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It's after midnight and neither of them are asleep.
Ronan had shown up a couple hours ago, had just muttered something about Declan and Can't stay there tonight and he'd curled up on the floor next to Adam's bed. He looks smaller and more fragile than Adam ever thought he was capable of looking. His eyes are tightly shut and he's very, very still, like a child who thinks the monsters won't be able to see him if he can't see them and if he doesn't move or make a sound.
Adam knows he's not asleep, because he's never this quiet when he's sleeping.
Maybe he'd meant to say, I didn't want to be alone.
Adam's sitting at the top of his tiny mattress, arms wrapped around his knees, head resting on them, just looking at Ronan's silhouette in the darkness.
Maybe it's the time of night or maybe he's not afraid to be caught looking anymore. There's no price to be paid for looking. The only ill-effects of this are a cresting wave in his stomach when he realises Ronan's looking back and something in the corner of his mind asking him if this is enough, if this is what he wants. To look and never be able to touch, to have. It feels like this is the edge where he's been standing all his life. It feels like reaching out to touch Ronan just because he wants to would change everything he's ever known about himself.
Ronan finally rolls over onto his back, arms lying at his sides. He could be a corpse if his eyes weren't open now and blinking slowly. Adam's looking at the shadows cast by his eyelashes on his cheeks and not away like he should.
Ronan knows he's looking; maybe he's known the entire time.
"It was easy to hate him," Ronan says, softly, still looking at the ceiling. "Because otherwise I'd have to hate my father. For not telling me what I am. For leaving me here all alone."
Adam knows family is private and he doesn't ever presume to ask about Ronan's. From what he's learned, Niall Lynch was a chronically absent father at best, but Ronan idolised him. Maybe growing up means realising your parents aren't gods or monsters, just people. Flawed, broken people. Adam doesn't hate his father either. He wonders what that makes him. If it makes him weak or cowardly or pathetic or a liar. Everything Robert Parrish thought he was. Or if it makes him better. Makes them both better. What use is it to try to be better people than those who came before when all that gets you is this? This ugly, uncaring world.
Adam wants to say, You're not alone, but he's not entirely sure how true that is.
Sometimes, it feels like they're both closer to and farther from each other than they've ever been. Ronan tells him a lot of things now, but the more he learns about himself, his family, his magic, the more Adam thinks it's impossible to ever truly know him. All that knowledge is like a weight on him, too; his eyes are tired and lifeless more and more these days. Like it's burning out, his anger and fire and wild rebellion. Like he's grown up between a blink of Adam's eyes, all at once. Like it hurts.
So, instead, he shifts onto his side, and reaches one hand over the edge of his mattress to press his fingertips against Ronan's. It's the slightest of contact, but more palpably intimate than he's ever touched him before. Maybe ever touched anyone. He's thought about this before, thought about it while they were sitting on a barn floor with an incomprehensible dream-object between them, thought about it when their eyes met across a church pew before everything turned to blood and terror. Both of those times, Ronan was too strange and foreign an entity to him to even think he'd be able to touch him. But this — this feels like something he can understand innately.
Adam runs his fingertips down his hand onto his palm. He hears a tiny hitch in Ronan's breath, but he doesn't move. His hands are warm, softer than he expected. He wonders if the rest of him is the same. If under his sharp smile and the knife-like hooks of his tattoo, there's just the soft, warm skin of a boy. He wants to know, wants to know everything, and at the same time, he knows he can't. Knows they've already gone too far.
He tries to slowly pull his fingers away, but Ronan's hand finally curls around them, just keeping Adam's hand there, strokes it once, feather-light.
He doesn't let go until Adam falls asleep and when he wakes up, he's already gone.
***
They haven't talked about it, and it's been weeks. And something's changing, between all of them. They can all sense it. Something's coming. An explosion. A lightning storm. The atmosphere's charged with secrets and unsaid feelings and ghosts of the dead and the soon-to-be dead and the heavy presence of a fate that's coming for all of them, like a tingling on the back of your neck that won't go away. It feels like the tick-tick before the boom.
They're driving in silence, and Blue called shotgun but she hasn't been able to properly look at Gansey for a while. She's staring out the window, stubbornly, like it's the most fascinating view she's ever seen. Adam thinks things are finally relatively okay between him and her, though. They know where they stand. Everyone else in the car right now — not so much.
