WHO: Ronan & Declan Lynch WHAT: The truth spell hits the Lynch brothers WHEN: January 11 (Gansey's bday) WHERE: The Barns WARNINGS: Suicidal ideation/dreams, drinking, references to violence in their pasts, I think that's it?
It was Gansey’s birthday, and Blue had planned a party in a cave. That part was typical. Ronan traveling to Brazil to join them was less typical, but he wasn’t going to miss Gansey’s birthday.
There was a three hour time difference, so even though he left just before sunset in Brazil, he arrived home mid-afternoon in Texas. He was scuffed and dirty and in a good mood; it had felt good to adventure with his friends again, and still able to come back to his house at the end of the night.
He walked into the living room and dumped his caving gear on the couch, then headed into the kitchen to find something to eat.
--
“Evening,” Declan said when Ronan walked in. He was making a latte, not facing Ronan. But the way he stomped through the house was Ronan, only Ronan. Even when Opal stomped, she didn’t have the same weight and gravitas. The near two months he had been in Texas this time had gone by fairly quickly. It took time to read or to watch media about everyone around them. What was available anyway. In regard to the hours, the limits were a blessing. It had been a productive and until now Ronan free day. Those were hard to come by at the Barns. It had always been a place for dreamers.
“I made soup,” he declared. It was enough for a typical person for a week. So it would last the whole week if Declan were the only one eating it. With Ronan, it could be gone in two to three days. He wasn’t Matthew, but they both ate their weight in food.
--
“Cool,” Ronan said. It was still a little weird to come home to Declan at the Barns, but as much as he would never admit it, he kinda liked it. He wasn’t sure Declan would ever let himself settle here, or even if that was something he wanted, but it was exhausting for Ronan to be here alone.
Still, it was hard to resist snarking at him a little, for all that it lacked the venom of most of their interactions for the last few years. “Is that all you did today?”
He stalked into the kitchen and pulled bowls out of the cabinet. He did his usual slamming of the door of the cabinet and the bowls onto the table, just because he could.
--
Except that Ronan would have needed to pull one of the chairs over to the cabinet, he could have been five years old. It sounded the same. Declan exhaled. The question wasn’t truly irritating. Ronan simply said it in an aggressive manner. “No,” he replied.
That should have been enough. But a few moments later, he added, “I also read two books and watched some tv.” The townhouse no longer needed to be cleaned up. But were it to be livable, it needed some new furniture and appliances. Declan hadn’t moved on that.
He frowned into the espresso machine. It wasn’t much of a thing to say, but he didn’t know why he bothered telling Ronan. It didn’t matter, and probably, he wouldn’t understand. In a purposely obtuse kind of way.
--
Ronan was vaguely surprised by the answer, but he also didn’t really know what to expect from Declan anymore. They had been charting new territory for… awhile. If he had to point to a moment things had changed, Ronan wasn’t sure what moment he would have chosen. It had just kind of crept up on them, with discovering how much Declan had actually known about Ronan and Niall’s magic, with everything they’d both done to protect each other, with this place sending him Declan after taking away multiple people he liked better and leaving him isolated.
“Cool,” he simply said again. “I went spelunking.”
When Declan didn’t move from the espresso machine, Ronan got the spoons and tossed them into place on the table, then grabbed his bowl and headed for the stove to get the soup.
--
He finished the drink and set it at the table, near the second bowl. It looked just right. Declan hadn’t yet explored everything the espresso machine could do, but it made his beverages perfectly. He wasn’t trying anything crazy. “Sounds like Dick,” he commented. It was the guy’s birthday. That also made him frown. Dick Gansey was -- here -- twenty-two as of this day. Somehow. It made no sense, given he had always been the youngest of Ronan’s friends. But not only were he and Ronan the same age, Dick was older than both of them. Things like that made the ground difficult to feel steady beneath him.
