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When they first met, Adam hated Ronan. As much as someone could hate a stranger, at least. Not just because he was rich, not simply because Adam was jealous, but because Ronan scared him. The sharpness to his face, the couldn’t-care-less attitude and the fact that he could somehow keep the good and noble Gansey by his side. The piercing look of his eyes and the anger that he seemed to hold. Not locked up, like Adam did, but worn on his sleeve and in his teeth.
Adam hated nothing more than being scared, having grown up feeling cornered and always under attack. Now, after months and months have passed since that first meeting, Adam is scared of Ronan for entirely different reasons. Reasons that have nothing to do with hatred.
5. They’re driving down a motorway (or as close as you can get to one in almost close proximity to Henrietta) and the windows are open. Adam’s on the passenger side - he always is with Ronan, trying to keep up and go along. The wind is hitting his face, hard. His ear hurts despite not hearing anything, and he’s again reminded that he’s still alive.
Persephone might be dead, Noah is dead, and Gansey might still die; but Adam is alive, his heavily beating heart is proof of it. The wind rushing by his cheek and making his hair stand out is proof. Ronan has a way of making Adam feel more alive, yet closer to death than ever before, all at the same time.
Speaking of Ronan; he swerves the car as they come to a crossroads, laughing as the tires burn against the ground and the car driving in the opposite direction honks, the driver clearly upset about the almost-impact. Adam takes the time to look, heart in his throat, as Ronan shows off his pointed teeth with glimmer in his eyes. He’s the epitome of being alive, Adam thinks, gripping the dashboard for support.
“You’re going to get us killed!” Adam yells over the howling wind, and he tries to make it sound like he means it, because he does. Ronan is crazy, wild and fearless and it’s ironic how the fearless in him brings out the fear in Adam.
He’s just not sure whether what he fears is for the moment to go on, or for the moment to end.
It does end eventually, when they’re driving down the straight-ahead road and face the emptiness of the countryside. There are no other cars, no lights, no houses. Just them, Adam and Ronan and the stupid car and the rest of the world. Adam doesn’t even feel Cabeswater, letting Ronan drive him through the dark.
Without saying a word, Ronan leans forward to press play on the built-in CD player. Adam faintly remembers the first time he laid eyes upon the CD that had been left in his own car, the scrawled writing on top. Briefly wonders what the one currently playing is titled.
He’s surprised once the music can be heard. Expecting something hard, more rock-y, and is faced with deep bass and romantic melodies. It pains him slightly to call them romantic, but it’s what they are, and though they’re very different from what Ronan’s made him listen to during past drives they’re still inexplicably Ronan. Dark and strangely intimate, a woman with an airy voice singing in between the riffs.
He doesn’t look at Adam once through the first song. Instead, there’s something suddenly closed up about his face. His jaw is clenched so hard that Adam can almost hear the teeth grinding together, Ronan’s fine hands gripping the steering wheel harder than when they were seconds away from a fatal collision.
“This new?” Adam asks as casually as he can manage with the wind still clawing at his face. He doesn’t want to ask Ronan to close the windows and shut it out, in case it worsens the mood that seems to have settled around them. He’s trying hard not to let it be known that he’s annoyed.
Ronan doesn’t answer. He doesn’t turn his head in the slightest, eyes flickering between the mirrors and the road ahead.
Adam breaks. “What did I do now? You almost got us killed yet somehow I’m the one who’s getting the silent treatment, again.” He speaks before his head catches up and Ronan maneuvers the car to the side of the road instantly. The safety belt keeps Adam locked in place as they come to a halt.
Ronan turns to him with a sharp twist of his body and Adam tries to ignore the instant relief he feels as their eyes meet. They’re here, it’s real, Adam can be seen and heard and cause a reaction. He breathes hard.
“Did you really think I was about to smash into that car? What, that I’d finally lost my mind, that I’m finally that fucking crazy? I know what I’m doing, Adam, even if you don’t. Okay? Let go!” Ronan spits out and he’s feral, wild with it and Adam is just... confused. Part of it is because he hasn’t heard his name come out of Ronan’s lips in forever. He’s not sure Ronan has ever called him Adam to his face.
Still, his instincts are telling him to get mad back, to yell for all the times he couldn’t before.
