Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is no moment between asleep and awake, and Adam is already screaming before he realizes that he is no longer in the clearing, that Ronan is no longer in front of him.

Ronan’s name hovers on his lips, and Adam reaches out desperately for someone who is out of reach—out of time. He can feel himself starting to crack, can feel the utter loss of control making him shake.

He can still feel the wasps against his skin, hear the horrible buzzing in his ear. He can still see Ronan’s skin splitting under the razor claws of the dream monster. He feels down to his bones the surety that it may have been a dream, but that it was utterly real. It was Ronan, his Ronan, in the dream with him, not a mind construct.

He can too easily imagine what it will be like for Ronan to wake up, he’s already seen it, lived it. Except that this time there is no body decoy to take Ronan’s injuries, to keep Ronan himself safe and whole. Ronan will be waking up, choking on his own blood, with no one there to help him.

Adam shouts Ronan’s name, half aware and fully desperate.

“Adam!”

There are hands on his shoulders, shaking him, and he resists, not sure what is happening, but knowing that he has to fight something- someone. He has to get back, has to help. Ronan needs him.

He can feel hands on him, grabbing, clutching, catching at skin under the thin fabric of his t-shirt. For a brief, terrible moment, he thinks that the Third Sleeper has followed him out, chasing him out of his dream like the dream creature had followed Ronan. His palms are prickling, and when he shoves the touch away, someone cries out.

“Adam!” And a sharp crack across his face jolts him out of it. Pain flares, and it hardly registers.

“I have to get back,” he says, before he is even sure where he is. “He needs me.”

“Adam, you have to calm down.” There is something about that voice—strong, commanding—that cracks through his desperation, that makes it even through the images that fill Adam’s head—Ronan, bleeding, dying on the floor of the church. “Adam.” Adam blinks once, twice. He would follow that voice into death itself. Gansey swings into focus, looking intent and concerned. “Adam?”

“I think he’s back,” Blue says. He’s pretty sure that she was the one who slapped him. She and Gansey are both kneeling beside him. Instinctively, Adam looks for Ronan, needing to reaffirm that Ronan is here, safe. Alive.

It takes a moment to register where he is, when he still expects to see Cabeswater around him. He’s in the Glens, in the main clearing, and it takes a moment for the memories to settle in. It had been a lazy day, even with Blue trying to press magic lessons into him, and he had drifted off.

It takes a moment for Adam to find Ronan, his heart pounding, fear and desperation rising heavy in his throat. When he finally sees him, Adam flinches. Ronan is sitting back on his heels, watching Adam with the same worried look as the others. Except that Ronan's arm is pulled close to his chest, and Adam can see the bright red bloom of fresh blood.

Horrified, Adam looks down at his own hands. There are sharply thorned vines wrapped around his forearms, creeping between his fingers, shooting out spikes like daggers. It's beautiful and deadly, and there is blood on the tips of the thorns that spring out from Adam's palms.

“Ronan,” he says, softly. He doesn't know what else to say, and no other words will come to him.

“It’s fine.” Ronan says. He sounds like he means it, which is so much worse. Adam wants him to scream, to yell, to curse. Adam wants Ronan to lash out with the full, terrible force of his temper, because Adam has hurt him and Adam deserves it.

Instead, Ronan just holds out his arms in evidence of his words. Adam pulls back, hardly able to look at the blood on Ronan's pale skin. His fault.

It doesn’t look fine. It looks painful. Blood is still trickling from two deep gouges, and there are smaller scrapes crisscrossing Ronan’s arms. “Hey.” Ronan moves closer, and Blue and Gansey shift to give him room. “Hey, it’s okay. You were dreaming. It’s not your fault.” His voice is careful, tender. It's the voice for a small, delicate thing, and Adam hates it. Hates that he needs it now even more.

At the first touch of Ronan’s hands on his face, Adam goes utterly still. Ronan is watching him as if he’s afraid Adam will spook like a nervous horse. “I heal fast. I’m glad that you’re finally learning how to defend yourself.”

Feeling shaky and vulnerable, Adam allows himself the telling motion of leaning into Ronan’s hand. “I’m sorry,” he says. Ronan's palm is broad, and warm against his face.

“I know.” Ronan brushes a loose curl behind Adam’s ear, then pulls back. Adam has to fight against the urge to pull him back, pull him tight against Adam. He doesn't want anything from it, just the solid feel of Ronan against him, the warmth of his body, the steady thrum of his heartbeat. Proof that he is okay, that he hadn't bled out in some nameless under the claws of a dream monster Adam had been unable to fight.

Ronan doesn’t go far though and Adam is able to keep his hands to himself, clenched tight to his sides. Ronan just settles down next to him, close enough that their shoulders are pressed tight together. Ronan’s skin is exposed in his tank top, and Adam can almost feel it, warm through the thin fabric of Adam’s own shirt.

“What did you dream about?” Gansey asks, careful. Adam can see the glare Ronan gives Gansey out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn't understand it.

The dream suddenly reinserts himself back into the forefront of his mind. “I have to get back.” He tries to get to his feet and almost falls. He feels wobbly and off balance and desperate. “I have to get back now.”

Gansey catches him when he almost falls, propping him up. “Woah, there. You’re not going anywhere.”

Adam pushes him away, and this time he manages to make it upright on his own. “They need me,” he says. “Ronan just—he just,” his throat closes tight around the horror of it. “The dream.”

Gansey grabs Adam’s face in his hands, turning Adam to meet his eyes. “It will be okay, Adam. He is going to be okay. You need to breathe.”

Adam draws in a sharp breath, and then, at Gansey’s direction, takes another.

“Please,” he says, once he feels more in control. “Please, I have to get back.”

It feels like a moment suspended in time. These three strangers who are almost his friends stare at him, and he stares back, and the silence stretches between them.

"What was the dream?" Blue asks, repeating Gansey's question.

Adam feels his face flame hot at the thought of the first half, but this isn't the time or the place for his embarrassment. "Cabeswater," he says. "Ronan and I were both there. My Ronan." He tilts his chin up, defiant and firm. "He was real. It was really him."

"I believe you," Gansey says comfortingly. "What happened?"

"He," Adam swallows. "The Third Sleeper was there. It was—it was terrible." He has to gasp around the memory, the terrible presence and how it had felt like dying things and the smell of rotten fruit in the summer. "Ronan was—it attacked him."

"A dream creature," Gansey offers, and Adam's eyes shoot up.

"Yes."

"He brought it with him," Gansey finishes. "He was hurt."

"I have to get back," Adam says.

The others exchange a look, and Adam feels anger prickle underneath his skin.

"If you were dreaming of Cabeswater," Blue says slowly. "Living dreams," she trails off, deep in thought. Gansey nudges her, and she turns to him. Her face is alive. "It's reaching out."

"What is?" Adam asks. He just wants to go home, needs to go home. He can see Ronan alive in front of him, but he needs to see his own Ronan, whole and healthy.

“There’s something we need to show you,” Blue says, turning back to him with wild eyes, and Gansey turns to her, his mouth gaping open.

“Blue,” he says, and it shouldn’t shock Adam that Gansey is using her proper name, but it does.

“No,” she says. “He needs to see.” She turns to Ronan. “What do you think, Greywaren?” There is something formal in her tone, something almost ritualistic. It’s not the playful teasing way that she sometimes uses in his own time. This is a title, and it has more meaning than Adam can understand.

Ronan stands with his eyes closed, meditative. He looks like a tightly wound coil of energy, and Adam can still see the ribbons of blood on his forearms and he hates himself for it. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it feels right.”

He catches Adam’s expression and rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I know. But sometimes you can’t help all the,” he holds out a hand and wobbles it back and forth, “magic stuff. Sometimes it really is just a feeling."

Adam feels frustration well up in him. “I just want to go home,” he says, and it comes out sounding plaintive. He feels like a child. “Ronan is hurt, and I don’t even know if he is with the others, or if he’ll be okay.” He swallows. “I know there isn’t much I can do to help but I need,” he clenches his fist. “I need to get back.”

Ronan’s eyes sharpen on his face. “You're worried.”

Adam feels fury abruptly well over. "Of course I am. He's—" everything. "I can't just let him die." And he tilts his chin up, defiant.

Ronan turns to the others. “Adam is right. It’s now. We go now.” His expression is thoughtful, and he keeps shooting Adam speculative looks.

Whatever he is thinking, he keeps it to himself, and Adam is too tired to ask.

Gansey nods, and seems to draw the mantle of leadership around himself. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Adam asks, already following him. It is easy to follow Gansey.

Gansey turns to him, never once stopping his stride, or looking to avoid the trees. His face is open and kingly and Adam would follow him to the ends of the world. “We’re going back to Cabeswater.”

Ronan hears Blue scream before he is even fully awake, and for a moment the sound blends together with the way Adam had cried out in the dream.

The pain hits him next, and for a moment he can’t even think through it. It’s white hot agony in his stomach, and when he clutches his hands to the worst of the pain, his palms come away wet.

He forces his eyes open because the dream monster isn’t on him any more, where is it? He’s sure that it came with him, he knows the feeling of having just brought something to life like he knows his own name. And if it isn’t on him, if it isn’t attacking him, then it is attacking someone else. That seems to be the nature of his dreams, of his subconscious mind—attack, attack, attack.

When he manages to get his eyes open, he almost closes them again because the light in the clearing is so bright and somehow it just makes everything hurt so much worse. His breaths are echoing in his ears, coming short and fast.

Someone screams again, and he’s not sure which of them it is this time. He really wants to scream himself. Sitting up is agony, but he manages. The monster, his monster, is here in what is supposed to be a safe space, and it’s his fault. His responsibility. He can’t breathe, can barely think, it hurts so bad.

“It’ll be okay.” Icy cold floods his stomach and it is blessedly numbing. “You’re going to be okay.” Noah doesn’t sound sure, and his voice wavers, but the words help. His hands, pressed icy cold to Ronan’s stomach, help more. The deep gouges in his stomach are still bleeding, but it’s sluggish. “I can’t give you my shirt,” Noah says, and he sounds desperate. “I’m sorry. I can’t do anything, I’m sorry.”

Ronan can see that Noah is starting to flicker, and he thinks that for once Noah is the one giving the energy—and Noah doesn’t have much to give. He closes his hand around Noah’s wrist, and feels the cold travel up to his elbow. “Stop.”

Noah turns his face up to Ronan, and his eyes are dark and wild. “I don’t know what to do.”

“You’ve done enough,” Ronan says. He lets Noah go, lets Noah step back. His whole stomach is numb, and he wants to cry from the release of pain.

He stands, with Noah’s help, and his knees almost give out twice, but he doesn’t have a chance. His friends are under attack, and Ronan has to help them.

The ground wavers under him, swaying like the deck of a ship. It’s a miracle that Noah is solid enough to bear any of Ronan’s weight, but Ronan doesn’t fall. When his vision clears, the ground of Cabeswater swings into sharp focus. The knife from his dreams sits there, looking incongruous against the bright grass. In the light of day, it looks even more wickedly sharp here then it had in the dream. Had Ronan made it like that? It’s nothing like the switchblade he had occasionally brought along when the met Kavinsky. It looks like an ornamental dagger, the kind that his father sometimes brought back from long trips, but Ronan is sure that he has never seen one like this before.

He makes a move to pick it up and stops himself before he can pitch forward, pain doubling in his stomach, running through every limb.

Noah stoops quickly and grabs it, pressing the hilt into Ronan’s hands. It’s stupid, the blade itself can’t be more than a few inches, but Ronan feels stronger for having it. He clenches his hand around it, feels it dig into his palms, and is glad to have something so solid.

Adam is standing motionless, his back to Ronan, with Gansey and Blue on either side. They are arranged like sentinels, shielding Ronan from further attack, and Ronan feels the thought run through him, hot with guilt and gratitude. It is one thing to know that your friends might be willing to die for you. It is another to see them standing strong between you and death.

The dream creature shrieks in rage, because rage is all this creature knows, and dives down to attack, razor claws extended. Ronan draws in a sharp gasp, wanting to shout, to warn them. He doesn’t get a chance. The creature hits a barrier that Ronan can’t see, bouncing back with another scream.

Adam wavers like taking a hit and Gansey has to steady him.

“He can’t keep it up for long.” Noah says, putting a steadying hand on Ronan’s elbow.

Ronan staggers up to the line of defenders, taking his place at Gansey’s right hand. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“Don’t be stupid,” Gansey snaps. “This isn’t your fault.”

Ronan wants to press the point, wants to argue, but they don’t have the time. It may be the four of them against one monster, but the only weapon between them is Ronan’s dream blade, and it’s barely more than a dinner knife.

“Blue,” Adam says, and there is steely command in his voice. “You know all that shit I said about control and making sure to keep your orbs as light based, not heat based?”

“Yeah?”

“Forget all of that.”

Blue grins. “Gladly.”

“Ronan,” Adam says. “How are you doing?”

Good, Ronan wants to say, and he manages “Fine,” just before his legs buckle.

Adam swears, and is at his side in an instant, crouching over him.

The monster dives again, relentless in it’s need to hurt, to kill. This time whatever barrier is holding it back seems to give, less like a wall and more like fabric. Ronan can see the places where the monster is held back, and other points where it almost makes it through. Adam goes dead white when it hits, swaying even on his knees.

“Fuck off!” Blue yells at the monster, and she hurls something that looks like pure fire at it.

Whatever barrier holds the monster back doesn’t work on Blue. The monster screams when its wing catches fire, and the acrid smell of burnt feathers fills the clearing. It flaps furiously, trying to put it out, and falls back.

Adam’s hands flit over Ronan’s stomach, barely making contact. “This is bad,” he says. “Fuck, Ronan.”

His face is drawn tight with concern, and Ronan has never seen him like this, so desperate. He raises his hand to Adam’s cheek, meaning to smooth the worry lines from around his eyes. His fingers leave bloody marks on Adam’s face.

Ronan had once had a dream where he lay back on an old stone table, bleeding from some unknowable wound. Gansey had been at his side, inexplicably bearded and understandably sad. Blue had been at Gansey’s side with red eyes. She had been wearing a dress like she had been stopped on the way to a Renaissance faire. Adam had held Ronan’s hand, jaw clenched in that way it got when he refused to acknowledge having human emotions, his eyes bright and his hair a wreck. Ronan had woken up and felt pleased at the thought that his friends would mourn him.

This is nothing like that. Gansey is standing between Ronan and the monster with nothing but his bare hands and his salmon polo shirt, while Blue tries to fight with magic she doesn’t know how to use. Ronan isn’t entirely sure that he is going to survive this, and Adam looks like he is about to come out of his skin, like he would burn the world down to make Ronan better. It’s terrifying, and Ronan would give anything to make sure that Adam never has to look that way again.

“Adam!” Blue cries, and Ronan looks away from the desperation on Adam’s face to see her dodge as the monster comes at her. Its wing is still smoldering, but mostly extinguished, and the barrier is gone. Blue only barely manages to avoid its claws.

