Ronan Lynch (alteridem) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-02-11 20:35:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, the raven cycle: adam parrish, the raven cycle: richard campbell gansey, the raven cycle: ronan lynch |
FEB 11
GANSEY ✦ RONAN ✦ ADAM
RONAN’S NIGHTWASH ILLNESS CATCHES UP TO HIM ANGSTYYYY (WITH A HAPPY ENDING) ALSO THERE’S A LOT OF BLACK BLOOD COMPLETE |
The nightwash didn’t usually give Ronan much warning. Sometimes he didn’t even realize it was happening until he wiped his eyes and his knuckles came away black. He’d made it eight hours back to the Barns from Harvard but Declan had to drive the last four while he held himself together in the passenger seat. Dreaming often worked as a reset. Even if he just grabbed something small. But being away from the Barns seemed to play an unpredictable part. Maybe it was being too far away from the magic of his family land. Maybe it was stress. Maybe it was the monster, getting stronger, edging out of Hennessy’s dreams and into the minds of dreamers everywhere. Who even fucking knew. They’d escaped the monster but Ronan was too jaded to think it was done. The nightwash would be back. His mood progressively blackened as the days passed in this new strange world. In direct contrast, the sun was shining when the nightwash finally did show. It was sharply cold though, even inside their little rented rooms at the Crossed Quills. The golden compass stone he’d dreamt ten minutes ago sat in his open hand, smeared with black blood. It hadn’t stopped. Dreaming wasn’t going to be enough this time. Ronan coughed and rested his hand on the bathroom sink, making a bigger mess. HIs reflection cried dark tears. “Fuck.” Knowing the nightwash was coming was nothing like the reality of it arriving. Adam spent days worrying about when, that he should have known that it didn't matter when. They were never going to be ready. He knew Ronan—sometimes, too well that it deeply frightened Adam to be so aware of another person—that Adam had already been drifting curiously toward the bathroom when he heard the quiet fuck. The black spatter in the sink was alarming, but the way it oozed out of Ronan's eyes was nightmarish. Adam's brain produced wildly unhelpful sensory memories of the last time this had happened, and before that, and before that. It caused him to flounder briefly in the doorway before he sucked in a sharp breath and moved to help. Adam ripped a towel off the hook and pressed it tenderly to Ronan's face. His instincts were torn between sheer unadulterated panic and cool compartmentalized control of the situation. Adam went with the latter—he always did, knowing that being visibly afraid only exacerbated the situation—but he didn't know how long he would be able to keep it up. "Gansey," Adam said to Ronan in the same way he might offer a solution to a problem. And then he said it again, louder, "Gansey!" because he needed him, they needed him. From his spot in the small dining area, Gansey had his head ducked down and pencil moving swiftly across the pages of his journal. When he got like this, he absorbed into the book and it was like nothing around him was loud enough, as it drowned out to the white noise of his brain. It took until Adam’s second, louder shout that his head lifted up. What had him moving, stumbling away from the table, was the fact that there was no laughter, nothing but the way Adam’s voice sounded, cutting across the room. It was terrifying. But not nearly as terrifying as Ronan leaking black everywhere in the bathroom as he entered the doorway. He’d experienced the nightwash in a way, and it had been the worst moment of his entire life. Watching Ronan be unmade was similar, a demon taking him apart, layer by layer. There had been no question what he needed to do in that case, but Gansey couldn’t just have a repeat performance. There was a limited amount of times you could sacrifice yourself for your friend, apparently. “Fuck-” He unknowingly echoed the earlier words as he rushed into the already-cramped bathroom. He leaned in, a hand joining Adam’s against the towel, cupping Ronan’s face. “Did you dream? Can we buy time--” It was easy to tell how fast this one was coming on by how weak Ronan already felt. He wanted to stand up straight, step back, convince them that he was fine. But all he could manage was closing his eyes and sagging into their touch. The one time it had gotten this bad, he’d blacked out in all senses of the word. Bryde had saved him. Ronan really wished now that he’d been smart enough to ask how. He took Gansey’s hand off his face and blindly put the compass rock