Once Ronan took his serving of soup, Declan did the same. “How was it?” he asked, maintaining the conversation and gentle equilibrium between them. Without Matthew, it was nearly a miracle. Declan, like Ronan, had too much time on his hands, but he hadn’t committed to a 9-5 anything yet. He was still settling, and if things were to be believed, in the next month or so they would leave this town behind.
--
“Very Dick,” Ronan agreed, grinning in a way that suggested he would have snickered if there was someone around to snicker with him.
He sat down at the table and gulped down a couple spoonfuls of soup. He was hungrier than he’d realized, and it was good soup. “It was cool. There was an underground forest. Can’t believe I never thought of that.”
--
An underground forest -- more specifically the thought of one made by Ronan -- made Declan feel so tired. He hoped that didn’t happen. One manifested magical forest was enough. “So long as we’re on earth, you’ve really got four options: on ground, underground, above ground, and underwater,” Declan pointed out. He had thought about such options before. He simply hadn’t said anything about them near a dreamer. Not that forests had been their father’s thing.
“I can say with certainty you dream plenty wide,” Declan added. Who had ever thought of crabs like that before? Why would anyone need to? They had been a pain but no more than anything else he had dealt with. The only trouble was it being in a public place.
--
Technically, Ronan supposed, he’d dreamed in all directions. But that didn’t mean he’d imagined everything. “Don’t limit me,” he said. “I can dream as wide as I want.”
He gulped down a few more spoonfuls of soup. “What would you dream, anyway? Expense reports?”
--
Declan didn’t need reminding of that. The Barns was full of stuff like that. There was a whole forest where none had been before. Ronan had dreamt the portal open, which had dragged Declan here the first time around, along with other folks.
He scoffed, slightly. That was what Ronan thought of him. He hadn’t tangled with the people on the other ends of their dad’s expense reports. “Art,” popped out of his mouth right away. He frowned. “Lifeproof armor around you. Money. Whatever would make no one ever notice this place again. Dissolving myself.” Declan hadn’t meant to say any of it. Well, money wasn’t so bad. And protecting the Barns wasn’t either. But he ground his teeth against each other silently and waited for Ronan to treat it like a bad joke.
They could just move on. Like they always did. Declan could figure out what had gotten into him later.
--
Ronan paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth, staring at his brother. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that. He was being surprisingly forthcoming tonight.
Art made sense. Lifeproof armor did too, and it was a funny parallel to what Ronan had tried to dream for Gansey. Ronan was still thinking about that and breezed right past money and defending the Barns (also entirely to be expected) when he got to the last one.
“Dissolving yourself?” he asked before he could stop himself.
--
Declan defensively shoved a spoonful of soup into his mouth. It was a relief that his mouth didn’t open anyway, to spill it down his shirt. But the good news could only last so long. Declan swallowed and planned to brush it off. He’d managed worse.
“Well, I’ve dreamt that happened,” Declan said, instead. “Can’t help but wonder what’d happen if I were a dreamer when that happened.” That was the second damn time. His eyes looked around the place for something new and annoying that Ronan might have dreamt. But between them, Declan was the one who had been there all day. And not a single thing was out of place.
“Why do you care what I dream? Or what I’d dream? It’s not going to happen,” Declan said. He couldn’t make art that expressed how he felt. But he privately collected what resonated deep inside him. He’d asked for art for Christmas and gotten it. They were exactly the same as they had been.
--
“Depends if you brought it back with you,” Ronan said, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Thinking about night horrors carving him up. About Hennessy and her inability to wake up without bringing something back with her, so she brought back copies of herself. “Nightmares suck extra for dreamers but they’re still just nightmares if they stay in your dreams.”
He had set his spoon down, his soup mostly forgotten for the moment. He opened his mouth to say that he didn’t care, but what came out instead was, “It was a rhetorical question. I didn’t expect you to answer.” Which was true, but it wasn’t what he’d meant to say. And apparently he wasn’t done. “I just think it probably felt shitty to be around dream magic and not have it. And I give a fuck that you had a shitty time of it.”
