#exactly like have you heard of adam parrish

[zephfair]

TRC Golf ???

It's probably one of the stupidest ideas I've ever had, but I thought up some scenes that I imagined were funny and now I'm too emotionally invested to just junk it.😅

The setup is simple: Adam is an up-and-coming attorney who needs to majorly impress a client so he maybe overstates how much golf he's ever played (which is 0 zero none). Then he has to actually play a round with the client and his boss, and he doesn't know if it's a good thing that Ronan is there because Ronan is himself but he has dreamed up a couple things that might help Adam out. It was supposed to be a comedy with some sexy scenes between Ronan and Adam, show them in their late 20s after they're settled a bit, and totally disregards Greywaren because I wrote most of it before that came out.

If I re-read it and still think it's funny, maybe I'll post it. I could use a laugh.😂 Here's the opening scene:

And thank you so very much for asking, Anon!😘

“Ronan, I am so fucked,” Adam hissed into his cell phone, trying to keep his voice down as he shut the door of his office but loud enough to make sure Ronan could hear how distraught he was. “So. Very. Fucked.”

“Really,” Ronan drawled back. “You’re calling to confess your infidelities right now? You couldn’t wait until I get home to tell me how you’re getting fucked?”

“My infidelities? What? Oh shut up,” Adam snapped then lowered his voice again. “I'm in so much fucking trouble. Please tell me everything you know about golf.”

“Hmm? Golf? Like, pasture pool?”

“Pasture what?” Adam tried very hard not to screech at his beloved but also really burdensome boyfriend.

“That’s what my dad used to call it. He would… Dick! Watch my six! How many times do I have to tell you! Fuck it all to hell!”

“Lynch, are you shooting Nazi-zombie-alien whatevers while I’m trying to talk to you?!”

“Well, not any more since somebody let one creep up right behind us and kill me. Damn it, Dick.”

Adam could hear a familiar voice mumbling through Ronan’s gaming setup and he lit up. “Is that Gansey? Lemme talk to him. He should know all about golf.”

“Yeah, typical rich white asshole sport.”

“Exactly.”

Adam heard Ronan turn volumes up and down, put his phone on speaker, and then got part of Gansey’s monologue about how exactly they were doomed to be killed that round and how their strategies needed to change if they wanted to ever advance to the next level.

“Gansey, tell me everything you know about golf,” Adam ordered.

“Oh, Parrish, hello! Are you playing with us? I thought Ronan was at the Barns?”

“He is, the indolent bastard,” Adam said to Ronan’s loud snort. “He’s supposed to be going through more of the special inventory but instead he’s playing video games in the middle of the damn day while some of our lives are falling down around us.”

“Wow, drama queen much,” Ronan said while Gansey made sympathetic noises.

“I’m not a drama queen when it’s just that everything I’ve built up since law school could be going down the toilet.”

“Parrish, you’re a brilliant attorney. I don’t know what you’re worried about.”

#my fic #ask meme

[crushpdf]

rules: Pick any 10 of your fics, scroll to the midpoint, pick a line (or a few), and share it!

Sophiieeeee merci 😌 I am lowkey reentering my fic era after my year hiatus 👀

Including TRC one-shots! Ordering these shortest > longest! One day I’ll write a character that isn’t Ronan 😂

Cliff’s Edge (Get a Little Closer) | Gansey turned back and grinned. “C’mon, cowboy, let’s go see the stars.”

Kiss Me Again |  It wasn’t that Ronan was good looking, exactly. It was more that he looked like home. Adam had seen every expression his face could make.

Better Than the Drugs | “I’ll be good this time,” Gansey mumbled, and then Ronan’s mouth was on his mouth, Ronan’s lips were parting his lips, Ronan’s breath became Gansey’s breath.

i still see your face in the white cars | But hadn’t he had enough excitement for a lifetime, hadn’t he bled his black excitement onto his best friend’s twice-dead body? Hadn’t he lost his forest because of an excess of excitement?

a sort of messy, too-red mouth | Ronan looks up as he catches his breath, and the doorman is contemplating him. “Tough guy’s good at this,” he says, and then Ronan’s head is pulled forward again, his throat stuffed again, his senses overwhelmed again.

hey wolf, there’s lions in here | Lynch stood, slowly unfurling himself to his full height, his full stature, and when he did, suddenly this house looked a lot less kitschy and lot more like a fucking horror movie setting. “You can’t kill me, Colin, because then you’d have no one to play with.”

I Want to Hold You Like You’re Mine | He cupped Ronan behind the neck, pulling his head forward into the stream until water ran down his face, Ronan’s eyes closing like a prayer. Ronan kept his eyes closed even as Gansey turned the water off, his head hovering there in the middle of the shower, halfway into Gansey’s personal space like an offering.

no other witnesses, just us two | And so while Adam Parrish was flipping through a math textbook, and Declan Lynch was blowing off steam with a girl, and Richard Gansey turned to Noah Czerny, who just found himself standing in the middle of Monmouth Manufacturing, and Joseph Kavinsky was sweating under the careful work of Ilya Prokopenko’s mouth, Ronan Lynch stepped deeper into the forest, and that’s when he heard the scream.

Anatomy of a Punch | He led the group like a tour guide, but he only watched Gansey’s face. And if you look to your left, you’ll see the place where we crashed Declan’s Volvo into the shed, long before either of us had driver’s licenses. Up ahead, that’s the spot where we’d sit in the summer, the only patch of shade that wasn’t attached to the house and the prying eyes within. Oh, and up these stairs? In this bedroom? Ronan watched Gansey’s expression closely.

Filling In the Blanks and Gaps | He sighed. “From the very start, Ronan. Your fault. All your fault.” He heard a foot creak across the floor. Then stop. Then another. Pause. “Your fault I came to Aglionby. Your fault I got away from him, and your fault for St. Agnes.” Ronan was moving steadily toward him and Adam kept looking at the door. “Your fault for fucking dreaming Cabeswater, and it’s your fault for being so goddamn cruel and beautiful and dangerous and safe that I fell in love with you.” Ronan’s hand was on the back of his neck. “It’s your fault for letting me go to Harvard and it’s your fault for staying behind. And when I let you go, it’s your fault I never came back.”

tagging @hklnvgl @rodansey @dameferre @nialltlynch @creativefiend19

#:)))))) #b writes #tag game

[ticklygiggles]

"That's not exactly a fair comparison" with Pynch for the drabble request? Only if you want to of course!!! ^^

Pyyynch, my weakness *sobs* of course I want to. I hope you don't mind having Ronan as the lee because I'm a sl*t for ticklish!Ronan dkdndkfkg also, perhaps this is a little cheesy... I hope you enjoy it!

"That's not exactly a fair comparison."

"To say I missed you as much as I missed our friends is not enough for you?"

Ronan rolled his eyes and Adam noticed with delight the flush on his cheeks, blooming first on his cheekbones and spreading to the tips of his ears.

That was certainly not fair. To look this adorable and feral simultaneously. It never failed to make Adam feel as if he was short of breath, his head feeling light as he resisted the overwhelming urge to kiss Ronan on the lips.

Of course he had missed him more than anyone or anything. Adam could barely sneak some visits to the Barns as finals approached and he got busy with exams and projects, but summer vacations were here and he didn't think it twice on spending his vacation at the Barns with Ronan, (and Opal), and enjoy all the things he couldn't when he was apart.

Things like kissing, of course.

But they hadn't kissed in a while, not even when Adam arrived; not when Ronan helped him bring his baggage up to Adam's room; not now as the laid side to side in Ronan's bed, pinkies linked in a stupid way that made both of them blush to their necks.

They were just looking at the ceiling as if there wasn't something more interesting to do.

Like kissing.

If Adam decided to actually start a kiss, Ronan would whine, but he'd close his eyes and melt under the gentle touch of Adam's lips. Sighing. Delighted.

Ah, Adam could almost feel it.

"What are you looking at, Parrish?"

Adam didn't notice he was staring, but when Ronan turned his head to look at him and Adam saw his pretty eyes, he couldn't stop his mouth:

"I want to tickle you."

It clearly wasn't something he was really thinking of, it was just something he came up with to make Ronan angry, but damn, the reaction he got was so satisfying that Adam kicked himself for not saying those words sooner.

Ronan visibly tensed and Adam was almost sure he heard him gasp softly. Ronan didn't move, didn't even blink as he watched Adam closely and Adam recognized that look.

Longing. Yearning. Wishing. Wanting.

Adam smirked and he rolled to the side until he was over Ronan, straddling his hips. Ronan quickly grabbed Adam's hands, intertwining their fingers tightly. Adam wasn't sure if it was to stop him from doing anything or because Ronan wanted to touch Adam's hands.

This was definitely something he had missed too. Besides Ronan himself and his kissing, he had missed the fact that Ronan was devastatingly ticklish. He had missed the way Ronan's eyes light up at the thought of Adam having his fingers tickling him until he was crying.

And he was almost sure that Ronan had missed the feeling as much as Adam missed that sweet hysteria mixed in his laugh when he tickled him in the right spot.

Adam's lips trembled as he tried to suppress a silly smile. He didn't want Ronan to noticed how excited, how ecstatic, he was to do this again after so long.

"What are you looking at, Parrish?" Ronan asked again and Adam noticed certain nervousness mingling in his voice.

"You."

"You're being strange," Ronan whispered, his eyes scanning Adam's face. "Adam, I swear if you-

"Swear as much as you want, Ronan," Adam said, untangling his fingers from Ronan's and latching them to Ronan's ribs. "I'm not listening to you anymore."

Ronan held back a shriek pretty well, but that sweet laughter of his still flooded past his lips, unstoppable. His body arched off the bed and his hands gripped at Adam's shoulder, his bones cracking a little under his grip, but not enough to hurt. Not enough to push Adam away or stop him at all.

"Did you miss this, Ronan?"

His cheeks turned pink and anyone would think that Ronan would try and stop his laughter, but he laughed and laughed, blushing brightly.

"I'll kihihihill yohohou, Ahahadam!" Ronan said and Adam chuckled. "Stahahahap!"

"I can't, if I stop you'll kill me," Adam teased and his hands didn't waste any time: they quickly pursued that tender spot at Ronan highest ribs, thumbs rubbing in quick circles that made Ronan cackle and throw his head back as his arms came down to wrap around himself.

It was still amazing to Adam how ticklish Ronan was and how much he liked being tickled by Adam. He hadn't really realized how much he'd missed that raucous laugh filling every nook and cranny of the room and in Adam's heart, which was pounding, a sweet fluttery feeling spreading throughout his chest.

He was also giggling before he could stop himself.

"W-Wahahahait! Hohohold ohon!" Ronan pleaded, stomping his feet on the floor behind Adam.

"What's the matter? Do you not like this anymore?"

"Stohohohop teheheasing mehehe!"

"So I can keep tickling you?"

Ronan could only shake his head, Adam knew he was really getting him now and he wasn't even tickling his worst spot yet.

"Are you gonna be good and raise your arms for me, Ronan? Or are you going to play tough and not do it?"

Adam wasn't sure where he was getting all this confidence from, but it was something that always happened when he did this. Maybe it was the fact that Ronan didn't hate it and that he actually enjoyed every second of this sweet torture.

"You cahahan't do ihit thehehere!" Ronan said between loud laughs, jolting heavily when Adam clawed at his ribs.

Probably weakened by the tickling, Adam had no problem lifting one of Ronan's arms, exposing his most sensitive spot to his wiggly fingers. Ronan shrieked, but his laughter turned immediately silent when Adam's fingers wiggled into his armpit, the tips of his fingers digging gently into the skin.

What a perfect moment for Ronan to wear a tank top.

“Already?” Adam asked, seeing Ronan shaking heavily as he laughed, but no sound came out from his wide, smiley mouth. “Did you become more ticklish while I was away?”

Ronan shook his head and taking a big breath, loud and clear laughter finally escaped him. Adam giggled softly when he easily batted Ronan's free hand as he tried to grab Adam's.

"Stop being annoying," Adam said, smiling like never.

"Y-You stohohohop b-beheheing- okay! OKAHAHAY! Adahaham! No mohohore, I-!

Adam leaned down and pressed his lips against Ronan's, kissing him softly. His fingers came to a stop too, Adam's hands moving to cup Ronan's sharp jaw. Ronan quickly moved his arm back down, hugging himself.

He was still laughing and giggling, so Adam could savor all of those sweet sounds, and they tasted like glory.

After a little while, Ronan was kissing Adam back, humming and sighing just as Adam had imagined him.

"Ronan," Adam whispered as they pulled apart to catch their breath. "I missed you."

Ronan blushed and he rolled his eyes, a smirk pulling at his lips. "I missed you too, Parrish."

The first day of vacation had not gone badly at all.

[Accepting requests ✨- Entries closed]

#The Raven Cycle #Adam Parrish #Ronan Lynch #Pynch #ticklish!Ronan #stupid bad boy loves his tickles #mia's things #mia's drabbles #accepting requests event #for the lack of better title aaa

[lizpaige]

i missed wip wednesday but here’s a belated snippet from my firewatch au. if you’re unfamiliar with the videogame firewatch, basically ronan just took a job as a fire lookout at a national forest. adam is is supervisor of sorts.

“Hello, Two Forks Tower.”

Ronan sat up abruptly as an unfamiliar staticy voice entered the small room. Disoriented, he looked around the room and assumed he imagined it. That is until he heard the walkie talkie chirp and the voice came back.

“Two Forks Tower, this is Thoroughfare Tower, come in.”

Groaning, Ronan made his way over to the desk, leaning heavily against it as he scrambled to pull the device from its charging base. He fumbled for the talk button on the side and, voice worn from disuse, managed, “uh, hello? Whoever this is.”

“It’s Ronan, right?” the stranger on the other end asked. “I’m Adam.”

Oh right, Adam Parrish. They told him about this before he made the hike. Adam was his sort-of boss this season, or at least his point of contact for questions, he wasn’t totally sure of the arrangement. He wasn’t exactly sure how Adam knew he arrived so quickly after he did, but as he turned to look out the far east window, he saw another tower in the distance, lights on, a shadowed silhouette facing him. Must be Adam, then.

“Yeah, that’s what the guy said on the phone.”

“So,” Adam replied quickly. “What’s wrong with you?”

Ronan sputtered, nearly dropping the walkie talkie as he answered, “Excuse me?”

“People take this job to get away from something,” Adam said impatiently. “So what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Ronan shot back, annoyed and too tired to deal with this tonight.

“That’s a great idea, go ahead.”

Huh? Still too tired for riddles, Ronan said as much. “Look I just hiked for two days, so I don’t really follow what you’re doing right now.”

There was a pause, so Ronan took the walkie talkie back to his bed and sat down, kicking off his books and laying back.

“You take a stab at what’s wrong with me.”

What the hell was this? Ronan hated this. Whatever this was.

“Fine, then can I sleep forever?”

“Sure. Now go ahead.”

Ronan sighed, trying to wrack his brain for a witty response. He didn’t know anything about Adam, but he sounded like an asshole. He normally got along well with assholes, being one himself, but this was bordering on gossip, which Ronan hated. Maybe Adam was just trying to be funny, break the ice a little. Ronan was horrible at small talk on a good day, let alone after two days of hiking, one night without a bed. He was just thinking about how great this was going to be not having to interact with people much and here was Adam, what, trying to make friends with him? Ugh. Ronan hated friends.

“You’re really gonna leave me hanging?” Adam’s voice roused him. Ronan didn’t even realize he had shut his eyes.

