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1
Adam woke up with an audible gasp, his pulse somewhere between jackhammer and hummingbird. He blinked fast, forcing his eyes to adjust. The space of his little apartment was so dark, impenetrable and oppressive and not at all comforting in his current state of mind. Everything was worse at night.
His mind flashed back to his nightmare: his father, his father, his father. Something had slammed against the counter. He didn't know what it was, and it didn't matter. It'd broken in a shower of glass and he'd cowered, back hitting the shitty cabinets with a sharp crack.
In the St. Agnes room, he sat up. His eyes burned. He forced himself to take a shaky breath in. Breathe, Adam. It's not real. Not anymore.
"Adam?"
Ronan. Shit. He'd forgotten Ronan was here. He took another quick breath in an attempt to calm his breathing as much as possible. Before Ronan noticed.
"What is it?" Ronan's voice was soft, softer than Adam had ever heard it.
He didn't know if that was just a byproduct of Ronan waking up suddenly, but the gentleness began to unwind something in his chest. His dream was just a dream. It wasn't real and he wasn't back there.
And Ronan was here. Ronan, who'd never hesitated to defend him, not even to the point of facing an aggravated assault charge. He exhaled and flopped back down onto his pillow.
"Nothing." He didn't want to talk about it.
"Parrish."
"Nothing, it's fine. Go back to sleep."
"I wasn't asleep," Ronan huffed, and Adam's good ear strained to catch the telltale sounds of him sitting up, likely tangled in the blanket on Adam's floor. The blanket that he'd brought here, and left here, and now slept on top of multiple nights a week.
"Well, uh, it's fine. Don't worry about it."
"If you say so," Ronan muttered, sounding very much like he did not believe him. There was a beat of silence, then the unmistakable tinny sound of Ronan's music blasting through his headphones started up again.
It should probably be slightly annoying to Adam, the neverending shake of electronica in the otherwise peaceful dark, but the truth was that he liked it. It was something real, something grounding. Proof he wasn't alone.
He rolled over, pulled his own threadbare blanket up to his neck, and resigned himself to staring at the wall until his mind settled back down.
2
"Shit, Parrish, wake up."
Adam shifted, barely conscious, and his blanket moved, allowing the slight chill of winter air to hit his skin. Fuck, it was cold. He moved his arm back under the blanket.
"Damn it, Parrish," he heard, the words filtering lazily through the lingering haze of sleep. He managed to grunt in response, a gargantuan effort that he hoped Ronan appreciated. He was so tired. What time was it? Like 3 am? Too early.
"Wake up," Ronan repeated, sounding panicked.
Fuck. God. He was so tired.
Adam forced his eyes open.
"What?" he asked, turning towards the flurry of movement that meant Ronan was doing something remarkably stupid. All he could see was shapes in the dark.
"Dream," came Ronan's rushed reply.
Adam sat up. His body complained in no less than several thousand ways, but he managed it.
Ronan's black sweatshirt shot up into the air. Goddamn it.
Sleep fled instantly as Adam jumped up, adrenaline coursing through his veins. Did he even want to know what Ronan had dreamed this time? It could be any manner of thing, and on the scale of Chainsaw to Night Terror the scale usually tipped towards the latter.
"Why did it have to be something flying?" He shot back as he reached out towards the unidentified flying whatever.
Ronan didn't reply. He was busy chasing the thing around the apartment, missing spectacularly every time he tried to grab it. If Adam hadn't been so stressed, he probably would've laughed. Ronan was many things; graceful was not one of them.
Obviously Adam was going to have to figure this out, as he figured most things out when it came to him and Ronan. Keyword most; there were things between them that he could never sort through. Not in any meaningful way, not when Ronan slept on his floor more nights than he didn't at this point. Not when there had started to be a slight ache in his chest on the nights he slept here alone.
He shook his head, a sleep-deprived instinct that did little to clear his thoughts. Right now there was this. He needed to fix this.
"Okay, listen, you get it over here and I'll try to catch it. You're not doing shit by runnin' around like a chicken with its head cut off."
"Well I'm fucking trying," Ronan spat, but he slowed and visibly recalculated.
