on the handlebars, and brought him home, got him in so much trouble with their parents that he never left the perimeter of their property again. Instead, he climbed trees or curled up in ditches at the bottom of hills or, if it was raining, lurked in the corners of unused barns.
If their parents were the source of Ronan's agitation, Declan would set out right away, pulling on a pair of galoshes and poking around the corners of the Barns, knowing Ronan never hid in the same place twice. If Ronan was annoyed with Declan himself — a scuffle over a shared toy or a particularly brutal loss on the video games Declan never let Ronan win — Declan would cross his arms over his chest, stomp his foot and claim that he wouldn't go looking this time, that he didn't care. But, after a few minutes, he always went anyway.
"When I found him, his reaction was always the same. He'd wipe the tears off his face with the heels of his hands, like he didn't want me to know he'd been crying," Declan said quietly. Adam thought about a tiny Ronan with a tear-stained face and a head full of curls and was so overcome with affection he had to dig his nails into his palms. "And then he'd hug me and say, 'Race you back home.'"
"And you always let him beat you there," Adam guessed.
Declan didn't answer. His face twisted into something that was too sad to be called a smile.
They both went quiet, then. Adam was pretty sure they were thinking the same thing: that it had been years since Ronan had wanted to hug his older brother but that Declan, for his part, had not changed very much at all. Adam looked at the lines at the corners of Declan's eyes and thought about asking him about all the ways Niall Lynch wasn't the hero Ronan made him out to be, but it felt, in that moment, like he was betraying Ronan, so he filed it away for another day.
Instead, he said, "You can always call me, if Ronan and Gansey aren't answering."
Declan blinked. "Ronan said you didn't have a phone."
"I didn't," Adam agreed, "but I let him dream me one for Valentine's Day."
Declan nodded, but he didn't move to pull his cell phone out of the pocket of his chinos.
Adam remembered Christmas at the Barns. Matthew had been thrilled to have Adam there — he'd insisted that the five of them, Opal included, wear matching pajamas from the Old Navy, which made Adam feel ridiculous but also made him cry, a little bit, when he put them on in the bathroom — but Declan had been less enthusiastic. He hadn't been cold towards Adam, necessarily, but he hadn't been particularly warm either. Adam didn't know if it was because he'd grown up in a trailer park or because he was a boy or because he was Adam. Every possibility made him feel shitty about himself.
He exhaled. "Look, I know you don't particularly like me, but having each other's numbers couldn't hurt."
Declan frowned. "I don't dislike you," he said, clearly surprised, though it was news to Adam. "I find you weird and unsettling"—Adam snorted, supposing he couldn't argue with that—"but Ronan..." He trailed off, faltering and grasping at the air like he could snatch the right words out of it. His hands landed on his knees and he shrugged, uncertain. "You're good for him."
This was perhaps the greatest compliment Adam would ever receive from Declan, but he had no idea how to respond to it, so he just slid off the bed and dug his phone out of his backpack. He typed in his passcode — 7-6-6-2-6, courtesy of Ronan's dream, a fact which had made Ronan blush furiously when they'd finally worked it out — and passed the phone to Declan. Declan sent himself a text, his fingers moving in a peculiar way across the keyboard. A moment later, he dug his own phone out and sent a text back to Adam. All it said was: D. Lynch.
"I only said it because I'm worried he won't have a future at all," Declan said then, out of nowhere. "I'm pissed that he made it this far just to throw it all away."
"I know," Adam told him, because there were moments when he felt the same. But he also meant it when he said, "He'll figure it out."
Declan hummed, gazing out the window. "You can lead a horse to water," he said solemnly. Then he stood, suddenly. Adam was sure he heard all the joints in his legs pop. "There's something I've got to do. Drop me a line if they get back before I do."
So he left. Adam watched from the second floor as he walked past the Volvo Ronan had stolen the keys to, right out of the parking lot and down the sidewalk until he disappeared from sight.
Ronan and Gansey did come back first, almost an hour later, Ronan's BMW edging into the lot with the Camaro trailing close behind. Ronan kicked off his shoes and threw his keys, and Declan's, onto the folding table where Adam sat, waiting, his paper finished and sitting in his email inbox, ready to be printed in the Aglionby computer lab on Monday morning. Ronan looked visibly calmer, the angry heat from before now a dull sizzle that hovered near his mouth. Gansey nodded at Adam over Ronan's shoulder.
