Adam was having a hard time not thinking about having sex with Ronan.
When he'd been with Blue, a kiss seemed like it would be enough. A kiss had seemed momentous enough, daunting enough. Now falling into Ronan's lap and necking for a quarter of an hour was practically a basic human need, which Adam factored into his schedule as diligently as sleep or food.
Thinking about having sex with Ronan wasn't the problem, exactly. It made his sparing jerk-off sessions a lot more efficient which was a problem. After five minutes with Ronan's tongue in his mouth, Adam thought he'd die if he couldn't get Ronan's clothes off, but Ronan could spend fifteen minutes just sucking on his fingers and still be, well, Ronan. Adam was afraid—Well, Adam was afraid of a lot of things in regards to this particular situation. He was afraid Ronan wasn't ready for sex, he was afraid he might push Ronan into it anyway, he was afraid Ronan would catch him looking too hungry. He was afraid of being too hungry.
He had spent a lot of time considering these fears, trying to balance them against reality, but it all came down to the same lack of information: Adam had no idea how Ronan felt about sex. He hadn't encouraged or discouraged Adam when he'd gotten handsier than usual. He hadn't even grabbed Adam's ass, which was frustrating and even a little offensive. But the more Adam considered this total neutrality, the more he thought it might be his fault. Maybe Ronan was holding back because he didn't want to startle Adam. Maybe he thought Adam didn't really want to be touched.
Maybe he should take Blue's advice and just have a conversation about it with him, but Adam really hated walking into any situation not armed with the facts. Except there wasn't any conflict to be armed for: if Ronan didn't want to have sex right now or ever, that was that, and Adam would have to deal with it.
Ronan was on his bed at the moment, waiting while Adam finished up some calculus. Before he could think about how much rather he would do calculus before have this particular conversation, he put his pencil down and turned around.
"So," He said casually. 'We should probably talk about sex."
Adam had been acting strange since he had come in and dropped onto the bed unceremoniously, one headphone popped into his ear while the other remained open to whatever his boyfriend had to say. The ceiling in Adam's room always felt so close, like it was ready to drop and crush the two of them to prevent them from whatever came next. He didn't see the appeal of places like this, but he knew it made Adam feel independent. Whatever. Let Adam have what he wanted. He was getting better about it.
It was one of those times when Ronan was calm to balance the tension in the air, but he realized that he could just as easily be a firework set off to explode in the tiny room. His body remained prone, and the only change was that he reached down to click off the music. (When Adam was doing homework, he typically listened to it quietly enough that the spare headphone didn't disrupt Adam's homework. Ronan Lynch: learning consideration for others.)
The question wasn't an easy one. And Ronan knew that if he evaded it, Adam would catch on. He always did. He just didn't know what to say. Yes, he was calm about the whole thing, but there was a part of Ronan so at ease with all of this that he hadn't let himself slide into that territory. If nothing else, he was capable of slamming doors shut permanently until he was ready to open them.
He realized he wasn't ready for this door to open.
What a fucking stupid revelation.
"Man, is calculus that much of a turn on? I wouldn't have guessed. Do I need to whisper equations in your ear now?" Evasion. Ronan knew exactly what he was doing, and even the playful smile didn't hide it. He just didn't say it as succinctly as he could have otherwise, and he just braced himself for the impact of Adam's issues. They were always there, and he didn't mind that. He just needed to work up to how he was going to contend with them.
The thought of Ronan whispering anything into his ear did not help Adam's objectivity. He was suddenly afraid all over again that Ronan just wasn't in to sex and he was somehow going to have to deal with that. He wasn't sure he could deal with that. The worst part of Adam was thinking the best way to win this conversation as to drop himself into his boyfriend's lap and have the conversation from there but Adam shut the line of thought down almost before it finished, spreading his hands flat against his desk.
On bad days, Adam told himself he was only with Ronan because he could make Ronan do whatever he wanted. The flipside of his struggle for independence was about control. He even loved this shitty room for the sole fact that he controlled everything in it.
