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It was two in the morning and Gansey had been alive again for some of the longest hours on planet Earth by the time anyone was willing to leave 300 Fox Way.
Adam got into the BMW without thinking and once he was there he saw that Ronan hadn’t been thinking about it either, didn’t question him or even look. He glanced over at him now as Ronan started the ignition, leaned back and scrubbed a hand over his face. Adam thought: Ronan looked like he had seen some shit. They’d all seen some shit today.
Ronan’s eyes were heavy-lidded, skin sallow and pale, his hands resting lazily on the top of his steering wheel as he navigated down Blue’s lane. Opal was asleep in the back seat under Ronan’s Aglionby jacket. This day—or yesterday, Adam realized as he looked at the clock—had lasted a million years. He forgot what real sleep-in-a-bed sleep felt like. Leaving Gansey and Blue had felt like pulling teeth, but they’d go back tomorrow.
If they were heading for St. Agnes, they’d need to turn off the freeway soon. Otherwise, they’d end up someplace else, and Adam realized too late that he and Ronan hadn’t talked about where they were going. They hadn’t had much of a chance to talk about anything at all. It wasn’t time for the big stuff and it still wasn’t. When Adam tried to pull logical, coherent thought from the recesses of his brain they came away wispy with exhaustion, dissipated adrenaline and fear. Nothing in their lives had felt real for forty-eight hours, and when he tried to think about Ronan, it was just this not-unpleasant static and snatches of memories that, if he hadn’t known better, he’d swear came from someone else; punctuated breaths, lips in the rough hollows under jaws, fingers digging into ropey muscle.
He glanced over at Ronan, who was looking at the road. The radio wasn’t even on. The turn-off loomed.
“Uh,” Adam said, quiet as anything, and Ronan immediately spun the wheel and hauled the car onto the gravel shoulder. Adam’s hand slapped against the ceiling. “Jesus.”
The BMW skidded to a halt and Ronan looked over at him. He looked … intense. He always looked intense, except for when he was trying not to, and Adam had always attributed this to his eyes; blue-eyed people had a way of looking incurably alert in the clearness of their pupil size, the shock of colour, something like that. But it was also just Ronan. Or maybe that was just the way he looked at Adam.
He expected Ronan to ask where they were headed, in some snippy and backwards way, but he didn't. He just sat there and waited.
If Adam had been more coherent, he would have picked an unaffected phrase that subtly told Ronan I really, really, really don't want to be alone right now.
But, he wasn't more coherent. He blinked a few times, rubbed his left ear and said, “Can I sleep with you?”
Ronan raised his eyebrows. Adam became slightly more awake.
“At—yours,” he corrected. “Sleep at yours. And I mean just—”
“I know,” Ronan said. His look softened, his weird intensity giving way to bewilderment. “Sleep.”
“Yeah.”
Ronan shrugged a shoulder at Adam like it was nothing and pulled back onto the highway, heading for the Barns. “Sure,” he said, which for him was polite, and Adam might have believed that he was actually flippant if it weren't for his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. The freeway was poorly lit and it was only once in a while that light from a street lamp crawled up the dashboard and ran a slice of colour over Ronan’s face, cutting hard shadows down his throat, the hollow under his bottom lip. Adam looked and then looked away. Looked back. Looked away.
How were you supposed to know if you loved someone?
With girls it was easy, because you were supposed to love them. If your hands brushed it was never an accident, and if she looked up at you through her lashes, that meant something, too. But what was any of this? What did it mean that him and Ronan didn't call each other by their first names half the time, didn't hold hands or touch or … Maybe they flirted. Adam wouldn't know. Ronan tried to be a black box—indestructible and full of information it was impossible to know—but he wasn't that good at it, or he hadn't been lately. Adam was starting to get him. Making Ronan smile made him want to light himself on fire and it wasn't the same as sweetly brushing a girl’s fingertips when she handed you something, but it gave him the same childish, clandestine rush, underlaid with an understanding that it meant something.
He thought about what Gansey had said to him. Why do we breathe air? Because we love air? Because we don’t want to suffocate.
Adam felt a bit like suffocating now.
The dense woods that quarantined the Barns from the rest of the world smelled of ozone, peat and earth, and Ronan cracked his window as they barreled down the winding gravel drive that curved through it. Adam had his head resting on his window and Ronan pressed the button to roll it down. Adam jerked up, jolted out of sleep.
“Wakey wakey,” Ronan said. Adam couldn't find it in him to be angry. Too soon.
Ronan parked, silent, then got out and scooped Opal out of the back seat and into his arms. He fumbled to unlock the door without putting her down and it seemed absurd to Adam that he'd even have his keys after everything they'd been through; Ronan’s wallet and keys still being in his pocket after they'd unearthed a centuries-old king, seen their best friend die and come back, and nearly died themselves was harder to believe than anything else that had happened. Ronan was almost destroyed from the inside out starting with his soul and here he was, dropping his house keys on a table in his entryway. He still had dried black dream-sludge crusted inside his nostrils and he was toeing his sneakers off, revealing dirty grey tube socks.
Adam wasn't sure that his heart would ever fully unclench, but it started to.
Ronan kept the lights off as he padded into the living room and deposited Opal on the couch. She stayed asleep. He slid into the kitchen on his socked feet and Adam followed. He got a glass from the drying rack, filled it with tap water, then turned and presented it to Adam. Adam took the wet glass from him and let their fingers brush; Ronan’s eyes flickered, just barely. He leaned on the counter and drank gratefully and Ronan leaned next to him, just within of shoulder-brush range. Adam could hardly keep his eyes open.
“I’m not sleeping,” Ronan said, in response to nothing. Adam couldn’t remember the last time Ronan had slept. He put his glass down on the counter and looked at him. He looked like shit.
“Lyn—”
“I’m not fucking doing it.”
Adam couldn’t begin to blame him. When was the last time he’d slept? When he’d seen his mother’s body? Cabeswater wasn’t there anymore, or not in any form he’d want it in. He hadn’t slept much before all this and now that Adam had seen even a fraction of what Ronan’s dream-life was like, he couldn’t ask him to sleep.
“I wasn’t gonna make you,” Adam said. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. In the dark, he could just make out Ronan staring down at the tiled floor. Adam stuffed his hands in his pockets and felt like an idiot, but even then it was nice to feel anything at all.
He waited for Ronan to get loud and defensive and storm outside to be with his lightning bugs and foggy, windswept fields. Instead, he sighed out his nose, frustrated, and brushed past Adam. “C’mon.”
He climbed the narrow, twisted staircases that led up to the bedrooms, but he paused at the landing to Declan’s room. Above it was Ronan’s. He looked at Adam. A decision was to be made.
“C’mon,” Adam said softly, making it. He nodded at the stairs behind him and Ronan kept climbing. Adam’s slow, stuttering heart was getting the hang of being alive again. He watched the way Ronan’s grubby black t-shirt hung from his wide, bony shoulders, and thought for the thousandth time about what happened in the BMW; the blood, the flowers, ripping off his blindfold and seeing sludge dripping from Ronan’s nose, too incensed over Gansey to even consider the fact that Ronan might have already been dead. His throat got tight.
Ronan’s bedroom smelled like him, dirty clothes half masked by a sweet, heady cologne or deodorant or something else that probably came in a grey or black container. Adam would know it anywhere. He wondered what he smelled like and all the answers to his own question were mean.
Ronan dropped his wallet on his nightstand and pulled his socks off, then clicked the lamp on. His room was the same as Adam remembered it, but in the dark it looked different, cozy and close and incandescent. The trinkets and baubles and indescribable shapes of things that sat stacked on his windowsill and dresser seemed even more impossible and delightful. Adam stood awkwardly at the foot of the unmade bed, very clearly a visitor. Or an invader, he thought.
Adam didn’t make a habit of being awkward. He understood people well enough and he knew how to watch them and play their game, which meant that any social faux-pas he committed was from an inability to execute rather than plain awkwardness. But this was a special, supremely awkward situation and he had never been so tired, wrung-out and post-scared jittery in his life, and that was saying something. So he looked at Ronan and said, “Do you have an extra toothbrush?”
