Chapter Text
Adam realized he was bisexual the way he assumed most people did: by walking out of a magical forest and into the 1800s. There was something about Irish farmers, apparently.
He told himself this joke when the separation was unbearable. When he was stuck in the now, wanting to be back in the then. When it was too much to remember the past and what it held, but too painful to not think of it at all, so he used that stupid, stupid joke for reminiscing.
Of course, it wasn’t actually that simple.
What happened was this: at the age of sixteen, Adam was riding shotgun in an old, beat-up Chevy truck when his father threatened to shoot him. Adam had done something - something insignificant and stupid and definitely not worth threatening your son for - and it upset Robert Parrish enough that he stopped the car in the middle of an empty field. As his hand clenched the gun, Robert told Adam he could get out or get shot.
They were miles from home, miles from anything, so it really wasn’t much of a choice. Still, Adam scrambled out of the car and watched his father drive away.
Behind him was a forest of trees. Ahead of him was miles of empty road. He knew better than to walk into a forest with no guide, but he also knew it was a diagonal route back to Henrietta. If he cut through the woods there was the potential to save himself a solid four miles of walking.
Adam looked at his shoes: they had holes. He looked at the sky: the sun was dipping low. Soon it would tuck itself into the land for a rest. Adam took the risk and walked into the forest.
The trees were thick, branches slapping against his cheeks no matter how he pushed them aside, but it was so pleasingly quiet. Empty, but not eerie. He had no watch, no cellphone, so Adam didn’t know how long he walked. All he knew is that by the time he saw a clearing in the trees, his feet were begging for a break.
So it was his annoyance that kept him from realizing something was amiss when he left the forest. Adam didn’t notice the surprisingly green fields, the lack of cars, the sudden grey clouds that covered the sky. Instead, he focused on the unrecognizable barn and how it was definitely not Blueberry Hill, the orchard he’d have run into if he had only stayed straight through the forest. Somehow he must have gotten off track.
Adam weighed his options. From a distance he could see a man working in a herd of cattle. He hated asking for help, especially from a random Henrietta stranger, but he saw no other option. If he was lucky, Blue would be near done with her shift at Nino’s and could come get him. As he walked down the hill and to the farm he recited a speech in his head. Hello, Sir, my name is Adam Parrish. I got lost in the woods and I was wondering if I could borrow your phone.
The man didn’t notice him coming over the sound of the cattle. Adam had to clear his throat twice to get his attention. The farmer turned to him, the frown on his face quickly turning contemplative as his eyes scanned over Adam.
“Hi,” Adam said.
The man nodded at him, expression back to a glare.
Adam pressed on, hoping that if he just talked fast it would make it all go away faster. “My name is Adam and I think I’m lost.” He wet his lip with his tongue. “Could I borrow your phone?”
The man blinked at him. He grabbed his bottom lip with his thumb and pointer finger and twisted it, as if Adam’s request was something worth seriously considering. His eyes lowered to Adam’s body again, causing Adam to tug at his shirt. It felt absurd to be judged by this man, who himself wore an extremely dated, white button-down covered with grime.
“I’ll only be a minute, I promise,” Adam muttered.
The man cleared his throat and finally spoke. His voice was deep and lilted, and it took Adam’s brain a minute to register it as an accent. “I beg your pardon?”
“Can I borrow your phone to call my friend?”
The man ran his arm across his forehead, wiping away invisible sweat, and went back to frowning at Adam. He was trying extremely hard not to fidget in a self-conscious stupor. They couldn’t have been that different in age, as the man didn’t have a single blemish or wrinkle marking his skin that betrayed too many years passed, but his body was built in the way that signaled he’d left puberty behind for good. While Adam was long, with protruding elbows and ankles and ears, this man had broad shoulders, remnants of a beard recently cropped, and some semblance of actual muscle.
“Where you from, kid?”
Where are you from? Adam wanted to ask. He sounded British-- wait, no, Irish. The only accents he heard around Henrietta were of Southern variants. How did the man manage to set up an entire farm in Henrietta and not lose his accent? By the looks of the farm there was no way he was a recent addition to the city. (Unless he was just a shitty farmer. That could explain the lack of fences, the shabby house that made Adam’s trailer look decent. Maybe he didn’t know better.)
