Archive of Our Own ^beta

“So where are you going to live next year?” Blue says, as she starts her ascent up the wall. It’s late Tuesday morning and the climbing centre is blessedly quiet. The question makes Adam wish it was louder.

He feeds a length of blue rope through the belay device before answering. “I’m not sure. I was looking at studio flats in Edgegate.”

“Edgegate? Are you hoping to get burgled?” Blue replies, hooking her leg up to her waist and propelling herself upwards. She clips the rope into the gear hanging from the wall before adding, “Also that’s really far from campus.”

Adam sighs and takes a step back as Blue reaches the overhang, two feet above Adam’s head. Once she’s over it, he won’t be able to hear her and this conversation can be over. For now, “I know, but I don’t think I’ll be able to afford anywhere else.”

Admitting this to Blue is easier than admitting it to anyone else. She doesn’t even ask why he doesn’t move in with Ronan.

Blue’s quiet. She’s at the tricky part of the overhang, trying to pull herself around the corner back onto vertical wall. Adam watches her carefully as her legs slip off the wall. She manages to make one move using just her arms to hold her up, but on the second, she loses her grip. Adam’s ready for it and he catches the rope so Blue only falls a little way.

“Bastard,” she swears emphatically, swinging from the overhang, kicking off the wall.

Adam laughs as he lowers her to the ground. “Try again?”

“In a minute. It’s your turn,” she says smirking, knowing how much Adam hates red routes, and how much he hates overhangs.

“I’ll do the purple one,” he offers. It goes up the same bit of wall, but the holds are bigger and closer together.

“P’shaw, you may as well climb a ladder. Get up it Parrish.”

“Fine.”

They swap ends of the rope, and Adam chalks up his hands. He doesn’t like overhangs, but he likes the challenge of the route, the way problem solving and physical exertion go hand in hand. He climbs the first few feet of the wall no problem, fingers gripping hard on the tiny holds and the friction of his climbing shoes sticking him to the wall like an insect.

“I’ve been thinking of moving out of my Mom’s,” Blue says. “It’s getting cramped, you know, now I’m an adult.”

Adam doesn’t reply, and he hopes Blue thinks he’s too focussed on pulling off the same move she had, hooking his left leg up high to propel his right hand up to the next hold. He’s not, he’s got a lot of height on Blue and the move is much easier for him.

“I was looking at those big terrace houses they’ve converted to flats in Fairgrove. I can’t afford one on my own, but split two ways the rent is manageable. Cheaper than a manky flat in Edgegate anyway.”

Adam’s at the overhang now. He clips the rope into the dangling karabiner around the corner and pauses to consider how to do this. Extra height isn’t an advantage here; it’s all about grip strength.

“They’re really nice apartments. Two bedrooms, big windows, high ceilings.”

Adam stretches his right arm up and out and wraps his fingers around the next hold. It’s right on the horizontal stretch of overhang but it’s a good hold, and his fingers wrap all the way around behind it. He’s hanging upside down on the wall now, and the next move involves kicking his legs off completely.

“I think it’s about a twenty minute walk to campus? But it’s a less studenty area because of that. Fifteen minutes from Monmouth?”

Adam kicks his legs off the wall and he uses the momentum to propel his left hand to the next hold. He’s hanging just by his arms now on the vertical part of the wall, but the longer he stays, the harder it’ll be to move.

“There’s a little red one out to your right,” Blue says, although she never uses it, always trying to push quickly up to the next hold instead. “You might be able to kick your foot up to it, rather than trying to just do this bit with your arms.”

She’s right, Adam concedes. He swings his lower body until he can kick his right leg high enough to reach the hold. It’s only small, but he angles his toes to relieve the pressure on his hands.

“Now what are you gonna do?” Blue laughs. She has a point. Adam’s right hand is at his stomach and his left is at his shoulder, whole body twisted sideways on the wall.

“Just because you’ve never got to this point,” Adam teases. He tests the strength of the hold of his right foot, and then brings his left hand down to the same hold as his right. His abs clench. The next hold is up high to the right as well, and Adam reaches out for it, pushing off his right leg and left hand as he does. It’s easy then, to bring his left hand up to the next hold and his left foot finally onto the wall as well.

He grins down at Blue and gives her a thumbs up. She flips him off in return, but feeds through enough rope for him to clip onto the next karabiner.

The next few holds are smaller and further apart, but Adam makes it to the top without a problem. He’s torn a callous on his left hand; the hard skin wearing away slightly, and he picks at it as he absently abseils back down the wall.

When he touches down on the mat again, he says to Blue, “We should book a viewing of one of those flats. I can call the letting agent.”

Blue grins. “Awesome. And nah, I’ve got the number saved, just let me know when you’re free.”

“I will,” Adam says. “Do you wanna try the red one again? Now I’ve shown you how it’s done?”

“Fuck you,” Blue laughs.

Blue gets on the bus outside the climbing centre, and she makes a face at Adam out of the window when the bus rumbles past him. He takes a detour when he walks home, heading up the hill through Fairgrove, instead of the quicker way.

