Midnight Moon

by xoeternalflamexo

{"So a week trapped in a sleeping world with Ronan Lynch is all it takes, huh?" also known as the Henrietta Fairytale.} Ronan Lynch was a wild animal, a warring star, a snakebite; and Ronan Lynch could want anybody in the world, but he chose Adam for his hungry eyes. He chose Adam. And Adam was choosing him right back.

I'll break out your windows, I don't need a key,
Show me your doubts and I'll make you believe,
Yeah, you're still here to haunt me,
You ain't gone,
So I take what I can get.

---

It'd been the strangest week of his life, and that was saying an awful lot, considering his life and his friends' lives – and this town that they lived in, was probably where strange originated from. It was the epitome of strange. It was strange multiplied times twenty. It was a factory that produced a surplus in strange every day. And yet, the events that unfurled in the span of that week would give Adam's customary level of strange a run for its money.

It all began with a pit viper slithering up his front door in the dead of the night.

i.

Adam was catching up on some sleep after days of sleepless nights when hell came knocking. Not that there was much knocking at all, more like incessant bangs against the door and impatient fiddling with the squeaky, protesting knob; which in turn roused Adam out of his dreams.

Adam didn't appreciate being disturbed on the rare instances that he actually got to rest. It wasn't insomnia, it was his restless mind, his overdosing on coffee and his late-night study sessions to keep from failing important exams that his wealthier peers didn't seem to really be overly concerned about considering their annoyingly affluent parents – who could probably just abracadabra a magic wad of cash to get them into college whether they passed or failed.

Lately, though, it was also Cabeswater, ever since he'd offered to be the ancient forest's eyes and ears, it constantly communicated with him, and it was never a spring breeze, or a soft, sugary rustling of leaves, it was never a whisper, it was always loud and violent and almost rancorous. With his luck, he wasn't awfully surprised that that was his reward for sacrificing himself to it. He'd learnt, in time, to deal with it, and maybe to even appreciate it a little bit.

Cabeswater had its ways, but it was undeniable that he wasn't quite sure where he would be if he hadn't offered himself up upon its wild altar. Adam's eyes were still adjusting to the warm, swarming darkness of his room when the banging got considerably louder. "Parrish!" Ronan's voice expurgated through the quiet stillness of his surroundings; sharp and vicious and urgent. "Oh for fuck's sake, don't tell me it's got you, too!"

Adam sighed loudly, rubbing his eyes to get rid of the trails of dancing colors his dreams left behind. It was still difficult to see, but he was able to comprehend silhouettes and shadows now, he scratched the back of his neck as he made his way towards the front door; careful not to walk into a piece of furniture or step on one of his textbooks. He considered switching on the light, but he was afraid his eyes would burn, so he disregarded the idea and swung open the door, glaring at the other boy in disillusioned annoyance.

"What the hell could you possibly want in the middle of the night, Lynch?"

Ronan Lynch didn't seem to give a damn about his half-baked sleep cycle, or his obvious displeasure at his sudden emergence, or about anything, at all, quite frankly. And yet his blue eyes, electric and alive in stark contrast to Adam's sleepy pale ones, widened at the sight of him with something that Adam would've pinned as relief if he didn't know better.

"Jesus, fuck. I'll be damned - you're awake," he muttered, taking a step forward so that he could come inside. "Yes, I am, because you practically broke down my door," Adam snarled.

"I was starting to think that I was the only one, I'm so fucking relieved I'm not the only one, the other boy paid no heat to Adam's exasperation.

Adam immediately blocked the doorway with one arm and his lanky torso, he knew that it wouldn't really keep a cyclone out if it really wanted to uproot everything in its path. And yet he had to at least pretend he could succeed at restraining Ronan; who wasn't making sense, of course, he hardly ever made sense, but this was insane, even for him. "What are you talking about?" he snapped, irritably. Ronan simply looked into his eyes, which seemed to send lightning bolts his way, and snarled.

"I'll explain everything," he said. "Once you let me in."

He sounded serious, as serious as Ronan Lynch ever got, and there was something volcanic and threatening in his tone, as if he didn't think Adam had the balls to slam the door in his face. Simply because of his daring approach, Adam almost wanted to do exactly that, but something kept him from doing it, something in his chest that reminded him that Ronan Lynch was a snake, who only bit when he had reason to, and that he wouldn't be strolling about Adam's place just to take a piss at him when he could be sleeping peacefully at Monmouth, or dreaming at the Barns, or burning buildings to the ground. Adam heaved yet another sigh, and stepped aside to let the boy in, shoulders drooping in defeat.

This better be good, he thought, as he shut the door behind him. Adam fumbled for the light switch while Ronan began to pace the length of his clustered abode. Along with Ronan had come the strangely familiar scent of leather, matchsticks and aftershave. Adam felt like his apartment had suddenly grown seven sizes to house the uncontainable and larger-than-life essence that was his flame of a friend. Sometimes it made Adam jealous, how Ronan had this stop-everything-you're-doing-and-look-at-me thing going for him, how he could probably silence nations with a flick of his eyebrow, how he was raw, unadulterated energy; like gasoline, like a force of nature. Ronan was dressed in his factory setting outfit, a black muscle t-shirt, with a black leather jacket to top it off and low-hanging jeans, also black, and probably worth more than Adam's entire closet.

He randomly recalled the one time he'd naively asked Ronan why he wore so much black, who'd simply curled his lips with a smirk like a shark bite and responded coyly. "Why, to match my soul, of course," it hadn't been funny to Adam then, but it made him chuckle dryly now.

"Ronan," he didn't like using the boy's first name, it felt like unchartered waters somehow, or maybe it just felt weird because they were so habituated to calling each other by their last names, as if they were people who didn't truly care about each other, as if they were people who didn't quest for dead Welsh kings together, as if they were unsolicited acquaintances. "Seriously, is something wrong?"

It was evident by now that Ronan wasn't here just because he'd been sauntering about aimlessly and had stopped by to admire Adam's furnishing. There was something terrible in his entire demeanor, the way he was constantly drumming his fingers against his thigh, how his wild eyes were wider than usual, how he was pacing frantically like he was on fire, like he couldn't stand to carry his own weight. Suddenly, Adam's heart skipped several beats.

"Is it Gansey? Blue?" he asked, almost afraid to let the words be heard and be made tangible.

"No, no. Well, sort of," he jabbered.

Adam simply blinked at him. "Can you please be less cryptic?"

Sometimes, Ronan tested his patience. Scratch that. Ronan tested his patience all-the-god-damn-time.

Ronan rubbed the back of his mostly-shaved head and groaned. "I know this is going to sound batshit crazy, but the proof's waiting right outside this apartment," Adam folded his arms over his chest and gestured for him to continue before he began to analyze the boy's words and produce ill-judged conclusions. "I… I was on my way back to Monmouth from the Barns, and there was all this traffic, all these cars just at a dead halt in the middle of the road, and the signal was green, so of course I thought to myself "what the fuck" and got out to see what these bastards were waiting for and… and they were all asleep,"

"What?"

Adam wasn't quite sure what was going on, aside from the fact that what he was claiming wasn't possible and made no sense, he felt like Ronan was going to explode, with the way he was constantly flittering about like a whirlwind that couldn't be contained. Adam suddenly flinched at a passing mental image of scraping bits of Ronan guts off his walls.

"They were all asleep," he echoed, his voice like an electric shock to his senses, completely jarring him out of his thoughts. "Some of them slumped on the steering wheel or against the window, but every single person in every single car was asleep. I – I thought they were bloody dead at first, almost pissed myself, but I checked a couple of them for pulse and it turns out they're all just… sleeping, or in some sort of deep coma," he explained, before running his hands over his head once more and finally plopping down on the edge of Adam's bed, making it creak weakly under his weight. "I tried to wake them up, I tried! And nothing," he went on. "And it wasn't just those people on the road, it was everybody. I tried calling Gansey, Blue, and nobody would pick up. So I drove to Monmouth and then 300 Fox Way and Gansey's under this – this spell, or whatever, too – and so are all our psychic friends," he took a deep breath and let it out.

"So I charged over here, I had to see whether you were like them too…" his voice trailed off, before his shoulders straightened again. "Though I suppose in hindsight, it would be easier to just show you than to explain it," he said, almost as an afterthought; before standing back up so quick Adam felt like he was moving in fast-forward. "Come on," he insisted, already walking past Adam, on his way to the door.

In the vast catalog of unfairness that was his life, there were still some things he liked to assume were impossible, and if what Ronan was implying had actually happened, if he were suddenly to live in a world that compromised of no sentient beings except for Ronan and himself, he was going to lose his mind.

It wasn't often that Adam Parrish searched for words and came up empty-handed. He would've thought Ronan was playing some sort of sick prank on him if it wasn't for the terror in his eyes.

After all, it wasn't often that he watched a lion cower in fear at his own kingdom.

Adam strived desperately to wrap his head around this, and when it didn't work, he simply sighed for the umpteenth time, grabbed his coat from the stand and followed Ronan out of his apartment.

"If you're screwing with me, Lynch, I swear to god I'll kill you," he snapped.

Ronan was already half-way down the stairs.

ii.

Adam used to believe in the laws of nature, back before he knew magic was real. He was a skeptic, only believing in what was displayed in front of his eyes, only permeable to concrete evidence. Now he knew that the world that they lived in merely wore a mask of normality and physics, the reality of it all was rather jeering: both astonishing and terrifying at the same time.

The world still managed to surprise him.

The night was both soft and hard-edged, the autumnal breeze was like a dozen kisses against his skin and a dozen slaps at the same time. The sky was cloudless and littered with stars; the moon grimaced, like it was empathizing to Adam's own mood. Everything was silent, more silent than Henrietta ought to be, and Adam realized that his neighbor's dog, who often shouted at the night sky (and in turn added to one of the billion reasons he had trouble sleeping at night), wasn't barking for once.

They strolled towards the end of Adam's lane, where Ronan came to a stop so abruptly that Adam almost crashed into his back. He pointed to something towards their left, Adam followed his gaze. There were two cars stopped in the street. One perched at the corner, as if it was just about to make a turn. The other was halfway down the opposite street, simply halted in the middle as if it had run out of gas. Both their lights and their engines were off. Ronan approached the one at the stop sign and wrenched the driver's door open. The interior light came on, illuminating the inside of the car. "Look," he said.

