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When Adam called Ronan to ask for help, he was expecting the BMW to pick him up.
He sat in the passenger seat of his currently incapacitated Hondayota waiting for Ronan to come get him and thinking of how he was going to manage scraping together the money to pay for a tow.
He was expecting the BMW, but instead found himself staring at one of the most hideously blue pick up trucks he’d ever seen. It had a wooden stake bed, the sort with the slatted planks instead of a proper bed wall. It was pulling a trailer.
Adam stood and rounded the hood of his car to stare at it, not entirely sure what to think.
Ronan put the truck in park and pulled his upper body out the window to look at Adam over the top of the ridiculous beast of a truck.
“The shit box is officially a shitbox now, then,” he said.
“Where’d you get this?” Adam asked.
“It’s so Declan knows I’m a proper farmer,” he said. “Where’d’you think I got it?” He asked the question like it was a statement. A dream truck. Obviously.
“Well,” Adam rolled his eyes. He pointedly looked at his shit box.
Ronan nodded and tucked himself back in. He pulled forward, and Adam directed him to put the trailer in the best possible position to load the Hondayota up with as little grief as possible.
Ronan killed the engine, and the door to the truck creaked open like it was actually as old as it looked and not freshly plucked from Ronan’s dreams. As tall as Ronan was he could very likely reach the step down, but instead he leapt from the tall truck, kicking up dirt as he did.
Together, they pushed Adam’s shit box up the ramp onto the trailer. Adam chained it in place and locked it up like he’d done a million times before with other people’s no-hope cars.
“I guess just bring it to the Barns, then?” Ronan asked. He scuffed his boot through the dirt in an arc.
Adam thought about it. He had been on his way there anyway.
“Guess so.”
Adam pulled the passenger side of Ronan’s truck open and was greeted with a smell that was like dust and birds. It smelled and felt like it had been sitting directly in a patch of sun for no less than three weeks.
Adam pulled himself up and buckled into the passenger seat.
Once they were at the Barns, Ronan pulled the truck up past the driveway, across the grass and into the side yard. They were comfortably fit between the far wall of the large house and a broad white barn with an aluminum roof.
“Here’s as good a place as any,” Ronan said. Adam shrugged.
“Are we just unhooking the trailer and leaving it, or taking the car off?” Adam asked as he found out that yes, jumping from the truck was much easier than trying to take the large step down.
“Taking the car off, I’ll still need the trailer to move other stuff.” Ronan was pulling out the ramp on the back of the trailer when he looked back over to Adam.
“You didn’t think I dreamt it just for this occasion did you?”
He had. He wouldn’t have been surprised at least.
“You would,” he said.
Ronan shook his head, but with a wicked grin that told Adam he was right. So Adam climbed up onto the trailer to unhook the car.
In the middle of it all Adam distantly heard the screen door slam and the unmistakable clunk of Opal’s hooves on the porch.
Opal was at them in a flash.
“Stay over there,” Ronan snapped, serious but not mean. “Please,” he added, as an afterthought. Opal nodded and smiled. She waited for them to finish.
It didn’t take much longer and Ronan looked at her the moment they finished, signalling that she was good. She dashed to his side in an instant, wrapping her arms around his waist in a hug.
It was short and quick before she turned to Adam, giving him a tighter and longer hug.
“She likes you better,” Ronan said.
“She missed me,” Adam said at the same time and in the same tone Opal said, “I missed him.”
Ronan smiled.
Adam stooped to pick Opal up, and he set her on his shoulders.
“What’s wrong with the shitbox?” she asked.
Ronan smiled bigger.
“My car,” Adam corrected, “stopped working.”
“You couldn’t fix it?” she asked.
“Nope, it’s done for good this time.”
She shrugged, done with the topic and asked if he wanted to make homemade ice cream with him. They decided that was quite a good idea.
-
At the kitchen table, Opal and Adam were rolling a metal tin that looked like it probably once had coffee grounds in it back and forth. Inside, cream and sugar and ice sloshed around to make their ice cream.
Ronan was sitting on the counter cross-legged and barefoot, watching them.
Whatever Adam had been explaining got suddenly interrupted when Opal cut him off.
“If you don’t have a car how will you visit?”
“Don’t interrupt people,” Ronan said from his counter perch.
