#Declan was THE FIRST one to love ronan….the first to see him as family
Text
The Dream Thieves / Greywaren
#greywaren spoilers#Greywaren#LITERALLY losing my mind#Declan was THE FIRST one to love ronan….the first to see him as family#tdt#trc#ronan lynch#Declan lynch#niall lynch
4K notes
·
View notes
Text
he loves his younger brothers so deeply he can't function without them. his entire sense of self is predicated on service to his family. he is everyone's least favorite family member. he hates his brothers. he needs to be needed by them because he's never felt wanted. he has the shape of Matthew's forehead and the texture of his curls memorized. goodbye to whatever Declan Lynch would have grown up to be. his mother isn't real and maybe that's why he doesn't love her like he should. keeps an attic full of paintings that make him feel things tucked out of sight where no one can ever see him do it. he drives a 4 hour round trip every sunday to worship a god he no longer believes in because it's the only time Ronan concedes to spend with him. he dates three girls all with the same name and knocks his mother's wedding ring down the garbage disposal. he is a perpetual motion machine, never alone but always lonely. coffee and antacids and sleeping pills so he won't dream. he misses his father so much it hurts. he curses his father's name with every breath. trained so thoroughly to lie that telling even innocuous truths feels like giving something away. "fuck, do not fall in love with this girl." he's his father's only natural-born child. his father doesn't remember his birth. he was the first to love Ronan and so Ronan lived. off the rack suits and italian leather shoes. he wakes up every day wishing he didn't have to. goes to work, goes to school, takes Matthew to organ practice. his mother isn't his mother but his mother left him behind so maybe that's for the best. he gets beaten bloody by the hitman that killed their father and neither of his brothers pick up the phone when he calls to make sure they're alive. he still drives 4 hours to share a pew with them.
#Declan Lynch#i am simply obsessed with him#he is so much character#he fascinates me#TRC#TDT#the Raven Cycle#the Dreamer Trilogy#tags by me
781 notes
·
View notes
Text
-> declan bringing ashley to monmouth. ashley, the raven boys, chapter 4. (we’re meant to look pretty for her.)
this is one of the first chapters where we really get to know a lot about our characters, and ashley being there—combined with adam suddenly being aware that they are observed when it’s clear he didn’t feel that way immediately preceding the start of the book—lead me to believe that the fourth wall is very thin here.
-> ashley, this is noah, can you see him?
ashley is one of the only characters outside of the gangsey themselves who is not only able to see noah but also to meet and interact with him.
-> (your hands are cold. (i’ve been dead for seven years.))
ashley is also the first person that noah says this to within the confines of the narrative himself. nobody is surprised when he says this, so clearly he does make these jokes a lot, but it’s significant that we, the reader, hear this for the first time when it’s directed at ashley—ashley who, like us, just got here and doesn’t (can’t) know the significance of this interaction until after everything is over.
-> adam. (don’t you feel observed? someone is looking in when they weren’t before.) the raven boys, chapter 4.
adam: wary, adam: watchful. adam feels the eyes of the reader when the others do not; adam becomes aware of us as soon as we become aware of him. no sooner is ashley named than adam is introduced; no sooner is ashley introduced than adam is wary of her.
ashley (f, gaelic: aislinn): dream, vision
-> (three ashleys) (three brothers) (three witches) (nine’s very three plus three plus three) (6:21) (3+3:+3)
-> declan started hating me first. it was all because declan loved ronan.
-> this is not the first time
declan lynch was 18 the first time matthew fell asleep (was ronan dead)
-> gansey. where’s ronan? i don’t know. something’s wrong. something’s happened to him. how do you know? i can’t explain. i don’t know. we fought. something’s wrong
he’s your dog, gansey (i can’t help him any more (i’m killing him and i don’t know how to stop))
-> he trusted gansey (he still worried about ronan (he never stopped worrying about ronan))
i want you to meet ashley. yes again it’s a different ashley (i need to check in with you) is ronan around? he shouldn’t be (we’ll fight if he’s there (i need to know how he’s doing (he’ll hate me more for hovering)))
-> ronan please just tell me it won’t happen again i’m doing everything i can to keep you both alive
the brothers lynch (a dreamer (a dream (declan)))
-> half none of declan’s surviving family was real. half a dreamer. half a dream. to lose one is to lose the other (part of ronan died when niall did (part of ronan died when his dreamer did))
ronan lynch was 18 when a demon nearly unmade him (the second time matthew fell asleep (the second time declan almost lost them both at once (was ronan dead)))
-> declan cannot let go (if he lets go who will hang on (who will live without him fighting tooth and nail to keep them))
matthew lynch was 18 when he punched his eldest brother in the face (matthew lynch was 18 the third time declan almost became the last living lynch)
-> was ronan dead
declan bringing ashley to monmouth. ashley, the raven boys, chapter 4. ashley (f, gaelic: aislinn): dream, vision. three ashleys. three brothers. three dreamers. three sleepers. three witches. three murders. nine’s very three plus three plus three
(i look just like my father (so do you (every time i see your blood on my knuckles i remember him dead in the driveway (every time i look at you i see the face of a dead man))))
-> was ronan dead
declan brings ashley to monmouth.
#hi guys. this is not coherent i know. sorry. here’s the ashley-declan-ronan post nobody asked for#the raven cycle#declan lynch#ronan lynch#matthew lynch#the lynch brothers#helenaposting#barbi.trc#trc meta#trc quotes#best of
210 notes
·
View notes
Text
i've revised my trb chapter 36 notes and they've somehow expanded to ~15 pages. you can read them here (i've also pasted the text into this post under the cut). the notes don't constitute an essay or produce a coherent thesis but they're a pretty comprehensive list of observations and interpretations i drew from the chapter.
TRB chapter 36 notes (content warning for abuse)
Last updated: 230610
“’The buck stops here,’ Ronan said, pulling up the hand brake. ‘Home shit home.’” This is the first chapter where Adam and Ronan are the only main characters present- their first scene entirely alone, set in the BMW before Adam gets out. I’m thinking about a few things: how differently Ronan and Gansey talk about Adam’s trailer, his parents, his poverty, etc.; how Ronan’s flippant insults and nonchalant offers of help (despite genuine concern) are less alienating to Adam than Gansey’s more openly heartfelt concern, since it’s paired with criticism of Adam’s pride and a tendency to command rather than suggest (full disclosure- I love Gansey and understand his point of view, but it’s clear why his approach upsets Adam more, and I think Ronan, having felt smothered by Declan, is more capable of empathizing with Adam on the matter of refusing help moving out); the recurring theme of cars being a place of refuge and solace for Ronan and how he wishes Adam would stay inside the BMW (even though he knows he won’t). I didn’t verify what I’m about to say so if I remembered incorrectly please let me know, but I’m pretty sure that we see Ronan drive Adam in the BMW to the trailer park twice (in this chapter, and in TRK when Adam scries while Ronan drives [the “wrong devil” scene]). Nobody else drives Adam home (although Gansey repeatedly stops by to pick him up). Gansey is constantly bringing Adam away from the trailer, for good reason (and practical reason too- sometimes they’re just going to class). Ronan brings him back, setting Adam up to confront his life and make decisions to change it. I know someone else has written a tumblr post about Ronan putting Adam in these types of situations and it’s very insightful and I’d love to cite it here (so if you wrote it or know who did, please tell me!). But ultimately this sets up an arc that ends with Adam driving the BMW alone for a final conversation with his parents, in which he can come and go from the trailer independently and in control of his interactions with his parents- the effects of the abuse are not erased, but his character arc has such a trajectory that he’s able to get some closure on his own terms via his hard-won autonomy and healing (the BMW/Ronan has played a key role in establishing both).
“In the dark, the Parrish family’s double-wide was a dreary gray box, two windows illuminated.” The description of the double-wide has gone from pale blue in daytime to an absence of color- things are even more grim. No love, no liveliness. A strong contrast to the home from which they’ve just driven (300 Fox Way, which has a bright blue exterior). The illuminated windows seem like omens or warnings rather than beacons. “Box” implies simplicity, a lack of architecture, a constraining place, a place in which one might be trapped. I’m thinking about how the flat ceiling of a box-like trailer also contrasts with the multi-sloped attic of 300 Fox Way, perhaps symbolizing Blue’s family’s proclamation of Blue’s potential versus Adam’s family’s stifling of his talents, needs, wants, etc.
“It was a comfortable enough arrangement; Adam and Ronan weren’t in a fight at the moment, and both of them were too startled by the day’s events to start a new one.” Not that they don’t get genuinely upset with each other on page (things get heated in BLLB as the development of their relationship becomes more prominent/less subtextual), but I feel like we get told that Adam and Ronan don’t get along but they…usually…do, from our vantage point. When they do have conflict in the first book, it doesn’t seem as heavy/personally directed as when Adam and Gansey fight. I get the sense that a lot of their bickering is routine and low stakes, especially since the passage tells us that the day’s chaos and threat to Gansey’s safety has jostled them out of their typical (mundane?) arguing.
“Adam reached in the back for his messenger bag, the one gift he’d ever permitted Gansey to give him, and only because he didn’t need it.” I remember this sentence being critical to my understanding of Adam’s character the first time I read this series. Adam accepts the one gift he doesn’t need because he could get rid of it and suffer no dire consequences if the friendship ended. He wouldn’t have to rearrange his carefully made plans over a messenger bag if he wanted or needed to give it up at all. There’s no desperate gratitude or a gnawing need to pay back a debt- it’s superficial, not connected to his precarious survival, no implied reliance. There’s also something in here about a bag being used to carry things (burdens?) that I’m trying to tease out into words but haven’t yet. whoreshoecrab also made the brilliant observation that a messenger bag is more of an academic, white collar (and relatively impractical) choice of bag which I think plays into Adam’s willingness to accept something since it doesn’t highlight his desperate need for the bare necessities.
“Another silhouette, distinctly Adam’s father, had joined the first at the window. Adam’s stomach curdled.” We don’t get much information about the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Parrish (although Adam’s later concern about leaving his father’s gun behind implies that Robert also abuses his wife), but here there’s an implication of a united front against Adam. His stomach going sour is a visceral description of his fear- how terrible to go home to danger rather than safety. This sentence reminds me of one from TDT in one of the Gray Man’s chapters: “The Gray Man’s stomach wrung itself out… His brother had never intended for him to pick up; he merely wanted this: the Gray Man stopping the car, wondering if he was supposed to return the call. Wondering if his brother was going to call back. Untangling the wired threads in his gut.” (TDT, chapter 7), both serving as descriptions of a particularly physiological, visceral fear stemming from abuse.
“He tightened his fingers around the strap of his bag, but he didn’t get out.” Tightening -> builds tension in the narration as Adam braces himself for a confrontation. I mentioned this already, but cars often serve as places of refuge in the series. Ronan goes to wait in the Camaro after his brawl with Declan in TRB chapter 7 and after Calla goes for his neck in TRB chapter 15; Adam lingers in the BMW to delay having to go home in this chapter. Adam joins Ronan in the BMW in TRK in silent solidarity as Ronan grieves.
“’Man, you don’t have to get out here,’ Ronan said. Adam didn’t comment on that; it wasn’t helpful. Instead he asked, ‘Don’t you have homework to do?’ But Ronan, as the inventor of sly remarks, was impervious to them. His smile was ruthless in the glow from the dash. ‘Yes, Parrish. I believe I do.”’ A suggestion, not an order (i.e.. You don’t have to get out here vs. don’t get out here). Adam’s arguments with Gansey are often about how Gansey views/treats Adam; Adam’s arguments with Ronan are often about how Ronan wastes the time he has, the time he could be using for school work, the time Adam wishes he had. He’s genuinely frustrated that Ronan wastes such a precious resource, but the frustration is with a behavior that doesn’t have anything to do with himself (if he doesn’t compare himself to Ronan, which is another can of worms). Adam ignores Ronan’s comment- would he have ignored such a statement from Gansey, or started to argue? Would Gansey have ever phrased it like that? We get more insight into how they interact/communicate; Adam avoids arguing over serious circumstances but is comfortable resorting to banter since he knows there’s no risk of actual offense. There’s also a microscopic bit of dramatic irony here if you’re re-reading since the outcome of the events in this chapter directly lead to Ronan doing his homework in earnest.
“He didn’t like the agitation of his father’s silhouette. But, it was unwise to loiter in the car — especially this car, an undeniably Aglionby car — flaunting his friendships.” This chapter obviously shows Adam’s father’s physically abusive nature but also demonstrates how absolute his effect on Adam is, whether or not he’s actively enacting the abuse. Adam is constantly tuned to his father’s posture and follows a set of rules designed to minimize conflict and harm to himself. For someone running so low on time and sleep, this perpetual monitoring must add an additional layer of exhaustion. There’s no place to hide- to stay safe in the BMW is to potentially worsen his father’s mood, and to go home is to put himself in the path of danger anyway. Re: it being unwise to flaunt friendships: this was also crucial to me understanding Adam and his independence/lonesomeness; because the Parrishes are poor and Adam’s friends are wealthy, and mentioning his friends (which is criticized as flaunting) threatens his father’s insecurity about their poverty, Adam is conditioned to see connection and community as shameful, as a betrayal to his roots (which he is also taught to see as shameful- there is no winning). In the context of his family, he is safer on his own (but in the context of the world, he cannot move forward alone, and this is a lesson he must learn).
“If he shows up for class,” Adam replied, “I think that the reading will be the least of his concerns.” Subtle threat/hint at Adam having zero remorse for Whelk in future chapters
“There was quiet, and then Ronan said, ‘I better go feed the bird.’ But he looked down at the gearshift instead, eyes unfocused. He said, ‘I keep thinking about what would’ve happened if Whelk had shot Gansey today.’ Adam hadn’t let himself dwell on that possibility. Every time his thoughts came close to touching on the near miss, it opened up something dark and sharp edged inside him.” Like Ronan calling Adam “man” and “Parrish,” referring to Chainsaw as “the bird” serves as an example of Ronan keeping his emotional distance, maybe as a way of giving Adam space in a tense situation, maybe to disguise Ronan’s intense emotions. Ronan engages with his concern for Gansey by obsessing over the worst case hypothetical outcomes; Adam (who is typically concerned with planning for all the possible futures) chooses to avoid thinking about such fears at all. As explained in the remainder of the passage (next section), Adam cannot fathom a life without Gansey. This is a clear reminder that Whelk is Adam’s foil, not someone on a parallel path- for Adam, harming Gansey/Gansey’s mortality is too heavy to even think about, much less plot out. Something dark and sharp edged- a hole, a grave? In BLLB when Adam figures out that Gansey is on the St. Mark’s Eve death list, the narration says, “his heart was a grave” (ough). A place to bury impending grief? Or, if you’ve read TD3, this sounds a lot like the Lace, which is to say it sounds a lot like fear and insecurity and terror and being seen and the infinite and abandonment and grief and a lot of other things I haven’t processed yet.
“It was hard to remember what life at Aglionby had been like before Gansey. The distant memories seemed difficult, lonely, more populated with late nights where Adam sat on the steps of the double-wide, blinking tears out of his eyes and wondering why he bothered. He’d been younger then, only a little more than a year ago.” Not only is Adam currently repressing the thought of a life without Gansey, he recurringly prevents himself from crying. Adam alone at Aglionby, struggling to adapt and feeling like a fraud, with no one to believe in him but himself, is incomprehensibly sad. “Lonely” followed by “populated with” makes it seem like the late nights themselves were Adam’s only company.
“His hand worked on the steering wheel; something was frustrating him, but with Ronan, there was no telling if it was still Whelk or something else entirely. “No problem, man. See you tomorrow.” This assessment of Ronan (aside from an incidence of Ronan in motion/his kinetic way of processing emotion), in my opinion, serves to illustrate Adam’s self-perception and paradoxically egocentric and unselfish thought process (he’s self-centered in the sense that he has to prioritize his own needs to survive and is constantly worried about how he acts and feels and interacts with others and looks and on and on but is unselfish in the sense that he doesn’t consider the possibility that Ronan might be frustrated and worried about Adam himself). Ronan is reeling from grieving Noah, worrying about Gansey almost getting killed (which was a pre-existing fear, as we know from chapter 16 and the wasp encounter). And while we’re on the topic of chapter 16 and the aftermath of chapter 33, I hadn’t realized until now that Gansey’s “dual vision” when death is imminent (“Two narratives coexisted in his head. One was the real image: the wasp climbing up the wood, oblivious to his presence. The other was a false image, a possibility: the wasp whirring into the air, finding Gansey’s skin, dipping the stinger into him, Gansey’s allergy making it a deadly weapon.” And “Gansey had that same, detached feeling that he’d had in Monmouth Manufacturing, looking at the wasp. At once he saw the reality: a gun pressed against the skin above his eyebrows, so cold as to feel sharp — and also the possibility: Whelk’s finger pulling back, a bullet burrowing into his skull, death instead of finding a way to get back to Henrietta.”) is perhaps an effect of him living two lives at once, at both dying and surviving twice (but sort of at the same point at the time loop because both deaths and rebirths are temporally linked to Noah’s favor, powered by Cabeswater and the ley line). ????????????????
“With a sigh, Adam climbed out. He knocked on the top of the BMW, and Ronan pulled slowly away. Above him, the stars were brutal and clear.” Who else notably sighs? Noah, another target of physical violence. Ronan is slow, reluctant to leave. Over the next few pages (as Robert berates Adam and accuses him of lying) Ronan continues to slowly leave the driveway because Adam can still see his break lights (antithetical to a stereotypical Ronan response- speeding off recklessly). The brutal and clear stars- perhaps an acceptance of the inevitable cruelty he is walking into? Adam feels destined or cursed to suffer, maybe as if fate, is cold and uncaring. (but does he believe in fate? Evidence in TDT chapter 8 says yes, if not literal fate but a general doomed-by-your-origin/bloodline sentiment, although he also persistently rewrites his narrative and seeks autonomy in his own life, so I don’t think there’s a clear answer. If anything, if he does believe in fate, he sees it as mutable and probably something not named fate at all). I think it’s also notable that the stars are a source of calming comfort to Blue, rather than harsh and distant observers of her struggles. “The stars were brutal and clear” always reminds me of Javert’s Suicide from Les Miserables: I am reaching but I fall/ And the stars are black and cold/ As I stare into the void/ Of a world that cannot hold.
“Hi, Dad,” Adam said. “Don’t ‘hi, dad’ me,” his father replied. He was already revved up. He smelled like cigarettes, although he didn’t smoke. “Come home at midnight. Trying to hide from your lies?” Adam graciously attempts civility; Robert eschews all pretense of acting like any sort of father at all. He’s already agitated, by Adam breaking curfew (which he’s broken for good reason, though Robert doesn’t and can’t know this) or by anything else in the world- his anger is out of Adam’s control. We’ve recently learned Adam does not like to be accused of lying from his encounter with Declan (TRB, 31). The cigarette smell on an adult non-smoker is probably indicative of the company they keep- co-workers? Friends, if he has them? An affair if Adam’s mom doesn’t smoke? The midnight curfew is surely a measure of control rather than care, and is relevant to interpretation of Adam’s constant meticulously meted out aliquots of time (for school, for work, for friends, for sleep) and deep envy for/resentment of those that have time and waste it- not even his own time exists outside the shadow of his father’s fist.
“Adam’s knees were slowly liquefying. He did his best to keep most of his Aglionby life hidden from his father, and he could think of several things about himself and his life that wouldn’t please Robert Parrish. The fact that he didn’t know precisely what had been found was agonizing. He couldn’t meet his father’s eyes.” Emphasizes Adam’s need to always be hiding, keeping secrets, protecting the truth. Ronan is also familiar with the burden of keeping secrets in the name of safety. More description of the physical impact of abuse on Adam (in addition to the actual physical abuse- here I’m referencing the physical manifestations of fear and dread). I’m really interested in Adam’s relationship to his body throughout the series (and I’d have to dig up some other notes to elaborate but his POV chapters often pay acute detail to physical sensations, he dissociates on a number of occasions, his sacrifice of his hands and eyes and ongoing struggle for autonomy on physical and psychological levels especially as the unmaker/demon gains access to his hands and eyes, his healing occurring metaphorically via ley line work/outside of his own body, being alive because he bleeds, perhaps positing his awakening in BLLB as a reintegration of his mind and body after that pivotal scrying scene, etc. I would LOVE to discuss this more but I think I to collect my thoughts or the input from someone else on which to reflect- but this is probably the foundation of a legitimate essay imo). The liquifying sensation intimates a dissolution of the body, or the loss of restrained solidity and form, an unwilling spilling out of his tightly rehearsed outward projections. And finally, not knowing what his father found = lack of control = lack of strategy to defuse the conflict and protect himself.
“Robert Parrish grabbed Adam’s collar, forcing his chin up.” This is a repeated gesture in this chapter: a proprietary, controlling action, forcing Adam to make eye contact he’s trying to evade.
“Think fast, Adam. What does he need to hear?” Adam ends up carrying the burden of resolving the abuse inflicted on him, as if it’s his responsibility and not just a deescalating survival tactic. In TRB chapter 32, Blue muses that Adam isn’t often lost for words- but here, he’s scrabbling for words (he’s too panicked for his words/intellect to cooperate). This is another example of Adam’s solution oriented nature (the mechanic, the scientist)- here is a problem; how do I solve it?
“His father drew Adam’s face a bare inch from his, so that Adam could feel the words as well as hear them. ‘You lied to your mother about how much you made.’ ‘I didn’t lie.’ “Do not look in my face and lie to me!’ his father shouted.” This is one of the more visceral, tactile chapters in the book, with the narration appealing to sensation to convey the intensity of the conflict. The physical nature of the scene also highlights the running theme of Adam’s relationship to his body- how it’s integral to his survival but also how he bargains it away and how it betrays him, the duality of mind and body, etc. I’m remembering that in chapter 31, Adam is highly displeased to be accused by Declan of lying. And not that it really matters, but I wonder if Robert not originally realizing how much money Adam has to accumulate in order to cover the remainder of his tuition is due to a) a lie by omission or b) him simply not listening to Adam’s needs in the first place. Robert also keeps invoking Adam’s mother as she stands idly by, perhaps to emphasize that everyone is against Adam, as if Adam alone is in the wrong here. It’s also interesting that the yelling here is italicized rather than capitalized. I don’t think the books are entirely consistent about this, but I believe we see capitalized yelling from Maura, Neeve, and Jesse, at least. Because the characters’ internal monologues are also italicized, we get a visual representation of how Adam’s parents’ cruel statements worm their way into his own self-talk and therefore self-esteem, self-perception, and reflexive victim blaming (Adam later muses that he has some sort of Stockholm syndrome). The italics in external dialogue and internal monologue collectively simulate abuse survivors’ internalization of abusive rhetoric against themselves. It’s also a little impressive how quickly a knot forms in my stomach at hearing a father say the phrase “your mother.” Has anything good ever followed that phrase?
“When his father’s hand hit his cheek, it was more sound than feeling: a pop like a distant hammer hitting a nail. Adam scrambled for balance, but his foot missed the edge of the stair and his father let him fall.” I’m thinking about hands as tools used as weapons (recurring knife motif in the books, especially in TDT, and how Adam works with his hands, offers up his hands to Cabeswater and in the process the demon uses his hands to nearly kill Ronan). Previously, sound and feeling converged; here, they diverge; Adam is possibly dissociated from the violence to some extent (like a distant hammer, more sound than feeling, etc. … a hammer is also a tool that could be used as a weapon). Adam is literally scrambling for balance here (but also does so figuratively at all times and is often quite successful at maintaining his tightly orchestrated and exhausting equilibrium). The precise nature of Adam’s fall here is brutal- the hit doesn’t make him fall, but it knocks him off balance and the subsequent misstep makes him fall, which his father makes no effort to prevent- the abuse not only aggression but neglect, which is to say control in both positive and negative (not good and bad, but additive and subtractive/maliciously neutral) ways.