Cautiously, in case it was still some kind of trick, Adam leaned forward. The driver was sitting up, still buckled in, and sound asleep with his head leaning back against the headrest at a rather uncomfortable angle. The man was snoring softly, most certainly asleep.

When he glanced up at Ronan for some kind of explanation, he had an eyebrow raised as if to say, "I told you, now do something."

Not that he was sure what he could even do. The driver wasn't anybody he knew, but he couldn't just leave the man like this. It seemed wrong.

Reaching out, he gently shook his shoulders. The driver only snorted in response, then resumed snoring. Adam shook him again, harder this time, the driver didn't even react.

Without warning, Ronan leaned across him and planted the heel of his hand on the steering wheel. The sound of the car's horn was startingly loud, and Adam jumped back. The horn's blare echoed through the intersection and down the street. Ronan made sure to keep it blasting for a good two minutes, during which the driver never even twitched. Nor did any of the neighbors look out to see what the commotion was about. The dog was still ominously silent.

Adam simply stared, panic grasping at his heart, his stomach twisting.

Ronan hadn't been kidding after all, and the gears in Adam's brain were churning in a hundred different directions. Adam didn't like not knowing things, he liked solving puzzles, sure, but that was only when he had all the pieces. This was like some kind of cruel joke. "Maybe… Maybe it was something in the water," he managed, flimsy, even to his own ear. Ronan, who was stood by his side, chewing on one of the several leather bands he wore around his wrist in anxiousness, scoffed. "Maybe it was fucking Santa Claus," he derided. "Don't you think it's awfully ironic? We're in search of a sleeping Glendower and now suddenly the whole fucking town's rock-a-by-baby," he muttered.

"Noah," Adam said suddenly, which made Ronan scoff again. "You don't think I tried to contact him? I guess it's a public holiday in the land of the dead. Do you think the Underworld has spas?" Adam pressed his temples. Normally, this kind of insanity was Gansey's territory, Gansey would know just what to do, he would probably dig up some book that was more ancient than Glendower himself and begin to sprout out solutions. Even if Gansey didn't have a solution, his presence had always been a security blanket in situations of the supernatural variety. Not having Gansey to tell them what their next step was, or to reassure them in his calm-yet-commanding Gansey voice that everything was going to be okay, made Adam's nerves rattle.

"Shit," Adam said, finally. "Shit." Ronan agreed.

"Okay, okay. Maybe we could call for help? Have you tried –"

"Do you take me for a half-wit, Parrish? All the phone lines are dead, cable TV and wifi doesn't work, it's like Henrietta's been sealed off from the rest of the world. I have a feeling it's just this town that's infected," he explained. "I tried to leave," he added quickly.

"And?"

"And I couldn't."

Adam felt his stomach flip. "What do you mean you couldn't?"

"There's some sort of freakish invisible barrier that's keeping us trapped in this shithole, that's what I fucking mean."

"Oh, god," Adam said. "Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God!"

"Jesus fucking Christ isn't going to do shit, but you've got to chill out. Alright? We're going to wake these people; we're going to figure this out. Hey, maybe this will all blow over by morning, maybe it was some kind of enchantment gone wrong at 300 Fox Way, you know how they're always dabbling around in all that mystical shit,"

Adam knew Ronan well enough by now to understand that this was his twisted way of reassuring him and telling him that panicking was not going to help the situation at all, only Ronan Lynch, out of all the people in his life, was the only one at the moment who he could remove his frustrations out on, and Adam had plenty of frustrations going around; enough to last him a lifetime, or seven.

Adam felt the anger like a bubble at first. "Chill out," he muttered dryly. "The whole town is asleep and you're the only person besides me who's awake for some reason and you're asking me to chill. out."

"I actually have a theory on why we're the only two people who weren't zapped by the sleeping curse or whatever. I think it's because we're both kind of connected to Cabeswater in our own ways. You're its slave and I'm the greywaren."

Adam's anger was now simmering. "You did this," he accused, misguided in his rage and unable to do anything about it. This was rage born from panic and both feelings were relatively intense, at war inside his gut. He knew what he was claiming wasn't even probable, there was no way Ronan had that much power, he could pull things out of dreams, he couldn't put a town to sleep, and yet, he couldn't control himself. "What did you do, Lynch?" he demanded.

"Have you lost every brain cell you were ever gifted, Parrish?" snarled Ronan. "Do you think I would actually want to live in a world like this? Are you fucking telling me I'm capable of something this retarded?" he was biting his lower lip, his teeth glittered in the dark, his chest heaved ferociously from his own fury. "You were the only one awake. I was asleep and you were the only one awake. You must've done something!"

"I didn't do anything," Ronan muttered. "Now calm your tits before I give in to my urge to punch you in the throat."

Adam's anger was boiling; he could feel it worsening in his chest. "This is probably all your fault," he muttered crudely. "You wanted to be royalty? Here's a kingdom for you to rule! Go ahead, Lynch! Grab the crown off Gansey's head!"

Ronan bit his lower lip, there was something hazardous in his eyes. "You don't know what you're talking about. You need to calm down,"

"I can't calm down, god damn it!" Adam stomped over to him, closing the distance between them, his face merely inches away from Ronan's; whose breath smelt like he'd been chewing gum. Adam glared at the other boy, Ronan kept his cool, something intense yet caged veiled intricately into his features; perfectly embroidered.

"I'm not going to hit you, I know you want me to, but I won't do it." He snapped, matter-of-factly.

Adam frowned at him, still inches away from his face. Instigating Ronan, at this point, was like requesting an earthquake to move. His mind reeled. He wouldn't give up. He had to get the absolute anguish out of his system. "Don't pretend like you haven't been itching for a fight. Gansey's dog's off the leash and he can do as he pleases."

There was a part of him that was watching all these events unfurl with an expression of horror plastered over his face, and he was practically screaming at the Hulk who'd possessed Adam all of a sudden to stop it immediately.

"Parrish, for the love of fucking –" he didn't let Ronan finish.

"You know what," Adam spat, his anger sizzling and scorching and towering above him like an inferno. "Maybe we're the only two people awake because you wanted this!"

The subtext behind that sentence was loud and clear: because you wanted me.

Somewhere, in the part of his brain that wasn't overcome with overwhelming rage, he knew Ronan would never do that, he knew Ronan had a crush on him, but that he would never act on it unless he was a hundred percent sure that Adam wanted it. Ronan wasn't the guy Adam once used to think he was, he wasn't an entitled asshole or a selfish jerk who cursed the world just because he felt like it. And yet he knew it was the only way to push the other boy's buttons, to get him furious.

It worked.

Ronan, in that moment, was not a human being. He was a solar storm, astronomical in his aggression, untamable as a hellhound and absolutely unstoppable as he charged at Adam and punched him in the jaw, and then in the stomach, and then under his eye. Adam had his own demons to feed, he fought back, bringing his storms to the table, despite the fact that he hated violence, despite the fact that he'd been beaten up so many times that he could barely keep count anymore, despite the fact that Ronan was a million times stronger than he was, despite the fact that he was doing this out of fear and not out of spite.

Ronan pushed Adam down as he tried to steady himself and his spine met the ground with a sickening crack, and then, instead of going for the final blow, Ronan turned around; flipped him off and began to stomp away, trailing dust and leaving Adam's entire body stinging; even though he was aware somewhere subconsciously even then, that Ronan had tried to be as lenient as one could when they were beating the shit out of the other party.

"I'm going to Monmouth to do some research and get us out of this new form of shitstorm we've found ourselves in. You're welcome to join me when you're finished throwing tantrums."

iii.

The deadness of everything on the outside absolutely mirrored the deadness he felt on the inside in that moment. The skies were dark and unforgiving, the birds and the crickets had been silenced; snatched of their songs. It was all wind and ghosts and rustling concrete.

Adam felt terrible, his jaw throbbed from where Ronan's fist had met his bone, his eyes were bleary and thirsty for sleep, there was a hailstorm in his stomach: guilt, misery, fear.

He thought about Cabeswater, closing his eyes for a moment before he entered Monmouth, and imagining his lungs filling up with its lush evergreen; the roots and the shrubbery reaching out to him, shielding him; the saltwater of its streams on his tongue, the sugar and mist in the air. What's going on? He questioned, and then he repeated the question in Latin. Cabeswater, for once, was silent.

Just like everything else.

Everything except for his own mind.

Monmouth Manufacturing in the wee hours, was even more gutted and black-eyed than usual, with its stale, rusty walls and its old factory smell reminding him of a haunted house from a classic horror movie. As he climbed the stairs to the second floor where the boys lived, he spotted a black cat sound asleep in a box of shadows in the corner. It was almost camouflaged by the darkness, but he'd heard its soft, sleepy purring.

Adam took a deep breath, and then walked in, somehow knowing Ronan would've left the door unlocked for him.

The interiors of the house were just as much of a mess as the boys' lives, clattered with everything and nothing, Gansey's random artifacts picked up on trips from faraway places, coffee stains on the floor, Ronan's shoes tossed flimsily by the derelict welcome mat and Gansey's mini-model of Henrietta. The pad, despite being wide and spacious, felt small and cluttered, heavy with memories, ambitions and imaginings.

It was a home appropriate for boys who dreamed of seeking kings.

Adam thought there was something ironic about the fact that even in a room full of mystifying and fascinating objects, Ronan still managed to be the loudest thing present.

He sat there lazily, back to the wall, eyelashes dipped into a large book that looked rather out of place in his hands, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent with his arm hanging loosely atop his knee. Even though Adam had felt Ronan's eyes flutter onto him and away, he barely reacted to his entrance.

Adam didn't say a word, because there was nothing to be said, not yet. Quietly, he sauntered over to where Ronan sat and joined him by the wall, careful not to step on Gansey's precious cardboard town. "Is Gansey in bed?" he asked.

"Like a baby in a cradle," Ronan replied, without looking up from the fat book he was reading, the fat book that Adam was pretty sure was written completely in Latin.

