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For most normal college students, winter break is about relaxing. But Adam Parrish isn’t exactly normal.
Adam spent all semester precariously balancing coursework, two jobs, a long-distance relationship, and pretending he isn’t an emotionless lizard dressed up in an 18-year-old meat suit so he could make friends and stop feeling so damn lonely all the time. And because Adam survives by compartmentalizing, scheduling, and just getting shit done no matter the cost, he did fine at all those things but definitely fails in the healthy sleep schedule department.
And then finals come, and while most normal college students use finals as an excuse to stop working two jobs in order to burn through coffee and snacks and their sanity all for the sake of rescuing a probably-not-resuscitative grade, Adam Parrish is...not that. His grades are great, because he’s spent all semester slowly destroying his “sleep schedule” until it was not longer a “schedule” and just a “steal hours here and there” type situation, so since you can’t lose what you never had, he continues to work two jobs, study at all hours for finals, and pretend to be a Real Boy with his new friends during 2am Sheetz Runs and sleep-deprived study delirium.
And then finals are done, which is when most people go home and sleep for 13 hours straight to make up all the hours lost the week prior. But Adam isn’t most people. Adam decides to cram as many hours as possible at the garage and the library before returning to The Barns so he wouldn’t need to stress about money over break, which means late nights and early morning and continuing to never sleep properly.
And then it’s winter break, and Adam is back at The Barns, and he and Ronan talk and laugh and reacquaint themselves with each other until there’s only an hour or two until sunrise Then it’s non-stop decorating and cooking for the days before Christmas, since apparently Niall Lynch did Christmas some kind of way and Ronan refuses to hear even the suggestion of them deviating from Lynch Traditions. Then it’s late nights with Matthew playing video games, early mornings with Ronan doing farm shit, and exhausting civil engagement with Declan. Then it’s Midnight Mass, followed by an early Christmas morning for presents and breakfast and preparing for a feast. It’s sitting by the fire with mulled wine and full stomachs until the early hours of the morning.
And then it’s the dead time between holidays. Gansey, Blue, and Henry are back in town after their year of global exploration and their first semesters in college. It had been decided--more like, declared --that they would ring in the New Year together at a cabin in the woods, one of the Gansey family properties down in Asheville. The plan is to gather at the Barns and make the 5 ½ hour trek down south together on the 28th, where they will spend days reminiscing and sharing stories about college and talking about dumb shit, eating comfort food and sitting in front of the fire, staying up too late and getting up too early.
Adam is already very, very tired.
He wakes on the 28th and immediately wants to go back to bed. His energy reserves have been burnt down to embers, barely a spark left. But Gansey and Blue and Henry are coming, so he does as he has always done: takes a deep breath, sucks it up, and keeps moving.
Ronan, on the other hand, is full of frenetic energy. He’s been up since 5am, at least--which Adam knows because he remembers waking up when Ronan moved--drinking coffee and doing chores and making sure the farm hands and Matthew know what to do while he’s away. When Adam gets out of the shower--which only made him want to crawl back into bed instead of waking him up like he’d hoped--he’s throwing clothes into a duffle without consideration or regard for what he’s bringing.
“You need 5 tank tops for a winter retreat to a cabin in the mountains,” Adam says flatly.
“Yes. Maybe. Whatever, stop digging through my shit, Parrish. Where are my fucking sweatpants?”
“Well, I packed one pair.”
Ronan glares at him. “You stealin’ my clothes, now?”
“Yeah. Reckon you don’t mind it.”
The accent always gets him. He blushes and turns away, grumbling denial that only he finds convincing. He finds another pair and shoots them like a basketball into the bag.
Adam lays back on the bed, eyes closed. His throat feels kind of funny; he’s trying to swallow the subtle ache while also trying to not fall back asleep.
A phone buzzes. It lands, suddenly, with a thud against his chest. He doesn’t bother protesting, just unlocks the phone with Ronan’s passcode and squints against the light of the screen. “Gans says they’re on their way.”
Ronan grunts. “You eat yet?”
“Hm? No, not yet.”
“Go get something, then.” Ronan knocks Adam’s ankle with his foot. “There’s coffee downstairs, too.”
“In a minute.”
Ronan pauses. Adam cracks an eye open. “What?”
“Nothing. You just...you’re usually more fucking excited about coffee.”
“Maybe I’m getting calmer in my old age.”
Ronan snorts and throws at least 9 pairs of boxers at the bag. “We’re only going to be gone for 5 days,” Adam says as he sits up again.
“What’s that saying? From the Boy Scouts? ‘Always be prepared’ or some shit?”
“What are you preparing for with that many pairs of underwear?”
“You’re the psychic one, you tell me.”
Adam rolls his eyes.
