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undermoonwalker-ish · 6 days ago

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part 3 snippet THIS IS UNEDITED AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE

“When you and Cabeswater were at odds,” Gansey starts. It’s a polite way to phrase it. “What did you do?”

Adam thinks of how to say it. “I realigned myself,” he says. “I remembered who I was, who I am, and I remembered that Cabeswater shares a part of me instead of owning me.” Shared, Adam corrects himself in his head, but still can’t quite bear to say it out loud.

Gansey nods. He seems pensive, distressed, even. It’s never an expression Adam likes to see. “Hm.” It’s not an answer he’s satisfied with, because Adam and Gansey don’t have the same relationship with Cabeswater at all; Adam gave himself up willingly in a moment of desperation. In another moment of desperation, he gave up Cabeswater for Gansey. Gansey is Cabeswater is Gansey, is something else.

They won’t be able to stop noticing. Adam hasn’t been able to stop noticing how out of time Gansey is with everything, like a dance where he’s always one beat behind. “What do you want me to say?”

The furrow between Gansey’s brow deepens. “I don’t know. Something right. Something Adam. Something that makes it alright.”

“Is it not alright?” Gansey doesn’t talk about these things with Adam so much. He has Blue for this, for the deep emotions; how could he trust Adam with these delicate things when they’ve always broken them?

“I don’t know,” Gansey says, and stops there, a broken sentence. Adam tucks his tongue in front of his teeth and looks out the windscreen at the trees. It’s peaceful here. Maybe this is why Gansey brought them to this spot. It’s like how he wants to be.

Adam doesn’t have any more to say, so he doesn’t say anything. He mulls over the question in his head; how do I fix a Gansey? Fixing things is something that Adam is good at, something he gets paid for, but Gansey is not as simple as a car engine.

“When we were in DC, did that help?”

It startles Adam for a second. “Losing time?” His runaway act was something he hadn’t repeated quite so extravagantly since, but the threat of it had scared him for a long time. Losing hours, losing yourself, losing where you were. Adam hopes to God that this isn’t how Gansey feels all the time.

“No,” Gansey says, assuaging some of Adam’s worries. “After.” Adam thinks, then feels stupid that he hadn’t gotten it immediately. The air is thick. Gansey is watching him carefully, but not as though he’s scared of the reaction he’ll get, more like he’s waiting for a theory to prove itself true. If we stimulate the memory, if we dredge up the unseemly past, is something going to happen?

Gansey’s still waiting on an answer. “It helped temporarily,” Adam says. “I needed to fix myself. The-” Is sex too blatant to say out loud? “-sex was a bandaid.” Apparently it’s not. Apparently, this might just be something they do now, the way things are going. Apparently Adam’s fine with that and with cheating and with homewrecking, if it means that he gets Gansey looking at him like this.

Gansey takes his water bottle back and stands it in the footwell. Adam waits while he looks Adam in the eyes, looks down at the gearstick in the middle, then jerks forward and kisses him.

#YAY!#adansey #trc

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undermoonwalker-ish · 7 days ago

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snippet of the first chapter of untied, untied

(which is up on ao3 now. btw. <3)

Birthdays were nothing of note to Adam.

While he still hadn't grasped if it was a conditioned apathy from neglect or a genuine disdain, either motivation lead to a nonchalance. He'd quietly hit another year survived since he'd clawed his way from the womb, and planned to continue that way.

Unfortunately, that memo did not always translate. Though mindful of his desire for a tranquil afternoon and nothing more, the last few years he'd been wrangled into traps and schemes to enforce celebration. Never something so blatant as Adam's Birthday Party on cardstock, wrapped in ribbons and advertised on gold leaf flyers, but woven into Fourth of July parties, impromptu road trips to the city, or a lakehouse Gansey's family just so happened to have erroneously rented the first week of July. Though the pretense was transparent, it was appreciated in its efforts. He'd long abandoned frustration for endeared exasperation at Gansey's escalating antics to celebrate another year of his life. Every year, he focused it to returning the gesture tenfold when Gansey's birthday came winding back around. It was a difficult time for them all, the reminder Gansey had made it another trip around the sun, that his gravitational pull kept their world on axis and thriving. Knowing Gansey could not be here kicked all birthday efforts into overdrive, and easily overshadowed “impromptu” barbecues that just so happened to come with dessert. The equal, though arguably weighted Gansey's way, efforts kept footing level and tempers mellow.

Adam knew they were planning something, even without Blue’s questioning. It had rooted at the epicenter of his mind, took chokehold on his frontal lobe to pluck and fry all logic. Alcohol was not, he knew, the problem. Held no control over the bearer, not really. Alcohol was a weapon only in ill-tempered hands.

And yet.

