#regardless‚ noah paints ganseys nails.

[gansey--thats-all-there-is]

Gansey and Noah bffs REAL !!!

[actuallymollyweasley]

kids of the in-between: ch. 14

aka “Ticking Backwards”

Honestly, you’re all amazing for being so patient all this time, and I hope this chapter was worth the wait! Managed to finish just in time to celebrate the end of the beauty that was Pynch Week haha. Feel free to ask to be tagged in future updates if you want!

Read all parts: on tumblr | on ao3

One second, Adam was highlighting his calculus lecture notes from last week in an effort to try and remember how the hell he was supposed to answer the questions in his problem set. The next second, Blue Sargent had somehow managed to snatch up his notebook and highlighter, toss them onto his bed, and perch herself on his desk, all in a single motion. She then proceeded to smile at him as if this was completely normal.

(Although Adam supposed that because Blue Sargent was involved, it kind of was.)

“Hello, Adam.”

Adam narrowed his eyes. She was using her customer-service voice, the one that managed to convey I'm running on two hours of sleep so you can be polite to me or die just by the way she shaped her vowels. “Blue. What do you want?”

“Can’t I just want to talk to my best friend, whom I love dearly and never see anymore?”

“You can,” Adam said. “But you generally do that from your own desk, not mine. Also, it's not my fault that you've only slept in your own bed three times in the last week.”

“Adam!”

Blush was an interesting color on Blue. It clashed rather horribly with the neon green streak Noah had dyed in her hair the other day—but the neon green streak also clashed horribly with her ripped purple overalls, so maybe it all balanced out in the end.

“I'm just saying,” Adam continued, “don't try to pass all the blame off on my double shift and weird boyfriend.”

To his surprise, that statement made Blue eye him carefully. “That's what I wanted to talk to you about, actually.”

“The double shift?”

“The weird boyfriend, you idiot.”

“Could have gone either way,” Adam argued, although he couldn't quite keep the corners of his mouth from twitching. “What about him?”

Blue snagged one of his pens and started doodling on her overalls, as if owning ripped purple overalls wasn't anti-establishment enough already. “How are things going between you two? Since your… since that phone call?”

“They're good,” Adam said, and was surprised to find that for once in his life, he actually meant it. Good wasn't something he came across very often.

Blue drew a suspicious smiley face on her overalls. It sported a single raised eyebrow and a curled mouth and a judgmental stare that pointed directly at Adam. “So no problems at all?”

“I said good, not perfect.”

After all, Ronan had blown into this very dorm room yesterday morning to show Adam a caricatured painting of Gansey that he'd created using Gansey's sleeping face as a model. Adam had been working at his desk with his deaf ear pointed toward the door and all his focus directed toward his assignments. When Ronan had let the door slam shut behind the tail end of his hurricane, Adam had flinched. It had been instinctive, and unavoidable, and had nothing to do with Ronan himself, and he had still freaked out and left and refused to talk to Adam for the next several hours out of misplaced guilt.

So they were working on it.

But that was good too. It was nice to work for something that Adam actually thought he could get.

“There's already too much perfect in our friend group,” he continued. “Henry and Noah never even frown at each other, and don't think I didn't notice that Gansey’s wearing a lavender polo shirt today.”

“Coincidence,” Blue insisted.

“You guys matched outfits,” Adam replied, unrepentant. “Ronan and I have to have disagreements just to balance out the rest of you.”

“That's a terrible reason to have a fight.”

“You yell at Gansey for wearing boat shoes every day just to keep up your three-week streak.”

“This conversation isn't about me and Gansey.”

“The thing about a conversation,” Adam said, “is that you shouldn't start one if you don't want it to go both ways. Why are you suddenly asking about Ronan?”

At that, Blue finally looked up from the drawings on her overalls, rolling Adam’s pen between her palm and the desk. “I just… Are you sure you want to stay here for Thanksgiving instead of coming home with me? Because I know that you don't want to cause issues with money, but you know my mom always cooks too much food anyway, and you really wouldn't be imposing and my baby cousins would love to see you and I don't want you to have Thanksgiving with Ronan just because you don't think you have any other options.”

“Oh, Blue.” Adam reached out, rolled the pen out from under Blue’s hand, and started drawing. “I'm staying here for a lot of reasons. One reason is that I don't want to go back to Henrietta so soon after telling my father that I don't need to.”

