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'Cause we're the masters of our own fate
We're the captains of our own souls
There's no way for us to come away
'Cause boy we're gold, boy we're gold
-- "Lust for Life”, Lana del Rey
Adam Parrish hadn’t always disliked his birthday. Some of them hadn’t been terrible – not great, but he didn’t have much to compare them against – which meant he could vividly recognise just how bad the terrible ones had been.
When he was three, his grandmother came to visit for the first time. He remembered her only very vaguely, because his three-year-old self was much more impressed by the cake she had brought. It had blue icing on it, and tasted better than anything Adam had ever had, which wasn’t saying much.
When he was four, his grandmother came to visit for the second and last time. She only made it as far as the door of the double-wide before she ran into his father. Adam didn’t know, at the time, what “being drunk” meant, but he could remember the screaming and anger and the sound of a bottle thrown. After that, his grandmother stopped visiting. His mother was the only one who still got to speak to her, in hushed and resentful tones on the phone.
The only thing Adam had left of her were the five envelopes that she had sent between his fifth and tenth birthdays. There had been no card for his eleventh. Adam didn’t know why they stopped – if she’d died or just stopped bothering. He’d never dared ask his mother, for fear that it would be the latter. After a while, it hadn’t seemed to matter anymore.
All of the envelopes contained a garish birthday card and a ten dollar note. Those had been the source of all his birthday presents, as far as he knew. His mother would take him to the dollar store when his father was at work, buy him a pack of cheap candy or chocolate chip cookies, and begrudgingly allow him to choose whatever toy he wanted.
On his seventh birthday, Adam bought himself a Transformer. It was originally meant to cost 15 dollars, but the paint on it was chipped, so it had been priced down. Adam didn’t care about the chipped paint. He’d never loved another toy more.
On his eighth birthday, Adam’s father hit him for the first time. Adam would spend years afterwards trying to remember what he’d done to incite it, and the answer was: nothing. He’d just come in from playing outside with a neighbor’s kid, and had poured himself a glass of water. He still vividly remembered the feeling of the chunky plastic tumbler in his hands when his father’s fist hit. Adam had only been drinking; his father had been drinking.
On either his ninth or his tenth birthday, Adam bought himself a Pontiac model car. He’d been playing with it when he heard his parents talking in the other room. I regret the minute I squirted him into you.
That was the last year Adam remembered buying a birthday present. Any extra money he found himself in possession of, after that, he used to buy candy bars, which he’d then store under his bed, for evenings when the kitchen turned into a war zone.
Sometimes the kids at school told him happy birthday. Sometimes they didn’t. Adam stopped minding, and – as he did with many other things – learned to make do.
On his eighteenth birthday, Adam was sleeping on the couch of three psychics, after unlocking a power inside him he’d never even dreamed he could have. It would take him a little longer to truly believe that he did.
On his nineteenth birthday, Adam Parrish woke up in Ronan Lynch’s bed in his childhood bedroom at the Barns, to the smell of coffee coming from somewhere to his left.
“Happy birthday, nerd.” Ronan himself was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing black gym shorts and nothing else, except for a smudge of flour on his cheek.
Adam blinked once, twice, then mumbled something sleepy while making a grabbing motion at the mug Ronan was holding. When Ronan handed it over, he accepted it gratefully, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. It took the first sip of coffee for the words to properly connect.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess it is. I wasn’t really thinkin’ about it. Thanks,” he smiled.
“You are so welcome,” Ronan said, with teasing affectation. “I’ve got eggs and bacon waiting downstairs, so come on. Look alive, put some clothes on.” He grinned savagely. “Or don’t.”
Adam rolled his eyes, then leaned forward to thumb at the flour smudge on Ronan’s cheekbone, which made his expression shift from wolfish to slightly flustered. “Ah. Yeah. I, uh. I was making pancakes.”
Adam raised his eyebrows.
“They didn’t come out great, so I threw them away. Chainsaw was thrilled.”
Adam opened his mouth to start to protest, but Ronan shushed him with a quick kiss. “Yes, I know, we live in a consumerist nightmare of a society. You and Sargent can lecture me later. Now come downstairs before everything gets cold and gross.” And with that, he was out of the room.
Adam was left sitting in bed, cross-legged, steaming coffee in hand. “Later…?” was all he could mutter to himself, perplexed.
