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They're not friends. They've never been friends, and they probably won't ever be. Adam doesn't care either way. He doesn't have the time or emotional energy to expend on futile endeavours like getting Ronan Lynch to like him. Ronan doesn't seem interested in having more than one anyway. And Adam decided a long time ago that maybe it isn't worth it. They're not going to last. They're going to leave him behind, or he's going to leave them, and it's just going to be another absence to live with.
But now, there's Gansey, and there's feeling like he's a part of something for the first time. But he and Ronan are still not friends.
They're just two objects orbiting the same gravitational centre. Sometimes they pass each other by. Ronan's quiet and distant sometimes, covered in ice; watchful, like he's sizing up your weaknesses. Other times, he burns hot like a supernova, consuming everything that comes close. Adam's cautious, always; not too hot or too cold, but adapting to survive whatever the universe throws at him. Sometimes he feels like a black hole, like there's nothing at the bottom but more dark, dark emptiness.
*
The thing no one knows is that Adam noticed him first.
He's frustratingly great at Latin even though he acts like a smug asshole about it. Always tossing around dirty jokes or vague insults that no one else understands and that Adam has to look up afterwards.
He rarely shows up to his other classes. When he does, he's not paying attention to anyone or anything else in the room. Like it's all beneath his consideration. Sometimes, he's doodling in his notebook and Adam catches himself staring without realising it, like he's been entranced somehow. There are birds, flowers, tree branches, interspersed amongst Latin phrases he can't make out, but all adding up to something else: something sprawling and intricate and beautiful.
Sometimes, he crumples them up and throws them in the trash afterwards and Adam has to restrain himself from fishing them out or bite his lip before he does something stupid like ask him about them.
He forgets about it for a while, and then Gansey's offering him a ride, and inviting him to Monmouth, and introducing him to his friend, Ronan Lynch, who just sneers at him and then looks away, and he realises the hooks he can see now that he's not wearing his uniform are part of something bigger, and he thinks, Oh.
He figures Ronan's just an asshole by nature and it's not really about him.
He figures there's not anything ordinary about any part of him. Adam's always liked a puzzle.
They're still not friends, though.
*
The first time he's inside his room, it's the only thing that draws his gaze amongst the clutter of shiny, expensive toys that Adam should probably covet.
They're just lying on his bedside table: a bunch of blue flowers, but they're not just blue; they're like the shifting colours of the ocean during a thunderstorm; they're more alive than they should be, like they're still growing and changing even after being cut; they're wild and incomprehensible just like Ronan is. They're the colour of his eyes, impossibly.
It's all impossible, but he thinks he's seen them before, through a crack in the door probably the first time he ever came to Monmouth, and that's actually impossible. Because that was months ago, so they can't be the same ones. But these flowers shouldn't even exist much less for others exactly like them.
He seems to remember himself and why he's here and spots Ronan's Latin textbook on the floor next to his bed and bends down to scoop it up.
"The fuck are you doing in here?" Ronan says, appearing in the doorway.
Adam straightens, brandishing the book like a shield as he quickly brushes past him. He doesn't want to look back; he wants to forget about those strange, impossible flowers.
He expects to never hear the end of it but Ronan just kicks the door shut behind them, speeding tickets rustling like leaves, and doesn't say anything about it again.
*
Adam's riding home from work and trying not to freeze to death when he sees the familiar dark car parked on the side of the deserted street. He almost doesn't see it at all; it's bathed in shadow, headlights off, blending into the asphalt and the night. It looks like no one's in it. Like it's been abandoned.
Adam gets off his bike, lets it fall to the sidewalk along with his bag. Ronan wouldn't just leave his car here. Something's wrong.
He wipes away fog from the driver's window and peers inside, but no one's in there or in the passenger's seat. The fuel gauge is pointing to empty, though. Maybe he called Gansey, and then — wandered away? But this is Ronan. Maybe he's actually dead in a ditch. It probably wouldn't be such a harrowing thought in any other circumstance.
