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Adam is leant up against the doorframe of the upstairs washroom at Fox Way, watching. He shifts his weight and the doorframe moves smooth and soft against the bare skin of his arm and the side of his head where he leans against it; the wood is old, old, worn down like sand and layered in decades of ill-planned paint choices. Now, it’s painted a pale blue over a noisy vermillion that peaks through scratches and at the very corners of the wood.
The tap is as old as the wood — it protests noisily when Ronan twists his wrist to turn it on. He cups his hands together and Adam watches, arms crossed, silent, as the water weakly fills them up and splashes the sink as he pulls his hands apart to let it all go down the drain. He presses his hands together again and this time brings the water to his face.
Something in Adam itches to touch, to help, to wipe away the black from Ronan’s skin. He holds himself still. Contained.
They are tucked away at the top of the rickety stairs, away from Gansey — freshly reborn — and Blue and Henry and Maura and Calla and Orphan Girl, the last of which Adam believes is asleep under a couch. The party had packed up and relocated from that bloody stretch of highway to Fox Way, a shallow attempt to regroup, deliberate, discuss. It has served so far as a chance to wipe the blood and muck from everyone’s skin, have a glass of water, stare off at the wall for a while. A precursory clean-up before they make decisions about the rest of the night.
Blue had lead Adam and Ronan upstairs and shown them where the necessary supplies were housed; now, Ronan holds a hand towel under the tap and presses it to his face. He scrubs at where the black had most thickly accumulated: all around his nostrils and ears, mostly. Tears had tracked some of it down around his mouth and onto his chin. He has to wet the towel under the tap a couple more times to get it all off, clean as it’s going to get without a long shower. The process leaves his skin red and irritated and Adam’s wishing there was something quick and cold that he could rub into Ronan’s skin to soothe.
“Can I have a turn?” Adam asks, unfolding his arms from his chest, pushing himself off the doorframe. Ronan glances at him, as though to get a look at the damage, then rings out the towel and wets it again. Instead of passing it to Adam he presses it to his face himself. The weight and feel of Ronan’s hand at Adam’s jaw is familiar, now, gentle as it was the night before. He holds Adam still as he raises the towel to clean up the blood and dirt and unmaking and whatever else had made its way onto Adam’s skin.
He lets Ronan stand above him, inspecting the red marks he’d gouged into his own skin. “You should clean that,” Ronan says, finally. His eyebrows are knitted together in messily disguised concern.
“I thought you were,” Adam says.
Ronan humphs. Adam stays silent. Ronan does something that looks like a discreet eye roll and uncaps the rubbing alcohol Blue had pulled out. This touch is gentler than before, the careful pressure of the cloth against his skin almost a comfort. Adam focuses on Ronan’s face, his concentration, and he can barely feel the sting.
Ronan sets the towel down, satisfied with his work, and looks at Adam. It is the looking-equivalent of his smoker’s breath: everything slow, everything intentional. Adam does his best to look back. And when he has his fill of looking he leans forward, uncontaining himself. It’s a mirror of earlier: Adam’s head on Ronan’s shoulder, holding each other up, his hands no longer tied behind his back but limp at his sides.
Now, everything is more. Now, death is lurking only behind them instead of ahead. In the Fox Way washroom, the door open and the smooth paint of the doorframe and the leaky tap drip drip dripping everything is now. Adam leans his head on Ronan’s shoulder and presses his face into Ronan’s warm neck and in the same moment Ronan inhales, the opposite of slow, the opposite of intentional. Ronan’s hands are tentative at Adam’s wrists, the tips of his fingers running anxiously up his arms and then down before, finally, braiding their fingers together.
What are we going to do? Adam wants to say. But this doesn’t feel like a time for speaking. Ronan’s head is too heavy against his for that.
They descend, eventually, and join everyone where they’ve gathered in the kitchen. Maura had pulled out Persephone’s last pie from the freezer — a peach something — while they had been off writing the climax of their story and now it sits, still in the pie tin, on a dinner plate. Sliced neatly into eight pieces. A stack of mismatched dessert plates towers on one side of it, a pile of forks on the other.
Ronan and Adam slide into the two seats together left for them, between Gansey and Calla. Gansey says, “You look better,” after a brief inspection of Adam and Ronan’s faces.
