this black thing inside of me (call it irrationality)
Ronan wakes up in the middle of the night to a cold bed beside him and running water in the bathroom. He waits, blinking in the dark, for Adam to finish getting a drink or washing his hands or whatever he has to do at two in the goddamn morning.
The water rushes on and on and on. Ronan watches the numbers on the clock beside the bed tick up. Once three minutes go by he sits up, irritated and concerned, mostly for their water bill. It doesn’t really cross his mind to worry about Adam.
He finds Adam pacing the bathroom, diagonally in the longest stretch he can manage. His hands are in his own hair, ruffling and tugging at it relentlessly, and his mouth is forming soundless words. Water splashes into the sink basin, forgotten. Ronan leans over and shuts it off.
Adam freezes, looking up from the floor and staring at him. He moves his hands from his hair to his arms almost unconsciously, scratching his nails over the insides of his forearms. A sheen of sweat glistens on his forehead, and his skin is paler than usual, freckles standing out sharply.
“Ronan,” he croaks. “Go…go back to bed.”
“No, Parrish, you look like shit,” Ronan says, stepping in and letting the door swing closed behind him. “You sick?”
Adam’s throat convulses and the scratching intensifies. “No.”
“Yeah, you are, stop…stop doing that, you’ll hurt yourself.”
Ronan steps toward Adam to take his hand, but he does, thankfully, stop scratching himself. His skin is only red, nothing bleeding, but Ronan’s chest tightens a little anyway. Unmoored, Adam’s hands flutter from his hair to the hem of his shirt to the counter not far away, like he needs something to hold onto.
“What’s wrong?” Ronan asks.
This doesn’t feel like regular sickness. Unease coils in his gut. He’s seen Adam afraid. Adam’s fear is a thing to be hidden, quiet and dark. The sheer anxiety in Adam’s face now, his inability to be still when usually he defaults to invisibility, it’s unnerving. And Ronan doesn’t know the playbook for this.
Adam shakes his head, mouth pressed into an insubstantial line.
“That doesn’t fucking help, look, just tell me what to do.”
Adam shakes his head again, staring at the floor. His hands return to his hair and he starts pacing again, like he can’t bear to stand still any longer, but now his shoulders are hunched and he deliberately doesn’t look in Ronan’s direction.
Okay.
No, not okay. Ronan doesn’t know what the fuck to do.
Surreptitiously, which is to say pretty obviously because Ronan isn’t one for subtlety and Adam isn’t looking anyway, Ronan texts Gansey.
parrish is freaked, pls advise
Thank fuck for Gansey’s insomnia for once, because the reply is instantaneous.
Is this about school? Do you need help?
Oh, fuck, why didn’t Ronan think of that?
think so, he writes, then glances back up at Adam. He’s seen Adam stressed. Especially about school. Thousands of times. This isn’t even close.
no, he says instead. worse than that
he wont talk to me
looks like hes sick
A pause. Adam slows his pacing, and Ronan can see him measuring his breathing, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. He wills Gansey to reply.
I’m not sure, Ronan. You know how Adam is. Just be there for him until it passes.
Well, shit.
fuck you, dick, Ronan replies, then shoves his phone in his pocket even though he really wants to throw it.
“Hey, Parrish, can you give me anything to go on here?”
Adam stops in his tracks without looking at Ronan, chewing on his lip for a long moment. Finally, he says, “I’m nauseous.”
“Oh. Is…is that all?” That can’t be all, right? “Dude, if you’re nervous about puking, you just gotta do it. Better out than in and shit.”
Adam shakes his head violently, throat working. It takes several tries for him to spit the words out. “You…you don’t…you don’t underst-stand.”
The part that gets Ronan is that his accent bleeds in, Virginia mountains and Henrietta honey. He never lets his accent slip anymore.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Ronan links his hands behind his head, blowing out a breath while he tries to think.
“What don’t I understand, huh?”
Adam starts pacing again. He doesn’t answer. He looks more anxious than before. Shit.