He knew Ronan must have been beyond exhausted because he wasn’t a dick about it.
“You … can use mine,” he said after a moment. He pointed at the doorway. “Bathroom down the stairs on the right.”
Adam wished he found sharing a toothbrush more gross than he did. Not only had he not brushed his teeth in two days, but it was hard to take the moral high ground with toothbrush-sharing when you’d already had the other person’s tongue in your mouth. So he crept downstairs and brushed his teeth with the only toothbrush there, scrubbed at his face with hot water and ran his fingers through his hair. The toothpaste’s mint made him think of Gansey and he had to give himself a moment before he went back upstairs.
Ronan was sitting up in bed, very pointedly only taking up one half of it, clothed. He had a small brick of a paperback in his hands. Adam got closer. Tom Clancy. Adam quirked an eyebrow. The only people he'd ever seen reading Tom Clancy novels were middle-aged moms trying to—Oh.
He got it. The look on Ronan’s face said that he got that he got it. The book had been Aurora’s.
Adam wanted to cry.
Ronan looked at him, his jaw set, and then down at the bed next to him. There was something so painfully intimate about it, sleeping next to Ronan in his childhood room as Ronan sat next to him and read grocery store thriller novels by lamplight.
Ronan was daring him to say something about it, but he wouldn't. He pulled off his jeans, left them crumpled on the floor and climbed into bed. The duvet was perfectly white and linen-soft and weighed Adam down like a hug. He lay on his back and looked up at Ronan, who silently looked back.
They'd never been in a bed together. On Friday night, they made it as far as the living room couch. Their lips were red from the scratch of stubble and Ronan looked at Adam like he'd never seen him before, and was stripped away to reveal his final form: a panicky seventeen-year-old who’d never gotten to third base. He stretched out on the couch and Adam was in his lap and with only a quiet oh, fuck as warning, he came in his pants. It had taken all of a minute. Adam found this unbelievably charming and Ronan looked like he wanted to jump into the centre of the Earth. He was halfway through saying, “Don’t tell anyone,” when Adam said, “I’ll get there, too.” And he did. And then they lay together with their ankles dangling off the far end of the couch and Ronan let him look at his tattoo for the first time, and it was beautiful and upsetting and mystifying. Adam asked if it hurt and Ronan said ehhh.
Ronan blinked down at Adam. If Adam had to guess, he’d say Ronan was thinking about Friday, too. Saying goodnight felt weird, all things considered, so he tried to convey a smile with his eyes and rolled onto his other side to sleep.
He drifted in and out of consciousness whenever Ronan turned a page. He could feel the heat radiating off his body, close enough that it was nothing for Adam to shift and press his back to the side of Ronan’s legs. Adam fell asleep and woke up. Ronan rustled pages. Adam fell asleep. Ronan slumped down so the length of his arm rested against Adam’s spine. Adam fell asleep.
Eventually the lamp went off and the bed dipped as Ronan left it. Adam, only half-awake, burrowed into his pillow and curled up. He hadn’t expected Ronan to stay all night, he just hoped he wasn’t getting up to do something stupid.
Adam fell asleep. He dreamt about nothing; kid-like dreams of imaginary cities and nonsensical quests.
The bed dipped again as Ronan got back into it.
Adam stirred awake. Ronan tucked himself against his back as close as he dared to get, forehead resting against Adam’s nape. His bare calves slid between Adam’s and he breathed out long and steady and slow. The soapy-mint scent of his face was the most comforting thing Adam had ever known.
Falling for Ronan had felt like going to speak at the same time as someone else after a long silence, two people bumbling over their words to say, no, sorry, go ahead before one of them says what they were going to say. It felt like watching a horror movie and yelling “Don't go in there!” to the girl with the slasher hiding in her closet. It felt like staring at one of those magic-eye pictures for hours and finally seeing the cartoon dolphin jump out from the kaleidoscope of patterns and colours.
It also felt like what Adam always imagined home was supposed to feel like, for other people. An epiphany, something settling inside him, a gentle, knowing oh. Everything shifting two inches to the left. Same same but different.
He reached back, groped for Ronan’s hand and found it resting innocently on Ronan’s thigh. He pulled it over his side and tucked it against his chest and threaded their fingers together. Ronan folded his arm tight against Adam’s side and buried his face in the back of his neck; his eyelashes fluttered and the long line of his nose pressed against Adam’s top few vertebrae.
Adam wanted to say that he was glad Ronan hadn’t been unmade and that he was glad he had his hands and eyes back and that Ronan brought him to the Barns and that he wasn’t sleeping alone in his leaky apartment. Blue had said all the heartfelt things the rest of them couldn’t manage to during the hours they’d spent in the reading room at 300 Fox Way that night, sitting on the floor, drinking tea and trying to make sense of the things that had happened to them. Gansey lay with his head in Blue’s lap and Ronan and Adam sat with their shoulders pressed together for a grand total of maybe an hour off and on. Henry touched everyone and everyone permitted it, all things considered.
Adam didn’t know how to sum up any of this up neatly and he wasn’t completely awake, so he squeezed Ronan’s hand and after a moment, Ronan squeezed back.
“I can’t promise I won’t bring something back,” Ronan mumbled, voice thick with exhaustion. Adam squirmed back into him until there was no space between their bodies, which made Ronan’s fingers twitch where they were caught between his.
“S’okay.” Adam yawned. “I’m a light sleeper.”
Ronan did not bring anything back, but he wasn’t there when Adam woke up. The duvet was still pulled back from where he’d lifted it and the jeans and shirt he’d been wearing yesterday were crumpled on the floor.
Adam pulled his own jeans on, tried to flatten his hair and peered out the window; it was overcast but holding. The cut on his cheek stung from having slept on it. The house was cold and quiet. He crept downstairs as quietly as he could but the floorboards creaked and he heard voices when he reached the main floor.
“Scio,” Ronan said softly. Something scuffled on the hardwood. An indistinct voice. And then Ronan: “Shut up.”
The voice spoke again and again Adam couldn’t make it out, but it was so soft and high that he knew it was Opal. He stood behind the doorway to the living room and listened.
“Bonum est enim mihi,” Ronan said. Adam tried to translate in his head and came up short; is good, something. “Non opus est mentiri.” Mentiri was lie, something about not lying.
The phrase arranged itself in his head: I don’t need to lie.
He considered the first phrase again; Bonum est enim mihi. Good for me, Adam was pretty sure it was. Was this about him?
He stepped out from around the corner and into the living room. Ronan was lying on his back in front of the fireplace with Opal. He had his feet in the air and she was balanced on top of them on her stomach, with her little hands held in his and her arms out to the sides like she was flying.
Adam’s heart tugged. The image of Ronan dying in his car flickered into his mind and away. His heart ached with more fondness than he ever thought he was capable of.
Ronan saw him over the back of the couch. His eyes said Oh! but his mouth said, “Not a fucking word, Parrish.”
Opal looked at Adam, distinctly pleased with herself. Adam said to Ronan, “Are you playing airplane and talking to your half-faun dream-daughter about your love life?”
“Yeah.” Ronan bent his knees and eased Opal back down to the floor, which she huffed angrily at. He sat up and rubbed the back of his head. “She's not a fan.”
“Of playing airplane, or of daddy-daughter heart-to-hearts, or of you having a love life?”
“Of you.” He hauled himself to his feet. He was wearing sweats and a t-shirt cut into a low-hanging tank top. Adam thought, for the billionth time during the course of their friendship thus far: if I had his kind of money, I'd dress better than that. Ronan was always confusing like that—nine-hundred dollar jeans with ugly black metal band tees from those kiosks in the mall. Adam could only imagine the unfathomable luxury of looking good in anything. “She says you're a bad influence. Doesn't want me fucking around with some sad boy demon spawn.”
