Snapshots

by salvagingthestars

Summary:

For a sociology project, Adam has to capture the definition of love in a series of photographs; alternately, a character study of Adam Parrish.

Henrietta, when Adam finally rolled into town in the loudly protesting Hondayota at nearly one in the morning, was familiar in a way that he hadn’t quite expected, despite only having been gone for three months. The last vestiges of summer heat still hung heavily over the town, a living reminder of the August day Adam had left behind three months before, as though that moment had been frozen, holding it’s breath over Henrietta in anticipation of Adam’s return.

He could feel the electric thrum of the leyline under his feet and surging through his veins, as different from the faint impression of it he’d felt in Boston as a hurricane from a sunshower, so that the weather might have such a specific intention in regards to Adam wasn’t exactly out of the realm of possibility.

Adam’s boyfriend had dreamed an entire magical forest - one with which Adam himself had made a bargain he still couldn’t fully understand - only a year before. After that, Adam doubted he’d ever be able to dismiss anything as impossible again.

The warmth of the leyline was comforting, in a way, the feeling of realignment settling something in Adam he hadn’t realized until then had been unsettled. But an uneasiness, vague but impossible to put aside, came along with it, because with the strengthening of the leyline came the remembrance of how tightly Adam had bound himself to Cabeswater, and how little he understood that connection.

He tried not to remember Ronan having to hold him up, restraining him even as he offered what little stability he could after Adam had nearly broken his hand punching a tree, and the lurching feeling of his eye rolling wildly, uncontrollably, in his head; his body had tried to kill his friends, and Adam had been utterly helpless to stop it.

He tried not to remember waking up on the side of the highway, hours from Gansey’s house with no memory of having walked there and his limbs aching from an effort that, as far as Adam’s memory had been able to show him, had never happened. He’d vomited along the side of the road when he realized he’d lost hours, his body taken away from him as though it were nothing for Adam Parrish’s will and thought - his personhood, his self, his identity - to stop existing for a few hours, as though he had never been at all.

Adam had sacrificed a part of his free will to wake the leyline - I will be your hands. I will be your eyes. - and, after having felt what it was to lose that, it was all he could do, when he felt the exuberant buzz of Cabeswater under his skin welcoming him home, not to run away.

* * *

During his time at Aglionby, Adam had become used to pushing himself to his limits in every moment he had, taking time by the throat in his relentless drive to escape Henrietta. So when Adam’s sociology professor has assigned a project over Thanksgiving break, Adam had been far less put out than his classmates. He had used school breaks before college on extra credit essays and college applications and as many shifts as he could work and tasks for Cabeswater; it didn’t seem farfetched that breaks during college would be the same. But, instead of an essay, which Adam could have aced in his sleep, they had been assigned a photography project.

Adam had never even owned a camera.

They had to, as Adam’s professor had explained, capture the “fluid definition of love” in a series of photographs. She had given them Thanksgiving break, when most of the class would be home with their families and friends, to work on the project.

Adam had spent most of the ten hour drive brainstorming ideas for the project, his camera - borrowed from the library desk with a strict warning about returning it as soon as he returned from break - on the passenger seat beside him, but he had come up with nothing. How could he show the “fluidity of love’ in a few pictures of his friends?

He had considered returning to the trailer park, but had dismissed the thought almost as soon as it occurred. He would find no love there: only dirt, resentment, and the dull, breathless anticipation of waiting for a dropped glass to shatter that came with living with Robert Parrish.

It wasn’t until Adam finally crossed into Henrietta, a feebly flickering street light illuminating the faded sign with its population ten years out of date, that inspiration struck, a puzzle piece sliding into place where Adam hadn’t even seen a gap.

If he had to capture how love was defined differently to each person, then it didn’t make sense to photograph simply what love meant to him; Adam would photograph what love meant to others, letting the differences between them tell the story of his project. It sounded like bullshit, but then, so had every other essay or project Adam had ever done.

Blue, Gansey, and Ronan, then. He would have included Noah, too, but his professor and classmates most likely wouldn’t be able to see Noah, and Adam wasn’t entirely sure Noah would even show up in photographs. They’d never had occasion to check. Gansey or Blue would have included Henry, as well, but Adam didn’t know Henry well enough to consider him in something as personal as this.

All he needed to figure out was how each of his friends defined “love,” and how to capture that as a novice photographer.

* * *

Trees nearly completely obscured the driveway of the Barns when Adam arrived. Fruit weighed down the branches, with plums and peaches and berries so bright and ripe that Adam thought actually gemstones were growing on the trees at first, dragging the branches down so low that the leaves brushed the pavement. Adam had to park the Hondayota along the side of the road and force his way up the driveway on foot, snagging a violently red strawberry from overhead and trying to ignore that strawberries didn’t grow on trees as he ate it.

It was delicious.

Adam had agreed to staying at the Barns over his breaks because it didn’t make sense to pay for his rent at St. Agnes’s when he was away nine months out of the year, and with his tuition and room and board fees, he wouldn’t have been able to afford to anyway. Ronan had told Adam to “Shut the fuck up, Parrish,” before Adam’s offer to pay rent had even been out of his mouth, but Adam had insisted on chipping in for groceries, which seemed to be the only expense Ronan really had. Adam wasn’t entirely sure how the electricity and plumbing worked, but somehow the dreamt house provided endless power and hot water without Ronan ever touching a bill.

Ronan sat waiting for him on the porch steps, hunched over himself as he nodded along to whatever deafening music came through his silky headphones. He wore dark jeans, and a black tank top despite the November chill. His face was half in shadow, the other half harsh and supernaturally handsome in the moonlight. Ronan’s hair had begun growing back in the last few months, and he had taken to only shaving the sides, so that the dark curls on the top had grown out most of the way to an undercut. Adam rather liked it.

Chainsaw perched on the porch railing, breaking the supernatural silence of the Barns every few seconds with a loud ke-RAH.

“Lynch!” Adam called, placing his bag carefully on the ground beside him. He doubted Ronan would be polite enough to grab it, but his shoulder was aching from the weight.

Ronan looked up. “Yo, Parrish,” he said with nod. He took his headphones off and dropped them unceremoniously on the step beside him, as though they didn’t cost more than most of Adam’s possessions combined.

Adam took a few steps forward, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. “Miss me, sweetheart?” he drawled, letting his Henrietta accent roll off his tongue rather than suppressing it as he usually did.

Adam meant it as a joke, in what he thought was a very Ronan-esque attempt to be an asshole, but he watched as Ronan licked his lips and let his eyes move over Adam’s body. So apparently Ronan didn’t mind Adam’s accent when he was flirting; Adam filed away that information for later.

“That my jacket?” Ronan asked in lieu of answering.

It was. Ronan had given it to him back in August - when they’d spent a week trapped in what Adam called a “hell dimension” and Ronan called a “fucked up clusterfuck of a fever dream” - because Adam had been in only a T-shirt. Adam, after having cleaned the pulsing, tendril-like slime from the jacket in Ronan’s expensive washing machine, had never bothered to give it back. The jacket was warm and thick enough to stand up against Boston’s windchill, although it had stopped smelling like Ronan by the second week of September.

“What’re you gonna do if it is?” Adam teased, letting his mouth drift upward into a smile.

Ronan was up in an instant, crossing the distance between them to stop just in front of Adam in a few long strides. His shoved his hands under the jacket and pressed his nose into Adam’s hair, humming in contentment as a Adam’s own hands came to rest just above Ronan’s waistband. They were close enough for Adam to make out the light dusting of freckles across the bridge of Ronan’s nose and the tops of his cheeks, barely there but just visible against his dark skin in the harsh moonlight.

“I’ll ask you to never take it off,” Ronan answered finally, rucking up Adam’s shirt at the back so that his blunt nails could scratch lightly across Adam’s bare skin.

Adam paused for a minute, though, leaning back so that he could see Ronan’s face. “This isn’t some ownership crap, is it? You’re not into this because it means I’m ‘yours’?”

Adam didn’t think he’d be able to stand it if that was what was making Ronan so happy. He had already sold part of himself to Cabeswater, given away a piece of Adam Parrish because it was the biggest sacrifice he’d known how to make. He wouldn’t be able to do that ever again, and he didn’t know what it would mean for his relationship with Ronan if Ronan would want him to.

Ronan looked angry, though, his handsome features drawn in a scowl. “The fuck? Gross, no Parrish. You don’t actually think I would do that?” He sounded almost insulted.

“What then?” Adam asked, holding Ronan’s gaze. Ronan looked hurt, which Adam regretted, but this wasn’t something he was willing to negotiate.

If possible, Ronan looked even angrier. “Does it matter?” he snapped. “It’s just a fucking jacket.”

“It does,” Adam said, voice firm. “To me, it does.”

Ronan stared back at him, his dark blue eyes flashing in the silver moonlight. After a moment, though, Ronan deflated, shifting his gaze so that he spoke to Adam’s good ear. “I like that you… want something of mine, to keep with you. I like that you washed that stupid jacket even after all that… slime blood shit got on it, because it was mine. You’re not mine, obviously, because you’re a fucking person, but you’re with me, and I like that you… like that, or whatever.”

Adam swallowed. “Oh,” he said hoarsely. He reached his finger under Ronan’s chin, tilting Ronan’s face up so he could meet his eyes again. “Okay, then. I just… you can get why I wanted to make sure?”

Ronan nodded reluctantly. “I know it wasn’t… personal, and shit. I just don’t want you to think of me like that. Like I’m some sort of possessive asshole.”

“I don’t,” Adam reassured him. “Just a regular asshole.”

Ronan’s mouth quirked up in half a smile, and then, with a cautious hesitance, he lifted Adam’s hand to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss to Adam’s knuckles, giving Adam a look as if to ask, Is this okay?

Adam’s response was to pull Ronan down by the shoulders and finally kiss him.

Adam had last seen Ronan when Ronan had come to Cambridge during family weekend. They had ditched the Harvard football game to wander around the campus and later Harvard Square, Adam leading Ronan around by the hand as he pointed out his favorite places to study and the more popular stores off campus. By midnight they had snuck into two frat parties; accidentally stumbled, drunk and falling over each other, upon a Revolutionary War reenactment, barely escaping being enlisted as red coats; and eventually ended up pushing each other around in a shopping cart in an empty parking lot for hours, leaving with scraped knees, bloody hands, and, in Ronan’s case, a massive hickey on the side of his neck of which Adam was still proud.

That was the last time Adam had seen Ronan in person, so he had been waiting for nearly two months to kiss Ronan Lynch again; now that he finally was, he felt himself reluctant to pull away even to breathe, all too eager to drown himself in Ronan’s mouth and Ronan’s scent and Ronan’s hands under his shirt, and Ronan seemed to be thinking the same thing, kissing Adam back just as desperately. Whenever he pulled away, he would move only centimeters before returning his lips to Adam’s.

At one point, Adam thought he heard Ronan mutter, “You taste like strawberry,” but he had Ronan’s tongue in his mouth the next second, so he didn’t dwell on it for long. When Adam let his fingers tangle in Ronan’s hair, Ronan actually groaned into his mouth, biting down on Adam’s bottom lip in response.

If it had been left up to Adam, they probably would have stayed there all night. But after a few minutes in which Ronan lost his shirt and Adam was sure he gained some new scratches on his back that he wouldn’t be able to explain away to his roommate as anything other than what they were, he felt Ronan’s hands under his thighs, lifting him up. Finally, reluctantly, Adam pulled away from Ronan’s mouth.

“What are you doing?” Adam asked, taking a moment to let his eyes run appreciatively over Ronan’s shirtless torso.

“The fuck does it look like I’m doing? I’m carrying you inside.”

Adam laughed. “I’m not the girl in this relationship.”

Ronan rolled his eyes even as he finally managed to heft Adam into his arms. Adam, uncharacteristically obliging, wrapped his legs around Ronan’s waist.

“No one’s the girl, Parrish,” Ronan said, having to tilt his head up for once to meet Adam’s gaze. “That’s the fucking point. Don’t be so heteronormative. But it’s my fucking threshold and I’m damn well going to carry you across it if I want.”

Adam laughed again, letting his head fall onto Ronan’s shoulder. “You’ve been spending too much time with Blue.” And then, “Fine. But are you actually gonna carry me all the way up to the bedroom?”

Ronan started walking them toward the porch, leaving Adam’s bag on the grass. Adam wasn’t too concerned; it never rained at the Barns unless Ronan wanted it to.

“For the sake of your back,” said Ronan as he walked, “You’d better hope so, because wherever I drop you is where we’re fucking.”

“How romantic.” On a whim, Adam pressed his lips against Ronan’s ear and murmured, “If you can get me to the bed you can come on my face.”

He could feel when Ronan’s step faltered, and tightened his grip around Ronan’s neck in response.

“Parrish,” Ronan groaned, and he walked faster as they made their way up the porch steps and through the doorway. And then, as they began walking up the main stairs, “We’re washing that jacket later. It smells like feet.”

“I haven’t washed it in a while,” Adam admitted, feeling bolder than he had since leaving Henrietta in August as Ronan carried him into the bedroom. “Not much point to it if it smells like my shitty detergent when I only took it because it smells like you.”

“Jesus Christ, Adam,” Ronan swore, and when Ronan finally dropped him onto the bed, straddling Adam with his arms braced on either side of Adam’s head to hold him up, Adam could feel Ronan fully hard against his hip. “Do you even know what you’re doing to me when you say shit like that?”

“I-” Adam began, but Ronan was kissing him again before he could say anything else, soft and sweet but paired with the agonizingly slow dragging of Ronan’s hips against Adam’s.

Ronan had thrown Adam’s jacket and shirt onto the floor and was pulling Adam’s zipper down when he paused, pressing his lips against Adam’s neck and breathing his words into Adam’s skin. “I did miss you,” Ronan said, quietly and in the dark and with his face turned away from Adam’s, but he said it. “More than I ever thought I would.”

Adam smiled. “I missed you, too,” he said, because Ronan didn’t lie and so Adam wouldn’t either.

Then, with a breathless laugh, Adam flipped them over so that he straddled Ronan’s hips. He leaned down, letting his lips hover teasingly over Ronan’s, and breathed, “I missed you, too, sugar,” making no attempt to flatten his accent, and he watched in delight as Ronan’s bare skin flushed beneath him.

Still, something of his vulnerability from a moment before lingered in Ronan’s eyes. Adam remembered, more than a year earlier, thinking that making Ronan Lynch smile was a dangerous thing. And maybe that was still true, but Adam wasn’t scared anymore. However dangerous Ronan was, Adam thought he was up to the challenge, and maybe dangerous in his own right. He kissed Ronan again, and it was like a static shock across his entire body all at once, every single nerve on fire with every touch of Ronan’s tongue or teeth or fingers, and for once, Adam was content to lose himself in the moment.

* * *

Early in the afternoon the day before Thanksgiving - after Adam had managed to sleep for a solid seven hours following his late arrival in Henrietta and his reunion with Ronan - Adam and Ronan met Blue, Gansey, Henry, and Noah in the new Cabeswater.

It was still half-finished, Ronan dreaming up new wonderful and conflicting aspects every day. A crumbling stone tower with no discernable entrances had sprung up near the edge of the forest. A creek with water so clear and fresh and pure it was almost painful to drink, with a bridge of stepping stones floating in midair crossing its widest point, ran across a snowy meadow near the heart of the Cabeswater. Adam’s favorite so far was a lush field full of fireflies which, upon closer inspection, revealed themselves to be tiny faeries with glass-spun wings which sang songs in voices that sounded like sunlight spilling through autumn leaves.

Ronan led them to an empty field with soft grass, clusters of daisies unmolested by bees, and a clear view of both the misty blue peaks of the mountains surrounding Cabeswater and of the northern lights in the middle of the afternoon in Virginia.

Blue had promptly declared it her favorite place in the world, and had, to Ronan’s annoyance and what Adam suspected was reluctant fondness, thrown her arms around his waist in a rib-crushing hug.