“I’m out by Boyd’s, if you know that area. I thought I cut could through the woods but I must have got turned around,” Adam said as he pulled his arms close to his body, eyes darting to the sky. Why was it so cold all the sudden? It was summer and Henrietta never got this cold.
The man ran his hand over his scalp, fingers digging into dark curls. It was growing long in boyish fashion, just another thing that made it hard to place his age.
“You’re not from here, are you?”
Adam sighed. It had been an extremely long day, the last thing he needed was a farmer slow on the uptake. A particularly biting breeze disrupted his internal complaints, however, and he shivered.
The farmer jerked his head to the house. “Come inside. We’ll figure it out.”
It struck Adam that it wasn’t wise to follow a stranger into his house, but as he looked around the valley, he felt he was screwed either way. He could either run back into the woods or run into an empty field, knowing each direction likely led to more abandoned stretches, or he could follow the man and take the risk.
Anyway, Adam felt like he trusted the man, for whatever reason.
Stepping into the house was the first time that Adam felt that something was amiss. He didn’t catalogue it into words quite yet, but the sense of not quite right crept up his neck. The house was...wrong. It was a little too dark, the only light coming from a small, dying fire in the corner. Adam didn’t see a single appliance, not even a sink. Was this place even up to code?
The man jerked his head to the fire. “Fix it, will you?” He then went into a small room in the back and disappeared.
Adam stared at the fire. Fix it? How? He’d never made a fire in his life. (It was one of those realizations that sent a sharp spike into Adam’s heart. Just another thing that Adam didn’t get to know. He bet Blue knew how to build a fire. She’d been camping with her family before and got invited to class bonfires.) There was a pile of wood next to the fireplace in differing shapes and sizes. Adam picked up one of the larger pieces and gently placed it over the embers, being careful to watch his fingers.
Nothing happened.
“Here.”
He felt something hit the back of his head. Adam spun, quickly trying to grab whatever the man had thrown at him. It was a white shirt to match the man’s, rough to the touch but shockingly thick, though it was thankfully devoid of dirt stains. Adam looked at the man, meaning to question why he needed it, but the words died on his tongue.
The man had pulled off his shirt and was walking around the room without a care. A fresh shirt was slung over his shoulder but apparently he didn’t plan to wear it any time soon. Adam’s eyes lingered a little too long on his naked chest and bare back. He wasn’t ripped like some celebrities Adam had seen in magazines, a pastime he’d taken up when the grocery store was slow and he had to wait at his register, but that was fine. Adam never saw the appeal of men like that - wondered why woman ever wanted that - but this was different. This was strong arms, broad shoulders, a tapered waist.
He swallowed instinctively.
Adam should have known right then. He still didn’t.
The man cleared his throat. Adam placed his hand on his own stomach, his palm spreading across it, and he clenched the fabric when the man turned to him with a sour expression. Caught.
“Is this for me?”
The man nodded. “Sun is going down. You need something warmer than... that.”
Adam looked at his t-shirt. It wasn’t anything fancy but he didn’t understand why the man looked at it with such judgement.
“Go on,” the man said, gesturing to the shirt he gave Adam. His eyes then skipped to the fire. He barked a rough laugh and walked over, hands on his hips. “What have you done here, kid?”
Taking advantage of the man’s back to him, Adam shrugged off his t-shirt and put the new one on. It wasn’t exactly comfy but the chill lessened quickly.
“I don’t know how to build a fire, sorry,” Adam muttered.
The man’s eyes slid back to Adam, again judgemental, but the expression dropped quickly enough. He grabbed a few smaller logs and waved them at Adam before he placed them into the fire.
“Start small. You need the fire to catch first.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Adam looked around the room again. He didn’t see a phone anywhere. Maybe this guy was a minimalist?
“So, uh, do you have a phone I could borrow? If not, I need to--”
The man perched himself on a wooden chair. “What’s this you keep saying? Phone?”
“Yeah.” Adam tugged at his new shirt. It made him feel, once more, incredibly tiny compared to the man. They were almost the same height, but there was so much extra room across the shoulders and in the sleeves. Room that allowed for muscle Adam didn’t possess. “A cell phone? Wait, uh, or a mobile? I think that’s what you guys call them.”
The man blinked. Instead of answering he drawled, “You guys?”
“You’re...Irish?” Adam ventured.
“What kind of question is that?” He barked. When Adam flushed, the man rubbed the back of his neck and said, “And what are you? Brit, I assume? You Brits and your fucking accents. Always changing.”
