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~~ 1 ~~
Ronan wasn’t particularly fond of Gansey’s new stray.
He was hostile and wary, like a badly scratched alley-cat looking for a fight, and he seemed to think he had something to prove. His name was Adam Parrish, and he was skinny, squirrelly, gratingly polite and impeccably studious.
Gansey had started off with a quick introduction, but soon, he was bringing Adam around Monmouth every few days, and then Adam was coming over to meet him before or after a shift or school to get some work done. He said he worked better there than at home.
The first time it happened was only three or so months into Adam’s integration into the friend group, and they had never hung out without Gansey and could hardly talk without fighting over something inane. Ronan thought Adam was a stubborn martyr with a bad attitude and Adam thought Ronan was an ungrateful rich kid determined to squander his opportunities, and no matter what Dick tried, he wasn’t going to make them like each other.
The door of Monmouth slammed shut at precisely 5:42pm on October the third, vicious enough that it drew Ronan from the haven of his room to find out who was throwing a temper tantrum in his house. He exchanged a look with an equally alarmed Noah, who was peeking out from the kitchen, and gathered from the thumping of heavy feet, the bang of a body hitting the wall, and the muttered, accented curse that it was not Gansey returning early from his fancy-ass family shit.
Adam stumbled up the steps into the living room and collapsed right there onto his ass, hair wrecked from the rain, shoulders shaking, head bowed. He didn’t look up and he didn’t acknowledge either of the silent residents of the house. For a moment, everyone stayed perfectly still. Then Adam spoke.
“Where’s Gansey?” he asked. The sound of his voice, low and raspy, dangerous, sent Noah back into his room with a wince and a look at Ronan that said ‘scary breakdowns are your department.’ He wasn’t wrong, exactly; Ronan had had plenty of experiences with scary mental breakdowns. But he didn’t know Adam well enough to handle… whatever this was. Loath as he was to admit it to Noah, the danger in Adam’s low tone sent a shiver of nervousness down his spine. He crossed his arms and answered back in a low, growly tone of his own.
“Away until Tuesday. Some fancy family function. Who shit in your cereal?”
Adam barked a hollow, humourless laugh and raised his head, and Ronan’s eyes widened in horror. His eye was bruised black, his nose leaking trails of blood all down his chin and onto his white shirt. His lip was swollen and split and a huge purple bruise was already spreading down his jaw, promising to get much uglier before it got better.
Ronan was not stupid. He’d heard Gansey’s desperate pleas for Adam to move in. He’d seen Adam’s bruised arms and badly-hidden limping, a jaw set a little too hard, eyes that wandered on bad days, the way he flinched at sudden noises or raised voices. Ronan had never seen Gansey so furious as when he’d yelled in Adam’s ear to startle him and freaked him out so badly he’d thrown up and fled for work an hour early. He’d had his ass handed to him so thoroughly that he’d stayed in his room for a week, until Noah dragged him out to help with a Latin phrase that had Adam in knots. He’d never apologized, but they’d moved past it. He knew what went on in that fucking trailer. He knew that Adam’s father was a drunk with a temper, and that Adam tried so hard to fly under the radar, and that sometimes even the perfect straight-A, hardworking, doe-eyed golden boy wasn’t good enough for Robert fucking Parrish to leave alone.
In that moment, rage consumed Ronan in a way he’d never felt, and he decided that he didn’t care how strained things were between them. Adam needed help, and Gansey wasn’t there. He could do this much.
“What the fuck did he do that for?” Ronan asked, moving slowly across the open floor like he was approaching a cornered animal. He was, in a way. Adam Parrish had to be handled with care in the way a wild tiger did—with respect and calm, lest he get defensive and retreat to lick his wounds alone in the dark.
“I didn’t buy groceries this week,” Adam muttered. “Told him that I couldn’t make it to the store between school and work and asked why he couldn’t do it. I was mad. He was drunk. Should’a known better.”
“Hm.” Ronan crouched down in front of him to inspect the damage. The split lip and the bloody nose were bad, but the black eye was by far the worst of it. That bruise on his jaw was getting more vibrant by the minute, and a splash of purple-ish red at his collarbone said that there was more under the shirt. Ronan didn’t react. Instead, he directed the boy to the couch with a jerk of his head. The first-aid kit was right in the bathroom where Gansey had put it back when they’d first moved in together. For once, Ronan was glad to have it.
He sat down across from Adam cross-legged with the kit, a bowl of warm water, and a cloth. Carefully, he cleaned the blood away from sun-kissed skin, revealing an array of freckles that could put the Milky Way to shame. Adam’s eyes drifted shut, and slowly, he began to relax under Ronan’s gentle ministrations.
Ronan probed as cautiously as he could at the nose and determined that it wasn’t broken before applying a bruise cream to the marks on his jaw and eye.
“That feels nice,” Adam mumbled as he spread lidocaine over his eyelid.
“I bet.” The numbing cream was cool and soothing. Ronan hoped the stuff wasn’t expired. He didn’t bother checking. “Anything too bad on your body, or did he just fuck up your face this time?”
“Bit of both,” Adam said, “but he was aiming for my face. I shouldn’t have talked back. My own fault.”
“I’ll kill him for you,” Ronan offered. Adam laughed, startled and light, and opened his eyes. “I might take you up on that one day, but I have it covered for now.” Ronan’s breath left him in a rush as brilliant cornflower blue caught the sun and shimmered for a moment, long, dusty gold lashes brushing against Adam’s star-spotted cheeks. He was pretty, Ronan realized, and his stomach dropped. Had Adam always been this pretty? Ronan didn’t remember his lashes being so long and full, or his eyes such a vivid, warm blue, or his hair so artfully wavy or his stupid cheeks so covered in freckles. Even his teeth were straight and mostly white. Ronan was of the personal opinion that no one should be able to look so attractive after getting the shit kicked out of them by an alcoholic, but Adam Parrish wasn’t really one to follow the rules unless it suited his needs anyway.
He finished with his tasks and zipped up the first aid kit, clearing his throat. “I, uh… I’ll make you some soup,” he croaked. Adam offered him a lopsided smile that would have been adorable if he hadn’t flinched at the act of cocking his head.
“Thanks,” he said. Ronan left him on the couch to go and make soup.
When he came back, Adam was curled up on the couch cushions, face hidden in his knees as if to protect it. He dipped into his room. Usually, Ronan’s first instinct would have been to wake the strange boy taking a damn nap in his house, but Adam… if he wasn’t mistaken, Adam worked almost 35 hours this week while also trying to keep up with school. So instead of waking him, Ronan knocked all his things into a closet and pulled out a fluffy blanket.
Adam half-woke when Ronan wrapped the blanket around him, but he slipped inexplicably back into slumber when he picked him up. Ronan tucked him into bed and made sure the blankets were tight and tucked in around him properly. Then he set the food on the nightstand (a crate with a block of wood inside) and laid down next to him to watch how the lengthening shadows make his lashes appear fuller and his eyes brighter.
He woke around midnight, startling soundlessly out of slumber with a jerk just hard enough to wake Ronan where he was dozing next to him. Adam sat up, hissing at the pain.
“Did I come in here?” he asked, looking down. Ronan yawned wide as a cat and shook his head, stretching until his spine crackled satisfyingly.
“I carried you,” he said. The couch isn’t good for your neck. You have work tomorrow. Figured you wouldn’t call out.”
Adam blinked down at him in silence. His swollen face was shadowed in the night, but the lamp on Ronan’s dresser cast a dim golden glow that illuminated his cheek and one of his eyes, and even under the black bruise, he was beautiful.
Ronan had grown up in the Barns, surrounded by love and warmth and incredible dreamlike flowers and fairy lights and decorations and handmade carvings. He considered himself something of an expert on beautiful things, most days. Adam fit the bill. It was a little annoying that he’d only seen it after he’d had the shit kicked out of him, but he could spend more time studying Adam’s face some other time. For now, he watched as Adam’s eyes softened.
“You’re not so bad, Lynch,” he said after a long moment. Ronan’s shrug was manufactured to look far more careless than it was. Pride swelled in his chest when Adam lay back down with a sigh and closed his eyes. “Wake me up at seven?”
“You got it,” Ronan told him. They slept back to back that night, and Ronan didn’t think he’d ever been so warm.
~~ 2 ~~
If Ronan had known that Adam would do something so incredibly stupid, he would have come to school.
At least, that was what he told himself to occupy his mind away from images of Adam unconscious, pale and lifeless, as he sped recklessly toward Boyd’s, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
He peeled into the parking lot with the squeal and scrape of tires on gravel and leapt out of the car without even turning the engine off. Boyd met him in the parking lot with a wave and a nod.
“Where is he?” Ronan demanded. Boyd jerked his head towards the office.
“Just woke up a minute ago,” he said. “He’s not concussed or anything; just a fever. He has explicit instructions written down in the system to call his emergency contact and wait for your arrival before calling an ambulance.”
Ronan stilled. He hadn’t realized Adam had made him his emergency contact. Why in the hell would he have done that? Gansey was better with paperwork, Noah could almost teleport to his location, Blue had three women in her house who could probably communicate while he was unconscious—hell, even Henry was more likely to pick up the phone. Ronan had only answered on the third call, and then mostly out of annoyance.
He stalked past Boyd and threw open the office door, glaring at the hunched form in the chair. The figure wilted, and Ronan crossed his arms to compensate for the uncontrollable softening of his anger. He was too much of a goddamn sap.
“The hell were you thinking, going to work a manual labor job with a fever?” he asked by way of greeting. Adam groaned miserably from his chair.
“Didn’t realize till it was too late to call in,” he sighed, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. Ronan stepped forward, not touching him, but hovering at his side in case he fell. “I’ve worked through fevers plenty. How was I supposed to know it was this bad?”
“You passed out, Parrish,” Ronan said dryly. “Get in the car. I’ll grab your bike. You’re coming to Monmouth and going to bed.” He still didn’t leave Adam’s side until he was safely buckled into the passenger seat with the heat on. When he turned back for the bike, he jerked his head at the car to indicate Adam.
“Take him off the schedule for a few days,” he told Boyd. “He can’t work like this. I don’t want another accident.”
Boyd nodded once. “Already done,” he said. “Have a nice day, Mr. Lynch.”
“Yeah.” Ronan threw the bike in the boot and climbed into the car.
~
Adam’s head had been pounding all through school, and he couldn’t seem to get warm for the life of him. Unfortunately, it was November, and this was not unusual for Adam. He was skinny as a rail under the muscles he’d put on from working labor jobs, so the cold Virginia air always hit him hard, and living above St. Agnes plus dealing with Cabeswater all the damn time did not make for a quiet head.
It wasn’t until his vision swam when he tried to get on his bicycle after classes that he realized what was going on. He got sick so often that he hardly even noticed anymore.
So, he sucked it up, rode the two miles to Boyd’s, and clocked in. He made it an impressive five hours into his shift before his vision went black and he collapsed on the floor of the garage, scattering tools everywhere.
When he woke, Boyd was on his way out of the office, and the familiar roar of a dream engine was approaching at a truly alarming pace.
Adam leaned back into the seat and sighed, rubbing at his arms. Ronan shrugged out of his jacket and handed it over without a word. Usually, Adam would have protested, but Ronan smelled very nice and the jacket was soft and warm, and he was too tired to argue anyway. He draped it over himself and settled back against the car’s warm interior.
“When did you make me your emergency contact?” Ronan asked. His voice had softened, like it always did when they were alone these days. Adam pressed the neck of the jacket to his chin and turned his head to watch the scenery go by. There wasn’t much to see. Henrietta was pretty scraggly.
“The day you beat up my dad,” he answered.
“Why?” was Ronan’s eloquent reply to that. “I hardly answer the phone, Parrish. I’m not good at paperwork, law enforcement hates my guts, and I can’t talk to you when you’re unconscious. I make the least sense.”
Adam looked over at him. Ronan’s face was pale, his jaw set, his hands tight on the wheel. He sat back against the seat in a practiced position of calm nonchalance, but Adam knew him well enough now to see the truth. He was scared. He smiled weakly, one corner of his lips lifting for a moment. “‘Cause if I call, you’ll come,” he said, shrugging. “Yeah?”
“Well, yeah, of course, but—”
“That’s it,” Adam cut him off, rolling his eyes. “That’s the reason. You’ll come.”
Ronan glanced over at him wordlessly. Adam caught something warm and shocked in his icy eyes before he turned back to the road.
“I’ll put Boyd’s in my phone later,” he said. “I want the numbers for your other jobs too.”
“Sure,” Adam said easily. He would give Ronan anything he wanted. He owed the boy his life, his dignity, his hearing, his freedom—everything. Without Ronan’s fearless, selfless interventions, he would have been dead twice over now.
