Chapter Text
The first time they’d run into each other, it had been an accident.
Noah had been drifting - aimless, as he was now - never sure which direction he was coming from, or which way he wanted to go. Sometimes he would forget where he was. Sometimes the streets were unfamiliar and the city was too loud. He’d been a boy that had grown up in rural environments - be it the sleepy town of Henrietta, Virginia; or the tranquil corners of Plumas, California. In a far-away sense he knew that an old version of him would have liked Massachusetts. Well, a very young version of him, his past self, would have.
He’d once liked mess and noise. He’d thrived in the hectic bustle of humanity all around him. He’d been fresh faced and eager for another day, just like his sister and her colleagues. Adele had been so sure that bringing him along while she helped with the curation of a new exhibit for one of the local museums would be just the thing he needed.
But Noah didn’t feel inspired by the scenery, or the nightlife, or much of anything anymore.
****
The first time he’d met Adam was in Harvard Square.
Noah had stopped to stare at a large oak tree. It reminded him of the one he’d spent springs and summers climbing with his friends as they explored every inch of a forest tucked away near the sprawling Henrietta mountains. It was a place that had always felt like magic to him, or maybe that had just been the words of the boy they’d looked to as their leader. They’d gone on countless adventures with him in search of some long lost dead king. So much about life had felt magical then, but he’d also been young and stupid.
His father still thought he was being young and stupid. He was probably right.
Noah knew he was letting his life go to waste.
The tree standing in Harvard Square had stirred something in him, time blurring around him as he stood before it and floated through aching memories. Too many feelings of things lost, and the tree seemed to warp before his eyes into something rotten and gnarled. There was the crack of his head against the bark, and then the heavy blow of a board against his face.
Noah had jolted back at the sense memory, staggered away so quickly that he collided with someone behind him. A someone that had been running, and so the force of their momentum hitting one another had sent Noah suddenly and sharply to the ground. He’d barely noticed the blood that welled up from a bad scrape down his arm. He’d touched his face instead, feeling out the raised lines of surgical scars. The distinct way his cheekbone went slightly concave.
Remembering, remembering, remembering - and then it was over. It wasn’t happening . It was a thing that had happened . It was a thing that always felt like it was still happening.
The man’s voice had pulled him from the cycle of thought-memory and Noah had blinked to where his arm was being motioned to. Where there was a bloodied wound, and then he was letting himself be pulled back up to his feet. He’d recognized at the time that he should say something, maybe explain himself, but all that made it past his lips was a glum, “Sorry.” He’d continued to stand there doing nothing until the man had let out a long sigh and regarded Noah with a stare he couldn’t discern.
It was like Noah had blinked and the setting changed. The tree had disappeared, instead before him was the man still. There was a drinking fountain where a water bottle was filled, then used to clean the blood off his arm.
Noah had only noticed the watch because of this gesture. The sunlight had glinted off the surface, and Noah had been overcome with a sense of familiarity. It was well made, old fashioned in a way most wouldn’t think to wear these days. The strap was a thick piece of black leather, but it was the watch face that had triggered the memory. He knew this watch. He knew there was no other like it. The design was wholly unique - hand painted with Celtic love knots. A gift from wife to husband, then filched by son after his father’s death.
The only conclusion to be made was that this person knew Ronan Lynch. They had to know Ronan Lynch in such a profound way that it made Noah curious and devastated in equal measure. In Noah’s absence, Ronan Lynch had found someone he loved deeply enough he’d given away his late father’s watch. Ronan had found someone he loved even more than Gansey , and that stirred up so much feeling in Noah it had blindsided him.
So who was Adam Parrish? A name was all he’d learned.
***
The second time they met had been only half accident.
Noah hadn’t realized he’d wound up at the park again. He hadn’t strayed towards the same tree, but instead a collection of bushes where he’d watched bees flit from flower to flower. His mind buzzed with their sounds, and the memory of Gansey’s body going into anaphylactic shock weighed on his mind. He’d barely known what to do at the time as he’d scrambled with the epi-pen in Gansey’s pocket.
How nearly Gansey had lost his life that day.
How nearly they’d lost Ronan a few years later.
How nearly they’d lost him, and they’d never know.
