Work Text:
Adam didn’t kiss him.
It had all been going great. They were doing so well at the whole long-distance thing. Ronan was using his phone, and he didn’t absolutely hate it. Adam knew the random times of day and night when Ronan was more likely to call without warning, and would try his hardest to be unoccupied during those times. Even all the supernatural shit had taken a fucking chill pill this semester and let them have some goddamn honeymoon bliss for once in their fucking lives.
In July, Adam had promised that he would come down to Virginia for Fall Break instead of torturing himself in Cambridge for a weekend of extra shifts and endless studying. He swore he’d only bring one textbook, just one, which was a damn miracle. And he’s early. Tires crunch through the gravel driveway an hour sooner than either had expected. A personal record (still not even close to Ronan’s PR, obviously. Regardless, Ronan is ready to wipe a tear from his eye and plaster a “my boyfriend is a Rockingham County champion speeder” bumper sticker on the back of his BMW like a proud soccer mom.)
It’s golden hour when Adam pulls the Hodoyota into its empty spot. Sunlight streams through flaming maples and yellow hickories; Shenandoah’s in a cold snap, the air biting at Ronan’s toes and fingertips with the first taste of frosts to come.
The Barns are quiet--it’s always quiet, no matter how loud Ronan tries to live--and even though the janky shitbox windows are all rolled up, Ronan can hear the thudding bass of a song from the Parrish’s Hodoyota Alone Time mix. It’s been jammed in the tape deck for two years, now, so it’s not like Adam has much of a choice, but the fact that Adam would rather listen to the music than the radio or silence, even, makes Ronan’s heart stutter in a way that is, quite frankly, really fucking embarassing.
As if this whole thing wasn’t already like one of those god awful Lifetime romance movies Gansey used to watch at one in the morning when they lived in Monmouth (“it’s background noise; I’d rather listen to this than to your terrible music selection”), Adam’s dusty hair catches the breeze as soon as he’s out of the car, disheveled and haloed in the sun, and he turns to smile at Ronan before he gets his stuff from the back seat.
Fuck, Ronan missed him.
Adam’s got a backpack on one shoulder and his duffel hanging off the other, climbing the steps of the porch where Ronan shifts his weight from one bare foot to the other again and again.
“Hey,” Adam says, dropping the duffel to the floor.
“Hey,” Ronan says back. He inspects every inch of Parrish’s face, cataloging all the subtle differences, marking all the new freckles and the sharpening line of his jaw. Those things are small, never much of a surprise that he’s growing and changing in between their visits. It’s Adam’s alien beauty that always knocks the wind right out of him. He’s so much prettier in person than he is in memories, or in the dulled and flattened video chat screens.
“No motorcycle?” he asks.
“The shitbox was feeling neglected.”
“It should. It fucking sucks.”
Adam laughs, and everything is great. Everything is amazing. They’re slowly inching closer to one another, attentions flickering to lips and back again, eyes hooded by lashes as their heads tilt in opposite directions and Ronan’s hand comes to Adam’s neck, to caress a thumb across his cheekbones, and he whispers another “hey,” as their noses brush against cheeks and eyes close and lips--
And then it happens.
Adam’s lips don’t touch his. Instead, he feels the air tickle as Adam’s head swoops to the side and Ronan’s lips graze his cheek and then they’re just...hugging?
Which is fine.
This is fine.
Hugging is fine. Hugging is great. Hugging is--
Who is he kidding. It stings like a slap. Even though Adam’s hand is cradling the back of his head with its usual tenderness, even though his face is buried in Ronan’s neck like there was no place he’d rather be right now than here, even though he’s holding him tight and exhales raggedly like he’s been holding his breath for months and is finally able to breathe again, here, in Ronan’s arms--something dark and icky curls itself around Ronan’s chest, finding the weakest bars of the cage where Ronan keeps his insecurity about Adam being far away and surrounded by smarter, better, more ambitious, less backwoods-hick-dropout people, and sawing them through with nasty, lying whispers.
Ronan smells Adam’s bargain 3-in-1 soap and the dream detergent he gave him at the start of the school year scented like petrichor and the BMW’s leather seats and the woodstove at home, and he tells that creature to shut the fuck up.