They pulled into Monmouth and Ronan popped the boot as Adam stepped slowly out of the BMW onto the ground. He wobbled a little, but regained his balance before Ronan reappeared with the bike over his shoulder. Adam admired the curve of his bicep for a half a second before following the taller boy to the door and up the stairs. He crashed face first into the couch, closing his eyes, only to be woken a minute later by a poke to the ribs. He grumbled.
“Shut up and take this,” came a gruff voice. Adam reached out blindly for the pill Ronan was holding, then sat halfway up to swallow it with a glass of water that Ronan refused to relinquish to his trembling hands. He was glad Gansey and Blue weren’t around. Even Noah seemed to have faded out for the time being. Ronan disappeared and returned a moment later with a soft, fluffy black blanket, which he draped over Adam before shoving a pillow under his head. Adam murmured something vaguely grateful and received a scoff for his trouble.
“Sleep it off, Parrish,” Ronan said. “I’ll make you some soup when you wake up.”
Adam slipped away into dreams.
~
Ronan watched him sleep from the kitchen, arms crossed, leaning on the counter. Adam slept silently, like he stopped existing when he was out. Chainsaw’s warble alerted him to her presence a moment before she landed on his shoulder and nibbled on his ear. He scratched her chin with a murmured greeting and sighed.
“He’s gonna kill himself and call it an accident,” he muttered to her. She croaked in agreement. Ronan turned back to the stove and dumped half a can of water in with the chicken noodle soup, stirring with one hand while he scratched his insistent bird with the other. When it was bubbling, he poured it into a bowl and buttered a piece of white bread—nowhere near the best he could do, but it was good enough. It wasn’t like Adam would know the difference between a good meal and a bad one. Ronan had once watched him eat a tomato he’d found in a parking lot because he had nothing to eat at home.
He crouched next to the couch and set the bowl down on the coffee table. For a moment, he sat still, frowning at Adam’s sleeping face. Chainsaw warbled. He glanced over.
“Right, well, first of all, it’s not fair that he gets to look cuter when he’s sick,” he told her. “No one looks cute when they’re sick. People look gross. That’s what being sick does. Secondly, I didn’t think this through. No clue how to wake him up without scaring the shit out of him. You got any ideas, birdbrain?”
Chainsaw pecked at his hand and nipped at Adam’s t-shirt.
“You could try petting him.”
Ronan jumped half a foot, getting all the way back to his feet before he registered Noah leaning on the back of the couch, eyebrows raised. By some miracle, he didn’t wake Adam.
“What the fuck, Czerny!?” Ronan settled back down beside Adam, aiming his fiercest glare at the ghost. He got a shit eating grin for his troubles. “You have got to cut that shit out. Fucking asshole.” Noah stretched.
“I’m just saying,” he said with a shrug. “When I was younger, my mom used to wake me up by running her fingers through my hair. It’s too gentle for him to think it’s his parents, even if he is delirious.” He reached down and threaded his fingers through Adam’s hair, tugging gently at the curls to separate them. Adam shifted and, after a moment, blinked slowly awake.
“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Noah cooed, leaning over the back of the couch to grin at him. “Your Prince Charming has made you some food to help with that flu you’re carting around.”
“You ever call me that again, I’ll bring you back to life and kill you again,” Ronan threatened.
Adam pulled the blanket up over his head with a miserable groan and Noah detoured to the window to close the blinds, dimming the room. “How long was I out?” His voice was muffled through the blanket, and Ronan had to hold back a smile with more effort than he cared to admit.
“Oh, not long enough,” Noah said. “Ronan’s barely started mother hen-ing yet. You’d better eat your soup before he dials emergency services.”
“It’s a flu, not Ebola,” Ronan complained. “I’m not calling an ambulance. Don’t you have better things to do than stand around making fun of me?”
“I do not,” Noah said, which really should have been obvious considering that he was dead. “But for Adam’s sake, I will kindly leave before you start yelling. Goodbye, and you’re welcome.” He gave a salute and wandered through the wall to god only knew where. Ronan grunted and rolled his eyes. Adam peeked above the blanket.
“He’s just try’na help,” he admonished. Ronan shrugged.
“He’s annoying,” he replied. He reached back for the soup as Adam pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Here.”
“Thanks.” Adam yawned before he took the food, one freckled wrist pressed to his mouth because he never forgot his manners, even when he was on death’s doorstep. At the first bite, he relaxed back into the couch with a contented sigh. “Fuck, this’s good. I didn’t know you could cook.”
“I can cook, but that is a can of chicken soup I found on Gansey’s shelf with some water and a piece of untoasted white bread.” Ronan leaned back on his elbows on the coffee table. “Never insult my cooking by comparing it to this shit. I made that in ten minutes, and five of those minutes were spent looking for the can opener.”
Adam’s laugh was hoarse and tired, but the crinkle of his eyes said it was real. Ronan loved his smile more than he loved his own life. He would do anything to see it, even if it meant burning down his whole world.
Adam finished his soup and bread in under fifteen minutes and laid back down. Ronan put a hand on his shoulder. Before he could chicken out, he said, “You should sleep in my room.”
Adam blinked up at him, big blue eyes ringed with long, dusty brown lashes, lip bloody where he’d bitten off a scab earlier that day, and nodded. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Yeah, probably quieter than here when Gansey gets back. He’ll fuss.”
Ronan didn’t point out that he was doing a fair amount of fussing here, too. “More comfortable than a shitty couch, anyway,” he said. Adam exhaled sharply, as close to a second laugh as he was likely to get, and stood up. He wavered, swaying on his feet just precariously enough that Ronan stood and wrapped an arm around his shoulders to steady him.
“Sorry,” Adam muttered, pressing a hand over his eyes as he leaned into Ronan. “That was dumb. Gimme a minute.”
“Got you,” Ronan mumbled back, trying not to think about how warm Adam felt against him or how his weight was getting heavier by the second. He wondered if Adam would lean on Gansey or Blue like this, or if the privilege of holding him up was Ronan’s alone. He hoped for the latter.
Eventually, Adam pushed off of him and moved towards Ronan’s bedroom. Although he was out of it, he stayed upright and independent until he was inside, where he promptly flopped down face first on the rumpled covers. Ronan kicked a few stray articles of clothing under the bed and hastily shoveled a pile of arbitrary objects into a dresser drawer.
“Stop cleanin’, Ronan, I don’t care,” Adam called without looking up. He’d hauled himself the rest of the way onto the bed, but he seemed to have run out of energy from there. Ronan dug out a t-shirt and a pair of sweats that smelled like laundry detergent even though he hadn’t done laundry in two weeks and threw them on top of Adam’s crumpled form.
“Change,” he said. “You can’t sleep in oily jeans.”
“I have a new least favorite phrase,” Adam announced, but obediently rolled over and squirmed out of his shirt in favor of Ronan’s. It was clean, which was better than the one he had on. Ronan decided that was good enough and pointedly did not watch the way it slipped off Adam’s shoulder before he grunted and adjusted the neck. “I’m almost as tall as you,” he muttered, knitting his eyebrows in mild annoyance. “Why do you have so many oversized shirts?”
“You’re skinny, dumbass,” Ronan answered around the pounding of his heart in his throat. “It’s not oversized on me.”
“Right.” Adam kicked off his jeans, leaving him in black boxers with a hole in the leg. Muscles shifted under the tanned, freckled skin of his bare thigh and Ronan turned on his heel to march out of the room. He counted to a hundred as he filled a glass with water and located a small trash can and a box of Kleenex.
When he returned, Adam was lying starfished on the bed, eyes closed and brows knitted in discomfort. He sniffled, but it didn’t seem to do much. Ronan put the water and Kleenex on the block of timber serving as a nightstand and the trash can next to the bed. Adam made a miserable noise and reached out for the Kleenex. Ronan pushed it closer. He sat down on the edge of the bed while Adam blew his nose.
“I’m gross,” the boy complained as he tossed the used tissue in the trash. Ronan snorted.
“Hardly,” he said. “Declan on Thanksgiving is gross. You’re reasonably cute.”
Adam cracked a lopsided grin that made him look two years younger and lifted himself up onto his elbows. “You’re sweet, Lynch,” he teased. “Pickin’ me up, makin’ me lunch, lettin’ me borrow your clothes. If everybody at Aglionby knew how nice you were, you could make so many friends. Betcha one of them uptown rich boys could get you a girlfriend in a week.”
Ronan grimaced and rubbed a hand over his face. Well, this was awkward. Did he nip it in the bud or laugh along? Chainsaw cawed. Ronan sighed and caved. “Yeah, uh… listen, Parrish, I don’t… swing that way.” He braced himself for whatever reaction might come out of his mouth.
“Oh,” Adam said. Ronan tensed, but he continued. “Boyfriend, then.” Ronan lifted his hand to squint out from under it.
“That’s it?” he asked incredulously. Adam raised an eyebrow at him in the most judgmental stare he’d ever received from a sick person.
“The hell did you expect?” he asked. “You’re my best friend, Lynch, I don’t give a damn which way you swing. Hell, I’m bi. Pretty sure Blue is, too, and Gans. Why would I care if you’re gay?” He leaned forward and socked the boy lightly on the shoulder, offering up a small smile. “You’re still my Ronan,” he said. Ronan almost passed out. My Ronan. Those words would haunt him until he died.
He used the closeness to distract himself and Adam from his flaming ears by pressing the back of his hand to Adam’s red forehead. He let out a low whistle. “You’re burning up,” he said. “Probably delirious. I’ll leave you to get some rest. Call me if you start seeing things.”
Adam hummed in amusement. “The hat man says you should shut up and stay,” he said. Ronan barked a laugh despite himself.
“Tell the hat man I have an errand to run,” he said, and ruffled Adam’s messy hair just because. “I’ll be back in an hour, princess. Calm down.”
“Ugh,” Adam answered, wrinkling his nose. “Listen, Lynch, I can take it from Noah, but if you start calling me princess, I’m going to have to punch you. I assume you don’t like that idea, so knock it off.”
“Don’t kinkshame me,” Ronan shot back as he stood to leave. Adam laughed as the door swung shut.
My Ronan. My Ronan. The words followed him all the way to the car, ricocheting around his head in Adam’s beautiful Henrietta drawl. If only he knew the truth of it. Ronan drove to the store without thinking and bought as much cold medicine, soup and vegetables as he could carry. His mother had a recipe for potato soup somewhere…
~~ 3 ~~
Adam could not for the life of him get Cabeswater to shut up. He had made three trips out to the forest already to move the rocks and twigs around to its specifications, tried scrying, and even called Calla to see if she had any advice. She didn’t.
By four o’clock, he was fed up. It was fucking February and he had two days off in a row for the first time in months, and he was not going to waste it on a picky, spoiled dream forest with accountability problems.
Leave me alone, he thought as he climbed into the shitbox. It complained again vaguely in his head and suddenly, the thought occurred to him that perhaps the forest itself was not the problem. This time, he let Cabeswater guide him as he drove, allowing his hands to go where they would until he pulled up outside Monmouth Manufacturing in an empty parking lot.
Gansey and Ronan were both out, then. That was odd; why would Cabeswater bring him here? He got out of the car and located the key from under the rock by the doormat, tossing it on the side table when he entered. He took the stairs two at a time to the second floor, where a soft croak of recognition reached his ears. He turned to find Ronan’s door cracked. There was no answer when he knocked, so he stepped cautiously inside. In the corner, Chainsaw fluffed up her wings. Adam winced against the excited rush of whispers in his head and stumbled across the room to let her out. She flew around the room twice before perching on Ronan’s bed and cawing at him.
“Kerah!” she squawked. Adam shook his head with a groan.
“No, he’s not here,” he said, and pressed his hands over his ears as the whispers grew impossibly louder, somehow. Groaning again, he fell face first onto Ronan’s unmade bed.
The whispers stopped.
Adam lifted his head at the sudden silence. He blinked. Slowly, he stood. The whispers returned. He sat back on the bed. They stopped.
Adam ran a hand over his face. He hadn’t slept in two days. If Cabeswater wanted him to nap in Ronan’s bed, who was he to deny it? After all, Cabeswater was deeply connected to its Greywaren. Maybe Ronan was off fucking with it and it wanted to put its magician in the Greywaren’s home base for safekeeping. He didn’t care. With a muttered insult to the forest, he kicked off his worn shoes and flopped down on the bed, curling up in Ronan’s collection of blankets.
Chainsaw hopped over after a minute to settle beneath his chin, and Adam wrapped an arm around her with a sigh.
“Just give me, like, twenty minutes,” he mumbled. “Then I’ll try to fix whatever it’s mad about now.”
~
Ronan had learned to expect the unexpected in every scenario by the tender age of seven.
It still did not prepare him to stumble home exhausted after a whole weekend with Declan in the city, fighting with Cabeswater the whole time, just to push open his bedroom door and find Adam curled into his bed like he belonged there, Chainsaw tucked into the crook of his arm, eyes closed peacefully.
