Ronan Lynch (alteridem) wrote in valloic, @ 2020-09-30 19:22:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, the raven cycle: adam parrish, the raven cycle: ronan lynch |
His BMW glinted in the moonlight, haphazardly parked in the gravel. Why was it night? He didn’t want to do this at night.
Ronan blinked and the sun was just above the horizon, casting a beautiful sunset across the farm. It wasn’t a cure-all but it eased some of the tension in his shoulders to know he was in control here. Mostly anyway. Dan was there, a few feet from the BMW, standing over the spot where Niall Lynch had taken his last breaths.
“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Dan said. His pity was a palpable thing. It made the sting of those words hurt more.
Ronan sneered. “Can’t you make him talk to me?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
Ronan didn’t know if it did or didn’t work like that but the dream was convincing anyway. He kicked at the ground and linked his fingers behind his head in frustration.
He doesn’t want to talk to you.. It was just a dream, his own anxiety manifested. But Ronan felt like he couldn’t breathe all of a sudden. He wished he’d left it fucking nighttime. It would feel less ridiculous to find himself sitting on the ground with his knees pulled up to his chest and his forehead resting against them. He’d feel less exposed, quietly hyperventilating in the dark.
Adam woke up. His whole body, previously heavy and pliant with sleep, was ringing with adrenaline. It was a warning, Cabeswater flooding his senses with awareness. Something was wrong, and Adam instinctively rolled toward Ronan, reaching for him. When he rested his hand securely on Ronan's hip, Adam frowned. There was a tension in Ronan's body beside him that Adam didn't like. Even more concerning was that that same static buzz of unease hadn't pulled Ronan awake, and his breathing coming quick and rapid in the dark.
Bad dream, Adam's mind supplied. Nightmare, something worse. An urge, an innate need, pushed Adam unapologetically into Ronan's space, tanging legs and arms back together where they had unexpectedly come apart with sleep. Adam had done this before, dozens of times, scrying into Ronan's dreamspace. But he only ever did it with permission, except once. It required concentration, staring blindly into miniature suns or dark bowls.
This time—humming with Cabeswater power—Adam didn't even have to try. He pressed a palm to Ronan's cheek, nosed at Ronan's temple, and closed his eyes, whispering, "Intrantes sum."
He opened his eyes, but he was standing on the front porch of the Barns at sunset. As he started to walk down toward the driveway, more came into frame—the long shadows of the trees, the sharp gravel against his feet, and Ronan's curled form sitting on the ground.
Adam approached slow, careful, trying to assess the situation before he did anything stupid. He crouched down in front of Ronan, his fingers ghosting over the back of his head.
"Ronan," Adam said on a soft exhale, "I'm here. What happened?"
The Latin warning breathed through the dream like a cool gust of air on a boiling hot day. Ronan felt his breath catch but it didn’t slow down, even out. He kept his eyes clamped shut until Adam was too close to ignore. A shiver raced from where Adam’s fingers grazed down the slope of Ronan’s bent back. He made himself lift his head to look at Adam then around the driveway.
Dream-Dan has his back turned to them. Ronan didn’t know whether to be annoyed or relieved.
“I--” He swallowed, surprised to feel just the slightest dampness under his eyes. Emotions were so stupid. He swiped at his cheeks with his shoulders as his breathing still stuttered out of him. “I just...I wanted to practice this shit.” He gestured at Dan with his chin. “He says dad doesn’t wanna talk to me.”
Adam was putting the pieces together even before Ronan answered. The spot in the driveway, Dan with his back turned, the visceral parts that were a sign of rejection and painful memories. He should have known Ronan wanted to practice working up to something like this, and he understood why he might not have been privy to that decision. Adam didn't mince his words when it came to Niall Lynch.
But it also wasn't Adam's choice to stop him. Ronan had let him make his own decisions when it came to parents, even when he hated it, there had to be the same supportive courtesy.
His expression was soft and concerned, and he moved to sit completely in front of Ronan, legs bracketing him as Adam helped swipe tears from Ronan's face. "He is part of your dream, under your control. If he said that, then—" Then it was a very real possibility that all of this was just preparing Ronan for disappointment, and Adam didn't want to feed into that. Not now.
"Is that what you're worried about if you do this? That your dad won’t want to?"
