itinere | open | i heard that you make old things new; so I give these pieces all to you

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the raven cycle: adam parrish

open | i heard that you make old things new; so I give these pieces all to you

Since the arrival of the other three members of their group, Adam had been scarce. He purposefully stayed at work at the garage extra late. The sickness had kind of made it an easy excuse for him to bow out of sleeping in the same bed as Ronan. His erratic presence at the apartment made it easy to avoid actually talking. On June 1st though, after hyposprays and everyone being magically healed, it was the first true test for him and Ronan and Adam failed.

Instead of going home, he stayed at the garage until he couldn't stand the same four walls anymore. Then he went out to the forests of Itinere where the ley lines were. He worked on repairing them for Ronan. At least he could do one thing right, one thing to help. Maybe Ronan would notice he had done this for him. Maybe he wouldn't.

Adam would stay out in the forests way past dark, taking his time, doing what he thought needed to be done. Then he would head back in town to walk through the park, sit on a merry-go-round and push at it with his feet to move it around. The metal squeaked and after a quick trip to the garage, he came back to dismantle and oil the merry-go-round to keep it from squeaking so loudly.

Probably another thing no one would notice. Productive, though. Adam Parrish felt productive and useful... busy, even now at some god awful time in the night or morning. And he supposed that was the point.

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"I've seen those." Among the rich kids at Aglionby. The looked so silly to him. Why use them when you had two perfectly good legs and feet? But they were also beyond his pay grade, and Adam worked three jobs. It probably didn't help that his money, what money his dad didn't steal for bills and beer, went toward paying his tuition.

Now his money was his own. And he still never seemed to have enough for things he didn't absolutely need.

"I'm Adam." He tells her. "I'm good in a pinch, I guess. If you need something." Friend material though, he knows how hard it is to be his friend a lot of the time.

It's funny, isn't it? Here in Itinere, two people who would never cross paths spend time talking in the middle of the night.

And the fact that Adam offers, even if it's meant lightly, means something to Venus - Outside of the Sons, it's unusual to receive such offers, even if Adam doesn't consider himself good friend material. Venus is more used to being mocked, honestly. And while she's never worked three jobs, it's only because of her freak status: she can ask for more money, you see.

"I wish I could offer in like, sweetheart, but ... I suppose I don't have much to offer, not really. Not for a nice boy like you anyway," she says with a rueful smile. "Except a good ear and I can actually make pretty good homemade ice cream, actually."

A nice boy? So few people had ever called Adam Parrish nice, or complimented him at all, that it makes him pause to look over to her again. After a moment though, he turns back to his work.

"If I were better at talking, I guess I could use that." He says this not to be rude, just to let her know that being a good listener is actually a good thing to offer, even if he sucks at giving her anything to listen to. Adam so rarely talks about himself though. Even his friends have to drag things out of him or find things out vicariously.

He sighs. "Where do you even start when everything is so messed up?"

Well, that had Venus's attention. Venus starts to slow her swinging, her brow furrowed as she drags her feet in the sand to slow down.

"If everything's all messed up," she says, the swing slowly stilling, "you work on what you can fix, sweetheart. One little bit at a time, I suppose."

Adam just sits there for a moment, taking in those words. Work on what you can fix. He taps the wrench in his hand lightly on the metal of the merry-go-round, making a light tinkering sound. He's doing that here, see?

"One little bit at a time." He says with a nod. Fat lot of good it will do him, aside from reminding him that he is good at something and good for something.

When her swing has stilled, Venus gets up, coming over to sit on the merry go round near the boy. It's a calculated risk, you see. The closer she gets under that pooled light, the more likely Adam is to see that she is not exactly what she purports to be. But he's sweet and he's clearly hurting and it is not in her to hold back if she can help in any way.

"I know," she say with a small smile, "that it can, at times, seem overwhelming. I really do. We have to take hope and solace where we can. There is always hope and there is always solace, even when it may not seem like there is."

The merry-go-round creaks just a bit when she sits on it, as metal things do with any amount of weight. Nothing to be done about that. It's the squeak when it's going around that Adam's trying to fix. He doesn't even really look at her just yet. Adam rarely looks directly into other people's eyes, a lesson learned well from his father and the way he beat on Adam so much.

"Where's the hope and solace when you might lose the only good thing to ever happen to you?" Yes, that's really how Adam saw Ronan. Ronan was the only good thing he'd had here. They'd worked so hard to get past Adam's uncertainty and insecurities. And now... Adam was the one tearing them apart because of those very things.

"Why ... "

That sounds dire. But Venus knows too well that sentiment. Why, any time Tig and the others went out, there was always the risk that he wouldn't come back. Here, well, the jury might still be waiting out the verdict of what would come of her and Derek, there is little argument that he is a good man.

"What makes you think you'll love it, sweetheart?" she asks, voice low.

While Adam is older for his age, forced to grow up quickly and having had little to no childhood, he is still only just eighteen. That transitional age between being a teenager and being an adult. Things are still dire to him, no matter how grown up he is.

It takes him a moment to finally look up, somewhere just below her eyes. He's still weighing his options on how much to say or what to say when he notices that she's different. She's not...

