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Adam could almost see steam rising off of Ronan’s shoulders, anger boiling off of him in near-visible waves, and somehow, that was the most normal aspect of the scene. Everything else was…surreal. Had been surreal since Ronan and Gansey had stepped into the courtroom, and only gotten more so as the trial had worn on, and now, as the three of them walked out, nothing felt quite real yet. Nothing except Ronan’s anger and Gansey’s babbling.
“I mean, it’s good that you won, at least,” Gansey was saying, “I suppose that’s the most important thing, but—“
“Can’t believe the piece of shit walked after all that,” Ronan was grumbling, kicking the side of the door as they stepped out of the courthouse into sunlight.
Adam had tuned both out slightly. He’d taken off his suit jacket once the trial had ended, and had been staring largely at the ground while all three had walked out together. He wasn’t entirely sure when they’d started talking, really, only that he’d become aware they were once they were well out of the courtroom. Which was good. Better they both complain now rather than raising a fuss over the final verdict.
“—I just wish we could’ve gotten a better sentence,” Gansey said, and Adam’s eyes caught the movement of Gansey’s fingers tapping against his side, agitated. “I really hoped that there’d be something more—more substantial, with everything that…”
Adam shook his head, both to stop both of them talking and to clear it of some of the haze he still felt caught in. “I never needed him to be in jail or pay a huge fine to me or anything like that,” Adam said, surprised at how soft his own voice was. “That’s never been what I…what this was about.” Ronan responded with a noise somewhere between a growl and a scoff.
“…What did you want, then, Adam?” Gansey asked. He was a few steps behind Adam—Gansey and Ronan had both stopped walking when Adam had spoken, he realized, and he’d just kept walking without noticing. He turned.
Ronan’s face was frustrated, but…cautious. Gansey’s was guarded, too, but less so; his eyes were sincere as ever, and warm.
“I…” Adam paused, looking up at the sky for a moment. It was a nice day out, which just made it feel even more surreal. White clouds drifted across the sky.
The courthouse was old and small, but made to look nice, for some reason; Adam didn’t really have enough experience with these things to know if that was usually the case or not. The building itself strove to look official and governmental, but a couple trees and some flowering bushes made it seem less like a house of law and more a public building. On the drive here, Adam almost had missed it, it looked so unlike the kind of forbidding place he’d imagined.
Adam wasn’t sure why he was noticing all of these details so much, right now. Gansey and Ronan were still waiting on his answer, and all he could think about was how pretty the sky looked through the tree leaves nearby.
He sighed, and started the thought over.
“What happened to me was…wrong,” he said, after a long moment.
“Obviously,” Ronan grumbled. Gansey hushed him, and then nodded at Adam to continue.
“And I…” Wind swept through the leaves, filling the area with a gentle rustling. The sidewalk wasn’t as well maintained as the bushes; it was full of cracks and weeds. That didn’t make the scenery feel less peaceful, though. If anything, the dandelion he spotted growing from a crack, gently bobbing in the wind, felt hopeful, somehow.
Today, an unrelated third party to all of this—with no attachment to Adam, no prior reason to side with him—had looked at the whole mess, and agreed with that simple statement: what happened here was wrong. It was down, on paper, in an official capacity. It was somewhere inarguable, removed from subjectivity and phrased in the most objective way it could be: this was a crime, and it should not have happened.
He watched the dandelion for a few seconds, trying to figure out how to put that into words.
“I…I just needed it to be…official, I guess,” he said, feeling like that was woefully inadequate, but unable to put better words to it. “That’s all I wanted.”
Ronan snorted, and got very gently elbowed in the ribs for it.
Gansey smiled, hesitant. “Well, that’s…good, then,” he said. Adam could hear him choosing his words. He wasn’t sure why Gansey felt like he had to be so careful, right now. He knew he’d been…unkind, frequently, in response to Gansey’s attempts to help in this situation, but. Seeing the two of them walk into the courtroom had been…Obviously, Gansey’d not been trying to exert control over Adam, just to help, and Adam was so grateful for them turning up, and…
“It’s over,” Adam said with a shrug, his eyes drifting down to the dandelion again. The words hung in the air, for a moment, and then crashed back down on him like a wave. It was over. It was real, it’d all been real, his father was always in the wrong, and it was over and done and Adam was free.
The world…came into focus, somehow, like someone twisting the lens on a camera. The haze faded out, and the sunlight seemed too bright, and Adam felt the pressure at the base of his throat just in time to desperately work to fight it down.
“God, it’s finally over,” he said, already hating how he could feel heat rising in his face up to his ears, the shudder breaking across his shoulders.
