adam "now he's a spooky 10" lynch (parrish) (tamquam) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-06-16 19:42:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, the raven cycle: adam parrish, the raven cycle: ronan lynch |
The "date" had been pushed off for so long, between the unpredictability of Vallo, that Adam almost forgot what had made him apprehensive in the first place about coming back. This room, complete with a hotplate and a bathroom no bigger than a closet, was nothing. A place. One he moved out of a lifetime ago. So why did it feel so big to return, when all he had done was downplay it?
He was quiet as he jammed the key into the door. There was a flash of uncertainty—was there someone living there? Did all his research prove faulty?—before the lock clicked open, and the door squealed loudly on its hinges. Even the noise was painfully familiar; Adam couldn't stop the surge of memories that pushed against that compartment he had stashed them in before they came.
Adam thought he heard his breath echo as he stepped inside. He reached instinctively for the hanging bulb in the center of the room, flooding the space with dull yellow light. The mattress was upright against the wall, stripped bare. The desk was in the same corner, empty of books and his second-hand lamp. But the rest of the space, cellular-like and harshly sloping along the walls, was empty.
"It's smaller than I remember," Adam said.
Ronan had been shockingly patient about this “date”. Once it had been mentioned, it hadn’t been brought up again. It might have, once Father’s Day had come and gone. But Ronan was achingly aware that the constant reminders of fathers at the Barns this month might be slowly chipping away at Adam’s carefully built walls. So he was actually a little surprised when Adam pulled the trigger and they were on their way here.
Now, as he followed Adam up the stairs, he stayed quiet and pressed a hand to the base of Adam’s spine, just as a constant point of contact. He kept it there until Adam stepped inside the room and only let go so he could turn to stealthily close the loud ass door. As much stealth as he could manage anyway.
“It was always the size of a fucking broom closet.” But it was freedom so it didn’t feel as small, Ronan thought as he poked his head into the bathroom. His voice echoed, as he attempted to lighten the mood. “There’s some of your cheap ass shampoo in here, collecting dust like the saddest Smithsonian exhibit ever.”
"No it wasn't, it was—" Bigger. Adam remembered it so much bigger. The room was easily twice the one he had in the double-wide. The things stacked inside on crates had been his. There had been a sad little plant in the one lone window that seemed confusingly naked now. How could a place without its contents seem claustrophobic? St. Agnes had been freedom, but the Barns had become home.
He had never been happier that Ronan had come with him tonight. Adam thought he might live a lifetime standing in the center of the room, grappling with this small existential crisis of what a place meant to him.
Adam followed Ronan into the bathroom—because they had plans, plans that didn't involve a pity party for himself—and eyed the offending bottle. "Are you not a fan of Alpine Fresh?" Adam teased, but it lacked its usual casualty. Something was off, but he continued because he didn't bring his boyfriend along to be sad in this room. "The label would say: Frugality. An interactive piece where patrons can test their olfactory senses against the humbling existence of 3-in-1 shampoos.”
Ronan lifted one sharp eyebrow at him as he came inside the bathroom. That dropped sentence about the apartment hadn’t gone unnoticed but there was no need to rush Adam towards some kind of epiphany about this place. Not that Ronan would know how to fucking do that anyway. He snatched up the shampoo bottle and popped the cap, taking a sniff.
“I’m not not a fan. This is how you smelled when I realized I was in too deep to do anything but tread water and hope I didn’t drown.” He snapped the cap shut with a self-deprecating snort and chucked the bottle back into the shower so he could crowd closer to Adam. The nearness immediately settled some of his own nerves, being in this place that brought on so many complicated feelings.
“You smell like the Barns now.” Tracing his fingers up along Adam’s jaw, Ronan stopped at his ear and tugged lightly. “Any chance you forgot something here you actually want?”
Adam's smile was small as Ronan recounted his crush. Part of him wanted to poke that a little more, listen to how someone like Ronan Lynch managed to have a crush on someone like Adam Parrish during a time where his whole life was on fire and thrown upside down. Adam had been a selfish, unrepentant asshole for the sake of independence. Having someone like Ronan, who held a lot of love for him, felt like a dream.
Being back in this bathroom also felt like a dream. It was hard to stay focused on the good things. All he wanted to do was lean into Ronan's close contact. His eyes even fluttered closed for one short second in hopes to blind himself from the environment. St. Agnes was safe, an escape, a memory, and place that Adam could—
He hadn't said anything. And he realized he hadn't said anything. A quietness had come over him unintentionally. The tug on his ear caused him to open his eyes again to stare back at Ronan; he had asked Adam a question.
"Maybe—Maybe in the desk," Adam said, too fast, too abrupt. He was already leaving the bathroom to the desk and pulling open drawers, all which seemed disproportionally filled with things compared to the emptiness of the room.