The coffee just staves off the inevitable caffeine headache; it doesn’t make him any less tired. And food is sounding less and less appealing, so he forces himself to eat a slice of peanut butter toast and drink a glass of water (because dehydration causes tiredness, right?) and then goes back upstairs to watch Ronan wrestle his duffle closed.
####
To be clear, the Gansey Family “Cabin” is more like the Gansey Family “Rustic Mansion That is Forest-Adjacent.” And Blue says as much.
“We’re at least a quarter mile from another house, though,” Gansey protests.
“That is...not very far,” Henry says. “Look, I can see them, right there.”
“Only because the trees are bare! And this only has six bedrooms and two master baths, and no professional-grade kitchen.”
“You are really not helping your case, sweetheart,” Blue says, patting his arm.
Adam, shockingly, doesn’t say anything. He just gets his stuff out of the car and follows the group into the house, bracing himself against the icy winter winds and the chill that settled deep beneath his skin during the car ride.
The house is enormous, all high ceilings and exposed mahogany beams and luscious, lacquered wood floors The living room, dining room, and kitchen are stretched into one room, marble countertops and an enormous open stone fireplace separating them.
Ronan drops his bag and throws himself onto one of the leather couches as soon as they walk in the door. He catches Adam’s wrist and tugs, pulling Adam into the curve of his body. Adam smirks, but compiles, eyes closing the second he lays his head on Ronan’s chest.
Henry runs off to pick a room. Gansey and Blue take stock of the kitchen.
Adam shivers, and Ronan wraps his arms tight around him. “You okay?” he asks, because tired Adam is standard, but an Adam who doesn't have at least one snarky comment about opulence locked and loaded to shoot at Gansey at a moment’s notice is really fucking strange.
Adam hums. Ronan feels it vibrate through his chest, rippling all the way down to his toes.
“Not an answer,” he notes.
“Close enough,” Adam murmurs, and he sounds like he’s already three-quarters of the way asleep.
But then he coughs. And it’s not a “oh I got dust in my throat” cough, or a “I need water” cough. It’s a suspicious cough. Kinda raspy, kinda painful. Definitely worth the furrowed brow Ronan gives him.
“I’m fine. Just a long drive. And I need water.”
“Hey, Dick!” Ronan shouts. Adam groans. “Can you bring us water?”
“He’s not your maid, Lynch!” Blue shouts back.
“Oh shit, you’re right. That’s your role, isn’t it?”
“The hell did you just say?” she shouts, nearly jumping over the counter to give him her best attempt at a murder stare.
“No murder on this trip!” Henry calls from the depths of upstairs. “Ganseyman, Parrish: control your lovers.”
“Jane,” Gansey says.
“Don’t be a jackass, Lynch,” Adam grumbles.
Gansey brings them water anyways. A peace offering.
They spend the evening building a fire and sitting sprawled across one another on the leather couches, eating overwhelming amounts of spaghetti and christmas cookies. They drink mulled wine spiked with whiskey and hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps. They laugh about stupid stories from college and traveling and the farm until the earliest hours of the morning. And Adam feels drowsy, cloudy, weird, but it’s...that’s just what wine and liquor do to a person, he guesses. Wine and not sleeping and laughing too hard.
Laughing too hard can also make your throat hurt, right? Right. Definitely that.
Conversations stop making sense at some point. Adam tries to pay attention, but his brain is foggy and words are hard and he’s only had one glass of wine so he cannot possibly be drunk right now. He’s got his head in Ronan’s lap and Ronan has been playing absentmindedly with his hair for the past hour and he feels himself slipping into a weird half-sleep as they drone on around him. And it’s not until Ronan stops and flicks his forehead instead that he struggles back to reality.
“Earth to Adam,” Blue sings, shoving his legs and nearly knocking him off the couch. He startles, clears his throat, and tries to rub the exhaustion from his eyes. “What?” he murmurs.
“I asked when you and Ronan were gettin hitched.” And that sends Adam bolting upright.
Ronan scoffs. “She’s lying, Parrish, chill the fuck out.”
Blue laughs. “I was asking about your internship.”
“Oh. Yeah, it’s fine,” Adam mumbled, swallowing with a grimace as he settled back into Ronan’s lap.
“Got anything else you’d like to share?”
“No.” And he closes his eyes again.
“Alright, Parrish, up you go,” Ronan says, poking Adam’s ticklish side until he sits back up. Adam glares at him.
“I’m taking the zombie to bed,” Ronan announces. Gansey whines. Blue groans. Henry wags his eyebrows. “Taking him to bed, huh?” he says.
“Not like that,” Ronan snaps.
“Just keep it down; these walls seem pretty thin.”
Adam and Ronan flip him off.
Adam only strips off his jeans and flannel because Ronan won’t stop poking him until he does, and only brushes his teeth because Ronan complains about his “gross ass breath.”
“Hey,” Ronan says as Adam buries himself until the mounds of blankets. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Tired,” Adam mumbles.
