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Opal stood in the center of the kitchen, head cocked and hooves spread, poised like a startled deer.
Ronan stared at her from the doorway, an overfull bowl of cereal balanced on one hand and a spoon stuck haphazardly between his teeth. “What the hell’s up with you?” Whatever she was listening to, Ronan couldn’t hear it.
She bolted. Hooves scrabbled on the tile, and she slid around the table in the center of the kitchen, almost bowling Ronan over in her haste to get out. It was either move or be run over, so Ronan moved.
“Hey!” He hollered after her.
A wild, delighted giggle drifted back to him through the open door, and then Ronan could hear it too. Hear was perhaps the wrong verb to use. Feel was more accurate. He could feel the bass thrumming through the ground at his feet even before he heard the crunch of tires on gravel.
Opal’s ecstatic departure suddenly made a lot more sense.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Ronan followed her, feet slipping less on the floor more because he was equipped with the proper feet to handle wood and tile than due to any sort of restraint on his part. He checked himself at the door. This was more out of habit than because of any sort of belief that Adam wouldn’t see right through his posturing.
Adam knelt beside his tri-color shitbox of a car. He’d turned it off, which was probably a good thing because Ronan had see the way the frame shook when he cranked up the volume and he didn’t fancy combing the ground for all the bolts that had shaken loose from Adam’s car.
Opal had a pink triangle between her hands and was eying it with the unmistakable lip curl that meant that she was about to bite it.
Ronan eyed it with the puzzled expression that meant that he didn’t have a fucking clue what it was.
“It’s a teether,” Adam offered. “Saw it at the store when I stopped to get gas. I thought, at least it’d be safe for her to chew on….”
On closer inspection, the pink triangle was actual plastic or something shaped like a slice of watermelon, complete with green plastic rind on the back. Opal took an experimental bite. When she couldn’t immediately tear off a chunk of it, she shoved it farther back into her mouth and gnawed at it with wide, flat molars. She grinned around it at Adam.
Ronan remembered the bass beat and how Opal had heard it long before him, and he narrowed his eyes at Adam. “Were you really playing that all the way up here just so that she’d know you were here first?”
“Well, I told her that the first person to see me when I got home would get a present, and I didn’t think you wanted the teether.” Adam grinned up at him. “But seriously, if you think that I listened to that shit that you call music for the last four hours….” It was an empty insult. Adam listened to it half as often as Ronan did mostly because it reminded him of Ronan, but neither of them bothered to point that out.
Even though it was for show, Ronan bristled. “Well, fuck you too, Parrish.”
One of Adam’s eyebrows rose towards his hairline and kept climbing, a smile playing around his lips. With that expression, the words became a suggestion instead of a rebuke. With the miles and days and months between them, the words became a command instead of a suggestion.
Opal glanced between them, frowned, and stuffed the watermelon-shaped teether back between her teeth.
Making it through dinner was a test of will. Adam’s hands were everywhere, lithe fingers working quickly and efficiently to parcel out the silverware, pass plates, and pour drinks. Ronan caught himself staring and jerked his gaze away to a safe middle ground on the top of the table only to remember for the millionth time because even after all this time the whole thing still seemed so surreal - so much a part of his dreams - that he was allowed to stare.
And that he was allowed to enjoy the sight of Adam staring back.
Opal yawned hugely and slid from the table, muttering a heavily accented “welcome home” to Adam and grumble to Ronan that she was bored by the lack of conversation and that she was going to go read if they weren’t going to be interesting. She graciously allowed Adam to trail after her, up to the room that used to be Declan’s that was now filled with blankets and pillows in impossible bright colors, and to help her get settled in against one of the pillows.
She didn’t need to be tucked in, not really. She’d been alone for so long that she didn’t need that kind of routine to fall asleep, but Adam always did it whenever he was home.
Ronan hadn’t needed to ask why.
He also hadn’t complained. No matter how long it had been since he’d seen Adam, no matter how much he wanted, needed, this was sacred. This was a moment to patch the damage done by a life of nightmares, and he wouldn’t take the catharsis away from either Opal or Adam.
But he met him on the stairs as Adam was coming down and Ronan was going up. He wrapped one arm around the small of Adam’s back and tilting his head up so that his mouth met Adam’s. A tighter grip and a couple steps down and Adam was fully in his arms. He almost lost his footing, almost sent them tumbling to the ground, but caught himself with one hand against the wall.
Adam’s breathless chuckle against his neck thrilled down and under his skin. “You’re out of practice.”
“Damn, Parrish, you’re right. Wonder what we can do about that.”
The insistent beeping of an incoming text message on Ronan’s phone dragged Adam awake. He tried to move, found his legs inextricably trapped in the blankets, and had to wriggle himself free before he could throw himself over Ronan in order to reach the phone.
The screen read: “Glad you’re home. We’re planning to be there in 20. Hope you both have pants on.”
Adam lowered his head to rest it against a particularly intricate and intriguing portion of Ronan’s tattoo. They were not, in fact, wearing pants. He was not even entirely sure where his pants had gotten to the previous night.
“Whoever it is, tell them to fuck off.” Ronan growled into the pillow.
“It’s Gansey.”
There was a long pause while Ronan weighed the options. “Fine,” he said finally. “But I’m not getting dressed.”
Adam reread the text message. “I think you may want to reconsider.”
“Nothing he hasn’t seen before.”
“No, but that might be a different story for the other two.”
There was an even longer pause this time. Adam tried to picture Ronan in the kitchen with Blue, Ronan in his boxers and Blue wearing an expression of exasperated indignation.
“Fine.” Ronan rolled over under Adam and levered himself up so that he could catch Adam’s gaze with narrowed eyes. “But only because you’ll have to take them off again.”