Chapter Text
“You need to ask Adam on a date before we leave for college.”
Ronan nearly chokes. “I’m sorry, what?”
Gansey, curled on his couch, sock feet nestled in the cushions, doesn’t look up from his phone. He repeats himself, emphasizing before we leave for college. His eyes flick up over his glasses. “Or have I miscalculated something?” Gansey’s face is stoic, as serious about this as he is about anything else.
Ronan, somewhat speechless from the seemingly out-of-nowhere command, furrows his brow. Ronan fumbles for a way to get around the question without lying, especially on such short notice. He opts for making a vague gesture and taking a heavy step towards his room.
“Ronan,” Gansey cries, flopping his phone face down. He scrambles to his feet, catching Ronan around the forearm. Ronan tries to shake him off, but Gansey holds tight. “Listen, sorry, I know better than to spring things on you out of nowhere, that was my bad. I’m sorry.” He puts his other hand to his chest. “But listen. This is urgent. I needed to get it said. You need to ask Adam on a date.”
There’s a pounding in Ronan’s chest that is caught somewhere between anger and anxiety. How long has Gansey been sitting on this information? How long has Gansey known? Can everyone tell? An image of Gansey whispering to Blue about silly Ronan and his stupid crush flashes through Ronan’s mind, and it's enough to make him want to collapse all of Monmouth Manufacturing to rubble right then and there.
Gansey is standing at an awkward angle, fingers still wrapped around Ronan’s arm, eyes pleadingly raised.
“I don’t know how,” he finally says. It’s the first time Ronan has admitted verbally his feelings, to himself or anyone else; rationally, he knows that doesn’t change anything, but there’s a feeling deeper down than his mind, a feeling that’s much more human than brain matter, and it’s a feeling that tells him everything is more real when Gansey is involved.
And the way Gansey’s face lights up in response... Well, Ronan would be lying if he said it didn’t scare him a little bit. His fingers drop from Ronan’s arm, and he stands straight, pushing his glasses up. “Well, lucky for you, I have just the plan.”
Gansey’s plan involves a rented convertible, a trunk-full of snacks and suitcases, a CD case packed with mixtapes contributed by the entire group, and a month-long stay at a beach house on the east coast of Florida.
On the surface, it’s one last hurrah before college.
Beneath that, it is Gansey’s second attempt at being a wingman. Having tremendously offended Blue on his first attempt, he was banking on this one being more successful.
At nine in the morning on the day of their departure, it was already looking pretty good to Gansey.
Adam, who had just finished looking around under the hood of the rental car to make sure there were no unnoticed problems that could cost them money upon the return of the car, closes the sleek, blue hood with a soft click. “Everything looks great,” he announces, wiping his hands off on a rag.
From her perch on the trunk, Blue gives a cry of excitement. “Excellent!” She hops to the asphalt, landing next to where Gansey is leaned against the door of the car, and as she does so, her sunglasses fall from the top of her head to her face. She makes a face and pushes them back into her hair. Gansey catches her around the waist and pulls her over to him.
“Come on now,” he places her glasses back on her nose, grinning stupidly. “You look cooler this way.”
Blue sticks her tongue out at that, and then she runs a hand through his hair. “And you look cooler when you’re wearing anything but those horrible boat sh—”
Ronan interrupts with a loud noise of disgust as he arrives on the scene, trailed by Noah. “Save the touching for another time.” Ronan tries not to notice the way Adam’s eyes are glued to a grassy spot in the pavement, distinctly away from the other two. He marches up to Gansey and holds open his hand, asking for the keys.
“Oh no you don’t,” Gansey says, stepping away from Blue and Ronan.
“But I picked out the car,” Ronan protests, snatching for Gansey’s pocket.
“Yeah, well, maybe later!” he replies with a grin. “And you’re sitting in the back with Adam.”
The statement sounds loudly against Ronan’s eardrums. Could anyone else hear how loaded that sentence was? Ronan resists the urge to clench his fists.
After a pause, he adds, “And Noah, as long as he’s with us.”
“I’ll be there.” Noah’s voice is soft, but perfectly audible.
Then Noah is trying on Blue’s yellow sunglasses, Adam is getting a soda from the trunk, and the tension Ronan felt from Gansey’s statement dissipates.
Blue gets into the front seat, Adam is climbing into the middle, leaning over the front console to ask Blue something about how planning for college is going, and Noah hops into the side behind Blue.
“You’re being obvious,” Ronan growls as Gansey steps past him to the driver’s seat.
Gansey raises his eyebrows as if to say, Really? Then he rolls his eyes. “Am not.” And he climbs in.