in his palm. “Fucking tried.” His mouth tasted terrible. He made a disgusted blegh and blinked his eyes back open. “Think I have to try bigger. Maybe uh….maybe…go...” He trailed off, pressing his hand over his eyes. Adam's attention was on Ronan's face, then the compass in Gansey's hand, then back to Ronan. His own breath was coming fast and hard, the kind that came with overwhelming fear for the situation at hand. But Adam remained resolute in his expression as he watched exhaustion overcome Ronan. "You're in no shape to try and dream something else right now," Adam said. A fact. "You've been dreaming the whole time you've been here." Another fact. "It's not related to that this time." The most painful fact. The one Adam didn't want to think about, because there was no solution. And determined, relentlessly stubborn Adam did not want to accept that as fact. He thought his hand might be shaking, holding still against Ronan's face, so he moved the towel around to try and staunch the flow, from his eyes, his nose, his ears, everywhere. But it was holding back a river with nothing but a ladle, but goddamnit—Adam was going to try. "Gansey, help me move him to the bed, or at least sit down." Adam couldn't think clearly when he thought Ronan might pass out any second. He couldn't think clearly when Ronan's face was a grisly mess of black. “Jesus,” Gansey hated feeling as if he was at a loss. He hated feeling useless, and blank headed, but seeing Ronan in this state was what turned him into a brain-addled mess. Not being able to fix things was never his forte. He was grateful for Adam’s forthright decision making in this case, as Gansey was left just fumbling for answers or guesses or suggestions and coming up short. His hand tightened around the compass rock until he pocketed it, doing as Adam asked and wrapping an arm around Ronan close, to assist. He hated the idea of the bed - as if they were just going to stick him there and tell him it was going to be okay and attempt to think up things while the person closest to both of them melted away. No. “The sofa--” He helped direct Ronan there, and grabbed another towel to hold against Ronan while his brain went to work. “What about the fairies? Their magic is different, powerful, we could ask-- They’re nearby, we can walk there-- Fuck. I don’t know.” He’d trade them The Pig at that very moment if it meant they could help Ronan. Feeling Adam’s shaking hand and then the pair of them, moving him along like an invalid, helped Ronan push back the fog a bit. Some of it was fear, after all. He remembered all too well what it felt like when the black wave crested over him and he couldn’t see, hear, think anything but darkness. He was afraid and it made him cling to them a little tighter than he’d have allowed himself any other time. “No fucking bed. No fucking sofa.” Ronan couldn’t think of anything worse than laying down to die. He stumbled, blinded for a moment, and rested a hip against the arm of the sofa while he reached for one of their towels to wipe at his face. “Fairies. Fine, just…” He shifted a glare between the two of them of them and pushed back to his feet to push them weakly towards the door. His words were pulled from in a rough tangle. “Don’t do anything stupid. Don’t...you know. I can’t--I won’t fucking forgive you.” "No one is doing anything stupid," Adam said, though it was painfully hypocritical coming from him. He would do absolutely anything, including several stupid things, to keep Ronan alive. To keep Gansey from dying again. To keep either of them from sacrificing themselves. And if the stupidest thing they would do today was going to the fairies who were outside of this building then Adam was willing to risk it. This was the contingency plan he and Gansey agreed upon. Keeping it together though was proving to be much harder than he expected. If Ronan stopped moving, Adam was afraid he was going to collapse. He reached for him, refusing to be pushed away. He understood—the feeling of wanting to stay standing on your own accord, physically and metaphorically, for as long as you could. But Adam also knew now when to call it in, and he remained by Ronan's side with Gansey to get him out the door. "Just don't pass out and we won't have to," Adam said, sounding weakly confident. The worry on his face betrayed everything, but he threw open the door, anyway, to usher them out. Adam's mind was already going through what they needed to do: be fast, ask the right questions, be ready to barter. Had any of them actually negotiated with fairies before? What would it take to fix this? Could they? Adam tried desperately to