The Barns; closed

[forleaving]

Who: Adam, Ronan, and Gansey
What: Serious conversations
When: April 9th
Where: The Barns
Warnings: Heartbreak, probable swearing

Adam had been going over things in his head for days, rolling them around, examining them from every angle, picking them apart. Every time, he came to one conclusion; he had to do something. It wasn't going to be easy, but nothing ever was. The worst part, the absolute worst thing about this was that he was going to have to do something he swore he never would. But he'd hold hope close to his chest, just like he'd held tamquam close this whole time, something just for him at this point and no one else. A memory and maybe a promise of better times.

He'd texted both Ronan and Gansey a simple we need to talk with a place and time, and then spent the rest of the morning trying not to pace a hole in the floor. Eventually, while he waited for both of them, he perched himself on the edge of the couch in the living room, fingers twisted together. Looking down at his hands, he took a deep breath. Compartmentalize, he kept telling himself, but there was only so much compartmentalizing he could do before the boxes started to burst. Right now, the metaphorical lids were straining, threatening to spill emotions everywhere.

Comments

[affection_for_research]

(ooc: Separate threads for each?)

The text had caused something cold to settle in Gansey's chest. It'd distracted him at work and on his attempts at trying to make what they've learned about their new home into something accessible to Bruce and anyone else who might need it. Eventually his shift ended and he headed home, wondering if Ronan was headed for the Barns as well.

He let himself in, setting his messenger bag and keys in their usual spot before toeing off his shoes. "Adam?" His voice remained steady despite the nervousness tightening his stomach. Something was wrong. Nothing good ever came from the words 'we need to talk'. He petted Drill Bit when she head butted his leg, then headed toward the living room. Pausing in the doorway, he gently motioned the goat away. "Let me guess. Things aren't going as well as we hoped?"

[forleaving]

[ooc: sounds good!]

"I'm in here," he replied when he heard Gansey's voice, working his hands together anxiously.

He huffed out a breath as Gansey came to the doorway, shaking his head. He looked up, met Gansey's eyes for a brief moment, and then looked away. He felt absolutely abysmal about what he was going to say, but he couldn't see a way to make things work right now that made everyone happy. Gansey and Ronan might have been happy with things, but what about Adam?

"No. I'm sorry," he said immediately. It was better to get it over with as fast as possible, like ripping off a bandaid. "This isn't working. Us. I love you, I do, but-" he shook his head again. He'd practiced the words over and over in his head, how he was going to break this news to Gansey and Ronan, but that didn't actually make things any easier.

What was wrong with him? Did he not love Gansey enough? Did he love Ronan too much? Was he just not built for this kind of thing? If Ronan could put his jealousy aside for this, why couldn't Adam? Why was he still so goddamn miserable when he was trying so hard to be happy? He'd given things time, he'd tried it out for months, and yet here they were.

"I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to hurt either of you." He never had, no matter how many times they'd fought. He'd just wanted Gansey to understand where he was coming from most of the time.

[affection_for_research]

Drill Bit's presence kept him grounded as Adam spoke. The warm weight of her against his leg made everything seem less surreal.

Gansey wasn't sure if that made things better or worse.

He'd thought things were working out. Slowly, but he'd expected things to be slow. The three of them were from different times. Adam had mellowed compared to the boy they'd seen before they'd arrived in a new reality. It'd take time for them to get used to each other again. Puzzle pieces shaken around but Gansey had assumed those pieces still fit somehow.

From Adam's expression, he'd been wrong.

"But I'm not Ronan." He answered, voice slipping automatically to the tones used at political gatherings and during class presentations. A false confidence that Gansey didn't feel. Moving around his pet, he sat down in the chair opposite the couch, making sure not to touch Adam. Unsure if Adam would want to be touched or if he could do so when it felt like the floor might drop out beneath him. "It's all right, Adam. You can't control how you feel. This was an experiment. Sometimes those don't go as planned."

