#his name is literally Gansey. let’s just start there.

[cabeswaterdrowned]

I can understand someone not liking Gansey that much but I Can Not imagine calling him boring. Sir that’s President Freak of Clowntown right there…

[wander-wren]

wrt to the “adam shouldve been a visionary” dreamer trilogy/greywaren post i’ve seen a few times (possibly reblogged?)….well, maybe, but also no.

it’s not that i don’t have my own gripes with tdt (namely, yes, not enough adam), but i just…i can’t get behind visionary adam. not canon visionary, anyway.

like. you’re telling me ronan “the choice was death or hurting adam, which wasnt a choice at all” lynch would have handled it with ANY amount of grace if adam “i will be your hands. i will be your eyes” parrish was given the ultimatum “hurt others every time you have a vision and live, or turn the visions inward and quickly die horribly”??? no!!

and maybe in this alternate version of tdt that’s the whole point, yknow. if that’s what you want, ABSOLUTELY go ahead, dream on about it, write the fic, send it to me i’d love to see. etc etc etc

but the point of the dreamer trilogy is that it’s about ronan. so if we’re keeping with that vision (ha), and with the basic premise of the series, then no, i don’t think visionary adam is a good idea.

which begs the question…what WOULD i have adam do?

[disclaimer i read each book as they came out and havent done full rereads since so my memory is spotty, pls correct anything i get wrong]

in all honesty i would keep call down the hawk essentially as it is bc i think it was good. it takes place during november, no? so potentially add in/exchange a shorter adam moment for thanksgiving break. he can help scry and figure out psychic things and be distrustful of bryde.

have winter break be during part of mister impossible. seriously where are adam’s school breaks lmao. adam is relentlessly practical and cares about ronan and he should be here to sow doubt and try to curb some of ronan’s more ecoterrorist tendencies. ronan can sneak around and hide from him and there can be tension and worry and anger. but also a lot of good pynch feelings still, ofc, bc its Them.

but don’t worry! they can still have a big fight/falling out over the ley lines/bryde/the ecoterrorism before adam leaves for school again. as silly as it is that ronan freaked out over an unread text when adam was literally napping, maybe this time it’s deliberate. or maybe adam really was napping again, or driving, or whatever. the rest of mister impossible can play out from there, or a condensed/reshuffled version of it to accommodate adam being there for a while.

greywaren can start the same, but for the love of god let ronan get out faster it is HIS BOOK. i do like henessey helping him do that i think its an important part of her character, and adam’s part in all that was very good and angsty so i wouldnt change it, but i would have it happen in the first half. ronan and adam make up and go off to do whatever was happening by the end of greywaren tbh i got confused. or something totally different! who knows.

also i just want to see adam interact with the actual visionaries and with carmen and henessey more and with bryde i think it would be very cool. very fun.

i also think gansey/blue/henry shouldve shown up literally ever at all but idk how they fit in so shh

[clotpolesonly]

@morocorra BET YOU THOUGHT I FORGOT ABOUT THIS

well, i definitely did not, let's talk about Adam impersonating Gansey

so there's a lot to unpack here, obviously, and i am of two minds on the matter. well, ok, i'm of more than two minds. at least three or four minds. i'm conflicted, is what i'm saying here. there are pros and cons to this whole little sequence.

let's start out with the obvious: it was SO unnecessary. they literally didn't have to do this. it doesn't line up with anything in book canon and it didn't serve much of a practical purpose within the show canon that couldn't have been covered elsewhere.

if i recall correctly, in the books, the information about Whelk's father's embezzlement was given to the reader through the narration in Whelk's POV chapters. we don't get that kind of exposition handed to us on screen, we need to see and/or hear it more directly somehow, but it would've been fairly easy to either show it as part of the Noelk flashback sequence or to just have Noah or Whelk outright tell us/another character about it.

usually i'm all for showing and not telling, but sometimes it really is as simple as "my dad got arrested, the bank took all our money, i needed the glendower favor to get it back". instead of using up 20 minutes of screentime on having a main character sneak off, disguise himself as someone else, charm his way into city hall to illegally access police records that i don't think realistically would even be available at city hall in the first place, and then bring that same information back to his friends while refusing to provide them with any context on where or how he got it.

(honestly, he probably could've just fucking googled the Whelk name. was there no press coverage for this at all? come on, man)

so anyway, none of this needed to happen. like, i can see why they thought it might've been a more interesting way to convey that information, but really it just robbed us of a lot of their already very limited screentime. they crammed two whole books into 8 episodes and wasted our time with THIS??

on top of that, it's just........it's absolute UNHINGED behavior. i've seen some people say that it feels out of character for Adam and, yeah, honestly, i agree, at least to a degree.

it's not that book!Adam doesn't want to wear Gansey like a skinsuit. he absolutely does and he's really fucking weird about it. he gets to harvard and cosplays as Gansey so hard that even Ronan is like "dude wtf are you doing" but the thing is, book!Adam would never do it consciously and intentionally. that boy would rather chew his own arm off than recognize/acknowledge/admit how badly he wants to BE Richard Campbell Gansey III. he would literally rather die.

so for him to be on our screens, dying his hair dark and stealing Gansey's clothes and wallet and introducing himself as Dick Gansey to state employees is WILD and feels so so wrong. like, no offense to the writers, but Book!He Would Not Fucking Say That.

-sigh-

however. canon is canon, and he did, in fact, fucking say that on our screens. and i'm gonna be real here, it makes tv!Adam look even more like a complete fucking sociopath than book!Adam ever did adlkjfgh. like, what a batshit psychosexually charged immoral thing for him to do. especially because not only did he use Gansey's name while committing a crime, but he also used Gansey's influence, name-dropped his mother, and promised the county clerk a FAVOR from a US senatorial candidate if she broke the law for him. idk if that's ever gonna come back up again, if it's gonna be relevant and cause problems in later seasons, but even if it doesn't, dude, that's fucked up!!!! wtf lol

...........SO THERE'S ALL THAT

but then, on the other hand

i really enjoyed Adam being a conniving manipulative amoral little mastermind on my television screen, not gonna lie, adlkfjhg

and we know the real crowning glory of this whole ordeal!! hence the tags!!! we knew i was coming back around to this XD

when this show as first announced, i didn't have a lot of hope for the Adam/Declan parallels surviving to screen. many of them were purely textual, phrases and descriptions used for both of them that stand out starkly because of how they're written but wouldn't carry over as well to a visual medium (ie, they weren't born afraid but they learned). i was emotionally prepared to lose those and just make do.

AND THEN THE SHOW WENT OUT OF ITS WAY TO INVENT A WHOLE NEW PARALLEL THAT'S EVEN MORE UNHINGED THAN ANYTHING THE BOOKS COULD'VE GIVEN ME

i cannot believe that they made a big change to Declan's character and then also made a corresponding change to Adam's that matches Declan's deviation from canon, like did they do that one purpose?? is it a coincidence??? it can't be a coincidence, surely

okay i'll cop that it's not a perfect parallel. or, i'd say, it's both a parallel and a contrast.

we didn't get to see Declan going blond or making that decision, we don't know if it was a trauma-fueled impulse like him re-dying it dark was or if it was a choice made with a little more poise and composure, but either way it was something entirely intrinsically motivated. he did it for him, even though it caused him problems and he likely knew that it would, while Adam dying his hair dark (temporarily, it's only a level 1 dye, the kind that washes out pretty quickly, and we see that it's gone by the next episode and no one else is any the wiser about what he did) is externally motivated and for a practical purpose. it's part of a scheme rather than something that he feels emotionally driven to do as part of a coping process.

but even that says so much about them as people. Declan likes to claim that he's so rational and detached, but underneath the facade he wears, he's as impulsive and passionate as Ronan is. his emotions lead him far more often than he wants to admit even to himself. both instances of his hair fuckery are driven by emotional overwhelm, and both are permanent changes (for a given value). you can't unbleach hair that has been bleached, and level 3 dye takes weeks or months to fade. and he owns his choices in the aftermath because, as the books say, Lynches always want to be seen as deliberate, even if it's deliberately cruel or, in this case, deliberately with bad taste in aesthetic choices (lmao).

meanwhile, Adam truly is a much more rational thinker. even when he feels strong emotion, he examines it and picks it apart and makes a real effort toward not acting on it. regardless of his emotional state, on the whole, he is driven by thought and logic. he dyes his hair because his appearance is a tool to be utilized to achieve an end - in this case, accessing information that he wouldn't be able to if he presented as himself. Gansey has clout that he doesn't, and thus taking on Gansey's appearance and name allows him to leverage that clout for his own ends. and when that end is achieved, Adam takes off the disguise. he rinses the dye out of his hair. he is himself again.

through this whole metamorphosis, Adam never loses his sense of self. he is playing Gansey's role, yes, but it's a costume and he knows it is and he takes it off when he's done. but Declan doesn't have a solid sense of self. his identity is a fractured mess, and he has to go through another external process in an effort to regain what he'd stripped away from himself. he cannot unbleach his hair, he has to dye it dark again in an attempt to match his natural color. even when he's trying to be himself, he's still pretending.

if i were to read even more too much into this (😂) i would say this could also be representative of their stations in life and how they feel about themselves -- ie, Declan has the means to make whatever changes he wants, he can live any life he likes (in theory), but none of it means anything if he doesn't know who he is or how to be that person in an authentic way. and Adam feels like, as much as he can play at being better than his roots, in truth he will always be what he is and no amount of slapping paint on top is ever going to change him. from dust he came and to dust he will return. Declan cannot decide if he wants to look like his father or not, that association is fraught and complicated for him and the push-pull of it is tearing him apart, and Adam desperately aspires to distance himself from the father he resembles but believes, deep down, that there is no escaping their similarity.

it makes the monmouth gatekeeping scene spicy in its own weird way, at least for me. it's the only time these two are face to face on screen with nothing else going on around them, just the two of them going head to head. the natural blond and the fake. i have to wonder if that scene is where Adam got the idea for his own brunet adventure. after all, he learned how to flirt from observing and copying Declan, why shouldn't he get tips on pretending to be someone he's not from Declan too? he did it first and he does it best, after all.

[mychemicalrachel]

tell me more about your vegetarian Ronan Lynch agenda

Aah, gladly! 🙏

Ronan grew up on a farm, he was raised in a barn surrounded by animals, some of which are probably older than he is, and with the kind of private life the Lynches lived, secluded and secretive, I have no doubt he was really really close with some of those animals. He loved them, he cared for them. Take a moment to imagine young Ronan hanging out in the fields with a bunch of cows, talking to them, telling them all the secrets he isn't allowed to tell anyone else, things he's too afraid to share with even his brothers. They're his pets, his friends.

I don't think it's ever specified what kind of farm Niall ran, but I think it's safe to assume that whether it was a cow from their own farm or a neighboring farm, there was at least one time in Ronan’s life that Niall brought home some "fresh beef." And Ronan cannot eat it. We all know how compassionate Ronan is, do you really think he would be able to eat something that had a face? A name??? And I think that slaughtering any of the animals Ronan personally knew would've absolutely destroyed him.

It's just that at first; the fresh beef. It feels different to eat store-bought prepackaged meat because it's not someone Ronan knew. But as he got older, he realized that it wasn't really all that different at all, that the meat he got at the store was once an animal and it was raised just to die and maybe someone like Ronan had really loved that animal, or even worse, maybe nobody had ever loved that animal.

And to also further my Niall Lynch is a bad father agenda, I think, in some ill willed attempt to get Ronan to understand the circle of life, he took young Ronan to a slaughterhouse. That was a mistake. Niall thought that having Ronan see the whole process through would help him come to terms with it; their job is to care for the animals and then the animals get to go on to fulfill their purpose and nourish some family. But that backfires when Ronan takes one look at the facility and breaks down. Niall has to literally drag him away because Ronan gets upset and tries to set some of the cows free (it does not work, cows are kinda slow so they don't get very far).

After that, Ronan swears off meat. I think the whole avocado on pizza thing started off as a misunderstanding. Gansey and Ronan had only just recently become friends, they're still figuring each other out, and Gansey wants to make a good impression, so when they to to Nino’s the first time, he wants to be considerate. He looks at the menu and thinks "what would my new vegetarian best friend like on pizza?" and this lovable dipshit decides of course Ronan would like avocado. Because avocado is good and it is not a meat and Gansey feels awful proud of himself for that suggestion. And Ronan, poor gay Ronan who has the biggest crush on Gansey and doesn't want to hurt his feelings, goes SURE 🥴 let's order avocado on my half of the pizza! And it just becomes tradition after that 😂

[therubyreader]

My Review of The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

See a full list of my book reviews here

*Disclaimer: there will be spoilers later on in the review*

Review Word Count, non-spoiler: 1,008 Review Word Count Total: 1,692

Am I writing a review for a book I just finished yesterday instead of waiting for weeks and by the time I get to writing I’m already done with the whole series??? Looks like it, but don’t get used to this because I know I’m going to be back to my horrible habits soon enough. In the first ever installment of “a book review written about a book a real person in my real life recommended to me” (or another much catchier title) I bring you a review of The Raven Boys.