Ronan tries to think back to feeling sick himself, and he can’t come up with an answer for Adam’s behavior now, but he can remember holding a hand over his mouth, unwilling to open it and say anything for fear of what might come out. Okay. That might explain the not talking. Plus Adam tends toward silence at the best of times.
He just doesn’t not answer questions. And if he won’t answer Ronan doesn’t know what the fuck to do. He feels useless. He wants to dream a cure, but his skin crawls at the thought of leaving Adam like this.
Suddenly Adam spins on his heel and crouches in front of the toilet with a grace that does not match the subtle tremble in his hands and the sheet-white pallor of his face.
His mouth is forming words again, and this time Ronan recognizes them.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck-
“Adam,” he says, unable to keep up the flippant act any longer as he slides to his knees next to him. “Adam, hey, just let it come up, it’ll be fine.”
Adam shakes his head, mouth nearly invisible with how hard he’s clamping it shut.
“You’ll be okay,” Ronan promises, rubbing a small circle into his shoulder. “Just get it over with, man, isn’t the anticipation worse?”
Adam doesn’t reply. The slightly-too-small t-shirt he wore to sleep clings to him with sweat, and Ronan can see his stomach muscles trembling. He moves to rubbing his back in broader sweeps and keeps up the soft reassurances while Adam tries and fails to breathe normally. Once, he makes the most awful gagging sound Ronan has ever heard and retches, his whole body jerking and shuddering, but nothing comes up.
“Hey, man, you gotta stop fighting it. This is good shit. It’s gross, but it’s your body expelling whatever’s fucking you up. Just go with it.”
Adam just shakes his head again. His sandy hair is plastered against his face.
“Come on. Just let it happen and then this’ll be over.”
Adam screws his eyes shut, an expression that looks nearly fucking painful, and his body shudders as he retches again. Ronan averts his eyes as this time the contents of Adam’s stomach come up. A few seconds pass as he rubs his back, and then Adam throws up again.
“Hey, you’re okay,” Ronan says when he slumps over, moving to place his back against the wall. “That’s it, it’s over. All done.”
Adam just shakes his head a-fucking-gain, and that method of communication is getting really old. The shakes are worse, now, even though paradoxically he looks less freaked. Maybe it’s shock or something. Both of them stare at his trembling legs and hands for a few seconds. Ronan flushes the toilet, but Adam doesn’t react.
“Feel any better?” he ventures.
This time Adam nods, and relief is a punch to the ribs. “It’s always better after. Just shaky.”
“Always?” Ronan echoes. “The fuck do you mean, ‘always’? You throwing up on the regular?”
“No,” Adam sighs heavily. “I’m emetophobic, Ronan.”
“I speak two languages and I still don’t know what the hell that means, Mr. Harvard.”
Adam meets his gaze briefly, then his eyes flick away. “Irrational fear of throwing up,” he mumbles, barely audible.
Oh. Oh. Shit goddamn fucking fuck.
“Jesus, Adam, you could’ve told me-“
“I couldn’t!” Adam protests, too loud. “Not when…not then. It’s really hard to talk. I always feel like I’m gonna…”
He trails off, making a vague gesture, and Ronan nods. “No, no, that I get, I just mean…before tonight, maybe? How long has this been going on?”
“I don’t tell people,” Adam mutters. “Generally I get three responses: People who say ‘oh, really, me too, I hate getting sick’; people who think I’m overreacting; and people who think I’m a freak. More than normal, anyway.”
“You’re not a freak, you can’t help your brain shit, and I don’t have a clue what you’re going through right now,” Ronan says automatically. “But I wanna help.”
Adam stares at him through guarded eyes for a while. “Okay. Um. I think I am actually coming down with something, so meds and water are first on the list. Then probably just…bed.”
“Right.” Ronan stands and holds out a hand, pulling Adam to his feet. His first intention is to get the ibuprofen, but Adam is still shaky and breathing too carefully and something makes him open his arms instead. “Come here.”
