Work Text:
This time.
This time, I’ll do it.
Adam cleared his throat. Once. Twice. Coughed. Performative preparation for a speech savoured for reflective, mirrored practice in isolate. It’s been good. No, dismissive. I’m leaving. I’m sorry.
I’m sorry. Ridiculous.
I can’t stay here.
You make me want to stay.
Would you come with?
Would you…
Enemy: his ambition. Ronan: counterpoint.
Can’t move two pieces with versatility of one. One: the loneliest number, but easiest to shift. Any number to the power of one, any number divided by one. Reduce this value to one. Simple: the math. Root of every language: binary, code. Integer ideal. Root in all numerical theory. Prime number? Debatable.
Chart your path: latitude, longitude. Another point. Navigate singular, sole traveler. Add second coordinate point, then you’re calculating distance between, accounting in travel time. Compass: where did she point? True North? Magnetic? Search for intersect where divisions in land went to interject? Hope charge and field directed to satisfying equivalent? Navigation went complex when adding values beyond those of one. Driving one ship to landmark was a simple task when put to lifelong practice. Seafare to second rig was nebulous: reliant, on motion on another vessel.
Unsteady.
Fluctuating.
Unreliable.
Difficult to place final destination on the terms and conditions on variables outside realms of your control. Independent, that value.
It was… Ronan was…
Don’t break him.
Leaving would break him. Adam knew. Certainty: leaving would break him. That distance would break him.
It’d break Adam worse.
Truths came dealt in the vulnerability of an exhausted mind, and it was staring beams interlocking over ceiling slant, catching moonlight between splinters and planks where his head had earned its steady, tender bruise. Blood vessel burst pulsed in time to blinks, heartbeat thundering: leaving Ronan like this would break me. Leaving Ronan would break me, if I knew I could come back. Break me.
It was a want: not a need, as negotiable as any other. Ronan was a want. Enemy: Ambition. Price you paid in allowing oneself to redefine as knowable. That value had ticked up: from one, one, one. Added: became two. Function stretch. Variables became complex. Unaccounted for. One became two.
End it. Now.
Today.
You need to.
Want came easily sacrificed in acknowledgement of necessity: and Ronan veered in precarious traffic boundary, wove from want to need with little regard for Adam’s cautious segregation of the two. Ronan was a want. Ronan was becoming a need. Ronan as a need contradicted other needs: food, water, work, sleep, distance. Sleep was a barrier between this meeting, next.
Food was a side effect of time spent in oppressive engine roar where Ronan had made a habit, ritual. Lunches, between class. Rolling forward, dragging Adam to shotgun and sneering at perpetually churning rumour mill: Lynch and Parrish, who’d have thought. Parrish, obviously. Please? Lynch? Remember K? Parking light, just enough a picnic to combat midday slump, before Adam was guiding driver’s seat back, grasping levers and climbing across consoles to melt: hips, chest, lips, sighs in dwindling time availability. Wasteful. This time was best spent eating, drinking, sleeping. Reminded himself: Ronan is a want, not a need. Do not sacrifice this for the other. But Ronan’s hands crawled along vertebral protrusion, untucked button-up and loosened pristine knot on ties, and suddenly want, need, carnal necessity overtake remaining consideration. No cost-benefit analysis when the benefit was the outrageous melody of Ronan when marks went seared to jugular. Food became want: inverse, became incentive to see Ronan after work. Midnight drives, and sustained bass line in fluctuating fourth, eighth beat, and a hand on his thigh and fuck it if food went cold, he’d eat later, pull over now there’s better use of twilight. Crepuscular liaison: that was a need.
Work became barrier outside of hours clocked, wages earned, time to spend in study, how to designate and prioritize. Work was sacrifice of weekends easily plundered in Ronan’s company. Work was always a need: but shift in desire. Precedence went handed, open palm Ronan’s way. Spark of panic, when a night spent in tangled, twisted, thrifted cotton spread was interrupted: extra hours, just one more shift, overtime if you’re willing. And Adam ran the schematics— rent, affordable, groceries, it’d be some wiggle room, a lunch or two skipped, he could cloak emerging vacancy in cloth— glanced to serenity melted over Ronan’s features, scarce sedation sanding angular, wicked cut in regular blaze.
Not this Saturday, he’d murmured, outside himself. Leeched away. Pressed index to contours in agonized pout (nightmare, maybe, and Ronan wouldn’t want him here for this, but it came with the territory— difficult, uphill climb, Adam was as experienced a hiker as any) and split second calculation: let me keep this weekend free.
He needed to end this.
Now.
Adam told himself this. Regularly. Gripped his fist to keratin indent in palm heel, knuckled white around pencil grip in class. Conjunction, looped over tongues, and he reminded himself today, today you end it. Today, tell him. Practiced: recitation, put to action what you preach. It’s too far, too long. You’re overwriting all that drive. Replace: Ronan, primary factor.
Told himself: Lunch. Lunch, now. You’ll tell him. Lunch, Lynch. Fitting. Alliteration. Break up with Lynch by Lunch. It’s fitting. Slots neatly.
