Matthew Lynch :))))))) (dreamedup) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-08-27 08:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, the raven cycle: matthew lynch, the raven cycle: ronan lynch |
Who: The Lynch Brothers, the Brothers Lynch
What: Reconnecting, talking dreams and dreamers
When: A few days post-Interitus
Where: The Barns
Warnings: Nah, just soft bros and a few animals
The animals at the Barns were all officially back to themselves. They’d been sluggish and quiet for a couple days and parts of the farm had felt like weak spots Ronan’s insides immediately warned him away from, but those were nearly gone too. He still felt exhausted and worn thin. The feeling would pass eventually. There was just a lot of shit that needed to be done in the meantime. Closing the market down for nearly two weeks left a backlog of catch up.
Even still, he found himself trailing around behind his brother. Would it have been faster to split up and get things done separately? Maybe. But Ronan kept thinking about Matthew saying he was scared when they woke up with new memories and how this all had been the same kind of is this the end terrifying. He glanced over at Matthew as he finished carrying two buckets of milk over the cooler where they would wait for pasteurizing. “How do you feel?” He’d asked this question a lot this week. It wasn’t an outright hug but it was close for Ronan Lynch. “Not weak or anything now, right?”
Matthew pulled eggs out of the rainbow pocketed apron Blue had knitted for him specifically for carefully transporting them. In containers he placed six or twelve eggs, and on the top he wrote the date they were collected, a note that was some variation of Have a great day! and a smiley face or three. He liked personalizing the Barns experience, liked making deliveries, and liked talking to people at the market. He also liked working at the farm, all of it, even the chores that were done in the hot sun, or were ridiculously gross sometimes. This was their family farm after all, and although Matthew wasn’t sure that Niall would have loved the changes they’d made, he knew Aurora would have absolutely been delighted.
How was he feeling? The answer was complicated. The entire situation, Ronan bleeding nightwash, Gansey’s heart failing, Cabeswater all but shrinking and Adam’s connection to it sending him spiraling, Blue’s frightened look when she found him from the sheer weight of everything, all of that by itself had Matthew terrified. Add in his own woes and he could barely parcel out an answer that wasn’t stuck behind a ball of emotion lodged in his throat.
He nudged Ronan’s shoulder with his own. “Not weak,” Matthew promised. “Not wandering, either, I know that. I think I,” he scratched the back of his curly head. “I haven’t been sleeping great? It’s nothing to be worried about, I just. Stare at the ceiling and my brain won’t turn off.” Or he jolted awake at random hours, and once he was awake, he couldn’t fall back to sleep. He watched out the window as night paled into the hazy light of dawn, turned into the bright day and by then, it was time to get up and get moving. “I might try some tea or meditate, maybe?” Matthew, who had played every sport possible and could be accused of being a golden retriever turned person, didn’t know if he could sit still for that long, but it seemed like something to try, anyway.
“You? The truth.”
Ronan's heart felt like a brick in his chest. Matthew not sleeping was almost up there with Matthew not eating. The serious tone was comforting, though. Like his brother was taking his own fucked up situation seriously and not trying to fake his way through it. The Lynches faked their way through too damn much over the years. Ronan leaned against the barn wall close to Matthew.
"That sucks," he said plainly, softer than he spoke to most people. "I'd give you insomnia tips but that hippie shit is probably better." Reaching out, he squeezed Matthew's shoulder. He didn't care for the question being turned on him, but at least he knew the answer was fairly simple. "I'm tired. I'm probably sleeping too fucking much but it's like...I don't know, maybe I can keep us safe if I just stay in a dream. Figure it out."
“I might need them if it doesn’t work,” Matthew admitted. “Or I might start taking suggestions for new hobbies to try. Who knows, I could be really good at origami or word searches!” Not a fantastic joke, but Matthew was trying. And not because he was trying to be something he wasn’t, instead, it was him finding himself again--always trying to find the light, no matter what. It wasn’t that he didn’t experience other feelings, within the past few months it had been a wide range of them too, but the longer Matthew reflected on things, the more he realized who he was as a person was someone who chose joy.
But he was also someone who listened and empathized and who wanted to be seen as someone solid and steady. “Thanks for being honest,” he said, with a wry smile. Lynches hadn’t always been great at that either, they were raised on secrets alongside dreams and magic. Matthew considered his next words with a side to side toss of his head. “Ro, you know you can’t do that, right? Stay in a dream and keep us all safe. Not by yourself, at least, the last part, and the first part,” Matthew’s brow furrowed, again searching for the right words. There was something important he wanted to say, something about Ronan’s dreaming and Bryde and trying to solve everything on his own. He wished he was better with words.
