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It was 11:30pm, and Adam did not want to leave.
He should leave, he thought. It was Sunday tomorrow, and he had the first welcome desk shift in the morning, the 6:45am one that the other RAs begged off, citing 8am classes and internship commutes. Adam picked it up whenever he could. 6:45am meant he got to sleep in.
But Gansey’s room was dark and cozy, and they were watching a baking show that Adam found intensely relaxing, and Gansey was warm and soft beside him, and Adam did not want to leave .
They were propped up against both of Gansey’s pillows, huddled under a nautical navy duvet, and Gansey had Adam tucked beneath his arm in a way that made Adam feel safe and protected and settled, like he had stepped into a reality where no harm or hardship had ever existed.
Onscreen, a baker flipped her cake pan over, muttering prayers to herself, and Adam watched her sag with relief as the cake slid out perfectly golden, perfectly round. Gansey pressed a kiss to Adam’s temple, and Adam, emboldened, placed his own lips at the base of Gansey’s neck and returned the kiss, gentle as anything.
When he’d first met Gansey at an RA info session eighteen months before, he’d been slammed with the uncomfortable jumble of emotions that often accompanied his attraction to men: He thought Gansey’s tangerine polo was cute. He thought Gansey’s tangerine polo was hideous. He thought Gansey looked pretentious. He thought Gansey was pretentious. He thought Gansey’s extra twenty pounds were adorable. He thought Gansey’s extra twenty pounds reeked of entitlement. He wanted to kiss him. He wanted to be him. He wanted to never see him again. He wanted to say hello. He wanted Gansey to never know he existed.
He’d spent the info session quietly fuming, constructing a rationale for his annoyance in which Gansey was interested in an RA position for the authority it would afford him, another rich white guy looking for a power trip. After all, Gansey surely didn’t need the tuition break or free room and board that came with the position, and boys who looked like Gansey didn’t help out or take on extra responsibility for the hell of it.
But then Gansey had held the elevator for Adam on their way out, and Adam had crossed his arms over his chest and tucked himself into the corner, and he had braced when Gansey turned to him.
“I think it would be fun,” he said as they descended floors, tilting his head toward the elevator door as if to indicate the meeting they had left. He was a little shorter than Adam, and heavier, what Adam’s friend Blue from marine biology would call pear-shaped . His biceps and calves were thicker and more shapely than Adam thought was strictly fair.
“Don’t you?” Gansey prompted when Adam didn’t answer.
Adam had shrugged, hurriedly collecting and scolding himself. “What’s in it for you?”
He hadn’t quite meant to say it, and Gansey had looked unsettled for a moment. But he righted himself immediately, and raised and lowered one shoulder with practiced ease. “I think it would be a good experience,” he said. “And I like helping people.”
He didn’t say it like someone who thought he had a lot of help to offer, but he said it like someone who was excited to try, and that softened something in Adam. He had resolved not to fall for Richard Gansey III, but had thought that, well, maybe he could manage not to hate him.
But then they had both made it through the interview process and been offered positions, and although they’d been assigned to different buildings, they’d gone through RA training together, and they’d found each other in their gen ed economics class, and Adam, gradually and not altogether unpleasantly, had realized that it would be impossible for him to hate Richard Gansey III at all.
There was the night Gansey had caught Adam up late in the student lounge, building a tiny but extraordinarily complex set of circuits. Adam had initially bristled at the interruption, but Gansey had watched him work in silence that was somehow encouraging rather than judgmental. When Adam showed him how the finished product worked, Gansey had made a delighted sound and exclaimed, Adam, you marvelous creature! , and it had smoldered in Adam for weeks after, fueling him.
There was the afternoon that Gansey had offered to buy Adam a coffee in exchange for holding his hand through three chapters of economics lessons that Gansey couldn’t wrap his head around, and Adam had cautiously accepted, because this I’ll pay for your ... felt different than the others. He had knowledge Gansey didn’t, and Gansey needed his help, and they had huddled close at a table at Starbucks, Gansey’s breath minty on Adam’s cheek as Adam walked him through each chapter. He’d watched the spark of understanding flicker to life in Gansey’s hazel eyes, and for the first time, he felt necessary to someone. Gansey could have asked anyone for help, could have gone to the student help center in the library, could have asked their professor - but he had asked Adam, because he liked Adam, and because Adam was important to him, and that felt significant.
There was the morning Adam had found Gansey sitting cross-legged beneath a tree on the quad, his face twisted in discomfort as he spoke to his parents on the phone. Adam, caught between interest and embarrassment, had made to leave, but Gansey had motioned him over, and his voice had cracked when he told Adam his parents were pushing him toward a political science degree, and while there was nothing wrong with that, it wasn’t what he wanted , and he’d chosen this school specifically for its history and archiving programs and they knew that, and it didn’t matter, and - I’m sorry, Adam, you don’t deserve me dumping misfortunes on you like this . Adam had been surprised to find that he did not mind, that it was somehow comforting to know that even someone as polished and gleaming as Richard Gansey III could crack at his seams.
