[I know it's been a couple of weeks, so I'm really excited to finally update! Life just got in the way, and I missed writing for this universe. Shout out to the usual crowd for all their support and patience! Thank you so much for reading!]
Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | AO3
~*~
Declan emerged from the bathroom more or less ready to face whatever waited for her downstairs. She stole a glance over to Ronan’s bedroom door, seeing it partially open with Adam’s duffel bag sitting at the end of the bed. He’d slept there last night, which Declan should have expected, but it still struck her as terribly lonely. She felt for him; the unknown and the waiting were terrible. Voices drifted up to her from the kitchen, along with the smell of coffee. It seemed most of the people in the house were already awake. Declan couldn’t find it in her to be guilty for sleeping in a little. Not when Jordan felt warm and solid and real against her this morning. She found herself wishing they were still tangled up in bed.
She took her time going down the stairs, listening to Ronan’s friends talk. At the bottom of the steps, she paused, instead sitting down. Most of their voices were familiar to her now. Gansey had spent quite a bit of time at the Barns before things took their turn, practically the unofficial fourth Lynch child. His voice fit into the corners and tucked itself up on shelves, a part of this home. Adam lived here with Ronan when he wasn’t in school, and Declan felt certain he also called it home. Blue and Henry were less familiar, but it made her realize how much she’d been held at arm’s length from the people who were important to Ronan. Half the time, it had been Ronan pushing her away, and the other half had been her withdrawing, choosing to be suspicious of anyone who got close from a good safe distance. The list of things she could have done differently began to pile up. She put her face into her hands and pushed her fingers into her hair.
Someone sat down next to her on the stair.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” Gansey said, when she snapped her head up. “I was going to bring this up to you.”
He held a mug of coffee, offering it out to her.
“Thanks.”
Declan took it from him, wrapping her hands around it, grateful, but also a little guilty. Caught like this, it would be easy to presume she’d been eavesdropping instead of building up the nerve to join in. He didn’t imply anything of the sort. They sat listening to Blue and Matthew discuss whether the eggs in the fridge were still good and whether scrambled or over easy was better. The coffee tasted good, very close to how she preferred it.
Gansey rubbed his palms on the tops of his cargo pants, swallowing. “So, would you still like me to call you Declan?”
She blinked, looking at him. He couldn’t quite meet her eyes, and she freed an arm to sling it around his shoulders. It seemed very Gansey that she hadn’t thought to change her name, but he’d considered she might have. “Yes,” she told him. “I like it.”
He smiled, reminding her of the first time he’d tasted Aurora’s cooking, the first time he’d stayed to watch a movie, the first time they’d all tussled in the grass. She squeezed him a little tighter, the gesture awkward and usually reserved for Matthew. He leaned into her such that she had to adjust her grip on the coffee mug.
“I’m glad I didn’t misread the situation. That would have been awfully embarrassing.”
“I can think of far more devastating scenarios, and I’m not sure what that says about me.”
“Just that everything is as it should be. Though I will say that you certainly took Parrish by surprise.”
When Declan looked at him again, he finally met her eyes, studying her. “Yes, well, I didn’t have much time to prepare anyone, least of all myself.”
Gansey nudged her with his elbow. “She’s good for you. Jordan, I mean. I’ve only known her for a day, but I’ve known you long enough to be my bro— sister.” He paused, laughing the kind of laugh that sneaks up on you. “Good God, you and Helen in the same room would be positively world-ending.”
“Sounds like a good reason to be in the same room with her.”
“Don’t think I mean to switch the topic, Declan Lynch. I daresay if it weren’t for this whole dreamer hunting business, I’d actually consider you in better spirits than I’ve seen you in a long time.”
“Seems pretty par for the course, as far as Ronan is concerned.” They quieted, Declan’s smile wavering as she washed down the worry for her brother with another swig of the coffee. “I’m glad you’re here, Gansey.”
“Me too.”
Declan thought they should get up. Even when her cup was empty, they still lingered just on the outside of everything going on in the kitchen. Someone brewed another pot of coffee. Something Jordan said made Matthew laugh. There was a bottled up feeling inside of all this, and every moment she spent at the Barns without Ronan shook up the contents of that bottle. She might burst.
“I’ve missed out on a lot.”
It wasn’t a question. Declan knew there was at least a year of things she’d removed herself from in an effort to balance all her secrets. But it haunted her sleepless nights far more than she liked to admit. Surely Ronan knew where Aurora had disappeared to, and he’d almost died a day after the mysterious auction Seondeok had warned her about. Gansey had been sick for a couple of weeks after that, with no illness she’d been able to name, both Adam and Ronan very tight-lipped about it around her. She’d walked a fine line between what she had to know versus what she had to lie about. Ever since Matthew had discovered he was a dream, Declan had started walking back through the world she’d crafted out of lies and secrets and wondered if any of it had been worth the effort. Looking at Gansey now, his face young and his eyes old, she felt her decisions eating holes in her.
Gansey regarded her without responding. She liked that he thought about how to answer, not that reassuring platitudes reflexively filled the uncomfortable space.
“You had your reasons.” Not an accusation, not an excuse. “Some of it is mine to tell, and a lot of it isn’t. The incredible thing about this is how tangled up in it everyone was..”
Gansey’s eyes unfocused, as if he were seeing something that she couldn’t, and Declan actually believed that was true. Looking at him invoked the way she’d always seen him, but something more lay behind it, like an afterimage or the negative from a photograph. Everything she’d tried to avoid had become everything she wanted to know.
“Even me?” she asked.
“Oh, I have no doubt even you.” He reached up, covering her hand on his shoulder with his own. “I’m grateful you trusted me with what you told me before you and Matthew left Henrietta.”
It hadn’t been much, Declan recalled, barely scratching the surface of what she was running from. It was as little as she could get away with telling Gansey without spilling all the secrets Niall had told her to keep. To have left without telling him anything at all seemed cruel. He was family too.
“I could tell you. My side of it,” he offered. “If you want.”
No hesitation. “Yes.” Would she tell him her side? From the first night Gansey had slept on Ronan’s floor while she kept vigil all night outside his door to the fraught time spent at the Fairy Market only days ago. Declan thought she wanted to.
Gansey smiled. “Have you been there yet? Lindenmere?”
Ronan’s forest. The one he’d dreamed, his place of power. Declan never got much out of him, those rare times they talked about his dreaming. But it was beloved to him. Looking at Gansey now, it meant something deep and vital to him too, and she had no idea why. It reminded her of his dissociated days back in April, where the trees could hold his attention better than any of his friends.
She shook her head. “I’d like to go.”
“Me too. I’ve longed for it since the day he made it. Perhaps, when it’s safe, he’ll take us there.” He lay his head against her. “Oh, Declan, we have a lot of catching up to do.”
-
Jordan greeted Declan at the kitchen doorway, a kiss and a whiff of her soap. Declan’s breath caught at the cheerful, “Hey, babe. Just in time.”
Matthew perched in his usual spot at the end of the counter, and Henry took the spot next to him, fiddling with something on his phone. Most of the attention, however, seemed to be on Adam. Something heavy and full of potential hung in the air, as if waiting for she and Gansey to step into it. Declan took a deep breath to steady herself.
“If we’re about to get mystical in the kitchen, I’d like to get another cup of coffee first.”
She made her way over to the pot and refilled the mug Gansey had brought her. She couldn’t say exactly how, but being in the room seemed less like her family home and more like the Fairy Market. She was surrounded not just by dreams, but by magic. They watched her as she doctored her coffee, and in the same breath, she felt both vulnerable and a part of this by association. Magic was such an abstract concept to her, too wispy and vague when she grew up witnessing the extraordinary and knew it as dreaming. As commonplace. As a commodity to be bought if you could afford the price tag. When she leaned against the counter near the fridge and looked at Adam sitting before a bowl full of dark liquid, magic became a solid term, shaped like her brother’s boyfriend.
Blue straddled a chair next to him, a little pink switchblade laying naked on the table. “I know the drill,” she said to Adam.
“Ten minutes,” he replied. “I’m not going to go looking for them. The last time I did this, the Lace spotted me immediately. I don’t want to put them in danger. I just want a feel for what we’re dealing with now.”
At the other side of him, his phone sat face up, dark. Just seeing it reminded Declan of Ronan’s frantic explanations before he and Hennessy had gone to dream. He would have ended up here regardless, but she didn’t regret going to get him instead of waiting to see how long it would take him to show up.
Gansey turned his wrist. “I’ll keep time.”
Adam rolled his shoulders. Declan didn’t think she was imagining his hesitation; he didn’t want to do this without Ronan. But he would do it for Ronan. He leaned forward and pushed the bowl into the sunlight coming through the kitchen window. It reflected brightly off the surface, the beams catching the steam still rising up from the bowl. He was about to scry into coffee. She glanced down at her own mug, then lifted it in salute before taking a drink. The potential she’d sensed practically smothered her now — Gansey, Adam and Blue making a half circle around this bowl and the light as if it were sacred. There was so much she didn’t know.
The world held its breath.
Adam, palms flat on the table, lowered his gaze to where the light reflected until Declan could see it in the washed out blue of his eyes. One moment he was there, focused and full of intent. The next he was gone. Declan shuddered so suddenly that Jordan took her arm. This was the in-between, like the fraught moments before Ronan woke up from his dreaming. It was the sick feeling in her stomach while she waited for whatever was on the other side to manifest. This was her hands hovering over his shoulders, ready to wake him up and terrified to do it. She wanted to do the same thing to Adam, take him and shake him until that vacant look disappeared, before something could come out of that bowl that would burn, cut, harm them.
Adam’s phone suddenly lit up. A single notification, then two, three, more. One after another, they flashed in.
LYNCH, LYNCH, LYNCH.
Adam didn’t move.
Everyone was watching the phone except for Gansey and Blue — Gansey watched the hands ticking away the time, Blue watched Adam’s face.
“Eight minutes,” Gansey whispered.
