WHO: Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish WHAT: A nightmare, standing in the rain, and wedding talk all while being besties with some cats in a tower WHEN: Last night/early morning as the storm rolled in WARNINGS: None, really. Just soft! STATUS: Complete
By all accounts, Adam assumed that Ronan would be the one to have a nightmare. Not because his fiancé was predisposed for his subconscious to conjure up the worst-case scenarios when stress plagued them, but Adam was the one who didn't dream. It was rare, and definitely not in the same way Ronan did. Adam was the person to keep his mind clear, focused, to be ready for whatever came next.
It was supposed to be a nice night. Adam didn't call it an engagement honeymoon, though it certainly felt that way. The tower had been used, almost painfully typically, for Adam to do homework or meditate briefly. He regretted that the bed wasn't being utilized for napping as its existence suggested. But it was a space away from home, and one that he and Ronan decided to spend the night at.
That was before the storm rolled in. Before they exchanged a handful of texts with the other Barns residents who assured them they could stay, should stay. They could handle a little wind and rain. Adam felt guilty, for agreeing and for convincing Ronan to stay behind too.
But they had curled around each other under the magically clear skies of his room in the tower, thanks to Caleb, and managed somehow to fall asleep.
Adam wasn't asleep long. Exhaustion and worry and stress plagued him until his subconscious was pulling him to that moment over a month ago—Ronan, struggling to stay conscious, black blood, so much nightwash, everywhere, all over his face, his body, his hands, he couldn't get it off his hands. Panic seized him and Adam was startling awake, in an unfamiliar room, unable to shake the dream from reality. The nightwash still felt like it was all over him, and he couldn't get right of it, couldn't save Ronan from it, couldn't do anything but, but, but—
He went on autopilot for the exit, because escaping was easier than calming down for a moment to figure out where the bathroom in the tower was. Outside was both better and worse. The howling wind and the torrential rain clouded out his senses, and all he could feel was the cold, cold water running down his arms, soaking his hair. It did not wash away the feeling the nightmare left behind.
It was a strange turn of events for Ronan, being the one sleeping soundly when something went wrong. The engagement had blanketed his days in good vibes that nothing so far had been able to shake. Even the storm hadn't really thrown him. They'd had a bad storm last year too - Adam had gotten his ankle busted trying to help lock up the animals - but they had better procedures in place now. Ronan had even put them through drills like a fucking douchebag as soon Richie had put out the warning call.
As a results, Ronan's worry about the farm was low-level and apparently easily set aside while curled up with his fiance in a magical tower. It was Adam abruptly leaving the bed that jerked Ronan into consciousness, bleary-eyed and anxious.
"The fuck," he muttered, rolling out of bed to follow Adam outside. He got slowed by several of the house cats weaving through his feet, like they knew something was wrong but couldn't be much more than soft roadblocks. Ronan reached down to give a few of them distracted pats as he passed by and then peeked out the door into the pouring rain.
"Adam?" He stepped out into the rain and cupped a hand gently to the back of Adam's neck. "Hey, what is it?"
Hearing Ronan call his name made Adam fill instantly with regret. Sleep was a precious commodity on a good day, and knowing that Ronan was awake when he should have been sleeping didn't help the situation. Being out in the rain with him was worse. Adam sagged briefly at the touch, but spun to face Ronan trying to wipe the water from his face. He was fine, he was fine.
"I'm fine," was the lie right out of his mouth. He had to yell it a bit over the rain hitting the pavement. Looking at Ronan now, even in the dim, ambient light from the tower, Adam was almost afraid what he would find there. Would his mind still play tricks and show him a version of Ronan dying in the glade? Would he be dripping nightwash, without being able to stop it? Adam was almost manic, as he reached his hands to Ronan's cheeks, inspecting for any sign that his nightmare had been a reality.
It was the weight of the ring pressing into his finger and the solidity of Ronan standing in front of him that helped ground him. These were little reminders that he was not sleeping, he had some control. Adam didn't have control in his own dreams, not in the same way he did in Ronan's.
He blinked rapidly against the rain. "Bad dream. I just need to—get out for a second, I don't know." He repeated again, "I'm fine."
Ronan considered the word fine a borderline curse word. And not one of the fun ones either. No one ever really meant fine, least of all Adam Parrish. The way he touched Ronan's face and the haunted look in his eyes, visible even in the stormy darkness - it was obvious Adam was not even in the neighborhood of fine. Ronan pulled him into a hug, curling his arms around Adam's shoulders.
He didn't say anything right away. He preferred to let the warmth of his body do the talking. The stroke of his fingers through Adam's damp hair. When he pulled away, he kept Adam under the crook of his arm as he moved for the door.