Ronan’s legs were too long to sit with them crunched up between them for long, but he hesitated to move. It was probably something stupid about guarding himself, which the thought alone was almost enough to push him into unwinding. He didn’t need to guard himself from Adam. He just really fucking hated feeling vulnerable even in his own dumb head. His eyes shut briefly while Adam wiped at his face and at least his breathing finally started to level out.
“I guess. I don’t fucking know.” That was close enough to a flat out lie that guilt drove Ronan to uncoil his legs on either side of Adam’s hips. He was practically in his lap this way but it’s not like that was a bad thing. He pressed closer and buried his forehead in the crook of Adam’s neck. “I haven’t done anything the way he would’ve. I don’t...I’m not the person I was when he died,” he mumbled from his hiding place.
It was inevitable, weaving their way back together, and Adam more than greedily scooped Ronan up into his arms. Asleep or awake, Adam found it impossible to not reach for Ronan when he offered the vulnerable parts up to him. Ronan was always opening doors and windows for Adam to slip in past his often impenetrable emotional walls. He took them.
But Adam worried that the more they kept talking about Ronan's dad in his unconscious dreamspace, that eventually this dreamed version of Dan would morph into Niall. He worried that the slow tread away from the immediate pain of this dream would be wasted with his appearance. Adam needed Ronan to keep his focus.
He squeezed at the back of Ronan's neck when he said he didn't know; it was supposed to be an encouraging touch to just get the rest of it out. "Is that such a bad thing?" Adam asked, and dream Dan took a step away from them. "You're not supposed to be the same person, even if you can do the same things."
Adam pressed a fierce kiss against the side of Ronan's head. "What you've done may not be what he would have, but do you regret them?"
“No.” Ronan’s tone was absolute. “I don’t regret who I am or the choices I’ve made. Well…not most of them,” he conceded with a wry twist of his mouth as he pulled his face out of hiding. Where Adam had kissed him still felt warm and he hoped it lingered for as long as this took.
He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to see that Dan had wandered off completely. His dreams knew he was shit at talking things out if there was too much of an audience. He sighed and twisted his hands into the fabric at the base of Adam’s spine.
“I don’t idolize him like I used to,” he scowled. The farm felt deathly quiet but Ronan knew that was his own dramatic ass subconscious. “But I…I don’t think I could handle it…” His voice dropped to a whisper, but he kept his eyes locked on Adam’s. “…If he was disappointed in me. If he…didn’t even wanna say goodbye.”
If it weren't for Ronan keeping his eyes locked on Adam's, Adam would have looked away. He had his own complicated issues with his father, and had suffered through being the disappointing son for just existing. His father hadn't said goodbye either, but for very different reasons. It was difficult to separate his experiences from Ronan's, to try and understand the grief Niall had left circling inside his boyfriend for years.
He took a deep breath, his fingers outlining Ronan's brow, pushing back hair that didn't exist, just gentle touching for the sake of closeness. Somewhere in the waking world, Adam's hands were doing the same gestures across Ronan's sleeping form.
"I don't think that's possible," Adam said, just as quietly, in order to not break the silence that Ronan had gathered around them in the dream. "In every scenario, best and worst, there is not one where your father would ever be disappointed in you. He loved you. There's things he did that I don't agree with, and things you don't, but—" Adam shook his head. "His choices don't change the way he felt about you. It's not possible. I don't believe it."
Adam leaned in and bumped his nose against Ronan's. "You'd both be getting another chance to say what you need to, and he wouldn't pass it up."
Talking about their fathers was always risky. Ronan tended to dart in, bark out his piece, and get the fuck out as quickly as possible. But being in a dream made everything feel distant and soft. Adam’s hands on him stretched the moment out to the horizon and his anxiety felt liquid. If he stayed there long enough, maybe it would evaporate away completely.
“I hope so.” That was true. The next words were just as honest, even at a rough mumble. “I know there’s other shit, but I never got a chance to tell either of them about me. About you. And it always just…I mean, they have to fucking know, if they have any awareness of here, or home.” Ronan swallowed the lump in his throat and turned his head to kiss the corner of Adam’s mouth, grazing his cheek along Adam’s jaw afterward. “Guess I’m just a little worried if he doesn’t show that I’ll have to live wondering if that was the thing he couldn’t accept.”
Adam had been so concerned about Niall giving up answers to those questions Ronan often grappled with by being the greywaren, he hadn't even entertained the idea of it being this. Them. Oh.
