#he was vulnerable in front of gansey and blue before he was ever vulnerable in front of ronan!!! | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

clotpolesonly · 1 year

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i figured out why Declan is my go-to blorbo, and it's because he's one of those characters where i can find common emotional/experiential ground between him and practically every other significant character and that just makes him fascinating to me and so so versatile

Declan and Gansey: repression, repression, repression!! so much anxiety rolled up into a tiny little ball and stubbornly ignored because feelings are unseemly and have no place here. they will feel things when they're dead, thank you very much. responsible beyond their years, on their own/taking care of themselves long before they should have been. tending to other people or the practicalities of the moment take precedence over themselves, at all times. unfortunately, Ronan is very important to them and they will go out of their way to protect him. also the insomnia and the autism vibes.

Declan and Adam: ruthlessly practical people. hard working and ambitious but for a reason, not for its own sake (Adam to get out of the trailer park, Declan to camouflage his other activities). they would rather die than admit to weakness or vulnerability in front of another human being. Do Not Let The Emotions In Or You Will Never Stop. feeling alienated and fundamentally from their peers, and distrustful of/disillusioned by the idea of help from authority figures -- if you have a problem, solve it yourself. both very very accustomed to lying, constantly and about everything, in order to disguise their home situation and deflect attention from anything that might cause people to ask questions. complicated relationships with their mothers, at least partially rooted in negligence and not stepping in wrt the situation with their fathers. and of course, there's a difference in scale and severity, but feeling unsafe due to the aforementioned fathers.

Declan and Blue: the particular brand of resentment that comes with being the only unspecial member of a special family. being the sensible one and stubbornly proud of how well they manage to get by without any of the ✨ super specialness ✨ that everybody else has. torn between wishing and wondering what it would be like to be special too and being desperately grateful that they're not. wishing that somebody would understand how fucking lonely it is knowing that you and your loved ones will never truly understand each other. being too proud to ever admit as much out loud.

Declan and Noah: this one's more nebulous, but the idea of being not fully real, not fully a person, and definitely the idea of not being seen. of being invisible and looked through. Noah's is because he's a literal ghost, obviously, and it's through no fault of his, but Declan has gone out of his way to cultivate that experience, to make himself as overlookable and forgettable as possible, for safety and security. but it doesn't feel good. the erosion of the sense of self as time goes on, worn down by the life they're living. and a shared understanding of being the victim of extreme violence (Noah's murder and Declan's attack by the Grey Man, at least).

Declan and Henry: the children of criminals. burdened with the knowledge of a world -- two worlds tbh, the criminal and the magical -- that they can't speak about to anyone else. socially isolated and starved for emotional connection. uncomfortably comfortable with the violence that has permeated their lives and always acting under the assumption that it can and will find them again.

Declan and the Gray Man: business is as business does and it's not personal. ✨ depression ✨ and going through the motions because this is just their life and they don't have the emotional or mental capacity right now to think of how their life might be changed. making themselves as dull as possible and then not being able to find their way out of the hole they've dug themselves, at least not until someone comes along to remind them of what it feels like to feel things.

Declan and Jordan: repression of self and lack of identity. not being allowed the space to be their own person, always forced to cram themselves into a tiny box for the sake of others. bursting at the seams with dreams that they're not allowed to chase and feelings they're not allowed to express. feeling truly seen for the first time when they meet each other.

Declan and Hennessy: being preceded by the reputation of a parent they resent. living in Niall and JH's shadows, always compared to them, even when they suspect that they may actually be better than their parents at what they do. the struggle not to let that bitterness swallow them whole before they can grow into their own reputations and make names for themselves.

Declan and Farooq-Lane: young professions who have worked very hard, thank you very much, to be as competent as they are. logical thinkers with a brewing storm of emotion that they try not to let interfere with their logical thinking because they know it makes them impulsive and they don't like that loss of control. loss of control is the enemy. they are the only grown-ups in the room and they would rather die than acknowledge that they are actually scared kids in way over their heads. both with complicated feelings about dreamers and deep-seated issues related to their dreamer brothers. also they have very similar taste in women.

honestly, the only people that Declan doesn't have common ground with is his brothers, and that's what makes his relationships with them so interesting and so fraught. there's something to be explored between Declan and Ronan wrt their suicidal ideation (though they have very different flavors of it) and perhaps with them both feeling insecure compared to each other, but so much of their conflict is about just how different their experiences and perceptions and personalities are.

and Declan being unable to relate to Matthew on a personal, empathetic level is probably part of why he finds it so hard to really think of Matthew as a fully independent PERSON in his own right. though, if Declan's experiences with the bag of Niall's memories had gone a little differently, there could have been a connection over the experience of being denied full personhood by a well-meaning but ultimately overbearing and neglectful guardian. 🤔

anyway, these have been my musings on Declan and why he continues to fascinate me. he has the range, darling.

#Declan Lynch #Gansey #Adam Parrish #Blue Sargent #Noah Czerny #Henry Cheng #Mr Gray #the Gray Man #Jordan #Hennessy #Jordan Hennessy #Farooq-Lane #Ronan Lynch #Matthew Lynch #TRC #TDT #tags by me

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adamprrishcycle · 1 year

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In 2016 I wrote a pynch fic where ronan accidentally pulls a version of adam out of his dreams who is a manifestation of his own self hatred (oh yeah I was deep in 2016) and just like my fic about adam’s dads funeral that I rewrote, I thought I might try and rewrite this idea too. The beginning is below the cut, let me know if you’d read more

Adam Parrish thought he looked ugly. His face was jagged and hungry, nose crooked and mouth downturned. His eyes looked hollow, despite the light reflecting from the large windows of Monmouth Manufacturing, the skin below them clinging to his skull heavy with lack of sleep and tinted in twin shadows. The freckles on his cheeks were a thousand pinpricks marking every time he had thought about leaving and every time the unbearable summers had suffocated him and kept him here. He wore blue jeans and a green T-shirt that Adam recognised.

Before Adam Parrish’s eyes, Adam Parrish’s face twisted into a grimace and he felt a chill so deep in his bones that he thought he would never feel warm again. It was like a gut punch.

He hadn’t looked at himself in a mirror all day and now he wondered if the Adam Parrish in front of him was a perfect reflection. He knew the answer but he denied it silently, looking down at his school uniform. The faded secondhand jumper, the trousers that were just a little too short in the ankle.

“It’s you,” the Adam standing before him said. His expression gave way to a mixture of realisation and disbelief like he had known of Adam’s existence but he wasn’t sure he would ever come face to face with him.

It would be easy to leave now, to blink and rub at his eyes and turn away. Maybe he was tired, he had been working more shifts than usual recently and his homework had been keeping him busy in any free time he had left.

“It’s really you,” the other Adam said to him. “You look just like me.”

Adam felt himself backing away. He felt the need to put space between himself and the other Adam. The couch was already between them and Gansey’s unmade bed on the floor and now he stepped carefully around the cardboard Henrietta that took up a third of the floor space.

“Where are the others?” Adam demanded, eyes darting to Ronan’s bedroom door which stood open.

Ronan.

Maybe Adam wasn’t hallucinating, maybe this Adam did exist. Maybe he existed like Chainsaw existed.

“They’re not here,” the other Adam said and he frowned. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here either.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Adam asked, the words coming out harsh.

The other Adam smirked. “Lynch didn’t want you to know about me. I said you deserved to know. Gansey took his side,” he paused, “obviously.”

Adam felt a flicker of anger at his words, the way the other Adam talked about them like he knew them, or the fact that his friends had so far kept this from him, he wasn’t sure. If Ronan had in fact dreamt another Adam into existence, it was definitely Adam’s business to know.

There was no way to contact Gansey or Ronan, neither himself nor, he assumed, this other Adam had a phone. The large room had been warmed by the sun burning in through the south-facing windows all day long, so Adam was sure Noah wasn’t present anywhere in the old factory.

“Why are you here?” The other Adam asked and Adam recognised the way his fingers found his deaf ear subconsciously, worrying at it briefly before letting his hand fall back to his side. It made him feel sick, to see himself as others saw him. Hostile and vulnerable like a frightened wild animal.

He was here because he hadn’t seen his friends over the weekend and neither of them had showed up at school today. Adam had a rare night off until early the following morning and while he had homework to do, he thought this might be more important.

“My friends live here,” he said, shortly, refusing to explain himself. “And you?”

The other Adam spread his hands and shrugged. “How should I know?”

“He dreamt you,” Adam stated, challenging the other Adam to deny it. His mind flickered with images from the day Ronan had dreamt a copy of himself and both of them had watched it slowly choke on its own blood in St Agnes catholic church.

The other Adam nodded slowly. “It’s about you.”

“No,” Adam said, “it’s about him. There must be a reason he dreamt you, he— he wouldn’t just bring you out for nothing.”

That day at St Agnes, Ronan had dreamt the copy of himself to die in his place. And he’d been angry with Adam for being there as it happened, for watching him watch himself die. He hadn’t just been angry, he’d been furious and in turn, Adam’s own anger had flared up. It was one of the worst fights they’d ever had and even now it sat in the pit of Adam’s stomach, heavy as a rock each time he thought about it.

“It’s kind of sick, isn’t it?” The other Adam said.

“What?”

“That he dreamt me, and you had no say in it whatsoever,” the other Adam continued. “Who does he think he is? Some kind of God? He’s an arrogant prick.”

“He will have had a reason,” Adam said firmly, though the other Adam’s words resonated with him. If Ronan could dream anything— anyone, he must have some kind of God complex.

Adam could picture him, his sharp, easy smirk, his blue eyes that when turned on Adam, made him feel overexposed. His short temper and his hyenas laugh. The way he acted like he didn’t care about anything, but recently Adam had come to realise that he cared a whole lot. The smell of trees, of a misty forest and a rainstorm rolling in.

“I don’t know what Gansey sees in him,” the other Adam said and he rounded the couch, sitting down heavily.

“‘Course you do,” Adam said, looking down at his shoes, at the model Henrietta, then over at the window. The sun was beginning to set, heading towards the blue mountains.

#the original was all ronan’s pov #but I decided to start this with adam’s #and thinking the latter part will be ronan’s #👀 we’ll see #let me knooooow if you’d read more #pynch #adam parrish #ronan lynch #trc #the raven cycle

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pynches · 4 years

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almost is never enough

aka the 5 times ronan and adam almost kissed but were interrupted and the 1 time they finally got their shit together and went for it

for @neontetraskill who requested “a hoarse whisper “kiss me”then licks their lips and says “please” from the kissing prompt list

word count: 3500 (satisfying right?)

It had been a long time coming and it started with Ronan. Catching feelings for Adam Parrish came as easy as breathing, but dealing with those feelings often grabbed him by the throat and squeezed until he was choking. He had denied himself the possibility of getting together with Adam until it became unbearable, drowning him together with the other sorrows in his life that he never learned to come to terms with. All hope seemed lost when Adam got together with Blue and then they broke up and Ronan finally believed he had a chance. But Adam never saw him the way he saw Adam and the rejection hit him harder than he dared to admit. By the time Adam started looking back, Ronan had already given up.

But then it continued with Adam. Because Adam was smart and he knew and he ignored it until there was no room for ignoring it anymore. Ronan had fallen for him and Adam had fallen right with him.

Adam wasn’t like Ronan. He wasn’t careful and shy, he wasn’t painfully selfless. No, Adam went after what he wanted even if there was a chance of rejection. Not because he thought that he deserved Ronan in the least, but he was a selfish creature and he wanted Ronan.

Their first kiss should have happened then, in Ronan’s BMW, parked in front of St. Agnes, with neither of them willing to get out. It should have happened when Adam turned to look at Ronan and, for the first time, Ronan looked back without averting his eyes. It should have happened when Adam decided to inch closer, letting his breath hit Ronan’s lips. It should have happened with Ronan’s hand tangled in his shirt like he had now, his eyes closing as he sent a quick thank you to God.

Their first kiss should have happened like that, but it didn’t.

The smell of Cabeswater interrupted them, hitting Adam with a force that made him reel back. There were whispers in his deaf ear again, urging him to come to the forest and do his job as its Magician.

Ronan’s face was closed off when Adam turned to him, his jaw clenched.

“It’s Cabeswater,” Adam tried. Ronan just nodded and pulled out, turning the car back to the forest they had just come from.

Adam leaned his head back against the window, trying to catch Ronan’s eyes but he held them firmly on the road before them. Adam turned away from him and pretended to sleep, trying not to think of the possibility that this could have been the only shot he had at kissing Ronan.

Adam thought he could have a second chance that same night. They had returned from Cabeswater and were both bone-tired, to the point that Adam forgot about the awkwardness of missed opportunities for long enough that he offered Ronan a place next to his bumpy mattress. Ronan took it without many words, placing his leather jacket underneath his head like he had done so many times before. There was such familiarity in the action that Adam dared to hope they could go back to before they ruined everything that had been building up between them.

Adam went to the bathroom to wash the dirt from Cabeswater off of him, hoping he would feel like himself again once he was done. By the time he came back, Ronan had his headphones over his ears and eyes closed. Adam could see he was not sleeping but Ronan was very clear in his implications.

There was no room for explanations, not tonight at least.

Adam tried to pretend he couldn’t physically feel his heart bleed from Ronan’s clear dismissal. He was a proud being and letting Ronan inside of the walls he had built up for himself was hard enough but now that Ronan had wrecked everything he had held so close, there was no universe in which he was the one to apologise, to vent off the awkwardness stifling the room.

He turned around so he didn’t have to see Ronan, closed his eyes, and pretended that his eyes were watering for a different reason.

The sniffles he let out were quiet, hidden, though, of course, Ronan managed to notice them anyway. There was something terrifying about Adam trying to hide the most vulnerable parts of himself and someone else seeing them without having to try.

He had his good ear pressed against his pillow, not hearing when Ronan got up so when Ronan leaned over him and pressed a tentative hand to his shoulder, Adam jumped, curling in on himself instinctively.

“Shit,” he heard muffled through the fabric of his flat pillow. Adam quickly wiped his eyes and turned to Ronan who staring at him wide-eyed.

“I would never-“ Ronan started, being interrupted by a quick, “I know.”

They were silent for a moment, Ronan in what could only be described as simmering rage slowly bubbling to the surface and Adam basking the awkwardness of his instinctual actions.

“Why were you crying?” Ronan asked, sounding too gentle for Adam’s liking. He was an expert in biting words and balled fists but he hadn’t learned how to handle gentleness yet, especially when coming from the last person you’d expect to have this underlying core of pure love inside of him.

“You know why,” Adam snapped back, his eyes trailing the bare wails, the cracked ceiling, anything to avoid Ronan’s questioning eyes.

Ronan sighed and caught his chin, his touch light and non-threatening. “Talk to me.”

“Bold request, Lynch,” Adam said, his voice cold and hard. “You were the one that avoided me.”