Then, he realises someone's lying on the backseat and relief courses through him. But — Ronan's unconscious and eerily still. His heart starts pounding in his chest. God fucking damn it, Ronan.
Thankfully, the door's not locked. Ronan doesn't wake up or stir at all as Adam leans over his pale, bloodless face, all upside down.
Adam puts his ear close to his mouth to make sure he's breathing. There's beer on his breath, not surprisingly.
He must have just passed out after one too many. On the side of the street, with the doors unlocked, where anyone could find him. Maybe he shouldn't mention that part to Gansey. And fuck, Gansey.
Adam starts looking around for his phone. It's not in his pockets. There are still bandages on his wrists, but they're mostly covered by the leather bands he's taken to wearing since Gansey watched him get sewn up a couple weeks ago. Both of his hands are wrapped around something, resting on his stomach like a corpse's. Adam leans closer and realises it's a dark purple rose. It's like a bruise blooming against his pale skin. There are thorns on the stem and they're probably burying themselves into his palms. Adam carefully dislodges it from his grip.
Adam finally spots the phone on the floor, partially buried under garbage, and swiftly sends a deliberately vague text to Gansey: i'm with him, he's fine. -A, along with the name of the street they're on.
He's leaning against the open car door, freezing his ass off, and silently cursing the universe for whatever cosmic joke is being played on him when Ronan's eyes open.
He sits up, bloody hands braced against the seat but he doesn't seem to notice, and just breathes hard for a moment before twisting his head around and saying, "Adam?" like he can't believe he's real.
Then, he half-falls, half-pulls himself out of the car and onto the sidewalk. There's still something annoyingly elegant about a drunk Ronan Lynch basically sitting in the gutter.
Adam lowers himself to sit next to him as his phone lights up with a new message from Gansey: I'll be there in 5. He figures that Ronan disappearing again is the kind of extreme situation where Gansey would actually disregard the speed limit.
He gives him back his phone and registers absently that he's still holding the rose in his other hand.
Ronan looks at it like he's confused about why he has it, but he doesn't say anything. He just stares at Adam for a moment, a strangely wistful expression flitting across his face. Then, it's gone just as quickly and he turns away again.
"You're bleeding," Adam tells him.
Ronan looks down at his hands, which are shaking slightly but not from the cold, and closes them into tight fists on his knees.
"You should, uh, clean that up. Before —" He doesn't say, It might upset Gansey, but Ronan gets it anyway and nods.
They just sit there in silence for the next five minutes, Adam playing with the rose, brushing his thumb lightly across the thorns; Ronan closing his eyes, just letting the cold, night air wash over him. He can see both of their breaths in front of their faces. Adam's fingers are probably turning blue. Ronan doesn't seem to mind; he isn't even wearing a jacket.
Ronan pushes himself up off the sidewalk with his knuckles when the Pig's distinctively noisy engine cuts through the night. Adam follows, dusting off his jeans with stiff, aching hands.
Ronan grabs the BMW's keys from the ignition and then reaches across the centre console to rifle around in the glove box for something. He resurfaces with an actual pair of gloves that look like they were hand-knit and wordlessly shoves them at him before he locks the car. Adam puts them in his jacket pocket and holds the rose back out to him. Ronan just shakes his head, says, "Keep it," without looking at him.
He gets in the passenger seat as Adam gets his bike into the back of the Pig. Adam puts the rose into his bag and slides his hands into the gloves before getting in.
They drive in silence until Gansey drops Adam off and just tells him he'll see him tomorrow.
Ronan's still looking straight ahead.
Adam forgets about the rose, too, until the last time he's inside the trailer, but it's nowhere to be found then. He leaves it behind.
