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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Adam's still groggy when he wakes, but he feels a little better. He hopes that this time he'll be able to stay awake for more than an hour. Getting up, he eats another cake, then comes back to the bed, sitting cross-legged and watching Ronan in return. "Are there people here, aside from your father and the monsters? Monsters, videlicet, the ones who wanted to eat me."

"There are servants," Ronan replies, swirling his wine around and around in his goblet while observing Adam. "Out of sight, but never far. Don't bother asking them questions more complicated than, 'Where's the toilet?' They get confused very easily when they have to think for themselves."

Which isn't so different from Ronan, considering the line of questioning about the library.

"Out there - out there out there - there are billions of people like you, suffering. Unlike you, they didn't mean to come here. Do you even understand how fucked you are?"

"Hardly matters," Adam says, dismissing the fatalism. "I chose to come here. It must have been important." He must have been worth it. "Now I'm here, so all that matters is what I can do with the circumstances I'm in."

He studies Ronan, trying to memorize every detail. He's not about to tell his keeper that he's here looking for the boy he loved. It's clear enough from Ronan's obsession with him that Ronan would be jealous.

"The--the things that tried to eat me. They were all humanoid, in awful ways. That's what you mean, isn't it? People out there, suffering."

Glancing away, Adam processes through what very little he knows. "Is your father in charge of that?"

Ronan bristles at the question. "Are you trying to blame him? Everyone does." And from Ronan's tone of voice, he's in disagreement with all of them. Despite his tower bedroom that might as well be a dungeon. Despite the chains at the foot of his bed. Despite skin so pale it's likely he's never seen sunlight, only sickly green clouds and a landscape of death and rot.

"The decay of the soul is natural," Ronan says. He takes another sip of wine before continuing, "You can't blame anyone for that. And if someone's accelerating the rate of that decay with their deeds? No one to blame but themselves."

"What's the use of blame?" Adam asks, rhetorically. He's not surprised at how Ronan defends his father--owner? creator?. It's already clear that Ronan doesn't like questioning the dream-king's authority and doesn't have enough of a rebellious streak to chafe at the restrictions on his life. "What I want to know is how much choice or influence he has over the denizens of the land. Does he rule them, create them, design them?"

His nose wrinkles a little as Ronan keeps drinking. "Is your diet entirely liquid?"

"Yes," Ronan answers, unimpressed by that judgmental tone. "Why wouldn't I drink? It's the most fun a guy can have by himself. Why are you asking about those things out there, anyway? It's all of the above, and there's nothing you can do about it."

"I'm curious. And since I don't know what I came here for, it makes sense to learn as much about the place as I can." Adam's gaze lingers, unyielding. "Self-preservation, too. How many of those things are former pets of yours?"

Ronan hasn't mistreated him yet, but that doesn't mean that Ronan won't get bored. This callous but careful young man might only be the first phase. As Adam's fascination begins to fade, the treatment might change.

Unless Adam can change the rules. Ronan's will seems malleable. If Adam can gain influence over him, then he can make it impossible for Ronan to discard him. Perhaps even to a point that Ronan's loyalty to his father can be subverted.

It's a dangerous plan, particularly knowing what Adam knows. He came here for someone. If Ronan were to find that out, Adam might lose all ability to control him.

Ronan sighs, bored or irritated by the question. "I can't remember," he says. Adam will find that's a common answer. Time erodes everything, and memory most of all. "If you're that worried about it, you ought to enjoy your time here a little more, instead of wasting it asking stupid questions."

Ronan doesn't remember. Which could mean none, it could mean dozens.

He wants to point out that the pursuit of knowledge is his idea of an enjoyable time, but keeps that to himself. He needs to secure his influence over Ronan. That's his first priority, superseding even the information of why he came here.

"What did you have in mind?" Adam tilts his head, curious and also challenging. If Ronan's favorite pastime was drinking, what other entertainments did he think Adam was passing up?

Ronan had nothing particular in mind when he said it. He only meant to discourage further inquiry about the world outside. Now that Adam asks, though, Ronan's gaze flicks to his lips before dropping away. His cup suddenly becomes much more interesting.

