Chapter Text
"I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something’s not right about what I’m doing but I’m still doing it—living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling. The enormity of my desire disgusts me."
— 'Birds Hover Over the Trampled Field'
Richard Siken
"[…] all that was left was the sound of the city that would slowly kill Ronan if he let it."
— 'Call Down The Hawk'
Maggie Stiefvater
One hundred and eighty two days ago, Ronan had proposed to Adam.
The engagement took place near Easter, in a park, after dinner, all casual—their Uber had pulled up to the curb before Adam could steady his hands long enough to put on the ring. Less than one hour later, Adam presented Ronan with the ring that had always been his, still in its Tiffany box with a ribbon around it.
Summer passed, then autumn, and then the year began to taper off into winter—a gloriously dull gray winter, while Manhattan seemed to shrink in on itself as it was slowly smothered by the density of the sky. It would soon be November. If everything went according to plan, Ronan would soon be thirty-two, and Ronan would soon be married.
The proposal was deceptively simple. Ronan offered the ring without speaking, and Adam accepted the ring without answering. While the agreement was wordless, it was mutual. It was unfortunate that an engagement would inevitably be the only somewhat casual stop along the bumpy, expensive road towards matrimony. With every passing day, the labor-intensive process of planning a wedding chipped away at what little patience Ronan possessed.
In a perfect world, he could simply hand Adam a second ring, or perhaps the same ring again, and they would be married without either of them having to say a word. Instead, Ronan was inundated with quotes from vendors and estimates from venues. A wedding was the antithesis of Adam and Ronan’s relationship thus far; getting married required saying several very important words, often in front of a crowd, famously at great expense. Their engagement had reshaped Ronan’s world in many ways—his relationship, his bank account, his family, his home. Specifically, and most notably in that moment, his kitchen. The island countertop had once been home to merely a Nutri-Bullet and a bowl of bananas, and it now served as the final resting place for a mess of lookbooks and swatches.
Ronan was not the kind of man who usually gave a fuck about centerpieces or floral arrangements or table settings. His concern wasn’t out of necessity—they’d hired a planner, a woman whose whole life revolved around gracefully executing other people’s weddings, no matter how difficult the client. They’d been clear with her from day one: Adam wanted the scope of his involvement to be showing up on the day of in a suit and saying I do , and Ronan wanted nothing other than total creative control over the honeymoon.
That had all changed when the emails started coming in with questions such as what do y’all think about this photographer and here are some dates/times for your cake tasting and can you send me the names of your groomsmen. Ronan came to the hard and sudden realization that he cared about those decisions; he’d offered their planner several strong opinions on the dinner menu for the reception, and since then, he’d been focused on doing whatever it took to execute his vision .
While he didn’t necessarily enjoy the act of planning a wedding, Ronan knew he was going to love the state of being married. The mere thought of being legally wed made the undertaking worth it. On the day of the ceremony, Ronan was going to be able to take pride in his own hard work. He knew he was borrowing a burden by involving himself, but at the very least, it kept him busy.
At the moment, he didn’t like any of the mockups the florists had sent along with their bids. It was all too floral, which irritated him, because he’d specifically requested greenery and botanicals. Whatever frippery could be done away with, he’d vetoed: lace tablecloths, sparkler send-offs, a flower girl, wedding favors. The invitations and their wedding website all bore the message NO GIFTS, PLEASE! Ronan didn’t trust anyone else to shop for him, and Adam still balked in the face of anything gifted.
“Here’s a question for you,” Ronan said. “What do you think about centerpieces?”
Adam appeared startled by the abrupt and obscure line of inquiry. He started to shake his whisk bottle back and forth, almost absently. A pensive divot creased the skin between his fair eyebrows as he frowned. Ronan watched the bones in his wrist flex while his hand worked, left to right, rapid and perfunctory. The rhythmic rattle of the whisk ball inside the bottle was a sound that had recently become commonplace in Ronan’s kitchen.
Two-hundred and twelve days ago, Adam had moved into the brownstone. It happened almost overnight, with little circumstance or ceremony—not because they’d discussed it or actively worked to make it happen, but because it was simply the most obvious next step in their relationship. Adam’s lease was up, and the invitation had been sitting on the tip of Ronan’s tongue for months. Somehow, Adam had mustered the courage to arrive on Ronan’s front stoop with a suitcase and a backpack in hand.
He hadn’t asked for permission, nor had he announced his intention. It was no secret to either of them that Ronan wanted Adam to live in his house, that he wanted it to be their home; Adam had decided of his own volition to make it his place of residence, despite the fact it was only Ronan’s name on the deed and Ronan’s name on the insurance and Ronan’s furniture in all the rooms. It wasn’t something they’d ever hashed out—Ronan was sure that if he brought up the idea of adding names to paperwork, it would send Adam scurrying back into the shadows like a startled spider. In his mind Ronan considered it their house. To Adam he referred to it as the house, never my house, but also never our house.
Adam was a largely unobtrusive roommate—tidy, quiet, and to Ronan’s delight, frequently horny. Despite the months that passed, Ronan occasionally found himself struck by the novelty of it; at first he was never sure if he’d find Adam somewhere in the house with his shoulders stooped as he frowned down at his laptop or his eyes closed as he napped on the couch. Each time he opened the door and saw Adam, it was like a reward: Ronan bided his time, didn’t jump the gun, let Adam decide for himself, and now they shared a closet and a refrigerator.
