Work Text:
There’s nothing unusual about this particular Sunday afternoon at Monmouth, nothing spectacular at all.
Adam’s dozing off in an old armchair, halfway to sleep in the warm sunlight that’s falling through the windows. The air is heavy with dust from all of Gansey’s old books, almost glowing in the light. He can feel his pulse beating, slower slower slower.
Blue is flopped on her back across Gansey’s mattress in the middle of the room, her head nearly touching the floor as she reads, upside down, A Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants. A few feet away from her, Gansey is busy rebuilding one of the shops in his miniature Henrietta, cross-legged on the ground with his city sprawled around him.
“That door’s crooked,” Blue says absentmindedly, eyes barely flitting away from her pages.
“That’s because you’re upside down,” Gansey insists, but Adam notices him tilt it anyway, almost imperceptibly.
Ronan’s standing by the windows with Chainsaw on his shoulder, looking out at god knows what and completely zoned out to whatever tinny electronic music is blasting in his headphones, loud enough it’s audible to the rest of the room. Beside him, Noah keeps trying to feed treats to Chainsaw without getting his fingers nipped.
On the surface, it looks like a normal afternoon. On the surface – if Adam squints hard enough, lets the dust motes swirl in front of everything and lets the warm glow of the sun make everything seem better – they could all be normal teenagers, albeit with slightly eccentric hobbies and pets.
Watching his friends laze about so normally in Monmouth, it almost seems to Adam that it would be almost impossible to think that Ronan pulled Chainsaw out of his dreams, that Noah is a ghost boy, dead for seven years.
Almost impossible to believe that Gansey is going to be dead soon, and Blue’s already seen his spirit on the corpse road.
Impossible.
If he closes his eyes, reaches out with that strange, new part of his mind he still doesn’t quite understand, and maybe never will, he can feel the ley-line pulsing so close to them all, feel it in his blood and his heartbeat like any other part of him. He’s not any more normal than the rest of them.
The sunlight feels a little bit colder on his skin. The illusion never holds up very long.
Adam stands up abruptly.
“I have to get to work.” It’s not a lie, but right now it happens to be a good excuse. Anything to distract him, mind and body. His pulse trips, panicked, as he waves goodbye and leaves. The ley line still beats strong.
Ronan shows up at the shop two minutes before Adam’s supposed to get off work. He’s just cleaning up, wiping down tools and putting everything back in place, when Ronan walks in as if it were entirely normal for him to hang out here. Maybe he’s starting to make a habit of it.
He doesn’t say hey, doesn’t say anything, just nods and then leans up against the door of the garage, like he’s waiting, or like Adam was waiting for him.
Adam wipes his cheek off where it feels sticky with grease, runs a hand through his sweaty hair. Ronan’s just watching him. He doesn’t know when he became so aware of Ronan watching him, but there’s a full moment of silence before he shakes out of it.
“Car troubles?” It’s a weak joke.
Ronan rolls his eyes, like such a thing would be inconceivable, and pulls away from the doorframe.
“Hurry up and come for a drive.” Every inch of his body seems taut with impatience, itching to get on the road for whatever insane midnight mission he’s planned.
Adam grabs the keys to lock up the shop, and his own car keys, which he jangles at Ronan. “I’ve got my car here too,” he reminds him.
Ronan snorts. “Not that kind of drive.” And then he’s gone already, slipping out the door like there’s no question whether Adam will follow him.
If it was anyone else, Adam might bristle at the jab to his car, might point out ‘not everyone’s born with the silver keys to a BMW in their mouth,’ but Ronan seems jittery and agitated and he doesn’t mean it like that - driving is more than driving to Ronan. It’s a drug, an escape, a religion, all wrapped up into one shiny car.
He locks up and follows him out.
They don’t talk while Ronan drives them further and further out of town. Adam’s exhausted from work, and Ronan – well, if his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel is any indication, Ronan clearly has something on his mind that he isn’t going to talk about just yet.
When he finally stops the car, they’re just past the outskirts of Henrietta, farmland on both sides of them and only mountains beyond that. There’s no flourish or showy sideswipe. Ronan just slows down and then – stops. His hand stays clutching the gearshift like it’s so natural, just an extension of his limbs.
There is nothing but the sky thick with stars all around them and the endless buzz of crickets and Ronan’s laboured breaths. The moonlight falls sharp on his profile, cutting his face into all angles. He’s not looking at Adam when he finally speaks up.