“But Adam,” Blue protested, “you shouldn't—”

“Another,” Adam continued pointedly, “is that Calla always looks at me like I'm either going to destroy the house or fall down dead at any moment, just because she knows I notice when she's doing it. Also, your mom always burns the turkey, and Ronan has never actually burned anything that he's cooked in front of me. Not to mention that I genuinely like Ronan and am looking forward to making out with him over break. I'm pretty sure all of those are valid reasons. Do you disagree?”

Blue looked at him, blinked, looked down at the vines now twisting across the hem of her overalls, and sighed. “No. I just had to make sure I didn't need to beat Ronan up for you. And I was hoping I could convince you to come so I wouldn't have to suffer through my mom’s burnt turkey alone.”

“And the truth comes out,” Adam grinned, capping his pen. “Don’t worry about it, Blue. I'm sure Orla will show up with her husband for Thanksgiving dinner so she doesn't have to cook anything herself, and if Orla enjoys doing anything with you, it’s painting nails and complaining.”

“You got me there,” Blue said, then paused. “You realize that I'm never going to be able to wash these overalls now, right? These drawings are a symbol of our friendship and ability to have serious conversations without deflecting. I have to preserve them forever.”

“All I did was make squiggly lines,” Adam said. “If you really want something worth preserving, hand them to Ronan and give him a Sharpie.”

“He'd just write the lyrics to the Murder Squash Song across my ass.”

“Or he'd draw something really thoughtful on your front pocket and pretend Chainsaw did it.”

Blue considered that statement. “Knowing Ronan, he'd do both.” She clapped both hands on his shoulders—a distinctly Gansey gesture—and looked him in the eye. “He really is perfect for you.”

Then she hopped off his desk.

“Did you just… give me your blessing?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Isn't that Gansey’s job? Are you assigning each other parental duties now?”

“Sorry, gotta go, meeting Henry to tear holes in our clothes and drink tea from his expensive mugs.”

“Henry would never defile his vintage Madonna t-shirts and designer jeans.”

“My and Noah’s clothes,” Blue corrected. “Have fun with your calculus.”

Blue had been his best friend for over three years at this point. Adam didn't know why he kept making the mistake of attempting to understand her.

“Now, I restocked the coffee beans and cereal—and remembered to buy milk this time, before you ask,” Gansey said, glancing around the kitchen like the cabinets would help remind him of what he wanted to say. “Ronan said you two were fine to do the grocery shopping on your own, but I didn’t know if you would get a chance to go out before breakfast tomorrow so I wanted to make sure you didn’t have to worry about that. The lock on our door is still broken, so you might want to push the couch in front of it at night just in case. Declan and Matthew are welcome to stay in my room if they don’t want to book a hotel. I’m planning to return Sunday afternoon around four, but if anything happens before then, just give me a call and I can be back in three hours. In fact, if you think I might need to be here for any reason at all, say the word and I can cancel my plans. Maybe I should just call Helen right now and tell her to let Mom know that I can’t make it home for Thanksgiving after all. I’m sure she’d underst—”

“Gansey.” Adam had been planning to let Gansey tire himself out, but this was getting out of hand. “I have been self-sufficient for the last ten years. I'm pretty sure I can handle a week in the dorms, even if that week does involve Ronan.”

“Dickface,” Ronan called out from inside his room.

“Are you talking to me or Gansey?”

“Yes,” Ronan said.

Gansey’s face contorted like he wasn't sure whether to feel offended or amused. “Regardless. You'll call me if the need arises, won't you?”

“Yes, Gansey, we'll call you.” Adam pushed at Gansey's rolling suitcase with his toe, watching with satisfaction as it bounced off the kitchen cabinets and slowly rolled back. “Now go enjoy your Thanksgiving.”

“You too.” Gansey considered Adam for a moment and then held out one hand for a fistbump. It was absurd and boyish and brilliantly Gansey, and Adam accepted it with a smile tugging at his lips.

Gansey's responding grin was blinding as he reached down and grabbed the handle of his suitcase. “Ronan, I'm leaving!”

“Good fucking riddance!” Ronan replied before sticking his head out of the doorway. “Watch your shifts into second gear. That's when the Pig stalls out most often.”

Adam wouldn't have thought it possible, but Gansey's smile widened. “Thanks, Lynch,” he said, and then he was gone, and Adam and Ronan were alone.

Adam turned and raised his eyebrows at Ronan, who very purposefully turned around and retreated back into his room. Unfazed, Adam followed him. “Second gear, huh?”

