ronan lynch (chainsawheart) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-06-24 18:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, adam parrish, ronan lynch |
WHO: Adam Parrish, Opal (NPC), and then Ronan Lynch as well
WHAT: Adam has a nightmare about Ronan dying, Opal is super fucking cute, and then Ronan and Adam make out.
WHEN: Like a week after Ronan stopped being a ghost? Idek, definitely backdated
WHERE: The Barns
WARNINGS: Mentions of Ronan's past possession and almost-death and also Adam's nightmare about it
Adam woke drenched in cold sweat.
It was the same nightmare again -- from when he had been possessed. From when Ronan wouldn’t do anything to defend himself. From when he had been trapped in the back of the car, tied up, blind, listening to Ronan die.
He had been scared then, of course, but he suspected it was nothing compared to what he would do if that happened now. Ronan’s recent “death” had only reiterated an idea that had crashed into Adam’s world: he had too much to lose. He loved all of his friends, but he and Ronan had started building things together, and he was left with the painful realization that he didn’t know what he would be or who would he be if something happened to Ronan here. And that, for Adam Parrish, who had always been incredibly independent, was painful.
And it tormented him to know that so many things could happen that Adam could do nothing to protect Ronan from.
Like demons hellbent on destroying dreamers.
Adam untangled himself from Ronan and the sheets of their bed, trying to be as quiet as he could as he headed outside, desperately needing air.
…
Ronan shifted, and made a soft sound in his sleep, but did not fully wake.
Opal, on the other hand, was already awake. She didn’t need much in the way of sleep and she certainly didn’t need it at night. She liked nighttime at the Barns, when she had the misty firefly fields all to herself and the other nocturnal creatures. Sometimes there was a human awake at night but not usually outside with her; she saw the lights on in the house. She lay in the grass about twenty yards from the farmhouse, looking up at the fireflies and the stars.
It was so quiet and still that she heard the sound of the door opening, even though it was quiet. She started and sat up, afraid that it was the lady with slightly less dreamstuff in her again, that she had found them here. But it was only Adam.
He seemed upset, though. She got to her feet -- hooves -- and asked quietly, “Adam?”
--
Adam hadn’t expected anyone to be out here, but, of course, he had forgotten that the Barns never truly slept. More than likely, someone was awake somewhere.
Still, he started at Opal speaking. It took him about half a second more to spot her in the grass.
“Did I wake you?” Adam asked, just as quietly.
…
Opal shook her head. She hadn’t been asleep. He had been sleeping, she could tell, but something had woken him up. She wondered if that meant Ronan was awake too, or if he was still asleep. But she didn’t ask.
She moved forward and reached out to take his hand.
--
Adam gratefully took her hand in return. He sat down on the porch as well. He felt a little bit better out here, late at night, with Opal. It felt like this might all not be really happening, and that felt better than having to face up to the fact that he was suddenly deathly afraid of losing Ronan. He was embarrassed of that -- and entirely aware that it was a ridiculous thing to be embarrassed about.
…
Opal took his hand and sat down next to him. She could still tell there was something wrong, but he hadn’t said anything about it. She loved him when he was sad, though. She ran the fingers of her free hand over the watch on his wrist, which was made of fuzzy dreamstuff. She still had Adam’s old watch on her wrist.
“Cur excitetur?" she asked, eventually.
--
Adam remained still as her little fingers explored the new watch on his wrist. He was quietly touched that Opal still wore the one that he had given her when they had met, which now seemed much further back than it really was.
“I had a bad dream,” he told her.
…
“Nightmare?” Opal asked, in English. She knew a lot about nightmares. Ronan’s nightmares, at least. She knew a lot less about what Adam’s nightmares were like, but there were some rules about nightmares that probably still held true in other people. Except for the part where you could work within them to make them not quite as scary.
--
“A nightmare,” Adam answered, nodding. He wasn’t unaware of the oddity of telling her this -- his dreams were tame by Ronan’s standards. He wasn’t sure he had the imagination to conceive many of the creatures that roamed Ronan’s mind but, even if he could, he couldn’t ever bring any of them back with him. He was never really in any physical danger.
And, of course, as a dream creature herself, Opal knew nightmares even more. Adam felt a bit silly that he had been so shaken up by something that wasn’t, technically speaking, real.
…
Opal nodded, and just kept looking at him. She knew less about fixing nightmares after the fact, once someone was awake, but she knew Ronan was usually upset even after he woke up from nightmares. She waited to see if Adam was going to say anything else.
--
Adam hesitated. He was torn on whether or not he should say more. It wasn’t simple, what he was feeling. It wasn’t simple to explain, but he knew that he was likely afraid to tell Opal because she would both understand too much and not enough from a human perspective.
