WHO: Ronan Lynch & Adam Parrish WHAT: Adam arrives! WHEN: February 25, 2020 (backdated) WHERE: Bureau -> Barns WARNINGS: Nah
Ronan was half-passed out on the couch, lost somewhere between drunk and hungover. He dozed in and out of consciousness, waking to Chainsaw pecking at the multitude of beads around his neck and the feathers in the mask that sat askew on his head.
His tablet buzzed on the couch next to him. He grunted and lifted his head, squinted at it. For a moment the words were blurry, and then he made out one.
Adam.
He was suddenly, instantly awake. He sat up too quickly, dislodging Chainsaw (but somehow not the mask on his head; it was stuck on his ear). A cascade of beads fell around him; his raven had managed to break the strings of a few of them. She fluttered down to the floor to pick up her prizes. Ronan barely noticed.
He stumbled to his feet, discovering that he was definitely closer to hungover than anything else, and had to stand still for a moment and swallow. Fuck, his breath was terrible. He fumbled in the kitchen for something to make it smell better, finally coming up with some gum.
Then he ran out to the car, sparing a few moments to tell Adam he was coming before he got in and sped to the Bureau.
And there he was, waiting outside. Ronan stopped breathing, almost crashed the car into the curb. He managed to park it safely, but not without a terrible squeal of the brakes. He pulled himself out of the driver’s side door, and then just stood there staring dumbly at Adam for a moment before he started to move around the car to get to him.
--
Adam met him halfway, crashing into him recklessly and twining his arms around him. It didn't matter that he'd seen him only a few minutes before he'd tumbled off his motorcycle and into a portal; it already felt like a lifetime ago. It felt like a lifetime every time he had to say goodbye but this, not knowing if he'd ever find his way back at all, had been worse.
The mingled scent of sweat and liquor was an assault on his nose, but that wasn't what made Adam pull back far enough to look at him. That was partially the beads that were getting in the way of really burying his face against Ronan's neck, and partially that his mind hadn't stopped working no matter how relieved he was that Ronan was here and, hopefully, theoretically, safe from the something watching them and from Bryde, even more dangerous still even if Adam couldn't be sure who he was a danger to, specifically. It didn't make sense for Ronan to be here when he'd just left him. He could have accepted the beads and the feathers. Ronan had dreamed more bizarre than that. But the time...
If Ronan had seemed unfamiliar, difficult to recognize, when he'd come to Harvard, he was even closer to a stranger now. It settled uneasily, another piece of a puzzle that Adam almost wished he could stop trying to put together just for a moment.
"I'm so glad you're here," Adam murmured, loud enough to only belong to the two of them.
--
Ronan hadn’t fully believed that Adam was here until the moment that Adam hugged him. He was a solid, familiar shape in Ronan’s arms, warm and real, gloriously happy to see him. Not that he’d believed Adam wouldn’t be happy to see him if he came back. But he hadn’t really known what shape Adam would be in if he came back.
His mind was stuck in processing the reality of Adam and it wasn’t anywhere near finished when Adam pulled back to look at him. This was where he was supposed to say something, and slowly, he tried to put the pieces together.
It was obvious Adam didn’t remember this place. Ronan had gotten that from the netpost alone. He was definitely college Adam, leather jacket Adam even, which was about how Ronan remembered him from the last time they’d seen each other in his new memories. But he was too groggy, and the memories were not lived memories, so it was not enough for him to be positive. Adam could have worn this same outfit a dozen times at Harvard and Ronan wouldn’t know the difference.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he managed to say at last, after staring at Adam just a little too long. He cleared his throat, tried to explain why he was being weird. “Sorry. It was Mardi Gras. Also, I’ve been here… awhile.”
I missed you, he thought, but the feeling was too much for him to say it aloud.