*
Adam finds him sleeping in the backseat of his car outside the church about a week after he told them about Chainsaw. He's definitely breathing this time, chest rising and falling, one arm thrown over his face. Adam's eyes follow a bead of sweat down the line of his neck and under his black tank. He swallows and tries not to think about that.
He knocks hard on the glass and feels pleased, despite himself, when Ronan springs up and nearly smacks his head on the roof.
"Come inside, you idiot."
He shoves a thin pillow and threadbare blanket at him when he's standing in his room, looking around like he's unsure he's supposed to be here.
When he comes back from the bathroom, Ronan's tugging his shirt over his head in one oddly graceful motion, back turned to him.
It's the first time he's seen the tattoo in full and part of him wants to avert his eyes as he feels a blush crawl over his cheeks. Part of him wants to keep looking at it forever, wants to pull all the layers apart and see how they fit, then put them back together. Wants to understand.
Ronan's trying to make himself small, which is a hard task to manage out in the world, but basically impossible here in Adam's tiny attic.
He takes his pants off too and lies on his back, eyes closed.
Adam turns the light off, gets into bed. He wants to keep looking at him, wants to see the moment when his dreams manifest in reality — he wonders if it hurts, because there has to be some kind of price — but he turns on his side, facing away from him, and makes himself go to sleep.
Ronan's not there in the morning, but he doesn't leave anything behind either.
*
The second time, he finds him stretched out on a pew and he drags him upstairs. He reads a chapter out loud from his Latin textbook until Ronan falls asleep, curled up on his side, unusually peaceful. Adam memorises about a quarter of his tattoo before he gives up. It's always changing under his eyes; it's like Cabeswater. It's like Ronan.
The third time, he wakes up and there's a kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttering where Ronan had slept.
"Fuck," he says, out loud.
It takes a long time to coax them all out the window. Ronan doesn't say anything but just starts laughing inexplicably when he sees him. Gansey just stares at both of them, half-amused, half-concerned.
He finds one, the lonely remainder, behind a stack of textbooks about a week later; he watches it move along his fingers for a long while, summer reading forgotten.
***
Adam thinks, This is it. Then, less certain, Is this it? But then the stupid cow drifts off again, and Ronan looks crestfallen, not mad, not frustrated.
"Sorry," he sighs.
"Not your fault," Ronan says, and it's not even snappish.
He hoists himself off the barn floor and to his feet, offers a hand to Adam. Adam accepts it; Ronan's hands are soft but his grip's sure and firm as he pulls him up. He lets go too quickly, though, and doesn't look at him as he walks to the door. Adam just follows silently.
It's dark outside; they've been at it for hours, too caught up with running trial after trial to even notice the time. It's like that with Ronan more and more these days: going along with him unquestioningly. Trusting him without really being sure of the reason why. Ronan's still an asshole when he wants to be, and maybe they're still not exactly friends, but Adam's intrigued, by whatever connection they have now, by Ronan's subtly changing behaviour towards him, almost mirroring the stronger reaction of the sleepers to their efforts over time. He wonders what finally waking them will mean for them. He isn't worried, though, just curious. He isn't scared of what being around him makes him feel and want anymore. He isn't scared to imagine the possibilities.
Not friends. But something.
Ronan's phone starts ringing when they're walking towards the car. Adam wonders if he's going to fling it somewhere deep into the bushes where they'll never find it again, but he just presses it into Adam's hand instead.
It actually says '300 Fox Way' and Adam figures he saved the number when Adam had called him after they found Persephone. It's weirdly touching.
Blue sounds frantic the way he's never heard her before. Not even when her mother was missing, not even when Persephone — that was helpless silence and horrified disbelief — this is something else.
He just took off, I don't know where he went, Adam, just find him, please, he wasn't acting right —
Ronan's just staring at him with narrowed eyes when he hangs up.
Adam doesn't even wait for him to ask.
"Something happened with Gansey."