“You're the mechanic,” Ronan said. “Didn't you notice?”

“Oh, I noticed,” Adam said, “but I wasn't the one who made sure that Gansey knew too.”

“Shut up,” Ronan said, and kissed him.

They'd been dating for a few weeks now, but kissing Ronan Lynch still felt like starting a wildfire. Adam had to break away before they burned down the whole dorm.

As he did, he eyed the extra sheets draped across half of Ronan's room. “When are you going to let me see what's under those?”

“When I’m fucking done with it.”

He frowned. “‘It?’ Is all of that for one art piece?”

Ronan shrugged. “Dr. Azalea.”

“But I thought you already turned in your last assignment.”

“This,” Ronan gestured vaguely, “is for my first assignment.”

Adam felt his heart collide against his ribs, a bang rather than a thump. “Happiness?”

“Yeah.” Ronan tugged the sheets more securely over his stack of canvases. “It's stupid.”

“It's not.” Adam reached out and took one of Ronan's hands in both of his, rubbing his thumbs over Ronan's knuckles. “Now come on, what are we supposed to be buying for tomorrow?”

“This was a terrible idea.” Ronan looked about five seconds away from throwing the pasta he was cooking out the window. “Adam, why the fuck did you let me cook? We should have met them for lunch somewhere. I shouldn't have let them come here in the first place. We should have driven to D.C. We should have stayed here by ourselves. Fuck, this dish is shit.”

Adam peered over Ronan’s shoulder. “Doesn't look like shit to me.” He snagged a bite of penne with a fork before Ronan could stop him. “Doesn't taste like it either.”

“It’s shit compared to my mom’s,” Ronan said, and that was startling enough to make Adam turn off the stove and take the spatula from Ronan’s slightly shaking hands. He hadn't heard Ronan mention his mother since before his father had died. Actually, he'd never heard Ronan mention his mother at all.

“Ronan.” Adam frowned at his boyfriend’s hands, trying to find the right words. He'd never been particularly skilled at offering comfort. He'd never really needed to be. “It doesn't have to taste like your mom’s to be good. I'm sure they'll love it.”

“Matthew might,” Ronan muttered. “Declan’s going to hate it.”

“He won't,” Adam insisted, but the look on Ronan's face told Adam he knew that Adam had no idea what he was talking about. He was an only child, his parents were both alive and terrible, and he had never met Declan Lynch before in his life.

“I mean it,” Adam said, not sure how he would back up that statement, and then there was a knock at the door.

Ronan tensed, gave the pasta one last stir, opened the door—and was promptly tackled by a medium-sized bundle of brightly colored clothing and hair like sunshine.

“Ronan! I've missed you so much! Your hair is so short! How is college?”

It's mostly like high school,” Ronan said, voice a little rough, “but with better friends. Are you still growing?”

“Like a weed,” came from behind Matthew’s mass of curls. “If you don't watch out, he’ll end up taller than you, Ronan.”

“Doubtful,” Ronan said, shoulders stiff but eyes still soft because Matthew had stuck his tongue out at him in response. “Are you coming inside for lunch or what?”

“Or what,” Matthew replied, although he was already passing Ronan in the doorway.

Adam hid a smile in his shirt collar.

At the same moment, Matthew caught sight of him and bounded forward like a wayward basketball, only skidding to a halt to extremely vigorously shake Adam’s hand. “Hi! I'm Matthew, Ronan’s brother. It's great to meet you! What’s your name?”

Adam’s smile froze onto his face. Had Ronan seriously not told them—

“Hello, I’m Declan Lynch, and you must be Adam Parrish.” Ronan's older brother slipped past Matthew to introduce himself. He had Ronan’s sharp cheekbones, the type of suit that a millionaire would wear for a casual evening out on his own personal yacht, and a handshake with half of Matthew's enthusiasm and twice his firmness. “Matthew, don't you retain anything Ronan says?”

“I retain the things that matter, like that he said lunch was ready,” Matthew retorted. Then he glanced at Adam. “Um, not that you don't matter, obviously. I just forgot that you were going to be here the whole time. But now I'm even more excited to meet you! Ronan’s never had a boyfriend before.”

The Lynch in question was currently glaring at the pot on the stove—probably because he couldn't bring himself to glare directly at Matthew, Adam thought with amusement. “Shut up,” Ronan said, “and grab a plate.”

