ronan lynch (chainsawheart) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2020-06-19 20:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, adam parrish, ronan lynch |
WHO: Ronan & Adam
WHAT: Ronan has trouble controlling his dreams in space
WHEN: Like a week-ish into the space cruise? (BACKDATED)
WHERE: The Atomica
WARNINGS: Technically Ronan is dying, otherwise mild
There was nothing that Adam couldn't adjust to, with enough time. He hadn't had the time to adjust to Tumbleweed, outside of the Barns and, of course, Monmouth transplanted to be its next door neighbor. Space had been strangely easier to get used to simply because it was so far from anything that Adam had ever known. He knew Texas—not personally, but Texas was a solid concept, something he could point to on a map and even name a few major cities.
Space, though, was so abstract a concept, so much bigger than anything he'd ever touched, that he'd been able to start reconciling it as being different from the world he'd left behind when he'd crashed through a portal. The alienness of it had made it easier to start shifting everything else in his new life into its own place. Ronan, and Opal and Gansey and Blue, were still his even after some time had been misplaced for all of them, and for Adam too. Better and more comforting still than that was that curling into Ronan in bed at night felt the same as it ever had.
Not being able to move in with Ronan on the ship had been disappointing; not that he'd had any problems with Della as his roommate, it was more that he'd gotten used to the idea of spending the rest of his nights with Ronan. At least, as far as Adam had been able to tell, there weren't any rules about spending the night with someone else, as long as you didn't move there permanently.
The hum of the engines had become familiar enough to be soothing, but something had made Adam stir, anyway, pulled him away from the depths of sleep. He grumbled and shifted against Ronan... unintentionally at first, but if he was awake it was only fair for Ronan to keep him company.
--
Ronan was awake, because he hadn’t fallen asleep yet. If he fell asleep, he would dream, and when he dreamed, he would bring something back, and he didn’t know what it was going to be. He was in space, far from the Barns and the dormant ley lines in the world of Tumbleweed, far from Lindenmere, where he was in the most control over his dreams than anywhere else. He had not yet completely lost control of his dreams when they went on these cruises, possibly thanks to the portal’s intervention, but space had always been the worst. Last time, he’d kept dreaming about black holes, long before one had actually appeared and threatened to swallow them. He was afraid of what he would dream now.
But he had noticed a speck of black at the corner of his eye before bed, and as he lay here, he could feel it trickling down his face, over the side of his nose. He lifted a hand to wipe it away and then stilled, because Adam grumbled and shifted against him and he couldn’t tell if it was the movement that had woken him.
“Parrish?” he whispered, when Adam shifted against him again, seemingly more intentional this time.
--
"I'm awake," Adam told him, just as softly. It sounded like Ronan hadn't been asleep at all; it wasn't a surprise. He was used to Ronan's insomnia, even more than he was used to Gansey's by now. Once Adam might have been up with them, not because he'd tried to sleep and failed but because there wasn't enough time in his day to do all the things he needed to and so he had to steal the hours from the night.
Slowly, Adam turned to push himself up onto his elbow, eyes blinking open and squinting to make out his boyfriend's face in the dark. There was something...
He reached out to smudge away the rest of the dark streak on Ronan's nose. "You haven't been dreaming."
It was something he should have noticed before, that Ronan hadn't woken up with any strange and wondrous items. He'd told himself that maybe Ronan dreamed on the nights when he wasn't there, but there was no denying what he saw. Adam should have asked sooner.
--
Ronan closed his eyes and leaned his head into the touch. It was probably the wrong emotion to have under the circumstances, but all he felt was relief. Nothing was fixed, of course, but everything felt more fixable with Adam here.
“I’m going to,” he assured him; he wasn’t going to put Adam through the stupid self-sacrificing shit again. Not that Adam remembered that, but he’d finally (he hoped) learned his lesson. He’d pulled it at home, though, and that was plenty. “It’s just… space. It’s fucking with my dreams. I don’t want to blow up the ship or bring back a black hole or whatever.”
