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Adam couldn't express how thankful he was that their car’s AC was working. There were simply no words. They'd been out of it for barely ten minutes, and already his shirt was plastering to his back, making him feel gross and sticky. He had no idea how the poor clerk could survive in this hell with only a weak fan aimed at her face.
How exactly didn't people in this town all die from heatstroke was totally beyond him.
"What factor did you say you use again?" Adam asked Ronan, examining the old wooden shelf for a brand of sunblock that he could at least recognize. "Thirty?"
Ronan grumbled dangerously next to him. "I didn't say," he said cuttingly. "Because I don’t use sunblock."
Adam snorted softly, eyes still on the shelf. "Yeah, cause that worked out so well for you last time."
Ronan rolled his eyes, undershirt clinging to his chest in the finest way. "I’ve never used sunblock my whole life, Parrish. I haven’t died of cancer yet."
"Yet," Adam stressed, quirking one eyebrow and reaching out for a bottle with a big 60 in it. “And let’s forget the cancer. Let’s talk about what happened last time you got a sunburn.”
Ronan looked at him with a warning. “Let’s not."
“You complained for a week that we couldn’t have sex,” Adam said, voice going weary just from the memory. Ronan scoffes.
“Cause you weren’t complaining at all,” he said.
“Wasn’t me that couldn’t sit without screaming.”
“Cute. Now you’re making innuendos.”
Raising an unimpressed eyebrow, Adam grabbed Ronan’s hand and smacked the sunblock in it. “If you liked that so much, there’s better ways to accomplish it.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a raspy whisper: “How’s that for an innuendo?”
Ronan gave him a look. His eyebrows twitched, and Adam had an abrupt, vivid daydream of a better use for the ancient ice cream freezer to their right. Then, Ronan shoved the bottle back to Adam, which was, as they both knew it, his way of expressing acquiescence. “Buy me a soda while you’re at it,” he said, turning and striding towards the wheezing refrigerators.
Adam called out after him: “I could help put it on your back,” and Ronan flipped him the finger.
Outside the tired gas station and dusty little shop, the sun blazed on its own personal vendetta. The large expanses of flat earth, the reddish-brown dust, the sky burning their eyes with its kindergarten primary blue; all of it conspired to make Adam feel they were in a different planet, rather than a different state. It was a familiar sensation for being an alien one. Things had been just the right unsettling kind of weird for as long as they’d been in the road.
Adam wondered if he’d ever become used to all of this.
Used to Cabeswater’s branches still reaching for him miles and miles and miles away from Henrietta. To strange and slumbering magic sizzling to life at the wake of his footsteps. And answering to no one but those he’d chosen to.
It was enough to scramble his brains like a cracked egg.
As if sensing his pensive mood, and disliking it, Ronan caught Adam’s attention again by slamming the refrigerator door with entirely unnecessary strength. Adam rolled his eyes.
“Are you trying to break something?” he asked, slipping his hands into Ronan’s front pockets. Ronan backed against Adam’s chest easily, swaying into his arms.
“Maybe,” he said, petulantly popping open a soda can. Really, only Ronan could manage to open a can with petulance.
“Pest,” Adam told him.
“Hag,” Ronan said, making it sound statement of fact. He tossed the soda back, an action planned in cold blood. It was getting progressively harder remembering why he shouldn’t jump his boyfriend’s bones in a convenience store.
Then again, the car wasn’t that far away.
Adam had just begun to explore that train of thought when they heard the bell to the front door ringing, effectively shattering the moment. Ronan, who’d seemed very content so far, immediately became annoyed. Adam was a bit glad for the interruption. He didn’t really fancy getting arrested for public indecency.
He gave a quick look over his shoulder to check who was coming in. It was a group of three men. Typical small-town, too much plaid, macho manly man buff dudes. They were starting to give Adam stomach ulcers. How could all these guys look exactly the same in every single town they drove by, even when they looked absolutely nothing alike? Forget Cabeswater. This was gonna drive him mad one of these days.
Adam ignored them. He had better, and more important things, to focus on. Such as the fresh smell of rain on trees that followed him everywhere now. Part of it was calling him back to the road, or, better said, to a few miles off it, where the Ley Line sizzled and moaned in loud disapproval.
