Making a face at Ryang, Koh wanders over to the kitchen table where Rutherford and Cheng2 are playing doctor. Rutherford’s even got a lab coat and a mask. It’s not even dark yet. Rutherford just likes to party in style.

“Blade, Cheng2.” Cheng2 obliges, handing Rutherford a serrated kitchen knife.

The table’s covered in newspaper, a bevy of cutting instruments arranged on one side. On the other is Ryang’s drawing to Cheng2’s specifications. This surgery was planned out to the minutest detail.

Rutherford sizes up his patient. He begins his incision.

He cuts deft, sharp strokes, cutting a circle into the persimmon-colored crown. Once the edges align, his and Cheng2’s eyes meet. Rutherford levers the knife and with a crack, the contents are revealed. He hands Cheng2 the skullcap. Cheng2 places it carefully on the table.

“What’s the diagnosis, doc?”

“It's…” Rutherford pauses dramatically. He wipes his brow.

“A pumpkin,” Koh supplies. Cheng2 swats at him.

SickSteve snorts and pushed the bowl of gummy worms closer to Lee-Squared’s reach. Nobody’s said anything about Lee-Squared eating all the candy. Racism. There is no other explanation. Certainly not that Lee-Squared is much sneakier than Koh and less apt to shove three candy bars in his mouth at the same time.

“A flesh-eating amoeba,” Rutherford declares.

Koh peers inside the pumpkin. It looks perfectly normal to him. Just pumpkin guts and seeds. Rutherford must be an excellent doctor to tell the difference.

“Is it treatable, doc?” Cheng2’s face is very earnest. Koh applauds his staying in character.

“Not at this stage.” Rutherford shakes his head. “The poor sod. He’s already dead. Well,” here his voice brightens, “we might as well remove his brain.”

What happens next involves two spoons and sprays of orange-white goop. It gets on the floor. It gets on the ceiling. It gets in Cheng2’s hair.

Ryang wrinkles his nose. “Gross.”

Cheng2 flicks pumpkin guts at him.

Ryang shrieks.

The grandfather clock in the living room bing-bongs its way to four o’clock. Normally, Koh ignores it but today-

“Monster movie!” he announces. He grabs Cheng as he’s trying to sneak out the side door. Cheng is very bad at being sneaky. It’s the hair. Very hard to be sneaky with great hair drawing all the attention. Koh has the same problem. “Nope. Monster movie is for everyone. Halloween is all night.”

Cheng’s cries of “no, please, I hate monster movies” go unheeded. They’re lies anyway. Everyone likes monster movies. Especially terrible, cheesy, American ones. Koh is going to make them watch Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood. Who could resist?

Koh presses on Cheng’s shoulders until he sits on the carpet in the TV room.

He sets the TV up while keeping a stern eye on Cheng. There’s no party starting yet. Cheng can wait until six to go meet Gansey and their secret girlfriend.

“It’s starting!” Koh yells, though, of course, everyone who’s going to watch is already here. Rutherford and Cheng2 are finishing up their pumpkin since they’re losers who couldn’t get theirs done last week like everyone else. They can listen to the cinematic masterpiece from the kitchen.

Koh looks around for a place to sit. Cheng’s on the floor where Koh put him. Ryang’s got the armchair. SickSteve and Lee-Squared are sitting on the couch with a chaste one foot of space between them. Aha.

Koh steals a handful of orange and brown M&M’s from the bag on Lee-Squared’s lap. He ducks his head to avoid SickSteve’s hand and uses that distraction to plop down next to Lee-Squared.

“Hi, L2,” he says.

“Hello, Koh,” Lee-Squared says back.

Crossing his legs so that his knees are solidly in everyone’s personal spaces, Koh sticks his tongue out at SickSteve. If looks were daggers, Koh would be murdered right now. Good thing they’re not.

Lee-Squared just smiles and continues chewing his M&M’s.

Twenty minutes into the movie, Rutherford and Cheng2 join them. They sit at the foot of the sofa, which is really not that smart of them because Koh is very agile and not at all against leaning down during the scary parts and digging his fingers into Cheng2’s ribs.

