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BLUE LILY, LILY BLUE
I
Ronan took Adam to the Barns.
It was still raining softly as they made their way back to the BMW. Adam climbed in on the passenger side right away, and shut the door behind him, but Ronan stayed standing next to the hood for a minute. Mist clung to his clothes, settled in his freshly buzzed hair as he stared at the farmhouse.
With his mother gone, all the lights were out, the windows black, like empty eyeholes cut in a once familiar mask.
The wind rustled in the trees.
Ronan could just make out the spot where Gansey, Blue, and Adam had helped him bury the night horror that summer, remembered the wet scrape of shovels meeting dirt, the rotting smell of the dead monster, all four of them breathing together as they worked. He wondered where his other night horror was right now, the enormous albino creature he had dreamed up to stop Kavinsky. When he looked around him, there was nothing but grass, and trees, and rain falling quietly between the scattered barns.
The passenger door creaked, and Adam climbed out again.
“What is it?”
His voice was softer than Ronan was used to, and his expression was wary.
He looked everywhere else, before his eyes finally settled on Ronan.
What is it?
Something too large and terrifying to explain.
Ronan leaned on the hood of the BMW, both hands braced on the smooth metal. He was getting cold, shivering slightly as rain trickled down the back of his neck, slipped underneath the collar of his hateful Aglionby uniform, but despite that he was not ready to leave just yet.
Adam seemed to understand, even though Ronan didn’t say it. He moved around the front of the car, and joined Ronan, sneakers scuffing in the wet gravel, their shoulders accidentally brushing for a fraction of a second when he leaned too close, the contact sudden and jarring.
“Maybe next time you want to dream out here, I can come with you?” he offered.
Which made no sense.
Adam Parrish had his own life—a gruelling schedule of school and work.
Ronan stared at him.
“What’s with the face?” Adam said, catching him at it.
“Don’t you have anything better to do than watch me dream,” Ronan replied.
He had meant for the words to sound sharply dismissive. They didn’t. Instead his voice wavered just a little, betraying his uncertainty and confusion.Adam blinked, shrugged. “I just… thought you might want the company.”
This was where Ronan was supposed to tell Adam that he was wrong.
He could do this own his own.
He didn’t need a babysitter. He didn’t need anyone.
Except that Ronan Lynch never lied.
“I might,” he admitted, not looking at Adam. “Sometimes.”
That would have been the end of it, ordinarily, but Adam made no move to get back in the car, and neither did Ronan. He was shivering properly now, and standing this close to Adam, he could tell that the other boy was too, both of them leaning silently on the BMW as the rain turned the shoulders of their uniforms dark. Adam put his hand down on the hood, and Ronan felt his breath catch when cold fingers grazed his wrist, an accident. Maybe. Probably. But instead of pulling away immediately, Adam just left his hand there, the lightest brush of skin on skin.
Ronan looked at him.
Adam was already looking back.
He could not quite remember how to breathe.
Adam let out a long, quiet sigh, his breath misting in the chill air.
“Ronan,” he said, almost like it was a question.
Ronan leaned in, slowly, until their foreheads were touching.
His heart hammered in his chest.
His hands were shaking. His knees were shaking.
Adam tilted his head up, and kissed Ronan, just for a second, their lips barely touching at all, but it was enough to send a jolt of electricity through Ronan, his mind looping over the moment, skipping the next, when Adam leaned back.
“Ronan?” he said again, and it was definitely a question this time.
“Adam,” Ronan muttered, because that was the only answer he knew.
II
The other Ronan was dead.
Adam answered the door almost immediately after Ronan knocked. He was wearing the faded Coca Cola shirt that was his namesake at 300 Fox Way, and the waistband of his sweatpants slipped distractingly low on his hips. He had obviously just got out of the shower, because his hair was still damp.
“What do you want?” he said shortly.
Ronan knew he probably deserved it, but there was no way in hell he was going to admit that out loud. He scowled as he shoved past Adam, remembering to duck his head at the last second to avoid smacking it on the low ceiling. He stomped across the tiny apartment to the bed, which was really just a shitty mattress on the shitty wood floor, and flopped down on it.
The springs rasped in protest.
“Make yourself at home,” Adam muttered, very sarcastically, but he took up his usual spot in the creaky desk chair, sitting on it the wrong way with his legs straddling the back.
Ronan tried not to look at him.
Adam was doing the same thing, his eyes wandering away, and then flicking back to Ronan for a fraction of a second before he seemed to remember that he was still angry about the dream, the body, the blood soaking through the carpet in the church.
His hands tapped across the back of the desk chair.
Ronan swallowed.