“When the side of Adam’s head hit the railing, it was a catastrophe of light. He was aware in a single, exploded moment of how many colors combined to make white.” The prose... The pain is absolute, infinite, world-ending. A railing is a safety feature; a parent is obligated to prioritize their child’s safety. Adam’s injury involving the railing is a testament to his parents’ failure to consider his safety at all. When Adam comes to on the ground, his face, especially his mouth, is “caked with dust” (which frequently appears when Adam expresses shame about his roots); I take the dust as a symbol for a dearth of love given that water repeatedly stands in for love and longing. It’s also a reference to Adam from the Bible being made of the earth. I think his mouth being mentioned in particular references his usual ability to talk his way out of scrutiny and concern or hold his own in arguments, but in the trailer park, his words don’t work as weapons.
“Adam had to put together the mechanics of breathing, of opening his eyes, of breathing again.” A bit of a symbolic rebirth moment, coming back to life. Similar sentiment: “a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival.” My original notes for this chapter said, “I do think this could have been revised though- ‘breathing’ is repeated but not rhythmically or frequently enough (in my opinion) to actually simulate the act of deliberately inhaling and exhaling to self-regulate.” But as I’m re-reading, I understand the choice better. It emphasizes that to live, you must breathe, and breathe again, (and this is relentless), which in turn emphasizes the labor Adam puts in to take yet another breath, to keep going (but the effort to breathe is so great that it’s impossible to consider anything past this breath and the next). Maybe it’s not meant to be a cycle but a Sisyphean climb. Adam has to choose his path forward over and over again.
In Adam’s head: “Just go, Ronan.” He thinks this as he’s rising to his feet after his head hits the railing and sees Ronan’s brake lights go on. The light (Adam indirectly associates Ronan with light multiple times in the text) should be a symbol of hope, but Adam is both too proud and too ashamed to want to hope/accept Ronan stepping in on his behalf. Is this the first time someone not-Parrish has observed the abuse first hand and not just lingering evidence of it? Ronan becoming a direct witness is a line they can’t uncross, a truth Ronan can’t un-know.
“’You’re not playing that game!’ Robert Parrish snapped. ‘I’m not going to stop talking about this just because you threw yourself on the ground. I know when you’re faking, Adam. I’m not a fool. I can’t believe you’d make this kind of money and throw it away on that damn school! All of those times you’ve heard us talking about the power bill, the phone?’” There’s just so much awful here- the victim blaming, the immediate trivialization of Adam’s injury, the devaluation of Adam’s education and opportunity for freedom, and the guilt-tripping over financial burdens a child shouldn’t have to cover, the implication that Adam is running some sort of con, etc.
“His father was far from done. Adam could see it in the way he pushed off his feet with every step down the stairs, from the coil in his body. Adam drew his elbows into his body, ducking his head, willing his ears to clear. What he needed to do was put himself in his father’s head, to imagine what he had to say to defuse this situation.” Keen observation of body language, pattern recognition, (and conscious use of empathy – understanding his father’s thoughts to protect himself). We see these behaviors from Adam in a variety of contexts outside his household; his survival tactics have become ingrained, and while they keep him safe and probably make him a better student too, what is the cost? Exhaustion, mistrust, hypervigilance, repression, isolation. Defusing the situation is what Gansey references back in chapter 7- Adam keeping things quiet.
“But he couldn’t think. His thoughts crashed explosively across the dirt in front of him, in time with the rhythm of his heart. His left ear screamed at him. It was so hot that it felt wet.” Re: previous discussion of mind/body duality, dissociation, etc. his thoughts feeling like they’re outside his body in a dynamic/describable way, the distinction between his ear and himself and the pain transmitted between them, etc. An inability to think as a critical loss given his reliance on his perceptive and intelligent nature.
“Grabbing Adam’s collar, he pulled his son up, as easy as he’d lift a dog. Adam stood, but only just. The ground was sliding away from him, and he stumbled. He had to struggle to find the words again; something was fractured inside him.” In this instant, Adam’s body is at the mercy of his father. This is from where his desperate drive for autonomy comes. Gansey fears that something essential in Adam will break- I’d posit that Gansey fears Adam’s inherent goodness or happiness or youth or curiosity or humor will be trampled beyond help; Adam’s fear of something breaking is more along the lines of his self-assumed potential to be violently angry/a threat to others being unleashed, as if his ability to choose to be good will shatter. Dog/collar – what does this evoke? Adam often laments his upbringing through metaphors about animal behavior (he feels cursed by both nurture and nature. I think this observation is in conversation with my earlier questions about Adam’s thoughts on fate). The ground slides away- the foundation of the world moves (much like the earthquake when he sacrifices himself in Cabeswater); the moment is unstable and unsafe; Adam is unsupported. Struggling for words is unusual for sharp-tongued Adam, but he’s too threatened to think as he usually does.
“’To do this,’ Ronan Lynch snarled, smashing his fist into the side of Robert Parrish’s face.” Reading about Ronan swinging at Declan from Gansey’s POV (nooooo) versus Ronan decking Adam’s dad (YES). I get the feeling that Ronan has been waiting for an excuse to do this for a rather long time. A core aspect of Ronan’s character is not hesitating to cause some damage for a cause in which he believes (especially in TD3).
“Beyond him, the BMW sat, the driver’s side door hanging open, headlights illuminating clouds of dust in the darkness.” Ronan (the BMW) being a source of light in a field of dust, taken with Adam finding the light switch in a previous chapter (29) only once Ronan appears -> Ronan as a source of light (probably more accurate to say source of energy) in Adam’s life.
“Out of his right ear, Adam heard his mother screaming at them to stop. She was holding the phone, waving the phone at Ronan like that would make him stop. There was only one person who could stop Ronan, though, and Adam’s mother didn’t have that number.” Adam’s mother has been a silent bystander while Adam’s dad screams and berates and hits Adam, letting him fall and blaming him for “theatrics,” but as soon as Ronan steps in, she yells for the violence to end. Gansey helps mediate the fight in Nino’s parking lot (TRB, 7)- but Gansey (i.e. Ronan’s impulse control) is not here. The bit about Adam’s mother futilely waving the phone of all things at Ronan is so fitting- she’s found the person perhaps most scornful of phones and telephonic communication on earth.
“Get up, Adam. He was on his hands and knees. The sky looked the same as the ground. He felt fundamentally broken. He couldn’t stand. He could only watch his friend and his father grappling a few feet away. He was eyes without a body.” without a body: dissociation from the current pain and overwhelm; foreshadowing to sacrificing his eyes (and hands) to Cabeswater. The empty, unreal sensation of incredulous “how can this actually be happening” is terrible, and he feels it here. (The sky mirroring the ground reminds me of one of my favorite concepts, probably because of the tomb/shroud quote from the Les Mis chapter about the drowning man; the motif is best summarized as “as above, so below”, which is particularly fitting for the Magician.). I can’t help but think of the sky and the ground as mirrors, reflecting one another in perpetuum like Neeve’s in the Fox Way attic, between which Persephone’s soul gets lost from her body. In “my” tv adaptation (or any visual adaptation really) I’d have Adam’s posture on the ground here (before he gets onto his knees) be the same as Persephone’s on the attic floor when she dies scrying. The fight proceeds without Adam; he has lost a say in his narrative for the time being.
“It was all just noise. What Adam needed was to be able to stand, to walk, to think, and then he could stop Ronan before something awful happened.” The cops show up incredibly quickly here, unless the fight is particularly long and/or Adam’s sense of passing time is warped. “What Adam needs” is a recurring and often tense theme in his character arc, and as usual, his needs are linked to a drive for autonomy, capability, and independent action. We get evidence of Ronan and Adam’s developing, mutual, and unspoken care for each other- the instinct to protect the other, often at the expense of their own wellbeing. Adam, while he’s already gravely injured and unbalanced, worries about something awful happening- but something awful HAS happened, has been happening. I’ll go on a bit of a tangent here because “it was all just noise” that Adam wants to filter out reminds me of things like signal to noise ratio, electrical impulses and synapses, electricity and ley lines, and how once Adam becomes the magician, he learns to scry intentionally (metaphor- healing from, or at least understanding, dissociation) and to rewire the ley line (metaphor- rewiring his brain as he heals, eventually distinguishing Cabeswater from his father, and accepts the necessity of connecting with others to do so/accepting the dual risk and reward of love, connection, magic, etc. which are double-edged swords in this context). I’m jumping ahead here, but I think Adam’s awareness of the way in which he takes in data from his environment, synthesizes a response, and acts accordingly is always relevant. Ever the scientist and all that.
“This can’t happen. He can’t go to jail because of me.” This is one of Adam’s sacrifices – pressing charges and losing his home/a say in how and when he leaves the trailer, all to keep Ronan out of jail (and expulsion, and Declan-induced eviction from Monmouth, and self-destruction, et cetera). In some ways, this is The Big Sacrifice of the book (and the bargain with Cabeswater at the climax gives an additional magical and metaphorical layer of commentary? discussion? on how and why Adam makes sacrifices and the consequences that arise from them). There are a lot of similarities between the sacrifices. I haven’t read the latter chapter in a little while, but from memory: “he was eyes without a body” links to “I will be your hands, I will be your eyes,” both of which play into the overarching theme of Adam’s fight for bodily autonomy, dissociation and eventual reintegration of body and mind (BLLB I am alive because I bleed chapter is crucial to this), a focus on his senses and how they become unreliable as he processes the events of the first book, etc. The foundations of Adam’s world figuratively (first sacrifice) and literally (second sacrifice, with the earthquake/stampede) shift beneath his feet. In the center of the pentagram, there is no sound at all. These vestibular and auditory effects of the magical sacrifice emulate detail from the mundane counterpart, which sets up the narrative about Adam learning to distinguish between the two (Cabeswater is not the boss of you, etc.). There’s also the parallel intervention of Ronan/Cabeswater on the behalf of Adam’s safety that forces him to make decisions/confront the consequences, even though Ronan intervening catalyzes Adam’s sacrifice of his pride, autonomy, and home and Cabeswater intervenes against Whelk after Adam sacrifices himself to the forest…much to chew on here. Mirroring experiences, perhaps. I’ll also say that one thing I really appreciate in TRC is that the metaphors don’t obscure the real life experiences (like you pointed out, Adam dissociates because of his magical connection/sacrifice to Cabeswater, but also as he copes with his father’s abuse, so the metaphor enriches and further discusses rather than sanitize the effects of the abuse; another example of this is Ronan’s dreaming, at least in TDT, doesn’t supplant him being gay and the associated identity, isolation, exploration, etc. experiences- the magical counterpart to the real experience is additive, not obfuscating or censoring. [I say at least in TDT because in TD3 I think the dreaming takes on additional metaphorical meaning such as chronic illness, generational trauma, amongst other things).
“He knew he looked drunk. He needed to get himself together. Only this afternoon he’d touched Blue’s face. It had felt like anything was possible, like the world soared out in front of him. He tried to channel that sensation, but it felt apocryphal.” Concern with outward appearance- his injury is internal, so there’s no way for the cops to believe him without his or Ronan’s explanation. The assumed concussion temporarily robs Adam of his resources- clear headedness, analytical skills, etc. “He tried to channel that sensation, but it felt apocryphal” is such a painful and effective way to describe someone grasping for hope and having it slip through their fingers. Adam, whose faith is “imperfect” to start with, is further challenged here. I always think of the word “apocryphal” when I think of this chapter. The infinite (the world soaring out in front of him) previously gave him a sense of optimism, but in this chapter, the infinite mirrors (ground and sky) trap and dwarf him. Blue’s face (which is to say connection with Blue) felt like potential. I think you could interpret this chapter as the beginning of the end for Blue and Adam’s romantic relationship- the attraction and care for one another persists, but there’s a distinct shift in their interactions after this chapter that disconnects them in a way they don’t resolve until after they break up.
Adam replaying what his mother has told him previously to keep the abuse quiet: “Don’t say anything, Adam. Tell him you fell down. It really was a little your fault, wasn’t it? We’ll deal with it as a family.” Encouraging him to keep secrets, to lie, to blame himself, to believe in the guise of a family his parents hide behind (he’s ostracized in his own home for acting “against the good of the family”). This rhetoric from his mother gets woven into his own internal monologue.
“If Adam turned his father in, everything crashed down around him. If Adam turned him in, his mother would never forgive him. If Adam turned him in, he could never come home again.” These statements are written like hypotheses. If _, then _. Scientific. Even though she’s watched him endure so much pain and violence and has done nothing to help him, he grapples with the guilt of leaving behind his mother. This moment is a crucial turning point for Adam, when he’s standing at the crossroads of two of the existing paths described in TRB chapter 15 at his reading. It’s one of several explanations of his hesitation to live somewhere safer, of why the more arduous and painful way of doing things is in some ways easier for him.
“Adam couldn’t move in with Gansey. He had done so much to make sure that when he moved out, it would be on his own terms. Not Robert Parrish’s. Not Richard Gansey’s. On Adam Parrish’s terms, or not at all.” Full names invite the reader to consider [confront?] these characters as complete and distinguishable entities -> what defines each character/what is intrinsic to each?, how can you distinguish their own goals and personal ethos? If Adam succeeds in the world, he can claim all credit. If he fails, he resigns himself to shoulder the blame alone without the messy implications of shared culpability. He doesn’t see anything as worth doing if he can’t do it independently in the way he’s meticulously determined to be optimal, in the way that keeps his pride most intact.
“Adam touched his left ear. The skin was hot and painful, and without his hearing to tell him when his finger was close to his ear cavity, his touch felt imaginary. The whine in the ear had subsided and now there was … nothing. There was nothing at all.” The loss of his hearing is representative of greater loss- of literal (vestibular) and figurative balance (oh by the way do you know what requires good balance…riding a bike), of the ability to observe the world in the precise way in which he observed it before, the curse of an invisible injury he must explain by telling rather than showing as well as the unquantifiable psychological impact of surviving abuse, etc. Adam feels that he has nothing after losing not just half of his hearing but his home, even if said home is dangerous, the opposite of a sanctuary. He ends up at St. Agnes, which he thinks of as “Adam Parrish’s nothing,” something visually unimpressive but valuable in the way that it is his alone, untainted by the authority of others. I’m thinking about “Gansey. That’s all there is.” versus “There was nothing at all.” and how their experiences are so heavily shaped by their families and the associated expectations based on their upbringings and how they worry that others perceive them as their origins rather than their actions. “His touch felt imaginary” echoes the sentiment of Blue’s touch feeling apocryphal; the abuse disconnects Adam from others and from himself.
“Ronan was defending me.” Adam’s mouth was dry as the dirt around them. The officer’s expression focused on him as he went on. “From my father. All this … is from him. My face and my …” A couple observations: Adam breaking his “keeping things quiet” habit to the cops; Ronan has already begun to make him loud. It might just be a function of his injured state but I think Adam referring to Ronan as Ronan, as if anyone would automatically know his name, posits Ronan as some essential figure in Adam’s life (although to be completely fair there are few enough people in this scene to make it obvious to whom Adam’s referring- but I do think the word choice is deliberate, especially since he doesn’t use Lynch, which to an outsider might imply more distance between them). The dirt/dust motif returns as he thinks of his father/his origins; his dry mouth indicates the strain of making this sacrificial confession. And finally, the double entendre of “All this.. is from him. My face and my…” to mean the immediate state of Adam’s injuries but also his pervasive concern that he has inherited his father’s violence and cruelty. We know that Adam resembles his mother more (at least facially), but these books are about mirrors (and Adam looks into them frequently, literally and figuratively), and he’s most concerned about seeing his father looking back at him.
“His mother was staring at him. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t look at her and say it. Even with his eyes closed, he felt like he was falling, like the horizon pitched, like his head tilted. Adam had the sick feeling that his father had managed to knock something crucial askew. And then he said what he couldn’t say before. He asked, ‘Can I … can I press charges?’” To make this decision is to completely disrupt his carefully planned life; he’s falling into a version of his life he wasn’t prepared to live in yet. Adam’s fear about being permanently altered echoes Gansey’s fears about Adam. I think, on a less central note, his view of Ronan is also knocked askew after this incident (him using violence on behalf of someone other than himself). I’ve been musing on the decision to mention his mother one last time at the end of the chapter, and I think it’s to emphasize the complexity of Adam’s decision (and that he’s considering the repercussions of leaving his mother alone in the trailer with Robert. I think the fact that she doesn’t have a canon first name indicates that she also lacks power and autonomy in the household, or will especially lack such things once Adam leaves).
I think it’s significant that we never see inside the Parrish house- the violence we see on page happens outside. The audacity of Adam’s father to yell at him and assault him on their front steps for anyone to see is…really something. Even in his own POV chapters, which are quite introspective and descriptive, Adam doesn’t let us in to the extent of his life at home (from a meta standpoint, this makes sense- it’s just as effective and less exploitative to characterize the extent and impact of abuse through Adam’s self-image and relationships and behaviors rather than saturating the text with repetitive, gratuitous, and graphic sequences of abuse). And while I’m dancing around the subject of private vs public spheres, I am very interested in discussing Adam in terms of unheimlich/the uncanny and I’m hesitant to do so because so much of it will come from Freud’s essay on the uncanny and with that comes all sorts of cans of worms but there’s something about the domestic vs public spheres and in the home and out of the home (stemming from the etymology of heimlich and unheimlich) and homelessness and Adam’s uncanniness and strangeness (both as in odd and as in foreign/estranged). Freud’s essay even talks about the loss of eyes as a castration metaphor in a different work that I’m forgetting at the moment, but even if we exchange castration for loss of autonomy (which might be a misinterpretation of the text but I’m still percolating), it works so well with I will be your eyes/the demon taking over Adam’s eyes/his visions that begin in TDT chapter 8/the blindfold on Adam and the figure on the two of swords and eight of swords cards, etc. (A lot of associated themes work for Ronan too- the intentional use of the word strange at the beginning of The Dream Thieves and the Lynch brothers’ estrangement from the Barns and Ronan dreaming about going home and him existing of and between two worlds and how these two uncanny and strange characters find themselves in these weird, isolating social valleys and seek a sense of home with from other…) anyway this is hopefully an actual essay I will write someday, but it will require a good amount of reading outside the series.
I did a final read-through of the chapter after I revised my notes to see if I missed anything (and of course I did) and I did want to highlight the switch from “his father” to “Parrish” when Adam describes the brawl that ensues when Ronan hits his dad, which I think serves the purpose reminding us how Adam separates himself from violence as a dissociative coping mechanism, how Ronan’s intervention grants Adam some distance from the situation, etc. but also how Adam views the Parrish name- violent, on the ground, in the dust. I also forgot to consider the purpose of flashing back to Gansey right before Adam makes his sacrifice (to press charges, to keep Ronan out of jail): You won’t leave because of your pride? We’re given a clear example of the circumstances necessary for Adam to give up said pride (it would be reductive but not incorrect to say the circumstances = Ronan).
#rchl#trc#as always i am so open to discussing trc/td3 so please come chat if you want to share your analysis too#also to the very nice person who sent an anon about the mask dream i saw it and i am intending to draft something over the next few days#the raven boys#the raven cycle#adam parrish#ronan lynch
59 notes
·
View notes
Text
Back in Business: Raven Cycle Characters as Things People I Know have Said Because These are Fun to Make
"’You're not gelatinous’ (Gansey with his infinite knowledge)
‘That's so mean, what do you mean I'm not gelatinous!?’ (Noah, a ghost)”
"Who made a Candyland wiki?" - Ronan to Gansey at 2 am
"One's a family" - Adam
"If this is how the session's going to start, I'm going to start [twerking]" - Henry
"This [search] is just a speedrun for how quickly [Ronan] and I can get kicked" - Blue
"I love forgery" - Hennessey
"There's a hamster in here, it's starving and dead" - Adam about his last brain cell
"'You get energy from your brain?' (Blue)
'I get nothing from my brain thank you very much' (Ronan)"
"Define 'sleep with'. Cause I think you mean teddy bear, but I wouldn't be surprised if you meant sex" - Hennessey
"Wouldn't you want back up if the spider monster comes to getcha?" - Hennessey to Ronan
"Why is the third image furry porn?" - Gansey: aghast, dismayed, and traumatized
"So he doesn't have a little stone rattling around in his big stone?" - Ronan to Adam after listening to him shit talk one of his Harvard professors
"Okay, first of all [s]he doesn't have a rat brain..." - Ronan defending Chainsaw
"Okay then I would like to fire man chick the chicken chicken" - Henry, very drunk (guess who was not when they said this…)
"Cock" - Ronan
"Don't cry on an empty stomach" - Gansey
"[Noah], do you got squishy bones?" - Ronan
"'Are we dumb' (Adam)
'Yea' (Ronan)
"Why...but probably' (Blue)"
"You can't take the moonshine out of [Kavinsky]'s stomach" - Kavinsky drunk on moonshine
"Rejoice my chicken brethren" - Henry fucking around at the Barns
"Can I go animal handle?" - Ronan
"You're very tall and [she] like[s] to be on top of tall things" - Ronan “explaining” why Chainsaw likes to sit on Adam’s shoulder so much
"I've been trained in harassment, I can now harass in the workplace" - Gansey, but unintentionally
“You’re like really fucked up version[s] of [Matthew]” - anyone who knew Matthew first to Ronan and Declan
“You might see Bill Clinton in hell” - Blue *
“You know bugs. You know they always have jacked legs” - Gansey attempting to flirt
“Moth-er focker” - Gansey being really unhelpful while the gang is helping Ronan clean out one of the unused barns
“It’s my santa skin” - Gansey dressing up as Santa
“Why wasn’t I interested in carriage etiquette?” - Ronan sarcastically lamenting his lack of knowledge when he can’t answer Gansey’s incredibly niche question
“What about grundle’s mom?” - Ronan intentionally messing up Grendel’s name to annoy Gansey (hc: Gansey fucking loves Beowulf)
“If you cannot be a person, be a bodyguard” - Mr. Grey’s personal mantra
“He’s fruity…like the juice” - Blue about Ronan
*Shout out to my English lit prof for cheekily saying this and then moving right back on to Paradise Lost without giving us a second to process
#the raven cycle#blue sargent#ronan lynch#adam parrish#gansey#henry cheng#noah czerny#jordan hennessey
17 notes
·
View notes
Note
accidentally started a crazy exgirlfriend rewatch and now I'm thinking about your wip.... might you, perchance, have anything to share 🥺🙏
cheeryos ily!!! 🥺🥺 god i need to do a rewatch too. also thank you for asking, I've been looking for an excuse to post the beginning of this fic lmao. and by the beginning, I mean nearly the whole first chapter uhhh........... enjoy? 💖
When Ronan Lynch was sixteen years old, his family rented a vacation house in Cape Cod. Surly teenager that he was, Ronan wanted nothing less than to be in the heat and the sun and to share a room with his older brother Declan. He spent the first couple of days melting under various umbrellas and eating his body weight in popsicles in an effort to stay cool.
