incognoscibilis | The water can't drown me, I'm done with my dying [Ronan]

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The water can't drown me, I'm done with my dying [Ronan]

Adam had read somewhere that in the time before electric lights, people used to have two sleeps. They'd sleep when the sun went down and wake up for a few hours in the middle of the night and then sleep again until daylight. Supposedly the human body didn't need the potentially fourteen hours of sleep that came from long winter nights. Usually, Adam would beg to differ but tonight was an exception.

The glowing hands of his watch said it was 2:30 in the morning. Adam knew he needed to get back to sleep, if only for the consistency. He had class in the afternoon but needed the morning to study, to make flashcards so he could go to work that night with a clear conscience. His mind knew that and his body didn't care, leaving Adam to lay still and look at Ronan sleeping next to him.

A streak of moonlight fell across Ronan's back, highlighting the tattoo. Knowing he was a fitful sleeper stayed Adam's hand for a moment but as the seconds ticked on into minutes he gave in and reached out, tracing a fingertip along one of the lines of that impossible, ever-winding tattoo.

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Sleep, even now, was a rare thing for Ronan to achieve. He usually caught it in fits and starts, an hour or two at a time before he'd wrench himself out of it one way or another. Nightmares weren't as common as they'd once been and, usually, Ronan knew how to deal with them whenever they did occur, but years of habit made him restless, it seemed.

Tonight, though, he woke slowly, pulled from dreams of lilies and growing moss to the tickle of fingers along his shoulder blade.

There was no suspension of movement between dream and reality this time, no dream thing under his palm when he opened only one eye to find Adam awake beside him, the cause of that touch along his skin. Still, he didn't move for a moment, only blinking through the haze of sleep as his breathing realigned.

"Hey," he managed after a moment, voice low and drowsy as he nestled the side of his face into the pillow.

"Hey," Adam said, smiling back at Ronan with his face half in the pillow. His tracing didn't cease, moving down to the small of Ronan's back to survey the next part of his tattoo. Even though it was static, applied to Ronan's skin with ink and needle, it seemed magical and ever-changing. Adam wondered if that was a product of the artistry or of it mingling with a boy who was too magical by half.

"I thought you were the scariest, most badass person I'd ever met, the first time you showed up in a tank and I saw the tattoo," he admitted. It seemed both faraway and childish, impossible to imagine because it meant that there was a time when they'd been strangers at all.

Adam's touch wandered lower, tracing over the lines Ronan didn't know half as well given he rarely saw his own tattoo. He wondered if Adam knew it well enough to draw by memory, or if maybe Noah did since he was the artist. Or if it was just a part of the landscape, known as part of Ronan minus the details.

"What, you don't think I'm scary and badass anymore?" he asked, still grinning. He felt the urge to slide his own hand out between them, to seek out the warmth of Adam's skin beneath his fingers, but held back, happy to be under Adam's spell for now.

"I don't think you're scary," Adam said. Ronan Lynch, for all his quiet and gentle moments, absolutely still had the air of a badass. His hand stilled, fingers spread over warm skin and highlighted in moonlight. It made Adam think of that day, so many months ago, when he had held up the Moon card and said it was Ronan's. Vivid dreams, intuition, passion.

"Maybe I should get a tattoo. Then I'll look real tough." He smiled absurdly, unable to keep a straight face at looking any kind of imposing.

"Since when do you need to look tough?" Ronan asked, his voice still heavy with sleep though he felt well enough awake, Adam's hand still resting on his back, warm and sure and right.

He kept his eyes locked on Adam's, the hazel nearly imperceptible in the low light before slowly shifting to slide his hand out between them, reaching to drag a single finger down the side of Adam's neck. "Could put 'Property of Ronan Lynch' right on your ass," he suggested with a grin. "That'd be tough."

"Since I have a tough-looking boyfriend," Adam said. He drew himself closer to Ronan, head tucked to his shoulder and neck arched slightly for his touch. It did nothing to muffle his laughter at Ronan's suggestion and Adam shook his head. "You wish."

Ever since he'd met Ronan, he'd wondered what it might be like to have a tattoo. Ever since Cabeswater, he'd considered the invisible vines that wrapped around him, the forest trails and rivers under his skin, the tarot card that named him. What would it be like to have some of that on the outside of him?

As amusing an idea as it was, that was definitely not something Ronan actually wanted. And they both knew it. He couldn't help but wonder what a tattoo might look like on Adam's skin though, how the dark lines would weave through his freckles, stand out against his tanned skin.

He settled his fingers at the base of Adam's neck, just shy of the tickle of his short hair. Adam's skin was bed-warm and smooth.

"What would you get then?" he asked, imagining vines trailing down the length of Adam's spine, or winding around his arms. A tree with aching, bare branches. Or that card, maybe. The Two of Swords, weapons crossed before a blindfolded wielder. Or something else entirely, something maybe only Adam would understand.