Lee-Squared grabs him when he’s about to. Koh pouts. Lee-Squared shakes his head.

“Let’s have a nice night, okay?”

Because it’s Lee-Squared and Lee-Squared is the nicest person Koh knows, he says yes. He sits back, only the slightest of pouts on his face and watches Warwick Davis stalk about in a leprechaun costume. He even leans into Lee-Squared’s side a bit and puts his head on his shoulder, not to make SickSteve mad or anything but because Lee-Squared is really soft and really nice and this is nice, all of them together, even Cheng.

In a couple hours, Koh will be going to one of the public school parties. He might see one of the guys there. He might not. He’ll probably get drunk and call Ryang to drive him home or maybe SickSteve, whoever’s up and semi-responsible. But right now, right here, he gets to have Halloween with his friends and that is very cool, no matter what Cheng thinks.

Honestly, it was absolutely and unequivocally Henry's fault. If it hadn't been for him, the Aglionby prom would have come and gone with little more than a sigh and a wistful remark from Gansey, and then faded completely from everyone's memory other than a casual "Oh I didn't go to my senior prom" to a future friend or coworker, which was the exact degree of high school sentimentality Ronan ever intended on having. The source of hassle and money wasted would only grow more meaningless and trivial with time.

The frustrating part was that Ronan really didn't have that much to do with Henry. They had become a sort of friends, he guessed, although 'friend' had always been a word he used sparingly. But Gansey was the one dating Henry, not Ronan, and yet somehow he had been roped into this. Yes, this was the frustrating part, the part of him that was forced to admit that he really hadn't been forced into anything— that maybe the reason he was currently shrugging on a dress shirt was because there was some part of him, for reasons he was trying to ignore, that actually wanted to.

And of course there was pressure from Gansey. Ronan hastily reminded himself that this scapegoat was not to be discounted. (Did Gansey realize he could convince Ronan to cross oceans for him if he had to? Ronan suspected he didn't and somehow that just made it worse.)

Here's how it had gone: Henry was on the planning committee for prom because power over choosing streamer colors and catering options was the sort of power that Henry seemed to have deemed necessary and useful in life. Ronan did not want to go, surprising no one. Adam had said he did not want to go (although whether this was the truth or because everyone knew he couldn't pay for it no one could say— probably some mixture of the two, though Ronan knew Adam's disdain of formal events was rivaled only by his longing for them to be accessible to him). Blue had too much public distaste for the excesses of wealth that were certain to come from an Aglionby dance to admit to wanting to go. Gansey… Gansey had wanted to go.

The solution, of course, was simple: Gansey could go and Henry could go and the rest of them could be left to their own feeling of superiority and alternative high school experience. Maybe the Aglionby student body would realize that no, the two of them were not being two-timed by that weird girl from Mountain View High and maybe there was a little something else to it.

Yes, that could have been the end of it. But Gansey and Henry, a match made in heaven (or hell, Ronan suspected) had not allowed that to be the end of it. Of course Blue had to come with them, it had to be the three of them together, which was fine in itself. But then of course Blue had said that if she had to go through this ordeal, then Adam and Ronan did too.

"No," Adam said flatly. "We definitely do not."

That was when Ronan did something very, very stupid, something he possibly understood but definitely refused to put into words. He bought two prom tickets.

"I suppose trying to convince you to at least put on a suit jacket would be too much?" Gansey remarked as he stepped into Ronan's old room at Monmouth Manufacturing, now vaguely converted into storage space but still holding most of Ronan's clothes that he hadn't thought to bring with him when he had moved back into the Barns. Like anything fancier than a t-shirt.

Gansey self-consciously adjusted the bottom of his tuxedo jacket. He hadn't put his contacts in yet and there was something almost comedic about it, this epitome of all-American perfection, this poster boy for southern prep school success, with his little pair of dingy wire-framed glasses hanging from his face like a scribbled afterthought.