Breakfast didn’t feel much different from usual, which meant Adam felt at peace and profoundly happy in a way he rarely did, quietly eating toast held in one hand while Ronan played with his other hand across the table. Ten minutes in or so, Opal galloped into the kitchen in a flurry of excitement – which was also not unusual – and threw her grubby little arms around his middle. “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!” she screeched excitedly. Adam reclaimed his hand from Ronan to ruffle her hair fondly. “Thank you. Do you even know what a birthday is?”
Opal nodded, her chest puffing out proudly. “Kerah said it’s a party to celebrate that someone exists, and I am very happy that you do!”
Adam’s chest clenched in a foreign and delightful way. “That is a lovely way to put it,” he said, voice a little rough, even as Ronan started very casually gathering plates to drop them in the sink with a clatter. She beamed up at him, and, after disentangling herself from him long enough to rummage in the pockets of her shirt (a long, ragged flannel thing that went down to her knees), proudly presented him with a small pile of rocks. There was nothing special about them, except – as Adam discovered after examining them carefully – that all of them had nooks and crannies that seemed to tuck into each other as if by design.
“Thank you, Opal. They’re beautiful,” he smiled, turning one over in his hand. Opal smiled back, and then – as uncomfortable with open emotion as her creator – skittered off to chase Chainsaw out of the kitchen. While Adam was halfway through buttering his second slice of toast, the unmistakable honk of a 1973 Camaro sounded from the driveway, and Ronan went to get the door. Adam frowned, trying to remember whether he or Ronan had made plans to hang out with the gang, and coming up blank. Curiosity propelled him out of his chair, buttered toast still in hand, to join Ronan and Opal on the porch.
Outside, Blue was in the driver’s seat of her brand new clean-energy Camaro – it was impressive how everything about it, from the horn to the (lack of) engine, sounded precisely like Gansey’s – and somehow already bickering with Ronan about how “if you really thought I was too short to reach the pedals then you shouldn’t have dreamed it for me, Ronan”. Next to her, Gansey was watching the proceedings with an expression between amused and exhausted; and in the backseat, spiky hair undefeated by the sweltering heat, Henry Cheng greeted him with a jovial “Birthday boy! Whoop whoop!”.
Adam turned to face Ronan, one eyebrow raised in question. “Do we have plans?”
Ronan, leaning against one of the posts and casually giving blue the middle finger, looked at him with a smirk playing on his lips. “We do. A full day, actually, so you’d better finish that piece of toast pretty damn fast.”
“There’s an area near where Cabeswater used to be that I’d like to explore,” Gansey said, helpfully. “The corn is growing in an extremely odd formation, and I think there’s something to it. Figured it can’t hurt to get our resident magician to check it out,” he smiled. “Also, happy birthday, Adam.”
“Yes,” Henry added, “and after that, we’re gonna do something that is actually fun, like go to the swimming pool or get ice cream or something.”
“And then Nino’s, because I have officially quit for the summer. No more Raven dicks to tell me what drinks to bring them!” Blue added gleefully.
Adam looked at all of them in turn, then to Ronan. Ronan shrugged. “I told them we weren’t doing anything uncool for your birthday, but unfortunately we don’t have a single cool friend.”
This was followed by a general squawk of protest from the car’s occupants. Adam was still reeling. “I thought you guys would be busy. Aren’t you leaving for your trip in like two days?”
Blue gave him a pitying look. “Like we were going to miss this?” Gansey leaned forward in his seat, somehow managing to look solemn even in his lime green polo. “Not a chance,” he said, steady and true.
Adam swallowed. “Oh. Alright. I’ll… go finish my toast?” Chainsaw landed on his shoulder and affectionately rubbed her head against his cheek. Then she stole the toast.
“Well, I suppose that takes care of that,” Adam said. He wasn’t sure how to feel – his stomach and heart were flipping through a lot at once, numb and giddy and helpless and exhilarated and surprised and grateful. His chest was aching a little, and he felt, for some reason, the urge to laugh. Instead, he smiled at his friends – at his boyfriend – his family. “I’ll grab the cards. Keep ‘er running, Blue.”