Ronan closes his eyes for the briefest of moments before opening his side door and thundering inside.
“Something wrong, Lynch?”
He turns to look at Adam—too quickly, much too quickly. He’s sitting there, facing Ronan, one elbow on the console, forefinger pressed to his slightly-parted, freckled lips, and the sun is hitting his eyes at an angle that should be fucking illegal. His sandy hair is a little longer than it usually is, curling around his earlobes, pushed back past his brow line. His skin is tanned in the easy way that only the June sun can do.
It takes a glance a fourth-of-a-second long for Ronan to lose his breath.
“Just fine,” he scoffs, not unhappily. Then he stretches his hands above his head, knocking his knuckles against the roof, and leans back against the warm leather. “Put this roof down, and let’s get this show on the road, Dick.” His foot meets the back of Gansey’s seat.
“Right away.” Gansey fumbles to find the button to retract the roof and then catches Ronan’s eye in the rearview mirror and winks. It takes everything in Ronan not to groan in response to the gesture.
As Gansey starts the car, Adam leans back and pulls his seatbelt on with an easy smile. His gaze lands on Ronan, and Ronan carefully looks back. Adam gives his shoulder a shove, “C’mon, man. Relax. It’s vacation.”
A smile finds its way to Ronan’s lips. “Can’t believe you know the meaning of the word vacation.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“The first of many friendcations to come!” Gansey announces with great verve as he messes with the CD player.
Different degrees of groans and sighs come from everyone in the car: Blue, loud and exasperated, because she can’t believe he just said friendcation; Noah, silent but with a dropped jaw, because he can’t believe he’s never thought of using that word until now; Ronan, pointed and short, because God, you’re a loser; Adam, more a laugh than a groan, because it’s truly a first and he’s glad to have such ridiculous friends to share it with.
The first length of the drive is to a Super 8, located just around the border of Georgia and Florida. It’s very near another ley line, and Gansey is hoping its proximity will allow Noah to come back, if he should disappear. They’re only staying there a night, and their beach house is located almost exactly on that same ley line, so he’ll be able to get there, definitely, even if he can’t make it to the Super 8. Noah had told Gansey not to worry—Super 8 wasn’t really up to his high standards, anyway.
To make up for his maybe-future-absence, Noah turns out to be mostly in charge of car entertainment.
“Here’s a game. People who aren’t evil, but have evil-sounding names.”
Adam looks at Noah expectantly. “Like?”
“Ronan Lynch.”
“I spy with my little eye… Something… Blue…”
“Me?”
“Yes!”
“I spy with my little eye…” Ronan glances around the car. “Something… Dead.”
“Okay, okay, Would You Rather. Here’s one: would you rather… work at the circus full-time or part-time?”
“What the fuck.”
“Full-time.”
“Is it a travelling circus? Because that affects my decision.”
“How about a joke? Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Boo.”
“No.”
Noah disappears halfway through a second game of I Spy, just around the time Gansey had been expecting that he might. They’ve still got hours and hours in the car to go, and Blue switched over to the driver’s seat at the last gas station, so they’ve been going exactly the speed limit for the past thirty minutes, and that’s enough to make Ronan want to fall asleep.
Gansey is holding Blue’s hand. She had protested quietly at first, saying she needed to keep both hands on the wheel, but all it took was a moment of Gansey’s pouting and fingertips prodding at the back of her hand to change her mind.
Ronan eyes their knotted fingers critically. He looks over to Adam—who has slid over to Noah’s vacated seat—and makes a face. Adam laughs without a sound and returns the face. A silent I know, right?
“What’re we gonna do now?” Ronan complains, voice raised over the wind noises that come with a convertible.
“More I Spy?” Gansey offers.
“No, that’s only fun with Noah. I think death might have made him colorblind.” Ronan taps his fingers against the seat. He sighs with far more fervor than necessary. “Better get some sleep, then.”
“It’s noon,” Blue protests.
“Well, at the speed this car is going, it feels like I’m being rocked to sleep, so.”
“We could stop for lunch,” Adam says.
“We just stopped for snacks!”
“It is lunch time, Jane,” Gansey says, as though he’d just realized the fact.
She just clucks her tongue. “What do we want?”
“Milkshakes,” Adam says enthusiastically, leaning forward to wrap his arms around Gansey’s headrest in front of him.
Ronan’s eyes rest too long on the curve of his spine, of the triangle of skin that’s just appeared between the hem of Adam’s t-shirt and the belt loops of his jeans. He turns his face sharply to look outside the car.
“Lynch?”
“I want whatever Adam wants.” Ronan prays that he sounds casual.
