Work Text:
Falling in love is risky business.
- bloodied tulips
The first time he sees him is not at school, or in Gansey’s coughing, spluttering car, or anywhere near Aglionby all together. Adam is thirteen the first time he sees Ronan Lynch. He’s young and scared and his arm throbs from where his father had thrown a bottle at him. He feels dampness on his sleeve and he is sure he is bleeding, but he’s too scared to look. Some time in the future he knows scientists will prove this to be true; cuts and bruises and bleeding arms do not hurt unless you look at them. If he never acknowledges his arm, there is no cut, and there is no blood, and it does not hurt.
For now, he keeps walking. He needs to get away from his shitty trailer where his father is passed out from midday drinking. Adam will be home before he wakes up, he must, unless he wants matching cuts on his back and cheek, but right now he wants to pretend that he can run away from home and that his arm does not throb in time to the thudding of his feet on dirt.
Thirty minutes of walking lands him in a kind of picture-book clearing he had only ever seen in the Classic Bedtime Stories for Children in the public library he spends his weekends in. Adam had never thought of himself to be one of those people that felt that nature or trees or mountains were breathtaking and beautiful, he was too logical for that- too uncaring for the frills and grass or whatever- but the clearing seemed to almost demand
He’s walking towards it before he knows why: pushing at tall weeds and grass that goes up to his waist to get to the centre where a patch of blue flowers is growing. It's not until he first touches the flowers that he realises that something is wrong about them. Every petal he touches turns into a butterfly that goes to rest on his hair.
At the centre of the sea of blue lies Ronan Lynch, just as much part of the dream as the wingtips touching Adam’s ears. He can’t help but smile at the serenity on his face, the flowers that curled into his hair. Adam, thirteen and hateful of everything in the world, finds himself nearly gleaming of an unexplainable, sudden joy that had wedged its way into his heart. He felt that if he looked away the magic would be broken, that nothing would remain good in this world.
Then the boy’s eyes open and Adam Parrish runs.
- the silence just wants to have a conversation
Adam has rules for sleeping.
Number one, he must always be asleep on the side closest to the door. It's a decades old fight-or-flight that he just can’t seem to let go of, but anything else feels too much like he’s trapped in a cell.
Ronan understands, of course he does. He makes fun of it at first; moves the entire bed one day while Adam is at work. When Adam comes home to see his side of the bed pressed against the door, he flushes red. Ronan smiles, big and pleased with himself. "It's for easier access to your escape route, Parrish”
It takes him some time to realise that even that was just Ronan saying I understand.
Number two, sometimes he wakes up from dreams that leave him feeling like a sharp edge of a sword. He doesn’t say anything at first, because obviously they aren’t as bad as Ronan’s. How stupid would he sound complaining about his dreams to Ronan fucking Lynch, who has such unique, custom-built, dream-specific trauma. How would he even begin that conversation? Hi Ronan, so you know how you sometimes wake up from your dreams nearly dead? Yeah, sometimes my brain makes me feel like I’m back at the trailer and then I scratch at my arms until they bleed. Kind of like yours do when your freaky dream monsters try to kill you.
So he doesn’t say anything. He wakes up at three and four and five a.m. with his heart crawling up his throat and he sits in the bathroom drinking tapwater until he can breathe again, and then he crawls into his sweaty spot next to Ronan like a wounded animal and prays for sleep to come.
Number three, he cannot be touched at all when he is asleep. This takes some time for Ronan to understand. Which is not really his fault, because Ronan’s naturally just a touchy person; an arm thrown over a shoulder, pats on the back, his toes touching Adam’s heel when they sit on a booth at Nino’s.
For the first few nights, Adam lays in bed, unasleep, for the entire night, muscles tensed where Ronan’s hand is splayed over his stomach. Ronan, miraculously, is dead-asleep, and Adam would feel so so so guilty if he woke him up just to tell him that his breath feels caught in his throat, in a really bad way, so he just keeps counting the minutes in his head until Ronan wakes up and grins at him lazily and Adam feels like someone had crushed his heart, and he doesn’t know how to tell Ronan that he hadn’t been able to close his eyes for nine hours now.
Later one night, when Adam has spent weeks trying to wiggle away from Ronan’s limbs, and finding ways to duck out of their bed to sleep on the couch, Ronan confronts him in the bathroom. Adam is handwashing the collar of his Boyd’s uniform before he has to go into another shift. He’s terribly tired. Ronan stands with his arms and legs completely blocking off the doorway which Adam disconnectedly acknowledges isn’t sending him into a panic.
