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gansey-just-gansey · 4 years ago

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Before I Wake Part Three

Written by @allfortheandriel, @majoringinlycanthropy, and @gansey-just-gansey

Blue kicked around at the entrance to Monmouth Manufacturing. They were all there. She could see three cars in the parking lot: Ronan’s slick black BMW, Gansey’s obnoxious orange Pig, and a tricolored piece of shit that stuck out like a sore thumb. Adam’s, probably. K was always calling him a trailer trash piece of shit and the car was exhibit B, example of proof.

“Don’t be a coward,” she muttered to herself before walking to the front door and rapping three times. It was quiet for a moment before she heard the telltale stomp of Ronan’s boots on the metal floor and he threw open the door. His mouth twisted up in a sarcastic smile, but she thought he still looked pleased somehow.

“Sargent,” he barked.

“Lynch,” she replied with a roll of her eyes. “Don’t look so surprised. My presence was requested at some point, no?”

“It was offered. Don’t mix it up,” he smirked. “Come on in.”

She followed him in, eyes searching every corner warily. Blue registered the boys first. All four of them from Nino’s were there, watching her with curiosity and distrust, even Ronan. Especially Ronan. That was fair.

There was a bed in the middle of the room and a desk shoved off to the side. Both were surrounded by books - mountains and mountains of books. A thriving mint plant sat next to the desk on a weighty stack of papers. That had to be why Gansey smelled heavily of it. Mint was always on his breath and in his hair. On the other side of the room were three closed doors, presumably additional bedrooms and a bathroom. She couldn’t explain the bed in this one, though.

She looked at Ronan, hoping he would smooth over the awkwardness. Talk about unfulfilled wishes. "Maggot, this is everybody. Everybody, this is Maggot." He leaned back against the door jamb. She made a face at him and turned to introduce herself, but Gansey beat her to it.

"Certainly your name isn't actually Maggot, right?" he asked, extending an uncertain hand.

"Blue," she replied.

"Blue? Like the color?"

"Yeah, and you're Dick? Like the appendage?" she took his hand.

He looked pained, mouth forming a grimace. "Please don't.”

"You must be Adam," Blue said, turning to face the lean boy. He was looking at her with his mouth twisted downward into what looked like distaste. She made a similar face, eyes roving over him, trying to see what marked him as superior to K. She didn't find anything immediately noticeable.

Enough time on him. She turned to the smudgy boy instead. "And who are you, stranger?" Everybody but Ronan seemed surprised that she addressed him. She stuck out her hand and he reached to grasp it, seemingly because it was expected of him rather than him meaning to. Blue’s fingers brushed his and she felt a brumal chill travel down her spine. Her stomach turned inside out. This was the telltale sign of being drained.

"Oh ho ho, Lynch, what interesting friends you have," she said loftily, turning to look at him instead of the remnant of the person in front of her.

He gave her his shark smile and bit out a reply. “I keep unusual company.”

“Isn’t that an understatement,” she murmured, turning back to the ghost. “What’s your name? Or what was it, anyhow?”

“My name is Noah,” he said, still staring at her in wonder. “It’s very nice to meet you, Blue.”

He still hadn’t let go of her hand, and she decided to let him keep it, though it might sap her. It had probably been a while since he’d felt this much energy. And it was worth the risk, she thought, to have him so immediately like her, even if she didn’t know why she wanted him to. It seemed to have an effect on the others, too. Adam was pacified infinitesimally. Gansey let out his own sigh, looking at Noah and Blue’s joined hands.

“So Blue, how might we help you today?” Gansey queried.

“Help me? I’m just here for a bit of fun. Lynch here seems to prefer your company so I thought I would check you all out.” She looked down at her hand still wrapped in Noah’s. “So far, doesn’t seem to be a complete waste of a trip.”

“Fuck off, Sargent,” Lynch laughed merrily.

“Go suck a dick,” she responded, making a jerking off motion with her free hand.

“Oh great, there’s two of you now,” Adam said, and Blue couldn’t quite comprehend what he did to his face to make it look so warm towards Ronan, and yet so cold towards her at the same time. It had to be a practiced look.

“How did you know about Noah?” Gansey asked. “Most people can’t even see him, let alone be able to tell he’s a ghost. Is this due to your powers?”

Blue sent a sharp look towards Ronan, meant to injure. “Someone has a big mouth, don’t they? How much have you told them about me?” she accused.

Ronan simply shrugged, an answer in itself, before Gansey stepped in again. The official spokesman of his people. Gansey intoned, “Only that you possess some unusual abilities of your own. You’re an amplifier, he mentioned. You make his ability stronger?”

“I make everything stronger. Dreamers, ghosts, psychics.”

“Oh, like a loudhailer!” Gansey said wondrously. Adam was keenly attentive for a second too long before schooling the fascination and the amusement out of his expression.

“A what now?” she asked, a mildly irritated expression crossing her face. Noah let go of her hand and warmly patted her hair. It was difficult to maintain the exasperation in her expression.

There were parts of Gansey’s face that pinked in response. “A megaphone.”

She shared a long-suffering sigh, shoulders slumped in defeat. She supposed that did describe her abilities. “I guess,” she said. “But I can feel him draining my energy. Made it kind of obvious.”

“Sorry,” Noah said sheepishly. He folded his hands behind his back.

Blue grabbed his hand and placed it back in her hair. “It’s okay, really,” she said kindly.

Adam watched her with narrowed eyes, a creeping suspicion in his gaze. “So,” he started flatly, “You’re Kavinsky’s girl.”

She automatically stiffened. “I’m my own,” she hissed at him, repeating Ronan’s words from that long ago day. “Don’t fucking imply differently.”

“You hang out with Kavinsky a lot. And you’re the only girl that does. Well, the only one that does regularly.” Adam crossed his arms defensively.

She mimicked his stance, standing several inches shorter, but ten times as tensely. Something burned at the bottom of her throat. “You meant I belong to him. Well, I don’t. Or, wait, are you Gansey’s boy? Come on. Talk to me, one toy to another.”

That slammed. Adam’s hands balled into tight white-knuckled fists. Adam’s ears were turning an alarming red color. Fury radiated just under the precipice of his skin. She could tell. It thrilled her.

“Shut your fucking mouth, Sargent,” Ronan seethed. He stood in front of Adam then, his back to her.

She smirked to herself. Blue was good at getting under people’s skin. She could tell from K’s stories that Adam wanted to stand on his own two feet, rather than depend on Gansey, or even Ronan, even though they were together. That car outside in the parking lot confirmed it for her. It would cost Ronan nothing to bring Adam back a car, like she contemplated asking K for. But, still, he drove that little tricolored shitbox. He was a lot like her. Or, at least, how she used to be before K got his hooks in her.

She shook that off. She was happy with her life. She was happy with K. Happy with her job, and her freedom, and her power. K only supported her. He didn’t control her like Gansey did with his followers.

Smiling again, more tightly this time, she opened her mouth for one reason only. “Go to hell,” Blue said pleasantly, rabidly, piercingly, over her shoulder, before she kicked open the door with the toe of her boot.

This had been a bad idea. There was a reason why she didn’t have friends outside the dream pack. There was a reason why she didn’t leave K. There was a reason why Ronan was considered a traitor. And, most importantly, there was a reason why she hadn’t followed him when she had wanted to.

“Wait,” called Gansey, when she was halfway to the opening to the road. She looked over her shoulder at him but didn’t stop. His longer legs caught up to her with minimal effort, though. “Please, wait!” He hurried to pass her and then planted himself in her way, a puff of breath rushing from his lips. “Adam didn’t mean it like that, Blue.”

“Yes, he did,” Blue countered. “Why even bother lying?”

Gansey began and then hesitated. “You’re right,” he agreed, after considering her for a moment. She was surprised to hear him say anything that painted any of his group in a less than perfect light. “You’re right,” he repeated. “He did mean it that way, but he’s just…-Well, for one, he’s rather defensive of the lot of us. I suppose he’s just a bit surprised. I know I am. Why would someone that spends so much time with Kavinsky suddenly want to hang out with us without malicious intent? Especially considering… our misunderstanding at Nino’s.” A hint of shame colored his tone.

Blue’s hackles rose again as she recalled. “Well, as Lynch so helpfully pointed out to me the other night, I have no friends outside of K and his group. He swears the sun shines out of your ass. So, I thought this might be a chance to branch out. Make some. But that was clearly a mistake. I’ll go now,” she said pointedly, moving to go around him.

He reached a hand out, as though to touch her shoulder, but dropped it and stepped into her path again. They weren’t done. “I doubt Ronan quite said that, but you’re not wrong. This could be your chance to branch out from Kavinsky.” The way Gansey spoke his name was the way he would ask someone to take out the trash. Hell, Gansey probably didn’t need to ask anyone to deal with trash. Yet, here he was talking to her.

“I don’t have a problem with Kavinsky,” Blue said sharply. “He’s not as bad as Ronan makes him out to be. He supports me. He cares about me. He encourages me. I won’t let you or your flunkies badmouth him.”

Gansey pursed his lips. He looked like he wanted to argue but, instead, he replied with more formality than was necessary. “I apologize for our incivilities. Please, come back in. We’ll all be on our best behavior. I swear it. Even Ronan.”

“Like that means much,” Blue snorted. “Even you can’t muzzle him.” Gansey cracked a smile, but didn’t dignify that with a response. She studied Gansey for a lengthy moment. He appeared sincere. “Fine,” she said. “I’ve got some time left to kill anyway. Think your merry band is calm by now?”

“Is that what you call us?” Gansey chuckled. “I rather like that. But yes, I think he was mostly over it by the time I came to get you. Adam tries so hard to be his own person, you know? He doesn’t like anybody implying that he belongs to any of us. I suppose you two have more in common than it seems.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” Blue muttered.

“He seemed ready to apologize when I left,” he assured her. Gansey paused, ”None of us think that.”

“Uh-huh,” she rolled her eyes again. “Never crossed your minds once.”

“Truly, I know you don’t belong to him. Someone like you could never be owned.”

It was a heady thing, hearing those words from Gansey. Like he saw her. Like he could separate her from the rest of them when no one else did, except maybe Ronan. A swell of pride made her chest puff out as she followed him into the factory.

He was wrong, though. Kavinsky did own her. For now.

Adam didn’t apologize, at least not aloud. When Blue reentered Monmouth, their eyes met. She returned the gaze and that was that. There was still tension between them throughout the day and it often came to a head in matters involving Ronan.

“We’re ordering in. Blue, do you have any requests?” Gansey asked, ever the doting host.

“Not Nino’s,” was her automatic response.

Adam snorted. “Well, that narrows it down.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “And I suppose you have someplace specific in mind?”

“As a matter of fact,” Adam postulated, “I do. I’d like that Mexican place over on Main street.”

“Ew,” Blue wrinkled her nose. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled at the sound of Adam’s haughty tone. Were they not cut from the same Dollar Store fabric? He was the least Aglionby of the boys before her, and yet he was working double time to clip his vowels and mimic Dick the Third. “If we’re gonna have cheap Mexican food, La Delicias is obviously superior to La Fiesta.”

“As if,” Adam scowled. “La Delicias is overpriced and bland.”

“Whatever. Ask literally anyone, everyone prefers La Delicias.”

“Name one person who prefers that junk over La Fiesta.” He added as she opened her mouth, “Besides yourself.”

The response was quick and followed by a smug looking smirk. “Your boyfriend,” Blue replied. She was petty and she wasn’t sorry for it either.

“Wrong,” Adam insisted. “He likes La Fiesta. We went there last week.”

Blue arched an eyebrow at Ronan. “Man, the things you do for love, huh?”

“Ro, tell her,” Adam turned to Ronan, only to stare disbelievingly at the chagrined look on his boyfriend’s face. “You can’t be serious,” he scoffed.

“Sorry, but the maggot’s right on this one,” Ronan shrugged one shoulder. “We went to La Fiesta cause that's the one you like.”

Blue faked gagged. “You’ve gone soft, Lynch. It's gross.” Gansey laughed, honey rich and butter smooth. It was hard to hate him when his laugh melted her insides.

“Fuck off. You’re just trying to start shit. You’ve never cared what you were eating,” Ronan replied. Neither of them mentioned that she was usually too high to actually pay attention to what she ate, when she actually remembered to.

She smirked again, mischievous this time.

“You’re right. But your little boytoy gets so worked up. It’s just so easy.” Her high was starting to fade fast, and she could feel herself getting bitchy. She scowled, unpleasantness settling in her gut. “Actually, I’m not hungry. I’m heading home.”

“Oh, are you sure?” Gansey’s voice sounded concerned. “Would you like one of us to drive you or-.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it. Got here just fine on my own. I can get back like a big girl.”

And then she was gone. Out the door before Gansey could insist on taking care of her like she was one of the gang. The last thing she needed was to be seen pulling up to K’s in Dick’s old car. She’d never hear the end of it and K would be pissed. She couldn’t let that happen, especially when she was contemplating asking him for a favor. Especially when she was contemplating spending more time with Gansey and the others.

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human-trash-fire · 5 years ago

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Beautiful Disaster: Chapter 5 (Pynch Soulmate AU)

Alrighty my loves, this chapter has been a labor of love from the beginning. As you continue reading you will see art pieces and each is correlated with a song (those will be at the end), and references yet again will be made to the EMFS playlist (Ronan’s rehab playlist- I’ve actually made it on spotify! you can find it here)

As usual you can find this story on Ao3 @ glam_reaper 2 if you’re interested <3

TW: Mention of suicide attempt, a panic attack though not super descriptive, cannon typical language.

Iv.

You,

I made a friend last week.

I know for most people that wouldn’t be a big deal, but I assume by now You understand what that means for someone like me. I guess “friend” may be a generous term? I don’t know if we are there yet, Blue definitely disagrees with him “on principle.”

You see, President Cellphone as she calls him, or Richard Campbell Gansey III (I know, what a douchey fucking name) is all boat shoes and privledge and perfect teeth. Gansey isn’t someone I’d normally associate with mind you, Henry kind of met my quota for rich extroverts in the inner circle, and yet…

So, here’s the story. I’m writing my last letter right? And I was so fucking lost. I decided to walk home from Nino’s- I thought maybe it would help me settle. And there, right around the corner is this fucking ‘73 camero. It should have been beautiful, really.. A classic like that? It’s a dream to look at. Only this fucking thing is the UGLIEST color of candy orange you could ever imagine… And it’s blowing smoke all over the damn place. I was honestly going to leave boat-shoes to call his daddy or mechanic or what have you, but he looked so confused. I offered to help him out and was able to get it running long enough to get to Boyd’s.

I expected him to just drop off “The Pig” (the car) like any normal person and come back for it, only I apparently made “quite the impression.”

Gansey ended up staying with me, prattling on about his Masters History program and some welsh king the ENTIRE time I worked on the damn car. At first I was tuning him out, but without realizing it I became completely entranced by the whole story. I’ve never seen such passion for anything, and I have VERY spirited friends.

He has one of those voices you know? The kind that can stop a room, raise an army, lead a nation. The kind that demands to be heard without ever having to raise itself.

That’s Gansey though.

I think he’ll be good for me, I don’t think he’d give me much of a choice in the matter though to be honest. He kind of adopted me this week? That should bother me and yet, being around him is just… It’s being included. It’s a sense of purpose.

I think he needs it too, he doesn’t seem to talk about negative things but you can tell, he’s haunted by something. That’s what solidified it for me really. He may be a senator’s son but he’s seen some shit.

I wish you could have met him, I wonder if you would have been as intrigued by him as I find myself.

Blue is being a total idiot about him, but I’m about 82% sure it’s because she is into him. I know for sure the feeling is mutual. It took Gans approximately 15 minutes after meeting Blue to ask me for her life story, offend her beyond measure, and then haul ass out of Nino’s. It was the first time I’d seriously laughed in so long. Have you ever been second-hand embarrassed for someone? It was that.

I’m going to wrap this up now though, I need to head to Nino’s for my shift, Blue’s working so of course Gans is stopping by. He said he’s bringing one of his best friends with him, some dude named Noah. Apparently he’s pretty cool, so I’m moderately less apprehensive. He said he wished he could bring his other best friend/ his and Noah’s third roommate but the guy is staying with family for a few months or something. Idk? He doesn’t talk about the other roommate much. I honestly don’t even think he’s ever said his name. Who gives a shit though, I can barely handle one new friend, let alone a 3-pack of Ganseys. Good God… I hope Noah isn’t another Gansey…. Fuck.

Welp.

Here goes nothing.

*****

It started with a not-so-subtle idea from the esteemed Dr. Allen. “Show me what happened.” Ronan was never great with words before all this, and since… When he spoke it was usually a litany of curse words. So Dr. Allen had suggested art. In the weeks since his entombment in this fine rehabilitation center, Ronan had kind of already been doing what he was being asked to do now. Though, he didn’t mention it to Allen. He’d spent countless hours sketching his life, the whole thing, in snapshots inside that beautiful leather sketchbook Gansey had given him.

