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"How did I know," Adam said dryly as he walked out onto the hotel roof.
There was Ronan Lynch, tie already discarded on the dirty pavement - that obviously was never going to last long, but Adam still felt faintly disappointed - all long legs and broad shoulders in an actual suit, looking like a male model for a bachelor party gone rogue. Figured.
"Parrish." Ronan grinned, razor-sharp and clearly trouble. "C'mere, you're pitcher."
"Excuse me?"
They looked at one another. Ronan sniggered a little and shook his head. "Check the bag, Parrish."
Adam followed Ronan's gaze to a burlap sack sitting by Ronan's feet, along with several bottles of whiskey. He arched an eyebrow.
"Open it."
Adam moved a little closer and nudged at the sack with the tip of his shoe - who knew what the hell was in there, but the amusement he could feel radiating from Ronan was a definite warning sign - until he could get a glimpse of what was inside. "The hell, Lynch?"
It was full of wedding cake toppers, a mix of pearly white and coal black and blood red, with odd proportions and vaguely animalistic facial features.
"But wait, there's more," Ronan said as he picked one of them up, and proceeded to hurl it at the wall.
It shattered into a million pieces with a bloodcurdling scream that would have made any slasher film proud.
"Ronan!"
"Relax, Parrish. They're not like sentient or anything. Just auditorily satisfying." So saying, he grabbed a half-drunk bottle of whiskey and swung like he was warming up with a baseball bat. "Come on, I'm waiting."
Like the vast majority of their previous misadventures, it was dumb and Adam knew he should say no. Like the vast majority of their previous misadventures, it was pretty damn fun.
No two wedding cake toppers were the same, and they got through a decent amount of them, trading off who was up at bat. One of the cake toppers made a sound sort of like church bells, blended with distant fire alarms and peeling tires. Another sounded sort of like the opening chords of The Wedding March if The Wedding March were performed by a conspiracy of particularly antagonistic ravens. (One sounded like a music box, playing a dreamy bit of melody that Adam was vaguely sure he recognized as the love song from Sleeping Beauty. Neither one of them offered the faintest acknowledgment that this even happened.)
When Ronan overshot a throw to Adam by a pretty significant amount and the cake topper sailed clear off the roof, things devolved into seeing who could throw their cake topper the farthest. From there, things further devolved into Ronan aiming at the cars in the parking lot down below which most offended his taste, and giving Adam shit about how he didn't think Adam was trying as hard as he could.
Predictably enough, Ronan succeeded in setting off a car's alarm system. The blare of it made Adam move for the door on instinct, but Ronan grabbed him lightly by the arm. "Where are you going? Someone could come out to check their car; we're about to have ourselves a way better target."
"We're not doing that," Adam informed him plainly, settling back down beside him.
"Weak." Ronan scoffed, but Adam caught the curve of a grin as Ronan shoved into him a little with his shoulder.
Adam shoved back, and that back-and-forth went on for a while.
"You know," Adam said eventually. "This is more fun than I was expecting to have at this stupid thing."
Ronan nodded sagely. "I'm a fucking delight."
"You're a lot of things, Lynch," Adam muttered, but he couldn't keep the mirth from his voice. When he looked over at Ronan, a firefly flashed between them. Adam held out his hand carefully, and the glowing light landed on the edge of his finger. He smiled faintly. "One of yours?"
He didn't really need to ask; the light was brighter than any natural firefly had a right to be, and warm, and whatever was sitting on his finger it was too wisp-thin and delicate to be real.
There was something about the way Ronan's gaze slid over Adam's hand and off that made it obvious Ronan was putting conscious effort into not looking at him.
"I remember one of the first times we all hung out at Nino's," Adam said softly, watching the firefly rise from his finger and glow around his head. "There were these really tiny little lights going off all around you, and they reminded me of fireflies, but I knew they couldn't be."
"Noah just went 'baby fireflies?' and you told him 'Then they'd be larvae, they wouldn't fly.'" Ronan said the last bit with a hint of Adam's drawl, and Adam cocked an unappreciative eyebrow at him, but Ronan just smirked in return. "And then you stayed up way too late researching fireflies trying to come up with some kind of explanation."
That was an assumption on Ronan's part, but a good one; Adam couldn't deny it and Ronan kept smirking that I-know-you-Parrish smirk.
"Learn anything good?"
Adam shrugged. "They're beetles, not flies, but I'd heard that already. They taste awful and tend to be poisonous to their predators. One of the chemicals that makes them light up is called luciferin, which is derived from lucifer."
Ronan tipped his head back and let out a laugh. "You need me, just follow my army of hell beetles."
It was a very Ronan Lynch concept, Adam thought: light, presented harsh and threatening, used for armor. Peeks underneath were rare and hard-earned, but - Adam surveyed the sharp line of Ronan's jaw, the soft shadow of his eyelashes against the cut of his cheekbones, taking in the way that laugh still lingered on his features - lately they felt more and more worth it.
"You didn't say anything," Adam started, finding words inelegant, eyes trained on the night sky. "About what you are. You just sat it out. Did...did you know, then, if you'd ever tell us?"
His heartbeat had picked up, just a little, thudding too-strong the longer he could feel Ronan's eyes on him. This wasn't territory either of them would usually broach. Then Ronan followed Adam's gaze up, scowling at the moon. "I wasn't going to throw something like that out there before you were ready. How was I supposed to know if there would be a good time to say anything."
