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The room was still and shadow-soaked in the barely-there light of the coming dawn but Ronan didn't need to be able to see to trace the constellation of freckles across Adam's back with his lips. He didn't need to be able to see to know where to pause to press his mouth against the small indentation of a dimple along the edge of Adam's shoulder blade. The bed was warm, Adam was warmer, and the metal band of the dreamt engagement ring Ronan had given him the night before was cool between their linked fingers. He didn't want to get up but the animals of the Barns didn't care if there had been a wedding the night before, didn't care if Ronan had changed his life the night before, they had to be fed. Why had he wanted to be a farmer again?
Ronan gently disentangled his fingers from Adam's and crawled out of the bed, careful not to disturb the occupant though it wasn't too hard a thing to do. Adam was a sound sleeper, and one not fond of mornings so even if he stirred he wouldn't be awake for long. Around him in the darkness, Ronan could make out the clutter of their bedroom. Though there was much less of it than there had been four years before during their first summer together there, the summer Blue and Gansey took their road trip and he and Adam dissolved into the paradise of the Barns, each item brought on a host of memories.
Each summer since that first one, he and Adam returned to the Barns and spent the season wading through the dreamt objects of his and Niall's work, organizing the ones kept around the farmhouse and storing others in one of the many outbuildings of the property, even sending some off to family in farther-flung places on occasion. But there were many items they just couldn't part with. When they moved into the master, when Ronan was finally able to let that part of his parents' memories be laid to rest, those treasures came with them too.
Ronan laid last night's dream object on the bedside table: a brilliantly golden ivy leaf, shiny as the metal itself but smelling of fall, its surface burned with a single word in Latin. Tamquam. He placed it between Adam's dreamt watch (Ronan's love letter to him before college that told the time wherever Ronan was located) and a little toy car that played a different tune depending on which wheel was spun. Dream objects with a purpose, with a story. Ronan figured Adam would insist on keeping the golden ivy leaf too as it was the same now.
Ronan slipped on some clothes. Though the shirt smelled like Adam's, he didn't bother looking for his own. Once he was out the front door, without hearing a single peep of life from those still sleeping within, Ronan breathed in the moist air of the June morning as he walked through the open field behind the house. He took in the rise of dawning color in the sky over the misty blue mountains in the distance. He soaked in the feeling of the damp grass beneath his boots, the give of the soil, the brush of the still air over his exposed skin, the taste of the dew on his tongue.
For so long, he never felt awake when he was awake, reality never fully as real as his dreams were. It wasn't the world's fault, he'd learned. It was because he hadn't realized how fragmented he was, how blocked he was from the fullness of this life. Now, he knew to appreciate it, the wholeness of himself and it.
He made his way to the main livestock barn. Along the way he dodged Gasoline the boar floating along as a cloud of noxious gas, and the cat with hands, and many other members of his bewildering dreamt menagerie of animals. They were all more present when he was home here at the Barns.
Other than the summers, his days here had been farther and farther between since averting the apocalypse four years before. After that day, with his power as Greywaren opening the world to him by banishing the nightwash, Ronan had been more places than he ever could have imagined before. Mainly, he was were Adam was. Or rather, they made a point to be as overlapping as possible wherever life took them both.
First there had been Boston long enough for Adam to finish his first full year at Harvard, which he did to perfection despite his ill health after returning from the Lace's attempt to unmake him. But, Adam hadn't been happy in Boston, with who he had become there, with being separated from his magic so thoroughly, so they left it behind to Declan and Jordan and moved southward. Adam finished his three years of undergrad at Georgetown, allowing them easier access to the Barns and Lindenmere when city life grew too heavy and they needed peace.
Washington D.C. was never quite home but it was better than Boston had been for them. Ronan had even audited a few classes, not enrolling fully since he refused to be beholden to curriculums or paperwork but wanting to keep busy while Adam was busy. Adam finally stopped carrying all of his extra jobs in his junior year. Ronan had started sketching alongside his studies, something just for himself that wasn't dreaming. Something just his and just real. They still owned their little apartment there; Matthew currently lived in it while attending UVA.
Ronan had left Adam's side off and on in those university years. As Greywaren, there was so much that needed to be tended to in the wake of Nathan Farooq-Lane's failed apocalypse. There were still dreamers living along or outside failing ley lines, experiencing nightwash and not knowing what to do, dreamers unaware of their powers or how to control them, dreamers scared and in-need, thinking they were alone in the world. Ronan went to them, taught what he could, did what he could, opened ley lines up as he could. But, he took Adam with him as often as he could too.
