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Gansey’s skimming Chaucer when Adam walks in, his phone raised in his fist like a sacrificial heart.
“He’s ignoring me,” he announces, dropping the phone when he’s close enough to the bed that it bounces harmlessly into the middle.
“Naturally,” Gansey replies, raising a distracted finger in Adam’s direction. His bookmark makes a slow landing as he finishes the page. Adam reaches over and closes the book on his hand.
“I’m serious.”
“Naturally,” Gansey repeats, looking over his glasses at the solemn expression on Adam’s face, presumably unmoved since he first gained control over his facial muscles.
There’s something stricken about him though, and Gansey properly bookmarks his third edition.
“He won’t answer me. I’m worried he might do something stupid.”
“Well he’s not exactly an avid texter, is he?” Gansey says.
“But he texts me.” He says it too loud, and then his ears flush quietly pink. "When I’m asking him a real question, he does.”
“And so,” Gansey starts.
Adam retrieves his phone, flips it open, and thumbs to his most recent messages. Gansey peers at the screen and frowns. Ronan’s last message is simply:
don’t come over
— followed by a string of texts from Adam that read like the 7 stages of grief.
What??
You’re not serious.
Ronan don’t pull this bullshit
come on man I was gonna stay the night
ok I’m getting actually worried
I’ll call Gansey
I’m calling Gansey
“And I’m about 98% sure he doesn’t mean it in a fun surprise party way,” Adam says flatly, visibly stopping himself from fidgeting with his phone.
“He’s at the Barns?” Gansey asks, thoughtful.
Adam nods, wringing his hands in lieu of electronics.
“You know he used to traipse out there at 5 AM every morning when he thought I was asleep? He might just want to be there alone, for a while.”
Adam’s eyes flicker over to Gansey’s. “You think he wants to be alone in the place he found both of his parents murdered? You think he doesn’t want me there?” He asks incredulously.
Gansey has a peculiar sensation like being a child who's raised his hand with a stupid answer to a simple question.
“No I suppose not. I’m just trying to problem solve, Adam, I don’t know what else to say.”
“I don’t need you to say anything, I just. My first instinct is still to go to you when something’s wrong with him. I don’t know why, he’s my—“ he breaks off, watching the air from the open window upset Ronan’s speeding tickets. Gansey hopes he was going to say boyfriend and not responsibility.
“I don’t want to go over there and find him… find him like Noah found him.” He grimaces.
“Oh, Adam. He won’t have. He wouldn’t,” Gansey says, but he feels a shot of worry all the same, like the panic Adam is so obviously repressing is leaking out into the room.
“It’s been hard, Gansey. Sometimes he’s so… happy,” Adam says, his brows knit as if he’s parsing out a difficult Latin text. “And sometimes he’s intolerable.” He sits on the bed with his hands clasped. “I would know what to do if he was angry, but sometimes he’s just… not there. Like I wake up and he’s staring at nothing.”
“I can’t imagine this is the best climate for a relationship to grown in,” Gansey says, sympathy weighing all his vowels down.
Adam shakes his head jarringly. “It’s not that. We’re fine. Good. But I can’t carry his grief for him, and if I can’t be there to even — to even hold his hand, I don’t know. I don’t know. Don’t come over. Like that wasn’t going to be exactly the most worrying thing to say.”
Gansey imagines Maura dying and Blue telling him to stay away. He imagines Ronan with his history of nightmares and drinking and almost dying. He considers a brand new relationship born in a war zone. He considers Adam’s wobbling face.
“He’s not the same person he was when his father died,” he says gently. “He knows things get better. He’s gonna be volatile and stupid for a while, and we’ve got to let him work it out. Interfere when it gets dangerous. You remember the drill.”
“But what if his grief is cumulative? He doesn’t have Cabeswater to keep the nightmares at bay anymore, and he doesn’t have me either, because he won’t let me in. What if it’s even worse than before?”
“Worse than rock bottom? I doubt even Ronan can stoop that low.” It’s a poor man’s joke, and Adam’s responding expression is withering. “Okay, sorry, sorry. That’s not helpful.” His face is hot. He thinks all his embarrassment tonight might be the byproduct of trying to be casual about something very un-casual. This thing Ronan and Adam have is deeper and stretches back longer than he can see. “When did you see him last?”