The last alert flashed on the screen, and Declan knew what it said without needing to see it from afar.
tamquam
Adam breathed again, dragging in a gasp as if he’d surfaced from under deep water.
Blue had her little knife in hand, but Declan didn’t recall seeing her pick it up. She watched Adam’s face, his forehead beading lightly with sweat, even though his hands were shaking. He clenched them into fists.
Gansey lightly touched his shoulder, doing so in a way that Adam could see the movement coming. “Parrish?”
Adam didn’t answer him at first, his gaze lingering on the still steaming bowl. Blue abandoned the knife to take his hand instead.
“Well,” he said, a tremble in his voice, “it’s still out there. But so are they. I just…I asked Lindenmere for that time back.” He looked over at his phone, and it lit up to remind him he had unread notifications. He pulled away from Blue so he could unlock it and read the texts he should have gotten from Ronan days ago.
“Hey,” Matthew said, breaking through the tension. “If I have some of that coffee, will I see the future?”
“I don’t think today’s the day I want to find out,” Declan told him, watching Adam’s face as he scrolled through his phone.
“It’s everything you said,” Adam murmured, looking up at Declan, his brow furrowed.
Everything about that smarted against her heart, but she really couldn’t blame him. Instead, she tried to feel satisfied that the truth had her back, for once. She didn’t think she could answer him without it sounding harsher than she wanted to be, so she just nodded and drank the rest of her coffee.
Adam took a deep breath, in through his nose and out through his teeth. It reminded her of Ronan.
He typed quickly, alter idem and locked the phone.
[Oh my gosh, everyone, this is it! The final chapter in this fic that is very near and dear to my heart. Please know this is not the end of Declan and Jordan or their experiences in this AU. This is just the end of the main story, and now I plan to shamelessly play around in this world. Catch us back again during @trc-wlw-week! I can't thank enough the people that made this story happen and supported it from beginning to end - @effwit, @galwaygremlin, @inoctavo, @cappie-says, my wife, everyone in the BB server and all of you who have read through to the end. Thank you thank you thank you! Enjoy the final chapter, but not the end, of Declan's story.]
Declan built a fire. Well, first she chopped down some of the logs stacked out behind one of the large barns while Jordan watched approvingly. Together, they brought the wood back to the house and put some in the hearth, leaving the rest in the rack to feed the fire. The others recovered the kitchen from Blue’s and Matthew’s breakfast adventure, and no one said what became of the bowl of coffee Adam had scried from. Declan only hoped Matthew really hadn’t decided to try and drink from it to tell the future. Gansey retrieved every blanket in the house, with Adam’s help, and Henry helped them build some impressive nests. They spilled off the couch and across the floor, pillows tumbled everywhere to make sitting anywhere a comfortable experience. Declan couldn’t remember the last time the sitting room had felt so homey. Her more recent memories of it felt too full of Aurora, with her vanguard of machines that would never see the battlefield.
“Were you sick over spring break?”
Gansey’s smile grows wistful, his eyes distant as if remembering something dear to him, bittersweet. “There’s no easy way to answer that. I died.”
“Again?”
“Again.”
This time he laughs, and Declan wants to, she does. But after all the Lynch family has lost, for Gansey to have died would have fractured them even more. Ronan most. She closes her eyes, and allows herself to feel those feelings, as quickly as possible. She runs the course of grief, anger, bolstering herself to pick up pieces that hadn’t actually been broken, and the relief that it all isn’t true. Like a speedpaint she watches at 2AM on her phone, where no one can see. Gansey touches the back of her hand, and she forces herself to look at his apologetic expression. She’d tried to keep her face blank, but it’s obvious he knows.
“There was an…entity.” Gansey says ‘entity’ like Father O’Hanlon said ‘Satan’ and ‘sinners’ on Sundays, something to be feared. Something to never be given a name, lest it answer when you call. Declan feels like she knows it, like it came knocking on her door uninvited. “We were out of options.”
Memories of that time rearranged themselves in Declan’s mind, slotting into an order that makes sense and terrifies her, all at once. The auction, she and Matthew leaving Henrietta, everything going still and heavy, calling Ronan frantically because something had Matthew. She had never been more certain Ronan was dying, not even when his wrists had neatly sewn sutures in them.
Jordan held Declan’s hand. Their fingers laced between one another, and Declan felt guilty for using her as a lodestone. While the others had started to gather in the sitting room, Jordan pulled her aside to smooth the hair out of Declan’s face and kiss her forehead.
“I can find some animals to feed, if you need me to be scarce,” she offered.
Declan decided she really didn’t want to do this alone. It was already bad enough Ronan was off into the unknown with two other dreamers and a government backed group of hunters right behind them. She just wanted what was left of her family to be close, to be safe. Honestly, that was all she’d ever wanted.
“I’d prefer that you didn’t. Make yourself scarce, that is. You’re very much a part of this.”
“I try not to step in other people’s dirty laundry,” Jordan said with a laugh.
Declan’s returning smile was wry. “You get the rare invitation to participate in laundry day.” She paused, looking somewhere over Jordan’s shoulder instead of her face. “It’s something of a family affair, and we’re out of clean socks.”
“I may as well toss mine in the basket then, yeah?”
“We should tell Declan what happened to Mom,” Matthew says, looking down at his hands.
Adam, Gansey, and Blue all glanced at one another, and Gansey’s expression carries the most pain when he nods.
“Cabeswater came before Lindenmere,” Adam offers. “Ronan manifested it first on the ley line that runs through here.”
He’s trying to give as much information as he can without making it obvious Ronan could have told her this himself. Niall Lynch had forced his two oldest children to keep the deepest darkest secrets, and that’s one thing. Many of their secrets are dangerous enough to kill them. But keeping secrets from each other? Declan will never forgive him for that. All the time lost, all the ways they could have protected one another. In the end, the monsters still came for Ronan.
“The spirits of the trees are ageless, and they speak to dreamers,” Blue supplies, toying with the frayed hem of her sweater dress. “My mom knows one of them pretty well.” Declan senses there’s more, and the moment that thought leaves her, Gansey nudges Blue gently with his elbow. “As in, one of them is my dad.”
“What Jane means to say is that whatever magic is in the trees, dreamers use it also and the ley lines are their energy source. Which means dreams can thrive there, even when the rules aren’t the same here.”
Declan takes a deep breath. “She’s alive then? Somewhere in a forest?”
She turns her gaze to Matthew. Golden, sweet Matthew, Aurora loved him as if he were her own. Perhaps because they were both dreams made of sunlight and every happy thing their dreamer could envision. Declan suspects Niall’s motives had been slightly less pure than Ronan’s, but that would never take much. Matthew still keeps his head down, and she knows without needing to ask that Matthew had known this, had seen it, and kept it from her. At some point while she was burying all of Niall’s skeletons, including the ones surrounding Aurora’s very existence, they had taken her to a place where she would open her eyes again and never told her. Had Aurora asked after her?
“The entity,” Gansey says carefully, “it destroyed the forest.”
“I’m sorry,” Matthew murmured.
And this wasn’t the usual apology that accompanied his struggling grades and terrible choral practice. There was no humor, no casual acceptance that those things were just a by-product of who Matthew was. He was genuinely remorseful, and Declan hurt for the tone of his voice. He hung back from her, expecting her to be angry. Maybe, in another time and place, surely before all this, she would have been. It would have instigated a fight between her and Ronan, it may even have come to blows. She held out her arm to him, and he shuffled his way to it, tucking up under her chin, even though that meant he had to hunch his shoulders.
“I shoulda told you about Mom.”
“There are a lot of things we all should have done.”
“No really, dude, I can’t call you a liar if I wasn’t telling you the truth either. It’s just not right.”
“There are a lot of things that didn’t go right, for a lot of reasons we can’t do anything about. But it was never because I didn’t care.”
Matthew pressed his ear against Declan’s chest, and his breathing synced up with hers. Declan remembered when Ronan used to do the same thing after one of his nightmares. Her fingers dug into his back a little harder than she meant them to.
“You should talk to Ronan when he gets back.”
She sighed with no small measure of fondness and long-suffering. “I know, Matty. I will, if he lets me.”
“He’ll let you.”
Declan wished she could be so confident.
“Dad sold his dreams.”
Declan’s gaze fixes on the fire, the way it licks up the stone, crackling and sputtering safely behind the grate. She leans back against the couch, nested in a pile of blankets next to Jordan, everyone gathered around. A lot of bandaids being ripped off today; she misses Ronan like a vital limb and vows to do better when he returns. It has to be ‘when’ because she can’t handle the alternative.
“Where does one…go to buy dreams?” Gansey asks.
“eBay is right out,” Henry offers.
“Depending on how mundane or impractical the item is, I’m sure you could try it. Dad always seemed to prefer higher stakes, bigger secrets. I’ve known about their dreaming for a long time, practically since I was old enough to understand it.”
Gansey shakes his head. “I don’t think he knew that, not at first.”
“Of course he didn’t. My dad made a secret out of everything like it was a game. He did that instead of teaching Ronan how to dream so that it would keep him safe. I wasn’t supposed to tell him about where we went to sell his dreams, I wasn’t supposed to tell him I was Dad’s successor to the ‘family business’.” She uses air quotes as if she could claw Niall’s smirk right off his face, and admittedly, she wishes she could. He pissed a bunch of people off with how he made deals. People that didn’t back off even after he was gone.”
“Burglars,” Adam says.
Declan suppresses a shudder. “Let’s leave it at that.”
He nods.
“One of the dealers I worked with after he died called me last spring, right before break at Aglionby, and told me that there was an auction going down that I didn’t want to be a part of. Out of respect, she informed me so I could leave before it happened.”
“That was very kind of her,” Henry said.
Declan hums. “It was. That’s when I took Matthew and left Henrietta for good. I’ve been spending quite a bit of time since then extricating myself from the entire business. I am tempted to say that my involvement may be tied into this mess Ronan is in, but after everything, I can’t really say it wouldn’t have happened, no matter what precautions I took. That’s…difficult to accept.”
“All that fighting,” Blue speaks up, “you were trying to protect Ronan.”
