WHAT. Just some besties talking about the future and babies :) WHERE. Cabeswater! WHEN.A few hours before Ronan’s post yesterday! WARNINGS. Some thoughts about bad parents. STATUS. Complete!
It had been big news at the Barns. Exciting news, that Gansey was thrilled about. There were still nerves, and a lot of things to be figured out in the end, but there had been grins and hugs passed around. Gansey could tell how excited Ronan was, how excited they both were but he knew Adam well enough to know things might be hidden from the surface.
Adam was world-class at covering up his feelings if he was nervous, so the people around him wouldn’t see it unless they knew what to look for. He was lucky enough to have learned a lot, but also may have just been overthinking it due to Adam’s upbringing. Still - Gansey wanted to check in. To see him away from everyone, in a place they both knew as well as their own bodies.
It took no prodding at all for Cabeswater to tell Gansey where he was in the shared sentient forest, and a spectral otter popped out of the bushes as soon as Gansey entered to lead the way. It hopped and swam through trees and suddenly the grass was clearing so Gansey could see his best friend. “If you’re doing experimental magic without one of us, I’m telling your husband.” It was a fairly empty threat, Gansey didn’t think he needed backup on this one. For now.
It wasn't that Adam expected their family to be mad that he and Ronan decided to speed up the baby plan. The overwhelming support had been just that: overwhelming. Adam still had issues with accepting compliments from his own husband, let alone people congratulating him on making a decision. Like he didn't earn it, like they had been unhappy with the waiting until this point. Adam knew, logically, that they weren't but it still made the whole situation feel like a lot in his overworked mind.
And so he found solace in Cabeswater. Because Adam had to tell the forest he was bonded to that Nora would be coming. Smaller, and more permanently, but would be here nonetheless. Not that forest had minded. With his fingers digging into the warm dirt, and the unidentifiable breeze kissing his cheeks, Adam figured this was Cabeswater's way of agreeing, in its own gentle excitement.
"No more experimental than the sacrifice made to bond to it," Adam said, rising from his knees and wiping his hands on his jeans. He had felt Gansey enter in the uncanny way he always sort of knew where his best friend was. But he liked to pretend this was a surprise all the same.
"I know the rules. The threat of you and Ronan's disappointed looks is enough to keep me from breaking them."
Gansey made a little noise. “That’s not the comfort you think it is, Adam.” Bonding to the sentient forest that no one knew was dreamed up had been experimental. But he also trusted Adam, even without the threat of disappointed looks.
So he just reached out for a fistbump, instead of any kind of look at Adam. “I’m not actually worried about it. Now. It’s been relatively quiet the last few weeks.” Which meant something was probably right around the corner, but they’d already been through nearly everything anyone could think of in Vallo and had come out relatively unscathed in comparison.
But that didn’t mean they always would be. Gansey took a seat on a nearby log, with enough room for Adam to join him if he wanted. “I didn’t actually come out here to harass you, for the record. I just wanted to see how you were doing with-- everything.”
Adam promptly fist-bumped back, their own special handshake. Adam would not be caught doing this with anyone else, and the absurdity of it given who they were—before at Aglionby, and after everything—wouldn't work with acquaintances. "You're going to jinx it, you know, the peacefulness of Vallo," Adam said, as he placed his hand on the trunk of one of the nearby trees.
He tried not to look affected by Gansey's question though. He was driven to Cabeswater because of how he was doing. Messy. Complicated. Happy regardless, but Adam was always overthinking.
"How am I doing with everything?" Adam repeated, his brow lifting in question. There was a slight amusing lilt to his voice, teasing even. "Smooth, Gansey." Adam didn't answer right away. He simply kept his hand pressed to the bark and tilted his face upward to the sunny canopy. "I'm okay. Everything feels too broad to describe it. I feel different things about different parts, you know?"
Gansey lifted one shoulder in an unapologetic shrug. Maybe he would jinx it, but sometimes it felt like breathing in Vallo was jinxing it. They were always at risk of something going haywire, no reason to walk on eggshells about it.
Adam’s words were vague yet Gansey understood them enough to nod. He’d only experienced parenthood briefly in the few times Vallo had thrust it on him, but it was a lot, and that was without Adam’s own history of parenthood. “I know. I think. I can’t ever say I know exactly what goes through your mind in terms of being a parent, but--”
Gansey looked up at Adam, he stared, probably enough to make his best friend uncomfortable, but that didn’t stop him this time. “But, I have full confidence you will be an exemplary parent to however many children you and Ronan decide to have. One, two, seven. You’ll be the best of the best and I’m excited to be there to see it.”