“Fine,” Adam continued. “Then I’m going to take a second here and make a guess about you. Let’s see… I don’t know anything about you. But maybe you just really like trees,” Adam’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Maybe it's a borderline fetish… a tree fetish.”

Ronan snorted, then held the talk button to say, “goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Adam replied in a gentle, patronizing singsong. “Welcome to the job.”

#firewatch au #wip wednesday #but belated cause i missed wednesday lol #ronan lynch #adam parrish #pynch #trc

[kelliealtogether]

These prompts have been rolling around in my head and one in particular was stuck in my brain the past few nights. I have also learned a new term, pentadrabble! It's a fic exactly 500 words long. 😊

I present to you:

16. you make me sick. babe I want to make this work but I’m so allergic to your fur

Adam woke in an empty bed with a tickle in his nose.

It was that liminal time of night, no longer fully dark but not yet dawn. Towards the east, there was only the promise of the sun flirting with the horizon. The bedroom was gray, courtesy of the full moon still hanging in the sky, the type of gray where muscle memory wasn't needed to navigate but was still useful.

Adam sniffed. He took two short hitching breaths, then sneezed.

"Ronan?" Adam asked the near-dark. A prickle in his nose, another sneeze threatening. Adam fended it off to continue, "You can't keep doing this."

Adam turned to the shadows in the corner of the room when he heard a grunt, and the crouched shape of his boyfriend resolved itself in the darkness. Ronan’s coiled form was restless, shifting, and when he said, "Sorry," it sounded garbled, like his mouth was stuffed with too many teeth.

Congestion rapidly set in. Adam’s eyes itched. When he couldn’t hold off any longer, he turned his face into the sleeve of his t-shirt and sneezed again. He needed an antihistamine before he really started wheezing.

“I’m turning the light on.” 

“Don’t.”

“Get over yourself,” Adam said, his voice more nasal by the moment. “Like I haven’t seen it before.” 

The duvet fell around his waist as he sat up and reached for his nightstand. Adam pulled the cord on his lamp, gave his eyes a second to adjust to its brightness, then turned to look at Ronan. 

He was still part-lupine, though more part-human, and becoming more human by the moment. His snout was receding, his teeth rearranging, his ears shrinking and moving back into place. His tail, fur, and claws were retreating, and his eyes were changing, fading from a glowing yellow to their normal ice blue. 

He was purposefully not looking at Adam. 

“It’s not that bad,” Adam said gently before he stifled another sneeze in his sleeve. 

Ronan growled, a remnant from his shift. “Jesus, Parrish. Take your goddamn medicine.” 

Adam turned back to his nightstand, to the pack of pink pills kept there. He swallowed one with a sip of water, and when he turned back to Ronan, Ronan was back to normal. “This is the fourth time in four full moons.” 

“I said sorry.” 

“I know. It’s okay.” Adam looked at Ronan and he looked as pathetic as Adam felt. “We’ll just keep Benadryl in business.” 

When Ronan was back in bed, Adam turned off his lamp. In the brightening gray, they lay facing one another and Adam traced the circle of teeth marks scarring Ronan’s shoulder. “Everything go alright?” 

Ronan nodded. “Yeah. Got a deer.” 

“Gross.” 

“Fuck off, you asked.” 

“Doesn’t mean I wanted to hear about it.” They wrestled for a moment until Ronan pinned Adam down, and when Ronan leaned in for a kiss, Adam turned his head so Ronan’s lips landed on his cheek. “Dog breath.” 

“That’s what you get for dating a werewolf.” 

#my fics #pentadrabble #pynch fanfic #trc fanfic #writing prompts #werewolves

[emmerrr]

Yesterday h I thoughtt about grumpy Ronan, who still try hard to hide his feelings and is harsh on the outside , and come to pick Adam up from work, and Adam fall asleep and so Ronan drive and drive and stare at Adam as often as can 👀 🥺 (maybe idea for drable ? ) 🖤

It was a little after ten when Ronan pulled into the parking lot of Boyd’s. It wasn’t open to customers this late, but the light was still on. Adam was probably just finishing up fixing radiators or whatever the hell it was he did here that took up so much of his time.

It annoyed Ronan that he was here, and that he didn’t really have an explanation for why he was here that wouldn’t be completely transparent to Adam. There was still time to leave of course, but Ronan knew he wouldn’t. He’d wait for Adam until Adam was done.

It only took about ten minutes. Through the window, Ronan saw Adam walk into view from where he must have been working further back. Even from here, Ronan could see exhaustion written all over Adam’s posture. He turned out the lights and stepped out into the night, locking the door behind him, his school satchel over his shoulder.

He turned and started walking slowly across the lot, hands in his pockets, and then he clocked Ronan’s car and stopped. He cocked his head to the side, then walked over and opened the passenger side door, leaning his head inside. “Has something happened?”

It was typical that Adam’s first reaction to seeing Ronan unexpectedly was to assume something terrible had happened. “Get in,” was all he said. “I’ll drop you off.”

Adam hesitated. “Okay.” He got into the car, shut the door, fastened his seatbelt. It was quiet while Ronan got them moving, but then Adam asked, “Why?”

Ronan flicked his gaze from the road to Adam and then back again. “You said your bike had a puncture.”

Adam nodded; he had said that, offhand, earlier in the day, to Gansey. He probably hadn’t even realised Ronan had heard. “I was going to walk.”

Ronan shrugged. “And now you don’t have to.”

Adam yawned in lieu of a response, likely too tired to care how he got home, as long as he got there. 

It wasn’t a long trip, particularly at this time of night with less cars on the road, and soon enough Ronan pulled up outside St. Agnes. When Adam made no immediate move to get out, Ronan glanced at him to find that he’d fallen asleep, his arms crossed and head drooping.

“Parrish,” Ronan sighed. He hated to wake him, especially not when he’d only just nodded off. “Parrish.”

Adam was not to be easily roused, the furrow in his brow evened out for once, his features softened in sleep. Ronan watched him for a moment, wrestling with his heart and his head, until finally he gave in and shifted the car back into gear.

He didn’t particularly drive any slower than usual, but perhaps a bit gentler. He took his corners more carefully, kept his gear changes smooth. He didn’t turn his music on. And all the while, Adam slept on.

When Ronan had done a complete loop of Henrietta three times, he decided enough was enough and headed back to St. Agnes. If Adam slept like this any longer he’d get a crick in his neck, and besides, he’d probably be annoyed that Ronan had cut into his allotted homework hours.

This time, when Ronan parked, he turned off the engine, and it was this that finally woke Adam up. He jerked his head up, disoriented, then looked at Ronan.

“Hey,” he said, and frowned. “Was I sleeping?”

“Out like a light,” Ronan confirmed.

Adam rubbed a hand down his face, then noticed the time on the dashboard and did a double take. “Is that right? How did it take this long to get here? Did you get stuck in traffic?”

Ronan snorted. “Nah. I drove around for a little bit.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Adam snapped.

“I tried. I said your name twice. You must have really needed a rest,” Ronan said pointedly.

Adam rolled his eyes at that but let it go. He unfastened his seatbelt and started to move, but then he paused and sat back. 

“I--” he started, but then didn’t seem to want to carry on. He dropped whatever was left of the sentence and shook his head. “Thank you. For the ride.”

“Anytime.”

Adam smiled, and opened the door. He stepped one foot outside, then half-turned back to Ronan. “You can come up and crash if you want?”

Ronan smirked. “You inviting me to a sleepover, Parrish?”

“I mean...you’re already here. It’s late. My floor is your floor and all that,” Adam said. “Unless, y’know, you already have plans.”

Ronan raised one eyebrow sky high. “Do I look like a man with a plan?”

“Exactly. So come up. Or don’t. Whatever. Up to you.” Adam shut the door and headed off towards the stairs that led to his little apartment.

Ronan took a slow breath now that he was alone in the car again. He felt like he’d already gotten away with a lot tonight; he didn’t want to push his luck.

Then again, he’d been given a clear invitation. 

Adam had reached the bottom of the stairs now, and he looked back, a clear question on his face.

Ronan did what he was always going to do; he followed.

#the raven cycle #pynch #tumblr prompts #trc #anon #emma answers

[likeadeuce]

WIP Wednesday

‘WIP Wednesday’ is kind of a lie because I don’t know if I’ll ever write more of this but it features Adam and Declan being awkward brothers-in-law and Matthew being a ray of sunshine and so I had to share it somewhere:

Early on a Sunday morning, riding in the passenger seat of Declan Lynch’s Volvo through the ugly sprawl of DC’s Western suburbs and the breathtaking vistas of the Shenandoah Valley, Adam Parrish put in one hundred and eight minutes of billable time. He was researching a memo on innovative applications of machine translation technology to electronic discovery, something he hadn’t even heard of before he woke up this morning to find the partner’s request in his inbox. This came in on top of the nine hours of work he already knew he would have to bill today, and the possibility of a quick visit to the Valley to see his fiance for the first time in weeks faded into a distant dream.

It was like the meme Blue had sent him once, probably after he’d moaned too hard about his hours at the firm. “Me sowing: Hell yeah. Me reaping: well this fucking sucks.”

Adam had the salary and the career path of a second-year associate in Very Big Law.  Unfortunately, he was also stuck with the lifestyle, which was exactly what everyone had told him it would be.  Not all that compatible with long afternoons cuddling on the porch of Ronan Lynch’s farmhouse.  

He was trying to figure out how to let Ronan down easy when Declan texted. The Lynch brothers didn’t go to church together every Sunday anymore, but they’d decided on mass at St. Agnes today. Would Adam like to ride along and spend a few hours afterwards at the Barns?  

This way, the math worked. He’d have a good five hours with his laptop and the Volvo’s wi-fi, plus at least an hour to work at the coffee shop while the brothers were in church.  As long as Adam didn’t plan to sleep much -- and when did Adam ever sleep much? -- he could have a too-short but much needed afternoon with Ronan.

Adam wore noise-canceling headphones and listened to energetic movie scores while he worked, leaving Declan free to listen to whatever modern classical music or informational podcast he preferred.  It wasn’t as though Declan was going to try to have a conversation. The eldest Lynch respected the importance of work, although his metric for success was measured in deals rather than hours. After all this time, Adam still had no idea what Declan did -- it might have been finance or crime, quite possibly both -- and Ronan either kept his brother’s secrets or was strategically uncurious about them.  Either way, when Adam said he was busy and needed the time in the car to get things done, Declan didn’t question him.

It was only when they stopped in Harrisonburg and parked in front of Matthew’s apartment that Declan tapped his ear and Adam took the headphones off.  “Ronan’s going to be happy to see you,” Declan said and then, with only a short pause as though he knew he should wait for Adam to make some kind of answer but wasn’t going to, “I don’t suppose it would kill you to come to Church with us?”

“It wouldn’t,” Adam acknowledged. “Just like it wouldn’t kill the Catholic Church to stop saying that my relationship with your brother is ‘inherently disordered.’ But I don’t think that’s gonna happen any time soon, sooooo. . .”

“That’s fair,” Declan said. His voice sounded even and judicious and it was only his face that jerked back a little before he could stop himself. “Of course that’s -- you know I don’t --”  

The Volvo’s dashboard pinged with an incoming message to Declan’s phone, and an electronic voice read it out loud: “Text from Matthew: Ooops.”

This couldn’t possibly be the first time Adam and Declan had talked about this, but it had been years, now, and the lines of their relationship so clearly defined. Adam just expected some things to keep not being said. “Twenty-first century Catholicism, you know -- especially in America. It’s all very complicated. Particularly with my family the number of things that don’t exactly fit the expected mold --”

“Text from Matthew: Five minutes? X O X O.”

“I’ve been sleeping with Ronan since we were eighteen,” Adam said. “He’s been Catholic all that time, and he’s also been a Lynch. I’m very much aware of the many many complications.” 

Declan let out a breath. “That’s more than fair,” he repeated. “All I meant to say was. I think Ronan misses you. I think he’d appreciate you kneeling next to him, it wouldn’t have to --” 

“I’ll stay over tonight. Ronan can drive me up in the morning.” Declan actually let Adam see him smile, which was rare, and Adam said, quickly, “If he wants.” 

Adam tasted every emotion at once --  Ronan missing him (bittersweet); Ronan missing him enough that it made Declan worried (hot acid); Declan acting like he knew something about Adam and Ronan’s relationship that Adam didn’t know himself (sour).  Then, Adam realized, Declan had gotten him to suggest an arrangement that Ronan would never ask for himself, that Adam wouldn’t have allowed himself to want.

“Text from Matthew: Oops again! Gotta iron my shirt. Could be another twenty minutes!”

“Since when does he even own --?” Declan began, just as Adam was saying, “Thank you.” 

They looked at each other, confused, and then the backseat door opened. “Just kidding! I’m ready!” Matthew announced, letting himself in. “I really had you there, I bet. Hi, Adam!” Conspiratorially, the youngest Lynch said, “I don’t even own an iron.”

#the raven cycle #adam parrish #lynch brothers #big law adam #catholic boys #wip wednesday #fanfic

[hklnvgl]

OMG I'm so happy for you and super excited about your prompts celebration! If it sparks joy for you :D could you do a Pynch + "Congratulations! One of your dreams has finally come true. Let me give you a big hug and wow, you’re warm…" Thank you! <3

(pre-relationship, set around bllb)

Adam was distracted from his careful and quite-shivery considering of how worth it’d be to try and drive to school that morning by crunchy steps and a sharp laugh.

“Shit, Parrish. I’ll give you twenty bucks if you manage to start that engine today.”

“Good morning to you too, Lynch,” Adam said through gritted teeth as Ronan was finally illuminated by the almost-dead street light. “Never thought I’d ever see you out and about before 11 am. Who died?”

“Shut up. Asshole. I share first period Latin with you on Tuesdays.”

Adam wasn’t impressed by Ronan’s glare. “You here to offer me a ride?”

Adam’s watch said he had exactly fifteen minutes to get to Aglionby, get warm enough that shrugging his ratty windbreaker with outgrown-three-years-ago sleeves into his messenger bag didn’t sound like torture, and review the essay he’d blearily finished at four in the morning for World Hist. With clear roads and normal visibility, his car needed nine minutes to get from St. Agnes to school. That morning, there was a foot of snow trapping his tires.

“Didn’t bring the BMW.”

“So you walked here?”

Ronan shrugged. Adam would never make it on time if they had to walk.

“Fuck. Okay. Let’s get going, then.”

He’d only walked three steps when he felt something hitting his arm.

He blinked down, barely registering the snow crumbs sliding down his sleeve.

“Did you just throw a snow ball at me?”

“You walk too fast. If I’d ran after you I could’ve slid off and fell to death.”

Suddenly, Adam felt hot, despite the snow crunching under his shoes when he turned back to get into Ronan’s space.

“I don’t give a shit about whatever’s got you in such a good mood today. You fuck with me one single time more and I swear, Lynch—”

“There’s no school today,” Ronan rushed. “We got an e-mail half an hour ago. ‘Cause of the snow. Gansey tried calling the church, but the phone lines must have gone to shit or something because it didn’t go through. So I figured—you didn’t know.”

“There’s no school?” Adam repeated, because he must have heard wrong, because Aglionby wouldn’t cancel because of a bit of snow, because he could’ve used the past half an hour, since his alarm woke him, to catch up on sleep.

Ronan nodded. The street light blinked hard, and for a long second they were in the darkness. Adam could only hear Ronan’s heavy breathing.

The light came back to life.

Adam was so close he could see the fur lining the hood of Ronan’s very comfortable-looking parka. His own arm was starting to go numb from the cold because the snow Ronan had thrown at him was leaking into his blazer’s sleeve.

He felt angry all over again.