Adam blinks at him, confused, but folds himself into Ronan’s arms.
“Copy me, okay?” Ronan starts breathing deep and even, holding Adam as close as possible even though he smells like sweat and puke. Adam breathes shakily for about thirty seconds before he starts to copy Ronan, and Ronan watches the wall clock over their heads, letting the hug go on for two minutes, three, four. At five minutes, Adam seems steady, settled, and Ronan gently loosens his hold and steps back.
“You should probably eat something with the ibuprofen,” he says lamely.
Immediately Adam shakes his head. “No. I can’t.”
“I know you don’t feel like it, but you-“
“Ronan. No. The water and the pills are bad enough.” Adam breathes in and out, running one hand through his thoroughly tousled hair. “I know what I’m doing.”
“How long has this been going on?” Ronan asks again as he gets the bottle and tips two pills into his hand.
Adam takes them and then a cup of water, staring at both before he answers. “Almost four years. I got sick at home. Not the flu, it was only a few days, but felt like something close. Had to deal with it by myself.”
Ronan winces to hide the fact that he really would like to kill Robert Parrish in that moment, for about the millionth time.
“I’m-“
“Don’t apologize.”
“Fine, then. Does Gansey know?”
“Never told Gansey. Noah had weird enough eating habits that I don’t think mine stood out as much. And I’m a good liar.”
Images flash through Ronan’s head. Adam tucked into the corner of a booth at Nino’s, picking at the crust of a half-eaten pizza. Adam ducking out of after-hunt outings for food with the excuse of work or school. Adam, who hates waste, taking the smallest portion of anything so he won’t have to throw leftovers away.
“I should have noticed,” Ronan says.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m your boyfriend. I’m your friend. I should’ve noticed.”
“I didn’t want you to. That’s not your fault.”
“Take your pills.” Ronan waits while Adam swallows one and then the other, expression pinching. He sets the cup, still half full, on the counter as if it might bite him. “Does Blue know?”
“She’s probably guessed.”
“Because psychic family?”
“Because one of her cousins or aunts or godmother’s best friends broke a bottle of perfume in the hallway outside her room once and the smell was so strong I thought I’d be sick,” Adam says with a wry, deprecating twist to his mouth. “I’m good at hiding it, usually, but Blue is very perceptive.”
Ronan gestures to the bathroom. “That looked pretty obvious to me.”
“I thought you were asleep. And by the time you got here I was too worked up. Sometimes it’s harder to hide.”
“But the, the pacing, and the shit with your hair and your arms and whatever you were saying to yourself, that helps?”
“Yeah. When I’m not actually sick it usually even works.” Adam looks down, and then, like confessing a secret, murmurs, “This will pass.”
“What?”
“That’s what I say to myself. It almost always does and then it feels really stupid to have felt like dying over…over nothing.”
“Panic attacks are like that,” Ronan says.
Adam’s head whips up; he frowns. “It wasn’t a panic attack.”
“Dunno what else you’d call it. Sounds like one to me.”
“It was just…a moment. I’ve seen Gansey have a panic attack. And, like, in movies.” Adam’s voice gets smaller and smaller at the end, like he’s realizing the holes in his own argument.
“Different for everybody,” Ronan tells him. “Can’t believe you called it a moment, though.”
“I don’t exactly have a better word!”
“I have two: Panic. Attack.”
Adam pinches the bridge of his nose, a gesture belonging to someone much older but entirely right on him, somehow. “Fine. Whatever. Can…can we go back to sleep now?”
-0-0-0-
In the morning, Ronan takes a stab at pancakes and bacon. He’s not a terrible cook, but neither of them really do breakfast. Now, he’s wondering if that’s another sign he’s missed for years and kicking himself. At any rate, with Adam sick it feels like the occasion to put in a little effort.
