Chapter Text
Time passes in fits and starts because Kavinsky didn’t destroy the world after all.
Ronan officially drops out of Aglionby, signing the paperwork and everything. It begins the biggest fight that he and Gansey have ever had and unfortunately coincides with Ronan moving back into the Barns via some legal f*ckery, which Adam knows has Gansey in an absolute tailspin. He drives to St. Agnes more than ever, but always calls before coming in case Ronan is already there (which he is, at least half the time). When Gansey does come over, their conversation inevitably draws back to Ronan despite their predilection for other topics.
For instance, the gap year Gansey and Blue have decided they’re taking: their mad-dash idea of going cross-country with Henry Cheng. Apparently they’d become good friends sometime while Adam was in his own separate universe with Ronan Lynch. And also exploring Cabeswater, which Gansey finally discovered as winter bit on autumn’s heels. It is a living, breathing organism, all dream-stuff in the real world. Always, Glendower: the search for the missing king, the search for answers, the search for why things happened the way they happened. Adam’s pretty sure Gansey thinks he can save Noah Czerny’s unlife, because Gansey has never met a lost cause he didn’t like.
And then comes Ronan. Always Ronan. He has no idea what he’s throwing away, Adam and The things I’ve done to keep him from getting kicked out and He never listens to anybody and He’s going to regret it in five, ten years, but the worst thing is he doesn’t even seem to care.
Adam usually lets Gansey run out of steam, talk himself into circles in his perfect politician speak. But something snaps in him tonight, particularly towards Gansey’s oblique reference to the things that he’s done—by which he means money; Gansey knows how to solve problems with money. He says, “So what?”
Gansey stops pacing and looks at Adam, who’s sitting on his desk with his feet on the chair. Gansey’s eyes are bright and hard, hair tousled from having run his hands so frequently through it. “What do you mean, So what? Ronan’s dropping out of high school, Adam. High school.”
“I know.”
“He’s making a mistake,” Gansey snaps, each word harshly punctuated with a drawn in breath.
“Either it’s a mistake or it isn’t,” Adam says, already tired of this. He shouldn’t have said anything and let Ronan eat this sh*t. “He’ll get a GED or he won’t. Jesus Christ, Gansey.”
“So you’re enabling him.” Gansey throws his hands up in the air. Adam laughs at that, a disbelieving switchblade sound, but Gansey says over it, “That’s what you’re doing, Adam. You’re letting him screw up his own future.”
Adam lets his feet slide from the seat to dangle in the open air. He feels fury clawing up his throat now, an instinctive bone-deep urge to shout and scream surging inside him like misused ley energy, but he calmly picks it apart until he can breathe again. He doesn’t have to be ruled by flare-ups of rage. “You’re such a hypocrite,” he finally says, his fists loosening until his fingers lazily sprawl on his desk. He leans back. “You’re the one screwing up your future with bribery charges, Gansey.”
Gansey, who never officially disclosed that this is what he’d done, flinches. In the light, the slopes of his cheekbones and ridge of his nose look harsher. Adam doesn’t blink, legs swaying, and Gansey exhales all at once, shoulders collapsing. “I just want to help him.”
Adam bides his time, collecting his own patience. Gansey is worth it. “He’s going to be okay.”
“He tried to kill himself,” Gansey says. He rubs his face, lips thinning and spasming in a way that’s unlike him. “We both know that’s what really happened. Magically induced suicide. And now he’s leaving for the Barns, and quitting school, and getting his hands dirty in his father’s old business.” He leans on Adam’s bed; even in this moment of internal wilderness, there is an artfulness to the way Gansey positions himself, ever aware of the constant watcher. He’s traded in polo shirts for longer sleeves, but they’re bunched at his elbows, shadows sloping over the rucked up fabric. “And his relationship with you has gone from zero to one hundred almost instantaneously, and…”
He notices that Adam has gone very still and says, “Don’t be upset.”
Adam doesn’t say anything. He just glares at him.
Gansey winces and gets up, taking a few steps forward. “Come on, Adam.” His tone is entreating, but that just pisses Adam off more. Like Adam’s the overemotional one and Gansey’s just being calm and reasonable and objective. “You know what he’s like. I just don’t want him to get hurt.”
“Sometimes,” Adam says, getting off the desk, the line between his unblinking glare and Gansey’s wincing face unbroken through the motion, “life hurts, Gansey. Sorry that I’m such a red flag.” His mouth moves around the lacerating ribbon of a silent laugh. His heart is a belltower. “Strike that. I’m not actually sorry.”
“That is so unfair.”
“And if that’s what you really think, maybe you should leave.”
Gansey doesn’t leave. He stays right in place, his hearth-warm eyes watching Adam carefully. He runs a finger across his lower lip, a scholarly and considering gesture that has Adam feeling like a caged animal at a zoo. “I don’t think you’re a red flag,” he says. His shoulders sink. “You should’ve seen him this summer, Adam. He was barely alive.”
