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“Ronan…”
Adam’s voice was soft and warm, and Ronan could live in that sound forever and ever and ever...
“Ronan.”
It was becoming a less gentle sound. It was still a really good sound though. It made his stomach muscles tighten and his forehead soften.
“Wake the fuck up, Lynch. Church.”
Now it sounded like the man he loved.
Ronan turned his head into the pillow to try to muffle it. He loved that voice, but maybe not right this minute when sleep felt so fucking good, and maybe it would go away.
“Your brother is thirty seconds away from busting in here and dragging both of us to Mass, and I for one would prefer to face a priest this morning without the memory of Declan seeing us both naked, so my love, my husband, you immense asshole, you need to wake up.”
Ronan opened his eyes.
Adam.
It never got old.
He was always just so damned happy to see him, with his furrowed brow, and his viciously chewed lips. His bespoke suits in the daylight, and his coke-a-cola tee shirt in the night. Ronan had saved that shirt from the trash, because he wouldn’t let Adam get rid of something that he knew he loved, just because it wasn’t meant for public consumption.
Ronan wasn’t meant for public consumption, either, and Adam had consented to keep him after all.
Because Adam loved him.
He knew this to be true.
He finally knew.
It was the most amazing feeling he’d ever had. Better than being a cloud. Better than being a god.
Feeling the certainty of Adam’s love. The truth of it. Because he’d been inside of it. He’d seen it and felt it from every angle.
He’d felt Adam love him.
It was the greatest gift he’d ever received.
He’d also felt Adam want him.
And now Ronan knew what he’d long suspected based on circumstantial evidence: Adam Parrish was a lustful creature, and nobody could tell him different. He had the receipts. He’d felt it.
And the memory of that wanting could be very distracting if Ronan let himself dwell on it. Which he did. Frequently. And definitely whenever he had the house to himself.
And some quiet afternoons, while Adam was off doing something federally mandated, but definitely not on the books, Ronan thought of their time in the sweetmetal sea.
He found himself thinking of it when Adam would close himself off. His eyes shuttered for a morning, an afternoon, as he worked through whatever new problem his mysterious government job presented.
Early on, in their new life together, Ronan had decided not to ask. Because, in the greater scheme of things, it just didn’t matter. Not to them.
And also, those times when Adam retreated into himself had grown fewer and farther between. And Ronan knew that if he simply waited, Adam always came back to him.
As reliable as the tides.
And when Adam was gone, lost in his own head, working the angles of a bureaucratic tangle or an international catastrophe, Ronan had the memory of their union in the sweetmetal sea.
The memories came back to him as a call-and-response, because it was all his corporeal mind could handle. At the same time he knew, though, that they hadn’t occurred in chronological time. It was all at once, and outside of time completely.
The closest his human mind could construct was a simultaneous pulse -- an explosion of joy and desire and fear and regret and love and comfort.
There was no time, no cause and effect – they were just there together.
You! [you!]
Mine [Yours! Mine! My love.]
Touch you, hands, skin, muscle, arms, strong. [Yes.]
Mouth, lips, tongue, more, please. [God yes, yes, yes]
Please, now, alter idem [forever, love, tamquam, yes]
I’m sorry [I’m sorry]
I love you [I love you]
I love you [I love you]
I love you [I love you]
Ronan could too easily get lost in those memories. They were a balm, but also a drug, and if he didn’t moderate how deeply he fell, he came out of them gasping, his heart racing, and not knowing exactly when or where or who he was, just knowing Adam adam adam adam adam.
And, well, that might have happened during Mass.
**
Ronan woke up looking at a very familiar ceiling from what felt like several lifetimes ago. He shifted and realized he was lying on a bare mattress.
“Jesus, thank god.”
Ronan turned his head toward Adam’s voice. He was kneeling next to the bed, and Ronan realized he was gripping his hand.
“You passed out during the sermon. It wasn’t noticeable. You slumped against my shoulder. I nudged you but you didn’t wake up, which made me think… ”
He didn’t finish the sentence, and Ronan squeezed his hand.
Adam held a bottle of water up to Ronan’s mouth and he took a sip, closing his eyes. He hadn’t realized he was thirsty.
“You were breathing steadily so I let you sleep. I wasn’t sure what else to do,” Adam sounded calm, but Ronan felt his husband’s fear in his own chest.
“I told Declan at the end of the service, and he spoke to a nun – a new nun, not one I knew – and she let us bring you up here.”
Ronan watched Adam. He was very intentionally not looking at where they were. He was tense. He didn’t like being back here.
“Hey,” Ronan tried his voice and it was horse. He tried again, “I’m OK. We can get out of here.”
“What happened?”
Ronan let out a low groan as he pulled himself into a sitting position, “Sometimes, if I don’t watch myself, I fall back into the space… where we were.”
Adam’s eyes narrowed. “How many times has this happened?”
Ronan stretched and his back popped, “Not that many times. It’s not dangerous, don’t worry about it.”
Adam let go of Ronan’s hand and stood up. He brushed invisible dust off his tailored wool pants and turned away. “You don’t know that it’s not dangerous.”
Ronan was damned sure not going to let things go in this direction. He stood and grabbed Adam’s hand and pulled him until he was facing him again.
“Look. I go to that space because it is safe. It’s… hard to explain, but it’s not tethered to time, so I can go in there and be with you again… when we were together.”
“You… what?”
Ronan ducked his head, not quite wanting to look Adam in the eye. “I live it again. I join with the me in that moment… I kind of… glom on.”
