Waking up on the cot in the long barn wouldn’t normally be disturbing, but Ronan damn sure didn’t fall asleep there. His back hurt and his head hurt and there was a large glass terrarium on the desk that he’d never seen. Inside was a beautiful albino python. He didn’t need to get close to feel her dreamness, but he pressed his fingers to the glass anyway. She uncurled enough to rub her head along the glass to meet him.
“Well, fuck.” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and dug his phone out of his pocket. Reading up on the network was a mistake. He didn’t dig very deep, but he got the gist. He’d apparently been fifteen for at least a few days and full of piss and vinegar. That might’ve really fucked him up if he hadn’t seen grown up Gansey before everything in his memory got weird and fuzzy.
Ronan left the long barn. Chainsaw swooped down and landed on his shoulder when he got halfway to the house. Her claws dug in but he reached up and scratched under her feathers in a warm greeting.
“Hey asshole, did you miss me?”
She gwahed and headbutted against his ear as he bounded up the steps to the house. It was early. No one seemed to be up as he stepped inside. He planned to run straight upstairs to their room, but he spotted one of Adam’s bare feet over the arm of the sofa in the living room and changed course.
Adam was frowning in his sleep and it was so instantly disarming that Ronan stood frozen by affection at the end of the sofa.
The only saving grace was that the couch was comfortable. Adam could, in theory, sleep anywhere, but that was usually because he had hit a wall of physical and mental fatigue with no way to climb over. This was different, and the Lynch family sofa made it easy to sink into unconsciousness instead of overanalyzing the last twenty-four hours. His mind had been a complicated, messy blur where nothing really made sense. The network conversations didn't seem real. Adam didn't seem real.
And everything was made harder by the fact that he couldn't share the what-the-fuckery with Ronan. Not really. Not when he was fifteen, knew Adam peripherally, and was referred to as 'the guy in the pictures.' He hadn't felt right sleeping in Ronan's room either, when it had never been their room to this version of his boyfriend.
Adam felt raw and exposed in an uncertain way, and when he curled up for the night with a blanket and a flat pillow, he was not looking forward to tomorrow. Adam wasn't prepared to take on any more. Even in his dreams he couldn't escape that uneasy feeling, and blinked awake into soft morning light. The night had gone by too quick.
He didn't feel well-rested at all, and probably would have tried to steal a few more minutes—hell, even seconds—of sleep, except he could feel someone was standing at the edge of the couch. Adam twisted around from his side to his back, in order to get a better look.
Maybe he was still dreaming. But he couldn't hide the earnestness in his voice; Adam wanted it to be him, so much. "Ronan?"
Ronan didn’t need much more of an invitation than that. Just seeing Adam’s eyes hazily focus on him was enough to spur him a step forward, but the way his name sounded in the quiet of the room sealed it. He kicked off his shoes, nudged Chainsaw off to her roost in the corner of the room, and then he climbed up onto the sofa. With a dramatic sigh, he blanketed Adam’s body with his own and burrowed his face into Adam’s neck.
“I only halfway know what’s been happening for the last week,” he grumbled, curling his arms up and under Adam to hold him close, “but I feel like I haven’t seen you in a month, what the fuck.” He selfishly took a long minute to just breathe in Adam’s skin. It felt like winding a clock. Getting everything lined back up. He’d need to see Gansey and the others too, and maybe even - God help him - apologize, but Adam was like a compass, pointing him back to himself and where his home was.
Whatever lingering sleepiness was gone the instant Ronan crawled on top of him. Adam wrapped himself around Ronan in return, twining legs and arms together until they felt impossibly inseparable. The weight of Ronan on him, the relief of being held close, eased that thorn of anxiety that had been burrowing into Adam's chest.
For the briefest moment, his emotions were too big, too heavy, too much—he almost let them spill out into the space between them. Instead, he matched his inhales to Ronan's exhales, until the immediacy of being overwhelmed passed, and he felt steadier than he had in days.
"I missed you, which, God, it sounds stupid when you haven't gone anywhere, but..." It was true, time and magic had decided to isolate them while they were both still close. The whole thing was horrifying and cruel, the kind that Adam couldn't fight, which only made it worse.
He scooped up Ronan's face into his hands. "I just need—" Adam cut himself off by pressing his lips to Ronan's, sweetly, tenderly, not unlike the ones they shared for every homecoming after so much time apart.
“It does sound stupid,” Ronan smirked against Adam’s throat. “But I missed you too.” He went easy into the kiss and slid his hands higher up Adam’s back with wide, greedy palms. They were in the living room and he was vaguely aware of that fact, but it took Chainsaw barking Kerah like an asshole for Ronan to pull away.
