marlowemuses | Adam/Ronan ~ Prince of Hell

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Adam/Ronan ~ Prince of Hell

Adam's existence commences all at once, as he is hurled into the world, and it is the only world he knows.

There was a Before. He knows this logically and viscerally, but his mind can only reach as far back as the Between, and that is slippery. The Between was a blank space, a vast nothing, that stretched forwards and backwards and beneath into infinity, and Adam does not know if he was in that timeless place for seconds or centuries.

He hits hard on his knees, splitting open the fabric of his jeans as he lands on rough, sandy stones.

He knows what jeans are, what a t-shirt is. He knows there are things that exist--trees, apples, wool, potato chips--but he no longer has context for this information.

The place he is in is wreathed with fog. It tendrils up from the ground, which is lukewarm where it bites rocky teeth into his knees, into the colder air that pricks at his spine and draws gooseflesh along his arms. This is no place for staying. Not dressed as he is, and he feels a clench of hunger in his belly, which has an emptiness that is both old and new.

There's no sun in the sky, but it may simply be hidden behind fathomless layers of fog. The light seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, an endless twilight that folds shadows into the wisps of fog on all sides.

Adam's heart pounds with an instinctual recognition of danger. He pushes himself to his feet, knowing that he must move, even though he has no inkling of a safe path through this directionless place.

Time does not pass as he walks, or if it does, it makes no change in the light. Adam's hunger pulses in his belly with each step. It is a visceral hunger, as if his body is new-wrought, and there has never been food in this mouth, this belly.

There are trees, wizened and bare, and sometimes there are glistening bushes heavy with dark fruits. They are not inviting fruits, and Adam does not dare to eat them.

It is an hour, perhaps, or more, before he encounters the first denizen of this shifting landscape, that is hell and nightmare and fever dream all at once.

The thing hops at him from the edge of a rocky swamp, which bubbles thickly and smells of sulfur and frankincense, arcane and profane and cloying. It has too many limbs, most of them too short, and set at the wrong angles, except for the one grasping, too large arm that claws at the ground between them as it hops.

Lost? it rasps. Hungry?

No, Adam says, retreating away from the thing. He stumbles on a cracked edge of ground and nearly falls into the clutching, steaming liquid of the swamp.

The thing grabs the edge of Adam's jeans, smiling with its too-wide mouth and teeth like stones, with its enormous blue eyes that are so human.

Adam kicks it in the face and runs, until the landscape of the swamp shifts again into a maze of chasms, and he can no longer hear the rasping, mewling hunger of the wrong-limbed thing.

Terror lodges itself under his skin, minute by minute, creeping in with each breath of the fog-heavy air, which is sometimes sweet and clear as rain and sometimes choking and black with cinders.

It's in the maze of the chasms that something catches him, something with spidery limbs each three times the height of Adam, furred and white, an albino spider with a tiny body and a crumpled face that is human in the most awful way, and when it opens its mouth, the whole head hinges open to reveal a triple row of tiny, needle-sharp teeth.

"Leave the boy."

The spider-thing pauses, inches from Adam's face, holding Adam entangled with black threads of nets around his arms. The nets loosen an inch. The head twitches--tic, tic--to one side. The teeth shimmer white in the non-light.

"You heard me. Leave him. Get."

The voice is commanding. Musical, almost, with a kingly charisma. It comes from above Adam and around him, but he is paralyzed with terror as much as he is paralyzed by the twining black nets, and he cannot look.

Teeth snap in his face, but then the thing is retreating, and the nets are slipping away. A set of stairs carves itself obligingly from the rock face of the chasm.

Any fate is better than the nightmare that found him. Adam climbs the stairs at just short of a run.

The man at the top is danger and charm, with curling dark hair and sparkling eyes. He is demi-god and rock star, and he is, at the very least, less teeth than the nightmare in the chasm, though the teeth he shows when he smiles do not soothe Adam's fears.

