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Adam Parrish was born with exactly four tattoos- A crown, a tarot card, a skull, and a feather.
The crown, a gorgeous golden thing strewn with bright green vines and blue star shaped flowers, sits in the middle of his chest. To Adam, it looks like it's constantly bathed in sunlight and warmth. Sometimes, when Adam is alone and staring through the fading condensation on the bathroom mirror, he presses a delicate hand over the crown. He covers up the warmth and the sunlight and the flowers and pretends he can hold all the feelings he gets when he looks at it in his small hand. He can't, of course, but he still likes to pretend that he could ball them all up and toss them away in the trash.
Feeling such things for a person you haven't met yet, for a person you have no promise of meeting, is a waste of time. At least, that's what Adam tells himself.
The tarot card is not as dainty and gorgeous as the crown. It's thickly lined and bold enough to catch anyone's eye every time he wears short sleeves. It sits on the inside of this lower left arm, spanning across his pale and freckled skin. The girl on the card is caramel skinned with high cheekbones and and wide, sad eyes. Her skinny fingers are adorned with multiple rings on multiple fingers. Her hand wraps around a golden goblet filled to the brim with sloshing liquid. The blue light that shrouds her matches the blue of the flowers that surround the crown. The writing at the bottom of the card identifies it as The Page of Cups.
Once Adam was old enough to ride his bike into the town, he spent a day at the public high school's library. During the summer, it doubled as the local library. The only lady who bothered to keep it open was a middle aged woman named Mrs. Prosper.
Adam had spent that whole Saturday with his face buried in as many books as he could find about Tarot. There weren't many, because he lived in Henrietta, Virginia where psychics were mistaken for witches and witches were mistaken for servants of the Devil.
The Page of Cups, as far as he could tell, was the bringer of messages. Unconscious inspiration. The inner child. Openness to new ideas. Potential to- to be anything, to do anything.
Also, according to what Adam could find, the meaning behind a card meant little if you didn't interpret it correctly. The cards, he'd learned, were cards. What matters is how you perceive them.
Even after he'd done his tarot card research, Adam continued to find reasons to spend his days between the dusty shelves of the local library. He could spend hours reading anything Mrs. Prosper put in his tiny hands.
It was as nice distraction.
His third tattoo sits where his leg met his hips, just shy of his hip bone. The head of the skull poked out from beneath the waistband of many of his pants. It was a normal skull, as far as he could tell, except for the small carving in the space between its eyebrows. To Adam, the carving appeared to be three intersecting lines that formed themselves into a triangle. He'd looked everywhere for an explanation of exactly what that symbol might mean but to his eight year old dismay, he couldn't find anything on it anywhere.
He couldn't accurately describe the feeling the tattoo gave him every time he looked at it. A mixture of dread and fear and childlike glee filled him when his eyes caught a glimpse of it.
The fear was something Adam had known nearly his whole life. What scared him even more, though, is how someone who he hadn't even met yet, could understand that fear so wholly. Could make him feel that fear like it was fresh and not a memory.
His final tattoo was his most complicated. The tattoo itself was not complicated, but the emotions it stirred up within Adam were. The feather was long and black and outlined just underneath his right set of ribs. The black of the feather was pocked with little blue stars and dots that made up a constellation of things Adam never could quite get himself to understand. The tattoo moved every time he breathed and it was like it was reminding him exactly how alive he truly was in that moment. How he was the oldest he'd ever been and the youngest he would ever be right there, in that exact second.
It was odd and scary and felt something like a word Adam was currently forcing himself to forget.
When you were someone like Adam Parrish, love wasn't a thing built for you.
Or maybe, when you were someone like Adam Parrish, you weren't a thing built for love.
He decides he wants to apply to Aglionby Academy after an encounter that involves a declined debit card and a boy with a shaved head and too many twenties in his wallet.
He gets into to Aglionby on a partial scholarship.
A partial scholarship.
Adam tells his father that it's a full ride, that the school will pay for his tuition. It's a lie. It's a lie that his father believes.
It's also a lie that forces Adam to get three jobs.
He doesn't mind. In the long run it will all be worth it.