He started at the beginning, pictures of Aurora and his brothers, the Barns, his father playing guitar by the fire. He drew their family vacations, the cows he used to sneak out and sleep beside when he was a child, the feeling of winning the Tennis State Championship when he was 15. He drew the bad things too, his nightmares, his drug-trips, that old stained couch in the basement of Kavinsky’s house. He put every piece of himself, all 22 years of memories down in that book, woven together with song lyrics in the margins.

So when Dr. Allen asked him to look specifically to his addiction and create, he didn’t see a problem. He needed to return to school with a series anyways, Declan had called to inform him that strings had been pulled to allow him to finish his final semester at Georgetown, but he needed to walk in with something to show at the January exhibition. Two birds, and all that.

He settled on 7 pieces, each done in oils on canvas, each accompanied by a song. 7 moments in the life of his battle with addiction, from the beginning to now. With each stroke of his brush he felt infinesmally lighter, pouring his grief into the images before him.

It started with “The Fall.” His father’s murder in reds and greys; fracturing lines and deep shadows. He mixed his paints with tears and used his heart to drag color across the canvas. For the first time in years, Ronan allowed the memory to consume him. He’d re-lived it plenty of times in his nightmares, but this was different. His hands shook, jagged strokes of anger and confusion bleeding through. He painted the brief moment, the final moment, when his world was whole before his teenage mind finally realized what it was he was looking at. His last free breath. And he painted his screams, the cacophony of pain, endlessly mixing with sirens until his vocal chords gave out.

He drowned the canvas in un-kept promises and hung it out to dry with childhood dreams.

Then came “Chasing the Void.” It was a story told in stark lighting. High beams on a backroad, swirling smoke and broken bottles. It was white glasses and white-powder lines on shark-nosed hood. It was going 115mph, bones rattling with the beat of the bass in his sound system. Ronan painted a black tattoo, used the blood on his knuckles to tint bloodshot eyes. His brush moved with his mother’s disappointment and his brother’s anger. Whimsical lines and Gansey’s head shaking when he found Ronan passed out yet again. He painted the highs and lows when sobriety reminded him that he hated the face that stared back at him in the mirror.

Each new piece he added to the collection was brought to Dr. Allen’s office. Together they worked through each memory associated with the piece and slowly Ronan felt the weight on his chest lighten.

Gansey visited every Monday and Friday like clockwork. He kept Ronan apprised to all the goings on of Monmouth and updates on Matthew and Declan. Ronan never asked for them, but he appreciated it regardless. His current obsession though seemed to be a new friend, Adam something. He had been going on for 30 minutes now about how this man single-handedly raised the Pig from the dead. Ronan tuned out most of the conversation, but nodded at what he assumed were appropriate moments while sketching.

“Ronan, are you even paying attention?” Gansey asked, irritation only slightly evident.

“Mmm?” Ronan hummed. “For sure. Pig. Smoke. Some new guy.”

“Essentially. I was saying that Noah and I are heading to his second job, the man works 2 jobs and is getting a masters can you believe it? Anyways Nino’s, so Noah can finally meet him and Blue. Have I mentioned her yet?”

Blue? He thought. Who the fuck names their kid Blue. “Once or twice.”

“Well they both work this afternoon, so I assume we’ll just hang there until they get off. Then maybe grab a bite. I wish you could come, I’m sure you’d get along nicely with Adam.” Gansey said, choosing to ignore the previous sarcasm and barrell on. Excelsior.

“Doubt it.” Guy sounds like a douche.

“On that note, thank you for another lovely visit. I’ll see you Monday, Ronan.” Gansey gathered his coat and made his way to the door with a final wave.

Ronan waved back with a single finger and a saccharine “Bye, Dick.” Then shoved his Airpods back into his ears and lost himself in the EMFS playlist.

*****

As Adam gathered the tub of dirty dishes from above the trash and made his way back to wash them, he was lost in thought. These last two weeks, recent events, had been so much and yet he strangely was beginning to feel some semblance of peace. He knew that Blue had wanted him to write letters to help him cope. If he was admitting to it helping, he also needed to be honest with himself in noting that it may have been hurting just as much. He was falling in love with a ghost. A figment of his imagination that he could tell his every secret too, someone who listened without judgment; Someone who never asked more of him than he could handle. It wasn’t healthy, wasn’t what Blue had intended, of that he was sure. But, if it brought him peace and allowed him to sleep without seeing cold, dead eyes, then what was the harm?

He rinsed the mugs and plates loading them efficiently into the dishwasher, and dried his hands. As he moved to toss the towel into the bin, he heard the bell chime above the cafe door. He made his way slowly to the front, knowing that Blue was currently handling the register meant that he didn’t need to rush. On his way down the hallway he stopped to straighten a missing cat flier on the community bulletin board, taking a moment to snap a picture of the cat in question so he could be on the lookout, then continued toward the front; eyes glued to his phone.

He rounded the corner towards the coffee bar to the tune of laughter, it seemed Gansey had arrived. His eyes found Blue first. For all her insistance that she loathed the man in question, she was positively glowing, head tossed back in a hearty laugh. Lost in the bubble of charm Gansey operated in.

“-And so I asked him, mind you I’ve had a lot to drink at this point, ‘Hey senator, why do you fucking hate poor peo-‘ Oh! Adam” Ganseys story of embarrassing his mother at one of her Republican fundraisers interrupted, as he caught sight of Adam sliding behind the bar.

“Hey Gans,” He smiled.

“My apologies, this is Noah.” Gansey stepped to the side to reveal the man in question, and Adam’s breath stopped.

There, eyes blue and wide with shock, mouth agape stood the man from the alley. The one whose scream still haunted Adam in the dark, solitary hours of sleep. The one that began his every nightmare of that night.

He was different now, tears weren’t pouring from his eyes to dance across the plains of his smudgey face. His blonde hair free of blood was slightly tousled, and his clothes were clean, albeit a little disheveled.

“No,” the word was a broken noise, barely a word at all, closer to a sob. Gansey and Blue looked frantically between the two for what seemed like an eternity before Noah spoke.

“It’s you…”

“Who? Noah, you know Adam?” Gansey’s voice was quietly confused.

Adam began to shake his head slowly, increasing with speed as his breath finally returned to him; Erratic and wild. Crocodile tears blurred his vision, and he finally croaked a simple question, “What… What was his name?”

“Ronan.”

“Oh, god” Blue breathed.

Adam ran, desperately fleeing the scene and chorus of his name called from the front. Ronan, his name was Ronan. Adam couldn’t breathe. His pain fresh, an un-mendable wound reopened now that he had a name to grieve. He paused, only long enough to grab his messenger bag from the back, and took the alley door.

Then he ran, faster than he’d ever remembered running. Tears turning the colors of the world around him to a haunting watercolor. His breath came in painful stabs, each beat of his bleeding heart an excruciating truth.

He somehow made it back to his apartment. The moment the door closed behind him he fell against it and slid to the floor. Ronan Ronan Ronan-

“R-Ronan.” He spoke the name the first time aloud, the feeling of its weight on his tongue was an answer to a question he’d been asking for a month. For a lifetime.

Adam didn’t know how long he sat on the floor, grief taking time and twisting it in on itself. An amalgam of pain, hopelessness, and questions. Gansey, Gansey knew Ronan, knew Noah. Noah the boy he’d last seen carted away in the back of an ambulance covered in red red red. Noah, who’d screamed for help like the world was shattering. Noah, who’d clung tightly to the shredded arms of a bleeding man in a dark alley.

Help me, his mind screamed, his internal voice morphing into Noah’s from that night.

Help me, I’m not okay…

A key twisting in the lock above his head brought his attention to the present. Adam pushed away from the door, and waited as Blue made her way into his dark apartment. Night had fallen sometime since he’d been here, on the floor, lost in the alley. Lost in a name.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“Th-that was-”

“I know. Noah told us after you left. Adam, there’s… Adam. I need to tell you something.”

It was a concentrated effort to drag his gaze from the space between their bodies on the floor to meet her eyes. Lights from the street poured through the window in the living room, painting Blue’s honey warm skin in a haunting glow. He couldn’t bring himself to ask, so he waited. He watched. She brought a trembling hand to his, her brown eyes lined with silver, she squeezed.

“Adam, he’s alive.”

A sob born of heartbreak and pain tore from his chest, he couldn’t form words. He broke then, completely and wholly. Blue came to cradle his head against her chest as he cried. Every hope he’d killed since the alley came barreling to the surface; All the pain and confusion, love and questions, beating like waves against the shores of his mind. Some minutes later he finally raised his head and met Blue’s eyes, her smile was wet and broken. He dragged his hand under his nose, across his eyes, and finally found the word to the question he needed to ask. “How?”

So Blue told him. Apparently, him finding Noah and Ronan in that alley, the tourniquet he’d made of his scarf, that extra minute he’d bought him had been enough. The doctors were able to stitch his wounds, and though it had been a close call, he’d pulled through. She explained that he’d had a hard life, though Gansey wouldn’t give details because he insisted those were Ronan’s to share when he was ready. He did however give her basic facts. Ronan Niall Lynch is an artist, a senior at Georgetown. He’s an orphan, and a brother. He’s an addict in recovery at a facility in Arlington, and Gansey’s third roommate.

Blue explained that, when Adam was ready Gansey and Noah wanted to meet with him, to talk more. She offered to accompany him when that time came, but they all agreed they wouldn’t push him until he was ready. “Thank you,” he’d said to Blue. For getting the information. For telling him. For allowing him space. She understood that his history made this difficult, an addict for a soulmate was something he would need time to process. She eventually asked if he wanted to be alone and when he’d told her “yes” she kissed his forehead, and made her way to the door.

“Adam,” she paused, and he looked up. “We’ll wait on your text okay? Whenever you’re ready. But please check in so I know you’re safe.”

“I will.”

With a perfunctory nod she slid back out the door.

Adam spent another minute in silence before dragging himself from the floor. He made his way in a daze to his desk and he collapsed into his chair. Slowly, he pulled out a blank sheet of paper.

His hand shook.

He took a deep breath.

He wrote.

Ronan,

You’re alive…

**********************

Art Pieces and their correlating songs (linked):

“The Fall” The War- SYML

“Chase The Void” For What It’s Worth- Malia J

#bd au #pynch #pynch fic #Adam Parrish #ronan lynch #ronan x adam #blue sargent #gansey #richard campbell gansey iii #gangsey #soulmate au

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daleyposts · 5 years ago

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Prompt!: a fluffy day with Noah and everyone else just having fun. Goofing off, a trip somewhere? Sure, a sleepover?? Amazing. Whatever you want!!

First, I wanna apologize for being so late with this. There was a medical emergency in my family that, along with some heavy work schedules, pretty much consumed my life. The family member has a long road of recovery ahead of them, but they are doing much better than initially.

Second, I want to thank you for the prompt, as I really need something light and fluffy right now. I kinda combined the two???

Its short, but I hope you enjoy it

It was a dark and stormy night, which was the opposite of what the forecast had indicated.

"Never trust a weatherman," Noah grumbled, peering out to the dark, wet, nothingness that greeted him. Well. Not 'nothingness', really. The neon glow of the gas station across the highway was visible, just barely, through the near torrential fown pour. He heard Blue make an unhappy noise from across the room, so he corrected himself, said, "Never trust a weatherperson."

"Meteorologist?" Gansey suggested.

Noah looked back at him. He was sitting at the desk in their hotel room, a vaguely damp map spread out in front of him, no doubt planning a way to recover the few hours they had lost of their group trip by having to stop thanks to the heavy rain. He was all hunched over and had a scowly, furrowed look to his face.

Noah looked from him to Blue, who was seated at the head of one of the beds and mindlessly flipping through channels. The volume was muted, though Noah didn't now why, and she whould complain every few mintutes about how there was nothing good on. Her legs were stretched out in front of her, and Henry sat with them in his lap, delicately painting each toe a ridiculous shade of orange.

Noah wondered if the hue had been purposefully chosen to match the Camaro.

On the opposite bed, Adam and Ronan sat, facing each other and playing an unnecessarily serious game of red hands. By the look on Ronan's face, he was winning.

Noah watched as Adam stared into Ronan's eyes, maybe to try and unnerve him, before quickly trying to slap Ronan's hands. He was quick, but Ronan was quicker, and he crowed in triumph as he pulled his hands back just in time to avoid Adam slapping them.

Noah surveyed each of his friends a second time, and sighed.

Sighed again when his first sigh wasn't acknowledged to his sayisfaction. Or, at all, really.

Sighed again after that, and, to make sure his point was getting across, loudly sigh, "I'm bored."

"We know," Ronan grumbled, yelped in surprise when Adam used his moment of distraction to successfully slap his hands. "This is the 12th fucking time you've fucking told us your bored."

"You could help me finish painting Blue's toes?" Henry suggested.

"Denied," Blue said, clicking off the television.

"I was banned from painting her nails," Noah sniffed, "Unjustly, I might add."

"Oh, it was more than just," Blue said to Henry's inquisitive look.

"Well," Gansey said, leaning back in his chair and away from his notes and maps, "I brought a game for just this sort of thing."

Gansey pulled an unopened deck of Uno from his satchel, and Noah could have kissed him. Instead, he grinned widely and pumped his fist twice.

The six of them squeezed unto a single queen sized bed and were about to start aying when someone suggested they raise the stakes, come up with a prize for the winner, which was decided would be the much coveted passenger seat of Noah's van they were traveling in.

Later, they would all argue over who the someone was that made the suggestion. A few insisted it was Noah himself, but he was adament that it was either Blue or Ronan.

An hour into the game, and a proverbial Pandora's book of chaos broke loose.

Noah had been distracted by a praticularly loud burst of thunder, so he didn't see exactly what happened, but he heard Ronan suddenly shout about cheating.

Henry, who had maybe payed better attention to the flow of the game them Niah did, loudly agreed, citing the rule book.

Blue scoffed, and indignantly insisted that there were no rules in Uno, that it was like love and war, anything was fair.

Adam vehemently agreed, to which Ronan muttered, "et tu, Brutus?".

Gansey tried, for several moments, to shush them all with the reminder that there were, technically, too many people staying in the room and they would all get kicked out. He gave up eventually, somewhere around the time Ronan threw his hand of cards in the air and Blue stood on the bed.

Noah couldn't breathe he was laughing so hard.

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markonasurface · 7 years ago

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things you said under the stars and in the grass

I accidentally posted this last week and didn’t realize until that night.

Exactly one year later, on St. Mark’s Eve they gather. Okay, so it’s the night before St. Mark’s Eve. Adam has to get back for Freshmen Orientation and if Blue is in Henrietta on St. Mark’s Eve, there’s no way she’s not going to be at that cemetery, sitting on the wall, helping her mom collect names.

She insists Adam and Ronan meet her, Gansey and Henry at the churchyard.

“Seriously?” Ronan had grumbled. “I don’t want to drive into town for the fucking death prediction party.”

“One,” Blue had retorted. “It’s not the fucking death prediction party. That’s the night after, asshole. Two, we’re driving from Mexico.”

When they pull up to the church/cemetery in Gansey’s bright orange Camaro, she half expects them not to show and half expects Adam to be there by himself. She doesn’t expect to find Ronan pinning Adam against a tree, sucking on his neck.

The three of them climb out of the car. At the sound of a door shutting, Adam’s eyes snap open and he pushes Ronan’s shoulder. Ronan just moves his mouth to kiss Adam’s jaw, then the corner of his mouth.

“C’mon!” Henry calls. “Not in front of the kids!”

“Classy, guys,” Gansey adds.

Blue pulls him away from the trees and closer to the church. She hops up on the wall and Henry sits next to her as they wait for Ronan and Adam to join them. Gansey leans back between Blue’s legs. He smiles when he feels her elbows rest on his shoulders. He grabs one hand and kisses her knuckles, making her giggle.

“Any day now, boys,” Henry shouts towards the trees.

“You guys are the ones who were late,” Ronan says. He and Adam come up to the wall from behind. “Had to come up with some way to entertain ourselves.”

Blue rolls her eyes. “Well done, desecrating church grounds.”

“I would never,” Ronan responds, mock offended. He points. “Church grounds end right over there, Maggot. And as you all saw, we were over there.”

“Oh, come on,” Henry says, straddling the wall and lying down. “Adam lived above a church the entire last semester of high school.”

“Not to mention that night you dreamed -” Adam cuts himself off, shuddering.

Ronan shoots him a look. They agreed never to talk about it. He tugs the tips of Blue’s hair and asks, “So what was so important about meeting here?”

Blue’s face lights up. “This is where it all began.” She nods at a particular spot where a thorny bush is growing - or dying. She can’t tell. “That’s where I first saw Gansey.”

They start a trip down memory lane. They get through Blue’s first impression of each of them (“Seriously, President Cell Phone?” “I told you it was a bad idea.”) and Adam and Blue’s relationship before Ronan says, “I promised the brat dinner.”

Adam turns his head in Ronan’s lap and says, “Her name’s Opal, Ronan.”

Ronan ignores the reprimand and asks, “To the Barns?”