“This morning when I left for work. He was fine. He didn’t get up or anything but he was pretty much a shit as usual. It was early though, I couldn’t tell you if he was morning quiet or weird quiet.”
“Alright, well. Let’s go then,” Gansey says, in that same quietly commanding voice that defies death and logic.
“Yeah?” Adam’s already standing, looking drawn but relieved.
“Yeah.” Gansey reaches out for a fist bump, making solid eye contact at the same time. “Of course.”
_____
The Barns are completely dark when they pull up, the Pig’s headlights slashing across eery black windows, eye-like in the gloom.
“Well that’s not promising,” Gansey says, cutting the engine but not moving to get out of the car. Adam fidgets next to him. “Maybe he’s not here?”
“I don’t know if that would make me feel better or worse,” Adam says, sighing. He seems to steel himself, and then he opens the door, stepping out into the night.
Gansey follows silently, looking up at the familiar shape of the main house against the violet sky.
“Lead the way,” Gansey says. They both know their way around, Gansey from a life before, Adam more recently and intimately.
The front door is unlocked, and Adam glances at Gansey as it sinks inwards into the dark.
There’s a shuffle and a crack, and the darkness stirs somewhere in the doorway of the kitchen.
“Ronan?” Adam calls.
“Non.” The orphan girl skitters out of the shadows and Gansey’s stomach twists up tight at the petrified shiver in her voice. She runs for Adam, and Gansey can see the outline of an oversized plaid shirt and a gleam of blonde hair in the dim light.
“Opal,” Adam says warmly, both hands on her little shoulders. Gansey hasn’t heard the name before, and he tucks it quietly away to be asked about later.
She starts speaking rapidly in latin and Adam crouches to her level, prompting her in hushed tones until she switches to english.
“I don’t know how to make it day,” she whispers. “I asked for the light and nothing happened.”
She’s just like any child scared of the dark and it absolutely guts Gansey. Fear of the unknown sits in his chest like a second heart.
“This isn’t Cabeswater,” Adam says, his voice delicate as tissue. “The dark is safe. And the light switches —“ he reaches up and flicks the nearest lamp on. “Are right here.”
Opal blinks in the roseate light of the dreamed lamp, her eyelashes glistening wetly.
“Kerah,” she says. “He’s very sad.”
Adam’s shoulders go rigid. “Where is he, Opal?
She shakes her head, lip wobbling.
“You don’t know?” Another shake. “Do you think you could stay here with ratchet?”
She nods. Gansey raises an eyebrow, and Adam looks meaningfully at him and then Opal.
He makes for the kitchen, and Gansey catches Opal gently by the arm when she starts to slip and slide after him.
Adam returns with a folded packet of what looks like dog treats. Gansey watches with dawning realization as he goes back out the front door, whistling high and commanding.
A patchy dog with violet eyes comes bounding up from a nearby barn, tongue lolling out of its mouth, docile as a dream.
“Last week,” Adam says to Gansey, nodding at the dog. He corrals it in by it’s shaggy side, and Opal clings to its neck gratefully.
“We’ll be right back,” Gansey reassures, inexplicably near tears at the sight of Ronan’s dreams embracing in the chilly foyer.
Adam starts up the stairs, one hand steady on the banister. It lights up in the wake of his hand, a glowing strip that guides their way through the heavy darkness.
Gansey remembers this engineering from a long ago sleepover. He’d been fascinated with the mechanism and Ronan had been flippant in a way Gansey had thought was bragging. He had, of course, been carelessly hiding a secret he hadn’t yet feared.
They move through the empty doorways in unsteady silence, passing by three abandoned bedrooms, two bathrooms, and the many handfuls of hidden nooks and crannies. There’s a spiral staircase behind a curtain, a guest room with a door shaped like a simple two-doored cupboard, all manner of art works or optical illusions.
They find him in the en suite bathroom of his dead parents’ bedroom.
The door’s open a sliver, and the only light in the house is knifing through that crack, fluorescent white.