pull up his limited catalog of lore, and realized it didn't matter. They would give them anything for Ronan. Gansey squared his shoulders and gave Ronan a look, a familiar, stubborn one. He’d already promised to do anything to get all of them out of any situation, alive, and he would hold to that. Right up until it came down to it. Thankfully for Ronan, Gansey couldn’t default back to a destiny that would end in his death, there was no guarantee the magic here would accept a sacrifice to save someone else. But that left them with anything else, and Gansey felt the mental flailing strong in his head. He wanted to help Ronan, he wanted to comfort Adam, he needed to fix this-- It was a wonder they made it out the fucking door and outside, since Gansey was basically moving on auto pilot, the same hovering stance that Adam had, mirrored. Finally, when outside, he gave up and muttered under his breath, “For fuck’s sake.” He put his arm under Ronan’s and stretched it across his friend’s back, over to Adam’s side, where he brushed his hand gently across him, too. “I’m not going to do anything stupid, as long as you let us help you.” Ronan swallowed down his pride and looped his arms around both of their necks to keep himself upright. Or rather, more literally, he swallowed down the nightwash threatening to choke him and rested his head against Adam’s. “I don’t know if I really have a choice,” he murmured. Whether he was answering Adam’s don’t pass out order or Gansey’s as long as you let us help you demand was anyone’s guess. He fell into silence either way, as they made their way out of the building and into the edge of the forest. Belatedly, he realized they were sitting ducks like this. If anything came at them, he’d be useless to help and a burden besides. His vision started to blacken around the edges. “Fuck. You’re both idiots.” Ronan felt overwhelmed. Ronan didn’t get overwhelmed. His voice cracked. “I love you. I’m sorry.” Adam was thankful to have Gansey there. His heart was a tempest, wild and violent inside his chest. The touch to his arm was grounding, and as they made their way to the edge of the forest, he had returned the touch to Gansey between wiping away the nightwash from Ronan's face and nudging his cheek gently up to Ronan's temple. "We're idiots? Says the guy with black shit coming out of his face," Adam said, but his voice was strange, a hard press for casual to keep the panic from rising, but he hated it. And he hated the way Ronan said I love you and I'm sorry—too final, too much like giving up, too aware that there was an end somewhere and they were all rushing headlong into it. Adam was overwhelmed with him. His next inhale was a broken one, his level-headedness deteriorating in a snap. "Don't, please—" Adam scrambled to clear the nightwash from his face. Each touch to his cheek, under his eyes, his jaw said I love you, I love you, I love you. Adam couldn't trust himself to say it outloud without scaring himself and Ronan and Gansey. "Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit," he said in a rush, emphatic, as if that would make things better, like the words had magic in them to flip the situation. Ronan had said the same thing to him once, to know there would come a day where they would look back on this and laugh. He wanted the same thing. He wanted both of them to know there would be other days, after today, where they would find humor in this. Please. “I don’t know what that means!” Gansey knew it wasn’t for him, not really, but his frustration was welling up inside and threatening to burst. His voice was cracking the same as Ronan’s was, but everything was happening so fast and he felt like he was falling apart instead of standing tall like they needed. If he let his frustration and his panic take over, what was he? Useless? No. Not Gansey. Not if he could help it. He let Adam stay close to Ronan, and he pulled away reluctantly, but with renewed purpose. Gansey stood tall now, his shoulders up in a way that always had people moving to the side for him. The sort of Gansey that could actually intimidate people, the one that made waves. “Okay- you,” He gestured to Ronan, Gansey’s face darkening with both fear and determination. “Shut the fuck up. Ronan Lynch is not giving up right now, you fucking fight this. Pull yourself together.” It was probably too much, too demanding when Ronan was literally leaking black out of his body, but Gansey was willing to play hardball if it bought them more time to figure this out. He looked around the forest now, getting his bearings for one full second before making decisions. “This place is full of