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Adam stood in the threshold of the playroom, arms crossed and surveying the damage.
“Why on earth is there glitter everywhere?” he asked the two little girls in the room.
The two in question--coated in shimmery silver among the mess--looked wide-eyed at one another.
“She did it,” they said in unison, pointing to Chainsaw perched on the windowsill. Her feathers were streaked with sparkles.
Adam quirked a brow. Chainsaw screeched in her own defense.
“Compelling argument,” Adam acknowledged, and the bird puffed her chest. “We ready to tell the truth?”
The smaller of the two looked at her messily painted toenails as she shuffled her feet through the carpet. Glitter puffed up like dust clouds. “Glitter fight,” she admitted quietly.
“Glitter fight,” Adam said.
They both nodded.
“Noah said she wanted glitter in her hair,” the taller explained, pushing her thick brown hair out of her eyes. “And so I put just a little bit in her hair, and then I said I wanted some too, but she dumped too much, and–”
“It all fell out like ‘woosh’ and Maeve, and Maeve said that–”
“–I wanted to get her back, and. Yeah.”
Chainsaw provided a witness testimony; she croaked in affirmation.
“Thanks for telling me the truth,” Adam said with a soft smile. “Anyone get hurt?”
They shook their heads.
“Anyone get upset?”
“No,” they said.
“Did you have fun?”
The smaller girl looked up, smile wide and pale green eyes alight with the thrill of chaos. She held up her arms and Adam picked her up. Glitter sprinkled from her pink tutu to the floor. “I’m all shiny,” she announced, shoving her arms in his face.
“Oh no, too bright! Too much sparkle power!” Adam cried, and the little girl cackled. He combed his fingers through her platinum curls, raining more glitter onto his flannel, jeans, and the carpet. “Hey, you know who would love some sparkle in his life?”
The sisters shared sharp, gap-toothed smiles, looking for all the world like their other father when he was a kid. Adam and Ronan joked about letting Gansey use them as a case study proving nurture over nature. They’d get free babysitting, he’d get tenure: not a bad deal for either of them.
Noah squirmed to get back down, and Adam obliged. “I think he’s in the kitchen,” he stage-whispered.
The girls took off, pitter-pattering down the bare wood floors of the hallway. Chainsaw flew to Adam’s shoulder. “Thank you for your jury service,” he said, stroking the feathers on her neck.
Adam followed their giggles and a trail of glitter to the kitchen, where they hid (quite conspicuously, if Adam was honest) behind the kitchen chairs and whispered conspiratorial to one another. Bluegrass music thrummed from the portable speaker sitting on the wood grain countertop.
Ronan stood at the stove, spatula in hand, minding the sizzling grilled cheese in the cast iron and a stockpot of soup he’d made from the tomatoes and basil in the garden. Incriminating marks peeked beneath the collar of his t-shirt.
Before being interrupted by the glitter explosion, Adam had been tracing the top lines of Ronan’s tattoo with his lips and teeth as a well-deserved thank you for the the previous night. “I’m going to burn the fuck out of our lunch if you don’t cut it out, Parrish,” Ronan had muttered. Although with the way his breath hitched, Adam guessed he didn’t mind it much.
“Can’t help that you’re hot when you’re lookin all domestic.”
“Fucking hell, Adam,” he moaned.
Then the shrieking started.
“Fucking hell, girls,” Ronan grumbled.
“I’ll go,” Adam said, and left a kiss behind his ear before investigating the suspicious noise.
Ronan appeared to have cooled off, now tapping his foot and humming along to the music, seemingly unaware of the sparkle monsters approaching. Although, Adam could never be certain that he wasn’t just pretending for their sake. For someone who never lied, he proved to be a very good actor.
The girls looked back to Adam. He nodded vigorously, leaning against the door jamb and gesturing them onward. They tip-toed across the tile, snickering all the way. Ronan flipped the sandwiches with a satisfying hiss.