Gansey seems to decide to pretend nothing's wrong at all, and casually starts talking to Ronan about something (sleeping things and dream energy and on and on). Adam looks across at him, carefully. He's rolling his eyes at every other word but there's a bright, indulgent quirk to his mouth that wasn't there before. That he hasn't seen in a while. And Adam thinks maybe, maybe, they can go back to how things were. Maybe none of the things he's afraid of are going to come to pass. Maybe they're going to wake Glendower, like they woke an army of skeletal animals, like they're working on waking Ronan's father's kingdom of dreams. Maybe it was all a nightmare, the vision and the death list, and this sun-washed, golden day in front of them is reality.
Or maybe this is the dream.
Ronan's hand is lying languidly on the seat next to him, a little too close to Adam's. He wonders if he did that on purpose.
Adam inches his fingers across the vinyl and gently places his hand on top of Ronan's.
Ronan trails off in the middle of a sentence, and he glances down at their hands. Adam very deliberately turns his head away from him, pretending to admire the scenery, but he feels his gaze on his face for a long moment. Then, he continues arguing with Gansey. Adam's wondering if they're just doing it to fill up the space now.
Adam leaves his hand on Ronan's and nothing happens. Lightning doesn't strike. He wonders if looking doesn't cost anything, then what is this going to cost? If not now, then soon.
Blue jumps in a few minutes later to simply state, "That is the worst idea I've ever heard."
And it's okay. Just one more day of them. They can deal with tomorrow when it gets here.
***
So, this is it. It feels like a tornado's carved its way through Monmouth. It feels like the blast wave rippled outward in every direction at once. Leaving shells of people in its wake.
Blue's just staring at the spot where he was standing, like she's seeing his ghost again, and tears are streaming down her face.
Then, she's leaving, running down the stairs and calling his name. Adam hears the Pig pull away a few moments later though. She's too late.
Ronan punches a fucking wall. Because it's Ronan.
"Jesus Christ, are you actually trying to break your hand this time?" he says, reaching out to stop his fist from making contact with concrete again.
He expects him to pull away and say, Don't fucking touch me, or to maybe punch him instead. But Ronan lets him. Lets him cradle his hand in his own and pull him towards the bathroom.
"You're not going to go after her?" Ronan asks, when Adam's studying his bloody knuckles under the fluorescent lighting.
"I think she needs to be alone."
"What about you?"
"What?"
"Do you need to be alone?"
"No — No, I —"
"You weren't going to tell me." He says it like it's just a simple fact. Sometimes, Ronan looks at him and he has an irrational urge to hide his face. Like Ronan can see all his shame and guilt in his eyes. All his lies.
"No."
"I told you everything, and you didn't tell me." He doesn't sound hurt. He just sounds unbalanced. Like maybe the world doesn't make sense anymore. Like maybe he doesn't actually know Adam at all.
But Ronan hasn't told him everything, the vindictive part of him reminds him.
He doesn't know how to say that he's just so fucking tired of secrets. And that's all it would've been if he'd told him, another secret. Maybe Ronan has limitless room for them inside of him, but Adam can't keep living like this. (There's one he never, ever can tell him though. Just like Ronan will never, ever tell him what he wants. Because neither of them will ever be able to go back from that. Maybe that's the real explosion he's waiting for, not this one. Not Gansey's betrayed expression, not Ronan's soft, disbelieving, "You knew about this?" directed at him, not his own telling silence, not Blue's strangled apologies as he walked away from all of them.)
"I didn't tell you, because — because I'm not going to let it happen. Okay?"
Saying it out loud seems to turn his resolve to steel. He's going to do this, no matter what it takes from him.
Adam's still holding his stiff, painful hand in his own, but Ronan's only looking at his face.
He seems to find what he's looking for there, because he nods, firm.
"That's why we're here, right?"
The thing is, they both know that Gansey could've never saved either of them. They had to decide to save themselves, to be here, to do this, together. To be something greater than they'd ever imagined.
To be who they were supposed to be, all along.
Adam cleans his hand and bandages his knuckles and when he's done, Ronan takes a couple minutes before pulling away. Just the two of them, standing so close together, hands still linked, eyes locked in a new kind of understanding, finally unafraid.