“I don’t want to die in the front seat of this BMW while driving nowhere for no reason, Lynch. Just. Shit. Turn around, I want to go back. I’m tired and I have to work in the morning.” He looks out the window, eyes the fields and tries to imagine what they look like during the day. Tries to remember if they’ve ever been here before.
“You always have work in the morning, so what’s the fucking difference.” It’s muttered, bitter. Adam just barely catches it.
Ronan turns the ignition and starts the car again. He makes a sharp but controlled U-turn and as they gain speed, he turns off the music that started playing again the minute he started the car. Adam didn’t even realise it stopped to begin with, too busy being turned upside down and inside out.
It’s always all or nothing, with Adam and Ronan. Either it’s calm and quiet and mutual understanding or it’s this crackling, all-consuming burn. The smallest thing kicks it off and though it makes Adam feel things the way he only ever does when scrying, it’s also confusing and tiring. They burn brighter than everything else when the fire starts, but they’re going to burn out eventually and Adam is terrified.
Up until this point, the car trips have been of the first kind. Just them and the roads and maybe a bit of bickering, maybe talking about how they’re going to approach Greenmantle (this is the first car ride since). This is also their first real fight in the car and Adam feels tainted. He digs his dirty nails into the palms of his no-longer-dry hands. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
He falls asleep with his face pressed to the then-closed window, his breath fogging up the cold glass where it’s pressed to his skin. Ronan looks at him to make sure he’s not going to choke on the belt, that he’s not shivering with the cold. Adam didn’t mention the windows, but his furrowed brows had their own way of speaking his mind.
Not sure how long he’s slept, Adam slowly comes awake to the sound of the music playing again. It’s still not the hard and angry guitars and drums, still the careful yet equally emotional bass and electronics. He keeps his eyes closed.
It takes him a while to realise that the voice coming from the speakers isn’t the only one filling the car. “... I can’t believe you’d think I’d kill you, asshole.” Adam tries to keep his breathing steady, as if he’s still asleep (not that he can remember falling asleep in the first place). He has to concentrate to make out Ronan’s low mumbling. “As if I’d let myself.”
When Ronan drops him off he says “Go to bed, Parrish,” Adam’s (oh the irony) apple bobbing as he swallows thickly, before letting Adam close the door and driving off. Adam’s not sure what’s real and what isn’t, so he doesn’t think to ask about what he heard. The only thing he knows to be real is the heart hammering in his chest and the fear that he’s fucked up yet another part of them.
4. Cabeswater is quiet, the dark of night hiding its magic and its secrets from prying eyes. Adam, though, is the magician. He sees, he hears, he feels. He is Cabeswater’s body, Cabeswater’s hands. He feels the thrum of life that keeps the trees tall, hears the hushed voices and the confused feelings. Why is Cabeswater confused?
He walks further in, his sneakers softly pressing down the moss and the grass and the everything-in-between. He feels surprisingly light on his feet, like he’s dreaming. Maybe he is. Who’s to say Cabeswater is anything but a dream, that they all don’t just fall asleep the minute they set foot in the peculiar place? It’s too much to think about, so Adam shakes it off.
Speaking of shaking, so is his body. It’s surprisingly cold, summer coming to an end. It’s strange that Cabeswater would be affected, considering it doesn’t listen to time and space. Here everything is sacred, different from the outside world. Time goes around in a circle, it doesn’t head straight on. As he holds his hands out before him, his tan hands are vibrating with adrenaline and cold, and Adam furrows his eyebrows and looks around.
“What’s wrong? Show me, and I’ll help.” He didn’t bring anything to scry in, and since the incident in the cave with Noah and Blue he’s reluctant to do it when he’s on his own. He could find some water, there’s always water in Cabeswater. The brew of life. Nothing is real in Cabeswater, but everything is alive and made alive if not already.
His instincts lead him further in, where the trees are taller and standing closer. The skin of his neck prickles, certain that there’s something he’s missing. He doesn’t know where he’s going, and he doesn’t remember how he got there. Why is he in Cabeswater alone? Is he alone, or did he bring someone? Ronan, maybe. They go on a lot of late-night adventures, nowadays.
“Ronan?” he calls out, pursing his mouth at the taste the unfamiliar name leaves in his mouth. “Lynch, for God’s sake, I’m not up for your shitty games.” He remembers when Ronan came to visit him at work, remembers the fear that ran through him as the monster made its presence known. Ronan is always scary, but his nightmares are scarier.