“I didn’t know… Shit, Parrish, I thought you regretted it ever happening.”

Adam twisted his hands together unconsciously, mirroring Ronan tugging at his bracelets. “Nothing has happened yet.”

Ronan stared at him a little too long for his liking, his eyes piercing right through him until it felt like Ronan was looking into his soul, not disliking what he saw.

Ronan was getting closer, his breath hot against Adam’s mouth. He leaned in and closed his eyes, waiting for Ronan to light him on fire.

Something big flew against his window, ripping them apart immediately. Ronan took a protective stance in front of Adam but he pushed him away so he could see what had ruined yet another chance of finally getting the kiss he craved.

Chainsaw was croaking indignantly at the closed window, rapping against it with her claws until Ronan sighed and opened the window for her.

She flew straight at Adam but he was prepared. He carried her more on his shoulders than Ronan these days.

Chainsaw nipped at his fingers playfully and he couldn’t help but smile at her, ruffling her feathers lightly.

Still, he was disappointed and impatient and he wanted Ronan to kiss him as he had imagined it. But Ronan’s face was closed off again, unreadable, even for Adam who had become quite good at guessing what Ronan was feeling.

Adam went to bed that night hungry for something he wasn’t sure he deserved.

Adam found himself in Monmouth more often when Gansey was not there. He would never completely feel at home in Monmouth, too much of the other boys were ingrained in the walls of the establishment but the quiet days, when Gansey was secretly running off with Blue and Noah had disappeared to a place not reachable for them, Adam could almost pretend he belonged there too.

He and Ronan had tentatively gotten back to being friends, the previous almost-kisses pushed to the back of their minds as much as it would let them.

They were in the living room, Ronan’s expensive laptop propped up the coffee-table, probably wrinkling some important notes of Gansey’s but neither boy cared at that moment.

The couch they were sat on was big enough that they didn’t have to sit close to one another, so they didn’t, something Adam craved more than anything. He had long stopped watching the movie Ronan had picked out and instead took this moment to think of a plan to somehow fix what he had unintentionally broken.

“You’re not even watching, are you?” Ronan asked suddenly, making Adam jump in his seat.

Adam smiled guiltily but didn’t answer. He couldn’t come out and say ‘no, sorry, I was too busy thinking about how I wanted to hold your hand and sit close enough next to you to smell you’ so he turned his focus back to the screen, trying to ignore how Ronan was still watching him from the corner of his eyes.

“We can put something else on,” Ronan opted, the air surrounding them awkward and tense.

Adam shook his head, his eyes never leaving the screen. “It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not,” Ronan said, jumping up from the couch. “If you don’t want to be here, Parrish, then leave.”

“I do want to be here,” Adam shot back, sliding off the couch himself. He stood in front of Ronan, poking a finger in his chest. “But I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to act around you.”

“Well, not like this,” Ronan said sarcastically, his arms crossing in front of him.

Adam sighed and felt the anger drain out of his body. He was tired of messing up, breaking everything he got close to. All he wanted was to be back in that precious moment before everything had gone to shit, when he was so close to Ronan he could count his eyelashes, and smell the scent of expensive cologne. When Cabeswater hadn’t interrupted an opportunity he had longed for since he realised his feelings for Ronan.

“I should just go,” Adam said quietly, turning around to grab his backpack before a hand stopped him.

“No, you should just stay here and talk to me.”

Adam raised an eyebrow, promptly ignoring the heat of Ronan’s skin on his own. “We’re not the best talkers.”

“Yeah, well, maybe we should finally learn.”

And so they did.

They sat back on the couch, staring at each other uncertainly before Ronan took it upon himself to start.

“I guess I don’t hate you,” he said, looking at his hands.

“Wow,” Adam laughed. “Thanks.”

Ronan cursed and wiped a hand down his face. He took a breath, looked right into Adam’s eyes and said, “I like you.”

“I like you too,” Adam admitted immediately.

Ronan sighed and got up from the couch, pacing in front of it. Adam followed him with his eyes.

“No, you don’t get it,” Ronan said, his voice strung tight. “I like you.”

Adam got up from the couch himself and stopped Ronan’s frantic pacing with two hands on Ronan’s arms. He looked at him earnestly and smiled a little, “I like you too.”

“Oh,” Ronan let out in a quiet huff. “Okay.”

This time it was Adam who took the leap, leaning in so Ronan could see his clear intent.

They were close, so very close to finally letting their lips touch and getting lost in the taste of each other.

The door to the living room smashed open and Gansey came stumbling in, his arms full of Amazon packages that were undoubtedly filled with ‘rare’ books he had decided would help them on their quest to finding Glendower.

“Ronan, call Adam, I found something about the leylines-“ Gansey finally looked at the pair that had sprung apart at the sound of the door, cheeks flushed and fidgeting as they stood a little too far apart to make sense. “Oh, hi Adam.”

“Hi, Gansey.” Adam gave an awkward short wave in his direction. “I should go.”

“But the leyline-“

“Can be saved for another time,” Adam said, already having gathered his backpack, he walked ‘calmly’ to the door and practically ran once the door fell closed behind him, leaving a confused Gansey and a slightly hurt Ronan behind.

If Noah could die again, it would be at Adam’s hands.

Since Adam and Ronan had confessed their feelings they were seeking out opportunities to finally do something about it. But there were always other things to do; exams, Glendower, meetings at Nino’s that were non-negotiable.

Today, though, there was a morning assembly and a small window of time for them to finally be alone together. They had stayed on the outer edges of the auditorium, waited ten minutes, then snuck away, claiming Ronan had a headache to a worried Gansey. They narrowly avoided Gansey trying to tag along and ran into an alcove.

Ronan’s back was against the wall, his lips pulled into a sharp grin. Adam was stalking forward, getting closer to Ronan until their torsos were touching.

Their faces inched forwards, their eyes closing, Adam had one hand on Ronan’s jaw to guide him to his lips. Their lips touched for a split second before a figure suddenly appeared next to them, singing loudly.

“Adam and Ronan were sitting in a tree-“

Ronan took Adam’s backpack from where it had fallen on the floor and threw it at Noah’s face.

Unfortunately, it went right through him.

“That’s not nice,” Noah pouted, turning around to stare dejectedly at the backpack.

“Oh, that’s not nice?” Ronan said, baring his teeth menacingly. “That’s not nice?!”

Adam stepped back with practised ease as Ronan ran after Noah who flickered in the bright light of the superficial lighting of the school and let out a joyous laugh that sounded more like an echo of what had once been.

After a few seconds, he could hear a loud scream and something heavy tumbling down the stairs. Adam waited patiently until Ronan returned with a self-satisfied smile.

“I threw him down the stairs,” Ronan said proudly.

Adam laughed, shaking his head in disbelief. “I figured.”

“Now, where were we?” Ronan asked, looping his fingers around Adam’s belt loops and pulled him closer. The bell rang before Adam could answer and Ronan let out a groan.

“I know,” Adam said, patting Ronan on the shoulder.

Adam was unable to focus the remaining hours of the day, constantly thinking of how close they had been, how Ronan’s eyes had fluttered closed, how Adam had felt a pull in his stomach he never felt before.

Adam was putting his books back into his locker, Ronan leaning against the ones next to him, suddenly asking him if he wanted to come to The Barns after school.

“I thought we were supposed to meet with Gansey?”

Ronan grinned. “I still have a headache, remember?”

Adam shrugged, “Sure.”

He tried to play it cool, not letting his excitement at the prospect of having Ronan alone again show. Ronan nodded back and that was that.

Before he knew it they were in Ronan’s BMW, close to one of the places Adam felt most calm. There was something peaceful about The Barns, with its dream creatures roaming around the almost unnaturally bright green grass.

It became quite clear Ronan didn’t have anything planned for their afternoon at the Barns, looking lost in his own home.

“You hungry?” Ronan eventually asked, but the tension was already palpable, Adam could feel it linger on his skin.

“I could eat,” he answered, following Ronan to the kitchen that was designed like it came right out of a feel-good movie.

Ronan took out some supplies while Adam lingered in the door-opening.

“Are you gonna help me or what?” Ronan asked over his shoulder.

Adam made his way to the countertop, taking in the many, many ingredients Ronan had accumulated. “We’re not feeding a small army, Lynch.”

“It’s for pancakes, dipshit.”

And then they got to work.

This entire mess started by Ronan being an idiot and flicking some flour in Adam’s hair, laughing hard as he did. Adam stood frozen for exactly one second before he grabbed the bag of flour, stuck his hand inside of it, and threw the handful of white powder right in Ronan’s face.

His shell-shocked facial expression was enough for Adam to double over in laughter.

“It’s on, Parrish,” Ronan said menacingly, moving forwards slowly, eggs in hand.

Adam stepped back, trapped against the counter. “Don’t you dare.”

Ronan rose one scarred eyebrow and threw the eggs with a surprising accuracy but Adam ducked just in time, grabbing the milk as he went down. He managed to get up before Ronan had the time to grab something else and threw it over his Aglionby uniform, making the white shirt cling to his skin.

Adam was too distracted by the sight to realise Ronan had taken the flour bag back. It was dumped on his head within seconds and Adam spluttered indignantly. He wiped the powder out of his eyes and charged at Ronan who ran away laughing.

They grabbed everything they could, taking every chance to touch each other. Until they came to a standstill, Adam pressed against the counter and Ronan pressed against him.

Ronan was close enough that Adam had to tilt his face a little to make up for the slight height difference. There was mirth in Ronan’s eyes and Adam suddenly forgot that there was a battle going on in the first place.

Ronan’s hand went to his waist tentatively, touching him like he was afraid Adam would run away. Instead, Adam lifted himself on the counter, urging Ronan to come closer. Ronan stepped between his legs, his hands placed on the counter besides Adam’s thighs. Adam wound his arms around Ronan’s neck and pulled him closer.

Their lips were so close to touching, Adam could feel his tingle. His stomach knotted with anticipation.

He closed his eyes.

“Hey, whatsup everybody, Matthew here! I just wanted to pop in and quickly show you my brother, Ronan. He’s finally getting some after months of pining! Leave a like if you’re proud of him.”

“MATTHEW.”

“Whoops, sorry guys, he’s not too happy about it. And now he’s chasing me-“

“I’m going to fucking-“

“Subscribe to me in case I make it out alive and hit that bell button to know exactly when I’ve uploaded something! Let’s help me get to 2 million before my birthday-“

“YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE-“

“Bye guys, see you in the next one!”

Adam was thrumming with restless energy.

It had been days since the Barns and Adam was feeling rather hopeless. For a second he thought fate was trying to tell him something by constantly ripping him and Ronan apart.

Then he realised fate was bullshit. Fate wasn’t real.

Maybe it was to show the reality of relationships, of something that would eventually bloom to love. Maybe it was to make them realise that maintaining a relationship was going to be hard and take effort and time but that it meant more than relationships steered by fate, by the inevitability it would work out, by the opportunities that were given not taken.

Or maybe their friends were just a bunch of dickheads.

When Cabeswater whispered in his ear again, he practically yanked Ronan outside after class and told him to drive him there, leaving Gansey to stare after them with a shake of his head but a knowing smile on his face. Of course, Noah had told him and this allowed him to take the day off Glendower searching and focus solely on Blue.

For once Adam let Ronan play his godawful music, the hard bass matching the frantic beating of his heart.

Ronan turned his head a few times trying to catch Adam’s eyes but Adam couldn’t look at him, not when he was seconds away from just lunging at him and finally getting the kiss he had waited for.

They walked into Cabeswater, Adam feeling where the irregularities were and together they fixed Cabeswater up until the forest was thrumming happily again.

“So that’s it,” Ronan said, wiping his dirty hands on his uniform.

“Yeah…” Adam said softly, not taking his eyes off Ronan. His unnaturally blue eyes, the rumpled state of his clothes, the leather bracelets he was chewing on again.

“Fuck it.”

Adam had two hands fisted in Ronan’s shirt, pushing his against a nearby tree, careful enough to not hurt Ronan but hard enough to make Ronan let out a sound at the impact.

They stared at each other quietly. Seconds ticked by, the air growing tenser, Adam’s hands still holding fistfuls of Ronan’s shirt.

Finally, Ronan’s eyelashes fluttered.

“Kiss me,” he whispered hoarsely. Then he licked his lips, Adam’s eyes following the movement. “Please.”

Adam surged forward, not taking a chance at getting interrupted again. Their lips met frantically. They had both been on edge for too long.

Ronan’s arms were wrapped around Adam’s waist, pulling him closer until Adam was melting into him. Almost every inch of their bodies were touching. Adam felt like he was burning up but then Ronan bit his bottom lip playfully and he found himself not caring.

They slowed down eventually, sharing soft kisses and gentle touches, smiling into the kiss.

Fucking finally.