To any outside observer, they might appear ill-matched: both short-tempered and stuck in their ways, neither especially polite or forgiving. It was different, within shared walls, with the front door closed securely between them and the rest of the world. Nothing was perfect, least of all their newfound domesticity, but it was far from the most complex situation either of them had navigated. Adam was a creature of habit, and Ronan structured his day just rigidly enough to keep himself from doing nothing but sleeping and drinking and pondering the immortality of the crab. The mundanity of sharing a life together was a luxury in and of itself—something to rely upon, reassuring in its sameness.
Ronan couldn’t help but think that he should hate it. He abhorred routine. That was why he’d moved to the city—to get away from the sameness of his daily life back home. Every day was the same day in Virginia, and Ronan had spent them all the same way: alone in a house that he shared with no one. On occasion, he would be seized by the fatal and irrational desire to blow up his life as he knew it; sell the brownstone, stop paying his gym membership, and flee the concrete jungle. New York had been a change of pace at first, so totally unlike the place he was from that it jumpstarted him, dispelling his melancholy by force. Now, once again, he found that every day was the same as the one before it.
Weekday mornings were always the same for Adam: an early run, an early shower, an early coffee, an early train downtown. Those mornings, Ronan woke up alone. Weekends were different. Every Sunday morning, Ronan rolled himself out of bed early and went to Mass. Adam never joined him, and Ronan never asked him to; there were some things they kept for themselves. Sunday morning was a well-planned day for the both of them, with Adam always off for a run and Ronan always in a suit and tie looking for parking near the church before the day had even really begun.
The science of habits was inconclusive—Ronan knew that there was no consensus on how long it took to solidify a neural pathway in order for one to stick. If any effort were to be put into finding out, Adam would have made the perfect test subject. He acquired fixations like it was going out of style, though he referred to them as routines and Ronan thought of them more like neuroses. He was strictly regimented and disliked any sort of disruption, sometimes to the point of asceticism. Ronan admired Adam’s self-discipline; he also liked to make fun of him for it. Despite his occasional teasing, Ronan understood. While he was not as adept at color-coding a calendar as Adam, he did know a thing or two about habits, or as they were often known to become: addictions. With their own unique brands of obsessiveness hard at play, they adapted to cohabitation as easily as they fell into step on the sidewalk.
“I don’t think I’ve ever thought about centerpieces,” Adam said, at last. “Do I need to?”
“One of us probably should,” Ronan gestured vaguely towards the mess on the counter in front of him: moodboards, portfolios, quotes and estimates, glossy ads for Manhattan-based florists that he’d ripped out of magazines in waiting rooms and doctor’s offices. “The planner wants a decision by tomorrow.”
Adam made a face. He looked a little perturbed, as was his nature, but his resting frown only deepened when he lowered his gaze to Ronan’s wedding binder. It had been a gag gift from Hennessy, a pastel pink three-ring binder outfitted with a timeline and a calendar and plastic tabs delineating the items. On the front it read MY BIG DAY in loopy, decorative baby blue script. It was the first of many contributions Hennessy had made—the other most notable was the group chat titled RONANS BACHELORETTE 💀🍺🍆 , in which Adam, Hennessy, Gansey, and Ronan were all working together to plan some monstrosity of a joint bachelor party. So far, the planning consisted only of Hennessy sending a few links for strip clubs, followed by the notification message RONAN LYNCH HAS REMOVED HENNESSY FROM THE CONVERSATION .
In two hundred and forty days, Ronan would be a married man.
In two hundred and forty one days, Ronan would be a married man on his honeymoon.
In six hours, Ronan was supposed to meet their wedding planner and a prospective caterer at a restaurant somewhere in Noho.
Adam, on the other hand, was responsible for only one thing: the officiant. Ronan couldn’t get married in a Catholic church, nor would an ordained Catholic priest be able to officiate. It was a reality he’d never needed to confront, and it remained one he did his best to avoid. He didn’t think about it, and they didn’t discuss it, aside from the initial agreement that Adam was going to arrange it, and Ronan wasn’t going to sulk about it.
“Okay. So fuck the centerpieces, then,” Ronan said. “You can help me make some hard decisions about the guest list, instead.”
Adam clearly did not want to do that—his frown deepened, and eyes widened slightly with alarm. He was dressed for a run in the early morning chill, an athletic jacket and joggers, all black. The firm, straight lines of his body were pronounced beneath the skin tight material that clung to his lean muscle. Wordlessly, with an urgency borne of confusion, Adam stepped behind the counter to stand next to Ronan. He cocked his head to scrutinize the portfolios spread out on the countertop. Though Ronan already knew they weren’t going to accept any of the bids, he said nothing. It pleased him that Adam was at least making an attempt to take boutonnières seriously.
With light, careful fingers, Ronan reached up and unzipped the jacket to expose some of Adam’s skin. There were freckles dappled on his shoulders, dark like flecks of dirt; Ronan bent his head and pressed his mouth to them. He ghosted the fingertips of his other hand up the column of Adam’s spine, barely enough to send a shiver coursing through him.
“I don’t think I like any of them,” Adam stretched out his neck, offering the long line of his trapezius to Ronan’s teeth. “That’s probably not helpful.”
“Not really,” Ronan admitted.
Adam hummed a quiet, considerate response. He popped the top off his bottle and took a long swig. It smelled like strawberry kiwi; it made his bottom lip wet. The muscles of his throat worked beneath his skin when he swallowed. He was wearing Ronan’s deodorant. He was letting Ronan lave his tongue against his pulse point. He was soon going to notice the time and make his exit.
In light of that understanding, Ronan was going to make the most of their physical proximity while he could. He nipped gently at the slope of Adam’s shoulder, leaving tiny purple suggestions of pressure on his skin, woven in amongst the freckles. The muscle beneath Ronan’s mouth was firm, carved into shape by hours of relentless training.