“Gansey,” comes a voice from somewhere. It’s light, airy, and… out of breath? Almost like… Almost like a moan, like something let out thoughtlessly, heat-of-the-moment, not quiet but far from loud. Adam hasn’t had much experience in the way of that sort of voice, but it can’t be confused with something else. Not really.
Especially not when the voice uttering the name belongs to one Ronan Lynch.
“No,” Adam whispers, back hunching so as to not be seen. Once he’s listening, paying attention, it seems that the forest goes quiet and all that can be heard is the breathing of others, punched out of bodies close together. No, this isn’t happening. This isn’t real. Adam doesn’t want to look, but Cabeswater does. Cabeswater wants him to see this, so he moves forward as quietly as he can, up to what looks like the biggest tree Adam’s ever seen.
He presses close to the trunk of it and inhales the wood. Old, rich, sturdy, reliable. Unfamiliar (he grew up surrounded by sand and fields), yet familiar (he is Cabeswater). He’s trying to ground himself, he’s stalling, but his heartbeat only speeds up with the breathing of boys he knows all too well and, apparently, not well enough. It won’t get any easier, he knows this. So he looks, hands pressed to the bulky body of the tree and fixes his eyes.
Gansey’s pale skin is a stark contrast to the dark surrounding them - Adam, Ronan and him. He recognises the line of his body, the hair on the back of his head, the curl and bend of his bones and muscles. Adam would know Gansey anywhere, and right now he wishes he didn’t.
Ronan is underneath him, shielded by Gansey’s body, and despite everything Adam is thankful for the little. He doesn’t know whether he’d be able to keep standing, had he been able to see Ronan vulnerable and bare. He’s terrified of them hearing him, the beat of his heart louder than their breathy moans in his ears. He knows what they’re doing, but he doesn’t understand.
Hands run across skin, grabs and holds and there’s movement and breathing in unison. Adam can spot a bruise on the side of Gansey’s neck, a mark left by teeth and tongue and blood crawling beneath the surface.
A voice cuts through the noise in Adam’s head. It’s gentle, and it’s Ronan’s, and it’s latin and because Adam isn’t enough for the two of them, he doesn’t understand it. He can’t make out the words and he closes his eyes, shakes his head. He doesn’t understand the words, but he understands the way Gansey lowers his head and the lock of lips that follows. He doesn’t see, but he hears, and it’s enough.
He’s seen enough, he’s done, and he turns and runs.
-
Adam wakes up in his own bed and the betrayal courses through him, his blood boiling. He was never going to be what Ronan and Gansey were, he wasn’t one of them the way they were the same, but he thought he was enough. That he knew them.
He turns to lie on his stomach and buries his face in the pillow that smells like dust and laundry detergent, curls his fists and yells. He’s angry, out of touch with himself for the first time in weeks. He’s a monster locked in, the opposite of Ronan’s douchebag exterior and inner… other. Gansey’s calm and knightly nobility.
Ronan. And Gansey. Adam can’t breathe and it’s only partly because of the material pressed to his face. Kicks off the sheets and tries to cool his burning skin, shakes his head so that his hair matches up to the chaos in his head. It feels like a memory, but he doesn’t remember getting there. He doesn’t remember getting back. Does remember their voices, their touching lips.
He gets out of bed and showers, scrubs himself red and pointedly ignores the tub of hand cream sat on his bathroom sink. Ma ni bus. How could he have been so stupid, so blind? Adam is smart, Adam is analytic and thorough. Gansey and Ronan are better; they were born that way and Adam is a trailer boy. A narrow minded trailer boy.
He goes to work, does his job, makes his money. He’s going to pay them back for everything they’ve given him, and he’s going to go back to school, and then he’s going to leave Henrietta and his past behind. The anger clouds his vision as his body fights the tenseness that’s settled over his body, trying to work quickly and efficiently.
As he sits down to eat his lunch, Adam comes to think of Blue again. Does Blue know? She probably does, he thinks, seeing how close Gansey and Blue have become. Does Noah? Adam snorts. Noah knows everything. And yet none of them thought to tell him.
Maybe they all knew he wouldn’t be able to handle it. Maybe Adam isn’t the unknowable one, but everyone else is. He goes to Monmouth anyway as he tries to tell himself that he’s stronger than this.