Blue lay in the grass with her head on Gansey’s stomach and Henry’s head on hers, a haphazard crown of daisies fashioned by Noah perched crookedly on her spiky hair. Gansey wore one as well, perfectly placed and worn with all the regality of a king. A little ways away from them, Noah was braiding together another daisy chain, which he had promised to a delighted Henry.

Ronan lay nearby, his head close enough to Gansey’s for them to speak easily, with Adam’s head pillowed on his chest.

Blue and Henry conversed quietly, barely audible from where Adam lay.

“-the real constellations?” he thought Blue said.

“I believe so,” Henry replied, and after a moment Adam thought he saw Robobee flying over their heads. “There are some discrepancies: stars where there should not be, or missing, or bright enough that if they were actually that close we would be vaporized. But all of the constellations are in their correct places.”

“I can’t believe we’ve never been stargazing,” Blue whispered. “Everywhere we’ve been, and we never have.”

“We have been busy,” Henry said. “It is difficult to look to the stars and the heavens when you are at the center of a thousand adventures here on Earth.”

“I love the stars, though,” Blue said. “I used to sit in my backyard and just watch the night sky for hours. Persephone taught me the constellations.”

Adam could imagine that. He remembered the hours he had spent with Persephone, and the weight her words would carry despite their airiness. Persephone was the sort of person whose voice he thought he could listen to for hours, even if it was describing something as immaterial as constellations.

“What is your favorite?” Henry asked.

Adam half-listened to their conversation as he watched the lights overhead, sleepy and content with Ronan’s fingers moving a idly through his hair.

“-quite a bit of trouble finding ties that matched Jane’s dress.” Gansey was saying to Ronan. “I wouldn’t have bothered at all if the dinner hadn’t be so important to the campaign.”

“Straight people,” Ronan declared, sounding disgusted. “You know what, thank fuck I’m gay.”

As if to punctuate his statement, Ronan reached blindly for Adam’s hand, bringing it to his mouth once he’d grabbed it and pressing his lips to it before letting it drop back to Adam’s side. Kissing Adam’s hand had been a habit of Ronan’s since shortly after their first kiss, but it still never failed to a produce a warm giddiness in Adam’s stomach, and a rapid fluttering of his heart like butterfly wings beating against his ribcage. At the same time, though, Adam felt the same sort of settling over his body and thoughts as he did when he performed a task for Cabeswater and the ley line clicked into place.

Gansey made a sound of protest. “I’m not even straight!”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ronan argued, “Having your tie match her dress is some heterosexual nonsense.”

“You could match ties with Adam and it would be the same thing!”

“I’m a farmer,” Ronan argued, “When the fuck would I have to match ties with Parrish?”

“If you go to any sort of formal event together,” Gansey tried valiantly, “You would have to at least coordinate your colors.”

Adam tuned them out, turning his attention instead back toward Blue as sudden inspiration struck.

“Blue?” he asked, drawing her attention away from the lights overhead. Her face was breathtaking under the shifting greens and pinks, filtering down like sunlight seen from underwater. If Adam hadn’t been in love with someone else already - and wasn’t that incredible and terrifyingly unknown to think about, with the lazy movement of Ronan’s fingers so perfect over Adam’s temple that he almost couldn’t believe it wasn’t a dream, something too good for Adam Parrish to ever deserve - he thought he might have fallen in love with her in that moment.

“Yes?” Blue asked him, turning her head to meet his eyes.

“Do you remember that photography project I mentioned, when I called you last week?” Adam had told Blue about the project almost as soon as it had been assigned, hoping for some advice from the only one of his friends who knew anything about art, but Blue hadn’t had much of a suggestion beyond “It depends on what love means to you, I guess.” Adam had had no idea then, and he still didn’t have much of one now.

Blue nodded.

“Would you, um,” Adam paused, trying to find the right words. “I’m… My idea is, for my project, is to photograph what love means to the people I love, instead of trying to show what love means to me. Because, I guess, the best way to show the fluid definition of love is to show multiple definitions.”

Blue pondered this for a second. “I like it. It’s very original.” And then, “I’m guessing you want me to be one of these people.”

Adam nodded as best he could while still lying on top of Ronan. “Would you mind if I took a picture of you now? I figured, with everyone here and in this place, it’d be…” Adam trailed off, not sure how to put what he was thinking into words, but Blue seemed to understand anyway.

“Go for it,” she said with a grin.

The picture, when Adam managed a version he was content with, was simple. Blue was at the center, her face lit up in blazing watercolor light as she gazed up at the sky, with Gansey under her head at the left edge of the photograph, and Henry by her waist. Ronan, slightly separate, lay across the top border of the picture, his hand splayed on his chest where Adam’s head had been. He was the only one looking at the camera, his blue eyes dark and intense and his expression heartbreakingly soft in a way Adam hadn’t noticed when he’d been taking the picture. Noah’s daisy chains lay in the grass, Noah himself a vague smudge on the ground that could, without a closer look, be mistaken for a shadow.

“It’s perfect,” Blue declared when Adam showed it to her, and he agreed. He had thought he’d be able to express himself better in an essay, but somehow, the picture had seemed to capture something about Blue, and her love for Cabeswater and “her raven boys,” as she called them, that was so profound and infuriatingly elusive that Adam didn’t think he could have captured it in a thousand essays.

* * *

The second picture Adam took of Blue he took in the kitchen of 300 Fox Way. He had stopped by at nearly midnight on Thanksgiving night to pick up something of Persephone’s that Calla had said he might be able to use. That had turned out to be a cardboard box full of mysterious, humming glass objects that set Adam’s teeth on edge, which he’d been too polite, and too terrified of Calla, to refuse.

When he came back downstairs, holding the box away from him as though it were filled with a noxious gas or live scorpions, Adam found the women of 300 Fox Way gathered around the kitchen island. Maura and Calla leaned against the counter, margaritas on the table in front of them and a space, notably empty, left between them where Persephone would have stood. Gwenllian sat in the chair farthest from Adam, doing something complicated with yarn and butterfly hair clips, and Orla sat beside her with a bottle of nail polish making the entire room smell of fumes.

Other women crowded around the kitchen, cousins and aunts who, for the most part, Adam didn’t know. He recognized a few - Ciara, who he thought was Blue’s second cousin; Ava, who had once had a lengthy discussion with Adam about tarot cards but whose relation to Blue Adam still didn’t know; Opal, who, according to Ronan, had been kidnapped for the week by the women of 300 Fox Way (Calla and Maura had explained that it might be good for Opal to spend some time around women other than Blue, and women who understood magic, besides). Blue sat in the chair closest to Adam, her feet swinging almost a foot above the ground as she ate her yogurt.

With reluctant permission from Calla and a rather overwhelming approval from Orla, Adam took his second picture of Blue, setting up the frame so that she was at the center of the picture, and leaving Persephone’s place gapingly, unmistakably empty. Still, there was something about the soft kitchen light and tired smiles and the midnight, pajama-clad gathering that suggested family so strongly it made something in Adam ache almost physically: a nostalgia for something he had never known.

* * *

Blue and Adam sat in her room for hours before Adam returned to the Barns, the box of glass instruments left by the door and half a bottle of cheap wine, ‘stolen’ from Calla, on the bed between them. Ronan had reluctantly promised to pick him up in the BMW, so Adam wasn’t too worried about being drunk. He never drank much anyway, both because he hated feeling out of control of himself and because he sometimes couldn’t even smell beer or whiskey without remembering fists and pain and numbness and the ringing in his ear, deafening and shattering the world around him like a comet hurtling through a glass door.

Blue propped herself up against the headboard, while Adam sprawled out along the edge of the bed, his socked feet near the pillows and his arms folded behind his head. He remembered how awkward he had felt around Blue, only a year before, and spared a thought to be grateful for how utterly comfortable he was sitting with her now.

Adam had realized, truly and totally, that spending time with Blue had stopped being painful the previous Christmas, when they had all sat around the preposterously large tree Gansey had insisted on, and had moved into Monmouth Manufacturing despite all known laws of physics pointing to the impossibility of doing so. Adam had thought Gansey was throwing himself into Christmas to avoid thinking about the Unmaker, his new avatar and the impossibility of his second life, and the trauma still lingering among them. In light of the horror and chaos and mortal terror that had been the autumn, Adam was more than content to play along and drown himself in Christmas spirit and spiked eggnog, forgetting about everything else, at least for one night.

Blue had sat in Gansey’s lap the entire night, she in a shredded homemade sweater of about twelve different fabrics and Gansey in the sort of horrid Christmas sweater that Adam associated with cheesy after school specials on public access channels. Henry hadn’t been able to come, because he’d been in Vancouver with his mother, but he’d Facetimed them all for a while, wearing a sweater nearly as ugly as Gansey’s.

Blue had looked lovely, as she always did. But Adam had spent the night with Ronan’s arm around his shoulders, and seeing Ronan in his own garish Christmas sweater (a joint gift from Blue and Adam), which was emblazoned with lyrics from Happy Holidays You Bastard. Noah had chased them all around with mistletoe, popping up just when they’d let their guard down, and so Adam had received kisses that tasted like eggnog, and later wine, from Ronan (as well as a good natured peck from Gansey that made Adam, who had never quite gotten over his initial crush on Gansey until he’d met Blue, blush, and that made Blue cackle) until eventually he and Ronan had ended up sneaking off to make out in Ronan’s room while Gansey, Blue, and Noah made cookies.

They had only emerged to sneak into the kitchen and steal a tub of raw cookie dough while Gansey had been distracted by Noah starting a minor fire. Blue had caught on immediately, but had only winked at them and kept Gansey distracted as they fled back to the couch with their prize.

Adam had realized over the course of the night that as much as he had once loved Blue, he didn’t anymore, and he had been less surprised than he would have thought to find he was fine with that. She was one of his best friends, and he would always think that she was very pretty and remember the thrill of her small hand in his, but he wasn’t in love with her.

Adam had once been jealous of Blue and Gansey’s relationship, too, of the easy way they fit together, and the way they seemed meant to be in a way Adam and Blue never had, and even of Henry’s easy inclusion into their relationship. But Ronan had barely left Adam’s side all of that night, pressing kisses to Adam’s hands and cheeks and temple, playing absentmindedly with Adam’s fingers, and telling Adam about past Christmases at the Barns and his presents for Matthew that year. Adam had found it difficult to envy Blue and Gansey anything when he had Ronan beside him the entire night.

At one point Adam, more content than he could ever remember being with his head in Ronan’s lap as Ronan played with Adam’s hair, had mentioned trying Boyd again in the morning, to see if there was anything he could do to help out and get in a few extra hours.

But Ronan had scoffed and said, in his typical manner, “What the fuck are you talking about, Parrish? You’re coming to the Barns tomorrow, and you’re wearing the goddamn Green Arrow footie pajamas, or Matthew might actually kill me,” and Adam had wanted to kiss him then and there, lack of mistletoe be damned.

Instead, Adam had bitten his lip to stop himself from laughing. “Green Arrow?”

“Obviously,” Ronan had said, rolling his eyes as if Adam were naive not to understand the nuances of footie pajamas. “Mom and Dad were Wonder Woman and Superman, Matthew’s the Flash, Declan’s Green Lantern because he’s a loser, and I’m Batman, so unless you want to be fucking Aquaman, in which case we’re breaking up-”

Adam had interrupted him. “You’re Batman?” he had repeated, trying and failing to keep the laugh from his voice.

“Yes, I’m-” Ronan had stopped, glaring down at Adam and stopping the movement of his hands for a moment. “I’m not doing the goddamned voice, Parrish.”

“C’mon, please?”

“No. Fuck no.”

“If you do it, I’ll-”

“I’m Batman,” a gruff voice had interrupted from directly behind them, and Adam had jumped. Ronan had jumped further, violently dislodging Adam and nearly knocking him off the couch as he sprung to his feet. He nearly tripped over the library of Gansey’s rebuilt miniature Henrietta until Adam righted him, grabbing the cuff of Ronan’s sweater and yanking him back upright.

Noah had stood behind the couch, smiling innocently despite Ronan’s gasped, “Jesus fuck, Czerny,” and moving to bump Blue’s proffered fist when Ronan flipped him off.

“C’mon, Parrish,” Ronan had muttered, dragging a still disoriented Adam to his feet.

“Wait,” Gansey had called after them, a crease forming between his eyebrows. “Where are you going?”

“My room,” Ronan had called over his shoulder, pulling a feebly protesting Adam along in his wake.

“It’s Christmas!” Gansey had yelled, shifting a startled and slightly irritated Blue on his lap to yell around her. “We’re supposed to spend time together, Lynch!”

Ronan had stopped in front of his bedroom door, Adam stumbling to a halt just shy of slamming into his back. Without bothering to turn around, Ronan had shouted back to Gansey, “I mean, I was going to suck Parrish’s dick in my room, but I guess I could do it on the couch in the name of Christmas.”

“Lynch,” Gansey had said despairingly, as Blue had let out a startled laugh and an, “Oh my God, Ronan,” and Noah had snorted so hard he had fallen over.

“Lynch,” Adam had hissed between his teeth, his entire body flushed bright red, but he was laughing a moment later, the sound bubbling up out of him in an uncontrollable, slightly drunken mania that he couldn’t quite seem to stop.

“Relax,” Ronan had said, in an offhand, asshole-ish way as he’d opened the door, pulling Adam in behind him and closing the door, shutting out the noise of their friends and the Christmas carols playing over Gansey’s speaker.

Ronan had turned to Adam once they were alone, though, looking as sheepish as Adam thought Ronan Lynch was capable of as he rubbed the back of his neck in a complete reversal of his nonchalance from before. “We don’t have to actually… you know,” he’d said, the tips of his ears bright red. “I just said that to wind up Gansey.”

Adam had made a show of thinking it over. His cheeks were probably still pink from laughter. “You always say you’re not a liar, Lynch,” he had said, his grin just as devious as the one that had begun to spread across Ronan’s face, and that was probably a bad sign but Adam hadn’t been able to bring himself to care. “I wouldn’t want to make you into one now.”

When they had emerged from Ronan’s room half an hour later, sticky and sweaty and satisfied, Blue and Gansey had been asleep on the couch, her head pillowed on his broad chest, and Adam hadn’t felt even a twinge of jealousy as he’d pulled a sleepy but eager Ronan by the hand toward the bathroom/kitchen/laundry room for a shower.

And so talking to Blue, nearly a year later, was easy in a way Adam never would have expected when they first broke up. She talked about her road trip, telling him about the Grand Canyon, and Gansey losing spectacularly at gambling in Las Vegas with a dreamt-up ID from Ronan, and Henry taking them to his all favorite places all in Seattle. Adam told her about Harvard, and joining his house soccer team despite being spectacularly bad it, and sneaking into off-campus parties with his friends from his floor.

At one point, Adam adjusted himself on the bed, inadvertently pulling down the collar of his shirt and revealing his collarbone for a moment. Blue clapped her hands over her mouth to muffle a startled laugh.

“What?” Adam asked, looking down at himself.

“You have a...” Blue gestured to his collarbone.

Adam looked down again, pulling his shirt down a bit more to reveal the hickey, dark and sprawling, just below his collarbone. It looked like a nebulous thundercloud, with indefinite edges and a splotchy purple color fading to vivid pink. Adam flushed bright red.

“Oh,” he said, tugging his shirt back up. He avoided Blue’s eyes. “Uh, yeah, that…”

“Is that from last night?” Blue asked. She was still laughing.

“This morning,” Adam admitted sheepishly. “Before Declan and Matthew showed up.”

“Just couldn’t help himself?” Blue teased, and Adam, if possible, even flushed even darker. “What happened?”

“I found out, um…” Adam forced himself to meet her gaze. “I, um, found out recently, that Ronan likes my, uh, my accent.”

“Really?” Blue asked, raising her eyebrows. “So you drop your ‘g’s and he drops his pants?”

She laughed, either at her own joke or at Adam’s scowl.

“More like… I call him ‘sugar’ or ‘sweetheart’ and he, uh…”

“Does that?” laughed Blue, gesturing to Adam’s neck, and Adam nodded sheepishly. “Did you find this out today?”