“I’ve been – talking, with Cabeswater.” His face scrunches a bit on ‘talking,’ like that isn’t the right word for it, but no other word would say it better. Adam thinks of how the pulse of the ley line blooms around him, the visions he sees when he’s scrying, and he understands. So much about Cabeswater is nameless.
“I’ve been trying to get it to show me another way to Glendower, another cave, just, something,” Ronan continues, talking quicker now, like it’s less painful to get it all out at once. “I’m not getting much, is the thing, but I think we have to hurry.”
He looks at Adam for the first time now. “We need to do it really soon,” he insists. “We need to figure it out. That’s our job.”
He means me and you, Adam realizes. Cabeswater is part of them both, or they are part of it - Gansey’s magicians.
Ronan exhales, a loud hiss through his teeth, sharp inhale through his nose right after, smoker’s breath.
“That’s what I wanted to tell you, away from everyone else. We need to hurry up. I have a really…” His mouth twists. “I have a really bad feeling.”
“Ronan Lynch drove me out to the middle of nowhere to talk about his feelings?” Adam murmurs, sarcastic, but it doesn’t quite hit, doesn’t make it out of his mouth quite right. He’s too distracted by bad feelings and Ronan’s need to hurry and an overwhelming sense that something bad is about to happen very soon all at once.
Ronan punches him in the shoulder.
“I’m being serious, Parrish.”
Ronan has no idea how much Adam already knows. He’s right to have a bad feeling about all of it.
Adam imagines himself saying the words.
He imagines telling Ronan ‘Gansey’s on the death list,’ and then he looks at the tight corners of Ronan’s mouth, the strained lines of his face, and he remembers everything he’s ever heard about what Ronan was like when his father was killed, and he can’t do it – he can’t take Gansey away from him too.
He imagines Ronan splintering apart right here in the driver’s seat, imagines all the cracks and fissures in the moonlight. He won’t do it.
It’s not his secret to tell, he reminds himself. It’s Blue’s – But is it really? Or is it Gansey’s, or is it none of theirs? Life. Death. These are the kind of secrets that no one is supposed to know.
Adam thinks of his vision of Gansey dead at his feet, and he thinks of Ronan’s lifeless body bleeding out in the church, and he wonders if all his friends are going to die because of him.
“You’re right,” he finally says, hoarse. “We’ll get it soon.”
He puts his hand on top of Ronan’s on the gear shift. He feels Ronan’s hand twitch underneath his hand, but Ronan doesn’t look over. He continues looking out the window, but Adam knows him well enough to see how purposeful it is – not disinterest, but rather the pure focus of looking anywhere other than their hands. He’s not sure what reaction he expected. He’s not sure if he’s just looking for a reaction.
“Soon,” Ronan insists. He’s still looking out the window.
Adam’s hand is still resting on top of his, following the curve. Ronan’s hand is cold and Adam wants to say that it feels like they’re running out of time, like they won’t make it much further. It’s suddenly not enough to notice Ronan watching him, not enough to wonder about what it could all add up to in some hypothetical future moment.
It’s just something they’ll never get the chance for. Gansey is going to die, and Ronan is going to hate him for it.
Adam pulls his hand away and looks out his own window.
“We’ve got school tomorrow,” he reminds Ronan. “Should probably get home.”
Ronan doesn’t say anything, but Adam hears the engine start back up a second later. He rests his head against the window the entire way home.
Inexplicably, Ronan climbs out of the car when they pull up at St. Agnes.
“I’ll drive us to school tomorrow,” he says, not looking at Adam, already heading inside. “Then we’ll go pick up your car.” Adam’s car, which is still at the shop. Right.
Ronan could just pick him up in the morning. Ronan could drive back to Monmouth now and sleep in his own bed instead of on Adam’s floor, but instead he’s leading the way up the stairs to Adam’s apartment.
Adam’s hand clenches tight. He thinks about Ronan’s cold hand on the gearshift. He thinks about Ronan’s eyes on him in the shop. He thinks about Gansey dead on the ground and Ronan snarling “Is this what you wanted?”
He jostles by Ronan to unlock the door, clenches his teeth at the brush of their shoulders, and pushes past him inside. Ronan kicks his shoes off while Adam gathers up his thickest blanket from his bed. It’s late, and they’re both tired, but the silence between them feels entirely unnatural.
“Here.” He offers Ronan the blanket. The small space of his apartment has never felt so tiny and claustrophobic as it does around him right now.
Adam crawls into bed while Ronan arranges the blanket on the floor beside him, just a few inches below his mattress. Ronan pulls off his shirt and balls it up into a makeshift pillow under his head. He’s facing away from Adam, and it’s impossible not to stare at his tattoo, how it crawls up his spine, unfurls over his shoulder blades.
