Work Text:
It was nearly midnight by the time Adam made his way out to the shitbox after a late shift at the factory, and frost had started to creep across the cracked windshield. He did his best to scrape it away with the edge of his ID card, breath fogging thick and white in front of his face, before he patiently coaxed the engine to start.
His eyes were tired, but that was normal, expected. As he drove, Adam reminded himself about the impending physics test that he still needed to study for, and the unfinished English Lit report waiting for him on his desk.
He parked on the edge of the lot outside St. Agnes church and shut off the radio, which had been a muddle of static and commercials most of the way back anyway. The church office was dark, of course, but Adam noticed that someone had left the door to the chapel open a crack, and his feet carried him closer automatically, gravel crunching underneath his sneakers.
He took a few steps inside the church, his nose itching with the faint prickle of incense and dusty pews. It was almost completely dark. The stained-glass window behind the alter that depicted Christ descending from the cross with his arms spread was illuminated by the soft and distant glow of the street lamps.
Adam hesitated, breath catching in his chest.
Maybe he was wrong. He could be wrong.
Someone from the church office had maybe forgotten to lock the door as they left.
He was about to slip away when his eyes landed on a dark shape in the last pew, only a little way ahead of where he was standing, the figure so still and quiet that he was rendered nearly invisible. Black on black, shadow on shadow.
Ronan Lynch sat with his head tipped down, like he was praying, his hands braced on the back of the next pew. Adam could see the tension in his body if he squinted, because Ronan was dressed absurdly for a cold December night, in ripped black jeans and a black shirt, no jacket. His tattoo poked out, clutching at his shoulders, coiling over the last few knobs in his spine, just below his pale neck.
He did not look around as Adam silently joined him, leaving a few inches between them on the bench, but he could tell that Ronan knew he was there. His knuckles shone white where he was gripping the smooth wood of the pew in front, breath hissed out between his clenched teeth, his long eyelashes dark and perfect.
Ronan Lynch was a god carved from metal and menace.
He was impossible.
Adam took a moment to admire his left bicep through the thin cotton shirt.
The church creaked around them, and the door rasped in a cold breeze that stole inside.
“You smell like The Pig.”
Adam snapped his head up to find Ronan already looking at him, eyes sharp.
“I was working,” he explained. “At the factory.” The darkness threatened to steal his words right out of him, and left his tongue sticking to his teeth. It felt strange to be talking so casually in a place like this. Adam did not consider himself to be a religious person, the existence of any god seemed irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. But sitting there in the church pew with Ronan, breath misting in the cold, their knees almost touching, something about the space felt holy.
Ronan reached back to scrape one hand over his brutally short hair.
His eyes were blue chips of ice, but Adam knew the other boy well enough by now to be certain they would never cut him.
Not intentionally.
Not deep enough to damage him completely.
He waited until Ronan stood up before doing the same.
“Opal?” he said, as they shuffled out of the pew one at a time.
“Left her with Gansey.”
“You want to come up for a bit?”
It was not really a question.
Adam knew that Ronan would always come up.
The old stairs creaked under their feet as he led the way, searching first in his thin jacket, and then in the pockets of his jeans for the key to his tiny apartment. They both ducked their heads when they stepped inside to avoid the low sloped ceiling, muscle memory.
Ronan shoved his hands in his pockets, thumbs poking out, his bony wrists pink from the cold where his sleeves were shoved up.
Adam switched on the light. “How are you not freezing right now?”
He was dreading the moment when he would have to take off his jacket, and knew from experience that the rough wood floor would be as cold as ice even through his socks, but Ronan just shrugged in a way that indicated he was too perfect or godly to notice the chill. He watched Adam sit down at his desk, one wheel on the rolling chair squeaking in protest across the floor as he pulled his English Lit assignment closer.
It was terrible that he had invited Ronan up just for this.
It was terrible that he did not have more time to do all the things he really liked.
Adam pretended he could not see his breath in the yellow light that filtered down from the single bare bulb in the room. It reached for the corners of his tiny apartment, exposing the way the ugly wallpaper peeled up at the edges, stained with water, the clumps of dust Adam no longer bothered attempting to sweep away, the once white baseboards that had swollen and cracked with time.
