Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Adam is uncertain which exact moment made him realize that Ronan Lynch was interested in him in a more than friendly way. Perhaps some time after he beat the everliving shit out of his father, but before he dreamed Adam hand lotion. The effect was cumulative: it is at some cloudy point within this window of violent and strange romantic gestures that it clicked for Adam: I am wanted. Ronan wants me. Ronan Lynch wants Adam Parrish. How it wondered him, to think that. How strange and magical it made his insides feel whenever the thought swam through his consciousness.

It might’ve been vanity. It might’ve been that he was Adam Parrish, and the idea of a Ronan Lynch liking an Adam Parrish was still so laughable and obviously misguided that he was savoring this mistake while it lasted, before Ronan found some other pretty thing, some other blue-collar curiosity to entertain his bored rich-boy palate.

It might’ve been that Ronan Lynch was, objectively speaking, the most handsome boy Adam had ever seen outside of a television screen. Even perfect princely Gansey didn’t quite reach Ronan’s savage and ethereal good looks. Ronan made people stop and stare in grocery stores, made women follow him in shopping malls, made shy wide-eyed waitresses stutter when they took his order. It struck him as insane that such a beautiful creature would select Adam Parrish out of the rows of desiring suitors desperate just to look at him.

The sincerity and content of Adam’s feelings were, as usual, unknown to him. But he knew they were there, untested, unsure, curious, afraid.

The bell rang. Adam paid attention to the studied way Ronan didn’t look at him when he said, “C’mon. Ditch with me.” Ronan dug his nail into Adam’s desk. Adam sighed and packed up his bag.

“Can’t. I have a math test next period.”

Ronan rolled his eyes, kicking one of Adam’s pencils out of his reach so he had to bend very far to retrieve it. Adam wondered dully if his ass was even that nice.

“Why am I only friends with nerds?” Ronan wondered aloud. “Between you and Gansey, it’s pretty fucking generous of me that I’ve never stuffed either of you in a locker.”

 Adam wondered if this is what one might call pigtail-pulling.

 “After school?” Ronan asked, tossing one of Adam’s pens into the air.

 “Can’t. I have work.”

 Ronan leveled him with what someone less familiar with Ronan Lynch might call a death-glare. But to Adam it was just his usual stare, and he was long accustomed to its burn.

“Yeah, sorry I have to feed myself and stuff,” Adam said dryly, slinging his bag over his shoulder. Ronan followed him into the hallway.

“Where are you going?” Adam asked, turning around. 

Ronan shrugged, walking backwards, arms outspread. His arms flopped down, and he turned around and walked out into the early afternoon sunshine. Aglionby’s wild, errant prince.

This time it was Adam who watched him, nearly missing the bell for his next class. Adam stared after Ronan’s leather jacket-clad back, his loose boxer’s fists, his strange and beautiful shaved head, leaving Adam wondering at the flick of pleasure that snapped through him, hot and curious, at the sight of him.

--

It was 8 o’clock when Adam returned from work. He was halfway through untangling himself from his dirty t-shirt when he heard a knock on the door. He regretfully pulled it back on and trudged wearily to the door, feet cold on the hardwood.

Ronan huffed inside, shoving a greasy paper bag to Adam’s chest. “Eat shit, trailer trash.”  

"Don't fucking call me that," Adam muttered, snatching the bag from Ronan's fingers. "It's not fucking funny."

"Consider the food a pre-emptive apology for my expected shittiness, then."

Adam’s stomach began to grumble as soon as he opened the bag. There were two burgers and french fries inside. Adam had worked a double shift that day, and he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

“Did you just come here to bring me food?” Adam asked. Ronan crushed the soda can he’d been drinking and dropped it to the floor. He’d been caught being nice. He had to cover his bases. Adam eyed it wearily.  

Ronan burped. “Nope. Came to bring you back to Monmouth.”

“I’m not going to Monmouth. I have work in the morning and Monmouth is too far to bike.”

Ronan rolled his eyes and threw his feet onto Adam’s table. “Three things, Parrish. One, there is a snow storm tonight and your piece of shit cardboard box doesn’t have central heating. Two, there is a snow storm tonight so you won’t have work tomorrow and three, you’re not biking anymore. I told you that. Not for winter, at least.”

“Lynch--”

“Number four,” Ronan raised his voice over Adam’s. “You’re a dipshit. Now come on. I wanna go.”

“I’m not going,” Adam repeated. “And stop being a shithead.” Then, coldly, “I thought I could trust you not to Richard-Gansey-the-Third me.”

Ronan stared at him long and hard, fingers tapping on the table menacingly, foot kicking dirt onto Adam’s table. But Adam was used to this. He stared right back, unyielding. Ronan really needed to learn a new trick.

Finally Ronan looked away. “Well aren’t you going to eat?” he asked, nodding to the bag of food. 

“In a bit,” Adam said.

“You should eat now,” Ronan advised, slinging an around the back of the chair, utterly casual, like this was his apartment and Adam was his guest. Adam sighed. “Fries taste shitty when they’re cold.”

“I’m not hungry now.”

Ronan pelted him with a fry. “Liar.”

“Ronan what are you doing?” Ronan blinked like he didn’t understand the question. “Why are you here? I’m trying to study.”

“So...study.” Ronan shrugged carelessly, making a face like it was Adam who was being insensible. “What’s stopping you?” He gestured to Adam’s books. “Get to it, nerd boy.”

“Not with you here,” Adam said tersely.

“Why not?” Ronan blinked innocently, tossing another fry into his mouth. “I’ll be quiet. Won’t even know I’m here.”

Adam snorted with disdain. “I must look very stupid to you.”

“Oh extremely,” Ronan agreed. “Brutally dumb. Truly a hopeless cause.”

Adam glared at him for a long moment. Finally he muttered, “If I let you stay you have to do homework.”

“Nice stern face, Parrish.”

“You’re impossible. And a shithead.”

“Your insults are getting stale, man,” Ronan shook his head, tsk-tsking. “That’s like the ninth shithead today.”

“Sorry, didn’t realize you were keeping track.”

Ronan swung his feet onto the floor with a violent thump. Adam watched, expressionless, as Ronan crossed the room to the door, coat flying behind him.

He paused at the door handle, nodding to the food again. “So are you not gonna eat that?” Ronan asked.

Adam wrapped an arm around his middle, an old habit. He stared back at Ronan and said quietly, “I’ll eat it.”

The door opened with a shriek of cold wind, chilling Adam to his bones.

“Are you not staying then?” Adam asked.

Ronan turned to face him, his profile sharp. A muscle leapt in his jaw. “Are you not coming with me?” he returned.

Adam looked at his bed, with its thin scratchy sheets, its threadbare blanket. His old flannel pajama pants which barely came to his ankles. His cold naked feet. He looked up to find Ronan staring at the same things. Adam shook his head.

“You know -- for a nerd, you can be pretty fucking stupid,” Ronan said, eyes dark.

Adam met his stare. “Goodbye, Lynch,” he said coolly.

Ronan slammed the door shut. Adam didn’t hear the engine rev to life until many minutes later, and the BMW headlights didn’t swing out of the dark parking lot until many minutes after that.

--

Adam finally shivered himself to sleep, and he dreamed of Ronan’s mouth. The shape it made when he said, “fuck you.” The shape it made when he was caught being kind. The shape it made when Adam stared back at him, and for that brief moment, Ronan let himself be known.

--

The thing was, Ronan thought, staring at the back of Adam's dusty head in Latin class, that Adam better thank his lucky stars he turned out so goddamn pretty. Because otherwise Ronan would never put up with this shit.

Ronan ignored the rumble of voices around him, Gansey poking his shoulder with a pencil, the teacher’s pointed glares in his direction. He ignored it all because Adam was sucking on the end of his pen in a particularly obscene way and it was taking all of Ronan’s energy to contain his outrage. 

“Alright, Mr. Parrish. For the tenth time, you may answer the question, since no one else seems to be listening.”

Adam consulted his notebook for the answer, rifling through its pages with his long, nimble fingers. Ronan loved those hands. He loved everything about him -- those big blue eyes, the dusty eyelashes. The earnest way his eyebrows arched when he was concerned, those gaunt haunting cheekbones. His golden skin, the worried little knit in his brow. That quick, dead flash that crossed his eyes whenever someone said anything stupid.

Gansey flicked Ronan in the temple, and Ronan scrambled to hit him back. “Watch yourself, old man,” he grumbled, and Gansey just laughed, gracefully dodging Ronan’s flying fists.

The bell rang. Ronan had never taken out his books to begin with, so he used everyone’s else packing-up time to glare at their new Latin teacher. Lacking both Whelk and Greenmantle’s respective homicidal tendencies, the new teacher was no match for Ronan Lynch’s death-glare.

“Gansey, leash that dog,” Henry Cheng said wryly, nodding to Ronan.

Ronan tripped him on his way out the door, smiling with toothy cruelty. Cheng cursed him under his breath.

“Ronan,” Gansey warned. “This one’s an innocent. Reign it in.”

“But how will I entertain myself if I can’t scare my teachers?” Ronan asked innocently. His eyes made some perverse fluttering gesture that Gansey never wanted to see again.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Adam drawled, appearing at Ronan’s shoulder. His hip nudged against Ronan’s, which meant he didn’t want to fight with Ronan anymore. Ronan steeled himself, swinging his bag over his shoulder, and yelled something pithy and insulting in Latin to their teacher as they walked out the door. Neither Adam nor Gansey understood, but Gansey felt it safe to smack Ronan in the back of the head nonetheless.

They went to Nino’s after school. Blue was just starting her shift, clutching her notepad between her teeth as she hurriedly tied the back of her apron. Ronan and Adam strode straight to their usual booth, letting Gansey lag behind to have some surely nauseatingly flirtatious exchange, something neither Ronan nor Adam could quite stomach.

Ronan watched Adam flip through the menu, even though he always ordered the same thing. Sweet tea and a slice of pepperoni. Adam had a knit between his eyebrows, fingers tapping.

Gansey slid into the booth, jostling Ronan, shaking his thoughts askew. Good, he thought. Let me forget. Let this fucking secret crawl back into the hole it belongs.

“Hey, can I call you ‘wench’?” Ronan asked when Blue strolled up to their table, pencil tucked behind her ear. “That’s what they used to call your kind in the good ol’ days,” he elaborated, nodding her to apron.

Gansey, Blue, and Adam reached out at once to slap the back of Ronan’s head. “Motherfuckers,” he hissed, slapping their hands away. “You know, I’m thinking about telling the manager about what terrible service you have--”

Blue reached out to hit him again, but Gansey gently caught her wrist. “I’m bringing you all your usuals,” she said breezily, turning back to the kitchen. “And piss for Lynch.”

“Great!” he yelled to her back. “My favorite!”

“You are truly in fine form, today,” Gansey said sternly once Blue disappeared into the kitchen. Ronan rolled his eyes.

“Skip the lecture and get to the fucking scoop.”

Gansey took a deep breath and looked deep into Ronan’s eyes. “I need you to dream me something.”

Ronan had begun to chew on a toothpick, and it looked like a tiny frightening fang. He twisted it disdainfully. “I’m not a fucking Walmart. 

“Please, then?" 

“Oh, well now that you’ve said please--” Ronan waved his hands contemptuously.

Adam sighed loudly beside him, and Gansey merely blinked at him.

“I need something that looks like this.” Gansey pushed his open notebook to show him a drawing of bizarre, complex contraption that looked something like a radio.

“The fuck is this?”

“Well, if it works, and I have no idea if it works because I need you to dream it, it will record the voices we hear in Cabeswater. So we can understand them better.”

“So you can understand them better." 

“Yes, yes, you’re the king of Latin, we get it,” Gansey waved his hands dismissively. “It’s for me. And Adam.”

“So you designed it then?”

“No,” Adam said, “I did.” It was the first thing Adam had said to him since he got to Nino’s. Ronan turned to him, poking the toothpick through his teeth like a threat.

“So you want me to dream a fake machine,” Ronan said eventually, after another one of his long glaring silences.

“I think it might work because your dream-logic and Cabeswater-logic seem to be compatible,” Gansey answered, always quick to Adam’s defense. He shot Adam an encouraging, hopeful look. “If anything, it’s worth a shot. And it would be a chance for you to make yourself useful,” Gansey added, arching his eyebrow in a way that reminded Ronan uncomfortably of a disapproving schoolteacher.

“How do you know I can dream this if I don’t know how it works? He’s the freaky Einstein magician,” Ronan said, waving his hand at Adam.  

“See, that’s the problem. We need to find a way for Adam to go with you. Into your dreams, I mean.”

“What? Why?”

Beneath Ronan’s transparent attempt to sound scary, Adam heard an undertone in his voice that could only be described as panicked.

“For precisely the problem you identified,” Gansey nodded to Ronan. “Only Adam understands it, because he’s the one who designed it. He has to be the builder.”

“The magician,” Ronan corrected, turning to Adam to bare his teeth in a grin, toothpick poking out like a weapon.  

“Can it be done?” Adam asked Ronan. There was something strange in his stare, curious and penetrating. Ronan twisted the toothpick between his lips, brow low.

“I don’t know,” Ronan said.

“Well do you have any idea of how it could be done?” Gansey asked.

He chewed on his toothpick and stared at them, long and hard. Then he spat it out on the table. After a long, uncomfortable silence he said, “yes.”

“Okay,” Adam said, drawing out the ‘kay. He blinked impatiently. “And how is that?”

“It’s funny -- I don’t ever remember actually agreeing to do your plan,” Ronan said sharply, his gaze snapping to Adam's.   

This is the moment when Blue blessedly arrived with a pitcher of iced tea and a giant pepperoni pizza. “Hey, Sargent -- how about ‘peasant’? Can I call you peasant?” Ronan asked Blue when she slid into the booth to steal a bite. She tossed one of her half-eaten pepperonis at his face. 

“Hey!” Ronan yelled, to the mostly empty restaurant. “This peasant is stealing our food!” 

Blue nailed him with a spit ball. “Touché, maggot,” Ronan said through a mouthful of crust, flicking it back to Gansey, who probably pocketed Blue’s coveted spit for some nasty love potion.  

This last part Ronan might’ve accidentally muttered aloud. Adam snorted an abrupt derisive laugh, hiding his face behind his cup. Blue and Gansey, pink-cheeked, both bravely pretended they hadn’t heard him.

“So will you do it then?” Gansey asked, clearing his throat in a painfully obvious way.

“Please,” Adam added, because every time Adam said please, all slow Henrietta vowels, Ronan’s resolve seemed to visibly weaken.

“Do what?” Blue inquired.

“Adam designed something that might help us record Cabeswater’s voice, so we can listen to it later and translate, to better understand what it wants. But the only way we can think of to build it is for Ronan to dream it. But for it to work, we need Adam to go with him.”

“To his dreams?” Blue looked incredulous, and to Ronan’s supreme irritation, also mildly delighted.

“Yes." 

“How? Do they have to--?” Blue’s face broke into a wide wicked smile, but Ronan cut her off.

“Don’t you dare say it,” Ronan hissed. Adam blinked at him.

“Do they have to what?” Gansey asked, obliviously. Ronan briefly and wildly thought about strangling them all.

“Sleep together.” Blue’s mouth spread into a Cheshire smile. Gansey furrowed his eyebrows violently, in great alarm. Ronan, decidedly not blushing, stabbed the tines of his fork into the wooden table. Adam, who decidedly was blushing, snorted a laugh, then belatedly clapped his hand over his mouth. 

Blue’s voice barely contained her cackle. “Lynch? That is the way, is it not?”

Ronan’s smile promised to rip Blue apart. “It looks like we’re having a motherfucking sleepover.”

“So...you’ll do it then?”

“Depends,” Ronan shrugged, too-casual. “You snore, Parrish? ‘Cause I’m afraid that’s a deal breaker for me.”

Ronan knew that Adam did not snore. He had accidentally crashed on Adam’s floor dozens of times. But Blue and Gansey did not necessarily know that, and it seemed suddenly imperative that it remain unacknowledged.

Blue was rubbing her hands together maniacally, so Ronan reached for her, fork still in hand. Gansey gently pulled her out of harm’s way.

“C’mon, Parrish,” Ronan said, abruptly standing up, tossing his crumbled napkin onto his empty plate. Adam stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder. 

“Why are you leaving so early? Work?” Gansey asked, concerned.

“Nope, just need get home to write an essay. I still have no idea what I’m going to write,” Adam said, swiping his hand through his hair in a way Ronan found annoyingly appealing.

“Well, come over later, if you like,” Gansey offered. “And you, Lynch?”

“I’ll be around,” Ronan said vaguely over his shoulder. Adam followed him to the parking lot, shielding his face from the hard evening light, gold and orange in their eyes. Ronan walked much farther ahead of him, half-shadowed, half-alight, his hands flexing and falling lose, shoulders rolling, muscles crackling with unspent energy.

“Well are you going to get in or are you just going to stare at me?” Ronan cocked his head at Adam, shaking him from his thoughts. Ronan’s face looked a little pleased; maybe Adam’s face betrayed more than he meant it to.

He slid into the passenger seat. He felt Ronan’s eyes on his face before he heard the engine rev, the car reverse, the sudden glare of sunshine on their faces. Adam glanced at Ronan, sidelong. Ronan’s blue eyes, for a brief moment, were nearly translucent, the sun hard in his eyes. So unbearably pretty that Adam couldn’t look away. A muscle turned in Ronan’s jaw, teeth sucking in his lower lip. Ronan turned to Adam, his eyes racing across Adam’s face for just a moment.

In that brief second, their eyes met, open and devastating, before Ronan turned back to the road, cagey-shouldered. Knuckles white on the wheel. Adam looked down at his own hands, and was surprised to find them clenched into fists, white-knuckled, on his knees.

--

The church pews were empty when Ronan threw open its heavy doors, just candlesmoke and low evening sunlight filtering through stained glass. Ronan’s footfall was heavy and echoing. He climbed up the winding staircase at the back, so he could sit near the organ. His fingers floated curiously near the keys, before falling back into his lap. He reclined across the bench, and let silence save his mind from the roaring, barbarous swagger of his own heartbeat, wild and pendulous in his ribcage.

He closed his eyes and saw Adam. He opened them and saw the dark, rustic beams of the church’s arched ceiling.

Ronan kept his eyes open.

It was dark by the time Ronan finally made his way to Adam’s room, but not terribly late. The only discernible sound was the dryer machine running. Ronan went to the fridge and peeked inside: there was very little food. Just a carton of eggs, some milk, a mostly-eaten loaf of off-brand bread, some yogurt that Blue had probably left for him. It was a very spartan kitchen, tidy and yellowing, with peeling wallpaper and very little to indicate that a teenage boy inhabited it.

Ronan poured himself a glass of water and wandered to the corner that was Adam’s bed. He expected to hear rustling pages, scribbling pen, but there was just Adam, passed out on his mattress on the floor. Adam was curled around his books protectively, hair askew, mouth open, wearing only a pair of gray sweatpants. Ronan glanced at the alarm clock next to his bed: it was only 8:30.

There were many paths Ronan considered: he could wake Adam up, or he could let him sleep and enjoy the sight of Adam’s naked torso undeterred. Ronan knew Adam needed to finish this essay, and he would be furious with himself if knew he’d fallen asleep. Privately Ronan thought this was idiotic; he did not understand why this magical boy lowered himself with something as obviously pointless as his schoolwork. For Ronan there was no arbitrary division between curricular and extracurricular, school and not-school: for Ronan there was magic, and then there was everything else. 

Ronan swilled water through his teeth and kicked the foot of Adam’s poor excuse for a bed. Adam’s arms came up to protect his head, still unconscious, and Ronan kicked the mattress harder. Adam turned over with a groan, and Ronan tried very hard not to appreciate the way his sweatpants fell just past the twin dimples at the small of Adam’s back.

“Parrish,” Ronan grunted. Adam moaned “no.” Ronan gave a loud sigh and kicked the bed again.

“Get the fuck up.”

Adam rolled back over and blinked his eyes open drowsily. “Shit,” he murmured, eyes falling on the open books scattered around him. “Shit, shit.” He looked up at Ronan, dragging the back of his hand over his eyes.