The house next to them was considerably larger and more ostentatious, and it had been empty, at first. Then a family took up residence. Even from down the beach, Ronan could tell they were the kind of stuffy rich that Ronan had no interest in.
Until Gansey.
Gansey was beautiful and sweet, intelligent and really fucking weird. He believed in truth above all else and he thought magic was real. He took to Ronan so quickly that Ronan could hardly remember what had been the catalyst to their friendship. It felt instantaneous. Inevitable.
When they finally kissed, it was all fire and explosions—the fucking Fourth of July in Ronan’s stomach and his heart.
Gansey was Ronan’s first. His first kiss, his first time, his first love.
They spent nearly two weeks together. And then Gansey left. He was always going to leave, of course. Gansey had a life in DC and Ronan’s family lived on a farm in upstate New York, and they were only ever going to be temporary. A summer fling.
But Ronan thought he would have more time. They should have had two more days together. Instead, he woke one morning to find the Ganseys’ summer home vacated, luxury SUV gone from the circular driveway, Gansey nowhere to be found. He hadn’t even said goodbye.
***
In the townhouse he shared with his brothers, Ronan was doing his level best to sink into the uncomfortable and austere living room couch. The townhouse was entirely to Declan’s taste, which meant that it was not at all to Ronan’s taste, which meant that Ronan vehemently hated every square inch of it. Its bland, boring walls and its bland, boring furniture, and its bland, boring artwork.
With his eyes shut and blood-pumping EDM blaring through his headphones, he could almost drown out that expansive hatred. Almost.
Someone pulled the headphones off his ears and around his neck. He turned his head to make sure it wasn’t Matthew before he snapped at them. Sure enough, it was Declan. He was wearing a bland, boring suit, had his curls styled back in a bland, boring fashion and he was holding a stack of bland, boring mail.
Ronan opened his mouth to shout something involving a compound fuck-word based swear, but the shout came out wordless because Declan threw the topmost piece of mail directly into Ronan’s face. Its corner jabbed him in the nose with surprising force. The envelope was heavy with sheets and sheets of paper inside.
He batted the envelope away and said, “Jesus shitting fuck, assface, what’s your fucking problem?”
Declan’s eyebrow raised, pointedly. He said, “Open it. It’s from BU.”
Ronan’s heart dropped into his stomach. He shut his eyes. He crumpled the envelope in his fist.
Declan said, “Come on, Ronan, don’t you want to see if you got in?”
“No.”
He stood up from the couch and went upstairs to his room. He shut the door behind him and sat on the edge of his bed. He uncurled his fist.
The curtain was shut, so it was dark, but unfortunately not dark enough that he couldn’t see the envelope addressed to him and stamped with Boston University’s seal.
He ripped it open. Dear Mr. Lynch, it began. Congratulations—
Ronan's vision swam. He dropped the envelope to the floor. He didn’t know how long he sat there, with stomach acid still eating his insides away, bit by bit.
He couldn’t breathe. He needed—air, or something. Anything.
He was in the foyer with feet jammed into untied boots and leather jacket over his shoulders before he’d even registered the desire as more than an abstract. Declan was saying something. Matthew was saying something else. He slammed the door as if the sound would slam him back into his own body, but it didn’t.
He walked, and walked, unseeing, until he came to the park a few blocks away from Declan’s townhouse. The air always felt clearer there, although Ronan knew it wasn’t. It was the same polluted city air that was all over Boston, but here it was filtered through trees just starting to sprout leaves and lush, green grass, and the closest approximation of wilderness available in a place like this. He dragged in lungful after lungful of it. It smelled of spring-fresh foliage in the rain, and only then did Ronan realize it was raining—dripping down his face and soaking through his clothes.
When he came to the little bridge that crossed over a stream, Ronan stopped, and he stood there, staring at ripples in the water, for a long time.
It was good that he’d gotten in, wasn’t it? That was why he’d applied, after all.
No, it wasn’t. Declan was why he’d applied. He’d finally worn Ronan down, after one too many years of listlessness, and school was at least something to do. Something to occupy the endless hours of the day.
But now it was real. He’d been accepted, and he would have to sit for lectures, trapped in classrooms, condemned to a life of homework and tests and pointless assignments, and for what? A degree that he didn’t want. A job that he didn’t want. A future that he didn’t want.
He couldn’t do this again.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ronan saw someone walking toward him with an obnoxiously purple umbrella and an obnoxiously turquoise polo shirt. He looked back to the river, but something tickled at the back of his mind. He looked back at the stranger and he took in their face.
And it wasn’t a stranger, after all.
Everything in Ronan lit up with recognition, inundated with memories—wet sand between his toes and surf lapping at his thighs. Summer warm hands on his waist. Kisses that tasted like mango gelato.
Breathless, Ronan said, “Gansey?”
The stranger looked up. Ronan met a pair of hazel eyes, bright and curious behind gold, wire-framed glasses. He smiled a big, dimpled smile and said, “Ronan? My God, is that you?”
“Yeah. Fuck.”
Gansey jogged the last few steps to meet Ronan on the bridge, and he wrapped his arms around him—one looped around his ribs and the other stretched up to curl over his shoulders. Ronan had to lean down to return the hug. He pressed his face into Gansey’s shiny, windswept hair. Gansey smelled like fresh mint and he laughed delightedly into Ronan’s ear.
Ronan’s heart was going to explode.
Gansey pulled from the embrace but kept his hand on Ronan’s arm, umbrella lifted up high so Ronan could fit under it with him. He said, “Wow. It’s really you. It’s been so long.”
“Yeah.” Ronan knew he should say something else, but his mind was wiped clean—empty but for every memory he possessed of a single summer nearly ten years ago. And Gansey, glowing and radiant in front of him—the sun shining through dreary, gray clouds.
Gansey smacked Ronan’s arm gently and dropped his hand. “What have you been up to? I didn’t know you lived in Boston!”
“Yeah. Uh, not much,” Ronan said. He needed to divert the conversation away from him so Gansey didn’t find out what a loser he was. “What about you?”
“Oh, I’m just in town for a moment moving the rest of the stuff from my apartment.”
Ronan’s spirits sank nearly as soon as they’d lifted. “You’re moving?”
“Yes! Back to Virginia. Henrietta to be exact. It’s a lovely town. I’ve been living there for a couple of months, I was just waiting for someone to close on my old house so I could make the full leap.”
“Oh. What’s in Virginia?”
“A position opened up at a law firm where a friend of mine works, and he put in a good word for me! I’m rather excited. It’s so nice to be around like-minded people. People who really want to make a difference. And you should see it, Ronan. It’s so beautiful. It’s been so long since I’ve been surrounded by nature’s majesty like that.”
“Yeah, that sounds. Nice.”
“It does indeed! But I do wish we’d run into each other earlier, Ronan. We could have grabbed a drink, caught up properly.”
“We could get one now,” Ronan pleaded.
Gansey’s face fell, like maybe he didn’t want to reject him, but Ronan could see it coming anyway. He said, “I'm afraid I don’t have time, at the moment. My sister Helen is waiting for me to return. You remember Helen, don’t you? She’s helping me move. Well, directing the movers. We really need to get on the road soon. Work in the morning, you understand.”
Ronan did not understand, but he said, “Yeah. Sure.”
Gansey thumbed at his bottom lip. It was only for a second, but it was enough to make Ronan’s stomach flip over. He longed for the taste of mango gelato. Just one more time.
Gansey reached into the pocket of his chinos and fiddled with his phone for a moment before handing it to Ronan. “Listen, give me your number. If you’re ever in Virginia, please let me know. I’d love to see you again. I mean it. We’ll get that drink.”
Ronan nodded, certain he was betraying his eagerness, but he didn’t care. “Okay.” He put his number in and sent himself a text.
Gansey smiled. “We have so much to catch up on.”
And then Gansey’s phone started blaring a generic ringtone. They startled away from each other. “I’m sorry,” Gansey said. “I should get this.” He raised one finger in the air to signal that Ronan should wait, and put the phone to his ear. “Hello Helen.” Gansey shut his eyes. “Yes, I’m on my way back.” He paused while Helen pattered on and on. “I got caught up with an old friend. I’ll be there soon. Not more than a few minutes. All right. I said all right. Bye.”
Gansey hung up and heaved a great sigh. “Sorry about that. I really should go.”
Ronan's throat was tight so he cleared it and said, “It’s fine. Go. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
A sad, private smile lit up his face. “I hope so. Well.” He reached out a hand like he was going for a handshake, but changed his mind at the last moment and pulled Ronan in for another hug.
He let himself sink into his warmth and the soft, solid planes of his body. He couldn’t bring himself to let go, but Gansey could.
Just like old times.
“Goodbye, Ronan,” he said, and then he was gone, and it was as if it had never happened at all.
The entire interaction couldn’t have lasted for longer than a couple of minutes. It shouldn’t have impacted Ronan’s life at all, but something had shifted inside of him. Like Gansey had cracked open a door and some dusty corner of his heart had been exposed to fresh air and morning light for the first time in years.
He drifted back to the apartment in a haze, floating on the high of Gansey’s touch, replaying his words over and over.
I’d love to see you again.
I mean it.
We have so much to catch up on.
And then—Henrietta.
Henrietta.
Henrietta.
The first thing Ronan did when he got back to the townhouse was fend off another interrogation from Declan. When he got back to his room, there was no crumpled letter lying discarded on top of piles of dirty clothes. Declan must have taken it, which meant he’d been in his room, which meant Ronan would have to murder him later.
The second thing he did was boot up his laptop. It took him several minutes to figure out his Goddamn Facebook password, and when he managed to log in, he searched for Richard Campbell Gansey III. He sent a friend request, and waited for a solid minute and a half for a follow back.
When none came, he Googled Henrietta, Virginia. It was a quaint, bustling little town sprinkled with old buildings and Victorian houses, nestled in the lush valley between the Blue Ridge mountains. He could see why it appealed to someone like Gansey, who, despite his image, had always come alive surrounded by nature and beautiful old things.
A notification popped up. Ronan swore at it, until he realized that Gansey had accepted his friend request. A surge flooded Ronan’s whole body. He clicked on the tab so eagerly he closed it by accident and then had to reload it.
He looked at Gansey’s profile. He went through every photo and absorbed every scrap of information he could get his hands on. He knew where Gansey worked, knew who his friends were, knew how and where he spent his free time. The most important bit of information, though, was his relationship status—single.
I’d love to see you again.
I mean it.
Gansey had Instagram, too, but the problem was that Ronan didn’t. He couldn’t create a new, empty account for himself, and then follow Gansey immediately. That would look too desperate. So he created a fake one and hoped Gansey wasn’t the type of guy to reject followers he didn’t actually know.
Fortunately for Ronan, Gansey seemed to be something of an influencer for fucking nerds, and he had a few thousand followers. Ronan was just one of the masses, eager to see more of the man posed on a mountain cliff like an intrepid explorer, or a king looking over his sprawling kingdom. It was possible that some of them were genuinely into Welsh history, but Ronan was willing to bet not many.
Then Ronan found himself on Zillow, looking into Henrietta, Virginia’s real estate. Declan might have been proud, if it was for any reason other than this.
***
Incense permeated the air. Holy water was still wet on Ronan’s fingertips. The cushioned wood of the kneeler creaked under his weight. He opened his eyes.
The church was empty and cavernous. Dust motes floated in a haze of kaleidoscopic colored light. Stained glass stretched towards the ceiling and slipped across every surface.
Every pillar was a tree trunk. Vines crept up the walls. Flowers sprouted up between cracks in the marble floor. An archway stood where the altar should have been, made of twisting branches and leaves.
Ronan walked through it, into the forest beyond. It was wild and dense with oak trees—nothing at all like the park by Declan’s apartment. He wandered down the narrow footpath until the ground was taken over by twisting stems covered in thorns. Ronan followed their path with his eyes, up and up, to a throne made out of perfect red roses in full bloom. Sitting on the throne, golden crown on his head, was Gansey.
Even in wire-framed glasses and a turquoise polo shirt, he belonged there—the just ruler of this forest. Of the whole world.
Ronan climbed up the clusters of rose stems. Thorns cut into his palms, over and over, until blood was dripping down his wrists—a distantly familiar feeling.
Gansey looked at him only when he’d nearly reached the throne. He held out his hand, adorned by a golden claddagh ring with a glittering ruby at the center. Ronan took Gansey’s hand in his and touched his lips to the ring.
“Ronan,” Gansey said, amiably. “Get over here.”
In the space of a blink, Ronan was at his side, standing next to the throne, overlooking his kingdom. Henrietta, Virginia. It was the aerial view he’d seen on Google images.
An inexplicable sense of rightness washed over him—belonging. Purpose.
Gansey said, “What do you know about Welsh kings?”
***
Ronan woke up.
He got out of bed and packed all his clothes and his favorite things into three suitcases. He managed to sneak them all into his car without anyone noticing until the very last one.
With a duffel bag slung over his shoulder, he passed by his brothers at the kitchen table on his way to rummage through the fridge. Declan was sipping a latte and Matthew was shoveling a whole piece of burnt toast into his mouth.
Declan said, ”Ronan, what the hell are you doing?”
Ronan said, “Why don’t we have anything to eat?” He slammed the fridge door.
“Ronan.”
Ronan slid his own piece of toast into the toaster and turned it on. Dismissively, he said, “I’m moving to Virginia.”
Declan stood up. “You’re what?”
Matthew said, “What’s in Virginia?”
“Trees and shit, I think.”
Declan said, “What the fuck, Ronan? You’re not moving, you’re starting school in the fall.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Man that shit didn’t work on me when I was a teenager, what makes you think it will now? I already have the trust, there’s nothing for you to hold over my head anymore. I’m a fucking adult—“ Declan interrupted him with a sharp bark of a laugh. “And if I want to move to Virginia, you can’t stop me.”
Declan pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes in disappointment or frustration or hatred. “What is wrong with you? I thought you wanted to go back to school.”
Ronan snorted humorlessly. “Please.”
His toast popped, and he slathered it with butter.
“What are you going to do in Virginia? Do you even have a plan?”
With his mouth full of toast, he said, “Nope.”
Declan stood in the doorway of the townhouse with his arms crossed over his chest. Ronan tossed the duffel bag into the backseat of the BMW.
Hovering on the sidewalk, Matthew said, “You’re really leaving?”
His face was frozen in a childlike pout. Why Matthew cared so much was a little beyond Ronan. Matthew would realize in a few days—how much more peaceful and pleasant his life was without him there.
“Yeah,” Ronan said. “You can come visit when I’ve got a place.”
Matthew pulled him into a tight hug. It hit Ronan, then, how much he would miss him. How he was the only person on earth who could stand him. And how it was likely that Gansey wouldn’t be able to stand him, either, once he’d seen the person Ronan had become.
***
Ronan spent the first night in a hotel, and the following day touring rental properties. The first was a freshly remodeled bungalow with an open floor plan and shiny, new appliances. The second was a shabby, 30-year-old two-story several minutes from town, where every surface was the same shade of greige.
The third rental was a shithole fixer-upper row house four blocks from Henrietta’s sad excuse for a downtown. The wood hadn’t been painted with a fresh coat of blue in years and was starting to rot. The backyard was a fenced-in plot of dirt and crabgrass with one scrawny tree trapped in the far corner.
Ronan signed a month-to-month lease for way more than the place was worth.
When Ronan finished moving in (throwing his suitcases on the floor of the living room), he went for a walk around the neighborhood. The downtown area was all old buildings and quaint little shops.
When he looped back around to the row house, he noticed a bar partially obscured by the flowers and plants crawling all over the brick facing. The sign read Nino’s, and he recognized the name from posts tagged on Gansey’s Facebook and Instagram alike. Gansey hung out here—it was one of his usual haunts, and so Ronan shoved the door open and went inside.
It was 3pm on a Monday, and Ronan knew that Gansey was unlikely to be at a dive bar, but a wave of disappointment hit him, anyway, when he wasn’t.
Ronan took a seat at the bar. The bartender approached him. Her dark skin was very tattooed and very pierced and she looked entirely too city to be in this town.
This was confirmed when she said, in a British accent, “What’ll you be having, mate?”
“Beer, whatever’s on tap.” He’d missed lunch, so he added, “And you got anything to eat in this dump?”
The bartender laughed. “That very much depends on your definition of edible.” She slammed a laminated menu onto the bartop in front of him. He liked her, immediately.
Ronan glanced at the menu, and when the bartender came back with his beer, he could’ve sworn she was wearing a different outfit—something lacy and orange—but he chalked it up to not paying very much attention to women’s clothing. She said, “What’re you having, hotshot?” and it was just flirty enough that Ronan changed his mind. He didn’t like her at all.
He ordered a burger, medium rare, and took in the ambiance. The dark, old wood had grime sticking to it like a second skin, every surface comfortable and worn, barely lit by dim, old-fashioned stained-glass hanging lamps. The place really was a shithole, but like the row house, Ronan basked in it. He always felt more comfortable in shitholes.
When Ronan glanced back towards the bar, there were two identical bartenders. One was in leather, the other in orange lace. Ronan blinked, and another one emerged from the kitchen, tossed a plate in front of Ronan, slipped her apron over her head and left out the front door.
Bewildered, Ronan said, “Why are there so fucking many of you?”
The pair in front of him grinned the same blinding, toothy grin and said, in unison, “Identical sextuplets.”
Ronan popped a French fry in his mouth, and with it still full, said, “There are six of you? And you just decided to work at the same place, to what? Confuse the shit out of people?”
The one in orange said, “Pretty much, yeah.”
The one in leather said, “What’s the point of being an identical sextuplet if not to fuck with people?”
“You’ve got a point,” Ronan conceded.
Some deranged part of him was charmed by this place and this weird fucking chick and her gang of clones. Ronan’s trust covered the house, but he could use some extra cash. More than that, he needed a way to spend his time, he had experience, and most importantly, it would be a built-in excuse to see Gansey.
“Hey, I know you’ve got this whole family business or whatever-the-fuck going on here, but are you hiring?”
“Actually, yes,” the leather one said. “Only three of us work here, and Brooklyn wants to quit. You got experience?”
“Yep.”
The orange one said, “You some kind of serial murderer? A mafioso goon?”
“If I was in the mafia, what the fuck would I want to work here for?”
“No offense meant, mate, you’ve just got that kind of face. And you don’t seem like a local.”
“Neither do you.”
“Touché.”
“I’m not local, I just moved here and I could use a job, are you hiring or not?”
The leather one grinned and said, “All right, fuck it, you’re hired.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. You ready to start now?”
“What the fuck, I’m eating.” Ronan gestured to his plate.
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “We’ll have to do a background check and all that shit. And the owner will want to meet you. Bring your shit tomorrow and we’ll get you sorted. I have somewhere to be on Friday and I need someone to cover my shift. What’s your name, guy who is definitely not a mafioso goon?”
“Ronan.”
She held out her hand and Ronan shook it. “Hennessy.”
***
Ronan started work on Wednesday. He knew what he was doing, so training was pretty minimal, and the owner didn’t seem particularly hung up on the paperwork side of shit.
He was cleaning up a spill when the front door opened. He glanced at it, only to find another rando instead of a familiar face.
“Are you looking for somebody?”
Ronan jumped, undignified, and bared his teeth at Hennessy. She was hovering over his shoulder with an insufferable smirk on her purple lips.
He said, “Who the hell would I be looking for? I just moved here, remember?”
“Then why are your eyes drawn to the door whenever it opens if you’re not looking for somebody?” Ronan glared in a way that made lesser people back down immediately. She said, “Exactly. Now who is it? Some other goon who you owe money to? Your dealer? Or an ex-lover, perhaps?
Ronan’s jaw clenched. “Shut the hell up.”
“Oh, really?” She grinned. “I didn’t take you for a lover, more of a fighter. You’ve got layers, I see.”
Apparently God was listening to Ronan’s prayers, for once, because they were both flagged to opposite sides of the bar before Hennessy could continue sticking her septum-pierced nose where it didn’t belong.
There was a man sitting at the bar, all but batting his pretty eyes at Ronan. He ignored him for as long as he could, and then sucked it up and stepped in front of him.
The guy was good-looking in an abrupt, startling way. He had an interesting face—gaunt, sunken-eyed, but elegant. Ronan’s heart flip-flopped. His hands tightened into fists until his nails bit into his palms.
The guy tilted his head and gave Ronan a clear once-over. He said, “You’re new.”
Ronan rolled his eyes. “Yep.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen you around town before.”
“Just moved here.”
The guy leaned his elbows on the bartop. He had the sleeves of his slick, corporate button-down rolled to show tanned forearms, sinewy with muscle. “From where?”
“Boston.”
“Oh, I went to school in Cambridge.”
Fuck. It was even worse than he thought. The pretty-boy was a Harvard douche. Ronan growled, “Did you want something, or?”
Ronan only noticed the smile in the guy’s eyes when it vanished. His voice was cool when he said, “Gin and tonic.”
Ronan made him a gin and tonic. He handed it to him, and the guy’s long, knobby fingers wrapped around the glass. He said, “Thanks.”
The door opened again, and helplessly, Ronan looked. It was just a small group of twenty-something girls. Ronan sighed in disappointment for maybe the thirtieth time of the evening.
“Who are you looking for?”
Ronan stilled. How did he keep giving himself away? And more importantly, why was everyone in this bar incapable of minding their fucking business? He turned back to the guy and snapped, “What?”
“You keep looking at the door. You expecting someone?”
“Friend of mine."
“Well, I hope you find them.” The guy held up his glass in a little salute. “I think mine stood me up.”
“Can’t imagine why.”
The guy’s blue eyes narrowed, his pink mouth parted in offense. “You’re awfully rude for a customer service professional, you know.”
Ronan had to work to subdue a grin before it took over his face. “I know.”
As he was making a tequila sunrise for some sweater-wearing local, Hennessy inserted herself into his personal space and stage whispered in his ear, “Is that him?”
“Is who him?”
“Your loverboy. Over there.”
She pointed to the pretty Harvard douche. Ronan scoffed. “No.”
“You’re staring.”
Ronan’s face was very hot. It was so easy to overheat crammed in a bar with a couple dozen people. He said, “No, I’m not.”
He wasn’t. And he wasn’t listening, either, to the guy's phone conversation. Not until he said, “It’s all right, Gansey. See you tomorrow. Have a good night.”
Ronan’s heart kicked into double time. He barely waited for the guy to hang up before he interrupted, “Did you say Gansey? You know Gansey?”
The guy narrowed his eyes at Ronan. “He’s my best friend. You know Gansey?”
He put a lot of emphasis on the you, making the question skeptical and a little accusatory. As if someone like Ronan couldn’t possibly know someone like Gansey. And maybe he had a point, but he didn’t need to be such a dick about it.
Ronan said, “Yeah, I know Gansey.”
“That’s weird. I thought you said you just moved here.”
“I did.” He sighed, annoyed at having to explain himself. “We knew each other when we were kids. I ran into him last week.”
“Last week. In Boston?”
“Yep.”
“And now you’re here?”
Fuck. “Yep.”
Adam traced his fingertip in the condensation his glass was leaving on the bartop. “Why did you move here, again?
Ronan grit his teeth. “Felt like it.”
“What are you, some kind of stalker?”
Ronan hadn’t actually considered what other people would think about him moving halfway down the east coast for a guy, but he'd been an idiot not to. What else would it look like, to someone who didn’t know? He said, “No, I’m not a fucking stalker. Just seemed like a nice place, that’s all.”