Adam sighed out, enjoying Ronan's warm fingers against his neck and the sense of eyes on him. No matter how often Ronan looked at him, Adam enjoyed it. It gave a sense of realness to them both and to what they shared, even or especially in this moonlight.

"A lemniscate maybe," he said, turning a little so that Ronan could see the leather bracelet he still wore, its moon and infinity charms a little more scratched from wear than when it had been new, a gift for a first Christmas. "Maybe a whole magician."

Maybe there would be ravens.

"A magician on a magician," Ronan said with a smirk, though his tone wasn't judgmental. Adam wasn't pulling away from his touch so Ronan let his fingers wander lower, still tracing over warm skin, drawing meaningless patterns with the tips of his fingers. Winding vines and curling circles. A lemniscate down the center of Adam's spine.

He slid his hand away then, but only to shift his way, sliding closer beneath the covers. "Where do you want it? On your back?"

"Cups, coins," he said, naming the suits in a tarot deck. "Wands, swords. The Magician is supposed to understand them all." Adam sort of did but not as a form of divination necessarily. When he used the cards, the cards spoke to him as a voice for Cabeswater. Archetypes and Jungian psychology could only take him so far.

"Yeah." Adam resettled in the mattress, left arm folded back underneath his pillow, forehead now quite close to Ronan's. "Like yours."

There was no hesitation in Adam's response that time, his voice clear and sure, and Ronan frowned a little, his curiosity growing as he met Adam's gaze, searching. He could picture a huge piece in his mind, something that wove together the tarot cards Adam used to speak with Cabeswater, the vines that wound around his wrists, becoming his hands, a lemniscate infusing the background, tying it all together in a neverending loop. It would be extravagant and beautiful and Ronan would trace every line with his tongue.

He wondered if Adam would want something so detailed or big. Or maybe something smaller, nothing like the full piece Ronan wore on his own back like a shield.

"You're serious," he said then, still watching carefully. "You've thought about this."

"I guess I have," Adam said, surprised with himself. The truth was that he'd mostly thought about Ronan's tattoo, or so he'd thought. Adam had imagined it as a shield, a weapon, as something to trace with his fingertips and mouth. It had never occurred to him in a real way that he wanted those things for himself too.

"Did it hurt?" He drummed his fingers gently on Ronan's spine, trying to remember if he'd ever been told just how many hours it took to apply the tattoo.

It was a strange thing to find appealing, maybe, but Ronan couldn't deny that the thought of Adam's skin painted in black ink was alluring. Overwhelmingly so. He curled his fingers against Adam's back before sliding his hand away, giving over to Adam's touch instead as he nodded against the pillow.

"Yeah. Some places more than others." Years later, though, and Ronan could hardly remember the pain. At least in specifics. "Pain is what I wanted at the time."

But that much he didn't need to clarify. Not for Adam.

Adam nodded, taking in that information. In his imagination, his back swam with black and color. It spread over his back in one vision, as complex as Ronan's. In another mental image it was small and contained, between his shoulder blades only.

"I think I convinced myself you'd dreamed that thing onto your back," he admitted, despite the fact that someone or another had once let slip how much it had actually cost. Adam remembered staring at Ronan's clothed back, unable to fathom paying that much for anything.

"Don't think I could have back then," he admitted with a small grin. "Not intentionally at least."

Then again, maybe he could have on a subconscious level. After all, he'd one that both with Matthew and Chainsaw, created two things, two beings, from his dreams with a care not even he knew himself capable of.

"Could now," he realized, smile brightening slightly as he rolled onto his side, still facing Adam, but smoothing a hand down his own arm this time. "Maybe I should. Give myself a dream sleeve."

Adam smiled and reached out, his fingers following Ronan's over the shape of his arm. "What would you wear on your arm? These Hands Belong To Adam Parrish?" he asked, turning Ronan's earlier suggestion back onto him. "If lost, return to Adam Parrish? I'll get a t-shirt that says I'm Adam."

In truth, it was easy to imagine Ronan swirling with ink, the patterns slightly alive, ever changing.

"What about me?"

"Don't really need that, do I? Everyone already fucking knows who I belong to." The words were said fondly with a hint of teasing and he turned his hand slightly to curl his fingers with Adam's.

In truth, he wasn't sure what he'd dream onto his arm. Probably just make it an extension of the piece on his back, curved lines stretching over his shoulder, intertwining down past his elbow and around his forearm, celtic knots blending into one another around a raven cradled on his inner bicep.

It wasn't a bad thought.

"Hmm?" he asked, still smiling faintly at Adam. "What about you?"