"Do you want a candy bar?" he asked, holding one out for him to take. Adam had snagged a few from a store on his way over, and even though there was a part of him that didn't want to use the cash he had in his wallet when under the circumstances, stealing a couple of chocolate bars wouldn't be a big deal, he still didn't have it inside him to be a thief. It felt wrong, against his principals – so he'd left the sleeping cashier some money to wake up to for the bars taken.

Ronan nodded wordlessly and took it from him. Adam had already scoffed one down on the way over. "What are you reading?" he questioned, glancing at the book Ronan was looking at. "It's a grimoire, it's got all these nasty curses and spells – I thought it would be a good place to start considering this feels like a curse,"

Adam was quiet, his mind was leaping up and down, like it was trying to catch his attention, like there was something extremely obvious that he'd been missing, when it came to him, he felt stupid. He hated feeling stupid.

"The sleeping kingdom," he muttered, more to himself than to Ronan.

Ronan took a huge bite of the candy bar and paused to speak, mouthful of chocolate. "Ironic," he scoffed, gulping down the sweet remains. "No, I mean literally. Have you heard of the sleeping kingdom? You know – the one from Sleeping Beauty?"

"Is that a movie? Because I only watch movies with titles like 'Apocalypse Now' and 'Pet Sematary',"

"It's a fairytale," Adam explained, before gawking at the other boy in disbelief. "You're seriously telling me you've never heard of Sleeping Beauty?"

Ronan merely shrugged. "I prefer ghost stories to fairytales," he said, with a sly grin.

"Well, in the folktale, there's this fairy who puts everyone in the kingdom to sleep. Quite like what's happening to Henrietta right now," he said. Ronan frowned, eyebrows furrowed, in the dim light of the fluorescents, with his nose peeping from behind a book, he looked like someone from another world rather than the Ronan he knew, or claimed he knew. It was insane, Adam thought, how the boy's features twisted from nightmarish to wonderful like the weather. He actually looked soft all of a sudden, like crushed ice.

Adam realized he'd been staring, he also realized Ronan had noticed. "Do you want my autograph, Parrish?"

"I'm good," muttered Adam, discomfited, eyes darting away.

"But I thought fairytales were supposed to be all unicorns and pennywhistles," Ronan said, absentmindedly scratching the bit of stubble on his chin.

"Not necessarily," Adam replied. "In fact, the more ancient roots of fairytales have always been embedded in darkness. The Grimm versions of these stories were all pretty twisted and dire. Mothers killing daughters, acts of adultery, children dying; brutal stuff," Ronan chuckled dryly. "And we turned that crap into bed time stories? I don't know if that's awesome or sadistic," Adam considered this. "Probably both."

Adam sighed, running a hand through his hair. He felt Ronan watching him again, before looking away right on cue. It still intrigued Adam that someone like Ronan could want someone like him, considering that if there was beauty inside Adam, he couldn't see it himself. If Ronan had to pick and choose, surely he could have fallen for someone like Gansey, regal, handsome, and nicer. Gansey would've never said the kinds of things Adam had. Gansey would've never hurt his feelings. Ronan had feelings, even though he liked to pretend like he didn't feel pain, if there was one thing Adam knew about the boy, it was that he felt - he felt things like glass shards and bee stings and toes jammed against wood.

"I'm sorry," Adam didn't enjoy apologizing, it wounded his pride, upset his ego, broke his own rules; and yet he felt like he had to. "I shouldn't have blamed all of this on you. I was scared. I panicked. I needed to blow off steam and you were the only one I could take it out on."

"I know, Parrish," Ronan said, slamming the book shut and standing up all of a sudden, rather abruptly. "What are you doing?" he wondered out loud, as his gaze followed the boys head to the kitchen/bathroom/laundry, when he returned, he held an ice pack. He tossed it at Adam; he caught it at his chest.

"Your bruise is swelling, it looks like it's going to grow a face," he said, in way of explanation.

Adam accepted the ice pack and held it to his jaw, the coolness of it numbed the pain, and he sighed in relief. Ronan looked upset as he began to pace once more. "Chainsaw's asleep too," he said peevishly, he was very sensitive about his bird. "And so are Matthew and my mom," he added.

"That's strange," because Matthew, Aurora and Chainsaw were dream creatures, and while they were seamless replicas of real people/birds, they ticked differently than them. "Cabeswater has some explaining to do," Ronan agreed. "Your fairytale theory, does it involve a cure, a solution – something to wake them up?" Adam scratched the back of his neck. "True love's kiss," he said dumbly.

Ronan gawked at him for a moment, before bursting into laughter. The sound of Ronan's laughter was a heart-stopping thing, it wasn't heard often, but when it was, it seemed to rattle the ground underneath his feet. "That sounds fun. Let's go around kissing everybody in town," he said.

"Maybe we should drive to Cabeswater," Adam suggested. "It hasn't spoken to you?" Ronan asked, picking up a snowglobe from one of Gansey's ample boxes and juggling it in one hand.

"Just as mute as everyone else," he sighed.

Before Ronan could respond, Adam felt every hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and then, Noah appeared.

He stepped out of the shadows, a silvery silhouette, everything about him hazy like bad television reception; everything except the smudge on his face where he'd been smashed. Looking at Noah these days, it felt absolutely impossible that they hadn't figured out that he was a ghost sooner. He looked like half a skeleton and half an apparition, like a fairytale creature himself.

He was a portrait of shadows and rainclouds; a boy whose life was lost to the ruins.

"Something weird is going on." He stated as soon as he emerged.

"Well, don't you catch on quick," Ronan snarled. Adam frowned. "Where have you been?"

Noah looked sad. "I don't know where I go sometimes," he admitted. "The ley line feels weaker when Blue's asleep," he added.

"Update: we're standing in a town full of sleeping Glendowers," Ronan mused, while Noah took a step forward to admire the snowglobe in Ronan's hands. It was attractive, from one of Gansey's trips to Paris, a globe housing a tiny gemmed replica of the Eiffel Tower, little people, snowflakes and glitter.

Ronan left it to Noah's mercy, whose misty eyes lit up at the sight of something sparkly. "It's so pretty," he said, sounding less like a dead boy and more like a five year old boy. "I wish I could keep it," he grumbled. "Knock yourself out," Ronan said. "Break it, even. I'd love to see the look on Gansey's face if he finds one of his prized souvenirs in pieces,"

"If he ever wakes up," Adam muttered. "Noah," he said. "Do you have no clue what's going on?"

Noah was still busy gawking at the snowglobe like a little kid unwrapping a present on Christmas. He shook it, and then chuckled, and then shook it again. "Glittery!"

"Noah," said Adam and Ronan, at the same time.

Noah looked up from his new toy, his smile melting away. "I don't know, but there's this weird energy to everything, like we're encased in a shell. Listen – you guys have to find a way to undo this, whatever it is. What happens if this goes on for days? How long would the sleepers survive without food or water or their basic biological processes? I'm not sure how it all works, but I'm scared. And if I'm scared, you guys should be too. Death kind of relieves you of most fears," he explained.

Adam felt a lump the size of a brick form in his throat and sit there. Ronan looked weary too.

"Fuck," he said. "I was hoping you'd be more helpful than that."

"I'm sorry," Noah said, his voice began to diminish like it was coming from a great distance, his eyes widened in something like fright and he vanished, the snowglobe clattered to the floor in his wake.

"Oh shit, not again, Noah," Ronan grumbled, despite his earlier request to break the thing, he looked disappointed about its fall.

They stared at the spilling liquid, the fallen Eiffel Tower, the shattered glass. It felt like hope snatched away.

iv.

Minutes passed by like hours, heavy on his chest, moving in a slow, drone-line fashion; like they wanted to make themselves memorable.

Adam would remember, of course; the night the town slept. How could he ever forget such a numinous and dreadful event? He felt like a character from a fairytale, only Ronan was not a princess and this was Henrietta. Strange things occurred in Henrietta all the time, only previously, the strangest things Adam knew were his friends, and Cabeswater, and Blue's family of 'psy-chicks' as Ronan often liked to refer to them.

The research was proving unfruitful; the light that spilled in through the windows announced that dawn was on its way and the words from the book were no longer popping out at him, they were now melting off the page. He couldn't concentrate anymore.

Adam finally glanced at Ronan; he'd been avoiding looking at the other boy for a very long time, simply because Ronan's mere presence was a distracting thing. They'd both lost themselves perhaps, in their own minds, in their own respective research. A word hadn't been spoken in an hour. It was the quietest Ronan had ever been.

Adam had to look, just to make sure that he was still sitting there right next to him, even though every few minutes, he heard Ronan sigh profoundly or clear his throat or scratch his cheek.

When he looked, what he saw was a drowsy boy almost falling asleep with his head still stuck inside a book. Adam had to stifle a laugh, the Ronan he'd known wouldn't be caught dead anywhere in the vicinity of rusty, old books, and yet here he was. Adam shook the boy's shoulders, gently. Ronan muttered something incoherent, sleepily. "Lynch," he said softly.

"Mm. Yeah, I'm awake, I'm awake," Ronan's head sprung out of the book, which he slammed shut and tossed at the wall in exasperation, he blinked some of the sleep out of his eyes. "What happens if we fall asleep?" Adam asked the question that he could tell Ronan had been thinking about as well, before he'd lost track of the thought and let his fatigue wash over him.

"I don't fucking know," Ronan muttered, annoyed. "Gansey's useless pile of books have been a grand waste of time, I suggest we just drive up to Cabeswater now,"

"We should do it in the morning," Adam suggested. He was still holding on to a little hope that everything would go back to normal when the sun came up, that this whole night had just been a very surreal dream. "What do you suggest we do while we wait for sunrise? You want to braid each other's hair?" Ronan mocked. Adam rolled his eyes, "Maybe we're impervious to the sleeping spell," he suggested.

"What gives you that impression?"

"Your Cabeswater theory makes a lot of sense. Not to mention, you woke me up. I shouldn't have been able to wake up if it'd gotten to me too."

"We can't risk that. It could have been a one-off. What if we catch it?"

"I don't think we will,"

"I'm not risking that, and I'm not letting you risk that. End of discussion." He snapped furiously, his nostrils flaring slightly, the vexation painting all his features in greys.

