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Adam was thirteen when he started to realize that he might be attracted to boys as well as girls. It wasn’t a sudden bolt of lightning, but a slow realization.
He’d had crushes before, like most boys. The pretty girl three seats over who smiled at him even though Adam already knew enough to know that she came from a nicer part of town, a nicer family, and would never actually be his friend, much less anything else. The neighbor’s niece, visiting for the summer, who played with him (at least, until his father got roaring drunk one night and kept half the trailer park up with his yelling, after which she was forbidden from associating with the Parrishes). Normal things, brief interest that flared and died, because Adam knew nothing could come of it. He’d always been smart.
It’s only when he looked back on it that he realized he had crushes on boys, too. The kind teacher’s aide with the lopsided smile who loaned him markers for a project and then, deliberately, never asked for them back. The boy who never asked about Adam’s bruises, but would always ask him to play after a particularly bad day, until he moved away.
Adam admired them, thought of them wistfully, and it was only a careful sort of ignorance that kept him from understanding that his feelings for the boys were no different than his feelings for the girls.
He knew it was wrong. Or he knew that his father would say it was wrong, and when he was thirteen, that was all that really mattered. So it made sense that until that point he would ignore it, would pretend that any interest in boys was only admiration.
It was easier to do that. Much, much easier, because Adam knew even having a girlfriend could cause trouble with his father. What could having a boyfriend, or even just wanting a boyfriend, do? He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want to imagine it. He’d heard the things his father said about men who loved other men.
So he hid it away. It was easy to focus only on his attraction to women, normal and acceptable. Or - not easy. Not exactly. How easy is it to ignore a part of yourself? He just didn’t let it become a thing.
If asked, Adam would have said that there was nothing wrong with being gay or bisexual, that his father’s politics did not inform his own, that he supported people of all orientations. He would have said that even at thirteen, and never breathed a word of the truth: that he was one of those people. A deliberate cognitive dissonance. A way to survive, when he had no other choice.
But that didn’t mean those feelings went away. It didn’t mean that he didn’t appreciate - just for a moment - the built shoulders of the policeman directing traffic. Or the clean, polished handsomeness of men in advertisements, something he never could tell if he wanted or wanted to be or both.
Before Aglionby, it was easier to ignore that part of himself. To be frank - and maybe to be rather snobbish - Adam didn’t have much interest in the boys of Mountain View High. They were Henrietta, through and through, and he already knew that wasn’t what he wanted. Plus, it was dangerous, because they knew him. Look too long in a locker room, get distracted by a pair of deep blue eyes, and he’d be caught. So he just didn’t. It was easier, because he didn’t really want to.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. It was always there, curled inside him, waiting for the moment he could no longer deny it.
Adam Parrish was thirteen when he began to realize he liked boys as well as girls. He spent the next four years carefully keeping any hint of that from slipping out. Until Aglionby. Until Ronan Lynch.
Until Blue, first of all, and he would not easily be able to explain how Blue’s mere presence helped him finally accept his sexuality. What it really was, what it seemed to be, was that Adam had a type, and Blue fit that type, and so did Ronan, and their different genders made absolutely no difference to his attraction.
Not a physical type. There was nearly no physical similarity between Blue - small, pretty, female in a way that almost seemed defiant - and Ronan - tall, intimidating, flaunting his masculinity like a challenge to the world. But attitude? That was something else. They both faced the world like they were ready for a fight, fierce and uncompromising, and if Ronan had more sharp edges and more anger that was only because he’d been cut more deeply.
They weren’t the same, nowhere near. But they were more similar than they would ever have admitted, and though Adam did not really group them together in his mind, it was difficult to deny that he was attracted to them both. That Blue, a more acceptable choice being female and all, was no more attractive to him than undeniably male Ronan.
And, before long, she was less. Though that had nothing to do with Ronan’s gender and everything to do with Ronan himself, and wasn’t that even more proof? Proof he couldn’t ignore anymore?
So it was obvious, in the end. Had always been obvious, really, but out from under his father’s thumb - and with Ronan there - it was impossible to pretend anymore.
Adam Parrish was bisexual. And that was fine.
Or he wanted it to be, anyway. Even if he’d never spoken it aloud, never put his feelings into words, he wanted it to be.
It was a hot summer day, and the Hondayota had never had working AC, so when Adam pulled up at the Barns after a long morning and afternoon at Boyd’s, he was already sweaty. His hair was a royal mess, too, from driving with the window down, but it was that or boil himself alive. Ronan had, of course, offered him the BMW, but while Adam was getting a little more comfortable driving it he was not willing to take it to work.