The book brings us to the fictional town of Henrietta, Virginia (yes I did just Google if it was real, I am multiple shades of not the smartest) where we are introduced to Blue Sargent, the daughter of the town psychic, or well one of them, and she lives with her aforementioned mother, aunts, and cousin. The women of 300 Fox Way are all psychically gifted, except for Blue, who is only able to amplify their gifts but has none of her own. On the night of St. Mark’s Eve it is tradition that Blue and her mother go to an abandoned cemetery and watch the spirits of the townspeople who will die that year walk through, though Blue can’t see them this year is different, she sees the spirit of a boy named Gansey meaning he is either her true love or he dies by her hand (she’s fated to kill her true love with a kiss so, it could be both). Parallel to this, Gansey is looking for the mythical Welsh king Glendower who is prophesied to grant a wish to the person who wakes him and his search brings him, unknowingly, to Blue. Together they, as well as Gansey’s friends Ronan, Adam, and Noah, search for the ley line that runs through Henrietta in hopes it leads them to where Glendower’s body is hidden.

I’m going to be totally transparent with you all and let you know that my friend has been trying to get me to read the Raven Cycle books for a solid amount of years, probably almost as long as I’ve known them (which has been almost seven years now) but I finally caved when they said they would read the Shadow and Bone trilogy in exchange, and I can’t pass up a good deal. I was hesitant to read the book because the summary doesn’t really do it justice, and also it just didn’t appeal to me even after my friend explained it. I think it just felt a lot like something I would’ve read in middle school, but not in a fun nostalgic way, and this was most likely because I did read another of Maggie Stiefvater’s books in middle school, Shiver, and my werewolf phase is a dark past I’m not trying to remember. And I honestly had this apprehensive feeling throughout the first half of the book where I couldn’t shake that vibe of middle school negativity but I forced myself to read it and to endure because I made a deal with my friend and they were nice enough to let me borrow their copy of the book complete with the author’s autograph and my mother didn’t raise a quitter. I think this feeling was made worse because I literally couldn’t stand any of the raven boys, save for my boy Adam, and eventually Noah, throughout the whole first half which in hindsight is good writing. Stiefvater did a great job writing entitled rich boys who are horrible in their own unique ways but I actually started to like (or well, be ok with) the other two boys by the end of the book.

I think once the action of the story really got going then I actually started to enjoy it, though it is a little annoying that I had to read about half the book before anything with consequence or excitement started happening. But, then again, I’m someone who really likes more action and conflict heavy books no matter how much they trigger my anxiety so this style of book where all of the world building and setting up the conflict take up the first half of the narrative without much consequential action isn’t super my thing. That being said, once I got over that (and myself) I actually enjoyed the book quite a bit, sorry for doubting you [insert friend’s name here for privacy reasons]. I enjoyed how each of the children’s (they’re teenagers but I’m an adult so they’re children to me) back stories and life circumstances are woven into the story, that it’s not just them looking for this mythical king but also them experiencing the hardships of life while on this quest. These characters are all very real with very real problems so you can relate to them all in one way or another which definitely adds to the story so it doesn’t feel like a run of the mill fantasy story that doesn’t have any depth or humanity. The question of “don’t these kids have school?” that a lot of stories with teenage protagonists makes you ask isn’t really necessary in this book because they do have school and their plans have to be put on hold until the end of their school day on top of the plot heavily revolving around Ronan’s horrible academic behavior.

Though this isn’t my favorite book ever it definitely exceeded my expectations (which, let’s be honest, were very low and that was entirely my own doing) and I’m very excited to continue reading the series, I already got my hands on the second book (public library beloved) and I only read the prologue as of right now which is already very intriguing. I will say if you’re interested in this book I do recommend giving it a chance but you will have to power through a solid chunk of it before it really gets good but overall a very Stranger Things but for a different breed of nerds vibes out of ten.

Spoilers Below!!

There are a lot of things I want to talk about in terms of the specifics of this book that I don’t know what I want to talk about first so I’ll just go in order of least complicated to most. First, Gansey calling Blue “Jane” because he thinks her name is stupid, rude. He’s right but like, that’s her name dude, she likes it, stop being mean. Another thing that doesn’t require many words is that it isn’t really explained how so many people are just presented with this idea of magic and are cool with it. I know Adam kind of touches on him being convinced by Gansey that magic is real and so is Glendower but I feel like in our day and age (which this is supposed to be set in, just ten years ago) not many people would be on board with it. I don’t know, it might just be me, but if you told me at seventeen that you were looking for a mythical king and a ley line I would think that you’re insane and probably not talk to you very often after that. But then again this could probably just be chalked up to their version of our reality being more accepting and open to magic and I could just be overthinking it, which wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for me. 

I also wanted to talk about the absolute plot twist of Noah being a ghost this whole time. I texted my friend about it as soon as I read that part and they told me it was stated right at the beginning of the book when Declan is introducing the raven boys to his newest girlfriend. I honestly didn’t remember it and so I went back and there it was, she made a comment about his hands being cold and he responded something along the lines of “I’ve been dead for seven years so that’s about as warm as they get” and then it isn’t acknowledged by literally anyone or the book itself. I think I just laughed it off as an angsty teenage boy joke but he was being serious. When Gansey and Blue found his body (which, why was it near the cemetery, did we ever address that?) I figured it would be the body of Czerny, just process of elimination, but when the ID said Noah, I was shocked. Then I thought it was like that thing where Ronan from the future wrote a note on the rock for Ronan from the past and this was going to be Noah’s future but nope, he was a ghost. I did think the ending where they dug up his bones and reburied them on the ley line was funny in a cute endearing way, especially with how Noah immediately started patting Blue’s hair. 

I am going to take this moment to pour one out for my homie Adam, that boy is too pure and kind for this world and he just receives the worst end of the stick possible. First, his dad is absolutely awful, he is a scholarship kid at a rich private school which probably feels horrible, and then he likes Blue and he doesn’t even know he’s going to get his heart broken in the future because Gansey is obviously Blue’s true love. I do hope Adam is able to have a happy ending at the end of the series because that’s what he deserves, life keeps beating him up for no reason. Justice for my man Adam. 

I think the thing I’m most excited to see is how the whole Blue and Gansey relationship is going to pan out, especially since she’s supposed to kill him, which sounds morbid but I know they’re going to find a loophole to keep him alive somehow and I just want to see what it is. Watch me be wrong and he just straight up dies, the end. Anyways, the moral of the story here is that you should trust your friend when they recommend a book because you’re going to like it.

[crimeronan]

Ok so I’m into the dreamer trilogy and haven’t read the Raven cycle...what is Declan’s characterisation/journey there?

THIS MIGHT BE THE BEST ASK I’VE EVER RECEIVED. IMAGINE I’M STANDING WITH MY ARMS SPREAD USING DIFFERENT VOICES AND HAND GESTURES TO REENACT THIS STORY FOR A RESENTFUL CAPTIVE AUDIENCE

also declan’s TRC storyline is like. equal parts horribly fucking sad and unbelievably fucking hilarious so. i will try to strike a Balance

FIRST OFF.  there is exactly one (1) declan POV chapter in the entire series. it happens toward the end of the last book. up until then, everything we know about him comes from the observations and narration of others.

he is also a very minor character.  his importance grows throughout the series, but almost all of his actions happen offscreen.  it’s not until the last book that we know exactly how much he’s been dealing with the whole time.

when he’s introduced in the first book, he appears as a plot device.  here is a two-dimensional horrible controlling hardass who doesn’t give a shit about anything but his future political career.  look at his fake, smug fucking grin.  how did someone like ronan end up with a brother like him??  doesn’t matter.  it’s a convenient excuse for ronan to live with his best friend in a drafty warehouse, which means more room for YA hijinks!

declan’s introduction scene is Embroiled in Capital-D Douchebaggery. according to the narration (from gansey and adam), he loves to fuck women and then never call them back, cozy up to powerful people, and bitch about how ronan’s ruining his life by being sad about their dead parents.  SOME people can just get over their dead parents, ronan!

this intro scene is also Extremely Funny i 100% recommend reading it even if u don’t read the actual series.  ronan makes a nasty comment, declan goes “why are you the way that you are” and tries to salvage his date, gansey utters the phrase “man whore”

then later that night things go like. actually bad.

declan shows up at the same pizza place where ronan is with his friends.  this scene is gansey pov.  gansey runs out to the parking lot to find the two of them Very Literally Trying To Kill Each Other.  you don’t see that violence in cdth - there’s only the TINIEST shadow of it when declan confronts ronan over matthew - so i Cannot Express Enough that someone is going to end up hospitalized at BEST. ronan’s already slammed declan’s head on the car, declan’s already grabbed ronan and beaten the shit out of his face, like.

you do not get good old-fashioned Declan Lynch At His Actual Worst in cdth. u might be thinking, THAT guy???? doing THIS????

oh yeah. things are real bad between declan and ronan.

after gansey breaks up the fight (and gets punched in the face for his trouble, albeit accidentally), declan tells ronan that their dad would be fucking ashamed to see him now & that he’s washing his hands of it & basically if ronan wants to go off and fucking die, he can.

this is like. just a couple months after the magical suicide attempt referenced in cdth

in the aftermath of that scene it becomes clear that ronan absolutely unequivocally 100% will kill himself if he has to live with declan. hence. why he’s living with gansey instead.  gansey spends that whole night petrified that the declan altercation will lead to another attempt, and for Good Reason

so like, that’s how we first meet declan. he’s an uncaring wannabe corporate asshole who does not give a fuck and who only exists to exacerbate ronan’s mental health issues.

but then the opening of book 2 gets real interesting.

book 2 is where we start learning more about the lynch family.  we learn that ronan’s father was a dreamer who sold his creations on the black market, we learn that that’s why he was murdered. we learn that ronan’s a dreamer too. we learn that there are very powerful people looking for the greywaren, an artifact that takes objects from dreams. those powerful people just don’t realize it’s a person, yet.

so here’s the assassin who killed niall lynch.

he goes to declan’s dorm.

with everything we know about declan, the kid should be completely unprepared.  he can box, but the assassin knows that, so there’s no real advantage.  he’s alone, and he doesn’t have an escape route.

declan pulls out a gun.

this is an unexpected turn of events.

unfortunately he ends up getting beaten half to death with the butt of said gun, because he loses the ensuing physical struggle for the weapon.  the assassin is like, i need the greywaren.  declan is like, i know it exists but i don’t know what it is.  i’ll find it for you.  i’ll get it to you.  then you’ll leave me the fuck alone

now with everything we know of declan at this point - his attitude toward ronan, his general demeanor, and this new knowledge that he knew about the black market - there’s one obvious question.

will declan sell ronan out if he finds out about the dreaming.

and like, okay. their relationship is antagonistic in cdth but it is NOT what it is in trc. believe me when i tell you that at that point, when you’re reading, you can pretty reasonably go, “oh, god.  oh god.  oh god please no one ever tell declan what the greywaren is.  oh god.”

declan has some other interactions with ronan and the gang throughout the book, mostly where he’s just a hardass who tells ronan to stop causing trouble.  adam’s the only one who notices that declan is scared.  like bone-deep shaking to the core petrified.  about Something.

probably getting beaten to within an inch of his life by the man who murdered his father.  that’s the reasonable reader conclusion.

so imagine how everything changes when you find out that declan already knows.  that declan’s known about ronan’s dreaming for longer than ronan has.  that declan knew exactly what and who the greywaren was, and he lied to a man who was ready to torture him for information, and he got away with it.

suddenly a lot of things recontextualize.

“keep your head down and stop making trouble”? people are gonna NOTICE your magic bullshit, ronan, we do not have time for this!

“stop hanging with that loser druggie friend of yours”? you mean the loser druggie friend who sells on the magic black market and doesn’t care about protecting himself or anyone else?

“i got super weird for no reason about ronan sleeping close to adam”? i don’t have fucking TIME to be homophobic i’m busy with your POTENTIAL TO MANIFEST NIGHT TERRORS IN FRONT OF WITNESSES IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

“i’ll find out what the greywaren is and bring it to you”? i’ll die. i’m making a bargain to die. i’m never giving you the greywaren and i know you’re going to kill me about it and that’s fine as long as my brothers are safe

ronan doesn’t know that he dreamed matthew.  declan knows.  he’s known the whole time.  declan tells ronan in book 3.  and then things recontextualize even further, because ronan’s death is also matthew’s, and matthew IS close to declan in trc.

but declan never tells the goddamn truth unless it’s his last option.  he doesn’t tell ronan that he knows about the dreaming and he doesn’t tell ronan what specifically wants to hurt him and the lack of communication fucking destroys both of them.

in the last book, ronan realizes declan loves him.

more than that, he realizes declan’s loved him the whole time.

this is when declan finally tells the truth.  things are getting bad, plot-wise, and declan is scared, so he comes clean.  he tells ronan that niall specifically tasked declan with protecting ronan from the market.  he begs ronan to run from the danger.  “let’s pour gasoline on everything dad left and start over.”

this is also when ronan realizes that declan’s childhood was very different from ronan’s own.  and that niall and aurora lynch were not the same people to declan that they were to ronan.  and that their father’s decisions are what’s driven the wedge between him and declan all this time

(he’s still struggling with the cognitive dissonance of this in cdth. i don’t think he knows how to adjust his perception of declan to fit this new information.)

aaaaand the final scene with declan makes me cry every time i read it so instead of summarizing, here’s the important part:

Ronan delivered a sharp tap to the object, and a small cloud of fiery orbs sprayed up with a sparkling hiss.