"Aren't you a surprise," says the king, the trickster. "Remarkably powerful, to transport yourself here. Unbelievably stupid."

Adam keeps his mouth shut and his muscles tensed. He wants to run, but unlike the nightmares he's encountered so far, he knows that he cannot outrun the god of this place.

The dream-man opens his hand, and within it is a tiny black mouse, fast asleep. It warps as Adam watches, lengthening and twisting, features vanishing as it writhes upward, dancing like a cobra.

The black cord reaches toward Adam, and as he yanks backward, it snaps forward, faster, curling itself around Adam's neck and tightening, so that Adam's momentum ends abruptly as he hits the end of his tether, and the man with the star-black eyes has a tight grip on the other end.

Reality shifts around them with a roil of fog, and the chasms and wastelands unfold into a garden.

Adam yanks at the velvet collar around his throat, which is intimately snug and soft as mousefur. There is no give to it, and while it is less final than the hungry nets of the spider, it is more humiliating.

They're standing at the bottom of a grand flight of stairs leading to an expansive palace of black stone, wrought in exquisite detail, gothic in grandeur and dripping with power. On the other side are gardens, overgrown and wild, soft as meadows and filled with beautiful, delicate flowers like stars.

"Ronan," says the Dream-King, and it is a command.

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The resemblance between the nightmare king of this place and his younger, sharper version is striking. The young one might be Adam's own age. He still has some of the softness of youth, though youth is the only aspect about this boy that might be called soft. He's a weapon, and it's evident in every step, in the shadows around him, in the way his father speaks his name, in the depths of his inhuman stare.

Adam meets his gaze, bold and defiant. It's painfully, miserably clear that he's caught and outmatched by this trickster god and his son, which makes Adam no less ready to fight them until his last breath.

When the son claims him, like he's some appealing trinket dredged from a pond, Adam's jaw clenches so fast that his teeth clack. He yanks against his leash as he surges toward the prince, expecting the tether to go taut again. It doesn't, and Adam draws up an inch away from the boy whose lines write out violence. He rears back, dignity wounded by that miscalculation, and winds the end of the leash around his wrist before either of them can reclaim it.

"I'm not yours," Adam snarls. He is a hurricane trapped inside human skin, all fury and wildness, only constrained by the force of his own will. "I belong only to myself."

Ronan doesn't move. He doesn't so much as blink when Adam comes at him, his lips twitching into a smirk when the boy realizes his mistake. Fighting until his last breath? Funny thing, that.

"Everything here is mine," Ronan says, his tone airy and bored. He sounds as if he's said it a thousand times, to a thousand boys in Adam's position. Nothing about this is new. Not Adam's indignation or his rage or the despair that'll soon settle upon him. "If you've found your way here, then you've offered yourself up to me. Thanks for the gift, by the way."

And what a gift it is. Adam is beautiful, burning with an inner fire that Ronan's sure he would be able to feel from all the way across Hell. If there's anything unique about him, it's this light. It reflects in Ronan's eyes as he watches Adam. There's a hunger about him that's menacing, as if at any moment he'll uncoil and snatch Adam's flesh between his teeth.

When he advances, though, it's a lazy step forward. His hand appears out of the folds of his cloak and he offers it palm up, inviting. No need for Adam to kiss the ring just yet. He'll do it willingly, later.

There's no fear in Adam's eyes as he faces down the god-prince of this hell. His determination is colored heavily with desperation, as he is in under no illusion about the hopelessness of his circumstances, but he's not about to roll over and offer his belly.

His eyes flick to that hand, then back up to the trickster-king's son. "And if I don't?"

He expects that he'll be tossed back out into the wastes. Still exhausted, hungry past any hunger he's ever known, and cold, but he'll still struggle to eke out some hours or days of survival. If they toss him back into the chasms of the spider-creature, he'll be doomed entirely. Forced to choose, he knows he will choose this boy, because at least it provides a chance of survival.