And there were plenty of other ways that his dreaming could be a problem, if he didn’t have control over them. But he didn’t have to spell that out for Adam. “It happens more quickly out here, though. So I’m not gonna get away with just not dreaming.”
--
Adam nodded, a furrow between his eyebrows as his mind, gone straight from the pleasant haziness of waking up beside Ronan to finely honed sharpness, picked through everything that could possibly go wrong with Ronan's dreams. If Ronan was thinking the same thing, the chances that something would go wrong were higher than they should risk.
They had to risk it anyway. Adam would risk whole universes a thousand times before he watched Ronan being unmade again.
"I'm staying with you," he told Ronan—just in case he had any ideas about sending him away. He didn't know what he could do, whether he could scry, whether he'd still be able to feel anything at all while Ronan dreamed. He should have tried it once they'd gotten here. He'd meant to try it, just to know for a fact whether he could or not. Space was a long way from ley lines and magical forests.
He let his hand slide, traced Ronan's cheekbone with the pad of his thumb on his way to cradle his jaw against his palm; he leaned in for a kiss and told him, softly, "Bring me back something nice."
--
Ronan didn’t argue -- he had absolutely no intention of sending Adam away. Last time his dreams had gotten fucked up by space and the black hole, Adam had been the one to solve it. He had pushed Adam away at first and so it had taken some time and his dreams had gotten worse, before Adam had insisted on knowing what was going on. He’d learned his lesson, then. Even if Adam couldn’t fix it, he wasn’t going to push him away.
But Adam was very good at fixing things. Ronan had expected him to offer to scry into his dreams again, and he was willing, although he was a little afraid of where Adam’s soul might go if it was away from his body in space. Probably Adam had considered that, too, because that wasn’t what he offered.
Nevertheless, his solution -- and his touch -- revved the engine of Ronan’s heart, and his mind went in an entirely different direction. Which of course was precisely what Adam had intended.
He closed his eyes and kissed Adam back, his heart rate ticking up another few notches. It was tempting to just stay awake and keep kissing him. But he could do that after he dreamed Adam something nice. And in the process, prevented himself from dying for a little while longer. His mind was already working out what he could bring back, what he might be able to make even if space fucked with his dreams that Adam would like.
Softly, against Adam’s lips, he murmured, “Okay.”
He broke the kiss, buried his face in Adam’s shoulder, tightened his arms around Adam’s waist, and fell asleep.
He fell very abruptly into the vacuum of space, surrounded by stars, planets, black holes, but the dream wasn’t a nightmare. So he stared out at all the planets and stars, and even the black holes, and then he went to work. He reached out and plucked the planets and stars from their orbits, holding them between his thumb and forefingers, and strung them together with a cord pulled and rolled from the darkness around him. The little planets brightened as they were strung together, still orbited by their tiny moons, and the stars burned even more intensely, all of them glowing like a string of fairy lights. But none of them burned Ronan’s skin, no matter how vividly they looked like they were burning, instead giving off a pleasant coolness like the touch of a breeze.
When he had strung them all together and everything else around him had gone black, he focused on the feel of them in his hands, the weight and tactile reality of them. When he was sure they were real enough to bring back, he imagined them strung along the walls of his bedroom on the Atomica, draped around the bed.
And then he woke up.
--
Adam hadn't moved since Ronan had tucked his head against his shoulder. He'd closed his eyes, too, for a moment, focused on the warmth of Ronan's breath against his skin and matched his own to its rhythm. Doubt tried to gnaw its way into the back of his mind... maybe he should have gotten Opal. She'd been protecting Ronan in his dreams for a long time before Adam had met him. Maybe he should have scryed into his dreams, tried to help more directly. There might have been something he could do—Adam needed to do something.
But sometimes being there was enough. At least, it was true when it was between him and Ronan.
