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randomfatechidnaThis fic was so cathartic to write. I love it, I teared up writing it. It made my heart hurt. It is primarily about home (as all my Interesting fic tends to be) and lies, and also dealing with adulthood as a child of emotionally neglectful parents. When I decided to focus on the theme of lying, it was upon rereading a poem I had written in 2019, called a lie.
wholesome, i say, like an apple
and
good, i say, for the health.
no concern of mine, whether you believe me or not.
watch me chew the truth between my teeth.
watch me form reality with my hands.
the thrill is in not knowing what will
come out of my mouth until it has been said,
until the consequences shake me awake.
my tongue, moving faster than my
brain can think, begins to weave.
whatever i say, it keeps me safe,
nestled tight in the tapestry of what was not said.
it rolls off my tongue like a dream
and escapes just as quick.
Declan, the star of this fic, and recipient of all of my excellent little projections, is very skilled at lying. It is, at some junctures, all he knows how to do, and how he copes. In this fic, I am primarily interested in how that plays out in this little family he's unwittingly created for himself, and how he chooses, or desires to choose, a life of his own, that does not involve hiding who he is. I'm aware my take doesn't delve into most of why he lies (for safety, to protect his family, etc) but instead I choose to focus on his lying as a result of emotional immaturity and neglect. Also, he makes an excellent whump punching bag.
In this directors cut, I'm only going to include the sections where I have comments, because honestly this fic is so long, I don't particularly want to copypaste the whole thing in here.
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Ronan loves the Barns, loves it maybe more than he loves Declan. He worships the sprawling expanse of the property like he worships the glorified memory of their father, like if he ever let go, he’d have nothing left.
None of those things are true, of course, but Declan knows that Ronan believes they are, and so when he dresses himself in the morning dark, feeling his way around the room by touch and by childhood memory, he dresses in a kind of uniform he’s not worn since high school—jeans and flannel and thick socks—and reminds himself that Ronan may possibly never forgive him if, while he was away saving the world, Declan let the Barns go to ruin.
The room is brighter, now, than it was when he woke, and the beginnings of a bird call so familiar that it twists the viscera of his stomach echoes in the silence. He should get up. There is work to do.
There is the smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen, when he steps off the staircase. This does not immediately throw up warning klaxons in his head, for reasons that he should possibly spend some time investigating, and that are probably his inability to shake off memories of his father in this place. The hot-and-cool spots of anxiety that he is intimately familiar with from his time here make themselves known again, bubbling away in his chest.
He takes a deep breath. Counts to ten. Remembers how old he is.
There is a technique that people with childhood trauma sometimes use that I discovered from TikTok, of all places: when you are overwhelmed or struggling with a particular emotion, ask yourself 'How old am I?' Are you at the age that your trauma occurred, or are you older—20, or 30, or whatever your age is? Then, you pick yourself up, comfort the child inside of you, and deal with the situation with the adult skills you now have. A lot of this story takes influence from therapy and skills that one might learn in therapy (see the grounding technique he and Jordan use later, and Jordan affirming her right to be angry at him).
The animals miss Ronan. They keep their distance when he unlatches the gate between them and they shove when he refills their troughs. An impostor, he is, perhaps. Someone enough like Ronan to get by, but not enough to really be trusted. There is, in that, possibly an unfortunate thought spiral he could follow if he really wanted to get into his feelings today. Luckily for him, and luckily for the cows, he very sternly chooses not to touch that thought at all.
“June—” she says, and bites off the rest of her sentence to look away, blinking away rapidly forming tears. “Fuck.”
Declan feels something distinctly vital twist in his gut. Those were her sisters.
I don't think we talk enough about the fact that Jordan and the other copies lived together for a long time and then they were just murdered.
For the first time in a long time, Declan wishes he had the skills to be able to comfort her properly. He wishes there was not so much of a distance between them, wishes his heart didn’t get so sore every time he remembered she was a dream, wishes it didn’t matter so much, wishes murderously that Niall Lynch was still alive so he could fight him himself. “I’m sorry,” he says softly instead, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
Now we get into something meaty. I'm very interested in Declan essentially having been traumatised by his childhood and the way Niall (and, by extension, Aurora) invalidated his experiences, however, the does come a point in an adult's life where you do have to take control over your actions and seek a different way to move forward. Of course, Declan is not your average case, so it's unfortunate to see him go so long, clearly chronically anxious (see: the antacids and sleeping pills) and with a low self esteem (see: his everything about him).