He stood there for somewhere between a minute and an hour before quietly closing the door behind him. He approached the bed on soft feet, toeing off his shoes, and sat down cautiously on the edge of his mattress.
Adam looked peaceful in a way he had never seen before. His head was tucked into the pillow, dusty brown-blond curls scattered around his head like a disheveled angel’s halo. His eyes were closed without scrunching, serene and heartbreakingly beautiful. He was curled up small, maybe cold or maybe just afraid to take up space. Chainsaw fit under his neck like a cat in a box, staring up at her owner with beady little eyes. Ronan wrinkled his nose at her and got up to change as quickly and quietly as he could manage into sweats and a light t-shirt.
He laid down across from Adam, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest and counting the dusting of freckles across the bridge of his adorably upturned nose.
Chainsaw woke the boy by hopping out of his arms and Ronan muttered something unflattering to her in Latin. He let her snuggle up to him anyway. He was going soft. Really should deal with that.
Ronan wanted to be upset at Chainsaw for waking Adam from some much-needed sleep, but he couldn’t bring himself to begrudge her. Adam’s eyes opened in the limited light of Ronan’s room, summer sky blue darkened by shadows and soft. He frowned as he looked around as if confused. Then his eyes landed on Ronan and he froze like a deer in headlights. Ronan thought back to the day he actually had found Adam scrying in headlights. Somehow, he was even cuter now,
“I am so, so sorry,” Adam said hoarsely. He swallowed and cleared his throat before trying again and Ronan noticed that his freckled cheeks were now flushed a pretty shade of red. “I swear, I wasn’t going through your room or anything. It just—Cabeswater wouldn’t shut up, and nothing I did would fix it, so I let it guide me and it took me here. And then it wanted me to let Chainsaw out, so I did, and she led me over to your bed and as soon as I touched it, Cabeswater went silent. It was the first time all week I had some peace and quiet. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I swear.”
“I don’t care, Parrish,” Ronan said honestly. “You don’t need an excuse to crash here.” He cracked a grin that hopefully came out more casual than he felt. “Did you conk out before or after it started snowing?”
“What?” Adam shot up faster than a rocket and was at the window before Ronan could blink. “Fuck.” The snow had piled up nearly a foot already, soft and pillowy and undoubtedly wet. Adam sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. Ronan stretched on his bed now that the space had freed up, subtly turning his head into the mattress to get a whiff of Adam’s scent. He didn’t even care if it was creepy; Ronan Lynch was not one to do anything the normal way, including having a crush.
“You should probably stay the night,” he said with all the bored nonchalance he could muster. His traitorous heart fluttered at the thought of Adam staying over, sleeping in his bed, finally experiencing a soft mattress and warm blankets. He really needed to wash his sheets; it hadn’t gotten done this week because he just hadn’t been home.
“No, I gotta go,” Adam said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. His forehead was creased again and Ronan lamented the stress on his magician’s shoulders. “I got work in the morning.”
“Boyd’s or the factory?” Ronan asked, frowning. “Because Monmouth is closer to both than your shithole apartment.”
Adam gave him a look of unfettered offense that pulled a grin to his lips. “I don’t see why you would think the apartment you found me is a shithole, but okay,” he said with enough snark that Ronan relaxed. He was fine, then. His chest swelled a little at Adam’s words, pride welling up at the acknowledgement that it was Ronan who had found him a home. He shrugged.
“I offered Noah’s room,” he said. “And the Barns.”
“Noah was not involved in that offer and you aren’t allowed at the Barns yet,” Adam said dryly. Ronan scoffed.
“He’s dead,” he said flatly. “What does he care? Doesn’t even need to sleep. And Matthew adores you. Declan likes you, too; says out of all of my friends, you’re the best for me. Prick that he is, I don’t think he’d be upset if I gave you a key to a warm house with five bedrooms when you didn’t have a place to go.”
“Declan thinks I’m good for you?” Adam sounded genuinely surprised, and for a moment, Ronan almost backtracked. But then a small grin broke out across his face and he snorted, making his way back towards the bed and collapsing across Ronan’s shins. Ronan grunted, but didn’t move. Chainsaw croaked and hopped up onto his shoulder. He scratched her head.
“Declan is a stuck-up fuckwit with no friends and too much money,” Ronan asserted. “I wouldn’t believe anything that comes out of his mouth. It’s all horse shit.”
“Well, your mouth’s not much better,” Adam drawled. Oh, that’s not true, some traitorous part of Ronan muttered in the back of his mind. I could show you how good my mouth is, if you let me. He shook off the thoughts and jerked a leg up, dislodging Adam from his uncomfortable perch. He slid to the floor with an annoyed groan. Ronan barked a laugh.
“Point being, St. Agnes was like, plan F,” he said. “If you weren’t so annoying about being independent and paying your own way, you might have a heating system.” Adam was quiet for a long moment and Ronan wondered if the dig was too much. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Adam’s voice floated up from the floor before he spoke.
“I don’t pay my own way,” he said quietly. The words were solemn in a way that didn’t quite suit Adam. Ronan sat up halfway, dislodging Chainsaw, and looked down. Summer sky eyes were fixed on his, deep and serious, and Ronan’s heart skipped a good few beats. He knows. He thought he’d been so subtle, only talking to the landlord during mass when Adam was at the factory, making sure the man would call it a tax adjustment, swearing him to secrecy. Adam didn’t accept help, didn’t want help. He needed to prove to himself that he could do it on his own, because if he couldn’t then he was nothing to himself. It wasn’t true. Adam Parrish was everything. He was kind despite living an entire life knowing nothing but cruelty. He was gentle even though no one had taught him how to be. He was brilliant despite being raised in a blood-soaked trailer, cowering in shadows and keeping silent. He was hardworking, empathetic, full of life and ideas. He was a magician, a boy who had somehow managed to gather all of Ronan’s wild, unfettered dreams in his calloused hands and care for them like he’d done it all his life. There was no world in which Adam Parrish was nothing, but his mind was hardwired to believe that anyway.
“I just wanted to help,” he said, swallowing around a dry lump in his throat. Would Adam be angry? He didn’t yell, never, because Adam Parrish was not and would never be his brute of a father, but Ronan had always found his quiet disappointment worlds worse than any screaming match. “You were—you couldn’t take any more hours if you still wanted to get good grades, not with… everything.” Glendower. Gansey. Blue. Noah. Your father. Me. Cabeswater. Persephone’s death. The caves. The dreams. Fixing the ley line. “I owed you, anyway.”
Adam’s laugh was sharp and surprised, but real. “Owed me? For what? You caught a police record and a night in jail to save me from my dad, and went back there with me to get my things.”
“Yeah, he called me your guard dog like it was an insult,” Ronan recalled with amusement. “But I already had a police record, dude. You don’t spend as much time racing other dreamers and doing imaginary drugs as I did without picking up a few demerits. You did me the real favor. You saved Matthew.”
Adam cocked his head, casting half his face in shadow, and Ronan’s breath caught at the elegant sight. He had only let himself think about Adam recently, when Adam had hugged him like he couldn’t bear to let go after they were reunited post-bail and hospital release. Adam didn’t really do casual affection, so the hug itself was rare, but the small, gasping breaths against Ronan’s collarbone and the way long fingers curled into his jacket, holding him still when he tried to pull away, had broken a decade of secrets wide open. And then Adam saved his baby brother.
“I wasn’t even there,” he said slowly, frowning. “That was all you and Blue and Gansey. I wasn’t there at all.”
“You were,” Ronan insisted. “Without you, I’d have lost. Bad. Matthew would be dead. He almost had me until I felt you fix the ley line, and whatever you did, you lent me something of yours, too. I beat Kavinsky because you were there with me in the ley line’s magic.”
Adam’s eyes widened minutely. “Huh,” he said. “I saw it happening through the trees, but I didn’t realize…” He shook his head. “It’s in the past. You beat my dad to a bloody pulp ‘cause he punched me, so you don’t owe me shit.”
Ronan rolled onto his stomach, resting his chin on his crossed arms, half draped off the bed. “I’ve wanted to punch his ugly mug since the day I met you,” he said, shrugging. “Believe it or not, I don’t just keep you around for your pretty face.”
“I should hope not,” Adam agreed. “I wouldn’t have been around long while I was in the trailer.” Ronan laughed, tipping his head back to let the sound pour freely out of his mouth. Adam smiled at him, and even through his exhaustion, Ronan basked in the genuine affection in his eyes. He grew serious again after a moment and reached up to run a hand thoughtlessly over Ronan’s buzzed scalp. Every thought in Ronan’s brain turned to static and he went still, quieted by the touch.
Adam sighed. “I thought it was Gansey, at first,” he confessed. “I was all ready to tear him a new one. I prepared a speech about how I could do it on my own and how I didn’t need his charity, and how just because money wasn’t a big deal for him didn’t mean that I wanted it. But then I saw you watching me one night in the parking lot. I told you about the tax bullshit, and I was pissed off, but I saw your face change. You’re not very good at lying, Ronan.”
Ronan shrugged helplessly, unable to come up with anything clever to say. Adam scratched at the base of his neck with blunt nails as he continued. “I knew it was you right then, but I wasn’t mad at you.”
“No?” The word came out half murmured, half slurred. Ronan felt like he was floating under Adam’s touch, somewhere in a land of dreams.
“Nah.” Adam’s scratches turned into petting and Ronan almost moaned before he caught the sound by biting his tongue. “You don’t do things for me because you feel sorry for me. You just… take care of the people you love. You just wanted to help, yeah?”
“Mm.” Ronan half opened his eyes, wondering when he’d closed them, and found Adam smiling at him with a kind of warmth he’d never seen before. His heart stuttered painfully.
“You’re a good friend, Ronan,” Adam murmured, leaning his head against a broad shoulder where it hung over the edge of the mattress.
“You tell anybody, you’re dead,” Ronan muttered, but he sounded too content by half to put any heat into the threat. Adam cracked a grin, playful and young on his too-worn face, and butted affectionately against his shoulder.
“Lips are zipped,” he promised. “But I love you, too. For the record.”
Ronan nearly fainted. “What?”
“Y’know,” Adam said, removing his hand—to Ronan’s great disappointment—from its casual path over his buzzed scalp. “You take care of people you love. You’ve heard it from Gansey and Blue plenty, but I never told you. Thought you oughta know. I’m not good at saying stuff like that.”
“I figured it out when you made me your emergency contact for some stupid ass reason,” Ronan admitted. “You don’t sleep in people’s cars or take things. You slept under my jacket the whole way home.”
“Listen,” Adam said, pointing at him, “I was going to refuse, but I was very sick and you’re a goddamn furnace, so your jacket was very warm. That was the fever talkin’.”
“Sure, sure.” Ronan snorted. “That’s why you passed out on my bed for at least two hours and cuddled my bird.” Chainsaw squawked from her perch as if to add to the conversation. Adam shot her a glare.
“You can blame Cabeswater for that one,” he said dryly. “I don’t know what in the hell you were up to, but you freaked it out so bad it had to drag me to your home base. Be nice to your forest, jackass, we’re connected. I’ve been up for days.”
Ronan actually winced. “Sorry,” he said guiltily. “I was out all weekend. Declan made me come to this fucking church event down in the city. Matthew begged.”
“I don’t care,” Adam said, tilting his head back against the mattress. Ronan’s eyes devoured the line of his throat like he was in a museum with a time limit. “Just give us a heads up before you fuck off overnight, yeah?”
“Sure. I’ll sneak into your shitty apartment and stick a note to your forehead.”
“I do not sleep through people coming into my room,” Adam said dryly. Ronan guffawed, sitting up to point at the pile of clothes on his floor.
“And yet, here I am, having come in, found you, changed, and laid down before you woke up when your cuddle buddy decided she liked me better,” he taunted. Adam grabbed a nearby pen off the floor and threw it at him. Ronan caught it with his teeth and shot the other boy a dangerous wink. To his immense surprise and satisfaction, Adam’s ears flushed pink.
“I was exhausted,” he argued. Ronan spat out the pen.
“Which brings us full circle to my first point: you should stay here, because if you sleep at St. Agnes, your balls will freeze off and you’ll never be able to jerk off again.”
“That’s not how that—you know what? Fine. I’m using your toothbrush.” Adam threw his hands up and heaved himself to his feet, stopping to spin around. “And I’m borrowing your clothes, because I don’t keep spare pajamas in my car.”
Ronan had slept on the floor at St. Agnes enough times to know that Adam’s definition of pajamas was a hole-filled Coca Cola t-shirt and basketball shorts, which in his opinion did not count. He stripped off his t-shirt and flung it at the boy, who caught it one-handed with a dramatic roll of his eyes. “Do I get pants?”
“I’m a man of God, Parrish,” Ronan drawled, folding his arms behind his head. “You want to get my pants off, you better head back to the church and ask the priest if he’s got some spare time for a marriage.”
Adam’s cheeks flushed red and he flipped Ronan the bird. Ronan just grinned, sharp and lazy, and rolled over.
