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The sky opened up the night Gansey died.
This was what Adam would remember forever: mud-caked shoes and grime under his fingernails. Raw wrists recently unbound. An ache pulsing behind his eyes and bitter wind whipping the wet, ripped sleeve of his shirt against his arm. His heart beating hard in his chest while Ronan faded away in the driver’s seat.
The look on Gansey’s face before Blue kissed him.
When Gansey fell, Noah wailed a low, terrible sound, otherworldly and desolate and from somewhere Adam couldn't see, then flickered out of existence. Adam tripped backwards over dream-things spilling out of the car and landed on his ass, hands catching his fall. For a moment, he thought his ribcage cracked—but it was just the pain being cut out of him because it was too much, too much, too much–
“Well,” Henry said to no one, on his knees in the mud. Then he covered his eyes and slumped forward, shoulders shaking.
Blue knelt there, in the grass, one hand grasping the front of Gansey’s borrowed sweater. The other was pressed to the center of his chest, next to where she laid her head. It was the kind of pain that comes after the impact. When you understand you have to wake up tomorrow even when someone you love won't, and it feels like nothing – not screaming, not crying, not destroying every breakable thing in this world including yourself until it’s nothing but dust and rubble – could ever make any of it better.
From the car, Ronan came back to life. Adam wanted to vomit. He wanted to sob until he was bone dry, but instead he mechanically crawled over to the driver's side door, already wrenched open. He touched Ronan’s wrist, his shoulder, his cheek.
Ronan opened his eyes.
“...Gansey?”
It was a question – Ronan couldn't see Gansey from his seat – but whatever answer was held in Adam's brow, in his mouth, in the slightest tremble to his chin, had Ronan choke out a noise Adam hoped he would never hear again.
Ronan rattled the car in his haste to get out, tumbling onto the pavement, catching his fall at the last second. But the panic left him as he straightened. Adam watched him take a step and then stop, take another, then stop again. >t was the moment after the impact, Adam thought. What else was there to do? So Ronan stood there, flowers and blood-rain piled around him, and stared at Blue cradling the body of someone who would never love her back, not anymore.
Adam let out a breath until his insides felt emptied.
The deluge didn't stop.
But that wasn't how the story ended.
As is it now, morning is about to break. They made the trek back to 300 Fox Way, because five rain-and-blood-and-black-ooze spattered teens and a hooved girl are just a bit too conspicuous for a hospital. Aside from Blue's soft directions to Henry, there is only the heaviness of their limbs settling and an awfully odd charge in the air that tells them things will not be the same, cannot be the same.
No one mentions Noah.
There is some yelling, a lot of crying, and each of them are handed at least two cups of terrible tea within fifteen minutes of walking into the house. Blue has her eye expertly patched up by one of her more medically inclined family members. The same one mends the gouge in Adam's cheek the best she can, on the promise that he goes to urgent care tomorrow. Adam lies and says he will, then balks when Gansey says he'll take Adam himself. Adam bites back a response and figures it’s easier to sit with the shame of a friend paying his medical bill if the friend in question was dead a few hours ago. He has to keep reminding himself that Gansey is okay. That he's alive, even if the "and well" remains to be seen.
Adam wants to reach out and touch him; Ronan can't seem to stop. He's lost too much already. He keeps his hand on Gansey's shoulder as he sits in the chair diagonal to him, fingers dug in just a bit, grounding, like maybe Gansey will disappear otherwise. Adam is not entirely sure that won't still happen. They’re talking in low voices to Maura about something else now, Adam only half-listening. Henry is leaning against the counter, feet crossed at the ankles, warily eyeing both the cup in his hands and Orphan Girl blinking up at him with the tiny, cardboard end of a tea bag dangling from a string in her mouth. Blue is gathered close to Orla in quiet conversation, tender in a way she never is with her cousin. Every minute or so, she looks in their direction, like she's also making sure Gansey is still there.
