Archive of Our Own

Even if it was a text message from a friend, a summons to the United States Botanic Garden’s public conservatory on the National Mall was rarely a good sign. Adam Parrish lived and breathed the Garden’s production facility in Southwest D.C., a massive greenhouse he worked in every day, far from the hustle and bustle of the Garden’s main location. He was only called to the conservatory near the Capitol Building when something went terribly wrong: a visitor toppled a trellis in the Mediterranean plants room, a child fell into the pond in the orchid room and damaged the water pump, a volunteer found black rot on plants despite computer-controlled temperature and humidity.

Adam loved the conservatory, but he preferred experiencing it on his own terms.

Before the Garden opened to the public.

Midday on an April Tuesday wasn’t the ideal time for a summoning either, peak visiting hours for field trips and tour groups. But Adam still got in his car and drove downtown, because his friend Blue Sargent had sent the text, and when Blue Sargent wanted him somewhere, Adam typically listened, dropping whatever he was doing and going wherever Blue directed.

Even if it was midday on a Tuesday. Even if Blue’s message was only there’s someone here you should meet.

When Adam arrived after an uneventful drive, he headed through the conservatory’s front doors and ducked into the administrative offices off the lobby. A brief search for Blue was fruitless, the office marked with her name and Donation Coordinator empty, and after an intern tipped him off that she’d seen Blue heading into the Garden, Adam entered the USBG’s main attraction: its massive glass-paned steel-framed conservatory.

Each time he stepped through the oversized doors into the conservatory, it threw Adam back to the eighth grade class trip when he’d first set foot in the Botanic Garden. A two-hour bus ride left his classmates restless and eager to stretch their legs, and as soon as chaperones gave them freedom, they’d spread like pests through the conservatory, as loud as cicadas but harmless as springtails.

Adam hadn’t followed.

The conservatory stilled him, inside and out, and he stood just inside the doors, staring. Lush palms towered overhead and brushed the glass ceiling, pothos vines cascaded from hanging planters mounted on walls, bright ripe oranges hung heavy from potted trees—Something fundamental in Adam changed that morning in the conservatory, full of green, full of earth, full of life. A piece inside him, loosened by an unkind father, slid firmly back into place and grew roots, and twenty-five years later, those roots ran right alongside his veins so he felt most vital, most alive, when he stepped through the Garden’s doors.

As Adam walked further into the conservatory, weaving past visitors, he passed one of its narrow, pool-length fountains, and the water’s rhythmic rushing washed away any frustration still lingering from being uprooted from his usual work. All that was left was familiar stillness, the same as back in eighth grade, and he stepped to the side of the walkway as he let it sink in yet again.

On that field trip, Adam Parrish decided he wanted to work at the United States Botanic Garden, and over two decades, three degrees, and four promotions later, he was second in the hierarchy of botanists on the Garden’s staff. He had been to that conservatory, and so many others, too many times for him to count, but each and every time, he felt the same as he had at thirteen.

Like he’d never be able to get enough.

Taking a deep breath, Adam filled his lungs with the richness of dirt and growth and life hanging in the humid air, then he continued on his way to find Blue and whoever she wanted him to meet. She always took guests on a clockwise route, so Adam went counter, hoping to run into them on the back end of their loop through the greenhouse. Hope worked in Adam’s favor, and after passing through the room of medicinal plants, he found Blue and her—guest with the orchids.

They were in conversation, Blue using her pinky to point at a single long-petaled, star-like pink flower, a bloom on one of Adam’s favorite Bulbophyllums he’d transplanted from the production facility a few weeks before. The plant had barely been budding when he’d situated it among the ferns in the orchid room, but there it was in all its glory, and he couldn’t help but feel a little pleased and satisfied it had captured Blue and her guest’s attention. Not wanting to interrupt, Adam hung back a little, and he didn’t mind not barging in; it gave him a few moments to study the guy Blue wanted Adam to meet from where Adam lingered in the doorway.

And he wasn’t an objectionable subject to study.

The man was much taller than Blue and a little taller than Adam, and the Garden’s humidity had forced him out of his leather jacket so he held it draped over one arm, even though the jacket wouldn’t have concealed the broadness across his shoulders and chest. But it would have concealed two tattoos: one creeping up his neck from his collar, curved black feathers or wings, and one that stretched down his arm from the cuff of his black t-shirt, an intricate sleeve of snake scales, inked in a rich, vibrant green.

That alone was enough to draw Adam’s attention. What kept it was objective attractiveness, softened just slightly by the faintest hints of age Adam only noticed because he saw them in the mirror every morning in his own blond hair and around his blue eyes: a few flecks of gray in the temples of the man’s dark buzz cut, a crow’s foot or two at the corners of his eyes.

Blue knew Adam’s type, and if that was the only reason she wanted him to meet this guy, Adam was alright with that. It had been a long time since Blue tried setting Adam up with anyone; a few attempts at getting him to date friends and, once, family, had remarkably failed, and Adam had asked her to stop trying, because he’d come to prefer nothing over a string of epic failures. So Blue had stopped, but Adam thought this was a fresh attempt at setting him up, going against his moratorium, because when Blue noticed him hovering in the doorway, she said, “God, finally! Adam Parrish, this is Gansey’s best friend, Ronan Lynch.”