“Sorry,” she said. She didn’t sound the least bit remorseful. Ronan wondered how much of his personality he could handle handed back to him.
“I guess I can’t unless Ronan comes to get me.” Adam looked like he’d been thinking about it all day, and like he didn’t want to think about it for much longer. “Otherwise I have my bike. I’ll just use that.”
“Hooves are too hard to ride bikes with, did you know?” She frowned. “You can take Ronan’s truck.”
“Hey,” Ronan cut in, “don’t go offering up my stuff, little miss. No one can take my truck.”
The sound of the metal tin rolling across the table stopped in Opal’s hands.
“Adam visiting is important,” she said.
“Obviously,” Ronan answered, leaping down from the counter. He opened the fridge. “He can take the BMW.”
Ronan heard the tin roll across the table again, but just once as it stopped again in Adam’s hands. Opal was pleased. Adam was not.
“I can’t just take the BMW,” Adam said, lowering his voice to mimic Ronan.
“Why not?” Ronan pulled out a carton of orange juice and knocked the fridge closed with a hip. “You know how to drive it.”
“Not the point,” Adam said. “You know the point.”
“Adam, come on,” he said between gulps straight from the carton. “I don’t drive it anymore.”
“That’s not true.”
It wasn’t entirely false either, or Ronan wouldn’t have said it. He rather favored the truck, but usually still drove the BMW into town. He just didn’t usually go to town too often anymore, especially not since the Sarchengey’s left for their trip; now he mostly hung out with Chainsaw and Opal.
They stared at each other across the kitchen. Finally the metal tin rolled across the table again to Opal.
“My hands are cold,” she said after a few more rolls.
“Switch with me,” Ronan said. “You get all the topping stuff out.”
Adam caught the tin and rolled it to Ronan when he and Opal switched places. It felt like she left the room entirely when she entered the big walk-in pantry.
Adam and Ronan stared at each other, silently discussing the reasons Adam needed the BMW more than Ronan.
Opal clattered everything she decided was needed onto the counter.
“Is it ready yet?” she asked.
Adam pulled the lid off and tilted it to her so she could judge. She took it, snapped the lid back on and gave it a last minute quick few shakes.
Ronan scooped the homemade ice cream into three bowls. They each piled the toppings on and headed to the living room. Ronan set his bowl on the glass coffee table while Adam and Opal sat on the couch.
He pulled a dusty box of records out from under the small table that had a less dusty record player on it. He pulled out one with a mossy green cover—Matthew’s favorite.
Adam and Opal remained silent, waiting for the music to start.
When it did, Ronan returned to the couch.
“Move over, Jesus,” he said, and he pushed his way between the arm of the couch and Adam. He nudged his leg behind Adam’s back, and Adam turned to lean against Ronan’s chest.
Opal leaned against Adam’s legs, and they ate their ice cream to the sound of Matthew’s favorite record, more flute than bagpipes. Ronan preferred the bagpipes.
-
When Opal fell asleep, Adam carried her up the stairs to Declan’s bedroom. For some reason she favored it to the rest. Adam wasn’t sure if it was because it would be the easiest to transform into her own personality what with Declan’s seeming lack of one, or if it was for some other unnameable reason. He was smart enough to know better than to ask Ronan what he thought.
She slept in a nest of blankets, comforters, comics and toys. She made it herself, and it was located behind the slatted closet doors.
Adam laid her across the bed anyway, as it was both awkward and uncomfortable to navigate a sleeping child into a closet.
They stood together in silence, and Adam wondered when his life got so pleasantly domestic. He looked at Ronan, who nodded towards the door.
They were quiet, but not awkwardly so, as they made their way to the kitchen. Adam was washing dishes and Ronan was drying when Ronan finally spoke.
“So, do you want a ride back, or?”
Adam turned the water off and dried his hands on the front of his pants. He leaned against the counter while he thought about it.
He had work in the morning. Opal was sleeping upstairs, and would be upset if she woke up and they were both gone.
“Alright,” he said.
Ronan sighed, his frown creasing his face in the way Adam hated to see.
“No,” Adam clarified. “Alright, I will take the BMW. Stay home with Opal.”
Ronan looked grateful, in an irritated Ronan-esque sort of way, and nodded. He shuffled up to Adam’s side.
