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Ronan.
It’s cool and clear in the afternoon in the forest. Ronan’s fingertips trail along tree trunks as he passes them, taking little flecks of moss with them. He dusts his hands off on his bare thighs and steps over a small stream. He hears a small girl’s voice whispering to him, and then there’s a small hand in his. He looks down to see large eyes peering up at him from under a white skullcap.
“Ubi is?” the girl asks.
“Nescio,” Ronan murmurs in reply. “Deinceps.”
“Vade ad fluvium,” the girl urges.
“Why the river?”
“Natare.” The girl tugs him by the hand and turns left, and he follows her, stumbling a little at her speed. She leads him through the trees and they whisper to him too, ad fluvium, ad fluvium, and he grunts in acknowledgement. The forest is deceptive sometimes, and he feels like he’s seen these trees before, minutes ago, and then suddenly they’re on a new path.
The river, when they find it, doesn’t appear to be anything special. Ronan guesses that it’s about five or six feet deep in the middle, and it’s fairly lazy. The girl skips up to the edge and steps into the water. Her feet seem to disappear completely. She laughs and stamps a little, then looks back at Ronan. “Hic.”
“Why?” Ronan asks, suspicious. The girl frowns, frustrated, and reaches for him, but loses her balance and splashes down into the water. Ronan snickers quietly and she gives him a betrayed look, but stays in the water. Apparently, it’s nice.
Ronan looks down at his bare feet, then steps into the river next to her. The water is almost warm, heated by the sun. Ronan hums to himself and reaches down to scoop up some water. His fingers look different when they dip past the surface, and then right themselves again when he brings them up to splash the water in his face.
“Natare,” the girl reminds him. She scoots forward until most of her is submerged in the water. Ronan thinks about telling her to take off her big sweater, which is getting weighed down and soaked through, but she doesn’t seem to care. He steps forward again, and slowly descends toward the middle of the river where the bottom is the deepest. The water swallows up his bare calves, and then his knees, and then his thighs, and the surface seems to change color a little, brown around the places the water touches his skin. It looks like an oil spill everywhere he moves. Ronan pulls one leg back and the color reattaches itself to him, making his leg look softer than it had in the water. He frowns, then puts his foot back down and reaches for the weird color and pushes it away from him. In the moments before it comes back to him, like a magnet, his legs look a bit thinner, calves more muscular and thighs sturdier. And then the color is back, obscuring them.
Ronan lets out a short breath, then reaches up and pulls his shirt off. His chest feels heavy, but not as heavy as usual. He often forgoes sports bras in dreams, preferring the soft material of his shirt against his skin and the way a real, full deep breath expands his ribs. He runs his hands over his own arms, then along his shoulders and down his chest and stomach, then then takes a breath and dives down into the water. It’s cool, but not a shock to his system, and clean and clear enough that when he opens his eyes, it barely stings. He stays underwater for as long as he can, then surfaces for air. He shakes hair out of his eyes and then sweeps it back flat against his head. Stands come off in his hands and he blinks at them, then dips his hands back in the river, where the strands dissolve and float away.
Ronan watches the river bubble along, then sinks back down in the river until just his head is poking out. He runs his hands down his chest, which feels as flat and tight as it does when he wraps bandages around himself alone in his room where no one can remind him about the dangers of his ribs breaking. He glances down, and the flat planes of ribs and pectorals and flat nipples and sternum look nearly as out of place as his chest usually does. He likes the way it looks, but it still feels heavy like it always does, and when he stands up again, water clings to him in the form of soft breasts and wider hips.
“Sub aqua,” the girl suggests. Ronan jumps a little; he’d forgotten she was there.
“Cur?”
“Pilorum tua,” she says, pointing. Ronan runs his hand self consciously through the short locks on his head. More comes out in his hand. He rinses it away.
“Quid factum?” he asks, a little self-conscious. It could be worse; she’s seen his chest before.
“Spes,” she murmurs. “Auferre.”
Ronan’s insides twist a little, but he does as she says. He ducks back down into the water, until every part of him is submerged. He curls his fingers in his hair and scrubs at it like he’s washing it, and it flows away like oil down the river. It doesn’t take long to wash all of it away, and once he does, he stands back up and it doesn’t grow back. He feels lighter without it plastered against his skull.