“Well then get some fucking sleep.”
Ronan turns out the light, kisses his temple, and wraps an arm around his waist and chest.
####
Weak winter sunlight filters through the blinds. The house is quiet, and Ronan’s side of the bed is cold.
Adam is groggy, achy, and feels like he hasn’t slept in 56 years despite being out for at least 10 hours. He tries to go back to sleep, but the sun is right on his face and he feels too shitty to just...enjoy the comfort of this queen-sized memory-foam probably-costs-more-than-his-room-and-board-at-college mattress.
He trudges downstairs in his old Coca-Cola tee and Ronan’s sweatpants, trying to rub the ache and exhaustion from his eyes. There’s coffee waiting for him with a Post-It: waffles in the fridge, asshole with a poorly-drawn fist flipping him off and an aggressive frowny-face.
The coffee feels like acid burning his raw throat, so he throws ice cubes in it hoping that’ll help. It doesn’t. He drinks it anyways.
Gansey comes back first, blustering into the kitchen from the back door in a whirl of sharp winter winds.
“Parrish! Good to see you’re up,” he says with a smile, cheeks and nose bright red from the bitter cold.
“Mornin,” Adam mumbles. The word grate his throat. “Where were you?”
“Just went for a brisk morning hike. Sorry, we figured you needed the rest. You looked exhausted yesterday.” He casts a careful gaze over him, slumped at the kitchen bar with his cold coffee and a waffle with two bites taken from it. “Actually, you still look a bit peaked. Are you okay?”
“Who the hell says ‘peaked’?”
“The British.”
Adam rolls his eyes.
Blue throws the door open, black skull cap in hand, breathing heavily with wild mischief in her eyes. She turns to shut the door; Ronan shoves his foot in the way. Blue yells. He grabs her arm, maneuvers her into a headlock, and snatches the hat from her grip.
“Maggot,” he snarls.
“Snake,” Blue returns with a satisfied smirk.
“Nice pants, asshole,” Ronan snipes at Adam, rubbing his shoulder as he walks past.
“They look better on me,” Adam says. He clears his throat.
Ronan turns and hip-checks him. “You good?”
Adam nods, grimacing as he swallows.
Henry saunters in at last. “Oh, Adam! Glad to see you’re alive.”
“Didn’t realize there’d been a question,” Adam grumbled. Ronan slides a glass of water in front of him. He nods in thanks, and takes a sip. It scrapes the inside of his throat. He shivers.
“We’re going to set up the movie,” Gansey announces. “Adam, care to join?”
There’s a theater in the basement of the house (because of course there is), next to the wine cellar and the ski-snowboard gear storage (because of course it is) , with reclining seats and sofas. Henry makes popcorn. Adam curls up on the couch. Ronan and Blue bring armfuls of blankets.
They queue up an obnoxious, melodramatic action movie with seven unnecessary sequels that Blue, to everyone’s shock, adores shamelessly. Ronan also loves it, but that’s far more on-brand for him, so no one cares as much.
Gansey takes five times longer than the average 20-year-old to figure out how to work the damn projector. Meanwhile, Ronan and Henry shoot popcorn into each other’s mouths from across the room. Blue fiddles with her chair to find the optimum reclined angle, grumbling all the while about “excess” and “eat the rich”.
Adam coughs, a harsh and painful sound. Gansey, reading the back of the DVD case while the “don’t steal this movie” credits flash on screen, looks up. “You alright?” he asks, peering over his glasses.
“Yeah. Fine,” Adam says. He coughs again, and sinks deeper into the giant quilt Ronan draped over him.
Gansey doesn’t look convinced. “If you want to go rest--”
“Menu’s up,” Adam says quickly. Gansey allows himself to be distracted.
“Stop it. You guys suck,” Blue snaps at Henry and Ronan, both of whom have popcorn kernels ready to launch at the back of her head; Henry fakes, Ronan throws. The piece gets caught in her hair. “I hate both of you.”
Ronan offers the bowl to Adam. The fake butter smell makes him queasy. He burrows further into the blanket while Ronan shoves a handful into his mouth and licks the greasy from his fingers.
“Are we ready?” Gansey asks.
“Been ready, man,” Ronan hollers. “Press play already.”
It takes another five minutes for Gansey to figure out how to work the remote; well, five minutes of Blue growing progressively more impatient until she can’t stand his incompetency any more and gets up and does it for him because, “seriously, it’s a damn remote, and you go to an Ivy League school, I mean honestly. ”
The movie is loud, violet, explosive, car chase porn without plot. But it doesn’t matter, because now that he’s in the dark, warm theater, sleep creeps along Adam’s consciousness. It slowly pulls him under, and when he surfaces again the movie is ending and Blue and Ronan are calling for a double feature.
