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spiltscribbles · 4 years

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Can I request 7, 9 or 78 for pynch? I liked all of those, haha -- uncertainglobalfuture

~Notes: Thank you SO SO much gorgeous<3 This came out way to soft lmfao. |

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~78. “Just please be my best friend right now, and not the person I confessed my love to~

When Adam’s seven years old his first grade teacher asks him why he never has a lunch. He tells her he forgets to get up early enough to make it. Three weeks after that she asks him where he got that nasty bruise on his left arm. He tells her he had wiped out on his bicycle. Two months after that she keeps him inside for recess and asks him to join her and Principle Jenkins for a little while. Adam didn’t mind, he never could make a friend as easily as the others— too distant and too reserved and too withdrawn for the lot of them. But then they start asking about Adam’s home life and parents and whether he needs help or not, all rinsing hands topped off by tense smiles that don’t touch their eyes.

Adam stays aloof— doesn’t bother to panic. He’s been trained by his mother for countless years on how to reply to these sort of probing questions. Has long mastered the owlish blink to his eyes, and diffident smile to his lips. Knows exactly what to do so that they could pretend that there’s nothing out of the ordinary. He knows full and well that none of them actually want to tackle this conversation, and knows that it’s pointless because he’s a Parrish, this is all there is.

This’s all there ever will be.

He doesn’t tell either of his parents about the meeting, is too afraid of their reactions. Besides he doesn’t see much of a point when only a week later they’re packing up and leaving this small town in the dust just to settle in another with the same pasted grins and eyes that slide off from truths that are too ugly to confront.

On Adam’s first day of classes in Henrietta elementary he comes to the conclusion that not everything is stuck being the exact same when a boy with cornflower eyes and dark curls pads up to him and tells him that he’s Adam’s assigned buddy.

“What’s a buddy?” Adam asks, pinning him with a one eyed squint, totally incredulous.

“’S someone who shows you round the classroom and playground.” the other boy answers with an imperious tilt to his head. “Duh.”

“I Don’t need a buddy,” Adam glares at him. He doesn’t yell because Robert yells and Adam hates it when he yells.

“Who peed in your cereal?” The other boy, Ronan Lynch, asks sourly, indignant hands on his hips.

“I don’t need a buddy,” Adam only reiterates, spindly arms wrapped tight against his chest, his jaw set and stance rigid.

“Fine!” Ronan huffs with an emphatic stomping to his foot for good measure. “Hope you get lost with all the big kids then!”

“Fine!”

Later that afternoon, during free time, a blonde boy Adam doesn’t even recognize gleefully shoves his gross ball of slime into Adam’s face with an emphatic gusto. Adam only escapes the situation when Ronan storms over towards them to interrupt.

“Get lost Tad.”

“Can’t hog the new kid Ronan!”

“Uh-huh! Mis Sanchez made me his buddy.”

“Oh,” Tad only pouts, totally put out, before ambling off with his aforementioned ball of slime.

“Uh, ah thank you.” Adam says, wide eyed as he stares at a still moody looking Ronan.

“Wasn’t to help you! Me and Noah need someone to play trains with us, now c’mon.”

He pivots around, marching towards the back of the room, and Adam is only sorta shocked that he actually follows suit.

Adam isn’t sure how, but impossibly— remarkably— Ronan Lynch never quite leaves his orbit for the rest of that year, or any of the ones that follow.

He isn’t sure if they’re friends, has never had a friend before, which might be sorta embarrassing considering he’s in the fourth grade now. But in Adam’s defense no one else really caught his attention, certainly not keeping it for as long as Ronan has somehow done.

If Adam’s forced to think about it, he thinks that they are.

They sit besides each other for class every day, and Adam isn’t even annoyed when Ronan pulls funny faces his way instead of listening along. Yesterday for kickball Ronan chose Adam first, even before Gansey or Noah, and Adam has only ever liked adventuring outdoors with Ronan, even if it meant scraped knees and dirt on his pants that he shakes off the best he could before going back home to the trailer park.

But even still, it couldn’t hurt to ask him, right? It’s a simple question that calls for a simple answer. It’s just to double check that Adam’s not just some leach grabbing for anything he can.