He clenched his jaw shut, but that seemed to be the end of it. He hadn’t dreamed anything to make them talk like this. Had something happened to him in the cave? Or was this a Tumbleweed portal thing?
--
“Dad didn’t bother teaching you how to do that,” Declan muttered under his breath. He had known what had happened when Ronan ended up in the hospital. Not the specifics. Just that it had to do with dreaming and with Niall teaching Ronan jack shit about it. Ronan had had to figure it out the hard way. Ronan had almost died because Niall either hadn’t thought to or hadn’t bothered to teach Ronan how to be a dreamer. Oh Niall kept him safe and soft and protected… but not how to protect himself. It was more important than Ronan knowing how to fight.
His teeth continued to grind against each other. While Declan could recognize that Ronan was saying he cared about him, something they didn’t verbalize as a rule, the reason why Ronan thought Declan had a shitty childhood was shit. “I could have been fine, not having dream magic,” Declan said. “That’s not what made it shitty.” He didn’t bother trying to deny that truth. They both knew he was the part that was disjointed from the rest. The one that didn’t fit.
“The problem was this place was just a dream to everyone else, and no one spent a goddamn thought about how to keep it safe, how to keep anyone here safe,” Declan said. “Sure Dad went away for months at a time. But he didn’t keep people from being able to follow him back, from being able to find us and hurt us. And Mom just didn’t have the place of mind to worry or to do more than clean up after his dreams with my help when it got messy.
“Neither of them made sure you were safe when you were dreaming. They didn’t teach you a thing about it. Neither of them thought ‘oh school, that’s something kids do.’ They just lived the damn dream like the real world would never catch up to this place,” Declan spat out. “Like a disposable phone was all it took.” He huffed, nearly a laugh but not.
He didn’t like how much had come out. But it was what it was. The truth. All of it. “It wasn’t lacking dream magic that made me not fit here. It was being awake, not living the damn dream.”
--
Ronan sat in silence while Declan’s vitriol spilled out. He had been angry with his father, too, for dying and leaving him with so many unanswered questions, but Ronan had figured it out. He hadn’t died, and he was as in control of his dreams as he thought it was possible to be. Although his father seemed to have controlled his dreams everywhere in the world that he had traveled. Ronan still wanted to know how he had done it.
But that wasn’t the point. Everything Declan was saying was true. He was the only one who hadn’t idealized the Barns. He was the one who had saved Ronan from the dreams that posed a danger to him. He was the one saddled with the gritty details of Niall’s business, of his death, of trying to protect Ronan from finding out too much about what Niall had done, the underground world he’d gotten into, the world of the Fairy Market and magical hunters.
He didn’t know what to say. He pushed his soup away, his appetite gone. His insides were turning to battery acid, and he’d thought he’d gotten away from that feeling. “It’s not worth holding onto all of that shit,” he said, voice rough. “It’ll eat you up inside.”
--
“It’s a little too far down on my priority list to give a damn,” Declan answered. And it hadn’t been on anyone else’s. He sighed. Ronan wasn’t the one he was mad at. Oh, Ronan got on his nerves plenty enough. Enough dumb ass things kept Declan worried or busy. He pulled his antacids out of his pocket and dry swallowed one. His stomach had been worse before. The sense of dread that he couldn’t lie was worse, was something no medicine could help with.
What was Declan Lynch without lies?
He settled his breathing and considered his options. Even with most of them eliminated, the truth was a great many things. And Declan Lynch could wield that too, when it mattered to. “I’m not saying I did the best job,” Declan said. “But I raised you two and kept you both safe, as best I could. That’s all I’ve been trying to do.” The extra feeling behind that hadn’t been intentional. But it was better than the raw unfiltered truth that had been pouring out of him before. Ronan didn’t need to learn the worst about Niall Lynch.
Thankfully, he managed not to comment about how somehow this had led to a government backed black ops group hunting Ronan down. That they were still doing just that and weren’t going to stop. Declan didn’t know how they had heard about Ronan. The crabs hadn’t extended far, and Ronan kept to the farm. His memory went back to the registry, but Declan doubted that group would find much welcome at the Fairy Market.
