WHERE A (mostly) empty lot on the outskirts of Vallo WHEN Late morning, Sunday, April 3 WHAT Adam's trailer decides to make an unexpected appearance, and after going through some Emotions™ about it, Cabeswater wrecks it like a forest kraken STATUS Complete WARNINGS References to past childhood abuse (not explicit but heavily implied)
Adam always had an answer, but at this moment, he didn't know what to do. Texting Ronan and Gansey had seemed like the most logical step, almost instinctual. He reached for his phone when he saw the double-wide tucked against the stark, empty lot on the outside of the city, waiting for him, foreboding like a threat. Ronan was coming to meet him, which was good, that was right, that was an answer. That was something Adam could cling to, and considered progress in the problem that stood before him. Adam was doing something about it, they were doing something about it.
But Ronan wasn't here, not yet. And so it was Adam watching the trailer from a dozen yards away, cataloging all the details, attempting to find something different about the outside. Weather damage, a broken piece of siding, a curtain that didn't match. Something that said this wasn't the Parrish trailer, that he was overreacting. But his skin felt too tight, constricting him, rooting him in place, forcing him to accept this as real, here, now.
As the shadow from the roof stretched closer and closer to him, Adam took a step back. Then another. He didn't want any part of his childhood home touching him when he wasn't ready.
He climbed back into the tow truck. He waited. He cut the engine. He waited. The silence was suffocating, goddamn oppressive, leaving him alone with his thoughts; the cruel, confusing ones he thought he had scrubbed from his brain ages ago. He waited, he waited, he waited. The trailer hadn't disappeared like a bad dream, he didn't wake up. The wind slammed the screen door open, and Adam closed his eyes to stave off the sick memory.
He couldn't wait anymore.
Adam was back out, approaching the trailer with flimsy determination. He had done this before after his senior year, he could do it again. And he paused at the bottom of the steps, touched the railing briefly. He expected a shock, or wished for his hand to pass through like a mirage, but nothing changed. It was solid, rough and splintering, the paint peeling from the rotting wood. Fucking familiar in a way he didn't want to consider.
It was Cabeswater, not his own partial hearing, that alerted him to Ronan approaching behind him. Adam took a deep breath without turning around.
"I want to go inside," Adam said, beating Ronan to the question he was certain his husband was going to ask.
Adam's text had been unexpected, to say the fucking least. Ronan hadn't thought about the trailer since St. Agnes had shown up and they'd fought about Adam keeping a key to his childhood "home" there. It would've been swallowed up by the earth and never seen again if Ronan had any say in the matter. But Vallo liked to fuck with them sometimes. And they had to take the good with the bad, he supposed. At least long enough to demolish a doublewide.
He drove the bmw, because there hadn't been a waypoint close enough. And he was glad for the comfort of it now, as he pulled into the lot and parked. He glared at the trailer as he climbed out of the car and approached his husband. Adam got a much softer stare.
"The fuck you wanna do that for?" he asked, quietly, as he pressed a hand to the base of Adam's spine and kissed his temple. "I can go in, make sure it's empty, and then we can go find a fuckton of gasoline."
That plan sounded solid. It was an olive branch, a helping hand, a protective suit of armor that he had come to understand was Ronan's way of expressing his care and concern, not taking a choice away from him. He was trying to save Adam from, undoubtedly, the onslaught of emotions that would come pouring out of the open door, and wash Adam away. He should have taken it, and he almost did. It was easy to agree with Ronan when he was touching him and offering something logical.
But Adam, stubborn, couldn't walk away now. The trailer showed up for a reason, right? He would be a coward if he let other people, including his husband, take care of all the bad shit for him. It was shoddy reasoning, but it was what Adam did to convince himself.
"I have to. I'm already here," Adam said, as if that was enough of an excuse. "We're not—we can't, yet. Not yet. Just—" He sounded frustrated, as if mentally and physically warring with himself for the right answer. Adam was useless without a decision, and so he made the one he thought was best: he tore himself away from Ronan and climbed the steps.
The door was unlocked; it was always unlocked. There had never been anything inside worth stealing. There had never been anyone inside worth saving. But now, he wished there was resistance as he stood on the shitty laminate that led immediately into the kitchen.
Ronan grimaced. It wasn’t like it was a surprise. One of the first things he’d ever learned about Adam was that once he decided he needed to do something, there was nothing – nothing - that would stop him. It was a lot sexier when it wasn’t pushing him towards something that would hurt him. Ronan followed him to the door, giving him just a little more space for now.
