WHAT. Two assholes plus one painful part to their memory update equals one long overdue discussion in dreams. WHERE. Adam's dreamspace, for real. WHEN.December 14, a nebulous time in the middle of the night, after Adam's conversation with Gansey. WARNINGS. Big Old Greywaren Spoilers™ ART CREDIT.here!! STATUS. Complete!
In the three years since he’d ended up in Vallo, Ronan had learned a lot about himself. Some of it through memory updates, some of it through marriage. Some from running a successful business out of his home. And some from beating his head against whatever wall happened to be in his way.
Dreamwalking wasn’t impossible. He’d done it before. But repeating the process hadn’t been simple as it should’ve been. And stretching his legs to step into dreams that weren’t Adam’s was still a mythical goal at this point. He thought if he could master reaching out to Adam though, the rest would come easily enough. And waking up with a deeper understanding of himself and his husband apparently helped. Because this time, when he reached out in his own dreamspace, he found himself slipping into Adam’s mind like it was a well-work jacket.
He knew every nook and cranny of this person, and Adam knew every dark corner of his psyche too. There’d been no room for hiding when they’d tangled together in the sweetmetal sea.
So why did it feel like they were hiding from something now?
“Show me what he’s dreaming,” Ronan whispered. He didn’t need to say it out loud, but it helped to focus. He stepped out of the formless void and into Adam’s dream, his gaze slipping over the complex strangeness in search of Adam himself.
Adam didn't dream often. His body was continually so tired that his mind took the reprieve of sleep as a rarity and let him rest, as little as it was. And when he did dream it was a complicated, fractal mess—working through real-world problems in his "down time", in a way that somehow made sense to him even if it was not in a focused space like Ronan's often was.
With their new memories, Adam now understood why Ronan's dreamspace was always so well-structured. It was him, he was it. So why would he ever want to come into Adam's subconscious?
Probably for the same reason Adam had hoped he would dream tonight: to work through all the unspoken issues between him and Ronan since they were crammed full of new events. He felt the feelings plague him, no matter how hard he tried to shove them down. He was fine, he was fine.
His dream, however, betrayed him. This one was a strange amalgamation of objects: Adam sat at a desk in the middle of not-unfamiliar darkness. Anything void of light tended to look suspiciously like the sweetmetal sea that he had spent days in, but it didn't bear the corresponding oppressiveness. On the desk was a scale, off-balance. On the left side was a miniature facsimile of the apocalyptic fire. On the right side were floating lights. Adam kept pressing his hand base with the faintly glowing orbs, but no matter what he did, no matter how much weight he pressed against, the fire remained heaviest and would not give way to the other side of the scale.
Adam had clearly been at this for a while.
He barely heard Ronan approach, unused to having him in his dreams, unused to being afraid of others stepping inside this private, intimate space. He should have known better. Adam startled to stand, worried that this was an illusion of Ronan, and not the real one dreamwalking. "You're here," Adam said, giving a guilty glance to the scale, then back to Ronan. "You're here, right?"
Adam's analytical dreams weren't new to Ronan but this particular dream was. In the way of dreams, Ronan was many feet away one second and right next to Adam the next. His eyes passed over the scale - at first, ready to disregard the image as something odd Adam's painfully clever brain could make sense of and Ronan Lynch could not.
But it didn't take a rocket scientist to understand the imagery.
"I'm…" Ronan stepped closer, frowning, eyes on the floating orbs that remained stubbornly lighter than the fire. "Fuck. I'm here," he croaked. "I thought it might be easier to come to you now. And it was."
He brushed Adam's hand near the scale with tentative fingers and quietly asked, "What are you doing, Adam?"
The rarity of Ronan in his dreams made Adam hesitate. Scrying had been off the table for weeks now, and that included scrying into Ronan's dreamspace. Adam didn't realize, though he should have,that Ronan could do it better now, would do it to Adam. He wished now that Ronan hadn't walked into his mental experiment, and was ashamed at the state of his lackluster subconscious to someone like Ronan's, which were much more meticulously formed.
"You should have called. I would have cleaned up for company," Adam said, a poor joke. There was nothing but them, the desk, and the scale. He wanted all of it to disappear but his brain wasn't cooperating with his lucid dreaming and so the clunky physical metaphor stayed. Adam could see the recognition in Ronan's face.
He turned his hand over to tangle just his fingers with Ronan's, a brief touch. "I'm trying to solve an unsolvable problem." Adam tried to smile, tried for light and teasing again, but his whole expression was tight.He gave up with pretense; they had always been the most exposed in their dreams. "You weren't supposed to see this. Not like this anyway. It's—nothing, it's nothing."
"It's not nothing," Ronan balked. That word horrified him. As if Adam were saying his own life were nothing. "It's not nothing," he repeated in a growl.
