Ronan Lynch (alteridem) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-12-16 14:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, the raven cycle: adam parrish, the raven cycle: ronan lynch |
Was Opal out there?
Adam had been so concerned about Ronan clinging to something vague from his psychic vision, that Adam hadn't considered that he might too. Cabeswater rumbled in that soothing way in the back of his chest, and Adam rubbed absently along his sternum as if to say I know. He needed to be patient, he needed to believe that failure did not come from not being perfect.
So he waited, and he watched, and when the wind whipped one of the barn panels open where the cows were secured, Adam felt his purpose renewed. He rushed to the back and started throwing on boots and snow pants, gloves and hats. He needed to do something, he needed to be helpful, and this was a welcome distraction.
"I'm coming with you," Adam said when Ronan met him at the door. "I need to get out of the house, even if it's freezing."
Ronan’s primary concern at the first signs of a storm was that they not repeat the shit that happened last year. He had a better system in place. Better reinforcements to the Barns. Better procedures for moving all the animals inside. This time, they weren’t going to be scrambling and Adam wasn’t going to get hurt again.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t also thinking about Adam’s vision and wondering. Hoping. It didn’t mean bad couldn’t still happen either. Which was why he frowned at Adam as they met at the door.
“Why?” He pulled his coat off the hanger and yanked it on, then tugged a beanie over his shorn head. He used to stubbornly brave the elements but apparently he was getting fucking soft. “Do you have a gut feeling or something? Is it you carrying me this year?”
"Can't carry you if I don't go with you. You'll just lay in a snowbank until we dig you out," Adam said, offering up the extra set of work gloves to Ronan, before he checked the laces on his snow boots. Adam didn't want to admit it was also a gut feeling—he had a lot of those, some of them driven by his own sheer stubbornness and the rest guided by the otherworldliness of Cabeswater. Right now it felt a little of both.
When he straightened back up, his eyes searched Ronan's face, lifting his chin almost defiantly back. Ronan wouldn't be able to convince him to stay inside. Adam already made up his mind.
He knew it was a cheap shot when he said, "You wouldn't let me go out there alone, especially in the middle of a storm. Don't be hypocritical. Just tell me what you need me to do." Because this was Ronan's farm, and his livelihood and Adam wouldn't pretend he knew more.
Adam kissed Ronan's cheek. "And maybe, I don't know, I want to make sure. You're better off with an extra set of eyes." Adam didn't have to explain what they were making sure about; he trusted Ronan to know as he opened the door to the outside.
Ronan wouldn’t have actually stopped Adam from going anywhere he wanted to go, but he did squint a little at the blatant cheating. He kept right on squinting even as he put on the offered gloves and hooked his fingers into the back of Adam’s collar and stepped up close to talk near his good ear.
“What I need you to do, huh? Alright, keep that extra set of eyes on your surroundings, Parrish. I don’t want either of us getting fucking surprised this year, okay?” It wasn’t entirely true. He’d accept a good surprise, but he dodged nimbly around that thought and squeezed the back of Adam’s neck before he pushed out ahead of him into the yard.
The worst of the storm had passed but it was still cold as shit and the air was so sharp it hurt to breathe in. Ronan pulled his cap down further over his ears and hurried across the yard to shut the flapping barn door. The crossbar was apparently damaged so Ronan looked around for a piece of lumber or something to jam the door shut.
“Grab that and bring it here,” he pointed at a suitable piece of wood leaning against the side of the barn.
Inside the barn, a quiet voice rang out. A quiet familiar voice and a word that made Ronan freeze in place.
“Kerah?”
"No surprises," Adam agreed, following Ronan outside and into the snow. As they got closer to the barn, the damage wasn't massive, but enough to cause more problems if they didn't take care of it.
He didn't wait when Ronan pointed to the wood beside the barn. The faster they got this done, the quicker they could go back inside. Despite the gloves, Adam's hands were already going numb.
That was when Adam heard it. And he knew Ronan heard it. The look he exchanged with Ronan reflected back inside of him—Adam was hopeful, and surprised, and worried. It was like his brain couldn't decide what to process first, but somehow it told his body what to do.
Adam dropped the piece of lumber, and rushed into the barn. The frantic urgency of the moment had him scrambling past the stalls to the ladder—the safe spot in the hayloft that they had drilled into her to hide; for safety, in case of emergencies, for a space outside of the home, but not outside of the property that belonged to her.
"Opal?" Adam called out as he took one rung, then another, hearing the footfalls of Ronan right behind him. Just before he reached the top, Opal's tangled blonde head popped out above him. "Adam", she whispered in that same small voice.
His heart was in his throat, as he managed out, "Stay there we're coming up, okay?" And Opal scrambled back from the edge in compliance.