Adam had jogged past him, then done a lap around the park before he’d come up beside him. Noah had blinked himself back into reality again as Adam rattled off the scientific name of the flower and some basic facts about them. It had reminded Noah so much of Gansey, and his heart had ached with the loss of him. Noah hadn’t said anything to fill the silence that fell between them after, and eventually Adam had excused himself to continue his run.
***
The third time was on purpose.
Noah had shown up at the same time three days in a row before they’d crossed paths again. This time Adam found him sitting on a park bench while Noah’s eyes had been scanning runners as they went by. He’d told Adam his name that day - just his first name. While Adam hadn’t smiled, there had been something in the way he’d looked back at Noah that had seemed pleased. Noah had felt pleased too. Even if all they’d inevitably talked about was the weather, it was the most he’d said to anyone recently, outside of the girl at the pizza parlor down the way. It had felt a little like progress.
***
It was a morning in his third week spent within the city that Noah took his chances on the park again.
Despite the weather dipping towards brisk and chilly, Noah wore the same style of crew neck and shorts as every day prior. They weren’t really his style, but his sister had packed his suitcase for him. Noah barely had the energy to shower and change most days. He often just wore whatever he’d pulled out. He hadn’t even unpacked his things, instead living entirely out of his suitcase. He was only leaving the apartment so that his sister wouldn’t worry.
He was watching the runners again, scanning them for any sign of familiar dusty brown hair. Tracking their movements, he found himself wondering if he even had that kind of muscle in his legs anymore. Could he manage anything more than a short sprint? Stretching out a pale leg, he tilted his head at an uncanny angle to survey the long, thin scar running up the inside - from ankle to mid calf. Stretching out his toes in his sneakers next, he noted there was no pain that reverberated back at him. He could still envision it though - a branch catching along skin, his ankle snapping as he fell. The white hot pain of it.
“Does it still hurt?” A voice asks from behind him. A distinct cadence to it, like something had been sanded away.
It’s because he’s not looking anymore that Adam appears in his life again in such a jarring fashion. He hadn’t even noticed the shadow looming over him. When he looks back, it’s with surprise alight on his face. Noah thinks about the sound of that voice, certain that something is missing from it, only he isn’t sure what. Then he processes the words he’s been asked and re-cycles them a few times in his head before speaking.
“Physically? No.” He says, looking down at his leg again, testing the motion of it to make sure his words are true. “I was just looking, and then I got distracted.” He admits, only realizing seconds later how that didn’t make much sense.
“For you, I mean. I was looking for you, and then -” Noah waves a hand at his leg before shrugging one shoulder. “I don’t think I’m a runner.”
He wasn’t sure what he was anymore, but probably not a runner. He preferred his means of transportation to have wheels.
Adam seems to contemplate him for a long minute before he finally nods. “I can understand that.”
His admittance feels slow, but then he eventually reaches up to tap his left ear. Noah’s eyes follow the motion.
“I’m deaf in this ear. Fell and busted it a few years back. Sometimes I feel like… it’s happening again.”
Noah stares a little more intently, like he can somehow tell the difference, but there isn’t any obvious damage to be seen. All internal, no outward proof. He’s almost jealous, but the feeling doesn’t last for long when he tries to imagine what being deaf must be like. He reaches up to touch the left side of his face, tracing over the dip in his skin below the scarring. He’d once had a face that people adored - girls especially. A hundred dollar smile . Now most people got uncomfortable when they looked at him.
“Me too. Busted it and fell.” He doesn’t tell Adam how .
“I forget sometimes, but my body never does.” Adam admits, shrugging one shoulder back. “Don’t think it ever will.”
“I try to forget.” Noah says simply.
Only it feels so far from simple it’s become completely out of his reach. He tries, but it never works. There always seemed to be something dragging him back into memories. He didn’t know if anything could ever make him forget.
“So, you were looking for me?” Adam asks, and this time he smiles.
It’s only with one corner of his mouth, but Noah thinks he likes it. There’s a severity to Adam’s mouth that makes Noah think he isn’t one for smiles. He wonders how easily Ronan can make him smile. Ronan had always been good at that, in his own abrasive way. Noah wonders if Adam is capable of making Ronan smile in return. He can barely remember the last time he’d seen Ronan’s smile free of pain.