--
"I was just at the Barns," Adam told him. Blue and Gansey had both made it pretty clear that neither of them had seen him in a long time, either, but for them it was a little easier to fathom. They were text messages, voices on the other side of the phone; they'd been in touch but it had been so long since he'd seen their faces that Adam could grasp the idea of a long absence. Ronan, though...
Ronan was still a fresh memory of warmth. The idea that it had been a long time since Adam had seen him felt far more wrong. That Ronan had been at Mardi Gras when Adam could close his eyes and see the look on his face when he'd watched him leave, that was much harder to wrap his mind around no matter which way Adam tilted the information to try to make it fit.
Not being able to understand or put the pieces together was an itch that would linger at the back of Adam's mind. He wanted to sit down across from Gansey and tease every bit of information out of the situation, toss ideas back and forth until he understood more of it. He wanted Blue to point out the practical bits that he was missing because he was so lost in the details. But more than all of that, he wanted Ronan. Nothing specific from him, just every bit of himself. "How long is awhile?"
Adam was afraid of the answer, but he didn't fear it more than he needed it. If he was going to make sense of this place, he needed to know how much of his friends' lives he'd somehow missed.
--
Ronan didn’t want to answer that question. Adam wasn’t going to like the answer, and follow up questions and answers wouldn’t make it any better. The reality of the situation was confusing and there were no easy explanations.
He’d had a variation of this conversation with Gansey, with Noah, with Blue and Declan, but never with Adam. He and Adam had showed up at the same time. He didn’t know what to expect.
But Ronan had never lied -- not to Adam, anyway -- and he sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.
“Almost three and a half years.” He was drinking in the sight and feel of Adam as if it had been that long since he’d seen him, but it hadn’t, which meant he had more explaining to do. Because it wasn’t going to occur to Adam that he might have been here before. “You were here with me for most of it. Been gone since July.”
--
"I..." If Ronan being there for over three years was a shock, hearing that he'd been there before was being struck by lightning. Not just been there, but been there for... Adam could have done the math in an instant, normally, but the numbers slid through his grasp like water. Almost three years? He frowned, lips tight and a wrinkle between his eyebrows. "I don't remember."
There was nothing to tell Adam how he was supposed to feel about that. No rules he could have learned to help him react to news like this. That Ronan could be making it up didn't cross his mind. Ronan didn't lie, even when a lie would have saved him a world of pain. Three years of Adam's life, gone; three years that Ronan had spent with an Adam that wasn't him. Was that something he'd get used to, if he spent longer in this place?
It couldn't do anything to lessen the sickening swoop of his stomach now, though.
Behind the slippery shock, Adam's mind still buzzed with fragments of thought, trying to piece together something whole enough to say out loud. Most of it was... not irrelevant, but not important enough to ask—was Adam the youngest of them, now? How far ahead of him were Gansey and Blue?
What he asked, finally, was, "Do people always forget, if they... come back?"
--
Shit.
Ronan had known that wouldn’t go over well, but he hadn’t anticipated how hard Adam would take it. The look on his face somehow reactivated Ronan’s limbs, though; he had been sensorily overwhelmed by Adam in his arms for a moment. But he pulled one arm back to lift his hand, press it against Adam’s cheek. The other stayed around him, steadying him.
“I know,” he said quickly, “It’s okay.”
He nodded, even though the answer to Adam’s question was not a precise yes. “Most of the time, yeah. Not always. But most of the time.”
--
It was, mostly, about the control. Adam had gotten better about relaxing his grip on it, letting small bits of it go. Years that he couldn't remember was more than a small bit. It was longer than he'd known Ronan, in his... timeline? Multiverses weren't something that Adam had put thought into, since they had nothing to do with either his classes at Aglionby or Welsh kings.
Adam didn't really feel like it was okay at all, but he leaned his face into Ronan's hand, anyway, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It would be okay, even if it wasn't now. As long as it wasn't a disappointment that he wasn't the Adam that Ronan had spent years learning.