He thought that he could still smell the gore on his hands.
“What did you do with it?” Adam said, after several long minutes had passed in awkward silence. He caught Ronan staring at him, and his cheeks turned pink. “I mean. Um. What did you do with him?” he added.
Ronan was just glad that Adam had not called the body you.
He scraped a hand over his buzzed hair. “Shoved him in the trunk. I’ll deal with it later.”
Maybe.
The truth was, dealing with it was the last thing he wanted to do.
Adam leaned his chin on his arms, and leaned his arms on the chair back.
“Let me help,” he said, and it was such a surprise that Ronan just stared at him for a minute. He swallowed again. Any lingering anger he had felt for the other boy was gone, replaced by a familiar squirmy sensation in his stomach, a warm flush in his cheeks.
He didn’t say anything, and after a moment Adam made a huffing noise.
“If you want to do it by yourself…” he started, and then he stopped again.
They regarded each other properly for the first time since Adam had stormed out of the church, since Ronan had told him to get out, since they had stood there together and watched as the other Ronan took his last stuttering breaths on the bloody carpet.
Adam was paler than usual.
It could have been the light.
It could have been in his head.
Ronan looked away. “If you want to help,” he muttered, shrugging.
Adam scrambled to his feet. “I do. But only if you stop being weird about it.”
Ronan stood up. He waited for Adam to grab his coat, put on his shoes, but he just stood there next to the desk and stared at him.
“What?” he snapped.
“Are you going to stop being weird about it?” Adam pressed.
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means…” Adam laughed, ragged. “God. I don’t know. This is so fucked up.”
“Seriously? My dead body double in the most fucked up thing about tonight?”
“Probably. Maybe.” Adam reached up absently to touch his deaf ear, but stopped himself just before his fingers brushed it, his cheeks turning slightly pink. “I thought it was you,” he admitted, finally. “The real you. I thought you were dying.”
“It wasn’t me,” Ronan said.
Adam laughed, and took a step toward him. In the tiny apartment, it brought them significantly closer together. Ronan could have reached out and touched his chest.
“The dreaming tree, in Cabeswater,” Adam said. “It showed me something like that, except it was Gansey. He was the one dying, and it was my fault, and you were—you hated me.”
His voice broke. There was something more to it that he was not saying.
Ronan muttered, “I’d never hate you, Parrish.”
Adam ducked his head, eyes fixed on the rough floor between his bare feet.
“Gansey isn’t going to fucking die,” Ronan added. “We can keep him safe.”
Adam let out a shaky little breath. “What if—”
“We can keep him safe,” Ronan repeated, louder, firmer. He watched the way Adam shrugged at his words, shoulders hitching, breath hitching, his face a mask that was starting to crack, and it was terrible. He suddenly wished he had never asked Adam to research Greenmantle.
What had it done for him? What had it done for any of them?
All he had so far was a body that looked like him, somehow was him, and a bloody envelope full of false evidence to a false crime.
“Shit’s fucked,” Ronan said, which made Adam laugh for the first time that day.
He glanced up, and realized Adam was looking back at him, his eyes lighter, his expression lighter too, although not entirely uncomplicated. Adam shifted closer still, and lifted his hand to carefully touch the back of Ronan’s neck, right where his tattoo stained the skin black.
“I’m glad it wasn’t really you,” Adam said softly. “And I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Ronan grunted. He was barely breathing.
“I don’t know,” Adam said. “There are a lot of things.”
Ronan nodded. “Yeah.” He reached out, hesitated, and withdrew his hand again.
“What?” Adam whispered.
“Just this,” Ronan said. He kissed Adam, pushing into his space, hands tangling in his hair, their knees bumping together, hips knocking. The contact sent a jolt of heat through Ronan. He hesitated, panic chasing the heat, but Adam kept the hand on the back of his neck, and placed his other hand on Ronan’s hip, drawing him even closer. He kissed Ronan softly, carefully, like he might break, and then he kissed him harder, hungrier, his breaths coming out in little gasps.
Finally, they stopped, breaking apart to stare at each other.
Ronan felt like he had been hit with something heavy. Like he had been under water for his entire life, and was only now just coming up for air. Everything around him looked sharp and crystalized, the colours brighter, every sensation heightened as Adam reached up to touch his cheek, brushing his thumb down across his wet lips.
“That was something,” he said.
Ronan wanted to reply, agree, but his breath was gone.
Adam leaned in, and kissed him again, very carefully.
“Come on,” he said, when he pulled back. “We need to go bury a body.”
III
They had run.
For him.
Guilty. The sentence should have been a victory. It should have been the earnest exchange of fist bumps, and arms slung casually across shoulders, and the familiar carbonated hiss as Ronan cracked open a celebratory beer in the parking lot.