“I was also angry,” Declan admits. She doesn’t want to be martyred for making things worse just because Ronan had no idea what their father had really been like. “I treated Ronan like shit because I thought that the right combination of terrible words would fuel him to take action. And I was jealous. I miscalculated at many turns, but felt I couldn’t turn back once I’d done it.”
“There came a point,” Gansey began, “when we all realized we were in very much over our heads. All of us were hiding things, we were taking steps apart from one another, and the consequences were…very troubling.”
He, Blue, Henry, and Adam sat close, comfortable with each other in a way Declan was only just beginning to understand. Hands were clasped, one leaned on another’s shoulder, intimate, familiar. Declan longed for closeness like that, to surround herself in people she trusted with her life. Her short list, until very recently, only included herself.
“We made a decision that we were going to be forthcoming with everything. No more lies, no more hiding. We all belonged to Cabeswater, so together we meant to save it. I think…I think we are to do the same now. Everything that we know up to this point suggests we are once more in over our heads, so to go our separate ways now would be foolish, no matter what Ronan seems to think. I don’t regret coming home.”
Adam shook his head. “Neither do I.”
Declan swallowed, felt Jordan squeeze her hand. “I want in.”
Gansey beamed while Adam and Blue raised their eyebrows.
“There’s no way to know if any of this would have been different if Ronan and I had been up front with each other right from the start. Even if there was, we can’t change what’s done. I don’t want it to be this way for the rest of our lives. I don’t want to fight the dreaming, I don’t want to deny his dreams. We should have fixed this before now, before it could come crashing down on our heads. The longer I spent apart from Ronan, the less I knew about everything and everyone important to him. I’m done with that. I want to be a part of this…all of it.”
“None of us can really speak for Ronan,” Adam said. “But you called us family before. If you meant that, then it’s already better than it was.”
-
The fire burnt down to embers. Goodnights were exchanged, and Declan retreated upstairs to her room with Jordan close behind.
“I think that was real brave, mate,” Jordan said, cupping Declan’s face in her hands.
Declan sighed, sinking down to the edge of the bed, wrapping her arms around Jordan’s waist. “I should have done it sooner.”
“You’ll eat yourself alive thinkin’ like that. Just like you ate yourself alive playing at someone you weren’t. It’s okay to let go now. You’re on this path, and you’re not alone.” She kissed the top of Declan’s head. “And for the first time, Hennessy isn’t either. She has someone who understands her, and none of us ever saw that comin’. I’m not gonna tell you it’ll be all right, but we’re gonna fight and that has to be enough.”
Declan didn’t say anything at first, but she nodded.
“Was it ever harder for you to be honest instead of lying about who you were?”
“All the time,” Jordan answered without hesitation. She shifted in Declan’s arms so she could sit next to her on the bed. “A lot easier to stick to the story when someone else made it for you. Honesty? That’s a bitch.”
A laugh startled itself out of Declan’s mouth. “Yes, it is.”
“I think we’re both going to like who we are better when all this is over. The alternative means that it’s not going to matter to us at that point anyway.”
“Hell of a pep talk.”
“That’s not what you need from me, Declan. You need the truth. I could tell you another, but you’ll have to decipher it for yourself.”
Declan’s brow lifted. “Oh?”
Jordan kissed her. Not like the world was ending, not like this was their only chance, but like there was room for more. Soft, eager, gentle. Declan let herself fall to it, just like she’d let herself fall into this truth of self, into Ronan’s world, into everything that would unfold before them.
Maybe all the truths yet to be told wouldn’t be this simple, but she prayed they would all feel this right when it was over.
--
Here are some extra goodies for your Honest Reflections/Jordeclan needs!
Declan's Pinterest inspiration board
Declan's playlist
effwit has done art for chapter 2, chapter 7, and this final chapter
Thank you so much again for reading! I love you all!
[Trans lesbian Declan, post CDTH (so spoilers, if you haven’t read it). Thank you to everyone that’s been supporting this project! Special shout-out to @effwit for their help with dialogue and for listening to AAALLLL the rambling I do about this AU.]
Declan had always liked the porch, in that idyllic way that country porches were supposed to represent. Niall had installed the swing when Matthew was a baby so Aurora could sit out and rock with him while Ronan sat next to them. It was the most fatherly thing she’d ever seen him do. Looking at its faded floral cushion now took her back to times Ronan had scooted over to make room for her, and they all sat swinging while Aurora hummed. Declan closed her eyes, and even though it was buried quite deep, she could remember how good that felt. They would look quite ridiculous, but she thought about sitting with Ronan now, all grown up. There would be jabbing elbows, fights over who would kick them back and forth. Matthew would squeeze his way between them and they’d really test the supports. She wanted that moment with so much force, she had to sit down on it anyway.
She clutched her coffee mug and took a sip of it, staring out over the lazy sprawl of the property. Every building looked both like it could stand on its own and yet part of the others, an indicative piece of the whole. Not unlike all the Lynches who’d lived here before or still did now. Every now and then, she caught movement by the edge of the trees. When she squinted, she could make out vague shapes, and when she likened it to grasping at familiarity while waking up from a dream, it settled in her as more accurate than just a mere metaphor. Just because she didn’t dream didn’t mean she’d never had dreams. Declan saw flickers of white, greys, browns, and blacks — always black with Ronan — and they were deer shaped, bird shaped, horror shaped. All hovering as if they were waiting for something, but didn’t dare cross where their dreamer couldn’t be found. A shiver went down her spine that wasn’t from the cold.
The corners of Declan’s mouth turned down. There were new cows in the pasture by the largest barn. Those weren’t asleep like the others, and she remembered Ronan’s stubborn commitment to feeding all the animals that had roamed here back when they were kids. A flutter of wings drew her eyes away from the fields, over to where Chainsaw landed nearby, peering at her, walking up and down the length of the railing anxiously. She must miss Ronan terribly.
“I don’t bite,” Declan told her, feeling ridiculous almost immediately. Still, Chainsaw seemed to understand the intent, hopping over to the arm of the swing, rolling her head when Declan delicately set the swing in motion.
“Krek?” Down to the cushion, stepping closer still.
Declan watched her, thinking that if anyone knew the worst of anything Ronan had to say about his ‘big brother’, it would be this pretty creature. Pulled from his dreams, astoundingly real, down to the feather fringe dusting the base of her beak.
“Declan,” she said helpfully, and half expected that to be the kill command, wherein she would lose her eyes immediately.
Instead, Chainsaw plucked at the loose sleeve of her shirt, rubbing her beak against the bare skin at the back of her hand. Declan had never touched a raven, or any bird for that matter. But something in her mind set this right as appropriate behavior. She still had her eyes, in any case. The near-human squawk of “Keck!” startled her, but Declan considered it.
“Close enough.”
Chainsaw climbed onto her thigh, and Declan let out an audible noise. Much heavier than she expected. She was about to ask if Chainsaw was hungry, embracing the very human reflex of talking to an animal, regardless of how much sense it made. She resisted, instead thinking about all the flickers and shadows at the forest line, the cows in the pasture. Number 2 or 3 on Ronan’s daily to-do list was to feed the animals. Declan stopped the swing and Chainsaw took that as a hint to hop off and waddle her way to the door, as if she’d anticipated Declan’s intentions. Declan didn’t question it too hard.
The first floor shower was still running when she got inside, and it would have been easy to distract herself with thoughts of Jordan’s skin and warm water, but she was on a mission. A search of the kitchen, the office and the front room turned up nothing in terms of instructions, and she only dared a cursory glance inside Ronan’s room before shutting the door again. Of course he wouldn’t have it written down anywhere, not when the Barns was his life. The feeding routine, like the dream creatures, existed inside Ronan’s head first and foremost.
There was a decision to be made. She could either spend an hour searching the internet for what to feed a raven, come up with nothing about how to feed dream cows, and want to pull her hair out. Or she could try the source. Picking up her phone off the counter, Declan heaved a heavy sigh, and Chainsaw echoed it. She had this number on speed dial, and she fully expected to drop into voicemail. She was braced.
“What, asshole? Did you forget we we’re, y’know, on the fucking run?”
Ronan didn’t sound winded, and there were no sirens in the background. Declan had expected tinny reception, like the kind that was always present on the old reality TV cop shows. If anything, it sounded like Ronan had just woken up. Shithead. Relief that he wasn’t somehow already dead warred with annoyance, and she just wanted to reach through the phone and shake him. She wanted him home, with his family and his animals and what she wouldn’t give for this dreamer manhunt to be done with.
Dredging up the deadpan Ronan was most used to, she said, “Tell me how to take care of your animals.”
Silence.
“Ronan?”
“Yeah, I fuckin’ heard you.” He sounded flustered about it. Good. That’s how Declan felt about him most days. “Get a pen.”
She took the pad and pen sitting by their silly and fully functional rotary phone and started taking notes. In this, Ronan was incredibly detailed, and Declan worked on that delicate partition between things she accepted as fact and things she would have to ponder the dissonance of later. Like a boar that turned into smoke when startled. By the time he finished, she realized that the cows and raven would be the easiest thing to feed today, but she wrote it down dutifully and repeated it back to him. She took his nonverbal grunt of acknowledgment as indication she’d gotten it all correct, and the silence returned to hang threateningly between them. In spite of all things, she found herself reluctant to hang up, and the fact that Ronan hadn’t done it already made her stomach twist up a little bit. They were standing on the precipice of something big and uncertain, a threat to what was left of their family. She hated it.
“That it?” Ronan finally grumbled.
“Parrish,” she said suddenly, the word surprising even her when it tumbled out of her mouth. He wasn’t an animal Declan needed to feed, but Adam Parrish was undeniably precious to Ronan. Not her responsibility to care for, and yet…
"Don't tell him.”
Startled, Declan wasn’t sure what to say to that.
Ronan continued, and the tone of his voice put frost in Declan’s bones. “I don't want him to have to choose, because if it gets serious, he's going to choose me, and I don't want to fuck up what he's worked for over me."