Adam knew Blue, and if the meeting were solely for business, she would have introduced him as Dr. Adam Parrish.

And Ronan Lynch didn’t look like any friend of Gansey’s Adam had met before. Most of those friends had been exactly like Blue’s partner: burnished, All-American good looks, the kind that came from money.

Ronan was sharply, savagely, darkly handsome. He’d probably eat Gansey’s other friends alive.

They exchanged the usual pleasantries, nice to meet you and same, and when Adam shook Ronan’s hand, he was grateful he’d scrubbed all the dirt from under his fingernails before he drove downtown, because Ronan’s chilly blue eyes fell to their clasped hands until Adam dropped the handshake.

“Adam’s our resident orchidologist,” Blue explained, and when Adam opened his mouth to protest the designation, Blue jabbed her finger into the front of his button down to shut him up. “I don’t want to hear it. You’ve published papers. You’re listed in the Wikipedia article.”

Adam lifted his hands in supplication and smiled tightly. “Without citation.”

Blue’s eyes flickered to the glass roof before she gave Adam a long, even look, and Adam’s smile loosened. Blue said, “Anyway. Ronan’s mom left him a boatload of orchids and he’s going to kill them all and I’m trying to convince him they would make a very nice donation.”

People donated all types of plants to the Botanic Garden. Or they tried to. A family member died. They were moving out of the city. They didn’t have the green thumb they thought they would. Most of the time, the donations were offered in good faith. Most of the time, the Garden ended up declining the offer. Outside plants had to be quarantined, observed for disease and pests—a lot of work for a bunch of house plants the Garden already had in spades. Adam put on a placid smile, the one Blue always told him came off as detached, and turning from Blue to Ronan, he said, “We appreciate the thought, but small collections—”

He stopped when Ronan showed him a photo on his phone, and, voice low and gravelly and containing a challenge, Ronan said, “I wouldn’t call it a small collection.”

The orchid room faded then disappeared around him as Adam took in what he was being shown: a panoramic photo of a glass-walled conservatory larger than the room they were in, its walls lined with shelves as tall as Ronan.

Shelves crammed full with dozens upon dozens of potted, blooming orchids.

Adam’s mouth was the arid, cacti-filled desert room he’d walked through to get there, and his heart beat like the wings of the hummingbirds that fed on the flowers in the natural gardens surrounding the conservatory.

Ronan was right. It was no small collection of house plants.

It was an orchid horde.

Reaching for Ronan’s phone, Adam’s stopped before touching it and asked, “May I?”

“Have at it,” Ronan replied, putting his phone in Adam’s hand. “There’s more if you swipe.”

Holding Ronan’s phone like it was something precious, Adam zoomed in on the panoramic photo. The quantity of plants was overwhelming, making it impossible for Adam to focus on any one of them, but there were clusters of fuzzy-petaled White Fringed Orchids and pink-and-plum Demon Orchids and tall yellow-and-crimson Donkey Orchids. There were orchids Adam rarely saw outside of other botanic gardens or carefully preserved and protected environments. Orchids he hadn’t acquired for the United States Botanic Garden’s collection.

Yet.

Because Adam wanted these plants, though he couldn’t understand why someone would want to get rid of them.

“Why’s Blue trying to convince you to donate them?” he asked, handing Ronan back his phone. Adam had seen enough in the panoramic; if he swiped to other photos, he thought he might need to leave the room to contain himself.

“I can’t keep a kitchen garden alive,” Ronan told him, pocketing his phone. “Not even tomatoes, and those things grow themselves.” He flashed a smirk at Adam, there and gone. “I don’t want to murder my mom’s plants.”

Adam appreciated someone who knew the limitations of their skills, and he appreciated even more that Ronan wanted to put his mother’s orchids in better hands. “That’s fair. Orchids can be tricky,” he said. He heard it often, people saying orchids were difficult, and he’d rescued his fair share of green stems people gave up on and left at the curb. It was how he’d acquired a lot of the plants in his overly-lush condo, as much greenery as he could fit packed into the bounds of its walls.

But orchids hadn’t been tricky for Adam. Not for a long time. They were temperamental. They got stressed. They were picky about their surroundings and where they grew, how much water they needed and how much sun, what temperature the thermostat was set to.

But who wasn’t?

“Then if you’re interested in donating,” Adam said, glancing at Blue and ignoring the smug little smile twisting her lips, “we’d be more than happy to accept them.”

And though they wouldn’t really be his, when Adam said we he really meant I. Particularly if he got to see Ronan Lynch, philanthropist, again.

Blue, as the Garden’s donation coordinator, handled the negotiations.

“Is he being a jerk about it?” Adam asked when Blue stopped by the production facility to give a large-dollar donor a private tour. The donor was entrenched in a one-sided conversation with Tad Carruthers, a horticulturalist and the colleague who tested Adam’s patience most, leaving Adam and Blue with a few minutes to talk before the donor needed rescuing. “He seems like he could be a bit of an asshole.”

