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Here’s a thing few people expect about Adam Parrish: He’s not shy about the things he wants. He’s not the one, in his and Ronan’s relationship, who struggles with initiation. Ronan isn’t bad at it either, to be fair, but Adam reaches for his hand easy as breathing, kisses him on autopilot. He wants, and he has, and more often than not that is that.
So it’s not unusual for him to back Ronan up against the kitchen counter and kiss him, deep, his hands settled on Ronan’s hips. It takes him an embarrassingly long moment to realize Ronan isn’t kissing him back.
He pulls away. “Are you okay?”
“What’d you stop for?” Ronan asks, which isn’t an answer, but when Adam leans in again he at least kisses back, a little. Maybe he was just surprised.
Then he moves his hand up Ronan’s back and feels how tense he is, muscles pulled taut all over, and something is wrong . Something feels wrong. Adam pulls away again.
“Okay, seriously, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Ronan snaps, for no reason at all. (He doesn’t need a reason. He’s Ronan Lynch and it’s Thursday, that’s reason enough). “Nothing, it’s fucking fine, are you going to kiss me or not?”
Adam steps back. “I don’t think I am.”
“And why the fuck not?”
“I don’t think you really want me to.”
“I didn’t tell you to stop, did I?”
There are two ways for Adam to go from here. Technically, Ronan never said no. But he never said God, yes either, and they haven’t treaded this gray area before. Adam doesn’t want to do it in the kitchen with Ronan angry.
He chooses the second option, and says, “You didn’t. But I am. I have homework.”
He leaves Ronan there, and sits in his room for fifteen minutes, trying fruitlessly to read the first textbook he pulled out of his bag. Finally he admits to himself that he doesn’t even know what subject he’s reading on and flips it closed. He texts Ronan even though he never heard a door, so he must still be in the kitchen.
Pizza for dinner?
“Hell yeah,” Ronan calls, but it’s flat and emotionless.
Adam orders carryout, partly because the shop is not that close and delivery is too expensive to be worth it, partly to give him and Ronan some space. He doesn’t know why they need space, yet, but he feels it’s appropriate.
Unfortunately the drive does very little to make anything make sense. When Adam gets back, he holds the open box out to Ronan like an offering. Ronan looks at it and then at him with some kind of calculating look in his eyes. Then he takes a slice, folds it in half, and crams a third of it in his mouth at once.
“You’re disgusting,” Adam says, like he says every time they get pizza, and the tension breaks.
Fifteen minutes later the whole Kissing Incident is forgotten. It pops up in Adam’s mind a few times, later, and he makes sure to be more careful about taking Ronan by surprise, but he chalks it up to an off day and leaves it at that. Later, he’ll look back and think that was the first sign .
He is wrong.
-0-0-0-
On one of the first nights after they got an apartment together, they watched a movie. Jurassic Park , because it was on and they’d just unpacked their last boxes and barely had the energy to turn up the volume, much less pick a film. They weren’t touching, but they were close enough to facilitate it easily. Adam was paying closer attention to the proximity of Ronan’s bare shoulder than to the dinosaurs. He couldn’t even muster up a token protest on how science doesn’t work that way because he was trying not to stare too obviously at the sharp line of Ronan’s jaw, the gleam of his blue eyes.
When a round of commercials came on, he skated his fingertips across the few inches of couch cushion between them and held Ronan’s hand.
Immediately Ronan tensed. Adam didn’t move, trying to assess what sort of tense this was. Ronan clenched his jaw, which ruled out oops, surprised me there, carry on .
“Can we just watch the damn movie,” he said, low. Adam didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, except that maybe he should stop staring.
Adam always felt like an outsider, but very few people managed to make him feel uncertain of himself. Even when he knew he was a liar and a fraud and a pathetic excuse for a human, he knew who he was . He knew what he was doing, or at least where he was going. But Ronan was the hurricane and Adam could never find the eye.
Which was dramatic, for holding hands during Jurassic Park (or, right now, during a State Farm ad), but that was what Ronan did to him.
He turned back to the screen while the movie came back on and sort of absently stroked his fingers from Ronan’s palm up his wrist, over and over. He was still tense. Adam half wanted to take his hand back and forget the whole thing, but that felt like admitting something, or drawing too much attention. Before he could figure it out Ronan had closed his eyes, head tipped back against the couch, the ghost of a grimace lining his mouth.
“Ronan,” Adam whispered. “You okay?”
Ronan opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. “Fine. Just…headache. I’m gonna go to bed.”