"Yes," Ronan said gruffly. He was still debating whether a tie would make him look like too much of a sellout.

Gansey sighed, wearing a half-hearted sort of grin from the satisfaction you can only have when you know someone well enough that their behavior matches exactly your expectations.

"So are Thing 1 and Thing 2 coming here beforehand or are you picking them up?"

Gansey raised an eyebrow at the nickname for his boyfriend and girlfriend. "Henry's already there to prevent any potential disasters with set up."

"Oh, we can't have that," Ronan quipped. "They might get the napkin color wrong and the whole thing will just fall to shit."

"We can't indeed," Gansey said patiently, but a little amused despite himself. "And I expect Jane will be by in a minute or so."

"I still can't believe you roped her into this. Of all people, I thought Sargent was anti-establishment enough to avoid all of this John Hughes teenage fuckery."

"Ah, well, never underestimate the persuasive effects of love," Gansey said a bit dramatically, and added with a cautiously curious edge, "I still can't believe we roped you into this."

"Don't give yourself so much credit," Ronan shot back. "It's prom. Someone has to poison the punch bowl or some shit. The place would fall apart without me."

"Spike the punch bowl," Gansey added in quickly. "Spiking is the cliché, not poisoning. And please tell me you intend on doing neither of those things."

Ronan responded with a wicked grin, but there was an uncomfortable awareness that the conversation was taking place in lieu of another Gansey hadn't worked himself up to having. For one, the chances of Ronan willingly providing free booze to the Aglionby student body were slim to none, more or less eliminating that motive entirely. The other matter was why Ronan was able to come in the first place. Ronan was fairly certain it had not been brought up by Gansey because Gansey was afraid that asking Ronan why he was still technically enrolled in Aglionby would only serve as a reminder to drop out.

Ronan was hardly attending classes, but technically he didn't need to with a diploma bought and paid for, an arrangement detailed in paperwork he had found sticking out of Gansey's desk drawer. It infuriated him, but he didn't ask Gansey about it, just as Gansey didn't ask him about his continued status as a student.

All he needed to do to void the contract was drop out. There was no way Child could give a diploma to someone who wasn't even a student at his school and once he couldn't hold up his end of the agreement, Gansey wouldn't have to give up Monmouth.

And he would drop out before graduation, high school and higher education be damned. But not quite yet.

"And Adam will be by after work?" Gansey asked breezily, fingers fumbling as he fixed an elegant and expensive looking watch onto his wrist.

"Well if he's not off by now, he's kind of fucked," Ronan said. "He's going by the Barns right after to change and shower and I don't know… powder his nose. That kind of crap. And he'll come here and we can leave with you and your girlfriend like one big happy family."

The situation of Adam living at the Barns was a relatively new one and it gave Ronan an embarrassing thrill to mention it, even casually, so he made sure to do so as often as possible. It had been a bit of a process, both for Ronan to work himself up to asking Adam to move in a way that actually registered as a serious request and for Adam to seriously agree. It had taken Ronan pointing out that Adam was spending enough time at the Barns that he was practically just paying St. Agnes for a place to store his mattress for the move-in to be made official.

Ronan felt like, at least in this liminal space of time before graduation, before college and moving on, things were working out in ways he had never even let himself think of.

There was a brief rap on the doorframe before Blue Sargent stepped into the room as well.

"Hey," said Ronan. "How about some personal space? Do you even knock anymore or is breaking and entering the new vogue with you two?"

"I think I can trust Jane to open the door unaided," Gansey intoned.

"Well, with the key," Blue said meaningfully.

"The key?" Ronan raised an eyebrow at Gansey, who pretended to be busy fixing his tie.

"Well, you don't live here anymore. And neither… well, Noah's gone now." Gansey's voice caught for a moment and he tried to hurry past it; if there was one skill Gansey had mastered it was how to brush past unpleasantness at any cost to himself.

