The sound of pool balls crashing against each other echoed in the main room of Monmouth Manufacturing, and Ronan saw ball number 2 disappear in one of the pockets of the table, like he had intended.

"Nice one," Noah said amiably from where he was leaning against the table. Noah didn't care whether he was winning or losing (he was always losing), he just genuinely liked playing pool. He was getting better at it, though, thanks to Ronan's impromptu lessons.

Today Ronan wasn't in the mood for lessons, however. And his head wasn't in the game as he half-heartedly examined the position of the balls to decide his next play. No, his head was– as it was wont to be lately when nothing important was going on– on Adam Parrish.

He could still feel in his hands the warmth of Adam's back through his thin t-shirt, the feeling of the fair hairs of his nape, the soft bumps of his spine...

This time, when he hit the white ball, he only managed to move some balls around, which was, if you asked Ronan, good enough given his state of mind. Noah seemed to agree with an absent smirk as he grabbed his own stick for his turn.

They were all meeting at Monmouth that evening to discuss Glendower related stuff or go to Cabbeswater or just hang out, depending on Gansey's mood, really. Adam was meant to arrive any minute now, and that knowledge filled Ronan with nervous energy.

The last few days had been... tiring. Mentally. Something was changing between him and Adam. Or at least he thought so. Maybe it was all wishful thinking.

But no, he hadn't imagined catching Adam looking at him. And not in that I'm-an-ancient-sentient-forest-looking-through-a-teenage-boy's-eyes way he did sometimes. A couple of times Adam had been looking at Ronan in a spaced-out but human kind of way, which could have just been caused by boredom in class. But he'd also been looking at him intently, with narrowed eyes, like he wanted to crack Ronan's head against the school desk to see what was inside. It was a very powerful stare, and Ronan thought he would've ended up doing exactly that if it had continued for long. But luckily, Adam always broke eye contact when he was discovered. Or pretended he wanted to borrow a pencil or something.

The thing was that Ronan had no idea what was behind those stares– Parrish had a good poker face, the fucker,– he just knew what he wanted to be there.

Ronan knew very well what he was doing when when he had taken Adam to the Barns to rifle through dream things, and when he'd made him a shitty mixtape, and when he'd brought him into the church at night. Ronan wouldn't call it flirting or seducing. (Could someone seduce Adam Parrish?) He was trying to make Adam see him.

Obviously, Adam knew he existed. But he hadn't really known him... That had been intentional on Ronan's part, at least at the beginning. Ronan had always been a private person, what with the need for secrecy about his and Niall Lynch's abilities. But after losing his father, he hid even more parts of himself to others. He only let them see what they couldn't hurt; the bad attitude, the aggressive music, the car-racing. But that wasn't going to be enough. Not if he wanted Adam's attention.

Ronan knew the other boy pretty well, how his mind worked. He knew that Adam didn't like unanswered questions or unresolved puzzles. So he was presenting himself as one, giving Adam one piece of his puzzle at a time. He was quite sure that Adam was intrigued by it, but in the same way that Blue had been intrigued by him at first, the same way Gansey had been. If there was something more to it, Ronan couldn't see it. However, he didn't think that there was anything else he could do about it. One couldn't force his way into Adam Parrish's interest. Like with everything, it would be on Adam's terms or not at all. It was funny how one of the characteristics he liked most about Adam was also one that was causing him so much frustration and headaches right now.

"Maybe we have a Valium around," Noah said, apparently out of the blue. "Your turn."

After he was in position, just as he was going to take the shot, the door opened and Adam's voice echoed in the room.

"Hey, guys."

Ronan startled and the point of his pool stick scrapped horribly agains the green table top. Noah snickered mischievously. He had probably calculated that, the little shit.

"Hey, Adam," the ghost said cheerfully. "Wanna play with us?"

"No, thanks," Parrish said while letting himself fall on the leather sofa and rubbing his hands. "I don't feel like suffering another crushing defeat today,"

"Another defeat?" Noah asked.

"Yeah... I've been beaten by a Peugeot."

Ronan scoffed. "Lame."

"A woman brought it like two hours ago and explained the problem, and I've been working on it until my shift finished, but I still have no idea what's wrong with it."

"What is it like? Is it a very old model?" Ronan asked

Adam proceeded to tell them the year of the model and the distinguishing mechanical features that it had. Ronan understood, like, twenty percent of it all.

"Adam, he's not gonna understand you if you say it like that. Here, let me translate, I speak Ronan." Then Noah made a show of touching his chin in thought and taking a deep breath before saying, carefully, as if speaking a different language, "it's ugly as fuck and old as balls."