“Jesus, Ronan!” Declan jerked his chin away.

“Please. Did you think I’d blow your face off?”

He demonstrated it again, that quick tap, that burst of brilliant orbs. He tipped it into Declan’s hand, and before Declan could say anything, jabbed it to activate it once more.

Orbs gasped up into the air. For a moment, he saw how his brother was caught inside them, watching them soar furiously around his face, each gold sun firing gold and white, and when he saw the spacious longing in Declan’s face, he realized how much Declan had missed by growing up neither dreamer nor dreamt. This had never been his home. The Lynches had never tried to make it Declan’s home.

“Declan?” Ronan asked.

Declan’s face cleared. “This is the most useful thing you’ve ever dreamt. You should name it.”

“I have. ORBMASTER. All caps.”

“Technically you’re the orbmaster though, right? And that’s just an orb.”

“Anyone who holds it becomes an ORBMASTER. You’re an ORBMASTER right now. There, keep it, put it in your pocket. D.C. ORBMASTER.”

Declan reached out and scuffed Ronan’s shaved head. “You’re such a little asshole.”

The last time they’d stood on this roof together, their parents had both been alive, and the cattle in these fields had been slowly grazing, and the world had been a smaller place. That time was gone, but for once, it was all right.

The brothers both looked back over the place that had made them, and then they climbed down from the roof together.

[happyandticklish]

Idk if you’ve already done this, but do u have any headcanons about the gangsey group and if they’re sensitive and such, and if so where? Love ur blog xx

Aw, thank you! <3 I would love to write some headcannons! I believe I’ve done a couple for Gansey before right here.

The Gangsey:

-Gansey:

. I figured I’d start here because his name is right there in the title. 

. Okay, so Gansey is one of those people who’s deathly ticklish but doesn’t seem like it at first. He’s really good at hiding/suppressing it, so most people just assume he’s not (his friends know the truth of course). 

. His worst spots are his neck, knees, and stomach. His laugh starts off as this startled huffy chuckle, before slowly turning into this combination of wild, crazed laughter that makes everyone around him melt. 

. Loves being tickled because of this physical closeness of it all. My boy is hella touch-starved, and doesn’t know how to handle any kind of attention. Teases will destroy him because he just doesn’t know how to respond to it and will turn into this blushing, stammering mess. 

. More of a lee than a ler, except when it comes to Ronan because the latter is a little shit and needs to be put in his place. He’ll also tickle Blue on occasion, but the consequences are scary so he tends to refrain. 

-Adam:

. Not as ticklish as most people would assume, but he has a couple spots that get him going. 

. His ribs and knees are death spots, and if you do any combination of the two he is not held responsible for his actions. 

. Didn’t really know how to handle being tickled at first. Gansey ended up poking him in the side once jokingly and he nearly jumped out of his skin. Gansey of course immediately apologized and Adam assured him it was fine about a million time, his face burning all the while. 

. Tickling made him feel weak at first, as it was just one more way that he was out of control. After a while though, he begins to feel comfortable enough for soft gentle tickles and eventually more intense stuff, though he still can’t do too much at a time. 

. Doesn’t mind tickling on the whole. He doesn’t hate it, but it can get super unbearable at times and the others have to be careful not to push boundaries with him. 

. As a ler he is fucking terrifying. 

. He knows everyone’s spots because he’s eerily good at observing others, as well as whatever method flusters them most. His main victim is Ronan, though he’ll wreck the others on occasion if they need it, even Blue though he’s gotten kicked multiple times. 

. Doesn’t actually tickle Gansey that much, even though he knows the other likes it. There’s something strangely nerve-wracking about the concept of wrecking Perfect Gansey. He’ll risk it on occasion, however, and each time the sight of Gansey genuinely laughing and pleading makes him have a near heart attack. 

-Ronan:

. One of the few of them that doesn’t actually deny being ticklish or the fact that he enjoys it. Ronan’s creed is honesty and he holds to it even in situations like these. He doesn’t openly admit it, but he won’t contradict anyone if they say something. 

. The small of his back is weirdly sensitive and Adam teases him with it all the time. Tracing swirling shapes with his nails over the spot will make him melt and he’ll let out these pure giggles that Adam is addicted to. 

. Other than that, his thighs, feet, and underarms are his worst. Adam loves to sneak up behind him and taser him, usually leading to the other choking on a repressed snort before glaring at the other. His thighs being sensitive can become difficult in more intimate circumstances, though sometimes Adam will take advantage of this and just pepper kisses over his thighs until he’s a flushed, writhing mess of laughter. 

. The tickle monster to boot. Has no sense of self-preservation and will destroy everyone regardless of consequences. Pins Gansey down all the time and goes to town on his stomach and sides. He has this look he’ll get right beforehand and Gansey’s eyes will widen as he starts scrambling backwards and protesting, “No, wait, hold, Ronan-” 

. Often will just straight up pick up Noah and dig into his ribs and stomach, leaving the other a squirming, giggling mess instantly. 

. Adam and him hold constant tickle fights, and if Ronan ever gets the upper hand, hoo boy... He loves to tease him with these soft, gentle tickles that drive Adam absolutely insane, all the while commenting on how beautiful he looks like this (Adam insists he hates it, but Ronan knows the truth). 

-Noah:

. Possibly the most ticklish person on earth, god help this boy. 

. Has this boisterous laugh that’s such a change from his normally drawn-back personality, and for a moment they’re able to see the Noah from before, high energy and full of joy. 

. Literally ticklish everywhere, but his worst spot would have to be his hips. Scratching your nails lightly over the spot is unfair and he cannot handle it for the life of him. But if you dig your thumbs into the dip of the bone and press in, he’ll lose his shit, shrieking and arching back against whatever surface he’s on, desperately trying to get your hands away. 

. Loves tickling, being tickled, tickling others, just everything about it. Will openly admit to people that he loves it and and it always flusters the others how easily he can just say it. Asks for tickles often, though he does have to be restrained often as he is just too sensitive to hold still. 

. A strange phenomenon they discovered is that his ghostly qualities actually make him less ticklish than he was in life, but if Blue’s in the room than it’s amplified. So if any of them ever needs to wreck them they make sure she’s in the room. And if she’s the one tickling him? God have mercy on his soul. 

. Alternatively, if his body is less corporeal it makes his fingers feel like cold feathers against your skin and tickles like a motherfucker. Ronan, out of curiosity, had him try on himself once and it was almost scary how ticklish that simple touch was. 

. A super playful ler, he’s constantly poking his friend’s sides and scribbling fingers over the backs of their necks on a near daily basis. He just loves seeing his friends smiling and happy (have I mentioned that I love him???).

-Blue:

. Her greatest accomplishment has been convincing everyone in her life that she’s not ticklish and that all breaks down when she meets the Raven Boys. 

. Adam is the first to discover it when they’re dating, but was too shy at the time to initiate anything. Gansey is the second to figure it out, and is much bolder in his further investigations. As they all quickly discover however, Blue is dangerous when tickled and you will get obtain physical harm if you attempt it.

. Generally speaking, she doesn’t like tickling all that much, though she’ll tolerate it from a Gansey on occasion. 

. Has an adorable little giggle that she is super embarrassed of and Gansey loves. Her worst spots are her hips, ribs, and sides. Basically, her entire upper torso. She’ll snort if you tweak her sides suddenly, as all members of the Gangsey have confirmed by this point. 

. A tiny but vicious ler. No mercy from this munchkin. She takes constant advantage of Gansey’s sensitivity, and there’s rarely a peaceful moment between the two ever since she found out about it. Most of their make-out sessions (post the Raven King, of course) are filled with at least a giggle or two because Blue cannot keep her hands to herself—but then again, who could when their boyfriend has such cute reactions?

. Discovered Adam was ticklish also while they were dating and loved to tease him about it. Once Adam and Ronan began dating, she made sure to pass this information on. 

. Noah is one of the few people that she’ll actually get into tickle fights with, as there’s something so addicting about the comfort of his presence and his infectious smiles. Loves to grab him from behind and ruin him with tickly hugs, and will even let him tickle her back on occasion. 

. Her and Ronan have a truce—Blue doesn’t tickle him, he doesn’t tickle her. But if one of them ever does build up the confidence and initiates something, it is war. Adam still gets shivers thinking about their last tickle fight. 

I hope you enjoyed these! Thank you so much for the ask! :)

[somniabundant]

For the character thing: Skov :)

Duuuuuuuuude. I’m about to go off

Sexuality headcanon: okay I think that Skov is pan. He just has chill, carefree vibes and I feel like while Proko doesn’t want to label his attraction in a way that he picks something ambiguous, Skov doesn’t want to label his attraction in a way that he’s like ‘everything! Everyone! I am open to possibilities and I do not care what you identify as as long as you are hot!’ And I love that for him.

Gender headcanon: listen. Listen. My guy is ftm trans and I will fight you in an alleyway if you tell me I am wrong. I will stand by this until the day I die I swtg he is trans and it’s beautiful and his boys support him and it’s wonderful and I’m so proud of him (the fact that typing that all out is making me emotional...) Anyway in another timeline I was Skov and therefore this is true, thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

Just kidding, I’m not done yet. Skov is a trans dude, but he’s also pretty chill and very secure in his identity. He knows who he is and really found himself after he joined the pack and their support means a lot to him. Because of this, he’s able to experiment with his style and wear eyeliner n shit and sometimes borrows Proko’s skirts and drives his expensive-af car in an electric blue miniskirt with fishnets like the king he is and I love that for him. He’s out here destroying gender norms, just a dude being hot and wearing a skirt and still being a dude and he’s an icon and I love him. I could keep going for a while, but let’s move on...

A ship I have with said character: ngl I stole this from a thread between @prokopenkokavinsky and @non-mortem-somni-fratrem they showed me the possibilities and I got hooked. Gansey/Skov. Idk why the idea of this is so appealing to me, like before I was just here for shipping him with Swan and K but now I’m like dang him and Gansey, that’s the kind of out of the box thinking I wanna see. Can you imagine?? Gansey just has no idea how to deal with him and he’s blushing all the time because his boyfriend is so hot and confident and he /wishes/ that was him, but at the same time Skov brings it out in him and Gansey is more adventurous when they’re together and it’s wonderful :))

A BROTP I have with said character: okay so like. Totally ship Swan/Skov in a non platonic way, but I totally see them having an epic bromance as well?? Like they just know each other so well and they do SPORTS together and they got that jock bonding going on for them and they’re so bro together the rest of the back just rolls their eyes at how dumb they are. But then at the same time they’re totally in love more than bros (romantic or somewhere that transcends labels) and they cuddle every night and are like absolute soulmates and it’s beautiful.

A NOTP I have with said character: hmmm. I actually had a lot of trouble coming up with one because I feel like he works with everyone, but I’m going to have to go with Blue/Skov. I feel like maybe they hooked up once and it was fine like they had fun, but then afterwards they mutually decides to never do that again because it was kinda weird and they’re still chill with each other, but they don’t mess around or anything, just platonic pals.

A random headcanon: there are so many... I legit don’t know where to start... okay okay a couple days ago @prokopenkokavinsky and @townpunk and I were just going off on a thread about him so I’m just going to list some from there and then a couple other random ones. First off, he has electric blue hair, I’ll fight you on that one too. Also, he def has a sugar addiction like blue sour patch and monster and just candy and energy drinks galore, he’s got that gamer aesthetic but he spends most of his time playing soccer instead of video games, though he and Swan do play Xbox together sometimes. Ngl I’m not sure where this one came from but I feel like he smokes weed?? Don’t ask me more about this I’ve said it before but I know nothing about drugs I literally don’t leave the house I’ve never been to an actual party all of the stuff I write is completely imagined so like I have nothing else to say about this, but he smokes weed and he also lets himself go wild in every way at K’s substance parties and the regular ones. Another one from the thread: he has ADHD and has a bunch of stim toys and the boys carry some around with them at all times to make sure he always has something to keep himself occupied with. One that I just randomly decided on is that he plays electric guitar and like he’s not that good at it, but he likes it cuz it’s loud and he just has fun messing around and half-assing songs and stuff. Also, this is just my thought, but his actual name is Jacek, but in America aka at Aglionby he goes by Blake. Okay I feel like I should cut myself off before I just keep talking forever but yeah those are a couple...

General opinion over said character: I mean I think you already get the gist... but yeah, he’s an icon and I love him and I want us to meld and become the same person, I very much look up to him XD

[astudyinfreewill]

dear adambra, can u spare a chainsaw & adam bonding time with a pinch (heh) of ronan pining for this trying times 😔👊

vila!!! 💕sorry it took me so long but i finally got around to this. i hope you like it! 😚 (and anon – i hope you don’t mind that i joined these two prompts!! 💞)

this and more i sat divining

1.3k, fluff, (sort-of-mutual) pining, pre-relationship (takes place before trk)

read on ao3

The thing of it was, Ronan thought glumly, that Chainsaw was a filthy little traitor.

It was hard enough to stop himself from spilling all of his secrets in front of Parrish; he didn’t need his psychopomp – one of his own secrets! – to expose him like this.

Ronan had spent a long time trying to hide the truth of his feelings from himself. He had done this by keeping them mired in self-loathing and buried under self-destructiveness. But something had changed over the summer.

