marlowemuses | The One Secret I Never Told You

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The One Secret I Never Told You

Ronan was coming home.

He'd sent ahead, Adam supposed. Letter or telegram. And he'd said... what? Adam had no idea. No one had even bothered to tell him. He'd overheard some of the other servants discussing preparations.

That stung, though it shouldn't. He'd always known that their childhood friendship was temporary. Illusory. He'd been a bauble to Ronan, a friendship that came easily and could be cheaply kept.

And when Ronan had been old enough, he'd left. That made sense, too. His father's death, the upheaval of his life, the culmination of the conflict between Ronan and Declan.

What hurt was that he hadn't needed Adam anymore.

Squeaks and whispers preceded the general bustle of servants toward the main hall. Adam stayed out of the way, stealing toward an upper window to catch a glimpse. He wouldn't be missed among the larger array of servants. He was only an under-footman, after all.

Hidden behind a lace curtain, Adam peeked out to watch as Ronan descended from the coach. He'd grown. Taller than Adam remembered. His charming black curls were gone, shorn to a short bristle. The man he'd become was someone handsome and commanding, drawing attention like a thunderstorm.

Adam's heart thudded, then clenched.

Oh.

He'd hoped, all those years, that ignoring his childhood crush would make it go away. That Ronan's distance would make Adam forget him, so that he could focus once and for all on his career. His career, which was the only thing that mattered. The only thing he had left.

Seeing Ronan brought it all back, with more intensity than ever.

Adam was in love with him. And always had been.

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Confused but at least reassured that Ronan wasn't angry at him, Adam came closer, sitting down on the bed. Ronan's position meant that either he had to sit very close or he would have his head at an odd angle to hear Ronan well. Adam chose the latter, trying to make it seem as natural as possible how he turned his body and cocked his head.

"I don't mind, if it makes things easier for you," Adam said, wondering if Ronan was going to finish that sentence by saying that he did already have someone he was fucking. "I don't..."

He looked away, realizing that he'd never responded to Ronan's revelation. Not to Ronan, anyway. Adam thought it was wonderful, but he had to remind himself that he was deceiving himself if he thought it would bring Ronan any closer to him. "I never knew. I wish you'd told me. If... I don't know if you knew back then. Is it... is it Gansey?"

"I ... sort of. Didn't want to know, though, so I tried not to think about it," he admitted, looking at Adam as he sat.

Despite how heavy his heart was, Ronan snorted when Adam asked if it was Gansey and shook his head. "I think everyone has a thing for Gansey at some point. But, no. He's like a brother to me. I think he's making doe eyes some uppity blond now, anyway. Last I heard."

Ronan pressed his lips together again. It felt dishonest to keep his feelings secret from Adam now.

"No... ever since we were kids, I—..."

Gently, he laid his hand on top of Adam's, studying the way their fingers laid together before he forced himself to look away. "Sorry," he mumbled, pulling his hand back, knowing fully well that such actions were over the line. Fingers curling inward, his nails bit into his palm.

"Just. Don't make things easier for me at your own expense. I don't want that. Fuck, Adam. You deserve better than all of this."

Adam smiled at the line about Gansey, nodding his head. "Me too, a little."

Adam thought, for a moment, that Ronan meant him. That Ronan wanted him. Adam's heart and groin both lurched for an instant, wanting so much that he could let himself believe it.

"I've always made things easier for you at my own expense," Adam said, staring at his hand and wishing to have the warmth of Ronan's hand back again. "I wouldn't know how to do anything else."

"I know."

Adam had always been there. Trying to help. Being clever, doing what Ronan wouldn't. Just like tonight—Ronan would never play nice with Declan. Yet Adam had, for his sake.

For a good long minute, Ronan stared at Adam. The fire burning low in the hollow of his chest couldn't be ignored; not anymore. Every pent up feeling. All the things he tried to ignore. All the things he wanted.

Hand pushing into the mattress, Ronan leaned, tucking his face against the side of Adam's face. Lips brushing the other man's ear, he closed his eyes and murmured, "I've always loved you. And now, I want you to be happy."

Only one thing—he had chosen Adam's bad side to press his lips against, unbeknownst to him that Adam wouldn't be able to hear his confession. When he pulled back he looked at Adam, waiting for some kind of answer, knowing full well he was going to get shot down. But Ronan didn't lie and he was tired of hiding the truth.

Shivers went down Adam's spine at the nearness of Ronan, the warmth of his breath tickling at Adam's hair, lips moving against his ear.

