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When Ronan Lynch is awake, Adam Parrish is awake.
In this particular case, Adam Parrish probably didn’t have much of a choice, because Ronan Lynch had woken up gasping in a cold sweat and latching his hands onto Adam’s shoulders as if Adam was another thing he needed to fight. Woken up ready to shove Adam away and throw a punch and defend himself.
He supposes it’s justified, considering it hasn’t actually been that long since Adam was possessed by a bloodthirsty demon and nearly broke his hands trying to throttle Ronan along with the rest of their group. He still has phantom pains of hands grabbing at his throat and his ear and anywhere they could make hold - Adam’s hands, his favorite thing in the world, turned into a weapon against him.
But no, this is just Adam, and that’s evident in his minimal reaction to Ronan’s panic. Being ever Adam Parrish, he just holds a level, sleepy stare with his boyfriend, waiting until Ronan has calmed down a bit before he dares reach his own hands out.
Those hands.
Ronan collapses against the pillows. One of Adam’s arms snakes around him, tugging him close, as if he’s a child that needs to be comforted. In any other moment, he’d fight it, but it’s just him and Adam and there’s no one to put up a front for.
Adam’s fingers trace over the inked skin of his bare back, coming up his neck to dance over his close-shaven head. Ronan shivers. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks in a voice that implies he already knows that Ronan doesn’t.
“No,” he says. He doesn’t say I’m sorry but he’s sure Adam knows it, anyways.
Slowly, Ronan tangles his own arms around the other boy, comforted by skin against skin and the familiar scent that just screams Adam to him now, like wheatgrass and magic.
It’s ridiculous, he knows it is, because he’s not afraid of Adam. He’s not afraid of much outside of the confines of his mind and the things that he’s capable of doing. Him, the Greywaren, ever a living weapon.
More than anything, he should fear what he could do to Adam.
But that’s not a thought he lets himself dwell on for long.
Adam’s fingers, lovely and perfect, rub gently into the back of Ronan’s neck. He lets out a breath, tension draining from him like rainwater. He tilts his head up just slightly, eyes moving down to Adam’s lips. They’re cracked from dryness, pale and pink and kissable.
He thinks fuck it before he actually goes in, catching Adam’s lips on his own. His boyfriend seems surprised but not unhappy, head tilting for better access and fingers on Ronan’s neck pressing him closer.
Ronan still isn’t used to this, isn’t sure he’ll ever be used to this, but he’s certainly not complaining as Adam’s lips part for him and as the other boy nudges at Ronan until he gets the idea that Adam wants him to be on top.
Yeah. Definitely not complaining at all.
They break away just long enough for Ronan to get Adam underneath him, breathless and exhilarated. Adam tugs him down, kissing him again before breathing, “Let me distract you for a while?” against his lips.
And yeah, Ronan definitely isn’t going to object to that.
-----
A week later, Ronan dreams of a city on fire, Adam holding a can of gasoline.
He knocks Adam out of bed this time, a great start to a long weekend together.
This time, he does apologize, a hissed, “Shit, sorry,” as he drags his boyfriend back up onto the mattress and Adam rubs his head where he hit it on Ronan’s nightstand.
“‘s okay,” Adam mutters. Still half-asleep, his accent peeks through his words. “Just my head. Not that important.”
Ronan rolls his eyes, because even half-conscious and in pain, Adam Parrish is still a master of sarcasm.
Jesus Mary, Ronan fucking loves him.
This time, when Ronan pulls the other boy against him, Adam rolls halfway on top of him before seeming to decide that that had been a good course of action and shifting his entire body so that he’s pretty much dead weight on Ronan’s chest.
That isn’t saying much, as Adam is rail-thin and doesn’t weigh anything more than a large dog, but Ronan appreciates the weight, nonetheless. It’s grounding and a reminder that Adam is solid and real, real, real.
“Parrish.” He swallows. “You’d tell me if you were a dream, right?” he asks, half-kidding, as his hands come up to grab Adam’s hips. The boy on top of him shifts, sitting up and straddling him more comfortably.
“I dunno, some have told me I can be pretty dreamy,” Adam jokes, but it comes a second too late, a beat off from being funny. Besides, Ronan’s words being half-joke means that they're also half-serious, and he can just imagine his crestfallen look at Adam’s nondescript answer. Adam must see something on his face, for he’s quick to amend, “No, Ronan. I’m real. See?” He taps two fingers against Ronan’s cheek. “Solid as oak.”
There’s some dirty joke to be made there, but Ronan’s mind is reeling a bit too much to hone in on it. Sleep deprived and paranoid, he feels a familiar anxiety beginning to pool in the bottom of his stomach as an awful part of his brain begins to whisper, But what if Adam is a dream? You dreamt Matthew up and never knew it.
It’s a horrible thought, the concept that Adam could have been just another dream thing, just another item to pop up from Ronan’s subconscious. Like Matthew, like Chainsaw. Like Opal, who currently sleeps in what used to be the guest bedroom here at the Barns. All solid, tangible things - things that could pass as real to the untrained eye.
He hates feeling like this, his hands starting to shake as his chest clenches up, mind racing as fast as the BMW. Nightmares taunt him even when he’s awake, reminding him of what he is, what he can do. Reminding him that his father had to dream up somebody to love him, and if Niall Lynch had to do that, how could Ronan possibly ever hope of actually finding someone-
But then he checks himself; he couldn’t have dreamt Adam. He never would have thrown Adam into the situation he’d been raised in, a living Hell. If Adam had been dreamt up, an extension of his subconscious, he would have always been within Ronan’s reach. Within Ronan’s worship.
