Adam couldn't remember the last time he was in the master bedroom. Two years ago? A year before that? He recalled tucking the more personal items, like pictures from the mantle and clothing from the closest, into the boxes and labeling them as neatly as his handwriting would allow.. He felt the memory of holding Ronan in the hallway while they stared at the closed doors that summer before Harvard. None of his experiences with Niall and Aurora's space had been terrible, but they weren't his parents either.
And then Noah moved into the master bedroom when they arrived in Vallo and he hadn't thought more about it since.
Now, Adam was standing in threadbare t-shirt and boxer briefs, curling his bare feet into the plush area rug of the same master bedroom, all his thoughts focused on it and his husband who might be having a wildly different experience. It felt like a different place, an unrecognizable part of the Barns. If Adam had not stepped foot into this room before, he could trick himself into believing this was in another house.
He was holding a set of fresh sheets from the linen closet. They had to replace them before they slept in bed. That was the first step and it seemed innocuous enough that Adam took the lead and approached, putting down the new sheets on the ottoman at the end of the bed, and began to pull back the current covers with gentle, deliberate care.
"We can do laundry later. Probably turn the mattress, too. You're supposed to do it two times a year," Adam said conversationally, though they had never given the same consideration to the bed in Ronan's room.
Ronan's day had been chased by a quiet dread. He had a complicated history with sleep and he had a complicated history with his parents. The plan to sleep in their old room made sense, but it didn't mean it was going to be easy. He'd snuck into this room as a young child, often while Niall was off on a "business trip", and he could remember his mother's soft voice singing to him even now.
It was the first ghost to shake off as he came into the room and scowled at the bed.
"Is that a real fucking thing? Turning the mattress?" Ronan had never turned a mattress in his life. Unless flipping it off the base in a rage counted. He frowned and moved for the pillows, ripping off Noah's pillowcases with a little too much force. "If we do this, we'll just bring ours in here anyway. This one can go in our old room I guess." He hadn't thought that far ahead.
"It's a real fucking thing," Adam said, dropping the stripped sheet from bed to the floor, and went for the elastics of the fitted one in the corner. "Preserves the inner spring. It's why the one in our room is slowly causing us to roll into the middle." He flashed a half a smile to Ronan, clearly teasing. As if Adam would mind that their bed was causing them to slide together in the middle of the night to be closer.
He watched Ronan mess with the pillows, waiting to see if there was something— Adam wasn't quite sure what he was looking for. A twitch in the corner of Ronan's eye, a crease of despair in across his brow, the tightening of his jaw to swallow back an emotion he didn't want to feel. Adam knew all these parts of Ronan from observing him for so long, that he wanted to cut them off before they happened.
They were in the room, and making space for themselves, so Adam counted this as good progress, even if it abruptly came to an end. He still didn't know what corners preserved memories that Ronan didn't want to relive. But he would; Adam wanted to learn them all, good and bad.
Reaching for Ronan's hand, Adam leaned in to kiss his knuckles. "Let's keep this one in here for now. You were the one who was against moving all our stuff immediately, so I'd like to stick to your plan."
Ronan shrugged. He hadn't noticed the bed thing. "I just thought you were determined to stay as close to me as possible," he leered, slow to take his hand back. Refocusing on his task, he tossed the dirty pillowcases over his shoulder blindly. This part was mindless enough that he moved through the motions without any twitching. Admittedly, he hadn't really looked around the room much. He'd have to eventually, but he was trying not to drive himself right back out the door.
"Anyway, I just meant, if we do this for real. I don't want to sleep in this bed for good." The thought alone was enough make his shoulders tense. He put the first pillow into its fresh pillowcase and then promptly smacked Adam lightly in the face with it. To help himself relax. "How's it feel?" he smirked. Another smack followed before Adam had time to react. "Soft enough or should I go grab ours?"
"I am determined, but sometimes during the summer it's so hot that I—oof." When Ronan pulled the pillow away the first time, Adam's whole face twisted up like he ate something painfully sour. He barely had time to open his mouth, let alone think before another smack came. Somehow this released the building tension he had for being in this room. Adam felt a little guilty for not thinking of it first.
His face, however, after the second time was eerily calm. He worked his jaw as if to say I see how it is. His body language was one of annoyance, and he returned to stripping the bed, snatching the other pillow as though that would stop Ronan from doing it again. It was, of course, an obvious ploy.
"I don't know, you tell me," Adam said, and retaliated with his own pillow, right to Ronan's face. He grinned, smartass shithead and all. "I might be used to ours, but I'm willing to give these a try." Adam dropped onto the bed to sit and bounced once on the bare mattress to test its efficacy. Adam didn't care what they slept on. He had grown up on worse.
"Do you want to keep changing the sheets or was that your attempt at challenging me to a pillow fight?" Adam asked.
Ronan looked smug. There was something really sexy about know Adam's body language well enough to know the annoyance was an act and that it was okay to enjoy it. Sure he liked annoying his husband, but only because it usually ended with laughter or being pressed against a hard surface. These days, he wasn't actually in the business of making Adam miserable on purpose.