Adam sighed and got up then, "I'm starving," he said. "I'm going to whip us something to eat. If you have anything other than beer and cornflakes in the fridge, that is."

"Do you forget that Dick Gansey lives here?"

"My bad," he made them sandwiches, he would've made them coffee as well, but their coffee maker was ancient and looked like it produced cobwebs rather than beverage. Adam didn't touch it, in fear of poisoning himself.

Ronan bit into Adam's sandwich. "It's crappy and a little too light on the mayo," he announced.

"Well, unless you want to get off your ass and cook yourself something to eat, it's all you're getting." Ronan didn't complain after that. Sometimes Adam wondered if Ronan actually meant all the off-handed comments he made. When he looked at him again, when he was certain that Ronan was too immersed in devouring the sandwich to pay him any heat, he thought that for someone who pulled things out of dreams, it was ironic that he looked like something that had been pulled out of a dream himself, and yet – at the same time, he was stark reality, sharp edges and biting like a wolf howl. He felt the sudden urge to get to know Ronan better, since it seemed unfair that Ronan knew him, even though he'd always told himself that he was unknowable.

"Do you think that if eyes could leave marks on people, we would've left a lot of marks on each other?" Ronan asked, rather unexpectedly, almost like he'd been thinking it and had spoken it aloud by accident.

"What do you mean?" Adam questioned, gulping, playing dumb.

"You know exactly what I mean," replied Ronan, his smile resembling the dark side of the moon.

Adam said nothing.

It truly had been a crazy night, he'd been jarred awake, beaten up, and now he was sitting on the Monmouth floor eating cold sandwiches with Ronan Lynch.

It was ironic, he thought, how appropriately lonesome it all was.

v

He opened his eyes to a strange sensation in his chest and the gentle whirring of a ceiling fan bathed in light.

He opened his eyes wider.

Sunlight filtered in through the windows, dust motes danced in between bars of aureate, everything was still dead silent. He couldn't believe they'd fallen asleep. When had they fallen asleep? Adam strained his neck, rubbing the back of it to get rid of a kink, he was spread out on the floor, and his head had been resting on something soft and yet hard - he realized it was Ronan's stomach he'd been using as a headrest.

Adam instantly pushed himself into a sitting position, his cheeks burning as he stared at the other boy who was using a textbook as a pillow and had one arm covering his eyes. Adam didn't want to wake him because there was something mesmerizing about Ronan sleeping, about how harmless he became, how unguarded, how it made him feel like Adam's averageness could never truly match up to Ronan's beauty. Ronan's features lit up like a billboard in the morning light, his jaw sharp enough to cut yourself on and yet with his thick lashes dipped and his lips slightly parted, he looked like he ought to belong in a museum. Unfortunately, the thought of being alone in a sleeping world was too upsetting.

Maybe they're all up; maybe everything's gone back to normal.

It was wishful thinking and he knew it.

He got up and stretched, his limbs aching from exhaustion and being punched again, the first injuries since the bruises he'd been awarded from his father's cruel hand. He made his way to Gansey's room where Gansey… was still fast asleep. The soft rise and fall of his chest assured him that he was still alive. Gansey looked regal, Adam thought, even while he was asleep. All the worry lines on his face disappeared and eased out, and he looked like the prince of a faraway kingdom. Adam struggled to wake him, and failed epically.

He sauntered out of the bedroom disappointedly. "Are we still in hell?" came Ronan's voice, startling Adam lightly. When he turned around, Ronan hadn't moved from his position, and his arm still covered his eyes. "Yes," Adam muttered dejectedly. "I tried to wake Gansey and nothing," he said. "I think it's high time we pay Cabeswater a visit."

"We should brush our teeth first."

xxxxx

They had to take several detours considering the road was littered with awkwardly positioned vehicles that they couldn't exactly run over, especially with their occupants still sound asleep inside them. Ronan got close to homicide, however, quite a few times, cussing creatively and stomping on the gas pedal so hard Adam was afraid they would fly instead of sprint. Ronan was a drag racer after all; he probably had no concept of safety on the road. And yet he found himself staring at the other boy, every time he was certain that he had his eyes trained on the road ahead and wouldn't notice. Adam on the other hand, couldn't stop noticing.

Every little thing – the way Ronan kept rolling the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip everytime he had to reverse the car because of a road block or ghostly traffic jam; a gesture which made Adam's stomach hurtle off of a cliff and his fists clench. The way his eyelashes dipped and fluttered like fireflies in the dim glow of taillights as he swore in that poetic way that only he could master, making ugly words sound beautiful; how he dribbled his impatient fingers over the steering wheel, drumming up a beat, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and how he kept unconsciously heaving a sigh and running his fingers lightly over the nape of his neck in exasperation, tracing the edges of his capering tattoo.

Ronan was doing it too, everytime he thought Adam wasn't paying attention. Every time Ronan stared, Adam looked away, and everytime Adam stared, Ronan looked away. Adam sighed as he stared out at the whirring trees and sleeping people, the musky greens and the murky browns that made up the patchwork of Henrietta.

He thought they could keep this charade going forever.

Once they finally got to Cabeswater, Adam made it a point to let the other boy know that they would be taking the Hondayota next time, provided there was a next time. Ronan simply scoffed like he'd made a joke and strode towards the preternatural forest.

Everytime he stepped into Cabeswater, he felt like he was stepping into a dream; as if reality's clutches on him got a lot looser when he was embraced by the forest's tender arms. Ronan was a few paces ahead of him, stomping about like pumped on steroids. Adam could instantly tell that he was a lot more bothered about this than he seemed to be letting on. It made him feel twice as more foolish for pointing fingers at him the night before.

Around them, Cabeswater chattered and whispered mellifluously. Non-existent birds still flew overhead; the sky was starker, bluer, and more perceptible than it had been outside of the bubble that was this place. Everything in Cabeswater looked like it had been painted carefully by some fortified artist's careful hand, a romantic's depiction, a wanderer's ideal, an explorer's masterpiece. For a moment, just a moment, Adam halted and closed his eyes, listening to the water gurgling over rocks, to the rustling songs of the leaves, to the gentle whirl of spring encircling him. He held his breath and then let it out, his veins sizzled with Cabeswater's energy, and he felt flowers growing inside him, bundling plants and moss.

Every single time he came here, he recalled the day he'd given himself over.

I will be your hands. I will be your eyes.

"Do you want me to stand over by that clearing and hoist you up like Simba from The Lion King so you can commemorate yourself?" Ronan snapped, completely derailing Adam's train of thought. He felt embarrassed, but then again, why did he care what Ronan thought? He wanted to come up with a witty retort; instead, he just shook his head in disbelief. "Oh, so you've seen The Lion King but you haven't heard of sleeping beauty,"

"You forget I have a care bear for a brother," he replied, before continuing on. "Come on," he muttered. "Wait," said Adam. "The Trees – something's not right here," he could hear something, only it seemed to be coming from his deaf ear rather than his functioning one.

"No shit something's not right. All of Henrietta's asleep, Noah's being a noob, and the trees won't talk," Ronan groaned.

The trees suddenly began to whistle, louder, louder, louder; like war drums, as if instigated by Ronan's words. The wind picked up pace, rushing like it had a train to catch, clouds had joined the plain cerulean of the sky. "Are you making this happen?" Ronan asked, Adam simply shook his head no.

"In that case," said Ronan. "What in the name of fuckery is going on?"

Everything around them began to hum, pulsate, glower. They heard the thundering of a thousand hooves against the forest floor; a stampede was coming. Ronan's eyes widened in panic. "Is that a shitstorm I hear?" Adam frowned. He was begging Cabeswater to stop, to explain. "WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME?" he yelled, looking like an idiot yelling at the heavens, but he had to try and negotiate, try and understand.

"Cabeswater's lost its nutsack, that's what's its telling me,"

"Shut up, will you?"

The trees spoke. Cogito ergo sum, cogito ergo sum. And then, duo capita sunt meliora quam unum. And then, daturos tempus, daturos tempus.

The chaos quieted down, Cabeswater returned to its semi-normal state. The wind calmed itself, the leaves of the trees were dancing again, rather than charging into battle, and the sounds of the hooves had vanished, like a stampede of thousands had simply evaporated into mist. Ronan heaved a sigh of relief, pressing at his temples.

"Did you get that?" Adam asked, even though he was almost ninety-nine percent sure he'd gotten the translation right for once.

Ronan nodded, looking colorful and magnificent in the backdrop of glowing forest. "I think, therefore I am, I think, therefore I am. Two heads are better than one. Give time, give time."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Hell if I know,"

vi.

"Well, all that established is that Cabeswater's a bitch," announced Ronan.

Adam shot him a look, surprisingly offended. "Like you weren't thinking it," he scoffed, in response to his look. "I think what that really established is that Cabeswater knows," suggested Adam.

"Of course it knows. It's a talking forest. I never doubted its omnipresent abilities for a second. The real question is – why?" he explained. "If it knows, why isn't it doing anything about it?"

"You said it yourself, it's a talking forest. It's not like the trees can grow limbs and just start pouncing around Henrietta, breaking people out of their sleep. I think it was trying to tell us that we have to fix this for it,"

"Yeah, now we're doing its dirty work. Maybe we should do its laundry too; separate the whites from the reds,"

"Ronan,"

"And for once, couldn't it say something straightforward instead of spouting nonsense riddles," he muttered, his voice slightly raised, his fists bawled.

"Speaking in tongue is how Cabeswater communicates best."

"I know this feels like a royal goose chase but I think –" Ronan cut him off.

"It feels like shit - goose shit."

"Ronan," echoed Adam. The other boy was having trouble meeting his eyes, the edges of his lips were curved in distress, and his eyebrows were knitted together. He was a sky before a storm. "Hey, you need to remain calm. Remember what you told me? We'll figure this out; together."

Adam took a step closer to place a hand on the boy's shoulder after a mental debate over whether or not it was appropriate. Ronan swatted his hand away. "You're not Gansey,"

Adam felt a spark go off in his chest. "You're right," he said. "I'm not, and that's why I'm not going to tell you that it's all going to be okay, and I'm not going to baby you, nor am I going to take your bullshit. I'm going to tell you to keep yourself together for the sake of both of our sanities, and I'm going to remind you that frustration isn't going to do anything but rub salt to the wound. Do you understand?" he asked, looking into Ronan's eyes, pinning his gaze on him.