But: Ronan, swings by between periods. Easy enough: climbing to front seat, Ronan flinging legs along his lap, nudging breast pocket with a rancid toe and Adam sputtering— locking hands around an ankle, pulling him irrationally, with unreasonable abandon, winding fingers up and into calf muscle. Massage, encourage relaxant. Ronan melts into it, into knead of callous to malleolus, and Adam’s words snatch off his tongue: dissipate.
Not today. He conceded, when Ronan allowed pant leg to go rolled up, where Adam could coax fingers along the inseam, tantalize with teasing touch. Not today. Tomorrow.
End it. Tomorrow.
End it. Today.
Told himself, again: slick in grease, sweat in beads encroaching over comfortable patches of nape. Flattened hair to scalp line, wrinkling nose at emergence of grime under ring finger: rings in residual from engine fracture. Mindless, minimal repair: engine, misfiring. Accelerating, sputtering and unpleasant start. Distributor cap, he thought, and it’s simple diagnosis, which means ease of rehearsal.
Today. End it. Today.
Ronan, I’m sorry. School. Henrietta, it’s not for me. It won’t work. You realize? Please tell me you realize. I’m containing the break, cutting infection before it spreads. Nipping the issue at its root: tearing up invasive weed, before toxicodendron could release itself in full force. I’m ending it. Today.
But there was issue in building experiments from result, down: tonight, they’d be over. Adam, slinking back to St. Agnes alone. Gansey would be furious: but he’d understand. I can’t break him, you need to understand, Gansey it’s for him. This isn’t a battle I can let him fight for himself. You get it. Please. Ronan would recover: he’d be fine. The remaining casualty lay in the wreckage, roadkill in Adam’s heart.
Today. End it.
Ronan: there, and Adam had known he’d be waiting, leaning against car hood in practiced posture. Only reason he knew the maneuver of limbs was faux disinterest came from peeking between door crack, watching him shift. Adjust. Sit, on the hood. Shake head, slide off. Cursing. Kick: gravel. What did it do to you? Settled, finally, on arms crossed, glowering, roll of eyes.
Endearing: the effort. Adam reminded himself: Today. End it.
But Ronan kissed him: oxygen isn’t even granted merit of want, it’s hurdle. Wound fingers in Adam’s hair, and begged he go pressed to sleek car door. Begged Adam curl him over convex windowside and slip hands to abdomen and encourage sound, please, tell me how it feels. And Ronan pulling back, hands wrapped over wrist: lips to knuckles, finds that traitorous ring finger, coating in grime: slips a tongue over slick of oil, gasoline where it makes matrimony to skin and Adam decided, again: Not today.
Not today.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Again: another take.
Today. I end it today.
This time, he drives. Slows, slips beneath speed limit to devastating crawl. Better, he supposes, to do this on Ronan’s territory. Then it’s Adam in the funeral procession, wound in grief. Adam trudging home in silence. Loathing. Regret. The collateral was fine, when self-produced. He practices: out loud. Ronan, I can’t. I’m sorry. You and I both know. We’re a ticking time bomb. We’re not… Blue and Gansey. We’re not… I’m going, where you won’t follow. I won’t make you follow. You won’t make me stay. I won’t break you. I won’t let you let me break you. I won’t force you to break me. This is… weed killer. This is…
This is wrangling bounties of English ivy to let gardens grow.
Adam wishes it wouldn’t hurt so much.
Illogical, preposterous, where’s your drive, Parrish?
Today. End it. Today.
Pulling up: driveway to Barns, and Ronan’s already out. Chainsaw, on his arm, and her head swivels, recognition: Atom!And Adam’s biting down a grin. Opal, too, unabashed in her delight: raises over railing edge, hair matted in mud, bridge of nose ripened under summer’s ruthless slaughter. Adam! He gives himself a count of five, to delight in the snapshot, future retrospective and polaroid, before burning it down: one, two, three, then falters. Ronan’s attentions seek Adam in immediacy, forgoing second nature to align in first. Grins: swathed in golden hour. Flickering, gilded flame melting most, all, any of Adam’s resolve. Eager: and any other moment, Adam would tease, roll eyes, can’t wait five seconds, Lynch? Let me get my feet off the gas, at least. But Adam’s the one with little resolve. Clambers out driver’s side, leaves door flung open, careless, pacing forward (wasting: car battery, gas, time time time) and closing distance in half a breath. Meet: middle. Fingers slot in ribs, mindless and foreordained for fingers to fit in divots. Hand, cups over back of skull. Breathing: along ear shell, lobes. Ronan’s lips: chapped, berated by sun, scraping over jawline, to right ear. Parrish.
Want. Need.
Most his resolve crumbles.
Tomorrow, then. Or the day after. Next year. Ten.
Not today.
Want. Need.
Don’t lose grip of this. Not today.
“Tamquam.” Ronan says, and want, need, not today not now not ever, Adam’s alter diem is its own innate response.
Want. Need.
Ronan became both.