Adam shook his head. “I said something as a joke on Tuesday night, when I got back, and he was, uh, way more into than I was ready for.”

Blue grinned evilly. “Respect,” she said, and held out her fist. She had been disdainful of the fistbumping, at first, but Adam supposed the last year spent with Gansey and Henry had finally worn her down. Adam touched his fist to hers, and was reminded of the grounding feeling of bumping his fist with Gansey’s.

They swapped stories for a while, in the sort of conspiratorial whisper that Adam associated with gossiping. He was used to weighty conversations with his friends, about resurrected kings and living nightmares and death curses. Lying around drinking wine and talking about boys with Blue felt lightening, and Adam revelled in the levity of the moment.

And then Blue asked, “Is it hard being away from Ronan?”

Adam said, “Yeah, it is. We video chat all the time because he still refuses to text or call me, but I’ll be talking to him on that and forget how far away he is for a minute, because I’ll just be sitting there listening to his voice and it’s like he’s right there next to me, and then it’ll all come back to me and I’ll miss him all over again.” And then, “Why?”

“Because I care about you,” Blue retorted. But after a pause, “I might go to college next year. In California. With scholarships, and work study, and all that, it’s actually affordable, and I wouldn’t turn it down for boys, but-” she stopped.

“I get it,” Adam said. “But I doubt you have too much to worry about. You’ve seen how in love with you Gansey is, right?” He didn’t even hesitate to say it, or feel awkward afterward, because it was true, and Adam found he didn’t resent that in the least. “He’ll go to Stanford, or UCLA or Caltech, and Henry will probably be right behind him. And even if they don’t, well… Gansey’s literally fated to be your true love. Star-crossed and all. And Henry is ridiculously gone on both of you. And even if it doesn’t work out, I reckon you’ll be fine, because you’re Blue Sargent. You’re one of the strongest, most independent people I’ve ever met. But somehow I reckon y’all are gonna make it work.”

Blue was silent for a long time before she spoke again. “Why don’t you ask Ronan to come with you to Boston? Not for school, but he could get an apartment.”

Adam shook his head. “I couldn’t do that to him,” he told her, “Because he’d say yes. If I asked, and I really wanted him to, which I would, he’d say yes. And then he’d have to leave the Barns, and Monmouth Manufacturing and Cabeswater and the leyline, and live ten hours away from Matthew, and as selfish as I am I don’t think I could ever be selfish enough to do that to him.”

“You’re not selfish,” Blue said quietly, reaching out with her small hand for Adam’s, and squeezing his for a moment before letting go. “You’re right, I guess, that’d it’d be selfish to ask him to leave. But you’re not selfish to want him with you.”

“Thanks,” Adam breathed, the moment suddenly too fragile to break by talking at a normal volume, but then, because Ronan was apparently rubbing off on him, “How would you get all three of you on a dorm bed, though? There was barely enough room for Ronan and I on my bed when he visited, so I don’t know how y’all would-”

“Adam Parrish!” Blue interrupted loudly, lunging across the bed to clamp her hand over Adam’s mouth. Adam flinched at the contact for a moment, but then he breathed, forced himself to remember where he was, and managed to laugh at how Blue’s face had gone bright red in embarrassment.

Blue was looking at him apologetically, her arms drawn back to her chest after realizing what she’d done, and so Adam reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it like she had his and saying, “It’s alright.”

And Blue smiled, and kept looking at Adam for a moment, before dropping his hand and springing to her feet with an exclamation of, “Oh, I wanted to show you something!” and began digging around in her closet.

Adam wasn’t in love with her anymore, but Adam was so glad that Blue Sargent was one of his best friends.

* * *

Blue came up with her third picture herself, because she was Blue Sargent, and so of course she did.

She sat under the sprawling beech tree in her backyard, her back against the trunk and her legs crossed in front of her. Maura had turned on the back light so that, with the flash from Adam’s camera, there would be enough light for a photograph. When Adam viewed her through the camera, Blue was sitting slightly off center, and he had lowered the camera, intending to have her move over, when he saw realized Noah had appeared in the place beside her.

It was at it always was when Noah appeared; he was not there, and then he was, and Adam’s mind seemed to have jumped over the moment between, rewinding and erasing that fraction of a second when there was, suddenly, Noah, where there had been no Noah before.

Noah was looking almost solid, with his fingers laced with Blue’s, and when he made a face at the camera, sticking his tongue out dramatically, it was easy to imagine him as the same carefree, immature boy who would have walked the halls of Aglionby almost eight years before.

Blue followed suit with a delighted laugh, sticking out her own tongue at Adam, and he took the picture. Blue was still off-center, Noah discernible only as a pattern or a shadow on the tree, but Adam thought that the picture was perfect.

* * *

Adam saw his parents for the first since his final visit to the trailer park at 3:30am at the supermarket of all places. Blue’s wine had left him tipsy, but apparently not drunk enough for Ronan to have enough pity on him to go into the store himself. Instead, after they’d left 300 Fox Way, he’d sent Adam inside with his credit card and a list of breakfast food ingredients.

Adam made it through most of the trip unscathed, avoiding eye contact with the wild-eyed customers and dead-eyed employees who wandered the aisles of a supermarket at three in the morning, He grabbed flour and sugar and baking soda and potatoes and salt and orange juice and everything else Ronan had on his list as quickly as possible and made his way to the front with his loaded cart.

Paying for things with Ronan’s credit card still felt strange to Adam. He couldn’t stop remembering trying to convince the cashier and himself that his mother wouldn’t have given him a card with no money on it, and the Aglionby boy in the next line swiping his card as if he’d never even imagined it could ever be declined.

And yet Adam stood in line with his groceries, a credit card with access to the sort of small fortune he would be lucky to make over the course of his lifetime digging its sharp corners into his palm and a BMW waiting for him in the lot. Adam had bargained with a magical forest, and quested for an undead king, and had a reborn avatar of a leyline and a ghost and a psychic’s daughter and a Greywaren for friends, but holding Ronan Lynch’s credit card in his hand was still probably the strangest thing in Adam’s life.

He was second line, stifling a yawn that definitely stunk of wine, when he heard someone step up behind him, and then, a moment later, a soft, “Adam?”

Adam turned around, making sure his good ear faced toward the person who had spoken. He saw Robert Parrish first, tall and slightly flushed and with a six pack of beers in each hand. Adam’s mother stood behind him, small and slouched and timid, like a washed out photograph, with the car keys in her hand. She looked uncertain, as though she didn’t know whether she should have just ignored Adam. Adam would have preferred if she had.

“Hey,” he said. Adam almost wished the floor would swallow him up and let him leave this situation, but he suppressed the thought, because as soon as he thought it he began to hear Cabeswater’s whisper of leaves in the wind and water over stones, and realized Cabeswater might actually open a hole in the middle of the supermarket to swallow him whole.

Adam found himself uncomfortable looking at his father. He knew that they didn’t look much alike, but the longer he looked at Robert Parrish’s face, the more similarities his mind seemed to create. Adam wore his hair longer than his father did, and his own was darker, but they were both only variations on the same dusty brown. Adam’s features were slimmer, his face more fine-boned, but there was the same sort of prominence to his father’s features that spoke of the exhaustion and hunger Adam knew still clung to his own face. Adam’s eyes were an unnervingly bright blue, the sort of color that looked alien anywhere less wondrous than Cabeswater or the Barns (and especially so compared with Adam’s dark skin, a few shades lighter than his mother’s dark brown), and his father’s a dull grey, but there was the same hard set and heavy gaze to them that Adam thought made both their faces so unnerving.

“You didn’t call,” his mother said, forgoing any sort of greeting.

“I called last week,” Adam argued, as though pretending he didn’t know what she meant would help the situation. “I left a message about getting an A on my Roman history paper. You didn’t pick up.”

He hadn’t expected her to. When he’d left the trailer park for the last time, he’d done so with the understanding that his mother wanted to follow his life, but not to be a part of it, and Adam was fine with that. His mother had a way of speaking that wormed its way under his skin far more insidiously than his father’s punches, and Adam remembered how he’d locked himself in his small room or hidden under cars in the backyard after his father would hit him, always alone, not even considering seeking comfort from his mother because he knew he would find none.

Adam had been alone in the trailer, lonesome and utterly isolated. His mother had never been on his side, and Adam wouldn’t ever pretend, to himself or to her, that she had been.

“You know what I mean,” his mother said, her voice as firm as it ever got but still very quiet. “You didn’t tell us you would be home for Thanksgiving.”

“I didn’t think you’d care,” Adam said. “I didn’t think I’d be invited for Thanksgiving.”

His mother pursed her lips and crossed her arms, because Adam was right and she knew it.

“You didn’t even tell us you were gonna be in town,” his mother continued, a whine to her voice as if Adam had personally hurt her, and he thought she meant to make him feel guilty. It didn’t work.

Adam’s father was looking at his clothes with a growing frown. Adam wore pressed khakis and a navy blue blazer and neat shoes, although his shirt and tie were wrinkled from lying on Blue’s bed. He had gone to Thanksgiving mass with the Lynches after an informal dinner in the kitchen of the Barns with Ronan, Matthew, and Declan, and had dressed for the occasion.

“Everytime I see you,” Robert Parrish said finally, a slight slur to his speech, “It’s like you made yourself into someone even worse. You dress like that friend of yours, the one with the polo shirts that talks like he’s the fucking queen.”

He meant Gansey, Adam thought. And maybe Adam did dress more like Gansey than he once had (although he thought he had enough dignity that he would never wear boat shoes, at least). His father meant it as an insult, but Adam didn’t feel particularly insulted.

“Next,” called the cashier in a monotone, and Adam turned away from his parents to push his cart up to the register.

He was keenly aware of his parents eyes on his the whole time, as his total grew higher and higher, and especially as he produced Ronan’s credit card with as little embarrassment as he could to pay for the groceries.

On an impulse, Adam gave his parents a small wave as he began to push his cart away.

His mother called to him before he could walk away. “This ain’t our fault, Adam!” she said, as loud as Adam had ever heard her.. “You keep acting like we’re awful, but you’re the one did this!”

“Did I?” Adam asked, deadly quiet, and the cashier actually perked up as she watched them. Adam could feel his pulse thrumming his hands, and could hear wind through leaves in his good ear, Cabeswater swirling invisibly around him. Adam didn’t think he needed Cabeswater though, as he stared down his mother.

“You’re the one who made it ugly,” Robert Parrish said, echoing his words from May.

His mother nodded. “It was your boyfriend,” she almost spat the word, “who got your father arrested. You talked to the police, even when I told you not to. You left, Adam.”

Adam met her gaze. She was angry, finally, her entire body trembling with emotion, but so was Adam. He wasn’t scared at all, which he found surprising in a detached sort of way. He was the Magician; his parents couldn’t scare him anymore.

“You left me deaf in one ear,” Adam said to his father. He repeated, “You’re the reason I can’t hear out of my left ear.” He turned to his mother and said, “And you’re the reason it got that far. If it hadn’t been for Ronan,” both his parents made faces at his boyfriend’s name, but Adam didn’t care, “He wouldn’t have stopped. I was on the ground with my head ringin’, I couldn’t even stand up, and he was screamin’ down at me to get up so he could hit me again. If Ronan hadn’t stepped in-”

Adam forced himself to stop. He wasn’t scared - he would never be scared of his parents again, not after everything he had been through - but he was pissed, his fists trembling where they were clenched around the handles of his shopping bags and angry tears forming in his eyes. He needed to stop; he wasn’t going to have this fight anymore, and certainly not in the middle of a grocery store at 3:30 in the morning.

“Don’t expect me for Christmas, either,” Adam said at last, and then he turned away from his parents and walked out of the store.

Ronan was waiting for him when he got out, the BMW parked in one of the closest spaces to the store, and Ronan leaning against the side.

He raised a questioning eyebrow as Adam approached. “Took you long enough,” he drawled.

“I ran into my parents.”

“Shit,” was all Ronan said.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” Adam yanked the trunk of the BMW open viciously and shoved the bags inside. He closed it more carefully, though, wary of breaking the car.

“Did I say anything about talking?” Ronan asked as he walked around the car. With a glance at the trunk, he added, “You’re fucking lucky there weren’t any eggs in those, Parrish.”

Adam didn’t bother replying as he pulled himself into the passenger seat, and after a moment, Ronan followed suit on the opposite side. The streetlamps in the parking lot cast stripes of shadows across his face in the dark car, sharpening his already harsh features. His dark blue eyes shown in the soft golden light breaking through the windshield, like sunlight breaking through thunderclouds.

Ronan hesitated before putting the key in the ignition, giving Adam a look of concern that anyone who didn’t know Ronan as well as Adam did would think was uncharacteristic.

“What, Lynch?” Adam snapped. He wiped angrily at his eyes.

Unphased by Adam’s rudeness, Ronan reached out and took Adam’s hand in his own, interlocking their fingers with the sort of easiness that came from habit and practice. “You don’t have to talk,” he said, “But whatever you want to do, we can. If you want to scream or punch something or break shit, we’ll go do that. If you want me to fuck off and just drop it, I can do that, too.”

Adam considered it for a moment. His first instinct was to say no, to brush Ronan off and cross his arms and draw in on himself, or to pick an argument with Ronan as an outlet for his anger. A year before, when their relationship was still new, Adam probably would have done that, and probably would have ruined everything with Ronan.

Instead, Adam paused, feeling the weight of Ronan’s hand in his own, and tried to figure out what he wanted.

“I wanna be drunker,” Adam said at last. “Maybe then I’ll wanna talk about… feelings.”

Ronan nodded seriously. “Drinking and cuddling: I can manage that.”

Adam looked over at him and said disdainfully, “I didn’t mention ‘cuddlin’,’ Lynch.”

Ronan rolled his eyes. “We’re getting drunk and talking about feelings, Parrish, you bet your punk ass there’s gonna be cuddling.”

Adam rolled his own eyes in return, but allowed himself a small smile when Ronan brought Adam’s hand to his mouth and kissed it. And then Ronan let go, reaching to spread his hand across the side of Adam’s neck and pull Adam’s face closer to him across the center console. It was the sort of touch that made Adam’s pulse race, but Ronan only kissed Adam on the forehead, just at his hairline, and left his lips there. Adam closed his eyes and let the touch linger, letting himself indulge in being held and just not thinking for one, two, three seconds, before pulling away.

“We should go,” he said quietly, careful to keep his eyes away from the parking lot lest he see his parents again.

Ronan nodded, placing the key in the ignition and starting the engine, but he reached out for Adam’s hand before grabbing the gear shift, keeping one hand on the wheel and one hand on Adam’s for the entire ride back to the Barns.

* * *

When Adam had first tried to decide how to photograph Gansey, he’d been stumped. Gansey was Gansey, after all: handsome and charismatic and, since his rebirth, unknowable in the same way that Adam had become when he’d made his bargain.

Ronan had told Adam over video chat that, although Gansey’s rebirth seemed to have cured his insomnia, his sleep was plagued by nightmares afterward, horrors not unlike Ronan’s, from which he woke up screaming and retching and muttering about ravens and the undead and inhuman hands soaked in blood. Adam didn’t know if Gansey was experiencing Cabewater’s memories, moments along the leyline transferred into his subconsciousness, or visions of the future - more vivid that anything Maura or Calla would see, he thought - but he desperately hoped it wasn’t the latter. They’d all been through enough.

Even Adam, who had long since given up believing he was owed anything, thought that, after everything, they were owed the small slice of happiness they’d managed to carve out for themselves.

Despite Adam’s fears, though, Gansey’s pictures were ultimately the easiest to choose. Gansey could be beyond the vulnerability Adam needed for his project, hiding it under an impressive layer of charm and misdirection, but Adam knew Gansey as well as he thought anyone could ever know Gansey.

* * *

They took the first picture in the Pig on the morning after Thanksgiving, Gansey just barely speeding across back roads and Adam in the passenger seat. Gansey wore a bright green polo shirt, boat shoes (which Blue had threatened to burn more than once, and, considering Gansey was still wearing them in November, Adam was inclined to agree with her), and a pair of sunglasses, as if the weak sunlight of November dawn were enough to justify such a measure.