"I know this is hard for you, it's no cake walk for me, either – but we're going to get through this." He added.

Ronan huffed and puffed, and for a moment, Adam was afraid he would blow his house down, but then his shoulders slumped, his eyes cleared and he sighed languidly. Adam's brain was screaming at him to take a step back, but he remained frozen in place. Ronan kicked at some rubble and then, to Adam's utter surprise, he closed the distance between them by wrapping his arms around his neck in an embrace.

It was such an alien gesture, especially from Ronan, and it had come out of nowhere. Adam felt like he couldn't move a limb, he was paralyzed in place. Ronan still smelt like leather and aftershave – but also of misty Cabeswater, a strangely comforting scent. Ronan's palm was warm against the back of Adam's neck, and it made his skin tingle and his nerves shudder. This proximity to Ronan was enticing and a bit dizzying, like a carnival ride. The other boy was only slightly taller than Adam; but he looked smaller and even younger, when he buried his face in Adam's neck. He could feel Ronan's warm breath against his skin, it was driving him nuts, and it was making his body feel things it shouldn't. He hadn't felt like this since the last time he'd been around Blue, back when he still had feelings for her, only that multiplied times a hundred. With Ronan's chest mushed against his own, he was finding it troubling to breathe, especially when he could feel the boy's pulse roaring in his deaf ear like some sort of voodoo.

Perhaps it was just an auditory hallucination, even though it didn't feel like one.

Cautiously, slowly, Adam wrapped his own arms around the other boy's back, in reciprocation. He patted him comfortingly, once, twice, and then closed his eyes to breathe into the dewy scent that was just perfume and gasoline and so, extremely Ronan. Only before he could even inhale, Ronan jerked back.

The boy's ears were red and the color was finding its way to his cheeks too.

"If you ever tell anybody about this, I'll eat your sorry face for breakfast." He said.

vii.

"It's been three days since the world fell silent, and so far, there's been little progress. People seem to be in a sort of magical coma that isn't affecting them physically at all; as if their regular biological processes have been put on pause. I suppose this is a good thing, because we were worried this languid period of sleep would eventually kill everyone, but I guess, it won't. It sounds insane, I feel insane. Ronan's been driving himself up the wall, and I keep telling him that removing our frustration on inanimate objects won't do us any good. I caught him cursing at a fruit basket the other day; I told him that our fate wasn't in the fruit basket's hands. The trees are silent, ever since Cabeswater gave us that cryptic message; it hasn't been as active as it used to be. We know we're the only ones awake because we're the only ones who can figure this out, but at this point, a resolution seems heavily unlikely. I'm hoping that there's –"

"You talking to yourself, again, you fucking weirdo?"

"I told you, I'm simply keeping a record of our experience."

"Well, can you nerd out somewhere besides my bedroom? I'm going to try and dream us up another solution because I, unlike you, am actually being productive," he snapped.

Adam sighed and stopped the tape recorder; a dusty, fallow toy that used to sit in one of Gansey's boxes of Fantastical Things until he'd dug it up on a sleepless night.

"I'll stay," he said, staring down at the ground instead of at Ronan's face because he was aware of the jeering look he was going to get. "That's cute, Parrish. But you better leave the gritty stuff to the grown-ups," he said. "I'm serious," Adam insisted.

"Yeah, no. Definitely not after the last time," on one hand, Ronan made a fair point, the last time Adam had been around him while he'd been dreaming, Ronan had brought to life a dying double of himself and Adam had been left flabbergasted, and a little traumatized. Despite that, he thought he'd taken it quite well, and he could handle it now, he knew Ronan, and he would never ask for it because he thought he was Mr. Invincible, but he needed his help. "Cabeswater will listen; it's only trying to help. So let us – let me," he insisted.

Ronan's presence seemed to light up the shadows he was standing in, his eyes were trembling blue stars. "I said not again. Now fuck off,"

"No."

"What?" Ronan actually arched an eyebrow in incredulous amusement; clearly, he wasn't used to being overruled. "Why are you being unreasonable, Parrish?" he asked, Adam didn't drop his gaze from the other boy's face, feeling stubborn as a storm. "Why are you?" he countered. "Don't you want to get out of this dilemma sooner rather than later?"

"Of course I do, but I don't know how chirpy I'll be about that if a night horror disembowels you," he snapped, something dark and terrible simmering over his lips. Adam felt his stomach lurch unhappily at the thought, and yet he let the fleeting notion of terror sink. "I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'll risk it."

Ronan groaned, cursing incoherently under his breath and scratching the back of his head, he turned around so his back was facing Adam and stared at the wall like maybe it could talk Adam out of the bad idea if he couldn't. Adam felt his eyes dart towards the midnight black embroidery of the tips of his tattoo, jutting out from his t-shirt collar. He had the sudden urge to run the tips of his fingers all over it.

What is happening to me?

Finally, Ronan sighed, rolling his shoulders back in defeat. "Just for the record, if a night horror does come after you, I might just let it have a nice, chunky bite of your skull,"

"No you wouldn't," Adam had meant it jokingly, but the unfazed confidence of his words rattled him, and clearly, they affected Ronan too, who had turned back around to gawk at him.

Unknowable. Unworthy. Disgraced.

And yet he enjoyed the thought of catching a pit viper off-guard, of having the ability to send a tsunami hurtling the other way. Ronan broke into a dark grin, the kind of grin that burned holes in Adam's stomach. "Hop aboard the crazy train then," and he did.

Ronan jumped onto his bed and lied down on his back with his hands crossed over his stomach. "You know," he said coyly. "It works better if we're on top of each other."

Adam tossed a pillow at the other boy, feeling a swirling tide inside his chest, rising and rising, and then falling like a heartbeat. "I'll sit on your face," he said, as he climbed onto the bed. "Oh, I dare you," muttered Ronan, cheekily.

He got another pillow thrown at his face for that.

Adam spread out besides him, careful to maintain some space between them, but their ankles and elbows touched.

Adam tried to think about how he was going to negotiate with a sentient forest and not about how this proximity to Ronan was electric and sabotaging, and not about how the other boy seemed to be giving off magnetic vibes, making his nerves swivel, pulling Adam to him, and not about how he could hear Ronan's breaths resounding in his deaf ear, subjugating the customary white noise he felt.

"Are we going to make it out in one piece?" he asked, despite himself as he closed his eyes.

He could see Ronan's wicked smile in his mind's eye, and he could feel it in his words.

"Goodnight, Parrish. I'll be seeing you."

xxxxx

It was both light and dark where they found themselves.

The light was piercing and soft like cotton-candy, the darkness was almost blooming and unfurling wider, yet warm; caramel-y. It was Cabeswater of course, but this was somewhere deep in the depths of the wild woodlands, somewhere Adam had never seen before.

Adam waited a moment or two for his eyesight to adjust. The trees twinkled like the eyes of lurking critters submerged in a sea of leaves and twigs. The wind was humming; no – chanting, like the chorus of the dead. The sky was black and bruised with stars. Ronan Lynch was on his back, watching the sky with something intense and celestial burning in his crystal eyes. He was in the same position that he'd been in when he'd fallen asleep, Adam realized, soon enough, that he was like that too. He dug his fingers into the damp grass beneath him, which surged forward to wrap around his fingertips and swathe his arms, Cabeswater claiming what was its own. He felt a rush like the scent of wildflowers sipping on sunlight and the vapory glaze of sleepy saplings.

"Look at the stars," came Ronan's voice, a soft whisper lifted by the wind, reverberating in Adam's deaf ear like music. "We're not here to look at the stars," replied Adam.

He still looked. The stars were strange in Ronan's head, so much larger, each one the size of the moon. They glistered a mosaic of constellations, and Adam suddenly thought he could lie here forever, painting pictures in the sky with Ronan, out of all people, by his side. Like it made sense somehow, like that was how it was supposed to be; or… no, like that was how he wished it could be. The moon itself was huge and hung low, like a silver bowling ball plastered between the branches of high-rise trees, almost like they were trying to grasp at it and it was playing along.

"This… is not what I pictured the inside of your head to look like," admitted Adam. Ronan let out a sardonic smile. "What did you picture it to look like and what were we doing in this picture?" he asked. Adam rolled his eyes. "It's surreal, that's all."

Just like he is.

Ronan smirked, "Dreams don't grow on trees," he said, cryptically. "We're here for a reason," Adam muttered, reminding himself not to be distracted by the star-drunk sky or the mellow marshmallow roast that simmered silently in his lungs at being so close to Ronan.

"I want to stay here for a minute longer," Ronan admitted. "Before the dream's dead."

Adam nodded because Ronan often snatched the words out of his mind and left him brain-dead, rendered him raven-meat. As Ronan continued to gaze at the night sky, Adam laser-focused on Ronan, and the sharp-ridges of his razor-edged cheekbones, and the milky promise of his winter-stained lips, and the electricity and enigma that burned in his eyes.

How could such a beautiful thing, something so full of light, fall for such a retched thing, something stitched out of the seams of shadows?

Adam didn't understand.

Ronan was the knife that wouldn't hesitate to twist itself into his gut. And there was something; while self-destructive, exhilarating about that - which was probably why they fought so much. Wolves and coyotes both had sets of fangs, but they never got along. They both, despite being so obviously different, were similar on some nuclear level Adam couldn't even begin to comprehend in that moment.

Lonesome.

Wide and flashing in neon, like motel signs in the dead of night.

The only thing he was sure about was that it made sense somehow. They both ran on demonic energies. Only while Adam wore a million masks to conceal his, Ronan walked with his caught in his hair like a crown, and in his eyes sizzling euphoric, and beneath his shoulder blades like the bones that glued all his pieces together. Maybe, Adam had been envious of Ronan's ability to be so raw, to be so true to himself. It made him feel like a clown, complete with the sad droopy eyes and the blood red fake smile.

"I wonder if your ability to pull things out of your dreams has limitations," said Adam, words yanked out of nowhere. "What do you mean?" asked Ronan.