"It could be anything," he answers vaguely. He'd never beg a kiss off Adam, let alone demand anything more of him. Adam's soul is his charge, but Ronan's not some tyrannical monster. "Anything we can do inside this place."

Adam notices the glance at his lips and then the way Ronan suddenly becomes unable to look at him. It's charming, honestly, that the intimidating prince of hell is shy.

It's nice, too, to feel wanted, especially because that comes with no demands and no expectations. Ronan seems to be willing to yearn from a distance if that's what Adam requires of him.

"I'll make you a deal," he offers. "I'll give you a kiss if you'll take me to the library."

Ronan's face grows warmer than it's ever felt. (At least, as far as he remembers.) The deal is more tempting than anything he's been offered in his afterlife. If he was a fool, he'd accept without hesitation.

However... "If I take you to the library, we'll never see each other again." He raises his eyes to Adam's. "You wouldn't have a chance to kiss me even if you actually intended to. Anyway, I'm not that desperate. When you kiss me, it'll be because you want to kiss me, or it won't happen at all."

It's cute, again, how Ronan goes pink. He's really kind of sweet and charming, despite the conditions of their relationship. If things were different, Adam thinks it might be pleasant to flirt with him just for the pleasure of flirting with him.

But Adam isn't capable of simply accepting his fate. He will not resign himself to living in a windowless room without books. He'll fight the god-king of this place before he resigns himself to that.

"I was planning to kiss you first," Adam says. "So you'd still get your payment either way. One kiss before leaving one kiss upon arrival, that seems fair, don't you think?"

He finds that he has an impishly playful side that makes him want to bring more blushes to Ronan's cheeks, and to make him squirm. "Why do you say we'd never see each other before? You think your father would separate us for the disobedience? Why? He gave me to you. He wants you to have me."

"Yes," Ronan confirms, his face still burning. "He wants me to have you here." Adam is meant to be a companion, not a troublemaker. Ronan's tendency toward mischief is part of the reason he's isolated in the first place.

"Anyway, your affection's not something I'm going to bargain with. I'm not that kind of monster." His gaze drops briefly back to Adam's lips. It would be easy to accept the kiss and refuse his half of the bargain anyway, but he has too much honor for that.

"That's fine," Adam says, and gives it to him anyway. As a reward for that honor, and because he's cute, and because Adam want to have power over him.

Bracing himself with one hand on Ronan's shoulder, Adam leans in and kisses him. He keeps it sweet and brief, but it's a real kiss, not just a peck.

As he pulls away, Adam flashes a little grin and gets to his feet. He's not giving up on the library, not even a little. He's just going to focus on other goals and come back around to it when he has a better plan. So in maybe an hour or two.

"I want to go for a walk. I know I'm allowed in the gardens, at least. Or anywhere else I'm allowed that has windows."

There's nothing forbidden about it, in this place, but Ronan's heart skips at the kiss. Adam gives it away so freely, as if Ronan is someone he'd actually want, when they both know that isn't the case. It can't possibly be. Not yet.

Once the dizziness passes and the spell of Adam's lips wears off, Ronan realizes that Adam knows exactly what he's doing. If he isn't very careful, he'll end up Adam's captive.

"If you're looking for something beautiful," Ronan says as he rises, "the gardens are the closest thing to beautiful that you'll find here."

Adam's eyes flick over Ronan and he considers pointing out that he has something beautiful right in front of him, but it's too much.

"I'm looking for the illusion of freedom," Adam says. At least until he can have the real thing, and he's still convinced that's going to happen. He'll find a way. He'll find the library. He'll find the boyfriend he came here for.

Ronan's gotten to his feet, so that's progress at least. They're going somewhere. Anywhere is acceptable to Adam. He has so much to learn about this place.

"Aren't you being cruel to yourself?" Ronan asks as they leave the room. He can still feel the ghost of Adam's kiss on his lips, resisting the urge to touch them with his fingers. "I think it's easier to forget the outside world."

They descend the stairs, a long spiral back down toward the gardens. Ronan walks slowly, in no hurry. "This is a place for losing things," he continues. "So the sooner you forget about ideas like freedom, the sooner you'll stop feeling the loss."