#pynch #pynch fic #pynch fanfic #pynch fanfiction #trc #trc fic #trc fanfic #trc fanfiction #the raven cycle #the raven cycle fic #the raven cycle fanfic #the raven cycle fanfiction #adam parrish #ronan lynch #adam x ronan #ronan x adam #mine

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fleurdehivers · 5 years

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i wanted to expand a little on adam’s need for human touch, because it’s such an interesting subject. starting from the very beginning, i.e. going back to the raven boys and looking at the most intimate moments between him and blue, this want immediately becomes very obvious. adam’s attempts to get closer, both physically and emotionally, start just as blue joins the boys for the first time; but i’m going to concentrate only on the former, since the latter would require their own in-depth analysis. whenever he’s next to blue in these early days he’s always trying to close the distance between them. and these seemingly casual contacts happen more and more. when blue and adam meet after the reading at 300 fox way, and adam first speaks with her, his breath was hot on her skin, and, just a few beats later, blue felt him take her hand. then, during the helicopter flight: as he climbs in, he sits next to her taking the middle sit, in a way shielding her from ronan and his snide comments, but also possibly to have a semblance of privacy with her, because he’s always turned in her direction, adam’s headphones were looped around his neck, and he was leaned over beside blue. he’s not particularly subtle when they’re in cabeswater for the first time either. he gravitates around her and steps in her personal space a lot and as, blue stretched her hand out. adam took it without hesitation, like he’d been waiting for her to offer it. the text is incredibly transparent here, voicing an observation that might have been just a passing thought for the reader up until now. adam not only longs for human touch, but he’s waiting for someone to offer it, too. that doesn’t signify that he’s willing to beg for it or to accept it from anyone or to compromise, his pride wouldn’t allow that and rightly so. he would deserve the attention for the beautiful intelligent and caring, if still unconsciously traumatised, boy that he is, not – as he puts it for both gansey and blue later on – as a pity case. but he craves it nonetheless, and since he likes this girl, he fights for her. not, or not only just, for her attention, not for her compliments, but for a connection. when they’re still in cabeswater, there’s another significant moment that needs considering. as they wander around, adam and ronan find a tree with a cavity and adam steps into it and he’s profoundly shaken by what he sees inside of it. by the time he comes out, blue and gansey have reached them and blue eyes adam and, in front of her adam’s arms were still gripped around himself. this is heart-breaking because it’s a spontaneous reaction, one that adam has little control over, but it shows how when he doesn’t have anyone else to count on for physical contact, he wraps his own arms around himself for comfort.

however, there are instances where adam restrains himself from reaching out, even though he would like to. when blue permits noah to smoothen out her hair, adam perceives the implicit difference of his relationship to blue, compared to noah and blue’s one. he admits he’d like to pet her hair too, but knows that the gesture would be interpreted in a different way coming from him and he knows that whatever it is that has with blue, they’re not at that point in their relationship yet. with the passing of time there’s a progression, and the touches between blue and him become more and more intimate. these are all steps that in adam’s mind should likely lead to the moment of kissing her. and as much as he was into – or thought he was into – blue at the time, it’s not just the fact of kissing blue for him, it’s the kissing itself, the inherent intimacy of the gesture. the kind of thing he has, on a platonic level, with his friends; the bumping of knuckles with both gansey and noah, maybe even ronan?, every time they meet are meant to suggest a symbolic closeness and comradeship between the three boys. something that he still seems not to have with blue, at least not completely. a kiss would maybe seal the reaching of that moment in adam’s mind, but she doesn’t let him have that, so he’s left with doubts and uncertainties about her affections. in fact, the most intimate moment between adam and blue takes place just after adam has pressed charges against his dad and finds himself homeless and more in need of comfort than ever. he goes at blue’s and when he’s there, wordlessly, he sat beside her and then laid his head on her lap, his face in his arms. he’s so shattered after what’s happened to him that he doesn’t even realise how much contact he’s craving and taking. then he asks her for a kiss and in this instance blue is right, it isn’t how it should be because it’s not about kissing her at all, it’s once again about the gesture itself. and the emotional support that he needs, in whatever form, in a moment where his whole world has gone to pieces. to be honest, blue telling him, there’s still worse than what you’ve got is a really cruel thing to say when he’s hurting, even if, generally speaking, it might be true. i don’t want to start discourse on blue, because she’s just a teenager too, and she has her own valid reasons for not wanting to kiss adam. so i’m not necessarily blaming her, but it truly isn’t her best moment and she certainly doesn’t show a lot of empathy for what he’s going through.

in the first book and a half, he tries to kiss her at least three times, and blue rejects him without a (real and true) explanation on every single occasion. as i said, i don’t fault her for not knowing how to handle the situation. but from adam’s point of view, these refusals must sting in a very painful way, because she’s the one person from whom he would naturally expect a physical connection. he asks for a kiss even when they’re breaking up, under the guise of proof that he isn’t her one true love.

so that’s the situation with blue.

but then we have ronan. adam and ronan seem to have casual physical contact all the time, what with one teasing the other or with playful punches on the arm as a way of greeting each other. and that already establishes their relationship, strained as it may be at the start of the raven boys, as a long-standing, strong and contact-based one. they might fight every other day, but they’re very familiar and comfortable with each other. and they fight less and less as the story progresses, their fights being more sparse though sometimes more explosive when they happen. and the first turning point is probably in the dream thieves, as they collaborate to fix the ley line and of course as we learn of ronan’s crush for adam.

things change more visibly by the time of blue lily, lily blue, with both of them becoming more self-aware and self-conscious around each other. for a while it’s just stolen glances and hidden stares, but fast forward to the sudden bite of possibility scene, when adam is reminded of the instant when his and ronan’s hands touched for a second. adam describes the physical sensations from the touching in a very distinct and vivid way and these sensation are so intense that they’re said to explode out of him. at this point his feelings for ronan aren’t at all definite, at least not on a rational level, and yet a simple brushing of hands prompts a strong reaction from his body. and the same happens with the first kiss with ronan, adam felt it in more than his lips, and with the whole mental image of a storm coming from a mile away to soak him, which is obviously a metaphor about being overwhelmed by sensations. he still doesn’t intellectually understand how he feels, but from a physical perspective he feels, bright and dreamy and imaginary as the light through the window. this is such a peaceful, almost blissful scenario. when has adam parrish felt so light before, ever? just the first, unexpected kiss from ronan brings sensations so much stronger than any moment spent with blue. we don’t see the following kisses from his point of view, with mstief concentrating on ronan’s instead, but the description is enough to draw a pretty clear picture: ribs under hands, mouth on mouth, stubble on lips… but especially, they were both hungry animals, but adam had been starving for longer. this is such a simple sentence, and yet it holds so much truth. their hunger is different, ronan’s is more adam-focused because of his crush for adam having much older roots, whilst adam’s is made of both his (newly uncovered) feelings for ronan and a concrete need of someone to let off his starvation for touch with. not any ‘someone’, of course; someone he has feelings for and is attracted to, and who has feelings for him and is attracted to him, too. someone to love and to be loved from. and they were both starving and hungry. adam might not call this love yet, convinced as he is that he’s maybe still unable to feel such a feeling. but from that moment on, he completely confides in and relies on ronan. even when he’s at his most vulnerable once again, when the demon takes over his body, he trusts ronan enough that he physically counts on him for comfort, his body sagging against ronan’s and his head resting on ronan’s shoulders. he doesn’t give up, because ronan does not allow him too. and he trusts ronan enough to listen.

#that took some time #but i loved writing it bc it allowed me to see once more what an amazing boy adam parrish is #and how much he grows and works on himself #trc #trc meta #adam parrish #ronan lynch #pynch #adam x ronan #the raven cycle #maggie stiefvater #cissy talks

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randykorn · 4 years

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2019 Writing Roundup

Under the cut because I have never been succinct in my life and this is no exception

JANUARY: Welcome to Aglionby

“Okay, okay,” Maura said, holding up her hands for peace, swinging her gaze between Blue and Gansey. “We don’t know everything-“

“We hardly know anything, really-“ Persephone interjected.

“But I will tell you what we do know. This boy is on a quest for a lost king. This boy is touched by death. This boy will either save this town, or doom it. And you, Blue, are going to help him do it.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means that there’s a prophecy,” Maura said, “that we’ve been monitoring for quite some time now. It means that the cards say that you’re both at the heart of it. It means that you’re both going to face danger and decisions that will change you forever.”

“It means that it’s starting,” Persephone said with a laugh that struck Gansey like lightning. “It’s finally starting.”

FEBRUARY: Welcome to Aglionby

Slowly, he unfolded the letter, already dreading what he’d find.

Henry Cheng called. Went to Hirshhorn. Be back soon. Safe dreams. -Gansey

The crumpled letter was hitting the opposite wall before Ronan even realized what he’d read.

This close to the full moon, Hirshhorn would be an endless maze, easy to enter but impossible to leave. And that wasn’t even accounting for the line’s gathering energy. Gansey would be in there alone, without Ronan to guide him and keep him safe by navigating the fluctuating magic. But Gansey wasn’t alone, was he? No, he had-

“Henry Cheng,” he hissed.

Henry Cheng, who modeled for Ronan’s art classes and gently kissed him in empty hallways, never forcing Ronan to speak, instead trusting him to act. Henry Cheng, earning Ronan’s voice and truths and fears when he was drunk enough to give them. Henry Cheng, who promised something softer than Kavinsky, but just as exciting, and likely more real.

Henry Cheng, who seemed to be involved in this fucking prophecy.

MARCH: Welcome to Aglionby

“What in the nine heavens is that?” Henry asked, pressing against Ronan’s seat to get a better view.

Something moved in Gansey’s peripheral vision, in front of the car. Something large and white and glowing.

“That,” Adam said quietly, sounding just as shaken as Gansey felt, “is The Beast.”

Gansey whipped back around so fast he felt the Camaro shake. Standing directly in front of the Pig was the largest deer he had ever seen. Easily twenty feet tall, the sight of it made his stomach drop out, equal parts fear and awe. It was just as Adam said - glowing white fur woven from moonlight, with a subtle sheen of blue. Small, silver butterflies fluttered around it, dancing in its glow. Moss and vines draped elegantly between its antlers, forming a natural crown of delicate, pale blooming flowers.

The Beast suddenly struck him as a wholly inaccurate name. It was far too crude, too rough, too lacking for such a magnificent creature. What stood in front of them contained all the delicacy of the moon and all the strength of the sun. The Beast simply didn’t come close to capturing it.

It looked at him, stark white eyes meeting his through the windshield, and Gansey found that he couldn’t breathe. Its gaze bored into him, looking far past his physical appearance. Gansey felt a shiver run through his mind, his soul, through everything he was and everything he would ever be. He felt himself pulled into that all-encompassing white expanse as it read him, judged him, measured him against what he needed to accomplish. For the moment he felt blank, peaceful, and if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought that this soft, floating space within himself was akin to death.

APRIL: Welcome to Aglionby

“I’ll do it,” Adam said, standing up and turning toward The Beast. “I’ll do it, if you’ll have me. If you’ll keep him alive.”

He couldn’t change the past, couldn’t help his younger self when no one else would, but maybe, just maybe, he could help this boy here, now, right in front of him. Maybe he could manage to be what his younger self had always needed, by being what this boy needed now.

Adam climbed up onto the stump, standing tall as the wind whipped and swirled around him. He still had to look up to meet The Beast’s eyes, but at least they were on more even ground, now. The boy shook beneath him, beside him, within him, and Adam hoped he was making the right choice.

“Well?” he asked, staring upward with a confidence he didn’t really feel, spreading his arms to the sides. Open. Vulnerable. “Will I do?”

Yes.

MAY: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

Adam was quiet for a while, slowly unwinding his anger as his eyes searched Gansey for some unknowable quality. Gansey, for his part, let himself be studied in silence.

This was the moment he had told Ronan about Glendower - about the truth and the pain and the magic - but reversed. Inverted, a mirror reflected out. He had watched Ronan like Adam was watching him now, carefully cataloguing everything he knew of his friend and weighing him against a lifelong desire to be believed. To be known.

He could feel a secret rising up in the air, and he hardly dared to breathe lest he scare it away.

Trust me, his mind whispered. Trust me like I trust you.

JUNE: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

For an instant, Ronan imagined the scene. Gansey waking to find Ronan missing, sighing to himself as he pulled on days-old clothing and grabbed the keys to the dreadful Suburban. Gansey wandering the streets, worry squirming in his gut, holding off on calling the others - but only just. Gansey finally making his way to the church as the dawn inched across the sky. Gansey seeing the blood spattered across the steps, already turning brown, before noticing Ronan’s broken body crumpled on the ground.

For an instant, Ronan wondered if the Grey Man would be smart enough to make it look like a suicide.

For an instant, Ronan wondered if Gansey would believe that.

Of course he would. A part of Gansey was always braced for the worst Ronan had to offer, even as he yearned to believe that Ronan was better, now. Ronan was starting to believe that “better” was a myth, that healing was an unattainable platitude forced upon grieving teenagers that no one knew how to handle.

Did he still want to die?

Sometimes.

Did he want to die under the hands of the same man who had murdered his father?

Fuck. No.

JULY: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

A flash of darkness surged out of the trees, landing on top of his car with enough force to dent the roof inward. Adam cursed as the back wheels buckled and skid sideways, sending the car into a wild tailspin. He wrestled for control as an inhuman screech scraped against his ears, calling for blood and destruction. Gleaming claws pressed against the windshield, and Adam screwed his eyes shut as glass exploded inward, several large shards shattering into dust as they hit his skin.

Cabeswater, protecting him.

But from what?

Adam blinked upward, just long enough to catch a glimpse of an amorphous dark shape against the swirling vortex outside the car, everything in shadow except for the small details. The teeth glinting in the shuttering light of his dashboard. The claws curling around the space where his windshield had just been, piercing the underside of the roof. The six eyes glowing like ravenous fire, ready to swallow him whole.

The trees, he thought wildly, abandoning the steering wheel entirely to brace his head with both arms. I’m going to hit the-

AUGUST: Welcome to Aglionby (unpublished)

There was no ground, no sky, no way to orient himself as he fought his way through the smoke, the darkness, the voices that rolled around him, over him, through him. His body felt heavy, sluggish, each small movement taking more energy than he was sure he had.

He lifted his hand to his face, knowing it wasn’t the first time he’d done this, either. The memories fell into place in his mind, identical dominos all collapsing into a single, present moment of uncertain fear.

He was fading.

His skin was transparent; wispy and thin, layered over his bones like an indistinct x-ray. The bones themselves gave off the faintest glow, making it easier to pick out the tiny veins and arteries that curled through him, rivers that wound their way through the valleys and peaks of his physiology.

This would be great for anatomy class. The thought startled a desperate, panicked laugh out of him that faded within seconds, and he was left with a terribly hollow feeling. Something told him he wouldn’t be going back to anatomy class for quite some time.

Noah pulled his hand to his chest, feeling the frantic beat pulsing through him, steadying some wordless fear within him.

Alive.

SEPTEMBER: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

Adam remembered carefully researching the cheapest way to get to New York, remembered thinking that it would be easy to get lost in the crowd of the city. He remembered slowly filling his backpack with clothes and snacks over several weeks, remembered shoving in his toiletries in the panicked silence of that final night. He remembered sneaking into his parents’ room and stealing the credit card out of Dad’s wallet. He remembered biking to the nearest gas station and buying a bag of nuts so he could get enough cash back to fund his trip.

He remembered the terror of the bus ride. The freedom. The hope.

He remembered New York, a blurred haze of uncaring crowds and dirty sidewalks. He’d been one face among millions, impossible to notice, impossible to find. The sudden release from his life - from what it meant to be Adam - had completely overwhelmed him, and he’d spent most of the first day squatting in a back alley next to a dumpster, struggling to breathe through his decision. The second day he’d managed to find his way to the library and began the process of figuring out how to live on his own at fourteen without his father finding him. The third day, someone far more desperate than him had stolen everything he had while he slept in a park, including Dad’s very traceable credit card. The forth day, the police picked him up and dropped him into Officer Soltero’s sympathetic but useless hands.

OCTOBER: Welcome to Aglionby (unpublished)

Now it was Adam’s turn to look pained. “I don’t care to hear his tragic backstory.”

“I think it’s related to the ley line,” Gansey said. “Ley lines.”

Adam paused. “You didn’t know, did you. That there were two.” Gansey shook his head, his perfect lips pulling into a frown. “Ronan did.”

“I know. Ronan seems to know quite a bit more than he ever let on.”

“Why didn’t he tell you? Haven’t you been poking around here for a while with him?”

“Years,” Gansey whispered, his eyes somewhere far away from here, surrounded by memories that Adam couldn’t reach, emotions that he couldn’t fully see. “But I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Adam couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be searching for something for years, only to find out that your best friend and partner in magic had held the vital clue all along. Ronan had been by Gansey’s side for every step of the way, as far as Adam could tell, and he’d still chosen not to mention his obvious connection with magic, with the lines. He’d chosen to keep Gansey searching in the dark while he’d held the light. Adam couldn’t imagine the anger he would have felt. Or, he could, which was why Gansey’s utter lack of animosity was both perplexing and alarming. Adam didn’t trust silence. Stillness. Not when there was reason for it to break.

