incognoscibilis | Mondays is for drinking to the seldom seen kid [Ronan, 07/25]

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Mondays is for drinking to the seldom seen kid [Ronan, 07/25]

When he'd set his schedule, Adam had been well-pleased with himself for having Monday off. He'd planned to use the day to catch up on summer reading and, more importantly, catch up on Ronan. Gansey's appearance yesterday morning had thrown everything out of order. Noah is beside himself and Blue has retreated and Adam thinks that Ronan's just gone numb for the sake of not blowing up with rage. Henry is too ineffable for Adam to even gauge his reaction.

So he'd left a note for Ronan. Well, note is a generous word for it. He'd taken a post-it and drawn three intersecting lines and figured that if anyone could understand it, Ronan would.

It's a humid mid-morning and Adam's surveying a corner of land at the very edge of Cabeswater. It's close enough to reality that its location should stay fixed but still firmly in the space of Cabeswater that no one will find the barn that isn't invited. He's shirtless, the shirt tied into his belt loop, and surrounded by some library books on livestock care, a tape measure, a calculator, and a rapidly-filling notebook as he does his calculations.

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The note Ronan finds stuck to the inside of Adam's door, just at eye level is fairly cryptic, but makes perfect sense to Ronan. There's no handwriting to interpret, no way of really knowing where it came from, but there's no question in Ronan's mind.

He feeds the animals and collects what few eggs the chickens have laid, setting them out in the kitchen for later before grabbing some bottled water and a bag of apples. Gansey's bedroom door stays closed, a fact Ronan is strangely grateful for as he snatches his keys and heads out in the Pig.

He doesn't drive to his normal spot, but nearly half a mile beyond, the Pig rattling and shuddering over rocks and uneven terrain before he finally settles her to a stop. Adam is at least thirty yards away, his bare back to Ronan where he's hunched over, writing into a notebook Ronan can just barely make out. Grabbing the water and the apples, Ronan steps out, slamming the door behind him before making his way over a hill toward Adam, calling out to him.

"Like, the new uniform," he says with a smirk, waiting until Adam's facing him to toss him one of the unopened bottles. "You're starting without me?"

There's no mistaking the sound of the Pig, heralding Ronan's entrance and Adam puts his notebook down, smiling despite it all.

"I thought you would," Adam says, using the hanging shirt to wipe the sweat from his face before he catches one of the bottles of water and beckons Ronan over to join him.

"I was just making measurements. Not building yet. I needed to think." Ronan can translate Adam well enough by now to know what that means. He's probably doing as much to provide Ronan with an excuse not to stay in Hywel himself where Gansey sleeps and tries to reacquaint himself with his strange new realm like a wakened sleeper, brought back into the world.

When Ronan doesn't close the space fast enough, Adam goes and meets him, arms around Ronan's middle.

It doesn't count as leering when it's your own boyfriend you're admiring, Ronan figures, and he lets himself take in the clench of Adam's abs, the ripple of muscle as his back curves and he wipes at his face.

Ronan steps forward when Adam gestures at him, his head cocked. There's no having to guess what Adam means by any of it; they're both out here for the same reason. There'd been a gaping hole in their lives when Gansey had disappeared and now that he's back, it's almost as though there's too much of him, this bulking presence he doesn't know how to breathe around.

He breathes in quietly when Adam meets him halfway, one sweaty arm looping around Ronan's middle. "Told you I can just dream this shit," he says with a quiet smirk, curling his own arm, the one still holding the bag of apples around Adam to draw him closer still.

"I know you could, but then I can't help," Adam says. He feels the apples roll against his back and laughs a little, oddly soothed by the solidity of it all. The apples are a counterbalance to the weight of Ronan in front of him and Adam closes his eyes, shamelessly reveling in the miracle that is Ronan Lynch.

And even if Ronan does ignore the calculations Adam's made, it's still a good way to use up his morning, to keep him out of Hywel as the dust decides how to settle.

"I kept hoping he'd come back but now that he has, I don't know what to do," Adam says, letting Ronan support a little more of his weight as Adam slumps.

It's an easy shift of subject if only because Ronan knows the topic's been floating at the surface for hours, untouched. There's no room to talk about it at Hywel, not with Noah buzzing around and Blue hiding and Gansey just trying to make sense of it all.

Ronan shifts his weight a little, his hold around Adam a little more supportive as he brushes a kiss to the top of his ear. The right one so his low murmurs will be heard.

"I thought he was gone," Ronan admits, maybe for the first time. "Especially after Cheng of all people showed up. I thought that was it."

