Chapter Text
January 2015 - Winter
It's been almost two months since Adam's buried his dad. Two months since that crisp red-gold day, and Ronan had hated the bastard with all his heart but he'd stood there in an equally crisp suit and his tie knotted, straight-backed beside Gansey and Noah and Blue. Adam and his mother stood in front of them as they'd laid the coffin down. Neither of them had been teary-eyed. Robert Parrish hadn't been the sort of man who'd inspired that particular kind of grief.
It's been two months, and Adam had returned to school the Tuesday after the funeral. Ronan had seen the Hondayota in the parking lot in the morning, and his heart had fucking raced with a sort of unidentifiable hope-anxiety combo. And then he hadn't seen Adam all day. But Spanish was the second to last lesson, and Ronan had slid into an empty seat, for once early, and doodled furiously and stressfully on the table. Then Adam had said, from above him: "Stop vandalizing school property, you're too old for detention." He'd sat down next to him. Just like that.
It's been. They don't hang out much. They hang out with Noah and Gansey and Blue in a group, and it's like all the puzzle pieces fit. They talk favors from dead kings and ley lines and Noah's possible afterlife condition - Ronan had called that first, by the way - and they eat at Nino's and Adam's moved to reading in the library to reading at their table during lunch break, but they don't hang out as much as they used to, Ronan and Adam. Sometimes Ronan goes to the garage, waits for Adam to finish, drives him home. Sometimes Adam gives Ronan a summary of his day's Bio lesson when everyone else is asleep and Ronan doesn't really care about the words but Adam's voice is a safety blanket he's missed for too long.
It's slow, but it's working.
Ronan's not going to rush it. It's only almost been two months.
But this morning he wakes up and it's snowing; fresh, crisp magical dreamt-up matter. Cabeswater's winters have always been sludge and mud and this one started out no different, only now there are actual, honest-to-God snowflakes, perfect and symmetrical and drifting down the road outside Ronan's window.
Last night, Adam had said, quietly: "You'll visit? --will you? With Blue. And the rest."
Ronan runs down the stairs and is almost out the door when Aurora shouts: "Scarf!" He accepts it from her and she shakes her head and he kisses her on the cheek, his beautiful, impossible mother. No harm will be allowed to come to her, not when he's around. And then he's off, as fast as he can in winter boots in thick snow. Towards the pier. Towards Adam.
Adam's already sitting there when he reaches it.
This is Aurora's third year without Niall, and her first real winter. It feels like closure, in a way. Like something she would have never thought possible come to life. Mrs Lauren Garcia shivers in her yard, waves at her exuberantly.
"Aurora, dear," she says, "I believe miracles have returned to this blue neighbourhood."
"I believe you're right, Lauren," Aurora agrees, and hands Matthew a likely-looking stick for an arm.