Robert hates it when Adam asks questions, tries teaching him to stop being so god damn nosey about everyone’s business. Adam’s never seen it like that. Question yield answers, and answers usually make someone smarter, so without questions the world would just be stumbling around, utterly ignorant to everything. He much prefers how his first grade teacher had called him inquisitive, it makes Adam feel smart, proper, like he isn’t just annoying everyone, more like there’s a purpose to it.

That said, Adam knows that he’s inquisitive as all get out, so he doesn’t even think twice before asking Ronan point blank the following day at recess if they’re friends or not.

Ronan scrunches his nose at him, lips curled morosely.

“Stop being a weirdo and come play four square with us.”

Adam reasons that’s as much of an affirmation as he’s gonna get, and decides to only shrug before following him to play along.

The first time Adam goes to Ronan’s house for a school project, it’s a sunny autumn afternoon, and they’re fresh faced sixth graders. It’s the last year before embarking on the looming threat of junior high— A practice trial of sloppy make out parties and getting buzzed off cheap wine coolers swiped from someone’s parent’s licker cabinet— Gansey’s determined to make it the best year yet, and of course Ronan enthusiastically agrees because he and Gansey are really brothers in all but blood, so of course he’s going to entertain all of Gansey’s grandest of whims. And Noah always loves a good tie.

Adam still thinks it’s miraculous that they’ve adopted him into their little, mismatched brotherhood. That just as often Gansey looks at Ronan for a joke, he glances to Adam to ask a question with a furrow between his brows. And Noah says that Adam’s the only one who could keep up with him on a skateboard, even if his is a pathetic hunk of plastic he had bought for a quarter at a nearby thrift shop. And Ronan—

Well Ronan’s a different beast entirely.

He’s loud and abrasive and yells when he’s feeling to passionately and curses like a sailor even before they’ve hit teen hood. On paper he’s the precise sort of boy Adam never wanted to entangle himself with, the sort of boy that might’ve scared him in another universe. In a universe that Ronan wasn’t his assigned buddy on that fateful day, and a universe where Adam didn’t see how he doted on his brother a year behind them in school, and how he always fed the birds outdoors with bread from his lunch, and how he sometimes looks at Adam with such caution and care that it makes him blush.

No, Adam hates the thought of that world, and he refuses to think on it for any longer.

“C’mon ’s just a bit further of a walk,” Ronan tells Adam with a slight tug on where he’s got a hand encircled around Adam’s smaller wrist.

The first thing Adam thinks of when he finally sees the mythic Barns is that it’s a castle from a storybook.

It’s all sprawling fields filled with daisies and a large, but cozy looking house that’s got the backdrop of such blue, blue skies behind it. There are even vines that snake up its entrance, a rosebuds that accent the doorway.

The inside is much of the same, a managed mess with coats slung on the sofa and family portraits hanging on the walls, and the scent of fresh baked cookies wafting in the air.

It’s a home, loving and lived in and ringing out with warmth.

There’s a pang to Adam’s heart. He’s never felt the chasms that divide his and Ronan’s lives so acutely.

“Love,” a low, melodic voice crows from what must be the kitchen. He recognizes it to belonging to Ronan’s mother, the golden and beautiful Aurora.”Is that you?”

“Yeah Ma!” Ronan shouts back, crass as ever and making it so Adam winces back. “Adam’s here too, we’ve got a biology project to do.”

“Oh how splendid,” Aurora says with genuine mirth as she steps into the living room, splattered in flower and glowing with pure delight.

“Sorry for the intrusion ma’am,” Adam mumbles even though his own mother cuffs him on the back the head every time he does so.

“Nonsense,” she admonishes with no real heat, just fond exasperation. “Now Adam darling, how does quesadillas sound for dinner?”

Adam pulls his bottom lip between his teeth, feeling his cheeks flush as he averts his gaze. “I won’t stay for dinner ma’am, I don’t wanna be a bother.”

“Course you’re staying for dinner dummy.”

“Ronan, language,” Aurora chides, but the reproach sounds more like a formality than anything else. “Adam sweetheart we have more than enough to go around, you’re more than welcome to stay. In fact you’re the only friend of Ronan’s that hasn’t come around for a meal, and I know Niall would love to get to know you along with me.”