In the long run, he'll never have to step foot in Henrietta again.
At least, that’s what he keeps telling himself.
His first day at Aglionby goes exactly the way Adam had expected it to.
The one thing he didn't expect though, was Richard Campbell Gansey III and his crown tattoo.
Adam nearly chokes on his spit when he looks up in Latin class and sees the same crown that's displayed on his chest nestled between Dick Gansey's hairline and the collar of his pressed shirt.
At this point in Adam's life, he had resigned himself to the fact that he would never meet any of his soulmates. He'd forced himself to give up on that childlike longing for someone, anyone to love him.
Yet, here that someone was.
Adam was possibly going to throw up.
When the class ends, Adam is up and out of the classroom in a split second. He smashes into someones chest hard and because the universe hates Adam Parrish, his binder falls out of his arms and makes all of his first day papers fly everywhere.
"Shit," He curses, not even bothering to check on the person he had collided with. His brain was currently in fight or flight mode. One more thought about Dick Gansey was going to send Adam into a full blown panic.
What makes everything a little bit worse, is the fact that the guy Adam just smashed his face into, crouches down and helps gather up all of Adam's papers.
He silently curses the universe.
"Ronan, there you are," Comes a voice so heavenly, so elegant, that Adam's stops breathing completely, "Who's your friend?"
Adam stands up quickly after grabbing the papers out of the other boys hand. He's clutching his binder close to his chest as he breathes out, "I'm not his friend," the same time the other boy says, "He's not my friend."
Good. They agree.
Dick Gansey rolls his eyes, just barely, and smacks the other boy lightly in the chest, "Lynch, be nice."
"He bumped in to me, Gans," Ronan or Lynch or who the fuck ever defends.
"Sorry," Adam suddenly blurts, "I didn't mean to bump into you like that."
This conversation, by Adam's watch, had gone on too long for his liking. He had been rushing out of class to get away from Dick Gansey, not so he could be trapped in an awkward conversation with him and one of his friends.
Mrs. Prosper was going to pop a lung from laughing so hard when he told her about this.
"It's cool," Ronan or Lynch or who the fuck ever says.
Adam stands there for a split second, his eyes focused on the wall behind Dick Gansey's head, before he nods and turns on his heel to disappear towards his next class.
That night, if Adam lays in his bed and wonders what would have happened if he'd told Gansey, well, that's between him and the universe, I guess.
The next few weeks go by rather uneventfully in Adam's opinion.
He meets Dick Gansey again on the side of the road.
"You need any help?" He asks, even though he's so unsure of himself in that moment. He doesn't know what possesses him to stop and he doesn't know what makes him ask, but he does know that he wants- no, needs- to hear Dick Gansey's stupidly pretty accent one more time in his life.
"You know anything about cars?" Gansey replies.
Adam happens to know a lot about cars.
And that's how it starts.
The next day, Adam finds himself in the middle of a Henrietta field with Ronan Lynch and Richard Campbell Gansey III as he listens to a story about a sleeping Welsh king and a favor to be granted to anyone who wakes him.
Adam doesn't really believe, but he'll listen to as many stories as he needs to just to see that look in Gansey's eyes as he talks about Glendower.
It takes four weeks and three days for Gansey to find out about Adam's tattoo.
They're in the middle of a pizza when Adam rolls up his sleeves to reveal a tarot card tattoo.
He doesn't realize anything's wrong until Gansey says, "Adam," in such a way that has Adam looking up from his pizza.
"What?" He asks around a mouthful of Nino's.
"Can I-" Gansey starts and stops, taking a sharp breath in, "can I see your tattoo?"
Adam stops mid chew.
Fuck.
Oops, Adam thinks.
Adam slides his gaze from Gansey's awe struck face and over to Ronan's passive one and finds the other boy's eyes staring at Adam's forearm.
Adam, against his better judgement, holds out his arm.
Gansey's hands come up to touch his arm but he stops mere inches away before he makes contact.
"Can I?" He asks.
Adam, against his better judgement, nods.
Gansey's fingers are light and soft, so different from Adam's own. He tries to stomp on the jealousy the best he can.