The way they fit together was almost the same as Adam remembered. His hand found the back of Ronan's head, pulled him closer to press their foreheads together.
"I think I'm jealous of myself," he admitted. The words were barely more than a breath. There had been an Adam who got to have this, and that wasn't him.
--
Ronan leaned willingly against him, keeping his eyes open because he was afraid if he closed them, Adam would disappear. He felt simultaneously like he couldn’t breathe, and that he could breathe easier. Adam had always been a breath of fresh air. Now he was as vital to Ronan as a lung.
Being here with him had meant having him at the Barns, not being separated even when they traveled, and Ronan couldn’t deny that had made it the best two and a half years of his life. He wished Adam could remember, wished he could regain those memories somehow, but he had been here long enough to know that he wouldn’t. Ronan could tell him about it, if he wanted, but now wasn’t the time.
It was strange, but even knowing how happy Adam had been here with him, even knowing that they had a future at home, Ronan still felt glad to know that the time they’d had here was something Adam wanted, wished he could remember. Two and a half years later and he still took nothing about Adam for granted.
He leaned in and kissed Adam, partially to reassure him and partially because he just really fucking wanted to, and god, he’d missed this. “Tamquam,” he murmured against Adam’s lips. This time, he also intended it to mean: they were still their same selves, Adam was the same Adam that Ronan had been living with while he’d been here; Ronan was still the same Ronan that Adam had been with at home.
That didn’t solve the matter of what the fuck had happened to Adam when Ronan’s texts had gone unread. Maybe this Adam could tell him what the fuck that had been about, but it was equally likely he couldn’t. The present moment was more important just now.
--
"—alter idem," Adam mumbled back, already pressing in for another lingering kiss. It eased that sick feeling at last, hearing that. They were years apart, but those words were still something they shared. Something that was equally theirs. And kissing Ronan, that felt the same, too. It finished unclenching his stomach, curled his lips into a smile against Ronan's.
He could think about what he'd missed and what he'd forgotten later. He could think about school and the future, the thousands of little inside jokes that he'd never understand when they were all together, what he was supposed to do with his life if he didn't have Harvard. He'd make new plans, and he'd make new memories, be in on new jokes until the ones he'd missed didn't matter anymore. What mattered, the only thing that mattered, was that he hadn't lost the one thing he couldn't and wouldn't give up.
When Adam pulled away this time, it was to demand, "Take me home."
Wherever home was... Barnmouth? Maybe he should have asked Blue more about that after all, except he honestly didn't care. Home was wherever Ronan was, no matter what they called it.
--
Ronan had missed Adam so much, every second he’d been gone. Every second that he was here, the reality of him sank in a little further, filled in the gaping absence in his heart and soul. Adam being away at Harvard was nothing compared to Adam being in an entirely different universe. No texts, no phone calls, no way of knowing when (or even if) he would see Adam again.
It ached to let Adam go, but he did, and he nodded. He pulled open the passenger’s side door of the BMW -- really, Adam was in the best shape to drive, but he didn’t know where he was going -- and walked around it to get in the other side.
“The Barns is here,” he said, as he started the car, almost on autopilot. Explaining the current situation was easier than everything else, and besides, Adam was going to notice this as soon as they got home. “And Monmouth. And I put in some go-karts and a roller coaster. And got some new pets.”
--
The BMW, at least, was something else familiar. Adam rested a hand on the center console for a second once he'd gotten in, just to reassure himself that... he didn't know. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, aside from something more to anchor him. More proof that he was here and this was real. That everything, including Adam, existed.
His smile was completely involuntary, helpless against the fact that of course Ronan had more pets... dreamed up, Adam assumed, but maybe making assumptions here wasn't the best idea. The go-karts and roller coaster should have been a surprise, but they were so perfectly Ronan that he couldn't really be surprised about them at all. Most important, though, was the fact that it was the Barns they were going back to.
