InsaneJournal

It was only technically camping. Set up on the open field only twenty feet from the front porch of the Barns, within eyesight of Blue, as she’d specified. But it involved a nice tent and his two newest (and best) friends. He hadn’t had a lot of those, just fellow politician kids that he had been thrown together with - but none of them really liked listening to his stories, or telling their own. They didn’t speak their own minds and they certainly weren’t allowed to get their clothing dirty.

Which meant in Gansey’s estimation, this was the best camping experience he’d ever had, with friends that seemed to like him. It was late, but Adam was still awake with him as they stretched out across a sleeping bag with a book open, flashlight propped up. Ronan was close by, just a few inches away, snoring softly as he just dozed off. Gansey kept his voice to a whisper in an effort to let him sleep.

“Vallo has some of the most interesting flora I’ve ever seen. Did you know the largest recorded venus fly trap here was four feet tall and ate a goblin whole?” He half expected something like that to come up here at the Barns, with how strange everything was. “Do you think we’ll see something like that in the forest?”

Adam was having a good time. He was scared to have a good time, because that meant it had to end at some point, and he didn't want it to. He wanted to stay at the Barns again, longer than last time—forever a little voice in his head whispered—but he knew he couldn't. He had parents he had to go home to, and his own clothes, and he had to finish school even if older Ronan told him he could learn any way he wanted. Adam knew he couldn't say that to his parents. School kept Adam out of their hair. School was safe.

But so was inside this tent with Gansey and Ronan, who were his age now. The logical parts of Adam's brain knew this couldn't be real. People didn't just become the same age as you and be your best new friends and listen to the things that interested you. But if he wasn't going to wake up for a while in his new dream, he would have a good time. Something to remember later when reality came crashing in.

"That's not true," Adam said, scrunching up his face as he scooted closer to Gansey's open book to see what he was reading. "Venus fly traps can't eat people. And even if they did eat people, they would need to eat three people four times a year and that's twelve people for one plant. They would chop them down for sure. It would mess up ecosystems."

Adam leaned in closer to Gansey, believing he was getting too loud—he wasn't, but it was a habit to always be contentious of his indoor voice. Parents didn't like noisy children. "I mean, if that was true, it could eat us."

Ronan hadn't meant to fall asleep. His sleep schedule was less of a schedule and more of a lightning storm that occasionally touched down. Declan always tried to keep him on a schedule anyway. And he got more and more tense if Ronan didn't sleep when he was supposed to. Where he was supposed to. But today had been exciting and Ronan was having so much fun. The farm had people at it! And Adam and Gansey were fun and friendly. They didn't treat him like he was weird. He kept waiting for his dad or Declan to show up and shoo everyone off.

Instead, they'd gotten to camp and he'd accidentally curled against Gansey's side and dropped off like a log.

He hadn't meant to dream. But then he never did. He'd just been thinking about what Gansey said all day. About the bee. And he didn't want his new friend to die. But he couldn't stop thinking about bees and Gansey, Gansey and bees. What if Adam was allergic too and he'd just never been stung?

The bees swarmed him in his dream and he snapped awake, paralyzed in place.

“I wouldn’t let it.” Gansey was largely oblivious to Ronan’s dozing, letting him just do his thing. He was enjoying the conversation with Adam, as he kicked a foot up in the air and let it swing around. It had been obvious from only a few days that Adam didn’t have the best home-life, and Gansey was determined to be a safe rock for him. Even if he was the same size. “But it’s true, look--”

He both cut off to push the book a little closer to Adam and because he froze.

Bzzz. It wouldn’t have been the first time he imagined hearing a bee buzzing in his ear since he’d had a deadly allergic reaction. He always jerked, or froze in place, and then discovered that nothing had been there all along.

Gansey sucked in a breath and desperately hoped that was the case this time. “Adam, do you hear anything?”

Adam was also unaware of Ronan's sleeping situation. He knew there was something weird about it—Adam's memory from his last time here had been met with vagueness that Adam questioned extensively—but plants captured his attention, much like his conversation with Gansey did, and so he didn't question it this time either. He liked having friends, but he also liked the truth, and maybe Gansey was misreading four foot tall carnivorous flora.