Adam had gathered that from the slight undercurrent of smugness running beneath the rest of the conversation they’d had in the orchid room after Adam changed tack about Ronan donating his mom’s flowers. Though Ronan had been perfectly civil, a few smirks and dark looks hadn’t helped Adam’s assumption, and the belief all but settled when Ronan stuffed his hands in his pockets instead of shaking Adam’s hand when they’d parted. He hadn’t been unkind, exactly, but he hadn’t been kind, and it left Adam wondering how Gansey, affable, amiable, people-pleasing Gansey, had acquired such a best friend.

“Oh, he is an asshole,” Blue confirmed. “But not about this. He actually only has one demand.”

“A demand,” Adam replied flatly. Sizeable donations, in his experience, didn’t come with demands. Requests, yes. Private tours of the production facility, after-hours access to the conservatory for a son’s proposal, things the Garden could easily accommodate. But most people who donated anything of note to the Garden were not so uncouth as to have demands. “What, a big bronze plaque on the wall? A skywriter over the Mall declaring his benevolence?”

“Nope,” Blue said, both face and voice becoming joyful, and Adam’s stomach sank a little. A merry Blue in the context of donation negotiations was never a good sign. “He wants you to arrange the move.”

Being in proximity to Tad’s droning must have momentarily rendered Adam hard of hearing because he swore Blue said Ronan wanted him to coordinate moving his mother’s orchids.

“Come again?” Adam asked, sure he’d heard incorrectly, furrowing his eyebrows deeper than he had in quite some time. He’d long stopped questioning people’s wants and whims, but Ronan requesting Adam work on transporting hundreds of orchids all the way across Virginia—Adam didn’t know whether to be flattered Ronan wanted his involvement or to feel degraded Ronan wanted someone with a doctorate to move plants and get dirty, though Adam didn’t mind moving plants and he definitely didn’t mind getting dirty.

“Don’t start that it’s a horticulture versus botany thing,” Blue hissed, jerking her chin toward Tad. “That relocations are horticulture’s responsibility.”

“I’m not,” Adam told her. He’d do whatever he needed to get those orchids, even if it meant working closely with Tad Carruthers for a few weeks. “It’s just—a very specific thing to ask for.”

Blue shrugged. “He doesn’t get a lot of human interaction. Which probably makes him worse, now that I think about it.”

“So he doesn’t play well with others and you want to send me two hours away to his farm?” Adam smiled a little, elbowing Blue. “I think I’ve seen a horror movie that started this way.”

“Oh, shut the front door.” She shoved at Adam’s arm and after a moment of looking coy, her joyful look returned, brightening her eyes and curving her lips into a smile. “I kind of got the impression you wanted to play with him.”

“Yeah,” Adam sighed. It was a testament to Blue, to how well they’d gotten to know one another in the ten years they’d worked together. In the ten years they’d been friends. She knew precisely who his type was, the things he looked for in them. Blue knew exactly what she’d been doing the afternoon she called Adam over to the conservatory, and now she’d leave Adam to reap the benefits if he wanted. And for the first time in a while, Adam wanted. “Yeah, I do.”

Which was how he wound up driving one of the Garden’s white pickup trucks two hours west into the Shenandoah Valley on a scouting mission to determine what was needed to move all the orchids Ronan agreed to donate once Blue told him Adam would help with their relocation. It had turned into a nice day trip out of D.C., particularly after he declined not one, not two, but three of Tad Carruthers’ offers to accompany him. It turned into an even nicer day trip after Adam turned into the driveway leading to Ronan’s farm, the Barns.

Shrouded in trees, Adam missed the turn off the first time he drove past before he noticed a creeper-covered mailbox set back off the road. Beside it was the mouth of a gravel and dirt track that looked exactly like the entrance to a dozen fire roads he’d passed on his way there, but assuming the mailbox meant there was a house somewhere beyond the trees, Adam took the turn. The driveway wound around oaks and elms, just sprouting leaves as April progressed, and after a quarter mile, when the trees fell away from the driveway, a farm spread for acres in front of the truck, springly green and bright with life.

It was lovely, postcard perfect, rolling fields as far as Adam could see. Outbuildings cropped up here and there, a fairy circle around the idyllic glen, some red, some white, some crumbling. Fenced in fields held no cattle, and in the middle of it all was a shabby white farmhouse, a dark figure already waiting on the front steps, or rather on the ramp that covered half of them.

“Nice place,” Adam said when he climbed out of the truck after parking it beside a classic BMW in the gravel parking area in front of the house. Without another vehicle or person in sight, it had to be Ronan’s, and it managed to make Ronan immeasurably more attractive.

“Yeah,” Ronan replied, meeting Adam halfway between the porch and the parking area. Again, he glanced at their hands as they shook and then looked around for a moment, a king observing his kingdom, before he pushed his fists into the pockets of his black hoodie. He added, still looking out at the Barns instead of looking at Adam, “It’s not awful.”

Ronan didn’t have the edge Adam noticed when they’d met in D.C., like being here settled Ronan the same way the Botanic Garden settled Adam. Ronan was still sharp, still dark, but it was almost like the city had been a yolk and two hours' distance unburdened him. Like this was his home, and the Ronan Lynch standing in front of Adam was a truer version than the one Adam met in Washington.

Adam liked him a little more for it.

