RONAN LYNCH + MATTHEW LYNCH
POST EVIL BUNNIES ATTACK - SAD BOYS HAVE A SAD TALK
(temporary animal death vaguely referenced)
LOW | COMPLETE
Ronan’s shoes were fucked. Little rabid teeth had torn into the material, frayed the edges and carved a hole near his left pinkie toe. His jeans weren’t much better off and his hands were raw from swinging the axe. He’d be more angry if his heart didn’t feel so fucking heavy and he wasn’t still out of breath.
The cows in this barn barely moved on a normal day, just the soft barely there rise and fall of their breathing as they slept the dead dreamer sleep. But there was one not moving at all now. Ronan herded his shaken brother outside, into the bright sun and the warm summer air. The breeze helped with the smell.
“Syd’s not far,” he said, one hand on Matthew’s back and the other digging out his phone. The crack in the screen was new but it didn’t stop him from firing off a quick text. “I’m not sure how it’ll work with these cows but—“ He swallowed. “We’ll try okay?”
After a long moment, Matthew nodded once, more because he knew Ronan would want an answer rather than because he was actually listening. He felt a hollow ache in the center of him, a stunned silence too much like the silence of death. The cows had always been quiet due to their nature, yes, but theirs was a different sort of silence. Matthew would know, he spent time with them in the field and in the barn sitting against them lost in his thoughts. Sometimes he found his breath matching theirs, slow, gentle, and it was only then that he would shake himself out of his reverie, pat them on the heads, and wish them sweet dreams.
Matthew liked to believe they heard him. He wanted to believe they heard him. He clenched his jaw against the trembling of his mouth. Matthew’s sensitive heart meant he loved everyone, so tender that he kept a wide berth around anything resembling violence save for physical contact from sports, but when it came to the safety of the animals, Ronan, and their friends, Matthew rushed right in. It hadn’t been enough--or it had been, for the sheep, and thank goodness for that! But the sleeping cows were too easy of a target. It wasn’t fair.
“Do you think she was in any pain?” He swallowed, his vision going blurry and his eyes too bright and too blue from unshed tears. “Do you think she knew?”
As dense as Ronan could be about a lot of shit, he was highly attuned to the emotions of his loved ones. That didn’t mean he was any good at responding to those emotions, but at least he was beyond the years of stomping away and hiding behind a slammed door. He scowled and shifted his hand from Matthew’s back to the back of his neck.
“No,” he growled. The anguish in Matthew's voice felt like fire in Ronan's lungs. “I don’t think she felt a thing.” There was no way to know for sure, but Ronan’s gut said dreams lost to a dead dreamer were locked in the dream that made them, unable to break free. He’d tried dozens of objects, dreamt up spells, even dreamt technology over the years but nothing had made a difference. He frowned back at the closed barn door. It was a special kind of torture imagining Matthew suffering the same fate. “I hope not anyway,” he mumbled unhelpfully. It felt too much like lying to act like he’d never had any doubts.
Matthew sniffed and exhaled a shuddering breath. “So she didn’t know anything at all? Didn’t know when we were there?” Of course he never wanted anyone to feel any pain, so it was a relief to hear that Ronan at least believed the cow died in peace, but it was a double edged sword to think that the cows were unaware of anyone or anything around them. To think of Aurora like that. His own nebulous future. Furiously, Matthew wiped at his eyes. “She was alone?”
There was a logical part to Matthew that knew he was piling too much on Ronan. He had always loved Ronan, always wanted to be around him, always wanted to make him proud. But without their parents, without Declan, Ronan was the one who had to bear the weight of Matthew’s care, as much as Matthew was trying to grow and become more real, he would always turn to Ronan first. The guilt of that, of adding to Ronan’s emotional plate, only made Matthew’s emotions feel even more complicated and overwhelming. “Sorry,” he said, quickly. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, I--I don’t know.”
He leaned his head against Ronan’s, rubbing his impossibly golden curls against Ronan’s shaved head. He’d done it for years, when he was on the verge of falling asleep, when he wanted to tease Ronan with big gestures of affection, when he was seeking comfort. When there were so many things Matthew wanted to say but didn’t have the words for. “I’m so sad.”