Adam was starting to get very confused. What was this man on? “No, I’m from here.”
“Bullshit. You’re not Irish,” the man said.
“Uh, no? Not… that I know of,” Adam muttered, confused at the discussion now.
The man seemed equally perplexed. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, eyes searching Adam once more. It was awful. Why did he have to stare at him like that? (And why hadn’t he put a shirt on yet?)
“How old are you?” The man asked.
“Sixteen.”
“Barely still a baby, but a baby still you are,” the man confirmed. Before Adam could argue this point, the man (finally) tugged his shirt over his head and asked, “And your name?”
“Adam.” He didn't want to say his last name. His father had a reputation in town, and even though this guy was clearly new to Henrietta, Adam didn’t want to chance being associated with Robert Parrish. “You’re…?”
The man didn’t answer for a moment. Apparently a name was too much to ask for, even when Adam had just returned the favor. When the silence officially moved from awkward to downright uncomfortable, Adam muttered, “So… you don’t have a phone. How far from town are you?”
“‘Bout an hour’s walk. I’ll take you there tomorrow,” the man said.
“An hour?” Adam pressed his fingers into his scalp. How had he gotten so off track? That damn forest must have turned him around somehow. He wanted to ask about a car but he didn’t want to assume. Owning a car was common in Henrietta but if his family was barely able to save enough for a shitty truck, he couldn’t imagine this man having a secret Beemer anywhere.
Adam licked his bottom lip. “It’s fine, I need to get home. If you can just point me in the right direction--”
The man snorted. “You leave now you’re just going to get lost. Sun is going down, cold is coming out. You can stay here for the night, help with the animals in the morning, then I’ll take you in.”
“I’ll be fine--”
“Kids these days. Stubborn as hell,” the man muttered. He turned in his chair to turn back to the fire, using a stick to poke the logs into a new position. The fire crackled with enthusiasm. “Look, kid--”
“Adam ,” he muttered.
“Fine, Adam, you don’t seem to be from this area. You don’t seem to be from this…” The man trailed off, the word clearly on his tongue but being left unsaid. Instead, he waved his hand in the air. “You walk out this door and you’re going to get lost. Don’t look at me like that. I get lost and it’s my own God-awful farm.”
Adam leveled his gaze at the man, hoping he could convey the question, What about stranger danger? without actually having to say it. The man did not pick up the hint. Instead, he stood up and began rummaging through a wooden crate in the corner of the room and asked, “Hungry?”
“I’m fine,” Adam said. He was hungry, of course, but he already felt like an imposition. “Look, I can’t just… stay here.”
“Too simple for your taste?”
“No. This whole...minimalistic thing you have going on isn’t too far from what I’m used to. But I don’t even know you,” Adam said. “You won’t even tell me your name.”
He dropped a loaf of bread on Adam’s lap and said, “Mr. Lynch is fine.”
Adam scanned his memory, trying desperately to pinpoint that name. There was definitely no Lynch Farms in Henrietta and he’d never heard the name around town. There was no possible way he could have walked so deep into the forest that he came out in another town, right? Time did slip away from him when under the thick canopies, but surely he would know.
Later, when he told Blue the story, she thought it strange that Adam didn’t realize sooner that he was not in his time. It wasn’t that simple, though. Adam had always been rational and time travel wasn’t supposed to be real. Why on earth would he suspect he’d gone back in time? It didn’t even cross his mind.
“You can help yourself to some eggs if you need more. Chickens are out back,” Lynch said. He pulled a wooden bowl from a shelf and handed it to Adam. “Berries, too. Not much, I’m afraid, but beggars can’t be choosers and the whatnot.”
“This is fine,” Adam said. He picked at the bread. It looked home-made, lumpy and uneven but with a crisp crust. “Look, no offense Mr. Lynch, I really appreciate the offer to stay. It’s kind of…” Please don’t make me say it. When Lynch blinked back, Adam finished, “Weird?”
“You’re not the first runaway to stop by my farm and stay the night,” Lynch said.
“I didn’t run away --”
“I get a lot of those, too,” Lynch said with a roll of his eye. “Or what, is this a money thing? Don’t think you can stay without paying me? I should have know. You look and talk like one of those rich kids from down south.”
“I’m not rich, ” Adam spat.