After all, Adam was even better with ley lines than Ronan was and something even grander had happened to his own power after Ronan took on the mantle of Greywaren. It made Ronan smile a little, and made his neck ache a lot, to remember the thousands of miles of him driving so Adam could do school work in the passenger seat, occasionally twisting the knob of the dreamt car's radio just so to make the murder squash song blare out of the speakers after long periods of Adam's studious silence, both Adam and Chainsaw squawking in indignation at the abhorred tune as Ronan cackled.
Then Adam was approached by Carmen Farooq-Lane with the offer that would change both their lives: to work full-time in service of the ley lines and dreamers through a secret government agency she had been tasked with creating from the ground up.
It had taken Adam a long time to settle on what exactly he wanted to do with that clever analytical mind and ruthless focused determination. One degree hadn't been enough so he got two, one in political science and one in environmental science. 'One for the real and human world,' Adam had explained, 'one for the magic and dreamer world.'
It wasn't until Carmen came to Adam with the perfect job that it made sense exactly what he would do with it. When Ronan asked Adam how he had known to be prepared for the work, he gave that knowing smile, that smile that spoke of the strangeness of time and the bigness of the universe beyond the scrying bowl. He could do that now much more safely than before. Ley lines spoke to Adam now even better than Cabeswater once had, as Lindenmere did still, reaching out for the Magician to bring the Greywaren to them to make them whole and safe once more. Adam was the compass, Ronan was the instrument.
And Ronan. All the trees of the world spoke to him now, sometimes in Latin and sometimes in that special language only the Greywaren part of him knew how to understand. His dreams had never been grander or more stable. He hadn't pulled anything accidentally from dream space in years and he could safely take Adam into it without worry of losing the connection between body and soul.
Between the two of them, they could rejuvenate the world and so that was what they'd done together since Adam's graduation: traveling around the nation to rebuild ley lines and save dreamers. They shut down unnecessary development projects (through legal means thanks to Adam's expertise) and brought abandoned land back to fallow. They allowed the magic of the world to safely pour out and manifest as they opened the way, the focus of balance always in mind. And, when they needed rest, the Barns was there for them as sanctuary.
It was simple enough to feed all the animals that needed to be fed and let out the ones that needed to be let out. Morning chores at the Barns were as breathing was to Ronan, stabilizing and constant. The farmhouse was still quiet when he returned but he knew his brother like clockwork so Ronan set to work in the kitchen preparing food for the crowd. He was rather good at making breakfast. Adam didn't quite come alive until after the first cup of coffee and was liable to skip eating all together if someone didn't remind him, so that became Ronan's job. Adam's job was practically anything else that arose during a day, especially if it involved picking up a phone or being somewhere on-time.
The coffee pot, dreamt, was switched on. Mugs, some dreamt some not, were laid out. Pitchers of milk and juice, dreamt to stay cold outside of the fridge, were placed onto the breakfast counter. Ronan couldn't even remember when he dreamt the sunflowers sitting at the center of the large not-dreamt dining table. Years, he supposed. He didn't think he'd dream ones with such garish purple polka-dots now if given the choice.
As expected, Declan Lynch, the eldest brother, was the first to arrive in the kitchen only half an hour later, pouring coffee without a word before settling at the head of the table with his phone already open to work emails. It was the morning after his wedding but it wasn't a surprise. His empire waited for no man, not even himself and, technically, the no-work honeymoon didn't officially start until he and Jordan reached Boston later that day.
Carmen Farooq-Lane arrived next, phone also open to work, but she did thank Ronan for the coffee and greet Declan at least. Richard Campbell Gansey III came in soon after, trailed by a seemingly-hungover Blue Sargent who wordlessly helped lay out plates in front of each of the chairs while Gansey carried over the platters of bacon and scrambled eggs to put at the center of the table. Matthew Lynch, the youngest brother, rolled in with his mop of golden curls everywhere and mouth already humming an off-key tune, brightening the room with his noise and chatter as he drew everyone into the day with his warm charm. Both Carmen and Declan sat down their phones and all those around the table fell into easy conversation.
Ronan had just finished the second platter of steaming pancakes when Jordan Lynch (née Hennessy) and Jordan Hennessy arrived at the same time, both looking equally exhausted and equally dropping into their seats with cheek kisses for their respective more-awake partners. Hennessy immediately fell into a long-winded monologue on her loathing of plane travel and Jordan stole bacon from Declan's plate.
Though his back was still to the hallway, Ronan felt the air shift when Adam entered the room, as he always did. He'd asked Adam once if it was the same for him, if he too always felt where Ronan was in a place no matter their distance. 'Of course,' he replied, as if all couples felt that.
Their time in the sweetmetal sea, when their consciousnesses had combined into one entity, had changed so much, so much of their awareness of each other individually and together. They still fought, they still disagreed, they still struggled, but there was a surety after that day that never dampened. I know you, their souls whispered to one another, Always.