The girl looks on, pleased. “Better,” she points out, then gets up and splashes over to him. She’s much shorter than he is so he catches her so she doesn’t sink, and then she’s dragging him out of the other side of the river and on into the forest. He glances back for his shirt, but the girl doesn’t seem to care for or about it, so they leave it, and Ronan supposes that he doesn’t need it anyway. They’d left the river browned like it was full of mud and Ronan’s body feels reshaped like putty, smooth and flat in all the places he dreams about it being. They walk through the forest for ages, until Ronan gets used to the new tightness in his calves and walking without a constant tug forward against his chest and not having to hold his hips as still, and when they break out into a sunny clearing, Ronan wakes up.
In his hands, he holds a small lock of hair. He looks at it, and then notices himself looking. He’s not frozen, not paralyzed. He didn’t take another from a dream, which means that it’s his real hair. His head aches a little bit where he must have pulled it out. He brushes the back of his hand over his forehead and finds only sweat, leeched out by the oppressive Virginia heat. He throws the hair toward the overflowing trash basket by his dresser, then gets up, feeling a little unstable as he reminds his body how it still works. Then he jams his legs into jeans and his arms into a jacket and his feet into his boots and drives to the twenty-four hour drug store and buys a set of clippers. In the middle of the night, with Gansey asleep in the other room, he shaves his short hair off, filling the sink with it like the river before. He looks at himself in the mirror, twisting his face from side to side, considering the newly bared hairline and the way it makes his sharp cheekbones look even sharper.
The girl was right. Spes. It is better.
Adam.
The two of them are lounging around Monmouth, not speaking much. Parrish is tucked on the couch with a book for lit; Ronan is lying on the pool table, throwing the six ball in the air and catching it. Parrish been working on homework since before Gansey left, and Gansey’s not due back for another hour, but Ronan bets she’ll still be working when Gansey gets in.
“Put the fucking book down, Parrish, it’s like four hundred degrees in here,” he says irritably.
Parrish looks unimpressed, even though she doesn’t look at him. “We still have homework even if it’s four hundred degrees.”
“How can you even think?”
“Just fine, thanks for the concern.” She turns a page. Ronan feels a strange stab of irritation as he watches her eyes dart back and forth.
“Shit, you’re fucking boring.”
“And you’re annoying.”
“Better annoying than boring.”
“That’s entirely a matter of opinion,” Parrish says.
“Fucking smartass, all the time,” Ronan snaps back. “Smartest fucking asshole ever to come out of the trailer park.”
“Don’t call me that.” Parrish’s voice has gone low.
Ronan swallows down how good and awful it sounds and sits up, a sneer curling across his face to hide it. “What should I call you then?”
Parrish’s face does something subtle and complicated, a look of pain and internalized frustration and confusion, before it settles into blankness.
“What?” Ronan says. “You forget your name?”
“No,” Parrish says. Her voice sounds different. “It’s just not mine sometimes.”
“The fuck? Is that some Cabeswater shit?”
“No.” Parrish sets her book to the side and rubs her hands over her face. “I don’t want it anymore. I want a new one.”
“Like what?” Parrish has been Parrish her whole life. Ronan knows she hates having to share it with her father, but being Parrish is an undeniable part of being Parrish.
“I dunno,” Parrish says. “Like… Adam, or something.”
“Most people go for the ‘s’ on their last name. President Adams or some shit.”
“No, like Adam for a first name.”
Ronan’s stomach immediately drops through his body and into the first floor of Monmouth.
“Far cry from your old first name,” he says, attempting casualness. He knows he fails because Parrish looks at him, one eyebrow cocked. “Sounds like a boy’s name.”
“Uh huh,” Parrish agrees. They lock eyes and Parrish holds Ronan’s gaze unwaveringly. Ronan’s throat feels swollen shut. He can’t breathe. He’s choking on hope that someone understands.
He goes to make a joke, but “I like Ronan,” comes out instead.
“Huh?”