But the moment stuck. The loss of Noah had been a tangible thing in their company from the moment they had realized his latest disappearance seemed to be permanent. The women of 300 Fox Way had assured them all that moving on at last was the best thing for a spirit like Noah, but the apparent happy ending hadn't been visible enough to bring anything like closure. Ronan was still pretty sure Gansey had left Noah's room the same way it had been on the day Noah had disappeared.

"Anyways, you and Adam both let yourselves in here all the time, and neither of you live here, so why shouldn't Jane? Especially since the two of us are part of a hot ticket item."

"God, if you call us that again," said Blue, and the moment of loss moved swiftly to the past for as long as it would stay there. "You and Henry are going to comprise the entirety of said 'item'."

The two bickered back and forth while Ronan connected this new information with the multicolored hairclips he had seen making themselves at home scattered over Monmouth's bathroom sink. Gansey lived alone, technically, now that Ronan had moved out. And it made sense that Blue (and Henry, likely) would be more frequent presences at Monmouth than ever before; Gansey was too prone to insomnia and extended periods of anxious self-reflection to be suited to spending most nights alone. Noah was gone and now, to some extent, Ronan had also left the position he had once held in Gansey's life, and Gansey had found people to fill in the gaps. He couldn't have everything; Ronan couldn't have both the Barns and Monmouth, but it was still disconcerting, the feeling of a treadmill moving forward beneath you when you hadn't expected you'd have to take a step.

A fourth party appeared in the doorframe amid the commotion.

"Are you guys still getting dressed?" Adam Parrish said. "You know prom starts in fifteen minutes."

"Well, we might as well skip it now," Blue said hopefully. She was wearing something that had probably started its life as a dress, but had clearly had an unfortunate run in with a pair of scissors, sequins, and what looked like to be notable parts of a deep purple men's tuxedo. Gansey seemed thoroughly into it. Ronan wasn't sure if it was an outfit appropriate for anything but prom, though even that seemed highly questionable, but he had also gotten to know Blue Sargent well enough that he was sure she wouldn't hesitate to tear off any meaningful bits to make it suit something else.

"Oh, so we'll be fashionable and show up a bit late," Gansey said. "Henry will understand."

The thing about Adam was that he looked in no way any more remarkable than Ronan had expected him to look tonight. He was wearing the same deep black suit Ronan had seen him wear a dozen times before, at Aglionby job fairs and when Adam was getting ready for some event Gansey was dragging him off to to make "connections". The thing about Adam was that Ronan had anticipated every second of this, from the way the faux-silk fabric of the suit jacket tugged across his broad shoulders to how his hands tugged self-consciously in attempts to straighten his already smooth tie. The thing about Adam was that Ronan was floored by this anyways, obsessed and enthused by all the features he had already memorized in exhaustive detail.

So he kissed him, because, well, he was allowed to do that.

"Well," Gansey said cheerfully. "Unless Ronan wants to make his tie look presentable, which I doubt, I believe we're all ready to be off."

If Ronan was being honest, which was a courtesy he usually extended to others as well as himself with unsparing intensity, even after he bought the tickets he hadn't actually thought he would really end up going. Adam was going to blame this on him (and Ronan was certainly going to blame it on Henry and his damnable involved-ness), but at the end of the day, he had agreed to go. He had taken a ticket. ("How the fuck is this charity?" Ronan had said after Adam had objected to him having already bought a $150 ticket for him. "I'm your boyfriend; it's called being romantic.")

Still, Ronan had mildly expected Adam to find some way to return the tickets. So, really it was both their faults they were standing in the middle of an uncomfortable crowd of gyrating wealthy teen boys accompanied by local girls wearing tiny silk dresses their dates had bought them while Adam and Ronan were both being subjected to listening to Henry Broadway explain how you could build your own DJ mixer from scratch. ("No! Really! Look at this, Parrish. The school tried to make me use some fancy high tech piece of shit, but you can't beat something you made with your own hands. I had a feeling you would understand.")