Jesus Mary. Ronan tensed at Matthew’s questions – rolling them quickly over in his head in search of the truest answer to ease his brother’s heart. But he didn’t have the answers, and his heart hurt too. What a shitshow.
“No, hey, don’t be sorry. Those are good questions.” Ronan hugged Matthew’s head. “I wish I fucking knew. I…” He exhaled, loud and shaky. Matthew sad was like getting taken out at the knees. Ronan just had to mentally push to his feet for both of their sakes. Maybe even channel some fucking Declan and sound boringly reliable. “I think it’s like being in a coma. They can’t feel, they don’t know what’s going on, but some coma patients say they remember people talking to them. How it felt like a lifeline. That doesn't make this shit any less sad though.”
Matthew hugged Ronan in return because while he never needed an excuse to embrace him, Matthew knew Ronan was hurting too. As much as they were making the Barns their own, remnants of their father would always be there. The sleepy cows were tangible proof that Niall Lynch had lived, and he had died, and he had left behind beautiful things and he had left behind mysteries his sons might not ever solve. “I’m sorry you’re the one who has to get the questions, Ro, it’s not fair.” Maybe if Niall had been more concerned about his sons than the magic itself, or teaching Ronan what he knew instead of forcing him into it and letting Ronan fend for himself, it would have been different.
But it was different, what they had. Ronan and Matthew had each other, they had everyone at the Barns, Ronan had divulged his secret because he didn’t want to live in the dark.
He released Ronan but kept an arm around his shoulders and his head resting against his brother’s. “It might not work,” Matthew said, slowly, his eyes shut. Ronan had said as much, but Matthew wanted him to know he knew it too. “Or it might and she’ll still be asleep. What happens then?”
“Stop apologizing, dumbass,” Ronan grumbled, even as his grip gentled and he pressed down Matthew’s wild curls in an attempt to be soothing. His words were always sharper than his actions. “I’m not sorry you feel like you can ask me this shit. I’m just sorry I can’t give you the answers that would make this all easier.”
He let Matthew rearrange them, pliant for once. The list of people he was pliant for was short. He thought about the cow and what it might mean if resurrecting her woke her up completely. The idea that Matthew might need to die someday to be free of his dreamer made Ronan’s stomach turn over. He scowled. “If she’s alive but still asleep, then nothing really changes. If it doesn’t work...What do you want to happen?”
The hollow feeling in Matthew grew larger and larger. He felt like he was looking out over the edge of a cliff, the vertigo enough to have him swaying. These big feelings, these complicated issues, they were so much for Matthew, who had previously lived the same golden, dream filled, protected life that Aurora had. But as much as Matthew adored their mother, he couldn’t live that same way. Not now, not when he knew the truth, not when he wanted to be someone Declan and Ronan could count on, a good brother, a good friend, a good everything else.
That meant tackling these things. Not alone though, never alone.
“If she’s asleep, there’s still a chance she could wake up,” he worked out, slowly, carefully treading the conversation. “Even though Dad’s not here anymore, if she’s sleeping, there’s still hope, right? If she’s gone, that’s it.” But it was more than that, Matthew thought, even though it took him a minute to work out exactly what the ‘more’ was. “If it works, and the cow wakes up, then that means...every dream thing would have to die and be resurrected in order to be--independent.” That word, Matthew picked deliberately. Free sounded too much like he was being held prisoner by something, and Matthew just didn’t feel that way at all. His life, however, was wound up with Ronan’s.
“I don't know what I want,” he confessed, opening his eyes so he could meet Ronan’s stare. “Thinking about it makes me think of Mom. It makes me think of something happening to you, and I hate it.”
“If she’s sleeping, there’s still hope,” Ronan confirmed quietly. “And if she’s awake then…” He hadn’t wanted the conversation to go down this road, but they were here now and he stubbornly clenched his jaw to forge on ahead. “If she’s awake then maybe I can take a little comfort from the fact that you could be okay if something did happen to me. I don’t know that it matters though. You’d still have to die and it’s not like anyone is going to be willing to kill you to wake you up.”