Out of all the habits and routines and obsessions Adam painstakingly maintained, Ronan’s favorite was the running. Sometimes when Adam came back from his runs he would be shirtless and sweaty, pink from the sun, his hair dark with sweat, breathing heavily into the pit of his stomach. If he’d really pushed it, his legs would tremble with a minute little quiver of exertion. He always smelled like hard work and effort and the city, stale cigarettes and car engines and fresh air. If the mood struck and there was time for it, Ronan would slide to his knees and pull down Adam’s shorts to skate his open mouth over the sweat-sheened skin of his legs and belly until Adam finally gave in and shoved him up against a wall. On those days he would speak low in Ronan’s ear, always with something to the effect of open your mouth so I can watch you fucking choke on it. When Adam was like that all Ronan could do was nod and stick out his tongue and wonder how in the world he got so lucky.
Ronan’s heart thrummed in the hollow of his clavicle. He kissed the slope of Adam’s delt, and said, “You should fuck me when you get home later. I’m not busy today. Except for the caterers.”
“I am,” Adam said. “Busy, I mean. I’ve got a lunch meeting with one of the team leads for the new vault project.”
Ronan furrowed his brow. “On a Sunday?”
“It was the only time we both had available.” Adam shrugged, jostling his shoulder against Ronan’s lips. “Are you—“
“No,” Ronan murmured, and then he sat back to let Adam see him grinning wickedly. “But I will be, by the time you get back.”
With a light, breathy laugh, Adam replied in a low voice, “Okay. I want to. We’ll see.”
Ronan watched while Adam went through the next few steps of his routine, an unelaborate string of practical tasks. He zipped up his jacket. He disassembled and rinsed out his bottle. He straightened the knot in Ronan’s tie. He kissed Ronan on the mouth. After all that, the front door fell shut behind him, leaving Ronan alone in his kitchen with a partial seating chart and a partial honeymoon itinerary and a full-blown pounding headache. He glanced up at the clock. It was time for him to leave—he bundled up the floral bids into a loose pile and tossed them in the trash. After he finished wrestling with his coat and scarf, he fired off a quick email to their wedding planner.
all those flowers were shit does nobody in this fucking city know what greenery is?
Sent from my iPhone
The morning air was brisk; Ronan turned up the collar of his coat as he jogged down the block to his car. There was a long-standing rule that every Sunday, the Lynch brothers attended Mass together. It was one of the few traditions they observed as a family, and perhaps the most important. When a Sunday dawned, two or more Lynch boys would meet outside on the sidewalk in front of the pre-designated family church of choice. If Ronan was alone in the city, he was alone at Mass. If he was in DC, he was with Matthew. More often than not, Ronan and Declan would find themselves together at the Shrine and Parish Church of The Holy Innocents on 37th—one of the last few churches in Manhattan that still offered Mass in Latin.
Despite the growing they’d done in the last few years, both as individuals and a family, Mass remained one of the few places where Ronan and Declan were able to engage in civil conversation. Since adolescence, most of their interactions rapidly devolved into shouting, and sometimes violence, always frustration and anger and misunderstanding. In church, they couldn’t shout, they couldn’t take swings at each other, and they couldn’t even really hate each other. Neither of them liked to misbehave in full view of God. It was easy to believe at other times that He might not be paying attention; in Mass they were acutely aware of divine observation, which meant they were on their best behavior, Ronan especially.
His proper deportment in church wasn’t always for Declan’s sake—Ronan prided himself on his knack for being Catholic. His confessions were thorough and to the point; he knew the service in both Latin and English; he didn’t need a hymnal unless the organist decided to try and keep things interesting by pulling out a deep cut; he could only identify two times in his life when he’d missed a Sunday Mass.
The first time, he’d been seventeen years old, in the hospital on suicide watch, with fresh stitches in his arms. He hadn’t even known it was Sunday. The second time, he’d been twenty-two years old, high out of his mind in a car on his way upstate. Declan delivered an ultimatum, so Ronan went to rehab instead of Mass. That particular Sunday happened to have been October 31st—pursuant to Declan’s orders, Ronan had spent his 25th birthday in detox, sweating and vomiting and cursing his brother’s name. Things had improved since then. There was occasionally conflict between them, because Ronan liked to create it and Declan liked to exacerbate it, but a tenuous truce had come to exist between the brothers. Ronan preferred Declan at peacetime. Though he would always be overly critical and underly empathetic, he did have some redeeming qualities—one of which was his wife.
Jordan, whose company Ronan greatly enjoyed despite the poor judgement shown when she agreed to marry Ronan’s brother, did not attend Mass on any day except Christmas Eve. In other circumstances, she would’ve served as the last line of defense between the two of them. That morning, being just a regular Sunday, it was only Ronan and Declan—they acknowledged each other with a nod on the sidewalk out front before they headed inside, and that was all.
Each of the Lynch boys had their own relationship with God and the church in general. Ronan sometimes suspected Declan only attended because he felt like he had to do so, whereas Matthew definitely only attended because he was told to do so. Mass was not typically a rip-roaring good time. It was a lot of call-and-response; a lot of standing and kneeling and sitting and singing; and on confession Sundays, a lot of raking your own soul out over the coals to burn off all your wrongdoings. It was a communion Sunday. Ronan couldn’t partake—he hadn’t been to confession in several weeks. He kept his gaze trained on the altar. Hostility bristled in Declan’s countenance as he sidled past Ronan in the pew.