“I’m sure he didn’t,” he said instead.

“No offense, Adam, but you don’t know him very well.”

“No,” he agreed. “And I don’t care to.”

NOVEMBER: Carry On Rewrite (unpublished)

If I don’t kill Baz, he will kill me.

I’ve always known this. It’s been the foundational fact of our relationship, the thing that’s driven us to become mortal enemies for the past seven years. It’s why he and his family have tried to kill me so many times. It’s why I hate him.

It’s easier to kill someone you hate, especially if that someone is trying to kill you.

I shift my sword into a two-handed grip.

If I don’t kill Baz, he will kill me.

He lunges for me, bloodied hands reaching for my face, fangs reaching for my neck, eyes swirling with a desperate, wild hunger that will only be sated by my blood, my death.

I don’t think I hate Baz.

I don’t think I want to kill him, either.

I don’t think I ever have.

I drop my sword, feeling it vanish - and with it, any real chance of killing the bloodthirsty vampire in front of me. Feral, ruthless, deadly. Broken, starving, terrified.

I’d rather save him than hurt him.

I hope I haven’t made a mistake.

DECEMBER: TRC Rewrite (unpublished)

Noah drew close to the girl for the first time in seven years.

It’s starting.

She sat on a crumbling stone wall, tapping her pen against the notebook open in her lap, diligently scribbling names down as the woman called them out. Later, her family would contact their customers if their names appeared, giving them time to get their affairs in order. It was a macabre job, but Noah didn’t mind. Death came for them all, and perhaps it was best to be prepared.

He drew even closer, leaning over to read the names scrawled into the book. He wondered if his own name was there, pages and pages back, or if his spirt had failed to walk the line all those years ago. He was stuck, after all. The normal rules didn’t seem to apply to him.

Her hand jingled pleasantly as it slid across the page, the multitude of bracelets tinkling like bells in the night. He looked up into her face as she frowned down at the page, a mixture of frustration and wonder woven into the slant of her lips, begging to be wiped away with a quick joke or a quicker kiss. Her hair was pulled into a dozen pigtails with a dozen mismatched hair clips, the variety of spikes making her look like a hedgehog. Noah fondly brushed his fingers against it, smiling at the way the tight, prickly curls tickled his palm. He had always enjoyed this, even if this was the first time he’d done it.

#i need a writing tag #WtA #ICYH

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gansey-just-gansey · 4 years

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Punk History 101 part ten

Blue was still laying in her bed with her head under a pillow when Adam knocked softly on her door and let himself in. She had come straight home, skipping her other classes, and immediately put on about three extra layers of clothes, got under two blankets and added the pillow for good measure. She felt naked, exposed, seen.

Gansey had taken her at her most vulnerable and shown it to everybody on campus. Okay, that was an exaggeration. It was just his photography class, but at a school this large, that was easily seventy to a hundred people. Strangers had seen her. Henry had seen her. He'd probably shown it to Ronan when he got it printed.

Adam sat on the edge of her bed and touched her shoulder over the blankets. She flinched away from the contact.

“What happened, Blue?” he asked softly. “Gansey was waiting outside the door. Said he's been pounding for hours now.”

“You didn't let him in, did you?” Blue shot up, the pillow and blankets falling around her.

“Of course not. I sent him and Ronan home. Told them I'd come talk to you,” he said. “Why are you wearing so many clothes?”

“Gansey,” she spit from her teeth, “took a picture of me half naked and presented it to his entire photography class. Without my permission.”

Adam was quiet for a moment. Then: “He did what?” Adam asked, disbelieving. “That's-that's illegal. You could literally sue him if you wanted.”

“The important parts were covered. I was in my underwear and I'm an adult. It's not technically illegal.”

“Still, that's unacceptable. Give me a minute.” Adam got up and left the room. After a minute, Blue heard knocking and followed him.

The door to the apartment was open and when she peeked out, she could see him standing in front of Gansey, who had answered the door, probably hoping it was Blue. She quickly ducked her head back in so she could see Adam but not Gansey.

“Gansey,” Adam said, his accent present, betraying his calm demeanor. Adam never let his accent slip in front of other people.

“Adam. Adam, is Blue okay? Is she still mad? Can I talk to her?” Gansey sounded miserable.

“She doesn't want to talk to you right now,” Adam told him.

“Adam?” Ronan's voice came closer.

“Not right now, Ronan,” Adam said, holding one hand up. “Gansey, you have a mother right? A grandmother? A sister, an aunt, even just a friend who is or was a woman?”

“I have a mother and a sister,” Gansey said, voice strained.

“And neither of them ever taught you how to be a decent human being?” Adam asked, calmly, softly. Gansey sucked in a sharp breath, but he kept going. “How would you feel if they allowed themselves to be that open and comfortable with someone and that person turned around and betrayed them?” Blue fidgeted, uncomfortable in her skin.

Gansey took a moment to answer. “Furious,” he finally whispered.

“Do you understand what you have done?” Adam's voice started to heat up, getting harder. His fists balled at his sides. “She's wearing layers and layers of clothes, curled up in a ball under her blankets, trying her damnedest not to be seen. I think she may have even skipped her classes.”

“It was just a project. It doesn't even show her face,” Gansey attempted halfheartedly.

“Gansey, no,” Ronan said from the background.

“You think that makes it better somehow? Less objectifying?” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, reigning back the anger. When he spoke again, his voice was back to the polished, unaffected version he had adopted their first semester here. “Stay away from her. Ronan, I'm sorry to say that I don't think we'll be moving in together next semester. I won't abandon her or put her in a position where she may be taken advantage of. Again,” he tacked on, glaring at Gansey.

He spun away, marching back to Blue. She ducked farther back into the apartment, but not before Gansey caught a glimpse of her.

“Blue,” he called, but he didn't try to follow Adam down the hall. Ronan was already angrily asking Gansey what the hell he'd done to Blue. She blinked back angry tears, hand tight on the door knob. She didn't answer. She went back down the hall to her room and crawled back under the covers. This time Adam left her alone.

After a few minutes, she heard a door close on the other side of the wall she shared with Gansey. He breathed a deep sigh and a light thud reverberated through. His head hitting the wall? Blue didn't know and she didn't care. She waited for the music to start, so she could lose herself in it without letting Gansey know she was in here, listening to him.

Instead of music, though, it was Gansey's voice coming through the wall. “Blue?” he asked tentatively. She didn't answer, so he pushed on. “Blue, if you're listening, I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking. No, I wasn't thinking. I got so caught up in the project, in you, really, that I didn't stop to think about what I was doing. I took the way you were with me for granted, assumed it would be okay to share it with others. I'm pulling my project next time I see my professor. All the pictures. I'll give them back to you. I know it might be too little, too late, but I'm going to try. I understand if you don't want to talk to me again, though. I really do. And I'm sorry.”

Blue didn't answer and Gansey sighed again. Then the music started up. 'I miss you' by Blink-182 began playing. After a few bars, Blue couldn't take it anymore. She picked up her blanket, wrapping it around herself and padding out to the living room. Adam looked up at her and lifted one arm. She tucked herself into his side.

“Thank you,” she said. “And I'm sorry this is coming between you and Ronan.”

“Don't think that for a second,” he replied. “Ronan and I will be fine. I'm far more worried about you.”

“I'll be fine. Eventually. I just... need some time. To feel less... uncovered.”

“I understand. I meant what I said, though. I won't leave you or make you move in with him. We can keep on living together. We've been fine for over two years. We'll make it another two.”

She felt gratitude for Adam well up in her chest and she settled in closer. Her eyes grew heavy, emotionally exhausted and drained, and warm from her extra layers. Eventually she stopped fighting them. She closed her eyes and fell asleep right there on the couch.

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ridleymocki · 7 years

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There's a Brand New Dance, But I Don't Know Its Name

Written for Pynch Week 17 Day 1, prompt: Something old // Something new // Something borrowed.

Summary: Ronan picks Adam up from work and struggles with the way that old baggy t-shirt makes him look, prompting Adam to share a good memory from his past, in a way he so rarely does. Ronan loves the way the two of them work together, Adam thinks his boyfriend is away with the faeries half the time.They have a quiet, cute evening together, with some gratuitous Gangsey shenanigans at the end.

Notes: Guys this is my first Pynch fic and it’s amazingly self-indulgent but that’s just going to be the tone for this week, I think. A big thanks to the organisers of Pynch Week 17, you guys are great. (I’m also posting from Aust, so sorry if the times are off for you international peeps).

also on ao3

There was a hole in the collar of Adam’s t-shirt when Ronan picked him up from work, a stretched out and threadbare t-shirt that was driving Ronan goddamn fucking crazy. Streaks of black were littering Adam’s hands and forearms, one across his brow, but the shirt was clean for all that it was ratty as hell. His hair was heavy with a few days dirt but the smile was the same. The whole ensemble was strangely new.

Ronan had never seen him quite like this. Adam had looked tired at times; beaten down, or worn out. But he’d never looked vulnerable. He had ridden a moving dolly behind Ronan’s car and held a demon in his bones, for god’s sake; he never, ever looked vulnerable. But the shadow from the loose collar made Adam’s chest look concave, it’s faded colour washed him out, and Ronan had the infuriating urge to gather him to his own body and shake out whatever made him look so small.

It was an urge Ronan rarely got: to protect Adam Parrish. All the facts seemed to suggest the opposite; he’d beaten the shit out Adam’s dad, after all. But if anyone knew about wanting people to treat you as though you were your own master, it was Ronan. And Adam wasn’t some wilting rose you had to tiptoe around lest his petals fall. Adam could be more dangerous than Ronan himself in many ways and Ronan was keenly aware of it. Attracted to it, even. Just like he loved Adam’s dark stare and his dismissive comments, the glimmer of something hard and jagged and ready. Ronan had been pinned by that stare more than once, and it was always thrilling.

But that fucking shirt. It was wrong on him. Made him look skinny and ill-matched to his body. The way it made Ronan want to protect him was infuriating because he knew Adam would hate it. They cared for each other by insulting one another then laughing together, touching like they were entitled, being there when needed and leaving be when that was needed, instead. By giving each other the dignity of their respective strength – not by treating one as weak.

“Earth to Lynch. Where’ve you gone?” Adam snapped his fingers in front of his face and Ronan blinked, hurtling back to reality.

“Whatever,” he snarled. Adam only smirked at him. “You look awful. Don’t get grease stains everywhere.”

“Didn’t seem to bother you much the other night,” Adam said lowly, buckling into the passenger seat of the BMW. Ronan felt his neck go hot as he pulled back onto the road, trying hard not to look in the rear view mirror to the back seat, and fuel the memories of what they’d done there. Adam’s crassness was oddly relieving, though. Pierced the dishevelment so Ronan saw him sharply again.

“What the hell happened? Did you get stuck under a car?” He reached over to thumb the stain on Adam’s brow, and Adam swatted his hand away with a grumble.

“Just an engine that looked like it’d been dragged from the sea. Bastard of a thing. I actually had to change, I haven’t done that in years. Honestly, the shit people do to their cars…” He trailed off, distracted with retying a shoelace.

“That explains the shirt.”

“What about the shirt?”

“It has holes in it,” Ronan said plainly. “You never wear anything with holes.” Adam got a sad little twist to his mouth at that. It was true, of course, Ronan knew. Adam’s Aglionby uniform had always been impeccable, and if he’d just never sat next to another student, made obvious the way his uniform was slightly faded, it might have looked new.

“It’s old,” Adam said, “I found it in my locker.” Ronan had taken the road on the edge of town, and it was blessedly bare of other cars, because he kept looking over at his passenger.

Adam picked at another hole in the hem of his shirt, the cotton knit peeling back like worn paper. After a few moments he said, “There was this guy that lived in our street for a while,” and Ronan looked back to the road, aware of how rarely Adam talked about his old place. “He wasn’t that old but he acted like he’d lived through the punk era or something, safety pins in his ears and shit,” Adam smiled to himself. “Anyway, his name was Gary and he was cool, you know? Decent guy. Not brave, exactly. I mean, he knew what was going on with me the way everyone did. But he was nice.” The unspoken everyone knew and didn’t do anything made Ronan grind his teeth together. Adam seemed to frown at his own memories, and they filled up the car, hovering.

“And?” Ronan said lowly, after a moment. Adam recalled himself.

“And, one day he saw me walking out of the lot to go to school, with a blood stain on my shirt. Gary, he was out smoking on his front step, asked if I wanted to change. I told him I was locked out. Then he just disappeared inside his trailer and came out with this,” Adam tugged at the collar of his t-shirt. “I wore it that day and then kept it at work. Totally forgot about it, actually, until just now.”

“Why at work?” Ronan asked, then immediately wondered if that was the wrong thing to ask. This second-guessing shit was all Gansey’s fault, he swore. He reminded himself that Adam didn’t care when he was blunt.

“Because I didn’t want my parents to find it. It was just– it was mine. And I didn’t want Gary to get shit for it.”

Ronan nodded. “What happened to him?”

Adam shrugged. “He moved a few years back, chasing some music dream or something. I only knew him for a couple months.”

They lapsed into silence, spent mostly with Adam rolling his shoulders and neck, and Ronan sneaking as many glances at him in the orange setting light as safety would allow.

Before long they pulled up at Monmouth. The windows were dark, seeing as no one was here these days but Ronan, the others off on their intrepid adventures.

“You still need a damn shower, though,” he said, slamming the door shut.

Adam snorted. “You offering to give me one, Lynch?”

“Oh fuck off,” Ronan said with a smile.

…………………………

Adam did shower, but he did it alone and threw water around the curtain at Ronan when he came in to grab a soda from the fridge. “It’s not like I haven’t seen it,” he laughed on the way out.

When Adam emerged, towel around his waist with another rubbing at his hair, pink from the water and smirking, he said, “If Blue were here she’d be biting your ear off about consent.”

Ronan huffed, dragging his eyes away from the droplet of water on Adam’s stomach. “I’d willingly cut my ear off before she opened her mouth.”

“I’ve learned from experience that she’ll just walk to your other side and get your good ear.” Ronan made a face at him. “Too soon?” And there, right there, was the asshole he knew and quietly loved. Adam’s feigned look of concern slowly melted away into a smug grin, his eyes dark. Ronan stretched a little where he sprawled on the couch and openly stared, letting his eyes run over the breadth of Adam’s shoulders, the graceful slope of his cheek, trailing down his neck and chest, ending at the strong hand that gripped the towel he’d stopped using to dry his hair. Said hair flopped in attractive disarray over his forehead, making him look touchable and real. When Ronan caught his gaze again, Adam’s smile had shifted into something soft and amused.