Adam looks up at the wide terrace houses, at the block being renovated into flats. Blue’s right, it’s a good area to live in, the road is quiet and well-shaded by trees. The front doors of the houses are all painted different colours and Adam can see why Blue likes it so much. There’s a weird little feeling in Adam’s chest, one he usually associates with Ronan. It’s a cautious excitement, he discovers on closer inspection.

It won’t be anything like he planned, living with Blue. It’ll be so different, but Adam’s finding more and more that different isn’t always bad.

And a lot of things are different now. Second year is creeping to a close, end of year exams are looming. Adam doesn’t speak to the Crying Club. He lives with them, ostensibly, still pays his rent there, but he sleeps more nights at Monmouth than he does in his damp attic room. It’s not a long term solution though, not the way living with Blue is.

Sex is different too. Adam had always thought of sex as an exchange. A deal, made between two people, strangers, long term lovers, regular hook-ups. You get me off, I’ll get you off in return. In his first year hook-ups, that’s exactly what it had been. Hand job for hand job. I’ll eat you out until you come, and then I get to fuck you. Transactional, easy. Life is a series of fair and equal exchanges, sex was just another one of them, and Adam liked it that way.

With Ronan it’s different.

It hadn’t been, for a long time. Adam hadn’t thought too much about it, but he didn’t have to. Every hook-up was an exchange of orgasms. He doesn’t remember when it changed though, when it became about escape, release, distraction. When it became a connection that satisfied him on multiple levels. Or, more tangibly, when he was getting off two, even three times in a session. When it became about doing things for Ronan that, really, were just things for Adam.

Ronan brings him food, sandwiches after his work shift, snacks to eat in the library. He argues with Adam about stupid things when he leaves tutorials feeling pissed off. He knows Adam, knows when he needs to get sleep, when he needs to get fresh air, when he needs someone to help him switch off all the clamouring noise in his head.

Adam struggles to think of something he does specifically for Ronan. He comes up blank. Hell, the other day Ronan had fucked his thighs rather than his ass because he had a long shift at the grocery store the next morning.

It weighs on Adam’s mind for the rest of the week though. No matter how much Ronan says that he does do things for him, Adam can’t help feeling that there’s an inequality in their relationship. Adam’s always the selfish one. Taking everything he can get and leaving nothing, giving away nothing in return.

For Ronan, he’s going to do better. On his break, he Googles a recipe and after work, he grabs the ingredients. He has a spare key to Ronan and Gansey’s, and Gansey’s away on a dig this weekend.

“What are you doing?” Ronan asks, as he shuts the front door. Gansey is away this weekend, so Ronan wasn’t expecting to come back to find his apartment occupied. It’s not a bad surprise though.

“Oh fuck, hey!” Adam turns around at the stove. And then rapidly back to it again. “Have you done this before? How do you get the powder lumps to break up?”

Adam gestures to a glass jug containing a bright orange liquid. There are lumps of powdered packet mix floating on the surface still.

Ronan raises an eyebrow. “Use a fork, dumbass.”

“Oh shit, good idea. I was so focussed on all this—” Adam gestures vaguely at the discarded onion skins on the worktop. There’s a can of kidney beans, and a can of chopped tomatoes, both already freed of their lids. Adam grabs a fork and stirs the sauce quickly, flinching back as some of it splashes over the edge of the jug. He pulls his blue t-shirt out to check there’s no sauce on it, and stirs the mince and onions frying on the stove with his other hand.

“Adam, what the fuck are you doing?” Ronan finally asks.

“I’m cooking you dinner, what does it look like? You always do stuff for me, so I’m doing something for you.”

“Right. I look forward to being tended to then.” Ronan picks up the packet mix sachet. Chilli con Carne.

Adam screws up his face, puzzled.

“You know, when you inevitably give me food poisoning.” He’s only half kidding.

“Oh fuck off. It’s a packet mix, I can follow instructions.”

Ronan hooks his chin over Adam’s shoulder and makes a worried noise as he stirs the meat and onions in the pan.

“What?” Adam panics. Predictable. “What is it?”

Ronan kisses the back of Adam’s neck. “I’m messing with you.” He swings away and grabs a beer out of the fridge. “Thought you’d try to make it from scratch.”

“Baby steps, Lynch. This is several of them away from my microwaved egg special,” Adam replies, and he turns his head to kiss Ronan’s cheek when he comes back, beer in hand.

“You know I love your microwaved eggs,” Ronan says, watching Adam pour the sauce, the beans and the tomatoes into the pan. “Do you want me to put rice on?”

“I’ve got it. Just sit down,” Adam says, gently nudging Ronan to the table.

“Could get used to this, Parrish,” Ronan says as he sits and sips his beer.

“Blue asked me to move in with her. Next year,” Adam says.

Ronan chokes on his mouthful of chilli. He grabs his beer to wash it down, and when he’s recovered, he says, “And you had an argument with her?”

“No.” Adam looks affronted. “I agreed to move in with her. We’re looking at a flat in Fairgrove on Saturday.”

