WHAT. Waking up with four more years of memories (canon bump to end of Greywaren epilogue) WHERE. The Barns farmhouse roof WHEN. February 14th 2023 WARNINGS. none that I can think of STATUS. complete
Adam thought his brain was done cramming memories into it. While his mind had a capacity to push through extreme pressures, physical and analytical, there had to be something that said human beings were not made for so much memory in one go. Just a few scant weeks had run havoc on his body, and in some ways he was still recovering—parsing out the new hang ups and confusion, working through guilt and grief. He recently had done the hard work of bringing up his desire to not be afraid of scrying, admitting that he needed help. He had made progress.
And now, after he had finally fallen asleep on the evening after Valentine's Day, tangled up with Ronan in their shared master bedroom, he was stuffed with four more years.
It was recovery from Boston, then classes, then moving, then classes, then moving again, then changing his normally decisive mind about where and what and who he wanted to be. He was magic and scrying again, and graduating. He was being approached by the government who said he had the affinity for this sort of work. He was coming together with Ronan, and missing him deeply when they were apart. He was traveling, and researching, and finding his way back to the Barns. He was opening a crisp, plain invitation for a wedding. He was mingling with his friends, his boyfriend, no—there was a ring and then Adam was waking up.
Not gasping out of fear or surprise, nothing as dramatic as the last few times. But Adam's consciousness felt like the reel of an old film that had simply reached the end, and continued to spin. He took in his surroundings; he was alone in the dark. Adam tried to look at his hands, attempting to figure out if he was wearing his wedding ring or his engagement one that this Ronan, his Ronan, had quietly offered.
Adam pushed himself out of the bed, dressed in his earlier discarded clothes, and made his way outside. It was almost too easy to know where Ronan would be, and if he wasn't in bed it meant that he had received the same dump of future knowledge. Or was it past? Adam wasn't coherent enough to dissect that yet.
He passed by the couch, swiping a blanket that he figured Ronan wouldn't have taken, and began the climb up the ladder that was predictably pitched against the house to the roof. It was an awkward ascent, and when Adam reached the top to see his husband already there, he didn't say much, simply held out the blanket. "Take this, so I don't slip getting up here."
Waking up with new memories was never especially pleasant but this time around was much less awful than the time he'd woken up thinking he was probably asleep for good and Declan had sold him out with Adam's help. That felt like a lifetime ago now. Ronan here, in Vallo, hadn't seen his brother in three years. Ronan, there, had just attended his brother's wedding. Ronan, here, had been married for over a year. Ronan, there, had only just finally proposed after five years of dating.
The contrast was fucking him up a little. It's the only reason he didn't wake Adam up right away and headed up to the roof instead. The sun was just starting to creep over the horizon and the air was crisp. He was fucking cold honestly, but he was too stubborn to go back down right away.
"Fuck," he grumbled cheerfully at Adam's arrival. "My psychic hero." He scooted over to pull the blanket up onto the roof and then moved over enough to let Adam climb up. The blanket helped a lot with the early morning chill, but it was Adam's presence that grounded him. Ronan waited until he could pull Adam in close against his hip and cover them both in the blanket before he said anything else.
"Or should I say, my psychic fiancé?" he joked. It seemed as good a way as any to see if Adam had woken up with the same memories.
Adam, crouching low across the roof for balance, which honestly looked ridiculous, crawl-shimmied over and in next to Ronan. It was a familiar position, having spent other previous days curled up against him on this very same spot. Under the blanket, Adam was quick to grab Ronan's hands, to warm them up the way Ronan had done for him hundreds of times before, and to check if he somehow had another ring on. Adam wasn't hiding his obviousness in his inspection.
He paused his ministrations briefly, hiding part of his relief that Ronan had the same memories. He had assumed, he had hoped, but Adam was too pragmatic to not get some kind of confirmation before believing it. "Yeah, your psychic fiancé, turned husband, turned back to fiancé. I want to say I'm surprised you did it at your brother's wedding, and that it took us four years but—" Adam cut himself off, shaking his head. He wasn't ready to get into that just yet.
His face twisted sourly, even though he was anything but sour when he said, "Does this mean we have to get married again here? I don't think the rights revert back with new memories, but I'll have to check when we go inside."
"Fuck no," Ronan laughed, tangling his fingers up with Adam's. "We're not going to be that obnoxious couple." He could just imagine Gansey's face if they did try to throw another wedding. But as amusing as that thought was, Ronan had limits. "We're a different kind of obnoxious couple," he clarified. And to punctuate the statement he lifted Adam's hand to his mouth and lightly bit his knuckle.