They both seemed slightly useless without Blue present to facilitate conversation, and so rarely was Adam involved with this stage of a large-scale move that, while he knew what information he needed, he had to pick his path to get there. A big piece was seeing what the Garden would be moving, and after a long moment of deciding how to put that stake in the ground, Adam asked, “Want to show me the plants?”

It looked like something else in Ronan settled when Adam took the lead, and Ronan nodded, turning toward the side of the house and jerking his chin for Adam to follow. “Yeah. This way.”

They rounded the farmhouse in silence, not awkward or tense, but a silence, and Adam slowed as they turned the corner of the back porch. Not thirty feet from the house stood the largest private conservatory Adam had ever seen, nestled in the shade of two tall elms—An intricate iron frame, painted white to match the house. Pane after pane of glass revealing the multitude of colors within.

It wasn’t so much a conservatory as a house of worship to orchids, a display of idolatry finer than any altar in any church.

“And your mother…” Adam couldn’t even finish as Ronan opened the doors, letting the conservatory's sweet air out as he let Adam inside.

“Always grew them,” Ronan replied. “Started before I was born.”

In front of them was a lifetime of work, and Ronan was giving it all away.

Everything faded into the background as Adam started walking the greenhouse’s perimeter, observing—admiring—plants. Clusters of red-and-gold Lady’s-slippers, towering pink-and-orange Nun’s caps, stems bursting with white Holy Ghosts. There were orchids Adam hadn’t seen outside of photos because they were so rare and because anything from overseas violated CITES. He was thankful he was a botanist and not on the legal team; he’d hate to play the floral provenance game for so many of these plants. “How’d she get them?”

“My dad was an art dealer,” Ronan told him, and Adam spared a glance over his shoulder to look at Ronan as Ronan leaned against a wooden workbench with a decoratively carved skirt and legs and he crossed his arms over his chest. He looked back at Adam. “He traveled a lot and brought them back as souvenirs.”

It confirmed Adam’s suspicion that a lot of the orchids hadn’t cleared customs, let alone the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but he figured this could be an ask forgiveness later, not get permission now kind of situation.

Because what Ronan’s mom had done with these plants had been a labor of love, a time-intensive endeavor. The contents of the greenhouse had not been cultivated quickly; it was constant dedication over thirty-five, maybe forty years, depending on Ronan’s age.

Adam hadn’t asked; he didn’t think he was in a position to.

But he couldn’t imagine Ronan’s mother would have wanted her hard effort to leave this place, this idyll with perfect light, a gorgeous greenhouse, and a son Adam could teach if he was willing to learn.

“You really don’t want to keep them?” he asked. Adam wanted them for the Garden, desperately, but while he knew he was biased, he didn’t fully understand how Ronan was able to give away his mother’s collection so easily.

“I’ve killed, like, five of them already,” Ronan replied, waving to a gathering of pots with stems and leaves but no flowers.

“Oh. They’re not dead.” Adam moved across the greenhouse to the pots. “That happens.” He pushed a fingertip into one pot’s soil, checking its moisture, then he spent a moment checking roots, looking for new growth. Finding gray-green nubs, he stood and dusted his hand off on his jeans as he looked over at Ronan. “Give them a few months and they’ll have flowers again.”

“And that—” Ronan pointed at Adam “—is why you plant nerds should have them.”

Adam had never been pleased by someone calling him a plant nerd before, but coming from Ronan he kind of liked it. Heat inched up his neck from the collar of his jacket, stretching toward his ears, and Adam couldn’t remember the last time he’d blushed. He was thirty-eight, not thirteen. There wasn’t much that made him blush anymore, but evidently Ronan Lynch did.

Rubbing his hand over his lips to hide a smile, Adam looked around the greenhouse again, at the hundreds of orchids Ronan’s mother had grown. Part of him wanted to check with Ronan one final time that he wanted to relinquish the plants to the Botanic Garden, but Adam stopped himself. Ronan seemed like the type where, once a decision was made, he was so sure of it he didn’t budge. So Adam didn’t ask. He only dropped his hand back to his side and said, “Look. I don’t do this kind of stuff. I’m a plant nerd who conserves rare species. I don’t know when we can get people out here and move these all to D.C. It’ll probably take us a few weeks to get a team together. And then it’ll take—I don’t know—maybe a day to move everything. I’ll come and catalog and tag, and people will pack the plants so they’re safe on the way back. If you can’t do a weekday because of work or something, a weekend would–”

“I work here,” Ronan interrupted. His blue eyes were brilliant in the sunlight filtering through the windows, and he pressed his lips together for a moment, like he was trying to not seem eager, before he added, “You could come back tomorrow.”

The Barns didn’t look like much of a farm, cattleless and cropless as it was. That didn’t mean Ronan didn’t have a home office or some kind of setup in one of the outbuildings, but it was far from a conventional work environment, though Adam supposed he didn’t have room to talk.

And Adam thought he would have come back tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after. He would make the four-hour round trip drive nightly to—tend to Ronan’s mother’s orchids. To make sure nothing happened to them between now and their relocation.

Though Adam got the distinct impression Ronan’s offer wasn’t about the orchids.