Ronan nods. It makes sense, to him at least. Adam gets on with Blue, Blue wants to move out of her Mom’s, Adam needs someone to live with that he doesn’t have to play pretend around. He stirs his chilli, mixing the sauce with the slightly overcooked rice.

“Is this why you made me dinner?” he asks. “Did you think I’d be…” Ronan searches for the right word. “Offended?”

Adam grins. “I made you dinner because I wanted to do something nice for you. There doesn’t have to be some ulterior motive. Don’t make that face.”

Ronan doesn’t think he’s making any kind of face. “Sure Parrish,” he says. “Because that’s not exactly how you think the world works.”

Adam’s mouth twists wryly. “You’re making fun of me,” he points out.

“I am.” His boyfriend is so clever. “Eat your chilli.” Ronan gestures with his fork and smirks to himself when Adam rolls his eyes and does.

Adam’s making revision flash cards in the library, trying not to let himself get distracted by Ronan, on the other side of the table, making an origami crane from his completed tutorial worksheet.

Adam doesn’t want to let himself be annoyed about it. It’s not like Ronan has to hand it in; it’s already been marked by his tutor. He goes back to his own notes, swapping his pen to a different colour to write answers on the back of his card.

Ronan’s started colouring in a diagram of a sheep’s reproductive system. Adam hopes, not for the first time, that colouring isn’t actually a part of his coursework.

“Do you think I’m apathetic?” Ronan says, suddenly. He’s frowning at the sheep’s uterus, now coloured lime green.

“No,” Adam says. Ronan is many things, lots of them contradictory. “Did someone say you were?”

“Girl in my tutorial group. She was upset about her result on this.” Ronan gestures to the origami crane.

“And you told her it didn’t matter?”

“It doesn’t!”

“What did you get on it?”

“Ninety-eight.”

Adam blinks. It’s not unexpected. He knows Ronan is good at things he puts his mind to. He knew some of his grades had to be dragging up his average, to level out his consistent forties in molecular biology and maths.

“What did she get?”

Ronan shrugs. “Sixty? It was a set of mock exam questions, not the entire fucking degree. Don’t tell me you’d get that worked about it.”

Adam thinks about the fifty-seven he got on a mock test last year. About how he freaked out so much he stayed up until 4am revising everything he’d got wrong. He doesn’t tell Ronan this.

“Maybe you should think about it from her perspective. She probably worked her ass off to get onto the course and she probably still is now, and there’s this guy that sits at the back of lectures with his headphones on, getting ninety-eights.”

“I don’t always have my headphones on.”

“Veterinary is a hard course to get on. This is a hard school to get into. And you just decided to do it on a whim. And you get good grades in the stuff you give a shit about. I think I’d hate you if you were on my course.”

“You don’t hate me though.”

“No.” He doesn’t. But— “I think you’re impossible.”

Ronan grins, entirely too pleased.

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Yes it was. Do you wanna get some dinner?”

May comes, unseasonably warm, and the campus is suddenly drenched in university colours as varsity season begins.

Last year, Adam had barely been aware of it. He hadn’t been to any of the matches, he’d only worn university colours by coincidence, couldn’t even say which university had won.

This year he’s got two reasons to pay attention to varsity.

The first is bouldering. Adam’s not been doing it for long enough that expects to win his university any points, but he has fun doing it. He does better than he expected; the boulder problems are harder than the ones he’s been practicing with but there’s something freeing about competing with no expectations.

The second reason is Ronan. The second reason exists primarily in his head as watching Ronan run around in tiny shorts, but really it’s because he’s being a supportive boyfriend.

He hadn’t known for ages after he met Ronan that he played rugby. Adam knew he played some kind of sport, based mostly on running into Ronan on Wednesday nights out and the way he always had to leave Adam’s place early on Saturday mornings for training.

He’d learnt it was rugby some time last winter, when he’d been taking a shortcut past the rugby pitch on the way home work and heard Ronan shout his name.

He’d run across the pitch to Adam, covered in mud and bits of grass, and all the words had fallen out of Adam’s head, other than a constant stream of shorts-thighs-shorts-thighs-shorts-thighs. Adam can’t remember what they’d talked about that day, whether he’d managed to say anything coherent at all. All he remembers is those tiny shorts, and Ronan’s long, muscular thighs.

He’d fucked Ronan that night, that he remembers. Ronan’s thighs wrapped around him, all of his strength and power beneath Adam. Adam sucked a dark mark into his thigh, high enough that it would be covered by his little shorts.

Now, he’s standing in Monmouth, letting Blue paint black and gold stripes on his face.

“I hope he loses,” she says, grinning. She’s got the colours of the opposing university on her face, the university she’d studying Environmental Management at.

It’s easier, Adam thinks, to be himself when he’s around Blue and Gansey together. Sometimes, when it’s just him and Gansey, Adam finds himself verging on telling him the kind of lies he so easily told the Crying Club. He stops himself, mostly by imagining Ronan’s face when he finds out he lied to Gansey.