“Mmm-hmm,” Adam hummed. Ronan slipped his hand into Adam’s back pocket, and Adam kissed him.
-
After Adam left, Ronan returned to Opal/Declan’s room. She was still asleep on the bed, and he sat on the foot of the bed.
He briefly considered covering her with a blanket, but knew that she would wake soon enough to move across the room into her closet-nest.
So instead, he opened the window and sat cross-legged in front of it. He leaned his arms on the sill, surprised to see the Hondayota in the side yard there, even though he put it there.
He felt Opal sit up before he heard her voice.
“Did Adam leave?” she asked.
“He took the BMW.” Ronan spoke the words out the window.
Opal crawled across the bed and sat in Ronan’s lap. They sat together like that until Opal started to fall asleep again.
“Get in bed,” he told her.
She snorted, no doubt another trait she picked up from Ronan, but it sounded particularly animalistic coming from her. She sleepily made her way across the room and tucked herself into her nest and pulled the closet door almost all the way closed.
Not long after, Ronan fell asleep with his head in his arms on the window sill.
He dreamt about the large field of Mitsubishis. There was a large screen in front of them all, like a drive-in movie.
He was in the booth with the projector, and there were piles and piles of movie reels around him. He stared down at his bare feet, tangled up in loose film. He flipped the power to the machine on and a bright and color memory of Alice in Wonderland sprung to life on the screen below him.
When he looked out the hand cut hole in the building that served as a window, the Mitsubishis were gone. Adam’s shitbox car took their place, side by side, hundreds of them filling the field below him.
The screen also changed, and in its place stood the large white barn that sat closest to his house. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in through his nose.
He startled awake—an expression he found funny but still fitting as he’d yet to enter back into his body. The projector was sitting proudly in his hands on the window sill, spools of film tangled around him and rolled off the bed.
He stood and untangled himself. He went to take a shower.
-
Sunday morning when Adam opened the door to go to work he almost tripped over a basket. It was a basket of bizarre and mismatched wildflowers.
The little card had Ronan’s heavy handwriting and Opal’s teeth marks on it.
Date tonight?
Below that, there was an address, one that Adam immediately recognized as the Barns’ address. Ronan’s phone number was also written unnecessarily. There was a lopsided heart drawn in the bottom corner.
Ronan must have dropped them off before church; Adam was annoyed he didn’t say hello as well but knew that that would’ve ruined the gesture.
Adam rolled his eyes and scooped up the basket of flowers, unlocking and re-entering his apartment. He could tell they weren’t dream flowers and would therefore need water and proper care.
He found a plastic pitcher in his bottom cupboard he’d bought at the dollar store to make Kool-Aid in.
He filled it with water and placed the flowers carefully in it. He brought it over to the window, slid the invitation card into the front pocket of his flannel shirt, and left to go to work.
-
On his break, he called Ronan’s phone. Flipping the little card between his fingers he wondered if Ronan would pick up.
“City Morgue,” Ronan answered.
“Do you answer all date related phone calls this way? Don’t you think that’d scare him off?” Adam said.
Ronan’s sharp laugh was muddled by phone static.
“What’s this about?” Adam asked.
“What’s what about?” Ronan asked back.
Adam’s face felt hot, words too difficult to say. Leaving me flowers and asking me on dates like we only just met, he wanted to say.
“So you’re coming right?” Ronan asked.
“I usually do,” Adam hoped Ronan could hear his smile.
“Yeah but—”
“I’ll come after work. I’m done at 7.”
“It’s a date,” said Ronan.
“It’s your house,” said Adam.
Ronan hung up.
-
Adam parked his car where the BMW was always parked just as the sun was setting. As he walked up to the house, Ronan swung open the screen door and stepped out. He was standing there with a plain white t-shirt and bare feet.
“Is that what you wear on all of your dates?” Adam asked.
“First of all,” Ronan put a hand in his back pocket, “fuck you, this is a clean shirt.”
Adam laughed brightly.
“Second of all?” he asked.
“Second of all, I have a surprise.”
Ronan stepped down the porch steps.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
Adam gave him a pointed look.
“Hey, it’s okay. Close your eyes and give me a hand.” He held his own hand out, palm up.
Adam stared just enough longer to make sure Ronan understood he wouldn’t do this for anyone else.