“Yeah, yeah, get off my ass.” He rolled to Adam’s side, against the back of the sofa, and rested his head on Adam’s shoulder. As cloudy as his memories were, the emotions seemed to cling. He hadn’t forgotten how hopeless he’d felt at that age. He hadn’t forgotten exactly how crucial the people in this house had been at pulling him back from the edge. But the reminder still left that sharp ache a little too fresh for his fucking tastes.
“What do you remember?” Ronan grunted.
Adam loved Chainsaw, but he was contemplating how to throw her bits of trash as a distraction so he could keep making out with Ronan. How a raven managed to dictate their level of appropriateness in public spaces remained a mystery, but Adam ultimately gave in with a groan. He rested his temple against Ronan's head when he resettled beside him, keeping as many points of contact as possible. Like muscle memory, his neediness for Ronan reared up unconsciously after going so many days without this.
He hummed, contemplative, as his fingers trailed nonchalantly along Ronan's side. His hand lingered on a sharp hook of his tattoo—it was the little things he missed, too. "Not much," Adam said carefully. "I didn't have time to go through everything on the network yesterday. I was preoccupied—" That was the most diplomatic way he could describe the day before. "—with other things, but it's there. All of it."
His eyes slid closed, before he asked, "What about you? Anything stand out? Maybe we can work backward to the earliest memory from the last week?"
Ronan’s eyes drifted shut under the touch, an unconscious mirror to Adam. He felt worn thin, like back in the old days. He wondered how little his younger self had even slept. Eventually, his eyelashes fluttered back open and he slipped the tips of his fingers under Adam’s shirt just to touch warm skin.
“I think I pointed a knife at Gansey.” He couldn’t help but snort a humorless laugh at that. “I know I stole his car, but only because there was a post about it.” The post had made him wince and he hadn’t gone much further back from there. But he still had a strong feeling that he’d been a prime shithead to Adam too. Either that, or he’d angrily...pined? Ronan scowled even though part of him was amused at his own predictability. “Any chance you remember a snake?”
Oh, this was a dangerous combination—all of Adam's stomach muscles tightened when he felt Ronan's hand under his shirt. Rationality reminded him they were having a conversation about important things; things that would eventually eat away at Adam later when he wasn't being so thoroughly distracted. He grabbed for Ronan's wrist, holding his wandering hand up to his mouth. Adam's lips brushed softly over Ronan's fingertips as he spoke.
"I didn't know about the knife thing," Adam said, quietly uncertain. He only half-remembered the stolen car because he had seen the post about it, too. Reading back on the network felt like he was having an out of body experience, like scrying. Adam couldn't go too far or he'd be lost to the entirety of it, swallowed up in that black hole of non-memories. He pressed in closer to Ronan, rolling on his side so that they could be face-to-face.
His brows furrowed, struggling to recall anything with a snake. "Maybe. Was it white? I remember something in the long barn and feeling calm, but also scared. For you. And I—" Adam shook his head. "Did you dream a snake?"
Having his hand redirected made Ronan smirk. He didn’t have long to be lazily smug about it though, with Adam’s lips on his fingers first and then their faces close as Adam shifted on the sofa. Ronan smoothed Adam’s hair back from his face and then left his hand resting on his cheek for a moment.
“White, yeah. Bit of faded color in the spots.” Snakes had been a minor interest of his for a while, particularly when it became normal for people to call him a snake. Even with that, he only knew so much about python care. And what he remembered was all tangled up with what he assumed were the complicated feelings his teenage self had been dealing with in the long barn. He frowned and shifted his hand from Adam’s cheek to stroking down his arm. “You must’ve been there. No way I dreamed something that clear and harmless without some help at that age. Chainsaw was a fucking fluke.”
Adam kept letting out involuntary soft sighs with every new touch, on his cheek, in his hair, the long line of his arm. It took most of his will power not to mimic Ronan and curl into his chest and hide away from the morning. His brain hadn't quite kicked in to work Adam into knots yet, except that only made it tougher to sift through the last few days.
He kept reaching for the memory of the snake and it kept moving further out of his mental reach. He had to have been there, Ronan was right. But it was the older him, the other version of him. Adam didn't like the feeling that left behind. "Would you even have let me help you?" Adam asked, but not unkindly. "Yesterday you panicked when you saw me in the kitchen."
His hand smoothed down on Ronan's chest, distracted, his attention looking just past Ronan's shoulder to some indiscriminate spot on the couch. "It was strange to see you like that." Adam rolled his bottom lip between his teeth, before elaborating. "Different. A person I didn't know from a time before—everything. If I helped you with the snake, I don't know how he did it. Getting your trust was harder at fifteen than it was when I met you."
