Archive of Our Own

You've got a new match 😍😍😍

Ronan sent you a message

There wasn't much that confused Adam Parrish, but the two Tinder notifications on the lock screen of his phone confused the hell out of him.

He didn't understand how he had a new match when he hadn't opened the dating app and swiped right on anyone in months. Tinder wasn't exactly useful in the middle of a global pandemic.

Like most single people, Adam’s dating life had taken a backseat in the midst of lockdowns, stimulus packages, and mask mandates. No one was opening up their social bubbles for coffee or drinks with a potential hookup they met on Tinder or OkCupid or Grindr. For the first few months, there weren't any cafes or bars open to get coffee or drinks.

Even after things started slowly opening back up again, no one with any form of intelligence was hooking up with a stranger. There was too much risk, and Adam had always been risk averse. His one goal was to get through the pandemic without contracting COVID-19, and the only sure way to do that was to keep to himself as much as possible.

So when the world ground to a halt in March 2020, so did Adam's use of dating apps.

In the first few weeks of quarantine, he'd still get an occasional notification of a mutual match or a new message, but he'd swipe them off of his phone screen without a second glance. Eventually they slowed to a trickle before they became completely non-existent.

Until this notification of a new match and message from Ronan.

Curious how he had a new match after not using the app in over half a year, Adam tapped the notification. Tinder opened and Adam instantly remembered the profile.

This Ronan was the hottest guy Adam had ever seen. On Tinder or out in the real world. After flicking through Ronan's photos, Adam had swiped right even though he was sure the profile was fake.

No one could be as savagely handsome as this guy. Tall. Built. Crisp, pale blue eyes. Dark hair buzzed short. Cheekbones sharp enough to cut. Thin lips tilted into a shark-like grin.

Ronan's photos were standard Tinder fare. One in the outdoors on what looked like a farm, an old, white-washed house in the background. Another behind the wheel of a car, a photo Adam zoomed in on until he could tell it was a vintage BMW. He had a third in a beer garden with a full stein in hand, and then his last photo was of him tending a bar.

Adam had swiped right on Ronan in early March. Maybe in February. The months of 2020 blurred together after a while, and it didn't help that Adam hardly left his apartment and had nothing except work to mark the passing of time.

After getting over the slight shock that Ronan had swiped right on Adam's profile months and months after Adam had done the same, Adam navigated to his messages. He opened the one from Ronan at the top of an inbox full of unread messages sent by men and women before the world went to hell.

Adam almost regretted opening the message and wished he could go back to Ronan just being a pretty face to look at because Ronan’s message read:

You're not really into fucking tarot, are you?

Ronan Lynch could have been more couth in the first message he sent Adam.

COVID-19 had had him holed up in his apartment for months, though, and even before that, Ronan hadn’t had impressive social skills. Over six months of lockdowns and near total isolation hadn't done him any favors.

He had only checked Tinder because a screenshot he'd sent his best friend revealed all of the unread emails, texts, and notifications Ronan had on his phone. Gansey had almost had a heart attack at the number and told Ronan, "Really, Lynch. Some of those nine hundred seventy-three emails may be important."

Ronan didn't mean to open Tinder. He only wanted to clear the little red bubble with 82 in it from the app's icon. But once the app loaded, his iPhone showed him the profile of Adam, the most beautiful guy Ronan had ever seen and Ronan swiped right and matched with Adam before even looking through the rest of his photos or reading his profile.

If Ronan had done both of those, he probably still would have swiped right. Adam was too ethereal, with high, gaunt cheeks and dusty hair and eyebrows and blue eyes pretty enough for a girl. In his first profile picture, he was tall and lean, and when Ronan went back to Adam's profile to look at the rest of his photos, Ronan saw Adam was not only stupidly attractive, but he also had really nice hands.

Then Ronan read his profile.

It was sparse, but made Ronan groan.

Adam, 25

Engineer

Friend to cars everywhere

Tarot reader

Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.

Three of the things turned Ronan on.

Adam was intelligent. Adam liked cars. Adam knew Latin.

Adam also read tarot.

Even the most beautiful guy on Earth had hamartia, a fatal flaw.

Ronan always had shit luck with online dating. There was a reason he hadn't opened Tinder in almost a year. Pandemic aside, he hated the digital dance of getting to know someone almost as much as he hated it in person.

With COVID, that was impossible. Meeting up with a stranger was a perfect opportunity to catch the coronavirus and Ronan was not interested.

There wasn't a green dot noting Adam was online, and one of his photos at some nerdy book festival on the National Mall had a banner with 2019 on it in the background. It looked like he might not have updated his profile in a while. He might have even found someone and forgot to delete it.

Ronan thought what the hell and opened a message to Adam. He typed You're not really into fucking tarot, are you? and hit send.

It would probably go unseen and unanswered, which was fine with Ronan.

He didn't expect to get a response less than five minutes later.

I am. I read tarot. What's it to you?

Ronan felt like he'd been given a long, appraising look and had been found wanting.

Its a bunch of hocus pocus bullshit, thats what. he wrote back. Dont tell me you believe it.

It's not hocus pocus bullshit. It's a collection of archetypes and symbolism that ultimately tells someone what they already know. Adam responded quickly. Another message followed shortly after that one. And it's a good party trick and a way to make a few extra bucks.

Ronan laughed. This guy wasn't taking his asshole comments lying down. He liked that.

He messaged, Pull a card for me.

Adam responded OK. There was a pause for a few minutes and Ronan waited. Then Adam wrote, Knight of Swords.

Whats it mean? Ronan asked.

That you're an asshole. appeared on Ronan's screen seconds later and Ronan was so absurdly pleased he had to put his phone down for a few minutes.

When he picked it back up, he wrote Adam, Hi. Im Ronan.

Nice to meet you, Ronan. I'm Adam.

"I met a guy."

Blue had been dicking around on her phone while she and Adam had their weekly Zoom happy hour but when Adam said that, she snapped to attention. "What?"

"I met a guy," Adam repeated. "Ronan. He lives in Adams Morgan."

"What?"

"I met a–"

Blue waved her hand to shut Adam up. She set her phone aside and leaned close to her camera so Adam's screen was all Blue Sargent forehead, eyes, and nose. "I heard that part. How? You don't leave your apartment. Like, at all. Did he deliver your groceries? Your beer?"