“Morning, sunshine,” Ronan says with a smirk, but there’s something in his gaze. Concern, maybe. Worry. “Have a nice nap?”
No, he didn't. His head is throbbing, his throat aches, and everything about his body feels itchy and uncomfortable.
He nods anyways.
“Well you still look like shit,” Ronan says, twisting his fingers with Adam’s to bring his knuckles to his lips.
“Hey, lovebirds, second one’s starting,” Henry sings.
“Yeah, stop being gross. No making out in this theater,” Blue says.
Ronan pulls Adam’s index finger into his mouth and sucks, holding eye contact with Blue all the while. Gansey mutters a “Jesus, Lynch,” and Henry fake-gags, but Blue, to her credit, doesn’t break. “Real cute, asshole,” she says.
“Cut it out,” Adam groans, pulling his fingers away from Ronan’s snaking tongue. He wipes the spit on Ronan’s sweater.
Ronan laughs, and Blue throws a fistful of unpopped kernels at him.
“Adam, control him, please,” Blue says.
“Too tired,” Adam says through a yawn. “Maybe later.”
“How are you still this tired? You just woke up.”
“Dunno. Don’t care,” Adam mutters.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Gansey asks.
“Yes, Gansey, I’m fine.”
“Chill with the attitude, Parrish,” Blue says.
“Chill with your attitude, Sargent.”
“Wow, such a good comeback. They teach you the art of insulting at Yale?”
“They teach you manners at Community College?”
“Yeah, they did, but the rules don’t apply to jerkwads.”
Henry cups his hand around his mouth and stretches out an “oh” for way longer than it ever needed to be. Blue smirks triumphantly.
“Whatever. Play the movie, already,” Adam grumbles.
Ronan rubs his hand through Adam’s hair. “That was weak,” he says as Gansey dims the lights again. “Gotta do better than that when up against a Maggot.”
Blue flips them off.
Adam rolls his eyes. “Shut up,” he snaps.
“What crawled up your ass and died?”
“Nothing. You’re annoying. Just stop talking.”
Ronan takes his hand away, and if Adam were less stubborn he’d admit that Ronan’s cool fingers rubbing his aching head felt damn good. But he feels like crap and everyone is annoying--except, oddly enough, Henry, which is a fucking first-- and that makes him less willing to concede anything at all.
Instead, he falls back asleep.
####
“Parrish? Hey, wake up, man.”
The theater is silent. The lights are on, the screen is black; it’s just him and Ronan.
Adam rubs his eyes. His head is throbbing, stuffed with 2500 cotton balls. He can’t breath through his nose anymore. And it feels like they turned the heat up to a billion degrees.
How long was he asleep?
“Where is everybody?”
“Food.”
Adam grunts, closing his eyes against the headache and building pressure in his sinuses. A cold hand is on his forehead, trailing down to his cheek. God, why the hell did they turn the heat up so high? He’s sweating, for Christ’s sake.
“Adam?” Ronan says softly. “I think you have a fever.”
Adam forces his eyes open. “Huh?”
“A fever.”
Huh. Well, that would explain it.
“Dude, you’re sick. Go upstairs and go to bed,” Ronan commands, already peeling the blankets off of him and grabbing his arm to help him to his wobbling feet. Adam doesn’t need help getting upstairs--really, he doesn’t; it’s not like his legs have ceased to function just because he’s running a fever--but Ronan follows close behind anyways. And while Adam burrows himself under fleece blankets, Ronan grabs tissue boxes and a glass of water from the bathroom.
“Drink,” he commands. Adam does. Ronan gets Adam’s phone and plugs it into the wall behind the nightstand. “Sleep, okay? Text me if you need anything.”
Adam nods, already almost asleep again in the soft cocoon of memory foam and sherpa wool. Ronan turns off the light and shuts the door, and just as Adam slips back into unconsciousness he hears Ronan say, “Hey, Gans, you still in town? Good. I got some shit you need to get.”
######
“I knew it,” Gansey says upon their return, nearly 90 minutes later, with pizza and wings (apparently, finding a place in Asheville that will put avocados on pizza isn’t hard; it just takes them fucking forever and a day to do it.) “I knew something was wrong. I could sense it.”
He says this as if he were a psychic. Blue snorts. “Yeah, it was definitely your sixth sense and not him being pale and weird and sleepy all the damn time.” Blue hands Ronan a canvas bag of cold medicines, tissue boxes, and cough drops. “My mom, on the other hand, is actually psychic. She made me bring a bunch of teas with me, which now makes a lot of sense.”
“Witches,” Ronan says, almost fondly.
“Is he asleep?” Henry asks.
“Think so."
“Good. Let’s Clorox the hell out of everything he’s touched.”
“No.”
“He’s patient zero, Lynch! Haven’t you seen those movies? Friends in a remote cabin in the woods, one gets struck down by a mysterious illness, and then BAM! An epidemic of flesh-eating disease. Tell me, have you seen him shave recently?”