Why do you hate yourself?

I don’t.

And he didn’t, not anymore. Not much, anyway. There were good days and bad days; but the important thing was that once that wall had crumbled – once Ronan had started loving himself again – he’d cautiously dared to reach out to the rest of his feelings, including the ones he felt for a certain over-tired, stubborn, car-fixing, uncanny, beautiful-handed magician.

The problem was that once he’d started – once he’d thrown open the floodgates – he’d been unable to stop feeling those feelings. Ronan now lived in fear that one word too much would give him away, reveal his innermost desires, gushing out of him like a volcanic eruption. Adam probably knew, anyway. He was clever like that. Ronan thought he knew, at least – there was something different, weighted, in the looks he sometimes cast Ronan’s way – but if he did, he hadn’t said anything about it, whether to acknowledge Ronan’s feelings or reject them.

Ronan could tell him. But he didn’t know what it would do to their friendship. And it turned out, now that he was no longer consumed with jealousy over Gansey or trying hard to choke down his own shameful, fearful feelings, he quite enjoyed being Adam’s friend. He didn’t want to ruin it all on a chance. So he kept quiet; he hoped and waited and watched (literally – he looked at Adam quite a bit, more than before, probably more than was wise).

Which would be far, far easier to do without a certain feathered traitor.

Because as Ronan’s luck would have it, Chainsaw fucking loved Adam Parrish.

Right now, for instance, she was perched on Adam’s shoulder with a startling gentleness, one she didn’t even display for her own creator, if Ronan’s constantly scratched shoulders were anything to go by. Well. He supposed wearing tank tops didn’t help, but still. You could just see Chainsaw holding her body primly so she wouldn’t weigh down Adam too much. Damned ass-kissing bird.

Right now, she was staring adoringly at Adam as he tried to eat a truly pathetically thin peanut butter sandwich without jostling her too much. Ronan could tell because he was also staring from across the cramped St. Agnes attic (no, not adoringly, fuck you very much).

…Okay, maybe a little adoringly.

Chainsaw hopped down from Adam’s shoulder to land on his forearm. She cocked her head imploringly, black eyes fixed on the sandwich. “Kreker?” she asked shamelessly. Ronan could have smacked her - or himself. He hadn’t spent hours trying to teach her to speak just so she could try and steal Parrish’s sad excuse for a dinner.

“No, not a cracker,” Adam replied, seriously, as if he was holding a conversation with an actual person. He paused for a moment, as if he was looking for a term that a corvid could replicate more easily than peanut butter sandwich.

“Snack,” he landed on eventually, waving the sandwich a little as Chainsaw followed it avidly. “It’s a snack.”

Chainsaw flapped her wings once, then cocked her head to the opposite side. “Snack,” she barked.

Well, Ronan thought. I’ll be fucked.

“Clever girl!” Adam praised, kind of in the same tone he used whenever Gansey demonstrated that he’d retained a fact about car engines. He tore off a corner of his sandwich – with some difficulty, since he still had a very hefty raven pinning his arm down – and offered it to Chainsaw, who gobbled it up greedily.

“Hey, shitbird! That’s not yours. Leave Parrish’s sandwich alone,” Ronan called out across the room. Leave Parrish alone, he wanted to add. Stop acting like all you want is to be near him. This was a dangerous game to play. Adam knew Chainsaw was dreamt. He knew about how the night horrors, his deadlier-looking dream creatures, only ever wanted what Ronan wanted. He knew Ronan looked at him more than a friend should. He was observant, and he was smart. It was only a matter of time before he connected the dots. If he hasn’t already, Ronan thought with some unease, glaring at Chainsaw as he nervously bit on the leather bands at his wrist. Seriously, just stop.

Chainsaw blatantly ignored him.

“It’s alright,” Adam said, looking back at Chainsaw. Which meant he had been looking at Ronan just now. Possibly. Maybe. “I don’t mind,” he added, tearing off another piece of bread and feeding it to the raven. There was a small smile playing about his lips, amused and almost fond – like he was enjoying Chainsaw’s proximity and attention, even if it was coming at the expense of his food.

Chainsaw chirped happily – since when did ravens chirp, anyway?! – and flapped herself back up to Adam’s shoulder, hopping closer to his head this time. Most people would be a little nervous having a huge-ass bird with an extremely sharp beak that close to their face, but Adam only held himself still, waiting, his head tilted a little to the side. Chainsaw took that opportunity to nestle into the crook of his neck and puff up contentedly.

Oh my God, are you fucking kidding me, Ronan thought furiously. He thought he could feel a blush creeping up his own neck.

He wanted badly to call Chainsaw back – assuming she would even obey – but he couldn’t bring himself to do it when Adam looked so genuinely pleased, like any and all affectionate physical contact was surprising and delightful.

“Atom.”

There was a moment of silence in the room.

“Did she just say my name?”, Adam asked.

“Not sure,” Ronan lied, studiously staring at the raven  – glaring at the raven – and not Adam.

“Yeah, she did. She said ‘Adam’.”

Ronan made an ‘eh’ face. “I think it was more like ‘atom’.”

Adam shot him an unimpressed look. “I doubt your raven is interested in molecular science.” He carefully put down his sandwich and reached up to gently pet Chainsaw, using one long index finger to stroke down the soft feathers around her beak. “Even though she is very clever. Good girl!”

“Atom!” Chainsaw crowed again. The word wasn’t any clearer but the way she rubbed her head into Adam’s jaw made the meaning very apparent.

Adam looked at Ronan with a little triumphant smirk. Ronan rolled his eyes.

“Whatever, Parrish. Here, you little bastard. Let Parrish finish his food.”

Chainsaw flapped her wings in discontent. “Atom snack?” she asked balefully.

“No,” Ronan said firmly. “Enough ‘snack’ for you.”

Even as he was still speaking, Adam replied, to Chainsaw, “Yes, Adam is gonna eat a snack. Clever girl. Good bird. Are you gonna let me finish it?”

Chainsaw barked once at him, but not unkindly, before flying the short distance over to Ronan’s outstretched arm.

Ronan glared at her for a few moments, then turned his glare on Adam.

“You’re undermining my parenting,” he accused.

“Well she has to learn manners somewhere,” Adam replied around a mouthful of sandwich.

“Hilarious,” Ronan muttered, stroking Chainsaw’s head, absently tracing the same path Adam’s finger had. She tucked her head in contentedly, as if allowing him to pet her was a conciliatory gesture on her part. She was still staring at Adam as he wolfed down the sandwich.

Well, fuck. This was going to be a problem.

[dustofsouls]

Soooo another post about outer banks because I'm definetly not finished bitching about it ok (even though it's like three in the morning and I could really use the sleep).

Where do we start? Well for starters the Plot, nothing new, the ol' classic dangerous treasure hunt that would probably kill most of actual 16y olds but heeeey I loved the raven cycle so you now what? I don't care about this aspect, it had a very strong buildup until like what the last 2\3 episodes (they felt more like a huge single episode in my opinion) the bits were all there, and while I understand that resolving everything in the first season would've been quite problematic for building suspense for the, I hope, second one I really think they could've pulled something better out of those last ten minutes (I was ready to bloody murder John B and Sarah) but overall it's a good first season.

Now's the time for the characters (I adopted them all already, someone wants to coparent?) :

John B: little idealistical angel who's trying to be a grownup without anyone but himself cause I just realized, while the others had some kind of family, yes even JJ's father who i would personally beat the shit out of, poor John was literally ALONE for three months at the start of the season so he had also fucking school to survive goddammit. He still fits the classic hero trope while being a bit (being generous here) more dysfunctional but that's what his friends are for (remember the breakdowns because OH I DO)

Kie: she's precious and will probably end the patriarchy by noon so she can hang out with the rest of the pouges, so yeah even though it's not all that apparent, she finds solutions to problems not solvable by normal means (lighting the screen on fire my god) and is in a headbutting competition with JJ apparently (girl you got my never-ending respect cause I wouldn't do that), I wish the writers would've brought more nuances to her character, like they did for her male counterparts (I WANT WELL ROUNDED CHARACTERS FFS) but she has room to show us that in season two, so I'll wait for more judgement.

Pope: man I feel you for the college admission, almost got reported for presiding a manifestation against neo fascists that could've costed me my admission to med school, so yeah If you don't get that scholarship I swear I will find the way to pay for it by season two. Jokes aside, he's the plotter and the one who always needs to feel in control, boy do I know the feeling, but little by little we see him change and become a different person by ep 9, reprocessing his priorities and feeling like shit for the missed opportunities, like any 16 yrs old would in his shoes, and while the thing with kie felt a bit forced I still feel like he had a good growth arc and I hope to see more.

JJ: IF SOMEONE EVEN DARES TO TOUCH A HAIR OF HIS I SWEAR I WILL KNOW ABOUT IT AND YOU WILL SUFFER. So, now that you know how to behave let's talk about this sinnamon roll who's too sweet to actually kill someone but will still fuck you up or steal your money if you try to hurt him or his friends. At first i hated the character cause I felt like he was the classic dumb friend who fucks shit up and has the emotional depth of a puddle but OH MY GOD I WAS WRONG, this boy suffered a lot, didn't show it cause he didn't want his friends(who am I kidding they are his family) preoccupied, so when the tub scene arrived I cried, like A Lot, the only thing I thought pope would've interacted sooner than kie due to previous lines and events between the two (I ship them okay) he made me laugh, cry and amaze at how he puts all of himself for his friends, even prepared to go to jail, so yeah 10/10 I need to protect him and tell him that all is going to be all right

Special mentions: the murder granny sent me flying, while she's probably horrible hey she got mad respect for going around blind with a shotgun and an iron thing? (I don't remember the naaaame fuck) and hacking doors to pieces like she's the fucking terminator.

And last but not least the ships (only the non canons because I do not talk about the shit show that went on in the last ep) cause oh boy do we have a lot of material:

Jpog (it's a dumb joke about the fact that JJ has chemistry with all the pouges and it's similar to jpeg): a poly ship, while yeah technically they're only friends/found family we can't deny that platonic or not they could all work together and y'all know it (ep 1 and they look like they like all together at lest for a year)

JJ/Pope (I need full names for christs sake, what do they think we work with?): what can I say they have chemistry (not just sexually speaking ok) they care a fuck ton about each other and there was some homoerotic subtext, but that was to be expected no? Also it could power so of the tropes that break my heart into a million pieces and that's exactly what I need right know.

Sarah/kie: c'mon, y'all telling me that when kye got all fussed up about JB and Sarah and started with a I know exactly what you will go through doesn't smell of past relationship?

A side note that I already said I would talk about: IT SCREAMS RAVEN BOYS IN MY FUCKING Guts, ok listen to me apart from the plot (that's already been used countless of times), JB on par with gansey, kye as blue, Pope as Adam and JJ as Ronan (I know abusive household screams parish but the rest? Oh god if it's not ronan) and also Sarah as Henry (initial distrust between her and kie but becomes friends in little time) the almost death like twice I mean it had some of those vibes (yes I'm waiting for that goddamn adaptation into TV show like there's no tomorrow so I'll depressurize also here which is marginally related)

[kazbrekkerrs-remade]

ekrjhak i lov eu and to further enable you: ur thoughts on blue, gansey, ronan and adam and henry? and their group dynamic????? 👀👀👀

Wow this took me ages sorry dfjfhd. Claire... u enable me too much these are my onions <3. Under a cut because I went. overboard :3. I’m probably going to have to shorten this I don’t know if tumblr will even let me post something this long dkshjfhg. (Also I wrote half of this in word so if there’s proper capitalization in places that’s why, don’t let it cloud my image as a cool, laid-back bitch that doesn’t care for grammar.)

i’m starting individually then moving onto group dynamics heh

blue i like blue but it did take a bit of growing on me djjdjhjss. i like her a lot bc i relate to her a lot, but i do think there was a lot of room for improvement. she said she wanted to see the world and make it better but how exactly.. is that a roadtrip? i mean i guess it’s a start in a way, but i think it would’ve been much better if we saw her join an activist organization.. volunteer for a non-profit or something. Also her misguided feminism ah! But I can be a bit more lenient with that bc she was still very young when the series ended so. Also she was revealed to be part tree and then like. Nothing substantial came of it? idk

Ganseyboy! I have to be honest my.. fave uwu. There is a Lot of room for improvement  but I just. Optimist!! insecurities :( also he KNEW he was gonna d*e I’m. sad. Anyway like I said a lot of room for improvement as in like.. not everything is about you king <3 also he needs more… idk I don’t wanna say empathy bc i think that’s something different but like. He needs to realise that what he thinks is best isn’t gonna be the way everyone deals with something, if that makes sense? Like basically the “how do you know what’s good for me?” “THAT’S MY OPINIOOONNNNN!!” vine. THAT SAID I love him so much.. he held up the mouse to his face! And smiled!! mon dieu.. when he made bird jokes to make adam laugh… “am I in your dreams?” AH! In a way, blue and gansey are sons of the same gun: I love them both but there could be more done with them tbh. But I have a lot of fun with Fansey, a.k.a: fatima gansey. Kind of like fanon gansey except no one’s opinion matters besides mine <3 (basically it’s  the *aggressively kicks off shoes* “yee haw”, parts of gansey, and then me giving him the arc he deserves) maybe we could sum it up to “ma’am that’s my emotional support projection character” but like. That’s my business.