“For me. I like Ronan.”
“Ronan,” Parrish repeats. Ronan flushes a little at the way the name sounds in her mouth. His mouth? He hopes Parrish doesn’t notice. “Nice.”
“Adam,” Ronan says. Parrish perks up a little bit, like she – he – wanted to hear someone else say it.
Parrish studies Ronan for a moment, a long moment where Ronan’s heart is about to slam out of his chest, then says, “What are you?”
“What are you? ” Ronan shoots back to hide the quaver in his voice.
“A boy,” Parrish says simply. “With a boy’s name.”
Ronan stares at him, and notices that Parrish’s cheeks are flushed a little too with nerves, or shame. He can’t tell. The longer they stare at each other, the more pronounced it gets, until Parrish looks away, picking at a thread on the couch. There’s quiet in the apartment, no one daring to speak, until abruptly, Ronan says, “Me too.”
Parrish looks up, and seems startled, even though Ronan had just confessed his own name. “You too?”
“A boy,” Ronan says. “Like… like you.”
Parrish’s eyes are wide, and Ronan sees his own hope reflected in them. It kind of hurts to look at. He finds himself sliding off the pool table and striding over to the couch and dropping down next to Parrish, who looks a bit shell-shocked. They sit there together and stare at their hands, each reconciling their mental picture of the other.
“Gansey’s such a fucking lesbian, she’s gonna be bummed her arm candy is dudes,” Ronan says after a moment. His voice is still unsteady, but it snaps the silence and Parrish laughs loudly, relief evident in her voice. His voice. Ronan mentally adjusts himself. His voice. Parrish’s voice. Adam’s voice.
“Adam,” Ronan says to himself, and Adam looks at him, barely repressed delight in his face.
“Ronan,” Adam replies, and it feels right, somewhere in his chest that only wakes up in dreams.
Gansey.
Ronan knows that Gansey isn’t watching him any more than usual, but it feels like her eyes are constantly on him now. Maybe it’s because he’s just more aware, or because the idea of being seen doesn’t make him want to punch the wall quite as much anymore. He doesn’t know. It feels like every time he turns around, Gansey’s gaze is on him or sliding off.
Adam is around more often too, in between jobs. He’s started doing homework at Monmouth sometimes in his hours off, which Gansey is delighted about because she thinks it might rub off on Ronan. Ronan knows that absolutely nothing, wanted or otherwise, is rubbing off on him right now, but it makes Monmouth feel a little safer. It’s not like it’s two against one, except sometimes, when Gansey is calling Sargent like it’s a secret and they’re not the perfect little Henrietta power couple, it kind of is.
Adam is over one night, lying on the floor with his feet kicked up on the couch. It’s the coolest position for a very hot day. Gansey is being both obvious and oblivious where she’s working on a massive map of where they think Cabeswater’s cave systems are and staring at the two of them at the same time. Part of Ronan feels terror at the idea that she might see the way his gaze falls onto Adam and away, and another part clenches sickeningly at the idea of Gansey seeing Adam at all instead of Parrish. Gansey calls him Parrish, and it’s killing Ronan to keep calling him that as well when the name Adam is so firmly on his lips.
Gansey’s eyes slide from him to Adam, and Adam can’t be that oblivious, but he doesn’t look back. His eyes are closed against the September heat and his hair, recently cut short after an incident with an engine block, is pushed up off his forehead. He looks good with a pixie cut, and Ronan knows Gansey thinks so too. He knows because Gansey had stumbled over her words trying to tell Adam she liked it, and then been annoyed with herself afterwards. Gansey is terribly obvious sometimes.
Gansey looks back over to him. She’s pretending she’s not, moving her pencil along a latitude line, but Ronan knows she is, and so he looks up and looks back. Gansey freezes a little, and Ronan says, “Why do you keeps staring at me?”
“I’m not staring at you,” Gansey says, while staring.
“Yes you are, you’re doing it right now.”
Gansey flushes a little, embarrassed to be caught, and shrugs one shoulder. “Just thinking.”
“About what?” Ronan demands. Self consciousness is making him irritable.