Adam visibly pulls himself together. “You’re going to be okay,” he promises, and he bends over to give Ronan a quick kiss on the lips. Ronan is a little pissed that he’s not in any mood to enjoy it. Then Adam stands, and puts his hands on Blue’s shoulders. “You can do this, I promise. It’s just like shielding yourself at Fox Way—but bigger.”

The creature banks to make another attack—and Ronan isn’t sure if it is going to go for Blue or for Ronan himself. Gansey swears and grabs for a rock on the ground. Ronan blinks. Were there rocks there before?

“Hey, ugly!” Gansey shouts, and Ronan wants to tease him for the cliche, but his throat is tight with worry. Gansey throws the rock, lobbing it overhand. He has the muscles from crew, but there is a reason that Gansey never played baseball. The rock falls short of the creature itself, but the threat of it sends the monster back a few feet.

“I just need you to hold it back,” Adam says. “Just for a little bit.”

“What will you be doing?” Blue asks Adam as his hands slip from her shoulders. Ronan has never heard Blue scared before, and he would love to never hear it again. The monster is preparing itself for another attack, watching them all with blood red eyes.

“Gansey needs a weapon,” Adam says, and his voice is steely. “And I think I can get it for him. Just keep it away from Ronan.”

Ronan wants to protest that, but his tongue is too heavy to form words. He feels cold all over. He doesn’t have much protest left in him.

Blue nods, and her expression is fierce. “I won’t let it get him.”

“I know.”

Blue turns back to the creature, and twin fireballs appear in her hands. “Come and get me,” she says, positioning herself between the monster and Ronan. Ronan thinks that if he weren’t gone on Adam, and if Blue were a gender that appealed to him, he might fall in love with her in this moment. Her face is fierce, her eyes alight. Her dark hair shines in the light of the fire. She looks like a hero out of legend.

Gansey’s face is dazed when he looks at her, awestruck and a little scared.

Adam grabs Gansey’s arm and drags him to the pond, ignoring Gansey’s protests. “Concentrate on Glendower,” he says curtly, and shoves Gansey’s entire arm into the water. Ronan hadn’t thought that it was that deep.

“What—” Gansey gasps, then, “Oh.”

And Adam lets him go.

To Ronan’s shock, Gansey comes out with a sword clutched in his hand.

“What the hell, Adam,” Gansey says, faintly, staring at his hand like he’s never seen anything like it. The sword is sharp enough that its edges seem to disappear, and the metal gleams so bright in the sun that Ronan has to look away. Even so, he can see the blue wire hilt, the raven head at the pommel. He can’t see it, but he knows that the crossguard would look like spread wings. Ronan looks at the dagger still held tight in his palm. It’s a perfect match.

“It’s no Excalibur,” Adam says. “But it belonged to Glendower. And now it’s yours.”

“Adam, I can’t—” Gansey begins, and is cut off by Blue’s scream.

Ronan drags his eyes back to her. She is hurling fireballs, but they’ve stopped making an impact on the dream creature, because of course Ronan would dream up a fireproof nightmare monster.

Blue is panting, and there is a bloody gouge in her shoulder. “Get fucked,” she says defiantly, and throws her next fireball at the ground in front of her instead of at the monster. The fire roars into life, and travels in a straight line, creating a barrier between her and the monster.

Ronan looks over just in time to see Adam flinch back with his entire body, watching the fire with something that looks a lot like horror. For a moment, he looks like a stranger, terrified and terrible.

Then he shakes himself and gives Gansey a push. “Help her.”

Gansey scrambles to his feet, and Ronan notes with absent attention that his arm isn’t even wet. There is no way that Gansey has held a sword before in his life, but he grasps it steady in both hands and faces off next to Blue like was born to it.

Adam drops to his knees next to Ronan. “You shouldn’t just give swords to children and let them play with fire,” Ronan says.

“Asshole,” Adam says, tone heavy with affection. Ronan preens under his warm gaze, and winces when his stomach pulls. “Stop moving.”

Adam reaches a hand to the ground, and when he pulls it up he has a fresh sprig of something Ronan can’t identify in his hand. Slowly, carefully, he lifts the bottom of Ronan’s shirt. Ronan groans as the blood, gone tacky in places, pulls at his skin. Adam makes low shushing sounds in his throat and presses his hand into Ronan’s side. Ronan cries out, barely muffling a scream behind his teeth. He can’t see the fight anymore, can’t see anything as his vision greys out in pain.

“Noah?” Adam says, and there is no discernible shift, nothing that Ronan can see, but he can suddenly tell that Noah is beside him. “Can you keep it numb?”

Noah must agree, because cold fingers press against Ronan’s side.

“Chew this,” Adam says, and he presses leaves into Ronan’s mouth—Ronan hadn’t even seen him grab them. How much of this is Adam’s magic, and how much is Cabeswater obliging? Is there a difference, with Adam? Ronan opens on instinct, and a disgusting taste fills his mouth. He almost spits it out, but Adam’s hand clamps tight on his jaw. “Don’t you dare.”

With effort, Ronan chews and swallows. He can hear Blue and Gansey and the monster locked in battle, but he can’t lift his head to see how it is going. The sky swims above him, and it’s very bright.

“I’m sorry about this,” Adam says, just before Ronan’s side explodes into fresh pain.

He screams, and the world wavers.

“Ronan!” Gansey shouts. Ronan forces his gaze up, and watches as the dream creature takes advantage of Ganey’s distraction to dive at him. Blue shoves Gansey out of the way, almost impaling herself on his sword as she gets too close. Gansey is still watching Ronan, the blade held loose in his hand, and Blue has to dodge around it.

“Stay focused!” Blue yells, and flings another fireball at the ground, making her firewall flare enough to drive the monster back. In its flickering light, Ronan can see how pale Adam is.

“Right,” Gansey says, visibly forcing his attention away from Ronan and back the the monster. He squares his shoulders and raises the blade, ready. Ronan knows that tone, that set of his shoulders, the confident line of his back. Gansey is going to win this one, or die trying. It’s one of Ronan’s worst fears, and it has never been so literal.

Ronan’s side flares with pain, and he looks down to see what Adam is doing. “Is that a needle?” he asks dizzily.

“Stop talking,” Adam snaps.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Ronan asks, because he needs to say something, and he doesn’t know what else is left. His head is swimming, and it is only Noah’s hands on his side that keeps the pain bearable.

“Trust me,” Adam says, “I’m a doctor.”

“Bullshit,” Ronan gasps as he feels the needle go in. He feels foggy and far away. He has no idea what the leaves Adam made him swallow were, but it was some good shit.

“If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to stop trying to save your life,” Adam threatens.

“Liar,” Ronan mutters, but he falls silent after that. He rolls his head over to watch Gansey and Blue, letting Noah sink blessed cold into his side.

Blue and Gansey are holding their own. The wall of fire keeps the monster at a manageable distance, and every time it gets close, Gansey is there, weapon at the ready. The monster is faltering, but every time it looks as though Blue and Gansey could get in close enough to finish it, it flies back out of range. They don’t dare chase it out of the carefully shielded area, don’t dare to leave Ronan and Adam defenseless, so the fight drags on.

“There,” Adam says, and his voice shakes. His hands are steady. “The stitches are done. No, don’t move.” He still has his hands against Ronan’s side, just hovering, and his face is tight with concentration.

Ronan looks over to where Blue and Gansey fight. They both wield their weapons with more enthusiasm than skill, and the monster is not the only one starting to show signs of strain. If it’s a matter of outlasting one another, Ronan isn’t sure who will win.

Ronan closes his hand tight on the handle of his knife. “Help me up,” he says.

“What?” Adam says. He has his hands pressed to Ronan’s side, and the sharp smell of pine tree and aloe is coming from between his fingers.

“Help. Me up.” Ronan says it slowly, like he would to a child. “I need to help them.”

“You can’t—”

Ronan goes to push himself up, with or without Adam’s help. He can see a muscle jump in Adam’s jaw, then Adam grabs his elbow and helps him stand.

“You’re a fucking moron,” he snarls, but he lets Ronan lead him to stand next to Gansey and Blue. The wall of fire is hot enough to warm Ronan’s face, but it’s already starting to flicker and die.

Ronan hefts the dagger in his hand, feeling its weight.

“How are you doing?” Gansey asks. This time, he keeps his gaze on the monster.

“Fine. You?” Ronan’s tone is deliberately light.

“We have it injured, but it won’t get close enough to finish it off.”

Ronan looks at the monster, at this terrible creature that he himself created. It’s slower now, its wing beats drag. It knows that if it lands, they’ll finish it. It’s only a matter of time before it’s instinct to retreat overwhelms its need to hurt them. And if it does, Cabeswater is an open area. It could go anywhere—they would never find it.

Ronan throws the knife.

It hits the monster in the meat of its left wing, and it screams as it falls.

Ronan sways, even that motion pulling at his stomach, draining his strength. His knees buckle, and Adam is already there, helping him to the ground.

Gansey and Blue rush forward like they’ve done this a hundred times before. Blue makes a gesture, the wall of fire dropping enough that they can step over it. She has her magic at the ready, prepared to defend Gansey, but he doesn't need it. Gansey runs it through, driving the sword all the way into the ground before the creature can make more than a weak swipe at him. For a moment, it lies there, pinned to the ground, screaming. Then Gansey pulls the sword out, blood glistening along the blade.

He slits its throat with more ruthlessness than Ronan would have expected of him. It only takes a few seconds for the screams to die out, for the monster to shudder to a gruesome death.

For a moment, they all stare at Gansey. His chest is heaving, sweat glistens on his skin in the light from the dying fire. He looks like an action hero. He looks like a king out of legend.

“Well,” Gansey says. He brushes his hair out of his eyes and leaves a dark smear of blood on his face. “That was exciting.”

The moment pops.

Ronan, still collapsed on the ground, starts to laugh. He has to stop when it pulls at his stomach, but it feels good just to feel something good.

“What the fuck,” Blue says, staring at the dream monster. Ronan frowns at her—she’s seen one before. Then she looks to Gansey. “What the fuck, Gansey.”

Gansey looks at the sword in his hand, then to Blue, then shrugs. As one they both look at Adam. Adam isn’t paying them any attention. His attention is on the flickering fire. Blue follows his gaze.

“Adam?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” But he doesn’t look away.

Slowly, watching Adam like he might break, Blue holds a hand out towards the fire. Her face creases in concentration, and she slowly makes a fist. The fire goes to low embers, then dies completely. The only sign of its passage is a thin line of scorched grass where it had stood.

Adam shakes himself visibly. “Good job, Blue.”

Ronan half expects her to bristle at what could be seen as polite condescension, but she only smiles. “We were pretty badass, weren’t we?”

“The most badass,” Noah agrees.

Gansey stares down at the sword in his hand, his face unreadable.

“Gansey?” Blue asks, tone concerned. She reaches out her hand to touch his arm, and stops herself before she makes contact. Gansey doesn’t move.

Then, slowly, he raises his head to give Adam a baleful look. “This is the wrong mythology,” he says accusingly.

Adam just stares at him. “What?”

“The sword!” Gansey lifts it, sees the blood still shining on it, and quickly lowers it back down. “In the water! It’s a King Arthur thing!”

Blue gives him an incredulous look. “Seriously?”

“There is no mythos of a sword in Glendower’s story,” Gansey protests. “Water, yes, sometimes, but they don’t pull anything out of it.”

“That’s what she said,” Ronan mutters to himself. Only Adam seems to hear him, and he turns to him with a small smile. Except, as soon as Adam meets his eyes, his smile falters, and his hands go to hover over Ronan’s wound.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

“The sword in the stone, or even the sword from the water, has always been intrinsically linked to King Arthur,” Gansey says, and Ronan can hear the start of a true rant in his voice. Someone needs to head him off before he gets too into it and goes on for hours, but Ronan does not have the energy.

Over their heads, Blue cocks her hip. “Oh, you know. These dead kings all look the same to me,” she drawls, and Gansey makes an indignant noise like a cat being trodden on.

“King Arthur and Glendower have NOTHING to do with one another!” Gansey says, and it comes out more like a shriek.

Ronan ignores them both, and nudges Adam’s hands aside to look at his wound.

“Hm, yes. The magic, the betrayal, the connection to leylines, the promise to return in their nations’ time of need,” Blue ticks off the points on her fingers. “They have nothing in common.”

“It’s, it’s,” Gansey splutters. “It’s totally superficial!”

Any other time, Ronan would be poking fun at him, helping Blue to rile him up. But he can’t think of anything to say, can only stare at the place where, less than an hour ago, he had cuts so deep into his stomach that it could easily have killed him.

Slowly, he raises his gaze to meet Adam’s eyes.

“What the fuck.”

He doesn’t say it loudly, but something in his inflection catches the attention of the others. Blue and Gansey both look over, and when they see the blood staining Ronan’s shirt, they fall silent.

Where there should be deep gouges in Ronan’s stomach, there is a row of neat stitches. It’s still ghastly looking, but it has the pink tinged edges of skin that has been healing for days, if not weeks.

“I told you,” Adam says calmly. “I’m a doctor.”

His arch tone is belied by the way he runs a hesitant finger just above the highest mark, leaving an icy trail in his wake. Ronan isn’t sure if it’s the chill or the contact that makes him shiver.

"And I say again, bullshit," Ronan says, staring down at his own stomach. "Doctors can't do that."

Adam reaches down and pulls an aloe plant from the ground, where Ronan was sure there had been only grass before. He presses his hands together, the thorny stem completely enveloped between his long fingers. When he opens his palms again, he has a translucent green gel, which he carefully applies to Ronan's wounds.

"They can when they're also a little bit magic," he says.

Ronan makes a face at him. "I thought Adam wanted to be—" he stops, words trailing off. He has no idea what Adam wants to do with his life. Get out of Henrietta. Be respected. Make money. Adam has never mentioned any career aspirations beyond that.

Adam would foster contacts at Gansey's parties but he had never made any mention of what he actually wanted to get from them. Ronan feels vaguely ashamed that he never thought to ask.

Adam glances at his face, and smiles. It's a quick, tight movement of the lips and there is no sincerity in it."Don't worry if you don't know. I didn't either. My goals were always very simple. Limited, even. I think that I always thought that I would figure it out when I got to college. That the right path would open itself up to me, that it would suddenly make sense." He laughs, and it sounds bitter. "I was very stupid."

"Hey," Ronan protests. Adam is many things—arrogant, frustrating, a pain in the ass and on occasion an utter bastard, but he is never, ever stupid.

This time, when Adam meets his eyes, there is affection in his face. "I didn't mean anything by it. It's easier to see these things in hindsight."

"Do you think that I'm stupid then?" Ronan challenges.

Adam purses his lips. "That's an unfair question," he says. His hands are still pressed to Ronan’s skin, and he moves to pull away. Ronan catches his wrist.

"I don't think so."

"Well," Adam looks amused, "you wouldn't."

Ronan tightens his grip on Adam's wrist and doesn't say anything. Adam sighs. "No, Ronan. I don't think that you are stupid. I never," he swallows, "I never once thought that you were stupid."

"Not once?" he asks, startled. Disbelieving. His hold on Adam falls slack, then drops. He shouldn’t be surprised, and yet.

