Very little had prepared Adam for the last few weeks. Being unexpectedly eight years old again—despite the fact that he didn't remember much but a fuzzy haze of moments where he felt precious and loved—left him in a lurch. This was followed closely by the fact that his daughter from the future had made another impromptu visit, this time with less brandishing of knives in her direction. But all of that felt almost easy to adapt to in the shadow of the looming first anniversary to his husband.
Sure, there were plenty of suggestions on what to do for the paper anniversary—cute objects and clever loopholes to make the most of the strangest first-year milestone—but not much instructed him on the way to feel. How to mentally prepare. How to compartmentalize the overwhelming feeling of being married for a year. Adam, competent and capable, could not articulate the emotions into words; how was he supposed to culminate it into a gift that passed his muster?
He realized, too late, between asking for help setting up this complicated gift and waiting anxiously outside of the long barn, that he was competing against himself for Ronan's love. Adam was addicted to the challenge, even if it was unwinnable. God, he had a problem.
So instead of reeling from his own ridiculous revelation, Adam focused his attention on Ronan who was approaching up the gently sloping hill of their backyard. Adam had watched him make this trek a hundred times to dream and create in this space, but never from this angle. He smiled, decided he couldn't wait, and walked to meet Ronan the last few feet to the door.
"Before you go in, just know that I didn't touch or move anything that wasn't already there. I have people who can vouch for me."
The last few weeks had been eventful to say the least but Ronan had somehow managed not to forget his own anniversary. He imagined one day he’d forget it was also his birthday, but he’d never forget Adam. Working on his gift had been a quiet, secretive thing. Mostly because it had taken him ages to figure out what the fuck he was going to do and the rest because Adam woke up one morning as a little kid. Adam had been back to himself for a week now but Ronan could still picture his childlike face with perfect clarity.
It was weird shit to wish you could save your husband from the life that would lead him to you.
Ronan was glad he’d grabbed a quick shower after the market was all closed up for the day. The sun hung low in the sky and it was romantic on the farm even without the fireflies seeking them out. He smiled at Adam, loose and easy, as he approached.
“Okay, sneaky fucker. You can touch anything you want in there.” He looped an arm around Adam’s waist and pulled him into a soft kiss. “Except the wrapped box hidden under a bunch of junk dreams anyway. How much snooping did you do?”
"Touch anything I want in there?" Adam asked, in that devious little way when he found an immediate loophole in something Ronan said. He leaned into the kiss, back out, and then in again. Granted Adam could spend the evening making out with Ronan against the side of the long barn, but there was a point to pulling his husband out here—if there wasn't, they would have stayed wrapped up with one another until Adam made everyone sing happy birthday.
"I did a minimal amount of snooping, just enough to make you sweat it out if I found the box or not." He did not find the box, Adam didn't know if there was a box at all. Maybe a ruse, maybe a misdirect. Adam wasn't sure how he managed to keep his own gift a secret for so long. He was torn that it felt like lying to the one person he was honest with the most.
Pulling away, Adam promptly manhandled Ronan about face and toward the door. His hands went over Ronan's eyes. "Mine first, because I can't hide it. You'll see it right away. You're going to have to trust me."
Ronan leered at Adam's question and waggled his eyebrows unhelpfully. Given half a chance, he'd derail them for dream barn sex without feeling even a little bad about it. But Adam was good at staying focused. His sexy, smart husband. Fuck. They'd been married a whole year and he hadn't fucked things up. It was a goddamn miracle.
"It's wrapped so if I see any corners lifted, I'm gonna give you tons of shit, Lynch," he teased. Suddenly he was facing the door and then he was looking at Adam's palms. Feeling them against his face heated his blood in the stupidest way. "Shit, alright. Lead the way, bossy. I wondered why people kept veering me away from the barn the last couple days." He hadn't really. He was wondering now, but he'd been thoroughly distracted by Nora being here and Halloween shit. That had probably been the point. Nora was just as sneaky as Adam when she wanted to be, it seemed. The thought made him smirk as he stepped towards the barn.
He trusted Adam to lead him true, without hesitation. But he still had to make a joke. "If you run me into the doors, I'm gonna tackle your ass."