“I know.” Adam tries to imagine a version of events where he and Ronan hadn’t forsaken each other after the wake and finds that he can’t. He needed time. Adam’s pretty sure he was barely alive this summer too. “Ronan’s going to be okay, Gansey. Believe me or don’t. Trust me or don’t.”
“Of course I trust you.”
“You have to let him try,” Adam says, narrowly avoiding, You have to let him go. He’s not trying to put Gansey into cardiac arrest, after all. And it might be sh*tty of Adam to make this linkage, but he can’t help but think of how Niall would make Ronan’s obsession with Adam a problem that Adam was responsible for. Niall must’ve known that if he told Ronan that he ought to stay away from Adam, it might’ve started World War Three. He must’ve known because so much of Ronan was Niall. So it was always Adam who was chastised.
Adam says, voice a little frayed, “You have to let him strike out on his own. You have to.”
Gansey sighs and looks away. When he does collect himself, he says with a rueful, half-bitter smile, “I guess that’s not really up to me, anyway. Ronan’s going to do whatever he wants.”
Adam snorts, and Gansey looks relieved at that break of sound. “Talk to him. Deal with it.”
Gansey nods and rubs his face again, hands underneath his glasses to press against his eyes. “I thought it would fix it,” he says nonsensically. When Adam co*cks his head, Gansey walks up beside him and leans against the desk with him. They both look at and through the slanted wall, intimately aware of the other. They are a study in opposites—Gansey, fine and fond, Adam, tense and faded. They are headed in very different directions after graduation. “Finding Cabeswater.”
“Finding Cabeswater means waking Aurora,” says Adam. “It fixed something.” Adam sighs and knocks his shoulder against Gansey’s. “Have you thought about catacombs underneath Cabeswater, by the way? They would’ve buried him underground.”
It’s a shameless invitation for Gansey to talk at length about historical Welsh funeral rituals, which Gansey gratefully accepts with a white knuckle grip. Adam is very fond of Gansey, of his ridiculous shirts and his all-American smile and his sleepless nights filled with obsession. How awful and astonishing he is. What a triumphant set the four of them all make.
Gansey isn’t his only visitor.
Declan doesn’t really come over. It was agreed that they’d take care of business at the Barns because the Barns are no longer too innocent for Niall’s work. It’s a strange déjà vu, for files of ancient deals and owed favors and dark connections to be spilled out in the open on the table of the living room. Like unearthing a grave and putting the rotting innards on display in a museum for children to pretend to throw up at. Adam has an ingrained reaction to keep it all hidden, keep it private, but he’s biting that instinct down because he doesn’t trust it anymore.
So he’s surprised when Declan loudly knocks on his door and practically barges in when Adam opens it.
“What the f*ck’s wrong with you?” he demands, and then he sees the haze in Declan’s half-lidded, red-rimmed eyes and the general rumpled state of his suit. It’s like Declan put both himself and his nice suit through an unkind washing machine. His curls are disheveled from their usual perfect coif, his skin sallow with the bags underneath his eyes punched in like bruises. More damning is the half-empty bottle in his hand. “Oh. Don’t tell me you drove here wasted.”
“Nope,” Declan says, kicking off his shoes. The whole of the situation is profoundly not Declanlike. He practically claws the tie from his neck and holds it limply in his other hand. He stands there in the middle of Adam’s small apartment, looking around without really registering any of it. Adam waits by the door with a raised eyebrow until Declan finally mutters, “Got wasted in the parking lot.”
Adam knows that Ronan and Matthew took Aurora to Cabeswater today. This could not be unrelated. “Why are you here, Declan?”
Declan says, small, “I dunno.”
“You could’ve gone with them.”
Declan barks a loud laugh at that, which startles Adam. Declan is usually tightly controlled, displeasure merely hinted at in the shift of his mouth and the flare in his eyes. Today he is inside out, the bone and meat of his innards all exposed. Adam can’t quite get used to it. “No, I couldn’t have.” He takes a swig from the bottle and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his suit jacket. His knees buckle, but he doesn’t go anywhere. “She’s not my mother, Adam. I’m not going with the lie anymore. I’m not.”
Adam observes him for a while, tossing and turning the sight in front of him over in his own mind. He wonders if he and Ronan had another fight. Whether other sh*t had fed into a colossally terrible day. Then he sighs. “Lay down.”
There’s no space for a couch at St. Agnes, so he obviously means the bed. Declan looks at it with a complicated expression until Adam walks up to him and slips the alcohol from his clasped fingers without fear. He turns and places it on the table as he passes into the kitchen, busying himself with turning off the stove and pouring a glass of water. By the time he’s back, Declan is laying in his bed stiffly; his whole body is tight, ready to jolt toward the exit point.
He puts the water on the side table and sits beside Declan, opening a textbook across his thighs.
The lack of attention to his own unmade state seems to settle Declan somewhat, because he grabs the water and finishes it all in one quick go. Declan moves to get up, but he must be even more wasted than Adam thought because he stumbles and falls over Adam's knees, his shoulders hitting Adam’s lap. “f*ck,” he snarls, stumbling to get up.
