for the 100 followers list: #83 “Stay there. I’m coming to get you.” - your choice of pairing
100 Ways to Say ‘I Love You’ | accepting
Pynch - “Stay there. I’m coming to get you.”
Adam fumbled for his phone before it could vibrate itself right off the night table. He blinked at the face of it until the letters stopped being blurry. Lynch. The call dropped into voicemail while Adam fought to get his bearings. The tremor lingering in his hand in the wake of the missed call was more than just the vibrate mode, it was sudden fear.
He’d spent the night at the Barns.
His other hand shot out to the space beside him in Ronan’s bed, and his stomach hollowed out to find it empty.
The phone started ringing again.
“Where are you?” Adam asked as soon as he picked up.
At first, Ronan didn’t answer. The only thing that assured Adam that he was on the other end was the sound of his breathing, hitched and heavy.
Adam was already on his feet and fumbling around for his clothes. His heart hammered against his ribs, Ronan’s fear a mirror image of his own, both of them trying to keep it pushed back and failing. Both of them already knew what being afraid sounded like to one another.
“Okay,” Adam said, “that’s all right. Do you know how you got there?”
He heard night sounds, insects chirping, the disorienting sound of wind gusting past the microphone. He heard Ronan lick his lips.
“I think I sleep-walked here. Fuck, Parrish, I’ve never sleep-walked before.”
“Stay there. I’m coming to get you.”
Adam wrestled a shirt over his head around the phone, hesitant to hang up with Ronan when he sounded like this. He headed downstairs and put his shoes on without socks.
“How the hell are you gonna find me?”
“You’re gonna send me your location with your phone,” Adam said, almost laughing. He was the one in their group who had lived without a cell phone the longest, and yet knew so much more than Ronan, who hated the phone with every fiber of his being. It would have been funny to point out if Ronan calling hadn’t been a sure sign of just how much this predicament unsettled him. “Listen carefully, Lynch. You with me?”
“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ here.”
Adam grabbed the keys to the BMW off the hook by the door, walking Ronan through how to send his location in a text. Relief hit him when the map pinged up on his screen. “I’m coming for you, okay?”
Time and distance didn’t mean a damn thing, Adam just drove, his little dot on the map eating up the miles on its way toward Ronan while anxiety ate up his insides. He bit back a curse when the road just stopped, and he had to take the rest of the way on foot. Above him, the moon illuminated only what it felt he needed to see, his path in the tall grass and the evidence that someone else had been through it. The hour was so close to morning that the dew had been disturbed ahead of him, and now his ankles and the cuffs of his jeans were wet.
“Ronan?” he called out as the trees got thicker around him, everything about this a discomfiting familiar while at the same time eerily not. “Lynch, are you here?”
It sounded like it was coming from all around him. It sounded like it was coming from inside him. Ronan’s voice, but not Ronan’s voice. Adam’s knees felt weak, but he kept walking. He had to know. Hope grew in his chest like fresh roots, taking hold of his fear and choking it; in his heart of hearts, Adam Parrish always wanted something good to happen, even when all the odds suggested it wouldn’t. He kept walking, the map half forgotten, a different sort of guidance system kicking in. That of his instincts and his connection to Ronan. Semel tantum. He parsed through it. Once. Only once.
Adam’s head jerked up and there was Ronan, cloaked in shadow and glistening with dew. The moon only came through the cover of trees in a dapple pattern, casting him even more ethereal than Adam already thought him. He truly looked like a dreamer, and suddenly it seemed okay that he’d probably dream-walked his way here. Just this one time. Only once.
“Semel tantum,” he said out loud.
“Yeah, that’s what they keep telling me.” Ronan sounded put out, and he crossed his arms. Being angry was always a better alternative than being scared for him.
“The trees,” Adam confirmed instead of asking.
The weight of that slipped under their skin, settling into their bones. Adam could feel it like a truth that has always been. Just this once, they lured the dreamer out here, leading him both within and outside of the dream. It was important to show him this time, instead of letting the magic of a child’s mind give ancient powers a shape and a home. Adam’s pulse raced. Semel tantum, they said in the space between heartbeats.
“In tempus est nunc.” Ronan slid his hand into Adam’s. The time is now.
Adam nodded. “Nos sumus parati.” We are ready.
Silence enveloped them, the true and complete silence you can only find when the world stops, when time stops. When it’s most important for you to be aware of exactly what needs to happen. There’s no room for anything else.
“Nomine apellant,” the trees asked of Ronan.
He squeezed Adam’s hand, and the anxiety stopped breathing in the embrace of hope. The magic was coming alive, sparking awake between their staggered breaths and the expectant quiet of magical trees waiting to grow.
Ronan whispered reverently. “Lindenmere.”
