Closed to Adam

[fictor]

Ronan is sick and, unsurprisingly, an awful patient. He's got flu-like symptoms: high fever, aches, nausea and coughing (occasionally accompanied by blood). They'd spent one night at the Barns after Ronan had gotten sick and then he'd insisted on going back to the flat in town. It had been too overwhelming to be there sick. He wanted to be in the home that feels like it belongs to him and Adam so they'd gone back to the flat in the town. Adam had succumbed to being sick shortly after that.

Ronan has spent the entire day bundled up on the couch, tearing pages out of a magazine to ball up and throw for Chainsaw, who clearly isn't happy that both her boys are sick. She keeps pecking at them and bringing them random, small objects. The TV is playing some movie that he isn't paying attention to and despite the fact that it's warm outside, they've got the fireplace going.

"Is it too damn much to ask to just die," Ronan grumbles as he reaches over to grab the bottle of 7-up on the coffee table.

Comments

[fictor]

Ronan presses his lips together. He doesn't say it, but it's clear that he thinks he should have left sooner, or at least not have shared a bed with Adam. Maybe if he'd slept on the couch it would have kept Adam from getting sick. No, he wouldn't take 'let me take care of you' well. It's not Adam's fault. It's just who Ronan is. Even as a little kid he tended to take care of the people in his life: Matthew, his mother, Gansey. It's part of who Ronan is. Besides, he doesn't like feeling vulnerable. He's Ronan Fucking Lynch. He doesn't need taking care (except he does; he so does, just not in the ways that other people do). He likes taking care of Adam and he doesn't mean to make Adam feel useless or less because of it. He wants him to feel loved cared for and valued.

Ronan catches that look, reads everything in it. Just as Adam understands him better than most people, Ronan understands Adam better than most people. Ninety percent of what they say to each other isn't in words so much as it is in intention and looks so he burrows a little deeper into the blankets on the couch. "Okay." It's filled with gratitude even if Ronan won't say it. He doesn't want to be alone right now.

[adamparrish]

In the kitchen, Adam opens a can of chicken noodle soup, pours it in a bowl and puts the bowl in the microwave. Adam is accustomed to canned and frozen foods. This is going to be the best chicken noodle soup ever. Well, as good as a person could really make chicken noodle soup. While it's warming , he gets the orange juice from the fridge and carries it and a glass into the living room. He pours some in a glass and then adds some 7-up.

"Try that." He says, setting the glass and coke bottle down and returning to the kitchen.

His nose is running so bad that he gets a kleenex and sticks the corners up in his nose before he pours himself a glass o OJ. He grabs a spoon just as the timer on the microwave goes off and then gets the bowl and carries it all to the living room. "Might wanna let it cool a second."

Adam ends up on the opposite end of the couch with the box of kleenex where he lifts Ronan's feet and plops down only to rest the others' feet in his lap, sharing the blanket with him. "This sucks." He blows his nose.

[fictor]

In the living room, Ronan tries to convince himself that Adam doesn't think he's pitiful and worthy of contempt. He's not good with being vulnerable and he's fairly sure this is the first time that Adam has seen him vulnerable and pitiful like this. He can't remember the last time someone took care of him this way, the last time he allowed someone to take care of him this way. He's fairly sure it was under sedation at the hospital when the night terrors had slit his wrists.

His gaze snaps to Adam when he steps back into the living room, watching him intently even sick. At Adam's urging, Ronan sits up a bit, picks up the glass and takes a sip of it. "S'good," he drawls a little when Adam reappears. He can't help but smirk at Adam with kleenex sticking up his nose. "You've got something there," he points to his face, tone more teasing fond than malicious.

He will let the soup cool simply because he doesn't want to add a burnt tongue to his list of complaints. Besides, Adam distracts him by sitting his his feet in his lap. He's absolutely certain that no one has ever sat with him like this. "When I was about...six, I got chicken pox. Caught 'em from Declan. Mom hadn't ever had 'em so she caught 'em too then Matthew got 'em. Dad had to stay home and take care of us all. He was shit at it. This..." he looks pointedly at Adam, at his feet then to the soup. "This isn't so bad."

[adamparrish]

Adam had never had anyone take care of him when he was sick. He knew what he would have liked to have happened though. So maybe he was playing up being able to play house with Ronan right now as caretaker. Maybe he was even enjoying it a little bit, not just because he felt useful but because he could say 'see? this is how it should be when someone is sick and needs taking care of'.

And that was only reiterated by Ronan's story. Even if he said Niall was shit at it, the point was that he had tried. Adam could respect that. He thinks he would have liked to have known Niall Lynch, to have met him at least once.

The laugh that escapes Adam when Ronan points out his kleenex turns into a cough. Adam pulls it from his nose and blows into it. They're both pitiful. "This isn't so bad." He repeats Ronan's words.

