Chapter Text
My scars were reflecting the mist
in your headlights,
I look like a neon zebra
shaking rain off of stripe.
And the rivulets had
you riveted to the place that
I wanted you to kiss me
when we find some time alone.
And then we can do anything we want.
And then we can do anything we want.
And then we can do anything we want.
Anything We Want//Fiona Apple
After tumbling through a sea of nothingness upon a platform of deep space-stuff, Adam wasn’t quite sure how to go back to real life. The time he spent climbing up ropes of scattered thought, clinging to the only thing that felt solid in the complete emptiness of the abyss, felt like an eternity. Until something formed out of the dark. A person that he knew, intimately, and loved, fiercely.
Their edges were all fuzzy and electric—dark splinters of fragmented thought rebounding into blackness. For a moment he thinks he’s looking at the lace, but even rolling the thought around in his head feels desperately, distinctly wrong. Ronan, he thinks, my Ronan.
He wakes up to his DC apartment. It's bright, because his windows faced the sunrise and his white walls acted as amplifying mirrors of light. It’s so disconnected from his dream—from its dark, empty nothingness—that it makes him want to retch.
The whole apartment is awfully sparse. He won’t be here long anyway. Instead, it's populated by the things he can easily move. A single pot of billowing Philodendron. A few books worn down by use and marked by blacked-out library bar codes. Photos of his friends, his family. Of Ronan.
He calls him. It takes barely two rings for his prayer to be answered, for Ronan to slide his thumb against the answer button and press it to the shell of his ear. “What the fuck, it's four in the morning here.”
“Barely,” Adam replied. He glanced at his watch, the one that told him Ronan’s time wherever he was in the world. It read 4:47am. “It’s basically five.”
They had invented a new sort of routine over the past few years. While they both travelled frequently around the country, they almost always crossed paths. Often times it was intentional: the perfect culmination of Adam’s love of schedules and Ronan’s careless disregard for them. Many of their text threads started off with Adam informing dates and Ronan twisting around the topic until he finally relented to accepting reality: that they missed one another.
Management <3
Thursday, March 21st, 4pm, Connecticut, New Haven, The Marriot Hotel
talk dirty to me science man
I am not a scientist
Be there on time
ill do what I want
course ill be there
tamquam.
Alter idem.
Sometimes Adam would have a layover at La Guardia, or JFK or chillingly, LAX. Notably, he’d been on the phone with one of his co-workers, making arrangements for paperwork to be filled or crime scenes to be cleverly covered up. And then, out of the blue, he’d looked up and seen Ronan there with a group of equally ethereal-looking people clad in varying shades of black and harbouring an intense sort of energy.
Freshman year of Harvard was so long ago and Adam had once feared that they’d only regress further into their own lies the longer time went on. There was always a thought toying at the frays of the back of his mind, worrying about forgetting how Ronan’s neck felt under his palm, or how he liked his toast, or the sounds he made when he was close to letting go. It turned out he needn’t fear. He had not walked past Ronan since the sweetmetal sea. He was incapable of it.
As if thinking the very same thoughts, Ronan would also look up and rush forward and they’d hug—hard, with Adam’s hand on the back of his neck and Ronan’s face pressed into his collarbone. Nothing slid into place, because everything was already there. It simply reignited like fire licking along dry wood; catching.
Now, Adam pressed his hand along the back of his own neck, as if he could touch Ronan through the phone before taking a deep breath and uttering familiar words: “I dreamt it again.”
The problem with floating through a sea of nothingness with your larger-than-life inhumanly formed boyfriend was that words often failed them. How to describe something so purposively unique? So intimately revealing? You couldn’t, but they still tried.
Ronan’s breath was loud in the receiver. “Want me to kiss it better?”
“Yeah,” Adam said, because he was past timidness when it came to Ronan. There had been no shame between them for a very long time. “I do.”
“Want me to come find you?” Ronan asked. Adam did not know if that was why he called him. It might have been—it often was. He was still mulling it over when Ronan tried again. “Please say yes. I want to see you. I’m being selfish.”