On better days Adam told himself he didn't have the energy or the degree of sociopathy needed to sustain a relationship for purely Machivallian aims.
And on good days, shockingly more common, Adam was convinced that Ronan would never put up with that kind of shit from him. He was a good person and had standards and morals that didn't subordinate everything to survival, not like Adam, and Adam was a better person because of him.
Being physical with Ronan was so easy compared to being with Blue that this new anxiety had been fairly slow in building. Ronan was clearly into his body and Adam didn't get it, really, but that didn't stop him from getting high off the mutual contact. Ronan's obvious evasion now made his body tighten up with anxiety. His thoughts flashed back to that disaster of a conversation he'd had with Blue about kissing her, everything that went through his head at the time: Too dirty to touch, too messed up to be with another person, too hungry for any kind of validation that his existence was worthy that he couldn't respect someone else's autonomy.
Adam took a deep breath and slid his hands off his desk, trying to make it look casual as he turned around.
"You could whisper just about anything in my ear, except for that fucking squash song," he said lightly. "If you were wanting to turn me on."
"What, you don't like the squash song? I bet I could make it work." Ronan wished he could do that right now. He wished that he didn't have hangups, and he knew that he was messing with Adam every time he drew one of his long, elegant fingers into his mouth to suck it like he was taking care of his dick. He wasn't clueless about it. But Catholic shame was burned into him even if it didn't make a single lick of sense, so he hadn't allowed himself to think about it.
Evasion was a part of how Ronan Lynch survived. He didn't face things head on. He busted his way past them violently to make things work out the way he needed them to work out. There was a part of Ronan that was all too aware that in the medieval period, he would be dead for what he could do. They would see him as a monster instead of a saint. His body wouldn't be preserved, probably, but it was hard to say. His mother had been preserved until she died. Did that mean his father dreamt up a fucking saint?
Religion was something that he had a hard time letting go of and being chill about, but that may be because "being chill" was difficult for someone like Ronan, who was rather good at staging his life like he was anything but.
"Look," he continued, because he knew that as much as he wanted to drape an arm around Adam's shoulders and whisper "squash one squash two" into his ear, it would be a dick move. He should have the damn conversation, and then do the dick move. Obviously. "Sex was always meant to wait until marriage, though I don't know that it matters so much." Sex was a dishonest transaction between Declan and any of his girls. Ronan hated it. He knew he'd be better about that. "I don't know if I'm ready yet, Parrish."
In a way, he was actually the more sincere version of "awfully young." "Not that I don't want to fuck you man. I do." Just getting that out there. Ronan didn't lie. He may evade, but the words that came out of his mouth always had to be the truth.
"Alright," Adam said immediately, aiming for casual and missing by a lot. His heart was pounding, he realized. Had he been that scared of the answer? It takes a couple of run-throughs just to really process what Ronan said. Adam's relieved at first, quickly followed by a curl of frustration at all the fucking ambivalence. He has to keep himself from balking at the mention of marriage.
"I'm probably never going to want to get married. At least not for a long time." Practical to get that out of the way. Outside of his brief glimpses of the Gansey's, Adam's parents were the only example of a marriage he had to go on, so there was no surprise it didn't hold much appeal. Would Ronan understand that? His own instincts made it seem like every time something like this came up it was like turning a blind corner. This will be it, this is where and why it ends..
Adam bit his tongue on his immediate questions. What do you mean you want to fuck me but not now? It even sounded stupid in his head. Childish, hurt. Logically, Ronan would never hurt him. On purpose.
Unfortunately an entirely different question popped out. Curt and defensive. "You know I'm not a virgin, right?" Adam looked briefly startled, like he hadn't meant to say that at all, but after a beat his expression solidified into irritation.