But when Gansey turned toward Adam, his face lit up in a bright, genuine grin and the side of his face colored by the streaked watercolor pinks and oranges of the sunrise, Adam managed a picture that captured both the timelessness of him - how he seemed to inhibit the past and the present, old and age and youth, simultaneously - and his open, entirely teenaged joy at riding in a fast car with a friend.

* * *

“Can I ask you something?” Gansey asked eventually, his gaze fixed straight ahead as they wound their way through the mountain roads. Adam could feel the ley line under them, there and then not as they sped around meandering curves, but a comfortable, anchoring presence nevertheless.

“Sure,” said Adam, sitting up straughter in his seat. His back was beginning to hurt from slouching anyway. He nearly had to shout to be heard over the engine, although at least it they didn’t need the air conditioning anymore.

“Are you happy?” Gansey asked him, his voice just as loud as Adam’s.

Adam turned to look at him, but Gansey’s eyes were still on the road.

“Should I not be?”

Gansey made a rather undignified face behind his sunglasses. “I’m serious.”

Adam crossed his arms. “Why are you asking?”

Gansey shrugged, but it was the sort of shrug that tried so hard to be casual that it immediately gave him away as anything but. “I haven’t kept in touch as well as I should have,” Gansey admitted.

“You call me more often than Ronan does. I’m pretty sure my roommate thinks you’re my dad.”

“I know that,” Gansey said, tapping his hands on the steering wheel. “But when I do, I tell you about what we’re doing, and the places we’re seeing, and you tell me about school and your classes and your job and-”

“And what?” Adam snapped. He hadn’t meant to become angry, but it bubbled up to the surface all at once, more like an explosion of champagne shooting out of a bottle than the fizz that made its way to the surface after the cork had been blown off.

“And we’re talking,” Gansey continued, his tone still infuriatingly calm, “But we’re not communicating, you know?”

“What do you wanna communicate about?”

“D.C.,” Gansey said bluntly, and Adam could feel the color drain from his face. “Blue and Ronan. Your… Magician status, and how the whole Cabeswater situation affects it. My rebirth.”

“It’s seven o’clock in the goddamn morning.”

“And?”

“And it’s entirely too early to be talkin’ about any of that!”

Gansey clenched his jaw. “I’m sorry Adam, but we need to talk about this. We can’t just go on ignoring it.”

Adam remembered thinking, once, that Blue and Ronan were different brands of the same impossible stuff. He thought that the same might be true of him and Gansey, but in a different way. Blue and Ronan were both like dynamite, or a meteor: brilliant and violent and impossible to ignore, and both of them stubborn and argumentative in a sort of heels-dug-in, ‘take no prisoners’ way.

(Adam had a horrible realization that he had a type).

Adam and Gansey, though, were like waterfalls; relentless, impossible to stop, and rushing headfirst in whatever they thought they must and damn the consequences. They were both stubborn too, and just as ruthless and unwilling to negotiate as Blue and Ronan, but while Adam was fire and temper and rage simmering barely under the surface, Gansey was masks and logic and a thousand tiny pieces Cabeswater had taped together into a semblance of a boy.

Adam considering arguing with Gansey, or refusing to talk at all, but he figured it was like the adage about an unstoppable force and an immovable object. They’d be left at a stalemate, and their argument would ruin what little time they all had left together before Adam went back to Harvard.

And so Adam acquiesced. “Fine,” he managed. “D.C.. What about D.C.?”

“What about D.C. indeed,” Gansey mused, infuriatingly. “We never actually talked about that. What did happen in D.C.?”

Adam looked across at him incredulously. “You’re asking me? You realize I’m the one who can’t remember most of it, right?”

“But you know why you can’t remember,” Gansey pressed. “Don’t you? You know why that happened, and you haven’t told me, or Jane, or Ronan-”

 

“You don’t know what I’ve told Ronan,” Adam argued.

“If you had talked to Ronan, he would have told me-”

“He’s my boyfriend!” Adam interrupted, and he realized he was yelling but didn’t care enough to stop himself. “If I told him something like that, why would he turn around and tell someone else?”

“He would tell me because he cares about you, Parrish,” Gansey said, still calm, but his use of Adam’s last name gave him away; he was well and truly pissed. Gansey only used Adam and Ronan’s last names like that when he was angry with them, and wanted to distance that anger from their friendship. “And he knows that I care about you too.”

“That’s not how it works,” Adam retorted, shaking his head. “Would you expect Blue to tell me everything I assume you tell her about your resurrection? Or Henry?”

Gansey made a pained face. “That’s different.”

“How?”

 

“Ronan is my best friend,” Gansey said. “And so are you. I trust him to be honest with me about you, if something meriting of worry happens.”

“I trust Ronan, too,” argued Adam, “So I know that if I told him something personal like that, he wouldn’t tell you or anyone else about it. He’d tell you to fuck off and ask me yourself.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” Gansey said, and finally he sounded frustrated. “You revel in being cryptic. You keep derailing this conversation now! I need you to be honest with me, but I don’t think that you can! At the very least, you certainly don’t seem to want to.”

“I don’t need you to solve all my problems for me!” Adam shouted, turning to face Gansey fully. “I can handle my life on my own, alright?”

 

“But you don’t have to!” Gansey shouted back. He took a deep breath before continuing, his eyes still straight ahead on the road. “My intention isn’t to control your life, but we’re friends, Adam. After everything we’ve been through, I know I can’t just solve all of your problems for you, and I wouldn’t want to try, because I know you, and I know that isn’t what you’d want. But I can be your friend, and talk to you and care about you without you having to sacrifice your personal integrity.”

Adam didn’t speak for a long moment, so that the only sounds were the deafening roar of the engine and the rattling of the heater. Adam kept his eyes on the horizon, where the violent orange of the sunrise was spilling over the rigid blue line of the mountains, slicing through the lingering morning mist in sharp rays of light. Cabeswater still pulsed through him, like vines crawling through his veins and frost settling on his limbs and Ronan’s arms around him the only thing keeping him from collapsing on himself even as his hands ached to wrap around Ronan’s neck.

“I can’t even trust my own hands,” Adam said finally, and utterly miserably. “The demon wanted me to kill all of you, and I couldn’t stop it. I tore out Blue’s stitches. I would’ve stabbed you if Cheng hadn’t stepped in. I tried to kill Ronan-”

“But you didn’t,” Gansey reminded him. “We stopped you, and we stopped the demon.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m in control of myself!” Adam exploded. “It wasn’t the demon that… that hijacked my mind and tried to make me walk back from D.C.. That was Cabeswater, and I’m still tied to Cabeswater! It can drag me back whenever it wants to, erase my… my identity, erase me, whenever it wants, and I can’t do anything to stop it.”

“Has something happened since you were at school?” Gansey asked, concerned but also as if he already knew the answer.

“Twice,” Adam admitted reluctantly. “I haven’t made it out of my dorm building. My roommate thinks I sleepwalk.”

“Maybe you do sleepwalk,” Gansey suggested.

Adam gave him a droll look. “I don’t. You don’t grow up somewhere as small as where I did, with a father like mine, and start getting up in the middle of the night. That, and there were vines all along the walls.”

“Did your roommate notice those?”

“He was pretty stoned at the time.”

Gansey managed a laugh. “Small blessings, at least.”

Adam merely shrugged.

Gansey assumed what Adam thought of as ‘Gansey face’; it was the mask he put on that Adam thought might have been closest to the truth of Gansey. He was serious, commanding, and wise beyond the years of an eighteen year old boy. It was the sort of face that made Gansey look like a king.

“I’m sorry, Adam,” he said, and the words managed to sound simultaneously rehearsed and genuine. “What you’re going through is genuinely horrible, and I wish I could help. It’s incredibly frustrating that I am so helpless to help you at all, but I can only offer my sympathy.”

Adam kept his gaze ahead, but he held out his closed hand, and Gansey, glancing briefly to the side at Adam, smiled as he bumped Adam’s fist.

They drove in silence as the sun rose - or near silence, because the noise of the Camaro around them was still nearly deafening - but, as Gansey finally turned around and began driving back toward Henrietta, Adam spoke again.

“That day,” he said, and Gansey looked at him again. “With the demon, and your death, and my being taken over, and…”

“What about it?” Gansey asked, soft and cautious in a way that made Adam feel like something fragile: something to be treated with caution.

“Everything was horrible, but…” The words stuck in his throat.

“Adam?”

Adam cleared his throat. “Sorry, I just… I haven’t, uh, talked about this before.”

Gansey looked at Adam out of the corner of his eye. “Not even with Ronan?”

Adam shook his head. “I couldn’t. Even after everything, with this… I couldn’t talk to him about this.”

“About what?” Gansey pressed gently. “I promise, you can trust me Adam.”

Adam swallowed around his dry throat. “I know. And I do. I just… On that day, when the demon took me over, and I was attacking y’all-”

 

“When the demon was attacking us,” Gansey corrected him.

“It was my body,” Adam argued, “It was my sacrifice, to give myself away to Cabeswater like that. It was my choice.”

“You wouldn’t attack us,” Gansey replied. “Not of your own free will. You were begging us to hurt you, to stop you, because you were so miserable at thought of hurting us.”

Adam disagreed. Giving up his free will had been his choice, and so the consequences of that - almost killing his best friends - were on his shoulders. But he would never convince Gansey of that.

“That’s what I was talking about,” Adam said instead. “I was begging you to stop me, and Ronan couldn’t do it, for a while. I had almost choked him to death, and he nearly didn’t fight back because he was afraid to hurt me.”

“He loves you,”

“I know,” Adam said, but he was shouting again. He forced himself to be quiet. “I know. And that was the problem. I noticed that he liked me for a while, you know, before I realized I felt the same way. And I was flattered, at first, but I also thought I was being vain. Everything with Blue had just happened, and I thought I might’ve just… just wanted to think that I was worthy of a crush, you know?”

Gansey seemed to gather his words for a moment. “You’re not vain,” he said finally. “And not just because you were right about Ronan. You have such a skewed perspective on yourself, did you know that? You’re one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met - I can see it, Harvard can see it, we both know that Ronan can see it - but you think the absolute worst of yourself in every situation.”

Adam didn’t know what to do with that. He decided to continue what he’d been saying, instead. In Gansey’s mind, he would be proven right, but Adam’s fears had been burning a hole through him for more than a year; he needed to tell someone.

“Once I knew that Ronan liked me, though, and that it was mutual, that made everything worse. Ronan is… Ronan is Ronan. He’s incredible, in the most literal sense of the word. And he was pure and proud and literally beyond human understanding, and then he fell in love with me, and almost let me kill him because he couldn’t bring himself to hurt me. As if somehow, maybe hurting me could’ve been worse than being killed.”

Adam’s voice broke. “He was going to let me kill him, if it meant keeping me safe. Somehow, a literal miracle of a person fell in love with me, and I ruined him. He almost died while I tried to kill all of you, and he almost died rather than hurt me, and all I could think was ‘I’ve ruined him.’”

“Well,” said Gansey, and he sounded angry, finally. It was almost validating, to finally have Gansey be pissed at him. “I’m sure Ronan would have something to say about that.”

Adam blinked back the tears threatening to form in his eyes. “What?”

“Do you really think Ronan thinks he’s ruined?” Gansey demanded.

“No, but-”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Gansey continued dismissively. “Ronan didn’t hesitate to hurt you because you somehow corrupted him, Parrish, my God.”

“What, then?” Adam shot back hoarsely.

“He loves you,” Gansey snapped. “And that’s just how Ronan loves: with his whole person. It’s how he loves Matthew, and me, and Blue, and you more than almost anyone else. You make him happy, Parrish, and he likes your attention and your company and your face and plenty other aspects of you, I’m sure. He wants you happy, and in his life, and he’s loathe to hurt you because he cares so much about you.”

“But-”

“I’ve know Ronan longer than you have,” Gansey continued, as if Adam had never interrupted. “He’s always been intense, and he’s always been utterly devoted to the people he loves. You didn’t make him that way, Parrish. You’re just the focus of it now, because Ronan thinks you’re worthy of it.”

“But I’m not!” Adam burst out, the tears finally falling from his eyes. “I’m not, alright? That’s the entire goddamn problem.”

Gansey’s knuckles were white on the wheel. “Ronan thinks you are,” Gansey said quietly. “And that’s not something he thinks lightly. And I do, too, Parrish. I think you’re good enough for my best friend to love. But if you think he’s somehow ruined-”

“That’s not what I meant,” Adam defended himself.

“Then what?”

“He’s not a ruined person,” Adam tried, falteringly, to explain himself. “I love Ronan. I don’t think he’s ruined as a person.”

Adam didn’t think that Ronan was a ruin. He thought that Ronan Lynch was miracle.

“Then what?” Gansey repeated.

“I ruin people,” Adam said. “I just… Ronan shouldn’t be willing to die for my sake. I’m not worth that. And I’m terrified because… I get nightmares all the time, from Cabeswater, of you and Blue and Ronan, Ronan again and again and again, dead because of me, and I’m not worth that, alright? I don’t- I can’t, Gansey, I can’t-”

Gansey pulled over and shut off the engine. The sudden silence was deafening.

“Adam,” Gansey said quietly. “Adam, oh my God.”

Adam wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. He felt as though he might vomit.

“Ronan thinks you’re worth it,” Gansey managed. “But if you’re that scared, and having nightmares like that… Adam, you need to talk to Ronan. He loves you. He’d want to help you.”

Adam nodded. “You’re right. I know you’re right. I just… I’m not…”

“You’re not used to having people who want to help you,” Gansey finished, meeting Adam’s eyes across the console. His image swum in Adam’s visions as tears spilled from over his eyes. “I get that. But you have people who love you now. You need to let us be there for you.”

Adam finally gave up on wiping his eyes and folded in on himself, his arms tight against his chest and his forehead pressed to his knees. When he’d been younger, Adam had used to hide in the same position once his father had walked away, before he’d begun disassociating himself during his father’s outbursts. He had curled up in whatever small spaces there were in the limited area of the trailer, or, more often, in the garage outside, and had tried to force himself not to cry, waiting alone for the tears to stop before facing his parents again. His mother had never tried to find him.

But then Gansey’s hand, large like Ronan’s but unhardened by callouses and scars, began rubbing soothing circles across Adam’s back. Adam kept his face down, but he leaned into the touch, relaxing the grip around his ribs that had been his attempt to physically hold himself together, and let his friend offer what silent support he could.

* * *

Ronan met Adam in the late morning, racing the BMW along the winding back roads to where Gansey had dropped Adam off near the foot of the mountains. Adam could hear the engine for almost a full minute before he saw the car, the sound echoing off the mountains.

The BMW jerked to a stop, the engine cutting off abruptly, so that one moment it was all Adam could hear, and the next there were bird songs and wind rustling through the grass and the electric hum of the ley line under his feet. Ronan was out the door an instant later, slamming it closed behind him as he ran to Adam, his heavy boots crunching the gravel of the road beneath him. Chainsaw, close enough to Ronan’s back to blend in with his shadow, fluttered around indignantly as she waited for a stable purchase on Ronan’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Adam said, his voice still hoarse from crying, as Ronan all but ran into him, his hands running down Adam’s arms as if checking him for injury. Once he seemed satisfied that Adam was fine, though, Ronan didn’t back away, instead letting his hands settle on Adam’s hips.

“What’s wrong?” Ronan demanded, glancing over Adam’s shoulder as if the problem would leap out of the grass.

Adam took a step back, feeling a twinge of guilt when Ronan’s face fell in the moment before Adam could grab his hand. Ronan had long fingers and slim knuckles, with prominent veins across the back of his hand and fingernails bitten to jagged edges; Adam had been fascinated with Ronan’s hands long before they had been dating, and the warm skin-on-skin contact of Ronan’s hand in his was still somewhat dizzying in its sudden anticipation and promise.

“Cabeswater stuff,” Adam said, pulling on Ronan’s hand as he began to walk away from the road. “You can help me while I talk.”

Ronan followed reluctantly, adjusting his grip on Adam’s hand as they walked. “You brought me all the way out here to help you move rocks?”

