Chapter Text
“Baby, there you are, you’re late for date night,” Adam exclaimed, his voice saccharine sweet. Ronan heard him but does not comprehend. Was he dreaming or did Adam Parrish just call him baby? Adam wrapped his arm around Ronan’s waist, which was about 150x more physical contact than Adam had ever made with any of them.
“Ronan Lynch is your boyfriend?” Tad grated out, face pinched like he had just eaten a lemon.
Adam leaned and pulled Ronan in even closer, warmth from his body radiating. Ronan shifted up, and whispered, “Parrish, what the fuck are you doing.”
“Do you have a problem with that Carruthers,” Adam said with more bite than Ronan has heard from him before. His hand that was wrapped around him was starting to clench into a fist. “If you’ll excuse us, we have a date to get to,” he said, marching them off towards Nino’s where they were to meet Blue and Gansey.
“What the fuck was that,” Ronan muttered, hoping Tad wasn’t listening in. Ronan wouldn’t put it past him.
Adam looked down, all his fake bravado leaving him like helium leaving a balloon, his cheeks flushed red and said, “He kept asking if I was single! Obviously to fuck with me and I don’t know any girls besides Blue and for obvious reasons I couldn’t say I was dating her. So I said that I had a boyfriend but he wouldn’t believe me and then I saw you close by and panicked. Ronan, I’m sorry. I know you’re not exactly out.”
“Parrish…” Ronan trailed off. He didn’t even know where to start with that. Did he address the fact that Carruthers was clearly asking for his own nefarious purposes or the fact that pretending to be Adam’s boyfriend was hardly a hardship for him or that Adam didn’t realize that now people would think that Adam wasn’t straight? “I’m not not out but that’s hardly the problem here. You do realize that now people won’t think you’re straight, right?”
“I don’t care if people think I’m not straight,” Adam said, his voice filled with confusion.
Ronan dragged his hand over his face and sighed, “Adam, you might not care now but what exactly is your plan for when you want to date a girl here. Word travels fast in Henrietta.”
“I’m not straight, Ronan, I’m bisexual. I thought you knew this,” Adam said his head cocked. And oh, that explained a lot of the puns Blue made. Ronan had to remind himself that just because Adam could be attracted to boys didn’t mean he was at all attracted to Ronan. There was no reason to think Adam would be attracted to him.
“Even then! We aren’t dating. You know he’s going to be able to tell in approximately two seconds when he realizes no one else knows we’re ‘dating’. Or when he realizes that we don’t act like a couple,” he said.
“Can’t we pretend to date? Just for a bit,” Adam said, before pleadingly looking up at Ronan, “I don’t want him to know that I lied.”
“Exactly how long do you plan on keeping this ruse up, Parrish,” Ronan grumbled. He’s not sure how much he could pretend to date Adam without revealing his feelings. But he didn’t want Carruthers to think he even had a chance with Adam. Stubborn dick.
“Just a couple of weeks of us pretending to date should get him off my case. And, I can do something for you in return. Like field Declan’s calls or get Gansey to stop asking about college.” Adam bargained, hoping to sweeten the deal.
“Fine, Parrish, but only for two weeks,” Ronan said. He realized Adam’s arm was still pressed up against him and tried not to think about what else he could have pressed up against him. These were going to be the two longest weeks of his life.
If Ronan was being honest he had mostly forgotten about agreeing to be Adam’s boyfriend. Well, fake boyfriend. Sure it came up in a few of his dreams but it was hardly haunting his every waking moment or anything. He hadn’t seen him since Friday night and in hindsight, it barely made sense as a concept. How often were they around Tad anyways? It would barely ever come up. This was fine. Everything was fine.
It was already over two days since he’d agreed to the sham relationship and he hadn’t even seen Adam since. Some fake boyfriend he is.
He’d come back to Monmouth after Sunday mass, raring mad. Declan was on his case again about college for some goddamn reason. It was nothing short of a miracle that he deigned to graduate from high school let alone spend another four years stuck in a building he had no interest in being in.
Ronan’s phone lit up with a text. He was tempted to stick the device into an incinerator and never check a message again, but he promised Matthew earlier today to start responding more often so he was stuck. He couldn’t break a promise to the youngest Lynch, and especially not so soon after he had made it.
Adam had texted, ‘Are you free for a date in an hour?’ Ronan reread this text three times before coming back to reality. Oh right. A fake date. Great, so had to pretend to be into Adam enough to be convincing but not enough that he also convinced Adam himself.
He texts back ‘Fine. Where?’ before slumping back onto his bed. He’d never been on a date before, fake or otherwise. Unless you count street racing against Kavinsky, which he didn’t. What did you wear on a fake date with your real crush? He settled on basically what he wore every day: a pair of black skinny genes and a red t-shirt.
He tamped down on his nerves reminding himself that this wasn’t real. It was just like seeing Adam on any other day. He received a text from Adam telling him to come to Paradise Park. One of the perks of living in a small town is that you always know where everything is.
He headed towards the park, not caring that he’d be half an hour early. All he would do while waiting at home would be to become more anxious.
To his surprise, Adam was also already there despite it being quite early. He might as well get this over with. He walked towards Adam and allowed himself for once to check Adam out. He was in a threadbare white shirt and worn light blue jeans. There was a small sliver of skin peeking out around his midriff and a small smudge of dirt around the cuff of his jeans. He was radiant.
“Hey,” Adam said, uncharacteristically reaching out for a hug, “I was thinking we could talk some more about this. I brought stuff for a picnic. For the date.”
“Alright. What’s left to discuss?” Ronan replied, helping Adam unpack the contacts of his bag. They billow out a thin blanket to sit on before placing a few Tupperware containers on top of it.
“I know we discussed how long we’d do this but how about the frequency of dates? Physical contact comfort level? And what do we tell Gansey?” Adam listed off pulling out food for them.
“Twice a week. Don’t kiss me. And the truth?” Ronan suggested in turn, biting into the sandwich. Ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches cut into diagonals, just how he liked. When did Adam learn his sandwich preferences?
“How about three times a week, if we include this as a date,” he suggested before nervously adding, “Can we not mention this to Gansey?”
“I think he’ll notice if all of a sudden we’re dating, Adam,” Ronan said, confused as to why he would want to hide this.
“No, I know. Just, do we really need him to know that it’s fake? I feel like he’d make a bigger deal out of it than it needs to be.”
“I guess. Fine,” Ronan added despite his distaste for lying, especially lying to Gansey.
“I think we should uh, practise looking like we’re together,” Adam said, pulling out a container of cut-up fruit. Wow, he’d really gone to the effort of setting up a whole picnic for a fake date. Ronan couldn’t imagine what he’d be like on a real date then. Adam’s single-minded focus directed at another person would be dangerous.
“Is this not practise enough for you,” he said with a big sigh as if it was an ordeal to be having a picnic on a sunny day with Adam Parrish.
“No, this is good, but you should sit a little closer,” Adam directed, leading Ronan to lie pressed up against Adam, shoulder to shoulder, “Good. Here bring your hand up.”
Adam reached out and entangled their fingers together. His long fingers fit around Ronan’s perfectly. His hands were calloused but soft against his own and far warmer than Ronan’s. Adam’s thumb made small circles against the back of Ronan’s hand, sending shivers down his spine.
They ate the rest of the food cuddled up against each other, halfheartedly bickering about their Latin homework. If this is what he’d signed up for agreeing to a fake date, then Ronan never wanted to fake a breakup, because to his heart this all felt scarily real.