After Opal is fed, bathed, read to, and tucked in, the group heads outside, drinks and blankets in tow. Gansey has his arms around Henry and Adam.

“She go down okay?” he asks Adam.

“Yeah,” he answers, blushing thinking about all the questions she had. He looks around Gansey at Henry and glares. “Thanks for telling her Blue and I dated.”

Henry laughs. “I still can’t get my head around it.”

“You have to admit, she asked some pretty good questions.” Blue slips between Gansey and Adam, wrapping her arms around their waists.

“‘Did you kiss her like you kiss Kerah?’”

Adam’s face was already hot but he can feel it getting even hotter. Then Ronan takes his hand and he doesn’t know what he feels.

“So did you?” Ronan whispers in his ear, breath tickling his skin.

“No.” Adam untangles himself from Blue and Gansey and sits down.

Ronan sits next to him and drapes a blanket over their laps. He throws a small acorn he finds in the grass at Blue. “You said he was a good kisser.” Adam looks over at her, surprised and a little bit skeptical.

“You told me you never kissed him,” Gansey adds, mouth twitching in poorly hidden amusement.

“So what is the truth, Blue Sargent Mirror?” Henry takes a sip from a bottle and immediately spits it out. “Bleh! What is this?”

Ronan shrugs a shoulder. “I dreamt it.”

“Is it fucking 100 percent alcohol?” he demands.

“That one might be,” Adam says. “It’s kind of hit or miss with these.”

Henry opens another bottle, sniffs, and gingerly takes a sip. He smiles, pleased that this one is way less potent. “So, Blue, your final answer, please!”

She takes a gulp of Henry’s drink and wipes her mouth on the back of her hand before answering. “I never said I kissed him. I just said he’s a good kisser.”

The boys shout at her vagueness. Adam really wishes they’d stop talking about his kissing skills, although at least they weren’t saying he was bad, and he does want to know what Blue’s on about. This time Ronan throws a bottle cap at her.

“Explain, Shortstuff.”

“Okay, okay,” she says, leaning against Gansey. “These two girls I went to school with saw us holding hands and they asked me about it but we’d broken up so I told them that. And one of the girls, I swear to God, was like,” Blue makes her voice nasally. “‘Wasn’t he such a good kisser?’”

“None of the girls I kissed ever sounded like that,” Adam insists at the same time Henry prompts, “And you said?”

Blue sighs. “Well, I wasn’t going to get into the ‘if I kiss my true love he’s going to die’ mumbo jumbo. So I said yeah.”

“Thanks, I guess.” Adam lies back in the grass, staring up at the stars. They were so much brighter over the Barns.

“He’s a great kisser,” Ronan informs them, leaning down to kiss Adam’s cheek.

Blue raises her eyebrows, giving Adam a significant once over. “According to the other one that’s not the only thing he’s great at ...”

“Oookay!” Adam sits up. “That’s enough!”

“Woah, woah, woah! You can’t just leave it there, Blue!” Henry complains.

Gansey looks conflicted but then says, “I have to agree. It’s sort of unfair to leave us hanging.”

She shoots Adam a mischievous grin.

He covers his red ears. “Blue, no. You guys - I have no idea what she was talking about but you’ve heard enough. Let’s talk about Henry’s exes.”

“The way you’re reacting kind of makes it seem like you do know what she’s talking about.” Ronan narrows his eyes, leaning away to study his face.

“Also, dude, you dated two girls who are friends? What’s wrong with you?”

Adam sighs. “Not on purpose. I didn’t know any of them are friends.” He kind of wants to point out the hypocritical nature of that statement coming from Blue.

“So, the other one,” Ronan brings the conversation back. “You say you don’t know what she’s talking about but ...”

“There’s not a lot to do at the trailer park, okay?” he says quickly. “It was better than sitting at home and waiting for -”

The look Ronan gives him hurts almost as bad as talking about the trailer park. Blue sees the moment between them and demands, “Henry, tell us about one of your exes.”

While Henry talks about some floozy he met when he first got to Henrietta, Ronan lies next to Adam and puts his chin on his shoulder. “Hey, we were just teasing you, okay?”

“I know,” Adam mutters, picking at the grass. It doesn’t make him feel any better. He hates feeling like this.

“Also,” he whispers. “I already know what I think you’re good at.” Adam can’t help his smile but refuses to look at him. “Maybe you can show me what she was talking about though? After the others go to sleep of course.”

Adam turns over to face him. He leans in closer so only Ronan can hear him. “Sorry, you’ve got different - parts ... I could do something else to you though and you can tell Blue whether or not I was good at it.”

Ronan lets out a loud, boisterous laugh that simultaneously has Adam blushing again and feeling more at ease. Ronan leans up on an elbow and says, “So the real question: is Gansey a good kisser?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Blue says, haughty, flipping her hair. Her voice turns nasally. “But he’s such a good kisser!”

“Oh, you’re doing Kristine when she has a cold!” Adam shouts. The others look at him before bursting out laughing.

They go back to reminiscing - the good and the bad. As the night goes on their voices get slurred and unnecessarily loud. One thing they don’t talk about is Gansey dying.

Someone says, “Noah,” and they all go silent. There are a few sniffles and they all seem at a loss for words. They never got to say goodbye.

Gansey never got to thank him.

At the right moment, Ronan’s magical glowing butterflies pass over them, big orbs of white light. Fluttering. Outshining the stars. Henry raises a bottle.

“To Noah.”

“One of the best friends we could’ve asked for.”

“He deserved better.”

“The best dead friend I ever had.”

“And a damn good kisser!” Ronan adds.

Before any of them can question how he knows that, Blue yells, “Hell yeah!”

This was intended to be a gangsey fic but it’s really just pynch with the rest of the gangsey.

Fun Fact: I remember being really disappointed in the ending of the series. I felt like the ending was rushed and (correct me if I’m wrong) there was nothing about Noah. He disappeared on his own and I don’t remember anything more being said about him. Like, did they all forget him once he disappeared?

#trc #the gangsey #pynch #pynch central #adam central #in which there's a lot of talk about who's a good kisser

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astudyinfreewill · 7 years ago

Note

Hello lovely! How about a pynch au fic where Ronan and Adam meet when the fire alarms for their apartment building go off and everyone has to evacuate to the parking lot?

hey there!!! i am so sorry this is so late, and i don’t really have an excuse other than that life’s been incredibly busy – with good things, mostly, so that’s a plus at least. three notes: 1. this is definitely not a drabble of a couple hundred words, because i’m apparently terrible at keeping my own resolutions… but at the same time, 2. it’s also not a complete fic; it kinda feels like the start of one, and maybe i’ll write that au someday, but i decided to let this go for now or i would never fill your prompt, ack ^^;;; finally, 3. this is unbeta’d, so any mistakes (whether in the english or in general knowledge about american stuff) are exclusively mine. hope you enjoy!!

Adam didn’t need this. With midterms looming so close, and the opening shift at the coffee shop the following morning at ass o’clock, he was really looking forward to going over his chemistry notes one more time and then getting an early night. Instead, he had been forced out of his tiny flat and down four flights of stairs by a blaring siren.

Adam really didn’t need this.

As he reached the parking lot, he noticed how chilly the night air was against his arms and cursed himself for not grabbing his jacket on the way out. He had moved to the city from his hometown of Henrietta only a couple months before, when he’d started college, and he was still a little nervous about his new surroundings. When the fire alarm had sounded, he’d hightailed it directly to the door as his landlord had instructed, but now he was wondering if maybe this was just a drill.

Looking around the parking lot at the other disgruntled tenants, he tried to find someone to ask. Everyone was engaged in conversation already, and Adam felt self-conscious about barging in and interrupting them to ask what was possibly a stupid question. After a few minutes of scanning the parking lot, he finally spotted one tenant who was standing on his own, not talking to anyone. Somehow, he managed to make his lack of activity look pointed.

Adam took a step closer. The other guy seemed to be in his early twenties, tall and broad-shouldered, with his hair shaved to an army-style buzzcut. Adam hoped he wasn’t some crazy survivalist type. Shaved Guy was wearing a black leather jacket, artfully ripped jeans (okay, so maybe not a survivalist) and—was that a raven perched on his shoulder? (…okay, definitely crazy).

Still, Adam had not made it out of the trailer park and into New York City only to be intimidated by a bird of prey, either literal or human-shaped. He walked up to the guy and, trying to hide his accent as best he could, started: “Um, hello. Can I ask you a question?”

The guy looked down at him (he was only about an inch and a half taller, which Adam found inexplicably frustrating, especially because Raven Guy managed to make it look like it was a foot) as if he was surprised and a little affronted anyone had had the gall to come up to him and make verbal contact. Adam did not doubt that was exactly the case.

“You already did, didn’t you?”

His tone was bored and downright rude, but Adam had the weird, unshakeable impression that his disinterest was not genuine.

“I guess I did. Another question, then,” he amended, trying his best not to let Raven Guy get under his skin. “I was wondering if you know what’s going on.” He tacked on a soft question mark at the end, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible.

Raven Guy stared at him.

“Are you an idiot?”

Adam’s blood went up several degrees in temperature.

“Pardon me?” he asked, struggling to keep a lid on the anger about to swell up.

“Well, let’s see, a fire alarm just went off,” drawled Raven Guy, sounding, if possible, even more bored and condescending than before, “And now we’re all down here… could it be that there’s – oh, you know – maybe a fire?”

“I thought maybe it was just a drill,” Adam replied, quietly, the way he got very quiet when he was absolutely furious. In that way, he was very different from his father.

Wordlessly, Raven Guy just pointed at the penthouse floor of the building, where sure enough, now an ominous orange light was beginning to show. Adam did feel a bit like an idiot then, which did surprisingly little to placate his anger. He was just about to turn on Raven Guy and thank him for his help as venomously and sarcastically as he was able, when he felt a light touch to his elbow.

“Don’t mind Ronan,” a soft voice piped up to his left, on the side of his good ear. He turned to see a pale boy who looked… well… smudgy was not a good choice of word, but it was the only one Adam could come up with on the spot.

“He’s just mad because he set the fire himself. I’m Noah, by the way.” The pale, smudgy boy extended a hand to a bemused Adam.

“Wow, Noah, thanks, way to fucking have my back,” Raven Guy – who was apparently called Ronan – spat out, as Adam shook Noah’s hand. It was very cold.

“You live in the penthouse?” Adam’s accent coloured his words slightly in his surprise; it was hard to imagine two people that different living together.

Noah nodded. “He was trying to bake an Irish cream cake, and the alcohol caught on fire,” he whispered, conspiratorially. Adam couldn’t hold back a snort at that, though he tried – very poorly and belatedly – to hide it behind a hand. If it was hard to imagine Ronan and Noah living together, it was even harder to imagine Tall, Dark and Asshole (though, okay, Adam had to admit he was also very, very handsome) baking a cake.

“What the fuck, Noah,” complained Ronan, now absolutely livid. “What is wrong with you?”

“I was just trying to be friendly,” Noah shrugged defensively.

“Oh, friendly, I see, that’s awesome, man. So the first random guy rolls in from Hicksville and you throw me under the fucking bus?”

Adam saw red.

Not bothering to hide his accent anymore, for all the good it did, he stared Ronan right in the eye. “Maybe if your mama had taught you how to talk to people, your friends wouldn’t feel the irrepressible impulse to expose you for the bag of dicks you are.”

Ronan stared back at him in what looked like disbelief, outrage, annoyance and – was that a tiny, microscopic hint of respect Adam could see?

“Is that how it is?” he asked, dangerously pleasant. “And what the fuck do you think you fucking know about me, exactly?”

Adam didn’t hesitate one second: “I know you think you’re too damn cool to be nice to a stranger asking you a question. Well, and that you’re apparently a shit baker, but that’s neither here nor there.”

Noah gasped softly, Ronan opened his mouth to reply, and Adam was not at all sure he knew what he was doing, really, except that he was not going to step away from this, dammit—but before Ronan could fire back something truly incendiary, they were interrupted by a steady, pleasant, rich voice (Adam hadn’t thought it was possible for a voice to sound wealthy before, but there it was).

“What’s going on here?”

Adam expected the voice to come from a middle-aged politician. Instead, it was a boy that looked glaringly implausible standing in the dark parking lot of a badly maintained block of flats. He was wearing khakis, boat shoes, and a polo shirt that was… Adam wasn’t certain he knew the name of that shade. Some variation of turquoise that probably had an even fancier name. The boy was regarding him with an affable smile that looked practiced, but genuine curiosity was shining from behind his wire-framed glasses. Adam couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard Ronan mutter ‘oh, there we fucking go’ under his breath.

“I’m Gansey.” A hand was extended towards him with unwavering confidence.

“Adam Parrish,” Adam replied, a little puzzled, but shaking his hand regardless.

“Do I need to make apologies for Ronan? I usually do. Consider apologies extended. Come on, we’ll go and have pizza while this all blows over. I have been speaking to a few of the people handling the situation, and the fire has apparently not spread any further than our kitchen. Don’t ask. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. Gentlemen, shall we?”

He turned and headed towards the most hideously orange Camaro Adam had ever laid eyes on. Adam stared at it, then at Gansey’s retreating form again, as if he was certifiably insane. Ronan rolled his eyes and started stomping after Gansey, letting loose a litany of what was a truly impressive range of swears. When he got into the car, he slammed the passenger side door, then slammed it again for good measure.

Adam still stared. Something was telling him to follow those boys to their improbable car. Even though every rational cell in his brain thought it was a massively stupid idea, somehow he knew with unshakeable certainty that he would still do it – get into the improbable car and have pizza with these improbable strangers.

The quiet boy – Noah – nudged him very lightly. Adam, despite his better judgement, started walking, with Noah following one step behind.

“Don’t mind Ronan,” Noah said again, softly. Adam turned to look at him, wondering if he’d misheard.

“Beg pardon?”

“He’s all bark and no bite. And also he’s just mad because he’s been talking about you ever since you moved in and he wanted to make a better first impression than ‘arsonist baker’.”

Adam’s head was reeling. Ronan wanted to make a good first impression on him – or anybody? Ronan had been talking about him? He had noticed Adam?

“Yeah, most people do,” he replied, a little bewildered.

“Don’t let it put you off him though. He’s a great guy, really.” Noah smiled in a vague, wistful way, only to be replaced by a bright grin a moment later.

“Hope you like avocado on your pizza!”

Avocado.

Adam’s life had just taken a turn for the very, very strange. But somehow, he had a good feeling about it.

#adam parrish #ronan lynch #pynch #trc #the raven cycle #answer #noodle-bird #i'm sorry this is so late and also i am not entirely happy with it but hey ho #also this is only sort of pynch because they do not get along super well at the start #big surprise there lmao #my writing

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magicianparrish · 7 years ago

Text

Who’s That Girl (pt 2)

Here is part 2 of the New Girl au fic that I have created. It is also part 2 of the Meeting the Roommates arc. All of the 12 parts are posted on my ao3 account, which is linked here for all to see if you don’t want to read it on here. This isn’t beta’d so all mistakes are mine. Enjoy!

Blue stood in the doorway of what will now become her room. It was completely bare, and no signs that anyone else had ever lived there before her. Behind her stood the three guys, also looking inside.

“This belonged to Henry. He’s a pretty swell guy, I think you’d get along famously with him actually. But he decided to go find himself,” Gansey explained.

She heard Ronan scoff. “Find himself alright. The dude seemed to know himself just fine,” he grumbled.

Then she heard a smack, an “ow!” and then a retaliation which left Noah hysterically laughing.

It was spacious, and it had a walk in closet which Blue thought was a nice touch. It could double as storage for all her fabrics and other materials she makes her clothes with. She turned around and looked at the three of them.

“Can you come over and help move my shit here? I don’t want to sleep on the couch again when I can actually sleep on a bed for the first time in a month.”

Noah and Gansey looked thrilled at the opportunity to help her. Ronan just scowled but said nothing. Gansey clapped a hand on Ronan’s shoulder which elicited an eye roll from him.

“His scowling means yes he will,” Gansey said.

“You’ll soon learn Ronan language,” Noah added. “He has specific grunts and scowls that mean different things.”

Ronan shrugged Gansey’s hand off his shoulder and pulled out a pair of car keys from his pocket.

“Whatever. Let’s just get this over with.”

As they all walked out the door, Blue took her phone out of her pocket. She quickly dialed Adam’s number as the four of them entered the elevator. It only rang twice before Adam picked up on the other end.

“How’d it go, Blue?” he immediately asked.

Blue quickly did a glance over the three of them before answering back. “Fine. I signed the lease just now.”

“Awesome! I’m glad it worked out. But if anything seems suspicious don’t hesitate-”

Blue rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know the drill. Not like I didn’t pass kindergarten with that one, dummy.”

It was silent on the other end for just a moment. “Just making sure. Remember, you did find this place on fucking Craigslist .”

Blue flapped her hand like she so often did to him, even if Adam himself couldn’t actually see it through the phone call.

“All is good in the hood. Speaking of, I’m stopping by the apartment.”