Adam wasn't doing a very good job of looking like he wouldn't rather be dead than endure another minute of this conversation, but to his credit, he was clearly trying. It didn't matter though, because Cheng2 clearly hadn't picked up on it even remotely and was fully prepared to cheerfully carry on another half hour of well-meaning and vaguely classist conversation.

"We need to go," Ronan said gruffly, nodding vaguely into the crowd towards some unseen purpose. He hadn't thought of an excuse, but that was okay because nobody at Aglionby expected Ronan Lynch to give them any. His fingertips lightly brushed Adam's elbow as he turned away.

"Oh. How come?" Broadway asked unexpectedly. This was mostly directed at Adam, who was generally regarded as kind of intense and scary, but unlike Ronan, not too scary to avoid asking prying questions.

"Gansey," Adam said uncreatively.

Cheng2 nodded knowingly. "You're like the Three Musketeers, man. And that girl from Nino's, she's like your… uh…"

"d'Artagnan," Adam provided.

"Spot on. Knew I could count on Parrish to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of French lit. Tonight, I am not at my cognitive best so I'm afraid Dumas suffers. Cheng1 invited you to the pre-game at Litchfield, yeah?"

They both nodded uncomfortably. They had, obviously, opted not to go. No one had really expected them to, and Gansey had decided not to attend anyways, so then really why bother?"

"You really missed out, man." Cheng2 nodded sagely. "Though I'm already more sober than you would hope from a night like this. Lynch, I don't suppose you would be equipped to help a man out."

Ronan, who had gotten a flask in fairly easily—partly out of nursing his natural rebellious streak and partly because he didn't have faith he was going to be able to handle an event like this completely sober—could help a man out, but had no intention of doing so. Besides, he was vaguely amused by the idea of trying to spike the punch bowl, so he wasn't going to be wasting booze on Henry Broadway's cravings. The problem was that there was no punch bowl; instead, a fancy looking bar where a beleaguered caterer served fruity soft drinks.

God, they wanted kids to remember high school, to relive some classic nostalgic experience, but had carefully removed all the conventions that were supposed to define it and replaced them with safety tape. How trite and typical of sentimentality to glorify the recklessness of youth while making the walls higher and regulations stricter, a generation of adults prematurely outplaying their own younger faces.

There was some clever sociological metaphor here, one Gansey would have expounded on instantly, but Ronan didn't care to find it.

"We're going," he said instead, and the vicious gleam of his eye was enough that Broadway didn't push it.

"Alright, alright," Broadway acquiesced, a bit sloppily— he clearly wasn't that sober. "The man suffers. I have musical duties I've been neglecting as it is. You guys let me know if you want me to put on a slow song," he added knowingly.

It was these parting words that had taken Ronan aback. He almost said something, but instead opted to leave into the throng of tuxedoed teens with Adam.

It wasn't as if their relationship was any kind of secret; both of them liked to believe they didn't care enough about what other people thought to put up any kind of pretenses. But it hadn't been explicitly public either, and Aglionby boys could be very, very stupid. It had taken them long enough to figure anything out about Gansey and Henry, and they could be almost sickeningly affectionate. (Although, it seemed the rumor mill still had yet to work that one out entirely. The third party of Blue was still confounding even to Henrietta's most enlightened gossips.)

If rumors about him and Adam existed (and Ronan was sure they did— there had been too many hands held, too many secluded car rides, too much almost domestic familiarity at this point for someone not to have taken the evidence into account, to have calculated the number made when you put together two and two), he had imagined they took the form of half-amused speculation, an eyebrow raised at an emerging subplot you hadn't realized you'd already seen coming. Parrish and Lynch, you know— you'd think they're just Dick Gansey's entourage, but it's not him they're fucking.

For whatever reason he'd had, he thought it was all a little more private, unconfirmed, than Cheng2's knowing smile had implied. It wasn't like he cared if people knew— he didn't think he cared if people knew— but he was suddenly very aware of the way their fingertips had been brushing all night, of how they had come together, of how they had been together, of how they would leave together, and how a hundred boys he hated would smirk knowingly amid crude euphemism.

Ronan suddenly felt very public.