He manages to not completely burn anything and is just about to go wake Adam when he stumbles in himself, still in his pajamas with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He looks miserable, but not anxious. Ronan sets a plate in front of him, two pancakes and three pieces of bacon, alongside water and more ibuprofen since Adam almost certainly didn’t bother to get some. He assumes correctly; Adam eyes the food warily but takes the meds right away.
“Ronan,” he says, small, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about me, I won’t be offended if you don’t eat it all. Leftovers can go in the fridge and you can have second breakfast in an hour, if you want.”
Okay, so Ronan has been googling emetophobia for the better part of the morning when he wasn’t cooking, assuming (probably correctly, again) that Adam’s response to it has so far been to shove it down and pretend it isn’t there, not try to accommodate it.
Sure enough, Adam is looking at him like… something. Like he’s just unlocked a puzzle or conjugated a tricky Latin verb. Like he’s solved something.
He eats one of the pancakes and one and a half pieces of bacon, slowly, over the course of half an hour while Ronan pretends to do things in the kitchen. He’s congested and obviously still tired, but a lot better than the night before.
While Ronan is reluctantly rinsing dishes to load the dishwasher, Adam starts coughing behind him. He turns, still awkwardly holding a plate, not really concerned.
Then Adam stops coughing and holds himself very, very still, breathing in and out through his mouth.
“You okay?”
It takes a minute for Adam to collect himself enough to respond. “Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I just…it feels a lot like when I…yeah. Sorry.”
“You’re okay,” Ronan says. Adam lays his head on the table, pillowed in the crook of his arm.
“I hate being sick, because of this,” he mumbles. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Impulsively Ronan comes over and runs a hand through Adam’s hair. He sighs, and maybe it’s Ronan’s imagination, but he thinks a little of the tension drips out of him.
“Are you done eating?” Ronan asks.
Adam tenses, lifting his head slightly.
“You can come back to it. No problem. You can give yourself permission to break it up. It’s, like, less pressure.”
Adam squints at him. “Who are you quoting?”
“I…may have read some articles, watched a few YouTube videos.”
Adam blinks at him, surprised. Maybe shocked. Ronan can’t handle it, so he takes his plate and sets it in the fridge beside a plastic bag of the rest of the breakfast leftovers.
“Do you always eat slow when you can?” he asks, curious. Adam winces like it’s a moral failing.
“Yeah. Eating too fast is…yeah. But it’s not often I get a lot of time, so I just…eat less.”
“You know that’s unhealthy, right? Shit, have you been doing that when we eat together?” Adam’s never eaten as much as Ronan, but he never gave it much thought before.
“A little,” Adam admits. “I try not to be obvious.”
“Well, quit it. New rules, from here on out. Whenever possible you can do whatever shit you have to about food. I don’t care, I’m not going to judge you, even if all you eat is chips and cake and it still takes you two hours.”
Adam is staring at him like he can’t understand what he’s seeing. “I don’t want to…to disrupt your schedule, or get in the way.”
Ronan gestures between them. “Boy. Friends. I don’t care. If it becomes a problem we can talk about it like grown fucking adults because we are. In the meantime it matters a lot more to me that you eat than literally anything else.”
Adam looks down at his hands. “You don’t have to say it like that.”
Ronan frowns. “Like what?”
“Like it’s…a problem, or something. The eating is a secondary issue.”
Ronan pulls out a stool and sits down. “Parrish. Look at me. I’m not a fucking expert here, okay, but I’m pretty sure you’ve got some disordered eating going on and…” he swallows. “That shit’s dangerous. That shit’s fucking deadly. So I’ll take it as seriously as I damn well please.”
Adam hunches his shoulders, gaze flicking between Ronan and the floor. “It’s not that big a-“
“Shut up.” Ronan kisses his temple just because he can, to soften the blow. “I kind of love you and don’t really want you to die, so like, let me take care of you?”
“Okay.” Adam leans forward before he can pull back, tipping their foreheads together. “Okay.”