What was it? Complicated? Ronan wished it were complicated. It probably seemed very simple to someone as practical was Adam; Ronan had picked everyone else over him. The problem with that was that Ronan Lynch would have ceased to be anyone at all if Hennessy hadn't rescued Adam. He'd known that, making the choice.
"If I dreamt like this, I'd probably be reliving that moment over and over too." If Ronan had less control over his dreams these days, they'd have had bigger problems than his guilt but that was besides the point. "I'd be dreaming that moment again and again, making a different call. Saying fuck everyone else. Fuck the world and everybody in it."
"Don't say that," Adam said, even though he sounded pained to do so. He had wished to hear those words dozens, hundreds, thousands of times. Adam had spent too long convincing himself, and talking it through with Gansey, that it didn't wreck Ronan in the same way. But to hear Ronan say he would make a different choice altogether now? Hope and hurt sputtered desperately in his chest. But they couldn't change time, there was no way to rework the events of their lives into something else.
"I've spent too long trying to find another way." With those words, a stack of papers fizzled into existence on the table. The words and mathematics were incomprehensible dream language, and not the elegant Latin that came so easily in Ronan's dreams. Adam was not the Greywaren, Adam was not a being of dreams. None of this made sense. Hidden behind the empty darkness of this 'room', other attempts were obscured, all with the same answer.
Adam shook his head, and then shook it again harder. "There would be nothing to come back to Ronan. You would have saved me and then what? The world would be gone, there wouldn't be anything to save me for. And then what is the point?" He had to make an impossible choice, Gansey had said, and Adam knew this inherently, and yet when he tried to convince himself—and Ronan—of that now, it rang hollow.
Ronan had told himself similar already, too many times to count. He’d known it then and he knew it now. He’d made the only call he could have in the moment, with seconds to spare and a world relying on him. But it didn’t change the feeling that churned in his gut looking at Adam’s little stack of papers and heartsick face.
“Yeah but…why should anybody else get to live if you don’t?”
It was a dark thought, selfish, but it was genuine anyway. He took Adam’s hand and pulled him out of his chair. He didn’t tug him into an embrace immediately because he knew if he did, he’d just burrow into Adam’s neck and hide away from all of this until they woke up in bed. And this deserved a real conversation.
“I knew what I had to do. In that moment. But I need you to know I still wanted to pick you, over all of it. Just have us all go down together. Because what the fuck is even the point if you, if I…” He exhaled shakily and shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, Adam.”
Adam swore he was dreaming, dreaming within a dream. Was that possible? A thread of longing wove its way deep into his chest, the kind that he had continually and continuously squashed when he tried to put himself into Ronan's shoes. He had told Gansey as much—that he would be a hypocrite if he had to make that decision, knowing what was the right option. But he had wanted so badly to be wrong about the way his rational mind convinced him that Ronan didn't hesitate in his choice.
How could he when the world was on the line?
"Shit, hey, hey—" Adam was using his free hand to touch Ronan's cheek, to make sure he looked straight at him, the way that Adam was now. Adam was not someone who cried; he was taught to keep it locked up tight because it was some sign of weakness. But even without wet cheeks, his face twisted up into something miserable as he attempted to suck it back in.
"I forgive you, Ronan, I forgive you," Adam said, and the scale, the desk, and the papers all faded away. The only thing left was the dancing orbs that winked futilely in the inky darkness of the rest of Adam's dream. "I thought, I thought that it was easy. I thought I wasn't enough at the end of everything. And I thought I was okay with that, or I tried to be. A necessary casualty in the scope of the world and, well, you."
"You didn't know Hennessy would be there and we didn't talk about it, so I figured you were—" Adam had to stop himself and exhale because it was starting to become too much. "I'm not telling you this to hurt you, I'm telling you this to be honest with you, even if it sucks."
"Fuck." Ronan turned his head away for a moment and then swept his arm across his face. "It wasn't fucking easy. Jesus. Why would you--Is that what you think I--"
Just the thought that Adam believed that Ronan didn't care enough about him to burn the whole world to the ground just because he hadn't, when the opportunity was right there…But then he hadn't. That was the kicker, wasn't it? And the reason wasn't even all that deep.
"I…I didn't want to be the guy who destroyed the world. I didn't want them to be right about me." He sniffed, his eyes damp and not quite settling on Adam still. This was a fact he hadn't really even admitted to himself before now. "I knew…if you didn't make it…none of it would be worth that loss, but I still couldn't bear the thought of being the guy who snuck into the world through a fucking back door and then left it in ashes."
His touch on Adam's hand was gentle and seeking as blindly reached for him. "It wasn't easy though. Nothing about losing you would ever be easy, you asshole."
Adam realized how idiotic his rationalization had been. Had it been left over from the Lace pulling him apart and whispering dark terrible thoughts into his mind? Had it wormed its way into his subconscious when he least expected it? Adam couldn't entertain the thought, because then he would second-guess more, everything, and he had promised he wasn't going to let it win.