"Tinder," Adam said simply and took a sip of one of the beers that had been left at his apartment door that afternoon along with the rest of his weekly order from Drizly. He could be obtuse a little while longer to stoke Blue’s exasperation.

"You're still using Tinder?"

"Not anymore."

Blue's eyes widened for a fraction of a moment before she sat back and crossed her arms. She narrowed her gaze at Adam. "Quit messing with me."

Adam stopped hiding his smile and finished off his beer. "I did meet him on Tinder, though. I swiped right on him before COVID. He just matched with me, like two months ago. I haven't really met him. We've just been talking."

If they had been at a real bar, or if they had been hanging out at one of their apartments, Blue would have smacked Adam's arm. Instead, she threw a balled up piece of paper at her camera. "Adam! You've been sitting on this news for two months?"

"I wanted to see where it was going." Adam shrugged. "Hold on. Let me get another beer and I'll tell you about it."

When Adam returned to his living room with a fresh bottle of beer, Blue was grinning wickedly. He settled back onto his couch in front of where his laptop was set up on his coffee table and gave her a long-suffering look. "What?"

"Looks like you're still making the most of that sourdough starter." Blue wagged her eyebrows, still grinning.

Adam looked down at himself for a moment. The way he was sitting with one leg curled under himself and one foot propped up on the edge of his coffee table wasn't exactly flattering even though it was comfortable. His shirt was tucked into a fold on his stomach created from the way his bent legs pushed up the pudge he'd developed on his belly.

Pudge he hadn't had before the pandemic.

Pudge that was the direct result of not only the boules of sourdough he was baking twice a week but also the recipes he was making with the daily discard from his starter when he fed it. He didn't want to be wasteful and throw it away, so Adam had a growing bookmarks folder of recipes for sourdough discard pancakes, banana bread, and a dozen different types of crackers. Recipes Adam only had one audience for: himself.

He pulled his t-shirt out of the crease it had gotten caught in and arranged it to disguise his new little belly before looking back at Blue. "Do you want to hear about Ronan or are you going to be shitty?"

"You look fine. You look good." Blue waved away Adam's insecurity and took a long drink of her wine. She smacked her lips dramatically as she put her glass down, then she curled her hands under her chin and leaned into her camera. "Tell me about Ronan."

"I met a guy."

Ronan dropped it in the middle of his weekly Tuesday night phone call with Gansey. He wanted to wedge it in so his best friend didn't even catch the comment and breezed past it as he talked about whatever his weekly obsession was, but Gansey cut himself off mid-sentence as he was blathering on about the Picts.

"Come again?"

"I met a guy. On Tinder. Adam."

Gansey had been the one to prompt Ronan to set up a Tinder profile just after New Year’s 2020 in the first place. He'd helped Ronan choose photos, reworded the crass language Ronan had drafted for his profile, and then prodded Ronan occasionally to use the app.

As evidenced by it taking eight months for Ronan to match with Adam, he was not diligent in his Tinder usage.

Gansey was silent on the other end of the call for an extended length of time before he said, "Lynch, I understand your track record of making sound safety decisions is shaky. But we're still in the middle of a pandemic. Is using Tinder the smartest choice right now?"

"Jesus Mary, I'm not going around fucking every guy I match with." Ronan rolled his eyes. "I matched with one guy after he'd swiped right on me, like, a year ago. That's it."

"He swiped right on you a–Nevermind. Have you met him in person?"

"No, Dick. We're in the middle of a fucking pandemic."

"Are you interested in meeting him?" Gansey asked.

Ronan had wanted to meet Adam as soon as they'd started exchanging messages on Tinder. His want had only grown the more they'd messaged through the app and then as they'd started texting. The two of them hadn't even talked over the phone yet, but Ronan didn't think his desire to meet Adam in person would go away unless Adam's balls hadn't dropped and he sounded like a twelve-year-old.

Ronan could probably learn to live with it if Adam did sound like a twelve-year-old.

"Yeah, I wanna meet him," he finally responded to Gansey.

Gansey made a thoughtful noise. "I know you're being safe. Is he?"

Ronan laughed loudly, because Adam was practically a bubble boy compared to Ronan. "Yeah. He's being safe."

"You could probably arrange something. Outside. Socially distanced. If you're willing to take the risk."

Ronan's only problem with that suggestion was that when he finally got to meet Adam face-to-face, he had no plans for social distancing. He was going to kiss Adam so long and so hard that, by the end, neither one of them was going to be able to breathe.

He also wasn't sure if Adam was willing to risk meeting in person. Between Tinder and texting, they'd been talking for almost two months, but they were still essentially strangers. Adam operated with an abundance of caution when it came to COVID and Ronan wasn't going to push him outside of his comfort zone.

"Maybe," Ronan said noncommittally.

"Are you worried about him seeing you?"

"Why would I be worried about him seeing me?"

"Ronan," Gansey said in a way that reminded Ronan of the warning tones he'd used with Ronan in his more wild teenage days. "You took a year to look at Tinder. You definitely didn't update your photos."

Gansey was too tactful to say anything directly, but he knew about the quarantine fifteen Ronan had gained. Ronan had told him about it in September or October. Almost four months later, Ronan was pretty sure he'd gained the quarantine twenty-five. He hadn't mentioned that to Gansey yet.

"I'm not worried," Ronan answered shortly.

He was a little worried. His photos on Tinder were of a Ronan with a trim, tapered waist and a flat stomach. While there was still some taper to Ronan's waist, it wasn't the shoulder-to-hip triangle it once was thanks to the gym and hauling kegs around at work. Now it was more of an upside down isosceles trapezoid.

As for his stomach–

It wasn't flat anymore. It wasn't quite a beer gut, but it was a potbelly. A soft mound that stuck out in front of Ronan unless he sucked it in. It was enough that, when he put on jeans instead of sweatpants, he had to button them under his belly, and that was in jeans a size larger than what he'd been wearing before the pandemic.

"You look fine. You look good," Gansey said easily, even though the last photo Ronan had sent to Gansey was a close up of his elbow that looked like a butt. "Tell me about Adam."