Adam’s face lights up and he lifts a fist to pump knuckles with Ronan. Then he sits back and runs his fingers through his hair and then drags his hands back down over his face, tugging his hair down with them. Ronan absolutely does not think about those being his own hands.
“I’m ready to be out of this car!” He throws his hand outside, palm open to the wind.
“We’ve been on the road for three hours, and we’ve already stopped once!” Blue cannot believe the things being said in this car.
“Well.” Adam offers no defense, one hand still over his eye.
Minutes later, Adam leans forward to point at a sign. “Steak n Shake! Three miles!”
Adam has a plain vanilla milkshake and everyone’s cherries—Blue’s because she doesn’t like cherries, Gansey’s because Gansey gives Adam things whenever he’ll let him, and Ronan’s because Ronan is head over heels for a boy who loves maraschino cherries.
Halfway through the meal, Ronan gets up to go to the bathroom, and he’s not even surprised when Gansey scrambles up behind him and tails him to the restrooms.
“Yes, Gansey?”
“Is there anything you want me to do for you?”
“Are you asking if I want you to suck my dick in a bathroom stall?”
“God, Lynch, about Adam.”
“What do you mean about Adam?” he asks as they disappear into the dingy, checker-tiled bathroom.
“Like… Say anything that could… Oh, you know.”
“I’m afraid I’m not well versed in understanding you when you’re at a lack for words.”
“I mean, should I drop hints or do… I don’t know, anything to help you out?”
Ronan contemplates the offer, but he can’t even think of anything that would be helpful. In fact, he’s assaulted by a number of images of things going completely wrong; it’s enough to make him cringe. “No, Gansey. Thanks, though. But please don’t do anything.”
Back at the table, Blue leans across the table as soon as the boys are out of earshot. “Adam.”
“Yeah?”
“Question: Ronan.”
“That’s… not a question.” He takes a sip of milkshake, peering at her under raised eyebrows.
“Doesn’t he seem… Like… about you, doesn’t he seem…?”
If Adam hadn’t noticed exactly the same thing months ago, he would be baffled by Blue’s words, but instead he just scrunches up his face with a small sigh. “Yes. He does seem.”
“And do you also—I mean, do you seem… the same way? About him?”
Adam contemplates as long as he thinks is reasonable, given that Gansey and Ronan will be back any second. “I think… I have no idea. But, the thing is, it’s probably… our imaginations, he can’t—can’t like me, of all people. I… I try not to think about it. Really. But now that I’ve said this to you, well. I don’t know how I feel.”
A wicked smile comes over Blue’s face. “I’ll help you—figure it out or make something happen, whatever. Can I help you? I won’t tell Gansey or Noah. But, well, Noah’s, like, psychic or something, but anyway, I won’t tell Gansey. Our secret. It’ll happen.”
Adam gives a wary smile, glancing towards the bathroom door, where Gansey and Ronan are now exiting. “Don’t do anything yet.” His stomach already feels like it’s clenching into a knot; he shouldn’t have said anything to her. Should have denied it outright.
Ronan is…
God, he shouldn’t have said anything to Blue. Not when he doesn’t completely know what’s up with Ronan. He doesn’t know what’s up with Ronan in the real world, much less in his own brain. Stupid.
“Sure, sure.” Blue waves her hand airily.
Maybe she’ll forget about it.
Ronan sits down heavily and looks at Adam. “You’ve got ice cream on your nose.” Before Adam can even register what he’s said, Ronan wipes it off with his forefinger and puts it in his mouth. He returns to his food like everything’s normal.
Adam meets Blue’s eyes with a vaguely dazed expression. Blue gives Adam the smallest of smiles and an even smaller kick under the table. The knot in his stomach ebbs.
It’s Ronan.
It’s only Ronan.
Ronan drives the rest of the way to the Super 8; he starts out going twenty-five over the speed limit but slows to fifteen over when Gansey threatens to call the cops himself. Adam is sitting in the seat behind Ronan, and in the rearview mirror, Ronan can see the wind rushing through Adam’s hair and bits of his collarbone when his shirt flaps against his skin. For half a second, Ronan thinks his eyes have met Adam’s, but then he speeds up and focuses on the road.
It doesn’t take more than an hour before Noah flickers back into the car, holding tight onto Blue’s hand for energy.
“Would you rather—” His voice cuts in suddenly, spooking everyone but Blue, who had his cold touch as a forewarning. “—kiss Ronan or a block of wood.”
“I will drive this car off the road.”
“You’d hurt everyone except me.”
“The block of wood,” Blue says definitively. “Softer.”