Lynch held up his hands in defense. “Alright, suit yourself. Then just help me out with the animals in the morning and we’ll call it even. That’s what everyone else does.”
“Everyone else?” Adam echoed.
“Like I said, you’re not the first kid to wander into my farm. Though the first who doesn’t know how to start a damn fire.” The latter fact was added with a tilt of Lynch’s eyebrow. At its arch, Adam sucked in a quick breath. Sensing Adam’s sudden worry - though there was no way Lynch could know the exact reason for why Adam’s stomach clenched - he waved his hand and said. “I’m only kidding. You can’t light a fire but you clearly have other skills. Your boots, you make them yourself?”
Adam looked at his sneakers. “What? These?”
“What else?”
“No, they’re just… I don’t know, I got them from Goodwill.”
Lynch frowned once more. Adam thought it ridiculous that teenagers got such a bad wrap for being moody when this man had yet to crack a single smile. Maybe it was good he ended up in Henrietta. He could use a dose of Southern Hospitality, especially if he frequently had visitors to his farm.
(Again, again, again, why did it take him so long to notice? Sometimes, Adam wondered if he would have realized sooner if his first time going back in time wasn’t at just sixteen.)
Still, despite his constant frown, there was something about the feel of Lynch’s gaze on Adam that didn’t feel sinister. It struck Adam, then, that he ought to be freaking out. He was stuck, overnight, at a stranger’s house. Further, even though his father was the one to kick him out in the first place, it would not stand as an excuse for why he didn’t return home by curfew. When he got back there would be hell to pay.
And yet. And yet.
Adam felt at ease. Maybe it was the warmth from the fire - which, after a little loving and prodding from Lynch, had grown enough to send a healthy glow throughout the room - just enough to feel as if he were surrounded by a thick blanket. Or maybe it was the shirt, smelling faintly like Christmas trees or grass or something earthy he couldn’t quite place.
Either way, Adam let himself pick at the bread and took a handful of berries from the bowl, rolling one in-between his fingers. Lynch seemed content with the silence and walked around the room, disappearing occasionally to his back room. Eventually he popped his head out and beckoned Adam with two curled fingers.
Adam followed, not knowing what to expect. What he found was an extremely small bedroom, lit up by a few candles, a wall of small shelves filled with books and random knick knacks to the left, and a haphazard bed made of layers and layers of poorly knitted blankets and something lumpy that was trying (but failing) to pass itself off as a mattress.
Lynch gestured to the bed.
Adam sucked in a quick breath. Was he insinuating that they would-- Did he expect that Adam would just sleep with him? In one bed? In one, shabby and small bed, where you’d inevitably have to press your body up to each other because how could you not? He tried to imagine laying next to his man, alone, having to feel the press of those arm muscles against his and--
He wanted to smack himself. No, why was that what he worried about? There was a more pressing issue here.
When Adam didn’t move or comment, Lynch rubbed his own arm and muttered, “It’s nothing fancy, but you’re welcome to rest in here. I’ve got a calf to watch over tonight, newborn who isn’t doing so well, so I’ll be in the back barn anyway. If you can read, books are there. Some in English, most in Irish as they are a bit old.”
The breath escaped Adam in a laugh. “Oh. Uh. Right. Thanks.”
What was he thinking? Of course the man wasn’t suggesting they sleep together. He wasn’t a creep, just a frighteningly attractive but disgruntled farmer.
“Washroom is out back, behind the house. You’ll be impressed with me when you see it, quite the set up. I’ve been told it’s ingenious, really. Rooster will wake you up in the mornin’ -- can you handle the chickens?”
Adam had no idea what it meant to handle the chickens but he was tired of seeming like a helpless fawn. So instead, he just said, “Yes.”
Lynch knocked twice on the edge of the doorframe - which had no door, now that Adam noticed - and said, “I’ll be out back if you need me.”
Adam waited until the front door shut before he sat down on the bed. It was not comfortable. Nor were the blankets covering it, or the makeshift pillow. Who was this guy? He didn’t strike Adam as poor, because poor didn’t look like this. Lynch’s home reminded him of poverty tourists; the privileged few who decided small houses were “rustic” and prided themselves for selling all their shit and living minimally. Who wanted a taste of living like he did, but got the choice to leave at any time. People who didn’t realize how lucky they were to have choice in any capacity at all.
