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The first thing he registers is that he's not wearing any clothes under the soft cotton sheets. The second thing is that he's not in his own bed. The third thing is that he's alone. And he wasn't alone when he fell asleep.
This has never happened before — not like this, not even close — but the only thing he can think is, Not again. Because it feels just like all those other times he's woken up in his shabby, little apartment and Ronan wasn't there. Sometimes, it's almost too easy to believe that maybe he is a figment of his imagination after all. (Like last night, or a part of it anyway, the part that was like a dreamlike haze, eyes closed in the dark, nothing but fevered heat and the heady taste of him and the sensation of skin sliding against skin, until he'd said, "Look at me," and he'd opened his eyes and there was no denying that this was reality.)
Like now, turning over to study the place next to him where he'd slept, with his strong arms around Adam's waist, his warm, solid chest pressed to his back. The spot's gone cold; any remnant of that warmth has dissipated. His body's left a faint imprint on the sheets, the only evidence he was here, but he hadn't stirred at all when Ronan had left, hastily and stealthily, presumably in the middle of the night, like a shadow or a spectre, like he wanted to forget and be forgotten. It shouldn't feel like this, like it's something shameful, like he's been abandoned, like Ronan couldn't wait to get away — but it's not that, he tells himself, it couldn't be that, because this was always more than that, because Ronan wants this, wants him, and he doesn't lie, not in his words or actions. He meant it, he meant all of it, but then — he meant to leave too. He just needs space, probably, to process. To think. Maybe it did take him by surprise after all, even if it did feel like a foregone conclusion to Adam. He can't say he doesn't need time and distance to think about it too. But he could've said something, left a goddamn note, something —
He gets up and gets dressed, like it was just another night. He doesn't know if being in Ronan's room makes it better or worse. On one hand, it's incontrovertible proof that It happened, I'm here, we were here, and it definitely happened. On the other, it just makes his absence all the more stark. Ronan's room without Ronan in it almost feels like the Barns do: still, quiet, but full of all this wild, unpredictable potential. When he's here, in his own world, surrounded by his impossible dreams, it feels like anything could happen, like he's capable of anything, like he's invincible. It was all too easy to feel the same way when Adam was here with him last night.
They hadn't promised each other anything, he knows. And he's never told him to stay before. (In fact, he'd never actually invited him to sleep on his floor the first time but he'd never kicked him out either. Because he knew he wouldn't be there if he didn't need to be, for some reason.) He just thought it was implied this time, and it hurts, stupidly, illogically — because Ronan's his own person, and he has his own life to live, and it's not like he'd envisioned a morning spent cuddling and trading lazy kisses in Ronan Lynch's bed because that's sappy and ridiculous and not them — only they'd had sex, and Ronan had said things and maybe he'd said things back too, and maybe that wasn't very them either. But it happened, it happened. His blood thrills with the tangible memory of every single breathtaking moment of it. It makes waking up alone feel even more wrong, somehow.
*
He closes Ronan's door as quietly as possible behind him and carefully looks around for any signs of life (or of the undead), wondering if it counts as a walk of shame when the other person ditched you in their bed halfway through the night.
He figures he's safe and starts briskly and purposefully walking towards the front door.
And then he runs right into Gansey who's coming out of the kitchen with a glass of orange juice in his hand.
"Adam!" he says brightly. And then, eyebrows furrowed as he realises something's not right about this, about Adam skulking about Monmouth before seven in the morning, about the morose expression he's most likely wearing on his face, "Are you okay? Wait — what are you doing here? Did you spend the night?"
"I was just —" he starts, feeling too exhausted to even begin to come up with a plausible lie. "Yeah."
"Did you — were you in Ronan's room?" Gansey says, frowning slightly.
Adam sighs. "Yeah. Do you know when he left?"
"I don't know. Couple hours or so ago. I think he was in a rush for some odd reason."
"Yeah, I bet," he says, his words tinged with bitterness.
"You had a fight or something?"
And it would be easy to say, Yeah, of course we did, but then he'd still have to explain his sleeping over. It would be equally easy to say, No, we were just studying and I fell asleep, precluding all further questions. At least for now.