At the beginning of the pandemic, Adam had cobbled together various digital jobs he could do from home. He had to financially bridge the gap between the abrupt end of his paid internship and the job he was meant to start post-graduation, so he threw postings up on Craigslist and every other job board he could think of.

In that two-month span, Adam did Latin translations and proofread papers for undergrads. He did some CAD work for a guy who ran a 3D printing shop. There was one minor copy-editing job, work as a model for a digital art class, and a few sessions of online tutoring.

The most lucrative job, though, was a listing he put on Etsy for digital tarot readings.

That was the only thing Adam kept up once he started his post-grad job in May. When he’d started the readings, he was doing about twenty three-card pulls a week for people all around the world. Once he started working full time, he put a quantity limit of four on the listing and reposted every Sunday. It was a quick way to make a hundred extra bucks a week, and Adam wouldn’t say no to that.

He was in the middle of one of his Etsy readings when Ronan called him for the first time.

They’d been texting for two months, and in normal circumstances, it would have been really weird to have not verbally talked to someone he’d been texting with for that long. COVID-19 had thrown normal circumstances out the window almost a year before. Neither Ronan or Adam seemed to be in any rush to get on the phone with one another.

Maybe Ronan sounded like he’d inhaled helium and he was embarrassed by his voice. Maybe he’d never gone through puberty and he sounded like a twelve-year-old. Adam was embarrassed enough about the hint of an accent he still had, so he understood someone being cagey about the way they sounded.

Ronan’s photos definitely made it look like he’d gone through puberty, though.

Maybe he’d butt dialed Adam, who picked up after pushing down his initial confusion. “Ronan?”

“Hey.” Ronan didn’t sound like he’d inhaled helium or hadn’t gone through puberty. His voice had a nice, deep timbre with a hint of grit to it. “Sorry. This okay? You busy?”

“Yeah. This is fine. I’m free.” Adam shut his laptop and slid the three cards he’d drawn closer to it so they wouldn’t distract him. “What’s up?”

“You want to meet. In person. Right?” Ronan asked. “When this is all over? After we're vaxxed?”

Adam let out a breathy laugh. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Alright. Good.” Ronan said shortly. “Thanks.”

He hung up.

Adam held his phone in front of him and looked at the screen, even more confused than before he’d picked up. He waited a few seconds and then slid his thumb across the screen to call Ronan back. It rang once, then twice, then a third time before Ronan accepted the call. “Hi.”

“Can I ask what that was about?”

“Just wanted to make sure you wanted to meet me, too.”

“Oh. Okay.” Adam smiled faintly. This tracked with what he’d noticed with Ronan’s texts, which were mostly short, stilted things until he got a roll about something he liked and they’d turn into screen-long, grammatically correct messages. “I’m not doing anything right now. Do you wanna talk?”

There was silence down the line until Ronan said, “Yeah. I do.”

Tarot could wait.

Ronan had too much food between himself and his laptop.

Do you want to go on a date with me? Adam had texted a few nights before.

Ronan didn't know Adam really well yet, but he knew Adam well enough to know that Adam was living a more shut-in life than Ronan during the pandemic. The week before, he'd told Ronan he went out to Walgreens because Instacart had forgotten the dish soap he'd ordered with his groceries and that it was the first time he'd left his apartment in two and a half weeks.

Adam asking Ronan on a date confused him, until Adam followed up with, Not like a date date. Not an in person date. Like a Zoom date.

What the fuck is a Zoom date? Ronan sent him back.

We eat dinner together. Over Zoom.

They'd set up a date and time that worked for both of them, even though both their social calendars were empty. It felt like it brought back some semblance of regular dating. It gave Ronan something to anticipate.

Adam had sent the Zoom invitation via email and Ronan added it to his calendar. He carefully decided on where to order dinner from so it wouldn't be something too messy to eat on camera.

But now he had one of his standard orders from NaanWise Indian Cuisine spread out on his kitchen table and Ronan realized that the amount of food was way more than what he would have eaten on a first date before COVID.

Arranged between Ronan and his laptop, there was a mixed platter of pakora, an order of pani puri, coconut chicken curry with a heaping side of rice, two huge pieces of naan, and a large mango lassi.

Ronan could not eat this much food in front of Adam. Not when it was the first time he'd actually see Adam on camera.

It was a normal dinner for Ronan during the pandemic, two appetizers, an entire entree, and sides. It hadn't been normal at the start of things in March 2020, but after eleven months of near-daily takeout, he wasn't usually satisfied until he'd eaten enough for two people.

All the restaurants in a three-block radius knew his telephone number and called him by name when he ordered. The delivery men and women were the only people he regularly interacted with in-person. He was frequently given extra food at no charge when the kitchen messed up an order around the same time as his.

Over the course of the pandemic, all the restaurants had started giving him three sets of plastic utensils and then four.

If that wasn't a testament to how much Ronan had for dinner every day, he didn't know what was.

That combined with the roll of fat around his hips. And his thicker thighs. And his bigger ass.

Ronan slid the pakora platter behind his laptop and put one of the pieces of naan on top of it. He'd wrap them up later and put them in the fridge. For once, he'd eat them tomorrow.

Food hidden, he reached out and clicked the link Adam had sent him. A screen popped up for him to test his camera and audio settings and Ronan looked at the little preview of what his camera would show Adam.

The image on the screen looked enough like himself.

Ronan looked like he did in the photos on his Tinder profile, mostly. The camera on his laptop just added a few pounds. He didn't think it was enough for Adam to notice. As long as he didn't stand up, Adam wouldn’t see the worst of it.

Figuring it wasn't going to get any better, Ronan clicked the button to enter the meeting. He had to wait a few seconds for Adam to admit him, and then there Adam was.

He had his bottom lip between his teeth as he fiddled with something on his computer, but when he noticed Ronan was on the screen, his fair eyebrows rose and his teeth released his lip so he could smile a little. "Oh. Hi."

"Hi,” Ronan replied.

His heart thumped in his chest.

Ronan had studied Adam’s photos on Tinder repeatedly. They were as good as burned into the backs of his eyelids. He’d even pulled them up a few times when he was in bed and he’d let his hand sneak down beneath his sheets.