Adam pushed past the shrubbery on the side of the road. “No,” he said, keeping his eyes on the path in front of him, “That’s an added bonus.”

He didn’t need to turn around to know that Ronan rolled his eyes. When he spoke, though, Ronan’s voice was serious. “Gansey said something was wrong.”

Adam shrugged without turning around. “I was talking to Gansey when I was taking his picture. He thinks you and I need to talk.”

Ronan stopped and tugged on Adam’s hand, so that Adam had no choice but to stop as well, and turn to face Ronan. “We need to talk?” he repeated, and his grip on Adam’s hand tightened, as if he was afraid Adam was going to take it back.

Adam borrowed a gesture from Ronan and brought Ronan’s hand to his mouth, kissing his fingertips.

“It’s about the Unmaker,” Adam admitted finally, and Ronan’s face fell. “Or, no, it isn’t, but it’s about what happened that day.”

“What?” Ronan demanded, angry in his worry, but he didn’t take back his hand from where Adam had pulled it to his chest, his fingers tracing over the lines of Ronan’s palm.

“I thought I was going to kill you,” Adam said, straight to the point. He didn’t think he could take another drawn out conversation like he’d had with Gansey, and certainly not with Ronan, who was always so beautifully, brutally honest. “I thought I was going to kill all of you, but you didn’t want to hurt me.”

Ronan sounded perplexed when he spoke. “Of course we didn’t want to fucking hurt you. Parrish, are you serious?”

“You didn’t want to hurt me,” Adam corrected. “You didn’t want to hurt me, and you almost died because of it. I was gonna kill you, and you almost let me because you didn’t want to hurt me.”

“Parrish, where the fuck is this coming from?”

But Adam wasn’t going to let himself be distracted. “I can’t ruin you like that, alright? I can’t just… have you fall in love with me, and then suddenly think I’m worth dying for! You seriously considered whether or not dying would be better than hurting me when I was possessed by a demon and trying to kill you all, and that’s- I’m not worth that, alright, and you’re… I’m…”

Adam words were sticking in his throat. He still couldn’t bring himself to look at Ronan, but he watched as Ronan took his hand back. Then, when Adam thought he might just collapse in on himself, his head cold and light enough that it felt as if it wasn’t even there, and the world tilting around him in a violent swirl of muted greens and autumn yellows - Adam thought he might’ve been working himself into a panic attack - he felt Ronan’s arms wrap around him. Ronan’s embrace was strong and warm and stabilizing, and Adam melted into it without a second thought, desperate for the comfort Ronan offered so freely even if he had done nothing to deserve it.

Chainsaw jumped from Ronan’s shoulder, cawing indignantly and fluttering loudly above their heads for a moment before alighting on a nearby tree branch.

“Fuck, Parrish,” Ronan muttered into Adam’s hair.

Adam spoke with his words muffled by the fabric of Ronan’s shirt. His nose was buried in the fabric, the smell sweet and comforting as Adam tried to hide his face in Ronan’s chest.

“I keep having dreams,” he admitted. “About Gansey and Blue and Henry, and you, over and over again you. And you’re dead because of me, and I can’t…”

Ronan swore, the words spilling from his lips with the weight and rhythm of poetry, for a long minute before he could respond.

“Your dreams… if they’re from Cabeswater, then you can scry, alright, and I’ll come in with you. I have your tarot cards in the glove compartment. Whatever’s going on, we’ll fucking deal with it.”

Adam managed to nod against Ronan’s chest..

If possible, Ronan’s arms wrapped tighter around him. “And I’m not fucking ruined, Parrish, alright?” Ronan said into Adam’s hair. “Or at least, if I am, I was ruined long before I met you.”

“No-”

“I found my dad’s body,” Ronan said quietly. “A bloody fucking pulp with a tire iron beside it, and I walked down the driveway and found it. If I’m ruined, it’s not because I didn’t want to hurt you because I care about you.”

“You’re literally a miracle,” Adam protested hoarsely. “You can create entire worlds and people from your dreams, and-”

“And you’re the fucking Magician,” Ronan interrupted him. “That world I created? It loves you, and works with you, and trusts you. And it does that because I trust you, because I know who you are, Adam, alright?”

“Lynch-”

Ronan didn’t let him start. “You’re ambitious, and underhanded, and cunning, and ruthless, and vengeful. You can be callous, and selfish, and self-centered. And you’re the most proud person I’ve ever met. You’re an asshole, Parrish. I knew that when I fell in love with you.”

Adam pulled his head back to look up at Ronan. “Then why would you think I was worth it? Why would you think protecting me was worth dying?”

“Because I also know that you’re stupidly loyal and devoted, and you’re terrifying smart, and you love the people you love with your whole fucking heart. And you’re the most stubborn motherfucker I’ve ever met. Matthew loves you, Opal loves you, and Gansey honestly probably loves you more than he loves Sargent, so I know that you’re a good fucking person. And you’re the Magician, which means you’re the only person who could ever even vaguely understand what being the Greywaren means. You care about me even though I’m an asshole, and you get me, like no one else ever has. So of course I’m in love with you, you fucking idiot. And of course I’m going to do anything I can if it means I don’t have to hurt you.”

The words were barely out of Ronan’s mouth before Adam was kissing him, pulling Ronan’s mouth down to his and tangling his fingers in Ronan’s jacket. He kissed Ronan desperately, wanting to stop thinking for a moment in favor of drowning in the smell and feeling and taste of Ronan.

But Ronan slowed the kiss, keeping it soft and sweet, until finally he pulled backed, flushed and looking thoroughly debauched with his hair a mess from Adam’s fingers buried in it. Ronan didn’t go far though, pressing a last, lingering kiss to Adam’s still-tingling lips before pressing his forehead to Adam’s.

“You’re worth it,” Ronan repeated gently. “I’m not ruined because I don’t want to hurt you, alright? Do you remember when I was being unmade? Before Sargent kissed Gansey?”

 

Adam nodded. “It was the worst moment of my life.”

That seemed to give Ronan pause. “Of your life?” he asked, his tone closer to the asshole Adam had thought he was when he and Ronan had first met.

“I was tied up and blindfolded,” Adam defended himself. “The demon was still rolling my eyes around and trying to get out of the ribbon, and I was completely miserable, because I had finally kissed you and thought that we could be happy - that I could be happy, that I could have something that made me happier than I’d ever been - and I’d nearly killed you. And I could hear you gasping, every time you were conscious again, and I thought you were going to die. And I wanted to help, I wanted to help you more than anything, but I knew if I asked Blue to untie me I’d just try to kill you or Opal again. I was just… utterly helpless and out of control of myself and you were dying two feet in front of me and-”

Ronan kissed him again before he continued, short but heated, as if he needed to kiss Adam to assure himself that they were both still alive, and as whole as they could be. He drew back after a moment and pressed another kiss to Adam’s forehead before speaking again.

“When it was happening, though,” said Ronan at last, “You were scrying, behind your blindfold. You risked your soul and shit because you thought I was going to die. You fought the demon and fucking won because you wanted to help me, Parrish. So if think that you ruined me, then I ruined you, too.”

“So maybe we’re not ruined,” Adam admitted quietly, to himself and to Ronan.

“Maybe we’re not ruined,” Ronan repeated. “Maybe we’re just two idiots stupid enough to fall in love in a fucking shitstorm of a situation.”

Adam laughed.

They stood like that for a long time, Adam leaning against Ronan and Ronan’s arms around Adam, before Adam whispered, nearly inaudibly, “I love you.”

Adam had said it before, but not often, because every time he did, it felt like glass shattering into a million splintered pieces, with Adam left raw and vulnerable as he placed his entire self in front of Ronan.

And then Ronan said, “I love you, too,” and all the pieces fit back together. Adam was left with a smile he couldn’t fight from his face, despite the tears still drying on his cheeks, and for the first time, he found he didn’t want to, because Ronan’s answering smile was breathtaking.

Ronan pulled away first, although he locked the fingers of both his hands together with Adam’s. “C’mon, Parrish,” he said, “You still need to move some rocks or some shit for the ley line, right?”

Adam nodded. “Yeah. You can move the heavy ones.”

Ronan made a sound of protest. “No the fuck I cannot.”

Dropping one of Ronan’s hands, Adam ran his fingers up and down Ronan’s bicep, delighting in the goosebumps that rose under his touch. “I like seeing your arms when you lift stuff.”

“You’re just trying to get me to move a bunch of rocks for you,” Ronan protested, fighting the reluctant smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

On impulse, Adam darted in and kissed Ronan on the cheek. “Possibly. But I might also be in the mood to blow you after seeing you move a bunch of rocks for me.”

Ronan raised one eyebrow. On him, it was an aristocratically handsome gesture that made Adam’s knees just the littlest bit weak. “What, just on the side of the road?”

“You have a car,” Adam pointed out, and that made Ronan grin.

He placed his hands on either side of Adam’s face and kissed him, a long and sweet and dizzying kiss that left Adam breathless when Ronan finally pulled away.

“I’m holding you to that,” Ronan warned, pointing his finger right in Adam’s face. “Because your mouth looks mighty pretty right now, and I reckon it’d look even prettier around my dick.”

He said the last part in a mocking version of Adam’s own accent, but Adam only smiled and said, in his best Henrietta drawl, “Sure thing, sugar,” and watched with a vindictive glee as Ronan’s face went bright red.

“You’re an asshole, you know that, Parrish?” Ronan managed as Adam turned away, following reluctantly as Adam began walking toward the block in the ley line.

“I know,” Adam called over his shoulder, still grinning. “But you love me.”

Ronan caught up to Adam suddenly, his arms wrapping around Adam’s waist in a hug from behind. “I do,” Ronan admitted, pressing his lips to Adam’s neck before burying his face in the junction between Adam’s neck and shoulder. “You smell nice,” he added quietly. “I missed that.”

Adam didn’t think they were going to be very productive in fixing the ley line, but, as he leaned back against Ronan’s chest, he couldn’t bring himself to mind.

* * *

That afternoon, they all sat on the porch of Harry’s, enough gelato to make the table sag spread out in front of them and the speakers cranked up as loud as they could go at Ronan’s request. Ronan’s boots rested heavily in Adam’s lap, but his upper body was twisted toward Gansey next to him, who, Adam was sure, had his ankle entwined with Blue’s beside him. Henry leaned forward eagerly across the table beside Blue, his face lit up by an unabashed smile. Noah filled the seat between Henry and Adam, holding a spoon and yet not, so that it was both in his hand and floating in midair; it gave Adam a headache to look at it, so he tried not to.

The afternoon sunlight, gold against Gansey’s brown skin, cast him as an immortal king holding court over the table, but there was a simple happiness to his expression, and a clear excitement in his voice as he gesticulated with his hands, telling Ronan about some sort of tomb he, Henry, and Blue had discovered on their road trip.

“It was really quite stunning,” Henry was saying to Ronan. “The walls seemed to be carved out of marble, but there were miles and miles of tunnels going deep underground. That much weight should have collapsed in on itself. It was terribly claustrophobic. Dick especially had trouble with that, but Blue and I helped him through it, for the most part. We are all the sort of people willing to go to incredible lengths for adventure, I suppose. It was beautiful enough to justify being scared. I wish we could have taken pictures. I would have sent them to you and Adam.”

“I think it was another dream place,” Gansey added. “It was on a ley line, and the caves were rather like ant tunnels, if someone who’d never seen an ant hole or an ant farm outside of a television show tried to imagine one-”

“Since when are you an expert on ants?” Blue interrupted incredulously. “When could that ever possibly be relevant?”

“You’d be surprised,” Gansey said vaguely, “In Peru, I was searching through this cluster of hills with my EMF and-”

Adam took his second picture of Gansey as his friend was mid-word - though he looked as handsome as always, of course, perfectly photogenic even when unaware the picture was being taken - his smile wide and unabashed, his posture and presence as regal as any king’s. Blue was turned toward him, her features softened by fondness, and Henry laughed along with Gansey. Noah was a blur at the edge of the frame, insubstantial as a cloud of autumn mist suspended in mid-air. Ronan was smiling a soft smile that still never failed to make Adam’s heart melt in the picture, but he turned toward Adam with a scowl when the camera whirred and the shutter snapped.

“What the fuck, Parrish?” he asked, punctuating his words with a soft touch of the toe of his boot to Adam’s stomach.

Adam replaced his camera in his bag and said, “It’s for my photography project.” And then, dryly, “I got your good side, sugar, don’t worry.”

Blue laughed, covering it behind her hand, and grinned knowingly at Adam.

Ronan’s cheeks flushed a delightful shade of pink as he flipped Adam off before turning back to Gansey, but he undermined the gesture by reaching under the table and taking Adam’s hand in his own, his thumb rubbing across the back of Adam’s knuckles. Having only one hand made it more difficult to eat the gelato, but Adam couldn’t bring himself to mind.

* * *

Adam took his third picture of Gansey at Monmouth Manufacturing, because to show how Gansey loved without including Monmouth Manufacturing would have been impossible. Gansey had sold the deed in order to bribe Ronan’s way into not being expelled from Aglionby the year before - which, when Ronan had found out, had been the cause of his and Gansey’s biggest and most vicious argument to date - but Ronan had managed to buy it back for an outrageous price, and a few well-placed bribes to town and state government officials.

They all gathered at Monmouth Manufacturing just before midnight, everyone together on Gansey’s bed to face a massive projection screen dreamt up by Ronan. When Adam arrived, driving straight from Boyd’s, Blue and Ronan were, very passionately and very loudly, trying to convince Gansey to agree to watch Mad Max: Fury Road: Ronan because he loved explosions, and Blue because she loved feminism and explosions. Noah interjected once in awhile from his place at the top of the headboard, balanced in a disconcertingly inhuman way, to say something about a flamethrowing guitar.

This seemed to be enough to catch Henry’s attention, as he looked up from his phone to join the conversation. “The cinematography is actually quite brilliant as well, my love,” he said, addressing Gansey. “The use of color especially is supposed to be quite striking, which is impressive for a movie set in the desert. And I certainly would not mind seeing that flamethrowing guitar. That alone seems to be a good enough reason to watch it.”

Ronan looked at Gansey and gestured dramatically toward Henry, as if to say, you see?

“Cheng gets it,” said Ronan, offering Henry a fist bump. “Just because it’s not Monty-fucking-Python and the Holy-fucking-Grail doesn’t mean it isn’t a good movie.”

“Flamethrowing guitar,” Noah emphasized, and Ronan nodded in agreement, as though Noah had made some sage point.

Adam retrieved his camera from his bag and took the picture before the others realized he was there, although when he looked at the photograph, Gansey, his wireframe glasses perched on his nose, was smiling softly at and locking gazes with the camera, with a look on his face as though to to say Can you believe this?

Blue’s head rested Gansey’s shoulder as he sat upright against the headboard, her face tilted upward to argue with him, while Henry leaned back against Gansey’s knees, his phone in his hands but his face turned toward the argument behind him. The smudge above the headboard, where Adam was sure his teacher would say he had left too much empty space, was Noah. Ronan, sprawled out on the bed beside Gansey, was a blot of darkness in his black muscle shirt and black jeans, his legs spread far apart where, Adam realized with an erratic quickening of his heartbeat, he had left room for Adam to lie between them.

Gansey was the clear focal point of the photograph, though, the only one making eye contact with the camera, with the faces on the bed around all him turned toward him, as if he were the subject of a Renaissance painting.

Adam quite liked the way the picture came out.

“Parrish!” Ronan called loudly. It seemed Adam’s presence had finally been noted. “You going to come watch this movie or just fucking stand there taking pictures all night?”

Adam placed his bag on the floor. “It depends,” he said, as he made his way across the room to settle on the bed between Ronan’s legs. He could feel Ronan’s knuckles rubbing a gentle, soothing rhythm through his shirt almost immediately as they ghosted over his side, and the reassuring warmth of Ronan’s body under his shoulders. “What’s this movie about, besides explosions and flame-throwing guitars?”

