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English
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Published:
2024-08-25
Completed:
2024-11-03
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4,832
Chapters:
6/6
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107
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198
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all around and in between

Summary:

It's sort of about family and sort of about watching and it's definitely about Adam but it's also Ronan's diary?

Notes:

doing some practice/trying new things.

chapters 1 and 6 are outsider pov; 2 through 5 are ronan.

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

I.

On Tuesday, Dr. Parrish wore a gold band on his ring finger. Thursday, it was gone. On Friday, ring again, and then after that, Elena didn’t see it anymore. It had seemed to distract him on Friday, catching his attention as he turned it and tugged at it with the fingers of his right hand. 

You weren’t supposed to get stuck on things like that, but it was hard not to: Dr. Parrish was the youngest visiting professor the department had seen in years, Elena’s roommate Cora pointed out, and nobody knew anything about him. His scholarship was seminal; his personal life, a black box. But he was young, quite young, and sort of handsome, Elena thought. In a certain kind of way.

They had tried to uncover something, a little crumb of confession, at the department happy hour before the start of fall term. Cora, Elena, and Sydney all hung loosely in orbit and listened for clues in the small talk.

“Tell us about yourself, Adam.” Professor Walker’s voice carried when he’d been drinking. “What do you like to do when you’re not working?”

That bland answering smile lasted a barely polite half-second. “I’m not sure yet,” Dr. Parrish said, holding a can of seltzer to his chest, and the students and faculty near him laughed for too long. “I’ve heard there are trails by the river, is that right?”

He deflected all night, and Elena recognized herself in that. She was an acquired taste, Cora always said, a slow burn. She never made fast friends.

“And is your family here?”

Dr. Parrish shook his head. “Just me and the books.”

Elena noticed that Dr. Parrish wore a chain at least once that first week, a fine gold one inside his collar. So maybe the ring was just a ring, she thought, and nothing special. Just another piece of jewelry that didn’t quite fit right, and so he’d given up wearing it.

He seemed lonely. He made her feel lonely.

 

II.

Dr. Parrish—Adam, Connor reminded himself—was talking to a dark-haired man in a suit. They stood close together outside of the American Studies building in a patch of shade below the front steps. 

From across the lawn, their body language was intimate, familial. At one point, the stranger waited while Adam spoke on the phone with his face pulled sharply into a frown. It didn’t look like a happy conversation.

Connor chewed his lip, conflicted. On the one hand, he didn’t want to interrupt anything personal. On the other hand, he had a question for Adam that would only take a few minutes. He’d planned on waiting for office hours the next day, but maybe he could ask now, on the way to meet with his advisor, and then he wouldn’t have to come to campus tomorrow before work…

Caught. He’d stared too long. Spotted first by the man in the suit, who lifted his chin, and then by Adam, who turned at the gesture and waved Connor over.

“Sorry.” Connor felt sheepish as he jogged over. “Sorry, I don’t mean to bother you outside of class.”

“It’s not a problem,” Adam said, cutting him off. It was clear he wasn’t going to introduce the man in the suit, who began texting and didn’t bother looking up. “You’re meeting with Iris, right? And you need another source for your last chapter?”

A wave of relief. “Yes, exactly, I was going to stop by tomorrow, but—”

“Don’t move,” Adam said, already pulling a phone out of his back pocket. “I’m emailing you,” he muttered as he typed, “and you’re going to review these in the order they’re listed in.” There was a momentary silence as two men typed and Connor looked up at a puffy cloud above them, feeling awkward. Finally, at the sound of Adam tapping his phone screen, Connor looked back down. “If you have time before your meeting, grab the Desjardin.”

Connor pressed his hands together, prayer of the undergrad. “Thank fuck, thank you so much,” he said gratefully. “Holy shit, you’re my savior.”

The man in the suit laughed abruptly, lifting his head and looking between Connor and Adam. 

Adam didn’t laugh back. “Let him do it the way he wants,” Adam told the man quietly. “I’ll be there this weekend, anyway.” Turning back to Connor, he said, “You’re welcome at office hours, too, if you want to talk more.” And then he turned and walked away.

Suit man pocketed his phone and pulled on a pair of sunglasses. 

“Any half-decent restaurants around here?”

 

III.

Once or twice, Elena heard Adam use “we.”

Did you like Princeton?

Well enough, although we were living in the city, so I didn’t spend much time on campus.

Did you attend the keynote last year?

I caught most of the conference, but no, that night we were hosting friends.

 

IV.

Partway through the semester, Connor was half-asleep in Adam’s Wednesday morning seminar. 

