A/N: If it wasn't obvious, If the World Was Ending by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels hit me deep. So it seemed appropriate to make my favorite characters suffer.

(This story does not contain Dreamer Trilogy spoilers! I know the whole premise of the series is some sort of fiery destruction happening because of dreamers but this is not that deep. It's just a good, ol' fashioned end of the world love story that I wrote listening to sad pop music. Because contrary to popular belief, not EVERY apocalypse is Ronan Lynch's fault.)

You'd come over, right?

The earth vibrated beneath Ronan's feet, and he knew he didn't have much time. The goats were still in the fields and the pole barn was still open and his car was still parked in the driveway and none of that should have mattered. But during the goddamn apocalypse he didn't know what to do, so he grabbed two pygmy goats by the horns and dragged them towards the second barn, trying not to look at the blood red sky or the smoke coming from the east. They kicked viciously and shrieked in fear, chilling Ronan to the bone. While he knew it wouldn't do them any good, the barn would not save them from the impending doom raining down on them, he chucked them in the pen with the rest of them and ran back to the fields for more.

He was alone. Opal was in Lindenmere right now, which might be safer, maybe, and Declan and Matthew were in D.C. He hadn't heard from them in days, so for all he knew they could already be—

He grabbed more goats.

The air crackled with an electric charge that could have meant an oncoming thunderstorm, because of course there'd be a storm, and Ronan hastened his wrangling, feeling the goats' animal terror almost more strongly than his own. The least he could do was get them inside. It was better than nothing. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck despite the cold wind whipping around him, and he grabbed the last goat, a small thing frozen in petrified fear. He gathered her in his arms and wished he could do more to help. Murmuring words of encouragement to a fucking goat, he ran back to the second barn and put her with the others, locking the metal pin on their enclosure and looking at them for what was probably the last time before running back outside.

After shutting up the pole barn (it would do them no good) Ronan raced towards his car. There was no point to any of this, but the panic igniting his nerves was causing his mind to do stupid shit, like desperately saving goats or refusing to leave his father's car in the driveway when ground was shaking as badly as it was. He could barely stay on his feet as he tried to navigate the crushed gravel path to the car. He needed to get it into the garage, then everything would be in its place when the ground finally split, or the lighting struck, or the sulfurous smell of fire finally approached the house. His life would end full of regrets, things he could never hope to change now, but the least he could do was move the damn car.

He ripped open the driver's side door and slammed it closed. It was quieter inside, without the reedy screeching of the wind, and somehow that made it worse. If the sky wasn't pulsing like a punctured artery he could almost convince himself this wasn't happening. That Ronan was tumbling into this car with another body, hot and heady with lust and laughing when he hit his head on the visor like he always did. Ronan had spent months trying to forget rolling down blue coveralls and the smell of gasoline mixed with sweat, but what is certain death without painful flashbacks? He threw the car into reverse and let them play out, knowing that it would be the last time.

The painfully attractive snickering as he tried to pull legs from oil-stained pantlegs, the "What're you doin' down there? I thought you were good at this" because the asshole loved making fun of him and loved torturing him with his Henrietta accent in the worst possible moments. Car sex is something that should never be allowed outside of movies; there's no room and it hurts your neck and your stupid boyfriend will spend the next three months poking fun at you for wanting it before leaving in the dead of night for Harvard and never coming back.

Not the most eloquent of goodbyes, but it wasn't the most eloquent of fights that caused him to leave either. Selfishness is what it came down to, from both of them, like it always did. When you can't see why something so unimportant to you could mean the world to someone else, how could you possibly expect a relationship like that to last?

Something under the car bumped and Ronan gripped the gearshift tighter. Maybe he didn't have time for regrets right now.

Jesus fucking Christ, for all the time he spent dreaming this place into fantastical perfection, he never bothered to put an automatic opener on the garage door. Ronan tore out of the car and grabbed at the tiny handle at the bottom of the garage door and pulled. Nothing.

The key. The goddamned key. It was back in the house.

He was sprinting again, to the farmhouse this time, tripping over his own feet when the ground pitched and shifted. What normally looked like an idyllic country home now looked marred with horror. The earthquakes had shattered two of the windows. The wind had ripped away at the shutters that he didn't even bother to close. The swelling storm clouds gathering behind it in the distance were coming closer. He wished he would have paid more attention to how the house looked before this. Ronan Lynch, known for his attention and care in the details, for dreaming up perfect facsimiles of objects beyond anything the human mind could comprehend, had never given proper attention to the way the front door of his childhood house looked in the light of the golden sun, and he regretted it now as the sky painted his house a dismal burgundy, the sun long gone in favor of a crime scene.

The house was dark, not that he expected any different. The power was the first thing to go, the first sign of the end of times. Because of course electricity is the thing people cared about most. They dismissed the shaking ground along no perceivable fault line just fine, rolled their eyes as twisters ripped their way through the most populated metropolitan areas, but when the blackout happened it's like everyone knew.