He could only imagine what the other mechanics would think. His relationship with Ronan was not a secret, but they didn’t broadcast it either. Henrietta was a small town, and neither of them were anything but very private people. It was no one’s business but their own.
He climbed out of the car, breathing a little easier as he felt some of the tension drain from his shoulders. Coming to the Barns always did this to him. It was Ronan and Opal, the place itself, the distance from his bad memories. All of it.
Across the fields, he could see faint movement. Opal, near one of the small groves of trees, doing Opal things. She wasn’t a child, exactly, not really. They took care of her, but only insamuch as she let them. If she wanted to go off on her own, she did, and she often did. So Adam was not worried, and instead went looking for Ronan.
He was in one of the barns, as usual. Ronan was slowly but surely making the property his own, now that he could, and he was in the middle of some kind of project there - half dream, half construction. Adam didn’t know exactly what the goal was, and he hadn’t asked. He’d find out eventually. Ronan never liked trying to put his dreams into words, no matter what kind of dreams they were.
He lingered in the doorway, watching Ronan hammering some nails into a plank of wood. Adam watched the play of muscles in his shoulders, because of course Ronan had discarded his shirt in a corner. When it was hot out, he went around in black tank tops and muscle tees and took his shirt off at the slightest provocation. Adam couldn’t say he minded.
At first, he’d wondered if Ronan was doing it for his benefit, but after the first couple times Ronan caught him staring and got angrily (adorably) embarrassed, he figured out that no, this was just Ronan Lynch in his natural habitat. His pale skin burned easily, but that never seemed to stop him.
It was so different from Adam, who usually didn’t show too much skin. Ronan had seen all of him by now, and seemed pretty happy with it, but Adam still didn’t like showing off his scars or his freckles or his physique that was not nearly as nicely sculpted as Ronan’s.
But he sure enjoyed the show.
Watching Ronan, it felt almost hard to believe that he’d ever pretended he wasn’t attracted to men. It was Ronan in particular, of course, Ronan more than any other man, but - it wasn’t just because Ronan was Ronan. It was the shape of him, the solidity, the stubble on his cheeks and the muscles in his arms. Warmth curled in Adam’s belly.
Ronan looked up and saw him. He rubbed an arm across his brow, wiping the sweat from it, and scowled at Adam. “Stop being a creep, Parrish.”
Adam smiled. “If I’m not allowed to ogle my own boyfriend, I guess I can always find someone else to look at.”
Ronan set down the hammer and walked over, catching one of Adam’s belt loops and pulling him in. “No one else to look at on this farm, asshole. Unless you’re into cows.” He kissed Adam, sliding his arm around Adam’s waist so they were pressed close together. Adam leaned into the kiss, feeling it in his toes. Kissing Ronan was always like this.
“Gross. You’re sweaty,” he said, but he didn’t pull away.
“You smell like gasoline and motor oil,” Ronan said.
Adam knew by now that that wasn’t a complaint, even if Ronan was trying to make it sound like one. He was nosing at Adam’s neck now, pressing biting little kisses against the skin there. It sent shivers down Adam’s spine.
“Let’s go inside,” Adam said, and pulled Ronan toward the house. Ronan followed with no resistance.
Getting upstairs was a little more difficult, as Ronan pressed him against the wall for more kisses, and Adam found it very hard to push him away. Granted, he maybe didn’t try as hard as he could have. Or at all. They nearly got away from themselves right there, but after a day spent fixing cars, Adam’s muscles were sore enough that he eventually forced them both up to their room.
‘Their room’ still felt strange to think, but it was true. Adam even had drawers for himself, and part of the closet. Cohabiting in a place like this with a person like Ronan was incredible, sometimes dreamlike, occasionally annoying, but really everything Adam could have wanted. Everything he never thought he’d have.
He pressed Ronan to the bed and took the opportunity to trace the muscles of Ronan’s chest with his tongue, the ones he’d been happily ogling not long before. He traced kisses down Ronan’s stomach and took Ronan into his mouth, knowing just what he liked. They’d learned that about each other, through long nights (and some days) of experimentation and lust. Adam was more careful, more scientific about it - trying different things, discarding what they didn’t like, improving on what they did. Ronan was all passion, figuring out what he wanted and going for it.
Adam loved it. All of it.
After he brought Ronan to release, Ronan did the same for him, using his hands and his mouth, whispering dirty things in Adam’s ear as he mapped out Adam’s body, never flinching at a scar, never anything but rapt and hungry. Adam couldn’t take his eyes off him, the lean muscled lines of Ronan’s body, the sharpness of his smile, his big hands and the stubble that brushed Adam’s skin. He was gorgeous. He let himself want Ronan, let himself understand how deep that want went, the desire that had taken him so long to accept. He let himself want.