“Welcome home,” Ronan says against Adam’s good ear.
“I missed you,” Adam replies, and tightens his grip.
So Adam had just wanted a hug. Fair enough, Ronan’s a good fucking hugger, and now that he’d gotten his fill, Ronan pulls back and closes his eyes and leans forward--
Adam tilts away. Again. Angles his face just so , so Ronan can’t possibly kiss him without bending his neck in ways it should not be bent.
What the hell, man.
“What’s for dinner?” Adam asks softly. And maybe Ronan’s just seeing what he wants to see, but Adam does look at least a little sorry about it.
“Food,” Ronan says, trying to keep his tone even.
Adam rolls his eyes. “Glad you haven’t adopted Opal’s dining habits.”
“Technically bark and leaves are food.”
“Delicious. Can’t wait to eat dirt.”
“Glad Harvard hasn’t made you a dining snob,” he says, mockingly.
“You’ve eaten in the dining hall. You know that food is not going to make anyone a food critic.”
Ronan snorts despite himself.
“If anything, it’s given me a newfound appreciation for home cooking.”
“So this is the real reason you’re home: you’re just using me for my food.”
“Pretty much.”
“Shithead,” he manages a kiss on Adam’s forehead; can't stand the thought of rejection for the third time. “C’mon, I’m getting fucking frostbite on my toes.” He takes Adam’s bag in one hand and Adam’s wrist in the other.
“It’s common sense to wear socks if you’re going to stand outside when it’s 56 degrees.”
Ronan scoffs. “Fuck you and your sense. Who needs that. ”
####
Like with so many aspects of Adam Parrish’s life, he’s got a set and stable routine for his first day home on break.
Step 1: take his backpack and duffel upstairs.
Step 2: Lay on the bed and insist Ronan lay with him.
Step 3: Take a nap.
(A half-step is often added before, during, or after when they inevitably end up making out in bed or in the hallway or on the porch or pushed up against the Hodoyota or precariously seated on the motorcycle because one of them just could not wait. )
(And add another half step if that making out turns into something more.)
Because Adam has changed in many ways since he was an overly-ambitious, forest-possessed high schooler, but he is still a chronic overworker with a serious sleep-deprivation habit and an unhealthy disregard for self-care. When he has breaks, he spends 85% of the first 24 hours catching up on the sleep he’s missed.
He’s still taking his bags upstairs, and he’s dragging himself along like a dead man walking, but halfway up the stairs he turns to Ronan, who is trailing dutifully behind him, and asks, as gently as he can, “mind if I rest alone?”
It hurts, just a little.
Okay, no, it hurts a lot .
Of course he minds. He dreams of curling his arms around Adam’s waist and tangling their legs together beneath the duvet and feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest every goddamn night. Dumbass fucking question.
But Adam’s bleary blue eyes are pleading, and the dark circles around them that speak of sleepless midterms and a brilliant mind never allowed a moment’s peace are bruised enough that Ronan is willing to omit the truth. “Go ahead,” he grumbles. “In the middle of a game anyway.”
Adam’s no fool. He hears the omission as clearly as if Ronan had just confessed. But he swallows with a grimace and kisses him on the cheek and pulls himself slowly up the stairs, quiet and alone.
#####
Ronan was in the middle of a game. That part wasn’t a lie. SmashBros awaits. A triumphant symphony swells through the dream surround-sound speakers as the menu screen idles, Switch hooked up to a TV carbon-dated to at least 2003 that he’d found among the clutter of the long barn. A mess of dreamed convertors and real wires that Ronan has spent far too much time finagling when avoiding all other, more pressing matters, like returning any of Declan’s calls or supporting Gansey’s new eco-warrior escapades or missing Adam.
He wants to show it off to Adam. Knows Adam will be equal parts impressed and awed and annoyed by the hodgepodge of magic and mechanics. That he’ll be more than willing to take the Player 2 controller and “test” out all the games in Ronan’s minimal catalog (because the number of games that provide cathartic release without making him want to throw his controller across the room can be counted on one hand) just to see how the set-up accommodates for every game.
Also, it’s no secret that Adam finds Ronan’s SmashBros talent hot. Because Adam is turned on by competency.