*
He doesn't know why he does it. Maybe it's because he doesn't even recognise who he is anymore. The person he was a year ago is someone else, a stranger. And Ronan's pretty unrecognisable now, too. Not because of his magic. But because it was like something was withering in his soul before, and now it's growing again. Slowly but surely, stretching upwards to the sun.
Maybe it's because he doesn't want him to lose that again. Even if it looks hopeless now, they're going to do it, they're going to save his mom and save Gansey and achieve impossible things he couldn't even begin to dream of before.
"Hey," he says, because he hates when Ronan's quiet like this. It feels like he's only this quiet when death is perceptibly in the air: new (Persephone), past (his dad), almost (his own), future (Gansey). They're sitting in the BMW and they should probably be leaving the Barns, going to find Gansey, doing something, and Ronan's hand is on the ignition but he isn't turning the key.
Adam just wants to reach out and touch, for the first time, but he's afraid that's not what he needs right now. He's still not sure that this new Ronan in front of him really knows, knows that Adam wants to be so careful with any part of him he chooses to give to him; he wants to try even if he doesn't know if he's capable of handling precious things without breaking them. He needs Ronan to trust him more than he needs anything else at this moment, because Adam doesn't know if he can trust himself anymore.
He takes a deep breath and covers Ronan's other hand with his own. He doesn't start or pull away.
Adam just looks at him for a while, remembers sitting with him on the sidewalk the last time he was this vulnerable with him, and fuck, he's going to regret this, probably, but he can't not do it now that he's finally thought it.
He moves his hand up to tilt Ronan's chin towards him.
He says, "Hey," again before he leans in, and he doesn't have time to think about the fact that he's probably terrible at this, because it's just a short, dry press of lips against Ronan's and then he's pulling away.
"God. I'm sorry." Ronan's just staring at him, lips still slightly parted and eyes wide. He kind of wants to die on the spot.
"Don't fucking apologise." It's not angry, just kind of broken. Adam hates himself, for a moment, because it wasn't about giving Ronan comfort after all.
"I shouldn't have —"
"Don't ever apologise for that."
Ronan just squeezes his hand one more time, and starts the engine.
*
Gansey's alive and his mom's awake and Adam doesn't believe in happy endings but Ronan's happy. And that's enough for now. He'll think about it later, what this means, whether Cabeswater still needs him or not. Whether he needs it.
He's heading to his car when Ronan stops him.
Adam stares at the hand on his wrist and then up at his face and he lets him go. Slowly, reluctantly. Adam can almost still feel his touch.
"Sneaking away?" Ronan asks. He looks flustered, but also younger, expectant.
"I'm not — I just, you know, I have things to do," he says, mock-casually. He curls his fingers into the legs of his jeans before he does something stupid like reach out to hug him.
"Right," Ronan says, with a fond smile that nearly breaks his heart.
"Go be with your family," Adam tells him, managing a real smile in return.
"You know, you're —" He stops, like he's afraid of whatever he was about to say.
"I'm what?" Adam definitely feels a bit like crying now.
"With or without this place —" he says, gesturing back at the forest. "I still —"
"Yeah," Adam says, nodding. "I know."
Ronan kisses his cheek and then walks away without a glance back.
Adam closes his eyes, brushes his thumb over the place where his lips had touched and it feels like he's imploding, collapsing in on himself; the gravity at his core sucking all the bright stars of possibility down into the blackness, inexorably.
*
They go out after graduation and end up messing around at Monmouth until after midnight.
Ronan offers to give him a ride afterwards. Instead, they just end up leaning against his car in the parking lot, the sliver of space between them a palpable thing. What happens, Adam wonders, when two stars orbit each other? Are they brighter together or are they both diminished?
It's the first time they've been properly alone since that night at the Barns. Adam actually has been busy; he's not avoiding him. Not really.
"It's weird, without Cabeswater. I never thought I'd miss a magical forest having an all-access pass to my thoughts." Ronan's the only person he thinks will really understand.
