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Adam and Ronan were sitting on a porch together, arms pressed tight. Adam was fairly certain it was sunrise, although for some reason he couldn’t accurately tell. He was trying to remember which direction they were oriented. There was something strange about the light– or the mountains or dirt. Was this The Barns? It was, he was pretty sure, but everything felt out of place as if they were in a toy set and someone moved the pieces around.
The weight of Ronan’s arm wrapping around his shoulders distracted him momentarily. Fingers gently brushed the fine hairs behind Adam’s deaf ear. It took all his effort to not let himself shiver at the touch.
“What time is it?” He asked.
“Dunno.” Ronan responded and Adam felt him shrug.
“Where are we?”
“Who cares?”
Adam furrowed his brows, squinting. Was something shifting? Moving? Ronan’s fingers brushed the shell of his deaf ear. He turned his head to look at him. He was starkly handsome, the gentle light illuminating his skin a blushed orange colour. Ronan hadn’t shaved so his stubble was in its full prickly glory. Adam wanted to press his mouth against it until his lips stung.
Suddenly Adam was speaking, or he wasn’t sure if he was speaking but he heard his own voice out loud. “I used to think I needed some clean boring apartment like Declan’s townhouse to be happy, with expensive things and as far away from Virginia as possible.” Ronan knew all this, so he was still looking out at the maybe Barns and Adam turned his head to look out as well. “I kind of hate the idea of being in some stainless steel and granite hell. It’s weird that one day I could see myself living in Virginia again, even Henrietta back at The Barns, if that’s where we ended up. Not any time soon, obviously, college and…” he had to stop to reorganize his thoughts as they began to slide all over the place. The memory of the morning after he’d kissed Ronan surfaced in his head, when he truly realized he didn’t feel the need to never come back here. He’d been so shocked to realize how much he loved this beautiful valley that held secrets and magic. Obviously he still had to finish college, take his time exploring the things he wanted, see where their newfound freedom together took them, but—
Now he was sure he was speaking. “But one day… I think I want something like this.” Ronan, a place they both loved no matter where it wound up being in the end, security in every facet of life instead of purely financial. Wherever Ronan was, that was home. A small part of himself even now wanted to hold onto the old dreams, but they didn’t belong to him anymore. He was disappointing his teenage self, but his teenage self had wanted those things to cram into the holes left from a traumatic childhood. Those old holes were either much smaller now and continuing to shrink or being filled by other, better things. What do you want, Adam? To live freely. He smiled a bit to himself, and then turned his head to look at Ronan.
Ronan was gone.
He furrowed his brows and stood. “Ronan?” Adam said but there was no answer. He didn’t remember Ronan getting up, he didn’t remember Ronan’s arm lifting from his shoulders. Making his way down the steps of the porch he looked around the side of the house. “Ronan!” He called a little louder, but he was gone. Adam felt a little disoriented as he walked into one of the fields. His feet lead him to the long barn. Had Ronan said he was going to the long barn? His memory was now supplying him with the statement. Maybe he hadn’t been talking afterall.
When he got to the barn he tried the door, but it was locked. “Lynch?” Adam knocked a couple times and waited. He wrapped his arms around himself as a shiver wracked down his spine despite the warm spring air. After a minute he glanced to the side and blinked. The pattern of grass was different by the corner of the building. It was dry and browned and for some reason made his chest heavy to look at. It was also out of place. As far as he could tell it was spring (Was it spring break? Yes, he could remember that now.) and it had been pretty rainy, so the Barns was lush and green. Forgetting why he’d come out here in the first place, he went over to investigate. Adam rounded the corner and the long barn was no longer there and instead he was in front of the old double-wide he’d lived in with his parents. Everything else around him was a wasteland. Not a hill, not a tree, not another trailer, not another person in sight. Dead grass and dirt stretched out forever.
It’d been so long since he’d last seen it.
Before he could think or stop himself he was walking up the steps and opening the door. It swung open to reveal the claustrophobic space that used to be his bleak, unloving home. Dread was singing in his deaf ear and his heart pounded at the walls of his chest. The trailer was the same as it had always been. It was the broken kitchen in the back and a chipped round dining table and a dirty living room and his parents unmade bed shoved in the corner. It was the two cracked doors on the far wall, one that led to Adam’s old room and the other leading to the bathroom. The way it smelled familiar hit him like a brick. It was like when he went to Gansey’s family house or Monmouth or The Barns and each place had a distinct smell. Now that he’d been away for so long, he noticed it here too.
The door slammed shut behind him and Adam spun around to face his father. His breath caught in his throat.