One-on-one, Dr. Parrish was phenomenal. Ruthless. Keen. Prodding. But Connor found his classes surprisingly lax: it often felt like Adam was waiting, fruitlessly, for the students to impress him. Connor thought they might, someday, if only the class didn’t start at 8 am. It was warm, too, on the fourth floor. 

“Let’s look at some examples,” Adam was saying in a disappointed tone, “since some of you clearly lied when I asked if you were comfortable with the qualitative analysis...”

He tapped the trackpad to wake his laptop; instantly, on the screen behind him, a hideous e-card took up the space of the wall: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY it screamed, in animated glitter text. Behind the text was an image of an old car on fire, surrounded by dancing clip-art cows.

Twelve pairs of alert eyes turned to Adam, expectant, ready to laugh; no luck, though, and they should’ve known better than to hope.

Smoothly, opening a new tab: “Apologies." He cleared his throat, lightly. "Inside joke.”

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

I. 

I always figured I’d be the one to stay up all night, but it turns out that by the time A finished undergrad, I’d mostly figured that shit out. Stopped smoking so much weed, started working out, stuff like that. Started keeping normal human hours and falling asleep around midnight.

A goes until the sun’s up, if no one stops him. It’s real bad in the summertime; it’s gotten worse over the years. I don’t mind, really, except that everything gets fucked when we’re on opposite schedules: no sex, no shared meals. And then the semester starts, and if he teaches any classes before noon, it hits him like a truck.

The trick is to get at him early, get him up and keep him up. Sex, breakfast. Bring him along to the gym and throw him on the treadmill. He bitches, but five minutes in he’s cruising. He likes it when I run next to him, which is fucking cute, and I tell him so. If I take my shirt off, we’ll race; he’s stupid competitive. I don’t know how, but we run about the same speed.

I don’t worry about him. As in, I don’t indulge in that. He doesn’t need it, doesn’t like it. But I’ll be glad when he’s home.

 

II.

I fucked up my wrist right after we told the social worker that we could take another kid, which was fucking stupid to do in the first place when Adam was still three hours away in Chapel Hill. But they’d called about it like eight times, and he was supposed to come home for break in a few weeks, anyway. Spring term he’d only be on campus three days a week. They knew about his schedule, said it was ok. It wasn’t our first time.

The first time had gone fine, even though we were scared as shit about it. We had the baby, Kyle, for a few weeks before his grandparents got custody, and we knew it might go like that, that the grandparents were trying. We made a lot of jokes about how Kyle was a weird name for a baby, about how this was a test run. I think that’s what freaked A out, though, that the whole thing was over so fast. It freaked me out later, too, when they asked us to do it again and it felt like we hadn’t learned anything or gotten any better prepared.

Sometimes I’m not sure about fostering. I’d be ready to adopt on day one, but it doesn’t work like that. You can’t know for sure. 

A doesn’t need to know how long we’ll have the kid. He’s ready to adopt, too, but not ready to say it.

 

III. 

I left to pick her up about an hour after A started his drive back. They called and I just got in the car right away, didn’t even stop to think that they would’ve waited a few hours if I’d asked, no problem. It’s not like the social workers can’t keep a 4 y.o. old alive for an afternoon. 

I’d woken up so horny that I’d jerked off twice in the shower that morning, and then wished I hadn’t, since A was almost home and also because then my wrist hurt like a bitch. But then the call came and it was like: thank God. No one is getting laid while there’s a freaked-out kid sleeping down the hall.

A rolled with it; he always does. When he got home, I could tell his brain had moved a pile of things to the Later pile. He’d listened to my message, so when he came in through the mud room, he called, “Hey Ronan, hey Opal,” and then spent a long minute taking his boots off. He didn’t want to scare her.

She doesn’t startle easily or anything. It doesn’t sound like the situation with her parents was as bad as it is sometimes. But she’s shy and sensitive and she won’t cry in front of us, which is the worst part, that this little kid thinks it’s not ok. I don’t think A slept at all that first night she was with us.

Chapter 3

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

I.

Today A told Opal he was proud of her. I saw him decide to say it, saw him open his mouth and watch his own words come out. Then he looked at me like, did you catch that shit? 

I have my own bullshit, dead parents blah blah, but sometimes the scope of A’s family stuff makes me want to rip my skin off. So I look at him and think how I would do anything to go back and take better care of him then, when he was just a kid. And then I look at Opal and I

Opal likes us. I’m not sure she trusts us, that’s fine, she’s a smart one. A’s spring term started up so it’s been a lot of just me and O, but she’s got the busiest schedule of anyone I know: OT, preschool, music class, Friday mornings with Jordan. Little kid tycoon shit. We thought her mom might get visitation sorted out, but that hasn’t happened. No other family around.