His hands are cramping around the old, leather wheel, and there’s some sad indie song playing on the radio and the CD Ronan made for him is lying on the passenger seat. His hands are dry from not using that stupid cream. Ronan has somehow made his way into Adam’s every waking (and asleep) moment, and yet Adam didn’t notice.
When he gets to the old factory, Blue and Gansey are sitting in the sofa, opposite each other, talking with low voices. Gansey’s face is the same, yet Adam had somehow imagined it would look different, less… knightly. He tries to see whether there’s a bruise on his neck, but Gansey’s wearing a collared shirt and the collar is turned up. It’s probably Noah’s doing, but nonetheless it seems intentional and Adam clenches his jaw.
“Adam!” comes Gansey’s voice, and he’s been spotted. He tries out a smile as Gansey lifts his fist up in his direction, and he walks over with heavy legs and lamely knocks their closed hands together. Gansey smiles like the sun, and he’s truly one of the most handsome people Adam has ever seen. Handsome like a prince, clean and so fucking noble. He’s going to die a noble death and Adam will never forgive himself if he can’t bring him back. He’s always felt better with Gansey, yet perfectly aware of all the way he’s less than the boy at his side. He used to cover it up with fight and fierceness.
Adam sits down on the floor, leaning his back against the sofa. One of Blue’s little hands starts to run through his hair; the touch alone makes Adam want to scream. He wanted her so much, the way Gansey and Ronan wanted each other in his dream, and now he doesn’t. It’s terrifying.
“We were thinking of going to Cabeswater, later. See if there’s anything that Persephone left behind for us to find,” Gansey says, and what Gansey says goes. Adam misses Persephone, misses the look of her long hair and her dreamy eyes and the way she made him feel sane and capable. He was probably her favourite. He’s never felt that way, before.
Adam doesn’t remember ever becoming this pathetic. He nods and Noah comes to sit down in front of him with a quizzical look on his face. Adam stares at the dent in his face. Does Noah know what Adam saw? Noah smiles. He probably does, being the all-seeing ghost that he is.
And then Ronan enters, and Adam’s face falls because Ronan should have told him. Ronan never lies, Ronan is fucking brutal about the things that he thinks are wrong and they’ve been alone enough times for something to be said.
“When did you get here, Parrish? I thought you were working.” Adam looks up and faces Ronan’s raised brows and realises that more often than not he’s announced his presence at Monmouth by being a shit to Ronan and marching into his room, telling him to pack up his things and get ready for them to head off somewhere. All of them, that is. When it’s just Adam and Ronan, Ronan has always been the one to pick up Adam.
He doesn’t pay attention to the way Ronan has his schedule memorised. He usually works an extra hour on Thursdays, and Ronan knows this.
“I only just got here. Maybe you should pay more attention. Why? Do you want me to leave again?” There’s no way of keeping the hurt out of his voice. It’s uncalled for and nonsensical and Blue’s fingers stop twirling around in his hair. The factory goes quiet, and Ronan fucking laughs.
“What’s crawled up your ass? I was just asking, Christ.” Ronan rolls his eyes and Adam won’t take it, won’t be patronised because he’s stupid and didn’t know about them, didn’t know anything. He should have known.
“You know what, I think I’m just going to go. I’ve got better things to do. Tell Cabeswater hello from me,” he says as he gets onto his feet and almost trips over Noah. He manages to side-step, and when Gansey’s hand comes to circle around his wrist and try and hold him back with a wounded sound he pulls it free with a decided tug. He’s sick of being held back.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Parrish?” Ronan says with his face drawn together in frustration, coming up in front of him and Adam pushes him to the side, careful not to let his hands linger on the flat, strong frame of his upper body. He barely hears Blue’s “hey” over the sound of blood rushing in his ears.
“Everything, right?” Adam mutters low enough for them not to hear it as he walks past, exits the factory, gets into his shitty car and drives back to his shitty apartment. When he reaches the parking lot outside, he lets his head drop against the steering wheel several times.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
-
Ronan comes in the night, banging loudly on the door and Adam doesn’t know for sure that it’s him, but he knows it’s him. He’s fully awake, lying on top of the covers, and yet he doesn’t get up. The banging continues. Adam stays put. He’s not sure he’s ready to face what he’s about to do, what’s about to go down.