For a long moment he didn’t move, then he pulled his hand away from Adam’s. He still didn’t move. Adam tried not to stare, but it was hard not to stare at Ronan Lynch at the best of times, and this was not the best of times.
“Are you going to go?”
Ronan stood up, jerkily, like half of him wanted to move and half of him wanted to stay still. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll just…” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at nothing and headed for his bedroom.
“Should I turn it down?” Adam asked.
“No, it’s fine. You’re fine. I’m just gonna…yeah.”
Adam turned it down some anyway. Neither of them mentioned it again, and by the next morning he’d forgotten it happened at all.
-0-0-0-
Things come to a head a few weeks after the Kissing Incident, which is what Adam calls it in his head on the rare occasion he thinks about it. They’re fighting, which of itself isn’t unusual. They bicker often: Whose mug are you eating cereal out of, Ronan, and you can't eat cereal from a mug anyway, Ronan, and turn the light off and go to sleep, Adam, and would you stop leaving your stupid obnoxiously thick law books on the couch where everyone has to see them, Adam? Sometimes they even argue for real, but not like this. Almost never like this.
It’s stupid, is what it is, so inconsequential Adam forgets what it’s about as soon as it’s over. Halfway through he doesn’t even remember why he’s saying what he’s saying. He doesn’t even want to be saying what he’s saying, but the words keep falling out of his mouth anyway. He just doesn’t understand , why does Ronan have to be the way that he is, so sharp and biting and
“Just so stubborn and immature, irresponsible, you think you’re so much better than everyone else because you don’t lie and you don’t give a shit-“
And Ronan slides his hand up Adam’s shirt and his tongue into Adam’s mouth and for three solid seconds all he can think is What the hell what the hell what the hell.
Then he shoves Ronan away, hard.
Ronan stares at him, bewildered, like Adam is the strange one that tried to start a makeout session in the middle of a shouting match.
“What the hell was that for?” Adam spits. His anger hasn’t gotten the message that the fight is over, so it still comes out vitriolic and mean.
“It’s better than fighting,” Ronan says with a shrug, like that’s obvious.
Adam stares at him. “What is that, what, if I hadn’t stopped you you would have-“
“Let you fuck me, probably, or whatever you wanted to do.” Ronan rolls his shoulders, refusing to meet Adam’s gaze. “Like I said. Better than getting yelled at. Gets it out of everybody’s system. We can move on with the fucking night, Jesus, Parrish, stop looking at me like I ran over your puppy.”
“I’m angry at you.”
“Not anymore. I kissed you, yelling done, seems like a solid plan to me.”
“I’m not angry now because I’m really, really confused,” Adam says. “I’ve known you for years, who, who taught you that?”
Ronan laughs like a bark and links both hands behind his head. “No one taught me , Parrish, God, I didn’t think I was gonna offend your delicate sensibilities. Never heard of hate sex?”
“Not with my fucking boyfriend .”
“Yeah, but-“
“I don’t hate you -“
“Hey, I didn’t name this shit, sorry there’s not a lot of room for nuance , what the fuck do you want from me?”
It clicks, suddenly, in Adam’s brain. He’s known Ronan for most of high school, and he doubts Ronan was having any sort of sex before then. He’s also fairly certain he and Gansey had something in their mutual past, but Gansey would never, so…
“Kavinsky,” he says, and Ronan goes completely and utterly still. He’s been pacing the room, hands still behind his head, and now he stands with his back to Adam, which strikes him as vulnerable and painful.
“What about him?” he asks.
Adam swallows. “He stopped fights that way, didn’t he.”
“Don’t say it like that, it wasn’t like that, we were-“
“Could you say no, Ronan? Did he let you say no to him?”
“I didn’t try, so I don’t fucking know.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I won’t , then,” Ronan snarls, spinning around. “Look, this is stupid, let’s just-“
“What? Make out? Fuck? And then fall asleep and pretend this never happened in the morning and hope that we both learn to forget that you’ll trade sex for safety-“
Ronan’s face goes closed and cold. Before Adam has time to register what’s happening he has a jacket on and is charging out into the night. The door slams so hard the dishes rattle in the cabinets. Adam sits on the bed. Closes his eyes. Counts to thirty in his head. And pulls out his phone.
Like he always does when he doesn’t know what else to do, he calls Blue.
“I think I fucked up,” he says before she even gets through Hello .
“O kay , going to need you to elaborate,” Blue says.
“Ronan and I had a fight. And then he tried to kiss me in the middle of it, so we had another fight.”