But when Gansey froze, so did Adam. He knew what it was like to be stopped in his tracks. When fear overcame his body, that paralysis was a real, terrible thing. He listened when Gansey asked, he waited for silence. Instead, he was met with the same buzzing noise from a tell-tale insect. Adam remembered the strict warnings Blue gave them; he moved first.

"I hear it, I hear it, stay down, Gansey," Adam whispered, afraid he would lose track of the sound if he raised his voice. It was close, inside the tent for sure. Adam didn't remember which one of them had the epipen, but he was going to find it by digging through their things and getting Ronan to help. But as he put his body over Gansey's to wake up Ronan, he saw that Ronan was—something was wrong.

Adam shook him, while his eyes kept darting frantically around the tent, to Gansey, and back to Ronan. "Bee, Ronan, bee."

Ronan unfortunately got to watch all of this occur, looking down on his body and the panicking boys like a ghost. This always happened when he brought something back. The minute of paralysis was a special kind of a torture for a nine year old who was terrified he'd just signed his new friend's death certificate.

When it finally ended, he came gasping to life, jerking straight up and frantically checking his hands and the space around him for the dreamt insect. "I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to," he cried. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just wanted to make it okay!"

The buzzing got louder and Ronan froze as the bee landed on top of his backpack nearby. He lunged for it.

Gansey wasn’t exactly sure what to do. Moving around more only attracted attention, but freezing in one place felt unnatural and unfair, while his friends rushed. He didn’t want them to get stung either, even if Ronan had assured him already that he’d been stung a dozen times in the past.

“Wait, no--” He watched as the bee flew off of the backpack just as Ronan landed, and Gansey flinched. Finally, he moved and scrambled to his knees. Maybe if he could get the tent open, they could just usher it out and then zip it back up and they’d be safe.

Right? Ronan rambling about not meaning to had confused him. But not enough to make Gansey pause more than half a second before he shuffled over to the entrance on his knees. Even with his hands shaking, Gansey managed to get a few inches open. “Get it out- Just- just get it out.”

Adam was good at catching bugs. He could never bring them inside, and he could never show anyone what he was doing. But hours outside kept him away from the double-wide and away from anger inside of his home. So he practiced—with lightning bugs, with butterflies, with a pretty moth with velvety wings, and with a grasshopper that had tickled his palms. He had never caught a bee, but he was certain as it buzzed off Ronan's backpack into the small space of the tent that he could.

His hands were small, but the bee was smaller, and he cupped them expertly around it, and immediately dragged his clasped hands to his chest. He could get stung, he could survive it. And if he had the same allergy as Gansey—well, Adam couldn't think about it. He simply awkwardly crawled out of the tent where Gansey had lifted the flap.

"It's not your fault," Adam said to Ronan, even if he didn't know what he was apologizing for. "I'm going to get it far away, just really far away, okay?" Adam was struggling to get to his feet without the use of his arms. But there was no way he was letting it go. Not for anything.

"It is. It is my fault." Ronan couldn't say why. He wanted to, desperately, but also not at all. Talking about dreaming after something bad came back with him was the worst way for his new friends to hear it. He focused on tumbling out of the tent and wrapping his hands around Adam's, bodily putting himself between Gansey and the bee as he'd promised he would.

"Stay back, Gansey." His eyes were shiny and too wide. He wasn't any more graceful about getting to his feet, but he managed. "And don't stay in the tent! I don't know if there are more." There had been a lot more in the nightmare.

“Don’t stay in the tent, stay back! Which one!” Gansey sounded a little manic, his voice now high-pitched as he crawled out of the tent behind both of them. He felt frantic, and hated that feeling, like something was clawing it’s way out of his chest. He didn’t know what it meant that his heart no longer felt normal, or what the feeling was when things got too tight, too constricted.

Gansey stayed a few feet away from them and got to his feet. He looked to Ronan first, “It’s not your fault. These things just-- happen.” To him, specifically, because of the bad luck that had been following him around lately. When he turned to Adam and saw his friend’s hands still cupped around the bee, his chest tightened again. “Are you still holding it?” At this point he was loud enough that someone in the house might wake up and hear him, but he couldn’t help himself as he worried for his friends. “Let it go, don’t get stung!”