ADAM! Previous endorsements include: “might fuck around and become an adam parrish stan account.” “I’ve only had adam for a day and a half but if anything happened to him I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.” “I go :D whenever I see it’s an adam chapter” (these are more or less verbatim from my previous posts.) that said, I don’t have many fully formed thoughts because I uhhh don’t remember the books that well and also I repress the adam chapters bc they hit too close oops :). tbh I don’t have many complaints at all heh. That’s not to say he doesn’t have flaws but a) I will excuse them because he’s justified, adam does anything problematique and I’m like he can have a little murder. As a treat. and b) I genuinely loved his arc so. No complaints for real!! Also.. adam realising he is capable of loving and being loved…. *kermit meme* I have nearly teared up while writing this. :( one more half baked thought: trc having being “known” as a mark of being loved but then adam being like “i am unknowable” and then there was a moment of him with ronan like “how foolish of him to think he was unknowable”.... *kermit hearts meme intensifies*

RONAN O CLOCK to be honest. I. don’t have any meta or complaints I just love him. I love him a LOT okay.. very much. Big love. Sharp edges tough guy but he names his dream animals chainsaw and gasoline and has a pooping blanket for chainsaw… I can’t remember the quote but that but in cdth where he was like the point is dreamer or not if people are going to get hurt I’m going to stop it… Much to think about. HIS GROWTH. IN THE DREAM THIEVES wow can you believe I read him in TRB and was like ‘I don’t care for him’ ddhfjdhf and then in the dream thieves I’m like.. I have rescinded all previous callouts of ronan lynch. Oops. HE LOVES HIS FRIENDS SO MUCH oh my gosh. Ronan just… he has so much range for feeling!! he feels so much!!! I love that about him so much omg

Henry. Ah. This is where we get kind of controversial jdhjdfh I’m sorry but. I’m going to be honest I like him well enough as a character but I don’t care for him much I’m sorry I just. It’s because he was introduced so late. And only became an important character towards like.. the last half of TRK? I mean, I’d have loved him if he was introduced earlier, hell at least have him come into play in BLLB. The issues I have with him isn’t because of anything about him as a character though, I think it’s all about the way he was handled. I think because he came in so late, there just wasn’t enough time to do justice to the depth that he had, or give him an arc or anything, or enough time to connect with him. Also a part of me feels like he was in there just to kind of tie up Blue and Gansey’s stories and give them something to do after the end of TRK (which sucks because like… making your only canon POC being primarily to develop/give your white characters storylines… (blue isn’t white in my mind but like she was written “colorblind” and when that happens it usually means the author viewed them as white at least in the beginning jhfhgfj. but i don’t remember it too well so if i’m wrong lmk please!)). But probably my biggest problem is: I couldn’t help get the vibe that MS was facing criticism for the lack of diversity and so decided to bring in an asian character. Like, I feel that way bc he came in so late, and because of that he was so half-baked I’m.. gah. GAH. That’s unfair maybe henry is a cool dude hdhfg but I just can’t warm up to him because of this :/

Group dynamics!! With the gangsey I have to *sobs* I love them so much I’m.. what a strange constellation they all were <3

blue and ronan!! BROnan amirite… omg. That moment when blue nearly slips and ronan immediately catches n holds on to her… she would have to remember that :( sons of the same gun. Best friends!

Blue and adam.. gah. As friends it really goes hard. Get you someone who will stab you if you fall too deep into the nether-realm <3 but uhh. As dates. YIKES. Blue really just. Kissed noah while dating him. And didn’t even think for a second “I have a bf” :( not very cool of her to tell gansey about the kiss curse but not telling adam which I mean, I know that happened to show that they weren’t a good match but. Still yikes. Blue was lowkey cheating on adam the whole time during tdt huh :( also bro I am number one stan of the “I wish you could be kissed jane” scene but it happened literally RIGHT AFTER she broke up with adam I’m. relax <3. I wish that was kind of addressed but meh, overall it doesn’t bother me too much. I think they’re great friends :)

Ronan and adam… I can’t talk about it too much. I really can’t!! I really really can’t! the fact that adam goes to gansey like what is love and gansey is like she makes me quiet… and then adam is like “he was so still inside”.. :( omg the bit during trb when ronan is going on a swearing tirade and adam is like “they didn’t start making the civic until ‘73 <3” what a JACKASS I love him. Second secret!! --okay! Wait I have to say: while this one is not really a big deal compared to all their other moments, my favourite quote is “ and he realised that while he’d been looking at ronan, ronan had been looking at him” :uwu face:

Blue and gansey: :3 :33333 maybe it’s the muslim but I really like the tragedy of not being able to kiss :( I would beg just one off you! Under all this! Maybe I’m crying because of the inherent romantic-ness of the night sky with all its stars and late night drives :( wow I love them. Also i know most people find it annoying but I personally love the “I’m never gonna fall for this person” *fast forward to getting to know each other* “ahahah. :) I have rescinded all callouts of ____. she is now my girlfriend (long story)” (not to be confused with enemies to lovers <3 (not to be confused with enemies to friends to lovers <3)) also they can kiss now thank you very much.

Okay I will just preface this with: gansey’s relationships with both ronan and adam have the “how do you know what’s good for me” element to them so I don’t have to address it later hdfgjlfj but bro they love each other so much I’m… “dream me the world… something new for ever night” you’re leaving for TWO DAYS.. gansey gave up monmouth omg what became of that I really forgot khffhk did he get it back. I don’t even need to elaborate on ronan, “ronan would do anything for gansey” :(

ADAM AND GANSEY I been WAITNG for this one! Turn it up! Bro if you saw the whole face I made when I realised it was time for this kdhfhfkhu this is so loaded despite the fact that I cant articulate it <3 the.. idk what to call them. Parallels? Foils? I didn’t take lit sorry but he RANGE we could have had there… remember when gansey was shocked in trk bc :0 you guys came with me and also “they had run for him”. bro their whole relationship had so much. Tension because of their different backgrounds and fundamentally different outlooks because of their backgrounds, and I think if we had seen them properly connect then both of them could have grown from that. I know we see adam understanding gansey a bit better I don’t remember when that happened but I know it did at some point hhdsf but gansey.. never does! Huff and puff. It’s really so FRUSTRATING to me bc that could have key development for gansey but also for adam and gansey’s relationship. And also I feel like we didn’t.. see them try either? Which is so frustrating like idk if it’s a fault on stiefvater’s part or just with YA lit in general that platonic relationships are kind of ignored. Or maybe it’s because idk I remember ms saying she had a lot of issues while writing trk.. but still. We could have really had it all but instead I have to live with “don’t break him adam” I’m (: ok but now I must lighten the mood hjsdhf so might I add: when one of them sees the principal in his crazy funky junky hat and goes “yee haw”… when gansey is like :DDD hey ADAM guess WHAT and adam is like ? and gansey is like oh it was a fully casual problem with the ALTERNATOR of my car of COURSE it was the alternator, it was really simple and I fixed it with much ease :D and adam is like :’D felt like the had hatched a baby bird.. my uwus. ADAM! give me an idea! ALSO if anyone will allow me to venture into adansey territory…. the fact that adam is cabeswater’s magician and gansey now.. is cabeswater in a way. MUCH to think about. I still spend a lot of time thinking about the dryad au the problem is I have never been to progress past the “vague concept” stage of stories and this is why I don’t write dhfjhfdhf. But yes. I think about it often :3

i also like the henry with the gang, i think it could work really well but once again it wasn’t given the time for me to really see it :( also. ronan being racist. and adam laughing along with that. why was that included, ms turn on your location i just wanna talk

okay once again thank you for enabling me claire and i’m so sorry for this monster dsjkhfjkdhg

[wander-wren]

*holds up shield* don’t throw things at me but i have actually developed nuanced opinions on AI over the past couple of months. imagine that. but this isn’t a post about those nuanced opinions! i can get into them later

this is a post where i reluctantly went to chatgpt to perform An Experiment, because if there’s one thing i love it’s writing-related data and making fun of bad writing guilt-free. and now that i’m not ideologically opposed with every atom of my body to AI i can do that!

i chose to give ai one of my older fics (from 2022), both because it was short enough for the text box and because, given all the scraping drama, ai probably already has it anyway. i was very tempted to put in something original, but i haven’t yet.

then i asked it, first, to write something mimicking that style, to….horrible results. i also asked it to write a sequel to the fic, because i had written a sequel myself. i got….interesting results from that. i have some thoughts on how ai writes, what it could be used for, and what it should almost definitely not be used for.

let’s get into it!

so, to start off, i used my raven cycle fic hostage situation. it’s not my best, being both old and written in like an hour for whumptober, but it’s not the worst.

when i asked chatgpt to mimic the style, i expected it to create something similar (this was a kidnapping with torture h/c fic, so something like that) and to do its very best to write something that sounded like a thing i would write. you know, like the ai art that puts in specific artists’ names to get something like their style.

i did not get that. maybe i would have if i had given it a more specific prompt, like, write a story about X in the style of this story, but i didn’t and i don’t really want to go back to chatgpt again, so just…shh. this was still a useful exercise, i promise!

let’s start by looking at the openings of each piece.

first of all, it chose to change the names and some more specific details, but literally nothing else. also love how it switches from ronnie (ronan?) to theo (gansey) almost immediately and there is cassie (noah) and cassie (adam).

also they made my gay fic hetero. alright.

also, this introduces a theme that we see throughout this endeavor. the ai has little to no idea what trc is or who the characters are (actually it has no idea what anything is, i shouldn’t anthropomorphize, but it doesnt have enough data to pick up on patterns like it might with, say, MCU fic). therefore, it ruins one of my favorite things about writing fic, especially for trc, and that is making dozens of subtle references that probably most other fans would even miss.

for example, right here we have references to ronan’s never-ending battle with his phone, his father’s death, and, if you squint, that One Line that goes “jesus,” gansey said, “christ.” which i have heard talked about a few times and lives in my head rent free. i’m sure no one else thinks about it that much, but it’s a very specific inflection and i love it.

the one (1) thing i will say is that “theo’s breath catches” is totally something i would write, and the ai didn’t copy it from this fic. i mean, it’s still pretty generic, but it kinda feels house style-y to me. hm.

continuing on! let’s see what the video is

so basically it stripped out all the fun description. incredibly rude, this was my favorite part to write. again, i’m wondering if there’s something significant about changing “guy who had to be rescued” to a girl.

there’s also a lot of confusion on like, what’s happening and why on the ai’s side. it’s copying my words, but cutting a lot, so there’s no reason for, say, the villain commenting in her mental faculties—she didn’t seem disoriented before, and she hasn’t done anything now to prompt the remark. also, we “see” cassie and then the newspaper gets pulled away to “reveal” her. it’s very messy. we also don’t get cassie telling theo not to come for her, something that is pretty important in adam’s case, mr. self-sacrifice, lover of ronan.

what happens when boyfriend comes to the rescue?

sorry i’m laughing because theo is still gansey in my head and him having like, full tattoo sleeves is Sending Me.

once again, cutting out the good description and making it all generic. this part makes sense, at least, but it’s less interesting. the best parts are the dialogue and THE DIALOGUE IS MINE. verbatim.

the line “time blurs since the video, her only link to theo gone” is grammatically incorrect or at the very least clunky. idk why that got changed.

changed the lastname-firstname switch that is so very important to pynch. kay.

obviously theo isnt ronan and this technically isnt fanfic so we lose the kavinsky/matthew reference, even though that adds depth to the scene when you remember that almost exactly this thing has happened to ronan with someone he loves before, so this has to be very fraught for him.

let’s finish up with the ending!

so this part doesn’t make any sense in the EXTREMELY limited context of the ai’s story. at the very beginning, it said that one of the three has the ability to manipulate illusions (which in itself is a bit odd—shouldn’t it be create illusions? or can you only manipulate illusions that are already there? that’s not very useful), but that doesn’t have anything to do with violence. is the implication that our dear friends [checks notes] ronnie and cassie2 did this??

the implication in the original fic is that ronan used dream creatures or something similar; it’s his subconscious, not technically his own work depending on how you look at it. i don’t believe ronan would commit violence like this where adam could see (hence why he wanted adam not to look) because of adam’s history of abuse, but ronan also has a lot of anger and a lot of monsters in his head and a lot of love for adam. so.

because this is fanfic, i don’t have to spell any of that out. it just is. but in the ai’s story it doesn’t know why or how that part exists, it just copies it.

and then basic ending where the ai says the quiet/implied part out loud. boring.

it should also be noted that chatgpt generated stories only clock in at around 600 words. the three screenshots here are almost all of that generation, while my fic is almost twice as long.

so my main takeaway here, aside from “chatgpt is bad at my favorite part of fanfic” as i said, is that chatgpt can’t really effectively mimic a writing style that isn’t generic or very close to it, because of the whole “most likely word” thing. and if your style is very generic than other human people already write a lot like you and/or could mimic you very easily.

i don’t have an outside perspective on what makes my fics recognizably mine (tell me?), but i’ve had a lot of people comment on the way i describe emotions. which is cool, because i love doing that. i like implying things with body language (especially focusing on where someone is/isn’t looking) even more than directly describing what people are feeling. the ai’s style is very much about stating directly what characters feel, often to the point of redundancy, a huge pet peeve of mine.

so yeah, not uber useful for fanfic writing. tumblr photo limits prevent me from continuing with the second experiment (writing a sequel to this fic), but i’ll be back in a hot second to write that one.