He sat up slowly and eventually dragged himself to the bathroom to splash water on his face. Ronan flopped down in the space he just occupied, crossing his arms behind his head. The bed was still warm.

Adam appeared in the doorway again, watching him. “So,” he said eventually.

“So what?” Ronan’s eyes were closed. He felt the weight shift at the foot of the bed.

“So what d’you think of Gansey’s plan?" 

Ronan cracked one eye open. Adam’s arms were crossed over his chest, one arm on each shoulder, hugging himself tightly. He was still watching Ronan.

“Gansey’s plan?”

“Fine. My plan.”

Ronan picked a stray eyelash off his cheek and flicked it away. His expression was inscrutable.

A loud beeping sound interrupted them. Adam sprung to his feet and rushed to the kitchen, bare feet padding on the floor. Ronan collapsed against the headboard, head pounding. He suddenly needed a drink very badly, something strong and numbing, but he knew Adam wouldn’t have anything. He avoided drinking like the plague; privately Ronan thought it would do him some good, but he knew it only reminded him of his father.

Adam returned with a battered laundry basket. He looked like he badly needed a drink too.

“How much more of this shit do you have to do?” Ronan gestured vaguely to the scattered books, their previous conversation deliberately forgotten. Adam slumped to his knees and began folding his clothes. 

“A lot. The whole damn essay.”

Ronan’s face folded in disgust. “Call it off, man. Say you’re sick and do it tomorrow.”

Adam was suddenly very interested in meticulously folding his socks. “I can’t do that." 

Ronan threw one of Adam’s books to the ground, but he didn’t argue. There was no point.

Staring very intently at the sweatpants he was folding in his lap, Adam said, “You should...you should sleep here tonight. In the bed. If you’re not doing anything, I mean,” he added quietly. “That way it’ll force me to stay up and work.”

Ronan heard the gurgle of a coffee pot in the kitchen. He ran his hand roughly over his face. “I could stay up with you,” he suggested casually, eyes on the ceiling. He felt Adam’s gaze on him, watchful.

“No. You’ll distract me.”

He was right. Ronan was no good at helping with these sorts of things. Whenever Gansey pulled all-nighters he banished Ronan to his room. Otherwise it was nothing but a deluge of obnoxious music and restless energy and demands for midnight snack runs.

Ronan idly flipped through one of Adam’s notebooks. “Fine.” He flipped over onto his stomach and snapped his fingers. “Get to it then, nerd.”

Adam heaved a deep sigh and plopped one of the heavier books onto his lap, settling into a cross-legged position on the floor. Ronan flicked his head, and Adam turned around slowly to level him with one of his own death-glares. 

“That’s what I’m gonna do every time I see you slacking off,” Ronan warned, twirling one of Adam’s pens between his fingers.

“I asked for this,” Adam sighed, resigned.

“Damn straight.”

Adam flipped through his book with a little snort of laughter. So goddamn straight.

In the span of a couple hours, Adam had managed to construct a decently detailed outline. He searched his drawer of meager school supplies to staple it together.

“Ronan did you steal my stapler?” Adam asked, head bent to peer deeper into the cabinet. He looked at Ronan over his shoulder.  

“I’m borrowing it,” Ronan answered. He held up a tiny conglomeration of staples. “Look, I made you a house.” Adam crossed the room to search through another drawer. “Now you’ll never be homeless, Parrish--”

Adam swept it aside, still looking frantically. 

“Ungrateful.” Ronan shook his head. “A man makes you a house -- a house, Parrish -- and you sweep it away like it’s nothing--”

“Ronan, you used all my staples.”

“Like you even needed all those staples. I gave them a purpose--”

“Shut the fuck up,” Adam muttered darkly, kneeling to rifle through another cabinet.  “Look, I can’t find my book. You seen it?”

“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific than that. I mean, Jesus, looks like you’re hoarding half the school library in here, man--”

“Shit,” Adam said louder, cutting Ronan off. He sat back on his heels. “Fuck. I’m such an idiot.” 

“Stating the obvious,” Ronan said, tapping the stolen pen against the top of Adam’s head. He flopped onto Adam’s mattress and began flipping idly through a car magazine. “What did you do?”

“I left a book with Gansey,” Adam sighed, running a hand over his face. He took a long gulp of his now-cold coffee. “One I really need. At Monmouth.”

Ronan was already on his feet, crackling with energy. “What’s it called?” 

Adam flopped down on his back on the floor, throwing an arm over his face. “Ronan, please--” He felt Ronan’s shadow looming over him. He peeked at him from between his fingers, reluctantly dragging himself to lean against the wall. Staring at his lap, he protested, “I’ll be fine without it--”

Ronan bent over him imposingly, then reached out to tug on a lock of Adam’s hair. For a brief, wild moment, Adam felt like laughing at the fact that Ronan’s months of metaphorical pigtail-pulling had finally escalated to the realm of the literal. He closed his eyes. 

“Name, Parrish,” Ronan demanded, nudging his knee with his foot.

Adam bowed his head, defeated, and told Ronan the name. A beat passed, and then, “I owe you.”

Ronan kicked his shin. “Shut the fuck up, dumb shit. I’m getting bored of lying around your piece of shit cardboard box anyways.” He threw his coat over his shoulders and stalked towards the door. Adam watched him quietly, a warm strange feeling in his belly. Ronan was still muttering abuses under his breath as he slammed the door behind him.

It was nearly 1 AM when Ronan returned, armed with Red Bull and his laptop and an armful of various snacks which he dumped on Adam’s table.

He found Adam kneeling by the window with one leg curled up by his chin, his notebook open on the ground next to him. Adam peered up at Ronan from beneath his eyelashes, though his long slim neck remained bent over his knee. Ronan loomed for a long moment before lobbing a candy bar at Adam’s head. He dumped the requested book next to Adam’s foot.

“Thank you,” Adam mumbled, too tired to protest Ronan’s generosity. Ronan sprawled out on the floor next to him, ankles crossed, leaning his weight on one elbow. Perfectly casual, in no way affected by the adorable and impossible sight in front of him.

They sat there in silence for a moment, Adam chewing and scribbling, Ronan staring broodingly at some dark spot on the floor when he finally muttered, “The Barns." 

“What?” Adam looked up at him. There was chocolate on his lip.

“When we do The Plan. It should be at the Barns.”

Ronan was twirling one of Adam’s pens again. Adam watched him quietly. He did not prod Ronan to elaborate.

“I dream better there,” he said eventually, lifting his eyes to meet Adam’s. Neither of them looked away.

“Okay,” Adam said simply.

They both fell asleep shortly after: Adam curled against the wall, clutching his notebook to his chest. Ronan was sprawled on the floor beside him, sleeping on his own arm, Adam’s pen still closed in his fist.

-

At some point in the early morning Adam must’ve finished his essay. He was sitting on his bed, scribbling furiously, when Ronan woke up. He made his way into Adam’s bathroom to splash some water on his face. He had most of his things with him, so by 8 AM they left St. Agnes together for Aglionby.

Adam was anxious and jittery beside him, clutching a battered travel mug full of cheap, weak coffee. Ronan whistled blandly along with the radio. They barely looked at each other, though Ronan could feel Adam’s gaze glancing off his cheek with the watery morning light.

The rest of the school day passed without much event. One of Kavinsky’s old cronies -- Skov or Swan or Skovswan, as Ronan had taken to thinking of him in his head, had reportedly been founding kissing an underclassmen in the boys’ restroom. Ronan and Gansey heard varying rumors skittering across the halls. One account alleged that the underclassmen had attacked him afterwards. Another reported that they had been secret lovers for months. Ronan’s curiosity was piqued: it wasn’t often that an Aglionby boy was openly homosexual. The school didn’t seem hostile, but the attitude towards him seemed uniformly bewildered. Skovswan was one of the bad boys, a group Ronan also belonged to in the minds of most Aglionby students, though he was a satellite member, a one-man gang. The students were reeling at their new discovery. Skovswan, for his part, seemed to relish this new notoriety. He even winked at Ronan when they passed in the hallway, prompting a fierce and immediate shove into the wall. Kavinsky’s ex-cronies still seemed to harbor a fascination for Ronan. In their minds he would always be Ronan the Inconquerable: the one that got away.

After school, Ronan drove Adam to work. Neither mentioned Skovswan, or anything at all for that matter. The prospect of even raising the specter of sexuality as a topic of conversation -- even when it had nothing to do with them -- terrified them both into silence.

Ronan pulled in front of the auto shop. Adam sat there for a moment, not yet ready to leave the warmth of Ronan’s car.

“So, tomorrow night?” Adam asked eventually. “The Barns?”

Ronan stared at him blankly.

“The sleepover?” Adam lifted a wry eyebrow, and Ronan half-scowled in response. Ronan’s cheeks were a little pink, but Adam didn’t mention it; he was sure his were a similar color.

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Adam rested his head against the back of the seat. He still hadn’t gotten out of the car.

“What, you want to ditch work or something?” Ronan asked. His eyes were bright, and he had that war-look. For a split second, Adam wanted nothing more than to let Ronan take him somewhere, anywhere.

Adam sighed and looked away. “You know I can’t.” He took a deep breath and opened the door. The immediate cold lungful of air that he swallowed made his eyes water, wind whipping at his exposed face.  He threw his backpack over his shoulder.

“Do you want to though?” Ronan asked him. His face was strangely serious, eyes still sparkling. Adam felt something in his stomach dip. 

He stared at Ronan for a moment too long. “Yeah,” he said eventually.

His voice was so quiet the wind nearly swallowed it, but he knew from the way that Ronan’s mouth quirked that he’d heard him.

They stared at each other, much longer than was necessary. Ronan’s mouth opened a little, like he was going to say something, but then he cleared his throat and turned back to the road.

“Have fun giving lube jobs,” Ronan drawled. Then he shifted his car into drive, leaving Adam standing there in the dust, already hugging himself for warmth.

--

There was a gnawing feeling in Ronan’s belly, wild and unshakeable. He thought briefly and wildly of the fairgrounds, the carnival of substances and fire and drag races that always made him feel so alive. His hands flexed on the wheel, and he found himself suddenly turning the car. His stereo was blasting something thumping and bass-heavy, something Ronan could lose himself in.

He didn’t stop until he reached Cabeswater. 

The sun was setting. Thin, pink arms of light stretched across the fading blue sky, reaching for tendrils of purple and orange, unfurling over the tree tops. From the edge of the trees, the forest looked staggeringly tall to Ronan. He turned off the BMW and stepped into the loud night, replacing the booming electronic thump of his car for the buzz of cicadas and the song of the trees, their rustling leaves and low, sibilant noise.

The forest was lush with dark moss, submerged beneath a milky mist. The trees hummed with power, damp and virile, and the music of them was almost too loud for Ronan to bear. Overlapping whispers, zipping past his ear, voices so loud and penetrating that they seemed to be inside of him, scratching and purring at the back of his throat. Languages dead and strange, so strange they didn’t even feel like words, just feelings and essences, distilled into some crystallized shape, and then disappearing in a wisp of smoke.

Then Ronan heard the Latin. Low and throaty, a witchy sort of croak that chilled Ronan to his bones. Dices ad eum.

Tell him.

The leaves rustled around him in waves, and the roar of it was staggering to Ronan. He felt like falling to his knees. And still, the croak: Dices ad eum, over and over. 

Ronan stared up at the canopying branches, stepping gracefully around the mossy roots under his feet. The dim light was a thick, sleepy glow, and the shadows vibrated with whispers. He could not shake the feeling that he was not alone.

He listened for the sound of crunching leaves, but it was only him. Him and Cabeswater.

Tells him.

In the distance, Ronan saw a small pool. He stepped closer, gooseflesh rising on his arms. The surface was entirely still, and the color was an unnatural electric-blue. Ronan knelt beside it, leaning over to catch his own reflection. He ran his hand over the fuzz of his head and listened to the trees. They were quieter now, their whispers calmer. Ronan crouched over the pool to catch a sight of wildlife, but instead he found something materializing just behind him.

To Ronan’s amazement, a figure slowly crystallized behind his reflection, slim and serious, with dirty fair hair and closed eyes. The figure must’ve been right behind Ronan. And then, sweetly and cautiously, the figure rested his head on Ronan’s shoulder.

This time, the tree’s whisper of dices ad eum sounded like it was right next to Ronan’s ear.

It was Adam. Ronan’s breath came up sharp, and Adam’s reflection opened his eyes. They were the same brilliant blue as the pool. Ronan reached out with trembling fingers to touch the surface of the water. He found it strangely thick and syrupy. Adam’s image rippled before his eyes before disappearing entirely.

Ronan closed his eyes, sitting back on his heels. The forest seemed almost silent to him now, save for the thunderous sound of his own heartbeat. Fingers still quivering, Ronan touched his own shoulder, searching for the phantom feeling of Adam’s hair brushing against him. 

There was nothing there.

Ronan stood up slowly, limbs stiff. He left Cabeswater behind him, feeling full of ghosts and tremors, and prepared himself for another sleepless night.

--

It was late when Adam returned home from the auto shop, and he felt miserable. His boss had been in a rotten mood, and Adam had spent most of his shift hiding underneath an old Ford, tinkering idly with the tires to avoid his wrath. He felt frozen and stiff when he finally arrived at St. Agnes, nose running miserably, still losing the battle against his cold.

He shucked off his filthy clothes and stepped into his shower, allowing himself a long, blissful moment just to stand under the steamy spray. Adam usually denied himself the pleasure of a long, hot shower, but he simply could not find the energy to move tonight, and the hot water bearing down on his stiff, overworked muscles was too blissful for Adam to fight.

Adam closed his eyes, steam rising around his long, slim body in the tiny shower stall. He pressed his hips into the wall. This was usually the time of night that Adam engaged guiltily in the act of self-love, though it always was a somewhat sad affair. A rough routine of quick, brutal, almost perfunctory self-pleasure that was barely pleasurable at all, more a hurried release of bodily urges. Adam was always too rough with himself, never sweet or taking his time.

This rough treatment was, perhaps, out of genuine ignorance to any other kind of treatment. For Adam Parrish, for whom all kinds of care, including self-care, was a foreign thing, masturbation was not unlike any of the other routine acts of survival that Adam carried out on a daily basis. It is not that Adam didn’t have urges. In fact he had many urges, and as he got older those urges became insistingly regular and demanding. He felt like he was in a constant state of desperate wanting, only he could never quite conjure a lucid picture of what was on the other side of his desire. Its content remained blurry to him, pixelated. Sometimes snatches of it were blindingly clear: a broad back to touch, a mouth on his neck, hands that weren’t his own working him to the blissful conclusion. These desires basically summed up to the touch of another. Adam’s general knowledge of sexual conduct was exceedingly limited. Porn was a scarce resource to him. Growing up in the double-wide, Adam didn’t even have a desktop computer, let alone a laptop, and it’s not like he was about to explore his sexual impulses at the public library computer. One time he’d found a porn magazine in the wastebin at the auto shop he worked at, but the images within were entirely unappealing to him. All hard masculine bodies with ugly faces and terrifying sexual organs, and orange-skinned women with plastic breasts that protruded from their chests like taped-on balloons. So Adam generally worked within the boundaries of his own imagination. The problem was that his imagination had no input to work with, no erotic reading material or suitable pornographic images to expand upon, and it could only stretch so far.

Adam braced himself against the wall with one arm, resting his forehead against his wrist, head bowed. His other hand closed around his cock, and Adam’s breath came up sharp, exhaling shakily. He extended his thumb to brush against the head, flicking harshly, and his stomach jerked. He moved his fist, mind black and dizzy. He felt empty all over -- hungry, lonely, desperate, his body so full of want that it hurt him. His hand sped up, hips squirming with arousal.

Shards of body parts and phantom touches swam behind Adam’s closed eyelids. He imagined a body pressing against his back, lips on his neck, a strong hand on his dick, one distinctly different from his own callused, bony fingers. His own hands flexed uncontrollably, jerking himself harder and faster.

He imagined a low voice at his ear, deep and hoarse with arousal: Adam was all the voice said. Just his name, throaty and fucked-out, whispered like a prayer. Adam.

He recognized the voice as Ronan’s too late. He was already coming. He was already thinking of Ronan’s feral mouth, his violent hands, his powerful arms. He couldn’t stop the flood of images anymore than he could help the spurt of come spilling helplessly into his fist.

His other hand clenched and unclenched against the shower wall. His lungs fluttered and shivered dramatically, in and out, while his heartbeat eventually slowed. Muscles weak, eyes still closed, Adam turned around slowly, presenting his body back to the spray. He closed his eyes and saw Ronan’s finely-carved cheekbone.

Adam’s eyes flew open, heart hammering. He was alone. The shower water was getting colder. He felt suddenly, desperately lonesome. He glanced around his bathroom through the foggy screen, and caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked like a ghost. Gaunt and colorless, blurry. Some haunted thing that had been here forever, always alone. Not even Blue had touched him. Not even Gansey, his best friend, was anything but careful with him. Always afraid that Adam might break. Always reminding Adam what he was: something to be protected and protected from. Something that could be set off.

Adam mused dimly that only Ronan treated him like he wasn’t a broken thing. He was rough and easy with Adam in a way nobody else dared, and Adam found it was the only time he could properly breathe. Around everybody else he was too conscious of how he made others feel, their sensitivity towards him; or rather, their awareness of his own sensitivity. People treated Ronan the same way. Ronan knew what it was to be treated like one of Gansey’s beloved broken things. Like Adam, Ronan had intimate knowledge of what it meant to be treated like something equally dangerous and endangered.

Adam blinked. The shower water was not yet cold, but it was not hot either. Adam quickly washed himself. His hands shook, and Adam wasn’t sure which of the many hungers inside him were responsible for it. 

Clean, but still feeling somehow dirty, Adam perused his cabinets and fridge for food, his still-damp feet leaving faint imprints on the floor. He eventually found a can of Spaghetti O’s in the deep recesses of his pantry, and realized with a maddening jolt that Ronan had probably hidden this for him. His stomach writhed with something unplaceable, a hot shaky feeling that made Adam feel short of breath.

Adam was suddenly terrified that Ronan might show up at St. Agnes, as he so often did when Adam worked late like this. How would Adam be able to behave normally around him, after what had happened in his shower? How could he look him in the eye?

He ate his late dinner in a state of barely-contained terror, but his door never opened. It just was Adam and the lonely silence of St. Agnes, the rustle of wind and leaves outside his window, and the occasional caw of crows.

--

Richard Gansey III needed Blue Sargent in a way that was entirely unfamiliar to him. Gansey was not the kind of boy who was used to being aware of his needs at all. They were generally something that was met with nary a blip of recognition to his consciousness. When he was hungry, he ate. Thirsty, he drank. Tired, he slept.

But Blue was a need that he could not control at will. He couldn’t control Blue at all. Like Adam and Ronan, Blue existed in an orbit that was entirely her own. Sometimes it crossed paths with Gansey’s, but more often that not Gansey had the sick feeling that it was turning in another direction to his entirely. Or rather: they were going in the same direction, but perilously. Only neither of them had any idea how to step off the ride. 

Gansey was a man of careful planning and calculation, but he had not planned Blue Sargent. Every inch of her was a brilliant and painful surprise to him, including this moment, when she showed up at Monmouth unannounced early Saturday evening.

“Oh, hello,” Gansey greeted her. Blue stared up at him from beneath a shock of spiky bangs.

“It’s Saturday,” Blue replied. She stood there like she wasn’t sure if she should hug him or not, so Gansey reached for her small shoulder, closing his eyes at the bliss of her pressed against his chest. They took the same small, shaky breath, before Blue darted inside, ducking under his arm.

“Blue!” Noah cried out in delight. He was sitting cross-legged beside Gansey’s Henrietta model, and Blue joined him, knocking their shoulders together.

Gansey shut the door. “Care for a drink, Jane?”

Blue shook her head, so Gansey joined her and Noah on the floor.

“Where are The Boys?”

At some point, without any discussion, Gansey, Blue, and Noah had all taken to referring to Adam and Ronan as The Boys. It struck them all as strangely appropriate for reasons they could not quite identify.