But he wouldn’t burden Ronan. Ronan had extended his hospitality enough, welcoming Adam that afternoon, opening his property to a far greater number of USBG staff in the future. For someone who didn’t get a lot of human interaction, that was already a big ask. And on top of that, two hours—wasn’t a short distance.

“I wish we moved that quickly,” Adam told Ronan, smiling a little. In apology. “I’ll talk to Blue tomorrow and we'll get back as soon as we can.”

Ronan nodded and looked down as he knocked a knuckle against the top of the workbench, and when he looked back up, his eyes were narrowed, deepening the crow’s feet around them. “Alright. Just show me how to not slaughter more of these things between now and then.”

For the next half hour, Adam gave Ronan a crash course in caring for orchids. He found spray bottles and walked Ronan through misting leaves and roots, not flowers. He showed him photos of different types of rot and pests. He assured him plants losing flowers wasn’t a sign that they were dying. It was more information than Ronan needed to tend to the plants for another week or two, but Adam always aimed to be thorough.

“If you see anything weird,” he said when he finished, pulling a business card out of his wallet and offering it to Ronan, “just email me a photo.”

Ronan took the card and flicked his thumbnail against the edge as he read it, and for half a second, Adam swore he looked stricken before his expression cleared and he looked up at Adam. “You’re a doctor?”

Adam wanted to laugh, but stopped himself, because when Blue introduced them, he’d just been Adam Parrish. Until he saw it on Adam’s business card, Ronan hadn’t known about the doctor part, and Adam couldn’t judge him for his surprise. Most people didn’t assume someone went to school for ten years to work with plants everyday and more or less build a life around them, because, admittedly, most of Adam’s life was his work.

Nodding once, going for levity, Adam said, “That’s what they call people with PhDs, yeah.”

“Shit. I wouldn’t have–” Ronan cut himself off and shook his head, slipping Adam’s card into the back pocket of his jeans before he reached up and scraped his hand over his buzz cut. Nodding, he said, “Alright. Yeah, I’ll email you.”

When Ronan eventually walked Adam back to the truck, for their entire walk around to the front of the house, all Adam could wonder was what Ronan wouldn’t have done.

Driving away from the city before rush hour, Adam made excellent time getting to the Barns. He’d left D.C. as soon as his coffee finished brewing, and it was still a socially unacceptable hour when he turned onto the Barns’ driveway, not missing it this time.

In the week and a half since he’d last been to the farm, the woods on either side of the driveway had come alive with bluebells, and some immature, childish part of Adam wanted to get out of his car and pick some. He stopped himself, but barely, only to be bombarded by daffodils in the flower beds around the farmhouse, adding bursts of white and yellow where they had been only green the week before. Not enough time had passed to change the Barns drastically, only enough for change to be noticeable: the leaves on the trees were larger, and the grass in the fields was longer and just a little bit greener.

It still made Adam wish he had made the four-hour round trip drive, at least once or twice.

The clock on the dashboard told him it was barely eight thirty when he parked, but the front door opened as he climbed out of the driver’s seat and Ronan stood behind the screen door, barefoot but otherwise fully dressed for the day in jeans and a black plaid flannel, sleeves rolled up so Adam caught a glimpse of his scale tattoo. Grabbing his backpack from the passenger seat, Adam shrugged one strap over his shoulder, and as soon as he was within earshot of the front door, Ronan said, “Blue told me your caravan wouldn’t be here until nine.”

“The caravan has the horticulturalists,” Adam replied as he walked up the steps. “They’re a different kind of plant nerd.”

“Oh, baby. Plant nerd drama. Tell me more,” Ronan deadpanned, opening the screen door for Adam.

“Not much to tell,” Adam said, smiling a little as he thanked Ronan and stepped into the house. It was dark and cool and smelled like lemon and boxwood and the runner down the hallway was well worn and faded in patches. Standing just inside the door, Adam knew this was a home. “They think they know botany and—they don’t.”

“Do you know horticulture?”

“More than they know botany.”

Ronan laughed, loud, merry, and he waved for Adam to follow him, like Adam belonged in the farmhouse and wasn’t just a passing acquaintance. A piece of Adam, one that clung like a deeply rooted weed, one that perpetually nagged him that he didn’t belong, thought he was only getting this level of treatment because of a good word from Blue or Gansey. But another piece, a more reasonable piece, thought it might be something—more.

A few days after his first visit, Adam got an email from Ronan. No greeting, no signature, just a photo of a single ladybug on the broad, flat leaf of an orchid and a question. Should I evict this squatter?

It amused Adam, not insignificantly, and he replied, They’re a good tenant. They can stay. He’d hoped it was the start of a digital conversation, but Ronan didn’t follow up until a few days later, a second photo with more ladybugs and only one line of text: They brought friends.

Adam didn’t respond to that right away. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he wanted to say something witty, coy, and he was out of practice. When he did reply a few hours later, he wrote, Now it’s a party. Am I invited?

Again, Ronan’s reply wasn’t immediate, but when Adam checked his work phone later that evening, he had a new email from Ronan. Another photo, more ladybugs, but in this picture, a beer bottle sat beside the flower pot and Ronan held a slice of pizza in the foreground.

He’d written, Yeah. Wish you were here.

“You want coffee?” Ronan asked, leading Adam further down the hall.