The sweatshirt-thing kept flying. There was no apparent pattern to its movements. Maybe it was another bird. Could they even handle two birds? Chainsaw was a lot and she was fairly well-behaved, a shocking thing considering she'd come from Ronan.
Suddenly, the thing paused mid-air and wheeled towards him. It was a bit too high, almost hugging the rafters. He'd have to jump if it flew above him.
"Adam!" Ronan yelled.
"Yeah I see it, Lynch, don't let it get past if I miss!"
The sweatshirt was rapidly getting closer. Adam steeled himself to jump. He could do this.
Sweatshirt-thing was approaching. Now or never, he supposed, and threw himself towards it. His fingers caught on the arm and he pulled it down, praying the thing couldn't get out. The sweatshirt landed on his bed with a thump, whatever was inside thrashing.
"Should I open the window?" Ronan asked, all of a sudden right next to him.
"You're just gonna throw whatever it is out there?" he asked. A tired Ronan peered down at him, the streetlight outside reflecting in his light eyes and glancing off the top of his cheekbones. Adam quickly looked back down.
"I mean, yeah," Ronan muttered.
"What the fuck even is it?"
"A bat, I think. Or something like a bat."
"Oh." A bat. That was sort of anti-climatic. "Uh, yeah, open the window. Fuck, don't bats have rabies?"
Adam didn't need to be looking at Ronan to know he was rolling his eyes. "It's a dream bat, I don't think I dreamed it rabies."
"You absolutely could've dreamed it rabies," he shot back, glancing at Ronan again. Ronan was already looking back.
"Fuck you."
Ronan smirked, eyes lingering on Adam for just a second before he leaned past him to open the window. It hit the top of the frame—because of course it did, Ronan was never careful—and Adam made a mental note to make sure there wasn't a mark later. Ronan made a flourishing gesture towards it, which struck Adam as a very Ganseylike thing to do, before moving back to give Adam space.
When Adam didn't move, Ronan shifted. The floor creaked slightly under his socked feet. "I can do it, if you're scared."
"I'm not fucking scared, Lynch, fuck off." He took a deep breath, and carefully picked up the sweatshirt. Maybe he should just throw the whole sweatshirt out the window. See how Ronan liked that. He'd deserve it, for dreaming a fucking bat in the middle of the night.
He was still deciding as he held the sweatshirt up to the cool night air. Before he could do anything, though, the bat simply dislodged itself and flew off. Ronan sank onto the mattress next to him. They silently watched the shape of it disappear into the dark.
Adam's head spun.
He glanced at Ronan without moving, a peripheral look that offered nothing more than the tired slump of Ronan's eyes. Outlined against his creased pillow, Ronan looked incredibly human. Sometimes it was shocking how human he was, despite his dreaming. How real and how close he was.
"Don't dream anything else tonight, please," Adam whispered. In his head it'd been funny, a quip that might be rewarded by the slight uptick of the corner of Ronan's mouth, but it came out too soft. Pleading, nearly. Adam squeezed his eyes shut, cursed himself internally.
"Got it, boss," Ronan whispered back, his tone also quiet.
As the adrenaline faded, Adam shivered. He glanced at Ronan again. The dark-haired boy was staring at the ceiling. Thinking, maybe. Adam wondered what his dream had been.
After a moment, Ronan shuffled off the mattress and returned to the floor. His black sweatshirt remained on the edge of Adam's bed, just under the window, a testament to something that'd feel like a dream itself come morning.
3
"Fuck!" Adam whisper-screamed, out back in the ramshackle shed, where his father hopefully couldn't hear. He held his mangled arm to his chest, blood streaking down his now-ruined shirt. It was one of his Aglionby shirts; he didn't know how he was gonna be able to make do with only one now. Maybe he could get the blood out.
He couldn't even remember what happened– what had happened?
His arm burned. He didn't know what to do. He was supposed to wrap something around it, right? Stop the bleeding. He carefully pulled off the ruined shirt and slowly began to wrap it around the wound.
"God damn it," he muttered. The pain in his arm grew exponentially with every movement.