Adam raised his eyebrows, as much at fucking around as anything else. Transparent. Opal tugged on Ronan’s sweats, which meant he was either lying or she was mad at him for telling the truth, but Adam couldn’t tell because he was occupied with the newly-exposed cut of Ronan’s hip, bare under his sweatpants. Ronan caught him looking and clearly liked it.
“Sad boy demon spawn,” Adam said slowly.
“Her words, not mine. Not a direct translation.”
“Kerah,” Opal whined. Ronan laughed, not nicely.
“Want food?” he asked Adam, who was looking at the fine cuts along the top of his trapezius from Chainsaw’s talons. His voice was off. He was trying, it wasn't there. Brittle. Off. Which wasn't surprising. After yesterday, they were both saving face.
“Do you have food?” he asked.
“Nah, but we can stop at Mickey-D’s on the way to the nunnery.”
“Hey.”
“Let’s shower, though. I smell like fuckin’ roadkill and it’ll offend all six of their delicate senses.”
“Asshole.”
“That’s original.”
“Go shower.”
It had always bothered Adam that the cheapest food was also the worst for you. He’d eaten more McDonald’s than he’d care to admit over the course of his life, but it was hard to beat a three-dollar breakfast that took five minutes to get. With that being said, there was a big ideological difference between angrily devouring an Egg McMuffin between his graveyard shift and morning shift and happily devouring one in the front seat of Ronan’s BMW. McDonald’s usually made him feel cheap and poor and greasy, but with Ronan, who could obviously afford better food and chose McDonald’s, he felt more like a grimy, ironic teenager, and that was a very different and arguably better feeling.
Ronan was speeding. Neither of them had said it, but being separated from Blue and Gansey felt uncomfortable and wrong and it was wearing away at them both. After spending all of last night staring at Gansey and watching the rise and fall of his chest—with Noah and his accidentally-secret ghostly state at the forefront of their minds—not knowing where he was or how he was was scary. Not that either of them would say so. Ronan was speeding, but when was he not?
Opal was eating a McGriddle, wrapper and all, in the back seat. Adam twisted around to look at her. It was a sight to behold. He turned back.
“Does she actually not like me?” he asked Ronan. Ronan slurped his coffee noisily as they waited at a red light.
“I was fucking with you,” he said. Adam smacked him. “She does think you're weird, though. I dunno if it's in a bad way. She calls you puer silvarum.”
Adam thought about this. “Young forest.”
“I think she means ‘forest boy.’”
“I feel like you should be forest boy.”
“We’re both kind of forest boys.” The light turned green and they shot through the intersection. “I'm a boy of tons of stuff. A boy of all trades.”
Adam looked down at himself. He was wearing one of Ronan’s shirts because his own was covered in blood and grave-robbing dirt and it gave him a stupid, boyish thrill to be wearing Ronan’s clothes. The shirt was just plain black and a little too big, softer than anything Adam had ever worn. He was terrified that someday he’d learn how much Ronan had paid for the shirt. He told himself it didn't matter. He told himself not to spill anything on it.
“A renaissance boy,” he said.
Ronan snapped his fingers. “Exactly.”
Ronan had meanly referred to 300 Fox Way as a nunnery, but it was obvious that he was more comfortable there than he had been a few months earlier. If Adam didn’t know better, he’d say that Ronan liked Blue’s home, if only because he liked to prove that he could drink the most disgusting teas they had, and because Calla let him add a slug of whiskey to most of them.
They knocked at the front door, even though Ronan wanted to barge in. Blue answered beaming a thousand-watt smile and touched both their arms, as if checking to see if they were corporeal. Opal darted inside past her, but Blue didn't mind or didn't notice.
“You came back!” she said again, checking. It was funny to see Blue so bubbly—she tended more towards Ronan on a scale of ‘genuine feelings’ to ‘prickly as a defense mechanism’—but it made sense. Adam wondered if Gansey had stayed the night.
Ronan jabbed a thumb at Adam. “Parrish works later.”
“That's fine! We’re just sitting.”
That was all they'd done last night, too. It had been like a sleepover, hugging pillows, sprawled on the carpet. They pulled their shoes off in the hall and were ushered into the kitchen because Maura had a client in the reading room. Gansey sat at the table in front of an empty, greasy dinner plate next to another empty, greasy dinner plate, and the room smelled like eggs and bacon.
“We made eggs,” Gansey said. Like Blue, he was beaming.
“Sickening,” Ronan said, and pulled out a chair.
“Eggs?”
“Us,” Blue answered for him, her mouth twisted into a smirk. She stacked her plate with Gansey’s despite his protests and carried to them to the sink. When she came back to sit, she kissed his head.
Ronan gagged. “Like a coupla fuckin’ kids.”
The four of them sat around the table, Adam offering Gansey a pleased, giddy wave.
“Well,” Blue said, reaching for Gansey’s hand, “If your boyfriend comes back from the dead, see how you like it when I make fun of you.”
Opal started chewing on one of the table legs and Ronan bapped her on the head. “If my boyfriend came back from the dead, you wouldn't see either of us for three days at least.”
In a single sassy comment, he'd managed to make everyone at the table at least a little uncomfortable. Adam thought they should have a word for when that happened, like when you got a perfect hand in poker. A Royal Ronan Flush: no person within earshot left unoffended. Gansey laughed too loudly. Ronan stood up, smiling, and his chair legs squeaked on the linoleum.
“Who wants tea?”
They talked about everything and nothing. Maura stopped in, touched Blue fondly on the shoulder, made tea and left again. Gansey painted his toenails. Blue and Adam played table-top football with a folded take-out menu. They made Gansey recount the experience of dying and coming back for maybe the third or fourth time since yesterday, and he said the same thing he always had: he didn't remember. There were the last few seconds of dropping to the pavement and then, as quick as if he'd blinked, he was up again. It was too simple for anyone’s tastes, too uncomplicated and anticlimactic. Did he feel anything? Was Cabeswater somehow inside him? Did he feel magical?
Calla came in at midday and eyed the four of them with muted disdain. Gansey had his head down, texting Henry, and forgot to be pleasant. Ronan saluted her.
“Lovely,” she said, “three more teenagers, just what this house needs. You boys have to bring in money if you want room and board.”
Ronan leaned his chair back on two legs. “Adam fixes cars and I've always wanted to be a bouncer. Plus Gansey’s got a Phone Voice.”
Calla squinted at him. “It's a start.”
She tried to edge behind Adam and Ronan to get to the fridge. Ronan refused to tip his chair forward. She huffed in annoyance, closed her hand around Ronan’s shoulder and shoved him forward.
The legs of his chair clacked on the floor.
Calla burst out laughing.
Blue noticed that Adam’s ears had gone red. Gansey noticed Ronan scowling at the table. They looked at each other, impossibly and endlessly curious.
“God,” Calla laughed. “Alright, tough guy, move your ass.”
Ronan grudgingly tucked his chair in. Calla moved behind him, chuckling, then grabbed a can of bitter, naturally-sweetened pop from the fridge and left the kitchen.
Gansey pointed at Ronan. “What was that?”
“What?”
“Calla saw something,” said Blue. “What did you do?”
Gansey looked at Adam. Blue did not know enough to look at Adam.
“None of your fuckin’ business, that's what I did.” Ronan stood up. “Where’s their whiskey? Fuck this.”
Blue sat back. “You're not drinking it without them here. That stops being social and starts being …”
“Sad?” Ronan finished for her. He wagged his mug of footy tea at her. “No sadder than thinking a bunch of wet roots are gonna do jack shit for your health or clairvoyance or whatever the fuck you quacks think they're supposed to do.”
“Don't be a dick just ‘cause you’re embarrassed.”
Adam squeezed his eyes shut. Ronan was the way he was because if he made people hate him for specific reasons, he didn't have to worry about them hating him for who he really was. He was in control. It was admirable, in a back-asswards kind of way, but sometimes Adam hated him for it.
“I’ve gotta go,” Adam interrupted. Everyone looked at him. He downed the last of his tea without making a face and set the cup back down. “Work in twenty.”