With Blue, it’s a bit easier. He’s going to live with her, he goes climbing with her, they’ve got things in common that the others couldn’t understand. It’s also a little too to argue with her sometimes, not deliberately, but still too easy.

So he’s glad he’s going to the rugby match with both of them.

There’s a little stand set up at the pitch, one set of low bleachers, students from both universities mixing on it. There are more people watching this than had come to watch any of the sport climbing, and Adam’s secretly grateful it’s that way around.

Ronan’s doing warm-ups on the pitch, but he runs over when he spots Adam and the others, ignoring his coach shouting at him to come back. His rugby shirt is striped with the university colours, and tight across his chest. His tattoo just pokes out of the collar of his shirt at the back, and he looks powerful and dangerous. Adam’s glad he wore lose jeans.

“Hey,” he says to Adam, before kissing him just once, hard on the mouth.

“Hey yourself,” Adam says. “How are you feeling?”

Ronan shrugs. “Fine. I’m not you, I’m not gonna be nervous.”

Adam grimaces. He hadn’t been nervous before the bouldering. “Are you gonna score?”

Rona rolls his eyes. “What do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell you I’m gonna try?”

Adam laughs. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I want.”

“What will you do if I score?” Ronan asks.

Adam never actually gets to tell him, because that’s the moment Ronan’s coach has decided he’s had enough, and roars “Lynch!” across the pitch at him.

Ronan smirks. “I think I gotta go,” he says, and he kisses Adam again before he jogs away. Adam smirks at way his ass moves as he runs, and the way his shirt is tight across his back too, moving beneath the number 4 on the back of his shirt.

“Sometimes I don’t even know he ended up on the first-string team,” Gansey observes. “Did you know, when we were in high school, Ronan played tennis?”

Adam grins. “No, I didn’t know that. In the little white outfit?”

“I don’t think he always wore white. I think rugby suits him much more.”

Adam nods, watching Ronan move into a huddle with his teammates. He’s one of the tallest guys on the team, but definitely not one of the broadest. “Built for a scrum,” Adam comments.

The match starts without much fanfare. The captains shake hands, the other team wins the toss, and they’re off. Adam isn’t particularly interested in the sport as a whole, he knows the rules enough to know what’s supposed to be happening. He tunes out Gansey whispering the rules to Blue and Henry, and focusses on Ronan.

When the players position themselves for the first scrum, he hears Blue ask, “What’s the point of a scrum? And don’t be condescending.”

“So there was a knock-on, where one of your players knocked the ball forwards. So they’re restarting play from that point with a contest for possession. The referee awards the scrum to the team that pushes the most, that wins the ball.”

“And Ronan’s in there?” Blue asks.

“Yeah, he’s number four,” Adam says. “Left lock.”

“Does it bother you, Parrish,” Henry says. “That your boyfriend is currently putting his head between another man’s legs?”

“Only because if it’s between his legs, that means he’s forgotten how to form a scrum,” Adam says, dryly.

It seems to happen in slow motion. One second Ronan has broken free from the opposing team, making a break for the try line, and the next he’s been tackled to the ground by a huge barn door of a man on the opposing team.

The whole crowd groans. Ronan’s head whips back where the other player hit him in the face with his shoulder.

“That was a high tackle!” Adam shouts, on his feet. Gansey standing too, shouting needlessly at the referee. It seems ridiculous to Adam, that someone could high tackle Ronan, but there he is, lying on the floor spitting blood out of his mouth from his split lip.

“He’s okay though?” Blue says. One of the other members of his team pulls Ronan up to his feet, while the referee gives the player that tackled him a yellow card.

“They’re bringing him off for a concussion check,” Gansey says. He does look okay though; he looks pissed off about the concussion check.

When Ronan’s close enough, Adam mouths “you okay?” to him. Ronan rolls his eyes, but he nods anyway, and lets the medic check him for a concussion. The bad tackle had happened far enough down the pitch that the kicker tries for a goal kick. The crowd around Adam cheers and jeers when it sails between the posts, but Adam doesn’t see, he’s too busy watching Ronan wiping the blood from his split lip.

He swaps back onto the pitch though, laughing with one of his teammates as he falls back into the line of attack.

There’s five minutes left on the clock, and Ronan’s team is down by six points. One try, and one conversion, that’s all they need. Just one more.

“They won’t get it,” Blue sings. “We’re gonna wi-in!”

Adam laughs. It doesn’t matter to him all that much, it’s just a game. But still. He wants Ronan to win.

And it’s Ronan that does it. He’s down the opposite side of the field to the crowd and the ball’s being passed steadily along the line towards him. The ball skips out the next player, but the opposing team’s player goes for him anyway. The ball flies past, and Ronan catches it. He dodges around the player who’d be marking him, and runs for it, streaking down the pitch as fast as he can.

“Yes! Come on!” Adam shouts. He’s on his feet, along with the entire crowd, shouting at the pitch. “Run!”

One of the opposing players is catching him, fingertips stretching out to catch him, but Ronan hits the try line before he manages it, skidding through the mud and grass, the ball clutched in his hands and pressed firmly to the ground.