It was not as if this was the first time Adam had seen Ronan all semester. Ronan had made a point the drive out every couple of weeks to stay a few days in Adam's shitbox apartment while Adam studied between intermittent makeout sessions and cheap takeout. He'd done it faithfully all year, had steered clear during finals and midterms, had texted Adam at 3am telling him to go to bed even when he could have had no idea Adam was awake (he was awake).
Being with Ronan was so easy, and Adam was slowly learning to stop bracing for it to be hard. It had been weird to realize that there was no honeymoon period, no looming fight about Adam being away. Ronan had known what he was getting in to when he'd kissed Adam which was strange because Adam had had no idea what he was getting into with Ronan.
I am unknowable, He thought to himself at the time and then, wryly: But only to myself. Too caught up in his own framework to see how the pieces fit together, or maybe just too unwilling to examine those pieces too close. The nice thing about being with Ronan is that Adam could trust Ronan to make a lot more sense out of the things he did than Adam could. It made him less paranoid.
He was waiting downstairs with a single suitcase for Ronan to pull up. Strangest of all, maybe, was that he was looking forward to going back to Henrietta.
For Ronan, "stability" was what he sought out every moment after his father had died, found in the driveway with the tire iron just beside his head. He hadn't known there and then that his life would slip away, his mother becoming a fragment of herself, and his brothers would be distant extensions of his identity, but he had come to recognize it for what it was. When he reclaimed almost all that he lost (and lost his mother in the process), he had felt oddly at peace with himself. "Peace" and "Ronan Lynch" feel like contradictions at best, but they were the two words that suited his lifestyle.
It wasn't that much of his routine changed, either. He still drag raced around Henrietta, seeking out the next jackass who wanted to be as outstanding as Joseph Kavinsky. He picked fights in Nino's on Fridays when he got bored. But all of it suited him, a little chaos centered around his otherwise peace-filled life. He enjoyed sizing guys up and seeing how quickly they'd go in for the punch, and if they made it through his defenses, he smiled viciously, eyes blazing and body taught to go yet another round.
But there were changes. He didn't fight like he didn't care if his life was lost. He didn't race without hesitation, knowing that if he took it too far into the wrong part of the suburbs, that people would be out and wandering the streets at 10:30 PM. He showed restraint—and it was that restraint that showed Ronan's peace with the world. It was restraint that only those closest to Ronan could recognize, vicious smile well-honed in the face of every danger of the world.
And then there was this with Adam. Ronan had always enjoyed prying him out of his box. He had enjoyed reminding him of what it meant to be a kid, when his eyes, even wrapped around by bruises, would be full of life, beautiful lips twisting sharply in a smile before he held on for dear life with his rough, but delicate hands. Ronan was all instincts when it came to Adam, but he found himself fixated with his reactions and curious for when he might realize that this could go in two directions. He was glad, now, that he was still fixated on Adam's reactions: like the simplicity of Ronan's straightforward nature could carve out a new experience with Adam every time they were together.
Ronan could pinpoint the exact moment that he realized he wasn't dragging Adam back to Henrietta this time. It was twenty minutes outside of New Haven, air conditioning on full blast, the electronica booming out of his speakers like it was one with the driver. The BMW peeled over the road like it was nothing, and as he passed through the poorer part of New Haven (the part where Adam decided to live, even though Yale had insisted on having him closer, had insisted on having him on campus—but he was nothing if not stubborn, and Ronan had a feeling he might change his tune after a year full of cockroaches disturbing their make out sessions and, more importantly, Adam's three AM study sessions), he realized that Henrietta could wait.
When he pulled up, he tugged his phone from the back seat and dropped it into the passenger seat. Once Adam approached the car, he unlocked the doors, eyes pointed forward. "Call Declan and let him know to check on the Barns. We're going on a road trip."
To be fair, the ride between Connecticut and Virginia was always a road trip, but there was something different about the way Ronan held on to the steering wheel, like he had concocted another plan and he just assumed that Adam would be persuaded to go along with it.