Adam says, half-angry at himself because Lynches are a bad habit he just can’t kick and half-concerned that Declan might wander off and hurt himself, “Stay.”
Declan freezes, breath choked. He doesn’t move at all for a second, looking up at Adam. When Adam narrows his eyes expectantly, Declan slumps and commits to the posture, head on Adam’s lap. Everything about it is both uncanny and familiar. When they were younger, Adam remembers sometimes falling asleep like this. When he would black out after scrying or working on the ley line, it was Declan who would bother to wait for him to wake up. Adam would rouse from sleep with a blanket he didn’t remember wearing before he’d crashed, maybe curled into Declan’s side. He was a starved child looking for heat, and they were in the same sh*t situation.
Adam awkwardly pats Declan’s head, smoothing some of his curls back. He remembers when Ronan looked a little closer to this.
Declan’s shoulders are shaking, but he doesn’t say anything for a while. Adam doesn’t say much either, apart from It’s okay every now and then. Declan’s faced away from him, his breaths uneven and a little panicked. He finally says, “Dad took me away when Mom got mad. She could get really mad, Adam.”
Not Aurora, the perfect dollhouse dream-wife. Declan is talking about whatever came before Aurora—whatever got away from the Barns and made Niall hate the world even more than he already did.
“I figured out she was a dream when Ronan threw a baseball in the house. It fell into an open cabinet. He broke her entire teacup set and she just cleaned it up.” Declan’s words, slurred and wet, remind Adam of a babbling brook, running water rippling over exposed stone and towards gravity. Even a professional liar’s words eventually trace back to the truth. “Dad made him apologize, and she just laughed. Can you imagine that? It was her favorite set.”
Adam can’t imagine any of it.
“I knew then that Dad replaced Mom. And he’d replace me if he wanted to.” Declan laughs, the sound choked. Adam rests his hand on the crown of his head, and Declan lets all the air out of his lungs. “I mean, I guess he did. Look at Ronan.”
Adam doesn’t say anything. What’s there to say? He and Declan are the same type of grifters, because it’s way easier to pretend you don’t want something than to admit that you’re the one who’s unwanted. They are the dirty grain in someone else’s photograph.
Declan says into Adam’s denim, “They have no idea how empty Aurora is. They have no chance; there’s nothing to compare it to ’cause Dad didn’t like other people. So I’m the crazy one who hates our poor, comatose mother.” His breath quickens. “I couldn’t stop them.”
“Ronan and Matthew?”
Declan shakes his head.
“Who, Declan?” Adam asks, voice more pointed than it has to be.
“Dad,” Declan says immediately. His shoulders draw in tightly, shaking a little. “Always Dad. Dad above everyone else.” He doesn’t really breathe for a second. “Both of them, I guess. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t do anything.”
Adam begins to piece together the woman who’d come before Aurora Lynch. “You were just a kid,” he says. Matthew and Ronan were born close after Declan; there’s no way Declan could’ve been old enough to have done anything. Whatever anything was. “It’s not your fault.”
Declan replies, “We were never kids, you and I. So, yeah, it was.”
“sh*t, Declan.” He wonders if he should call Ronan over, but that might just lead into another fight. He pats the back of Declan’s head again, trying to remember how Declan had done it when Adam was much younger and rawer. The watch feels heavy around his wrist.
Declan sounds very far away. “I think he made Aurora because he didn’t want to share Ronan with anyone else. It’s kind of what he did to you too, when he killed your old man.” Adam tenses. “He killed every part of you that didn’t belong to him. I think—yeah. Yeah.” He nods to himself. “That’s about as close as Dad ever got to love.”
When Adam is silent, Declan slurs, “He made me wait in the car while he dug the hole. When he dropped the corpse, he tossed me the shovel and said it was my turn.” His muffled giggles are about the most tragic thing that Adam’s ever heard. “I remember. He told me: Burying it’s the easy part.”
“I wish you told me this when you were sober.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Adam presses back his curls. There is a sting to this that goes along with the comfort: the quiet humiliation of it that will follow Declan when he wakes up. Adam’s not sure he and Declan know how to interact without it hurting at least a little. “I forgive you for not telling me.”
Declan doesn’t say anything else. Adam realizes later, as the rise and fall of his back solidifies into a slow and even pattern, that he’s knocked out.
This is going to keep happening. If he goes down the road he wants to go down, these stones will keep upturning on him, violent secrets spilling lush and fresh into the open, because Niall Lynch is dead and the world has kept spinning. This is his poison to choke down.
Equals, Ronan promised. Adam has no idea what that even looks like.
He calls Ronan, who picks up immediately. Adam has to bite down a smile when Ronan says, all casual, “What’s up?” There’s a rare lightness lifting Ronan’s tone; clearly the trip to wake Aurora had gone as he’d hoped it would.
Adam says anyway, “How’d it go?”
“She’s back,” Ronan says. There’s movement in the background. Adam closes his eyes and imagines Ronan around the Barns, picking up broken furniture or wiping down dusty windows, cleaning it out like he said he would. “Cabeswater built her a house filled with flowers, real fairytale sh*t. Matthew just about cried like a baby; he was always her favorite. You should see her.”