“So you moved here? Here?”
“You live here.”
“Yeah, but I—“
“What? Your reasons were so much better than mine? What was it? Your shitty job moved you out here?”
“Something like that.”
Ronan sneered, “Cryptic.”
“Does Gansey know? That you’re here? He hasn’t mentioned you.”
“No, I haven’t told him yet.”
“Why not?”
“I’m—“ Ronan tore the rag from his shoulder and slapped it on the counter to start clearing some of the condensation away. So he could avoid the piercing eyes of this pretty stranger. “I’m working my way up to it, fuck off.”
“Oh,” the guy said, deflating.
“What.”
“You like him.” The guy huffed a humorless laugh. “Figures.”
“Look man, it’s none of your fucking business.”
“I think it is, actually. What was your name again?”
Ronan wanted to not tell him, to be contrary, to buy himself some time, but it would be easy enough to find out. And if this guy really was Gansey’s best friend, he imagined they would be seeing more of each other, anyway. He said, “Ronan Lynch.”
“Ronan Lynch,” he said, thoughtfully. “I know that name.”
“Do you?”
“You’re his ex, aren’t you?”
“I guess,” Ronan said, irritably.
Adam ran a hand through his burnished gold hair. “All right. At least I know you’re probably not here to murder him. It’s almost sweet,” he said, in a way that implied he didn’t much care for sweet things. He took a sip of his drink. “Still creepy though.”
Creepy? Ronan leaned closer than he’d dated up until now, hands on the bar and face close. “Don’t fucking tell him.” The guy didn’t retreat. He just stared, unimpressed, so Ronan added, “Please.”
The guy closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. “I won’t. For now. But he’s going to know as soon as he sees you. You’re not exactly being subtle. And I reserve the right to tell him if I think you’re being extra creepy.”
“Fine.”
“Oh, and you should probably know. He has a girlfriend.”
Ronan’s heart stopped. “What?”
The guy rolled his eyes. “He’s bi, not gay.”
“I know that but what the fuck? That’s not what Facebook says.”
The guy’s face creased with barely restrained judgment. “Well, Facebook officiality notwithstanding, he’s pretty serious about her, so don’t be an asshole.”
Ronan snapped, “Thanks for the heads up.”
Ronan was sulking, and he knew it. He was even more terse than usual, and if he weren’t so damn handsome, his tips would have been in the shitter. His phone was in his hand, the fucking Facebook app open on the link to Adam Parrish’s locked profile.
He’d been easy enough to find. Adam Parrish was tagged in most of Gansey’s photos. It was difficult to imagine how Ronan could have possibly not noticed him, even consumed as he was by Gansey. He threw his phone into the sink and hoped it drowned.
While he mixed some dickhead's martini, Hennessy sidled up to him, and before she could open her mouth to pry even more, he said, “He has a Goddamn girlfriend.”
“Who, that random guy?”
“Gansey.”
“Ah. The ex-lover, I presume?”
Ronan slammed the martini glass onto the bar and didn’t give a fuck that it splashed the person who ordered it.
Hennessy didn’t seem to give a fuck, either. She leaned her elbows back on the bar and said, “Ooh, the plot thickens. Is that what your little friend said to upset you so?”
“He’s Gansey’s best friend, apparently.”
“Small world.”
“Small fucking town.”
“Well, them’s the breaks, sailor. Don’t you dare quit before Friday, though. Remember, I’ve got plans.”
“Why would I quit?”
“Because your obsession with your ex is doomed to failure due to him being otherwise involved?”
“Fuck you.”
Hennessy raised both middle fingers and gave him two-handed salute.
Ronan stood at the kitchen island, shoveling furious bite after furious bite of cold, leftover Chinese takeout into his mouth.
Adam Parrish. That asshole. His words played in Ronan’s mind on a continuous loop. Who the hell did he think he was? He might know Gansey, but he didn’t know Ronan at-fucking-all. Creepy.
Gansey wouldn’t think he was creepy, would he?
Ronan snapped his chopstick in half and threw the splinters into the last dregs of his chow mein. His fingers ached, so he stretched them out and then he found himself reaching across the island for a lonely ballpoint pen, and then he was sketching on a brown paper napkin.
It had been awhile since he’d drawn anything. Months. No, years. More, since he’d drawn anything good. This wasn’t good. It was just a sketch—an elegant, bony hand with knobby knuckles and raised veins.
He drew it again, wrapped around a glass, before he realized what he was doing.
“Fuck,” he said, to the empty room. He crumpled up the napkin, threw it across the kitchen, and stomped upstairs to his empty off-white bedroom. He collapsed onto the mattress on the floor and he stared at the ceiling for hours, watching the sun streak pink light across it before finally succumbing to sleep.
***
He was behind the bar at Nino’s, wiping the same glass dry over and over, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at Gansey, handsome and tan, sitting across from an amorphosly beautiful woman. A caricature of a beautiful woman. Gansey was enraptured by her, hearts bursting from his eyes. This was the way he’d once looked at Ronan, so long ago.
He fed his date a bite from the plate of chocolate covered strawberries that sat between them and smiled as if she was the most perfect being on earth. They were bathed in pink light and bracketed by billowing red velvet curtains, like a stage play.
“Ronan,” Gansey said. Ronan was embarrassed at the way he lit up at the sound of Gansey’s voice wrapping around his name, his bid for Ronan’s attention. But even as he spoke, Gansey didn’t take his eyes off of his girlfriend. “Would you please bring us a bottle of your finest champagne? We’re celebrating, after all.”
The girlfriend giggled and flashed a gaudy, sparkling diamond ring. No, a claddagh set with a red ruby.
Ronan seethed. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move. But they didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t bringing them a bottle of their finest champagne, as if this dump had any champagne to speak of. They were too absorbed in each-other.
Hennessy said, “Them’s the breaks.”
Another voice said, “I told you.”
It was Adam Parrish, sitting further down the bar, alone, nursing a gin and tonic.
Ronan still couldn’t speak. He couldn't breathe past the pressure in his chest.
Adam said, “Just let it go, Ronan. It was never going to be you.”
#pynch fic#my writing#asks#cheeeryos#just this bit was WAY longer than i was imagining lol this fic is a monster 😅#someone force me to finish it please it needs to be exorcised#crazy ex bf
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
Adam had seen many of Ronan's dreams made real by now, and he knew how savage and lovely and terrifying and whimsical they could be. But this girl was the most Ronan of any of them that he'd seen. What a frightened monster she was. (TRK chpt 7)
I just read the part in CDTH where Ronan brings Hennessy to Lindenmere to get her to dream. Ronan is harsh with her. Demanding. Utterly unempathetic when she reveals her worst memory. Poor, traumatized Hennessy.
But Opal is there too. Where Ronan is harsh, Opal is gentle. When Ronan lacks empathy, Opal is comforting. Opal knows Hennessy is trying. Opal defends Hennessy. But Ronan thinks of Opal
. . . she couldn't be trusted. She had a soft spot for the downtrodden, being one of them. (CDTH chpt 67)
Throughout the whole series, both TRC and TDT, there is a whole lot of symbolism about masks, all surrounding the Lynch family. Ronan dreams of masks twice in TRC - once that Adam puts on a mask, and once that Declan puts a mask on Matthew. The most terrifying aspect of both dreams, is that the mask, in both dreams, melds into their wearer's faces and becomes a part of them, such that when the mask is torn away, what's left is terrifying and monstrous, even if it is the most true representation of who the person really is.
Awhile ago, Maggie implied that Declan was the most heavily masked of all, when she chose the song "The Mask" by Matt Maeson for him.
But if the CDTH prologue is accurate, aren't all three brothers masked? Masks are a way of both hiding yourself and protecting yourself.
Matthew's mask is the easiest. He is "sweet humored, pliant and gentle." Once he realizes what he is (a dream), he removes his mask himself, showing himself to be an ordinary teenager, desirous of agency and autonomy. Much to Declan's chagrin.
Declan's mask, of dullness, is the most impenetrable. Very little has actually been revealed about him so far. His family (and the reader) don't really know who he is. At this point, Declan's mask has become so much a part of him, that I don't think even Declan knows what lies beneath. But if it's torn away, he's afraid he'll be monstrous to himself. So, nothing to see here.
Ronan is interesting. He defends himself by being "as frightening as possible." His mask is to be harsh, demanding, unempathetic and this is quickly becoming who he is. You see this from his very first scene in RB.
But Ronan has also left clues, lots of clues, as to who he really is. Every single dream is a clue. And Opal is the biggest clue of all.
First of all, Opal is a hybrid creature - goat and human. Ronan is a hybrid too - dream and human. (Or dreamer and Something Else maybe?)
Second, Opal was very much afraid of dreams. She begged Ronan to bring her out of his dreams. She had to be forced into Cabeswater. Later, she only returned to Lindenmere with much coaxing. And yet, dreams are her natural habitat.
Third, Opal is caring and empathetic, qualities which Ronan very much has himself, but only shows to people he is most comfortable with, like his friends, as was gradually revealed throughout TRC. This is the Ronan most readers (including me) fell in love with. This is the Ronan he never shows to Declan.
Opal also has a soft spot for the downtrodden, because she herself is downtrodden. This means Ronan sees himself as downtrodden. He knows people in power want to exploit him. He wants to defend the weak.
But Ronan doesn't trust these qualities. Maybe that's why he dreamt Opal as a girl. He thinks these qualities are weak, liable to get you hurt, inherently feminine. Ronan has always shown a bit of casual misogyny, thanks to American culture and his particular upbringing by Niall, his only real role model.
Which is also interesting, given that the new prologue shows that Niall himself had some traditionally feminine qualities - like wanting a home and a family - making himself pretty for Mór, being openly loving etc. Maybe after she left, and his heart was broken, Niall decided these qualities were weak, liable to get you hurt.
Meanwhile. Ronan's mask is almost as much a part of him as Declan's. But as Calla says to Ronan:
. . . Get rid of that mask. It's a nasty bit of work (The Dream Thieves Chpt 21)
#another long vomit about TRC and TDT#ronan lynch#the dreamer trilogy#the raven cycle#tdt#trc#niall lynch#declan lynch#matthew lynch
94 notes
·
View notes
Text
The Dream Thieves Deadass Book Review
By Maggie Stiefvater
Blue and the gang are back in another thrilling installment of teenagers taking on way more than they should!
This is an unhinged book review/recap of this BEAUTIFUL STORY I LOVE IT!!
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
We kick things off with a cool prologue about Ronan Lynch and his enigmatic father, who apparently dissapeared for months at a time and returned with ridiculous amounts of money and treasure. It’s also heavily implied that Niall Lynch also had the ability to manifest objects from his dreams. He says weird shit like “Ronan on the day you were born, blue rose petals rained from the sky and all the cows started crying blood.” And Ronan says “Thanks Dad, a birthday card will suffice.” (Jk) But there are instances where Niall wakes up with blood and blue rose petals on his face and is like “Oh Ronan, I was just dreaming about the day you were born.”
Wow this family! (To recap, Nial was murdered with a tire iron and Ronan found him)
Was… was Ronan not birthed, but dreamed?? Did his father dream him into existence? I’m not sure.
Well everyone is in the know because the kids meet up in the countryside with a telescope — still on their quest to chart the leylines and locate Glendower… who the trees confirmed exists, so that makes all this crazy magic even more real. Ronan demonstrates flying a toy plane that he dreamed into reality, which can miraculously fly without batteries. His raven, Chainsaw chases it and it’s adorable.
It’s so fun to see the gang back together. Ronan can dream things into existence and we’re all okay with that. Adam is some kind of magic we don’t understand yet. Noah is dead. Gansey’s super power is loving his friends to the point of being annoying. And being obsessed with Glendower. Their new plan is to keep exploring the enchanted forest and hunt for the king. Blue continues to be adorable and poke fun at Gansey, who calls her Jane and likes to say shit to get a rise out of her.
THEN we meet some dude who is described as the Gray Man. He has quite a pit of personality for someone who only wears grayscale shit. He walks into Declan’s dormitory at Aglionby and proceeds to BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF HIM. Poor kid. He’s demanding to know where the Greywarren is?? And Declan is like “I have no idea what that is please stop hitting me.” And Gray Man says “You better find it for me or I’ll kill you and your whole family, kay bye.” Then he checks in to a bed and breakfast.
I kind of remember Ronan saying Greywarren in the first book. It was something the trees called him in Latin and he was confused and said he didn’t understand.
Anyway, both Gansey and Ronan have insomnia. So one night, Ronan wakes up with a puzzle box/decoder he manifested out of his dreams and takes it out to Gansey, who is also awake at 3am working on his scale model of Henrietta on the floor. They have a neat conversation about Ronan’s dream powers and the strange contraption he made that night. You type a word in English on one side and wooden letters rearrange in Latin, Greek, and some other language they can’t figure out. Gansey is very fascinated with how Ronan accomplishes this magic feat. Then he says “God I’m tired.” — “Then sleep.” — glare from Gansey, who would if he could. — “Wanna get orange juice?” … they get orange juice.
The next day, Blue goes to work at the pizza place and the guys come. There’s a cute part where Adam touches her wrist. There’s an even cuter part earlier in the book, when Blue is thinking about the tree visions and her fate to kiss and kill her first love. She says to “fate”, if I’m destined to kill Gansey, I don’t want that to happen. If I’m destined to love him, I don’t want that either. It’s Adam I want. Eeeeee!!
While they’re chatting, the local douchebag Kavinsky shows up and exchanges some witty banter. Like genuinely witty. This kid is a dick, but he’s really funny. He gives Ronan some leather bands, just like the ones he’s already wearing and chewing on all the time… and this must have some significance but we don’t get it yet. So anyway, he leaves. And the boys are trying to figure out what the mystery language is on the dream box. Blue says “I bet Ronan knows what it is. Somewhere in there.” And Ronan snaps back “You don’t know shit.” And everyone at the table freezes. Gansey says in a threatening way to the table, “You are not to speak to Blue like that ever again, you hear me?” And Blue is like “BISH I don’t need you standing up for me! Fuck you rich boy and fuck you Ronan I will end you.”
The Gray Man is driving around town in a shitty rental car talking to the locals. Apparently there have been power outages and surges lately. He’s using instruments given to him by his boss… Greensomething. GREENMANTLE. And following the energy to a crazy rose bush and a creepy well. When he takes the lid off the well, the energy readings stop.
Adam has been living in the musty little space above St. Agnes’ church paying rent to the nuns for a few months now. When he gets home from his mechanic job, Blue is there. This is such a BEAUTIFULLY written chapter (8) and Adam continues to be a beautifully written character. There is so much going on in this scene. From Adam pining over all the things he wants in life… to the anxiety of knowing he made a bargain with a magical forest that is hanging over his head because he has no idea what that fucking even means…. To his incredible attraction to Blue and deep desire to kiss her.
They have a sweet moment where they hug, and he’s getting signals, so he goes in for a kiss and she FREAKS OUT and steps back. This wounds him deeply, since it’s been weeks now, and he knows he should respect a girl when she says “no” but also just why?? I WISH BLUE WOULD JUST TELL THIS POOR BABY IF SHE KISSES HIM HE MIGHT DIE but I also see how that could be a difficult conversation, so she just keeps it vague like “I don’t want to move too fast.” — Adam takes a shower to exit from this awful interaction, and while he’s in there he catches sight of himself in the mirror and thinks he looks different. Like a little more gaunt than usual. And then he has this strange moment of scratching his skin. And the water feels like it’s falling in slow-motion. And then he gets this weird flash of water falling off leaves.
So Adam steps out of the shower like “Wow. That’s weird.” And finds Blue talking to a Nun. The Nun explains that some weird tax thing happened and his rent has been lowered by $200. Adam is super relieved, and after she leaves, he opens a letter from Aglionby that he’s been ignoring… and that letter says that tuition has been raised by $200. He’s immediately like…… Gansey. He puts two and two together and is just livid. And he takes it out on Blue, so they get into a huge fight. And she storms out. And Adam feels like a fucking monster and more trapped than ever. And the chapter ends with him getting a flash of another image in his head. I THINK HE’S STARTING TO BECOME MAGICAL. But also, sweet baby. I hate that he carries all this pain. But god damn if he is not a fascinating character. They all are. I love them.
Gansey, Noah, and Ronan are dicking around a Dollar Tree when Adam calls.
I love the idea of these 2 rich idiots and their dead friend just messing with chinsie toys and bullshit at the dollar tree. They went there for batteries but are standing around just being teenaged boys. Also the raven is with them. Adam tells Gansey he just saw a ghost woman in his apartment and it freaked him out. Noah finds a snow globe that he loves that is full of glitter, and Ronan and Chainsaw are being adorable and in an unusually good mood. Then Noah like, BLINKS OUT for a minute then comes back. The boys hypothesize that the leyline’s power is fluctuating. And it probably has something to do with Adam.
Adam and Gansey get into a brief argument on the phone about the tuition… where it’s revealed to us the reader (but not the boys) that it was RONAN who adjusted Adam’s rent. There’s a great line like “The good thing about being Ronan is that no one ever expects you to be nice.”
Ronan has a dream about being in the forest and hanging out with a little blonde girl. He’s seen her before. And like everything there, she speaks in Latin and is super skiddish and afraid. She asks if he’ll take her with him before he wakes up.
The next day, Adam calls Gansey again and Gansey invites him to one of his fancy rich people parties. He says there might be internship opportunities. Adam hates offers like this, because of that damn pride of his! But he actually considers accepting and pretty much says yes. Then he asks Gansey for some relationship advice about Blue… which makes Gansey deeply uncomfortable.
Blue told him about her prophecy/curse when they were exploring the woods that one day. The same day he told her about the day he died of hornets. Again… it is driving me crazy… how none of these kids will just out and say this. But I appreciate the tension hahaha. Poor ADAM!! He asks Gansey if he’ll talk to Blue for him… maybe find out why she’s so skiddish about kissing in particular. Or if there’s something wrong with him. Gansey reluctantly says yes.
Then there’s a cute bit with Ronan and Noah being boys and throwing shit out the factory window. Then Noah stomps back in all upset because Ronan threw HIM out the window. OH BOYS.
On Sunday, Ronan goes to church. He very much believes in God and the Devil… because he saw the devil once?? He saw his Dad talking to this goat-headed beast in the barn. And then Nial shot Satan 13 times in the head. And Satan flashed his dick at Niall and dissapeared. I AM NOT FUCKING WITH YOU. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS. I’m just like… okay, Maggie.
Ronan notices Declan all beat up and is happy to see it. But it’s weird. Normally the only people who can beat up Lynch brothers are other Lynch brothers. He says it was a robbery though. We meet Matthew, the most adorable of the brothers, who is kind of a clean-cut jock as opposed to being a brooding punk or a pompous future-senator. It’s worth mentioning that Noah joins Ronan at church, but no one acknowledges him.
Ronan has a street race with that Kavinsky guy (who calls him a f**. REAL NICE.) — And before they race, Ronan throws a pair of sunglasses into Kavinsky’s car? They’re identical to the pair he’s wearing on his face, and he seemed kind of surprised by it. He asks how the hell he found a pair. Ronan doesn’t answer. And we all know we dreamed them. So that happens and it’s over.
Is Kavinsky a dreamer too???
Meanwhile, Gansey and Adam are hanging out at Blue’s house. Gansey is in the kitchen with Blue and Adam is out in the reading room. Their fearless leader is talking with Maura and basically saying in much more fancy Gansey speak, “I think we’re going to have to go back to Cabeswater eventually. I can’t guarantee it’ll be safe, but I can say we’ll be as cautious as possible?” — Maura is like FINE. Then when they have a free moment, Gansey asks Blue if she’s talked to Adam about the whole “If I kiss you, it might kill you.” Thing. Blue gets flustered and is like “Of course not and it’s none of your business!” — Well he tried. Blue has a gentle chat with Adam who has laid out a deck of tarot cards and is just staring at them. He seems to be in a much better mood now, but things are still awkward between them. Gansey is adorable with his water bottle, which he pokes Blue with and is like “Fair Trade!” Like he deserves a prize for being more environmentally conscious.
One day, the Gray man comes into the Blue House. He’s extremely charming. Says he’s there researching a book, but it comes out pretty quickly that he’s a hitman. The ladies aren’t really that afraid of him though. And he even plays little psychic card games with them before leaving. Persephone and Calla ask Maura why she allowed all that to go down, and she’s like… best to keep an eye on those types.
So the gang is in the camaro on their way to Cabeswater, and things are still a little weird between Adam and Blue. He keeps getting visions and seeing figures (dead people?) and he’s worried that Cabeswater is going to like… take him.
Well they pull up to where Cabeswater is supposed to be and it’s just fucking gone. The whole forest… up and left like it never existed. And to make things worse, the camaro breaks down on the way home and they’re pretty far from civilization. Ronan is stomping around in frustration and Blue make some kind of comment like “Yeah let’s just throw rocks and be violent and do something manly like yell. That’ll really help.” and even though she says it to Ronan, Adam knows he was the one that was supposed to hear it (because he scared her by exploding in the apartment earlier). To make matters worse, Gansey and Blue formulate a plan together over the GPS and just seeing their hair touching is enough to make Adam feel real awful. He just presses his head against the seat back and groans.
They ask Declan to bring a battery. Ronan pretends to be asleep, which pisses off his brother. It also pisses him off that Ronan’s leg is draped over Adam’s. He tells him to keep his fucking head down and out of trouble, drops the battery, and leaves.
That night, Ronan has a truly AWFUL nightmare. He’s standing in Adam’s apartment, and there’s this mask on his wall that belonged to his father, but only in his dreams (??) and the little girl is there eating fried chicken lol. Well eventually, dream Adam shows up and puts on the mask, and the second it does it turns him into a MONSTER. Adam is both trying to get the mask off and posessed by some evil force attacking Ronan. Ronan manages to pull the mask off him easily, but when he does it takes Adam’s fucking face with it — so then he’s dying in the corner. And Ronan wakes up with the mask in hand. He has sleep paralysis so Noah talks him through it until he can move. This chapter ends with a weird clicking noise in the corner and I am very scared.
OH GOD IT GETS WORSE. Gansey is out sitting in his Camero in a thunderstorm because it’s 4:45am and he has insomnia. He’s feeling a bit sorry for himself at Cabeswater disappearing. I love this bit:
“…then instead gave himself over to feeling sorry for himself, that he should have so many friends and yet feel so very alone. He felt it fell to him to comfort them, but never the other way around. As it should be, he thought, abruptly angry with himself. You’ve had it the easiest. What good is all your privilege, you soft, spoiled thing, if you can’t stand on your own legs?”
I love Gansey so much.
Noah comes out and flags him down, then leads him to the massive main room on the 1st floor that has no lighting and is full of dust and Ronan is just standing in the middle of it like a creeper while there is a storm outside. Chainsaw is there for levity… rolling in the dirt. So Ronan asks Gansey about the promise he made last year… after they found him in a pool of blood with slit wrists. He said he didn’t actually try to kill himself. He had a nightmare and brought the wounds back with him, but his father made him promise never to tell anyone about his dream powers, so he just let everyone think he was suicidal. And there’s still something banging and dragging around upstairs and I will fucking SHIT myself if it is Adam without a face.
