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After it all, they went to Jordan’s studio.
It was different, being there physically, not just seeing it through the canvases crowding the room while he floated in the empty dark of the sweetmetal sea. But Ronan remembered the studio, the portraits. He remembered the painting of Declan, face turned away in a mostly hidden smile. He remembered Jordan and Declan swaying to music, taking a few real, waltzing steps before Declan dipped Jordan and Jordan struck a pose.
Declan.
Declan had been shot, but he was fine. Or he’d been temporarily fine enough to coordinate getting Carmen Farooq-Lane the sweetmetal ink that made up the intricate scaled tattoo covering Ronan’s left arm. Declan will be fine, Ronan thought. He had to be. Because Matthew–
Matthew.
The Museum of Fine Arts. The explosion of sound. The thunderous noise that felled every living thing nearby.
Ronan shattered the vise that started tightening his chest. Grief would come, he’d let it in, but he pushed it away right then. Because he had Adam–Adam. His Adam. Adam!–back, and after he’d put on a mask, acting like he was fine during their brief walk from the Esplanade to Fenway Studios, Adam slumped against the arm of Jordan’s hideously orange couch and closed his eyes as soon as the door shut behind Jordan and Hennessy when they left to get food on what Ronan thought was a calculated errand to leave him and Adam alone.
So many times, Ronan had seen Adam beat up, bruised, bloody. For the first few years Ronan had known him, that had almost been Adam’s natural state. But angry bruises from Robert Parrish’s fists had turned into more pleasant marks from lips and teeth. Except for once, blood from counter corners and table edges was replaced by scrapes and nicks from boyish antics.
The Adam Ronan crouched in front of now made Ronan’s heart want to implode. He wasn’t beat up, bruised, or bloody, things Ronan could clean up, soothe, or bandage. This Adam was worn. Weak. Gaunter than his usual gauntness, thin as a rail, his deep-set eyes further sunk. There was no trace of the tan from their summer at the Barns that had still lingered the last time Ronan saw Adam face-to-face.
Ronan didn’t know exactly how long Adam’s soul had been away from his body, how long he’d been trapped in the Lace while Nathan Farooq-Lane held his physical body captive, but Ronan did know there wasn’t a quick fix for days and days without food, without water. It would take more than a single good meal, whatever pizza, Chinese, or Indian Jordan and Hennessy brought back, to put meat back on Adam's bones. It would take time to figure out what bits and pieces of Adam Parrish Hennessy hadn’t been able to collect and squish back into his consciousness.
But Ronan would be there for it all, whether it was there in Boston or back at the Barns or anywhere.
Because now Ronan could go anywhere.
For a while, silence stretched between them, folded back on itself, and started stretching again. Then Adam muttered, “They’re awful.”
Ronan had been watching Adam’s hands, long, knobby-knuckled fingers knitted together and folded neatly in Adam’s lap, and when he looked up, Adam was looking down at him. Though his body was worse for the wear, Adam’s blue eyes were bright and alive, and they gave Ronan a modicum of relief. They said Adam would be alright. They said the two of them would be alright.
But as to what was awful, Ronan furrowed his eyebrows, because if Adam meant Jordan and Hennessy, Ronan didn’t know much about Jordan, but Hennessy wasn’t awful, at least not more awful than Ronan. He was on the cusp of saying so when Adam started to speak, paused to clear his throat when his voice cracked, and then untangled his fingers to wave at the paintings by the artist Jordan shared a studio with. “Those. The–tits. They’re awful.”
Looking over his shoulder, Ronan scanned the multiple elongated nudes, all colorful, all with cucumber-shaped breasts. Though he himself was not familiar with the female form, Ronan was pretty sure the guy who made the paintings had never seen a naked woman in real life. Ronan laughed, because Adam wasn’t wrong, because Adam was going for humor when things were better but still pretty shitty, and when he turned back to Adam, Ronan found him smiling a little.
“They’re really fucking awful," Ronan said and smiled a little back before he gave his ankles a break from crouching and tipped forward onto his knees. While they had some time alone, they should talk, but Ronan didn’t know where to begin. So much had already passed between them while they’d been alone and entangled in the ether, all the things neither one of them ever had the vocabulary to say out loud. And so much had happened since, so much Ronan was still grappling with and couldn’t wrap his head around, things he’d probably never wrap his head around, or would at least need Adam’s help to understand.
Instead of losing himself to amorphous thoughts about who he was, what he was, Ronan took both of Adam’s hands in his and brought them to his lips. He kissed each of Adam’s knuckles, then turned his hands over and kissed Adam’s palms, and when he was done, Ronan rested his forearms on Adam’s knees, favoring his right arm to his left, which Adam, always observant, picked up on in a heartbeat. “What happened?”
“I’m fine.” Shucking his jacket and pulling his hoodie off over his head, Ronan wrestled the sleeve of his t-shirt up to his shoulder. He peeled away carefully wrapped plastic, then held up his newly-inked arm to Adam in offering. “Hennessy did it. It’s a sweetmetal.”
Adam’s lips parted slightly in awe as he took Ronan’s hand, slowly rotating Ronan’s arm as his eyes wandered the scales covering it from wrist to shoulder, where they blended into a whorl of Ronan’s back tattoo. Ronan watched Adam taking in the fresh dark green ink, watched Adam move his free hand to hover his fingertips above Ronan’s skin as he felt the power of the sweetmetal. When he was done, the corner of Adam’s lips twitched with another small smile, and he lifted his gaze to Ronan’s. His voice still rasped a little as he said, “Calla always did call you the snake.”
Ronan laughed, loud and bright. “Fuck off.” He grinned at Adam, reached up to rest his hand on Adam’s cheek. They looked at one another a while before Ronan said, softly, “Let me get you water.”
Adam nodded and Ronan leaned up to kiss him lightly before leaving Adam to find a glass that wasn’t full of paintbrushes or crusted with dried varnish. The only serviceable cup he found was a souvenir mug from Amsterdam’s red light district, the outside printed with explicit silhouettes of women of all shapes and sizes. There wasn’t a thing in the studio that wasn’t covered with naked ladies and Ronan wondered why Jordan didn’t find a place of her own, unless she didn’t mind being bombarded by boobs all the time.
“Sorry,” Ronan told Adam when he brought him the mug full of water. “More tits.”
Adam laughed a little and thanked Ronan. He took a long drink of water, and when he said, “They seem to be unavoidable,” he sounded much more like himself, even with a hint of his accent, which simmered something in Ronan’s stomach.
Ronan nudged Adam away from the arm of the couch, whose color, Ronan realized, reminded him of the Pig. Thoughts of Gansey and Blue and how the almost end of the world affected them settled into Ronan as he settled down on Adam’s right side, and they sat quiet while Adam drank and Ronan thought of their friends. Finally, Adam reached across Ronan and put the empty mug down on a stool that had been pressed into service as an end table, and after he folded Ronan’s hands in his, Adam asked, “What do you want to do now?”
There were many ways Ronan could have answered the question.
He wanted to get Adam alone for a good length of time, to show Adam exactly how much he wanted him.
He wanted to find Declan, to make sure he was okay.
He wanted to find Matthew, if anything remained.
But, most of all, Ronan wanted the place he thought he’d never leave. The place he thought he’d be forced to stay while everyone around him got to spread their wings. The place that had been a cage, but wasn’t a cage anymore.
He wanted the Barns.
He said, “I want to go home.”