A cold gust of wind put a shiver down Ronan’s spine and it was that more than Adam racing in ahead of him that finally kicked him into motion. It was knowing how cold Opal had to have been to follow their emergency protocol instead of heading up to the house. Cold and maybe blinded by the storm. Afraid.
She’d led him out of the dark recesses of his own mind so many times over the years that it made his heart hurt to think of her afraid.
Ronan pulled the barn door shut behind them and used the inside bar to lock it in place. He caught up with Adam just as a blonde head disappeared back into the darkness above them. Pressing a hand to Adam’s back, he followed him up the ladder. There wasn’t enough space to stand up straight, but he wouldn’t have had time to get up off his knees anyway because Opal flung herself at the pair of them, one spindly arm around Adam’s neck and the other around Ronan’s. There was melting snow in her ratty hair and she was babbling in his ear but he couldn’t make sense of any of it.
“Easy, creep,” he murmured, his tone warmer than the words themselves. He hugged her close and smoothed a hand over her hair and back. “You’re safe. We’ve got you. How long have you been up here?”
Opal shook her head, not loosening her hold just turning to press her face into Adam’s neck. “I don’t know!” she whined, muffled. “There was so much snow.”
Adam was quick to keep low as they climbed into the hayloft, making it easier for Opal to pull them in close. There was something surreal in having her here, like his own forceful disbelief and controlled hope was attempting to disassociate with what was a very tangible girl in front of him. It wasn't until Opal turned her face into his neck, that Adam wrapped a hand around her head, and pressed his cheek into her hair settling something inside his chest.
His realness, her realness, was what he needed. Then it was the other things: how cold she felt, how scared she felt. He hated that feeling, and a surge of protectiveness rose up inside of him. "There's been a storm. Ronan and I were coming out here to fix the door, we didn't know you were in here. We would have come sooner. You shouldn’t be out here in the snow, you should be inside with us."
That part was said to Ronan, his brow furrowing together in concern. Adam should have known, he should have checked this space, but he had been trying not to get ahead of himself.
Opal lifted her face, sensing in that uncanny way of hers, that something was up. Like it was now hitting her that both of them were here, not just Ronan. She frowned a little at Adam then peeled herself away to hug Ronan close. "It's different here."
Something about Opal pulling away from Adam didn’t sit well with Ronan. She’d been about as mature about Adam’s absence as Ronan had been when he’d first gone off to Harvard and he supposed that was his fault. She was a part of him, a reflection of his baser instincts and anxieties. She loved as fiercely and as stubbornly as he did. He kissed her forehead and tugged on a strand of her hair.
“It is different here. Almost everybody’s here, living at the Barns.” He reached with his free hand to curl an arm around Adam’s shoulders and reel him in closer. “Parrish lives here all the time, even while he goes to school.”
Opal peered up at Adam from under her wild bangs but kept speaking to Ronan. “He has more...dream fuzz to him.”
“Oh,” Ronan murmured, glancing over at Adam. “I forgot she can sense that shit.”
He didn't take offense to Opal's attention on Ronan but was glad to be pulled in close to them regardless. It made sense—Ronan was safety in many ways for many people, himself included. For Adam to be here and not at school was strange. It was a lot to unpack for a psychopomp who measured the passage of time in an unfathomable way. Adam knew this because he had tried to understand it. He tried to understand most things from Opal.
Like now, Adam could only nod about the dream stuff, about Opal being able to sense it.
"Did you see Cabeswater?" Adam asked, his attention flashing to Ronan, then back to Opal. As if he was asking permission to bring this up. She was going to find out eventually, in some ways her keen sense of otherness already told her. "When the snow clears, I'll—we'll take you. That's different too."
Opal's eyes went wide with surprise, excitement, a sliver of apprehension. The last time she had been in Cabeswater it was being unmade and then gone. Adam understood. "Est tutum," he assured her, taking Opal's small hands in his. He began to rub them warm.
"There's a fire going inside. Everyone will be happy to see you." Adam leaned in close, whispered, "I'm happy to see you. So is Kerah," and watched Opal's smile grow at using the name she wasn't supposed to. Adam smiled conspiratorially back, then both of them pinned their grins on Ronan.
“Est tutum,” Ronan parroted. It made him stupidly warm inside to watch Adam rub Opal’s hands and speak to her like a fellow troublemaker. He rolled his eyes at them, of course, but his answering smile was impossible to smother.
“When she’s being a feral brat later, I’m gonna remind you that you set the tone here, Parrish,” he teased. Even with that said, he pulled them both back into a hug and pressed his cheek to the top of Opal’s head. “I am happy to see you though,” he admitted quietly. “I...tried not to think of you too much here. I was afraid I’d dream up a copy. But I was worried about you…”
“I just saw you!” Opal wiggled out of his embrace and tugged them both by the sleeve as she moved towards the ladder. “Well, I just saw you--” She let go of Ronan’s sleeve to pat his face like the butthead that she was, but she stared unblinking at Adam while she did it. Ronan didn’t want to hear the obvious follow up, so he shuffled for the ladder.