“You don’t need to tell me that, Blue. You have a key.”

She twisted her face. “But I’m bringing the guys over to help move my stuff.”

Radio silence swept the call again. Blue braced herself for the impact that was to come. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Gansey’s face pinched in worry. She noticed then she had taken the phone away from her ear a little bit.

“Jesus, Blue? Are you serious? I’m not even going to be home, and the place is a mess!” he exclaimed. His southern drawl coming out in full force, elongating all the vowels and cutting off words.

“I know, I know. I’ll take full blame, I mean it is my shit that is cluttering your tiny apartment anyway. By the time you’re home, it’ll be just like before. I promise.”

She heard him scoff. “Promises are no guarantees in the Sargent family. Nice try.”

Blue let out a little laugh. She honestly hadn’t meant it that way at all. But that phrase was a famous one from her own mother at her household, even if it referred to getting your fortune told.

“I swear, you won’t even notice I had even lived in your apartment. Then you can come visit me after work tomorrow, and actually, meet the people I’m living with.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that, Blue. I gotta go, work calls.” With that, he hung up on her.

The call ended just as the elevator doors opened up. All of them walked out into the little parking garage that was right next to the apartment complex. It was then Blue realized she had taken the subway to the apartment and did not have a car of her own.

“Can one of y’all give me a ride? I don’t have a car,” she politely asked.

Gansey whipped out his own set of keys. “I’ll be glad to be of service.”

They all walked up to a trio of cars, that was very expensive looking but were not made to haul many things. She turned to the three of them and gestured to them.

“These cars are for splurging money. Not transporting things to and fro.”

She walked up to the hideously orange car, that had a black stripe going down the middle of the hood. It was one of those vintage cars that belonged in some sports magazine. Next to it was a bright red Mustang, and a dark gray car that reminded Blue of a shark. She turned back to the three guys.

“How the hell are we going to move things?” she asked them.

They all looked at each other, seeming to be at a lost. Blue didn’t understand how a simple answer could be so evasive. For the hundredth time that day she wondered who the hell these people were exactly. Then Gansey’s face lit up, and Blue could see the metaphorical light bulb above his head. He took his phone out of his pocket.

“I know someone who can give us a portable pod. I’ll attach it to the Pig.”

“The Pig ?”

“It’s the nickname of Gansey’s shitty orange Camaro,” Ronan said filling in the gaps.

Gansey was typing away on his screen, but he turned around to look at Ronan with an offended look on his face.

“Do not take her name in vain.”

“That only works with God,” Ronan spat back.

Gansey looked like he wanted to say something else, but held back. Instead, he looked to Blue with that charming smile of his.

“I’ll call the guy who can set us up with the transfer pod, while we drive. And you can lead me to your place after we pick it up.”

With that, he pressed a button on his screen and put the phone to his ear and walked away. Blue, Ronan, and Noah all stood around in an awkward silence as they listened in on the half of the conversation Gansey was holding. The phone call didn’t last over a minute, but it still felt like an eternity.

“Excelsior my friends!” he greeted when he came back. He took out his keys and the lights of the Camaro came to life. Blue and Gansey jumped into the car, while Noah and Ronan went into the gray car.

As Gansey pulled out of the parking garage, Blue took notice of all the little quirks of the car. For starters, the car sounded like it was wheezing when he put the keys into the ignition. And that the car itself was so old it only accepted cassette tapes and to open windows one had to actually crank a handle to roll them down.

It was silent, minus the little static of the radio that was playing a classic rock ballad about white winged doves. Blue found herself tapping her foot to the guitar riff. It only took a few minutes to get to the place where Gansey’s connection was.

He jumped out of the car, and she watched him shake hands cordially with some man. The two shared a laugh at a private joke before the man directed the pod to be attached to the back of the Camaro. When he was finished, she saw Gansey open his wallet and give the man a few dollars for his troubles before jumping back in.

He let out a sigh of satisfaction. “Now to our next destination. Jane, please show me the way.”

Blue narrowed her eyes at him. “What did you just call me?”

Like nothing was amiss, he started the ignition of the car. He turned his head toward her for a moment. “I’ve always like the name Jane.”

“What does that have to do with why you called me a different name other than my given one?” she demanded.

He cocked his head to the side before turning on his blinker and looking through his mirrors. “I just thought you looked more like a Jane. Sorry if I offended you.”

Blue was ready to explode on a rant. She could go on for hours about how names have meanings to people and calling them by random names other than their given one is rude. But, fighting with this guy was exhausting already. And she had known him for a total of two hours tops. So she let it go, for now.

The GPS app on her phone started the directions to Adam’s place. From behind, they heard a car honk loudly and obnoxiously. Blue whipped around to curse and use obscene gestures, while Gansey just sighed. She noticed it was just Ronan who had a shit eating smirk on his face.

The ride took around fifteen minutes, mostly because traffic didn’t seem to be a pain in the ass today. Gansey parked outside the lobby door to the small apartment building. It was squished tightly next to the Holy Church of St. Agnes and practically shared a wall. Blue could always hear the sermons of Mass every morning. She learned more about the Catholic faith in the month she had lived with Adam than she had in her entire life.

The elevator was still broken, which Blue had forgotten about. She let out a groan at the thought of having to drag her stuff down three flights of stairs. But she had three guys to help her out.

They all walked up, and Blue dug out her key that Adam had given her and opened the door.

“Jesus Christ how do live in this apartment? I’m claustrophobic just looking at it,” Ronan commented.

Blue watched Noah smack Ronan upside the head. “Don’t be a dick,” he chastised.

Then he turned to Blue with a smile on his face and an apologetic look. “I think it’s lovely. Very homey.”

Blue rolled her eyes but a small smile was on her own face as she walked in. Many of her things were still packed away with boxes. It was a mix of her not wanting to unload everything and make it seem like she was taking over Adam’s place, and the rest of it being her laziness.

“No need to flatter me. Trust me, I know it’s a shit hole. Let’s get this over with.”

It took an hour and a half to transport all her stuff into the pod attached to the Pig. Ronan had made sure to voice his displeasure every step of the way, and she was being quite literal about it.

He cursed colorfully with every step he took, making exaggerated grunts and groans even though he seemed to have no problem carrying the boxes. It had taken all four of them to carry her mattress down though. And Ronan was in the right to complain about doing that; because Blue sure did.

Before she left though, she had written a quick note for Adam and left it on the counter in his kitchen. On top of the paper, she left the spare key. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the bottom hem of her t-shirt while walking to the Pig.

Gansey was directing Ronan to do something, which he begrudgingly did. Since he was the tallest of the guys, he had to reach to pull the cover of the pod over and lock it in place. The last thing Blue wanted was all her stuff tumbling out into the streets of Los Angeles. Blue jumped into the passenger seat.

He clapped his hands together. Blue had to admire the enthusiasm he seemed to have. He seemed to be genuinely happy to have her moving in, even after the rocky start. The Pig coughed into life and he pulled away from the apartment complex.

Blue felt a brief pang of sadness. Even though she had only crashed there for a month, it had grown on her. But she reminded herself that her new place was a much better living accommodation than living in her best friend’s single bedroom apartment, in his living room. She’d actually get her own room now.

As they drove back to Monmouth, she felt a shudder through the Pig. Blue didn’t know much about cars, but she knew that couldn’t be good at all. And with the look of distaste on Gansey’s face, he knew it too. He pressed his hazards and pulled over onto the shoulder of the interstate that ran through LA to get to the other side.

“Oh dear, not again,” he muttered.

“Not again? This is a common occurrence?” Blue asked.

He nodded his head solemnly. “Unfortunately, yes. She’s old, and not very reliable these days it seems. But I can’t bear the thought to part ways with her. I’ll call a tow truck.”

Gansey had started to pull out his phone, but Blue placed her hand over his. They both looked up, eyes wide and she yanked hers back like she had been burned.

“Don’t bother. My best friend is a mechanic. He can come over and fix your car, free of charge.”

His face lit up again. “Splendid!”

A loud knock on the window startled the both of them to look that way. Ronan was looking through, scowling hard and looking irritated. Gansey opened up his door, hitting Ronan intentionally. He let out a grunt but stood back as Gansey got out. Blue followed suit, her phone already dialing Adam’s number.

“What’s the fucking hold up?” he demanded.

“The Pig broke down on me. But Blue’s friend here is a mechanic. She’s calling him to do us a service.”

Ronan ran a hand through his buzzed head. He looked up at the sky, glaring at it like it was the cause of all his problems.

“He better be here quick. I hate the sun.”

#Blue Sargent #Ronan Lynch #Richard Gansey III #Noah Czerny #Adam Parrish #The Raven Cycle #trc #my writing #new girl au

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thewarlocksbitch · 7 years ago

Text

I will be your: hands, eyes, heart

prev - chapter 4 - next

word count - 8.6k

thank you to chloe for beta editing

read it on ao3

Ronan didn’t show up to physics class Friday morning. Probably he was too wealthy to think of school as more than a pastime. A little annoyed, Adam flicked his pen in irritation – an unjustified and irrational irritation, he realized – and opened his book to take notes.

After physics was speech, and then chemistry. As soon as chem was dismissed Adam headed back to his dorm. Noah had said he would be at an all-day party - or it may have been a meditation club meeting, Adam couldn’t remember - so the dorm was empty and quiet when Adam got there.

It was lunch time, but Adam was too tired to make himself anything or to bother going to the cafeteria. He set an alarm to wake him up in a few hours and fell face first into bed.

When the alarm went off he got up and made himself a bowl of cereal, then sat cross-legged in bed, his notes and homework spread out in front of him, the cereal box at his knee. He only had a few hours before work, so he munched cereal and got as much done as he could.

The parlor was as busy as usual on a weekday evening, and Adam passed the time with ease making coffee runs, working behind the counter, and chatting with his co-workers. He’d just finished a short coloring job when a familiar man walked in.

“You’re just on time,” Adam told him. He set down the design he’d been idly working on and turned for the back. “Follow me.”

Ronan waited in the lobby for a while, and he wasn’t sure why he did. If he’d known Gansey would be so excited to make friends with Adam, he would have turned around the second he realized Adam worked here.

When it was Gansey and Ronan, it was GanseyandRonan. Nothing and no one had threatened that since high school. They were brothers, comrades in arms, a king and his gallant knight.

Ronan should have expected that Adam would be able to find his way between them. He was too smart, too kind, too interesting to not have caught Gansey’s eye. He was calculating where Ronan was impulsive, genial where Ronan was cruel. No wonder Gansey had been so badly impressed.

And it hadn’t taken any effort from Adam at all. He probably hadn’t even been aware of what he was doing.

Ronan checked his watch. It would have been more sensible to have gone to class this morning and talked to Adam there, and he regretted now the time he was wasting and the work he would have to make up. Ronan was about as adept at physics as he was happy about the prospect of studying it.

Finally, Adam emerged from a door in the back, an older man behind him. The man clapped Adam on the shoulder, his hand spread wide over Adam’s narrow frame, and Adam flinched.

Ronan took a step towards him, then stopped.

He watched as Adam slowly leaned away from the stranger until the hand fell from his shoulder and he was safely at his place behind the counter. His mouth drew down a bit when he saw Ronan waiting in the lobby.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked.

Ronan walked up to the counter and leaned on it with all his weight. A small, unhelpful part of his mind noticed that Adam was in work clothes today instead of what Ronan had taken to be his school clothes. Where Ronan had expected tattoos, his white tank revealed nothing but dark skin and freckles. “Gansey sent me. Who’s that guy?”

Adam’s frown deepened. “A client.”

Ronan looked over his shoulder and watched as the man left. “I didn’t know you could give guys tattoos in alleys,” he said. “And without your kit.”

Adam bristled. “Gansey sent you?”

Ronan shrugged and scratched at the leather bands around his wrist. “He thinks you’re nice and he’s tired of my antagonistic attitude. Plus, you showed interest in his king, so there’s no getting out of it now.”

Adam’s fair brow furrowed in distrust. “’It’?” he said.

“Pizza. Downtown. Greasy.”

Adam glanced at the monitor, uneasy or reluctant. “I… need to log in one more appointment before I leave,” he said, not quite looking at Ronan.

Ronan looked behind him. The lobby was empty; the only customers in the shop were already under the needle at the hands of the other artists.

“Just one more?” Ronan asked.

“Yeah.”

Ronan looked down at his new tattoo. It was still a little red around the edges, but a little more poking wouldn’t make it much worse. “I guess you can color in the petals on this.”

“What?” Adam said. “Are you serious?”

Ronan dug his wallet out of his pocket and handed Adam his card. “Yeah. It won’t take long, will it? Gansey wants us to meet him in half an hour.”

Adam looked ready to bristle again. His already tense posture and thinned lips showed this was probably something he did often. “It’ll take a few minutes.”

He was holding Ronan’s card between his thumb and forefinger like it was something nasty he’d picked up off the ground. Ronan glanced from the card to Adam’s face to the monitor. “What?” he said. “Can’t you go ahead and charge me before you do it?”

“That’s not…” Adam said, but he didn’t look interested in carrying the conversation any further. He quickly typed something on the keyboard, swiped Ronan’s card, and handed it back to him. He stepped out from behind the counter and glanced at Ronan over his shoulder. “Come on.”

Ronan followed Adam to the same chair he’d sat in last time and watched while Adam got his things ready. He shook his head at almost every color Adam showed him until finally Adam decided on white, a soft yellow, and the exact pink of Ronan’s work apron.

“Funny,” Ronan said.

Adam tore open the antiseptic wipe packet with his teeth and scooted closer on his stool. “Give me your hand,” he said.

Ronan looked around the parlor as Adam scrubbed the raw skin on and around his tattoo with more attention than Ronan thought was necessary. This was another reason why Gansey liked him; he was a meticulous worker. He had the hard-earned charm Ronan refused to acquire.

Most of the parlor’s space was overtaken by randomly placed stools and chairs that went mostly unused. It was a small area to begin with, made smaller by the dim lighting and the illusion of privacy. Ronan’s eye caught on a calendar across the room featuring tanned, beautiful women and expensive, more beautiful cars. He smiled. He’d given Gansey the same calendar for his birthday, once.

Ronan heard Adam’s gloves crinkle and looked over as he turned his pen on. It gave a happy whir and this time Ronan didn’t look away. Adam bent his head close over Ronan’s hand and air-traced the petals of the flower before picking one and pressing down. Ronan’s thumb twitched. Adam held it down with his own.

Adam was silent as he steadily colored in each petal, pausing as he was done with each to wipe away small pinpricks of blood and excess ink. When he was done he let Ronan look at the tattoo and nod his approval, then quickly wiped and wrapped it before Ronan could pull away.

Ronan debated tearing the bandage off, but instead he watched Adam put his things away and then lead him outside to the BMW.

“Wait,” Adam said when Ronan pulled open the driver’s side door. Ronan dropped his keys in the driver’s seat and looked back to see Adam standing at the rear bumper, his grip white-knuckled on the handlebars of a crappy looking bike. “Where can I-?”

“One sec,” Ronan said. He leaned in to pop the trunk. “Just throw it in the back.”

Adam’s long look into the back of the car had Ronan thinking it was full of hiking equipment or something else of Gansey’s the Pig didn’t allow, but when he went to Adam’s side and peered in he saw it was empty.

Adam made no move to put the bike in the car, so Ronan grabbed it from him. With some maneuvering and a lot of swearing, he got it secure.

A few seconds later Ronan was in the driver’s seat and Adam had carefully and silently buckled himself into the passenger’s seat. Ronan noticed Adam looking at his CD’s, but Adam kept his hands still in his lap. Ronan pulled the car out of the parking lot in a messy, rough slide and got them on the road. He didn’t mind the silence.

Ronan’s driving skills were, objectively, acceptable. He got Adam, himself, and the other contents of the car to a small diner in one piece.

Said diner was neon-lit, set far back from the street between an abandoned barbers shop and a laundromat, and extremely obvious in its attempt to seem shabby and secluded.

Ronan pulled in alongside an old orange Camaro Adam would have recognized as Gansey’s even if Gansey weren’t leaning against it. Gansey was dressed the same as he had been Monday, except tonight his polo was peach instead of aquamarine and a pair of ancient-looking wireframes sat low on his nose. His head was bent over a large, leather-bound journal in his hands, and he was so immersed in it he didn’t notice Adam and Ronan’s arrival until Ronan flicked his ear.

“Ouch,” said Gansey dispassionately. He shut the journal against his chest and slowly raised a hand to cup his ear. Then he noticed Adam and immediately put on his brightest smile. It was only a watt or two down from the presidential smile he’d given Adam the first time they’d met, but Adam thought it was an improvement nonetheless.

“Adam!” Gansey said joyfully. “Thanks for coming.” He held out a fist to Adam and after a moment Adam did the same. Ronan snickered as they shyly bumped fists.

“Lynch,” Gansey said, gesturing to the door. “Lead the way.”