Selfish. What a word. Ronan was constantly saying that’s what he was. Not even in a macabre, self-deprecating kind of way, but using an explanative sort of language that made it seem like an unfortunate symptom of loving someone. That to miss him, to crave him, to enjoy his company was to love but also to admit weakness. Adam felt equally weak-footed.
“Yes,” Adam answered, because there was no universe in which he’d say no. “Find me.”
He turned away from his window to shield himself from new spikes of light that had risen with the sun. It revealed new layers of blankness. The cavity of his wardrobe, shielded from the creeping light but cavernously empty. His suitcase sat neatly on the dresser, tidily packed and battered from overuse. None of his shelves were full, a vase sat empty by his bedside table. For a long moment, he thought of moving into St Agnes and wishing that he owned more, if only to seem more like a real person.
Real people owned stuff.
He didn’t feel shame over Ronan walking into his blank apartment, because he’d seen much worse and again, shame did not colour him the way it used to. Instead, he felt guilt. Ronan had pleaded with him long ago to own more, to leave more, to make a mark on the places that he stayed. I spray painted a mural of a middle finger on a brick wall in downtown Detroit, he’d reasoned. Do your Adam Parrish version of that.
He hadn’t yet discovered what that was.
To save them the conversation when Ronan arrived, he put it out there. “My place is empty.”
Ronan took it in stride. “Then I guess I’d better get to dreaming.”
Their reunion was like any other. Adam did not have to tell Ronan that he didn’t like shoes inside, or that he would probably be hungry around midday, or that he didn’t want to talk about work until he’d been well acquainted with Ronan’s body again. Everything happened as it should have.
They crashed into one another fiercely. Ronan tugged impatiently at his ear with his teeth until Adam undid his belt and lowered them both onto his bed. Its sheets were white linen with clean approximations of hospital corners tucked into the sides of the frame. The instant Ronan’s back hit the mattress, his hard work came undone, as if Ronan and neatness could not possibly exist on the same plane of existence.
I missed you, wasn’t uttered by either of them but it floated between their bodies regardless. It existed in the cavern of Adam’s chest when Ronan leant down to kiss him by his sternum, wrapped his legs around his knees, smiled into his skin. It bloomed and grew when Adam’s wrists drifted down his back and along his snake-scaled arm. The worn leather of his watch caught on the cross that hung delicately from Ronan’s neck.
They tangled in one another. They breathed into each other’s lungs. Need, need, need. The years between their first kiss and this one had changed them. Ronan’s shoulders were wider, his eyes brighter, his frame and mind more solid. When Adam held him he did not feel rickety or unsure but muscled and stable. Sometimes he wondered how he himself had changed; if Ronan even thought about stuff like that.
Every kiss ended with a deep sigh, like they regretted having to break to breathe. Eventually, Ronan didn’t reconnect their lips but instead pushed Adam back by his shoulders until he seemed happy with the distance he’d put between them. He almost snarled down at him to stop, to let him back down, but Ronan used their newfound space to run his thumbs under Adam’s under eyes, catch on the new lines and cracks of his face. Adam watched his hands as if his freckles would rub off and mark them, but they were as pale and clean as always.
“You look tired,” Ronan whispered as his thumbs tugged at the flesh of his cheeks and ran down the curve of his chin. “Are you sleeping enough?”
He jostled Ronan’s hands off his face and dropped his forehead to his chest. With Ronan underneath him he felt powerful and important, a feeling he’d learnt partly came from the sweetmetal marring Ronan’s skin. It felt like a caffeine injection right into his heart, like the shock of a metal car door just before a storm. When Ronan’s tattooed arm curled around him he felt the electricity of each scale dig into his spine through his cotton shirt, as if they were real scales scraping down his skin.
“Talk to me about that after I’ve fucked you,” he managed, throat closing up with desire. Ronan’s reptilian smile revealed his own enthusiasm.