Adam feels his cheeks heat even brighter. He knows that she didn’t mean anything by the fact that they have more than enough to go around. It definitely wasn’t intended as any sorta dig, it’s just the way wealthier folks speaks. They’ve never needed to want for anything. Besides, it would be awful of him to stay here and eat their surely amazing food when he knows there’s a three day old meatloaf that his parents would be heating up tonight.

“I should ask my Ma.” Adam says mildly, a sneaky out. He’s sure his parents won’t let him stay past dinner time, and at least this way he won’t inadvertently insult Aurora.

“We’ll make her say yes,” Ronan squawks, indignant at the thought otherwise. Because of course he is, with the parents he got, Ronan probably can’t even fathom eating leftovers or being made to finish all the household chores or being ignored up until either of his parents feel like a good yelling. “Ma, I know he’s skinny but trust me he eats like a freaking maniac. I don’t even know where he stores it!”

“I’ll make so many you boys won’t know what to do with yourselves,” Aurora chortles, and Adam isn’t sure if he imagines the soft, sympathetic look she tosses his way or not, but prefers not to marinate on it. “Adam there’s a phone in the kitchen, you can call your folks from there.”

Shockingly, his mom says that Adam can stay.

“Your dad’s at a poker night, so come back before he does and don’t forget to walk Luanne’s dog tomorrow morning or else the doe’s coming from your pocket.”

Adam’s so stunned he doesn’t even have it inside of him to remind his mother that he doesn’t have a scent to his name.

The rest of that afternoon is spent roaming Ronan’s truly massive backyard, and playing a game that Matthew’s made up using a kickball, a spoon, and two eggs from the chicken coop. Later on Declan helps them with their diorama, and he and Ronan are allowed to eat in his room while watching an old black and white movie in the small television he keeps atop a shelf cluttered with about a thousand other nicknacks and broken toys.

And it’s wonderful.

“He’s just such a prick.”

Adam doesn’t have to ask who Ronan’s talking about.

He’s working beneath an old Ford truck in the small auto repair shop that he somehow finessed getting a job inside of even though he’s only fifteen and a sophomore and frankly, always fucking exhausted.

It’s become the norm for Ronan to ditch Gansey and Noah and join Adam in the dingy, rundown garage on his work nights, mostly just to keep him company. Sometimes he’l bring over homework and read the chapter for whichever class they’ve got the next day, and sometimes they just chat and listen to the old rock station playing from the speakers. But tonight’s one of those rare nights when Ronan is well and properly pissed, so he’s just slamming a bouncy ball against the wall over and over again while ranting about Declan, and Declan’s stupid new internship on the hill, and his stupid new girlfriend, (The third fucking Ashley in a row! Can you believe that!) And has now moved to berating Declan’s slicked back hair and clothes and his know-it-all attitude.

“He’s just such a— A—“

“Prick,” Adam says, snarky as all get out as he slides from under the car and moves to dry his hands from the oil that’s leaked onto him. “You’ve said— Like a thousand fucking times.”

Ronan pouts, arms crossed against his chest. “Well I don’t lie Parrish.”

The corner of Adam’s mouth quirks up reluctantly. “But you do pout, quite moodily too.”

“Oh piss off,” he hisses venomously, flipping him the bird for good measure.

Adam only rolls his eyes at his friend’s antics.

“Is this really because you think Declan’s a prat, or ’s it cause he’s moving out for a whole semester.”

Ronan glares at him with the ferocity of a thousand suns, and a weaker man might’ve shuttered back. But as it is, Adam is not a weaker man, and besides— He’s been on the receiving end of that look, and a thousand other even more menacing ones a countless number of times, it’s part and parcel of being Ronan’s best friend.

“You bite your whore tongue Parrish.”

Adam laughs, appreciates that even when he’s bone weary, Ronan can always do that. Make him feel lighter and dazzling and smile like they were still kids and things sucked, but they just sucked a little less.

“You’re gonna miss’m.”

“I said shut! it!”

“Ronan loves his older brother, oh this is good! I can’t wait to tell Gans!”