--
“Yeah, well,” Ronan said. “I give a damn.”
He knew how shitty it felt to hold on to all that past anger. He had done his best to let it go, but knowing that Declan was still holding onto it was going to bother him. How was he supposed to just sit by and watch him suffer through it? That was too much to ask.
He eyed the antacids. He’d seen Declan taking them before, but hadn’t made the connection that it was this shit giving him heartburn or whatever. He could probably dream something that worked better. It wasn’t a fix, but he couldn’t cure Declan’s demons for him. He could probably only help with the symptoms.
For himself, he wanted a drink. He wanted to drive fast. He wanted to slam his hand through a wall.
He did none of those things.
“You did fine,” he said. “There was just a bunch of shit you didn’t tell me, either.”
--
Declan closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. He opened them and found the same situation as had been there when he closed them. No luck. This was reality. They were both frustrated and angry and getting a little short with each other. But there weren’t any exchanged blows, so that was something. Growth.
“It wouldn’t have made you any safer,” Declan commented. “And besides, you idolized Dad. I didn’t want to take that away from you.” It wouldn’t have done any good. Ronan mourned Niall Lynch in a pure and honest way. It was more than he deserved, and Declan hadn’t held his tongue for their father’s sake. Niall Lynch explaining that the Fairy Market was too dangerous a place to let Ronan ever get near, then taking Declan inside, wasn’t an issue he wanted to crush Ronan’s memories with. It had been softer to parcel out the stories, whenever they were the only way to get Ronan to listen.
--
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ronan snapped. This wasn’t whatever truth magic was compelling them, this was just pure, reactionary anger. Or maybe it was a combination of both. “I was pissed at Dad. At God. At everything. I didn’t know who the fuck to blame, so I blamed myself. That’s why my nightmares almost killed me. I didn’t know what the fuck I was. I needed answers. You had them.”
He hadn’t felt truly angry about this in a long time. Finding out that Declan had known about his dreaming, about Niall’s, had stumped him. He hadn’t known whether or not to continue being angry, but had usually fallen back on it by default.
--
Declan frowned. Ronan had gone into an emo stage after their father died. The tattoo, disheveled clothing, truancy. Honestly, it was a fair reaction to grief. They had lost their father, their mother, and their home in the course of a week. It hadn’t been easy to deal with. Dick had helped. But Declan had been juggling Ronan’s issues, Matthew, Niall Lynch’s black market business (so that it wasn’t immediately clear what a ‘greywaren’ was), care for Aurora, finances, keeping up appearances, and, when there was time for it, his education. Ronan had never confided in him and hadn’t made it at all apparent that he had been struggling with the idea of being a dreamer.
Honestly, Declan was a little surprised Ronan hadn’t put Niall and him together in his head, the connection. Like Ronan, Niall’s bedroom got the weirdest shit in it often enough as they grew up. Declan didn’t know how many times he had cleaned their parents’ bedroom. It seemed like a comedy of errors that Ronan had never learned. No one had told Declan. He simply grew up with it.
“I thought you knew,” Declan said. “Not everything, but the bare bones. You’ve been dreaming things since you could dream. The Barns is full of dreams. Made of them…” Plenty of them Ronan’s.
He paused. “You never asked me anything,” Declan said. “I’d have helped if you asked. If I’d known…” He would have done whatever he needed to for Ronan to be safe. That was the truth. But Niall had wrapped Ronan up so far away from everything but the ‘safe’ dream of the Barns. Declan hadn’t wanted to expose him to the cold, dark world. Ronan dreamt light and Matthew and ridiculous fancies he thought up. That didn’t need to be tainted. It shouldn’t have been.
--
Ronan’s anger dissipated when Declan didn’t fuel it, and he just felt empty and tired. “I knew the shape of it,” he said. “The feeling of it. I knew I had Dad’s magic. I didn’t know what it was, what we were, just that it was something people would kill us for. Something that was suddenly trying to kill me.”