His skin itched. He let Matthew go but only so he could rub roughly at his arms and glare over his shoulder towards the rest of the farm. The next question out of his mouth felt stupid and like something that would’ve made his Dad roll his eyes, but he asked it anyway. “If it’s neither and she’s just gone, do you want us to bury her?”
Matthew had always been the most outwardly sensitive and empathetic Lynch brother. He’d side up to Declan when Declan had an especially hard test at school, he’d tackle Ronan in a bear hug just when Ronan needed it, the Lynches couldn’t leave Matthew alone in public for too long without strangers talking to him, he put worms that had been out on the sidewalk back in the dirt, he once stopped traffic entirely so a turtle could amble across the road. Matthew may have given up on leaving treats for gnomes and faeries but that too tender heart would never really change. He already knew what he wanted to do, even before Ronan asked.
For all of Matthew’s perhaps surprisingly complicated feelings about Niall Lynch, he loved their father. Niall may have been more absent of a parent than Aurora, due to all of his mysterious traveling, but Matthew had magical memories of him too. He wondered what their lives would have looked like with fewer secrets earlier on. If Niall would have still been alive. If Aurora would have been. What it would have been like for Ronan to grow up confident in himself and his dreaming. If things would have been different now for himself. Maybe he mourned that as much as he mourned losing Niall. “Yeah,” he said, wiping his eyes again. “I think--doing anything else would be too hard. Because she was one of Dad’s. But I can do it, pal. You have a lot to deal with. This can be on me.”
“Matthew…” Ronan rubbed at his face, both frustrated and heartsick at seeing such somber resolution in his normally weightless brother. “Even if I agreed to let this be on you--which, you know I fucking won’t--” he pointed at Matthew for emphasis. “Do you have any idea how much a cow weighs?”
He tried to say it with at least a little good humor, but his worried eyes probably didn’t sell the joke. He did manage a sad little smile though, and a one-arm squeeze around Matthew’s shoulders. “You’re not doing this shit by yourself. If it has to happen, we’ll do it together. And probably with the help of a dream crane because the balloon trick really fucking failed.” At least with that he really could laugh. The memory of him begging Chainsaw to help stop a cow from floating off into the sun was funnier as he got further away from the day itself.
“Oh,” Matthew blinked rapidly, as if actually realizing what he’d just said. “Huh. That would be pretty heavy.” He leaned into the squeeze, his own arm wrapped around Ronan, solemn but the seemingly overwhelming sadness had abated. He felt solid again, tethered to the ground of their family farm, with the brother he loved so much and their friends not far away. There were more questions than there were answers and even when they got some answers it would only result in more questions. But for now, for now he’d be okay.
A laugh broke out of Mathew then, surprised, but genuine. “Holy Cheese Nips, Ronan! Did I really think I was going to bury a cow by myself? How was I going to do that? Roll it in?” He snorted, in an attempt to reign in another laugh, but it bubbled out of him. “The balloon trick was pretty bad, but the idea was good! Maybe we need like, a big drone! That we could control!” But if Matthew wasn’t able to control his laugh thinking about the two of them trying to roll a cow, the thought of flying one via drone was far and away too much. His shoulders shook from laughing, cathartic from the maelstrom of emotions.
It was a heavy sort of relief that came with watching Matthew fall back into himself. Ronan knew suffering was just a part of life and being a person - a real person even if he was a dream - meant Matthew needed the chance to process sadness as much as the rest of them. It didn’t mean Ronan enjoyed watching it happen or ever fucking would. A laugh sputtered out of him and he gave his brother an affectionate shove.
“Holy cheese nips,” he echoed mockingly. “A drone. Chainsaw would probably divebomb the damn thing.” He snorted and then straightened up when he saw Syd in the distance. “We’ll figure it out if we have to, but I trust Syd. Let’s just…” It was really fucking weird to wish Declan were here. Ronan scowled. “Let’s have a little faith.”