~
Adam personally thought that the concept of a bathroom/kitchen was an abomination, but it was the only chance he’d get at a real shower, so he stripped, moved the fridge half a foot to block the door, and hopped under the hot spray with a sigh. For all its convenience, St. Agnes really was cold, and he was grateful not to have to drive back in the snow.
He thought about Ronan, lying on his bed, fingers crooked welcomingly into Chainsaw’s feathers, completely unbothered by his presence. He wasn’t stupid. He had known since their hug in front of Monmouth that day, and everything Ronan did only confirmed it. The pounding of a too-fast heartbeat against the bridge of Adam’s nose, the trembling in his voice when he’d asked if he was okay, the shudder that ran through him when Adam had refused to let go. He had known when Ronan’s flushed face and downturned mouth revealed that he’d been the one paying the difference in Adam’s rent, and when Ronan, who hated his phone and refused to be summoned like a dog at anyone’s behest, picked him up from work and put the numbers of Adam’s workplaces in his phone so he wouldn’t miss a call. He’d known when Ronan threw himself between Adam and his worst demon, when he had brought hand cream to soothe the cracks and cuts in his skin after working in winter, when he showed up after nightmares to curl up on the floor by Adam’s bed and sleep like the dead whenever Adam let him.
Adam knew Ronan loved him. He loved Ronan, too, but Ronan Lynch was a creature of dreams—sharp as a knife and soft as silk, born to the shadows between worlds, beautiful and terrible and made entirely of love. And Adam… was Adam. Adam was the son of a heavy-handed drunk, a thin boy covered in scars who insisted that he was independent while everyone else saved him from himself and his situation, who worked three jobs to put himself through school and who had always dreamed of getting out of Henrietta. Adam was dust and sweat and dull, small town hick, and Ronan was shadows and magic and dangerous whispers in the wind. They were about as alike as a desert and a forest.
Adam scrubbed the dust out of his hair and off his limbs, rubbing until he was flushed pink all over and not a hint of work remained. If he was going to be allowed to share Ronan’s space for a night, he was going to leave as little as possible of his presence.
He toweled himself off roughly before throwing Ronan’s shirt over his head—then, just because he was alone, he raised the collar to his nose and buried his face in it, allowing himself to bask in Ronan’s heady Old Spice, leather and metal scent. He wondered how in the hell the smell of leather and steel had become something safe.
He did end up abandoning his jeans in a messy pile on the floor, opting to make peace with wearing his threadbare black boxers to bed. It took a minute to shift the fridge back out of the way, but he managed, ruffling his hair with the towel as he emerged.
“Ah, Adam, I wondered if that was you.” Gansey was sitting on the floor, gluing together a small tree with patient hands. Adam crouched down next to him.
“Is that for Fox Way?” he asked. “Blue’s tree?” Gansey nodded proudly.
“Ronan dreamed up the material for the leaves. Look, isn’t it pretty?” He held it out and turned his wrist, and Adam watched little rainbows dance through the pale green substance. Gansey grinned. “It’s somewhere between fabric and glass,” he said proudly. “Blue is going to love it. Ronan said it was an annoying accident and to stop prattling about my material setbacks while he was trying to sleep.” He chuckled.
Adam cracked a grin, tracing the edge of one of the petals with a finger. Gansey yelped. “Careful!” he warned. “I cut my finger doing that.”
Adam continued his ministrations, tilting his head. “It’s so soft,” he marveled. “Like silk, only… more.” Ronan’s dreams were usually impossible to describe as anything other than more. He was a beautiful wonder of frustration that way. Gansey reached out curiously and immediately sliced himself on a leaf. He winced and stuck his finger in his mouth.
“Why do his dreams only like you?” he complained. Adam’s heart fluttered like a nervous raven. He shrugged casually.
“I’m Cabeswater’s magician,” he said, pushing himself back to his feet. “It probably gives me a pass on anything harmful.”
“Of course!” Gansey lit up like he’d been handed a new complete index of Glendower’s history and a map to his location. “I’ll write that down. That’s incredible—it’s so obvious! You’re quite the marvel, Adam. What a fascinating discovery.”
Adam shrugged and turned toward Ronan’s room. He pushed open the door without knocking and flopped across the end of the bed, arms folded under his chin much like Ronan had been lying earlier.
“You were gone forever,” Ronan said flatly without opening his eyes. “How long does it take to take a shit?”
“I had a shower,” Adam said, swatting him on the ankle. “And then got Gansey-ed.”
“Ahhh, the wondrous distractibility of Dick,” Ronan sighed. “Can’t say I see the appeal.”
“No?” Adam rolled over and arched his back, stretching until his spine gave a satisfying pop. “I thought everybody got distracted by dick once in a while.”
Ronan snorted and poked him in the side with a toe, but when Adam cracked an eye, he saw that Ronan’s ears were red and his eyes were hunter-sharp, lasered in on a strip of skin showing between his boxers and his shirt. He smiled to himself.
“The tree’s pretty,” he said. “Gansey keeps cutting his fingers on it, though.”
“Ugh, I told him to stop petting it if it doesn’t want to be pet,” Ronan muttered, rolling his eyes. “Idiot. It doesn’t like being touched.”
“It let me,” Adam said, just to see his reaction. “It was so soft. Super nice. You think you could make me a blanket out of that stuff? Then anybody who tries to wake me up would get cut.”
“Not a hope in hell, Parrish.” His voice was steady, but the red was spreading over the tops of his cheeks. Adam thought it was unfairly pretty on such a sharp face. He sighed.
“Worth a shot.” He sat up and stretched again, twisting side to side to pop his vertebrae, and stood up. “Alright, I’m gonna go to sleep. G’night, Chainsaw.” He scratched under her chin and she warbled at him—some sound akin to Aataaw that he took to be his name.
He was reaching for the door when Ronan sat up behind him, the mattress squeaking under his weight. “Where are you going?”
“To the couch?” Adam raised an eyebrow and looked back over his shoulder. Ronan’s face soured, then shuttered.
“Don’t wake me up at the ass crack of dawn talking with Dick,” he said shortly. Adam paused and turned back around.
“Well, he is pretty chatty,” he said slowly, taking a step toward the bed. “Maybe I could stay in here, if it’s alright with you? Prevent the whole fiasco entirely?”
Ronan looked surprised for a moment before blinking and shifting back on the bed. “If you want,” he said, but Adam caught the triumphant glitter in his eyes and had to suppress a smile. He crawled onto the bed and settled on his side next to the other boy. Ronan watched him for a minute before falling onto his back and rolling over.
Adam reached out and brushed his fingers lightly over the ink on Ronan’s broad back. Ronan exhaled, and to Adam’s surprise, relaxed, pressing slightly back into the touch. His heart fluttered. He reached up, tracing the swirling vines at the base of his neck. Ronan hummed. Feeling bold, Adam shifted closer and followed the lines to the raven in the center of his shoulder blades, over the feathers of each wing and down to the little roses and the pearl, down to a blue eye framed by a golden brown curl, the rest of the face hidden behind a hand and a raven wing. He stopped there and rested his palm over the hand, exhaling softly.
He didn’t speak, but by the way Ronan tensed under his hand, he knew. Adam shifted a little bit closer, pushing the boundaries of Ronan’s hospitality, and rested his cheek against a strong shoulder. Ronan’s shiver ran through his own chest like lightning.
Ronan rolled over slowly, giving Adam time to move as if he were an easily-startled animal. Adam felt a swell of affection in his chest despite himself; Ronan and his affinity for calming small creatures, caring for them, was one of his favorite secrets.
Ice blue eyes met his in the silence of the dim room and he couldn’t stop the smile from spreading across his face.
“I’m real, y’know,” he said with more fondness than he intended. Ronan blinked at him, face shadowed.
“I know,” he mumbled back. Adam could feel his warm breath against his cheek. They were so close now, almost touching, nose to nose in the darkness of Ronan’s bedroom with its single shifting lava lamp in the corner.
“Thought you only got your dreams tattooed on your back,” he whispered, afraid to lift his voice any louder. Ronan met his gaze with a steadiness that Adam suspected was a complete farce.
“I do,” he answered. Adam blinked, taken aback. He swallowed; once, then twice. His mind raced around everything those two little words could mean.
He couldn’t find the words, so instead he curled into Ronan’s side. He stiffened for a moment, but just as Adam began to pull back, a strong arm curled around his waist. Ronan shifted and slipped his other under Adam’s head with more grace than a boy his size should be able to display and pulled him close until they were skin to skin under the covers. Chainsaw warbled from the corner. Ronan paid her no mind, instead curving his neck gracefully to press his nose and lips into Adam’s damp hair.
Adam settled against the taller boy’s chest and wrapped his arms—less gracefully—around Ronan’s waist, palms settling and stroking at the knobs of his spine. He felt more than heard Ronan’s contented hum and realized then that his hearing ear was down, pressed against the Greywaren’s chest. He realized in the same moment that the uncanny silence of the muffled world didn’t scare him, because he could hear Ronan’s heart beating under his cheek. He closed his eyes and pressed into the warmth he found there. Ronan made a sound like a purr, something drowsy and happy, against his hair. When Adam stroked his back, his heartbeat quickened. When Adam pressed his nose into Ronan’s collarbone and inhaled, taking shelter in the hollow of his neck, shivers ran up and down his back and his heart skipped a few beats.
There was a certain giddiness to realizing that Ronan Lynch was madly in love with you, Adam mused as he slowly wrapped one leg around the dreamer’s at the knee. Ronan made his purring sound again and hugged him impossibly closer, nuzzling at the space beneath his ear. Now Adam’s heart was the one beating too fast and irregularly, but for the first time, he couldn’t bring himself to give a fuck about whether Ronan parsed out his feelings. Ronan loved Adam. Ronan loved Adam. Ronan loved Adam. He would never understand it, but then again, he hadn’t understood much of anything since meeting this wonderful amalgamation of fucked up dreams and magic and memories, this man with his sharp grins and his gentle spirit, who would soak his hands in blood to protect someone he loved and then cradle them close to his heart and apologize for dirtying them.
Adam couldn’t help it. He turned his head into Ronan’s neck and pressed a chaste kiss to his jaw. Ronan gasped quietly, just enough for Adam to hear, and returned the gesture at Adam’s brow.
Adam fell asleep curled into the safest place he’d ever been.
~
Ronan lay awake for a long time, listening to the steady sound of Adam’s breathing. He had seen Adam sleep plenty of times before, quick naps taken in the library between classes or a few hours stolen in the early hours at St. Agnes, shadows playing over his face as it wrinkled and worried.
There was none of that, now. Adam’s forehead was smooth, his mouth slightly parted and his shoulders relaxed. His breathing was slow and steady, too, and Ronan felt it when he slipped into REM and went completely lax. His weight pressed heavy into Ronan’s side, warm and clean and bundled up in borrowed clothes and safe, and really that was all Ronan had ever wanted for him. He’d been selfishly trying to keep Adam safe for as long as he’d known him.
He ran a hand down the length of the boy’s knobby spine and thought back to the first time Adam had fallen asleep near him more than a year ago, bruised and battered and curled up safely beside him in this very bed.
Ronan attributed the start of his crush on Adam Parrish to that day, when the boy with the pretty blue eyes had looked at him for the first time, and they had found something in each other that was safe when the rest of the world was vicious.
He ran his fingers idly through Adam’s soft hair, watching the dark golden-brown curls twine ad slither around his hand like little snakes. A Medusa if ever he’d met one, he mused. Adam had him mesmerized as well as if he’d been turned to stone.
Adam made a tiny sound in the back of his throat and snuggled closer, pressing his freckled nose into Ronan’s neck and exhaling softly as he resettled. Ronan tilted his head to bury his face in Adam’s hair, inhaling the scent of his shampoo—he’s stolen Ronan’s soap, it seemed, which technically was 3 in 1, despite Gansey’s loud complaints. He usually won that argument by merit of having no fucking hair, Dick, but he appreciated the smell of his things on Adam enough to wonder if he should buy something else, like a signature. Would Adam use a scent that everyone around them associated with Ronan? God, he hoped so.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand and he threw out an arm to silence it, pressing his other hand gently over Adam’s ear to block the noise. He realized after a moment that Adam’s hearing ear was flat against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, but he’d already flipped the thing open, so he might as well check it.
Dick: Ronan, sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if Adam was staying the night? I only ask because he seems to have left his car running. Was he waiting for it to heat up?
“Shit!” Ronan sat up, dislodging Adam violently enough that he startled awake with a noise of protest. Ronan winced as he hopped out of bed. “Sorry, sorry, I’ll be right back,” he said as he slipped out of the room. Gansey looked up, raising his eyebrows.
“He’s still in there with you? Ronan, really, the poor fellow has work in the morning. You can’t expect him to function on your abysmal schedule.”