When Blue had finally vacated - citing a trip to town with Henry and senses overflowing with cow manure luring her out the door - the sun had already begun carving its way across the matured blues of late afternoon. Daylight stretched too long out here, or not long enough, or just long enough for the heat to sweep in to leak headaches and sweat along hairlines and crevices. The light had begun to fracture in a kaleidoscope of blush pinks and salmon oranges, sunk in a ring of green where trees met horizon line. Adam peeled off t-shirt and faded jeans, socks that swam in the worst of his exertion, curled himself in bed where the mattress made a memory of his body in its indentations. Ronan, already propped against pillows with headphones and limbs spread in exhaustion, didn’t shift so much as absorb Adam into his space. Head met shoulder and legs tangled together in a slick of sweat not mitigated in the slightest by the clatter of the portable drum fan they’d set to groan and whine at their bedside.

Adam hooked an ankle under Ronan’s, ignored the chill of half-cooled sweat, and buried his nose against collarbone, against the familiar jut of it, ran a hand over bare waist and grasped at whatever skin made itself available. Ronan didn’t bring attention to it, but folded and met in the middle where necessary, palms around back and fingers slotting between ridges of spine. He nudged Adam’s left foot with the toes of his right and pinched his calf between big toe and padding.

“Ow.” Adam said, halfhearted.

“Just testing reflexes.” Ronan explained, “It’s too hot to be this clingy.”

“Push me off, then.” He retorted, smug when Ronan did not budge, “Jesus, all you do is complain.”

Ronan flicked his head, not harsh enough to hurt, but jarring enough it struck a laugh from him. “It is hot though.”

“Thanks, captain obvious,” Adam snorted, “Glad we have an underdog reporting on the mundanities of everyday farm life.”

“This isn’t everyday farm life,” Ronan explained, “This is a heat equal to alevel of hell.”

“Hm. Maybe we took a wrong turn.” He yawned, “Tell me more about hell. I need to know what to expect.”

Ronan smacked his shoulder, feather light and reprimanding. “Not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.” He moved to nip at Ronan’s shoulder, delighted in the little groan he evoked, and moved to curl his head on stomach instead. All of this screamed needy, touch me, I need hands on me now please. Ronan didn’t need the encouragement, knew the give and take. It was just rare Adam was the one asking. Fingernails moved and scraped along scalp, a languid and satisfying threading of hair through fingers.

After several moments humming in the drag of affection over hair, forehead, neck, shoulder, and back again, Adam twisted to stare up at Ronan’s profile, half-asleep, chest rising and falling in steady rhythm, the twitch of his brow, the pale slice of the scar that cut across his brow, the prominent bridge of his nose. He reached up and cupped his cheek, begging his eyes open to match shades of blue with sky or ocean or a pigment all Ronan’s own. Sometimes I think I dreamt you, Ronan had said, once. Adam wondered how to convey that same concern, that same regard.

“Blue came over.” He said, sweeping thumb over the cut of cheekbone. Ronan leaned into it, pressed mouth to the tender flesh coating radial artery, not opening eyes. His attention was tactile, always, and now more than ever it sprung a gratitude in Adam’s chest, all coiled and fierce and burning hot in a way he’d defined as love.

“I was here.” Ronan said, “Remember?”

“I’m speaking.” Adam reprimanded, “My turn with the talking stick, not yours. Ass.”

“You gave me no hint. Not my fault.”

“I”m telling you now. Shut up.”

Ronan scowled, but shut up. He was good at listening to instructions like that. That burn swelled once more.

“She asked if I’m drinking on my birthday.”

A hum. Ronan slid his other hand to rest between shoulder blades, ran an index where bone rose in defiance of skin, traced the lines that arched and swirled and met together to form the whole of Adam’s back. “Are you?”

“I don’t know.” Adam admitted, and for all it hurt to admit uncertainty, the fingers dancing around his spine and shoulders fought off the worst of his insecurity. “I don’t know if I’d like it.”

“Kind of the point, isn’t it? To drink around friends or family or whatever?” Ronan pointed out, “I don’t know. Figure out if you like it.”

“Like sex?” Adam raised a hopeful eyebrow.

“Not when you’re having a damn crisis.” Ronan snorted, “Put on something nice and find me later.”

“Nicer than this?” Adam sat up, dispelling Ronan’s hands in favour of leaning over him, hands on either side of torso, knees situated over hip, “I’m basically buck naked. Did you have any suggestions?”

Ronan did crack his eyes open, now, lip twitching as Adam hovered. He brushed a few stray hairs from his browline, swept a hand across temple to ear, to neck. “Just one.” came with the snap of boxer waistband, “but maybe finish your speech about how terrified you are of getting shitfaced. Because if you bring it up in the middle of sex I’ll think of that every time I get a boner for the next week. Major mood killer.”

Adam considered that. “Okay.” He leaned up, settled on Ronan’s thighs to stare at the ceiling, sucking in through nose, out through mouth in one, two, three, four. “When did you first drink?”

“Hm.” Ronan hummed, rest a palm on Adam’s knees, worried a thumb over cracked skin, a symptom of labour with no aftercare. “I think communion? But besides that... I had a beer with my dad when I was thirteen.”