“Congratulations,” he sneered. “No school: one of your dreams has finally come true!” Ronan pinched his lips together and Adam smirked, vindicated. “Let me give you a big hug—we must celebrate!” He’d just wanted to press his wet sleeve into Ronan’s nape, and he’d figured Ronan would step back anyway, but before he knew it he was wrapping his shivering arms around Ronan’s neck, and Ronan was letting him, and the wind picked up around them but Adam couldn’t care less because his ear was being caressed by the long breath Ronan took. “Wow, you’re warm—,” he gasped, before he could help himself, because Ronan’s coat was soft to the touch, and his brain was realizing he didn’t need to be fully on alert for school so it was starting to shut back off.

“You need a better jacket,” Ronan said, and it didn’t sound like he was patronizing Adam or trying to make him feel like he didn’t know how to take care of himself.

Adam just nodded. Ronan’s arms circled briefly his waist before Adam decided it was getting too weird and overwhelming and took a step back.

He didn’t feel like sleeping anymore.

“You just woke up?” he asked.

Ronan cleared his throat. “Never went to sleep.”

Adam nodded towards the end of the street, pointing at the 24 diner round the corner.

“Breakfast?” he asked. He thought he could spy the hint of a smile in Ronan’s lips before Ronan turned and started leading the way.

#pynch #adam parrish #ronan lynch #pynch fic #the raven cycle #trc #fic #i know this is probably not what you were expecting #tbh at first i was tempted to make it about ronan congratulating adam on harvard stuff #but i couldn't help myself to take the weird route here!! #so thank you so much for the prompt!! it does spark lots and lots of joy! 💛 #d reaches 200 #d #creativefiend19

[pynches]

through the years we will be together (if the fates allow)

a/n this is a gift for @mletart for @pynchpromptweek Secret Santa! I hope you like it! summary: The Lynch brothers do Christmas caroling together to uphold the brotherly bond after their parents passed away. It so happens to be that Adam lives at the church they frequent at. The Myth of the Brothers Lynch become a reality when Adam finally meets the middle one.

word count: 2571

ao3 Adam had never seen them, he had tried many times to catch as much as a glimpse but his job at Boyd’s lined up with the mass times and he was always a little too late. Once, he thought he saw the edge of a BMW turn around the corner but he had waved that off. “Good boys” as the attendees had said, didn’t drive cars that were shark-nosed, all edges and brute force.

“They sing like angels,” one old lady told Adam. She attended church often, burning a candle sometimes. Adam wondered who she had lost, if she was the only one left standing. He almost wanted to ask if the angel metaphor was blasphemy but he held it in at the last moment and politely listened instead, the key to his apartment still in hand. “Especially the middle one.”

“Ronan,” Adam said helpfully, nodding his head in recognition. He had been so mystified by the brothers that he had absorbed every bit of information about them like a sponge, trying to piece everything together and create clear images of them.

He never quite succeeded.

“You must come to mass,” the lady said, her watery eyes looking up at Adam hopefully and Adam had politely declined though it cost him great hardship to do so.

“I’m not religious,” Adam said apologetically and stayed to listen to the lady’s story about the grandson she never really saw because he went to study abroad before Adam finally went up the stairs and let himself into his apartment.

The Brother’s Lynch, now a tangible subject in his mind, took residency in his thoughts for the remainder of the day, the week, until it was Sunday again and Adam was home for once.

Boyd had called Adam to him a few days before, telling him that he had to take some vacation days or he would breach the contract he had signed the year before. It so happened that one of those vacation days was that Sunday, since it wouldn’t be too busy at the shop that day anyway.

And thus, Adam was at the window on Sunday, peering through the slightly cracked glass to try and catch the eye of the brothers.

He watched as the shark-nosed BMW appeared again, followed by a much more boring car, parking next to the BMW. The first guy that got out was one that looked like he was the poster child for bad behaviour. Shaved head, tattoos that curled up from his shoulders and around his neck, peeking just above the black suit he was wearing, the tie artfully undone.

Next came another guy out of the more boring car, a displeased frown already set in his eyebrows. He wore a gray suit, everything perfectly in place. Adam wondered if the perfection was compensating for something.

Then, the last guy, which Adam expected was Ronan, the one with the nice voice, the “very kind boy” as one of the old ladies had whispered to him. Golden curls, a sweet smile on his face, an excited jump in his step as he entered the church.

Adam didn’t go down but he snuck out of his apartment and sat on the stairs, hoping to catch one of their voices. He wanted to learn the magic behind the sound, understand why everyone, including him, had been mesmerised by the brothers.

He didn’t hear a single one stand out, all of them combining too much to notice the ‘angelic’ ones the woman had told him about. Adam wished he still had his other ear in use, thinking that perhaps he would be blessed with the heavenly voices of the brothers if his father hadn’t beaten the hearing out of it.

Disappointedly, he stood again and moved upstairs to his little apartment, sitting down to study as he had done a hundred nights before and would continue to do so until the very end.

It wasn’t a half-hour later when he heard a single voice, moving below in the heart of the church, the voice echoing off the wall. Adam quietly tiptoed down and peeked around the corner. He was too entranced by the voice at first to notice the person singing. The musical notes and the quiet timber of it made Adam wonder if the church was built for the sound instead of God. But then he saw the figure and his heart momentarily stopped.

Shaved head, eyes sunken into his head, was he sleeping enough? Perhaps he was an insomniac as Adam was as well, by choice or not was the question. The suit jacket had been shrugged off and laid over one of the benches. His dress shirt had been rolled up his arms, exposing the boy’s pale forearms, scarred and vulnerable looking. Adam could distinctively see two hooks etched into the sides of his neck, the black ink a stark contrast against the whiteness of his skin.

This must be the youngest one Adam thought. He wanted to go up, introduce himself but he was too scared to. The boy was not only taller than him but significantly stronger too. Adam didn’t exactly feel fear but he didn’t want to take any chances either.

He barely noticed the singing had stopped before the boy was in front of him and Adam’s heart stilled in his chest. “Who the fuck are you?” Adam was asked who immediately went into defensive mode.

“I live here,” Adam said with an annoyed pull of his lips. He wondered why the ladies had said they were ‘good boys’. This one seemed anything but.

The boy’s mouth opened and closed, the spell on his hardened eyes momentarily broken and he looked so much younger immediately. “Oh, I didn’t know.”

Adam swallowed and nodded before his everlasting need for approval reared its ugly head. “Adam Parrish,” he said, knowing how ridiculous his name sounded in a church of all things. The boy, Matthew, Adam presumed, seemed to realise as well and smirked a little. Adam wished he didn’t find it as attractive as he did.

“Ronan Lynch,” the boy replied and…

Oh.

Oh.

“You’re not Matthew?” Adam asked and he immediately realised how stupid he sounded. He also realised his hand was still in Ronan’s, pleasantly warm under his soft skin.

“That would be my baby brother,” Ronan answered and cocked his head. Adam didn’t dare to tell him that it made him look like a confused puppy. “Why would you think I was Matthew?”

And here Adam was, standing in front of the most dangerous-looking boy with the most beautiful voice he had ever heard, tongue-tied and all. “The ladies who come here told me Ronan was the nicest of the brothers and well…”

“Matthew looks like a golden retriever personified,” Ronan helpfully added. “We’re all aware.”

Adam bit his lip and finally released Ronan’s hand. It took him everything to not immediately start running. He would have if he didn’t also want to tell Ronan how nice his voice was and, more importantly, leave a good impression for whatever reason that might be.

“Your voice…” Adam started and cleared his throat. “It’s really nice.”

He walked away after that, hating himself for coming up with ‘nice’ of all things. As if that wasn’t the lamest thing he could have said to the hottest person he had ever met in his short and sheltered life. You didn’t often find people like him in little Henrietta, Virginia and Adam blew it completely.

Adam could hear the soft laughter of Ronan echo against the walls again, following him up into his room. It was a quiet and surprising thing, fleeting like the birds’ wings on Ronan’s neck.

Adam dreamt about Ronan that night. Perhaps he truly wasn’t real but just a myth his mind had helpfully added a face to. But it couldn’t be, Ronan’s hand had felt so real in his own, warm and soft, the comforting touch of a mystical stranger.

Adam looked out the next day but Ronan was gone. It wasn’t a surprise, he didn’t think people that drove such cars actually slept in churches but he still felt a deep sense of disappointment that nobody was waiting for him downstairs, singing a beautiful song in greeting.

Adam got back to work the next Sunday and though he rushed back to catch a glimpse of the brothers, or, well, Ronan, it was to no avail. They were gone, carrying their voices with them.

The days flew by, the weather got worse. Adam was cold more often than not and in those freezing days where he could only pace up and down his small apartment to gain some warmth, he remembered the touch of Ronan’s hands, their palms pressed together, Ronan’s finger lightly touching his racing pulse.

“They have a habit of Christmas caroling,” one of the ladies, Dorothy, apparently, had told him with a wink as if she knew Adam had been looking out for them. “They do it every year, it keeps the brotherly bond alive.”

Adam thought Christmas caroling only happened in cheesy Christmas movies but he had thanked her and kept Dorothy’s words to heart. He made sure to finish all of his homework before sitting down on his bed on Christmas eve, eyeing the door with nervous anticipation. He belatedly thought of the possibility they would only carol at the door of the church, not of his apartment. Still, he held the hope that Ronan would remember their conversation and attempt to sing for him.

Though Adam had hope, he didn’t actually expect a knock on his door. He turned the doorknob with a shaky hand, his stomach fluttering with nerves.

Before him stood three brothers.

Declan, his expression stoic, his suit black this time with a tie that looked as if it was made by someone artistic, snowflakes and Christmas trees decorating the red and green background. The tie greatly contrasted what Adam had thought was his personality. Maybe he wasn’t as boring as he portrayed himself to be.

Matthew, all golden curls and happy smiles as he sang, his head bobbing a little with every note, his eyes squinted to feel the music more. He was as he seemed, cheerfulness evident in every word he sang.

And then there was Ronan. He was dressed in all black, not quite right for Christmas eve but it fit him, Adam could tell even though he didn’t truly know him. The scar on his lip pulled a little when he sang, the sole focus point of Adam’s sight until he suddenly remembered he had been staring at Ronan’s lips with fascination and looked up again. His eyes met Ronan’s pale blue ones. It reminded him of the ice he always wished he could skate on but never could afford.

Ronan smiled while he sang, he could tell from the crinkles around his eyes. Adam couldn’t help but smile back and applaud a little when they were done.

“You deserve every praise you get,” Adam told the brothers. Declan nodded in appreciation and squeezed Ronan’s shoulder.

“He really is nice,” he said, smirking a little as Ronan’s cheeks turned red, his expression affronted that his brother dared to expose him like that. “Ronan forced us to sing for you.”

This time it was Adam’s time to blush, unable to meet Ronan’s eyes so they fell on Matthew instead who looked ecstatic. “I think you’ll make a lovely brother in law.”

“Matthew!” Ronan yelled and Matthew laughed as he dragged Declan down to ‘give them some privacy’.

Adam finally looked up to Ronan again and tugged a little on the sleeve of his suit jacket so he met his eyes again. “I’m glad you came here.”

“You are?” Ronan asked, sounding as if he expected Adam to slam his door in his face. Adam could sense the hope in Ronan’s eyes and, hell, it was Christmas Eve . This was the night for miracles and taking chances, for spending time with loved ones that Adam didn’t have but if he played it right, he could have exactly that next Christmas.

Adam thus nodded and ran inside to get a pen, writing his phone number on the palm of Ronan’s hand, the light blue almost the colour of the veins that ran underneath his skin. “I want to get to know you better, maybe you become less of a myth in my head.”

Ronan’s laugh sounded like bells and Adam couldn’t help but grin back, strangely proud that he made the boy with the wonderful voice laugh like that.

“I don’t use my phone a lot,” Ronan confessed but protectively curled his fingers around the phone number anyway and Adam knew he was going to call him.

“See it as a Christmas present to me,” Adam replied and Ronan’s lips pulled in a smirk, leaning closer to him as he spoke his next words.

“And what is my present then?”

Adam rolled his eyes, somewhere between exasperated and amused, knowing that he would be walking that fine line more often with Ronan. “A date?”

Ronan’s cheeks flushed a little again and he nodded. Adam cheered inwardly. “Deal,” he replied as if they were in some kind of business meeting. He briefly frowned, having realised that himself too.

Adam wanted to tease that he was more like his brother than he was probably willing to admit but he kept his mouth shut to ensure he would still go on that date.

“Deal,” he replied softly instead and watched as Ronan finally turned to leave, looking back one last time at him before going back into the cold. Adam watched Ronan push Declan and ruffle Matthew’s hair before getting into the shark-nosed BMW and driving off, the pristine snow still lingering to its exterior.

The myth of the Lynch Brothers didn’t end there but next Christmas, Adam was in on it too. He didn’t carol, it was something for the brothers alone. Instead, he comfortably sat on the worn couch of the Barns, sipping hot chocolate with Chainsaw, Ronan’s raven, her beak comfortably pressed into his neck, waiting for the brothers to return.

With them, the Lynches brought warmth and joy, a liveliness that Adam had missed in those years alone. It wasn’t before long that they came barrelling through the door, Ronan curling up next to him, one arm around the back of his shoulders as they retold where they had been caroling, how the old ladies of the church wished Adam a happy Christmas.

And Adam did have a happy Christmas, more so than he ever experienced before. He was surrounded by people he cared for more than anything and finally understood what the true Christmas spirit was about. Love, joy, and most importantly, spending time with your family, be it born or found.

#pynch #pynch fic #pynch fanfic #pynch fanfiction #trc #the raven cycle #trc fanfic #the raven cycle fanfiction #adam parrish #ronan lynch #pynchpromptweek #declan lynch #matthew lynch #mine

[the-ace-with-spades]

(4/6) the best is yet to come

five times someone realized Ronan and Adam were basically married and one time they actually were

Part 1 │Part 2 │Part 3 │Part 5 │Part 6

Read on ao3

Matty liked Adam. It was not the simple liking he gave everyone he met but something much deeper and more familial — it had a lot to do with how Adam could make Ronan smile the way their whole family used to could.

But also with the way he could explain math.

Declan offered to get him a tutor when they moved to DC but he never liked the idea of a stranger in their house or a stranger seeing how stupid he was exactly. There were probably other dangers with engaging the Lynch family into the normal business, like prep school — which Matty hated the very idea of — so Declan often preferred to tutor Matty himself. It usually ended up with thrown textbooks, screams and another promise of getting Matty a tutor but Matty didn't mind. His grades weren't as critical and he could still get into college, even if it wasn't an Ivy League like Declan would prefer.

In the worst-case scenario, Matty could help Ronan with the farm. Being a farmer was something that sounded like a nice way to make a living. Although that would probably give Declan a hernia.

Matty would usually come to the Barns for the weekend, unless he had other plans with his friends, and help Ronan around until Sunday Mass, after which they would eat dinner together and then Ronan would drive him to catch the bus to Washington or Declan would pick him up, if he was going to the Mass that week.

Most of the time, Adam was also there for at least some of his stay. Matty was pretty sure he moved in with Ronan a few months before and was just pretending he didn't have his own shelves in Ronan's wardrobe, or his own laptop in their dad's study, or the shoes on the porch, or the weird, super-caffeinated green tea, all for the sake of appearances.

When Matty arrived on Friday evening the day before and Ronan went to the bus station to pick him up, the first thing Matty saw at the Barns, was Adam, lying shirtless under a tractor.