“I'll shut up if you let me drink beer with lunch,” Matthew said.

“Not a fucking chance,” Ronan replied.

Adam had no way of proving it. But when he turned around to shut the front door, he was pretty sure he glimpsed a small smile on Declan’s face.

The rest of Wednesday went so well that Adam had to refrain three times from asking Ronan what he'd been so worried about. As he’d expected, Matthew had nothing but compliments to bestow on the food Ronan made, and Declan didn't mention it at all, which Ronan claimed was its own kind of silent approval. After that, they spent most of the afternoon shopping for last-minute groceries—or rather, Ronan and Declan argued about what they needed to buy while Matthew stealthily added cans of whipped cream to the shopping cart behind their backs. By the time they reached the checkout line, there were at least fifteen cans tucked between the bags of sweet potatoes and fresh green beans, but the older Lynch brothers placed each new can on the conveyor belt without a word.

Declan made dinner and spent most of the meal talking about his job.

Matthew begged Ronan for beer unsuccessfully half a dozen times.

Ronan painted all through the night, telling Adam that with a little luck, he could be finished by the end of Thanksgiving break.

And then Thursday morning came.

Adam woke up to yelling, which was both familiar and discomfiting. For a moment, he couldn’t distinguish reality from his dream about the double-wide trailer he’d grown up in. The sheets felt scratchier. The room felt smaller. He even thought he heard the sound of breaking glass.

But then Declan shouted, “And it’d be nice if you’d answer your phone every once in a while,” the polar opposite of anything Robert Parrish would have said to his son, and Adam refocused.

“It’s college,” Ronan snapped. “I’m fucking busy.”

“Oh, please, you’re an art student.” Declan’s voice was scathing. “Don’t bother pretending that you’re drowning under some heavy workload.”

Adam decided to grab a pair of sweatpants and open the door before somebody got punched.

“Good morning,” he said pleasantly, doing his best to pretend that the walls weren’t paper-thin. “You’re up earlier than usual, Ronan.”

“Didn’t sleep,” Ronan growled, which Adam already knew. “I was working on an assignment for class.”

“And I’m sure it’s very pretty,” the eldest Lynch brother said. Ronan was still silently fuming behind the kitchen counter, but Declan’s expression had shifted from derisive to politely neutral the moment he caught sight of Adam. “Good morning, Adam. Would you like some coffee?”

“I’d love some,” Adam said.

“Sugar? Cream?”

“Just a little cream is fine, thanks.”

“Gross,” Ronan muttered.

“You’re gross,” Matthew said over a yawn, wandering into the hallway. “What are we talking about?”

“Coffee,” Ronan said.

“Oh, yeah. That is gross.”

Adam furrowed his eyebrows. “I thought you two were staying in a hotel room?”

(It was the type of decision he had a feeling he would never understand—in his opinion, spending money on a hotel when there was a perfectly usable bed and couch in the suite was a frivolity and a waste. But Declan had thought a hotel room would be more comfortable, and so the money was spent.)

Matthew rubbed a hand across his eyes, yawning again. “We did.”

“But Matthew said he was going to use the restroom and ‘accidentally’ went back to sleep on your friend Gansey’s bed,” Declan explained.

“Lame,” Ronan said. But this time he reached out and ruffled Matthew’s hair, so Adam figured things would be all right.

Less than an hour later, the Lynch brothers were arguing again.

“What do you think you're doing?” Declan demanded.

“Making the spice rub for the fucking turkey, like I said I was going to,” Ronan growled.

“With those spices? You're doing it completely wrong.”

“No, I'm fucking not.”

“It doesn't need sage.”

“Yes, it does.”

“How would you even know?”

“Because I actually cared about helping Mom out with Thanksgiving dinner, unlike you, and I listened when she was teaching me! It's parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, like in that fucking song, but without the parsley because who the fuck needs parsley anyway. And then if you’re not a fucking idiot, you’ll remember that it also uses salt, pepper, and garlic powder. That's what she told me.”

“Yeah? Then I'm sure she would have loved to hear you repeat it back like that.”

“Guys,” Matthew whined.

Ronan turned to him. “Matthew, you always hung around the kitchen at Thanksgiving too. Tell Declan that he's wrong.”

Matthew bit his lip, eyes darting between the two of them, and said, “I'm sorry. I don't remember how Mom made it.”