Ronan’s done everything he can. He didn’t get a chance to arc his run closer to the posts, so the conversion kick is going to be difficult. There’s only a few minutes left on the clock, no time for another try if the kicker misses this conversion.

The whole crowd is silent when the fly-half, a third-year that Adam thinks might be called Daniel, steps up kick the ball. Adam’s heart is hammering in his chest, he can’t imagine how the actual players feel right now, how Ronan must feel.

The ball flies through the air, arcing perfectly between the two posts. The crowd cheers and Adam cheers along with them. There’s no time for the players to celebrate though, the other team have the possession again and they’re on the attack. They can still win, if there’s a penalty, if there’s a drop goal.

The clock ticks over to eighty minutes. “Kick it out, kick it out,” Adam mutters. Someone on the other team misses a catch, someone else makes a tackle, the ball bounces out of play and like that, it’s over.

It’s a long time after the end of the game, after celebrations with his team, and shaking hands with the opponents, that Ronan finally gets to Adam. He’s covered in mud, and there’s blood on his shirt, but he looks so happy that it makes Adam’s chest ache. He sees Adam, and the look on his face twists, turns to something dark and predatory. Adam knows that look intimately, he wants desperately to get Ronan alone now.

He’s going to have to wait though. A lot of people want Ronan tonight, and Adam spends the night hanging out with Gansey, Blue and Henry while people buy Ronan drinks and dissect the rugby match until Ronan looks sick of it.

“I hope you don’t think I’m gonna be able to fuck you tonight,” Ronan whispers to him on the way out of the pub at the end of the night. “I’m fucking exhausted.”

Adam snorts. “I bet you are. I could blow you though?” he offers.

Ronan grins. “Yeah, you could do—”

“Oh hey Adam,” someone says, just passing them on the pavement. Adam looks away from Ronan to see Benjy awkwardly paused on the curb.

“Hi,” Adam says. It’s awkward. He doesn’t know what to say to make it less awkward. He half expects Ronan to just walk off, but he doesn’t. He waits from Adam to say something.

“I heard we won the rugby,” Benjy says. “That’s—good.”

“It was a good match, yeah.” Adam can feel Ronan’s eyes boring into the side of his skull. “We had fun.”

“Yeah. I—I don’t know the rules,” Benjy says. And then, like he’s finally realised the awkwardness of the situation. “I guess I’ll see you at home.”

“Yeah, see you later,” Adam says. He feels about two inches tall.

Benjy walks off down the hill, and Ronan starts back up it again. Adam doesn’t move.

“Come on, Parrish,” Ronan says, eventually, calling back down the hill to where Adam is watching Benjy walking away.

Adam, can we meet for lunch? G.

Adam reads the text three times before he starts to type a reply.

Sure, of course!

Delete.

No. I’d rather not.

Delete.

Today? What time?

Delete.

Gillian texts again before Adam can reply.

I just want to talk about what’s going on.

Okay, Adam replies. I’ll meet you at 12.

“I just thought,” Gillian says, spearing her salad. “That you were our friend. You never told us anything about Ronan, and then suddenly he’s there all the time.”

I never told you a lot of things. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“I hope we can still be friends, Adam, but he was an asshole to us and—”

“What? Maybe he was, but you guys weren’t exactly very nice about him.”

Gillian raises a sharp eyebrow, and twists her mouth wryly. “We’re your friends though, we want you to be happy.”

“Ronan’s my friend too. And please, you want me to fuck Fletcher.”

“Adam!” Gillian looks shocked. “I’d hardly call Ronan your friend. Regular hook up maybe.”

“I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.”

“Do you want to live with us next year?”

“No. Not really.”

“So you want to live with Ronan?”

“No.”

“See this is what I mean Adam. You’re just going to end up alone.”

Adam blinks at her. He’s got nothing else to say.

She must realise her mistake, because she bites her bottom lip, and then says, “Sorry. That wasn’t fair of me to say. I just wish you’d opened up to us more. You could’ve told us about him. You could’ve told us anything, we’re you’re friends.”

“You’re right,” he admits. “I could’ve. I guess I’m sorry that I couldn’t.” He doesn’t say anything more, nothing about how being with Ronan feels like he’s being his real self, nothing about how his real self and the self he showed Gillian and the others are not at all that alike.

Gillian doesn’t press him anymore. She looks at him, cocking her head sadly, like she’s expecting Adam to tell her all of his truth now.

He doesn’t. He finishes his sandwich in silence and gets up to leave. He’d already paid at the counter, he doesn’t need to wait around. He’s being rude, but he also doesn’t care. “I’ll see you around, Gillian,” Adam says before he leaves.

Adam’s in the student union supermarket, contemplating the benefits of different smoothies against their prices, when a girl walks up to him, grabs a blueberry smoothie and says, “Oh hey, Adam!”

Adam doesn’t know her name but he recognises her from tarot readings. He calls her unobservant-septum-piercing in his head. “Hi,” he says, with a grimace that he hopes says, please leave me and the overpriced juice in peace.