He found himself disappointed in Lynch, which felt absurd. He didn’t know the man. He didn’t have any right, or hell, any reason to hope for him to be better.
Adam looked outside. It felt unnaturally dark. It couldn’t be later than seven and yet it felt past midnight. He searched for the moon and found himself disappointed when he realized it was completely blocked by the clouds.
Adam looked around the room for a light switch before his eyes settled back on the candles. That was right. No lights. Of course.
Adam didn’t feel comfortable falling asleep yet so he ran his finger along the books, searching for any recognizable titles. Nothing stood out. He settled on one at random after deliberately ignoring the many religious texts (and after a short debate about whether or not Lynch could be Amish), pulled the book with him on the bed, and flipped through.
His eyes crossed. Adam knew his vocabulary wasn’t what it should be - a dirty secret he carried with him since junior high when his teacher chuckled at his misunderstanding of the term “benefit” - but the text felt absurdly difficult to read. He felt like he was reading Shakespeare, the words foreign and out of order.
Adam quickly shut the book. So Lynch could have muscles and build fires from scratch and run a farm, and could read advanced literature like this? It wasn’t fair. The universe wasn’t supposed to work that way, you either got brawn or brain. Not both.
He climbed under the scratchy blanket and pulled it over his head. It smelled like hay. It was not enough to distract him from the image of Lynch, shirtless, a memory which seemed unnecessary to remember at a time like this.
His first thought was to assume it was jealousy. But Adam was not immune to jealousy, knew it intimately. As he clenched his toes and bit the inside of his cheek, he thought of Blue and the way he felt when she lifted her hands above her head in a stretch and exposed her navel to the air. How that, too, made his toes curl.
Adam groaned. He turned on his stomach and buried his face in the makeshift pillow, then instantly regretted it. Lynch’s pillows were not meant for wallowing.
At some point, Adam fell asleep. He woke plenty of times throughout the night, each time with a start and a wave of panic when he didn’t recognize his surroundings. The candles had burned out. He would wait, listening for sounds of Lynch in the side room, but was always met with silence.
When his small window betrayed that sunrise was finally here, Adam allowed himself to get up. He was never one to pass up extra sleep, but the constant waking up left him more exhausted than before. He was still wearing the shirt that Lynch had let him borrow and he briefly considered taking it off. A quick look at the fog outside convinced him otherwise.
Lynch was still not in the house. Adam took advantage of the empty room to snoop, eventually stumbling upon more bread, more fruit, and some dried meat. He picked at it carefully, shuffling the meat around in an attempt to cover up the missing piece. He cut the thinnest slice of bread, stuffed it in his mouth, then fell guilty to stealing another piece. He knew this routine well enough by now. When hunger hit, the compulsion to keep eating and eating was sometimes too powerful. If he started small and couldn’t stop himself, then at least he didn’t dent the food too much.
With luck, his need to piss overpowered his desire to keep eating, so he was able to escape easily. Adam found the bathroom out back, a good thirty feet away from the house. By now, he was completely unsurprised to find that it wasn’t a toilet. What had Lynch said? It was impressive? It was something all right. Adam left the makeshift bathroom and ventured instead to the edge of the trees. Realistically, peeing into a bush wasn’t any different than squatting over a makeshift hole in the ground, yet somehow it felt less wrong.
There was a small well near the bathroom. Adam pulled up some water, first to pour over his hands, then to swish around his mouth, before finally gulping down a cup. He felt bad for drinking straight from the bucket but somehow knew Lynch wouldn’t care.
Probably part of the rustic charm. He was grumpy already. This wasn’t good.
Adam wandered around the farm looking for Lynch. He saw the chickens first, all of which seemed to have free roam of the land but still congregated around a small chicken coop, and remembering Lynch’s request to “handle” them, Adam took a shot. He found what looked to be food in a wooden trunk and threw a few handfuls. Blue’s family used to have chickens so he wasn’t afraid of them; Adam leaned down to cuff his pants and then ventured toward the coop and looked in. He found a few eggs. Making a pouch out of the too-large shirt, Adam carried them back to the house and left them on the counter.
He finally found Lynch in a small barn behind the house. The farmer was laying on a bed of hay, a small towel covering his eyes, his legs propped up at an angle. Adam startled, not expecting to find him asleep, and immediately turned on his heel.
“You awake?”
