Chapter Text
Seattle, Washington
1996
“Huh, I don’t really feel any different.” Blue shrugged as she fixed clips into her heavily highlighted hair.
“Seriously? We are finally free. It’s graduation…it’s the best thing I could have ever hoped for.” Noah replied, as he plopped onto Blue’s bed, his dress shirt unbuttoned, which revealed a blue Weezer t-shirt underneath.
“I know, I was just expecting some kind of revelation, or an epiphany to hit me when I woke up this morning. But, it’s just the same feeling of…I dunno…waiting. Like Whelk was on my ass all year, just a total dick, and then he writes in my yearbook yesterday, ‘you’re a spirited girl, and have a bright future ahead, love Whelk.’ It’s all so…false. I just thought things would feel more real now.” Blue said.
“Maybe he just wanted to end things on a nice note, or he was hitting on you.” Noah said with a shrug, getting up to get his pipe out of his messenger bag.
“You are not smoking in my room. Dean would kill me!” Blue yelped.
Blue’s stepfather, Dean Allen, was a police captain. He was fairly lenient with Blue regarding curfews, and who she spent her time with, but the only thing he asked in return was for her to not do anything explicitly illegal, especially in their home. Smoking pot was definitely illegal.
Noah, just shrugged again, restlessly, got up from Blue’s bed, and sank into the small reading chair in the corner of Blue’s very green room.
Noah was a mailable and amiable creature. It was hard to get upset with him, as he rarely did anything that warranted the rise in blood pressure that accompanied true anger. He was their friend group’s glue, he was their secret keeper, he was the boy they were all a little bit in love with.
“And gross. If Whelk is using words like love, then I think we need to find new words.” Blue said with an obnoxious huff while trying to figure out which pair of knee socks to wear with her flower printed baby doll dress and platform Mary Janes.
“There is no way Maura is letting you out of the house in that.” Noah barked gleefully as Blue slipped the dress over her slip.
The dress barely went two inches past her butt, and on an averaged sized girl, the dress would easily be worn as a shirt. Blue had gotten the dress from the children’s section of a local thrift store.
“I’m wearing socks…” Blue retorted angrily as she tried to bend over to put on her clunky shoes without showing her ass off to the world.
Blue was wearing pink knee high socks, which still left about five inches of bare thigh exposed. And on a girl who was not quite five feet tall, that was a lot of bare leg.
“Besides, we’ll be wearing our gowns anyway.” Blue finished her thought.
“Hey, I’m just saying your Mom is going to throw a fit. I think you look adorable.” Noah cooed.
Blue scowled.
“What do you think dumbass?” Blue pointedly asked a tall, lanky, boy who was laying on her bed, staring as the ceiling, ignoring Blue and Noah’s entire, pointless exchange.
The boy’s name was Ronan Lynch. He was dressed in a white Bad Religion t-shirt which had seen better days (It had been his father’s), and was just a smidge too small. He wore a black and red checked flannel over it. His tattered black jeans were too purposefully ripped to have not come that way, and his shit kicking Doc Martin’s were well worn and scuffed. Leather bracelets wound around both of his wrists. A thin, silver ring, was threaded through his lower lip. His hair was cut close, a buzz cut. He was brutally handsome in a way that made it difficult to look at him for too long. He had sharp, angular, features; high cheekbones, roman nose, thin mouth, and eyes that were cerulean blue. Eyes that a girl could lost in, which was really too bad for the girls, as Ronan was as out as they came.
“I think…” Ronan pondered. “That you look like a loser.”
Blue just gave Ronan the bird and went back to getting ready, smearing red lipstick over her mouth that made it look purposefully smudged, which it was. She then started artfully smudging her eyeliner, and Noah suggested he wanted some too.
“I think I’m going to ask him out. I’m going to do it.” Ronan said thoughtfully.
Blue rolled her eyes. This again.
“Ronan, buddy, you don’t even know he’s…like…into dudes.” Noah said, not unkindly.
“We had a moment.”
“Ronan, you purposefully started failing AP Chem so you could trick Adam into tutoring you, that’s not a moment, that’s a scam.” Blue accused.
And Blue was not wrong. Ronan had started throwing quizzes and tests, and not turning in homework last year just so he could ask Adam Parrish to tutor him.
“I didn’t go through with it. But, he seemed disappointed when I declined.” Ronan reasoned.
Noah rolled his eyes this time.
“Adam Parrish doesn’t know you exist.” Noah said, less kindly.
Adam and Ronan had gone to school for two and a half years, and had a surprising number of classes together given Ronan’s generally unimpressive GPA, and disdain for institutional learning. Adam was this year’s valedictorian, and had well over a 4.0 GPA. For the better part of twenty-two months (as Ronan was deprived Adam’s presence during the summer months), Ronan loved Adam from a far, never having the nerve to talk to the dusty haired boy who consumed most of his thoughts.
His infatuation with Adam was probably the only reason he was graduating today, as school was the only time Ronan saw Adam. Ronan would sometimes sit out in his BMW in front of the community center where Adam volunteered, but he never dared to go in. A few shameful times, Ronan had sat in his car, out on the street, chewing on his leather bands, in front of Adam’s Uncle’s art gallery, hoping for a glimpse of Adam. Ronan had even contemplated taking a college level course at the university with hope of running into Adam there. His time had run out. If he was going to make a move, he had better do it soon. Adam was leaving the last week of August for his fellowship at Oxford. He had not quite twelve weeks to make Adam fall in love with him. Assuming, Adam even liked boys.
“Well, he might not be able to recall my name off hand, but after today, he will.”
“I don’t think Adam dates, and even if he does date, and even if he likes boys, he’s not going to go out with you. He’s a brain, an overachiever. You are kind of whatever the opposite of that is.” Blue pointed out.
“Plus, he’s hot. Like he could be like a fancy European runway model hot.” Noah chimed in.
“I don’t think Adam realizes that about himself.” Blue said thoughtfully.
“Yeah, that’s one of the great fucking things about Adam Parrish.” Ronan exclaimed.
And it was. Ronan thought he might have a chance, because he had watched girls throwing themselves at Adam for years, and he was always polite, but he always declined. Their mutual friend, Richard “Dick” Campbell Gansey III, once confided in Ronan, that Adam seemed generally flabbergasted as to why anyone would take an interest in him.
“You two don’t even exist in the same orbit. He’s going to Oxford, you want to what, be an MMA fighter?” Blue scoffed.
Blue wasn’t wrong, not completely. Ronan had been training in mixed martial arts for years, having picked up an interest in it when his family lived in Japan when Ronan was nine or ten years old. That wasn’t Ronan’s only interest though. His friends didn’t really know how smart Ronan actually was. They didn’t know that he scored very well on his SAT’s the previous year. They didn’t know he was fluent in Greek and Latin, along with a passing grasp of Gaelic. They didn’t know he read the classics in his spare time. They didn’t know he painted, and one of the spare rooms at his brother Declan’s house had been devoted as Ronan’s art studio. They didn’t know, not because they didn’t care, but because Ronan was a secretive creature. Ronan had no doubt he could carry on an intelligent conversation with Adam.
“I don’t know what I want to be when I grow-up, just that I need to take a chance. You don’t have to be such a dick about it.” Ronan glared at Blue.
Blue’s eyes softened.
“Even though you are the biggest fucktard I have ever met, I still care about you, and I don’t want you to get hurt.” Blue responded, voice softer, quieter.
“Fuck, maybe I want to get hurt!” Ronan exclaimed, as he sat up, and ran his hands over non-existent hair.