“How come you aren’t doing tarot readings any more?”

“Oh uh, the D&D society booked that meeting room on Thursday nights this semester. It was the only night I could do. So.” He shrugs. The D&D society really do have the room booked, but only because Adam couldn’t be bothered to book it first.

“That’s a shame,” Unobservant-septum-piercing says. “Would you ever do private readings?”

It’s not flirting, she looks sincere. “No,” Adam says. He thinks about what he could draw for her. Eight of swords, if he was feeling mean. Knight of cups, to tell her what she wants to hear. The moon, to tell her what she needs to.

The girl blinks at his bluntness. “Oh, right.” She frowns a little, and rolls her smoothie between her hands like she’s deciding something. And then, “So you’re friends with Ronan Lynch, right?”

Slightly more so. “Yeah. Why?”

“Do you know if he’s seeing anyone?” Unobservant-septum-piercing lives up to her name.

“He is.”

“Damn. Lucky girl.”

Adam has to bite hard on the inside of his mouth.

“He’s really hot," she says, like she's the only one who's noticed. Adam’s patience hangs by a thread. "Do you know who?”

The thread snaps. “Yeah. Me.”

“Oh. Oh.” She laughs, fake and loud. “Awkward!”

Adam raises his eyebrows. The girl laughs again, and she does a weird half-shuffle turn like she can’t remember which way to go to leave the store.

Adam buys a coke.

“What took you so long?” Ronan asks when Adam gets back to where he, Ronan and Gansey have spread their work out across a large table on the top floor of the library. Well, Adam and Gansey have spread their work out. Ronan has his Animal Nutrition text book open at least, even though he’s playing Tetris on his phone at the moment.

“Unobservant-septum-piercing thinks you’re really hot. She wanted me to ask you out for her.”

Ronan pauses in taking the lid off Adam’s coke. “Living up to her name then.”

Studying with Ronan is distracting. It’s not the mobile phone games. It’s not the pointed comments at the behaviour of other students, or the snacks that he’s always getting, or the fact that he used all the ink in a biro to draw a very detailed raven on the back of a test paper. It’s not even the hand job he gave Adam in the disabled bathroom.

The most distracting thing about Ronan studying doesn’t happen until gone eight pm, just after Gansey leaves. The library is quieter than it’s been all day when Ronan sighs, takes his laptop out of his bag, puts on his headphones and finally starts writing his essay.

He looks like a regular student. Typing rapidly, pausing to check a reference, flipping through a text book. He gets up and comes back a few minutes later with a different reference text. He stretches his back, frowns at a paragraph, prints something out and highlights several parts of it. He has his own highlighters.

“Stop staring at me,” he says, at ten thirty, without looking up.

“I wasn’t. I’ve not seen this before.” Adam gestures in a way that he hopes encompasses all the tableaux before him. Studious Ronan Lynch. “Why don’t you do this in the day?”

Ronan snorts. “I work better at night. It’s quieter.”

Adam doesn’t point out that Ronan’s been listening to obscenely loud EDM for the past three hours.

“Also Gansey would see.”

“And that would be bad because...?” Adam prompts.

Ronan looks up from his laptop, cool blue eyes narrowing like he knows exactly what Adam’s doing.

“Do they teach you that shit in shrink school?”

Adam rolls his eyes. “I’m not psychoanalysing you. I’m trying to understand you. Because you’re my boyfriend.”

Ronan scoffs, but he also looks pleased. He goes back to his essay though, and Adam gives up and starts going through his flashcards again.

“If Gansey knew I studied, then he’d tell Declan. And then Declan would know I wasn’t using university as a chance to piss about.”

“You don’t want your brother to know you’re doing well?”

“No. I want him to think I’m failing everything and barely scraping by each year.”

Adam grins. “And you’re asking me not to psychoanalyse you? After that?”

“Fuck off Parrish. He just. He thinks I’m going to fail.”

“You want him to think he’s… right?”

“No. I want to see the look on his face when he’s wrong.”

“He’s wrong now,” Adam points out, picking up the origami crane. “Or are you waiting for graduation?”

“Yeah. Make it a special fucking occasion. It’s just… You haven’t met Declan. You don’t know what he’s like.”

Adam thinks about asking if he’s ever going to get to meet Declan. It’s the kind of question someone in a normal relationship might ask. But this is Ronan. Adam’s probably going to meet Declan when both he and Declan least except it. Adam hopes he’s at least wearing pants when it happens.

Adam yawns. “I’m gonna head home. It’s late, I have a shift tomorrow.”

Ronan nods. “Do you want my keys?”

“It’s okay, I should probably sleep in my actual house. The one I pay rent for.”

Ronan shrugs, and goes back to his essay. “Suit yourself.”

“I’ve never had sex with anybody else,” Ronan confesses one night.

They’re on the roof of Monmouth, legs slipped through the railings, feet hanging over the drop, hands wrapped around cold steel. It’s after exams, the middle of June, and the city is slowly emptying of students. Adam sticks around. Ronan sticks around.