"Isn't that what you wanted? To be free?" Free of Henrietta, yes. Free of Cabeswater, maybe. Free of Ronan?
"Am I, really?" he asks.
Maybe he's always known it somehow: he can't leave him behind even if he tried.
Ronan doesn't say anything.
It's supposed to be simpler than this now; the worst of it's over. But it's even more difficult somehow — to figure out what this is, what he and Ronan are, and how it fits into the life he still wants, even after everything.
Ronan's arms are folded like he's trying to protect himself from something; their hips are pressed together now — he's not sure which one of them moved or if it was both of them, subconsciously — but he doesn't pull away again. It feels like where they've been since they met: close but never quite close enough. One of them always stepping back the minute the other reaches out. Adam takes a steadying breath, tilts his head back to look at the sky, and they just stay there for a while longer.
*
They haven't seen each other in weeks and then Ronan's knocking at his door one night.
"Sorry, it's kind of a mess," Adam says, needlessly. As if Ronan cares about that.
He just stops, though, taking in the stacks of books and boxes of clothes scattered across the wooden floor.
"So, you're leaving," Ronan says, abrupt.
"Yeah, in a couple days," he breathes out, and it's hard to look at him.
"What happens now?" He shoves his hands into his pockets like he doesn't know what to do with them.
"I used to think it would be easier," Adam admits, for the first time. "Not having any real attachments. Easier to leave and not look back."
"Is that what we are?" Ronan asks, and it's another kind of challenge, one Adam's not sure he can avoid any longer. There's always been something else, between them, something dark and strange and unfathomable. Some kind of deeper understanding even when he didn't think he'd ever really know him.
"We're not friends," he tells him, and God, he's such an idiot, such an idiot.
Ronan just says, "Okay." His raised eyebrow says, So what?
Adam surges forward, up onto his toes, and grabs the side of his face, kisses him again, but it's for real this time.
Ronan exhales into his mouth with a small desperate sound like he's been dying for this. For exactly this, this moment.
It's blinding and chaotic and instinctive. It's impossible to think about anything but Ronan's tongue in his mouth, every burning point of contact between them, hips against hips and chest against chest and hands roaming over tender skin.
Ronan's arms finally settle around his waist, hands splayed over his spine, and he presses Adam into him like he wants to meld them together.
Their kisses gradually get gentler, slower, mapping each other like newly discovered lands.
Adam stops for a second, to breathe against his neck, and Ronan laughs softly into his hair, presses a kiss there, still holding onto him so tightly.
They fall asleep, a tangle of limbs, in Adam's tiny bed, clasped hands resting against Ronan's heart.
They wake up with bright green, moss-covered vines, lush like velvet, wrapped around both their wrists, linking them together.
***
Adam dreams of Cabeswater, still. Even though it's released him, it's there if he needs it.
He can close his eyes and pretend he's lying in the shade of a huge oak, wind rustling the leaves, birds singing in the upper branches, when his mind's overloaded with study schedules and essay outlines and extracurriculars. Ronan's there, sometimes; sometimes, he's not. It shouldn't bother him, that they only talk once a week now. They've never been the loquacious type, anyway. That's not what they are.
This thing between them is — something else. It's getting harder and harder to pinpoint these days, though. Adam hates it. The unclarity of it now that he has some distance. Ronan, undeniable and irresistible and (finally) touchable, is always the clearest thing. He can't put a name on it, but it's not supposed to matter. It's not love or belonging or need. Maybe all of those, but mostly truth.
They don't need to talk to know each other. That's never been them.
*
It's lonely, sometimes, though, not having Cabeswater's voice in his head, not feeling the ley line thrumming in his veins. A constant companion.
It's just lonely. But it's not like before. This is what he wanted. What he chose.