And in a second or a minute, time meant nothing in a dream, Adam ran the gamut of emotions: he was sad that Ronan thought this was something his father wouldn't accept. Then he was angry that this would be what kept his father's spirit away. Frustrated he knew he couldn't change Ronan's mind with a single logical answer. Hurt that Ronan thought he needed his father's approval in some way, still. Worried what would happen if all his anxiety proved to be right. And finally determined that it wasn't, wouldn't be. Adam wouldn't let it.
"They knew," Adam said, as he wrapped his whole self around Ronan, like he could protect him from the emotions that threatened him. From Ronan's own mind. A futile attempt, but Adam never balked at limitations and certainly never when it came to Ronan. "They know. And if this, us, is what your dad couldn't accept and why he won't show, then you're better off."
His grip on the back of Ronan's shirt became a little rough, a little desperate. "You're better off."
Ronan closed his eyes and started shaking his head even as the words were still forming on Adam’s lips. It wasn’t denial; it was something else. “I know that, I know. I’m not--”
He caged Adam’s face between his palms, fingertips in his hair. “There is jack shit in this world or any other that could ever make me feel bad about loving you. I’m not gonna pretend it wouldn’t hurt to have that be the way this shit ends, but I’d...” His eyes shifted out towards the bruised sky like it might help him pick the right words. Sadly, a skywriter did not suddenly appear to sort out his thoughts. Dreams were really worthless sometimes.
“I’d survive,” he eventually huffed, shrugging. His thumbs brushed over Adam’s cheeks. “I’d probably be a real shithead for a while, but...I’d get the fuck over it eventually.”
There was nowhere to go. Adam had so thoroughly tangled himself together with Ronan, and now Ronan's hands were on his face keeping him in place, like he was a dream. Like he wasn't the one real. Adam felt sheepish for getting so worked up at the thought that Ronan didn't already know how important he was. What a better man he had become in spite of and despite the circumstances. Adam knew it in his bones, had been awed by him for, what felt like, forever.
They were sitting in his dream, acting as if the changing sky and the presence of Dan and endless silence wasn't strange, for instance. That was extraordinary.
His fingers snaked down the collar of Ronan's shirt, just enough to trace the edges of his tattoo. "I hate to break it to you, but you're always a bit of a shithead," Adam said softly, teasing him in a way that felt casual and familiar. He leaned in and kissed him, as an apology, then turned his cheek to kiss Ronan's palm—Adam knew what he meant about surviving.
"No matter what happens, if he shows, if he doesn't, if he wants to talk to you or doesn't, any of it—I'll be here for whatever comes next. That's never going to change," Adam said, his dream-presence voice overlapping with the one currently whispering the same thing to Ronan in their bed.
If Ronan hadn’t already been in love with Adam, that soft-spoken joke would have sealed the deal. A laugh sputtered out of him and he smothered it against Adam’s lips. He’d have happily stayed there and not talked about this shit anymore, but it wasn’t like he hated hearing that vow to stick. In fact, he might just tuck that memory away for safe-keeping.
“Good. Ditto.” It was a casual word, but not casually said. There was nothing casual about the look in his eyes either. He carded his fingers back through Adam’s hair and gave it a little tug. “Sorry I scared you into dream hopping. I forgot you’re all high key tuned into this frequency now,” he teased.
Hearing Ronan laugh smoothed out the rougher edges of his concern. He melted into him and into the kiss, happier than a moment before, and then the moment before that. Nothing was fixed, but it was like falling off the footpath and getting back on together. As much as Adam was fiercely independent, some things were better done with Ronan.
Adam let his focus blur, his eyes close, and his body go a little loose with Ronan's hands in his hair and the subsequent tug. He was not embarrassed by showing simple appreciation for the things he liked. "Being high-key tuned in isn't a bad thing," Adam replied. He would prefer it, actually. What was more unsettling was how easily he could do it now, unconsciously, intrinsically.
After a beat, Adam added a little more serious, "You can kick me out, you know. Just because I know something is happening in here doesn't mean I should have free reign to come and go. It's your head, your privacy."
“Shut up,” Ronan said fondly. “You’re never not welcome here. But if…for some reason, there’s something here I don’t want you to see, I’ll tell you.” He highly doubted that would happen at this stage of things. Adam had seen the worst of him and still stuck around. But Ronan was self-aware enough to know he’d slipped off an edge or two in the past. And besides, at some point, he might want to practice proposing somewhere that a houseful of nerds wouldn’t see.