Adam's shoulders shook in silent laughter while flexing his fingers discreetly. Ronan changed hands on his pool stick and leaned towards Noah threateningly, like he was gonna go after him. The smudgy boy took a hurried step backwards, prepared to run if necessary, a playful grin dancing on his lips. Sometimes he looked too much like a puppy, it was unsettlingly endearing.

"Don't tell Gansey," Ronan said to Adam, but still watching Noah form the corner of his eye, waiting until he lowered his guard to tackle him. "He'd be so fucking disappointed. You'll lose your reputation as the car whisperer."

"That's true," Noah concurred, "like a little kid finding out Santa isn't real, you can't crush his dreams like that."

Adam simply rolled his eyes at them, as if they were exaggerating and Gansey didn't think that Adam was the best thing that'd ever happened since the invention of boat shoes.

"Speaking of, where's Gansey?"

"Texted me a bit ago, said he was going to pick up Blue from Nino's" Ronan said.

"What? Why didn't you tell me?" Noah asked, surprised.

He shrugged. "You didn't ask."

"I wanted to pick up Blue, too," Noah said in a pouty voice. Ronan didn't say what he was thinking, which was that maybe Gansey wanted to pick her up alone. The ghost seemed to make a decision. "I'm going with them." And before neither of them could say anything else, their friend disappeared with a, "Don't destroy the house while we're gone!"

The sudden departure left a short silence behind.

"What's the fucking rush? She's gonna come here anyway."

"Maybe he was trying to avoid the tackle he was seeing coming," Adam said with a raised eyebrow.

Ronan smirked, sometimes they all knew each other too well.

"Where's Chainsaw?" Adam asked, looking around.

"She took off, since we weren't doing anything interesting. She's taken to fly around and bring back gifts."

"Gifts?"

"Yeah, like pretty rocks and shiny shit. The other day she brought back a watch. Looked expensive as hell, and was working perfectly fine. I think she stole it from someone."

Adam laughed, shaking his head a bit.

"What?"

"I just remembered that comment Gansey made once, just after you got Chainsaw, about how he didn't want to have a child with you? And it's like she really is the child of you both: she got the habit of collecting pretty things from Gansey, and the inclination to obtain them illegally from you."

Ronan grinned at that, feeling pleased, but sobered up when he noticed the other boy rubbing his hands again.

"Hey, are you cold? You look like a second-rate super-villain when you do that with your hands."

"I could never usurp your villain position, Lynch, if that's what you're worried about," Adam evaded.

"No, you could not, I did say second-rate." Ronan joked, but indicated with his stare that he wasn't gonna let this go.

Adam sighed. "I'm not cold, we've just had a lot of work today at the garage."

"Right." So his hands were hurting.

Something warred inside Ronan.

There was something he really wanted to do. But he wanted it so much it frightened him.

Instead, he said, "Want a painkiller?"

"Nah, it'll pass."

They used to have a cream for muscle pain, but since Gansey and him quit the row team and tennis respectively, he had no idea where it was.

A part of Ronan warned him that what he wanted to do was dangerous, but he had never been very good at listening to that part of himself... So he didn't.

Without saying anything, he walked to his room, retrieved a small white recipient and threw it to Adam's lap when he was close enough to the sofa.

Adam took it and looked at it and then at Ronan quizzically.

"Put that on your hands, I'm gonna teach you how to give yourself a hand massage."

Then Adam opened the container and saw that it was the same cream Ronan had left in his car some weeks ago.

"Oh. You use this stuff too?"

"No, it's... I thought you might be running out, since there wasn't much..."

"Oh," Adam repeated. "I was. Running out. Thanks." Then, "Ronan, you don't have to..."

"Shut up, Parrish," Ronan interrupted, feeling a bit awkward. "There's nothing better to do here until Gansey and the maggot come anyway. Now scoot back and put that crap in your fucking hands."

His friend snorted. "Well, if you ask so nicely..." But he did as told, and Ronan took a seat beside him on the sofa, facing Adam, one of his legs on the cushions and foot in the air while his other foot was still planted on the floor.

After applying the lotion, Adam adopted that same position to face Ronan, the now familiar scent of mist and moss drifting in the air around them. "Okay, how do I do this?"

"First you need to locate the pain. If you're not sure what's hurting exactly, open and close your hands a few times, like fucking Noah when he sees some glittery shit."

Adam smirked at the comparison and followed his instructions. Then he indicated which part was aching.