Ronan leaned over him quite suddenly, one hand braced on the desk.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
Adam twitched the assignment away from him. “Like you even care.”
He could feel Ronan breathing steadily next to his cheek, close and warm enough to be distracting. He wanted to touch those elegant fingers. He wanted to kiss that knowing smirk right off his face.
“Parrish,” Ronan said, slowly.
“Shut up,” Adam muttered. But he stretched up, and their lips brushed, chapped and dry, barely teasing at something more fervent before Ronan pulled away again and tucked his hands behind his back like a fucking gentleman.
“Read it out loud to me,” he prompted.
Adam frowned. “You hate that.”
The words earned him a shrug, superficially casual, a carefully disguised challenge.
Ronan pretending.
Ronan lying to him.
“I can wake you up,” Adam offered softly. “If you start dreaming.”
“Just do your fucking homework,” Ronan muttered.
The anger arrived so quickly that Adam knew he had guessed right. Ronan did not want to sleep. He did not want to dream. Adam had tried to be kind about it, but sometimes this Ronan was still so much like the old Ronan, the one that Adam first met, who was just doing his best not to bleed out all over the place.
Impatience and guilt surged up at once inside Adam.
He turned back to the desk.
Ronan flopped down on his bed a moment later, the mattress springs groaning beneath his indolent weight. Boots thudded on the floor, one at a time, kicked grumpily aside as Ronan removed them. But he let Adam concentrate on his assignment, keeping quiet while Adam willed himself to stay focused on the untidy notes in front of him, the blunt pencil stub clutched in his fingers, the steady scratch of lead on the page as he scrawled out a new sentence.
Ronan Lynch understood that Adam Parrish would always do what he needed to in order to survive, even if surviving meant sitting down to work on an English Lit assignment at one in the morning on a cold Sunday in December.
By the time Adam allowed himself to look around again, Ronan had produced a pair of silkily expensive headphones from somewhere. He was propped against the wall, head ducked slightly to avoid the edge of the sloped ceiling, his eyes on the window across the room. Adam glanced over at the cracked pane too, and saw that it was snowing outside, fat white flakes drifting down to land on the narrow sill. They were melting almost as fast as they appeared, but the moment still called up a memory from last Christmas: Adam sitting on his bed in his tiny room in the trailer, the blankets pulled across his knees, head turned away from the door as his father raged on the other side.
It had been nine, or maybe ten in the morning, still early.
Adam remembered leaning close to the window, the way his warm breath fogged over the glass as flecks of white dotted the narrow strip of wood. He had wished, shamefully, that he could have allowed himself to stay over at Monmouth Manufacturing the night before, just as Gansey suggested before he dropped Adam off.
He had wished that he was not so goddamn stubborn all the time.
“Adam?”
Ronan was still looking out the window, but he must have realized that something in Adam had shifted. The mattress creaked again when he stood up, socked feet scuffing on the floor as he walked back over to the desk. Adam got to his feet before Ronan could quite reach him there, hands coming up to slide the headphones off to hang around his neck, meeting him halfway.
Their lips collided, awkward and clumsy and perfect. Adam could hear the music pulsing faintly between them, the electronic beat matching his heart as Ronan gently touched the small of his back, fingers pressing into each knob of his spine, one at a time, through his thin jacket. The action was cautious, and curious.
Adam let out a shaky breath.
He felt drunk.
What do you want, Adam?
He kept his eyes tightly shut as Ronan kissed the sensitive skin behind his ear.
I want this. Just this.
Ronan.
Was this what it was to be content?
“Adam,” Ronan muttered again, one hand slipping up underneath his shirt. His fingers were ice on the bare skin, but the rest of him, pressed close as Adam grabbed the edge of the desk to keep himself from stumbling, burned like fire.
“Here,” Adam said, not sure what he meant, not sure that it even mattered.
The desk rocked back against the wall, taking him with it.
Something clattered to the floor.