“Did you know that?” Ronan asks him.

“Yes and no. I thought, maybe. But not because you were bad, ” Adam laughs a little.

“Asshole. I’m great at sex.”

Adam nods, and he smirks. He feels smug. Ronan’s great at sex and he’s the only person who knows it. It’s the best secret he’s ever had to keep.

“Do you mind that I’ve had sex with other people?”

“No.” Ronan licks his lips. “No. As long as none of them were better than me.”

“Is this why you’re bringing it up? You want me to stroke your ego?”

“I want you to stroke my—”

“Don’t!” Adam interrupts, sharply, holding up a hand. “Not every innuendo needs to be said.”

Ronan mumbles like he disagrees. They sit in silence a while longer. They came up to watch the sunset, but it’s been hours since. The summer night is cooling rapidly, but neither of them move to leave.

“I brought it up because I want you to come in my ass.”

Adam chokes on his sip of beer.

“Jesus Parrish. I didn’t ask you to fist me.”

Adam splutters a little more, until he can finally choke out, “I could do that. I had a... Check up, just after the first time we were together.”

It’s the most delicate way he can put it.

Ronan doesn’t try to be delicate at all. “And you didn’t fuck anyone else after that?”

“No. They were all boring.”

It’s Ronan’s turn to wear the smug grin. He’s been wearing it most of the conversation.

“So. Wanna fuck me without a condom?”

Adam licks his dry lips. “Please.” He pauses for a beat. Down in the street below, a girl is shouting at her boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. “Will you do it to me, too?”

“Fuck. Yes. I’m going to do to you what I said I’d do the other night. You know what I mean.”

He does know what Ronan means. But they’re alone on the roof, high above anyone that might hear them. “Tell me again, anyway.”

Ronan angles his grin up to the sky. The blinking lights of a plane pass overhead. “I want to come all over your ass. All over your tight fucking hole. Then I want to finger you with it. Work it all back into your body, get you slick and wet with it. I want to keep playing with your hole, while you whine and beg. Then when I’m ready, I want to fuck you again. Come inside you properly this time. Leave another load to drip out of you.”

Adam swallows. A cool breeze whips at his hair. “Fuck.”

“You want that? Yeah?”

“Please,” Adam says again, coolly, like his insides aren’t singing for Ronan’s touch. “Do you want to go back downstairs?”

“I’m gonna need a minute before I can move anywhere.”

“Same. I meant. In a minute. Unless you just want to fuck up here?”

“Are you trying to kill me?” Ronan accuses.

“Me?” Adam says, incredulous grin on his face. “I’m not the one who just made a whole filthy speech of promises.”

Ronan throws his head back and laughs. “Promises I intend to keep. Let’s go downstairs.”

They go downstairs. Ronan keeps his promises.

“Gansey’s moving to a different university for his Master’s,” Ronan says, staring at the IKEA drawer he’s managed to screw up construction of. He knocks it to the floor with a thud. “Piece of shit.”

Adam hides his eye roll in his own drawer. He’s been waiting for Ronan to bring up the thing that was bothering him with words, instead of taking it out on his new furniture.

“He’s decided already?” Adam’s been researching Master’s programs himself, trying to figure out of it’s something he wants, before working out how to go about getting it. He’s just surprised that Gansey has done the same. Done more.

“He wants to specialise in Welsh History. Apparently that means Wales.”

“I don’t know why you’re acting surprised.”

“I’m not surprised,” Ronan snarls as he tears apart the backwards drawer. “I’m—”

Adam moves the hammer out of his reach before he uses it to bang a dowel rod in with more force than necessary. “Give me those,” he says, gesturing at the pieces of MDF.

Ronan uses his foot to slide the wood across the carpet. He slumps back against the foot of the bed.

“You feel like he’s leaving you behind.”

Ronan stares at the white wall by the door. The sun shining through the window casts a bright square on the wall, dimming and brightening as clouds move across the sky in the high wind outside.

“He’s not going that far away,” Adam says. Jealousy is ugly and difficult. Adam reminds himself that it’s good that Ronan has more than one person. Adam is one of them, and—oh.

“Blue’s not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere.”

Ronan keeps staring out of the window. “You shouldn’t stay here for me.”

“I know. You’re not that great.”

Ronan snorts. “Liar.”

“They do a psych MRes here, and the tuition fees are discounted if you did your undergrad here. Might do my PhD here. Then it’ll be me getting left behind.”

“I’m not gonna do that.”

“You shouldn’t stay here for me.”

“Shithead,” Ronan says.

Adam shuffles round on the floor to sit next to him.

“I never really think about the future,” Ronan says.

“Doing a degree suggests you do,” Adam points out.

“I didn’t really think about after. I thought I’d just, you know, be a vet. I didn’t think about how, or where, or what it meant about where I’d live.”

Adam can’t imagine it. So much of his future is dreamt, planned, mapped out in his head. How he’s getting there, the steps to take. Destinations, waypoints, paths he wants to follow. Life doesn’t always follow the map, but every time he changes course he imagines a new future, ahead down this unexpected road. Maybe his future won’t look like the one he sees for himself now. His present doesn’t look how he thought it would.