Seeing this living, breathing Adam was something else entirely and Ronan couldn’t tear his eyes away from Adam’s face. It looked like he was in his kitchen, and the light coming in through an off-screen window made him look like he was glowing, like he was a Caravaggio or Rubens chiaroscuro.

As Ronan was looking at Adam, Adam was looking back, so Ronan didn’t feel like a complete gawking asshole. He only hoped Adam thought he was as attractive on camera as Ronan was currently finding Adam.

The staring continued for a very awkward length of time, thirty seconds or a minute, until Ronan said, “Well. This is fucking awkward.”

Adam hesitated and then burst into laughter, loud peals that flooded through the speakers of Ronan’s laptop.

The ice broke after that.

They formally introduced themselves. They tipped their beer bottles towards their cameras and virtually clinked them together.

Then they ate.

"What're you having?" Adam asked, fork poised in his long fingers as he looked at his camera.

"Indian. Coconut chicken curry. There's a really good place near me that delivers." Ronan reached forward and tilted his laptop's camera down so Adam could see his decreased spread. He made sure he didn't shift the camera too far so it could see below the plane of his tabletop. When he'd righted his laptop screen, Ronan nodded towards the bowl in front of Adam. "What about you?"

"Korean. Pork and kimchi udon noodles." Adam lifted his bowl and tipped it towards his camera.

It was full of thick noodles that glistened with a spicy-looking orange sauce and wound around chunks of seared pork belly. An over-easy egg rested on top, the yolk shiny, bright, and yellow. Everything was sprinkled with sesame seeds, white and black, and thinly-sliced scallions.

Ronan's mouth watered as he looked at Adam's dinner. He'd have to get the name of the restaurant. The Korean place by his apartment was good, but nothing looked as good as what was in front of Adam. "You must have a good take-out place nearby."

Adam shook his head. "No. I made this. Even the udon. I've been teaching myself how to cook in lockdown."

Ronan already found Adam hot. Adam knowing how to cook made him even hotter.

"Yeah? Tell me about it."

After their first few Zoom dates, Adam suggested coordinating their dinners. Not all the time, but every once in a while. Ronan could choose, Adam had said, so he could still get takeout, which offered Adam the opportunity to try cooking something new.

"Fuck that. How is that fair to you?" Ronan complained. "I get to call in an order for my pad ga prao, wonton shrimp soup, and pineapple fried rice and you have to spend hours cooking it? Nope."

Adam laughed, "You lost me at the wonton soup, but I would have tried the other two."

"They're fucking delicious. Bangkok Thai Dining. I recommend it." Adam could hear both a smirk and pride in Ronan's voice.

Everything Ronan had eaten while they'd had dinner together via camera had looked mouthwatering. From the Indian on their first Zoom date to the platter of Ethiopian food and injera he'd had on their last one, Ronan cleared his plate, so the food must have been good. After the date when Ronan had Ethiopian, Adam found a recipe for sourdough injera and made Ethiopian food for the first time.

He was sure it wasn't close to what a restaurant would have made, but it was damn good. Adam barely had anything leftover to save for lunch.

Salivating at the thought of Ethiopian food again, Adam asked, "What do you want, then?"

Ronan made exaggerated thinking noises for a few seconds before replying, "Grilled cheese. And tomato soup."

"Are you a six-year-old?"

"No, but I have the cooking skills of one."

Adam didn't mind grilled cheese and tomato soup. It was something he'd made himself repeatedly over the course of lockdown. He'd slice his sourdough, slather the pieces in butter, load them with all types of cheeses and fillings, and grill them to golden perfection in his cast iron skillet.

His process had developed over the months and had become more time-consuming. His sandwiches had become more elaborate. He'd also moved on from canned soup to making that on his own.

Which is why, on the evening of their grilled cheese date, Adam was running late.

"Sorry," he shouted in the direction of his laptop when he heard Ronan join their meeting. Adam had started it so he didn't leave Ronan waiting, but had run back to his stove to finish his sandwich. "The cheese isn't melting as fast as I thought it would. It should be almost done."

"Shit," Ronan's voice rang through Adam's kitchen through his laptop speakers. "What kind of cheese are you using?"

"Havarti," Adam told him. "What did you use?"

"Kraft singles. Like you're supposed to."

Adam laughed and checked his grilled cheese one more time, determining the havarti was finally melted enough for him. He plated the sandwich and ladled himself a bowl of tomato soup from the pot on his stove. Then Adam finally walked to his table and sat down in front of his laptop with his dinner.

Ronan was already on the screen, and his face lit up when Adam slid back his camera cover.

"Sorry," Adam apologized again.

"You're a horrible date." Ronan smirked and his eyes slid down to Adam's grilled cheese. The slices of sourdough had been from the middle of the boule and the sandwich took up almost all of Adam's plate. Cheese and fillings oozed out around the edges. "Jesus shit, I want that one. Not these."

Ronan gestured to his plate and the two sandwiches on it. The bread was an upgrade from white squares of Wonder bread, but it was definitely the artificial yellow orange of Kraft singles that seeped from between the slices.

"But you have two," Adam pointed out as he grabbed his knife and cut his sandwich in half. He made a show of lifting the two pieces and separating them and Ronan stared at the strings of melted cheese stretching between them.

"The fuck else is in that? That's not just cheese."

"Bacon, caramelized onions, and Dijon"

Ronan jabbed his finger at Adam through his camera. "You're making that for me when we meet."

"Deal." Adam grinned before taking a huge bite of his grilled cheese.

"Now you're just showing off."

They were having pizza night and the pizza Ronan was looking at on the screen of his laptop was one of the best pizzas he'd had the privilege of seeing.

Ronan had seen a lot of pizzas. The number had grown exponentially since the beginning of the pandemic. The number of pizzas he'd eaten had grown exponentially.

But none of them had looked like what Adam had made for himself.

The pizza in front of Adam had a crisp crust and instead of shredded cheese, he'd sliced mozzarella and laid the pieces out in a circle over a thick layer of tomato sauce. The cheese had bubbled and browned a little, spreading towards the edges of the pizza. Basil leaves punctuated the melted cheese.

"You just said pizza night," Adam said, a wry twist to his lips. "You didn't provide qualifications for the pizza."

Ronan nodded towards Adam's pizza. "You're gonna make that for me, too, right?"