“Adam’s at work. He’ll be here soon.”

There was a loud crash from Ronan’s room, followed by an immediate shriek of kerrah! and a thump against the wall. Blue turned to Gansey with eyebrows raised.

“Don’t even ask,” Gansey said shortly.

“I think he’s building Chainsaw a tree house,” Noah supplied. 

There was another loud thump, a much quieter kerrah, and a furious bellow from Ronan.

“I don’t think it’s going well.”

For a moment, they listened to what sounded like Ronan hammering something into the wall. Then, they heard a violent flapping of wings and an agonized cry from Ronan.

Noah sighed, “I’ll go check on him.”

Blue and Gansey looked each other, suddenly very aware of the fact that they were alone.

“Hi, Jane,” Gansey said, nudging his knee against Blue’s. Blue looked around Monmouth furtively before leaning in to press a quick kiss to Gansey’s cheek. Gansey blushed, and he looked like some All-American farm boy, so Blue kissed him again, this time closer to his mouth.

Gansey closed his eyes. “Blue” was all he said this time, and he felt her smile against his neck.

A sudden, angry shout of “Noah!” from inside Ronan’s room made Blue and Gansey spring apart.

"I don’t give a shit if you’re dead,” they heard, followed by, “I’ll fucking murder you again.”

Noah appeared very abruptly behind the Henrietta model, looking sheepish. All three of them flinched against the sounds of crashing and yelling inside Ronan’s room.

“I wasn’t very much help,” Noah sighed.

Ronan’s door swung open, followed swiftly by Ronan himself. He was covered in sawdust, and he looked ready to commit homicide. Everyone stepped back as he stalked towards the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

They all peeked inside his room. Gansey groaned. From under his shoulder, Blue said, “Ronan Lynch: Agent of Destruction, strikes again.”

There was a thin layer of sawdust on the floor, and a giant broken pile of plywood in the corner, as well as nails scattered across the ground.

“At least he’s going to the Barns tonight,” Gansey sighed. “Finally, some peace." 

The wicked Cheshire smile spread across Blue’s face. “The Sleepover.” 

Gansey laughed at her expression, and prodded her gently back towards the kitchen. They heard the door slam behind them, and then a steaming Ronan was coming towards them, a towel tied around his waist.

“Don’t you dare say a word,” he hissed, looking darkly at his room.

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Gansey said lightly.

Ronan sent a nasty glare in Blue’s direction before disappearing behind his door. From behind the walls, they heard Ronan yell, “Czerny! Get your spectral ass out here. You’re only delaying the inevitable.”

Gansey and Blue looked at each other, and it lasted a beat too long.

They heard a knock on the front door. Startled, they sprung away from each other, and Gansey fled to get the door. Blue trailed behind him 

It was Adam. He was pink-cheeked and watery-eyed from his bike ride, his limbs frozen stiff.  

“Come in, come in,” Gansey ushered him in. A gush of cold wind escaped inside.

Adam took of his jacket and placed it carefully on the hook by the door. He hugged himself, running his hands up and down his shivering arms. 

“Hi, Blue,” Adam said, his voice still shaky from the cold. He nudged her gently with his elbow.

Blue nudged him back. “Hi Adam. I like your hat.”

Adam reached up to feel his head, and felt the familiar softness of Ronan’s navy blue beanie. He had forgotten which hat he had wearing, and the realization made his cheeks turn even pinker.

“You should tell Ronan then. It’s his, I think.”

Blue’s eyebrow quirked in a wicked way. She opened her mouth to make a comment that would surely make Adam uncomfortable, but she was interrupted by Gansey. His head appeared inside the kitchen doorway.  

“Come in! I’m not sure what to do with this soup.”

Blue and Adam entered the kitchen. There was a huge pot of something simmering, and it smelled divine.

“What is that?”

“I’m not sure -- Ronan was in here early slamming cabinets and throwing ingredients around, but then I think he got bored, so he tried building Chainsaw a treehouse. Then he took a shower.” Gansey sighed. “I don’t think he intends on stirring this.”

Adam imitated his sigh and perused the drawers for a spoon, ultimately producing a long wooden one. He stirred the pot for a while while Gansey and Blue took out bowls and spoons. Adam tasted the soup.

“There’s bread too -- one of those fancy artisanal ones that Helen always leaves here.”

Adam stared at their spice rack. It was full of obscure herbs and expensive looking jars. He assumed Helen was responsible for this selection, but he was surprised that Ronan apparently knew what to do with the exotic display of difficult-sounding spices and curious oils. Whatever he made tasted amazing, even if he was too lazy for the more menial tasks cooking required. As much as Ronan may have liked to pretend he was a big bad man, it was undeniable that he was also very much a spoiled little boy, worse than even Gansey. Gansey’s parents made sure he was at least self-sufficient. Ronan’s parents were far more erratic in their education: Niall had taught Ronan how to fight, how to live, how to stand up for himself, how to dream, how to create something from nothing. Aurora made sure Ronan was never left wanting. The gaps in his upbringing were massive, and the result was that there were actually very few things Ronan was capable of doing by himself. Gansey usually ended up mercifully including Ronan’s laundry with his own. Adam usually ended cleaning Ronan’s room out of sheer exasperation, or at the very least demanding that Ronan at least try picking up a broom every once in a while. The only thing Ronan was semi-decent at was cooking, but he could hardly cook alone because he was far too careless, and very prone to both deliberately and accidentally setting things on fire. Usually Gansey or Adam jumped in to actually cook, taking over the things Ronan had no patience for, like stirring the pot and washing the vegetables and making sure the kitchen didn’t burn to the ground.

Adam heard a door slam, and Ronan’s figure appeared in the hallway. He was wearing sweatpants, slung low on the sharp cut of his hips, and he had replaced his usual tank top with a more sensible winter version: a tight black long-sleeved shirt that clung to his muscles in a way that could only be described as indecent.

Adam swallowed, remembering Ronan’s appearance in his shower fantasy the previous night. Color flushed his cheeks. He froze when Ronan’s body was suddenly next to his, leaning close to him to turn off the stove. He smelled like expensive soap, pine-scented. His jaw was clean, and his aftershave smelled sharp and spicy. His skin was still warm and faintly damp. Adam’s knees felt suddenly like jello, his face hot and tingling.

“Thanks for stirring, Parrish,” Ronan said next to his ear, his voice very low. Adam cleared his throat awkwardly, eventually managing to make eye contact.

Adam searched his mind desperately for a pithy, careless reply. He said, “You know, there’s not much to it really. I’m sure even your limited skillset could manage.”

“But it’s so boring,” Ronan said disdainfully, snatching the spoon from Adam to taste.

“Is it ready?” Blue appeared at Adam’s side, sticking her head under his arm to see the pot. She sniffed. “I’m so hungry.”

“I’ll serve the maggot,” Ronan announced, his face wicked. He took a bowl and pretended like he was putting something inside it, and Blue snatched it away from him, holding it to herself protectively.

“Absolutely not.” She dipped the ladle in the pot and served herself. Adam took a bowl next, then Ronan, and Gansey, who joined them last at the giant rustic wooden table. 

“I have to say,” Gansey admitted, blowing lightly on his spoonful. “This is very good." 

Ronan’s spoon clattered in his bowl. He had practically inhaled his and was now leaning back in his chair. He prodded Adam’s foot under the table, and Adam stepped on his.

“Alright, Parrish.” Ronan stood up, his chair scraping across the floor. He flicked Adam’s head, and a tuft of hair sprung askew. The result was annoyingly endearing. “Time to go.”

Adam swallowed his last mouthful and followed suit. He caught his coat when Ronan threw it at him and tugged on the dirty shoes he’d left by the door.

“Sweet dreams, boys,” Blue waved them goodbye, her eyes twinkling in a way that made both Ronan and Adam scowl darkly. They shut the door, hearing her witchy cackle erupt behind the walls.

“Maggot,” Ronan hissed, with none of its usual deeply-buried affection. Adam nodded sullenly in agreement. 

The sky was a deep thunderous purple now, heavy and damp with the promise of a storm. The air was thick and staticky, the dark gray clouds ominous above them. The wind whipped Ronan’s coat dramatically around his body, and it made him look like a superhero, or maybe a supervillain. Adam trailed behind him, still hugging his arms for warmth, tugging Ronan’s beanie low over his ears.

He sunk gratefully into the leather passenger seat of Ronan’s car, his shivering hands hovering above the heating vents. He could feel Ronan’s gaze on the side of his face, but he didn’t acknowledge it. Ronan started the engine and backed out of Monmouth, the sleek grey BMW disappearing into the dark highway. Thunder rumbled above them, though the skies remained dry for now. Ronan fiddled with the radio dial, eventually settling for one of those bass-heavy electronic songs he liked so much. Adam rested his head against the window and stared outside. They were heading directly into the storm. The BMW slid over the gentle hills that introduced the countryside, zipping past frost-bitten fields littered with scarecrow tree limbs, the bare branches lonesome and eerie against the dark sky.

The car was finally warm, and Adam closed his eyes with relief.

“Don’t fall asleep on me yet,” Ronan said, knuckles rapping on Adam’s knee. Adam slapped his hand away.

Finally, the red farmhouses which made up the Barns appeared in the distance. Adam felt a strange warmth in his belly at the sight of them. He glanced sidelong at Ronan, whose eyes were fierce and joyful, though his mouth remained unsmiling. His thumbs tapped percussively against the wheel, twiddling as they turned onto the tree-arched dirt path that led to the main house.

Wind roared at Adam’s good ear as they ran inside the house. Adam caught his breath leaning against the wall, cheeks pink and chapped from the cold. He opened his eyes to Ronan throwing his coat on an armchair and collapsing onto the couch. Adam slowly took off his coat, finding the low-ceilinged hallway curiously warm. He realized dully that the house was probably heated by magic alone, and the recognition buzzed lowly in him as he stared around at other evidence of magic: a beautiful antique Grandfather clock, magically ticking. The smell of burning woodsmoke from the long-dead fireplace. The magical glow of lamps which lit the sprawling yet cosy living room with no outlets in sight.

He joined Ronan on the giant velvet sofa, the fabric rich and plush beneath his fingertips. Adam turned to Ronan.

Ronan looked like a king. Arms braced on his knees, his mouth still, his brow low and noble, lazily owning everything he looked at and touched. His gaze turned to Adam, the low glow of the fringe-tasseled lamps reflected in his eyes, glittering.

“Want to see something?” he asked. Adam nodded. He loved Ronan like this: kingly and content. He was softer, warmer, taking his place as the Sun of the Barns’s galaxy.

Ronan handed him a thick cable-knit blanket, which Adam wrapped around his shoulders. Ronan had his own blanket, which hung from his shoulders like a cape. It billowed dramatically and royally behind him as they braved their way through the wind. Ronan was taking him to one of the barns.

Inside it was dark, but magically warm like the house. Lights sprung to life, though Adam could not place their location. He trailed after Ronan, tugging his blanket around his shoulders.

Ronan led him to a small enclosure. Inside was a purring black and white cat, its eyes a sleepy green, its paws kneading its cushion with happiness as Ronan knelt to pet it, his thumb dragging across her head with practiced ease. Adam slipped to his knees beside him, his blanket pooling on the ground around him.

He gasped. Behind the cat was a litter of tiny kittens, their black-spotted bodies small and curled around their mother. Most of them were sleeping, or near sleep. Ronan picked one up gently. It was so small it could be cupped in his palm. He rubbed his cheek against the kitten’s soft fur, then held it out to Adam.

Adam took the kitten carefully. He held it against his cheek, like Ronan had, and the kitten purred happily at his ear. A smile broke across Adam’s face, unbidden. He lifted his eyes to meet Ronan’s. 

Ronan had picked up another kitten to scratch it gently behind its ears, and Adam observed the obscenity of Ronan’s adorably fond expression. His heart dipped with affection. It felt heavy with it, and the feeling was almost unbearable to him. Adam spent most of his days feeling somewhere below miserable, sorting through envy, sadness, anger, and fear like clockwork, interrupted by the occasional painful jab of desire and the even deeper knifing wound of lonesomeness. He could only take good feelings in small gulps. Too much goodness at once almost hurt him.

“It looks so innocent,” Adam found himself murmuring. Ronan nodded to the kitten in agreement, his face almost unrecognizable in its softness, its open display of adoration towards the fragile creature in his hands. It was not the first time Adam had seen Ronan transform before an innocent animal. It made sense, if Adam thought about it, that Ronan was drawn to innocent things. He had created Matthew, after all. He was born of the same man that had dreamed his mother, whose innocence was rivaled only by her dream-son’s. It was why he helped Gansey and Adam look for Glendower. These things reminded Ronan that he was alive, and that there was goodness in the world. They were the noble antagonists to the horrors of his mind, and Ronan wanted them to win.

Adam wondered if maybe Ronan mistook him for an innocent thing too. He could see how he maybe looked like one, betrayed by the delicate bones of his face, his blue eyes. But Adam was the least innocent of them all. Worldly in a way no one should ever have to be. He had seen things that Ronan could not dream of.

“Do you want one?” Ronan asked. It was the least menacing Adam had ever heard him sound.

“Me?” Adam almost laughed. “I can’t take care of anything.” He regretted saying it almost immediately. It felt too raw leaving his body. An admission of utter helplessness.

Ronan’s look sharpened, his brow furrowed. He leaned over the kittens, fingers dancing over their small bodies gently, before scooping a carefully-selected one into his hands. He pressed his cheek to the kitten’s soft head, and the kitten mewled quietly. Ronan opened his eyes, his gaze on Adam’s. “Take her,” he said.

Adam obeyed, out of pure primal instinct. The weight of the kitten was nothing in his hands. Something bloomed in his chest, sweet and painful. The kitten blinked at him, and Adam blinked owlishly back. Ronan laughed.

“Let her smell you,” Ronan directed. He had a kitten perched on his shoulder. Adam offered the kitten one of his fingers, and she slid her tiny pink nose against the pad of thumb.

Again, Ronan surprised him. There was yet another Ronan that remained hidden to Adam, and likely many more. Adam watched him play with the kitten, wondering what other Ronans there were, and how they fit in with the Ronan he knew. Ronan watched him back.

“Congrats, loser. She likes you,” Ronan said quietly, leaning back on his elbows. The kitten on his shoulder scampered down to his lap.

“How do you know?” Adam whispered. He was afraid if he spoke too loud he’d startle the kitten.

“Because she isn’t scared of you,” Ronan replied.

“You can be scared of things you like,” Adam said, just to be contrary, and Ronan rolled his eyes, putting the kitten back on his shoulder. She kneaded her paws against his buzzed head.  

“What, Parrish? Are you scared of the things you like, you miserable bastard?”

Adam moved his legs so they were extended next to Ronan’s, and kicked him in the thigh, ignoring how firm the muscles felt under his foot. “Some of them,” Adam admitted eventually. The kitten was curled up in his lap now. Adam pet her head idly, and Ronan frowned at him.

“Like what?” Ronan asked. Something about his voice was strange and unnatural, and he wasn’t looking at Adam.

Adam bit his lip lamely, frozen with uncertainty, and was saved blissfully by a loud clap of thunder, so booming it shook the barn. The kitten in his lap darted frantically back to the enclosure. Ronan placed his kitten back inside and stood up, gesturing for Adam to follow him

They returned to the main house, blankets still slung over both their shoulders. Ronan began stomping around the kitchen. Adam leaned against the doorway and watched him rustle through cabinets. 

“Fuck,” Ronan spat.

“What’s wrong?” Adam asked. 

“I want some goddamn pancakes.”

“What?” Adam laughed. “We just ate." 

“Yeah, well, I’m a growing boy,” Ronan growled at the fridge, glaring at its emptiness in dismay.

“I know a place that’s open late pretty near here,” Adam offered. “One of those roadside diners for truckers.”

“Truckers?” Ronan repeated, his face curling with disgust. 

Adam lifted an elegant eyebrow, his expression disdainful. “What, Lynch? Tell me what’s wrong with truckers. I dare you.”

Ronan slammed the fridge shut and stalked towards Adam. He ruffled his hair as he passed, shoving Adam into the wall. “Jesus. So touchy.”

Adam sighed. “I swear, you’re worse than Gansey sometimes.”

Ronan threw Adam’s coat at him. Adam just barely caught it. “The highest compliment,” Ronan replied, smiling sharklike.

Adam followed Ronan back to the BMW, and thunder clapped violently above their heads, wind roaring at them from all sides. They practically threw themselves inside the car just as rain began to splatter the windshield. Lightning lit up the sky, crackling menacingly, the bolt spidery against the purple sky.

“How hungry are you?” Adam asked dryly, staring at the stormy sky.

Ronan clapped him on the shoulder. “Starving.” He was also staring at the sky, but his face was sharp with delight.

Rain pounded against the windshield, and Ronan revved the engine with glee, taking off into the night. Adam pressed his face against the rain-streaked window, watching lightning shatter the sky, far beyond the distant wall of trees.

They swung into the parking lot of the roadside dinner. Despite the weather, there were a decent amount of trucks outside. Adam and Ronan sprinted inside, holding their coats over their heads. They shook the water off themselves like dogs as soon as they entered the florescent-lit diner, and a leathery-skinned woman with orange lipstick led them to a booth. Adam took the side where the leather seat had ripped open, the stuffing inside poorly contained by random strips of duct tape.

“Thank you, ma’am,” Adam said to the hostess. He did not hide his Henrietta accent. Ronan cocked an eyebrow at him.

“I love places like this,” Adam murmured, leaning over the table. “Places with real people in them.”

Ronan looked around. He saw men over the age of sixty wearing dirty overalls and no undershirts. A group of middle-aged men with sweat-stained t-shirts and blue jeans that looked like they’d been worn a thousand times. Men who spoke in low, country rumbles. Men whose idea of being rich was having a new Ford pickup.

Adam leaned back in his seat, staring at Ronan in a way that was almost arrogant. Ronan adored Adam like this. He was proud in a way he never was around Aglionby boys or Gansey’s congressional crowds.

However, whether Adam knew it or not, he did not look like he belonged here. His face was too lovely for such a place, or for any place really. To Ronan it would’ve looked out of place anywhere.

Their waitress arrived to take their order. Her question bounced uselessly against Adam’s bad ear, so at first he didn’t hear what she asked. Ronan’s tongue clucked with annoyance.

Adam turned his head, his chin tucked close to his chest, and politely asked, “I’m sorry, ma’am, could you repeat what you said?”

“What d’you want to eat, darling?”

Adam asked for sweet potato pancakes, and Ronan ordered a gigantic chocolate chip stack. There were only a handful of fellow occupants in the diner, so their food arrived quickly, served with cheap store-band syrup that Ronan sniffed at disdainfully before pouring thick strands of it over his mountain of pancakes.

“How the fuck do you eat so much?”

“Don’t shame me,” Ronan said through a mouthful of food.

“Where does it even go?” Adam gestured to Ronan’s lean boxer’s body, the injustice of it all.

“To my dick,” Ronan said, still chewing. He laughed at Adam’s outraged blush.

“What is wrong with you?” Adam muttered.

“Do you want the extended edition or just the Sparknotes?” Ronan’s eyes glittered. Adam looked away from him, scoffing and pink-cheeked. Ronan stepped lightly on his foot. Adam didn’t try to move it. He was grateful when the waitress appeared to drop off their check, and even more grateful that his boss had paid him before he left earlier that evening.

The boys left the diner, their bellies full, and found the sky blissfully calmer than it was when they had arrived. Thunder still crackled occasionally, but the brutal downpour had subsided for the time being.

As Ronan and Adam were waiting outside the door while Ronan searched his coat pockets for his keys, they heard a low laugh from beside them. It was two mean-looking men, smoking a mean-looking pack of Marlboro reds. They reminded Adam of the kind of men his father went drinking with on the weekends: hard men who’d never had decent spending money their entire lives, and when they did, they spent it on beer and car parts. Men who didn’t have a lick of time to spare for Aglionby boys, or anyone that struck them as belonging to the vague category of “uppity,” for that matter.

Ronan and Adam must’ve looked pretty damn uppity, because one of the men piped up, “I know where you’re from, couple of snot-nosed teens like you.”