"Must have been a shit one to make you run out into this forty year flood bullshit." Lightning crackled above them, as if to punctuate his point. Ronan pulled Adam closer and pressed a kiss to his temple. "Do you wanna tell me about it?" They were dripping water all over the foyer to the tower, but Ronan paid it no mind. The cats would clean it up. "Or, we can get a hot bath going, warm up, forget you just ran all the way down here in the middle of the night." He paused and gave Adam a little more breathing room so he could look him in the face. "I'd rather you told me but we both know I'd be a shithead about it if it was me."
Adam was quick to wrap his arms around Ronan. Contact was such a confusing thing, one that Adam had gotten better about understanding. An Adam Parrish of years ago might have simply shrugged out of the embrace, feeling undeserving, and that was assuming that a Ronan Lynch of years ago would have offered one. But right now he needed it, longed for it, felt the comforting effects having Ronan's strong arms wrapped around him did. It didn't matter that it was in the rain; Ronan shielded him from all the cold.
Once they were inside, Adam could hear him better and was starting to feel sheepish about his dramatics. He took a deep breath and then another. "A bath sounds nice, but—" Again, he pushed his wet hair from his face, and made a note to find towels or a mop or something later, even if the cats could handle it. "I don't want to forget about it. I know you're letting me have the opportunity to be a shithead, and by all accounts I should take it."
He wanted Ronan to hold him again. He struggled with asking for more affection. He knew Ronan would give it, but after feeling shaky from the nightmare, his mind left him unsure about every certainty he had.
"It was about the nightwash," Adam said, exhaling. He glanced at Ronan, then away. "I know, why am I having dreams about something that happens to you? But it was, it was when..." He couldn't finish and he just rubbed at his eyes instead, a subtle way to hide his face.
Ronan generally didn’t press when it came to shit that made Adam look the way he looked now – shaken. It was one thing hassling his boyfriend with jokes about spreadsheets and overworking himself. It was something else dragging his future husband through memories that left him looking haunted. But the seal was broken now and he took a sharp breath when Adam admitted exactly what the dream had been about. He darted a look around the entrance. Some cats were appearing out of their little holes or wherever the fuck they came from, but they were alone for all intents and purposes.
Still, he wanted more privacy for this.
“Why are you having nightmares about something horrible you witnessed? God, that’s a real headscratcher, Parrish.” He was going to have to start calling him Lynch soon and even as sour as his stomach was in the moment, that knowledge warmed him through. “Come on.” Grabbing Adam by the arm, Ronan mumbled up and they floated up to the floor that held their rooms. Once they were inside Adam’s, he called out to the walls. “Hey can we get some towels?”
Cats would come streaming in soon with his request, but in the meantime, he pulled Adam back into his arms and pressed a kiss to his damp shoulder. “I’m sorry that shit is haunting you. I wish I could promise it’ll never happen again.”
"Don't be a shithead," Adam breathed out, a half-joke. He knew that academically speaking, nightmares were subconscious triggers of trauma he experienced. A chemical imbalance firing off all the wrong synapses. He had said as much to Ronan once when they discussed dreams and night horrors. But stubborn Adam thought he had much more control over his mind. He didn't want to have nightmares, and he didn't want to have them about Ronan.
But he couldn't think of a good argument, a way to debate with Ronan that this particular one wasn't one that should have haunted him. The ending to that event was much happier than the experience of being in it. The logical side of his brain didn't really want to figure it out, though. He just let himself be pulled back to the room, allowing Ronan to take the lead. It was calming, actually. To give someone who understood him implicitly, control. s
So much trust in those simple gestures.
Adam went willingly into Ronan's arms when they were back. "It's not your fault, " Adam said, then quickly clarified, "You know what I mean, the nightmare, the fact that it happened, it isn't your fault. I've seen you nightwash before, it's not new." He sighed and pressed his face into Ronan's neck in the same subconscious way Chainsaw would do. "I'm not going to hold you to any promises like that anyway. But I'll do anything I can to stop it from happening again."
He kissed his throat, gently, like a whisper. "I have a lot to lose now, my mind is reminding me of how close I keep getting, I guess."
Ronan coiled his arms around Adam's shoulders, one hand stroking over his hair. He rocked them both in place with subtle shifts of his feet. It might've been a dance if he moved them anywhere but he just rolled from one foot to the other and pressed soft kisses into Adam's hair.
"It's not my fault but it is because of me." Ronan would always wish loving him was just a little fucking easier. But Adam kind of turned his nose up at 'easy' anyway. "Maybe we should practice lucid dreaming more. If you can get enough control in a dream like that, you can reach for me. Maybe I can come to you for a change."
He wasn't entirely sure that was possible. He wasn't the psychic here after all. But it didn't hurt to try. There was no rule book to being the Greywaren after all. Maybe he could do more. For Adam, he could damn well try.