[emmerrr]

oh! what about an au where ronan and adam have been pining for each other for a long time and talked for the first time at a halloween costume party

YEAH OK I CAN DO THAT!!

-

Adam stood alone at the food table, eyeing up the pumpkin shaped cookies and bowls full of candy corn, and wondering if he could just shove a bunch into his pockets and then leave.

It was all Henry’s fault he was here, and yet within five minutes of arriving, Henry had ditched him. At a frat party. With no one else here he knew.

“You have to come,” Henry had said. “I’m inviting you. And you have to dress up. It’ll be fun, I promise.”

He’d needled away until Adam had eventually agreed, and now here he was, dressed as a very low maintenance and last minute cowboy using clothes he already had in his closet and a hat borrowed from his roommate, and Henry was nowhere to be found.

“Ugh,” said someone from his right, “candy corn.”

Adam didn’t understand the apparent universal hatred of candy corn. He loved it. He half turned to the newcomer, just annoyed enough to engage. “What’s wrong with candy corn?”

Too late, he realised who it was and he froze, eyes widening. But he’d spoken now, and Ronan, the boy he’d been pining over from a distance since the start of the semester looked up.

Adam only knew his name because during the first week of classes he had come into the coffee shop across campus where Adam worked, and that’s what he’d said to write on his to-go cup. Of course it was possible the drink was for someone else or that it wasn’t his real name, but Adam hoped it was, because it’s what he’d been calling this hot stranger in his head ever since. It suited him.

It was the only time Ronan had ever actually been in, at least while Adam was working, although he’d seen him walk past a few times. But he’d caught glimpses of him pretty often, all over campus. They didn’t share a single class, and Adam had never seen him with anyone else to even know if they had any mutual friends. Adam didn’t know what he was so taken by him for; he’d never spoken to him, not to mention he always looked just a little bit angry and unapproachable. But there was something intensely fascinating about him. Adam could never quite look away.

And now he was here, at this particular party and looking just as unhappy to be here as Adam was.

Ronan seemed to recognise Adam, too. Something sparked in his eyes, just for a second, but then he scowled and turned away. “What’s fucking right about candy corn is a better question.”

Adam might have been able to come up with a decent counterpoint, had it not been for what Ronan was wearing. Gone was all the black, pretty much the only colour Adam had ever seen him in, and in its place was an aquamarine polo-shirt and beige chinos. Instead of boots, there were boat shoes. All other thoughts fell out of Adam’s head. “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

Ronan frowned. “I’m Gansey. Isn’t it obvious?”

Adam knew Gansey, sort of. They shared a few classes and only really ever said hi to each other, but Ronan’s outfit made sense as a costume now. More surprising was that he was good enough friends with Gansey to dress up as him for Halloween.

“I thought I recognised that polo-shirt.”

Ronan grinned at this and Adam hoped against hope he wasn’t blushing. “Right?”

“The tattoo kinda ruins the illusion though,” Adam said, nodding at Ronan’s neck, where the top of a tattoo he was absolutely dying to see in its entirety was just poking out.

“Thank fuck for that,” Ronan said. “Anyway, you’re not allowed to make fun of my costume seeing as you’re…what, a lumberjack cowboy?”

“Just a regular cowboy,” Adam said with a sigh. “I knew the flannel shirt was a mistake.”

Ronan smirked. “You only find out about this party today or something? This kinda looks like a last minute deal. I’m guessing this is all stuff you already own.”

“I mean, I borrowed the hat from my roommate but yeah, pretty much.”

Ronan gave Adam a lengthy once-over and then laughed. “You don’t even have cowboy boots.”

“Shut up,” Adam said, but he was laughing too. “You just raided your friend’s wardrobe. You expended no more effort than I did here.”

“Okay, true, but at least mine’s funny.”

“Only to people who know Gansey.”

“This is Gansey’s fucking frat!” Ronan pointed out.

Adam narrowed his eyes; he had to concede the point. “Alright, fair enough, you win.”

Ronan’s laughter subsided. “What’s your name anyway?”

“Adam,” Adam said. “Parrish.”

“Ronan Lynch,” Ronan replied. “C’mon, help me track down a beer. There’s gotta be one somewhere in this shithole.”

Adam followed him. How could he not? “Don’t suppose you’ve tried…oh, I don’t know, the fridge?” 

“Oh good, he’s a smartass,” Ronan said, shooting a smirk over his shoulder at Adam.

Well, shit, Adam thought.

Ronan led them through to the kitchen and pulled two beers out of the fridge, passing one back to Adam.

This task now over, Adam thought Ronan might disappear too, but instead he poked his head out the side door, then motioned to Adam. “It’s quieter out here.”

It was a little cold outside, but Adam’s shirt was long-sleeved at least. Ronan didn’t seem bothered by it at all as he leaned against the wall.

“So,” he said, taking a sip of beer, “no offence, but this doesn’t exactly seem like your crowd.”

“That doesn’t offend me,” Adam replied. “Although, I could say the same to you.”

Ronan shrugged. “Yeah, it’s not. But Gansey’s my best friend and he’s been on at me to come to one of these bullshit things all semester, so here I am.”

“So where is he?” Adam asked.

“That’s a good fucking question, Parrish,” Ronan said with a sharp laugh. It should have annoyed Adam that Ronan had called him by his last name, but for some reason it didn’t. “He’s probably striking out with this girl he’s been after for a while.” Ronan laughed again. “He accidentally implied she was a prostitute when they first met so it’s been a bit of an uphill journey.”

“How do you accidentally imply someone’s a prostitute?”

“I dunno, man, but Gansey fucking managed it.” Ronan shook his head, fond. “Anyway, who’re you here with?”

“My friend, Henry Cheng, d’you know him?”

“Don’t think so.”

“He’s around here somewhere, dressed as Tom Cruise in Risky Business.”

Ronan nodded. “Oh yeah, I think I saw him just before I saw you, he was holding court at the karaoke machine. I mean, unless there’s more than one Risky Business costume at this party.”

“Honestly? I wouldn’t be surprised.”

Adam was glad they’d come outside. He could hear better a bit away from the loud music and the noise of everyone else, and he liked that Ronan had clearly specifically brought him out here so he could talk to him. Conversation was flowing easier than Adam tended to find talking to strangers, and he was incredibly glad that his admittedly irrational crush on Ronan wasn’t being ruined by his personality.

It made him feel a little bit brave.

He leaned against the wall next to Ronan, letting their arms touch. Ronan didn’t move away. “I have a confession to make.”

“Oh yeah?” Ronan said. “What’s that.”

“I sort of knew who you were already. Before tonight, I mean.” He glanced up out of the corner of his eye, but Ronan was looking straight ahead. “I just…I’ve seen you around. And you came into the coffee shop once, and I served you. So I knew your name already.”

Ronan’s mouth curved up in a brief smile. “You remember that, huh?”

Relief flooded through Adam. “I thought you’d forgotten.”

“I never forget a face,” Ronan said solemnly, then he glanced at Adam and grinned again. “Well, not a face like yours anyway.”

Adam rolled his eyes, but couldn’t hide the smile. “So how come you never came in again?”

“I almost did a few times. But I dunno, I didn’t wanna be creepy? I didn’t wanna embarrass myself in front of the cute barista? Take your pick.”

“All this time we could have been living our very own coffee-shop AU,” Adam said with false wistfulness.

Ronan snorted. “How would it be an AU if it’s our literal fucking lives?”

“Shut up, just let me have this.”

Ronan elbowed him lightly in the side. “You’re a dork. I like that.”

“Yeah?” Adam asked, and Ronan nodded. “Well I like that you were too shy to come back into the coffee shop.”

“Hey, I never said shy,”

“Whatever,” Adam said smugly. “You were shy.”

“Alright, fine. But don’t tell anyone.” He turned so he was facing Adam. “I have a reputation to uphold.”

“I’m sure it’s a very terrifying reputation,” Adam tried to snark back, but he wasn’t sure how well it came off. Ronan was so close now, and he thought his heart was beating out of his chest.

“It is,” Ronan whispered, and his eyes flickered to Adam’s lips, and he leaned closer and both their eyes drifted shut…

…and Adam put his hand gently on Ronan’s chest to stop him.

Ronan’s eyes flew open. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and stepped back. “I thought—”

“No,” Adam said quickly. “You thought right. It’s just…”

Ronan tilted his head to the side, all concern. “What?”

Adam sighed. “I can’t kiss you while you’re wearing that fucking polo-shirt.”

Any thought that he might have offended Ronan disappeared when Ronan burst out laughing. “If you wanted me out of my shirt, all you had to do was ask, Parrish.”

That was exactly what Adam wanted, but perhaps now wasn’t the best time.

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Absolutely fucking nothing, why?”

“Do you maybe want to do something? Food, or a drink, or anything. Just…as ourselves, and not as Gansey and a lumberjack cowboy.”

Ronan smiled, the softest one Adam had seen so far. He suspected this one was rare.

“It’s a date.”

[abarbaricyalp]

The Babe With The Power

@pynchpromptweek

Pynch // Prompt: Future/Kid Fic // Rated: G

No archive warnings, but Adam bruises his face in the second half and the injury is discussed

AO3 Link

“We have to talk,” Ronan said, leaning on the door way to the living room.

Adam looked up at him, leaving his hands to the mercy of RG IV in front of him. The baby wasn’t actually called RG IV. Actually, the baby wasn’t a Richard at all. She was a Noa Percy and had stalled the great debate about whether Blue would allow Gansey to name their son RG IV. But they’d all spent so long calling Blue’s baby bump RG IV that the nickname stuck when they weren’t actually talking to the baby. (Names were important for cognitive growth, they were told, so don’t fuck her up with your joke)

RG IV gnawed at Adam’s knuckle and Ronan scowled at her. “You shouldn’t be baby sitting so much.”

Adam frowned and pulled the baby into his lap. “What do you mean? You volunteered us for the summer!”

“Yeah, but you’re supposed to be working on your dissertation and you have that grant proposal in a month. You should be focusing on that.”

“What? Do you want more time with her?” Adam asked. “I’m balancing everything just fine. I’m ahead of schedule on my dissertation and the proposal is being edited right now. If you want me to back off to give you time, just say, Ronan.”

“I don’t want more time with her. I already have to entertain her when you’re writing.”

Adam stood suddenly, a fast flash of anger. “You told them we’d take care of her. Get over yourself, Lynch,” he snapped, cuddling her closer to his chest.

Ronan’s jaw worked and Adam could see it all the way across the room. “She’s gonna forget what her dad looks like ‘cause she stares at you so much.”

Adam’s eyes widened and his arms tightened around her. “Did Gansey tell you to do this? Is he mad at me?”

Ronan made a face. “What? No. Gansey would probably be honored if she started to call you Daddy. He’d be like, ‘That’s fair, I get that.’”

Adam rolled his eyes and relaxed a little bit. “Then what the hell is your problem?”

“Watch your mouth, she’s literally right there.” Ronan shifted from foot to foot, chewing on his lower lip in irritation and anxiety. “It’s distracting. And she takes up so much room. I mean, there are baby toys down our couch and you're always sleeping with her on your chest and that's just a safety concern to begin with. Her bottles are all over the drain tray and I almost put formula in the coffee this morning.”

Adam steeled his jaw and shoulders, glaring so hard Ronan felt it cut him to the quick. “If you want me to take a step back, I will. But I think you’re just throwing a fit. Here.” He crossed over to Ronan and held RG IV out. “You tell Gansey that you don’t want her around.”

Ronan took the baby, immediately cuddling her in the crook of his arm and letting her hold his other arm hostage to chew on his bracelets. “You gave her a bath the other day in the sink and you were baby talking her and I walked into a door.”

“I remember,” Adam said with a nod.

“And I don't even know which is worse--when you're talking her nonsense or when you're sitting there, asking her serious questions about whatever paper you're writing and nodding along seriously when she coos back at you.”

“I knew it!” Adam crowed. “You have baby fever! You’re not upset, you’re overwhelmed!”

Ronan glared at him. “I do not! I am not! It’s just that my boyfriend is always hugging on her and kissing her and you’re so good at it, I want to scream.”

“She’s our niece. I’m not gonna send her home just ‘cause you never learned how to process emotions.”

“You’re pursuing a doctorates! You should be living a distractionless life!”

“Oh, ‘cause you’re so distractionless.”

Ronan scowled at him for a second longer before sitting heavily on the couch. “I didn’t want kids. I wanted a family, wanted my family back. Kids felt like I was trying to replace them and I didn’t want to. And, y’know, bein’ gay and all. And I never thought I’d actually get to fall in love.”

Adam sat down next to him. For a moment, he just smoothed his thumb over the baby’s weirdly soft forehead. “I always thought I shouldn’t have kids,” he said eventually. “That I might end up too much like my dad. I figured he musta been in love at one point, he must’ve been halfway decent and it was just me who ruined everything for him, so I should avoid kids too.”

“Clearly you’d be a great father,” Ronan muttered.

“Yeah, I get that now. But I’ve grown a lot since then too. Who knows what might’ve been true if things in my life hadn’t happened the way that they did.”