“What were we talking about, again?” Ronan said, unbothered. Adam laughed at him and swatted him with a towel as he walked behind the couch and into Ronan’s room. It was only once he was out of sight that Ronan realised the towel he’d swatted with hadn’t been the one Adam had pressed to his hair, and he groaned. “You’re a fucking tease,” he called out.

This summer was being incredibly good to him, Ronan thought. The fact the others were away made things very quiet, but they kept in touch and the feeling of their absence never veered into loneliness. On Friday, when Adam finished work, they’d drive to the Barns for the weekend and while away hours in the too-warm sun surrounded by dream things. Adam would do a reading for him out on the porch in the middle of the night, fireflies about and circling. He’d try to do it on intuition but end up pulling out a book on tarot anyway, and Ronan would tease him for being a nerd. Ronan would wake up next to him the next morning, seek out his warmth under the covers, and wonder how in the hell they, of all people, managed to end up here. They’d get up at crashing sounds in the kitchen and find Opal throwing cereal pieces to Chainsaw, the bird hopping manically in the small space to get to them. Adam would press a kiss to his shoulder and start on the coffee.

It had been more or less the same for the last few weekends in a row, and the predictability of it just made Ronan grateful, instead of annoyed.

“You’re drifting off a lot today,” Adam said right before he flopped on top of Ronan where he lay on the couch, head pressed to his throat and chest to chest. “Everything good?”

Ronan was nodding without having to think about it, and he ran a hand down Adam’s spine. It was a testament to their relationship that Adam accepted that response and didn’t press further. The fabric beneath Ronan’s fingers was softer than he expected and he looked down to see Adam was wearing one of his own black t-shirts. “You changed.”

Adam propped himself on an elbow to look at him, suppressing a smile. “You hated the other shirt,” he said, matter of fact, and Ronan raised an eyebrow at him. “I know you, Lynch.” He said lowly, and leaned down to press their lips together. Kissing Adam was still a little leap of faith, like he was giving himself up, giving in, allowing another person too near. It was as dizzying as the first time. But they had lots of kinds of kisses now. This one was content and easy, and they drew it out for longer and longer.

“You wanna get pizza later? Skype the others?” Ronan asked when they separated. This was something of a routine, as well. And Gansey would never let them hear the end of it if they left it another day without checking in. Adam nodded at him and resettled on his chest, the silent yes, but later coming through loud and clear, regardless. Ronan let his head fall back, the shadows of Monmouth’s dusty eaves growing broad as the sun met the horizon. He toyed with the fabric under his fingers, liking that it was warm from Adam’s body and fit him well, liking it in a way he couldn’t explain. There were a lot of things he couldn’t explain about this new thing they had, and not everything in his life was alright, but damn it, this was.

This was alright.

This was good.

…………………………….

(They overslept and had to race to Nino’s before it shut, even though the summer night was probably too warm for pizza. Blue took smug screenshots of their Skype chat when she saw they were, in fact, wearing the same shirt. Henry joked that he would make an Instagram account to document their married life, and then looked wounded when Ronan very slowly and appreciatively ate the pizza that Henry couldn’t get to if he tried. Gansey looked well slept for once and, with the unwitting confidence of someone who thinks their concern is valid, told Ronan and Adam that they had better be taking care of themselves. “You’re the one in the middle of fucking nowhere,” Adam laughed at him.

“Adam. It’s Henrietta.” Gansey got very close to the camera and widened his eyes as if to psychically convey the weight of what he was saying.

“There’s magic in them thar hills,” Blue said behind him, rolling her eyes. Adam cracked up.

“Thank you, Dad,” Ronan said, “we’ll be sure to use the buddy system.”

Gansey sent them ‘mental hugs’ – “It’s a thing, Ronan, accept my affection” – as Henry waved goodbye on screen, and ridiculously, Ronan and Blue fist-bumped their respective cameras at each other, making Adam snort into his shoulder.

This was good.)

...........................................

Thanks for reading! <3

#pynchweek #pynchweek17 #pynch #the raven cycle #fic #my fic

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fromchaos · 7 years

Text

i like my body

read it on the ao3 at http://archiveofourown.org/works/7846558

(repost of an old fic just bc)

summary: adam has noticed for some time that while ronan seems to be getting more comfortable every day, he’s been feeling gradually stranger in his skin.

pynch, rated m, #everyoneistrans

title from the poem “i like my body” by e. e. cummings, which vaguely inspired this fic. in order to fully get into the mood, listen to the entirety of the front bottoms discography.

cw/tw for gender dysphoria, brief references to adam’s past, mentions of gender confirmation surgery, and non-graphic descriptions of sex. in addition, i’d just like to say that i am but one trans person and the experiences of these characters certainly don’t represent the experiences of all trans people. okay, enjoy!

the first time one of them leaves a mark, it’s almost completely an accident. ronan gets carried away lavishing attention at the meeting of adam’s neck and shoulder, and later there is a faint red splotch in that very spot. he doesn’t notice it until he’s brushing his teeth before he leaves for work. as he kisses ronan goodbye at the door, he comments on it as casually as possible, “nice leech action earlier.” adam swivels his head to the side, baring the little mark to ronan.

ronan looks embarrassed, which on him is really just one of many variations on “mad.” he won’t meet adam’s eyes when he snaps, “sorry, won’t happen again.”

and maybe adam should have expected he’d take it this way; physicality between the two of them has been a slow, rambling journey, ironically nowhere near as natural as it had felt with blue. they still haven’t done anything more than clumsily feel each other other up in the midst of a heavy makeout session. any verbal acknowledgment of it by either of them usually makes the other respond with teeth and claws bared, ready for a fight. “no, ronan,” adam says, trying for a tone that could be described as earnest, “really- nice.”

it’s still not enough, still awkward in the way words usually are between them. their flirtation had been about actions and spontaneous gestures for so long that it sometimes feels like things get lost in translation. when adam had asked gansey about it, his sage advice had been, “if you can’t talk about it, you shouldn’t be doing it.” and adam wants to be doing it, wants to be doing even more of it, so he bravely struggles through moments like this one.

ronan’s face breaks into something more open and unreadable, and he gives adam one more kiss before shoving him out the door. on opposite sides of the barn’s walls, they are both smiling.

from that point on, ronan and adam rarely appear in public without a few hickeys between the two of them. the others give them shit for it almost constantly, but adam just rolls his eyes because he doesn’t have words to describe how good it feels to have bruises that his friends can joke about, how it feels like he and ronan might belong to each other in a way that isn’t completely terrifying.

in january, ronan gets top surgery as a christmas present to himself. the surgeon is in dc, so he stays with the ganseys while gansey is up there for the winter break. adam asks if ronan wants him there, but he shakes his head and gives adam’s hand a squeeze where it’s held between them on the couch. he doesn’t explain too much, probably can’t, but adam figures he understands some of his reasoning. they’ve been working on it, but they still struggle with being vulnerable in front of each other, and adam feels uncomfortable with any behavior that could be described as “nurturing.” gansey had been taking care of ronan a lot longer, and he’d gotten his own top surgery more than a year before.

when he comes back to the barns nearly a week afterwards, adam is anxiously waiting at the kitchen table with opal, who is chomping on a fork and kicking her hooves. the pig pulls up, and he rushes to the door to see ronan slowly pushing himself out of the car while gansey carries his bag and fusses over him.

“remember, opal, no tackling.”

she snorts, clearly of the opinion that tackling should always be allowed. “how long?” she whines.

“two weeks. at least.” opal throws the fork angrily but comes to stand by the door regardless.

ronan grins when he comes in, even after gansey starts nagging him and overloading adam with care-giving instructions. he waits until opal has given ronan a surprisingly sweet hug to say his own hello. it’s just a light kiss, a whispered “welcome home,” in his ear, but when he pulls back, both ronan and gansey are looking at him with utter delight.

“stop making it weird,” he reprimands, leading the way into the living room so that no one can see the way his face has heated up. ronan takes the couch, lies down with his feet in the air so adam can slide under them, put his feet in his lap.

gansey settles in an armchair, says seriously, “i’m just so happy for you two. you know, this is exactly the sort of fluffy human interest story they put on local news networks, and it’s happening to you. that’s exciting!” ronan and adam sneak a look at each other that says exactly what they think of that, and adam has to hold back a laugh. a transgender fluff piece on local news would probably have a lot less dangerous magic, death, near-death experiences, and a lot more parents and heterosexuality.

“well, i’m just saying that i think it’s nice. things haven’t worked out half-bad is all,” gansey continues, “certainly not as terribly as they could have.”

“you’re right, gansey,” adam says, “we’re just being assholes.”

gansey stays for a while, until it’s obvious he’s just being polite by pretending he wouldn’t much rather be getting an enthusiastic welcome back from a certain tiny fashion disaster. “tell blue we say hi,” adam says as gansey is leaving.

“tell them to go to hell,” ronan adds with a small smile.

the last thing gansey says before he goes is, “i certainly will not.”

after adam makes a lazy dinner of instant mac and cheese and gets opal in bed, ronan gestures to him, says “c’mon.” he follows him up to the bathroom, where ronan starts unpacking the paper bag full of ointment and dressing gansey had left there earlier. he starts to roll up his t-shirt and stops halfway, admits, “my arms don’t really move that far yet.” adam tugs it the rest of the way up and off for him.

it’s not the first time he’s seen ronan shirtless, but it is the first time ronan doesn’t immediately curl up on himself or switch the focus to adam instead. his chest is still bandaged and a little swollen, but he looks good. the context isn’t quite right for adam to get worked up about it, but he admits to himself that his boyfriend is more than a little okay-looking. “you’re gonna have to get used to this glorious sight, parrish. soon i’m gonna be strutting all over the place half-naked. never wearing a shirt again,” ronan jokes when the silence stretches on a beat too long.

adam starts peeling away the first bandage, maybe a little too harsh at first. “it’s january. you’ll freeze your newly-placed nipples right off.”

ronan’s hands come up almost reflexively in a protective gesture. he huffs, “you’re just jealous.” it doesn’t really make sense, but the comeback sits with adam as he finishes cleaning the incisions and changing the bandages.

he isn’t jealous of ronan’s new chest per say, but he has noticed for some time that while ronan seems to be getting more comfortable every day, he’s been feeling gradually stranger in his skin.

over the past few months, he’s been more and more aware of his body with each passing day. maybe it started with cabeswater vanishing or with being in a relationship or the way his chest and shoulders seem to be broadening out. maybe he just has too much time to think about himself now that all of his spare time isn’t dedicated to hunting for glendower. whatever the cause, adam’s body feels at once the most his that it ever has and the most alien from himself that he can ever remember.

they sleep in the same bed that night, eager for more time together even if it’s spent unconscious. adam tries not to get too close to where ronan lies on his back, anxious about disrupting his healing, but he slides their hands together and holds on tight.

they get better at the physical stuff slowly and steadily, to the point where adam would even call it a major component of their relationship, but they stay firmly planted at second base for almost six months. there’s ronan’s weird catholic guilt, adam’s overtaxed schedule, and both of their individual body issues to contend with. adam can’t say he hasn’t thought about it- it’s actually become sort of an obsession. he’s lost precious sleep thinking about how it would happen: what actual acts would be performed, how it would feel, what ronan would look like in that final moment as he tipped over the edge. he’s a planner, and sex is no exception.

but the thing about ronan-the thing about adam with ronan-that he should have accounted for is the recklessness, the spontaneity. when it happens, it’s almost completely different than he had envisioned.

they’ve been having a lethargic day at the barns. no homework, no odd jobs around the farm, just catching up on sleep and heating up leftovers. there’s been a series of movies playing on the television in the living room, but adam has missed large chunks of every single one for trading lazy, sloppy kisses with ronan on the couch. opal had been sitting on the floor with declan’s old lincoln logs for the first movie, but had left shouting and making sounds of disgust once the kissing had started. it doesn’t feel like it’s building up to anything, going anywhere, until ronan comments, faux-casually, “we could be doing this upstairs.”

adam adopts the same tone when he adds, “in an actual bed.”

“with a door that locks,” ronan smirks, now that he’s sure they’re on the same page.

it takes them a while to actually get upstairs to ronan’s room, to remove clothing, to get into a workable position on the bed.

then ronan zeroes in on adam with laser focus, building him up first with his hand, then with his mouth. it’s good (really good), but there are still moments when he starts to get uncomfortable with the attention. he keeps turning his head to the pillow next to him, only to remind himself that ronan is on top of him, below him, not at his side. then ronan will pause and grin up at him, and his stomach settles, and he can just let himself feel good.

when he finishes, ronan crawls back up to his side and collapses, face down in his pillow. adam presses kisses onto his shoulder, his bicep, his shoulder blade- anywhere he can reach while his bones still feel like jelly. ronan turns his head, says, “i’m good.”

“i know. are you looking for a performance review or something?” adam teases between kisses.

ronan groans. “no, asshole. i mean- ugh.” he buries his face into the pillow again, speaks out of the side of his mouth, “you can return the favor tomorrow or next time or whatever. right now- i’m good.”

something about that doesn’t sit right with adam. it’s hard not to think of this as a one-sided exchange, a debt that hasn’t been properly paid, even if he knows rationally that it was a gift ronan gave without any expectation of reciprocation. as if he can hear the gears working in adam’s brain, ronan continues with difficulty, “look, it’s like- it’s- i- you.” he pauses, sighs, cracks a single eye to look at adam, “being with you, getting you off- that gets me off, okay? you make me feel like i’m getting off with the body i wish i had.”

he hadn’t thought of it that way. he isn’t sure he gets it, but adam never leaves something alone until he understands completely. “is that… enough?” “i mean, not always. i still fucking want you, okay? but tonight, just let me savor this shit.”

“okay.”

“okay,” ronan echoes. he wraps an arm around adam, pulls him closer until he can just flop on top of him the way he likes to when he’s on the brink of sleep. adam stays awake a little longer, puzzling out what it is about his body ronan finds so reassuring. in the morning, he does return the favor, and he tries to suppress the overwhelming feeling of smug satisfaction it brings him.

the gang almost always hangs out as a complete group, barring romantic endeavors. sometimes, though, ronan starts to get restless and awful, and gansey starts acting like he’s got a bee in his bonnet, and that’s usually when it’s decided he and gansey need some special friendship time. then things go back to normal again for a while. henry says it’s what adam and blue deserve for breaking up their boyfriends. they say it doesn’t matter why it works, just that it does.

while the two of them are off on their very special friend date, adam meets henry and blue for frozen yogurt at the usual place. at first it had felt wrong to go there without noah, to act like nothing had changed, but a new normal slowly asserted itself as time went on. also, there is only one frozen yogurt place in henrietta.

henry is trying to steal bites of blue’s fro-yo which usually would lead to blue wielding her spoon like a sword and henry getting injured. today, though, blue seems distracted, and ze has free access to her banana yogurt.

