adam "now he's a spooky 10" lynch (parrish) (tamquam) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-04-19 23:51:00 |
|
|||
The farm was thriving. His dad’s animals were asleep, but the rest felt familiar and strong. They felt like they called out to this wild power in him. Fuck, he wished he could control it. The people here seemed to think he could. They didn’t seem afraid of him at all.
Adam Parrish didn’t seem afraid of him at all. He’d let himself scroll through the pictures in his phone again, sitting on the cot in the long barn. He shouldn’t have. It felt invasive as fuck, but…
They looked happy. That older version of him and that pretty teenage boy with warm blue eyes and tanned skin. They looked like they had a future together.
Ronan had thrown the phone in the corner after that and then laid out on the cot without any real plan to sleep.
That’s probably why the nightmare caught him by surprise. It came on as quick and intense as a grease fire and suddenly he was surrounded by rattling snakes. He called out for the Orphan Girl. He called out for his dead father. There was nowhere to run. A snake lunged and he stumbled to the ground and then he felt one snap out and bite him on the neck.
He couldn’t breathe.
His body - laying there on the cot in the long barn full of discarded dreams - gasped for air.
Adam intended to be quiet and unobtrusive. He had stayed out of the way, orbited Ronan for the past few days like a stranger in his own home. Adam knew Ronan for so long that pretending he didn't, required so much respectful distance. Not afraid, never afraid, but attempting to not be invasive.
Except that Adam worried. And that had brought him a sleepless night where he waited for Ronan to return from the long barn, let impatience win, and followed him some time later into the cramped dream space. He had an array of excuses in case Ronan was awake, but mostly Adam wanted to make sure the lights were out and his teenaged husband was covered with a blanket.
But Ronan's desperate gasp shot through Adam. He found himself instantly kneeling before the cot, moving on panicked auto-pilot. They had dealt with so many nightmares together, but scrying in felt too heavy and terrifying now. So he went with a method that seemed to have worked in all their years of marriage: a hand on Ronan’s forehead, the other on his chest, whispering a soothing steam of words: you're not alone, follow my voice, and wake up, wake up, wake up—
Silence stretched out in endless seconds. Adam didn't have to look, he could feel that dreadful stillness in Ronan's body, the dream paralysis. Ronan was awake, but he had brought something back.
Ronan was not used to feeling soothed in these kinds of nightmares. The Orphan Girl would help as much as she could, but she was often as scared as he was. There was only survival to be fond here, not comfort. And yet the sound of a reassuring voice helped guide him away from his own terror. It didn’t help the panic that came with the paralysis. His mind hovered over himself, seeing himself frozen, seeing Adam Parrish with a hand on Ronan’s forehead and one on his chest, and there, a large, pale python slithering up his leg. What little relief he might have found from having brought out a python instead of the venomous rattles in his dream was quickly dashed by the snake rearing up anyway.
It was trying to look threatening. It was such a pale yellow it may as well have been white. And Ronan was torn by joy at having created another living thing and fear for the man who seemed to be trying to help. The paralysis set him free with only enough speed to say one thing before the snake had time to lunge.
“Please don’t hurt him,” he gasped. Whether he was talking about the snake or the man was anyone’s guess.
Adam handled his fair share of innocuous and monstrous dream things with Ronan. He had expected a night horror; something far more dangerous in this cramped space. He wondered if Ronan kept any weapons inside the desk still. Adam was running on old information to save a younger version. Time was messing with his head.
He had not expected a snake.
There was a sense of detached calm that came over Adam when he heard Ronan's plea not to harm the dream-snake. He stood abruptly, causing the python to track Adam instead of lunging at Ronan. Adam could appreciate its strange, iridescent beauty that only came from Ronan's vibrant and creative unconsciousness—harming it was not even an option. Subduing it as more Adam's speed. He scooped the snake off Ronan with experienced efficiency, and dropped it into a nearby dream box, colorless like a void, with perfunctory ease.
He closed the lid, waiting for the python to settle peacefully inside, before he sighed, a shaky nervous thing. Instinct told him to gather Ronan up in his arms, rationality told him to stay right where he was. He hated the question, but Adam asked it anyway, "Are you okay?"
Ronan scrambled to a sitting position as Adam picked up the snake. He couldn’t figure out why the fear in his chest felt bigger than it had in the dream. Why it felt protective. It probably had something to do with the fucking pictures in that goddamn phone, but he wasn’t thinking about that right this second. He was too busy watching Adam shut the snake away like a pro.