Ronan hesitated, pulling back just enough that Adam could see his flushed cheeks, the way his hands were shaking slightly at his waist. They had done more than this, even on that first magical night at the Barns, but every moment that they were allowed to indulged in each other still felt tentative and fragile, each kiss exposing more cracks.
Adam was not sure which one of them was closer to breaking.
He watched as Ronan ducked his head, embarrassed, or pleased. His ears were pink too. “What about your English thing?”
“Nearly done. I can finish it tomorrow,” Adam admitted.
Ronan raised one eyebrow at that, some of his composure returning, mouth quirking up in what was clearly amusement. Music still thudded from the headphones dangling around his neck, and Adam felt the way his own heart whispered between his ribs, betraying his boundless want.
He gently kicked Ronan in the shin. “Shut up, Lynch.”
“I didn’t say anything, Parrish.”
Adam kissed him again.
And again.
And again.
He tried to steer Ronan backwards in the direction the bed while continuing to kiss him, which only resulted in him stumbling over the discarded combat boots, and then smacking his head on the low ceiling.
“Shit! Ow,” Adam hissed, his eyes watering slightly.
Ronan steadied him again by taking both his hands. Then he unsteadied Adam by kissing the new bruise on his head better, nosing affectionately at the dusty hair, teeth finally scraping over the very sensitive shell of his ear in a way that was decidedly less soothing.
“Asshole,” Adam muttered, out of breath.
“You like it,” Ronan teased.
But the truth was that he did. He really did.
They tangled together on the mattress, and Adam finally discarded his jacket. Ronan set about warming him up again immediately, his mouth hungry and worshipful, hands wandering treacherously low. Adam paused to pull his soft shirt over his head, and then traced the familiar lines of his tattoo with his fingers, and finally his tongue.
“Adam,” Ronan murmured, and then again, “Adam.”
Like he was praying.
Adam gasped, and it was a ragged noise in his throat. “Stop,” he said, carefully pushing Ronan away. He had no idea what time it was, but it had to be very late, and he was trembling so badly that he felt he would shatter apart at the slightest provocation.
Ronan rolled over lazily to lie on his back, but his eyes remained bright and awake.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Adam swallowed. “Yeah. I just… I need to sleep. School tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Ronan echoed. He was flushed all the way down his chest, his mouth pink and swollen from kissing. Adam felt a jolt of heat go through him when his eyes caught on the new, purpled bruise that Ronan sported on his collarbone.
He reached out to touch it, dazed.
Ronan covered the hand with his own warm fingers, and Adam realized that they were both shaking a little.
“Are you staying?” he said.
“Gansey,” Ronan mumbled, but the rest of the protest died there on his lips.
He turned away while Adam stripped down to his boxers and dug a faded sleep shirt out of his pillow case. The modesty seemed a little ridiculous, but was also somehow endearing. It was only when Adam had retreated to the bathroom with his toothbrush that Ronan flopped over to lie on his back again, peering through the open doorway as Adam rinsed and spit.
That somehow felt more intimate anyway.
They crawled under the blanket in silence, trying to share it in a way that was fair despite the fact that Ronan was always burning up and Adam could never seem to get warm enough. The mattress was a single, and it made sense to curl up close together, an excuse that Adam doubted he would ever become weary of.
After a moment he felt brave enough to stretch up and kiss Ronan once more, before he tucked his face in the curve of his neck.
The headphones had been removed at some point, but now Ronan slid them back on.
Adam listened to the low and comforting thud of the electronica as he was drawn closer to sleep. He would probably not find out until the morning if Ronan eventually drifted off along with him, but he tried to press his body as close to the other boy as possible without crushing him against the mattress, tried to convey a silent promise that everything would be fine, it would be okay even if Ronan dreamed.
They were cracked, yes, but not entirely broken.
Adam was very nearly asleep when Ronan shifted again, tracing one hand up his spine at an achingly slow pace, knob by knob, through his shirt. His fingertips were a barely there touch, like the long absent leaves of Cabeswater.
Adam felt him breathing, warm and steady, next to his good ear.
When he opened his eyes again the next morning, there was a very fine layer of snow on the blanket that did not melt when Adam reached his hand out to touch it. Ronan yawned sleepily next to him, and smiled.