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]

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.