He just wants to know whether it is a choice, or whether he'll be taken by force if he doesn't agree.

As far as Ronan's concerned, whatever choices were going to be made were made prior to Adam's arrival in this place. Days ago. Months ago. Years ago. That's how it works, after all. This is a kingdom built on consequences. But that's a truth humans can't stomach, in Ronan's experience. With no one to blame but themselves, somehow they still blame him.

So he skips the lecture altogether and casts a look from left to right, to the beautiful and oddly unsettling landscape around them. "Do you prefer to stay out here?" he asks, incredulous, as if the idiocy of that is self-evident. "I mean, you're welcome to take a tour of the gardens, but you're not so important that we'll be preparing a feast for you out here. And beds are so much softer than the ground."

Food. Soft bed. It's bribery that the dream-prince offers him, rather than threats. His alternative is to be left here, within the sheltered beauty of the strange gardens, in the shadow of the palace, where any other creatures can be assumed to recognize and respect that he has been claimed, and thus should not be harmed.

There's no true refusal, then. He can accept food and comfort--if that suggested offer is real--or he can wander the sheltered maze of the gardens. Either way, he's a kept pet.

He's in no condition to attempt an escape, and has nowhere to go. Adam's too self-driven to allow his pride to send him straight into the maw of the monsters he's all too recently escaped.

His pride balks at accepting food from this boy's hand, a master feeding his pet, but his pride also balks at the real and imminent possibility of passing out in the garden. Resuscitation would be humiliating. Cooperation means tools that Adam can use, knowledge he can leverage, and the fuel and rest that his body needs to function. It's the more practical option.

Adam swaps the leash over to his left hand, winding it around his wrist. He wants to reduce the possibility of having it reclaimed by either of his captors.

Satisfied with that preventative measure, Adam reaches his right hand forward and clasps the nightmare boy's hand.

The prince is incapable of telling a lie, which is something Adam will learn about him, though hopefully not soon enough to take advantage of it. His fingers close around Adam's hand with a gentleness that's counter to his severe appearance and the underlying threat of Adam's situation. It's a grip so loose he's daring Adam to hold tighter if he doesn't want to get left behind.

"Pride is a terrible sin," Ronan says as they begin to ascend the stairs, "because it feels like a virtue." He hasn't read Adam's mind, but he did notice the way Adam's guarding his leash. As though the leash is what determines his autonomy. Later, when he's gathered his strength, Ronan will teach him otherwise. For now, Adam is too fragile to be tested.

"I don't give a shit," Adam tells him, "about whatever moral code you use to determine what is and isn't sin."

They start up the stairs, and Adam feels a foolish, wistful moment's disappointment that they're not going to simply reappear at their destination the way the trickster-king had teleported him here.

The stairs are tall, and Adam's exhaustion is crippling. Standing upright is a struggle. Ascending stairs is nearly insurmountable.

He forces himself forward, leaning into it so that the forward momentum carries him up and it's a matter of getting each foot under him or pitching forward across the stairs. Each step is a struggle, and it takes all of his will not to stop entirely.

His hand slips an inch within the devil prince's grip, because he doesn't tighten it. He has an instant to remedy the situation, and chooses instead to let the hand slip.

He'll get up these damn stairs on his own. He doesn't need his hand held.

Dim alarms in the back of his head grow louder, but they feel like they're stifled by thick air raid curtains. The edges of his vision have grown dark. Adam's pretty sure he's dangerously exhausted.

He's going to get up these damn stairs.

Adam wants to determine his own fate so badly, Ronan leaves him to it. They're all here to learn: Ronan about humanity and Adam about himself. It seems the first lesson will be about Adam's limits, and all the ways they're different from what he'd like to pretend.

Ronan's hand disappears back into his cloak and he turns his gaze forward, to the palace that is their destination, and the rise of steps Adam's yet to conquer. "Morality didn't spring from my imagination, or anyone's, really. It's a stone smoothed over time, the wisdom of ages collected and simplified for digestion by you, a simple mortal thing, with a lifespan like the blink of an eye. You think I'm here to punish you? Look at what your pride's doing to you."