“Fuck,” he breathed out in a gust. He brought his knees up to his chest and pressed his face into his hands. “That could’ve been so bad. That could’ve been so fucking bad.” His shoulders shook and he tried very hard not to let stress tears break free from where they pinched at the back of his eyes.
Adam was fragile to Ronan's moods, at any age. He was quick to absorb them because he believed he lacked the empathy to relate. Anger was anger, fear was fear, and sadness was—Ronan's sadness could break him. The tight curl of his body on the cot called Adam closer, and he sat beside him. He didn't know if the proximity of a veritable stranger would help, but Adam was going to try.
"It could have, but it wasn't," Adam said. He was going for comfort, but he absolutely was aware of how bad it could have been. He had been there for some of the more terrifying things. It served no purpose to reiterate that fact to Ronan though, who was vulnerable and haunted. Adam took a chance and rested a reassuring hand on Ronan's back.
"Whatever that was supposed to be," Adam tipped his chin toward the box, "it wasn't when it came out. That was you. You made it that way, you made it safe—safer."
Gentleness had been scarce in Ronan’s life lately. Besides Matthew and Gansey, who tried their best, most people didn’t bother to get past Ronan’s prickly shell. They damn sure didn’t try to soothe. It made him tense up, his instincts demanding he strike out, leap to his feet, something. But he was still shaking like a fucking leaf and he was pretty sure he’d just fall on his face if he ran.
He arched away from Adam’s touch anyway. Just because it was a comfort he couldn’t bear.
“It was just dumb fucking luck. I didn’t want to bring anything back.” He still felt nauseous that people knew. That he told anyone that wasn’t Gansey baffled him. But the weirdness of this whole thing took the edge of that at least. He lowered his legs over the side of the cot and growled, “You should be more afraid.”
His hand shot away the moment Ronan moved. Adam's comfort wasn't welcome here, and it had been a gamble to start with. A stranger—Adam was a stranger—who knew all of Ronan's secrets. And right now, Adam knew them all without Ronan’s permission. He clasped his hands together in his lap, as if to nonverbally signal to Ronan that he wouldn't do that again.
"What exactly am I supposed to be afraid of?" Adam asked, in a way that sounded gentle but also rhetorical. There wasn't an answer to the question that would change Adam's mind. "That snake in the box? What you can do? You? Am I supposed to be afraid of you?" Adam shook his head. "I have no reason to be afraid of you."
Only for you went unsaid. That was too much, even if it was honest. Adam was better off sticking to facts. "I've done this for a long time."
Ronan had a hard time believing anyone would stick around long to call it a long time. Gansey, maybe, because he was quietly stubborn and hated disappointing people. But that was a big maybe. Thinking about someone ever being in love with him made his chest ache and he stole a quick sideways glance at Adam’s face.
“Pythons aren’t venomous.” He didn’t bother answering the rest. He’d thrown enough questions at Adam the last few days to know he was smart as fuck.
The shaking finally stopped. He rubbed at the knees of his dark jeans.
“If you’ve got no reason to be afraid of me, why did you come out here? Why does this place even exist?” He kicked back at the legs of the cot and gestured angrily towards the contents of the long barn, vibrating with dream energy even from this little office in the back.
He wanted to say I know you, as an answer. But to be known by someone was far too terrifying on a regular day, let alone right after waking from a nightmare from someone Ronan didn't know right back. And all the excuses Adam had queued up fell to the wayside. He was already here in the long barn doing things he told himself not to do, because he didn't want to scare Ronan.
But Adam wasn't giving Ronan enough credit. His attention went to Ronan's hands, rubbing on his jeans. His wrists unscarred by the impending night horrors. Adam's mouth pressed into a thin line, and he skipped over the first question. He didn't have a good explanation for why he was here.
"This place is yours. Your workspace. Not all of it is yours, but most of it will be. Eventually. Right now..." His eyes picked over the contents, most unfamiliar to Adam. Too much of Niall existed in this place still. "You're coming out here now to get away from everything inside the house, but it's not always like that. This place exists so you can dream as wildly and freely as you want."
Adam paused, unable to help the tiniest flash of a wry smile before it disappeared. "You dream some weird shit. Weird, but harmless, shit."
Ronan looked really fucking unconvinced, but like he wanted to believe what Adam was saying. He looked away and swiped a hand up over his buzzed head.