Embarrassingly, he started to cry. He hadn't cried since he was much, much younger, and it felt foreign. It felt more like a failure than his arm. He was going to have tear-streaks on his face when he went in, he'd have to sneak back to his room.
"Parrish?"
He gasped awake, arm still clutched to his chest. His throat hurt, his arm hurt, everything hurt. He swallowed hard and blinked back tears. Of course he was crying in real life. Of course.
The ceiling swam above him, hairline cracks and speckled drywall.
He gingerly stretched his arm out. There was no blood. Thank God. But there were the tears, streaking down his face and pooling on his pillow. He sniffled, and wished he could afford things like tissues.
"Adam?"
Sniffing again, Adam turned. He could just make out a disheveled Ronan sitting up next to him. Only one earbud was in, the wires twisting down to disappear somewhere beneath his hoodie. Adam, too tired to restrain himself, tracked them down to where they rested against Ronan's collarbone.
"Did I wake you?"
"No. Do you…" Ronan rubbed his eyes. He was a fucking liar. "Do you want to talk about it? Sometimes it helps." When Adam only stared blankly at him, he scrubbed a hand over his head. "Gansey makes me talk about them," he added, quieter.
Oh.
Right, Ronan was no stranger to nightmares either. He vaguely recalled how Ronan was afraid to sleep in the same room as Gansey for fear he'd bring back a wasp.
Still, he was reluctant. Well, reluctant to talk to Ronan about this. Every day he found more and more that Ronan understood him in a way no one else did, that no one else had ever tried to.
That wasn't to say Ronan perfectly understood him, in fact that was pretty far from the truth. But Ronan knew what it was like to feel the way he did. Lost. Pissed off all the time. Trapped.
Adam just hid things better than Ronan did. Probably because he had to. Ronan could afford—literally and metaphorically—to have poor impulse control. To race his car and do drugs in parking lots and get into fights.
"There's not much to talk about," he said. "My arm was like, falling off or something. I don't know. It was bad. The blood ruined my shirt."
He knew that last part made him sound like a petulant toddler, but still he felt the need to say it. It'd been the main concern of his dream after all, the stupid problem of only having one good shirt outweighing the injury and subsequent blood loss. He expected Ronan to comment on that, but he only hummed. It was a thoughtful sound, impossibly kind. Adam's palms ached. He shoved them under his pillow.
"Does it hurt?"
"What?" The question took him aback. It was the complete opposite of what he'd expected. Although, he didn't know what he expected, not really. This was entirely uncharted territory.
"Sometimes I still feel things, after. Does your arm hurt?"
"Uh, a little, I guess. It more feels… numb."
"Let me see."
Adam blinked. What?
"Uh, okay." Too surprised to refuse, he hesitantly extended his arm towards Ronan.
Ronan's fingers wrapped around his wrist. The pads of his fingers pressed gently into the underside, just over the tendon. Adam let him maneuver his arm around, his fingertips grazing his arm as they moved upwards. He felt it in more than his arm.
"Could you feel all of that?" Ronan asked, his hand still on Adam's arm. His hand was so warm.
"Yeah," he breathed. Understatement of the fucking century. He was acutely aware of every single point of contact between them; all he felt was the brush of Ronan's fingers on his wrist.
Ronan dropped his arm. "Then congrats. You're healed."
They stared at each other through the dark for a long moment, then Ronan flopped back down onto his blanket. Adam slid down under his sheet. He felt weird.
It was starting to warm up outside now, and he suddenly wished he'd opened the window before bed. There wouldn't be much noise outside at this hour, but at least there'd be something. The silence felt tangible, thick and heavy.
He rolled over and pressed his face into the cooler side of his thin pillow. He could ignore this. Ignore that more days than not, Ronan was only inches away and sleeping on an old comforter. Ignore that said comforter lived here now, spending the day poorly folded and shoved in the corner.
It didn't mean anything.
4
Adam was cold. Adam was overtired.
All he wanted was to feel warm and to sleep. Literally that was it. Unfortunately, one was tied to the other. He couldn't sleep when he was cold. He never could.
It was a problem he should've overcome by now, especially considering the many long nights he'd spent at home—no, in the trailer—shivering and staring up at the ceiling because there'd been a cold snap that fall or winter or spring and his parents couldn't pay for heat. Just like he couldn't right now. So much for breaking cycles.
