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This all started months ago, when Adam woke up late - or maybe got a bit too distracted by Ronan - and was late to work. He threw on clothes and was frantically searching through the house for his car keys, but they weren’t where he left them the night before.
“Just take mine,” Ronan offered, only to discover his keys were missing too.
“Can’t you just dream of another set of keys?” Adam shouted from the kitchen, turning out his backpack on the table, searching its contents for the umpteenth time.
“Opal!” Ronan shouted out the back door, convinced his dreamt psychopomp was to blame.
Adam had ten minutes before he was really late, even if Ronan was driving him. He took off into the living room, patting his pockets for his phone to call Boyd and let him know he was running late, when he found it. On the armchair in the corner, next to the lamp that Chainsaw liked to perch on, was a pseudo-bird’s nest - a blanket stuffed with twigs and moss and leaves. Opal had been bringing Chainsaw branches from outside to set up a proper bird nest, which was an argument all its own. But nestled in the middle was not just the keys to the BMW and the Hondayota, but also Adam’s wallet, which he didn’t even realize he had been missing.
“Where the hell are you, you little gremlin?” Ronan’s voice filtered in from the front porch through the open windows.
“Ronan, I found them.”
“Damn- what?”
“I said I found them!”
Ronan slid on socked feet through the doorway into the living room. On seeing the nest of stolen items, his face dropped. “Where the fuck is that bird?”
Adam stumbled over the cushions on the floor, falling into Ronan’s arms to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Either she has separation anxiety or she’s bored… or both.”
Ronan caught Adam at the elbows, gently setting him upright and kissing him back once. “Yeah, yeah, sorry about the bird.”
Looking at the clock over the mantle, Adam sighed, knowing full well he would not be able to make it to Henrietta on time if he drove. “Can you drive me?”
On the car ride to work, they were mostly silent. Between shifting the car, Ronan’s hand caught Adam’s, fingertips tangling together. Adam’s mind was at work, already problem-solving Chainsaw’s kleptomania. He was convinced that she needed more mental stimulation. Ronan had always been teaching her to say certain words or phrases and she could pick things up super quickly, but Adam knew that there was more to her than that.
So, days later, the next time Adam was at the Barns, he started with teaching her to weave in and out of his legs, taking a step and having Chainsaw hop along the ground through the gap between his steps. This didn’t turn out so well because soon she learned that getting in the way of Adam walking meant she would get a cracker and Adam fell on his ass a few times.
“ Kreker.”
“Yes, yes, that deserves a cracker, doesn’t it?” Adam’s voice was soft as he offered up the treat to Chainsaw, who snatched it away quickly, in case it would be taken back.
Today, Adam was sitting on the hay and dust covered floor of the long barn, with a colorful, plastic block sorting child toy in front of him and an eager, hungry raven, haphazardly jamming a star block into a square hole.
“That’s close, girl, don’t get frustrated now,” Adam soothed. Chainsaw dropped the star, gave a squawk of defiance, and then picked up a square block.
The children’s block toy he found at the dumpster behind the church and he only needed to rinse it off for it to be usable. Chainsaw took to it immediately, jamming the blue round plastic block into the circular hole almost immediately. The blocks with edges were a little harder for her to grasp, but not impossible.
Chainsaw got the square block into its corresponding hole and hobbled over to Adam, screeching in delight. “ KREKER.”
Adam laughed, “yeah, yeah, you earned it.” He held out another cracker for her, smiling as she wandered off to devour it.
“Adam!”
He turned to see Opal galloping into the barn. She normally wasn’t allowed in the long barn, but Adam was here so he felt like his supervision was enough.
“How’re you doing, Opal?” Adam asked, unable to help the smile at her enthusiasm as she ran circles around him and Chainsaw before dropping to sit right beside him.
Opal’s words tumbled out quickly in one breath. “Good. Are you done sometime soon? I want to show you something, but you’ve been in here for hours and Kerah said I should wait, but-”
“ Kerah ,” Chainsaw echoed.
“Kerah, yeah,” Opal eyed Chainsaw with a narrowed gaze. “Are you done yet?”
Before Adam could answer, Ronan called for Opal from outside.
“Where are you, brat?”
“In here,” Adam called and Opal whined in protest at being discovered, her wide eyes glancing between Adam and the door. As Ronan entered the barn, Chainsaw leapt up from her blocks and perched on his shoulder. Well there goes that…
“How was the student?” Ronan asked.
“Distracted.”
“Spoiled,” noted Ronan at the cracker crumbs in Chainsaw’s feathers.
“Why is Opal hiding from you?”
“She’s not hiding from me. She’s right there.”
“Yeah but she didn’t want me to tell you where she was.”
“ Adam ,” Opal whined.
“ Atom ,” Chainsaw echoed.
Adam sighed and looked between all three of them. “What’s up?”
“It’s hot as hell,” Ronan said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning against the wall. “We’re going swimming. You in?”
Opal’s eyes lit up as she looked at Adam for his response. The please was left unsaid, but Adam heard it anyway.
“Yeah,” Adam stood up, brushing the dirt off his jeans. “Sure.”
Opal squeaked, galloping around Adam once before racing out of the barn, nearly colliding into Ronan on the way out, but he quickly dodged her with a whispered curse under his breath. Chainsaw, too, took flight out of the room, although when Adam walked out of the barn, his hand in Ronan’s, he saw Opal hanging back, making sure he was following, and Chainsaw circling overhead.