A different Barns than the one he'd just left; that would take a moment, but coming back to a Barns that wasn't the same as the one he'd last seen wasn't exactly new.
"Are the go-karts and roller coaster for a reason, or just because you could?" Adam was shifting out of his shock, now; he was sure it would come and go for a while, but for now he needed to know a million little things about what Ronan had been doing. "And what about Chainsaw, is she here? And..."
Adam almost didn't want to ask, but this one he needed to know the most. "Opal?"
--
“Both,” Ronan said with a slightly ironic grin. “They’re how I make money here. That and selling fruit.”
It warmed his heart that Adam asked after his dream creatures, and his smile warmed, his posture relaxed in the driver’s seat as he pulled away from the curb. The tires didn’t squeal this time, but he was going only marginally slower than he’d driven over here. “Chainsaw and Opal are both here, and even my night horror -- the one the demon killed -- showed up. We also have a dog named Slayer, a Ditto -- you know, like the pokemon? We went to Pokemon world for a bit. And some dumbass Star Wars swamp turkeys that came through the portal after I accidentally fucked with it. And then I have a friend that keeps her cow, goats, and Tauros pokemon at my place too. There’s also a new orchard and a lake and some other random shit. Also, Monmouth and Declan’s townhouse are kinda on the same property now.”
He lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “When the Barns showed up here it was practically empty. None of my father’s creatures, just my little animals. Now it’s a little more filled up.”
--
"It sounds..." Adam smiled again, a soft sort of smile. Chaotic. Confusing. Overwhelming, especially trying to wrap his head around it all at once. He'd always liked dogs, and cows and goats were the normal sort of thing you'd expect to find at a place called the Barns, even if seeing cows that were actually awake would take a little getting used to. But Pokemon—and he wasn't going to mention that he'd never really had the chance to get into it when other kids had been, or that his father probably would have torn the cards up if he'd tried—and swamp turkeys, Adam could barely even start imagining those. He wouldn't have to imagine anything, though. He'd just have to look around. "...great. Honestly."
He couldn't spend all his time wandering around the Barns, getting used to all the ways it had changed. There was still finding a job to worry about, but with as long as Ronan had been around he'd have to know a place Adam could try. Maybe (and the thought brought a little of the sinking feeling back) wherever he'd worked when he'd lived here before would take him back. He'd give himself a day, though, maybe two.
As much as he wanted to stare at Ronan, Adam forced himself to look out the window instead, take in as much of the town as he could at the speed that Ronan was driving. He didn't know how long it would be his home; he hoped the answer was as long as Ronan was there. That was probably what he'd hoped the last time, too.
"What about the ley lines?" If he tried, Adam could probably feel the answer to that question for himself. "Are there any nearby?"
Surely, in a place like this one, there had to be.
--
Ronan grinned at him, a flash of an expression before he had to look back at the road. He thought it was pretty great, too -- still weird that the Barns even existed here in any form (he wasn’t sure if the alternate world thing was weirder, or the fact that it was in Texas), but he would take it over the Barns not existing.
“That’s something worth asking Gansey and Blue,” he answered. “They’ve looked around. I think they’ve caught hints here and there. I haven’t been traveling with them most of the time.”
--
"Can you?" Adam didn't ask whether Ronan had found a way to stop the nightwash, but he didn't think he'd need to. Ronan would know what he meant.
Going to Mardi Gras was different; Adam assumed he hadn't tried to sleep there. If Ronan could travel with Blue and Gansey though... it made the world bigger. For Ronan. For all of them. "I told them both I'd check in soon. Not tonight, though."
Because that was another thing that didn't need saying. This night was for them, no matter how they spent it. Adam would like to spend it in an obsessive study of the ways that Ronan was the same, the ways that he was different. Relearning him with words and fingers and lips.
And that part Adam kept to himself because he wanted them to get to the Barns in one piece.
--
“A little,” Ronan said, adjusting his grip on the wheel. “It’s better in this world, but I haven’t tried to go away for more than a few days. When we go other places for a while it gets worse.”
