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The gun seemed to get larger in her hand the longer it was pressed to the man’s head. This was no dream magic. This was just the magic of violence. It was a sustainable form of energy, violence. It powered itself.
“Nightmares are chemical,” his boyfriend, Adam, had told him once. “Inappropriate adrenaline response to stimulus, possibly related to trauma.” “Talk dirty to me,” Ronan had replied.
By the time they’d ditched their phones, Adam still hadn’t answered Ronan’s last text. Tamquam, Ronan had messaged, which was always supposed to be answered by alter idem. But Adam hadn’t replied at all. The silence sort of made this—the being away—easier. What do you feel? Confused.
when he got trapped in one particular train of thought, where he imagined he and Adam had been together a very long time and then Ronan died of old age or bad choices and Adam found someone else and later they all three were reunited in the afterlife, and rather than getting to spend the rest of eternity together, Adam had to split his time between Ronan and this stupid usurper he’d fallen in love with as a widower, which completely ruined the point of Heaven. And that was before Ronan even got to worrying if Adam made it to the afterlife at all, with his agnostic tendencies.
ronan spends so much time thinking he’s not good enough for adam it makes my heart hurt
Ronan’s legacy was a destroyed Harvard dorm room, an invisible car, and a sword with the words vexed to nightmare etched on the hilt.
Don’t eat dreams, Bryde had chastised him. At best they’ll starve you and at worst they’ll control you. Dreams are like words, they’re like thoughts. They always mean more than one thing. Are you sure those pills only made you sleep?
You are more than the sum of your feelings, your id. You are also the things you have learned to do about them.
Every wheel had a single word printed or burned into it: tamquam.
Ronan rubbed a thumb over the wheel closest to him, pressing his fingers into the etched word tamquam. This was a thing Hennessy was learning about Ronan Lynch: He always thought he was keeping his secrets by keeping his mouth shut, but he ended up telling them in other ways.
ronan thinking him keeping secrets is saving people! that is not the case
Declan gave Matthew his most Declan of faces. He generally used one of two expressions. The first was Bland Businessman Nodding at What You’re Saying While Waiting for His Turn to Talk and the other was Reticent Father with Irritable Bowel Syndrome Realizes He Must Let His Child Use the Public Restroom First. They suited nearly every situation Declan found himself in.
Was Adam injured, was he bored with Ronan, did he prefer the company of his urbane new friends, calm down, Ronan, stop being needy, Ronan, get yourself together, Ronan, you’re always the car crash, Ronan.
Is he a witch? Did he say a spell wrong and you appeared and now you’re bound for life?” “Yeah,” Ronan said. “That one.”
Ronan hadn’t thought much about the future. This was a way he and Adam had always been opposites. Adam seemed to only think about the future. He thought about what he wanted to happen days or weeks or years down the road, and then he backfilled actions to make it happen. He was good at depriving himself in the now in order to have something better in the later.
Seeing the two pairs tumbled together, a nameless feeling had suddenly overwhelmed Ronan. It was about Adam’s gloves here, but it was also Adam’s jacket tossed on a dining room chair, his soda can forgotten on the foyer table, him somewhere tossed with equal comfort in the Barns, his presence commonplace enough that he was not having to perform or engage with Ronan at all times. He was not dating Ronan; he was living in Ronan’s life with him.
Here in the future, they didn’t know about his past. Maybe that was Adam’s attraction to it.
“A human child believes all things are possible. How wonderful. How terrifying. Slowly, you are taught what you cannot have. What will not be possible. What you do not have to fear. There is no monster in the closet. You cannot fly. How relieving. How disappointing. But this is the world, isn’t it?
“Do you really think your family understands you? Truly? This world has been built for them, so thoroughly that they don’t realize it. It has been built to destroy you, so thoroughly that it has never occurred to them. Your goals are fundamentally opposed.”
And where are your brothers, Ronan Lynch? Where is Adam? They are the brothers and lovers of a dreamer, is this not their concern, too? Did they come with us to save the world for dreamers? No, dreamers are a task for dreamers, they think, not for people like them. They love you, they support you, they wave goodbye as you flee without them, and then they return to their own lives to muddle through without you.”
Noooo that is what he is afraid of :(
“You’re wrong,” Ronan said. “About Adam, anyway.” “I’d like to be,” Bryde replied. “But I’ve met too many humans.” “You’re wrong,” Ronan said again. “Tell me the dream that produced all those wheels,” Bryde said. “Tamquam—” “Don’t say that again,” Ronan said. Then, again, “You’re wrong.”