"What if you dreamt up a universe?" he marveled. "And what if you could pull it out?"

"I'd be the king of a land of dreams. I'd feel like a fucking god." Ronan sounded equally thrilled and terrified by that idea. For a moment, Adam tried to imagine what a world ruled by Ronan would look like: flames and stars and dynamites.

"Maybe you should dream us one," muttered Adam.

Ronan actually sucked in a breath. "What?"

"You know, dream up Gansey his precious Welsh king, Blue a curse lifted, and Noah his life back."

"I don't think it works like that," smiled Ronan, it was a sad smile; one Adam hadn't seen him wear before, at least not in front of another human soul. Ronan, for once, the car-crash, fisted-fire boy that Adam used to erroneously believe he knew, looked vulnerable. It was like watching an angel spread its wings; wraithlike. "If it could be done though…" Adam spectated. Ronan's voice was hardly a whisper,

"Then it would end in flames."

Adam felt Ronan's elbow twitch, so he leaned ever-so-slightly close and ran his knuckles over the back of the other boy's hand. Ronan froze.

"Good," said Adam, whose fingers had found the gaps between space and time.

xxxxx

"Shit on a fucking stick, we're missing something," said Ronan (as he followed what he described as a little ghost girl who somehow, only he could see) past a gurgling brook; mouth a focused line, eyes vigilant.

"There needs to be a night terror," he explained, when Adam frowned, flabbergasted. "Why on earth are you complaining about murderous monsters not chasing after us?" Ronan was barely listening to Adam as they trudged through the silvery-dark chocolate contours of a dreamlike, night-entranced Cabeswater. "Because that's the way it works, that's the way it always works. It can't be easy, if it's easy, it's probably a trap," explained Ronan. "Come on, Parrish, you're smarter than me, you should know how these things work without me having to baby you."

Adam frowned some more at the thought of being 'babied', but eventually, just because it was Ronan and he didn't mean it, he let it go. He didn't want to face another night terror, not when the last one had almost scared him half to death, but he had to trust that Ronan knew what he was doing, even though he had this gut feeling that the boy never knew what he was doing – 'I'm just going to wing it' was what he always told a very appalled Gansey before a final, and it was probably his life motto. As they kept going, deeper into the whimsical and breathy abyss they were sauntering through, Adam wondered about the time. He wasn't quite sure how it worked in dreamland, he wasn't quite sure how it worked in Cabeswater either, but he still wondered how much time must have passed in the real world.

It didn't really matter, he supposed, considering Henrietta was a sleeping ghost at the moment; but the thought still bugged him. "How much further is it?" Adam asked, finally, with a sigh. "I feel like we've been trudging through here forever," he said.

"These things take time, I can't just snap my fingers and abracadabra, I'm not a motherfucking fairy, now I'd warned you this wouldn't be a cake walk but you still decided you wanted to come,"

"I'm here to help you," snapped Adam, at once. "So maybe, show me some gratitude, I'm risking Death by Night Terror here for you," he added, pursing his lip. Adam could only see the back of Ronan's head, but he could tell, just by the way his shoulders dropped and how he picked up pace that he was rolling his eyes. Adam was getting impatient; and he didn't like himself when he wasn't thinking straight. With Gansey and Blue, he always had to restrain himself with multiple reminders.

Do not fight with Gansey. Do not fight with Blue.

Ronan was a different sort of conundrum.

The boy was a fist fight in himself, so there was nothing Adam could ever do to tame his emotions when he was around the boy. This whole quest felt like an impossible sum, he didn't enjoy formulas he couldn't solve. When he was younger, he was always the brightest in his class, and his teachers commended him by telling him that there was not a single equation he couldn't solve. And then Richard Dick Gansey happened, and Noah and Ronan happened, and then Blue happened, and it was like one impossibility after another.

He was loyal to them all, but sometimes, he felt like they were planted in his life just to mock him. Ronan looked like he had a witty remark up his sleeve, and Adam was eager to instigate him until he made his comment, until Ronan stopped abruptly and for the second time that week, Adam almost walked into his back.

"What is it?" asked Adam, Ronan simply raised a finger, signaling for him to wait. "Do you hear that?" he questioned, tilting his head slightly upwards. Adam listened. At first, it was merely a low rumbling noise, like hearing an airplane fly overheard at midnight, when you're half-asleep. Then it got louder; almost unbearably loud – making Adam glad, for once, that he was deaf in one ear. "Yeah," he frowned, pressing a finger to his eardrum. "Where could it be… Wait – Ronan, what are you doing?" the boy took off in a sprint, and Adam was left fumbling after him, supremely annoyed and slightly afraid of being rendered deaf in his good ear, too, as the noise was incessant, like it could go on forever if it wanted. "We've got to follow it!" exclaimed Ronan, then, "Try and keep up, old man!"

Adam felt that familiar rush as he picked up pace, and the wind flirted with his skin, and his heartbeat accelerated, and his stomach blew up. It was what he felt like when he was off having shopping cart races with Ronan, a childish and inane sport, one of those things only Ronan Lynch could prompt Adam Parrish to do.

Ronan skidded to a stop towards a clearing, near a narrow snaking stream that cut through the thick forest like a glowing vein. The noise died down until it was simply a faint hum, and relief washed over him and his one, good, assaulted ear. Ronan was breathing heavily, his chest heaving, but he looked far from drained, his eyes were bright lit stars. When Adam finally caught his own breath, he said, "You finally got me to chase after you."

Ronan shot him an insidious smirk, before breaking into a frown and scratching his ear. "We've got exactly one minute to figure out what we need to take with us from here, and then the night terror's going to be on our asses."

"Great. Perfect. Thanks for the head's up."

"Don't worry. You trust me, right? I'll keep you safe." There was a tinge of ridiculing sarcasm in his words.

Adam scoffed. Ronan chuckled. "I've done this a thousand times, those ugly bastards may have fangs, but they're easy to outsmart."

"This whole thing's been pointless; we should've never done this in the first place." Adam said, abruptly. "What are you talking about? We still have forty seconds," snapped Ronan, upturning stones, dipping fingers in the turbulent current of the river, eyes searching, for something – anything. Adam felt his chest simmer and fizz out. Everything was beginning to resemble hopelessness. "Maybe we should take this cursed swamp with us, drown ourselves in it," groaned Ronan, suddenly agitated.

"Maybe we're what's cursed," said Adam.

Ronan looked up to meet Adam's eyes; Adam had trouble reading the other boy's expression.

Their time was up.

The forest quest provided fruitless, since they'd wasted their precious time bickering, and the night terror was swooping in, from the skies this time, and Adam had a feeling it had air support. It was a stutter in his heartbeat, a breath sucked in, the echoing thunder of flapping wings, and a quick reflex. Ronan reached out, grabbed Adam by the arm, and yanked him towards a shadowy spot between two sycamores, their branches intersecting to create a makeshift roof, stretching forward protectively.

It was a tight, tiny space, and Adam would have felt claustrophobic, if it wasn't for Ronan. They were hiding from literal monsters, and Adam's heart was ready to pounce out of his chest sans his mouth, but there was a warning in the blue limelight of the other boy's eyes.

Adam's mind tipped like an iceberg when it occurred to him how strange it all was, and how vivid and delightfully insane it felt to be asleep and still awake. Ronan's chest was pressed up against his own, because there was nowhere else to go, and they were close enough that Adam could count the discernible veins on his neck, breathe in the mist and woodsmoke mixed with Ronan's cologne, all colliding to make a dizzying, almost somnolent scent. Close enough that he could feel Ronan's warm breath against his upper lip and nose like toxic fumes that were paralyzing his body, close enough, that Adam was afraid Ronan could hear his heart or worse; his thoughts.

Adam squeezed his eyes shut, but then he had to open them, because he saw the same picture behind closed eyelids, only they were a lot less clothed than they were in actuality. Adam was reminded once again, of just how effortlessly beautiful a creature Ronan was, like a nightingale, or an autumn leaf. "How long do we have to stay like this?" he croaked, because he was afraid he would combust from the pressure.

Ronan was overwhelming enough at a calculated distance, but he was cataclysmic when he was at a close proximity – too much soul for one body; a dream catcher.

Ronan shot him a devil-may-care smile, Adam felt his jaw clench. "You know," he purred, his teeth a flash of white in the brewing darkness. "Nobody's watching."

Adam was sure of two things: one: every nerve in his body was frozen, and two: he was going to kick the Lynch boy's ass when he remembered how to breathe again.

"Shut up," Adam said, then, "How do we wake up?"

Ronan smiled once more, or perhaps he hadn't stopped smiling, Adam couldn't tell. "How do you wake Sleeping Beauty, again?"

Adam stared. Ronan rolled his eyes, "Close your eyes," he directed. "And wait."

Adam closed his eyes.

And arose, with a million stars in his eyes.

viii.

Adam just lied there on his back for a couple of blurry-eyed minutes, but Ronan leaped off the bed and hurried out of the room, like he'd been itching to get away from him.

Adam considered going after him, but then thought better of it. They were awake, and this time, Ronan hadn't brought along with him a cloak that blasted Beatles music, or a watch that told time backwards, or a snowflake encased in glass, like the past three nights, but he'd left something there instead, a part of Adam.

A part of Adam that wanted to go back, a part of him that, whether he admitted it or not; was terrified and spell-binded, at the same time.

"Fear is such a mortal thing," Noah was always at his ghostliest when he appeared out of nowhere in that freaky way of his, speaking to him like he'd been there all along, invisible and watching; silent and observant. It almost felt invasive, like his private space was not being respected, he didn't enjoy the idea of his life being a movie that Noah got to watch and comment on; but Adam could never stay angry at Noah, perhaps Noah was the only person who had that privilege, who never had to worry about getting under Adam's skin.

It probably had to do with the fact that he was dead. It was almost heartbreaking, how much his deadness had come to define him.

Noah was perched at the edge of Ronan's bed, his expression was unreadable; it wasn't so much a smile but it wasn't a frown either. Something in between. "Stop being creepy," Adam said, at once.

"You're scared," Noah pointed out. "Of course I am," Adam agreed. "Everything's sleeping,"

"That's not what I'm talking about."

