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It happened so slowly that Adam almost didn't realize it was occurring.
He'd always been the one who spent the most time with Ronan at the Barns anyway; after everything that had happened, following a quiet and somber Ronan back home had seemed inevitable. The lush green sprawl of the land was slowly browning in the wake of an early fall, but it was still beautiful. The trees were turning colors in all shades of red and gold, and something about this had seemed to settle Ronan. Ronan, who had cried over Gansey's body as it lay cooling in the middle of the road. Ronan, who had convulsed in the front seat of his car, dying, unraveling, while Adam had sat in blind horror in the back. Ronan, who had refused to raise a hand to Adam, even in the face of death. Ronan, who had lost his mother in the most brutal way imaginable, who had woken with her blood on his hands.
It was a lot to deal with, Adam reasoned, and Ronan shouldn't be alone.
He spent the first week there following Ronan at a respectable few paces, never crowding but always within sight. At first he thought he would let Ronan be by himself, but Ronan had seemed to seek him out, always showing up in the doorways with glances that no longer needed to remain subtle. Adam realized that Ronan wanted to know Adam was still there, was still alive, was still himself. He didn't know if he was still himself, if he could ever be himself again (how do you forget your hands around a neck, how do you forget a boy falling from a kiss to the ground, how do you forget a forest pulling away from your soul), but he trusted Ronan to know him. He trusted Ronan to understand.
He went back to school, although Ronan did not. Gansey did not say anything, perhaps recognizing that nothing would heal Ronan more than being able to be at the Barns, or perhaps recognizing that life suddenly seemed both more and less than the careful plans Gansey had been laying for them. They were without a grand purpose, without sleeping kings and magic forests and ghostly friends, but the less grand purpose of being young and on the cusp of freedom suddenly held an appeal that had not been there before. Henry Cheng was making noises about a gap year, and Adam could tell Gansey would let himself be swayed.
So Adam went to Aglionby, although the days seemed longer than they had before, and he went to work, which dragged hours into what felt like days, and then he drove to the Barns. It was a precious use of gas money, and it meant waking up early and getting home late, but Adam could not bear to think of Ronan all alone at night with his dreams. Ronan was always at the door when he pulled up, leaning with the light glowing behind him so that Adam could not see his face. He knew Ronan was thinking of their kiss -- kisses -- on this porch, just as he knew Ronan knew Adam was thinking of the same thing. It was a pleasant memory to have every evening, one that left Adam's mouth curled at the edges as he got out of his car. Ronan's mouth echoed it.
They spent the evenings quietly, for the most part. Adam did homework or studied or read, and Ronan tinkered with dream objects, or repaired holes in the wall, or taught the Orphan Girl how to speak properly, as she still stubbornly lapsed into Ronan's broken Latin. But they were always in the same room, and they always went to bed at the same time, although Adam did not know if Ronan was choosing to sleep.
They would trade appraising looks as they stood in front of their respective doors, and Adam would feel the inevitable pull of his body, yearning towards Ronan's dark, cool eyes and the curls of black creeping up his neck, but he held himself back. He already felt he had tripped over a starting line rather than approached it the right way. He did not want to handle Ronan poorly (Ronan was not a game, it did not feel like a game), and it felt too soon to risk making mistakes. He could wait. He could not precisely tell what was going on in Ronan's head, only that Ronan would tap his fingers against the door once, twice, or would cast his eyes to Adam's hands or neck, before quirking his mouth and muttering, "Night, Parrish."
So. He spent the first week carefully watching and being watched, holding hands with Ronan and watching fireflies chase the Orphan Girl around the Barns and letting his body remember how to be Adam before everything. Adam pre-magical adventure, Adam pre-Cabeswater, Adam pre-demonic possession. Adam who was a student, Adam who did not have to worry about anything except school and work and friends, Adam was looking forward to leaving Henrietta on a scholarship to anywhere else. (Except now, Adam conceded, he was also a post-Ronan Adam, an Adam he thought could be persuaded to return.)
