lol talk about pre-trb adam and ronan forever tbh i am fascinated with the dynamic of adam not hating him at all (tho ronan obvs think he does) but just being so fucking tired of him, like goddamn lynch, how do u even have the energy to be this much of an asshole all the time? Like what do you think their first meeting was like? I imagine ronan was an asshole and adam was just v calm and collected and arch about it and so ronan was just an even bigger asshole.
it starts with Gansey planning their first meeting.
at first Gansey is very careful about when and where he handles each of them. He says hello to Adam in the hallways and in class but always sits with Ronan. Excuses himself from Ronan’s presence to talk for a few minutes with Adam. Introduces Adam to Noah first while he knows Ronan is at tennis practice. Gansey is all about their feelings and about controlling the situation. He wants Adam to meet the least-prickly Ronan possible, he wants Adam to not be instantly turned off, he angsts about this like crazy. And he knows that Ronan needs to not feel threatened, he can anticipate Ronan’s jealousy, he knows that Ronan will be jealous and pretty awful no matter what, and he wants to minimize this as much as possible.
So picture Gansey conducting two parallel friendships with the greatest amount of decorum possible, carefully comparing what he knows of their schedules, gently feeling around for a time when Ronan Lynch will be a half-step removed from Ronan Lynch, a time when Adam Parrish might be most receptive to Ronan’s moods and his unpredictable volleys.
And both Adam and Ronan are completely aware of this.
Ronan more than Adam. Like, Ronan knows that Gansey is gearing up to make the introduction, which of course pisses him off. if Adam Parrish wanted to meet Ronan he could fucking walk right up and introduce himself. which Ronan wants him to do. which Ronan doesn’t want to want him to do. which Ronan doesn’t even consider than he wants him to do. Have you ever wanted something and had it shred itself inside you? want it so badly and irrationally that it tears apart your ability to even consider wanting it? That. That happens to Ronan Lynch.
Anyway, in response, Ronan is even more terrible than normal.
And Adam only thinks that Ronan-and-Gansey, that two-headed-monster, isn’t something he can intrude on. He doesn’t bother to think about wanting to meet Ronan Lynch (though if he did think about it, he’d probably admit to himself that yes – that’s what he wants) because he only has so much energy to spare and it’s pretty much consumed by admiring Gansey and despising the way he turns on to meet that powerful voice when Gansey calls out his name, despising how much poorer and more pathetic he feels now that people know who he is, people notice him, because Gansey picks him out in every class they share.
And anyway, he wouldn’t beg to drive Gansey’s car. He wouldn’t ask to see Gansey’s apartment. He won’t ask anything of Gansey – that’s the only saving grace, that’s the only way to make knowing a being like Gansey alright.
And in the meantime Gansey is carefully scheduling study sessions with Adam while Ronan is occupied with mass or weekend detention at Aglionby, and redoubling his efforts to support and guide Ronan so that Ronan knows that they two – they aren’t changing no matter what, no matter who gets added to the group. but even Gansey can’t possibly tie himself into knots for all eternity, and so one day things go wrong. He doesn’t get enough sleep. he forgets he’s supposed to meet Adam. Ronan decides fuck detention, why would he go to that anyway? And even the Camaro is acting up.
So it breaks down completely by the side of the road, with Gansey and Ronan in it. Ronan is fucking horrible about it. Gansey is exhausted and firm and thinks how useful it would be to have Adam there, to have Adam with them. Adam, for his part, is waiting anxiously for Gansey at Nino’s, unsure about whether Gansey has stood him up, sure Ganseyhas, sure he has no right to demand Gansey’s time, sure he shouldn’t have expected any better, and also – blackly furious and resentful.
and so Adam becomes reckless, as he usually is when he’s choking on his fury like mud, when he wants so bad to be anyone but a person who lives this way, who wants to be worth Gansey’s time and is sure he isn’t and resents. and he digs up a quarter or two (which he really can’t even afford to give up, not if he wants to pay the public library late fees on a book he should have returned weeks ago, and was too proud to get from the Aglionby library), and he marches to the Nino’s payphone and dials Gansey’s number, half-hoping he gets through to him, half-hoping he doesn’t.
