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Tomorrow’s the day.
Adam lies in bed, his weight all on his left shoulder. He’s been staring at the wall and counting cracks for the last two hours and tomorrow’s the day. Well, it’s one fifty a.m, so maybe not tomorrow. Maybe today.
The window’s open, but there’s no sound, barely any light. He would normally find comfort in these things, but now, with the looming certainty of what’s coming, the silence is unbearably loud and the darkness holds secrets he’s completely sure he never wants to discover. He wonders why his throat feels like it’s demanding him to scream.
July brings damp, sticky air, and the way it caresses his skin is enough to drench him in sweat. That, and the fact that he’s so used to doing it alone in the dark of his room, is probably why he takes so long to realise he’s crying.
Oh, he thinks when he finds himself heaving a sob, that’s why.
It seems as if the realisation makes it worse and, soon, he’s finding it hard to breathe. He shudders, silent sobs rip his chest open, but he knows if he lets himself be loud, there will be no going back.
It’s a very hot night. Adam is good at dealing with heat, and he’d gladly take a hot night over a cold one any time, because it’s easier to sleep sweaty than shivering. Now, he’s not so sure.
His eyes are swelling, he can feel it. He’s already dreading the way he’s sure they’ll throb tomorrow. but not even that knowledge is enough to make him stop. Tears race and roll down his face, chasing each other until they inevitably die in a collision with the mattress. Adam wishes it were that easy.
Everything is sharp and focused, which confuses him out of his mind. He feels the scratchy fabric of his duvet underneath his bare legs, his shirt sticking to his back, smells the acrid scent that lingered after he burned his coffee in the morning, hears the occasional car racing away, away, away. It feels natural, but if he thinks about it, he can’t remember the last time he felt there while crying. Usually, when he does, he’s gone. Looking at his body from an outside perspective, floating through space and time, unable to concentrate on anything. The polar opposite of this — this absolute presentness.
He sighs loudly and reaches for his watch. It has no light, so he squints and tips it this way and that until he makes out the time. Two thirty.
Today’s the day. Maybe tomorrow.
Sleep won’t come to him tonight, this much is obvious, so he gives up and gets off bed a little too fast. He stands a bit dizzy for a second and feels his body readjust to gravity, sweat changing directions. It’s gross.
The floor feels wrong against his bare feet, seemingly transferring heat rather than absorbing it and Adam is almost sure he’s never felt this hot in his life, not even after a long shift next to gasoline-driven machines, not even on lonely nights hiding under the covers in his tiny room at the double wide.
He stands under the cold shower for much, much longer than he normally would. It doesn’t matter. Not right now. He stands under the shower for minutes, hours, days, maybe centuries. He stands there until his back feels numb from the constant stream hitting it, until the cold picks at his very seams, until he can stand to breathe without feeling like his lungs are trying to collapse onto themselves.
Minutes slither by without him moving, even though the shower isn’t running anymore. The knot pressing his chest hasn’t quite vanished, but at least the tears are gone. He thinks this must be because his body is incapable of producing more rather than it actively stopping. Dry sobs still break out of his throat. It feels sore and raw and he himself feels hollow, fractured and turned inside out.
This is all so unbelievably stupid. He knows this, he tells himself this, but it’s as if his body doesn’t belong to him anymore, a prisoner inside an almost too tight cell.
It was a deadly quest, after all.
Is it safe to say he failed already, or does he have to wait until the inevitable happens to let the misery consume him?
It was a deadly quest. They all knew.
And it’ll all be over tomorrow. Or is it today?
He pulls sweatpants up his legs and leaves the apartment shirtless and barefoot. A sleek-black BMW awaits him right outside. He is fairly unsurprised.
Ronan Lynch sits behind the wheel, his head propped against the leather seat, lips pursed. Adam has never quite understood how he manages to look like a personification of god and the devil at the same time.
Those are too often the same thing, Persephone’s small, sad voice reminds him and brings a shudder, because now his head is once again plagued by thoughts of what’s coming.
He says, “tomorrow” and Ronan shakes his head and answers, “today.”
Red and white light comes off the dashboard and hits Ronan’s face, making his clenched jaw look like it could cut through anything. Three fifty, the digital clock reads.
“You’re bleeding,” Adam points out after looking Ronan’s knuckles over.
“You’re crying,” he answers. Adam sighs loudly and closes his eyes, too.
Swallowing hurts, but the air-con fills his chest with bliss and makes up for it. The side of his face prickles and he stiffens but tries not to show it, because he’s experienced this feeling enough by now to know what it means. Ronan is staring.
Adam presses his left cheek to the headrest, favouring his right ear in case Ronan says something. He knows he won’t, but a guy can hope.
“I don’t think I’m ready,” he says, after a while. “I mean, are you? We don’t even know what we have to…”
Ronan cuts him off, “I’m not. But, honestly, this is as ready as I’m ever gonna get.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means fuck it”
Silence isn’t as overwhelming as it was in the apartment. There’s the soft growl of the engine, resonating deep inside him, the air conditioner running, Ronan’s unsteady breathing. He opens his eyes and finds that Ronan mirrored his position and is staring right at him. He doesn’t look away.
“I’m sorry I’m keeping you up,” whispers Ronan and it is definitely not what he was expecting. He’s actually puzzled for a second. And then, he’s even more puzzled because he hadn’t realised he was expecting a specific something. He still doesn’t fully understand what his insides are aching for.
“It’s okay. I couldn’t sleep, anyway,” he whispers back a bit too late and now the air between them is thick and charged, the space between their noses probably smaller than it ought to be, yet much bigger than he’d like.
“Shit, Adam, don’t—don’t look at me like that.”
Adam blinks. “Like what?”
“Like you’re totally miserable, man. I can’t take it. It’s gonna be fine. We’re gonna be fine.”
Adam doesn’t ask about Gansey, but Ronan tells him anyway. Thankfully. He tells him they are all going to make it, he tells him,“did you see us down that cave? We were fucking unstoppable. We can…” he stops, swallows, “we can take over anything any day. Together we can beat the shit out of this. And we will. We’ll save him and we’ll save us.”
It’s almost too much, the way Ronan looks at him. Like he means something, like he’s valid, like they’re equals. He remembers the way he said magician, almost too long ago and with a confident smirk, as if he’d always known.
He closes his eyes for a heartbeat, flutters them open again and nods. They will make it. Ronan says so.
And he never lies.