“Please,” Adam replied. He’d finished what was in his travel mug just past Front Royal, and it would be a two, if not three, cup kind of day.

Walking behind Ronan, Adam slowed as he passed the open door of a sitting room, though it wasn’t being used as one. A hospital bed, bare of sheets and pillows, stood in the middle of the room, facing a picture window that looked out over the Barns. An empty IV stand rose next to the mattress, the power cord for the monitoring device mounted on it wound around the base. In the corner, a wheelchair, a narrow model that could fit through the old farmhouse’s doorways.

They were the remainders of a life that probably hadn’t ended quickly, but had probably ended quietly. Adam knew Ronan’s mother had passed—he wouldn’t be at the Barns at all if she hadn’t—but he hadn’t known she’d been ill at home. That Ronan had probably been her caretaker.

“I’d take her out back to her greenhouse,” Ronan said from where he’d stopped down the hall, his cool eyes watching Adam as Adam looked at the sitting room. Of course he brought it back to the orchids, because they were why Adam was here. “Until she couldn’t really—” He grimaced, and Adam waited. It didn’t look easy for Ronan, and from what Blue had mentioned, he thought Ronan didn’t have many people to tell this to. Adam was likely one of the few people Ronan knew who didn’t know this story already, and he realized that maybe Ronan wasn’t good with others not because he didn’t get a lot of human interaction, but because he’d been taking care of his mom at the Barns for so long he’d forgotten how to operate in the world.

For the space of a second, that knowledge made Adam unbearably sad.

After a long minute of fidgeting, of looking everywhere but at Adam, Ronan took a deep breath and continued, “She had MS. PPMS, one of the shittier varieties. Took its time.”

Adam nodded a little, letting this new information sink in, and because he figured Ronan had received enough condolences and apologies to last a lifetime, he said, “That must have been rough.”

Ronan shrugged, and Adam knew rough was probably putting it lightly. It was another long minute before Ronan said, “She’d like that all her flowers are going somewhere where someone will appreciate them.”

“A lot of people will appreciate them.”

Ronan shrugged again, and he looked straight at Adam when he next spoke, “Not as much as you.”

Heat flared in Adam’s cheeks and ears, and he finally took another few steps down the hall toward Ronan. He was there for work, albeit early, albeit to spend more time with Ronan, and he was closer to forty than he liked to admit. Adam shouldn’t be blushing because a handsome man thought his dead mom would like that Adam was taking her orchids away.

But, undeniably, Adam had been attracted to Ronan, at least visually, since they’d first met, and unless he’d suddenly lost the ability to read people, the attraction went both ways. Adam’s first visit to the Barns only managed to turn that initial spark into something resembling a crush, which left him feeling like a teenager again, or at least a much younger adult. Adam hadn’t known how to navigate the nuances of love and relationships then, leaving him fulfilling needs instead of wants. After years of having no luck with relationships while he figured out what he did want, his navigation was still unreliable, but whatever this—thing—was with Ronan, Adam thought he might want to put what he did know into use.

Then Ronan had to go and say not as much as you, and it took every ounce of Adam’s propriety and professionalism to not cage Ronan against the wall and kiss him. But it made Adam make a promise to himself. When this was all over, once Ronan’s donation was suitably complete so Adam didn’t feel slightly sleazy about lusting over a donor, Adam would invite Ronan to Washington. He would see where things went from there.

It still didn’t stop Adam from giving Ronan a weighty—a very weighty—look before he asked, “So, that coffee?”

In the kitchen, Ronan poured them coffee, got out milk and sugar, and watched as Adam stirred a little of both into his mug. To keep things from getting too charged, Adam said, “You mentioned you work from home the last time I was here.”

“Not home.” Ronan waved around the kitchen with his hand not holding a coffee cup. The kitchen was old like the farmhouse was old, well-used and worn and comfortable, everything a little dated but exactly as Adam thought it should be. “It’s a pain in the ass to make furniture inside the house. I have a woodshop in one of the barns.”

Adam recalled the carved workbench in the Barns’ conservatory, then his mind slid to a set of intricate and complex shelves in Gansey’s home office, an oddly unique coffee table in Blue and Gansey’s living room. The wheelchair ramp out front. Things built with care for the people meant to use them. Letting that settle for a moment, Adam said, “You can manage that, and you think you can’t manage a few plants.”

Cupping his coffee in both hands, Ronan pointed at Adam around it. “Thing is, wood’s already dead.” He paused a second, frowned a little, and added, “Or mostly dead. I can’t kill it more.”

Adam laughed, only to be interrupted by a loud chime, and when he looked around for the origin of the sound, Ronan supplied, “Sensor on the driveway. Your flotilla of horticulture pricks are probably here. What’s the difference in your plant nerdery, anyway?”

“They just grow stuff,” Adam said, at that moment loathing the horticulture team more than he already did. He tried his best to keep disappointment from his voice as he resigned himself to losing this bit of alone time with Ronan. “I grow stuff and study it.”

