Chapter Text
Gansey came back. Everything was over: Glendower, the demon, Blue’s curse. All of a sudden it seemed that they had returned, inexplicably and entirely, to a world devoid of magic.
Well – Adam thought, looking at Ronan’s profile from the backseat of the Pig – maybe not devoid of all magic.
Adam mostly didn’t hold back from staring at Ronan now. Still, even after kissing him (really kissing him) some days ago, he still had to fight the instinct to flinch away the second he got caught. But Ronan had nearly died; Adam’s own hands and eyes had nearly seen to it.
So he looked.
Ronan was alive. He was sitting in the passenger seat of the Pig, just as he always had. He was breathing steadily. Adam looked because he couldn’t convince himself of what he was seeing – Ronan was okay. It was also true, Adam thought, that Ronan looked exceptionally handsome in the evening light, all harsh angles and bright eyes, and that harsh expression which made his stomach turn in a way he used to find unpleasant and which now just made him fidget in his seat. Ronan Lynch was beautiful, and he was far too human.
So, Adam looked. Ronan hadn’t looked back yet.
After everything, Adam wasn’t sure that Ronan would want to look back at him anymore – much less kiss him, touch him, or whatever else they’d been moving toward. That was selfish of him, he knew, to fret over a budding romance when there was so much going on, especially with Ronan. Maybe now was not the time, maybe Adam was cruel for being disappointed by that prospect.
Things were different now that Adam Parrish had let himself want something. Now that he had kissed Ronan: licked into his mouth, heard the very un-Ronan-like keening sound that bubbled up out of him when Adam moved to mouth at his jaw. Adam didn’t know when he’d be able to do anything like that again. Mottled bruises now tarnished Ronan’s pale throat in the shape of Adam’s fingers. As Ronan was dying, it had been Adam’s face he saw; what would be think if he looked at him now?
Ronan glanced over his shoulder, ostensibly feeling the subtle burn of Adam’s gaze, and he didn’t glare. He didn’t jump, or snarl, or scoff. Instead, he smirked, a playful thing with no real sharp edges. Soft, if Ronan Lynch could ever be called such a thing. He tilted his face back to the windshield, no longer looking, but Adam could tell that Ronan knew he was being watched and that he wanted to be seen. Ronan shuffled a little in his seat – nervous, very un-Ronan-like – and rested his elbow across the center console, his bicep flexing under the short sleeve of his dark t-shirt. It might have seemed natural enough if you didn’t know Ronan. All casual.
Adam felt his face heat, and he didn’t look away.
“So,” Gansey said. It seemed only fitting that he should break the silence. “Where am I taking everyone?”
It was so strange, driving through the thin Virginia rain down a highway that Adam had travelled mindlessly a thousand times before Glendower, during Glendower, and now. After.
“I should get home, see my mom,” Henry said reluctantly. “RoboBee tracks my heartrate and reports concerning activity back home, so. You know. It’s probably been a little concerning in the last few hours.”
Ronan scoffed, “That’s disturbing.”
“Mom will want me home, too,” Blue lamented a second later. She buried her face in her hands. It wasn’t overdramatic: there was little question as to why she had to go, and even less uncertainty as to why she wanted so desperately to stay.
“Monmouth,” Ronan said, surprising everyone. His room – rarely used in in the first place – had been almost absolutely untouched these last few weeks, with Ronan staying over at the Barns more nights than not.
Adam said, “Me too.”
Adam didn’t just go to Monmouth for Ronan. He needed, he thought, to be near Gansey now: to see him, flesh and blood, and know that he was real – or as real as whatever he was, now. To be able to repeat to himself It’s over, it’s over, he’s not dying, he’s not dying.
After dropping off Blue and Henry, it was just the three of them – the Raven Boys as Blue had called them – crossing the threshold into Monmouth Manufacturing in the same formation they always had: Gansey at the center with Ronan and Adam at his sides.
But things were different now, Adam couldn’t stop reminding himself. The same shapes in all the wrong colours.
Gansey went to the kitchen to warm some leftover Chinese food from the fridge, as if everything was normal. Adam and Ronan settled hesitantly in the living room, catty-corner to one another, Ronan in an armchair and Adam hovering on the edge of the couch.
Adam steadied his breathing, staring down at his sneakers.
Gansey was just in the other room, Ronan was here within reach, and they were both alive.
Ronan was right here.