With Gansey panicking and Ronan panicking, Adam was having a difficult time staying still and ignoring the contagious, frenetic energy between the three of them. He should have been calm, he needed to be calm, but a roaring in his ears made him want to smash the bee between his hands and run into the forest so that he didn't have to see Ronan or Gansey's worried or scared faces.

He closed his eyes tightly, trying to focus on the insect, trying to work through what to do. Ronan's hands were around his for extra protection but he felt wild and terrified, his breath coming short and quick through his nose. "I'm not going to get stung!" Adam shouted, both a promise to himself and Gansey. It was only when he said the words out loud that he realized—why wasn't he stung yet?

Pulling his clasped hands away from Ronan, he took a few steps away so there was space between all three of them. He could feel that the bee had calmed in his hands, no longer bouncing around angrily. It was curiously prowling around and Adam could feel an unfamiliar and strange fuzz. Fluffy like the alpacas they had been surrounded by for days.

Adam slowly lifted one of his hands toward him, and the bee there—if he could call it a bee—was not anything he had ever seen. Most importantly, it had no stinger. Adam frowned, confused. "I don't think, I don't know what this is, I've never seen this but it's not going to hurt anyone."

Ronan didn't want Adam to get stung either but in the chaos of the moment, it hadn't even occurred to him that he might. Now that he realized it and Adam was jerking away from him, he felt the panic double.

"What do you mean? It's a bee, of course it can--" Ronan got close enough to see the bug in Adam's hands and frowned. He had no control over how things looked in his dreams. A lot of stuff came out harmless. But some stuff tried to hurt him or his family. Declan usually took care of it before it could. But the bee in Adam's hands didn't look dangerous. It just waddled around on his palm, fuzzier than a bumblebee, no stinger in sight. It was kind of cute, honestly.

"I…I wanted to make it safe. Before I woke up," Ronan murmured, sounding like he was talking nonsense probably, but he couldn't help but be honest when the adrenaline was still pumping.

Gansey didn’t want to be left out, even if he had been ordered to keep his distance. But they were both interested in this bee and that made Gansey interested, even if he was worried.

Didn’t matter. He still stepped forward to stick his head in there, to see the bee, and stopped in his tracks. It wasn’t like the ones that had surrounded him, the ones that had ended things. He’d expected to feel a lot more terror involved, but instead the warmth that came with Ronan saying he wanted to make it safe, that he had two friends that would go out of their way to help him.

But something struck true and he looked at Ronan curiously, with the same wonder that he looked at the bee. “You don’t mean that you were just trying to get it out, do you? Safe how?”

Curiosity had replaced fear as Adam inspected the bee. There was something beautiful about this fuzzy insect that felt like it came from a dream instead of reality, and he managed to reach out a tentative finger to stroke its back, while Ronan and Gansey talked around him. He could hear them, things like safe struck him in his core, a word that was not in his everyday vocabulary. But somehow being here with them, and the harmless bug was safe.

The gears in his little mind turned, achingly slow—Adam did not have the experience of the knowledge of his older self to make connections sooner or believe in unrealistic things—but he lifted his head to look at Ronan and Gansey.

"You were stuck," Adam added as Gansey probed. The strange paralysis in the tent was circling his mind. He wanted to ask about that too. "I don't know how this got in but it is not a bug I have seen before and I know I haven't seen a lot of them but then you were stuck, kind of like you were dead but not."

The bee continued to crawl over Adam's hand and he held it out to Ronan to connect the bridge and let the bee keep walking between them.

Ronan looked between them and the bee, fear and hope mixing together in his too big eyes. If they'd been in Henrietta, he would have run away. There was one unbreakable rule and it was that no one could know the Lynch family secret.

But they weren't in Henrietta. And there was magic here at every turn. And something at the heart of him that was its own kind of magic told him he could trust Adam and Gansey more than anyone.

"I…" He stared hard at Gansey. "I made it. I dreamt it. I wanted to make it so it couldn't hurt you and then I dreamt about bees." He felt like he was going to bite clean through his tongue with how fast he started talking once the words broke free. He looked at Adam as he scooted closer to let the bee crawl into his hand. "I was stuck because that's what happens. When I pull things from my dreams. I get stuck for a minute or two when I wake up and then whatever it is I dreamt about, it's there in the real world…"

He fell silent and waited, every second feeling heavier than the last.