“Adam, you’re a good man. You’re nothing like your father. You never would’ve been.”

Adam shrugged. “Yeah, but that wouldn’t have been enough to convince me to have kids, probably. But now I have you and I see myself in such a different light, I’m a different person. And you’re right, Ro. I am good at this. I love it so much.” Like she was trying to prove his point, RG IV let go of Ronan’s bracelets to grab Adam’s hand and chew on his thumb again.

“It’s a big change. And I’m having to come to terms with a lot of things about myself that I didn’t know, or didn’t want to know,” Ronan said. They sat in silence for a few moments, watching the baby who was keen on watching them too. She had a big, gaping grin for them each time she caught their eye. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Ronan eventually said.

“It’s alright,” Adam murmured, leaning into his side. “I know you didn’t mean it. And we don’t have to make any kind of plans, Ro. I mean, this is literally the first time we’re talking about it. It’s not like we should be at an adoption agency tomorrow morning.”

“I could dream us a kid,” Ronan said immediately, like he was anticipating Adam’s response. “A little kid with your hair and my eyes and your freckles and--”

Adam pressed his hand over Ronan’s mouth. The baby watched intently. “You can’t dream them. I can’t lose you both in one moment.”

Ronan sagged under Adam’s hand and his eyes lowered before he nodded. “I won’t. I promise,” he murmured. He met Adam halfway in a kiss and the baby giggled between them.

Two days later, Ronan ran through the door, breathless and terrified. “Adam? Where are you? Are you okay?” he asked, rounding into the living room with a panicked look on his face. He saw RG IV first, asleep in some mini-bed on the couch, perfectly safe and happy. Then his eyes found Adam, and his face, and the already mottled bruise down half of it. “Oh my God,” he breathed, crashing to his knees in front of Adam.

“Please don’t wake her up. She was so freaked out, I thought she’d never go to sleep,” Adam groaned, leaning back in the couch and replacing an icepack on his face.

“What happened, Parrish?” Ronan asked, voice still tight with worry.

“I was chasing her around the house and I ran into the french doors on the other side of the kitchen. One was open and one was shut, but I was looking down at her and I didn’t see it.”

“Adam, you look like you got hit by a baseball bat. Move your hand, let me see.”

Adam sighed and sat up, obediently pulling the ice away. Ronan hissed in sympathy as his cold fingers probed at the bruise. “Did you clean these cuts?” he asked, tracing two fingers down either side of the gash that ran from the top of Adam’s forehead to his eyebrow and then picked up again at his cheekbone, a perfect visualization of the edge of the door.

“No, I didn’t have time. It was all I could do to get some paper towel on it to stop the bleeding,” he explained.

Ronan flicked his opposite temple. “I’ll go get the alcohol and some bandages,” he said. “How’s your head feel?”

“Hurts like hell,” Adam admitted.

“We should take you to an emergency clinic. You might have a concussion.”

“I don’t have a concussion. Besides, I’ve lived without getting them diagnosed before.”

“Doesn’t matter. You have to go get checked out.”

“We can’t take a baby to a med clinic in the middle of flu season.”

“Then she can go to her grandmother’s place.”

“You really got used to leaving kids with them, huh? Having withdrawals, Lynch?” Adam teased softly.

Ronan shoved Adam’s shoulder just as softly and got up to go to the medical cabinet. When he got back, Adam was rocking the mini-bed, hand pressed over the baby’s chest as she clung onto his index and pinky fingers.

“When I ran into the door, I knew I’d hurt myself pretty bad,” he said as Ronan sat himself next to him. “I was in pain, I couldn’t think, my vision had gone a little black, I was bleeding immediately. And she’d gone running off still and all I could think about was how badly she could’ve been hurt if she’d hit the door instead of me. I mean, she was running full speed. And she’s fast. It’s part of why I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t want her to run away from me and be able to hide.

“But I could only see her running into the door and how small and fragile she is. She noticed I wasn’t chasing her and she came toddling back and she crawled into my lap and I just...hugged her so tight. I was so scared.”

“Nothing happened to her, Adam,” Ronan said, setting aside the alcohol wipes and grabbing neosporin. “She’s totally fine. Look at that little face.”

Adam sighed and rubbed his hand against her chest and tummy. “She was so sweet about it. She pointed up at my face and pouted out her little lip. She really freaked out when I carried her in here and kept wincing and stuff.”

“Adam. Adam. Look at me. Look.” Ronan turned Adam’s face to his. “She’s okay. And you’re gonna be okay. This wasn’t a tragedy.”

“It could’ve been, Ro.”

“But it wasn’t. Hey, look. You did good, alright? You took care of her, got her down for a nap even.”

“It was already nap time. That’s why I was trying to wear her out.”

Ronan snorted out a laugh, which made Adam smile, a little begrudgingly. He finished bandaging Adam’s face and leaned over to kiss the corner of his mouth. “You did good.”

“There’s still so much we don’t know, Ro.”

Ronan shrugged. “Sure. We’re twenty five and haven’t dealt with a baby until her. We’ve got a learning curve. But, hey, at least we get to practice with the best baby ever.”

Adam smiled over at the baby and nodded. “She’s pretty cool.”

“Gonna be cooler for knowing us.”

Adam rolled his eyes and leaned over to kiss Ronan again. “Well, not so much for knowing you.”

“Now I’m definitely gonna drag your ass to a med clinic.”

“I might let you. To set a good example for her.”

Ronan hummed and kissed him again. “One day you’re gonna do something for me and I’m gonna keel over.”

“Yeah, I’ve never done anything for you,” Adam agreed sarcastically. “You have a hard life.”

“It’s getting better.”

Adam stole another kiss. “The best is yet to come.”

“You’re a damn sap, Parrish,” Ronan murmured against his mouth.

[pynches]

the five stages of grief

a/n this is a very personal story to me. ive dealt with a lot of grief, way more than i should have, in a short period of time so i figured it would help to write about it. this is a friendship-centric fic so no relationships happening. i hope you still like it.

tw: mention of child abuse but it’s only a sentence mention, loss of a parent

word count: 1927

ao3 link

The biggest misconception about grief is that you feel it right away. That the moment you hear someone  you once loved died, you break down, sobbing on the floor from the pain you cannot hold in. We’ve seen the movies, read the books, watched the tv shows and how grief was portrayed in them.

It’s a lie.

This is how it goes.

The police calls Adam at 5:37 pm, something about an accident his mom got into and his father who cannot be reached. Adam stopped listening after the first words, “I’m sorry to tell you but”. The resignation in the police officer’s voice  was enough.

Dead on impact.

No revival possible.

And that was it.

There were no tears when he told the police that he would be there soon. No tears when he had to identify his mother’s body not even an hour later so he could sign the papers.

“It’s hers,” he told them.

And that was it.

Adam still went to school despite the school counsellor telling him that it wasn’t required. He lost a parent after all. He was tired of the concern thrown around though. The pity in the counsellors eyes, the pity in Gansey’s. Ronan was the only one who treated him semi-normally and even he was more careful with Adam than usual. Adam couldn’t blame him, though, he lost a parent too after all. But Adam did blame him, for not treating him like nothing happened even though something did, for making him feel like there was something different even though there was.

Truth was, Adam didn’t feel like something happened, didn’t feel like his mother was well and truly gone. He pictured himself opening the door of the trailer and seeing her bent  over the stove like she often was, or cleaning up after his father which happened even more often. He felt like he could pick up the phone to call her and hear her familiar voice on the other end.

There is bliss in denial, it makes everything hurt less.

The funeral was his job to organise. His friends had tried to help with sad half-smiles and pats on his arm. Adam didn’t feel anything. No sadness, no anger, but no happiness either. The emptiness inside him was all-consuming and nothing was left behind.

He picked the music and used his mom’s hidden savings to pay for the costs so that his father couldn’t drink it away. His throat tightened when they lowered her casket into the ground and filled the hole with dirt, his eyes full of unshed tears.

Adam swallowed.

And that was it.

Denial was out of the question now. Every time he closed his eyes he saw his mother’s body, one that held so much life before, too much for the small trailer in which it had been contained.

Now it was anger’s turn to rear its ugly head.

This particular emotion was one Adam had tried to avoid his entire life. It just reminded him of bruises and wounds that never truly healed. His father instilled fear upon him when he got lost in his own anger and Adam tried to ensure he would not do the same to anyone else.

Until he did.

Until he saw a woman cross the road from his booth inside Nino’s, her hair the same dirty blonde his mother had passed down to him.

Until he rushed outside because it was his mom and she was there and despite every phone call she didn’t make to the police and despite every time she turned her head when he was lying in a pool of his own blood. Adam wanted to rush into her arms and feel them wrap around him like she had done when he was younger and the world was less cruel.

Until the woman picked up her phone, her voice high and sweet unlike his mom’s, rough from years of chain smoking and yelling at him.

Until Adam stopped in his tracks, watching as the woman walked away, unknowing that she snapped something inside him that had been coiled up since the first ring of his phone.

Until he punched a wall.

Until Blue came rushing out of Nino’s. She kept a safe distance from Adam’s balled fists, probably on Gansey’s orders.

Adam walked away with his knuckles scratched and bruised, disappearing into the evening.

The only thing he left behind was his blood smearing the now stained wall, an almost literal red flag that warned people to stay away from him.

He didn’t stay to wipe the hopelessness from his friends’ faces. He walked away before he did worse.

And that was it.

Adam never visited the church he lived above. He wasn’t religious but sometimes, when people feel the defeat clawing at their throats, they search for miracles everywhere. They look for signs that would indicate their loved ones were still alive, even if it was just the wind that had slammed the door closed. They search for meaning in death, finding solace in the thought that it wasn’t for nothing, even though it was and always will be. They pray to gods they didn’t believe in so that they could fool themselves into thinking someone was listening.

Adam had his hands clasped in front of him awkwardly, not used to the position. He wasn’t sure how to begin a prayer and he wished he had googled it but that somehow seemed insincere. So, he closed his eyes, clenched his hands tighter, and begged.

“I will live at home again if it means you will bring her back.”

He sat on the same pew, every night before he went to bed, when the church was dark and empty, praying to God, to someone that her death could be reversed.

It never happened.

And that was it.

We’ve seen the movies, read the books, watched the tv shows and the way guilt was portrayed in them. Guilt as an instant reaction, guilt as a way of making up for years of neglect, guilt as an excuse for the police. Guilt as something you can live with.

It’s not true.

This is how it feels.

It sneaks up on you quietly. One minute you’re making canned soup on your shitty stove and the next you’re on the floor. Not quite crying. You can’t yet. But you feel the burn in your throat that has now become a constant, the shaking of your hands, the rapid pounding of your heart.

“If you had still lived in that trailer,” the voice in your head tells you. “You could have prevented this.”

That’s how it starts and it never really ends.

Adam puts his books in his locker and exchanges them for the ones he needs for the next two periods.

“It’s your fault she’s dead.”

He drops the book on the floor, not looking at Ronan when he hands them back without a word.

He fist-bumps Gansey when he takes his usual seat next to him but he can’t focus on Gansey’s nervous rambling. It feels like the entire classroom is staring at him, mumbling the thing he had told himself over and over last night before sleep took him.

“It should have been you.”

And that was it.

The emptiness feels deeper this time.

There was no way of explaining this feeling, the world didn’t have the words to describe it and they really shouldn’t.

The days feel longer, seemingly going on forever. Adam feels like he is in a haze, sadness clouding his rational mind.

Adam is independent. Always has been. He learned not to seek comfort from other people because it would just result in disappointment. Instead, he taught himself to hold it in, every emotion that he didn’t want, he would just let go.

It doesn’t work like that.

When he was a kid and his father started to drink more, he would seek the comfort of his mom and she would give it to him. She would hold him close and brush through his hair with her hand. Back then, she always faintly smelled of fresh grass. He cannot even remember what she smells like now and he hates himself for it. But he does remember her gentle touch, her lightly freckled arms closing around him, his face in her neck.

Adam is independent. Learned to be that way. But right now, he needed his mom.

One person cannot bear the constant weight of grief on their shoulders. One day they will succumb under the weight and it will either crush them or they will have people who stop it from happening.

Once the intense sadness hits, people don’t go to a bar and drink until they forget their own name. It’s not like the movies, books, or tv shows.

It’s wrong.

It happens like this.

Gansey persuaded him into coming to Monmouth and help the group with their research. And it’s fine, it’s good. Until it’s not.

Because the word “dead” seems highlighted on every page even though Adam knows it’s not. Because death is his only focus, not Gansey’s voice or Ronan’s grumbles or Noah’s quiet snickers or Blue sighing. Because suddenly his knees buckle and he’s dry heaving on the floor, the pressure in his chest growing, his heart pounding in his ears. He can’t hear Ronan calling his name, he can’t feel Gansey holding him up. The tears are flowing down his cheeks and it will not stop no matter how hard Adam is pressing on his eyes. He can’t breathe and everything feels off and he wants to claw his skin of just so it doesn’t fucking hurt anymore. He can feel himself hiccup, can hear himself gasp but he cannot do anything but curl in on himself and try to stop the sobs from overtaking his body.

And then Ronan cradles his head against his neck like his mom used to.

And Gansey slings an arm over his shoulders, holding him tightly.

And Blue rakes her fingers through his hair in soft motions.

And Noah wipes his tears away.