Declan had grasped the rules of his magic much better than he had. He’d known about Aurora being Niall’s dream creature, about what had happened to her after. About Matthew being Ronan’s dream creature. “Like you said. I was inside the dream. I couldn’t see it from the outside.”
He leaned his elbows heavily against the table, closed his eyes. “And Dad made me promise to never tell anyone.”
--
Niall Lynch hadn’t died because he was a dreamer. He had died because he loved stories and couldn’t stop telling them. He loved telling so much he got himself into trouble he couldn’t get out of. He made the wrong promises to the wrong people, and it caught up with him. If special ops people hadn’t come after them, Declan thought it might have been possible for Ronan to live where being a dreamer wouldn’t get him killed. Declan had worked hard to make that the case: to keep Ronan away from the people who would lock him away in a cage and destroy his soul. No matter the personal price.
“Yeah,” Declan said dryly. “He made me promise the same thing.” Not to tell anyone. He had kept that promise. Even if he had broken the one about never letting Ronan go to a Fairy Market. It had been a time of poor decision making.
Briefly, Declan considered telling Ronan about his birth mother. But he didn’t have answers himself, not really. And he suspected Ronan would be upset Declan had recognized the woman and not told him who it was. Or that Declan had been chasing her just as desperately. Foolishly. More truth had come out between them than had in a long time. It was better not to push the calm.
“I didn’t want you or Matthew to get dragged into that world,” Declan said. Ronan had been impossible to control. Matthew too in his own way. The only sure way to keep them away from it had been keeping them from knowing about it. At least, until people returned for the greywaren.
--
Ronan huffed a mirthless laugh and let his head fall forward into his hands. “Of course he did.”
His insides hurt, but dully, not the corrosive burning feeling of being eaten inside by self-loathing. Just the ache of scar tissue left by years of it. He wasn’t thinking about anything that had happened recently, about any of the hurts that he and Declan had dealt each other; he was thinking about his father. Secretive Niall, alienating everyone around him, alienating himself even from his family’s lives simply by being gone. Ronan wondered if any of them had really known him at all.
He was so tired of carrying all this around.
“I don’t want to be part of that world,” he said tiredly. “I don’t want to be like Dad. But if I don’t know shit, how am I supposed to know what not to do?” Just telling him what to do didn’t work. Everyone knew that. “I just want to be left here in peace.”
But not alone with his dream things, like Niall had been; dreams weren’t enough to build a life on. He wanted -- needed -- real people around him, people who weren’t created by his imagination and whose lives weren’t fueled by his magic. People who had their own minds, drives, wants and needs, but stayed in his life because he mattered to them. Here, that was Gansey. Blue. Fray. Others that stayed but at a farther distance. The others that had come and gone.
Adam. Ronan missed him so much he ached with every fiber of his being.
“I can protect myself. But only if I know I need protecting. Okay? So cut it out with the ‘keep it secret to keep me out of it’ shit.”
--
Given all the dangerous shit Ronan had pulled, how impossible it was to keep him away from anything dangerous once Ronan had his sights on it (sometimes Dick could intervene… sometimes), how close to death Ronan had come, and how foolish he had behaved at the Fairy Market (giving his zip code to what was at best some form of the mafia? Something that made the dealer uneasy?), Declan was glad -- at least, at a minimum -- Ronan didn’t want to be part of that life. That dangerous place. Unlike their father. And, unfortunately true, like Declan. If it wasn’t something that would place Ronan and Matthew in any danger, he would have loved it.
“The only way I have ever successfully gotten you to stay away from something is you not knowing it existed,” Declan said. He didn’t say it with malice. But Ronan had never listened to Declan when he said something was dangerous or that he needed him. Sometimes, if Matthew needed him, that worked. But his phone calls and texts when ignored. Along with warnings. “If you want me to be open with you about things, you have to listen in return.