“You’ve just been different over the past week or so, is all,” Gansey says. “Quieter. I was just wondering if something was wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Ronan snaps. “Everything’s fine, except you staring at me like I’m gonna explode or something.”
Gansey winces a little and Ronan immediately feels guilty. It’s easy to snap at Gansey but he rarely actually means to hurt her. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m okay,” Ronan says. “So’s Parrish. I know you’re staring at… her, too.”
Adam visibly flinches, and it leaves a bad taste in Ronan’s mouth. Adam turns to look at him, and they hold each other’s gaze for a moment, and then Adam says, “I don’t want you to have to do that.”
Gansey looks perplexed, but Ronan nods. He rubs his hands hard over his face. He tries to remember the last time he called Adam she and can’t. Parrish is so much easier than pronouns. So much safer.
“Do what?” Gansey asks. She’s looking between the two of them again, confusion rather than concern on her face now.
“Is it okay?” Adam asks softly.
Ronan grits his teeth, but nods. If he were to tell anyone, it would be Gansey. Gansey knows him better than almost anyone.
Adam rolls over and sits up so he can face Gansey. Gansey’s face is carefully neutral now, but Ronan knows that her anxiety is clawing at her inside. “We, me and Lynch, had a talk a little bit ago,” Adam says carefully. “And we, like… Came out to each other by accident.”
“Came out,” Gansey repeats. “As… gay?”
Adam lets out a short breath. “No, as boys.”
“What?”
“Both of us. We both identify as boys. Not girls.”
Gansey stares at them, blank expression gone.
Then she throws her head back and laughs.
Ronan’s body feels like ice, and next to him, Adam looks somewhere between terrified and defensive. Ronan wants to reach over and take his hand, but he doesn’t know how to go about doing it, or if Adam would appreciate it, or if he would have the courage to anyway.
“Jesus Christ,” Gansey says to herself. She rubs one hand across her eyes. “Christ, I’m such an idiot.”
“Uh,” Adam says. “What?”
Gansey’s grinning now as she looks at them. “I’ve been keeping it to myself because I didn’t know what to say.”
“Been keeping what to yourself?” Adam asks warily.
“I– me too,” Gansey says. “Secretly. I can’t tell my parents, obviously, they would have conniptions.”
“You too,” Ronan repeats. His voice is suddenly hoarse. His head feels like it’s spinning.
“You’re talking about being transgender, right?” Gansey says. “I’ve done some reading on it and– that’s what you mean, right?”
Adam nods wordlessly. His eyes are very wide.
“I’ve been thinking about it for ages,” Gansey confesses. “But it’s Virginia, and my mother is my mother, and it’s not the most liberal of–”
“So you’re a boy,” Ronan cuts in bluntly.
“Um. Yes. That’s how I would identify myself.” Gansey suddenly looks a little nervous. “Is that…?” She – he , Gods, Ronan chastises himself in his head – trails off, then adds, “I mean, of course it’s alright.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Ronan says, then shuffles forwards on his knees and crashes into Gansey in a half-hug that lands them both on the floor. Gansey makes a startled noise, and then laughs breathlessly and slings an arm around Ronan’s shoulders.
Adam is still sitting by the couch watching them incredulously. There’s obvious wonder in his face. “Are you some kind of magnet?” he asks Gansey.
Gansey laughs again. “I must be.”
“Parrish likes the name Adam,” Ronan tells Gansey’s shoulder. “Been calling him that.”
“Adam,” Gansey repeats, and Adam lights up a little, whether he means to or not. “What about you?”
“Ronan,” Ronan says.
“Ronan,” Gansey agrees. “It suits you.” Pride swells in Ronan’s chest and he presses his forehead against Gansey’s shoulder.
“Can’t believe you,” he murmurs.
Gansey pats his shoulder, amused. “Sometimes I can’t believe myself either.”
Blue.
They feel invincible some days, the three of them walking in line together with their secret held between them. Ronan feels stronger for it some days; no one bothers him anyway, no one calls him anything but Lynch, or Adam anything but Parrish, or Gansey anything but Gansey. It feels less like lying now that three people know.