“You have another sleep thing.” Ronan says. His voice sounds like a child throwing a tantrum.
Adam continues scrubbing. His fingers feel raw. “What sleep thing?”
“You know what fucking thing.” He glares at Adam’s ever-moving hands, and then reaches down to shut off the water.
Adam inhales sharply, once, and then wrings the water off his shirt. “Ronan, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His tone says this is the last of this conversation , which Ronan doesn’t understand because he’s Ronan Lynch, and he’d pick a person to the bone to get the truth.
“You haven’t been sleeping. And it’s either because of me, or because of Robert fucking Parrish, or something at work or school and either way I’d at least like to know.” Ronan’s voice has the sharp bite of winter morning.
Adam’s mind sets off a panic alarm. It’s the stupidest thing ever but all he can think about is the THE END flashing in his head. Ronan’s finally had enough of Adam’s problems and he’s annoyed and he’s going to leave him. The panic floods before Adam has a moment to rationally think about this Ronan leaving him fear that seems to have sprung out of nowhere. His mind says: I’m sorry for being annoying, I’m sorry for being needy. I’m sorry for not being a person sometimes. I’m sorry for wishing I didn’t have this body anymore. I’m sorry for being all nails and teeth and exhaustion . He says: “I understand if you don’t want me to sleep over anymore.”
Ronan is silent. He runs a frustrated hand over his head, his face and then down to the right of his neck. “Adam. . .” he begins, and then he’s silent again. Adam’s heart is pounding hard enough for him to feel it in his throat.
Ronan sits, right there in the doorway, his legs folded. “I don’t. . . I don’t want you to leave , Parrish. Where did you even get that from? I just. I want you to tell me what’s wrong, so we can, I don’t know. Fix it. Compromise. Something like that.”
Adam chokes out a laugh. The rush of relief has his mind feeling dizzy, and all he can think to reply with is, “you sound like a love is patient, love is kind throw pillow.” Adam sits down so his knees are touching Ronan. By default, Ronan’s hands find their way to Adam’s.
“Are you gonna tell me?”
“It’s just too much sometimes. At night, having you touch me. Having anything touch me, really. It’s not-- It’s not just you. I just. . . can’t sleep that way,” he finishes lamely.
Ronan shoves Adam’s shoulder.
“And that’s all you had to say.”
The next day Adam comes home to find that Ronan’s split their mattress in half with a long pillow, the purple writing on top says love does not insist on its own way . Adam thinks, I need to get him a job. He says, “Asshole.” The smile on Ronan’s face is enough.
- lonelism
In junior year at Aglionby, Adam’s English teacher has all of them keeping journals as part of a personal documentation project. Adam barely ever writes in it, because three days into writing about his daily life had made it quite apparent what a massive loser he was compared to everyone else at his school.
Today I went to work before the sun rose. I ate toast as my only meal because my scholarship doesn’t cover full tuition anymore. I am the poster child of every single possible bad thing that can ever happen to a person.
He burns red when Gansey accidentally reaches for his journal in class one day. He rips his bag away before his fingers can reach them. Gansey is surprised, but doesn’t show it. That is his kindness, Adam supposes, another debt he owes to him.
Adam’s journal at sixteen says;
i think i am the saddest person i know.
i wish he would just kill me.
sometimes i want to lay down on the train tracks by 6th street.
He rips the paper. He would have to kill himself if anyone found these.
- god-possessed
Ronan Lynch is about to die, and all he can think of is the sweetness of his killer being Adam Parrish. His hands carefully curl around Ronan’s neck, the pads of his fingers pressing in deeply, the wild panic in Adam’s eyes screaming of something else. Something a little deeper than just I am choking my best friend of 4 years to death. Or maybe Ronan’s gone a little delirious from the lack of oxygen to his brain. It feels too much like a love letter.
Three years later, Adam is on Ronan’s bed, his back pressed to the headboard. He’s having one of his harder days, his hands are restless in his lap. Ronan takes one just to quieten them for a moment. He says, so softly that Ronan has to strain to hear, “why didn’t you stop me that day?”
“I couldn’t hurt you”
“I was. Hurting you, I mean. I would’ve killed you.”
Three years before, Adam says, “stop me, Ronan- fight back. ”
Ronan thinks, it’s not a bad way to go, death by Adam Parrish. He thinks, at least he is touching me, at least I get to be his. He whispers, only for Adam to hear, “ Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit. ” Ronan has him gathered in his arms, Adam’s violent hands trapped between their bodies, his arms restraining Adam’s.
