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Ronan woke from a nightmare, choking on the dry air of his room, with the front of his shirt damp. He drew a hand over his eyes, as if in hopes of drawing some kind of border between dream and reality. He didn’t waste time yawning or stretching or longing for the bliss of sleep. Ronan never really slept, after all, busying himself with plundering dreams instead.
The reality of his room was mediocre and got worse still when Gansey’s talentless singing reached Ronan’s ears from the bathroom. Chainsaw wasn’t around. Otherwise, she would be joyously cawing along. Ronan’s fingers itched to pet her head good morning. Everything got worse at night and the only way he could make it back into the world every day were the secret little rituals, the snippets of affection that nobody saw.
Without bothering to make his bed (that way it looked actually slept in, homely even, when there weren’t sweat stains on the sheets), Ronan stumbled out of it and made the effort to search for clean socks. Once he located a pair, Gansey had to be battled in order to gain access to the bathroom. Grumbling and looking not so presidential in his cow print pyjamas (a gift from his sister that Ronan wanted to photograph and spread for the world to see), that he managed to look handsome in anyway, Gansey trudged into the kitchen and plugged in a hair dryer there.
“Hello to you as well?”, Ronan snickered, his voice overflowing with the pleasure that he derived from Gansey’s suffering.
Gansey only moaned in response. The golden boy in him didn’t wake for morning toiletries, apparently.
It took Ronan exactly seven minutes to get out of the shower. If he realised that not half an hour from now he would be kissing Adam Parrish, maybe it would take him nine. Maybe he would stare into the mirror, trembling with want and uncertainty. Maybe he would brush his teeth more thoroughly, too.
When he put on his underwear and pulled up his pants, there was something on the fogged mirror. A note.
Have a nice day xx Noah
Ronan rolled his eyes. For the first fourteen times, it creeped him out to find these messages. Partly because it was tough to get used to one of his best friends being a ghost and partly because that may have meant Ronan’s dead friend liked to watch him in the shower.
Now he just hoped Noah appreciated his ass as much as he would expect it.
“Toast?”, Gansey offered when Ronan left the bathroom. He was already dressed in his impeccable uniform, an apron tied neatly on his back to prevent staining.
Seven-minute metamorphoses from a complete wreck to probably-the-next-president were Gansey’s specialty.
“Nah. You look cute in that apron, though, is it new?”, Ronan went into his room and once he failed to find a shirt that his mom friend would accept as presentable, he took one from Gansey’s wardrobe, disregarding the owner’s fiery protests. They used the same washing powder and fabric softener (okay, only Gansey used those, because only Gansey actually did laundry at Monmouth), same soap and shaving cream. But Gansey’s shirt still smelled different than Ronan’s.
Maybe it was because Ronan’s shirts always seemed to soak up a bit of Adam’s smell when they had the chance.
“I’m going to get Parrish.”
Gansey nodded, looking into his phone.
“Don’t be late.”, he said absentmindedly. He was probably ordering some new weird equipment for hunting Glendower. Or texting his mother about another one of her fund raisers. He could just as well been consulting the ministry of finance about next year’s budget, too.
Ronan left him to it and ran down Monmouth’s stairs.
With his window down and fingers drumming against his BMW’s wheel, Ronan savoured the morning emptiness of the streets of Henrietta. He inhaled the fresh air, the smell of earth radiating with mid-spring heat, and dried up grass and the expectation of seeing Adam. He kept all this in his lungs for a moment and exhaled through his mouth.
Adam called it his smoker breathing. Ronan called it his Adam breathing. But he did sometimes wonder, if Adam would think he looks hot with a cigarette in his mouth. If Ronan did say so himself, Adam definitely would. The ash would match his dustiness. Maybe if his fingers got used to it, they would touch Ronan more often. Ronan was nothing more than ash and coal and dust, kept together with anger, insults and want.
Minutes passed. He let himself into the tiny room above St. Agnes.
“Morning, Parrish.”, everything went as it usually did. He looked around the room. The mattress that Adam slept on was still warm. It wasn’t very old, but neither was it good quality, so just a few months of using it left curves and dimples where Adam’s body would sink into it and let it absorb his exhaustion.
When he looked at it, Ronan wanted to throw it away and offer Adam his own bed, his own skin to sleep in.
There wasn’t much more than the mattress in the place. A chair and multi-purpose cardboard Ikea boxes. Some of them were turned upside down and served as cupboards or tiny tables. On one of them there were already two mugs with coffee.
Adam always made two, but Ronan sometimes wished they shared one. All places where Adam’s lips have been seemed more than they were before. Fuller and more sacred.
“Morning!”, Adam called back. Every sensory cell in Ronan went into hyperactive state, now that he once again received evidence that Adam exists and is near him. Adam walked out of the bathroom.
His eyelids were heavy with too little sleep. His hair tousled by the memory of the softness of his bed sheets. His mouth dry, a toothbrush sticking out from it.
Ronan stared. He didn’t even try to stop himself. Even in this state, where every inch of his pale skin and every freckle screamed that he’s too tired and hungry to actually notice the world around him, Adam was otherworldly and it was beautiful. There was something about the way he carried himself that made everything else insignificant.