"Yeah. Of course. If you're nice, maybe I'll even put your favorite toppings on it."

"For the record–" Ronan pulled a slice of pizza out of the box he'd put off camera so Adam couldn't see he'd already eaten two slices "–I like pepperoni and sausage."

Pre-COVID, Adam didn’t drink at home often.

He'd keep a six pack in his fridge and maybe a bottle of wine, plus slow-dwindling bottles of standards like gin, whisky, and vodka, but his alcohol intake was usually at bars. In the best of times, he wasn't a huge drinker. He might have had a couple beers one or two nights a week. If he was feeling fancy, he might have gotten a cocktail. It was never enough to concern him.

It still wasn't, but the night or two a week had turned into every night. His couple of beers had turned into a solid three each evening, sometimes four, which wasn’t helping the growing paunch on his belly. The paunch was enough to push and squeeze it into a pillow of fat below his belly button that morning. When Adam let it go, it spread out, but his belly was still a noticeable curve above the rolled waistband of his sweatpants. The crease that ran through the middle of it when he sat down had gotten deeper.

He needed to cut back on beer. He needed to cut back on bread. First responders and people with vulnerable immune systems were getting vaccinated and it wouldn’t be long before vaccines were rolled out to the general public. It wasn’t going to be long before he’d be able to meet Ronan. It wasn’t going to be long before he couldn’t hide any weight he’d gained under hoodies and thick sweaters.

Adam didn’t want Ronan to see this version of himself.

That didn’t stop Adam from taking Ronan up on an offer to create a bespoke cocktail just for Adam on one of their semiweekly Zoom dates.

Talent for talent. Ronan had texted. Tell me what liquor and mixers you have. Ill make you a drink and you read my tarot cards.

Adam had laughed at the offer and responded, You think tarot is hocus pocus bullshit.

That was before I knew you were a professional. Whats in your liquor cabinet?

Making a hundred dollars a week doing emailed readings hardly qualified Adam as a professional tarot reader, but he appreciated Ronan's belief in his capabilities.

Adam sent Ronan a picture of his few spirits and texted a list of mixers he had in his fridge. A few hours later, they were on Zoom and Ronan was guiding Adam through mixing what had to be the easiest cocktail ever: scotch, lime juice, and ginger beer over ice and topped with a lime wedge. Ronan had been off-screen for most of the mixology lesson, just his hands, the ingredients and his glass on camera so Adam could see exactly what to do.

Taking a sip once he’d finished mixing, Adam looked approvingly at the drink Ronan had created for him. “That’s really good.”

“I call it the Van Nessy,” Ronan said as Adam watched his hands slit his lime wedge and put it on the rim of his glass. “Get it? Because you live in Van Ness and it’s got scotch in it, and Loch–”

“I get it,” Adam laughed, holding the cocktail in one hand as he grabbed his laptop off his kitchen counter. He padded into his living room and set his drink and laptop down on his coffee table, tilting the screen of the computer down for a second while he decided where to sit for Ronan’s tarot reading. “Sorry, give me a second. I have to grab my cards.”

“Yeah, take your time.”

Adam still had one of his hoodies on, but his couch was deep and he worried his expanded waist would be noticeable when he was sitting back or when he had to lean over and draw cards. He would look stupid if he went back into his kitchen to sit at the table in there, so Adam thought for a moment while he retrieved his tarot deck from his bookshelf before pulling his coffee table out a little, sitting down on the floor in the space between it and the couch.

When he put the screen of his laptop upright again, Ronan was in an eerily similar position, only visible from the chest up. Ronan laughed when he saw Adam. “Alright. Like we’re actually sitting across from one another.”

“Yeah, guess so.” Adam smiled and took a long sip of his drink before sliding his tarot cards from their pouch. “You ready?”

“Yep. Read my future.” Ronan grinned savagely at his computer’s camera.

“That’s not how these work.” Adam shook his head as he shuffled, a smile toying at the corner of his lips. “They’re to guide, not to prophesize.”

“Then guide me.”

“What do you want guidance on?”

Ronan drew his dark eyebrows together for a few seconds before they smoothed out and he looked into his camera. “What happens after all this COVID shit is gone?”

“Kinda broad, but okay.” Adam shuffled a few more times and then set his deck face-down on the coffee table. He cut it in half, flipped one card from the top of each stack, and laughed loudly.

“My life’s not a joke, Adam,” Ronan said dryly.

“Mine isn’t, either.” Adam picked up the first card and held it up to the camera so Ronan could see. On a background of a purple so deep it was almost black, a cream-colored, raven-masked man stood barefoot in the snow in a glade of wintry pine trees. He thrust a sword upward into the gaping, toothed beak of a swan descending from the top of the edge card. The bottom of the card read Knight of Swords. “Remember this one?”

Ronan narrowed his eyes for a second before his eyebrows shot up. “That’s me.”

“Yep.” Adam set the Knight of Swords down and picked up the other card. He looked at it for a moment, at the inky dark, star-speckled profile of a man dropping a girl from one hand into the other against a background of a bright, full moon. Then he held it up to his camera.

Leaning closer to his screen, Ronan read the name of the card out loud, “The Magician.”

Adam kept the card up, running his thumb along the bottom edge. “Since I started reading, this one’s always meant me.”

Ronan was quiet for a few seconds as he let that sink in. Then he said, “And you told me this shit doesn’t predict the future.”

Movie night was Ronan's idea.

He'd become a self-professed film connoisseur during lockdown. Familial money meant he didn't need to find a job to replace his bartender gig that came to a hard stop when the pandemic started. When restrictions eased and bars reopened, Ronan didn't need much convincing to wait out going back to work until things were back to normal.

Whatever normal was now.

The logistics of movie night, however, were not something Ronan had thought about.

Adam hadn't either.

"How do you want to do this?" he asked Ronan over the phone when they'd settled on watching Blade Runner because Adam had never seen it and neither of them objected to a young Harrison Ford.

"Well, you have a TV, right?"

Adam gave Ronan one of the long pauses that Ronan thought were Adam internally struggling with how he'd let himself get tangled up with a jackass like Ronan. "Yes, I have a TV. I'm not a luddite."

"How would I know?" Ronan asked, mocking defensiveness. "The most I've seen of your place has been in the thirty percent of your screen not taken up by your head."

