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As an avid explorer and researcher, and the son to two highly successful politicians, Gansey was no stranger to the feeling of potential. Sometimes he would pick up an arcane text and something in his stomach would contract and climb into his chest, and he knew, he just knew, that it would be important. He felt that sometimes when he would pick up a call from Mallory, the feeling that Mallory would tell him something important.
He wasn’t kidding himself, he was no psychic. He could barely see with his first two eyes, let alone his third, but some things felt like they were written in the stars. Like Ronan and Blue and Noah and Adam.
Gansey wasn’t sure what divine twist of fate led them to cross paths, but he had never stopped blessing whatever gods were out there for every decision he had made that let their worlds collide.
The boy in question was sitting at Gansey’s desk, scribbling furiously in his notebook.
“Gansey,” he started, turning to face Gansey, who was sprawled across his unmade bed chewing absentmindedly at his pen.
“Yeah?”
“Did, you get x= -7 for question 5?”
“Hmm,” Gansey said, scanning his algebra homework, “Yeah”
“Cool,” Adam said, nodding and smiling slightly as he turned back to his math homework, and Gansey was struck, once again, how right Adam looked, seated at Gansey’s desk, in Monmouth, dusty piles of books surrounding him.
One day, Gansey reasoned, this would be Adam’s life. Holed up in a fancy apartment he had bought himself, with his own books and his own pool table and his own life around him. One day, and Gansey’s lungs felt short of air at this thought, this will be Adam.
And Gansey wouldn’t be there.
He used to feel like he was holding his friends close, and that they were getting away from him. Now, he was the one leaving.
God, he was morbid.
Adam exhaled quietly, a barely-there sigh, and ran his fingers through his hair.
Something inside Gansey twisted painfully. Spurred on by his wildly beating heart, he did something reckless. “Hey Adam, do you want to study together?” he asked
Adam turned around, his pen between his lips. Gansey could see Adam’s spit on the end of his pen.
“We are together Gansey”
“No, but like,” Gansey gestured to his bed, a tangle of bed sheets and school books. “Here,” he finished.
The possible implication of ‘here’ was a heady and thoroughly impossible thought and one that Adam didn’t miss, judging by how delicately his eyebrow raised. He smiled. “I’m sure you’ve got more romantic pickup lines than that” Adam said.
Gansey flushed, which was a very un-Gansey gesture. “No, I didn’t, I don’t even pick people up” he stammered.
“Right yeah, Glendower would probably be a bit pissed if you were cheating” Adam replied.
Gansey didn’t have anything to say to that, so he amended with “I’m having trouble with question 6”
“Okay, um sure, I can help” Adam replied, collecting his books. He sat on the edge of Gansey’s bed, kicking Gansey’s legs aside for more room.
Gansey tried to concentrate as Adam explained how to do the math equation, but he found it difficult. Partly because he knew how to do it, and he really just wanted an excuse to interact with Adam, and partly because he distracted by how right, in this moment, it felt to have Adam on his bed with him. And then he was distracted, because was that something you were supposed to feel right about? Having one of your best friends this close?” And then Adam leant in a bit, and their arms brushed and Gansey’s thoughts spiralled away altogether.
“And, then that gives you a y-intercept of -14, which you can mark on your graph, like so” Adam pencilled in a point on Gansey’s graphing paper.
“Do you get it now?” Adam asked, tilting his head to look at Gansey’s eyes. Something in his expression softened. Gansey wasn’t thinking about mathematics, he was thinking about how there were frown lines on Adam’s forehead and how he knew Adam had dimples when he smiled, and how badly he wanted to see them again.
“Where are you Gansey?” Adam asked, and his hand brushed Gansey’s smooth jaw line. It was miniscule, the touch, and barely there, but Gansey felt trapped by it. Like a part of him, an important part, was stuck to the tips of Adam’s fingers.
He tried to shake it away. “I’m here” Gansey answered, and smiled his bullet proof smile.
Adam saw straight through it though. He always could. The trouble was, Adam didn’t always know what he was looking at behind it. “No, you’re not”, and his Henrietta vowels slipped through and a vulnerable part of Gansey nearly burst forward.
Adam’s hand found Gansey’s and he squeezed. His eyes didn’t look reassuring, but he looked like someone expecting a storm and preparing to brave through it.
But Gansey wasn’t allowed to be a storm. He wasn’t supposed to howl and crash and pour down. He was supposed to shine warmly over all who stood in his wake. Or at least that’s what his mother taught him.
Adam still had his hand on Gansey’s, but he readjusted his grip so their fingers were twined together. Gansey could feel their pulses beating in tandem, iambic pentameter in the warm afternoon, thoughts popping into his head and dissipating in the time it took for his heart to pump some more blood through his body. The thoughts were saying AdamAdamAdam.
“It’s all right Gansey, we’ll work through this, we will. Fuck fate” Adam said, but the statement seemed more for himself than Gansey. Adam had a faraway look in his eyes, and wherever that ‘away’ was, it didn’t look like a happy place.