Okay no it’s not that. But it’s still pretty fucking scary. Ronan grabs a crowbar. He gives Gansey a box cutter. And together they open the door to Ronan’s room to fucking fight some kind of… Raven person beast monster. It’s all claws and has red eyes and a huge beak but kind of a human body and totally fucks them up, but they fuck it up better. During the fight, Gansey notices Ronan has old scars on his arms beneath new ones from the claws. He asks Ronan if that’s how he got those injuries and he says “One got away”. So um… WOW. Like Gansey says, no wonder Ronan won’t sleep. That’s ten kinds of awful.
The next chapter starts with Gansey and Ronan fetching Blue with the dead, stinky bird man in the trunk. Then we get this phenomenal snippet:
“She wore a dress Ronan thought looked like a lampshade. Whatever sort of lamp it belonged on, Gansey clearly wished he had one. Ronan wasn’t a fan of lamps.”
Fucking beautiful. This is chapter 18 by the way. I love this whole exchange at the beginning. Blue is struck by Gansey wearing blue jeans and a tshirt. It makes him look his age and not like a senator, like he usually does. The plan is to pick up Adam next and then go bury the body in Ronan’s farm (which he’s not legally allowed to enter for some reason). Also Noah dissapeared when all the shit went down and hasn’t come back yet. I do not blame him.
They drive out to Ronan’s forbidden home which is like gorgeous fairy farmland. They have to go find a shovel in one of the many barns and discover that all of the livestock is sleeping with their eyes open. So… creepy? Even the little barn birds are doing it. Oddly enough the only animals not in this state are some baby mice. And there’s an adorable scene where Ronan says the only way to feel their little heartbeats it to hold them against your cheek, and everyone does it and can’t help but smile. It’s so freaking cute.
Great prelude to burning a horrifying bird creature. But once that’s done, they decide to go to Ninos. Adam, throughout this whole trip, is getting spacier and spacier. He did smile at the baby mice though lol. But otherwise he’s just staring off into the sky. Before they leave, Ronan asks if he can go see his mom (who apparently had a meltdown after his Dad died and stopped talking).
Ronan’s house is COOL!!! It is not rich bougie opulent like Gansey’s. It’s a proper farmhouse, cluttered and warm and packed with dream things. Like a lot of appliances that don’t require electricity. And some blue lilies sitting in a vase with no water. And the fucking MASK!! Ronan nearly tackles Adam to stop him from touching it, then that becomes the last straw. Ronan loves his home and misses it like crazy. And it’s killing him that he’s legally forbidden to be there. He doesn’t know how to process emotions, so he just starts punching the wall and destroying stuff. Adam stands there numbly, letting him. So Gansey thunders over, catches his fist, and tells him to cut it out.
Ronan goes to see his mother in a sitting room filled with still more magical shit, and she’s asleep just like the livestock. In a coma and surrounded by medical stuff (nurses come and check on her periodically). Basically by the end of this chapter, Ronan realizes that many of the things in his home were dreamed by his father, and that’s why they’re in this holding pattern/coma-like state….Including his MOM!!! DUN DUN DUN!!!
The next day or hours later (sometimes it’s hard to tell time in these books lol) - Blue tells Ronan “You need to go talk to my aunts about this dream stuff. Manifesting objects from dreams is crazy enough, but manifesting PEOPLE?!” — And here’s the funny thing about Ronan. He’s a total punk, but he’s also pretty religious. So they get in a fight about “Is spiritualism the devil” until Gansey breaks it up and makes Ronan go.
So they go talk to Calla, the sassiest of the psychics, who talks to Ronan while doing aerial yoga lol because reasons. She tells him that Cabeswater is a dream. And Ronan thinks his mom might be in there. I’m confused by this, but I think we’re supposed to be… Like, did Ronan’s father DREAM Cabeswater? She also tells him to get rid of that mask “It’s a bit of bad work”. I’m really glad Adam didn’t touch it now!!
Matthew and Ronan have lunch. This chapter is interspersed with excerpts from Nial Lynch’s will, which explains each brother gets 3 million dollars when they turn 18 ON THE CONDITION that they stay off the property. (And I guess Declan is real pissed because Ronan did just that. But I guess maybe it was okay since no one saw?). The will also leaves Ronan with the farm, which he can’t set foot on…. So thanks Dad. Mathew mentions that Declan is taking sleeping pills, knows about Ronan and Nial’s dream powers, and has a gun in his car. Ronan says he has a plan to get Mom back.
The Gray man is an interesting character. He is there on orders from a man named Greenmantle… looking for the Greywarren (all very strange names). The only thing he is afraid of is his brother, who he keeps dodging calls from. He has depression/gray days where he just stays in bed all day. He has a few of those before he realizes he left his wallet at the psychic house. So he’s going to go get that…AFTER HE GOES TO MONMOUTH MANUFACTURING slash base camp slash where our sweet heroes live and oh my god I will fucking die if he hurts anyone.
Gansey has been depressed since Cabeswater dissapeared. It’s really messing with him. So he goes on a spending spree and buys some things for the factory (a leather chair, pool table, and some air conditioners) — and asks Blue’s cousin Orla to help because they need someone who is 21 years or older to rent a trailer lol. Orla shows up to the factory in bell bottoms and an orange bikini, and Gansey and Adam exchange looks. RONAN DOES NOT BECAUSE HE DOESN’T LIKE LAMPS. Seeing them blush drives Blue nuts, since she and Orla don’t get along.
Then we get this beautiful line of thought from Gansey:
“She wore two shredded tank tops and a pair of bleached cargo pants. In some parallel universe, there was a Gansey who could tell Blue that he found the ten inches of her bare calves far more tantalizing than the thirteen cubic feet of bare skin Orla sported. But in this universe, that was Adam’s job.”
So not only did he rent a trailer, but he rented a boat. And as the Gray man pulls up on the factory, he sees all this and also sees a white Mitsubishi idling on the road (Kavinsky!!). Gansey and the gang head out with their trailers and boat. Then the Gray man waits for Kavinsky to pull in, drop off whatever he’s dropping off, and leave. When the Gray man approaches, he sees that Kavinsky has dropped off a stack of REALLY CONVINCING looking drivers licenses with Ronan’s picture and a birthdate that would make him 70 lol. I think Kavinsky is a dreamer!!!! While the Gray man breaks into the factory and pokes around, he calls Maura and flirts with her about getting his wallet back.
But while he’s there, two MORE people break into the factory and are ALSO looking through things, but being assholes about it and wrecking stuff. They’re about to stomp on Gansey’s model of Henrietta, which the Gray Man can’t stand, so he steps out and fucks them up. Murders one of them right off the bat. Asks the other one who sent them, and the guy says they were hired by someone with a French Accent to find the Greywarren, which they think is probably a box. This is new info for the Gray Man, who didn’t know if the Greywarren was a person, place, or thing. So he says thanks and then kills the guy.
Okay so the kids are on a boat and it’s hot as hell. Gansey has purchased a sonar machine that Ronan is beating into activation and Orla is stretched out tanning. They drive around looking for something to pop up on the sonar, and it finally does! So while Gansey is thinking about how to strip down and dive with all these girls present, Blue takes off one of her tank top layers and is like “I’m going in. BRB.” — Orla stands up and is like “No you don’t. I’m the only one actually wearing swimwear. I’ll get it.” And she strips down into her sexy orange bikini. The boy's reaction to his is PRICELESS.
I LOVE this bit with Gansey:
“A tiny part of Gansey’s brain said: You have been staring for too long. The larger part of his brain said: ORANGE. “Oh, for the love of God,” Blue said, and jumped out of the boat.”
Ronan laughs hysterically because, again, he doesn’t like lamps.
Orla swims around for a while and gives up. But Blue manages to dive and find 2 objects. A metal plate thing called a boss that used to be part of an ancient shield adorned with raven stuff (Glendower is all about ravens!) and a camaro tire that looks like it’s hundreds of years old. So that’s creepy. (It’s also funny when she comes back on the boat, she spits lake water on Gansey’s shoes and says “There! Now they’re actually boat shoes.” — and Gansey is like: [indignant rich people noises!])
More Gansey thinking Blue is hot:
“Gansey still felt he ought to avert his eyes. Everything was wet and clinging in ways that seemed more titillating than he’d come to expect from Blue’s wardrobe.”
They head back to land and Orla is getting in Ronan’s BMW when Blue asks, “Seen enough of Orla?”
And Gansey blurts out “What care of it is yours whether I’ve seen enough.” (And quickly regrets it because this sounds like a dare. Or flirting. Which he desperately doesn’t want to do because it will compromise his friendship with Adam.)
Blue replies, “Not at all.” And he knows she’s lying. So we get this neat bit:
“Blue Sargent cared whether or not he was interested in Orla. She cared a lot. As she whirled toward the truck with a dismissive shake of her head, he felt a dirty sort of thrill.”
Ganssseeeyyyy!!! Has so got the hots for Blue. Oh god, Adam though. I don’t want this poor baby to get hurt. I mean he’s already been through so much and the magic invisible forest is scrambling his brain… please just be happy.
When Blue comes home (soaking wet) she finds Noah doing ghost shit on her front lawn. I’m sorry, that’s way too blunt. I just thought it would be funny to write it. But he is doing something she’s seen him do maybe 4 or 5 times before… which is re-enacting the moment of his death. We see him get hit by the invisible skateboard and shiver and shake on the ground for like 11 minutes making horrific noises. Then he just blips and is standing next to Blue like “Hey Buddy!! What’s up! Did you go swimming today? NEAT!” And she’s like “Heyyyy Noah. What’s going through your head when you do that?” And he simply replies that he wasn’t there. Like he wasn’t conscious of doing that. WOW BEING A GHOST IS WEIRD. Also I love how no one noticed their roommate was a ghost in the first book. Was he doing this while he lived with them and they were like “Noah, cut it out!”?
Mister Gray buries the two dudes he murdered at the factory, all while asking Maura out on a date. Later, he shows up to her house to get his wallet and has a terse conversation with Blue — who senses that he is smart, and not to be underestimated. Blue is a smart cookie. She notices the way Mr. Gray tries NOT to care when Maura comes in and says Gansey is on the phone because his place got broken into. Blue is like okay this guy is something…
The night before Gansey and Adam go out of town, Gansey is in a fucking mood. He and Ronan drive out to Kavinsky’s substance party (his words, not mine) in an abandoned fairgrounds where a bunch of rich kids are getting high and destroying their cars. When they arrive, Kavinsky has this great line where he goes “Hey lady. To join this party you gotta bring drugs.” And then Ronan punches him… lol Kavinsky is either too high or too charismatic to care. But I thought it was so funny when he said “Hey lady.”
He says it wasn’t him that wrecked the place, which tips G & R off that the same person who beat up Declan might be looking for them too. Kavinsky is like “Hey before you go, wanna blow stuff up?” And Gansey is in just crazy enough of a mood to do it. So they throw some Molotov cocktails at cars — and it’s all very cinematic and poetic. I love angry/scary Gansey. He’s not unhinged angry. He’s just as intelligent and confident as he always is. But he’s a certain shade of lethal. Freaking love it. Kavinsky asks Ronan if he’s coming to the 4th of July party and he says maybe. This chapter ends with Ronan admitting to himself that he’s bummed Gansey and Adam are leaving town without him.
Mr. Gray and Maura have their date and it’s actually pretty cute. He opens up about his brother, who sounds like a complete fucking psychopath (torturing him and small animals as a kid). Their flirting is kind of adorable, and they even kiss! When he gets back to the Bed and Breakfast, he learns that his room has been turned upside down and ransacked. Also, Maura stole his phone and replaced it with his tarot card in his pocket (The something of swords… I forget haha)
Persephone wakes Blue up in the middle of the night to help break into the Gray Man’s phone. These psychic ladies straight up do not give a fuck. They get Blue to show them his emails and phone calls and they figure out (through a mix of that and psychic ability) that he is there looking for the Greywarren. His problem, they say, is that he thinks he’s looking for an object when he should be looking for Ronan. So that’s interesting that the psychics know Ronan is a/the Greywarren! They know that word?? The Gray Man calls and isn’t even mad about the phone. He just flirts with Maura some more.
That night, Ronan has a dream about his tattoo. He hasn’t really looked at it since he got it, but he can see it clearly in this dream. It’s made up of all the stuff he dreams about. Ravens and claws and the road to the Barns and other scary and beautiful things. In the dream, ADAM IS BEHIND HIM, TRACING HIS FINGERS DOWN HIS BACK on the road to his home. Then Adam turns into Kavinsky. And that tattoo shrinks into the size of a wafer and he eats it… and Ronan wakes up in a cold sweat feeling shame and adrenaline. Poor sweet religious baby, I think we all know what he is struggling with. And it’s not lamps.
IT’S THE WEEKEND OF THE BIG FANCY RICH PEOPLE PARTY and Helen returns with her helicopter to fly Gansey and Adam to Northern Virginia. I’m really excited for this party???? Poor Adam is just terrified though. Nervous and anxious. When they land, Helen runs into a Whole Foods so Gansey asks Adam how he’s doing. Adam just lays down in the back of the car and asks to talk about anything else. For a minute, Gansey thinks, Blue, but tells himself don’t you fucking dare. So he calls his British friend Malory who is at a PIGEON SHOW and is all in a tizzy describing the birds, and there’s this adorable scene with the boys trying to hold in their laughter while he’s describing the pigeons. At one point he describes “Pigmy somethings” and are “very feisty” and Gansey mouths to Adam “Blue!” And Adam actually cracks up and laughs out loud. Then he’s back to looking like his old self, which makes Gansey extraordinarily happy. This scene is so cute. I love it so much.
When Adam and Gansey left in the helicopter, Ronan watched them from the hood of his car. He even blew a sarcastic kiss to Gansey before he was out of view. So this first thing he does now that he’s alone is test the set of dream keys to the Camaro lol. They miraculously work, though he dare not drive the car. Gansey LOVES that car. Then he gets a text from Kavinsky that says “You gotta check out my new wheels. See you tonight at 11”. I feel like Ronan is the teenager left home alone while Mom and Dad are out of town lol.
Noah lets Blue into Monmouth Manufacturing to have a snoop fest because everyone is out. I love these paragraphs where the author describes them just doing teenager shit. Raiding the fridge. Playing pool. PLaying with the telescope. Putting on a record. I mean, they totally go through Gansey’s stuff hahaha like go through all he draws in his desk and everything. Then they even LAY DOWN IN HIS BED and we get this phenomenal bit of literature:
Only inches away, Noah blinked sleepily at her. Blue crumpled the edge of the sheet against her nose. It smelled like mint and wheatgrass, which was to say, like Gansey.
As they baked in the sunlight, she let herself think it: I have a crush on Richard Gansey.
In a way, it was easier than pretending otherwise. She couldn’t do anything about it, of course, but letting herself think it was like popping a blister. Of course, the opposite truth also seemed self-evident. I don’t have a crush on Adam Parrish. She sighed.
AAAAHHHHHH!!!!! And also awww Adaaammm but also AWWWW BECAUSE I LOVE GANSEY AND BLUE. But omg I love Adam. IF ANYTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS TO ANY OF THESE KIDS I WILL NOT BE OKAY.
Okay so then Noah says he heard Blue won’t kiss Adam. And she tells him about the psychic prophecy, and confesses that Adam isn’t her true love, anyway. And she just has to go through life not kissing anyone for fear of killing them. Then Noah has an idea: Well, you could kiss me. Oh my gosh I love this because the author completely unlocked a memory for me of how a first kiss feels. They are generally not great hahaha
His mouth mashed her lips until it met teeth. The entire thing was at once slimy and ticklish and hilarious. They both gasped an embarrassed laugh.
Oh my GOD this scene is so fucking cute. They sit up and keep trying, and the next kiss apparently feels like “kissing a dish washer” hahaha. “It’s hard because it’s you!” They say to each other, because they have what I think is firmly a friendship. When it comes to hanging out and being comfortable around each other, Blue is definitely closest to Noah… which I think is so adorable. He is so adorable.
“Is it me?” She asks, because these kisses are terrible. And he’s like YEAH lol you’re too tense. Think of how they kiss in the movies and try to imitate that.
I AM COPYING AND PASTING THIS WHOLE SECTION BECAUSE IT IS SO CUTE.
She sighed and sifted through her memories until she found one that would do. It wasn’t a movie kiss, however. It was the kiss the dreaming tree had showed her in Cabeswater. Her first and only kiss with Gansey, right before he died. She thought about his nice mouth when he smiled. About his pleasant eyes when he laughed. She closed her eyes. Placing an elbow on the other side of her head, Noah leaned close and kissed her once more.
This time, it was more of a thought than a feeling, a soft heat that began at her mouth and unfurled through the rest of her. One of his cold hands slid behind her neck and he kissed her again, lips parted. It was not just a touch, an action. It was a simplification of both of them: They were no longer Noah Czerny and Blue Sargent. They were now just him and her. Not even that. They were only the time that they held between them.
Oh, thought Blue. So this is what I can’t have. Not being able to kiss whoever she fell in love with didn’t feel so different from not having a cell phone when everyone else at school did. It didn’t feel very different from knowing she wasn’t going to be studying ecology abroad for college, or going abroad period. It didn’t feel very different from knowing that Cabeswater was going to be the only extraordinary thing about her life. Which was to say that it was unbearable, but she had to bear it anyway. Because there was nothing terrible about kissing Noah Czerny, apart from him being cold.
She let him kiss her, and kissed him back until he pulled back on an elbow and clumsily wiped away some of her tears with the heel of his fist. His smudge had gotten very dark, and he was cold enough that she shivered. Blue gave him a watery smile. “That was super nice.” He shrugged, eyes doleful, shoulders curled in on themselves. He was fading. It wasn’t that she could see through him. It was that it was hard to remember what he looked like, even while she was looking at him. When he turned his head, she saw him swallow. He mumbled, “I’d ask you out, if I was alive.” Nothing was fair.
“I’d say okay,” she replied. She only had time to see him smile faintly. And then he was gone. She rolled onto her back in the middle of the suddenly empty bed. Above her, the rafters glowed with the summer sun. Blue touched her mouth. It felt the same as it always did. Not at all like she had just gotten her first and last kiss.
I CAN’T. I CAN’T. I CAN’T. I CAN’T — THIS FUCKING BOOK. I AM GOING TO THROW IT ACROSS THE ROOM and then retrieve it and sob all over it and read it some more. That was the cutest fucking scene… Noah is so cute. Blue is so sweet. Poor baby having to go through life not kissing anyone except for her ghost friend who she also kind of likes I guess but it’s a non-starter with him being dead and all. GAWD. AUGH. And on Gansey’s bed?? Fuck.
Alright onto the next chapter.
Ronan picks up Matthew from school and says “Get in the car bitch, we’re going to the house.” (He does not say that. But that’s what they do). While they’re poking around their house, which they are very much not allowed to do, Ronan finds his father’s will and tries to translate a line from it with the puzzle box. It doesn’t turn up with any interesting results. THEN THE OTHER FUCKING BIRD MONSTER IS IN THE HOUSE. There is a truly terrifying scene with the brothers bracing a heavy chest against the door to keep it out of the room with their mother. Then the Bird Person just leaves… because MR. GRAY shows up and is poking a round the room while they hide. He steals the puzzle box (probably thinking it’s the Greywarren) and leaves. So do the boys.
OKAY PARTY TIME. I’M A BALL OF NERVES.
The Gansey mansion is of course, gorgeous. And so are the boys in their tailored suits. Gansey is a GOOD FRIEND. When some rich whose-a-what’s it claps his hand on the back of Adam’s neck, and he notices Adam having PTSD flashbacks of his father throwing him down flights of stairs, he rescues him and gets the man off him with a charming smile and introduction. Adam is collecting business cards left and right. (Yay!) but he’s also kind of losing it a little. He catches glimpses of himself in the mirror that don’t look right and a spirit touches his elbow. Painted branches in paintings look like they’re moving.
There’s this one interesting part where a lady is talking to Gansey and trying to guess his age — and pauses because he has a tendency to look both old and young at the same time. This comes up a good bit so I wonder what’s up with that. Gansey hates this party, by the way, but he’s good at playing the part. And he’s being crazy protective of Adam, knowing this is uncomfortable.
There’s this one really strange moment where the lights go out, and Adam is hallucinating seeing ghosts all around him. And he and Gansey hear the singing of a choir of women, chanting in Latin “Make way for the Raven King.” — then the lights come back on. Turns out Adam is not completely crazy, because everyone saw the lights go out. They heard the choir too, but dismiss it as the musicians being musicians lol. I like that these rich people are like “Oh a ghost choir, how quaint. Har har har”. Gansey meets Adam’s eyes from across the room. THE LEYLINE IS BEING WEIRD, YOU GUYS.
Meanwhile, back in Henrietta, RONAN IS OUT IN THE DAMN CAMARO WAITING FOR KAVINSKY. Ronan noooooooo!!! Noah appears in the passenger’s seat and tells him he doesn’t want to watch him die. He’ll tattle on him. He’ll do it. Ronan’s response:
“Noah,” Ronan said tenderly, placing his palm on top of Noah’s cold, seven-years-dead hand, “you’re starting to piss me off.”
Well they race. And Ronan loses. And just as Noah is saying “Are you happy now?” THE FUCKING NIGHT HORROR LANDS ON THE HOOD OF THE CAR AND BREAKS THE WINDSHIELD. Again I say Noooooooo!!! Noah is a cutie and helps out despite being terrified. He wrestles the bird man on the hood, and manages to take one out. But there’s another one? EIther way, Noah crashes the car into a telephone pole. And then Kavinsky shows up and TAKES OUT A GUN and shoots the night horror, saving Ronan’s life. They stand by the side of the road for a while, and Ronan is freaking out because Gansey is going to kill him, and Kavinsky is like oh my god chill out and come with me. So he does.
Back at the party, Adam and Gansey take a break to go stand upstairs in the hallway outside of Gansey’s old room. They’re drunk— because this whole time, Adam thought he was being handed ginger ale, but somewhere along the way it became champagne. And they talk about their feelings and inevitably get into a fight. I think because they realize they’re on separate paths. Gansey hates this world and never wants to return to it. He loves Henrietta. But Adam hates Henrietta and sees this glittering rich people life as his old way out. They talk about Adam stealing the Camaro to wake the leyline and get into a huge fight where Adam finally lets it out that he hates feeling like he’s always taking orders from Gansey, and if he wants his help finding Glendower, he has to let him search the way he wants to search. Then he ends with this venomous line:
“I don’t need your wisdom, Gansey,” he said. “I don’t need you to babysit me. I got into Aglionby without you. I got Blue without you. I woke the ley line without you. I won’t take your pity.”
AUGH. And breaks some fancy shit on a table. And then they part ways. BABIES NOOOOO!!! Also Adam is just straight up seeing dead people all around him now. Like random men in bowler hats and this chapter closes with a random woman screaming but making no sound.
Alright so Kavinsky… is a character lol. He’s so aloof and crazy, he’s hard to get a read on. But he drives Ronan out to his fairgrounds hideout and reveals a parking lot full of white Mitsubishi cars. All with an identical spoiler and knife graphic on the side. Some have 2 doors. Some have no doors. Some have 4 doors. So Ronan realizes that Kavinsky is a dreamer too, and evidently a better one than he is because he can manifest a whole ass car. So I think these two are in some kind of plan to dream up a new Camaro.
Sad Gansey is sad. With the party still raging, he goes out to a fountain in the garden and calls Blue, and doesn’t tell her anything, just asks her to describe what’s going on in her house. What is everyone doing? And he lays down on the fountain and listens to her talk. And that’s it. That’s the whole chapter. So fucking cute.