Thursday night we drove down to see Adam, made him dinner. I slept on the couch and O and A slept in the bed; faculty housing down there sort of blows. A’s willingness to ask UNC for better accommodations also blows. Then Friday we checked out some trails by a river until O passed out and we carried her back to the car. She’s heavier than she looks, so we traded off. A gave me that look again, but this time it made me laugh.

 

II.

I started this for you, Opal, before I knew there was you. But now I can’t give it to you, not after I talked about jerking off and talked about A so much and talked about how much shit we don’t know how to do. A, maybe this has been for you. But you know everything already. That’s the whole point of us.

Sometimes I feel like I only know myself through you, like you introduced me to myself. (You'd kick my ass if I told you that.)

Sometimes you need to hear things out loud, I know. But you already get it. It’s like that.

 

III.

O, I can’t stand the thought of you going with your mom. I have to write it here because I can’t tell you and I can’t tell A and I don’t go to church enough anymore so I can’t tell God, not officially. I've got enough shit to cover at Easter.

What’s best for you? I ask myself that forty times a day. We’re supposed to think about it like we’re helping your mom, but Jordan said you asked where your dads were the other day, and I never even asked you to call me that. I never told you.

A was back this weekend and it felt so good to wake up with him, his body against me, heavy. He'd passed out early and crushed my arm; he's heavier, lately, since he's been lifting while he's on campus. He sends gym pics at like 3 am, fucking goon. I know he's trying not to go crazy down there.

He put his ring on when he got home on Friday, just after he took off his coat and boots. Change of uniform, God I fucking like that. He kept me up all night, happy, and in the morning at the table it was all of us.

Halfway through the term, almost. He's thinking about taking leave in the fall. What if this is the only time we get to do this, what if she has to leave, what

A looked so bad when it was time to leave, shut down and face blank and the ring back on his chain.

Notes:

hi sorry yes it's me, off anon. why was i there in the first place? who can remember!

anyway ty for reading

Chapter 4

Notes:

toyourdetriment & or-dhuilleag you've taught me everything I know about hyphens and emotional devastation (ty for editing!)

Chapter Text

I.

  1. Use both hands to lock the door
  2. Call 911
  3. Call Jordan and Declan
  4. You live at the Barns
  5. Your guardians are Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish


We taught O how to use the landline. We also taught her how to use the utility sink and the coffee maker and the thing that feeds the dog, not that she’s tall or coordinated enough to do any of that on her own.

She can use the landline, though, with the step stool that’s got her name on it. You can’t live out here and not know how to call for help, so I spent two hours finding the fucking phone manual in the attic and programmed the speed dial like we did when I was a kid. O knows her numbers, so she knows 9-1-1 and she knows to call Jordan by pressing the 3, same as my cell. Just in case I fall off a ladder or some other casual traumatic shit goes down.

You’d never know the stuff she’s dealt with, not any more. Her birthday was last Saturday, A was home and relaxed and 36 hours out of work clothes. The two of them woke up early and made cake for breakfast and then O hung onto him all day, fell asleep on his lap after lunch, ran him all around the orchard like a demon. Showed him the show with the lemmings like he hasn’t seen it 49 times. She’s obsessed with A, always wanting to go down and see him, and we do, Jesus Christ have we been driving. But I think it’s normal, the way she misses him. Healthy, not anxious. The two of them are real funny, the way they do the matching eyebrows at each other. Anyway, she can’t miss too much school.

We talked about her staying with us for a long time. We talk about her mom and her dad—she hasn’t spent much time with him, but she knows who he is—and I keep expecting her to pitch a fit about wanting them. But all her tantrums are regular 5yo tantrums, now, just big tears when she’s tired and can’t get her sock on, and when I bring the wrong jacket to school pickup and A isn’t home until tomorrow.

II.

I started working again, finally, just two weeks before the end of A’s term. I felt sort of like an asshole taking so much time off, but it’s not like my brain’s been working great since A’s been gone and O dropped in like a perfect little bomb going off.

You’d read this and think I’m resentful or lonely or something. I’m not, I just want everything: I want to do my work. I want A every second, I want to be close, want to see that ring I put on his finger. Want him to fuck me every day and then I want to watch him get out of the shower. I want our kid to be our kid and I want her to be happy and weird and fierce. I want to teach her things. 