It was the one in obnoxious yellow color that their dad used to say was his favorite and it hadn't worked since before their dad died. It was easy to forget Adam was a simple mechanic, as of right now, when he could talk in this weird, Declan-sque way when he sounded both like a teenage boy and a lawyer of twenty years. It was even weirder to remember that Adam was the one that finally coerced Ronan to set up a legitimate firm and pay all the necessary taxes on the property and invest in the modern stuff while Declan tried to do that since he heard Ronan was dropping out to become a farmer.

Matty didn't say anything to this because he was still feeling the wariness Ronan had when it came to the whole being gay thing. Declan said they should leave him alone with it until he was completely ready so Matty never said anything about anything Adam, or Ronan, or Adam and Ronan had done.

He wasn't complaining when Adam offered him to help with algebra while Ronan prepared dinner.

This was also what made Adam feel so familial very quickly — the obvious naturalness of the whole motion.

Matty didn't remember much of their father as he never had that much of contact with him. He supposed that if he did, his parents would probably be in the same position as Ronan and Adam — mom would be preparing dinner and dad would be helping one of his sons with homework. And as strange as the concept of Ronan taking their mom's place on the farm was, it was actually true. Their dad was away so often that throughout most of the year, their mom was the head of the farm and did most of the chores that living with animals and acres of land involved.

Adam didn't look much out of place either. Even though he was at the house more than their dad had — or so Matty assumed, since they were still lying about the moving in thing — despite constant school and work, he belonged there in a way that felt like he was born to live there.

Adam explained his homework, Ronan cooked spinach cream pasta. They ate dinner.

"I'll do the dishes," Adam offered.

"Shut up and sit down, Parrish," Ronan replied, with a tone that was more suited for love confessions or romantic songs.

"Ronan."

"You're not doing the dishes, you worked the whole day so sit on your ass for five minutes and do this thing we normal people love called rest."

Matty wouldn't exactly call any of them normal.

Adam sat down and sighed. He and Ronan had the exact same conversation every time Matty came for the weekend.

"But I'm doing the dishes next time."

Matty had never seen him do the dishes despite him saying it every time.

"Are you staying for the night?" Matty asked because he liked to indulge people — if Adam moving in was something they wanted to hide, then he would pretend it was still a secret.

There was banging on the back door, which was also in the kitchen. Ronan opened the door grumbling and Opal came through.

"Go wash up, munchkin," Ronan said, sounding very much like their mom.

Matty decided to focus on Adam, who admitted, "Yeah, I'll be staying for a couple of days."

By a couple, he probably meant forever but Matty didn't plan to call him out unless it'd be in the speech he was going to give at their wedding.

Opal came back from the bathroom with wet hair and even a wetter t-shirt.

He had never thought someone could sigh with a tone of a tired parent without actually being a tired parent but Adam did.

"Let's get you in your PJs, sugarplum."

Ronan stared after Adam with his hands still in the sink. Matty stared at him.

"What?" he asked when he finally turned his gaze away from Adam and Opal.

"Nothing."

They watched Fast and Furious until Opal fell asleep on the floor and Ronan took her to bed. Matty said goodnight and went to his room, clean of dust and dirty clothes like every weekend he was staying at the Barns and that was it.

Matty woke up in the early morning hours and went down to the kitchen. Adam was there, making coffee, with a book in one hand.

"Ronan is out?" he asked, instead of a greeting.

"Nah," Adam said. "I let him sleep in today and fed the chickens earlier. He doesn't sleep that well still, you know. Coffee?"

There was a lot to unpack in those words so instead of doing that, Matty said, "Yeah."

Lynches were very good at not addressing the obvious, really.

And so were Adam.

They drank their coffee, Adam left their empty mugs in the sink when the stairs creaked.

Adam put the kettle on again.

Ronan came through the door, with a well-rested face but sleepy eyes, looking just the same way he used to look on Christmas morning. He smiled in an easy manner that had become uncommon for him over time and went straight for Adam, halting an inch or two before his face. Adam's lips quirked when he leaned in his direction.

"Had a good sleep?"

Ronan's arms wound around his waist and said, "The bed was cold."

And then he closed the gap and kissed him, with Adam's palm curling around his nape in one smooth move.

One of the things Matty remembered clearly about their parents, as a single entity and not two separate people, was how affectionate they were. Their mom had a soft touch that worked on almost anyone but especially on their father — he had melted under her hands, melted into long hugs, longs stares, long kisses.

So Matty tried to look at his coffee instead of at Ronan and Adam because this kiss did feel like watching your parents, with the second-hand embarrassment and the general confusion, and he hadn't been quite ready for that.

"Morning breath, babe," Adam said, between breaths.

Ronan's lips were just in the corner of his mouth.

"Don't care."

And then Ronan's hand was moving lower and lower on Adam's waist, lifting his t-shirt, until his fingertips were dipping into the elastic band of Adam's pajamas and—

Matty cleared his throat. This was way more than kissing and way more than he wanted to ever see.

Adam stepped away from Ronan, seemingly as awkward as Matty felt on the inside.

"Sorry, Matty," he said.

And then, in a manner that was very much alike their dad's, Ronan said. "I'm not sorry."

#pynch #pynch fic #outsider pov #trc #TRC #the raven cycle #my fics #my writing #matthew lynch

[astudyinfreewill]

Could you maybe do something like Adam and Ronan hanging out with Blue and Gansey near the beginning of their relationship and Ronan marvelling at how he actually gets to hold Adam's hand now and it feels too good to be true 🥺

dear anon... i’m so sorry. this spiralled from the intended 500 words of cute hand holding to 2500 words of group dynamics. i have no excuse. hopefully there is still enough hand-holding to fit the bill 😅

since this got long-ish, you can also find it over at my AO3 if you prefer to read there!

and at every table, i’ll save you a seat

adam/ronan, fluff, 2.5k. takes place after the main events of trk but before the trk epilogue.

“I’m just saying, if he starts shit, I’m gonna walk out. I don’t need that drama in my life right now.” Ronan huffed, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, hands shoved deep into his leather jacket pockets. His breath condensed in the cold early December air. “Noted,” Adam replied, with the patient tone of someone who had heard the threat before and was not particularly concerned.

Ronan glowered - not at Adam or at anyone in particular, he just glowered. He did mean it. He couldn’t be fighting with Gansey right now, he just couldn’t.

Technically, they were already in a fight. This was new: historically, it was Adam and Ronan snarking at each other until one of them snapped, much to Gansey’s great exasperation; or Adam and Gansey waging cold war at each other until Ronan got tired of it and did something purposefully outrageous just so they’d get mad at him and forget whatever argument they were having. It usually wasn’t Ronan and Gansey. But then Ronan had dropped out of school.

The argument that had followed hadn’t been big and explosive, but rather drawn out into instalments: interrupted before things could get too bad and then picked up again at a different time, with Gansey pleading and needling and insisting graduation was mere months away. Ronan had endured a week of this before dealing with it the only way he could conceive of: by moving himself out of Monmouth and back into the Barns, which had been the plan anyway.

Adam had been a quiet bystander in this. He did not approve of Ronan dropping out, and it was clear in the tight line of his mouth when Ronan had told him. But he had always been good at picking his battles, and he had clearly decided not to fight Ronan’s for him. “Are you sure?” he had asked, looking at Ronan with narrowed blue eyes that, as usual, saw far too much. “Yeah,” Ronan had replied. In all honesty, he hadn’t exactly thought it through, because he could not think it through right now - but that was exactly why he was dropping out. He couldn’t be around people. He couldn’t be expected to function and show up and act like an engaged student and study for exams after– everything. So he said again, “Yeah.” And Adam had nodded, and that had been that.

Of course Gansey, correctly guessing that Adam would disapprove of anyone giving up on education, had tried to gain access to his – recently increased - leverage, but his efforts had fallen flat as far as Ronan could tell.

“But you must realise it’s a mistake”, he’d said on the only occasion Ronan had been witness to, one time when he’d arrived early to pick Adam up from work. “Don’t tell me you agree with him!”

“I don’t, but it’s his mistake to make,” Adam had replied, his annoyance clear even from Ronan’s sightless spot around  the corner of Boyd’s main entrance. “Leave him alone, Gansey. Just because your friends want different things from you doesn’t mean they’re not your friends anymore.”

God, but Ronan loved him.

There had been a long pause filled with Gansey’s chastised silence. This wasn’t solely about Ronan’s choices, and they all knew it.

After that, Gansey’s tactical maneuvers had stopped, but Ronan still hadn’t really spoken to him since dropping out, which was less a hostile decision and more due to Ronan not being in school and refusing to answer his phone. When he left the Barns, it was to spend the night at St. Agnes or go for a long drive with Adam, who knew better than to try to play peacemaker on those occasions.

But now it was Gansey’s birthday, and Blue had summoned them at Nino’s, and apparently would never ever speak to him again if he did not show up. So, whatever, fine. It’s not like Ronan would ever miss Gansey’s birthday anyway. He wasn’t that shitty of a  friend. He just didn’t want any drama.

“I’m just saying he needs to lay off,” he added, defensive.

“Fine,” Adam rolled his eyes. “Now are you gonna stop being a big baby?” he held out his hand for Ronan to take. “We’ve been out here for ages. Let’s go inside, I’m cold.”

“Now who’s being a big baby,” Ronan shot back, but took Adam’s hand anyway. He couldn’t help the little electric thrill that went through him at the sensation of skin on skin. It had been almost a month now since he and Adam had gotten together, since their first kiss on Ronan’s birthday, and he still wasn’t used to the idea of this being offered so casually, like something he could just have. Because he could just have it now.

They walked into Nino’s to see Blue waving at them energetically to signal her position. There was no need for it, of course, because she was sitting at the same booth they always sat in. “God, so dramatic,” Ronan moaned, rolling his eyes dramatically. “Ain’t that the truth,” Adam commented, his lips tilting into a smirk. Ronan gave his hand a little squeeze.

Blue, satisfied with her flagging-down antics, had sat back down, and now was placidly nestled into Gansey’s side, looking like one of those small angry birds who puff up and tuck their head into their body until they’re perfectly round. On Gansey’s other side, perusing the menu intently as if it didn’t have the same 12 choices as always, was Henry Cheng, his hair looking like an abstract painting and his t-shirt screaming out a Kylie Minogue logo.

And Gansey himself looked… the same as usual, which was to say, it was both impossible to tell and impossible to forget that he had died and been resuscitated in the past month. He also looked anxious. That, Ronan mused, was also usual. He just didn’t usually look anxious about greeting Ronan, and Ronan wasn’t sure he liked that. He chewed on his lip, then gave Gansey a reluctant half smile and hoped it didn’t look like too much of a snarl. Gansey also gave a half smile that looked like a gastritis grimace.

Progress.

“Hey y’all,” Adam greeted. “Hi Blue. Cheng,” he nodded. Then he turned towards Gansey, starting to raise his right fist reflexively; he paused, looked briefly down at where his left hand was joined with Ronan’s, then seemed to make a split-second decision and raised that hand instead, curling his fingers into a fist around Ronan’s, making it so they both fist-bumped Gansey at once. It was embarrassing and looked silly and awkward, but somehow, afterwards, Ronan didn’t feel quite so tentative, and Gansey’s grimace was more and more reminiscent of a smile.

“Very fucking clever,” he muttered in Adam’s ear as they slid into the booth.

“I know, right?” Adam replied with a cheery smile. “I should be a counsellor or something.”

Ronan shoved his shoulder into Adam’s good-naturedly. Adam jostled him right back. Neither let go of the other’s hand.

Immediately, they were pulled into conversation by Blue and required to arbitrate a discussion between her and Henry on whether reality shows were morally bankrupt or a fascinating social experiment. Adam, who had never watched a reality show, sided with Blue out of principle. Gansey, who for very different reasons had also never watched a reality show, was discreetly trying to pull Ronan’s focus with an entreating look; Ronan, warily, let him.

“How have you been, Lynch?” Gansey asked.

Ronan shrugged. “How have you been?”Gansey looked for a moment like he was going to lose his patience. Instead, his face cracked in a different direction, an almost melancholy expression coloring it. “Alright. Adjusting, I suppose. To… everything.”

Everything being “dying and coming back to life as a patchwork tangle of ley line forest”.

“That’s rough, man.” Ronan raised his glass sympathetically, and Gansey tilted his own back.

“You must also be… adjusting. To everything.”

Everything being losing his mother, losing Cabeswater, and almost dying himself.

The undercurrent of things unsaid, hovering just under the surface, was too much; Ronan was going to scream.

But then Gansey did the unexpected.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Ronan choked on his drink a little.

“I shouldn’t have hassled you about school. I just…” Gansey waved a vague hand.

“Think you know better than everyone?” Ronan supplied dryly. Damn, maybe Parrish was rubbing off on him.

Gansey tilted his head. “Perhaps. I made a few bad calls. I, uh. I may have sold Monmouth Manufacturing to get Child to let you stay in school.”

The words were like an ice pick in Ronan’s heart. He felt Adam’s hand tighten around his, despite the fact he was ostensibly still listening to Blue. Adam knew, then. Ronan could only imagine that argument.

“Dick. You did what?”, he rasped. “I never, ever asked you to do anything like that, you colossal fucking-”“I know, I know,” Gansey said, raising a placating hand. “It was stupid. I was maybe not thinking straight. Bit concerned with my own impending death. It’s alright. I managed to buy it back.”

The storm cloud threatening to explode in Ronan’s chest dispelled. Monmouth was safe. Monmouth, with its tall windows and its dusty floors and its walls that held a thousand stories of insomnia and grief and laughter and companionship and fights and friendship. Brotherhood.

“Good,” he said, a little hoarsely. “You love that place.”

“I do,” Gansey admitted wistfully. “It’s just been a little… well. Different. Now that it is just me, I mean. I don’t see you at school, and I don’t see you at ho– at Monmouth. And it’s a big place, and I suppose maybe I was – there is a chance that I perhaps might have been a little afraid of being… well. Lonely. I guess.”

Well. That was a low blow. Or maybe it only felt like one because Ronan had not stopped to think about that and was caught unawares now – but he was gonna go with low blow anyway. It seemed wrong for Gansey – Gansey, of all people – to be lonely. He had always been the one collecting lonely people, the glue holding them all together. Ronan had spent so much time worried about losing Gansey’s friendship, so it was a baffling change of pace for Gansey to miss him.

It made him feel a little bad, but he also knew he was doing the right thing. He needed to be at home right now - his real home, his childhood home, to process everything. And Gansey had other people now – he had Blue and he had Henry, and Ronan had Adam – well, he’d had Adam before, in a manner of speaking, but it was different now. They were both following their own paths. But it didn’t mean Ronan couldn’t be there for him.

“You can still text me, you know,” he said as casually as he could.

Gansey glared at him. “I have been.”“Really?” Ronan said even more casually, scratching at his stubble. He shrugged. “Try again,” he added, more sincerely, holding Gansey’s gaze.

Gansey gave him a small, earnest smile. “I will.”

And just like that, things were okay again. Ronan leaned over the table to give Gansey an amicable punch in the shoulder, but had to raise his right hand, still entwined with Adam’s, to reach forward. It didn’t occur to him that their joined hands were visibly resting above the table until Gansey’s eyes shot down to them and quickly away, his expression doing something complicated but not displeased. He nodded, that little unguarded smile still on his face. Approval, perhaps. Ronan had not asked for it nor did he need it – but it was still nice.

Not as nice as actually getting to hold Adam’s hand though. Now that he’d been reminded of it, he couldn’t stop focusing on it – the warmth, the contact of thumb crossed over thumb, his fingertips brushing over Adam’s still slightly chapped knuckles, the way Adam’s calluses were familiar to him now in a way he’d never expected to know outside of a dream.