Adam laughs. "Well, maybe once or twice. When you would get into those godawful street races. But that was stuff that you did. I never thought that you, Ronan Lynch, were stupid."

Ronan holds Adam's gaze for a minute, and he doesn't see any lie. He smiles.

"This is all super nice and all," Blue says. "I’m really happy about your emotional revelation and all that shit. It's good for Ronan to attempt to interact with other humans, but can we just—" she points at the dream monster, broken and bleeding and very dead on the ground. "What was that."

Ronan goes tense. God, he had brought it here. It had almost killed them. He ducks his head. "I'm—"

"Don't apologize," Blue snaps. "I know it's not your fault. I'm asking how it happened. I thought we were supposed to be shielded against magical attacks."

"We are," Ronan and Adam say together. Adam nods for Ronan to continue. "That was the only reason it wasn't worse." He shudders, remembering the cold, terrible presence of the Third Sleeper in the dream. "It was—Cabeswater wasn't warded against any of us. And this was one of mine."

He feels sick, looking at it. Thinking about how close they were to dying.

"So," Blue bites her lip. "What do we do?"

Ronan opens his mouth, but he doesn't have anything to offer that isn't unhelpful or self-pitying, so he closes it again.

"You prepare," Adam says. "You train. And you learn to work together."

Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Blue take Gansey's hand. Then, to his surprise, she takes his as well. Ronan meets her eyes, and Blue smiles at him. He smiles back, hesitant. Slowly, carefully, he takes Adam's hand.

Adam squeezes his fingers.

"You're going to be fine," he says, like it's a secret. "You are going to be magic."

Gasney laughs, and shoves Adam with his free hand. "Have you been waiting all day to say that?"

"A bit, yeah," Adam says.

For a moment, they sit there, and Cabeswater is peaceful and calm.

Then Noah flickers back in, and his face is pale. “Blue,” he says. “Your shoulder.”

Blue turns to look at her shoulder like she has never seen it before. “Oh.” She stares at the three vertical lines that cut through the fabric, bleeding onto her dress. “That’s not good.”

“Jane!” Gansey gets to his knees, hovering over her. “God, doesn’t that hurt?”

Blue’s face pinches. “You know, now that you mention it.”

“Jane!” Gansey says again. He reaches out, then pulls back. “Can you do anything?” he asks Adam.

Adam leans over, letting Ronan’s hand falls from his own. “This isn’t that deep. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Blue mimics in an airy falsetto. “Thank goodness we have Houdini here.”

Adam gives her a dirty look. “Do you want my magic hands or not?”

“Oooh, kinky,” Ronan drawls. It’s nice to see that he can still make even this Adam go red.

“You’re an asshole,” Adam says lowly. Ronan yawns at him.

“Blue, you need to take off your shirt,” Adam says. Gansey yelps, and Blue’s eyes go wide.

“What?”

Adam puts a hand on her shoulder, just over the cuts. “Just kidding.” He closes his eyes, his expression going intent and distant. When he pulls back, the skin is knit up, only pink lines showing.

“You’ll live, Ms. Sargent,” he says seriously.

Blue rolls her eyes. “Thank god.”

Then Adam sways dangerously, and almost falls. Gansey catches him.

“Adam?”

Blue’s face is pale. “Did I?” her hands flutter at her sides, nervous. “Was that me? Did I pull too much from—”

“No,” Adam waves her off. “No, I’m fine. I just used too much magic. It’s nothing dangerous.”

It’s easier now for Ronan to pull himself into a sitting position. “I don’t believe you.”

Adam gives him a dirty look. “Would I lie to you?”

“Yes,” Gansey answers promptly.

“Without hesitation,” Blue adds.

“I’m pretty sure you’ve lied three times in the past two hours,” Ronan says, and he has to grin at the look on Adam’s face.

“I just need to lie down for a second,” he says, leaning away from Gansey’s hands. “Just for a bit.”

Ronan goes utterly still when Adam stretches out, resting his head on Ronan’s thigh without a moment of hesitation, without a thought to how incredibly fucking weird it is.

“Um.” He looks up at the others, wide-eyed. Blue clasps her hands to her mouth to stop a laugh from escaping. Gansey, the asshole, just looks at them both with affection.

“You look precious,” he whispers.

Ronan flips him off.

The ride to Cabeswater takes almost an hour. Blue and Gansey are both hesitant about even letting him get an idea of where the Glens are, but Adam had drawn the line at letting them blindfold him.

They all pile into Gansey’s luridly green car, and it feels almost like the Pig, almost familiar. Still, for all the car’s bright colors, Adam knows cars well enough to tell that this car runs at least twice as well as the Pig ever had.

“What happened to the Camaro?” he hisses at Ronan, who is squeezed into the back alongside him. There is even more of Ronan to squeeze, and it’s a tight fit.

Ronan just shakes his head. “Dark times, Parrish. Dark times.”

Adam looks at the way Gansey’s hands are clenched on the unfamiliar steering wheel, and doesn’t press. It would take something truly serious to make Gansey give up on his beloved car.

“Give me that,” he says instead, holding out his hand for the roll of gauze Ronan is clumsily wrapping around his own arm. Ronan has the spare end clenched tight in his teeth, holding it steady. When he just stares at Adam, Adam makes a grabby motion with his hand until Ronan slowly presses the roll into his hand.

“You don’t need to—”

“Shut up.” Adam frowns as he stares at Ronan’s arms. The cuts are no longer bleeding, but they still look nasty. “Did you even clean this out?”

The dirty look that Ronan gives him is as good as an answer. Adam leans forward into the low median between the two front seats. “Blue, do you have any Neosporin?”

Blue, who had provided them the gauze from the overstocked first-aid kit that they all apparently felt necessary to keep in the glove box, passes some over. The tube has never been opened.

“Do you ever clean your wounds out?” Adam demands, because he isn’t sure how else to vent the anger he feels every time he catches sight of the new cuts crossing the already deep scars on Ronan’s arm.

“I don’t usually need to,” Ronan says, eyeing the Neosporin with suspicion.

“Do you usually just let your limbs rot off?” Adam says, breaking the seal. “I can’t believe that Gansey lets you get away with that.”

“Don’t look at me,” Gansey says. He doesn’t even have to yell over the roar of an over-taxed engine. “Usually you just do your magic thing.” Adam looks up sharply, just in time to see Blue shove an elbow into Gansey’s side. “What!” Gansey protests. “He needs to know things!”

“What magic thing?” Adam asks. He slaps Ronan’s hand away when Ronan tries to take the gauze back from him.

Blue sighs. “It’s a thing you do. It’s healing? Sort of?”

“I can heal people?” Adam demands, feeling something desperate and eager burst inside of him.

“Slow down, Florence Nightingale,” Blue says. “I said sort of. You can’t heal major wounds, just scrapes. None of this cure the blind, heal the sick Messiah schtick. You just, help.” She looks at the tube in his hand. “Like Neosporin.”

“Like Neosporin,” Adam repeats, incredulous.

“Can I please bandage my arms now?” Ronan says. “I’m going to bleed on the upholstery.”

“Don’t you dare,” Gansey says.

“You’re good with organic things,” Blue says. “I don’t know, you never explained it to me. I think you thought it made you look more impressive and mysterious.”

Adam wants to feel offended, but he isn’t surprised. It wouldn’t be what she thought though. It wasn’t about looking cool—it never was. If no one knew how you did it, they could never replace you. The trick was to learn the one thing that no one else could do, and do it the best. Make yourself indispensable.

And look where that got him, Adam thinks angrily, staring down at the tube of Neosporin in his hands. Blue can’t even walk him through the basics of it.

“Great,” he says, and squirts the gel into his hands. “Give me your arm.”

Ronan hisses when Adam presses it into his skin, carefully smoothing it around the edges of the cuts, and over the tops of the shallow ones.

“Watch it,” Ronan mutters, jerking when Adam goes over a particularly deep cut.

“Stop being such a baby,” Adam says, and he can feel it when Ronan goes still. “What?”

“Adam always says that.” Ronan is looking at him with something that is almost surprise, and there is something open and vulnerable in his face.

Adam feels the back of his neck heat up. He coughs, not sure how to respond to that look on Ronan’s face. “Maybe you should stop being a baby all the time then,” he says. “Then he won’t need to say it as much.”

“I don’t mind.” Ronan says softly. “It’s how he shows affection.”

Adam feels flushed all over, and the sudden temptation to throw himself out of the moving car is almost overwhelming. He feels so very known , and he has no idea how to handle it. Instead of replying, he tucks the free end of the bandage between Ronan’s thumb and palm, and slowly starts to wind it over Ronan’s arms.

Ronan holds perfectly still, letting Adam wrap his arms in loose, unexperienced loops. The small space of the car feel enclosed and intimate, and Adam almost forgets that Blue and Gansey are even in the car with them. When he finishes, he carefully tucks the final edge of the bandage up into the rest of it, and holds Ronan’s hand between two of his own.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He’s never said sorry this much in his life. Part of him wants to protest that it was Ronan’s fault, that Ronan shouldn’t have grabbed him, that he should have just left Adam alone, and this never would have happened. But every time that thought crosses his mind, he sees the way that Ronan had looked at him, arms bleeding into his shirt and over his pale skin and still looking so worried for Adam.

Ronan deserves his apologies, even if Adam is terrible at them.

Ronan, unaware of—or, more likely, unconcerned by—Adam’s inner turmoil, just rolls his eyes. “Don’t be, dumbass. Magic isn’t easy to control. It’s not a science. That’s kind of what makes it magic.”

Adam shrugs, running his fingers lightly over Ronan’s palm. The bandages are terribly wrapped, he thinks. Maybe he should have let Ronan wrap his own arm after all.

“Seriously,” Ronan says, catching Adam’s hand in his own and making Adam look at him. “You think that none of us ever fucked up? I’ve brought nightmare creatures out of—”

Adam draws in a breath so sharply that he jerks his hand out of Ronan’s completely. He’d let himself almost forget about Ronan’s nightmare creature—about what his Ronan could be facing. He feels abruptly sick.

“Gansey,” Ronan says, not looking away from Adam’s face. Adam wonders what he sees there. “Drive faster.”

Adam feels Ronan’s hand come down on his shoulder, and he can’t even feel comforted by it.

It’s disquieting, the way that Adam can tell as soon as they cross into Cabeswater. He can feel it prickle under his skin, a tingling awareness that makes him feel as though he is about to climb out of his own skin.

Something is wrong.

Adam can feel goosebumps rising up on his arms, on the back of his neck.

"You can feel it, can't you?"

Adam turns to look at Ronan, who is watching him with dark, intent eyes. Behind him, the familiar scenery of Henrietta goes past. Blue had insisted on taking a route that would skirt the nominative downtown, in case the sight of whatever building replaced the torn-down Costco caused his life to descend into a self-fulfilling death spiral.

It all looks fine, normal.

None of this explains the chills that Adam can feel creeping along his spine.

"What happened here?" he asks.

Ronan's hand tightens on his shoulder, then slips down Adam's arm to hold his hand. (Adam has the sudden sense memory of Ronan in his dreams, his Ronan, the one who may be dying right now, ten years ago, doing the same thing. He shivers.)

He should pull away, he know. Ronan doesn't want him, doesn't want this broken, angry version of Adam. And Adam has no idea what he wants.

He lets Ronan take his hand. In the wrongness that surrounds him, Ronan feels like the only thing that is right. Adam feels cold down to his bones, and Ronan is so warm.

Adam can't put a word to the feeling, but he gets more tense the closer they get to Cabeswater proper. His muscles are coiled tight with it, and he thinks that if he could, he might jump out of the car itself and run all the way back to the sheltered safety of the Glens.

"We're almost there," Blue says from the front seat. Her voice is soft, serious. "Brace yourself."

Against what, Adam wants to ask. He doesn't need to. He can already feel it. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

When Gansey's car makes the final turn to Cabeswater, Adam feels a gasp leave his mouth before he can stop it.

He's seen pictures of a forest after a fire before. This is nothing like that. This is so much worse.

The land is scarred and burned, the majestic trees that have stood for centuries, millennia, the ones that Gansey is so sure house an ancient, sleeping king, are gone. In their place are low, burnt down stumps. Some of them smoke as though the fire itself was just yesterday. Some of them still have embers flowing in their hearts, a mocking parody of life.

The car has barely come to a stop when Adam forces the door open and retches violently. The wrongness is shaking him, tearing at him from the inside. He throws up until all that comes up is bile, and he can still feel the terribleness of what happened here like sickness in his chest.

When he comes to, he can feel Ronan making soothing circles on his back.

"This is why I didn't want to take him here," Blue is telling the others.

"This was your idea," Ronan snaps in response, but his hand doesn't stop its motion.

"You approved of it!" Blue says.

Gansey crouches down by Adam's side. "Shut up, everyone," he says, and his voice is calm. Adam hadn't even heard him get out of the car. "Are you ok?

Adam manages to lift his head. He feels shaky and weak, and his mouth tastes terrible. Gansey presses a water bottle into his hands, moving back so that Adam has room to rinse and spit.

He does this twice more, and he has to smile when Gansey offers him a mint leaf. It’s reassuringly familiar.

"I'm fine," Adam says, waving them off. It's a lie. He can still feel nausea roiling in his stomach, twisting in his gut. He's pretty sure that if there were anything left in his stomach, he would still be throwing up.

"I didn't think that it would be this bad," Blue says to Ronan in an undertone.

Ronan's hand is still a comforting weight on Adam's back, but out of the corner of his eye, Adam can see Ronan's other hand clench into a fist.

"That's because he's been hiding how badly it affects him," Ronan says, and the words come out as a snarl. "That stubborn bastard."

"Hey," Adam protests weakly. "That's your husband you're talking about."

Ronan's hand goes still.

Adam feels himself go tense again, and this time it's not from Cabeswater. Has he referred to himself as Ronan's husband before?

He doesn't think that he has.

"Can you stand?" Gansey asks, breaking into the moment of tension. He gets to his feet and offers a hand down to Adam.

Adam takes it, and he stubbornly forces strength into his knees. He is not going to swoon into Gansey's arms. He's not going to swoon into anyone's arms.

"What happened here?" he asks again. The others all look at one another, exchanging worried looks.

It's Gansey who finally answers. "War."

Adam trails his eyes from the burned shell of Cabeswater to the scars that cross over Gansey's face and hand.

What had happened here, that had taken so much?

This close, he can see that the damage does not cover all of what he would consider Cabeswater, but it's enough of it. There are still a few trees left standing, enough that it might even still be called a forest. But Cabeswater itself is damaged, hurting.

And yet, once he pushes past the suddenness of it, the nauseating ache of what should be there and isn't, he can sense something else.

Adam steps away from Gansey's steadying hand, away from Blue's concerned eyes, away from Ronan.

It's like looking at a mirage. The pressing wrongness of it is so distracting, but if he turns his head too quickly, he can see the places where trees should be. No. He can see the places where trees are.

Adam shakes his head, trying to ward off the sudden double vision.