He gets up, unlocks the door, and Ronan is furious. His eyes are all but black and his body is screaming, his arms two rigid sticks on either side of his body. He’s taller than Adam, and now is the only time Adam’s really thought of it. It’s not much, but the situation makes it feel like he’s towering over him.
“You were a dick today, for no fucking reason, and I get that you’re angry or whatever but do not take it out on me!” Ronan doesn’t yell, but he’s snarling and Adam steps back from the sheer force of it. He didn’t realise they were standing so close until he felt Ronan’s breath on his face.
And Ronan has no right to tell him what to do. So Adam pushes him, for the second time that day, and Ronan looks at him like he’s been stabbed. Which, ha, if he only knew what it actually felt like to be stabbed in the back.
“You should have told me. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?” Adam snarls back and Ronan blanks out.
“What?”
Adam inhales, steps back clenches his fists at his sides. He won’t punch. He’s not his dad. “I know about Gansey, you absolute shithead. We’ve been meeting by ourselves for weeks, just you and me, and you never thought to let me know?”
Something clicks and realisation dawns on Ronan’s face. In a matter of seconds, his expression goes from blank, to knowing, to… upset? And then he closes up, locks his features in place in a way that Adam has come to see as his “trying to hide” face. He did it the first time they went to the Barns.
“Well sorry, mr. I-always-tell-people-everything, but I didn’t think it mattered.” Adam chokes on his next breath and pushes Ronan back again. Has he really not noticed? Did he really think that Ronan and Gansey, being together, behind all of their backs, didn’t matter to Adam?
His closest friends have been hiding from him, and his… his best friend didn’t think it mattered.
“Of course it fucking matters! It’s a pretty big deal, asshole, if two of my best friends start hooking up together behind my back. How long has it been?” Ronan looks away and Adam doesn’t feel happy as he sees what he can only count as shame shadow his face. He doesn’t want Ronan to be ashamed. He wants Ronan.
He wants to ask what it all meant, what Ronan was aiming for when he suggested going for drives, the stupid shopping cart incident, the hand cream, the rent. If it was all just making up to Adam for the things Ronan would never give him. Adam wants Ronan - not his things.
But Ronan was always Gansey’s, and Gansey was always Ronan’s.
“Get out,” Adam says when Ronan doesn’t answer. Get out of my head, I don’t want this, I don’t want to feel this, get out get out get out. His apartment feels too small and again, Adam feels his chest collapsing. There’s no air. Adam is scared.
“Fuck you, Parrish,” Ronan says, and then he meets Adam’s eyes one last time before he goes, leaving Adam and the noise in his head behind. Always leaving Adam behind.
3. Adam remembers the first time Ronan came to visit him in St. Agnes after Adam’s awakening. Adam had been on his own for the first time in days, and he was exhausted in a way that made him feel safe. He knew this kind of exhaustion, the one that sleep could cure.
He’d been brushing his teeth, a ratty tank hanging off of his skinny frame, faded underwear slung low on his hips. His hair was a mess, and his eyelids were drooping. He washed off the spearmint toothpaste from the corner of his mouth, yawned and walked out, turning off the lights when... Click. Click. Click.
He turned his head to the window just in time to catch sight of a pebble hitting the glass. Click. He looked out the window, opened it and cautiously leaned forward, and then he saw him. Ronan was sitting on the hood of his car, smirk laced with alcohol-induced laziness. Throwing small stones at Adam’s window.
“Well, hi there, Parrish,” he’d said, and kept his smirk intact as Adam rolled his eyes. Sober Ronan would never let Adam get away with rolling his eyes at him. Drunk Ronan let Adam get away with a lot of things.
“Come up, jerk, or you’ll end up breaking the glass. It’s not perfect, but I have a door that does the job,” Adam called down and Ronan got to his unsteady feet and finished his bottle of beer, making his way around the house to get to the stairs. Adam wondered how long he’d been sitting there, if Ronan would have stayed all night had Adam already fallen asleep and not noticed.
The minute he opened the door Ronan offered something in his open palm. It was a t-shirt, an old, faded t-shirt. It looked vintage, but Adam knew that it was probably something Ronan had just dreamt up. A vintage t-shirt dreamt up new.