Blue took a deep breath, preparing her spiel again, although there was a mischievous, impish light in her eyes that made Adam think she knew what she was doing. Gansey gave Adam a long-suffering look over Blue’s head, and Adam smiled at him, settling further back against Ronan’s broad chest as he listened to Blue.

* * *

Adam woke up in the next morning feeling well rested for the first time since starting college.

The light coming spilling through the blinds, rather than the shrill beeping of an alarm clock, pulled Adam reluctantly into consciousness. He was overly warm, from the blankets and the contact and the general coziness that clung to the Barns, but entirely too content to consider leaving Ronan’s bed. Adam opened his eyes blearily to find the back of Ronan’s head centimeters away from his own face, his lips nearly touching the skin at the base of Ronan’s neck.

After a moment’s deliberation, Adam tilted his head forward and pressed a kiss there, and then wrapped his arm more tightly around Ronan’s waist, pulling them even closer together. Ronan hardly ever allowed himself to be the little spoon, so Adam intended to take full advantage of his boyfriend’s moment of vulnerability, planning to steal away a few more hours of blissful, contented sleep.

But Adam’s kiss must have woken Ronan, because, with a reluctant grumble, he rolled himself in Adam’s arms so that they were face to face, noses nearly touching. There was something small and shimmering in Ronan’s hand, something pulled from a dream, but he tossed it lazily to the end of the bed, uncaring of its fate as whatever it was rolled to the ground. Adam found himself too tired to care much about what happened to it, either.

“‘Time is it.” Ronan muttered, his voice muddled by sleep so that it came out as a statement rather than a question. He lisped slightly around his retainers..

“Dunno,” Adam murmured. With the easy contentedness of late mornings and warm sleep still hanging over the bed, he was unwilling to raise his voice anymore than necessary. “Too early, probably.”

“Go back to sleep, then,” Ronan mumbled, too tired to swear. But he raised himself up, scooting over to lay his head on Adam’s bare chest, his arms going around Adam’s thin torso automatically. Ronan, Adam had discovered over the last year, was far less self-conscious just before and just after falling asleep than he was during the day. Although, self-conscious might have been the wrong word to describe the particular brand of defensive posturing that was Ronan Lynch.

Ronan spoke into Adam’s skin, his voice muffled to the point of near incomprehensibility. “Why’re you up?”

Adam pressed a kiss to Ronan’s temple and brought his hand up to stroke through Ronan’s short hair. His other arm he wrapped around Ronan’s waist, over where Ronan clung to Adam’s chest.

“Sun woke me up. I was gonna go back to sleep.”

Ronan hummed contentedly. “Smart. Knew there was some common sense in there somewhere.”

“If it’s too early to be awake,” Adam shot back in a whisper, “Then it’s damn well too early for backhanded compliments, Lynch.”

Adam felt Ronan’s lips brush lazily over his chest, just above his heart. “You know I love it when you swear, baby,” he whispered, barely awake but still somehow as sarcastic as ever. “Save it for later, though. Tired me out too much to go again right now.”

“Let’s keep sleepin’ then,” Adam managed around a yawn, his accent worse than ever in his tiredness. “We can see what you’re feelin’ up to in a few hours.”

Adam could feel Ronan’s smile. “Sounds perfect.”

Adam was too much of a pessimist to ever admit that anything seemed perfect, because he knew that, as soon as he thought things were finally going well, that he might finally be in the clear, everything would fall apart again. But as Ronan fell asleep on top of him, and Adam was dragged back into his own dreams, he admitted, if only to himself, that the moment was pretty close to perfect.

It was the sort of feeling, caught in that moment like sand in an hourglass, that Adam wished he could capture in his project. But the comfortable silence of the morning after, and the warm blankets and lazy sunlight and Ronan’s warm pressed against him from head to foot, was entirely too intimate for Adam to ever consider sharing. This was how Ronan loved, and, if he allowed himself to admit it, this was how Adam loved, too. But, as perfect as the moment was, Adam wanted to keep it as something for him and Ronan, and for them alone.

Maybe that made him selfish. Adam already knew he was selfish. He had known he was selfish since he’d begun putting his paychecks toward tuition for Aglionby instead of helping his parents with the bills. But Adam thought that he might deserve to be selfish. After everything they had gone through, he thought he and Ronan deserved a selfish, self-indulgent morning of sleeping as close together as they could physically be without having to worry about magical forests and dead kings and nightmares.

Ronan didn’t have nightmares when Adam slept with him, and Adam thought that that, at the very least - the relaxed, peaceful expression on Ronan’s face as he slept on top of Adam - meant they deserved to be selfish, if only for a few hours.

* * *

Adam took his first picture of Ronan that afternoon, outside of St. Agnes’s before the four o’clock mass. The Lynches always went to church on Sunday morning, but Adam would be leaving for school then, and Ronan had wanted Adam to come to church with him while he was home. Declan had been reluctant to drive down from D.C. again so soon, because he and Matthew had only just left the Barns on Friday morning, but Matthew had been on Ronan’s side, wanting to see Adam again before he left, and after what had happened with the Unmaker, Declan had, according to Ronan, not yet been able to say no to Matthew.

And so Adam stood outside St. Agnes’s on Saturday afternoon, shoulder to shoulder with Ronan and slightly uncomfortable in his stiff, single suit. The November sunlight was weak, but it shown directly in Adam’s eyes, and so he was still blindsided when Matthew ran into him, throwing his arms gleefully around Adam’s chest and knocking them backward half a step before Ronan righted the both of them, giving Adam an amused smirk over the top of Matthew’s head as he did so. Adam decided to ignore him.

“Adam!” Matthew exclaimed as he pulled away, beaming up at Adam with his perfect, even-toothed smile as though he hadn’t seen Adam’s two days before. Adam could see Declan behind him, looking pained at Matthew’s loud, exuberant show of emotion and glancing around worriedly at the other churchgoers who had turned to stare disapprovingly at Matthew and Adam. Adam decided to ignore him, too.

“Hey, Matthew,” Adam said, and he fought to keep any sort of reaction but a smile from his face as he took in Matthew. He had seen Matthew on Thanksgiving, of course, but he doubted he would ever get used to the horrific, twisted burns like snarled tree roots dragging down the side of his face, pulling one side of his mouth permanently downward and reaching the corner of his eye. Ronan said Declan had refused to talk about what exactly had happened to Matthew when he had almost been Unmade, and Adam was glad for it, because he thought it would hurt Ronan even more to know the details.

Adam only turned to Declan when Matthew finally let go of him, stepping away to hug Ronan. Declan’s handshake was cool and firm, the sort of handshake politicians had, and he had begun wearing a silver ring on his right hand.

“Adam,” Declan greeted him, and although Matthew had said the same thing, there was a slight twist to his lips and a hardness in his voice that set the two greetings miles apart.

“Declan,” Adam replied, and then, “I wanted to ask your permission for something.”

Declan leveled him with a look of cool indifference. “You’re not asking for my brother’s hand, are you?”

Adam felt the flush that rushed to his ears and the back of his neck, his heart suddenly pumping so loudly that it was all he could hear for a moment. He looked toward Ronan, but he and Matthew had moved out of earshot to greet an uncomfortable looking woman in a dress that looked like an eggplant. Ronan turned, as though feeling Adam’s gaze on him, and raised an eyebrow, as if to ask “what?” - rude even in a single gesture - before the eggplant woman pulled him back into the conversation.

“I - What? Um, no, that’s not… it’s only been a year, I wouldn’t, um…”

Declan laughed, following Adam’s gaze to Ronan. “I was joking, Parrish. Relax.”

Adam fiddled with the bracelet around his left wrist. Ronan had given it to him, on the night before he left for college, taking it from his own wrist and tying it around Adam’s as they’d sat on the porch swing at the Barns.

Adam met Declan’s gaze again. The same vivid, steely blue of Ronan’s eyes stared back at him. “I have a sociology project,” Adam said, gesturing to the camera bag that hung off his shoulder, “Where I have to capture ‘the fluid definition of love’ in pictures. I’ve taken pictures of Blue and Gansey, and what love means to them, but now-”

“Now it’s Ronan’s turn,” Declan finished, fiddling with his silver ring, and Adam realized he was uncomfortable. Adam wondered if he was worried about the opinions of the other churchgoers - as all the Lynches were, even Ronan, and when Adam had asked why Ronan, of all people, gave a shit about their opinions, Ronan had only said, “It’s a Catholic church, Parrish. You’re being judged the entire time, and they don’t let you forget it.” - or if Declan had an issue with him and Ronan.

Adam could understand Declan thinking Adam wasn’t good enough for Ronan, because in many ways, he wasn’t; the trailer park still clung to him like a second skin, a deadweight dragged behind him all the way to Harvard in his shitty car and Henrietta accent, and Ronan was beautiful and terrifying and wondrous, pulling worlds and wonders and miracles from his dreams as easily as plucking a rose from a garden. But if Declan’s issue was with Adam being a boy, Adam wouldn’t have much trouble telling Declan where he could shove his opinions, and he thought Ronan would probably be on his side, if only because he was always profanely delighted by Adam’s cursing.

“Now it’s Ronan’s turn,” Adam agreed amicably, choosing to ignore Declan’s discomfort for the moment. “I wanted a picture of him with you and Matthew, before mass.”

The way Adam had figured, if Ronan was willing to sit in the same pew with Declan for an hour a week, and Declan was willing to drive four hours from Washington D.C. every Sunday, then Ronan’s weekly ritual of attending mass with his brothers spoke to his love of Matthew and of the impact of Niall Lynch’s memory on the Lynch brothers better than anything else Adam could think of. He was sure there was some secret reason for Ronan to go to mass, as well, something terrifying or traumatizing or both which Ronan had alluded to a few times before abruptly shutting down, but Adam had no idea what that could be, and as much as he was growing to know Ronan, there were still buttons he wasn’t willing to press.

Still, mass meant something to Ronan that was more profound than Adam could understand or than Ronan could articulate to Adam; he’d had glimpses of it, seeing Ronan sprawled artfully across pews in drunken sleep or in Ronan’s passionate argument for Declan to bring Matthew for Saturday mass so that Ronan could share some small, inexplicable part of himself with Adam while he was home. Adam thought that perhaps whatever had so terrified Ronan drove him to seek answers, or protection, or both, in the pews of St. Agnes’s. Ronan had told him about how, desperate and afraid before he’d understood what it meant to be the Greywaren (or at least, as much as something like that could be understood), he’d turned to God for guidance.

Capturing Ronan without St. Agnes’s, or without Matthew and even Declan, for that matter, would be impossible.

Declan gave Adam an appraising look. “That’s fine, I suppose,” he said finally, sounding so bored that he couldn’t possibly actually be so, and then he walked away toward his brothers.

And so Adam’s first picture of Ronan was of Ronan at the foot of the church steps, tall and handsome and foreboding in a dark suit, but caught mid-laugh at something Matthew had said. Ronan faced the camera, his eyes looking past the lens and straight at Adam, as they had in Blue’s first picture. Matthew’s golden curls shone almost unnaturally in the weak sunlight, in the sort of way that made it easy to remember that he was a dream and drew the eye to his loveliness, although Ronan, as intense and dark and utterly captivating as he was, dominated the picture.

Declan stood at only an inch or so taller than Ronan, his solidness and strength in sharp contrast with Ronan’s brittle, lithe form. They had the same sharp features and cold gaze, although Ronan wore his in a way that was more obviously dangerous; Declan could intimidate with his handshake and his shark’s smile, but Ronan was dangerous in the same way as an underfed dog, or a wild animal freed from a cage.

Declan managed a small smile though, at Matthew’s joke, and his happiness softened his eyes, just a bit, as he gazed into the camera.

* * *

Adam found mass rather uneventful. His own parents were evangelical, but in the way that meant there was an unread Bible on his mother’s bedside table and his father was a Republican for social reasons, so Adam typically only went to church on Christmas. He forgot to bless himself as he walked through the door, was a beat behind in the sitting-standing-kneeling routine, and fumbled his way through the profession of faith and the Our Father.

But sitting beside Ronan in the pew gave Adam the chance to observe Ronan, and all he could think was that, despite his sharpness and his darkness and his profanity, Ronan fit in the church. Not so much in the stifling judgement and pious conservatism, but in the shards of color thrown by the stained glass windows and the loud, unsynchronized singing and the buzzing energy of the church that felt almost like standing on the ley line. Adam watched Ronan’s posture, and his attentive gaze, and the ease of his shoulders and his scowl as he sat beside Matthew.

Ronan held Adam’s hand during the homily, swiping his thumb across the back of Adam’s knuckles even as he seemed to keep the entirety of his attention on the priest, and for that moment, Adam thought he could understand a piece of Ronan he’d so far been missing.

* * *

They all spent Saturday night together at the Barns, gathered on the back porch with a view over the sprawling acres of misty fields and the lush gardens and orchards, bursting with vibrant yellows and violent oranges and iridescent pinks that seemed to glow in the moonlight. The fire in the impossible firepit in the middle of the porch - which, by dream magic, Adam supposed, didn’t burn the wood of the deck around it - kept them warm despite the biting chill of the autumn wind, although it was never really cold at the Barns unless Ronan willed it so.

Blue, Henry, and Gansey had all squished together on the loveseat, Gansey with his head in Blue’s lap, her fingers moving absentmindedly through his hair, and his feet in Henry’s. Gansey was gesticulating wildly as he spoke, his drink sloshing dangerously in its cup every time he did.

Noah had claimed the cushioned rocking chair, sitting cross-legged and perfectly still in the middle of the chair, which rocked back and forth gently nevertheless. He leaned forward intently as he listened to Gansey, interjecting with dirty jokes that made Blue, Henry, Adam, and Ronan snort whenever Gansey made an accidental innuendo.

Adam had sprawled out on the porch swing with Ronan settled in his lap, his long legs spread out over Adam’s and Adam’s arms wrapped around his waist. Adam let his hands drift under the edges of Ronan’s shirt a few times, mostly out of sight of their friends, tracing the lines of Ronan’s tattoo that extended to his lower back and delighting in feeling Ronan shiver against him. Ronan held his own beer in his hand, reaching out to touch his cup to Blue’s when she made a particularly vicious comment that left Adam, Henry, and Noah cackling and Gansey red-faced and sputtering, yelling an indignant, “Jane!”

At one point, tired and content, Gansey had held one of Blue’s small hands between his own, and said, his voice dripping with sweet, drunken sentimentality, “Your curse was terrible, of course, Jane, but at least it meant I got to be your first kiss, and you mine. There’s a bit of a silver lining, at least.”

Blue didn’t say anything, taking a sip of her drink instead.

Adam felt Ronan sit up abruptly in his lap and shifted his own weight to compensate. “No way, Sargent,” Ronan said, with a horrible sort of glee.

“Jane?” Gansey asked, his face falling quickly. Henry was turned toward his as well, an unreadable expression on his face.

Blue didn’t meet any of their eyes. “I may or may not have kissed Noah,” she said after a long pause, and Noah grinned.

Ronan and Adam laughed, Ronan almost falling out of Adam’s lap, as Gansey yelled, “Noah?!” with pompous indignity.

“I’m already dead,” Noah said with a shrug, but he was still grinning. “Not like she could kill me again, and she wanted to try kissing someone, so...” he spread his arms wide, as if to say, here I am!

“I wasn’t planning on kissing anyone ever,” Blue said, “It’s not like I knew I was supposed to be kissing you for a magical sacrifice. I figured kissing Noah would be the only chance I’d ever get!”

And then Blue started laughing, her cheeks going pink and her hand covering her mouth as she rocked forward. Gansey stared up at her for a moment, betrayed, but then he started laughing too, and soon they were all feeding into each other, none of them able to stop. They were all drunk, as well, though Adam less so than the others, which he thought was a large part of the hysteria of it.

It was hours later, after they had reached a sleepy lull in the conversation, the only sounds the hypnotic sounds of crickets in the fields, Chainsaw cawing on her perch on the railing, and the music, turned to a low volume, coming from the speaker Ronan had set up in the corner of the porch, that Adam remembered his sociology project. But Ronan’s weight, draped ever more heavily across Adam throughout the night, kept him from springing to his feet at the realization.