"Something is," he trails off. He doesn't have words for what he is seeing. Or what he thinks that he sees.

He takes another step forward, and the sense of wrongness grows.

The grass underneath him is charred. It has to have been years—Gansey's face is rough with old scars, not shiny with new ones—but the trees look as though they were burning just yesterday.

In places, the grass is more than charred, it's scorched clear away. In the empty places it leaves behind, the ground is pale and wrong, and looks like flesh scored down to the bone.

It gives Adam shivers just to look at it.

He feels dizzy and sick, and he has to stop and swallow twice before he can continue. "There are no birds," he says absently.

"No," Ronan agrees. He, Gansey and Blue are standing at what, from anyone else, Adam might call a respectful distance. "Not for years."

Adam sees another flash of something out of the corner of his eyes, but when he turns his head to look, it's gone.

"I need to see the clearing," he says, sure of himself.

The others all exchange looks, but they don't stop him.

They don't need to lead him, either. Adam could make the trek with his eyes closed, can feel in every part of him. There are fallen trees blocking familiar paths, and desiccated tree stumps where there should be green leaves, but he knows where he is going.

The press of wrongness is heavy and terrible, but it feels more and more like a heavy coat in the summer. It's wrong and too hot and it's making him nauseous, but it's just a cover. There is something underneath, and Adam can almost feel it, almost reach it.

The coat only gets heavier the closer he gets to the clearing, and he has to step to retch twice more—shaking off Gansey's steadying hands each time. Blue and Ronan hang back, and neither of them try to touch him.

Guilt, he thinks.

It hadn't been his idea to come here, but only because he hadn't known that it was an option. He would have been here on the first day, if he had know it was possible.

He doesn't know how he is going to get back, but the answer is here.

(Something in him feels as though, if he can just get to the clearing, he will return to that dreamspace. He will be here, and his Ronan will be waiting, whole and unharmed and affectionate. And his Ronan will look at him like that, with want and heat and something that Adam may never be ready to name, but wants to badly.)

Suddenly, Gansey puts out a hand and catches Adam's arm. "This isn't right," Gansey says. He's looking around with suspicious eyes, and it's an unfamiliar look on him.

Gansey barely has to turn his head to look at Ronan and Blue—they are at his side before he even finishes speaking, flanking him easily. Adam feels alone, looking at them. Standing here, arranged like this, they have never looked more unified.

More than that—they look battle-ready. They are the knights to Gansey's king, and Adam has no place here.

"What's wrong?" he asks. If anything, it feels better here. He feels less sick, less like there is a sickness trying to carve its way out of him.

Gansey stretches out a hand, but stops himself before he touches the tree he means. "This wasn't here the last time."

"So?" Adam asks. "It's a forest. Things change." He knows how stupid the words sound as soon as they leave his mouth. Cabeswater is a forest in the same way that Ronan is a boy. It may, technically, be true, but it is so far from the truth as to be almost wholly inaccurate.

"Cabeswater was damaged. It hasn't changed in almost ten years."

Gansey isn't looking at Adam as he speaks, but the words are like a bucket of ice water. They've all been so careful about not letting anything slip, but this. Ten years ago would put it at just after Adam left. The war is sooner than Adam had feared.

"Ronan?" Gansey asks, and Ronan nods. He slips around Gansey, easy and liquid. It's all as choreographed as a dance.

Ronan closes his eyes and tilts his head. Adam watches him. Ronan looks relaxed, almost peaceful, except for the way he is so clearly expectant.

When Ronan's eyes open, they're out of focus. "No one has been here," he says. And then his eyes slide to Adam. "Except the ghost of a dream."

The wind picks up, and it roars unexpectedly through the clearing. Blue and Gansey both jump. Adam and Ronan do not. Adam stands perfectly still and lets it swirl around him. He closes his own eyes, lets the wind surround him like a small tornado, feels it tighten with familiarity around his ribs, then release.

He understood the words Cabeswater says to him, but he lets Ronan repeat them anyway.

"Welcome." Ronan says, and his voice is hoarse. "Welcome back, Magician."

--

Adam feels himself being drawn forward. The clearing is just up ahead, and he knows that he needs to get there. That is the source of his nausea, and the source of the bubbling feeling inside of him that feels so apart from the the sickness.

When he steps through, it's like nothing has changed from his time. The grass is lush and vibrant, the trees dip their leaves almost to the ground, creating isolated pockets of space. The pond is clear and bright, reflecting sunlight.

Then he blinks, and it's like being in a nightmare. Everything melts, grotesquely dissolving into everything that is wrong.

The pond is dry. It shouldn't be the first thing that he sees, but it calls his attention. It had been the first indication of magic in this place, and now it is desiccated and wrong. The shells that had seemed to sparkle at the bottom now sit, dry and abandoned. They look like chips of bone.

Unlike the rest of Cabeswater, this area doesn't look like a fire had swept through. It looks as though a bomb had gone off.

The few trees standing are still smoking. The clearing smells like charred flesh and death.

Then Adam's gaze falls on the tree just to the left of the pond. The spot where, just last night, he had been sitting when Ronan had approached him out of the mist.

Ronan had made it seem better though, had made the mist recede. Ronan had pushed him against the tree and had let Adam take and take and take.

And now it is barely a stump. Embers glow from the husk, and it looks twisted, wrong. Decaying.

Adam tries not to look, but he thinks that he can see blood stains where Ronan had fallen, collapsing under the claws of a dream monster Adam had not been able to fight.

He gags, and nothing comes up.

Then Ronan is there, taking Adam's elbow, and the serene, peaceful Cabeswater snaps back into place.

The shock of it is so sudden that he reels, dizzy and off-balance. Out of instinct, he yanks himself out of Ronan’s grip. Ronan lets him, and Adam almost falls.

The full, uninhibited weight of Cabeswater’s sickness hits him again, the image of the Cabeswater Adam is familiar with falls away. He sways, and has to swallow to force down the bile. He feels confused and muddled, his head swimming. He’s not sure what is real. He can feel Cabeswater as a cool spring inside of him, full of life and power. But at the same time, he can feel its sickness and death, pulling at his edges like a hungry tide.

He hears Gansey from a long way away, expressing concern. The words are meaningless to him, he can’t understand them.

Ronan comes up on his side and says something. It sounds jumbled and wrong and Adam can only stare at him in baffled alarm.

Ronan frowns, reaches out as if to touch Adam’s face, then lets his hand drop. After a moment, he speaks again and this time Adam can understand him.

“Are you alright?” Ronan asks. Adam can feel Cabeswater draining his energy, like Noah on his worst days, but without the consciousness. He feels stretched thin, and he has no energy to lie. He shakes his head, and flinches back when Ronan tries to touch him.

He can see two possibilities, two Cabeswaters, and it’s making his head split in down the middle. It’s wrong, it’s impossible, and it’s almost more than his mind can handle.

“What do you see?” Ronan asks, and he waves off Gansey and Blue when they try to come closer.

“Everything,” he chokes out.

Some instinct, some part of him that understands the Tarot cards and can summon wildflowers and make thorns appear from the air, drives him forward. He walks in slow, careful steps until he reaches the pond, and his knees buckle. The others follow, cautious, concerned.

“I think,” he almost chokes on the word. “I think I need to fix this.”

Gansey opens his mouth, and Blue slaps her hand over it.

Ronan kneels down next to him. “What do you need?”

Wordless, Adam holds out his hand. Ronan doesn’t hesitate, not for a second. He takes Adam’s hand in his own. This time, the clean Cabeswater doesn’t overwhelm him. This time, Adam grips the image tight, and makes the two realities work together, refusing to be swamped.

“I just need to,” he trails off, staring into the pond. He can see it two ways, with and without water.

In school, he had seen images of optical illusions, the ones that were so solidly one thing, until someone else pointed out another. Sometimes, he could see both, but usually his mind would center on one, until he switched to the other. It takes concentration to hold them both in his mind.

This is not unlike that.

Adam holds out his other hand, and Blue takes it, already holding onto Gansey. Wordless, Adam plunges their joined hands into where the water is and is not.

He can feel it lapping at his wrist, cool and refreshing. He can feel heat radiating off the scorched earth.

Adam reaches into where he can still feels Cabeswater—his Cabeswater, he realizes, the one that he is still bound too, because what is time to a magical forest—and pulls.

Gansey makes a noise of exclamation, and the heat coming off the scorched bottom of the pond recedes. The phantom touch of water on his hands becomes more real, more solid. Ronan and Blue still have a tight grip on his hand, but now it feels cool and the slippery. He clenches tighter.

Adam opens his eyes. There is water filling the pond, flowing from the center like a hidden well has been suddenly uncapped. It carries the scent of growing things, of life and trees and cool moss.

“Adam,” Ronan says, and his voice is low and reverent. Adam looks at him, and he has to look away. He can’t handle that expression on Ronan’s face, can’t take it.

He gets to his feet, letting Ronan help him up. Blue’s hand drops from his, but he keeps hold of Ronan. He needs Ronan for this bit, this personal piece of magic that feels so much a part of them both.

When he settles his hand on the bark of the tree, Cabeswater reaches back to him. It’s a welcome and a warning and a recognition. He gets every moment of time spent at this tree in his mind at once—he sees Gansey leaning back against it, Blue’s head just shy of resting on his leg. He sees Noah trying and failing to braid flowers into Blue’s hair.

He sees his future self, showing Blue how to make the same kind of bubbles she had thrown at him in the Glens. He can see Ronan pressing him back into the tree, because dreams are the substance upon which Cabeswater has been built. He sees fire and anger and rage and he closes his eyes against it, clenches Ronan’s hand and—Adam reaches into the well of life that seems to make up his core, and presses.

He know that it is working before he even opens his eyes, can feel the heavy shackles of decay and death falling away. A breeze runs through the clearing, ruffling hair.

Half blind, Adam stumbles from tree to tree, pulling Ronan behind him, feeling when Blue will reach out to lend support with a hand on his shoulder, when Gansey will steady him. He can feel Cabeswater coming to life around him, can feel it healing. But he can also feel the toll it takes on him. The life and the power are Cabeswater, his own Cabeswater, an endless pool that he holds inside of himself—but the energy to make it works comes from him.

Ronan catches him when his knees give out.

--

When he looks up, he can see the green canopy of proper leaves, and Cabeswater is humming with thanks.

Adam sees Ronan’s lips move before he hears the words, and he frowns.

“Are you speaking Latin?” he asks.

Ronan grins. “He’s back.”

Gansey and Blue drop down beside him, looking relieved. There is something like wonder in their faces, and Adam turns his face away from it, uncomfortable.

“Why are you speaking Latin?” he asks, addressing the question to Ronan’s collarbone, the closest part of Ronan that he can see.

“You didn’t notice?” Gansey asks, and there is the familiar marvel of the unknown in his voice, his Glendower voice. “You were speaking it yourself, just now.”

“I don’t think you were even understanding English,” Blue says, and there is a small smile tugging at her lips. She brushes his hair back from his face. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Adam looks past her, at the towering trees and the fresh breeze. “Did I do that?”

Blue grins, and Gansey laughs outright. “Yes, you did, you magnificent bastard!” He claps Adam on the shoulder, and his hand lingers. When Gansey looks around at the clearing, his face is wide open. “We finally have it back. Adam, I could kiss you.”

There is a moment, where they all expect Ronan to make a joking remark, and he doesn’t.

When Adam tilts his head, he can see that Ronan is pale. Now that he is paying attention, he can feel Ronan’s hands shaking.

“Ronan?” Adam asks, concerned. Had he pulled some of the magic from Ronan without meaning to?

Ronan’s hands tighten around him, and Adam makes a startled noise as Ronan pulls him into a hug.

Adam has to make an effort not to pull away from the sudden movement, but then he lets himself relax into it, leaning his forehead onto Ronan’s shoulder. He has never been a hugger, but he feels momentarily safe.

“Don’t ever do that again,” Ronan snarls, pressing his face into Adam’s hair. “You crazy fucker, don’t ever do that. I could feel it—it was draining you. God, Adam.”

Adam fists his hands into the thin fabric of Ronan’s shirt. “I’m okay,” he says, pressing the words into Ronan’s skin. “I’m alright.”

Ronan pulls back, just enough to look into Adam’s face. “Your life matters, you asshole. Don’t ever think otherwise. It’s not your job to keep sacrificing yourself for us.”

Adam feels his throat go tight, feels heat prickle at the corners of his eyes. He looks away.

Ronan jerks Adam’s face back to his. “I mean it. You think—I don’t even know what you think. I’ve never understood the inside of your twisted mind. But just—you matter. Okay? You matter to me.” He looks around, at Gansey and Blue, who have backed away to give them both privacy. “To all of us. We can’t lose you.”

Adam wants to shrug it away, to laugh it off. Of course he matters—who will fix the Pig. Who will keep the leylines active. Who will make sure that Ronan does his homework—well, no. That’s always been Gansey. But there are countless other small, unimportant roles he fulfills in their little group—and Ronan doesn’t mean any of those. He just means Adam, who Adam is. Everything that Adam manages to accomplish just by being Adam Parrish.

“Got it?” Ronan asks. He has a hand on the back of Adam’s neck, and Adam couldn’t look away if he wanted to. (He doesn’t want to.) Adam just nods, unable to speak.

“He’s right,” Blue says, folding herself down next to them.

“I mean, I wouldn’t have put it like that,” Gansey says. He sits so that he leans heavy against Blue’s side. They are both so focused on Adam, but he suddenly sees it. Whatever it is that connects the two of them, whatever it is that he never had with Blue. The thing that he might have a chance of having with Ronan, if he doesn’t fuck it up.

The sudden desire to see his own Ronan wells up in him.

His hand drops from this Ronan’s back. He feels dizzy. Cabeswater is lurching up within him, again.

Ronan’s face above him tightens, goes pale with concern.

Adam clenches his hand in the soft grass. Ronan is still supporting all of his weight, and he trusts Ronan not to drop him. He is so tired, it would be so very nice to just lie back, to close this eyes.

Cabeswater is in him, all around him, pushing at the borders of his skin until Adam feels as though he will burst into full bloom himself.

“I’m okay,” he gasps out, because Ronan looks so worried. “I’m fine.”

He reaches out to Ronan—reaches with his left hand. His right hand is clenched in the grass, and he feels as though it has already become one with Cabeswater. He wonders distantly if he has put down roots himself.

Carefully, he smooths a worry line from Ronan’s face, feeling affection well up inside of him. “You don’t need to worry about me.” And then, because he feels as though it has to be said, that Ronan needs to know—or at the very least, that Adam needs to tell him—“I’m so glad that I married you.”

It’s probably the most honest thing he’s ever said, if only because it’s a truth he managed to keep even from himself, and knows that it is true only in saying it now.

The last thing he sees is the expression on Ronan’s face, a painful cross between elation and anguish, and he regrets having caused it.

Then everything is dark.

Adam's head is pounding. He presses a hand to it, and his fingers come away wet with blood. Then he blinks, and it's just water.

When he sits up, he feels off balance and strange. He's back in Cabeswater, or still in Cabeswater. He isn't sure which.