Another part of it was considering the store’s chocolate selection.
“Did we run out of snickers yet?” Ronan asked off-handedly, reaching back to cup his jaw. The motion was so automatic, neither boy thought much of it.
Until they heard the muttering.
Adam looked over his shoulder again. Ronan mimicked the motion, or rather mirrored was a better word, as they did it exactly at the same time. Stomach Ulcers Number One, Two and Three were loitering next to the counter, talking in gruff voices and glaring at their direction with open disgust. This was clearly their idea of subtlety.
The store clerk looked very anxious. Adam felt sorry for her.
Ronan turned back to the chocolates, leaning further against Adam’s chest, fingers caressing his neck pointedly. Six months ago, they would’ve stood so far apart, one of them would’ve been waiting in the car. But six months ago, Adam hadn’t yet noticed people avoiding them.
Not all people, which was the good part. But then again, not all people, which was the bad part.
Ronan finished drinking his soda. Sneered with contempt. “Do we do something about it?” he asked casually, smashing the empty can.
Adam considered it. Thought about the thinly veiled aggression brewing behind them. Thought about the truly hellish heat and the clerk’s fearful body language.
Stomach Ulcers moved away from the cashier.
“They’re probably aiming for the parking lot,” Adam said, in a low voice, next to Ronan’s ear. “Let’s pay and get out.”
Ronan’s answering smile spoke of late-night races, that one particular kind when Adam pretended to be asleep, and Ronan pretended to believe it, and none wondered if the whole facade was really necessary. “Get out, get out, or…?”
Adam rolled his eyes. “You’re a menace,” he said, pushing him towards the cashier. He said it like he’d meant to say something else: something like bed sheet whispers or hot afternoon murmurs.
Ronan replied with the same dangerous smile.
They approached the clerk with their total sum of a crumpled soda can, a bottle of sunblock, and the biggest bag of ice they could find. She still looked shaken, her eyes shifting faster and faster from them to Stomach Ulcers. Adam really felt bad for scaring her like this. She’d been so nice.
Ronan was just finished paying for their stuff, when something tickled the back of Adam’s conscience. He stopped, wondering what could Cabeswater want right now – seriously, he’d just spoken to it like five minutes ago – when the image of something vaguely familiar fluctuated before his eyes.
He looked at the clerk again, a chubby native girl with anxious, anxious eyes, and his mind supplied helpfully: Ashley.
Ronan picked up on it. If from Adam, or directly from Cabeswater, he couldn’t say.
“I’ll deal with those,” he told Adam, sticking a thumb towards Stomach Ulcers. Ashley tossed him a look of complete panic.
Ignoring that, Ronan untangled himself from Adam’s arms, not without grabbing his collar first. He pulled him down, pressing a hard, hot kiss against his lips. Then, smiling like war, he let go.
Adam thought that was unnecessary, but he didn’t complain.
Glancing at Stomach Ulcers with royal disdain, Ronan grabbed their groceries and strode towards the door. They waited a couple beats, then followed him out.
“It’s all right,” Adam told Ashley, halting her hand when she made as if to grab for the phone. “He can handle himself.”
She looked frantic still. “It’s three against one.”
“He’s gonna be fine,” Adam insisted. He could feel the Ley Line running steadily under his feet, and Chainsaw was waiting outside. Ronan wasn’t the one in danger there. “I’ll be just a minute.”
He kept an eye on Ashley to make sure she didn’t grab for the phone, then reached for his back pocket. Fished out a business card and a set of dreamed keys.
Pushing them across the counter towards her, Adam leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You should take the car and get out,” he said, barely moving his lips. “He won’t call the police after you.”
Ashley’s eyes widened, her face going a sickly pale green. She looked around with a hitch of terrified breath. “How do you…?”
“I think you know,” Adam said, offering a knowing smile. He felt remarkably like Persephone for a short moment, and he couldn’t tell if that was a pleasant feeling. “I promise you he won’t call the police. Take the car. Tonight.”
Ashley looked down, at the keys Ronan had wordlessly handed Adam earlier that same morning. Something hardened behind her eyes. She took them.