“Fuck no. I wouldn’t have let anyone help me.” Ronan scooted closer, tangling their legs together. “All I knew about what I could do was that it got my father killed and I had no control over it.” He couldn’t imagine what he’d even said to Adam in the long barn. If he’d been grateful for help or just belligerent that he needed it so desperately. All his memories of that time in his life at home were rimmed in anger and grief. Gansey had kept Ronan’s head above water, but he’d had one arm tied behind his back the whole time. Adam didn’t have that handicap.
“If anybody could magically get through my walls...it’s you, Parrish,” Ronan teased. His smile was a bit serious but the look in his eyes was fondness laid bare. “Bet he just ran because you’re hot. I tended to want to punch shit when I realized I was attracted to someone.”
Adam's expression was serious for a moment too—he didn't need lost memories of the last week when he had the ones from years of being around Ronan. He knew how strange and terrifying his dreamscape could be, still. Adam had been around when he was getting a handle on what he could do. If his older self was anything like he was now? Ronan wouldn't have let him, but he would have barrelled in anyway. He couldn't watch Ronan suffer through that shit alone.
He didn't say any of that though. Adam just tilted his face up to kiss Ronan's forehead in quiet agreement. Magically getting through Ronan's walls should have been a bullet point on his psychic resume.
"Huh. Punch things because you're attracted to someone. That explains so much," Adam teased right back. He stole another kiss, then left another on Ronan's cheek, then his brow. A slow and easy placement of affection as Adam drew quiet.
"Are you going to be okay with not remembering everything that happened this week?" Adam asked, though the question could have easily applied to himself. He didn't have an answer.
Ronan’s muscles went liquid with the scattering of kisses. He much preferred Adam close and affectionate over thinking about his life four years ago. And he wasn’t sure if his heart could take thinking about a potential future where they were still here and apparently married. He dug a hand into Adam’s hip and pressed his face into Adam’s throat. It muffled his voice but his words were clear enough. He sounded petulant but no more than usual.
“Sure. Whatever. Just like getting blackout drunk in the old days, right?” He pressed a kiss to Adam’s neck, then one up under his jaw. Chainsaw jumped down onto the back of the sofa and waddle-walked along the edge like she was checking for the best place to jump on top of them. “Are you gonna be okay with it?”
Adam made a skeptical noise, as if to say uh huh, sure, then readjusted to fit against Ronan. It was Adam's turn to hold him tightly, keep him close, slip his fingers below the collar of Ronan's shirt and trace the tattoo that had been so notably absent in the last week. Falling back asleep seemed attainable when Ronan was warm and pliant beside him.
"Maybe. Can I let you know if I'm not?" Figuring out his feelings on the matter required a cup of coffee at least, something for breakfast, and Ronan's mouth on his for a considerable number of minutes before the rest of the house woke up. Then Adam could sort through the complicated mess of what he wanted, how he got it, and how pleased the thought of him and Ronan in the future made him.
His attention went to Chainsaw pacing above them and Adam wrinkled his nose playfully at her. And then a stray thought slithered to the forefront of Adam’s mind: "Wait, where's the snake now?"
“I can tell you if you seem not okay with it, yeah,” Ronan scowled. He was reasonably confident he’d know if something was bothering Adam but sometimes he was too dense about shit to counter Adam’s many years of experience in hiding what he was really feeling. Shivering with light touch to his tattoo, he reached blindly up to wave Chainsaw away. She nipped at his fingers in retaliation.
“What are you worried she’s going to slither out from under the sofa?” Ronan joked, unconsciously mirroring his bird when he nipped at Adam’s collarbone. “She’s in the long barn. In a terrarium.” He had no idea what he was going to do with her. But he was predictable about one thing. “Think I’m going to call her Meatball.”
"No, asshole." Adam said, half-laughing. He pressed his fingers hard into the tight muscles of Ronan's upper back to keep him from moving from his spot. Maybe Adam kind of liked it, maybe this was his non-verbal way of saying he did.
Adam decided not to argue with Ronan about the other thing. What could he possibly say that wouldn't sound defensive or flat out wrong? Just as easily as he could tell if something was bothering Ronan, being known went both ways—Ronan could rightly corner him if he didn’t look okay. Adam filed away a note to himself to not seem too wrecked about the memories thing in front of Ronan if he could help it.
Taking the opportunity to return the favor though, Adam bit teasingly right back at Ronan's ear. "Meatball? Tamest name yet. You're losing your touch, Lynch."
Ronan huffed out a pleased laugh, his fingers digging into Adam’s ribs. They could probably go on like this for a while, trading affectionate revenge, one after another, until they ended in a pile on the floor. But Ronan was tired and he knew their privacy was short-lived, so he slid a hand up Adam’s chest and hooked his fingers behind his neck to pull him into a kiss.
“Snakes already get a bad enough rap,” he murmured against Adam’s lips. “Now shut up and kiss yours before this houseful of weirdos wakes up and we have to figure out what the damage is.”