As Ronan preceded them into the diner, Adam watched him and Gansey and their undeniable closeness, noticing the looks they shared every few seconds like they couldn’t enjoy anything without involving the other. Adam had previously thought it would make more sense to befriend Gansey rather than Ronan, but it was becoming clearer and clearer to him that he couldn’t have one without the other.

Adam slipped his hands into his pockets and looked around for an identifying sign or feature, but the diner seemed intent on keeping its interior obscure as well. Single paned mirrors hung over every checkerboard-print booth and flashy linoleum table, reflecting Ronan’s expensive watch and Adam’s own dusty reflection.

Adam found himself in the center of a booth seat, facing Ronan and Gansey and trying to remember the last time he’d gone out with people his age.

Elementary school had been a blur of uncommitted friendships that started and ended on the school bus, and middle school was one friend after another turned off by Adam’s reluctance to visit for too long and his inability to have anyone over. By the time he reached high school he hadn’t had any time for friends at all.

Now he didn’t talk much with anyone except for Noah, but Noah wasn’t here. Adam wished badly he could have invited him; his own social clumsiness would have been overshadowed by Noah simply sitting there.

Luckily, Gansey didn’t wait for him to strike up an interesting conversation. He set his giant journal on the table and flipped through it in chunks, giving Adam half-glimpses of diagrams and latin phrases and sketches of birds until he settled on a page entirely filled with cramped, urgent handwriting.

Ronan propped his head in his hands and stared at his reflection as Gansey turned the journal around to face Adam.

“After you mentioned Vortigern, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that I’d read more than just a mention of him before. So I went through my books again and I found this. He was a few centuries before Glendower, but look here-” Gansey jabbed at the bottom of the page, where he’d underlined Vortigern and believed to consult with the Fae and put in parentheses the Fae here are to Vortigern what Glendower’s magicians are to him?

“Ronan and I found a faerie ring on Friday. I heard what I think may have been voices when I held my arm over it. Voices of faeries,” he paused, for emphasis or to gauge Adam’s reaction, but Adam very decidedly kept his eyes on the journal. Gansey went on, “Vortigern was said to take advice from faeries and traveled with them in the same way Glendower did his magicians. They both used the ley lines. It can’t be a coincidence, don’t you think?”

A waitress showed up then, saving Adam from having to answer. She wore an apron tied at the waist of her loose jeans and a brown tee reading LADY PRESIDENT. She was attractive in a way Adam couldn’t help noticing, even as his mind reeled from everything Gansey had just said.

“Hi, I’m Blue, and I’ll be your server tonight. Can I get your drinks?” She asked, in an accent that was unmistakably Henrietta. Her eyes skipped from Gansey’s fancy clothes to Ronan’s pissy expression and finally settled on Adam.

“Water, please,” Adam said, trying to figure out if he remembered her from somewhere or if it was only her accent making her seem so familiar. She definitely looked his age with her spiky hair and round, chubby face. Perhaps he’d seen her in passing on campus.

“Coke,” Ronan said to her reflection. He was staring at his tattoo in the mirror; he’d taken the wrap off his hand at some point and his reddened skin almost hid the new pale colors on the petals.

“Coffee,” said Gansey distractedly, his attention focused on his journal. “With a lot of sugar, please.”

Adam watched Blue walk away. She was very pretty, but there was no way he’d try talking to her when he hardly knew the two boys he was with.

Gansey had again lost himself in his journal, which he seemed to be somewhat successfully reading upside down. Adam tried prompting him back to reality with, “Why are you looking for Glendower, exactly?”

Gansey looked up to meet Adam’s gaze. “Do you believe in coincidences, Adam?”

“I guess it depends,” Adam said carefully.

“I told you about the legends of sleeping kings, and I told you that I think, after he disappeared, Glendower became one of them.” Gansey’s gaze became heavy, measuring. He glanced at Ronan, then seemed to decide something. “I don’t mean this as a metaphor, Adam. I truly believe that Glendower is still alive, sleeping underground. And I believe that it’s my responsibility to find him.”

“You believe he’s been sleeping for centuries,” Adam said. “Actually sleeping. Kept alive by magic.” He couldn’t think of anything but to repeat Gansey’s words. They were unreal. Impossible. Laughable.

“Yes,” Gansey said, his eyes alight like they had been back at the parlor. “And I believe that when I find him and wake him up, he will grant me a favor.”

“And he’s on a-” Adam faltered. He looked from Gansey to Ronan, waiting for one of them to laugh, waiting to be made fun of. But Ronan was checking his teeth in the mirror, and Gansey’s face was still terribly earnest.

“What exactly are ley lines?” Adam asked.

Ronan leaned against Gansey and into Adam’s space. “They’re energy lines that run beneath the ground. Gansey followed them to find clues on Glendower in Henrietta, but here they’ve only led to rocks and fucking faeries.”

“We think the faeries are taking energy away from the lines,” Gansey said hurriedly. “The energy from the ley lines concentrates so strongly around the ring that I can’t get readings on anything else.”

Again Adam waited for one of them to laugh at him. Again Ronan checked his teeth. Again Gansey looked earnest. “You think faeries are taking energy from a sleeping Welsh King?”

“He’s a scientist,” Ronan told Gansey, “you’re going to scare him off.”

“Right,” Gansey said importantly. “Adam, come with us to the forest. You can see the energy readings for yourself.”

Blue showed up with drinks, again saving Adam from having to immediately answer Gansey, and because Adam had been watching Gansey he saw the minute widening of his eyes.

When they ordered their drinks, Gansey had been too absorbed in searching his journal for notes to notice Blue at all. Now he was staring.

Blue set all of their drinks down. She took out her notepad and caught Gansey’s eye. “Yes?” she said.

“What?” Gansey managed to stammer the single syllable.

Ronan made an unkind sound.

“Are you ready to order?” Blue rephrased, arching an eyebrow.

“Of course,” Gansey said quickly. He pushed his wireframes up on his nose and glanced down at the menu, then at Adam. “Are you okay with sharing a pizza?”

Divided between them the cost would be pretty cheap. Adam nodded.

Blue tucked her notepad back into her apron. ��It’ll be right out,” she said. She turned for the kitchen.

“Excuse me,” Gansey said, a little too loudly. Blue looked back at him. Her eyebrow was definitely arching higher by the second. “What’s your name?” Gansey asked.

Blue didn’t roll her eyes, but it was a near thing. Ronan laughed. Again Gansey looked extremely embarrassed.

“It’s Blue,” she said, and walked away.

“Does she not like me?” Gansey asked Adam and Ronan, a little hectically. “Blue. That can’t be her real name, can it? That’s a… color. Was she lying?”

“I think she was offended,” Adam said delicately, “because she already told us her name. Earlier. When she took our drink orders.”

Gansey dropped his face into his hands, skewing his glasses. “Oh, god,” he said.

Ronan looked away from the mirror to punch Gansey in the arm. “Shit, man,” he whispered. “Are you blushing?”

“Shut up,” Gansey muttered.

Adam was very glad he’d kept quiet about his attraction to Blue. He was also glad to see this boyish, embarrassed side to Gansey.

“Faerie hunting,” Ronan said to Adam. “Magic shit. Tomorrow. You in?”

“Are you really serious?” Adam asked.

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “And you gotta make sure you bring garlic, in case they get testy.”

“That’s vampires, asshole,” Adam said, and Ronan laughed.

The laughter surprised Adam. He glanced at Gansey and saw that he was smiling. Loosely. Lazily. Looking between Ronan and Adam. And Adam felt that maybe this was what he had been lacking.

They didn’t say anything about it, and Gansey filled the comfortable lull in conversation with random facts about Glendower and ley lines until their pizza arrived, and then there was much more eating than talking.

Finally the pizza was gone and paid for - with a rather heavy tip left by Gansey - and Gansey was discreetly watching Blue walk away as he finished off his coffee. Ronan hit him over the head when he was done and pushed him out of the booth.

Adam got his bike out of Ronan’s BMW himself and bid the two boys goodbye while Gansey was distracted with something in his Camaro and Ronan was busy leaning into the car but being otherwise unhelpful.

Adam walked his bike around the corner of the restaurant and stopped. Because Blue was standing there, not smoking or on her phone but looking up at the stars. Adam’s bike creaked as he walked up to her.

“Hi, Blue,” he said.

“Hi,” Blue said uncertainly.

Adam stuck his hand out. “Adam,” he said.

Blue shook his hand, then peered around his shoulder. “Where are your friends?”

“Driving home, I guess. I live on campus so I’m going the other way.”

Blue accepted that without comment and looked away. She didn’t seem to be annoyed with Adam, but she did seem very annoyed.

“I’m sorry about Gansey,” Adam said. “About him not remembering your name. I don’t know him well, but I think he’s a good person. He felt bad about offending you.”

Blue smiled, a little. She dug her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and rocked forward on her heels. “Rich boys should have enough sense of responsibility to apologize for themselves,” she said.

Adam couldn’t say he didn’t agree with her. “I know. I think he just didn’t want to bother you any more.”

Blue shrugged. “Thanks.” She looked past Adam’s shoulder again, but neither Gansey nor Ronan appeared.

“Well,” Adam said, “It was nice meeting you. Have a good night.”

“Wait,” Blue said, stepping closer. “I overheard…were you guys talking about ley lines?”

“Oh,” Adam said, surprised. “Yeah, he was. Gansey, I mean. He’s using them to find a Welsh king, but I don’t know much about them.”

“Oh, okay,” Blue said. She toyed with a patch on the thigh of her jeans. “That’s interesting. Well, thanks for apologizing, even though you shouldn’t be the one apologizing.” She pointedly glanced at the watch on her wrist - a plastic one like Adam’s. “My break is over, so, bye.”

Adam waved. “Bye.” He watched Blue walk away for a moment, then climbed onto his bike and pushed off the sidewalk. He wanted to be in bed already with the lights off. He needed some quiet to think. His head was full of fanciful things - magical energy lines and faeries and sleeping king’s miles underground - rather than the history homework he wasn’t yet finished with or the money he needed to make by the end of the week.

Adam’s bike bumped onto the sidewalk. He almost couldn’t focus enough to keep it in a straight line. No one could sleep for centuries. Faeries were nothing more than a children’s tale. Any energy running beneath the ground was either manmade or scientifically explainable. Adam was hard-wired not to believe in anything without science and proven facts supporting it. He couldn’t start accepting things at face value after an entire life of never believing anything without proof.

And then there was Gansey. Adam was not in the business of giving people chances, as people tended to disappoint him, but there was something about Gansey that rubbed him the wrong way. Or, rather, the right way. There was something admirable about believing in magic just because you really wanted to.

Just as Adam reached the end of the sidewalk and paused at the stop sign, headlights - from behind him, not from the street in front of him - illuminated his path.

Adam looked over his shoulder just in time to see the orange Camaro give a wet cough and stutter to a stop in the middle of the road. The shark-nosed BMW behind it honked and nudged its rear bumper. When the Camaro was unresponsive, the BMW pulled to the side of the road and its engine cut off a second later.

Adam waited to see if Ronan would get out to help Gansey, but he remained hidden behind dark tinted windows. The Camaro shuddered again. Adam turned on his bike and pedaled over to the passenger-side window.

Gansey rolled down the window at Adam’s approach. “I was going to drive up behind you and offer you a ride home, but,” he gave a short, self depreciating laugh. Then he slowly leaned forward until his forehead was pressed to the thin steering wheel.

Adam looked in at the interior of the car and then at the steaming engine. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out the problem. Daringly, he asked, “Do you want me to fix it for you? I know a bit about cars.”

That laugh again. Gansey ran one hand over the dashboard, slowly, like he was paying attention to its every detail. “I’ve had this car for four years and I still have to call a mechanic every time it breaks down. Could you teach me how to fix it instead?”

“Yeah,” Adam said as Gansey got out of the Camaro. “Sure.”

Together they wrestled the car to the shoulder, taking turns pushing and steering. It wasn’t until the car was completely over that Adam heard the door to the BMW slam shut. A second later Ronan had taken up post at the Camaro’s side. He didn’t say anything but stared Adam down to the point it was uncomfortable. Adam leaned his bike in the grass beside the Camaro’s back tire and followed Gansey to look at the engine.

“You said this happens often?” Adam asked.

“It does,” Gansey said, his voice fond. “Back at home I’m on a first name basis with every roadside mechanic there is. Since moving up here the Pig’s breakdowns have been quite unpleasant.”

Adam thought perhaps they had been quite unpleasant because Charleston’s locals were by nature wary of rich college boys in bright polos, but he wasn’t about to tell Gansey this. Spotting what had most likely lead to the Camaro’s demise, he leaned over and reached in. The smell and feel of gasoline and grease was at once comforting and tiring.

He wasn’t ready yet to say Aglionby, so he didn’t know why he said, “You and Ronan went to Aglionby Academy, right?”

“Yes, we did. What about you? I don’t think you mentioned it the other night.”

“Mountain View,” Adam said. Then, in a rush, “Actually, I went to Aglionby for freshman year. I was on a partial scholarship, but I couldn’t pay for a second year.”

“You paid your way through a year of Aglionby on your own, too?” Gansey said.

There was no judgement in his tone, only curiosity; and maybe, if Adam wasn’t imagining it, respect. After a moment Adam nodded. “I worked three jobs. One was as a mechanic.”

Gansey made a sort of awed sound, his smile wide as he looked at Adam. “It’s amazing that we’re just now meeting. It’s amazing that we’re meeting at all, really.”

Ronan gave a dry huff of a laugh. “Gansey doesn’t believe in coincidences,” he said.

Gansey pointed a meaningful finger at Ronan, then said to Adam, “You’re some sort of genius, from what I’ve heard from Ronan. You could help him study sometime, if you were feeling charitable.”

Adam glanced at Ronan and got a sour look in response. “Would anyone actually volunteer for that?” he asked.

Gansey laughed. “Maybe not. I might end up having to hang up flyers. My Latin isn’t the best.”

“I don’t need help in Latin,” Ronan growled.

Adam showed Gansey what had clogged the Camaro’s lungs and how he’d temporarily fixed it. “You can probably get home with it the way it is, but you need to get it to a shop as soon as you can.”

“Thanks, Adam,” Gansey said warmly. “I don’t know what I would have done if you weren’t here.”

“You probably would’ve had to beg a mechanic to put up with you long enough to fix it again,” Ronan said.

“Thanks,” Gansey said to Ronan. He closed the hood and turned to Adam, his hands on his hips. He didn’t seem to notice he was staining his polo shirt with grease. “I’ll give you a lift home, since Ronan is preoccupied.”

Ronan shook his keys at Gansey. “Don’t get all pissy.”

“Don’t murder your car,” Gansey replied.

“Bye Dad,” Ronan said happily, “don’t wait up.”

Adam and Gansey waved Ronan down the street, then folded Adam’s beat-up bike into the Camaro’s beat-up trunk. Gansey didn’t have a wide collection of CD’s like Ronan, and his radio didn’t seem to work, either. Adam looked out the window and watched the dim streetlights and half-lit storefronts as they drove by.

The short car ride was mostly silent, broken up by random Glendower trivia from Gansey and coughs from the Camaro that made them both hold their breath.

Gansey drove through campus and dropped Adam off right at his dorm building. He was smiling, fidgety, his wave too enthusiastic when Adam got out of the car. Adam got his bike out of the trunk himself, knocked on the hood, and turned for his dorm. The Camaro gave a happy honk at his back and ambled away.

Adam chained his bike outside the door and silently made his way up the stairs. He was confused. Excited. Nervous. He didn’t understand how a person like Gansey could spend years obsessing over a dead Welsh king and he didn’t understand how a person like Ronan could spend years enabling him. He wondered what he would see when they took him to the forest. He wondered if Gansey and Ronan were just crazy. He wondered where Ronan had gone.

Noah wasn’t home. Adam left the kitchen light on for him and fell into bed without even taking his shoes off.

Early the next day Adam found himself waiting outside his dorm building, already shivering in his thin t-shirt. Virginia summers stretched themselves languidly over the calendar with hanging humidity and persistent sunshine - today would definitely be too hot for comfort - but he was feeling jittery nothenless.

Before long the Camaro noisily rolled up, looking somewhat aggrieved to be living another day. Ronan had an arm hooked over the passenger window and expensive looking sunglasses perched on his nose.

“Get in, loser,” he said. “We’re going Faerie hunting.”

As Adam clambered into the back of the Camaro, he heard Gansey ask Ronan, “Did you really just use a ‘Mean Girls’ reference?” and Ronan reply, “No the shit I did not.”

“You did,” Gansey insisted. He grabbed his headrest and wrenched himself around to face Adam. “Adam. Good morning. I wrote down what we know about the faerie ring so far, if you want to take a look,” he handed Adam the thick leather-bound journal he’d brought to dinner last night, already open to a page full of handwritten notes.

Adam skimmed through the notes. They were mostly a repeat of what Gansey had told him last night, if only more organized and with more quoted sources. The page on faeries was the furthest back and one of the few that was covered entirely in Gansey’s writing; the rest of the journal was glued together and folded over with newspaper clippings, taped in old photographs and letters and brittle, yellowing paper.