Blue hums. “On a scale of playful insults to throwing things…?”
Adam winces. “It wasn’t pretty. I…said some things. I wasn’t wrong , I think, about most of them, but I shouldn’t have said them. There was shouting.”
“Not a great start. Do I get more context on the kissing part, or-?”
“He…” Adam swallows and presses the phone against his forehead for a long moment.
“Adam?” Blue prompts gently.
In a rush, he says, “He said it was better than fighting, to get it out of our systems and done with and stop yelling.”
He can hear her wincing down the line. “Well that’s…something. Kavinsky? Kavinsky. If he wasn’t dead I’d kill him myself.”
Adam is surprised, not at the violence but at how quickly she landed on Kavinsky. Then he’s just ashamed that she got there faster than he did.
“He stormed out, which is probably my fault. I didn’t exactly handle it gracefully. But now…I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m texting Gansey,” Blue says immediately. “I won’t give him details, just tell him to blow up Ronan’s phone until he tells us where he’s going.”
Adam nods, then remembers she can’t see him. “Right. Thanks.”
“As for you…this is a mess. Mostly Ronan’s mess. If you want to stay with him and work it out-“
“Of course I do,” Adam says instantly.
“-then you’re going to have to tread carefully. I’m not a relationship expert. But I think, you know, communication is a good place to start.”
“If I can get him to talk,” Adam mutters.
“You can always drag him to Fox Way and let the psychics have at him, as well,” Blue chirps. “But seriously, Adam, be careful. Call me if you need help. That’s about all you can do, for now.”
“Yeah,” Adam says roughly. “Yeah. Thanks, Blue.”
“Course. Love ya.”
She hangs up unceremoniously, leaving him alone.
-0-0-0-
It started like this:
K kissing Ronan when he brought things out of dreams, all teeth and tongue, tasting like the sweet tang of blood and dreamt pills. Ronan, lying frozen until the dreams released him, then biting K until he bled.
It started like this:
What the hell, man and Chill out, princess, you don’t need to snap and somehow, Ronan kissing Kavinsky.
Sometimes Ronan kissed him because he wanted to. Usually Ronan kissed him because he wanted to, if only because the alternative was the wrong kind of ugly.
The first time they fought (the first time they fought after the first time they kissed), Ronan was the one shouting.
“This is stupid, you’re insane and this is stupid, I’m going-“
And Kavinsky caught his wrist in long bony fingers, just below the leather bracelets. He smiled, predatory, and stalked three steps forward until he had Ronan pinned against the passenger side door of his white Mitsubishi. He held Ronan’s wrist to the window beside his head. Ronan stared at him, static buzzing in his ears, and in the moment it didn’t occur to him to fight. He didn’t fight.
“You talk a big game, princess,” Kavinsky purred, sliding his free hand down Ronan’s other arm. “But you’re not gonna fight, are you? You want it. You know Dick isn’t gonna give it to you. You know he can’t.”
He lifted Ronan’s other wrist, slow, sensual, to mirror the first. Ronan panted for no reason at all.
“Tell me you want it,” Kavinsky growled. He grinned, a wide knife-slash of teeth. “ Bitch .”
Ronan tipped his head back and closed his eyes, because his mouth wouldn’t work.
That was the first time.
After, Ronan lay on the grass, staring mutely at the sky. K hauled himself to his feet like a lumbering bear and kicked him in the thigh.
“Easier that way, isn’t it, Lynch?”
“F’ckoff,” Ronan muttered, his first words in a long time.
“If you want a fight, I can give you a fight. But you don’t actually, do you? It’s just a replacement. A shitty substitute. You’re easy, in the end.”
And he was right. Ronan didn’t have anything to say to that. K kicked him again, he got up, they dreamt.
When Ronan woke up, Kavinsky’s tongue was in his mouth and his leg was working its way between Ronan’s thighs. So he punched K in the face, just to prove he could, and K smiled , and there wasn’t actually much fight in the passenger seat of a car with one guy already on top. K managed to hit him and rip his belt open at the same time. His fingers were cold when he pressed them to the V of Ronan’s stomach, just above his low-slung jeans. Ronan stilled, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his nose into his mouth. K swiped it away with his free hand, held his red thumb up to the light to examine it, then smeared it on Ronan’s shirt.
“Good girl,” Kavinsky said, and that was the second time.
Ronan learned quickly that K took what he wanted when he wanted it, and that he could fight him off if he wanted to, but that the bruises usually weren’t worth it. He liked what they did, anyway, so what was the issue if he hadn’t been planning on it? He got used to being sore. He was usually hurting anyway. Might as well be fun sometimes.