Now, in their bed, Ronan laughs. Adam blankly stares at him, unimpressed.
“It’s just,” Ronan begins. Recomposes. Adam on days like this is hard to manage, Ronan can’t be too solemn or Adam will think he’s being pitying, and he can’t be too funny or Adam will think he’s making fun of him.
He considers, and then finally decides on just being honest. “It’s just that. I don’t judge you for your worst bits, Adam. And that whole thing, it wasn’t even your fault, really.”
Adam doesn’t respond. It strikes Ronan that it’s kind of weird that he has to be the maturer one in this conversation, like he has to step up and be man of the house and make sure Adam doesn’t twist this into something uglier in his mind.
“I wouldn’t want you to judge me for things that I feel guilty over, and I hope you don’t, or it’ll be a little weird that we’re still together.”
Adam is slack against Ronan’s body, his knees buckled and weight fully against Ronan. Every once in a while he feels Adam’s hands still twitching, yearning for violence, but mainly he’s calm now. Against his non-hearing ear, Ronan says, “thanks for not killing me, Parrish.” He thinks of how easy it would be to just tell Adam everything right now, with all this closeness between them.
Adam, now, says, “I don’t think anything you’ve done is bad, or wrong, because I know you did what you did out of necessity.“ Ronan gives Adam a now you’re getting it look, and pulls Adam up by the hands until he’s slumped against him, and uses a foot to kick a blanket towrds the two of them.
“I thought, back then, I will not be the next person to hurt you. I refused to hurt you because you had been hurt enough.” Ronan says, and then, because this had been enough realness for a lifetime and Adam’s face was about as close to crying as Adam gets, he tightens his arms around Adam’s middle, fingers tugging on his shirt a little.
“I loved you then, Adam, and I love you now.” He ducks a sheepish head into the crook of Adam’s neck. “You need to stop making me say it.”
Adam smiles. “You’re crazy, Lynch.”
- half-burnt boy
He ran into his mom entirely on accident.
Adam was walking home from a grocery store, the sun oppressively hot on his back, the plastic bag holding Ronan’s mango ice cream digging into his fingers. In the Barns, Ronan and Opal are waiting for him in a half-muddy pool Ronan dug up himself. Adam had refused to take the car when the walk was only 14 minutes, and anyways, Ronan and Opal both needed to learn some patience.
His body sees her before his mind does, and he’s hit with a dizzying amount of panic for a 1pm on a Wednesday. He feels his throat tighten first, the familiar knot of choking back tears. Then it’s his heart racing to catch up with the coiled tension in his legs begging him to run. He considers just turning around and sprinting away, she hadn’t seen him yet, when her eyes meet Adam’s
Adam stops dead in his tracks. His heart hammers against his ribcage, and he reminds himself he’s safe like a mantra. I am safe. She can’t hurt me. I am far away from her and him and everything to do with them. I am safe. I am safe. I am safe. He remembers Peresphone saying something about things being better in threes.
“Hi.” It felt so inadequate. How do you greet someone who’d spent years silently watching you get beat blue and black?
She grimaces against the sun in her eyes. They’re blue like Adam’s, but duller. “Hey. You’re back in town?”
“Yeah. I’m staying here till graduate school starts.” He had sent her an invite to his Aglionby graduation, the last time he had been naive enough to try to communicate with either of them- nearly five years since they had last seen or spoken to each other. His back burns from the sun behind him.
“Still with your rich boyfriend?”
“Yeah.” He itches his elbow. “How’s dad?”
“He’s- yeah,” she starts, “really sick. Cancer. Pancreatic.” She pauses, waiting for Adam to say something. “He’s dying, Adam.”
Adam is shocked how his first thought is a little thrill of pleasure. He says, “I- I’m sorry.” Lacking, and awkward. He doesn’t know what else to say.
“Will you come see him?” She’s starting to look angry again, or not angry, just the way she’d look at Adam sometimes, like he’s pathetic and inadequate and beneath them.
Adam thinks of his dad, of evenings spent praying he’d gotten into an accident on his way back from the bar. “I don’t think so, mom.” He shrugs. “Besides, he wouldn’t want to see me anyway.”
“It might help, talking to him. Maybe you can put all this business behind you. He might even forgive you.”
Adam frowns. “Forgive me ?”
“That’s not how you do things, Adam. You don’t humiliate your father and then run off with your rich friends without looking back.” When Adam doesn’t say anything, she keeps going, her voice serious. “The least you can do is help pay, I know you have the money.”