When he returned, he sat closer to Ronan than he had before, and then, smelling like wine and stale wafers, he leaned in to deliver reproach directly into Ronan’s ear. Declan was accusatory right off the bat; it seemed at times he was incapable of extending a curious inquiry into Ronan’s behavior or well-being. He never saw Ronan’s behavior as an opportunity for constructive criticism or brotherly bonding, but instead, took every opening he could find for a vigorous verbal dressing down. He was like a bloodhound for bad behavior. If Ronan even so much as picked his nose, Declan would feel a psychic disturbance that clued him into whatever delinquency in which Ronan might be even tertiarily involved.
“This is the third communion in a row you’ve skipped,” Declan hissed.
“Very astute, Columbo,” Ronan murmured in an undertone. “I see we’re not wearing our little trench coat today.”
“Which means you haven’t been going to confession. Why?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Of course it’s my business,” Declan snapped. “Are you just doing it to piss me off?”
If Ronan hadn’t been in church, he would’ve laughed. Instead, he slowly turned his head to meet Declan’s eyes and stared at him, mute and unamused, with one imperious eyebrow arched. It was a ridiculous question. Ronan remained silent and impassive until Declan looked away. The priest was getting close to delivering the final blessing, and the rote Latin responses rolled off Ronan’s tongue with no thought behind them. When he bowed his head to be blessed with the rest of the parishioners, Ronan tightened his hands into fists and released one long, unsteady exhale. He already knew he wasn’t going to confession. He also knew Declan wasn’t done fighting about it. As soon as the priest dismissed the congregation, Ronan slipped out of the pew and out onto the street in an attempt to leave Declan behind in the throng.
“Ronan! Wait!”
Ronan didn’t wait.
"Ronan," Declan shouted again, this time a little sharper.
Ronan bristled. He hated the way Declan called after him, like a dog or an unruly child. He was tired of people using his name against him, treating it like a synonym for something else, like problem or asshole.
Whenever Niall had said his name, it was always a warning. It was always a stern, hard, Ronan tacked onto the end of a sentence or flung across a room that carried all the force and impact of a slap. Niall had never slapped him; it had never been necessary. Ronan’s birth mother had, before she had left; not out of necessity, but meanness. Ronan did not fear violence, though he did often find himself paralyzed by the idea of being crushed under the weight of someone’s disdain or disappointment. As a child, he would sometimes freeze up at the sound of his name in his father’s mouth, unsure of what correction or admonition or passive criticism might be coming, unsure of what he had done wrong or needed to change or stop in order to have it taken back, to be unnamed, to be left to his own devices and be nobody again, for a little while. For years, Ronan had fought the startle reflex that came along with the sound of his own name, often to no avail.
Declan had a habit of invoking Ronan’s name as often as a priest might invoke God’s, just in case anyone had forgotten who the topic of discussion was. If Ronan was lucky, occasionally when Declan said Ronan it was less of a concussive reprimand and more an alternative for a word that might not be suitable for mixed company. No matter what Declan meant to say, it all came out in the same tone of voice, and it all fell the same on Ronan’s ear, every nice going Ronan, that’s great Ronan, figure your shit out Ronan, you’re going to rehab Ronan, I can’t let Matthew see you until you’re past this Ronan, can we have just one Christmas where you don’t fucking ruin everything Ronan. Declan had slapped Ronan, and he had nearly ground Ronan into dust with the weight of his disapproval, but he had never been able to make Ronan small; in the presence of his father, Ronan was nothing, because there was nothing else he could possibly be. Niall cast a long shadow. While Ronan stood an inch taller and just about as broad at age fifteen, he had always been made to fit in the palm of his father’s iron fist.
Despite the fact that Ronan had longer legs, a head start, and had picked up his pace just a hair when he heard him call out, Declan soon caught up to him. He was breathing furiously, like an enraged bull. In an instant, he drew up to Ronan’s shoulder and grabbed him. His hand around Ronan’s upper arm was not gentle or polite; it was a command. Ronan stopped, irate in a glacial way—icy fury webbed his stomach lining. Silently, he glanced over his shoulder to glare at Declan out of the corner of his eye. He knew there was potent hatred in his hooded gaze; he knew it would likely do nothing to dissuade Declan from delivering his admonishment.
“Matthew’s coming in next Tuesday,” Declan said. “I’m picking him up at Penn.”
“Okay,” Ronan said. He already knew that; he was a little surprised not to find himself on the tail end of a lecture. “And?”
“And, I think you and I should take him to lunch.” Declan sounded annoyed, as if he’d expected Ronan to read his mind. “It can’t be dinner. Jordan’s got an exhibition opening I don’t want to miss.”
“I can’t,” Ronan said.
Declan exhaled sharply through his nose. A tempest brewed in his face—he drew himself up and opened his mouth, most likely to unleash a few choice aspersions about Ronan’s character. Ronan was not in the mood.
“Jesus, would you fucking relax, man,” Ronan snapped. “I’m not blowing you off. I really can’t. I’ve got an endo appointment.”
He watched Declan grind his teeth together, once. He watched Declan decide not to fight.
“Fine,” Declan said. “I trust you’re planning on going to confession next week.”
“Sure,” Ronan muttered. “And I trust you’ll make me the bad guy when you tell Matthew why I’m not at lunch.”
Declan rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Ronan. Just don’t get hit by a car on the way home. God won’t take you back in your current state.”
Ronan flipped him off with both hands and then turned to walk away. He was grateful to have escaped both an interrogation and a scolding.