Adam braced himself, his hands curling into fists in his coat pocket. Not to fight. Adam was not nearly that stupid. While Adam had plenty of experience getting hit, he did not know the first thing about fighting. That was exclusively the province of Ronan Lynch, and Adam wanted to keep it that way.

Adam was clenching his fists because he recognized the look in the mens’ eyes. He’d seen it enough times on his father.

The men in front of them strolled closer to them, their faces cocky. “These are Aglionby boys, Tom.” He pronounced Aglionby like Ag-Lion-Bee. “I bet you one hundred dollars they from Aglionby.”

Adam’s face dripped disdain, every inch of him a portrait of contempt. Pride purred in Ronan’s belly.

Coolly, Adam said, “Actually I’m from a trailer park not too far from here.” The pride purred louder.

“Oh, yeah? What what about him?” The man pointed to Ronan, who quirked an eyebrow. His war-face was already on. “I seen him pull up in here in that fancy car.” 

“Let’s go, Parrish,” Ronan ordered. Both he and Adam sent twin terrible glares at the men over their shoulders.

“Did you jus’ say Parrish?” One of the men asked, cocking his head in a way that struck Adam as decidedly cruel. “Why, Tom, I think this might be Robert Parrish’s boy.”

Adam froze, his blood suddenly cold inside him, his heart hammering violently. He looked like someone had knocked the breath out of him. Ronan put his hand on Adam’s shoulder, squeezing tightly, and felt Adam shudder beneath him.

“Go to the car,” Ronan said lowly, so that only Adam could hear him. Adam did not move. He was staring at nothing, feet rooted in place. Ronan’s head whipped around, the thought suddenly striking him that maybe Adam’s father was here, in this parking lot. But it was only them.

“He mentioned his son was a real useless sack o’ shit,” the one called Tom pondered aloud, looking Adam up and down. “He didn’t say he was also some kind of faggot.”

Ronan joined Adam at his shoulder, and he stretched himself to his full, overbearing height.

Ronan was not much taller than either of the men, but oozing threat the way he did, he practically towered. The men bristled. He leaned into both of them and dropped his voice to a low, dangerous pitch, too quiet for Adam to hear, though Adam could imagine the creativity of whatever threats Ronan was hissing with great ease.

He turned around and walked back to Adam. It took every inch of Ronan’s self-control not to send them one last murderous glare over his shoulder before climbing into the driver’s seat of his car. A handful of second later, the passenger door opened. Adam slid inside.

They didn’t breathe a word nearly the entire ride back to the Barns. Ronan’s music hummed quietly through the speakers. Both of them sat white-knuckled, Ronan driving swiftly and sharply through the winding backroads of Henrietta, Adam vibrating with nerves. Ronan turned the dial for the heat all the way up, glancing sidelong at Adam and then back to the road.

Ronan probably thought Adam was thinking about getting hit. But Adam wasn’t thinking about getting hit. He was thinking about his mother, and how she always smelled like Pantene hairspray and Virginia Slims and a drugstore body spray that came in a green bottle labeled “Juniper Breeze.” He thought about the permanent crescent of pink lipstick on the rim of her favorite coffee mug, from the ’96 Atlanta Olympics. It was one of the only vacations she and Robert ever went on. Adam wondered if she was thinking about him right now, too. He wondered if she thought about him ever.

“I’m fine,” Adam said, after a very long silence, his accent clipped. Ronan’s jaw clenched. Adam was not fine.

Ronan, his face expressionless, shook his coat off his shoulders and flung it into Adam’s lap. Adam didn’t react for a moment. His head turned to face Ronan, appraising him studiously.

Ronan said, “Put it on.” His eyes remained on the road.

Adam pulled the coat over his shoulders, like a blanket. He did not say another word for the entire ride, just stared between Ronan and the road.

The Barns were draped in stars. The storm clouds had left or moved on, and the Barns’s utter rural isolation exposed them utterly to the house’s lonely occupants. The BMW pulled in front of the main house, and Adam began walking towards the door.

“Don’t,” Ronan said, reaching out to grab his wrist.

Adam stopped, his body very still and strange, the way it sometimes was when he was more Cabeswater than Adam. He looked at Ronan’s fingers around his wrist, and then up into Ronan’s eyes.

“Follow me,” Ronan said.

He let go of Adam’s wrist and stomped across the wet waves of grass towards one of the barns. Adam followed.

A flood of moonlight, cathedral-like and otherworldly, spilled across the floor as soon as Ronan pushed open its swinging doors. He stepped into light, and Adam followed him. Ronan was a silhouette. He turned to face Adam, his cheekbone as sharp as a knife’s edge, his eyelashes catching the light. Then Ronan tipped back his head, and he screamed.

It echoed gloriously across the towering, cavernous interior, more musical than any shout Adam had ever heard. Ronan was not smiling, but his eyes were fiercely joyful, glittering at Adam.

“You try,” Ronan said.

Adam furrowed his eyebrows at him, like he’d made a joke.

Ronan laughed, like he had. He pushed out his chest and yelled again, tipping his head like a lion.

“Stand up straight, Parrish,” he ordered, once his roar had stopped bouncing across the walls of the barn like a pinball. “Push out your chest. Scream.” Ronan stared at Adam. “It’s easy.”

Adam stared back. “You’re a lunatic,” he said.

Ronan’s eyes glittered. “Just do it, Parrish. You’re stalling.”

Adam screamed. He knew as soon as he opened his mouth that it was weak, and Ronan would chastise him for it.

He looked up at Ronan, whose brow was predictably and disdainfully quirked. Adam shrugged sheepishly.

“Again,” Ronan said.

Adam straightened his back and pushed out his ribcage, tugging Ronan’s coat tighter around his shoulders. He screamed. This time it bounced off the walls like Ronan’s. It felt big leaving his body. He looked at Ronan, whose face was still fiercely happy and unsmiling. He imagined his own face must look the same.

“See?” Ronan said.

“You told me so,” Adam finished for him. He leaned back and screamed again, to the high arched ceiling. Ronan yelled too, and their shouts pinged across the sweeping roof. Adam felt lighter, almost high. He screamed and screamed, his yells mixing with Ronan’s, until they both collapsed on the hay-dusted ground, their arms outstretched like angel wing’s, chests heaving. Their eyes were closed, the same small private smiles on both their faces.

“Is this what you used to do?” Adam asked, turned to Ronan. His hair was pushed askew by the ground, littered with hay and dust. His face was glowing, cheeks pink from exertion, blue eyes bright.

Ronan bit his bottom lip, his jaw muscle working under the skin. “Yeah,” he said. “Sometimes.” Then, after a minute he added, “With my dad. His coping mechanisms were irregular, but he swore by them.” Another pause, a shrug. “They work okay.”

Adam kept looking at him. Ronan stared at the ceiling. He did not look sad, just cold somehow. Adam wished he was touching his wrist again.

“I’m tired,” Ronan said eventually. “C’mon, Parrish. Up.” He climbed to his feet, and Adam begrudgingly followed suit.

The main house was still warm, its magical skin hiding Ronan and Adam from the chill outside. Adam brushed his teeth in the bathroom, picking hay out of his hair as he stared into the mirror. Ronan appeared behind him, seemingly just to flick the back of Adam’s head, before disappearing down the hall, armed with blankets.

By the time Adam returned to the living room, the giant L-shaped couch was draped with blankets. Ronan was sprawled across one limb of the couch, leaving the other for Adam. He was completely shirtless, and Adam found himself staring at the dip of Ronan’s sleek, muscled abdomen where it disappeared under the blanket.

Adam hopped over the back of the couch, kicking Ronan’s legs aside in the process. Ronan leaned forward to swipe at the back of Adam’s knees, sending him tumbling face-first into the couch. As soon as Adam gained his bearing, he was met with a pillow to the face.

He scowled darkly at Ronan.

“This is what chicks always do in sleepover movies,” Ronan shrugged. “Pillow fights.” His eyebrows waggled at Adam, who rolled his eyes and collapsed into the couch cushion, which was blissfully comfortable and warm compared to his thin mattress at St. Agnes.

Another pillow hit Adam in the face. He removed it slowly and stiffly, then chucked it back at Ronan, who threw his head back and laughed. “It’s called a throw pillow,” Ronan said, tossing the pillow back into the air.

“Do chicks not actually sleep in sleepover movies?” Adam asked dryly. He discreetly slipped out of his own t-shirt, leaving him in just his sweatpants. “Because I would like to sleep.”

Ronan flipped so that he was laying on his stomach. Adam did the same. In this position their heads were next to each other, their mouths only a foot away.

“So, Parrish,” Ronan asked slyly, his voice half-muffled by the pillow, “does this make us the dream team?”

Adam lobbed a stray throw pillow at his head. Ronan, with a gleeful bark of laughter, caught it deftly then hurtled it back at him. After a brief scuffle, Adam buried his head into his pillow, then opened one eye at Ronan.

“So how does this work then?” Adam mumbled sleepily. “How do I go to your dreams?”

Ronan crossed his arms over his pillow and rested his head in the cradle of his elbow. He sighed at Adam. “I have to take you with me.”

“How?” Adam imitated Ronan’s pose.

Ronan unfolded one of his arms and rested it on the pillow between him and Adam, fingers extended. Adam looked at it.

“We have to hold hands?” Adam said, a laugh bubbling up from his throat.

Ronan’s fingers danced out to grab Adam’s. His smile was sharklike. “Oh, yes, Parrish. I have to take you with me. That’s how it works.”

Adam stared down at their joined hands, and another helpless little laugh rose to his throat. “This is really how it works.”

“This is how it works,” Ronan repeated, his voice a little darker. He glared at Adam, brow low. “What, Parrish?”

“Nothing,” Adam said. He bit his lip. He still wanted to laugh.

Ronan ripped his hand away from Adam, scowling.

“No, no, it’s okay,” Adam pleaded. His voice was still weak with the need to laugh. He straightened his face determinedly. “Ronan, c’mon.” He reached out his hand, leaning across the couch.

Ronan stared at him, brow lifted unsympathetically at Adam’s outstretched limb.

Adam sighed, ducking his head. “Please,” he said, in his soft Henrietta accent. Ronan turned back on to his stomach, facing  Adam.

After a long moment, he slipped his hand into Adam’s. Ronan’s hands were big and strong, with long fingers and twisting veins. His palm felt so strange against Adam’s, dry and masculine.

“I wonder how it will work,” Adam said quietly. His thumb stroked idly across Ronan’s knuckles, almost like he wasn’t thinking about it. The last hand Adam held was Blue’s, and hers had been so small and restless, with her bitten-down nails and unblemished knuckles. Ronan’s knuckles were entirely torn up, scabbed and scratched under Adam’s thumb.

Ronan’s face looked briefly pained before settling back to his default brooding expression. “It’ll be just like a normal dream,” he said. “Except you’ll be in mine instead of your own.”

“Will the dream have everything I need to build?”

Ronan shrugged. “I never know,” he said, voice hushed. Adam was suddenly aware of how close their faces were. “You just have to think about it really hard. You have to see it, like it’s right in front of you.”

Adam listened to him, his eyes drifting shut, lashes fluttering against his cheeks.

“Picture the object you want,” Ronan said. His eyes were closed too, seemingly in concentration.

Adam imagined the recording device so vividly he could see it in his consciousness. “I’ve got it,” he said.

Ronan’s fingers jerked around his wrist. Adam curled two fingers around his thumb. “I hope it works,” Adam whispered. He did not want to let Gansey down. He did not want to let Ronan down.

“It will work. You’ll know how to build it.” Ronan’s voice was gruff with the effort to be quiet, but utterly confident. Adam’s two fingers tightened like a hook around Ronan’s thumb.

Still, always a skeptic, Adam asked softly, “How do you know?”

Ronan’s eyes fluttered open to find Adam already staring at him, his head cushioned on his folded arm.

He squeezed Adam’s wrist. After a long silence he said, “Because you’re like everything else in this house.” Adam was a thing that should be broken but wasn’t, surviving solely on the wits of his own magic.

Adam closed his eyes, utter exhaustion settling heavily into his limbs. He could feel Ronan’s eyes on him, but he didn’t mind: their weight was one he was used to.

They listened to the gentle sigh of wind outside the window, the hum of wildlife, and their own breathing. And with the lulling wild drum beat of Ronan’s heart, accompanied melodiously by the steady thump of Adam’s, the boys fell asleep.

With long boyish fingers intertwined, they shared a dream.

Chapter Text

Ronan woke up in a dusty beam of grey sunlight. He was immediately aware of two distinct weights on his body that he was unaccustomed to. The first was a strange contraption on his lap, with a strange assembly of wires springing like a fountain from the top. The second was Adam Parrish’s head lying in the crook of his arm.

He took a deep breath. Ronan’s eyes traced the soft, golden sunlight pooling in the long, hollow contours of Adam’s face. It was early still -- the sky was mostly a pale, washed-out grey, with a little spot of sun gathering light in the horizon, occasionally scattering light through the living room in blinding streaks. Adam’s face was slack with sleep.

Ronan remembered the first time he saw Adam. It was not when Gansey introduced them, but earlier, perhaps the very minute Adam first strode onto the Aglionby campus. It wasn’t much of a stride -- more of a cautious tread, like a deer crossing the road. His gaze had accidentally landed on Ronan as he took in his surroundings, and Ronan knew immediately that the boy was new. To begin with, Ronan would have noticed him before that moment. Not because Ronan could typically be expected to notice people. In fact he almost never bothered to learn anyone’s name, though everybody almost certainly knew his. It’s that he would’ve noticed this boy in particular. This boy had one of those frowning mouths that Ronan was especially partial to - the kind where the lip-corners droop southwards, like an archer’s bow. His eyebrows arched elegantly upwards, the still and lovely surface of him paralyzed in a kind of inquiry, or perhaps the expression was more fearful. Peering at Ronan over his shoulder, he looked like some woodland creature, all doe-eyed and fine-boned, with his slim elegant neck and long, coltish frame. The boy looked like some cursively-imagined letter of the alphabet: long and slim and elegant, every inch of him deliberate, from the narrow wings of his shoulderblades poking from under his meticulously clean secondhand sweater, to the curlicue shell of his ear to the pulsing muscles of his neck peeking from his neatly folded shirt collar.

The boy’s eye contact with Ronan could only be described as “accidental,” and this is the second reason Ronan had known he was new to Algionby. People didn’t look at Ronan accidentally. They stared at him when his back was turned, and from across the parking lot, and sidelong in class, then quickly averted their gaze when the object of their fascination moved or jerked or made an otherwise frightening shape, like a growl or a snarl or a smile.

The boy had not looked frightened when he met Ronan’s eyes. He looked wary, then curious, then finally away.

Ronan learned his name in his second period Latin class, when the boy said his name clearly and quietly, facing the sea of curious, disdainful, and indifferent Aglionby faces: “Adam Parrish.” Ronan swallowed the name between his lips, felt the vowels moving around his mouth, the boy’s poorly-concealed Henrietta consonants lighting up different parts of his body. The P nudged his teeth, the whispered sh at the end hushed and vibrating in his knees. Adam Parrish.

He remembered the strange feeling that dipped in his gut when Adam Parrish’s name came out of Gansey’s mouth a few weeks later. Ronan had initially given Adam the same potential-enemy treatment that he gave everyone, though it was admittedly darkened somewhat by jealousy, as all things Gansey-related were. Adam was officially one of Gansey’s, and for a while it made Ronan miserable. Then Ronan and Adam became friends. Then Ronan and Adam became friends apart from Gansey, the gravitational pull of them so strong that they needed their own orbit.

It is around this time that Ronan began to indulge in the fantasy that his crush was requited. Sometimes Ronan couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t such an outrageous notion at all. The way Adam looked at him sometimes, when he thought Ronan wasn’t paying attention: like he was something to be studied. The way Adam let him get away with nearly everything, no matter how much he moaned about Ronan’s nuisance. How it was just a little bit harder for him to say “no” to Ronan, when it was so easy for him to say no to everyone else. The way he sometimes turned a strange shy color at Ronan’s stupid dirty jokes, when Gansey or Noah or Blue would just laugh.

Birds twittered outside, sunlight streaming through the window in thick wet beams. Ronan was staring at the naked narrow valley of Adam’s collar bone when Adam’s eyes fluttered open. His head was still cradled in the crook of Ronan’s elbow, and little tufts of hair sprung up wildly around the crown of his head. Adam blinked sleepily, his eyes finding Ronan’s dazedly. As soon as his vision focused, his eyes widened in alarm.

Adam stared, blinking and bewildered, at the contraption on Ronan’s lap, and then more bewilderedly once he realized his head was resting on Ronan’s arm. He sat up abruptly, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

“It worked?” Adam’s blanket pooled in his lap. Ronan tore his eyes away from Adam’s naked torso reluctantly and shrugged.

“We’ll have to take it to Cabeswater to know for sure.”

Adam’s fingers hovered between them, dancing lightly over the dream-invention. “It looks just like how I imagined it,” he said wondrously, his voice hoarse with sleep.

He knelt on the cushion next to Ronan and placed the contraption between them, eyes roving over his dream-thing with amazement. “I can’t believe....” His eyes lifted to meet Ronan’s. Ronan’s mouth was a tight knot, eyebrows lifted.

“This is incredible,” Adam said.

Ronan shrugged again. “You’re the magician. I’m just the Walmart.”

“No, you’re--” Adam didn’t know what Ronan was, but it wasn’t a Walmart. He stared into Ronan’s eyes, fingers still flitting hesitantly and covetously over the contraption. Adam could not find the words, but an assembly of divine titles remained hidden under his tongue.

Ronan twiddled his thumbs, chin lifted to the ceiling. Adam swallowed and asked, “What did we dream about?” Adam, an unpracticed dreamer, was not used to remembering his dreams. The ones he did remember were nightmares. The others dissolved like smoke the moment Adam opened his eyes.

“The Lab,” Ronan said. Adam watched his jaw move. “One of the barns...I always have this dream that it’s a laboratory. I usually blow shit up in there.” Adam lifted a wry eyebrow, and Ronan’s eyes slid to his, sidelong. “You were there this time, obviously. Being a fucking nerd.”

Adam threw a pillow at Ronan’s face. Ronan caught it before it landed and tossed it back to Adam without looking.

“How did I build this?”

Ronan fixed Adam with a long look. “You knew what to do. Just like I said.” Ronan always trusted Adam’s competence, something Adam always managed to forget, and something that always quietly unmade him every time Adam remembered.

“Is that all that happened?” Adam asked. Ronan’s tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip. He looked away from Adam and nodded, with a careless shrug.

He tossed another pillow at Adam’s face before abruptly climbing to his feet. “Come on, Parrish. Up. I’m starving.”

Adam briefly collapsed into his own lap in a pathetic imitation of child’s pose before reluctantly trailing after Ronan to the kitchen.

With an arm thrown across his face to protect him from the blinding flood of sun, Adam watched Ronan busily peruse the cabinets. He produced a french press and a kettle, as well as coffee mugs. Adam wandered inside the pantry to look for food. There was some dry pasta, cans of soup, and a few unopened boxes of cereal.

Adam poured himself a bowl of cereal. Ronan swung himself onto the counter, legs dangling, the handle of his coffee mug clutched in his fist. He blew across the steaming rim, his eyes watching Adam as he searched the drawers for spoons.

“Is there any for me?” Adam asked, peering at Ronan over his shoulder. He looked like he had on his first day of school: deerlike and alien and so lovely that a stubborn part of Ronan still insisted that Adam came from his dreams.

Ronan blinked. “No, Parrish. I made only enough for myself,” he said sarcastically.

Adam pushed a cereal bowl towards Ronan across the counter and then poured himself a cup of coffee.

They wandered back to the living room so that Adam could continue to study his dream-thing. His fingers drifted over the wires. He pressed his good ear to its belly, its metallic dream-material cool against his cheek. He listened to it hum and creak. Adam looked at Ronan. He could not believe this was a real thing. In his mind, and then in front of him. Just like that.

