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It had started as a joke. Anyone who has ever met Ronan will tell you that sunshine is nowhere near an accurate description of the man. With his shaved head, punk clothing, and heavy black tattoos, the nickname could only be said in mocking or teasing, which was how Adam had meant it when he first called the other boy that.
Ronan had been in the barns all day, doing whatever it was he did in the barns. Tend to the animals, dream, clean, dream some more. His boyfriend had been filthy and grumpy when he came back into the house at dinnertime, and the nickname had slipped out.
“Nice to see you too, sunshine,” Adam had called after him from his place at the stove as Ronan stalked up the stairs, flipping him off as he ascended out of view. Adam had grinned and Ronan hadn’t given him any shit about it like he usually did when he tried to call him something normal like love or baby or fuckface, so tt had stuck. Sunshine became Adam's name for Ronan, which was a fact that Blue found very entertaining the first time she heard it.
“Yes, sunshine,” she had snickered. Ronan had smacked her on the back of her head and Blue had ‘accidently’ stepped on his foot, but she had never called him it again, even mockingly. She understood that some things were group things, and some things were just for them.
Because the thing was that, to Adam, Ronan was sunshine. He was hot and intense and burning; he was the very thing Adams' world revolved around; he was vital to every aspect of Adams life.
Ronan burned hot and intense at all times, but he was also someone who warmed your skin on a cool day, who reminded you that there was beauty in the world, who cultivated and cared for life—he was essential to it, even. Everything needed sunlight to live, especially Adam with his connection to nature and Cabeswater. But he needed Ronan even more.
Being at Harvard had intensified that need. Being away from something so essential to his life had taken its toll, and no one noticed because no one knew him before, knew the person Adam was when he was with the love of his life. Then, when Ronan had visited and his new friends had seen what he was like, everything went to hell fast and suddenly all his friends thought Ronan was some virus that made Adam sad and angry and a million different things at once. Adam knew this wasn’t true, knew that the problem wasn’t his boyfriend but the situation the two of them were in, but it wasn’t like he could tell anyone that without exposing their biggest secrets to everyone around him. He wanted to tell them how vital Ronan was to him, that when they were away from each other they could scarcely breathe, that they lost who they were, that without their love to warm their skin they wilted, but he was scared that his friends would call them toxic and codependent (which maybe they were but did it always have to be a bad thing?)
So instead he sat there and he let that sun dim, and he wilted because of it. Then Ronan ran away with Bryde and their sun was barely a wink of light and Adam grew pale and cold and the sunshine inside of Ronan had almost flickered out completely, both literally and metaphorically.
“What are you thinking about?” Ronan asked, rubbing a hand down Adams' back. He startled, brought out of his thoughts by the abrupt reality of his boyfriend's hands on him and oh, he was real, he was there, they were together again. Ronan wasn’t asleep, Adam wasn’t wilting. He still had to remind himself of that sometimes.
“You,” he answered honestly, “Always you, sunshine.”
Ronann smiled, pressing a kiss to the top of Adam's head and joined him in watching the edge of the forest that stretched on for miles behind the Barns. The dreamer wrapped his arms around the magician's waist, and the magician laid his head back on the dreamer's shoulder, and the two of them stood together in a content silence that was a result of knowing the ins and outs of each other so well that no words needed to be spoken for them to have full conversations. The swipe of Ronan's thumb on the skin of Adam's waist meant Are you okay? and the way that Adam laced on hand into Ronan's meant Now that you’re here, and the way both boys pulled together like magnets meant Tamquam, meant Alter idem, meant I love you, meant Never leave me, meant Stay, meant You can’t get rid of me now matter how hard you try, meant I will always be with you.
“You look so real,” Ronan said, gazing down at his boyfriend with a lovesick expression. Adam hadn’t even been aware Ronan had been studying him, not the treeline.
“I am real,” Adam responded simply.
“I didn’t dream you?”
Adam leaned up and kissed the dreamer, kissed away his worries and his fears and the subtle tension in his shoulders that came from being so uncertain that anything in this house of dreams was created by anything that existed outside of his and his fathers dream realm. Ronan kissed him back, as he always did, always taking any chance he could get to remind himself that yes, this was allowed, yes, this boy was his, yes, this boy wanted him as much as he did, yes, this boy was real.
“Do I feel like a dream?” Adam asked when they pulled apart.
“You feel too good to be true,” Ronan said, but instead of uncertainty and worry in his eyes, there was love.
“I am true, sunshine. I will always be true, and I will always be here to show you that truth, whenever you need it. Whenever you want it.”
“I love you,” Ronan said, because he felt like he didn’t say it enough.
“I love you too, sunshine,” Adam said, because he felt like Ronan didn’t believe it enough.
Ronan leaned his head down to press his forehead against the magicians and said, “Tamquam.”
To which Adam responded, “Alter idem.”
And they stayed like that, in each other's arms, for as long as their bodies would allow. And they stayed together, in every life, for as long as their souls existed. Forever, with conviction. Always, with certainty. Together, as they were meant to be.