Oh.

He shifts his eyes back up from where the had dropped to just below hers again. All the names he can hear his dad calling him come to mind. Robert Parrish would say the same things of her (him?). Adam Parrish does not want to be like Robert Parrish. So he moves on. For now.

"Because I'm afraid." He says. "Of what people will think. And say." Adam cares about those kinds of things. He always has. He always will, even if he knows he shouldn't.

The first time he had kissed Ronan he could hear his dad's voice in his mind calling him a faggot or a queer, telling him what a disappointment he was, how worthless, a waste of space. Sometimes words were a harsher blow than Robert Parrish's fists. Now, he'd gotten past that for the most part. With his friends here, all of it had reared its ugly head again. Maybe he wasn't as past it as he thought.

"Oh, sugar." The words come out quiet, nearly a whisper.

Oh, yes. Venus can relate to that.

"If there is one thing I have learned, it is that we cannot control how other people think or what they will say." His look to her and away is ample evidence for that, isn't it?

"And it comes down, in my experience, to figuring out if what it is you have is worth the risk. Life is made of risks. And I think you know that."

There's something about Adam's eyes that tells her that.

"So ... if someone says something about your precious thing ... well, I say you fight for it." Her voice is still quiet, but firm. "Fight and hold on to it as if your very life depends on it."

"I'm not very good at fighting." Adam confesses. The statement is true, of course, unless the Greywaren has dreamed too much, broken the ley lines enough to drive Cabeswater, and Adam, to insanity. Then, Adam seems to do nothing but fight with people and slowly go crazy.

Otherwise, he's used to hunkering down and taking whatever lashing is coming, physical or not. Adam Parrish has been a punching bag for so long that it's second nature to him to block everything that hurts out. It comes off as being cold and distant. Really, it's just survival instinct.

Amazingly enough, talking to this stranger is easier than talking to anyone else. "If he doesn't want me anymore, now that our friends are here, how am I supposed to hold on? I mean he could have anyone. I know that. And I know... I'm a whole lot more trouble than..." He shrugs.

Once upon a time, two punching bags sat on a merry-go-round and talked about love ....

Venus is quiet as she parses through what Adam says. A boy, new friends, new dynamic.

"What makes you think you are trouble, sugar?" she asks, head cocked. "What makes you think you aren't exactly what he wants, mmm?" She smiles just a little. "From where I sit, you seem like a good catch." She's not just saying that either; he's cute as hell, conscientious, kind...

"I only just figured out that I like..." Boys and girls? Just Ronan? Was he gay? Was he bisexual? Was he Ronan-sexual? He has no idea. How people classify that kind of thing is up in the air and Adam goes back and forth between understanding that it's okay to like Ronan and being disgusted with himself, as his father would say he should be.

"He has to put up with me... figuring out how to be this way." It's obviously difficult for Adam to talk about. "You know... liking him."

He looks up to Venus again. "I'm not a good catch. I mean sometimes it's so easy." With Ronan. "And sometimes I can't... understand why it's so easy." So he makes it difficult as he thinks it should be. Adam Parrish is his own worst enemy in thanks to Robert Parrish's incessant voice in the back of his mind.

He should hate Robert Parrish. But in a sad and Stockholm syndrome kind of way, he loves him. And he misses him. There are too many layers here to fully explain to Venus.

Ah, but some of those layers show through very clearly in what the sweet boy says. Venus knows too well how love and hate can seem like the very same thing. After all, it wasn't that Venus killed her mother; Jackson had to do it, even as she spewed truly terrible things at him.

"He sounds like a wonderful boy," she says, because it takes patience to do that. Patience and kindness. "And that means that you mean something to him, too, darlin'. It takes time, doesn't it? Not to question things." As she does with Derek, as she has done. "To just ... go with the flow, as it were." When the flow can seem so very strange.

There is nothing disgusting about love, though. Nothing at all. Love is - or it should be - good and sweet and kind, patient.

"It sounds like," she decides, voice gentle, "you are so very hard on yourself."

"He's a pain in my --..." Adam trails off before he can use any language like that in front of a woman. The words have no sharp edges though, because really, Adam thinks Ronan hung the moon. He's wished he were more like Ronan Lynch from the moment he first saw him. Unfortunately, they're the exact opposite in every way.

He looks to her again, avoiding her eyes as he shrugs. "I deserve it." Things being hard, being hard on himself, all of it.

"I question everything." He adds. "It's a habit that you sound like you know about."

"Well," she smiles a little, looking down at her hands. "I don't often question myself, actually." And that is not a lie. It is only in times of extreme duress that her self-love fails her. She is very comfortable in her own skin, for better or worse. It is only when she cannot trust the emotions of others that she finds herself on shaky ground. "I wish everyone else were as reliable. But what makes you think that you don't deserve good things?"

The pain in the ass comment is taken for what she knows it is. Affection.

"That must be nice." Not to question yourself, to be comfortable in your own skin, to feel awake when your eyes are open.