“You don’t have to, but fine. If Bastard Bob is in there, I can’t promise I won’t punch him in the face again.” He would promise, if he had to. If Adam said don’t do it, for me, don’t do it. Ronan could stand up to death itself if Adam said I need you to live forever. Which was just a really fucking dramatic way of saying he would do whatever Adam needed him to do, including trailing up the stairs and into the house behind him.
The place looked empty, thank fuck. And bleak. God. He’d never understand how someone as special as Adam Parrish had been born into this shitty life. Ronan took a step closer to his husband but kept his dumb trap shut.
An unkind wave of nausea bubbled up in Adam's stomach. The last time he had been here, Adam had practiced the firm words he had readied for his parents. It had been an attempt to mend something that probably couldn't—shouldn't—be mended. And now standing here, seeing all the rooms blending together like the memories he had tucked away in these walls, it was empty in a different way. Something he couldn't quite take in when he had last been in this place, demanding that his father invite him in.
"Don't, all right?" Adam said. He then touched Ronan's hand, briefly, before stepping away and down the hall. As if he was taking some of Ronan's strength to get through the rest of the house. He was at his room first, and he shoved the accordion pocket door away to reveal—well, what Adam expected: a mattress on the floor, stripped of sheets; a beer bottle; a bag of trash; a single work boot covered in mud; broken blinds clinging sadly to the one small window; a large dent in the wall, still unrepaired.
His room had been turned into a catch-all. His carved-out space no longer needed to be carved out for the son they didn't want.
Adam moved to the window, unfastening the latch. "I used to tell myself that some people didn't even have doors," Adam said, so painfully conversational, like he was talking about the weather. "Or bedrooms. Or beds. Anything to make it okay to stay, that somehow I had it better than other people. But part of me always still wanted more, not this, not..." He trailed off as he shoved the rusted-over pane open. A gentle breeze replaced stuffy air.
The situation was too serious for pouting, but Ronan looked a special kind disappointed at being told don’t. He squinted at every corner of the trailer anyway. Robert Parrish’s reclining chair. The kitchen that was the opposite of the homey Barns kitchen Adam always looked at home in. His eyes lingered on the suspicious dent in the wall when they passed into Adam’s room.
“You’re the fucking strongest person I’ve ever known, Adam.” His voice was soft; his gaze on the dent was not. “You survived this place.” He turned away from the wall and moved closer, but still gave Adam space. As much as he’d rather have wrapped him up in his arms and spirited him away from this hellhole. “You deserved better and you found it for yourself, with no help from the fuckers who were supposed to love and nurture you.”
"I found better people to love and nurture me," Adam corrected, almost instinctively without thinking about it. Had this been another time, another life, he might not have taken Ronan's words—the strongest person he'd ever known—at face value. As the truth they were. Some days, Adam didn't feel very strong, comparatively, but emotional and mental strength came in shades. No one trauma was on a scale, he didn't need to diminish what he went through because his biased lens was saying it wasn't as bad as others.
So instead of turning away, and shrugging off the comfort that Ronan clearly wanted to give, he stepped in closer and took his hands between his. Adam brought Ronan's knuckles to his cheek and held it there. Breathed Ronan in, and exhaled all the raw, awful bits out. It was hard, and he felt a little manic at the thought that he was finally, trying, to let it all go.
He closed his eyes; it was too much. "I thought I could walk away. Erase it by never speaking about it. But I just needed one more look, to know that what I felt here was never happiness. That I was never going to get it back," Adam said, and he looked sad as his brows furrowed together attempting to conjure whatever he thought might spring forth—family, contentment, love. "This isn't a place I miss. Not anymore."
Ronan's stiff shoulders sagged as Adam initiated contact. He kept his knuckles gently caressing Adam's cheek and pressed their foreheads together. It was easier to block out the room around them when all he could see was the graceful slope of his husband's nose, dusty eyelashes against tanned skin. He wanted to kiss away all the hurt. Set fire to this place with his mind. Anything. But he knew the best thing he could do was listen and give Adam something steady to lean on.
"You can't make it so this place never had an effect on you. You can't make it so it never existed. But you can let it go. Or turn it into something else? Or fuck, feed it to Cabeswater." He enjoyed the mental image of the forest going feral and ripping into threadbare walls like tissue paper. After a few seconds of savoring the thought, he sighed and knocked his head against Adam's gently. "Whatever you wanna do, I'm right here. Just tell me what you need."