“Shut the fuck up, Cheng.”
“We know you’re worried,” Gansey says, laying a hand on his shoulder like he’s a congressman at a political fundraiser trying to be chummy with a potential donor. Ronan shoves it off with a grunt. “But that’s no reason to be rude.”
Ronan sneers and takes a ferocious bite out of sauce-slathered wing. “I’m not worried, Dick. Dude’s probably just got a cold or some shit.”
“That’s how it always starts,” Henry notes. “A sneeze, a cough, and then they’re zombies. You locked his door, right?”
“I’m gonna shove my foot up your ass in a second. Don’t fucking try me.”
“Aw, you’re so worried,” Blue taunts. “It’s sweet.”
“Don’t you fucking start, Maggot.”
“Just so you know, saying ‘fuck’ more doesn’t make you sound less worried.”
“I don’t give a fucking fuck what you fucking think. I will fucking say ‘fuck’ however fucking much I fucking want to, and it doesn’t mean a fucking thing.”
His phone buzzes, and he immediately whips it out of his back pocket. Gansey, Blue, and Henry all stare, jaws agape.
It’s Adam. I can hear you upstairs. Shut up.
Ronan’s cheeks go red. Blue yanks the phone down to her level and cackles.
“What is it?” Gansey asks.
Blue takes the phone from Ronan’s hand and shows it to him. Gansey at least tries to smother his laugh. Henry doesn’t.
Ronan grabs the canvas bag and storms from the room, face a lovely shade of Mortified Magenta and grumbling curses all the while. He doesn’t even bother grabbing his phone.
He knocks on Adam’s door as he opens it, yellow lights of the hallway sconces flooding into the room. Adam is a shapeless form beneath the blankets, shifting with a cough and a moan when the light hits what Ronan assumes is his head.
“You awake?”
Adam groans. “You’re too loud.”
“They were giving me shit,” Ronan says, as if that’s an apology. He sits on the edge of the bed. “Got you some meds.”
Adam coughs into the crook of his arm, and then drags himself up into a seated position. He accepts the cup of Theraflu and a glass of water from Ronan without any debate. He downs both with a wince and a shiver and lays back down, face crumpled and miserable, curled into a tight ball beneath the covers as fever chills race up and down his spine.
Ronan’s heart aches. A lot.
Okay, maybe he’s a little worried.
“Go back to sleep,” he says gently, carding his fingers through Adam’s hair. Adam whimpers when Ronan takes his hand away, and the pathetic, hoarse sound is a night horror talon piercing his defenses and lodging itself in his soft little heart; so he kneels by the edge of the bed and massages Adam’s head until he falls back into his feverish dreams.
“He okay?” Blue asks when Ronan returns downstairs. They all have that look they get sometimes when they’re talking Adam: like they think worrying about him when he’s not around will summon him like Bloody Fucking Mary in a mirror, like he’s just gonna appear out of goddamn thin air yelling about how independent he is, how no one owns him, blah blah blah all the old shit he used to get off on, like he’s a fucking poltergeist with nothing better to do than be self-righteous and make people feel bad.
It’s fucking stupid-ass sentiment, if you ask Ronan. The dude has made some serious strides in recent years. But they haven’t exactly been around to see any of that. Traveling. School. Life. Shit happens.
Ronan sighs. “Yeah, he’s okay. Well, not okay okay; he’s sick as a dog, but I don’t think he’s dying.”
“Fever?”
“Definitely.”
“Think it’s the flu?”
“Hell if I know.” Ronan grabs a slice of lukewarm pizza, folds it over, and shoves half of it in his mouth. Henry and Gansey grimace.
“I’ll get the Clorox,” Henry says, and has started polishing door knobs before Ronan can shove the rest of the slice in his mouth.
“Teas are in here,” Blue says, shaking a battered & faded tin cylinder. “From the smell of it, some basic cold and flu remedies, and some immune boosters for the rest of us.”
“Blech,” Ronan says, grabbing another slice of pizza. Blue throws a balled-up napkin at his head.
Gansey pours two glasses of Cabernet and gives one to Henry when he finally sets the Clorox down. “Where do you think he picked it up?” he asks as he swirls the wine in the crystal glass.
Ronan really wants to rip the glass from Gansey’s hand and throw it: to hear the shatter, to see the expensive red wine splatter and stain the bearskin rug. “Dunno. He hasn’t really slept much, I guess,” he says.
“He’s been on break!” Blue exclaims. The others shush her, and she flips them off, but lowers her voice. “What’s he been doing?”
Ronan shrugs. “Working. Dealing with my family. Fucking me. I dunno. We’ve been busy.”
Gansey nearly spits his mouthful of wine. “Jesus Christ, Lynch."