Noah got this dark twinkle in his eye, it made him look like he'd seen many winters. Adam often had to remind himself that Noah was actually older than he looked, that he didn't age because he was perpetually stuck as a teenage boy. It must be strange, he thought, to be dead and yet be immortalized in youth. Adam looked away, Noah's gaze was hurtful.

"I have no idea what you mean,"

"You're foolish to try and fool the dead,"

"Can you stop talking like a seventy-year-old saint for one second?"

"Sorry," Noah muttered, dropping his gaze. "Just take my advice, I know nobody ever takes my advice, but you'd all be better for it if you did. Tell him you feel the same way. After everything you've been through, he deserves to know."

Adam opened his mouth – to protest, or question, or retaliate, but Noah was already gone, the edge of the bed where he'd been sitting was cold. It was like he'd never been.

His words lingered in his mind, bouncing off into infinity; it was going to drive him mental. Tell him you feel the same way. Did he feel the same way? Adam didn't know what he felt, he'd always felt unfamiliar with himself, but ever since Cabeswater, he was beginning to learn about himself, he was beginning to see.

And he could see to the ends of the earth, and yet, his own heart was latched and he didn't possess the key; impenetrable.

Perhaps it had happened, and he just hadn't known it. Perhaps it had crept up on him in the middle of the night. Perhaps it had always been there. Perhaps it had been an unarticulated feeling, something impossible to grapple with; a secret kept from oneself.

With Blue, he'd been so sure of himself.

With Ronan, it was like stumbling blind through a rollercoaster with tornados on his tail.

Ronan returned a couple minutes later, oblivious to Noah's cameo, he shoved a coffee mug at Adam. "Take it. Take it, I think I just figured out what's wrong with this bloody town, or, more accurately, whose wrong with it," Adam took the mug before Ronan spilled a steaming hot liquid down his shirt and placed it on the bedside table. "Elaborate," suggested Adam, the other boy ran his hand over his mostly-shaven head. "I was trying to figure out what Cabeswater was trying to tell us, but it was what it wasn't telling us that gave it away, really,"

"You're still making nothing on the sense side of things," snapped Adam.

Ronan wasn't listening, he was sailing a turbulent sea of thoughts.

"Cabeswater protected me, and you, but he doesn't know about you. He's aware of the ley lines, and maybe he figured out Cabeswater somehow, or at least figured that something would protect me," he continued. "The Greywaren! I don't know how the bastard figured out that I'm a person and not a thing, but he put the town to sleep to suss me out, because Cabeswater or the ley lines or whatever would render me immune to the spell. But I think something went wrong while he was conducting the ritual – and his own idea bit him in the ass real good, are you getting what I'm trying to explain or is this all just gibberish to you?"

"Two questions," Adam said, blinking. "One, how much coffee did you intake in the span of two minutes?" he questioned, seriously. "And two, how on earth did you get all of that from an unsuccessful mission and a couple of Latin quotations?"

"It was Orphan Girl! And also one of the things Cabeswater mentioned – it's in its nature, we think something and then it happens whenever we're in that forest, right? How Blue made blue lilies rain that one time? - in explanation, I think therefore I am, get it?" he went on.

"And when it was talking about two heads being better than one – it wasn't talking about you and I, it was talking about Greenmantle and his bubble-headed wife, Piper, and also my own intensive knowledge on the fumes of evil that emanate from that unholy son of a bitch," he explained.

Adam took a couple of seconds to let it sink in, but when it did, he felt like an idiot, because someone had solved an unsolvable equation – and for once, it wasn't him.

ix.

"Ronan," Adam called, as they made their way to undo the ritual that Greenmantle had performed, and to revive the sleeping town. "Wait for a moment." He said.

Ronan turned around and frowned, "What is it?"

"It's just, we never really took the time to appreciate it, did we?" he asked. Ronan knit his eyebrows together in confusion. "The quiet." he established. He thought about how foolish he was, to be talking about the quiet to such a loud person.

Ronan smirked. "It feels like everything around us is frozen at gunpoint, if you think that's pleasant, you're fucking twisted."

Adam considered this. Maybe he was twisted. He took a deep breath, and let it out.

"I kept thinking about Gansey, what he would've done if he'd been in our situation," he admitted.

He would've been fascinated, he would've been intrigued; mindblown by the strangeness and terribleness and beauty of the world they lived in; of the prospect of a fairytale brought to life.

Gansey would've probably excavated himself an answer at once, after he was done being captivated.

Ronan had regarded it as a challenge, because everything in his life was a war, but he also regarded it as another demon he would eventually conquer, another hill he would shake to it's very core just because he'd stepped foot on it. Just because he held in him the sort of magic even a magician did not possess; the sort of magic that could change the tides and make the moon dance.

Noah regarded it in the only way he knew how; because he was a dead thing and dead things had nothing on the living's woes. Blue would have regarded it as another proof that magic was real, in some ways, she was just as wide-eyed and inquisitive as Gansey, she found wonders in terrors and marbles in plain rocks.

He thought about how he'd regarded it himself, with disdain and fury and fear.

This was why Adam Parrish could never match up to his friends.

Ronan chuckled, "Gansey's going to wake up and expect a power point presentation and a memoir on every minute detail."

Adam nodded in agreement and continued to walk.

"So, Parrish. You afraid Greenmantle and his Jersey Shore reject wife are going to be awake when we get there?"

Adam felt the darkening in his voice as he said, "They should be the ones afraid."

"Oh, right," Ronan scoffed, biting at one of his several leather bands. "The gods themselves do tremble!"

Adam rolled his eyes.

Tell him you feel the same way.

"Can I ask you something?" he said, after a minute of contemplation.

"It's a free world, grasshopper,"

"Why Kavinsky?"

"What?"

"You spent so much time with him, but you hated the guy."

"He was a jackass, yes, but he had the same abilities. I thought he was the only one who might understand."

"I might understand if you'd explain,"

Ronan fell extremely silent. Adam could tell he was in the midst of a mental battle. He watched him dubiously for a second, and then he continued to walk like Adam hadn't said anything at all.

Adam opened his mouth to say something, retaliate; or question him maybe, but Ronan began to sing, completely derailing his train of thought. Oh, no. Not the Murder Squash Song.

"Squash one, squash two, squash three -"

He stared up at the moon, and then at the boy besides him, sauntering about like they were on a casual jaunt, singing the one song that petrified Adam's ear drums; and he burst into laughter.

Absolutely unadulterated, naked laughter.

Ronan stopped singing, simply staring at him for a moment, before bursting into a fit of laughter himself. It was bright and real. The laugh of a boy who'd finally sussed out the great cosmic joke that had been played on him - and who wasn't bitter about it.

And Adam was still laughing, because once again, when you find yourself falling for a pit viper, and start to question your beliefs in life until you aren't even quite sure of who you are anymore, you have to believe that the joke is on you, too.

x

"So for how many days were we asleep, exactly?" Gansey asked, eyebrows furrowed.

"A week," Adam replied, taking a sip of his soda. Even though he'd already answered this question fourteen times before. Gansey was having trouble wrapping his head around it. Adam couldn't say he blamed him. He'd lived the experience, and he still couldn't half believe it.

"That's just - that's just... brilliant, and insane!" Gansey exclaimed. Blue's eyes shot skyward. "You already contemplated the impossible magnificence of the situation, move on now before I shove this breadstick in your mouth," she said, sounding bored as she munched on her breadstick.

Gansey didn't look offended; only endeared. He was endeared by everything she said nowadays. He was endeared by Blue just being.

It had been two days since that spellbound week, when Ronan and Adam had reached the Greenmantles' abode, they'd been delighted that both the mister and the misses were dead asleep, they'd reversed the spell and chased Greenmantle out of town, with a slightly evil and slightly genius plan. Something they'd been working on for quite awhile.

Greenmantles' wife Piper was MIA, but she had to turn up sooner or later. As long as she wasn't putting the town under another primeval curse using one of the many ancient and powerful artifacts her husband hoarded, they were fine staying out of her way.

Blue had decided they would celebrate with pizza from Ninos', so they sat on Monmouth's cluttered-and-polished floor, like normal teenagers who weren't on a quest to rouse a sleeping king.

"I'm just happy it's over," Noah admitted. "I like to think that I'm the most disturbing thing going on, and that sleeping curse was stealing my thunder; haunting the town instead of me," even though he was joking, Adam felt a shiver drop down his spine.

Noah's morbid humor had gotten more intense these past few days, and it worried him.

He locked eyes with Blue; only momentarily, but he could tell she'd felt it too.

Blue was sitting cross-legged with her back against the wall, in shoddy overalls with fabric butterflies pinned/glued/attached onto them; her personalized backpack (covered in glitter, unicorn stickers and perfume that smelled suspiciously like incense), sat by her side, looking like it was feeling neglected.

Gansey sat with his back against the wall too, his legs spread out in front of him, in his favorite canary yellow shirt and his unnecessarily expensive and excessively ironed pants. His glasses sat only slightly tilted on the bridge of his nose; but he managed to make imperfection look careful and calculated - regal. Noah sat in between them, playing like a literal barrier to their metaphorical one, in his smudgy and translucent way. Adam didn't feel the punch in his chest that he usually did when he saw the way Blue and Gansey caught glimpses at each other when they thought nobody was looking; the undeterred and established longing in their eyes.

It felt rather familiar, this time, instead of hurtful.

Adam wondered if Noah and Ronan knew. They probably did, and just weren't saying anything about it. Who were they to say anything?

"I, for one, don't enjoy being put to sleep like a dog," Blue grumbled. "And I'm also a bit offended Cabeswater didn't protect us against it too. It can't play favorites!"

Gansey shrugged. "I'm sure it had its reasons."

Adam's mind blasted off into outerspace. Ronan had promised Gansey he would be there, but he still wasn't here. He felt like Ronan had been avoiding him eversince things had gotten back to normal. He wanted to confront him, but he wasn't quite sure what he would say. Suddenly, he felt something cold and windy against his ear; a whisper.

"You know what you have to do," it was Noah.