The praise from Gansey was not uncommon, but the immediate flight-or-fight response was new. Was it because the compliment had to deal with being a parent? The future responsibility that somehow Adam would be good at? There was a part of Adam, a much louder part that used to be stressfully quiet, that told him he would be good. He was kind. That he would not be his past. It was the one that said to not be scared, and that having a child was not going to be a disaster.
But that had been in the tiny space of his mind, safely tucked away for him to pull out in rare moments where he could be left alone to contemplate it. But now every knew. And no one was disagreeing that this was the right decision, that he would be good. It was terrifying to have people agree, to support something that almost felt impossible.
"Don't say seven," Adam said, wiping his hands again on his pants again because they were getting sweaty. Goddamn anxious. "I'm still grappling with the one. I know you say I'll be the best, but you don't know that for certain. No one is infallible." Adam knew it sounded like he was insulting Gansey, but he wasn't. Adam was aware that Nora didn't hate them as parents—had even said as much, a conversation that Adam held dear to him—but still.
"It's just real. We're really doing it. I don't regret it, but I think I can—" Freak out Adam wanted to say. "Over think it."
Gansey gave him a look that registered as oh, don’t start with that, because he knew damn well that Adam would start in with that as soon as he’d said it. “I didn’t say infallible, I didn’t say perfect. Just the best of the best. Because you do overthink it.”
He knew it could be obnoxious when Gansey wanted to drive home a point, but he had a few more things to reassure first. “None of us had outstanding parental figures - outside of Blue’s mother - no competition. Just us growing up learning how to be young adults that do better than their own parents, and both you and Ronan have that in spades.”
When Gansey was young, he’d expected to be exactly like his parents. Political, married, two children. Then he’d died, and that expectation went straight out of his head, he’d grown up knowing that was what his parents wanted for him, but it hadn’t been until recently that he’d entertained the idea again for himself, with Blue. “I don’t think Blue and I are quite there yet, but I’m looking forward to when we are, now. And overthinking it.”
"I told Ronan that I didn't want to put our life on hold because I was scared. That we could want things now and have things now and not wait because I wrote them into a five year plan that we had to follow." Adam really needed to stop making those plans because they often changed after the first year. But routine calmed him, organization made him feel less unmoored by the life they lead in Vallo and at home. If he didn't have a goal he was working toward all that ambition would be splintered. Adam was now just moving those goals closer.
"I'm not doing it just for Ronan, either. If that were the case, Nora would have been here nine months after she showed up the first time," Adam said, and shook his head. He started to walk to the next tree, and run his fingers along its trunk too. A calming gesture when he felt justifiably not calm. "But even if we are better than our parents, the bar was on the ground with mine and sometimes I worry that that feeling, the comparisons I make, will never go away. That I'll always worry, Gansey."
And he might. Adam knew that was a real possibility, despite the support he received from his best friend, his husband, and the version of his daughter who liked to pop up every October.
A bit of bark flaked off in his hands, and he rubbed it together between his fingers. He considered Gansey being a father. And if they were sharing advice, Adam was going to reciprocate. "I don't recommend overthinking it, though," Adam added, teasing obviously. "It's brutal."
Gansey couldn’t argue with Adam on any of that. Both he and Ronan deserved happy family memories, and making their own was a good obvious goal toward it. “You’re always going to worry,” he pointed out, probably unhelpfully. But it was true. “When you stop worrying, we have a problem.”
His own parents didn’t worry, they didn’t even seem to really care as long as it was outside their political agenda. It had served Gansey well, he’d learned to become self-sufficient at such a young age, but he also lacked the parental comfort that parents were supposed to bring.
Supposed to. Sometimes that idea felt more like a fairy tale than realistic. He had to shake his head to knock that thought out. “I’ll try not to overthink it and just look forward to the time when our kids grow up together, and have each other even earlier than we did. How lucky they are.”
Adam pulled away from touching the trees to come close to Gansey. He put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Adam had grown a lot in the years together with his friends and in Vallo. He was still unlearning bad habits—like fighting the world and expecting everyone to be against him—but his friendship with Gansey had always been a work in progress that he wanted to keep making better. So he understood that his own concerns weren't out of just observing other families but his own different difficulties of having parents who didn't care.