***
They drop Blue off at her house, and Gansey's still fucking gone, with Cheng of all people. Maybe a part of him doesn't want to be saved, a part of him that's known all along and almost welcomes it. Adam can't bear to even think about it.
Ronan looks like he wants to smash his fist into something again.
Adam grabs his hand before he can take out some of his anger on the BMW's innocent steering wheel, traps it with his own in his lap.
"Don't. Just don't," he sighs.
"Gansey said the difference between us and K is that we matter. Look at us now," Ronan snarls. There's something worrying in the set of his jaw. Adam's never known a Ronan without Gansey; he imagines it would be a terrifying thing to behold.
Look at us now.
He remembers Gansey saying, Look at yourself, at the Gansey mansion, Blue saying It's not gonna be you. Adam knows who he is without Gansey, without all of them; he's someone Ronan would hate. Someone he's going to hate.
Ronan doesn't know, hasn't seen all the ugliness under his skin. He only sees what he wants to see.
He interlaces his hand with Adam's almost unconsciously. Maybe this is the first time they've done this properly. Maybe this is the first time it feels real. Feels like a starting point for something else. Looking was different; looking could go on forever without changing. They've changed the entire playing field with a brush of fingertips on fingertips. That's all it takes, to destroy a world. To create a new one.
"Maybe this was all a mistake," Ronan says. Adam doesn't know if he means Gansey and Glendower, or if he means Adam. It shakes him to the core.
"What if we can't stop it?" Ronan asks quietly. Adam hears the real question: Without Gansey, what am I? What are we?
Adam can't kiss him now, not like this, not with Gansey's dead body between them, not with his blood on Adam's hands. Just like Ronan's, two different times now.
They won't be able to look at each other afterward; it's all they'll ever see in each other's faces.
He can't risk it. Can't kill Gansey and this in one fell stroke.
Can't ever tell him either.
***
There's no funeral.
There's no funeral, because there's no body, because no one else knows, because they're going to save him, because they have to.
He dies before they find Glendower. He dies centuries ago, stung by bees, drenched in rain.
When they get back to their time, they're still all soaking wet, but his body's gone.
Blue's still kneeling on the ground, crying into her hands.
*
Adam finds him in the empty church the day after.
He's sitting in a pew with his head bowed and his hands clasped together. Adam wonders what he's praying for. No god can fix this now. Only them.
This is what started all of this though, playing God. Fucking with life and death and destiny and time.
Ronan opens his eyes, but doesn't look at him when he sits down next to him.
"What are you praying for?"
"His soul."
Adam takes a deep breath.
"We'll find him, we'll find Glendower and —"
"That's what caused this in the first place," Ronan says tonelessly.
No, that was me. He came after me, the dumb bastard.
"It wasn't my fault. I didn't ask him to." Ronan can see through every single one of his lies, though. He can't even pretend otherwise.
"You knew he would."
"Well, it's time to go after him for once."
"Adam —"
"Just let me do this. Please." You can hate me after, but now, just trust me. Trust me, trust me, trust me.
Ronan unclasps his hands to intertwine one with Adam's.
It feels like a different kind of prayer, just between them, believing in each other against all odds.
***
Adam tells him again in the car before they get out, "Just let me do this."
Ronan takes his hand as they enter the forest and doesn't let go when they reach the place where Adam made his sacrifice.
Blue looks at their hands for a moment, but her expression is distant.
"I have to do this alone," he tells them. "But he'll be in the caves somewhere. You have to look for him."
Blue nods kind of absently. Ronan squeezes his hand as an answer.
"Are you sure?" he asks.
"Yeah, I — I'll be fine. Noah can stay with me."
Ronan finally lets go and Blue follows him in the direction of the caves.
Adam slowly drops to his knees in the dirt.
"Noah?" he calls out.
When he appears, he inhales sharply before asking, "What is it like?"
***
There's a lot of blood. His blood. But not enough. It was supposed to be all.
Ronan's standing over him. He looks fucking pissed. So, he looks like Ronan. Adam never thought he'd ever see him again.
"You're a fucking idiot," he says. Adam thinks he's been crying.
"You saved me?" Adam says. It comes out more incredulous and less angry than he'd intended. He thought they saw eye-to-eye on this. Thought they'd agreed on saving him no matter what the cost.
"No, I convinced them to save you."
"And Gansey?"
"He's fine, he's with Sargent."