His heart flipped at the implication of not checking in with Blue and Gansey tonight. It meant, he hoped, he was going to have Adam to himself tonight. He stepped on the gas, and soon, turned onto the street where the entrance to the Barns began. The part that he’d turned into an amusement park was obvious first, with a big public entrance; he drove almost a block past it and then turned up the long driveway towards the farmhouse.
“Bit of mindfuckery,” he said, “Then we’re home.” Adam had been through his mindfuck ward once already at home, but he figured the advance warning would be helpful. He floored it and gritted his teeth until they were through, and kept up the speed until they reached the house. He parked, turned off the car, and looked at Adam.
--
The ward had been unexpected, the first time; knowing what was coming gave Adam enough time to brace himself and breathe through it. It wouldn't last forever, because it hadn't lasted forever. And then it was over and Adam was staring at the Barns again, for the second time that day.
He'd noticed some of the differences. It was hard not to. There were probably thousands more he'd notice over the next few days or weeks. A coffee cup he liked that wasn't there anymore. Furniture shuffled from where he remembered it being. It didn't matter, though, because being back was such a relief. He'd felt it the first time he'd pulled up that day, too. Adam hadn't realized he could be homesick for any part of Henrietta until then.
But he only admired it for a moment. Ronan was looking at him, after all, and that would never stop sending electricity snaking down Adam's spine. He looked back at him, just like he always would, and smiled. He was already reaching for the door handle.
"Anything I need to watch out for on the way in?" Adam wouldn't mind sitting in the car all night, if that was what Ronan wanted, but he'd rather have more room and a less awkward angle in case Ronan wanted to welcome him home.
--
Ronan wasn’t opposed to making out in the car, but he was eager to reunite Adam with Opal and Chainsaw, and to reintroduce him to Ditto and Slayer. Which, he realized, was kind of his version of making Adam play cards with his friends before they got to be properly alone, and now he understood that a little better.
“Slayer’s gonna jump on you,” he said. “And Ditto does like… transformation? It likes to turn into Slayer or Chainsaw or Opal.” He grinned at Adam. “So you might have to try to figure out which one is which. Or it might just be a weird purple blob.”
He reached for the door handle and pulled himself up out of the car. He came around to Adam’s side and offered his hand.
--
Without hesitating, Adam took it. Any excuse to stay near, to stay touching. "I think I can figure it out."
Or he'd get the hang of it eventually. He thought he knew Opal and Chainsaw well enough to tell the difference, at least, unless they'd both changed completely while they'd been here. They hadn't had the time to go see Opal while he'd been at the Barns, and Adam suddenly missed her as if it had been much longer since the last time he'd seen her.
His grip on Ronan's hand while they walked to the door was firm; nerves, partly, and he wouldn't admit it but he was sure Ronan would know anyway. He'd promised Opal he'd come back. Seven months wasn't that long, really, but it was longer than he'd ever planned to be away.
--
Ronan hadn’t been kidding; the moment they walked in the door, there was a clattering of four paws worth of toenails on the floor, loud barking, and then a muscular grey pitbull was leaping all over them, wiggling her entire body and trying to lick their faces. Ronan made a grab for her collar, and had to let go of Adam’s hand to get a two-handed grip on it before she knocked Adam over with her enthusiasm.
Of course, a second later, Chainsaw dive bombed them out of nowhere, screeching, “Atom!”
And then a second black, feathery form hurdled clumsily through the air straight into the side of Ronan’s head, but this one said, “Ditto!”
“Stupid fucker,” Ronan told it affectionately as it fell to the floor. “Ditto sucks at flying, so that’s usually a big hint. And all it ever says is its own name.” From the floor, still Chainsaw-shaped, Ditto pecked affectionately at Ronan’s ankles and then at Adam’s. “Opal’s probably outside somewhere still. She was out there when I left, I didn’t get to tell her you were here.”