The truth was that Ronan couldn’t be sure why exactly he’d been avoiding confession, and consequently, communion. He had no unusual sin to confess, no particular penance he feared receiving. It wasn’t a matter of scheduling, either; the church they attended offered communion weekends, Tuesdays, every first Friday, and by appointment. He had no reason not to go. He just didn’t want to. It wasn’t a question he had an answer for, yet he would’ve resented Declan asking it no matter what. Though Ronan confessed to the same few things every few weeks, and then immediately went home and did all those same things over again, with both intent and enthusiasm, that had never before stopped him from confessing all the same. He prayed the rosary most evenings, even though he knew that didn’t count as penance.
It was a fact that he’d yet to apologize for his most recent six week streak of premarital sex and taking the Lord’s name in vain. Ronan sometimes felt bad for doing those things, though he continued to do them quite frequently and with great enthusiasm. The Catholic Church had a lot to say about sinning when it was done on purpose. Ronan was always careful to feel just the right amount of guilt for his willful misbehavior. He wasn’t going to stop doing it, and therefore, he wasn’t going to be able to stop apologizing for it.
Despite all of that, he didn’t feel bad for ditching Declan—he was going to see Declan both at church again on Sunday and on his birthday. Still, the guilt nagged at him. He was sorry for something, perhaps nothing; it could be just the effect Mass often had on him lingering in the back of his mind, following him like a shadow. Adam teased him about it sometimes, how he would come home mired down in pious guilt, fretful and brooding. Ronan was much better at that than he was anything else. He wasn’t very good at being good, not in a strictly Catholic sense, but he was excellent at regret and well-practiced in begging for forgiveness.
Ronan was preoccupied with his thoughts as he strode up the steps to his own front door. He’d spent the better part of his journey uptown compiling a docket of his wrongdoings to share with a priest. Six counts of premarital intercourse without the intent to procreate, at least four counts of overindulgence, countless instances of lust and gossip and taking the Lord’s name in vain. He was already guilty as charged, and now awaited his sentencing. The priest at their parish was undeniably somewhat fond of Ronan. While he made a valiant effort to maintain the anonymity of the confessional, his recommendations for penance were lenient and his promises of forgiveness were pointed.
The longer Ronan examined the situation, the more ridiculous it became that he was avoiding the act of confession. He supposed he’d have to apologize for that, too— forgive me father for I have avoided asking you to forgive me father. His glossary of wrongdoings grew longer by the second. He had nothing else with which to occupy himself; the planner would be in charge of the caterers, and Adam wouldn’t be back until later that evening. Ronan found himself left to his own devices, and chose to exercise his free will to trip himself up with introspection. His mood soured. It was already too warm outside for his coat, but he preferred wearing it to carrying it. His scarf hung loose around his shoulders, brushing his knee cap as he walked while sweat pricked at his lower back. The bright hour of midday drew the shadows long across the sidewalk while he fumbled his key into the lock.
When the front door swung open beneath Ronan’s hand, he was surprised to find Adam standing on the other side of it, digging through the hall closet. Adam was shirtless, with his pants unbuttoned and hanging low on his narrow hips. As he stretched his arm up to yank something off the top shelf, the line of his lats drew itself long: a clearly defined muscle, pulled taut underneath Adam’s smooth, freckled skin. He didn’t look up when Ronan opened the door. The light streaming in through the entryway caught against the fine white-blonde hair that grew between his shoulder blades, rendering him aglow.
Adam looked most at home in daylight, when the sun seemed to cut right through his blonde eyelashes and fair eyebrows. His hair appeared lighter in the summer, when all of him was tanned; he was monochromatic, save the warm splatter of freckles that dappled the ridge of his nose and the deep, sunny-day-blue of his irises. He had big, doe-like eyes, and he blinked slowly when his attention was fixed on a certain point. His hips were narrow, but his chest and shoulders were broader, lean and well-disciplined with muscle. He was always warm underneath Ronan’s hands. The solid plane of Adam’s torso was dusted lightly with tawny gold hair, a trail that narrowed itself until it disappeared beneath the waist of his pants.
His knuckles were chapped by the onset of winter weather, blistered by cold and wind and moisture. Ronan knew he kept an assortment of unscented lotions in the bathroom cabinet, though nothing ever seemed to help. He suffered the most when it snowed, and the air was both wet and chilly—his skin would bleed, stretched dry and taut over the ridge of bone. When it got especially bad, Adam would sit in his lap and let Ronan slather his hands in Vaseline, working globs of bloody pink-tinged jelly into the joints of his fingers.
Sometimes, when Adam was lost deep in thought, he would tug on his left earlobe. Sometimes, when Adam was asleep, he would roll over and tuck his face into the curve of Ronan’s neck. Sometimes, the sight of Adam overwhelmed Ronan so badly he felt sick, and he wasn’t sure where to put his hands or his mouth first.
In that moment, there was no doubt in his mind—Ronan knew exactly what he wanted and how to get it. If he played his cards right, Adam would fuck him, and then he could float through the rest of his day on that high. He peeled off his coat and draped it over the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. He tossed his keys onto the hall table. Adam must have heard him, but he didn’t turn around; he kept his back to the door.
It was unusual for Adam to be home in the middle of the day, even on a weekend. He always had a client to see, a workout to pace himself through, an errand needing to be run. According to the household calendar, he wasn’t supposed to be back for another hour. It was a surprise, and a welcome one. Adam stood in the foyer like a gift, a blessing that continued to present itself, whether Ronan considered himself worthy of it or not. With a few long, swift steps, Ronan crossed the room.
When Ronan moved into his space, the shift in Adam’s body was almost imperceptible: he paused, arrested, and waited. In the quiet, Ronan reached out and brushed his knuckles up against the small of Adam’s back, first one, then two. He dragged the line of Adam’s spine in one slow, stuttering slide. Adam was breathlessly still, like something caught in a snare. Ronan fit his hands around the curve of Adam’s ribs and stepped inside the door frame to close the gap between their bodies. After another moment of tense internal deliberation, Adam melted himself back against Ronan’s chest. His skin smelled clean, like soap, and the small space behind his ears was strong with cologne.