Ronan didn’t need to explain when we were together to Adam. Adam’s pupils were dilated and Ronan could tell he was reliving the experience of them being one. Of feeling Ronan’s love for him from the inside. Of understanding every bit of him, and them, and what they’d been, and what they were, and what they would be.
Adam blinked. “You can do that? So when I was there with you, there were probably several…. fuck, dozens… hundreds… of you’s there experiencing it?”
Ronan shrugged and gave a grunt unbecoming of a being that could exist outside of time and space.
Adam put his hands to his temples in a gesture Ronan was all too familiar with.
“OK,” Adam steadied himself, “OK, you can time travel. I’m going to just accept that for the moment and move on.”
“I wouldn’t say time travel. I was still sitting in the pew next to you.”
“Your body was, but your mind was re-living a specific moment in time… and not as a memory?”
“No,” Ronan allowed, “I was definitely there…. again.”
“Can I…?” Adam stopped himself and shook his head.
“Can you…?” Ronan prompted.
Adam shook his head again, “Nothing.”
“Can you come, too?” Ronan asked, smiling.
Adam started gathering up their jackets and shoes that had been discarded. “Shut up. I know that’s not possible. I just….”
Ronan reached out and took hold of Adam’s waist, pulling him close, stopping his busied tidying of the empty apartment. He leaned his forehead against Adam’s, “Tell me.”
“I want to do it again,” he whispered.
Ronan bit back a grin. This he could do. This he could give Adam.
Well, sort of.
“I can’t take you back to that moment with me,” he said and Adam nodded against his forehead. “But we can do it again.”
Adam pulled his head back and stared into Ronan’s eyes. Ronan could see he was working it out.
“I can scry… and you can send yourself into the sweetmetal sea… and we can…”
“Mmmhmmm,” Ronan hummed into his ear.
“And you’re telling me this now?” Adam asked, hands tensing on Ronan’s arms. “Why haven’t we been doing this all along? It was so… I mean, I thought it was…”
He sounded hurt, and Adam rarely let himself sound hurt.
Ronan pulled Adam close again. He wasn’t sure how to explain why he hadn’t brought it up before. Why he’d been keeping the possibility from Adam.
He put his hands on Adam’s face and looked into his eyes, “It was so fucking powerful. I just don’t think we should do it too often.”
Adam furrowed his brow, “Because it could be dangerous….?”
“No.”
“Does it sap your energy?”
“No, not really.”
Adam looked at him in the way that Ronan knew was him trying to work out a problem. Ronan did not like being looked at like that.
“Fuck! Because I feel like I got lucky that you came out of the first time still loving me, and when we do it again it’s just another chance for you to see something inside of me that you don’t love!” he let out a frustrated sigh.
Ronan had not meant to say any of that.
He’d honestly thought the sweetmetal sea had cleansed him of those feelings.
He’d known for once and for all that Adam loved him.
They weren’t just end game, they were beginning game, middle game, all the fucking games.
And he’d thought that feeling would last. He truly had. But they’d returned to their bodies. And while those were also pretty fucking effective at conveying how much they loved each other, the mundane world kept turning. And kept asking things of them.
Bosses gave deadlines. Leylines needed tending. Bills needed to be paid. Laundry done. Dishes washed. They watched TV. They bought groceries. They bickered over things neither would be able to recall a day later.
Life drained away the magic.
And the farther he got from that moment when they were one, the more he wondered how Adam could still want to be with him.
Ronan realized, with a sinking feeling in his gut, that he had been cheating.
He’d been tapping back into the purest vein of their love, and keeping it on the downlow. He’d been dipping back into that moment of synchronicity, of purest union, without Adam, because if he knew it was possible, Adam would want to do it again… and Ronan couldn’t guarantee that Adam would still love him if they did it again.
When he thought about it that way he was shocked Adam wasn’t angrier.
Adam was looking at him with an expression Ronan knew was part exasperation and part fondness. “There is nothing in you that I don’t love.”
He said it was such surety and such affection, that Ronan felt tears in his eyes.
“And we are doing that again.”
Ronan used the bottom of his t-shirt to wipe his eyes, “Fine. You can experience all my new PTSD, you’ll fucking love it.”
Adam kicked him gently in the leg, “You can have a taste of my growing hatred of bureaucracy.”
“Yeah, talk dirty to me.”
Adam finally let himself look around the bare apartment where he’d spent the last years at Aglionby, “Can we please go back to The Barns. This place has too many ghosts.”
Ronan huffed, “Oh yeah, no ghosts there. Let’s go.”
Ronan turned toward the door and Adam snagged his shirt, turning him around. “I love you. All of you.”
Ronan rested his head on Adam’s shoulder and gave a shaky exhale.
“God, I fucking hope so.”
**
They lay on their bed at The Barns.
Even after Declan and Jordan had moved in, they’d kept Ronan’s room as it had been, and it was always ready whenever they wanted to visit.
They were both breathing heavily.
It had been just as intense as the first time, but without the underlying fear and worry that had underwritten everything about that year of their lives.
Adam’s golden light and Ronan’s dark vines had found each other easily. Ronan noted the presence of more sweetmetals than the last time they’d been in the space and it made him hopeful.
And Ronan’s hope glowed in Adam’s heart, and Adam’s love flowed through Ronan’s dark veins. And then there was no Adam and no Ronan, there was just a single burning sun in that dark sea, and they were one once again.
They’d come out of it gently, not ripped apart like that first time. As Adam had the thought, “We should get back…” Ronan had felt it too and had eased them back into their bodies, warm and safe in his bed.
Adam turned his head. His eyes were wet.
“I told you.”
Ronan turned on his side and ran his hand down his face.
“Once a year? An anniversary thing?”
Adam kissed him to seal the promise.