Adam had accepted it, held it up in front of himself to look at the print, the soft textiles a comforting weight in his hands. The model was a bit strange, loose and big around the neckline. His collarbones would show, it might even slip off one of his shoulders if he wore it. The symbol on the front was the old Pepsi logotype, and Adam snorted.
“Thanks, Lynch. Can’t get enough of soda t-shirts,” Adam said and meant for it to come out sarcastic, but it ended up sounding a lot more like he was endeared, an amused sort of endeared. He thought back to the first time he saw Ronan Lynch at Aglionby, and snorted again at the thought of having felt endeared by the boy he’d seen then.
Ronan had grinned. “Yeah, figured it would look good on you.” And then he’d just walked past him, spread out on Adam’s bed and closed his eyes. Casual. Eyelashes resting on the top of his cheeks, looking pleased and sated and… so much like Adam could imagine himself imagining him.
Adam had gone to lie down next to him, both boys on their backs, arms just barely brushing. Ronan breathed long and deep and for a few minutes they just lay there, quiet and peaceful. Adam opened his mouth.
“You know, I was so scared. I felt like Cabeswater was eating me up, like I’d given up not just my body but my mind, too,” Adam whispered, admitting it out loud for the first time. “Persephone helped me. I feel more like myself again, now.” He didn’t look at Ronan, kept his eyes on the ceiling and away from knowing looks.
Ronan turned, the bed creaking beneath them, and put his hand to Adam’s cheek so that they were lying face-to-face. Adam inhaled sharply, thinking that no, this can’t happen now, not like this, as Ronan put their foreheads together.
“Yeah, well. Don’t do some stupid shit like that again,” and that was that. Ronan turned his dangerous eyes and too-close lips and beer-sweet breath away and the moment was over. When he woke up Ronan was gone, but the t-shirt was still there. They never mention that night.
2. It’s been three days of silence. Since Ronan stormed off, his tires burning against the gravel of the small parking space outside St. Agnes, Adam hasn’t been in touch with any of the people he’s come to think of as his friends. Blue has tried to contact him, his boss tells him. Gansey is probably too hung up on Cabeswater, and Ronan is probably still too angry. Adam doesn’t blame him, he’s realised. Because, really, he knows Gansey, and he knows Ronan. He knows Ronan more than he knows himself, sometimes.
While he’s sure that they are all a little obsessed with each other, a little too wrapped up in the world they’ve created for themselves, he’s also sure that it was just a dream. After the rage has settled, and he’s dropped his head in shame after realising that it was nothing short of jealousy, he’s decided that he needs to do what he wouldn’t have a couple of months ago.
He needs to apologise. Adam realises this after dreaming back to that night with Blue, when she hadn’t denied Gansey’s upcoming death, tears in her eyes. Gansey’s going to die, and if Adam doesn’t save him, he’s probably not the only one that’s going to disappear from Adam’s life.
What Adam had forgotten in the dream was that Ronan and Gansey have a more settled relationship. They know where they have the other, and Adam and Ronan don’t. Gansey is a best friend, an idol of sorts, a support and a nuisance. Adam and Ronan are a firework waiting to go off. It’s impossible to tell the colours and shapes by looking at the package, and none of them have yet had the courage to light the fuse.
Adam isn’t sure of his feelings for Ronan, but he knows that the thought of losing him makes his stomach turn inside out. The thought of not knowing where Ronan is, that he isn’t hurting himself (the images from the church still flash by far more often than he’d like them to).
He turns up outside Monmouth manufacturing, the Raven Boys’s head quarters, unannounced. It’s night, dark, and he remembers reading that everything is always scarier in the dark. For some reason, that doesn’t apply to Ronan. Ronan has always been more manageable in the dark, when Adam doesn’t have to worry as much about the things that Ronan can see on his face.
Somehow, Adam had failed to notice how perceptive Ronan was (is) to Adam’s moods and feelings. Maybe it was the general cursing and being an asshole that did it. Probably, Adam thinks almost bitterly as he parks the car and gets out with a CD gripped tightly in his right hand.
Gansey is the one to open the door, and he looks at Adam hesitantly. Adam’s heart hurts and he licks his lips as he tries to think of something appropriate to say. “I’m sorry” doesn’t feel like enough, but then again it’s more than he’s said in the past. He’s going to lose his best friend soon, before the year is over, and it would be foolish to waste the time they’ve got left.