Ronan’s head had fallen against Adam’s shoulder, his face turned in so that each breath tickled warm air against Adam’s neck as he drifted to sleep. From his angle looking down at Ronan’s face, Adam could see the way his long, dark eyelashes fanned out across his dark skin, and the peaceful stillness to his face that had been so glaringly absent only months before. Ronan asleep, at least with Adam nearby, was a heart-achingly vulnerable Ronan, perfectly spun glass ready to shatter at any moment, and Adam nearly decided to forego waking him up for a picture. All he wanted to do was to wrap his arms tighter around Ronan’s waist and fall asleep with him on the loveseat.

But he had a sociology project due on Tuesday, and two more pictures still to take. So Adam sighed and curled his fingers in Ronan’s hair. Ronan was prone to punch anyone who woke him up unexpectedly, but Adam’s hands in his hair seemed to signal to him that it was just Adam, and that he was safe: enough, at least, that Adam was most certain of his own safety.

“Ronan, wake up.”

Ronan was only half asleep, so he grunted in response to Adam’s words and tucked his face further into Adam’s neck.

“Ronan,” Adam repeated, still whispering, and when this garnered no response, “Lynch. I need to get up for a minute.”

“Why?” muttered Ronan, his breath hot against Adam’s collarbone.

“I have to take a picture,” Adam said softly into Ronan’s hair, and was met with a whiff of green apple shampoo.

“Parrish,” Ronan groaned, but he yawned his way through Adam’s name so that it was nearly incomprehensible. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

“I’m leaving at ten tomorrow,” Adam reminded him. “I thought you’d wanna do something more fun than taking pictures before I left.”

Ronan smiled against Adam’s neck. “I do,” he said, “Believe me. But I also want to sleep right now.”

“One picture,” Adam pleaded. “You can keep sleeping for it, even, because I’m not planning waking the others up.”

Ronan signed. “Fine.” He stood up unsteadily, crossing his arms once he’d clambered to his feet, but whatever intimidating effect it was supposed to have was ruined when he rubbed blearily at his eyes.

Adam stood up slowly, one arm asleep from being trapped under Ronan’s weight and his mind still heavy with tiredness. He snuck a light kiss to Ronan’s nose, grinning at Ronan’s confused scowl, before heading inside to grab his camera.

Ronan had thrown himself back onto the porch swing by the time Adam returned, arms crossed behind his head and chin raised defiantly, as though he planned to stare down the camera. Adam set the picture up so that the fire was at the center, with Ronan laying across the porch swing with his feet on the arm, facing the camera.

Noah’s chair was opposite Ronan’s, where Noah floated an inch or so above his chair, staring into the fire with an unblinking hyperfocus, his pale eyes unnaturally bright from either the reflection of the fire or from something entirely other. Noah had looked more like Noah than Adam had seen him in months since Adam had come home from Harvard, but at that moment he looked so dead that Adam almost couldn’t reconcile that image of Noah with his friend.

The loveseat was opposite Adam across the fire, where Gansey was passed out with his head in Blue’s lap, his eyebrows drawn together in the same way Ronan’s did when he had a nightmare, and Blue’s head was falling onto her shoulder. Adam thought she might still be at least partially awake, but he wasn’t entirely sure. Henry’s head had fallen onto the back of the loveseat behind him.

The picture was one of Adam’s favorites. The soft comfortableness of the scene and the vulnerability of their friends made Ronan, despite his posturing, seem almost as vulnerable as he was asleep; it was the sort of private, intimate moment that Adam was reluctant to share with his class. The firelight cast Ronan’s sharp features as golden and statuesque, so that Ronan was subtly brilliant in a way that dominated the entire picture.

“You done, Parrish?” Ronan drawled, and Adam looked up from the view screen to meet the challenge in Ronan’s gaze.

“Yeah, it’s good. Just let me put the camera away.”

But Ronan stood, stretching widely, and said, “We might as well go inside at this point. It’s your last night on a bed. I don’t plan to spend it freezing my balls off on a fucking loveseat all night.”

“I have a bed,” Adam defended himself.

Ronan rolled his eyes. “A dorm bed isn’t an actual bed.”

“You’re a snob.”

“My bed is actually a dream,” Ronan said, and Adam groaned. “I have high standards. And there isn’t enough room on a dorm bed.”

Adam raised one eyebrow. “Room for what, exactly?” he asked.

Ronan smiled dangerously, stepping closer to put his hands on Adam’s hips. He tilted his head down to touch his forehead to Adam’s. “Come upstairs with me and I’ll show you.”

Spreading his hand on the side of Ronan’s neck (and keeping a careful hold of the borrowed camera in his other hand), Adam said, “I could agree to that. But we have to bring everyone else inside first.”

“They’ll be fine,” Ronan breathed against Adam’s skin, pressing a slow kiss behind Adam’s ear and biting down softly after.

Adam melted into Ronan’s body for a moment, letting himself indulge in the heat and the feeling of Ronan’s mouth moving down his neck and Ronan’s fingers curling in Adam’s belt loops, pulling Adam flush against him, but he pushed him back after a moment.

“I reckon Blue might actually kill us if we let her fall asleep like that.” Adam told him as Ronan blinked at him, disoriented at the sudden transition.

“Damn straight,” Blue muttered sleepily, and Adam laughed, muffling the sound in Ronan’s shoulder so as not to wake Gansey and Henry.

“Good morning to you, too,” said Ronan, the bite in his voice barely softened in his annoyance. “Are you good to walk on your own, princess, or do you need to be carried?”

Adam looked up to see Blue extricate herself from under Gansey and stretch, a tired grin on her face. “I’m fine, thanks. But y’all are in charge of moving Gansey and Henry.”

Ronan flipped her off as she walked into the house, yelling quietly after her, “Guest room on the second floor, maggot!”

“I know!” Blue replied in the same voice, not bothering to turn around.

Ronan stepped back from Adam with a reluctant sigh. “Let’s get this over with, I guess.”

Ronan grabbed Gansey’s shoulders, Adam grabbed his feet, and they managed, cursing and stumbling, to maneuver his through the house and drag him up the stairs. Gansey muttered in his sleep, little nonsense pieces of words, but he was still asleep when Adam and Ronan threw him unceremoniously onto the bed beside Blue, who was sitting cross legged in a pair of what looked to be Henry’s sweatpants and a thin T-shirt, working a growing pile of bobby pins out of her short hair.

“If you want him to brush his teeth and shit,” Ronan warned her in a whisper. “That’s on you. And if you let him sleep in his khakis he’ll be cranky in the morning.”

“I know,” whispered Blue in reply, and she ran her hand through Gansey’s hair with heart-melting gentleness even as Gansey began to snore.

Adam and Ronan left them to get Henry from the porch, but met him, sleepy and stumbling, halfway on his way up the stairs.

“Was Noah still outside?” Adam asked quietly.

Henry merely blinked at them for a moment, drunk and exhausted, before shaking his head. “I assume he went wherever it is he goes at night.”

“Good night then, Cheng,” Adam said, and was completely unprepared when Henry hugged him, the scent of his cologne overwhelmed by the ethanol stench of vodka.

“Sleep well, Adam,” Henry said as he passed them and made his way into the guest room. Ronan was muffling a laugh behind his hand.

“Shut up,” Adam told him, making his way back upstairs without bothering to see if Ronan was following.

“I didn’t say anything,” Ronan protesting, still laughing. Adam could hear his boots on the stairwell, muffled when they reached the carpet at the landing, but he didn’t turn around as he made his way past the guest room to Ronan’s bedroom. Ronan followed after him, closing the door softly behind Adam even as Adam pulled his shirt over his head, reaching for another - his Coca Cola shirt, worn thin and soft by use and stained with grease - and switching his jeans for a gray pair of Ronan’s sweatpants.

Ronan moved through the room behind him, fishing a pair of sweatpants from the bottom of one of his drawers and stealing a Harvard T-shirt - which had been a gift from Ronan in the first place, because Adam couldn’t justify spending fifty dollars on a shirt just because it said ‘Harvard’ on the front - from Adam’s bag. Ronan’s shoulders were too broad for the shirt, but he didn’t seem to mind much.

“You know,” said Adam after a while, when Ronan was brushing his teeth in the ensuite, “I still need one more picture of you before I go.”

Ronan stuck his head out of the bathroom door. “Then take another fucking picture,” he muttered around his toothbrush and a mouthful of toothpaste.

Adam considered it, but the domesticity of the moment - Ronan with his hair mussed from sleep and his toothbrush in his mouth - was something that Adam, selfishly, wanted to keep to himself.

“Of what?” he asked instead.

Ronan rolled his eyes before retreating into to spit into the sink, and a second later Adam heard the tap running. “Of me, Parrish,” Ronan said once the water had shut off.

“No shit,” Adam muttered as Ronan emerged from the bathroom, running a hand through his hair. “But I’m not sure how else to capture how you love. I have you with Matthew and Declan, and with Gansey and Blue and Noah and Henry. If Opal were here-”

“But she’s not,” Ronan said, sitting on the edge of the bed and opening his bedside drawer: the one on the right, because Ronan slept on the right in any bed he and Adam shared. He pulled out a pair of retainer cases: one purple, and one red. “The psychics are kidnapping her until next week.”

“Then what would you suggest?” Adam asked, crossing his arms.

Ronan looked at him as if he were an idiot. “Probably a picture with you, Parrish.”

Adam shook his head. “I haven’t been in any of the pictures so far.”

“But I’m the only one you’re photographing who’s in love with you, unless you and Gansey are having a torrid affair behind my back.”

“I did have a crush on Gansey,” Adam admitted. “When I first came to Aglionby, and especially when we first became friends.”

Ronan held up his retainer cases in a mock toast. “Didn’t we all?” he asked solemnly. “It’s a gay right of passage.”

“I’m bi,” Adam argued half-heartedly.

“Doesn’t matter in this case,” Ronan said dismissively. “If you went to Aglionby and guys do it for you, then you’ve had a crush on Gansey.”

Adam deliberated for a moment before agreeing. “That’s fair.”

Ronan stood up, and was halfway to the bathroom with his retainers when he stopped. “Parrish, I have an idea.”

* * *

Once they had retrieved Adam’s camera from the kitchen, Ronan led him up and up through the dark house, his phone flashlight lighting the way as they made their way to the fifth floor. Ronan entered a room covered wall to wall in books - so many that they spilled off the bookshelves, stacked on top of each other in every possible nook and cranny, and fallen unceremoniously to the floor when there was no more room. The ceiling was low, with a skylight in the middle letting in the moonlight that cast the entire room a shifting shades of silver. Ronan grabbed a chair - which Adam hadn’t seen at first because it had been covered in books - and pulled it directly under the skylight.

“Here,” Ronan said, handing Adam his phone. Adam took it without thinking and pointed the flashlight up to where Ronan’s long fingers moved around the edge of the skylight. Ronan had to duck to avoid hitting his head on it.

“Got it,” said Ronan after a minute, and he popped the skylight open. Then, with a great effort, Ronan grabbed the edges of the opening and heaved himself up through the skylight and gestured for Adam to follow after him.

Adam climbed onto the chair, handed Ronan his phone - he placed it beside him uncaringly - and the camera, and considered the jump. He was shorter and less muscular than Ronan, and so getting through the skylight would be more difficult.

“C’mon, Parrish,” Ronan complained, in the tone of voice he used when he was rolling his eyes.

Adam reached up, grabbing the edges of the opening and hauling himself through the hole in the ceiling. Once he was halfway through, Ronan grabbed his arms and dragged him the rest of the way, so that Adam’s shirt rode up and his hips scraped the edge of the opening as he finally emerged.

Adam knelt on the ground, Ronan climbing unsteadily to his feet beside him, and looked around. They were on the roof of the Barns - or a roof, because the sprawling farmhouse mansion had several - with a view over the back lawn. There were flowers in violent, glowing colors in rows in boxes all around them, with the skylight opening right in the middle of the roof. Despite the fact that it was autumn, and the middle of the night, what appeared to be gilded butterflies fluttered lazily among the flowers. At the edges of the roof, where the roof of a higher part of the house formed two walls which met at a corner, there were white portcullis covered with ivy and small purple flowers climbing and looping through openings. And just beside Ronan and Adam was an arch, made of thousands of twigs all twisted and braided together, with strings of small floatings lights - each about the size of Adam’s pinky nail - twined around it. There were even trees growing right out of the roofing, with gnarled branches and sweeping foliage that cast shifting shadows across the entire garden.

“What is this?” Adam asked, accepting Ronan’s hand climbing to his feet. Ronan’s hand was cold from the night air, but the touch still sent a flood of warmth down Adam’s arm.

“It was my mom’s,” Ronan said as he let go of Adam’s hand, and his face could have been carved from marble in that moment. “She used to tell me that this was the place where fairytale weddings happened.”

Adam could believe it. He remembered reading The Secret Garden in elementary school, although it had been long enough that he couldn’t remember the plot or the characters anymore. The seclusion and otherworldliness of Aurora’s fairytale rooftop garden, though, captured the feeling of nostalgic, enchanted offness Adam associated with the book. He loved it immediately.

“Why are we here?” Adam asked, taking Ronan’s hand in his again. Even after more than a year, after losing Aurora so soon after finally having her back, Ronan’s mother’s unmaking was a sore point for him.

Ronan shrugged, but his bravado was as thin and unsubstantial as the autumn mist under their feet. “It’s my favorite place at the Barns,” he explained. “And it’s the first place I think of when I think of… love, or whatever. I figured, if you needed one more picture of me, this is the best place for it.”

Adam nodded, pulling Ronan along with him as he spun in a slow circle, looking over the entirety of the garden.

“This is incredible,” he said at last. It was a massive understatement, but Adam was tired and overwhelmed and still a little drunk; he wasn’t feeling particularly poetic, even if the garden around him was a living poem, thrumming with vibrant energy and color like a miniature leyline.

Ronan shrugged. “Come with me,” he said, pulling Adam the few feet to the arch.

They sat underneath it, Ronan in the V of Adam’s legs with Adam’s chin hooked over Ronan’s shoulder. He could feel the heat of Ronan radiating through the thin T-shirts between them.

Adam held out his hand, willing one of the little lights to drift toward him to hover just over his palm. Ronan watched silently as Adam considered the light. He tried to picture Aurora’s roses from Cabeswater: the smooth, cool, almost velvet texture; the delicate curl of the petals and watercolor fading of the pinks as they spilled into the middle of the spiral; the sweet scent, like spring and Cabeswater and sunshine all condensed into a single flower.

Adam directed the nexus of power swirling around and through him - the electric thrum of the leyline, the pulse of the Barns, the spark buried deep in his own chest - and willed the light to change, watching as it, pulse by dim pulse, fashioned itself into one of Aurora’s delicate pink roses.

Ronan reached out reverentially, his fingertips a hairbreadth away from the rose before he drew his hand back to him as if he had been burned.

“You can touch it,” Adam offered quietly. “It’s for you.”

Ronan looked over his shoulder at Adam. “You’re a goddamn miracle, Parrish, you know that?” he asked, the awe obvious in his voice.

Adam ‘hummed noncommittally and let the rose settle in his palm. It had no stem, but Adam thought that it would bloom forever, or at least as long as Ronan was alive.

“I’m the Magician,” he said at last. “For however much that explanation is worth.”

“You know what it means,” Ronan protested.

“But gun to my head I couldn’t explain it.”

“Which means that you get it,” Ronan asserted, and Adam knew he was right.

They sat like that for a long time, watching the clouds moving across the sky and soaking up as much of each other’s presence as they could manage.

“Hand me that,” Ronan said after so long that Adam had nearly fallen alseep, gesturing at Adam’s camera, and Adam handed it over wordlessly. Ronan took the camera and pressed a button on the view screen, so that the image of what the camera had been pointed at switched to reveal Ronan and Adam’s faces, their features sharp and harsh in the moonlight.

“We’re taking a selfie?” Adam asked, amused.