“Was it...” Adam debated his words, thumbed through his vocabulary to place the word that fit intention. Anything involving Niall Lynch required a bit more decorum than either of them practiced. “Nice?”

“It tasted like piss.” Ronan pat his hip, “Like actual watered down piss. I spit it out and asked for a juice box. He told me to try it again. I got used to it.”

None of that seemed especially healthyto Adam, but he doubted he held much authority on healthy paternal relationships. “And you were safe?”

“Yeah. I trust my dad. Trusted.” Ronan’s mouth tugged down at the correction, “And after that I drank with Declan. Fourteen. He was in a rebellious phase. Then Gansey. We used to sneak out after dark and steal my dad’s beer from his cooler. He always forgot half a case in the cooler during the summer. It was easy.”

Gansey being a drinker was a piece of information Adam did not expect, but he drank the history of Ronan’s upbringing, folded it into the stream of Ronan he’d always swam along. Swiping a thumb along the downturn of his mouth, Adam asked, “And now?”

“You know.” Ronan said.

Adam did. He curled forward to pressed his nose in the crook of Ronan’s neck again. “Do you think I’d be a bad drunk?” It was the closest to honesty he’d tiptoe on this topic.

“Oh yeah,” Ronan said, bright, and Adam waited for the thought to finish despite the instinctive recoil, “Sloppy, probably. Clumsy. I bet you cry.”

“I’m not going to cry.” Adam scowled into the junction of shoulder, “Also I won’t get that drunk.”

“Sloshed.” Ronan laughed, then laughed harder at the picture he’d taken of Adam’s drunk persona, “God. We should take your phone away.”

“Shut up.” Was said with no heat, just a slide further down to rest his working ear against the rhythm of Ronan’s heart. He had to crane just so to catch the melody of laughter, didn’t want to miss it. If he’d taken a recording to Cambridge, sleep might have come easier those first few nights. Sliding his palms to rest on Ronan’s waist, he asked, finally, “You think I’ll be okay?”

“I think...” Ronan turned his head to meet Adam’s eyes, fiddled with the uneven flip of bangs over his eyes, “I think you should do what you want.”

Adam frowned, and bit his lip, worried dried skin off pink flesh in trepidation, “Does it feel like... do you... can you tell its you? When you’re drunk?”

“To a certain point.” Ronan admitted, “I don’t know how to explain it. Uh... like, that part of you that holds you back just... melts away, I guess. Your inhibitions. I don't know. You read the same no drinking warning in school as I did.”

Adam had memorized it, but Ronan knew that too. “You won’t let me do anything bad, right?” Because for all his curiosity, he knew what alcohol did on the surface. Enhanced certain traits, shone a magnifying glass on the good, the bad, the ugly. It wasn’t a conduit of destruction, it gave an excuse to demolish. Logically, he knew alcohol was only as dangerous as the potential of who drank it.

And emotionally he’d seen what alcohol soured. He’d seen that glazed, detached look. Had felt the consequences of too many cans, too much cheap beer from the station nearby, knew where it made dents in budgets and flares in tempers. Had worn that proof pressed beneath long sleeves and behind bold-faced lies so long it had become first nature. Somewhere down the line, the two had conflated.

“You won’t.” Ronan said, playing with a piece of sweat-stained bang, “But I’ll pretend and say sure. I’ll hold you back if you get scrappy. But I’m being honest, you’ll probably make it halfway through a seltzer and pass out. Just saying. Lightweight.”

Adam pinched his waist, “Asshole.”

“Calling it like I see it.” Ronan flinched to dodge his hands with little success, “But maybe, you neurotic freak, consider that giving alcohol that much power over you is just as bad in reverse?”

He sighed, sunk heavier into body heat and summer glaze and the mirage of golden hour that fluttered through window panes in syncopated beats of fleeting daylight. “I’ll call Blue tomorrow. Might as well, right?”

“Not telling you what to do.” Ronan said, “That’s your job, remember? Management.”

“Hm.” Adam craned his head up to grin, “Is that what you think of me?”

“Yeah, real bossy.” Ronan cracked an equal show of teeth, glinting and jagged and snaggled in places, “Embarrassing. For you. I’m fine, obviously.”

“Oh sure.” Adam surged up to catch that grin with his own, curled a hand over the imprint of stubble on his jaw, scratched a nail over the incoming hairs on his head, just enough to tickle and send a shiver through Ronan’s spine He pulled back, propped on forearm and remaining palm, “Wanna test that out?”

“Pfft. See, bossy.” Ronan slid his hands over Adam’s waist, stopped to run thumb over hip bone, over the dip of his waist, over belly button and chest. It was a slow mapping of familiar ground, his eyes not leaving Adam’s as he charted roadmaps and pit stops with practiced fingers.

“So that’s a yes?”

#👀👀👀#pynch #trc

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