Adam doesn't want to hear this guy's weird philosophical lecture. Wisdom of ages, simple mortal thing, punish, pride. Seems pretty typical to him. The people with power over others tend to think that their way is de facto superior.

"Morality's relative, asshole."

One step, then the next, focused singularly on the goal of ascent, one step at a time, and then he's there, and there are no more steps.

Adam sways dangerously on his feet, catches himself. His head is swimming. Ears ringing.

It reminds him of something, but he doesn't know what.

"I don't make the rules," Ronan sighs, to sum up the point. It doesn't matter to him very much. Certainly not to the extent it ought to matter to Adam. Because Adam has a mortal soul and Ronan does not. He was created in this place, for this place, and he was always meant to exist only here. Adam, on the other hand, suffers here because of his own actions.

And he seems to be suffering quite a lot. "I can carry you the rest of the way," Ronan offers in a way that sounds like taunting, whether he means it or not. "You only have to ask."

"I'm fine."

He's not. But as long as he hasn't passed out yet, he's going to keep going. 'Ronan' can carry him if he passes out.

Recovering himself somewhat, Adam looks around. The soaring pillars around him are a kind of architecture he's never seen before, though he doesn't know what he's seen before. It's wondrous.

It's a cage.

"Which way?" He asks, turning his head toward the demon prince. The very motion of turning gives him vertigo.

His ears ring, and there's something wrong with that, something he's not remembering.

His hand lifts to his ear, and his fingers snap, with a sort of habitual ease, some gesture that his body knows even though his mind has forgotten its purpose. The sound is thunderous, and it startles him.

Ronan watches, half-certain that Adam's about to topple over, and making no move to prevent it. The gesture doesn't make any sense to him, but there's a lot he still hasn't learned about mortals. He so rarely comes into contact with them personally.

"Would you understand direction even if I told you?" he jokes. Adam doesn't seem capable of turning his head without getting lost. Ronan proceeds to lead the way, assuming Adam can still follow him.

Adam presses on after him. He feels more exhausted now than he was when the dream king found him.

Adrenaline, he supposes. Adrenaline kept him going through the horrors out in the wilds. Now that he's in some relative safety, there's no adrenaline left.

He wants to ask how far it is, but pride keeps the words back.

Step after step, he follows after the dream boy. The boy seems to be moving further ahead of him, and Adam isn't catching up. Belatedly, he realizes that he's stopped. His vision has narrowed further, to almost a pinpoint.

He's unconscious before he starts to fall.

Ronan hears the falter in Adam's steps before the fall, but he only stops and turns to watch. Adam insisted he could do it alone. Adam has earned his bumps and bruises. Ronan only laughs, a short and quiet sound.

He gives it a moment, in case Adam comes to, and when it becomes apparent that he won't be waking anytime soon, Ronan approaches and gathers the boy up in his arms. He's warm in a way that only mortals are warm, and his hair smells like the earth. With one arm under Adam's knees and the other supporting his back, Ronan nuzzles up to the crook of his neck and breathes him in.

Then he straightens and resumes the journey. The palace is vast and difficult to navigate. It takes nearly an hour to reach Ronan's room, which is a very long time for a mortal and feels like only minutes to a creature like Ronan. A cage like this has no locks because the maze is maddening enough.

They will be sharing Ronan's bed. It's large enough to fit more than just the two of them, but it's just the two of them for now. The room has all the qualities of a dungeon, carved from black stone. The bed, however, is plush and soft. It's a place for dreaming. Sometimes Ronan sleeps for years.

He lays Adam down and steps away, shedding his cloak and tossing it over the branch of a sculpture that's either meant to resemble a tree or an antler. Possibly a cracked rib cage. When he returns, he leans over to graze the line of Adam's jaw with his fingertip.