“Did you go the Barns when you were having issues with… nightwash?” Declan asked. It was Ronan’s term and as good as anything else. “Or did you chase things when doing so put you in danger of dreaming in public, far from safety?” Ronan’s silence on Declan’s texts wasn’t unusual. But given how Ronan ‘did not lie’ sometimes it functioned as a matter of silence, to avoid the lie.
He waved a hand between them. They both knew what the answer was. Or Ronan knew, and Declan assumed. He knew his brother. “When I say I need you, I mean it,” Declan said. “I’m not going to spell everything out on an unsecured line. This only works both ways. If you keep pulling ‘Dad’s working’ nonsense, I’m not going to tell you things. There have to be big red buttons you resist pushing.” Sure, he was falling back on some of the advice he had read in parenting books, but it worked for someone, right? Even if their family wasn’t good at getting murdered.
--
Ronan simmered indignantly. Sometimes dangerous things needed to be done. He’d needed to stay and fight the demon. He’d needed to confront the Lace, to keep Hennessy from dying or bringing it back from a dream. He’d needed to go with Bryde.
But he’d nearly died from the nightwash chasing the woman with his mother’s face and the man with his own. He’d brought murder crabs back from his dream into Adam’s dorm room. He had done some stupid shit and he knew that, too. He kept his mouth shut, let Declan wave it away.
Mostly.
“I was working,” he said irritably. “And it was important. And it was also something I wasn’t going to spell out on an unsecured line.” He let venom creep into his voice as he parroted Declan’s words back to him. But then he exhaled, knowing that Declan had indeed called him for important things. Like Matthew being in danger. “Fine. If you say you need me, you mean it. Got it.”
--
Declan raised an eyebrow and waited. He took a sip of the latte and set it back down. Ronan could mock Declan’s choice of words and throw a temper tantrum. It was a small one, for Ronan. Declan had weathered worse. It helped that Ronan wasn’t in immediate danger, and his brother could storm off but not hang up on him and leave Declan clueless as to where he was and what condition he was in. There was, remarkably, some benefit to living at the Barns, to sharing a house.
Between them, Ronan was the one who liked to lash out with the truth. A majority of Declan’s toolbox had been taken away from him. Not talking about secrets -- as opposed to outright lying -- had been one he relied on heavily. But some of them had come up and come out despite his wishes. And this conversation… well, they didn’t face the same dangers here as back home. But they could be just as deadly.
“I’ll tell you more when it’s safe to do so,” Declan said. He knew better than to abuse the notion of Ronan listening to him. “And I would appreciate if you did the same. Not the… floating cow nonsense or whatever that was. But whatever you were working on.” Declan had not cared to know more about the sort of nonsense that only happened with dreams on the Barns, not so long as it was an isolated Barns and Ronan only sort of matter. If, for example, locals here were going to see an ungulate floating into the sky, then it mattered to both of them.
He paused, considered. “Chainsaw did that dream daze thing too. And some of the other animals from the Barns,” Declan said. “When Matthew figured it out, he saw them there at the river, doing the same thing he did. He knew they were yours.” And Declan had been coaxing the enormous dazed bird into his arms to keep her safe. If he hadn’t, if he had just left her there, hurried Matthew by, perhaps he wouldn’t have figured it out. Declan didn’t know. But he hadn’t been going to abandon that damn raven of Ronan’s there.
--
“I was trying to save Hennessy from her dreams,” Ronan said. It really had been a good excuse to ignore Declan and so he wasn’t going to bother holding it back. “So like I said. Working.”
He twirled his spoon around in his soup just to have something to do with his hands, but he still wasn’t hungry. His hands stilled at the mention of Matthew; it felt like a stab in the gut, especially in this context. The idea of Chainsaw doing the same dream daze thing only made it hurt more. He wanted so badly how to figure out how to set all his dream things free.