Ronan shrugged. “Unless you want to wake up someone downstairs to take our picture, because your punk ass going to be in the goddamn picture, Parrish. You’re not going to be able to show my ‘definition of love’ or whatever bullshit without you in it.”

Before Adam could say anything, another voice spoke.

“I could do it,” came Noah’s voice, from somewhere to Adam’s right, and Ronan jumped, his body jolting into Adam’s.

“Czerny,” Ronan gasped once he’d regained some of his composure, “What the actual fuck?”

Adam looked over to see Noah, so faded that his entire body was nearly the same color as the moonlight, shrug. “You need someone to take a picture of y’all being all couple-y, right?”

Ronan pushed himself away from Adam and to his feet, grumbling, “Swear I’m gonna get you a fucking cowbell, Czerny, Jesus Christ.”

Adam mourned the loss of Ronan’s warmth for a moment before climbing to his feet as well.

Noah looked unbothered as he suddenly was directly in front of Ronan and Adam. Adam hadn’t seen how he’d made his way across the space and the rows of flowers, his mind skipping over the transition as if it had never happened, and Adam tried to ignore the missing space between.

“I mean,” Noah said, “You’re a farmer, so I guess you’d have that lying around anyway.”

Ronan only rolled his eyes at Noah, but Adam nearly lost it, clamping his hand over his mouth to stifle his sudden laughter.

“The fuck, Parrish?” Ronan asked, casting a betrayed look at Adam over his shoulder as Adam almost doubled over with laughter.

Adam took a moment to pull himself together. “Sorry, I just… I told my friends from school about how my boyfriend was a farmer recently...” Adam gestured vaguely before devolving into drunken giggles.

Ronan stared at him, utterly perplexed, With a detached sort of surprise, Adam noted that Chainsaw had appeared from nowhere to perch on Ronan’s shoulder.

“Whatever,” Ronan declared at last, turning back to Noah. “But fine, Czerny, if you want to take our picture, knock yourself the fuck out.”

Noah beamed as he took the camera. Adam finally pulled himself together as Ronan grabbed him by the hips, guiding the both of them into position under the arch.

“A little left,” Noah said, and then, “Yeah, perfect,” once they’d moved.

“I feel like we’re taking awkward prom pictures,” Adam admitted to Ronan, and Ronan huffed a small laugh, the corner of his lip tugging upward into a crooked smile.

“Is that really all you told your friends about me?” Ronan asked, his fingers looping through Adam’s belt loops.

“I mean,” said Adam, a half smile on his lips, “It’s the sort of description that begs an explanation. I told them about how you nursed a baby bird,” Chainsaw ruffled her feathers obligingly, “and love your younger brother, and and spent your time wandering around forests. I also told them how you completely flouted school dress code, and how when you swear it sounds like poetry, and how you drag race just like every other rich, pretty boy asshole.”

“So all good stuff,” Ronan clarified sarcastically.

Adam allowed himself a real smile as he placed his hands on the sides of Ronan’s neck, cradling Ronan’s face in his hands. “Yeah,” he affirmed, “All good stuff.”

He kissed Ronan, closing his eyes and breathing in Ronan’s scent and tasting the minty toothpaste on Ronan’s breath, pulling back only when he heard the shutter noise of the camera.

“Got it,” said Noah, sticking out his tongue in mock disgust. “It’s gross, but I got it.”

“Gross, huh?” Ronan asked, propping his chin on Adam’s shoulder to look at the view screen as Adam took the camera from Noah. After a moment, Ronan also wrapped his arms around Adam’s waist from behind.

The picture showed Ronan and Adam as silhouettes, in contrast with the lights floating around the arch and the moon behind them, caught mid-kiss. Chainsaw was her own shadow sprouting from Ronan’s shoulder, her wings spread and her head ducked forward toward her chest. The entire picture was, Adam thought, very Ronan.

Noah nodded. “Emotions,” he said, with a false shudder that made his whole body tremble like hologram about to flicker out of existence. “Disgusting.”

“That’s homophobic,” said Ronan.

Noah rolled his eyes. “I’d say the same thing if one of you were a girl. Straight affection is gross, too. And you called traffic lights homophobic last week, Lynch. I’m not sure you understand what the word means.”

“I lost a drag race because of a fucking red light!”

“That doesn’t make red lights homophobic.”

“I’m gay and they’re inconveniencing me,” Ronan argued. “That’s homophobic.”

“As someone who was asexual when I was alive-” Noah began.

Adam looked up. “Wait, really?” he asked.

At the same time, Ronan asked, “Was?”

“Yeah,” Noah said to Adam, and to Ronan, “I’m dead, Lynch. I can’t have ghost sex.”

“You kissed Sargent!” Ronan protested. Adam could feel the scratching of Ronan’s stubble against the side of his neck as he spoke.

“Yeah, I kissed her,” Noah agreed. “I can’t really do much else, though.”

He didn’t go into the logistics, for which Adam was grateful, and Adam spoke again before Ronan could ask for them.

“Did you have a gender preference?” Adam asked. “Like, romantically?”

Noah shrugged. “I liked both, but guys more. I had a crush on Whelk, actually, which is why I did all that stupid shit with him.”

Ronan, Adam was sure, made a very rude face.

“Really?” asked Adam, trying to hide his own disgust. He didn’t think he was very successful.

“He was cute,” Noah defended himself. “Not like I knew he was a homicidal egotist.”

“Fair,” Adam allowed.

“On that horrifying note,” said Ronan, “I think it’s time for Parrish and I to go to bed. You want a guest room, Czerny?”

Noah shook his head, but didn’t bother explaining further.

“Will you be here for breakfast tomorrow?” Adam asked.

Noah smiled a charming, lopsided smile that made it heartbreakingly easy to remember the handsome, easygoing boy he must have been when he was alive. “‘Course, Parrish,” he said, sticking his hands in his front pockets in a very Gansey-esque gesture. “I wouldn’t miss saying goodbye.”

Lowering themselves through the skylight was considerably easier than climbing up had been, especially with Noah’s help and general lack of concern for physical barriers. After the three flights of stairs and placing his camera on his bedside table, Adam fell onto Ronan’s bed, closing his eyes immediately. He heard Ronan in the bathroom - finally putting in his retainers, Adam assumed - before Ronan shuffled back into the bedroom and let his weight fell on top of Adam.

“‘Love you,” Ronan muttered absently as sleep took him, the ‘you’ barely an exhale as Ronan’s eyes slid closed. With the retainers in, he lisped slightly.

“‘Love you, too,” Adam breathed, and maybe he was too tired to notice, but it seemed as though the words hadn’t hurt at all. He didn’t have much time to think it over, though, because between one breath and the next, Adam was asleep.

* * *

Adam woke up early the next morning, sunlight slipping through the narrow spaces between the blinds to cast the room in pale orange and pink stripes, and the other side of the bed cold under his stretched out hand. He was confused for a moment, still disoriented from sleep, and grabbed at weakly at nothing across the cold sheets, before he noticed the smell of bacon drifting up the stairs.

Reluctantly, Adam dragged himself from the warmth he had built up under the covers, peed without bothering to close the door, and halfheartedly ran his toothbrush over his teeth and his fingers through his hair before making his way downstairs, still barefoot and in Ronan’s sweatpants.

He made his way blindly to the coffeemaker, moving around the kitchen in a daze as he grabbed a mug from the cabinet with the broken hinge and accepted a carton of milk from an outstretched hand without bothering to see whose it was. Once his mug was full, though, Adam made his way around the kitchen island to lean against the counter next to where Blue had claimed one of the bar stools, her feet tucked up under her and her short hair in a disarray. She acknowledged him with a small smile before spooning more yogurt into her mouth.

Gansey had claimed the chair next to her, with a plate of eggs, bacon, and sausage on the table in front of him, his fork still halfway to his mouth as a spoke animatedly to Henry about, from what Adam could tell, the research he had been compiling about myths concerning the idea of “king once, and king to be” intersected with dozens of accounts, credible and incredible, of various kings across Europe and parts of western Asia, and Gansey’s working theory about the figure of Arthur being an amalgamation of the stories of dozens of real and fictional kings. Between bites of his own breakfast - what appeared to be a misshapen vegetarian omelette - Henry offered something about French king associated with a variant of the sword in the stone story, which Gansey latched onto immediately.

Ronan was moving around the kitchen with a spatula and a frying pan, his hair mussed from sleep and still in his sweatpants and Adam’s Harvard T-shirt. He offered Adam a plate, identical to Gansey’s, without comment, and Adam snuck a kiss to his cheek in thanks as he maneuvered his way around Ronan to the fridge for the orange juice.

Music played softly from a speaker set up on the counter: something fast and Irish, with a frantic pace and rigid cheerfulness that Adam tried to tune out.

Blue and Ronan managed to get into a passionate discussion on an art class Blue had apparently dragged him to at the community center, with Blue asking Ronan about whether he thought oils or watercolors would work better for a depiction of the clearing in Cabeswater where they had spent Wednesday afternoon, and Ronan suggesting a variety of mixed mediums to capture the effect of the light across their faces.

Adam interjected briefly to offer to let Blue look at his picture from that day, and Blue responded by telling Adam with an evil glee about the pencil sketch of Adam Ronan had apparently been working on the class before until Ronan, his face and neck flushed bright red, threatened to stab her with her own switchblade.

Adam lost track of time as they all talked and ate and laughed, the cheerfulness of the kitchen stretching out the moment until the shutter of a camera brought both conversations to an abrupt halt. They all turned to look at Noah, who had not been there a moment before. Noah ignored them as he lowered Adam’s borrowed camera to look at the view screen.

“It’s good,” he affirmed, as though one of them had asked.

Curious, Adam stood from his chair to make his way around the island to Noah and peer over his shoulder. Adam was the focus of the picture, directly across the island from the perspective of the viewer, with a smile just beginning to break across his face and his mug, just barely still steaming, clasped between his hands. His gaze was turned upward toward Ronan at his right, who had his arms crossed but was obviously fighting a smile of his own. Blue sat to his left, a delighted smile on her face as she met Ronan’s stare head on, while Gansey and Henry were turned toward each other on her left, still deep in conversation. The picture was cozy, cheerful and bright, and comfortable and friendly and profoundly intimate. In the strangest way, Adam thought that the picture could only be of a family.

“Why?” Adam asked, taking the camera from Noah.

Noah shrugged. “You took all your pictures of how we loved. I figured you needed at least one of how you love.”

Behind Adam, Ronan made a fake retching noise, but Adam looked at the picture again and grinned, because Noah was right. This was how Adam loved. He was little in love with everyone in the kitchen, and as he looked at the picture, he thought it might have come closest to the essence of what he was supposed to be capturing of all the pictures Adam had taken.

* * *

Adam and Ronan managed to sneak back up to Ronan’s room for almost a full hour after breakfast before Gansey came up, banging on the door and demanding Adam say a proper goodbye while Adam and Ronan, breathless and sprawled out next to each other on the soiled sheets, struggled not to laugh. When Gansey’s demands continued, Ronan linked his fingers with Adam’s and shouted for Gansey to fuck off.

They snuck a shower, with Adam luxuriating in being in a real shower instead of the stalls in the dorm bathrooms as much as he did in Ronan’s hands on his body, before making their way back downstairs, Adam in jeans and Ronan’s freshly washed jacket, and with his hair smelling of Ronan’s green apple shampoo. Ronan grabbed Adam’s duffel bag on the way out of the bedroom, giving Adam an exasperated, “Shut the fuck up, Parrish,” when Adam opened his mouth to offer to carry the bag himself.

Blue, Henry, and Gansey were waiting for them on the front porch. Henry gave Adam an awkward but genuine hug, promising more pictures and asking Adam for some of Harvard and Boston in return, because he’d never seen a New England autumn.

Gansey offered Adam a fist bump and then a hug of his own, making Adam swear to call him if he ever needed anything, including a sympathetic ear.

Blue gave Adam several gifts: a journal with a cover she had decorated herself with stylistic images of trees and mountains, a flower crown made of faux flowers and glittery pipe cleaners, and a “Make America Gay Again” hat she had gotten while protesting a Trump rally with Henry (Gansey had texted Adam throughout the entirety of it, bemoaning the modern state of American politics and sending Adam miniature essays, which quickly dissolved into rants, about nearly every comment Trump had made, from what Adam could tell). Ronan grabbed the hat almost immediately, placing it backward on Adam’s head, and he figured it wasn’t worth taking off. His friends at Harvard would appreciate it, anyway.

Blue hugged Adam so tightly Adam couldn’t breathe for a moment, and then Noah gave Adam a hug so cold he could see his breath when Noah stepped back.

Ronan handed him another mixtape: Parrish’s Shitbox Sing-Along: Harvard Edition

“If this is just the murder squash song over and over again…” Adam threatened.

Ronan grinned, but it was Henry who spoke first. “Murder squash song?”

Ronan’s smile, if possible, became even sharper. “Squash one, squash two…” he sang.

“Oh!” said Henry, his face lighting up. “I do know that song. Dick, Blue, I put it on our playlist for today’s trip!”

Blue looked physically pained, but tried valiantly to cover her disgust with a smile. Gansey looked shell-shocked, as if some fundamental truth had just been proven false and he had to reevaluate his entire life philosophy. While they weren’t looking, though, Adam saw Ronan and Henry exchange a surreptitious fist bump, and his estimation of Henry went up a few notches.

Ronan walked Adam down the driveway to the Hondayota alone, still lugging the duffel bag, but he dropped it once they reached the road. Pressing Adam against the car with his body, his arms braced on either side of Adam’s head, Ronan touched his forehead to Adam’s and closed his eyes.

“December fifteenth?” Ronan asked, as though Adam had made a statement necessitating clarifying.

Adam nodded anyway. “I expect you to call me before then, though,” he said dryly.

Ronan answered him with a kiss, long and lingering, the sort that was the reason they had put a miniature forest between them and their friends. Adam clung to Ronan’s shoulders, dug his fingers into Ronan’s hair, wrapped his arms around Ronan’s neck and pulled Ronan down to him, desperately clinging to Ronan as if he could stop him from ever needing to pull away. Ronan had a tight grip on Adam’s hips, pulling their bodies flush together, so that everywhere they could be pressed together, they were.

Ronan pulled away first, his breathing heavy. Adam’s lips felt bruised, and he imagined he could still feel the weight and warmth of Ronan’s against them. Ronan touched his forehead to Adam’s again.

“I’ll miss you,” Ronan admitted, breathless and vulnerable and private. His eyes were closed.

Adam closed his own eyes. “I’ll miss you, too.”

“Make sure you stop to eat,” Ronan warned, “Because you can’t drive for nine fucking hours without eating and then have shitty dining hall food.”

“I’ll be-” Adam began.

Ronan cut him off. “Eat or I will drive to fucking Cambridge and kick your ass myself.”

Adam hummed noncommittally. “That means I get to see you again, though, Lynch.”

“Loser.” A beat. “I can still drive you, you know. You don’t have to take the shitbox.”

Adam would have shaken his head if it hadn’t meant dislodging Ronan. “I’ll be fine.”

He opened his eyes, pulling back and grabbing Ronan’s chin to tilt his head to meet Adam’s gaze when Ronan opened his own eyes.

“I love you,” Adam said, direct and open and leaving himself completely vulnerable as he stood bracketed on either side by Ronan’s arms.

“I love you, too,” and Adam was pieced together again.

Ronan kissed him once more, hard and fast, and then pressed a soft kiss to Adam’s forehead before finally stepping back.

Adam got into the car reluctantly, dumping his gifts from Blue and Ronan into the passenger seat, buckled his seatbelt, and turned the key in the ignition.

* * *

Adam had dreamt of leaving Henrietta since he was a child, curling up in whatever hiding places he could find in the trailer and daydreaming about leaving his father and the trailer park and the dirt and dead ends of the entire town behind in his wake, driving his way relentlessly forward toward something better. As he drove away, though, Henriette fading to a distant spot in his rearview mirror before disappearing completely, he felt himself, for the first time, sorry to leave.

Notes:

Let me know what you thought and find me on tumblr

(also: how I imagine Ronan to look in this fic: x )

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Return to Henrietta