Gansey didn’t shy away from the stare, in fact it emboldened him, it made him square his shoulders and try not to look at Ronan like he just hung the moon. It was amazing, though, and he had to close his mouth twice after realizing he looked a little ridiculous. “That’s---” Crazy. Impossible. Insane.

All the things he’d called himself just weeks before, after going through something otherworldly. He believed in magic being out there, in the impossible, and was both proof of that and saw it now, in Adam's hands. “Amazing. So cool. What other things could you pull out? Anything you think of? Is that why everything is so-- nice here? Why the toaster doesn’t have a plug? Why the TV gets every channel?”

He nodded, as if that was that. The fear had left him and now he just had something new to experience with his new best friends. “Very cool.” He looked down at the bee in Adam’s hands, and delicately, hesitantly, reached out to pet it. “I think we should name him Bee-thoven.”

Adam didn't say anything for a long time. He let Gansey bombard Ronan with questions because his brain was still attempting to rationalize what Ronan had said. Dreams weren't things where reality came true. People couldn't pull things out of them. It was like a fairytale or like one of the books the teachers read aloud in class. His whole face scrunched up confused, his eyes on the bee.

Why didn't the toaster have a plug and still worked? How did the television get every channel? Why did the motorcycle in the front driveway not have a real engine? How were there so many flowers here that were in colors that didn't exist? Were they from Ronan? Were they all from Ronan, when he got bigger?

Adam knew better than to say whether it was real or not. It was important to Ronan and to Gansey, and that was what was important to Adam. Not trying to logic out whether the words were a lie or there was a reasonable explanation, which there had to be. His friends were the most important to him.

"I think Bee-thoven is a good name. But if Ronan made it, he should get final say."

Ronan's breath came out in a rush after holding it so long. He wasn't convinced Adam believed him - that if caught in his brain like a thorn - but this was all still a better reaction than he could've hoped for. They didn't laugh at him, or demand he prove himself. He couldn't do it on command and he didn't want to admit that he didn't have much control over it at all. So he focused on the bee and that goofy name, rather than the questions.

"Bee-thoven," he smiled, slowly lighting up with the weight of his secret lifted. "That's funny." Older Ronan was rolling around on the ground somewhere inside of his head. "Okay, yeah. Bee-thoven." He lifted the bee up closer to his face to examine its fat furry body. It was really cute actually. "Sorry Bee-thoven. I guess I made you without your defense thing. But look, you're all hairy. I bet you're a super duper pollinator now."

His gaze was bright and hopeful as he looked at Adam. He hoped whatever doubts Adam had in that smart head of his, he would still be Ronan's friend. "That's how it works, right?"

Gansey’s own grin grew as Ronan seemed to perk up again. He hadn’t wanted his friends to worry about him, not like this, since it was such a burden to carry when death was involved and he hated that. He just wanted answers more than he wanted pity.

And now he had friends that seemed willing to help with that. Getting books, exploring, and finding answers. It was what he’d craved so deep in his heart for a while now. “Maybe he can stay here and hang out in the greenhouse--” Gansey lifted his head up and looked towards the house. “I think I just saw a light come on. We might have to hide back in the tent if we don’t want to get caught by Blue.”

Or risk going back inside the house to camp out in the living room. They were all overdue for sleep, but now Gansey had a dozen more exciting things to think about, and didn’t expect sleep would come easily.

Adam nodded, weirdly pleased by Ronan remembering pollinators. It meant that the incessant rambling about the things that interested him weren't met with uninterested ears. The things he said mattered. It made Adam all the more willing to suspend a bit of his disbelief about the dreaming things. Maybe, somehow, it was possible. He pet the bee with one index finger, as if that would help him think about it more and figure out an answer.

He turned toward the house too when Gansey said he saw the light come on and froze. He didn't want it to end. And now that the threat of the bee was gone, Adam could ask Ronan more questions with Gansey. Do whatever they want. Spend time in their own private space where he could be with his friends.

"Yeah, we should go back to the tent. And you can show Ronan that stuff about the venus fly traps." He was going to leave it at that, but he exchanged a quick look with Gansey, smiled a little, and added, "One ate a goblin."