Declan and Ronan both froze for such a long moment that Adam inexplicably remembered the drawing he’d seen on Ronan’s wall the first time he ever entered his room—Declan and Matthew wrestling in the grass, Ronan perched on Niall’s back, and Aurora Lynch smiling softly in the background.

Which was worse? To have never felt the kind of love that the Lynches offered each other, or to grow up surrounded by that love, only to have it all ripped away in a single bloody morning?

Declan sighed. “Maybe it has been too long since I helped Mom in the kitchen,” he said. “Go ahead and do what you want, Ronan.”

Ronan’s knuckles were white as he gripped the edges of the mixing bowl. “Who even fucking cares about the turkey anymore?”

“I do!” The turkey was lying on the other end of the counter, so Matthew nudged it within Ronan’s reach. “Come on, Ro, I’ll help you with the turkey.”

“I can start peeling potatoes,” Adam offered.

Declan stiffened like he had forgotten Adam was there. But when he turned to face him, his smile looked unshakable. It would have been enough to make Adam question whether Ronan and Declan were actually related, except that they shared too many facial features. “That’d be great, Adam,” he said, as if tension wasn’t stretched between everyone in the room like bungee cords just waiting to snap. “But I don’t want you to feel like we have a monopoly on tonight’s menu. Do you have any family recipes you want to make?”

Adam flinched—but a quick look at the rigid lines of Ronan’s back told him that one family’s worth of drama was enough for this Thanksgiving, so he covered it by pulling the bag of potatoes closer to him. “No,” he said simply. “My parents never cared much for Thanksgiving.”

Ronan snorted, and not kindly. “You can say that again.”

Matthew looked between his siblings and Adam, frowning. “So. What are we doing for lunch?”

Lunch was an argument, as Ronan thought they would be too full to eat dinner and Declan thought he was just trying to be difficult. Cooking was an argument, as they were constantly bumping shoulders and using each other's mixing spoons and changing the oven temperature. Chainsaw flew into the kitchen at one point, looking for scraps, and that sparked yet another argument, as Declan couldn't decide which was more horrifying: that Ronan had broken the dorm’s rules to get a pet, that said pet was a raven, or that Ronan was planning on feeding her some of the leftover turkey later.

When the Lynch brothers got along, it made this too-large-for-a-couple-of-college-freshmen dorm feel like a home.

When they were fighting, it made this too-small-for-a-couple-of-angry-boys dorm feel like a certain double-wide trailer that Adam was still trying to put behind him.

And on top of that, he was developing a migraine—because everything sounded louder when you could only hear out of one ear.

So when Matthew went digging through their grocery bags, surfacing only to exclaim that they had forgotten to buy pumpkin pie filling, Adam jumped at the chance to get out of Walton.

“I think there are a few grocery stores just off-campus that are still open on Thanksgiving,” he said. “I can bike around and see if any of them carry pumpkin pie filling.”

“Oh, we couldn't ask that of you,” Declan said.

“It's really not a problem,” Adam replied. “Besides, I want pumpkin pie just as much as Matthew does.”

“Don't be stupid,” Ronan said. Then, when Adam turned to frown at him, “It’s fucking freezing outside.” And he tossed the keys to the BMW at Adam.

Adam caught them out of reflex and sheer luck, furrowing his eyebrows. If he'd been having a shitty day, how much shittier had Ronan been feeling? He’d spent the entire day arguing with the only family he had left. “Ronan,” he started, and then hesitated, not wanting to offend Declan. In the end, he settled on, “Do you want to come with me?”

Ronan just shoved his hands in his pockets. “Nah,” he said. “Gotta keep an eye on the turkey.”

Adam frowned at him again, but when Ronan didn't budge, he had no choice but to leave.

Buying pumpkin pie filling on Thanksgiving afternoon took Adam almost an hour. It turned out to be more difficult to find an open store than he'd anticipated, and if he'd lingered in the one store he had found, walking through every aisle and relishing that it was quiet enough for him to hear the buzz of the fluorescent lights… well, no one could prove it.

In any case, by the time he returned, Ronan was no longer in the kitchen. Instead, his awful electronic music was blaring inside his room.

“The turkey finished cooking, so Ronan decided to let us make the rest of dinner while he went back to painting.” Declan didn't roll his eyes, but with that tone of voice, he didn't need to.

“Well,” Adam replied, “he’s extremely dedicated to his art. He wants everything he works on to be perfect. That's what makes him such a good artist.”