Adam – who by this point was wryly arguing with Henry over whether there was even a point to a student council when everyone on it was part of the 1%, to Henry’s impassioned retorts that there are more issues than just classism, Parrish – absently shifted his hand so it was resting palm up on the table, an open invitation, a gentle suggestion to readjust. Ronan followed in kind, resting the back of his hand against Adam’s palm. Adam wrapped his long fingers around the side of Ronan’s palm – Ronan closed his fingers over Adam’s.

He felt warm all over. He took a sip of his iced tea but couldn’t hide the small, private smile playing on his lips, nor could he stop staring at their hands crisscrossed over each other’s on top of the table.

And then he was rudely snapped out of it by Blue’s teasing Awww, cute.

Ronan raised his head slowly, making sure to narrow his eyes menacingly despite the distinct heat he could feel on his cheeks.

Blue was staring at their hands, an unrepentant grin on her face. She met Ronan’s eyes without a trace of concern, taking a big, leisurely gulp of her tea.

“You got somethin’ to say, Sargent?” he asked pleasantly.

“Yeah,” she replied defiantly. “I said you guys are cute.”

This was all new terrain. Ronan had never been teased for being in a relationship, but he’d also never been in a relationship, and hell – he’d all but avoided thinking about the mere idea of a relationship until last year.

Then Adam pressed his leg against Ronan’s under the table, a private show of support, a quiet reminder that it wasn’t Adam and Ronan, but Adam-and-Ronan. It was such a small thing, but it meant so much. Less than a year ago, Ronan had been sitting in this same booth, watching Adam hold hands with Blue and feeling like he’d swallowed his own heart and it was slowly poisoning him from the inside.

And now, it was Adam-and-Ronan.

He tilted his chin haughtily. “Maybe we fucking are, Sargent”.

Blue scrunched up her nose, her expression going from teasing to earnest. “Yeah, you are. It’s nice to see you looking like that for a change.”

Ronan raised an eyebrow. “Cute?”

Blue leaned her chin on her hand. “Happy.”

Oh.

Well, how about that.

Ronan exhaled loudly from his nose and threw himself back against the headrest of the booth; but he also extended a leg under the table so he could knock into Blue’s tiny booted foot. She bumped his boot right back.

At his side, Adam leaned into him lightly, shoulder pressed warmly to shoulder, his head tilted in a way that suggested he might soon be resting it against Ronan’s temple, as he sometimes did when he was tired after a long shift.

Yeah. Ronan supposed that, all considered, he was pretty happy.

#ronan lynch #adam parrish #pynch #trc #trc fic #fluff #my writing #everyone in this gang is so DRAMATIC i can't stand them #it's ok tho they love each other :') #will adam and ronan ever stop holding hands?? DEBATABLE #nor should they!!! #they've earned their hand holding privileges #but ronan will still call out blue and gansey for doing it #anonymous #answer

[eury--dice]

history, huh?

chapter 4: proxime

check the notes for links to other chapters and ao3!

(also would like to note a general cw for alcohol and child abuse in this chapter - see ao3/message me for more detail and please be safe and avoid if necessary)

Adam kind of wanted to go back and slap his former self before he could announce anything was “perfect.”

It was only once the turkeys were deposited in his room by blank-faced handlers that he began to regret his decision. The turkeys stared ominously at him, eerily silent for all of five seconds before they started to move and gobble.

And they didn’t stop.

SOS, he texted Ronan simply, receiving a lone question mark in reply. 

  iMessage chat to HRH shitty bird boy

Resumed 28 November, 2019, 12:36 am

  It’s the turkeys. I saved taxpayers needless expense and now they’re going to peck me to death. 

  told you to stop playing the hero, Parrish. 

  NOW IS NOT THE TIME

CORNBREAD IS EYEING ME

Some support would be appreciated here

  i’m going to assume that cornbread is one of the turkeys and not a sentient loaf of cornmeal?

  No, Your Highness, I’ve been performing a complicated experiment involving a snack to see if it can gain intelligence. The crocheted eyes appear to be working.

No shit, Sherlock, good assumption. 

And excuse you, in the South, we make cornbread with real corn. 

  if you’re going to jest don’t include hobbies that seem plausible

  The science experiment or the crocheting?

  both. 

  When would I do either of those?

  fuck if i know, that’s your business. 

  Oh shit oh shit oh shit

Meatloaf is gobbling again.

Is gobbling a precursor to attack? 

Would google it but I’m too afraid to take my eyes off of the dinos.

  gobbling is widely known as a war declaration amongst turkeys 

i’m surprised a smartarse like you wouldn’t know this.

  Oh, fuck it, Adam thought, and before he could talk himself out of it and resign himself to a night of gobbling, the dial icon had been tapped and the glass of his phone felt cool against his hearing ear. 

“Have you ever shared close quarters with a turkey?”

Adam could feel Ronan’s unimpressed silence through the phone. “No, I have not. Why the hell would I?”

“Privileged,” Adam muttered. “You don’t know how sadistic these turkeys are.” 

Cornbread chose that moment to gobble rather loudly and antagonistically. Adam’s eyes snapped to the bird, his muscles freezing in pure fear. “Sorry,” he whispered. 

“Christ,” Ronan said, and his tone had softened somewhat. “Did a turkey make that noise?”

“Yep,” Adam breathed. 

“That is not natural,” he insisted. “What the fuck?”

“I told you!”

A squawk sounded on Ronan’s end, and when Ronan spoke his voice was a great deal gentler than it had been. “Good baby, your noises aren’t demonic…”

“I’ll assume you’re not speaking to me.”

“Fuck no. Every word out of your mouth comes straight from hell.” There was a muffled rustling nose, something that was probably feathers against skin. 

“Your bird?”

“Raven. Keep up, please.”

“Ravens are birds,” Adam said, but it was probably futile. “What’s its name again?”

There was a brief pause on Ronan’s end. “Her name is Chainsaw.”

Adam’s voice fell flat in response. “Chainsaw.”

He heard a kerah. “Something wrong with that?” Ronan said, his accent drawing out the o in ‘wrong’ like it was already a guilty verdict .

“It just doesn’t seem very...royal. Or bird-like.”

“It’s a good cry better than cornbread and stuffing.”

“I didn’t name them,” Adam defended. “Blame the American people.”

“But I already blame them for so much.”

“Add it to the laundry list.” Adam flinched back as the other turkey squawked deafeningly. 

It was the first time he and Ronan had spoken on the phone, and until then, he hadn’t even realized it. All it took was Cornbread’s evil gaze to snap him into reality. 

Silence settled between them for a moment. Adam barely dared to breathe between the awkwardness of his conversation with Ronan and his clearly impending doom at the hands of something only distantly related to dinosaurs. 

“If you get mauled by those turkeys, may I give the eulogy at your funeral?”

Adam snorted, drawn back to the feeling of the phone clenched in his hand. “Ignoring the fact that I’m the son of the President and you’re the Prince of England, absolutely.” 

“Good. I’m already drafting turkey-related jokes.”

“Don’t you dare dishonor me by bringing up the cause of my demise.”

“It’s a good thing Cornbread will have clawed your esophagus out and you’ve no possible way to object.”

“Jesus.” Adam shivered. “Now I have a third part to my nightmare.”

“I would trade you Chainsaw, but she goes for the eyes and I have the feeling you’d rather keep those.”

“Your feeling is correct.”

“Also, I would fucking die for her.”

“...Strong feelings, apparently, for a bird that doesn’t seem royal-approved.”

“That’s half the reason I love her,” Ronan admitted. “Most definitely not approved.”

“Just like your tattoo?”

The line went quiet for a moment. “Yes,” Ronan finally said. “Just like my tattoo.”

That line was back, and Adam inched ever-closer to touching it with his toes.

“No trade, then. I’ll just slowly perish alone in my room. If this causes a fiasco in the press be sure to make fun of me properly.”

“Of course,” Ronan said, just as Stuffing let out a deafening gobble. “Can’t you get Sargent to intimidate them into silence? Or, wait, is it charming them into liking her? I can’t figure her out from your description.”

“Knowing Blue it could be either,” Adam admitted. “And she’s...busy.”

“Busy how?”

“Back in Virginia busy.” Adam stretched out his shoulder, keeping a wary eye on the turkeys. 

“Virginia? With family?”

“Most of her family is Maura, and she’s still here,” Adam hedged, weighing the little he knew about the Sargent family with what he could say to Ronan. “But yeah, of a sort. Thanksgiving’s a rough time of year. She’s trying to help out, even though it’s not technically where she’s from. Raising money, ensuring shelter, I think she’s even got a protest planned.”

“Different shade of Sargent, then.”

“Same shade,” Adam corrected. “Different circumstances.”

Ronan hummed on the other end of the line. Adam scrambled for words, trying to lighten up the air. Stuffing squawked as though to mock his tied tongue.

“She’s been busy for the last few weeks, anyway.”

“What type of busy would this busy be?”

"Just start a new sentence. You sound ridiculous." Ronan stayed silent to his jab, clearly electing to ignore him. “...Date busy.”

“Good for her,” Ronan said, but he must have heard something else in Adam’s silence because he continued. “Wait. No. No fucking way. Not with Gansey?”

“Yes with Gansey.”

“Wow, third wheeling’s gotta be even more fucking awkward, huh?”

“God, I hope not.”

“The way you described them I thought they’d never wake up to it.”

“Me too,” Adam said. “And I’m thrilled for them, but I’m also very offended that their feelings are getting in the way of saving me. Gansey went with her.”

“Oh, you drama queen. Just sleep in Gansey’s room if the gobbling is that bad.”

“They can escape, Ronan, I swear to you. They’re like the raptors-”

“They’re named after fatty foods. You’ll be alright. Go the fuck to sleep.”

“...Yeah, alright. But you need to sleep too.”

“Wouldn't dream of letting you sleep alone,” Roman replied, his tone dry. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

As Adam let his phone fall onto his pillow, Stuffing chose to bash her wings against the cage. After almost falling out of his bed in fright, Adam quickly decided that Ronan might have been onto something about sleeping in Gansey’s room. 

If he made it through the night, he owed Ronan a thank you.

  ***

Christmas rolled around with a mighty fervor.

It felt like one moment, Adam was sitting back down in class after Thanksgiving to crack down on some new essays, and the next he was watching evergreens and pine decorations get thrown up along White House walls in perfect synchrony. 

The normal White House Christmas was an ordeal, one that did its best to stress family but mostly stressed political strategy. Nothing changed that year to make it different, but they did have a smaller affair in addition to all the festivities. Christmas Eve was, in many ways, the eye of the storm. An extreme amount of chaos was behind them, and a deluge to follow come Christmas morning, but Christmas Eve dinner was dependable, private, and blessedly relaxed. Adam, somehow, found himself looking forward to it. 

He sat on one of the staircases - it really didn’t matter which one, as they all blent together, only distinguishable by where they could take him - with the decorations hanging around him and a book in his lap. For once, there wasn’t any work, and even the most work-centered version of himself was forced to concede and enjoy a few hours of pleasure reading. He had grabbed the first book he could find off of his shelf and set off. Apparently, his hand had gravitated towards Fahrenheit 451. Not exactly light enough to match the twinkling reds and golds he spotted in his periphery no matter how he turned, but a personal choice all the same. 

“If you keep sitting on staircases, someone is going to walk into you,” came Gansey’s voice from behind him. 

“It’s their fault for not watching their way,” said Adam. “I’m sitting with my back to them. How am I expected to know?”

“By not sitting on staircases,” Gansey repeated. The air rustled as Gansey lowered to sit on the step next to Adam. “Some nice, light reading?”

“Yes. Everything okay?”

“Grand. Mostly just avoiding Helen unpacking and my parents stressing over napkin rings.”

“Gansey Christmas sounds wonderful,” Adam said dryly. “I assume they’ll all be here tonight?”

“Of course. They’d never miss it.”

“Helen is well?”

“Fantastic, apparently. Primed to get engaged soon, she says, and the helicopter’s got a new paint job.”

Adam could almost forget how much the Ganseys looked like a new Kennedy-like dynasty, but their swarming every year always reminded him. Their Christmas photos, too - always at DC landmarks, bleached teeth and ghost-pale skin and all-American born and bred grins. And the occasional snap stories from Helen of her mid-piloting a flying vessel didn’t help. 

“Glad to hear it,” he said, not surprised to find the words genuine. 

He got to see the Gansey family anxiety for himself only a few hours later, donned in an ugly Christmas sweater Blue had insisted on. Mr. Gansey cast a discerning eye around the room while Mrs. Gansey smiled tightly at his side, dressed pristinely. Helen chatted idly with Blue, though Blue looked prepared to bolt at a moment's notice. 

“Ho-ho-horseshit?” Maura questioned, snapping him away from his reverie and gazing around like a caged animal. Her eyes traced over the pattern on his shirt. 

“Blue’s homemade gift,” he said by way of response, to which Maura only sighed heavily. Her sudden appearance reminded him he had a task to perform, the small handled bag digging into his palm suddenly given a purpose. He held the bag out to Maura with a small grimace, watching one of her eyebrows quirk. “I was told to give you this.”

Maura withdrew an identical sweater from the bag. “Sending you to do her dirty work, hm?”

“I suppose so.”

“Hm,” was all Maura replied, until she lifted her analytical gaze to him. “Thanks, Adam,” she said, and in one of the greatest surprises of the night, slid her arm over his shoulders and drew him into a quick hug. “Now sit down. We’ve gotta start wrangling dinner if we want this to end before midnight.”

Adam took his place next to Gansey at the smaller table, unfolding a napkin and laying it across his lap. The gals at the table slowly began to fill in as Gansey chatted about the recent tabloid conjectures. 

“The youngest is back in the tabloids, you know, trying to get him on drug use again.”

“Oh, really?” Adam muttered, eyes scanning idly over the periphery of the room. His eyes snagged on the Christmas decorations, simpler than the majority of the White House decor. A few string lights here and there, hanging baubles, the occasional pile of fake snow. His finger tapped at the stem of his empty wine glass. 

“Last time he disappeared for public for a while. Heaven knows if that’ll happen again.”

He felt an itch inside his deaf ear, one he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach. “Disappeared?” 

“Yeah, just...gone, no public appearances…”

It was a vague memory, or perhaps a memory of a memory.  Just a snatch of something that made the hairs in the back of his neck stand up. He tried to focus on Gansey’s words, but all at once they started sliding around, unclear and blending with the too-loud noises of dinner being served. A cacophony of clacks and laughs and voices. His head burned. 

Gansey’s voice lowered. “Are you alright, Adam?”

He scooted his chair backward quickly, muttering something like “back in a minute” to Gansey before rushing away. He felt eyes on the back of his head, but he didn’t pause or slow until the door to his bedroom shut firmly behind him and he leaned against it, completely alone. 

“Parrish?” Ronan’s voice said in his ear, low and urgent, and oh. Adam hadn’t even realized his phone was in his hand, much less that he’d managed to press Ronan’s contact or raise it to his ear. He did briefly remember the ringing, but then words were falling out of his mouth and he didn’t waste any more brainpower on how he reached that position.

“I don’t want to…to bother you,” Adam said, and only someone who had known him for a long time would know how much it took Adam to say those words despite the fact that it was a mantra in his head repeating infinitely. Blue, who had known him since the age of five, had heard him say it only a handful of times. Gansey had heard it perhaps a handful more, though that was mostly because Adam felt strangely indebted to Gansey no matter how much he tried to change it. Ronan should not have known, but Adam had a feeling he would anyway. “You hate phones and it’s Christmas Eve and-”

“Adam,” Ronan said abruptly, and the use of his first name stopped him short. “It’s two in the morning. I’m just with Matthew. Talk.”