Caught. Adam never was a quiet walker. He turned back to Lynch and muttered, “Yeah. I fed the chickens. Eggs are in the house.”
Lynch grunted but didn’t move. Adam looked around the barn, searching for the calf that was supposedly sick. There were cows resting in the back corner, but none looked in pain or sick.
“Do you know what time it is?” Adam asked.
“Early,” Lynch said.
“Right. I got that.” Adam fidgeted with his clothes. “Do you know when you can take me to town? I kind of need to get back.”
“Town won’t be ready for a few hours,” Lynch said, finally pulling the towel off his eyes and sitting up. He did not look well rested, and yet even the bags underneath couldn’t detract from his pretty blue eyes.
“That’s fine. If I can just get to town I can figure my way back to my house.” When Lynch’s lips remained in a frown, Adam quickly added, “I can go myself, too. Or if town is too difficult, I can just go back through the forest. I probably never should have gone through it in the first place--”
“The forest?” Lynch asked, voice tense. He pushed himself up and walked closer to Adam, using his height advantage to peer down at Adam in intimidating fashion. “You came out of the forest?”
Adam took a step back instinctively. “Yeah…”
Lynch tugged Adam by his shirt, pulling him outside the barn, and pointed to the very forest Adam came from. “That one?”
“Yeah?”
Lynch let go of his shirt, fingers falling to his side to twitch. He was staring up at the forest with a dark look before his eyes slid back to Adam. When Adam shrunk back once more, Lynch wiped his nose with the back of his hand and grunted.
“I’ll take you back that way, then,” he muttered. “Town is not the right place for you.”
“Oh, uh, thanks. What time--”
“Now.”
Adam’s heart paused in panic. Lynch looked so serious and kept looking at the forest with dark eyes and he didn’t understand the sudden insistence on leaving. Did he do something wrong? Lynch didn’t give him long to wonder. He took off toward the forest, not sparing a look back to see if Adam was even following. Of course, like a puppy, Adam scrambled after.
The walk to the forest, and into it, was done in mostly silence. Lynch charged into the brush, seemingly without a path as he didn’t follow a straight line. He looped around trees, paused, closed his eyes, then turned back in a different direction, walked, paused again at random. They’d been walking for at least twenty minutes when Adam finally got the courage to talk.
“Where are we going?”
Lynch grunted. “The entrance.”
“And you’re sure it’s this way? I swear I just walked straight--”
“I know what I’m doing,” Lynch said.
Adam frowned. His feet were starting to hurt again. His shoes weren’t thick enough to handle the random rocks breaking through the soil, or the roots of the trees that left the ground uneven. He tripped once only to have Lynch instantly grabbing him by the upper arm, pulling him back up.
“Woah there,” he muttered.
Adam felt his ears burn. He pushed Lynch’s hand away and muttered, “I got it.”
The little tilt in Lynch’s mouth hinted that he didn’t believe him. Desperate to take the attention to a different place, Adam said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Why even ask that?” Lynch said, stopping again to shut his eyes. After a few seconds he opened them back up and continued straight. “Just ask the questions you want.”
“Why do you--” Adam paused. He wanted to ask, Why do you live this way? It felt too rude. He searched for the more polite version. Ultimately he settled with, “What made you decide to not use appliances?”
“What are you going on about?”
“Just, like, I get the fire instead of a stove. The bed is...interesting. But the bathroom?”
“Here you go again,” Lynch muttered. “I don’t know your fancy Brit slang. Again?”
“The bathroom. The washroom. ” He couldn’t help but imitate Lynch’s accent when he said it. The man did not appreciate it, clearly, because he shot Adam a dirty look. “You didn’t want a toilet?”
“Are you complaining about my washroom? Are you daft? It’s fucking amazing, made it myself! When it’s full, I plant a tree and move it somewhere else. Grows the best trees, with the best berries! You tried ‘em, you know.”
“God, gross.”
“Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain,” Lynch snapped, shoving Adam by the shoulder. “You prefer a simple hole in the ground?”
“I prefer a toilet ,” Adam repeated.
“Whatever that is.”
“It’s a toilet! Everybody has a toilet!”
Lynch snorted. “Maybe where you live. With your fancy boots and your fancy trousers.”