"Now who's being bossy? Maybe I should change your name in my phone to management," Adam said, as he pressed his body against Ronan's back to whisper in his ear. If Adam was temporarily going to deprive Ronan of one of his senses, Adam was going to make sure he fully felt the rest of them. He pressed his lips to the exposed, freshly washed skin of Ronan's neck where it met his shoulder, for good measure.
With them this close, Adam had to shuffle Ronan forward. His heart was pounding, his nerves alight, and he wondered if Ronan could feel it through his palms. Suddenly Adam was overthinking, second guessing, wondering if this was enough. Ronan had always been so much to Adam, more than Adam was certain Ronan didn't know. He had tried to explain it hundreds of times, but nothing ever seemed adequate for his impossible, remarkable husband.
But Adam would keep trying, because Ronan had always been worth it.
The door swung open, and the slowly setting sky was punctuated by light from the doorway. Inside the long barn were strings of small lights that seemed to overwhelm and overly illuminate the magic of the items there. Tied around every light was a crisply folded piece of paper, giving off a diffused glow.
Ronan didn't need to dream of light, because it was all light, everywhere. The only way Adam could accomplish it as someone who was regulated to reality. He had slipped into Roann's dreams from time-to-time, and he couldn't help but catch those little moments where all the darkness was driven away—whether it was for Adam or not. Adam's attempt to replicate the feeling for Ronan was this.
Once inside, he let his hands slip from Ronan's face, and he took a step back to give Ronan space. Softly, Adam said, "You can open your eyes now."
Ronan wasn’t sure what to expect. Adam wasn’t your typical artist – exhibit A, the ugliest mug in existence – but Adam did have the soul of an artist as far as Ronan was concerned. He was magic and that required art. Creativity. Energy. Which was mostly what Ronan felt at first, when he stepped inside the barn he knew inside and out. There was more energy there. Scattered little bits of warmth and light that drew him forward as he opened his eyes.
“Oh,” he murmured, moving closer to the lights. “Looks pretty in here, I should’ve done something like this ages ago.” He didn’t know the secret of the papers around the lights, but it was strange enough to draw his attention. They diffused the light in a gentle way, made it romantic. But it seemed like a lot of work when Adam could’ve just found lights with a dimmer glow. Ronan stepped up next to the wall and turned one of the bulbs with a finger until the writing on the paper became obvious. He raised an eyebrow over his shoulder.
“Did you write your wedding vows on a bunch of mini lamp shades, nerd?” He sounded very fond and a little amused about the idea.
"Not exactly," Adam said from his position by the door. When he released Ronan from his gentle hold, he let him look around, and take it in. Adam was used to spending time being quiet and observing others, and he did it now. Watching how Ronan's expression changed with every new piece of the gift that caught his attention. The light was first, obviously, but it gave Adam a strange pleasure that Ronan was quick to see the writing. To know that Adam would not settle with something as simple as redecorating.
"Well, one of them might have my vows on it, but one of them has your vows on it, and there's another with the lyrics from one of the songs at our reception. And one that has that rant you gave me about my ceramics projects, about loving imperfect things perfectly. And that time you were obsessed with your arms. And when we exchanged gifts for the first time at Christmas as a married couple. Every time you agreed to do something for me because I asked, even if it was so stupid, what you said to me when the trailer was here, and there was this one morning, when you walked into the kitchen and made me a cup of coffee without me saying anything and—" Adam put a hand to his forehead, as if the thoughts were phyrically spilling out and he needed to hold them in.
Adam wrote them down, he wrote every single time he had felt so wildly, insanely, irrevocably and inexplicably in love with Ronan.
"One for every day for the next year. So even if we fight, even if things go sideways, even if Vallo decides to put us on other planes of existence for some time, you'll know. You'll have something. You won't have to guess how much I love you." Adam gave a half-hearted shrug, as if he was nothing he could do but give in. "It's always."
