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Adam shuts his eyes and contemplates ignoring the knocking at his door, before finally releasing a resigned sigh.
"If you're not going to go away, you might as well come in."
The door swings open, Ronan lounges against the frame. "Gansey's been trying to call you for hours."
"And I've been ignoring him for hours."
"You need a fucking mobIle. Or at least an answering machine. That way we know if you're being asshole and purposely ignoring him, or if you just haven't gotten the message." There's a pause. Adam can feel Ronan studying him, waiting for him to respond. Trying to decide exactly how hard he’s meant to push. Whether he can just shrug his shoulders and tell Gansey he tried. Adam squeezes his eyes tighter.
After a moment Ronan says, "You look like shit." Adam laughs.
"Feel like it too."
With a sigh Ronan detaches himself from the doorframe, and makes his way towards Adam’s mockery of a kitchenette.
Adam props himself up. “What are you doing?”
“Making soup. Don’t say I never did anything nice for you, Parrish.”
“Why?” His voice comes out smaller than he intended.
Ronan looks at him. “You look like shit.” He hesitates, as if he’s considering saying something else, but turns back to investigate Adam’s meagre pantry supplies instead.
“My mum used to make soup.” Adam says, and Ronan goes very still. “After work today, I started to head home.” And Ronan can’t help but notice the way Adam says home in a way that clearly conveys not here. “For a little while, I sort of tricked myself into thinking I’d just turn up, and she’d make soup. I got halfway there before I remembered I couldn’t.”
"I started to drive back to The Barns more times than I could count," Ronan says, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
“It’s not the same.” Adam counters. Because it’s not. It’s one thing to want to go back to a place where your parents loved you, where your father lived, where your mother laughed. It’s another thing entirely to be homesick for a place where love was measured out in bruises, and fear and resentment hung heavy in the air.
But it was the closest thing to a home he’d known.
Ronan doesn’t say anything else. And then, “Did your mother ever teach you how to make her soup?”
“We’re not talking about my mother, Lynch,” Adam bites back. “And, no. Cooking was for girls and fags.”
He doesn’t tell Ronan that he knew her recipe anyway. That he always used to watch her cook. That sometimes she talked about taking her handful of unimpressive ingredients and making them into meal worth eating, and it was her words that came to mind when he first learnt how to build an engine. He doesn't tell Ronan that the first time he'd used this shameful approximation of a kitchen, he'd thought of her smile, small and bruised and so often hidden, but always present when she cooked.
"That why you're so thin, Parrish? Can't have anyone mistaking you for one of those." There's an edge to Ronan's voice, but Adam's too tired to identify it.
"Remind me again, why are you even here?"
"I haven't a fucking clue," he says, and Ronan. Ronan doesn’t lie. But Adam knows it's not the whole truth either.
--
There's soup. There's thank you. There's something else that needs to be said. There's something about the set of Ronan's shoulders.
He feels like the word he needs is sorry, but he's not sure what for.
"You don't have to be here. You don't have to stay." Adam knows these aren't the words Ronan's waiting for, but they're the only ones he's got. "It's good. The soup." He adds after a moment.
Ronan stares at him. There's something sharp sitting on the tip of his tongue. Adam wants to tell him to spit it out, but it’s something Ronan’s hesitating to say. Adam can’t remember the last time Ronan hesitated before saying anything.
“My mum’s had more paprika, I think.” Adam says, because someone has to say something, and the soup seems like a safe topic.
“I thought you didn’t know how to make her soup?” And the edge is back in his voice.
“I said she never taught me.”
“Because your dad was a paranoid homophobic fuck.”
"He'd kill me if he," knew. Suspected. "Ever thought I was," he finishes the sentence with a shrug.
"Good thing you're straight as an arrow, then," Ronan says, and Adam can feel an uncomfortable itch growing between his shoulder blades. There’s a beat. A hesitation. And then he continues, “I wonder,” and it’s said with that carefully cultivated casual tone that only ever gets dragged out when things are far from casual, “what he would say if he knew he got beaten up by a fag?”
“Oh.” Because, of course. Ronan is eyeing him carefully. “I thought you were going to say something else.”
“Like what exactly?”