He took the retribution with a snorted laugh and reveled in the grin on Adam's face. His eyes fell to the bare mattress, contemplative. "You know I slept on your fucking floor so I could deal with that shit if I had to, but…"
There was a stain on the mattress, near Adam's hip. Ronan frowned at it and climbed up to sit next to Adam, pressing a hand over the spot. Whatever he'd been about to say about being spoiled now went out the window. "I snuck a soda in here when I was like six. Spilt it on the bed. I can't believe they kept it." The mattress was very possibly dreamt. "Fuck. This bed is probably as old as I am."
"You chose to sleep on the floor, because somehow crashing at my place was better than the bed you had at Monmouth," Adam said, trailing off as he watched Ronan reach down to touch the stain. He grew quiet then, sensing the slight shift in conversation, and waiting for Ronan to say something or nothing at all. Either option was possible.
He gently laid his hand on top of Ronan's, touching the same spot by proxy. Sometimes it was strange to hear stories about Ronan's childhood, even innocuous ones about spilling soda on beds. For a long time in the beginning of their relationship—the antagonistic friendship part—Adam believed Ronan came out a fully-formed asshole at the age of seventeen. But six year old, curly haired Ronan took shape in his memory, and he smiled.
"Maybe they kept it because of the stain. Adds character to a home to have things that are imperfect," Adam offered, knowing full well the Barns was filled with mismatched odds and ends. Even the furniture in this room was a mix of hand carved, old world pieces with scuffs and scratches that others might have given up on.
"What else?" Adam asked, his thumb stroking the back of Ronan's hand. "Any other secret messes that might be covered up in here caused by a significantly younger you?"
Adam's hand on his was soothing, even if Ronan's muscles still felt rigid. He rolled his shoulders and looked around the room. It was a good question.
"Fuck, I don't know." Picturing the same small curly-haired version of himself was unsettling. It felt like a different life. And that Ronan usually had a near copy running around beside him, older, stiffer, but still always there. Ronan snorted.
"I drew on a wall in the closet while playing hide and seek once. Thought for sure Declan was gonna make me clean it up when he found me, but he just pointed the flashlight for awhile. Stayed real quiet too. Think he was always a little weird about art," Ronan smirked, falling back onto the bare mattress to tuck his hands behind his head.
"A Lynch Original," Adam corrected, softly teasing. He'd go prowling for it later, seeing what had enraptured Declan. Adam had no doubt that Ronan was talented even when he was little and hadn't even heard of the term color theory. "Your family being weird about art is not surprising."
When Ronan laid back, Adam followed, keeping himself propped up on his side, so that he was hovering just a bit above Ronan, looking down. His free hand started tracing patterns in discontinuous lines over Ronan's t-shirt, across his stomach, down his ribs, up to his chest and along his collarbone. Adam was recalling from bone-deep memory the hooks of Ronan's tattoo and mirroring it on his front.
"I think," Adam said slowly, carefully, as if he was testing the words of a practiced speech for the first time—he had been mentally reciting parts in his head. "I think it will be good for us to be in here. The offer still stands to go back to your room if you change your mind, but since this is going to be our home, and we're going to raise our family here, I'd like to work up to it being a permanent move eventually."
He kissed a spot right behind Ronan's ear. "And I worry that if we don't start doing it now, we might never." Adam couldn't bear to let Ronan be haunted by the ghosts of his parents, but he also wasn't a therapist and his view on parents were woefully corrupted.
Ronan let the silence stretch out as Adam traced patterns on his chest. The tension in his spine was flowing out into the mattress below them, not forgotten, but softer. Dreamier. There was no doubt this was a dreamer’s bed. And there was no doubt that Adam’s gentle touch was calming him. He watched Adam’s hands with heavy-lidded eyes and the smallest of scowls.
“Can’t believe you just said raise our family without looking like you swallowed a bug,” he teased quietly, so obviously pleased it was a little nauseating. “Really can’t believe that’s the kind of shit that works on me these days.” Ronan huffed a laugh and rubbed a hand over his face before rolling towards Adam and tucking himself as snugly against him as he could. He ended up with his forehead pressed to Adam’s throat and his limbs wrapped tightly around him.
“I think it’ll be good too. Or at least okay until it is good. Even sleeping on your floor was good though so we might need to accept that I’m really fucking biased when you’re in the picture.”
"I figured saying 'while you watched me stress out about law school and the bar exam for the next few years' wasn't as appealing, and make you look like you swallowed a bug," Adam said, as Ronan rolled toward him. Adam eagerly gathered him up in his arms the best he could.
The hand that had been tracing patterns came to cup the back of Ronan's head, fingers rubbing against the soft shorn hair there. His cheek leaned against his temple, his mouth just grazing the top of his ear. They had been in a similar position before—many times before—but Adam remembered standing outside this very room, holding on to one another. The emotions felt equally dissimilar and also not, a tonal shift than a few years ago.