Instead, Adam is sleeping. Alone. While Ronan gets his ass kicked by this fucker maining Simon Belmont like the angsty oh-look-at-me-I’m-so-hardcore teen shithead they probably are. Also alone.
It’s been two hours, which is on the upper end of Adam’s start-of-break nap averages. Adam’s not one to intentionally induce a fucked-up sleep schedule. He stays up too late because he has to, because he’s got assignments and work and friends who he has to see x number of hours per week in order to keep their friendship. Given the choice, he’d rather be asleep at night. Which means he tries not to nap too long this close to bedtime.
Ronan is planning when he should wake him up--five more minutes? Ten? Should he have woken him up an hour ago?--when the bed creaks and the floorboards groan and soft footfalls lead into the bathroom.
It’s another ten minutes before Adam finally comes downstairs. “Hey,” he says around a yawn.
“Hey. Chili’s almost done.”
“Mmm,” Adam says, but Ronan doesn’t miss the flicker of a wince right before it. He nods to the TV, where fucking Belmont is doing his stupid fucking victory pose. “You winning?”
“What’s it look like, smartass,” Ronan grumbles, tosses Adam the second controller, and exits back to the menu screen. “Gonna use you to boost my ego again.”
“That so?” Adam smiles crookedly. He sniffs and clears his throat. “I’ve been practicing, you know. Training with Eliot. I might beat you.”
That’s such an outrageous statement, Ronan completely ignores the congested curl of Adam’s Henrietta drawl around his vowels. “No fucking way. I beat the shit outta them last time I visited.”
“Revisionist history. You beat them in sudden death because you tied. ”
“I don’t recall that,” Ronan mutters.
Adam rolls his eyes and he picks Simon Belmont. Just to be an asshole.
#####
They eat the chili. Ronan had dumped enough spice in the slowcooker to make even a ghost pepper flinch. It makes his eyes water and his poor bland Irish tastebuds scream for mercy, but Adam likes it. Only winces a little bit with each swallow as Ronan chugs milk straight from the carton.
Ronan shows off the TV set up. Adam is less enthused than Ronan would have liked (he was imagining groveling and hailing of his genius), but still interested. They test out all the games. Adam lays with his head against Ronan’s shoulder. They still haven’t kissed. And then Adam is yawning again, rubbing his eyes and clearing his throat and murmuring, “I’m going to go to bed.”
Ronan is not going to bed, because it’s only 8pm and he’s neither an 80-year-old man nor sleep-deprived Adam Parrish. And he’s pretty sure “going to bed” is not a euphemism. Not this time, at least.
“Want me to come with?” he asks, and it’s a genuine question.
Adam smiles at him, sad and fond and exhausted. He brushes his thumb over his cheek. “Nah, I know you’re not gonna sleep yet. Keep getting your ass kicked in Smash.”
Ronan’s heart sinks. “Shithead,” he mutters, and he takes Adam’s hand from his neck and kisses each of his fingers.
#####
Adam sleeps. And sleeps. And sleeps.
He obviously needs it, but damn. Thirteen hours straight? Ronan is impressed. And worried. And angry. Because Adam has pricked his finger on a cursed spinning wheel and is going to spend their few precious days together dead to the world. And Ronan has never been what the fairy tales consider princely, so he doubts his true love’s kiss will be the cure.
Besides, Adam still won’t kiss him. And Ronan’s not such an asshole he’s gonna plant his lips on his when he’s asleep just on the off chance the ley line has decided to have a Grimm phase right now.
So he chores and cleans and throws stuff around in the barns and picks rocks out of the pasture and chucks them over the fence as hard as he can and does all the things he usually does when he’s feeling lonely and horny and trying to be productive instead of burning down his excess energy with tire skid marks and bonfires.
When he runs out of productive things to do and Adam still hasn’t risen from his 100-year sleep, he stomps around the perimeter of the house and yells at clouds and insults the geese eating grass by the pond until they get angry and chase him away. It’s not even noon yet. If Ronan had hair, he’d be ripping it out.
