RONAN LYNCH + MATTHEW LYNCH
BB!BROS GO CHECK OUT A SPECIAL TREE AND BOND
MOSTLY FLUFF | COMPLETE
Yesterday had been a stressful mess. Today probably wouldn’t shape up to be much better. But Ronan was at least determined to spend some time with Matthew away from all the weirdness. Well, not all the weird. Just looking at his brother and seeing a seven year old where there should be a twelve year old did a number on his brain. Still, at least walking out on the Barns property, it was just them for a bit.
It was actually a nice enough day too. Sunlight glittered off the pond nearby as Ronan walked next to Matthew, randomly hip-checking him in the shoulder from time to time or pulling him into a headlock to noogie his fluffy blonde head.
“We’ve been walking for days, Matthew,” he teased. “Are we anywhere near this oh so perfect, extra special tree?”
Suffice it to say, Matthew had no clue about what was going on. He woke up in his house and when he went downstairs for good morning Matthew hugs and kisses and a song from his mom, he was met with grown up strangers, and Ronan who looked a little bit taller than Matthew remembered. And then there was a lot of talking as the grown up strangers (whose names were Gansey and Adam and Henry and Blue like the color) and Ronan tried to explain what had happened. There was something about another world and this was the Barns but it wasn’t the Barns that Matthew knew, exactly, and his mom and dad and Declan weren’t here right now, but he was safe.
Mostly, he got ‘you are safe, Matthew’ and ‘don’t go away without telling someone where you’re going,, Matthew’ and ‘yes, Matthew, we can have breakfast in a little bit’ and ‘don’t talk to strangers, Matthew’. All important things, even though Matthew had sort of forgotten about the last one. On accident! Talking to people was very fun! Even though the typing was taking a very long time. Declan probably would have said it was good for Matthew to practice his spelling and grammar, but Declan cared about things like that more than Matthew did. Matthew’s phone was in his pocket, along with some snacks he’d pilfered from the kitchen, so people could find him, but as Ronan was with him that was the most important thing.
He was still a little scared. But Ronan would chase away anything Matthew thought was too scary, and now they had a plan with Matthew’s favorite tree, so he wasn’t big scared. “Ronan!” Mathew giggled. “If we were walking for days our feet would fall off! It’s not so far! Just a little far.” He slipped his hand into Ronan’s and swung them back and forth. “There were no strangers this morning. Maybe we got no more?”
Ronan smirked and swung their clasped hands along with Matthew. He was self-aware enough to know his walls were down where Matthew was concerned, and sometimes he tried to shore them back up, but the last few weeks had been unending darkness and he needed this little jolt of comfort and contact more than he realized.
“My feet could totally be falling off right now. You’ll have to carry me home.” He switched around to loom over Matthew, half-draping himself over his back without really putting too much weight on his tiny brother.
“You could be right about the strangers, but I still wanna see your escape tree. We have to be prepared.” He groaned in mock-pain. “If we ever get there anyway.”
“No!” Matthew fell into a fit of giggles as he valiantly pushed against Ronan to ‘keep him upright.’ “I’m too small! We didn’t bring a wagon! I can’t fly us! I don’t have wings yet.” Of course Matthew, with his vivid imagination encouraged and supported by Aurora, would have gone from something slightly logical to something more fantastical. Luckily, he knew Ronan was teasing, but it didn’t stop Matthew from examining Ronan’s shoes with a cautious glance as if to make sure they weren’t, in fact, going to fall off.
With a gasp of surprise and delight, Matthew dropped Ronan’s hand and ran ahead through the grass, his little arms pumping at his sides. “Ronan! I found it! I found the escape tree!” Even a quick look at the tree Matthew was darting for showed why he was drawn to it. It was a massive tree, big enough that all of the Lynches could have wrapped their arms around the trunk and still have room. Large roots bumped out of the ground and made for an excellent way to get a way up to the giant branches. The leaves were a green so verdant it was almost impossible to believe, and the shade cover was peppered with enough sun coming through that the whole thing became peaceful. It was a tree that seemed just believable enough to exist, but also seemed entirely in place with the magic of the Barns.
What probably drew Matthew the most was a naturally formed hole in the trunk, given the way he ran into it and poked his head out. “See! We could hide in here, or we could climb it and hide there!”
Matthew’s sunshine giggling pulled a laugh out of Ronan before he could even consider smothering the sound. Something in his chest burned as his brother bolted for the tree. He knew with even a short glance that the tree was a dream of his father’s. It still lived, like the fruit tree in front of the main house. Ronan didn’t know what that meant at nineteen and he had even less of a clue at fifteen.
All he knew for sure was that seeing Matthew climb inside and peek out made him feel both full of love and sad as hell.
He put on a smile for Matthew’s sake though, and crossed to the tree to peek inside. “How much room is in there? It’s hard to tell when you’re getting so big, eating ten pounds of candy every day. We need to be able to hide a go bag in here with snacks and shit so you don’t try to eat me if we have to hide out here.”