--
As soon as Ronan let go of his hand, Adam reached to scratch behind Slayer's ears almost as enthusiastically as she'd greeted him. Chainsaw made him smile so hard it hurt his face; Ditto's crash made him laugh, loud and bright over the chaos of Ronan's—their?—animals saying hello. Or welcome back, he guessed. They all would have known him from before, he was sure.
"Should we go find her?" Adam asked. It wouldn't hurt anything to wait a little longer, he thought. Until she wandered back on her own. But she'd already be jealous that Chainsaw had gotten to see him first, and Adam hadn't exactly had the chance to bring her a present to make up for that. "Or let it be a surprise?"
Not that it wouldn't already, just... an extra sort of surprise. Adam, there, back just like he'd promised her he would be, before he'd left for school. Already settling back into the Barns like he'd never been gone at all.
He didn't let himself get too far from Ronan, stayed close enough to feel the heat of him against his side.
--
“One of you go get Opal,” Ronan said to the assorted animals. None of them listened to him; they were all too obsessed with Adam still. Nothing else he could offer them would be as good, he could tell, and frankly, he couldn’t blame them. Nothing could have convinced him to leave Adam’s side right now. “We should probably go and find her. Come on.”
He released Slayer’s collar, since she had at least stopped trying to jump on Adam and was just leaning heavily against his legs and wiggling with joy. He leaned down to pick up Ditto-bird instead, settled it on his shoulder and then took Adam’s hand again to lead him outside.
The interior of the Barns wasn’t much different from the way it was at home, except for random little things he had bought/dreamt here that he hadn’t at home, and a number of things that Adam had purchased while he lived here, and some of Declan’s things (which stood out simply by being boring). All of Adam’s things from home had disappeared when he’d left, and Ronan hadn’t checked if they’d reappeared, but he imagined that at least some of them must have done. They could check in the bedroom whenever they got there.
Outside, however, there was an immediate difference: the temporary shelter that Ronan and Declan had built close to the house to keep the animals closer by while Maleficent had been threatening them, and some of Ronan’s new plants. The shelter was the size of a small barn and pressed up close against the house; the plants sprawled wherever they liked. One in particular, a vine with obsidian stone thorns and flowers, crawled along the ground and over the walls and reached out tendrils for them as they passed. Ronan brushed his fingers over one of the flowers as he passed it.
“Opal,” he shouted, “Opal! Adam’s back!”
There was a high-pitched sound way off in the distance, and Chainsaw made a displeased noise in response. Then a small shape came running through the grass toward them. “There she is,” Ronan said, pleased that they hadn’t needed to spend ages looking for her. “We’re lucky I brought her back from Lindenmere, really. Otherwise we’d have to take another drive.”
--
"We'd have the time," Adam told him, softly. There wasn't a class he had to be back in time for, in the morning. There wasn't anywhere he had to go at all. Still, he was glad that they could stay at the Barns, where at least the strange things were strange in a way that was somehow still comfortable. And he was glad that they wouldn't have to drive back afterward.
The only reason Adam let go of Ronan's hand was to crouch down and put himself at Opal's level, arms parted and ready for her. Warmth bloomed in his chest again. He'd missed her—not the same way he'd missed Ronan during the months he spent at Harvard, but missed her all the same, and for longer. Ronan couldn't bring her with him to visit. It had felt strange, wrong, that his friends didn't know anything about her, but he'd never have been able to describe her well enough for them to understand her, anyway.
Opal looked almost exactly the same as he remembered her; Ronan had been right that she wouldn't grow anymore. He wrapped her in a hug, affection easier than he'd ever thought it could be, once. Slayer took advantage of Adam's crouch to wiggle up next to him again, warm and solid. He murmured to Opal, "I told you I'd always come back."
He wished he could promise that he'd stay this time, but he didn't have any control over that. All he could do was hope.