“What are you staring at?” His father growled at him as he pushed by, hitting his shoulder against Adam’s on the way. Adam staggered back and his knee hit the coffee table. It stung a little, but he was more concerned about the half-drunk beer that had tipped over and was now spilling off the table onto his pants and shoes. He grabbed it quickly and placed it back upright. Shit he thought and then a hand smacked the back of his head. It was not a bad hit in the grand scheme of all the times his father had hit him, but it still made him flinch and pull his limbs in closer. As if making himself a smaller target ever meant his father would miss.
“Damn it, Adam. You some kinda idiot?” His father shouted at him.
“I can clean it up.” He said but his father wasn’t listening.
“Get the hell out.” Robert Parrish shoved Adam’s shoulder hard.
He didn’t need to be told twice. Turning, he hurried out of the house as quickly as he could. It was winter outside and dark. The stars had eyes and they peered down at the small human who stumbled into view. Once Adam was down the steps he belatedly realized he hadn’t shut the door all the way. He didn’t want to turn back now, so instead he started fitting himself under the porch. It was too small for a grown adult but as he crouched down the entire trailer grew or Adam became smaller, child sized. He sat on the cold earth and saw the light from the door grow as his father opened it and yelled “Shut the damn door next time.” then grumbled “I’m going to kill tha–” before slamming it shut.
Adam tried to catch his breath. The smell of beer permeating his clothes was making him nauseous and he could feel a dampness on his cheeks. He closed his eyes tight and imagined he was running away as far as his feet could take him. Coward, he scolded himself. Coward , the stars called down to him.
When Adam finally opened his eyes again he was in the doorway of his old Sociology classroom back at Harvard, only something was different. The carpet was blue. It was eerily quiet. He walked over to the window and looked out, but there was not a soul despite it clearly being a warm autumnal day. The ominous feeling of being the last person on earth swelled up inside him.
Suddenly his phone, which was now in his hand, started buzzing. He lifted it and saw Ronan had texted him “ Tamquam ”. Before any relief could reach his heart the same text came in again. Then it came in again and again and again and again. Dozens. Hundreds.
Tamquam
Tamquam
Tamquam
Tamquam
Tamquam
Tamquam
Tamquam
Tamquam
Tamquam
Tamquam
The texts were spilling out of his phone and onto the blue carpet now, pooling around his feet. There was no possible way he could text back, but he realized it was too late anyways. In the way he knew things he knew Ronan was gone. Left? Gone? The texts stopped. He was alone and he was going to be alone forever.
Why would he choose you? You aren’t even you anymore.
Adam took in a shaky breath. The thing was, he didn’t want to be a solitary creature anymore. Ronan had made him so comfortable with love and he was going to lose it. The idea of losing it now that he knew he was capable of having it made everything feel unbearable. It was his own fault, really. Here, in Harvard, he wasn’t a person anymore but instead a hard shell that played cards and wore tweed and felt miserable. Adam closed his eyes, made a fist, and rested it gently against the windowpane. Although he’d barely applied pressure on it, the glass shattered loud and sudden.
He reeled back with a gasp. When he finally stopped, Gansey was standing beside him. There were now the far-away muffled sounds of people chattering and a wailing violin.
“Look at you, Adam.” Gansey said. He held up a hand, demonstrating. Exhibit A, Adam parrish, imposter. “Just look .”
Adam’s stomach curdled. Broken glass figurines, all ravens, were scattered around their feet. He hesitated before looking forward again. Where the window had once been hung a mirror in a gilded frame. There was no screaming woman this time. Instead it was just him, silently screaming at himself. “ Stop. ” He said, and this time he did strike the mirror. It cracked and bits crumbled. The image was true again but broken. Gansey stood behind him now in the reflection.
“Look at you, Adam. Just look .”
Will it even be me and me? Adam wondered as he stared at his fractured face. He realized his reflection was changing again. The other Adam in the mirror looked malicious, ready to burst free and kill him. He could almost feel the weight of his own hands around his throat. His own hands were around his throat, the other Adam had reached out from the mirror and choked him, then just as quickly it stopped. He was just looking in a broken mirror.
Adam stepped away slowly. He was strangely calm, touching his neck to feel for any damage. Nothing. Everything had gone dead silent again and the carpet turned black. The ground shuddered and trembled and then the black carpet was crawling up his pant legs. He tried to pull free, to step back but it rooted him in place. It was eating the room, it was eating him . He looked behind him for Gansey, but Gansey was long gone. In desperation he tried to wipe the carpet off him, but the black entity that had been the carpet just transferred to his fingers and ate him faster. The room was being eaten. All the light faded.
He was suddenly lost in a black void and he was starved of life and he was being ripped apart. All his fragments were being ground into dust and when there was nothing left but his agony he was blown away. Everything was dark. There was nothing and he was nothing and he’d never be anything again.
Alone. Dead. Gone.