Any time Ronan closed his eyes, he was capable of recreating a near-perfect Adam in the eye of his mind. On occasion he would do it for fun, just to make sure he could still pull it off. His sense memory was accurate to the minutiae, whether it be Adam when he tasted like toothpaste or coffee, when he smelled like sweat or laundry soap or whatever it was that came out of the square red glass bottle that sat on their dresser, when he was warm with sleep or clammy from the shower, whether he was laughing or scowling or making derisive remarks about his coworkers. Ronan could summon up any iteration of Adam that had existed while he had been there to bear witness. Dozens of Adams lived on forever in the annals of Ronan’s brain matter. This Adam was one of Ronan’s favorites: quiet and soft and as needy as he knew how to be. He closed his eyes and dropped his head back to expose the line of his throat as Ronan dragged his open mouth along the tense cord of muscle that ran down the side of his neck.
Adam rarely acted like he needed Ronan; he was staunchly independent and balked at even the mere suggestion he might rely on another person for entertainment or fulfillment or assistance. Ronan was an anomaly, an exception to the harsh and stringent conditions under which Adam governed his own life. It would only be a matter of time before he seized control and set everything right. When the moment crested, he would undoubtedly reach out to grab a punishing handful of Ronan’s hair, or fit an elegant hand around his throat. Ronan wondered what it would be this time—if he would be kissed or slapped or shoved or hung out on the line to dry while Adam attended to whatever business had him donning a suit on a Sunday.
He closed his mouth over the skin of Adam’s exposed shoulder and worried it with his teeth, just as he had that morning. Ronan laved his tongue over the old and new violet-purple marks left behind. He skated the tip of his nose over Adam’s trapezius until he found another soft place to sink his teeth into. Adam braced one of his arms against the doorframe. He reached up with the other to cup the back of Ronan’s head in a loose, steadying hand. He was quiet, quieter than Ronan had expected him to be, and a hot, pink flush had risen up in his cheeks. Given time, Ronan knew it would leech to the tips of his ears. Adam was florid like a sunburn when he was embarrassed or excited, like his body remembered being in the sun, and its first innate response was to warm him up. Ronan lay his hand flat to the firm, muscular plane of Adam’s lower belly. He slid it downwards, to where the fine bronzed hair that tracked its way down from his navel became coarse as it disappeared beneath the elastic of his underwear.
“When do you need to leave?” Ronan murmured.
“Soon,” Adam’s voice was a low rumble against Ronan’s ear. “Fifteen minutes. Twenty, maybe.”
Ronan teased the tips of his first two fingers under the waistband of Adam’s boxers. Methodically, he pressed a series of soft, open-mouthed kisses along Adam’s jugular. He knew already that he wanted to make Adam come, he just wasn’t sure how; that was the only thing with which he needed to concern himself. There would be time because Adam would make there be time—anything else that needed worrying about, Adam would consider for the both of them.
Almost like a warning, Adam tightened his grip in Ronan’s hair briefly, and then he wrapped his fingers around Ronan’s wrist to guide his hand further inside the unfastened waistband of his pants. He tugged Ronan into a kiss, languid and unhurried. At first it was a tangle of eager fingers caught in fabric, and then, success. Adam opened his mouth and made a warm, satisfied sound in the back of his throat when Ronan skated his palm along the cotton-clad line of Adam’s cock.
A frisson of need twisted a knot in the pit of Ronan’s stomach. He pulled away and sank to his knees. With a careful, guiding hand on Adam’s hip, he turned him to face the front hall. His pants were already undone; it took little effort for Ronan to lower the zipper and work the fabric down Adam’s legs. His boxers were white cotton, like Adam had closed his eyes and imagined underwear, and the result of his manifestations was the most run-of-the-mill department store multi-pack option possible. Ronan observed this not as a complaint, but as something he found both consistent and confounding in Adam: the things he kept for himself were simpler, more practical and more in tune with what Ronan knew his nature to be. The things Adam knew other people would see were different: flashier, more expensive, more on trend, more in every sense of the word. He was never garish or flagrant, but he donned his suits like a costume that disappeared into his wardrobe when he had finished playing his part for the day.
Ronan kissed the inside of Adam’s knee, the meat of his thigh, the cut of his hip bone. He dragged his tongue flat over the hair on Adam’s lower belly. Adam tasted like skin, and a little like body wash; his cock was a hard, hot line inside his boxers. Ronan skated his open mouth over it, fabric coarse on his chin, and waited, breathing, when he reached the tip. The cotton was already wet, damp and sticky as it clung to Adam’s body. Ronan closed his mouth and sucked gently, doing nothing more than soaking the fabric and drawing all of Adam’s attention. He watched Adam’s chest fill with a shallow, bracing inhale, and then he reached up.
The pants Ronan had pulled down were unlabeled: bespoke. The boxers Ronan pulled down to join the slacks around Adam’s ankles were labeled: Hanes.
He wrapped a firm hand around the back of Adam’s thigh and sat forward on his knees. At long last, the time came when Adam seized control, righting the subtle tilt of the moment. Instead of waiting to see what Ronan would do, Adam took his own cock in hand, making Ronan pause. He was slightly taken aback by the interruption, slack-jawed and dewy eyed, his gaze fixed on Adam’s hand.
“Where have you been?” Adam asked, his grip loose and pace unhurried.
“Nowhere,” Ronan replied immediately.
“Really?” Adam asked. “You smell like church.”