“Okay, well would you rather… have to eat corn or peas for the rest of your life?”
“That’s a stupid question but corn,” Adam says, leaning his head against his headrest.
“Well you come up with something, then!” Noah says, making a face.
“Would you rather…” Adam starts slowly, “Ahm…”
“Mhmm,” Noah mumbles triumphantly, reaching up to adjust one of the pins in Blue’s hair.
The setting sun casts color all through Adam’s hair; it’s reflecting against everything, even the deep blue of the car and especially through Noah’s vaguely transparent body.
Noah taps his foot along to every song that comes on; he taps his fingers on whoever’s leg or seat or back is nearest.
Occasionally, Blue will cry, “Whose CD is this? You like this song?” But she never complains.
Gansey is the singer in the group. Always loud. Always while making eye contact and pointing fingers as though he’s in a boy band.
Adam likes the loud songs, the joyful ones about youth and wide open spaces; he’ll hit his hand on the back of Ronan’s seat and then shout the chorus.
Ronan is the listener. Nowadays, the only time he sings is ironically, and he didn’t put any of those on his CD, lest he get left on the side of a highway somewhere. Ronan memorizes the habits of the others, though, predicting who Gansey will point to next, when Blue will offer constructive criticism, when Adam’s voice will cut through his consciousness.
And when the sun sets, things are quiet, though the music is still going.
“How much longer?” Adam’s voice is soft, right near his ear.
“Hell if I know, Parrish.” Ronan’s voice comes out clipped from surprise of him being so close. He looks out the side of his eyes to see Adam resting his chin next to the headrest.
“Mm,” he hums and reaches for Gansey’s phone, which is tucked in a cup-holder. “Ah! Twenty minutes. Did you know our exit is in three miles?”
“How would I have known that?”
“Aren’t you looking?”
“Thought you guys were looking.”
“Well,” Adam says lightly, scrolling through the list of turns. “Lucky I came up here.”
Gansey doesn’t tell them that he’d been looking, he just hadn’t brought it up yet. Gansey is too busy looking at Adam’s arm, folded behind Ronan’s headrest, his face oh so close to Ronan’s, his right forearm resting on the console—his upper arm looks like it might be touching Ronan’s.
Adam stays in that position for far longer than it takes him to look at the directions. He checks the weather, checks tomorrow’s weather, informs Gansey that a coupon for 10% off at Barnes & Noble has just arrived in his e-mail. He sends a text to Gansey’s mother, telling her that they’re just about to arrive at the hotel for the night. All the while, he’s as close to Ronan as friends are allowed to be.
Adam is testing the waters. He can’t help but feel sort of reckless, breathing in Ronan’s scent, wondering what it’d be like to wake up next to him. Do I like this? The place where Ronan’s jaw meets his skull looks razor sharp. An image of Adam running his fingers along that line crosses his mind; Adam isn’t sure whether it’s wanting or simply wondering.
It’s testing.
Adam doesn’t shrink back until they’re pulling into the parking lot of the motel.
“I’ll check us in,” Adam announces because he’s paying for it; he starts to open the door before the car’s even in park.
“And I’ll go with him!”
Gansey starts, “What for—?” but they’re already out the door.
“That was good, the leaning forward on his seat thing,” Blue comments, giving a little skip as they enter go through the sliding glass doors.
Adam rolls his eyes. “Look, Blue, I don’t even know if I…” But he trails off, not sure how to finish.
Her gaze is sympathetic. “I understand. Don’t do anything you’re not sure about, but also…” Adam gives the lady behind the desk his name, and Blue drops her voice, “He likes you. A lot.”
“A lot?”
Blue shrugs, leaning against the desk and looking back towards where the car is idling out front.
“I don’t want to do something wrong and then hurt his feelings.”
“What could you possibly do wrong?”
The women tells them their room number and hands over the keys. Adam doesn’t have an answer for Blue, so he takes the cards and wordlessly returns to the car.
“Three-twenty-four, ‘round back,” Adam says, dropping into the car. Blue casts him an ambiguous gaze across the car.
Because, the truth is, Adam doesn’t know how to deal with someone like Ronan. Not like that. He could do absolutely everything wrong. He doesn’t know how to love someone like Ronan. Because Ronan isn’t stone cold the way people think, he’s not someone who takes things in his stride. Every emotion Ronan feels has the ability to tear him down—he’s less wildfire and more wildflower, an unexpected beauty that will be trampled with every misplaced step. He lets himself feel things, things that drive him to drinking, to street racing, to falling for people like Adam Parrish.
When he’s stepped on, he’ll grow back the way wildflowers do. But differently. Always differently.