Gansey runs his fingers over the top of the tattoo and studies it like he would an old painting in a museum. He's looking at Adam's arm like it's a picture in an old Welsh book. Like it's something to be admired and cherished and loved and- Adam can't handle it. He pulls his arm out of Gansey's grasp.
"Can I show you something?" Gansey asks once he brings his own hands back to his lap.
"Yeah?" Adam says, questioning and confused.
One thing he'd learned in his research about soulmates is that not all soulmates have the same soulmates.
Just because Gansey was his soulmate doesn't mean that Gansey also was soulmates with the other three people depicted on Adam's skin.
Ronan hasn't said a word this whole time.
"I can't," Gansey starts and then pauses, "I can't show you here."
"Okay?" Adam quirks an eyebrow.
"Let's go," Ronan mutters, pushing at Gansey so he can get out of the booth.
The ride back to Monmouth Manufacturing is full of some sort of tension that Adam can't identify. He knows it has to do with his tattoo. Whatever has got Gansey so worked up has to do with Adam's tattoo.
Once they arrive, Gansey is the first up the stairs and the first one into Monmouth.
"Noah!" Gansey calls, "You home?"
Noah Czerny, the third occupant of Monmouth Manufacturing, is smaller than his two roommates. Honestly, he gives Adam the creeps sometimes, but Ronan has told him that he makes everyone feel that way so it's not a big deal. He also told Adam that Noah likes making people feel that way, so Adam tries to act as unbothered by the other boy's presence as possible.
"What?" Noah asks, appearing in the doorway to his bedroom.
"Show Adam your tattoo."
"Which one?"
"The tarot card," Gansey clarifies.
Oh.
Oh, shit.
Noah starts to unbuckle his belt. Adam wants to look away but before he can the pale expanse of Noah's hip is in his line of sight. Printed there, in full view, is a Page of Cups tarot card.
Oh.
Gansey starts to unbutton his shirt.
Ronan starts to roll up his own sleeve.
And then there are two more Page of Cups tarot cards staring back at Adam Parrish.
Oh.
"The skull?" Adam asks. His voice sounds like it's underwater to his own ears. Part of him can't believe this is happening. Part of him already knew it to be true.
"My shoulder blade," Gansey says, turning to show Adam his back.
Ronan touches a hand to his thigh.
Noah says, "That's me."
Adam replies, "You're on my hip bone."
"Nice," Noah retorts.
"The crown is me." Gansey offers.
Adam nods, "You're in the middle of my chest."
Ronan doesn't say which tattoo he is. Instead, he just pulls down the collar of his rumpled Aglionby uniform to show Adam a raven feather dotted with blue.
"Underneath my ribs." Adam tells him.
"That makes you, what? The vine?" Noah asks.
Adam thinks about his own soulmate tattoo, the one that had appeared when he was ten.
Adam nods.
"I knew it," Gansey smiles and Adam- Adam can't help but smile back because... because he has three out of four soulmates in this very room with him at this very moment.
He realizes that this is what happiness must feel like to a normal person.
The rightness that fills him once he realizes this is so profound and so out of his his normal realm of emotions that his knees wobble a little. Against his better judgement, he drops to the floor.
He sits there, his knees pulled to his chest, and he thinks, this is what I've been waiting for my whole life.
He smiles.
Gansey laughs. So does Noah.
Ronan sits down next to him and uncharacteristically ruffles his hair before falling onto his back and splaying out on Monmouth's dusty floorboards.
That night, when Gansey stops The Pig at the mailboxes that mark the long gravel road that leads into Adam's trailer park, Adam tells him goodnight instead of goodbye.
Gansey doesn't notice, but Adam does.
It feels like everything in his life is more solidified.
Adam had been waiting for that moment when Gansey grew bored of him. He'd been waiting for that moment when Gansey no longer sat in front of him in Latin or invited him to some random field in the middle of nowhere Henrietta.
Now, though, now Adam knew that Gansey wasn't going to leave him.
And it felt absolutely amazing.
Adam, because he was Adam, allowed himself the whole walk back to his trailer to wallow in the feeling. When he stepped on to the gravel driveway he made himself push the feeling away, to bury it as far back in his brain as he could.