They weren’t alone, but it was the first time since everything that Adam was close enough to touch Ronan without anyone noticing. When Adam looked up at Ronan, Ronan was already looking at him. Adam flinched away. He couldn’t help it. He wished he could have. After some deliberation, which felt like hours but must have been only seconds, Adam moved his ankle out in front of Ronan’s foot, not looking. All casual.
In no time at all, Ronan was moving to curl his ankle around Adam’s. Adam felt his heart rate increase. he needed to talk to Ronan. He needed to look at him. He really, really needed to kiss him, press up against him, hold his wrists in his hands and feel for himself that he was alive.
And then Gansey was traipsing back into the room, and Ronan was pulling his foot back, and Adam shifted back further onto the couch.
“Parrish,” Ronan whispered, and Adam glanced up to catch his eye. “Soon.”
And that was all. Ronan shifted his gaze to his best friend, shiny and golden and windswept, as he crashed into the couch next to Adam.
Soon. Soon what? Soon they could be alone? Soon they could talk? Soon they’d be able to play footsie in front of their friends? Soon Adam could press Ronan against the inside of his bedroom door and feel his aliveness for himself, could coax more of those sweet, un-Ronan-like sounds out of him? How soon?
Adam should have figured that Ronan’s trademark mysterious, vague style of communication would translate into this new thing between them. Luckily, Adam didn’t care what Ronan meant. He wanted all of it. Knowing Ronan, he probably meant everything.
Everything was fuzzy. Adam kept waiting for the illusion to break – to blink and open his eyes to a world where he had crushed Ronan’s windpipe, where Cabeswater’s sacrifice hadn’t worked, where Ronan and Noah and Gansey were gone and Adam was finally alone. But time kept moving, and Adam kept opening his eyes to the same world: the world where turned on a movie, and Adam sat between Gansey and Ronan, and the three of them picked at the containers of fried rice and noodles. It was quiet, but otherwise normal. It was heavy, but it was alright.
And then Gansey broke into a big, long laugh at something that happened on the TV, which was almost definitely not funny enough to warrant such a rection. Adam felt himself chuckle, too, more at Gansey’s unbridled enthusiasm than anything else. The mood lightening. This was how it had always been, Adam thought: Gansey led, heart-first, and he and Ronan followed. Adam hid inside his mind and Ronan hid behind a pair of fists but they always followed.
Everything was going to be alright. Gansey was there, and he was laughing.
“Your sense of humor is so fucked,” Ronan said, and Adam’s heart swelled.
“Your sense of humor is offensive at best,” Gansey snapped back. “This coming from the guy who threw our ghost friend out the window for fun just because he was already dead.”
As soon as he said it, Adam knew they were all having the same realization. He could feel the shift in energy amongst his friends, as well as the distinct lack of extra energy in the air around him. The lack of Noah.
Adam glanced at Ronan, whose eyebrows were pinched. Remembered.
“Man,” Gansey said, “I really wish we’d gotten to know him while he was alive.”
“We did,” Adam said. He didn’t know why he said it.
He added, “As alive as any of us, now, in the conventional sense. I don’t even know if Ronan is technically human.”
The traditional “Fuck you, Parrish,” was soft-edged and impactless, and Adam didn’t need to look back in order to see that Ronan was smiling and his words held no weight, but he did it anyway.
For a second, just this: Ronan Lynch looking at Adam Parrish. Adam Parrish looking back.
“Would it shock either of you if I said I was exhausted?” Gansey yawned, already halfway to becoming one with the couch cushions.
Ronan said “Yes” at the same time that Adam said “No”.
“Well, if a ley line resurrection is all it takes to knock you out, at least no we know,” Adam said.
Gansey laughed through another yawn. “Worth it.”
Adam and Ronan glanced at each other, and then looked to Gansey, whose face was relaxed but sincere.
“It was,” Gansey said, “Worth it,” and Adam knew what he meant.
When it came down to the details, he and Ronan were the two people who, in the moment, Gansey had died to save. And it was worth it. Adam’s head was queit. Gansey was smiling.
“For me, too,” said Ronan, “All of it.”
As it turned out, Soon was even more than Adam had hoped: for one, Ronan’s shirt came all the way off almost as soon as they got inside his room with the door shut. Two, Adam got the pleasure of pressing Ronan into his bedsheets instead of just up against the door.
Not that he would have minded the door even a little bit. Maybe next time.
The kiss had started desperate, with Ronan grabbing Adam by the sides of his neck and drawing him in, hungry. Ronan kissed the edge of Adam’s lips, his chin, his nose, and finally his mouth, swiping Adam’s bottom lip with his tongue. Adam’s mouth was open embarrassingly easily and he hummed deep into Ronan’s mouth as he pushed him, not breaking the kiss, back towards the bed.