He ended up paging idly through the journal, his eyes skipping over drawings and diagrams and randomly cut and ripped pages without taking anything in. There was no point in reading any of this without having proof that it was true, and Gansey would tell him anything he wanted him to know anyways.

Adam closed the journal and set it down on the seat beside him. He leaned forward against his seatbelt. In the rear view mirror, Gansey was sunny and smiling, the picture perfect model for a summer catalogue or a relaxed family portrait where everyone wore matching outfits and the easy confidence of old money.

One arm still hooked over the open window, his eyes closed against the breeze and sun, Ronan looked much more human and real. He was sweating and very clearly pissed off, though Adam didn’t know if that was because of the sweating or something else entirely. Probably it was both.

Adam looked down to where Ronan’s jeans creased at his thigh. His hand hovered over something there. Something that tilted its head towards Adam when he made a startled noise.

“Gansey,” Adam said. “Ronan has a bird.”

“What?” Gansey said, loudly to be heard over the engine. He was looking between Adam and Ronan like he expected them to be fighting and seemed confused that Ronan was, for all appearances and purposes, dead to the world. Gansey shut off the air co to hear Adam better. Immediately Ronan groaned and opened his eyes.

“Ronan has a bird,” Adam said. “A raven?” The bird ruffled its feathers and turned its head from side to side, peering at Adam with both eyes.

“Raven,” Gansey confirmed. “She’s Ronan’s. Her name is Chainsaw.” He frowned at Ronan. “You haven’t introduced them yet?”

Ronan gestured irritably between Adam and the raven. “Adam, Chainsaw. Chainsaw, Adam. It’s balls hot. Turn the fucking AC back on.”

Gansey did and the wheeze of overworked vents again joined the rumbling of the Camaro’s engine. Ronan didn’t close his eyes again. Instead he stared out the window, the furrow to his brow complicated. Chainsaw made a raspy noise and ruffled her feathers. Ronan laid a hand over her head and she was quiet.

“We’re almost there,” Gansey told Adam, his smile lifted to the rear view mirror.

“There” turned out to be a fork from the main road that, after a few miles, became a dirt path, and, a few miles after that, became a dead end.

Adam, Gansey, Ronan, and Chainsaw emerged from the Camaro as a single entity. Immediately Chainsaw hurtled herself into the air. Adam watched Gansey and Ronan tilt their heads back, back, back. They both looked extremely pleased, fully in their element with the Camaro gleaming at their backs and the forest stretching out in front of them, waiting to be explored.

Adam looked up to see Chainsaw circle the sky once before gliding down to land on Ronan’s shoulder. She pressed her body to the side of Ronan’s neck and rubbed her beak against his ear, either in apology for taking off or some other reason Ronan seemed to understand.

Gansey caught Adam’s eye and beckoned him over. He was holding a gadget Adam had never seen before in one hand and his journal in the other.

“This is an electromagnetic frequency reader,” Gansey said. “It measures the energy along the ley line. Here. I want you to hold it. That way you can see for yourself how the energy acts on and off the ley line. And especially how it acts near the ring.”

Adam took the EMF from Gansey. It was already on, and it blinked unsteadily between two red and orange lights. A wavelength spiked on a thin screen between them.

“We’re directly on the line right now,” Gansey said. He pointed to Adam’s feet. “Move over. Just two feet to the left.”

Adam did. The readings fell to orange. He stepped two feet to the right. They blared red.

Adam was acutely aware of Gansey watching for his reaction, though he wasn’t sure what to think yet.

“This could be picking up from anywhere,” he said.

“It only picks up electric and magnetic energy,” Ronan said, suddenly at Adam’s back. He reached over Adam’s shoulder and tapped the screen. “What else could it be picking up? We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“No power lines within ten miles,” Gansey said, sounding supremely happy. “No buildings. Nothing but us and the trees and the things in the trees. Come on.”

Adam followed the two boys and Chainsaw into the forest. Early morning sunlight filtered through the trees, turning over motes in the air and blinding Adam. He averted his eyes. In front of him, Gansey was walking parallel to a stream like a tightrope, putting one foot directly in front of the other. At his side Ronan swore at the uneven terrain and stumbled as the path became increasingly steeper.

The light dimmed the farther they walked. After twenty minutes of trekking Adam looked down at the EMF. He slowly let himself zone out. It was easier to pay attention to the device in his hands than the others. Easier to adjust his direction when the energy fell on either side. It kept him in an almost perfect straight line, right on the rockbed.

Ahead of him, Ronan and Gansey stopped suddenly, Chainsaw flapping uncertainly above them. They had reached the edge of a cliff that would take some maneuvering to descend. Gansey caught Adam’s eye, then pointed to where the stream they’d been following suddenly veered below them, cutting off the path.

“Make sure you watch the readings when we cross that,” he said, “they’re going to rise considerably.”

“Your cell phones,” Adam said suddenly. “What about them?”

“Hmm?” Gansey said pleasantly, understandably unable to follow Adam’s trail of thought.

“Couldn’t they register on the frequency reader, and the readings could have been consistent this whole time just because they’re in your pockets?”

“The signals from them aren’t strong enough to register,” Ronan said. “Besides, my phones in the car and Gansey shut his off.” He jumped down the cliff side and skidded the rest of the way down the path, either not understanding how physics applied to his body or he just didn’t care. Chainsaw screeched “Kerah!” and flew after him.

“We’re almost there,” Gansey told Adam, smiling. “You’ll see.”

Adam and Gansey picked their way down the cliff, then followed the ley line to the stream. The readings spiked as Adam picked his way across the stepping stones, but not so much that Adam would have noticed if he hadn’t been watching for it.

Adam wondered what kind of person Ronan really was to so loyally follow Gansey on his search.

Adam’s feet hit solid land and he opened his eyes; he didn’t remember closing them. Gansey had stepped aside so Adam would have an unobstructed view of the clearing in front of him, but Ronan had gone all the way to the edge of the ring.

It was clear now to Adam why Gansey believed the ring to be magical. Right next to Ronan’s scuffed boots, set up in a perfect circle like they’d been put there with meticulous care, were round stones and fungi, all bathed in the gentle light.

Adam stepped closer, and he let the electromagnetic frequency reader drop to his side. He was too bothered by how perfect and out of place it looked to focus on the readings, too shaken by his own pulse suddenly pounding in his ears.

He walked past Gansey. Something in him spasmed as he went to Ronan’s side, just outside of the ring. Then the line went dead under him.

Adam hadn’t named the energy he’d been feeling since stepping into the forest. He hadn’t wanted to. But now that it was gone there was no doubt that it had been there.

Gansey murmured something at Adam’s left side.

Adam turned to face him. “Sorry,” he said. “What did you say?”

“Check the frequency reader.”

Adam did. He wasn’t surprised to see that the readings had gone dead.

“Now,” Gansey said excitedly, “hold it out past the ring.”

Adam did. He was aware of Gansey watching him, and he was aware of Ronan going tense. Something whispered inside his deaf ear, but it was too quiet for him to make any sense out of it.

Adam handed the EMF back to Gansey. Then he stepped into the circle.

Ronan snarled something, but he was too far away for Adam to hear. Adam’s hands became heavy. He looked down at them. A single blackberry had fallen into each of his palms. Or had they appeared?

“Your friend,” a voice whispered in his deaf ear again, only it was clear now. Adam closed his eyes. He let the berries fall from his hands. The sound of them hitting the leaves at his feet was too loud to seem real. “The dead one. Where is he? He was just here.” It wasn’t a voice; it was voices. They were high and fluting, inhuman. They screeched something, and then they were dancing around Adam, their flimsy nails scraping over his neck and shoulders, their chalk-like feet beating an invisible dance around him. It was too much, too loud, too real.

“Stop,” Adam said. He opened his eyes. His heart was beating too fast. His own hands were wrapped around his neck. Gansey was standing in front of him with his hands around Adam’s wrists.

“Adam?” he said. Sweat was shining on his upper lip.

Adam allowed himself to be pulled out of the ring. “This has happened before,” he said. “In Henrietta. I haven’t heard the voices before, but I’ve felt this.”

Ronan made a sound like a bark. “What do you mean? Feel what?”

“The ley line,” Adam said. “Except I didn’t know it was the ley line last time.”

“Really? Where were you last time?” Gansey finally let go of Adam. His eyes on Adam were hungry, excited. Behind him Ronan’s expression was unreadable.

“It was some forest, I don’t know where. I was lost and it started to storm and I couldn’t see, but I could feel energy beneath me. I followed it to the main road. I’d convinced myself that I’d imagined it by the time I got home.”

“What does it feel like?” asked Gansey in a rush. “Tell me exactly.”

Adam had to remind himself that Gansey was earnest, not demanding. The look on Gansey’s face made him want to be careful, made him want to consider his thoughts before he let them take shape. He focused on the energy beneath him again and struggled to explain, “It’s like a pull. It’s like when you lick a battery, or… how you can tell if a hose is running by touching it. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”

“You heard voices?” Gansey asked. “Could you tell what they were saying?”

“They… asked about my dead friend? They wanted to know where he is. They said he was just here.”

Adam had closed his eyes again while focusing on the line without realizing it. He opened them to see Gansey furiously writing in his journal.

“Strange,” Gansey said, tapping his pen too many times at the end of a sentence. “Last time, and just now, too, when I was inside the ring, I couldn’t hear any definite words. I don’t understand why you can.” He was quiet for a moment, then pointed a very serious finger at Adam and asked, “You’ve never been struck by lightning or anything, have you?”

“I… haven’t,” Adam said cautiously.

Gansey nodded as if Adam had said something exceptionally intelligent. He wrote in his journal for another minute, then stared at it for a few minutes more before looking up at Adam again.

“I don’t remember if I told you this,” he started, “but the fae are believed to live on a separate timeline, or in a parallel universe, even, to us, and faerie rings serve as a sort of gate to the human world for them.”

Gansey stepped away from the ring and began to pace between Adam and Ronan.

“Ley lines mess with time,” he said. “If you say something while standing on the line, you could hear it echoed back to you years later, or even years before you said it. I think you’re connected to the ley line somehow. That’s why you can feel its energy, and that’s why you can hear the voices.”

Gansey stopped pacing and crossed his arms. He stared at the ground and pressed a pensive thumb to his lower lip.

“I think they were talking about Glendower,” he said suddenly, looking up at Adam and Ronan. “I think they know where he is.”

“They said dead, not sleeping,” Ronan said. He was beginning - no, continuing - to look very pissed off.

“They might consider sleeping to be basically dead,” Gansey argued. “Some legends say he isn’t truly alive, but will live again when he’s woken.”

“None of this makes sense,” Adam said. “I’m not denying that I can feel the line or that I heard voices, but how do you explain this?”

“I can explain some of it to you,” Gansey said. “But most of it you just have to believe is real.” He looked at Ronan. His eyes were full of a fierce and uninhibited joy. “You found Glendower’s magician.”

“I beg your pardon?” Adam said.

Ronan gestured animatedly with his hands. Chainsaw flapped indignantly on his shoulder. “Gansey doesn’t actually think you’re the reincarnation of some long dead magic freak,” he said. “So don’t get all sweaty. He’s just excited.”

Adam ignored that with all the good grace he could muster. Again his thoughts were spinning too fast, but now that there was proof behind them it wasn’t as overwhelming.

This was just a different kind of science.

“What now?” he asked.

Gansey grinned. “Now we find Glendower.”

Later, hours later, Gansey was tired.

In the time after the forest, after the faerie ring, after writing everything down and running it over in his head until it made him sick, Gansey could not find it in himself the feeling that he deserved this.

He had searched for so long. In Washington, in Wales, all over the world, but it had never been enough. It had never been close to enough.

And then he found Henrietta, and Ronan, and something had settled itself comfortably in the cavity of his ribs, but still the longing had remained. Henrietta had been home - Henrietta was home - but it wasn’t the means to an end. It was small clues and finds, days spent exploring and nights spent researching. He had known it wasn’t where he would find Glendower.

He didn’t find Glendower, and then he and Ronan finished their last year at Aglionby, and it felt a little like the world was ending. Gansey had felt sick leaving Henrietta. He hadn’t expected to find anything in Charlottesville.

He couldn’t stop replaying the day’s events in his head. He couldn’t decide if Adam himself was magical, or if the forest was only enabling him, and he couldn’t decide whether it mattered. Again he considered Adam, the constant furrow to his fair brow, his specific way of moving and speaking. Gansey couldn’t believe a person like Adam had found his way into his life. He couldn’t believe that Ronan was the one that had found him.

Gansey leaned forward on his bed, accidentally causing his phone to fall to the floor. He ignored it. He flipped through the book in front of him, desperate to research, to take notes, to find a new lead.

But there was nothing. Nothing about faeries, at least. He’d have to order some books tomorrow. He’d have to convince Ronan to go to class, and then convince him again to do his homework. He’d have to ask Adam to go to the forest again. He’d have to, he’d have to, he’d have to.

Gansey shut the book and leaned back in bed. Maybe he wouldn’t have to ask. Maybe they were already friends.

He hadn’t wanted to wait. He hadn’t wanted this space of unsureness. Of not knowing whether Adam liked him, whether Adam believed anything he said. He had wanted to take Adam back to the apartment immediately after the forest, to show him more, to give him the proof he needed, but Ronan had punched him on the arm and said, some people have jobs, Gansey.

Gansey pulled a mint leaf from the plant beside his bed and put it on his tongue. He could hear Ronan in his room, the restless creak of his bed as he rolled in it, the dull beat of music from his headphones. Gansey thought to check the time, then thought better of it. He scrubbed a hand over his eyes and readjusted his glasses.

Ronan’s door scraped open, and a second later Gansey heard the sounds of approaching fiends: the quiet taps and flaps of Chainsaw’s wings and claws, the carefully careless thuds of Ronan’s bare feet.

Ronan appeared in the doorway, naked except for his boxers and the headphones wrapped around his neck. The darkness made his sharp edges look less like warning signs and more like the parts of Ronan that were just a little harder to understand. It complimented his tattoo, disappeared the thin line of his mouth. He was already a terribly handsome boy, but the darkness made him all the more terrible.

He looked more like the current, dangerous version of himself than ever, but maybe if Gansey took off his glasses he would be able to see some of the old Ronan. Maybe there would be some of the old softness in his aura, or in his eyes as he looked down at Chainsaw. Maybe the flower tattoo on his thumb would seem brighter.

Ronan knocked softly. The wires from his headphones were tangled together below his neck, looking like a mockery of the ties he had knotted with so much contempt back in their Aglionby days.

There was a phrase to be remembered here, Gansey thought, one his father liked. A loose tie shows loose morals. But Gansey couldn’t remember when it had ever applied to him, or his ability to properly tie a tie. Ronan would laugh at him if he ever said it aloud.

“Hey,” Ronan said. He shut the door behind him and went to sit at the foot of Gansey’s bed. Chainsaw chirped happily as she started for Gansey’s dirty laundry.

“Can’t sleep?” Gansey asked, more to keep with tradition than anything else.

Ronan shrugged. He took the book Gansey was reading from him and paged through it, quick. He was obviously trying very hard to seem unbothered by whatever was bothering him, which was strange enough that Gansey let him pretend instead of calling him out on it. Ronan pushed the book away and grabbed Chainsaw from the floor. She allowed him to pet her beak and the sides of her face.

“What do you think of Adam?” Ronan asked.

Oh, Gansey thought. He didn’t think they’d be having this conversation so soon. He shut his book and set it aside. “I like him,” Gansey said. “He’s nice.”

Ronan looked up. “Just nice?” he asked.

Gansey shrugged. It wasn’t an eloquent thing to do, but it was late, and he was out of eloquent things and thoughts. “You know what I mean,” he said. “He’s good people.”

He thought about Adam. About his presence. The realness of him. The way talking to him felt more like talking to Ronan than talking to another student, another peer. He thought about the way Adam watched him and Ronan, and he thought about the way Ronan watched Adam.

Gansey knew what Ronan was like around people. He knew how Ronan would react to a new professor, or one of Gansey’s rare new girlfriends. He had enough experience to predict what Ronan would do before someone got hurt. But he didn’t know how Ronan would react to Adam. Because he didn’t know what had so easily convinced Ronan that Adam was different in the first place.

Ronan had been the one to introduce Adam to Gansey, after all. To really introduce him, to allow him past the barrier of casual acquaintance. He’d let Gansey invite Adam to dinner. He had to like him to do that.

But Gansey could see Ronan’s jealousy, even if Adam couldn’t. He could see where problems might start to appear.

Ronan looked angry. And tired. Gansey rubbed his eyes again.

“Don’t you think so?” he asked Ronan. “Magical inclinations aside, he’s a person worth knowing.”

Ronan shrugged, unsure. “I mean, we don’t just talk to people.”

“You don’t,” Gansey said.

Ronan traced his new tattoo. It was the most colorful thing in the room. Gansey let his eyes go out of focus as he stared at it.

“I mean,” Ronan said again, with feeling, “that we don’t have any other friends. Not any one real. It’s been just us since Aglionby.”