“Night, Parrish,” Ronan says, somehow managing to make those two words sound sarcastic.
Adam squirms and looks away, feeling caught out even though Ronan’s not looking at him, couldn’t possibly know he was staring.
“Night,” he says quietly.
He’s asleep less than a minute later.
When Adam wakes up, he has no idea if he’s been asleep a few minutes or a few hours.
Ronan’s leaning up against the window, looking at something outside. Adam blinks, disoriented, and then he notices the makeshift bed on the floor and remembers.
“What are you looking at?” His voice is dry from sleep, awkward in the middle of the night.
Ronan shrugs the shoulder not pressed up against the window pane. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Adam would apologize for the uncomfortable accommodations if it was anyone else, but he knows that Ronan and insomnia are old friends anyway. Instead, he forces himself out of bed and joins him at the window.
Ronan comes to this building every Sunday and sits in a pew with his brothers. They can’t see much of the lower roof from Adam’s window but it seems weird to imagine it anyway, the Ronan sitting down there below and the same Ronan standing beside him up here.
He’s standing close enough to Ronan that it’s difficult to focus on anything but the space between them.
It feels harder to keep secrets at night. Adam thinks of saying it again and again and again, ‘Gansey’s on the death list,’ until it feels like it might burst out of him.
He touches Ronan’s wrist with one finger.
Ronan looks at him this time, one sharp motion.
“Adam.” He says it quietly, quick and caught off guard, and it sounds like a warning, like caution, but he doesn’t pull his wrist away and there’s nothing angry in his eyes or posture, nothing to suggest he wants Adam to stop touching him.
Instead of anger, there’s the faintest trace of hope in the way he’s staring at Adam, and it’s more than Adam can bear, Ronan still wanting him now because he doesn’t know.
He curls his fingers around Ronan’s wrist when he makes up his mind and leans further into his space and kisses him, and – it should feel like the world is shifting under his feet, like nothing is ever going to be the same again between them, he’s kissing Ronan, but instead all he can think about is the soft taste of Ronan’s mouth and the way he goes limp with surprise for one, impossible moment before he grabs at Adam’s waist and pulls him closer into him.
Then Adam’s stumbling forward and they’re pressed up against the window frame and he gets his other hand around the back of Ronan’s neck, grazing at his short hair. Ronan shudders, and his fingers scramble under the hem of Adam’s t-shirt, pressing hard into the skin.
Ronan’s mouth slips from his with a quick exhale, and then he’s clenching his teeth, forehead pressed into Adam’s, eyes closed.
“Are you-” he starts to say, and stops, like maybe the end of the question was supposed to be ‘sure’ but he couldn’t quite get it out.
“Yeah,” Adam says, even though he’s not, even though he has a horrible feeling and a horrible secret. His voice sounds impossibly loud to his own ears.
Ronan kisses him, and it’s harder this time, and his teeth scrape Adam’s lip before he’s pushing him insistently and they stumble back toward Adam’s mattress, manage to fall into bed in the most ungraceful pile of limbs.
Once they’re slightly less tangled, Ronan helps Adam tug over his t-shirt over his head. He trails his hand down Adam’s chest slowly, an impossibly light touch, like he doesn’t quite believe any of this, and Adam has to close his eyes to ground himself. He opens his eyes a second later, and squirms closer on the mattress to kiss Ronan, who pulls him in with a hand in his hair.
They lose track of the night like that, until eventually Adam flops his head back on his pillow.
Ronan is just lying there, staring, chest rising and falling, his breath impossibly loud and his body impossibly here in Adam’s bed. Everything about this is impossible.
“Stop thinking so much, Parrish.”
“I’m not.”
Ronan rolls his eyes. His arm is draped over Adam’s back, and Adam’s hand is squished between them. There is no way this is a comfortable way to sleep, but Adam really doesn’t want to move. This feels like something that could disappear so, so quickly.
“It’s just – like you said. Cabeswater. Glendower. I have a bad feeling too,” he admits, before Ronan can think that Adam’s regretting this already.
Ronan studies Adam for a long moment, his eyes fixed like he’s realized he’s allowed to stare right now.
“We’ve made it this far,” he says finally. “We’ll figure it out.” He says it with surprising conviction. Maybe it’s the church below them, maybe this is just another Sunday prayer like he would say down there, and maybe he believes it just as much.
“Okay.” Adam’s already starting to fall back to sleep, and it comes out mumbled.
But he can almost believe it.