Adam was so absorbed by this confirmation of magic that at first he did not hear the steady thump of a knock on the door. His head spun to meet Ronan’s, his face quizzical. Ronan sighed violently and then pushed himself to his feet. Adam hung over the back of the couch, watching his form disappear down the low-ceilinged hallway.

He heard the door swing open, the deep rumble of voices, a thump. Ronan’s voice rose above the other voice, and very clearly said, “I have every right to be here.” Something froze in Adam’s heart, terrorized by the possibility of the police. He peered into the chestnut-paneled foyer, and was simultaneously relieved and horrified to find Declan Lynch on the other side of the door.

Ronan looked incendiary. The floor creaked under Adam’s socked feet, and both Lynch brothers whipped around to look at him, the older one frozen in mid-speech.

“Him?” Declan said. It didn’t sound like a question. His tone was strangely accusatory. Adam cocked his head at him.

“Declan,” Adam said.

“What are--” Declan’s face was very strange. He looked fitfully between Adam and Ronan, the normally aristocratic arch of his dark brow bent low with suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” Ronan demanded.

“Do you even still have a phone, Ronan?” Declan hissed. “If you did you’d see twenty missed calls. From me. From Matthew. I went to Monmouth, and Gansey was vague.” He arched his eyebrow wryly. “I fucking knew you’d be here.”

“Well, what is it then?” Ronan asked, his voice like a spike. He leaned on the door, the crack too small for Declan to slip through.

“Aglionby sent a letter,” Declan said.

Ronan and Adam closed their eyes.

“Your grades are dangerously low. They’re afraid you won’t graduate.”

“I’ll help him study,” Adam said. Ronan looked at him over his shoulder, the angles of him focused to sharp points in the shadowy foyer.

This seemed to make Declan even more irritated. He leaned very close to Ronan, and said lowly, “If I get one more of these letters,” he began. His breath smelled like gin and grapefruit juice. “You are through. I will be through with you.”

Ronan leaned impossibly closer, his eyes whip-sharp, shoulders coiled like a viper’s. “Good fucking riddance,” he hissed. Then Ronan slammed his door in his brother’s face.

“Ronan!” Declan shouted, thumping furiously on the door.

Ronan pressed his forehead against the stained glass window in the front door, watching blankly as Declan continued to shout at him over his shoulder before finally abandoning the cause altogether. He heard Adam sigh behind him, unimpressed.

As soon as Declan’s car disappeared, Ronan slammed his fist into the wall next to the door. He felt the blood run down his knuckles before his punch even landed in the plaster. The metallic scent was sharp in his nostrils, waking him up. Suddenly he was more alive than he was ten seconds before, his nerves and muscles and heartbeat turned up until he felt too hot for his skin, the rage messy inside him, bubbling over. He stared at his bloodied knuckles, chest heaving. He wanted to punch a hundred more walls. He wanted to pick at the bones of his brother’s stupid face until there was nothing. He wanted so many things.

There was a creak of wood behind him, followed by the hitch of Adam’s sigh. “You’re such a shit bag, Ronan,” Adam said. He was still standing in the hallway. Ronan turned to look at him, his bloodied fist held awkwardly by his side. He forced his body into stillness.

“Come with me,” Adam said. Ronan followed him. To his surprise, Adam led him to the bathroom. Ronan hopped onto the counter, and Adam took his hand and held it under the faucet. There was a spray of warm water, and then Adam’s beautiful fingers, his thumbs dipping between the grooves of Ronan’s knuckles, the water running pink into the drain.

Adam was a breath away from Ronan, his face close enough for Ronan to observe the microscopic subtleties of the features he spent so much time studying: the devastating downward curl of his mouth, the dusty rose color of his lips. The whimsical cliff of his cheekbone. His deepset eyes and their particularly melancholic shade of blue. The faintest dimple at the cleft of his chin, the shy yet prominent bob of his adam’s apple, the languorous valley where his cheeks caved in. The tentative suggestion of fine facial hair at the sharp pivot of his jaw, and the fluttering shadow of his long eyelashes, like filaments of gold.

Adam’s eyes lifted briefly to his. Both he and Ronan were biting their bottom lips. Ronan swallowed, his heart vibrating like a humming bird in his ribcage.

Adam, his expression tight and inscrutable, dropped to a crouching position to search through the cabinets. He found a first aid kit inside, with a few band-aids and some disinfectant. He cleaned Ronan’s knuckles with dutiful care, the dip of his eyebrows somehow rueful. Ronan’s anger was gone, barely even a memory.

“I’m sorry,” Ronan muttered. He was thinking of Adam’s bruised cheekbones again. Adam’s red wet eyes and that horrible shameful look on his face. He closed his eyes.

“What are you apologizing to me for?”

Ronan looked at him, his head still bowed. Eyes pained in a sharp way. “Parrish,” he said.

Adam’s thumbs smoothed over the bandaid on Ronan’s knuckles. He stepped back. “What would you have done if I wasn’t here?” He asked. “To Declan.”

Ronan knew he couldn’t lie so he said, “I don’t want to say.” He thought hatefully of the things he wanted to say: I am a scary thing. This is not pretend. What do I do? I break things. I hurt people. I am not a man; I am a hurricane. I am not the sheep in wolf’s clothing. I do not have a heart of gold. I am cloven-hoofed and devil-horned, and you’d better stay the fuck away from me. He watched the last of his blood run pink in the sink’s shallow basin.

“You know, Lynch,” Adam said. His eyes were clear, penetrating and knowing. “I’m not scared of you.”

Ronan’s breath stuck in his throat. He could feel the tight ropes of his muscles and organs unraveling, pooling at their feet. He forced his vision to focus to a sharp painful point between Adam’s eyes.

Adam was still holding Ronan’s hand under the water. Ronan felt Adam’s fingers move gently over the back of his hand, sliding between his knuckles.

Ronan swallowed hard, watching the careful way Adam’s thumb stroked over his wrist bone. “What are you doing?” Ronan asked hoarsely, barely a whisper.

Adam met his eyes. He looked skittish, like he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to. “You fucked up your hand, idiot,” he said, managing to compose himself. “I’m cleaning it.”

Ronan ripped his hand away. Blood rose up from the wound just as soon as it disappeared from the water.

“It’s fine,” he muttered. “Shouldn’t have punched the damn wall anyways. Was fucking stupid.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “You think?”

Ronan’s mouth twisted in a wry knot. He looked at Adam under his eyelashes and said nothing.

“Why can’t you just do the work, Ronan?” Adam asked, his voice low and urgent. “I really could help you with it, you know.”

“Aren’t you always saying I should be doing it myself?”

“Well, yeah, but--”

“Why do you even give a shit?”

Adam sighed hard, gritting his teeth. “Ronan, you need to graduate--”

Ronan laughed. When his eyes found Adam’s, they were gleaming with malice. “Why?” he demanded, still laughing. “What fucking good would that do? What the hell is that going to do for me?”

Adam bit his lip. “Don’t be a dick,” he said, stepping away from Ronan.

“I am a dick, though,” Ronan said, louder this time. “That’s what I am. I’m a dick. I’m not the nice boy who does his homework. I’m not ruining my fucking potential -- there was never any fucking potential. Don’t you get it, Parrish? Can’t you wrap your freaky genius brain around the idea that I’m just not like you and Gansey?” Ronan was breathing hard now, his muscles straining like he wanted to hit something again. “I’m an asshole,” he said. “That’s who I am.” His eyes landed on Adam’s, dark with intent. He needed Adam to understand.

Adam stared at him like he was transparent. Eyes zeroing in on Ronan’s core. “No,” Adam said, after a long pause. “You’re just afraid.”

Ronan pushed himself off the counter. Ronan was not much taller than Adam, but he managed to make himself tower in a way that seemed unique to Lynches. Adam could never mimic it, no matter how many times he tried.

“Eat shit, Parrish,” Ronan said, voice tight and controlled. It made Adam furious. He could feel the rage clenching and unclenching in his gut.

Oh god, don’t get mad, Adam begged himself. Stay calm, stay calm.

“You’re a coward,” Adam snapped, and something inside him snapped too. He didn’t remember walking toward Ronan but he must’ve, because suddenly he was right in his face.

“What are you talking about?” Ronan hissed. He looked like his fury had swallowed him. Ronan was nothing but knife points and teeth, utterly helpless to it.

Adam felt his own anger rattle inside him, shaking him loose. He stepped even closer to Ronan, their eyes locked and furious, chests heaving.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” Adam said quietly, eyes flickering so quickly to Ronan’s mouth that if he’d blinked he would have missed it. He saw something unspool in Ronan’s eyes.

A muscle jumped in Ronan’s jaw. He stared at Adam like he’d pulled a gun on him.

“I know,” Adam said softly. He couldn’t stop himself from speaking. His heart thumped wildly. “I know about...” he waved his hand vaguely at Ronan, as if that was enough.

Ronan shoved him away, hard. Adam’s back would have thudded against the door frame if he hadn’t caught himself on his hand.

Stumbling back, Ronan muttered, “Congrats, Einstein.”

Adam swallowed, watching Ronan carefully. Ronan took another step back, his eyes lost and strange.

“Looks like the boy genius has got it all figured out.” Ronan’s eyes were unnerving, his voice low and fragile.

“Ronan,” Adam started, but he realized he had nothing to say. Ronan lifted his chin and cocked his head, the way Chainsaw did before she zeroed in on a bug she was interested in having for dinner, cold and calculating.

“Eat shit, Parrish,” Ronan repeated, before walking backwards out of the bathroom. Adam closed his eyes. He could hear Ronan moving violently down the hallway. 

Adam yelled Ronan’s name, hanging on to the bathroom door frame, but Ronan had already disappeared. Adam bowed his head, a thousand pleas and apologies and confessions tripping on his tongue, and all of them somehow wrong.

He managed to drag himself back to the living room, but Ronan was not there. Adam turned around, and his backpack hit him in the chest before falling to the ground. Adam saw Ronan’s feet as he bent to pick it up, the strap hanging limply between his fingers. Ronan’s shadow fell over him. Adam’s dream-invention was already sitting by the door.

Ronan said, “Get it in the car.”

Adam got in the car, his dream-thing clutched tightly in his lap. His chest hurt. He couldn’t bear to look at Ronan as they drove, but he couldn’t bear not to either. He forced himself to stay curled against the passenger door, staring out his window across the sun and rain-soaked farmland. Ronan drove recklessly and furiously -- even moreso than usual -- but he was otherwise silent, staring stonily at the road.

It wasn’t until they reached Monmouth that Adam managed to even open his mouth. The factory struck a strange, lonely figure against the cloudy morning sky, and Adam felt his longing for it and all its contents dip painfully in his stomach.

Adam’s fingers played with the door handle. “Ronan, I’m sorry,” he said miserably. His gaze swung to Ronan, imploring, but Ronan would not look at him. Adam continued, “Just -- look, I didn’t mean any of that. Just pretend I never said anything, I wasn’t thinking, I was -- I was being stupid --” Adam took a long hitching breath. He needed Ronan to look at him. “Ronan, please--”

“Shut the fuck up, Parrish, or so help me God.”

“Ronan, please--”

“Get out.”

Adam stared at him, begging Ronan to look at him. He opened his mouth again, but Ronan beat him to it: “I really hate repeating myself.”

Pure Aglionby boy, that. Pure spoiled raven boy. Ronan’s voice was barely more than a hiss, all heat and teeth. Adam’s fingers tightened on the straps of his backpack, and he reluctantly opened the door of the BMW. He swung his bag over his shoulder, allowing himself one last glimpse of Ronan’s fierce profile, before shutting the door quietly. Ronan waited for Adam to climb into his own shitty car before he got out himself.

He did not watch Adam leave. He did not watch anything. Everything was shards of color and space, barely glancing off his body. He felt like a stormcloud, full of rain and rage and emptiness, the hollows of him more pronounced than the parts that took up space.

Ronan opened the door to Monmouth. Chainsaw flew immediately to his arm, wings flapping, beak searching gently through his buzzed hair. He closed his eyes, allowing himself a long moment to just stand in the entry way, Chainsaw’s feathered head warm and attentive against his.

“Lynch,” said a voice. Ronan did not open his eyes, but he knew immediately that it was Gansey.

“Where’s Adam?”

Ronan turned to look at Gansey over his shoulder. Gansey looked exhausted. There were deep bags under his normally bright eyes. Ronan was so used to Gansey looking like the fountain of youth. Now Gansey was wearing one of his bath robes, clutching a mug of coffee in his fist. He looked like he badly he needed a shower, or a drink, or both.

“Where’s Blue?” Ronan asked in response. His head pounded. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to have a nightmare. He wanted one of his own night horrors to peck him apart in his sleep.

Gansey sighed heavily. “That’s not an answer.”

“Neither is that,” Ronan snarled.

“She left,” Gansey said sharply. “A few hours after you did.”

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. Home, probably.”

“Why did she leave?” Ronan was angry, suddenly. Fuming. He had no reason to be speaking to Gansey like this but he couldn’t help himself. He just needed to be angry at somebody.

“Because I wouldn’t sleep with her,” Gansey replied calmly, but Ronan knew that tone. He heard its barely-concealed righteousness loud and clear.

“I thought you already did that.”

Gansey shook his head. He looked like he’d been up all night. “We’ve done...things,” he said vaguely. Ronan did not care for the details.

“Why won’t you have sex with her? Besides the obvious reasons, like the fact that she’s a maggot and you’re a human boy.”

Gansey reached out to cuff his head, but Ronan ducked under his outreached hand effortlessly, laughing under his breath. Once he became tired of Ronan dancing away from his half-hearted punches, Gansey collapsed into the couch. Ronan followed suit, and they both closed their eyes.

“Because I’m an idiot. It is very complicated,” Gansey said eventually. “I think I’m in love with her.”

Ronan turned to him. “Love?”

Gansey’s cheeks were furiously red. He stared at the floor. Ronan sighed in exasperation, rubbing his knuckles into Gansey’s scalp.

“It’s very terrifying,” Gansey said seriously. His eyes were wide. “I’m very unsure about how to proceed.”

“You’re asking the wrong person, man,” Ronan said dryly.

Gansey nudged his shoulder against Ronan’s. Ronan nudged his back.

“So wait, what happened to Parrish?” Gansey turned to him. Ronan shrugged carelessly.

“Who the fuck knows.”

“Well, you were with him all of last night weren’t you?” Gansey demanded. “What happened to the Plan?”

“Your precious plan went fine,” Ronan replied. He pushed himself to his feet. Gansey stood up immediately after him.

“Ronan,” Gansey said sternly. “What did you do?”

This is good, Ronan thought. This is familiar. He thinks I did something bad. Good. Let him.

“None of your fucking business,” Ronan snarled. Gansey quirked an eyebrow and lifted his wire-frame glasses to sit on his head.

“Well what the hell happened?” He demanded. “Did it work or not? Where’s Adam’s invention?”

“He has it,” Ronan said shortly.

“It worked?” Gansey’s forehead wrinkled with surprise.

“Of course it worked,” Ronan snapped. He pushed past Gansey towards his room.

“Well then what in God’s name are you so worked up about?” Gansey demanded. “And where is Adam?”

“I told you. I don’t know,” Ronan hissed over his shoulder, his hand braced on the door frame of his bedroom.

“Did you have a fight?”

Ronan’s raised eyebrow said it all. What do you think, Dick?

“Oh, god,” Gansey moaned behind him. “What now? What could you possibly have to fight about now?”

Ronan turned his back to him, pressing his forehead against the door frame. He felt cold. He wanted to kneel against a church pew and let himself break. He wanted to curse at God, to shake his fist at the cross and then beg for forgiveness. He wanted so many things.

“Ronan,” Gansey said, much quieter. Ronan realized his head was still bowed. Chainsaw flapped to his shoulder protectively. “Are you okay?”

Ronan managed to zip up any leftover rawness from his face. He looked at Gansey over his shoulder. Gansey’s tired face was drawn with concern. Ronan couldn’t bear it.

“I have to go,” he said, pushing off the door frame. He had no idea where to go, but he couldn’t stay in Monmouth with Gansey’s worried expression for even a second longer. He pined for the church, but he couldn’t go there either, thanks to Adam. His head whirred dizzily as he scraped his pockets for keys, fingers trembling at the door.

“Ronan,” Gansey said. “Do you want me to come with you?” Gansey had no idea what he was asking for. Ronan clenched his fists.

“I’ll be home later.”

Gansey sighed behind him, and Ronan shut the door. Once he was in the BMW, he turned on his loudest, most aggressive music and allowed himself to drown, the speed of the BMW and the dark thump of the bass and the dull thud of his heartbeat a numbing mess inside him. He wanted to think of nothing. He wanted to lose himself.

Instead, his mind chanted: Adam knows. He knows. Adam knows what you are and he thinks you’re a coward.

Ronan’s body sung with emptiness. He wanted to curl up in one of Cabeswater’s nests and never wake up. He wanted to dream until he was lost in it, so he could never find his way back.

Cabeswater was quiet today, and Ronan was grateful. He wanted to fall asleep somewhere and let Cabeswater’s branches enfold him. He stepped out of the BMW into the lush forest. A few birds twittered, but otherwise it was almost entirely quiet.

Then Ronan heard footsteps, followed by the quiet crunch of leaves. He spun around.

It was Blue. She was peering at him from behind a tree, her face streaked with tears, wearing an absurdly oversized sweater printed with tiny monkeys. She looked so ridiculous that it made Ronan’s heart lighter.

“Sargent,” Ronan said. He stepped closer to her. Blue wiped at her cheeks shamefully then scowled at him.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

Ronan raised an eyebrow at her. He waved his hands at her vaguely and said, “Probably the same thing as you.”

Blue dragged the back of her hand against her wet cheek again, appraising him silently. After a long moment she said, “Want to see something?”

Ronan nodded. He followed her to a gentle brook, the water lapping at the cool smooth stones on the shallow riverbed. Blue found them a large rock to perch on, and Ronan climbed after her.

Blue glanced around. “It’s nice, right? I found a beaver’s dam farther down,” she said.

Ronan almost made a rude beaver joke, but he abstained on behalf of Blue’s red-rimmed eyes.

“So what are you emo-ing out here for?” he asked finally.

Blue sighed heavily, leaning her chin on her hand. She flicked a pebble into the stream, and it fell with a pitiful plop. “Oh, you know. Cool fun relationship stuff. The coolest.” Her face was miserable. Ronan flicked a pebble into the stream. “Relationships are so fun, didn’t you know?”

Ronan huffed out a mirthless laugh. Blue looked like she wanted to do the same, but then her face collapsed. She looked like Adam: full of fracture lines. “Aw, c’mon, kid,” Ronan said softly.

Blue’s smile was watery and miserable.

Ronan nudged her shoulder and muttered, very quietly, “He fucking loves you, you know.”

Blue’s eyes welled up with tears, and they slipped down her cheeks, clinging stubbornly to the cliff of her jaw. Ronan curled an arm around her shoulders, and she collapsed into his chest, her eyes screwed furiously shut, breath hitching. She squeezed his waist so hard it almost hurt, but he couldn’t deny how utterly comforting it felt to hold somebody. Even if that somebody was Blue.

She let Ronan hold her like this for a few long minutes. They watched the stream quietly, the sounds of Cabeswater and each other’s arms easing their pain at least slightly. Finally Blue ducked her head out from under Ronan’s arm, pulling her coat tightly around her shoulders.

After a long silence, Blue said, “You know. Even when he was with me, he was always looking at you.”

Ronan looked down at her. “Gansey?”

Blue just looked up at him with her eyebrows raised wryly. It was a look she must’ve learned from Adam. “You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

Ronan snorted with disdain. Blue continued to look at him with her eyebrows raised, unimpressed. Another signature Adam look.

“So everybody fucking knows, then,” Ronan muttered bitterly, after a long hateful silence.

Blue shook her head. “It’s not like that. I mean, Gansey definitely doesn’t know. I don’t even think Adam knows.”

Ronan pushed off the rock. “He knows,” he said hoarsely.

Blue looked at Ronan. It was so easy to see how damaged his armor was. Blue felt a strange urge to hold his hand. Despite how hard he was working to make his face look indifferent and cruel, he also looked like somebody who needed to be held.