The next chapter is all about the Gray man going about his day… snooping around the Kavinsky household. Talking to his Mom?? Who is slumped over a toilet maybe high?? Then we move on. He snoops around Ronan’s BMW and sees that the VIN number is Nial Lynch’s birthday. He waxes poetic about Maura and how much he loves her while he beats up a priest at St. Agnes asking if the Lynch brothers had ever confessed anything weird. It’s violent and adorable at the same time.
The next morning, Gansey is barely holding it together through his mother’s fussy book club luncheon, entertaining 50 year old women and drinking tea. Helen saves him though, noticing he looks miserable. So once he’s in the kitchen, he gets a second to check his texts and Ronan tells him he wrecked the Camaro, but it’s going to be okay and say hi to his Mom. Gansey is like… slowly unraveling at this point lol. He calls Ronan’s phone, but Kavinsky picks up, which is unnerving, and Kavinsky is impossible to talk to. It’s all jokes and quippy quips. He asks to talk to Ronan and Kavinsky goes, “Hey Ronan. WAKE UP FUCK-WEASEL, IT’S YOUR GIRLFIREND. Now he’s pissed. Can I take a message?” And Gansey eventually hangs up on him because Ronan won’t take the phone.
Ronan wakes up in Kavinsky’s bougie home movie theater after a crazy alcohol bender. They talk a little about being Greywarens and Kavinsky reveals that he saw Ronan’s “suicide attempt” last year. His window was nearby or something. So he saw Ronan wake up and the scars appear and he’s known what Ronan was ever since.
When Gansey finally plucks up the courage to talk to Adam, he realizes he’s GONE. He looks all over the place, then gets Helen involved. Then gets his family involved. Then gets the police involved. It’s a full-on Adam man-hunt until Gansey finally gets a phone call from him on some Virginia number he doesn’t recognize. Apparently Adam was found on the side of the highway fifteen miles away and can’t remember how he got there. It took him a while to remember Gansey’s number so he could call. When they pick him up, he looks AWFUL and barely talks. He talks to the family doctor on the phone and passes out on the couch soon after, so the Gansey family goes upstairs to talk.
I kind of love them. They’re rich, but they’re not complete assholes. Helen explains that the doctor said this sounded like a case of… Transient global amnesia. Which is kind of like a mental breakdown where people have spells of wandering off then kind of snapping out of it and not knowing where they are. It’s stress-induced, so the family asks Gansey why Adam might be stressed, and he spills the beans about Adam coming from an abusive household and refusing to live with him. They hatch a plan to try to give Adam a car, but make it sound like he’s taking Helen’s “shitty college car” off her hands….. when they’re actually going to just go buy like a 10 year old Honda lol. That’s cute. But OH GOD POOR ADAM!! He’s losing his marbles!!
Back in Henrietta, Kavinsky is trying to teach Ronan how he brings back such elaborate things from dreams. They’re practicing, basically. Kavinsky is super cavalier about dream stuff. He says to get in and get out before your dream place catches on to you. Take your stuff and leave. They pop green pills that Kavinsky probably dreamed, and it knocks you out immediately (and I think kills you briefly?? Like they stop breathing for a second, then wake up)
When Ronan wakes up, he’s paralyzed for a few seconds. This doesn’t happen to Kavinsky. When Ronan goes to the dream forest, Orphan Girl screams at him to leave (I think she might know his heart is stopping. Or it also might be hurting the leyline energy to manifest stuff from dreams). Ronan and Kavinsky spend basically 2 days doing this… sleeping in the dang car and surviving solely off drugs and Twizlers (Well, Kav does drugs. Ronan just sticks to the dream pills). He tries to bring the Pig (the Camaro) back and ALMOST does it successfully, only it has no engine lol. So Kavinsky gives him a RED pill this time, and we get this weird scene:
Ronan was a stranger in his own body. The sunset cut into his gaze, slantwise and insistent. As his muscles twitched, he lowered himself onto his chest and then rested his cheek against the hood, the heat of the metal not quite painful enough to be unbearable. He closed his eyes. This wasn’t the hurtling-to-sleep pill of before. This was a liquid fatality. He could feel his brain shutting down. After a moment, he heard the hood groan as Kavinsky leaned over him. Then he felt the ridged callus of a finger drag slowly over the skin on his back. A slow arc between his shoulder blades, drawing the pattern of his tattoo. Then sliding down his spine, tensing every muscle it moved over.
Then he passes out and is able to come back with the ACTUAL Camaro. The Orphan girl seems sad — asking him why he’s stealing from them. When Ronan is like “Okay thanks for the pills and the dream training. Bye.” Kavinsky freaks out and is like “You’re running back to HIM? I thought it was going to be you and me! If you’re not with me, you’re against me.”
I think Kavinsky likes Ronan. In other news, NOW THE PIG IS BACK!
And now Adam has a car. Helen’s plan pulled off perfectly. They found a truly shitty car and pretended like the towing company failed to pick it up so it would be doing her a favor and saving her money if he just took it. The Gansey family is so cute. They all leave him little gifts. Adam laments about ruining their Saturday, but also can’t get over the fact that he doesn’t even remember Saturday. Adam is like… hanging by a thread. He keeps disassociating and seeing spirits and trees and has to snap himself back to reality. Even though they haven’t 100% made up yet, he’s touched by the fact that it’s taking every shred of Gansey’s will power to not ask “Are you okay? Do you need anything? You’re my best friend and I love you please be okay.” — So they head back to Henrietta.
The Gray Man comes to 300 Fox Way and I’ve decided I love him. He’s so cute and in love with Maura. He makes her a flower crown. They talk about the Greywaren and how he’s finally figured out it’s a person, not a box. And he can’t go through with kidnapping (Killing he’s fine with but not kidnapping minors lol). With Maura there, Gray calls Greenmantle and tells him, “Hey, the Greywarren isn’t here. I looked everywhere. I think the fault lines are causing the weird energy flow. We gotta keep looking.” And Greenmantle is like… “Okay fucker, you found it didn’t you? I’m on to you. I’m going to call your brother and tell him where you are so he can come fuck your shit up.” (Seriously, his brother sounds awful). So now THAT’S a thing! Greenmantle is coming for everybody. Also Gray Man’s name is Dean.
The next chapter opens with “Gansey only had a few seconds of warning before the Camaro hit him” hahaha. He is like.. LIVID with Ronan. They pull over and Ronan reveals the new Pig Dream car (that has an engine this time.. and is somehow INVINCIBLE. Like you hit it and the metal just pops back into place.) Gansey is struck by Ronan offering a sincere apology for stealing his car. It’s also kind of adorable how proud Ronan is of this creation (as he should be). Gansey is so relieved to see Ronan’s old smile and genuine laugh that he drops his anger easily. Ronan also thinks he knows why Cabeswater dissapeared. They have to stop Kavinsky because that idiot is draining all the magic with his 100 Mitsubishi cars.
Blue makes Calla look at the Camaro wheel and the Shield thingy and this is what she has to say:
Camaro wheel: “He’s not alone when he leaves the car behind.”
Sheild: “They were dragging him at this point. The horses had died. The men were weak. It wouldn’t stop raining. They meant to bury the shield with him, but it was heavy so they left it behind.”
I swear to god. If Gansey ends up dying in this book, I will not be okay. If there’s some kind of tie-in to him and Glendower.. like eventually the gang is going to have to DRAG HIS BODY and try to bury it with the Camaro I will lose my shit.
When they get home Adam is on the front door step.
He comes up to Blue’s room and they get into a fight. She finally tells him about the prophecy, and then she has to be honest and say that even if the prophecy didn’t exist… she realized she doesn’t love Adam. She really wanted to, but she just doesn’t. Blue can also be a little too testy for her own good sometimes. She gets easily offended by the slightest hint of misogyny… which is why Gansey makes fun of her for it all the time. Seriously, she kind of says some mean shit. Which is not great because Adam is losing his grip on reality. And now he just feels alone and unloved and so distant from everyone he thought were his friends.
Persephone catches him on his way down the stairs, which is great because he is full on hallucinating, and she pulls him into the reading room. She says Blue can come if he wants her to be there. And he says no. He wants to do this alone. Persephone explains that he’s out of balance. And she gives him pie lol. And they do this scrying ritual where he looks into a pool of black water to finally confront himself and come to terms with what’s been going on. So he sacrificed his eyes and hands to Cabeswater, but he didn’t sacrifice his mind. So Persephone tells him to quit giving that up. Next, she explains that he hasn’t been listening to Cabeswater. It’s been trying to get his attention with all the ghosts and stuff, but he’s been too wound up in his own pain to listen. So he basically has a psychic acid trip and puts himself back in balance. When he comes out of the vision, he can FEEL tarot cards. Like a heartbeat.
He pulls the Magician which is like… his symbolic card. ADAM IS PSYCHIC NOW and will hopefully feel less crazy from here on out.
He literally passes out on the couch and Persephone says he’ll probably be out for a while. Like a whole day, and when he wakes up he might feel sick. Something huge shifted in him and I can’t wait to see what happens next to this sweetheart.
Blue is majorly depressed about the fight they had. “Why couldn’t I have fallen in love with Adam?” She thinks. She also thinks Adam is so attractive and she could have even kissed him without worrying about killing him. But she’s Blue. And she doesn’t do dishonest stuff like that. Also she’s got the hots for Gansey like whoa.
SO SHE CALLS HIM. And asks him to take her somewhere.
So he shows up with his dream car. And in her favorite kind of outfit — the casual kind with his wire framed glasses (not the done-up preppy Gansey). He asks what happened and she says that she and Adam had a fight. But doesn’t want to talk about it. Instead, like she did for him by the fountain earlier, Gansey tells her about everything going on in his life. About the party and Ronan’s powers and Pigeons etc etc. Blue is finally ready to hear about Adam, so he tells her about how he blacked out and wandered off after they had an argument.
I’m going to copy and paste most of this chapter. DEAL WITH IT!!!!
“Oh, Jane,” he said suddenly. “If you’d been there when we got the call about him walking on the interstate, you would’ve …” He trailed off before she found out what she would’ve done. And then, all of a sudden, he pulled himself together. “Ha! Adam’s communing with trees and Noah keeps reenacting being murdered and Ronan’s wrecking and then making me new cars. What’s new with you? Something terrible, I trust?”
“You know me,” Blue said. “Ever sensible.”
They have a great conversation about how they both come from families with a lot of love. And Adam never experienced that. So of course he reacts differently to things in life. Gansey talks about how much he hates Adam’s parents. The bruises he’d come to school with. It broke his heart.
They drive up to a sort of “Lookout point” and park overlooking the glittering city. He says he’s been all over the world, but Henrietta is the only place that feels like home. He feels like he belongs here. But if he belongs here, why does it hurt so much?
SHUT UP AND READ THIS CUTE PART:
“Jane, in this light,” he started, “you … Jesus. Jesus. I’ve got to get my head straight.” He suddenly threw open the door and got out, seizing the roof to pull himself out faster. He slammed the door and then walked around the back of the car; one hand scrubbed through his hair.
The car was utterly quiet. She heard the buzzing of night insects and singing of frogs and slow chirps of birds who should have known better. Every so often, the cooling engine let out a little sigh like a breath. Gansey didn’t return.
Fumbling in the dark, she pushed open her door. She found him leaning against the back of the car, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m sorry,” Gansey said, not looking at her as she leaned on the car beside him. “That was very rude.”
Blue thought of a few things to reply, but couldn’t say any of them out loud. She felt like one of the night birds had gotten inside her. It tumbled and fumbled every time she breathed. He’s going to die; this is going to hurt — But she touched his neck, right where his hair was cut evenly above the collar of his shirt.
He was very still. His skin was hot, and she could very, very faintly feel his pulse beneath her thumb. It wasn’t like when she was with Adam. She didn’t have to guess what to do with her hands. They knew. This was what it should have felt like with Adam. Less like playacting and more like a foregone conclusion.
He closed his eyes and leaned, just a little, so that her palm was flat on his neck, fingers sprawled from his ear to his shoulder. Everything in Blue was charged. Say something. Say something.
Gansey lifted her hand gently from his skin, holding it as formally as a dance. He put it against his mouth. Blue froze. Absolutely still. Her heart didn’t beat. She didn’t blink. She couldn’t say don’t kiss me. She couldn’t even form don’t. He just leaned his cheek and the edge of his mouth against her knuckles and then set her hand back. “I know,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”
Her skin burned with the memory of his mouth. The thrashing bird of her heart shivered and shivered again. “Thanks for remembering.” He looked back over the valley.
“Oh, Jane.”
“Oh, Jane, what?”
“I can’t — we can’t do this to him.” It was jagged inside her.
“I’m not a thing. To have.”
“No. Jesus. Of course you’re not. But you know what I mean.” She did. And he was right. They couldn’t do this to him. She shouldn’t do it to herself, anyway. But how it made a disaster of her chest and her mouth and her head.
“I wish you could be kissed, Jane,” he said. “Because I would beg just one off you. Under all this.” He flailed an arm toward the stars. “And then we’d never say anything about it again.”
That could’ve been the end of it. I want something more. She said, “We can pretend. Just once. And then we’ll never say anything about it again.” What a strange, shifting person he was.
The Gansey who turned to her now was a world away from the lofty boy she’d first met. Without any hesitation, she stretched her arms around his neck. Who was this Blue? She felt bigger than her body. High as the stars.
He leaned toward her — her heart spun again — and pressed his cheek against hers. His lips didn’t touch her skin, but she felt his breath, hot and uneven, on her face. His fingers splayed on either side of her spine. Her lips were so close to his jaw that she felt his hint of stubble at the end of them. It was mint and memories and the past and the future and she felt as if she’d done this before and already she longed to do it again.
Oh, help, she thought. Help, help, help. He pulled away.
He said, “And now we never speak of it again.”
THIS FUCKING BOOK I SWEAR TO GOD. I read this last night on my phone at like 1am and had to take periodic breaks to breathe and look at the ceiling. This is so fucking sweet. AUGH!!!
Ronan is trying to enjoy watching his Raven hide a cheezeit from him when Kavinsky keeps texting him incoherent shit. Some of it is threatening. Some of it is flirting. They also had a conversation about Kavinsky’s father trying to kill him, so I think this kid is not okay lol. So Ronan falls asleep without the help of the pills and dreams up his FATHER! His father explains that the will has a loophole. “This Will stands as a fact unless a newer document is created” ….. and I instantly feel stupid for not thinking of this sooner. It’s okay. Ronan feels stupid too. It’s like a fun little trick his father played that could have cost the brothers their entire future. THANKS DAD!!
Blue is trying to sleep when her Mom crawls into bed with her and there’s this cute scene where they both realize they’re crying. Blue because she realized she’s in love with Gansey and he’s going to die. Maura because she likes Mr. Gray and she’s worried this Greenmantle dude is going to kill him.
Mr. Gray gets a call from Greenmantle saying he has 2 days to deliver the Greywaren or he’s going to come get him. Or sic is brother on him. Both are bad.
Adam ends up sleeping for 21 HOURS. When he gets up, Henrietta is preparing for the 4th of July. It’s also his birthday! Either the 4th or the 3rd when he was conked out. The author hurls a bunch of rapid fire information at us here. Like Calla’s office was broken into (wherever she works). A white Mitsubishi with keys in the ignition shows up at Monmouth Manufacturing with a note that says “This one’s for you. Just the way you like it. Fast and anonymous.”
And Gansey goes “I think he needs to come to terms with his sexuality.” LOL
When Adam leaves the psychic house, Persephone leaves shortly after in a taxi in the same direction. I guess we will figure out what that means later.
Ronan texts Kavinsky and says “Would you stop bringing back dream shit if you knew it was destroying the world?” And Kavinsky goes, “GOD THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.” — so Ronan and Gansey think “Welp. Now we gotta kill him.” (Just kidding, they don’t say that)
Maura, Calla, and Blue show up in their Ford to pick up Ronan and Gansey. The amount of times people climb into cars in this book not knowing why or where they’re going is pretty funny. The boys are like “What is happening??” - the psychics say “Get in bitch. We’re going to the bed and breakfast Gray is staying at!” Just kidding they don’t actually say anything, because the next chapter starts with the boys standing around like “WHY ARE WE HERE?”
There’s a cute bit where Ronan notices Gansey and Blue are staying far away from each other, so they must have had a fight hahaha
I also love this line:
He [Gansey] was clearly discomfited by what Maura had told him about Adam on the ride over. Ganseys were creatures of habit, and he wanted Adam here, and he wanted Noah here, and he wanted everyone to like him, and he wanted to be in charge.
I love this kid so much. I probably relate to him a little too much.
FINALLY Maura answers everyone’s questions as to why they’re standing in a bed and breakfast room. She says when Mr. Gray comes here, Ronan has to look him in the eye and convince him not to kidnap him. Ronan is like….. “So hit him?”
“No, not hit him.”
“I punch?”
“No punch. You’re the Greywaren and he was sent here to bring you to some rich evil person. And he’s not the only one. There are people crawling all over this city looking for you.” (I’m paraphrasing all this dialogue, by the way)
“Why don’t we just let him take Kavinsky?” - Blue says.
“If they take that other boy, they’ll be back for the snake.” - says Calla.
Also Kavinsky is too stupid to know he’s hurting the leyline. — Ronan
Then the Gray Man arrives.
And explains that if he doesn’t turn in the Greywaren to this eccentric millionaire collector of magical things, his brother is going to hunt him down and torture and murder him. He reveals to Ronan that it was HE who killed his father (sent by Greenman to send a message to Declan, who he thought knew where the Greywaren was). Ronan, who had been pretty cool up until his point, launches at Gray and they get into a scuffle. Even cute little Chainsaw helps lol. It’s chaos up in this bed and breakfast and when Calla says “You, pretty one! Do something!” Gansey is like “Nah I think this is justified.” — Eventually they’re just panting on the floor. And Gray says that on the 4th of July, he’s going to call his boss and say that he found the Greywaren, but he’s keeping it for himself. And then he’s going to run.
MEANWHILE. Adam is having a gay old time in the woods. Okay I don’t mean to make light of this. Actually, it’s REALLY NICE to see him so at peace and finally feeling okay with himself, and the world, and detached from the pain he’s been carrying his entire life. I mean a side effect is kind of…. Also being detached from his friends. Which sucks. But everyone knows you need to love yourself before you can love others, so I like this.
Can I also insert a note that NO ONE HAS SEEN NOAH SINCE HE TACKLED THE NIGHT TERROR??? Um guuyysss??????
Alright so Persephone comes out to help, and together they figure out that the leyline is like a frayed wire. So they drive around all afternoon beneath a big dramatic thunderstorm sensing out rocks. Adam can FEEL the leyline and Cabeswater and knows exactly where all of the special rocks are haha they rearrange them in certain ways, or in some cases, take them and put them in the car.
So Kavinsky’s big 4th of July drug and explosion extravaganza starts. But not before he sends Ronan and threatening text because he has KIDNAPPED MATTHEW. Like an ACTUAL VILLAINOUS ASSHAT. I thought he was just like… Ronan’s rebellious, party hardy friend. Turns out he’s fucking crazy and real mad that Ronan “Didn’t choose him”.
They show up and see Kavinsky arrive with 10 identical Mitsubishis driven by his friends. Matthew is in one of them. And Kavinsky won’t listen to reason. He pops a green pill and promptly passes out against the car. Blue and Gansey are like ummmmm….okay? But Ronan is like shit shit shit he’s going to Cabeswater. He’s going to bring back something awful. You guys find Matthew. I’ll be right back. And he pops and green pill too.
I just imagine Gansey and Blue standing there like “UMMMMM????”
Of course through all of this, killing Kavinsky would be a simple solution, but none of our boys are murdererers so…
In the dream world (aka Cabeswater), Ronan finds Kavinsky getting the shit beaten out of him by the trees. They are sick and tired of these punks coming and stealing their magic.
We get this exchange:
“You don’t have to do this,” Ronan said.
“There isn’t anything else, man.”
“There’s reality.”
Kavinsky laughed the word. “Reality! Reality’s what other people dream for you.”
“Reality’s where other people are,” Ronan replied. He stretched out his arms. “What’s here, K? Nothing! No one!”
“Just us.”
There was a heavy understanding in that statement, amplified by the dream. I know what you are, Kavinsky had said.
“That’s not enough,” Ronan replied.
“Don’t say Dick Gansey, man. Do not say it. He is never going to be with you. And don’t tell me you don’t swing that way, man. I’m in your head.”
“That’s not what Gansey is to me,” Ronan said.
“You didn’t say you don’t swing that way.”
Ronan was silent.
Thunder growled under his feet. “No, I didn’t.”
I love the way homosexuality is handled in this book. There’s not one ounce of cliche.
Kavinsky is strong though, and creates a DRAGON MADE OF FIRE, totally tapping Cabeswater and promptly disappearing back to the real world. Ronan is left alone with the Orphan Girl, who explains to him that “He is the only one”. There may be others in this world that have dream powers, but there’s only one Greywaren. I don’t know what that means. Probably just that he has a special connection with the leyline.
Kavinsky has totally dried up the leyline magic. Adam can sense it. So using his newfound badass intuition, he arranges the rocks he’s been collecting, POINTS AT THE SKY LIKE A LITERAL MAGICIAN, and gets a lightning bolt to strike in the middle of it. Don’t think too hard about how this happens. Adam is magic now. That’s all we need to know. Ronan, in the dream, in Cabeswater, can SEE ADAM doing this in the real world, and they have an amazing moment of recognition where Adam says “I know it was you who arranged the rent. I figured it out.” But he’s not mad. He’s calm. (Maybe… appreciative?) — and then Adam is like “Now Ronan. Go.”
And with the leyline charged up from the lightning strike (thanks magic Adam!) Ronan tries to think of something to defeat Kavinsky’s dragon. But at the worst possible moment, all he hears is the sound of a night horror. He’s like um, no trees. Bad trees. This is not helpful.
But the trees reply something to the effect of: A sword is only dangerous in the hands of someone… like… looking to hurt people with it. Or something. DO not fear your night horrors, Ronan. (But in pretty Latin tree speak)
A giant fucking two-headed albino raven manifests.
“Why do you hate you?” (The Orphan girl asks)
Ronan thought about it. The albino night horror swept in, talons opening.
Ronan stood up, stretching out his arm like he would to Chainsaw. “I don’t,” he said.
And he woke up.
Love it. Love this metaphor for Ronan coming to terms with himself. (Our religious boi… has a lot going on)
So back in the real world there’s an epic kaiju battle between a fire dragon and a lightning raven and everyone is too drunk and high to notice. They’re all cheering like “WHOA!! Kavinsky’s fireworks are always so crazy!”. Meanwhile Blue and Gansey are running around checking all of the Mitsubishis for Matthew.
There’s fire everywhere. Everything is on fire and it’s getting worse by the second while Kavinsky stands on the hood of the car losing his god damned mind. He reminds Ronan that he killed his own father. AND EVEN HIS BEST FRIEND Propopenko. Then he just dreamed them back into existence — clever duplicates. This kid is actually insane.
Finally, they find Matthew in the trunk of one of the cars. They get him out and hit the ground just before the fire dragon careens down toward them. Kavinsky won’t get off the car. And he utters “Life is a nightmare.” Before his own creation kills him. DUDE this kid is messed up. Once he’s dead, all of the dream things go into their coma state. Propopenko’s car crashes because he’s asleep at the wheel.