But fuck, it was cold.
Usually he didn't care. In fact, he liked when it was a little cold in the room and he could pull the blanket up over his head. It was almost easier to sleep then. The air was so crisp that he could breathe easier, and it was sort of cozy.
It was colder than usual outside right now though, a mid-May cold snap that the weather people were saying was "due to strong cold fronts that sometimes reassert themselves during the spring." He was calling it fucking stupid.
May should mean warm.
He turned over for the umpteenth time, sheets rustling as he hurled himself towards the wall. Maybe he could make a pocket of warmth there, curl himself against it like a caterpillar in a cocoon.
"Will you stop fucking thrashing around over there?" Ronan muttered, voice muffled.
"Sorry."
"Can you not sleep?"
"Obviously."
"Damn, Parrish, I'm rubbing off on you."
"Don't flatter yourself. It's just cold."
Ronan was silent for a moment. Then, "Too bad you don't run hot. It's kinda nice when it's fucking freezing."
"Yeah, must be fucking nice."
"Aw, don't be like that."
"I'm not being like anything. I'm fucking cold and tired and I'm trying to sleep. Goodnight."
"Do you want this blanket too? I don't need it." A rustle, then.
"No." Adam closed his eyes and willed himself to fall asleep. Again. Please.
"You can be such an idiot sometimes, you know that right? Just take the fucking blanket."
"Not unless you bring it up here yourself. I'm not moving."
Silence, then, "alright."
There were shuffling sounds and then a weight settled on top of him. He opened his eyes to see Ronan putting his comforter over him. He was a faint silhouette lit only by the dim streetlight outside, stuck somewhere between real and not. It made him look kind of dangerous. It was kind of a funny thought. Adam knew most people were afraid of Ronan, but he wasn't most people, and he'd forgotten the possibility of it entirely. It was strange to be reminded of it right now.
"What are you gonna do?" he managed, his eyes meeting Ronan's.
Ronan shrugged. "Don't really need one."
"That's bullshit. You run hot, sure, but no one is that hot."
"Wow, I'm offended, Parrish," Ronan teased, holding a hand to his chest in mock offense. "I am actually that hot."
Adam rolled his eyes. "You're full of shit. I will not take your blanket."
"Fine," Ronan muttered.
Adam raised an eyebrow, and briefly made the mistake of thinking maybe he'd actually won an argument with Ronan Lynch for once. He was quickly proven wrong when Ronan flopped down beside him. "We'll share it then."
"What?"
Ronan shrugged. "You're cold. And you refuse to just take it, because fucking of course you do, so shut the fuck up and deal with it."
Adam could only stare at him, mouth open. He didn't mind Ronan in his bed, not really, but this was a line they'd never crossed. They'd never even come close to this line.
It was no secret that Ronan had a penchant for physical touch, always wanting to be close to Gansey and Noah and then Gansey and Noah and Adam and now all of them. It was a mark of true acceptance by Ronan when he'd throw his legs over your lap or shove you jokingly, hand lingering on your arm. It'd taken Adam a while to get used to it. He'd been touched only a handful of times before he met Gansey and Ronan, and now it was odd when a day went by without a clap on the back or an ankle touching his.
But this was different. Or, it felt different.
Ronan had always just curled up on the floor and shoved in his earbuds and laid there til sunrise. Sure, sometimes they'd woken up precariously close, Adam at the edge of his mattress and Ronan right up against said edge, mere inches apart, breathing the same air, but that was different. That was accidental.
This was not.
Whatever. It was whatever. He didn't care. And maybe he could use the extra body heat. He could handle this. Friends slept in the same bed sometimes. He squeezed his eyes shut.
"Fine," Adam said finally. "Goodnight."
He rolled over one last time, to put his back to Ronan. He didn't need to think about any of this right now. Not when he was finally sort of warm and he was so goddamn tired.
Ronan didn't reply, but Adam felt him shift. "Goodnight Adam," he whispered, so quiet that Adam wouldn't have caught it if he had been facing the other direction.