“Yeah,” Adam agrees. “Hey, I’m coming over.” This is rare. He usually asks permission.
Ronan says, “Oh?” There’s a suggestive arc to the way he says it.
“Declan’s at St. Agnes.” Adam pauses, but Ronan doesn’t say anything. He looks down at the eldest Lynch and sighs. “He was drunk and fell asleep, so I’m going to drop him off in his car. If you’re gonna have a Lynch pissing match when he gets home about Aurora or me or whatever else you’re fighting about, do it outside with all the other animals.”
“He’s plastered,” Ronan repeats in his own way of framing, “and knocked out. Holy sh*t. We’re talking about the same Declan, right? Boring future Wall Street sellout Declan?”
“He’s f*cked up,” Adam says.
Ronan sneers. “He’d rather get wasted than wake up Mom? Prick.”
“Don’t get me involved,” Adam warns, a laugh stirring underneath his words. “I won’t come over. Declan will stay the night on your bedroll, and come morning he’ll have me convinced you’re a total pissbaby with no redeeming qualities after all.” Adam likes playing with Ronan too much, probably. “He’ll become my new favorite Lynch.”
“f*ck,” Ronan says, quick and loud, which makes Adam grin uncontrollably. He holds the phone tighter, like it’s Ronan’s hand or the crook of Ronan’s elbow or the back of Ronan’s neck. Any part of Ronan, really. “sh*t. I mean. Come over. Please?”
Adam likes it when Ronan says please. He likes it a lot. “You should shower before I get there,” he says and hangs up the phone.
He shakes Declan until Declan rouses. Then he laboriously drags him into the Volvo, fishing the keys out of his pocket. Declan mumbles a bleary-eyed curse as Adam forces the seatbelt on him. Then Adam sits behind the wheel, takes pity on Declan and lowers the windows, and drives in the dusty night to Singer’s Falls. He’s had this stretch of highway memorized for years.
Ronan is waiting on the porch, draped in a black tank top and ripped jeans, feet bare and pale. He gets up when he sees the Volvo, setting down the gas lamp on the bench. It casts long yellow shadows over the driveway. He whistles as Adam gets out, so Adam offers a grinning middle finger. When Adam drags Declan out, Ronan jumps onto the driveway and cackles as he swipes an arm around Declan’s midsection, helping Adam drag him into the house. “Jesus Christ, you weren’t kidding.”
“Did you fight or something?”
Ronan shrugs as they help Declan up the stairs. “I mean, yeah. But we fight all the time. He’s never run off to St. Agnes before. Right?” He looks suddenly anxious, head co*cked to peer at Adam over Declan’s slumped neck, so Adam shakes his head. The smug grin works back onto his face, as though the momentary hesitancy never happened. As though he’s never had a moment of hesitancy in his entire life. “We should put some sunglasses on him and Weekend at Bernie’s it.”
“You’re such an ass.” Ronan lifts his leg to turn the door knob to Declan’s childhood room with his foot before lazily kicking it open. Everything looks dusty and well kept, the desk clean and the books organized on the shelves. There is no hint of the dreamt knick-knacks all over the rest of the house, the whole of it profoundly austere. The windows are covered by the curtained blinds. “I forgot he lives like a monk.” He pauses, a small smirk warping his mouth. Adam is so fond of him. “Except for the celibacy part.”
They dump him onto the bed. When Adam tosses a blanket over him, Ronan shoots a curious look at him that Adam ignores.
“Sit outside with me?” asks Ronan when Adam closes Declan’s door behind them.
Adam studies him, mostly for the pleasure of looking at him. His jaw is dark with days-old scruff, his hair growing out a little too. Dark curls curve underneath his ears. There are bags underneath his eyes, but a content air about him. The tank top flatters him, snug around his lithe, long-limbed frame. “Okay,” he says. “If there’s too many mosquitoes, I’m sacrificing you to the buzzards to save my own skin.”
Ronan tangles his fingers in Adam’s and yanks him along, looking over his shoulder as Adam fumbles forward over a loose floorboard. Adam feels the rake of Ronan’s eyes over his body. “Worth it.”
“Where’s Matthew, anyway?”
“In his room,” Ronan yawns. “He was tired. Long-ass day, you know?”
Adam does know. They settle on the bench, everything mysterious and dark in the dead hours at the Barns. Anything could happen here, and not a soul would know. Adam can see the shapes of faintly sleeping cows, protruding from the grasses like centuries-old landmarks. He’s gotten used to their sleeping states. It’s like they’ve always been unconscious, a thought he knows that Ronan would hate.
Ronan leans over, across the gas lamp between them, and kisses Adam twice. The first one is chaste, a quiet brush of their lips. The second is greedy and long, a hand on the inside of Adam’s thigh as Ronan pulls a quiet groan from Adam’s mouth. Adam is blinking, mouth parted and gasping, everything on his face demanding to know why the hell Ronan stopped, when Ronan lifts his ass off the bench just enough to pull a folded page from his back pocket. He throws himself back down, bench whining underneath him, and tosses the page to Adam.