He refocuses again and holds up three fingers. “Three times is supposed to be a charm. Four is uh… luck?” What was four times? Maybe he should have asked Blue about the significance of fours.
Blue Sargent seemed to understand the importance of numbers. She’d told him three was a very solid number, and that maybe it meant something that he’d run into the same person in the same place three times.
“Four? I’ve heard good things come in threes, and something about sevens. I don’t know much about four. Four leaf clovers, maybe?” Adam muses. “Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three is a pattern. Four is a habit. Maybe that’s it.”
Noah’s brain clicks on something. It’s so automatic he speaks without even intending to.
“There are no coincidences.” It’s his voice saying the words, but it’s another voice ringing in his ears.
Coincidence? I think not. Gansey’s voice seems so alive in his head that he feels almost disoriented by the fact the face looking back at him is someone else.
Does Adam know Gansey? Have they met? Knowing Ronan meant knowing Gansey, didn’t it?
Adam laughs, the sound something soft and almost startled. “Sorry, just - you reminded me of a friend. He always says there’s no such thing as coincidences. I think he puts too much stock into things like fate, though.”
Noah can’t entirely place the warm feeling that passes through him at the quick knowledge that Adam does know Gansey. It has to be him. He’s not sure how to reconcile the feelings inside him to know his two closest childhood friends are still connected. Quick on the heels of that warmth is also a pang - a sharp realization that Adam has slotted himself into the place Noah had once held.
Three is a grounding number .
Three. Gansey, Ronan, Adam. What did four make, if anything?
Nothing. It was nothing.
“I know someone like that.” Noah says, but doesn’t give Adam anything more.
“I’m a bit too pragmatic to put much faith in fate or magic, but it’s nice to know someone who does.” Adam notes.
“I don’t know what I am.” Noah replies, his voice not gaining any inflection. There was no concern or despair. He just didn’t know.
He didn’t think anyone had ever called him pragmatic , so he could probably cross that out. Had he ever held much stock in faith or magic? They were nice concepts. Blue had talked about her family a little, and she’d made it sound like those things could be real if you knew where to look. Gansey was like that too. Noah could remember following him and Ronan almost blindly along. He’d always been happy to just be a part of things, even if he didn’t fully understand them.
Barry had always called him airheaded and foolish.
Barry.
Barrington had hated that nickname. Noah hadn’t realized just how much until it was too late to fix anything. Noah can feel himself losing focus, but Adam shifts nearby and it draws him back in.
Adam seems to be watching him with consideration again before he asks, “Do you know what you want to be?”
Noah blinks slowly, trying to give the question a proper moment of thought. What do you want to be? It’s not the first time he’s been asked this question. All through high school he’d been asked that question a lot. His answer had changed every time. A pro skater. A model. A fashion mogul. A Nascar racer. A rockstar. A surfer. A yacht owner. An adventurer. A teacher. A good boyfriend. Now when he thought of that question he didn’t have a dozen different answers anymore. He felt like he had just one.
“I want to be me again.”
Or maybe he just wanted to be someone . Anyone beyond this ghost of a person he was now.
That felt like too much to explain, so he doesn’t. Instead he asks, “So, is this a habit now? Should I come again?”
Adam just watches him in silence for what seems like a very long time.
“I wouldn’t mind if you did.” Adam finally tells him, and it sounds sincere.
He’s wearing that hint of a smile again, and Noah feels a spark of accomplishment in putting it there.
“Okay. I’ll come here again. Do you need to finish your run?”
“I probably should. I have class in a few hours.” Adam glances down at his watch - that watch . “Maybe I’ll come by earlier, next time. So we can talk more. I usually run every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”
“Okay. I’ll be here.” Noah promises. Having a place to be was better than wandering around aimlessly. Adele would think so, anyway.
Adam nods and starts to lift what looks like an airpod back up towards his ear. “Then I’ll see you Friday. Maybe bring a jacket next time? It’s getting cold.”
Did he even have a jacket? He’d have to dig around in his suitcase to see.
“Okay. See you later.” He says, and hopes it’s true.