[forleaving]

"I didn't say that." It was true that Gansey wasn't Ronan and Adam loved him differently, but he still loved and cared about him. He'd tried to make this work, he really had, but his jealousy and feelings of inadequacy kept getting to him. Ronan had chosen Gansey over him. He'd said it had nothing to do with choosing one of them over the other, but that was still the way it seemed to Adam. Ronan had chosen Gansey first and both of them second.

"This wasn't an experiment to me," he added miserably, refusing to look up when Gansey approached and sat down across from him. "I wanted things to work out. I didn't want to hurt either of you. You're my best friend." And Ronan was, maybe, his soulmate.

"Ronan chose you though, and that's the way things are." Surely he wasn't that important to either of them. Surely they'd be fine without him romantically involved with them. "I want you both to be happy together. He's going to need you." Because Adam was going to break his heart, too.

[affection_for_research]

No, Adam hadn't said it, but Gansey knew it was true. He wasn't Ronan, the person that Adam wanted. Why wouldn't he want Ronan instead of him? Ronan was healing while Gansey was cracking. Even before that started, he'd known that Ronan was the better choice, the right choice for Adam.

Adam had a future while Gansey was waiting for a fate that he didn't want but couldn't escape.

Carefully keeping his expression from slipping, he absentmindedly petted Drill Bit when she started to fuss. Therapy goat, he thought vaguely, not sure if he should be pleased or surprised that Ronan had created such a thing.

"It wasn't an experiment for me either," he admitted, not wanting Adam to feel like this had been some adolescent adventure in dating that had failed. There were questions hovering along the edges of his mind, but Gansey knew the answers wouldn't help either one of them. And he probably knew the answers without Adam putting them into words.

"Ronan shouldn't have chose me." It was something that he'd known from the beginning but was too selfish to accept. That and Ronan had asked and it was impossible for Gansey to refuse Gansey anything that wasn't life threatening. "He based his feelings on those from the other version of himself. We both know he's supposed to be with you."

[forleaving]

Well, at least everyone had been in it for real. He didn't even have to talk to Ronan to know he was really, truly in love with both of them. Ronan didn't do things halfway. The fact it had been real for Gansey too didn't make it hurt any less, though. That meant Adam was really breaking his heart.

"Don't say that. Why wouldn't he choose you? You're amazing, and the two of you have always been so close." Best friends to lovers was a common enough occurrence that Adam couldn't say he was surprised, just heartbroken. He'd never had love for himself and now he was losing it all.

"I shouldn't have told him we were dating. He said fuck fate and chose you." He took a shaky deep breath. It felt like his own fault if anyone was to blame. "But he's not making a mistake, so don't say that he is." Adam's shoulders hunched, fingers sliding into his hair. He was trying so hard not to cry; it was evident in his voice. "You're good for him and you're good to him. I just want you both to be happy."

[affection_for_research]

"Before we arrived here, Ronan would never have considered it." Ronan called him brother. He was family. If they hadn't fallen into the memories of the Gotham versions of themselves, Ronan would have still thought of him as a brother. "We both know why he shouldn't choose me." Gansey had no future. When he returned to Henrietta, he'd die. Adam said he'd come back, but deep down, Gansey knew that he shouldn't be brought back.

He'd been given a second chance before when he'd stepped into the hornets' nest, but he'd never done anything to deserve that chance. He still hadn't. Adam was the capable one of the group, the true intelligence among them. He couldn't help thinking of the things Blue and Adam had said in the past about his privilege, and knew he wasn't worthy of what he'd been given.

Somehow he managed to keep his voice steady, his expression composed. His mother would be proud of how Richard Gansey III he was being. No sign of the hurt tearing at his chest or the guilt drowning his thoughts. Or how lost he suddenly felt, doubt prowling around the corners of the room, ready to attack. He rubbed the back of his left ear, the only sign of that weakness that he'd allow himself. "Give him time, Adam. Eventually he'll figure it out and realize he wants to be with you. He's just being stubborn."

[forleaving]

"Are you sure about that? You two have always been close." So close that multiple people thought they were dating. Adam didn't know the things that went through Ronan's mind, sometimes. That gave him another terrible thought. He'd been Ronan's first kiss before, but here? His stomach twisted.