magic. We’re going to find someone that can help. It’s just a little farther, Ronan. If we have to carry you, we will.” Ronan immediately regretted causing that fractured please to come out of Adam’s mouth. Just because he was scared, and he fucking hated being scared, didn’t mean he should put that shit on them. He leaned into Adam’s hands with a sigh and tried to come up with something comforting to say back. Gansey’s outburst made him snap an open-mouthed glance at his best friend instead. Two f-bombs. Jesus. He must really look like death. “Damn, old man. Okay. Get off my ass,” Ronan croaked. At least he sounded fond, if not any stronger. He reattached himself to Adam’s shoulder and got them walking again, but he only made it a few hundred feet before the black filled his vision completely. He stumbled and collapsed to his knees, dragging Adam down with him. “I--I can’t see. It went fast after this. Don’t--” The nightwash filled him up, but he had time to finish this one last thought. “Don’t bridal carry me, you assholes.” He sagged into the dirt, unconscious. There was something strangely calming about Ronan being able to hurl a friendly insult at Gansey still. Adam took a deep breath, and tried one more time to school his emotions. He was no good if he didn't stay practical, logical, even-keeled. He found himself fighting a painful smile at Gansey's determination to get them through this task. Adam loved Gansey so much right then. He almost believed they could do it when they started walking again, reinvigorated by their collective perseverance. Until Ronan stumbled. Adam was unprepared for the drop, and he hit the ground hard with his knees, his arms scrambling to catch Ronan from falling over completely. If he just stays upright, if he just stays talking, if he just keeps his eyes open, Adam could rationalize away all the ways it wasn't wholly terrible if Ronan just— It went fast after this. Adam looked up to Gansey to confirm that this was real, that Ronan was unconscious, that the nightwash still oozing out of his face. "Gansey," Adam whispered, in a small uneasy voice. Then he was moving, reaching under Ronan's neck to lift him to sitting, even with all his weight slack underneath his arms. "He doesn't get a say on how we carry him," Adam said lifting Ronan's arm around his shoulder, halfway to a bridal carry with Gansey helping him on the other side. "We're close." Adam didn't know this for certain, but he couldn't think about what it would mean if they weren't. “What’s he going to do, beat us up?” Gansey quipped back at Adam, his face already having molded back to an expression of worry and frustration, his feet moving faster than they had in a long time. He helped catch Ronan, and held him with Adam, and allowed himself a second to run his hand over Ronan’s neck, as if confirming he really was just unconscious, before his arms wrapped around Ronan’s thighs to help carry him. It was easier with the both of them, and Gansey was thankful for the years of conditioning and training that rowing had offered him, but the determination was probably their true driving force. Together, the three of them could do anything, and right now, it was just two of them having to function without their center point of gravity. It was disarming, but Gansey didn’t allow himself much time to dwell on it. They had to continue deeper into the woods, along the path. He adjusted his hold on Ronan’s thighs, huffing out a noise before grumbling to Adam, “Is it just the nightwash that makes him so dense?” When he had a better hold, he continued. “You’re right tho, it can’t be far now.” "Even without it, he still is," Adam countered softly, but his eyes were on Ronan. Adam's gut ached, his arms burned, his own fingers were stiff with the drying nightwash. He knew that Gansey was shouldering more of the weight that he was, but Adam refused to fall behind. His focus was on keeping pace, but inevitably he nearly tripped on a root. But when he found his footing, something felt off. A bright, keen awareness overtook him. It was different than the magic of Vallo. It was, it was, it was— "Wait," Adam gasped. His eyes were frantic, scanning the canopy above them, the fallen log to the right, a rough clearing to the left. How many times had he been out here with Ronan and Opal, just past the threshold of the sprawling property where the main house stood? He could track his way back blindfolded; his footsteps had carved the path into the dense underbrush. Adam had been here, Adam knew these trees. He knew what was on the other side of them. His eyes were wide, staring at Gansey across Ronan's form held