“I’m really sorry for just leaving you. I shouldn’t have snapped,” Adam says slowly, carefully, and meets Gansey’s hazel eyes. He’s become less and less blue-eyed these past few months and Adam hates the world for letting it happen. Hates himself even more for not doing anything about it.
Gansey holds his fist out with a little smile and a shrug. Once they’ve bumped their fists together, he looks over his shoulder and into the large open space, landing on Ronan’s closed door. Yeah, Adam thinks, I know. “It’s not really me that you owe an apology. I’m not sure he’ll listen, but I think you should try.”
Adam nods, hiding the CD behind his back. He doesn’t want Gansey to see, regardless of how much he trusts him. This is something that is his and Ronan’s, and Gansey will have to wait. If Ronan then… if something happens and they want to… well, tell Gansey, then they will. Adam won’t make that decision for them. If, Adam repeats.
Gansey leaves through the door at the same time Adam walks up to the one leading into Ronan’s bedroom, and just as he’s about to put his knuckles to the wood he hesitates. Is he ready? Is this really a good idea? Will Ronan understand? Even more than that; will Ronan feel the same?
The big, misplaced old clock on the wall says it’s half past midnight. Adam knocks three times.
Ronan opens up and it’s obvious that he’s expecting Gansey, face closing up the second he’s met with dirt-coloured hair and lanky and deep-set eyes and not the handsomeness of Richard Campbell Gansey III. Before Ronan gets the chance, Adam interrupts.
“I’m really, really fucking sorry, Ronan. I was a dick to you - I’m always a dick to you. You’re kind of a dick to me, too, but I’m still sorry. I’m sorry about the ignoring you, and the pushing, and the yelling and I’m really, really sorry about always taking everything out on you.” It’s probably the hardest thing Adam’s said in his life, swallowing all of his pride and having the words come out the way they are. He’s not the sentimental kind of person, never this genuine, and Ronan isn’t either. This isn’t them, but they have to go through this to be them.
Ronan looks at him with narrowed eyes and Adam laughs breathily. He’s never, ever been as terrified as he is of what Ronan’s going to do or say now.
“Why are you saying this? What do you want?” Ronan asks, clipped but not dismissive. Adam bites down on the insides of his cheeks as he tries to figure out a way to answer that’s enough like them that Ronan understands that Adam knows what they are.
Instead Adam leans in and presses his lips to Ronan’s and prays to God that he’s doing the right thing.
There’s a second where everything stops, where time doesn’t exist and all that is is the points of contact (lips, Adam’s hands on Ronan’s shoulders) between them. And then, to Adam’s surprise and with a surge to his gut, Ronan’s big hands come to rest on his lower back and pulls him in.
Adam exhales shakily onto Ronan’s skin and Ronan decides to part his lips and take Adam’s between his own and bite down. It’s everything that Adam never had the courage to imagine. Ronan isn’t hurting him, holding on securely and pressing them close together but not about to leave bruises. He’s not gentle but he’s not rough either; he’s just... a lot. It’s overwhelming. His tongue tastes like skin and life and real, no sweet yoghurt like Adam up until recently imagined his next kiss would involve.
“Come on,” Ronan mumbles into Adam’s open mouth and pulls him along, closing the door behind them. And then he steps back, his cheeks a bit flushed, and Adam stares. He did that. Not Gansey, nor Kavinsky or anyone else. Adam did that.
Ronan pulls his shirt over his head and lays down on the bed. Puts his hands behind his head, tilts his chin up like a challenge. “You just gonna stand there, Parrish?” Adam rolls his eyes. A minute ago they were being serious, Adam laying his cards out, and now Ronan is challenging him again. It’s surprisingly easy to do this and still be them. He doesn’t hesitate for more than a moment.
They’re chest to chest again, locking lips and gripping skin and Ronan’s hands are in his hair, tugging and running and twirling, pressing their faces together and keeping him in check as he flips them over and kisses down the line of his neck. Nipping, sucking, testing it out. Adam wonders briefly what his skin tastes like, if Ronan’s disappointed.
“We should talk later,” Adam says. And then he finds out that Ronan has found a way to effectively shut him up.
1. Adam feels more bare than he has ever felt. Both literally and figuratively. He’s naked, half of him hidden beneath Ronan’s worn and cologne scented sheets, and he’s hiding his face in the crook of Ronan’s neck. His fingers trace the hollow between his collarbones, up along his neck and Adam’s apple. He’s never seen Ronan this relaxed. It hasn’t hit him yet, what just happened.