"I'll try not to take that as an insult about my head size." Adam laughed. "Do you want a tour?"

"Show me where the magic happens."

Adam switched the call to FaceTime and Ronan got comfortable on his couch as Adam took him on a tour of his apartment. It was exactly what Ronan had expected, neat and orderly without a thing out of place. It was sparsely decorated without many personal touches, but the few personal touches screamed Adam.

Every windowsill held plants. His bookshelf was full to the point it was overflowing. In his kitchen, his sourdough starter had a place of prominence on his counter.

"This is Tibreadianus," Adam said as he held his camera so Ronan could see the bubbly starter in its glass jar.

"Tibread– You're a nerd. You know that, right? He only has, like, five poems."

"I'd say you're a nerd if you know that."

After Adam's kitchen, he virtually walked Ronan down his hallway and turned into his bedroom, standing just inside the door as he panned the camera around. "This is where the magic isn't happening."

Ronan was following what Adam was saying until he wasn't. Because when Adam stopped panning his camera, it was focused diagonally across his bed, and the only thing Ronan had eyes for was Adam's reflection in the mirror on the other side of the room.

In the two months they'd been virtually hanging out, this was the first time Ronan had seen Adam from head to toe. Computer and phone screens weren't optimal for capturing all of a six-foot-one guy in Adam's case, two inches more in Ronan's. They'd both been talking heads and chests so far.

Ronan was hesitant to let Adam see anything below that. He’d been careful with camera angles and kept everything above where his stomach started to swell not far beneath his chest.

Because that’s what his stomach did now. Swell. He’d always worn his t-shirts a size or two too large as part of an aesthetic he didn’t admit to having, and the shirts that had been a size too big now fit perfectly. Shirts two sizes up weren’t anywhere near as loose as they had been.

It wasn’t really a problem for Ronan. He didn’t want it to be a problem for Adam.

Adam, who he should probably tell that he now had a gut. And thicker thighs. And a bigger ass.

Adam, whose reflection Ronan couldn't stop staring at.

Adam looked good. Better than good. Adam looked great. Adam looked fucking hot.

His hair was a little messy and he looked comfortably cozy in loose sweatpants and a slightly faded MIT hoodie. He looked relaxed. He looked real.

"Ronan? Did you freeze? Did I freeze?"

"Oh, shit." Ronan snapped himself out of his staring. "No. Sorry. I was looking at you."

"Looking at–" Adam lifted his head from his phone and saw what Ronan had been looking at. He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot and tugged at the front of his hoodie, pulling it away from his body. The lighting in his bedroom wasn’t great, but Ronan thought his cheeks turned pink. "Oh."

"You look good. Like, really good. Really, really good."

Adam stepped around his bed, keeping his front-facing camera on and holding his phone at chest level so Ronan could see his face in the mirror as he approached and stopped in front of it. He parted his lips like he was going to say something then closed them and hesitated before he finally said, "I don't think you'd say that if you actually got my clothes off."

"I'd definitely say that if I got your clothes off," Ronan told him lowly. Adam was the hottest guy he’d ever seen. If Ronan ever had the opportunity to see Adam naked, Ronan would probably nut untouched.

Adam's eyes darkened a little. He dropped his gaze from his reflection to the screen of his phone and Ronan saw his throat bob. Adam asked, "Do you want to get my clothes off?"

Ronan's heart started pounding, slowly gaining speed like a steam engine leaving a station. At that moment, he could think of nothing he wanted more. "Yeah, I wanna get your clothes off."

Adam ran his tongue over his bottom lip. His voice was heady, half-wrecked as he said, "No camera."

"Whatever you want." Ronan was already scrambling off of his couch. His downstairs neighbor probably hated him for practically running to his bedroom.

They didn’t have a movie night.

Adam had never received as many text messages in a row as he did during the first hour of a weekly staff meeting that was only two hours long but felt like it went all afternoon.

He’d purposely left his phone just out of reach so he wasn’t tempted to check email or reddit while someone droned on about operational metrics. It was a cameras on meeting, which violated his privacy, but he was the most junior employee on staff and wasn’t in a place to question the requirement. He just masked his background, muted his microphone, and snacked on a batch of spicy sourdough discard cheese crackers he’d baked the night before.

The quick buzzes of texts never turned into the long buzzes of a call, so he knew there wasn’t some emergency, but the frequency of the texts meant it could only be Blue or Ronan. No one else liked Adam enough to send ten or fifteen texts in such quick succession.

When the meeting finally paused for a bio break after the first hour, Adam shut his camera off and made a grab for his phone.

He had texts from Blue and Ronan.

Blue had only sent one: YEAH BITCH, GOT MY VAX APPOINTMENT!

Ronan had sent twelve.

The first text was a screenshot of an email confirming a vaccination appointment for April 18th through the Virginia Department of Health.

The rest were gloating. First that Washington, D.C. wasn't opening up appointments to healthy adults until May 1st, so Adam would have to wait. Then that Ronan was scheduled for the Johnson & Johnson shot, so he'd only need one dose.

Ronan's text string culminated with the middle finger emoji and Adam rolled his eyes while he smiled.

How? he texted Ronan back. You live in DC.

Three dots popped up almost immediately, stopped, and then Adam received a photo of Ronan's driver's license. It listed an address in Alexandria.

Permanent address is my brothers place in VA. Suck it.

Adam very much wanted to suck it. After they were both fully vaccinated.

Hearing his meeting pick back up through the ear pieces of his headphones, Adam threw himself in his desk chair and put them back over his head. Before turning his camera on, he texted Ronan, Lucky bastard.

Adam propped his phone screen-up near his monitors so he could see any responses from Ronan come in without being too obvious. Just before the screen went dark, he saw the sly face emoji come through. Adam had to push a few of his crackers into his mouth to occupy it so it didn't break out into a crazy grin that made him look like a lunatic to his co-workers.

Adam had gotten his first dose of the Moderna vaccine the day before and when Ronan had talked to him a few hours later, he'd been okay. His arm was a little tender, but that was the only thing he'd mentioned.

Twenty-four hours had wrought change. Not great change, but enough to make Adam a little ornery.

Ronan liked this grumpy, horny version of Adam. He laughed loud and long before replying.