“What do you want? When you think about the future?”

Ronan shrugs again. He’s picked up Adam’s ratchet screwdriver and he’s fiddling with it. The sound of it clicking as he turns the handle fills the silence.

And then Ronan speaks. “Remember that day, we were at Monmouth, studying together, just me and you. You went to go heat up dinner, and I tidied your books away with mine, stacked them together on the shelf. That’s what I think about. When I think about the future.”

Adam takes the screwdriver out of Ronan’s hand, and replaces it with his. He locks their fingers together and squeezes.

“I want that too,” he says. It’s not a waypoint on his map, it’s not even a destination. It’s the whole journey.

Later on, lying in the dark in Adam’s bedroom, Ronan rolls to Adam, throws an arm across his hips, and says, “I used to think about the future.”

Adam breathes steadily, waiting quietly for Ronan to carry on, and when he doesn’t, Adam makes a soft, inquisitive noise, letting him know he’s listening.

He feels the mattress rock as Ronan shifts and swallows.

“I used to think that I’d live on the farm. With my Mom and Dad, help them out, take over more of the jobs. Look after them when they got old.”

Silence again. Adam doesn’t dare disturb it.

“When they—” Ronan starts but doesn’t finish. His exhale shakes in the space between them.

Adam closes the gap, slides an arm between Ronan’s ribcage and the mattress, wraps the other around his shoulder and pulls Ronan in so that every one of his unsteady breathes doesn’t have chance to escape. They leave Ronan’s chest and sink into Adam’s.

“I just stopped thinking about the future. How could there be a future without—”

Adam tucks his chin on the top of Ronan’s head. “You’ll find something you want just as much.”

“I tried staying on the farm. Living there by myself, but everywhere I looked it was just memories. I haven’t been back. I can’t go back.”

Adam can’t say anything. He doesn’t have the right words, not for this. He cups the back of Ronan’s skull, fingers spreading protectively across his soft, shorn hair.

“I want to go for a drive,” Ronan says. Adam can almost feel it: his desire to keep moving making his muscles twitch, potential energy through his body like a rubber band, about to snap.

“Do you want me to come?” Adam asks. It’s 2am.

“If you want.” Ronan hasn’t moved. “I won’t go if you don’t.”

“Let’s go,” Adam says. He’s done with exams, he hasn’t got lectures, he’s got nowhere to be.

Ronan puts Adam’s rock climbing hoodie on over his bare chest and Adam trips into a pair of jeans that he thought were his but turn out to be Ronan’s. The don’t turn any lights on as they leave the apartment.

Green lights clear their path out of the city. The amber glow of the BMW headlights eats up the white lines of the motorway and Adam falls asleep to the rumble of the road and the low pulse of Ronan’s EDM, tugging at his gut.

When he wakes up, Adam doesn’t remember where he is. As he slowly comes back to the waking world, as he lets go of the hazy edges of dreams about motorways and flying cars, he remembers he’s in Ronan’s car. He doesn’t know where though.

They’re parked at a viewpoint, in a tiny dirt car park just separated from the road by a low bank of grass. The sky is lightening with the imminent sunrise, a soft blue glow stretching out from a point on the horizon, just over the rolling hills.

Ronan is staring out of the windscreen. He’s awake, but he doesn’t look like he’s really here. Adam reaches out for him, rests his hand on his shoulder.

Ronan exhales, a little shakily. “They divided the farm up. Put it in a trust and then when we turned eighteen, we each had a third of it. I wanted to keep it running but—”

“You don’t have to say,” Adam says. His mouth feels sticky.

“I do,” Ronan tells him. “My dad had a lot of debts. A lot. We didn’t just inherit the farm, we inherited those too. Declan sold his third completely. I had to sell some, Matthew did too. We still have the house, and some of the fields around it. It’s just not a farm anymore. They’re building houses on it.”

Ronan’s eyes are rimmed with red, and Adam doesn’t know if it’s from exhaustion or from tears. Adam doesn’t say anything for a long time.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ronan says. It does. “I can’t go back anyway.”

“It would be okay if it did matter,” Adam says. “You’ll go back one day.”

Ronan doesn’t reply. He’s still staring out of the front window like he’s waiting for something, waiting for instructions, for a reason. He tries to suppress a yawn.

“Do you want me to drive back?” Adam asks.

Ronan nods.

“I love you, you know,” Adam tells him, before he can climb out the driver’s side.

Ronan nods again. “I know,” he says. “I love you too. Me and you, we’re… we’re good.”

“We are,” Adam says. He climbs over the gear stick to get into the driver’s seat. “And even if I’m not… here, I’m always going to be, you know, there. Around.”

Ronan makes a fake vomit sound as he gets in the passenger side.

“Fuck you, I’m trying to be sincere.”

Ronan smiles at him, and maybe he meant it to be a teasing smirk, but it doesn’t come out that way. He’s smiling softly at Adam, sincere too. “I know.”

Adam starts the engine.