Ronan placed the last pancake on the stack and turned to place it on the breakfast counter, grabbing the mug that was distinctly Adam's (Ronan had even dreamt it with his name on it, much to Adam's amusement.) and mixed his coffee with just the barest amount of cream and a heaping spoon of sugar. Adam padded over to him, eyes only for Ronan, and took the mug gratefully from Ronan's hand as he leaned over to kiss his cheek.
"Alter idem, darlin'," he whispered in Ronan's ear, responding to the leaf on the bedside table.
His breath was a warm caress against Ronan's skin, shivering down his spine with a delicious rush, and Ronan pulled him close. Adam turned around to lean his head against Ronan's shoulder and Ronan draped his arms around Adam's waist to hold him in place against his chest. There was a time when they wouldn't have done this, showed such affection so openly around others. Back then the fear of acknowledging, of wanting, had been too much to face. Now though they stood together comfortably as they looked over the kitchen table in companionable silence, observing. They had always both been observers, of others if not mostly of each other. Ronan let his eyes close as he leaned his cheek against Adam's hair, breathing in that smell that was only Adam, something beyond words he knew how to speak.
"Adam?" Something in Matthew's tone made the conversation at the table grow quiet, curious, and Ronan opened his eyes to look at his youngest brother. Matthew's bright wide eyes were fixated on where Adam held his mug of coffee. "What's that?"
Ronan didn't need to see Adam's face to feel the creep of his small-town summer boy smile as Adam lifted his hand, palm back, to show the table the engagement ring around his finger. Instead, Ronan took in the faces of those before them. Their family. The one they had made, that started when they were only children playing at finding kings and grew through the quest of saving the world. Ronan had only a moment to appreciate it before the room burst into ecstatic chaos.
Blue launched herself out of her chair with such suddenness that Gansey yelped, nearly falling out of his, and rushed Adam. She leapt into such a fierce hug that Ronan barely had time to take Adam's coffee from him before it spilled, stumbling a little to catch them both from toppling to the floor. Matthew followed her, jostling Declan along the way, and wrapped his arms around both Adam's and Ronan's necks.
Jordan's eyes filled with glassy tears as she took Declan's hand with a fierce smile and Hennessy let out a sound somewhere between a crow and a cackle, saying that it was all thanks to her such a day could come in the first place. Gansey eventually made his way past Matthew and Blue to hug Adam around Blue and clasp Ronan's shoulder with a knowing smile. Carmen lifted her mug in congratulations and Declan gave a very sedate very Declan nod of approval.
The sound died down a little as Hennessy waved her hand, coaxing Adam closer so she could inspect Ronan's handiwork as she lounged in her chair like an empress. "You better have done a good job by him, bruv," she mockingly warned Ronan, "No excuses for poor craftsmanship."
As the most powerful (second to himself) and creative (second to no one) dreamer Ronan knew, Hennessy was quite the critic. She held Adam's tanned palm between her black ones with Blue and Matthew standing behind her chair, all of them peering down as Jordan too leaned for a closer look. The dreamt band was silver, gleaming almost soft-blue in a certain light, with the etching of a ivy vine in which each leaf shone green in the illusion of emeralds though no real gemstone could be cut in such a delicate fashion. The vine surrounded the band in an eternal circle.
Hennessy nodded once in approval, looking to Adam, "Less flash than I would have made you, doll, but you did choose him so I guess you get what you get."
Adam laughed and it was, as it always was, the most glorious sound Ronan had ever heard.
"When are you thinking for a date?" Declan asked, already thumbing to open the calendar app on his phone, "We'll all want to make sure to lock it in. No one around this table is allowed to miss it." Leave it to Declan to declare something a family meeting without calling it so.
"November second," Ronan said.
They hadn't discussed it of course. They hadn't discussed any of it yet. But when Adam's eyes met Ronan's, Ronan knew that Adam understood why that day.
It was the November first of five years ago when, on his eighteenth birthday, Ronan kissed Adam for the first time in his childhood bedroom. After nearly two years of holding back his growing love for him to the point of painful suffocation, it changed everything. It was the night of truth, the night that had been so full of every possibility in the universe, the night that they determined to once and for all see the search for Glendower to completion.
It was the November second of five years ago when, in the nebulous time between midnight and dawn, Adam pressed Ronan's back into the pillar of the front porch of that same farmhouse and kissed him for the second time.
The next year and a half after that wasn't easy. Gansey died and came back to life thanks to Cabeswater's sacrifice. Noah passed into the next realm. Adam left Ronan for Harvard and then Ronan left Adam for Bryde. They lost themselves and the end of the world came and went. They had been apart and they lied to themselves. They hurt each other.