She was angry. Legitimately pissed off at the thought that Ronan would want or expect someone he loved to turn their back on what was happening to him. She had no idea how to properly vocalize that to Ronan. She never knew how to vocalize things that mattered about him.
"Don't be a fool, Ronan. You told him everything before you went into the dream with Hennessy. I'm surprised he isn't here yet."
"I'm asking. Can you do this because I'm asking instead of doing what you want because you think it's best?"
Declan, who had been leaning against the counter, found herself sliding to the floor. Doing what she thought was best was the crux of who she was. It was how she’d picked up the pieces after Niall died and Aurora slept. It was the driving force behind her research on being a good father, the parent-teacher conferences, insisting on Ronan’s schedule, being the most boring fucking man on the face of the earth. Doing what she thought was best had been a tactic of keeping herself and her family alive while she picked her way through the messes Niall had left behind. When it came to Adam Parrish, Declan thought it was best for him to know, to make the choice to stand with Ronan through this. Declan wanted to do it because she needed to know what he was made of. The ultimate question of whether he was good enough for her brother. That was what she thought was best. And Ronan was asking her not to do it.
Doing what she thought was best had still brought her to this place and time. Doing what she thought was best hadn’t been good enough.
Her head thunked back against one of the kitchen drawers, but she barely felt it.
“You want me to tell him you’re all right, which is tenuous, and encourage him to continue his studies. You’re asking me this.” It wasn’t really a question. And also, she despised it. Declan Lynch. Hating a lie. She would have laughed if she didn’t want to scream.
"You don't have to tell him I'm all right. You just have to...not tell him what he doesn't need to know yet. I'm asking you to do what you always do." For the first time, he acknowledged what it is she will ‘always do’, and the importance of it.
Declan had to find her voice again. "Well, he is family now."
She could hear him, breathing through his teeth. She could see his face without even being there. She’d never forgotten how Ronan looked at her when she’d said things like that in their past. She waited for him to throw all the times Declan lied to him and to Matthew back in her face as he remembers them.
"So protect him." And he hung up before he could say anything else.
Declan resisted the urge to throw her phone across the room. Right now, it was the only connection she had to Ronan. Instead, she fumbled it above her head to the counter and dragged her hands over her face. This, like many other times in her life, was not the time to fall apart. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to pick herself up and keep going, and it wouldn’t be the last. She could call Adam, but she needed to see him — had to look him in the face while she weaved something together to tell him in the face of Ronan gone missing. Lying is so easy for her, she wants to know if lies are what she sees in Adam too. She got up, bracing herself on the counter and looking at Chainsaw, who nudged at her phone curiously. She had no idea how good a raven’s hearing was, if she could have known Ronan had been on the other end of the line. Declan somehow believed she did.
The shower had stopped sometime while she was on the phone, and she hurriedly tore the page of her notes from the notepad, scribbling a note to leave next to her coffee cup. Then she headed to the back door, sliding her feet into the work boots Ronan had left there.
[I'm very excited to bring you the next chapter, even reasonably on time! I'm surprised my own self! I appreciate all the kind comments and support this fic has received, thank you so much! Love, as always, goes out to @effwit, silyara/inoctavo, Cappie, and the folks in the TRC Big Bang server. Hope you enjoy!]
Diners were touch and go for Declan. On the one hand, Matthew loved them, had all sorts of fond memories of being in them as a kid and into his young adult life. Even when the family trips to New York meant work for Declan, Matthew and Ronan had never seen any of that. Only the train rides and block after block of restaurants and brightly lit stores. Declan did enjoy the anonymity of a diner, transient places where people might become regulars or they might go once and never return. She enjoyed big cities just for being big cities. The more easily she could be swallowed up by people, the more she appreciated it. She allowed herself a moment to think about heading back into New York on her own agenda — MOMA and the Smithsonian sang a siren song to this newly-awakened part of her. Sure, the rational part of her said, when all this was over. But it was more than she’d allowed herself to think before recent events.
They followed Adam past the libraries again, headed back toward Mass Ave., where Matthew once more engaged in a fit of giggles about the Wigglesworth buildings. No one was immune to it; even Adam glanced over his shoulder, the faint hint of a smile on his face. Declan felt eager to find out just how much Parrish knew about the family, about their secrets. She automatically assumed he knew all of Ronan’s. That was the part about being in a relationship she hadn’t been able to commit to in the past. Allowing someone to care about you meant that you showed them not only the good things, but the bad. Declan had it on good authority that the bad things about her were really quite bad, or more specifically dangerous . So she’d never let it get that far. She’d been in the same room as Adam and Ronan in the weeks leading up to his first term at Harvard. They did not occupy space like two people who didn’t already know there were bad and dangerous things about each other.
They arrived at a burger place, whose patron capacity already looked to be pushing the limits. Still, she and the other three slipped inside, and were shown to a table along the back wall where some kids were clearing out. Declan frowned for thinking of them as ‘kids’ when they were probably her age. She’d been parenting too long, and she tried not to feel cheated by that. She thanked the equally-her-age hostess as they accepted their menus, and she flipped hers open.
Matthew started laughing again. “D, These names are great! Did you see the one called Legalized Gambling! Am I old enough to get that?”
“Yes, Matthew,” she answered, peering over the cleverly named sandwiches, already quite fond of this place’s walls, crowded with signs and posters and memorabilia. Unfortunately, she thought these names on the menu spelled the end of the top three layers of her stomach lining.
Next to Matthew, Adam had his menu open, but he was looking at it in a distant way that meant he’d probably try not to order anything, if he could possibly get away with it. His eyes flickered up to her, and she didn’t even try to pretend she hadn’t been watching him. He opened his mouth to say something, but the server came by to take their drink order. The server reminded Declan of Gansey, wide in the shoulders and dimples when he turned on his customer service smile. She couldn’t even imagine Gansey doing this, but it was fun to try. Especially in the apron.
When he left, Adam closed his menu, folding his hands on top of it. “So, I really hope you didn’t come all the way up here for a late game shovel talk just because I haven’t called Ronan in a day.”
Declan closed her menu as well. “I suppose that would depend on the reason. I do still owe you a ‘they’ll never find all the pieces’ talk.
She felt Jordan’s hand come to rest just above her knee, and she almost forgot what she just said.
Adam frowned. “My phone overheated. I got out of one of my finals, and it wouldn’t turn on. I had to take it in.”
Declan almost asked about the warranty, but then thought better of it. “And?”
"I had to replace it with a refurb. I was going back to the Barns today. Lynch knew I was coming once break started. Would’ve gotten in pretty late, but I don’t think he would’ve cared.”
Declan ran her tongue over her teeth, considering whether or not she wanted to believe it. What did it say about her that ordinary problems that happened to ordinary people felt like lies to be debunked? Nothing good. Whatever Adam thought he saw on her face changed his expression. She was impressed how he could go from polite wariness to absolutely nothing.
“Are you gonna tell me?” Adam asked. “What. Happened. To Ronan?”
Their drinks arrived, and Adam’s face shifted, just like that, so he could thank the server. Not-Gansey lingered to take their orders and Matthew happily requested his burger, Jordan did hers, and Declan handed over her menu.
“I’ll have a Viagra,” she said with a straight face.
Jordan nearly choked on her sip of root beer and Matthew couldn’t contain an unholy cackle.
Adam looked a little like the rug had gotten pulled out from under him as he passed the menu to the server. “I’m just having the tea.”
“He’ll have an Admissions Scandal,” Declan amended for him. “He’s got a long drive ahead of him.”
Adam shot her a withering look, and Declan hoped her smile embodied all that made her a Lynch, all that made her Ronan’s sister.
Not-Gansey took his customer service dimples over to the computer to put in their order.
“Declan, what the hell is going on?” Adam asked.
“This,” she told him, waving a hand at the restaurant, at Matthew still chortling into a milkshake, “is a moment of levity before we dive into the shitshow.”
Matthew pointed his finger admonishingly at her. “Don’t fucking swear,” he said in a perfect imitation of Ronan.
“Since we don’t have a swear jar handy, you might as well add to that poor chap’s tip, at this rate,” Jordan laughed.
Her fingers were kneading lightly at Declan’s thigh, and she thought maybe it was to keep her calm, but Declan wasn’t really sure that was the effect happening to her.
“Look,” she finally managed to say, “I’m sure anything Ronan has had to say about me in the past isn’t anything pleasant. But my family’s safety is, and always has been, my top priority.” Ronan would have called that a Declanism, and she didn’t care. “That includes you now.”
Adam raised an eyebrow. “Am I in danger?”
She told him the truth. “I don’t know.”
“Does he know you’re here?”
“Not yet.” She felt a twinge of something in her chest, because she still wasn’t sure if coming here fell under the ‘do what you always do’ category, or the one where she acted against Ronan’s wishes because she thought it was best. Maybe it straddled the line, maybe it was its own third specific heading that didn’t have a name yet. The longer all this went on, the harder it was for Declan to compartmentalize and put things in their own unique places like she’d done in the past.
“Look, Declan, I don’t exactly know what you came here for, but you should know that I was coming back home anyway. Ronan knew that.” The look on Adam’s face was still that carefully controlled neutrality, but Declan had the slight advantage of knowing when it cost someone to hand over a piece of information. His eyes flickered over to Jordan, then back to Declan. “He told me he would be there. Is he?”
Every truth cost Declan something now. “No. He’s not.”
Matthew seemed to shrink into his parka a little bit, and he held his milkshake in both hands. Declan found herself split between the image of Adam processing and this younger-looking Matthew that she wanted to protect with everything she had. Saying it out loud meant admitting that Ronan had gone off into the unknown, eagerly, like he’d done it before. She took Adam’s thoughtful silence to lose herself in the din of the other people around them and wondered how different their lives would be if they’d just shared their secrets. If Niall hadn’t burdened them with all of them to begin with. Jordan’s thumb rubbed over her knee, and the gesture was soothing more than anything else now. She’d never let another person ground her like this before, but now that she had it, she was grateful.