“Harmless shit,” he said flatly. His fingers snagged onto a frayed seam of his jeans and he yanked. “Like the bird.” Chainsaw had been cranky with him the first day, in an investigative way. Pecking and scratching and barking strange sounds. He’d loved her instantly and quietly tried to win her favor when no one was looking. Luckily, she was easy as fuck to bribe when he still felt like her dreamer and smelled like the Barns.
He chewed on his lip. “Were you around for less harmless shit?”
"I was," Adam replied, dragging a hand down his face. The less harmless shit had been night horrors, Ronan's copy being torn apart between church pews, the nebulous darker corners of Ronan's dream space. None of it felt appropriate to mention for several reasons—half of them relating to the mess Adam could make by telling Ronan the future.
"But not at the beginning. That was Gansey. Even then, you didn't tell him about this." Adam made a half-hearted gesture to everything surrounding them. "It took awhile. And you and I didn't meet until, I guess it was, junior year at Aglionby. We kept a lot of secrets from one another for a long time."
Adam took a deep breath and leaned over, twisting his wedding band unconsciously around his ring finger. "I'm not trying to make you feel uncomfortable by knowing all of this, it's a lot, and I don't expect you to trust me in less than a week. But I'm not here to pull one over on you either. I feel like I need to make that clear."
Even though he was listening very closely to Adam’s response, Ronan stared at a spot on the floor at their feet. His jaw clenched and unclenched. He let his gaze drift over to Adam’s hands when motion pulled his attention there and the sight of him fiddling with his wedding ring made Ronan feel painfully dizzy.
“It’s fine. It’s—well it’s not fine, it’s fucking weird, but honestly I just…” Ronan shook his head and closed his eyes. “I can’t imagine dragging people into this after…” He didn’t finish the sentence, just snuck a glance over his shoulder at the wall behind them, like he could see all the way to the driveway where he’d found his father’s body.
His haunted gaze shifted slowly back to Adam’s face. “I can’t imagine dragging people into this and having them stay.”
Even as a teenager, Adam felt inclined to argue with Ronan. "You're wrong," Adam said, watching him carefully; he was unsure that fighting with this version of Ronan as a thirty-something adult wouldn't come off as anything as assholish, but here he was.
"You didn't drag anyone into this, you didn't force anyone to stay. I chose—we chose to be here in all of this with you. Any of us could have left at any time, and we didn't. Because we weren't choosing the dreaming, we were choosing you." It had never been a question. Adam was fiercely independent and unendingly self-reliant, but he always chose Ronan. Because he cared about Ronan, loved him unconditionally.
"No one is asking you to imagine it now," Adam said, struck by the fact that Ronan's current emotional state was nowhere close to optimistic for the future. Adam knew what it felt like to be at the bottom, and instead of trying to climb out, it felt easier to take a pick axe to the ground to keep going deeper.
"And I'm aware of how it sounds, you can call bullshit. But—" Adam let out a shaky exhale. "You deserve all the best fucking things, Ronan, including people who stay for you. Because all this hurt, all this shit, it's going to end eventually."
Ronan scowled first - at hearing you’re wrong in that softly southern voice - but Adam continued before he could snap out a petulant well fuck you too. It was a good thing, he supposed. That he didn’t miss all the shit that came after. He didn’t realize he was gaping wide-eyed until Adam cursed and he felt the words like a kick in the ribs.
“Bullshit,” Ronan whispered, just to be a shit. It was easier than dealing with the emotions banging around in his chest. The hope. He had to turn away, to exhale and get his bearings. “It’s fucked up how much I want to believe you. You…when you were talking, when I was asleep. I could hear you.” Swallowing dryly, he put a hand over his chest and rubbed upwards towards his shoulder, holding on there. “That snake should’ve been a dozen rattlers, but I fucking heard you and it changed things.”
His expression softened when Ronan recounted his dream, but Adam turned his face away. It was hard to watch Ronan, while also speaking so intimately of what they—the greywaren and the magician—could do, the potential they held when working with one another. "I thought it would be less jarring than the other options. We learned our lesson when it came to forcing you awake, even during nightmares. We figured out that if you focused on my voice, you could—"
Oh, Adam didn't want to get into it. This was already too much information.
He was back to fiddling with his ring again. An anxious habit, a necessary comfort. Adam illogically believed that when Ronan slipped this on his finger so many years ago, he had passed along some of his strength with it. Adam needed it now. "You and I, in the future, the things we can do complement one another. There's balance. It takes some time to figure it out, but we get there."
“Balance,” Ronan murmured. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know any of this. It was a light at the end of the tunnel – it was a really bright and warm light at the end of the tunnel - but he’d still have to go back into the shitty tunnel to get to the good parts.