"They're going to be so lucky," Adam agreed. He wondered what his life would have looked like if he had met Ronan and Gansey before highschool. If their friendship would have saved him from so much hurt. It was a nice thought, but they had this now. To grow up together on the other ends of their lives. Adam would have more years with them than he did without them, and that thought warmed him.
"You know you have about a year before Ronan's going to start asking about you and Blue so they can grow up together," Adam said, smiling softly at Gansey. "No pressure, but warning you now. I think he wants to build the crib and will ask if you need one too."
It made Gansey glow a little when Adam agreed with him - Adam agreeing with him wasn’t the most unusual thing, but this topic? One of their friendship, that he held so dear?
He was a goner. There was just something that hit him when Adam acknowledged how important their friendship was. Gansey knew he felt the same way, but for Adam to willingly admit it just-
A warmth settled into his chest and he wouldn’t have tried to hide his grin for anything in the world. Even the idea that Ronan would be building cribs for their future children that weren’t even conceived yet. “I think it’s cute that you’re being optimistic enough to say a year.” He gave it six months. “But I’ll allow crib building, because I know you’ll make him follow the laws and regulations for proper cribs for infants. And that would give Blue something to paint.”
Adam did not need to be tied to Cabeswater to see the shift in Gansey. Their mutual bond with the forest made things easier to understand between one another, but that wasn't what connected them. Years of awkward miscommunication and battling personal inner-demons left Adam's friendship with Gansey constantly in jeopardy. Weaker people would have given up. But their friendship had been worth it, always been worth it, would always be worth anything shoved in their way. It brought them to this point right now.
If Adam were more of the hugging type, he might have embraced Gansey first. Instead he made a sort of aborted move with his hands and again offered up one accompanying fistbump—their own secret language.
"I'd like to give Ronan a little credit. He waited years to even bring this up to me. Maybe he'll be chill," Adam said, knowing absolutely that his husband would not be chill. It was why he had semi-secretly done his research. Adam shook his head, then shook it again in disbelief. "This is really happening, right? I just need someone to remind me that this is my life now."
Gansey happily met the fistbump with his knuckles, he probably couldn’t have gotten the grin off of his face if he tried. They had come a long way and also had earned every step of their happiness along that path.
“We’re far too young to have been through a lot of the shit - forgive my language but it’s appropriate in this case - we’ve been through. I think we’re owed this measure of happiness. But Ronan will absolutely not be chill.” They didn’t compete about trauma at the Barns, but half of that was due to the fact that they’d had time away from it all. Time here, to build this family of theirs.
He was pleased to confirm for Adam, that grin still right there. “This is really happening, and it’s so well deserved. How many lists do you have already? Do you want an extra set of eyes?”
"Several list, actually. Separated by general topics. There's things we have to do now, things that can wait, things that are pre-baby and post-baby. A list dedicated list to questions to ask the surrogacy coordinator at our first visit..." Normally he wouldn't ask Gansey for help. He wouldn't ask anyone for help because Adam was always so determined to handle it.
But there was something so moving at the fact that they were here, in this place, having this conversation, with a future stretching out in front of them that Adam wanted everything, everyone involved. A measure of happiness that they all deserved. Adam couldn't do that alone.
"Yeah, actually. I wouldn't mind your perspective. There might be something I missed," Adam said, trudging back toward the exit to Cabeswater. The trees, always in sync with Adam now, like another limb, parted. He smiled again, back at Gansey. "And maybe a few things I can assign to you. Ronan will want to do them all, all at once, but that would require him him not sleeping for two weeks straight and I can't support that."
Gansey was up and following Adam before there was even a second thought to it. Maybe it was Cabeswater pushing him, but he didn’t even really need the nudge to follow, not when it was Adam.
Plus, it wasn’t often Adam actually agreed to share extra work with him. With anyone. Hesitating might have that yanked away and that wouldn’t do. “Happy to help, you both need sleep, you’ll have to catch up before it’s all gone.” The whole house had a glimpse of that when Owen had arrived as a baby before, and they’d all had to unite so that people could sleep at all.
He clapped a hand on Adam’s back fondly. “Can’t wait to embark on this new adventure. It’s going to be the best one yet, Adam. Excelsior!”