“All the Lynches are liars,” Matthew murmured, then sucked on his straw hard enough to make a gurgling sound that signaled the end of his shake. He was pointedly looking at the ketchup bottle instead of anyone at the table.
He did not exclude himself from the statement.
Declan’s pulse roaring in her ears drowned out everything else, and her hand dropped to cover Jordan’s on her leg. The tangle of fingers in hers was immediate, holding tight.
Adam considered Jordan again, as if he hadn’t figured out her place in all of this. Then he sighed, reaching out carefully to ruffle Matthew’s curls with a stuttering affection he was still learning from being with Ronan.
“Me too, Matthew,” he said. “Me too.”
Declan did what she always did, only with fewer lies than usual. Over a meal Declan was certain she’d regret later, she led the conversation into Adam admitting he knew about Ronan’s hunt for Bryde, about there being another dreamer in the world. Jordan made the reason for her presence clear to Adam by explaining she also knew a dreamer, and that dreamer was with Ronan now. Adam listened, something about his demeanor hinting to Declan there was more to the story than he’d told them, and so Declan kept the dream hunters close to the chest. It seemed they still needed more family counseling.
Adam steepled his fingers. Despite his earlier protests, his plate was empty. He hadn’t wasted a crumb.
“I told him to go slow.”
“Is it really any surprise to you that this is Ronan’s idea of slow?” Declan asked. “Truly?” She paid the bill with cash, leaving a considerable tip on top of the bill. When Adam tried to pay his share of it, she didn’t turn it down in front of Matthew and Jordan, but she knew there would be opportunities to make sure it landed right back in his wallet later.
Adam shook his head, but he seemed pleased that she hadn’t argued with him about the money. Even though she’d been kept at arms length from Adam, there were some clues Declan hadn’t missed in the slightest. She folded her hands on the table. It was already close to 2PM, and she positively itched to get back to the Barns. With everything else, it was difficult not to feel exposed, like every move she made out in the open was a risk. There was a saying about whether it could be considered paranoia if people were actually out to get you, and she took that to heart.
“So what’s your next move, Adam?”
He didn’t even hesitate, “The same as it was before you showed up. I’m going back to the Barns. I said I was going to come back for break, and I meant it. It’s his fault if he’s not there like he said he’d be.” He took a slow breath in, let it out just as slowly. Another piece of the truth. “I think dreamers are in danger.”
Declan met him there. “I think you’re right.”
Adam nodded, as if that was all he needed. “My bag is already packed. I just need to grab it.”
Matthew tugged on Adam’s sleeve. “Before we leave, don't forget to tell him that thing that means ‘I love you.’ You know, the Latin one.” He botched the words they’d overheard Ronan say horribly but didn’t seem offended by the slightly pained crease in Adam’s brow because of it. Declan wasn’t entirely sure it was the pronunciation that had gotten to him.
“I will,” he finally said. “I’ll be less than an hour. Meet me back in the square.”
-
Declan, Jordan, and Matthew took the long way back around to Harvard Yard, heading up Quincy toward the Art Museums. This time, she held Jordan’s hand wishing once more that this had been a place she’d applied to. It wasn’t that she’d worried as much about acceptance or cost; her grades had been very good when she graduated (an event that Gansey had dragged Ronan to, despite a great deal of grumbling). Harvard Law would have been a good match for what she was doing now in Alexandria, but it was too far away from home, too far away from her responsibilities and her secrets. She hadn’t even tried.
“We’ll come back here,” she told Jordan, pointing to the classic-modern hybrid that was the art museum campus. She promised herself as much as Jordan, aching to veer off their intended path to go in and lose herself for hours. Another thing she put on the list of things she was going to do when all this was taken care of.
If it could be taken care of. Everything felt so far out of Declan’s hands she would never be able to get the control back. It forced her to live in the moment, and her moment included Jordan, Matthew and Adam. She had to trust that Ronan would take care of himself with Hennessy, and Declan knew intimately that wasn’t his strong suit. For that, she would have to rely on her faith. It was in tatters but still there. Lynches didn’t give up on one another, no matter how much it hurt.
They crossed back over, past Grossman Library, and into the Yard. Sure enough, Adam waited where they’d met up earlier in the day, a large duffel bag over one shoulder, and his messenger bag slung across his chest. He had a slightly different battered, secondhand phone gripped in one hand.
“Let me put that in the car,” she said to him, motioning to the bags. “That’ll probably make it easier to handle the bike.”
“Yeah,” he said distractedly.
“Did you talk to Ronan?” Matthew asked.
Adam shook his head. No wonder he looked distracted. Declan hadn’t tried to call since she’d asked Ronan about the feeding schedule the day before. She didn’t want to risk calling him on her way to Cambridge. She didn’t want to lie to him.
“Maybe he’ll call while we’re en route,” Declan said. She opened her mouth to say something else, but something caught her eye across the Yard.
Red. Vibrant, flowing red. She blinked at the young woman walking away from them toward Thayer Hall. It reminded Declan of her trip with Niall to Ireland. They’d met a young tour guide who looked as if her hair had been spun with a vivid flame. Next to her was another woman who couldn’t have been more opposite if she tried. It struck Declan funny because she wasn’t dressed like a student, or not even like faculty. Everything about her was crisp lines, immaculate hair, and expensive linen. Declan felt a kinship to her, for in that amazingly dressed facade was someone who wanted to be stylishly nondescript.
Declan could relate, and that’s why she couldn’t tear her eyes away.
“Lynch.”
“Declan?”
She blinked, turning to Adam and Jordan again. When she tried to catch sight of the two ladies again, they were already gone.
“One more thing before we go,” Adam said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded scrap of paper. He put it in Declan’s hand.
“What is this?” she asked, opening it up.
“Gillian’s number. She wanted me to tell you it had the right number of digits.”
Declan rolled her eyes. “Jesus Christ.”
Jordan threw her head back, laughing. God, Declan felt good about that laugh. “Some balls on that dame, mate.” She reached over and plucked the paper out of Declan’s hands before she could be stopped. “Tell your friend that your sister-in-law’s taken, yeah? I’m not the sharing type, if y’feel me.”
“Jesus Christ ,” Declan repeated, feeling heat climbing up under her collar. But she felt the way she had when Jordan’s hand was on her leg. Like they were already more .
Adam’s expression was unreadable for a moment as he glanced between them. Then he nodded, the pieces all falling into place for him. He didn’t press for any more.
“Come on, we’re losing time,” he told them. “I want to go home.”
[Holy wow, we are here at chapter 5 of question mark now, and I couldn't be happier about writing this fic. As always, shout outs to @effwit, the TRC BB Server and @Inoctavo for all the support on this story and what it's become to me. I've reached a point where I think I actually need to outline what I'm going to do next because there's way more story than I ever would have expected now. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!
As she dragged them and herself across the expanse of the Barn’s property, her brain helplessly cycled through all the witty sayings she knew about shoes. Walking a mile in them, filling them. Somehow, she sensed that this wasn’t a hardship for Ronan, feeding his dream creatures. For her, it was unfamiliar, cumbersome. Not at all like waking up early and making breakfast for Matthew. Likening him to “dream creatures” felt dirty on the first try, but she knew better. Matthew wanted to be real, and since Declan had lived a life around the lie that he already was, she felt a cataclysmic shift in her to stop pulling Matthew down into a ‘dream thing’ category and wondered if she could ever raise ‘dream things’ up into a real category.
“This is why you could never be a dreamer, Declan. The head is too wise and the heart too stubborn,” her father had told her. It sounded nothing like a compliment.
“What heart?” she could hear herself replying blandly, never sure if Niall could also hear it. “You taught me it wasn’t safe to have one.”
Onward she walked, one foot in front of the other, a very literal mile in Ronan’s shoes. She’d wanted to be a dreamer, once upon a time; since the night Ronan manifested his first dream. She remembered how much it had scared him, a vicious little thing that looked suspiciously like the beetle they’d found in the yard earlier that day, but more terrifying, with horns and teeth it shouldn’t have had. She’d known it for what it was in an instant. She had yanked the case off of Ronan’s pillow and tied it up tight, then listened to it scrabble from the inside while she held Ronan and he cried cried cried until Niall came to check on them.
Declan should have known precisely then. There was a way Niall looked at Ronan, like the sun shone from every frightened tear; then the sack of dream beetle, still writhing and scratching from the inside, like it was a drawing he’d have Aurora put up on the fridge in the morning. And then at Declan. Back then, she’d mistaken his look at her for pride, a job well done protecting her younger brother. Ronan was two and a half, and she had just turned four. As the world of dreamers took shape around her in the most stifling way possible, she continued to hope she would one day wake up with something in her hands that hadn’t been there when she’d gone to sleep. That hope leeched out bit by bit until a single glass of whiskey finally told her the truth. No matter how deep Niall dragged her into his secrets, she would never truly be a secret he kept, something he coveted.
She was human, and that world wasn’t for her.
“I fucking hate you,” Declan spat.
Something that had been behind her scuttled back so quickly that when she turned her head, she saw nothing. Her entire feeding experience had been like that, or at least, everything that wasn’t Chainsaw or the cows. Ronan’s dreams didn’t know her well enough to be seen, hovering at the edge of her awareness, like dreams do. But they apparently knew enough not to consider her a threat. She stopped jumping at the little sounds, the flickers of light and shadow she could see between the mismatched Barns and all the lovely trees. If they wanted to appear, they would, and if they didn’t, at least they’d be fed. She couldn’t tell if she wanted to see them all or not. Declan had previously kept a firm distance between herself and Ronan’s dreaming out of a sense of safety. The only difference had been Matthew. She did it for their safety.
That world wasn’t for her.
“Really worked well, didn’t it? All the secrets, all the work I did. The whole fucking world is broken.”
Declan checked one of the buckets hanging on her arm to make sure she’d dug her fingers into the right feed. She slammed it down into the tall grass. More skittering. The way she rolled her Belfast R’s ripped the sutures out of buttoned up Declan Lynch, and now she was leaving a mess out in the field, hung it in the trees to be left behind when all the leaves abandoned the branches. The burn of her hatred for Niall Lynch felt good on her tongue, like her first taste of whiskey. It had been acid in her bones for so long. Creatures murmured, and who was she to know any better, but it sounded like they agreed with her.
