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Ronan Lynch was easy to love, Adam Parrish was beginning to learn. Sure, it had taken him a long while to like the boy, but from there, falling in love with him was the easiest thing in the world. Because Ronan was not sharp edges and swear words, insults and pride. Not really. Not once he decided he loved you. Maybe he hid behind anger and wit, but Ronan did not, could not really, lie, and actions had always spoken louder than words, especially to Adam's partially deaf ears. He had a million and one doubts regarding Ronan, but that the snake of a boy loved him and that he loved him back was not one of them.
At the moment, Ronan was sitting on his bed, eyes closed, headphones blaring in his ears, loud enough that Adam could hear it across the room. This whole scenario should have been surreal. He should be questioning why this spoiled, reckless rich kid with a smile he used like a weapon was sitting on his bed, waiting patiently for Adam to finish his homework and come join him. But he wasn’t. What was left to question? Hadn’t they already sorted all this out when Adam’s hands wrapped around Ronan’s throat and Ronan refused to fight back? When Adam faced his every nightmare to keep Ronan out of jail? The thought made Adam want to close the history textbook on his desk and walk over to the dream of a boy who made himself at home on Adam’s bed, but he didn’t have time to. He needed to study. But he could spare a glance in his boyfriend’s direction.
At some point, Ronan had taken off his shirt. Adam could hardly blame him, the apartment above the church was always hot as soon as the earth decided that it was spring, something Adam was sure Ronan knew better than he did. This was not the first time Adam had seen Ronan without a shirt, but this was the first time he could remember his head short-circuiting at the sight. Ronan’s past was written in his body, from the scars on his skin to how his muscles moved when he did, and Adam was desperate to read every bit of it. The fact that Niall had made sure that his boys were physically fit might have played a part in the sudden malfunction in Adam’s neural pathways, but it wasn’t like Adam was going to admit that just yet. Ronan opened his eyes.
“Quit staring, asshole.” Adam laughed.
“What, can’t take the attention?” Ronan’s lips turned upward in what could be called a smile if his eyes didn’t speak of storms and nightmares.
“Oh, I can take the attention, Parrish. In fact, why don’t you come here and give it all to me?” If there was one thing that Adam Parrish was good at it was resisting temptation. It was how he survived, quite literally. If he had given into every little distraction in his life, he would never have made it anywhere near as far as he has. If there was one thing that Adam Parrish was bad at, it was resisting Ronan Lynch’s smile and dangerous eyes. And so he stood from his desk chair, walked across his tiny apartment that he knew Ronan had arranged for him to have, leaned down to place a hand on the aforementioned boy’s cheek and kissed him sweetly.
Ronan’s hands shot up to Adam’s waist and pulled him down onto the bed, causing him to stumble and land on top of him. Adam laughed against Ronan’s lips and when he pulled away the look on Ronan’s face was everything that the world forgot that he was. It was soft and pure, because at the end of the day, that was who Ronan was. A gentle boy whose dreams are what reality are made of.
Adam’s laughing caused Ronan to laugh and wrap his arms gently around his boyfriend. Neither knew if it was day or night. Not really. For all they knew they could have been in one of Ronan’s dreamscapes. Except that there were textbooks open on the desk and graphite up and down Adam’s hands from writing essay drafts by hand and while Ronan would never ask Adam to stop being the overachieving nerd that he is, Ronan also would not be dreaming of Adam studying when his hands could be used for other things instead.
“I love you, asshole.” The words were whispered, barely there. Ronan smiled anyway. This was new to Adam, the whole love thing. Whispered words were better than none at all.
“Love you, too.” Ronan’s words sounded almost casual to Adam, as though they were nothing. Ronan’s methods of affection were different than Adams’s, sharp edges and things given without asking for permission. But the words came easy to Ronan, growing up as he had, surrounded by people who loved him with everything they were. Ronan, who dreamt up a little brother so sweet it was impossible to not love him. Ronan, who gave everything he was to Gansey, no questions asked. If there was anything that scared Adam about Ronan, it was the way he loved.
But Adam had never been a coward, couldn’t afford to be one, really, and he was selfish. Ronan deserved better, but Adam would take him while he could.
Sometimes, people are so damn easy to love it isn’t fair. Ronan knew he wasn’t subtle. Nothing about him was subtle, quite deliberately so. Adam was beautiful and brilliant and brave and Ronan was not subtle. Ronan remembered life before Adam. It was a time that his dad was alive and his brother didn’t hate him and his mother wasn’t comatose and in most ways objectively speaking, it was a better time. It was before Ronan hated himself with as much passion as he put into everything else. All or nothing.
But then came Adam, and at first, Ronan thought he was just going to be yet another one of Gansey’s “friends”, there and gone before Ronan had to actually give a damn. He was wrong. Adam was logical and sensible and way too fucking smart for his own damn good. Pride and anger and fear and hope wrapped in disaster. Ronan Lynch was an asshole by nature, and he knew it. Adam Parrish, it turns out, was one by nurture, and didn’t bat an eye at everything Ronan threw at him. What else was he supposed to do except fall helplessly in love?