“I worry about Ronan being hurt,” he said, an oversimplification, but the closest he could come to saying that he kept dreaming about Ronan dying.
…
Opal nodded, because she understood. She had seen Ronan hurt so many times in his dreams, and a few times in the animal world as well. She opened her mouth to say something, and then suddenly realized Ronan was there, standing in the doorway. Her head turned to look at him.
--
Ronan had woken to found himself alone, and gotten up to find Adam. He’d stopped in the doorway to the farmhouse, because Adam and Opal were sitting close together and talking, and he wasn’t sure if he should interrupt. But then Opal noticed him, and it seemed awkward to be lurking behind them.
He stepped out. “Hey,” he said, quietly. “What are you two weirdos doing out here?”
--
Adam started a little when Ronan spoke, unable to hide his surprise.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Adam answered. It was a half lie, he figured, but he didn’t want to skip right into the nightmares part. He didn’t know if he was ready to discuss that with Ronan quite yet, because he wasn’t entirely sure how Ronan would react and it would mean digging up a particularly hard time for both of them.
…
“Nightmare,” Opal said, but she had said it in the tree language, and she didn’t know if Ronan would understand it.
--
Ronan recognized the word, but didn’t remember the meaning of it. His eyes narrowed briefly as he looked at Opal, but he didn’t say anything. Then he looked at Adam. “You want more company, or is this a ‘three’s a crowd’ kind of situation?”
--
Adam’s gaze flitted between Opal and then up to Ronan, because he, of course, didn’t know what she said. He wasn’t sure if Ronan did either.
“Sit down,” he told Ronan.
…
Ronan was glad to be asked, although he would not have minded leaving them alone either; it warmed his heart to see the two of them together. He sat down on the opposite side of Adam from Opal, and knocked his shoulder companionably against his boyfriend’s.
“You alright?” he asked, after a moment.
--
“I’m okay,” Adam reassured Ronan quietly, leaning back into him. The nightmare was fading more now, and this scene almost seemed quaint in a way -- the three of them outside, together, with the night and the Barns sprawling in front of them.
…
Ronan pressed his hand into the porch just behind Adam, so that his arm pressed diagonally against Adam’s back, supporting him without actually holding him. He leaned his side a little further against Adam’s, offering warmth and closeness to help ward off the night’s chill -- and whatever it was that was keeping Adam up at night.
“Too much going on in that big brain of yours?” he asked, with a small smile.
--
“You could say that,” Adam answered lightly, even though it was also true. He felt a bit better about everything now that he was leaning warmly up against Ronan, and he was fine and safe. Some part of him wondered if he was overreacting, but some part of him was aware that they were always going to deal with some extra threat.
He reached down and threaded one of his hands with Ronan’s free one.
…
Ronan’s fingers curled around Adam’s. He hadn’t had a nightmare, and his sleep was only disturbed because Adam had gotten out of bed, but he liked this nevertheless. It was nice here on the porch with Adam leaning against him and Opal sitting nearby chewing on something that she probably shouldn’t, the cool mist of the Barns mixing with the warmth of the Texas night.
“You wanna talk about any of it?” he asked, because Adam had taught him that talking helped, but Adam also seemed alright, so maybe he didn’t need it.
--
Most of Adam didn’t want to talk about his dreams right now, but he also knew the pain of this was just going to keep festering in his heart. He needed to talk to someone else about this, and if it wasn’t Ronan, it would be Gansey. Maybe both, he supposed.
“I keep dreaming about you dying,” Adam said, looking down at their hands together. “When the demon was trying to unmake you.”
…
Ronan felt something clench in his chest at the mention of the demon, of being unmade. It had been a vivid experience -- the second time he’d almost died that day -- and he tried very hard not to think about it. But it also didn’t surprise him that it came up in Adam’s dreams, because he had dreamed a thousand nightmares of Adam dying, in hundreds of different ways. What he was grateful for was that Adam dreamt of the demon unmaking him, not the demon using Adam’s hands to strangle him.
He pressed a kiss to Adam’s shoulder. “Those kinds of nightmares are the worst.”
--
Something clenched inside of Adam, because he knew that his dreams didn’t really begin to touch Ronan’s. His were just projections of his fears. Ronan’s could become real. They had both seen Ronan die through what he had brought back.
What didn’t really surprise him was the admission that Ronan had seen him die before. That seemed to be a worry that aligned with what he expected of Ronan.
He didn’t know what the question to ask about this was, on how to fix it or what he was entitled to know. He knew that Ronan would share anything with him, but Adam didn’t feel entitled to everything.