And he was scared.
Not that he’d admit that shit out loud. He rubbed his hand roughly over his face and then jerked his gaze back to Adam. “Wait. You said what we can do. What can you do?”
Adam had already said too much. He was pushing at the edges of something irreversible, knowledge that could not be undone. But those limits and boundaries always tended to blur around Ronan. Even now, when their lives intersected at this strange and unusual time, anything less than honest would ruin whatever tenuous space they had both inhabited.
"I'm psychic," Adam said, all blunt and factual. There was no hesitation in his voice, not anymore. There hadn't been for years. "I use divination to look into the future, kind of, and tap into the consciousness of the world. It's complicated to explain, and even after all these years I still don't think I do a very good job of it."
He searched Ronan's face, for any sort of discomfort. He felt a wave of his own uneasiness crawl up his spine. "I'm not a dreamer like you, but when I scry and you dream we can enter the same unconscious space," Adam said, his voice soft. "The nightmares aren't so bad when you know you don't have to be alone with them."
While Ronan didn’t look discomforted exactly, he did reel back in surprise, dark eyebrows snapping together. For a moment, he wondered if this was all part of some master plan to fuck with him. Soften him up. He could pull shit out of his dreams but believing in psychics hadn’t been on the fucking agenda. Still, staring at Adam, all he could remember was that soothing voice leading him out of the dark.
His icy eyes eventually glanced away and he snorted an inelegant laugh.
“I fall in love with a psychic.” Once the words were out, he couldn’t help but laugh again. Surprisingly, it sounded light and not like the sharp, mocking sound that usually came out of his mouth. “I bet nobody saw that shit coming,” he said, biting back the tiny little smirk at his own bad joke.
It felt like a win to make Ronan laugh. Adam returned a smile, not as carefree as he often was with Ronan, but enough to show that there was something ironic in this situation to find humor in. Even Ronan's bad jokes.
"Someone did, maybe. But it wasn't me, I was a shitty psychic then. And it wasn't you, and it definitely wasn't Gansey," Adam said, remembering the punched out, awestruck, surprised voice of Gansey saying Jesus Christ when Adam first told them they kissed. God, a lifetime ago; Adam could get swept up in nostalgia. All the shitty memories of his youth were scrubbed away by the new ones he made with his friends, his new family, and especially with Ronan.
Adam seemed bashful when he said, "It's not so bad, though." He meant the falling in love thing, but saying it meant pointing out how bizarre this conversation was, given the circumstances. "When it happens."
Ronan could feel the sting of longing trying to make his eyes damp but he blinked it away. All of this was just horribly unfair. He needed to remember that there was every chance this wasn’t even his future. Just because this wasn’t a dream didn’t mean it was really his to have. Or even real at all.
“Yeah, well. I’m...I’m sure it’s just fucking great,” he mumbled, sounding more genuine than the skeptical he was aiming for. He gracelessly lurching to his feet. “I think I broke my phone. His phone. Whatever.” Stomping over to the desk, he reached down into the dark well of space between it and a line of boxes until he came back with the device. The screen had an ugly crack up the center. Ronan scowled, torn between relief and loss.
“Don’t suppose a psychic magician can fix that?” he said, holding the phone out to Adam.
Adam exhaled heavily, when Ronan stood to look for his phone. Ronan was okay, for now. Adam would be fine, for now. They just needed to tread water for a little while longer. Adam had pushed through the exhaustion, the sadness, and the longing of being near the person you missed the most and still being without them. Gansey told him not to fold, but Adam had been so close to it.
When Ronan turned around offering up his phone, Adam's expression was open and neutral. It spoke nothing to what was swirling around inside of him.
"No, just a psychic magician couldn't, but a psychic magician who knows his way around enough technology and mechanics could," Adam said, with a tight smile. It felt like a sign to leave, so Adam stood from the cot, tucking the phone in his pocket. "I'll see what I can do."
There was a second where he hesitated between asking Ronan to come back to the house, and knowing that was unlikely. Adam settled on, "You going to be okay out here?"
Ronan watched him move out of the side of his eye, pretending to be more interested in peeking into the snake box next to the desk. The act faltered a bit when Adam asked if he’d be okay, though. He huffed.
“Yeah, Parrish, I’ll be fine,” he sighed and waved Adam towards the door. His hands moved to grip tightly to the edges of the snake box, but his voice was too soft for the words that followed. “Get outta here. I gotta remember everything I know about pythons.”