Declan looked like he couldn't imagine Ronan Lynch being dedicated to anything. “Good for him,” he said, sounding unconvinced. “Were you able to find the pumpkin filling, then?”

Adam nodded.

“Awesome!” Matthew sprang up from where he'd been lounging on the couch. “Do you want to help me make the pie, Adam?”

What Adam really thought he should do was check on Ronan. But Matthew’s eyes were shining with excitement, and Adam found himself unable to refuse.

Between making pie, throwing together a few side dishes, and reheating the turkey once everything else had finished baking, hours passed without Adam noticing. Suddenly it was seven o’clock, and dinner was ready.

“We usually try to eat by five,” Declan said, sliding into his chair at the kitchen table, “but with putting everything together ourselves, I suppose delays were inevitable. I hope you don't mind, Adam.”

Adam thought Declan must not have actually gone to college to believe that a seven o’clock dinner was some horrible catastrophe. “It's fine,” he assured him. “Should I go get Ro—?”

“RONAN!” Matthew shouted out of nowhere, making Adam jump. “DINNER!”

“He's fifteen feet away, not five hundred,” Declan chided, although even he seemed unable to properly discipline Matthew. “I’m pretty sure you didn't have to scream that loudly in order for him to hear you.”

“Yeah, but it was fun,” Matthew grinned. “And apparently necessary, because he's STILL NOT OUT HERE!”

A pause.

“RONAN?!”

“I'm coming, I'm coming, Jesus,” Ronan said, shrugging on his leather jacket as he came out of his room. “I had to finish the thing I was working on, calm the fuck down.”

“We were all waiting for you,” Matthew said, in a supercilious tone he could only keep up for half the sentence before breaking into giggles, but Adam’s eyes narrowed as he took a second look at Ronan’s hands.

Declan followed his line of sight and frowned. “Ronan… Ronan, are those bandages? Are you all right?”

“Calm the fuck down,” Ronan repeated. “My hands slipped, it's not a big fucking deal.”

Declan’s frown only deepened. “You cut yourself… on art supplies?”

“Ever heard of a palette knife?” Ronan said, scathing.

“Nope!” Matthew broke in cheerfully. “Now come on, Ronan, sit down, we have to pray.”

Ronan's shoulders stiffened. “Right.” He sat down next to Adam. “I guess that's your job now, Declan?”

For the first time since Adam had met him, Declan looked visibly uncomfortable. “Actually, I was thinking we could all say it together?”

Ronan clasped his hands together so tightly, Adam thought it must be hurting the cuts on his palms. “Fine.”

He bowed his head, and after a moment, Matthew and Declan followed suit. “Bless us, O Lord, and these, thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ Our Lord. Amen.”

“Amen,” Adam said along with them, although he wasn't sure he believed in gifts or bounty, let alone a benevolent God who supposedly offered them. It just seemed like the polite thing to do.

When they were done, Matthew's head popped back up like a puppy's. “Okay! Let's eat!”

Declan smiled, passed Matthew the mashed potatoes, and stood up to begin cutting into the turkey. Adam got so caught up in filling his plate with green beans and sweet potato casserole and stuffing and peas and turkey and gravy and cranberry sauce—he may have been getting three meals a day from the dining hall, but putting as much food on his plate as he could, whenever he could, was second-nature by now—that he didn't look over at Ronan until he'd sampled everything in reach.

“Ronan,” Adam said, “this turkey is amazing. Whenever I go to Thanksgiving at Blue’s house, her mom always burns it and makes us eat it anyway, but I… Ronan, why is your plate empty?”

Ronan was staring off at nothing.

“Yeah, Ronan, if you don't get some food soon, I'm finishing off the sweet potato casserole without you.”

No, not nothing—the empty chair at the head of the table.

Adam started to get a hard feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Ronan?”

Ronan stood abruptly and nearly knocked his chair over. “I need a drink,” he said before heading toward the refrigerator.

“A drink,” Declan said drily.

Ronan threw open the refrigerator door.

“Are you serious? Beer on Thanksgiving?”

He grabbed one, seemingly at random, and slammed it on the counter. “Yeah, Declan, beer on fucking Thanksgiving. Who's gonna stop me?”

“I—”

“No, I mean it,” Ronan said. “Who's gonna stop me? Because Mom hasn't spoken in months, Dad’s dead, and I don't have to listen to a word you say. You're not our fucking parents.”

Declan went completely still, as if this was another one of Ronan's paintings. Adam thought he knew which emotion Dr. Azalea would accept this one for. Heartbreak.