“You too, Dick,” Ronan says, which is true because the Dick in question had been dead. But he didn’t look it; he was the best looking recently deceased person Adam had ever seen. Not that he’d seen many.
Gansey doesn’t seem to be any less Gansey than usual. He has his wireframes, somehow, and his hair is only mildly out of place. The skin under his eyes is dark violet, giving away his exhaustion. Adam’s sure he looks similar.
Blue and Ronan had looked the worst out of them: Blue’s blood had gone dark and tacky on the side of her face where the Demon had pulled her stitches out by Adam’s hand, Ronan’s face covered in black unmaking and his neck already bruising dark and bloody purple.
“Alright,” Maura says, leaning between Ronan and Adam to set a pot of something steaming down in front of them. She flops down in the empty chair on the other side of Calla. “This is the least footy thing I could find, because I feel bad for you and peppermint is good for the brain. Possibly. Enjoy the tea, enjoy the pie, etc.” She extricates a slice of pie for herself, two fingers light on its top to give the illusion of holding it in place. She does the same for Calla, pours two cups of tea. “Calla, this is our exit.” She eyes Blue and Adam knows a conversation is held there.
Blue’s cleaned up again, in the space of time since Adam’s last seen her. Her stitches are ragged and she will need to go back to the hospital tonight, likely, but the blood has been wiped bleach-clean off her skin.
The pie is so good Adam might cry. Maybe that’s the exhaustion and recent trauma talking, but it’s something peachy and sweet and maybe a bit bourbony and it melts down Adam’s throat. The second piece goes down slicker than the first.
Adam leaves most of the talking to Gansey and Blue and Henry. He’s busy with his pie and trying to shuffle his chair closer to Ronan’s without anyone noticing. And they don’t end up talking too much anyway — the theme of the evening seems to be an all-consuming feeling of being overwhelmed. So much has happened and yet so little.
So many hours of the day were lost and then found again, bleary and blurred. Night falls fast and even and none of them had slept through the night before. Gansey’s roped easily into spending the night with Blue at Fox Way after yawning a few times, under the safety and supervision of several psychics. Blue tells Henry and Ronan and Adam they’re welcome to stay too, but Henry’s to get back to Litchfield and Ronan’s going back to the Barns, he says. Adam thinks he’ll go with him. He tries to convey this to Gansey in a silent conversation via a significant look.
Adam waits to tell Ronan this until they’re sitting on the steps outside, their goodbyes delivered, the Orphan Girl already in the BMW’s backseat. The sky is long dark. The warm light streaming through the screen door behind them is enough for Adam to make out the barest details of Ronan’s face. He watches Ronan as he speaks.
“Don’t want to be alone?” Ronan asks. His tone is mocking, and Adam remembers only hours before, standing in the bathroom. “Or, wait. Don’t want to leave me alone.”
Adam doesn’t have the patience for this, not right now, not when the memory of them making out on the old, worn leather sofa is as fresh as death. He doesn’t want to argue. He’s too tired.
“Fine.” He gets up off the porch and feels his bones whine and shift and beg him to stand still and sit again but Adam is good at ignoring them. He starts to walk. “I’m going to St. Agnes.”
“You’re walking there?” Ronan calls when Adam makes it to the sidewalk. Adam keeps going. Takes two more steps. Behind him, he hears a small commotion on the porch stairs: them creaking warningly, Ronan’s fucking Christ, the hollow sound of his boots on wood, then the solid one of them on concrete. A hand on Adam’s wrist three slow, slow steps later, tugging him around. Adam only half understands Ronan’s expression; he looks nervous, almost. Not quite sure of something. “It’s gonna take you three fucking days to get there. Come on.”
Adam follows Ronan to the BMW and drops himself on the passenger seat. It feels nice to sit, but Adam won’t say it. Ronan starts the car. Puts it in gear. Does something a little magic with the clutch and the gas. They move.
Adam’s still jealous at how easy Ronan makes driving a stick look; Adam can do it just fine, just with none of the snarling energy Ronan imposes on the BMW when he changes gears. He makes it look like an angry, elegant art.