Frowning, Ronan followed Adam out into the room. He might have been dense about some things, but he was generally decent at reading Adam and knowing when his too sharp brain was a bigger danger to Adam himself than it was any outside problem. Though Ronan supposed anybody should be able to tell when their boyfriend was getting lost inside his own head.
He stepped up next to the desk and ran his finger over the crooked tree he’d carved into the top one sleepless night before Adam had caught him. It felt like a lifetime ago. The contents of the desk drawers eventually drew his attention.
“Fuck, Parrish. How much did you leave behind?” Ronan scowled and reached in just to move things around alongside Adam. “You could bring all this home, you know.”
"I didn't leave anything behind," Adam corrected. "I left what I meant to, I don’t need to bring it home, this is just..." The drawer spoke for itself. Old receipts that Adam used to write an idea down on when he was at one of his jobs. Paperclips, and old bolts, and the knob from one of the other drawers on the desk that had fallen off. There was a notebook that was half-empty of pages because Adam had needed the contents but couldn't bear to throw the rest of it away. A handwritten draft of an economics paper. And then there was a hard metal scratch along the wooden bottom.
Adam dragged out a single key on a piece of twine. At the time he needed this key, this was the only shelter Adam knew. Adam would never put it in that lock again, had said his piece to his parents almost a year ago. It felt unnecessary now that it still existed.
He didn't need this key, he hadn't needed it for a long time. But for some awful reason he had kept it. A reminder, maybe. A fucked up security blanket. Finding it now, holding it up between them, was a tangible way to unlock an intangible box of memories Adam thought he had put safely aside.
"The first night I was here," Adam said, his voice sounding far away. His eyes were locked on the key, hypnotized. "I had this insane thought that if I apologized, I could go back. Rewind time and all the shit that happened."
It wasn’t the first time Ronan had seen this particular key. He spent a lot of time watching Adam a little too closely, out of the corner of his eye, when they were back in school. Even when the key was hidden under Adam’s uniform as well as he hid his bruises, the twine attached used to catch Ronan’s attention. He would find himself torn between the ever present desire to drag Adam from the trailer he lived in forever and the much more shallow appreciation for getting even a tiny glimpse at Adam’s collarbone under his dress shirt.
He’d often been an insulting shithead to distract himself from both feelings. He didn’t fall back on that old defensive measure now.
“Jesus Christ,” he growled. Real words escaped him. He wanted to snag the key and throw it out the fucking window. His fingers curled gently around Adam’s other wrist and he stroked his thumb over his pulse instead, ready to withdraw in an instant if Adam needed space. "Why the fuck did you keep it even after your court date?"
His fingers curled around the twine until the whole thing was buried in his palm. Adam didn't want Ronan looking at the key anymore—Adam was torn between embarrassment and shame and Ronan's interrogation, though innocent in its intent, felt like ice against his heated skin. Why did he keep it?
"Why does anyone keep anything from the people that hurt them? Why did I lie to everyone at Harvard? Why did I go back over there after I graduated? Like, fuck, Ronan. I had hope." Adam pulled his wrist away from Ronan's comforting gesture. That anger, that one piece of his father he couldn't get rid of, boiled under his skin. And he knew it was misplaced, he knew Ronan wouldn't deserve it directed at him, but logic failed Adam when it came to family.
"Hope that maybe something or someone somewhere would make my dad realize how much he fucked up. How much I needed a father who didn't—who didn't..." This felt like the beginning of the aborted fight in his dorm room again. This felt like a hundred conversations he had with himself. Practical and pragmatic Adam Parrish had optimism because parents had become an unpredicted weakness.
Adam's breath was coming out, heavy and overcontrolled. "I want to be able to think about him, to look at a key to the trailer I grew up in, and not hate it."
Ronan tried not to let that withdrawal or the sharpness of Adam’s words sting but a flash of hurt winced across his face anyway, and it drove him a step back.
“But he deserves to be hated,” he snapped, instantly brimming with fury on Adam’s behalf. The days of constant anger might’ve been in Ronan’s rearview, but there were a few topics that punted him straight back into that old grieving, hotheaded mindset.
He grieved for Adam. And he was angry for him and a little at him all at once.
“Even if Robert Parrish—“ He spat the name out like a curse. “—Turned around and realized he was a piece of shit and came crawling to you to apologize, he wouldn’t deserve your forgiveness. And that trailer would never be any kind of home to you. I don’t think that’s why you kept that key.”
Adam flinched, not because he was afraid, Not like that recoil of horror he had by the hand of his father. But because that echo of anger he had not seen come from Ronan in a long time. The kind that was usually not directed at Adam. But Adam, stubborn and harboring a complicated mess of fury in his gut, would not let it wither him.