Ronan read Adam's text a few times before he tapped the button to call him from their text thread. He didn't even let Adam get a word in before saying, "Why'd you get vaccinated in your right arm, idiot?"

"It was all just kind of shock and awe at the clinic," Adam answered curtly.

"So a nurse invaded you like we invaded Iraq."

Adam snorted. "No. Shock that I was within two feet of another human being for the first time in forever and awe because it means we only have six weeks left."

"There's more than six weeks left in this pandemic," Ronan said pointedly.

"Yeah, anti-vaxxers are going to see to that." Adam's voice was heavy with disdain. "But after my second dose and the two-week wait for effectiveness, we don't have to Zoom date anymore."

Just the thought of this made Ronan incandescently happy. Over six months after Ronan accidentally opened Tinder and matched with Adam, here he was. Incandescently happy to finally meet the guy he was mad about. In six more weeks. "What do you want to do?"

"Anything. Nothing." Adam sounded wistful. "Everything."

Adam shouldn’t have waited until the morning of his first in-person date with Ronan to try and find something to wear.

Pre-pandemic, he’d had a rotation of date outfits. They were clothes nicer than the worn out jeans and t-shirts he’d typically wear around his apartment, but not nice enough to wear to work. There were designated date jeans in dark washes and plaid button ups worn alone or over t-shirts if the date was something more casual. If something fancier was needed, he had dress pants and a nice cashmere sweater he’d thrifted when he was an undergrad.

All of those clothes had been in drawers for over a year.

If he hadn’t waited, Adam would have had enough time to order new clothes so he could look put-together. Adam wanted to make a good impression now that Ronan was finally able to see him outside of a Zoom meeting or a FaceTime call.

Except Adam wouldn’t look put-together and wouldn’t make a good impression.

Because none of his pre-pandemic clothes fit, date or not.

They did fit in the sense that Adam could put them on his body and he could button most of them.

They did not fit in the sense that the pants Adam was able to button had to be pulled down below the bulge of his lower belly and his hips rounded out over the top of the waistbands. His button up shirts were tight across his stomach and waist if he buttoned them and the arms were snug enough they restricted his movement a little. If Adam left them unbuttoned and wore a t-shirt, the t-shirt clung to his belly and the dip of his navel was evident. In June in Washington, D.C., he’d look like a jackass in a sweater, so he didn’t even bother to try.

Resigned, he found the t-shirt that clung least and was long enough to cover the way he had to wear his chinos below his belly and put on a button up that matched it, leaving the buttons undone. Then Adam stood in front of his mirror.

What he saw wasn’t what he wanted Ronan to see.

Adam had gained weight during the pandemic. He didn’t deny it. It was enough for Blue to notice and comment on occasionally. There was more belly for him to wash in the shower. He took up more space in his desk chair. Even his sweatpants, already forgiving, fit differently than they had in March 2020.

He just didn’t expect it to be significant enough that his regular clothes didn’t fit.

The button up he’d put on did a decent job covering the way his t-shirt hugged his hips where they spilled over his pants. It couldn’t hide his gut though.

Adam’s once-flat stomach now had an obvious outward curve. The roundest part of it pushed out his t-shirt. Turning to the side, his belly was visible past the open button up hanging loose at his sides. Adam sucked in and it disappeared, but as soon as he relaxed, there it was again. It was soft when he poked at it and when he shook it experimentally, it wobbled.

Turning back towards the mirror, Adam looked at the rest of himself. His plaid shirt was a little tight around his upper arms, warping the lines of the pattern. His chinos were snugger around his thighs, and when he twisted to look behind him, they were snugger on his ass, too. He probably wasn’t going to be able to put his wallet and phone in his back pockets.

Adam didn’t have a scale, but he’d bet he put on the quarantine fifteen. More likely the quarantine twenty.

He wasn’t going to cancel on Ronan until he got new clothes. They’d waited too long for that. First the six months until they could get vaccinated. Then the month between Adam’s doses. Then the two weeks afterward for it to be effective.

This just wasn’t what he wanted Ronan to see in the flesh for the first time. This tubby Adam whose clothes didn’t fit right.

He’d fully understand if Ronan, who was expecting the lean Adam from the photos on his Tinder profile, didn’t want to see him again.

Adam needed to warn Ronan. Set the expectation that the Adam who was showing up for coffee wasn’t the Adam in his photos. Adam had enough decency to at least do that.

Checking his watch, he saw it was about forty-five minutes until their date. He’d have to leave soon to catch the Metro to make it to DuPont Circle on time, but it was at least enough time to give Ronan a fair warning.

Adam grabbed his phone from his bedside table and took an extra second before unlocking it. He pulled up his text thread with Ronan and before he could overthink it, Adam started texting:

Ronan stared at the screen of his phone.

“What the fuck?” Ronan asked his empty apartment. “What the actual fuck?”

Adam and Ronan had been having Zoom dates twice a week for almost five months. They’d FaceTimed almost as often. The guy Ronan had seen on his screens looked a hell of a lot like the guy in the photos on Tinder.

There was no way someone had catfished him for that long. If someone had, props to them, because they had obviously put in a lot of time and effort to get Ronan in hook, line, and sinker using a stand-in who happened to meet all of Ronan’s qualifications in a guy.

Ronan didn’t think Adam was catfishing. Adam seemed more real than anyone Ronan had ever met.

They hadn’t even met met, though. They’d been meeting digitally and textually and virtually and telephonically for months, but that morning was the first time they’d get to meet meet. Ronan had been counting down the days since Adam’s second Moderna shot.

The screen of his phone had gone dark while he’d been contemplating whether he’d been catfished or not, and Ronan unlocked it so he could text Adam back.

Three dots appeared almost immediately and responses came in quickly.

Different could mean a lot of stuff.

Adam could have legs covered in horrible scars. Ronan had never seen Adam’s legs outside of sweatpants.

Ronan thought he could probably deal with that.

Maybe Adam had a whole body suit of bad tattoos. Ronan had never seen Adam’s upper body outside of hoodies.

Ronan could probably deal with that, too.

Plus, Ronan didn’t really look like his photos anymore, either, so he couldn’t really judge.

He texted Adam back.