-0-0-0-
Adam wakes up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, wrapped in blankets that are so, so hot. He kicks them off, shivering or maybe shaking, and rolls onto his stomach. His throat feels thick, too small, and it reminds him of choking on his own vomit. He tries to force the memory away, swallowing hard, but it feels slimy and so, so sickeningly familiar.
He turns his head, looking at the shape of Ronan. He shouldn’t. He can handle this on his own, he has before.
It’s fine. It’ll go away like it always does.
He breathes in and out, carefully, but a flame of panic still crawls through his veins like his blood has turned to gasoline. He rolls onto his side so there’s no weight pressing on his stomach, curling halfway into the fetal position and trying to focus on the sound of his own breathing. It doesn’t help.
His thoughts aren’t words. He’s just afraid. He thinks about the bread and soup he managed to eat for dinner, imagining what it would look like coming back up, and a shudder runs through him.
It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine just wait it out-
Fear drowns out his own thoughts. He bites his fist, not that it helps.
Don’t bother Ronan. He’s done enough. You can’t be the weak one, you can’t annoy him.
He bats Ronan’s shoulder weakly, too afraid to open his mouth, until Ronan rolls over and opens his eyes with a sleepy mumble.
“Wha-?”
Adam pushes lightly at his chest instead of talking, conveying absolutely nothing but steadily rising panic. Finally Ronan seems to catch on, the glimmer of his eyes widening, and he sits up.
“Adam, shit, what do you need? Are you gonna be sick?”
Adam shrugs helplessly. All his words pile up behind his teeth, a familiar and unwelcome feeling. His stomach tightens and he could swear he tastes bile in his throat.
“I’ve got you,” Ronan promises, vaulting out of the bed. There’s a rustling of plastic and he returns with the trash can from the corner of the room, next to Adam’s desk. “Just in case, okay? You’re not gonna throw up. If you do, you know you’ll be fine, but I don’t think you will. You’ve been fine all day, remember? I know you don’t feel fine right now, but that’s just your big genius brain lying to you. It’ll pass. You know that. It always does.”
Adam nods, and in spite of his misery he spares a thought to tuck that away, the memory of Ronan remembering such a small form of comfort he usually only hears from himself. Without really meaning to he finds himself relaxing slightly, believing Ronan where he couldn’t believe himself.
Adam Parrish is a liar. Ronan Lynch only ever speaks the truth.
He rolls onto his other side as Ronan puts the trash can well within reach on the floor, then climbs into bed behind him.
“Can I…what do you need me to do? I’m sorry, I don’t…you can do what you were doing last night, if you think it’ll help.”
Adam doesn’t want to. He never wanted Ronan, wanted anyone, to see that part of him. The part of him so irrational and afraid and strange, stranger than usual, pacing and muttering and running his hands through his hair. It feels weak. It feels crazy. He shouldn’t be so afraid.
Adam stares straight ahead in the dark and after so long he’s half afraid Ronan fell asleep, he manages, “You know the thing you did last night, in the bathroom?”
“Yeah,” Ronan whispers, with something like hope in his voice.
“You can do that again.”
Ronan scoots up behind him, wrapping his arms around Adam and pulling him close enough to feel the steady rise and fall of his chest, incongruous with his jackrabbit heart. There’s no clock on Adam’s side—Ronan confiscated it months ago citing redundancy and Adam’s general stress about time—so he has no idea how much time they pass like that. Just breathing. It feels like an eternity.
It is almost scary how fast Ronan’s breathing fixes his panic. He smells like leather and farm and forest, even now. Like comfort. Like home. Even once the initial spike has subsided, Adam is grateful for Ronan staying, guilty as he feels for forcing him to. It loosens something deeper in him that he isn’t ready to examine yet.
Eventually Ronan murmurs, “You’re okay, Adam. You’re okay.”
Adam twists around to face him, confident he doesn’t need the trash can anymore, and fights the urge to pull Ronan closer because that sounds like an ending and he isn’t ready yet.
“‘M sorry,” he mutters, and then, a little louder. “This is stupid.”