If Ronan could dream up power for the whole world to get back on its feet again, he would've. But all he had instead was this: a dreamt phone with unlimited battery life that was just about as useful as a normal fucking flashlight. He unlocked the screen for the millionth time and wished that a call would come through, a text, anything, but it remained miserably silent. No power equaled no working towers. Not that he'd be getting any calls regardless. He'd burned too many bridges for goodbyes at this point.

He turned on the flashlight feature and swung the beam of light around the living room, searching for the key to the garage. A loud BANG caused him to flinch instinctively. Debris was hitting the siding on the house. God, he hadn't even shut the door to the BMW before coming here. It could be smashed to bits now for all he knew. This was pointless. But it was all Ronan had, so he searched for the stupid key. He scraped furniture legs on the hardwood floor and ripped cushions from couches, a human disaster blowing through before anything outside could wreak havoc on this place. It made sense that the final moments he had in here would be destruction. Lynches were best at that.

The outside world howled away, and Ronan wished for one more moment of peaceful quiet. He missed this place at its most serene, right before sunrise when he was gearing up for chores in the Barns. He missed the morning coffee, pressed shoulder to shoulder kitchen, the "there's a Starbucks in town, you know" and the "yours is better" conversations whispered as they gazed out the window and watched the steam rise from the fields. That could have meant "I can't afford Starbucks coffee" but Ronan always took it to mean "I can't afford to miss out on mornings with you," whether that was the intention or not.

But even that couldn't last, not with Lynch Destruction running through his veins, proud and true. Soon morning coffee turned to shouting matches over dinner. "Your dreams are what make you special" became "You have to face reality, Ronan," and that just wasn't a problem he could fix with another dreamt gift. So he didn't fix it. His father taught him to hit where it would hurt the most, and without laying a single finger on that perfect head he dealt the finishing blow.

"For someone so worldly you don't seem to have a hard time mooching off of me," he'd parsed evenly, knowing that a controlled tone would mean more than a shout. And it did. The headlights of the shitbox shined through their bedroom window as it backed out of the driveway for the final time that night, and Ronan watched it leave without a word.

Another bang, quieter this time, came from the front door, startling Ronan. Maybe the twisters would take him out before the fires could. Maybe his house would collapse before he could see the sky open up and lightning rain down. Trying to pinpoint when it was going to end was almost worse than the actual ending, in a way. He knew that better than most.

The door bang ed again, and the flashlight beam finally illuminated the garage key, dangling from a Harvard lanyard, of all fucking things, hung on a hook in the kitchen. If he got the car in the garage, everything would be fine. Then he could die peacefully amongst the rubble, knowing he had checked off his final inane task on his apocalypse to-do list.

He ripped open the front door, keys in hand, and almost ran straight into Adam Parrish, hand raised like he was going to continue politely knocking even as the world crashed down around him.

"Parrish?" Ronan asked, skidding almost cartoonishly to a stop. This wasn't real. Of all the unreal things that had happened today, Adam Parrish standing on his front porch was the unreal-est.

His colorless hair was whipped into a frenzied mess from the aggressive gales. His faded Harvard sweatshirt was mucked and ripped. And his face. Ronan never thought he'd see it again, and here it was in front of him, expression bleak and desperate and just as shocked to see Ronan as Ronan was to see him.

"What are you—" was all he could utter before Adam was crushing Ronan to him, pulling him into a hug that cracked all his ribs, squeezed and splattered his heart. He had no words because he had no air, and Ronan decided he didn't need it. Oxygen was pointless if it meant leaving Adam's arms.

"I saw the BMW," Adam said breathlessly in his ear. "You left the doors open and the house looked so fucking dark and I thought—I thought maybe you'd already—that I wasn't fast enough—"

He pulled back and gripped Ronan's face in his hands, the motion rough in execution when it probably should have been tender. It had been months. They were both out of practice with gentleness. But Ronan forgave him. He forgave him he forgave him he forgave him for every bad thing he had ever done.

"What are you doing here?" Ronan asked, still breathless, still marveling at the hands that held him and the eyes cutting through him.

Adam let out a surprised laugh. Of all things, he laughed, still holding onto Ronan's cheeks tighter than he would have months ago, back when he still called Ronan sweetheart , before he called him fucking asshole and left him behind. They were horrible to each other, but Ronan forgave him for it all. He wanted to wrap that laugh around him like a blanket to stave off the oncoming doom.

"Have you seen what's going on outside?" Adam said, still laughing.

"I hadn't noticed," Ronan said stupidly. His mind was still reeling from Adam's presence, his heart drunk on the feeling of his calloused hands.

"Traffic was a fucking nightmare," Adam said, and it began to sink in that amidst the chaos of, well, everything, Adam was here. He'd come back.