The wildlife provides an incessant soundtrack as they wander home, as inescapable as the sound of traffic in the city. Declan notices how quietly enamoured Jordan is with the place, how her face sometimes flushes with delight when a bird is close, or when she spots the grazing cows. She has lived in cities all her life, he knows. He can only imagine how a place like this might compare.
I have no idea what Virginian wildlife sounds like, or American wildlife at all, for that matter. As I said before, I wrote the second draft of this in suburban Australia in the middle of winter, with my windows wide open, the birds nittering away absolutely incessantly, and animals playing with each other (indeed, one time I looked up from my laptop to see the goats bucking each other in play). I imagine the barns to have the same soundtrack I did, animals fighting with each other, and birds. Always birds.
Declan feels very faintly that he would like to vomit. The urge settles into the back of his throat, familiar and uncomfortable, the way it always is when he becomes aware that things have caught up with him in tragic and irreparable ways.
An absolutely nightmarish anxiety response that I have had the recent pleasure of experiencing. So, of course, I had to give it to our favourite Anxious MessTM.
Declan nods, helpless, not trusting himself to speak without ruining anything else in his already very sad little life. Jordan looks at him, really looks, for a long moment, and Declan thinks she might say something to him. Instead, she blinks and then turns to walk up the stairs.
Oh, the poor boy. He really, truly, and utterly hates himself. I truly think the fact that people actually care about his sad little life comes as a surprise to him. Poor bean.
He feels twelve, thirteen, years old—young enough for the lies to make him feel important but old enough to recognise that there was something deeply wrong with his life; old enough to not know what to do when he and his father returned home, and suddenly they were the perfect Catholic family they had always been, with Church on Sundays and confession on Saturday mornings. The perfect Catholic family, except for the eldest son, who had so much guilt and no priest who could possibly absolve him.
I don't have anything poignant to say about this paragraph, other than please read it again because I am proud of it. I can't help but feel deeply for a young Declan who had to sit next to his loved, criminal father at Church. Being the only family member who saw what his father traded in, and then had to come home to his father's loving family, he had to have felt gaslit at a certain point.
He hears conversation in the kitchen from where he is in the mudroom, he hears laughter. Jordan’s voice, and Matthew’s too. Jordan says, “No fucking way,” with barely concealed mirth, and when Matthew says, “Yep!” he pops the p.
I deserve Matthew & Jordan content. I believe with my whole that they'd shoot the shit together. Two dreams, just fucking shit up. They're buddies! Bros! The dream team! They prank Declan, to his complete dismay! Where is my Jordan & Matthew content?!
Declan breathes through his nose. The truth is, he is sorry, but he’s not sure they will believe him, and he is not sure he is ready to be responsible for the very shaky playing-card house of the family myth to come floating down, and the hatred and the resentment resulting therein. “I am sorry for hiding things from you,” Declan says. “It was wrong.”
Oh, the family myth! From PsychCentral:
"The myth sets out rules about what can and cannot be said, how the parents must be viewed and how members should be viewed. The myth also sets out the roles of each member in the family, and the hierarchy of power in the family. One parent...acts as the leader of the family and sets the rule and the roles."
That parent is clearly Niall.
“Declan,” Jordan says, slowly. She is figuring it out, he can tell. “Matthew is upset with you, as he has a right to be. It doesn’t mean he loves you less, though, right Matthew?”
One of the items on my Personal Bill of Rights that I was given by my most recent mental health professional says, "I have the right to be angry at someone I love." In the same vein, I realised, others have the right to simultaneously love me and be angry with me. Further, Lindsey C. Gibson, in her book about emotional immaturity, asserts that emotionally mature people have the ability to have mixed, complex emotions. I think this is something Declan may have yet to learn—both that he is allowed to have mixed emotions about people, and that other people can have mixed emotions about him.
Somehow, after that, it all comes bubbling out of him. He didn’t used to think it was a lot, but when he speaks it aloud, when he has to consider how to structure the story, how to weave it in a way that makes sense, he discovers that there is, possibly, much more to the things that pain him than he had previously ever considered.
The comment in my GDoc for "how to weave it in a way that makes sense" is "Declan is, unfortunately, his father's son." Declan has qualities of Niall's that aren't objectively bad! Here, he has his storytelling ability. I think it's something he uses regularly as a liar, but here it is used for good. You know what that is? Growth!