Ronan pushed his phone into the pocket of his new jeans and looked at himself in the mirror one last time.

He was out of sweats and back in one of his Ronan-Lynch-doesn’t-have-and-aesthetic aestheic outfits, a pair of black skinny jeans, a black t-shirt a size too large, and his Doc Martens, the only thing about the outfit that wasn’t new. He’d at least had the idea to order new clothes so he had something that fit when he met Adam.

He was just undeniably larger.

His jawline was a hair softer, his cheeks a bit fuller. The t-shirt he wore skimmed his rounded belly, but he could still see it. Even the way his chest had gone a little soft and peaky was visible. His tight jeans hugged thicker thighs and when he turned to the side to check out his ass, he was at least pleased it had rounded out instead of spreading to the sides.

It wasn’t the Ronan Lynch he’d wanted Adam to see for the first time in person, but he was crossing his fingers that Adam liked him enough for it to not matter too much. Preferably to not matter at all. If it did, he’d fully understand if Adam, who was expecting the lean Ronan from the photos on his Tinder profile, didn’t want to see him again.

In any case, there was nothing he could do about it in forty-five minutes.

Grabbing his wallet and his keys, Ronan shoved them in various pockets. Then he masked up and left to go meet Adam.

Adam sat in a white metal chair at a sidewalk table outside of Emissary, a coffeehouse near DuPont Circle, and he couldn’t keep still. His blunt fingernails tapped on the tabletop. His knee bounced up and down. He curled his fingers into fists and pressed his heel into the ground, but as soon as he relaxed, the movement started again.

He didn’t get nervous on first dates.

This wasn’t a first date.

He just liked Ronan so much that he didn’t want twenty more pounds of Adam to matter.

“Adam?”

Adam looked up from watching his impatient fingers and there was Ronan, six feet away.

For a moment, Adam’s lungs collapsed in on themselves. He’d had six months to prepare himself for this exact moment, but no amount of preparation would have prevented Adam’s rapid oxygen loss.

Ronan was so Ronan, there in his black jeans, his black t-shirt, his black boots, his black mask, his hands shoved insolently into his pockets. He was bigger, huskier, but he looked more like a Ronan than his Tinder photos. Like this was the Ronan he was meant to be, confident and cocky. Thicker. Hotter.

He wasn’t the Ronan Adam was expecting. He was better.

“Hi,” Adam managed to say as he finally got his lungs back into operation.

He didn’t even think how he looked as he pushed himself to his feet and stood in front of Ronan.

“Hey,” Ronan replied. Adam thought he was grinning behind his mask.

Adam was grinning behind his own.

They reached up at almost the exact same time and pulled their masks off. There was a brief moment of staring before they both cursed.

“Shit.”

“Fuck.”

Then they were meeting in the middle and Adam was hugging someone for the first time in fifteen months. He was hugging Ronan, who felt so real and so solid in Adam’s arms and Adam wanted to stay on the sidewalk outside that cafe holding him for a very long time.

Adam didn’t know what he’d been worried about. His belly felt so nice pressed into Ronan’s.

Ronan’s meaty arms were firm around his shoulders as he spoke in Adam’s ear, “I want to kiss you so bad, but it feels fucking wrong to kiss in public right now.”

Laughing, Adam pulled back enough to look at Ronan. “So let’s get coffee to go.”

Somewhere between his front door and the couch, Ronan had lost all of his clothes. Adam had lost most of his, too, but his boxer briefs were still somehow miraculously bunched around his thighs, even after they’d fooled around.

They’d had to squeeze to both fit on Ronan’s couch. Even before the pandemic, they would have had to squeeze, but Ronan liked the extra forced bit of closeness. The hickey blooming on the side of Adam’s belly was evidence of that.

The initial round of hands and lips and hips hadn’t lasted long. All Ronan had known for over a year was his own hand, so when Adam’s hands were finally on him, Ronan was a goner. Even if he didn’t really like Adam’s hands, he would have been a goner.

It was mildly embarrassing, until Adam finished almost as quickly.

Then they’d configured themselves into a position where Adam was half draped over Ronan, his leg hitched up so his thigh pressed into the bottom of Ronan’s stomach. He’d moved his hand around a few times, like he wasn’t sure where Ronan was comfortable with being felt, before he rested it on the top of Ronan’s belly, right below his chest.

Ronan had one arm between Adam’s back and the couch and his fingers spread out over Adam’s ribs. His other hand rested on the one Adam had on his stomach. He’d folded their fingers together.

The two of them had been quiet for a while. Ronan didn’t mind that, either. Just existing in a space that wasn’t liminal or digital was awesome. Getting to see and touch and smell Adam was enough. They’d had over six months of talking. They could talk later.

It was edging into mid-afternoon when Adam finally asked, “Do you mind it?”

When Ronan had put his hand to Adam’s stomach for the first time, Adam had frozen but slowly relaxed after Ronan said he liked it. So Ronan’s answer went towards alleviating any of Adam’s lingering self consciousness. “No, I don’t mind it. I like it. You’re fucking hot.”

“Yeah, you made that clear.” Adam untangled his fingers from Ronan’s and reached down to rub his thumb over the red mark on the soft skin of his stomach. “I meant on you. Do you mind it on you?”

“No,” Ronan replied after thinking for a moment. He hadn’t set out to gain weight, but once he’d started, he hadn’t done anything to stop it. He hadn’t done anything to lose it. It felt good to eat what he wanted. To take up more space. “Do you mind it on me?”

“No,” Adam answered nearly immediately and without any hint of hesitation. “It’s like you’re more–you. Like your photos were Ronan, but right now, you’re Ronan.”

“Big personality, big guy, I guess.” Ronan laughed. Adam returned his hand to Ronan’s belly as it shook. “Do you mind it on you?”

Adam was quiet, pensive for a second before shaking his head. “No. I thought I would, but I don’t. I cooked myself some really good food and I enjoyed every bite. If this is the outcome, it was worth it.”

Ronan made a noise of agreement. “Food’s fucking great.”

“Mm, speaking of food.” Adam pushed himself up onto one arm and looked down at Ronan. A light smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. “I think I owe you grilled cheese and tomato soup.”

Ronan looked back at him and grinned sharply. “I think you owe me a pizza, too.”