Like, your arrow is closer to a boomerang. Adam shrugs again.“Kavinsky?”
Ronan sours. “Not my type.” Then brightens. “Were you jealous?”
And Adam. Adam can’t exactly deny it.
Ronan looks at Adam. Looks at him. And he’s closer than Adam remembers him being.
“I’m going to do something now. And if I’m wrong I’d appreciate you not holding it against me.”
And then Ronan kisses him.
--
The kiss is. Soft. Gentle. Cautious. Chaste.
A thousand words that mean Not Ronan.
The kiss is Very Ronan.
(How can it be anything else with Ronan's hands digging into his hips, holding him still. Holding him steady. Holding him so close he can feel the rapid rhythm of Ronan's heart in his chest.)
He pulls back and looks. Ronan's eyes are hungry. Questioning. Wary.
The kiss a test. Before he bares his teeth.
He's meant to answer. Say yes. He wants to say yes.
But he stills and. Considers.
Because he wants this. And he's thought about wanting this. But he hasn't thought about Ronan wanting this.
And so the word that finally comes out is Wait.
--
"How long?" Adam asks.
Ronan frowns at him, "I didn't mark it on my fucking calendar. What, did you?"
"Did you," he starts, his voice thick and uncertain, Henrietta accent glaring and obvious, "Is this why you punched my dad?"
"You think I hit on the kids of all people I punch? You should tell Declan, might keep him and any of his future spawn away from me." Ronan looks. Something. Incredulous. Angry. Like he wants to laugh. Like he wants to punch someone. Possibly Adam.
"Is this why you paid for my rent?" Adam presses.
"Jesus fuck Parrish. It's not some fucking master plan."
"I won't. This can't. Not while I'm indebted to you."
Ronan stills. "Did you let me kiss you because you think you owe me something?"
"No."
"Then tell me, Adam, what the fuck does any of that shit has to do with this?"
Adam pulls away. "I think you should leave."
Ronan does.
--
"Whatever is going on between you and Adam, I want you to fix it." Gansey says, eventually.
"Why do you assume it's up to me to fix anything?"
"Ronan." Gansey stares at him, insistent and implacable. Ronan sighs. He doesn't say he will. He doesn't say he won't, either.
--
"We need a contract." Adam announces.
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"A contract. Because," he drags a hand through his hair, "I owe you money. There should be terms of repayment. Interest."
Ronan forces himself not to point out that it's just two grand, and it's not like he's ever going to miss it. There's a challenge in the set of his jaw, and Ronan knows where this will end if he pushes.
"I'm not charging you interest. At least not until you finish college." He looks at Adam again and smirks, "That desperate for another kiss?" and Adam glares back at him. It'd be more intimidating if Ronan couldn't see the blush rising to his cheeks.
He waits a moment to see if Adam wants to protest, before asking, "What exactly do you think this'll achieve?"
"Then the loan," he hesitates over the world, and Ronan can see him itching to name it as charity. Ronan wishes he'd see it as a gift. "Will exist separately from me and you. And won't be influenced by any personal. Any relationship changes."
Adam's looking at him expectantly, more unguarded than Ronan's seen him in a long while.
"Huh. I guess you really are chasing after another kiss," Ronan says at last. Adam swallows, and flashes him a nervous smile. "I have to say, Parrish, I'm kind of glad about that."
--
Two fistfuls of Aglionby Academy sweater pulling Adam closer, not letting him go.
Adam's hands at Ronan’s hips, making sure there’s not an inch of space between them.
There’s tongue and teeth and lips. There's want and hunger and more. There's finally.
There's damnation, but, God, it tastes so much like salvation.
There's a break. And a pause. Ronan’s heart is racing, his lungs gasping. Adam’s eyes are wide, cheeks flushed. Ronan wonders if his are too.
He starts apologising, and Ronan’s heart stops. Because, Fuck Parrish, make up your mind. And then he realises Adam’s apologising because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and it’s not like he has a whole lot of experience, and sorry if it’s awful. Ronan laughs. It’s a rough, unwieldy sound. He buries it in Adam’s neck, and his teeth tease his skin.
Awful is not the word he’d use.
“Neither do I,” he says at last, “But I figure we’ve got lots of time to work it out.”