For the rest of the day, Adam hardly saw Ronan. Between dealing with the horticulture team, taking photos of all the orchids, classifying as many as he could, and tagging everything, he was too consumed with actual work to think much about Ronan Lynch. But when the team was done for the day, he volunteered to find Ronan and tell him they were finished, and he followed the sound of a power tool, a band or table saw, to a barn not far from the house. It smelled a little like sawdust and a little like sweat, and Adam stood at the entrance for a few moments, watching Ronan work in his woodshop packed with half-finished furniture and more tools than Adam knew existed.

“So what now?” Ronan asked after powering off his band saw when he noticed Adam in the open doorway. From the way Ronan looked at him, Adam didn’t think the question was entirely about the fate of his mother’s orchids, or he hoped it wasn’t, because he was sure he was looking at Ronan the same way.

“They’ll be quarantined for a while,” Adam told him, shrugging his backpack from his shoulder so he could unzip it and pull a box from inside. After zipping his bag back up, he smoothed his thumb over a piece of tape attaching another one of his business cards to the box, this one with his cell phone number written carefully beneath his email address. “And some of them will probably have to go to our plant rescue center.”

Ronan pushed his protective glasses onto his head and furrowed his eyebrows. “You said they were healthy.”

“They are.” Maybe some time Adam would explain exactly what laws Ronan’s father had violated by smuggling orchids back into the country so he could gift them to Ronan’s mom, but that afternoon was not that time, so Adam shortened the story to, “Some of them are illegal, though. Really illegal. The Garden can’t keep those for our collection.”

“That bastard,” Ronan said after a moment, smirking, his voice a little proud, already connecting the dots.

Laughing though he knew he shouldn’t, because he didn’t want to condone plant smuggling, Adam stepped into the barn and walked closer to where Ronan was working. He was seconds away from putting the ball in Ronan’s court and his heart was a maple seed helicoptering in a breeze. “I can’t promise anything else will make it into the main Garden, at least not until our orchid show next spring.” Adam paused and took a breath, but it didn’t stop his fluttering heart as he added, “But you could come see them at our production site.”

Ronan nodded slightly, watching Adam’s approach, and when Adam offered him the box, a LEGO set to build a potted orchid, Ronan accepted it without looking at it. He asked, casually, “Private tour?”

Adam nodded, and just as casually, he replied, “Private tour.”

They looked at one another for a few moments before Ronan dropped his gaze to the LEGO set and his eyebrows furrowed again. When he noticed the business card, Adam watched Ronan’s eyes dart back and forth as he read it. “What’s this for?”

Blue would send a thank you gift from the Garden, but that would need round after round of approval before it made it to Ronan. Adam had wanted to give Ronan something more immediate, a more personal token of gratitude. He said, “I couldn’t leave you orchidless. And you can’t kill it.”

Ronan looked at the set another moment or two before he burst into laughter, louder and merrier than he’d laughed in the house that morning, and when he looked at Adam again, the only way Adam could classify Ronan’s smile was as a grin. “You’ve got far too much faith, Parrish.”

Saturdays were busy at the Garden on the National Mall, but not at the production facility across the city. Weekends, the facility was usually low-staffed; computers controlled watering and temperatures, and numerous people, Adam included, received alerts on their phones if anything went wrong.

So it had been a while since Adam had been to work on a Saturday, though he wasn’t really there for work. Thursday evening Ronan had texted coming to DC this weekend if youre available for that tour, and Adam replied almost too quickly he could meet at whatever time worked for Ronan. Though he didn’t want to come off as too eager, Adam realized he was too old to play games, to care about how a quick response made him look.

They’d agreed to meet at eleven, late enough Ronan wouldn’t have to leave the Barns at dawn. Adam had a far shorter ride from his condo, but perpetually early, he was already outside the facility’s main doors when Ronan’s BMW pulled into the parking lot at 10:45. They shook hands, exchanged smiles that were only slightly giddy, and after Adam signed Ronan in as a guest, the tour began in earnest.

“Tell me my mom’s stuff had some never-before-seen disease that spread to everything here,” Ronan said as they walked through one greenhouse, past rows of waist-high perforated tables covered in terra cotta pots of succulents, ducking every once in a while to avoid Burro’s-Tails and Strings-of-Pearls tumbling out of pots hanging overhead. “That would be awesome.”

“No, that wouldn’t be awesome,” Adam laughed, batting a philodendron vine away as they passed through another greenhouse. “I don’t know what world you grew up in, Lynch, but plant diseases aren’t fun. Especially rare ones. I don’t think your mom would want that as her legacy.” When they reached it, Adam opened the door to the first of three orchid greenhouses and held it for Ronan. “Your mom’s plants were fine. Are fine. Not even garden-variety pests for me to take care of. Just a few hitchhiking ladybugs.”

Ronan paused on his way through the door to look at Adam. “You’ve been taking care of them?”

“Yeah.” Adam hadn’t needed to do it all himself, but he’d wanted to. There was an element of—personal investment. He’d come in earlier, stayed later, and in the first of three months of quarantine, he’d been able to research most of the plants he didn’t know, get them in the Garden’s plant database, and created about half the little black display placards the orchids needed. Adam waved his free hand at himself. “Botanist. Orchidologist.”

Nodding, Ronan looked at Adam a moment longer before he said, “Alright. Cool. Good.”