Adam gasped awake and sat up in bed. He was in his dorm room back at Harvard, although Fletcher’s bed was empty. This was wrong. He’d transferred out of Harvard, he was very sure of that fact. Adam fumbled in the dark to find his phone and check the date, but it wasn’t on the bedside table where he usually left it at night. Suddenly, the annoying ringtone Ronan had set for himself started playing on the other side of the door. The sound was off, jittery and broken up. Adam got out of bed slowly and hesitated before he pulled open the door. He found himself in the upstairs hallway of the old white farmhouse back at the Barns. Looking back over his shoulder, it was his dark Harvard dorm room. Forward was the daylit hallway at the Barns. Adam stood there for a moment before walking into the hallway and nearly slamming the door behind him.
“Ronan?” He called nervously into the farmhouse. No response. Adam hurried down the old creaky stairs and looked everywhere. Once he decided Ronan wasn’t inside, he pushed out the back door and stopped dead in his tracks.
He was on the tiny porch of the double-wide staring down at himself. A different, younger Adam was laying in the dirt, blinking awake as if he’d just been asleep and with a bright red left ear. There was dirt in that Adam’s mouth and he could feel it in his own. Slowly, the younger Adam pushed himself up on his hands and knees, looking unsteady and small in the oddly cut light. His heart was beating so fast Adam thought he might throw it up. He could hear a high whining sound in his left ear. The younger Adam was looking up at him now, but something was odd about his face. It was like it was dry, the skin flaking. It was coming apart and falling to the ground. He realized that this version of himself was turning into dirt.
Back where it came from. Said the brutally bright stars above.
Young Adam disintegrated.
Adam stood staring at the dirt pile, everything quiet. He was back in that abyss where there was nothing but dead things and the trailer and the stars with their eyes which faded one by one. They were tired of watching this sad little human.
There was nothing left. Adam stumbled down the steps of the trailer and started into the darkness. He was surrounded by an eternity of dirt and dry grass walking in the dark, dark, dark. It felt like he’d walked days, it felt like he’d only been walking for a minute. He wished Ronan was here. He wished Gansey and Blue were here. Hell, he even wished Henry Cheng was here. He wished he could remember who any of those people were. He wished he could remember who he was.
He blinked and he was standing in the kitchen at the Barns with Ronan’s nightwash on his hands. He blinked and he was in a forest, his cheek throbbing in unbelievable pain. He blinked and he was standing on the ceiling of the Mrs. Gansey party room with painted trees moving at his feet. He blinked and he was standing in his old church apartment with damp cheeks as his father slammed the door. He blinked and it was black.
Alone. Dead. Gone
.
.
.
Adam opened his eyes and found he was back at the Barns with Ronan’s heavy arm resting over his chest. He shot up to a sitting position, pushing Ronan’s arm off him without even thinking. Every muscle in his body felt strung tight and trembled against his will. Ronan made a disgruntled noise as he began to shift and Adam looked at him. He was laying on his stomach, the black lines of his tattoo almost completely exposed since Adam had pulled the blankets down with him when he sat up. He was scared to close his eyes. They felt like they were burning. You’re awake he told himself and he forced himself to blink. Nothing changed. It was just Ronan grumbling and rolling onto his back, scrubbing his face with both hands.
“Parrish?” Ronan’s voice was quiet and rough with sleep.
Adam could already feel a single hot tear searing down his cheek. He didn’t move. He blinked again. Nothing changed. Two more tears fell before he even realized they had cued up. This wasn’t a dream. He was suddenly aware he hadn’t been breathing and he inhaled raggedly.
Ronan suddenly looked wide awake. He sat up and pressed his hand against Adam’s back gently, then reached over with his other hand to touch his cheek. “Hey.” Ronan said in a quiet, low voice as he pulled Adam into his side. “Nightmare?” He asked.
Ronan already knew the answer so Adam only nodded and closed his eyes again. He leaned his head against Ronan’s shoulder and tried to steady his breath. Immediately after the Lace, Adam had had consistent nightmares that would rapidly fluctuated through mashed up bad memories. Now just over a year on they only came maybe once every two months. The low frequency still didn’t make them feel any better when they happened. He reached up and gripped the hand Ronan was now holding his bicep with. Ronan wiped Adam’s remaining tears off his cheeks and kissed the side of his head. He felt warm and solid and familiar. An easy peace washed over Adam.
“I’m here.” Ronan whispered, still tracing his thumb back and forth against Adam’s cheek although it was well dry. “ Numquam Solus. ”
Adam smiled a little and let out a much steadier breath. “Yeah.” He whispered and held onto Ronan’s wrist, lightly running his fingertips along raised scar tissue and magical inked skin. Sometimes, Adam thought he could feel the energy radiating from it. Or maybe it was just Ronan. “Yeah.” He repeated a little louder this time. “You’re here.”