“That too,” Ronan said, and then, “Adam.”
“What, Ronan?”
The teasing lilt to Adam’s voice settled heavily in the pit of Ronan’s stomach. He craned his head up, and found Adam’s eyes. There was a warm, amused slant to his face, almost painful in its intimacy. Just as Ronan had expected, there was a vivid, even heat visible beneath Adam’s skin. Adam was adept at schooling his responses, and in mixed company often opted for a practiced, glacial indifference. Even despite his rigid self-censorship, there were things he couldn’t hide from Ronan. The suggestion of a dimple at the corner of his mouth and the subtle sheen of sweat in the hollow of his collarbone were obvious in the midlight of the front hall.
While Adam prided himself on his exemplary self control, Ronan prided himself on his ability to dismantle it with hardly any effort at all. He couldn’t help the brief smugness that surged up inside him, while he was on his knees with Adam towering above him. Ronan didn’t often like to fight for control—he preferred to hand it over willingly at the first command, but the amount of influence he held over Adam was heady; it was a type of power in and of itself, one that he wielded frequently. He was winning, and Adam was going to fuck him; if not now, then later.
“You should fuck me,” Ronan goaded as he sat back on his haunches, his breath quick and shallow in his lungs. “You’ve got time. I know you want to.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Adam said. “Open your mouth.”
Ronan opened his mouth and pressed his tongue flat against his bottom lip. Anticipation bristled along Ronan’s bones while Adam pretended to debate his next steps—the moment grew heavy with it. All of it was to a purpose; he knew Adam had decided on a course of action as soon as he elected to take charge; his fate was set. Spit dripped from the tip of Ronan’s tongue as he sat obediently, his attention rapt on Adam’s body.
“Look at you,” Adam said. “You’re already drooling for it.”
Ronan made a sound, laden with need, oddly shaped in his open mouth—resonant and greedy and wet. He leaned forward, in, towards Adam, and folded his arms behind his back.
“Shit, Ronan,” Adam gasped under his breath, a warm, whispered murmur. “Come on, then.”
As soon as permission was granted, Ronan moved in. He pressed the tip of his tongue to the head of Adam’s cock, and dropped his jaw. When he lifted his heavy eyelids to stare up at Adam, he knew he’d gotten his point across; Adam grabbed a tight handful of Ronan’s curls. He tapped his cock against Ronan’s cheek, and then his tongue, and then pulled his head down. Ronan made a small, excited sound as he surrendered to the silent command. Adam’s cock was heavy and blunt, a familiar weight against the back of his throat. He didn’t move at first; he simply pushed until Ronan started to struggle, and then waited there until tears welled up in his eyes and spit rolled down his chin.
Ronan swallowed uselessly, his throat fluttering as his breathing came heavy and hard through his nose. Part of him wanted Adam to let go so that he could really set himself to the task of sucking his cock, but the helplessness brought on by his expected obedience only served to wind him up even further. Adam was fond of drawing out situations and sensations until Ronan was nearly hysterical with need.
“That’s so good, Ronan,” Adam murmured. “You look so pretty for me.”
Adam tugged on his curls, guiding his head to match the slow grind of his hips as he fucked himself into Ronan’s mouth. The house was quiet around them, except for the uneven cadence of Ronan’s breath and the occasional low, satisfied groan that escaped from Adam. It was hard to add any sort of flair while Adam fucked his throat, but Ronan did his best to remain as still and compliant as possible. When sweat had started to build up and Ronan’s jaw had started to ache, Adam pulled him off. Ronan sat, gasping, with spit and pre-cum all over his face, dripping, silvery and viscous onto the floor in front of him. He blinked furiously, trying to purge the salt from his eyes. Adam dragged the head of his cock along the line of Ronan’s cheekbone.
“I really have to go,” Adam whispered.
In a rough voice, Ronan said, “I want you to come, first.”
With one short, sharp exhale, Adam dropped into a crouch in front of Ronan and started to tug on the buckle of Ronan’s belt. He pulled roughly on the hem of his dress shirt, while his fingers slipped against fabric as he struggled in vain to get his hands on Ronan’s skin. Their bodies were heaving with effort. Sluggishly, his reflexes dulled by the thrum of urgency that took prescience over the rest of his faculties, Ronan unfolded his arms and brought his hands down to meet Adam’s. He pulled his abdomen tight as he reached behind his head to grab a handful of his shirt. Without ceremony, he yanked it off, tearing buttons free in the process, and tossed it aside, with his undershirt right after it.
“I want to touch you,” Adam said. “Come on, let me—“
“Yeah, shit, please,” Ronan pressed his forehead against Adam’s and looked down at their hands as they tried in vain to get the rest of his clothing off. “Adam.”
He struggled with the closure of his belt, still fit snugly around his waist. Adam managed to work it loose, and then he pulled Ronan’s pants down halfway, stopping when the waistband drew tight around the meat of Ronan’s thighs. He wrestled Ronan onto his front with a dizzying efficiency. It was rare to find oneself face down on the floor in the matter of a split second; he let Adam take the upper hand, and he let Adam keep it. Ronan’s arms were pinned behind his back again, this time by one of Adam’s firm hands while he swiftly arranged Ronan’s body as he pleased. The hardwood was chilly and unyielding against Ronan’s temple; he could hear his own ragged breathing as it reverberated across the floorboards.
“Lift,” Adam ordered.
Ronan did his best to interpret the simple direction. He pressed his shoulders down into the floor, and lifted his lower body up. Adam pushed his thighs together by caging his legs in, his own knees on either side of Ronan’s, all of his weight bearing down against the small of Ronan’s back. He spit down onto Ronan’s body, and pressed his thumb into the space between his thighs. Ronan gasped, humid and stuttering.