“He’s in bed, Dick, fuck off,” Ronan said, casting around until he located Adam’s coat draped over the arm of the couch. He fished the keys out of the pocket and turned for the stairs.
“Ron’n?” The exhausted voice, tinged with Henrietta honey, came from Ronan’s bedroom. He glanced over and found Adam standing there, rumpled and pissed and worried and adorable with Ronan’s t-shirt cast off one shoulder, too big on his malnourished frame, and red boxer shorts that had a hole in the leg. “Fuck’re you doing? Some’n wrong?”
Ronan melted like butter for that fucking accent, the one Adam hated because it made him sound less sophisticated than the other Aglionby boys. He held up the keys. “Making sure you don’t kill your car, genius,” he said. Adam thumped his head against the doorframe.
“Fuck,” he groaned. Ronan laughed the whole way down the stairs.
When he came back up, Gansey was sitting on his bed, reading. “Where’s Parrish?”
“Sleeping, I assume,” Gansey said without looking up. “I asked if he was planning to go outside dressed like that and he said you would handle it and went back to your room.”
Ronan’s heart did a somersault. Adam rarely let anyone do things for him, especially in regard to his car. He grunted acknowledgment and headed for his room, shutting the door behind him. Adam was curled up under the covers on Ronan’s side of the bed, face buried in the pillow again. He lifted his head blearily and shifted back on the mattress, holding up the blanket with an unintelligible murmur. Ronan whistled through his teeth and tossed Adam’s keys. Chainsaw caught them and flapped loudly across the room to hang them up on the hook Ronan had screwed into the wall. Adam whistled appreciatively.
“Good girl, Chainsaw,” he called. Chainsaw warbled in reply and flapped back to her cage, bedding down in the moss and twig nest Ronan had built her. Ronan crawled back into bed and lay down facing him.
“D’you take care of it?” Adam asked quietly, meeting his gaze even though he was clearly falling back asleep. Ronan smiled, soft and real.
“Yeah,” he said, just as quiet. “Your car’s fine, Parrish, I checked. Starts fine and you still have half a tank of gas. If it starts bitching in the morning, you can take the BMW. Go to sleep.”
Adam mumbled something that sounded like nonsense and shifted closer until he was pressed up against Ronan. “Knew you would,” he muttered, wrapping himself back around the other boy, and then he was out.
Ronan didn’t sleep at all that night, but for once, he stayed firmly planted in bed for six solid hours.
~~ 4 ~~
Adam was really just worried, that was all. Ronan had been sick with a flu for a week and he was so out of it that he had declined to even go for a drive, which Adam was pretty sure was grounds for an ambulance.
For the last two hours, he’d been talking to Chainsaw about the suppers his mom had made when he was little and complaining about how Declan always stole off his plate because he was jealous of the attention Ronan got.
Adam was, by any definition, a good boy. He didn’t break rules or get in trouble—or, if he did, it was always for a very good reason—and although he was mixed up with the raven boys, he was generally accepted to be the most well-behaved and studious of the lot. So this was unusual for him.
Still, he pulled the shitbox into the gravel driveway of the old Lynch estate, Ronan’s childhood home where he wasn’t allowed to go, and turned off the engine. For a moment, he sat there, breathing in and out, and then he got out of the car.
The front door was locked, so he stole around to the back. That door was locked, too, but he did manage to find a window that was stuck slightly open, and with a little help from a huge stick he found under the old pine, he managed to lever it open.
He supposed he really should have expected a place like the Lynch estate to have a silent alarm, but when nothing immediately started screaming at him, he wriggled through the window and collapsed in a heap on the floor of the living room.
It was cozy, he noticed—two plush couches, a soft carpet, honey-colored walls and pictures hung all around. He blew the dust off one sitting on the carved wooden mantle and found a family portrait. Niall Lynch stood tall and proud, grinning widely. He looked so much like Ronan that Adam felt a pang in his chest. Next to him stood Aurora Lynch, golden haired and willowy and everything Adam had ever imagined a mother should be. Their hands rested on their children’s shoulders in front of them—Declan, stone-faced and proper in a suit and tie, looking very out of place next to his father’s loose white button-down. Matthew on his mother’s lap, maybe two or three at most with his halo of golden curls and big ice-blue eyes making him look like a little cherub.
And there, in the middle, his mother’s hand on his right shoulder and his father’s on his left, stood Ronan. He couldn’t have been more than seven years old in the picture. His hair was grown out in dark curls like Niall’s, and he looked as happy as he did shy, a small grin revealing a missing tooth.
Adam held the picture for a long moment, charmed at the sight. They had been so happy, once. He set it carefully back on the mantle and turned toward the kitchen, where his real goal waited.
It took around ten minutes to find the box of recipes on top of the highest cabinet. Adam scaled the counters to retrieve the thing, wrinkling his nose at the amount of dust on it. He leafed through the cards, perfectly organized and alphabetized, just to be sure he had the right box and wasn’t accidentally liberating some important family documents, and then he made sure the lid was shut tightly and made for the window.
A click sounded from the front door. Adam paused. His first thought, this being Ronan’s house, was that some dream creature was trapped inside. He turned quietly toward the noise, peeking around the corner—and was instantly tackled to the ground by a man in a police uniform. He yelped, arms tightening around the box to protect it as he hit the floor.
“What the—”
Adam’s arms were wrenched behind his back. “You are under arrest for breaking and entering,” the cop said in a harsh, deep voice. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can—”
“Wait, wait!” Adam gasped, coughing. “I’m not—I wasn’t stealing, I swear! Well—kind of, but for someone who lives here! Lived here?”
“Adam Parrish?”
The voice came from somewhere off to his right, which was thankful, considering his deafness. Adam turned his head just as a pair of shiny loafers appeared in his field of view. He dropped his head to the floor with a groan. He didn’t need to look up.
“Hello, Declan,” he said flatly. “Long time, no see.”
Declan waved at the cop, who reluctantly backed off. He extended a hand not to help Adam, but to pick up the box. Adam pushed himself to his feet with a wince. Declan inspected the item and fixed him with a perplexed look. Adam supposed that much was fair.
“What on Earth are you doing here?” the eldest Lynch brother asked. He shook the box. “And, of all things, why steal a recipe box?”
Adam rubbed his head where it had collided with the floor and sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just… Ronan’s real sick. Like, real sick. His fever’s getting worse by the day and he’s rambling constantly. Wouldn’t even go for a drive to cool down. He won’t let us take him to the hospital. He just keeps talking about his childhood and the things his mom—your mom—used to make when he wasn’t feeling so good. He’s just talking to Chainsaw, but I thought that maybe if I could get her recipes for him, then I could…” He shrugged, embarrassed. “Make him feel better, I guess.”
To his surprise, Declan’s eyes softened. “That’s surprisingly sweet, Adam,” he said. He stepped closer and held out the recipe box. Adam took it, not without suspicion, and clutched it to his chest again. Declan cracked a half smile, and for a moment, his resemblance to his father was uncanny. “You should know we have a silent alarm system,” he said, chuckling. “It’s motion sensor. I get a call if it’s tripped. Lucky for you, I was in town to deal with some notary issues since Ronan’s turning eighteen next week.” He rifled around in his pocket for a moment and produced a key, which he handed over. “Here. You can hang onto it for now. Please tell my baby brother that I pulled some strings so he can come home for up to three nights a week.” He sighed. “I can’t let him move in properly until Matthew’s sixteen, but I felt it was… a very cruel torture to let him stay so close while he’s of age and deny him our home.” He looked around, an unreadable expression on his face. “Ronan grew deeper roots in this place than I ever knew was possible,” he said softly. “Matthew and I mostly recovered, moved on, after dad’s death, but he… he never did, really.”
“Ronan found him,” Adam reminded him, curling his fingers protectively around the key. “You can’t expect him to be normal, knowing… what he is.”
Declan offered a sad smile and nodded. With a heavy sigh, he clapped his hands together and straightened his spine. “Well,” he said. “Sorry for the misunderstanding, gentlemen.” He nodded at the cops, who returned the gesture and headed back out. Declan shot Adam a sly grin. “Let’s get you out of here so you can keep my brother alive,” he said. “And for god’s sake, go out the front door. It’s such a pain when mother’s recipes get disorganized.”
He stopped Adam briefly at the door to show him the code—their mother’s birthday—and then locked the door behind them.
Adam paused outside the car. “Declan!” he called as the police pulled away. Declan turned with his car door open, cocking his head in question. The gesture was surprisingly cute, exactly like Ronan’s, and Adam hid a bemused smile at how alike the brothers were in mannerism. “Thank you,” he said sincerely, squeezing the box against his chest. “This’ll make him so happy.”
“I know,” Declan replied. “I ought to be thanking you, though. I don’t know many people who would break into a sealed, alarmed house just to get mom’s recipes for someone like Ronan.”
“I love Ronan,” Adam said, frowning slightly. “Someone like him deserves a little comfort when he’s this sick.”
Declan laughed, flashing too-white teeth, and climbed into the car without another word.
~
Ronan woke to a cool hand on his forehead. He groaned miserably and rolled over, only for a familiar smell to bring him to attention. He perked up and rolled back, frowning. It couldn’t be.
But there was Adam, smiling gently like an angel, holding a bowl of what was undoubtedly Ronan’s favorite potato soup, the exact one his mom had made him. He pushed himself up against the headboard and took the bowl reverently.
“How…?”
Adam huffed a laugh. “Wasn’t easy,” he said with a grin. “I broke into your house and got your mom’s recipes. Got tackled by a cop on my way out, but your brother intervened. He gave me the recipes and the code to the alarm. He also gave me this.” It took a moment for Ronan to focus on the object in Adam’s palm, but when he saw it, his eyes widened. Adam beamed. “He did a ton of paperwork and managed to get approval for you to stay at the Barns up to three nights a week,” he said. Ronan felt tears welling up in his eyes.
“I can go home?” he rasped. The look on Adam’s face was so tender he almost started crying for real.
“Yeah, Ro, you can go home,” he whispered. Ronan sniffled and wiped his eyes roughly with the back of his hand.
“Don’t call me that,” he said. Then he took a bite of soup and lost the battle instantly. Tears rolled down his cheeks, harder and harder with each bite, until his shoulders shook with silent sobs. Adam climbed onto the bed next to him and put an arm around his shoulders. “I miss her,” Ronan admitted when he could manage three words without bawling. Adam nodded, cheek scraping lightly against Ronan’s buzzed scalp.
“I know,” he murmured. A knock sounded at the door and before Ronan could even try to compose himself, a tiny head of dark hair popped in. Her brown eyes went wide and she burst through the door, throwing herself onto the bed and clambering over to Ronan’s other side.
“Honey!” she exclaimed, wiping his tears with the hem of her shirt. “What’s the matter!?” Her obvious distress brought Gansey hurtling in after her and Ronan rolled his eyes up at the ceiling.
“Oh, sure,” he said, though he was interrupted by a hiccup and another sob. “Just come on i-in. It’s a party.” He bit his lip hard when his voice wavered, determined not to let out any more noise, but the others paid no mind. Gansey shut the door and climbed onto the bed after Blue, who vacated her spot for him. As soon as he was settled, she crawled into his lap and tossed her legs across Ronan and Adam’s. Adam nudged him lightly.
“Go on, Ronan, eat,” he urged. Ronan took another bite, choking down a whimper. He could almost hear his mother, standing at the stove, humming an Irish lullaby.
Sleep, mo ghra, he heard her whisper. The tears came faster and Ronan turned his head to bury his face in Adam’s shirt. Blue squeezed his thigh and stroked his shoulder, and Gansey wrapped an arm around his back, smoothing a hand up and down his spine.
“You’ll be alright,” he said, pressing a kiss to Blue’s hair. “We’ve got you, Ronan. It’s alright.”
Adam turned his head to hum against Ronan’s scalp, and Ronan knew for certain that only Adam understood the depth of his weakness.
He finished the soup and let Adam take the bowl, and then he slid down on the mattress and pillowed his head on Blue’s thighs. She scratched at a spot behind his ear as she leaned against the headboard, letting Gansey sprawl out along his side, throwing a leg over Ronan’s. Adam settled down, too, curling up against him with his head pillowed on Ronan’s shoulder. Ronan worried, just for a moment, that they would get sick. Then he threw caution to the wind and pawed at the blanket until Adam and Gansey pulled it up to cover them all.
Blue was the first to go, slumping down into a cat-like curled-up position with her legs under Ronan’s head and her head resting on Adam’s hair. Then Gansey, one shoulder supporting his girlfriend’s knees and his head tucked under Ronan’s ribs.
Adam watched him for a long time. Eventually, he raised the hand that wasn’t under Ronan’s head and began gently wiping the tears away from flushed cheeks. Ronan nudged his face into the touch, an acknowledgement. Adam smiled.