“What’s this?” Adam asks.
“Our section of the will.”
Adam feels his face immediately flinch into a glower towards Ronan, eyes bright and flaring, mouth twisted with hurt. “I didn’t think I was being subtle,” he hisses, staring at the folded page on his lap. Shame wells in his throat, face gone hot and blank. He has to breathe a few good times to choke words through the block. “What makes you think I ever wanted to read those words again?”
Like he could ever forget them. To Adam, I leave the sum of $25,010. Feed the dog, kids!
“Just read it.” Ronan looks at him, an arm languidly hanging on the back of the bench. His other hand reaches for Adam’s, a thumb tracing the scar on Adam’s palm that Adam’s been reopening for years. In the haunting yellow-tinted light, he looks older, a more certain version of himself. “Trust me.”
It’s terrifying, how in love with Ronan Lynch he is. It’s a tornado that lifts everything up, the whole world weightless and spinning. He spent ten years living in a dusty trailer park, and the eye of the storm was just thirty minutes away.
Adam opens the letter, smoothing out the creases left by the folds. He feels unusually scattered. Ronan keeps touching his scar, his thumb nudging underneath the metallic chain of his watch.
There it is, typed, right under the Lynch brothers’ promised $3 million each:
To Adam Parrish, I leave Ronan Lynch.
Adam stares at it: the impossible dreamt-up will.
Ronan overwrote Niall. Ronan took what Niall offered them and completely defaced it, like pissing on a stop sign.
“That’s how I got the Barns back,” Ronan says, lifting Adam’s hand. He kisses his palm, open lips to the scar like he’s licking up the blood that spilled from a long time ago. Adam can feel his own breath going ragged as he’s swept away, ever floating. He might never touch the ground again. “Took back Dad’s stupid wording about banning us for life.”
“You’re mine?” Adam asks. He leans closer, and his knee bumps against the gas lamp.
Ronan swears and sets the gas lamp at his feet, so Adam admires the slope of his neck as it leads into his back, all lanky and broad. When Ronan looks back up, something in Adam’s heady stare has his face saturate pink and his wet mouth part. His lips look ripe to Adam somehow, some precious thing whose taste he has chased for years.
Adam puts a hand on the back of his neck and pulls him forward, mapping the soft prickle of his hair. “You’re mine,” he says. He kisses Ronan, a wet slide of shared breath and chasing tongue, and kisses him some more. Kisses him forever.
At some point, they fumble inside. Adam’s legs hit the arm of the couch in the living room, and he lets himself fall back, pulling Ronan over him like a duvet. Ronan smirks and throws a pillow at his face, sprawled over Adam’s entire body, arms over chest, legs entangled with legs. Adam feels young in a way he’s never really felt before as Ronan mouths his neck, teeth sinking into his pulse.
He puts a finger on Ronan’s mouth when Ronan tries to kiss him again.
“No?” Ronan wonders, hands resettling on Adam’s arms.
Adam holds out his wrist where the watch is still clasped. The red clockface is a violent interruption of the paler, more faded colors that Adam usually favors, and Adam realizes just how huge and blocky it looks on his wiry wrist. He got used to house arrest. “Take it off,” he says.
Ronan makes quick work of it; when it’s off, Adam feels light. He waves his hand around and flexes his wrist. Ronan watches his movement and then captures his traveling hand in the air with both of his own, a flytrap holding its prey very close. He holds Adam’s wrist right by his face, tanned skin against the harsh slant of his jaw, and licks the soft veins of the previously hidden skin.
“You can kiss me now,” Adam says.
Ronan snickers into his skin. “Demanding.” He lowers himself, straddling Adam’s waist. “Am I really your favorite Lynch?”
Adam lets out a peal of quiet laughter, shaking underneath him. Ronan breathes over the wet hickey he’d left on Adam’s neck, an ineffective reprimand that makes Adam shiver. His mouth still twitches uncontrollably. “Yeah,” he says. He strokes the back of Ronan’s head, eyes closing as Ronan kisses his jaw and then the corner of his mouth. “You’re so jealous and competitive.” Ronan grumbles into his skin, nipping at his lower lip. “You’re my favorite Lynch. You’re my favorite.”
Ronan grins. Adam feels it rather than sees it. “So long as we both know it.”
They stumble into Ronan’s room. They wander into the kitchen for a snack. They check up on Matthew, who’s watching The Notebook on his laptop and texting a girl; Ronan gives horrific advice, and Adam throws Matthew’s pencil case at him while snorting, “You don’t even know what girls like! You’re gay!” Later, they check that Declan hasn’t choked to death in his sleep. Ronan flicks his forehead, and Declan drunkenly swipes at him.
The next morning, Ronan pushes Adam on the huge swing outside the house and jumps on the back of it, almost off-balancing the both of them.
They inhabit the house, unafraid.