“You haven’t seen the way he looks at you, have you, Lynch?” Blue said.

“Don’t, maggot,” Ronan said. He closed his eyes. “I’m really not in the mood.”

“Idiot.” Blue kicked Ronan in the thigh. He brushed her away like she was a fly. “You know that stupid look you sometimes get when you’re staring at him?” Ronan opened his mouth to protest. Blue cut him off before he could: “We’ve all seen it, Lynch.” She nudged his shoulder. “That’s the way he looks at you.”

“I don’t need your pity,” Ronan spat.

“It’s not pity. It’s true,” Blue said simply. “Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself.”

Ronan looked at her sidelong, his mouth twisted in a knot, making his cheeks hollow out in a way that was terribly attractive, even to Blue. His eyes were like ice, sunlight captured in the snaky scales of his pale irises. It was moments like these -- moments when Ronan was so beautiful that it could not be ignored -- that Blue understood why Adam sometimes stared at Ronan so intently, almost like he couldn’t help it. It was a look she’d seen on Gansey’s face too, and Orla’s, and dozens of strange women on the street who strained their necks to catch a more lingering glimpse of the beautiful boy-prince with the shaved head.

“So,” Blue said slyly, “Was your sleepover everything you dreamed it would be?” She teased, reaching out to pull at the hood of Ronan’s coat. Ronan flipped it over his head and smacked her hands away. Blue laughed.

“You wanna get stepped on, Sargent? I’ll trample your ass.” Ronan reached out to grab her, but she ducked away, her eyes dancing wickedly.

“You’re too--” Ronan grunted, trying to get a hold of her, but she was darting around him too quickly, still cackling. “--goddamn small!”

“Well, you’re too goddamn big!” She gave a solid yank to the back of Ronan’s pants, but they were too tight for her pranks. She hopped to another rock, far from Ronan’s reach.

“If you wanted to grope my ass all you had to do was ask, Sargent!” Ronan yelled after her.

She skipped rocks, her hair flapping wildly around her. She looked vaguely like Chainsaw. It made Ronan grimace.

“Great!” Blue shouted back. “I’ll let Adam know!”

Ronan’s mouth fell open. He narrowed his eyes and grabbed the biggest rock he could find. Blue squealed, half-horrified half-delighted, and hopped to another rock, Ronan’s falling with a violent splash next to her.

“This isn’t over!” he warned.

Blue made it back to shore. Ronan caught her by the neck and mussed up her hair. She squirmed away from him, cheeks pink, her temples shiny. They both looked exponentially happier than they had an hour before.

“You know,” Blue said, still catching her breath. “It’s really a shame you insist on being such an asshole all the time.” Ronan rolled his eyes. She prodded him in the chest with her index finger matter-of-factly. “Because whether you like it or not, Lynch, you’re actually pretty good at being a decent human being,” she said, knowing full well this was the most horrifying thing she could possibly say to Ronan.

“Yeah, whatever, maggot,” Ronan said. His cheeks were a little pink.

Blue elbowed him in the side. “Give me a ride home?”

“As long as you’re cool with jamming to some Murder Squash,” he replied. This time his smile was his usual psychopathic one.

Ronan deposited Blue at 300 Fox Way and then returned to Monmouth. He climbed the steps, wondering if Gansey was still there waiting for him, or if he’d gone to look for Adam.

Ronan opened the door. He held out his arm for Chainsaw, and she flapped to him immediately, her beak poking around curiously in his ear. His footsteps echoed across the floor.

“Noah?” he asked, his voice ringing across the factory. “Gansey?”

“I’m here,” Noah yelled from Ronan’s room. Ronan looked inside: the room was completely spotless, the charred remains of his tree-house attempt magically erased.

He lifted an eyebrow at Noah, who was swinging his feet off the side of Ronan’s bed.

“Is this your handiwork?”

“Eh,” Noah shrugged. “Me and Gansey.”

Ronan nodded, scuffing his feet on the hardwood.

“How did Plan go?” Noah asked.

Ronan collapsed on his bed next to Noah. Noah perched his chin on his folded arms. “Oh, it was a real blast,” Ronan said sarcastically. Noah flipped onto his back, staring at Ronan upside-down.

“Gansey said you and Adam had a fight,” Noah said.

A headache still pounded dully in Ronan’s temples. He threw an arm over his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Good,” Noah said, followed by a quiet oof. He had flopped back onto his stomach. He flicked Ronan by his ribcage. “Neither do I. Let’s play a game.”

“If it’s a fucking drinking game, sure.”

“Let’s do shots!” Noah cried, throwing his arms into the air. Ronan laughed, and he did not think of Adam. He would not think of Adam. He banished him back to the darkest corner of his mind. His secret might not have been a secret, but he could still push it into non-existence. He would hide it even from himself.

He watched Noah sniff proprietarily at each of liquor bottles. I will not think of him. Ronan’s mind buzzed. Chainsaw nestled her beak against the crook of his arm, and Noah said something from the corner of the room, but Ronan’s head was pounding too loudly. I will not think of him. I will not. I will not.

Noah pushed a bottle into his hands. It was a fancy, ancient Scotch that had once belonged to his father. “Cheers to getting so fucked up that I forget the past 24 hours.” Ronan lifted the bottle. Noah gave it a fist-bump.

He tilted his head back and swallowed a mouthful. I will not think of him, Ronan swore. The alcohol burned pleasantly in his throat.

--

Adam stared into the mirror and thought, what a beast you are. You are what wasted space looks like. You are what happens when something exists where it isn’t supposed to.

For the hundredth time, Adam wondered if this is what his father felt when he hit him. This might have been the hatred he felt when held Adam against the wall by his throat. This must’ve been the disgust which inspired Robert Parrish to slam his son’s face against a dresser and hold him by the hair so hard his scalp burned and lock him outside like a dog. What Robert Parrish felt was not merely anger: it was cruelty. It was sustained and cultivated hatred. He made sure Adam felt that hatred in his bones, until it became a part of him. Because a parent hitting a child is not just a fist hitting a cheekbone: it is the slow and unauthorized altering of a person, a veering of paths. For Adam, learning how to love was like learning another language, one with a different alphabet than the one you were raised with, an entirely different rhythm of speech, something spoken in a world you didn’t know, that one with the greener grass.

He just wanted to be good. He wanted to be able to control himself. He wanted material evidence that his labor was worth something. He wanted an advance check from his boss, a fridge full of new groceries, and a laundry machine that didn’t require Adam to violently thump at its side every 7 minutes for it run. He wanted a full scholarship to a reasonably difficult college with a fancy reputation. He wanted his friends to be happy and alive. He wanted a hug, and a nap, and someone to sleep with at night. He wanted someone to kiss him. He wanted someone to want to kiss him. He wanted, he wanted, he wanted.

Why did I have to open my stupid mouth? Adam stared at himself hard in the mirror. He wanted to hit something.

His mind was this: what’s wrong with me? and then who are you? in a rhythm. It was the saddest song around, sung in Robert Parrish’s dulcet tones: another surprise mixtape, though this was one was from dear old dad. How desperately Adam despised his gifts.

Adam was so busy plumbing the depths of mental self-flagellation that at first he did not hear the telltale rumble of the Pig pulling into the lot outside St. Agnes.

He was still staring hatefully into the mirror when Gansey knocked on the door. For a moment Adam hated him almost as much as he hated himself. He reminded himself: Gansey is Gansey. He is not an idea. He is a person. Treat him like one.

Only after this private mantra did Adam allow himself to open the door. Gansey was wearing his wire-rim glasses. Probably on purpose, Adam realized, because he knew this was Adam’s favorite Gansey.

Gansey offered his most guileless smile, and Adam stepped aside for him to enter, self-loathing and guilt pinching at his insides.

Adam offered Gansey a seat on his shabby pile of patio cushions which served as a couch. He produced the dream-thing from his bed and brought it to Gansey’s lap.

“It’s pretty weird looking,” Adam said, dropping to a crouch. Gansey eyed it wondrously, his eyes skating over its strange corners and dials. “But it seems pretty much the exact way I imagined it. Guess we’ll just need to bring it to Cabeswater to know for sure.”

“It looks perfect,” Gansey breathed, pushing his glasses down the brim of his nose to squint at a particular dial more closely.

Adam gave Gansey a self-deprecating shrug and shifted to sit on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest. For such a long, lanky thing, he had a peculiar talent for making himself very small.

Gansey lifted his glasses to his head. The room was hushed, the only sound a gentle stirring of afternoon wind at the window, the occasional hum of a passing car, and some quiet shuffling from the nuns downstairs.

“So are you gonna ask me what happened with Ronan or what?” Adam asked, after a long silence.

“If you’re volunteering,” Gansey said mildly.

Adam pushed his thumb under a peeling strip of wood in the floorboard. He couldn’t look Gansey in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said, his voice muffled by his knee. He sounded like he was underwater. “I take full responsibility for all of his violent moods.”

“What are you apologizing to me for?”

Adam blinked at him. “You’re the one who’s gonna have to deal with him now. ”

He could see that Gansey’s face was soft in his periphery, waiting for Adam to explain.

“I said something I shouldn’t have,” Adam said. “I went farther than I needed to.”

Gansey blinked.

“I don’t want Ronan to think--” Adam started, but he cut himself off abruptly. Gansey waited patiently.

“Think what?” he prompted gently.

“I don’t know,” Adam mumbled. He felt the sudden urge to pace, or throw a ball, or give his hands something useful to do. He stood up to open the window. Gansey remained in his cushion pile, staring at the invention in his lap.

“I don’t want him to think,” Adam began again, his voice barely louder than a whisper, “that he doesn’t mean anything to me.” It felt so strange leaving his mouth, true and not enough at the same time.

“Adam, what did you say to him?”

Adam pressed his forehead against the window sill, eyes closed. He cracked one eye open to stare mournfully at Gansey. “He’ll tell if he wants, though I doubt he will. It’s not my story to tell.”

It was the sort of circuitous and self-effacing answer that Gansey had come to expect from Adam. It inspired nothing more than a gentle sigh.

“Do you think he’d come to Cabeswater with us when we test your invention?”

Adam lifted one shoulder. His eyelids felt so heavy. He wanted nothing more than to lay in his bed unconscious for the next 24 hours.

“Adam, are you okay?”

Gansey reached out like he was going to touch Adam’s arm, but then slipped his hand into his pocket instead. Everything inside of Adam throbbed, especially behind his eyes. He could feel a lump building in throat.

“Yes,” he croaked. “I think I’m just -- I’m going to go to sleep.”

“What about Cabeswater?”

Adam shuddered at the name. “Tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Gansey said. He was still watching Adam with a strange combination of concern and suspicion, like he didn’t know if it was actually a good idea to leave Adam alone. “We can go after school.”

Adam visibly melted with relief. “I don’t have work until Tuesday.”

“Good,” Gansey said, a little distractedly. He glanced around Adam’s apartment one last time. “Good. Well. I’ll leave you to your sleep, then.”

By the time the door closed behind Gansey, the lump was more like a boulder. Adam did not need to return to the mirror to know that his face was crumbling, the creases of his fracture lines becoming more defined with use. A tectonic plate shifted. What have you done? Adam thought furiously. He wiped his cheek. What have you done?

--

“La la la lalalala, la la la-- what’s the next part again?”

“I thought you knew.”

“I thought you knew. I don’t even know this song.”

“Then how are you singing it?”

Ronan shrugged. “I dunno,” he slurred. “I thought you were singing it.”

Noah’s cackle dissolved into a sleepy sigh. “I’m drunk,” he said.

“No, you’re not. Dead people can’t get drunk.”

“You don’t know what I can do!” Noah retorted.

“Psh,” Ronan said. He tripped on a pebble. “Can you do this?” Ronan did a complex dance move that was quickly upset by his temporarily tenuous relationship with gravity. His throat felt thick and dry, his vision blurry. Noah was just hair and a sweater. The trail they were following was briefly dazzled by moonlight, before submerging them in darkness again.

“I’m bored again,” Noah said. “The trail is dead. I was hoping for shenanigans.”

“I need heavier drugs,” Ronan replied. Noah hummed in agreement.

“I’m gonna run ahead and see if there’s anything interesting over that hill.”

“Interesting like what?”

“I dunno. Bears?”

Ronan nodded as if this were a sensible thing for Noah to say. “I’ll meet up with you in a second.”

Ronan had consumed a great deal of scotch. The Lynches were known for holding their liquor and Ronan was no different. But this was a great deal of scotch even by Lynch standards. He couldn’t remember how he had gotten to this trail. He remembered Noah insisting on playing the same Missy Elliot song over and over again, and falling off his bed, and Noah playing with shaving cream. He couldn’t remember how he got to the trail: at a certain point his memory hit a drunken wall.

This is exactly what you wanted. To forget. Still foggy-headed, Ronan slumped down to the ground, one leg bent, the other sprawled in the grass. He stared up at the sky. The grass was dry and weedy from winter, but he did not care. The stars glittered above him, the moon a strange and silent orb in the inky blackness. A fly buzzed next to his ear. Ronan half-heartedly swiped it away. He blinked and his vision refocused slowly to find his hands were still in front of his face. Ronan had never realized how brutish they looked. How beastly, how destructive, how unfit for human companionship: his still-red knuckles, the sharp peaks of them under his veiny hands, the skeletal fluttering of his flexing fingers.

“Noah?” Ronan asked out loud. “Where are we?”

No one answered him. His head was spinning like he was crossfaded.

“Noah you dead fuck, come back!” He yelled.

There was a wavy whisper of grass next to him, and then Noah was splayed like a snow angel next to him.

“I didn’t find anything but a ribbon,” Noah sighed. He twisted it between his fingers, blue and satiny in the moonlight. “I think I’ll give it to Blue.”

“Noah, where are we?” Ronan whispered loudly.

Noah laughed. “We’re right behind Monmouth.”

“Oh,” Ronan said. He sat up and saw Monmouth’s shadowy form in the distance, stars twinkling over its industrial spires.

Noah made a contemplative sound, still twisting the ribbon between his fingers. He leaned over to tie it in a bow around Ronan’s wrist, taking advantage of this pliant drunken version of Ronan.

“I wish there were girls around,” Noah sighed.

Ronan snorted. “Why? It’s not like you’d talk to them if there were.”

“Well it’s not like you would either!” A strange look crossed Noah’s face. “Now that I think about it...I’ve never seen you with a girl.”

“Oh, well if you’ve never seen it then I guess it’s never happened,” Ronan said sarcastically.

“So you do see girls!” Noah cried.

“No,” Ronan said dryly. “They’re invisible to me.”

“Sure does seem like it,” Noah muttered under his breath.

Ronan didn’t have anything to say to this. They both listened to the cicadas for a few minutes. Finally, Noah rolled onto his side, facing Ronan.

“Can I ask you something?” Noah begged.

“Sure,” Ronan shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I’m gonna answer.”

Noah took a deep breath. “Ronan, do you prefer Johns to Janes?”

Ronan’s eyebrows crept slowly and menacingly up to his hairline. He poked his tongue in his cheek, eyes sliding sidelong to Noah’s. Noah bravely made eye contact, wincing at the stormy look on Ronan’s face.

“If by Jane you mean Blue,” Ronan’s voice rumbled lowly, “Then yes. I prefer everything to Blue.”

Noah graciously let Ronan leave it at that. They laid on the grass for a few more minutes before Noah took Ronan’s limp form and steered him back towards his bed in Monmouth.

--

Ronan woke up to a violent spear of sunlight in his eyes and angry thumping on his door.

“Just fucking open it!” he shouted groggily, shielding his hands with his arm.

Gansey stormed into the room. He was wearing an obscenely pastel polo shirt which offended Ronan’s hangover-impaired eyesight even more.

“You don’t get a sick pass for being hungover, Lynch. Up.”

“Up for what?” Ronan snarled, chucking one of his pillows at Gansey’s head. Gansey ducked deftly, well practiced.

“We’re going to Cabeswater. You’ve known this.” Gansey began rummaging through Ronan’s dresser for clothes. He tossed one of Ronan’s black shirts and a pair of expensive jeans onto the foot of Ronan’s bed.

Gansey shoved a glass of water in his hand. Ronan drank it reluctantly.

“Now get up,” Gansey said seriously. He handed Ronan his toothbrush. Ronan stared at him, eyebrows raised. “Be dressed and downstairs in five minutes. I’ll be waiting in the car.”

When Ronan finally opened the front door ten minutes later, the first thing he saw was Adam’s dusty head in the back seat, dream-thing in his lap.

Expressionless, Ronan slammed the door shut and disappeared back inside Monmouth.

A minute later, Gansey was thumping at his door again. Ronan clenched his entire body still.

Gansey opened the door. Ronan did not turn around.

“You know -- for once, just one time, Ronan --- why don’t you think about someone who isn’t you?”

Ronan examined his nails. “Can’t. Don’t have the parts. I have neither the equipment nor the fucks to give.”

Gansey pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not going to say please. Get in the car.”

Ronan spun around swiftly and furiously, stalking towards Gansey. “You didn’t tell me he was coming,” Ronan hissed.

“Of course he’s coming,” Gansey said simply. “And so are you. I don’t know what happened between you two but it has nothing to do with this. So buck up, Lynch.”

Gansey left, leaving the door hanging ajar.

Two minutes later, Ronan finally stomped down the steps. He slid into the passenger side without a word to Adam.

When they arrived at Cabeswater, they were all grateful to leave the thick silent tension of the car for the crisp lungfuls of winter air. They plodded nimbly through the unseasonably lush green, the magic so sharply realized that it struck them all silent.

Ronan disappeared into the trees, leaving Gansey and Adam to play with their dream-toy. He watched over his shoulder as they both knelt to fiddle with it on the forest floor. Ronan almost wished Blue was with them, if only so she could share in his gleeful contempt when he called Gansey and Adam nerds.

He walked deeper into the forest, until he couldn’t see Gansey or Adam anymore.

The whispers began.

“Oh, no, no, fuck this--” Ronan muttered under his breath.

Tell him.

Ronan clapped his hands over his ears, screwing his eyes shut. He knows. He wanted to scream. He already fucking knows. There is nothing to tell.

Tell him, tell him, tell him, tell him, tell him--

“Shut up!” Ronan bellowed. He felt hot over, sick with fury. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

A hand fell hesitantly on his shoulder. Ronan spun around wildly, arms braced to land a hit if necessary, until he saw Adam’s stricken eyes facing him, ashen-pale.

“Ronan?” Adam blinked at him. He was clutching his dream-thing under his arm. “You were screaming.”

Ronan threw Adam’s hand off him. “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that,” he snarled. Adam blinked, shocked. He took a step back.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

Ronan’s eyes glanced off him, icily. Adam’s stomach twisted.

“Gansey and I -- I think we got what we needed. The trees were really loud...” Adam’s voice drifted off. Ronan stared fiercely at a tree over Adam’s shoulder.

“We should head back,” Adam said. “If you want.”

Ronan finally looked at him properly. Adam’s throat worked nervously, but he did not try to hide himself from Ronan’s cool gaze.

Adam looked terrible. Gaunt-cheeked and bruised around the eyes, like he hadn’t slept in a while. Like he was disappearing.

Truly Adam looked as beautiful as ever, but Ronan wouldn’t let himself think it.

“Are you not speaking to me then?” Adam asked. Ronan said nothing. “Is it gonna be like this now?”

Adam didn’t sound resigned. He sounded like he wanted to shout but was using every ounce of self-control to keep his voice soft and even-tempered.

Ronan shrugged carelessly, sticking a toothpick in his mouth. It poked through the corners, his cheeks hollowing as he rolled it between his lips. Ronan’s eyes were cruel and miserable.

He said, “Beats me, Parrish,” and Adam felt something wriggle around his heart, what a lovelorn preteen diarist might earnestly describe as a thrum. It felt like a thrum. Adam’s mind was usually too cloudy for certainty. But now he felt a crystalline thought forming in that usually hazy space: I like this boy. I could love this boy. Ronan Lynch. Pieces coming together and wrecking Adam from the inside. It wasn’t that anything new had happened, but rather that everything that was already there alchemized in a way it never had before, and for the first time Adam’s mind was clear. Adam felt like his whole body was ajar: so vulnerable that anyone could walk through him. It was as though whatever intangible thing between them was suddenly alive in front of them, too present to be ignored.