She came to a stop in front of the largest barn on the property, and her eyes fluttered closed. All around her, the feel of dreams closed in. Once, Ronan had accused her of checking out of the family at birth. ‘Once’ was actually ‘recently’, and it still burned a hole in her chest. Try as she might, she couldn’t entirely blame him. She’d chosen a very specific path in her quest to keep Ronan and Matthew safe. Neither of them understood it, and she’d told herself she could live with that. Instead of memorizing the important dates her girlfriends had always cried about, she was like those fancy watches with four faces - one for her boring class schedule and dull internships, one for Matthew’s soccer practices and music recitals, one for Ronan’s daily routine ticking off survival every twenty-four hours; and the last one, the tiniest and most unreliable - the one most like Declan. The hands had frozen in place and had the strangest habit of ticking for no reason, in the middle of the night or when sitting still in a chair while someone painted her.
When she’d stepped up to take Niall’s place, she’d wanted to be nothing like him. She’d discovered she’d been very little like the New Fenian also, who for all intents and purposes sounded like a better father in ten minutes than Niall had been her whole life. She had spent so long planning for scenarios that never came to pass, ready to answer questions with fluid lies, ready ready ready. She’d never planned for a scenario where none of it mattered anymore.
Opening her eyes, Declan looked up at the colossal barn, as big a footprint as the house, maybe a little bigger.
Out loud, she said, “Ronan Lynch’s Marvelous Dream Emporium.”
Niall had dreamt here sometimes, when he was drunk, when he was unstable, when he’d gotten a grand idea to take to Market. If it wasn’t here, it was the basement. She would follow him down there sometimes; it was their office of sorts. But never out here. Standing outside of it and feeling dream energy ebbing and flowing over, she recognized the energy as the same she could feel around Matthew, around Chainsaw. Very little of Niall was here anymore, and if it was, it was covered up by Ronan. Good, that was the way it should be. He didn’t tell her not to go in the barn, but she decided not to anyway. She was still too raw, too angry. She, too, ebbed and flowed, seemingly okay in one moment, and then blindingly, furiously angry at everyone she shared blood with. All this time, she thought she’d had both hands on the wheel, and instead, she’d been doing her makeup in the backseat, trying to get it perfectly right before the car crashed.
Declan laughed in a way that was more of a cackle than actual mirth. She had no idea how to put on makeup, and yet she’d worn another face since she was old enough to be useful.
Above her head, something made a noise that sounded like her laugh, but was too inhuman to be accurate. Declan looked up.
“Keck!” Chainsaw said, perched on the edge of the barn’s roof.
It’s like you checked out of the family at birth.
Declan eyed a row of tin trash cans lined up against the side wall, looking like they had existed in another time, with their battered sides and lids, tinged with rust. Nothing like the brightly colored plastic ones with wheels that had sat in the alley behind her townhouse. Every Sunday night, Matthew had cheerily dragged them to the curb for garbage day, then sat down to the hot chocolate Declan made for him using her fancy-yet-practical espresso machine. It didn’t matter what time of year it was, every Sunday, they’d go to church together and they’d have hot chocolate together. She had no idea if it had survived the break-in (which was such a mild mannered word for what really happened, like saying ‘disagreement’ to describe a bar brawl with broken bottles). She had no idea about anything anymore. Downstairs, in that very same townhouse, she had checked out of the family at birth, and up in the attic she never felt more like them, the closest she could get to dreaming. She and Ronan both lived with secrets to survive; why had Ronan never understood?
“Hey!” she called up to the roof.
Chainsaw tilted her head, beak parting, curiosity visible in the raised ruff on her neck, the shift of her wings.
Declan stalked over to the cans.
And kicked every last one of them over.
Lids went flying and refuse tumbled out. Soup cans and cupcake packages, the fallen soldiers of takeout and fast food, papers that had been ripped into little pieces. Chainsaw screeched, not at all unlike the happy noises Ronan and Matthew made on Christmas morning as they thundered downstairs to see what was under the tree. Declan watched with the same sort of distant fondness she had back then. There’d be a mighty mess to clean up after, but she was used to it.
/
Jordan found her about an hour later, and only because she thought to look up. Most people never looked up - another survival tactic. Declan perched in her favorite tree, old and big, with branches large enough to support her even now. One leg dangled with Ronan’s heavy boot, untied, and the other knee was drawn to her chest.
“Aren’t you hungry, mate?”
Declan looked down, and she was beginning to recognize that fluttery feeling between her ribs, even if she didn’t have a name for it. Despite her thoughts tripping over one another about dreams being more or real being less, she looked at Jordan, and she knew she cared. A lot. Declan Lynch had found room for another dream that didn’t necessarily belong to her, but she wanted to have in her life. Once, which was actually recently, she hadn’t thought it possible. Now she wanted it too much.
“There’s a joke to be made from feeding off the anger of my enemies, but I don’t have it in me to make it.”
“Don’t quite think it’s their anger you’re talkin’ about anyway. You coming down, or do I have to come up there?”
It was impossibly attractive, absurdly so, to think of Jordan scaling this tree from Declan’s youth the way she’d so easily climbed over a fence to paint in someone’s empty house. Declan wondered if any of her old paint sets were still here. She doubted Ronan had thrown anything from their childhood out.
Declan made her way down the tree, then promptly felt ridiculous in her jeans, cuffed awkwardly over Ronan’s work boots. She’d hastily buttoned the cuffs of her shirt and all the way up the front to her collar to block out the cold. She was shivering. When Jordan moved in to put her hands on Declan’s hips, she could feel the warmth radiating on her skin, combating the deep-set chill of being outdoors in late November without a coat. She lowered her forehead to Jordan’s.
“I’ll have to see what Ronan has in the house. I doubt it’s much we want to eat.”
She’d picked up the trash by the dreaming barn while Chainsaw was a happy fluff of overfed nearby. She’d squawked a protest, but Declan told her she’d had enough, and that somebody had to uphold the rules while Ronan was away.
“Matty’s probably only had that orange juice and whatever he could scare up from the couch cushions,” Jordan murmured, and her breath made a puff in the space between them. She said ‘Matty’ like she’d known him for years, like she was part of the family. Declan felt complicated and restless about it.
“He’s probably fine.” But Declan readily distracted herself with a strategy for pulling a meal together. She was also thinking about what Ronan was doing right this very minute. She wondered whether Parrish had responded to all the texts Ronan sent him before they parted ways, or if Gansey might try to come home anyway. They were all probably fine, but Declan wasn’t sure she believed it.
Jordan didn’t call her out on her dubious tone, instead she sidled closer until their hips pressed together, and Jordan’s arms looped about her waist. Automatically, Declan wound her arms around Jordan’s shoulders. She could fake intimacy with the best of them, but this time, she knew she was giving something away, even though she wasn’t saying anything. Very deliberately, she’d brought her shampoo and soap down from the second floor bathroom she shared with her brothers and put them in the main floor shower, replacing any and all that had belonged to her father or Aurora. Now, standing here, breathing in her favorite scents on Jordan’s skin, felt more dangerous than a loaded gun, and she’d seen many of them in the last 72 hours.
“I feel like if I let you go, you’re gonna fly somewhere, Declan,” Jordan said against her ear.
It wasn’t that Declan couldn’t remember her nuzzling in close, it’s that her mind just accepted she belonged there and skipped over the unimportant things in between.
“Something’s bothering me,” she murmured.
Declan, curator of fresh lies - something new for every occasion, needed the truth. Needed answers that didn’t raise more questions.
Jordan laughed. Declan could tell she couldn’t help it; it just burst out of her. “Just one thing?”
There were a lot of things Declan felt on behalf of her brothers. Matthew’s hazy confusion about the Great Falls, Ronan’s adoration for one Adam Parrish. Matthew’s insistence at the cafe that he be real and Ronan’s desperation to see Adam before he risked his life. Some of those things were sorted into categories: her disgust at Niall Lynch, her curiosity at how easy it was for Ronan’s love and if she would ever understand it, and her rage at Adam’s unresponsiveness. Too many what-ifs there, but at the heart of it all, had Bryde and the dreamer killers been the ‘too much’ Declan had feared? It burned her up inside not to know.
“I want to go to Cambridge.”
Quiet passed between them as Jordan worked it out. “He’d be mad.”
Can you do this because I'm asking instead of doing what you want because you think it's best?
Declan didn’t know what was best anymore. She wasn’t sure she’d ever known.
“If I didn’t protect him, he’d be worse than mad.”
A half-truth; she was getting better at this. She was walking a fine line between wanting to protect Adam if something were truly wrong and doing something truly unpleasant if he’d ghosted Ronan when he was needed the most. Even thinking about it that way seemed wrong to Declan; like if Adam were going to do something that cruel, he would rip the bandage off and be done with it, not leave Ronan hanging. That left Declan swinging back to protect him .
Was that what she thought was best? Was that what Ronan meant? Declan had no idea. For once, she didn’t have a backup plan and a contingent of lies waiting in the wings. She only had herself, Jordan and Matthew, and a world that was broken.
“Also,” Jordan said against the corner of Declan’s mouth. “Matthew said to remind you—”
Declan smiled and kissed her. “—that it’s Sunday. I know.”
[I should have known it was serious when this fic developed a playlist and an inspiration board. Thank you for hanging with me this far! I'm really excited to bring the next chapter. Love goes out, as always to @effwit, @Inoctavo/silyara, and the folks on the BB and Whisper servers.]