They walked through the first two orchid greenhouses to the third, the one Adam had set up for Aurora Lynch’s collection. It turned out Ronan had wanted a plaque in the donation negotiations, but it was far smaller and much less flashy than Adam once joked about. It also didn’t have his name on it, but his mother’s. It was a display of discretion Adam should have expected; they’d met three times, but Adam already saw Ronan had a certain level of self-awareness, gave credit where credit was due. He wouldn’t want his name tied to his mother’s hard work. It was her place to shine.

“It’s not as nice as the conservatory they were in,” Adam apologized as they stepped into the greenhouse. Bare steel supports and corrugated plastic walls gave it an industrial, clinical feel, nothing like Aurora’s conservatory at the Barns. There was a stainless table instead of the workbench Ronan made, tiered plastic tables instead of wooden shelves. The farm’s conservatory had personality where the production facility had none.

“No shit. It’s kind of hard to be,” Ronan said as he started walking around, spending a moment at each of the plants like he was trying to remember where they’d been at the Barns. The White Fringed Orchids, the Demon Orchids, the Donkey Orchids. All the plants his mother had cultivated and he’d made sure found the right home. “My dad built that thing by hand, and now it’s just—there.”

Lingering by the door, Adam watched Ronan bend over and examine an orchid from another angle and Adam glanced away before he looked anywhere untoward for too long. He said, “You could fill it with stuff that’s impossible to kill. Snake plants. ZZ plants. Pothos. Plain green things you don’t have to worry about.”

“I wouldn’t know the first place to start,” Ronan replied, standing up and turning to face Adam.

“Good thing you know a plant nerd,” Adam said. He was completely certain Ronan was competent enough to manage bi-weekly watering, and if he couldn’t, Adam would volunteer to do it for him despite the lengthy drive to the Barns. It was an excuse to see the farm again. To see Ronan again. “I can find stuff so simple even you could handle it.”

“Look, man. Don’t say that,” Ronan told him flatly. “You trusted me with a LEGO orchid and I even messed that up.”

“You messed up putting a LEGO set together. They come with instructions. With pictures,” Adam said, confused on the verge of whiplash. Ronan built things for a living and he was significantly older than the 18+ age range on the box. “How did you—Did you kill the LEGO set?”

“I think I did it one worse,” Ronan told him, sliding his phone from his pocket as he crossed the greenhouse back to Adam. Unlocking the screen, he held his phone out to Adam and Adam took it, again holding it like it was precious.

On the screen was something made from the pieces of the orchid set, but was definitely not an orchid. It was more of a bionic botanic man. Pieces meant to be leaves and dirt and a stem formed a skeleton, wound through with flexible pieces that should have been roots. White and pink pieces that were supposed to be flowers made a rib cage, bloomed from kneecaps, and made a face, though face was being generous for what looked like a many-jawed floral monster.

“Oh god,” Adam said, trying not to laugh. He felt like a teenager again, this time for entirely different reasons. Because he did laugh. He laughed at the absurdity of this—creature—Ronan had built from what was supposed to be a flower, because he enjoyed it far more than the orchid it should have been. “Maybe you shouldn’t be trusted with plants.”

“Hey. Don’t change your mind so soon, Parrish,” Ronan said as he took his phone back and put it away, smiling, sharp and victorious. His crow’s feet were deeper again, this time for entirely different reasons. “Come on. I thought you could be my on-call plant nerd. You can talk me off a ledge when something starts turning brown.”

“Not saying I can’t be,” Adam replied, his heart a helicoptering maple seed again, “but that would require the acquisition of plants. Easy plants.”

“I feel like I’m in the right place for that.” Ronan waved his hands around and Adam laughed again.

He looked at Ronan for a long moment, knowing if he walked into this, he was done for. It had taken Adam Parrish thirty-eight years to figure out what he really wanted, and what he wanted was Ronan Lynch. This lonesome man from two hours away who Adam would drive to in a heartbeat if he called in a panic over a pothos. This man who didn’t follow directions and created beautiful beasts instead of plastic potted plants. This man who Adam didn’t know well, but knew well enough to see how much he cared for his family, his friends.

Adam wanted to know him better. So much better.

“You’re not,” Adam said finally, “but I know a few places where plants can be legally acquired. And a few places near them to get lunch.”

Ronan’s eyes narrowed, just slightly and just for a second, before he said, “You’re turning buying plants into a date.”

Adam nodded once and said, sure and true, “I am. You know, botanist and all.”

Ronan looked at Adam for longer than Adam had looked at him, and Adam’s sureness faltered. Ronan’s face was unreadable in a way Adam hadn’t seen it before, his mouth a flat line, the barest crease between his eyebrows. It was only when Ronan’s lips curved into a smirk that Adam felt steady again, and he hadn’t even noticed he'd curled his hands into fists so his fingernails bit into his palms.

“One condition,” Ronan said.

Whatever it was, Adam would agree. He’d agreed to Ronan’s first condition. He’d probably agree to them all. “Name it.”

Ronan stepped closer and Adam really had to cling to his propriety and professionalism when Ronan said, “Come to the Barns next weekend and help me repot them.”

Before he could even think of controlling it, Adam’s face split into a smile, a bud that had waited a very long time and was finally ready to bloom. “I can arrange that.”