I’ll handle fighting, painting, holidays. Animals, writing fucking legibly. Could teach her about siblings if it goes that way. A gets: writing, thinking, soccer, plants, school. How to be alone. Not singing, obviously. Lifting, maybe. Jesus.

I have the things I want, mostly, a lot of the time. It’s stupid, how much I have. If you read this, don’t get it twisted.

O doesn’t like music class anymore, but she goes. Dance, now, too. This summer she’ll go to camp every morning for a week, and A will be home every day, and God I want more kids and more everything all the time. 

 

III. 

A’s hot and cold about sex. Like sleep, like his headaches, his moods. Sometimes we go two three months with everything hot and easy and then he gets jammed up and stressed and his dick doesn’t work for three weeks.

I don’t know why I wrote that. I do. I’m horny. O’s with her uncles for the week, and I don’t want to do anything except paint and eat and blow my husband. Can’t, though, because he has a manuscript review Thursday and he’s covered in calamine. (We can’t keep O out of the fucking woods. Sent her to Deklo condo jail [they’re at the beach].)

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

I.

I’m so sick I want to rip my face off. Cement in my sinuses. O wants to poke my nose because it’s red and rub my head where my hair’s growing out. I think I broke a bit earlier, just zoned out and let her jump on the bed and fuck with me until A got out of the shower. He said, “Opal, honey,” scooped her the fuck outta here real quick. Now I haven’t heard from anyone all day and it’s freaky quiet and you’d think that’d help but nothing does.

I napped, I think. No, I did, this was all today. A left me a bunch of pills and I took the daytime ones nighttime ones whatever the fuck. I wish I was dead.

A gets triggered randomly and flips into Total Competence Mode. Which is cool at first, when everything in your life is done perfectly, and then you realize that there's a dissociated robot next to you in bed because you activated your sleeper agent husband. Soulless vegetable chopping, O busy and fed and perfectly entertained. Auto reply on my work email. He probably finished a painting for me, too.

She’s the one who notices, though. Knocks A on the head with her little fist, knock knock knock. Like, who the fuck is in there, my guy.

She takes after me.

Anyway. I got sick, he went robot. I’m grateful but I wish he didn’t do the thing. I miss him when he’s 

 

II.

Back to school is so fucking fucked, fucking heteronormative clown show. First day of school is an evil holiday where your kid is supposed to have a cool backpack and be girly and tell her class about her mom and dad and grandma and grandpa.

O, I swear to God you are a demon, you are a fucking demon, but you are too smart for that school and we are getting you out. But I can’t homeschool you, because I’m not smart enough, and you’re too much like me anyway, and we’ll both end up dead during middle school science. And A would be so jealous that he’d kill me anyway.

Lot of death and murder on the brain this week. 

O got a new case worker. No death or murder there, he’s great: gay and obsessed with us and turns hot pink whenever Adam’s in the room. I fucking love it. 

 

III.

O’s in school and Adam’s not, thank fucking Jesus

 

IV.

I know holidays fuck you up. I know you get so fucking mad. But Opal loves them, now, because you made it all so good, and now she’s talking about her Halloween costume for next year, and making the turkey with Matty, and right now I can hear you telling her a story and answering all her weirdo questions and telling her about smallpox blankets and I wish I knew how to feel all of this

 

V.

A back down at school this week. I know the inside of every cell in that asshole’s brain and I still can’t tell how he’s feeling about work. Not sure he knows, either, actually. He might be doing the go away come back thing.

O and I roll with the go away come back thing. Sometimes she even says, “I need a little time,” does a little tromp around the house just like he does. She talks to herself a lot now, it’s the funniest thing in the world.  Soon we’ll have to tell her that we can hear her from our bedroom when both of the doors are open. Soon we might stop sleeping with the doors open, but she’s scared of the dark still.

My thing with A’s job is I’m not sure he likes it. Not sure he likes it in the right way, maybe. Or, not sure he hates it in the right way, either. But he’s so used to things sucking ass that he doesn’t always know when it’s time to bail.

I want O to learn that it’s ok to want better. I want her to know that it’s ok to bail. I liked that we showed her that, when we got her out of that shitass school, and when we told her that she deserved a teacher who understood her and her family. But holy God, if I pull the Opal card with Adam, he’ll divorce me and get six more doctorates just to make it hurt.

 

VI.

We were both angry kids. We were angry people when we met. Sometimes I think we mostly got together because it was ok with us, it made sense to us, that the other would need to regularly spend four hours doing stupid violent shit in the middle of the night. That the rage needed someplace to go.