It seemed like an hour of sitting there, arms around his boyfriend, breathing and being calm; it could have been just seconds instead. He didn't stir until he felt Ronan stiffening in his arms, the telltale seconds of paralysis that came when he woke from dreaming. His eyes were open a moment before Ronan's, a moment before Ronan pulled something from his dreams.
His next breath caught in his chest, face softening in awe. Someday, it would stop striking him every time, how much of a miracle Ronan was. How much of a miracle it was that he wanted to lay in Adam's arms.
Ronan had given him an entire galaxy, and honestly, Adam shouldn't have expected any differently. "Ronan, they're beautiful."
No matter how much he wanted to touch them, to explore exactly what it was that Ronan had made, Adam kept his arms around his boyfriend instead. There'd be time for that. He wasn't quite ready to give up on holding Ronan yet.
--
Ronan couldn’t move, and for a moment when he heard and felt Adam’s breath catch, he was worried that he’d gotten it wrong. Brought back something dangerous, and put them all in trouble. But it was just the one sharp inhale, not an acceleration of panicked breaths, and then Adam’s voice assured him that it had worked. Although it was possible that it was still dangerous somehow, he had brought back tiny stars and planets.
He relaxed in Adam’s arms, still immobile, but the tension drained out of his body. A minute or so later, feeling returned to his limbs and he managed to shift his head, open his eyes, look around at what he’d brought back. There was a lot more light in the room now, tiny burning stars ranging from orange to white to blue, various colored planets with rings and craters and tiny moons glowing more softly. Just like it had been in his dream.
“You like it?” he said, which was mostly a rhetorical question; he could tell Adam liked it. He was mostly just really, incredibly relieved that it had worked.
--
That question wasn't even worth dignifying with an answer. Adam snorted, face still tilted up to admire the lights. They made strange shadows on his face, left hollows beneath his cheekbones. Softly, he told him, "Can't wait to see how they look in our room."
Not that he was in a hurry to be done with the cruise, as long as Ronan could keep dreaming safely while they were in space. It was just, he thought, that wanting to come back to the barns was in his bones now. It was the first place he'd ever been eager to see again when he left it.
Absently, he moved his hand over Ronan's back, long soothing strokes. Being together at the Barns was, he thought, a little like this. A universe that Ronan had made magical and for some reason was willing to share with Adam. He enjoyed the magic of it without thinking about anything else for a moment longer before he returned to the practical. "At least they're high enough up that Opal won't have an easy time trying to eat them."
He turned his head, lips brushing against the top of Ronan's head.
--
Ronan hid a grin, watching Adam as he admired the lights. He hadn’t even designed them to show off Adam’s face like that, but that was definitely an added benefit that he could get used to. He brushed a fingertip over one of the dark hollows under Adam’s cheekbone. He was tempted to lean in and kiss it, but now that he’d successfully dreamed something and didn’t have to avoid sleep out of sheer survival instinct, he was really fucking tired.
“I’m sure Opal will find a way,” he said, with an amused snort of his own. “When will she ever get the chance to eat a star? Or a planet?” He eyed his creation. “My bet is she’ll go for a planet with rings first.”
His skin tingled where Adam’s lips brushed it, and he closed his eyes, tucking his head back down against Adam’s shoulder and slightly under his chin. “God, now that I’m not dying anymore, I’m really tired.”
--
"Then sleep," Adam told him, as if it could ever be as simple as that. This time, though, maybe it could be. As long as Ronan kept dreaming the sort of dreams where he made beautiful strings of lights to cover the walls of their temporary room.
Slowly, he started slumping back down; he just hoped that his head hit the pillow instead of the head of the bed. He tugged Ronan with him, keeping him as close as he could manage. After all, it had only been a few minutes ago when Ronan was still, like he'd said, dying. It wasn't something that Adam could forget any time soon. As much as he hated it, it wasn't something that he wanted to forget, how easily all of this could be lost. "Tomorrow you can make Opal a planet of her own to eat."
There wasn't anything that Adam could really do to keep her from getting these, but he was going to try. He wanted to keep them for as long as he could hold on to them.