Adam's only in slightly more of a hurry, but with Ronan's longer stride, their speed matches up nicely. "I don't know if you've noticed this," he replies, "but I'm not very good at accepting stated boundaries." He flashes a glance toward Ronan, mischief and a hint of flirtation in his eyes, and it's gone as quick as it came.

So Ronan broke his wings battering himself against the walls of his cage, and now he's given up. Now he expects Adam to give up.

Waste of breath and a risk to convince him of just how implausible that is.

"What's her name?" Adam asks, pointing at a random servant at the end of a hall. "And his, next to her?"

The look in Adam's eyes warms Ronan, a flame he quickly snuffs out. "Makaria and Salmoneus," he answers dully, as if the information is hardly worth the effort of speaking. "You don't have to remember them. They answer to 'hey, you' or 'slave' just as readily, and they don't make very good friends."

Adam's briefly the tiniest bit disappointed--he'd wanted to try and catch Ronan in a lie, or to show an inconsistency in Ronan's behavior. The fact that Ronan knew his name is still strange and untrustworthy, and Adam had been hoping that Ronan wouldn't know their names so that he could ferret out the truth behind that.

Instead he finds that Ronan knows the names of every--or nearly--servant in his household because he tried to be friends with them. Adam's heart clenches with sympathy at how lonely that must be.

"Why don't they make very good friends?"

"They're hollow," Ronan replies. Every word out of his mouth is always honest, if not entirely clear or helpful. He has no need to deceive Adam and no desire to do so. Where someone else might make a game of it, Ronan finds no joy in manipulation. In this way, he's different from his father. "What they once were has been worn down to nothing, so that all that's left is their purpose. They're not servants so much as they are the act of serving. They exist to fulfill their duty, that's it."

Adam's attention lingers on them until they're out of sight. He thinks about it, mulling over what Ronan has said and what new information it provides. "What do you think will happen to you?" he asks, because he's learning that Ronan is intelligent and attentive, even if he's had the fire ground out of him. He suspects Ronan has thought about it before, or specifically avoided thinking about it. "You don't even have a purpose."

He already seems more than half hollow. Nothing seems to sustain him or appeal to him other than the drinking. And Adam, now.

Adam finds he doesn't mind being the focus of Ronan's fixation. It's nice to be fascinated upon, as if he's something wondrous. I'll give you a purpose, he thinks. Worship me.

It's a strange thought, and it makes Adam wonder who he was, and why he wants it. Ronan's docile servility in the face of his captivity grates at Adam's temper, but there's another feeling mixed in with the irritation. If Ronan's going to be obedient, he should be obeying Adam.

Ronan slows to a stop, his gaze dropping - not quite to the floor, but to Adam's hands. What will happen to him? He never cared to ask. Or if he did, the moment faded with so much of the rest of him.

"It must have happened already," he muses, dull and passionless. He can't think of any part of him that would be missed if his father saw fit to carve it out. His identity is one that was bestowed upon him. He doesn't know what he was before that, if he was anything at all. There's nothing about the tower, even, that might make it a home he could miss. Except, of course, that an afterlife in the tower would be easier than an afterlife full of suffering.

Ronan's gaze returns to Adam's face. A strange thought strikes him, then, and a cold jolt with it: That he would miss Adam, if Adam were taken away from him. Ronan quickly looks away, his brow drawn in aggravation. "I don't have anything," he reiterates, as if to convince the walls around them, though the walls know that's untrue, because he claimed Adam for himself the moment Adam arrived.

Adam goes a few steps past when Ronan stops, and then retreats back to stand in front of Ronan, very close, looking up at him. He watches the pained realization and then the jolt of something, and the upset that follows. Adam feels a bit like he just held a mirror in front of Ronan and forced him to look into it. It's a handsome face, but pale and drawn. A bit what you'd expect of someone who lived in that tower prison.

"I have a purpose," Adam tells him. Calm and certain. Adam still knows what he is, even though he doesn't remember why. He will fight the god of this place to keep his purpose, if he needs to. "You can come with me."

Then he turns and resumes their prior course. He knows that Ronan will come with him. He knows that Ronan will not endure having Adam out of his sight, unless Adam demands it, and even then he might not.

Adam/Ronan ~ Prince of Hell

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