Chapter Text
Ronan couldn't sleep. There was a boy in bed with him, radiating heat and the faint, almost electrical hum of magic, and it was everything he could do to lay there and stare at the ceiling while the existential crisis took hold.
This was something that happened now, apparently. Three nights this month Adam had fallen asleep on Ronan's bed, Calculus book propped up against his chest, and Ronan had tucked him in like a good mother and told himself not to dream too loudly.
The first night he’d tried to sleep on the couch. He had hugged his arms to his chest, eyes closed, willing himself toward unconsciousness, but it was like he'd shut all the sunlight and warmth in the universe behind a door and it was fifteen feet away, flooding his system with heat and deadly radiation. The thought of Adam's knees and shoulders moving against Ronan's sheets, his warm breath ghosting over Ronan's pillowcase, a thin line of drool escaping from gently parted lips and edging down Adam's cheek in a way that should have been gross and not at all compelling - these images burned inside of Ronan. He imagined the longing he'd been storing up in his chest as if it were hot embers raked together, whipped up by little gusts of wind and bursting into flame whenever he took a deep breath. He could feel the heat intensifying and dissipating in waves, burning brighter and brighter with every intake of oxygen, until he thought there was a reasonable chance he might actually catch fire. This was not an idle fear for someone who'd pulled nightmares and loaded weapons out of his dreams. If he fell asleep like this, could he burn the building down?
Ronan had spent a lot of time in that bed thinking about Adam. "Thinking" being both a literal and euphemistic term, because he worried about Adam sometimes, about whether he was sleeping enough or eating enough or putting himself in harm's way, but he was also an eighteen-year-old boy with a room to himself and way too much time on his hands. The Virginia sun had fallen asleep in his bed, and he was going to burn up no matter where he was. So Ronan got up, crossed into the cavern of his own bedroom, and lay down on the mattress next to Adam.
He didn't want to watch him sleep. That would have been creepy. But he lay awake all night and listened, eyes shut tight, burning up from the inside.
* * *
The second and third time Adam had apologized before falling asleep, which was stupid because Ronan had made it pretty clear that he would rather have him here at Monmouth than driving across town at two a.m. on less than four hours' sleep.
"Is somebody waiting up for you in that shithole apartment?" he'd asked. "Just sleep here, Jesus. I'll set an alarm," and if that wasn't as good as an engraved invitation then Ronan didn't know what was. Adam seemed like he'd understood - he'd stayed, anyway, and Ronan had curled up into the space beside him like a cat beside a hearth. Close, but not quite touching. Close, but not close enough to burn.
* * *
This time was different. It was different because Ronan fell asleep first and didn't have time to prepare himself physically or psychologically for the shock of Adam reaching across his stomach in the middle of the night, shirt hiked up and gently pressing the warm length of his thigh against the front of Ronan's jeans. There was nothing overtly sexual about it - the whole thing felt drowsy and innocent and weirdly domestic, which made it that more embarrassing when Ronan, sleep-stupid and confused, groaned and turned into Adam's touch, bending his knee and slipping it between Adam's thighs.
He heard a sharp intake of breath as Adam's whole body tensed up. His eyes snapped open, looking at Ronan with - what? Confusion? Embarrassment? They were both suddenly, undeniably awake.
"Jesus!" Ronan hissed, scrambling back a few inches and shoving Adam awkwardly away from him. But it turned out that Ronan had been crowding into Adam's space and not the other way around: Adam had been lying right on the edge of the bed and one shove was enough to tip him onto the floor, landing painfully on his ass if the brief and sharply efficient string of curses that came out of his mouth was anything to go by.
"You fucker," Adam said, and whimpered. "Jesus Christ, that hurt." The warmth of Adam's accent curled around every word and groan, and Ronan wanted, incongruously, to pull him back into bed and kiss him on the mouth and take whatever punishment followed. Had he always been this much of an idiot? But he didn't do any of the things that sprang to mind. Instead he sat up in bed and rubbed his face with one hand, trying to sound less shaken than he actually felt. "God dammit Adam, don't you have a home to go to?"
He expected Adam to throw something or make a joke or say something horrible but true that Ronan could memorize and repeat to himself any time he was in the mood for self-abuse, but Adam didn't say anything at all. He just got to his feet, grabbed his coat from the back of the chair, and left, wincing with every step.