Afterward, they curled close together, and Adam let the warmth and contentment of his release and Ronan’s nearness relax him.
Ronan rested against the rumpled sheets, watching the play of light on the ceiling as the sun inched closer to setting. Next to Ronan, Adam was sleepy and sated, pressed close to him. They both needed to shower, probably, but Ronan didn’t care much about that. He liked these moments, the quiet moments after they were both spent. He liked the way Adam let down some of his walls. Every new piece of Adam Parrish that he got to see was a gift, as cheesy as that sounded. He’d never say it aloud anyway.
Adam’s fingers traced the curve of his tattoo over his shoulder. He watched them move, transfixed as always by the strange grace of Adam’s movements.
“When did you know you liked boys?” Adam said. His voice was as soft as his touch.
At another time, in another setting, Ronan thought he might refuse to talk about this. He wasn’t uncomfortable with his sexuality, exactly, but he was uncomfortable talking about it. Words weren’t his thing. He’d never even formally come out to anyone, not yet - the message had been pretty well sent by his obvious relationship with Adam, he thought. Especially after Adam moved to the Barns for the summer.
But here, with Adam, in their bedroom, it seemed easier.
“A long time ago,” Ronan said. “I guess.”
That was true, but like a lot of things Ronan said, it wasn’t the whole truth. Ronan had been seventeen years old when he finally admitted to himself that he was attracted to men - and, specifically, to Adam Parrish. It wasn’t that he had never been attracted to anyone before, but rather that those attractions had always been brief or shallow or something easily pushed aside. Adam was different. Had always been different, maybe.
But he’d known a long time before that, even if he couldn’t admit it to himself.
It would have been impossible not to notice that he was different. After all, he had Declan as an example, all carefully sculpted smiles and lines crafted to charm. Ronan knew very quickly that he couldn’t be like that, that he didn’t want to be like that. When Declan had a summer romance with a girl in town visiting relatives, Ronan only wrinkled his nose in mild disgust.
And no one noticed anything, because of course Ronan would be uninterested in his brother’s exploits. Niall laughed, and said that eventually Ronan would find his own pretty girl to trade hidden kisses with, and Aurora smiled at the thought of it. A late bloomer, she said. But it was more than that, and Ronan knew it, even if he couldn’t put words to it yet.
He watched while Declan charmed girl after girl, never serious with any of them. This was before everything went bad, when Ronan still had a head full of curls and Niall still flitted in and out of their lives like sunshine, so he didn’t hate Declan then. He just didn’t understand him. He didn’t understand how he could be so casual, how he could not like any of those girls enough to be serious - even if the girls didn’t seem to mind.
On some level, Ronan thought - hoped - that maybe that was the difference between them. Maybe someday he’d find the right girl, and she’d be interesting, and he’d want to kiss her. Maybe it wasn’t that he didn’t like girls, but that he was picky, or careful, or destined for true love like in Niall’s stories. The sort of love his parents had.
But though he never admitted it to himself, not until he couldn’t deny it anymore, the truth was that Ronan knew even then he didn’t like girls. The hope that maybe there was one special girl somewhere who’d be different - well, it was hard to really believe in it. But he held on to it, secretly hidden somewhere in his heart.
There was an impossible innocence about the time before Niall died. Was murdered. Ronan could see it now, looking back. That was what had allowed him to hold on to things like that, even though he knew very well, on some level, that it would never happen.
After Niall died, there was no point in pretending it would.
He hid the truth from himself even then. He knew it very well - Ronan wasn’t stupid - but admitting it, even to himself, was something he wasn’t ready for.
There was so much that went along with it. He was already something else, some sort of creature that could pull things out of dreams, something impossible. Did he have to be this, too? Something else that would set him apart from the world, something that might make his friends turn away from him? They were the only ones whose opinions he gave a shit about, but they mattered. Society as a whole could go fuck itself, but Gansey, Noah, Adam - his brothers, his church, what his father would have thought - those things still mattered.
But he knew. He knew that during those hot summers, while Declan was charming girls, he’d noticed the boys he’d gone swimming with instead. Not friends, never anything more, but he’d still noticed. He looked at the heroes of action movies instead of their hot love interests, felt absolutely no arousal at the dirty magazines he’d found under Declan’s mattress but had uncomfortable dreams about the lead actor on his mom’s favorite soap opera after a certain shirtless scene.