His hair is wet, and when he puts an arm back to push himself up, he feels his hand get wet up to the wrist. He looks back and has to stifle a scream. It's blood, a giant spreading pool of it. It sweeps out all around him, it's on his clothes, in his hair, sinking into his skin. And he knows, knows with the bone deep certainty of dream knowledge, that it isn't his.

A heavy mist obscures the rest of the clearing, but it's a bold and glaring white, utterly different from what had choked the air in his dream earlier. Through it, he can make out the low form of bodies, and he wants to scream.

Then he shakes his head, blinks, and it's gone. It's just Cabeswater, and he has stuck his hand in the pond.

There are no bodies.

"Hello?" he hears, a form coming out of the mist, and his heart leaps into his throat.

"Ronan?" he asks, desperately wanting it to be true.

“No," the form replies, “I’m sorry,” and Adam knows that voice, even if he's never heard it like this before.

Adam scrambles to his feet, and for a moment he thinks that he sees blood—under his hands, his feet, in spreading pools around him—again, but he forces it away.

He's expecting it, but it's still a surprise to see his own face coming at him out of the mist.

He doesn't know what to say, doesn’t know what to do. How does one react to meeting one’s future self?

He thinks of how Gansey would react, so full of questions and excitement and wonder. He can’t be that, can’t even fake excitement at meeting a future self who has everything Adam has ever wanted. But there are other things he can fake. He thinks of how Gansey would be so confident, so sure that he would like whatever future awaited him, and Adam tries to be some of that. He straightens, trying to make himself look less of a child—as if there is anyway he can make himself look less inferior. He forces confidence into his voice, into his tone.

"Parrish." Let the older Adam be the one who is addressed by his last name, at least Adam can keep the familiarity of his own name.

"It's Parrish-Lynch, actually," Parrish says, and Adam flinches, just a bit, before he can stifle the reaction.

This close, he can see that there are difference between them. It's to be expected, with ten years between them. He's seen how the others looked, how much Ronan and Blue and Gansey had changed. He just hadn't thought to see it in himself.

Parrish is broader than he is, wider at the shoulders and across the chest. His hair looks as though it was cut by a professional, and not by the nun who sometimes looked in on Adam when she had a spare afternoon. He's still tan, but it looks good on him. He, at least, doesn't look like a farmhand left too long in the sun. He looks like the kind of tan that Gansey gets, from summers spent in luxury, on yachts and beaches and vacations to the Bahamas.

Parrish spreads his arms a little to the side, allowing himself to be examined. He seems utterly at ease, comfortable under scrutiny—sure that the looker will find nothing to look down on.

In contrast, Adam pulls his arms in, feeling small and unkempt. He knows that wrapping his arms around himself makes him look weak, makes him look like a child. He forces his arms to his side instead.

"Well?" Parrish asks, the hint of a smirk lingering on his face. “Am I what you were expecting?”

"I don't know what I was expecting," Adam says. It feels like a lie. Parrish looks different, but not as different as Adam had thought. He hadn’t truly had expectations, that much is true, but Parrish manages to utterly defy them all the same.

He was expecting someone so different from him. Someone who was clearly a stranger. Someone who Ronan could love, who Gansey could rely on, who Blue could trust. But Parrish just looks like him.

And he doesn't know what to do with that.

Parrish studies him. "You're not what I was expecting either."

Adam scoffs. "You knew what to expect. You were me."

"Ten years ago.”

Adam looks around at their surroundings. "Do you remember this? Do you remember talking to your older self?"

Parrish makes a so-so gesture at his own head. "Only a little. This is just a dream, you know. And we don't always remember our dreams."

Adam scowls. "I hate that. The plot twist where it was all a dream the whole time. It invalidates the entire thing."

Parrish actually throws back his head to laugh, and it's such a Gansey move that it takes Adam by surprise. "Just this, kid. Just this. Everything else was real. You didn't think that we could talk like this in the real world?"

"And everything,"—older Ronan, learning magic, healing Cabeswater, the hundreds of impossible things he's seen over the past few days— "it all happened."

"Yes."

Adam doesn’t how to feel about that, doesn’t know how he should feel. It complicates things; his life would be much easier if it had all been the product of his own mind. And yet, he’s glad. He feels relieved. He’s not sure that he wants Parrish to know that. "Don't call me kid."

Parrish watches him, cool, speculative. Does Adam look that impassive? That icily dismissive? "What should I call you?"

"Adam."

Parrish grins. It's a very nice grin. Adam doesn't like it. "Alright."

Adam gives Parrish a suspicious look. He hadn't expected him to agree to quickly.

"What do you really want to ask me?" Parrish asks. He sounds like a parody of an ancient Sage from B-movie. The Mr. Miyagi of dream science. It's annoying. If Adam is this annoying, no wonder Ronan is always pissed at him.

Still, there are hundreds of things he wants to ask, thousands. He could ask for as long as this dream spanned between them and never run out of questions.

"Is Ronan okay?" is what comes out first. He must be. Future Ronan had been fine, only silvery scars showing from the monster's claws, but Adam has to know.

Parrish looks pleased, but not surprised. "He's fine."

Adam feels like all the tension bleeds out of him. "Thank god."

When he looks back up, Parrish is giving him a long, searching look.

"What?"

"You don't deserve him," Parrish says. Adam flinches.

"What?" He means it to come out indignant, to be a fight. It comes out tentative, a weak question. A concern.

Parrish runs a hand through his hair. "It's not your fault. But you're young and stupid and selfish, and he deserves better than you. Better than us."

"I know that," Adam says. Because he does. It's obvious. Ronan deserves to be happy, to feel safe and secure and to never have another dream monster chase him awake again. Adam has no idea how to make another human happy, and he doubts that he would be any good at it. Ronan deserves someone who will put him first, above everything. Adam doesn’t know if he can do that.

Parrish sinks down to the ground at the base of a tree—not the one that Adam had shared with Ronan, to his great relief—and indicates that Adam should sit next to him. Adam does, wary and distrustful.

"I'm not saying that to be mean," Parrish says. "But I just—" he looks away, and for the first time, he looks something other than perfectly contained. "I hurt him."

Adam bristles. "And maybe I won't.” He wants it to be true, God, he does. “I know better, this time."

Parrish gives him a sad, pitying look, and Adam can't hold his gaze. The gaze that looks so similar to what Adam has seen out of his mirror hundreds of times.

"You won't do it on purpose," Parrish says. "And if it helps, he is going to hurt you too."

"Shouldn't you be protecting me, then?" Adam asks, and he knows the answer before he has even finished speaking.

“I'm not here to be your fairy godmother. Ronan will hurt you, and you’ll learn to move past it, and you’ll be happy with him, so it’s all worth it. I don't regret the things that I had to do, or to feel, to get here. But I would spare Ronan, if I could. I wish I could do it again, without hurting him."

Adam watches as the grass shifts under a slight breeze. “So do I,” he admits.

“What if I told you to stay away from him?” Parrish asks. “What if I told you that he would be happier without you, and that you should let him move on, right now, before it’s too late.”

Adam closes his eyes. Could he do that? Could he let Ronan go, let him walk away?

He thinks of all the things Ronan is to him, frustrating and infuriating and wonderful. He thinks of Ronan pushing him in an shopping cart, Ronan making a salve for his hands, Ronan kissing him under the branches of Cabeswater. He think of Ronan, shouting at him until they are both red in the face and Adam never wants to see him again, of Ronan with his sharp remarks that sometimes cut too deep. Ronan is not perfect, he never has been. He drives Adam up the wall, makes him want to hide in St. Agnes and never come out. And Adam could never give him up willingly.

Maybe it’s selfish of him. Maybe Ronan would be happier without him. But Adam has always been selfish. And if there is even a chance that he can make Ronan happy, that Ronan can make him happy, Adam can’t let it go.

“I would tell you to fuck off,” Adam says honestly. “Because it’s none of your goddamn business.”

Parrish laughs, and the look he gives Adam is approving.

“Good. Keep that.”

“You’re insane,” Adam says.

Parrish just shrugs. “If you were willing to give him up that easily, then I would probably have to kill you.”

Adam laughs nervously, because there is a danger in the way that Parrish is looking at him, and he isn’t sure that it is a joke.

“There is so much I want to tell you,” Parrish says, and his eyes are hard in a way that is almost frightening. “I want to warn about every mistake you’ll make, every way that you’re going to fuck it up, and hurt you both.” Adam feels sick. “I want to stop you from hurting him, and I want to stop him from hurting you. And there are hundreds, thousands of thing that have nothing to do with you—I keep thinking we could change them—you and me.”

Adam just stares at him, uncertain.

“But, who am I, to rewrite the past? To fuck with a timeline that didn’t even turn out that bad, all things considered. There I things I want to change, God, so badly. But in the end,” Parrish swallows, “somehow, despite everything—we’re here. And I’m happy. I never really thought I would be, you know?”

Adam feels the breath catch in his throat. Happy has never been the plan. Well-off. Respected. Admired. Content. But not happy. Even seeing the future with Ronan, the comfortable home they had built together, but not happy.

"I don't know why he chooses me,” he admits, because it is clear that Parrish considers Ronan to be a key part of that happiness, and Adam just can’t—he doesn't— “I just, I don’t understand.”

"God," Parrish groans, and he leans back on his hands. "You're just so stupid!"

Adam wants to protest, but honestly. He can’t find it in himself to disagree. He shrugs instead, digging his fingers into the grass. It stretches under him, growing up around his fingers, twining around his palms. There is a nervous energy to it, an anxiousness that mirrors Adam’s own.

“Look,” Parrish says. “It’s not a matter of choosing, or being chosen. He didn’t pick you out of a line-up of potential suitors, just like you didn’t choose him. Just like I didn’t choose him from a catalogue of potential husbands. It’s something wild and unpredictable. That’s kind of the point of love.”

Love. The word is like a thorn, and Adam flinches away from it. And Adam should really know better by now, because the second that he has that though, the grass under his hands turns from soft grass to vicious thorns, and he yanks his hand away as it bites into his palm.

Parrish just watches him, amused. Adam glares down at his hand, then at Parrish.

“I’m not in love with him,” he says.

Parrish raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t say that you were,” he says.

Adam gives him a filthy look. “Shut up,” he says.

Parrish’s mouth quirks up into a tolerant smile. “Okay.”

Adam really wants to hit him. Is this how Ronan feels all the time? It’s exhausting.

“Why did you marry him?” he asks, desperate curiosity overwhelming his irritation.

Parrish looks surprised. “Because I am in love with him,” he says. “Even if you’re not. Because he makes me happy.”

It all sounds so simple, when he says it like that. Adam doesn’t understand. How can he just know that. How can he just be like that. Marriage seems to Adam to be a lot like his contract with Cabeswater. Permanently tying yourself to something else, something with wants and needs that wouldn’t always match your own. Giving up a part of yourself that you could never get back.

“Yes, but how—”

Parrish gives him the most shit-eating, obnoxious grin that Adam has ever seen in his life. “You’ll understand when you’re older,” he says.

Adam is truly, honestly floored with indignation. For a moment, he can only gape, speechless.

“Look alive, Adam,” Parrish says. “We’re waking up.”

Adam looks around, but he can’t see anything different about their clearing. “How,” he begins.

“Years of experience,” Parrish says, and there is a lightness to his tone that Adam hasn’t heard before. Has he ever seen that kind of joy on his own face before? Has he ever even felt that kind of happiness? He’s not sure. “Smile. You’re going home.”

Adam Parrish-Lynch hates the feeling of waking up from a living dream. It’s something that he ought to be used to by now, years and years of Cabeswater and the Glens and Ronan pulling his subconscious around should have made it a familiar feeling.

But still, there is the disconnect where he expects to be waking up in one place, and finds himself in another. The moment when he expects the dream world to linger. Often, he expects to be waking up in forest or a clearing, and waking up in his own bed is always a surprise.

This time, he blinks awake with the thought of his younger self still in his mind and the scent of Cabeswater in his nose. Except, that when he wakes up fully, he can still smell it. Cabeswater is nothing like the Glens, however superficial the appearance may be. Cabeswater is infinite and vast, cold where the Glens are warm. In the last ten years, he has never mistaken the two. And it’s been ten years of his own time line since he last smelled Cabeswater like this.

For a terrible, heartstopping moment, he is afraid that whatever magic Cabeswater had woven around him has failed. That he’ll be stuck in the past with the ghosts of a life he has outgrown.

He can still feel Ronan’s hand in his; he would know that presence anywhere, and it is stronger in Cabeswater. The awareness of the Greywaren is tied into Adam’s own recognition, and that touch is infinitely familiar.

“Look who’s back,” Ronan says, and Adam knows that voice, would know it even in death. He opens his eyes. Looking down at him, face drawn with concern and lined with exhaustion but so wonderfully familiar, is his Ronan. His husband.

“Hey,” Adam says.

Ronan’s face breaks into a breathtaking smile, and Adam can’t help but smile back. He never has been able to resist that look on Ronan’s face. “Hey.”

Adam is lying with his head mostly in Ronan’s lap, Ronan’s hand clenched tight in his. Adam is so used to Ronan being the one who gets himself senselessly injured that it’s strange to be in this angle of the familiar pose.

“Is this blood?” Ronan asks, and his voice is tight. He traces the fingers of his free hand over Adam’s cheek, over the marks that the other Ronan had left behind.

“I’m fine,” Adam says. Ronan gives him a skeptical look, and his hand brushes over Adam’s cheek bones. Adam catches his hand, and presses Ronan’s palm to his mouth. Ronan’s mouth falls open, and Adam has to bite back a grin.

“Gross,” someone says from Adam’s left. He looks around, and Blue raises her eyebrows at him.

“Yes, we’re here too,” she says, indicating herself and Gansey. Gansey gives him a terribly dorky looking half wave, and Adam lives for the moments where he is less then put together.

“Begone, witch,” Adam says. “We were having a moment.”

“Your basic human emotions disgust me,” Blue replies.

“You’re going to hate this then,” Adam says, and he fists his hand in the collar of Ronan’s shirt and pulls him down for a kiss.

It’s easy and familiar and delightful. It’s stupid for Adam to have missed him after only a few days—it’s everything he swore to himself that he would never be in a relationship. He’s been without Ronan longer than this—even since they got married. But it had been harder that his usual absence, being with a Ronan who wasn’t his husband. All the ways that Ronan had been similar only made him miss this Ronan more.

Ronan kisses him back just as fiercely, and Adam wonders if it had been as hard for him. It had probably been even worse. Adam had been with a Ronan who had clearly still liked him, had been able to enjoy the way that Ronan still looked at him, even then. But this Ronan had been stuck with Adam at 18. Adam had not been his best at 18.

Beside him, he can hear Blue and Gansey making exaggerated noises of disgust and he finally breaks off to glare at them. Ronan is gratifyingly flushed, but Adam is feeling a little winded himself, so he can’t tease him for it.

“Gansey,” Adam greets, trying to play it off.

“Adam,” Gansey replies, and Adam can tell that Gansey is laughing at him.