What did Adam need? The question formed new answers every day, but they were usually less dire than he was feeling right now. He opened his mouth to say, but nothing came out, and he just turned his cheek into Ronan's comforting hand in response.
Part of Adam wanted to dig his fingers into the panneling and rip it apart wall by wall, nail by nail, piece by fucking piece. He wanted to smash every plate in the kitchen and tear into every sheet, and risk years of bad luck by cracking the mirror in the tiny bathroom. In his mind, it played out in a cathartic loop. But realistically, Adam would likely hurt himself trying to claw the trailer apart, and he refused to bleed more in this place, for this place.
His free hand drifted to touch a spot just below his ribs, feeling the contrasting outline of the Barns key on the long chain under his shirt. Much like his wedding ring, he couldn't go a day without wearing it, even if the Barns was always open to him. He was never locked out, shunned away, or considered a stranger. That was home, Ronan was home.
Liceat mihi, Cabeswater rumbled deep from within his chest. And Adam nodded. "Cabeswater wants to," Adam said, for Ronan. "I don't need it to stay. You're right. I can't make it so it never existed, but I'd rather let it disappear to memory. I don't need the reminder."
Ronan was more violent than he cared to admit; if he'd known there was a chance for Adam to pull apart this building with his bare hands, he'd have wanted that for Adam. Violence for violence. Was it healthy? Fuck no. But did he gleefully remember how it felt to smash Robert Parrish nose in? You're damn straight, he did. He frowned as he waited for Adam to confer with the forest.
"Do you want some kind of…fuck, I don't know. Ceremony? Some kind of hippie magician shit?" He smirked and pulled back to cradle Adam's face between both hands. "Cleanse your aura?" Niall would've hated hearing his son talk in such a non-Catholic way but Ronan had carved out a space for himself between Christianity and the occult. It was impossible not to when he loved so many damn witchy types. "I promise not to be a shit about it."
Adam smiled, small and tired, but he did nonetheless. Leave it to Ronan to pull the happiness to the forefront instead of letting him linger in the ugly parts, the painful parts, the suffering Adam thought he had to endure to get to the good stuff. He knew that wasn't true anymore.
He sighed when Ronan took his face between his hands, another reminder of that protective, gentle care. It was keeping his brutality at a simmer, while Cabeswater leeched off it in waves. Adam was clearly fighting an internal struggle of letting go of the control of his anger to the forest. "You're already kind of a shit about it," Adam said, teased, or tried to. "You should have brought holy water, exorcized the place first."
Underneath them, the floor groaned. The wind picked up, smacking the broken blinds against the window sill. The earthy tang of pitched soil and cut grass started to drift into the room. Adam exhaled, and when he opened his eyes again to look at Ronan, it was easy to see something else intense within his stare. "We should leave before I shove my fist through a wall."
The rumbling around them made Ronan's eyebrows raise. More even, the magic in his husband's eyes sang to the magic in his own blood. He might not have had the same literal bond with Cabeswater that Adam had, but there always felt like there was one with Adam himself. Whether it was love or magic, he wasn't even sure. The days of questioning that connection were fading out of memory, just like this shitty trailer hopefully would before too long.
Ronan dropped his hands and grabbed one of Adam's, threading their fingers together to lead the way outside. He kicked the front door open and didn't linger on the stairs that had taken half of Adam's hearing. He did stop once they were closer to the bmw than the trailer though.
"What now? St. Agnes isn't far if you still want that holy water." He shrugged and tightened his grip on Adam's hand. "Or we can go home. Where you belong. You don't have to figure out what to do with this place right this second."
What now? As they had passed from room to room, outside of the trailer and nearly to freedom, Adam wasn't sure. He knew that time away, overanalyzing the solutions, letting it rot away in his mind, he'd never come to a decision. In some ways, his childhood home was like a fucked up security blanket that he'd find reasons to allow it to remain, unused. But right now he felt so certain of his emotions, angry and bitter, proud and defiant, unafraid and unforgiving.
Adam wanted to cling to that feeling, lean into all the instincts he usually bottled away for safety and out of internal dream. He didn't need to be the better person now.
"Wait, wait..." Adam said, slipping out of Ronan's tight hold. He took a step, then another, toward the doublewide and stopped. He knelt to scoop up a handful of dry rocky dirt, and held it tightly in his fists, enough to make his arms shake with the effort. Cabeswather seethed and churned in forefront of his consciousness and Adam could taste the mossy greenery on the back of his tongue, the cacophony of harsh Latin in both his ears. He was calling Cabeswater here, to where its magician needed it the most.