It was this moment that finally made Adam realize there was something fundamentally different about Lynch. About his farm. About this… place. Later, Blue teased him for it. (“Out of everything it was the toilet? Really, Adam!”) He maintained it was fair. No one would ever be able to understand how absurd the situation was as a whole, how unbelievably insane it would have been to jump to the conclusion of time travel, but there had to be a breaking point eventually. Something that pushed Adam over the edge of odd to wrong.
Turns out it was the lack of toilets.
Adam’s feet took him further into the forest but he no longer felt the pain. His mind was spinning, reliving every moment from the past 24 hours.
His rational brain tried to rationalize it.
He refused to form it into thoughts. Instead, it was a steady stream of excuses. Reasons why it couldn’t possibly be that-- there was no way -- maybe it was all a dream-- maybe-- maybe--
“We’re here.”
Adam stared forward. They were at the edge of the forest and yet he couldn’t see past it. It was as if it were day within the forest, night outside it. The wall of black was not comforting and he did not feel like going back.
Lynch nudged him in the back. “On with ya.”
Adam looked back at Lynch. The man wasn’t looking at him anymore, his eyes trained at the edge of the woods. He looked uneasy, and Adam was glad to see he wasn’t alone in his discomfort.
“Thank you for…housing me,” Adam muttered.
“You’re welcome back if you ever need,” the man said. Adam felt he was simply engaging nicetities, until Lynch added, “So long as you work on your kindling skills. It’s too disgraceful.”
Adam’s laugh escaped him, and he was mortified to hear it echo back it him, almost as a giggle. A giggle.
Motivated by embarrassment, Adam jerked his hand in a quick wave and scuttled through the woods. It wasn’t until he passed the edge did he think, What if I’m not back in my time? It was the first time he had thought it out loud. When he realized what he’d done, he stopped, heart pounding, but it was too late. He had crossed the threshold, he was back.
It was so obviously home. Gone was the dark clouds, the lush, green grass. It was back to dust, to empty roads that felt achingly busy.
Adam hadn’t realized how much he hated Henrietta until he was back. He turned to face the forest once more, looking into it. From this side he couldn’t see Lynch. Adam wasn’t sure what that meant. Had Lynch simply turned back immediately? Or by crossing the threshold was he gone from time?
Adam’s heart seized. Why had he been so afraid before? He suddenly wanted to know. It was consuming, the sudden list of questions screaming at him. Was that real? Did he really time travel? How far in the past did he go? What was Lynch’s name? Why did he refuse to tell him?
Before he could second-guess it, Adam darted back into the forest. A branch whipped him in the cheek and it stung, but he’d inspect it later. He needed -- He just had to --
There was Lynch, head curved over his shoulder as he looked back at the sudden sound of Adam’s sprint. His eyebrows dipped in confusion.
Adam said the first thing on his mind.
“What’s the date? The year. Specifically. What year is it?”
“Not sure the day. About 1835, ‘suppose.” Lynch did not seem fazed by the question.
Adam grinned, delirious. “Okay. 1835. Ireland. Right?”
Lynch sucked in a deep breath through his nose, slow and pointed. “Go home, kid.”
Adam did as he was asked.
Time seemed to have passed in Henrietta while he was in the past. Adam sat on the edge of the road for an hour before a car finally pulled off and they allowed him to use their phone. He called Blue, told her where he was, and waited for her to arrive with his back to the forest. He found he couldn’t look at it.
When she got there, Blue reached out and touched his cheek. “What happened?”
So much, Adam thought. When Blue held up her fingers to him, showing him blood, he thought, Who cares about that?
Later that night, when he sat on Blue’s bed and ran his finger along the bones in her feet, he thought about telling her what he discovered. Not just about the time travel, but the confusing thoughts he had about Lynch. He found both secrets were too worrisome to share. He didn’t want her to laugh at him, call him crazy, if he dared utter the words time travel. Their relationship was still too new and tentative to dare admit the other secret.
He would eventually, far after they’d broken up. Instead, that night, Adam forced himself to focus on the curve of her calf muscle and the smell of her makeshift perfume: dots of almond extract she’d place on her wrists from when she and Persephone made pies.
And, over the next five years, he tried to convince himself it wasn’t real. Told himself it was a bad dream. When that didn’t work, he told himself it was a fluke. That it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that he’d eventually look back on with fond tenderness. The type of experience that you remembered during perfectly quiet moments of your life that were designed for nostalgia.
Until the forest called him back.
To Ronan.