Finally, Adam looks past them. “Is this Cabeswater?” It can’t be. Cabeswater hasn’t been like this in years. The only part of their forest that had been saved was the small area where Aurora resided, and only that because Adam had warded it to within an inch of its his life as soon as he got back from the future. This is not Aurora’s haven. It’s Cabeswater proper, with the pond and the tree and the cool breeze carrying Latin to his deaf ear.

“Are we—did you guys get brought to the past as well?” That’s not it. He can feel the wellspring of Cabeswater inside of him. It’s been a painful ache for the last ten years, a persistent nausea that he could push away as long as he never came back here. Even being back in the past, in the healthy and vibrant Cabeswater had been more like a bandage, a superficial feeling at best. He hadn’t been tied to that Cabeswater, not like he was to this one.

For a moment, he is terribly aware of Noah’s absence. The loss of Cabeswater had happened around the same time Noah started to truly disappear. It’s wrong, to be in Cabeswater without him. He misses him. Seeing him in the past had been wonderful, and terrible, and his loss is a fresh wound again.

“Adam fixed it,” Gansey says, and he sounds as proud as if he had done it himself.

Adam pushes through the resistance of time and dream-thought that shaded over his old memories of his time in the future. He vaguely remembers being in Cabeswater, but he had been so drained, and it had happened so close to his return that the details were blurred.

“Fixed it?” Adam had spent months here, fighting back sickness and driving himself almost to passing out to try and repair Cabeswater. It had been too damaged by the battle, by the vicious tears of the Third Sleeper and the loss of Glendower from the leyline. He hadn’t managed to do more than put out the fires and to stop the dark poison from spreading outside the forest itself.

Blue crosses her legs. “I think he was still tied to his own Cabeswater. So he had this power and life inside him.” Her mouth quirks. “Whereas you are just dead inside.”

Adam flips her off and Ronan laughs.

Adam looks back up at him. Had he forgotten how Ronan looked in only three days? It’s like looking at him for the first time, the razor sharp jut of his cheekbones, the strong line of his jaw, the blue of his eyes. Even the tattoos that wrap around Ronan’s shoulders seem new, where he had gotten used to pale skin there instead.

Adam follows the muscles in Ronan’s arm, tracing the curl of ink and the swell of bicep with his eyes. “What is this?” He sits up regretfully, pulling himself out of Ronan’s hold so that he can get a better look at the bandages.

Ronan rolls his eyes. “It’s nothing.” And, when Adam reaches out to take his arm, “Seriously, don’t be a drama queen.”

The bandage is terribly wrapped, disgracefully so. It’s already coming loose at the top, and the layers aren’t crossed enough to provide any sort of pressure. “This is terrible. Did Adam do this?”

“Well, he was 18 and didn’t have six years of medical school to fall back on, so I think you’ll have to cut him a break.”

“How did this even happen?” He unwraps the bandage carefully, letting it pool to the ground. Ronan’s arms are cut up, not bleeding but only barely. “Were you attacked?”

Ronan snorts. “Yes, it was terrifying,” he drawls, sarcastic. “I barely survived.”

“Did you even clean this?”

“Adam did. With Neosporin.” Ronan spits the word like someone else might say poison.

Adam smiles at him. “I think I can do better than that.” Which is worse, wanting to show up a teenager or wanting to show up his past self. He’s sure there is something in there that any therapist would have a field day with. Slowly, feeling the power of green and living things flowing through him, he runs cool fingers over Ronan’s arm. He thinks of the soothing properties of aloe, the anesthetic properties of kava, the cleansing properties of summer savory, and lets it run through him. He thinks of Ronan’s skin knitting together like climbing vines, with all the resilient energy of kudzu.

It’s easier with this Ronan, who is so attuned to him, and these wounds are nothing compared to what the younger Ronan had suffered. When Adam pulls back, Ronan’s arms are almost completely healed, and Ronan is watching him with indulgent amusement.

“It wouldn’t have killed me,” Ronan says reprovingly.

“No need to take any chances,” Adam says primly.

Blue clears her throat pointedly, and Adam looks over at her.

“Yep, still here,” she drawls. “Shocking.”

“You know, I keep hoping you’ll have just left,” Adam responds. Blue just rolls her eyes and moves closer to him, nudging him with her toes.

“So, how was the past?” Blue asks. “How adorable was I?”

“You were a brat,” Adam replies. “You were all brats.”

Gansey makes an affronted noise. “I was a perfect gentleman at 18,” he begins, and is cut off by Blue’s laughter.

“Gansey,” Adam says in exasperation. “You argued with me about getting a magic sword.”

“It was the wrong mythology!” Gansey replies, as though he hadn’t used it to save all their lives. As though he hadn’t trained to use it for years after the battle. As if he didn’t keep it in a place of honor in his house.

“It was a magic sword!” Blue says, exasperated. “You always take the magic sword.”

Gansey crosses his arms. “I did take it.”

“Without complaint, Gansey,” Blue says, throwing her hands up. “That goes without saying!”

Gansey tilts his head up, playing up the Richard Gansey persona to its fullest. “I was utterly justified.”

“I hope you never get a fairy godmother,” Blue says, leaning into his side. “She’d give you a dress and a coach to the ball, and you’d ask if she had any Camaros and then tell her that Cinderella mythology only referred to woman in servant positions and really, she should find someone who more traditionally adhered to the original story.”

“I wouldn’t be as bad as Adam,” Gansey says, trying to hide his laugh. “’Begone, fairy godmother, I don’t want your magical charity!’”

“‘Fuck off, I can get to the ball on my own!’” Ronan adds.

Adam rolls his eyes. “I hate you all right now.”

“‘I don’t want to marry a prince,’” Blue says, “‘I want to make my own way in the world.’”

“Wrong!” Adam protests, laughing. “Obviously, I would tell her that I don’t want to marry the prince because I am already happily married.”

“Damn straight,” Ronan growls, playing along.

“So to speak,” Blue says.

Adam gives her a flat look. “Hilarious.”

Blue bats her eyelashes at him.

“No prince can have him,” Ronan says, and leans over to kiss him, a playful thing, just to tease. But it’s—God, Adam missed this. He turns his head into what would have been just an innocent peck, and lets it go deeper than Ronan intended. When Ronan had woken up, screaming, wounds appearing on his body from nowhere, Adam had been so, so scared. He had known better, known that his husband was waiting for him—but there had been a part of him that was afraid he would never have this again.

When Adam pulls back, he takes a moment just to look at Ronan’s face, the delicate sweep of his eyelashes against his cheeks, the paleness of his face. A hundred tiny details that makes Ronan so familiar to him.

He still has Ronan’s hands in his own. He runs his fingers again over the healing scratches, pink marks crisscrossing old scars. He knows it’s stupid, but he can’t help reaching out to the hem of Ronan’s shirt, tugging it up and checking on his stomach. The skin is marked with silvery scars, but it’s whole and solid, warm under his hand. He traces the worst mark carefully, the one that had been bleeding into his hands just minutes ago.

Ronan shivers.

“Do you want us to give you two a moment?” Blue asks.

Adam looks up, realizing how this must look. He has Ronan’s shirt hiked up, running delicate fingers over his stomach, treacherously close to the waistband of Ronan’s jeans. Yes, Adam thinks, even though he knows that she is only joking. Yes, go away. He glances at Ronan, wanting to make sure that he hasn’t made him uncomfortable—he doesn't usually feel Ronan up in front of their friends.

The look on Ronan’s face makes him swallow. Ronan’s pupils are blown, his mouth open. There is flush rising on his pale cheeks-- the way he looks at Adam. God, Adam will never get tired of it.

Gansey coughs. “Ah, Jane. Why don’t we go see how much of Cabeswater is repaired.”

“No, I’m good,” Blue says. Adam can see her in his peripheral vision, leaning back on her hands, watching them. He doesn’t want to look away from Ronan though. He wants. There was something so heady about the way that Ronan had looked at him back then, undercut by the fact that Ronan had been a teenager, and had only really wanted the past Adam. But now, seeing that same look on his Ronan, on his husband. The idea that Ronan has wanted him like this for over ten years. God, it’s intoxicating.

“Alright, up you get,” Gansey pulls Blue up and drags her out of the clearing. “You owe me for this,” he calls over his shoulder.

Adam lets his head fall onto Ronan’s shoulder and laughs. “Those two.”

“Fuck them,” Ronan says. He pulls Adam to him, and Adam goes willingly.

He had thought for so long that Ronan only wanted this from him, lust and passion and heady kisses on the ground of Cabeswater. But Adam had looked at Ronan through the eyes of an adult, had seen his husband in Ronan’s wanting expression, and God, that Ronan had looked at him like that for so long.

He straddles Ronan easily, one knee on either side of Ronan’s lap. Ronan has to lean up to match him at this height, and Adam should feel bad about making Ronan chase after his mouth but Ronan does. He always does.

Abruptly, Adam is tired of teasing, tired of making Ronan come to him. (And God, if that isn’t a metaphor for their entire relationship, and Adam is so sick of himself that it hurts.)

He stops teasing, stops holding himself back, and leans in. His hand is on the warm stretch of skin of Ronan’s stomach. He uses the other to pull Ronan’s hair, pulling Ronan’s head back, just enough that he can press kisses into Ronan’s mouth. Ronan groans, arching to meet him. They’re pressed together, hip to shoulder, and Ronan is alive and warm and his.

Then Adam brings his hands to Ronan’s shoulders and pushes. Ronan makes a bemused noise, but goes willingly, following Adam’s hands until his head is pressed to the mossy ground. Adam can feel Cabeswater all around him, a living breathing thing. He can sense it rearranging, adding spring to the grass, softness to the moss. Making a more comfortable place for Ronan to lie. In this, they are united—make the Greywaren happy.

For a moment, they just stare at one another. Ronan’s eyes are dark and intent, and Adam wants to soak him in. He feels like he will never get enough of him. Maybe it is selfish, but it’s a selfishness he shares with Ronan, one that they both delight in indulging.

“I missed you,” Adam says.

Ronan smiles, and there are no sharp edges to it. “You too.”

He takes Adam’s hand and draws it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the wrist. Adam sucks in a breath. Then Ronan smirks at him, all the sharp edges that Adam never wants him to lose coming through, and scrapes his teeth across the tender skin.

“Fuck,” Adam breathes. How is it that he never gets tired of this, of having Ronan under him, alive and wanting.

“That’s the idea,” Ronan drawls. He reaches up and mirrors Adam’s move from earlier, tugging at the neck of Adam’s shirt until Adam leans down enough to kiss him.

And, well, it just seems easier to stretch out on top of him, letting Ronan bear his weight, their legs tangled together, chest and hips flush.

Ronan is already hard, and he groans when Adam slides a leg between his, letting Ronan grind up against him. Every time Ronan shifts, the line of Adam’s cock presses against the jut of Ronan’s hips. It’s delicious friction and it’s not enough and Adam wants more. He has to bite his lip to stop his own noises from escaping.

“Stop that,” Ronan growls, pressing his thumb to Adam’s mouth, nudging Adam’s lip from between his teeth. “Let me hear you.”

Adam opens his mouth enough to let Ronan’s thumb slide in, enjoying the way that Ronan’s eyes go wide, the way that his face flushes.

“Tease,” Ronan says, the word coming out tense around a moan. Adam closes his eyes and sucks, running his tongue over the pad of Ronan’s thumb, following it with his teeth. Ronan groans properly this time, the sound shuddering through him. Adam wants him to make that sound forever.

Then Adam’s stomach lurches as Ronan plants his feet on the ground and thrusts, dislodging Adam enough that Ronan’s hand slides free of his mouth. Ronan smiles at him, and Adam has just a second to brace before Ronan rolls them over.

“Hey,” Ronan says, looking down at Adam from between his hands, his arms locked to hold himself up.

“Hey,” Adam replies, feeling soft and hazy with affection.

Then Ronan thrusts against him, slow and deliberate, and all affection melts under the gut punch of arousal. Their hips are perfectly aligned, their cocks press together with every filthy roll of Ronan’s hips. Adam tosses his head back as he moans, his own hips jerking up to meet Ronan’s.

“Hm, that’s better,” Ronan says, and bends to press a kiss to Adam’s mouth, his jaw, his neck.

“Ronan,” Adam groans, fisting a hand in Ronan’s hair to hold him in place. He can feel Ronan grin against his skin, just before Ronan bites down. Adam arches up with a shout.

“Like that?” Ronan asks, the arrogant bastard.

“Yes.” Adam tilts his head back, giving Ronan easier access, and he whines when Ronan pulls back, settling back on Adam’s thighs.

“Say please,” Ronan says, smug.

“Fuck you,” Adam replies, saccharine sweet.

“Please,” Ronan repeats.

Then Adam grins, and he enjoys watching Ronan’s eyes widen. “Since you asked so nicely,” he says. Ronan has left his arms free, so Adam fits his hands to the sharp edge of Ronan’s hips and flips him over, feeling the whoosh of delight in his stomach when Ronan only laughs and lets himself be flipped.

It feels like a compulsion, the way that he goes back to Ronan’s stomach, using both hands to push Ronan’s shirt up out of the way. He lets Ronan sit up enough to take it off completely before pushing him back down. He traces each of the scars there carefully. For a moment there, Ronan had been so pale and so still.

Adam leans down and kisses the highest scar, just where a dark trail of hair begin. Ronan makes a low, gasping noise, and Adam sees his fists clench at his side. He runs his hand over one fist, waiting until Ronan loosens his grip. Then he kisses the next scar down, and runs his lips over the length of it. Ronan’s skin is soft, broken only by the crinkle of hair.

When Adam sucks a mark into the final, lowest scar, Ronan groans, and his hips jerk up. Adam presses them back down, and applies himself to the scar in earnest, tracing it with lips and tongue until Ronan is squirming under him continuously, fighting Adam’s hold on him. Ronan hates his scars, but Adam loves them. They are proof of all the things that Ronan has survived.

Ronan’s hands clench and unclench in the ground by his hips, digging furrows into the grass. Adam grins against his skin and drags his teeth along the trail of hair, all the way to the waist of Ronan’s pants. Ronan keens, a high, desperate sound, and Adam feels his toes curl inside his stolen sneakers.

“Get on with it,” Ronan says, and Adam bites him, hard. “Please,” Ronan gasps, his voice cracking straight down the middle. Adam looks up to watch the way that Ronan tosses his head. “Please.”

Adam doesn’t want to tease. He wants Ronan to know how stupidly in love with him Adam is, even when Ronan himself doesn’t believe it. He wants to take Ronan apart with lips and teeth and hands and body and put him back together, stronger.

He unbuttons Ronan’s pants with a practiced move, sliding them down his legs with his boxers and off, tossing them both carelessly behind him. God. Ronan’s cock is flushed dark with blood and rises sharply over his stomach and Adam wants.

Ronan is already dripping precome, and Adam leans down to press a wet kiss to the head, tongue flicking out to catch the drops.

“Wait,” Ronan cries. “Adam!” He gasps for air, chest heaving. “God, wait.”

“What?” Adam snarls, because he is busy.