He leaned in a little closer to Ronan, aware that this maybe was going to be a fear that always remained in some way. This was part of loving someone.
…
It was hard to tell if that had been the right thing to say. Ronan hadn’t wanted to be too sympathetic or consoling, which might make Adam feel worse, when he seemed to have recovered somewhat. He’d wanted to empathize. But now Adam wasn’t saying anything.
He nudged Adam with his shoulder, gently. “I’m still here. Not unmade.”
--
“I know you are,” Adam answered, almost surprised, in a way, that Ronan was being this gentle with him.
“I don’t know if it should feel foolish to be worked up over these dreams,” Adam admitted. Sometimes, it was still uncomfortable for him to be so open about what he was feeling, especially when it came to a deep-seated fear like this. But he didn’t know how else to process this, and, if anything, he had learned that being honest was an integral part of making this work with Ronan.
…
“Dreams are what’s in your head,” Ronan said. “If your head is messed up, if you’re scared of things, it shows up in your dreams.” He knew that was very basic stuff; although it was more literal in Ronan’s case. Still, most people knew that about dreams, everyone’s dreams worked that way.
He paused, and then asked, “Are you worked up just because of what you saw in the dream, or is it something that’s scaring you during the day, too?”
--
It was basic stuff, and Adam certainly knew it, but it was also quietly touching to hear Ronan work at explaining it.
“I think,” Adam said, licking his lips, “that it freaked me out when you switched with Noah.” And it wasn’t as if Ronan hadn’t come close to skirting with death so many times now. He knew that Ronan wasn’t that careless with himself any longer, but their swap had reiterated just how vulnerable Ronan could truly be.
…
“Yeah,” Ronan said. He let out a breath. “That freaked me out, too. It’s a lot shittier being a ghost like that than I thought it was.”
They had known that Noah sometimes had trouble taking shape, being solid, but it was more accurate to say that Noah had trouble with just existing. He was stuck in between, fading in and out. Even after Gansey had ordered Ronan to be solid, which had kept him solid for that entire week, he had felt the energy draining out of him, the cost that it was taking on Gansey’s magic to keep him that way. He had come out of it even more desperate to bring Noah back, to get him out of that half-existence.
--
“Am I allowed to ask you not to die?” Adam asked with a somewhat mirthless laugh, turning to look at Ronan for the first time since he had sat down. He knew that was at the heart of everything. He wanted the guarantee that Ronan wasn’t going to die and leave him. He’d put so much of himself and his life into another person. He hadn’t realized how terrifying and vulnerable that could be.
…
Ronan smiled, with just a hint of wryness. “Yes.”
He knew full well that it wasn’t something that could be truly promised. Adam was more logical than Ronan was; he absolutely knew that Ronan’s death might be completely out of anyone’s control. But Adam was certainly allowed to ask -- just as Gansey had been allowed to make Ronan promise, and Ronan had told Gansey not to go and fucking die.
“I’ll try, Parrish. I promise you, I will.” He had never wanted so badly to live in his life, truthfully. When he was younger he hadn’t known that life was so tenuous and that it was something to be wished for like this. And when his life had been harder, some part of him had wanted to die rather than to be in pain. But his life now was wonderful, and Ronan was aware of his tenuous grip on it and on his happiness, and he would do everything he could to keep it.
--
Adam’s heart squeezed again. He knew Ronan didn’t want to die. But he could and, eventually, would.
Adam turned to grip Ronan tight and kissed him with the same bruising intent, because there was nothing else to be done for it. He could be as afraid as he wanted, but they wouldn’t be able to avoid whatever would eventually happen.
…
Ronan leaned into him, putting one hand on the porch just beside Adam’s leg, his other still just behind Adam’s back, to brace himself instead of letting Adam take his full weight. He didn’t mind being held tight, or being kissed so ferociously, especially if it made Adam feel better; it would probably work better than words and logic would.
--
It was terrifying so much of his heart outside of his body. He wondered if this was as terrifying for other people as it was for him. He knew, at least, that it was for Ronan. That Ronan’s heart had already been broken once before, and that he had allowed Adam in anyway. That he was afraid of losing Adam.
It was hard to trust so much, because he had always thought that the trust was between two people -- and in many ways, this was a trust between Adam and the world. That it wasn’t going to take Ronan from him.
Adam bunched a fist against Ronan’s heart and kept desperately kissing him, because he didn’t know what else to do.
…
Ronan shifted to press more closely against Adam, to reassure him, and also because he wanted to. He slid his arms tightly around Adam’s waist, and kissed him back with all the intensity in his heart.
When he had to break for air, he murmured, “Come back to bed.”