Declan stepped into her room, feeling self-conscious as she draped a small armload of blouses over the back of a chair and set a modest jewelry box down on her old desk. Jordan looked up from where she sat cross-legged on Declan’s bed, looking right at home surrounded by prints of old masterpieces. These weren’t nearly as impressive as the ones she’d left behind in her attic, but just as indicative of who slept underneath the grey layer, the forgettable layer, and the dull layer. That beast at her core was more than wide awake now, and her skin itched with the realness of it, like something trying to get out of its cocoon. Jordan made her way to the end of the bed, once more wearing one of Declan’s shirts for sleeping and a pair of Declan’s favorite plaid boxers. She could tell she would be really distracted if this exercise were any less important.
“Is it a fashion show, then?” Jordan asked, sounding eager.
Declan had been to all her suit fittings alone, only coming out when everything was properly in place and she could see how invisible she looked in the mirror. It made her heart jackrabbit to consider that Jordan planned to stick around at the start. All at once, Declan swallowed down a terror that made her want to grab everything back up again and disappear into any room but this one. Instead, she made her way over to her closet and all but threw herself into it.
“I…” Her hands pushed hangers to and fro, the scrape of metal over metal as garments trembled along the rack felt like the claws of her sensibility trying to drag her back down. She pursed her lips, considering, then shoved the words out like she’d pushed Ronan into the lake for fun as kids. Dangerous, but exhilarating. No turning back once you did it. “I don’t want to wear a suit to Harvard.”
Declan couldn’t see it, but Jordan’s voice sounded like a smile. “Go on then, pick me some lineups for the runway.”
The closet seemed like a futile effort since most of these items she hadn’t worn since she lived at home. Felt like yesterday and decades ago at the same time. Still, she pulled out a few pairs of slacks, making a face at the more straight cut dress shirts and sweaters. They were a last resort. She set them with the blouses and then looked down at her sleeping pants and shirt, feeling lost. It was like she’d forgotten how to operate clothing, how easily it came over her head or down her legs. Declan tried not to think too hard about how it wasn’t so much forgetfulness as fear. She’d just changed clothes an hour ago, but she’d never undressed in front of Jordan before. There was a full length mirror hung on her door, but she resolutely stood with her back to it. She didn’t notice her fists clenched at her sides until her nails dug in. She shook out her hands.
“I…”
Jordan came up from the bed carefully, as if Declan would spook if she moved too quickly. That wasn’t far from the truth.
“Hey now.” Jordan put her hands on Declan’s hips.
It was quickly becoming one of their shared favorite ways to touch one another. Declan couldn’t look her in the face.
“Take it at your own pace,” she added. “Art doesn't come outta rushing the inspiration. Easy now.”
Declan forced herself to breathe, in, out. She looked at one of the prints on the wall over her bed, trying to distract herself by immediately identifying its title, who painted it and her favorite thing about that artist. Jordan’s fingertips brushed the skin over her waistband. To her credit, Declan didn’t jump or push back, but she did seek out the next piece of art.
“I don’t know,” she said out loud to a question nobody asked. “I…didn’t plan this far ahead. I don’t…know how to do this now.”
Jordan hooked her thumbs around the hem of Declan’s shirt, and she pushed slowly, her palms sliding along Declan’s ribs. She might as well have been peeling Declan’s skin off along the way for all that she felt exposed, like no one had ever touched her before, even though logically she knew that was far from true.
“It doesn’t have to be complicated, Declan,” Jordan murmured.
Up she went, taking the shirt with her. The next painting was another Sargent. Declan raised her arms, squeezing her eyes shut.
“I’m just touching your pretty skin. That’s all you gotta know right now, okay?”
Declan’s mouth formed, “Okay,” before she could stop it.
Three Ashleys had put their mouths on her. Three Ashleys had touched her exactly where Jordan put her hands right now. That was exactly where the similarities ended. Declan had thought for years she’d plated herself with some kind of armor, one that allowed her to keep her control, feel what she needed to feel and the rest would be biological. Call and response, normal things gleaned from terribly incorrect education, even more terrible media, and in its most basic form, touching someone was easy. Responses happened. Until this very moment, she’d believed she was really good at it, and now she felt like some kind of foundling. Sixteen all over again, and to say it complicated her was like saying the sky was blue or water was wet. Declan Lynch was a sleek and sophisticated assembly of question marks.
“You can drive this time,” Jordan said into the crook of her neck.
A myriad of answers to that rushed through Declan’s mind, like the pages of a rolodex, a number to pull that matched your specific situation. None of them fit this specific situation because she’d never let the scene play out like all the others. This had never been a possibility she’d allowed herself to consider. If Declan were being honest with herself, and she had a terrible track record with that, she would have uncovered the reason beneath that roadblock. Saying she would get herself out from under Niall’s choices, that she would finish school with a degree she cared about, that she would become Senator Lynch, those had all been lies too. Buried underneath that was a young woman whose world would never have a place for her under pre-existing conditions. But the world was broken now. The world was broken and she didn’t have a plan.
“Declan?”
Jordan’s hands were back in familiar territory on her hips, and she’d pulled back so she could look at Declan’s face. Declan’s gaze had fallen on one of the other prints, but for the life of her, she couldn’t recall the name. She felt the way Jordan had looked up in the attic. Adrift, unmoored.
“I forgot how.”
“Rubbish,” Jordan told her gently, no heat, no edge. “Just a different car, mate. The controls are just tossed about, but she still drives like a…”
Declan felt her mouth smiling. “A dream?”
“Too soon?”
“I’m definitely not the one to ask.”
Jordan traced the shape of her lips. “I like this one,” she said of Declan’s smile. “A true original. I’m going to kiss it.”
And she did, replacing her steady fingertips with her mouth. This was no longer a time to be chaste, and Declan kissed back with a cautious hunger. As promised, Jordan didn’t rush it, taking the time to really discover how Declan liked to be kissed, neither forging ahead nor waiting for her to do all the work. Declan might very well have found that novel were she not so thoroughly distracted. Her exposed skin was chilled but kissing Jordan warmed her from the inside, as real as can be. Jordan stroked along her sides, up her back, and it was a shivery, breathless sensation from head to toe. Declan thrilled in it, catching Jordan’s lower lip between her teeth. Jordan retaliated with her nails trailing down Declan’s spine.
Every bit of Declan awoke.
She broke the kiss eyes half-lidded, vision consumed by Jordan’s expression. A liar herself, Declan searched for any and all tells that the want was somehow dishonest. There was no way it could have been. She found the color in Jordan’s cheeks beautiful, the confidence on her face even more so. Jordan wore her grin like someone who’d done a job well and knew it. Declan found it hard to take stock of her situation in any sort of controlled fashion because everything inside and out had gone full blown technicolor, her body making a commotion where absolute silence had once reigned. Jordan’s thigh was pressed between hers.
“Jesus, take the wheel,” Declan murmured, and she didn’t recognize her own voice.
“Are you askin’ Him or me?” Jordan laughed, her breath ghosting over Declan’s chest.
All too aware of herself now, Declan shifted her stance so that they were no longer pressed together, and Jordan didn’t stop her. A little voice rallied in her that Jordan should have kept touching her. Not just call and response, but because Declan had liked it.
This wasn’t how it usually went.
Declan withdrew completely and sat down on the edge of her bed before her knees could give out. The chill crowded in close again, and she rubbed her arms. She hated that parts of her were already shutting down without her say-so, and the hot chocolate from earlier, still sweet on Jordan’s mouth, turned her stomach into a nightmare. Her pills were downstairs. She didn’t want to move; she wanted the floor to swallow her up instead.
An all too familiar phrase tasted like bile on her tongue. “It’s not you, it’s—”
“Tell me what you need.” Jordan sounded earnest.
Declan’s ribs were going to collapse. “I don’t know.”
She felt more than saw Jordan sit down; the bed dipped on her left side, automatically causing her to lean til their shoulders touched. To her surprise and relief, she didn’t flinch. Her hesitation had nothing to do with Jordan and everything to do with herself. This was a vaguely comforting and very frustrating norm. She turned her head toward the chair of clothes. Her mouth worked, but nothing came out. With astounding clarity, she remembered the day her nose had been broken, and she wondered if Jordan could tell, or if she’d done a good job making that detail as dull as anything else about her. The air in her room felt tangled up with the start of sentences that would never see the light, ideas and wants and art. She clenched and unclenched her fists on top of her thighs, until most of the arousal had burned off and left her with a clearer head. All the while Jordan gave her the space she needed, even while parts of their bodies still touched. Declan wanted to call that ‘safe’, but she didn’t remember the source material well enough.
“I don’t think,” she began, licking her lips. Jordan didn’t press herself into the space of quiet that followed while she got herself together again. “I don’t think I’ve been doing this long enough to… I haven’t reconciled what’s actually changed to the parts of me that aren’t changing.”
Do not fall in love with this girl, she recalled. But Jordan had seen more of the real Declan Lynch in the span of days from their first meeting at the Fairy Market than anyone had seen in years. Whether because she wanted to love Jordan or because she already did, Declan wasn’t sure.
“I’m no expert on breaking the mold just yet myself,” Jordan finally said. Her hand covered Declan’s, rough and warm where Declan’s felt soft and cold. “It’s fresh, this feeling of wanting to be different than the world shaped you. Wanting to be your own person. It’s a big deal.”
Knowing what she did about Hennessy, Declan could very easily understand Jordan’s desire to be her own person. As Hennessy, she couldn’t have Declan, she couldn’t exist separately, she couldn’t step outside of the admittedly big shadow cast by her creator. Niall hadn’t dreamed Declan, but had cast a shadow so big around Declan, she still wasn’t sure how deep the darkness went. This was her finding light. This was her realizing she wanted to be Jordan’s light as much as Jordan had been for her. Declan nodded her head, turned her hand so she could squeeze Jordan’s tightly.
“I’m going to give all this a try.”