“Nice,” Henry says, and fist-bumps Ronan.
“So he exhausted himself,” Blue decides.
Gansey sighs. “He knows we could have cancelled this if he had told us he wasn’t feeling well, right?”
“Parrish? Cancelling something for self care? Better chances of hell freezing over,” Blue says.
“I don’t think he knew he was sick,” Henry says, and maybe hell is freezing over, because for once in his life Ronan’s happy Henry opened his goddamn mouth. “It seems like it hit him hard just today. Which is how the plague viruses always start, by the way.”
Ronan stands corrected. Cheng should never open his mouth ever again.
He points at Blue. “He’s not like that anymore. He’s gotten his shit together, okay?”
“Well he’s not doing a great job of demonstrating right now,” Blue scoffs.
“You just haven’t been here to see it. That’s not his fault.”
“We went on a trip, dude,” Blue snaps. “You knew we were going. Chill out.”
“It’s not her fault either, Lynch,” Gansey says in his diplomat voice, which makes Ronan want to punch someone’s teeth down their throat.
“It doesn’t matter who’s fucking fault it is. You guys left for a year and you’re acting like we’re the same two fucking jack-offs you left behind. You don’t get to just leave and come back and act like you know shit all about anything--”
A cough.
They all turn to the doorway. Adam’s standing there, sweaty and flushed and squinting from the bright kitchen lights. “I can hear y’all upstairs,” he rasps. “Keep the fighting down, please?”
Blue, Gansey, and Ronan all blush shamefully.
“Yes, of course,” Gansey says. “Sorry, Adam.”
Ronan pushes himself off the counter. He brushes Adam’s hair from his forehead. “C’mon. Let’s go back upstairs?” he says softly.
Adam nods, and follows Ronan back upstairs to his bed.
Ronan can’t throw expensive crystal against a wall or chuck china plates into the forest like frisbees, so he settles for arson and lights a bigger-than-is-safe fire in the fire pit on the upper deck.
The sun sets. The mountain is quiet, only crackling embers and whispers of winter winds through the pines. Henry sings along to Madonna in the kitchen, but thankfully the breeze sends most of that noise in another direction.
Ronan’s got a foot on the edge of the pit, watching the flames burst and crackle against the night sky, sipping at some bougie craft beer that frankly doesn’t taste any different than Bud Light except for the pretentious aftertaste. Each adirondack chairs comes with a woven blanket that are itchy and made to look like an authentic Incan weaver hand-wove them on a loom; except the tags say “Made in China” and Ronan considers if anyone would notice if he used them all as fire fuel. Ronan throws his on the ground.
The sliding deck door opens and closes. Gansey sits in the chair beside Ronan. He pulls the discarded woven blanket over his legs and takes a sip of his wine. In his cowl-neck pullover and khakis he looks like a fucking 55-year-old father of three on a couple’s retreat with his fellow doctors and their wives. Ronan wants to slaps the underside of his glass and stain his stupid sweater with that stupid red wine, and then he wants to throw the glass in the fire.
Instead, he takes a long pull of beer.
“I’m sorry,” Gansey says. “We shouldn’t have talked about Adam like that.”
“Don’t think I’m the person you should be apologizing to.”
“Well, Adam’s asleep, and possibly has the plague. So you’ll have to do.”
They let silence fall between them. Blue joins Henry’s sing-a-long in the kitchen.
If Gansey is going to insist upon having this fucking conversation, then it’s gotta be about more than just today. Because it’s been two damn years . No matter how normal it all seems, no matter how easy it feels to just step back into his place at Gansey’s side like the loyal knight he was and is and will always be, there’s a giant fucking canyon between them, full of the minutes and hours and days and weeks and months Gansey missed. And that ravine started long before the Sarchengsey family left the country.
He lets the silence pass for one more inhale, and then he exhales noisily and says, “Adam told me, you know. Told me what you said to him the night we kissed. The night before…”
Gansey takes his glasses off and runs a hand down his face. “I figured he would, eventually.”
“It was a dick thing for you to say,” Ronan says, blunt and short, but not angry. Not anymore.
“Yeah, it probably was.”
“You just...you were so in your head, then, man. You didn’t know him anymore. Didn’t know him like I did. And then you just...say shit like that to him? Like he’s this fucking...disaster person? Yes, yeah, look, I know what he’s said to you. I know the whole fucking state dinner shit, the whole post-ear fiasco at the hospital, all the shit before that and after that and blah blah blah. But really, Gans? ‘Don’t break him’? And now you’re here acting like you know anything about him at all anymore--”
“I know, Ronan, I know. I…” Gansey sighs and slumps back in the chair. Firelight sparkles in his glasses. “I know things are different. But it’s hard to remember that. It’s hard to...realize that you two…”
“Grew without you?”
“Yeah. Without us. Even before we left.”