"Stop selling yourself short. What happens outside of this place is-" a bullshit reason not to date someone, he almost said. But then he realized how much like Ronan he would have sounded. "-you're going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay."

There was something else that was gnawing at him, too. Something he couldn't ignore. "What about you?" Lowering his hands, he glanced up for a moment. "Does Ronan make you happy? Don't you want to be with him?" That was just as important. Gansey was here, being selfless, acting like Adam was the only important one. And while Adam liked that Gansey was concerned, he wasn't the only one whose feelings mattered in this mess.

[affection_for_research]

Letting out a sigh, he reminded himself that emotions weren't something to be shown to others, not even a close friend like Adam. He needed to keep everything compartmentalized, ignore the hollow feeling that echoed through him. "Maybe when we first met. Before Niall died..." But that had changed everything.

"Of course we'll be okay." He forced a confidence that he didn't feel. "You said that somehow the two of you fix it." Paying a cost that they shouldn't have. Too many people had given too much - or would give too much - for Gansey to live. "And we'll fix this too."

His expression faltered, uncertainty creeping in before he could carefully box it away. "What I want doesn't matter. The two of you are supposed to be together. I knew that I was being selfish when I said yes. I knew that it was wrong, but I -" Shaking his head, he glanced down at Drill Bit, scritching the top of her head as he composed himself. "Why I did it doesn't matter. It was wrong and now I need to correct it."

[forleaving]

"So you have no reason not to date Ronan." Except for the glaringly obvious reason that Adam was head over heels in love. But Gansey wasn't going to die and stay dead; that was no excuse.

"And stop being evasive. What you want matters just as much as anything." Part of him couldn't believe he was saying things like this, but Gansey and Ronan were both his friends and he wanted someone to be happy if it wasn't him. He cared too much about them to wish unhappiness upon them. "You love him." They wouldn't be in this situation if Gansey didn't. "So be with him. Don't leave him because of me." Adam would feel even worse then.

"It's too late to say you've made a mistake." And Ronan wasn't a mistake; he deserved better than that. Did that make Adam a hypocrite then? He'd made a mistake thinking he could handle dating both Ronan and Gansey and now they were all paying for it.

[affection_for_research]

"Death is a big reason, Parrish." He might not stay dead, but that didn't mean he was the right choice. Or that he would be able to be with someone afterward. He'd been a mess for years after his first death. How could he go through that again without similar results? And how could either one of them want to be near him after giving up Cabeswater for him? He couldn't be more important to Ronan and Adam than Cabeswater.

"No, it doesn't." His voice was quiet but certain. His wishes weren't as important as the others'. This proved that. He'd accepted what he'd wished for and it had ended up hurting all of them. "We both know that Ronan made a decision using faulty logic. It needs to be corrected." Even if it would break Gansey's heart. He had to make sure that they were happy. That they were taken care of. "I need to ensure that he has what he needs to be happy. And that means he needs you.

"If you know you've made a mistake, then it can be fixed. But it wasn't a mistake. It was selfishness. I can find a way to do the right thing. It'll just take time for me to figure it out, but I will."

[forleaving]

"Only if it's permanent." It wasn't like they would love Gansey any less after he died and was revived. It wasn't like he would suddenly become a different person or something. He would still be Gansey, a king in his own right. A hero. A best friend.

"Fuck off with that," Adam said irritably. "What you want matters. You matter. And he seemed pretty sure of what he was doing, to me." He could still remember, vividly, standing in the kitchen with the dreamed flower, smiling while Ronan broke his heart. And then again later, at work, when Ronan explained himself. "It's not faulty logic if he loves you." And he loved Adam, too, but not as much as he did Gansey, apparently.

"It's just as selfish for me to want him all to myself. He was the first person to ever make me feel worthy of love." And Adam wanted that back, but he wasn't going to advocate for Gansey and Ronan breaking up. He was the one removing himself from the equation so they could be happy. He was used to being miserable; he'd lived seventeen years that way. "But if letting him go is what I have to do, then whatever."