There is noise all around him at 300 Fox Way. It's warm, and familial, and suffocating—it was only a few hours ago that a demon with Adam's eyes and Adam's hands tried to kill some of the people in this room. He closes his eyes and breathes in. Opens them, and breathes out. Slowly, he unfurls his hands and curls them back up. Cuts litter his knuckles. His right wrist is sprained. Each of his fingers aches from being pulled back too far, bent in all the wrong ways, but they're entirely his own now. He knows they're his own.
He slips outside to the familiar jungle of Blue’s backyard and sits on the bottom porch step. Adam closes his eyes and breathes in. Opens them, and breathes out. Slowly, he unfurls his hands and curls them back up. Everything hurts. Cuts litter his knuckles. His right wrist is sprained. Each of his fingers aches from being pulled back too far, bent in all the wrong ways, but they're entirely his own now. He knows they're his own.
He knows they're his own.
Adam doesn't glance up when someone finally comes out some time later, but he knows it's Blue before she sits next to him. She's showered and changed into a cut up T-shirt and bright orange pajama bottoms, damp hair beginning to curl behind her ears.
When he does lift head, he doesn't know where to look: at the way she's picking at the skin around her fingernails, at the knitted up gash at her eye. There'll probably be a scar, this time.
Adam opens his mouth.
Blue sighs, “I'll kick you in the shin if you say sorry.”
Adam closes his mouth. He settles on, “I can think it.”
She shakes her head, then touches his hand. “When he – when Gansey lying there, I kept thinking about all the little things we lost.”
We, she says. We, and she doesn't mean all of them, she means Gansey and I. Because she loves him. She loved him in the middle of that field and Gansey knew it'd kill him but he kissed her anyway because he wasn't going to leave without knowing how it felt.
She smiles, close-mouthed. “It was weird. Like this list that didn't end. I thought, you know, he wouldn't call me at three in the morning anymore just to see if I'd pick up. I wouldn't be able to hold his hand, or yell at him if he spent too much money, and, oh —" Her breath catches. "No one would ever call me Jane again –”
She stops, glancing behind them. Her shoulders relax when Gansey's laugh bleeds through the screen door. It makes her laugh, too, and wipe under her good eye with her free hand. She leans into Adam, hair tickling his cheek.
“Nevermind. Just, well. Ronan told me before–...before. That he kissed you. Finally.” Her weight gets heavier against him. “He said that. ‘Finally.’ He sounded so annoyed.”
“Typical.”
Adam says this instead of what he wants, which is, Ronan loves you, Blue, if he's willingly giving you these parts of himself. Maybe she already knows.
“I reckon it's real good.” Blue squeezes his hand. “So don't let it go, okay?”
“Trying not to.”
“Good,” Blue repeats with a sniff, sounding stuffy. “And if you tell him I said something nice about him, I'll deny it.”
Adam shakes his head, and drapes his arm across her shoulders instead. They stay like that for who knows how long, side by side, surrounded by morning birds and the muffled conversations inside. Then Blue says his name.
Adam squashes his nose against her hair. It smells like rain and bargain shampoo. Like Blue. “Hm?”
“I think Noah's gone.”
She whispers it, afraid to be right in the naked light of day, but it doesn't matter. It's too late. Saying it out loud makes it true, even without Adam's immediate connection to Cabeswater to confirm it. The space around them feels emptier.
“Yeah.” His voice is rusty. He clears it. “I think he is, too.”
“I wish...” Blue tucks in closer. “I don't know. He was so – at the end, he looked so...”
Un-Noah. More shadow than boy.
“I wanted –" she takes a little breath in and Adam squeezes her shoulder. “I wanted to say goodbye, is all. Tell him it's okay and that we love him. Tell him I wasn't mad.”
“I know,” Adam tells her, because he does, and there isn't much else to say. For now, it'll have to be enough.
“Hey.”
Adam and Blue both turn to find Ronan in the doorway. He declined to shower here, so he still has remnants of the terrible black ooze on his face and down his ears. Ronan tilts his head inside, a silent invitation to join everyone once more.