Adam drifts in and out of sleep as he's carried. Some deeper instinct than he remembers tells him that he's safe.

Sighing as he's settled into a soft bed, Adam drifts deeper into sleep, but surfaces again at the touch. Struggling back to consciousness, his eyes flicker and he wakes.

Brow furrowed, still groggy with exhaustion, he stares at the strange prince of this hell. He reaches up to swat away the wandering hand, but the motion is drugged and slow, and his arm falls again, unsuccessful.

"You said food," he insists, aching with hunger, almost as much as he's aching with exhaustion, and then he's gone again, eyes rolling up a moment before his lids close.

"Does this kind of behavior really deserve rewarding?" Ronan chides. Adam probably doesn't even hear him. He takes another moment to admire his new boy, that same finger brushing over Adam's lower lip. Then Ronan draws away, off to find a servant. There are hundreds of them, though the halls had appeared empty when Adam was carried through them.

When the food arrives, the tray is set beside the bed, just out of Adam's reach. The leg of lamb is most aromatic, slapped with spices and surrounded with various breads and fruits. As long as Adam's unconscious, however, Ronan's going straight for the wine. There are two goblets, one for Adam and one for himself. Ronan drains his entire cup in three gulps and reaches immediately for Adam's.

Adam's hunger pricks him awake as soon as his body smells food. He stirs, rolling onto his side, and his eyes scan the room in search of the food.

Irritation furrows his brow as he realizes that the tray's out of his reach. He moves to sit up, shooting a glare at Ronan and then returning his attention to the food. This feels intentional. "Is being unpleasant some kind of hobby for you?"

Forcing himself to stand, Adam wavers, staying in place despite the waves of blackness that threaten to submerge him. The hour and some that he rested helped his body, though his muscles are still screaming with starvation and overexertion. He needs food, and then he needs more rest. All other priorities can wait. If he has to put up with this creepy asshole staring at him the whole time, he will. Better Ronan than that spider-thing.

Ronan replies as he raises the goblet to his lips, "I could have sent you to fetch it yourself." He sips this one more slowly, in large part because - yes - his attention is fully fixed on Adam now. The boy looks so frail, tired down to his bones. Ronan doesn't think he's ever felt the way Adam looks, though he understands well enough that it means there's a good chance Adam will fall over again.

"You didn't have to get out of bed," Ronan points out. "You just needed to ask me to feed you."

"Not gonna do that," Adam says. It's interesting to know that that's what the demon prince wanted. He wants Adam to ask for things. To need him.

He doesn't believe the threat of sending Adam to fetch the food himself. His captor hasn't yet been cruel to him. He's offered assistance and pity at every turn. Adam's disinclined to accept either.

Reaching for the food, Adam leans on the table to steady himself as he devours lamb and fruit. He wants to consume the whole tray, but doesn't dare.

Stopping himself while his belly is still clenching with hunger, Adam licks his fingers and curls back into bed. He only needs enough to refuel his muscles and to keep his body from cannibalizing itself. Any more and he fears he'll make himself sick.

He slips quickly into sleep, and this time he stays there, submerging deep and sleeping for hours.

Ronan wants nothing, really. It's Adam who wants. The food, the bed, the comfort. But he refuses any help toward his goals, which gives Ronan nothing to do but watch him. And Ronan's perfectly satisfied with that. Adam is still very much a new toy, and Ronan takes the opportunity while he eats to admire the details of him. Adam's lips look soft even when he tries to look hard, a pouting quality to his frown. And from this short distance, Ronan's finds that Adam's brown skin is sprinkled with even browner freckles. These things invite touching, though Adam himself does not.

Ronan waits until Adam's asleep.

