hello hi please talk about witch adam. I just remember reading 1 post about it a long time ago and we need more. Please talk to us abt how adam makes pie with persephone's recipe when all of his college friends and him stay up late studying, or about the plants he keeps on the windowsill of his dorm that remind him of his friends and cabeswater or about the tarot cards he always carries in his backpack. Just talk to us about witch adam parrish <333
ok FIRST OF ALL, what do you think you’re doing coming here and making me FEEL THINGS about adam and persephone??? like????? their relationship was everything and she was probably the first good adult figure in adam’s life and i’m just…..so sad…….. ;___; so yes, of course he learns how to make her pecan pie. but it’s not like it’s easy, because nothing in adam’s life is ever easy. he asks blue to teach him; blue has to ask maura first; maura has to ask calla; calla storms to her room slamming the door and doesn’t talk about it again until two days later when she finally shows them how persephone made her famous pecan pie. and then blue teaches adam that last summer before he leaves for college, makes him do it over and over and over again until it’s just right (and yet, still somehow not exactly the same as persephone’s; the exact recipe being one of the many secrets she took with her). maybe it’s blue’s way of mourning her. it’s a way adam understands, at least – doing things to keep the emotions manageable. that first slice they eat together is a ritual. it’s a ceremony. it’s healing. so yes, adam makes it for his flatmates sometimes, and they all fucking love it dude this is delicious what the heck do you put in it, drugs??? but it’s when blue comes to visit that he makes it the most carefully and lovingly, because he knows what it means to the both of them.
and yes, of course there are the plants he keeps in the kitchen of his shared flat, in the brightest spot of sunlight under the window by the sink: succulents and cacti at first – he always has so much to do, and is terrified of killing them, so starts with something low maintenance – but more and more often things with leaves, things that he can visibly watch grow, things he can touch gently and be reminded of a time when other, older leaves touched him gently, almost the only gentle touch he knew in those days. plants with leaves, plants with flowers, sometimes, rarely, even dwarf fruit trees. and then, of course, there are the aromatic ones: basil, rosemary, thyme, and obviously sage (what’s not to love about a cooking plant that can also be used for purification rituals and protective magic?).Â
(ronan, once, as they’re standing in the kitchen in their boxers and little else, points out that those little aromatic plants are like adam: beautiful and practical. adam calls him a sap, blushes around the ears, and kisses him long and slow.)
and the thing is, adam is practical, but he’s also unfathomable, which his roommates notice pretty fast. there are lots of uncanny things about that parrish kid, they say to each other in curious whispers. like the way his plants always seem to grow a little faster and more visibly after he talks to them. like the way he never seems to follow the same recipe for his now-famous pecan pie, but always ends up with the same delicious result. like the way he took one look at his roommate sophie’s tinder date when he picked her up, and called her an hour later pretending his car had broken down (sophie later asked him, stunned, how he’d known the guy was a no-good fuckboy who was unable to keep his hands to himself and kept trying to get her drunk; he just shrugged and went back to his physics textbook).
and then, of course, there are the tarot cards.Â
adam keeps them to himself for a good while, only doing readings when he needs clarity or craves that connection to the supernatural he’d missed so dearly after cabeswater died. eventually jared stumbles in on him, and asks him to ~tell him the future. adam tells him to fuck off. jared fucks off, then comes back an hour later, and asks – this time, without a hint of mockery – for a reading, because there is just something about adam, about the loving and knowing way his deft fingers handle the cards, about the way his eyes go slightly hazy when he focuses on the cards’ images.
adam predicts jared’s week to a T, including things he had no business knowing. the next week, the roommates gather in the living room and ask him to read for each of them. it becomes a thing.
news travels fast across campus, and soon enough people adam doesn’t know start asking him if he’s that wiccan dude. they generally look perplexed, because adam looks every bit like the no-nonsense engineering student he is. adam shrugs it off. he’s not a wiccan, he tells them. then are you a witch? adam blinks. he thinks about persephone. he thinks about himself. magician. he pulls the tarot deck out of his bag, and reads. that’s how it starts.
he doesn’t read for everyone, of course; he has better things to do with his time – so many things to do – and he has never suffered fools gladly. people who stop him in the college green to ask him to cleanse their aura or some such get a glacier-cold look for their trouble. but sometimes, someone will show up at the apartment genuinely upset; someone who feels lost, and is looking for a port in a storm. he reads for them. he reads, too, for people who are restless like gansey, hungry like ronan, curious like blue. it becomes something of a joke inside his friend circle, the way people seek him out to ask for help with their everyday troubles. it’s low-key enough that it doesn’t interfere with his privacy or his school work, but high-key enough that he becomes that magic guy among the student population.Â
sophie jokes that now that he has a reputation, he should start charging. he just replies, that’s not how it works.Â
(it puzzles her, because adam is nothing if not financially savvy, but this – magic – is one thing he will not, cannot monetize. magic is what cabeswater gave him, and it is what persephone taught him; it’s what brought him close to gansey, and by extension ronan, noah, blue. it is what helped him realise his own power and save himself, so that he got out of henrietta and never looked back. in short, magic is so utterly intertwined in his life with friendship, love, and freedom, that he doesn’t know where it ends and he himself begins – or if such a separation even exists.)