A trio of motley colored cats came in, pushing a cart loaded with towels. They were gone as fast as they arrived. Ronan reluctantly unwound from Adam just to collect a towel and flop it over his fiance's sodden hair. "At the very least, maybe we can remind your mind that I've got a lot to lose too and I'm gonna fight for it every step of the way."
Adam hid a small smile, as they swayed in the room. He imagined something like this for their wedding, neither of them a great dancer, but they had always been good at winging it to make it look presentable. But he pulled away just enough to look curious at Ronan's suggestion.
"I didn't think to think about it that way," Adam said, his brain already attempting to sort through the steps to take, the trials to test. This was a solid distractor—offer up a question that didn't have an answer, a problem to be solved. The nightmare's memories were already fading as he considered the option of being able to reach Ronan to pull him into his own dream. It could work. It could be an absolute failure, but Adam would always try.
It was Ronan dropping the towel on his head that made take a breath and come back to the present. "Not tonight but I want to practice. Something new to do at night," Adam teased. They had plenty of activities alone in their bedroom, but dreamwalking had always been a special sort of intimacy and this could be another layer to it.
He scrubbed the warm towel into his scalp, watching Ronan. His expression was soft, sleepy, fond—listening to Ronan talk about fighting for them and everything in their lives was a lot in a good way. "You can put that into your vows, I like you suggesting that you can reason with my brain."
Ronan grabbed a towel for himself and rubbed it roughly over his head. A lack of hair paid off sometimes, though it was a little longer than normal right now, just starting to curl. He'd have to get Adam to buzz him again soon.
"Not tonight," he agreed. "Tonight we need something to wind down, not up." He crowded closer to Adam again, reaching out to brush water off of Adam's throat with a gentle stroke of his thumb. The word vows shouldn't have made his blood quicken but he was apparently a dumbass who got excited now anytime anything remotely wedding adjacent was said. He rolled his eyes.
"I think I already put something in there about getting you out of your head when you need it. Would…" His mouth quirked, fighting a smile. "Would talking about the wedding help your asshole brain?"
As Ronan brushed away water on him, Adam reached across to help Ronan with his towel. It was a subconscious gesture, a way to confirm one last time that the water was water and not going to suddenly turn into nightwash. When Adam seemed satisfied, his hands dragged down to rest on Ronan's chest.
"It might," Adam said, drawing unconscious circles across Ronan's collarbone to his shoulder and around, touching, just constantly touching. "But my asshole brain knows it's not the only asshole brain here. Yours is playing nice tonight." Adam leaned in to kiss Ronan, initially brief, but the warmth of his lips and closeness it provided convinced Adam to let it go on a little longer, to pull Ronan into him as much as possible. There were times where Adam couldn't believe Ronan was real. That at some point some fate of the universe, or God to the more religious half of them, had decided that yes, these two. Adam was lucky in ways he had never imagined.
He was pretty certain something like that would go into his vows too, but he didn't say it out loud. He wanted to keep some of the surprise. Although he knew Ronan knew, hoped Ronan knew. Adam had many promises to make, and none of them involved seeing Ronan with nightwash in his dreams again.
"I liked the dancing," Adam said. His arms slung back around Ronan's neck, his hand at the back of his skull, fingers playing with those little damp hairs. This was nothing like what dancing was supposed to be, but Adam swayed a bit, as a non-verbal nudge to Ronan to start too. "I want to dance with you where everyone has to awkwardly watch. Because it wouldn't be our wedding if we didn't make people a little uncomfortable in the best way."
These were easily some of Ronan’s favorite moments – when they did small things for each other, comforting things. Simple, intimate touches. He was possibly touch-starved for life after so many years of aggressively keeping people at arm’s length. But he also just knew that Adam’s first sixteen years of life hadn’t involved much soft intimacy. Ronan would devote the rest of his life to making up for that. God willing.
“You’re a walking wet t-shirt contest right now,” Ronan deflected, smirking a little lecherously as he coiled his arms around Adam’s waist. “Of course my asshole brain is playing nice.” It was too easy to sink into the moment and say something more real with his mouth on Adam’s. What the fuck was he supposed to say out loud anyway? Nightmares are the worst. You probably shouldn’t marry one. No. Ronan tightened his hold, reflexively even though the words hadn’t gotten anywhere the air between them. Adam was distracting him with the hand on the back of Ronan’s head and half-dancing anyway.
“I want that too,” he said simply. He pressed a kiss to Adam’s clavicle, exposed by the wet stretch of his t-shirt. “I want all the cheesy shit too. The chicken dance. The macarena.” A shithead grin brightened his serious face. “You gotta hokey pokey with your husband. It’s a law or something.”
"You like it, because you'll get to peel it off me later," Adam replied, making sure that every part of his wet shirt was pressing against Ronan. He could stay like this, even if he would catch a cold or be miserably damp for the rest of the night. As long as he had Ronan, and as long as his mind was putting distance between the nightmare and the present, Adam wouldn't move.