“You’re welcome,” he whispered. He cleaned all the tears from Ronan’s face and licked the hem of his t-shirt to clean the salty residue. When he was satisfied, he settled down in the crook of Ronan’s neck and melted. Ronan lay stiller than he ever had before. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, Noah lay at the end of the bed, one hand on his ankle over the blanket. Adam held out an arm and the ghost crawled up, resting his solid, weightless body on top of the two of them. Ronan wrapped a hand around Blue’s ankles, then settled his arm around Gansey’s shoulders. He didn’t sleep well when he was sick; it was too hard to tell dreams from reality.
But he was warm now, finally, after four straight days of fever and coughing and sniffling and memories. He was warm, and full of his mother’s soup made by Adam, who had apparently maybe broken into the Barns for him? And Declan had come back and done paperwork so that he could go home, and here in this room, Ronan Lynch was not alone.
Adam fell asleep before Ronan did, curled into his side, nose pressed against his jugular. Ronan turned his head just slightly, careful not to dislodge Blue, and pressed his forehead against hers so he could hide his own face in Adam’s hair. He remembered the burning jealousy he’d felt when they were dating, those confusing few weeks where Adam-and-Blue had been a thing. He felt none of that now. He loved Blue for being there, for melding so perfectly with their group and for putting that light in Gansey’s eyes. And he loved Adam; sweet, reckless Adam, who it seemed was willing to start fights and burn cities for him, too.
Noah nudged him before he drifted off. “It’ll break tonight,” he whispered with a small smile. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Ronan removed his hand from Blue’s ankles to wrap Noah in a one-armed hug.
“I know,” he mumbled back. He fell asleep surrounded by love, knowing it was true.
~~ 5 ~~
Adam was used to exhaustion, but not like this. He was used to pain, too, but not like this. He was not sick. He was not injured. He was just exhausted beyond measure, to a point where he considered whether going to the planned meetup at Nino’s was worth it.
But he had promised, so he got in the car and drove off as soon as he finished his shift.
He was the last to arrive besides Blue, who was just finishing her own shift, and he slumped down into the booth beside Ronan because that was his unassigned-assigned spot, now, always at Ronan’s side. He’d vowed never to become someone’s sidekick, but he was pretty sure Ronan was content with being equal partners despite his incredible powers.
“You look like shit, Parrish,” Ronan said as he dropped his head to his folded forearms.
“You sweet talker, you,” Adam droned back at the table. Gansey snorted and pushed a plate towards him.
“Eat something, Adam,” he said kindly. There was a bit too much pity in his voice for Adam’s liking, but that was just how Gansey was. He was learning to see past it. “You’ll feel better with some food in you.”
“I’m fine,” Adam sighed, sitting up straight. “I don’t look that bad.” Blue raised both eyebrows as high as she could get them as she slid into her spot next to Gansey, because that was her unassigned-assigned spot, now, always at Gansey’s side. Gansey might have been a king, but if anything, he was her sidekick.
“For a dead guy,” she said with all the sarcasm her sharp voice could conjure up. “You look like Hell froze over, thawed, then froze over again after everything in it rotted.”
“Wow,” Adam said, and chucked a piece of pepperoni at her. She caught it in her mouth, the clever, coordinated bitch. “Wow. Thank you.”
“Are you sick again?” Ronan asked, squinting at him. “Because if you’re sick twice in one year, I will have to dream up some kind of cold preventative, and if I have to do that, I promise, it’ll put you on your ass for a solid twenty-eight hours.”
“God couldn’t keep him on his ass for twelve hours, what makes you think you could do twenty-eight?” Blue asked through a mouthful of half-chewed pizza. Ronan belched at her. Adam snorted.
“Can’t take you two anywhere,” Gansey complained. “Have some manners.”
“For this dump?” Blue shot him an incredulous look. “Richard, I’m surprised at you. This dump has decades of history in its four badly-made walls, and most of that history is disgusting truck stop customers passing through and being grosser than the last visitors. At least Lynch and I have some respect for the place’s reputation.”
“Yeah,” Ronan added. “We gotta leave a mark on this place somehow. You see the clientele? Look what we’re up against.”
Gansey took another bite of his pizza with a long-suffering sigh and looked forlornly at Adam. Adam shrugged. “Don’t look at me, I’m on their side,” he said. “This place is a shithole. Might as well act like it.”
Blue’s triumphant crow and Ronan’s bark of laughter made it sound like a wild raccoon fight had broken out. Adam elbowed Ronan as Gansey grabbed Blue’s hand, hunkering down. He cleared his throat.
“Er, I seem to have had a bit of a breakthrough with the ley line,” he said, swallowing his pizza almost as an afterthought. “I believe that there’s an artifact somewhere on the line—in Cabeswater, specifically—that will allow us to make direct contact with either Glendower or whatever is unmaking the line’s efforts. The only problem is that, one, I can’t speak to the forest to tell me where to go, and two, I can’t read the past or origin of magical objects.”
“Which means you’re dragging Parrish and Maggot out for an afternoon stroll in my forest and I get to fuck off and spend my afternoon driving,” Ronan guessed. Gansey whacked him upside the head.
“Which means,” he stressed, “that I need you and Adam to come locate the item and tell me how to reach it, and then I think we need to pay a visit to Fox Way.” Blue sighed, slurping up half of Gansey’s Coke in one long gulp and turning her head to belch in the direction of a trucker who’d been eyeing her while she worked. Adam snorted around his greasy pizza.
“Alright,” he said, sitting up and twisting until his spine popped in six places. “Let’s go, then. I have a day off tomorrow for the first time in two weeks, and I intend to get at least seven hours of sleep before I finish my essay.”
“Nine, or I will knock your ass out,” Ronan bartered. Adam shrugged.
“At this point, I’d take you up on that,” he muttered.
They made for Cabeswater as soon as they were finished. Blue rode with Ronan because he wanted to show her some new death metal song he’d downloaded that he thought she’d like, and Adam couldn’t help but laugh as the BMW flew by on his left with a tinny roar and two teenagers screaming up front.
They parked in their usual spot, out in the boonies with plenty of foliage behind them to mask their arrival, and traversed the mountain in a familiar step-by-step path.
~
Adam stopped about forty-five minutes in as Cabeswater began murmuring urgently to him. Gansey looked at him in question, excitement shining in his big brown eyes. Adam nodded slowly and turned back to the dreamer. Ronan grimaced as a film took over Adam’s eyes, turning summer sky blue to a milky grey.
“Qui ad res eo?” Ronan asked. “Etiem, quid es?”
“Viam sequimini,” Cabeswater whispered in Adam’s voice. He turned, and the others fell into line behind him.
“I hate when he does that,” Blue muttered. Ronan did not answer. He should hate it too, he knew—he liked when Adam was Adam, and it was always a bit of a gamble whether they could get him back—but he had created Cabeswater from his own dreams, with his own mind, and when it poured into Adam, it was as if part of him slipped in with it. They were connected when Cabeswater took over, part of Ronan inside of Adam.
“Non pars quam somnias,” the forest taunted over Adam’s shoulder.
“Tace et duc,” Ronan admonished. Cabeswater’s laugh was beyond language, a whisper of rustling branches and distant running water. Ronan ignored it.
“Omnia de eo tibi ostendere possem,” offered the forest, and Ronan spat out a curse in Latin so vicious that the trees hissed reproachfully through Adam’s straight teeth.
“What are they saying?” he heard Blue whisper behind him.
“I’m not sure,” Gansey muttered. “Something about dreams, show you, uh... I’m terribly sorry, Jane, but Ronan is the only fluent Latin speaker I know. I’m not the one to ask.”
“Cabeswater is trying to convince me to let it enter Adam’s mind and show me everything in it without his consent,” Ronan answered without looking back. “AKA, trees are dicks.”
“You said no, right?” Gansey asked, and this time Ronan did pause to look back at him.
“The swearing wasn’t enough for you?” he asked. Cabeswater wisely did not interject but for a gentle rustle, a reminder that these woods fed on emotions. “Of course I said no.”
They followed Adam in silence the rest of the way, until he rounded a bend and disappeared behind a tree. A pained groan echoed after and Ronan lurched forward, scrambling to Adam’s side as the forest retreated. He caught him just in time, saving his skull from a nasty knock on a root, and hoisted him back up to his feet.
“Fuck,” Adam grumbled, pressing his hands to his head. Ronan held him steady until he stepped away. “Ugh. I think... I think we’re close.” He shook his head to clear the fog and leaned back against the tree, closing his eyes slowly. “...Yeah,” he murmured. “This way. It’s scared.”
Ronan could feel that for himself. He pressed a reassuring palm to the tree trunk and calmed it, promising that he was near. Adam shot him a glance that was half grateful and half devoted, and Ronan flushed, realizing that he was still tapped into the forest’s magic.
“Give me a minute,” Adam said, and Ronan nodded. He turned away for less than five seconds to check on Blue and Gansey—but when he turned back, Adam was gone.
“ADAM!” Blue took off in the direction he’d indicated, which Ronan would later admit was a better plan than to stand there yelling, and the boys took off after her.
Adam had left footprints, but they were few and far between, and lighter than they should be, as if something was half carrying him. Then they found a single track like a body being dragged, and Ronan’s chest iced over as the end came into view: a pool.
It was freezing cold—not unusual for Henrietta in February, of course, but it seemed like the temperature plummeted as they approached. Blue pressed her palms against a tree and screamed at it to give him back, and Gansey froze, wide-eyed, before scrambling to get his book out of his bag, hopefully to figure out what had gotten ahold of Adam and how to beat it.
Ronan did not have time for either option. He could feel the dark pull of whatever was in that pool, and he could feel the fearful withdrawing of Cabeswater. He dumped his jacket on the ground and, ignoring Blue’s shout, dove into the black water.
~
Adam wasn’t scared of water.
He couldn’t swim, but that was simply because he’d never really been in deep enough water to figure it out. He’d always figured that swimming would come naturally if he ever needed to do it, or that he’d have time to learn.
Here, there was no instinct. This place was beyond the human, beyond the veil of real and dream and demon and dead. He closed his eyes, or maybe opened them, and was swallowed by blackness. Something tangled around his wrist—a root, maybe, or a tendon? And dragged him into the depths. He opened his mouth to call out for Cabeswater or Gansey or Ronan or Blue, but only bubbles came out. That surprised him, for some reason. He hadn’t expected something as normal as air bubbles in this place.
Cool water slipped up the legs of his jeans and down his spine, twisting around his naked skin like tendrils of ice hauling him deeper and deeper. His head began to ache and his chest felt tight. Was this drowning? He’d always thought he’d go out in a more dramatic way, maybe with glass in his eyes or a broken neck or a car crash or something.
Cabeswater sang something in the back of his mind, amplified by Blue’s urgent voice, and Adam honed in on it. The illusion of air filled him, burning hot and painful, but breatheable nonetheless. He opened his eyes and followed the shadows down. Now, with Cabeswater reaching for him, he realized that it was not the forest dragging him. He kicked and struggled, fighting off the icy grip of the being in the shadows, determined to get loose.
A glimmer of light caught his eye. He thrust his hands out, clawing at the walls of the cavern as he was dragged helplessly down, deeper and deeper, but he hooked it, and his hand closed around...
A dagger. A silver dagger, set with sapphires, shining with something older than Cabeswater, older than the dead that lay here—some power as old as the demon. Adam sliced down desperately. A shriek like a banshee’s wail pierced his ears and he screamed, and only then did he realize that he was not breathing at all and the last of his air escaped in bubbles in the freezing depths, and he could not swim.
His vision blurred and went black just as a dark shadow appeared above him.
There was something warm on Adam’s lips. Something like that time he’d kissed Blue, only warmer and more...
And then there was a rush of hot, sour, pizza-and-winter flavored air dislodging whatever was in his lungs, and a pounding on his chest that felt like it cracked his ribs, and Adam’s reminiscence disappeared.
He coughed and spluttered as fire ricocheted through his chest and up his throat, lurching up against the pressure that held him down.
“There! Fuck, get him—“
“Get him on his side, hurry!”
Whispers surrounded him, but Adam was too busy retching out what felt like gallons of water, mixed with bile and maybe magma and probably poison. He coughed and hacked as he vomited up black water the likes of which he’d never seen. Someone pounded on his back, knocking loose another reservoir, and finally, he could breathe.
He curled his fingers into cold, hard dirt as he gasped for air like he’d never breathed before, forehead pressed to the ground, throat and lungs burning. His chest rattled until he managed to cough up a few more spurts of water, aided by the rubbing and pounding on his spine, and then he collapsed, slowly returning to himself.
He looked up to find Ronan leaning over him, dripping wet and clearly terrified. His lips were red, his chest heaving, and he was shivering like a rabbit in an owl’s nest. Gansey and Blue were there, too, which he only realized when they each grabbed an arm and hauled him up to a seated position. Adam’s head spun. He nearly fell again, but then Ronan’s hands—ice cold, shivering, red and wet and clearly frozen nearly off, but still burning hot against his own skin—shot out to grab him by the shoulders.