Gansey closed his eyes. “Maybe it’s time for a change.”

#pynch college au #pynch fanfiction #trc #trc fanfiction #the raven cycle #vv #posting this before class and gym yay!!!! hope u guys like it this chapter starts getting more into what the plot actually is

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captainkirkk · 7 years ago

Note

for the prompts, could you do something with Adam and ronan from the raven cycle and one of them having a nightmare please? bc let's be real, both of their lives have left them with some solid nightmare material and I live for hurt/comfort haha (also if you don't wanna write this that's totally cool!! I just love your writing sm that I had to send you a prompt when I saw you opened them)

Thanks, anon! This is set during the Raven King, when (spoilers) Cabeswater was growing more corrupted, and Ronan and Adam’s feelings were an open secret between them. Warnings for: mentions of blood and gore, instances of child abuse and discussions of past child abuse, and brief anxiety.

Read on AO3

–

Adam and Ronan have been circling each other for months; it makes sense that they’d be drawn into each other’s dreams, too. Their dreams merge abruptly like two cars colliding head on, like two jars of paint spilt out on the ground, colours bleeding into each other.

Adam is at Aglionby, sequestered away in the ancient, overbearing library. It’s cramped in a way it isn’t in real life. All the air has been replaced by books, and dread fills Adam’s lungs. The ticking clock is unnaturally loud. The homework stacked by Adam’s elbow wobbles threateningly. Its height defies gravity.

The bookcases grow larger and larger the longer he sits there, the aisles shrinking. The library shudders. Black vines creep into his vision. Adam curls around his essay, the paper rough like tree bark beneath his pen. His ribcage is two sizes too small, and his eyes ache with how exhausted he is, and dark roots shift beneath the library carpet, shackling themselves around Adam’s legs—

The library doors burst open. Ronan stands in the doorway dressed in full armour. It clanks as he raises a hand at the writhing branches, and declares, voice echoing off the endless aisles of books, “Fuck off!”

The plants shift guiltily. Adam kicks the vines making a grab for his feet beneath the table. They skitter away before returning like probing fingers around his bony ankles.

“Fuck off!” Adam echoes. Ronan picks up a book and throws it at a bramble growing around the legs of Adam’s chair. “Ronan, sword.”

Ronan unsheathes a sword from his belt. He examines its shining length for a moment. “Alright then,” he decides, before diving into the sea of vines and hacking, wielding the sword like a machete.

The vines lay in pieces around them. Ronan breathes heavily. Adam palms one hand over his stumbling heart, the other brushing leaves off his sprawled homework. During the invasion, his workload has doubled in size.

“Parrish,” Ronan says.

Adam picks up his pen. His trembling hand can’t form sentences. He doesn’t have the words, doesn’t know what the essay is about, his soupy brain filled with nothing but fear.

“It’s done,” Ronan says. “You finished it.”

Adam puts the pen down. When he examines his work, he finds his cramped cursive where, seconds ago, there had been blank space.

Adam exhales roughly. “Work.”

“You don’t have a shift today,” Ronan says, and Adam believes him; Ronan knows when Adam’s on roster.

“Class.”

“Finished for the day.”

“Gansey.”

“Safe. He doesn’t need us right now.”

Adam gets up. Their surroundings are more forest than library, now. The black vines are gone, replaced by soft earth and tawny leaves. Orange light folds through the treetops. Odd bookcases are built into tree trunks, books carpeting the forest floor in place of moss.

“Good?” Ronan asks, and Adam nods, yes. Ronan sheathes the sword, and runs a hand over his shimmering breastplate. “Gansey talks about medieval shit too much. It’s infected me.”

“Nice sword.”

“Keep it in your pants, Parrish.”

“Was Gansey dressed as a king?” Ronan grimaces, and Adam grins. “So predictable, Lynch.”

“He was wearing tights and a cloak and everything, but instead of boots, he was wearing his damn boat shoes.”

Adam looks down at himself. His Aglionby uniform is a perfect duplicate, complete with the stray loop of thread on his shoulder that drives him crazy. “What about me?”

“I was about to make you the court jester, but then black tree vines started melting out of the walls.” Ronan sweeps a hand over his knight regalia. “I guess this is a metaphor. You’re welcome.”

It’s peaceful in this soft-coloured place. Adam is warm all over, like he’s standing beneath his spluttering shower head and soaking in hot water after a long day.

But, like the faulty water system at St Agnes, the warmth peters out eventually, turns to ice against Adam’s skin. The pink sky dissolves into a starless wash of black. Insects crawl out of the trees, out of the dirt, out of the spaces between their feet, a many-legged hive brain that writhes around them.

A wasp lands on Adam’s sweater. Immediately, he looks around for Gansey, and meets Ronan’s eyes. He nods. They were both thinking the same thing.

Nightmare things replace the books and golden swathes of leaves. They dive for Ronan, and he bats at them with his sword. Their claws and beaks bang nosily against his armour.

Adam grabs Ronan by the arm and pulls them through the thick brambles, thorns tearing at his uniform. Ronan cuts down any nightmares things that come at them from behind, while Adam directs them deeper and deeper into the forest.

Ronan shouts and collapses. Adam catches him, and folds beneath his weight. He sinks to his knees, and pulls Ronan into his arms. His head lolls in the crook of Adam’s neck, all soft skin and warm blood seeping out against Adam’s long fingers; he’s bleeding heavily from his shoulder, and small cuts litter his torso. His armour vanished in the quick sprint through the thorny forest, replaced by black pyjama pants, Ronan’s usual sleeping attire. His tattoo and the pale expanse of his chest are on display.

“So much for a knight,” Ronan says against Adam’s throat. Adam shudders.

“I don’t want a knight.”

Ronan grins, a mean, sharp-toothed thing. Blood drips down his chest. “Don’t pretend like you’ve never needed saving.”

“I’m my own knight in shining armour,” Adam says, and then grimaces at how that sounds out loud. “Pretend I didn’t say that.”

Ronan barks a laugh. “You been watching teen dramas again, Parrish?”

“I’m not Noah.”

“Unfortunately.” Ronan shifts in Adam’s arms. Wet dirt soaks through Adam’s pants; if the briny muck of this corrupted Cabeswater isn’t enough to ruin his uniform, then Ronan’s blood dripping between them is. “Noah’s much better company.”

“Don’t make me leave you here, Lynch.”

“I don’t see a glowing exit sign anywhere.”

A gurgle and a thump echo through the forest. Ronan tenses against him.

“Adam?!”

Ronan curls like a snake ready to pounce. They both recognise that voice.

“We’re dreaming,” Adam says.

“Help me up. We shouldn’t be laying down for whatever’s going to happen next.”

With Adam’s assistance, Ronan climbs to his feet. He wobbles a little, but seems have regained his energy. He looks around the dimly lit clearing. “Cabeswater, I need something…”

A sword juts out of the dirt. Rubies glint in the faint rays of sun cast through the black treetops. Ronan unsheathes it, and sticks it into the air.

“It took my armour, but it can’t take my weapon.”

“Another metaphor?” Adam asks.

“I’m going to fucking stab that demon,” Ronan says, gripping the sword with a dirty, clenched fist, “does that count as a metaphor?”

“Not really.”

They make their way through the forest again. Their bare feet step in something wet, and warm, and Ronan rears back as though struck.

Adam was never able to meet Niall Lynch face to face, but he’s seen the photos hanging at the Barns. This smear of a man—the pulpy brain matter, the limbs splayed out like a dropped doll, this mass of hair, blood, and bone ground into the mossy forest floor—doesn’t look like the smiling, dark haired father who had stood with an arm slung around a young Ronan’s shoulders. It barely looks human.

Ronan’s legs wobble beneath him. “Christ.”

Adam reaches out to steady him, but he’s knocked off his feet before he can make contact. He sprawls out on dirty leaves, cheeks and palms smudged with mud. Robert Parrish is a jolt of ice through Adam’s stomach.

Again, Ronan says, “Christ.”

Robert Parrish hefts the shotgun in his arms. The sight of it is near paralysing. It’s one of the few things Adam has ever found that renders everything, the entire world, an irrelevant blur. His entire world always narrows down to the blunt nozzle, the lazy fingers edging over the trigger, the downturned slant of his father’s mouth.

His father opens his mouth, and the shouts that pour out are also familiar. Adam pulls his gaze away, looks towards Ronan. The taller boy is ashen and bloody. The tight curl of his shoulders gives Adam the strength to lever himself onto his elbows, onto his hands and knees, and then to his feet.

He’s not letting anything keep him down anymore. Definitely not this man.

“Ronan,” Adam says, “it’s alright, I’m here. We both need to wake up.”

“Right.” Ronan breaths in shakily. “Switch?”

Adam glances from Robert Parrish to what’s left of Niall Lynch. There’s nothing there for him to fight. The real struggle is taking place in Ronan’s chest.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Adam says.

“I’m the one with the sword.”

Ronan edges around the muck. His feet stick in the puddled blood, and Adam wants to reach across the space between them and lift Ronan up, carry him over the mess of his father’s dead body, stop him from having to go through this again.

Before Ronan and Adam can get to each other, Robert Parrish steps between them, lifts the shotgun, and hits Adam across the temple. His vision blurs out. Ronan’s shout is cut off. He barely feels the damp forest floor, and then—

Adam wakes tangled in cotton sheets and gasping. There are no dead leaves slicked with blood beneath him; no long fingered trees hanging over him; no gore splattered Niall Lynch, no red faced Robert Parrish; no pale Ronan clutching a ruby encrusted sword and trying to hold himself together. Adam can’t unearth things from his dreams. His nightmares stay buried behind his eyes.

Ronan’s don’t.

Adam wrestles out of bed and shoves his feet into sneakers, his arms into a jacket, and snatches up his car keys.

If Adam can’t carry Ronan to safety in the dreamscape, then he’ll do it in the waking world.

Gansey opens the door to Adam’s loud knocking. He’s in khakis, glasses perched on his nose, phone in hand. He looks partially dazed, as though stuck in some kind of fever state, his cheeks flushed. Adam would be concerned, but he’s busy. He shoves past Gansey none too gently.

Behind him, Gansey says into the phone, “Blue, I’m sorry to cut our time short, but I have to go. Adam’s here. He looks panicked. I’ll call you back.”

Gansey pulls the phone away from his ear. Blue’s voice, crackling and muffled through the line, calls out: “Adam! Be safe, you prick!”

Adam ignores her, and barges into Ronan’s room. On the bed, Ronan pants open-mouthed, his eyebrows furrowed as though in pain, and fists the sheets with both hands. He’s not struggling, but he’s fighting to hold on.

Gansey hovers in the doorway. “Is he okay?”

“We’ll see.” Adam shakes Ronan roughly. “Ronan. Ronan!”

Ronan jerks violently beneath Adam’s hand, and wakes with a bitten off shout. At the same time that his eyes fly open, blood smears across his chest, and wet leaves and forest dirt scatters across the bedsheets. Ronan’s feet are soaked with blood. A shotgun juts out beneath the bed.

Gansey hurries to Adam’s side, hands flapping over their gasping friend. “That’s a lot of blood. Does he need to go to the hospital? Are those fingerprints? Is that a gun?!”

“I’m fucking fine,” Ronan spits, shoving Gansey away. The shorter boy retreats to the doorway, only because Ronan is only this brisk and aggressive when he’s worked up, when he’s disorientated and pushed to his limits and needs space. Because Gansey trusts Adam to haul Ronan out of the bed and into the car if he really did need medical treatment. Because Gansey knows Adam can handle this.

Adam files that away to think over another time. He doesn’t need Gansey’s approval, but it’s a gratifying thing to have.

Ronan grasps at Adam’s shirt like he had in that rotted forest. Adam holds his wrist, and lets him hang on, lets Ronan slowly pull himself back together.

“You don’t live here,” Ronan says finally.

“You fought an overgrown library for me in full armour. I thought I should come and repay the favour.”

Ronan sifts through his bedspread with one hand—the other almost pulling Adam down with the strength of its grip—and tugs. From the rumpled comforter, a long, glinting sword emerges. The handle is embedded with rubies and latin engravings. Gansey comes forward again, but doesn’t take the sword until Ronan nods. He ducks out to examine the sword somewhere better lit than Ronan’s bedroom.

“Is that it? I was hoping for at least a breastplate.” Adam sighs. “At least Gansey is happy.”

“He’s going to be disappointed when he realises it has nothing to do with Welish kings.”

“What does the latin say?”

Ronan collapses back onto his dirty sheets. He looks exhausted for someone who has spent the night dreaming. Adam can relate.

“Probably something very rude, or very gay.” Ronan considers this. “Probably both, knowing me.”

Adam inches a little closer to Ronan. He doesn’t wipe the blood off of Ronan or pick at the mossy, blood slick leaves strewn across his bed, but he does press the hand Ronan has wrapped around his shirt closer to his skin, makes his inhales and exhales deeper, more exaggerated, so Ronan can match his breathing with Adam’s.

“The gun,” Adam says, because his eyes keep gravitated towards where it sits, poking out from beneath the bed. It had thrown him in the forest. He remembers the feel of it in his small hands when shooting cans under watchful supervision, knows the metallic smell to it and the weight against his ribs, against his chin.

“What if I pulled that fucker out of my dream, and you were here?” Ronan asks. It’s not a nice tone, but this isn’t a nice subject, and they are not always nice boys. “Then what would you have done, Adam?”

Adam matches Ronan’s words with something more clipped, less acidic. “You would’ve finally gotten the chance to run him through with that sword. Just like you’ve always wanted.”

“Fists,” Ronan corrects. “I wanted to use my fists until he was a piece of shredded meat, not use a pretty sword.”

Ronan lets his hand drop, as though sensing Adam’s sudden need for space. Adam stands and pulls the gun out. He points the nozzle at the ground and checks that its empty of bullets.

“Niall?” he asks, not looking at Ronan.

Ronan throws his legs over the side of the bed. He takes back the dreamed gun, and stashes it in the closest where Adam doesn’t have to look at it, and Gansey won’t have another heart-attack over it. Adam knows Ronan will bury it, or maybe burn it; he’ll do something with it that’ll make sure Adam never has to look at something so obviously his father’s again. Adam doesn’t need that kind of protection, but, like Gansey’s trust, like Blue’s muffled call to stay safe, Adam acknowledges it and quietly lets himself enjoy it.

“It wasn’t real,” Ronan says.

“I’m working through it,” Adam confesses. “The fear. I’m not the same person he ruined. I’m something more, now.” He picks a long leaf from Ronan’s pillow. The room smells of damp earth, blood, the stink of fear sweat, and ozone. All familiar things to them both. “I’m trying not to be afraid of him in real life, why should I be afraid of a dream version of him?”

Ronan stands a little taller at Adam’s words, like Adam’s words have righted something inside him. “I’m not that kid that found his dad cracked open. I’m not.” Ronan tugs at his leather bands, and sucks in a deep breath. “I’m not some weepy lost lamb Gansey had to scrape off a sidewalk.”

It’s the nighttime darkness and the fading adrenaline that pulls these words from their mouths. They’d never be this frank in the daylight. Ronan steps a little closer, and Adam puts his hand on the place where Ronan’s shoulder meets his neck, over the dark hooks tattooed on his skin. Ronan’s pulse thunders beneath Adam’s palm.

Adam meets Ronan’s gaze. They’re so close, Ronan’s bare, bloody feet almost touching Adam’s scuffed sneakers, their breaths mingled.

Out in the hallway, Gansey shouts, dad voice in full effect, “Ronan, is this the latin word for penis?”

They shuffle apart. They don’t jerk apart guiltily, but slowly move away, an understanding: now is not the right time.

“Busted,” Adam whispers.

“Told you it was both rude and gay,” Ronan whispers back.

Ronan leads the way out of the bedroom, Adam on his heels. Gansey is in the living room, sword held beneath a lamp as he examines it. His glasses slip down his nose. He peers over them at Ronan, thoroughly disapproving. “Ronan. Are you going to pretend not to be hurt again?”

Ronan runs a hand over his chest, and Adam swallows at the bare skin. Ronan brushes over visible claw marks and cuts put there by thorns and sharp branches. Niall Lynch’s blood has dried. The marks have coagulated. “Just scrapes,” Ronan says with a shrug, and then to Adam: “The worse injuries didn’t transfer through. I, um. I was focussing on not bringing anything back with me.”

“Hm,” Gansey says, and gets up to find their first aid kit.

Ronan catches Adam’s eye once again, and shakes his head. Gansey’s paternal instincts are legendary and inescapable. Adam bites down a laugh and abandons him to duck into the bathroom and check the forsaken mini fridge.

Adam gets onto his knees to peer at the contents. In the fridge’s dim glow, Noah’s eyes are a hazy blue. He always looks washed, especially these days, but right now, Noah is a wisp of fog stubbornly set into human shape, holding on tightly to his coherency. He looks exhausted with the effort.

“That must’ve been frightening, huh?” Noah says. He smiles weakly. “But Ronan looked good in armour.”