Instead, he takes a deep breath and says, "We had sex. And then he just took off. Typical Ronan behaviour, I guess. I don't know why I expected anything different."
Gansey's just staring at him. "Oh," he says after half a minute has passed.
"Yeah."
"So, you're —"
"Yeah."
"Do you, uh, want to talk about it?" he says, like the mere idea of that is physically painful to him.
"I think I need to go have a crisis somewhere in private. But thanks."
"Okay, yeah, that's — fine, I guess."
"Right. I'll see you later then," he says, making a beeline for the door again.
"Sure you're okay?" Gansey calls after him, his voice sounding slightly shaky.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll be fine. Just — tell him to come by later when he gets back?" he says quietly, glancing back over his shoulder for a moment, without stopping.
"Yeah, I will," Gansey says, nodding.
"Thanks."
He quickly slips out the door and down the steps, without pausing, without looking back at the familiar building which already feels different than it did the day before. He's not sure whether it's closer or farther away now, though. Just like Ronan.
*
He ends up in a wide, open field, aligning rocks and twigs before just lying on the ground, squinting up at the sun, before closing his eyes, running his fingers through the blades of grass on either side of him. Just breathing. It feels like a different kind of scrying: looking within instead of out. He's always known that he has to align himself before he could fix anything else around him, and he's been getting there, slowly, but this feels like a bigger step than any before, even bigger than choosing to touch him. Figuring out what it means. For them. For him.
Because opening himself up to this is something he can't go back from, something he won't ever be able to protect himself from, something that could potentially make him vulnerable, weak, powerless. He's spent his whole life fighting for control, but he can't control this. It's not safe — nothing about this is safe in any sense of the word — but somehow, insanely, he'd felt like he could be, eyes closed, with Ronan's arms around him, his breath warm and steady on the back of his neck.
He almost wishes he could talk to someone, but he's still not sure how to begin to ask for that. He wonders what Blue would think about this; he almost smiles imagining the names she'd probably call Ronan. He probably would deserve all of them. He knows he needs to talk to Gansey about it, eventually, when he's recovered from the initial shock; he's probably the only other person outside the two of them who has even a remote chance of understanding it. And he knows he'll be there for him, listen to him, even if he doesn't.
He misses Persephone, suddenly, misses her certainty, about him, about his power and purpose. The way she made him feel like he mattered, like he was connected to something bigger than himself, like his choices had a real effect on the world, on other people's lives, a responsibility that made him feel at once terrified and braver.
Sometimes he feels that when Ronan looks at him, like he's seeing everything he is and everything he wishes he could be, and they're not disparate. What he sees when he looks at Ronan is still a long way off from certain, though.
Even Cabeswater feels less confusing now than whatever strange, amorphous thing being around Ronan Lynch awakens in him.
But there's something almost reassuring in that: he'll understand this in time too. How they align with each other. As long as he wants to. As long as he lets himself want it. And he does, he wants it as much as anything he's ever wanted.
Ronan had told him the same thing last night. Maybe he was wrong, though. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he could feel it, could feel the undercurrent of uncertainty thrumming in Adam's veins the way he seems to be able to decipher every single one of his emotions all the time. Maybe he didn't entirely believe him when he said he wanted this too.
He can't exactly blame him, all his wants and needs are inextricably tangled in his head, but he thought it would be enough — showing him with his body, letting go of all the doubtful thoughts and trusting it to know what it wants, rendering words unnecessary. For a moment. For one night.
He doesn't know if he'll ever be enough. That's the truly terrifying part. He wants to be, someday, wants to be able to uncover all the hidden parts of himself. Under all the damage and the scar tissue. The parts he wasn't sure existed anymore.
All he wants now, though, is to talk to him. To look at him. To make him trust enough for both of them.
*
Gansey calls when he gets back to St. Agnes to change for work.
"Sorry for being a dolt earlier," he says, without preamble. "You just caught me off-guard. Seven in the morning is a bit early for earth-shattering revelations."
"It's okay," Adam assures him.