Later that week, he returned to the Barns and spent the night. As soon as his tires hit the hidden drive from the street, Ronan’s dreamt fireflies - that were more light than insect - lit the way, swarming in front of his car and gliding along through the brush and the trees as if his headlights were not enough to light the way. They danced and wove through one another in a brilliant waltz. He slowed down his car to observe them, distracted by their whimsy and grace. Amazed by their magic, Adam wanted to thank them somehow, but when he parked and got out of his car, they had all dissipated, back to flitting through the grass and trees with no pattern.
That night, he fell asleep in Ronan’s room with Ronan and woke up without him. This wasn’t surprising for the most part since Ronan’s insomnia was still very much a problem and his dreams were not always safe, but it still left Adam wanting . He felt that the sheets beside him were still warm, so he lounged in bed for a bit longer, hoping that Ronan was coming back, but he didn’t hear anything in the hall.
He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was midmorning, longer than he would have slept if he were at St. Agnes or if he had any work today. He had to work on some homework he brought with him, but was otherwise free. It was a nice feeling.
He stretched and sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes and running his fingers through his hair. The sunlight was streaming in through the windows, a breeze pushing back the curtains. He stood up and walked over to the window, tucking the curtains behind the hook on the wall and looking outside. He was surprised to see something looking back… or many somethings.
Lined up outside the window were a number of Ronan’s dreamt creatures. There was a pair of deer, the stag’s antlers tangled up and towered over them providing shade for the doe and the others beneath. Beside them was one of Ronan’s dreamt cows, brown with milky white patches, grass in between their teeth and eyes wide and appraising. Wrestling playfully in the tall brush were a few Barn cats, but they soon stopped to look up at Adam as well. A flash of black was all the warning Adam got before Chainsaw swooped down and perched on the windowsill in front of him.
“ Atom ,” she croaked.
He huffed a laugh and looked back at the other creatures who all seemed to recognize him, even if Adam hadn’t had many interactions with them. If he thought about it, it probably made sense, they were from Ronan’s head. If Ronan knew Adam then his creatures knew him, too. Perhaps that was why Opal had an innate trust in Adam when she first met him.
Thinking of Opal seemed to summon her. He grunted as he felt a small body collide into his legs, arms wrapping around his hips, hugging him from his side. He gently patted her head, pulling a loose twig out of the knit of her skullcap.
“Good morning,” he managed, throat dry and voice rough from sleep.
“Morning!” Opal yelped excitedly, taking his hand and dragging him downstairs to the kitchen where Ronan had breakfast waiting.
Later, he sat under the shade of a tree in the fields with his textbook in his lap, working through his study docket of the weekend. He kept glancing up to watch Ronan fixing up a fence a few yards away, grumbling at Opal when she’d traipse around him, stealing a tool or post. The breeze was a nice relief to the already sweltering late spring heat, rustling the tall grass around him.
As he scanned through the required reading for history, his hands absentmindedly skimmed the wildflowers beside him, gently petting the leaves and smooth petals coated in pollen. He remembered last month when Ronan had woken up with a bag full of seeds and the three of them - Ronan, Adam, and Opal - had spent all morning scattering the seeds in the field. The wildflowers were magical - bright yellows and deep purples, pastel pinks and inky blues. They only took a day to bud and blossom and another to spread, covering this patch of grass with beautiful speckles of pigment and life.
Adam retracted his hand to turn the page of his textbook and felt the petals brush against his forearm. He ignored it, reaching for his notebook and pencil tucked behind his ear to make a few notes. The wind had picked up, the grass was brushing against his ankles as well. He finished his notetaking, he held the pencil in his teeth, placed his notebook back on the ground beside him and folded his arms into his lap to stretch. That’s when he noticed the flowers moving .
Just as plants grow toward the sun for life, these wildflowers were inching toward Adam, reaching, straining. He slowly held out a hand, hovering it above a group of them and they grew upward, straight to his palm. He waited for the wind to pick up and as it jostled the tall brush and branches around him, the flowers beneath his hand did not shudder.
He slowly moved his hand in a circle and watched as the stems bent to meet his every move, the petals opening up to a wider bloom. Startled, he grabbed the pencil from between his teeth and tried to manipulate the flowers’ motion with that, pointing the eraser at the buds, trying again with the graphite tip, but they did not move. He replaced the pencil with his open palm and they reached for him again. He looked down at his feet, stretched out in front of him, the flowers there, a few inches away, also extended toward him, though they did not make contact.
His heart rate picked up. He felt like he was uncovering another secret of Ronan’s, a vulnerability he wasn’t yet supposed to know or have. His own chest felt warm as he thought more about what this meant… or could mean.
Adam and Ronan had talked about his leaving for college, about Adam’s decision to come back, but the promise still felt fragile. He wondered if Ronan had really believed him. If he trusted him enough. Trusted them enough. Even Gansey had had his own questions, always the first to defend Ronan’s heart. Adam knew he was coming back, as long as Ronan wanted him to and at this moment, he believed that would be a very long time.
The flowers stretching out for him, following his every move, matching his inhale and exhale. The fireflies welcoming him at the property line. The animals waiting for him at Ronan’s bedroom window this morning. Opal’s immediate trust in him as soon as he fastened his watch around her wrist. Chainsaw’s meddling kleptomania to keep him at the Barns, keep him close for longer. The message was clear and blaring and yet Adam kept it close to his chest. Full to the brim with nervous excitement to call Ronan out on it, to coax the confession from him.
Instead, he glanced up at Ronan and found he was already looking back. He smiled. Ronan smiled back. They were very happy.