Ronan comes up to visit him and Ronan never looks out-of-place, but God, it's all wrong when he's standing in his dorm room. Not him, never him. Everything else is wrong. Ronan belongs in a sacred place of worship, in an ancient forest, in a kingdom of dreams brought to life. His dreams are more real than the waking world. He's too alive, too solid; everything else feels like it's made of plastic. Cheap, manufactured, false.
Even him.
It's easy not to fight anymore when they don't talk with words but with touch.
Adam barely touches him at all over the entire weekend.
"What's going on with you?" he finally asks, the night before he leaves.
"I don't know. I just — I don't know how to introduce you to people." He knows how inane it sounds, but he can't put a name on this either, this sense of wrongness.
"What?" Ronan's looking at him like he's expecting this to be some kind of elaborate joke. Maybe it is. Maybe it's finally dawned on him after months of living a perfectly mundane existence: how ridiculous this all is.
"I mean, what do I say? You're my boyfriend and you take things out of dreams sometimes? Is that even what we are?"
"You don't have to tell anyone shit," Ronan says, typically stubborn.
"Yeah, I know. But I want to. I want to be able to. And I want — I just want it to be normal." It feels like some kind of deep, dark, shameful secret. Magic and happy endings and true love — none of it's supposed to be real, but he's never wanted it anyway. He's only ever wanted the chance to shape his own reality. He's afraid Ronan's going to take it as a rejection of him. Adam loves every single part of Ronan so much that it hurts sometimes, but he doesn't know where their worlds converge anymore.
"We're not normal. I don't know why you'd ever want to be."
He says the word like it's something dirty, something deserving of scorn. Sometimes, Adam wonders if Ronan knows him at all.
"Cabeswater's not mine anymore, Ronan. It's yours. It's always been yours." He's always known, somehow, that Cabeswater would be finished with him someday. That it would eventually leave him, too, another lost, forgotten friend.
That this is all he'd be left with at the end of it all: himself. No more extraordinary than he ever was before. But maybe he is simply because of that fact. That he's still here, that he survived.
"It's never been about that. You know that," Ronan says, like he actually believes it. It almost makes him hope, for a second.
"What's it about, then?" Adam asks him, plaintive.
"It's about you and me."
"I don't even know what we're supposed to be now." He's not sure what they ever were, really. Some kind of wonderful delusion, some kind of fever dream brought on by an oversaturation of magic and life and youth in the atmosphere. It feels like a long time ago and far, far away now.
"Does it matter?" Ronan asks, impatiently.
"I just — I don't know if this works — here, in the real world."
Ronan rolls his eyes at 'real world' and of course it doesn't matter to him. College and jobs and mortgages and bills are the problems of the ordinary.
"You mean, us," he says, with a tone of finality.
"I mean — Yeah, maybe we don't work," Adam says quietly, looking at his feet.
"So, what the fuck do we do now?"
"I don't — I don't want to lose you. But I don't know if we can be this," he says, with a strained gesture between them.
"I don't want to be your friend," Ronan says bluntly, and it's cold and terrible.
"Ronan —"
"No, you know I'm right. We can't be just friends, we can't be just anything. Because this is it, for me — You're —"
"I can't — I don't know how —" He wants to plead with him to understand, but there's nothing more to say. It's already over.
"Okay, fine," he says, as calm as anything, and then he's walking out the door.
*
Adam joins Gansey and Blue for Thanksgiving at 300 Fox Way. He knows Ronan's with his family, but there's still an awkwardness about his absence.
Gansey finds him on the front steps after dinner. It's one of the few places in Henrietta he has good memories of, but that only makes it harder, somehow. There's an anxiety humming under his skin from just being back here that he can't seem to get rid of.
"You should talk to him. He's — he's not doing so well." Gansey sets his jaw, and Adam shouldn't feel guilty. It's not like he intentionally broke his heart or anything. These things happen. Nothing lasts forever. Ronan knows that. It's not his fault that he's refusing to answer his phone like a bratty child.
"I don't know what to say," he confesses.
