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The first time Ronan brought it up, it was over the phone, and Adam was halfway through a cup of microwave Ramen.
“You should move in with me,” Ronan said.
Adam scowled down at his phone, a forkful of noodles halfway to his mouth. The display read RONAN and they’d been on the call for 23:47 and counting. He had just finished a ten hour shift, and he didn’t want to think about why this particular suggestion of Ronan’s had pissed him off so much. He scowled a little harder.
“No,” he said.
“Okay,” Ronan replied, and that was it. They stayed on the call for another 23:47 while Adam ate two more cups of Ramen, and Ronan didn’t mention it again.
The second time Ronan brought it up, it was to apologize for bringing it up the first time.
“I didn’t mean to…push,” he said carefully, which pissed Adam off, because Ronan never said things carefully. He didn’t do anything carefully.
“It’s fine,” Adam said dismissively. He held up two dress shirts on hangers and showed them to Ronan. “Which one?”
“Blue,” Ronan pointed.
Adam had known he would pick that one. He put the other shirt back in the closet and started putting the blue one on. Ronan was sitting cross-legged on the bed in Adam’s studio apartment, because the bed was the only piece of furniture in Adam’s studio apartment. It was a small, practical space with a kitchenette and a surprisingly spacious bathroom. Adam hardly spent any time in it, so it didn’t matter to him that it was small and lacked personality. At times, Adam himself felt small and lacking in personality.
Ronan regularly commented on the sparsity of Adam’s apartment, but it was always rude and biting. He had never before made an offer to dramatically alter Adam’s living arrangements.
“Are you sure it’s fine?” Ronan asked. “You’re making a face.”
“I’m not moving in with you,” Adam said.
“Yeah, I got that,” Ronan frowned. “I just thought we were on the same page here.”
“What page is that, exactly?” Adam asked as he buttoned his cuffs.
Ronan reached out from the bed and buttoned them for him. The room was small, so he didn’t even have to lean forward to take Adam’s wrist in his hand.
“I’m serious about this,” Ronan said, and that careful tone of voice was back again. Adam supposed he should be flattered that he was the only thing in the world Ronan ever deigned to handle with care.
“So am I,” Adam replied, but he was aggravated. “I don’t want to move into your apartment.”
Something dawned on Ronan’s face. “You don’t like my apartment? Don’t be a snob, Parrish.”
“I really like your apartment,” Adam said. “Black or brown shoes?”
Ronan made a face at him then, clearly done indulging him with his wardrobe selection. Ronan wore a variation of the same outfit every day, all black, all the time. It saved him a lot of time in the morning, or before special events. For example, it had only taken him five minutes to get dressed for this hospital charity function they were supposed to attend, and Adam was going on twenty minutes worrying about his shirt and his shoes and his hair.
“So what’s the problem?”
“It’s your apartment,” Adam said. “That doesn’t work for me. It would never become our apartment. It would just always be your apartment with some of my stuff in it.”
Ronan leaned back against the wall and considered that.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay?” Adam repeated.
Ronan shrugged. “Yeah.”
The third time Ronan brought it up, it was to tell Adam that he was moving.
“Why? Your lease isn’t up for another six months,” Adam handed Ronan half of his sandwich.
Ronan took the sandwich and ate half of the half in one big bite. “I’m sick of the commute.”
“The commute…where?” Adam asked, baffled. Ronan did not technically have a real job or a commute of any kind.
“To the hospital,” Ronan said, like it was obvious. “And it’s too far from my gym. And the store. And Declan. That’s four reasons.”
“You picked it because it was far from Declan on purpose,” Adam reminded him. “And you don’t work here.”
Ronan glanced over his shoulder at the hospital building that loomed behind them. “I’m here all the time for one reason or another. I’m thinking of becoming an ambulance chaser to cut down on the drive time.”
“I think you need a law degree to be an ambulance chaser,” Adam replied absently. “So…what? You’re telling me this because you want help finding a new place?”
“I want us to find a place together,” Ronan said casually, not carefully this time, but still casually. “Your lease is up soon, right?”
Adam’s lease was up in two months. He had been procrastinating finding new living arrangements. Most likely because he knew Ronan was going to ask this question again, and he had wanted to give him a different answer. Adam was very perceptive. Ronan was very much in love with him, and Adam very much knew it.
“Okay,” Adam agreed. He took a bite of his sandwich. “This weekend?”
“Okay,” Ronan agreed. He took the rest of Adam’s sandwich. “This is a bullshit lunch. You’ve still got twenty minutes in your break. Let’s get some real food.”