“I will punch your lights out you little runt!”

“Oo, big words from a big man.” Adam waggles his brows, unimpressed.

“You don’t know the people I know Parrish, I can get you offed with a snap of my finger!” Ronan says, laughter glittering in his pale eyes. The same color of the blue sky that first day Adam visited the Barns.

“Hah,” Adam snorts, finishing up closing shop for the night. “You know me, who’s a workaholic. Gansey, who’s too busy getting off to old dead kings to care about any sorta espionage mission. And Noah, who’s stoned about 98.5% of the time and built like a twig. You’ve got nothing.”

“I feel like I should be affronted on Noah’s behalf,” Ronan notes contemplatively.

“Oy, can you think on this great moral dilemma on the way to the McDonald’s drive through? I just got paid this morning and have been craving their fries from the dollar menu.”

“Oh fine you heathen,” Ronan huffs, acting oh so bereft. “Who gives a shit about my problems when your stomach is obviously much more important.”

Adam tsks as they meander to Niall’s old BMW that Ronan begged to keep, declining to buy a entirely new vehicle like Declan had gotten for his fifteenth.

“Oh and this provisional license means that I can’t have you in, so if any coppers cruise by just duck down like you’re giving me some road head, yeah?”

It’s Adam’s turn to glare at him. “Keep it up and I’ll have to tell Aurora bout your potty mouth you delinquent.”

Ronan’s smile goes sharp at that, like something very lethal and very dangerous. Adam pretends it doesn’t go straight to his gut.

“Naughty Parrish. And here I was all prepared to save you like a damsel if the coppers actually did stop us.”

Adam scoffs. “Please, that’s not a favor to me, you’re so thirsty to get arrested, it’s pathetic.”

“Well a pretty little thing like you wouldn’t last a day in the slammer,” Ronan goads, pulling the car into gear.

“You’re an idiot, and a prick.” Adam tells him bluntly.

“Tell me something I don’t know beautiful.”

Adam rolls his eyes so hard that he’s afraid he might’ve sprained something.

“Fine, you’re lip piercing makes you look like a douche.”

“But it’s so bad ass though!”

“Yeah, to like ten year old white boys in the suburbs.”

Ronan clutches his fist to his chest, feigning distress. “Parrish you’ve wounded me, I’m bleeding out! A curse to you and your family! And your family’s cow too!”

“Eyes on the Road maniac.” Adam scolds, trying his damndest not to let his mirth show.

Ronan buys himself half the menu and pays for Adam’s happy meal under the guise that it would be too difficult to have separate orders. But he conspicuously doesn’t ask for the receipt, and Adam tempts down the flicker that wants to fight him on it.

They end up on a cliff overlooking town, devouring their food in a sickeningly short amount of time before lying back on Ronan’s car, staring up at the constellations while the radio plays an acoustic song about love and slow dancing and Adam is too busy staring at the infinitesimal space that’s dividing their pinkies on the glass to pay attention to anything else.

“You— Erm, you have nice hands.” More than a bit surprised, Adam flinches back and quirks a brow at him in question. “They’re, erm rough, and you’ve got long fingers,” Ronan explains, his face going bright red and his bottom lip worried between his teeth.

“Is that right?” Adam asks, a slow smile gracing his lips as he gazes over at Ronan’s sharp profile being kissed by starlight.

“It is,” Ronan says, giving one, quick nod and not daring to look over at Adam quite yet. And God, he’s such a mess.

Tentative, Adam links their pinkies together and tilts his head so that he’s resting it on Ronan’s shoulder, hearing it when Ronan lets out the breath he seems to have been holding in for quite a while now.

“Right,” he says in a near whisper.

“Is this good?” Adam asks, only teasing him slightly.

“This is fucking fantastic Parrish.”

“You know that I—“

“I hoped as much,” Ronan admits, a bit flushed.

“But everything’s just so crazy right now,” Adam continues to explain, focussing on the velvet skyline and the full moon pouring over the pair of them.

“Your folks,” Ronan surmises, his jaw set and his open fist clenched so tight that his knuckles go white.

“Ro— Just please be my best friend right now, and not the person I confessed my love too. Please.”

