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

[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.