The Adam Parrish that Gansey knew was not the Adam Parrish his father knew.
Sometimes Adam wondered how multifaceted Gansey could be and he never truly understood it until this moment.
That night, his father slammed his face into the living room wall while his mother made dinner in the kitchen. He'd walked in front of the television without thinking about it and gotten a couple new bruises for his troubles.
The next day, he'd woken up to a fresh purple bruise that spread over the side of his nose and underneath his right eye.
He tried to convince himself that he could miss school, tried to say that it would be alright. Gansey would write notes for him and Adam would get them tomorrow.
He then realized that he had a test in three of his classes that day that he would have no time to make up if he missed them.
Adam sighed heavily.
He met Gansey and Ronan at the mailboxes.
Ronan, because he was Ronan, flicked his ice blue eyes over Adam's face and then turned away.
Gansey, because he was Gansey, could not steel his expression like Ronan could. He could not not question. So, Gansey opened his mouth to ask and received an elbow in his gut.
"What was that for?" He grumbled as Adam crawled into the back of The Pig.
"Shut up and drive, Dick." Ronan says.
Gansey did as he was told.
They went all day without asking. Adam was honestly impressed that it took Gansey that long to keep his mouth shut.
He guesses that it had eaten away at Gansey enough to the point that he couldn't hold it in anymore once they'd reached Monmouth after school.
"Can I ask?" Is all Gansey says when Adam drops his bag onto the shitty floral patterned couch in the corner of the room. He doesn't turn to look at Gansey because he doesn't want to see the pitying look on his face.
"If you must," Adam replies.
"It's just- Who-?" Gansey stops when he sees Adam's shoulders tense.
Noah had floated out of his room to greet them but had paused in his doorway to watch the conversation. Ronan had retreated into the Kitchen/Bathroom/Laundry for a soda and was also watching from its doorway.
"No one," Adam says.
"Adam-"
"It's not your problem, Gansey, so don't make it your problem." Adam says a little too harshly. He can't tell if he meant it to sound that way or not. He just knows that his father is the last thing he wants to be thinking about when he's with his friends- his soulmates, whoever the hell they were to him now.
"But-"
"Gansey," Ronan says but it sounds more like 'Stop'.
Adam sighs.
Gansey's face scrunches up in a mixture of hurt and confusion.
"I just-" Gansey starts, then stops. He takes a deep breath and tries again, "I just want to know if you're okay."
"I'm fine, Gansey," Adam tells him but the way Gansey's face contorts even further tells him that his words weren't believed. "Honest, Gans, I'm fine." He decides to add, for good measure.
Adam, is in fact, not fine. His head hurts. His eye hurts. His ribs smart every time he moves a certain way. He wants to take a nap. He wants to take a nap in Gansey's bed with it's nice blankets and it's even nicer sheets.
Gansey stills and shakes his head a little, "Fine is not okay."
Adam doesn't answer him. He instead takes out his history textbook and his homework and sits heavily on the couch so he can begin on it.
Noah comes to sit beside him. Gansey goes to sit at his desk. Ronan slams the door to his room.
Adam feels disconnected. He feels like he's lying to the only people in his life he gives a damn about.
Noah's hand is cold where it rests on top of Adam's knee.
"He doesn't mean anything by it, Adam," Noah tells him, "he just cares too much to not let it bother him. He falls in love with everyone he meets, you know. It's not your fault he's given you a tiny bit of his soul to hold."
Adam's hands start to shake. He thinks, this is how you ruin him.
Adam focuses on his homework instead of the swell of emotions happening inside him.
Weeks pass this way. Weeks pass where Adam has new bruises every few days and every time Gansey sees them his expression grows tighter and tighter.
Adam wishes- God, he wishes- that he could tell Gansey not to worry. He wants to tell Gansey that he has it under control, that he can handle it until he's eighteen and old enough to move out and be on his own. He wants to, but he knows in his fucking heart that Gansey wouldn't believe him.
It's like every blow to Adam's face is breaking something in Gansey and Adam doesn't know how to fix it without damaging it permanently.
More weeks pass and Gansey learns to seethe in quiet. He doesn't want to fight with Adam just as much as Adam doesn't want to fight with him.