A few breaths pass. Blue rises first, but hesitates when she sidesteps across the threshold before stepping in close. She rests her forehead against Ronan’s chest and he blinks down at her. He cups the back of her head, letting his fingers comb through her hair as she pulls away and heads inside. He stares after her, for a beat, before his eyes find Adam, and leans against the jamb. "Coming?"
Adam goes.
Ronan gently touches his arm when he reaches the entryway, picking it up. He's careful as he inspects the wrist wrap, like he’s double checking the work. His thumb runs down each of Adam's fingers, lingering over the dried blood that wouldn't wash off, and fight or flight overtakes Adam. He resists the urge to flinch, to yank his arm back, and Ronan seems to sense the change because he stills.
"Right," he answers, absentminded, even though Adam didn't say anything. He starts to release Adam's wrist, but Adam shakes his head. He's too embarrassed to ask for something, so he focuses on the floorboards beneath their feet. Wordless, and with the kind of intimacy that feels startling, Ronan holds Adam's knuckles to his mouth.
It's hard for Adam to breathe: his body never learned how to process kindness after it'd been hurt.
How long, he wants to ask, because a part of him needs to know, has needed to know since Ronan kissed him in his bedroom, but he steadies himself with a grip on Ronan's elbow. Ronan shifts so their temples are matched up instead, on the side of Adam's good ear.
“Did you talk to Declan?”
“He's fine,” Ronan says, meaning Matthew. “Tired. I didn't,” he falters here, “I didn't want to tell Matthew about mom yet. I don't know. I can't. Declan’s already a wreck. He still thinks he's going to lose us both. He made me FaceTime him to prove I was in one piece.”
“To be fair, you were almost killed.”
“Unmade.”
Adam thumps his head onto Ronan's shoulder. “Stop.”
Then his body makes an executive decision before his brain can catch up: the hand at Ronan’s elbow now touches the nape of his neck, soft and careful. With his other hand, Adam drags the very tips of his fingers down the length of Ronan’s back, where the sharp lines of his tattoo would be under his clothes. Ronan stands very, very still.
Adam misses him even though they haven't been them long enough for him to miss anything.
“You kissed me,” he says aloud, restless. “And we were happy for a little while, right? Then my hands and eyes were taken and you were being unmade and our best friend was dying and our other best friend was leaving and – and your mom, Ronan,” he says, and he feels Ronan's chest expand and retract, sharp.
"Parrish–”
“I don't understand any of it. I'm trying. I just don't know how to do this without all the good things getting buried.”
Hands cup his face; it doesn't feel new when Ronan kisses him. When he pulls away from Adam, his lashes are stuck together. Ronan wears grief heavy across his shoulders – an unbearable weight to bear. He is at once impossibly old and young, equal parts magical, mystical Greywaren and lost child surrounded by the ghosts of the people Ihe's loved.
A hand shifts to the side of Adam's neck before it drops. “C’mon, Parrish,” he says, rubbing a fist along both eyes before sliding out between Adam and the doorway to head further inside. “Maura gave Orphan Girl a bath. Gansey's staying.”
“The Barns?” Adam asks, and Ronan hesitates before shaking his head without looking back. Not yet. “...With me, then,” Adam says.
Ronan stops walking at that. The voices inside are a little louder. Adam steps up next to him. He meant it when he told Blue he was trying. They're all on their last legs and the only thing he wants is to sleep for an entire day, with this boy. He wants Ronan to dream of something simple for once, because he deserves to have a night where he isn't swallowed down by his own sadness.
Adam also thinks this might be love but he's never known enough of it to be sure.
“It's small, but... it's always felt better with you there, so,” Adam finishes lamely, half-shrugging. "Stay with me for now."
Ronan just watches him for a moment.
And then he says, “Okay.”
This time when Adam goes, stepping along Blue's front yard towards the BMW, Ronan doesn't just touch his good wrist – he slides their fingers together and holds on. Because he wants to. Because Adam wants him to. Because they are here, and they can.
Ronan tugs on his hand. His nose brushes Adam's temple, and his mouth follows after, as easy as anything has ever been done.
Adam closes his eyes and breathes in. Then he opens them, breathes out, and lets Ronan lead him home.