Once his breath grows slow and even, Ronan sets his wine aside and draws closer to the bed. He touches a finger to Adam's cheek, tracing the curve of it down to his lips. He waits for Adam to stir, and when he doesn't, Ronan bows down until their noses nearly touch. As his hand draws away, Ronan experimentally brushes his lips over Adam's. It's not a kiss, but a graze, as Ronan tries to remember what it is to kiss. He thinks centuries might have passed since the last time someone touched him.

He retreats, stripping to the nude as he crosses to the other side, and climbs into bed beside Adam. He shuts his eyes, but he doesn't sleep, only waits for Adam's attempt at rebellion.

Adam wakes groggy and starving, but no longer feeling like his body is consuming itself in order to maintain function. Dizzy as he sits up, Adam looks around the room, piecing his memories together. He's here looking for something. This world is dangerous and cruel. The king, the prince.

He turns his head to see the prince beside him in the bed. Adam can see a bare shoulder and chest, and a little spike of panic goes through him.

But he's still dressed, and feels unharmed. So the prince sleeps shirtless, maybe nude.

Not that he's sleeping now, but Adam doesn't know how much time has passed. It seems he's this boy's best entertainment, even when he's sleeping.

Pulling himself out of bed, Adam staggers back to the tray of food and picks at it, whatever seems least congealed. He takes only just enough to fuel himself, again wary of making himself sick.

Then he starts to explore the room.

It's true that Ronan has no better entertainment. In fact, there's nothing else at all for him. He's not allowed to create anything, though it's all he ever wants to do, and everything else in this place has existed for so many millennia that he's lost interest in it.

The room is both lavish and spartan, obsidian walls warmed with wine-colored tapestries that match the drapes of the bed's canopy. Unnatural purplish light - like a flame, only not - flickers in wrought-iron cage lanterns and scatters ominous shadows across the arched ceiling. The wind whistles through invisible cracks in the stone, suggesting they're at the top of a high tower, but there are no windows to confirm this. The massive black-stained wardrobe contains clothing more or less identical to what Ronan wore earlier.

And everything else in the room is a weapon. A colonnade of glaives lines one wall. Swords, another. On the third wall hangs a miscellaneous assortment, mostly maces, whips, and daggers. And attached to the bed, one in each corner, are chains and shackles. These have been tucked away as discreetly as possible, but they're still in sight if one's looking closely.

Ronan doesn't move as Adam begins his exploration. He only listens, curious what Adam will choose.

Adam stays warily away from the weapons. He glances once at Ronan, suspicious, expecting that these are his and fearing that he may desire to use them on Adam.

He knows that he's looking for something. He remembers that, although he doesn't know what.

And there was what the trickster-king said, when he found Adam. Remarkably powerful, to transport yourself here. Unbelievably stupid.

Adam came here. He chose to come here, wherever this is, or he was waylaid here on his way to his destination. Either way, he had a goal. A purpose. He just needed to find or remember what that purpose was.

"Is there a library?" he asks.

He needs more food, more sleep. He needs a bath.

But most of all, he wants information.

Ronan's mouth curves into a slice of a smile, eyes opening just a sliver. Adam's clever, which pleases Ronan more than anything. His last guest had attempted to impale him almost instantly.

That was a long time ago.

"I can't believe you want to read," he scoffs, coming alive in a way that confirms Adam's suspicion that Ronan hadn't slept at all. His long body uncoils with a luxurious stretch as he sits up. The sheets slip away from him immodestly and he doesn't bother to cover up. "We could be fighting right now. Or riding. Or hunting."

It's charming, though. Ronan flops back against his pillows, too lazy to hold himself upright. He adds, "There's a library, but it's forbidden."

Adam doesn't put a whole lot of stock in 'forbidden' as a concept. 'Forbidden' just needs he'll need to find a way to sneak in.

"Forbidden to me, or forbidden to you, too?" Adam's eyes flicks over the hell-prince's naked body. He's tall and muscular. Physically intimidating. Attractive. Impressively endowed.

Adam starts checking behind the tapestries to see if anything's hidden. "So do you not know how to read?"

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