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They're sitting in the den listening to old records when Adam realises he wants to kiss him. A lot. He's entertained thoughts of it before, but it's never been as real as this: Ronan curled up with his socked feet under him on an overstuffed sofa, clutching a mug of hot chocolate that's practically overflowing with bunny-shaped marshmallows he's sure he pulled out of his head. It kind of knocks him sideways for a minute. Because he could do it, probably, and Ronan would let him, probably, but what the hell would that mean for them?
Especially here. Adam knows what the Barns means to Ronan. It's not just a house, not just his home; it's everything he's ever known about himself, laid bare for him to see. Adam wouldn't be here if Ronan didn't trust him with this, with his secrets and his truth, and he doesn't want to betray that trust by doing the wrong thing at the wrong time. He's really not sure what the right time would be, though, if such a concept even exists. After all of this is over, when his mom and Matthew are safely back under this roof with him, when it's not so quiet here. When they find Glendower and save Gansey, when they're eventually happier and more fulfilled. It's too vague, too much of a maybe. And somehow, that future is an even scarier prospect to envision. Because who will either of them even be, then? Completely different people, by all guesses. Who want completely different things.
The song ends before he realises it and Ronan's getting up, gracefully, and lifting the needle and then taking his empty mug from him, fingers grazing his dangerously.
Ronan doesn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. He puts the mugs in the sink and puts his boots back on and he calls over his shoulder that he's going to lock up the barns and that there's books and stuff in his room, second door on the left, if he gets bored. And then he's gone through the kitchen door.
Adam just stares at the spot where he's no longer standing, wondering if he's just been invited to Ronan Lynch's bedroom.
*
Adam likes playing this game when he comes to the Barns: dream or not a dream. Maybe the whole place came out of Niall Lynch's imagination. Maybe it's so quiet because it's asleep just like everything else. Ronan moves silently around the house like he's afraid to disturb it, or like he knows it so well that he's become a part of it; he knows its natural language and rhythms in his bones. He's someone else here, someone finally in equilibrium, not perpetually on the defense or about to strike. He should always look like this, safe, content, surrounded by things he associates with love and care instead of monsters that want to eat the heart out of him.
He wishes he could have it all back. Things Adam never had in the first place.
His hand slides over the smooth wood of the railing as he slowly makes his way upstairs.
All the doors are closed except for Ronan's door which is slightly cracked, letting out a sliver of light.
He pushes it open and finds a boy's room.
He didn't know what he expected.
It's not as messy as it probably was a couple years ago, but there are books lying on the rug; soda cans are covering his nightstand; and his desk is littered with ticket stubs, and pieces of paper folded into airplanes and birds, and tiny model cars with a level of detail too astounding to be actual children's toys. He pulls open the top drawer and finds a stack of photographs. They're from about three years ago, just before he moved into Monmouth. Most of them are of him and his brothers but sometimes Gansey's face jumps out at him unexpectedly. There's something different about him, about both of them; they're wearing twin smiles in most of them. They look achingly young. Adam has a feeling that he's never known either of those boys. Niall's death changed everything, for Ronan, for both of them.
He puts them back, feeling like he's intruding on their time together. There's a sketchbook under it; his drawings are pretty good, but it looks like he hasn't done any new ones in a long time. There are trees and birds and flowers and some of Matthew, younger, smiling with a head full of unruly curls. He slides the drawer shut again, looking over at the far side of the room, next to the window.
There are faded posters still stuck to the wall: Irish bands and old, black-and-white films and race cars and boy wizards.
There's an armchair sitting near his bed; it looks well-worn but comfortable. There's a guitar resting on the seat, a blanket hanging from an arm. He can easily imagine him sitting in his dad's lap as he placed his fingers on the strings; he can imagine his mother curling up there and reading him stories when he was sick in bed.
He sits on the rug for a bit, flipping through the books. They're all epic fantasies about kings and knights and quests. He wonders if they were here before Gansey even arrived, if their paths were always meant to cross (he's less certain about his own). He gets up and goes over to the bookshelf next to the desk, running his fingers over embossed titles. There seem to be an inordinate number of first editions. Probably dreamt, too.
He opens the closet door and peeks inside. Nothing unusual. He spots a basket of stuffed animals hidden behind his clothes and smiles. He shuts the door again.
Then he notices the other book. It's lying on the floor right next to his bed, in front of the chair. He retrieves it, sits on the bed for the first time; the sheets are clean and soft and they smell like they've been freshly-laundered. The bed's pristinely made. He wonders if he sleeps in it at all.
On the first page of the album is a picture of Ronan the day he was born in his mother's arms.