After the first week he went back to living at St. Agnes, although he visited the Barns between shifts if he could, and inevitably spent the weekends there. Gansey and Blue and Henry would show up on Saturday, usually, and everyone would lay around in the cooling air and silently marvel at everything, at the enormity of what they'd done and been through, at the force of time pulling them onward and away from the events. Henry proved to be an excellent buffer between the Then and Now, caught as he was in the middle, and Adam grew used to his laughter, to Gansey's approving chuckles, to Blue's indignant but fond protests. He was especially glad for Ronan's dry quips, which provoked more sarcasm from Henry (who appeared to be operating under the assumption that Ronan was not as terrifying as he looked, something Adam knew was both true and false), which prompted the whole thing to start over again. Circles, Adam thought. Everything starting and ending and starting.
Ronan spent all of his time working on the Barns, so Adam should not have been surprised to find that come winter holidays, it was as beautiful and bustling as he imagined it had ever been. The animals were let out to pasture on warm days, and spent their nights in the stables with the glow of Ronan's fireflies casting amber light over their heads. There had been no harvest, given that there had been no crops, but obliging hay bales showed up anyway. The first signs of Ronan's attempts at dreaming since Cabeswater had vanished had been large, bright sunflowers, dropped casually on Adam's chest first thing in the morning, so it was not surprising to Adam that he continued to dream in the same vein. Impossible flowers grew out of the hard ground, and there was a garden in the back yard full of herbs and small vegetables. Orphan Girl, who Ronan now called Opal, had tried everything at least once, and only claimed to dislike the rosemary. Ronan had proudly told her she could help him learn how to cook with them, which she took to mean chew on utensils while Ronan caused a huge mess in the kitchen.
Ronan had decorated the Barns for Christmas, which seemed to surprise Henry. "I know he goes to church and all," he said, because Ronan had returned to St. Agnes when Matthew came back to town, Declan dropping him off with a strange, searching look on his face mixed with relief, "but I didn't expect all the lights and tinsel and ribbons." Adam of a year ago might not have either, but Adam now knew that Ronan was, if he was anything at all, a boy in love with his home and with his family. Although that family had grown smaller (and then larger, and then smaller, and then larger again -- Henry was a permanent fixture by now), Ronan would not pass the opportunity to return his home to his brightest moments, especially with Opal and Matthew at the Barns.
It was easy to see Ronan in the haphazard lights flung around columns and hanging from gutters, in the holly hung from door frames and the fake (or dreamed real but unmelting) snow that littered the floor, collecting in the corners and always managing to catch in Adam's eyelashes, which made Ronan smirk. But the tree, which sat in the living room, was so meticulously decorated, and so specifically arranged, that Adam knew he had prepared it the same way Aurora had years ago. There were stockings over the fireplace, and in the gaps where Niall's and Aurora's must have once hung, there were now stockings that represented Opal and Adam. Adam did not know how he knew the stocking was his, as it did not have his name on it, but he did. It felt obvious, the way Ronan had always seemed obvious; it felt impossible, in the way that Ronan was impossible. Adam had never had a stocking before.
He did not know when he decided to spend winter break at the Barns, but he must have, because he woke up one morning and realized that most of the clothing he owned was on the floor of Ronan’s room, and he had not been to St. Agnes for more than a few hours at a time in a week. He was contemplating what to do with the clothing -- wash it, obviously, but did he fold it up and put it back in his bag, did he tentatively put it in a drawer, establishing ownership, establishing a place among Ronan’s other possessions -- when Ronan pushed his door open. Ronan did not knock, which should have been annoying, but Ronan did kiss him good morning, which was the opposite of annoying. Adam pushed into the kiss, wrapping his hand around Ronan's neck and stroking along the edge of a feather he knew ran along his shoulder blade; Ronan made a dark, pleased noise, and grabbed Adam's hips. They kissed for what seemed like hours, or days, until Adam found himself pushing Ronan against the wall, Ronan puffing out an amused breath of air against his cheek.