So what if Ronan actually had been in the middle of something before? So what if Ronan maybe wanted to watch an entire fucking movie? So what if he wanted to say his piece, to finish a fight, to start a fight, just for the sake of it, and not because he wanted to get fucked?
He probably did want it, most of the time, in his black heart of hearts where he only lied to himself. K said so, and Ronan lusted after him and hated him in equal turns, but more often than not he was right about Ronan.
“Parrish is too good for you,” he hissed once in Ronan’s ear. Ronan had just come out of a dream, and could do nothing about anything Kavinsky was doing to him at the moment. “I see the way you look at him. He’s not for you, princess, understand? You think he’d do this for you?”
Ronan understood. He still punched Kavinsky when he got the use of his hand back, for making him think of Adam in the same space he thought of K, for tainting him. It did nothing, because Ronan wasn’t trying to make it do anything.
He could say no. He could fight back. He had , before. He chose not to, almost all of the time. So. That was.
Something .
Then Kavinsky died and nothing mattered anymore anyway.
Then Ronan Lynch kissed Adam Parrish and thought he’s not for you and fuck you, K at the same time.
It was fine.
-0-0-0-
Adam stays up until he absolutely has to sleep before he’s a zombie in class, and then he stays up another hour anyway, because he pulled all-nighters at Aglionby, he can do it again. Gansey texts that Ronan’s with him somewhere around four hours before Adam even goes to sleep, but he can’t help waiting. Just in case. Of something.
When he wakes up in the morning, Ronan is still gone, and there are no new texts from Gansey. He hangs around until he’s late to his morning class. When he grabs lunch (enough for both of them) from a dining hall and comes back, Ronan is lounging on the couch as if he never left.
Adam nudges the door shut with his foot. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
He sits on the coffee table and taps Ronan’s boot until he moves it to the floor, replacing it with the food. “Do you want to talk about last night?”
“Not really.”
Adam waits.
“You’re going to make me, though.”
“I’m not making you do anything, but yes, I think we should.”
Ronan sighs. “It wasn’t like you’re thinking, so stop thinking it.”
“Explain it to me, then. Explain how it could possibly be-“ Adam presses his mouth into a thin line before he shouts again and shakes his head. “Just explain it.”
“I liked it. I wanted it. Most of the time, at the end of the day, I wanted it. And I could have stopped him. A few times I did. So it wasn’t…like that.”
“Are you trying to convince me that you consented, completely, to everything?”
Ronan tips his head back and groans. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Ask a reasonable question because I care about you?”
“Exactly. K didn’t do consent. You wanted it or you didn’t, and he always knew.”
“How did it start?”
Ronan groans again and drags his arm across his face. “Badly. I’m not telling you. I don’t need you to know.”
“Why not?” Adam demands.
“Because it’s fucking disgusting and I’m a selfish bastard who doesn’t want to be alone.”
“Ronan-“
“He told me you’re too good for me,” Ronan laughs, shaking his head. “I want him to be wrong. But I’m not sure.”
“ Ronan. ”
“What? I’m a shit influence.”
“No you’re not, and even if you were that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a healthy relationship.”
Ronan opens his mouth to argue and thinks better of it.
“Are you…” Adam bites the insides of his cheeks, hard. “Did you ever do something with me because you were afraid to say no?”
Ronan eyes him. “I could bench press you.”
“Good to know. Is that what I asked?”
“I’m not afraid of you.”
“But the other day, in the kitchen, when I kissed you-“
“Jesus, you took me by surprise, okay?” Ronan launches to his feet, pacing behind the couch.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Fuck you, then,” Ronan spits tiredly, running a hand over his buzzed head. “I don’t want this to be a thing . I just want to be with you and leave fucking K out of our lives.”
Adam twists to face him and holds out his hand. “Do you promise to tell me to stop? And to not try to end fights like that again?”
Ronan takes his hand. “No.”
Adam starts to pull away, but he holds on. “Ronan-“
“I’m not a liar.”
“Can you try?”
His mouth quirks. “To lie? Probably.”
“You know what I meant.”
Ronan clambers over the couch to avoid letting go of Adam’s hand. He stares down at their linked fingers, rubbing his thumb over Adam’s skin.
“Yeah,” he says. “I can try.”
“Can you also try seeing a therapist?”
Ronan chucks a throw pillow they never use at his head.
“I’m serious! You should talk to someone.”
“I’m talking to you.”