The fourth time Ronan brought it up, it was to discuss the division of financial responsibility, which Adam had known would be brought up eventually, but he hadn’t been ready for it. Ronan had a knack for catching Adam off guard.
“I make more money than you,” Adam said.
“You have more debt than me,” Ronan said.
“Fair,” Adam acquiesced. “So this is based on our debt-to-income ratio and not just our general income? I thought it was typically just based on how much each person makes.”
“Gross or net?” Ronan asked. “I do have an investment portfolio. And I sold a dresser last week. You wouldn’t fucking believe how much.”
Adam had a few ideas, but he did not want to know how much Ronan’s client had spent on the dresser. Even though Ronan only dealt in beautiful, high-end pieces that he sometimes spent weeks restoring, it was still hard for Adam to comprehend anyone spending so much on a sideboard or a set of dining chairs. He didn’t understand what made them worth more just because they’d been built in some dusty shop circa 42 BC., or whatever.
“Was it more than my proposed contribution to our future rent?”
Ronan gestured with his hand as if to say near enough .
“So my contribution to this living arrangement is not equal to, but also somehow not lesser than, the cost of a vintage dresser?”
“It was a Broyhill,” Ronan said defensively.
Adam shrugged. He didn’t know what that meant. When Ronan said brand names of furniture it was to Adam what he imagined it was to Ronan when Adam said things like intubate or epistaxis or vasovagal syncope .
“If you want to pay more, you can,” Ronan said. He pushed their un-signed lease across the table towards Adam. “It’s no skin off my nuts.”
Adam huffed, irritated, and leafed through the lease. Ronan’s proposition for their expenses was fair. It made sense. He had clearly put a lot of thought into it, and he’d presented it to Adam in a way that he knew wouldn’t upset him by implying Adam wasn’t able to contribute. He had instead framed it within the knowledge that Ronan possessed more financial assets than Adam, due to the massive privilege that came along with having two dead parents. It was careful. Adam was slowly coming to appreciate the way Ronan approached him with such care.
His medical school debt was hefty. Not quite debilitating, but hefty. His paycheck was decent, but if he wanted to start making a dent in his loans, he would need to start divesting more funds towards repayment. Sharing the load with another person, a person who had more extra money and less debt than you, seemed like an obvious solution; a golden ticket to a debt free existence in the next ten to fifteen years, provided this person who had more money than you didn’t renege on the agreement.
“How serious are you about this?” Adam asked.
“About the apartment?” Ronan shrugged. “I’m sure there’s something better out there, but I’m fucking sick of looking.”
Adam was also sick of looking. They didn’t fight very often, not really, they bickered for fun because they were both stubborn assholes, but they didn’t genuinely argue. They had done nothing but argue during the whole house hunting process. Ronan had almost cried out of frustration once, because he was sure he’d accidentally doomed their relationship by suggesting they look for apartments and they’d accidentally uncovered some deep-seated incompatibility in doing so. That was not the case. They were very compatible. They were just both stubborn assholes.
“No,” Adam said. He pushed the lease back across the table, and gestured loosely between the two of them. “This.”
Ronan sat and stared at him for a second.
“Very serious,” he finally said.
“It’s cheaper for me to re-sign on my studio than it is for me to get dumped and start the whole process over,” Adam said.
“If we broke up, I’d move out of DC, so you could keep this place. Everything in this god-forsaken city would remind me of you,” Ronan tapped the lease. “But we aren’t going to break up.”
“You can’t know that,” Adam scoffed, but it was a test. He knew it. Ronan had known it before Adam did.
“I do,” Ronan said, and it was almost deathly serious. “If I thought you’d take it, I’d give you a ring right now.”
“Oh,” Adam said. He wouldn’t accept it, not yet, but it was nice to know the thought was there. There would be a day, soon, that he would accept it. “Give me the pen.”
Ronan slid the lease and a Sharpie across the table towards Adam.
“As proposed?” Ronan asked.
Adam initialed and signed where their realtor had indicated.
“As proposed,” Adam agreed.
He watched a slow, toothy grin spread across Ronan’s face. He matched it with one of his own.
“Okay,” Ronan said.
The fifth time Ronan brought it up, it was to tell his brother that he was moving out of his old apartment and was moving in with somebody, and he would be just a few blocks from Declan’s townhouse, but under no circumstances should Declan ever take advantage of that.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Declan said dryly. “You’re seeing someone?”