There was something oddly soothing about having all these new memories. He'd been able to travel the world, finally. He'd gotten close to Declan again. He'd spent time with Hennessy and gotten to know Jordan and watched his family grow in the peace that followed all their trauma. It made the absence of them feel like a fresh wound, but at least he'd had those moments.
"Maybe when Jordan finally drags Declan's ass here I'll change my mind." He looked out over the farm for a moment, somber but without the fury he used to always carry around when there was something he couldn't fix. "Gansey'll be relieved. He doesn't have to dance around shit anymore."
When Ronan bit his knuckle, Adam laughed, soft and simple. It was good to laugh about this. The memories this time didn't feel earth-shattering, didn't consume them in the way the last one did. Almost like Vallo, and their life generally speaking, decided to give them a goddamn break. There would always be questions that Adam would ask—and inevitably he would want to know what happened to them next?—but for now, this was punctuation at the end of a sentence.
His gaze was on Ronan, watching his profile as his husband stared out at the Barns. He didn't have to be in his dreams, let alone psychic, to guess what he was thinking about. But Adam had never pushed, and he wasn't going to any time soon. He trusted Ronan to be honest when he was ready.
"He could have at least said I work for the government. Or that I didn't stay at Harvard," Adam said, almost surprised that he gave into the life he wanted rather than the one he thought he did. That tidbit of information seemed not as alarming as it should have been. Probably because Adam had already come to terms with it in Vallo.
"I mean, shit, he hasn't even tried to tell me what a hypocrite I am for using taxpayer money to expense our hotel rooms when I'm traveling and definitely not working." Adam grinned. "It must be killing him."
"Or that Declan got married before me, the fucker." Ronan huffed. "But, be honest, if he told you all that shit, you wouldn't like knowing secondhand. Not just getting there on your own. He knows how fucking stubborn and self-sufficient you are. I'm sure he didn't want to take that--" He lifted one hand and made smartass air quotes with it. "--Growth away from you."
All joking aside, he did feel like they'd grown, fucking annoying as it was to admit it. He was still himself - still temperamental and immature - but he liked to think some of the edges had been smoothed down. Some of that had already been done in Vallo too, but now his Vallo self and his home self met easier somewhere in the middle instead of feeling like there was a wide gulf between the two. He was also a great deal more comfortable with what he was and what he could do.
"Also I'm pretty sure you wouldn't believe that hotel room thing before you actually started doing it. I know I wouldn't," he added with a taunting smirk.
Adam was quick to put his hand on Ronan's and push down his air quotes. "Don't be a shithead," Adam said, then sighed, and added, "But you're right. I would have hated it. I know I kept asking him for answers, and he kept being vague enough that I wouldn't push, but this is somehow better. I'm also not psychically exhausted so this is already a step up from last time." But that recovery was also four years ago; time seemed nonexistent when nothing matched up.
"And I think I'd believe the hotel thing over working for the federal government. And I like my job, what the fuck?" Adam asked, halfway to laughing again. It was a confused sort of laugh, trying to rectify his mind with what he knew then and what he knew now. His life seemed impossible, improbable, and yet...
Now it was Adam's turn to stare off at the Barns with a new perspective. The last memory he had, it had been months since he had been back to Virginia. The feeling of homecoming and homesickness warred inside of him. This had been home for him in Vallo, but not quite the same way it lived in his new memories. There was almost a sadness for his other self, that it took him years to have that growth because stopped fighting against what was right.
At some point, Adam had started to nonchalantly spin Ronan's wedding on his finger. "We were stupid. We waited so long."
“How do you think I feel? I’m married to a spook,” Ronan teased. It took some slightly dangerous maneuvering, but he shifted around Adam so that he had one leg on either side of him and could drape across his back. The blanket cocooned them and he hooked his chin over Adam’s shoulder.
“We weren’t stupid. We were figuring our shit out. It wasn’t like here, where the world is small and it’s easy to explore and fucking grow without straying too far from each other. I needed—” He sighed. Looping his arms around Adam’s middle, he pulled him in close against his chest in a hug. “I needed to prove to myself that I could handle being alone. That I could trust we would keep coming back to each other by choice and that I wasn’t an anchor around your leg.”
After a pause, Ronan snorted. “Okay maybe we were a little stupid. Four fucking years is a long time.”
Adam watched Ronan scoot around, his hand always a second away from grabbing him until he settled back down. It was that unnecessary protectiveness, the kind that Adam always seemed to find for Ronan even though he knew Ronan could handle himself. The feeling came from years—both here and home—of reaching for Ronan, not as an anchor but as a lighthouse to carry him home.
How strange that Adam's home was a person rather than a place? He'd tuck that information away to peel apart later when he couldn't sleep.