“Lots of room!” Matthew chirped, before ducking back in. which was...sort of true. True enough for his seven year old mind and his ability to estimate, at least! The hole was large enough for Matthew to slide in easily, but someone else bigger than him would need to be a bit more careful in entering, so as to not whack a head or smash a knee. Once past the hole, however, the interior was much more spacious and proportionate to the size of the trunk. Mathew could stand up comfortably, with the top of his curls brushing the ‘ceiling’ because of his fluffy hair, but Ronan would have needed to stay in a crouch. Most surprising (or not, given that Ronan had discerned the tree’s origins) was that the whole thing was softly lit with something bioluminescent along the walls. Not near as much light as actual sunlight that came through via the hole, but sufficient enough to make the space cozy instead of dark and fearful.
“Come in, Ro, see!” Matthew himself could have laid down and been able to take a nap--and knowing Matthew as Ronan did, he probably had quite a few times. “We can get snacks, blankets, and water, and we can stay here! I wouldn’t try to eat you!” But he did crawl over and set his teeth on Ronan’s elbow, absolutely no force behind it, only tease. “You’d be too big! And not yummy!”
Matthew sat back along one of the sides, his legs stretched out in front of him. “And we just be really quiet now and not move and no one sees us!” His brow furrowed for just a minute. Seriousness wasn’t an emotion Matthew at this age tended to display, joy, happiness, delight, earnestness, sensitivity, love, all of that came naturally to Matthew, but the almost worried look on his face seemed almost out of place. “Ro, are there bad guys? Are we hiding cause we’re scared or do we got to hide from bad guys?” .
Ronan swatted gently at Matthew’s head when he went in for a “bite”, huffing a quiet little laugh. He squeezed in carefully to get a better look at the inside of the tree but also just to kneel close to his brother and feel close to their dad, cramped inside one of his creations. He tried not to let a tangle of emotions come spilling out of him since it would probably end up as tears and Matthew wouldn’t understand. A few seconds clenching his jaw and he was finally able to speak without it coming out choked.
“We’re not hiding now. There aren’t any bad guys yet. But bad stuff can happen sometimes and we need to be ready to watch out for each other, okay?” He reached out and ruffled Matthew’s hair, pulling him in for a head hug. “I don’t want anything to happen to you so I just want to be fucking careful, you understand? It’s me and you, no matter what happens.”
Matthew nodded, his Lynch blue eyes big and solemn. He leaned in and nuzzled his face against Ronan’s shirt, absorbing the words. This young, Matthew had no idea about what was coming: Niall’s murder, the Lynch brothers kicked out of their family home and separated, Aurora’s eternal, unbreakable slumber. And of course neither Ronan nor Matthew had any idea of what was to come after that, the dangers that came with magic, kings, secrets, and dreams. What Matthew did know was that Ronan teased a lot, or he said things that sounded harsher than they actually were and this wasn’t either of those circumstances. This was Ronan as Matthew also knew him, honest, sincere, and one of the best two brothers in the entire universe as far as Matthew Lynch was concerned.
His imagination had the tendency to run wild creating stories and adventures, but Matthew didn’t want to come up with what could possibly happen to Ronan or himself. He wanted them to stay safe, even if that meant young child logic like snugly living in this tree. “I understand. I don’t want anything to happen to you either! You promise to be careful and I’ll promise to be careful too!” He linked their pinkies together and kissed his thumb to seal the deal. “Even if I get really really scared, cause there are bad guys or bad stuff, I’m still going to say, it’s okay, Matthew! Ronan needs you to be brave! So then I’ll find you and we can be brave together and I liked what you said about how it’s you and me no matter what happens.”
Matthew’s words tended to spill out of him when he grew excited. Which, considering it was Matthew, it happened a lot. He took a deep breath and wormed his way under one of Ronan’s arms to snuggle up against him. “If we don’t got to talk about bad stuff anymore, please can you please tell me a story? A good story, please?”
“I promise,” Ronan said, serious and devoted. There inside that tree, he could be soft. He could link his pinkie with Matthew’s and he could kiss his thumb to make a pact that had never really needed anything official but damned if he would be the one to half-ass a promise to his family. There in that tree, he could sit down criss cross applesauce and he could pull his tiny brother into his lap without worrying if it made them easy targets.
“I’ll tell you a story and then we’ll go back and get things to hide in this tree, how’s that? Let’s see.” He inhaled, the memories of each of his parent’s telling different versions of the same stories surfacing bright and sharp. He wished their mom was here. But in her place, he knew there was a story she’d only started telling in the last year. One that was kinder than the dramatic version their father told. One with swans and a happy ending.
Ronan rested his head against the side of Matthew’s head and closed his eyes. “Once there were three little boys. Brothers, who all loved the water…”