Adam dropped himself into the passnger seat and scoop up the phone in one graceful swoop, easing back against the smooth leather with a deep sense of belonging. It surprised him every time that this was his life now: one whole continuous thing suffused with well-being. He didn't have to ration out his meager resources between happiness and survival, carefully playing the two against each other. He didn't conceive of his life in fractured contrasts that could never meet. This one, perfect moment on contentment, glancing across at Ronan with almost smug possessiveness, would not mean a disaster later.
Though Roman's posture did cue Adam that something was going on. Adam had gotten used to watching people very carefully, at first just as a hopeless tactic to brace himself against his father, and then as a means of fitting-in in a place like Aglionby where any gesture could mark him as an outsider. The code of Ronan's body was always easy to read because it followed from the rest of his personality: it never lied. In fact, it usually broadcasted enough to make being psychic fairly redundant.
Odd to think that he had once thought Ronan was unpredictable and dangerous. Observing him before had made Adam uneasy, like walking past a stray dog and not quite knowing if it was friendly or likely to bite. He couldn't imagine all that pent-up energy being spent in any other way besides a self-destructive supernova that would take out anyone nearby.
And now Adam had to stifle the automatic impulse to touch him, get his attention, his focus. He knew it wasn't that Ronan was ignoring him; the tension in him, the abruptness, were both familiar, and sent a frission of eager thrill through Adam. If Ronan was expecting Adam to acquiesce to being dragged off on some wild ride, it was because he usually did. Ronan had uncannily good instincts for when Adam needed something like a shopping cart race crash, something not subordinated to his carefully constructed hierarchy of needs. Adam liked being in control, but he was beginning to like not having to worry about it, sometimes. Just with Ronan.
At some point trusting Ronan had stopped seeming like a reckless move and had just become common sense.
Adam obediently tapped out a message to Declan and tossed the phone in the glove box, pulling his seat belt on.
The glance that Ronan chose to give Adam in response to that final question was wicked, all sharp edges and blades ready to attack. He liked the mystery of this. There was something thrilling in knowing that Adam wouldn't deny him. Ronan never asked a lot of him anyway. His thrills were cheap and easy to achieve. Throw down a hill in a shopping cart. See what the hell would happen if they raced a car past a police station. Things like this were easily obtainable, and Ronan knew when the limits would test Adam's control and path in his life. So, he didn't test them. (As it turned out, the cops didn't have a speedometer running—but Ronan still wouldn't ask Adam to do that. He knew what was and wasn't okay.)
Something about being near Adam made him feel impossibly strong. Like he could do anything. His head leaned back into the driver seat, limbs tense with energy that had no place to go except into the pedal of his car. "Gansey mapped the ley line all around the world," he said. It was clear that he only just decided where they were going in that instant. Some of the energy coursing violently through his veins abated, but not entirely. "Why don't we take advantage of them for once? It seems like it might be more fitting, you and I." The Dreamer and the Magician. Cabeswater was gone, but the magic still burned in Adam's blood just like Ronan would never be anything less than the Greywaren.
He could never be his father dashing madly across the country on raucous adventures. No matter what Declan feared for his future, he could never be Niall Lynch. Ronan had been denied what he had, and he felt comforted in its return.
No, this was something else ... and something that wasn't for him. Adam had achieved a lot in getting into Yale on scholarship and setting off into the great blue yonder of eventually being a white collar worker. But that meant ridding himself of the ley line. Ronan knew what it meant to him.
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When he'd been with Blue, a kiss seemed like it would be enough. A kiss had seemed momentous enough, daunting enough. Now falling into Ronan's lap and necking for a quarter of an hour was practically a basic human need, which Adam factored into his schedule as diligently as sleep or food.