But seeing the heartbreak on Ronan's face at the potential of losing him and being the one to end the world—that was a weight that Adam never wanted Ronan to bear alone. "They were never right about you," Adam whispered fiercely, a well of unpracticed anger forming in his chest. A hot tear, in the dream and in the real world, escaped down his cheek, and Adam didn't bother to wipe it away.
"You were always better than anything anyone ever thought of you. You have always been so much more, and I'm not—" He swallowed down the old self-esteem issue. Words were so difficult, and Adam wished desperately for that moment they had tangled together in the sweetmetal sea, where vocalizing their feelings was unnecessary. Just emotions and understanding and knowledge and love all wrapped together. But Adam's dreamspace was more formal, regimented, and they were trapped in this clunky way of communicating.
Adam exhaled, a shaky and broken thing, and clung right back to Ronan. "I'm sorry that I doubted you. I'm sorry that I let my fear of not... of not being enough for you and everything that you are, confuse what I know is true. I was selfish and I just wanted you to pick me and fuck everything else, too."
Seeing a tear on Adam's face brought everything into sharp relief. Ronan cradled Adam's damp cheek with his free hand and pressed their foreheads together. They were both idiots with low self-esteem.. His own abandonment issues had caused Adam pain in the past; could he really blame Adam for feeling forsaken?
"You deserved to be picked over everything else. I know I didn't and that's shit I have to carry, but please don't carry it with me. My one choice in a fucked either way situation doesn't mean you're not enough for me. You're more than enough for anyone." He let go of Adam's hand just so he could hold his other cheek and brush his thumbs across Adam's face. "Anyone, you hear me? This world, that world, any fucking god or goddamn ancient creature…anyone. You picked me though and I'm not about to let you forget it, but still." He pressed forward to kiss Adam softly, tenderly.
"The next end of the world, it's me and you, ok?" he promised. "Everyone else can get fucked."
That hungry, touch-starved version of Adam nearly swallowed him whole when Ronan held his cheek. They were so close now, nowhere to hide from the searching look, and so Adam closed his eyes, nodded fervently that he understood, and allowed the words to soothe the ache inside of him that he hadn't realized was pain. Adam had been in his own emotional trauma for so long that just hearing you're more than enough for anyone nearly took him out at the knees.
He let himself be kissed, and then kissed again. His arms came to wrap around Ronan then. The embrace was not unfamiliar; one of Adam's hands on Ronan's side and the other cradling the back of his head.
Dream time didn't make sense. It could have been seconds, minutes, hours that he stood with Ronan in the dreamspace holding him. Adam spent it trying desperately for Ronan to understand the sentiments his mouth couldn't seem to form, all of it spilling out messily: I know, and thank you, and I love you, and but I don't want you to carry it alone, and tamquam alter idem, remember?, and I don't want you to be alone, and numquam solus.
Eventually, somehow, Adam pulled away enough to whisper in Ronan's ear. "Can it just be you and me, without another end of the world involved?" It was the tiniest bit of his assholishness coming through. It was like tearing away a corner, pulling back the layers of heavy regret and confusion he had been carrying him for weeks. It was nice to breathe a little easier.
"I don't know if I can handle another one for a few years, at least. We have plans."
Ronan snorted, equal parts amused and relieved to hear Adam joke. "From your lips to God's fucking ears."
His faith had been shaky before the near end of the world, but he'd clung to it for an assortment of reasons. Now that he knew what he was and how he came to be, he didn't not believe in God, he just had a looser grip on his old devotion. Not that he wouldn't have made that same comment before he knew everything, but now it had a little more sacrilegious smartass involved.
"How about we start those plans sprucing this place up a bit? I love you, but fuck's sake, Parrish. This place is dreary." As he said the word and shifted so that he had one arm loosely draped over his husband's shoulders, he shaped the space around them with velvety ease. One moment they were standing in a formless void, the next they were deep in a verdant rainforest, complete with fat drops of rain and a steamy heat in the air that warmed from the inside out.
"That's better," Ronan preened. He slid a warm smirk Adam's way. "Wanna hunt for bugs?"
Adam wanted to protest, even went as far as to open his mouth, with the complaint on his tongue. But when the darkness that he had become woefully accustomed to fell away into a rainforest, a place he had only seen in pictures from textbooks, Adam grew suspiciously quiet.A small spark of incredible warmth lit inside of him, and he knew it had everything to do with Ronan, and everything he had done and would do for him—even something like making his dreamspace wonderful, so that he wouldn't be left in the shadows of his own mind.
No one knew him the way Ronan Lynch did, and the doubt the memories and the Lace had brought on with smothered in that single, immutable fact.
He held up his free hand to catch some of the rain in his palm, before Adam turned his face up to Ronan and smiled. "Yeah, actually. I do."