“Right well, we’ve been here almost a year so wrap your weird little brain around that one.”
Adam was quick to place a kiss to Ronan's cheek when he was pulled in further. The happiness was contagious, a heaviness lifted at Opal being here. He had missed her in Ronan's dreamspace, but he knew why her absence was needed, even when Ronan explained it so plainly to her. Adam didn't need Cabeswater to tell him Ronan had worried.
"You are going to see me all the time now. I hope you're ready," Adam said, looking right back at Opal and her owlish stare. Adam had no intention of going anywhere, and he hoped that had gotten across as he smoothed a hand over her hair.
But it was Ronan's words that made Opal's whole face scrunch up, like she ate something sour. It surprised Adam to hear the honesty of that—almost a year. Almost a year of being here in the Barns with Ronan and not missing the distance he had purposely placed between them because of school.
Opal shook her head; no, like she did not want to wrap her head around it. She raced down the ladder instead, each clomp of her hoof loud against the wooden rungs.
"Opal, be careful," Adam warned as he paused at the top to watch her reach the dirt floor. She simply grinned up at the both of them, shaking her arms to make her sleeves hang low and cover her hands.
Adam looked to Ronan, and nodded toward the ladder. "After you, Kerah."
“You’re lucky you didn’t slip on an icy rung and bust your ass,” Ronan called down after Opal. He sounded pleased that he got to give her grief already, mixed with the relief that she was here and hadn’t just broken something speeding down to the ground. Adam’s cheekiness earned him a poke in the ribs as Ronan scooted around him and got down the ladder.
Opal was already moving, patting cows as she went and talking quietly to herself. “Don’t go outside without us, brat,” Ronan demanded.
She stuck her tongue out him but waited obediently by the door.
He waited just as obediently for Adam, but he’d never use that word, thank you very much. As it was, he was risking starting a fight by raising his hands to Adam’s hips as he descended. Better to piss him off than watch him hurt his ankle two years in a row, though.
“You gonna give yourself some credit for seeing this now?” Ronan asked.
Watching Ronan interact with Opal did something strange and complicated in his chest. Adam missed it, and there was already something different about Ronan. Something special and specific that couldn't be replicated.
Adam was eager to rejoin them, following Ronan down the ladder so that neither of them had to obediently wait. He paused for only a moment, feeling Ronan's hands on his hips, and decided that it wasn't worth whatever flash-in-the-pan feeling he had from it. Adam's mind had grown used to untangling unnecessary defensive reactions faster.
"Didn't see her in the barn," Adam said, almost too quickly, already prepared to knock himself down a few pegs because Adam Parrish was his own harshest critic. But then added, while hooking his fingers delicately through Ronan's as an apology, "Fine, a little credit. I'll be better next time, for whoever else. Whatever else."
"Whatever else!," Opal repeated. Adam gave Ronan a knowing glance, tugging him toward the door.
He only let go of Ronan to scoop Opal up, and tuck her inside his coat, to brace against the snow still coming down outside. "We can bring her inside and I'll come back out with you to fix the door?" Adam asked, as Opal reached behind his head reaching for Ronan's beanie in a definitive mine gesture.
If it had just been Ronan and Adam in the barn, Ronan would have pressed him up against a wall and kissed him stupid. Of course, if it was just them, he wouldn’t have the excuse of Adam being a stubborn psychic who had Ronan’s psychopomp in his coat. Not that he needed an excuse to kiss him stupid anyway, but still.
Ronan exhaled loudly and took off his beanie, pulling it down over Opal’s head and ears. “Don’t lose this.” He pulled the edges of Adam’s coat tighter around them both, tucking it up under Opal’s hooves, and then pushed open the door. The storm was dying down and he wasn’t surprised to see a black shape swoop down off the roof of the farmhouse to land on his shoulder as he stepped outside.
Opal squawked at Chainsaw and the bird leaned over to peck at the beanie on her head. Opal swatted at her. Chainsaw smacked Adam and Ronan both with her wings in the scuffle.
“Jesus Christ, you two.” He stepped away from Adam, attempting to calm the raven on his shoulder as he pulled the barn doors shut. There was a laugh trapped in his throat that even the complaint couldn’t hide. “Alright, let’s stick with your plan and get both these assholes in by the fire. They can annoy the shit out of Gansey for a bit.”
Even with the poking and prodding, the bitter cold, the wing to his face, Adam was happy. No longer incomplete in his home. The feeling warmed him against everything else around them. And Opal sensing it, tucked her head into Adam's neck again.
He took the brief respite between the bickering to steal one more quick kiss from Ronan as they headed back toward the house.
Adam was grinning as he said, "Oh, he's going to love that."