“Shit,” Ronan said, “I’m sorry.”

The door slammed shut behind him when he left.

For a moment, silence.

Then, “Ronan, wait!”

Matthew scooted out of his chair and hurried after him.

Adam got up and ran to Ronan's room, intending to use his window to see if Ronan headed into the parking lot, but when he finally tugged Ronan's door open, he couldn't do anything but stare.

At last, the sheets Ronan had been using to hide his happiness assignment had been tossed aside, leaving the project in full view.

It was a wreck.

Adam thought Ronan had actually been proud of how his artwork was turning out, but that was clearly no longer the case. Several of the canvases had been slashed through, while others looked like they had been kicked in. A paint tube had been squeezed out over a few more, leaving behind red paint hardened and flaking to the touch like dried blood. Preliminary sketches had been torn up and scattered over the mess, perverted confetti celebrating creative disaster. And when Adam finally remembered to lean out and look for Ronan, all he noticed was another pile of Ronan's ruined paintings that he’d apparently thrown out of the window. Everything was just—

“What the fuck is this?”

“It’s his art,” Adam said. “He's been working on these canvases for weeks, insisting that he was getting close to finishing, insisting that his next idea was going to be the right one, and now it's all destroyed.”

But when he turned around, Declan wasn't staring at the ruined paintings. He was staring at the objects that Adam had gotten used to after spending so much time in Ronan's room.

“What?” Adam asked. “You can't tell me you don't know about Ronan's dreams.”

“Of course I know about his dreams,” Declan snapped, his eyes too wide and horrified to make his harsh tone effective. “But these are…”

Adam looked around and tried to remember how it had felt to see Ronan's room for the first time. The unnaturally bent sword, the twisted clock that ticked backwards, the dark stain on his floor that was now mostly hidden by ripped canvases and red paint…. That pit in his stomach came back. He'd known the objects weren't exactly fun dream souvenirs, known they could even look menacing, but they were just dispersed among the other objects, right? Tucked between self-bouncing balls and clocks that worked properly, hidden behind dream lights and whimsical inventions? Everyone had nightmares sometimes, and anyway, Adam hadn't seen Ronan dream up anything bad since that night at the campground. Of course, he hadn't been around Ronan every night—but he'd been around sometimes—and Ronan had never objected when Adam asked to spend the night, he'd never said that there was anything to be worried about—but then he was always the one who woke up first, and last night he had never fallen asleep at all.

“This isn't normal,” Adam said. It wasn't a question because he already knew the answer.

He knew it wasn't normal.

But Ronan had been so happy for the last few weeks—he’d thought Ronan had been so happy—that he'd stopped worrying.

Adam felt, abruptly, like a terrible boyfriend.

“No, it’s not normal,” Declan said derisively. “None of this is fucking normal. I haven’t seen him dream like this since…”

“Since Kavinsky?” Adam guessed.

“How do you know about Kavinsky?”

For some reason, the question snapped Adam into action. “This may surprise you,” he said, “but being in a relationship occasionally requires communication.” Except, apparently, when you destroy weeks’ worth of hard work. No, that’s not worth mentioning at all. Adam pushed the thought out of his mind. “Listen, Declan, I still have Ronan’s keys. That means he can’t have gotten that far. You should take your car and look around off-campus. He likes to go to St. Agnes or Nino’s, but check liquor stores too. I’ll search his usual on-campus hideouts because you can’t exactly find those on Google Maps.”

Just then, someone started banging on the front door. For one hopeful moment, Adam thought Ronan might have changed his mind about storming out. But when he flung the door open, only Matthew was waiting on the other side, red-faced and breathless.

“I tried to run after him, but by the time I went into the hallway, he was already gone. I went down the stairs and looked around, but I couldn’t—I couldn’t figure out which direction he’d taken.”

“That’s okay, Matthew,” Adam said. “We’re going to find him. You stay here in case he comes back, all right? Do you have my phone number?”

Matthew shook his head, so Adam took Matthew’s phone out of his hand and punched his number into his contacts, sending himself a text so he would have Matthew’s number as well. Then he did the same to Declan’s phone, grabbed his coat off the couch, and felt in his pockets to make sure Ronan hadn’t taken his keys without Adam noticing after all. They were there, a cool and hard and reassuring weight.

In the same time span, Declan had barely managed to put on one shoe. “You seem to have this search-team business down to a science. Have you… has something like this happened before?”