Ronan tosses seeds in a swing that could only be described as violent while Declan types on his phone beside him. Concorde and Chainsaw battle it out with the pigeons of Boston, unlikely allies in this strange new terrain. Chainsaw, grown now, is much bigger than Concorde, but Ronan’s pretty sure that she’ll always be the little baby of the duo. Shrieking for attention, always.
“Declan,” Ronan says, sprawling on the bench, “that weird sound your phone makes when you type is what they use to torture people in hell. I’m about to lose my sh*t.”
Declan tosses him a scornful look. “You lose your sh*t when someone walks too slow on the sidewalk. You barely have your sh*t a good ninety percent of the time.” He looks swept together in his brogues and dark suit and brushed-back hair, ever the stark black-and-white photograph of propriety. Ronan is in loose dark trousers, a mostly-buttoned dress shirt, leather jacket and laced boots, a chunky mess of knotted leather bracelets around his wrists. They make up a strange pair.
Ronan glowers. “What time is it?”
“11:28.”
Ronan groans, head against the top of the bench. Two more minutes, he thinks. What’s two more minutes after months on months? You can do two minutes. He chews his leather bands, yanking at them when a particular wave of impatience hits him.
“Mother Mary,” Declan says.
Ronan gives him the middle finger.
Finally, students pour out from the tall red brick building behind them, conversations about midterms and grades and extracurriculars filling the crisp mid-afternoon air. Ronan gets up and looks around, the birds fluttering to follow. Concorde trills the chorus to “Space Oddity” with excitement, and a few heads turn to look at them. Ronan glares until the gawking resides, running after the musical bird.
He almost trips into Adam, who grabs his shoulder at the last second and laughs, “Settle down, I’m right here, Ronan.”
Ronan looks down at the version of Adam Parrish that exists at Harvard: nice trousers and a white shirt with an aged tweed jacket that neatly slots over his frame. His accent is coolly refined, the Henrietta stretch completely murdered until they get out of these particular acres of land. His hair is still familiar, self-cut and therefore endearingly uneven in places. His hand is perched on a messenger bag, the other settled on Ronan’s chest.
The hands are always the most familiar. Ronan wraps his fingers into Adam’s, calluses against calluses, scars against scars. He’s had a few visits to get used to the intricately created facade of Adam’s persona at Harvard, and his hands—plus the soft way he says Ronan and means what he says—are always what bring Ronan back.
“Took you long enough,” Ronan says. “I’m tired of Declan.”
“Poor baby.” He kisses Ronan, hand drifting to Ronan’s cheek. Ronan feels warm and alive underneath his touch, aware of every vein in his body. If he could inject Adam into him, he would. “You’re driving, by the way. We’ve lost enough time, but I need to make a detour.”
“Yeah?” Ronan grabs Adam’s bag and slopes it over his shoulder, strap around his chest. He likes the way Adam’s eyes linger. “What for?”
“You have my clothes, right?” Ronan nods. “I’d rather not change in these bathrooms. My roommate saw a rat the other day, and it always smells like piss. There’s a building on the other side of campus that’s breathable, and it’s on the way to the Fairy Market anyway.”
“Change in the car,” Ronan says. “Striptease.”
Adam bumps his shoulder against Ronan’s, grinning crookedly. He waves at Declan, who immediately walks up to the BMW and waits expectantly at the passenger seat. “Then other people would see,” he says, voice a low and pleasant hum, arm a hot press against Ronan’s. The crisp, cold light does wonders for him, hair light enough that it looks almost blond. Ronan feels a stab of jealousy for all the Harvard assholes who get to hang with him every day. “I don’t think you want that.”
No, Ronan doesn’t want that. “How was the midterm, anyway?”
“Aced it,” Adam says, all casual. His eyes are bright with victory, though, satisfaction laced in the content slant of his shoulders and languid lift of his mouth.
Ronan smirks. The three of them get into the BMW and slam the doors shut almost simultaneously.
The conversation immediately turns to business, but Ronan doesn’t mind it at all, because this time he’s actually an active participant. They talk about clients and the list of outstanding bullsh*t Niall left them, their real inheritance, that gets smaller every year. A decision is creeping up on them: whether to continue when the affairs are settled or to prioritize their other lives: studying at Harvard, and interning at Washington, and looking for other dreamers. They’re going to have to make that choice soon, all or nothing, in or out.
Ronan’s half-afraid to step out of it because it feels like the last iteration of Niall Lynch’s death.
They park outside a library, and Adam jumps out of the car. The two of them follow, still talking under their breath and going coldly quiet every time they pass anyone else. The bathroom is serendipitously empty, which is great because Ronan would rather not listen to a stranger sh*t themself. Ronan and Declan wait outside Adam’s stall, tossing around ideas about how to fulfill a particular favor Niall owed while undermining the power of the arcane object. No one who knows Niall Lynch should be trusted with anything too strong.
Adam changes behind the stall, intervening with his own thoughts now and then. Ronan tries not to get distracted when Adam tosses the tweed jacket over the top of the stall. By Declan’s rolled eyes, he’s sure he doesn’t succeed. At a certain point, Adam says, still behind the stall, “Declan. Get out.”