Gansey picks up and explains, sheepishly, that his car has broken down again.
Adam is instantly relieved and ashamed of himself and relieved. And purposeful. And at this point in his life, purposeful is close as Adam will let himself get to being secretly pleased.
“Where are you?” he asks.
Gansey tells him without really thinking about it. (he’s occupied. Ronan has wandered halfway down the road, cursing a blue streak, and Gansey has the odd anxious fear that soon he’ll start making rude gestures at passing drivers.)
Adam, of course, gets on his bike and heads over to them right away. Gansey realizes too late that this is it. They’re going to collide head on. They’re going to meet – at the worst possible moment, with Ronan incensed and Adam unprepared – and it will be a clusterfuck.
Adam arrives and can’t hide that first moment of wide-eyed surprise, a brief look that of course Ronan sees. Though Adam it puts away as he turns to work on the car, berating himself, because of course Ronan Lynch would be there. Ronan Lynch goes where Gansey goes. They’re a pair. They’re united. Why would Gansey ever have been driving to meet him, when he was with Ronan Lynch? How could Adam think that this could work?
And Ronan Lynch is spitting his fury. It practically glitters as it comes out of him. Even Ronan isn’t really sure what it’s about, other than Ronan being Ronan, and it will be some time before Ronan bothers to confront how it makes him feel to see Adam look so unrepared and unhappy to find him there; to see the way Adam fist-bumps Gansey and only mutters a polite, bland greeting to Ronan himself; to watch those hands do what Ronan himself couldn’t and certainly wouldn’t, calmly take apart the Camaro for Gansey’s benefit, rare and beautiful tools.
Ronan is overpoweringly jealous of everything in this situation.
And yes. At that point it pretty much goes exactly the way you describe. Ronan is an asshole. Adam is still and blank and removed, though not arch because arch is sort of carefully roguish or deliberately canny. Adam lands closer to challengingly blunt. that’s how you get canny with Ronan “Honesty is all” Lynch. Not by being coy and crafty – that’s going to prove you’re not worth his time. No, you have to go Ronan Lynch on Ronan Lynch. Throw a fucking truth at him.
“I didn’t know Aglionby provided us with our own mechanics,” Ronan says.
Adam tenses. Gansey tries to run interference, puts on his firmest and angriest and most warning tone: “Lynch, his name is Adam Parrish and he’s our classmate and he’s helping us. Keep a respectful tongue in your head or next time I’m leaving you at home.”
“Helping you,” Adam says, very clearly.
“What?” Gansey says, thrown off. Ronan looks enraged.
“Helping you,” Adam says. He throws away caution and lets truth and anger fill him. “Not him. You. I am a mechanic. Outside school hours. But I’m not fixing anything for him. I’m doing it for you, because you called.”
It’s such a horrible thing to admit – that he wants this friendship with Gansey. That he’ll come when called. That this other thing, this other person, Adam can’t have that. he doesn’t want that. he doesn’t know how to begin managing something like Ronan Lynch. Let that be a privilege the rich can keep.
And right now he’s tired and ashamed and his hands are covered in car grease, but a part of him is alive with knowing what Ronan Lynch thinks of him, what Ronan Lynch will say about him. Alive and angry. So he adds, “I don’t know him. I wouldn’t come for him.”
“As if I’d call, Mountain Dew Mouth,” Ronan snarls.
“Ronan. Lynch,” Gansey says. He’s powerful, electric, a live wire Gansey with a voice that makes Adam swallow hard. It makes Ronan give another curse and veer off into the thicket at the side of the road, like he wants to be alone. It doesn’t make Ronan stop, totally. Ronan has lots of practice pushing Gansey to the absolute brink.
“Are you gonna get him to clean our place too?” Ronan shouts back, before he disappears into the thicket. “You look like you could use the money, Parrish.”
And now Gansey of all people swears. Because it wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Because Ronan is being a Ronan even Gansey can’t support. Because Adam Parrish is someone Gansey wants to keep, and now this is looking like a lost thing.