“Someone who isn’t your boyfriend.”
“I’m not talking to Gansey about fucking K.”
Adam sucks in a breath. “Stop being obtuse.”
“Ooh, big word, here comes Lawyer Adam.”
He bites down on the automatic, defensive response and shakes his head. “I don’t want to fight. But I do want to talk about this later. Okay?”
Ronan looks mulish, but relents. “Whatever.”
“I’ve got my next class in an hour. You wanna watch TV until then?”
Ronan eyes him. “You don’t wanna study?”
Adam does, but he is also the liar. “No,” is a half-truth anyway, close enough.
“Cool.” Ronan grabs the food and the remote in one hand and swings his legs over Adam’s in a very deliberate way.
When Adam glances at him under the guise of reaching for a now-lukewarm sandwich, Ronan just gives him a challenging look, daring him to ask. Adam doesn’t ask. But this time, he doesn’t forget.
-0-0-0-
“Hey,” Ronan says when Adam opens the door, a few days later. He’s doing actual work for once, an essay. It’s boring as shit but it’s also due in three days and he needs Adam to rip it apart before he turns it in.
“Hey, Ronan,” Adam says, which is his warning system.
If he says Ronan’s name, he’s planning on going in for a kiss. Which is cool. Ronan’s just busy. So.
Adam slings an arm around him and kisses his temple while Ronan does his best to cover his essay from judgemental eyes. “How’s it going?”
“Slow,” Ronan mutters.
Adam slides more of his weight onto Ronan’s shoulders, draping himself. He’s not usually very touchy, unless it’s been a bad day.
“Think I can persuade you to take a break?” he murmurs, pressing another kiss to Ronan’s neck.
Normally Ronan would be all over that, but he’s not in the mood. And he does need to work. He shifts a little, turns on his stool to kiss Adam properly, mostly to see if it changes his mind. Not because Adam is probably in a bad mood and very in his space. Because Adam isn’t K and Ronan knows that.
Adam kisses him, slow and deep. “I miss you,” he murmurs. “We’ve been busy for days.”
His hands are on Ronan’s hips and their mouths are locked together and it suddenly hits him how much he wants to be somewhere else, anywhere else, and how familiar this feeling is. Ride it out. Wait for him to be done. Don’t make waves because you’re not in the mood for a split lip.
The words stop and no and don’t rise in his throat alongside K’s voice in his head. Don’t be such a bitch. Do you want a fight or do you want to come quietly? Don’t lie to me, princess, I know you better than you know yourself.
He can’t. He can’t but he should . Adam will be mad if he stops and mad if he keeps going.
“Wait,” he says into Adam’s mouth, and his voice doesn’t sound like his, “hold on.”
Adam jerks back, putting several feet of space between them immediately. “Fuck, Ronan, are you okay?”
I’m not made of glass , Ronan wants to spit. His hands just hurt, is all, the scars on his knuckles stinging.
Once, K put his fingers in his mouth and Ronan bit him. Hard. Usually K would laugh it off or take it in stride, but not that time. That time K punched him in the jaw and gagged him with his Aglionby tie and pinned his head to the seat of the car until Ronan stopped thrashing. Then he said good dog .
It feels like that now, like pressure squeezing his skull and all his words piling up behind his teeth while his mouth throbs.
“Ronan?” Adam asks.
“I’m fine,” Ronan snarls. “I’m not that breakable.” He fumbles for the counter, turning around, and fumbles more for his laptop. “I just need to…to finish this. First.”
“I’ll give you some space,” Adam says quietly. He vanishes into the bedroom.
It takes Ronan three hours, one of which is spent eating snacks, revolving slowly on his barstool, and trying to make his brain think about economics and not AdamKavinskyKissingShit. He should not call it that in his brain, that makes it sound weird.
He gets the paper done, slams his laptop shut, and knocks once on Adam’s bedroom door.
“Yeah?”
He opens the door and leans against the wall, allowing himself a smirk. “I can take a break now.”
Adam, who was hunched over his bed on his laptop, sits ramrod straight immediately. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, dumbass, I wouldn’t say so if I wasn’t.”
Adam fumbles to put his laptop away while Ronan joins him on the bed. He turns back so fast they nearly knock heads, Ronan catching him with gentle fingers on his face.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” Adam breathes. “So, how do you want to-“
Ronan kisses him. They don’t talk again for a while, but he doesn’t need them to. It’s not perfect and it’s not a solution, but it’s good without the part that hurts. It’s Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch, and they’re more than good enough.