“I’ll drive you,” Ronan said, right away.
“It’s—”
“We came together. What, you're gonna walk?”
Adam squared his jaw. He didn't look mad, exactly, but he was his own brand of awkward, which looked a lot like being mean. “Okay.”
Blue watched this exchange. She waved a finger back and forth between them.
“You're very matchy, come to think of it. Are those the same shirt?”
Adam scratched the back of his hair. Ronan snorted. “Yeah. So? I lent him boxers, too, as long as we’re being fucking grown-ups about it.”
Gansey raised his eyebrows. “Clean ones, I hope.”
Adam was aflame. He was halfway through shut up, Gansey, but Gansey was alive and Adam loved him and he couldn't bring himself to be angry with him yet, so he aborted the sentence into a weird noise.
“Sorry,” Gansey said, in response to the weird noise. “That was uncalled for.”
“It wasn't. I … I’m gonna be late.” Adam turned to Blue. “Thanks for the tea.”
She raised her eyebrows, just like Gansey’s, and nodded. She looked at Ronan, standing beside-and-behind Adam close enough to touch. She was putting pieces together. “Mmhhhmm.”
“I’ll come by after class tomorrow if you're not busy.”
“We’ll be here or at Monmouth,” Gansey said. “So sure.”
We, Adam thought. Already they were a unit. He was happy for them. He felt weird. He felt the heat of Ronan’s body behind him. “Okay, bye,” he said, ten shades of awkward, and ambled out of the kitchen. He heard Ronan follow him out and Blue made a displeased tch noise, which meant that he did something rude. They found Opal napping under a wicker chair in the reading room, stomped their shoes on and left.
The BMW shut out all the noise from outside.
“Where to?”
“Garage.”
Like last night, Ronan left the stereo off, which was ominous. The only reason you didn’t listen to music was because you wanted to talk. Adam didn’t know if he wanted to talk. He couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed by Blue and Gansey knowing he’d spent the night at the Barns, or pleased in a vain kind of way. It was both. But Ronan leaving the stereo off was a signal, so Adam complied.
“Was Calla laughing at us ?” he asked, picking at his thumb nail. “At last night, or whatever.”
“I dunno, maybe.” Ronan raised his wrist to gnaw absentmindedly on his leather bands. “I also jerked off in the shower this morning, so who knows.”
Adam hated that he blushed. “Jesus Christ.”
“It was probably those two things together. I mean, I don't know how far back her sight goes. It's not like I blame her. It's pretty funny.”
Adam looked over at him. “Is it?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Sexually repressed teen sleeps with—” He stopped here and struggled. Transparent. “His, whatever, then immediately jerks it? Textbook.”
Adam wanted to say you're doing that thing again. Ronan didn't think it was funny. Ronan wanted to defend himself against Adam thinking it was funny, since Calla had. He who laughs loudest always cries hardest. Something like that. Adam knew he couldn't call him out on it.
“Right,” he said. He also couldn't hold a conversation about Ronan jerking off. He bit the inside of his cheek. “You didn't have to be a dick about it.”
“She was.”
“Calla likes you.”
“She's a bitch.”
“You don't mean that.”
Ronan drummed his fingers on the top of the steering wheel. After a moment, he fished his phone out of the door and plugged it into the stereo. He turned the bass way up. Talking time was evidently over.
Ronan pulled into the lot outside the shop and got out when Adam did. He came around to the passenger side and Adam cocked his head at him.
“What are you doing tonight?” Ronan said, picking at his bracelets.
“Just homework. Laundry. I dunno.” With everything that had happened, Adam had forgotten how to be a real person; he needed to clean his place and make lunches for the week and take the trash out and God only knew what else. “Why?”
Ronan spoke with leather between his teeth. “Do you wanna stay at mine?”
Adam’s heart did a weird squeezy thing. “Uh.” He had a long list of reasons why he did and did not want to. Why there was little else he wanted more than to spend another night at Ronan’s, and why that was the last thing that he should do.
Ronan frowned. “What? I’ll let you do your stupid homework if you’re gonna be a little—”
“No, shut up, it's not about that. It's just—”
“Don't make excuses if you don't want to, just say it.”
“Ronan,” Adam snapped, “Shut the fuck up for two seconds, okay? Just … listen.” Adam short-circuited. This was getting ridiculous. “Can I be honest for one fucking second without you making a joke or jumping down my throat or whatever the fuck it is that you like doing so much?”
He expected Ronan to do exactly that, out of spite, because no one told Ronan what to do. But he didn't. He reached up and brushed his fingers against the inside of Adam’s elbow and up his bicep, where he tugged on the sleeve of his shirt. Disarmingly gentle.
All he said was, “Okay.”
Adam collected his thoughts. He looked at Ronan, at where Ronan was touching him, the pale pinkishness of his fingers against the golden blush of his own tan. When he spoke, it was more wobbly than he wanted, but if Ronan was willing to concede, so was he.
“If I don't stay at my place tonight,” he said slowly, “I’m never gonna go back.”
He let himself think about living at the Barns, in that old, warm farmhouse crammed full of nonsensical baubles, built on magic as much as brick and mortar. He could see himself ambling through the fields when being anywhere else was too much to handle. Mornings in the breakfast nook. Evenings in front of the fireplace. Waking up next to Ronan, the sun streaming in through the blinds making his bare shoulders glow white. It would be tantalizingly easy and he couldn't ever let himself. He knew he wouldn't, but he didn't want to give himself any chances. He needed to slip back into his old life.
Ronan breathed out a long, heavy sigh.
“I get that,” he said.
He didn't say so don't go back, and in that moment, Adam loved him for it.
“Ronan …”
Ronan leaned down and kissed him for the first time since Friday night. He didn't ask, but it wasn't unwelcome. It was soft, scared and familiar, warm and dry, long but chaste. Ronan closed his hand around Adam’s arm. Adam’s eyes fell shut.
Ronan stood back. Blinked twice. Those big, blue eyes.
“Let me pick you up after your shift,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.” Adam objected silently to the word home, but he was too far gone to care.
“Sure.”
He rolled onto the balls of his feet and kissed Ronan again, a little harder, control ebbing away under relief and the realization that this was something that he could actually have. Being with Ronan might be less of a ten-car pile-up and more of a dented driver-side door. He nipped Ronan’s lower lip and Ronan twisted his fingers in the sleeve of his shirt.
“Uh, Parrish.”
That was not Ronan.
Adam tore himself away and spun to face his boss, who was standing next to the open garage door, looking both perplexed and terribly amused.
“Sorry,” Adam said quickly. “I’ll—I’m going, I’m sorry, he’s going, we were just—”
Boyd waved his hand. “You’re not on for another ten.”
His eyes flickered over Adam’s shoulder to Ronan and Adam prayed Ronan wasn’t sneering. He was rude, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Yessir,” Adam said, flooded with relief. “Thank you, sir.”
Boyd good-naturedly scoffed at Adam and went back inside. Adam whirled around to face Ronan, who was already leering at him.
“What do I have to do to get you to call me sir?”
Adam punched him in the stomach. He cackled.
“I’ll be back at eight,” Ronan said. “Say hi to the cars for me.”
“Will do.” Adam offered a small, crooked smile and Ronan pinched his arm, which was stupid and cute. Adam turned and strode into the mechanic’s front office ehere Boyd sat behind the front desk next to a wilted fern. He looked up when he saw Adam.
“That yer boyfriend?”
He said the word like a punchline, which was better than the myriad other ways he could have said it, like the name of an over-the-counter rat poison or the way one would say Auschwitz. With that most obvious bullet dodged, Adam didn’t know how to answer the question.
“Yeah,” he drawled, making the word three syllables long. “Sort of.”
Boyd scratched his hairline with a pencil and seemed to consider this new fact. An electric table fan whining on the countertop was the only noise in the small, stuffy room.