"Alright, first we'll start with the fingers. Start massaging the pinky."

"How? Like this?"

"No, like– kinda upwards... towards the knuckle. Not so fast. Jesus, Parrish, what are you even doing?"

"What you told me!" exclaimed Adam, indignant.

"Just. Just gimme," said Ronan, indicating Adam to give him his hand. The other hesitated for a second before obeying.

Ronan held Adam's left hand, palm down, with one of his, and with the other he started massaging Adam's fingers, starting at the tip and going slowly to the knuckle.

"Like this," Ronan said. Shit, did his voice sound strained just now? Had Adam noticed? "Idiot," he added just in case.

"Whatever," Adam grumbled, but he didn't ask to take his hand back, so Ronan continued the massage.

What am I doing?

Ronan would have pinched himself if he hadn't thought it would look too fucking weird. Besides, it wasn't like pain always woke him up when he was dreaming.

When he finished with Adam's slender fingers, he started to massage the back of his hand slowly, pressing along the finger bones towards the wrist, his thumb sliding easily over skin and veins thanks to the lotion, taking a bit more time in the areas Adam had said he was hurting. After that, he massaged his bony, elegant wrist, making circular motions with his thumb while his other fingers held it. He could feel Adam's strong pulse, and it was driving him a bit crazy.

He could hardly believe this was happening. That after months of staring and thinking and dreaming of Adam's hands, he was finally touching them. Maybe it wasn't exactly how he had wanted it to happen, but it was more than what he thought he'd ever get, some days. With Adam's feelings still a mystery to him, some days hope was more difficult to keep than others.

After taking care of the wrist, he turned Adam's hand, with more care than he wanted to admit even to himself, and began to massage the palm.

"It looks like you're going to read my palm," Adam's voice broke the quiet and Ronan glanced at his face, something he hadn't dared to do since he took his friend's hand. However, Adam didn't return the look, he was staring at their hands, and he accompanied the comment with a small smile that looked a bit too tight. Shit, was his technique bad? Or was Adam nervous? The good kind of nervous or the bad? Fuck, was Ronan making him uncomfortable...? "Are you gonna tell me my future?"

"You're the one who runs around with tarot cards in his bag. You can read your own damn future if you want."

"Yeah, I doubt that. Somehow I can never seem to know or notice things when they're about myself. Tarot cards or not." Adam's voice had sounded bitter and immediately after saying that he pressed his lips together, like it was something he wished he'd not said.

Ronan's eyes widened a bit. Being the sort of reserved creature Adam was, that kind of slip was nothing short of a miracle.

Ronan's lips stretched in a humorless smirk. "Not knowing yourself is frustrating as hell."

Adam glanced up at that. "Speaking from experience?"

"You bet. It's not like my father ever sat me down to give me the Greywaren talk. And for a while, thinking that he'd gone with the answers to all my questions... Not knowing what I was, what exactly I could do, if I was the only one... Well, it fucked me up."

Ronan – who had looked downwards while saying all that, still continuing the massage – glanced up at the silence that followed. He found Adam looking at him. No, not just looking at him. Seeing him.

He had the same expression he always had when he found out something new about Ronan. Like he was adjusting the image he had of his friend in his mind.

The feeling of being seen made Ronan's heart beat faster. It was thrilling. Or frightening. Or both.

See me. Want me. Choose me.

In the end, he had to break their stare, because the yearning it woke in his chest hurt too much to bear without setting something on fire.

He turned his gaze to their hands, hiding it from Adam's penetrant eyes.

"But now you know what you are. Greywaren." The word resonated inside Ronan like it never did when Gansey or Blue used it. It seemed to echo in his chest and in his head, just like when he called Adam magician.

"Yeah. I still got some questions, but it's... it's better now."

Adam hummed and let himself fall sidewise slowly, until he was leaning against the back of the leather sofa. After a couple of minutes, Ronan finished the massage that he had been prolonging and placed the other's hand down. He then asked wordlessly for Adam's other hand and contained his surprise when the other teenager actually gave it to him. This was supposed to be an opportunity for Adam to learn how to massage his own hands, after all, but Ronan was glad that his friend had apparently forgot about that.

The longer the massage continued, the slower became Adam's breaths and the lower his eyelids stayed after each blink, until he fell asleep. Ronan had lost count over how many times Adam had slept in the same room, or car, or patch of grass as him. But it never ceased to amaze him that Adam – who was always alert in public, who had to keep tabs of where everyone was, what they were doing – was comfortable enough with him and their little group to abandon himself to sleep in front of them.