They make a turn at the end of the street. Ronan speeds past the left turn for St. Agnes and hurtles towards the highway like it’s a finish line, and Adam isn’t surprised. Ronan feels like a faraway object, vague and indiscrete, but Adam is unsurprised. He had allowed Adam to stay the night before, to sleep next to him in the BMW, and now he’s allowing Adam this. And Adam is so unsure of everything except that he is sure he wants this whirling thing with Ronan to work — he welcomes Ronan’s allowance.
Ronan doesn’t have any tells before he changes gear but Adam watches anyway because he knows it’s coming and there it is, smooth as the sky on a cloudless day, one foot off the gas and the other on the clutch and easy into fifth. They dive forward into black.
“I thought you were going to drop me off,” Adam says, quiet enough to not wake up the Orphan Girl. The Henrietta lights are far behind them now and everything is dark, only the headlights tracing the line of highway in front of them and the empty orange glow of the dashboard lights.
Ronan is silent for a second. Adam can see the outline of him against what little light there is, bringing his wrist up to his mouth and can hear more than see him chew on the leather there.
“Changed my mind.”
In Ronan’s language of half answers and whole truths, this is a cautious admission. This is Ronan wanting Adam at the Barns in not as many words. This is Ronan admitting to wanting Adam, carefully and circumspectly. This is a step forward, albeit a small one.
Adam takes the next. “Where do you want me to sleep?”
“God, wherever you fucking want. The sofa, Declan’s room, Matthew’s room, my mom and dad’s room if you’re twisted. Which I know you are. There’s always the barns too, if you really want to slum it.”
Adam feels his face go red. He doesn’t want to say this. “No, you know what I meant.”
Ronan glances at him, brows raised. There’s something in his expression that Adam doesn’t recognize, but it’s not malice. Something gentler. “Do I? How about we clarify for the class.”
When Adam doesn’t say anything, Ronan turns on the radio, volume down low. He fiddles with it for a second before it plays what he wants: something with more guitar than Adam’s usually subjected to when Ronan’s driving. It’s dark, though, darker than a lot of the other stuff Ronan listens to. Adam can’t make out too many of the lyrics; the ones he hears sound a lot like begging for forgiveness and understanding. Are you alive? the song asks. Does it still hurt? Adam answers yes to both questions.
Ronan barrels off the highway at the Singer’s Falls turnoff, not bothering with his signal. The highway is empty, anyway, at this hour of the night. They’re only a song or two away from the Barns now, Adam knows.
“I don’t want to play this game with you tonight,” Adam says over the music. Any night but this one. Not when he knows he doesn’t have to.
Ronan glances over. “I was never playing.”
They spend the last few minutes of the drive in silence, Adam listening to near noiseless sound of Ronan downshifting and then, a moment later, the gravel driveway crunching under the BMW’s wheels.
The car stops, slower than Adam is used to with Ronan at the wheel, and he closes his eyes. The car dings when Ronan’s door opens and stays that way, a friendly reminder to shut it. Adam listens to him murmuring to the Orphan Girl in the backseat, waking her up.
Ronan knocks at his window and Adam’s eyes flit open. He scowls, cracks open his door. “I’m coming, Jesus, move.” He unfolds himself out of the car and wanders toward the door after Ronan. The Orphan Girl trails a few steps behind, her eyes puffy and the side of her face red from where she had used the car door as a makeshift pillow.
Ronan climbs the steps up to the front porch slowly. He stands at the door for the second, digging in his pocket for something. He unearths an empty hand and drops it to his side. “Parrish,” he says. It sounds like he means something else.
Adam does not say anything. Waits for Ronan to continue.
“I can’t sleep yet. I’m going to climb a barn or some shit and you should come with. And then we can sleep.” Ronan pauses. Goes a little pink in the porch light that had flickered on when they pulled up. “In my room. If that’s what you want.”
“Sure,” Adam says easily, belying the way his stomach flipped at the prospect of sleeping with Ronan. “Can I borrow a jacket?”
Ronan looks at him, his face clear of everything except faint surprise. “Yeah. Of course. Let me — I’m gonna deal with the runt and you can do whatever. I’ll find you.”