Because, for Ronan, when people leave, they get buried. Right along with everything good about them.

Adam breathes in and out, as if he can better absorb the kiss with a deeper breath. Ronan stands solid in the earth and Adam lets him be an anchor. It's easy to pretend that if they cling to one another long enough, the rest of the world will right itself in their image, but Adam's known his whole life that pretend never gets that far. For Ronan, it might be different.

"I'm still trying to decide if it feels real," he says. So much of Adam's world since Cabeswater has been defined that way but with Gansey it's even harder to decide if he can comprehend what he sees.

At least, even with the humid day and the uneven land, mathematics stay consistent. Two times two will always be four and measurements can always be refined in a predictable way. It's oddly comforting with all of this surrounding them.

"It's fucked up," Ronan replies for him, pulling back just a little to give Adam a crooked smile. "It feels fucked up."

It's not the most eloquent response, but it fits, Ronan thinks. Everything about Darrow has been fucked since the minute he got here and it hasn't stopped. For every good thing, every gift, there's been a dozen pieces of bullshit. If they count Gansey's return as a good thing, then what fucked up thing is just lurking around the corner?

Or maybe Gansey's return is the fucked up thing.

"Maybe he won't actually be there when we get back," Ronan says. It's a joke, but part of him wonders how true it might be. "Like we all just fucking dreamed him for a day."

"You don't want that," Adam says, because they can't stand to be without Gansey. He's already seen what becomes of them without him.

But that doesn't make it any less weird, any less weighed down with existential crisis. Gansey is here but he doesn't remember Darrow. In its place, he remembers everything that happened after. More than Henry.

"There's Cabeswater in him now. When I look at him, it looks into me. He's Gansey the way I'm Adam but there's more now too."

After everything else Ronan has lived and seen, a lifetime accomplishing the impossible, it shouldn't be this that feels off, the sacrifice of a magical forest. A forest he dreamed into physical form if not into existence.

He lets out a breath, but it does little to settle he discomfort under his skin.

"How many more times do you think he can die before it takes him for good?" he asks, his tone flippant, hiding the sincere worry beneath.

"One more time, eighty years from now, surrounded by grandchildren. Many of them are short and all of them have an attititude problem," Adam predicts. It's a nice fairytale, one he imagines for himself as much as Gansey. He doesn't know if he can put Ronan in that fantasy–not Adam's specifically, just the general concept–but Gansey belongs in that roaring fireplace, wood-paneled future.

"I'm glad he's here but God none of this feels normal."

Once more, Adam gestures to his notebook, a graph-pad with pages of orderly squares. One page has the rough sketch of a barn, a measurement key in the corner, with a chicken run attached. Numbers can always be relied upon.

In truth, Ronan can't decide if he's glad for it or not. In a selfish way, he is. There'd been a hole without Gansey, an emptiness in all of them as well as Hywel that's now been filled. But what is there in Darrow for someone like Gansey? Just like Adam and Blue, it's too confining. They all deserve so much more.

He keeps it all in, turning instead to glance down at the notepad in Adam's hand, fingers twitching into a grin. "I like it," he says. I was thinking we could make a bigger pen for Hercules, too. Might dream him up some more friends eventually."

"Is that a good idea?" Adam worries because someone has to and because when he worries, there's a chance Ronan might listen. He's seen what happens to dream things when their dreamers get hurt, or die. What happens to them in Darrow? What happens if they disappear back to Henrietta and leave a stable full of comatose animals.

Nothing probably, if they're hidden well enough by Cabeswater, but the solution is not in itself a comforting one.

"We could go find a baby goat? A kid?"

Ronan frowns under the weight of Adam's worry. As far as he's concerned, the animals he pulls from his dreams are no less real than any they might find here or back home. But he knows they come with a caveat, he knows that if something were to happen to him, they'd all drop into a deep sleep just like all the cows and goats and little field mice back at the Barns.

"Yeah," he agrees after a moment's thought. "Maybe get another cow or two to keep Cinnamon company." Noah might like to come along for that, even. His lips twitch into almost a smile then, as he adds, "You ever think about having a horse?"

Adam holds his breath for a second, wondering if he's overstepped himself in asking that. Ronan doesn't agree or disagree but Adam thinks he can see it ticking in his head. It's a thing to worry about and while he can't control Ronan–doesn't want to–he's still careful where he chooses to try and exert any kind of authority.

"A calf maybe. Think she could be convinced to make milk?" He's tempted to crack a joke about how Gansey will be over the moon but it feels a little fragile. Besides, it'd be the same joke he made about the chickens. "The closest I came to a horse was my tour of Aglionby's branch campus where they keep the stables. And pony rides."