Adam didn't hear a thing.

Lost with yearning and uncertainty, Adam's brow furrowed. Ronan was looking at him, waiting for something, expecting something, and Adam didn't have a clue as to what. He hesitated, because he was so protective of that secret, he went so far to hide it. Who would hire a servant who was half-deaf?

"Ronan, I..." he said, faltering, cheeks red with nerves and dread.

Ronan rubbed at his neck, finally glancing away from Adam, like he knew what the answer was. Faltering, the look Adam was wearing. It felt self-explanatory.

"I just had to get it off my chest," he promised, biting the inside of his mouth as he spoke, unable to look at Adam again. "I... won't let it change anything." Adam would still get his reference. Adam could still leave whenever he wanted.

Even so, it felt like he was being smothered, the weight on his chest was so heavy. Admitting his feelings to Adam had been harder than telling Declan the truth about his sexuality. Ronan cared way more about Adam. A thousand times more.

"Ronan," Adam said, soft and nervous, hating that this was one more stumbling block between him and his ambition. He scraped his hands over his palm, struggling with how to say it. "Ronan, I didn't hear you. I couldn't hear you."

He stared down at his lap, feeling flutters of terror rippling through his chest. "...I'm deaf in that ear."

That wasn't what he was expecting Adam to say.

Ronan looked up in alarm, eyebrows flying into his hairline. "You're... what?" Adam hadn't been born with anything like that. When they were kids he had been perfectly fine.

... Oh.

Oh.

His lips thinned and for a moment, he looked truly frightening, features hardening as he ground his teeth.

"What happened?"

Adam's shoulders tensed, mouth flattening. Ronan's fury didn't scare him--never had, since it had always been a fact as sure as sunrise that Ronan was never angry at him.

He didn't like telling tales, didn't like surrendering secrets, didn't like revealing weakness.

"My father hit me," Adam confessed, voice dull and flat. He stared at the opposite wall, not wanting to see Ronan's reaction. "I fell, and tumbled down some stairs."

Those instants were burned in his memory. The pain, the betrayal, the certainty that this was his own fault for not doing better, for not leaving sooner, for being so damned unlucky.

Edited 2016-12-17 20:45 (UTC)

Ronan went quiet in his fury until he cursed, "That son of a bitch." Ronan knew Adam's parents abused him. That was how they became friends in the first place; Adam had been his age, and he had seen Adam getting reprimanded (read: hit) by his father. It was why he had insisted on keeping Adam by his side—at first.

He was smarter at six than he was at nearly twenty. "I shouldn't have left," he said, resting his forehead in his hands and fighting the urge to slide down the ladder and head to the kitchens to beat the shit out of Robert Parrish.

"I'm so fucking stupid. I'm sorry, Adam. Fuck. Fuck. You don't deserve any of this shit. You're the best person, and you don't deserve any of it."

Adam leaned back against one of the posts of the bed, relaxing a little. He was comforted by Ronan's words, his anger, his company. It was nice to feel defended. He'd missed that, and for the first time he felt like he had his Ronan back.

He didn't argue with any of Ronan's words. He agreed with most of it. His father was an asshole, Ronan shouldn't have left, Adam didn't deserve his life. He didn't think anyone deserved his life.

But, most of all, he agreed that Ronan shouldn't have left him.

Staying quiet, Adam hugged his arms over his chest, staring idly at a spot on the floor as he processed his emotions.

"Before," said Ronan, very quietly, "I said that I want you to be happy." The flashes of anger and distress hadn't faded but he knew that if he went to bother Robert Parrish now, they could all end up in trouble. The police looked the other way when a master hit a servant. They couldn't very well ignore a case where the master nearly beat the servant to death.

"And I said..."

Now, the words felt cheap, and he didn't think Adam would want to hear them. Even more so than he thought earlier. Before, he merely thought Adam would be put off and not want to work for him anymore. Now? Adam would probably be disgusted.

But he had said them once. And he would say them again.

"And I said that I've always loved you. I still do." Head bowed, he stared at the floor. "Take the country estate. You can have it. You can go there and get away from everyone. Maybe you can be happy."

Adam's heart fluttered with hope for a moment, before he quelled it. It was a beautiful illusion, the thought of Ronan in love with him, willing to give him everything, a place permanently by his side. But it was only that. An illusion.