Adam nods and Ronan nods back and then he twists the doorknob open and lets them in. Ronan inelegantly scoops Orphan Girl up by the armpits and takes her upstairs, to bed, Adam assumes. The fur on her legs had matted with dirt and some of the unmaking, and Ronan hasn’t quite figured out what to do with her yet — is he to look after her like she’s his daughter or sister or something or let her roam the barns like one of his other dream things? Ronan had let her build a nest of sheets and blankets from the linen closet in Matthew’s old room for now, and Adam guesses she’s going to be deposited there for the night.
And, really, Adam would like to be deposited somewhere for the night, too. He’s bone-tired, barely able to move to the kitchen to fill up the largest glass he can find in the kitchen with water. He drains it easily, and fills it up again and repeats, then rinses it out and sets it upside down on the dish rack beside the sink. He’s contemplating making coffee when Ronan comes into the kitchen.
“You ready?” Ronan flips over Adam’s used glass and fills it up. He watches Adam over the top of his glass as he drinks. He had put on a royal blue fleece Adam has never seen him in before while he was upstairs; an unknown part of him notices how it brings out the blue of Ronan’s eyes. It’s worn — the elbows are thin and the collar doesn’t sit quite right. There’s a similar sweater tucked under his arm.
“Yeah,” Adam says. Ronan finishes his water and puts the glass in the sink.
Ronan moves from the sink and presses the sweater into Adam’s hands. “Here.”
Adam shakes it out and slips it on. It’s fleece, too, but charcoal grey instead of Ronan’s blue. Adam feels like they should switch. He says, “Thanks,” and pulls it on over his head. His hair feels all frizzy from the fleece and he tries to flatten it a little. “We match,” he adds drily. Not that he minds.
“Don’t fucking mention it. You asked for a sweater.”
“How was she?” Adam asks, instead, thinking they should come up with a name for her more permanent than Orphan Girl. It’s a task for some other day.
Ronan shrugs. He disappears to the front door to get their shoes and deposits them on the mat at the French doors at the back and starts to wrestle on a pair of worn sneakers Adam has never seen before. “Fucking peachy. I don’t know. I tried to get her to take a bath, but — she’s not Matthew. She’s not just some kid.” He violently stuffs the laces in and stands up again.
Adam’s stomach does a small flip when Ronan mentions Matthew. Logically, he knows he’s fine, Ronan is fine, Orphan Girl is fine, but — “You called Matthew, right? He’s fine?”
Ronan looks at him like he has two heads. “Yes, I fucking called Matthew. Declan said they’re driving down tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Adam says. Eloquent. He’ll have to tell them about Aurora, he thinks, insides turning for the remaining Lynches. He says, “I’d never of guessed you’d be one to have a kid first out of us,” aiming for a joke. Something other than the impending empty-casket funeral. He pulls on his muddy sneakers.
Ronan snorts, surprised. “Yeah. I guess not. Gansey and Blue are probably taking each others’ virginities right now.” He flicks on an outdoor light and pulls the door open, stepping into the dark envelope of night. Adam follows, shutting the door behind him.
“You really think Gansey’s a virgin?” Adam asks, hopping down the stairs after Ronan. Fireflies buzz around Ronan’s shoulders, dream things. Ronan seems to be following them through the ever-growing, matted grass.
“He’s been saving himself for Glendower,” Ronan replies, after a breath or two. Now it’s Adam’s turn to snort.
They don’t get too far. Their day has started over too many times and their feet only allow them so many steps. The old metal groans as they clamber onto the closest barn with an easily climbable roof, the moss wet through the knees of Adam’s grimy jeans.
Ronan settles on his back and looks up at the black of the night. Adam crawls over him so he can be on Ronan’s left and does the same, half a foot between them. He pushes a heavy breath out of his chest.
Adam has so many things to ask, so many things to hammer out. He wants to know how Ronan’s doing, what he’s thinking, how he’s feeling, every intricacy of his mourning and his mind.
Their first kiss was punctuated by silent questions and empty breaths, their second prefixed by only Adam’s name. They move, they love, they kiss, they act. Ronan’s vocabulary is constructed of thoughtful gestures and, when he decides to speak, it’s artfully ugly. This is not the universe where Adam was seduced by Ronan’s words.
Though, now, he notices how his stomach flips when Ronan spits out a line of expletives like they’re a line of Virgil, like he’s speaking in ancient verse. It has a rhythm to it, a certain cadence. Like there’s a meter that’s unique to the way he puts together God and damn and mother and Mary and shit and fuck.