They're at Nino's when they meet her.
She's new and that's all that Adam knows. He also knows that she looks exactly like the girl in his tarot card.
Adam doesn't want to say anything to her because, well, how do you tell someone that all four of their soulmates are males and are sitting in their section at a pizza place.
Gansey doesn't seem to care. He also does not have any sense of discretion because the minute the girl brings two pitchers of sweet tea to their table he says, "The Page of Cups, huh?"
The girl goes very, very still.
"What about it?" She says. He accent is clipped. Proper in a way that Adam knows she is making it sound that way.
"Well," Gansey says, "for starters, I have the same one of my chest."
"Oh," The girl says, crossing her arms, "do you?"
"Adam also has it on his forearm. So does Ronan. Noah's is on his thigh." Gansey further explains. The girl seems to pull into herself further.
Adam thinks shes going to walk away.
Instead, the girl drops her arms and points at Gansey, "You must be the crown, then."
Gansey nods and pulls on his Presidential smile. Adam wants to roll his eyes.
She points at Ronan next, "You're the feather."
Ronan doesn't nod his confirmation. He just looks at her in that way that he does. It normally would have unnerved someone, but the girl just rolls her eyes and moves onto Noah.
"The skull." She says and Noah smiles at her, giving a small wave.
"At your service," He tells her.
"And you," She looks at Adam and Adam looks at her, "are the vine."
Adam gives her the tiniest of smiles.
"Well," She says.
"Well," Gansey parrots.
"I would get saddled with a couple of Aglionby boys. Orla is going to love this," She seems to say to herself before looking at Gansey, "My breaks in another forty minutes."
"We'll be here," He tells her.
They each watch her go.
"Well, That was unexpected," Noah finally says and Adam can't help the laugh that bubbles up his throat.
The laugh sets Gansey off, which in turn sets Ronan off.
Soon, they're all giggling like a couple of teenage girls with a crush on their math teacher. Adam doesn't think he could stop if he tried.
It all- It all seems so fake to him. What are the fucking chances of this? Their last piece, the last star in the constellation that they make up, being right here, in front of them? At the pizza place they've been going to nearly every day after school for weeks?
The universe must really like playing jokes on Adam Parrish.
"She's a girl," Ronan observes.
"No shit," Adam says.
Noah starts laughing again.
"Soulmates can be platonic, you know," Gansey tells him and Ronan just rolls his eyes in response.
"I know that, asshole," Ronan replies. "It's just, how do you think she's going to feel about being soulmates with four dudes."
"Well," The girl suddenly appears with their pizza balanced on one hand, "I don't have a problem with it. Do you?"
She sets the pizza in the middle of the table and stands there, placing a hand on her hip as she waits for Ronan's reply. Adam realizes they still don't know her name. She's not wearing a name tag.
Ronan crosses his arms and scratches his five o'clock shadow as he looks the girl up and down, "You're short."
"Yes, thank you for pointing that out," She huffs, "you're observant capabilities will win awards one day."
Gansey snorts. Adam's mouth quirks and he tries to hide it in his drink. It doesn't work because when he looks up Ronan is glaring at him in the way he does when he either finds something amusing or annoying. Adam is getting better at reading him, the more he gets to know him.
Adam lifts an eyebrow in his direction and sets his cup on the table in front of him, matching Ronan's crossed arms as the enter into an unofficial staring contest. It's childish and Adam has a black eye at the moment, but neither of them care.
"Are they always like that?" The girl whispers to Gansey out of the corner of her mouth as she watches the exchange with interest.
Gansey shrugs, "Sometimes Adam wins."
On her break, the girl makes Adam scoot over to allow her to squeeze into the booth with Noah and him.
And it's like she was always there.
Adam cannot explain the exact feeling that fills his stomach when he realizes that these are the people who are meant to love him unconditionally, the people who will always love him no matter what. It's like someone released a fucking dragon in his stomach and it's flying around trying to tears it's way out. It's more than joy and happiness and whatever the fuck else describes the pureness of this moment. It's more than love, even.
And it's all Adam's.
Maybe he was built for this after all.