Declan frowns at the stall. “Why—oh.” He stops leaning on the side of the stall and shakes his head at the two of them, adjusting his suit jacket. “You both are disgusting.”
“I know,” Adam says. The impatience in his voice is electrifying, could burn to the touch. “Leave.”
Declan’s jaw twitches. He checks his watch. “You have fifteen minutes. I’m waiting at the Starbucks.”
Ronan cackles as Declan shuts the door behind them. He hears the lock shift and pushes open the door, seeing Adam standing there in a loose button-up, pale blue dress pants, a pale long coat, and monk shoes. His hair is artfully disheveled, his grin a little dangerous.
“Hi,” Ronan says.
“Did you miss me?” Adam asks.
Ronan loops his fingers around the belt loops of Adam’s pants and tugs him close, pressing against him. “Yes.” Ronan kisses him and lets himself be lowered down, down, down, all the way to his knees. He grins up at Adam, cheek pressed to this thigh.
“Show me,” Adam says, rubbing the back of his head.
They arrive at the Starbucks in exactly fifteen minutes.
The Morningstar Hotel will burn to dust tomorrow.
Today, though, it is a tall and decadent multi-storied glass structure that perfectly bounces back the pale blue sky and dreamy clouds, the mirror illusion only broken by the geometric grilles. The parking lot is filled with cars, some expensive and others ramshackle. It is a perfect twist of fortune that the Fairy Market is taking place in Boston this year, that the three of them could all come together. The air is stirring with possibility.
Declan offers the doorman a handkerchief, which he studies carefully. It’s obvious to anyone with eyes that Declan and Ronan are brothers. Adam offers his own handkerchief, brandishing it from his pocket with a swift motion.
“I know you’re with them,” says the doorman with a too-red smile.
Adam smiles and tucks it into his pocket again, not breaking eye contact at all. Ronan wonders what secrets Adam is pulling out of the air right now, what’s being whispered into his left ear from the ether that lingers beyond the rest of their vantage points.
The doorman looks away first.
They walk down the long stretch of the lobby, footfalls softened by the red carpet. The air smells of both cigarettes and saccharine perfume. This is Ronan’s second Fairy Market, and they always seem to smell strongly of specific notions, like they’re trying to hide something else, to smother and disorient the senses.
“Don’t make any promises,” Declan warns Ronan.
Ronan rolls his eyes. “Aye aye, Captain.” He squeezes Adam’s hand. “How long is your psychic thing?” The psychic thing is technically a total secret, but Adam told Ronan all about it over the phone last week. His voice had a frenetic, ricocheting energy underneath it, filled with lacy excitement at the notion of testing the total breadth of his magical ability. Ronan fell even more in love with him that night, and he hadn’t even thought it possible.
“Fifteen minutes, if it goes well,” Adam yawns, exposing the pearly white of his teeth. He hadn’t let Ronan mark up his neck and exposed collarbones because it would’ve been obvious in the button-up. “We don’t start for half an hour, though, so I’ll dick around with you. Look at the stuff.”
Ronan grumbles, “I should be there.” Adam’s got much more control over scrying than he used to, but the idea of him performing a ritual with other psychics with a tenuous connection to reality has him a little nervous. He raises his hand and bites a leather band aggressively.
“Barred entry.” Adam co*cks his head and watches him, eyes half-lidded and flared warm. “Don’t worry. If I need you, I’ll let you know. I don’t care about their rules.”
Declan’s mouth quirks into a thin smile.
They meander around the Fairy Market, looking at art and trinkets, weapons and creatures, trading conversations with strange people. They see a man whose snake tattoos travel around his body, hissing and snarling at any who pass him by. There’s a woman who holds her hand out, the eye on her palm lucid and blinking while the eyes on her face are milky white. They are passed by an ancient person who walks around with the litheness of a young adult in their prime.
All three of them get their fair eyeful of stares.
Ronan’s been in this long enough that everyone knows Niall Lynch’s prodigal son is even more powerful and much more of a bastard. Declan gets stopped in almost every room they enter, cards slipped into pockets, whispers of arrangements answered by a noncommittal, bland smile. The Lynches work in rumors and myths and legends. Only if they want to, though, and Niall’s sons are pickier with their associations than their departed father ever was.
Not as greedy as their old man, but just as hungry.
Adam is, at first glance, the oddball in their group: the pale specter to the Lynches’ dark shadows. Adam doesn’t do sessions at the Fairy Market as a general rule, preferring more structured and controlled dealings with the arcane world. When people ask for Adam Parrish, they’ve exhausted other options. They’re trying to speak with a dead loved one, or unravel a buried secret hidden in the family tree, or get rid of a violent decades-long haunting—something dark to that effect. It costs a small fortune because Adam’s always ready to walk away.