That was as much as he could take sober. He put his soup spoon down, pushed back his chair, and headed to the fridge to grab the strongest thing he could find. Which, unfortunately for him, was beer. Probably because he’d drunk everything stronger after Adam’s disappearance and then he’d been too depressed to go out and get more (and also, with some degree of self-awareness, not wanting to have too much liquor around to tempt himself with).
He grabbed the six pack and brought it back to the table, opened one, and chugged down half the bottle. He swallowed, and then folded his free arm on the table and rested his head on it.
--
Saving another dreamer from her dreams sounded like the kind of work Ronan would choose to do, not something that had to be cajoled, manipulated, guilt tripped, or otherwise bullied out of him. And at that time, Matthew had still been going through his identity crisis. It hadn’t been a full twenty-four hours at that point. And Ronan had left, abandoning Matthew yet again. Sure, Declan was there. Declan was the one who had to drop all his real life obligations -- work, class, meetings -- whenever Matthew had a crisis. Ronan came when it was convenient for him, or at least, nothing else shinier had his attention.
Declan wanted to rake Ronan over those coals. It was so easy; all it took was the bitter taste of the truth. And Ronan choosing someone else over their family -- over Matthew, Declan had no illusions as to himself, unless he both was and Ronan knew he was facing an immediate death threat -- was a knife stuck between his ribs. Sure, he knew Jordan, and Declan didn’t want either her or Hennessy to die. But Matthew was the only priority they often agreed on. And Ronan wasn’t willing to do the day to day work; then he wasn’t willing to deal with the emotional problems Matthew was facing. When Matthew needed them most.
But Ronan had grabbed alcohol, a familiar habit. Declan hadn’t been trying to hurt Ronan. But it had been something he hadn’t shared, something that affected Ronan. So Declan was doing what Ronan had fucking asked for. He was talking. It wasn’t filling Declan with confidence. He grabbed a beer -- one less for Ronan to drink -- and opened it. He also continued to eat his soup. Declan wasn’t going to drink on an empty stomach.
“I need you to start replying when you could do something, or I’m really not going to have any reason or way to take comments like that seriously,” Declan said. “Don’t be the boy who cried wolf.” Or Declan wouldn’t believe him the time it was real. He managed not to say Matthew had needed Ronan. What he said was more on point about what he had been talking about.
“I took care of Chainsaw,” Declan said. Like he had taken care of Matthew. And Jordan. He knew how much Ronan loved his dumb bird.
--
“Hennessy was fucking dying,” Ronan said, without lifting his head. “That’s not crying wolf. You weren’t dying. Matthew wasn’t dying.”
He felt that Declan should, as everyone else did, realize that if Ronan actually replied to a text or a phone call, he was taking it seriously -- and he meant whatever he conveyed. With the notable exception of the times he’d texted Kavinsky, but that was a rule across the board. Or it had been at home. He generally replied to things here. Sometimes even initiated network conversations.
Which wasn’t to say he didn’t feel fucking awful about Matthew. It was obvious that he did. But even knowing what had happened, could he have walked away from a dying dreamer? Probably not. He was the only one who could help her.
--
Declan took a long deep breath. His stomach felt like coffee and acid. Like the soup he had been eating wasn’t taken into consideration. He took another antacid before saying anything. This whole conversation, he had tried to be generous in his consideration of Ronan’s feelings. Ronan’s thoughts and feelings were what determined what happened. But Ronan had been MIA too many times for that flippant text to have meant anything. Ronan simply wasn’t there when he had been needed, over and over and over.
And that was getting on Declan’s nerves. “I’m not saying you were crying wolf,” Declan said in as bland a voice as he could manage. Watching paint dry was more interesting than his tone of voice. “I am saying you have not come and dealt with Matthew related issues so many times that they were you crying wolf. That that time was the time there was a wolf and you weren’t believed. I couldn’t believe you.