He finally stops moping about and decides to be impatient inside the house, and starts playing SmashBros again, because beating people up in a game is far more socially accepted than beating people up in real life. He’s fighting against another asshole playing as Simon Belmont--apparently the SmashBros gods won’t give him a fucking break--when Adam slumps down next to him. Shivering, shoulders pulled up to his ears even in the sweats and Harvard hoodie Ronan knows are often far too warm for him, looking exhausted and miserable and like he’d rather be dead than awake.
All the anger and frustration that’s been sitting in his stomach since yesterday afternoon dissolves instantly.
He wonders how long Adam has felt like shit. He also wonders why the fuck he didn’t tell him.
Adam takes Ronan’s wrist and places his hand against his clammy forehead. “Can you feel?” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep and bone-deep exhaustion. “Please?”
As if Ronan could look at Adam’s tired eyes and flushed cheeks and miserable frown and say, “no.” As if Ronan has the ability to refuse Adam anything when he looks and sounds so unlike himself.
This is not an effective test of temperature--Ronan isn’t going to beep in five seconds with a precise decimal reading of his exact internal fahrenheit--but he knows enough to confidently say, “you’re burning up.”
Adam closes his eyes, and a soft, almost whispered moan escapes his lips. “Figured,” he says, and leans into Ronan’s hand with defeat. His hand drops from Ronan’s wrist to his lap. Ronan brings his other hand to hold Adam’s flushed cheek, and Adam’s eyes flutter closed. Enjoying the chill, Ronan supposes. He strokes his thumb along his cheekbones.
Adam stirs then, with a sudden breath. “Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
Adam hums, and drags himself up from the couch and just...walks away. Back up the stairs and to the bedroom like he hasn’t just appeared after thirteen-plus hours of sleep with a fever high enough to be felt by the untrained hands of a person who’s notorious for wearing tank tops in the dead of winter because he’s hot.
Ronan curses, throws the match to the asshole, and takes the stairs two steps at a time. “The hell, man?” Ronan says storming into the bedroom. Adam curls himself tighter under the covers, and grumbles incoherently into the pillow.
Ronan sits on the edge of the bed. “You can’t just--you’ve got a fever and you-- what the hell, Parrish?”
“Fuck off, Lynch,” Adam says.
Ronan’s glare moves to the bedside table. A half drunk bottle of Dayquil Severe, cup rinsed out recently enough that it’s sitting in a ring of water, is hidden behind the lamp. Throat spray sits next to it, inconspicuous behind the old alarm clock. A bag of cough drops peeks out from the small front pocket of his backpack.
“Are you kidding me,” he growls. Adam pulls the covers away from his face, follows Ronan’s eyes to the medicine, and blanches.
“Shit,” he says.
“No fucking way you drank all that in one day, you asshole.”
“Brought it from school,” Adam mumbles, which is not quite an admission but good enough for Ronan to feel justified in losing his shit.
“You were sick before this?” He pauses. He was sick before this. “You motherfucker...is this the same goddamn cold you’ve had since September?!”
It had been the second week of school. A cold went through campus like it always did at the start of the semester. But Adam hadn’t complained about it, hadn’t really said anything about it at all, other than the obligatory mention of this-is-a-thing-that’s-happening during one of their calls.
“I mean, can’t be sure, but—”
“Should’ve known. I should have fucking known. All the sleeping, the no kissing--which, fuck you, by the way. I’d rather die from the black plague than not fucking kiss you, you asshole. And, Christ, the Hodoy-fucking-ota! You haven't touched that piece of shit since you stopped dumping the bike every other mile.”
“Ronan...”
“What’s the worst possible thing that could have happened, huh? You tell me you’re sick and I make you soup? I bring you shitty witch tea? I make you rest and sit on the couch and take a goddamn break? What a fucking nightmare!”
“Ronan--”
“I made you eat chili last night. I dumped, like, four jalapenos with seeds in that shit. Probably wrecked your goddamn throat skin or whatever the fuck is in there. And you didn’t say anything?”
“I know, okay?” Adam sits up, flushed and angry. “I know. I should have said something. I didn’t because I’m a jackass who hates asking for help. But now I feel like shit and I just want to sleep and I’m sorry.” And it’s the crack in his voice that extinguishes Ronan’s fury once and for all.