"I know you love him. More than he probably thinks you do."
"Yeah, but —" Adam laughs hollowly. "How is this possibly going to work? I can't be what he wants, and he —"
"Ronan's a self-sabotaging asshole sometimes, but he doesn't want you to be anything else. Trust me."
"What if I want him to be something else?" Adam asks. It's his greatest fear: that one of them will have to be consumed for this to survive.
"Ronan will give you anything you ask for, but not that." Maybe Gansey knows this from experience.
Adam nods; he's never expected anything less.
*
Adam knocks on his bedroom door at the Barns.
He hears the scrape of a chair, the creak of floorboards, and then the door's opening and Ronan's standing there, with more stubble than he had the last time, wearing an actual sweater and looking soft and warm and achingly like home.
He also looks surprised.
"Your mom let me in."
Ronan nods. He steps out of the way so Adam can pass.
It was summer the last time he was here; the windows flung open to let in the elusive breeze, the room dazzling with sunlight like it was being reflected off of every surface, and the two of them, too.
It's darker now, but cozier somehow. Thick, fraying rug on the floor and patchwork quilt draped on the bed; coat and scarf hanging on the inside of the open closet door; hand-crafted wooden desk and matching bookcase overflowing with old fairy tales and adventure stories.
He thinks about sitting on the bed but images of the last sweat-soaked days of summer spent on those white sheets flash before his eyes and instead, he moves to the much safer desk where Ronan must have been sitting before. He just leans against it and turns back to Ronan who's standing in the centre of the room now.
"Nice sweater," he says before he can stop himself. It is, though; it's sky blue and it brings out his eyes and clings to him in all the right places.
"Birthday present from Matthew," he says evenly, and it's not small-talk; they don't do small-talk. Ronan picks every single one of his words so carefully.
"How is he?" Adam asks, and then wonders if he's still allowed to.
"Good," Ronan says, his voice tense now.
"Had a good holiday?"
"Yeah. Even Declan's on his best behaviour," he says with an ironic smile.
"And — you?" Adam says, hushed.
"It hasn't exactly been a fucking parade, you know."
"I'm —" Adam still doesn't know how to make this right; he looks away from him for a second, trying to figure out where they go from here. He wonders if it was a mistake to even come see him.
He notices now that the desk's covered in drawings. Some are obviously things he's dreaming up for the farm; others are the kind he hasn't drawn since Adam officially met him. He wonders if he spends afternoons in Cabeswater getting all the details just right. Stupid butterflies, he thinks, recognising them instantly. There's one of a blood-stained purple rose. It's like a bruised heart. He wonders if he ever dreamt another after that night. He's suddenly profoundly sad that he lost the one he'd given to him. It's almost laughable, the absurd metaphor of it. Maybe he should've known from the beginning that Adam couldn't be trusted with any piece of him, much less his heart. But maybe he can get another chance this time.
Adam turns back to him and he realises that Ronan's been looking at him while he's been studying the drawings. He ducks his head now, like he's retreating back inside himself, and Adam doesn't want that, he doesn't want them to go back to this. He can't bear thinking about it. Losing this, like a flower trampled into the dirt.
"I'm sorry, I was an idiot," he bursts out just as Ronan says, "Sorry for being an asshole."
They just smile at each other for a long moment. Maybe this talking thing actually works sometimes.
"It doesn't matter," Adam says, because he has to; he has to know, that Ronan's it for him too. "I don't care if it doesn't work. I just —"
Ronan takes a step forward and kisses him then.
"Stop trying to break up with me," he tells him, smirking, when they break apart. "We're not even officially together."
"What are we, then?"
"I don't know. Definitely not friends, though."
"Yeah, definitely," Adam says, kissing him again, pulling him in by the front of his sweater.
The bed's covered in pink petals when he wakes up. It's brighter somehow, the room, the space between them, like their bodies are emanating pure sunlight from all the places they're touching.