"I came in to get laundry," Ronan said, eyes dancing. "But I can see you have other plans."
Adam rolled his eyes. "I'm supposed to believe you just wanted to be really domestic this morning?" he asked, and Ronan crooked a grin at him.
"Think what you want, Parrish. You're the one pinning me to the wall." This was true, and Adam decided to take advantage of it by putting his mouth to Ronan's throat, because he could not offer a fitting rebuttal. Ronan made a satisfyingly choked off noise and Adam heard his head thudding against the wall.
They had tiptoed around each other the first month or so, content (and discontent, sometimes) to kiss and hold hands and lay curled up on the couch together, but both wary of going any further; they both understood the weight of actions given and taken. It hadn’t stopped him from thinking about it though. Adam had thought he would go crazy for wanting to touch Ronan, to smooth his mouth and hands over Ronan’s dark brow and his sharp collarbone and his pale arms. He had almost been afraid of the depth of his desire, but he could not seem to tame it the way he had his anger.
It seemed like Ronan had felt the same way, because at the end of November he had shipped Opal off in the back of the Pig (she had frowned but seemed reluctantly charmed by Henry) and then pushed Adam down on the couch in the living room and carefully, gently, viciously taken him apart.
Adam would have felt bad about making Ronan the one to always ask the question of where do we go from here, but at the same time he was too afraid of his own feelings and his own body to ever risk Ronan answering nowhere. His fears were probably unfounded, he knew, but Adam had spent his life questioning his place in every facet of his life, and no amount of success would ever overcome his inability to accept his failures. He sometimes did not believe he deserved any of this life he had found himself in, so different to the life he had begun.
Fortunately, Ronan did not seem to mind Adam's lack of initiative; he had sucked several dark marks into Adam's neck, fingers catching on Adam’s ribs, and then slid down his body and put his mouth on Adam's cock like he'd been waiting for this moment forever and was immensely pleased to finally be in it. Ronan was so incautious, so open with himself -- Adam had not been able to keep himself in check. He had scratched lines down Ronan's back and gripped the back of Ronan's head before he remembered himself, but Ronan had hummed and gripped Adam’s thighs harder, running his tongue and teeth along the length of him. Every hitching gasp Adam made only spurred Ronan on, and when Adam dared to look down, Ronan was looking right back at him, eyes black pools rimmed in blue, focused and intense. Adam could feel his pulse in his throat, in his hips, in his wrists. His hips lifted and fell of their own volition, and Ronan would not look away from him. Adam raised a shaking hand and slipped a finger alongside his cock into Ronan’s mouth and Ronan made a sound like he was dying and yet enjoying it, and Adam came. His entire body was afloat in an ocean of fire. He couldn’t see anything but the blurred edges of Ronan’s tattoo.
When he came back to himself, Ronan slid back up his body, shoved a leg between both of his, and proceeded to press against him in long, rolling thrusts. Adam weakly pushed back against him, fingertips still pleasantly numb, and when he stroked his knuckles against Ronan’s red, wet mouth, Ronan closed his eyes, furrowed his brow, swallowed hard and then froze against him. He held himself above Adam, trembling minutely, barely making any noise at all. Finally, he collapsed on top of Adam and breathed out a laugh into Adam’s neck. Of course, Adam thought fondly, Ronan would laugh after sex.
They had fallen asleep on the couch and then woken up sticky and deliriously happy about it, before moving to the shower and then the bed and then the shower again. It had been a long, exploratory weekend, and Opal had complained at both of them about Monmouth (“She tried to eat Gansey’s model of Henrietta and he almost cried,” Henry said, while Blue solemnly patted Gansey’s shoulder) and they had apologized by agreeing to build her a treehouse in the backyard. Adam immediately regretted it because she had hooves, how would she even get in and out of a treehouse, but Ronan took care of that by building a proper staircase for her to climb, winding but the perfect width and height for her to scale. It had fairy lights built into it and a turret and the tree curled into it until it became the treehouse itself – Opal loved it as fiercely as if she’d made it herself, and some nights had to be forcefully ejected to come in for bed.