"My hero," Adam said dryly, and Ronan was brought back to the moment at hand, to their recent escape from Cheng2's unwanted attention.

"He was never going to shut up," he said. "Either you were going to snap and kill him with his own shitty mixer or your soul was going to exit your body mid tutorial and he'd be the killer. Almost took bets on it, but then I'd have had to sit through it too."

Adam rolled his eyes and laughed. It was moments like these that could break Ronan. For a moment, their brushing hands turned to gently grasping ones and everything was alright— it was so easy to forget that everything had turned out alright.

"So what do we do now?" Adam mused. "Actually find Gansey?"

Ronan shrugged derisively. The mention of anyone other than the two of them had broken the wholeness of the moment.

"Or dance?" Adam suggested. "It is prom."

The two exchanged amused looks at the bizarreness of the mental image. It wasn't like either of them were opposed to dancing, but there was something about the idea of doing it here, at Aglionby, that seemed inherently ridiculous. He knew Adam understood; wordlessness was the kind of communication that suited them best.

"Ronan! Adam!" called a familiar voice.

"Well, looks like he found us," Adam said.

Gansey was off a little ways with Henry and a varied group of Aglionby boys that included Logan Rutherford, Tad Carruthers, and a tall blond Ronan was pretty sure he had had a history class with back when he still bothered going to class. It wasn't a group that seemed likely to naturally congregate, but the unfortunate thing about Gansey was his ability to effortlessly bring people together.

"Should we go over there?"

"Do we have a choice?"

Of course they didn't, because they were just as taken in as anyone else, if not more so. That was the other unfortunate thing about Gansey: it only ever got worse.

"Lynch," said the blond. (James… Something? Or Something James. Ronan decided he didn't care.) "I didn't even realize you could go to this thing. They sell tickets to dropouts too?"

It was all very good natured, but most of the guys at Aglionby didn't have the balls to try to rib Ronan unless they were the kind of guys he saw late at night in a haze of gravel kicked up underneath expensive foreign wheels.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said coolly. "I'm on the Ivy League track the same as the rest of you."

There was a general laughter from the group and Ronan was vaguely pleased that his cultivated delinquency was as widely known as he could have hoped.

"I'm still technically enrolled," he added begrudgingly, when it became clear they were still expecting some kind of answer from him.

"Looking forward to seeing you in a cap and gown then." There was a cool look down at Adam and Ronan's arms, at their proximity, at their familiarity, and a self-satisfied smirk at a hypothesis being confirmed.

Ronan decided he was already done with James Whatever and his mocking familiarity. "There's no way in hell I'll still be here by the time that comes around."

He did his best to not look at Gansey, but whether or not he could see him made little difference. He already knew exactly how it would look to see his face fall. I'm doing this for you, dickwad.

"That one last month just too much for you?" said the blond.

"Just about," Ronan said, irritated suddenly by whoever this was, by the fact that Gansey had thought he could trick and bribe his way into choosing Ronan's future for him. He almost turned to leave, until he noticed Adam looking at him strangely too.

"Anyways, where's Sargent?" He directed this at Henry, because he still wasn't looking at Gansey.

"Off stealing all of these gentlemen's girlfriends, I have no doubt," Henry said thoughtfully. "I guess some of them go to her school, and they make better company than us painfully out of touch one-percenters."

"But not too good of company, hopefully," Gansey added. "Or she won't want to leave with us."

The group laughed again, but this time it was a bit more strained, because half of them were trying to figure out exactly who of the three was dating who, and also, if she really posed a threat to their relationships with their girlfriends.

"Hey, Parrish." This was Tad now, who Ronan knew Adam could only stand to a certain extent. "You committed to Harvard, yeah?"

Adam already looked less than thrilled by the exchange.

"Yes." It hadn't been the only Ivy that had accepted him— he had actually been kind of set on Yale— but Harvard had been the one whose ratio of "prestige" and "financial aid" had balanced out the best, by happy coincidence.