Adam had no time to process what was happening as he was dragged into an embrace, tucked against Ronan’s chest with arms like iron. He wondered if even Cabeswater could move its dreamer from him—if it would dare to try. He guessed no, from the relieved rustling in the back of his mind. It seemed Ronan had saved him from... something.
“That,” Ronan rasped, his voice wrecked, “was not mine.”
Adam had guessed as much a while ago, but he decided not to mention that. Instead, he raised a hand and clumsily put it on Ronan’s wrist. He tried to grab hold, to offer an anchor, but his fingers wouldn’t listen. When he exhaled, his breath didn’t puff in the cold air. He knew enough about science to know that wasn’t a good thing.
“We need to go,” came Gansey’s matter-of-fact voice. His tone was stern and hard—he was their king, now, which meant that something was very, very wrong. “Ronan, help me carry him. Blue, you’re fast; get the cars started. Mine and Ronan’s. Leave Adam’s, we’ll come back for it later.”
Adam wanted to protest, but his head was swimming and pounding and the world was tilting and there was something warm around him—Ronan’s leather jacket?
“I-‘m we-t,” he croaked. Never in his life had he sounded less human, even when Cabeswater was speaking through him. Which reminded him, he was going to have to have words with the damn forest later. It had threatened to give up all his secrets and thoughts to Ronan like it was a game. Ronan had told it to fuck off, because he was sweet that way, but Adam was still pissed.
Although, right now, pissed took a backseat to the extreme pain he was in.
He had no idea how long it took to get back to the car. With his arms slung over Ronan and Gansey’s shoulders, he was in and out the whole way. His legs and fingers weren’t cooperating with what he told them to do and every breath felt like a hundred little knives stabbing his throat and lungs. He winced on every inhale, trying to keep his mouth shut against the February wind. It did not help. The problem was clearly inside.
He wasn’t sure how he ended up wrapped in two towels from the boot in Ronan’s passenger seat, speeding down the roadways to Monmouth Manufacturing. He caught sight of Gansey and Blue in the Pig in the sideview mirror before he lolled sideways and passed out with his head cushioned on Ronan’s cold, wet shoulder.
~
Ronan couldn’t remember ever being this scared before. Maybe when he found his father, that day, but that was so goddamn long ago, and he’d had no real concept of death and what it meant. Adam had been completely lifeless, like a puppet with its strings cut. Still, by some miracle he had not only found the object they were looking for, but also cut himself free from the monster that had grabbed him—something so dark and ancient that Cabeswater had fled, screaming for Ronan to save its magician.
Ronan clung to the wheel with both hands, laser-focused on getting them home. He skidded into the parking lot at twice the posted speed limit and slammed on the brakes, just barely managing to avoid throwing Adam through the front windshield. He tumbled out of the car so fast he hit the ground on his side, but he was up before Gansey peeled in nearly as fast behind him.
Ronan pulled Adam out of the car. To his relief, he heard a weak groan. Still, he didn’t wait for Gansey, instead picking Adam up as if he weighed nothing at all—he couldn’t tell in the moment what was Adam’s abysmal diet and what was adrenaline—and taking the stairs two at a time until he reached the living room. He nearly bulldozed Gansey’s mini-town on his way to the bathroom, kicking over a church and a post office in his haste, and knelt next to the shower. With one hand, he turned on the water, and while he waited for it to heat up, he began stripping himself and Adam both. Adam leaned up against the wall, blue eyes blinking open hazily.
“No more,” he mumbled. Ronan’s heart did a somersault at the genuine fear in those brave eyes.
“I don’t like it either,” he said through gritted teeth, peeling boxers that were already crunching with sheets of ice down Adam’s legs, “but we’re going to die of hypothermia if we don’t warm up fast.”
“No, no no,” Adam protested weakly. He pushed at Ronan’s shoulders, which had all the effect of a kitten on a Doberman, and shook his head. “Can’t swi-im.”
Ronan seized both sides of his face, forcing him to focus eye to eye. “I will not let you drown,” he swore. Adam held his gaze for a moment. Then his shoulders slumped and he nodded. His mouth twisted in clear reluctance, but he allowed Ronan to manhandle his limp body into the shower and under the lukewarm spray.
Even that was too much for a moment, but it worked. Adam sat up straighter, his eyes a little clearer, and looked down at Ronan’s hands in his. He worked his fingers slowly and carefully to close around Ronan’s wrists and palms. At first, Ronan thought he was exploring—but then Adam furrowed his brow and began to work out the seized muscles in his hands.
The shower shut off above them. Ronan looked up to find Gansey standing there with a horrified look on his face.
“What are you doing!?” he cried. “You’re going to kill yourselves! You do not fix hypothermia with hot water! That’s how you go into shock and heart failure! Get out of—BLUE! COME AND HELP ME!”
She was close behind him, helping to haul the frozen pair out of the shower and tie towels around their waists. They got as far as Gansey’s bed in the living room, and once they were under the covers, Ronan felt his strength begin to waver.
“This isn’t—“ Adam broke off into a wet coughing fit that nearly gave Ronan a heart attack. “—how I was planning to spend my day.”
“Nor us,” Gansey said, his voice shaking with relief as he clasped Ronan’s hands and worked his fingers into the muscles to prevent sezing. Blue did the same for Adam, who turned his head to look at the dreamer.
“D’you jump in after me?” he asked. Ronan nodded and he cracked an exhausted grin. “That was stupid. You could have died.”
Ronan pulled away from Gansey despite his weak protests and reached out to pull Adam against him. He was cold to the touch; it hurt, but it meant that Ronan would be warm to him, and that was good enough. He buried his face in Adam’s dripping wet hair as the shivers began.
“What. The fuck. Happened.” It came out more of a growl than a question, but Adam only curled closer, pressing into his skin like Ronan was a personal electric blanket.
“Something grabbed me,” he croaked out. “Thought it was Cabeswater... it disguised itself. Didn’t realize until Blue got it loud enough to break through. I grabbed it and it broke the illusion. Whatever it was, I... I cut it off me. Then I think... I think I drowned?”
“Not quite,” Blue said, wrapping her arms around him from behind. “Ronan went in after you head first and pulled you out. He had to do CPR to get you breathing again, but he stopped you from drowning.”
Adam wrinkled his nose and socked Ronan in the shoulder with the weakest punch he’d ever thrown. “Y’keep saving my life like that,” he wheezed, “and I’m gonna owe you hard enough to reincarnate.”
Ronan spluttered a laugh. A moment later, something warm draped over them, and Gansey dragged the new thing up to their chins, tucking them in tightly.
“It’s electric,” he said firmly, “so try not to drip on the cords. Jane and I are going to the store to get some food and medicine for you two. Ronan, text or call us if you need anything. Get some sleep, both of you, and do not move unless it’s an emergency.”
“What if I need to take a piss?” Ronan asked. Gansey rolled his eyes, but the joke loosened his shoulders and Ronan let himself feel eased by the obvious relief.
“That would be an emergency,” he said. “We’ll be back in an hour. Behave!”
They slept most of the day, waking only to take indecent amounts of medicine and eat some food—a ham sandwich for Ronan and a few applesauces for Adam, who had breathed in and coughed out enough water to make it impossible for solid food to get down his esophagus without extreme pain.
Gansey and Blue finally passed out tangled up on the couch around midnight with the unanimous decision to call Maura in the morning and tell her everything that had happened.
Ronan drifted in and out of sleep, but Adam didn’t wake once he was out. Ronan recalled how exhausted he’d looked before their excursion and felt an unnecessary flash of white hot rage toward Gansey for dragging him out in that state.
Blue and Gansey left in the morning with the silver dagger wrapped in a cloth, by which time Ronan was out of bed and moving around. He made himself breakfast, but declined to accompany them to Fox Way, partly because he didn’t want to be in the same building as that knife, mostly because he was too afraid to leave Adam alone.
When they were gone, he carefully peeled the regular blanket down and wrapped Adam up in the electric one. Adam half-opened his eyes and made a soft questioning noise in the back of his throat. Ronan managed to get an arm under his back and legs and haul him up. He was heavier than he had been before, but not as much as Ronan had expected. He managed all the way to his own bed, where he laid the boy down in his sheets.
“More private,” he mumbled, scrubbing his forehead. “And warmer.”
“Mm.” Adam snuggled into the pillows and closed his eyes again. “Thanks,” he muttered. Ronan crawled in next to him and pulled his duvet up over their shoulders. It felt wrong on his naked skin, but he’d at least found some boxers to wear that morning.
Adam had no such problem and seemed content to lie naked in Ronan’s bed, wrapped in blankets and sleeping soundly after nearly being killed yet again.
Adam shifted closer and tucked half of the electric blanket over Ronan’s shoulders, tugging until he got the other boy covered properly. Ronan yawned.
“Glad you’re not dead, Parrish.”
“Mmhm. Add it to the IOU folder.” Adam fell asleep tucked against his side like he belonged there, a faint smile pulling at the edges of his lips despite his obvious exhaustion.
~~ +1 ~~
Adam knew they were expecting company, but he didn’t think anyone would begrudge him for sleeping in a little late.
He’d managed to silence the alarm without waking Ronan, who was lying on his stomach next to Adam, head pillowed in the hollow of his neck. It couldn’t have been that comfortable, but there was no tension in the man’s shoulders, and his breaths were even.
Adam wrapped his arms around him and stroked the back of his neck, closing his eyes to bask in Ronan’s warmth and smell in the chill of the morning air. It had been a good idea to air the place out, he had to admit. After last night, there was no way anyone wouldn’t know what they’d done, but at least with the scent cleared out it was easier to ignore.
He scratched at the base of Ronan’s scalp and felt his breathing change—a slight hitch, a soft exhale, a whisper of something in the old language of the trees. He pressed a kiss to the crown of the dreamer’s head and met piercing blue eyes, shrouded by the haze of sleep, as Ronan lifted his head a half inch.
He watched Ronan’s pupils expand in real time and felt a swell of emotion eclipse his chest, filling his throat like a sob. Ronan leaned up and sealed their lips. The kiss was chaste and soft. They held their breath to avoid the taste of morning, and Adam reveled in the insistent, pressing weight of Ronan Lynch as the man shifted over top his body.
“Good morning,” he murmured. Adam loved Ronan’s morning voice. The sound reverberated from deep in his chest, deeper than his usual voice, and rattled through him. “You look good like this.”
“Half asleep?” Adam stretched under him before reaching up to caress his shoulder. “Thanks.”
“I was gonna say naked and in my bed, but I’ll accept half asleep,” was Ronan’s predictably lewd answer. Adam couldn’t argue. He grinned and pulled the man into another kiss, this time opening his mouth to let Ronan’s tongue explore his own. He didn’t seem to mind the slight sourness of morning.
“Wanna go again before they get here?” Ronan rasped against his lips, and Adam huffed.
“You’re insatiable,” he stressed. Still, the ache in his back pulsed pleasantly when he twisted them around and mounted Ronan’s hips, and the dangerous glint in Ronan’s icy eyes became an inferno of lust. Adam leaned back and, by chance, found the bottle of lube from the night before. He held it up, raising his eyebrows, and Ronan blinked.
“Huh!” he said. “I thought for sure we knocked that off the bed.”
Adam grinned and squeezed out enough to slide his hand up and down Ronan’s prick, already red and hard. He didn’t bother with himself—he could feel well enough that last night had him ready (as well it should, after four or more rounds). He rose up on freckled thighs that were padded with a thin layer of fat on top of muscle now, because he wasn’t starving anymore and hadn’t been for a long time, and then he sank down slowly on Ronan’s cock.
He would never tire of the way Ronan’s eyes rolled back, the way his mouth dropped open and his hands clenched into fists when Adam rode him. They had had sex in every way known to man by now—rough and fast and sweet and slow and up against walls and tangled in the hayloft and half-clothed and under a desk and in the car—both cars—and every other odd and wonderful position out there. Of all of them, this was Adam’s second favorite.
He trailed a hand down Ronan’s naked chest as he rose again, feeling the way his abs rippled and clenched under his hand, and when he lowered himself, his pleasure was multiplied tenfold by the way Ronan’s groan wrenched helplessly free of his lips. Ronan was a powerful man in many ways, but Adam owned him, and when he lay there obediently, letting Adam use him like a toy, Adam felt more powerful than any man in the world.
He rocked back and forth, circling his hips just to make Ronan spasm, until strong hands seized his hips and Ronan croaked, “Please.” Adam shuddered and nodded, entranced by the black that swallowed Ronan’s blue eyes, the lust, the devotion. Ronan sat up and turned them as smoothly as a snake, laying Adam down among the messed-up sheets. Adam melted, spreading his thighs for Ronan to slide between like he belonged there.
