“I’ve seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t notice.” Adam/Ronan, TRC
It was known to everyone besides Adam that Ronan’s second secret was, in fact, Adam himself. Ronan was less than subtle about it; the lotion left for Adam’s dry hands after a day at the shop, the rent so carefully finagled. It was obvious, perhaps, but Adam was a boy who needed words spoken for them to be indelibly etched upon his eardrums and inside his heart.
See, Adam wasn’t sure that anything he had wouldn’t, in an instant, slip through his fingers. It was this kind of belief, or lack thereof, that sowed doubt within him. He knew he wasn’t imagining that Ronan was looking at him, even if when he turned to check, Ronan was tending to Chainsaw or systematically destroying something or other. The burden of creation weighed heavily on Ronan; the universe always requires balance and he could only go for so long without giving in.
Yes, Adam knew that Ronan looked at him, never caught him at it but knew the way one knows a light is about to turn yellow or when the sky is nearly ready to open up and pour down rain. But that doubt, insidious and cold in its inevitability, meant that he didn’t entirely know why Ronan would be watching him so intently, playing sentry every time Adam’s voice rose in involuntary anger.
Cabeswater didn’t have an answer. It never did; only more questions, and sometimes a feeling of certainty to replace the sensation of the world slipping through his fingers. Adam was used to not getting what he wanted; even so, it still hurt when dreams taunted him with the rest of the wide world to which he was not entitled.