“He looks a lot like that fella I seen drag racing down by the fields,” he said. “With the shaved head and all. Only one of those hooligans what’s never brought his car into the shop. Not that your boy’s a hooligan, but he’s the spittin’ image.”
Adam tried not to smile. “Uh, no, that’s him, actually.”
“Huh.” Boyd considered this new fact, too. “You his mechanic?”
“He’s never needed me to be.”
“Huh,” he said again. The water cooler in the corner gurgled. “You sure can pick ‘em, Parrish.”
Adam wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult, but he was sure it wouldn’t be the last time he heard it with regards to Ronan. His boss cleared his throat.
“I never pegged you for one of those, but, you know, it’s the twenty-first century, or so my kids keep tellin’ me.”
Last month, this would have either bothered or horrified Adam. Today, he smiled.
“Yessir. I’ll be on the floor in two.”
His shift was quiet and pleasant. It started to rain and then stopped. He worked on a Ford Taurus with a shot transmission, a Charger with a fuel leak. He could feel Boyd watching him through the plexiglas window between the front office and the garage, like he was looking for changes in his work ethic now that he knew he kissed boys. Boy, singular. Adam thought about Ronan and Ronan’s cheekbones and his scratched-up shoulders and how solid and warm his body had felt behind his own as he slept last night. He walked to the 7-11 across the street on his break and treated himself to the biggest, cheapest coffee money could buy. The day passed slowly and uneventfully and at seven, he remembered that he didn't have a night shift and that Ronan would be picking him up, and then time crawled even more slowly.
He finished his last job of the day and swept up, then changed out of his coveralls and shoved them in his locker. Boyd was busy with a customer so Adam hauled up one of the garage doors to slip out that way.
Ronan was standing a few paces away on the other side and scared the shit out of him.
“God,” Adam gasped. “Lynch.”
Ronan turned around. He had a six-pack of Old Milwaukee swinging from his fingers. He looked different, fuller and more vibrant than he had that morning or yesterday. Was it because they kissed? Or something else? His head was freshly shorn and his boots were clean. He looked good. Even Chainsaw, huddled against the back of his skull, looked shiny and healthy. Ronan grinned.
“Wanna go for a drive?” he asked, in the way someone asks a question they know the answer to. “Before you go home. Like a responsible little bitch.”
Adam smiled. “Is this your idea of romance?”
“Yeah. Take it or leave it.”
He tossed Adam a beer. Adam literally and metaphorically took it.
Ronan had the stereo on this time and Adam could feel the bass in his throat. It was spitting rain but there was sun breaking through clouds on the horizon and everything smelled like wet, mossy earth and Ronan. Adam finished his first beer and stuck the empty into the cup holder, then pulled another from the six-pack at his feet and cracked it.
“You’re not drinking,” he said to Ronan. A statement of fact. Ronan shrugged.
“Maybe later.”
“You’ll have to drive back.”
“One beer isn't even drinking. I'm a seasoned professional. Talk to me after a 2-6.”
“I have. It's the worst. You babble.”
“I’m extremely charming.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “So, essentially, you bought me a six-pack.”
“Yeah, and before you get pissy, it’s Old Mil. I’m not doing you any favours.”
Adam couldn’t argue with that. He moved his seat back as far as it could go and stretched his legs out, cracked his window and let more of the almost-rain smell flood the car.
“I’m pissed that I missed you in your little jumpsuit thing,” Ronan said. “Whatever you call your car outfit.”
Adam laughed. “What? Why?”
“It's …” Ronan considered several different words. “Looks good. When you tie it around your waist and shit, like … tough mechanic guy or whatever.”
“You give the weirdest compliments.”
“Only to you, babe.”
It was a joke but the hairs on the back of Adam’s arms stood up anyways.
They drove out into the boonies where Ronan could floor it. He listened to Adam talk about the BMW’s engine in exchange for Adam listening to him talk about whatever band they were listening to. Chainsaw sat on Adam’s knee and Adam was on his third beer. Ronan was less of a dick than normal and it felt a little like talking to someone new. The more he learned about Ronan, the more heavily divided his Ronan Timeline became; pre- and post-Glendower, pre- and post- the past few months. He was still an insufferable prick, but he was an insufferable prick that Adam was starting to understand.
Adam couldn't stop looking at him. Ronan was more at home behind the wheel of his car than Adam had ever been at home anywhere. He raced down the poorly paved road so fast that Adam was pinned back in his seat. He could count on one hand the times he’d seen Ronan look as happy as he did now; even more rare were the times that Ronan was happy and it wasn’t at someone else’s expense. The part of Adam that admired Ronan, no matter how much he didn't want to, couldn’t believe that he was why Ronan looked so happy. Ronan Lynch liked being around him, Adam Parrish. He liked driving Adam around and he laughed at his jokes, especially if they were mean. He wanted to kiss Adam. He had made Adam come exactly once, and would probably do it again at some point. Maybe soon.
Ronan was beautiful when he was happy. Adam felt privileged to be one of the few people who had seen Ronan smile like that, and wondered if Ronan felt the same way about him. Like Ronan, Adam didn't smile half as much as normal people.
“I’m only gonna ask this once, but—” Adam took a deep breath. “How are you? Seriously.”
Ronan side-eyed him, then looked back at the road.
“Trying not to think about it.”
For a single shimmering second, Adam considered placing his hand over Ronan’s on the gearshift, but they didn't do that. He gently petted Chainsaw’s head instead, which she permitted.
“I get that,” he said.
Ronan smiled and it was more grim than happy, but it wasn't bad.
The sun had long since set when Ronan pulled off the main road and down a long, dirt road that disappeared over a slope in the distance.
“Where's this?” Adam asked.
“Dunno.” Ronan wrenched the steering wheel and the car flew off the road and into the long, dry grass that stretched for miles in all directions. “Don't care.”
“Trespassing,” Adam said, with put-on gravity. “Risqué.”
“I know you're joking, but I wanna remind you that I dreamt an entire magic dream-forest onto private property, so.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Adam sipped his beer. “You're gonna hit a deer or something. This grass is long.”
“I’ll see it.”
“Don't hit a deer.”
“Deer don't live in fields, Parrish. I'd hit a marmot or some shit.”
“Don't hit anything.”
They were so deep in the field that both the paved road and dirt road had disappeared. Ronan unplugged his phone and the music stopped abruptly and Adam’s ears rung. Chainsaw fluffed up and became a iridescent, oil-slick ball of black.
“Where are we going?”
Ronan said, “Nowhere,” and Adam thought he was being smart until he slammed on the brake. Adam jerked forwards and Chainsaw flew up into his face in a flurry of feathers, then settled on the dashboard.
“What if you drove like a normal person?” Adam snapped.
“What if you had fun for once?”
Ronan snatched what was left of the six-pack from the floor between Adam’s feet and got out of the car. He’d left the headlights on and they were the only light in the pitch black of the fields, and were cut off abruptly by the tall, burnt grass that surrounded the car.
Adam climbed out quickly so he didn't lose Ronan in the blackness, but Ronan didn't go anywhere. Adam could hear the deep breath he took from the other side of the car. Chainsaw flew out after Adam, screeched and took off into the air. Adam squinted into the night.
“Are you worried about turkey vultures getting her or whatever?” he asked.
“Nothing kills a raven,” Ronan said. There was a crack and a hiss as he opened a beer and a thunk as he dropped the remaining few on the hood of the BMW. Adam took a few strides into the field, away from the headlights, parting the grass as he went. Everything smelled like dirt and dust, smells he had grown up hating on the edge of town but, like McDonald’s, Ronan’s presence managed to make it different.
Adam said, “You can really breathe out here.”
Ronan didn't say anything. Adam heard him suck on his beer and grass rustled as he moved. Adam craned his neck to look for stars, but it was too cloudy. He moved further from the headlights and checked again; still nothing. “Beautiful,” he said anyways.
Ronan slipped his arms around him from behind.