“Help… pay?” Adam really doesn’t know what to say. He had imagined this moment so many times, meeting his parents, having all the right, snappy things to say, and leaving them repenting in the dust, but with her in front of him there’s cotton stuffed down his throat. In the end, he settles on, “no.” Simple. Decisive.
“ No? I never hit you, you can’t even do it for the bitch who birthed you?”
Adam wants to wave his arms around and yell. He feels like a child, he wants to scream and tantrum and he wants to break down crying. Yeah, she never hit him, but she was always there, always watching, never saying a word, not against him, not, ever, to Adam, to comfort him, to help him. He wishes Ronan was here, he’d know the exact string of curses and insults to throw at her.
Her eyes are exactly like Adam’s. Blue, sandy eyelashes, the way they squint against the sun. Adam watches her study his face. She looks like she doesn’t recognise him, this new boy who stands up straight, who isn’t scared anymore. Adam feels relief overtaking him. No amount of yelling or screaming is getting through to her. No amount of serious, calm conversation either. He’s done the best thing he could’ve done: he has rewritten them out of his life entirely. They have no power over him.
He smiles.
“Especially not for you.”
- the crow asleep on your chest
Adam’s apartment when he comes back from his internship is pitch black. His tie hangs loose around his neck, his blazer carefully draped over his hand. His body hurts at random points; right shoulder, left ankle, centre of his spine, base of his neck.
Stumbling through the dark, he calls out, “Ronan?”
“Fuck- wait I’m in the kitchen. What the fuck -?” His voice cuts out, and Adam hears a series of odd things being banged about, and then, finally, Ronan walks out of the kitchen, his eyes a little sleepy, and his shirt rumpled upwards. He holds a comically large orange bowl of steaming noodles. Adam’s heart takes root in his body, all pain suddenly seeming to leave him entirely.
Ronan smiles. “I made dinner,” he says, holding up the bowl a little higher. “Also spilled the whole thing of chilli in there, but we’ll deal with it later.”
Adam smiles to himself. They sit in the living room that also doubles as the bedroom, because the internship pays him actual pennies and Boston’s the most expensive city in all of America. Adam spends half the time complaining about work, telling Ronan about the idiots who keep making him get coffee and staple papers when he’s literally a Harvard valedictorian, and the weird guy in marketing who keeps trying to take him out, the other half inhaling the noodles while Ronan pulls at his sore joints and rubs all his aches away.
Ronan tells him about how he’s still dreaming, but also how he’s been doing all kinds of dumb things all over town; learning how to fix motorcycles, helping their downstairs neighbour fix her shelves, planting green beans in the community garden across their building.
He looks happy, talking in that unguarded tone he only ever seems to talk to Adam in, and Adam’s thinking of how only the barns ever seemed to pull this Ronan out of Ronan, and he’s suddenly hit with a pang of guilt . “Do you ever just really hate me for bringing you here?”
Ronan realises Adam is somehow even more emotionally stunted than he is, and so this question probably means something entirely different from what he says, but still, for context he asks, “what the fuck , Parrish?”
Adam blinks a few times, staring down at the last drops of soup in the bowl. “Like, you had this great life in the Barns, and you were happy and you had all this money, and your cows, and magic deer,” he begins, and Ronan nods, still unsure where this is going.
“And I’ve dragged you to this shitty studio in, I don’t know, in the middle of all this-” he gestures around him with his hands, “-and I’m not even doing anything, like, cool, or important at my internship, so I’ve made you move all this way for nothing. ”
Ronan blows out an impatient puff of air.
“Adam, what I need you to understand is that number one, I moved here entirely on my own, like, complete free will and shit, and number two, I’m not depressedly moping around missing my life from back in the fucking farms.”
He pulls the bowl out of Adam’s hands and puts it down on the table, and then pulls Adam closer to him until they’re face to face, one of Adam’s legs over Ronan’s.
“And number three,” he says, pausing to kiss Adam. “You know I’d follow you anywhere, right? Tomorrow if you wanted to start fishing in Scandinavia, I’d be your sexy bed-boat lover.”
Adam sputters out a laugh in disbelief.
Ronan kisses him again. “Or if you wanted to drop everything and start a shitty folk-punk band, I’d wear good girls go to heaven, but bad girls go backstage shirts to all your shitty gigs.”
Adam climbs onto Ronan properly now, holding his dumb head with its dumb shit-eating grin between his hands and tries to smoosh his mouth shut. “Just making sure you still loved me, Lynch,” he says, his heart feeling really dumb and happy and full, and kisses Ronan.