“i’m starting to suspect an ulterior motive for this trip,” he says once henry has eaten all of zir own fro-yo and about half of blue’s.

“huh? no!” she startles, then relaxes again, taps her plastic spoon on her lip contemplatively. “i guess i was just thinking about how it would feel to be the token cis person in the gang. it’s sort of weird, right? how all of us are this spectrum of trans identity and you’re…”

“boring cis adam?” he supplies. his stomach does a weird flip and he pushes what’s left of his fro-yo to henry.

“no!” she says again, “i mean, sort of. like, half of fox way is trans, and i didn’t really have friends at school, and now there’s all of us, and i guess what i’m saying is… i’ve never really had cis friends?”

“preach, bluester!” henry cries, drawing the attention of several other patrons at the fro-yo stand.

blue continues, “and i never really thought that a cis person could get it, could be so not-shitty about gender stuff. it sounds weird, but, like, what is that like?”

she’s looking at him so intensely, and now henry is paying full attention too, and adam feels sort of put on the spot. it had certainly occurred to him that maybe it wasn’t conventional for a friend group to be as diverse gender-wise as theirs was, but he’d always figured that was what had made them so intensely bonded. and he’d never really thought about what it meant to be cisgender. he stumbles looking for the right words. “thanks? i don’t know? i mean, what’s it like to be trans?”

“a-damn!” henry cries, “that is not the point of this very scientific inquiry. we are on a journey into the horrific and strange world of the cis mind!” blue nods absentmindedly, but turns back to adam with a strange, conflicted expression.

he shrugs, feeling more uncomfortable by the minute. he wishes the conversation hadn’t taken this turn. he says, almost pleadingly, “i’m serious, guys. i’ve never really thought about it. i figured that’s what being cis meant: never having to think about it.”

blue’s face scrunches up further. she speaks like she’s choosing her words very carefully, “i don’t think that that’s the whole of it, though. like, yeah, i think about my gender a lot which is maybe part of having a more fluid identity than, say, gansey or ronan, but even when i’m not actively thinking about it, i feel it? i don’t really know how to describe it.”

this time, henry is the one nodding. ze says, “if i may, blue’s clues- for me, it’s a sort of like being hungry or being warm or some other bodily sense? sometimes i just feel off, maybe i’m crabby all day for some unknown reason, maybe i just feel uneasy, and i don’t really realize it. then it hits me later that it’s just time to try out some new pronouns because these don’t feel right anymore.”

“right!” blue chimes. “but, like, not always about pronouns. some days, i’m just, like, more aware of my gender and my dysphoria.”

“oh.” adam feels prickly, like his skin is stretched too tight, and then he flexes his fingers under the table, tries not to feel that way because that sounds sort of like- he stands, looks at his watch, realizes he’s not wearing a watch, says, “i should get going. i have a shift at the garage in an hour, and i wanted to pick up some stuff from st. agnes beforehand.” he’s sort of light-headed now that he’s standing.

“‘stuff?’” henry echoes, an eyebrow raised.

blue looks worried, but she puts on a big smile for adam as she goes to hug him goodbye. “i mean, if you have to. we’ll see you around. take care of yourself.”

he rushes back to his car and tries not to think about how blue and henry are totally talking about him right now. about how cis he is, how he couldn’t handle their conversation because he’s a hetero-cis-patriarch (hetero?), how stupid he is for never thinking about gender like they apparently spend all their time doing.

adam doesn’t even have work until that night, a graveyard shift at the factory, so he starts the car and speeds back to the barns instead. he really had meant to pick up some of his stuff from st. agnes since he has to be moved out by the end of june, but right now he’s craving the wide open grounds of the barns so badly that he allows himself this small moment of irresponsibility.

ronan finds him on the roof of one of the smaller buildings towards the edge of the property when he gets back from monmouth. adam had thought maybe he had heard a sound like wheels on gravel twenty minutes earlier, but he had been too stuck in his own head to do anything about it. he feels slow and sort of far away, like he’s scrying but in a closed, limited space.

“thinking about jumping?” ronan snarks, throwing himself down next to adam. when he only gives a noncommittal hum, ronan scootches closer and nuzzles his bristly head into adam’s neck. the sensation helps a little, so he brings up a hand to scratch at ronan’s scalp. “if you’re getting all emo over something, could you at least give me a hint what it is?”

adam chuckles before he can stop himself. “emo? it’s 2015, is emo still a thing?”

“punk might be dead, but emo is immortal, dude,” ronan claims, leaning into adam’s touch. his breath is humid on adam’s shoulder, but the day is mild. they sit and look at the grounds of the barns in silence. ronan doesn’t let it go. “seriously, what the fuck is up?”

he gives adam space to speak at his own pace, knows he doesn’t like speaking until the thought is complete. “do you think i’m a man?” he asks abruptly. “i mean, do you think i’m manly?” he can tell it’s not where ronan thought he was going with this conversation. he stills for a moment against adam’s shoulder before relaxing again.

“honestly?” adam nods. “i don’t get much of a vibe at all from you.”

“thanks.” his voice and his temperament make the words come out sour, but he hopes ronan knows he means it. adam has always been thankful for ronan’s brutal honesty at times when everyone else wants to coddle him.

he shrugs, slips down until his head in adam’s lap right as adam’s arm was getting tired. these little intuitive gestures are probably the most consistent part of their relationship. ronan reaches for his hand, kisses his fingers. “is that all?”

adam takes a shuddering breath. “would this all be over if i wasn’t a man?”

ronan doesn’t answer, just meets his eyes with a vicious intensity and keeps kissing his fingers, his palm. he feels like he might hyperventilate when he asks, “and what if i wanted to try ‘they’ pronouns?”

ronan takes a moment, and when he responds, every word is deliberately enunciated: “you don’t need my approval, adam. i’ll do whatever you want me to. shit, i thought that was pretty obvious.”

he knows that. he does, but he feels like he’s still practicing this whole business of agency, of declaring what he wants and expecting to be respected. adam says, “well, i do. want that.”

“as you fucking wish,” ronan whispers, leaning up to crush a searing kiss to their lips.

#ficflashbackfriday #pynch #adam parrish #ronan lynch #the raven cycle #mine

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pynches · 5 years

Text

a/n this went from “non-au ronan visits adam at college” to “coffeeshop au” and i’m sorry so i hope you still like it

word count: 4392

“He’s back.”

Ronan pretended he didn’t hear Blue but he glanced over his shoulder too quickly for it to be subtle. This time, he really ignored Blue as he heard her laugh carry through the little coffee shop they ran together.

Gansey had voiced his concern more than once back when the shop was just an idea forming in their heads, a seemingly unachievable dream that would be their own, a place that didn’t require the University diploma’s neither had. It wasn’t strange Gansey didn’t trust them to work together, they had been fast enemies when Gansey introduced them. But their personalities had been too similar, too akin to not eventually reach a mutual understanding.

Both wanted to do something to pass the time life was giving out too quickly, something to ease their continuous boredom and restlessness. One late summer night, over too many beers, they had laughed and cried together, feeling a certainty in their respectively ruined futures until Noah had piped up and said, “I mean, worst case scenario, you end up working your entire lives in a coffee shop or something,” and thus the idea had been born.

“Cabeswater’s Coffee” they had called it, after a far off dream Ronan once had, about a place full of magic and possibilities. It felt fitting to give to the ruined building they bought, since it needed magic more than anything else.

Slowly they build up their shop, starting with cleaning up and deciding on the interior. They only argued twice a day, which was pretty good compared to their usual tally.

Wood and a lot of greenery became their theme. One customer had once commented on it, telling them it felt like stepping into a small forest. They had bumped fists beneath the counter at that.

Not after long, their clientele increased, and most customers kept coming back. There was something about the little shop, crammed between a clothing store and a hairdresser soon to be out of business that charmed everyone who came in to return.

Ronan had seen many people by the time the shop turned two years old, but there was one customer, though, that never failed to make his heart race. Dirty blond hair with a choppy cut framing high cheekbones and freckles gracing his skin, forming constellations Ronan longed to trace. His hands were a work of beauty. Ronan once dropped a sack of coffee beans on the floor at the sight of them wrapped around a paper coffee cup.

He drank his coffee black, no sweetener or syrup. He took them to go in the mornings and returned in the afternoon, except for Tuesdays. He worked on a laptop that was held together with masking tape until it was closing time. He had dark circles under his eyes and his clothes were, from what Ronan could tell, second-hand, though the fraying of the fabric was covered up well enough that nobody would notice if they didn’t pay close attention.

Ronan noticed.

Blue teased him about the boy but he saw her look over once or twice as well. Something about him made the magic Cabeswater’s Coffee held feel bleak and empty compared to the natural way he attracted all attention to himself unknowingly. There was something different about him, something Ronan has not been able to place since the moment he walked in 7 months ago, but it enraptured him. Ronan could not think about anything other than this beautiful boy and his tired eyes.

Ronan quickly moved behind the counter and asked for his order, even though he knew it by heart. Judging by the way the boy’s eyebrows rose, he knew Ronan knew it as well. He still gave his order, the slight lilt of his voice reminding Ronan of the place he had to leave behind a long time ago and the sole reason he kept asking every day.

He rung up the counter and took the boy’s money, always cash never by card. Blue once joked that he might be a stripper. Ronan had shame filled dreams for the weeks after.

As he handed the boy his coffee, he made sure their fingertips brushed each other briefly, a jolt of warmth shooting through his arm straight to his heart at the 0.5 seconds of touching.

The boy smiled at him for a second and Ronan would do anything to make it last longer. And then he was gone, leaving Ronan disorientated with a heart that would beat too fast for a long while after.

He will return, Ronan told himself and held on to that for the rest of the day.

“Stop checking the door,” Blue said, not for the first time. It was a habit, though, an unbreakable one that only came from longing. Ronan sighed and apprehensively averted his eyes. He felt Blue staring at him with sympathy, the way she looked at him often these days.

“He will come,” she said gentler this time. Ronan didn’t say anything but she understood anyway and squeezed his shoulder quickly before turning to their new customer.

Ronan eyed the customer, a nice looking guy, dimples visible as he laughed. His curls bounced as he walked over to the pick-up station. A boy who was attractive and judging by the looks of him kind as well. The guy could have been his type, if he wasn’t overshadowed by the grace of the boy that had been front and centre in his mind since the day he met him.

“Thank you, handsome,” the customer said, his voice low and sultry. He stared up at Ronan through half-lidded eyes and smiled, dimples more visible than they were before.

Ronan felt nothing.

Maybe, in some far of place in his mind, he felt almost flattered by the attention. With his appearance, not many people were brave enough to make a move, though Ronan had seen them stare appreciatively at him. Ronan couldn’t blame them, though. With his rugged handsomeness, amplified by the scars he wore, the back piece that curled around his neck, the shaved head, he wasn’t the most approachable guy. It didn’t help that his lips were almost always pulled into a sneer alternated with a sharp smirk that send people running.

Customers were often intimidated at first, their voices coming to a stuttering halt as they took Ronan in, the subdued way they continued their order making Ronan feel both powerful and ashamed. A knot forever curling in his chest that told him he wanted to be more, different. To be seen the way he was, not the way he looked.

Sometimes, when he felt the tired boy look at him, his gaze nothing but curious and wishful, a possibility of hope bloomed in his chest instead. A warm feeling he held onto for as long as he could, even when the boy disappeared into the throng of people again.

The bell chimed again. Blue poked him sharply with her elbow, nodding her head to the door once before she went to the back with the excuse that, “The coffee beans need a refill”. She had refilled those only half an hour ago, but Ronan let her leave anyway, silently thanking her for her perceptiveness and cursing her for leaving his anti-social self with a beautiful boy at the same time.

“One black coffee, please,” the boy said, ever polite despite him visiting the coffeeshop nearly every day. He never once struck up a conversation with either Blue or Ronan, remaining a mystery Ronan wished to uncover.

The only thing Ronan knew about him was that he was most likely a Harvard student, judging from his worn bag, overflowing with books at every time of the day and the hoodie he once wore during the winter time, the logo printed on his chest.

“What is your name?” Ronan wanted to ask. He was many things, a brother, a rebel, a dreamer of impossible things made possible, but he was not a brave man. So, instead, he said: “That will be 3 dollars.”

The boy handed him the cash, always tipping despite the to Ronan obvious little money he had. Their fingers brushing and lingering for just a second too long. His fingertips weren’t as soft as Ronan imagined them to be, instead they were rough and calloused which could only indicate years of hard work. Somehow, it made Ronan feel warmer than before.

Ronan always took extra care in making the boy’s coffee. There was something vulnerable to him, something he hid very well but still lingered on the surface. He looked about ready to break from the invisible weight he was carrying, but he steadily moved forward to the pick-up area with a strength Ronan couldn’t help but admire.

Oh, how he wished their little shop was more like those overpriced chain stores, where names were written on the paper cups and Ronan could finally learn his name. No name Ronan gave him in his head seemed to fit right and Ronan was desperate for a name to whisper as he wished for the boy at night.

“Adam!”

The boy turned around, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. Ronan recognised the voice immediately and would have dropped the cup on the floor if he hadn’t placed it on the counter already. It was the voice that told him stories about dead Welsh kings when they were both caught in the clutches of their insomnia, the voice that had whispered words of comfort when Ronan couldn’t bear the sadness of his father’s death anymore, the boy he had come to see as a brother, more so than Declan ever was.

“Gansey, long time no see,” the boy, Adam, replied, bumping his fist to Gansey’s as if they had done it countless times before. Ronan felt a surge of irrational jealousy well up in him. Adam always felt like he was his, as stupid as it may sound. Something for himself, someone that was entirely his own. Ronan shook those toxic emotions off quickly, though, knowing it wasn’t fair to think like this. Adam had his own life and friends like Ronan did and wasn’t something for him to claim. There was just something about him, a far off magical feeling Ronan couldn’t quite explain. A pull that forced Ronan to look at him, to want him, and that wasn’t as easy to shake off with rational thought.

“You two know each other?”

A question that was on the tip on Ronan’s tongue, something he quite possibly would have asked if not for Blue, regarding the two with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

“Jane!” Gansey surged forward and wrapped Blue’s tiny frame in his arms. “I missed you.”

“Yeah, yeah, I missed you too,” Blue confessed, her voice grumpy, but Ronan could see the smile forming on her face. She relaxed into Gansey’s arms for a second before pulling back. She looked more at ease than she had in the time Gansey and Noah went on their little Europe adventure, but she looked at him with a more serious expression than Ronan had seen on her for awhile.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Gansey needed a second to think back, his mind positively full with his thoughts running around at rapid speed. He was either hyper-focussed or not at all, and it seemed like he was leaning towards the last one now.

“We have some classes together,” Adam answered in his place. Three pairs of eyes turned to him and he cowered a bit under the attention.

“My name is Adam Parrish.”