It should have been Adam smiling loose and happy.
But for someone like Robert Parrish, first time offender, long time Henrietta resident, guilty meant nothing more than a fine and probation.
It was not enough.
It was—
“—fucking bullshit!” Ronan exploded the moment they had stepped outside.
The sunshine was warm and liquid, spilling across the steps of the old courthouse, spilling across Gansey, who still looked very nearly impeccable in his crisp Aglionby uniform. That same sunshine appeared to skirt just around Adam whenever Ronan glanced his way, catching in his dusty hair, slipping like water off the expensive fibres of his dark suit, his only armour against a world constantly fighting to keep him on the ground.
“Did you hear that bastard?” Ronan snarled. “Did you fucking—”
“Lynch.”
This was Gansey, always civil, always the perfect gentleman.
Adam just fixed his eyes on the ground. He looked numb.
Ronan tugged angrily on his tie, yanking the knot loose as he stormed across the parking lot to where the Camaro was waiting. Gansey had stopped it near the Hondayota, the orange paint even more garish than usual when compared directly to the mismatched paint job and pockmarked hood just next to it.
The air above the metal was shimmery with heat.
They had lost almost two hours in the stuffy courtroom.
Ronan snatched up a bottle cap from the ground, and hurled it over the Camaro. It arched neatly above the car, a breeze carrying it further than expected before it landed again in the gravel with a woefully unsatisfactory plink.
He wanted to smash something.
He wanted to smash Robert Parrish until his knuckles were bleeding.
Gansey appeared beside him, and set a hand on his shoulder. “Ronan.”
The stern disapproval in his voice only made Ronan angrier.
“What the hell is probation going to do?” he growled, shrugging Gansey off.
“I know.”
“He should be going to jail!”
“I know.”
“Shut up!” Ronan shouted. “Why are you being so fucking—”
“Ronan.” Gansey frowned at him, a warning. “Stop.”
Ronan stopped.
They drove back to Aglionby, because Gansey said so, and Adam didn’t say anything. Not when Gansey reached out to bump knuckles with him in a comradely way over the hood of the Camaro. Not when Ronan wrenched open the door to Adam’s shitty car and slammed himself into the passenger seat without an invitation. Not when the engine choked, and then rattled, and finally groaned to reluctant life beneath the dented hood.
Adam had the radio switched off, or the volume turned all the way down, which forced Ronan to seethe in silence on the short trip. He watched Adam grip the steering wheel tightly in his left hand, his right wrestling with the stubborn gear stick, prominent knuckles shining white.
His face was still carefully blank.
Gansey pulled in ahead of them, and Adam parked in the next empty spot. It was nearly time for lunch, the last class of the period in session for another five minutes or so, and the courtyard was empty. Ronan scowled at the perfectly mown lawn, the ostentatious brick buildings that rose up behind it.
He had never hated the place so much.
Gansey tapped on the passenger window. He had his leather bag slung casually across one shoulder, the knot in his tie impossibly neat, and the breeze had mussed his dark hair in such a way that only appeared on magazine covers.
Ronan slowly rolled down the window. “What?” he barked.
“Lunch?” Gansey suggested.
Ronan rolled the window back up.
Gansey knocked on it again, a perfect crease between his perfect eyebrows.
“Fuck,” Ronan muttered.
Adam waved at Gansey, a placating gesture, and then shut off the engine. He reached into the back for his bag, and his Aglionby uniform, which was folded carefully on the seat, but before he could get the door open Ronan said, “Parrish.”
Adam paused.
Ronan looked out the window, out at Gansey, who pointedly checked his watch.
“Are you happy?” he blurted.
“Am I… happy?” Adam repeated slowly. Henrietta curled around his words.
Gansey rapped his knuckles impatiently on the window.
Ronan rolled it back down.
“Are you two coming?” Gansey said, in his Richard Campbell Gansey III voice.
Adam looked at Ronan. Ronan looked at Adam.
Adam said, “Go ahead. We’ll see you at lunch.”
Gansey raised his eyebrows, looking slightly hurt. “I can wait for you.”
“No.” Adam waved him away. “Just go.”
Gansey went, although it was clearly a struggle for him. Ronan waited until he had disappeared inside the nearest building before he dared to look at Adam again, and when he finally did, the other boy looked strange and otherworldly, his eyes focused on something that no one else could see.
His left hand flexed on the steering wheel, thumb jutting out, his sleeve hitched up to expose a strip of tanned wrist just above his battered watchstrap. Ronan barely resisted the urge to reach out and touch the skin there.