"Where'd D-Bag go?" Ronan asked, hooking his ankle around the leg of the chair closest to Adam's and throwing himself in it. He briefly touched his forehead to Adam's temple. He smelled like sweat and incense and Adam loved him.
"I don't know," Adam said truthfully. He typed a short text out to Declan with one hand under the table as Gansey settled into a seat across from them. "He just said he had to do something and then he left." He dropped his phone in his lap, hooked a finger through Ronan's belt loop, and tugged, just for a moment, just to say hello. "Do you want to talk about it?"
Ronan grimaced. "It meaning my dad's birthday, or fighting with Declan, or Gansey having to track me down like I'm some sort of goddamn flight risk?"
"You are a flight risk," Gansey said affectionately.
"Any of the above," Adam replied.
Ronan placed the back of his hand on his forehead, leaning his elbow on the back of Adam's chair. "Fuck no."
Sometimes Fuck no meant Fuck no. Other times Fuck no meant Ask me again later, when the chaos of his insides had a chance to settle like the blue liquid in an overused Magic 8 ball, shaken and shaken and hardly ever placed down to rest. Adam would ask again that night, when they were alone and Ronan could hide in Adam's neck like he always did when he didn't want Adam to see the look on his face.
Gansey hadn't locked the door behind him, and now Declan walked right in, not bothering to knock this time, only the creak of the old Monmouth stairs forewarning his presence. His hairline was dotted with sweat, and he had a brown paper McDonald's bag clutched in one fist and a tray of sodas in the other. He walked right up to the table, dropping everything in front of Ronan. The bottom of the bag was soaked through with grease. Ronan stared at it, stunned.
Grabbing a cup for himself and snatching his keys off the table, Declan said, "I'm about to hit the road. Matthew's complaining that there's nothing to eat in the house, which isn't true, but he won't shut up about it."
Ronan was still looking at the food, his brow furrowed. "What'd you do, fucking walk?" He looked up at Declan, who was poking at his phone again and ignoring him and said, incredulously, "The closest McDonald's is like, two miles away."
Declan's only response was to take a long, loud sip from his drink and say, "Matthew and I will see you at Mass tomorrow."
He was turning to leave when Ronan said, simply, "Declan."
They looked at each other, then. Ronan didn't say anything else, but Declan appeared to accept his name as a peace offering, just as Ronan, apparently, accepted the McDonald's as one, too. Declan didn't say anything either, or even really react at all, but it seemed as though they had an entire conversation in that one look, anyway. Adam wouldn't know, not ever, but he was fairly certain it was the sort of thing only brothers could do. When Declan left, maybe he held his head just a little bit higher.
Ronan shook his head and dumped the bag onto the table, sliding a paper-wrapped burger and a cardboard container of limp fries to Adam, then to Gansey, who accepted them happily. Gansey immediately tore into a ketchup packet and poured it over the fries, depositing the empty packet onto a napkin and licking his fingers.
Ronan picked up a fry of his own and pointed it at Gansey. "You're nasty for that. Ketchup goes on the side."
"Your dad," Gansey pointed out, stabbing at his fries with a plastic fork, "did it my way."
"Every man has his flaws," Ronan retorted. "That was his biggest one."
Adam felt he was missing something. Ronan seemed to notice this first, because he turned to Adam and said, around the burger in his hands, "We weren't allowed to have McDonald's when we were kids, usually, but when Dad went on business trips, he used to always stop there on his way home from the airport. It was the one time we could have it, so we went nuts for it."
There were moments, sometimes, when Adam was floored by the knowledge of just how adored Ronan was, when he wished, more than anything, that Ronan could see it, too. This was one of those moments. Four miles Declan had walked, in work clothes and expensive loafers, to help Ronan honor a man who, for all intents and purposes, was the reason why everything between them was the way it was. Adam didn't think he would ever really know what to make of Declan Lynch.
"Mm," Gansey mumbled, flapping one hand to get their attention and wrapping the other around a cup. "Shall we cheers to Niall, then?"
So they did. They lifted their paper cups of soda, tapping them lightly against each other, their plastic lids crinkling when they touched. They chorused, "Cheers!" for Ronan's hero, his father, the mythical, magical man Adam would never have the chance to meet. Maybe that was the reason why (or maybe it was the four miles Declan had walked, the two hours he had driven one way, the look on his face when he'd said that Ronan used to race him home), when Adam lifted his cup, he thought mostly, secretly, of Declan.