When he woke up, he was so fucking warm. Warmer than he had been in weeks.
He yawned, and the movement pushed him back against something; no, someone.
Ronan was fast asleep, forehead against the back of Adam's neck and legs pressed against his. He hadn't been wrong about being hot. Heat practically radiated off of him.
The knowledge that Ronan had slept mere inches away from him all night had his mind spinning. It was stupid; there was barely a difference between waking up to Ronan in his bed and waking up to Ronan one foot away. He didn't know Ronan could sleep, somehow it'd seemed impossible.
"Jesus Mary, why's it so bright?" Ronan groaned, voice husky.
Adam stilled. It was extremely rare that he got to hear Ronan's morning voice. He so rarely actually slept.
It felt like something to laugh at, but he couldn't. Not now. Maybe later, when they were further from this. When it didn't feel like everything mattered, so much more than usual.
Ronan shifted against his back, pressing closer. Adam could feel his eyelashes on his neck. It sent goosebumps down his arms.
If he wasn't careful, he would fall back asleep, warm and relaxed and content. By the way the sun was slanting in the window, though, he knew there was precious little time before he had to get ready for a shift. In fact, he should probably get up now…
He pulled away from Ronan and stood, stepping over him to get to the bathroom. The linoleum was cold under his feet. He stared at himself as he brushed his teeth. His hair was getting longer. He'd have to enlist Blue to cut it again. And he was almost out of toothpaste. Great.
When he exited the bathroom, Ronan was awake. He was still in Adam's bed, a mess of all black and long limbs. Adam allowed himself precisely one second to take it in before turning away to grab a glass of water.
"Working?" Ronan asked around a yawn.
"Yes. Boyd's."
"Til when?"
Adam shrugged. "Til I'm done."
"Alright, mysterious. I'll come by at some point," Ronan said, and when Adam turned back around he was already up and by the door.
"You don't have to—"
"Shut up." He looked at Adam for a long moment, like he was considering something, and then he was gone.
Fucking Lynch. He would show up at the garage, Adam knew full well, and he'd do it suspiciously close to lunch time with way too much food to eat himself. It was extremely annoying and ridiculously kind. Sometimes he really hated him.
5
When Ronan finally admitted he slept better in Adam's room it felt like something monumental.
Ronan didn't ever lie, not technically, but he traded in half-truths and secrets and confessions veiled behind jokes. Getting something real from Ronan Lynch was as rare as getting a paycheck with enough to save. So when he plopped down on Adam's bed—which they basically shared now, on the nights when Ronan slept over—and announced this fact straight up, Adam could only stare at him.
"Christ, Parrish, I take it back. Never mind," Ronan huffed, throwing his shoe at him.
Adam let it hit his leg and bounce harmlessly towards the door. He could've shot back any number of replies, sharp and sarcastic, but he only shrugged. Despite wanting to fuck with Ronan, he was actually quite flattered.
The quieter part of his brain whispered that he slept better with Ronan here too. He pushed the thought away.
When he returned from the bathroom, Ronan was asleep. Or "asleep," probably, but his eyes were closed and he was face down with his hood pulled over his head. His hair was getting longer; he'd probably ask Adam to buzz it again soon.
The first time he'd asked Adam to do it instead of Gansey had been after one of their group movie nights. Ronan had driven him back to St. Agnes and ended up staying, and complained so extensively about needing to re-buzz his hair that Adam had almost lost his mind. Finally, a sheepish Ronan had asked if Adam just wouldn't mind doing it right then.
That was Ronan Lynch, incredibly impulsive in every single way. He always needed something to happen the minute he decided it must.
It'd felt almost like an honor, to run his hands across Ronan's scalp under the guise of making sure everything was even. Ronan's eyes had fluttered shut and Adam had gotten to look at him, really look at him.
It was just a normal Ronan activity, something that needed to happen every two months, yet it felt like something.
Everything lately had started to feel like something.
It used to keep him up at night, this thing growing between them, but now it felt like they were headed toward something inevitable and that was okay. He was both nervous and wasn't nervous about it. He simultaneously wanted whatever this was and was afraid to want it. Yet despite that, whatever this was with Ronan felt okay. Felt good. Like it didn't matter how things were going to go, because it was just them.