They stare at one another. Then Ronan flops backwards onto the bed and Adam falls into the pillows and they both heave the same, great sigh.
“I just care,” Ronan says.
“I know,” Adam whispers. “I care, too. I didn’t want to ruin it.”
Ronan turns to look at him. He can only see one blue eye and a tuft of sandy hair from where he lays. “Ruin what?”
“Break. Thought I could enjoy my time off. Guess not, huh.”
Ronan sits up on his elbow, and strokes his hand down Adam’s cheek. “Getting better from a cold you’ve apparently had for weeks is a good use of some time off, you idiot.” His brow furrows. “You sure it’s a cold?”
Adam shrugs. “I guess. Don’t know what else it could be.”
Ronan sucks his teeth, drums his fingers on the duvet. “Need anything?”
Adam’s eyes slide shut again. He swallows with a wince. “Just need the meds to kick in.”
Ronan grunts. It’s almost noon. He’s got to do his next round of chores soon.
“Call if you need me,” he says, kisses Adam’s burning forehead, and goes back to throwing things around the barns.
#####
Ronan’s brain automatically saves every memory involving Declan to a password-protected folder that he hides in a nesting doll of zipped folders labeled “Dicklan”, so that way they can’t just pop up and surprise him when he’s looking for something else. Sometimes, though, the system goes wonky and a memory escapes and he finds himself reliving some of Declan’s Greatest Hits as the Most Asshole-ish Still-Living Lynch.
Adam is dozing atop Ronan’s chest, a quilt wrapped around them because Parrish claimed he was freezing. He’s combing his fingers through Adam’s hair, humming half the notes of an old lullaby, trying not to worry about the warmth of Adam’s forehead, when he remembers: Aurora, pulling her long, delicate fingers through Declan’s knotted curls and singing the same Irish tune; Declan, feverish and shivering and curled up on the couch, only fifteen or so, with his head in her lap.
Most every memory of Declan is unwanted, because he’s an asshole. And most every memory of Aurora is unwanted, because he misses her too much and they all hurt like hell.
But this one is okay. It doesn’t make his throat close and eyes ache like the others do, mostly because Declan voluntarily laying his head on his dream mother’s lap looking disheveled and miserable and letting her sing to him is such a bizarre, almost unbelievable scene that Ronan is more curious than anything else. So he lets it play through.
Declan’s cheeks are rounded, still. His blue eyes not yet cold as steel. Awkwardly lanky in that way teenagers often are, when limbs grow too fast and the rest of them has yet to catch up. He’s wearing a t-shirt from an Irish music festival, and plaid pajama bottoms, and Ronan cannot recall a single other memory of Declan in something other than a primly pressed uniform or power suit.
“What’s wrong with him?” Ronan asks from the doorway of the kitchen. He knew Declan had a cold, had seen him red-nosed and raspy at church every Sunday for the past month, but Declan had been adamant before now that he was fine, he was just tired, he’d drink more orange juice and get more sleep and, no, he did not need to come home yet.
“He’s sick, my darling,” Aurora explains, voice like a song.
“Gross,” Ronan says with a sneer of disgust. His voice cracks. He must have been twelve. Declan only fifteen.
“Shut up,” Declan murmurs, voice a harsh rasp. He shudders from a chill only he can feel. Aurora coos and rests her hand against his forehead.
“He’s gonna get us all sick.” There’s something icky crawling beneath his skin, watching Aurora coddle Declan this way. Jealousy, he realizes. And Aurora, ever-perceptive, must have heard the green tint in his declaration, because she opens up her other arm so Ronan could nestle in as well.
“No, he will not,” Aurora says.
“Aglionby not want you to contaminate the dorms? They finally kick you out?”
Declan turns around and glares at him. He looks so painfully tired that, for half a second, Ronan feels a little bit guilty. And then he mutters, “I wanted to be home, dipshit,” and Ronan is no longer sympathetic.
“Declan Patrick Lynch,” Aurora chides. “Sick or not, that language is not allowed in this house.”
“Sorry,” Declan grumbles.