"Well hey, me too. Guess that means I'll be seeing you around next year." To his credit, Tad looked genuinely pleased at the prospect. "For me, the whole family's been Harvard, so I guess me going there is a bit typical, but thank god for nepotism, am I right? Because my dad donates something big nearly every other year and I nearly failed chem last year, so I don't think I would've stood a chance otherwise."

He went on like this for a while, with some chiming in from the other boys, about fraternities and long held traditions and casual acquaintances that had ended up shaping careers. And Adam watched these boys, who would never be as smart as him, who would never shape magic in their hands, with a hungry and desperate gleam in his eyes while he tugged and tugged and tugged at a loose thread on his jacket and kept reaching up to adjust his cheap tie.

"Of course the classes are a bitch." Tad might have been winding up now. "And so are some of the professors." There were a couple of chuckles— this was an allusion to one of the many anecdotes Ronan had chosen not to pay attention too. "But hell if it isn't worth it in the end. You'll see, Parrish. We'll both see. There's not going to be a reason to ever go near good old Henrietta or that trailer park again."

There was a tense moment of silence. People knew too much at Aglionby about just about everyone, but they always made an effort to pretend that they didn't. The game of secrets and one-upmanship was one of the most important you could play at a place like this, but its first rule was that you pretended it didn't exist.

Ronan looked him squarely in the eyes, and for a moment thought he could see his own fierce blue eyes reflected in Tad's innocuous brown ones. There was only fire behind them, but it was an old and tired flame. He stepped only an inch or two away from Tad's face. Ronan could hit him if he wanted to. "Don't be a dick, Carruthers. Everyone expects you to be an idiot, but don't be a dick."

And Ronan could already tell that Adam was angry at him for interjecting, and Gansey was disappointed in him for making a scene, and that Henry had probably expected him to act out long before this and would make a knowing comment about it to Gansey later, but he didn't care— he didn't care— he cared too much, but it didn't matter because they were already small behind him as he stormed away.

Ronan was on the roof when Adam found him. It wasn't that hard to get up to, if you knew where the ladder was, and of course the one thing Ronan had been careful to learn about Aglionby was how to get to all the places you weren't supposed to able to go.

"I'd be surprised if you even know where the science building is, but you can get up here," Adam observed wryly.

Ronan gave him a perturbed half-grin. "And I'm surprised you know how to get up here. Since, you know, it's not the science building."

"You underestimate me."

Ronan didn't say anything. He didn't doubt it.

Adam was frustrated, that much was clear, but it seemed like he couldn't decide whether he was okay with this turning into a fight or not. "You acted like a dick out there."

"You're going to have to be more specific than that."

"The whole time! With that weird graduation bullshit with Jameson," (Oh, last name. That had been it.) "And then all shit with Tad. I know exactly what that was about. I thought of all people, you knew that I didn't need… I didn't want…" Adam looked too pissed off to finish his sentence.

"What did you want then?" he asked, unfairly and he knew it. "From this. From tonight."

"I don't know," Adam said. He wasn't looking at Ronan anymore, and standing on the edge of the roof gazing out at the sunset and Henrietta's washed out features had turned him into a sharpened silhouette, dark and elegant against vivid blurred color. "Why did you even come here if you're just going to be weird about everything? Why are you here at all? You still haven't told me why you haven't dropped out."

"You just can't wait for that to happen, can you?" Ronan spat out harshly. "Anyways, I'm dropping out tomorrow." He had just decided it then, but it made sense. There really was nothing for him here.

"A month before graduation," Adam said flatly.

God, he hated this. He hated this school and its fancy historical halls, he hated that it had somehow gotten him to wear a dress shirt, he hated how tense Adam got around these boys who meant nothing at all. And most of all, he hated how high school, the most useless and suffocating institution he had suffered through in his life, sometimes felt like the only thing tying him to Adam these days.

Ronan had grown beyond this place. His roots were in the Barns and he longed for the future he knew he could expect, with magic and contentment and rest. But Adam had lost Cabeswater. They knew something like it lived in Gansey now but it wasn't something they understood. Adam was already planning a future where he dressed every day in a suit and tie, walked through halls with Aglionby's same rigid beauty, and made uncomfortable conversation with people he resented.