At least, that was what he tried to tell himself.
But when he rolled over and came face-to-face with an actually asleep Ronan… it felt real. And scary.
Somehow, when he wasn't paying attention, Ronan had gotten through those last few walls he kept up. He had so many goddamn walls, built painstakingly over years and years, and Ronan had just bulldozed through them like he did with everything else. It was fucking ridiculous.
He had to be careful. So fucking careful. This was Ronan; not some girl flirting with him in town or a younger student winking at him across the hall. Ronan Lynch was half-god and half-man and entirely consuming, and Adam didn't quite know what to do besides let himself be pulled into his orbit.
Pulling his blanket over his head, he released a long breath. He let his leg drift to rest against Ronan's. The black fabric of his sweatpants was soft against him. Adam squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to pull Ronan into his arms the way Ronan had done with him so many times, but he didn't have Ronan's bravery. All he had was this ache deep in his chest and hands that were too sweaty for the October chill.
+1
Adam woke up hot. Way too fucking hot for late November. He was like a thousand degrees.
There was no reason for his room to feel so hot, except for… oh.
Except for the shirtless and very warm Ronan Lynch curled around him. He reached out to push open the window without getting up, and sighed as a cold breeze blew in. Ronan was literally a furnace. For the first time in his life Adam was glad he ran cold.
Ronan shifted behind him, still asleep, and the events of the last twelve hours flooded back to him: the BMW and Ronan's hand in Adam's and gas station hot dogs and kissing and taking their clothes off and falling into Adam's bed and kissing.
Despite months of considering how Ronan's lips would feel on his, and how Ronan would feel underneath him, Adam had still not really actually believed this would ever happen. That he'd have Ronan next to him in a different context; that he'd have marks from Ronan's teeth on his neck and chest. He pressed his finger to one, let the slight ache ripple across his skin.
The past few weeks had been a fever dream. The best fever dream of his entire life, obviously, but a fever dream nonetheless.
It was hard to imagine that it wasn't going to end soon. But it wasn't; he knew Ronan better than to let his own fears of abandonment project onto this new but solid thing they had.
It still surprised him, despite how long he'd known this was where they were headed. Despite how long he'd looked at Ronan and saw Ronan looking back.
He could breathe when he was with Ronan.
After a lifetime of too-little air, his lungs were suddenly full, and he still didn't quite know what to do with it.
"Good morning," Ronan muttered, comfortably close to Adam's good ear, as if he could hear Adam's thoughts. His fingers spread out, sliding across Adam's bare skin. He nosed behind Adam's ear; Adam could feel the slight flutter of his eyelashes. The movement sent electricity arching across his skin.
"Morning," he replied, voice slightly foreign in the early morning air. He pushed back further into Ronan, smiled when Ronan's arms slid further around him. Encompassing him.
As he lay there, warm and happy in Ronan's embrace, he exhaled. He was so lucky. They'd defeated Greenmantle, and awoken the sleepers, and Ronan was a dreamer, and Gansey was so beautifully alive, and here they were.
"Want to get breakfast?" Ronan asked, pressing his mouth to Adam's shoulder. "I know a place."
"Do you now?"
Ronan's answer was to flip Adam around and kiss him, slow and soft. "Yeah," he breathed.
Turns out that meant the old diner on Route 64. Adam hadn't been since he was a kid and his mom had worked there. She'd lost that job in a blaze of glory and Adam had dutifully never returned. Not that he’d have the funds to, anyway. It was weird to sit at a table with Ronan, legs tangled together, and remember being five years old sitting behind the counter.
Too many plates of pancakes and two milkshakes later, they were racing towards the Barns with every window down.
When he was younger, Adam had been obsessed with time loops. He'd examined the good and bad parts of every day and compared them to each other, forcing himself to pick a day that he could stomach repeating. He'd woken up in a cold sweat some mornings, afraid to know if he'd have to do yesterday over again.
He reached out to trace the edge of Ronan's tattoo stretching up the side of his neck. Ronan turned to smile at him. If he woke up tomorrow much too hot for late November, he wouldn't mind.