"I meant it, you know. If you want to talk to someone — about anything, really — I'm always here." Adam's never been more grateful for Gansey's concern, really, but he has no idea how to begin explaining this to him when he's still in the midst of figuring it out for himself. Something makes him think that maybe Gansey already knows enough, though. Maybe he's always been deceptively intuitive about the two of them even when Adam was convinced he'd never be able to understand, that hiding things from him was best for all of them. Maybe he doesn't actually need to do this alone the way Ronan obviously still thinks he does.
He sighs heavily. "I'm — I just, I'm tired of lying, you know? Even when it's not intentional."
"I don't think you've ever lied to him, though. He knows that. He knows you." Ronan's always been able to see through his lies, anyway. And the only one he's ever accused him of was pretending to be someone else, something else.
"Yeah, but doubting myself — doubting this — feels even worse, somehow."
"You think he doesn't doubt himself all the time? Everyone does." It's rare, that tone of Gansey's voice, a rare admission of vulnerability from him. It should be unsettling, but it's almost exactly what he needs to hear right now. That they're all scared because they're all still human, after all. It's still unbearably frustrating, though, that there's no easy answer.
"Yeah, I know, but — not about this. Not about the people he cares about." Somehow, Ronan's certainty — about what he feels, about him — is just as scary as his own lack of it. It feels like something he's not sure he can ever live up to, even if Ronan's never going to ask him for that, for anything he isn't willing to give.
"He knows that too, you know. He isn't going to rush you into anything. I think you caught him off-guard too."
"And myself." It's not entirely true, though; kissing him wasn't a rash decision and it never was going to be. It was decidedly deliberate. He did it because he wanted to, and it felt like he could have anything he wanted then, felt like he could be anything he chose to be and maybe nothing bad would happen, this one time — for a moment, for more than that, for as long as Ronan held him in his gaze and in his arms. He's never going to regret that, no matter what happens now.
"Just — just do what feels right," Gansey tells him, like he believes it, like he trusts him to know where his destiny lies the way Gansey always has.
If only it was that simple. He used to think he could build his own fate from the ground up, but he's no longer sure what form it's taking. It feels like he's constantly being pulled in a dozen different directions, like no choice is ever explicitly right or wrong, like it's all just chaos and noise in his head without any clear path. Following his heart has always been a foreign concept but maybe he can learn to take a pointer or two from it, from time to time.
"It's like — I'm so fucking mad at him right now, but he's still the only person I want to be around. I don't get this at all," he says, with a strained, desperate laugh.
"If you decide you want it, really want it," Gansey tells him, sounding almost wistful, "then don't let it go."
"I won't," he promises.
*
When he gets home from work, Ronan's sitting with his back against the door of his apartment, knees pulled up to his chest with his arms wrapped around them. It almost makes his heart hurt, seeing him there, curled over himself, making himself look smaller than he usually does. It's far too easy to remember the tender expression on his face last night when he'd said he'd never wanted anything more than this, looking so young, looking like a boy; far too easy to remember how undone he'd looked after, just from Adam's hands and lips and breathy whispers. It was scary and exhilarating, knowing he could do that to him, knowing he held the power to hurt him in his unsteady hands. Knowing the converse was also unnervingly, undeniably true.
But then Ronan looks up at him, eyes searching, unwavering, and he remembers the light stroke of his fingertips over his cheek after they'd kissed, like he was looking for an answer, for reassurance that it was real. He'd just nodded then, more for Ronan's benefit than his own, but it's now that he realises that everything he'd felt in his arms, touching him and being touched by him, everything he'd seen reflected in his eyes — belonging and safety and indescribable bliss — it all outweighs the fear.
Ronan slowly gets to his feet and he unlocks the door and he quietly follows him inside.
He drops his bag on the floor, his keys on the desk, folds his arms across his chest and looks at the floor instead of at Ronan's hunched shoulders.
"Are you going to do that again?" he asks, his voice as small as it can be in the tiny room that now seems like a vast ocean between them. He misses it then, completely and achingly, the warm, sure line of his body lying inches away from him night after night for months, pressed as close as possible against his own the night before.
"What?" Ronan says, turning around, raising his head.
"Leave me in your bed in the middle of the night," he answers, every syllable taut and strained.
"I — Is that what you want?" Ronan says, his voice slightly choked.
"What?" Adam asks, eyes finally finding his face, the almost frantic expression there.