Adam’s hands went everywhere and Ronan responded beautifully. He writhed, gripping Adam’s sides, as Adam palmed up and down his chest, kneading harder than was probably necessary, but Ronan really didn’t seem to mind. Adam was suspended over Ronan by core strength and sheer force of will, carefully angling his hips in the most innocuous way he could – he needed desperately to feel Ronan, but not necessarily like that, not yet. His body was, of course, not necessarily behaving itself – it was inevitable when everything about Ronan, these days, felt erotic.
Ronan’s body looked so good, felt so good – but what made Adam the most shaky was the fact that he was here at all – that he was okay, that he was not broken, that he didn’t feel breakable, now, beneath Adam’s hands.
Ronan’s hands were exploring, too: clutching at Adam’s shoulderblades, tangling in the air at the nape of Adam’s neck. He cupped his hand at the base of Adam’s skull and held him there, and it felt so unexplainably good, Adam felt contained, he felt held – and then Ronan was pulling, moving Adam’s face to press into the crook of his neck –
Adam jumped back. Ronan looked dazed.
Adam was shaking his head. “I can’t,” he gasped, his throat feeling tight. “Ronan, your neck…”
“Parrish,” Ronan said hoarsely. “Please. It’s okay.”
Adam bit his lip to keep from trembling, eyes searching Ronan’s face for something, something, he didn’t know what.
“Feels so good, Adam, come on,” Ronan whined, pupils blown wide and cheeks flushed.
Even Ronan’s mouth – God – was slightly red. Adam thought briefly of how no one else had ever seen Ronan this way, not as far as he knew. Ronan Lynch, an impenetrable fortress of scathing remarks and cold stares and joyrides down dark country highways, was not untouchable. Not for Adam.
Adam couldn’t resist him. Not entirely.
He dove back in, hands pressing Ronan’s shoulders down into the mattress, kissing his mouth feverishly. He cupped his cheek and dug his teeth into Ronan’s bottom lip on instinct and that – that was a moan, low and deep, as Ronan cupped the back of Adam’s head and pressed him closer, licking deep into his mouth. Adam felt it drop like a stone inside of him, so low, so weighty.
“God, you’re hot, Lynch,” Adam panted against Ronan’s mouth, in spite of himself. He wasn’t thinking straight. If he was, he would have been too embarrassed to say it.
Ronan squirmed beneath him, trailed kisses along Adam’s cheekbone. “Adam, please, you know where I want you.”
Adam tensed. “Ronan, God…” he moved to nuzzle his cheek at Ronan’s jaw. He pressed a kiss there. “I want to. So bad.”
“Then fucking do it,” Ronan said. “Put your own marks on me. I wanna feel it.”
This did spark something pleasant in Adam’s stomach, but as he looked down at the boy beneath him, no shirt to cover anything, he could only see the bruises around his neck.
Adam jumped back, twisting until he was sat on the very edge of the mattress, arms wrapped around himself, eyes unfocused, head buzzing. “Ronan,” he said, and it was all he could say.
Ronan sat up and moved next to him. He leaned over to nip at Adam’s ear, and Adam flinched.
“I think we need to talk,” he said, “Seriously.”
“I’m very serious,” Ronan said.
Adam could see the way Ronan’s head hung next to him, the blissed out droop of his eyelids, the lazy smirk on his face.
“Why am I skeptical?” Adam mumbled.
“Parrish,” said Ronan, and when he leaned his forehead against the side of Adam’s skull, it didn’t feel playful at all. It felt steady. “I’m serious. I want to talk.”
Adam’s arms around himself tightened. This was tough. Hating himself was something that he usually only did while alone.
“How can you…” he started, then stopped himself.
Wrong approach; phrasing this in any sort of way that placed the operative blame on Ronan was a surefire way to begin a completely counterintuitive argument.
“Earlier,” Adam tried again, and again the words stopped. His throat was closing.
Ronan reached up behind him and rested his arm around Adam’s shoulders. He wrapped his hand around Adam’s bicep and held on tight. Adam leaned into Ronan’s side, still holding himself. Ronan held on tighter.
Adam took a deep breath. “You almost died.”
“Big fucking deal,” Ronan said. “Gansey actually did. Fucking attention whore.”
“Shut up,” Adam snapped, turning to face Ronan, but Ronan didn’t let his arm fall. “Lynch, stop it. Please be real with me. I almost killed you. You guys literally had to tie me up so I wouldn’t strangle you to death.”
