The Greywaren and the Magician [Pynch One-Shots]

I Worship You, Your Fingers Snag My Soul

Warning: this part contains explicit sex

It was a Sunday, and Adam knew this because when he opened his eyes, Ronan was standing in front of their bedroom mirror, tying his tie, and he was wearing his crisp black suit.

It was so obviously tailored just to him; the jacket sat on his shoulders so easily, followed the careful and sculpted line of his biceps, sleeves just graced his slender wrists, whispering against skin. His tie and shirt were black too, a silver clip holding them together, and the effect was to make Ronan elegant and cutting. His tattoo curled from beneath the collar, a reminder that he was not docile despite the veneer of expensive textiles.

Back when Adam was a bitter, lonesome teenager, the sight would've been accompanied by the sharp edge of Jealousy's knife, but now he was older and Ronan's wedding band glinted softly in the light. So instead, he just felt a deep and all-encompassing awe. Ronan before mass was a quiet and contemplative creature.

Adam stretched out on his stomach, pressing his cheek into the pillow tiredly. Ronan caught his eye in the mirror, struck by the softness in his gaze, the way his eyelids drooped sleepily. "Go back to sleep."

Adam was not a religious person— not unless he was standing in Lindenmere or amongst the other wondrous and impossible objects of Ronan's creation— so he closed his eyes and relaxed into the bed. Fingers pressed into Adam's hair sweetly and then drew away, leaving him to sink back into the warm embrace of sleep.

The next thing he was aware of, lulling him gently awake, was a warm pressure around his hips and he stretched, sighing out, "Ro," and pushing his face further into the crook of his elbow.

Above him, Ronan wondered over the shift of the muscles in his back, the sharpness of cheekbone, the soft curl of hair against his neck, and answered with a delicate brush of lips against the shell of his good ear, chest pressing down on his back, and "Adam..." said softly, prayerfully, head dipping down and lips caressing the soft divet in Adam's shoulder. "The Priest was reading from Genesis today, and all I could think of was you." A confession.

Adam, still half asleep, made a soft noise to encourage further explanation.

Ronan drew himself up, hand pressing into the small of Adam's back. There was a ripe silence, full of expectation, anticipation, the cold squirming of doubt. "On the first day, God created light." The words were so quiet, like a secret. Fingers brushed up Adam's spine, where the sun was spilling over his skin, warming it to a holy glow. Ronan bent again to press a kiss between his shoulder blades, neck bowed in supplication. "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Ronan's breath tickling the back of his neck, Ronan's thighs hugging his hips, Ronan's chest, so close he could feel the heat of it: all an implication. (Lynches were known for their storytelling, for their instinct in inflection, in tone, in the sense of when to pause, how to draw in a listener, how to quiet a room. Adam's heart seemed to draw itself up to listen.)

"And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light."

In Adam's mind, he saw Ronan in the cave under Cabeswater, the ghost light over his shoulder. He saw Ronan in the yard, head tilted back as he gazed at a multitude of buzzing, dancing lights in the air. At first glance, fireflies. At second, just tiny impossibilities.

"God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness."

Ronan's black suit whispering against Adam's sun-warmed skin.