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Adam knows they’re all a little in love with Gansey. That’s what keeps them together, isn’t it?
Because without the magnetic force that is Gansey pulling them all in, Ronan Lynch would more than likely be dead— some horrific accident or some purposeful tragedy that leaves a trail of smoke or a crater in the ground in the wake of it all. Or maybe, he’d be painfully alive, and he would probably, vehemently, hate Adam for reasons Adam doesn’t think he would understand– and Adam, powerlessly, might just have hated him right back.
Without Gansey, Adam wouldn’t know Noah Czerny existed, and he doesn’t even know if Noah would either. Perhaps he’d just be wandering aimlessly from home to home in Henrietta, waiting for anyone to see him and not just look straight through him, for someone to help him try and understand the tangle of magic and memories and pain that keeps him tethered but not quite present on this mortal coil.
Without Gansey– and they all can admit it– Blue Sargent’s life would be a lot simpler, maybe she wouldn’t be afraid to kiss the guys she likes, maybe she’d have a boyfriend and not have to spend her weekends trekking through weird magic forests with weird magic boys, worrying her brilliant mind about the inevitability of death. But Blue Sargent doesn’t like simple things, she finds them boring, which is probably why she likes all of them.
Without Gansey, Adam Parrish would be like any other boy who attends Aglionby Academy.
Except he wouldn’t be, not really.
All those boys are the sons of politicians, they’re ostentatious dinners full of networking opportunities, they're shiny cars and shiny teeth and shiny shoes. Adam is calloused hands and fifty hour work weeks and a rusty bike. And without Gansey, Adam doesn’t think he’s anyone. Certainly not someone those boys and that school would give so much as a passing glance, unless it was laced with scorn, or the kind of pitying laughter that happens under someone’s breath as they walk away from you.
So thank god for Gansey, Adam thinks. Gansey, the glue that binds them all inextricably together. Gansey, the peace broker, the motivation behind their quest for more, the sun himself— blinding and golden and unattainable to all of them he’s drawn in, their wax wings melting in his light. Thank god for his tan skin and his perpetually sunburnt ears and his stupid colorful clothes and his too shiny shoes. His sharp intelligence, his ruthless optimism, his ability to talk endlessly without the conversation feeling one-sided.
Adam Parrish thinks it's impossible not to fall in love with Gansey, no matter how long you resist it. From the moment he saw that ghastly orange camaro stalled on that hill, from the moment Gansey shouldered in right beside him and asked Adam, sheepish and genuine and patient, no, show me how to do it. When the car started running again, and Gansey smiled that charming, sickening smile that could cure cancer, end world hunger, and keep Adam alive for as long as he was in its proximity, he just knew.
No matter the severity, the undoubted complexity of your feelings towards him, one day, you will look at Gansey, whether he is shining in the sun, or looking up, unfettered, at the darkened sky in the middle of a downpour, he will be there, golden, godlike, absolutely inevitable, and you will think: oh, you’re beautiful.
And, if you’re Adam Parrish, it’s the most easily complicated puzzle you’ve ever had to decipher. Worse than Welsh kings and massive dreamt creatures roaring through the sky and dreaming from a forest’s perspective.
Because as much as they all love Gansey, as much as Adam loves Gansey— more than anything, so deeply and wholly he could learn every language there is to learn and still not he able to properly express everything he feels for him— he might be one of the few people in the entire world who also understands what it’s like to hate him.
Maybe that’s why he’s felt like such an outsider amongst them all– why he still has those jarring moments of disconnect from the rest of them, where he feels so out of place it makes him nauseous. Adam doesn’t think there’s anything Gansey could do to lose Noah, to lose Ronan, to lose Blue.
That isn’t the case with him.
Sometimes it feels like they’re both waiting for it, waiting for Gansey to push too hard, to speed past a boundary for the last time. It’s moments like the tense quiet following a shouting match outside Adam’s tin can of a house, or standing off on opposite ends of a massive hallway in DC that both of them seem to wonder why they even bother with all of it. Only to fall quietly back beside one another days, hours, minutes later.
Adam isn’t like the rest of them. Forgiveness doesn’t come willingly to him. Instead, it’s a devastating crawl towards the strange semblance of normalcy he and Gansey covet. Adam picks fights because sometimes Gansey is so ignorant it makes Adam want to hit something. Adam snipes at Gansey’s personal insecurities because Gansey has a bad habit of making Adam feel like he can’t live without him– without his clean, white smile, without his blinding optimism, without his physical presence, always beside him. Adam has to curl his hands into fists at his sides to stop himself from grabbing Gansey and hitting him, from pushing him up against a wall, from leaning down and sealing their mouths together.
Sometimes he hates Gansey, more times he fundamentally misunderstands him. But, ultimately, it is not dissimilar to the inevitability of looking at Gansey and understanding that he is beautiful. For Adam Parrish there is also looking at Gansey and knowing, fundamentally, that in his entirety, his glorious entirety, he is something too grand, too shiny for Adam’s dirty, scarred hands to hold without him spilling over the side of his palms and splashing like wine– sweet and intoxicating– onto the floor.
He wonders if Gansey knows that too.