When Adam looked up, Noah was still sitting there, in between Gansey and Blue, who were either bickering or flirting (Adam couldn't tell anything with those two sometimes). It was creepy, his uncanny ability to somehow be whispering in his ear and sitting on the other side of the room at the same time. He met the ghost boy's eyes.

Noah smiled; a hollow, crooked thing - like a cave or a secret.

Ronan burst in through the door, making it creak at the hinges. "You should knock," Gansey said. "Knocking implies I'm asking for permission," Ronan replied, simply, dark eyes twinkling like constellations.

"If you damage my door, I'm making you pay for it," Adam remarked, even though something in his stomach fluttered at the sight of the other boy.

"Where were you?" Blue asked.

"Why, planning your surprise party, maggot," Ronan replied tersely. Blue tossed a breadstick at him, it bounced off his shoes. He stuck the tip of his tongue out at her.

Ronan was dressed in his indispensable biker jacket, and once again, he made everything in the room brighter, starker, louder. Adam sucked in a breath and finished his soda in one languid gulp.

"Have a slice," Gansey offered, handing him one. "You must be hungry,"

"Always," Ronan agreed, taking the pizza slice from him and sitting down next to him, away from Adam. Why is he avoiding me? he thought. It made him angry, but he wasn't going to get angry. He wouldn't allow himself that. Not again.

Gansey met Adam's eyes, before standing up abruptly. "Adam," he said, in his polite-yet-commanding Gansey voice. "May I have a word with you?"

"Sure," he replied, unsurely, as he got up and followed Gansey out the door to 'have a word'. "What's going on?" Adam asked. "I just have one question, and I don't want you to take it the wrong way, and I don't want you to get upset."

Adam felt something in his throat tighten, but he nodded. "Okay."

"You and Ronan... Did something transpire between the two of you while we were under the spell?" he questioned.

"Something like what?" his heart was turning into sand.

"Did the two of you quarrel?"

"Yeah, but... Nothing that's unusual," he replied, carefully.

He wasn't sure of whether Gansey was on to him or not. "Oh," he said. "I just thought he was behaving strangely, almost as if he's avoiding you, since the past couple of days."

"Yeah? I didn't notice. I don't really care, but, if you're concerned, I think it's him you should be talking to about it."

Gansey sighed. "I shall, although, I do think now, in hindsight, that I should stay out of it when it comes to the two of you. You're friendship's complicated and it exhausts me," he admitted.

Adam had to stifle a dry chortle. Oh, Richard Gansey the Third. You have no idea.

When they herded back in, Noah and Ronan were singing the Murder Squash Song again, at the top of their lungs, and Blue was cringing with her hands covering her ears.

"Oh, boy," Gansey huffed. "I must rescue Blue,"

"I think Blue might try to bite your face off if you say that in front of her, but by all means, go ahead."

Gansey nodded glumly, "I'll just save her secretly."

Adam smiled, despite himself. This was what it felt like to have normality back, or at least, their version of normality. It felt like coming home from a long trip abroad, and Adam realized, quickly enough, how important all these people were to him; and how integral they were in his life.

Adam Parrish could not function without Gansey, Ronan, Blue and even Noah.

And he had a feeling they all felt likewise.

These people were his limbs, and Cabeswater was his roots.

Adam Parrish was nothingness; he was incomplete, without these things.

If only he could make things right with Ronan...

When everyone was leaving, Blue lingered by the doorway.

"I just wanted to tell you that I'm glad you've moved on," she said.

"What?"

She offered him a knowing smile before slipping out the door, and shuffling after Gansey towards the Pig. Ronan sauntered out of the kitchen.

"That's my cue," he said, as Gansey honked for him to join them. Adam had to stay in and study for an upcoming test on Monday, and he needed Gansey's notes to do it, plus, Monmouth was more spacious than his shitty apartment, but Gansey and his friends had other plans, they wanted to go have a word with Mr. Gray at 300 Fox Way, with Maura still missing, there was a lot of work to do. "Could you stay?" Adam asked, Ronan blinked at him, like he'd been speaking in an entirely different language. "I should really go, there's still a Welsh king to suss out, and Gansey's probably getting impatient -"

"Stay," Adam repeated, more demanding this time, his stomach leapt.

His own voice had felt so foreign to him that he'd caught himself by just as much surprise as Ronan, but he was proud of himself, for once, for trying to be true.

"Okay, give me a second," Ronan raced out, uttered something to the gang, and returned later, slamming the door shut behind them, then he plopped down on one of Gansey's worn out couches and stared at him.

"What's the summons for?"

"Can we talk?"

Ronan shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Sure. What do you want to talk about? The weather? Music? The fucked up economy's a hot topic right now."

"Ronan," he said, his tone somber. Ronan sighed, "Alright. Go ahead. Say what's on your mind."

"You've been dodging me,"

"Maybe I have. I've spent a week with you, Parrish. I'm sick of your face,"

"Am I that horrid to look at?"

Ronan considered this, before biting his lower lip, looking as close to apologetic as he ever got.

"No," he replied. "Not really."

"So why have you been giving me the cold shoulder?" he asked. "And be honest,"

"I'm always honest."

"Are you?" Adam shot an eyebrow at him. Ronan looked like he didn't enjoy being put on the spot, he also didn't enjoy being rhetorically questioned, in fact, he looked like he was suffering.

Adam wasn't sure whether he was being imprudent or brave, to try and venture across the dark side of the moon.

"I'm keeping my distance because it's driving me nuts! Is that what you want to hear? I'm keeping my distance because there's nothing else for me to do! Are you happy with that answer?" he yelled, eyes heavy with lava.

"Why isn't there anything else for you to do?" Adam questioned, patiently.

"You don't get it," Ronan said, shaking his head in dismay. Adam took a step forward. "What if I do?" he replied. "How? Why?" Ronan looked floored.

Because... Lonesome.

Because... Unknowable is a lie.

"I understand," he admitted.

I understand that it eats you up inside, I understand that you are the creator of beautiful things, and that ugly things follow you in return, I understand that you sought the comfort of a psychopath because sometimes even your friends aren't enough, I understand because you see me, you always have, and you're the first person who took a look and actually liked what they saw.

He did not say any of those things.

Ronan just gawked at him, he stood up and pressed an accusatory finger at the other boy's chest. "Parrish, don't mess with me,"

"I'm not."

Ronan looked afraid. Fear was a face he didn't normally wear, so it puzzled Adam.

And then he realized; he wouldn't make the first move, because Ronan Lynch would never do anything unless he was five hundred percent certain that Adam wanted it. And the truth was, he would never be certain.

"Ronan," Adam said, after a minute; his heart feeling like it would grow wings and fly away, his veins all iced up, his heart pounding in his chest. "Yeah?" the dreamer's voice was hoarse.

"You know," he leaned in, letting his lips hover above Ronan's for a moment. Ronan stood frozen still, like he couldn't move even if he wanted to. "Nobody's watching."

He ran his hands down Ronan's arms and locked their fingers together, it felt, for a second, like holding hands with a corpse, because his fingers were just as still as the rest of him, as if he was afraid that if he moved he might break the spell.

And then, Adam just went for it, even though he could feel himself shivering, even though the anxiety that bubbled inside his chest was making it hard to breathe.

He crushed his lips to the other boy's like a car crash. Ronan didn't respond at first, so it felt like a one-sided gesture, and Adam was almost discouraged, but a moment later, his body started to work again, and he gave in. Adam's lips danced with his. Ronan's hands knotted in Adam's hair. It was a strange practice that neither one of them had much experience at. So the stars didn't fall down, the earth didn't tremble, he wasn't seeing visions of flames and behind his eyelids, but the feel of Ronan against him was warm, and ground, and infinite.

The rightness of the action was felt in every breathless, savoring kiss, in the feel of his stubble against his jaw, in the strange and foreign and magical revelation that it was.

When Adam let go, Ronan was breathing heavily, his eyes were starry and wide; like galaxies. They were both incredibly nervous, this was foreign territory, and they were afraid they would get shot if they crossed the border - but there was nothing else to do. It would take time, and patience, and a lot of swear words from Ronan, but they would get there.

Ronan broke into a dark smile, Adam still felt the ghost of his lips tickling his skin. Every part of his body that had been touched sizzled with electricity.

It was a dream, and they were living it.

Ronan's smile was like sinking into quicksand, and it poked the very edges of Adam's being.

"So a week trapped in a sleeping world with me is all it takes huh," he muttered. "Maybe I should send Greenmantle a fruit basket,"

Adam rolled his eyes, but for once in his life, he felt thrilled about being Adam Parrish.

Because Ronan Lynch was a wild animal, a warring star, a snakebite; and Ronan Lynch could want anybody in the world, but he chose Adam for his hungry eyes.

He chose Adam. And Adam was choosing him right back.

xxxxx

They were headed to Cabeswater where they would meet the rest of the gang, and Adam felt like there was new, simpering energy in the world.

"Check that compartment," Ronan said, while Adam drove. "If you're going to distract me while I'm driving, Lynch, I'll drop you out on the curb."

"Fine. Don't look," Ronan muttered, crossing his arms over his chest and staring out the window with a petulant twinkle in his eyes. Adam groaned and yanked it open.

There were a cassette shoved in there, boasting a handmade label marked with Ronan's handwriting: PARRISH'S HONDAYOTA ALONE TIME and the other side was A SHITBOX SING-ALONG. The second half of the cassette was nothing but the Murder Squash Song on repeat, and the first half was a hybrid between heavy metal music, hard rock and melodramatic pop culture tunes that Ronan probably uploaded as a joke, 'My Heart Will Go On' by Celine Dion, 'Since You've Been Gone' by Kelly Clarkson and 'A Thousand Years' by Christina Perri.

"Really, Lynch?" Ronan burst into cackling laughter like his reaction had just made his day. "You better get used to it," Ronan commented. "If you still know what you're signing up for, that is."

Adam was surprised that Ronan was still giving him ways out even after he'd literally kissed him. It really was going to take time and patience, but for once, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

Once they pulled in towards Cabeswater and got out of the car, Adam turned to Ronan. "Do you think we should say anything to them?" the underlining question was quite clear, would this change things?

"Not quite yet," Ronan said, with a cryptic smirk. "The world isn't ready, Parrish."

It had been the strangest week of his life.