“What’s wrong, Parrish?”

Adam’s eyes flicked up to Ronan’s, open and devastating.

“Ronan--” he started, but once again he didn’t know what to say. Or he did, but he had no words to say them with. He felt suddenly and profoundly unworthy.

“Adam?”

Both Ronan and Adam turned at Gansey’s voice. His pastel shirt looked disastrously out of place in Cabeswater’s lush wild green.

“What are you guys doing? I thought we were going back to the car.”

“We’re leaving,” Ronan said loudly, though his dark, heavy gaze was levied at Adam.

Adam followed Ronan back to the car, his heart hammering dutifully. Against his deaf ear a whisper crept and disappeared: tell him, tell him, tell him.

--

Before Gansey even shifted the Pig into park, Ronan threw open the car door and bolted back to Monmouth. Adam could hear the front door slam from inside the car.

Gansey met his eyes in the rearview mirror. Adam grimaced apologetically.

“What’s happening?” Gansey asked quietly. He turned off the car.

Adam looked down at his lap. “I don’t know.”

Gansey turned around to look at Adam. He didn’t say anything.

“Do you want me to come up to listen to the recording?” Adam asked. “Or...guess we could do it at my place too.”

“Let’s just do it later. You can come over here. Ronan’ll probably leave at some point anyways -- he always does.”

Adam nodded. “Yeah, alright.”

“What are you gonna do now?”

Adam shrugged. “Should probably run by the auto shop to pick up my check. Got lots of homework to do too.”

He left Monmouth in the Hondayota with the full intention of doing just that. However instead Adam found himself driving down the tree-shaded lane of Fox Way, instantly calmed by soft evening light dappled through bare winter tree limbs, the station wagons on the street, the old couple bundled up in scarves and hats walking their dog.

Adam parked in front of Blue’s house, stuffing his dry jittery hands deep into his coat pockets. He pressed the door bell, rocking on his heels anxiously.

Blue’s bright eyes met his curiously in the window. She opened the door.

“Hi,” he said. “Sorry to come over without telling you I just--”

She waved his apologies away. “What’s up?”

“Do you wanna maybe go somewhere?”

“We’re about to have dinner. But you should come in!”

“Blue!” Maura asked from the kitchen. “Who’s that?”

Adam heard her footsteps approaching the door. She hung on the doorframe over Blue’s shoulder, beaming at Adam.

“Come in, come in, please, join us for dinner,” Maura fussed, ushering Adam inside before he could protest.

She shut the door behind him. “It’s so cold out! Here, let me take your coat--”

Adam bit his lip, eyes sliding to Blue’s. “Oh, thank you, ma’am, but I -- you really don’t have to --”

“I insist,” Maura said, putting a hand on Adam’s shoulder. She took his coat and hung it on top of the wild array of colorful winter coats on the coat stand squashed next to the front door.

“Sorry,” Blue whispered to Adam once Maura disappeared back to the kitchen. “She’s in mom mode right now.”

“I wouldn’t want to interfere with mom mode.”

“Generally a wise position to take.”

Suddenly a wild Orla appeared, swinging without warning from the staircase onto the landing.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, looking Adam up and down, sizing him up. Orla looked quizzically at Blue. “I thought...”

“He’s just having dinner,” Blue said quickly, pushing Orla into the hallway. She gave Adam a look over her shoulder.

“Where’s your friend?” Orla asked Adam loudly, shoving Blue off her. “The hot one.”

Blue groaned loudly, throwing her hands into the air. “Orla--” she warned.

“What? I’m just asking--”

“She means Ronan,” Blue interrupted. Adam’s eyes widened. “Gansey’s a little too J. Crew for her tastes.”

Orla waved her off and said, “All I’m saying is, I would let him do whatever the fuck he wanted to me if given the chance. Just want to put the offer on the table. Let the grapevine do its business and all that.”

Blue made a retching sound. Adam suddenly became very interested in counting carpet fibers.

After a dinner which left Adam both digestively and socially overwhelmed, Blue finally dragged Adam upstairs to her room.

“Stop looking so careful,” Blue ordered. “Sit.”

Adam sat obligingly at the foot of her bed, fingers running in wonder over her soft bedspread. He tucked his hands between his knees when he saw Blue watching him.

“So,” Blue said.

Adam chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I got my grades today,” he volunteered, just to break up the silence. This was the sort of thing he would only ever say to Blue or Noah. Ronan would just make a snarky remark, and he tended to avoided any mention of grades with Gansey because their friendship did not need a competitive edge. He never told his parents about his grades either, for obvious reasons. Even when he was small, his report cards were something he kept to himself. His pride was always a lonely thing, something to shame him.

“Adam, you’re stalling,” Blue said. She landed next to him with a thud. She poked him with her knee as she crossed her legs. Adam could almost smell her shampoo.

“I know,” Adam said. He looked at Blue sheepishly. “How much do you know?”

Blue shrugged. “Know about what?”

“Aw, you’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you?”

“You betcha.”

Adam sighed, fingers playing idly with her bedspread. “Stuff with Ronan is...I just don’t know what to do.”

“What happened?” Blue asked.

Adam could tell Blue was burning with curiosity. The thought of Blue and Gansey discussing him and Ronan made Adam very uncomfortable. He swallowed. “I don’t know how to explain any of it.”

“Well...” Blue looked at him very seriously, scooting closer. “Do you...do you like him?”

Adam’s eyes widened in alarm. He felt both very embarrassed and underwhelmed by the word like. “Christ, Blue. I don’t know what the hell I feel.” Part of him missed when it was Blue. It was so easy to like Blue. The fact of it was so clear to him. She was so beautiful, she cared, she made the horrible twisting feeling in Adam ease for a little bit, just looking into her face. “I mean, Ronan’s...you know...” Adam trailed off miserably.

“A boy?”

Adam met her eyes. Blue stared back, empty of judgment. “I don’t even know if that has anything to do with it,” Adam answered honestly. He had always thought about words like gay and straight and bisexual as Ideas, separate from himself. Adam Parrish: Unknowable Boy in one orbit, and the universe of sexuality in another, faraway.

Here is what Adam did know: Ronan is beautiful. Ronan is a boy. Ronan is a beautiful boy. This he knows like a Fact, so he never pondered what that might mean for him, Adam Parrish. Here is something else Adam knows: Ronan likes Adam in a more-than-friendly way, and describing his own feelings towards Ronan as strictly platonic felt profoundly dishonest.

Usually Adam finds a logical assembly of facts comforting, but this gave him no comfort. He wanted to understand.

Adam mumbled, “More freaks me out that--”

“It’s Ronan?” Blue smirked.

Adam put his face in his hands.

“Well...how do you feel when you’re around him?”

Adam pulled his knees to his chest. He pressed his forehead into his knees and opened his eyes, considering. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Scared, sometimes. Not of him,” Adam added quickly, noticing her alarm. “Just...more alive, almost. But mostly sort of...relieved, I guess. Being around Ronan isn’t anything like being with Gansey.”

Blue said, “Gansey cares about you more than you can imagine.”

Adam put his chin on his hands, eyes flicking to Blue. “I know. Fuck, I know that, Blue. But you see that’s the point, sort of...I know I’m such a mess. I know I am.” He looks at Blue very seriously when he says this, because she, of all people, knows what it’s like to be on the opposite side of Adam’s messiness. His hands twist together guiltily, his expression wretched. “But Ronan, just...sometimes it’s like I forget, when I’m around him.”

“Forget what?

Adam almost smiles. It’s pathetic and doleful, but it is a smile. “That I’m Adam Parrish.”

“Is that a good thing?” Blue asked skeptically.

“Sometimes, yeah. Ronan gets me out of my head.” Ronan understand when that is what Adam needs. Adam’s usual impulses are to find the problems and solve them. This impulse makes Adam very smart and very miserable. Ronan’s impulse is to ignore his provincial duties in favor of reckless plots and dream worlds. “Makes me feel less....” Shitty, fragile, damaged, asleep.

“I know what you mean,” Blue said kindly, although Adam had offered only the thinnest of explanations.

“I know I like him,” Adam said quietly, after a long silence. It felt almost anticlimactic to say it out loud. He could not look Blue in the eye this time. “It just feels so...complicated. And I don’t really know how to go about addressing it. I’m doing an awful job, to be honest with you.”

“That’s probably not true,” Blue mused. “It’s not like I’m unfamiliar with the complications of Ronan Lynch. And I’m not even courting the guy.”

Adam’s cheeks pinked at the implications of courting. Was he courting Ronan? He did not feel like he was courting Ronan. That did not feel like an accurate descriptor of the events at hand whatsoever. He sort of just felt like a madman.

“I know it’s weird,” Blue said. “It’s okay, you know, to feel...scared. Or feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. Or feel like you need time. You don’t need to feel ashamed of any of that.”

Adam cringed in memory of the words he’d spoken in that bathroom. Throwing Ronan’s cowardice in his face. Thinking of Ronan and cowardice in the same sentence at all. Ronan was scared, but he was not a coward, because Ronan was trying. He was making an effort. Making himself vulnerable increment by increment, a little braver every time, and Adam had called him a coward anyways. Adam wasn’t quite ready to let himself off the hook for that.

“He frustrates the hell out of me,” Adam said quietly, Henrietta accent in full form. Blue laughed.

“That’s not gonna go away."

Adam buried his face in his arms again. He felt Blue’s fingers move through the hair at the nape of his neck, and he sighed with gratitude. It was still so new to him to be touched gently. Love was still a language he was learning, after all. Adam was still learning how to recognize its face. He had to be patient with himself. Another disadvantage for Adam to add to his pile: at least Ronan knew what love was before it punched him in the gut. Adam’s grasp of the concept was still only tentative at best, still skeptical after all the shit he’d waded through.

“Is it always gonna be this way?” Adam asked her. “Blue, I feel crazy.” He thought of the way he felt when he knew Ronan’s eyes were on him, that hungry look. Adam thought of the way Ronan’s face looked when he pet those kittens in the barn, and the way his dark eyelashes fanned out on his cheeks when he slept, and the way his hand felt in Adam’s. He thought of that shameful night in the shower, and the many nights after that when he desperately tried and failed to think of any other fantasy, any other voice, any other body, and failed. He thought of that night at the double-wide when everything almost fell apart. He thought of Ronan’s face.

“You’re just going to feel crazier,” Blue assured him with a grimace, clapping her hand on his shoulder.

“Great,” Adam mumbled, slumping over on his side so he could put his head in Blue’s lap.

“Want me to read your horoscope?” Blue said. “They say bullshit makes you feel better.”

“Sure. Why not.”

Blue cleared her throat with a little ahem. “Let’s see, my cancerous crab...ah, yes...‘Your sun is in Aquarius. No man is an island! Stop trying to be good -- you’re already good. You’re always trying to improve...that’s ok. Your best quality, in fact. But stop and smell the flowers, kid. Get out of your comfort zone! Shoot for the stars!’”

Adam blinked up at her.

Blue said, “Okay I’ll admit that was a loose paraphrase job.”

Adam snorted. “My sun is in Aquarius?”

“Just go with it,” Blue advised. Adam closed his eyes, Blue’s fingers still playing with his hair, and for the first time in days Adam’s mind wandered to a quieter place.

---

Declan was wearing too much cologne. It was nauseating. Ronan barely resisted the urge to tell him so. He kept his fists clench tightly in his lap, eyes squeezed shut, forcing himself to focus on the priest’s words. Ronan could feel Matthew’s eyes on the side of his face, concerned.

He cracked open one eye and winked. Matthew smiled at this, assured. Ronan lifted his chin. St. Agnes had a beautiful stained glass window, gold and orange and green, scattering a prism of color across the domed ceiling.

“--for the forgiveness of sins. We look for--”

Ronan spared a withering glance at Declan, whose jaw was clenched just as tightly as his, who looked just as eager to roll up the sleeves of his crisp expensive suit and swing his fist into his brother’s face.

They said “Amen” with everyone else.

Once the service was over, Ronan’s first instinct was to go upstairs to visit Adam. More precisely, to bother Adam. But today this was not an option, so he drove back to Monmouth instead.

He should’ve noticed Adam’s bike outside, but he didn’t. Ronan opened the door to find him and Gansey at the table, notebooks spread before them, dream-thing as the centerpiece.  Both of their heads twisted to look at Ronan as he kicked the door closed behind him.

Ronan saw Adam’s throat work, his eyes flitting once over Ronan’s suit. Gansey’s gaze flicked nervously between them before his face smoothed into its default diplomatic expression.

“How was mass?” Gansey asked. Adam turned back to face the table.

Ronan grunted something unintelligible in response, tossing his suit jacket carelessly on a chair and pushing up his sleeves. He went to the kitchen. He heard Gansey’s chair creak and his quick footsteps behind him.

“Everything alright with you and Declan?” Gansey asked lowly, leaning against the door.

Ronan searched the drawers noisily for a spoon.

“Yeah, fucking peachy,” he said over his shoulder. Now he was in pursuit of a bowl and cereal. Gansey handed him a box.

“I’ll get the milk.” Gansey disappeared to the bathroom and returned with a carton. Ronan ate it on the counter, legs sprawled carelessly, spoon clattering with every mouthful. Adam watched him from the other room, quiet and careful. Ronan pretended like he wasn’t there.

“We’re listening to the recorder,” Gansey said.

“Yeah, I can see that,” Ronan said. Gansey rolled his eyes.

“Are you interested in listening?”

“Not particularly,” Ronan said, matching his patronizing tone. He threw his empty bowl carelessly into the sink and retreated loudly to his room. Ronan could hear the low murmur of Gansey and Adam’s voices through the wall.

Chainsaw flapped to his shoulder. Ronan kissed the top of her head and put her on the window sill. He slung his headphones around his neck and began to search his drawers for her food before he remembered that her last bag was finished. Ronan dreamed and stored extra bags of food in the pantry.

He opened his door. He could hear the tinny sound of the dream-recorder and the scribbling sound of Adam’s pen from the hallway. Cabeswater sounded bizarre and unnatural, sharp and choked by white noise all at once.

Ronan found Chainsaw’s food at the back of the pantry. From the other room he could hear the recorder’s gibberish Latin say “dices ad eum.”

The hair stood up on the back of Ronan’s neck. It was a curious sensation of deja vu: those same words, the same way, just as he’d heard them before. Before Ronan could even think about it Chainsaw’s food was falling to the floor with a thud, and he was crossing the room. He met Adam’s stunned blue eyes as his hand slammed down on the recorder, shutting it off abruptly.

Gansey stood up, chair screeching. “What are you doing?”

But Ronan wasn’t looking at Gansey. He was looking at Adam, who was looking at him. Ronan’s eyes searched Adam’s face desperately, furiously.

He looked down at Adam’s notebook. There, in his small, familiar scrawl: “Tell him.” Ronan looked back into Adam’s eyes.

“This is over,” Ronan said.

“Are you out of your mind?” Gansey said, voice raised. “We haven’t even finished listening yet--”

Ronan picked the recorder up and tucked it under his arm. Adam didn’t try to stop him.

Gansey looked between Adam and Ronan. “Are either of you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Ronan just kept looking at Adam. He said, “I’ll break it.”

Adam said, “Don’t.” Then he said, “Please.”

Gansey raised his eyebrows at both of them, lifting his wire-frame glasses to sit on his head.

Ronan put the dream-thing in front of Adam like it disgusted him. He stood up coldly and returned to his room, bird food in hand. A minute later he emerged from his room in new clothes, leather jacket slung over his shoulder.

“Are you going to tell me where you’re going?” Gansey asked dully.

Ronan slammed the door shut.

--

Ronan Lynch wearing a suit was a very troublesome image for Adam. It was something he could not afford to think about in non-private forums. The way the cut of his jacket made Ronan’s shoulders look. The sharp, clean lines. The bulge of fabric around his biceps, the curve of his ass, the long powerful legs. He looked purposeful and adult.

Adam watched Ronan leave Monmouth in expensive jeans and a leather jacket, and that was equally troublesome.

Gansey was staring at Adam like he was a stranger. Adam finally met his eyes reluctantly.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Adam closed his notebook and pushed it away. He put his face in his hands.

“Hey,” Gansey said, quieter. He could feel Gansey move like he wanted to put his hand on Adam’s shoulder, but he never did.

“Was it something Cabeswater said?” Gansey asked urgently, his voice still low. Adam peered at him through his fingers. “Is it about Glendower?”

Adam almost wanted to laugh. “No, Gansey. Nothing like that.”

Gansey was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Is he okay?”

Adam knew he meant Ronan. Truthfully he did not know how to respond. He stood up and pulled his threadbare jacket on, digging Ronan’s beanie from the pocket and pulling it over his ears.

“I think so,” Adam said, just to assure Gansey. “But I’m gonna go look for him.”

“But you have work,” Gansey protested, “And homework!”

“So do you.” Adam shrugged. “I want to go look for him.”

Gansey looked frantic. If Adam was this intent on finding Ronan, he was assuming the worst.

“Look, everything’s fine, alright? I just want to find him. I don’t have work until Tuesday anyways, remember? And no tests really until the end of the week.”

Gansey didn’t look convinced. Adam sighed.

“Stop worrying,” Adam said. He felt like shit. He wanted to tell Gansey everything: about the Barns, the dream, the fight, the horrible messy feeling in his chest. He wanted to talk about Ronan. He wanted to tell Gansey the truth, but he didn’t know how, and he didn’t know if it was his place.

Adam almost told him to go visit Blue, because she told him she and Gansey had been on strange terms recently and she missed him. But that didn’t quite feel like his place either. So he left on his bike, empty-bellied, heart fluttering, scanning the horizon for a BMW or a shaved head or a raven.

First Adam rode to St. Agnes. Sun in his eyes, he shielded his face with one arm as he pedaled. He didn’t expect Ronan to be there, but Adam couldn’t help the little dip of disappointment when he pulled into the empty lot of the church. He locked his bike outside and fished his pockets for his car keys. The Hondayota would be necessary to finish the search.

He drove to the Barns. The sun had nearly set by the time he arrived. Adam was afraid to go too far, and besides, he wasn’t sure what other magic the Barns had. It might have some precautions for trespassers; in fact Adam was almost positive it did. But he knew as soon as his car began to roll down the long dirt drive that Ronan wasn’t here. There was no BMW, for one. There were no lights on, for another. The Barns were asleep.

Next Adam tried Cabeswater. He didn’t like the idea of going to Cabeswater alone, in the dark, but he was desperate to find Ronan. Like the Barns, Adam barely made it past the margins of the forest before he was certain that Ronan wasn’t there. Ronan’s entire physical presence was too antithetical to stealthiness. If he was here, Adam would know. Cabeswater would tell him.

Now it was nearly 11 PM. The moon hung high in the sky. Adam drove to the fairgrounds. There were a few stray students lobbing fireworks into the sky, but the fields were otherwise barren.

Adam pulled off to the side of the road, exhausted, just to press his forehead into the wheel for a long moment.

Back to St. Agnes. This time he really did think Ronan might be waiting for him. He turned into the lot. No BMW. All the windows upstairs were dark. Everything just as Adam had left it.

No Ronan. No Ronan anywhere.

Adam drove to a corner deli and bought himself a ham sandwich and a 50 cent cup of weak coffee. He drove to Monmouth again, Ronan’s mixtape playing quietly from the speakers. The same songs, over and over, for the entire search.

He went to school the following morning. Still no Ronan. He and Gansey called and called, and though Ronan ignoring their calls was not exactly news-worthy, Adam couldn’t help the stiff clench of anxiety in his stomach.

He and Gansey went through their classes with rote indifference. Even diligent Adam’s attention span was peripheral at best. He received his teacher’s lectures, his peers’ mindless chatter, and Tad Carruther’s typical homophobic jabs with the same unblinking apathy. He was no fun to tease. They had a substitute teacher in English class who was particularly inane, and Adam wished Ronan was there to terrorize him.

After school Adam bought himself another 50-cent coffee to make it through the night. For his own peace of mind, he made one last trip back to Monmouth, just in case Ronan was there.