Adam doesn’t ask how Noah knows that. He grabs a couple of iced coffees from the fridge. No one in this apartment will be sleeping again tonight; they’ll need the caffeine.

“He looked ridiculous.”

“You thought he looked handddsomee,” Noah sing-songs. Adam nudges Noah with his foot. Noah is solid enough to rock at the force, and giggles into his hands. “You even liked the sword, too.”

“Rise above your status as an Aglionby boy,” Adam says, “and resist the urge to make to make a dick joke. Please.”

“You sound like Blue.”

“A compliment?”

“Of course.” Noah rests his chin on his knees. If he were human, Adam would say he looked halfway asleep, liable to doze off in the middle of this wasteland of a bathroom. “You guys are okay?

“We’re okay,” Adam agrees. He rises to his feet, knees cracking. “How are you, Noah?”

Noah smiles again. Adam hasn’t been keeping track of Noah the way he should, these days. He’s so busy, always has been busy, and Ronan and Gansey and Blue always seem to know something is wrong with Noah before Adam does.

“You should go check on Ronan,” Noah says instead of answering.

“Ronan is fine. Gansey’s with him.”

“Yeah, but I bet he misses you.” Noah tries to wink. It’s a disconcerting sight on a smudged out face.

“Alright,” Adam says, and nudges Noah again with his sneaker, a lingering gesture that Noah sighs beneath, curling up tighter around his knees. “Goodnight, Noah.”

“Goodnight, Adam.”

Out in the main area, Gansey is sitting cross-legged on the floor, his journal and a spare notebook open in front of him. The dream sword and his phone are propped by his socked feet. Ronan reclines on Gansey’s unmade bed. He’s been cleaned up by Gansey washed off the blood, and dressed in clean jeans and a muscle tee.

Adam hands an iced coffee to each of them, and unscrews the lid of his own. Gansey waves a distracted hand at him. He seems oblivious to the coffee he drips on the pad of notes, too busy scribbling something down.

“What does Maura or Calla say?” Gansey asks.

“It’s almost 1am,” Blue says. He voice is even more crackly on speaker phone. “I’m not waking everyone up for anything short of an emergency.”

“Hey, Blue,” Adam says.

“Hey, Adam,” Blue says. “Are you alright? Gansey told me what happened.”

“I’m fine.”

Gansey shoves his glasses back up his nose with coffee wet fingers. “You’re sure this has never happened before?”

“Pretty sure. I think I would’ve known if Ronan was actually in my dreams before now, instead of just a dream version of him. I knew tonight. He showed up, and I just knew it was actually him, dreaming with me.”

“Aw, you’ve dreamt about me before, Parrish?” Ronan says, fake sweet.

“I dream about all of you,” Adam says, because it’s true.

Gansey peeks up at them. His smile is shy, a little loving. “I dream about you all as well.”

“Me, too,” Blue says.

Ronan sighs, but nods his head, an agreement that he, too, dreams about them. They’re too tightly bound to each other, their lives entangled even when asleep.

“Do you think it was Cabeswater that brought your dreams together?” Gansey asks. “Why would it do that?”

“Power in numbers?” Blue wonders.

They devolve into speculation. Gansey furiously takes notes from the floor, bent over his notes, glasses slipping back down his nose. Adam takes a seat on Gansey’s bed. The mattress creaks under his weight, and he ends up against Ronan, feet to thigh to shoulder. Ronan looks at him, and Adam nods, and Ronan puts a hand on Adam’s knee. It’s not the worst way to spend the night. Adam thinks, for all the hours of sleep he’s missing, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

#trc #the raven cycle #my posts #my writing #sorry this took a little bit i was finishing TRC #and writing in general takes me a while #Anonymous

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adamprrishcycle · 8 years ago

Text

Please enjoy a “deleted scene” from the soulmate au that I’ll never finish (I dedicate this to everyone who was nice to me when I was writing it and when I decided I wasn’t anymore)

It had been a week since Adam had seen Ronan. He’d glimpsed him around school a few times, but Gansey informed him in a very concerned and quiet voice that Ronan was currently missing a great deal of classes. He didn’t mention that after they had dropped him off on Saturday he’d gone on a three day bender, but he didn’t need to. When Adam saw Ronan in the corridor on Thursday, Ronan looked sullen and irritable. His eyes were red and his skin had a gray-ish tinge.

It wasn’t hard to guess that he’d been spending his time with Joseph Kavinsky and his pack of dogs. Kavinsky didn’t have friends, he owned friends and everyone knew he was trying to rope Ronan in, but Ronan was too smart, or perhaps just too stubborn to let that happen.

Adam was already feeling uncomfortable. Being inside the converted factory building where Gansey, Ronan and Noah lived made Adam feel inadequate. These boys he had befriended were the kind of stupid rich that usually made Adam sick, and it did, though not like the other rich bastards at Aglionby.

Gansey had invited him over because they were throwing a surprise party for Noah’s birthday. At the first mention of a party, Adam had refused to go, but Gansey was quick to assure him that he used the word “party” very lightly.

“It’s not really a party per say,” he had explained. “It’s more like hanging out with beer and balloons.”

Adam had agreed on Wednesday, was feeling apprehensive on Thursday, nearly told Gansey he had too much homework and couldn’t come on Friday, then Saturday afternoon had rolled around and here he was, sat on Gansey’s leather couch while Gansey chatted away about Noah’s previous birthdays while they waited for Ronan to arrive with “the stuff”.

Adam tried not to touch his face. His cheek had scabbed over and was slowly healing but his black eye was still prominent and he felt self-conscious.

Gansey stopped talking and got to his feet as they heard the sound of keys fumbling in the lock. Then there was a noise that sounded like said keys dropping to the floor, then a muffled, “fuck”, then a thump.

Gansey opened the door to find Ronan with his arms full. He had a box of beer under one arm and a large paper bag under the other that was filled with what looked like party decorations.

“Take your time,” he said sarcastically as he struggled into the room and shoved the bag into Gansey’s arms. “The cake’s in the car, I couldn’t carry it with all this.”

“Did you get candles?” Gansey asked as he began emptying the bag onto the pool table that took up a corner of the room. There were balloons and streamers as well as what seemed like an excessive amount of sparkly confetti.

“Yeah,” Ronan said and he disappeared into the strange room that was both the kitchen and the bathroom.

“Can you blow balloons?” Gansey asked, snapping Adam’s attention back from the kitchen doorway. He nodded and approached the pool table to help.

“Hey, Parrish” Ronan said as he came back into the room. He held up his car keys, then threw them in Adam’s direction. He was relieved he had seen them coming and snatched them easily from the air.

Ronan smirked. “Go get the cake.”

There was something strangely complimentary about Ronan trusting him with his car keys but Adam tried not to think about it as he slid the key ring onto his finger and headed downstairs.

He ran a hand appreciatively over the side of the BMW and, palms sweating, climbed in the driver’s side. He put his hands on the steering wheel and marvelled at the cars interior for a full minute, noticing things he hadn’t when Ronan had given him a ride to school the previous week. He never let himself appreciate things so obviously usually, this felt good.

He finally rubbed his hands on his faded jeans and grabbed the cake box from the passenger seat before climbing out.

When he got back upstairs, Ronan was standing bare foot in the middle of the room, admiring a banner he’d just hung across the wall. He had a smile on his face. It was a small smile that wasn’t for anyone but himself and his thoughts and Adam paused for a moment. He’d never seen Ronan look anything but harsh.

He turned suddenly and crossed the room to take the box from Adam’s hands. His soft smirk became sharper and Adam’s stomach gave an uncomfortable jolt.

“Thanks,” he said and he took the keys back as well, sliding the key ring onto his finger in the same way Adam had done.

Adam smiled back sarcastically and waited for Ronan to look away first. He always did.

By the time Noah got there, Monmouth was covered from head to toe in streamers and brightly colored balloons. Gansey had put a CD in the stereo and it was playing catchy pop music. Ronan was on his third beer, Adam was on tap water.

He didn’t think he’d seen anyone look as excited as Noah did when he entered the room and he didn’t think he’d seen anyone look as shocked as Gansey and Ronan did when Noah wasn’t alone.

Blue, the waitress entered the room with a scowl on her face. She was wearing an oversized t-shirt as a dress which probably would have looked raggedy on anyone else, but she seemed to pull it off perfectly. Her wild, short hair was let loose around her face and it seemed to make her brown eyes look bigger and brighter. Another girl followed her inside. She was tall with long, dark legs that Adam was convinced were the reason for the saying “legs for days”. She was also wearing a dress. It was bright orange like Gansey’s Camaro, form fitting and low-cut.

“So this is how Raven Boys party,” the girl said with a smirk, obviously enjoying all the eyes on her.

“Happy birthday, Noah,” Gansey said, snapping his attention away from the other girl. “And Blue, hi.“ He smiled at her, then turned back to the other girl. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m-”

“I’m Orla. Blue’s cousin,” the girl said and she held Gansey’s gaze for second before smiling at Ronan. Ronan did not smile back.

“Nice to meet you,” Gansey said and he stepped forwards to shake her hand but she pulled him into a hug, running her fingers down his back. Adam saw Blue roll her eyes. She saw him looking and raised an eyebrow as if to say, “take a picture, it’ll last longer.” Adam didn’t know if anyone actually said that, but if they did, Blue would be the kind of person who would say it.

He turned away and looked over at Ronan to find that Ronan was a lot closer than he had been before.

“Noah,” Gansey said as he was released from Orla’s embrace. “Can I talk to you a minute.”

Noah followed him into the kitchen, batting balloons as he walked past them.

“So, introductions,” Orla said and she sat down on the couch, crossing her legs, letting her dress hitch up her thigh. It was probably deliberate. Adam didn’t really mind.

For most of his life he hadn’t been interested in anyone and hadn’t thought about first kisses or who he wanted to touch or how he wanted to touch them, but recently he’d allowed himself to consider it. He found beauty in almost everyone. Orla was stunning and Blue was beautiful in a way that made you blink a few times to make sure you weren’t simply seeing things. Gansey was handsome in his Aglionby uniform and equally as attractive in an old t-shirt and his wireframes. Noah was cute, until you saw him playing competitive sports. He turned aggressive and focused and Adam found himself staring. Then there was Ronan in his sexy car with his leather jacket and his leather bracelets that he sometimes brought to his mouth to chew on when he was nervous and thought no one was looking. Ronan with his explosive anger that usually would have made Adam run, but seemed to only draw him closer. Ronan who was an asshole who made Adam angry in return.

“I’m Adam,” he said when Ronan didn’t speak. “And that’s Ronan.”

“Irish name,” Orla said, smiling at Ronan again. “Snap.”

“Please don’t tell me you’re flirting with these people,” Blue said.

Ronan snorted and turned away from the girls as he came to stand beside Adam, their arms touching and spoke in a lowered voice.

“You can have the orange one but the angry waitress is Gansey’s.”

Adam stared at him and he laughed and Gansey and Noah came back into the room, saving Adam from the heat spreading up his neck.

Gansey politely got the girls some drinks and Noah sat talking to them animatedly and Blue cracked a real smile for the first time.

Ronan retired to the corner by the pool table to drink his beer. Adam got bored of Orla talking about herself and dared himself to go and sit with Ronan three times. The fourth time, he did it.

“Still on the water?” Ronan asked as Adam slid down beside him.

“Yeah.”

Ronan held his bottle out to him but he shook his head.

“How many of those have you had?” He asked.

“Don’t Gansey me, Parrish,” Ronan said. Adam looked down at his arm at the soulmate mark that stood out against his skin.

“I want you to apologize,” he blurted out.

“What?” Ronan said and they looked at each other. This time Adam looked away first.

“For the stuff you said the other day,” he said, picking at the edge of a rip in his jeans.

“I don’t lie,” Ronan said and Adam glanced at him, a question in his eyes. “Saying sorry would be a lie and I don’t lie. I’m not sorry.”

Adam swallowed hard and refused to rise to it. “Fine. Neither am I.”

“Didn’t expect you to be.”

“Why weren’t you at school this week?” He was asking the question before he could stop himself. Ronan gave him a grim smile.

“Therapy,” he said simply and swigged his beer. “Hey, you like cars, right?”

Adam was thrown for a second, then nodded.

“Let’s go for a ride,” he said and got to his feet.

“You can’t drive, you’ve been drinking,” Adam said, standing up beside him.

Ronan grinned at him and walked over to the others. “Noah, come on. Birthday treat,” he said and he pulled his keys from his pocket and threw them to Noah.

“Uh, Ronan,” Gansey said, eyes wide in warning.

“We won’t be long,” Ronan said. “I promised him he could drive it. Besides, you’ve got company.”

With a sigh and another warning look when he realized Adam was going as well, Gansey said goodbye to them and they went downstairs.

Noah was a good driver. Good because he pulled off smoothly and never braked too hard or went above the speed limit. Adam wondered what was the point in asking to drive Ronan’s precious car once a year if you were just going to drive it like this. It was too tame. Adam felt an itch in his veins for speed. He wanted to see how fast the BMW could go.

“You’re like a Sunday morning driver,” Ronan said from the passenger seat.

“I thought you’d be happy I wasn’t thrashing your car,” Noah said, sticking his turn signal on and glancing in all three mirror before turning into another road.

Ronan threw his head back and laughed. “What do you know about thrash, Czerny? Go for it, thrash it.“

Noah accelerated hard until he reached the end of the road, then braked suddenly. Adam clutched the back of his headrest as he was thrown forwards.

“You’ve lived a sheltered life, haven’t you?” Ronan said, smiling from ear to ear.

He twisted in his seat suddenly and Adam sat back feeling too close.

“You’re up, Parrish.” He turned back to Noah. “Czerny, out.”

“But it’s my birthday!” Noah protested.

“You threw away your rights as the birthday boy when you brought girls to our place,” Ronan said matter of factly.

“They’re not that bad. Quit acting like you’re allergic to girls all the time,” Noah grumbled but he climbed out of the driver’s seat and Adam warily got into the front. He shifted in the warm patch that Noah had left behind and turned to look at Ronan.

“Let’s see what you’ve got, Parrish,” he said. “Turn me on.”

Adam didn’t give himself time to think. He drove steady enough through town until he reached the highway, then he abandoned all his inhibitions and drove like the horizon and the setting sun were the only limit.

Noah rolled his window down in the backseat and whooped into the warm evening air. Adam only caught quick glimpses of Ronan who was aiming to appear unaffected by the speed, but wore a small smile that gave him away.

When they pulled in at a rest stop, Noah leaned forwards between the seats to relay to Adam everything that had just happened as though he hadn’t been the one making it happen. Ronan told him to go and get something to drink from the shabby store that stood by the side of the road and he went obediently.

Adam watched him walk away, then looked over at Ronan and realized he was having fun. This feeling in his stomach, this endless pull like his muscles were elastic that could stretch for miles, this was what fun felt like.

“My hands are shaking, look,” he said, holding his hands out to Ronan, feeling more comfortable with him than he ever had. Ronan looked at them, then held his own hands out, palms facing downwards. He was shaking as well.

Adam didn’t care that Ronan could see the words on his fingers, he’d seen it before and it didn’t matter.

“I didn’t know other people were allowed to drive your car,” he said, still watching Ronan’s hands that were now balled into fists.

Ronan shrugged. “It’s Noah’s birthday and you drive a damn sight better than him.”

“Do you think Gansey’s having fun with Blue and Orla?” Adam said and he tore his eyes away from Ronan’s hands to run his thumb along the bottom of the steering wheel.

“Blue’s probably eaten him alive, which is kind of romantic, I guess.” He smirked. “She is his soulmate.”

“Blue’s Gansey’s soulmate?” Adam was surprised. Gansey had gone over to talk to Blue specifically for Adam after he’d mentioned that she was attractive. He didn’t tell Adam he’d got his first mark. It probably wasn’t a big deal, but it bothered him nevertheless.

“Yeah,” Ronan said. “At least, that’s the only explanation for the stain on his leg,” he paused. “Why, you jealous?”

“Why, are you?” Adam shot back.

“She’s not really my type.”

“I wasn’t talking about her.”

“Fuck off, Parrish, you sound just like Kavinsky,” Ronan said, eyes glowing. Adam didn’t like the comparison.

“That’s where you were this week,” he said quickly before he missed his chance. He knew he’d ruined the lighthearted atmosphere as soon as the words left his mouth. “You were with Kavinsky,” he prompted seeing as he’d already made his bed.

“It’s not really any of your business where I was,” Ronan said and his smile turned sour.

“I know,” Adam replied, “I just want you to admit it.”

“Why?” Ronan was amused again.

Adam shrugged. To prove to me that you’re not worth any of my time, he thought.

They both jumped when Noah opened the driver’s side door and announced that he would be driving back and Adam didn’t look at Ronan again before climbing into the backseat.

#I always forget that noah's birthday was never actually a thing #bc all I remember is this lmao #I miss the angst #pynch #soulmate au #trc #the raven cycle #fic #adam parrish #ronan lynch #noah czerny #gansey #blue sargent #orla sargent

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