The little bit of shithead teasing on Ronan's face slid away in the face of Adam's sincerity. His eyes grew soft and round. He looked back to the wall of lights - the number he now knew to be a staggering three hundred and sixty-five. How Adam had come up with so many things to write was fucking mind-boggling. And moving. It wasn't as if he doubted the strength of Adam's love. Those days were in the past. But Ronan might always carry some degree of insecurity. Some measure of self-doubt. He felt that part of him get smaller standing there in front of Adam's wall of affirmations, as his heart felt bigger.
"Jesus, Adam," Ronan whispered. He reached out a hand for Adam, halving the distance between them. "I feel…I feel so fucking crazy sometimes when I think about how lucky I am and how much I love you." The feeling trickled out of him in a helpless laugh. "How the fuck. Where have you been hiding all these notes? If you tell me you remembered all that shit off the top of your head, I might lose it." He was teasing now, but giddy and gentle as he pulled Adam towards the wall.
"One for every day. Shit. You're such a stealthy sap." Ronan pulled Adam to his mouth.
"I like to keep you on your toes. I'm also not telling you where I hide my secret stash, it's the only way I can get anything past you," Adam said, trying to aim for nonchalance, but he was just as moved by Ronan's reaction as Ronan was by the gift itself. It had been easy to be a stealthy sap, it had been easy to write everything down, it had been so easy to love Ronan that Adam didn't realize that's what it was most days. He had felt so incapable, incompatible, without the capacity to love for so long that now that he knew, and wanted, everything else was second nature.
He was crashing into Ronan now, magnetized as he came closer, and kissing him with abandon. He felt raw and exposed, vulnerable in the best way—Ronan was able to see all his clunky, and ridiculous, and unrefined ways he was showing his love. Maybe in the future, it would be more subtle, a gentle reminder on their anniversary. But Adam was not someone to do anything by halves, and so Ronan had the lights, and his words, and hundreds of days to see it through.
Adam's hands were all over Ronan as they kissed, touching his face, his jaw, his shoulders. His fingers slipped under the collar of his shirt, and then dug into his back. Adam was unmooring, and clinging to Ronan would be his only life line.
Against Ronan's mouth, he smiled, with his eyes closed, and asked, "So you like it?"
It would've been very easy to get distracted by the fire in Adam's kiss, and it was a very near thing too. Ronan coiled around him like a creature that was bigger than a person could be. He wished he had more hands. More mouths. More hearts to hand over to his husband. It seemed like a weird thought in retrospect but in the moment, Ronan just wanted to be as connected to Adam as he could get, in all the ways that mattered.
"Yeah, dumbass," Ronan said adoringly. "I like it. It's…" He made himself pull back enough to look over his shoulder but his hands stayed tightly clinging to Adam. "You make me feel really fucking loved, Adam. You didn't have to go this big, this hard, but well, you're you," he laughed. Leaning back in to nip at Adam's nose, Ronan slipped out of his grip to go searching for the bin that had his gift in it.
"I had a hard time deciding what to do for yours. Cause fucking paper right? It had to be paper. And then I started thinking about how pages lay together and make up a book. Like they hold each other together or whatever? Fuck, I'm rambling just--there it is, goddamn." He pulled a box out that was wrapped in soft brown paper with a golden bow. The gift inside was part dream, part art-project. The dream was the box itself, which held the paper artwork inside and helped it move from one pair of hands to another. Each pair was either clasped lovingly or touching fingertips or drawing on the other's palm. They were painstakingly modeled after Adam and Ronan's own hands but Ronan had never exactly worked in this medium so he handed over the box with a bit of trepidation.
"I'll make sure to scale it back next year," Adam said, in a tone that suggested that was absolutely not happening. He didn't know how, not when it came to Ronan. He wanted Ronan to always feel this loved.
With the way they were so wrapped up with one another, Adam almost forgot that they were exchanging gifts and he was next. Adam waited patiently, pleased to watch Ronan ramble his way through an explanation. It was endearing to know that somehow both of them could still get a little tongue tied around each other. He took the box when it was offered and found the first available seat in the dream barn—which just so happened to be the most normal looking stool in the sea of impossible things.