But all Adam says is, “You live with him?”
To Adam, suddenly everything is locking into place and it’s worse than he thought. They’re more inseparable than he thought, these two princes. He’s even more the intruder, even more a dusty trailer thing, than he could have imagined. But to Gansey this quiet question is a chance to salvage something. Gansey is pleased that Adam can keep up the conversation. Gansey jumps into describing where they live, how they live, him and Ronan and Noah – Adam met Noah! Adam liked Noah!
Adam thought Noah was alright.
Really, when he pedals up to Monmouth the next day, he doesn’t do it for Noah. He doesn’t even do it for Gansey, because certainly if Gansey had formally invited him Adam would have declined. He does it to see the look on Ronan Lynch’s face. He does it because he has already admitted that he’ll come when Gansey calls, and he wants Gansey to know that he’ll come when he wants to, that he’ll come because it’s his choice. He wants Ronan Lynch to know it too. He wants Ronan Lynch to know it more.
If Ronan Lynch’s parting shot was a challenge, then he’ll soon learn that Adam can meet that challenge.
Gansey, of course, is surprised and delighted to see Adam, grateful that Adam hasn’t been turned away. Noah is faintly welcoming. Ronan is lit, fierce and wrathful and awake with it, even more vicious than before because now it’s home territory, and that’s his prerogative.
Adam supposes that’s fair. He doesn’t suppose it for long. Because with Ronan Lynch there is very little room for supposing. Ronan takes time and energy and all thought, sucks it all in, you have to be on to meet Ronan Lynch head-on. Because this is how it starts, for them. With something that exists beyond Gansey, with a spiraling series of challenges. Ronan makes another crack about Mountain Dew. Adam calmly says he prefers coca-cola. Somehow, less than a day later, Ronan produces a t-shirt and mocks him with it. Adam shrugs and puts it on.
It’s alright to take things from Ronan because Ronan gives them in anger and cruelty, and Adam is used to taking the cast-offs of those emotions. Repurposing them. Using them. Moving forward.
When Ronan starts noticing the bruises, it’s just as humiliating to have him produce cold compresses, treatment packs. But it’s not like it is with Gansey, trying to manage Adam, to control the flow of Adam’s life. It’s Ronan being Ronan, using the truth in the most painful way possible. That’s the challenge, and Adam can meet that challenge by taking on what Ronan offers, not once dodging it.
It occurs to Adam that Ronan thinks the truth is ugly and dangerous. Ronan must, the way he uses it, the way he uses his words. Adam thinks so, too. And he’s not going to let Ronan Lynch see him flinch from this.
And somehow, just beyond the fringes of Gansey’s orbit, this develops. A series of challenges. Ronan Lynch’s most vicious gifts and most ill-thought-out proposals accepted, met. Something about Ronan Lynch pulls out the iron core of Adam. He doesn’t choke on muddy fury around Ronan. He goes sharp and truthful in turn. Two can do this. If, with time, it merges into something like a genuine teenage boy friendship, something that settles around each of their relationships with Gansey, then Adam is fine with that. It’s a compromise built out of not-compromising. It’ll work for them, so Adam’s fine with it.
It doesn’t totally work for Ronan. And yet it works better than anything else, sometimes better than the thing with Gansey, Gansey’s endless support curling around Ronan so tightly and Ronan letting it, letting the nerves and the awfulness build, both he and Gansey agreeing that this what they are now. It’s not like that with Adam Parrish. Adam Parrish always seems to say that he has no fucking time for what Ronan is now. But he’ll make time, to show Ronan what he is.
God, it’s so close to what Ronan’s trying to do, trying to show.
It’s like he and Adam could know things about each other, could try something more tentative and precious, if they could ever pull themselves back, take a few steps back.
Ronan doesn’t know if he’s someone who can operate like that anymore.
At some point he’ll wake up and lie in bed and a glittering laugh will fall out of him, and he’ll realize that he wants to try. He doesn’t even know if he can do it, but with Parrish – he wants to try.
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