“Yup,” Ronan said, nonchalant, and Adam knew they weren't talking about the same thing. He felt like he was being awkward, but not in a bad way. Everything new was a little awkward. He gingerly touched Ronan’s arms where they were folded around his ribs and pressed his thumbs down the curve of muscle in his skinny forearms. He could feel Ronan’s breath in his hair, and then Ronan’s nose was at the base of his neck and he pressed his lips against him in a sweat-tacky kiss. “God. You smell like gasoline.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“It's hot.”
“Do cars turn you on?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know. Sexuality is complicated, Parrish.”
Adam laughed so loudly that Ronan laughed too, mostly at him. Ronan pressed his mouth into his hair. He was tall enough that it was just over Adam’s ear. They stood there for another minute looking out into the blackness, and it was funny in its softness, standing like that, but also not funny at all. Lights glinted in the hills from the windows of farmhouses miles away. Ronan’s heart beat against Adam’s shoulder blades. Chainsaw’s talons clicked on the roof of the car behind them.
When Adam stepped out of the circle of Ronan’s arms, Ronan let him. He walked back to the car, touched the hood and looked at Ronan. “Can I?”
Ronan nodded and Adam hopped up carefully onto the hood, leaning back along the windshield to look up at the sky. Ronan was silhouetted by the headlights as he crossed in front of the car to get up on the other side and lie next to Adam, the hood still hot from the engine. Their bare arms were pressed together from shoulder to elbow. They each wrapped their hands around their respective beers, resting on their chests, and neither of them spoke for a long time. There was an easiness to this that Adam figured could only come from being with someone you openly disliked at times. He didn't have to be anything but himself around Ronan because Ronan already knew him and that hadn't scared him off yet. He knew Ronan was putting on a bit of a front around him, but he'd gotten used to that, too.
“Is this a date?” he asked suddenly.
Ronan rolled his head on the windshield to look at him. Chainsaw descended noisily from the sky and landed on the toe of Ronan’s boot. “Do you want it to be a date?”
Adam had admitted that to himself the minute Ronan suggested they go for a drive. “Yeah.”
“Then it's a date.”
“What if I'd said no?”
“Then it wouldn't have been a date for you.”
Adam went quiet for a moment. Chainsaw preened. Ronan drank.
“I'll get the beer next time.”
“Sure,” Ronan said. Adam swore he could hear the smile in his voice, and felt like pushing his luck.
“Have you been on any other dates?”
Ronan made a snotty noise. “I lied on the hood of a car with Kavinsky once.”
Adam tried to decipher what this meant in Ronan-speak. “Okay.”
“He was doing lines off the windshield.”
“Oh.”
Ronan sucked back beer. “That sounded funnier in my head. He was teaching me to dream. It wasn't …”
“I don't care if you dated Kavinsky.”
“I didn't.”
“Well, I wouldn't care if you did.”
Ronan said, “Goody,” but it was without malice. Adam recalled the vague memories he had of Kavinsky, whom he knew only in relation to Ronan. If life were a choose-your-own-adventure book, Kavinsky was the Ronan you got if you fucked up the ending. And the middle.
Adam was still thinking about Kavinsky when Ronan pushed up on his elbows, leaned over him and kissed him.
Adam kissed back. His beer was almost empty so he knocked it off the side of the car into the grass so his hands were free to run up Ronan’s arms, the back of which were warm from the car. Chainsaw squawked at the loss of her perch as Ronan rolled towards Adam, and she took off into the night. Ronan slipped one of his thighs between Adam’s and Adam sighed against his lips before he thought better of it and pushed up against him, curling his calf against the back of his leg, letting Ronan pin him down.
Ronan’s mouth was gentle and inquisitive in a way that Ronan never allowed the rest of himself to be. His kisses asked a question and the hard press of Adam’s body against his answered yes, yes, yes. Adam stopped caring about homework or laundry or dishes. The perimeter of his world ended at Ronan’s thigh between his legs and the way it made him ache with want, and he got dizzy with the possibilities of where that could go. It felt a lot like Friday had, but with less of a frantic and desperate edge. They still had their clothes on. They were still both obviously, unabashedly hard. Adam wondered dimly if Ronan would come again by accident with the way they were moving against each other.
Adam got a breath in. “Can you—”
Ronan pulled back and Adam saw his eyes, wild and unhinged and maybe a little scared. He saw him finishing Adam’s sentence in his mind.
“Take me home,” Adam said.
On the drive back, Adam regretted phrasing it the way he had. Every second, he almost corrected himself, but he couldn't think of a not-awkward way to do it now that the moment had passed. To his credit, Ronan wasn't angry in the entitled way Adam feared he might be, but he wasn't really anything at all. He turned the music up and they didn't talk much and the sixth beer sat unconsumed in the back seat.
St. Agnes loomed. Ronan pulled into the parking lot next to the Hondayota and shut the engine off. He looked over at Adam, his face expressionless, clearly waiting for something. A goodnight.
“Do you …” Adam felt strangely formal. He should have just said it earlier. They should have just fooled around on the hood of Ronan’s car. “D’you wanna come up?”
Ronan didn't bother hiding his glee. “You fucking bet I do.”
It helped diffuse the tension; Adam laughed, and Ronan smiled at his laughter. “Alright,” Adam said. “Cool.”
As they climbed the stairs to Adam’s door, Ronan kicked the underside of his sneaker. “You're such a little shit, you know that?”
“I didn't mean to.”
“Take me home.”
“I didn't say you couldn't come with!”
“You're a fucking shit disturber, Parrish. I had a heart attack.”
Adam fished his keys out of his pocket and paused with them in the door. He looked over his shoulder at Ronan, standing with his hands jammed in his pockets and Chainsaw on his arm.
“But you would've taken no for answer,” Adam clarified. “Right?”
“Obviously,” Ronan drawled, like that didn't mean everything. Then he shoved him. “Get your stupid ass inside.”
Ronan banged his head on one of the trusses of the angled ceiling and swore, and Chainsaw flew a couple frantic laps around the apartment. Adam winced and quickly clicked the lamp on.
“Oh, God. Her wingspan’s as big as this place, she's gonna freak.”
“She’ll settle down,” Ronan said, stooping to unlace his boots, and sure enough, she did, and perched on the edge of the sink. Adam took his shoes off. Even standing under the highest point of the ceiling, Ronan couldn't quite stand upright. His eyes were trained on Adam with a hunger Adam had only seen in him a few times, when Ronan hadn't thought to hide it.
“Hi,” Adam said, like an idiot.
“Come here often?” Ronan said back, and they laughed at themselves. Ronan ducked his head to avoid the ceiling, stepped in close and tipped Adam’s face up in his hands. He kissed him.
There was no easing into it after earlier. Adam grabbed Ronan’s ass and dragged him closer and Ronan made a surprised, delighted sound. He pulled Adam’s shirt over his head and smoothed his staticky hair under his palms and kissed him again and again, searing and unabashedly needy. Adam didn't have time to be embarrassed by his mattress on the floor and Ronan’s hands were clumsy enough getting his jeans off that any embarrassment he might have had cancelled out.
He'd never seen Ronan naked before and didn't care that he stared; he was naturally ropey, slightly defined by boxing and doing whatever labour he did at the Barns, his shoulders wide and bony, his skin pale like marble all the way down. Not built, but lean. Skinny thighs and fine, dark hair. A nice dick, which answered a lot of questions Adam had been meaning to ask himself.
He swore softly, reverent, all but unblinking, and Ronan ducked his head. He pulled Adam’s boxers down his legs and laid him out on the bed and mapped him with his mouth and hands. He sat back and looked at Adam like he had to make sure he was still there, that it was still Adam’s ribs he took between his teeth to make him squirm. Adam stared up at the sloped ceiling close above his face because looking down was too much.
Ronan swiped his tongue over the head of his dick. Adam jolted up and smacked his head on the ceiling. “Fuck—" Ronan stopped and sat up. Adam hated him. “What?”
“Wait.” Ronan reached over to rummage through their pile of clothes, Adam’s legs still hooked over his.
“You're so weird,” Adam said, rubbing his eyes. “You're so fucking weird.”