Adam anticipated the joke – not the way I was hoping to see you tied up, Parrish, I’ll admit – but it didn’t come.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Ronan…”
“You asked me to be real with you. I really don’t think you would have strangled me to death.”
Adam shook his head. Scoffing. “And how exactly do you know that?”
Ronan shrugged, avoiding Adam’s gaze.
Adam didn’t know what to think about that. It felt like stubbornness, a refusal to admit the reality of the situation, which was that Adam had no control – whatever the demon wanted, it was going to get. It felt stupid. At the same time, it felt a lot like trust.
He knew it might upset or offend Ronan, but Adam asked the question that was clawing at his heart.
“How can you still want me?” Adam asked. “After that.”
After he said it out loud, he realized that hurting Ronan wasn’t really what he was worried about at all.
Ronan’s eyes on him were too much, their bright blue enhanced by the bright lamplight reflecting off of them. There was a lot in his expression that Adam couldn’t read. He looked determined, or in pain, Adam thought. Maybe aching.
“You have no idea, Adam,” Ronan said, lowly, “What wanting you is like.”
Adam felt a flash of hot pride, the same feeling he had nurtured for some time now, every time he thought about Ronan Lynch’s want. Adam wanted Ronan, too. He wondered if their wants felt the same.
“Tell me,” he whispered, and God, did he sound needy and fragile. He wished he could help it.
Ronan slowly maneuvered Adam to lay down against the pillows, glancing up at him each time he moved – pulling Adam’s legs up, guiding him back with a hand against his shoulder - to make sure Adam seemed okay with it. He was.
Ronan hovered over him, propped up by a forearm that rested beside Adam’s head on the pillow. Adam had the strange thought that it was safe to be in the shadow of this man.
Ronan’s gaze was dark and focused, and Adam still couldn’t read it. He reached up and ran his hand over the other man’s head.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Adam said, much too late.
“I don’t know if I can,” Ronan said, and Adam nodded. This was more than fine. He shouldn’t have been greedy, he shouldn’t have asked. “I’ve just never put it into words.”
Ronan’s fingers ghosted over the edge of Adam’s jaw, and Adam was about to pull him into a kiss, forget that he asked, but Ronan dodged his lips and pressed his lips feather-light against Adam’s cheek.
“I was never gonna tell anybody,” he said, so low that Adam wouldn’t be able to hear it if they weren’t as close as they were. Adam could feel Ronan’s heartbeat. Alive. “That would have made it real. I didn’t let myself think about it. Most of the time, it wasn’t about thoughts, anyway. It was just… I don’t know. Sometimes I could go without thinking about it for days, and then I’d see you in your work clothes or with your face all scrunched up doing homework and I’d just… feel it. Everywhere.”
“That’s what does it for you, huh?” Adam smirked. Here was Ronan being vulnerable, and it wasn’t right to tease him, but it was just so goddamn tempting. More than that, it was fair. This was still Ronan Lynch, after all. “Me doing homework? You must have been worked up all the time.”
“Yes,” Ronan said, and he didn’t sound like he was teasing at all. “Don’t forget your work clothes. The coveralls. I was able to find a few words about how those made me feel.”
Adam could feel Ronan blushing.
“And your hands,” Ronan said, rushing now, still pressed against Adam’s cheek. His heart was racing. Adam wondered if he would be able to say these things to his face. “Something about your hands, Adam, they’re…”
Adam reached up to cup Ronan’s face in his hand and moved him so they were eye-to-eye.
“Yeah. I can’t talk about it,” Ronan said. He looked embarrassed.
“I like your tattoo,” said Adam. He moved a hand to the back of Ronan’s neck, traced down to rub the bare skin he knew was marked by dark, black ink. “I’ve always liked when I could see it peeking out of the neck of your t-shirts. I used to tell myself it was just because I thought it was cool. Now…”
“If you’d rather me put my shirt back on, Parrish, you can just say so.”
Adam grinned and tugged Ronan down. Ronan went easily, pressing his face into Adam’s shoulder and resting against his chest. Adam trailed fingertips up and down Ronan’s spine.
Adam said, “So, let me clarify, just so I’m sure. You and I are kissing now? I can get you to talk about things?”
“Well,” Ronan said, his voice muffled by Adam’s skin. “We’re definitely kissing. I guess we can talk, too.”
Adam flattened his hand against Ronan’s back. He could feel him rise and fall with each breath.
“Let me sleep with you,” he said. It sounded like Ronan choked. “Just sleep. Just something like this.”