“Your dreaming can do a lot, and it can do fantastic, important, beautiful things. But all of those things aren’t as important as you. You have to take care of yourself, and you have to let us do it for you too. None of it means anything without you, yeah?”
"No, I know, I know." Ronan pushed off the wall and rubbed his hands roughly over his shorn hair. "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant...that's what the frustration feels like, when I'm sleeping extra hard. Like if I just worked harder, I'd get there." Because when Ronan Lynch slept hard, he had to tightly control his dreams. Especially when he so desperately wanted something specific.
"I know it's not gonna work like that. I just need us to figure out this sweetmetal shit out, Matty. I need you to at least have that. Gansey too maybe. Just in case." It wouldn't necessarily be a cure-all. But they were supposed to work whether there was magic or not. Whether there was a feisty little mirror bossing people around too. And Ronan would take any insurance he could get. He stepped closer and pulled Matthew into a bear hug. "Are you ready to start talking to people? About you? It could help with the sleeping. Just...opening up and moving forward, I don't fucking know."
Matthew went right into the hug, he never needed an excuse. And while he wasn’t good with words, he was good at putting his entire self into physical affection. Ronan got a bear hug in return, something solid and sure as if to reassure him that Matthew was still Matthew, whose love could not be shaken. “Yeah,” he said, and while he didn’t sound thrilled with the idea, he sounded certain. Matthew would likely never have the ease that some people seemed to have in discussing powers or magic or whatever else made them different, but that was less important in the face of falling asleep forever. “We need help. I kinda got lucky by falling asleep and then waking up. Technically it happened twice. I don’t know if I’m lucky enough for a third one.”
That scared him, fear that read in every bit of Matthew and he knew Ronan felt it too. But these were things they had to talk about, things they had to confront.
“I’ve been thinking about Mom,” Matthew confessed, after a minute. He squeezed Ronan in the hug once, and then released him to lean against the barn and wrap his arms around himself. “It doesn’t seem fair, you know? That we might actually figure it out but couldn’t do it for her. We didn’t know any of it, so it’s not the same, I get that, but I just.” he trailed off, shrugging. “Wish a lot had been different.” How much had Niall known? Declan’s biological mother was involved with the organization that knew about the sweetmetals, maybe he didn’t know that, but he did know that his wife and son were dreams. Had it ever occurred to him that they needed a future?
Ronan gave Matthew's hug a final hug before his brother stepped back. Matthew looked like he was trying to protect himself, or just disappear, and that twisted up something behind Ronan's ribcage. He moved to lean against the same wall, shoulder pressed to Matthew's. It wasn't another hug so he technically wasn't be touchy-feely smothering. That was his story and he was sticking to it.
"I...fuck, yeah, I know. It's not fair." He looked away, not particularly staring at anything in front of him. "I wish it too." Thoughts about Niall flitting through Ronan's head but he shoved them away. It didn't matter that Niall had probably kept even more from him than he thought. He'd buried that bitterness already. He couldn't--he didn't want to carry it with him anymore. "But she wouldn't want us dwelling on that shit when your life is on the line. Not when we finally might actually have a lead. Maybe we're just looking at it all wrong."
Matthew nodded, even as he leaned his head to rub against Ronan’s. He did know, he agreed, it was just an odd sense of guilt and remorse for something he could have never changed. What ifs and what could have beens for Aurora, who deserved so much more. Saying goodbye to her face to face in Vallo had given him closure he never thought he’d have. But there would always be moments that had a distinct Aurora Lynch shaped hole.
“It doesn’t make me want to stop or change my mind,” Matthew said, quickly, in case there was any doubt of that. “I just, you know. Just trying to think through things.” Especially because it was impossible not to think of Aurora and her last minutes away. Matthew was finding his own hard to remember, that whole time was a blur of confusion and bits and pieces that made no sense, like trying to remember a dream halfway through the day. “What do you mean? You think we’re missing something obvious?”
"I don't know. I mean, we must be, right?" Ronan pushed away from the wall, some of the carefully banked anger at the pit of him flashing across his face. It was frustration not fury really, but his stronger emotions still tended to come with an angry blanket sometimes. "I didn't have a name for it but I've been trying to make this fucking thing for years and nothing."