Now it feels like an old thing, most of the time, scarred over. Historical injury. But you don’t want to fuck with that shit, right, not with a kid around. You can’t play around with that, you can’t blow up at a kindergartener who’s seen adults beat the shit out of each other. You can’t sign up to be a foster parent and then whoops realize your inner teenager is still in there screaming. I used to be so scared about what would happen when one of us got angry.

It’s been a year with O, and it hasn’t been a problem. We get mad but we handle it. We trade off. We’re proactive. We take care of ourselves, share the work, blah blah. Adam does that dumb fucking box breathing. We’re fucking adults. We do stupid violent shit in one of the barns, not a moving vehicle. 

And

A got a new job, hadn’t told me he was even applying. He’ll be working from home, now, R&D for a tech company out of Chicago. He’ll go there for a week every few months, he says. The rest of the time he’ll be in the fucking guest house, working 10 to 6. Central time. 

I am

Everything. Angry. Stupid. Stupid violent happy. So dumb lucky. Hurt, when he keeps shit from me.

Wish I knew how to feel it. Had to go away and come back.

Chapter 6

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Dr. Parrish was leaving, they said, not just UNC but academia altogether, permanently. He had a draft of another book written, someone had told Elena; there were submission deadlines and a manuscipt review meeting on Prof Walker’s calendar. Cancelled, now. Connor said he knew the rumors were true because he was dating the department secretary’s daughter, and they'd seen Parrish's resignation letter in the staff room.

It wasn’t like this type of thing never happened. But it made Elena sad for him, when she first heard. Students tended to leave because they were burned out or depressed or unable to confront the vast landscape of inevitable underemployment. She liked Dr. Parrish, even if he was reptilian, and didn’t think he deserved any of those things.

He was wearing a big winter coat when he saw him on the last Tuesday before the winter break. He was carrying a box of books and wearing a miserable, impatient expression as he trudged away from Manning Hall, hunched in the stinging cold and damp wind. Next to him was an incredibly beautiful Black woman, wearing a coat that was long and shaggy and did not look waterproof in the slightest. She had a box, too, and looked around at the buildings on the quad, left and right, turning her head.

Complicated feelings emerged: pleasure, excitement, maybe jealousy. It was embarrassing, Elena acknowledged, to have a crush on Dr. Parrish. But she could tolerate it now that he was leaving—it could be named. It could be just a light, floating thing.

She knew, for a split second before it happened, that when he turned on the path towards the parking lot, which must be where he and the woman were headed, she would see a glint of metal on his left hand. He did, and she did, and she she began the elaborate process of freeing one gloved hand so that she could pull out her phone to text Connor and Cora. The truth, revealed! Finally! And good for him, she thought, snagging a wife like that. (Then she was embarrassed, again, at her own thinking. What a superficial, misogynistic idea.)

Parrish and his wife trudge to the parking lot with their books. Add odd couple, surely, but then again, what did she know about them? She’d never conclusively found out a single thing about Dr. Parrish, not one. Maybe he was the type to have a stylish, flamboyant spouse. Maybe he was…no, there she went, writing fiction again.

They met an SUV that was idling. A little girl hopped out of the back, blonde and bundled, and Dr. Parrish bent forward a little so that she could peek into his box of books. She lifted the top book, something heavy looking, and then let it go, satisfied, looking back up at the Professor. After a moment, she moved quickly, ferociously, grabbing onto one of his hands with both of hers. He was still holding the box, and she kissed his hand quickly.

Elena realized that she’d never heard Adam Parrish laugh before. There was an instant feeling of shame and thrill—she was a proper voyeur, now, watching some intimate thing unfold. Boxes were put in the trunk; the woman in the shaggy coat was re-tying the little girl’s scarf. Another man had gotten out of the driver’s seat and was talking to Dr. Parrish with one hand, Elena could swear, placed lightly, briefly, on his hip. 

The wife was not a wife. Elena’s fingers froze halfway through the text; she’d never seen Adam Parrish smile, either, it turned out. Not anything like this: a smile that wasn’t even a smile, really, so much as a certain kind of look, in the eyes, not the mouth. The other man was his, was for him. After another moment, Dr. Parrish put one hand flat on the other man's chest, and then all four of them got into the car. The way they had looked at each other, Parrish and his partner, made Elena feel thirsty and cold and shocked. 

It was too awful out to stay on her bench any longer. The sun was down; it was time to go home. She didn't feel sad for Dr. Parrish anymore, not really, and she wasn't sure if she felt lonely. She'd call Cora once she was inside, to see if the two of them could make a good dinner with garlic bread and wine and the pumpkin bread left over from the weekend.

Notes:

appreciate y'all, thanks for reading <3