He unwound from Adam’s lap in a clumsy, long-limbed move and rolled to his feet. His muscles felt like he'd just run a mile.
“I wanna be close to you but not here.” The gravel beneath them darkened as the sun finally dropped beneath the horizon. He ignored it and held out a hand. “Let’s go say hi to Cabeswater.”
He smiled. "I was trying to be polite," Adam said as he grabbed Ronan's offered hand and pulled himself up to his feet. He didn't let go of Ronan's hand, tangling their fingers together. If they were leaving the dream, Adam wanted it to be together. He could already feel the veil of his own unconsciousness peeling away, nudging him back to reality, to their bed, to the heavy comforting weight of the night. Adam wanted to be close to him too.
But the mention of Cabeswater caused Adam to stop in his tracks. He suddenly wasn't ready to leave; they didn't have the same emotional protection outside of Ronan's dream space and he was afraid to ask the questions he wanted when they were both awake.
Unfortunately, Adam had little control—between one blink and the next, Adam was outside the main house holding Ronan's hand and then in their bed. He managed to be half on top of Ronan now instead of beside him, and as Adam pushed himself up on his elbows, he waited, patiently, quietly, for Ronan to open his eyes. He had never been more thankful for the shadows of the dark to hide his face.
Adam's voice was a rough whisper, when he asked, "Are you going to bring Dan to Cabeswater too?"
For a moment, Ronan had considered just walking to Cabeswater in the dream. But dream-Cabeswater wasn’t a place he could afford to be distracted. So he eased up into the waking world with a deep breath and slow blinking eyes. If he’d dreamt something into existence, there would’ve been a long moment of paralysis to suffer through. As it stood, he was glad he could close his eyes back up when Adam asked his question.
“That’s the plan,” he murmured. “As long as Matthew doesn’t change his mind about all this shit.” He turned his head and kissed Adam aimlessly on the shoulder. His words were muffled against Adam’s skin. “Do you think that part’s a bad idea too?”
Adam tipped his head down, chin to chest, considering his next words. It wasn't a bad idea, but Adam was back to being concerned about Ronan's emotional well-being. He had been there when Ronan found his mother, sat in agonizing silence in the car the hours after, remembered days where just being near the master bedroom was difficult. Niall's death had caused the initial wound, but Adam saw the effects of what happened when Aurora's death ripped it further open.
He leaned in and kissed Ronan's brow, the bridge of his nose, one of his closed eyes, and the sharp slope of his cheek. Adam was using affection to procrastinate responding. "No, it's not," Adam settled on. "She'll be happy to see the both of you." There was no doubt in Adam's mind that Aurora would show for her sons, and he tried to impart that certainty to Ronan.
There was a warm prickling sensation up the back of his spine, and instead of ignoring it, Adam welcomed it, turning his face to steal a kiss from Ronan in the process. The feeling was familiar, one he was getting used to as the days on the other side of his bond with the forest grew.
"Cabeswater says it's ready whenever you are. Non est festinandum."
Ronan thought he was doing alright until Adam started kissing him to avoid answering. Each breath felt a little heavy after that. He pictured his mother’s face the last time he’d seen her alive and he saw Matthew hugging her. He resolutely did not think about finding her Cabeswater that final time, but his fingers still gripped a little tightly at Adam’s back.
His feelings about his mother were infinitely more simple than the ones about his father, though. It helped the tension leak out of him a lot faster than it had taken in the dream.
“I think it’ll be good for Matty. If it even works.” He nipped at Adam’s shoulder because it was close to his mouth. “But good to know Cabeswater’s not gonna be pissy about us trying.” He kissed the spot where he’d just grazed his teeth and lifted his eyes to Adam’s face. His mouth twisted into a suggestive smirk and he pushed up on his arms to murmur against Adam’s throat. “Want to put off that visit for like… a half hour?”
"It'll work," Adam confirmed, again, with his steady assurance, which was difficult with Ronan nipping at his shoulder and giving him that look that meant he was up to something else. "And you know you only have to ask, Cabeswater isn't always going to be pi—"
Adam made a soft, pleased, wholly unconscious noise with Ronan's lips against his throat. His eyes closed and he nodded into the dark. Yes, to putting off the visit; yes, to what Ronan was suggesting; yes, this was a better option. They were done talking for now.
He turned his head to claim Ronan's mouth in a hungry greedy kiss, and pressed him back down into the mattress.