Ronan likes being here with Declan and Adam. For so long, his father cut him out of the magical world where things are dangerous and people got hurt. Yes, it’s perverse and bloody, but on the grounds of the ever-moving Fairy Market, Ronan doesn’t feel like a freak. He feels powerful and comfortable, alive in his own skin. He's a young man with a past, present, and a future. He's on speaking terms with both his brothers and has a boyfriend who not only likes him but actually trusts him.
How long has he dreamt of death and waited for things to finally start happening for him? Things are happening now.
“The brothers Lynch!” announces a very posh voice from behind them.
Ronan sees Adam and Declan trade an annoyed look and knows immediately this is one of his fathers’ old contacts that he has not yet had the dubious pleasure of meeting. They all turn to a sallow-faced older gentleman in a busy suit and delicate glasses; there are spots around his skin, dark and obvious. He’s clearly sick.
“Howard,” says Declan, adjusting his own cuff-links. “You’re looking well.”
Howard laughs; it is the same harsh sound of a knife over a counter. He eyes Adam briefly and then smirks to both Declan and Ronan, trying to make them both complicit in something. “Still mute, Parrish?”
Ronan takes a step forward.
Adam says, lifting a hand and shutting Ronan up with the simple gesture, “I was never mute.” He co*cks his head, hearing ear closer to the other man. “I just never had much to say to you in between your and Niall’s self-important circle-jerks.” Ronan exhales in a sudden laugh. “Declan was being polite, by the way. His mother raised an angel." His words are caustic and filled with lurid pretension. "You look like you caught an STD.”
“Oh, dear,” says Howard. He smiles too, this hard-shaped thing. “Luckily for the both of us, Niall Lynch—may his eternal soul rest in peace—ensured I’ll be around for a long, long time, won’t I?” Adam’s eyes are glittering and cold, his body still aside from quietly tucking his hands into his pale coat. Howard looks at Ronan then, probably blurring him and Niall in the midst of this confrontation. “You should leash him, Lynch. Believe it or not, he used to know his place.”
Declan’s face goes cold. “Let’s keep this pleasant, Howard. I have too much on my itinerary today to page in more unpleasantness.”
“Get f*cked,” Ronan adds, settling into a glower, the arm slung around Adam’s waist tightening and pinching in Adam’s coat. There are politics to these things, so Ronan cuts himself off before he really winds himself up. If Adam wants him to shut the f*ck up, he’ll shut the f*ck up. Whatever. Adam knows Ronan isn’t above beating the sh*t out of an old guy.
“Seriously?” Howard demands.
Adam looks up at Ronan. His smile is positively fiendish, and Ronan feels part of the world’s greatest inside joke. “Don’t kill him,” he says, thumb caressing Ronan’s cheek.
Howard stares.
Adam looks back at him, co*cking his head. He is listening to the more quiet praxes of existence. “You’re going to have a very miserable two centuries,” he says. “And I can’t even say that I’m excited to see it, because I’m going to forget all about it the second that we turn around.” Adam leans into Ronan, not even looking at Howard anymore. He turns the two of them around, letting Ronan be his wall. “Let’s go.”
They feel Howard's eyes drilling into their backs before he whirls on Declan. His problem now.
“You were holding that in for a while,” Ronan says, the lightness in his voice a perverse giggle.
“Like four years,” Adam says.
“What a creep.”
“Him or me?”
At this, Ronan snickers again. The arm around Adam slides lower, Ronan’s hand tucking into Adam’s pocket. Sometimes he feels like they’re one mangled organism instead of two, walking around with half the limbs and half the brains that God gave them. Other times, Adam is so immediately apart from himself—a breath of bloody, practical magic that could’ve never come from the likes of Niall or Ronan—and it stuns him every time that he should get to have this, after everything that’s happened.
“You’re perfect,” Ronan decides, for the thousandth time.
Adam says, a hot breath in his ear, “You’re biased.”
“Guilty.”
“That, you definitely are.” Adam’s grinning. He grins a lot these days.
Ronan lifts his other hand and raises Adam’s wrist, kissing the inside of it with total reverence. Over the years, Ronan has discovered that it’s a mythical spot for Adam, which is all well and good because every part of Adam is mythical to Ronan. This is ceremony; this is tribute.
“I love doing this with you,” Adam says, voice low.
“Scaring the sh*t out of people?”
Adam shakes his head. Then he pauses to consider, and then shakes his head again. His face is pink and soft in a way that it never is with anyone else. “That and everything else.” He waves his hand, fingers angular and boyish and lovely. “I mean, getting to be an adult with you. Growing up with you. Calling you up whenever I feel like it.”
“I think we earned it.” Ronan’s fingers curl around Adam’s, mapping out the width and shape of them for the millionth time. Fingertips graze the delicate skin over bone. Usually, when he observes something with this much care, he’s trying to bring something back from his dreams.
Adam nods, at once co*cksure and serious. “I think you’re right.”
Only, this isn’t a dream that he is ricocheting through, ideas spinning out in an ambiguous dreamscape. This isn’t a timeless heaven with a mysterious hand reaching out towards him, everything perfect, understanding infinite.
This is reality.
So they live happily.