“Hi, Adam,” came a cheerful voice, somehow sounding like an even better picture-perfect British monarchy member than Ronan or Declan. “Ronan’s told me everything about how he-”

Adam missed Ronan’s ensuing muttered comment, something that most likely resembled a threat, but soon the voice that Adam assumed to be Mathew let out a trailing laugh, the sound growing fainter as he likely moved away from the phone.

“And fuck you!” Ronan called, with his mouth moved away from the receiver, before his attention returned to Adam. “He’s gone now.”

“It’s okay,” Adam said. “I didn’t mind.”

“I know,” Ronan said simply. “But I thought it might be easier. Now go.”

“I-I just,” Adam fumbled with his words for a moment, his free hand curling into a fist on his thigh. He felt, strangely, like he was back in Aglionby PE class trying to participate in a football scrimmage. He’d always come just short of catching the ball. He’d known what he was supposed to do, where his hands were supposed to go, the sequence of events following the initial contact, even the proper footwork. But whenever the ball reached him, he felt the disconcerting motion of closing his arms around nothing, always a second too early or too late, leather slipping from his arms like butter in a hot pan. “Couldn’t be at that dinner any longer.”

“Why?” Ronan asked, and it was a good question, a good question that Adam had avoided so many times over he barely knew how to respond. He almost deflected like he always did, but Ronan asked the question differently than everyone else. There was no expectation in the question, no real drive to know the answer other than making Adam feel better, no guarantee of hearing the full truth or any version of the truth at all. Why. Why respond now?

“I was little,” he said, and fuck why did he go down this road at all? “And everything was overwhelming when I was little, and everything is overwhelming now, but it’s even more overwhelming at Christmas.” Ronan didn’t say it again, but still, it traveled across an ocean to hover over Adam uncertainly. Why?

“I don’t remember a lot about it. I don’t know if that’s because of...how it was, or just because I was so small. Younger than three, I think.”

“I barely remember anything from then,” Ronan said, the closest thing to reassurance Adam had received from him.

“Yeah,” Adam said. “Yeah. I guess. But I remember...I remember the double-wide. The great American double-wide in the great American trailer park with the great American alcohol and the great, raging American father.”

Ronan’s breath shifted ever so slightly.

Adan screwed his eyes shut. “I don’t...my mother wasn’t there. But she was the one who put the Christmas lights up. I couldn’t stop staring at them. I can still remember...they made the tan wall look almost golden. Just where the lights touched it, of course.” His voice trailed off, realizing how tangential it sounded. Softly, he added “I don’t know why I remember those lights.”

“Our minds remember random things,” Ronan said, perhaps to bring Adam back to the story.

“Yeah,” Adam agreed, blinking quickly. “Yeah. He didn’t...he didn’t like that. Me looking at them, I mean. So he...he took them down.”

The silence pressed in at his ears, threatening to close in on him just like walls. 

“I see,” Ronan said. 

“And he…” Adam swallowed, feeling his Adam’s apple scratch tightly against his neck. He pressed his free hand to his deaf ear. “I don’t remember a lot after that, either. But the bulbs were...hot. It was freezing inside, so they should have been, too, but they were lightbulbs, I guess, and so they were hot. At some point, I fell into a railing. It burst my left eardrum.” At that moment, he could feel that second in startling clarity - pinpricks and needles and blood vessels dancing on his skin, sharp, pointed, wild attacks, and the loudest noise he’s ever heard in his life, making him collapse to the ground and forget everything else. Pain, bright and white and flashing and throbbing in time with his heartbeat until he wanted to melt into the floor. Adam was the better part of two decades removed from it, and still, the thought of that moment made his stomach turn over and over.

Adam knew he didn’t imagine Ronan’s intake of breath then.

“And my mother got home, and when she saw we left and never came back.”

The walls pressed closer to him until Ronan said “Well, shit. Fuck. Jesus.”

Adam brought his hand to his mouth, pressing it until the pressure began to ease up in his gut. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, muffled against his fingers.

“No, shit, Parrish. Don’t you dare apologize.” There was a quick exhale, something that sounded like leather sliding down a headboard. “That’s what you remember of Christmas?’

“Yeah. I don’t - I don’t remember a whole lot.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

Not even Blue and Gansey knew that story. They knew the vague details, of course, how his smiles turned tight around the White House decorations and he preferred to slip into his room early on holidays. And that Robert was the reason for his being deaf in one ear. He could just never get the entire story out around them.

Telling Ronan about it was easy, though, in a way that it shouldn’t have been. He was supposed to hate Ronan, even if it became more clear with every passing day that he was far from hatred. 

“I guess I should. It’s not like I’ve done any of that in a long time.”

“You don’t have to.” A slight pause. “I can.”

Adam tried to keep the doubt out of his voice. “You can?”

For a brief moment, Adam thought Ronan might hang up on him. But then he said, “Can I tell you a secret, Parrish?”

After everything I just put on you, you could tell me a thousand secrets. You know I’ll keep every single one. I’m trusting you with a story that no one else knows, that no one else will ever know. I could do nothing less than keep your secret. 

All he said was “Of course.”

“You know my Irish father? My Irish storytelling father? My Irish-Catholic father?”

“Right.”

“He passed down more to me than just his Irish stories.”

It took Adam’s brain a moment to catch up. “I...see.”

“All three of us...well, behind closed doors, that’s what we practice. Believe. Whatever shit you want.”

“Right. So no… C of E.”

“On the record, of course. Off the record...no. None at all.”

Adam hummed in response. He couldn’t think of what else to say. 

“So...I will. If that’s okay.”

“Yeah. Of course.” A knock sounded on the door, sounding suspiciously like Gansey’s familiar tapping. He rose slowly, crossing to fall onto his bed. “I should probably let you go. Don’t want you to have too prolonged contact with any screens.”

“Disgusting,” Ronan said. A beat passed. “Are you a bit better?”

Adam shut his eyes, feeling the tension coiled in his chest ease up slightly. The line between the two of them materialized at his feet, on the backs of his lids, and he could nearly touch it with the toe of his shoes. “Yes,” he admitted. “Thank you.” And of all the words for Adam to say, they were the easiest and hardest to accomplish.

“Thank you,” Ronan said, and if Adam didn’t know any better he would think the words sounded harder to say for Ronan than Adam. But the line clicked and fell dead before Adam could say anything. He stared at the phone for a moment until the screen switched off from disuse, leaving him in the dark. Only then did he stand and cross the room to perch on the edge of his bed.

Gansey’s head poked through his doorway. He hesitated as though asking for permission, and Adam nodded. 

“I didn’t mean to interrupt anything."

“It’s fine,” Adam hedged. “We were wrapping up.”

Gansey fell heavily into Adam’s desk chair just as he always did. “Everything alright?”

“Now it is, yeah.”

He seemed to be trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. “That wasn’t Noah, was it?”

“No, of course not.”

Gansey nodded once. “So it was Ronan.”

“What?” Adam sat up a little too quickly, blood rushing to his head. “Why would you say - how do you-?”

“You don’t exactly have a wide circle of friends. Guessing is easy.”

“I hate your knowledge of my loneliness.” He swallowed roughly. “And we’re not... friends.” 

Gansey cocked one eyebrow. His thumb raised to run over his lower lip. “Really?” He challenged.

And, well. No. Not really. Adam thought of their strings of messages, the trade of information between them so easy and simple. He couldn’t pretend that they were enemies anymore, or that their general feelings weren’t positive.

“Really,” He said, launching himself up off of his bed. Smoothing out the wrinkles in his pants, he glanced back over to his friend. Gansey was studying him with a distantly memorable expression, as though trying to discern a difficult Latin translation but determined not to ask for help. 

“Well,” Gansey said, blinking once, twice. He stood abruptly, noting Adam moving towards the door. “Let’s off, then.” “You’re not British, Gansey, don’t say that.”

“Mm, you’d know all about their phrases, wouldn’t you?”

“Do not.”

Before Adam reached the door, Gasney stopped him, saying his name so lowly Adam almost missed it. He turned and waited for Gansey to speak.

“Are you sure you can go back?” Adam mustered a smile. No, he thought, but Ronan’s voice echoed in his head. Don’t apologize. Maybe he could make it through after all, have a slightly better memory of Christmas. “Yeah, I am.” And he turned the doorknob to let them spill out into the hallway.

  ***

iMessage chat to HRH shitty bird boy

Resumed 29 December, 2019, 5:17 pm

  Look. I’m just saying.

Ignoring the fact that bearer bonds haven’t been legally in use since 1982

That henchman says that they’re valued at $100,000 USD

(£75,700 for your British ass)

and then Alan Rickman says they earn 20%

When the interest rate on corporate bonds was 9% when Die Hard came out??

And also there’s never been a US bond worth more than $10,000??

  stop letting sargent force you to watch die hard

for the love of god stop

it’s a MOVIE

  It’s not Blue, actually.

It’s your best friend.

  henry??? how??

  Netflix party

He got my number (thanks for that)

And wouldn’t stop texting insisting we watch it

Or he (as threatened) will “release the bees??”

I’m not sure what he meant but here I am. 

Accidentally desecrating Alan Rickman’s legacy.

Blue’s here too but it’s not her fault, at least.

  that asshole

how dare i not be included in everything he does

  “Why the hell is Ronan on the guest list?” Adam demanded, casting his eyes over their virtual list for what felt like the hundredth time. Planning for their New Year’s Eve fundraising event/PR dream/blowout party had been well underway since before Christmas, but crucial developments always occurred in the weeklong stretch between Christmas and New Year’s. Like the inclusion of the Prince of England on their exclusive invitation list of all the most famous and powerful twenty-somethings from around the planet.

Blue, seated sideways in an armchair and eating a container of strawberry yogurt at a glacial pace, said “I thought you added him?” 

Adam wouldn’t put it past her to add him and feign innocence - she had some hidden agenda with him and Ronan, anyway, one he wasn’t quite sure of - but her ignorance seemed genuine. At once, they both turned to Gansey. He kept his face blank.

“Good question, Adam,” he said, refusing to back down under their stares. “But the real question is why didn’t you invite him?”

Adam, too, did his best to look passive. “Why would I?”

“He’s your only friend that’s not currently in this room?”

“Plus he’s great for the press,” Blue chimed in.

Adam just looked between them, and Gansey sighed.

“Look, Adam, it’s - it’s great that you actually get along with him. Like him.”

“Do not,” Adam retorted automatically. His phone buzzed, and he felt his cheeks darken a little with the knowledge that it was probably Ronan. Gansey and Blue were probably staring at each other and having one of their silent conversations, but he didn’t trust himself to look at them without giving anything away. Not that there was anything to give away. “You invited Cheng too, right? Ronan won’t come if he doesn’t.” “Thought you didn’t care?” Blue asked, and he shrugged.

“They’ve both RSVP’d yes, Adam, so I’m sure your best friend will be there.”

“Lovely,” Adam muttered, ushering them along the rest of their planning.

Just before eight PM on the thirty-first of December, Adam curled into his desk chair with a textbook perched on his bent knees. Blue, already dressed and made up while laying spread-eagle on his bed, fiddled with the hem of her shirt. She’d managed to convince PR that a self-designed outfit would make a splash, and Adam had to agree with her - she really did have a knack for design and upcycling. 

Technically, they should have been heading down to play host to all types of young, influential people, buttering them up for cash and future favors. But much as the media loved their wild parties, none of the White House Trio were particularly fond of them. They preferred a quieter scene, but quiet didn’t raise money and make headlines. 

That didn’t mean they couldn’t hole up and enjoy the peace and quiet before then.

Gansey, who by far had the greatest social battery, was therefore left to field early attendants and the press on the lawn. He’d come and drag them out of Adam’s room soon enough, of course, but before that time came there was relative peace.

“I guess we’ll get one more of these,” Blue said. “At least.”

Adam lifted his eyes from the book and looked at her. “Yes,” he said softly. “I think I’ll miss them?”

She laughed, a deep laugh that eased a bit of the pre-party anxiety in his chest. “I won’t. I hate this party.”

“But don’t you like flirting with all the daughters of Oscar-winning actresses?”

Blue hummed. “That is fun. They’re never ready for it.”

“They never are.”

“I’ll be doing less of that this year, though.”

“And hopefully forever?” Adam teased. The sudden air of wistfulness descending around Blue gave him a hint of pause. She took a moment to respond.

”Maybe,” she muttered. “Shut up.”

Adam let it go for then, sensing genuine distress in Blue’s stiffened shoulders.

“They wouldn’t be so bad if everyone didn’t get so blacked out.”

“Well, we have liability waivers now. And I think you mean it would be worse.”

Adam sighed. “I guess no one would show up without the promise of alcohol.”

“Exactly.”

Contrary to how Blue and Gansey made him live, Adam really didn’t enjoy drinking that much. When he did, he preferred to do so quietly - sitting in the music room with the rest of the trio, celebrating a good grade with his family, breaking out something to make a night-in a little more exciting. Events like the Royal Wedding were a one-off, where he needed distraction and alcohol presented itself. 

He didn’t want to think about the need for distraction just then, with Ronan and Henry Cheng most likely en route to the White House.

A few quick, precise knocks came at the door. Gansey. He popped his head in.

“You two need to show up soon or it’s going to look suspicious,” he greeted. Blue made a tiny noise of discontent and made to turn her face into Adam’s pillow, but must have remembered her makeup and decided otherwise.

Adam heaved a sigh and stood, smoothing one hand over his hair. He’d straightened and smoothed it down for the event, knowing the cameras preferred him in all of his polished glory. He glanced between Blue and Gansey, but their gazes didn’t flicker from each other. Something about the hunger in their eyes made Adam ache, a tight knot settled in his chest. Gansey moved into the room and Adam out of it. He cast a glance through the doorway over his shoulder, trying to gauge if he should wait for them. By the low, urgent whispers carrying between them and Gansey’s hands rested on Blue’s elbows as they stood nearly flush, his presence was no longer necessary. 

Adam trailed down the hallowed halls until he reached the mingling mass of people in the East Room. He turned on his smile, trying his best to become invisible. It didn’t work. At every turn, another person grabbed his shoulder to catch up, another drink pressed into his hand, another question hurled his way. At some point, he started to feel a bit numb in the fingers, tiredness and giddiness from the schmoozing seeping into his bones.

Blue appeared at his side. Her smile had dampened somewhat, but he could tell she was enjoying herself from the set of her brows. Something, however, was off at just that moment. She inclined her head behind her, and that was all the explanation Adam needed. 

Ronan often had that upsetting effect on people. 

Adam took a moment to observe the scene. Ronan and Henry Cheng stood several feet away, engaged in conversation with Gansey, who walked backwards tidily through the crowd as though herding them towards Adam. Ronan’s face remained passive, clad in his black-leather best. Adam’s skin felt hot and itchy under his shirt, and he looked instead to Cheng. In his Madonna t-shirt, Cheng drew attention to himself in waves. Between his eccentric origin story and absently friendly expression, not to mention the excited manner in which he partook in whatever Gansey was saying, Cheng would surely be the hot commodity of the party. 

“Making friends?” Adam asked Blue, pulling a face at the same time she did. 

“He’s your best friend,” she replied just as Gansey reached them. Blue reached out a hand to stop him from colliding with them, stretching her arm so that it was almost straight, and he caught her hand easily with a squeeze.