Now, Ronan let himself be held against the wall while Adam touched his tongue to the hollows of his throat. He could barely believe this was something he was allowed to have, something he was allowed to do. Ronan didn’t even pretend to resist; he spread his legs so he was Adam’s height and Adam took advantage of it by slipping closer. Ronan’s pulse was jumping in his neck, his eyes wicked when Adam glanced up at him. His smile was sharp enough to cut glass but his mouth was soft when he pressed it to Adam’s mouth.
Adam wasn’t sure where it would have gone from there (he could guess) but Opal brought an abrupt halt to the proceedings when she slammed into the room hard enough to bounce the door off the wall. Ronan looked so proud of her for inheriting his need to slam things that Adam couldn’t even be annoyed that they’d been interrupted. For her part, Opal paid no attention to what they’d been doing and instead had imperiously ordered them to dress so they could all go gather pinecones to decorate the tree.
Adam gathered his laundry and let it wash while he followed Opal and Ronan around outside. Ronan attempted to keep Opal from chewing on the pinecones she found, but it was a lost cause and he let it go soon enough. It did not appear to hurt her, and she hummed with bits of bark in her mouth. Opal led them through the natural forest that mixed with the one Ronan had dreamt into life on the edges of the fields, waving energetically at the animals who ventured closer and closer to them as they recognized Ronan. Adam looked on as Ronan taught her how to coax them to come even closer, his pale hand resting on her capped head. She still wore Adam’s watch on her wrist; there were teeth marks on every inch of the band, a mirror to the leather bands still wrapped around Ronan’s wrist. Adam looked at this beautiful and terrifying boy, who had dreamt this beautiful and terrifying girl and had somehow decided that Adam belonged in their realm. Emotion rose up and he calmly let it crash into him, absorbing the acceptance and relief and worry at once. It was too much and not enough, he thought. Exactly what he’d come to expect from Ronan.
When he followed them in later, after they’d decorated the Christmas tree with the dented and chipped pinecones, after Ronan and Opal had made enormous messy mugs of hot chocolate, after Adam had read one of his favorite books while Ronan slept peacefully with his head in Adam’s lap – after, Adam folded his laundry and slipped it into a drawer next to Ronan’s clothing. He looked at the full drawer for a moment, realizing that there had been just enough space for him to fill, the gap already there. He had expected to feel like an intruder, but as he slid the drawer closed he felt only Ronan’s unspoken welcome to this place burning in his chest. It was becoming a familiar ache.
Going back to St. Agnes when the term began again only made sense, but his room seemed a thousand times smaller after the sprawl of the Barns, and a million times emptier for not having anyone waiting at the door when he got home. Gansey and Henry he saw at school, and Blue could usually be found at Monmouth with them after classes. It was a hollow consolation after spending weeks cocooned in Ronan’s arms and listening to Opal attempt to teach them the dream language. Ronan made trips into town when he could, but there was so much to do at the Barns, and Opal did not like being left alone, so they did not see each other as much as they wanted to. Adam had left most of his clothes at the Barns, but could not bring himself to retrieve them. He washed his shirts twice as much and slept with his hands close to his heart so he could smell moss and mist as he fell asleep.
February was halfway over before things it came to a head. Adam came home from work late, body aching in familiar ways and brain already shutting down for the night; he woke up entirely when he saw the BMW in the parking lot of St. Agnes. The hood of the car was still warm when Adam rested his hand on it, and there was a light on in his room upstairs. Adam’s night took on the particular edge of excitement and anxiety that Ronan always inspired.