And he cries.

He lets himself fall apart in the arms of his friends. For the first time since it happened, he feels like it’s okay that he’s not okay. That he can let himself go and feel this in the safety of his friends’ embrace. They take in his heaving sobs and return whispers of encouragement. They make him eat something because he had forgotten and make him drink water when his head is pounding. They stay with him when he eventually falls asleep, in the middle of a pile of his friends, not knowing where his body began and theirs ended.

And that was not it.

Because grief doesn’t go away, ever. Not even with the help of kind friends. There will always be a hole inside of you that the person left behind. Sometimes the anger will return, at them for leaving you, at yourself for letting them go, at the world for being so unfair. And sometimes the guilt will return because there will be moments when you won’t be thinking about them and smiling and laughing instead only to come home and fall apart because you feel guilty for feeling good. And sometimes, during the rare moments that become less rare over time, you will just smile at the memories and accept that even though you will never get over the fact that they are truly gone, this is your life now, and you shouldn’t stop living it.

[perksofbeingalittletwat]

Cherry Blossom Nights

future!fic Adam is chief of staff to a senator and Ronan lives at the barns farming and learning to cook. They make dinner together sweetly and then scare the absolute shit out of a senator together. Weird powerful Adam and intimidating Ronan power couple take on the normies.

“Your floor count is 47. The motion’s gonna fail, you’re gonna have to abandon it.” Adam repeated calmly over the phone. His boss, rising senator and current Senate Minority Whip Douglas Fairveiw (D), huffed on the other end. 

“I know. But I’m telling you, it’s not worth it.” 

“And when will it be worth it, Parrish?” The more refined Virginian accent asked. 

Adam looked down at his desk. A spread of tarot cards looked back at him. He checked that his office door was tightly locked and checked them again. “We have to talk to Williamson, from Utah. She’s on the fence. If we can give her something she might come over to our side.” His thumb rubbed the Four of Swords, Williamson’s card in his mind. Fairview sighed, “Fine. Alright. Cancel the vote and send everyone home. I’m not going to risk my ass over this.” 

Adam nodded and hung up the phone. A quick email later and a nearly audible sigh of relief passed through the Senate Office Building. It was late on a Friday night and everyone was anxious to get home, the only thing standing in their way had been Adam’s boss and the impending, and now doomed, vote. Adam sighed too, leaning back in his chair and loosening his tie. He was glad his weekend plans had been here in Washington instead of forcing him to drive back to Henrietta. It was only a few hours back to his hometown, but on weekends hours were precious. They were so often cut short that any week he could force his partner up to him instead of driving home was easier. Ronan didn’t mind Adam coming home late from an endless meeting on an amendment to an amendment to a motion to strike out a line from an appropriations bill. Fairview had promised his staff the whole weekend off, and the holiday as well, but Adam knew better than to believe it. He checked his watch anyways, Ronan should be here soon. He gathered up the cards spread on his desk, hid them deep in his desk drawer, and walked out into the lobby. 

“I’m heading home, June. That’s a full lid. Bossman says we have the weekend off but keep your phone on you just in case.” Adam addressed the woman working the front desk of the office. 

“Ron.. I mean your boy… Mr. Lynch is outside the building.” June faltered. People in Washington usually reacted like this to Ronan. It was a town of sharp suits and cultivated personalities and Ronan’s utter insistence on being himself at all times threw a wrench into the system. Adam smirked. “You can just say Ronan, June.” 

Ronan was a dark shadow just out of eyesight of the door to the Senate Office Building.

“You’re allowed inside you know. You’re one of our constituents.” Adam called to the dusk. 

“It’s much more fun to scare the suits from out here,” came the grinning response behind him. Adam softened as Ronan wrapped his arms around him from behind and kissed his neck gently. “The vote’s off. I’m all yours this weekend,” He whispered. 

“Mark the time. I’ll believe it when I see it, Parrish.” Ronan sneered. 

“Sometimes I get the whole weekend…” 

“Sure. Tell me the last time you didn’t get a text from the suit all weekend.”

“March.”

“He sent you an email. Doesn’t count. You spent four hours researching soybean prices.” 

“You said text.” Adam protested. He disentangled his body from Ronan’s and opted to just take his hand, leading him away from the SOB and up towards his apartment. He was lucky, he found a place only nine blocks from the office on I street. His salary wasn’t impressive but it was more than Adam had ever seen in his life. They cut through the Capitol grounds and towards the highway. 

“You know what I meant you little shit,” Ronan threw back. “And you haven’t said anything about my skirt, I wore it just for you.” 

Ronan was dressed as he always did, combat boots, black tank top, incomprehensible yet threatening tattoo peaking out, but he had switched out his usual ripped jeans for a mid length black skirt. Almost a kilt really, that somehow looked even better than the standard model. 

“I like it. I didn’t want to call attention to it if you were just experimenting,” Adam said. The couple cut an unusual shape through the city. Adam blended in so perfectly, a lifetime of practice finally paying off, in a dark navy suit and red tie; Ronan a foreboding slash of darkest reality next to him. No small space had been written about them in the capitol gossip columns, the highest member of staff on the rising Democratic star senator’s team traipsing around town with a hooligan. Adam’s own reputation provided enough inches on its own. The ‘Wizard of C Street’, claimed one fanciful headline. It was believed far and wide in the city that Adam knew things he could not know before he could know them. What was stranger still was that it was true. His and Ronan’s connection with the legendary Gansey clan didn’t help either.

But this spring night was blissfully calm. The reporters were at home, the only people who acknowledged Adam and Ronan were the guards at the checkpoints to the Capitol itself. Adam greeted each by name and wished them a good weekend. Ronan ignored them. 

“How’re the Barns?”

“Sprouting. Everything’s up and ready to grow. I accidentally created a new breed of apple the other night, here, try it.” Ronan fished an apple from his pocket and tossed it to Adam. Adam caught it and bit into it, a trickle of juice dripping down his chin. It didn’t have a taste as much as it had a feeling. The apple felt like home, tasted like summer, and smelled like a cool breeze off the mountains. It was a dream. Literally.

“Can you plant these? This is incredible.” 

“No idea Parrish. I’ve never planted a dream before. It’s got seeds though, and I got it from a tree in the dream so it should. I dumped a few on the south pasture before I left. We’ll see what it looks like when I get back.”

After the short walk they arrived at Adam’s building, a stocky four apartment affair set back from the street with a yard. Upstairs the place was small, but Adam had used his salary to furnish it the way he wanted. Granite countertops, large tv, and plants everywhere. Ronan may be a farmer, but Adam worked with plants the way Ronan worked with dreams. Adam could barely close the door before Ronan shoved him against it with a kiss. 

They kissed hungrily at first, then slowed as they sated the most desperate of their need. It devolved into a loose hug and lazy kisses off center. 

“I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna be able to do this.” Adam whispered, the barest hint of his accent slipping back in now that they were safely in his apartment. 

“Do what?”

“Not having you here every night.”

“We survived while you were at Harvard.” 

“Just barely, c’mon. Move in with me.” 

Ronan pulled back and turned his head away. Memories of nightwash and choking came back to him. It hadn’t happened in a couple of years now but he had been steadfastly living at the Barns near his leyline and dreaming every night. “I don’t know, Parrish. You know I want to but…”

Adam hung his head and nodded. “Yeah. I know.” 

Ronan kissed him again, an apology as much as a promise, and took his hand. “Now come on, let me cook you something, I’m fucking starving.” Time at the Barns without Parrish had left Ronan with a lot of time on his hands. He had filled it with chores, dreaming, and the latest project: learning to cook. Adam hoisted himself onto the kitchen island and watched Ronan throw a towel over his shoulder and start rooting through the cabinets. 

“You have no fucking food in here Parrish. When was the last time you went to the store?”

“I don’t remember. I’m a little busy keeping the country running.” “You call that running? This country’s running about as gracefully as a baby horse with two broken legs.”

“It would’ve been three if I wasn’t around, you should be grateful.” 

Ronan banged around the kitchen. Adam just watched him quietly, Ronan was a tight little hurricane, knives flying and pots crashing and curses muttered under breath but the whole while a tiny, tiny smile played at the corner of his lips. It was the Ronan he had fallen in love with, but conscious, the destructive power that had driven him through his grief over his father had become an aspect of his personality, no longer the motivating force of it. Eventually, even though he had nothing in his kitchen, Ronan still coaxed a meal out of Adam’s apartment. 

“It’d be better with the real stuff. But ta-da.” Ronan flicked a bowl to Adam. Inside was an instagram worthy nest of spaghetti carbonara. He looked at it for maybe a second before he began wolfing it down. Adam ate like he might never eat again, like he had burned all the calories he had last time and was a few minutes from starvation. “God this is good Ronan.”

Ronan ate in great chomping bites. “It’s fine. You need to buy something worth eating, this cheese is shit.”

Adam smiled, “Since when are you a cheese snob?”

“Since you only have this shitty powdered parmesan in your fridge. It’s not that expensive, Parrish. You can afford the decent stuff..” 

Adam was about to defend himself when his phone rang. They looked at each other and Adam sighed. Ronan rolled his eyes, “I win again. Told you we wouldn’t get the weekend.” 

“It’s going to be nothing. Something quick probably.” Adam looked embarrassed and sad. “Parrish. Yes… No, yeah. I’m fine I was just eating… Ronan made us something. Yeah it was really good… He WHAT? Are you serious? That fucking… Yeah I’ll go right over.” He hung up and threw his phone at the couch, “That bastard.” 

“A new broken leg?”

“Hackfield’s screwing us. He’s pushing the vote through committee so we lose it. I’m so sorry, i have to go.” He started collecting his things again. Ronan followed him and steadied his shoulders and retied his tie, “It’s okay. You gotta go. I’ll be here when you get back.” He kissed Adam gently and brushed a stray hair out of his eye. 

“Actually… Do you want to come scare a senator with me?”

The look on Ronan’s face was pure happiness.

***

Twenty minutes later, Ronan was dressed in the suit he kept at Adam’s apartment and was standing by the door of Senator Hackfield of Delaware (D)’s office. Adam was back in his navy suit in the chair across from the senator.

“I understand your boss’ position, Mr. Parrish, but I’m not changing my mind. My state needs this package and I’m not going to deny them the opportunity this is going to provide.” Hackfield leaned back in his chair and spread his arms wide like ‘what can I do?’ It was obvious he thought Adam was no threat. Ronan smiled to himself, this was going to be fun to watch. 

Adam didn’t reply to the senator. He just looked at him.

“Mr. Parrish, tell your boss he can send whoever he wants but you and your little boyfriend aren’t going to scare me.” Ronan bristled in the background and crossed his arm. Hackfield chuckled, “Keep an eye out, Mr. Parrish, that one looks like he needs a leash.”

Adam cocked his head slightly to the left and held a pause. Then very quietly he asked, “Did you just refer to my partner like a dog?” Hackfield chuckled nervously. 

“No, of course not, it’s just not very professional to bring your, uh, partner, excuse me, into a meetin-”

“It’s not very professional to turn your back on your party for personal gain.” Adam countered, again with incredible quiet. Ronan knew what was happening. He’d seen Adam when he was like this, unsettling, distant, calm in a way that no other human ever truly was. People were not comfortable with this Adam. Ronan loved it. Stuttering, Hackfield tried to defend hismelf, “I’m not turing my back on the party. I’m helping my constituents. That is a very… professional.. Mr. Parrish I don’t have to answer to you, you know. You’re not my boss. And I don’t appreciate a staffer from a different office coming into mine on a Friday night like this and pushing me around.”

Adam didn’t answer, he just kept staring. Ronan took a step towards him. Hackfield glanced back and forth between the two boys nervously. 

“Look I… Maybe we can work out a deal. I’ll just put in an amendment to the-”

 Adam cut him off with a quiet, “No. You’ll kill this in committee until we have the votes.”

“My constituents need this bill.”

“And they can have it when we have the votes. But this isn’t about them. This is about you. This is about you looking courageous without having to risk anything because you know this will fail. I don’t like grandstanding, Senator.” 

Ronan took another step forward.  Hackfield looked pale. “Grandstanding.. I’m not… How dare you…” The senator was stuttering. Adam knew he had won. He stood up and just said, “This is going to wait. Thank you for your time Senator Hackfield. Have a good weekend.” 

And then he walked out the door. Ronan watched the senator for another second, squirming like a prey animal. “Call me a dog again and I’ll show you what my teeth can do.” he growled and then smiled a shit-eating grin and sauntered out of the office. 

“That was awesome, Parrish. He was fucking wetting himself.” Ronan was grinning ear to ear but Adam still had an aura of cold around him. “I don’t like them talking about you like that.” 

“Oh fuck him, who cares. I don’t mind being your little attack dog.” Wrapping an arm around his waist, Ronan made a little woof noise into Adam’s hearing ear. Finally, Adam let out a breath and laughed. “C’mon let’s go home. Maybe we can still salvage the weekend. It’s fucking hot when you scare people like that but if you ever look at me with those dead eyes in bed I’m going to dump you.” 

Adam turned and looked right at Ronan, shifting effortlessly into his uncanny aloofness. Ronan pushed him away down the hall, “Fuck off Parrish. I’m not kidding.” But Adam laughed and reached back his hand for Ronan’s. They walked out of the building holding hands into the warm spring night.