Turning his face just enough to kiss Ronan's temple, Adam curled into the hug as well, holding Ronan's arms tight against him. "The second time I changed schools," Adam said, the new memories spilling out conversationally, like they had been there all along, "that was when I knew. The first time I was scared, all the planning and shit I had wanted at Harvard didn't happen, it felt like I failed myself. I had to find it all over again. But the second time, before the job offer, I knew what I wanted, where I wanted to go, who I wanted to be with."
He leaned back into Ronan more, laying his head against his. "I think you handled it though. We figured out that we can be apart, and alone but—" Adam sighed. "It's shitty. I missed you too much in between."
“I missed you too,” Ronan grunted. “Too fucking much to function sometimes.” Some days, he hadn’t been able to get out of bed until he talked to Adam or Gansey or his brothers. Until he’d reached out across the distance between himself and the people he loved and made sure they were still there. He was still there, in their world, not back swimming in the endless sea. Alone. There was a words for that feeling, of course. Loneliness. Depression. Existential dread. But he preferred to just think of them as his shitty days. The more time went on, the less shitty days he had. He liked what he was doing. Finding dreamers, finding ley lines, embracing what he was and making the best of it.
He liked who he was becoming. More than he ever expected, really.
“Think it helped me figure out that I’m never really alone though.” He rapped his knuckles lightly against Adam’s heart. “You fuckers are always right here. I’d see shit and know exactly what you’d say about it. Meet a new dreamer and hear Gansey being Gansey in my head. The real thing is fucking better, obviously. But it was good for my dumb needy brain.” After a beat of silence, he kissed Adam’s shoulder. “And it was sexy as hell when you used government funds to see me naked.”
"Obviously. I don't walk around in your dreamspace to not imprint something in your subconscious when I'm not around," Adam said. It was good to hear Ronan talk like this. Not that he wasn't settled on his own feet here in Vallo, and not that they hadn't had these types of conversations before back home, but everything felt too late. Like it took too long to come to these painfully obvious realizations. The whole practice of self-love had taken on a different meaning when they were figuring it out in real time.
Adam had forced so much of himself to fit a type, miserable and unfulfilled, that to honestly be happy was to do what he actually wanted, to embrace freedom.
His freedom, however, looked very different from Ronan's. And as much as Adam searched for his—in school, in work, in magic—he had wanted that for Ronan, too. Waiting for each other to figure it out was brutal, when they had been living it for years already in Vallo.
"But I also happen to like your dumb needy brain, so you're not allowed to talk shit about it, even when you're making a point," Adam said, swiping Ronan's hand and kissing his knuckles. Then nipped at them for the naked comment. "Is it going to lose all its luster now to be regularly naked with me, no federal government money involved? I know skirting the line of ethical practices really did it for you, I can't replicate that here."
"You're not in my heart because of dreamwalking, asshole," Ronan said fondly, poking Adam in the ribs. He tucked closer behind Adam's hearing ear and closed his eyes. As much as he'd felt fulfilled by the last four years of work, he wouldn't choose to be anywhere else. He didn't have lookalike parents living here at his farm. Adam and Matthew and Gansey and Blue were all close at hand. The market was thriving and, fuck, he had multiple friends that were practically family. He missed Declan and Hennessy and Jordan, there was no getting around that. But this was still home.
"Nothing about you will ever lose its luster," he said. It was too serious but Adam was fucking use to his mood shifts by now. "Besides, if you're feeling nostalgic, we can just tell everybody we're fumigating and send them off to a hotel for a few days while we have the house to ourselves. That's ethically skirty enough for me."
Ronan kissed the skin behind Adam's ear. "Glad you picked up the same memories," he whispered. "It's like even Vallo knows we're two parts of a whole."
"That's less about ethics and just straight asshole," Adam corrected, settling back into Ronan's embrace. His mouth so close to his hearing ear was all sensation, and he didn't hide the shiver that shook his whole body. "But okay. Keep that plan on the backburner when I'm feeling nostalgic."
Adam shifted more against Ronan, gently adjusting his position around him. He needed his arms not just at his waist but on his chest, holding his ribs, a security like a jacket, like a weighted blanket. Adam wasn't anxious, but there was something about being held like this that made him feel like the second self between the two of them. He didn't have memories of that sweetmetal sea again from the four years of memories, but sometimes he missed it too, the ease of existing. This was the closest he was going to get.
"I'm glad I did too. You would have been insufferable with knowing before me," Adam said, obviously teasing despite his voice sounding soft and tired. "Are you going to be okay knowing you could get out there at home and not actually doing that here?" Adam thought he knew the answer, but wanderlust was a real thing.
“Sargent would tell you I’m always insufferable,” Ronan shrugged. “I think you just like it most of the time.” He didn’t resist being repositioned at all. The closer he felt to Adam, the better. The inhuman part of his brain wouldn’t have minded climbing inside Adam and staying there for a while. But the rest of him recognized that was a fucking weird thought to have. He focused on the question instead.