Four people, really. Noah hasn’t been around much, but he called Adam Adam to his face without being prompted. But even if Noah counts, there’s still one person who doesn’t know and Ronan is dreading it.
“It’s not like Blue will be judgemental,” Gansey says as they all file out of the car. “His whole family is witches and psychics. Being transgender isn’t that weird.”
Ronan wishes Gansey would stop using that word. He suspects that it’s liberating for Gansey to be able to refer to himself like that, but it grates on Ronan. He wouldn’t ascribe it to himself. Trans, maybe. But not transgender. Too many syllables.
Neither he nor Adam have adopted it. They both feel comfortable just labeling themselves as boys.
“You have a magical connection with a forest, Adam,” Gansey adds as they walk up to the door. “That’s much more unusual.”
“And yet,” Adam says drily. Gansey punches him lightly in the shoulder, and then Adam bumps their knuckles together. Gansey smiles, then knocks.
The door swings open almost immediately and Calla is on the other side in a smart looking suit. Gansey straightens up a little.
“Blue is upstairs,” she tells them, then walks through them, car keys in hand. Ronan glowers and Adam bumps their shoulders together. Gansey watches her for a moment, then ushers them all in and closes the door behind them.
They find Blue in his room doing homework, or staring at the wall while pretending to do homework. He looks up at them as they come in and smiles brightly, shoving his book closed. “Thank God. I was beginning to think that I’d have to get some actual work done.”
“You should still do that,” Gansey says. “At some point.”
“Nah.” Blue rolls off his bed. He reaches down for a button up to pull over a very very bright tank top. “Are we going out?”
“Staying in, for a moment,” Gansey says. “We wanted to talk to you.”
Blue looks worried. “Did something happen to Cabeswater again?”
“No, no, of course not,” Gansey says, then looks at Adam, like he’s suddenly not sure.
“Cabeswater’s alright,” Adam confirms.
“Well. Good, then,” Blue says. He looks back at Gansey. “So…?”
“So,” Gansey says. “Do you know what being transgender is?”
Blue blinks. “Yes. I do.”
“Well,” Gansey says. “That’s us.”
Ronan gives Blue a sardonic little wave.
Blue looks back and forth between them for a moment. “All of you?”
“Yep,” Adam says.
“Roving pack of dudes,” Ronan adds.
“It’s all come out rather recently,” Gansey says.
Blue nods, seemingly absorbing this, then says, “Well, that’s good to know, that you’re down with that?”
“How do you mean?” Gansey asks.
“I never knew if it was– safe, I guess, to be out with y’all,” Blue says. “Henrietta’s a little–”
“Wait, hold the fuck up,” Ronan interrupts. “You too?”
“Uh. Yeah,” Blue says.
Gansey’s suddenly grinning so brightly he’s lighting up the whole bedroom.
“My family knows,” Blue goes on. “I think they always knew. Something about it not making sense having a man in the family, or my cards. When I told them I was actually a girl, they were all like, ‘well, of course you are’. I was kind of insulted.”
For some reason, that makes Ronan laugh. “I fucking told you, man. You’re a magnet!”
“You really are,” Adam agrees.
Ronan reaches his fist out to Blue. Blue looks genuinely surprised, then bumps it. Ronan shakes his head. “Swear to fuck, the whole campus is gonna be trans by the end of the year.”
“I can think of worse things,” Gansey says. He walks over and drops down onto Blue’s bed, still smiling. Blue sits down next to him, their shoulders pressed together. Ronan elbows Adam. Adam elbows him back.
After a moment, Blue says, “Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel better.”
Gansey laughs and wraps an arm around her shoulders. Ronan finds the pronoun slipping into his head easily. It makes sense that Blue is a girl, like it makes sense that Gansey and Adam are boys, the way his own dreams make sense, when he looks like himself to himself, the only person who needs to see it.
Adam sits down on Blue’s other side and Blue elbows him, then leans into his side. Adam rests his chin on her head and smiles crookedly. Ronan leans against the wall and watches them as Gansey starts to talk about the actual Cabeswater and cave systems. He doesn’t listen much, but he doesn’t feel the need to. They’ll all fill him in later.