Adam steps through first, and he makes a noise like he’s trying to sigh but there’s no air left in his lungs.
Ronan is curled up in the bathtub, a crime scene sprawled out around him.
There’s an empty glass two litre bottle on the floor next to a balled up red t-shirt that might’ve been white once. Everywhere there are leaves and springy blond hairs and splattered gore, and Gansey spots Ronan’s bracelets discarded in the sink with the tap running. The room stinks of alcohol.
It is so exactly what he expected that Gansey can only summon deep, tired sadness at the sight of it all. He twists the tap off.
“I told you not to come,” Ronan says, but he seems unsurprised. Gansey notices then that his phone is open in his lap, Adam’s most recent texts staring up at him.
His upper lip is beaded with sweat, his chest bare, blood under his finger nails. Adam steps through the mess and climbs into the bathtub without hesitation.
“You’re such an idiot,” Adam says, but he holds Ronan’s face in both hands.
“I can’t control my dreams right now. There’s nothing in my head that I would ever want to be real,” he whispers miserably, and Gansey looks way. He wouldn’t be talking like this sober.
“How long have you been like this?” Adam asks.
“Days. Weeks.” His brow is set so hard it’s shaking.
“God, Ronan, you should have told me.”
“Didn’t want you to go,” he says. “I thought I could— I don’t know. Fucking wait it out. Sleep when I’m dead.”
“You’re an idiot,” Adam says again.
Ronan’s face cracks. “My mom died.”
Adam moves his hands to bracket Ronan’s neck, thumbs brushing his jaw. “I know.”
“I didn’t even think to take her out of a dying forest. How fucked up is that?” His eyes are wet. “What’s the point of dreaming if it can turn on me like that? Turn on the people I actually give a shit about.” His eyes linger on Adam’s. “God knows everyone would be safer if I wasn’t around. Except I can't fucking end it or I'll take Matthew with me.”
Adam’s face draws up tight like someone’s yanked on invisible laces.
“You don’t mean that,” Gansey says, appalled, and Ronan looks at him for the first time. “You wouldn’t.”
“No,” he admits. “Not anymore.”
“You’re not allowed to kick me out whenever you lose control. Whenever you sleep,” Adam says, physically shaking Ronan’s head in his hands.
“We can figure something out. Ask the psychics, call a group meeting,” Gansey adds. “We’re not letting it get this bad again.”
“Not pretty, is it,” Ronan says savagely.
“Not acceptable,” Gansey corrects. He moves carefully closer, wary of the terrible dreams underfoot. He perches on the rim of the tub and holds Ronan’s shoulder.
“Could we have Opal scry into your dreamscape? Steady you?” Adam asks.
“Fuck no, I wouldn’t bring her in there. I can handle it.”
Gansey watches his horrified expression, the soft parts of him where Adam’s touching, the vulnerability in his just barely slurring voice.
His strength is almost off-putting, almost stupid, but it appeals terribly to Gansey’s sense of rightness, kingliness.
“What if I—“
“No, jesus, you think I would risk you? Obviously not, Parrish.”
“Well, then. I don’t know,” Adam says, genuinely stumped, clearly annoyed about it.
“It helps when you’re here,” Ronan says quietly, not looking at either of them. “This shit is what happens when you’re not grounding me.” He gestures to the mess around them.
“I guess I’m commuting then,” Adam says, mouth twitching, impractical for one glowing second.
“You don’t have to do that, Adam,” Ronan says, earnest and unusual in the room full of nightmares.
“I’m going to,” he replies firmly. “If you think I’m gonna leave you alone with your monsters, you don’t know me.”
Gansey watches Ronan’s whole body going pliant against Adam, and he feels like he’s made some critical underestimation along the way.
Adam looks up from Ronan’s shoulder and nods at Gansey.
“Could you check on Opal? She’ll be working herself up again.”
“Of course I can.” He crosses to the attached bedroom and looks back at where Ronan’s hands are fisted in Adam’s collar.
Adam’s eyes are closed and his mouth is at Ronan’s temple. Gansey sees the ghost of two friends at a father’s funeral and he thinks that healing can be really beautiful, actually.
He closes the door quietly behind him.