home is just a room full of my safest sounds
It’s the third time this week that he’s found himself gripping the ceramic of the sink countertop in the bathroom/kitchen/laundry of Monmouth Manufacturing. It’s not morning yet and not really night anymore, and every breath he takes sends pain down his spine. Ronan Lynch is misshapen words and broken bones and anger meshed into a skin that doesn’t fit quite right.
Most days he fills the emptiness gaping in his chest with alcohol and pills and the squeal of rubber tires against asphalt. It’s the third time this week that he’s found himself retching into the toilet; the world outside him still, silent. Chainsaw pecks at the one of the metal bars of her cage and he can feel the sound ringing in his mind.
Third time this week, Gansey stands just outside the bathroom/ kitchen/ laundry, forever awake, forever standing one door away from Ronan, his hand the shape of a knock, his lips the shape of pity. Outside, Gansey leaves. Today, he will let Ronan fight his own demons. He will let Ronan drink himself to death if that’s what he wants to do. Inside, Ronan passes out on the floor.
***
Sixteen was the age that he went to too many parties. His mother was alive and worried. At sixteen he made out with girls he didn’t like and watched boys he liked from far away. At sixteen his mind was too loud and the lights in the room were too damn bright, and he had to get out, damn it.
He ended up on the roof. It was cold and the wet air whipped at his face. Ronan thought he might kill himself that very day, jump off the roof and let himself be carried far off. At sixteen he felt that kind of itch often, it was always easier to leave before things got too hard.
The priest had dedicated last week’s sermon to afterlife, and Ronan thought about the devil in his backyard and felt himself slipping further from heaven. And then, because he was scared and his ears were ringing, Ronan pulled out his phone and called Gansey.
It was Adam who picked up.
Ronan felt cold slide down his spine.
“Ronan? There better be good reason to this.”
“I- fuck.” Ronan checked the caller’s ID. He had accidentally called trailer-boy. Ronan thought sand eyelashes and freckles. He thought wrists and bruises and greased overalls. The devil smiled, Ronan slipped more. “I’m at Kavinsky’s place.” Silence. Ronan felt himself jumping off the roof. “Please.”
Adam arrived soon after. He was out of breath. Blue-green spread out from below his right eye to his nose. Downstairs the party raged. Now that Adam stood this close, Ronan felt stupid for calling him.
“Why’d you call me?”
Ronan grinned, wild. “Why’d you come?” The air whipped, wilder. Neither of them spoke. Adam shifted his weight from one foot to another, uncomfortable. That had shut him up.
It was Ronan who spoke next. “How long are you gonna let him do that?”
Adam’s fingers went to the bruise staining his face, Ronan watching closely. “However long it takes for me to graduate.”
“However long it takes for me to graduate.” He snickered. “However long it takes for him to kill you, more like.”
“If you called me here just to be a condescending brat, I’ll be on my way. I have work early.” Adam crossed his arms, a timid impersonation of anger.
Ronan leaned back at the railing. “Get your head out of your ass, trailer trash. If you must know, I called you here because I was contemplating jumping off. As in killing myself. As in not caring about your dickhead of a father and how you refuse to let yourself leave,” Ronan spits out. He said it more for the dramatics, because everything he says has to be one big ha-ha joke, a punch or a smirk. He says it before anyone can catch him caring, makes it a snide remark before it becomes serious.
Adam tensed and Ronan knew he had hit a nerve. Downstairs, the song changed to a slower one.
“Fuck you, Lynch,” Adam spat. He stormed past Ronan.
Ronan smiled wider.
***
“Lynch. Lynch. Ronan. Calm yourself, princess.”
The lights keep flashing. Blue. Red. Blue again. Fourth July can go fuck itself, Kavinsky was celebrating himself tonight.
Kavinsky with all the bravado of a drunk seventeen year old hit Ronan across the face. “You done being a fuckin’ pussy now?”
For about twenty seconds Ronan stared at his hands, which he noticed were shaking. Ronan shook his head. His cheek throbbed. “Not yet.” He brought his fist down on Kavinsky’s nose, smirked like he had done him a favor. “You can continue now,” he said, the picture of nonchalance, as if he hadn’t come stumbling and stuttering Joseph Kavinsky’s name like a prayer. His father’s brains painted the driveway to the Barns red. Ronan didn’t know what to do with himself at nights. He tried to remember why he came here.
“Goddamn. Goddamn.” Kavinsky put his fingers to his nose, licking the blood that had flown onto his lips. “Goddamnit Lynch, did daddy not give you your pills today? Damn, that hurts, goddamn it.” And then, like he only now realized that words other than various combinations of god and damn exist, he shoved Ronan by the shoulders. “I’m gonna put a fuckin’ ban on you man, why’re you coming to my parties and punching me in the goddamn face?”
Ronan merely shrugged.