"I think my parents had already had chicken pox when I got it." He says. As far as he knew he hadn't given it to them. But he remembers being pitiful with it for awhile. Adam settles into a corner of the couch, one hand resting on Ronan's ankle as he stuffs the kleenex back up his nose with the other. "Hopefully whoever will figure out a cure for whatever's happening soon."

[fictor]

Without Adam there to take care of him, Ronan probably would have drank himself into oblivion. He'd never really gotten sick around Gansey, nothing more than a sniffle or a sneeze. They'd order pizza one night when Gansey had had a spectacular cold and passed out on the floor watching one of those ridiculous car movies. That had been Ronan's 'taking care' of Gansey. He's great as a protector, but nurturing is more awkward for him. Right now, Adam was doing an amazing job of being a caretaker as far as Ronan is concerned.

He had tried. Niall had loved all his boys. He had tried to be a good father. He didn't always manage it, but he had tried even with Declan. Ronan would have liked for Adam to meet Niall as well simply because he loves Adam and Niall both. He suspects Niall would have liked Adam well enough, as well as he liked anyone who wasn't Ronan.

Ronan nods; he expects that most parents would have had chicken pox. It's a rite of passage, those red dots all over one's skin. "My mom just didn't have them 'cause..." dream thing. He hadn't known that at the time though. He picked up his bowl of soup and took a spoonful, slurping at it. "You think they did it on purpose? Making us sick?"

[adamparrish]

Adam nods when Ronan explains why his mom didn't have the chicken pox. He understood that. She had been a dream thing. Ronan didn't even need to finish that statement. It was a curious thing. And Adam thought that if he could dream up people he would dream them up so that the would never get sick. Different, like the flashlights that didn't need batteries to run.

His fingertips idly picked at a loose string on Ronan's socks as he nodded. "I think things done here seem to be done with a purpose. The snow made us say what we were thinking. The roses made people fall in love and the clovers..." He glanced at Ronan. "Well we know what those did. You should've gone with the roses, by the way." He's teasing, mostly.

"If this isn't something done on purpose, then they made a mistake." And a mistake by those in charge, those capable of these amazing things, was almost scarier than if it had been something purposeful.

[fictor]

It would make sense to do, but then when he'd dreamed Matthew, he hadn't even been aware he was doing it. He'd simply wanted a little brother so badly that Matthew had manifested, fully formed and perfect from Ronan's dreams. He wonders if his father had done the same thing, or if dreaming Aurora had been something that Niall had planned.

Ronan watches Adam as he slurps at his soup and listens. He mulls over what Adam is suggesting, nodding a little. He's right; they may not understand the purpose behind whatever is being done, but there does seem to be a purpose behind it. He snorts at Adam's suggestion. "The fuck difference would it have made?" In other words, he's already in love. He's just not going to be sappy about it.

"No one is perfect," Ronan points out. He'd thought Niall was for a while, but then he'd grown up and seen his father's imperfections. Matthew and Aurora are the closest to perfect that Ronan has ever seen and they're both dream things. It is scary that someone with that much power can make a mistake. However, Ronan believes in God so it's not a stretch to him to think that something or someone so powerful can be wrong or can do bad. "Maybe they're just fucking evil, twisted bastards," he suggests.

[adamparrish]

The implications of the question, even in joking, leave Adam momentarily stunned. Did Ronan just say that he already loved someone? Him? Adam stares down at the sock he's messing with, the loose thread he's pulling. There was also the possibility that if affected by the roses, Ronan might not have fallen for him, but for some stranger. Adam had heard the whispers of things like that having happened during the whole debacle in the city. Adam wouldn't have been able to handle that.

"Better stick to clovers..." He finally says. Even though the clovers and roses are long gone.

He considers that the people running Itinere might be evil, twisted bastards. But after a moment, he shakes his head. "If they're evil, then all these things they give us are gifts to distract us from whatever their real goals are. Sleight of hand..."

[fictor]

That's exactly what Ronan just said and Adam is right in assuming that the person Ronan loves is him. Of course, Ronan won't admit that in so many words, not to himself and not to Adam. Eventually he might,. He's not opposed to it. He's just not comfortable with softer emotions. It's something he's learning from Adam during their time here. Ronan can't imagine falling for anyone else, but then he couldn't imagine being a clumsy idiot either. He's not ruling anything out here.

"Not really a roses kind of guy," he responds, taking Adam's words for at least acceptance of what Ronan had said. Adam didn't have to say it back, not now. It's enough that Adam doesn't freak out.

"Scary, fucking thought, isn't it?" Because that's exactly what Ronan is afraid of. "Seriously though, we're here...what, out of the goodness of their hearts?"