Adam has been educated in the way of literary devices; he knows the cacophony and the shape of Ronan’s mouth when he pronounces fuck, how somehow the sibilance of the sh in shit the opposite of sibilant. Maybe its the way he grinds the sound up between his teeth before spitting it out, or the hard sound of the t. Adam wants to know every particularity of Ronan, he is discovering.
But those questions seem too close to some tipping point.
“Hey,” he starts, too easy. He feels stilted and awkward, like a fawn taking her first steps, but not something out of place. “How are you? With everything that’s happened.”
Ronan glares at him, but it’s only out of principle. There’s no heat to it. It quickly shifts into something softer, gentler, something Adam is less familiar with. “I’m okay. I don’t really — I don’t think it’s hit me yet.” He hangs his head back and looks at Adam. “What about you?”
“I’m fine,” Adam says easily. It doesn’t feel like a lie. “Or — I have to be fine. I have work, and school, and —” He pauses. He almost said you.
Ronan hums his agreement. With what, Adam isn’t sure, but it warms him a little anyway.
They settle easily into silence, no soundtrack except each others’ soft breathing and the noise of the barns and then forest around them. It’s the most peaceful sound Adam has ever known; he lets his eyes close and tries to just be there, sprawled out on a rusty corrugated metal roof, Ronan close enough to touch, closer than, Ronan’s sweater around his torso, Ronan’s world drowning him in a sleep more heavenly than death. His self is seeping past his skin and he twitches his pointer finger on his right hand just to remind himself it’s still there.
Adam keeps his eyes closed when he asks, “How did you know you were gay?”
There’s no answer. Adam thinks open eyes and they do so and there’s Ronan, steeping in his world too. He looks peaceful. Adam’s surprised.
“I never knew,” Ronan says slowly, as though he’s figuring it out for himself, the answer just conceived in his throat and about to be born through his mouth.“I didn’t know it was even something I could know.”
Adam is persistent, though, even in this state. Ever the logician. “There must have been something. You must have known that you didn’t like girls, at least. Weren’t there, like, signs or something?”
“This isn’t some math problem you can figure out, Parrish.” Ronan would usually have snarled this but right now it’s in slow motion. It doesn’t hurt. “It’s just, I’m a lot of things, but I’m mostly someone who can pull shit out of my dreams and I’m…” Ronan swallows the word down. “You know,” he says instead.
“I shouldn’t even exist. I shouldn’t be the Graywaren, and I shouldn’t be gay.” He says gay like it’s worse than any of his curse words. Adam has never heard Ronan use the word as a descriptor for himself, and his heart jumps. He feels as though everything he’d guessed is confirmed, suddenly; he can’t be making up any of Ronan’s feelings if Ronan acknowledges them (although, indirectly) himself. It’s silly — Ronan kissing him should have been enough, was enough.
Adam opens his mouth, feeling the need to comfort and console.
“Don’t you fucking say it. I know it’s okay that I’m gay, now, but I didn’t. I went to fucking Sunday school, man.” He sounds defeated. Drained. No fight left.
“Who was the first boy you liked?” Adam asks, quietly, a gentle attempt to steer the conversation not off the road but into a parallel lane.
Ronan laughs, easy and surprised with exhaustion.“You, asshole.”
Adam’s eyes widen for a heartbeat and then they narrow again, unbelieving. Ronan’s feelings for Adam were as obvious as his tattoo: large and unmissable when Ronan laid himself bare or almost hidden under his clothes. The visible bits of it crawled out his shirt collar like the top of an iceberg, only a hint of its full extent.
But Adam had never thought he was the only one who had drawn Ronan’s attention. Aglionby is full of rich, beautiful boys, and what about Gansey? What about Kavinsky? “No,” Adam reasons, “there must have been someone else.”
“There wasn’t,” Ronan says. Factual. The end. Adam blinks once, and believes him. It's like a punch to the chest.
The conversation stutters out. Both of them sit, Ronan with his knees pulled to his chest and Adam stretched out with his weight on his elbows and forearms. A picture of youth. Ronan swallows, his gaze firmly somewhere in front of him. A question sits in his throat. “What about you?”