And then there was the night it had been raining after class and Gansey had offered Adam a ride back to his building in his garish, ancient muscle car, and although Adam had gratefully accepted, he’d felt a charge in the air the moment he got inside the car. Gansey was restlessly cheerful, electric, and although Adam could detect some kind of undercurrent powering him, he couldn’t discern its nature.
Until Gansey had pulled the car over outside Adam’s building, shuttered the ignition, and turned to him, one elbow braced on the top of the driver’s seat. Adam was damp from the rain, cool fingers of water tracing maps down his back, and he took a moment to marvel at Gansey in the wash of the streetlight: the soft line of his jaw, his restrained-wild eyes behind the glint of his wireframes, his thick arms and soft waist, the cling of his buttery yellow polo in the Virginia humidity.
“Adam,” he said, and he had made the word gentle and firm and wistful and wanting, and Adam had leaned forward against his will to hear more. He had the sensation that he was standing on the very edge of something, that maybe that something was crumbling beneath him the longer he spent in this car, that maybe it was better to jump than to fall.
“Yes?” said Adam.
Gansey exhaled, and although he didn’t smile outright, the smile was still there. “I like you an awful lot, Adam Parrish,” he said, and he leaned farther forward, and Adam leapt from the edge.
That had been ten months ago, and Adam still had not hit the ground. Instead, he had learned to enjoy the exhilaration, the uncertainty, the wildness of falling. He dealt best with concretes and absolutes, but sometimes dating felt like one big Gansey-shaped gray area, and he was still learning how to navigate that. He’d allowed himself to set rules for his own behavior, because that felt safer than operating entirely without directions, but lately, he’d felt himself beginning to chafe at them.
As a rule, he did not sleep over. He loved dating Gansey, and he was pretty sure he loved Gansey himself, for his quirks and imperfections and kindness and for the way he managed to make Adam feel like he was not falling at all. But sleeping beside Gansey - waking up beside Gansey - was a step into intimacy that Adam considered carefully from the threshold. He wanted it so badly he had begun to fear the wanting, and so he would not allow himself to have it, in case it destroyed him. He refused to let himself set alarms on his phone in favor of the alarm clock on his nightstand, and he had become well-acquainted with the crisp, quiet dark of the late-night walk between his building and Gansey’s, and he would not leave a toothbrush in Gansey’s bathroom no matter how often Gansey asked.
But tonight, the episode of the baking show ended, and Gansey eased his laptop shut and slid it onto his desk, and rolled so that some of him lay on top of Adam. He kissed Adam’s jaw, his cheeks, his forehead, and Adam tipped his head back, grabbing at the extra fat along Gansey’s waist. The stress of senior year had added a few more pounds than he’d had when Adam had met him, and Adam had decided almost as soon as he’d touched Gansey’s stomach for the first time that although Gansey’s eating habits definitely reeked of entitlement, the end result was definitely adorable. Gansey carried the weight with an embarrassed sort of resignation, and Adam couldn’t figure out exactly why that got under his skin the way it did, somehow thrilling and flammable at the same time.
“Hey, hey,” said Gansey softly, bumping his nose to Adam’s. “Easy there. I know there’s a lot, but you’re not going to get it all in one hand.”
Adam loosened his grip, and when Gansey flopped onto his back beside him, he slid a hand up Gansey’s t-shirt to jiggle gently at his stomach, and when that wasn’t enough, he rolled over to bury his face in it, kissing its doughy swell as Gansey whined and laughed and tangled fingers through his hair.
”Oh, Adam,” he said, soft, reverent. “You’re lovely.”
He did not say this like it was a revelation, but more as though it was something he was continually pleasantly surprised to see, and Adam liked that very much.
Finally Adam settled on his back, head propped on Gansey’s stomach. Gansey continued to stroke through his hair, brushing gentle fingertips against his forehead, and Adam breathed in and out, dizzy with bliss. He should leave, he thought. He did not leave.
At 3:32am, Adam blinked awake. Gansey was asleep beside him, snoring lightly, one arm thrown over Adam’s shoulders protectively. Adam smiled into the dark, unable to find the will to be annoyed with himself for breaking his own rule. He was warm and comfortable, and Gansey’s insomnia had not won tonight, and he had three more hours to sleep.
He shifted to get an arm around Gansey, and his stomach sank when Gansey’s eyelids fluttered.
“Do you have to go?” he mumbled, turning over onto his side. His stomach spilled out from his t-shirt, soft and gray in the dim of the room, and Adam gave it a reassuring pet before kissing the tip of Gansey’s nose.
“No,” he said, settling in beside him and setting an alarm on his phone for the morning. “Go back to sleep. I’m going to stay.”