"You, you—" Adam was back in Ronan's face in a flash, his index finger pressing hard and accusatory into his chest. Adam's anger was bright hot. His jealousy for a family that he never had was all wrapped up in Ronan. Again, gross humiliation for feeling that way toward someone, who loved him unconditionally, flooded him. "You do not get to tell me you don't like my answer. The trailer may not be my home now but it was. It was. I can't just erase that, Ronan, even when I try. And I have tried. So I kept the fucking key to see if all that trying would ever work."
p>His temper was slowly fading out, but Adam uselessly clung to it. Letting it go meant there were other, harder emotions he had to deal with. "Your dad turned out to be shitty—" That was a low blow, but Adam was untethered, unfiltered, he was burning himself out. "—but at least you have good memories of him. At least he loved you."
And right there, there, was when his voice broke.
Anyone else and Ronan would probably have smacked that proding finger away. But this was Adam. Adam, talking about his abuse and lack of love, even. Ronan’s heart felt like pieces of it were being chipped away with every word, so he just stood there and took it.
“When was that shithole ever your home?” He wanted to shout I’m your home! Gansey, Blue, Noah, Matthew, they’re your home! But he didn’t want to make this about any of them. What he wanted was to make it so Adam’s voice never shattered like that again. What he wanted was to take all of the boundless feelings he had inside of him and put them into just the right words so that Adam Parrish knew exactly how special he was. Not even a cheap shot at Ronan’s dad made that any less true.
“It’s not fucking fair you got dealt such a shitty hand, Adam. You deserved better. You deserve better.” His words were forceful and his gaze was fiery, but his hands were out palms up, beseeching. “You have a family who loves you now, asshole. For exactly who you are. We’d walk through fire for you. That’s what you fucking deserve.”
The teeth of the key were pressing sharply into his hand. It was easier to ground himself with a little bit of pain. Like reality coming into hard, unrelenting focus. And the reality right now was this: Ronan saying Adam deserved better, Ronan saying that he had a family, Ronan saying that Adam's life was unfair—Adam had suffered through so much of it because he thought that was what was okay.
Adam felt ungrateful. He had his friends. He had Ronan. And still, there would be always something missing. It felt large and unmanageable now. But when he got older and moved further away from the events of his childhood, it would haunt him from a distance. Just a brief thought, a half-formed memory. Adam only wanted it to stop gutting him every time he got close to desiring something foolish—like having a father that was worth celebrating on a holiday made for them.
His face was twisting up into something ugly, on that verge of wanting anger and getting sadness.. A tear slipped down his cheek and he roughly pushed it away.
He dropped the key; it made a quiet plink against the floor. Adam asked what felt like an unanswerable question, "All I ever wanted was a parent who gave a shit about me. Why didn't I deserve that?"
Ronan was at a loss. His shoulders sagged as emotion crawled up his throat and settled behind his eyes. He reached out and took hold of the hand Adam had used to grip the key too hard, lifting it to press a kiss to the imprinted flesh of his palm. Maybe it was a risk to touch, but Ronan needed it as much as he thought Adam did.
“Fuck. I don't--” There’d always been a minor worry that Adam still thought he’d earned his abuse, that Robert Parrish had poisoned him to think so forever. It was standard in these cases, wasn’t it? Adam was always just good at bottling that shit up so Ronan didn’t press his fingers into that trauma when it wasn’t laid out bare. It was certainly laid out bare now, with Adam looking broken in front of him.
Ronan covered his own heart with Adam’s hand. “How your parents treated you is not your fault,” he murmured tenderly. “But you’re right. It was shitty of me to try to tell you how to feel about it. I’d rather hate them forever for hurting you. But if you need something else, shit. To forgive...I'll try not to be an asshole about it.”
His breathing sounded too loud in the room. Rough inhales and hard exhales, like he was forcibly trying not to cry. It felt stupid to waste time and tears on someone who hadn't bothered anymore than a passing thought about him. And yet Robert Parrish was impossible to forget; everytime Adam lost his balance, or couldn't hear someone from his left side, or a hundred of other things that constantly reminded him of what he was missing, Adam would think of his father.
But it was Ronan—who was real and in front of him, telling Adam that he mattered, that forgiveness was an option he could want, if Adam wanted it—that helped. It was simple things, like kissing his palm, putting it to his chest. Adam's fingers curled helplessly against his shirt, wanting to drag Ronan closer. But he couldn't find the words to ask for it, not when he had been so shitty to pull away in the first place.
Adam let Ronan's words wash over him, an uncomfortable silence filling up the room. "I'm glad you're an asshole about it," Adam eventually said, his attention on where his hand was still resting. Ronan was steadiness in this moment that Adam desperately needed. "I never can be. Not completely. I'd still be there if you weren't an asshole."