Adam answers, accent slipping out and not caring. “What about me?”
“Same question as before.” It’s dismissive but Adam knows it’s because he’s gotten too close to who Ronan is and Ronan knows he’s given too much to Adam in too small a moment.
“Same answer.” Adam could answer the question straight, say it — you were the first boy I liked — but it seems too easy, almost. Colouring inside the lines. He colours in the negative space around it instead.
Ronan rolls over to look at him, finally, eyebrow raised. “You were in love with yourself? Fucking weird.”
“Asshole.” Adam rolls his eyes. “You know what I meant.”
Ronan shifts. He doesn’t say anything. And then: “God. Shit. Okay.”
“How come you don’t believe me?”
“I don’t know,” Ronan admits. “Side effect of being a closeted Catholic gay kid or whatever.”
Ronan swallows thickly and Adam turns his head a bit to look at him, just enough so he can still hear.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Ronan whispers. It feels more secret than a confession. He’s flat on his back and Adam rolls so he’s on his side. So he can watch and look, like he’s allowed to now.
Adam whispers back, “Me neither, really.”
“You’ve dated before, though.” Adam thinks about dating and Ronan and something inside him fizzes happily. “You dated Blue. I haven’t done anything.” Ronan sounds desperate. Begging. Bargaining. On his knees. He’s talking like he’s drunk — actually, he doesn’t even talk this much when he is drunk. Darkness and exhaustion are as intoxicating as booze, maybe more.
Ronan brings his hands up to cover his face.
“I just really don’t want to mess this up. I don’t know how to fucking do any of this, you know? I’m going to fuck it up. I’m just going to fuck with your feelings and you’ll never want to talk to me again. Jesus fucking—” He swipes his hand across his eyes angrily. “Fuck. God fucking damn.”
“Ronan,” Adam says softly. He wiggles over so his head is kind of on Ronan’s shoulder and their sides are pressed together. He doesn’t know what to say. Maybe he doesn’t need to say anything. Ronan’s hand is resting on his stomach limp and when Adam raises his, Ronan’s fingers twitch. Their fingertips touch and then their fingers are sliding together. Adam feels it everywhere.
He hears Ronan breath in, deep, hold it, and let it out. His smokers breath. It’s shaky.
“Are you okay?” Adam doesn’t speak louder than a whisper, they’re so close.
Silence, for a second, and then: “Yeah. It’s just…”
“Everything?” Adam fills in. Aurora. Gansey. Him. Them.
“Everything. And this.”
“Holding hands?”
Ronan snorts. Adam can feel more than hear it. “Yeah.”
Adam thinks on it for a second before he pushes himself up on his elbow, pressing himself further into Ronan’s space, and kisses him. Their first kiss was owned by surprise and fatedness and their second by finality and hunger. This one is owned by gentleness. This one is owned by the softness of the night.
They kiss for a little bit, both of them too exhausted and too overwhelmed to do any more than press closer to each other. Adam slots his leg between Ronan’s just to get closer to him and his warmth and Ronan lets out a tiny noise when Adam sucks on his bottom lip and then everything is too much — Adam pulls away and tucks his face into Ronan’s neck, shifts so they’re cheek to cheek. He still smells a bit like the soap from Blue’s washroom.
Ronan presses his nose to Adam’s, brings his hand to the small of Adam’s back. All of this touch — all of it is so new to Adam, so foreign. His body seems to know how to return it, somehow. Being held like this is, as light and restrained as Ronan’s touch is — his throat throbs and his eyes burn and he so badly doesn’t want this to happen, to cry. He shifts again so his face is hidden and he shuts his eyes, thinking, fuck, thinking, fuck, not now.
Adam can feel the heat of Ronan’s breath on his right ear when he exhales, when he speaks. “Do you want to go to bed?”
“Yeah,” Adam says. His voice sounds mostly normal besides heavy exhaustion. He doesn’t move. “Can you dream us into bed?”
Ronan snorts softly. “I fucking wish. I haven’t gotten to teleportation yet.”
