Chapter Text
Adam blinked, disoriented. His face felt wet, and his eyes ached with tears. The thing was, he couldn’t remember why he was crying. He couldn’t even remember what he had been thinking of only moments before. He could remember that he had been thinking, but the exact nature of the thoughts escaped him as easily as Noah’s last name had when Gansey had asked.
He shook his head and rubbed the moisture from his cheeks. Last time I try doing a reading in Cabeswater, he thought.
It was ridiculous, really: he usually only had this sort of problem if he was scrying, and even then it wasn’t this dramatic. Sure, he couldn’t remember every detail, but he usually had a general idea what he had seen – whether he had been successful, at least.
Now he had been sitting on the ground crying long enough for his legs to go numb, and he couldn’t even remember why. He remembered beginning his reading, but he hadn’t been getting anywhere; the cards had been projecting too much about him and his thoughts about…
Well, that was the thing. Moments before, he had been sure that he had known. In fact, he could feel the place that the memory had been, just on the edge of his thoughts and ready to be brought to the center of his attention before it had suddenly vanished.
Ronan… Adam thought finally, catching sight of The Lovers laid next to The Magician, the last card he remembered laying down. He had to have been thinking about Ronan, right? What else could he have been thinking about? It was a pretty good bet that he had been thinking about his boyfriend, Adam reasoned to himself.
Shaking his head slowly, Adam rubbed at his eyes with one hand while he picked up tarot cards with the other. Ronan was right, he thought, though he would never admit it: he needed more sleep. Cabeswater was going to have to wait.
Adam made his way out of the forest and towards his car, noting with a bit of relief that he’d only lost track of about a half hour, and he hadn’t gone anywhere during that time. He was more in control of himself than he had been when Cabeswater had sent him walking down the highway.
Still, this was a disturbing development. He would have to ask someone for advice on this. Stroking his thumb across the edge of the cards in his hand, he considered that he didn’t know who he would even go to for advice without Persephone. He doubted there was anyone quite like Persephone in the world, and he was certain he wouldn’t want to learn from anyone else.
With a heavy sigh, Adam climbed into the driver’s seat of his car. As he steered his car down the dusty asphalt leading the way into Henrietta, Adam had the most peculiar feeling that his mind was running backwards. Blinking away the odd sensation, he stared hard at the road before him. I really need to get more sleep, he thought.
After what felt like entirely too long, Adam arrived at the parking lot for St. Agnes. As he locked the car, he wondered idly if Ronan was going to come over tonight. He allowed his mind to drift to Ronan’s feelings for him, and his feelings for Ronan. Maybe it was something they should talk about. Maybe Adam should figure out how he felt –
Adam paused halfway to his door. Did I lock the car? he wondered. He pressed his brain to remember, but he couldn’t seem to recall anything between getting out of the car and – What was I just thinking about? He could remember that he had been thinking, but there was an absolute lack of hints as to what might have been on his mind.
Adam shook his head and walked back to the car. The door was, in fact, locked. Adam began his trek to his door once more. I think Ronan might have a crush on me, he allowed himself to think, because it felt good, because he liked to think that at least there was someone out there who thought he was something worth looking at.
Adam unlocked the door to his apartment. The room above St. Agnes was so small that it was nearly imaginary, but the lock on the door and the pervasively stale, hot air edged it just enough into reality that Adam could be proud that it was his.
He moved to shut the door. Did I lock the car? He squinted out to the parking lot. I must have… probably. He sighed. There was no point in going back. He was too tired. No one was going to steal that car, anyways, and there was nothing inside worth taking. If Ronan stopped by, he might put something in it, but locking the doors would hardly prevent that.
Double-checking that he had locked the door behind him, Adam ducked into the bathroom. His eyes stung a little still, and he splashed cold water on his face to wash off the dirt and salt. It felt so good that he considered taking a shower. He had a shift in the hot garage in the morning, though, and it felt too much like a waste to shower before that. He settled for another splash of cool water on his face, and he rubbed his dripping hands around the back of his neck as a bonus. He couldn’t remember anything that had occupied his mind since getting out of the car.
Maybe I should just get some sleep. But that, too, seemed like a waste when there was homework that could be perfected in that time instead. Still, there was that peculiar sensation that his mind was an odometer that was running backwards – I should probably sleep…
Adam returned to the small main room and dropped onto the bed in what probably at least resembled a normal sleeping position. Within seconds, he was asleep, and he dreamt a hundred, a thousand, a million memories of a boy with a smile more menacing than a tiger’s and a heart kinder than a summer breeze. When he awoke the next morning, he didn’t remember any of it.
Rather than pondering dreams he didn’t remember having, Adam went to work. And, after work, he did not think about anything or anyone that had occupied his sleep. Instead, he went back to his apartment and he took a quick shower that didn’t even begin to make him feel clean. And then he headed over to Monmouth, as he had promised Gansey, so that the two of them and Blue – and possibly Noah – could discuss what sorts of supernatural activity they should be expecting as they continued their search. When Adam jogged up the stairs to the factory apartment and opened the door, however, he came face to face with something that nothing else in their quest could have prepared him for.
Adam’s heart jumped in his chest, as though the muscle knew something that Adam did not. He shook his head and shut his eyes for a moment. When he reopened them and found the sight before him unchanged, his heart surged once more.
This didn’t make any sense. As though there had been any doubt, Adam’s eyes flicked to the miniature Henrietta. Definitely Gansey’s apartment…
Still, Adam couldn’t seem to reconcile this with the fact of the boy with the shaved head at the other end of the room. Adam took in the details as his heart pounded in his chest: raw fingers clenched into a fist that was overshadowed by dangling leather bands; a black raven perched atop the shoulder of a black tank top; two pairs of eyes studying him, one avian and the other untrusting.
Made entirely of height and sharp edges, the boy looked like a war waiting to happen; both the fire and the ashes it had left behind. He was too solid to be an apparition. He opened his savage mouth. “Who the fuck are you?”