between them. His voice was full of unfiltered awe when he whispered, "We're here." By here, Gansey had expected the fairy market area, but no - they were a ways off from that, from his own mental estimation. Instead, he just followed Adam’s lead, and gave a quick glance around. “Is this--” He knew the Barns, had been around it a great deal, both before Niall died and their most recent summer here. So he knew exactly what it was, but believing was an entirely different story. “The Barns. We’re at-- Oh, wow.” They got a little further through the underbrush and the through the trees, to Ronan’s backyard, to the backend of the house they were all so familiar with. It was everything they needed all at once and Gansey had to stop himself from falling to his knees, thankful. He did let Ronan’s legs fall to the ground when they were closer, though, with gentle care. “Ronan?” There was nothing for a while, inside Ronan’s head. Just inky darkness and a sense of futility. Why fight when there was nothing there to fight for? When he’s already lost everything? Then a dream creeped in, pushing the blackness back. He could tell it was a dream even though it was the Barns. Even though it was Adam and Gansey and a bright sunny sky. He knew it was a dream because he wasn’t caked in drying black blood and he didn’t feel like he’d been dragged along behind a train. Then he was awake, a tangle gasp on his lips and thankfully not frozen in place, but definitely feeling like he’d been dragged along by a fucking train. He clamped a hand onto each of them and blinked up at the sky. “Ooooh, fuck. Okay...” He wiped his filthy face on his own shoulder.. His voice dropped to an uncertain whisper. “Somebody tell me I’m not dead. And what the fuck happened.” "I don't know," Adam said. He hated those words, hated how they betrayed his knowledge of something, hated that he wasn't aware of what was sprawled out in front of him. But after everything that had happened in Henrietta, and his own coupling with Cabeswater, there were a lot of things Adam didn't know. The Barns reappearing in Vallo was now one of those things. He quickly added, "You're not dead." Relief was palpable, but his expression was still a portrait of confusion. His brows furrowed, trying desperately to work the situation out—the how, and why, and where, and when. His hand however, was running an attentive, soothing line along Ronan's back. He prefered conscious and alert Ronan; this was a good sign. "We were carrying you, trying to find someone to stop the..." Adam glanced to Ronan's face, the nightwash smudged away but not gone. "And then this happened. Either we stumbled upon a pocket of magic where the Barns exists, or it's actually here like the Pig is, or—Gansey?" Adam needed an assist for the explanation. Gansey didn’t have any answers to really give, and his little shrug said as much. It was entirely possible Ronan just bought himself a little time - Gansey didn’t know how this worked - and they’d still have to push forward for help. He allowed himself a second to linger on Ronan, though, hand rubbing against his friend’s arm. Eventually, he dragged himself away and stood up to walk a little closer to the house. “I think it’s real. Other people have had houses and places show up -- the farm, remember?” Gansey was apprehensive to get more than a few steps away, so he turned back to them. “Maybe it’s similar to Cabeswater. The forest felt it, and knew we needed the Barns.” That didn’t help the theory that this was all some elaborate hallucination, but at least they were all still together. Concern made his face wrinkle up as he looked at Ronan, now. “How are you feeling now?” Ronan only half-listened to what they were saying. He was still crawling back from the edge, but he could feel the magic of his family land around him, and it soothed something tempestuous in his heart. Still, the draining of adrenaline and fear left him riding a wave of nausea, so he stayed in the dirt and pulled his knees up to rest his forehead against them. “How do I feel. Fucking lucky, I guess.” Everything ached which was weird as hell. “…And like somebody threw me down a few flights of stairs.” He lifted his head up and looked over at Adam, then up at Gansey. They didn’t look like they’d had to fight anything in the forest on the way here, so at least there was that. He didn’t know if it was gratitude or exhaustion or just the stupid boundless love in his heart for these two spilling out of him, but tears stung his eyes. The good old fashioned annoying kind. “Thanks,” he whispered. Adam's mind was already whirling with possibilities. He was taking