With a war cry, the girls grabbed Ronan’s legs.
“Jesus holy motherffffffff-orker!” Ronan cried, startling and scrambling to catch the spatula before it could land on either of their heads.
Ronan tried very, very, very hard not to curse around the kids, at least not seriously (although once they were alone, Adam could get Ronan to weave poetry in curse words if he provided the right… inspiration, shall we say.) It had been 6 years since they welcomed Maeve home, and Adam was certain hearing Ronan fake-curse would never stop being hilarious.
The girls had done their job, his black jeans contaminated with glitter. They shrieked in victory. Ronan roared, which only made them laugh louder.
“Glitter ? Are you kidding me? You monsters!”
Maeve grabbed Noah’s hand and led the hasty retreat to Adam. Always their designated protector.
“You little ghouls better be careful,” Ronan said, approaching slowly and pointing threateningly with the greasy spatula. “We kept the receipts. We can return you at any time.”
“Nu-uh! Dad told me he shredded those ages ago. You’re stuck with us,” Maeve countered, hands on her hips and stance firm, face scrunched in a way that was a bit too similar to Aunt Blue’s (at Thanksgiving, Ronan would harass the “favorite aunt” about this, to which Blue would reply, “if they’re going to make it in this patriarchal nightmare world, they’ve got to have a strong, authoritative stance.”)
“Yeah,” squeaked little Noah, mirroring her sister’s stance in the usual uncoordinated, 4-year-old way. “No take-backsies.”
“Betrayal,” Ronan gasped. “I thought we were a team, Parrish.”
Adam shrugged. “They made a persuasive argument.”
“Well, if I can’t return you, guess I’ll just have to eat you.”
Ronan charged. The girls screamed and ran back down the hallway, peals of laughter echoing behind them.
But Ronan didn’t follow. He stopped in front of his husband.
“So,” he said, brushing sparkles from Adam’s perpetual 5 o’clock shadow with his thumb. “It was a craftplosion?”
“Glitter fight,” Adam explained.
“I knew we named that kid after Czerny for a reason,” Ronan grumbled. He shooed Chainsaw off Adam’s shoulder, who cawed sulkily and flapped her wings in Ronan’s face.
Adam laughed. Standing in the glow of autumnal sunlight, in their home full of laughter and sparkles and smelling of spices and seasoned cast iron, Adam looked so...happy. Content. Maybe a little tired, in that parents always are, but he was vibrant and present and so very alive.
“Have I ever told you how much I love you?” Ronan asked softly.
Adam rested his head against the door frame and chewed his bottom lip. “I think there was one time in college when we were drunk when you said ‘if love was trees I’d love you as much as that forest.’”
“The hell? That didn’t make any sense.”
“It was the sentiment that mattered.”
“Of fucking course it was. Shit. ‘Forking.’”
“Nice save.”
“Shut it, Parrish.”
“Make me, Lynch.”
He accepted that challenge with soft lips and a hand cupped gently around Adam’s chin, until a tiny voice called out, “Daddy, is something burning?”
“Oh fork me,” Ronan hissed.
“I’ll go lead the clean-up crew,” Adam said. “You don’t burn the house down, please.”
“Just for that snark, you’re getting the extra-crispy sandwich.”
Adam looked around the corner, saw the hall was empty, and then flipped Ronan off. Ronan laughed, and pressed a kiss into his lips, his cheek, his jaw, the hollow of his throat. “I love you a lot. A lot a lot,” he said into his collar bone, smiling as Adam shivered.
“Mmmm, so good with words,” Adam muttered, breath catching in his throat. “Go watch the food before it turns to charcoal.”
Ronan licked a stripe up Adam’s neck.
“Gross,” Adam said.
“That’s for insulting my cooking.”
Ronan intended to only kiss him once more. Adam demanded 3 extras.
It would be another year before they stopped finding glitter around the house.