They shed their clothes like snake-skins until Adam had Ronan’s inked back underneath his thighs, knees parted around him and settled by his ribs. They continued kissing, despite the uncomfortable angle, until Adam decided he wanted to make Ronan feel the shock of electricity he himself lived for.
The bedside drawer opened fully and closed partially. He revealed a dream product that was always the correct temperature and chemical makeup for its intended use. He used both hands to open its twist lid and gather it on his fingers, beyond anxious to turn Ronan’s anticipation into relief. One hand stretched him open while the other danced along the seam of his lips, entering his mouth with slick satisfaction.
Around Adam’s fingers, Ronan murmured, “’M cold.”
Eager to please, Adam relinquished his fingers from his mouth long enough to pull the duvet up over them to fully cover Ronan’s shoulders. He pressed lips to his ear, asked, Is that better?, and replaced his fingers back to their previous position when he huffed out an affirmative breath.
They weren’t always like this. Urgency was a common thread between the two of them but it didn’t always manifest in heated kisses and careful pressure. Sometimes it meant hugging on the front landing for far too long; long enough for suns to set and worlds to rise. Sometimes it meant Adam tugging Ronan cross-legged on the floor and drawing cards for him, focusing hard to press the energy from Ronan’s arm into his own intention. He still got a rush of familiarity every time he drew tarot. It made him certain that this had been the right choice: a life with magic was far superior to a life without.
Eventually, Ronan huffed impatiently, his neck uncomfortably distorted. He begged to be turned around, and so Adam sunk into him with their foreheads pressed together and Ronan’s arm around his neck and his breath painting heat on his nose and Adam’s lungs filling with something, something full.
They laid sweaty and shaking with exertion atop the covers. Ronan’s nose found the space between the muscles of Adam’s neck. He worked his tongue and teeth over skin in a calculated dance, and barely had to raise his voice to ask Adam if he wanted it.
It had begun back when shame still grew between them like ramped mould. Adam had been so painfully nervous of admitting that he wanted something so untoward, so verifiably opposite. In that perfect summer—the one when everything had seemed so fickly permanent, where the memory of dark bruises around Ronan’s throat still felt personal—he’d harboured a problem with divulging his desire.
Ronan was bad at speaking his feelings. He stumbled around the unfamiliar language clumsily, easily frustrated. But desire had always been easily expressed, as its language had less to do with words and more with actions. He touched freely and longed ferally. When Adam flicked his tongue just right, touched his inner thigh hard enough, made the perfect amount of eye contact, Ronan would roll his head back and crush his thighs harder. Would moan and breathe roughly.
Adam had allowed all of his own desire to manifest is similar ways, but it had always been enclosed within the boxes he had allowed himself. Ronan had felt his hesitance and pushed gingerly on him like one might a healing wound, testing its boundaries but afraid of causing pain. Under those fingers, Adam had relented.
“Adam,” he asked again, warm against his hearing ear.
“Please,” his voice rose and crashed like convex waves capturing and swallowing air. Ronan bit harder, left marks up and down his neck in a claim of possession, of love, of a game of survival harshly won but survived, nonetheless. “Below the collar. I have work in the morning.”
They showered off the lube and sweat and stickiness but the marks remained. Ronan kissed each one of them in front of the bathroom mirror. Adam wiped his hand over the condensation to reveal Ronan’s work of art and guided his lips from his neck to meet his own. They broke off only for Ronan to smirk at him, turn Adam’s chin gently towards the mirror and point at a place neat the base of his clavicle.
“Those one’s will last weeks,” he breathed, crowded him closer. He pressed a little on the edge of a particularly red one. “Does it hurt?”
He shook his head in reply. “Not really.”
It felt like reclamation; a body once owned by someone who had no right to it, now overtaken by his own personal request. He could feel the shape of the words he’d once uttered to Ronan, when he’d first unveiled the true extent of his desire. I’m fucked up, aren’t I?
“Badass,” Ronan said now, an echo of his past self. He wrapped a towel around Adam’s neck and gingerly dried off his shoulders, as if not to hurt him, even though Adam had just falsely confirmed it did not. “Fuck, I want a grilled cheese.”
