Chapter Text
It had always been a thing. Buzzing in the back of his mind when the ink appeared on his wrist. He’d been fifteen, and a small clock had appeared just across the pale blue veins of his wrist sometime overnight. It read two minutes.
He’d soaked it in the shower, the last dregs of hot water running over it, gritting it teeth as it burned. If his father saw-
Every time he washed the cheap soap away, the markings would still be there, stark against his brown skin.
The concept of soulmates is one Adam knew relatively well. It was all over in the media, and he’d pieced it together through snippets of magazines at the cornerstone and some radio stations. His father would always change the station or slam his fist atop the radio, muttering about the bullshit.
He’d seen his mother’s wrist once. She used a knife to spread the peanut butter across a piece of bread, her sleeve riding up. The light from the window had caught it, and Adam’s young eyes had latched on curiously. It was frozen at thirty seconds.
He’d asked about it. His mother had handed him the plastic plate and glared at him, the first time she’d let her anger slip at him, and told him to never bring it up again.
He didn’t.
Only later, the puzzle pieces clicked together. His mother’s clock had never gone off, she had never met her soulmate. She was also married to Robert Parrish.
He felt he finally could comprehend, at least a bit, the loveless marriage between his parents.
After a late night at the library, Adam had become acquainted with his father’s marking. A beer bottle was thrown, glass shattered across the carpet, and his father’s fist raced through the air with purpose.
It had been at zero. Somewhere out there, his father had someone. Either that or he was unlucky enough to be stuck with a one-sided soulmate.
Adam didn’t care for the logistics of it. He really didn’t care for soulmates at all, not when school was finally picking up and the trailer home was becoming more of a personal hell.
College was his escape, a shining beacon amongst his despair. He still remembered googling college admission prices out of curiosity after a desolate night. Just the out-of-state tuition costs made him feel ill.
A week later he’d shown up at Boyd’s, his mind filled with five-figured numbers.
And so, his life had become an endless loop: Work, tiptoe around the trailer home, and devote every bit of free time to studying. Soon, the clock on his wrist faded to the back of his mind, replaced by conjugated verbs and engine grease.
Adam felt whole enough when he lay in his bed at night, knees pulled to his chest so his feet didn’t hang off the bed. He was getting by, slowly but surely, and he didn’t need a soulmate to complete himself. Whoever she was, they’d be better off without each other.
He got by, day by day. The small wad of cash tucked away in a pair of socks slowly grew, he learned how to take a car apart and put it together again, and his teachers began to notice the lanky boy in the back of class with a perfect GPA.
Then he gets the letter. He’d been accepted into Aglionby on scholarship. Partial scholarship but he’d manage.
He was to be a Raven boy. Trailer trash amongst ridiculously rich boys reeking of arrogance.
Junior year was going to be long.
-
Ronan Lynch was a walking nightmare.
At least, according to the class of Aglionby and anyone who had the displeasure of stumbling across him in town.
He was teenage angst personified. He thrived off anything that gave him a rush, be it tires peeling off asphalt or the burn of alcohol down his throat.
The Aglionby boys’ eyes lingered on him disapprovingly, frowning as he skipped class. Then one day he’d been leaving, headed towards his BMW when he’d heard it. A whispered word at his back. Faggot.
Ronan had slammed the boy’s head, Ricardo or Chris or who-the-fuck-cares, into his Mercedes then left him lying in the dirt.
So Ronan had slipped into the role, became what everyone believed him to be anyway. It didn’t really feel like a farce anymore.
He’d left his friends, although most of them had already left when they heard of his father’s gruesome death and his resulting fall from society. They wouldn’t even risk putting even the slightest of smudges on their pristine reputation.
Gansey was his anchor, the one he unwillingly clung to as his life descended into hell. And he had stuck by his side even as Ronan dealt with his grief the only way he could. He lashed out, barbed retorts becoming his shield.
He relished looking in the mirror and seeing a stranger look back. Buzzed head, knitted brows, and his tattoo curling up his neck that he’d impulsively got after drinking himself hoarse.
His own father wouldn’t even recognize him-
The mark on his wrist used to be the center of his thoughts, his mind a constant thrum of who, who, who. He had a soulmate out there, someone he was destined to be with.
All his fantasies came crashing to a halt when he found his father laying on the driveway with his head bashed in.
When his mother slipped away silently inside herself and never said a word to any of her sons that she’d loved again. When grief molded Declan into something entirely new, all clipped sentences and a cool detachment to them all. Matthew, ever the golden son, kept a smile plastered to his face and pretended everything was fine.
Ronan could still hear him crying through their shared wall at night.
When his family fell apart is when he faced the sickening reality of it all. Whoever he was (because yes, his soulmate was very much a male), who was to say he would stick around? Would even want him?
Ronan couldn’t piece the tatters of his broken family back together, hadn’t even come to terms with the gaping hole inside himself. How was he expected to find a soulmate, to fall in love?
He was too busy throwing wadded up napkins at Noah and waiting impatiently for Gansey at Nino’s, he didn’t even realize his clock begin to tick down.
1:59.