Ronan sat up and looked ready to pitch the arguments that Adam had already anticipated, already practiced rebutting.
“I know you don’t think it’s safe,” said Adam. “But you used to sleep near me all the time at St. Agnes. I really think it’s gonna be fine.”
“It might not be.”
Adam sighed. “Well, then it’s a good thing you won’t be alone,” he spoke. He gripped Ronan’s wrists with both of his hands. He couldn’t seem to stop pushing it further, the limits of what he felt comfortable saying. “Come on, Ronan. Let me want you.”
They stared at each other for a moment. Adam squeezed Ronan’s wrists.
“Okay,” he said finally.
It was strange how Ronan, the one person who could be counted on to call out your most private weakness in any social setting, was letting him getting away with such humiliating sincerity. Maybe he liked it. Maybe Adam just didn’t know everything about Ronan Lynch.
“But tomorrow you’re giving me a hickey.”
There it was.
Adam gulped.
“Doesn’t have to be on my neck,” he said. “We’ve just gotta rip the bandaid off early. I can’t have you all scared about roughing me up, if we’re gonna start this.”
Adam felt very warm. “Oh,” he said, stupidly.
Ronan chuckled, ruffling Adam’s hair. “Something for you to dream about.”
Ronan raised his hand, and a ball of light – which Adam had assumed to be a lamp – moved from the corner of the room, disappearing when it landed in his palm. They were in darkness, but Adam’s eyes adjusted quickly.
“Let me get your pants off,” Ronan said, grinning wolfishly.
“Ronan…”
“For sleeping, Parrish,” he said. “We’re just going to sleep together.”
Ronan Lynch stripping his jeans off right in front of Adam’s eyes wasn’t something Adam’s dick could ignore under the best of circumstances, so he was grateful for the darkness. Then there was a shirtless Ronan straddling his legs and looking at him like he could devour him whole, and these were really not the best circumstances, at least not in terms of trying not to get hard.
Ronan was unbuttoning Adam’s own pants and tugging them down. “Boxers on?” he asked, and Adam could hear the smirk without seeing it.
“Yes, Jesus,” Adam huffed a laugh.
Adam looked down to see Ronan transfixed by the sight of Adam’s legs, but he glanced up nervously when he noticed Adam looking.
“You’re allowed to look at me,” Adam said. “If you want.”
The eye contact they held was heavy, until Ronan forced a laugh. “Just trying to be a gentleman, Parrish. Not that you’d know anything about that.”
They laid together on top of the blankets, facing each other on their sides. It was like a sleepover. Adam hadn’t been to a lot of those. He wondered if Ronan had.
“Are you tired at all?” Adam asked, although he knew it was a redundant question.
Ronan surprised him by yawning. “Wow,” he said. “Forest magic is no joke.”
Adam squeezed his eyes shut. Cabeswater. Every second he was not thinking about Ronan there was something to remember, something else they’d lost.
Cabeswater. Gansey. Noah.
“It’s not gone,” Ronan said. Adam wondered if the Greywaren could read minds, now, or if he’d actually said something out loud. Or – worst of all – Ronan was just attuned. “We can get it back. The Greywaren and the Magician; we’re all it needs.”
Adam thought about himself as the Magician, how it had felt. He didn’t feel it now. His bad ear was just his bad ear. He didn’t feel otherworldly or powerful, he just felt…
“I don’t know if I can talk about it right now,” Adam sighed.
“Thank God,” Ronan responded. “I’m about to pass out.”
Adam laughed. “Maybe it’s not the forest magic. Maybe you just need someone to help you let off a little steam before bed.”
“You know a guy?” Ronan asked, and Adam’s heart soared. This was flirting.
“Maybe,” said Adam.
“I think you just want to be sure you can get with me again.”
“Yes,” Adam said. “I do.”
In a phenomenon never before seen, and which Adam didn’t imagine he would experience anytime in the near future, Ronan Lynch fell asleep before Adam did.
Adam watched him breathe, delicate eyelashes fluttering. He considered staying up all night, ready to protect him from whatever horrors his nightmares might hold. It didn’t seem fair that Ronan had to work so hard to protect everyone else from his dream things, that no one else had ever thought to fight them off for him.
He also thought: Ronan wants me to give him a hickey. Ronan wants me to be rough. Ronan wants me.
Adam wondered if he could do it. It didn’t take much time watching Ronan’s toned body move in sleep, those miles of smooth pale skin, his face soft and relaxed, for him to decide: Yes, he could. He would.