"But how —"
"It's the intent that has the power, I guess. Or some bullshit like that."
"I'm not dead," Adam says. He probably was dead, for a minute or two, or maybe he just blacked out.
"That's really observant of you."
"I should be dead." He's not certain of much right now, but he's pretty certain about that. This, him being here, Ronan being here, doesn't make any sense to him. It's like it's happening to someone else, like he's observing it through a thick fog.
"What if it was me, huh, you bastard?" Ronan spits out. He looks like he's torn between strangling him and kissing him.
"I wouldn't let you," Adam says simply. In the end, he knows he's the one who won't be able to handle losing Ronan.
"Well, I wouldn't do this to you, anyway."
"I know you wouldn't," Adam tells him, fondly.
Ronan sits on the ground next to him, takes one of his hands, kisses it (dried blood and everything), and doesn't give it back.
***
They're sitting on the stairs at Monmouth and Adam's playing with the straps on Ronan's wrist. Noah's blasting some terrible electronica upstairs that's causing the roof to shake slightly, dust from the ceiling glinting in the artificial light as it floats downwards. It kind of looks like stardust falling all around them.
They haven't talked much in the last few days. Adam had just fallen asleep with his head on Ronan's shoulder on the ride back from Cabeswater, and they spent the day just lying next to each other in his bed, exhausted, barely moving except for the occasional brush of skin against skin. Then, Ronan took off to the Barns for most of the next day, and they all decided to meet here tonight. They both decided to bail when Blue and Gansey ended up curled up on the couch together, not even doing anything, really, besides being disgustingly adorable.
Ronan's ankle is casually tossed over Adam's, like he can't be bothered to move it. They're pressed together from shoulder to hip and Ronan's arm is on his knee. Adam wonders how there ever was a time he thought Ronan couldn't be touched. How there ever was a time he thought he'd never have this. He can't imagine ever going back now.
Part of him wants to drag him back to his apartment where it's quiet and private and they can do more of this touching thing with considerably less clothing. But part of him just wants to stay here, in this moment, just being alive. Just being next to him. It's all the more extraordinary now. To be. To feel.
"Are you still mad?" he asks.
"Yes."
"How long are you going to be mad?"
"An appropriate period of time, I expect."
He wonders what's the appropriate time needed to get over your not-boyfriend sacrificing his life to save his best friend. He feels a tiny pang of guilt for the first time. It's hard to feel anything for very long that's not just contentment that they're all still here, though, that he didn't lose everything, that all that matters to him are the people who are inside this building at this exact moment. Safe and at home.
"Can I do anything to speed it up?" Adam suggests, sliding Ronan's fingers through his hands in front of his face. They both smell like each other now, like mist and moss and leather and Adam's cheap soap.
"I don't know. Depends."
"What about…this —" he says, kissing Ronan's knuckles one by one.
"Uhhh," he says, obviously unconvinced.
"Or this —" he says, turning his head to kiss his bare shoulder.
"Better," he says, deadpan.
"Yeah? Okay, how about —" he says, kissing his neck, almost sitting in his lap now.
"Getting there," he says, nodding appreciatively.
Adam kisses his cheek, and then pulls away a little, just watching him. He feels his pulse quicken under his grip, sees him swallow, hears his breaths grow uneven. It's a ridiculous and wonderful feeling, looking at someone and knowing they're thinking the same thing. If only for a moment. That moment's all you need, to change everything. To go beyond the point of no return.
"I want —" Ronan says, very seriously. "To tell you something."
"I know," Adam says, smiling, bringing their mouths together. Finally.
He doesn't know how long they stay there, lips moving over lips. One of Adam's hands is still wrapped around his wrist, and the other's flush against his chest between them, feeling his heartbeat. Then, Ronan presses him back against the wall and kisses his mouth open slowly, hands on the sides of his face now, like he's memorising it with his fingertips. He moves his mouth down to nip gently at his jawline, to kiss a path down his throat. He twists his fingers into the front of his stupid Coca-Cola t-shirt like it's a source of frustration for him and Adam figures, eventually, that yeah, this is the wrong place for this.
Adam drags him back upstairs to say goodbye to the others ("Because it's polite, Jesus"), and after flipping Noah off for yelling "Congrats!", they finally escape.
Adam laces his fingers through Ronan's and together, they step out into the Henrietta night.