“Are we going to talk about it?” Adam said finally, his voice infinitely weary.
“Talk about what?” Ronan muttered.
“You know what.”
Ronan took a breath. He let it hiss out past his clenched teeth. “That fucker.”
Adam just closed his eyes.
“He should have got more than probation!” Ronan added angrily.
“The judge said he was guilty.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“So he was guilty,” Adam repeated. “That was all I needed.”
“Fuck,” Ronan muttered.
Adam frowned at him. “Don’t be like that,” he said, but then he leaned over and rested his forehead on the steering wheel, and squeezed his eyes shut again.
Ronan watched his eyelashes flutter against his high cheekbones, heart catching in his chest, breath catching in his throat. Without thinking about it, he reached out and placed his hand over Adam’s on the wheel, his sweaty palm brushing chapped knuckles.
Adam stiffened, and lifted his head just slightly.
Ronan expected him to pull away, waited for it to happen, but Adam just turned his hand over, very slowly, until they were palm to palm, and then carefully threaded their fingers together. Ronan stared at him, shocked into silence. Adam looked up again, blinked, and his expression was less distant now, less numb.
There was something in his eyes that Ronan did not quite recognize.
No. He did recognize it, but he had never thought it would be directed at him.
“Parrish,” Ronan breathed. “Adam.”
He flicked his eyes around, checking to see if anyone was watching, but their only audience was a parking lot of empty cars, the deserted courtyard outside, the distant windows of Aglionby Academy, glass panes tinted gold in the sun as Ronan stretched across the gear stick to kiss Adam on the mouth.
There was a strange and lovely moment when their lips brushed.
Ronan had never kissed anyone before, and he was not sure he was doing it right.
He felt the way Adam froze, maybe not entirely surprised, but a little surprised.
Icy panic trickled down his spine, and Ronan started to pull away, but just then Adam brought his free hand up, fingers spreading across Ronan’s cheek, calloused thumb slipping underneath his chin to tilt it slightly. He kissed Ronan back, tentative, uncertain, but it was a kiss, and if Ronan never breathed again he would have been happy.
He felt the way the gear stick cut into his side, the seatbelt pulled tight.
Adam tasted sweet and warm.
When they broke apart, he kept his eyes shut for a second, breathing ragged.
“Parrish?” Ronan said again, very quietly.
Adam was still holding his hand. “Why did you kiss me?” he whispered.
“You kissed me back,” Ronan said, which was not a real answer, but still.
Adam took back his hand, reached up to touch his own mouth.
Ronan could still taste him.
“It was a fucking shitty day,” he added, dropping his eyes.
Adam laughed, just barely. “Was?” he whispered.
“Yeah. I mean.” Ronan shrugged. “It depends.”
“Okay,” Adam said.
He kissed Ronan again.
THE RAVEN KING
IV
It was not 6:21.
It was either late at night or early in the morning.
There was only time for the truth. After they traded the too bright waiting room inside Mountain View Urgent Care for the chilly parking lot outside, after Blue hugged them all goodbye, even Ronan, her fingers curled tight in his leather jacket, after Gansey parked the Camaro outside Monmouth Manufacturing, and headed upstairs with one last wave and a mumbled goodnight, Ronan and Adam sat together in the BMW and watched as the sun peeked above the horizon.
Orphan Girl snivelled sleepily in the back, occasionally kicking the back of the driver seat with her hooves when she shuffled around. Ronan plucked absently at the sleeve of his dark jacket. His clothes were still damp from the acid pool in Cabeswater, and small burn marks decorated his jeans where it had started to eat through.
He was tired, but also very completely awake.
He wondered if Adam was experiencing the same thing.
He needed to say something.
“So…” Ronan cleared his throat slightly awkwardly. “Blue and Gansey.”
“I kind of knew already,” Adam admitted.
“I mean. They were being pretty fucking obvious about it.”
Adam laughed, a tired sound, his forehead pressed to the passenger side window.
Ronan turned to watched the pinkish tint on the horizon turn purple, and then a dusty yellow. The weeds that grew out of control in the parking lot glittered with beads of morning dew, and the gravel was marked up with tire tracks.
Adam said, “About Cabeswater. I get it, why you didn’t say something sooner.”
Ronan looked at him. He didn’t say anything.
Orphan Girl flopped around in the back seat for a second, and then went still again. When Ronan glanced over his shoulder, he saw that she had fallen asleep, or at least that her eyes were closed, her face buried in the leather seat. Adam followed his gaze, and a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“Thanks for earlier,” Ronan said. “For saving us, I mean.”
Adam shook his head. “The way you jumped after her—I wish I had done it.”