"For there to be a next time?" he says. It sounds both pained and hopeful.
Adam just stares at him incredulously. "I thought I was the one with the bad ear."
"Just — just be straight with me now," Ronan says, bluntly. "Do you want this or not?"
"I thought I made that clear last night," Adam says, feeling vaguely insulted.
"Well, you're allowed to change your mind."
"I don't want to change my mind," he says, downright furious now. "You're the one who physically ran away after we had sex."
"I didn't want to hurt you," Ronan says, shaking his head. "I just —"
"I was scared too, you know," Adam says quietly.
"I'm not — I'm not good at this," Ronan admits, hands clenching into fists at his sides.
"Being scared?"
"No, I'm — I'm always fucking scared. I'm not good at letting anyone see it."
"I'm not either. It feels like — giving away something else. Another part of me." I'd take care of it, he wants to say. I'd keep that part of you safe if you let me. I'd try. I hope you would too.
"I wish you never had to be scared again," Ronan says earnestly, reaching out to gently cup his jaw, brush his thumb over his cheekbone. "I just — I want this so much, it feels like it might crush me sometimes. And you too. And I'd never forgive myself if I —"
"It did hurt, you know," Adam cuts him off, curling his hand around Ronan's wrist, before guiding his hand to his chest to interlace their fingers properly. He looks down at their hands instead of at Ronan's face. "Maybe it was dumb and sentimental but it did. Waking up and you weren't there." He doesn't say, It always hurts. It shouldn't, but it does. He's never felt more exposed than he does now, admitting this to him.
"I'm sorry," Ronan says regretfully, but he's not looking at him either, head bowed. "I was freaking out. The whole time, really. I thought it would be too much — everything I said, everything I was feeling. And then I thought you'd change your mind halfway through. And then I thought you'd wake up and things would look different in the daylight."
"And you thought running away was a better idea?" Adam says, tilting his chin up at him, raising an eyebrow. "You're an idiot." Somehow, it almost sounds like, I'm really quite hopelessly fond of you, though.
"I know," he says, raising his eyes to Adam's now, questioning, almost pleading. They say, Forgive me? Adam just holds his gaze for a long moment, firm and unblinking, and they both know it's already done.
"If you don't want to hurt me," Adam says softly, moving closer so that their hips touch, clasped hands pressed between their chests, "then don't leave again."
"I won't," Ronan promises, wrapping his arm around his waist, brushing his lips over his forehead.
"I trust you," Adam tells him, because it feels like he needs to hear it, and because he does, he does. "So trust me too, okay?"
"Okay," Ronan says, squeezing his hand.
*
The first thing he registers is that he's alone in Ronan's bed. Again. He checks the time and he's about to get up, grab his clothes, and go on a destructive rampage across Henrietta to find him and then tear him a new one when —
"You know, you look really good in my bed," says a casual voice from the doorway.
"You're an asshole," Adam tells him, falling back onto the bed, closing his eyes, trying to hide his relief, how his heart's still pounding in his chest like he's woken up from a nightmare. (This is the opposite of a nightmare, really.)
"Aww, did you miss me?" he teases.
"Shut up. I thought you, you know — Again." He opens his eyes then, props himself up on his elbows to look at him.
Ronan looks like he actually feels ashamed of making fun of him then. "What? No, I just —" He starts blushing, inexplicably. "I got up to make you breakfast." He brandishes the cup of coffee he's holding.
"Oh. That's —" Disgustingly sweet and thoughtful. He's not about to say it out loud, though. Because that's probably even more embarrassing than freaking out irrationally because Ronan left him alone for all of ten minutes. He promised he wouldn't, he reminds himself, and Adam trusts him to never lie to him. It's just one of those sore spots they'll have to get over in time, he supposes. "Thanks," he says quietly, ducking his head. "But it's still early, you know. I don't technically have to be up for another hour. So, you should put the coffee down and get back in here. Before I make you."
"You're so bossy," Ronan says, but he does as he's told, resting the mug on the nightstand and sliding back under the covers, fingers tracing over the small of Adam's back, making him shiver, as he pulls him closer.
"You like it," Adam tells him, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to his jaw.
"Mm, yeah, definitely," he says, pulling him on top of him.