On Adam’s nineteenth birthday, there was friendship and magic and Ronan’s obnoxiously loud music played from the speakers of Blue’s dreamt Camaro. There was the sweat of summer clinging to their pores as they explored Gansey’s corn maze – there was Gansey, alive and vibrant and young and old all at the same time, because they’d saved him, they’d saved him – and there was the cool shade of the trees when they finally sat down for a rest (these were not magical trees, not strictly speaking, but although Adam missed Cabeswater sorely, the air seemed to be thrumming with a more powerful magic today).
There was ice cream, that Adam insisted he pay for, and there was birthday cake, that he didn’t. Actually, there were birthday cakes. A lavish red velvet affair bought by Gansey and Henry, and a yogurt-and-chocolate-chips cake baked by Blue. ("You didn’t have to do this,” Adam said, his throat tight. Blue patted his shoulder gently. “Of course we did. It’s your birthday, and I didn’t get you one last year, because someone didn’t tell me.” She glared daggers at all of them, Adam included, ignoring Henry’s protest that he didn’t even know her at the time).
There was the public swimming pool that neither Ronan nor Henry nor Gansey had ever been to, but that Adam and Blue knew well, and there was Blue cannon-balling herself into the water with a joyful shout, and then there was all of them splashing and yelling and throwing around a ball, and Ronan dunking Henry underwater until his perfect hair was ruined (“Lynch, you criminal”), and climbing on each other’s shoulders in turns to play chicken fight until the lifeguard threatened to kick them out.
There was Nino’s, with its familiar pizza and iced tea that was just the right amount of sweet; and by this point, Adam was so overfull on the day’s feasting – so overflowing with happiness and gratitude and love – that it didn’t even occur to him to protest when Ronan declared he was ordering two pizzas, and Adam could order one too, if he wanted to, but wouldn’t it be a shame for all that pizza to go to waste. You can have this, he reminded himself. You can let him do this for you and one day you’ll do the same for him. And for once, in the sticky booth that had been witness to their planning of adventures, comparing of school notes, and divining of magical forces, he knew with clarity that all of this wasn’t charity; it was friendship.
There were jokes and memes and group selfies (mostly taken by Henry) and off-key renditions of “Happy Birthday To You” (mostly started by Blue) and “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” (mostly initiated by Gansey) and by the time Adam’s ears were burning pink and his face was buried in his hands, there was Ronan’s comforting hand on his leg, a grounding touch even as Ronan himself joined in the chorus.
Eventually, after night had fallen, they parted – with a fistbump from Gansey, a warm handshake from Henry, and a hug from Blue, lingering and fierce.
And after that, there was this:
The clean, crisp night breeze as he and Ronan drove back to Singer’s Falls, windows down, speed limit in the rearview mirror. The bass pounding softly from the speakers of the BMW, thumping in Adam’s chest and temples even as it echoed in his right ear. The absolute quiet of the fields at the Barns, except for the crickets’ song filling the air. The lights on the porch glowing softly to welcome them home, casting Opal in a golden shimmer where she slept on the recliner with Chainsaw perched next to her.
And inside, this:
Ronan’s hands in his hair, Ronan’s mouth on his mouth, Ronan’s hips against his hips as they stumbled through the hallway, past the living room, into the kitchen.
On the kitchen table, striking and flawless except for a handprint that matched Opal’s perfectly, was a third cake, with candles on them that must have been magical because they’d clearly been burning for a while without melting. Adam’s eyes felt damp.
“You baked a cake?” he asked, voice small, very aware that he was asking for confirmation of something that was extremely clear and obvious, but struggling to hold all his blessings together in this one single day.
“Did you really think I had failed at making pancakes? I’m the fucking pancake master, Parrish.”
Perhaps it was the fact that Ronan sounded so genuinely offended – which meant he wasn’t at all – that made Adam burst out laughing. He blew on the candles, one by one. He ran a finger through the icing, and smeared it on Ronan’s lips. Then he kissed Ronan until they were light-headed, breathless and staggering and clinging to each other with hands fisted in shirts.
Upstairs, he knew, the night was theirs: a night made for dreaming and not-sleeping, for kissing and laughing, for Ronan’s skin under Adam’s fingers and Ronan’s eyelashes against Adam’s cheeks, for learning each other’s bodies over and over and for talking until daybreak.
Adam hadn’t always disliked his birthday, but for the first time in his life, he thought he could learn to love it.