The BMW was outside. Heart thumping, Adam pulled up beside it. He took a deep breath and went upstairs. The first thing he heard was booming unintelligible music. The bass was so loud it nearly rattled the floor.

Ronan’s door was cracked open. A thin snake of light slithered onto the floor. Adam gently pushed it open.

“Ronan?”

The bass drowned him out. Ronan had his back facing him. Noah saw Adam in the doorway over Ronan’s shoulder, eyes widening. Ronan noticed, head whipping around. He was wearing a backwards snapback, with boxing gloves slung around his neck. Noah was wearing guards, a helmet, and an inflatable tube around his waist.

Ronan crossed the room to turn off the stereo, his expression inscrutable.

Adam realized quickly that silence was much worse. He cleared his throat awkwardly, scratching the back of his head. “Sorry, am I...interrupting something?” He asked, gesturing to Ronan and Noah’s boxing gear.

Noah laughed. Ronan shot him a dark look. He lifted his chin. “Scram, poltergeist.”

Noah disappeared obligingly, but not before muttering threats of voyeurism under his breath.

The ensuing silence was deafening. Adam stared at a swirl of dust motes next to Ronan’s head. He didn’t move any closer to the window.

Ronan said, “You look like shit.”

Adam’s eyebrows flicked minutely. This was not exactly a positive development for his confidence. Perhaps this was visible on Adam’s face because Ronan added, much quieter, “You look really tired.”

“I am really tired,” Adam said. He lifted his head to look at Ronan. “I stayed up all night looking for you.” He didn’t say this to make Ronan feel guilty. If anything he sounded sheepish, like he was embarrassed by how much he cared.

“Why?” Ronan muttered.

“Why?” Adam repeated, incredulous. “Because I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

This was not a satisfactory answer, and Adam knew it. Ronan was still scowling at the floor, leaning on the windowsill, his long legs braced on the floor. He chewed on one of his wristbands. Chainsaw flocked to his shoulder, wings flapping.

Adam let out a rough sigh. He scratched the back of his ear again. “Where did you go?”

Ronan’s head was bowed. He looked up at Adam through his eyelashes once, offering a brief glimpse of pale blue. He crossed his ankles, leaning back on his elbow. Ronan lifted his shoulder. “Around,” he said vaguely.

Adam waited.

Ronan took off the boxing gloves still hanging from his shoulders. They fell to the floor with a light thud. Ronan crossed his arms across his chest. “Went driving,” he mumbled.

“How far did you go?” Adam asked.

Ronan lifted his chin. “Far,” he admitted.

Adam took the corner of his bottom lip into his mouth and nodded. A shaft of sunlight spilled onto the floor. A bird twittered outside the window. Chainsaw cawed back at it. Adam spared another glance at Ronan. He was scowling at the ground like that might hide how pretty his face was, but it wasn’t working. Adam felt stunned by the sight of him. Ronan looked arresting -- Adam did not have the vocabulary to describe how beautiful he was. Maybe it wasn’t Adam’s fault -- maybe there simply weren’t any words for him. Maybe no language was yet worthy of Ronan Lynch.

“Will you--” Adam’s voice came out hoarse. He cleared his throat, embarrassed. “Will you at least stand within five feet of me? Making me so damn nervous like this.” His accent slipped, proving he actually was nervous.

“Why?” Ronan rasped. This time he didn’t sound as petulant. This time it sounded like it hurt him to ask.

Adam stepped closer to him, his adam’s apple bobbing anxiously. Ronan stepped off the windowsill, stretching to his full height, though he made no effort to move closer to Adam.

Finally Adam was only a couple feet away. Close enough to hear Ronan breathe and smell the expensive soap he used.

Ronan was very still. Suddenly Adam’s hand darted out to touch his, though he lost confidence halfway through the motion. His fingers ended up brushing Ronan’s knuckles in a way that was more delicate than he intended. Ronan moved violently away, like he’d been burned.

Adam’s arm fell back to his side. He turned his face away from Ronan, red-cheeked. His eyes were closed.

He heard Ronan’s feet close the gap between them, his shadow falling over Adam. Ronan reached out, just as tentatively, for Adam’s fingers.

Adam jolted, his eyes springing to Ronan’s face. Ronan looked like he was holding his breath, his eyes wild. He did not try to pull his hand away. Ronan reached for Adam’s wrists, still hesitant, like he wasn’t sure he could. Like he was confirming that Adam was real. His mouth was a hard knot, nostrils flaring, brow low, dark and noble. Adam didn’t know it was possible for someone to look so kingly while wearing a backwards hat. He made no moves to pull away.

Adam took a shaky breath, lowering his eyes. Their faces were so close. In a stranger braver world Adam would’ve grabbed Ronan by the back of the neck and kissed him. But he didn’t do that. He felt his mouth trembling there, waiting, but neither of them could move. Adam’s heart was thumping so wildly he was sure Ronan could hear it.

The door swung open with a dull bang against the wall. Gansey’s voice sang, “Ronan, you here? I picked up some food from Nino’s, Blue even threw in some extra garlic rolls--”

Ronan and Adam flinched violently, springing away from each other. Gansey cut himself off abruptly, his surprised gaze searching both their faces, arms crossed over his chest.

Ronan, spooked, swiped a hand over his hair, stumbling backwards to the window. Adam moved away from him, hugging himself around the middle, as if mere proximity would betray them.

Gansey blinked at them. “What’s going on?”

Adam felt all the breath whoosh out of him. He spared a wide-eyed glance at Ronan and said abruptly, “I -- I have to go--”

Ronan stared after him, eyes lost and fragile. He blinked and the look was gone, replaced by his usual scowling indifference.

Adam avoided eye contact with Gansey as he fled the room. He pulled his threadbare jacket tighter over his shoulders as he ran down the steps of Monmouth, keys jingling in his pocket. His breath came out of him in ragged, chilly streams. His hands shook as he fished his pockets for his car keys, dry and blistering from the cold. When he finally managed to retrieve them, they slipped through his fumbling fingers to the ground.

“Wait!”

Adam was bent to the ground searching for his keys when he heard Ronan shout. Ronan came down the steps, leather jacket tight around his powerful shoulders, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. Adam’s fingers closed around his keys. He stood up slowly, dusting off his knees.

“What...” Ronan looked at him, chewing on the inside of his lip. “What did you come over to say?”

Adam couldn’t tear his eyes away from Ronan’s mouth.

“I just...” What was Adam supposed to say? I wanted to see you? Confess my feelings? Kiss you? “...wanted to apologize again,” he finished lamely.

Ronan didn’t say anything to this. Adam looked down at his shoes.

“I’ve been shitty,” Adam said, ducking his head. He stuffed his cold hands deeper into his pockets.

Ronan snorted. “Pretty positive that’s my line, Parrish.”

Adam looked at him quizzically. Ronan rubbed a hand over the back of his head. His eyes finally lifted to meet Adam’s.

“Adam, look,” Ronan began, like it was costing him everything to say whatever he was about to say. Adam blinked at him. Ronan never called him Adam. “I’m not a fucking idiot.”

Adam continued to stare at him.

“I knew you had some idea,” Ronan muttered. He pulled at one of his wristbands, avoiding Adam’s eyes. “Look it’s not like I thought I was being fucking shady about it. I mean I gave you a mixtape, Parrish. That’s like the oldest move in the book.”

Adam’s cheeks flushed.

“But I...I shouldn’t have gotten mad. Shouldn’t have treated you like...” Ronan trailed off miserably.

“Why not?” Adam replied. “I was being an asshole.”

“Didn’t really give you much choice,” Ronan said.

“I called you a coward. It was cruel,” Adam said simply. “And more than that, it was untrue. You’re...really, really brave, actually. I -- I hope you know that.”

Ronan snorted. He’d never been called brave before. Reckless, stupid, fearless in a bad way. But never brave.

“And for the record,” Adam said, his cheeks even pinker. “I liked the mixtape.” Even quieter, he added, “I’ve liked all the gifts.”

“You don’t have to--” Ronan ran his hands over his scalp again. “Look, bottom line is -- I gave you all that shit because I wanted to. Okay, I wanted to. Not because I thought I’d get something back or anything. You don’t need to...” his voice faded off. He looked at Adam. “I mean it. Damnit Parrish wipe that miserable fucking look off your face. I just wanted to give it to you. It’s not a deal, it’s not a bargain, it’s just...something for you if you want it. I’m not gonna die if you don’t fucking reciprocate. I never expected that. I mean it--”

“Ronan--” Adam started, staring at the ground, but Ronan cut him off.

“Adam, look at me. I mean that. You don’t...you don’t owe me anything. I don’t need anything from you--”

“Ronan--”

“I just want you to be--” happy, safe, unbruised, fed, fulfilled, alive.

“Ronan, Cabeswater wasn’t talking to you,” Adam said, finally raising his voice loud enough to be heard over Ronan’s rambling.

Ronan was struck silent. He blinked at Adam, bewildered. It was a strange look on him. “What do you mean?”

Adam sighed. He picked at a frayed strip of skin around his nailbed. He couldn’t look Ronan in the eye.

“At first the recording confused me,” Adam said. “I thought I was hearing ‘dices ad eum, ad eum.’ I didn’t know why it would be repeating.”

He looked up at Ronan under his eyelashes. “But it wasn’t repeating. It was saying ‘dices ad eum, Adam.’” He lifted his head. Ronan’s face was very still, but that fragile look had returned to his eyes.

“Cabeswater was saying my name. ‘Tell him, Adam.’ It was me it was talking to. Not you.” Adam released a tight lungful of breath.

A muscle leapt in Ronan’s jaw. Adam was now just as close to him now as he’d been in Ronan’s room. Ronan stood up a little straighter. Adam was so close to him now that he had to tilt his head back to see Ronan’s eyes.

Hoarsely, Ronan asked, “So what is you need to tell me?”

Adam’s face twisted up. He let out a long sigh. “You’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you?”

Ronan’s mouth twitched. A ghost of a smirk. The closest Adam had seen him come to smiling in days. “I can’t make you do anything, Parrish.”

There it was again. A strong thrum in his heart, like plucking at a violin string. Adam swallowed. “I dunno,” he shrugged. “I’ve done plenty of dumb shit I wouldn’t have ordinarily done thanks to you.”

“So what?” Ronan arched an eyebrow. “Add this to the list of list of ‘dumb shit’ then--”

Adam crushed his lips to Ronan’s, effectively shutting him up.

It was not a long kiss. Adam’s mouth hadn’t even been on Ronan’s for an entire second before Ronan jerked away, his fingers at his mouth. His face was almost wild. Like something dangerous, something to be held back. Restrained somehow. His face was too raw in that moment, naked with all the things he wanted to say to Adam, but couldn’t, because words had always felt so inadequate to him. Never right. They never seemed to capture the immensity with which Ronan Lynch experienced everything: a rapture more rapturous, a fury more furious, a grief more devastating.

Then Ronan kissed him. His arms swept around Adam’s back, and Adam’s arms somehow made their way around Ronan’s neck, clutching desperately at the back of his jacket collar. He kissed Adam like Adam’s breath gave him life. He didn’t think he could ever forget what Ronan’s mouth felt like against his, sharp and perfect and painful, shaking something loose in him. Like the phantom feeling of Ronan’s lips against his own would never leave his mouth. He felt wild, hot, alive. Vulnerable and safe all at once. It felt like Ronan was everywhere. Is this what it felt like to be Ronan every day? So alive that he even when he sleeps he’s a force of energy. So alive that he wakes up everything he kisses.

He tasted like beer and toothpaste, a misty morning, a farm, blood, a boy. Ronan Lynch. He was kissing Ronan Lynch.

Ronan pulled his mouth away. Adam realized belatedly that really it was a sip of a kiss, no matter how luxurious and live-giving it had felt. They were both breathing hard, each heave of their chests releasing thick puffs of cold air. Ronan searched Adam’s face desperately.

“Was that -- was that --”

Adam cut him off with another kiss. Ronan’s hands slid further down Adam’s back to his hips. Adam pulled away, brushing his lips against Ronan’s once more before pressing his face into Ronan’s shoulder.

“Play it cool, man,” Ronan whispered into his good ear. Adam couldn’t help but shiver. “I think Gansey’s watching us from the window.”

Adam let out a sound between a laugh and a groan. He could feel Ronan’s heartbeat pumping beside his own.

“It’s not like he hasn’t figured it out,” Adam said. He pushed his face into the crook of Ronan’s neck. Ronan’s arms tightened around him. He smelled like leather and laundry and his aftershave, something expensive and spicy. Adam closed his eyes.

He allowed himself one last long moment in Ronan’s arms before reluctantly stepping away, keys clutched tightly in his fist. Ronan watched him, burying his hands in his pockets.

“I gotta go to work,” Adam mumbled. Ronan looked off to the side and nodded. Adam swallowed tightly and took both of Ronan’s hands in his own, squeezing them tightly. “You coming to school tomorrow?” he asked quietly.

Ronan raised an eyebrow at him, eyes glittering. “Sure, Parrish.”

“Will you?” Adam demanded. Ronan laughed at his stern expression.

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Adam grumbled something under his breath. Ronan took him by the chin. Adam’s blue eyes found his briefly before slipping closed again as Ronan’s mouth met his, gentle and lingering.

--

Ronan technically attended every single one of his classes the following day, though he can’t exactly say his mind was fully present. Not with Adam Parrish sitting close enough to touch. Now that Ronan had kissed him, not kissing Adam was even more unbearable than it had been before. Pre-Kiss Adam was an unattainable fantasy and therefore the agony of not kissing him was a manageable daily struggle. Post-Kiss Adam was a living breathing reality not two feet away from him, looking unreasonably attractive in his neat secondhand uniform.

The bell rang. It was almost the end of the day. Adam’s shoulder brushed against his deliberately before he departed for Chemistry, an unspoken agreement to meet Ronan after school.

Ronan’s final period was gym. Since the physical fitness teacher was also the tennis instructor, and since Ronan was one of the team’s best players, he spent every gym period whacking balls across the court as his leisure.

Ronan’s tennis partner was a guy in their year called Heath Summerow. He wore lots of polo shirts and had a stiff quiff of shiny blonde hair. Ronan thought he was what Gansey might be like if Gansey did a lot of drugs. Heath and Ronan had a very bizarre relationship, beyond being strangely compatible tennis partners. Ronan didn’t know much about Heath besides the fact that he wore a lot of yellow and once accidentally sold mescaline to a middle schooler. Heath didn’t know much about Ronan other than that he wore a lot of leather and brought a bird to school. But Heath was a good tennis player, quick on his feet, and while he couldn’t match Ronan’s powerful backhand, he was the closest anyone at Aglionby had come so far.

As they stretched, Heath was telling him about how he thought he might be addicted to ketamine. Ronan’s monosyllabic responses did not deter his rambling in the slightest. His voice was grating and husky. Heath fished his pockets for a cigarette, offering one to Ronan, who dismissed it with a wave.

On the court, they volleyed the ball back and forth at a lazy pace for a half hour. Eventually Heath just started hitting balls over the net for Ronan to aggressively backhand, the satisfying thwack of the ball and squeak of tennis shoes the only sounds around until the bell rang promptly at 3:30.

Ronan saw Adam’s dusty head approaching in the distance. For a while Adam watched Ronan play from the sidelines. He threw his backpack at his feet and watched through the fence, fingers hooked through the metal rings.

“What’s Parrish doing here?” Heath asked.

Adam released the fence with a loud clanging sound.

“Beat it, Summerow,” Ronan said, without looking at him. He twirled his racket between his fingers.

Heath muttered something about Swan under his breath before obliging. As soon as his blonde head disappeared from the court, Adam hopped deftly over the fence.

“Hey,” Adam said. Ronan admired him quietly: the halo of sunshine in his hair, the cold flush in his cheeks, the willowy strength of him under his neat Aglionby uniform. Ronan thinks about the way Adam’s fingers brushed against his yesterday. About how easy it would to just yank him by the collar and kiss him.

“Hey,” Ronan replied, his eyes still lazily roaming over Adam’s face. He twirled the racket between his fingers again. Despite the pearls of sweat beading at his forehead, his shoulders were hunched with cold, hands stuffed deep in his pockets. He looked at Adam, eyes brows raised, before he tilted his head in the direction of the woods behind the courts.

“Come on,” Ronan murmured. Adam followed Ronan out of the court, watching the loose masterful way Ronan twirled his racket, the powerful swing of his arms, the brutal Y-shape of his torso, all broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped.

The dry winter leaves crunched loudly under their feet as Adam followed Ronan to the rim of the school grounds. A towering bank of trees loomed ahead of them. Ronan stopped at the edge, near the foot of a sprawl of tree roots.

“You planning on murdering me out here, Lynch?” Adam asked.

“Not at the moment,” Ronan drawled. He turned around to face Adam, hands still stuffed deep in his pockets.

Adam kissed him. He didn’t want to wait a second longer. Ronan seemed startled still again, too shocked by Adam’s mouth against his to move. Adam gently reached for his wrists to pull his hands from his pockets. As soon as he touched him, Ronan jerked away, pushing Adam off.

“Sorry,” Adam mumbled, ducking his head. He was too eager. He should have asked first. He should have waited to make sure Ronan didn’t think he was making a mistake. “Sorry, I--”

Ronan took Adam by the shoulders and backed him against a tree. His mouth was on Adam’s before Adam could even close his eyes. He kissed him slowly and deeply, with one hand on the hinge of Adam’s jaw and the other on his hip. Ronan’s mouth was soft and plush and like a dream. Adam could feel himself slipping like quicksand into the cradle of Ronan’s hands. Everything was slow and heavy and languid, like they were breathing underwater. Some dim corner of his consciousness wondered if this is what it always felt like to be with Ronan: loose and easy and raw. Adam felt certain he could lose himself here, in Ronan’s warm arms and strong hands and clever mouth. He felt like he was straddling the line, swimming just under the surface of his control: he could pull himself up if he wanted but he’d rather float in the deep, dark lull of Ronan’s current.

Ronan broke away first, his mouth jerking from Adam’s. He was panting hard, pressing his face into his arm to catch his breath.

Adam touched his face very gently. Ronan gave him a look under his eyelashes, fearful and fearsome all at once.

“I’m really shit at this,” Ronan said lowly. “Huge surprise, right?”

Adam snorted. “Yeah, I’m not exactly winning any awards over here, either.”

“So...what now?” said Ronan.

Adam lifted an eyebrow. “You’re asking me?”

“You always seem to know what to do.”

“Hardly.” Adam snorted again. “I know just enough to get by. And I’m barely doing that.”

“Well that’s still a hell of a lot more than me,” Ronan said, with a self-deprecating shoulder lift that Adam definitely did not like.

Adam did not try to touch Ronan this time. He just leaned forward enough to brush his lips against Ronan’s, so light it almost wasn’t a kiss. Ronan’s eyes fluttered shut. He was so stunning it made Adam’s chest hurt.

“Adam,” Ronan whispered, his eyes tracing the contours of Adam’s face like he was committing it to memory, his gaze heavy-lidded with lazy rapture. Adam took a deep, shivering gulp of air, like he was finally coming up for breath. Ronan’s hands skated down Adam’s arms and land at his hands, running his thumbs over the bones of Adam’s wrists. He pressed another lingering kiss to the corner of Adam’s mouth.

“Can I take you somewhere?” Ronan asked. “If you don’t have work. Or homework. Or Cabeswater, or any of the other shit you’re always doing.”

Adam didn’t have any urgent commitments. Right now Adam wanted nothing more than to drive somewhere with Ronan, anywhere. To be awake, to be alive, to feel all his senses working at once, to feel how powerfully his heart pumped blood.

Ronan was beautiful. There was no use pretending he wasn’t. Adam was tired of pretending to be indifferent. He was tired of denying himself what he wanted. He was tired of forgoing Present Adam’s needs for Future Adam’s needs. He was tired of Future Adam altogether. He was thinking of throwing him in the bin, or at the very least hiding him under the bed for a while so Present Adam -- real Adam, blood-pumping Adam, breathing Adam, right-here Adam -- could have some kind of chance.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Where do you want to go?”