Ronan should’ve been the easiest to hate, because Ronan was built for acrimony. He despised people and assumed they despised him, too. He was stubborn, narrow-minded, completely unable to see compromise or nuance. He’d fought Declan before, which was unremarkable; he’d fought everyone. The world against Ronan Lynch, that was his motto. As if the world cared.
now that Declan didn’t have to parent Ronan, he no longer had to constantly compete with a ghost.
Niall had made Declan a liar. Aurora had made him an orphan. Ronan had made him a nag and then, later, a fugitive. But Matthew had taken Declan’s youth.
This was his father’s DNA, he was sure of it. Niall had felt no compunction about going on trips and leaving his family behind. Fuck you, he thought. Then: I hate you. (How he wished that was true.)
“I really do have to go. Keep an eye over your shoulder for, like, uh, the bogeyman, I guess. Matthew, eat whatever vegetable the Big D tells you to.” “Turds,” Matthew said. “Turds aren’t vegetables,” Ronan replied. “They’re mammals.”
Declan didn’t even know why he lied about it; the fib was like bubble wrap, the truth carefully kept pristine and untouched for his collection.
Declan had a very complicated relationship with his family.
Normally he did not think his outside appearance at all reflected who he really was on the inside, but this mirror showed him an exterior Ronan just as complicated as the interior Ronan. The mirror presented a guarded bruiser, but one whose eyebrows gave away startling gentleness. There was a cruel and arrogant dismissiveness in this Ronan’s face, but also bravery. The line of his mouth held at once a crumple of depression and the shape of a grin. Anger simmered in his eyes, but so did an intense, savage humor.
People who are one thing have never known what to do with people who are more than one thing.
“Self-hatred is an expensive hobby paid for by other people,” Bryde said.
yeah RONAN!
Humans dance as elegantly as clockwork stars move across the sky, but they do not see it because they are the stars.”
It had been so long since he’d wanted something to happen, instead of wanting something to not happen. He’d forgotten what it felt like. It was equal parts great and terrible. It burned.
god this is so relatable. ronan feeling like he doesn’t have a purpose and only knowing what he doesn’t want. average postgrad experience fr
It was the sort of music Ronan heard all the time when he was at Aglionby, the stuff that made him feel as if he truly were nothing like other people, not because he was gay or because his father had been murdered or because he could take things out of his dreams, but because he couldn’t bring himself to sing along to the shit other students sang along to. Funny how a handful of people loving a song you couldn’t stand could make you feel inhuman.
Golden Matthew, charming the city. Rebellious Ronan, finally grown into something useful. Cunning Declan, trafficking in art and stories. The Brothers Lynch. He liked not worrying about them all the time.
His brother was many things, he thought, but murderer he was not. Even at his worst, it was only himself he’d wanted to destroy, and that hadn’t seemed to be the Ronan he heard on the phone. Ronan’s sin was immediacy, not villainy.
He looked down. One of the kids had his hand and was shaking it, trying to get him to follow. Another was giggling furiously as Chainsaw sat on her shoulder, working hard to be extraordinarily gentle with her talons. Same, Chainsaw, he thought.
A hero. It was an unfamiliar concept. Ronan had been the villain for so long, if he had been anything. The one in trouble, the one written up on the slip, the one being chased, the one being accused. And before that he had been the young dreamer. Secret. Forever. Now he was a hero to a family of young dreamers who would never have to feel alone.
“I’m not a doll, Ronan Lynch,” she said, her voice muffled. “Take your hands off me.” He just hugged her tighter, though, as she cried into his chest.
Declan said, “I’ve never been good at Ronan, and there’s no handbook for the conversation we need to have now.” “Sure there is. It’s a snap, a quick group read. The handbook’s called Your Boyfriend Called, He Thinks You’ve Joined a Cult, Please Advise.” “Ronan’s not much of a reader,” Declan said darkly.
“By the time we’re married,” Declan said eventually, “I want you to have applied for a different studio in this place because this man’s paintings are very ugly.” Her pulse gently skipped two beats before continuing on as before. “I don’t have a social security number of my own, Pozzi.” “I’ll buy you one,” Declan said. “You can wear it in place of a ring.”
His accent was gone. It was like talking to a stranger.
Ronan thought about Adam’s gloves set upon his shoes in the mudroom. He thought about wanting to feel like he had been made for something more than dying.