Plus, Ronan dreams nightmares. Blood and monsters and acid pools. Even if he had somehow managed to dream up something as beautiful as Cabeswater, he never would have been able to create something as beautiful as Adam.
He can’t say any of that, of course, as he’s Ronan Lynch. Instead, he says, “You’re as flimsy as an abiu.”
Adam blinks, and then laughs. It’s a wonderful sound. “I’m sorry, a what?” One of his hands continues to run absently over Ronan’s cheek; the other finds Ronan’s hand at his hip and laces their fingers together awkwardly, Adam’s thumb catching in Ronan’s leather bracelets.
“It’s an Amazonian fruit tree,” he says, matter-of-factly.
Adam laughs again, knocking him gently on his head. “You sound like Gansey.”
Ronan makes a face. “Don’t.”
Adam’s smile is coy, looking perfectly in place on his face. The things that Ronan would do for that smile.
He leans down, lips brushing gently against Ronan’s. Always gently, as if Adam has never experienced anything else, as if he's never acted roughly a day in his life. It’s the most tender thing Ronan experiences in his day-to-day life, and yet it’s the one thing that sets his adrenaline pumping and his heart pounding.
His mouth finds Ronan’s ear, quietly murmuring, “Transit umbra, lux permanet.”
Ronan’s heart jumps in the way it always does when Adam speaks Latin.
Shadow passes, light remains.
His arms loop around Adam’s neck, pulling the other boy down tightly against him.
Solid. Real.
-----
If Ronan sleeps poorly while Adam is with him, it’s even worse without him.
When he wakes up from a nightmare and his bed is empty and cold, he has a moment of panic before he remembers that it’s only Wednesday night. Adam is still at school until Friday afternoon, when Ronan will come to pick him up in the BMW after his one o’clock class gets out (“There’s no way you’re making the hour drive back in the fucking Hondayota, Parrish.”). It's their routine every Friday afternoon, like clockwork.
Ronan looks forward to Friday afternoons more than he’d admit.
He fell asleep with his headphones on, and they’re still blaring something from a playlist Blue made him a few months back. He slips them off and unplugs them from his phone, tossing them onto the nightstand and taking in the quiet sounds of the house.
The air conditioning is running, a low hum, and he can hear Chainsaw flapping about in her cage right outside his room. She must have sensed his nightmare and woken up when he did. He wonders idly if it woke Opal, too.
He notices belatedly that his chest is bleeding, three claw marks jutting sharply down his sternum. He’s experienced far worse, enough so that he only vaguely acknowledges the sting of pain. He can’t be bothered to get up and clean them out, as Adam would advise, so he just leans over the edge of the bed and grabs a dirty t-shirt to press against the cuts.
Ronan is hit immediately with the smell of Adam, although he’s positive that this is his shirt. He doesn’t remember seeing Adam in it, but his chest tightens and he grasps the shirt a bit harder at the thought.
There’s something comforting about the thought of Adam here, something that immediately makes Ronan’s muscles relax and his mind clear of paranoia. Although Adam hasn’t outright acknowledged the fact that he basically lives at the Barns when not at college, there’s something that’s just right about the idea of Adam here in his childhood home.
Steadying his breathing and closing his eyes, Ronan thinks about Adam being here. The way he feeds crackers to Chainsaw and sits on the floor and plays boardgames with Opal. The way he looks when he falls asleep on the leather couch in the living room, shirt riding up and mouth just slightly parted in sleep. The look of surprise on his face the first time he sat at the kitchen table, staring at Ronan in astonishment as he cooked an elaborate dish.
Sun-kissed skin and freckles against Ronan’s charcoal sheets, falling apart under Ronan’s hands as-
That’s not a train of thought he needs to focus on right now.
Instead, he rolls over, cracking his eyes open and staring at his phone in disdain. After a long moment of reluctant contemplation, he swipes the screen to unlock it.
Only for Adam.
To: Parrish
awake?
It’s not really even a question. He knows Adam isn’t awake, but he also knows that Adam sleeps with his phone volume turned up in case Ronan contacts him in the middle of the night. It only takes a few seconds for his phone to buzz.
From: Parrish
yes. you ok?
Ronan doesn’t want to talk, not really, and especially not through a cell phone. He only wanted to ensure Adam was okay, as if anything would touch him in his safe little college dorm room.
To: Parrish
astra inclinant sed non obligant
The stars incline us, they do not bind us.
Adam’s response comes quickly: that doesnt answer the question ro
And then, as he probably realizes that Ronan wasn’t going to reply: per angusta ad augusta
Through trials to triumph.
Ronan feels the cuts on his chest. Trials, indeed.
He feels a bit better now, and he locks his phone, letting it fall to the ground. Two more days until he’ll have Adam here, perfect and beautiful and content to support Ronan after he’s torn himself from his dreamworld.
Chainsaw makes a sound from the living room. Ronan takes it as a sign that he’s not going back to sleep any time soon.
When he finally drags himself from bed and out to the living room, his eyes catch on the sofa. Once again, it’s far too easy to imagine Adam here, making himself at home. Treating it like a home.
He lets Chainsaw out of her cage. She lands on his shoulder and bites his ear.
On the front lawn, a white deer picks idly at grass, illuminated by a moon that isn’t quite right.
It’s a night for dreamers and dreams.