Adam wasn't sure how much further they could push without tearing clean through. Despite his better judgment, he wasn't done, though. "But you did say something. That was better than keeping it secret, wasn't it?"
Ronan didn't answer. Adam felt more than saw Ronan clench his hands and unfurl them, clench them again. "I'm not big on putting words to secrets." Ronan got to his feet and kicked at the ground with his dress shoes, restless, needing to move. "You're clever, Parrish," Ronan said, going still, but there was potential energy gathered in every line of his body. "With enough time I've got the feeling you can figure out most things for yourself."
Adam swallowed. Stood. Took a step.
"You know me." His own voice was curiously faraway. "I see. I have a harder time with believing."
Ronan looked at him. He looked back.
Ronan must've seen something in him, because he was leaning in, close close close, and Adam was leaning in too, closer.
The careful brush of lips sent a shiver of pins-and-needles through him; something asleep starting to wake.
Ronan pulled back too soon, and Adam watched the way Ronan's eyes flicked over his face. Ronan was checking his reaction. Which was fair. Only Adam wasn't all that sure what his reaction was himself. He was overly aware of the way the night air seemed to prick at his lips, and he felt like something inside him had shifted, tiny unknown pieces of himself aligning and catching the light. He still wasn't done. He leaned in again.
This time when they kissed it wasn't a question, this time they both moved with the awareness that this was something they could have. Adam's hands went to Ronan's shoulders to steady himself as Ronan's hands went to Adam's hips to keep him close, their mouths finding the right angle, the kiss growing deeper, heat rising where they were pressed together. When Adam traced the seam of Ronan's lips with his tongue, he was so amazed at how easily Ronan opened up to him that it left him a little lightheaded.
Adam sort of figured kissing was like anything else in his life - it took a lot of practice to get good. But this, biting at Ronan's lower lip when they broke apart for breath, feeling the way it made Ronan jerk a little against him, biting a second time to make him do it again, this was easy, instinctive.
All the times he'd looked at Ronan and wondered about this, imagined this, he still hadn't been aware how much he wanted until he was faced with the here and now. Ronan's fingers raked through his hair, getting a good grip, pulling him back in; he could feel Ronan's viciously pleased grin, one he'd seen a thousand times, sharp against his own mouth. Would recognize it by taste now. Adam lived his life putting all he had into what on good days he made himself believe were manageable goals, but he tried not to want. Because once he started wanting, where would it end. This felt endless.
When they needed air again Ronan slid his mouth down the slope of Adam's throat, skimming along his jaw, finding the sensitive skin beneath his ear, chasing the quiet embarrassing breathless sounds Adam couldn't help letting out.
Face still half-turned into the crook of Adam's neck, Ronan asked, "Is this - We're really doing this?" A wry breath. "Here?"
"I have a room." It was out without any conscious consideration being made. Adam could only shrug as Ronan's head snapped up to get a look at his face. "We could - hang out," he offered, badly.
Ronan cocked an eyebrow to show just how convincing he found that. Then he tilted his head toward the door: lead the way.
They looked at each other, neither one bothering to disguise the way their gazes lingered, dropping down to kiss-slicked mouths and back again. They were really doing this. Adam moved to the door. Ronan followed suit.
~bonus~
When Gansey heard loud knocking on his hotel door and rushed out of the shower to answer it, he was surprised to see that it was Declan making all that noise on the other side. "What's wrong?"
"No one is answering their phone," Declan snarled, looking more like his brother than he'd ever admit to. "Have you seen Ronan? He's not in his room and Matthew refuses to leave without saying goodbye to him. I'm not missing my flight for this."
If Gansey weren't using his hands to hold up his towel, he would have held them up in a pacifying gesture. "I'll get a hold of him, just give me a minute."
"I appreciate it," Declan said curtly, not like he was expressing a genuine sentiment but like the line was an obligation to the company's main sponsor, before stalking down the hallway.
Gansey shrugged into his clothes as quickly as he could and dialed Adam.
"Hello?"
There was something slightly off about Adam's voice. Gansey would've assumed Adam was hungover if he didn't know that Adam didn't drink. "Hey, do you know where Ronan is?"
There was an unnecessarily long pause before Adam asked, "Why?"
"Because Declan's on the warpath looking for him and I'm attempting to mitigate the damage."
"Fuck," Adam said eloquently, which Gansey was a little taken aback by, but not as much as when he heard Adam hiss, "Get in the shower!" before saying, "He's on his way, I'll call you back," and disconnecting.
Gansey stared at the end call screen until the screen went dark. He was still replaying every memory he had of Ronan and Adam interacting in his mind, still a little lost in the sense of dawning realization, when he gathered his things and walked down to the hotel lobby.
He found Blue sitting all tucked up in a worn leather armchair eating a yogurt, and he really had no idea what to say to her when she looked up at him, so he was immensely relieved when she leaned in conspiratorially and went, "Did you see Ronan leaving Adam's room?"
"I had to call Adam to get Ronan out of his room!"
They exchanged looks, and Blue held out her half-eaten yogurt with an air that would have been more appropriate for her giving him a shot glass. "Weddings."