From what Adam could tell, their conversation centered around some vague school memory from Eton, but it dissolved as soon as Blue and Adam broke their circle. The brief silence was broken quickly by Henry Cheng, who announced, “Well, if it isn’t the man with the worst opinions about Die Hard.” 

Against his will, Adam felt the corners of his lips twitch. “And the man who cried over Alan Rickman dying in Die Hard.”

Henry shrugged. “I wear my emotions proudly.”

“We fucking know,” Ronan said, breaking his silence. Adam hated how nicely the tight leather jacket accented his pale skin and high cheekbones, looking almost regal in his rebellion. “You monologued about the unbridled joy in your heart over the Madonna song playing when we first arrived.”

Henry grinned. “I will not apologize for being stable in my masculinity, Ronan, unlike all you repressed British types.”

“I need a drink,” Ronan declared loudly, plucking one from the closest tray and downing it in one graceful motion as one might serve a tennis ball. Henry did not appear phased by the sudden dramatics. 

“Now, let’s see if I get everyone.” He turned his head to Gansey, moving around the circle. “We’ve got King Ganseyman, of course. Adam Parrish, the least valid person I can think of for purely petty reasons. And of course our dear Periwinkle.”

Adam cocked a brow and subtly shifted his eyes to look at Blue. She looked fit to claw out someone’s eye even though her own eye scars were obscured in makeup; her hand had tightened significantly around Gansey’s, and he gave no indication of pain from the movement beyond the barest twitch of his mouth. 

“Clever,” she said at last, sparing him a tight, sarcastic smile. “I’ve also read the labels on nail polish to pick up a few new words. It’s nice to know you can read.”

“Yes, well, you have to start your journey to literacy somewhere,” Henry said grandly. “I appreciate your support, of course.”

Adam caught a flicker of amusement pass of Blue’s face. He had a sinking suspicion that maybe Blue wasn’t as averse to Cheng as she put on a show of. 

“Are you literate enough to read off a drink order?” she said. 

Henry grinned, white teeth lining in rows in his mouth. “I suppose I can string a few words together.”

Without letting go of Gansey, Blue surged forward, looping her other arm in Henry’s. The three of them trailed off towards the drinks, Blue and Henry moving determinedly and Gansey, bemused and grinning at their sudden acquaintanceship, lagging a step or so behind. Adam gazed after them for a moment, but Ronan took a step closer to be heard over the music and he turned his head to look at him. 

“She’s gonna have them wrapped up all night.”

Adam raised a brow. “You can read her that well?”

Ronan gave his head the tiniest, nearly imperceptible shake. “No. I know Cheng and Gansey.”

The heat of the room was starting to cling to Adam’s skin; he rolled one shoulder uncomfortably. “Of course. Eton gang’s reunited.”

“For better or worse,” Ronan agreed lowly. 

Adam meant to ask what he meant by that, but he never received the chance. A hand tapped Ronan firmly on the shoulder, and Adam watched as he turned automatically. His face broke into an uncharacteristic grin at the sight of the person behind him. Adam felt his forehead crease as the figure wrapped their arms around Ronan’s shoulders and he hugged them back almost as enthusiastically. For a moment, the only sight was the overlapping of pale and dark skin, the stranger’s feather-pink jacket contrasting with the black leather Ronan wore. 

Then the two separated, and between the black bralette, exuberant eyeshadow, and tight-coiled hair shining under the strobe lighting, Adam recognized Hennessy - up-and-coming London artist, an occasional nuisance. and precisely the type of person that thrived at these parties. 

“You bastard,” she said to Ronan. “I didn’t know you were gonna be here.”

“Henry was live-tweeting the whole flight.” 

She scoffed lightly, rubbing at an invisible spot of dirt on Ronan’s cheek. “I've had him muted since uni.”

“Don’t let him hear that you haven’t been keeping up on his page.”

“Aww, it’s sweet you worry for me, little fox, but I can take that pissant any day of the week.”

Ronan pulled back slightly. “Of course you could, but Henry goes more for psychological violence.”

“Yes, well, I can get him in that too.” Neither acknowledged Adam standing nearby. Hennessy shook her head, curls bouncing with the movement and picking up all kinds of strobe lighting. “Where is he, that shadow of yours?”

“Cheng could never be anyone’s shadow. He’s too out there.”

“And you’re the one he chooses not to abandon, hm? How sweet.” When she smiled, she looked very much like a painting, striking and set and venomous enough to burn at the slightest brush. Ronan appeared impervious.

“He’s making friends.”

“Hm. How boring.”

Ronan’s voice lowered, but Adam thought he could hear him say “Jordan’s not here?” 

Hennessy’s lips, the same vibrant shade as her lids, pulled a little tighter. “Nah,” she replied, casual enough. “Working on some deadlines, poor thing.” Her eyes flitted away from Ronan’s face for the first time, landing squarely on Adam instead. Her grin widened. “Well, there’s our treasured host. Late to your own party?”

“I have learned a few things from you over the years, Hennessy,” Adam replied, slipping a hand into his pocket in an attempt to appear more casual than he felt. 

“Fuck, I guess you have,” she admitted. Compared to Ronan’s accent, her voice sounded slipperier and rounder, sliding through the air until it reached his ears. She lifted a hand to land one last pat to Ronan’s cheek before gliding on to land a similar one to Adam. She paused briefly in front of him, lowering her hand. 

“You look happy,” she noted. Waggling her fingers in a wave, she turned back so both Adam and Ronan could see her. “I need a drink to get through all these boring political types. Ta, darlings,” she said, before disappearing back into the crowd as quickly as she had arrived. 

Adam exchanged a look with Ronan. “So you know Hennessy?”

“I’d hope so, yeah,” Ronan said, but he didn’t elaborate. “You?”

“We've met a few times.” 

“Pity,” Ronan said, standing like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands. 

Adam rolled a few words around on his tongue - questions, mostly, infused with the sudden jealousy he felt simmering low in his gut - but instead all he said, so out of character, was “Do you want a drink?”

His shoulders seemed to soften slightly. “Can’t let Sargent have all the good ideas, I guess.”

“I’ll tell her you thought it was a good idea.”

“Fuck off.”

Ronan appeared a little more at ease with a drink in hand, and eventually, Adam lost him to the crowd. He stood stranded for the briefest of moments before Henry Cheng appeared, for the second time that night, at his side.

“Adam Parrish,” he said, handing off a drink that looked clear and deadly. It took his fingers a moment to remember to grab it rather than letting it splash to the ground. 

“Cheng,” Adam said, letting the déja vû wash over himself. “Thought we already had our introductions.”

“Of course,” Henry replied, tone too even and pleasant for the chaos around them. “Just wanted a chat with the movie critic, is all.”

Adam cast a skeptical eye around the room. “You’re sure this is the best place?”

“No time like the present, my friend.” Henry threw an arm around his shoulders, guiding Adam towards the dance floor and obscuring his own voice further. “How about you down that there drink and enjoy yourself? You look positively coiled and ready to strike.”

“I’d really rather not. What is it you wanted to talk about?”

“Well, if you’re so connected to sobriety, so be it,” Henry said, stealing the drink back. He nodded over Adam’s shoulder as he lowered his head back down from the drink, and when Adam glanced he saw a flash of Ronan’s leather among the crowd. “Our Ronan is looking fit, no? I’m proud of him for getting out of the house.”

“Some house,” Adam muttered, not expecting Henry to hear. All the same, his companion let out a startled laugh.

“Could say the same to you. But yes,” he said, leaning closer, “between you and me, the palace is always quite disarming.” Straightening and throwing a wave over his shoulder, Henry added, “Perhaps you have more reason to get used to it than I do, however.”

“More reason?”

Henry smiled, then, and somehow it appeared as menacing as Hennessy’s had earlier. Maybe he’d learned from her. “Friends of the royals make quite frequent trips, I’m afraid.”

“What, you’re not approved enough?”

“‘Fraid not. Heir to a fortune is not the same as First Son, Parrish, and I believe you’ve a wonderful slip of parchment ensuring just how approved you are.”

“I can’t find it in myself to be surprised you know.”

“Well, imagine being me if I didn’t!” Henry exclaimed, drawing the attention of a few popular influencers as he splashed a drink in their direction with his aggressive gesturing. “I was only on the receiving end of the HRH’s rants for three bloody years before you wrestled each other in frosting at the greatest wedding of the decade-”

“We didn’t wrestle-”

“And then you turn up a week later, acting all buddy-buddy for every camera you find - well, it would look suspicious had I not known!”

“Mhm,” Adam drawled, cutting his eyes back to Henry. “I bet Ronan can’t keep a secret from you.”

Henry grinned again, baring his teeth. “You’ve read him so well, McClane.” He sighed theatrically barely a moment later. “And debunked my argument succinctly.”

“That’s the price to pay for knowing all of Ronan’s thoughts, I suppose, Gruber.”

“Among many others. I’d expect his Niamh to know that well enough, though.”

Adam felt himself freeze as Henry’s hand came in contact with his shoulder, a friendly pat. His Niamh. As if that meant anything, as if those words fit together in any logical pattern. His Niamh, and his mother’s voice - almost golden. 

“Or you will soon enough, mate,” Henry said. “Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

And Henry Cheng disappeared into the crowd, popping up laughing with Blue a few feet away.

Adam surrendered gaining any grip on this night right then.

At some point, Hennessy found him, pressing a drink into his palm - what was with all his friends and acquaintances plying him with alcohol? - and said, “Well, I’d think you were avoiding me as you have at the last two of these parties.”

“Never avoiding,” Adam defended, mustering a smile as he lifted the drink to his lips without thinking. “Just generally indisposed at events.”

“You’re making some good choices, then.”

“What’s done must be done.”

She raised a single eyebrow. “Rather defeatist of you, Golden Boy. Don’t remember that from your time on the campaign trail.”

Adam grinned. “I’m a fully realized creation. I have the capacity to change.” “There he is, bringing out the philosophy at parties.” She nodded to something that might have been Ronan if Adam focused his eyes and squinted enough. “Don’t remember him, either.”

“Have I mentioned you look fantastic?”

“I know, darling, and I note your deflection.”

“My point stands.”

“And it’s valued.” She slid an arm over his shoulders, uncomfortably warm, to lean closer to his ear. “But we’re gonna have a conversation when you’re not overwhelmed at a party you don’t want to throw. I’m serious about the ignoring.”

“I know you are.”

“Mhm. And if I were you, I’d go check on your boy. But I’m not you, so I’m going to enjoy myself.”

As quickly as she’d appeared, she slid off into the crowd, joining the numbers of people Adam had completely lost to the mob. Everyone seemed able to navigate it but him.

As the clock neared midnight and another drink disappeared from Adam’s hand, leaving his blood buzzing pleasantly through his veins, he slipped out one of the ornate double doors. He breathed in fresh air like a man coming across water in the desert, the haze around his mind clearing with every breath. He ambled to a free bench, his legs still stiff and straight from overuse. The stone bit into his long fingers as he curled his hand around the bench seat, but he welcomed the feeling because it was so far from the thriving mass of bodies indoors.

At some point, he opened his eyes again. His eyes had briefly registered another figure outdoors by the statue when he first exited. Only once his eyes were open and scanning did he recognize the figure, a silhouette of black leather cut harshly from the ethereal white exterior of the Residence.

“Everything okay?” He called to Ronan.

“Yeah,” Ronan replied without turning to face him. “Just...getting some air.”

It was easier to associate this Ronan with the one he heard on the phone - so far from that royal persona projected everywhere, a voice in a face with no expectations on it. Ronan could have been anyone, his accent lax and his posture eerily straight in a contrast that made Adam feel a bit winded. 

“It’s loud in there,” he admitted.

Ronan didn’t respond, but Adam’s statement wasn’t one that required response. 

“I thought this would be more your scene,” Adam finally said, challenge creeping into his voice. He wasn’t sure if it was a genuine challenge or if he was just falling back on old habits instead of saying something he might regret.

“And I didn’t think it would be yours.”

“Fair enough, since it’s not.”

Ronan threw him a glance over one shoulder at that. “Makes perfect sense to throw this function, then.”

“Well, the media doesn’t exactly eat up overpriced textbooks and econ calculations, so I do what I can.”

“Mm,” Ronan hummed in something that sounded like agreement. “They do love the sex, drugs, and rock and roll, even in places it’s not happening.”

Adam stood, placing his hands on his knees like he had bad joints. “Unless if you actually went to 239 parties last year, I’d guess you know all about that exaggeration.”

“Do you stalk my tabloids, Parrish? The fuck?”

“No, Gansey does. With everybody. He just reads all his findings to me.”

“Terrifying,” Ronan muttered. “If I die of mysterious circumstances, you’ll both be on the shortlist of suspects.” “What?” Adam challenged. “You’ll keep it in the breast pocket of your blazer?”

“Sure,” Ronan replied. “I have to keep it folded up close to my heart, of course. Keep your lovers close but enemies closer.”

Ronan tilted his head in the direction of the statue, silently beckoning Adam to stand by him. It felt a bit like a confession, like his permission implied passing some silent test.

Briefly, in his buzzing brain, he wondered what side of that spectrum he fell on. 

“Did you get sick of watching Blue and Gansey?”

Adam shrugged, pulling to a stop just next to Ronan. He kicked absently at the ground with his toe. “A bit.”

“That has to have been a weird development to get used to.”

“A bit,” Adam repeated.

“Still, it hasn’t been too long.”

“I think they’ve been a thing for longer,” Adam admitted.

Ronan turned his head, and suddenly Adam felt the icy cool of his eyes trained on Adam’s face. “Why?”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems obvious, looking back. They’ve clearly been together for a while. August, at least.” He crossed his arms over his chest, the December-January chill suddenly settling over him. “I think they were...protecting me.”

Ronan snorted, the gesture not a bit princely. “Protecting you?”

Adam fiddled with the cuffs of his shirt.

“I’m damaged goods, Highness,” he said at length. “I’m fragile.”

Even though Adam didn’t turn to him, he felt Ronan’s eyes probe deeper as though imploring Adam to look back to him. “That’s a fucking lie,” he said, his voice low and dangerous.

Adam snorted, but Ronan was not deterred.

“You’re not fragile,” he repeated. “If you’re fragile, the world is being held up by - by dental floss and craft glue. No, a weak person couldn’t do what you do. Bullshit for the cameras at least once a week, keep up your grades, work on policy with Czerny, keep up your ratings so that they never dip - that’s too much for someone who is fragile.”

“Oh, then you must be superhuman, with all the bullshitting you do.”

“Of course I am, Parrish,” Ronan said, turning his eyes up and away from Adam.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, elbows rested on the cold metal fence guarding the statue. The night sky hung above them, pale in all of the light pollution of the city, but if Adam strained he could see the faint points carving themselves into the sky and drawing themselves into pictures and promises. Ronan’s heat radiated next to him, leather almost snagging on cotton. The fact that this was their first time seeing each other in person since the hospital photo-op did not escape Adam’s notice, but neither did the easy way in which they managed to coexist despite the time and distance removing them from that point.

When the moment grew too heavy, he said, “Did you look at my Wikipedia page?”

“No.”

Adam arched an eyebrow.

“...Matthew may have done some light Googling.”

Adam laughed. It wasn’t his carefree camera laugh, the ones that kept up his ratings, but it was a laugh nonetheless, one that dispersed through the air as though worried it could be stolen away at any moment. Ronan’s face shuttered abruptly. His expression became inscrutable, and Adam didn’t realize he’d looked happy until he no longer did.

All at once, Adam remembered the line separating them, and he felt certain they were touching it with their feet almost overlapping, face to face and chest to chest.