Ronan was sitting on his bed, leaned sideways against the wall with his ankles crossed over each other, the picture of practiced insouciance. His eyes were like a physical touch sliding from Adam’s boots to his face. Ronan had grown used to letting his stares be seen after so long of hiding his glances because Ronan was an honest thing by nature. Adam knew this and still felt his face grow warm, which only made Ronan quirk the corner of his mouth.
“Hey, Parrish,” Ronan said.
“Evening, Lynch,” Adam replied, shedding his jacket and kicking one shoe off, then the other. “Just in the neighborhood?” he couldn’t help but add, because he knew it would amuse Ronan.
Ronan smiled the smile he reserved for Adam alone. It was soft and full and uncomplicated, a smile made in opposition to the Ronan everyone else saw. Until it faded, which was Adam’s first sign that this was going to be more than an unexpected visit. The second was when Ronan cut his eyes away from Adam and looked instead at the desk, filled with books and papers and nothing personal. His fingers tapped once, twice on his leg. Adam understood at once that Ronan had come here to say something to Adam that he knew Adam would not like.
“How was work?” Ronan asked. Adam did not know if he appreciated the attempt at normalcy or if he was frustrated that Ronan would not just say what he had come to say. A familiar feeling was creeping up his neck; he was suddenly thrust into the memory of Blue telling him, It’s not gonna be you. He remembered the helpless emotion welling in him, he remembered placing his fist on the wall carefully, he remembered thinking: I want to leave.
Adam was equal parts glad and terrified to find that, now, he did not want to leave.
He wanted to go to school, he wanted to make something of himself. He wanted to stand apart from the shadow of the life his father had created for him, and that meant somewhere other than Virginia. He wanted to be able to see his last name and not feel the crushing, unending worry that he would never rise above it. He wanted to leave.
But. Adam’s wants had grown to encompass this: a home that was filled to the brim with dreams made real, a twisting treehouse built with an impossible child in mind, a garden that should not thrive in the dead of winter but could, a bed he would never be alone in. Adam wanted to be with Ronan, and if that meant coming back to a place he had sworn to leave forever, it was no choice at all.
“Ronan,” Adam said.
Ronan did not pretend anymore. He was too honest. He looked back at Adam, and his face was tight with emotion; Adam could not name it.
“Are you breaking up with me?” Adam said before he could stop himself, and was gratified and surprised by the speed with which Ronan stood up.
“What the fuck, Adam?” Ronan said, crossing to where Adam was standing and gripping his arm above the elbow. His hands were gentle, belying the snarl in his voice. “Why the fuck would you think that?”
Adam felt a staggering swell of relief, which then immediately was swept away by annoyance. “Well what am I supposed to expect when you show up out of nowhere and don’t wanna start a conversation with me? You didn’t even kiss me hello. You asked about work, Ronan.”
Ronan’s fingers tightened briefly and then he let go, huffing out a noise. His voice was the scrape of tires over gravel when he spoke. “I just don’t know how to – I don’t want you to get mad.” He rubbed a hand over his head, closing his eyes.
Because Adam’s biggest fear was now put to rest, he found himself patient enough to give Ronan an opening. He touched his shoulder carefully, a fingertip first and then his whole hand. “Just say it. I’m not gonna promise not to get mad but I won’t bite your head off.”
“I like it when you bite,” Ronan said immediately, and then he shot Adam a devilish look. It transformed him, for a moment, but then the worry closed him up again. “I just.” He contemplated Adam’s face for a moment, lingering over Adam’s eyebrows and the curve of his jaw as if committing them to memory. Adam knew he was asking Ronan to use his words, when Ronan had always been a man of action. Ronan did not trust words to convey his meaning, but he was using them anyway.
I love him, Adam thought, half-surprised and half-not.
“I hate you living here,” Ronan said. And then: “I hate you being so far away from the Barns. Opal hates it too, she’s even more of a brat without you there. I know you have school here and I know you have work here and I know it’s too much to ask but I just. Hate it. I hate not being with you.” Having released the words in a sudden burst as if they had spilled out against his will, he was now studiously looking anywhere but Adam’s face.