He was glad, at least, that Ronan half understood why Adam had accepted the country estate on his behalf. It was freedom and ambition for him, a better position than he could otherwise hope to have in his entire life.

"I love you, too, Ronan," he said, giving him a melancholy smile, with just a hint of something patronizing, because he hadn't understood, and he thought Ronan meant it like he meant for Gansey. As a brother. A friend. A companion.

Not as his equal.

Ronan glanced up at Adam when he said that, recognizing that tone, because he had heard it a thousand times before. From Declan, specifically. Not that he was mad; it was normal for Adam to assume that he meant in a brotherly way. That was, after all, how Adam felt. But he didn't want Adam to think that his thoughts were so innocent and pure. He couldn't, in good conscience, have Adam lie for him if Adam didn't know the truth.

"No," he said, "you don't." The lines between his eyes deepened. Words weren't always so easy for him outside as being as blunt as possible.

Which was why Ronan grabbed Adam's chin and leaned in, pushing their mouths together. It wasn't a dirty kiss, per se, but it wasn't the chaste kiss you'd give your brother either.

Adam's lips were as soft as they looked. Ronan thought his heart might crumble, explode, catch fire, something. It was his first kiss. It was with his first love.

After a few long seconds Ronan dropped his hand and broke the kiss, leaning away. He didn't say anything else. He didn't think he needed to. Adam would realize, be disgusted, and decide that he would like his referral sooner than later.

Still, Ronan watched his old friend's face.

Adam tensed in shock as Ronan kissed him. It wasn't a surprise, not really, not after he'd learned Ronan's inclinations. Of course it made sense for him to be the object of them. Him or Gansey, and he already knew it wasn't Gansey.

Ronan was kissing him. Ronan was kissing him.

He only barely reacted soon enough to return the kiss, but Ronan was already pulling away, as Adam leaned foward with longing.

Staring at him, panting softly, Adam licked his lips, tasting Ronan. He wanted to argue, to call Ronan a selfish prick, to tell him that he didn't know the first thing about what love was, that he didn't even know who Adam was anymore, that he'd never thought about what Adam wanted, about who Adam loved, because he'd never thought to ask. Adam had only ever been his plaything.

Pride warred with desire, but the longing for approval, for love, for comfort and kindness won out, and Adam reached for him, pressing close and kissing Ronan again.

Ronan expected some of those things. Maybe all of them. He was selfish; he'd focused on his own pain when his father died. Selfishly, he left Adam behind, and Adam had suffered for it. And he was stupid, didn't know much about love other than what he grappled with.

He hadn't asked Adam because it seemed so impossible.

He should have asked Adam. A long time ago.

Because before he knew what was happening, they were kissing again, and he hadn't been the one who initiated it. Ronan's hand pressed onto Adam's thigh as he leaned in, returning the kiss and feeling absolutely winded that it was even happening at all.

The kiss was everything he wanted, everything he needed, and he desperately wanted to melt into it, but his pride flared, and he shoved Ronan back.

"You left me," Adam snapped, temper finally let loose from its chains, freed finally by that kiss and Adam's own pride, re-awakening the stubborn and hot-tempered young man that had been sleeping under Adam's ingrained subservience. "You left me, without a word, without a letter, and now you come back and you want me to puppy-dog along at your heels like nothing happened? You left me, and every day I wondered if I'd die here, with no one in the world who loved me and only Gansey who would even notice that I'd gone."

He stood, shaking with anger, with fire under his skin.

It had been a long time since he heard Adam so angry. Even in the crypt he hadn't gotten mad like Ronan had wanted. So that fire still lived. Ronan was glad to see it, even if it was coming at him after a kiss.

"You don't have to do anything," Ronan said as he also stood, choosing not to refute anything else, or give his reasons. They were poor in the face of Adam's well-being. So he squared his jaw and continued looking steady at Adam, eyes glassy from emotions hitting him. "You're right. And you should hate me for all of that. I fucked up. I wasn't thinking about—about anything."

Just hoping he'd die, somehow. But he couldn't admit that.

"I'm not going to ask anything of you. Fuck, I know I don't deserve to." Which was why the kiss returned was so confusing. "Tell me how I can ... not make it right, but fuck, I just want you to be happy, Adam. That's it. If there's any way I can do that, I will."