"Don't tell me that," Adam said, almost scolding, like Ronan was revealing a secret that he didn't need to. Adam knew, he already knew. It spoke a testament to his self control to not take advantage of the bias. "I have grown so much here, overcome so much shit by just living in this place, in your life, with you." His voice was quiet then, like it was his turn to tell Ronan a secret. "I only want the same thing for you. For things to be okay until they're good, as long as they can be and will be. You deserve to grow, too."
He kissed the side of Ronan's head. "We can sleep on the floor in here, since you seem to be open to that."
"Fuck that," Ronan mumble-laughed against Adam's throat. "This bed is comfortable." He wasn't ignoring what Adam had said. He was rolling it around in his head like fancy fucks rolled wine around in their glass. Eventually, he pulled back just enough to meet Adam's eyes and drink him in.
"You already give me that, you know. The same shit, a good home, a great home to grow in. A family to grow with. I've fucking grown." A version of himself was still at home, struggling to do just that and feeling very alone, but he was an idiot who didn't know how to cope with change without feeling abandoned. Ronan in the here and now knew exactly what he had and that he wasn't alone. That he didn't need to pull people out of his head to help him be his best self because he had the best people there was ever going to be, right here in this house.
"By the time you're done with all that annoying law school crap, I'll be the most grown asshole on this farm, watch." He flashed a shark's grin. Making it sound like a competition was just his way.
"Bullshit, it's going to be me," Adam said, sensing the challenge and, dear god, falling for it. Even the stupidest things that had an ounce of competition made Adam's blood heat up in a delicious way, and with Ronan? It was nearly impossible not to rise to the occasion.
He nudged at Ronan's shoulder to push him back down onto the mattress. Adam followed, rolling a bit on top of him, not pinning him down, just holding him in place, a leg thrown over his, his arm barely bracketing the side of his head. "And I know," Adam continued, searching Ronan's face. "I know you have, I don't want you to think I haven't noticed. Everything has been... " Adam sighed, not unkindly, only an exhaustion of the environment they had navigated with surprising strength. Vallo tended to do that to people.
"But I see it every day. And that, that is what makes saying family easier, because I know it's a future with you." Adam leaned in, making it his turn to nose at the crook of Ronan's neck, hiding his face. He was certain Ronan could feel the shithed grin that followed. "The most grown asshole I'll know."
Ronan was easy to move now that a bulk of his tension had bled out of him and all of his attention was on his husband. He stared at him with the kind of soft gaze most people probably thought him incapable of making, his mouth slowly shaping into a loose and affectionate smile. It turned into a snorting laugh when Adam burrowed into his neck.
"Jesus, Lynch, write me a poem, why don't you?" he murmured warmly against Adam's temple. He pressed a kiss there and up under Adam's deaf ear. It was tempting to just octopus his limbs back around Adam and try to doze off like this, but the mattress under him was starting to itch and he didn't want the softness of this moment to be ruined. He brushed a hand over Adam's tousled hair and pulled back to nod towards the clean sheets Adam had left nearby.
"If you've gotten all the mush out of your system, we should put some fucking clothes on this bed." Ronan nipped at Adam's ear. "And maybe take off some of our own."
His whole body had trembled with the kiss to his deaf ear, as it often did, and Adam had to fight not to curl into Ronan to hold onto that feeling. He could go on exchanging gentle touches until they stopped realizing they were in this room, with work to do, mental demons to fight, but he didn't feel like distraction was needed. Not in the way he had been planning when first agreeing to flip the master bedroom for their potential use.
He didn't miss a beat though, and with all the fond exasperation he could muster, Adam rolled his eyes at Ronan giving him shit about poetry. "Mellitos oculos tuos, Ronan." Adam said, replacing the first line of the Catullus poem with his husband's name instead of Juventius—it didn't hold the same ring when trying to be a shithead with Latin poetry. "Si quis me sinat usque basiare, usque ad milia basiem trecenta."
Adam slowly peeled himself away from Ronan. The promise of taking clothes off had been a good incentive, and not just because it was hot outside. "How's that for poetry, Lynch?" Adam asked, conversationally, as he tossed the new fitted sheet at Ronan's head. "I'll save the dirtier ones for later."
Latin always had a special place in their relationship, but Ronan especially loved when it was "weaponized" as flirtatious snark. It rolled especially nicely off Adam's tongue these days and Ronan had to wonder if Adam had practiced this one and kept it in his arsenal for just the right moment.
"My eyes are blue, asshole," he grinned, chasing Adam off the bed. He took the sheet to the face as a result and laughed as he pulled it off his head. "Definitely want to revisit that kiss three hundred thousand times business. That big of a number is going to take some serious effort, pronto." Beaming a smug smile, Ronan wound the sheet up to whip one end at Adam and then turned to finally focus on making the bed.
Maybe this wouldn't be so hard after all. He could probably weather three hundred thousand ghosts with Adam at his side.