“Anyway, I’ll be fine. Think I got most of the travel bug out of my system and this is home. I love it here.” There wasn’t any need to list the parts that would bother him, but he sighed and did it anyway. “Just, fucking. Can’t believe I’m gonna be sad Declan isn’t here. If you’d have told me that a few months ago, I’d have been pissed.” He massaged at Adam’s chest, mindlessly warming his hands there. “Be nice if I could find some dreamers here though. Maybe I’ll look harder. Just to be sure.”
That thought pleased him. Even if it was unlikely to result in anything. Ronan hummed thoughtfully. “Are you gonna be okay without your swanky government gig?”
Adam snorted, and shook his head. "Maybe it's a sign. Fate and destiny are bullshit, but this could be preparing you for his inevitable arrival. And then you can give him shit for taking so long and you won't be sad at all." It was a small consolation, words only went so far, but Adam would keep searching and hoping for Ronan's sake; it was unfair for them to be separated even if Adam and his future-current brother-in-law had their disagreements.
He was thinking about Ronan's search for other dreamers here that Adam sounded dazed and a little surprised by the question being turned back on him. "Yeah, yeah of course, I'll be fine."
Part of him was surprised at the answer, and how quickly it came. His swanky government job was still a means to an end—Adam needed financial security and independence, but he also needed magic and wonder and all the uncanny pieces of the world at his fingertips. Somehow he had lucked out back home that his job allowed both. But being here was different, he could do what he wanted with all of it, when he wanted it. His priorities shifted as his memories of two lives folded together.
And abruptly, Adam's mood changed, and he tensed. "Shit, do I need to finish school?" Adam asked, mostly to himself before he twisted around in Ronan's arms to look at him. "I'm almost done here."
Ronan adjusted his grip to make sure Adam didn't tumble right off the roof in his hasty turn. "Fuck, Parrish, I don't know," he laughed. "I think that's up to you." He was, unshockingly, even less interested in school with four more years out in the world under his belt. But he knew all too well that Adam needed certain things to thrive and he'd help him get those things no matter how annoying he thought those things were. They were less annoying just by being something Adam wanted anyway.
"Do you want to change anything up here? Keep your goal the same? What? You could maybe be a magic spook here if you wanted." It likely wouldn't be as fulfilling since magic was out in the open and there was less need to sneak around or be exceptionally clever. But there would also be more magic in general. Maybe Vallo had more to hide than they even knew. "It's your call. You don't have to still be a lawyer just cause you think I'll need one on retainer."
"That's not the only reason I wanted to be a lawyer, but it is one of them," Adam said, going for a joke. It helped break the seriousness of the situation, pump some levity in Adam's brain where suddenly it started to rearrange again. The decisions seemed to pile up—what were the options for someone who had so much schooling under his belt that it seemed disproportionately stupid? He could still be a lawyer, or work for some secret magical governmental agency, or another third or fourth or fifth option he hadn't considered because he hadn't had the time to.
But instead of making the choice now, in the early morning before breakfast and coffee, Adam did his own uncharacteristic move and settled back against Ronan. "I need to think on it," Adam said, firm and resolute, to convince himself to wait. "I need to weigh some options. I need to not figure this out now. Later, maybe. I don't know."
It was freeing to not know, to let things sort and settle. Adam knew his subconscious wouldn't let it go on for long—to put something off was the antithesis of his being—but for now he pulled Ronan's arms back around him in that reassuring embrace, kissing his hand before placing it on his chest.
After a stretch of silence, Adam asked, "How much longer were you planning on staying up here?" Unsaid, the question also asked, And can I stay with you?
It was nice to hear Adam say he'd think it over. There'd been a time when Adam's goals were inflexible - once he set them, he stuck to them at all costs. Ronan preferred this, because it meant Adam was allowed to change his mind. He was allowed to decide he'd been wrong about what would make him happy. Ronan made him happy, despite the absolute impossibility of that when they first met. Change used to terrify Ronan but these days, he knew how much of it was good.
"Take your time," he murmured, resting his chin back on Adam's shoulder and staring out over the farm. "I was thinking I'd watch the sun rise, wait until the animals start yelling for their food, then head down." He hugged Adam closer and kissed the side of his neck, smirking against his skin. "But if you want to celebrate your new engagement, just say the word."
"I do actually," Adam said, casual and nonchalant, like getting engaged multiple times due to memory updates was normal. At least they could use this as an excuse for vow renewal in the future.
He lifted his hand to turn Ronan's face to his, and kissed him. It felt too long since he had, and it would be too easy to get lost in it as the sun rose over the farm. He pulled away, breathless and pleased, to add, "Except not on the roof."