in what Gansey was saying, but with the Barns in front of them, like a beacon home, Adam wanted to get Ronan inside. Just because the nightwash had stopped, Adam knew Barns served only as a stopgap for overcoming whatever really caused it. He didn't want Ronan to be tied to his home here too, unable to have freedom he deserved. Another conversation for another time. Dropping down closer to Ronan's side, Adam shook his head. He didn't want Ronan's thanks. "You would do it for either of us," Adam said, plainly. Then to Gansey, "I would do it for either of you." Again, and again, and again, to keep the people he cared about close. He wrapped an arm around Ronan's shoulders, gathering Ronan to his side. Adam dropped a swift, fierce kiss to Ronan's forehead, before resting his cheek there. Adam exhaled, long and brokenly, the last dregs of his immediate worry sagging out of him. Adam desperately needed confirmation that everything was okay; he was certain he would overthink every reason why it wasn't. And in that moment, he found himself stretching and arm up and reaching for Gansey. Oh. Gansey had fully expected to back off and give them a moment, to just smile at Ronan with a relieved crook of his mouth. The relief in his body was palpable, and really, all he needed was Adam reaching out before Gansey just gave in and sagged into both of them. His sweater and khakis were dirty already, so sinking down in the ground didn’t even make him blink an eye. The Ganseys weren’t huggers. They never had been. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d been hugged or coddled as a child, as they were a bootstrap sort of family. But he’d also never found comfort in them the way he did his friends - his found family, that he’d be willing to die for a million times over if he had to. A little hugging went a long way. And this wasn’t little hugging, by any means. This was fully, all in, no holds barred, arms wrapped around both of them, hugging. His voice was cracked when he finally spoke up, a little laugh that was clearly marred by some crying. “I hope some of my clothes are inside, you’ve destroyed one of my favorite sweaters.” And I don’t care. “I would do it as many times as it takes,” Ronan agreed. If they doubted exactly how shitty he was feeling – or how much better they made him feel - they only had to look at how easy he wrapped himself up in their embrace. No complaints beyond a quiet a little huff at them all hugging on the ground like a bunch of dorks. But he kept one arm around each of their shoulders, his head pressed against Adam’s cheek, and a heavy palm on top of Gansey’s head probably a lot longer than was really necessary. “I don’t know about your clothes, but I’ve got a tank top with your name on it,” he smirked mischievously. “I mean it says eat a dick but same thing.” Looking exhausted and yet still smug, Ronan patted them both on the back. “Help me up, assholes.” Ronan making a dick joke at Gansey's expense was a good sign. Adam bit back a small smile. "You can have one of mine, Gansey," Adam offered, as he adjusted his grip on Ronan to help him to his feet. As he reached with his other hand to steady him, Ronan's shirt felt tacky with the nightwash they couldn't wipe away. It was distracting, a bad reminder. "Can we wash this shit off you first?" Adam asked. That was assuming everything was still intact from the Barns, like plumbing and clothing and whatever else they were expecting. That was assuming the inside wasn't a hollowed out shell. Adam could only brace himself for so much in one day. While he was nowhere near living in the same state of exhaustion as Ronan, his fatigue was of the mental variety. Adam wanted his brain to not think anymore. "We will figure out what to do after." After, at least, didn’t feel quite so far away anymore. There was hope at the horizon, more than they’d had in a while. Gansey smiled for what felt like the first time in years, and squeezed Adam’s shoulder as he stood with them. Relief was evident. “Thank you, Adam.” He refused to get too far ahead of Ronan, opting to stick right at his shoulder in case Ronan needed the assistance walking. But he did very lightly bump the taller man with his elbow as they all walked towards the house. “You can save the tank for after your bubble bath, Lynch.” “Fuck, if there’s hot water in there, I just might take a damn bubble bath,” Ronan laughed. It didn’t have the same edge his laugh normally did, but it was still warm with relief and fondness. He ducked his head to kiss the side of Adam’s neck and then spun to shuffle backwards towards the house. “Let’s go see if anyone’s home.” |