Adam nodded pleasantly. “If you’ll excuse me.”
And then he left to find his boyfriend before Ronan gouged someone’s eyes out.
Turned out he’d missed all the fun. Stomach Ulcers were scrambling for their lives, all looking terrified, desperate to get away, and whiter than bleached bone. Ronan was leaning against their car, looking mighty pleased with himself.
Adam leaned next to him. “What’d you do?”
Ronan turned into him, nuzzling his jaw in a motion that looked entirely accidental, but felt every bit premeditated. “Oh, you know. The usual.”
“Mmhm,” Adam said, amused. “C’mon, let’s get out of here already.”
“Finally,” Ronan said, reaching out for Chainsaw. Sometimes she preferred to fly after the car, but the heat had gotten to her too. Perching in Ronan’s headrest was a lot cooler.
It was Adam’s turn to drive, so Ronan busied himself by eating snickers for a couple minutes, staring outside the window. Adam thought he was a bit quiet. He hadn’t even complained about the music, yet.
Sure enough: “What did she need the keys for?”
Adam considered his answer. Cabeswater gave him varying degrees of information for any given issue, and he was yet to figure out if there was any rule to it. He wondered if privacy meant anything to a magical sentient forest.
“I think she’s a Greywaren,” he told Ronan at last. This was a manner of saying, of course, as she certainly had another name to it. Many thieves, only one Greywaren. But there it was. “She needs the keys to get away from someone.”
Ronan didn’t ask why she hadn’t come up with them herself. One could just as easily ask why she hadn’t taken the original keys already, and that was a stupid question.
They got to the place where the road and their path separated, and Adam carefully maneuvered out of the asphalt. He was surprised to find a dirt path leading towards their goal. Cabeswater’s track record with accessible locations wasn’t exactly the best one ever.
“Wanna bet we’ll be hauling rocks the whole afternoon?” Ronan sneered, glaring at the desert stretching forever ahead of them. Adam shrugged.
“Cabeswater can wait until nightfall,” he said easily. Ronan eyed him with a knowing expression.
“But you can’t?” he asked, smiling devilishly. Adam ignored the heat creeping up his neck.
“I’m driving,” he said, in a clipped voice. Ronan laughed. That had never stopped them before.
“Yeah? So park the car,” he purred invitingly. Adam’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“We’re working,” he said, sneaking furtive glances at Ronan. He had this relaxed stance on his seat, head tilted back, lazy smile, spread legs. Sneaky bastard.
“Yeah?” he said, coolly. Making it all seem as casual as pouring a glass of water, he rolled the window down enough for Chainsaw to fly through, and gently nudged her out.
She flapped her wings and left the car.
Ronan rolled the window back up.
Adam hit the brakes.
“Fuck, Ronan,” he said, practically wrenching his seatbelt off. Ronan smiled victoriously, yanking him over the stick by his shirt, arching up to get to his mouth.
Adam climbed on the passenger’s seat, straddling Ronan’s lap, a fire roaring up to life. His hands reached for skin, teeth sunk into lips, and they were kissing like fighting, trying to steal each other’s souls. Ronan grabbed the headrest, his other hand dug into Adam’s hair, body arching into him helplessly. “Is that the plan?” he gasped, bottom lip between Adam’s teeth. “Cause then…”
“No,” Adam cut him off, hooking his fingers on his waistband and yanking him forward. Ronan went in an easy slide, bones like rubber. “Later. Car’s too cramped.”
Ronan laughed, a sound not unlike vinyl and gasoline, lips trailing down Adam’s neck. “Never stopped us before,” he said, making a small sound of satisfaction; almost a purr. Adam felt goosebumps run down his spine. He trusted forward, fitting their hips flush together, and Ronan’s breath caught – an imprecation cut short, a choking sound, and then a long moan that was nothing short of pure bliss.
He had gone boneless under Adam, pliant like wet clay, moving with his rhythm with only small mewling sounds. He moaned louder when Adam moved to open his fly, bucking his hips upward to help. “Adam,” he gasped in his ear, leaving reverent kisses all over his jaw. “Adam.”
“I got you,” Adam said, fingers fumbling urgently around belts and zippers. Ronan’s hands were cupping his neck, and his teeth were scrapping his skin lightly, and Adam had to kiss him – grab the back of his neck, press him to the seat, kiss him senseless until he could barely pant against Adam’s lips.
And the fact that he could – that Ronan would kiss back, ask for more, let Adam’s hands roam whenever they wanted in his body – was a power high unlike anything else he’d ever experienced. It wasn’t the cumulative power of thousands upon thousands of miles of a Ley Line. It wasn’t the heady, reckless all-knowing of scrying. It was unspeakably better than that, unimaginably more terrifying, and all-consuming whenever it sunk its claws on Adam’s heart head.
Why would one want to be a god, Adam, wondered, if one could already make a god beg?
“Adam,” Ronan called, in a tone of complaint. He had plastered all over him, arms around his shoulders and hungry mouth, still buckling his hips to his rhythm. “Come the fuck on.”
Adam laughed, nails scrapping Ronan’s neck, his other hand sliding down his abdomen. He stopped there, drawing circles in his tense muscles. Ronan threw his head back, hitting the headrest and cussing under his breath. “Damn it, Adam!” he hissed tensely.
Adam laughed again. He wondered if he’d ever get tired of seeing Ronan like this, torn between wanting more and wanting exactly this.
He run his hands upward again, hitching Ronan’s tank top, palms flat against the sides of his body. Ronan whined. Adam concluded he’d never tire of this.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” he told him, tugging at the fabric. Ronan wretched it off as it was catching fire. Adam reached out and twisted the seat into a lying position, promptly leaving Ronan with barely any leverage.
“So are you,” he said anyway, reaching for Adam’s pants. Before he could do anything, Ronan sneaked a hand inside his jeans, cupped his erection, and squeezed.
Adam’s knees trembled. Ronan got up on one elbow, his thumb caressing up and down with just enough pressure. “Feels good?” he asked in a raspy voice, pressing down.
“Ronan,” Adam gasped, jerking forward. “Fuck’s sake, just get them off already.”
Fast like a bullet, Ronan hurried to obey, unbuttoning Adam’s pants and shoving his own off with equal urgency – Adam would like to say he still knew perfectly well what he was doing, but that would’ve been a lie. Ronan was a challenge to his self-control when he’d had hours to plan ahead: when ambushed like this, he was lucky if he could stop kissing him long enough to form a couple coherent thoughts.
Ronan wrapped one leg around his, and Adam’s brain screamed: fuck coherent thoughts.
When he surfaced again, struggling to catch his breath, skin prickling like a summer storm, Adam found himself looking at Ronan’s eyelids. He had them half-closed, lips parted as he too searched for air, eyelashes fluttering over his cheeks. Adam reached out to cup his face, and Ronan sighed, pressing into the touch. Didn’t bother opening his eyes. What would he do that for, when he could still feel Adam’s every movement perfectly well?
Adam brushed a thumb across his eyelids, and the hint of a smile tugged at Ronan’s lips.
It was all Adam could do to stop himself from bolting. Something swelled inside of him, something loud and overpowering and ravenous that had him biting his tongue to keep it quiet. Well, it wasn’t like Ronan didn’t know. Wasn’t even like he’d never said it before (kinda).
But Adam didn’t want to say it – he wanted to bite and kiss it into Ronan’s skin, wanted to carve it in his bones, wanted to burn it into his blood and etch it inside of him. If he began saying it, he felt like he would never stop. It was rushing downhill in a supermarket’s car all over again, except atomic bombs had somehow become involved, and he was cantering off the face of the Earth directly to his gruesome death.
And he didn’t give a damn.
“You’re gonna move anytime soon, Parrish?” Ronan asked, voice lazy and hot, poking him in the ribs. Adam shifted to one side, jammed the door handle in the middle of his back, and cursed as Ronan shimmied from under him. “Watch it.”
“I know,” Adam said with a face. Ronan maneuvered into the driver’s seat to give him some space, all the while eyeing the horn suspiciously. There’d been an accident.
(It had involved Ronan climbing on top of him when Adam was driving, and a bad-aimed elbow, and then Ronan hitting his head on the hood so hard they’d had to get to a hospital)
Adam smirked at the memory. “It isn’t going to bite you,” he told Ronan, who glared daggers and snakes at him.
“Shut up,” he said, tossing the tissue box at his face. “I have one world for you, Parrish. Ketchup.”
Adam stopped smirking abruptly. Ronan didn’t bother trying to hide his enormous amusement. “It was your idea to go see the World’s Biggest Ketchup Bottle.”
“You wanted to go see The World’s Biggest Hole in the Ground.”
“It’s called the Grand Canyon.”
“It’s a huge hole in the ground,” Ronan insisted, maneuvering in distracting ways as he shoved his pants back on. “I still don’t know why you didn’t want to see the World’s Biggest Ketchup Bottle.”
“Why would anyone want to see the World’s Biggest Ketchup Bottle?”
“We did.”
“You were driving. I was kidnapped.”
Ronan snorted at that, disappearing briefly inside his tank top. Adam took that opportunity to hunt for his own clothes, finding it easier to remember that brief disaster with the Ketchup bottle than dwindle in the growing urge at his chest.
It had begun – Adam figured, even as Ronan stole the keys while he wasn’t looking – somewhere in the hundreds of side-road dinners they’d passed by. It had begun when Ronan was stealing food of his plate, holding his hand over the table and not noticing. Sometime when Adam had watched Ronan lean over a map spread in the car’s trunk, squinting as he examined it. In the nights they hadn’t gotten to a hotel and had instead curled in the backseat, only for Adam to wake up with cramps all over his body, and Ronan fast asleep on top of him, and never wanting to move.
It had been thousands and thousands of miles of no one but Ronan, and nothing but the road, and magic, and the growing pressure in his chest.
Ronan twisted one eyebrow at him. “Are we gonna get to that lake today, or are you just gonna stand there and stare at me?”
Adam pulled on his seatbelt. “You’re the one driving,” he said, settling back easy. Ronan rolled his eyes.
“Wanna give me directions before I drive us off a cliff?” he said, turning the ignition. “Don’t start with me, Parrish,” he added, just as Adam was about to point out there weren’t any cliffs around.
Adam smirked. “Just keep going straight.”
Ronan mirrored his smile. “Let’s see if I can accomplish that,” he said, dark amusement in his voice, taking off at breakneck speed. Chainsaw, back inside the car and nestled on Adam’s lap, screamed in outrage. Adam smoothed her feathers.
The lake was exactly as they’d left it. It wasn’t impressive by any means. In fact, Ronan had spent the whole of their last call home scoffing loudly every time Adam called it a lake. Blue had told him to get the stick out of his ass. Ronan had told her she could dive in the mud pool herself if she was gonna defend its honor. Adam still didn’t get their friendship.
“It’s still fucking depressing,” Ronan said, turning the car off and throwing his door open. Adam rolled his eyes.
“We aren’t exactly sight-seeing,” he said, heading over to the trunk. Ronan began munching on his rubber hands.
“It’s mud,” he said, getting up and out of the car. He wasn’t wrong. The lake was a brown thing, surrounded by tall weeds and shaded by a tree that had seen better days. “Are you sure we have to get in the water?”
Adam tossed him a diving mask. “Yeps.”
Ronan made a face. Adam slammed the trunk closed. “What’s with the sudden distaste for getting dirty?” he asked, realizing his mistake halfway through the sentence. “Don’t even,” he warned, pointing at him. Ronan wriggled his eyebrows anyway.
“The car’s gonna be filthy,” he said, frowning at the lake again as if it’d done him personal offense. “And we’re not gonna get to the next hotel until Friday.”
Adam began stripping down to his swimming shorts. “So? We haven’t exactly been keeping it clean,” he said, sensibly. Ronan shot a look at the car.
“It’s only food wrappers,” he said, waving a dismissive hand at it. Adam quirked one eyebrow.
“Not really,” he disagreed dryly.
“Oh, please. I’ve had your dick up my ass. I’m not worried about that.”
Adam spluttered, the sunblock falling right past his hands and crashing to the ground with a loud splurt. “Jesus, Ronan.”
Ronan smiled at him, a smile entirely too honest for the topic at hand. “What?” he said, taking off his own clothes. “Let’s go fix this damn mud pool.”
“Ronan,” Adam called, waving the sunblock bottle at him. He was met with a look drier than desert sand.
“Man, seriously?” Ronan complained, shoving the diving mask on, then letting it dangle from his neck. “Seriously?”
“You burn more when you’re in the water,” Adam said with a completely straight face. Ronan threw his hands up.
“Fine. Whatever.” He stomped over to Adam, then hoisted himself up on the rood, and just looked at him. “Well?”
Adam tried not to smile, but it was hard. He thought there’d been a time when he’d have rolled his eyes at Ronan, but now he couldn't not see it for what it was, and really – if not for the pampering, he wouldn’t have enjoyed the bossing around.
Still, as a matter of principle: “Lazy.”
“Ass,” Ronan replied easily. Adam smeared sunblock across his nose, and tried not to smile like too much of a fool at that image.
He cradled Ronan’s face, spreading the sunblock across his cheeks with his thumbs. It refused to blend at first, stark white against tan skin, but eventually it melted. Ronan closed his eyes.
Quietly, Adam worked his way down Ronan’s neck, across his shoulders, then his arms. He could feel the boy’s muscles unwinding under his touch, the way he swayed ever so slightly towards him. Adam wasn’t in a hurry. And he’d done this enough times to know how to untie the knots under Ronan’s skin, how to press his thumbs against his wrists to feel his pulse, which scars jarred him out of synch when touched.
But he was still learning to read all of Ronan’s reactions. The moments when he opened his eyes just slightly, eyelids at half-mast, looking at Adam’s hands rather than his eyes. The rarer glances up at his face. The minute shifting as if trying to find the better way to fit into his grip.
Adam spread the sunblock across Ronan’s stomach and let his hands fall there, just over his diaphragm, feeling the rhythm of his breathing. Ronan looked up at him, taking deep breaths. Adam wondered if on purpose.
“Your back,” he said, softer than he’d meant to. Ronan shifted so he was sitting sideways on the hood, and Adam climbed behind in.
He lingered even longer, then, feeling predictable and obsessed as he found himself tracing the lines of Ronan’s tattoo. It was the stuff of cheap romance novels. Next thing he knew, he’d be comparing Ronan’s freckles to constellations, and waxing poetry about his eyelashes – which, he’d absolutely never done before. No, sir. Not ever.
Still, Adam found himself doing it, again and again. Maybe it was that Ronan let him – maybe this, like so much else, was waiting to be denied, a manner of asking without asking. Or maybe it was just ‘cause it was there. Right within reach. Sometime around the tenth hotel, Adam learned that Ronan considered clothing superfluous around him. He’d had a lot of opportunity to look at it – it was a logical consequence he’d want to touch.
“You know you’re actually supposed to protect tattoos with sunblock,” Adam said casually. He felt Ronan’s shoulders moving under his hands, whole body synchronizing to his eyes rolling.
Adam could almost hear his next words leaving his lips, which is why he was so startled when they were different ones entirely.
He’d expected: “Whatever, Parrish.”
But he’d gotten: “You don’t need to nag me, Adam. I’m already using the damn thing.”
Smiling, fingers stilling over Ronan’s ribs, Adam leaned forward and kissed the junction of his neck. Ronan’s breath spluttered minutely, not even a gasp. Adam wrapped his arms around him.
“Let’s get to work?” he asked, kissing again, this time the side of his neck. Ronan grumbled:
“If you’ll let me go.” But there was unmistakable humor about it.
They parted, getting up and grabbing their diving masks, the muddy water seeming more and more inviting as the sun threatened to bake them alive. Ronan went first, complaining about it colorfully, and Adam followed with amusement.
It soon became obvious the visibility was utter crap. Even with their faces underwater, you couldn’t see a palm in front of your nose, much less the bottom of the lake, which was their intended destiny. Ronan stood in the dirty water sunk to his waste and shook the mask angrily. “It can’t be that deep, can it?” he asked Adam, studying their surroundings.
Adam frowned. “I mean, if it wasn’t sitting right on top of a Ley Line,” he said,, carefully inching his way forward. “You remember that freaky water tank.”
“Well, I do,” Ronan said, wriggling his eyebrows, and Adam flipped him.
“If I have to hear one more Sleeping Beauty joke…”
“You’re the one that kept falling asleep on the wheel for a month.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“I haven’t fallen asleep once!”
“Oh,” Adam poked him on his side, smiling devilishly when it made Ronan almost twist out of his skin to avoid it. “But I haven’t crashed the car.”
Ronan opened his mouth to retort, the gleam of his smile suggesting he had a mighty good one too, when the waters at the very center of the lake bubbled furiously, an angry explosion of heat that had them scrambling backwards away from it.
“Fucking hell!” Ronan hissed, stepping back on shore before the demon water decided to burn off his ankles. “Now the thing’s got a temper.”
“It’s impatient, I think,” Adam told him, eyeing the lake as it stopped boiling, the water turning lukewarm again. He examined it, squinting until his vision was blurred, trying to see if something new would show out of it. “I think it’s a branch,” he told Ronan, slowly, the syllables dripping out of him through a thick layer of honey. “It’s stuck right in the middle of the Line.”
“So it’s bleeding energy into the mud pool?” Ronan asked, accurately, glaring at the thing some more. “You wouldn’t know.”
“It can’t be that big,” Adam said, looking up at the vegetation around him. Skeletal branches and soggy leaves. “I’m sure I can pull it out if I can get my hands in it.”
“And you’re gonna do that…?” Ronan asked, twirling his mask around one finger to make himself clear. Adam shrugged.
“By feel.”
“By fe—Adam, what the fuck!”
But Adam had already submerged.
Ronan had been right – the lake wasn’t that deep. Sticking to the bottom of it, Adam could judge its slope as he went, and it was gentle. Before his lungs even started to burn from the lack of air, he felt his fingers bumping against something that was not sand and rock.
He found the place where it buried deep in the sand, sparkling sizzles of energy steadily spluttering out of it. After that, pulling was easy.
Adam heard something like a voice, muffled by too much water, sounding more like bubbles than words. He stopped pulling on the branch, having already yanked it most of the way out, and turned his head. The water broke, like someone had jumped in it. The branch slid out of the mud-sand all on its own.
Adam’s muscles screamed, from his palms to his shoulders and to his heart, screeching and seizing as electricity tore its way up his body. He jerked away from it – his hands glued to the branch – Adam felt his jaw snap open, muscles twitching from the shock, and water poured down his throat like a geyser.
The world went dark just as Adam vaguely felt someone’s hand closing around his arm.
Adam was standing at a doorway.
There had been no transition – no stepping forward or backward into this, no getting up or opening his eyes. No moment previous. He hadn’t been there before, and now he was.
The doorway was one Adam knew, though it took him long seconds to recognize it. Miles and months away made the image look ghostly. But he knew it the way he knew the veins on Ronan’s forearm: a web that he’d spent long enough tracing, knowing there was miles of it he couldn’t see. He was standing at the doorway to Ronan’s childhood home.
“Ronan?” Adam called, not going in, but sticking his head inside. The house didn’t feel empty, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly why.
Thunder grumbled in the distance. Adam took a step back, looking up at the sky – fat grey clouds loomed above, slowly but inexorably covering up the sun. Unease had him looking out to the fields: but the cows were nowhere to be seen, presumably all safely tucked away inside. Or not.
“Ronan?” Adam called again, growing restless, stepping over the threshold. Inside it was the sort of cool shade you only noticed after leaving the soggy heat of an approaching storm. The windows were all thrown wide despite the impeding waters. Adam advanced carefully.
Something kept nagging at him, telling him the house looked different. But Adam couldn’t register anything odd. It was like his mind was trying to tell him the objects he knew so well – the clocks and the pictures and the pink rollerblades – shouldn’t be there.
Wait, the—
What was he—
Trying to shake the uneasy feeling, Adam turned a corner, stepping into the living room. It was a mess, like someone had been trying to run a kindergarten in here. Holding his breath, Adam circled the couch.
Ronan came into view in a matter of steps. He was sprawled on the floor, clearly asleep as the dead, taking up as much space as his limbs could possibly manage. His chest rose and fell easily. His head was turned to one side, the swoop of his eyelashes catching the last of the sunlight.
And next to him – sleeping half on his chest and half on the floor – was…
Adam’s breath caught. The image fractured into a thousand sparkly facets – Ronan’s hand on his stomach, curled around tiny fingers, thumb safely trapped in them. The trail of spit running down his shirt. A socked feet kicking at his hip, caught in the throes of a grand dreamland race.
Stirring as if woken by some invisible hand, Ronan blinked his eyes open, in that morose way of unplanned afternoon naps. Straining, he looked around, his neck possibly craning. Then he spotted Adam.
“Hey,” he greeted, around a lazy smile, letting his head tunk back to the floor. "You’re home early.”
“—dam. Adam! ADAM!”
Adam jerked awake with a twist, heart catapulting out of his chest. Wheezing a painful gulf of air, he began coughing; deep, racketing coughs that felt like trying to vomit his own lungs. Turning on his side, he struggled to stop, but the best he could manage was actually vomiting – something acidic that burned his throat and tasted like mud. His whole body was pins and needles.
“Shit, fuck— Parrish, I swear to motherfucking Madre Thereza—”
Ignoring Ronan’s voice, cause at this point him swearing was white noise, Adam focused on coughing the rest of the lake water. He felt light-headed, and all scratchy inside, and honestly quite stupid. Electrocuted by the damn Ley Line. He was never going swimming ever again.
Frantic, Ronan grabbed his chin and yanked his face back.
“Are you all right?.” he demanded in a hiss. His fingers threatening to dislodge Adam’s jaw. The sun behind him was blinding.
He looked younger—but no, he looked exactly like he always had. It was the other Ronan that had looked older. His face had been more chiseled, his five-o-clock shadow darker, the lines in his eyes more pronounced. Adam kept registering these details now, everything that had been off that he hadn’t been able to recognize while staring at it.
This Ronan was his Ronan – and the other one had been… what? A promise? A possibility?
The howling inside of him struggled so hard to leave his mouth, Adam’s teeth were clattering.
“Ronan,” he gasped, sitting up so awkwardly he almost toppled over, reaching out to grab the boy’s neck, bringing him down. “I need to tell you something.”
Ronan let himself be pulled without resistance. Rolled his eyes at Adam’s antics. Looked annoyed. But still: “What?”
It wasn’t like Adam hadn’t said it before. When he wasn’t sure Ronan was awake. When he wasn’t sure Ronan was listening. When he wasn’t sure it counted.
He knew there was argument somewhere about the validity of grand confessions following near-death experiences, but he didn’t care.
“I love you,” he told Ronan, pushing himself upright, fingers digging on his neck. “No,” he interrupted when Ronan opened his mouth to reply. “I mean, I fucking love you.”
For a deafening heartbeat, Ronan didn’t react – just stared back, blankly, probably wondering if Adam had gotten water in his brain.
Then, wrapping the words around a lazy smile: “I fucking love you too.”
Adam yanked him down the rest of the way, their lips meeting with renewed urgency. The shift in weight toppled them over, sending Adam sprawling in the dirt and Ronan falling right on top of him. His ears were ringing like sirens.
Adam pulled away first. “Ew,” he told Ronan, lips twitching with laughter. “You taste like sunblock.”
Ronan’s eyes flashed. “Well, you taste like you just got a lungful of shit, so shut up.”
Laughing, Adam let Ronan pull him back in a sitting position, the world feeling fuzzy and saturated, a scene from a psychedelic movie involving drugs. Already, memories of distant rumbling thunder began slipping away. Adam tried half-heartedly to grab on to the pieces, but they slithered right through his fingers, never meant to stay.
Ronan smiled at him, and one last piece got stuck to Adam’s consciousness – tattered and lacking context and familiar and jarring in its strangeness. Lines around his eyes and lazy smiles and you’re home early.
The Ley Line hummed underneath Adam, a cat purring at the newest fix, and yet he was still conscious of hundreds of fixes still waiting ahead of them, greedy little things, and the only thing he knew was this: thousands and thousands of miles of no one but Ronan, and nothing but the road, and magic, and the growing pressure in his chest.
But also this:
Maybe knowing where the road led.