He said he was going to come back. But sometimes Ronan doubted that, that city sprawls and expensive jackets wouldn't make Adam forget the Barns, forget Ronan. Ronan worried he would forget too.

He didn't say any of this. Instead, he walked beside Adam and climbed the short wall that was probably meant to stop someone from falling off the roof, but seemed more likely to trip them instead. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the last rays of the disappearing sun and the chill that came with Henrietta nightfall.

"You're going to fall," Adam said, but his voice was tinged with amusement.

"Not if I don't move," said Ronan, but he stepped backwards and his shoes met the brick of the roof with a thwap.

"You're going to Harvard," he began.

"Well, yeah," Adam said. "That's kind of been the point of all this."

"No, I mean like… soon. In a couple of months." He cut off again, shaking his head. "Man, if you're not going to get it— you're the one who wanted me to explain what I was doing here."

Adam crossed his arms, but not agitatedly. "No, go on."

"Well, don't you ever think about that? Not just picking out your classes and shit, but what it's actually going to mean when we don't even see each other for weeks and you get too busy with school or whatever. It's never gonna be like it is now."

Adam ran his fingers through his hair. "Of course I think about that. But we've talked about this; I thought we were ready."

"Doesn't everyone else, though?" It had been a long time since Ronan had spoken this freely and he kind of hated it. Words were draining and he had thought he and Adam had come to an understanding that went beyond them. He didn't understand why Adam wasn't getting this, but he also wasn't sure that talking was making it any better. "Did you know forty percent of long distance relationships end with a break up?"

Adam's mouth quirked. "Did you seriously look up those statistics? Where did you get that, Seventeen Magazine?"

"That's not important," Ronan said quickly, "What's important is that we really don't know what we're getting into."

"Well, then what's your point?" Adam hesitated for a moment and then asked, "Are you breaking up with me?"

"No!" Ronan said, and considered stopping talking before the conversation spiraled into something unpleasant. "No, God, you are totally taking this conversation in the opposite fucking intended direction. I'm not trying to do anything; I'm just talking here."

"Oh," Adam said quietly, sitting on the edge of the short wall. "Okay. We can talk if you want to talk."

"I don't want to talk." Ronan realized he was pacing, an action that reminded him too much of Gansey's earnest intensity and too little of the cool exterior he worked to maintain, and stopped abruptly. "I don't want to need to talk. I like that about us."

"I do too," Adam said and Ronan felt reassured despite himself, that this was not in his head, that Adam understood. "But we're going to need to talk if we're going to make long distance work. You're right; it's not going to be the same. But… I think it's worth it. I think…" He stumbled over his words for a moment. "I think you're worth it."

It was a cheesy line and they both knew it, but there was still a part of Ronan, a part that was eighteen and in love, that couldn't help but smile at it. "I just didn't want to do this tonight. Everything kept getting to me and, I don't know, I guess I fucked everything up."

"Well, what did you want from tonight?" Adam asked him, nearly repeating Ronan's words from earlier. It was the question Ronan had spent the last hours trying not to answer. "Why are we here?"

"Well this is it, isn't it? The fucking precipice before we fall off into the future and uncertainty and all of that. I just… I wanted an excuse to do something nice with you, I guess. Before everything changes."

Adam looked at him strangely for a moment and for a second Ronan thought he had said something wrong.

Adam smiled uncertainly. "You did this for me?"

"Well, no shit!" said Ronan. "Who did you think I went to this thing for, Henry fucking Cheng?"

"I don't know, I thought maybe it was sort of psychological… thing. About wanting to finish high school normally or whatever." Adam laughed. "You put on a tie."

"And untied it!" Ronan said defensively. "I took it off!"

"It's the intention of the thing," Adam said dismissively. "Who would have guessed? Ronan Lynch just wanted to have a nice senior prom with his boyfriend."