“Yeah?” Adam asked, somewhat absently, as he started to press his cock in alongside his thumb. “Hold still.”
Ronan’s legs quivered as he held himself in place. It was clear that Adam wasn’t doing anything but working towards his own end goal; he didn’t change his grip to touch Ronan, he didn’t change his angle to let the head of his cock brush against the base of Ronan’s. He pushed, almost punishingly fast, through friction, while a deep ache set into Ronan’s knees. When Adam released his wrists, Ronan put his arms underneath himself, bearing his weight down into his elbows. He heard Adam spit again, this time not onto Ronan, but into his own hand.
The anticipation was unbearable. Adam didn’t touch him right away; instead, he dropped his head to rest between Ronan’s shoulder blades. He was breathing heavily against the hollow of his back, with weight behind his arm, holding him firmly to the floor. Every so often his voice would bend around a moan, low and unrestrained, as if he didn’t realize he was making noise.
“God, fuck,” Adam said. “I want to fuck you. Are you going to come?”
Ronan keened helplessly, high and urgent. At last, like a reward for his compliance, Adam bent lower to fit his hand between Ronan’s body and the floor. His grip around Ronan’s cock was loose, but would most likely prove sufficient.
“You want to come?” Adam asked breathlessly. “You know you look so pretty when you come for me, baby.”
“Please,” Ronan sobbed. “Please, Adam.”
“Good boy,” Adam said, full-voiced and earnest. “You’re always so good for me. I’m going to fuck you when I get home tonight. That’s what you want, right? I’m going to give it to you, anything you want, you’re so good, baby. You can come for me. I’ll make you come as many times as you can beg me for, let me see it, Ronan.”
Ronan cried out, gratitude and desperation in equal measure, and came into Adam’s hand with a dizzying immediacy. Tears slicked the floor beneath his head. Everything arrived at an end almost as quickly as it had begun; suddenly there was quiet, and stillness, and Ronan let himself sag forward to lie prone on the cold floor. In the same settling, Adam held Ronan down by resting the entire weight of his body atop him. He was boneless, heavy, panting roughly against the skin of Ronan’s back.
“I gotta go,” he said. “I’ll be late. I’ll be back. I’ll—I won’t be out all day.”
Ronan grunted a neutral response. He remained where he was, unmoving, while Adam extricated himself from the tangle of limbs their bodies had become. His belt buckle jingled when he pulled up his pants. His breathing was labored while he put valiant effort into getting himself under control. Slowly, Ronan rolled over, and propped himself up on an elbow to watch Adam put himself together again.
“Here,” Adam tossed Ronan his own undershirt. “You should wipe the come off the floor.”
Once Ronan’s shirt was ruined, and Adam was zippered and buckled and the flush in their faces had begun to reside, Adam offered Ronan a hand. He took it. When they were face to face, Adam tilted his head just enough to kiss Ronan on the mouth. Light refracted through the stained glass panel on the front door cast oddly shaped blotches of color across Adam’s face; it looked, for a moment, like his cheek was being caressed by leaves.
“You should go,” Ronan said.
“Yeah,” Adam agreed.
He turned and went up the stairs towards the bedroom, with Ronan in tow. They would go their separate ways after this, though temporarily. Through the foggy glass door of the shower, Ronan watched Adam get dressed: undershirt, dress shirt, tie, jacket, coat, scarf, gloves. When he was all bundled up, he disappeared from view. Ronan couldn’t hear the front door close over the water, though he was sure that it had; he knew there was nothing that could keep Adam from working when it really mattered. Not even the promise of Ronan, naked and already desperate for it, was enough to make him disregard his calendar. Ronan took a long shower, one so luxurious and thorough that it made him late to meet their planner downtown.
The banal nature of the catering appointment did its best to ruin Ronan’s good mood. It took concentrated effort to work against the constant encroachment of his trademark aggression. He was anxious to see Adam again later; he was anxious about his birthday. That Sunday felt like a bright spot—an anomalous blip on the radar. Ronan was not good at looking forward to the long life that modern medicine was likely to grant him; for a long time he’d been unable to picture himself any older than twenty-four. He’d been surprised by the way year after year continued to pass after that fateful birthday, minutes and hours hand over fist, a constant onward march that kept bringing the future to him, whether he was ready for it or not.
Ronan could not claim to be an optimist, and he would never think of himself as such; for as long as he could remember he’d struggled to do anything other than dread all of his coming days. The year ahead of him felt laden and purposeful with the promise of a birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas both spent with his family, another anniversary, Adam’s birthday, and his wedding. It was the most he’d ever had to look forward to in all his years of living. It frustrated him to no end that he could only bring himself to feel ambivalence; while that was better than hatred or complete disinterest, it still wasn’t quite enough.
Despite the fact he’d initially insisted upon being included in the catering decisions, he regretted that, now. A dark, self-pitying voice at the back of Ronan’s mind told him that none of it mattered, really. A menu was a menu, a venue was a venue, an officiant was an officiant. Once that voice got into Ronan’s ear, it was difficult for him to silence it again. He tried to focus on other things. There was no reason for him to feel sorry for himself. When Adam got home later, they were going to fuck, and then they were going to talk about getting married, and then they would have dinner, and then they would probably fuck once or twice more for good measure.
Ronan found himself smiling in spite of himself while he vetoed all the vegan entree options. He liked knowing that despite the fact everything else in his life still seemed to be very wrong, the decision to marry Adam was right. He liked knowing he could count on the fact that when he opened his front door later, Adam would be on the other side of it, waiting for him.