“You didn’t pick up your phone when the hitman who killed Dad threatened not just my life but Matthew’s and yours” -- and possibly Ashley’s? It hadn’t been Declan’s top concern -- “if I didn’t give him the fucking stupid greywaren Dad promised,” Declan hadn’t meant to say that as well. But it was true. It was part of the reason Declan didn’t believe responses he got from Ronan, when he got them at all. Declan hadn’t thought he was about to die because he was the best lead to shake on that front, and the hitman hadn’t finished shaking him. But he had been worried for his brothers.
Declan took a longer drink from the beer. It wasn’t a good idea. “I’m just saying, if you look at it from my point of view, I didn’t -- I don’t always -- have a reason to believe you. You didn’t take Matthew going missing from school seriously. He could get hit by a car. He could fall down the hill and break something. He could draw the wrong kind of attention from someone hunting dreamers. A lot of things could happen. He could have been dying, and you were AWOL,” Declan tried to bring himself back on track.
He sighed and pulled himself back together. “I’m asking for you to take things seriously. It’s not all’s well that ends well because I drop everything I’m doing every time Matthew needs me, and nothing worse than an identity crisis has happened when you haven’t picked up the phone.” Because he was aware that the last time, when it had been life or death, Ronan had miraculously picked up the phone. And the sundogs, as horrible as they were, had managed to save their lives (as well as try to eat them).
--
“I didn’t always have any reason to believe you were calling me about any important shit,” Ronan said tiredly, “And I didn’t pick up the phone for anyone. You knew that.”
He lifted his head only to take another swallow, about half of what was left in his bottle. But he immediately put his head back down. He knew full well that he hadn’t done right by Matthew. He hadn’t known for a while that Matthew was one of his dream things, but he was still Ronan’s little brother.
There was no way he could make up for that here, without Matthew coming through the portal. Instead he just got to stew and suffer in the knowledge that Matthew -- sweet, kind, never-angry Matthew -- was pissed at him. And he deserved it.
“Fine, but it goes both ways,” he said. “Don’t bug me about stupid shit--” like school, which thankfully was no longer a concern regardless-- “Or I’ll stop taking you seriously again.”
--
“I left a voicemail,” Declan said evenly.
That wasn’t the point. “Fine,” Declan agreed, gritting his teeth. Ronan had never understood the protection Aglionby provided, the shield that hundreds of eyes and ears provided. That wasn’t on the table anymore. It was the Barns, a place Declan had long lost the feeling of safety from. It was a quiet, isolated location. A good place for a murder.
He took another swig of the beer, which was more than half empty by the end of it. Declan needed to eat more of the soup. It was an uneasy truce. But Declan cared far too much about keeping Ronan alive to abuse his end of the agreement.
“I think you should close the go carts until whatever this is,” Declan motioned vaguely, this truth telling irritant, “is over. We don’t need someone asking an otherwise innocuous question and getting the truth.”
--
Ronan felt that it went without saying he also hadn’t been using his phone to listen to voicemails. He literally had gone out of his way to never use his phone at all, foisting it on Adam or Gansey. (Usually Adam.) He still didn’t like phones or voicemails but he didn’t hate them quite so intensely. As soon as texts from Adam had become a thing, he’d even kinda liked them. Though without Adam around, he was apathetic again.
He finished off his beer and considered throwing it at the wall. Chose not to. Instead he reached for another.
“They run themselves,” he said. As if he’d ever create a job for himself that couldn’t be left to its own devices whenever he wanted to be out in the fields or dreaming or dealing with whatever shit came up. “We can just hole up.”
--
Declan eyed Ronan drinking more. The six pack had come out. Declan expected drinking to continue at least until it was empty. Mentally, he sighed again. At least it wasn’t hard liquor.
He had observed the carts running without supervision. Strangers coming onto the Barns without any watchful eye wasn’t something Declan liked. But he wasn’t going to go and talk to any strangers when he couldn’t lie. “Fine,” he repeated. It felt like it should have been a dream thing causing this. Like the way the painting worked. Except worse.
It was going to be a fun however long this was. At least if they were holed up, they could run out of alcohol. Declan kept drinking.