Finally, he took Ronan’s hand and slid his eyes shut.
Ronan led him across the yard, around the house and into the side yard where he remembered they parked the Hondayota.
“What’s this have to do with the shitbox?” he asked.
“You think you’re smart for figuring that out? Opal could’ve figured that out, genius.”
“Where is Opal?” Adam asked instead.
His arm was tugged forward, It felt like Ronan tripped on something.
“Fox Way,” he said.
“Ah.” So they had the house to themselves for the night. Or the side yard. Whatever was going on, they were alone.
“Okay,” Ronan said when they suddenly stopped. Adam heard the Hondayota door open before he saw the mismatched ugly thing.
“Please tell me you didn’t bother dreaming me another shitbox,” Adam said as his eyes opened. Ronan didn’t say anything in lieu of having Adam figure it out for himself.
The first thing Adam noticed was that the white barn was currently decorated with large swaths of fabric swooped to the sides like a big theater.
On the side of the barn there was an image being projected. A big black and white old fashioned countdown was being displayed, perpetually counting down to nothing.
3, 2, 1. blink.
3, 2, 1. blink.
Adam followed the light of projection across the sky and saw a complicated machine that could only be described as what someone thought a projector should look like.
His car was the last thing he noticed, despite standing right next to it. It had been turned to face the barn, and the front seats and center console were missing.
In their place was a large, leather bench seat that looked like it belonged in a Cadillac.
“Hondayotillac,” Adam said.
Ronan just pressed his hand to the small of Adam’s back and guided him to get in. Of course, because Adam entered first, he found himself in the passenger seat.
Not that it really mattered, as the steering wheel was missing. The part of the dashboard the usually contained the radio was the only part still there in its usual shabby glory. Adam turned in his seat and got up to his knees to look in the back.
Where there were once seats, there now sat an honest-to-god popcorn machine, and mini-fridge.
“Ronan—” he started to say as he turned back around.
The glove compartment dropped open—as it often did whenever the car was jostled too much—and it made Adam smile. Proof that this was still Adam’s shitty car and not some magical creation.
Adam didn’t cry, but he felt like he should. His mouth pressed into a wobbly line, and he kissed Ronan on the mouth, soft and meaningful.
Then, he kissed Ronan again.
And then five more times.
“Thank you,” he finally said.
To say that he’d never seen Ronan Lynch blush before would be a lie, but seeing it again didn’t surprise him any less than any of the other times it’d happened.
“Yeah, well.”
“What made you think of this?” Adam asked, ever logical.
Ronan cleared his throat.
“I dreamt about it.”
Adam knew this, obviously, because of the projector, but it was still a shock to hear. Of all the spectacular and amazing, impossible things the dreaming boy next to him could spend his time dreaming about, his mind was apparently preoccupied with going on drive-in movie dates with Adam.
Feeling emotional, Adam turned his attention back to the screen before he really did start to cry.
“So, do we get to watch a movie, or do we suffer through the endless countdown forever?” Adam asked.
Ronan nodded and said, “It kind of only plays one movie. Or one good movie, I guess.”
Adam nodded back. That made sense at any rate: whatever it was playing when he pulled it from the dream was probably what it played best.
“There was lots of blank film that came out too,” Ronan told him, “and this was my favorite movie, so be nice about it okay?”
Adam didn’t know what Ronan’s favorite movie could possibly be, so he turned his attention to the screen. Ronan clicked a button on a small remote, and suddenly the screen was bursting with color.
“This is your favorite?” Adam asked, as the Alice in Wonderland title screen rolled across the screen. The question wasn’t malicious, just purely for clarification.
“It’s kind of wrong,” Ronan admitted. He told him all about how he hadn’t seen it in a while, that the whole family would watch it together, that Niall would read the book to them.
“It’s wrong because it’s only how I remember it,” he said.
And wrong it was. Adam loved it. He laughed so hard his stomach hurt when a bunch of flowers looked down upon Alice and said, “The fuck is this?” before falling into a weird children’s chorus version of the murder squash song.
There were parts of the movie that dissolved down to just bright colors with distant, muffled dialogue, clearly parts Ronan couldn’t remember very well.
The Caterpillar had Declan’s voice. Alice had Aurora’s.
Adam was surprised to hear his own voice come from the dormouse’s mouth.