Blue’s eyes flickered from Gansey to Ronan to Adam and back, focussing on Ronan for a few seconds longer. There was a glint of mischief in her eyes and Ronan feared the worst.

“Nice to meet you! We should all hang out sometimes,” she said, a smirk pulling at her lips, sharp and slightly bitter, one she had definitely learned from Ronan. Pride welled up inside of him at the sight.

“Since you never introduced us,” she now directed at Gansey who looked sheepish and regretful.

Gansey rubbed the back of his neck in a nervous manner. Ronan almost felt bad, but then remembered Gansey had kept Adam hidden from him, albeit probably not intentionally. The more intimate parts of him at least. Gansey had known Adam’s name for a longer time than he had and somehow he felt cheated, though it was irrational thinking. Ronan didn’t know if it was the fear of being left out, being replaced by a shiny new person Gansey liked better, a fear he had harboured since Gansey pulled him through some of the toughest periods in his life or if he was just really gone for Adam.

“Sure,” Gansey said eventually. He left shortly after, something about the books that were waiting for him at the local indie-shop he usually got his obscure history books from. He gave Blue a kiss on her nose, which she scrunched her nose at, and left with a promise of meeting up soon.

Blue moved at the sound of the little bell above the door ringing cheerily and welcomed the new customer coming in. Ronan couldn’t take his eyes off Adam, though. Not when he was closer than he had ever been, finally no counter between them anymore.

Adam stood in the middle of the coffeeshop. His right shoulder was sagging under the weight of his messenger bag but he made no attempt to move.

He looked tired, again. The darkness under his eyes were almost permanently etched into the delicate freckled skin below. Ronan almost reached out to smooth out the lines of his forehead which was pulled into a frown as he observed him apprehensively.

“Your coffee will get cold,” Ronan said, just to say something. He wasn’t good at this whole social interaction thing. His friends had found him and found him worthwhile to keep but making social connections himself was not something he did easily. Especially not when the person he was talking to had plagued his dreams for months. Someone he could finally put a name to which somehow made it more real.

Adam looked down at his left hand, his fingers loosely gripping the coffee cup that was getting colder the longer they were standing there.

“You’re right. I should-“

“Yeah.”

They stared at each other for a second longer and Ronan prayed he could stay in this moment just for a little while longer. But his prayers were never heard, not when he asked God to please bring his father back, not when he prayed for a better life, not when he prayed to just make it all stop.

Adam sat in the back of coffeeshop where soft cushioned fauteuils were stylishly placed in an array of mismatched colours and fabrics, all picked by Blue. The seat Adam chose was partially hidden by a big plant, obscuring it from few from other customers. Not that there were many at this time of day. Most were on their way home, back to their families and loved ones.

Back home.

Ronan had come to see Cabeswater’s Coffee as his home. The place where he could be most himself, surrounded by his friends and people he saw everyday. People he had gotten attached to. He relished in the comfort of having a space that was shared by people he actually cared for.

He sneaked glances at Adam during the rest of his shift. The way he was hunched over his laptop in front of him, cringing at the pain Adam would feel when he got up. He looked like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, but it didn’t hold him back from furiously typing on his computer. Ronan was almost surprised the tape held and the thing didn’t just fall apart beneath his beautiful hands.

It was nearing closing time when Ronan was starting his clean-up round. Something he didn’t like doing but knew it was necessary. As he walked past Adam’s corner, he saw a body slumped over in his seat. His heart stopped for a second before he saw the gentle inhale and exhale of his breath and realised Adam had just fallen asleep.

There was something worrisome about how far Adam pushed himself. He had seen him worn out more often than he had seen him laughing. Most days there was a subtle shaking of his hands as he reached for the coffeecup Ronan held out to him. Something made Ronan want to wrap him in blankets and hold him until he finally looked more at ease.

Even in his sleep, Adam mouth was pulled down, the lines in his forehead visible from frowning. His fingers twitched restlessly and Ronan’s heart squeezed in his chest.

“Parrish?”

Adam woke up with a start, his eyes momentarily wild before they settled in something more absent, carefully casual. Ronan wondered if he practised in the mirror.

“I fell asleep,” he said bewildered. He eyed Ronan before realisation hit him fully. “Oh god, I fell asleep. I’m so sorry.”

Ronan stopped his apologising with a wave of his hand. “It’s fine, it’s not closing time yet.”

Adam started collecting his laptop and the few books that were laying in a neat pile and put them in his bag with an efficiency Ronan had never seen on a person. He looked helplessly at Blue. He didn’t want to let him go, not yet. Not when they had talked more than ever. Not when he finally knew his name.

Blue made some rapid hand motions that didn’t make sense at all. He shrugged lightly and Blue looked about ready to smack him over the head, but smacked her own forehead instead. She started mouthing something, quickly turning around when Adam briefly glanced her way.

“Again,” Adam said, focussing on Ronan. “I’m sorry.”

Adam moved towards the door before Ronan could react, but he sprinted after him in a way that was hopefully not too obvious. From gauging Blue’s reaction he really did not succeed but right now his sole mission was to make this boy stay.

“You can stay,” Ronan said quickly, slightly out of breath.

Adam looked at him incredulously.

“For a while,” Ronan added, trying his best to sound casual, as if he offered this to all of his customers. “At least I can finally meet Gansey’s new best friend.”

The last words were unintentionally harsh but Adam seemed too tired to notice. He was swaying on his feet, his skin even paler than it was before. Ronan could see the veins running up his arms, the blue delicate and vulnerable. He pointed at a seat near the counter and Adam took a seat without protesting, something that worried Ronan even more. He didn’t seem like a guy you could tell what to do. Something headstrong was always a present with Adam which made Ronan even more attracted to him.

Ronan made Adam a cup of coffee, his usual order, and set it down in front of him. Adam pulled his wallet out but Ronan stopped him with a hand on his. Adam looked up at him, frozen in motion. There was something charged between them, the heat of Adam’s hand seeping into his, the contrast of his soft hands compared to Adam’s rough ones sending shivers down his spine. His hand was trembling when he pulled away, the butterflies in his stomach, those he kept contained at all times, swarming around freely now.

“Thank you,” Adam said softly, his cheeks a light pink. Ronan felt pride in causing that. He absentmindedly wondered if he could put “I once made a pretty boy blush” on his resume but decided against it. This moment was for them.

Ronan watched him closely, feeling as though he finally could without the distance that made him look like a creep. “Do you ever sleep?”

The question came out unpromptedly but Ronan had been worried for some time now, seeing Adam deteriorate more and more as the year went by.

Adam laughed, thankfully, and put his cup down, his hands folding around it to feel the warmth. “I feel like I haven’t slept in years,” he said with surprising honesty.

“Your prestigious university beating you down?”

“Pretty much.”

They talked until the sky turned orange, to pink, to midnight blue. Adam explained how he came from a shitty home life, one that he didn’t want to give too many details on yet, but Ronan understood shitty home lives better than most and didn’t push. Everybody had their demons and he wasn’t one for judging. Instead, he kept quiet for once and let Adam keep talking, about his major, the few friends he had at Harvard University, how hard he had worked to get there, and how it wasn’t as easy as Adam had expected it to be. The doubt Adam carried with him was almost tangible thing between them and Ronan wanted nothing more than to make it disappear, though he knew this was something Adam had to do for themselves.

When they finally realised how long they had been talking, it was almost midnight. Both boys paused from shock but laughed together. It had been easy to talk to Adam, Ronan realised. He was so much more than Ronan had thought of him. More than just a pretty boy with tired eyes. He was smart, funny, and he made Ronan feel things nobody ever succeeded in.

Adam seemed to be almost guilty when he told Ronan he had to go. Ronan was disappointed but masked it beneath a smirk and a “you gonna miss me?” which made Adam blush. Ronan felt his own ears heat up and quickly retrieved his keys from the back.

Blue had left sometime earlier, pecking Ronan on the cheek and ruffling Adam’s hair with a surprising gentleness she didn’t show to many people. She had thrown a wink over her shoulder at Ronan and he was suddenly very glad Adam had his back to the door.

“I had a nice time,” Adam said, a bit awkwardly. Ronan was oddly endeared. It almost sounded like the end of a date and Ronan suddenly wondered if it had been one. He wished it was, he wished he had the privilege to take Adam out on a date, let him finally have a bit of fun he clearly missed.

“Me too,” Ronan said honestly. He didn’t lie and though he sometimes hid was he was really feeling in a bunch of half-truths he didn’t feel compelled to now. Adam had already wormed his way into his heart, breaking down the walls little by little with every smile and soft touch they had shared during the night. A small kick to his ankle as Ronan said something mildly offensive, a brush of hands when handed freshly brewed coffee, like they had done so many times before. There was no need to lie to Adam, he wasn’t going to hurt him. Ronan had rarely felt this safe with someone but somehow it felt right. As if he was finally in a place he should be in. A place where he truly belonged.

“Is it too forward of me to ask-“

“No!” Ronan quickly cut in. “I was gonna ask too.”

“Oh,” Adam said, looking at his feet with the beginning of a smile on his lips. “Good.”

“Friday? 7 pm?” Ronan asked before he lost the courage.

“It’s a date,” Adam replied, fully smiling now. The frowning lines had disappeared, his eyes sparkling instead of dull like they had been before. It almost felt like he was staring right at the sun, unable to look away.

Ronan fell a little more for him right then.

Then he leaned forward and pecked Ronan’s cheek lightly. Ronan felt the bottom of his stomach drop out, his knees weakening at the innocent display of intimacy. His cheek felt hot where Adam’s lips had pressed against it and Ronan longed to feel it again.

“See you tomorrow,” Adam said with a wave, smiling over his shoulder one last time before disappearing into the night.

Ronan lied awake in his bed the entire night after, pinching himself to check if he had been dreaming or not. After a while, when minutes started to blend into each other, Ronan couldn’t tell what was real and what was a dream anymore.

But then Adam was standing in front of him the next day. His shoulders slightly straighter, his eyes still tired but cheerful as well. He didn’t tell Ronan his order, instead, he handed him the money, a little note attached to one of the dollar bills with his phone number on it and Ronan finally let himself believe this was real.

Adam didn’t get less tired the remainder of his first year. There were still all-nighters pulled, days where he felt like either crying or screaming or both, grades that weren’t as high as he had hoped for. But now, he had a caring boyfriend that looked out for him, bringing him coffee when he couldn’t keep his eyes open enough to read that last chapter, laying soft kisses on his shoulder when he was writing an essay that he couldn’t figure out the conclusion for, cuddling him to his chest when it all became too much and Adam wanted to do nothing more than just give up even though he knew that he would never do that.

Ronan watched as Adam bloomed more into himself, though he would never credit himself for that. Adam always had it in him, he just needed someone to remind him that he could. His dark circles faded a little and Adam looked happier than Ronan had ever seen him. Ronan felt happier himself too, whistling as he got to work, play fighting with Blue in between customers, smiling a genuine smile instead of a bitter one.

It was a careful balance between them, one that had come naturally. They didn’t push or pull the other too much and instead felt what the other needed. Sure, they made mistakes and fucked up, but they were happier and more themselves than they had been before.

And it was enough.

#pynch #pynch fic #pynch fanfic #pynch fanfiction #adam x ronan #ronan x adam #adam parrish #ronan lynch #blue sargent #trc fic #trc fanfic #trc fanfiction #trc #the raven cycle #the raven cycle fic #the raven cycle fanfic #the raven cycle fanfiction #mine

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pynches · 5 years

Text

give me your hand (save me) 1/6

a/n submission for day 2 of the @trc-wlw-week

summary: basically a 5+1 fake dating fic in which rowan lynch saves adeline parrish 5 times and the 1 time she didn’t have to

word count: 1098

read on ao3

Adeline Parrish never perceived herself as pretty. Short dirty blonde hair that just reached her shoulders, unevenly cut with blunt scissors in the crappy light of her tiny bathroom, dull blue eyes, ringed with dark circles that always made her look older than she was, thin lips that always seemed to be pulled down. She had freckles littering her face, her body, every inch of her covered with them which revealed more about her than she wanted people to know. The scars running up and down her body were thankfully hidden by the cheap clothes she never really liked but wore for the necessity of them.

Her appearance wasn’t something she thought about often, there were more important things to fill her mind with, university applications, how to make it until her next salary, finding Glendower and saving Gansey from her impending doom.

She became more aware of her appearance, though, with the recent events she couldn’t stop thinking about. She didn’t know what it was that suddenly made her seem attractive enough to other people that they asked her out. Sure, she had gotten some attention from people before, but now they came in rapid speed, asking her for her number, on a date, flirting with her until it made her uncomfortable. Perhaps it was Cabeswater. Something had changed when she sacrificed herself, a feeling she couldn’t quite shake but didn’t particularly dislike either. She didn’t know what it was, she just saw the same old her every time she looked in the mirror. People looked differently at her, though, but the possibility of them looking at her and not noticing the dust of the poor outskirts of Henrietta that had settled on her skin like a flashing sign hadn’t even crossed her mind. She couldn’t afford to think like that, until she could.

The first attempt someone made at asking her on a date had been a week ago. Adeline had been grocery shopping with Rowan who had invited herself along, which Adeline hadn’t minded. Sure, Rowan still made her feel awkward and uncomfortable sometimes, stumbling through every conversation that now grew into more of a practised ease the longer she got to know the complexities that Rowan was made of. However, rather than making her want to pull away from her and the things she felt when Rowan brushed her hand accidentally or smiled at her with a seemingly less sharp pull to her lips, Adeline only wanted to get closer. Being one of the only people Rowan tolerated felt less like a poorly executed joke and more like a thrilling adventure Adeline had waited for her entire life.

Rowan was in search of snacks, most likely filling the cart to the brim on top of the actually necessary items Adeline knew Rowan would insist on paying for. They did this dance often, in grocery stores, at Nino’s, the movies that one time. Rowan would pull out her wallet, inconspicuously enough that Adeline mind not notice but she always did and she always stopped her. Yet, Rowan always tried again the next time.

She hadn’t even noticed the boy next to her until he tapped her on the shoulder. Ever polite Adeline Parrish had turned to him with a little smile she reserved for every stranger she encountered.

“I am Aaron and you are very pretty,” the boy said, trying too hard to sound seductive. Adeline reeled back in surprise but quickly schooled her features back into a more neutral expression, one she had practiced in the mirror many times and now came to her more naturally than anything else.

The boy was not ugly and maybe, if her mind hadn’t already been occupied with someone else, she would have laughed kindly, maybe even agreed to go on a date with him, which he was clearly after when he asked for her number.

Her chest tightened uncomfortably. She didn’t want to be impolite and brush him off with the aloofness she felt, but she also didn’t want to succumb to her need to please everybody and agree to go out with the wrong person.

Relief flooded her body when Rowan came into line of sight, her arms full of colourful packets Adeline quickly recognised as candy. She felt something fond curling in her stomach, but she knew her face must have revealed something because Rowan’s eyebrows pulled down into a frown and picked up speed just a little bit. She came to a standing next to her, closer than she usually stood.