Nevertheless, a loud sound from Ronan's pocket disturbed the silence and he cursed darkly while reaching for his phone as Adam regained consciousness. It was a text from Gansey.

"What is it?" the sleepy boy asked.

"Gansey says Blue's picking another shift after hers, so she won't be coming, and asks if we want something to eat from Nino's."

"I'm good," Adam answered predictably.

Ronan looked at him hesitantly before saying, "dude, maybe you should go get some rest. I mean, we're not going anywhere without Blue, so."

"I still need to finish the English task for tomorrow."

"Have you seen your face? Your eyes have more bags than that fucking old man Malory." Ronan knew that Adam always took longer completing school assignments when he was sleep deprived, and that was his sleep deprived (more than usual) face. "Go to sleep now and wake up a bit earlier tomorrow to do it."

It was perhaps a testament of how out of it Adam was at the moment that he didn't cut Ronan with some snarky remark, and instead mumbled wearily, "I'm afraid that if I go to sleep now I won't wake up in time tomorrow."

"I'll make sure you wake up tomorrow," Ronan said thoughtlessly. "C'mon, I'm driving you to your place," he said as he practically pulled Adam from the sofa to a standing position.

"Will you really wake me up?"

"Yeah, I promise, you stubborn bastard." Ronan had to steer him to the door with a hand on his back. No, really. It wasn't that he wanted to keep contact with Adam. He had to. "Now let's go."

…...

The sounds of soft breathing, pen against paper, and the wakening birds outside Adam's window seemed to be the only ones in the world.

As Adam wrote the last lines of his English task, the first rays of sunshine started to sneak into the room above St. Agnes. It must have been something past seven, so they'd have to start preparing for their eight o'clock class soon. Adam turned his head to his asleep guest, wondering how long would it take him to convince Ronan to get up and go to class.

Like he had promised the night before, Ronan had showed up at Adam's room at five a.m. with a couple of donuts and a thermo full of hot coffee to make sure he woke up with enough time to finish his homework. Adam, always slow to wake up in the mornings, had accepted one of the donuts and the coffee with a thankful grunt, had gone to splash his face with water and had focussed on his work. When he had noticed that Ronan was trying not to fall asleep against a wall, he'd told him to 'just take the bed and sleep.'

So that's how Ronan had ended up wrapped up in Adam's sheets on his bed. He was laying on his side, facing Adam, with half his face smashed against the pillow and his lips slightly parted. The increasing, soft, morning light caressed his face and elongated the shadows of Ronan's eyelashes on his cheeks.

Adam felt himself grow warm from the inside looking at him, his heart beating heavy but steady thumps against his ribs. He looked at the thermo with the now cold coffee, the kindness of the gesture not escaping him; he brushed his hands together, recalling the incredible feeling of Ronan's hands against his; he closed his eyes and remembered Ronan's own blue orbs watching him with his wild intensity… and he felt himself give up. He didn't know when it had started, but he couldn't ignore his feelings anymore nor could he rationalize them as anything different than what it was... He liked Ronan.

Why, how, when had it happened?

He was bemused, because... Since when had liking boys started being a possibility for him?

But if he was being honest, him liking boys as well as girls – in general, as a concept – was easier to accept than him liking Ronan... romantically.

He's lazy, Adam told himself. But he knew it was a lie even before his brain provided him with an image of Ronan trying to find a way to wake the Barns' cows, with tireless dedication.

He's reckless. But his recklessness wasn't born from lack of intelligence. He had been convinced of Ronan's brilliance after seeing the kind of things he could dream into existence. And Adam himself had a reckless streak he couldn't deny.

He's rude and snarky. But that didn't mean he never showed care or affection. A hundred examples of that came to the forefront of his mind: Ronan letting his mother touch him affectionately, Ronan ruffling Mathew's curls, Ronan protecting Blue from falling in the cave, Ronan rough-housing with Noah, Ronan punching Gansey in the arm while smiling warmly... Ronan caressing Adam's hands...

It seemed that talking his way out of his crush on Ronan wasn't going to work.

He couldn't convince himself that Ronan wasn't someone he wanted, because he was.

Adam breathed a long, pained sigh as he contemplated Ronan sleeping peacefully on his bed.

His shitty IKEA mattress had never looked so inviting... or so impossible to reach.

Adam sighed wearily again and gazed at Ronan as he became one more thing he wanted but couldn't have.

NOTES:

Mmmrrrnrhgh... I feel like I don't know Ronan as well as the others because we only had his POV in TDT, but I tried to make this as in-character as I could... hope it came out okay.