He sighed against the kiss, and a shiver—that had nothing to do with being in the rain—ran down his spine. A childish part took over and Adam moved his feet so that they were on top of Ronan's, swaying and moving in sync with his steps. It was such a simple thing, but it was comforting, letting Ronan take the lead and giving over control again. Adam needed it, he needed not to think about much else outside this little bubble. And he didn't think it was a one-sided desire either.
"What about the electric slide?" Adam asked, muffled into Ronan's shoulder. "The cha cha slide? There's instructions in the lyrics and everything. Unless you don't want music bossing you around at our wedding."
And there, there, it hit him finally. Ronan using the word husband so easily. Adam would gladly do the hokey pokey with his husband.
Adam wasn't much of the overtly sentimental type. He understood the precious value people could put on others, and even on the intangible feelings like love and generosity and friendship, but hadn't allowed himself to give in too much. And yet, there was something about this single word from Ronan that made his whole body sag with warmth and overwhelming appreciation. "Say it again?"
"Yeah those too," Ronan deadpanned, as seriously he could possibly manage with the words "cha cha slide" in the air between them and Adam's feet on his as he swayed step for step in a slow circle. "I don't mind being bossed around for your sake." Case in point, he very much didn't mind Adam sagging against him and asking for a repeat. Not that there was anything bossy in those soft words.
Ronan pulled back to meet Adam's gaze. "I'm gonna be your husband." His smile was less shithead and more idiot in love now. He knocked their heads together lightly though, so there wasn't any doubt who was talking. "And you're damn sure gonna be mine. I've already designed your new tarot table sign. Adam Lynch. Love saying that," he huffed a laugh, stupidly pleased by just those two words alone.
"Adam Lynch," he repeated, softer. "Fuck. I can't promise you'll never see nightwash again and I can't promise you won't have shit dreams about our life, but I can promise that I'm yours forever and saying Adam Lynch makes me feel like we could take on every fucked up thing this place has to throw at us and still come out on top."
"You're going to be my husband," Adam echoed with the same earnest eagerness. It should have been silly, that a wedding involving Ronan would give Adam a little thrill every time. His own experiences on what marriage was supposed to be wasn't something healthy or an example he wanted to use as a benchmark for any relationship. And now, Adam could objectively say that his excitement for it seemed uncharacteristic. He couldn't remember swearing off love, but he remembered he didn't want what the Parrishes had. He didn't want to be them.
Ronan was making damn well sure that he never had to be again. Nothing about them would be Parrish again, just a Lynch. Adam Lynch. That was enough to make the night turn for the better.
With their heads pressed together, Adam closed his eyes and let Ronan's words soak into him. It was much better than the cold rain and the dark dreams. This was cleansing. He nodded with him, they couldn't promise each other that bad shit wasn't going to happen, but they could do it together. "If you're going to keep saying stuff like that to me at our wedding, I don't know how I'm going to be able to wait until the end to kiss you."
So Adam kissed him now, again and again, pulling away only to say I love you, with that Adam Parrish—soon Lynch—determination. God, he didn't deserve Ronan, but he got to have him and Adam would never take that for granted.
"You redesigned my sign without consulting me?" Adam asked, clearly teasing.
“Oh what a threat,” Ronan teased, smiling into the kiss. “Better make my vows dry and boring so you don’t jump me at the altar like the heathen you are.” He was embarrassingly all smiles. Watching some of the shadow of the dream lift from Adam’s eyes and face helped. Made it easy to fall right back into the doofy happy daze he’d been in since they got engaged. That didn’t mean he wasn’t a hundred percent shithead, but it did mean he kissed Adam with a heady warmth before murmuring a prayerful I love you too.
Right before he bodily lifted Adam and carried him towards the bed, of course. “Anyway, I made mock ups, you control freak. You can see them when the name fits.” With a bright flash of a lecherous grin, he dumped Adam onto the bed and crawled over the top of him on his hands and knees. “Now,” he said, mock seriously as he dropped his head to nip at Adam’s throat. “We should really talk about floral arrangements.”
Adam should have expected this, to go from soft and sweet one second to ridiculous assholish in the next. He didn't even complain when he was scooped up, and only opened his mouth to protest his wet clothes on the dry bed, but Ronan had to sleep here too, and so it died on his lips, and he sunk further into the blankets.
His arms wrapped around Ronan, gathering him up as he crawled over him. Adam hummed, pleased, by the teeth and the warmth of Ronan. Wedding planning was a better way to spend the evening if sleeping wasn't going to be involved any time soon.
"I was thinking," Adam said slowly, casually, deadpanned in the same way Ronan would, "we could do carnations. Lots and lots of carnations."