Ronan had his phone in hand. Adam tried to sit up again. “If you take a picture of my dick, I’m—”
“No, shut up, wait.”
He tapped around for a moment. Music started playing.
It had a beat, but it was gentle. There was a low, crooning voice that was like audible cognac and a melody made of deep, persistent percussion. Like some sort of tropical, indie jazz. It was beautiful. Adam got goosebumps.
“Mood music,” he said. “You.”
Ronan smiled, too sweet. “What, you'd rather we listen to, just like … wet dick sounds?”
“Charming, Lynch.”
“S’true.” He set the phone next to the bed and leaned back over Adam to kiss him, sucking his lower lip. Their cocks slid together and their breath hitched in time; Adam felt Ronan’s jaw tremble and he did it again and again.
Everything they already knew went unspoken: Ronan was batshit crazy about Adam; Adam liked girls and Ronan didn't; Adam was, despite his best intentions, very good at breaking hearts; and the events of the past year were going to make it very, very hard for them to ever relate to anyone else. They were engines that ran on each other. And to say that Ronan was crazy about Adam was the understatement of the century, because without even trying, Adam had wrapped Ronan around his little finger and made himself centre of a galaxy he hadn’t known existed, king of a nation of one, just by being himself. He didn’t think he’d ever understand what he did to make Ronan want him so, so deeply—sometimes he assumed it was just a coincidence of time and place, and that if another trailer park inhabitant had made his way into Ronan’s line of sight, he could have just as easily have fallen for him, if all he was looking for was someone different—but he wasn’t about to question it. A few months ago, all he did was question it, but he wasn’t interested in playing around anymore. Ronan made everything inside him go still. He was a world where heroin loved you back.
“I’m—” Ronan’s voice cracked. “I’m gonna venture a guess and say that since you’re cut, you’ve got lube around here somewhere.”
Adam couldn’t be hurt by the insinuation that all he used lube for was jerking off if it was true. He said, “Bathroom,” through his teeth before he clued in. “Wait, what?”
Ronan stood and strode the few steps to the bathroom, gawky in his nudity in the way that all teenage boys were. The medicine cabinet creaked and clattered and Ronan came back, tossing a small tube in his hand. Adam expected snark—right next to the toothpaste, classy, Parrish—but Ronan had gone grave and quiet and intense and Adam found himself mirroring him. He scrubbed his hands over Ronan’s closely-shaved head, pulled him down and kissed him like he obviously wanted to be kissed.
“What—” Adam tried, but Ronan cut him off with his mouth, and then he stopped trying. Ronan wasn’t one for thoughtful discussion. Ronan was a force of nature and being around him meant that sometimes things just happened to you and you had to go along for the ride. This both was and wasn't one of those things. Ronan was still a force, but Adam was trying to rise up to meet him.
Ronan touched his lube-wet fingers to Adam's, slicking them up. Intentionally. And then Adam got it.
"You want—?"
Ronan wouldn’t look at him. Adam didn’t force him to. He was up on his knees with his forehead resting on one of the ceiling trusses, his eyes shut, and Adam could feel his breath in his hair. He eased his fingers inside him and he had no idea what he was doing, but if it was awful, Ronan didn’t say so. The song playing sounded like water droplets. Chainsaw was watching them. Ronan’s fingers curled tight in the hair at the nape of Adam’s neck and Adam brushed his lips against his chest. Ronan gasped, sharp and quiet. Adam scraped his teeth against his sternum and fucked him with his fingers, trying not to panic or moan or die.
When Ronan bent down and kissed him, he was shaky. Adam could only imagine. Ronan put his hands on his chest and eased him to lie down, and Adam looked up at him with equal parts wonder and terror because he couldn't believe this was Ronan, couldn't believe it was him and that this was happening in his dinky apartment of all places, in front of a bird that was essentially Ronan’s familiar. Adam felt like he should say something and wondered if Ronan wanted him to. Ronan had his eyes closed, long lashes dark on his cheeks. He reached down to grab Adam's dick and line himself up and Adam had to actively try not to come. He had a dozen things he wanted to say but all that came out was a needy whine. He dug his hands into Ronan’s thighs and Ronan slowly sunk down onto him.
I’m dead or— Adam's brain short circuited and rebooted. This isn't real.
Ronan ran his hands down Adam’s stomach. He bowed his head, let his shoulders shudder happily and said, “Fucking Christ, Adam.”
Adam laughed breathlessly because he couldn't speak. His back arched and sweat pricked where Ronan’s thighs hugged his sides.
“Oh my God.” He had to close his eyes. His fingers traced Ronan’s hips and felt him flex as he lifted himself up. “Oh my fucking—”
He dissolved. He gave up on breathing. He opened his eyes and the bliss that played over Ronan’s features was impossible to describe. He said Adam like a prayer, like Adam’s shitty apartment was a holy place that required whispers and reverence and Adam’s body was the deity he spent his whole life worshipping.
He braced his hands against the slope of the ceiling. He ran them over the back of his head. Adam reached up and touched his neck, his throat, his jaw, and Ronan opened his eyes. He took Adam’s fingers in his own, turned his hand over and kissed the inside of his wrist, his eyes fluttering shut again as he sunk down, and somehow, even as he was inside him, that kiss was the most intimate thing that had ever happened to Adam, imbued with the knowledge that Ronan loved his hands and the delicate bones of his wrists. Ronan had never told him this but Adam knew it like he knew his own name.
Ronan said something that sounded like Sweet Mary mother of fucking Christ.
Adam said, “Go slow,” all but begged, but Ronan just smiled and did this happy, breathy laugh that Adam was never going to forget. “Fuck, please—”
Without missing a beat, Ronan said, “Please is halfway to sir,” and laughed, then abruptly stopped laughing when Adam grabbed his hips and bucked up into him, and then neither of them were kidding around anymore.
In his head, Adam reconciled the different Ronans he knew. The Ronan who beat up Robert Parrish, who loved fireflies, who had lost both his parents, who dreamt up the otherworldly forest that still consumed Adam’s thoughts, who adored his little brother with a ferocity that shocked Adam, who called Blue “maggot” and ridiculed Henry mercilessly. He was the same Ronan who was riding him—with a precision and concentration that betrayed a deep love for the act—in an apartment above the church he attended every Sunday.
If it weren't for the ceiling Adam would have pulled Ronan down to kiss him, but there wasn't any space and Ronan looked so pretty and again, he thought he should say something, but again, all he could manage was a whine. He turned his face into his pillow and came, his hands holding Ronan still, and it was endless and unbearable and perfect and he couldn't breathe. Ronan laughed like he was surprised and smoothed Adam’s hair back. He rocked his hips and Adam almost sobbed into his pillow. Ronan laughed again, but Adam could feel his thighs trembling.
Adam worked his way to sit up and Ronan let his legs fall around him and they kissed, pushy and deep, and Adam worked him in his fist for only a few seconds before he came, with his mouth open against Adam’s, silent in ecstasy.
Ronan stilled. His hands were locked around the back of Adam’s head and he held him there, still in his lap, still on his dick. Sweat rolled down the back of Adam’s neck. He pulled out and Ronan made a bratty yuck noise, and Adam sniggered. Ronan almost stumbled standing, then went to the bathroom and shut the door. Adam lay back down, lifting his back from the wet sheets. His right ear buzzed. Honey-sweet music dripped from Ronan’s phone next to the bed. Chainsaw was perched on top of the kitchen faucet and he said, “Sorry,” to her. She picked at one of her feet in reply.
Ronan came back and stood naked in the bathroom doorway, paused and looked Adam over. He came back to the bed, sat down and turned his music off, then lay down next to Adam. There wasn't much room, but with both of them on their sides, their limbs tangled, they fit. Ronan sighed hard like there was something inside him that wanted out. His hand rested in the soft space under Adam’s ribs.
“I can't believe we did that,” Adam whispered. Ronan didn't say anything, but he combed his fingers through Adam’s hair. Adam shivered. “Are you—”
“I’m fine.”
