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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"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.

It doesn't have to be difficult. Some things can be nice and easy, right?

Like playing in a playground at 2 in the morning.

With some swinging and a good deal of effort, Venus gets to the second rung. "Whoever told you that," she murmurs, short of breath, "was a terrible liar. Why was this so much easier when I was a child?"

Adam doesn't know how to do nice and easy. Although, he has found, before the others had arrived, that there were rare moments when both he and Ronan had their walls down and things sort of just... fell into place. Maybe that was nice and easy.

And maybe sitting here silently cheering Venus on from one rung to the next was easy too.

"Because the aerodynamics are different. Everything's heavier and shifted. It's different." He explains. "Not that... I mean heavier as in you grew up. Not that you're..." He wasn't trying to insult her. Really, he wasn't.

The laugh that Venus couldn't hold back isn't helping the situation. She drops to her feet, still chuckling. "I do believe you called me fat," she cheerfully chided, clearly unhurt by his fumbling attempt. "Come over here right now, Adam and show me how it's done, young man."

Adam is quick to shake his head and backtrack. Oh, now he's embarrassed. Now he feels bad. He might not have a lot of experience with girls. He might have failed in an epic way with Blue. But every guy knows not to call a girl fat. That would be stupid. Adam wasn't stupid.

"I swear that's not what I meant." He says quickly.

Then he pales a bit when she tells him to try it. "Oh I don't think that I... can." He doesn't have a lot of experience with playgrounds.

"I know, sweetheart," she tells him, grinning, her hands on her narrow hips. "Just swing from one bar to the next. You are most definitely strong enough to do that and show an old lady how it's done."

Old lady - the wording is sadly funny, reminding her of her days near SAMCRO.

"What's the worst that happens," she tells him. "You land on your own two feet." That's hardly frightening.

"You don't look that old." Adam says, taking the word at its base meaning rather than the term of endearment Venus knows it as. He really doesn't want her to think he was insulting her at all.

After some consideration though, he sets his tools aside and pushes up to move over to the monkey bars. He reaches up on the tips of his toes. Once he has a hold of the bard, he bends his knees and starts working his way across them. One bar, two, three, four bars, and five, six...

On the seventh, just three bars away from the end, he hangs there. So close, but his arms are hurting. He pushes himself to the eighth. He hangs there again.

"You're makin' it look easy," she tells him, feet silent on the grass as she moves to stand parallel to him, smiling, voice gentle. "Just a couple to go. C'mon now. Your shoulders are gonna thank you for this, you know. C'mon, sweetheart. Swing those narrow hips and get there."

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

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