This was his favorite way to do this. Vanilla though it was, as Blue would have taunted, he loved it. Ronan leaned over him, pressing their foreheads together as he slid back inside. Adam moaned from somewhere deep in his chest as calloused fingers brushed his nipple. He whimpered at an undignified octave when Ronan hit his prostate, and Ronan’s hand laced through his next to his face. He turned his head to litter the skin of his lover’s wrist with kisses. A thumb stroked his cheek and pressed him back to where he had been, and Ronan captured his lips as he sped up. Every roll of his hips hit right where Adam needed him, because Ronan knew Adam’s body better than his own and had worshipped every inch of him.
Their kisses grew frantic and sloppy until they were panting into each other’s mouths, sticky and sour and entirely each other’s. Adam wrapped his legs around Ronan’s hips and pressed his heels into his ass, crying out as Ronan’s fervor increased at his wordless demand.
Ronan dropped his mouth to suck and bite at Adam’s neck, no doubt darkening the many, many marks he had left the night before. Ronan was obsessed with leaving marks. His oral fixation was a great bonus to Adam in many ways, but he loved nothing more during sex than to mark Adam up with the imprints of his teeth and the colors of his mouth.
“Right there,” Adam whispered into his ear, moaning louder just because he knew it got Ronan worked up. “Go ahead, leave as many as you want, Ronan. I’m yours now, you have me. My husband.”
Ronan’s helpless moan was punctuated by a sharp pain at Adam’s shoulder and a hot pulse and flood inside him. Adam arched his back with a gasp, but Ronan wasn’t done. He pulled out and crawled down the bed, biting and kissing every inch of Adam’s bare skin on his way, until he settled between his thighs.
He spared one hot, lust-filled glance for Adam before ducking his head and taking his cock all the way down his throat as he slipped two fingers inside to rub hard against his prostate.
Adam shouted—screamed, really—his hands twisting in the sheets. He moaned and bucked, but Ronan seized his hip in one hand and held him down, preventing him from doing what he wanted.
Ironically, that was what did it. Adam’s attraction to Ronan’s inhuman strength was a known fact by now, and Ronan made full use of that as he held Adam down one-handed while taking him apart with his fingers and mouth.
Adam couldn’t even muster up a warning. He shuddered, his moan turning into a whimper as his voice broke, and his toes curled as he clamped his legs around his lover’s shoulders and spilled into his talented mouth.
Ronan flopped down beside him, and for a minute or two, they lay in silence, panting. Adam found Ronan’s hand and squeezed. Ronan traced the lines of his palm with gentle fingers. They curled close to each other to bask in the afterglow.
Adam wasn’t sure how much time had passed when the knocks came, timid and gentle, on their bedroom door.
“Er, sorry to interrupt,” came Gansey’s far too amused voice, “but Declan and Ashley are on their way, and some of Adam’s school friends have just pulled up out front, so you two had best wrap it up.”
The two exchanged a panicked look and threw themselves out of bed.
~
Ronan made the bed, fed the bird and found them clothes while Adam cleaned himself out and started the shower, cursing their timing in his head. Had the alarm not gone off? Were the others early? Had they not heard it in the midst of their incredible morning sex? Ronan was hoping that would be a near daily thing, so he’d have to get a louder alarm.
He stepped into the bathroom and laid their clothes on the counter before looking up. For a moment, he stood perfectly still, breath caught in his throat.
Adam stood under the water, head tipped back and a smile on his face. His shoulders were relaxed and his cheeks glowed with the flush from the hot water and the... activity. Water droplets gathered on his long lashes and dripped down to cascade along his cheekbones. Ronan followed one down his jaw and over the blooming mess of hickeys on his throat. His cock stirred between his legs.
Leave as many as you want, Adam had said. It was rare for him to let Ronan leave marks above his collar, never mind when they were expecting company. I’m yours, now. My husband. Ronan stepped into the shower and wrapped his arms around Adam from behind, burying his face in the other man’s shoulder. Adam kissed the top of his head and turned to lather his neck with soap.
They washed each other wordlessly, hands and cloths gliding over sensitive skin. This, too, Ronan loved, maybe more than the sex. He loved every second he got to spend exploring the crevices of Adam’s form, counting freckles and caring for him in ways he knew no one else would ever be permitted.
He loved Adam, simple as that.
Adam leaned into his chest with a long, tired sigh. “Why’d we schedule this thing the day after?” he complained. Ronan kissed his temple, carding conditioner gently through his curls.
“Because we leave tomorrow,” he said. Adam grumbled something that made it sound like he wasn’t too pleased about that, either, but Ronan could only smile like a fawning romantic and feather his cheeks and forehead with kisses.
Adam seemed sufficiently mollified by that. He wasn’t very affectionate physically, most of the time, but it seemed he was as giddy as Ronan was. A good thing, Ronan thought proudly. He made Adam happy. Being with him made Adam happy. They had gotten married yesterday. He made his husband happy. It was almost too much.
They toweled off, dressed and brushed their teeth in under two minutes before making their way downstairs together. Gansey and Blue were making breakfast (Gansey was making breakfast and Blue was stealing bites and annoying him) and Henry had put on a fresh pot of coffee. Ty, Corey and Sara, Adam’s friends from Harvard, were lounging at the table, getting to know Henry and Blue with wide smiles and easy banter.
Declan hadn’t arrived yet, to Ronan’s relief—he was bringing Matthew, who was not as innocent as he seemed, and he did not want to sit through a breakfast full of lewd jokes.
A cheer went up. He wasn’t sure who had caught sight of them first, but he was yanked into a tight hug by Blue and Ty, and Adam was whirled in a circle by Corey before being unceremoniously shoved into Sara’s arms.
The front door opened, and Ronan just barely had time to recover his balance before Matthew crashed into him with a whoop of joy, taking him right down to the floor. Henry’s unmistakable laugh sounded off nearby, and Ronan hugged his brother fiercely before hauling them both to their feet.
Declan pulled him into a strong hug. Under any other circumstances, Ronan would have stabbed him, but today was special, so he allowed it for a whole ten seconds. He returned Ashley’s one-armed embrace and ruffled Matthew’s hair, turning his head here and there in the throng of visitors.
He found Adam chatting with Gansey, grinning widely, one hand threaded into Opal’s hair as Blue snuck her bits of bacon to wolf down when Gansey wasn’t looking. He waved, and she lit up and sped over to hop up into his arms. He swung her legs back and forth a few times—the prosthetics were holding, thankfully--before setting her down.
A half hour of chatting and catching up and cheers and congratulations passed before breakfast was finally ready. Declan helped set the table while Henry and Matthew made everyone’s tea or coffee, and Ashley helped Gansey put all the food out.
Declan was the first to speak when they had finished their prayer—a tradition at this table—and begun stuffing their faces.
“I never thought I’d see the day you, of all people, tied the knot,” he said. Ronan rolled his eyes and chucked a piece of scrambled egg at him. Opal bit it out of the air before it hit his face. Declan didn’t even flinch.
“Piss off,” Ronan told him, but the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth kept anyone from taking him seriously. Adam snorted into his coffee quietly and earned a kick to the shin.
“Hey, hey, no pissing off the newlyweds,” Sara scolded, squinting at Declan. She tossed a scrap of bacon at Opal and a piece of scrambled egg at Ronan’s brother, which was much more successful and managed to land on the eldest Lynch’s cheek. He picked it off and fed it to the girl next to him, squinting at her as Ronan cackled.
“It’s okay,” Matthew said, snorting. “The day Declan and Ronan get along is the day Satan comes to sit down for tea.” He earned a wave of raucous laughter for that comment, and Ty patted him on the back.
“I always thought Ronan was terrifying,” he said, amused. “He’d show up unannounced every month or two in our dorm, and then he fucked off for the better part of a year and came back from god-knows-where. He’s literally the grim reaper to our first years. We told stories about him around campus.”
“Yeah, till he showed up at two am with the kid when Adam was sick and spent three days sitting in Harvard classes so Parrish wouldn’t miss any notes.” Blue had delighted in this story when it had happened, and she leaned on the table with both elbows and a sigh. “You love him.” She threw a grape at him. Ronan caught it in his mouth and flipped her the bird.
“If you’re going to make fun of me,” he said with his mouth full, “you should pick a different subject than the fact that I love my husband.”
He felt Adam’s shiver next to him and suppressed a smile. He wasn’t used to saying it, yet. Adam had whispered it into his ear half a hundred times last night and once this morning, panting into his neck and mouth and crying out against him, but this was the first time he had heard the word in the light of day. He felt giddy.
“We’re very happy for you both,” Gansey said. His smile was loose and real, and Ronan felt warm. “If you had told me ten years ago that you would marry Adam one day, I would have sent you to a psychiatrist.” He grinned and shook his head. “You two were at each other’s throats constantly for the first few months. I’m so happy to see how far you’ve come.”
“You wrote the speech, you practiced the speech, you performed the speech,” Adam said, wrinkling his nose. “You don’t have to do it again, Gans.” He paused and tilted his head. “But, thank you. Honestly, if you’d told me ten years ago that Ronan would be my husband one day, I probably would have hit you with a bat, so I can’t blame the thought process.”
“Fuck,” Ronan mumbled under his breath. My husband. Adam’s thigh pressed warm against his under the table.
“So, when’s the flight?” Blue asked, raising both eyebrows.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Adam answered, which was good, because Ronan was still dazedly playing the word husband in his head over and over. “We’ll be in Ireland for two weeks, then we’re stopping in England before we come home so I can see libraries and Ronan can see cows.”
“Mostly sheep in Ireland,” Ronan agreed, nodding. “I prefer cows.”
“And you’re sure about leaving Opal with us?” asked Ashley, leaning on the table. Ronan shrugged.
“She’s hard to kill,” he said, squinting at her. She squinted back, twice as mean and with a glint of something not-quite-human in her eyes. “The brat will keep the farm running if you two fuck off to Arizona. She won’t even notice you’re gone.”
“We wouldn’t do that. What would she eat?” Declan asked.
“Do not ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” said Adam with a grimace.
“I’ll eat you,” Opal threatened. Adam rolled his eyes.
“No you won’t,” he said. “Who’d read you bedtime stories?”
“Kerah,” she answered haughtily.
“Not if you eat my husband, you little puke.”
“Oh.” Opal considered that, scrunching up her nose. “Okay. I’ll eat you, Kerah.”
“That works.” Adam sipped his coffee, leaving Ronan to fix him with an offended stare he refused to acknowledge. Ronan scoffed.
“Wow,” he said flatly. “You two don’t love me at all, huh? Ungrateful, both of you.”
“That is not true,” Henry interjected, snickering. He pointed at Adam. “I’ve known Mr. Parrish here—“
“Lynch,” Adam corrected, making Ronan’s heart explode.
“—long enough to know,” Henry continued, unfazed, “that he doesn’t look good in red and he prefers to be put together. The fact that he let you do that to his neck last night says he loves you just fine.”
Ronan spat out his coffee.
“Oh, not just last night,” Blue muttered, waggling her eyebrows. “You should have heard the noises coming from upstairs when we got he—“
“ALRIGHT!” Adam snapped loudly. His face was redder than a tomato. Ronan thought that Henry was wrong; Adam looked very good in red. It brought out his pretty eyes. “That’s enough of that, thank you. How bout we stick to the original fuckin’ plan of eating and going for a hike?”
His no-nonsense tone mollified the group enough to end the teasing, and they finished breakfast before long. Ronan retired to the couch to read Opal a story while the others cleaned and Adam sat complacently so Blue and Sara could help him mute the hickeys enough to go out in public.
“Don’t get rid of ‘em entirely, now,” he warned, grinning with smug pride. “Not many people get to show off Ronan Lynch’s teeth marks.”
“Well, you’re purple from the jaw down,” Corey said from the floor, where he was lounging with a second cup of coffee. “So I don’t think you’ll have to worry. You also have his last name and a fucking wedding ring. If you’re that desperate to show off his claim, we could paint his name on your back. Calm down.”
Adam’s laugh was bright and real and boyish, and Ronan couldn’t hold back his smile at the sound. Adam had made that same laugh the first time he’d fallen asleep on Ronan, all those years ago, when Ronan offered to kill his father. He’d been surprised by how beautiful the boy had been, back then.
Now, Adam was even more stunning. He sat straight and proud, unafraid to take up space. He had friends in two cities and a law degree from Harvard and in a few weeks, he’d be working with Declan’s former employers in the Henrietta legal system, and he called Ronan his husband proudly and happily without caring who heard him.
Ronan closed his eyes and felt Opal sink into his side the way she did when he was listening to the forest. It hummed in satisfaction.
Good, it whispered faintly. Magician happy. Greywaren happy. Bound. Like a second self.
“Tamquam,” Ronan mumbled quietly. He opened his eyes and found his gaze locked with piercing summer sky blue across the room. Adam smiled, soft and private, and Ronan knew he had heard Cabeswater’s approval.
“Alter idem,” he said.