“You didn’t have to come,” Adam said softly, his normal voice suddenly feeling far too loud for the little bubble forming around them, devoid of anyone else. “Not if you didn’t want to.”

Ronan didn’t speak for a moment, by choice or to gather his words, Adam didn’t know. “I did.”

Adam just shook his head, choosing to stand in comfortable silence. A star winked in the sky.

“Non est ad astra mollis e terris via,” Ronan whispered, his lips barely movin g. There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.

“Itaque imus ad astra, per aspera,” Adam replied, barely thinking about it. So we go through hardships to the stars.

Ronan visibly started at his use of Latin. Adam smirked as if you say you’re not the only one with a posh education.

“Shooting for the stars, Highness?”

Rona turned his eyes back to the sole bright star. “I might as well be.”

“I’d doubt whatever it is that’s bothering you is as hopeless as that.”

Adam couldn’t take his eyes off of Ronan, noting the way his lips thinned. “Oh, but it is. In my position. In my life.”

“Non ergo qui in vobis sunt terminum tibi.”

Ronan turned his head toward Adam again, and Adam felt a spark of fear over what he might do if he turned his head to meet Ronan’s eyes, blue as a never-ending lake stretching on and on until he drowned against the sand.

He turned his head anyway. The stars suspended above them, the leaves ceasing to rustle and shuffle, the party inside fading away until everyone disappeared into nothingness. Ronan lifted one hand from the railing and slid it along Adam’s cheek, his skin heating and jolting at the touch like Ronan himself was made of electricity and stardust, like the galaxies that Adam had once been were meeting their long lost particles in Ronan’s hand. In Ronan’s eyes, he could have sworn he heard words turning over and over.

Adam heard him whisper, then, the words that must have been bouncing in his head. “Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death,” he muttered, the tail-end of something Adam couldn’t quite place. He parted his lips to speak just before Ronan kissed him.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, he didn’t worry that he was kissing someone - kissing Ronan . For once in his life, he forgot about everything else. He didn’t worry about anyone inside or what anyone might think. That would come later.

Ronan’s lips pressed to his, and he tried to string a coherent thought together but was instead met with abstract, overjoyed ideas floating aimlessly in his brain instead. 

The press of Ronan against him was hard, sharp lines and corners poking into his chest and his hips and his legs, but his lips were soft and Adam tasted whiskey and powdered sugar on Ronan’s tongue and Ronan’s teeth flashed against his lip and he thought he might die, that the feeling may kill him if he did that again.

He didn’t have a chance to test that hypothesis, because Ronan pulled back and stepped away so quickly Adam almost fell forward onto his face. And then he hurried away, leaving Adam standing like an idiot outside of the White House ballroom at a party he was supposed to be hosting after just kissing a male member of the monarchy.

His only thought was, absently, if they’d kissed at midnight.

#trc #the raven cycle #pynch #pynch au #rwrb #rwrb au #trc rwrb au #adam parrish #ronan lynch #hennessy #jordan hennesy #blue sargent #richard gansey #richard gansey iii #maura sargent #henry cheng #wips #my wips #my writing #cw child abuse #child abuse tw

[100storiesin2020]

a Chainsaw in Fox Tower: Chapter 5

Ronan watched Adam sleep from the corner of his eye as he drove. Adam had spent much of his time catching up on lost sleep at the Barns this summer, and had developed a habit of falling asleep at any chance he got. Ronan figured that years of sleepless nights would take years to catch up on. He didn’t mind it, really. Adam was so beautiful asleep, with those high cheekbones and slender fingers, almost delicate and ethereal. How Ronan had won a love from such a man, he still wasn’t sure, and he was afraid, sometimes, that it would burn him alive.

Ronan nudged him as they passed the road sign for Palmetto. Adam opened his eyes, and looked at Ronan, and it was new all over again.

This love would burn him, all right, but he didn’t mind the flames.

“We’re almost there,” Adam observed, looking out the window. Campus was just off the freeway, and the next exit took them straight to it. Fox Tower was only a few turns away. They arrived, pulling into a parking spot next to the Pig as Gansey unloaded boxes. He looked up, smiling as they got out. 

“Parrish! Lynch! You’re just in time!” Gansey said. “Blue is on her way down to help us, since she is already moved in.”

“Waiting for her to come do the heavy lifting for you?” Ronan jabbed. Adam laughed as Gansey pouted.

“I can do my own heavy lifting, thank you! I was hoping she would help me decorate the dorm.”

“What do you mean, help /you/ decorate the dorm?” Ronan asked. 

“What do you mean?” Gansey looked very confused.

Adam gave him a stern look and answered the question. “Monmouth was yours to decorate. Fox Tower is ours. That means we get as much say in decorating as you do.” Gansey opened his mouth and Adam cut him off. “We do this together, as equals.”

Gansey nodded slowly. Considering the conversation over, Ronan moved to the backseat and unbuckled Chainsaw from her harness. She had been surprisingly quiet on the drive over, but that was never a guarantee for her, and so Ronan kept her tied to the seatbelt to prevent any road incidents sparked by a flying bird in the vehicle.

Chainsaw immediately took the air, calling /Kerah, kerah/ as she began to explore her new surroundings. After a few quick laps around the tower, she settled on Ronan’s shoulder just as the front door of the Tower opened, revealing Blue.

Blue walked over to them. /Walking/ wasn’t something that Ronan would often describe Blue as doing. Generally she was /pacing/, or /striding/, or /stalking/. Walking was a bit too tame for her. Something had upset her, but drawing attention to it was the worst way to get information out of her. Also, it would ruin Ronan’s terrifying image.

“Hey, maggot, come to make yourself useful?” She laughed as he handed her the largest box from Gansey’s trunk. She was so small she couldn’t see over the top of it, but she hefted it like it was nothing.

“Is that the best you’ve got, asshole?” There. Blue was back to herself, at least for a little bit. Ronan gave her a ferocious grin as he put another box on top of the one she was already carrying.

Adam stacked two of the smaller boxes and picked them up. They were full of books and probably the heaviest things there. “Don’t hurt yourself, Parrish,” Ronan drawled. 

Adam just gave him that /look/ and turned to Blue. “You’ve been here a bit, can you lead the way?”

As they started into Fox Tower, Adam called back. “Grab the small box first, Lynch!”

Ronan growled and put the suitcase back, grabbing the small box instead. 

“Why does it matter?” asked Gansey. “Isn’t it all going upstairs anyway?”

Ronan didn’t bother replying. He hauled the box of dreamstuff into the Tower and up the stairs behind Blue and Adam, Gansey in tow with suitcases and Chainsaw still on his shoulder. Blue was telling Adam about how she had decorated her part of the room, and some of her observations of the new teammates. He tuned it out, concentrating instead on the muscles in Adam’s back, his soft hair and quiet laughter. As they arrived at the right room, Blue pointed out her room just two doors down. They opened the door (Gansey had handed Blue they key) and walked into a very blank living room. As Gansey closed the door behind them, Ronan shoved his small box into Adam’s recently-vacated arms. “Here’s your precious plants, Parrish. I need a nap.” Adam looked at him, head slightly tilted to one side. A silent question. He sneered back in a silent answer and continued on his way. Now was the true test of the Palmetto leyline, and he needed to do it alone.

Ronan didn’t bother to shut the door to the bedroom. Chainsaw hopped from his shoulder to the bedpost, and then started to explore the room. There was a set of bunk beds and one lone bed on the other side of the room. He took the lone bed, knowing it was the safest option should he dream something unintentional. He laid down and relaxed as he heard Adam and Gansey arguing about where stuff should be placed in the living room.

“Do we really need so many plants, Adam? They take up so much space.”

“They’re more useful than your Glendower papers are now,” Adam replied. Fuck, Ronan liked this confident version of Adam. “Also, if you brought your little Henrietta please do NOT put it near the window, I need that spot.”

“Oh no, Gansey,” Blue laughed. “Where are you going to put little Henrietta?”

“I left it at Monmouth, Jane.”

“Oh thank god,” Adam and Blue said in chorus. Ronan drifted to sleep to faint chirps of /kerah/ as they started to squabble over how the cupboards would be arranged.

He didn’t dream of a forest today. He was standing on a short clif, looking down at a fast-moving river. The other bank of the river was a flat plain, giving a good view of the many switchbacks and curves in the more distant parts of the river. The cliff went all along this edge, but it was not sheer, and stout trees grew out of the side of it. Ronan walked along the cliff until he came to a dip, an almost-trail, leading down to the river, and descended.

The water changed as he approached, not uncommon for a dream. It went from a deep greenish blue to completely transparent, as if there was no water at all. Ronan picked up a rock and launched it into the river. It splashed, and ripples of silver spread back to the edge on which he stood. 

This was not Cabeswater, but it had the same feeling of home, and Ronan knew what he needed to do.

He took a step.

The water was warm and soothing, cleansing his feet. He didn’t have shoes anymore, which was as it should be. He took more steps, the water remaining clear as ever, now without even ripples to distort the riverbed below him. He whispered to the water, /show me what I need. Something for Blue. Something to make this home for her./ He took another step, and then he saw it below him in the river. It was perfect. He dove in a pried it from underneath a rock, then sat down on the riverbed to look at it. Breathing was not an issue here.

He woke, frozen to his bed as always. He could feel the smooth wood of a picture frame beneath his fingers. Fuck, he was cold. He’d forgotten to get out of the water before waking himself up, and he was soaked to the bone. Even his socks were wet, though his shoes were dry. Go figure.

He slammed his feet onto the floor and stomped back to the living room. He saw everyone freeze and turn towards him as he entered. Adam had his plants spread in the various corners, and Blue had set up a trellis so the viney one could stretch itself across the wall. Gansey was putting pots in the cupboard, and Ronan noted that they were a mix of Adam’s shitty stuff from thrift stores and new stuff which Gansey had obviously procured. He would have to go through the kitchen later and see what was missing so he could dream it up.

“Catch, maggot.” He tossed the picture at her head and stomped off to the bathroom to take a warm shower. Fuck, he was going to have to be careful to dry off if he ended up dreaming the river again.

*****

Blue caught the flying object out of reflex as Ronan stomped off. The bathroom door slammed shut behind him. Turning to the others, she asked, “Do you think the leyline is strong enough for him?”

Adam smiled softly, still looking at the space Ronan had just occupied. “I think if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t have had that for you.” He eyed the object in her hand.

“I’m rather concerned about him being soaking wet,” Gansey interjected.

Adam shrugged. “He was probably underwater when he woke himself up. It’s happened before, though rarely. It always pisses him off.”

Blue was delighted. “And you would know this, how, exactly?”

Adam glared at her. “What did he give you?” he asked, ignoring the question.

Oh, right. Blue looked at the thing she had caught. It was a picture in a frame that felt wooden under her fingers but seemed to actually be made of silver. It seemed to be a traditional photo, at first, but then it was an oil painting, and then watercolor, before shifting to a pencil sketch and back to a photo. It featured her and all her Raven boys. She was in the center, with Noah on one side, arm over her shoulder, and Gansey on the other side holding her hand. Beyond Gansey was Henry striking a wild dance pose. Adam and Ronan were on the other side of Noah, standing shoulder to shoulder and leaning on each other a bit. Behind them was the Pig, and beyond it was Cabeswater. It was perfect.

Tears welled up in her eyes as she looked at Noah. She missed him so much.

At Gansey’s questioning look, she handed it over. Adam peered at it over his shoulder, and they were both obviously touched.

Gansey stared at it a little too long, transfixed. The smell of warm earth and leaves filled the room, and Blue saw shadows of tree branches in the corners of her vision. Gansey was still as a statue, looking very /otherly/ at that moment.

“Earth to Gansey,” Adam said, plucking the picture from his fingers, and the tree branches seemed to /snap/ away as Gansey came back to himself.

“Oh, my apologies,” he said. “When are we, Jane?”

“It’s our first day in Palmetto, it’s 4 o’clock, and we should probably start making our way to the court for our first official team meeting.”

Gansey nodded. "Then we will go as soon as Ronan joins us."

#a chainsaw in fox tower #all for the game #the raven cycle #aftg #TRC #pynch #chapter 5 #blue and ronan are bros

[emmerrr]

Hello! If your prompts were open what about post trk the gang uses Ganseys helicopter and Ronan is holding Adams hand and comforting him since there’s a line in trb where Adam mentions he hates flying. Have a great day!!

this isn’t exactly what you asked for as they’re not in a helicopter and the whole gang isn’t there, but there is flying and hand holding!

-

“What I don’t understand,” Ronan says for what feels like the millionth time, “is why Gansey and Sargent couldn’t get married somewhere I could drive to.”

“Probably because by doing it abroad, they minimise how many people can come,” Adam replies dryly, although Ronan’s complaining is, admittedly, a helpful distraction.

“Yeah but most of the people Gansey knows are loaded, it’s not like they can’t afford the airfare.”

Adam shrugs. “It’s romantic then.”

“Romantic,” Ronan scoffs. “It’s gonna be humid and horrible is what it’s going to be.”

Adam suppresses a grin and peers out of the little window, watching baggage get tossed haphazardly aboard a neighbouring plane. It’s not long now until they take off, the last few stragglers being hurried down the aisles by flight attendants, trying to stuff their oversized hand-luggage into overhead bins.

He’s looking forward to getting away. He’s looking forward to the wedding, to celebrating with their friends, to exploring with Ronan. It’s the getting there that he’d rather skip. Ideally, he’ll sleep through most of the journey, but right now he’s too anxious about the take-off. And the take-off is the worst part.

The captain speaks through the intercom, mostly unintelligible, but the gist is that their departure is imminent. The plane starts to move away from the gate, and Adam becomes uncomfortably aware of his own heartbeat.

“Talk to me,” he tells Ronan.

“About what?”

“Anything,” Adam says. He checks and double checks his seatbelt. “Tell me a story.”

“Way to put me on the spot, Parrish.” Ronan tilts his head to the side, thinking. “Okay, once upon a time--”

“Great start. Real original.”

“Don’t interrupt, you’re ruining the flow,” Ronan chides, and Adam laughs shakily. “Once upon a time there was a boy who was looking for a king. And on his journey he found a ghost, and a knight, and a magician, and a mirror.”

“I think I’ve heard this story before,” Adam says mildly.

“Can’t have, I’m making it up as I go along.”

The plane starts to speed up and Adam inhales sharply, unable to hide it. He shuts his eyes. “Keep going.”

“On their journey,” Ronan continues, his voice a comforting familiarity, “they faced many foes, like murderous Latin teachers, dream dragons, hitmen, and demons. And when they finally found the king, they realised the real treasure was the friends they made along the way.”

Adam opens his eyes at that. “You’re the worst.”

The plane lifts off, and Ronan takes Adam’s hand, his thumb gently stroking Adam’s knuckles. “Do you wanna know the best part of the story?”

Adam breathes in and out slowly, trying to ignore the sensation of the plane flying higher, trying to drown out the roaring sound and focus on Ronan and Ronan alone. “What’s the best part?”

Ronan brings Adam’s hand to his mouth and kisses it. “The best part is that the knight and the magician fell in love.”

Adam smiles. “That was the best part, wasn’t it?”

They’re still climbing, but it probably won’t be long until the plane levels off. Adam chances a look out the window; the ground seems impossibly far away and he squeezes Ronan’s hand without meaning to.

“It’s okay,” Ronan says, and squeezes back. “I’ve got you.”

Adam knows. He always knows.

He hugs Ronan’s arm to him and leans his head on Ronan’s shoulder, closing his eyes again. “Tell me another story.”

#the raven cycle #pynch #tumblr prompts #trc #emma answers #anon