Thinking about having sex with Ronan wasn't the problem, exactly. It made his sparing jerk-off sessions a lot more efficient which was a problem. After five minutes with Ronan's tongue in his mouth, Adam thought he'd die if he couldn't get Ronan's clothes off, but Ronan could spend fifteen minutes just sucking on his fingers and still be, well, Ronan. Adam was afraid—Well, Adam was afraid of a lot of things in regards to this particular situation. He was afraid Ronan wasn't ready for sex, he was afraid he might push Ronan into it anyway, he was afraid Ronan would catch him looking too hungry. He was afraid of being too hungry.
He had spent a lot of time considering these fears, trying to balance them against reality, but it all came down to the same lack of information: Adam had no idea how Ronan felt about sex. He hadn't encouraged or discouraged Adam when he'd gotten handsier than usual. He hadn't even grabbed Adam's ass, which was frustrating and even a little offensive. But the more Adam considered this total neutrality, the more he thought it might be his fault. Maybe Ronan was holding back because he didn't want to startle Adam. Maybe he thought Adam didn't really want to be touched.
Maybe he should take Blue's advice and just have a conversation about it with him, but Adam really hated walking into any situation not armed with the facts. Except there wasn't any conflict to be armed for: if Ronan didn't want to have sex right now or ever, that was that, and Adam would have to deal with it.
Ronan was on his bed at the moment, waiting while Adam finished up some calculus. Before he could think about how much rather he would do calculus before have this particular conversation, he put his pencil down and turned around.
"So," He said casually. 'We should probably talk about sex."
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Adam had been acting strange since he had come in and dropped onto the bed unceremoniously, one headphone popped into his ear while the other remained open to whatever his boyfriend had to say. The ceiling in Adam's room always felt so close, like it was ready to drop and crush the two of them to prevent them from whatever came next. He didn't see the appeal of places like this, but he knew it made Adam feel independent. Whatever. Let Adam have what he wanted. He was getting better about it.
It was one of those times when Ronan was calm to balance the tension in the air, but he realized that he could just as easily be a firework set off to explode in the tiny room. His body remained prone, and the only change was that he reached down to click off the music. (When Adam was doing homework, he typically listened to it quietly enough that the spare headphone didn't disrupt Adam's homework. Ronan Lynch: learning consideration for others.)
The question wasn't an easy one. And Ronan knew that if he evaded it, Adam would catch on. He always did. He just didn't know what to say. Yes, he was calm about the whole thing, but there was a part of Ronan so at ease with all of this that he hadn't let himself slide into that territory. If nothing else, he was capable of slamming doors shut permanently until he was ready to open them.
He realized he wasn't ready for this door to open.
What a fucking stupid revelation.
"Man, is calculus that much of a turn on? I wouldn't have guessed. Do I need to whisper equations in your ear now?" Evasion. Ronan knew exactly what he was doing, and even the playful smile didn't hide it. He just didn't say it as succinctly as he could have otherwise, and he just braced himself for the impact of Adam's issues. They were always there, and he didn't mind that. He just needed to work up to how he was going to contend with them.
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On bad days, Adam told himself he was only with Ronan because he could make Ronan do whatever he wanted. The flipside of his struggle for independence was about control. He even loved this shitty room for the sole fact that he controlled everything in it.
On better days Adam told himself he didn't have the energy or the degree of sociopathy needed to sustain a relationship for purely Machivallian aims.
And on good days, shockingly more common, Adam was convinced that Ronan would never put up with that kind of shit from him. He was a good person and had standards and morals that didn't subordinate everything to survival, not like Adam, and Adam was a better person because of him.
Being physical with Ronan was so easy compared to being with Blue that this new anxiety had been fairly slow in building. Ronan was clearly into his body and Adam didn't get it, really, but that didn't stop him from getting high off the mutual contact. Ronan's obvious evasion now made his body tighten up with anxiety. His thoughts flashed back to that disaster of a conversation he'd had with Blue about kissing her, everything that went through his head at the time: Too dirty to touch, too messed up to be with another person, too hungry for any kind of validation that his existence was worthy that he couldn't respect someone else's autonomy.