Adam thought furiously for a moment, still caught up in his realization, mixing his love with Ronan’s confession. For a moment he did not recognize himself – he wondered what the Adam who was so adamant and stubborn about living with Gansey and Ronan in Monmouth would think of the Adam who now was considering what Ronan was saying with a growing light in his heart. I don’t want to be anyone’s possession, he thought, testing, but this did not feel like ownership. This felt like belonging. A distinction Adam once had not understood, but which Ronan had always known. And now he was trying to make Adam a part of the place Ronan had always belonged.
Adam deliberately thought about saying no, absorbed his own reluctance to do so, and then accepted the changes he’d gone through.
He cleared his throat. Ronan’s body tensed. “You say it’s too much to ask, but you never actually asked me anything,” Adam pointed out. Ronan’s body held itself still for a moment longer and then relaxed. He leaned into Adam’s hand.
“Asshole,” Ronan said. He turned to face Adam properly again. His hand rose up and smoothed along Adam’s cheekbone, over his freckles. “Come live at the Barns.” With me, he did not say, but Adam understood.
“That’s still not a question,” Adam said, but he leaned into the kiss Ronan pushed onto his lips. When Ronan pulled back, he studied this familiar boy up close, the blue eyes he’d accidentally caught for months and months, the dark eyebrows and the long eyelashes that framed them, his stubborn and cruel mouth.
It would not be easy. He was not sure he would not regret it, and in the front of his mind was Gansey’s warning to him: Don’t break him, Adam. Adam had no intention of doing so, but he also didn’t want to be miserable and make Ronan miserable in the name of being safe anymore. He was tired of going to sleep alone, he was tired of pulling himself up the stairs to this small, quiet room without personality or comfort, he was tired of living in self-imposed exile. He wanted to let himself have something for once. It was a heady and heavy thought.
“Okay,” he said. Ronan kissed him again before the word was fully out of his mouth, and they stayed that way for an indeterminate amount of time before Adam forced himself to remember practical things. He pulled away and Ronan immediately attached himself to Adam’s jaw, sliding towards his neck.
“Okay,” he said again, “If I don’t have to pay rent here then I guess I can use that money for gas, and I don’t mind waking up early, especially since Opal tends to get up at sunrise anyway, and I can probably pack up—”
“Parrish, I’m trying to do something here,” Ronan interrupted, and then he bit down on Adam’s collarbone and Adam let himself be dragged to the bed. His knees had given out anyway.
Later, when Adam had tangled his legs and fingers with Ronan’s legs and fingers, he let himself drift in and out of sleep. He wondered if Ronan felt the same hazy, surreal ache surrounding this night that he did. He wondered if this was what it felt like to pull a dream into reality.
Ronan’s voice was quiet but clear. “If you want, you can drive the BMW. It doesn’t need gas. So.”
Adam thought his body would melt into a puddle of feelings. He thought about saying those feelings out loud for a moment, thought about giving some of himself back to Ronan the way Ronan was always giving to him. He opened his mouth to tell him, to say I love you I love you I love you, to try to find some measure of words or emotions to compare to Ronan offering Adam a piece of his father’s memories, when Adam knew what something like that meant.
But he did not want Ronan to believe that it was said out of obligation, and he did not want to say it without giving them both time to prepare for it. Adam swallowed the words but kept them at the back of his throat.
He promised himself that he would say it first. He wanted to say it first, to show Ronan that he was not blindly following his lead or letting himself be pulled in the wake of his feelings. But he also wanted to give him more than just words, the way everything Ronan did was more than words, and it would take time to figure out how to do that.
Adam curled into Ronan and pressed his mouth to the edge of Ronan’s. “Don’t complain when I throw away all your music,” he said.
“You love it, Parrish,” Ronan said.
Yes, Adam thought, and they both went to sleep holding on to each other.