"Parrish," he said. "Adam. Why—"

"Are you stupid?" Adam interrupted. Not cruelly, but angry all of a sudden, laughter gone. It seemed it was finally sinking in for him too. He was looking at the ruined Barns around them like this mess was all Ronan's fault. "God, Ronan, you didn't even close the shutters. Are you even taking this seriously? Do you see what's happening? If I'd come any later you could have already been dead , do you get that?"

"Why, though?" Ronan asked. "Why did you even come all this way?"

The smell of smoke was getting stronger. The fires. He'd cleared away as much of the brush as he could around the farm, but the wind could easily carry the embers to the house. Ronan hoped the world could wait one more goddamn minute before killing him. One more minute to hear this answer.

Half of him expected another fight. They were good at that. Their friendship was built on fights so he didn't know why he'd expected their relationship to be any different. It was all they did at the end of it, the real end of the world, the one that ended with the screen door slamming shut in the middle of the night and one half of their bed sitting vacant.

But the other half of him expected sarcasm. I left my last will and testament here and didn't want to die without my affairs in order. They never did feelings right. If everything wasn't wrapped up in five layers of bullshit and jokes then it wasn't worth saying at all. The sky was falling and the fires were closing in on The Barns and Adam Parrish was impossibly here, so it only made sense for Ronan's life to end with one final punchline.

But Adam didn't say anything. He took his hands from Ronan's face and brought them to his waist, thumbs resting on his hip bones delicately. His freckled face looked wrecked with an emotion that Ronan couldn't place, but the sight of it made him want to cry.

"I had to."

He closed his eyes when Adam kissed him, the hearth in his chest flickering with warmth for the first time since Ronan made the decision not to go after Adam that night. He let himself be kissed like they were 18 and still madly in love. Like they had actually been meant for each other. Like he was worth coming back to.

The crack of thunder made them flinch.

"We should go inside," Adam whispered against Ronan's lips. Ronan could have told him that the feeble walls weren't going to protect them. The end wasn't far off now, whatever that end may be, and the farmhouse protected them just as much as the now goat-less field could have. But he didn't. He pulled Adam into the house, and wrapped his arms around him, breathing in the scent of him and wishing that the apocalypse wasn't the only thing that could bring them back together. I love you could have fixed this. Or, even better, I'm sorry.

But this was good, too. Adam's hands roved up and down Ronan's body as his tongue traced his bottom lip, and Ronan imagined what would have been. If he had been smarter, if he had been kinder, if he had been less stubborn and had run after Adam that night. If he had taken the keys from his hands and told him that he'd work harder to be more understanding. To rely less on dreams and more on the concrete. He'd tell Adam that he didn't mean any of that shit he'd said, that he had never said anything more untrue. It would have all led to this, probably.

He could have gone on kissing Adam until the world ended (a few more minutes give or take), but there was something else he wanted to do. Slowly untangling himself from Adam, he led him by the hand to the kitchen, guiding himself through the house one last time by touch. The fingertips of his left hand grazed over wooden chairs and countertops while the fingers of his right entwined with Adam's, warm and solid. When Adam saw him begin stoking the wood stove, he let out that surprised laugh again, bewilderment in his voice.

"I don't know if you're aware, but we don't have a lot of time," he said to Ronan. The wind was a monster outside, tearing down trees and threatening to rip the siding right off the house. Ronan ignored it.

"We have a little time."

Something that had been knocked askew inside of him for months had finally settled back into place, and he wasn't afraid anymore. Adam watched as he poured water into a tin kettle and placed it on the stove, the light reflecting in his eyes. It would be the last time he would do this, the last time he would do anything, probably, and he wanted the last thing on his apocalypse to-do list to matter. So Ronan pulled Adam's favorite mug from the cabinet above the sink, the one that could have been smashed by the earthquakes or Ronan's own anger but had survived despite the potential destruction of this house. He threw a few filters on top of the pot and looked to Adam, waiting for him to take the cue to search the pantry for the dark roast they both liked. Adam smirked at him as he passed the can of grounds to him, an expression that Ronan should have taken the time to appreciate before, when he had the time.

Ronan took the kettle from the fire and let a stream of hot water soak the grounds suspended above the pot in the shittiest version of pour-over coffee in the world. But none of that mattered after he'd finally given Adam his mug. He watched Adam breathe it in before taking a drink.

"This really is better than Starbucks, you know," Adam said after a moment, mug still held close to his face.

Ronan barked out a laugh that almost drowned out the whistling of the wind outside. A long sip from his own mug told Ronan that the coffee tasted just as awful as it always had, but the smell of it masked the smoke from outside, and Adam's smile masked just about every other bad thing in the entire stupid world. So Ronan sidled up beside him, pressed shoulder to shoulder, and let himself enjoy the simple pleasure of enjoying coffee with the person he loved one last time. The pole barn was probably gone by now, the BMW blown halfway across the state, but Ronan had this. Adam snaked an arm around his shoulders and Ronan let out a shaking breath.

He had this.

Ronan had Adam.