Pointing her chin toward the clothes still slung over her chair, she reluctantly let go of Jordan’s hand and got up. To her surprise, Jordan averted her eyes to the side, giving her privacy without being asked for it. She shed the rest of what she was wearing and pulled the garments on, feeling luxurious in Aurora’s draping blouses, rocking her hips into pants that were a handful of years old but still fit despite her growth spurt. She made a face at how much of her ankles was visible beneath the cuffs, but didn’t comment when she saw Jordan’s gaze lingering on the exposed pale skin. Peering into the mirror on the back of her door, she liked what she saw, dark green satin French tucked into the neatly tailored and pressed slacks she remembered wearing to one of Matthew’s recitals. She didn’t bother buttoning up the shirt all the way; Jordan’s gaze on the exposed V of her chest was all too encouraging to leave it just as it was. Declan reached up and pushed her hair back from her face, gathering all the curls at the back of her neck. She barely recognized herself in one breath, and then the next, it was as if she’d never been anything other than this.
“I think we have a winner,” Jordan said, wrapping her arms around Declan’s waist while they both watched the movement in the mirror. “How do you feel?”
“Pretty,” Declan breathed before she could stop the word from escaping.
Jordan laughed, warm against the back of her neck. “I love it when you see things my way.”
Together, they sat at Declan’s desk, Jordan helping herself to a seat in Declan’s lap, one arm still slung about her neck, fingers treading the line of satin against skin. Carefully, reverently, Declan looked through Aurora’s jewelry box. She hadn’t been Declan’s mother in blood, but while Matthew had been her favorite, she’d always treated Declan as her own. Looking back on it, she had a compassion Declan could never assign to his father. Wearing these things of Aurora’s felt less like trampling on her presence and more like honoring it. She deserved that much, and more. Declan’s ears weren’t pierced, so she bypassed the earrings and moved on to the necklaces, selecting one or two simple ones - a teardrop pearl, a golden medallion. Jordan helped put them on her. Aurora’s hands had been delicate compared to Declan’s, so few of her rings fit. Declan found an old cameo that was clearly in the box more for show than wearability; she couldn’t remember ever seeing Aurora wear it. She slid it onto her middle finger, then smirked at Jordan as she showed it off. Jordan’s laughter felt intoxicating. They kissed with Jordan still firmly planted in Declan’s lap, their fingers twisted in dark curls.
When the fashion show was over, Jordan averted her eyes while Declan changed for bed. Together, they packed a duffel bag with enough provisions for the next couple of days, trading kisses between trips to the bathroom. As the decision to go to the Barns had been made on the fly, Jordan entertained herself with picking things from Declan’s closet to wear, a delightful prospect to the oldest Lynch. Declan went to check on Matthew and found him above the covers, flat on his stomach and snoring, gaping duffel coughing out its contents haphazardly to the floor - her brother’s idea of packing. Clicking her tongue, she packed him up in a more organized manner, then reached for the quilt kicked to the foot of the bed to cover him. She pushed his curls from his forehead, reflex, and turned the lights off.
“Will you stay?” Declan asked, turning down the bed.
“Thought you’d never ask. What time is this ship leaving the dock?”
“Four,” Declan answered, unable to help smiling as Jordan’s face said exactly what she thought of that.
“Good thing you’re pretty,” she teased, looking at Declan from the other side of the bed. One eyebrow arched in question, are you sure?
Declan slid beneath the covers and reached out her hand. Jordan, her eyes glittering, didn’t waste another moment joining her. Pleased, oh so very pleased, Declan rolled to her side to turn off the light, and that’s when Jordan pressed up against her back. Solid, warm. Soft skin and sure hands, Declan felt Jordan from nape to calf, lips pressed to the back of her neck. Once more, she felt that twinge of desire, of yearning, but also a sensation of safety she didn’t quite recognize right away. There was nothing safe about this, or anything else they were doing. It was absurd to even assign such a word to the way she felt. And yet, there was no other option. Jordan’s contented sigh undid Declan.
Title: A Very Declan Father’s Day - Read on AO3
Ship: Gen
Summary:
When Declan wakes up one June Sunday morning, she's not expecting the surprise her brother(s) had planned for her. It pushes her towards a forgiveness of self she didn't think she was allowed to have.
Notes/Warnings: This takes place after CDTH and the current storyline of Honest Reflections, where everyone WILL make it out of the Dreamer Trilogy alive sohelpme... I've been planning to do this for a while, and it's lovingly dedicated to @effwit, who's been supportive and awesome this entire time. Many thanks, as always, also go to silyara/inoctavo, Cappie, and the BB server. (You know the drill <3) This is one of hopefully many oneshots set in this univers. Hope you enjoy!
Header image credit/source
[Trans lesbian Declan, post CDTH (so spoilers, if you haven’t read it). Thank you to everyone that’s been supporting this project!]
Declan worked on easing back into her own skin as she poured coffee for herself and Jordan. She couldn’t help but watch how Jordan took her coffee, intending to remember the spoons of sugar and the color of it after she added milk. Knowing how someone took their coffee was a detail Declan always felt torn between coveting and scoffing. She was sure she’d once known the formula for each of her ex-girlfriends, but hell if she could remember them now. She hoped this wouldn’t be as fleeting, but too many things were tenuous right now, she wasn’t about to push her luck.
Jordan sidled up next to her, both of them leaning against the counter, but Jordan clearly wanted to be in Declan’s space. Declan breathed in slowly through her nose, then put her arm around Jordan’s shoulders. The hum it evoked from Jordan made the decision the right one, and they lingered there while the morning sun filtered through the kitchen windows.
They both tensed at a sudden thump from upstairs, Declan pulling Jordan tighter to her eyes fixed warily on the doorway. But she relaxed immediately after when that single thud became the familiar thunder of Matthew making his way downstairs. Declan recalled there being a time when Matthew’s complete lack of quiet bothered her to no end, but now it was worth knowing that this was what made Matthew alive in her world. She’d witnessed Matthew going still and quiet once, the night the world nearly ended, and now Declan preferred to let her little brother make as much noise as he wanted.
As if that thought were an invitation, the golden boy skidded grandly into the kitchen on socked feet, making it halfway into the room before he stumbled with a bubbly laugh. For someone well aware that they were all hiding from danger, Matthew had a way of making it feel like they were just here to watch the place while Ronan went off with Parrish for the weekend. It was hard to feel dour with him skidding around like they all had when they were kids. Matthew had his earbuds in, and Declan could hear them from where she stood. Was it worth reminding him again that he should take care of his ears? Probably not.
He popped one of the buds out and looked curiously at the two of them, standing unmistakably close and Declan looking…well, probably like a person. Does she seem as out of place on the outside as she tends to feel on the inside.
“What’s up, little lion man?” Jordan asks, nodding respectfully at the untamed mess of Matthew’s golden hair.
Matthew laughed and made a move somewhere between a shake and a headbang, and his hair got impossibly wilder. “It’s great, right? I woke up like this.” He trundled over to them. “What I really need is a cool scarf like yours to hold all this awesomeness.”
Jordan laughed, and Declan just watched with wonder as her girl slipped out from under her arm to untie the scarf she wore. Declan burned her tongue on her coffee, for sheer need to have something to do with her hands while this happened in front of her. Matthew held still while Jordan wound it around his head instead, tying it off and dusting her hands off like a job well done. “There you go, mate. Stylish as fuck is what you are.”
“Hell yeah! Though Declan’s worse; have you seen it? We should get another scarf.”
“Little shit,” Declan huffed, reaching out to ruffle Matthew’s hair, sounding appropriately put out while actually quite charmed.
She wasn’t expecting Matthew to throw himself against her chest for one of his crushing bear hugs.
Declan froze.
Matthew breathed against her skin, and Declan knew she couldn’t just stand there. She’d never denied him any of the moments of affection he ever showed before, and with this whole awkward dream nonsense, she couldn’t afford for Matthew to think she loved him any less. It was painfully the opposite. She loved him so much, it pierced every vein of common sense she had, bleeding her dry. Declan held him, kissed the top of his head like she always did, pointedly not looking at Jordan. Matthew’s terrible music echoed tinnily against her pulse.
“You smell like Mom,” he murmured into her neck.
Years of not letting things show on her face, no matter how angry or frightened she was aided this moment when she had no idea what those words would mean from someone who’d only ever seen Declan as put-together-big-brother, who occasionally had worse bedhead. Declan felt like she was bleeding again.
Matthew pulled back, arms loosely circling her waist. His smile, Declan would destroy someone for it.
“I like it!” He jerked his head over to Jordan, freeing a hand to flash her a thumbs up. “You’re good for Dec. Stick around, okay?”
“Jesus,” Declan’s voice broke. “You’re—”
“Awesome, I know.”
Matthew finally let go and headed over to the fridge, which had likely been his intended target before catching sight of Jordan in Declan’s embrace. He yanked open the door, humming along to whatever song had come on and rummaging for the orange juice carton.
“Score,” he said to himself, nudging the door shut with his hip and walking out with the carton, no glass.
“He got that from Ronan,” Declan said weakly.
“Which part, mate? His honesty or his good looks or his desire not to give a shit about tellin’ it like it is?”
“Both. All.”
Declan still felt like she couldn’t breathe, trapped in a moment when she’d hung on the precipice of rejection. She should have known better. One hand came up to cover her mouth. She barely registered Jordan gently taking the coffee mug out of her other hand.
“You did good with that kid. Ain’t like I know much about raisin’ someone, but he adores you. That’s fuckin’ beautiful.”
When Declan finally had the nerve to look at her, she couldn’t quite read Jordan’s expression, but she didn’t dislike it. Those were the eyes of an artist hungry to put something on canvas, someone who’d witnessed something glorious like a sunrise or a natural disaster and needed to immortalize it. Declan could scream for the absolute humanity, the heart of it. Jordan and Matthew were dreams, and yet she, the fake brother, would rend herself to the bone for either one of them. She still didn’t know what to do with that information, convinced that she could always keep the line solidly drawn between the reality of Matthew’s creation and the life he lived today. That line had been drawn in sand, and she was clawing it into a blurred mess all on her own. She didn’t want the world to be so black and white anymore. It wasn’t with her, why should it be with them? She could have cried, but her eyes forgot how. Jordan put her arms around Declan’s waist.
Wild, beautiful Jordan. Everything Declan wanted, everything she wanted to be.
“Will you?” Declan asked.
She didn’t have to specify. Jordan already knew her answer.