Adam took a deep breath and slid his hands off his desk, trying to make it look casual as he turned around.
"You could whisper just about anything in my ear, except for that fucking squash song," he said lightly. "If you were wanting to turn me on."
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Evasion was a part of how Ronan Lynch survived. He didn't face things head on. He busted his way past them violently to make things work out the way he needed them to work out. There was a part of Ronan that was all too aware that in the medieval period, he would be dead for what he could do. They would see him as a monster instead of a saint. His body wouldn't be preserved, probably, but it was hard to say. His mother had been preserved until she died. Did that mean his father dreamt up a fucking saint?
Religion was something that he had a hard time letting go of and being chill about, but that may be because "being chill" was difficult for someone like Ronan, who was rather good at staging his life like he was anything but.
"Look," he continued, because he knew that as much as he wanted to drape an arm around Adam's shoulders and whisper "squash one squash two" into his ear, it would be a dick move. He should have the damn conversation, and then do the dick move. Obviously. "Sex was always meant to wait until marriage, though I don't know that it matters so much." Sex was a dishonest transaction between Declan and any of his girls. Ronan hated it. He knew he'd be better about that. "I don't know if I'm ready yet, Parrish."
In a way, he was actually the more sincere version of "awfully young." "Not that I don't want to fuck you man. I do." Just getting that out there. Ronan didn't lie. He may evade, but the words that came out of his mouth always had to be the truth.
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"I'm probably never going to want to get married. At least not for a long time." Practical to get that out of the way. Outside of his brief glimpses of the Gansey's, Adam's parents were the only example of a marriage he had to go on, so there was no surprise it didn't hold much appeal. Would Ronan understand that? His own instincts made it seem like every time something like this came up it was like turning a blind corner. This will be it, this is where and why it ends..
Adam bit his tongue on his immediate questions. What do you mean you want to fuck me but not now? It even sounded stupid in his head. Childish, hurt. Logically, Ronan would never hurt him. On purpose.
Unfortunately an entirely different question popped out. Curt and defensive. "You know I'm not a virgin, right?" Adam looked briefly startled, like he hadn't meant to say that at all, but after a beat his expression solidified into irritation.
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Being with Ronan was so easy, and Adam was slowly learning to stop bracing for it to be hard. It had been weird to realize that there was no honeymoon period, no looming fight about Adam being away. Ronan had known what he was getting in to when he'd kissed Adam which was strange because Adam had had no idea what he was getting into with Ronan.
I am unknowable, He thought to himself at the time and then, wryly: But only to myself. Too caught up in his own framework to see how the pieces fit together, or maybe just too unwilling to examine those pieces too close. The nice thing about being with Ronan is that Adam could trust Ronan to make a lot more sense out of the things he did than Adam could. It made him less paranoid.
He was waiting downstairs with a single suitcase for Ronan to pull up. Strangest of all, maybe, was that he was looking forward to going back to Henrietta.
i will make proper fanart icons tomorrow
It wasn't that much of his routine changed, either. He still drag raced around Henrietta, seeking out the next jackass who wanted to be as outstanding as Joseph Kavinsky. He picked fights in Nino's on Fridays when he got bored. But all of it suited him, a little chaos centered around his otherwise peace-filled life. He enjoyed sizing guys up and seeing how quickly they'd go in for the punch, and if they made it through his defenses, he smiled viciously, eyes blazing and body taught to go yet another round.
But there were changes. He didn't fight like he didn't care if his life was lost. He didn't race without hesitation, knowing that if he took it too far into the wrong part of the suburbs, that people would be out and wandering the streets at 10:30 PM. He showed restraint—and it was that restraint that showed Ronan's peace with the world. It was restraint that only those closest to Ronan could recognize, vicious smile well-honed in the face of every danger of the world.