Ronan nuzzles against Aurora’s side. She begins to pet his hair as well. “Declan is welcome home whenever he needs it,” she tells Ronan. “And he’ll be here for a few days. This sickness makes him very, very tired. So you,” she bopped him on the nose with a finger, “are to be kind to him while he’s not feeling well.”
“Yes, mom,” Ronan mutters.
“Now, why don’t you come help me make dinner. I’m thinking some soup is in order.”
Ronan’s eyes snap open. He leaps off the couch and Adam groans in annoyance.
“Get up,” he orders.
“What? No,” Adam rasps, half-asleep and very nearly pouting about the loss of his personal heater.
“Get up, Parrish.” Ronan’s pulling his shoes on, and throws Adam’s coat at him. Adam does not move.
“No,” he repeats.
“Not up for discussion,” Ronan says, and kicks at Adam’s legs. Adam tries to kick him back. He fails, spectacularly. “We’re going to the doctor.”
“Hell no,” Adam says, louder this time.
Duncan rips the quilt off him. Adam whines. “Not a fucking discussion. Let’s go.”
Adam, too tired to fight any longer, does as told.
####
It’s mono.
“Any way it’s a false positive?” Adam asks the urgent care doctor. The prickpoint on his finger stings.
“Only if you’ve got something way worse,” he drones, flipping through the chart without really looking at it.
“Like…?”
“Leukemia.”
Adam will stick with mono, thanks.
There’s no quick cure: no antibiotics or shot or magic potion that will make him better in 24hours so he can get on with his life. He’s ordered to rest, drink fluids, wait it out. Two of those three instructions make Adam laugh, they’re so absurd and impossible for his current breakneck pace of a lifestyle. The doctor looks wholly unimpressed. Or maybe that’s just the painful indifference that comes from thinking you’d be saving lives at General Hospital after med school and now you’re stuck telling college kids they’ve got to stop kissing so much.
“There’s nothing I can do?” Adam confirms.
The doctor looks at him over the rim of his glasses, sighs, and walks out of the room.
Guess that’s a no.
Ronan’s playing Candy Crush on his phone, slouched in the seat with his legs spread and stretched into the aisle for maximum inconvenience.
“What’s your damage?” Ronan asks.
“Mono.”
“I fucking knew it.”
The nurses at the intake desk glare at him. Ronan doesn’t even notice.
“You get meds or anything?”
“It’s a virus. There’s nothing we can do except wait it out.”
Ronan knows the “we” is used intentionally. Because Adam’s already gone through the five stages of grief about the fact that they can’t kiss each other anymore and is forcing himself into acceptance.
“How’d you know?” Adam asks him once they’re in the car. There’s no prescription, but he does have a doctor’s note clutched in hand that should get student services to grant him a few extra sick days (which Ronan will make damn sure he takes).
“Declan,” Ronan says, whipping out of the parking lot. “Got mono a few years ago, when I was in middle school. All I remember is him sleeping all the fucking time for, like, a month. And being a whiny bag of dicks, but that’s nothing new.”
Adam smiles, head leaned back against the seatrest and eyes closed once more. “Nothing new indeed.”
####
Adam doesn’t kiss him.
He sleeps a lot: tucked into Ronan’s side, or with his head in Ronan’s lap, or with his back to Ronan’s chest and Ronan’s arms wrapped around his waist. He lets Ronan massage his aching muscles and lay cool cloths across his feverish forehead and feed him water and soup and tea that tastes like dirt. He is persuaded to spend a few extra days at the Barns, to call the school and get his doctor-mandated days off, to tell his friends he’d be back later, to email his professors and promise that he won’t fall behind but really needs the rest. And Ronan is so proud of him he helps Adam relax in ways that do not strictly require his mouth (although Adam does miss it greatly).
Adam doesn’t kiss him. But Adam does let Ronan care for him in every other way, gives Ronan a few extra days of a break that was too short, anyways; wants to stay at the Barns instead of going back to Harvard, because Ronan’s arms around him and Ronan’s lips pressed against his temple and Ronan’s fingers carefully combing through his hair and rubbing the precise spots on his head that hurt are better than anything he could get at Harvard.
Adam doesn't kiss him. But he makes it clear as best he can in between bouts of sleeping that he loves Ronan more than anything in the world. And Ronan does the same.