They made sandwiches in his kitchen. Gone were the days of tiny, cramped apartments littered by scare artefacts. Now he lived in large, multi-roomed apartments littered by sparse artifacts.
The kitchen was much too big for a person who cooked as inoften as him, but Ronan was a natural chef. He tasked Adam with buttering the slices of bread while he grated cheese and shredded chicken, chopped up tomatoes with a dreamt pocketknife that mimicked an old blade: vexed to chaos, emblazoned on its side. A gag Adam barely understood but seemed to amuse Ronan greatly.
“I still can’t believe you like tomatoes on your grilled cheese,” Ronan prodded while flipping over one over on the stove impatiently. He never let them cook long enough on the first side.
Adam stole a piece of discarded tomato off the cutting board and licked his fingers of the juices in a way he knew to be infuriating. “Good thing you don’t have to eat it then.”
Adam, who was completely unsurprised by the miraculously stocked fridge, just did as he was told and sat patiently at the counter while Ronan cut his sandwich into four triangles and split the two different types over both plates. Adam ate his tomato, chicken, and cheese triangles with his feet kicking lazily against Ronan’s.
They were still half dressed but the heat from the pan and the gooey feeling ballooning in his chest warmed them both well enough. Adam produced two mismatched mugs and filled them with tap water, placed them gently on the granite before them.
“How’s work?” Ronan asked, mouth full of bread and cheese. “Really I mean. None of that fake shit.”
“Good,” he replied, and it wasn’t a lie. It complicated things slightly that Adam didn’t really have much to tell about his profession. Most of it was not suitable for civilians (not that Adam really regarded Ronan as a civilian, for a multitude of reasons) and the things that were often made no sense without the context of the other half. “I learnt how to shoot a gun the other day.”
Ronan narrowed his eyes at him. “A gun? Why? Are you shooting at bad guys?”
Adam smirked and rolled his eyes at the juvenile term. “Bad guys?”
He shrugged two bare shoulders and downed half his mug. “I don’t know what the fuck you do. James Bond shit.”
Adam’s job was a complicated web of ley lines, sacrificial chalk circles, and complex scientific data analysis. His office was the earth; his paperwork half-hearted sketches of root systems in a field pad. His employer held great faith in Adam’s abilities, and Adam, for once, held an equal reverence for his own skill. Turns out good psychics were hard to come around these days.
It had been shocking to realise that he needn’t split himself into copies and chose who to kill. His hands were blood free, dipped deep into magic and power but equally coated in prestige and academia. He didn’t end up having to choose. He could have both.
He could have Ronan.
“It was just protocol stuff,” Adam explained. “It’s not like I’m ever going to use it.”
Ronan seemed unconvinced and he knew he was thinking about a stuffy trailer and a small pistol. A threat held over Adam’s head in a place where threats did not belong.
Then there was a long time when they just ate, where Ronan looked around and seemed to glance into every corner like he was actually interested in remembering them.
“It’s kind of hot, actually,” Ronan spoke into the silence. Adam got up to turn the AC higher, but as he walked past Ronan he was stopped by a hand sliding smoothly down his wrist. “I meant, picturing you as James Bond. Gun on your hip. Walking away from explosions. Shaken, not stirred.”
“I’m not roleplaying as James fucking Bond,” he laughed.
Ronan shook his head and tugged him closer. “Wouldn’t be roleplay, would it?”
They kissed and drifted from counter to bed to couch until the sun made its final descent into the horizon. Ronan ordered Chinese and Adam didn’t flinch at the frivolity of it all, only sunk further into the couch and let Ronan splay his heavy legs all over his lap.
The next morning he’d have to find a way to let him go, at least until they saw each other again. It wouldn’t be long. It never was. In college, they’d gone months without seeing one another. He couldn’t imagine that now, not when so many doors were open to them. When Ronan had a community behind him. Adam, an organisation that needed him desperately.
No, they’d never be that far from the other again.