Adam shrugs, pausing to give it some thought. He knows why he doesn't deserve good things. People who come from where he comes from don't get good things. Adam Parrish was worthless, just like his father had said. Adam Parrish was either going to kill Gansey or find Glendower first and wish Gansey's death away.

With the darkness he had discovered within himself regarding Greenmantle and Ronan, he feared the first possibility to be more true than the last. Would Ronan still want him if he knew the prophecy Adam had seen?

"Some people aren't worthy. They come from dirt and they're always dirt." He finally says, speaking of himself.

"Now, that," Venus says, her voice taking on a stern edge. "Is patently bullshit." And yes, she might be defending herself against her mother as much as correcting Adam's incorrect assumption about life. "Darlin', that is not true. We live in America, after all, where we can be whatever it is we want to be. That might not always be true exactly as our bigoted and racist founding fathers meant it, but it is true."

She reaches for his hand if he'll let her take it. Hers are big hands, but smooth, well-manicured. "Yes, there are people who are dirt, it's true. I can think of a handful without even hurting my head. But if you think that you are one of those, that you don't deserve something good, I am going to need to spend a good bit of my time making sure you have your head on straight."

Her defense makes Adam turn his face away from her. Of course she didn't understand. No one did. Not even his friends. America, home of the rich, hell of the poor. Adam had to work ten times as hard as Gansey and Ronan to get anywhere in life. And make no mistake that Adam worked that hard and more. But he was just so damn tired of trying to keep up or even maintain.

When she reaches for his hand, his gaze snaps to her briefly before he pulls his hand away and pretends to be busy with the wrench in his lap, picking the tool up so that he has something to do with those hands. It isn't against Venus. It's Adam. People don't touch him because he's dirty. People aren't nice to him because they feel more pity for him than kindness. He doesn't fully understand what's happening here with Venus. Why is she being nice to him?

"Why?" He asks. "Why do you care?"

Well, now Adam is just being stubborn. All he needs to do is take a good look at Venus to know that she's more toward the poor end of the spectrum than the rich. Any money she's made has been right on her back.

To say that she doesn't understand is rude on one level, ignorant on the other. Martyristic on a whole other level. If he wants the bad stuff all to himself, he's going to have to work harder.

When he pulls away, Venus lets her hands rest on her knees. "Why, he asks," she says with a small smile, her head down. "Because we're both out here in the middle of the night, sweetheart. Because your have a sadness that emanates off your skin as if it's who you are. Because when I was your age - around eighteen, I'd guess - I nearly killed myself because I was in a situation I couldn't see my way out of except with a razor blade to my wrist. Until I realized that I needed to love myself even if no one else did. Because how I look did not represent who I was."

In case that last bit isn't as obvious.

"Until I realized that my hell-spawn mother was not who I was and would not define me."

There is the mildest form of defensiveness in her expression, well outweighed by her more gentle countenance.

"Because," she finally says, "we are not alone."

Her confessions surprised him, opening herself up like that with an ease that is proof that she has, for the most part, learned to love herself despite all of those things. There had been a few times, prior to spotting that Ronan like boy in the grocers, when he had thought about ending it all too. That day had changed his life in spite of the embarrassment of not having enough money to pay for anything. It had made him try to change things.

If only he had found that mentality sooner before Robert Parrish had crushed him beneath his foot and somehow made him still love him.

"I'm sorry." He says quietly, twisting that wrench in his hands again and again as if that were his immediate and necessary job. He's just not used to strangers caring about him, letting him into their worlds. Gansey and his group of friends had been a novelty, he thought.

Venus smiles just a little bit, shrugging. "It's all right," she says quietly. "I suppose now would be when I get up and head on my way." She looks around at the moonlit playground. "But I think, before I do, I am going to see if I can still get across the monkey bars."

She smiles at Adam as she stands. "You might want to take note of this, sweetheart. It is not a sight you may ever cast your eye upon again." She starts toward the monkey bars, her hips swaying, feet silent on the sand and grass.

When she moves away from the merry-go-round, Adam watches her go. Monkey bars? He's really never met anyone like Venus. She's an enigma. He doesn't get or understand her.

Or maybe... maybe he understands her all too well and that terrifies him because maybe she understands him too. Adam has never been understood before. He's never been seen so plainly as it seems Venus has seen him. He has no idea what to do with that.

It will take time to decide if it is the former or the latter. Venus is willing to put in that time, if Adam is (she would suspect it's the latter, though).

That's for later, though.

Now, in her tiptoes, Venus can reach the monkey bars. She chuckles to herself a little as she grabs hold and lifts her feet. She's fit to be bursting right out of her top, but starts to swing regardless, reaching, when she can for the next bar.

"Ha!" she exclaims. "One down, five to go. The journey of a thousand steps beginning here."

Adam watches, unsure of what to make of Venus. A part of him thinks that he likes her. Another part of him thinks he shouldn't like her. Such is the nature of Adam Parrish. Everything is a war. Everything is made difficult.

He squashes a smile before it can begin when she makes the first rung. "I've heard the first step's always the hardest." He finally says dryly.

open | i heard that you make old things new; so I give these pieces all to you

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