[adamparrish]

Adam isn't sure he could say it back just yet. It's an idea that he had thought previously impossible now alive inside of him through Ronan's mere suggestion of it. A tiny spark deep inside in his darkest, most carefully hidden places that he can't fully wrap his mind around just yet, but will have to consider and overthink, as Adam is so prone to doing. He'll have to study it from afar, keep it in sight, examine every angle and then figure out what he thinks about it.

Someone loves him. Not just someone. Ronan Lynch. He's lovable. It still has that impossible feel to it.

He has to work so very hard to be back into the conversation of the now when every part of him is also lingering in those new ideas, that tiny spark that he has no idea whether to extinguish or fan into a fire. It's like forcibly pushing himself to stand with one foot in the now and one foot in the dark where he can guard that tiny light until he knows what to do with it. It should also be noted that Ronan put that tiny ember there while he's laid up with the flu and Adam has kleenex hanging from his nose. Great timing.

"Rats in a cage." Adam says absentmindedly. "M-... maybe we're an experiment."

[fictor]

Ronan has plenty of issues, but feeling as if he's loveable isn't one of them. Ronan doesn't want to be loved by most people. Luckily, Ronan isn't overly concerned with emotions and the verbal expression of them. He doesn't mind if Adam tells him that he loves him (or inferred it) as long as Adam acts like he loves him. He can take his time about it.

He'll get used to it, but Ronan isn't sure he wants him to.

As high on cold meds and fever as Ronan is, he won't notice if Adam doesn't jump right back into the conversation. His timing is the best. Excuse you. It's not as if Ronan can do anything normally anyway.

Ronan scowls at that idea. "I'll show them a fucking experiment if that's what they wanna see."

WARNING! WARNING! Adam, nip this nonsense in the bud.

[adamparrish]

"No you won't." Adam is going to nip this nonsense in the bud. Quickly. Because he knows that if anyone would actually try to show the people who were running this place, people who were clearly very powerful, more powerful than anything he and Ronan could comprehend, it would be Ronan Lynch.

His hand pats and then squeezes Ronan's ankle. "It isn't like... it isn't always bad here." And for Adam, it had almost always been bad at home except for very rare moments. And now he and Ronan had this. Together.Adam couldn't complain aside from being sick right now.

He looks over to Ronon at the other end of the couch, willing him to understand what he's saying without his actually saying it. Adam doesn't want to lose this. Strangely, it's a mess in his head because he misses Henrietta for all the right and wrong reasons. But he has no idea if this, the two of them, would have happened in Henrietta.

[fictor]

Excellent choice. Ronan scowls at Adam in response. "I could burn this fucking place to the ground around them." Which would leave no one with anywhere to go, assuming that whoever ran this place would allow such a thing. His words don't have the same punch as his earlier declaration did. He doesn't feel like burning anything to the ground, quite honestly.

The intimacy of the gesture, the domesticity of it softens Ronan's rough edges and lets him slip back into complacency because Adam is right. It isn't always bad here. In fact, most of the time it's good. The last couple of months haven't been great, but previously it'd been very good. While Ronan didn't have things bad back home (not the way Adam did), his world was composed of so much anger back home. There was less of that here and he's beginning to realize he could get used to that.

"Yeah," he says roughly. "It isn't all bad here." There's more emotion in his words than the words actually warrant because it means more than those simple words. Sometimes it's damn near perfect here and Ronan feels so content, verging on happy, that he's afraid to breathe and fuck it all up. Some morning he lies in bed with Adam and pretends to be asleep because surely if he actually wakes up he'll screw this up and he needs this more than he wants to admit. He doesn't know if he'd need it this much with Gansey and Noah here, but he likes to think he would.

Ronan swallows hard and tilts his chin up a bit in a gesture that says he does understand. He does get it. He misses Henrietta. He misses Gansey and Noah so much sometimes that he aches and it spawns an anger in him that he can't destroy, that he can't drive faster enough to get away from, but he likes it here too. He doesn't know if he and Adam could be this back home either and he would miss this as well.

[adamparrish]

When he can tell that Ronan gets it, Adam nods and looks back over to the fireplace. He misses Gansey and Noah too. Not like Ronan though. Adam always had that part of him that felt like he was on the outside looking in at the others. No matter how they had tried to fully bring him in, Adam couldn't allow it. He wasn't at a place in his life where he could allow it. They were his friends in spite of that though. So he missed them.

But here, here where things were different, just him and Ronan, Ronan had gotten him to a place where he could allow himself to be open to being fully a part of Ronan's life. It felt good. It felt terrifying. But it was fact, nonetheless. If things had happened in any way differently than they had, he isn't sure it would have happened this way. Something about it being just them, something about being given the time to cultivate what they have now, it worked.

"How's your stomach handling that soup?" He asks.