“Yeah, Lynch, act like you didn’t come in here sobbing like a fuckin’ baby. Gansey, oh Gansey, wherefore art thou Dick? I wish to hop on it. Or is it trailer-boy you’re fucking these days?” He snorted unattractively. Yeah. That’s why he came here: Because Kavinsky simplified everything to a few incorrectly quoted lines and an innuendo, because Kavinksy was superficial and idiotic and. And.
And he had drugs.
“Ha- fucking- ha. Take a medal for you’re a-grade Shakespeare skills, Joseph.” Kavinsky flashed him a smile. “You know what I’m here for. Give me the stuff so I can leave.”
Ronan passed out that night with his clothes off on Kavinsky’s floor, his nose burning.
***
They lay in Ronan’s parents’ bed in the barns; skin sticky and hearts thudding, coming down from the high but not enough for the world to make sense yet. In these moments of unguarded love Ronan would admit he wants to kiss every freckle on Adam’s shoulder. Ronan would let himself look at Adam’s eyes, his lips, his hands, at Adam without red-hot shame running down his spine.
Here was Adam; skin glowing golden in the setting sun, head back, neck arched. Here was Adam; fingers running lazy spirals across his tattoo, eyelashes brushing cheekbones, mouth parted. Here was Adam unwary, Adam perfect and peaceful and—
“I don’t deserve you.” The words are out before Ronan can stop them. His neck goes red.
Adam laughs, slow and easy. “Yeah? Why d’you think that?”
“Just do.” The red travels to his shoulders. “You want a fucking essay?”
“I’m good. Just strange for you to say that, that’s all.” Strange of you to say that. Ronan toys with the words in his mind: strange as in Adam disagrees? Strange as in Adam might even say the same for him?
He shifts to press his mouth against Adam’s skin. “You’re just too damn perfect, that’s all.”
Adam lifts his head up just enough to look at Ronan through half-lidded eyes, his eyebrows raised. He laughs, quietly, and falls back with a thud. Ronan flushes three shades darker. “So are you, you know,” Adam says. “Like I can’t ever tell you properly, but you really are.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty dang great.”
Adam laughs again. Ronan crawls up till his head is on Adam’s shoulder and falls asleep like that; fingers buried in his hair, his cheek warm where it touches Adam’s skin.
***
They fall into patterns after the Second Death. There’s mornings in the barn where Adam would be gone to work or school before Ronan even had the time to blink the sleep out of his eyes. Some mornings Adam would stay back and they’d sit on the porch steps while Opal would run in the knee high grass of the fields. In the evenings those who went to school would do their homework on the floor of Monmouth. Ronan would sit in his bedroom and let it all wash over him.
He told himself it was comfort, this everyday normalcy. That it’s okay they weren’t talking, even if they were fucking traumatized, and that it’s okay Adam pulls away from him and wears seventy layers of clothing every day and that they all have the same ghost look in their eyes. They are fine. He chants it to himself like a mantra. Fine. Fine. Fine.
One night they’re lying there on the couch: Ronan on one end, Adam on the other. Adam’s doing that thing where he watches his hands for hours on end, flexing and unflexing them, turning them one way and the other, reminding himself that these are his hands, and Ronan’s doing that thing where he watches Adam for hours on end trying to remember when he got replaced by this skeleton.
The clock ticks from the hallway. Ronan snaps. “Can you fucking stop?” His voice comes out harsh. Adams backs away from his own hands, blinking.
“I’m—I’m sorry. Sorry.” He puts his hands on his lap, and then on second thoughts, he sits on them instead. “Sorry.” He looks small, pitiful. His eyes sunken into hollows, and from where Ronan sits he can count about three sweaters on him even though it’s just the middle of September.
“I didn’t mean it like that. Goddammit, why can’t you just tell me what’s wrong?” He reaches forward and touches Adam on the shoulder, a ghost of a touch, but Adam snaps backwards like he’s been punched. “See what I mean? Why can’t I touch you anymore, Adam? Why don’t you just leave if you hate me so much?” Ronan’s voice is pleading and his eyes are wet.
“Because I almost killed you, that’s why. Don’t you remember? Or did you make yourself forget that part?” Adam’s words come out in heaving sobs and he’s rocking himself back and forth. “I almost killed you Ronan, I’m a monster, I almost killed you, I almost. Fucking. Killed. You.”
They’re both crying, and it’s all a mess and really, Ronan at any other point in time and history would have just gotten up and left, but he needs to fix this. He reminds himself he’s fine, and he breathes even though he’s still crying.
Ronan Lynch is a creature of great wonder and bad chosen words. He walks towards Adam and kneels to where he’s sitting, takes both his hands in his and places them on his neck. Adam’s fingers tremble against Ronan’s throat, and Ronan can barely get words out between all the tears but he keeps saying it again and again to Adam. “I’m not afraid, it wasn’t your fault. I love you. I love you. Iloveyou.”