They watch the flames in silence. Henry tries to sing both parts of “4 Minutes” and fails spectacularly.
“I’m sorry,” Gansey says. “And I know it not you who needs to hear that, but I’m telling you regardless. I am-- we are--sorry.”
Ronan grunts.
“I think that’s the most you’ve ever talked about something, by the way,” Gansey says.
“Yeah well, Parrish ain’t the only one who changed,” Ronan replies, taking another swing of his beer.
“That wasn’t the only thing we talked about that night.”
Ronan pauses, bottle still at his lips.
“He also asked how I knew that I loved Blue.”
Bright red blush spreads up Ronan’s neck and cheeks as he sinks into the chair like it might consume him.
Gansey chuckles. “I am sorry. Truly. For being what you would call a ‘mother fucking dickface.’”
“Ha! Yeah, I would call you that.”
“Are we fine?”
“Yeah,” Ronan says, and holds out a fist. “We’re fine.”
When Blue comes upstairs with a tray full of s'mores supplies, she apologizes, too. “Sorry for being a jerkface,” she says.
“Don’t waste your breath apologizing for you face,” Ronan says. ““You can’t help your genetics.”
Blue punches his shoulder. Ronan ruffles her hair.
Everything is good again.
#####
Adam is still fast asleep when the rest of the house wakes up on the 30th. Blue, Gansey, and Henry decide to go skiing at a resort just north of Asheville. And while watching Blue wipe the fuck out every two seconds would be hilarious, Ronan says he’ll stay behind. “Don’t want to upstage you all with my mad skills,” he claims.
Really, it’s because Adam’s forehead was still uncomfortably warm when he checked this morning. But no one is going to call him on his bullshit.
Instead, Ronan wanders around the McMansion, moving trinkets here and there and turning generic mountain landscape paintings upside-down. When he hears lung-ripping coughs start to echo through the house, he grabs a mug of tea and heads upstairs.
Ronan knocks on the door as he opens it, and is greeted by a painful-sounding sneeze. Adam falls back into the pillows with a groan, holding a tissue to his nose and draping an arm across his forehead.
“Morning, shithead,” Ronan says.
“Hey,” Adam croaks. He’s still got that fever flush and looks at least 6 different kinds of miserable.
“Should I even bother asking how you’re feeling?”
“No.”
“Good. Brought you gross-ass psychic tea.”
Adam drags himself into a seated position and moves over to make room for Ronan to sit beside him. Ronan reaches to test for a fever; Adam swats his hand away, breath hitching, to sneeze once more, and then leans against the headboard with his eyes closed. Ronan rests the back of his hand against his forehead. He frowns. “Still warm,” he mutters.
Adam isn’t surprised; his body is too achy and itchy and prickly, still. He laughs, which is more a cough than anything else. He grabs more tissues. “Just my luck, huh. Don’t get sick for years and now I have the fucking plague.”
Ronan traces Adam’s fever-red cheekbones with his knuckle. “Shitty fucking luck,” he agrees. “Don’t let Cheng hear you say ‘plague’, though. He’s already got too many stupid ideas.”
“Are they mad?” Adam asks, voice soft and cracking, warped from congestion and fatigue. He stares at the mug of tea in his lap, hands shaking.
Fevers have a way of finding the deepest, darkest insecurities and fears and pulling them past weakened defenses so people feel even shitter than they already do. Ronan assumes that Parrish’s immune system declared that it fill Adam Parrish’s sinuses with snot to the point of bursting, rake a cheese grater down his throat, and set his skin on fire, and then, ah, yes, let’s also torment him with his deep-seated fears that he’s once again ruined a perfectly good friend get-together by being an absolute fun-sucking waste-of-space.
It’s a stupid fucking sentiment, and Adam, if he were lucid, would know it’s a stupid fucking sentiment. But his brain is being baked by his immune system, so he’s not exactly his best intellectual self this morning.
Ronan cards his fingers through Adam’s hair. “No, dipshit, of course not. No one is mad, okay?” he says, as gentle as he can possibly be.
“I heard the yellin last night,” Adam says.
“I know. They just.” Ronan takes a deep breath. “Blue said something. I got mad. And Dick was being a dick. Shit got heated.”
“About me,” Adam adds. “Blue said somethin bout me.”
Of course Adam Fucking Parrish could have a raging fever and still be fucking perceptive enough to know what the fuck was happening.
“Yeah. About you. But she was wrong. And she said sorry. So. It doesn’t matter.”
“You were defendin my honor, huh?”
Ronan laughs. “Can’t have people beating you when you're down.”
Adam hums, which is probably as close to a laugh as he can get without hacking up a lung.
“I’m tired,” he announces. “And I feel awful.”
“Okay. Drink half this mug of tea, take another dose of this orange shit, and then you can go back to sleep.”
He does.