“I know. Brains are shit,” Ronan replies. “I’m sorry.”
Adam doesn’t have the heart to tell him he meant this, this mess that Adam is, clinging and fragile. He half thinks Ronan knows and chose to misinterpret him. And Ronan doesn’t pull away, either, just keeps holding him and breathing, occasionally rubbing his back or toying with his hair in their new position. Adam doesn’t know which of them falls asleep first.
-0-0-0-
Adam’s fever breaks and he turns out just fine within another 48 hours. It’s the following week when he and Ronan decide to drive to a new bakery for breakfast before their morning classes that the next real problem comes up.
He hasn’t exactly been hiding his emetophobia from Ronan; he just doesn’t think Ronan realizes the full extent yet, and it’s been second nature for years to keep the secret. So he skips brushing his teeth because some mornings it makes him gag, even though it’s gross, and climbs into the passenger seat. And for a little while, it’s okay. Then it hits him from nowhere, a spike of dizzying nausea, and he fumbles to turn the radio down, running one hand through his hair over and over in a mostly useless attempt to calm down.
“Parrish?” Ronan asks, sharp. “Adam? What’s wrong?”
“Two minutes,” Adam hisses, bending his head and pulling his knees up. He can’t say more than that. He wants badly to scratch his arms, wants the sharp bite of pain that usually makes a good distraction, but Ronan hates it and he hates it so he really, really tries not to. He breathes, dimly registering the car veering to the left and stopping. Ronan opens the passenger door as the worst of the moment—episode—panic attack, whatever—passes.
“Adam, listen, you’re okay. You’re okay, we’re stopped, it’s fine.”
“Not the car,” Adam says through gritted teeth, lifting his head. “Just happens sometimes. ‘Specially in the mornings. At least I wasn’t driving.”
Wrong thing to say. Ronan’s eyes widen. “This happens when you drive?”
“Not all the time!” Adam protests. “And only in the mornings. It only lasts a minute or two and then I’m fine.”
“But it has happened.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me you pull over and give yourself a second to breathe.”
Adam looks away. Ronan’s fist thuds heavily on the side of the car, but he doesn’t think that’s the reason for the pain in his voice as he hisses, “Jesus, Adam. So it…it’s really all the time, like that?”
“Not always that intense. But…yeah. It’s pretty much always there. Gotta eat three meals a day at least.”
(And he wishes it was only meals that were the problem, that it’s not a constant calculus in the back of his mind.)
Ronan looks up at him, his expression unreadable. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Adam,” he says roughly, “but that sounds like fucking hell.”
Adam can only shrug. “It’s been four years. It’s kind of hard to remember when this wasn’t my life.”
Ronan’s mouth twists bitterly and he scrubs a hand across it in a vain attempt to erase the expression. “You still up for the bakery, then? Because we can go home.”
“Ronan, if I had to quit and go home every time I had a, a panic attack or whatever you want to call it, I would literally not get anything done,” Adam says.
He doesn’t mean it to be shocking or sad or anything. It’s just the truth. It’s maybe even supposed to be reassuring. But Ronan just looks sort of guilty and like he wants to hit something. He nods once, shuts the door with more force than is necessary, and climbs back into the driver’s seat.
Adam makes sure to eat his entire muffin from the bakery just to prove he’s fine, but Ronan doesn’t stop casting sideways glances at him the whole way home.
-0-0-0-
In the coming months or years, Adam’s eating habits will settle closer back to normal. He’ll go out and actually eat, instead of picking at his food and taking the leftovers home to eat standing over his kitchen counter. He will stop feeling the sharp spike of panic at a wayward cough.
Then he’ll gain ten pounds in a few months without noticing, because he tries not to notice, and it will be cause for celebration. And he will realize he hasn’t had a moment in days, maybe a week, that the worst times are fewer and farther between.
He’ll lean his head on his boyfriend’s shoulder while they eat sandwiches with their friends in a park, and he will be okay, and for the time being, that will be enough.