Alright so the last knot to tie up is the Gray man. He’s in the dream Mitsubishi. He’s driving down the highway drawing out all the other hit men AND his homicidal brother. This goes on for a while and the author does a great job of building up the tension. They drive and drive and drive. He pulls into a gas station and has a lovely chat with some henchmen, convincing them to give up and go away.
Then, the moment of truth.
He has to face his brother, who has tortured him in the past and will surely torture him again. We’re all just dreading this. Like oh my god what’s he gonna do? WHat kind of epic battle are they gonna have in this parking lot? What are we going to have to endure reading as Gray’s brother ties him up and tortures him.
Welp.
They pull up in their cars, side by side. And Gray’s brother is like “Hellooo brother.” And Gray just…. Reaches for a gun in the passenger's seat and shoots him. Twice.
He’s dead now.
All that build up and the guy gets shot and Gray drives off. I laughed out loud at this. Like literally, this is like Whelk dying by getting trampled by random dream beasts. Like… OKAY, WE’LL TAKE IT!!!
In the epilogue, Cabeswater is back. The leyline has been restored and balanced. Ronan and Mathew go get their comatose mother and take her to the forest. The second they arrive, she wakes up. Noah is back!! Ronan dreams a new will that allows him and his brothers to set foot at the Barns whenever they want. But they can’t live there until they’re 18.
Ronan stares at Adam for an absurd amount of time, noticing how different he looks (now that he’s not depressed or crazy). Noticing how attractive he is. There’s this beautiful line about secrets. And how “Adam Parrish was Ronan’s second secret.” — AWWWWW
Adam shows the gang how the pool in Cabeswater dried up, and now it has revealed a black-rock cave leading deep underground. Gansey is immediately like “Do we go in it? Do we go in now? Glendower down there. I find Glendower.” And Adam is like “I don’t think it’s safe.” — and everyone trusts the boy with a mental link to the magic forest.
This book ends with everyone clamoring back to 300 Fox Way (I think they got a phone call) and they find a tipped over skrying bowl, and a sloppy note from Maura that says “Glendower is underground and so am I.”
DUN DUN DUNNNN THE END!!!!
Well, I just loved this book and I am ecstatic that I am halfway through this series. This world is weird. I love the writing voice. I love these CHARACTERS SO MUCH and I love how much they love each other. They just care about each other SO MUCH. I’m trying to avoid spoilers like crazy while I look at fan art. I am not okay about Gansey being fated to die. I am not okay about him and Blue being so in love and not able to kiss. This series is wrecking me.
I can’t wait to read the next book and learn how the next villain gets killed anticlimactically lol. I do feel sorry for Kavinsky. He was very troubled. Poor boy had too much money and power and not enough love. And I like that the Gray man is part of the gang now. BUT NOW WE HAVE TO FIND MAURA!!!
Deadass Rating: 8.5/10
Unofficial theme song: “Trying to Sleep” byWolfie’s Just Fine
#the raven cycle#maggie stiefvater#raven boys#the dream thieves#blue x gansey#adam x ronan#joseph kavinsky#maura sargent#the raven boys#noah czerny#ronan lynch#richard gansey#gansey
20 notes
·
View notes
Note
hiii #38 from the romantic/mildly spicy prompt list? :)
Oooo! Thank you so much!! I went a little wild with this one, I hope you don't mind some AU action!! 🥺💕
38. Meeting the Family
[Romantic/Mildly Spicy Prompts]
Adam stood next to Ronan, holding Ronan's hand tightly in his own, as they waited outside the upscale bistro in Washington, DC. Ronan was relaxed and casual. He looked at Adam, smiling fondly.
"Relax, Parrish," he chuckled. Adam looked up into Ronan's handsome face. His long curls were pulled back into a half pony tail, the rest hanging down to his shoulders. His bright blue eyes sparkled as he smiled at Adam.
When law student Adam Parrish had met art student Ronan Lynch, it had been like oil and water. Ronan, with his long hair and piercings and tattoos, was nothing like clean-cut, poised Adam.
But opposites attract because Ronan and Adam had slowly been drawn closer and closer into one another's orbits until they'd collided. Now, a year into their relationship, Adam was meeting Ronan's family.
Adam had heard all about the Lynches. Niall, Ronan's father, a fast-talking, charming Irishman, his second wife, Aurora, Ronan's step-mother, Declan, the oldest Lynch brother, his wife Jordan, and then Matthew, Ronan and Declan's half-brother, and the youngest Lynch.
"They're going to love you," Ronan assured, kissing Adam's cheek, and Adam felt his cheeks warm, blushing.
The Lynches arrived in separate cars. Niall, Aurora, and Matthew, and then Declan and Jordan. Niall was extremely personably, shaking Adam's hand heartily and saying how pleased he was to finally meet Adam. Aurora was sweet and maternal, giving Adam a hug, saying how handsome Adam was. Matthew was effervescent, hugging Adam tightly, as if they were siblings rather than just meeting for the first time. Adam liked him immediately.
Declan was polite but serious, which Ronan had told Adam to expect, shaking Adam's hand firmly. Jordan was far more casual and warm, calling Adam 'mate' and hugging him. Ronan winked at him, taking his hand once more, as they moved into the restaurant.
Adam could see the family resemblance between Declan, Ronan, and Niall. All three of them shared the same dark, curly hair, Roman nose, and straight toothed smile. There were slight differences that Adam guessed were passed on from their birth mother. Ronan's eyes especially, a light blue compared to Declan and Niall's darker shade.
Matthew and Jordan were lively and chatty, keeping Adam in conversation when Niall wasn't. Niall seemed to enjoy regaling everyone of his many exploits and adventures.
By the time lunch was done and they'd said their goodbyes and how lovely it was to have met one another, Adam was in need of a very long nap. He slid into Ronan's BMW, his head back against the headrest.
"How'd I do?" he asked Ronan, glancing at his boyfriend.
"Passed with flying colors," Ronan replied. "They loved you. And I love you. You were great."
Adam smiled tiredly and Ronan leaned over to kiss his cheek, lingering.
"I love you, too," Adam replied, smiling.
8 notes
·
View notes
Note
📓
Thanks, friend! 🥰
I'm really into time travel stuff, so naturally, I have daydreamed many, many times about writing a time travel fic that essentially steals the plot of Yesterday Is History by Kosoko Jackson. It's got a little bit of Adansey, but (as always) the end game is Pynch. This is long, so I'll throw it behind the cut:
Adam is grad student at Georgetown, living with Blue in an unreasonably and suspiciously cheap basement apartment in Georgetown. Everything is going swell, then he starts getting stomach pains. In typical Adam Parrish fashion, he just deals with it and doesn't get it checked out until, one day, he collapses on campus. Turns out the stomach pain was a sign of something bad (in the book, it's cancer, but daydream fic is unclear), and he needs a liver transplant. Miraculously, he gets one. Like crazy stupid fast, faster than anyone has ever gotten a transplant before kinda fast.
He's recovering well, then one day, he's hanging out on his and Blue’s patio and starts nodding off, only to be woken up by a thunderstorm. Except it was a bright sunny day without a cloud in the sky. So Adam is all, "DC weather 🙄" and starts heading inside, but the door into their apartment is locked, and Adam hadn't locked it. He knocks on the door, thinking Blue accidentally locked it, but it's not Blue who comes to the door. It's Gansey. And it's not 2023 or whenever the present day would be. It's 1962.
Adam had somehow unknowingly traveled back in time.
So Gansey lets Adam in out of the rain because the apartment he and Blue share is in what used to be the Gansey family mansion and, in typical Gansey fashion, is incredibly curious about Adam, and Adam is curious about Gansey. They talk for a while, hit it off a bit, then Adam starts stressing out about how he's going to get back to his time, and that's what triggers him going back.
So Adam starts popping back to Gansey in 1962 whenever he gets a little stressed out, they become friends, yadda yadda. Then one day there's a knock on the door of the unreasonably and suspiciously cheap Georgetown apartment, and it's Declan Lynch.
Turns out...
The Lynches have a genetic disposition toward time travel (that Declan of course doesn't himself have 🥺), and that liver Adam got? It was Matthew's (sorry 😭😭). Adam obviously has evidence this time travel thing is real, but he's like, "No, sorry. Don't want anything to do with you. Bye." Until Declan says his other younger brother can teach Adam how to manage it.
Enter Ronan.
They h. a. t. e. each other at first. Ronan's a shitty teacher and Adam is stubborn as hell and they butt heads. So Adam starts escaping to Gansey more, but then he starts getting pain in his stomach again. Turns out, he can't keep popping back and forth in time, because it's only one part of his body that let's him do it, not his whole body (which can spread out the shock of time travel more or something? Don't ask.)
But as much as they initially dislike one another, eventually Adam and Ronan kind of get into a groove with the whole time travel teaching thing, and they start liking each other a little. Then a little more. Then a little more. But Adam is still going back to Gansey, because he likes Gansey, too.
Ultimately, the whole time travel thing begins really wrecking his body, so Adam has to stop traveling. He has an ultimatum: go back to Gansey and never see Ronan again, or continue in his present with Ronan and never see Gansey again.
Adam chooses Ronan. He's really beat up about leaving Gansey back in the 60s because Gansey made him happy and he made Gansey happy, but Adam gets over it.
TURNS OUT...
The reason why the Georgetown basement apartment is so unreasonably and suspiciously cheap?
Adam and Blue’s landlord is one Mr. Henry Cheng. Gansey found him in his time, they fell in love, Gansey told Henry all about Adam, and when Gansey passed (sorry again 😭😭), he made Henry promise to turn the Gansey family mansion into apartments and put the listing for the basement apartment up when Adam would be looking for a place to live. (Gansey writes this really sappy letter to Adam that Henry gives to him and its all a big fluffy mess about how much Gansey appreciated his time with Adam, and that Adam shouldn't worry about him because he found Henry and they were very happy blah blah blah.)
And, in the present time, Adam and Ronan live happily ever after. The end.
That was so long, sorry! But yeah, this is one I daydream about a lot and will probably never write. 😌
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
Happy new year! If the adage is that you spend today doing what you want to for the rest of the year, then I want to keep reading and reccing some fics I’ve loved in the last little while!
So, here’s a mish-mash of multi-fandoms. As always, you can find my master rec collection here.
Ghosts (BBC)
And So On and So Forth by V_Evergreen
Dying is, of course, incredibly tragic. It is also the most wonderful opportunity.
Father of the Bride by EllianaDunla
Rachel Fawcett visits Button House to feel closer to her father.
Which happens, just not quite in the way she expects.
Project Chatterbox by SqutternutBosh
‘What’s this?’ Alison asks, looking down at the scrappy piece of note paper that Mike has just put down in front of her.
‘It’s a list of ways I can talk to them,’ Mike says, sitting down beside her at the kitchen table.
Raven Cycle
hold me tight, fear me not by audikatia for Northisnotup
When Adam stepped around, he found himself suddenly in an emerald glen of moss-covered trees. More blue roses scattered over the green ground like raindrops or tears.
And there, in the center, was a man pinned to a tree with an arrow through his heart. :: Tam Lin AU
Someone Worth Knowing by SprigsofViolets
Alex Claremont-Diaz and Adam Parrish meet on their first day at NYU. They do not hit it off—cue the academic rivalry. They hate each other until they learn to understand each other.
(I can’t tell you how many times I’ve re-read this one, esp as it hits two of my fave canons in all the right places)
since you've been home, see what you have become by Mici (noharlembeat)
Adam goes touring colleges, and Ronan comes along. And Opal, well. She stays with Declan.
***Greywaren spoilers for the below fics!***
There's No Place Like My Room by Lil_Redhead
Sometimes endings are endings, but sometimes they’re just middles and the real ending is very, very far away.
Or, the days between the last chapters and the epilogue of Greywaren
(This one is still a WIP with one chapter left to post, but it hits all the right notes of post-Greywaren + plot that I was craving after finishing the book)
god only knows (what i'd be without you) by RhymeReason
[Part of Gansey was starting to accept that two of his best friends were most likely dead.]
Or: gansey finds adam and ronan :)
and on the seventh day he rested by Prevalent_Masters
On the seventh day, the Lynch brothers discovered they were friends once more.
Or, the week following the (near) apocalypse.
Roswell New Mexico
Contigo me encontré by beautifulcheat (Katalyst), ladynox
The Lockhart House was once a home, although it was never a happy one. Steeped in tragedy, it still stands today, in the heart of Old Town Roswell, attracting ghost hunters and those seeking to catch a peak of something from beyond the veil.
Contrary to popular myth, it wasn’t currently haunted (except by one paranormally talented docent). It was Michael’s favorite job and the best part of his summer home from UNM. Or at least was until Alex Manes was hired to man the gift shop, complicating an otherwise fun and easy job.
With Love Overflowing by Nestra
"We both agree that this is not the place we belong, right? Please say yes."
Michael tossed his hat on the coffee table and dropped onto the couch. "If you mean that your dad's been dead since CrashCon and some kind of crazy shit is going on, then yeah, I agree."
(This one was for me for Secret Santa, it is just THAT GOOD that I want everyone in the world to read it)
Severance
r/severed by curtaincall for LearnedFoot
Welcome to r/severed! This is a subreddit to discuss the experience of severance and provide advice and support to fellow severed people (and friends and family).
Top Gun Maverick
we're fools to make war by whimsicule
In a Walmart at three am, between beef jerky and tortilla chips, with the lights flickering above them like it’s the fucking twilight zone, Bradley wants him more than he’s ever wanted anyone.
or: it's a hundred degrees in texas.
what doesn't kill me makes me want you more by ok_thanks
For Rooster to be his ex-boyfriend, that would require him to have been Jake’s boyfriend in the first place. Which he definitely wasn’t. He was –
"Ex-something," Jake coughs.
or, the intricate ritual of teasing the guy you've been hooking up with since college that you're definitely not in love with
Men Like Us by DancingDisaster
Seresin men love with reckless abandon. It’s put every man before him in the ground.
Jake refuses to be buried.
#recs#ghosts bbc fic recs#top gun fic recs#raven cycle fic recs#roswell fic recs#(the lack of old guard here is telling me I need to get into my marked to read pile#oops)
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
thinking about Declan and the moth again
it HAUNTS ME that the moth is one of the few times that Declan seems to lose his self-awareness completely. like, yeah, he's the ultimate king of repression, but he's usually very conscious of what he's repressing and the fact that he's repressing it. he knows his issues.
he knows that he forces down his emotions in an unhealthy way so that he can be the adult in the room at far too young an age. he knows he can't form healthy relationships because of a lifetime of danger and insecurity. he knows he dehumanized his mother as a means to cope with their batshit family situation. he knows he's competing with his father's ghost for a place in Ronan's life. he knows he resents Matthew for being the primary factor in his parentification and loss of opportunity in life. he knows he loves his father no matter how much he tries to convince himself to hate him. he knows he feels trapped in the life he's leading, doesn't see a way out, and likely wouldn't take it if he did because it would be at the expense of his brothers.
all of these things, Declan acknowledges openly, either to himself in narration or out loud to others. he may delude himself about how well he's coping with his issues, but he has no illusions about what his issues ARE.
except for the fucking moth.
it's such a perfect, on-the-nose symbol that it almost strains credulity for Declan not to acknowledge it as such, and yet not once does he ever look at the moth and feel the way he did about the black string art exhibit that made him recognize how trapped he felt in his life. "how the moth had beaten against the walls for those first few days, until it had learned it could not escape."
the learned helplessness of it - there's no point fighting to get free, just lie down and accept that this is your life. know what you're allowed to do, and have, and be. know what you're not. a creature of his father's making, confined by his father's hand.
and not even something as eye-catching as a butterfly, no, but a quieter subtler moth with eyes like glittering purple-black marbles that will never get to live a life because Niall made it so.
and the symbolic parallel of the display case and the townhouse. the rigid real world structures that Declan himself requested, because they made him feel more secure than being surrounded by dreams, and that his father provided in a well-meaning but ultimately short-sighted attempt to accommodate him. things that Declan only recognizes much later as the cages that they were.
Declan now regrets demanding his dad make the display case by hand, and when he puts himself through Ronan's bad-feeling security system at the end of the series, the memory it hits him with is inheriting the sterile alexandria townhouse that was exactly what he'd claimed to want.
these are symbols of Declan's complicity, in a manner of speaking, in the whole tragic mess that was his upbringing. at some point, quite early on, Declan's oppression became a joint effort, something that he participated in (because a complete lack of control in the situation would have felt worse). it reminds me of Declan struggling to remember which of them first decided to lie to Matthew about what he was, whether that was his dad's idea or if he'd done that of his own volition, just following pattern.
did dad trap him, or did he build the walls himself? or was it both?
but, for once, none of this is acknowledged by Declan in the text. this artistically-minded chronic overthinker carries the moth around with him - one of the two dreams he will never sell, alongside the gift from Ronan - and he stays so uncritically sentimental about it that he releases it on his wedding day with happy/nostalgic tears in his eyes, and it just boggles my mind.
this is the man who looked at a bunch of string and had the immediate revelation that he was utterly miserable and trapped in a spiderweb of a life precariously balanced on a knife's edge where one wrong move could get him and everyone he loved killed, but he looks at a direct, uncomplicated, one-to-one representation of himself and somehow does not recognize that it is not something to think of fondly. that, yes, it may be a symbol of his father's love for him, but it's not good.
#this goes hand in hand with Niall's characterization 180 in this book#uncritical thought is REQUIRED in order to maintain the rose-tinted view of him as a good father#Declan cannot look at that damn moth with his usual level of discernment and empathy or the whole arc falls apart#Declan Lynch#Niall Lynch#TRC#TDT#tags by me
72 notes
·
View notes
Note
i just saw the behind the scenes fic asks but!! 30, 12, and 18!
Honestly that's my bad for reblogging an ask game on Christmas Eve and expecting anyone to see. Thanks so much for asking!!! 💕
[Behind the Scenes writer asks]
30. Tell us an idea for a longfic you want to write in the future.
Oooh, well I was thinking recently about the potential of a Rovinsky fic where Niall and Aurora are still alive and Ronan starts seeing Kavinsky. I want to deal with Ronan's coming out, Kavinsky's influence on him, how Ronan's parents perceive their relationship, them getting to know and accept Kavinsky. I don't know if I'll ever get around to actually writing it, but I think it would be fun!
12. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?
So many!! So so many!!! Time travel is probably top of the list, I love time travel fics. The only reason I haven't yet is because I get too caught up in the semantics, figuring out the miniscule details of how time travel works and the effects it has, the things it changes, etc… Daydreaming about a time travel fic is easier than executing it.
18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.
I love this question so much. This is gonna be a kinda long answer but you literally asked for it, so 🤷
So the part I’m gonna ramble about right now isn’t actually one scene, but two different chapters in Magnetic that have a lot of really clear parallels and I don’t think enough people noticed it, so I need to talk about it.
It all kind of starts with this scene outside the church in Chapter 34, after Ronan decides to get sober and breaks up with Kavinsky;
Matthew's gaze bounced between Ronan and Declan and he kicked a pebble, watching it skitter into the road, then he settled that frown on Ronan and asked, “Is it drugs?”
"Yeah, Matthew,” he said, “it’s drugs.”
Matthew nodded. He had expected as much and his stoicism didn’t falter. “Is that why he’s here?”
It’s a wonder they had missed it before, following Matthew’s glower to where the Mitsubishi was parked across the street. Sat on top of the hood, just watching, waiting, was Kavinsky. He was a statue like the one of Mary inside the nave, unwavering and stonelike, an observer to the Lynch family drama.
“I thought you said you broke up with him,” Declan said.
“I did.”
“Well does he know that?”
Ronan couldn’t take his eyes off Kavinsky. The church reflected in his white sunglasses-- a massive, grandiose edifice like staring into the depths of whatever soul he had left-- and it was odd to see the things he’d once worshipped together like that; two fragmented gods. Now they both lacked any sort of appeal.
It’s not noticeable until way later, but it’s a direct parallel to the flashback scene in Chapter 55 when Ronan talks about when Kavinsky outed him to his brothers;
“It was after Mass,” Ronan said. “K and I had only been together a few weeks and it was still new and weird. We were figuring it out. But I came out of church one day and he was there.” Ronan could imagine it; Kavinsky lounging against the side of the BMW, cigarette between his fingers, those soulless white sunglasses in place. He was stunning and for a moment Ronan could only watch, mesmerized. Kavinsky would stop anyone in their tracks. He had that effect on people and Ronan was far from immune. “Declan saw him leaning against my car– our dad’s car– and he got all pissy, first at Kavinsky, then at me.”
“You’re hanging out with junkies now?” Declan demanded. “Ronan, this isn’t like you–”
“Fuck you, you don’t know anything about me.” Which was stupid. There was a time when Declan knew him better than anyone. Only he didn’t. Not really. Not anymore.
“Lynch!” All three brothers looked up. Kavinsky grinned.
“Who’s that?” Matthew had asked.
“Nobody,” Declan said, and then, “Ronan.” His name was a warning, a caution, a swear.
Kavinsky pushed away from the car, sauntered their way. “Older Lynch,” he greeted Declan, then Matthew, “Younger Lynch,” and then Ronan, “Sweetheart.” There was a terrifying second when he leaned in to press his lips to Ronan’s and it felt as though he short circuited, shocked and electric, frozen in place. It was over quick, a fleeting kiss, chaste even, but it replayed over and over again in Ronan’s head. An endless loop. Kavinsky kissed him. Kavinsky kissed him in front of his brothers. And just like that, Ronan’s worlds collided.
It's basically the beginning and end of Ronan and Kavinsky's relationship. And it’s SO IMPORTANT because it shows the ways Ronan has changed. In the flashback scene, he left with Kavinsky, but in Chapter 34 he actively decides to ignore Kavinsky. It shows how he went from consistently choosing his relationship with Kavinsky over the relationship with his brothers and how he’s finally choosing to be honest with his brothers and making the decision to leave Kavinsky behind.
Then there’s this part in Chapter 55 when Ronan is talking about the anniversary of his parents’ death and how he handled it;
“I didn’t want to be alone,” Ronan said, “but I didn’t want to be with my brothers either. K and I spent most of the day out at the fairgrounds, same way we used to. Making out, drinking. But I needed… more. I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing my parents. I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Like,” he shifted forward, pulled his legs up onto the couch with him, trying to make himself smaller, “what would I be doing right now if they hadn’t died? And instead of being at tennis practice or going to the movies or cooking dinner with my mom, I was having drunk sex in the backseat of my dad’s car. I was fucking mad. At my dad, and my mom, and Declan, and Kavinsky, and myself. You know that phrase, blood boiling? That’s what it felt like. It was like I was feeling so much and I just– I needed to let it out.”
“Through sex?”
“When that wasn’t enough, I started a fight. I don’t even remember what I said to him, but I kept shoving him. I knew if I pushed him far enough, he would snap and I just wanted him to hit me... He was usually easy to piss off, but I trusted him. He wouldn’t hurt me more than I could handle. But he didn’t hit me. He kind of just… shut down. He went blank. And he left.”
And the parallel in Chapter 34, after Ronan broke up with Kavinsky, after he fought with Declan, he was upset and uncertain how to deal with his feelings, so he tried to do the same thing by kissing Adam and then, when that didn't work, starting a fight;
“I’m not fucking drunk,” Ronan snapped. “I’m sober. I mean, I’m getting there. Withdrawals are a bitch, but I just-- fuck, I need this, Adam.” Catching Adam’s lips again proved more difficult this time as Adam saw it coming and he barely managed to reach him when Adam was pushing him away again, standing up. The suddenly empty space next to him immediately felt cold.