And then there was this with Adam. Ronan had always enjoyed prying him out of his box. He had enjoyed reminding him of what it meant to be a kid, when his eyes, even wrapped around by bruises, would be full of life, beautiful lips twisting sharply in a smile before he held on for dear life with his rough, but delicate hands. Ronan was all instincts when it came to Adam, but he found himself fixated with his reactions and curious for when he might realize that this could go in two directions. He was glad, now, that he was still fixated on Adam's reactions: like the simplicity of Ronan's straightforward nature could carve out a new experience with Adam every time they were together.
Ronan could pinpoint the exact moment that he realized he wasn't dragging Adam back to Henrietta this time. It was twenty minutes outside of New Haven, air conditioning on full blast, the electronica booming out of his speakers like it was one with the driver. The BMW peeled over the road like it was nothing, and as he passed through the poorer part of New Haven (the part where Adam decided to live, even though Yale had insisted on having him closer, had insisted on having him on campus—but he was nothing if not stubborn, and Ronan had a feeling he might change his tune after a year full of cockroaches disturbing their make out sessions and, more importantly, Adam's three AM study sessions), he realized that Henrietta could wait.
When he pulled up, he tugged his phone from the back seat and dropped it into the passenger seat. Once Adam approached the car, he unlocked the doors, eyes pointed forward. "Call Declan and let him know to check on the Barns. We're going on a road trip."
To be fair, the ride between Connecticut and Virginia was always a road trip, but there was something different about the way Ronan held on to the steering wheel, like he had concocted another plan and he just assumed that Adam would be persuaded to go along with it.
Re: i will make proper fanart icons tomorrow
Though Roman's posture did cue Adam that something was going on. Adam had gotten used to watching people very carefully, at first just as a hopeless tactic to brace himself against his father, and then as a means of fitting-in in a place like Aglionby where any gesture could mark him as an outsider. The code of Ronan's body was always easy to read because it followed from the rest of his personality: it never lied. In fact, it usually broadcasted enough to make being psychic fairly redundant.
Odd to think that he had once thought Ronan was unpredictable and dangerous. Observing him before had made Adam uneasy, like walking past a stray dog and not quite knowing if it was friendly or likely to bite. He couldn't imagine all that pent-up energy being spent in any other way besides a self-destructive supernova that would take out anyone nearby.
And now Adam had to stifle the automatic impulse to touch him, get his attention, his focus. He knew it wasn't that Ronan was ignoring him; the tension in him, the abruptness, were both familiar, and sent a frission of eager thrill through Adam. If Ronan was expecting Adam to acquiesce to being dragged off on some wild ride, it was because he usually did. Ronan had uncannily good instincts for when Adam needed something like a shopping cart race crash, something not subordinated to his carefully constructed hierarchy of needs. Adam liked being in control, but he was beginning to like not having to worry about it, sometimes. Just with Ronan.
At some point trusting Ronan had stopped seeming like a reckless move and had just become common sense.
Adam obediently tapped out a message to Declan and tossed the phone in the glove box, pulling his seat belt on.
"Are you going to tell me where?"
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Something about being near Adam made him feel impossibly strong. Like he could do anything. His head leaned back into the driver seat, limbs tense with energy that had no place to go except into the pedal of his car. "Gansey mapped the ley line all around the world," he said. It was clear that he only just decided where they were going in that instant. Some of the energy coursing violently through his veins abated, but not entirely. "Why don't we take advantage of them for once? It seems like it might be more fitting, you and I." The Dreamer and the Magician. Cabeswater was gone, but the magic still burned in Adam's blood just like Ronan would never be anything less than the Greywaren.
He could never be his father dashing madly across the country on raucous adventures. No matter what Declan feared for his future, he could never be Niall Lynch. Ronan had been denied what he had, and he felt comforted in its return.
No, this was something else ... and something that wasn't for him. Adam had achieved a lot in getting into Yale on scholarship and setting off into the great blue yonder of eventually being a white collar worker. But that meant ridding himself of the ley line. Ronan knew what it meant to him.
It was good to remind him.