Someone swore, between Gansey and Ronan; probably Ronan, but Adam couldn’t tell, too busy trying not to break down in front of the courthouse in the middle of town. An arm—Gansey’s, still clad in his overcoat—wrapped around Adam’s shoulders and guided him off the sidewalk and under the shade of the tree; there was a concrete bench, pressed up near the building, that Adam hadn’t spotted. Gansey must have, though. He was herded gently onto it, facing away from the road, which was something of a relief, but still left him completely failing to stop crying.
Gansey didn’t say anything, and for that, at least, Adam was grateful, if very nervous. He couldn’t bring himself to meet Gansey’s eyes, not that he could see much past the tears—God, it was over, it was over, it was over, he was safe and never had to go back there again if he wanted and his father had always been in the wrong and it was over —and he had no idea what Gansey thought about this display, wasn’t sure he wanted to. It was almost poetic, a very detached part of him thought; this started with Adam breaking down crying in Gansey’s car, and it ended with another breakdown.
Ronan, an even more detached part of him noted, wasn’t on the bench. He was instead leaned up against the tree, staring at the road. Adam really didn’t want to know what he was thinking about all this. Probably nothing nice. Ronan wasn’t someone Adam had ever planned on showing weakness around.
He tried to get a lid back on the torrent of emotions—he shouldn’t have said anything, he should’ve waited until he was back at St. Agnes to unpack all of this, should have just ridden out the haze and let it carry him to somewhere safe so he could have his breakdown in private where no one would see it and he could pretend it never happened—but there was so much, a mix of hurt and relief and gratitude and anxiety and anger that had all been stoppered up over the course of this entire disaster of a process, and the more he wrestled with it, the more kept popping up to join the flood—
“Keep walking,” Ronan’s voice said. Adam tried to turn to see what was up; Ronan was largely obscured by one of the bushes and further by Gansey, who, Adam realized belatedly, was actually somewhat shielding Adam from view of the sidewalk. He managed to catch a glimpse, though, of a frightened looking person stepping quickly away, avoiding eye contact with Ronan, before Gansey shifted even further.
And the detached part of Adam’s brain realized, oh, they’re both making sure no one sees me.
That thought was followed a few seconds later by a wave of feeling so complicated and strong that any attempts he’d made to stem the tide had to be abandoned in favor of keeping his head above the water.
He buried his face in Gansey’s shoulder. The soft noise of shock Gansey made would’ve been funny if Adam wasn’t so busy crying his eyes out. The arm circled around his shoulders again, rubbing gentle circles in his back—hesitant, at first, but more confident when Adam made no attempt to stop him. As if he would want to, after all that’d happen. As if he could, even if he did want to.
It took…what should have been an embarrassing amount of time to collect himself, probably. He didn’t know how long they actually sat there. It wasn’t embarrassing, though. During that time, Ronan scared off one other passerby, and Gansey shifted slightly once, and none of them said anything to each other, and then it was over and Adam could breathe again.
Adam took another couple minutes to resettle, pulling away from Gansey finally and just…breathing. Gansey seemed to take the hint and looked away, which was appreciated, and stayed silent, which was even more so.
“Sorry about that,” Adam said, less to actually apologize and more to make it clear he was done.
Gansey smiled, softly. “You’ve nothing to apologize for,” he said. He didn’t say, ‘we’ll never speak of this again if you don’t want to,’ but he didn’t need to. It was understood.
The walk to their respective cars was quiet, but peacefully so. Gansey broke it after a bit, to ask if Adam was going to be at school today.
“Took the whole day off,” Adam said, shaking his head. “I wasn’t sure how long the case would be, and anyway, I wanted to…” Give himself time to process, except Gansey and Ronan had handled a lot of that just now, hadn’t they. “I’m planning on pretty much sleeping for most of the rest of the day,” he finished instead. He was exhausted. He’d been tense and anxious since waking up—for weeks, really, if he was fully honest with himself—and then there’d been the trial itself, and now…whatever it was that had just happened that none of them were ever speaking of again. He was drained.
In a good way, though. Like flushing out stagnant water.
“Good. I mean, alright, that’s wise of you,” Gansey said. Another pause.
“Come wake me up after school’s over?” Adam asked, with the biggest smile he could manage just then, which was…less of a smile and more a tilt of his mouth. He hoped it got the message across, though.
Gansey beamed. “Of course! You won your case, we need to celebrate—we can pick up Jane and head to Nino’s, maybe?”
“I’d be okay with that,” Adam said, and the smile was a lot less forced this time.