“Course Adam, of course,” Ronan says worriedly, hurrying to collect him into his arms. “Whatever you want, whatever you need. I’m here.”

Adam’s entire body goes relaxed, and he puts a gentle hand over Ronan’s heart. “This, this’s all I want.”

The smile Ronan gives him in turn is blinding.

Adam’s mother tells him early on— tipsy and slurring as she puts him to bed after one of Robert’s moods— not to expect much from this world, this life. She tells him not to get his hopes up with the folly of making it big one day. Of leaving the dust and brimstone that molded him in the first place, tells him it’s a wasted effort.

“You’re not better than us Adam,” she says his name like she meant something else entirely.

She says his name like she means plague, like she means ruin, like she means tragic. She says his name like she sees all the twinkling possibilities she once dreamt of touching slowly collapse right in front of her, like it was his fault that she’s fettered to a life composed of cold silences and loveless touches and being stuck existing in the underbelly of society. Like it’s his fault the light in her eyes fractured day by day until it shattered permanently.

“The teachers don’t know what they’re talking bout, think you’re just some quiet, bookish kid.” She continues to bellow, tiny fists knotted in the material of the threadbare blanket he’s wrapped within. Adam feels nauseous at the scent of beer masking her hot breath. “They don’t know how much of a pain in the ass you are! How you just keep revving your father on for the fun of it! How you’re a fucking disappointment.”

Adam apologizes because he thinks that’s his only option. His mother snarls like she can’t stand to look at him for any longer. And nothing changes because nothing ever does.

But now, sitting in Ronan’s beloved BMW— bloody and battered and barely conscious— Adam thinks he can maybe, finally escape it.

The next time he opens his eyes he’s in an abrasively white hospital room, and he can’t hear out his left ear, and everything aches. But Ronan’s besides him, and that makes everything bearable.

“I hate them,” is the first thing Ronan says when he realizes Adam’s awake and has already pressed the button for the nurse to come in.

“I’m not going back,” Adam tells him, more convicted than he’s ever felt before.

Ronan squeezes his hand in silent thanks and it��s the first time Adam notices that Ronan’s broken three knuckles from the impact against Robert’s face, and he’s surprised that he’s only worried that Ronan’s hurt himself.

Them falling into their relationship was one of the more natural changes in Adam’s life. He hadn’t realized how gradual, how fated their romance actually was. How it’s been building for nearing on a decade.

How Ronan had always chosen Adam first since childhood— through it all. How Ronan is one of the only people Adam has always trusted implicitly. How jealous Ronan had been freshman year when Adam took Blue to homecoming and how relieved he became when Blue and Gansey began going out later that year.

Adam knows that he and Ronan aren’t some sort of soulmate love story, that they can get on each other’s nerves and have fights and disagreements too. But that makes it just the more real, makes it something solid and tangible and something Adam can’t imagine living without.

But the night his Harvard acceptance letter comes is only three months after Niall’s death after a drunk driver had hit him on the slippery January streets. Ronan’s already decided to stay home after graduation to watch out for his Ma and to keep the farm going.

“I can go somewhere closer by,” Adam tells Ronan that night, tangled in one another and Adam’s threadbare sheets in St Agnus, his hearing ear against Ronan’s chest and the pair of them shirtless and clinging onto each other like they needed the closeness to breathe.

“Don’t be stupid Parrish,” Ronan says in a excruciatingly soft cadence, one of his fingers tracing small hearts down Adam’s spine. “You’re gonna go off and be brilliant, and I’ll be here when you get back.”

“Promise?” Adam asks lowly, his voice thick with emotion and his own hands beginning to tremble.

“I’d wait for you for forever and a day.” Ronan tells him with such conviction that Adam’s left speechless, only tilts his had upwards so he could capture Ronan’s mouth and snog him nice and thorough.

“God I love you.” And it’s the first time Adam’s said as much with so many words, but he’s not afraid, not anymore.

“I love you too Parrish.”

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#pynch #adam parrish #RONAN LYNCH #THE RAVEN CYCLE #SPILT INK #cowboyformitski #this is so late #But ILY BUBBY

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