“Aaron,” Adeline said, her voice laced with fake-cheerfulness. She quickly took Rowan’s hand and squeezed it in a silent please go along with this. “Meet my girlfriend, Rowan.”

Rowan’s head snapped sideways looking at her with disbelief in her eyes. She quickly recovered, though there was still something unreadable in her gaze. Her arm slowly moved to wrap around her waist, pulling her closer until she was flush against her. Adeline could focus on nothing but the warmth of Rowan’s skin radiating through their clothes, her strong muscles holding her like Adeline had dreamt about more often than she would like to admit.

There was a threatening pull in one of Rowan’s eyebrows alone and Aaron backed off immediately, hands stretched in front of him in a “please, don’t bite my head off” kind of way. Adeline smiled apologetically at him and sighed in relief, sagging more against Rowan’s body while she still had the chance. Adeline felt daring in doing so.

Rowan released her immediately and spun to face her. Rowan’s face was hard and steely, her arms now crossed over each other. Despite the wall that was building around her, Rowan’s eyes were almost vulnerable, studying Adeline as if she could find the answers she needed by merely looking at her.

“I don’t lie.”

Guilt hit Adeline with inhuman speed. She inwardly cursed herself for forcing Rowan to play along, for putting her on the spot with no way out. She couldn’t stand people deciding for her and now she had done it herself. With Rowan no less.

With the way Rowan looked at her sometimes, she thought she might have a chance with her someday. Though, Adeline wasn’t sure enough to voice her crush out loud, to tell Rowan that she had been on her mind for weeks now, to finally confess to the biggest secret she had to bear to date.

And now, when they paid for the groceries without Rowan putting up a fight for once and walked to Rowan’s shiny BMW, Adeline knew she really fucked up.

#ronan lynch #adam parrish #adam x ronan #ronan x adam #pynch #pynch fic #pynch fanfic #pynch fanfiction #trc #trc fic #trc fanfic #trc fanfiction #the raven cycle #the raven cycle fic #the raven cycle fanfic #the raven cycle fanfiction #trcwlwweek2k19 #mine

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pynches · 5 years

Text

risk it all (for you) ch8

a/n the final chapter is here! i hope i ended everything okay and satisfying enough. let me know <3

word count: 2573

Ronan stayed away from school the remaining days of the week. Instead, he spent his time either driving or at the Barns. He couldn’t face Adam, not after everything that had happened. It was already too much to think about the way he had been rejected, let alone see the person who still evoked the same feelings he had for a while now. Ronan couldn’t see Adam’s face without remembering how it had looked up close when Ronan could count the freckles dusting his skin. He couldn’t watch Adam smile at someone without remembering how it looked when it was directed at him; exasperated yet fond. It hurt too much.

The only reason he returned to Aglionby the next week was because Gansey had called him and begged him to go or he would be kicked off. Ronan was Gansey’s responsibility and Ronan knew it wasn’t fair to leave Gansey with even more of a mess to clean up. So, he went and got his heart ripped out the minute he entered the building.

Theodore was leaning against the lockers, one arm bracketed next to someone else’s head. A head with cropped hair that looked like it was cut with kitchen scissors. Adam.

Ronan watched as Theodore moved closer and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. As he drew closer he noticed how Adam looked slightly flustered while Theodore’s voice was suggestive and full of confidence.

“Are you sure?” Theodore asked, leaning forward to look deep into Adam’s eyes, the way Ronan had never dared to. Adam smiled and nodded.

The bell rang and Adam turned at the sound, eyes finding Ronan’s almost immediately. Ronan didn’t know what he saw in his face, whether Adam noticed the barely contained rage, the jealousy coiling low in his stomach, or the overwhelming feeling of pure agony that made Ronan slightly dizzy but Adam’s smile slid off his face immediately.

Ronan walked away.

“Ronan!”

He didn’t turn around.

Of course, Adam didn’t feel the same. He should have known better than to listen to Blue or the other women of Fox Way. He should have trusted his gut who told him that someone like Adam couldn’t love someone like him. Of course, Adam would go for clean-cut Theodore. The boy who is accepted into society with his politician smile that everybody but him at Aglionby seemed to have. Of course, Adam wouldn’t go for the boy who scared everybody away. He wanted to fit in and all he would ever do with Ronan was stand out like a beacon that shouted: “I’m an outcast!”. Adam deserved someone like Theodore and it was foolish to hope Adam would stoop low enough to think of Ronan as more than a friend.

Ronan shouldered passed Gansey who turned his head around to do a double-take and got into his car as fast as he could. He allowed himself to lean back and close his eyes for a second, just so he was calm enough to actually drive without instantly wrapping his car around a tree in his anger. He barely noticed the car door opening next to him until he felt fabric brushing his arms.

“Get the fuck out,” he said but it lacked the usual sharpness. He was just so damn tired.

“No,” came the response and Ronan didn’t expect anything else. Adam had always been a strong person. It’s what attracted Ronan at first; his ability to withstand any glare Ronan threw his way and look him in the eyes with a certain firmness that told him Adam was not going to change his mind so don’t even try. Lesser men cowered before him, but not Adam. Never Adam.

Ronan sighed, tearing his eyes away from Adam’s and focussing on the school building instead. “You’re gonna miss first period.”

“I know.” Ronan raised his eyebrows. Adam never missed classes, all of them too important to skip no matter how many time Ronan had tried to persuade him.

“Go inside, Parrish,” Ronan said, cocking his head towards the car door. “You can still make it.”

Adam shook his head. “I want to talk.”

“Oh,” Ronan snapped, “so now you want to talk? Why now, huh? We could have talked last week when I was knocking on your door and fucking begging you to let me in.”

Adam hung his head and he suddenly looked like he had before he got his magician powers. Distant but with a tinge of vulnerability that made Ronan’s heart clench. He looked like he was going to fall apart right there. Tired eyes turned to his and Adam mumbled a quiet yet clear “sorry” which wasn’t a word either of them used often. Most of their fights were resolved over time when they couldn’t remember what the fight was actually about and one of them said something to make the other person laugh and that was the end of it.

Ronan softened a bit at the apology. “I can come by later.”

He didn’t know why he suggested this. Maybe because Adam rarely ever expressed wanting anything. Maybe because Ronan couldn’t deny him, even if he tried, especially not when Adam was slumped over next to him, his head hanging in defeat.

Adam made him weak.

“No,” Adam said quickly, shaking his head. “That’s not fair. I should come by Monmouth.”

“I don’t live alone,” Ronan reminded him. “It’s fine, Parrish. Just go, I’ll be there tonight.”

He felt Adam’s eyes flicker over his frame, his eyes searching for his but Ronan didn’t give in to the temptation to look. This was difficult enough as it was and seeing Adam this close again was going to make him combust. He already felt like a ticking time-bomb that was going to hurt everything in its range and one look at Adam would make him go off.

Eventually, Adam nodded to himself and stepped out of the car. Ronan turned the ignition and drove off, watching as Adam’s frame got smaller in his rearview mirror until he couldn’t see him anymore.

Adam was pacing in his apartment. Why Ronan had agreed to come, Adam didn’t know. It was unlike them to have real conversations with actual depth and it was even stranger that they were going to talk about emotions and feelings, things neither of them are good at. Ronan expressed his negative emotions through rage, through slamming doors and dents in walls. Adam kept every bad feeling inside until he felt like he couldn’t contain it anymore and then he allowed himself some time to cry and get it out of his system. But they never talked.

As Adam was waiting, he couldn’t help but picture the broken look on Ronan’s face that morning. It had hurt him to see Ronan this way, the pain clear in his features. Adam was used to seeing passed the aloofness and plain boredom Ronan liked to show instead. Somewhere, though, he was almost glad he wasn’t the only one who was hurting. It was a sadistic thought, but Adam hadn’t seen Ronan in a week and the agony of feeling him ripping apart from where he was so carefully woven into his life was threatening to drown him.

He didn’t even know what he was going to say. “Please, don’t leave me again”? That would be pathetic and Adam wasn’t and would never be pathetic. He felt it, though. The urge to beg Ronan to stay. To not leave him again without so much as a text. To hold his hand again because Adam had felt so cold without it. All things Adam wished he was brave enough to say, but knew he really wasn’t.

This time when Ronan knocked, Adam didn’t hesitate before opening the door. He couldn’t have a repeat of what happened the last time Ronan stood on the other side. He hadn’t forgiven himself for that encounter and he doubted he ever would, but he couldn’t stop crying and he didn’t want Ronan to see him like that. Weak. Pathetic. If there was even a small chance of Ronan liking him back, it would have been ruined at the sight of his wet face and red nose. He fucked it up anyway, though, and Adam doubted he could fix it but he had to try. Just one more time.

“Thanks for coming,” Adam said quietly, opening the door further to let Ronan in. Ronan merely nodded and stepped inside, standing still in the middle of the room as if he had forgotten why he was even there in the first place. Adam scraped his throat and motioned to the bed but Ronan shook his head and kept standing instead. Adam placed himself in front of him, not willing to back down.

“Say something.”

“You’re the one who wanted to talk, Parrish,” Ronan said simply. “So talk.”

Adam ran his hands through his hair and bit his lip, a nervous habit he had picked up on lately. His hair was in constant disarray, even worse than it was before and his lips were red and bruised from biting it too much. Adam let the pain ground him and looked up to face Ronan.

He was beautiful. He had always been beautiful, though at first Adam was willing to ignore that and focus on his asshole tendencies instead. Now, however, with the last rays of sunlight hitting his cheekbones, casting shadows over the rest of his face, making it even sharper and angular, Adam didn’t know how he could have ever ignored this. He wanted to touch him and nearly reached out to do so before he remembered that he couldn’t.

“You were gone for a week,” Adam said. It wasn’t what he had planned on saying but right now, he couldn’t even remember the words he had rehearsed in the hours before Ronan finally arrived.

Ronan raised his eyebrows. “I was.”

I missed you. “Why?”

“I think you know why,” Ronan answered, his eyes locked onto his own. The clear blue of his eyes was clouding, making it look more like a stormy grey in the shadows of the room.

Adam looked away first. He had always prided himself on his ability to look in Ronan’s eyes without cowering away. Not many people could say that. Not many people could make Ronan look away either, but today Adam felt as pathetic as all of the others who had tried to stare Ronan down. His presence alone filled up the entire room and beyond it. Adam couldn’t breathe.

Ronan stepped closer. When Adam looked up he could see the concern in Ronan’s eyes even though he tried to hide it well. He hesitantly raised one hand and placed it on Adam’s shoulder, the touch feather-light.

Adam’s breath hitched.

“Parrish-“

“Why did you run away?” Adam asked suddenly, shocking Ronan into ripping his hand from Adam’s shoulder. Adam felt the loss in his bones.

“What?” Ronan asked incredulously.

“Today,” Adam clarified with poorly concealed impatience. “You saw me and you left.”

“I saw you with Theodore,” Ronan said through gritted teeth. “Getting a rebound a week after breaking up is pathetic, Parrish. You’re giving yourself a bad rep.”

“A rebound?!” Adam practically yelled.

“I mean, it was fake,” Ronan said that word with the utmost distaste. “But the others don’t know that.”

Adam wanted to scream. He wanted to shake Ronan until he was starting to make sense. He wanted to stop the world from spinning. He wanted, he wanted.

Ronan.

But he couldn’t. He wasn’t worthy. So, he went for the next best thing. Making him angry so he made the choice for them.

“What’s it to you?” Adam asked cooly, fixing Ronan with a raised eyebrow. “So what if Theodore and I are together. You’re right. It was fake. It shouldn’t matter.”

“But it does!” Ronan yelled. His chest was heaving, his hands balled in fists, pressed to his sides firmly. “It does,” he said again, this time softly, his voice breaking and Adam’s heart with it.

“I said no,” Adam confessed, his eyes focussing on a crack in the wall. Anything to not look at Ronan. Because he couldn’t. Because he had to say it. He had to stop Ronan from hurting.

Ronan didn’t say anything, so Adam kept talking. The words were falling out of his mouth. He had kept his feelings inside for too long and now there was no way of containing it.

“Theodore did ask me out. I said no.”

“Why?” Ronan had moved closer, his voice a mere whisper. Adam couldn’t stop himself from looking up. Ronan’s eyes had always been made from impenetrable walls and little by little those had fallen away in Adam’s presence. Even now, in the midst of their biggest fight yet, one that could truly break them, Adam could see through them. He saw hurt and confusion, but there were little cracks of hope shining through.

Adam wanted, so he did.

He closed one hand around Ronan’s neck, the way he had done the night of the party, and brought Ronan closer. Their breaths mingled, eyes searching each other, and despite Adam’s self-doubts, despite every time he had told himself there was no way Ronan would want him too, there was a reassurance in Ronan’s eyes that made him close his eyes and move forward.

“Adam,” Ronan whispered against his lips. Adam felt a thrill run up his spine and closed the distance.

Ronan’s lips met his hesitantly, the touch light and chaste, giving Adam every opportunity to pull away.

He pulled himself closer instead.

Adam tilted his head and deepened the kiss. He felt electricity running through his veins, his skin sparking at every point where Ronan touched it. He felt alive, so alive. He could do anything.

Adam distantly wondered if this is how Ronan felt after pulling something out of his dreams. God-like. But those thoughts were quickly fading to the back of his mind as he felt the wet press of Ronan’s tongue in his mouth. Adam’s gasped which only urged Ronan on.

Somehow, Adam went from standing to lying underneath Ronan, gasping as he softly kissed his neck. Adam put his hands on Ronan’s jaw, fingers tracing his cheeks and brought him up to eye-level.

“Does this mean you like me?” Adam asked, half-joking and half-serious. He had to know. He couldn’t give himself to Ronan now if it only meant hurting again. It had to be real this time.

“For a genius, you’re pretty thick, Adam,” Ronan laughed breathily, stroking away some hair that had fallen in front of Adam’s eyes.

“Ronan-“

“Yes,” Ronan rolled his eyes but smiled down at him fondly. “This means I like you.”

Adam kissed him slow and deep this time, pulling him closer and closer. He knew there were things they still needed to talk about and issues to work on. They had to tell the others one time and explain this entire messed up situation they had worked themselves in. They were going to have to learn how to be together for real this time. But, for now, he just wanted to focus on the warm press of Ronan’s body against his, how their lips moved together as if they had been doing it for years. For now, he just wanted to get lost in Ronan and forget everything else.

tagging @theogvodkaaunt (thank you for being interested enough that you wanted to be tagged!)

#pynch #pynch fic #pynch fanfiction #pynch fanfic #adam x ronan #ronan x adam #adam parrish #ronan lynch #trc fic #trc fanfic #trc fanfiction #the raven cycle #the raven cycle fic #the raven cycle fanfiction #the raven cycle fanfic #mine

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