Adam closes his eyes for a second more and then lightly pushes Ronan off of him. They crawl slowly over the side of the shed they’d clambered up and Ronan gets down first, turning around and reaching his hands out for Adam. Adam shoos his hands away but Ronan grabs at his wrist, his waist and Adam blinks sleepily and laughs a bit, maybe more a giggle. They stumble the first of their steps until they’re on easy even ground and Ronan reaches his arm around Adam’s waist, a thumb tucked under fleece, pulling him in close. Adam figures out how to spider his arm around Ronan’s so he’s touching his neck.
The warm light of the house through the kitchen windows is the kindest sight Adam has ever seen. He follows Ronan through the French doors and slides his shoes off on the mat.
“Are you too tired to shower?” Ronan whispers, sliding through the house to turn off the lights and then up the stairs in his socked feet.
Adam shrugs. “Are you?” They’re at the landing now, standing at Ronan’s bedroom door.
“Yeah,” Ronan says, “But I’m still gonna.”
Adam shrugs again. “Then I’ll shower too.”
Ronan gives Adam a towel and a pile of soft, clean clothes and they shower in different rooms — Ronan in the washroom down a couple of stairs from his room, Adam in Niall and Aurora’s ensuite. Adam pulls on the boxers and sweats and t-shirt Ronan had given him — who do they belong to? Matthew is shorter and wider than Adam, Declan taller and built in places Adam isn’t. Maybe they’re Ronan’s. They’re a similar size. They’re black. Adam doesn’t want to ask.
Adam beats Ronan back to his room. The room is different now from the day before — the objects and dream things lining the walls and cast on the floor are half invisible and half unknown in the faint light from the ceiling lamp. It’s a room magic could happen in. Adam switches on the lamp on the bedside table and everything is drowned in a soft circle of downy light.
For once, Ronan isn’t wearing all black when he wanders in. He throws his dirty clothes into a dark corner and moves towards where Adam is sitting on the corner of his bed. Adam has to tilt his head far, far back to look up at Ronan — the white of his t-shirt matches the white of the duvet cover. He looks good in it, younger maybe. He’d foregone sweats and Adam can feel his warm, bare legs where Ronan has stepped between his thighs.
“Hey,” Ronan says, looking way down at Adam. His skin is red, from the shower, maybe, or from Adam bracketing Ronan’s legs with his thighs.
“Hey,” Adam says, looking way up back. He slides a hand around the back of Ronan’s bare knee and up the back of his thigh, not quite under his boxers. His skin is still warm from the shower and smoother than Adam expected, soft even. He keeps smoothing up and down the back of Ronan’s leg. He thinks it’s putting them both to sleep.
Ronan closes his eyes and drops his head. “I checked on Orphan Girl,” he says, weakly.
“And?” Adam raises his other hand to the small of Ronan’s back, under his shirt. Holds it there.
He doesn’t open his eyes. “She’s passed out.”
“You should do the same,” Adam says softly, eyes on Ronan’s bruised neck, the bags under his eyes.
Ronan nods, eyes still closed. He crawls over Adam’s lap and crash lands into the bed and groans softly, satisfied. “I might not sleep,” Ronan says, getting himself under the covers. He pulls at the corner Adam’s sitting on and Adam stands.
“Whatever,” Adam says, wriggling out of his sweats. “It’ll be good just to lie here. It’ll help.” He tries not to think too hard about it before he crawls in with Ronan. “And if something happens…” Adam leaves the I’m here unsaid.
He watches Ronan stare up at the ceiling, dotted with glow in the dark stars stuck there a decade ago. He needs to go to sleep — to shut his eyes and turn his brain off and go to sleep but he can’t stop looking. Not out of worry, but out of curiosity, out of desire to do so. He can’t stop thinking that he’s allowed to do this now.
Ronan’s eyes slide to Adam’s and narrow. “Go to sleep, Parrish.”
“Okay. Goodnight.” Adam tries for a smile. He lays there still as Ronan flips the light off and settles under the covers.
Adam reaches his hand out when Ronan stops wriggling around, under the safety of the duvet. Ronan’s on his back so it’s easy enough for Adam to slip his fingers through Ronan’s and squeeze. He gets himself comfortable and, not wanting to let go of Ronan’s hand, awkwardly pulls the duvet up and over his shoulders with his free hand.
“Goodnight,” he says again. It feels different in the dark. Quieter. Meant only as something between them. Adam wants to cup this moment in his hand and hold it close to his heart.
He closes his eyes and does just that.