Adam felt a little offended by that question. He scowled down at Ronan’s phone. The display read DEKLO and they had been on the call for 0:46 and counting. A new personal best. Declan had pissed both of them off in less than sixty seconds. He was usually harmless, and liked using turns-of-phrase such as bold as brass or circle back at a later date, but he was uniquely irritating in a way that only a parentified older brother could be.
“Yeah, idiot,” Ronan said. “The doctor.”
“Oh,” Declan said. “Adam? I didn’t think you were serious about that.”
“Why the fuck would I not be serious about it?” Ronan demanded.
“I thought you made him up.”
“We’ve been together for over a year.”
“I’ve never met him.”
“Every time you call and he’s here, he says hello to you.”
“Oh,” Declan said again. “Well. This is on me, then. Adam is a very standard name. If you’d said his last name was Doe or Smith, I wouldn’t have been surprised.”
“It’s Parrish,” Adam said. “Dr. Parrish, actually.”
“Well,” Declan was clearly caught off guard. Ronan had a talent for catching people off guard. “When you’re settled into your new place, you should come by. I’m sure Matthew would love to meet you.”
“Sure,” Adam said. He did not mention that he had already met Matthew several times, and Matthew had saved himself in Adam’s phone as MATTHEW LYNCH!!! and he regularly received a dizzying assortment of stream-of-consciousness text messages from Matthew, such as fell off skateboard skinned knee tetanus shot??? and i cant believe greys anatomy is still going do u and ur dr friends hate on this show in the breakroom?? I like Scrubs personally. I bet ur a house md guy. He’s serious like u and Ronan’s birthday is next week what r u going to get him?? I got him a helmet so he can ride on ur motorcycle with u so don’t get him that.
Ronan rolled his eyes with all the annoyance of an angsty teenager being confronted about his report card. “Okay, Declan, anything else?”
“No,” Declan said, clearly annoyed by Ronan’s attitude. “I’m glad you’re happy, Ronan.”
“Thanks,” Ronan reached out and hung up the call.
“He has to be kidding, right?” Adam asked. “There’s no way he doesn’t remember me. Don’t you and Matthew talk about me?”
Ronan shrugged. “Declan wouldn’t give me any credit if it would save my life. If someone had a gun pointed at my head and they told Declan he had to give me the benefit of the doubt, he’d let them shoot me.”
Adam frowned. That hardly seemed fair. He knew Ronan had been a troubled youth. He joked about it now, but the death of his parents had weighed heavily on him for a long time. There had been behavioral issues. A suicide attempt, or two, Adam wasn’t sure how many. It was difficult to tell from the crisscross of scars on Ronan’s forearms. It could have been one very dramatic attempt, or it could have been multiple slightly less desperate attempts. Ronan did not talk about it. After the attempt (or attempts), Declan had pulled him out of his boarding school in their hometown and brought him to DC and put him in a different boarding school. Then there was his stint in rehab. And Ronan’s controversial return to fighting.
Declan had responded to each development in Ronan’s life like a hysterical mother hen, aggressively, inappropriately, unhelpfully, and he had always, first, assumed the worst. Adam recognized it as a defense mechanism, because he saw a little of himself in what little he knew of Declan, but he also saw that it hurt Ronan. Ronan was not gracious about it, they fought constantly, and then, inevitably, they moved on. Most of it was water under the bridge. Brackish, polluted water under a derelict, rickety bridge. He’s all I’ve got, was how he had justified it to Adam, and Adam knew Declan would say the same thing, so he tried not to get involved. There were many different kinds of love.
Adam knew Ronan to be a reasonably responsible and emotionally stable adult. He had not always been that way. He still had his moments, everyone did, and Adam couldn’t say he was fond of the fighting, but Ronan didn’t drink, or smoke, or start fights with people outside of the ring anymore. He was very guarded, but with Adam he was warm, and funny, and he had contributed positively to Adam’s life almost a ridiculous amount. Adam wasn’t sure what he had ever done without Ronan.
“I bet you have a fuck ton of antique furniture for this apartment of ours, huh,” Adam said.
“Yeah,” Ronan said, and then, with a wicked grin, “A fuck ton.”
“We should invite Declan over for dinner,” Adam suggested, and he matched Ronan’s sharp-edged smile. “Once we’re settled into our new place.”
“Okay,” Ronan said, and he grabbed Adam’s wrist and pulled him onto his lap and kissed him.
Adam closed his eyes and let himself be kissed.
The sixth time Ronan brought it up, it was to invite Gansey and Blue to the housewarming party. They were all at dinner, one of their now traditional Thursday night double dates at Blue’s favorite Italian place. