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Adam answers the door and Abby stands on the other side, looking nervous and shifty, which may be because she and Adam broke up a little over three months ago, now. Adam hears Ronan walk up behind him, watches as he leans a hand on the door jamb, and asks Abby, “Hey, what's up?”
Abby is already looking at Ronan, though, over Adam's shoulder. Adam can't blame her—Ronan with his pretending-not-to-be-confused glower on is a sight to see. Abby asks, “This is him, isn't it? Your guy.”
The thing that had been nice about being with Abby had been that they'd fallen into each other in what they'd both quietly suspected would only be a brief gap in other, more tumultuous relationships. They'd even talked about it once or twice, and Adam is sure she's remembering a certain pre-dawn, whispered conversation as she looks over his shoulder and into Ronan's face.
“Yeah, this is him,” he confirms, feels Ronan's other hand meet his hip, slide fingers into his belt loop. “Ronan, meet Abby."
Ronan doesn't say anything, which Adam was expecting. He wasn't expecting Abby to turn to him again and say, “I'm happy for you,” because he’s still not sure what she’s doing here. She says, “David and I got back together, too, for a while. I really thought—” and suddenly Adam thinks he knows why she’s there.
Ronan must think so, too, because he says, a little nastily, though not with nearly as much venom as Adam knows Ronan has in him, “Well, I'm sorry to interrupt your rebound plans, then.”
Abby glares. “That's not why I'm here,” she tells Ronan sharply, then looks back at Adam and asks, “Can we talk?”
“Sounds to me like you're talking already,” Ronan says, tugging lightly on Adam's belt-loop.
Adam sighs. “Don't be a dick,” and then, to Abby, “Come in, then.”
When she's settled inside, Abby looks over at where Ronan is sprawled across the couch with his legs draped over Adam's lap in what is clearly a statement, laughs a little hysterically, and says, “I don't really know how to say this.”
Adam wonders vaguely if she's going to tell him she's given him an STD.
“I'm pregnant. If I'm doing the math right, it was probably with you.”
Adam feels like there should be a moment of silence after that, to give them all some space to process, but Abby is still talking. Ronan is terrifyingly still against Adam’s side.
“When I first told David, he said it didn't matter whose it was—that it was mine, and we'd do it together. But then we—well, that's not happening, we broke up, I think for good this time, and I thought—the way everything ended made me think—I'm not ready to be anybody’s parent, you know?” Until this point it’s had the sort of cadence of a prepared speech, but here she falters a bit. “I was thinking of not—not having it, but when I thought David and I were going to raise it, I was already thinking about it as a person, and I don't know if I can, and I was thinking about adoption, maybe? But I thought I'd better ask you, that maybe you'd have an opinion, or maybe you'd want—”
“Yes.” It's Ronan who says it, short and loud and like he thinks somebody is going to beat him to the punch. “Yes, we do. We want it. Him. Her.”
Adam stares at him. He's pretty sure Abby is staring at him, too. “Well, don't we?” Ronan's tone is the kind of combative that means he's unsure. “We—it's your kid. You can't tell me you'd feel good about not knowing what kind of home they end up in.”
He's right, but Adam knows he's right, too, when he says, “We’ve been back together for a month and a half, I can't ask you to raise a child with me.”
Ronan looks at him like he's an idiot. “You don't have to ask me, I'm—” but he cuts himself off, looking stricken. “I’m telling you again, aren't I? Shit—” and Adam is hit with a wave of overwhelming fondness.
Without really letting himself think about it too much, he reaches out and grabs Ronan's hand, catches his gaze, and asks, “You really want to do this? With me?”
Ronan nods, dark, serious eyes never leaving Adam's own. “Alright.” He looks over at Abby. “Okay. Yes.”
…
Adam is filled with a strange and calming certainty right up until Abby falls asleep on the couch, but as Ronan tugs him back towards the bedroom, he starts to feel himself get twitchy, and by the time he’s flung himself across the mattress, he can’t stop himself from saying, “You know there are a thousand reasons why this is a terrible idea, right?” The accent of his childhood twists out along the words, softening them, and Ronan stares down at him.
“Lots of things are bad ideas,” Ronan offers. “Explosives. Drunk driving. Drag racing. Sacrificing your soul to a magic forest. Law school. Talking to Declan. I don’t think having a baby fits into quite the same category, though.”
Adam shakes his head, feels his hair rustle against the sheets. “Yeah, but it’s kind of worse, though. Because the other things are only the things we can do to ourselves, right? Or to each other, I guess. But bring a kid into it, and that’s a whole new person to mess up. Abby said she wasn’t ready to be anybody’s parent, but who says I’ll be any better? I don’t even know if I know what better looks like.”
“I do,” Ronan says enigmatically, sitting on what he always claims as his side of the bed when he’s here, and nudging Adam with his elbow until he moves. Adam sits up long enough for Ronan to settle in, then flops back where he was, across Ronan’s lap.
He asks, muffled against the fabric of Ronan’s jeans, seeking a little clarification in this evening that’s gotten so unclear and strange to him, “You know what it looks like? Or you—”
“Yes. I know what it looks like. That’s how I know you’ll be better.”
“Kiss-ass,” Adam grumbles, distracted. “But—even aside from all the other shit, which is all important shit, and probably shouldn’t be put aside,” Adam hugs the arm that’s stretched across Ronan’s legs in a little tighter, “There’s still—I’m in school, you know.” He says it a little bleakly because he feels a little bleak about it. Because he should have known he wouldn’t get to have that, because of course school is something he’ll have to give up, if this is going to work. Life is a series of trade-offs, and he thinks he’s got an idea, now, of what he’s giving up for the wonder of an idea that’s not quite visible in Abby’s body yet.
“I know,” Ronan agrees, quiet.
“Maybe they’ll let me defer for a couple of years, or something,” Adam muses, thinking out loud.
“What?” Ronan sounds honestly surprised, “No, what the hell? You can’t do that, there’s no way you would keep your scholarship.”
He says it like it’s something Adam might have forgotten, or overlooked, and any other time, Adam thinks he’d have it in him to be pissed about that. It’s just like Ronan to jump into an idea like this, without thinking what it could cost Adam till later. Adam is so tired, though, he almost feels seventeen again, and in the end, there’s no way he can blame Ronan for this.
He explains, as patiently as he can, “Even if I could afford childcare for when I’m in class, which I can’t, I don’t know that I’d feel right about passing the baby off to strangers all the time when it’s that young, you know? And it would have to be all the time, you know how much time I don’t have, with work and school. And if I was going to stay in school, it would pretty much have to be right away after it’s born.”
Ronan shakes his shoulder, just lightly, a care that’s practiced, measured—Adam still starts away from rough contact, sometimes, especially so near his head. Ronan knows just how far he can push, though, after all this time. Adam doesn’t know when he stopped being unknowable to Ronan, does know he doesn't mind. “It’s like you’re not hearing me, Parrish. Didn’t I say you don’t have to do this by yourself?”
It’s true, that had, pretty much, been the deal, when Ronan leapt into the conversation like that after Abby’s big announcement. Adam just isn’t sure he’s processed exactly what that will entail, though. He says, “Okay, so I can look into transferring back down to somewhere in Virginia, there’s got to be something with a decent commute to the Barns—”
“Are you deliberately being a dumbass?” Ronan asks. “Of course I’ll move down here for a couple years.”
Adam turns over so he’s looking up at Ronan, and the wrinkle between his eyebrows tips Adam off to the fact that he might not be as certain about this plan as he’s trying to sound. He goes on, shifting around a little uncomfortably, “Not like I’ve got much going on down there, as long as you’re okay with moving back after graduation it should all be cool, Matt’ll probably be glad to get a little space while he finishes undergrad.”
“It sounds like you’ve thought about this a lot,” Adam says, tentative, and Ronan shifts a little again.
“Yeah, well. I was actually—I was already going to say something about it before the end of this trip. I was thinking, after this last time—if we’re going to make this work, the distance isn’t good for us, you know?”
Adam definitely knows—the ways they can find to fuck with each other’s heads without meaning to from a distance are seemingly endless—and the idea of having Ronan closer is a warming one, as is the idea that he’d been thinking about this for longer than he’d known about the baby. He says, “And it’s still what you want now? With, you know, all this?” He sweeps a hand wildly to encompass Abby sleeping on the couch in the next room, and the fact that Adam’s apartment is less shitty than his room above the church, but definitely shittier than anywhere Ronan has ever lived, only-partially-converted-warehouse included. Mostly, he guesses, the uncharacteristic arm movement is supposed to include himself; constantly short on sleep, too busy, still jumpy from a fucked up upbringing that ended years before, and, apparently, about to unexpectedly become a parent.
“Yeah,” Ronan breathes, “It’s still what I want.” He continues an little louder, more steadily, “I don’t know how involved you want me to be with the—you know. The kid thing. I just, I want you to know on my end of it—I’m in. I’m up for whatever, Parrish.”
The last bit sounds like he’s talking about the route on a road trip more than like he’s making a life-changing declaration, which would be worrying if Adam hadn’t known him quite so many years. It’s almost like a switch flipping again, a nudge of certainty, or sense of destiny, that he’s started to trust in the years since he started scrying on a regular basis—in this moment, Adam is sure. He says, “I want you as involved as you want to be. If you’re up for it, we should set up the paperwork for a step-parent adoption. In case something happens.”
Ronan stares down at him and Adam starts to feel vaguely uncomfortable with their relative eye levels. Ronan asks, “You’re sure about that?”
It feels like a do or die moment. Adam scrambles up into a sitting position, turns to look at him head on, and says, “Yes.” It doesn’t feel like enough, though, so he goes on, “I trust you. And you were the one of us who was sure about this to begin with. And I wouldn’t know how to do this alone.”
The last part sounds more like a confession than Adam would like it to, isn’t something he’s likely to say to anybody about anything for any reason, most days, but it feels more true than anything, here. Just the idea of having responsibility for another life terrifies him, but Ronan has had the power to create or keep from creating life since he was three years old or younger. There’s nothing about giving his soon-to-be-child a tie to Ronan that doesn’t feel like the safest thing he can do for him or her.
…
It seems strange, the next day, to just go on with his regular life, like the entire shape of Adam’s immediate and foreseeable distant future hasn’t changed utterly in the last twelve hours, but his alarm goes off at the same time it does every day, and he has a paper due in Contracts and a shift at the café just off campus, and then a little bit of a hustle to make it to Intellectual Property on time.
He thinks he pulls it off in a way that at least seems convincingly normal, and he takes pretty competent notes, doesn’t fuck up any orders at work, but he thinks that’s more of a testament to his years of practice working through various types of incredibly distracting realities, rather than a lack of distraction. In his mind, under the notes and pleasantries and the uncountable pumpkin spice lattes and the calculation of exactly when he’ll have time to do which readings, there are two parallel tracks his thoughts are running along.
The first is the endless list of things that could go wrong about having a baby that started with fucking it up worse than his own parents ever had, and all of the ways that could happen, and go on to touch on Ronan leaving, and leaving Adam alone with the baby, or worse, Ronan leaving and taking the baby with him. It doesn’t sound particularly plausible when Adam starts putting words to it, even in his own head, but neither does actually having a baby, which is, apparently, happening, so that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.
The second track is all of the reasons why, now that he knows that the possibility of this baby exists, he really can’t do anything else. These reasons start with what Ronan pointed out the night before, the kind of responsibility that washed over him when Abby told him, and dances past the warm feeling at the passing idea of building a family, of making something good, and settles on the memory of Ronan’s serious eyes last night as he’d told Adam he was in.
When class gets out, instead of rushing home, the way he usually does when Ronan is up for a visit, he takes a seat on a bench outside the building and dials Blue’s number.
“Hey,” she answers, after just a couple of rings, which is a relief, since she’s taken to cell phones with the same kind of bad grace Ronan had in high school, and half the time, calling 300 Fox Way is still the most efficient way to get ahold of her.
Adam leans his head back against the bench and tells Blue, “I think I may have gotten unofficially married last night. Oh, and we’re having a baby.”
“What?” Blue laughs. “How unofficially are we talking, here? And you do mean to Ronan, right? Oh, god, don’t tell me you let him talk you into getting a dog together, Adam that’s an awful idea.”
“Yes, with Ronan,” he confirms.
“Thank fuck, I don’t think I’m up for dealing with him through your next breakup for at least a couple of months. You didn’t deny the dog thing, though, that’s kind of freaking me out. Tell me he didn’t just show up with a puppy, or something.”
“No,” Adam says, a little wary, “I don’t think you’re supposed to get dogs at the same time as babies, right? And that’s what I mean by unofficially married—I don’t think you’re going to have to deal with any more of our breakups.”
Blue is silent for a moment, and then, slowly, dangerously, “What do you mean when you say ‘baby?’”
Adam clears his throat, suddenly and painfully uncomfortable. “Like, an infant. A human child.” Then, as one of the things Blue might be thinking hits him, “Not from a dream or anything—there was this girl—woman—I was seeing for a little while, the last time Ronan and I broke up. She came by to tell me last night.”
“Right, a human child,” Blue echoes, sounding a little lost. Adam doesn’t blame her.
“And she doesn’t want to keep it, and before I knew what was going on, Ronan was saying we did, which was weird, but I don’t think I mind, I think it’s what I want.”
Saying it out loud feels right, like it’s cementing something real.
“I’m happy for you, then,” Blue says when she finds her voice again. “You’ll have to bring the baby down to visit for your summer vacation, and I had better be the godmother—” Blue cuts herself off with a laugh, says, “I’m sorry, I just—I don’t eve know what I’m saying. This doesn’t feel real, you know?”
Adam lets loose a startled laugh. “Oh yeah, I know.”
“It’s so weird,” she says, after a pause, “Thinking of you two with a baby, of Ronan with a baby. The domesticity, my god. Do they even make leather jackets in infant sizes?”
“He’ll dream one up, I’m sure,” Adam says, and suddenly he can picture it perfectly.
“Oh! There’s a question. Is he coming to you, or are you moving back here?” Blue asks.
Adam clears his throat. “He’s coming to me—to us. For a couple of years, just till I take the Bar. Or maybe I should take it down there? But I don’t think there’s a question that we’ll move back. Do you think he’ll mind till then?” Adam wonders—it’s one of the quieter nagging worries that have been on his mind today. “He offered, but I don’t want him to, to come here and resent it.” He thinks of the way Ronan always looks so perfectly and ferociously at home at the Barns. Like he was made for the world there and it was made for him. Which it was, in a way.
Blue hums like she’s thinking about it, then confesses, “I’m actually surprised it took this long for him to do it. No, I think as long as there’s a set end-date, it’ll be fine. He misses you when you’re not here.”
Adam scrubs the heel of his hand along his eyes and thinks that it’s ridiculous that thinking about Ronan missing him, something he already knew, and that has been a fact of life for years, is the thing that’s getting to him right now, when there are so many brand new potentially awful things to be concerned about. “Yeah,” he says to Blue, “Yeah, okay. I should actually probably get back to him right now, but, uh, thanks for this.” He means it more than he knows how to say. He trusts that she gets its, though.
…
When Adam gets home, Abby is still on the couch. She’s not asleep, like when he left, but she looks pretty comfortable, sprawled out. Ronan is perched in the edge of a chair he’s drawn in nearby, and he’s looking at barely-over-five-foot Abby Pierce with her neat headbands and her color-coded study schedule like she’s about to unhook her jaw and eat him alive.
It makes him smile, the same way both of their heads turning his way when he comes in does. Abby waves her hand in Ronan’s direction and says, “Go on, then.”
“What?” he asks her, a bad imitation of his usual bad grace.
“I want to see the way you guys are. Just pretend I’m not here.”
“Abby?” Adam asks.
Abby twists her head back around to face him, grinning. “Ronan agrees that I should have the chance to get to know my kid’s parents. So here I am.”
“Right.” Adam raises his eyebrows at Ronan, who raises one right back, challenging. “Are you staying for dinner?” he asks Abby.
“Would you ask if I was staying for dinner if I wasn’t here?” She asks him.
“Right, pasta for two, then.” Adam says, and isn’t surprised when Abby shouts. “Or three! Four, if you’re getting technical about the number on heartbeats involved.”
…
When Abby leaves that night, she leans over to hug Adam, hesitates, then pulls Ronan into a quick hug, too.
“Okay, uh, guess I’ll see you guys in, like, eight months?” She says it in a jokey tone, but it’s clearly at least half serious.
It feels wrong to Adam, though, who’s actually ended up having a strangely nice night with the two of them, and who considers, vaguely, that pregnancy is probably not the easiest state to be in alone, especially if it’s not in preparation for some joyous transition to motherhood.
He looks over at Ronan, who’s already looking back, and he doesn’t know what his face says, but Ronan seems to think it’s pretty definite, because he looks over at Abby and says, “Don’t be stupid, you need to come back over when I move in, so I can show you what real music is.”
Adam clears his throat. “And didn't you say you had a doctor’s appointment next week? I can go with you to that, if you want some company.” Abby looks hesitant, so he goes on, “Don’t worry if you don’t, that’s fine, too.”
“I—would that be weird?” she asks.
“Everything about this is weird,” Ronan says, and his tone is derisive, but he’s smiling. Adam looks over at Abby and sees that she’s caught the smile along with the tone, and is smiling back, which, he guesses, means she’s been won over by the abrasive charm that is Ronan Lynch. He’s glad—he’d hate for her to have misgivings.
“Yeah,” she agrees, and, “Let me think about it, okay? I’ll call you.”
…
At the appointment, the doctor smiles at Adam warmly and says, “And you must be the father,” and one of the weird, nervous, moving parts that rattles around in Adam’s mind panics about that, because yes, he is, that’s accurate, but if he says so, the impression she’ll get will be totally wrong, or at least very incomplete.
It’s not a new feeling, but it is one that Adam has never managed to get quite comfortable with, the push and pull between not needing to explain the things about his life that aren’t quite what people assume they are and also not needing to hide it, particularly—certain truths are luxuries you have to fight for, and once you have them, it can seem like a waste not to share them. He glances at Abby, because it’s her medical care here, and he thinks they probably should have talked about this on the way over, instead of stopping for muffins and wondering out loud about how baby-friendly of pets ravens make. It had seemed like the important question, at the time.
She raises her eyebrows at him through the pause that is probably significant enough at this point to cause suspicion even if he did choose to go the conventional storyline route. Adam continues to not say anything, because now that he’s started, he figures he may as well commit to it, so after a handful of seconds that seem to stretch a life time, Abby says, “Yeah, he’s one of ‘em.” Her tone is breezy and bright and does not invite follow-up questions. Adam ducks his head and smiles.
“We’re probably going to have to come up with a party line for the future, though,” Abby tells him a little later, as they’re walking out of the clinic. “I’m totally okay with being vague and cryptic and seeing what people come up with on their own, but if that’s what we’re doing, we’re doing it, you know I don’t like to half-ass things.”
That does sound like Abby, Adam thinks, still, “I’m sort of into the idea of just letting Ronan loose on whoever’s nosy enough to ask questions, once he’s up here, you know?”
“That’s evil,” Abby says, pleased. “I’m carrying hellspawn in my womb, aren’t I?”
“Perfectly healthy, developmentally on-track hellspawn,” Adam agrees.
“It would solve the problem, though, wouldn’t it?” Abby goes on. “He’s not who I pictured, when I was picturing your long-lost love, you know?”
“Not that long-lost,” Adam says, because it’s the only part of that statement he feels prepared to respond to.
“You really think you guys can stay together?”
Adam tries an are you really asking me that? look, to see if it’ll be enough, but Abby stares him down right back. “I’m not saying I’ll change my mind if you’re not sure—I mean, nothing’s sure in life—but it would be nice to feel like I’m not dumping this kid in the middle of a future messy divorce, you know?”
Adam feels his heart constrict at the thought. “I don’t think you are,” he says, soft, “I really don’t.” Adam is the wrong person to come to for certainty, he knows, because he feels as certain of this as he ever has of anything, but that doesn’t go too far, certainty is a language he’s had to pick up as an adult, and his understanding of it is still stilted and strange, for all that he’s practiced.
Maybe it’s enough for Abby, though, because she smiles over at him, links their arms, and lets the subject drop.
…
They haven’t really fought about finances in years, but that’s because they’d clawed their way into a kind of equilibrium when they were still teenagers where Ronan is allowed to help Adam out more, and to be more aware of what he’s dealing with, than anyone else, and in return, he doesn’t offer anything huge or over-the-top, just little things Adam can not think about if he doesn't want to.
It comes up when Ronan moves in, though.
“I’m already paying for it,” Adam says, glancing around the apartment he’s lived in for almost a year now, “And it’s not like you’ll be working.”
“I work,” growls Ronan, who writes two profanity-ridden reviews a week for an alternative techno site for token payments and the occasional set of concert tickets, “And I can do it, you know I can.”
“I know one of these days your trust fund’s going to run out and you’ll be fucked, asshole.” This is something Adam actually worries about, now and then. Ronan’s trust fund is significant, but it’s not endless, and bad things do tend to happen. Not to Ronan in particular, sure, but in life in general, and even though he’s half a dream, Ronan’s bound to find himself tripped up by the way life can suck again one of these days.
“Well, you know, I’ve got a plan for that,” Ronan says. “Got my eye on a future hot-shot lawyer, he’ll keep me in the style I’m accustomed to.”
Adam snorts. “In your dreams—oh wait.”
“Seriously, though,” Ronan tells him, “Do we actually have to say all the ‘what’s mine is yours’ bullshit? I thought it was implied.”
Adam swallows. Jesus. Fuck. Ronan. Ronan, who goes on, “That asshole Declan was all determined to give me a stern talking-to for not having you sign a fuckin’ pre-nup. Really shut him up when I said we hadn’t gotten hitched.”
Ronan says all this like it isn't coming out of nowhere. “Where’d he get the idea that we did?” Adam manages to ask.
“Oh,” and here Ronan looks a little uncomfortable, “I, uh, I told Matthew. About the kid. He’s excited about it, by the way. Says congratulations. But, uh, I guess he told Declan, and he may have embellished a little. Declan came up the day before I had everything packed up to move down.”
He looks a little wary, and Adam wonders why—is he expecting Adam to object to him telling his brothers? Adam shrugs. “I’m assuming that explains the shiner, then?”
Ronan had said, don’t even ask when Adam had looked questioning about the black eye after Ronan arrived, and he’d sounded annoyed enough about it that Adam had been planning to wait to ask until Ronan was just barely awake. Groggy, Ronan was more likely to be open than pretty much any other time, Adam had found by way of extensive trial and error.
Ronan nods, grudgingly. “Going to tell me why?” Adam asks, and lets his Henrietta drawl creep into the question just a little. When it comes to coaxing Ronan into saying things out loud, it’s best not to waste any advantage you’re given.
Ronan doesn’t answer, but not in a buttoned-up, closed-mouth way. Instead, he stares over at Adam like he’s not sure what to do with him, like the answer is obvious.
“I know,” Adam concedes, “it’s not like you ever need a reason, with Declan, aside from his face—”
“I told you,” Ronan answers, voice a little blank, “He said I should have had you sign a pre-nup.”
“Well, he didn’t know we weren’t getting married,” Adam points out, fairly reasonably, he thinks. “You know Matthew can get carried away. And it’s not so much of a stretch to believe, you marrying me. Not after this whole ‘baby’ thing.” The last statement feels a bit like a risk, Adam isn't sure he likes it, this feels like the wrong moment for risks, but it’s also true, he’s almost certain.
“He thought I should have had you sign a pre-nup because he thinks I shouldn’t trust you,” Ronan snarls, and Adam nods. Declan really is kind of a dick.
“He thinks I’d take advantage,” Adam says, and then, “He cares about you,” which is probably the most generous thing it’s possible to say about Declan Lynch, who can be everything Adam has ever hated about Aglionby boys since he was a child, but who Ronan hates to hate almost as much as he can’t help it.
“He’s a fucking dumbass,” Ronan gripes, settling, a bit. “You barely even let me buy you dinner, most of the time.”
Adam feels his cheeks go a little warm, at that. He tries, he does, but sometimes letting go of the pettier parts of the pride he needed for so long are the hardest at all. “I’m getting better,” he mumbles.
Ronan sighs. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, you are. Now let me pay my own half of the rent, asshole.”
Adam isn’t quite sure how Ronan’s belligerence and black eye won this round, but they did, he thinks.
…
Ronan has been back a little over a months when Adam wakes up gasping from a dream he can’t remember and staggers out of bed to the bathroom.
“Adam?” Ronan calls out, groggy voice a little concerned. “You okay?”
“Scrying!” Adam calls out as fast as he can, already feeling the bits of him that make him Adam slip out of the room and away, out through the vent for the fan in the ceiling and up, up, or down into the shallow, reflective pool he’s drawn in the sink.
The trees whisper and it screams through Adam the way nothing else ever has since he lost half his hearing, they cry out in dappled light and a sound like the feeling of the bottom of a dank, mossy pool in spring, things hatching and buzzing their way to life. It takes Adam a moment, but he gets it. Yes, yes that’s true, he agrees, and stifles a smile when the wind that rushes through the body he doesn't really have, here in the clearing, stops for a moment at the core of him, brushes against what feels like his heart, murmurs, Greywaren?
Yes, him too, Adam agrees, lets his unfocused eyes see the branches of an oak grow like stop-motion, brittle twigs extending further, new growth, more hands? more eyes?
“No!” Adam cries, thinks it’s out loud, outside of his own head, even, if he even still has a physical body at times like this. No. I made my sacrifice, but I didn't promise you anyone else. You can’t have the baby.
Adam is suddenly momentarily and absurdly sure that the low-pitched rustle is upset, that Adam has managed to hurt the ley-line’s feelings.
Greywaren? it asks again, touches that place in him he thinks he ought to keep hidden better, but it’s enough to settle some of the unease he felt over Cabeswater’s last question.
This one, he’s embarrassed to say, he doesn’t know the answer to. Maybe? Adam doesn’t know how dreaming is passed down. You’ll have to ask him.
The trees agree, they murmur, they brush new sprouts of green against where the tips of Adam’s fingers would be, if he had fingers, offer him a moment of grounding, of roots, of sinking deep into soil and knowing where he fits, and then they let him go, and he staggers back from the bathroom sink, gasping.
Ronan, who, at some point while Adam was scrying, came into the bathroom, and is now sitting perched on the turned-down seat of the toilet, eyes still sleep-heavy and blinking in the low glow of the plug-in nightlight Adam keeps in here because it’s only sensible when the trees come calling in the night, reaches out a hand to steady him.
“Big job?” Ronan asks. “That looked like kind of an intense one.”
“No—I mean yes, yes it was intense,” Adam agrees, stepping closer till he’s standing between Ronan’s legs so he can rest a hand on Ronan’s shoulder and lean a little bit. “They didn’t want anything, though. To say ‘congratulations,’ I guess.” He peers down at the top of Ronan’s head, where the buzz has started to grow in a little—he’ll be cutting it soon, but at the moment, his dark hair stands out, spiky, in the dim light. “The ley-line’s happy for us—I think it wants to know which of us the baby’s going to apprentice to, or something like that.”
Ronan looks up at him, curious.
“I told it certainly not me, so it can keep its grabby vines to itself,” Adam clarifies. “I wasn’t sure about you, though. I don’t know how that kind of thing works. You might have the orphan girl asking you questions in your dreams, I don’t know.” He moves the hand not on Ronan’s shoulder up to scratch lightly against the spiky outgrowth of hair across his skull and waits for a reply.
“Yeah,” Ronan breathes, leaning into Adam’s hand. “I’m not sure how that one works, either, you know? Not like Dad ever talked about it much. If Cabeswater has any insight, it’s welcome to explain.”
Adam laughs a little. “Somehow, that doesn’t quite sound like Cabeswater.”
…
Adam’s phone rings when he’s in class, and he glances down to see who it is before he dismisses the call. When he sees that it’s Abby, it feels like his heart stops. He doesn’t even bother to pack up his things, just rushes out into the hallway mid-way through the lecture.
“Abby? What is it? Is something wrong?”
He’s not expecting her to laugh, but that’s what he gets. She laughs and says, “It moved—I felt it move! I’m on my way over to your place, are you guys there?”
“I—Ronan is. I’m outside of class, but I’ll be back soon. But nothing’s wrong?”
“No, nothing’s wrong, I just thought—it felt like this was the kind of thing you guys should know, you know?”
Adam feels tension flood out of his body till he’s almost gasping with it. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. I’ll be back in a bit, okay? Tell Lynch it’s his turn to cook, alright?”
…
They’re in the clinic waiting room that is almost familiar to Adam now. He’s been here with Abby twice before, and Ronan went with her once, when Adam was working, but it’s the first time they’ve all gone together. “Let’s give ‘em something to talk about,” Abby had said on the ride over, eyes sparkling.
“You ever wonder if you get too much pleasure out of the idea that this is scandalous?” Ronan had asked, tone a little sharp, and Abby had glared.
“Hey, let the pregnant lady who’s carrying your kid get her kicks where she can, okay? I haven’t had a drink in almost four months,” she’d snapped back, and Ronan had nodded in acknowledgment, chastened.
Now, they sit on the scratchy synthetic fabric of the waiting room chairs, the only group of people in the room who are talking, as a young couple pages through an ancient magazine and a heavily pregnant woman scrolls through her phone, and Adam tells them about his disaster of a presentation in class.
“I don’t know, it was going so well, and then I just wasn’t thinking about how it came out when I answered questions at the end, and I sounded like such a damn hick, it was awful.” Adam isn’t sure why he’s talking about this at all, why he’s letting himself relive it. He hasn’t slept much in the last three days, has been getting home from work late and studying later, and even when he does lie down and try to sleep he can’t—there’s something restless under his skin and he knows what it is, but he wishes he didn’t.
“You know what I think about that,” Ronan says, and it’s a flat statement, not a question, because Adam does know.
“Yes, I know you have weird kinks and the trashier I sound, the more you want to bang me.” Ronan has never been anything resembling subtle about this. “Somehow, I have a feeling my professor’s going to feel different.” He means it, and he’s still disappointed about the presentation, but he smiles through the last statement, lets it grow long and lazy, lets the ends of words drop, watches Ronan’s eyes darken.
Ronan looks over at him, runs the tip of his tongue over his top lip, quick and probably unconscious, and says darkly, “Somehow, I doubt that.”
“Guys, is this really the time or place?” Abby asks. She’s smiling, but there’s something nervous in it, and she she’s looking up at the way the young couple across the room are studiously avoiding looking their way, and at the receptionist’s obvious interest, the woman on her phone’s even more obviously amused smile as she stares down at the screen.
Adam flushes, but Ronan drawls, “Thought you were getting off on being scandalous.”
All in all, it’s probably for the best when they’re called in to see the doctor next.
…
They talked about it, and they decided they did want to know, the boy-or-girl question, and it’s not like the ultrasound technician is going to give them more than one of very few answers, so really, there’s nothing to be all that surprised about when she says, eyes jumping from one to the other to the next of them like she’s not sure to direct the information at, “Congratulations, it’s a girl.”
“Is it?” Ronan asks, looking down a little wonderingly at where the ultrasound gunk is smeared across Abby’s abdomen. Abby places a hand carefully around the bump, just cupping the curve of it lightly, and Adam thinks they’re all experiencing a sort of internal crisis over the shocking reality of how human life happens. Adam himself has seen impossible things, things that shouldn’t be able to exist, skeleton armies and visions of false futures from inside of trees and a thousands of years old mad woman dancing out of a stone coffin, has seen Ronan produce impossible things out of his dreams and Blue’s mother staring into the future, has seen his father taken away in handcuffs and Ronan Lynch smiling at him like he, Adam, is the answer to all of Ronan’s questions, and that’s a good thing. Adam has had trees talking to him in his dreams. He thinks he was expecting all of those miracles to somehow prepare him for the fact that there’s someone growing, there in Abby’s stomach.
They haven’t at all, really, though.
…
It’s late, and Adam is almost asleep, when Ronan murmurs, “It’s not just you, you know?”
He pauses, like he’s not sure Adam is listening, or awake, and he sounds like he’s continuing a conversation only he knew they were having. Adam makes an interrogative noise.
“Who doesn’t want to be the same kind of father as your father. I mean, mine was—he wasn’t—but he wasn’t really there, most of the time, and when he did show up, he just sort of took over the whole scene.”
Adam has known this, in a sort of vague way, for a while, but it’s the first time Ronan has said it all directly, and all at once. It’s not the same. The tiny, terrified part of Adam that watched as he lashed out at furniture in front of Blue once and wondered if this was how turning into his father would begin wants to scream about all of the ways that it’s not the same, about how it’s not even a difference of magnitude, but a different type of scale altogether. This is important, though, so Adam stays quiet for a breath, and when he does speak, what he says is, “You won’t be like that.”
Not you wouldn’t, but you won’t, because this is not a probable outcome based on uncertain variables, it’s a truth Adam knows down past his bones and into the core of him—he knows it in the pieces of himself that aren’t even his anymore, that he gave away to something bigger, and in the pieces he’d kept his own by fighting for them, tooth and claw.
“Don’t let me,” Ronan says, a plea and a request and a statement rich in certainty all at once.
“I would stop you if you were,” Adam agrees, because sometimes that kind of reassurance is important, too. He rolls onto his side and fixes his eyes on Ronan’s profile where he’s staring up at the ceiling. “But you won’t. I know you, Ronan Lynch, and we wouldn’t be together to begin with if you were that person.” Adam knows Ronan loved his father, but from what Adam knows about the man, there isn’t much about him he could see himself being attracted to.
Ronan turns over to face him, and Adam thinks he looks, if not completely convinced, at least somewhere on his way there. “Okay,” he says. “Can I record what you just said and play it back to you the next time you start freaking out, or do I have to find a way to put it into different words so it sounds like I came up with it off the top of my head?”
The scared place in Adam’s mind shrieks about how that’s different, it’s different, it’s different, and Ronan goes on, “I know you, too.”
…
“I was thinking,” Adam says, and he means to sound sure about it, but it comes out tentative, “Maybe Persephone.”
Abby laughs. “The queen of hell?” she asks.
“Hades,” Ronan corrects, eyes trained on Adam’s face.
“Right,” Abby agrees, but she looks over at Adam, too, curious.
“Other than that,” he says, “She was a, a mentor of mine, when I was younger. Our friend Blue’s sort-of aunt. She died suddenly.” It’s strange, Adam thinks, that he knew Persephone for such a short time, but she casts such a long shadow. He uses her cards every day, and he thinks of her more often than he thinks of his own mother. It would be fitting, he thinks, to name his daughter for her.
She’s not just his daughter, though, and he looks up, sees Abby and Ronan both watching him.
Abby says, “I’ve always liked the idea of family names,” and Adam remembers again in a rush all of the reasons why he liked her to begin with.
Ronan says, “Names have power, you know,” and Adam thinks he means to sound ominous, but the edges of his lips twitch. “What are you going to do when she comes out calling you ‘Coca-cola t-shirt?’”
“Blame you,” he tells Ronan, grinning.
…
Blue tears up when they tell her, over skype, what they’re thinking about for a name—tears up and glares, daring them to say something about it. Ronan smirks like he might try anyway. Adam elbows him sharply in the side, which successfully shuts him up, even if it’s not for any better reason than because Ronan shoves back, and Adam can’t let him get away with that, and before he knows it’s he’s trying with half his mind to keep the roughhousing out of the way of his computer while the rest of him his totally focused on pinning Ronan down.
Blue is laughing, and Adam doesn’t even mind that his distraction over the computer means he loses this round, just relaxes down against the mussed sheets of the bed beneath the hands Ronan has pinning him at the shoulders and laughs up at Ronan’s half-savage grin.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the future parents of the next generation,” Blue intones.
“Damn straight,” Ronan agrees, and Adam knows it’s juvenile, but his mind catches on the last word and he can’t help laughing. The look Ronan sends him at the sound is pleased and a little smug, like he knows exactly what Adam is thinking.
“Oh, you think you’re so funny, Parrish.”
“I do,” Adam agrees. “I really, really do.”
“That’s something,” Blue breaks in, because, right, they’re still supposed to be communicating at least a little bit like human beings here. “Have you guys decided about a last name, yet?”
This would be a totally innocuous question, Adam thinks, if they had, or even if they’d at least talked about it, but they haven’t, and the reason they haven’t, on Adam’s end, at least, is that he hasn’t known how to say what he wants to, and Blue’s question sends that feeling rushing back with a vengeance.
Ronan doesn’t seem to have the same misgivings, though, because he doesn’t hesitate, just gives Blue a little bit of a strange look and says, “Parrish, of course.”
Blue asks, “What’s ‘of course’ about that?” kind of sharply, and she’s got her disgruntled feminist face on, which baffles Adam a little, but then, so does Ronan’s easy assumption.
Ronan looks over at Adam for support, though, like it’s perfectly clear to him. He says, “Well, it’s just not practical to use Abby’s. Imagine introducing ourselves to her teachers—‘Oh, yes, we’re Persephone’s parents, no, neither of us have her last name, or each other’s, we’re just a loose collective of people calling ourselves a family so we can make your paperwork hell.’”
“Are you actually thinking about what her many-years-in-the-future teachers will think?” Blue asks. “Who are you, and what have you done with Ronan Lynch?”
“She could have your name, though,” Adam hears himself tell Ronan before he’s decided he was going to.
Blue says, “Well, yeah,” and then, “Wait, you guys seriously haven’t talked about this at all yet?”
Ronan glances at her, but doesn't answer, looks back at Adam and says, “You mean that?”
Adam shrugs, stilted. “I mean—last names are family names. And if there’s a family we want to give her a connection to, it’s definitely not mine. Unless—I know you said you were in this, but if that sounds like too much—”
“No,” Ronan says with the same intensity that he’d said, yes, we do, we want it to Abby, months earlier. “It’s not too much, I do want—I just didn't want to—”
“Well, okay then,” Adam says, breaking in because sometimes it hurts to hear Ronan try to talk about his emotions when it’s clear that he feels he should be able to express it all with his eyes—even knowing it’s irrational, Adam sometimes feels like he’s letting Ronan down by not already knowing. “Because,” he stumbles on, “If you are, if this is what you want, I don’t want you to feel like you have any less of a part in her life, any—any less of a claim. As her family.”
“Alright,” Ronan agrees, quiet and low and intense.
After a moment, Blue clears her throat. “Well, if you’re having trouble deciding on one, I was going to say, Sargent’s a good one, it’s always worked for me. And I am her godmother after all. I called it, remember? But it seems like you’ve got that one worked out on your own.”
…
Three days later, they get a call from Abby saying she’s on her way to the hospital, and four and a half hours after that, Persephone Sargent Lynch comes into the world.