“Don’t be stupid, Parrish. You would have drowned.”
“Yeah. But—”
“Shut up,” Ronan told him. “Your plant things got us out of there.”
“My plant things,” Adam echoed, and he sounded almost amused. He reached out like he was going to push open the passenger door, and then hesitated, pulling his hand away. Ronan watched him carefully; very aware of how close they were in that moment, that they were almost completely alone in the quiet car.
Adam looked out the window, at Monmouth, at the gold squares that were windows where Gansey was presumably getting ready to go to bed for a few hours before they had school again.
The morning sunlight turned his face blue and gold.
Ronan wanted to say something.
He wanted to—
Adam turned back to him, and his expression was complicated, a crease forming between his fair eyebrows, the corners of his mouth tilted down. The contented smile that Ronan had seen on him a few moments ago, when he was watching Orphan Girl sleep, had disappeared, but there was still something magnetic behind his eyes.
“If I can just keep you all alive for as long as possible,” Adam started.
“Both of us,” Ronan said. “We can keep each other alive.”
Adam sighed, and then he said, “I should get home.”
“I’ll drive you back,” Ronan said, but he didn’t start the car.
Adam was still looking at him.
Ronan took a deep breath, and then he put one hand on the dashboard, bracing himself as he leaned across the car. He placed his other hand on Adam’s neck, fingers sprawling across his shoulder, pulling him closer, close enough that their breath tangled in the few inches left between them.
“Oh,” Adam said, not in a surprised way, but in a way that meant he could have been relieved, or happy, or nervous.
“Come here,” Ronan muttered.
They kissed once, twice, three times, slow and tentative.
It was perfect.
Ronan had never kissed anyone before, and he never wanted to kiss anyone else.
His mouth was tingling as Adam pulled away, his hand going to Ronan’s chest, fingers spreading out across his heartbeat. Ronan started to pull his hand away from his neck, but Adam caught it in his other hand, holding it gently, carefully, like Ronan was something that he might break. He was smiling, just a little bit. He was breathing almost as quickly as Ronan.
“Was that okay?” Ronan muttered.
“I think so,” Adam said. “I mean. Yes. It was okay.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Ronan admitted.
“That’s okay too,” Adam whispered.
Ronan started the car, and drove them back to St. Agnes.
Adam kissed him one more time before he got out, and he was smiling again as he shut the passenger door behind him.
Bonus Scene
V
He closed his eyes and let the storm soak him.
Adam had been gone for five, or maybe ten minutes when Blue found what was left of the aluminum foil under the sofa in the sitting room. Orphan Girl had clearly got to it first, because Ronan didn’t know anyone or anything else that could chew through an entire roll. Even the box had been demolished, shredded until all that was left were a hundred tiny pieces of cardboard.
“Well,” Gansey said, and he flicked a useless strip of aluminum at Ronan.
“Has anyone seen Adam?” Blue said.
Ronan went to look him. He checked in all the obvious places, the back porch and the upstairs hallway, inside both bathrooms and the master bedroom, which had hardly been touched since his father died, and still smelled very faintly like his cologne. But along the way Ronan also poked his head inside the linen cupboard, and opened every closet, because he knew from experience that each corner of the farm house called out, beckoning visitors like a friendly laugh, or the familiar touch of a loved one.
He finally found Adam in his room, sitting on his bed.
He was holding a model car, with tiny chrome wheels and a shiny silver hood.
It was clearly a dream object. Ronan recognized it immediately, although he could no longer remember if the car was one of his, or if it was something that his father had gifted to him years earlier.
Adam just sat there, and stared at it in his lap.
He was washed out and beautiful in the pale afternoon sunlight.
He was so beautiful that it hurt.
Ronan rapped his knuckles once on the partially open door, and Adam looked up, meeting his eyes in a way that Ronan was not quite used to. After a moment, he crossed the room and sat down on the bed beside Adam. The mattress dipped under him, pulling them slightly closer together, close enough that their knees were nearly touching.
Ronan held his hand out for the car, and Adam passed it to him.
“This old thing.”
He turned the front wheel, and immediately a tune played out, the song quiet and strange and lovely all at once. Adam sat there and watched as Ronan took a closer look at the model car, although really he was just stalling or… something else. Time did not feel the least bit wasted when he was with Adam.
Ronan spun each tiny wheel, and every one played a different tune.
He knew them all by heart.
His breath was coming fast, and his pulse slammed in his throat, his wrist. Ronan sighed, and then he set the car down on the bed. He looked at Adam again, felt his breath catch slightly when Adam looked right back, his expression open and earnest.
Ronan leaned over, and—
~ Fin ~