The soil moved, a slow roll like an incoming tide, beneath the BMW, pushing past Ronan, past Adam, and shooting toward the trailer. A beat of silence stretched painfully out, right before the pop-pop-pop of the latticework foundation began to buckle and fold in on itself. The whole trailer skewed hard to the left, before a thick root shot out of the roof like an explosion.
Adam couldn't seem to find his breath, but his eyes could take in what was happening, what he had inherently given Cabeswater permission to do. "Oh, fuck."
Ronan let go, reluctantly, but moved back towards the trailer with Adam anyway. He couldn’t exactly throw him over a shoulder and make a run for it. Tempting as it was. His stomach churned almost as violently as the ground under the trailer and his pulse picked up speed. There was a part of him that would always get nervous for Adam when he showed this kind of power where someone could see it happening, even though they were far from living in secret anymore. It didn’t matter, though. No one was around to appreciate the show except him. He jumped as the root shot out.
He made sure to memorize every detail for Gansey’s sake.
“You think Dick can feel this at the library?” Ronan was already painting a picture in his head. He wanted to make a joke about recording this too, but this wasn’t a time for a jokes. Instead, he curled a hand around the back of Adam’s neck, grounding him. “Don’t second guess yourself, Adam. Finish the job.”
"He can definitely feel it," Adam said, without hesitation, eyes trained on the slowly curling roots and vines. He sensed the pulse-pounding power behind his ribs, through his veins, thinly held together by that need for control. Adam knew it was impossible that even in the barest of connections wouldn't feel an overwhelming surge, and Gansey was part of Cabeswater as much as Adam was.
It was hard to be vulnerable, it always had been. But Ronan here, beside him, urging him to finish it buried the last of Adam's resolve. Cabeswater needed no further encouragement; Adam was grounded here, and much like scrying, he let go of his mind and gave it to the forest.
The trailer cracked and splintered, collapsing in half. Branches and leaves consumed the walls and the door, smashed through the stairs exponentially harder than any other part of the house. The crunch of the foundation sounded like a guttural scream, or maybe that had come from him. Adam wasn't sure.
Cabeswater, with its roots tangled around windows and wrapped around the rickety framework, dragged it down, down, down, into the ground, swallowing the trailer whole, until it was nothing but a mound of upturned soil. Silence followed. Adam's face was wet, his breathing heavy and shaky, and he slowly turned his head to Ronan, before flinging himself into his arms.
Ronan kept hold of his husband until Adam turned and crashed into him. The trailer was disappearing underground like a ship being swallowed up by a kraken. But Ronan's attention had been mostly on Adam since this whole thing started and that's where it stayed. Adam didn't often express emotion so openly. Every time it happened, it was both heartbreaking to experience and heartwarming to be there when Adam needed him to be. To be someone trusted with that level of vulnerability.
"Easy…easy. Breathe, babe," Ronan murmured, his arms tight around Adam and his hands stroking soothingly against his back. He rocked them both in place. "I'm gonna say something cheesy, I'm sorry, but it has to be done." Hugging tighter, he pressed his mouth right up to Adam's hearing ear. "I'm so fucking proud of you. You're amazing." Robert Parrish was a cockroach. Neither of Adam's parents deserved him. Ronan almost wished they'd had to watch their house get buried. But it was better if they never set foot in Vallo.
He pulled back and swiped dampness from Adam's cheeks with his thumbs. "Do you want to go find Gansey?"
Adam could have stayed there, in Ronan's strong embrace, forever. It was comforting and safe, like Adam always knew it to be. He sunk into his words of reassurance and praise, letting them soothe his wild heart and broken thoughts. Ronan might have thought they were cheesy, but they were things that Adam needed—no, craved—to hear. Who else had been proud of him? Who else had loved him enough to say it? The list was small, and when Persephone was gone again, it had become smaller.
When Ronan pulled back, pushing away all tears that would have undoubtedly made him embarrassed in front of others, Adam nodded. This time when Adam exhaled, he didn't feel wound so tightly, weighed down by the misery he had been carrying around, unaware.
"Yeah, let's find Gansey," Adam said, nodding. He gave one last look at the phantom space where the trailer had been. He'd never need to look back again. "Let's go home."