And then it had slowly become more and more real.
Adam’s fingers still traced Ronan’s tattoo, bringing him back down to earth, back to the reality of a boy in his bed - this boy in his bed.
“A long time ago,” he said, sounding amused. “You hid it pretty well. Gansey had no idea.”
“I’m good at secrets,” Ronan said, and it was a level, truthful statement. He’d hid it from himself, he’d hid it from Gansey, he’d hid it from Adam. Until he accepted it, until he’d started admitting that - if nothing else - he wanted Adam to notice.
“I know I’m your first boyfriend,” Adam said, pressing his palm to the front of Ronan’s shoulder and leaving it there, just touching him. “But who was the first guy you wanted to be with?”
Ronan looked at him. Adam was probably the smartest person he knew, determined and brilliant and capable of working out a solution to nearly any problem. But he missed some very, very obvious things sometimes.
“You,” he said, and it probably would have been more romantic if he hadn’t said it in his you fucking idiot voice. Adam frowned at him.
“Come on, Lynch. Don’t be a dick.”
Ronan just looked at him. Adam knew he didn’t lie, and he watched Adam’s look of annoyance slowly change to confusion, then something else. Wonder, maybe, or something like it.
It was the truth, after all. It wasn’t that he’d never been attracted to men besides Adam - of course he had been. He’d even, briefly and disastrously, been attracted to Kavinsky. But that option had been offered and he’d turned it down, as he always would have, because that kind of thing just - wasn’t how Ronan worked.
He could look at other guys and think they were attractive. He could appreciate Gansey in casual jeans and a t-shirt, Kavinsky’s irritating smirk, the leanly muscled bodies of the boy on the tennis team. But Ronan wasn’t built for casual. He wasn’t built for anything but all-in, headlong relationships, whether they were true friendships or something deeper.
He’d never wanted to date anyone but Adam. He’d never wanted to be with anyone but Adam. He knew that Adam wasn’t quite the same - he was serious about this, about Ronan, but he’d dated Blue casually and had no particular hangups about it - but he didn’t really care. Ronan didn’t waste time on what-ifs, on whether he’d ever want to date anyone else if they broke up. All he knew right now was that Adam was what he wanted, what he had wanted since - well, longer than he’d admit to himself.
He looked back at Adam with steady defiance. This was who he was.
Adam brushed his cheek, running his thumb over Ronan’s cheekbone. “If you were anyone else, I’d say you were lying to get me into bed.”
“Already got you into bed,” Ronan said, and he grinned, reaching under the blankets to slide his hand up the inside of Adam’s thigh.
Adam laughed and leaned in to kiss him. “Asshole.” They slid past the moment easily, then, another piece of hidden truth offered up and accepted. He thought Adam understood, in a way, even if he didn’t work like Ronan did. This mattered, they mattered. Before Adam there was no one, and after him? That didn’t matter.
“I’m bisexual,” Adam said, out of nowhere.
Ronan looked at him. “Uh, yeah?” He knew about Blue. He also knew Adam had had Ronan’s dick in his mouth not thirty minutes before. He wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be a revelation or a confession of some sort.
Adam looked a little flushed, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know. I’ve just never said it out loud before.”
“I think we all know, dumbass,” Ronan said. There was a knot of helpless affection in his chest when he looked at Adam, the way his ears went pink, the strange necessity of saying aloud something like that. He loved this boy. “But we’ll get some fucking calligraphy pens and send letters to our friends if you want. ‘Dearest Gansey, were you aware Adam Parrish is bisexual? P.S. Ronan is gay and we’re having a lot of sex. Toodles, your friends at the Barns.’”
“Oh, shut up,” Adam said, laughing, his hand over his face. “Can we, and bribe Blue to record his reaction?” Ronan watched him laugh until he stopped, and then kissed him until they were both breathless.
It had felt different to say it aloud. It had always been true, but putting words to it felt like a puzzle piece snapping into place. Ronan thought he could see, then, why Adam had felt the need to do it. Not that he’d admit it, of course. But he felt - content. Comfortable, maybe, with that part of himself.
It was easy to feel that way when Adam was next to him, kissing him.
Ronan was letting his hands wander - he didn't know about Adam, but he was pretty ready to go again - when there was a loud crash from downstairs. They both stopped. After that came silence, and then the faint sound of cloven hooves on the wood floor of the hallway.
Adam sighed and pulled away from him. “We’d better go see what that was.” It wasn’t the first time Opal had interrupted them, and it wouldn’t be the last. Ronan was not disappointed, though. They’d have more time, more chances. All the time in the world.