Declan sits his hands flat on the table. “Aurora Lynch was not my mother, no.”
“So when you said you were the fakest Lynch brother, you really thought that.”
Declan sets his teeth and does not look at Matthew in the eye. “I was being truthful, yes.”
I am so intrigued by Declan and Matthew's obsession with family and being a real Lynch. Because there is no such thing! Ronan's parents are Aurora and Niall, Declan's parents are Mo'r and Niall, and Matthew's sole parent is, arguably, Ronan. None of them are full siblings. It's interesting that Matthew would assume that because his father is not his father, that doesn't make him a real Lynch. It's more interesting that Declan doesn't use Niall's fatherhood as a claim to it.
Matthew looks positively slapped. He stands, walks to Declan’s side of the table, and wraps him in a bear hug. “Yeah, well, it’s about you now, you big dummy.”
This fic got massively derailed in the second draft. In it's earliest form, this was self-deprecating drivel that made me kind of annoyed by Declan. Then I leaned into him actively being confronted, and growing, and loving, and being loved, and it turned into something that reflected how I wanted him to be. I love this scene, because it accurately highlights everything I wanted this fic to be: hard conversations and healing.
As all the other doors in this house, his bedroom door is locked, too—old habits from this house die harder than most—and so he must rise to answer it.
I was shocked by that one tumblr post asking users to put in the tags whether they slept with the door closed or not. I have slept with my door closed since I was about elevent, and locked since I was about fifteen. I didn't realise that was abnormal behaviour till now. Whoops!
Declan’s phone has one new message.
you’re such a dick. “please confirm”. hennessy’s in fucking hysterics.
There is, after all, work to do.
Declan quite thoroughly appeals to my adult self. I've spoken about this briefly before, but he really appeals to the part of me that finds I have to compartmentalise myself in order to function. I wipe my tears in the bathroom and go to my job where I have to be normal. When people ask how I am, I say, Good, thankyou. When there is work to be done, he files his problems away, and does the work until it's time to have feelings again. It's not really that healthy, but credit where credit's due. I can vibe with that.
Declan uncovers his face and looks back at her, no longer hiding his smile.
This was the first scene in the fic that I ever wrote. It underwent many many changes since it's initial writing, but this is where it started. A messy Jordan and some comfort kisses.
When he looks at her, Jordan’s eyes have slipped away, distant, and blinking rapidly. She holds the spatula in one hand, continuing to make scrambling motions in the frypan. Her movements are jerky, uncontrolled, and lack real motivation. She’s not here. Wherever she is, she is not here.
I have a personal affection to the idea of the dreaming-state as an allegory for petit mal seizures, which are the slightly lesser known sibling of grand mal seizures (or what people generally think of when they think of epilepsy). They are also very aptly nicknamed absence seizures. Aptly named, because one literally just, becomes absent. You are very suddenly unaware of what is going on around you. I had juvenile epilepsy as an adolescent, and while it wasn't a scary experience for me, coming out of an episode and being aware you have just slipped away for an undetermined amount of time, and having people look at you and worried for you, is a singular experience. I never had the deja vu some people experience at the beginning of an absence, but I gave it to Jordan anyway, because, to my eleven year old self, it always seemed like a lucky kind of superpower to have.
Declan kisses her like she is honesty, and she is home. He wipes a tear from her cheek with his thumb, and the Barns wakes up.
The original last line of this was, "Jordan presses her lips to his, like a promise, and if they said that neither of them shed a tear, they would both of them be lying." Which, honestly, I like a lot better (because lying is the central theme of this work), but I struggled to make it fit once I had revised the ending. Unfortunate. I do like this new ending, however, which reaffirms the theme of home and belonging (HSC students of 2011 and earlier groan in Area of Study) which had otherwise gone missing in the body of the fic.
you’re a grown-up now.
and you don’t have to be an ingenue
and there is nothing wrong with you
as long as you make your family proud.
These lyrics are from Samia's "21". The song is about growing up, being 21, and coming to terms with the fact that you have almost nothing lined up or sorted out. I used to think the lines above were sarcastic—nothing matters at all except what your family thinks, okay, sure Jan—but then I read all of the lyrics, and realised Declan is in the processing of making his own family. For him, these lyrics are true: there is nothing wrong with him, he doesn't have to be everything he's convinced himself he has to be, as long as he makes his family—his new family—proud.
Thank you for reading! I hope you liked the insight I could give. Please stay safe, and have a lovely twenty-four hours :)