"You might've asked!" Adam said, but the initial defensive flare of anger had tempered into a steely, temperamental determination. "You might have asked what I wanted, what makes me happy, who I was in love with. You acted like you expected me to cross the void and reveal my secrets to you, as if that wouldn't put my position and my life in danger, as if there was any hope for me to be your equal." He spat the word, aching with bitterness. "Do you have any idea what you're offering? What you're asking? How different it would be if I behaved like your equal rather than your obedient dog? Because that's what I want. I want an equal place at your side. I want a quiet life in the country where no one hits me or spits insults at me. I want enough to eat and to never again be cold and exhausted for days on end. I want to believe that you could love me for me, not just the version of me that dreads being left behind by you. Again. You... you fucking prick."

Starting to shake, Adam sat back down on the bed, hugging himself and feeling sick with the familiar dread that he'd known all his life, that Ronan would leave, that the household would cast him out, and that he'd be left with nothing but hunger and cruelty.

Adam sat, but Ronan continued to stand.

"Damn it, Adam, you think I want you to be that lonely man, waiting on me hand and foot? No. I fell in love with the guy that was smarter than everyone else, clever as fuck, independent, seen hell but still fucking good and ... real." There had been those flashes when they were young, of the man Adam could be, and not the servant, not the scared under footman that bowed his head.

Ronan shoved his hands into his pockets and stepped away from the bed, pacing again, "I am a goddamn prick. I should have asked. But fuck, Adam, would you really have told me?" Adam had always been difficult when it came to his secrets. Ronan loved that fierce independent streak but it could also be frustrating. "That's what you want—that's what I want too. I never wanted you to be my dog," he said, frustrated that Adam seemed to think that he relished the difference in their status, or something. "Then let's fucking go to the country estate and have all of that, holy shit. Let me give you a goddamn quiet life where you can be happy and comfortable until we're ancient. It doesn't even have to be the damn estate, it can be anywhere. We can go anywhere."

Stopping his pacing, he looked back at Adam, "Unless you don't want to. Unless you wanna get the fuck away from me after everything. I'll give you the reference if that's what you want."

"Why do you keep thinking," Adam asked, stepping into his arms and hugging his arms around Ronan's neck, "that the way to make up for leaving me is to leave again, permanently?"

He pressed close, relishing the warmth of Ronan's body, the scent of his skin at the side of his neck.

"I miss your hair," he said, and then realized that was a stupid thing to say. "I missed you. You stupid prick."

Clinging tight to Ronan, Adam trembled slightly, trying to contain it at first and then just letting himself cling.

Ronan melted into Adam's embrace, bowing his head and sliding his arms around the other man's waist. God. He missed Adam. The weight of how much he missed Adam finally hit him then, having his love pressed against him, clinging and trembling. Calling him a prick.

"I missed you too," he said, very quiet, holding tight. It still seemed impossible to him that Adam would want him, especially after he was so stupid. That he wouldn't want Ronan to leave again.

"... I don't know what you want from me. I thought you hated me after everything." And that, he had been afraid to truly ask, without jokes or sarcasm. Having Adam truly hate him, knowing for sure, might have killed him.

And even softer still, "I'm sorry." Apologies were a rare thing from Ronan, only said when he truly meant them.

"I do hate you," Adam said, clinging tight to him as a few tears fall, the tears he'd kept in for years. "I hate you for leaving me. I hate you for thinking I could live without you. I hate you so much, you stupid jerk."

He held on tight, nails digging into Ronan's shoulders as he clung. "I've been in love with you for as long as I can remember. God damn it, Ronan, I lost them too. Your parents were kinder to me than my own ever have been, and then you were gone days later. Of course I hate you."

"Yeah," he said into Adam's shoulder, hugging tightly still. "Yeah."

He deserved Adam's ire. But Adam also—loved him? Or had. It was a strangely euphoric mix. Not knowing what else to say and not sure if Adam was finished cursing him out, he stayed quiet after that, hanging onto his old friend tightly. Now that he had all the context, the idea of moving into the country estate with Adam was perfect. They could live a quiet life. Have a skeleton staff, just to keep up the grounds. Stay away from the city and live in peace.

It was what Ronan wanted. To be with Adam. It was where he belonged, even though he was stupid and took too long to realize.

Adam's breathing evened out, after a while, and the hot tears stopped falling. He leaned more heavily against Ronan, loosening his grip slightly and just letting Ronan hold him.

Ronan loved him. Ronan wanted to spend a life with him.

Adam's mind clicked quietly, making plans, while he recovered from the emotional intensity of their mutual confessions. "Jerk," he mumbled, utterly drained and feeling dizzy with it.

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