#####
Adam spends most of the 30th sleeping, sneezing, and shivering. Blue brings him tea, Gansey brings him soup, and Henry brings him “the pleasure of being entertained by my sparkling personality.”
“Hard pass,” he and Ronan say.
Ronan doesn’t sit with him all the time, but if he check in on Adam and Adam’s awake, he comes and hangs around until Adam falls back asleep.
“You’re gonna get sick,” Adam notes during one of his more lucid moments.
“We made out, like, a minimum of 39 times last week. If I’m not already infected it’ll be a damn miracle.”
His fever breaks at some point in the late afternoon. When he wakes up again, long after the others have eaten dinner, he still feels gross, but at least he’s not fluctuating between freezing cold and boiling hot anymore.
He takes a shower, because he’s been marinating in fever sweat for over 24 hours and he thinks the steam will help his sinuses.
He’s hungry-ish, and thirsty-ish, and while he’s still exhausted and weak he cannot stand to get back in that bed again, so he pulls on another pair of Ronan’s joggers and a clean t-shirt and goes downstairs.
It’s as if Ronan can sense when he enters a room; he’s barely past the threshold when Ronan’s eyes snap to him and he nearly jumps out of his seat.
“Shut the fuck up,” he snaps at Blue, Gansey, and Henry, who are laughing hysterically at some card game. He comes over to Adam. “Hey, I’m so sorry, I’m trying to keep these fuckers quiet, but it’s hard with this game and--”
“No, they didn’t wake me up. I just...needed to get out of bed for a bit,” Adam says. It hurts to talk, and it’s embarrassing how the congestion accents his words.
Ronan brings a hand to his forehead. “Hey, no fever.”
“No fever.”
“You gonna come sit with us? You can, if you want.”
“I don’t want to get too close. Still germy.” On cue, he sneezes into his elbow.
“Adam!” they all cheer from the couches.
Adam waves.
“Want soup or anything? Hey, let me make you a drink--not a get-drunk drink. It’ll help your throat.”
Adam ends up in an armchair with soup, a hot toddy, a box of tissues, and snuggled under a blanket. Gansey squeezes his knee with a smile. An apology, for something Adam doesn’t quite understand, but he accepts it anyways. Blue kisses his cheek, which she regrets almost immediately and rinses her mouth with whiskey, “not because I hate you, but because you’re...well...a walking-talking plague machine.”
They play their card game and drink spiked hot chocolates, whiskeys on the rocks, and fancy wine. A fire crackles happily in the big stone fireplace. The house is full of laughter and a never-ending Madonna playlist that seems to be slowly growing on everyone.
Adam still feels like shit. And he thinks it’s going to be a another few long, miserable days of stuffiness and sneezing before he’s anywhere remotely better.
But if he has to feel awful, at least he’s here, in this armchair, surrounded by these people. People that help him back to bed when he starts to nod off again, and who bring him soup and tea and their sparkling personalities. People who stay home on New Years Eve just so they can all be together, even if Adam is asleep for half the day.
And one person, in particular, who’s more than willing to postpone his well-deserved midnight kiss until another day.
“I’m not gonna kiss you when I’m all...” Adam says, gesturing up and down his body. He’s made it out of bed again, and is lying on the couch with his head in Ronan’s lap. Ronan’s fingers card through his hair in a gentle, steady rhythm.
“It’s not always about the kissing, Parrish.”
“Next time I want to watch a movie and you keep trying to distract me, I’ll remind you of that.”
Ronan laughs, and scraps his nails a little harder against Adam’s scalp. “You’re funny again. Must mean you’re feeling better.”
“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Not true. Last week, I told you’re smart enough to be a serial killer.”
“I don’t think that’s a compliment.”
“If someone told me that, I’d be fucking honored.”
“We have very different tastes, then.”
Ronan flicks his forehead, and Adam smacks his arm. “Get a room!” Blue calls from the kitchen.
Ronan’s hand stills in Adam’s hair. Adam tilts his chin with a question in his gaze.
“I miss sleeping next to you,” Ronan confesses suddenly.
Adam quirks a brow. “It’s only been two nights,” he says around a coughing fit. “Probably gonna be three.”
“Yeah, well, I managed, didn’t I?” Ronan shrugs. “I’m just saying.”
“I missed you, too,” Adam says. “I don’t like losing some of the few days we have together not sleeping with you.”
“Horndog.”
Adam shoves his shoulders. “You know what I mean, jackass.” And then he yawns.
“Want to go back upstairs?”
Adam looks around. Henry’s reading in one of the arm chairs. Blue is handing Gansey a mug of hot chocolate, and he’s kissing her cheek in thanks; they’re working on a jigsaw puzzle on the floor. Sunlight streams through the windows. The fire crackles. Soft indie guitar fills the room.
“No,” Adam says as his eyes slip close once more. “I feel much better out here.”