Ronan smiles at him, already looking perfectly wrecked, and runs a hand through Adam’s hair. It’s a delicate, tender move and Adam feels a little broken in it’s wake. “I think you’re a bit overdressed for the occasion.”

Adam gives his own clothes a disgusted look. He doesn’t care about that. He wants this, needs this, to be about Ronan. He keeps hearing the way past Ronan had asked ‘what do you want from me,’ and he can’t shake the feeling that he has never given him an answer.

He ignores Ronan, leaning forward to lick a long stripe up Ronan’s cock, feeling it hot beneath his tongue.

Ronan’s hand tightens in his hair and Adam has to swallow a desperate noise. “No,” Ronan says, sliding his other hand up Adam’s hip, under his shirt. “Off.”

He still has a firm grip on Adam’s hair, and it makes Adam feel claimed. Owned. Even just three years ago, Adam would have balked at the very thought, but now it just riles him up, makes him more desperate. He shivers under Ronan’s touch, feeling the calluses on Ronan’s hand as it slides up his chest, rough against his skin. He is painfully hard in his jeans, but taking them off would mean moving, and he has Ronan just where he wants him.

But then, Ronan knows him so well. He tightens his hand in Adam’s hair, tugging just hard enough that Adam’s eyes water. His other hand he slides down Adam’s chest in one long, torturous drag, pressing the bulge in Adam’s pants and grinding down with the heel of his hand. Adam moans, and his whole body curls forward until he catches himself with one hand on the ground. For a moment, he is paralyzed as Ronan’s hand moves, shudders of pleasure wracking through him as he gasps and moans.

Ronan undoes the button on Adam’s jeans, enough that he can get his hand inside and Adam curses.

Ronan’s hand is hot and perfect on his cock, and god, Adam can hardly think as Ronan tilts his head up enough to catch Adam’s mouth in his. Adam drops his own hand to curl tight around Ronan’s dick, loving the way that it fills his hand, the way that Ronan shudders and moans against him.

For a moment, they gasp into one another’s mouths, desperate and uncoordinated as teenagers. Then Adam pulls back with an anguished sound.

“Fine.” He yanks the shirt off and tosses it behind him as well. “Fine!” Getting his pants off is almost painfully awkward, and he has to stop half way through to take off his shoes and pretend like Ronan isn’t laughing at him, but he manages. And finally, finally they are both naked.

“Well,” Ronan says, rising up on one elbow to give Adam an absolutely filthy look. “Now what?”

Adam rolls his eyes, feeling so full of affection he might die.

“Now,” he says, stretching out beside Ronan’s hips. “I am going to suck you off.” He continues over Ronan’s groan. “And then I am going to fuck you until all you can remember is my name."

“Big promises,” Ronan taunts, as if he can hide the way that his cock jerks, the way his voice has gone hoarse, the way his face is flushed red all the way down his neck.

Adam doesn’t bother to reply, just leans down and licks a stripe up Ronan’s cock, loving the way Ronan chokes on his own words, gasping as they come out as moans. He loves Ronan like this, coming apart under his mouth and hand. Loves how in this moments, Ronan is utterly his.

They’ve done this before, hundreds of times, and it never gets old, never gets tired. Adam knows the spot just under the head to press his lips, and Ronan cries out. Adam pushes Ronan’s hips to the ground and swallows him down, feeling Ronan fill his mouth and loving it. Ronan lifts one hand to cup Adam’s face, then runs his thumb along the line of his own cock, pressed against Adam’s cheek, and his moan is unsteady and gasping.

“Adam,” Ronan says, and his head is tilted back, his eyes closed, the flush running all the way down his chest. “Adam, please.”

This too is familiar. Adam presses his hands to the ground and he barely has words to form what he wants from Cabeswater, so he just pushes out with his desire. Ronan shouts, because, God, Adam forgot the effect that Cabeswater sometimes had on them both, how it can carry strong feelings between them. He pushes again, this time with deliberate intent, with all his love and his want and everything he has and Ronan gasps and shakes and comes in Adam’s mouth.

Adam is so surprised that he doesn’t swallow in time, feels it spill over his lips.

“God,” Ronan gasps, and pulls him up to kiss him, dirty and wet. Adam can taste Ronan’s come in the kiss, know that Ronan can as well, and he doesn’t care at all.

“I was going to fuck you,” he says when they break apart. It’s almost worth it though, to see the way that Ronan lies, languid and satisfied on the mossy ground.

Ronan stretches, smug in a way that says he is enjoying the way Adam watches the long, pale line of his body, the way the muscles of his arms are pulled tight. “You still can.”

Adam frowns down at him. “You already—”

“Can’t you feel it?” Ronan asks, and god, he’s already getting hard again. He writhes against the ground. “I can still feel you. I can feel,” he groans, and the sound goes straight through Adam, “everything.”

Adam kisses him, because he can’t not. He can feel it. Cabeswater is humming around them, and he is pretty sure that some of it is the new energy of rebirth, all the power that his younger self poured into it. But the rest of it is just them, the Magician and the Greywaren, the two of them so closely tied to Cabeswater that the air feels heavy with their emotions.

“Come on, magic boy,” Ronan says, hooking one leg around Adam’s waist to pull him closer. “Fuck me.”

And, well, Adam has never been good at turning away from Ronan’s challenges.

He rests his hand on the spot where he had pushed all of his want from earlier, and his fingers come up slick, a small stone basin formed in the ground itself and filled with something that functions like lube. He had gotten it tested, once, and trying to get Gansey to send it to a lab had been one of the most mortifying experiences of his life. No one had been able to tell them what it was, exactly, except that it was organic and it wouldn’t hurt them.

It always smells like moss and growing things. Sometimes Adam wonders if it has aphrodisiac qualities, because even the smell of it is intoxicating. It’s the product of all the want and desire that he poured into Cabeswater, the manifestation of how much he wants Ronan.

Adam slicks up his hand, and kisses Ronan again, warm and wet and pleased. Ronan is the one who turns it dirty, licking his way into Adam’s mouth, biting at his lip. His cock nudges at Adam’s hip, and Ronan thrusts against the bare skin there, slow and languid in his desire.

“Eager?” Adam teases.

In retaliation, Ronan reaches down to palm Adam’s cock, hand sliding slowly over its length and twisting up on the upstroke, just like how he knows Adam likes. Adam moans, eyes slamming closed as he jerks into Ronan’s hand. He is abruptly aware that of the two of them, he was the one who hasn’t come yet.

“What were you saying?” Ronan asks. The smug tone in his voice should not be so sexy and yet. There is something about the way his mouth curls, the way his eyes glint—Adam wants to fuck it out of him, until Ronan can’t form words. Adam reaches down and slides two slick fingers into Ronan without preamble.

Ronan’s smirk drops away as his mouth goes slack with pleasure. It’s exhilarating, taking Ronan apart like this. Adam pumps his fingers inside, watching as Ronan twists his head back and forth, his chest arching up. He howls when Adam presses a finger to his prostate, his entire body shaking with pleasure.

“Adam,” Ronan says, it comes out in a long moan. “Adam. Fucking—do it.” He can’t keep his voice steady, can barely get with words out around the noises forcing themselves out of his throat and Adam doesn’t know if it is possible to die from wanting someone so badly. There is something in the way that Ronan says his name, it has always driven him crazy. He loves knowing that Ronan is here for him, that it is him that Ronan wants to badly. Ronan knows it. Ronan exploits it viciously, tilting his head back to expose the delicate line of his throat and moaning Adam’s name like he doesn’t know how to say anything else.

He can’t get his mouth to form around anything that isn’t a moan or a whimper, so he just presses in another finger.

“Fuck!” Ronan shouts, his whole body shaking. Adam curls his fingers, waiting until Ronan shouts again, then stretching them apart.

Please,” Ronan says. “Please, Adam.”

And God, Adam has never been able to resist Ronan when he begs. Adam slides his hand out of Ronan, and Ronan makes another low desperate sound.

Adam reaches down to slick himself up clumsily, only barely manages to resist thrusting into his own hand.

“Ready?” he asks, lining himself up and watching Ronan carefully. He doesn’t push in, just teases around the edge of Ronan’s hole, wanting Ronan to ask for it.

Ronan makes an anguished, frustrated noise and lurches up. He gets his shoulder into the center of Adam’s chest, taking him utterly by surprise, and the momentum takes them all the way back to the ground. Adam stares up at Ronan, startled.

“What?”

“You were taking too damn long,” Ronan snarls, and thrusts himself down on Adam’s cock.

Adam feels the tattered remains of his self-control shatter, and he cries out, thrusting up to meet him. “Ronan,” he gasps out. “Ronan.”

Ronan throws his head back, lifts himself up and then back down, groaning. Adam isn’t the only one who likes to hear his name.

Adam’s hands go to his hips, steadying him. How could he have ever thought that he didn’t want this. How could he ever have been willing to give this up.

Ronan falls forward, supporting his weight with arms on either side of Adam. “Whatever you’re thinking,” he says. “Stop it.”

He clenches around Adam, hard, and Adam sees stars. He can hear himself whimper, knows that he must sound desperate and he can’t help it. Ronan’s stomach flexes as he rolls his hip. At this angle, he can’t fuck Adam as thoroughly, but Adam considers it a fair trade-off for the way it puts Ronan’s mouth in easy access.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says.

Ronan stares down at him, a faint smirk playing on his lips. “Liar.”

Adam bucks his hips, hoping to distract him, but Ronan knows him better than that. He rolls down into it, and they both moan, but Ronan’s gaze is steady.

“You think that it’s not fair,” Ronan says, and his hips never stop moving. “You think that you’ve been a terrible boyfriend, a terrible husband.”

Adam looks away, feeling shame coil in his stomach. Ronan lifts his hand and turns Adam’s face back to his, kissing him with so much passion and love that Adam wants to scream.

“You think that it’s not right, that I loved you for so long, and you didn’t love me as much.”

“Please don’t,” Adam says.

Ronan is slowing down, and it’s a terrible paradox. Adam wants to move, needs to move. But there is something of a predator in Ronan’s sharp gaze, and every instinct tells Adam to stay still.

“I used to think so too.”

“Ronan—”

“Shut up. I’m talking now. I didn’t care that much, because I knew that you love me, and I knew you wouldn’t have married me for anything else. But it still crossed my mind, how unfair it was. And you know what?”

Ronan’s hips start moving again, tantalizing circles, and Adam doesn’t know how to react. He is still so hard, so wanting, and his body is flushed with confusion and arousal. “What?” he asks. He’s not sure he wants to know, but Ronan wants him to ask.

“I was wrong.”

Adam jerks in pure surprise, and Ronan groans. Then Ronan reaches down and wraps a hand around his own cock, and Adam can’t look away. “Wrong about what?” he asks, watching the movement of Ronan’s hand. Ronan’s dick is flushed dark red, and Ronan’s pale hand is a delicious contrast. He knows that Ronan is teasing him, giving him so much to look at, trying to rile him up. Adam doesn’t care.

“I met you, past you. And you loved me, even then. You just didn’t know it yet.”

Adam’s gaze flies to Ronan’s face, and he feels pinned opened and exposed and wild. “What.”

Ronan grins, and it’s sharp and pleased and so very satisfied. “I know that look on your face by now, Adam. And he loved me. And maybe it will take him another ten years, maybe it will take him until this moment to figure it out, but he loved me the whole time.”

Adam surges up, knocks Ronan’s hand away, practically throwing Ronan onto his back. He slides out of Ronan and he doesn’t care. He grips Ronan’s hands in his, lacing their fingers together and pinning Ronan’s hands to the ground. “Ronan,” he says, drawing it out, watching Ronan shudder. He thrust back in, hard enough that Ronan’s whole back arches, a perfect curve. Adam shoves him back down, leaning over so that his mouth is just over Ronan’s their faces close together. He doesn’t move, his hips still, his cock throbbing inside Ronan.

For a moment, Ronan just stares at him, eyes wide and startled. He clenches around Adam, trying to goad him into movement, and Adam pulls his self control around and resists. He needs Ronan to pay attention.

“I love you,” he says, breathing it into Ronan’s mouth. He’s not sure what he expects—not surprise. He’s said it before, said it often, but he expects something, some kind of reaction. Ronan just smiles at him.

“I know,” Ronan says.

And God, he doesn’t know why that’s sexy, but it is. He tries to keep ahold of his control, but he can feel it slipping around him. He pulls back and thrusts into Ronan, watching as he keens.

“Adam,” Ronan moans, playing him, and Adam can’t help but give in. He keeps a tight hold on Ronan’s hands, their fingers laced tight, but he can’t hold Ronan’s hips still as well. He doesn’t think he wants to. Ronan meets every thrust, the two of them falling into a rhythm.

“Ronan,” Adam says, loving the way it makes Ronan shudder against him. When he leans down. Ronan’s cock presses tight against his stomach. Ronan moans, and Adam can feel his desperation through the ground, through the very air. It ricochets back and forth between them, love and need and want. Adam pushes it back, all his love for Ronan.

Ronan leans up to kiss him, and comes, muffling a cry into Adam’s mouth

Adam pulls away to watch him, feels him coming apart, feels Ronan’s love echoed back at him. He can feel his carefully prized control edging away from him. He doesn’t try and keep ahold of it. It’s Ronan. Ronan, who knows every part of him, and loves him anyway. Ronan, who doesn’t care when Adam is out of control, when he isn’t perfect. He feels Ronan around him, feels his love, the safety of his affection. Adam gasps, shudders and—lets go.

Adam Parrish is getting way too used to waking up in unexpected places. He doesn’t even blink to feel grass under his palms, tickling where his shirt rides up from the back of his borrowed pants.

“Hey.” Adam feels someone tap on his cheek. “Wake up.”

The air smells like moss and cool and that unnameable familiar scent that had permeated the Glens. Adam bats at the hand, wanting just another few minutes. He is so tired.

“Wake up.” The tap on his face returns, this time hitting on his cheek bone.

“Fuck off, Ronan,” Adam mutters. “I’m sleeping.”

There is silence above him, the tapping stops. Then a hand settles gently on his hair. Ronan, Adam is sure that this is Ronan, can feel it as a humming awareness in his bones, in the very air, just lets his hand sit there, still and unmoving.

Adam nudges into it ever so slightly. There is another long pause, and Adam is just too tired to care. Then, slowly, the fingers start to comb through his hair, smoothing it away from his face.

The air is warm and the touch is so gentle that Adam feels his already tentative hold on consciousness slipping. It seems easier to just let Ronan take care of him.

He hears muttered whispers, almost indistinguishable from the sound of wind in the leaves, and then the unmistakable click of a fake camera shutter.

“Dammit, Gansey,” Ronan hisses as Gansey swears.

“Blue made me.”

"You woke him up," Noah says accusingly.

Adam turns his face away from the light and the noise, and feels rough denim against his cheek.

His eyes shoot open. He is lying with his head on Ronan’s thigh, and Ronan is running careful fingers through his hair.

Adam shouts and jerks away.

Blue bursts into laughter and Noah buries his head in her shoulder, snickering. Gansey tries and fails to hide a smile behind his hand. Ronan just raises an eyebrow at him, and Adam can’t read him at all.