Adam laughed softly and shifted, kissing Ronan on the nose simply because he could. In this quiet nighttime space, they didn't have to pretend to be anything. He could just be the boy who kissed Ronan Lynch on the nose because he loved him. The shadows were liberating that way.

"We've dreamed together before," he said, cheeks warming with the memory of how they'd woken up together, had sex. The dream had been a strange, lucid experience where everything had felt too real and not real at all.

"You could dream it onto me."

They had dreamed together, yes. Walked through Cabeswater in some space that was neither Ronan's mind nor Adam's and both of theirs at the same time. When they awoke, they tangled anew, shared breath and body all over again. It'd been well over a year since then and they hadn't done it since, but even now Ronan could remember the sensation, otherworldly and overwhelming.

Still, the suggestion caught him by surprise and he kept his gaze carefully locked on Adam's. "A tattoo," he said, wanting to be sure of what Adam was saying. His lips twitched in a faint grin, "You just trying to avoid the pain of the needle?"

"So what if I am?" Adam asked. Part of him did want that experience, the physicality of marking his body that way. It was easy to imagine his back burning and aching but, at least, with a pain of his own choosing.

At the same time, the possibility of having Ronan do it, having Ronan mark Adam with his own magic, felt breathtakingly intimate.

"Do you want to?"

Brow furrowed, Ronan waited for Adam's gaze to break, for his lips to twitch into a smile, for some indication that he was joking or just talking shit. The idea of dreaming a tattoo onto Adam's skin, something not only permanent but from Ronan's mind felt profoundly intimate. More than any bracelet or ring that could be taken off or lost, more than a promise that could be broken.

Adam was asking for Ronan's mark on him.

"Shit, Parrish," he said with a breath of a laugh. Overwhelmed. "I want to."

He shifted again, sliding closer to drag his hand up Adam's arm and over his shoulder. "Do you know what you want? You'll have to tell me exactly. Every detail."

"Not yet," he admitted. Adam paused, just enjoying the way Ronan's calloused hand slid up his arm, the way it created that small place of warmth, of action.

"We can work on it first. While we're awake."

In his mind, Adam knew the tattoo, could picture black lines and symbols, but when he focused on the details his mind's eye wouldn't focus. Ronan would need precision to do this right and Adam would have to get it the way he wanted, the way it would look on his body permanently.

Ronan nodded, still searching Adam's eyes for any hint that he suddenly reconsider. There was none yet, but Ronan knew that didn't mean he wouldn't later. Adam wasn't exactly indecisive by nature, but something like this, a fucking dream tattoo, was something worth serious consideration.

"Maybe get Noah's help," he suggested, sliding his fingers downward to trace Adam's collarbone. "He's into all that art shit. See if he can draw what you've got in mind."

A thought occurred to him then and he glanced up again, meeting Adam's eyes, his blood warming. "Or we could dream together again. In Cabeswater. Dream up ideas for the design until you decide on the one you want."

Adam sighed out, enjoying Ronan's touch, feeling known. "Noah would probably like that," he agreed. Adam could draw charts or maps but nothing delicate or beautiful.

"It's been a while since we dreamed together though." He could see in Ronan's eyes that he remembered that night just as well as Adam did. The sleep, the waking, the way they'd fucked after, all of it strange and powerful.

Adam remembered it too, Ronan could tell. They hadn't done it since, likely for a dozen different reasons.

But this seemed a better reason than any Ronan could think of for why they should try it again. Ronan could control his dreams better now than he ever could before and if they did it in Cabeswater itself, he would have even more control. The two of them together could create anything, he knew that much.

"Do you want to?" he asked, because he couldn't tell, even now, entirely what Adam was thinking. And, in this case, he wouldn't make a guess.

"Could be tempted," Adam said. He wasn't in a hurry right now, starting to become drowsy, contented with the shared warmth and Ronan's little touches. His eyelids drooped and he shifted, wrapping his arm around Ronan and pulling himself closer. "We could practice."

Even as he said it, he yawned. Adam was always tired. He knew the feeling intimately, but to be cozily and comfortably intimate in his tiredness was a more novel thing, one he enjoyed.

Adam's eyes were drooping and Ronan was once again reminded of the years and years worth of sleep his body was still trying to make up for.

Grinning, Ronan grazed the backs of his fingers along Adam's jaw and then leaned in to press a kiss to the middle of his forehead, his lips linger. "Assuming you even remember this," he whispered, his voice found before he pulled back again, curling his arm over Adam's shoulders and holding him close.

"Mn," Adam replied eloquently, nuzzling into the hollow of Ronan's neck, head turned just enough to let him breathe. "I'll remember." It was important, the idea, even as his sleepy brain nudged the priority further away for the moment and reclaimed him to ordinary dreams.

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The water can't drown me, I'm done with my dying [Ronan]

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