"Yeah," Ronan replies easily because it's a calf he's been thinking of for awhile anyway. Dream thing or not, he thinks Cinnamon will take to a baby better than one full grown.

His lips twitch again at Adam's admission and he pulls away to let out a laugh, setting down the bag of apples before pulling out one of them and scanning the trees across the clearing, looking for a familiar shade of white. "You've actually been on a fucking pony ride, Parrish? When was that?"

"And then Noah can sit with it and they can both make cow eyes at you whenever they want something," Adam teases. It's likely a devastating combination and it could threaten to undo the resolve of everyone in Hywel.

He takes an apple and nods. "County fair when I was five." He'd been small enough to be cute and mostly portable. Adam likes to think that, at least then, his dad had made a decent go of...being a dad. But maybe that's just because he was too small to remember the violence.

Ronan throws Adam a look at that, one eyebrow arched. There's no point in arguing, though. Not when he knows Adam has a point.

"Well, that's goddamn precious," he says, choosing to focus on that instead, his attention all on Adam now instead of trying to search out Verity. His tone is teasing, mocking even, but it's only to mask the weird tightness in his chest, the worry in wondering just how many bruises Adam had been sporting even then.

"Bet we can find a pony," he says then, looking back toward the trees again.

"There's a stable not far from here, but I'd rather make a fool of myself in private," Adam says. He's never ridden on a horse and he's certain now that his legs are too long for any kind of pony. The results would be laughable at best.

"Anyway, should I build on a horse's stall for you?"

Somehow, Ronan doesn't have too much difficulty picturing Adam on a horse. He'd sit up tall, Ronan thinks, those long fingers wrapped easily in the reins. If anything, it's a damn nice image and Ronan has to clear his throat a bit.

"Yeah, we should," he says, turning to look through the trees again. "And I was thinking some living space, too. For people."

"A little slice of Hywel in Cabeswater?" Adam fills in, smiling. "Or are we talking more of a love nest." He has to laugh when he says the last two words, no matter how real the implication because it doesn't sound sordid so much as absurd. 'Love nest' in Adam's mind conjures up a red-filtered image with a jacuzzi and seventies music.

It's not their style.

"I'd like that."

Ronan lets out a snort of a laugh at that, but he doesn't argue.

"You can call it whatever you want, Parrish," he says with a smirk, cutting him a glance before a flash of white out the corner of his eyes catches his attention. "But yeah. Something small maybe. Few rooms, kitchen space. Might have to dream up the plumbing but we could make it work."

It's a stupid, he knows. There's no way of seeing the Barns ever again and nothing he could ever dream could take its place, but he could have something similar. Something with Adam. Maybe.

"Love nest just sounds gross," Adam says, smirking at Ronan and thinking he must have created a similarly tawdry mental image.

But it's not going to be the Barns. The Barns are something that, no matter what grand things Ronan creates, will never be matched. The Barns are Ronan's home and that actually means something to him, unlike Adam.

"Cottage," he suggests, both as a name and as a design.

Twigs snap beneath Ronan's feet as he heads into the trees, walking after Verity now that he's found her, the bag of apples still swinging heavily from his hand.

"Cottage," he repeats, glancing over at Adam with a small smile. "Implies fewer dirty sheets, I guess."

He does like it though, both the name and the image that immediately springs to mind. It's just exactly what he wants, something small and intimate, an addition to their place in Hywel if not a replacement. It'd be easy enough to dream, even, but he likes the idea of building it, too. With Adam. Their hands together.

And more to the point, it implies safety, a sort of domesticity that fits them. It's not quite 1950s bliss turned sideways, nor is it redolent with excessive masculinity. It's just...theirs.

As soundlessly as he can, Adam follows Ronan until they're not far off from Verity. He wants to ask, to press Ronan on if he can manage to be okay or not, but first he wants to put arms around him, forehead resting on his shoulder.

Ronan interprets Adam's silence as agreement, images still playing in his mind of a building not all that much bigger than the trailer Adam grew up in, with two or maybe three rooms at most, a little kitchen and living room area, the walls decorated with Noah's art, and too much fucking yogurt in the fridge.

They're within ten feet of reaching Verity, her large brown eyes catching on them as they make their way through fallen branches and undergrowth, when he feels Adam's arms curl around him from behind.

"Parrish?" He settles a hand over Adam's forearm, glancing back to see him resting against Ronan's shoulder. The touch settles him somewhat, grounds him, and he lets out a breath. "You good?"

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