Cbr16 Bingo: Part 2
19A by Toyourdetriment
“Emotional availability is a skill. You, particularly you, can decide to learn it, if you want to.”
In spite of the tone, it hits like a backhand to the jaw. He has learned bedside manner for a given definition of empathy. Allowed methodical and unsparing trauma therapists to rake him over the hot coals of his childhood for a decade. He is, in short, an entire and convincing machine of a person, whose inner child definitely wants to fuck him.
And
He’s so clear, is the thing. Higher resolution than everything around him, lit up, the world brighter and blurrier for his presence. Adam can’t stop looking.
Honestly Adam’s starting to feel a little iffy about objectifying Ronan so bad, but then Ronan changes his shirt: laughing, in a literal sunbeam, with that monstrous hot guy technique of reaching overhand to the nape of the neck and taking the shirt off by the back collar in one smooth pull, and the light limns Ronan’s whole torso creamy gold, it’s fucking porn, slo-mo, Adam’s furious. The clean shirt’s too tight.
This fic wrapped up less than a week ago, but it has been on my mind since part 1, 18A, dropped in early January.
This hyper-specific love story has consumed my thoughts for a solid nine months.
One of the major risks with reading fanfic is that sometimes works-in-progress never get updated. This fic did not update for over three months as the author was having some serious writer’s block and was overwhelmed with how to tie everything back together in a satisfying but not oversimplified manner.
This is a fanfic about two of the main characters in Maggie Stiefvater’s series The Raven Cycle and its spinoff The Dreamer Trilogy.
This AU has Ronan and Adam as full grown adults navigating Adam’s near-crippling self-sabotage when it comes to relationships.
Adam is a broken man. He excels at everything he attempts with the exception of forming and maintaining close relationships. He wants to be someone who can love and accept love, but abuse and abandonment during his childhood left very real, very permanent trauma.
Adam is smart. He’s been to therapy. He understands what is going on in his brain. At thirty-eight, he believes he is fundamentally broken.
He meets Ronan, who is also broken but, unlike Adam who is detached and clinical, Ronan is an exposed heart, his emotions bloody and raw and unhidden. Their relationship starts out as two hungry people with complimentary sexual kinks, and gradually develops into love. Ronan adores Adam and reshapes his life around him. This of course freaks Adam the fuck out, who always runs at the first whiff of anything resembling codependence.
This fic broke my heart again and again. It is gorgeous. The descriptions of the pain and self-criticism were so visceral that I had to skim over them at times because the pain was too much to bear.
I’m so sad the story is over, although I’m sure I’ll read it end-to-end again and again.
TW for consensual kink and please check the fic tags before proceeding.
For this year’s CBR16 Book Bingo Reading Challenge I’m choosing albums from the 1970s that helped raise me. When I think of the sick churning of Adam’s shame and guilt and relief as he alternatively nurtures and destroys his closest relationships, I think of Elton John’s heartbreaking ballad “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” from the album Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (1975).