He turns pages: Ronan crying, laughing, walking. He stops on a two-year-old Ronan with his baby brother, wisps of golden hair on his head, a tiny hand grabbing Ronan's thumb. Ronan's first day of preschool, smiling with his father's arm around him. The resemblance is unnatural. He stops breathing for a moment, thinking about someone who looked so much like Ronan lying in a grave just because of what he was. He wonders how hard it is to look in a mirror, wonders if that's why he buzzes his hair short. He thinks about shutting the album and going back downstairs to wait but it's hard to resist how happy and invincible he looks in these pictures. Ronan playing the bagpipes, sitting next to Declan at the piano, clutching a toy truck, eating cotton candy at a carnival, at the beach with his brothers, on a bright, busy city street holding his mother's hand, camping under the stars with Matthew, dressed as Merlin one Halloween, and then dressed as Harry Potter the year after. He can't help the laugh that bursts from his throat.
He's in his Aglionby uniform on the last page, hair still longer than he's ever seen it, laughing at something out of frame.
Then the floorboard creaks and he looks up. Ronan's standing in the doorway, face half in shadow, feet bare. Figures that he didn't hear him come up the stairs. He looks so much like his father for a moment that Adam almost drops the album onto the floor.
Adam wonders how long exactly he's been standing there. He tells him he's being a creep to hide his own embarrassment at being caught snooping. But Ronan just comes over and sits next to him and asks him what was so funny.
*
It's too much, suddenly, that look on Ronan's face, his warmth, his beautiful childhood bedroom, all his memories.
He can't breathe.
It's too quiet, they're too alone, he wants it too much.
He can still feel Ronan's light touch on his neck, can feel his breath so, so close to his own lips.
He stands in the kitchen and looks out the window. There's just what looks like miles of open country. His jacket's hanging on a peg next to Ronan's by the kitchen door; his battered tennis shoes sitting next to Ronan's boots on the mat. Something tightens in his chest and then he scolds himself for being an idiot.
He could put his shoes back on and go walking out into the night but he'll probably just end up lost and freezing.
He could ask Ronan to drive him back and he would but then what? He can't just avoid talking about this forever.
It was a mistake, probably, pretending he could belong in a place like this. Belong with someone like Ronan.
He takes a few deep breaths, composes himself, gets a glass of water, leans against the counter. Waits.
*
Kissing him is: all the nerve endings in his body firing simultaneously, seeing the universe exploding and expanding behind his eyelids, not just at an one instant, but stars warring to be born, burning bright, collapsing, the supernovae levelling galaxies but creating new ones too. The cycle starting all over again. He wonders if Ronan's mouth can create galaxies.
There are entire worlds in his mind, stardust in his blood, lightning in his touch.
Adam can feel all of it, like every one of Ronan's emotions is flowing through him (relief and joy and loneliness and fierce longing), like electricity, like the constant hum of the ley line, and it doesn't scare him. Not anymore.
It feels like a flicker of something warm and bright at his core. Something starting to grow in the wake of a star's death.
*
It's hard not to stare at him; hard not to reach across the table and interlace their fingers, hard not to kiss him without ever stopping. He's happy, he's happier than Adam's ever seen him, he's almost like the boy in those pictures again. The boy Gansey never thought he'd get back; the one Ronan said goodbye to forever. You did that, he tells himself, in awe. It's hard to believe; it's hard to contain the warm flood threatening to break out of his chest cavity.
It's hard not to say everything he's thinking.
Ronan kisses him again before he can, touching him like he's something precious, like he's as precious as his memories and the relics of his childhood, like he's a part of this place too, now, like he's a part of Ronan.
He looks at him like he's seeing him in a way no one else ever has; like he's seeing the branches of his bones and the scar tissue of his heart and the chaos of his mind and the things buried underneath: the clear spring water of his dreams, the burning flame of his will, the childlike wonder, the tempered rage. Seeing all the parts of him he hides, all the shameful parts, all the parts he's afraid to lose.
And Adam looks right back at him.
*
They're in his bed, Ronan's arms around him, both cocooned in a thick comforter. It's still quiet, but it's a familiar, reliable kind of silence. Just like Ronan's.
"It must be hard — looking at pictures of your dad," Adam says quietly.
"It's gotten better."
"It must be hard just being here too. I'm sorry." He's not sure what he's sorry for, that his dad's dead, that everything's a reminder of that, that he's here all alone.
"I used to think I was sleeping too. Like maybe everything that happened after was a dream."
"What made you change your mind?"
"You," he says simply.
"Oh."
"I knew it had to be real. It wouldn't hurt so much if it wasn't."
"Ronan —"
"No, don't say anything. Please."
"Okay."
They don't speak for a long while, until Adam's sure he's probably fallen asleep, still holding him tightly to his chest.
But then he speaks again, as soft as he can, but perfectly clear in the silence.
"I just — I just want to make you happy," he says against his hair, like it's the only thing that matters.
"What did you think you were doing all this time?" Adam says, closing his eyes, smiling into his neck.