When Adam didn’t jerk his hand back, Ronan inched into his space and waited for him to speak. The words themselves made him frown around the eyes. He knew Adam would have found a different way out of that house, all on his own. But he wasn’t convinced Robert Parrish wouldn’t have killed him before he pulled it off. Ronan chewed on his bottom lip for a moment and then leaned down to press his forehead to Adam’s.
“You had one foot out the door and graduation not that far off.” He threaded his fingers through Adam’s and kept it pressed to his heart. “But I’m not sorry I sped up the timetable.” His free hand lifted to Adam’s deaf ear and caressed the shell of it. “What else do you need? Besides me being an asshole sometimes.”
It was hard to explain the phantom sensation that occurred when Ronan touched his ear. An awareness of how gentle Ronan was being, cautious and considerate. To Adam, it was an intimate gesture and he shivered against it. Any other person and Adam would have drawn his shoulders up and shied away. But Ronan had been there when it happened, Ronan knew the excruciating details of why Adam couldn't hear out of that ear. There was nothing left to hide.
Ronan might have believed he sped up Adam's carefully laid out plans for escape, but the fact was he saved his life so that Adam could leave just like he planned.
He felt tired now. Exhausted in a way he hadn't been in a long time. Adam closed his eyes and shook his head against Ronan's, uttering the words, "I don't know." He hated that phrase, hated not knowing what he needed. Adam carried this uncertainty too often. He denied himself so many things that need was always a confusing ask.
Adam moved into that last space between them, tucking his face under Ronan's jaw. "Just hold me, for a little while so can I figure it out?"
Ronan wasted no time opening his arms and wrapping them around Adam’s shoulders. He buried his nose in the hair behind Adam’s ears and rubbed circles into his back. “Fuck this little while bullshit,” he mumbled, sounded worn thin but relieved. “You can stay right here as long as you goddamn want.”
He cupped the back of Adam’s skull, like Adam always did for him. If it made him feel safe and held and known, maybe it could do the same for Adam.
The one word he uttered was barely audible, but all the more heartfelt for how quiet it was. “Tamquam,” he said.
Adam let out a small noise, caught between wounded and relief. Touch had always been a strange, complicated creature in Adam's mind. But it had been Ronan's unending tenderness when he held Adam that made it something to be greedy for. He felt safe, he was safe. All the bad memories, the frustrating feelings, the pain of remembering it all couldn't touch him here—at least, he could pretend anyway.
"—alter idem," Adam murmured back against the soft skin of Ronan's neck. Adam didn't know how long it was, but eventually he felt steadier, less likely to fall apart. Adam had had plans for the evening, that involved a tiny shower or his shitty hand-me-down desk, but he had managed to ruin that. This date thoroughly sucked.
He slowly extracted himself from Ronan, not a lot,, just enough to look up at his face. It felt like Adam was waking up from some unknown sleep, and Ronan was still blissfully, perfectly there. "I want to go home."
Patience wasn’t something Ronan Lynch was known for, but he’d have stood there for hours if it helped Adam. Okay, maybe he would’ve nudged him towards the shitty mattress leaning against the wall eventually, but still. He drew back when Adam did and pressed Adam’s face between his hands, pushing his hair back.
“Alright. Do you—“ He glanced back at the desk and then around the room. The urge to ask if Adam wanted to make any last pass around the room slipped away as fast as it came. Ronan scowled and leaned in to kiss Adam before letting go of his face to grab his hand. “Fuck that, let’s go,” he growled as he pulled open the door with a lot less stealth than he’d entered the room.
It made a terrible shriek. Ronan grimaced and dug his keys out of his pocket. “Time to make a run for it, Parrish. You wanna drive?”
Given the opportunity, Adam might have said yes to one last look—masochism at its finest. But it was Ronan's hands pushing back his hair and his lips against Adam's, that made the thought disappear. St. Agnes had been a waiting place, a beginning to something better. He didn't need to be here anymore.
Adam went easily toward the door, turning the light off as he went. He wanted to at least try to cover up their trespassing, even if the door was ruthlessly giving them away.
He eyed the keys and considered the offer that came with them. Ronan didn't let just anyone drive his car. And there was the tiniest smile as Adam reached for them, drawing Ronan into his space. He returned the kiss Ronan so rightly deserved, softly, delicately, an unspoken thank you.
"You're not allowed to complain if I stall out our getaway car.”
Ronan snickered and draped himself over Adam’s shoulders like a long-limbed cape. It was selfish but he wasn’t ready to not be touching him in some way. Also it meant he could nudge Adam down the stairs with body weight alone.
“Fuck you,” he said warmly, right against Adam’s good ear. “I’m definitely complaining if you stall out our getaway car.”
WHAT Adam and Ronan visit Adam’s old apartment above St. Agnes
WHEN late June 16th
WHERE St. Agnes Church
RATING references to child abuse
STATUS complete