Absentmindedly, he thumbed over Gansey’s knuckles, and Gansey was embarrassed by how intimate he found it. His eyes caught on the curl of Adam’s hair at the nape of his neck and he didn’t want to look away. He didn’t want to look at Adam’s stricken face, freckled cheeks or bitten lips. Especially not at Adam’s lips, red and slightly parted and- God, he had to stop otherwise he would end up doing something stupid.
It was ridiculous. Adam had liked Blue and--- all the excuses fell away. Gansey had liked girls, and he probably liked Blue but he still wanted kiss Adam on the mouth.
Adam’s words brought him back to earth. “What’re you thinking?” he asked, words treacle-thick and sweet as honey.
Gansey spoke before he could filter “You”
It was possibly the most stupid thing he had done in his entire life, probably even more stupid than his first disastrous conversation with Blue. He could feel his lungs restricting, he was running out of air.
Adam just nodded, and smiled a wry smile and Gansey found he could breathe again.
Somewhere in their not-quite conversation, Gansey had taken to worrying his bottom lip with his teeth, in absence of an available hand. One was holding him semi-upright, and the other was in Adam's, and there was no way he was removing it. Adam eyed his lips, and laughed slightly.
Adam pulled himself upright, and Gansey followed, regretfully pulling his hand out of Adam’s. He wasn’t complaining though, because Adam placed his hand on Gansey’s neck, thumb brushing his lips. “You’re always so worried. You think I don’t notice, but I do.” Adam said.
Gansey wanted to say, that in that moment, the only thing he was worried about was accidently doing something he desperately wanted to do. How could he be worried? He was in the hands of Adam Parrish, fixer of cars, writer of top-marked essays, repairer of ley lines, shuffler of tarot cards. He was in the hands of a repairer, a fixer, a builder, a magician. And currently, one hand was on his jaw and the other was millimetres away from his knee.
“What do you want Gansey?” Adam asked and Gansey was struck by how odd it sounded, Adam throwing back the words Gansey had said many times to him.
Gansey didn’t say anything, but something must have registered in his expression, because Adam just nodded. And lent forward. And touched his lips against Gansey’s.
And suddenly nothing mattered. Only this: Adam’s hand on his neck and the other on his knee. Gansey’s arms were around Adam’s shoulder, pulling him in, and Adam obliged.
It was an awkward kiss at first, Adam’s head angled all wrong, teeth and tongues and noses but Gansey felt like he was floating. He couldn’t catch his thoughts, like they spoke a different language than the one of lips on lips and hands in hair.
Adam readjusted, and then they were kissing so slowly and so deeply and all the thoughts that were bursting from his head a second ago, a minute ago, a lifetime ago, were gone. Banished. Lost between Adam biting his bottom lip and Gansey’s stifled groan as Adam ran his fingers up his thigh.
They broke apart, after what was surely minutes, but Gansey felt it was more like hours. He had never kissed someone and lost time before, but then the people he had kissed before were not Adam Parrish, repairer, magician, captain of his own ship.
They were panting, hard, like drowning men deposited onto the shore. Adam smiled, and Gansey could see his dimples and the crinkles by his eyes that only appeared when he was laughing. Adam cleared his throat “Um, Gansey? Can I ask? Um, how long have you wanted that?”
Gansey tried to reason with himself but came up with a blank. Ever since he had met Adam, he’d felt right. Right like how Henrietta felt as a town to live in, right like Monmouth was for a home, right like Ronan was for friend.
He didn’t think ‘from the very start’ was the right answer for Adam’s question, but he gave it anyway.
“I have always wanted you. As a friend, and maybe more recently,” Gansey shrugged and gestured between them. Adam just nodded, and then he was on top of Gansey, pushing him into his bed. Gansey was okay with this, more than okay, and then registered, with some embarrassment, how good it felt to have Adam straddling his waist, their burgeoning boners pressing together.
Adam shifted, running his fingers up Gansey’s arms, pinning them above Gansey’s head. Gansey recognised a wicked little smile on his face.
“Is this what you want?” Adam asked.
Gansey didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded, and swallowed. Adam seemed momentarily distracted by his Adam’s apple bobbing. He looked up again at Gansey’s eyes.
“Hmm, you’re going to have to use your words,” Adam said, and Gansey felt his stomach floor out. “Is this what you want?” Adam repeated, still grinning wickedly.
“Yes” Gansey managed to gasp out, because at the moment he opened his mouth to speak, Adam ground down on his lap. The friction was delicious and there was so much of it. Adam seemed momentarily distracted by the feeling as well. “And,” Adam swallowed “What do you want?” The confidence he had inhabited so easily moments ago dissipating. He looked at Gansey wondrously, like he couldn’t believe he had Gansey under him. Gansey wanted to erase that doubt.
He pulled Adam down, fitting their lips together