He didn't say anything, not at first, as he gingerly opened the gift, making sure not to tear the paper, preserving every piece that Ronan had clearly painstakingly put together. But he swallowed hard at seeing the box, the intricate paper hands moving from one to another. It was instinct that had Adam reaching out his own hand to take Ronan's without taking his eyes off the moving paper hands. Their hands.
"Cause fucking paper, right?" Adam said, echoing Ronan's earlier words, but his voice sounded funny, hoarse. And while the box sat in his lap, Adam put his other hand to his cheek and took a deep breath as emotion slithered to the surface and a tear ran down his cheek. "I love it."
It felt weird to stand while Adam sat, and all of Ronan's nervous energy wouldn't allow him to just stay still anyway, so he grabbed a nearby bucket and flipped it over to sit down next to Adam. He wasn't wearing his bracelets today but old habits died hard and he lifted his wrist to his mouth before he realized it. Frowning at the stupidity of that, Ronan dropped his hand back into his lap and watched Adam take in the moving hands. The layers of paper that formed the artwork made soft fluttering noises as they moved. It almost sounded like they were speaking latin but it was too faint to pick up actual words.
"I--" He had to clear his throat to get his own voice back to normal. Well, normal as in mildly wrecked and softer than most ever got to hear it. "I know I'm not great with the word shit and I know at home I made you feel like I let you go when things got hard so I just wanted something that said I won't let go. I'm with you and I'm yours forever, ok?" He scooted his bucket closer, notching one knee between Adam's. "Whatever the fuck else you believe, I want you to be able to trust that much."
"You didn't have to go this hard, but you're you—" Oh, Adam couldn't even finish the smartass response. He pulled Ronan back in, grabbing a fistful of his shirt to make sure he would stay put as they kissed over the box and under the lights.
There was a time when Adam thought that Ronan would look elsewhere, that he would choose the great, infinite expanse of magic, than the realistic little bubble that Adam had stayed grounded in. But that had been smoothed away with a year of marriage, and hundreds of thousands of words exchanged. Three hundred and sixty five days worth of moments was a fraction of all of that.
Adam stayed in Ronan's space, cheek to cheek. His whole body felt shaky, and he thanked the foresight he had to sit. He wasn't sure if he would be able to get back up, but that was a problem for his future self.
"I trust you," Adam said, quiet as a whisper, but heavy with conviction. "I love you. Even when you're shit at words, I know you. You don't have to say anything, because I know. " Adam turned his face and gave Ronan another kiss, sweeter and softer than his hungry, riotous ones from before. "Tamquam alter idem." He didn't need Ronan to finish it this time; it was a statement, a universal truth. He had Ronan forever, because he was Adam's second self, unable to be extracted from the whole.
He sighed, and then slowly leaned away to take Ronan in again. "I need to add another piece of paper, to account for a leap year and put, shit, all of this."
Now that the anxiety of gift-giving was gone, Ronan was all lanky softness, his long arms around Adam, his equally long legs tangled with Adam's. He would roll them off to the ground or carry Adam to the floating coach nearby soon enough but he wasn't in any rush to move right now. He kept his face pressed to Adam's until the kiss and even then he was pressed as close as he could, forehead to forehead.
"I know you too," he said fiercely. "Tamquam alter idem. Sempiternum." He took one of Adam's hands and kissed his palm and his up the length of his fingers and then just held Adam's hand over his own heart. He didn't want to go anywhere. He didn't want to think about anything else. His mind and heart were reserved for Adam, Adam, Adam. So he leaned into his shithead nature.
"The lampshades can wait, Adam. I wanna renew our naked vows. And see how much vigorous activity the floating couch can handle." Ronan stood, holding a hand down to his husband.
Adam took Ronan's hand, firm and sure, and allowed him to pull him to his feet. Not without putting the box down carefully on his seat first. He took a second to look to watch the fluttering of the paper hands, then looked to their clasped ones. The ones Ronan was just kissing, holding over his chest, where Adam could feel warmth and security in the simplest gesture.
He grinned, then immediately crowded into Ronan's space, backing him toward the couch. "Alright," Adam said, grabbing for the hem of Ronan's shirt to tug it off. "Now that the anniversary gifts are out of the way, I hope you're ready for me to give you your birthday one."