“Ronan!” Adam said and it sounded like an exclamation, like help or stop. It chilled Ronan to the bones. The warmth from before was gone. “You can’t do that. You can’t just show up here and kiss me like that. I don’t--”
“Don’t say you don’t want this,” Ronan interrupted. He stood too and hated the way Adam stepped away. “We both know that’s bullshit. You wanted me to kiss you.” Adam had wanted it nearly as long as he had, maybe longer. He’d said it himself.
But the furrow in his brow deepened. His jaw worked and, shaking his head sadly, he said, “Not like this.”
“It’s not like that, Parrish,” Ronan said. “You know I care about you.”
“I know,” Adam said. “I just think you should go. We can talk about this later.”
“Adam,” Ronan said, a question and a plea wrapped into one simple word. He reached out and saw Adam pull away, felt it like Adam was ripping away one of his own limbs. “I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“I know.”
“Adam,” Ronan said again. “Please. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Adam said.
“Shit, Adam, say something else,” Ronan pleaded. "Yell at me. Tell me an asshole. Tell me you didn’t want me to kiss you. For once in your goddamn life, Adam, stand up for yourself.”
When Adam’s tongue flicked across his lower lip, Ronan wondered if he tasted him there. “I don’t want to fight,” he finally said. But Ronan did. He wanted to fight because fighting was easy, mindless and numbing. It was hard to feel pain when anger was overwhelming. “You need to leave.”
These two scenes are so good. It not only shows the similarities between how Ronan treats both Kavinsky and Adam when he's distressed (side note; I’ve gotten comments about how Kavinsky is abusive (we all know that) but nobody wants to acknowledge that Ronan is also abusive and this paints a really good picture of how he uses Kavinsky and, in this case, Adam, for his own benefit without considering how it affects them and that is another whole post, but I won't go into that right now) but it also shows the comparisons in how Adam and Kavinsky reacted to it. In both scenes, Adam and Kavinsky chose not to indulge in the fighting, they walked away. When Kavinsky turned him down, that was the first time Ronan tried to commit suicide. And when Adam turned him down, Ronan went back to Kavinsky which is essentially a metaphor for suicide because he’s reverting back to his old self.
#thanks so much for asking#❤️❤️❤️❤️#Magnetic#pynch#rovinsky#ask game#there are actually so many good parallels in Magnetic#and i could talk about them forever
6 notes
·
View notes
Text
✝ main ✝ bio ✝ face ✝ muse ✝ wishlist ✝
about:
This is a sideblog, and I follow back from my main @grimmusings. Please direct IMs there, since it's easier for me to keep all my messages on one blog. It's also easier to start interactions with me there, where I regularly post open starters and meme prompts. For a full list of rules and verses, see my main. Honesty hour questions will largely be answered IC and treated as anonymous unless signed by a muse.
There are major spoilers ahead for The Raven Cycle and some for the Dreamer trilogy. Ronan has the ability to take objects or beings (or sometimes entire forests) out of his dreams. There's no real limit to what he can take--if it works in the dream, it works in real life, beyond the bounds of reason or physics--but he must be on a ley line to use the power, and he'll die if he leaves the line for too long. He guards this secret ferociously, so there is no chance your muse would know about it unless they're a fellow canon in the know or it's been heavily plotted ahead of time. What they are welcome to notice is that he's often surrounded by improbable objects or that he constantly hums with dream energy if they're supernaturally sensitive to that sort of thing.
I typically pull my portrayal from some time after he's graduated from Aglionby, while Adam is away at college, and Ronan is fucking around dreaming things, taking care of the Barns, and generally being a menace. I take some elements from the Dreamer trilogy, including Ronan's friendship with Jordan and their investigation into sweetmetals (made objects or art that keep dreamed things awake even after their dreamers die, otherwise they fall into an unwakeable sleep). In addition to the intricate tattoo on his back, Ronan also has the chainmail tattoo on one arm that's made of sweetmetal ink to keep him awake off a ley line. However, I typically don't include Ronan's friendship with Bryde, their bout of ecoterrorism, or the plot with the Moderators.
wanted connections:
Per canon, he's a hostile jerk to most people, so please do not interact if you're not prepared for that. Likewise, your muses are welcome to respond in kind, since being an asshole has consequences. This is by no means a comprehensive list, and I can roll with most muses as far as basic interactions. I’m happy to ship Ronan with other TRC characters and OCs/fandom crossovers based on chemistry, but unless they’re on my OTP list, they need plotting and interaction first. There is never any pressure to ship with me, even if they’re on my list.
Please note that I write Ronan as homosexual, as supported by his canon, and I only ship him with male muses, with the exception of a polycule that includes Blue Sargent (because imo the canon also supports all of them being in love with each other). He doesn't consider this as much a secret as it used to be, and while he's come a long way in terms of acceptance, that Catholic guilt is hard to shake, and he still struggles to be open about it. There may be some internalized homophobia in his threads.
OTPs: Adam Parrish, Richard Campbell Gansey III, Noah Czerny, Blue Sargent, Joseph Kavinsky
NOTPs: Anyone on the family list (it should go without saying, but you'd be surprised), Bryde
Family: Matthew Lynch, Declan Lynch
Other: Jordan Hennessy, Opal, any supernatural/powered people because he feels very alone in that secret
0 notes
Note
Ok so I’m into the dreamer trilogy and haven’t read the Raven cycle...what is Declan’s characterisation/journey there?
THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST ASK I’VE EVER RECEIVED. IMAGINE I’M STANDING WITH MY ARMS SPREAD USING DIFFERENT VOICES AND HAND GESTURES TO REENACT THIS STORY FOR A RESENTFUL CAPTIVE AUDIENCE
also declan’s TRC storyline is like. equal parts horribly fucking sad and unbelievably fucking hilarious so. i will try to strike a Balance
FIRST OFF. there is exactly one (1) declan POV chapter in the entire series. it happens toward the end of the last book. up until then, everything we know about him comes from the observations and narration of others.
he is also a very minor character. his importance grows throughout the series, but almost all of his actions happen offscreen. it’s not until the last book that we know exactly how much he’s been dealing with the whole time.
when he’s introduced in the first book, he appears as a plot device. here is a two-dimensional horrible controlling hardass who doesn’t give a shit about anything but his future political career. look at his fake, smug fucking grin. how did someone like ronan end up with a brother like him?? doesn’t matter. it’s a convenient excuse for ronan to live with his best friend in a drafty warehouse, which means more room for YA hijinks!
declan’s introduction scene is Embroiled in Capital-D Douchebaggery. according to the narration (from gansey and adam), he loves to fuck women and then never call them back, cozy up to powerful people, and bitch about how ronan’s ruining his life by being sad about their dead parents. SOME people can just get over their dead parents, ronan!
this intro scene is also Extremely Funny i 100% recommend reading it even if u don’t read the actual series. ronan makes a nasty comment, declan goes “why are you the way that you are” and tries to salvage his date, gansey utters the phrase “man whore”
then later that night things go like. actually bad.
declan shows up at the same pizza place where ronan is with his friends. this scene is gansey pov. gansey runs out to the parking lot to find the two of them Very Literally Trying To Kill Each Other. you don’t see that violence in cdth - there’s only the TINIEST shadow of it when declan confronts ronan over matthew - so i Cannot Express Enough that someone is going to end up hospitalized at BEST. ronan’s already slammed declan’s head on the car, declan’s already grabbed ronan and beaten the shit out of his face, like.
you do not get good old-fashioned Declan Lynch At His Actual Worst in cdth. u might be thinking, THAT guy???? doing THIS????
oh yeah. things are real bad between declan and ronan.
after gansey breaks up the fight (and gets punched in the face for his trouble, albeit accidentally), declan tells ronan that their dad would be fucking ashamed to see him now & that he’s washing his hands of it & basically if ronan wants to go off and fucking die, he can.
this is like. just a couple months after the magical suicide attempt referenced in cdth
in the aftermath of that scene it becomes clear that ronan absolutely unequivocally 100% will kill himself if he has to live with declan. hence. why he’s living with gansey instead. gansey spends that whole night petrified that the declan altercation will lead to another attempt, and for Good Reason
so like, that’s how we first meet declan. he’s an uncaring wannabe corporate asshole who does not give a fuck and who only exists to exacerbate ronan’s mental health issues.
but then the opening of book 2 gets real interesting.
book 2 is where we start learning more about the lynch family. we learn that ronan’s father was a dreamer who sold his creations on the black market, we learn that that’s why he was murdered. we learn that ronan’s a dreamer too. we learn that there are very powerful people looking for the greywaren, an artifact that takes objects from dreams. those powerful people just don’t realize it’s a person, yet.
so here’s the assassin who killed niall lynch.
he goes to declan’s dorm.
with everything we know about declan, the kid should be completely unprepared. he can box, but the assassin knows that, so there’s no real advantage. he’s alone, and he doesn’t have an escape route.
declan pulls out a gun.
this is an unexpected turn of events.
unfortunately he ends up getting beaten half to death with the butt of said gun, because he loses the ensuing physical struggle for the weapon. the assassin is like, i need the greywaren. declan is like, i know it exists but i don’t know what it is. i’ll find it for you. i’ll get it to you. then you’ll leave me the fuck alone
now with everything we know of declan at this point - his attitude toward ronan, his general demeanor, and this new knowledge that he knew about the black market - there’s one obvious question.
will declan sell ronan out if he finds out about the dreaming.
and like, okay. their relationship is antagonistic in cdth but it is NOT what it is in trc. believe me when i tell you that at that point, when you’re reading, you can pretty reasonably go, “oh, god. oh god. oh god please no one ever tell declan what the greywaren is. oh god.”
declan has some other interactions with ronan and the gang throughout the book, mostly where he’s just a hardass who tells ronan to stop causing trouble. adam’s the only one who notices that declan is scared. like bone-deep shaking to the core petrified. about Something.
probably getting beaten to within an inch of his life by the man who murdered his father. that’s the reasonable reader conclusion.
so imagine how everything changes when you find out that declan already knows. that declan’s known about ronan’s dreaming for longer than ronan has. that declan knew exactly what and who the greywaren was, and he lied to a man who was ready to torture him for information, and he got away with it.
suddenly a lot of things recontextualize.
“keep your head down and stop making trouble”? people are gonna NOTICE your magic bullshit, ronan, we do not have time for this!
“stop hanging with that loser druggie friend of yours”? you mean the loser druggie friend who sells on the magic black market and doesn’t care about protecting himself or anyone else?
“i got super weird for no reason about ronan sleeping close to adam”? i don’t have fucking TIME to be homophobic i’m busy with your POTENTIAL TO MANIFEST NIGHT TERRORS IN FRONT OF WITNESSES IN BROAD DAYLIGHT
“i’ll find out what the greywaren is and bring it to you”? i’ll die. i’m making a bargain to die. i’m never giving you the greywaren and i know you’re going to kill me about it and that’s fine as long as my brothers are safe
ronan doesn’t know that he dreamed matthew. declan knows. he’s known the whole time. declan tells ronan in book 3. and then things recontextualize even further, because ronan’s death is also matthew’s, and matthew IS close to declan in trc.
but declan never tells the goddamn truth unless it’s his last option. he doesn’t tell ronan that he knows about the dreaming and he doesn’t tell ronan what specifically wants to hurt him and the lack of communication fucking destroys both of them.
in the last book, ronan realizes declan loves him.
more than that, he realizes declan’s loved him the whole time.
this is when declan finally tells the truth. things are getting bad, plot-wise, and declan is scared, so he comes clean. he tells ronan that niall specifically tasked declan with protecting ronan from the market. he begs ronan to run from the danger. “let’s pour gasoline on everything dad left and start over.”
this is also when ronan realizes that declan’s childhood was very different from ronan’s own. and that niall and aurora lynch were not the same people to declan that they were to ronan. and that their father’s decisions are what’s driven the wedge between him and declan all this time
(he’s still struggling with the cognitive dissonance of this in cdth. i don’t think he knows how to adjust his perception of declan to fit this new information.)
aaaaand the final scene with declan makes me cry every time i read it so instead of summarizing, here’s the important part:
Ronan delivered a sharp tap to the object, and a small cloud of fiery orbs sprayed up with a sparkling hiss.
“Jesus, Ronan!” Declan jerked his chin away.
“Please. Did you think I’d blow your face off?”
He demonstrated it again, that quick tap, that burst of brilliant orbs. He tipped it into Declan’s hand, and before Declan could say anything, jabbed it to activate it once more.
Orbs gasped up into the air. For a moment, he saw how his brother was caught inside them, watching them soar furiously around his face, each gold sun firing gold and white, and when he saw the spacious longing in Declan’s face, he realized how much Declan had missed by growing up neither dreamer nor dreamt. This had never been his home. The Lynches had never tried to make it Declan’s home.
“Declan?” Ronan asked.
Declan’s face cleared. “This is the most useful thing you’ve ever dreamt. You should name it.”
“I have. ORBMASTER. All caps.”
“Technically you’re the orbmaster though, right? And that’s just an orb.”
“Anyone who holds it becomes an ORBMASTER. You’re an ORBMASTER right now. There, keep it, put it in your pocket. D.C. ORBMASTER.”
Declan reached out and scuffed Ronan’s shaved head. “You’re such a little asshole.”
The last time they’d stood on this roof together, their parents had both been alive, and the cattle in these fields had been slowly grazing, and the world had been a smaller place. That time was gone, but for once, it was all right.
The brothers both looked back over the place that had made them, and then they climbed down from the roof together.
#long post#REALLY long post#i haven't reread this so excuse any incoherence#trc#trc meta#not really but??#suicide /#declan lynch#i love my idiot son#replies#Anonymous
641 notes
·
View notes
Text
It’s awkward.
It’s been awkward since the moment they parked the car and Adam saw the curtains twitching in the windows.
“They knew I was coming, right?” He’d sounded amused. Charmed, almost. Still distracted by the trees and the fields and the cows and the barns which littered the Barns.
“Yup,” Ronan’d said. Making no move to turn the car off.
Adam paused in the middle of unbuckling his seatbelt. “They knew I was coming, right?”
As in, they knew it was Adam Parrish, his boyfriend, a man, who was coming to dinner.
Wisely, Ronan said nothing. Silence was not a lie.
It wasn’t an answer, either, but —
“Ronan.” Adam hissed.
Fuck. Adam brought out the first name. He was pissed. Fingers drumming on the steering wheel, Ronan sneered, “Yes, they knew I was bringing someone.”
Adam blew out a breath. “Un-fucking-beliveable, Lynch.”
Well, at least they were back in safe harbors. Ronan’s heart was trying to blast it’s way out of his fucking chest, but, what was new.
“What are we walking into?”
Affection welled up in his frantically beating heart and Ronan had to lean forward and breath in the leather conditioning for a second. Adam, practical and ruthless and immediately on his side. Knowing there were sides. Prying his hand off the wheel, Ronan reached out and brought Adam’s knuckles to his lips the same way he did when he didn’t have words, the same way he did in his dreams, the way he did to say ‘thank you,’ and ‘I love you,’ and all the too-big things that raged inside him.
“Family dinner,” he shrugged.
“Don’t be a shit head,” Adam said, and Ronan rewarded him with a quick bite to the knuckles he’d been kissing.
It probably said something about him that he found Adam’s insults more grounding than any sweet nothings that Adam wouldn’t have said anyway. Not here. His shields were up, had been up since the second they made the turn off the highway, but Ronan was included in them now.
“Family dinner where everyone’s pissed at me,” he admitted. A lame offering in return for the gift of Adam’s presence. “I’ve skipped Church the last three Sunday’s after Declan told mom and da that I was seeing someone.”
Adam’s knuckles tightened against Ronan’s lips. He didn’t look over. He didn’t need to look to know that Adam was giving him a ‘what the fuck is wrong with you,’ look.
“We’ve been dating over a year,” Adam said.
Ronan shrugged.
“You asked me to move in with you.”
“You said no,” Ronan snapped, still stung about it.
“You didn’t tell your family about me?”
Fuck. He kissed Adam’s knuckles again, turned his hand over to kiss his wrist, his palm, each one of his fingertips. Adam put off meeting Gansey until after they’d been together for three months. He’d joked ‘three months is the minimum for ‘meet the family.’ At the time, it had warmed Ronan through that he’d seen Gansey and recognized Ronan’s family in him. Adam didn’t want to merge their lives too much, at first. No double dates. No ‘this is my favourite spot in the city.’ Strict rules for who pays for what and when to go dutch. Ronan scoffed and Ronan groaned and Ronan pushed where he could and Ronan said I love you first and all the while…
“It wasn’t like that,” he said instead. “You’ve been free the last three Sunday’s.”
Ronan’s a Dreamer. Like his da. And a dreamer, like his mom. And Adam is… magic. He’s just magic, plain and simple.
Adam takes his meaning, something he’s good at. Or maybe he just understands that whatever contentious relationship Ronan has with his family and with God, that he’s put Adam above all that.
They managed to skip most of the posturing by being late. Dinner already cooked and ready to be served by the time Adam managed to pry his hand out of Ronan’s death grip.
Which leads to this moment, here. At the Lynch family dinner table, sitting in this awkward stew of awkward people all trying so desperately hard to pretend it’s not at all awkward. With his mom and Matthew exhausting every conversational topic they can think of, and Adam with his ‘aw shucks,’ Southern Charm smiles out full force, while his father and older brother sit in their silence.
“How did you two meet?” Aurora smiles, all roses, no thorns. She’s been delighted by Adam since he sat down. Who wouldn’t be? College boy working two jobs and still managing to make it to a proper family dinner with his boyfriend’s parents.
Adam loves this story. True to form, he nudges Ronan, smirk coiling in the corner of his mouth. “How did we meet?” He leaves their shoulders flush together instead of moving back.
Ronan rolls his eyes. “It’s your story, you tell it,” he grumbles, stuttering over the expletive that wants to come out but is decidedly unwelcome at Niall Lynch’s dinner table. It’s for show, because it makes Adam laugh. Usually, it’s a mean laugh. Petty, the way Ronan loves him best, but he lightens it for the sake of their audience.
“No, you tell it better,” he says, using his water glass to hide his smirk.
“I was visiting Gansey and I forgot he had new classes,” he starts, no point in going any further because Adam, as always, jumps in.
“You got lost.”
“I did not.” Ronan snaps. “It was the same fu- it was the same classroom.”
“For a different class. Entirely different from the class you were looking for.”
“Who cares! What happened next?” Matthew says, words tumbling over one another in excitement.
Adam takes over, as he always does. Fuck, why does he even ask Ronan to tell the story. “So he slips into the back of the lecture hall, midlecture. And the Professor hates that. Calls on him immediately to analyze the text and provide translation and context. It was a Latin class, So of course Ronan does it. Doesn’t seem to bat an eye. Professor is furious, but it’s more than anyone else has been able to do, only it’s Ronan. And he feels challenged. So he starts giving his analysis on the context…in Latin.”
Matthew crows with laughter, and Aurora hides her smile behind her hand, blue eyes dancing. He watches her eyes dart away from Adam, across the table. Once, he would only know that expression in the context of a child stealing family secrets. A year into his relationship with Adam, he recognizes a shorthand, a language all its own shared between husband and wife. But the years since he stormed out of the family farmhouse and went to live in a fucking abandoned factory with his best friend have eroded his ability to translate the language. He’s not fluent in what the slant of Aurora’s pale brows mean anymore than he is the answering shrug and attention paid to his fathers carrots.
Declan’s scoff brings Ronan’s attention back to the table. “Is his grammar still a nightmare, then?”
It’s a subtle thing, the tension that strings Adam Parrish together. Ronan knew it the second he saw him, glowering up at him in that fucking lecture hall, knuckles white on his pen, where it hovered over his notebook. He’s made a fucking thesis study of it in the time since, and if they were anywhere else this particular tension would be shown in a baring of teeth that is not unlike a smile, except for all the ways that it is.
“Is your grammar still terrible?” The Latin rolls off Adam’s tongue easy as breathing.
“My grammar can shit on his tongue,” Ronan grunts back, safe in the knowledge that any Latin Declan learned was long wiped out to make better use of his fucking business degree, and that the rest of his family only knows enough to follow along in Church.
At the head of the table, Niall Lynch puts his knife and fork down. “Adam Parrish, hm.”
The table falls silent.
Even years after leaving, Ronan is still furious and heartbroken to see how quickly he falls in line. Silent, head bowed, even his knee has stopped jiggling beneath the tablecloth. Adam’s knee knocks against his, a whisper of cloth, and Ronan lets out the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.
“You know, you’re the first person my Ronan has ever brought home.”
Ronan had never asked to be the golden child. He’d never wanted his parent’s to play favourites. Declan had hated him so much for the way Niall doted on him. And then Ronan left, and Declan seemed to hate him more for centering their father’s ambitions and dreams (not, his Dreams) on Declan’s shoulders the way he always fucking wanted them to be. Hated Ronan for his ‘childish rebellion’ and ‘flights of fancy’ and his selfish need to be the Prodigal fucking son.
He’d always wanted to ask Declan if being The Favourite was all he ever dreamed it would be.
He never has.
Even Ronan can recognize where the fucking line is.
“How long’ve you two boys been,” Niall flicks two fingers, but the way he did it, the way he does everything, gives the impression of a bigger movement. He’d deepened his accent in the way he did when he wanted to remind everyone of his roots. Puts a light emphasis on boys.
Ronan doesn’t know why he does it. He panics. Probably because the truth would hurt in a way that he doesn’t want to hurt, and because the only other option is to lie. Because Adam is deferring to him as much as he can without them making eye contact to have one of those conversations without language that is learned between people who love each other. Probably because that would be an answer in and of itself.
“Adam’s agnostic,” he says.
Niall gives another half-wave, still focused.
“But his family is protestant.”
Niall sits up straighter in his seat. A lack of faith has never bothered his father, but the wrong faith is something else. Finally, Ronan raises his eyes higher than his plate, taking in the way Matthew’s face has gone blank, his mouth forming a silent ‘oh, fuck.’
Adam kicks his fucking ankle under the table. “You shithead,” he breathes, all Henrietta twang in his annoyance and shock.
Ronan grins, heart beginning to knock against his ribs in the same unsteady rhythm he remembers from first glance, first words, first kiss. “You wanna marry me, Parrish?”
“Let’s get through dinner first, how about?” Adam says, and turns his picture-perfect, unflappably polite, ruthless all seeing gaze on Ronan’s father. “Technically they’re lapsed.”
{Alt ending}
Adam frowns, ignoring the way Declan is fuming and the way Niall’s face is turning slowly more and more red. “I told you, I’m not going to break my lease and my landlord won’t take a subletter. We can talk about finding a place in a few months.”
“Not a no,” Ronan points out.
Grimacing, Adam darts a look around the table, finally giving in and giving Ronan the same ‘what the fuck,’ look from earlier. “We’ll talk about this later.”
#idea stolen from a tumblr post of a twitter screenshot - so sue me#you didn't expect to be reading this and i didn't expect to have written this#ronan lynch and his big dumb crush#magic but magic lite#niall is a dick but not an asshole - y'know?#pynch#adam parrish#my fic#the raven cycle#trc
30 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
ferkaiba
Fer Fudô
tsumugizine
DRAMATURGY!
dianaothemyscira
more concept than reality
macedwarf
Various things!
twidolan
dolan twins