He scuffed the ground with his boot. This thought had haunted him so long, he felt like it was never very far from the surface of his thoughts. Who was more motivated to free Matthew than him? And yet, every sweetmetal attempt had resulted in nothing special. "There's either a trick we don't know or we need to think outside of the box. Pull in more people to try. Maybe all at once, I don't know."
“If anyone could dream it, it would be you,” he told Ronan, earnestly. “I believe that, Ro. That means it can’t be dreamed.”
If Ronan had dreamed anything that he thought would be a reasonable idea, Matthew knew he would have brought it to Matthew to try. Or, maybe he wouldn’t, unless he was certain because Matthew had made his views on trying too many things clear. Either way, whatever the magic was that freed the dreams, it wasn’t the same as the magic that allowed for dreaming in the first place. Matthew supposed that made sense, even though dreamers were rare there had to have been one of them that had tried to free their dreams. If they knew what would happen, at least, what Matthew didn’t know was if there were other dreamers who talked to each other. Ronan had always thought himself alone, and Matthew had actually felt the same way, but maybe it wasn’t that way for everyone.
Matthew looked out over at the cows, seemingly lost in thought for a minute. “Like, making a sweetmetal requires so much of someone, right? Something original and unique to that person? That, maybe if there were more than one person, it divides up what’s needed so it’s more manageable?” Even after being here for more than a year, he still didn’t understand the laws of magic. But the idea of many hands makes light work, well, he understood that easily.
"I haven't just been trying to dream it though," Ronan frowned. "Tried painting shit, and making little doodads you could carry in your pocket. Nothing made me feel stronger when my magic started to fade." Shrugging, he moved over to a cow. She lifted her snout to nuzzle at him and he scratched at her face the way she liked.
"That could be it though. Maybe not just a bunch of people, but a bunch of people who care about you specifically, all having a hand in making the thing that protects you?" He didn't want to get his hopes up, but the idea wasn't total garbage. It had heart and sometimes magic was a fickle bitch that required that sort of personal touch. "It's worth a shot?"
“It would have been the tattoo, if anything?” Matthew said, shrugging “I love it, no regrets.” The sunrise colored sundog lived on his right shoulder blade and Matthew felt comforted by that constant reminder of being watched over. The sundogs original intent was to protect Matthew and Declan, they were a physical manifestation of Ronan wanting nothing more than the safety of his family. And they gave great snugs, for shadowy wolves.. “I want to see what you made? Even if they’re not right, I want to see? Maybe I can--tell that they're not right, so we'll know what right feels like? Or is that dumb?"
Matthew pulled out a bag of Spicy Ranch 3D Doritos and thoughtfully chomped on a few before handing them over to Ronan so Matthew could say hello to the cows. Sometimes he felt like he didn't have to say anything at all, he looked at them, they looked back, and he knew what they were thinking. He wrapped his arms around a cow's neck in greeting. "We should try it," Matthew settled on. "And if that doesn't work, then the answer isn't a sweetmetal right now, and that's okay. It's not like we're committed to it being a sweetmetal, that's just the answer that we know works."
That specific cow given enough affection, Matthew moved on to the next one, after nudging Ronan with his shoulder again. "I was scared. I am scared. I'm scared about what people are going to think, but I'm also scared about falling asleep again. So, I'm ready to try."
Ronan cast a quick glance at Matthew. He was probably right. If anything Ronan had brought into the world was personal enough to be a sweetmetal, it probably would've been the tattoo he'd drawn a hundred sketches of before he'd finally presented it to his brother. He took a chip reflexively and then crossed his arms over his chest after he ate it. It was less out of defensiveness and more out of normality. It was his default position and he used it to park next to Matthew and nod.
"You can see it all. Just assume it's a pile of junk, because it is." He uncrossed his arms to press a hand to Matthew's back. "I'm scared too. But not about what people are going to think of you. At home, maybe shit would be a lot harder. But everybody here has seen incredible stuff, and they know about dreams. No matter what happens with the sweetmetal, that part will work out just fine." Patting Matthew on the back, Ronan grabbed another pail to milk the next cow. "And if it doesn't, I'll bash some heads," he joked. "Get back to work. I wanna go get burritos when we're done."
"Ro," Matthew drew his name out sing-song like he would as a child and his beloved older brother teased him about something. Sometimes it felt like everything had changed since those seemingly carefree days of magic and fairy tales and imagination, because it had.
But the core of them? That never would.
"You better get a move on then, I'm very food motivated and I for sure might think about not waiting for you for burritos."