Adam felt something shatter inside of him. “Not in a while,” he managed to say.

Then he was gone.

Adam checked everywhere. Every classroom Ronan had bribed or broken his way into, every tree he’d sketched, every bench he’d fallen asleep on. By the time he got back to Walton, it was almost nine, Thanksgiving dinner was a forgotten feast weighing down the kitchen table, and nobody had been able to find Ronan Lynch.

Finally, feeling guilty and desperate, Adam called Gansey.

“Adam! I’m so happy to hear from you! I hope you’re having a lovely Thanksgiving. I’m just,” he hiccupped, “watching Food Network with Helen. Because obviously we haven’t seen enough—hic—food for one day.”

Gansey sounded sleepy, wine-drunk, and content. Adam could picture him leaning against Helen on an extravagantly luxurious couch in their living room, even though he had yet to actually see a photograph of Gansey’s sister. It made him feel even worse about saying, “Ronan is missing again.”

Gansey caught himself mid-laugh. “What? But I thought—”

“I don’t think it’s anything serious,” Adam was quick to add. “I mean… you know. Now that we know the truth about that one time. But he left during dinner and Declan and I have checked all the usual places and I….” He sighed. “I would just feel better if I knew where he was.”

Gansey was quiet for a while. “Did he take his car?”

“No.”

More silence. “Did you check the roof?”

Adam felt his heart stop, restart, and stutter again, all in the space of a moment. “The roof?! Gansey, I thought we just established that Ronan wasn’t—”

“Not like that!” Gansey interrupted hastily. “Ronan and I used to go up to the roof to talk. We haven’t been up since… but anyway, it’s worth a shot.”

Adam’s heart did its best to reestablish a natural rhythm. He didn’t think it was particularly successful. “Oh. Okay. Thanks, Gansey.”

“Do you need me to come up? I wasn’t being flippant, you know, when I said I would the other day. If you’re concerned that Ronan might—”

“No!” Adam’s voice was too loud for the near-empty campus. “No, Gansey, you really don’t need to come. You’ve already been helpful enough.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Adam hesitated, squeezed his eyes shut, and opened them again. “I’m sorry for calling you like this. Don’t worry, all right? Ronan is fine. This isn’t like before.”

“Just text me when you find him, okay?”

Gansey’s voice was smooth, measured, and nowhere near immature enough to belong to an eighteen-year-old boy.

Adam tried not to let the guilt crush him like a cartoon anvil when he said, “Of course I will, Gansey. Have a nice night.”

After a moment’s indecision, Adam ducked into Ronan and Gansey’s suite on his way up to the roof. It had gotten cold, and Ronan’s leather jacket offered almost no insulation, so he just wanted to grab a couple hats and maybe a blanket before heading up to the roof.

Of course, Matthew Lynch stopped him in his tracks.

“Did you find Ronan yet?!”

Adam shook his head. “Still looking. Gansey told me about another place I haven’t checked yet.”

“Okay,” Matthew said before handing Adam a brown paper bag.

Adam frowned. “What is this?”

“Well, you both pretty much missed dinner, so I filled up some plastic containers for you,” he said. “They should still be warm. There are forks and knives in there too.”

“I—thank you, Matthew.”

“I had to do something while I waited,” Matthew shrugged. “Now I’m working on this.”

He turned around in his seat and gestured at the kitchen table, on which rested a medium-size square canvas. From the underlying design, Adam recognized it as one of the ones that Ronan had elected to squirt paint over rather than completely mutilate, but it was getting harder and harder to make that distinction. Matthew was methodically covering every inch of the canvas in a gentle, chrysanthemums-at-sunrise yellow.

“You’re repainting one of Ronan’s canvases?” Adam asked in surprise.

Matthew shrugged. “He said he was having trouble with his happiness assignment. I thought this might help.”

Adam looked at the bag of food in his hands, at the serene smile on Matthew’s face, and at the yellow canvas. For the first time, he understood why Ronan had such a soft spot for Noah Czerny.

“Paint fast,” he said. “Ronan will be back soon.”

He draped one of Gansey’s spare blankets over his shoulders and took the stairs as high as he was allowed to go, and then higher. The door to the roof read, Locked: Authorized Access Only, but when he pushed on it, it swung open.

Adam poked his head out. The wind whistled in his one good ear, making it difficult to hear anything.

He squinted into the darkness.

“Ronan?”

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