“Stop staring at me. Creepy as fuck, Parrish,” Ronan mutters. His eyes are closed, or seem to be so anyway. Adam snorts and rolls his eyes before biting down on the shoulder just by his face. Ronan doesn’t laugh, but Adam can see the corners of his mouth twitch. It’s strange, to see him happy this close up. No one has done this before, Adam thinks proudly. This is theirs. This is them, biting at each other even after tonight.
Ronan’s hand is a familiar, heavy and comforting weight against the skin just above where Adam is covered up. And then, out of nowhere, Adam remembers the CD lying on the ground. He’ll tell Ronan all about that later.
“The only time you’re ever in my bedroom is when you’re in my nightmare,” Ronan admits into the quiet, breathing so that his chest goes up and down beneath Adam’s hand. Ribs expanding, skin stretching across bone and muscle. Ronan is beautiful. His voice is uncharacteristically careful.
“You scare the living shit out of me, sometimes,” Adam says matter-of-factly.
He doesn’t say that he doesn’t want to lose him. That Gansey’s going to die, and that he’s afraid Ronan might die with him. That he’s not sure they’re going to be okay because there’s so much they need to talk about, so many issues that Adam has and that Ronan has and things they can’t deal with yet.
“Remember that mask, the one on the wall?” Ronan opens his eyes but keeps them far away from Adam’s. “Sometimes, in my dream, you put it on and turn into a monster. It’s the scariest fucking thing, looking at you and knowing that it’s you and at the same time it’s not. And I never get to you in time. There’s never anything I can do.”
“That’s why I got so pissed at you, that night in the car. You were saying that even in real life, I could be the one to kill you, which if you knew me you’d know that I couldn’t. So never do that again, asshole.”
Adam listens to Ronan’s whispers, tries to think of what he’s actually saying. The not being able to in his dreams has to be why Ronan is always the one coming to Adam. Why he does all of these things to keep Adam safe and sound (beating up his dad, setting him up at St. Agnes, paying part of the rent, the hand cream).
“And I thought you were over Blue.” Adam lifts his head up so quick that his neck clicks and he groans, rubbing the open palm of his hand against the spot. When were they ever talking about Blue? Ronan is looking at him quizzically, trying to gauge his reaction. Like he really doesn’t know what this all means, either.
“I am. What are you talking about?”
Ronan raises his eyebrows, his mouth a defensive line. “Don’t look at me like that. When you were yelling, about the whole Blue-and-Gansey-thing. It was weird. They’ve been pretty fucking obvious, but they didn’t want to hurt you, because they’re stupid enough to think that they could save you from it.”
For a minute Adam doesn’t understand a thing, and then he does. Blue and Gansey. Gansey and Blue. Two of his best friends hooking up behind his back. Ronan had thought that Adam was talking about them.
And all of a sudden it’s obvious. How Gansey and Blue have been trying to hide to spare Adam’s feelings. With shame, Adam remembers when he and Blue broke off whatever they had going. How he’d brought up Gansey, insisting that Adam wasn’t good enough but Gansey was and that that’s why Blue wasn’t interested.
He’d realised that Gansey and Ronan were just a figment of his imagination, a dream, but never thought about why Ronan had said the things he’d said. And yes, thinking about Gansey and Blue does hurt a little, but not the way the thought of Gansey and Ronan had. Not because he wants to be with either one of them, but because… he doesn’t want them to feel like they have to hide.
And he did like Blue that way, once. He was right, about not being right for her, and he’d been right about her feelings for Gansey changing, like he’d expected. But he’s not the person he was then, and this thing he has with Ronan is so very different.
So he puts his head down on Ronan’s shoulder instead. “I’m not in love with Blue. I dreamt… I thought you and Gansey… It doesn’t matter. I was confused, and I guess that Cabeswater wanted me to do something about it, so I dreamt that you and Gansey were in there.” He doesn’t say what they were doing. He doesn’t need to.
“Go to sleep, Parrish,” Ronan says, deciding that their serious talk is over, and Adam bites back with, “Shut up, Lynch.”
Ronan doesn’t kiss him again, but he runs his hand up and down Adam’s spine and it’s enough.
It’s enough for now.