During a scene that was just a bright yellow screen with nonsense words tumbling out of someone’s mouth, Adam felt Ronan’s arm fall behind his back. So, Adam scooted closer and laid his head on Ronan’s shoulder.
He felt the breath that Ronan had likely been holding across his hair. Adam carefully reached out his hand and placed it softly against Ronan’s stomach.
Ronan sat still for a moment before reaching and tangling their fingers together. Adam could feel Ronan’s hand trembling.
Adam stayed quiet a moment longer before shifting just a bit and he whispered, “Ronan, are you...nervous?”
“Pshaw,” Ronan said, sounding entirely too much like Blue.
“Why are you acting nervous? We’ve been like this...together for months.”
Ronan didn’t say anything, and Adam kissed his throat.
“We’ve never been on a date before,” Ronan finally said.
Adam pulled back enough to give Ronan a look.
“Ronan, we kiss each other every day.”
“I’ve never been on a date at all before,” he said, sounding angry.
“I’ve never been on as good a date as this before,” Adam told him.
Ronan sighed. It sounded like relief.
“This isn’t a first date, you know? You don’t have to impress me, I’d still like you even if it wasn’t the best date I’ve ever been on.”
Ronan didn’t say anything, which Adam heard loud and clear. I want to impress you, though.
“You’re...the most impressive person I know, you know?” Adam’s face burned.
Ronan groaned.
Adam sat up, and kissed Ronan’s jaw.
“You kiss on all your first dates, Adam?”
“All my first dates with you.”
Ronan sucked in his bottom lip and bit it.
Adam leaned forward and kissed his jaw again. He kissed his cheek. The corner of his mouth.
Adam leaned up onto his knees and turned entirely toward him before kissing his mouth.
Ronan’s hand wound up in Adam’s hair, and Adam swung his leg across Ronan’s lap. With no steering wheel there was plenty of space for their bodies to fit together this way. He wondered if Ronan predetermined that.
He brought his hands to Ronan’s shoulders and kissed him deeply.
Ronan pulled his knees apart, and Adam dropped a comfortable few inches to sit directly in Ronan’s lap with his knees pressing into the back of the plush cadillac seat.
As their breathing turned to panting, their kisses grew sloppy. Ronan’s hands found their way to the back of Adam’s thighs. Adam ran his nails across Ronan’s scalp. His hair was long enough to need to be cut again soon.
Ronan brought his hands up under Adam’s shirt.
Adam brought his mouth down to Ronan’s throat.
When Chainsaw screeched, Adam hit his head on the roof of his car.
Ronan turned a heavy glare to where she was perched on the open passenger side window.
Ronan’s blown pupils and red face weren’t making him look any more intimidating than usual, so Chainsaw hopped into the car.
Adam laughed and ducked his head against Ronan’s neck. He kissed his jaw one last time before dragging himself off his lap. He scooped up Chainsaw and gave her a kiss too.
The movie was still running, so Adam placed Chainsaw on his shoulder and snuggled back up to Ronan’s side. Ronan twisted in his seat to reach the mini-refrigerator and he pulled out a Coke and a Sprite and he handed one to Adam.
“You want to know why I dreamt the truck?” Ronan whispered, once they were all comfortable.
Adam stayed quiet but nodded.
“I don’t like being in there anymore, not after--”
Adam laced his fingers with Ronan’s.
“You can keep it,” he said. “Please keep it. It’s not...It’s not mine anymore, I don’t want it.”
Adam kissed his shoulder.
“I’ll keep it,” Adam whispered. “I’ll keep it.”
Ronan nodded.
The credits rolled on the screen in front of them and Adam asked if they could watch it again.
“Right now?” Ronan asked.
“Do you have other plans?”
Ronan rolled his eyes.
“We could go inside. You can still see it from my room.”
“Very smooth, Ronan.”
“I’m always smooth.”
-
They found themselves in a tangled heap of blankets, laying the wrong way on Ronan’s bed.
At some point during the second showing, Ronan lost his shirt. During the credits, Adam lost his pants.
Adam fell asleep during the third showing, after Ronan pressed kiss after kiss to Adam’s hands, his ears, his neck.
“Gratias,” Ronan whispered into Adam’s hair. “Bonum nox noctis, te amo.”
“You too,” Adam mumbled, sleepily.