“Welcome back, sleeping beauty,” Ronan drawls. He looks amused, but there is something distant behind his eyes. Adam, who has gotten so used to the way that Ronan looks at him in the future, feels anxiousness form a hard knot in his stomach.

“I,” he hesitates. Was it even real? Has he been in Cabeswater this entire time? “Had a dream,” he finishes lamely.

Blue grins at him, and points at Gansey sarcastically, “And you were there, and I was there,” when her finger comes to rest on Ronan, her grin widens. “And you were definitely there.”

Adam feels his face flame. Blue gives him a smug look. “So, Adam,” she says, teasing. “You and Ronan, huh?”

Adam wants to protest, wants to deny it, for no other reason that his face feels hot and he’s embarrassed and he wants to be out of here. But then he catches sight of Ronan’s face, drawn tight and utterly closed off.

“That’s what I hear,” he says instead, and Ronan’s eyes jerk to meet his. Adam smiles. The pleased, embarrassed look that crosses Ronan’s face is probably the best thing he’s ever seen.

“How was the future?” Gansey asks. Adam would have liked to stay in the quiet moment with Ronan, and usually Gansey can read a situation better than that, but one look at Gansey’s face shows that they aren’t dealing with polite, mannered Gansey. Gansey’s eyes are shining, the bright light of discovery in his face. It’s his Glendower face. “Did we wake Glendower?”

Adam looks at Gansey, and it’s like being back in the future Cabeswater, the peculiar double vision. Gansey is young and bright and whole, but Adam can see the shadow of scars in his face, burn marks that stretched over skin that is currently unharmed and healthy. Gansey, who had lived again when he should have died. Adam can’t do anything that would take that future from him. From any of them.

He shrugs his shoulders, forcing a nonchalance that he doesn’t feel. “They wouldn’t tell me much.” They had probably told him more than he should have known, but that just means that it’s his job to keep it from the others.

Gansey looks crestfallen. “Your future self was not particularly forthcoming either,” he says.

Adam wonders just how much his future self had said. Had he told them about Cabeswater, the burned out ruin it had become? Had he told them about Noah, fading away to nonexistence? Had he told them about the Third Sleeper, or the fact that Gansey and Blue were married? He had clearly told them about Adam and Ronan.

Adam mentally sends a sarcastic thank you to Parrish, because he still isn’t sure he is ready to deal with that fall out.

Instead, he turns and pulls Noah into a hug. It's freezing, and only half-substantial, and he has to be careful not to squeeze too hard in case he goes straight through him. It's only saved from being a terrible hug because Noah is a truly amazing hugger. Adam is not a big fan of hugs, and even he gets that.

Noah pats him carefully on the back, and when Adam pulls away, there is something sad and knowing in Noah's face. Noah, at least, understands what his future holds.

Then, still feeling tremulous with emotion, he reaches to Gansey, because he can’t stop seeing Gansey, burnt and broken. Gansey, dead because Adam had given too much away, and pulls him into a hug. It’s not a brief, manly hug, Gansey has never excelled at those. Adam tucks his head into the curve of Gansey’s neck and feels Gansey’s arms come up around him. It’s awkward, with Adam half kneeling there, and Gansey not moving from his sitting position, but good.

Then Adam pulls back and sees why Gasney had held himself so still. “Is that a sword?” he asks, incredulous.

It is a sword. Broad and silver, with a blue wire-wrapped handle and a raven head carved into the pommel, wings spreading into the crossguard, looking incongruous against the ordinary fabric of Gansey’s khakis. There is something inherently wrong about a man in khakis with a sword.

Gansey looks down at it proudly. “Isn’t it cool?” he says. “Not thematically appropriate, of course but—" Blue groans, and Gansey closes his mouth, looking abashed. “It’s very cool,” he says again, and falls quiet.

Adam looks to Ronan. “The dream monster,” he says slowly. “Did it,” he trails off, not sure how to finish the sentence. Ronan holds his gaze for a long moment, and the knowledge that they had both truly been there in that dream space, and all they had done, passes between them. Then Ronan jerks a thumb over his shoulder. Adam follows the motion and sees the singed and cut up body of the monster from his dream.

“It was real,” he says. He had known it, but there is a difference between feeling something and seeing it before you.

Ronan’s gaze is hesitant. “Yes.”

Unbidden, Adam’s eyes fall to Ronan’s stomach, where he had been so badly hurt. Ronan’s shirt covers it. Is that blood? Adam can’t tell, the shirt is too dark for it to show properly. Ronan is up, moving, alive. Adam doesn't need to see it. He tears his eyes away, looking back at the monster. “We should bury it,” he says. They could bury it by the other one.

Ronan makes a noise, low in his throat. It’s not enough of anything to call a laugh, but it’s dark and bitter. “Wonderful. Another body for me to bury.”

Adam’s eyes go back to Ronan’s stomach. They had buried the other monster together, but Ronan had to bury his own corpse alone. A body that had been cut up in the same way that this Ronan had been cut up. He had left Ronan alone for that. Adam reaches out, and pulls his hands back. He hopes that no one had noticed the gesture, and he pulls his eyes away. He meets Blue’s eyes almost by accident. She looks between him and Ronan, her expression speculative.

“I think there are still shovels in the trunk,” Blue says. Adam doubts that. There is barely room for the trunk in the trunk of the Pig. “Why don’t we take care of it.”

Adam opens his mouth, to protest, he thinks. He isn’t sure what his intention is. Then Blue gives him a murderous look, and Adam falls quiet. Right.

“But—” Gansey says, and Blue punches him in the arm. “Ah, yes. Right.”

Gansey stands first, offering a hand down to Blue. She ignores it, pulling herself up with a pointed look at Adam.

Blue and Gansey pick the monster up together, both of them grimacing at the blood that gets on their hands, their clothes. Noah follows, hovering nervously, unable to bear any of the weight but still wanting to help. Adam watches them go.

“Those two,” he says, shaking his head with fond amusement.

Ronan watches them go, scowling. “They shouldn’t have to do that alone.”

It’s his mess, his danger. His responsibility.

Adam is still staring after them, his face unreadable. Ronan feels jolted by the thought that in the brief time that Adam has been away, he has become a stranger. He looks young, in the wake of an Adam that was older, and Ronan doesn’t know what to do with that.

“Let them go,” Adam says slowly. “I think that if I try to go after them, Blue will actually stab me.”

“Barbeque,” Ronan corrects absently.

“What?”

“Blue would barbeque you. With her,” he waves his hand, meaning to indicate magic, and Adam just cocks his head. Has it only been three days, since Blue learned that. “Parrish taught her how to cook people.”

“Parrish-Lynch,” Adam says absently.

Ronan feels his spine go stiff, feels every muscle tense. He hadn’t thought that Adam would be the first one to mention the relationship they had in the future. He doesn’t know what to say now that he has.

“That’s it?” he demands. “Nothing on the cooking people thing?”

Adam looks at him, drops his gaze to Ronan’s stomach, then away again, quick as blinking. “That was only a matter of time, with Blue.”

Ronan snorts, because he can’t entirely disagree. “So, Parrish-Lynch, huh?” he asks. “He never mentioned that part.”

Adam jolts in a gratifying manner, his eyes flying to Ronan’s, wide and shocked. “He didn’t say—”

“I knew that we were,” he has to swallow twice to get the words out, “married. But,” he flounders. “Names. We never talked about names.”

“Oh.” Adam traces a line on the ground, and Ronan watches in fascination as mistletoe springs up in the wake of his finger. Adam’s eyes go wide when he sees it, and his face flushes hot. “Oh my god.” He brings the heel of his palm down on the nearest one, like he intends to push it back into the ground, and hisses when the sharp edges bite into his palm.

“I always thought those were Christmas plants,” Ronan says idly, watching as Adam makes increasingly frantic gestures to make them disappear, looking up like he is somehow hoping that Ronan won’t have noticed any of this.

“Shut up,” Adam hisses, and his face is red all the way down his neck, into the low neck of his shirt. The shirt is too big on him and it gapes in the front, showing the sharp lines of his clavicle, the smooth line of his breastbone.

Ronan feels more comfortable in the wake of Adam’s discomfort. He reaches out and picks one of the stems, mindful of the sharp edges. He cocks his head at Adam. “A kissing flower?”

“It’s not a flower, asshole,” Adam says, glaring down at the mistletoe. “It’s a weed.” He rubs absently at his hand, and Ronan can see small pinpricks of blood.

Ronan lets it fall to the ground, the berries bright against the grass. He reaches out, feeling like he is approaching a wild tiger, and takes Adam’s hand in his. Adam goes perfectly still, letting Ronan get a closer look at his palm.

“You’ll live,” Ronan pronounces and his tone feels too light for the heavy moment that has settled over them.

Adam rolls his eyes. “It’s a miracle.” His eyes flick down to Ronan’s stomach again. He doesn’t try to pull his hand away, and Ronan doesn’t let him go. Carefully, mindful of Adam’s tendency to lash out when he feels emotionally exposed, Ronan uncurls Adam’s fingers and traces over the lines and creases.

“Are you trying to read my palm?” Adam asks, and it comes out soft, a whisper.

“I think I already know your future,” Ronan replies, and his tone is low to match.

Adam looks at him through his eyelashes, and if Ronan had thought it was a devastating look on older Adam, that is nothing to the effect it has on him now. And he knows that Adam isn’t trying to be flirtatious, is pretty sure that Adam wouldn’t even know how to be flirtatious, but it’s a striking look all the same.

“Do you?” Adam asks.

Ronan drops his hand. “Yeah, you grow up to be an asshole.” Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck .

But then, to his surprise, Adam smiles like the sun coming out. “Yeah, I kinda do.” He moves closer, and it’s hard to breathe. Has the clearing always been this small? “But that’s ok. You’re an asshole too.”

“Am not,” Ronan says, and his gaze drops to Adam’s mouth. Adam licks his lips and God. That had to be deliberate.

“Are too,” Adam says, and kisses him.

It’s nothing like the kiss from the dream, which was all heat and want and now.

This is slow, tentative. It feels like a first kiss should, Adam’s lips sliding over his, parting and returning. Ronan feels as though his heart is going to explode out of his chest. Adam runs a careful tongue over Ronan’s mouth, and Ronan opens his mouth, letting Adam set the pace.

He leans back when Adam puts his hands on Ronan’s shoulders and guides him, until Ronan’s head rests on a bed of moss. He’s pretty sure that moss was not there a second ago. Still, he wants. He wants the feel of Adam’s hair in his fingers, the taste of Adam’s skin under his mouth, the press of Adam’s body in his palms. He opts for the safest, letting his hands fall naturally to the jut of bone at Adam’s hips.

To his surprise, Adam allows the contact, only presses closer and licks into Ronan’s mouth like he’s done it a hundred times before. Ronan feels jealousy flare— has he done it before? Had Adam kissed that other Ronan, that future self who had the life Ronan desperately wanted? He pushes the thought away—it’s not worth dwelling on. Even if Adam is still in love with Blue, or waiting for a Ronan who won’t exist for another ten years, or even just pressured by a future he doesn’t want to live, at least Ronan has this.

All too soon, Adam pulls back, propping himself up on one hand to look down at Ronan. Ronan looks back at him, not flinching from Adam’s stare. Ronan stares a bit himself. Just-kissed is a good look for Adam, with his red lips and flushed cheeks. His hair is still too neat though, and his breath is too even. Ronan will have to do better.

To his surprise, Adam’s gaze drops again to Ronan’s stomach, and he lifts his free hand to hover just above Ronan’s stomach before he pulls back.

Adam’s gaze goes to Ronan’s face, back to his stomach, and he lets his hand fall back to the grass. He looks tired.

Ronan can feel queasiness lurking at the edges of his consciousness. Does Adam regret this? Had Adam hated the future, hated the life they apparently shared? Ronan knows better than anyone how much Adam wants to be independent. Adam would hate the idea of marriage, a legal contract that trapped him in someone else’s life.

“What are you thinking?” Adam asks.

Ronan shakes his head, because he won’t lie to Adam, but he can’t bear to tell the truth. Adam frowns at him. Ronan lets his head drop back to the moss, tilted up at the sky. It’s a clear, perfect blue. “No light show, this time.” Had Adam only wanted that because he had been so sure that it was a dream? Because that much had been clear.

Except, Adam doesn’t blush, doesn’t duck his head and demure at the thought of their shared dream, at the reminder of heated kisses and hands pressed to skin. Adam goes pale at the reminder, and his hand goes again to Ronan’s stomach, this time resting fully on the fabric of Ronan’s shirt.

Then, Ronan understands.

“I’m fine,” he says. “It was just a scratch.”

Adam makes a choked, desperate sound. “A scratch.”

“It was just a dream,” Ronan tries, anything to get that look off of Adam’s face.

The look Adam gives him could freeze a lake in high summer. “I have seen you die from a dream, Ronan Lynch. Don’t you dare,” he sucks in a breath, and it sounds painful, “Don’t you dare.” He looks desperate, looking at Ronan with so much caring, so much worry and Ronan just—can’t.

He digs his fingers into Adam's hair—God, the sound he makes—and pulls him into a kiss, and it’s everything that the last one wasn’t, wet and filthy and needy. Ronan keens as Adam licks over his teeth, biting into his mouth and claiming him.

“I’m okay,” Ronan says between kisses, gasping for air. “I’m fine.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Adam says, and he kisses Ronan like he wants to punish him for it, which, yes. “I hate you so much, oh my God.” Adam gives the lie to the words as he pushes Ronan into the ground, holding him down like he never wants Ronan to move again.

Ronan keeps his own touch gentle, thinking about what he would do at the sight of Adam, broken and bleeding beside him. “I’m okay,” he says again when Adam breaks off. Adam pants for breath, and now he looks properly kissed, his hair a tangled wreck around his face and his chest heaving. “Here.” Ronan takes Adam’s hand and slides it up under his shirt, watching Adam’s face as he does.

The way Adam’s mouth drops open, the way his breath comes in a stuttered gasp, the way he looks at Ronan, God, it’s even better than the touch of Adam’s fingers on his skin. Adam traces over the scars, feather light and careful.

Then Adam drops his gaze to Ronan’s stomach like he has clearly been waiting to, hiking Ronan’s shirt up to expose the line of his stomach, the still healing scars.

“God, Ronan,” Adam whispers, tracing over the worst mark with trembling fingers.

“Thanks,” Ronan chokes out. “I work out.”

Adam laughs, and if it comes out a bit wet, neither of them is going to say anything about it. “God, you asshole. I can’t believe I married you.”

Ronan gasps, and his stomach jumps under Adam’s fingers.

Adam looks up at him, and his eyes are wide and so very blue. “Oh,” Adam breathes. “Oh.” He surges up to kiss Ronan, his hand a hot brand on Ronan’s stomach. Ronan pushes up into it, into the hand on his stomach, Adam’s mouth on his.

He has no idea if this will be something that he gets to keep, if the future that Adam spoke of will ever be his. He hopes so, God, he hopes so, but for now, this is enough.

THE END