But nothing ever changed what they said to each other with that kiss on November second, what it meant. Nothing ever changed the knowing weight of it, sure and constant, that never shifted in spite of the blood and tears shed. The weight of 'this is us', the weight of 'this is us, forever'.
They had never been people who did things halfway.
The first kiss was a question, a longing fulfilled and a dream into reality but nothing more. It was the second kiss that was the answer, the one that sealed their two fates into one path. That was why it was the second, not the first, that Ronan wanted to pay homage to in November.
Adam gently took his hand from Hennessy's and walked over to Ronan. There was no one else in the room as he took Ronan's face in his hands, his eyes luminous and beyond the world, and kissed him. Adam kissed him with all of every second of those five years between them, with all the memories and moments piled into a single breath, and Ronan willingly drowned in it. Even when they broke apart, eyes only on each other's, it took a little bit for the sounds of the room to come back to them.
Adam's cheeks flushed and he ducked his head as Ronan pulled him against his chest, pressing his cheek into Adam's hair. Hennessy and Jordan gave identical hoots of approval and Blue fanned herself and Matthew cheered and Gansey's mouth gaped but his eyes shone with gladness. Ronan wasn't sure if Gansey was even breathing.
"Consider this your notice, Adam, that you have the week of November second off, as well as whatever length of time you determine for a honeymoon," Carmen said with a sly smirk. Adam pulled back a little to nod to her with a still-shy smile.
Declan frowned, "You know that only gives you five months to plan it all, right? These things don't just come together without effort."
Adam's smile turned cocky, his eyes bright. Ronan wanted to swallow the expression whole. He glanced from Ronan to Declan, "Nothing is impossible for a dreamer."
Ronan's chest swelled with pride. Just a few short years ago and such a thing would've been an unspoken secret in this house. Dreaming was something hidden but not any longer.
"Hear hear!" Hennessy toasted with her glass of orange juice.
Jordan plopped into Declan's lap and leaned into her husband, cooing, "I'm sure they will handle it beautifully, dear. After all, they won't have to plan it with you so it will go swimmingly."
The table chuckled. Declan had been a true monster despite it only being a small affair at the Barns. Everyone expected him to become even worse by the time he finished planning the grander Boston society wedding for himself and Jordan taking place the following month.
Ronan handed Adam back his rescued mug of coffee and rested his chin on Adam's shoulder. Adam laid his free hand over Ronan's against his stomach, interlocking their fingers. The mug was still warm, thanks to it being a dreamt mug. Ronan hadn't made it just to have Adam's name on it, after all.
"Is it going to be here?" Blue asked, resettling into her seat and plucking a piece of bacon from the platter, her arm across the back of Gansey's chair.
"Of course," Adam said. They didn't need to discuss that either. They were always going to be married at the Barns, as surely as they were always going to fall in love with each other here, just as they were going to return here in the end.
"A good amount of logistics to consider with a winter wedding outdoors," Carmen pointed out. She wasn't wrong about that. The Barns was always more of everything. More life in the summer, more flowers in spring, more color in fall, and predictably more snow in winter.
"Oh, I don't know," Hennessy said with a cavalier wave of her hand, "I'm sure Lynch can come up with a thing or two to make the cold worthwhile." Her eyes sparkled with challenge and Ronan imagined her artist's brain whirling with ideas. His dreamer brain was already working on it too. They would have to compare notes later.
"There is one thing though we could settle while everyone's here," Adam said. He leaned his head against Ronan's cheek and Ronan knew what was coming when Adam's eyes settled on Gansey across the table. Everyone else followed his gaze and Gansey's eyes went wide. Ronan grinned with his sharp teeth. "We need you to get ordained, Gansey," Adam continued, "if you'd be so kind as to marry us."
Gansey's eyes somehow went wider, turning glassy and his cheeks flushed. Then the grandest smile pulled at his lips. Blue laid a hand on his shoulder, smiling softly, and Gansey laid a hand against his chest, bowing his head to them.
"It would be the honor of my life," Gansey said in his Virginian drawl, tears threatening to spill, "to stand by my magicians on the best day of theirs."
Ronan and Adam both smiled back at him. Their friend, there from the start. Everyone called out their approval and Ronan's eyes roamed the table. The mirror and the king, two dreams and a dreamer, the man who loved the two dreams and the woman who loved the dreamer. The magic of them, the impossibility of them. And in his arms, the Magician, maybe the most improbable of them all.
Adam let out a sigh of such deep contentment that Ronan's eyes fluttered closed for just a second at the sound, breathing in the scent of Adam and letting the sounds of joy surround him. Their home. Their family. Their wedding. What a miracle of a life they had dreamt up and fought for and willed into being.