He was seventeen, sleep-deprived, too skinny, his back was permanently hunched from carrying too much expectation wherever he went, with scraped elbows and circles under his eyes. Broken, patched up and then shattered again. Ronan wanted nothing else if there was Adam Parrish to look at.
“What?”, Adam knew there was nothing on his face or his undershirt, or his slacks. Nothing was wrong. And yet Ronan kept looking at him. It didn’t bother Adam. He just had to ask it, he had to say something, just so it didn’t escape his mouth that he wants those dangerous eyes on him all the time.
There were two things in the whole of Adam Parrish’s nothing that, just by the look of them, were treated with more respect than anything else, his only hopes, bridges that could lead his way out of feeling worthless.
The two things were perfectly ironed and placed on hangers. There was no wardrobe, so the hangers were on doorknobs. All of Adam’s other clothes were dumped in one of the boxes on the floor.
One of the things was Adam’s Aglionby shirt. The only thing about it that gave away its second-hand provenience was, paradoxically, its perfect condition. Aglionby boys had enough of those quality cotton shirts to throw away after one use or at least not to worry how they looked. Adam realised that his was the only shirt that had a stitch on it after one of the seams tore in the right sleeve. He was the only student at Aglionby, who actually gave any thought to what his uniform looked like and what temperature it can be washed in.
The shirt was perfectly clean and perfectly good to wear. And yet every single thing that Adam ever did to make it so stung his eyes when he looked at it. He grabbed it with caution and put it on.
The other thing was his suit. His one and only black suit, with a waistcoat and a dress shirt that needed cufflinks, that he wore when he kept Gansey company on his outings. Adam’s potential future employers were invited to such parties and a Gansey was probably the best choice of person to show up with anywhere. Adam should take every opportunity to go.
But when he did, all he really thought about was how clumsily his fingers wrap around a champagne flute, how the drawn out vowels in his yessir’s and nicetomeetyou’s screamed HENRIETTA into the faces of snobs that could one day be paying him his salary. How they can see that all the clothes that he has on put together are less than five hundred dollars, labels spelling out C H E A P to their expert eyes guarded by designer-framed glasses against his small-town presence contaminating the room.
Gansey realised all of that. Ronan knew that, too. And of all the purposes that were assigned to Ronan to fulfil in life, he only agreed to one - it was making Adam Parrish realise there were people to whom he was perfect no matter what.
“Photosynthesis was tough, huh?”, Adam made small talk in between sips of his coffee. It was probably much stronger than the one he made for Ronan. Ronan shrugged before he fully realised what Adam meant. It only dawned on him later that they were going to have a huge biology test and Gansey even made him revise some for it the previous night.
Adam put his empty mug away.
“You’re never going to learn to tie it by yourself, are you? Come here.”
But he approached Ronan before Ronan even moved. Ronan’s Aglionby tie was loose on his neck. On most days Gansey tied it for him and then he crooked it on purpose. On days when Ronan felt like he deserved to reward himself, he left his tie like this for Adam to knot.
It would be way easier for Adam if Ronan tilted his head back and exposed the neck to his fingers. The tips of those fingers were always so cold on Ronan’s skin, they sent shivers down his spine, forced sighs out of his mouth that he struggled to keep in. But Ronan kept his eyes fixed on Adam’s face.
The cool thing about Adam’s Aglionby shirt was that he only had one. Wearing it every day really made it easier to open the buttons, because the holes became more loose. He didn’t even notice when Ronan’s finger snaked up to his stomach and opened the lowest one.
Single millimetres of skin grazed one another. The knot slipped out of Adam’s hand.
And then Ronan kissed Adam Parrish.
It was like bass dropping in a song, but drawn into seconds. The moment when you feel fierce and powerful, and there is nothing there to stop you from drinking up the world. Things exploded and fires burned. The unspeakable ache in his chest was at once and in its entirety relieved.
Adam’s lips were dry and chapped. They didn’t have the softness of his eyes or of the way he said Ronan’s name when they were alone in Ronan’s BMW. But they fitted Ronan’s perfectly.
Adam almost fainted; once he had Ronan so close, he forgot he also needed breathing to live. There was hesitation in his hands, when they rested on Ronan’s shoulders, shyness and conflict. Finally, Adam inhaled through his nose and placed his hand on the side of Ronan’s head, burning where they touched. A surrender they were both grateful for.
Ronan parted his lips slightly and drew in the air that Adam exhaled. It was hot on his skin and moist, and still smelled like toothpaste. That mouthful of air gave him more life than all the world’s remaining oxygen could. Ronan pulled at the hem of Adam’s shirt and when their bodies were pressed close together, he locked his hands on Adam’s hips.
Adam linked his hands on the back of Ronan’s neck, smiling as he kissed him back. It was slow, deliberate, an endless torture, because Ronan knew it was never going to be enough.
“Gansey will strangle you.”, Adam mumbled into his mouth, his finger tracing down Ronan’s neck much more delicately than an angry Gansey’s hands would. Ronan bit his bottom lip with a growl at the mention of anything that isn’t Adam Parrish. Adam’s heart skipped a beat when his imagination wandered to the place that the growl came from. Putting all his might to it, he managed to step back, look away from Ronan’s lips and point to his wrist watch instead. “We’re late for algebra.”