Adam had no way of knowing if that was true. He traced the lines of Ronan’s tattoo that curled up around the side of his neck. He was exhausted and safe and happy and scared all at the same time, and he hadn't done his homework or laundry or dishes, but he couldn't remember ever having felt so accomplished. This was something he could have.
He didn't remember closing his eyes, but then he was opening them. Ronan’s eyes were without their usual, manic intensity, grayish in the dim light, but he didn't look tired, either. Adam doubted he'd sleep.
“Wanna stay?” Adam asked quietly.
Ronan shuffled down so his face was against the pit of Adam’s throat, even though his feet hung off the end of the mattress.
“Yep,” he said, and it was enough. The less Ronan talked, the more he said. Adam reached over him to click the lamp off, then folded an arm over his shoulders and idly stroked the back of his neck until he fell asleep.
In the morning, Ronan left early to check up on Opal and change for class and Adam sat on the floor of his apartment and scribbled his Latin homework down before first period. Ronan showed up to class and sat behind Adam. Adam pretended like he was thinking about anything other than last night. He thought he was doing an alright job, but Gansey kept giving him these quiet, speculative looks that made him think maybe he was failing. Ronan smiled at him like someone who had a secret and Adam couldn't help but smile back.
When the last bell rung, Gansey pointed at Adam and said, “You're coming over,” and it wasn’t a question.
He glanced at his phone. “Is Ronan coming?”
“I'd imagine so.” Gansey wore the look he pulled out when he wanted to get things done. “Meet me there.”
So Adam did. He knew better than to text Ronan and that if they hadn't made other plans, Ronan went to Monmouth by default. Sure enough, by the time the Hondayota rattled into the building’s lot, Ronan was there, leaning against the BMW, which was next to the Pig. Gansey was not outside. By the looks of it, Ronan was trying to convince Chainsaw to eat a Slim Jim.
Adam parked and got out, squinting into the sun. “Hi.”
“Hey.” Ronan grinned with all his teeth. “How does it feel to have ruined your academic career by not doing your homework?”
“I finished it this morning, asshole.” Adam came around the hood of the car and stood in front of Ronan. Chainsaw conceded and ate the Slim Jim. “Hi,” Adam said again, a little breathless.
Ronan looked over his shoulder towards the building, then out at the street, and then ducked his head and kissed Adam on the mouth. It was uncharacteristically sweet. He smelled like pepperoni and it was awful. Adam’s heart twisted up.
Ronan touched his cheek with the hand Chainsaw was on and she jumped onto Adam’s shoulder. “You're so fucking smitten, Parrish,” he said under his breath, letting himself sound as full of wonder as Adam felt.
“So’re you.”
“And? I never said I wasn't.” He straightened up and headed for the stairs, leaving Chainsaw with Adam. Adam followed. Gansey eyed them suspiciously when Adam showed up with Chainsaw.
“Hullo.” He was watering his mint plant from a mason jar. “Nice of you to show up.”
“Nice of you to be alive,” Ronan said, as he had been for the past couple days, shoehorning the new miracle that was Dick Gansey into conversation whenever he could. It made Gansey smile.
“You too. Very thoughtful.”
“I do what I can.” Ronan pulled his arm across his chest until his shoulder popped. “It's fucking hot out. I hate it.”
“It's not that bad.”
“It is. Is there any of that shitty cider left?”
“In the enormous plastic jug? I don't know. It's swill. You'll have to dig for it.”
“I will,” Ronan said, determined, and stomped into the kitchen-bathroom-laundry with Chainsaw flapping behind him.
Gansey sat at the table. Adam sat across from him and waited. Gansey could be a little nosy in a way that he preferred to call naturally inquisitive, but Adam couldn't blame him. It's not like they'd been subtle and he'd already talked to Gansey about Ronan anyways, although it was literally a lifetime ago for Gansey.
“It has come to my attention,” Gansey said after a moment, folding his hands together, “that you are officially romantically involved with Ronan Lynch.”
Adam glanced towards the kitchen-bathroom-laundry door where the clunk of foodstuffs being rummaged around in a fridge could be heard. “You didn't want to have this conversation with both of us here?”
“No. Ronan would make a joke of it and find a way to talk about his dick.”
Adam raised his eyebrows. “Fair enough. Is this an intervention?”
“No,” Gansey said after a moment, treading carefully. “I’m in no position to intervene, per se, and … You're both my friends, and you're—well, you're not stupid, and neither is Ronan, but I was just …”
“C’mon. Out with it.”
“Be careful with him,” Gansey said. “And yourself.”
“He’s not a book you're lending me, Gansey. This isn't sharing toys.”
“I’m just saying, Ronan seems very, um, exciting, but I don't think he knows what he's doing. In this specific arena. Maybe you do, I don't know, I just wanted to make sure you …” He paused here and seemed put off by everything he'd just said. “Please think about this. A lot.”
“I've thought about it. I’m not a monster. I know he's … complex.”
Ronan was complex in the way that disarming a bomb was complex. Complex like a hole in the head.
“I like him,” Adam added, although it was a massive oversimplification. “A lot. And he likes me.” He paused. “Also a lot.”
Gansey’s eyebrows went up. “Does he, now.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Did you two …”
Adam smiled.
“Oh my God. Adam Parrish.”
“I know.”
“This is the gossip of the century. Aglionby’s top scholarship student committing unspeakable acts with local drag-racing street tough.”
“Scandal.”
“It honestly is.” Gansey peered into Adam’s face. “Um. Was it …”
“I’m not talking about this.”
Gansey sat back, looking pleased with himself. “Ronan will tell me.”
“Of course he will.”
They sat in companionable silence for a few long moments. There was a glassy clatter from the kitchen. Gansey was trying very, very hard not to smile impishly, and was failing spectacularly. It was contagious. There was something so comforting about the idiotic thrill of talking even tangentially about sex, like all the magic and dead kings in the world couldn't stop them from being teenagers.
“He kissed my wrist,” Adam said, unable to stop himself."
“He didn't.”
“He did. During it. Like a soft and tender lover.”
“I don't believe you.”
“Here.” He motioned for Gansey’s hand and Gansey gave it to him. He took it in his own. “Went like this,” he said, rubbing his thumb gently over Gansey’s pulse where the skin was thin and vulnerable and his bones sat just beneath the surface. “And then—” He lifted Gansey’s wrist to his mouth and kissed it just like Ronan had done, his eyes dropping shut. Just a simple, closed-mouth press of lips. Doing it here didn't make his stomach flip like it had when Ronan had kissed him. Almost.
“He closed his eyes?”
“He did.” Adam sat up but kept his fingers around Gansey’s wrist.
“Ronan did this.”
“Yep.”
“Ronan Lynch.”
“No, one of the other Ronans we know.”
Gansey took his hand back and touched where Adam had kissed and stared at him, bemused, a smirk tugging at his lips.
“I’m going to politely remind you that liars go to hell, Adam Parrish.”
From the kitchen-bathroom-laundry, Ronan yelled, “And snitches get stitches, Adam Parrish!”
Adam’s ears got hot. Gansey grinned.
“Someone’s in the doghouse.”
“It's not like that. There's no doghouse.”
“Pretty strong words from someone who’s clearly in the doghouse.”
Ronan re-entered the room with a 2-litre jug of something pink and flat and said, “This shit is completely gone, so one of you dial 9-1 into your phone in case I need to go to the ER.”
“You could just not drink it,” Gansey suggested.
“And stay sober in this heat? Fuck off.” Ronan took a swig, then laughed. “Jesus H. Fucking sick.”
Gansey thrust a hand at Ronan. “Adam, this is where you have laid your affections.”
Adam turned in his chair to look at Ronan. Ronan Lynch, with his Aglionby tie pulled free and hanging around his neck, holding a jug of expired booze, a massive raven perched like a gargoyle on his wide shoulders. He was smiling, crooked and cocky and pretty.
Adam smiled back at him.
“I know.”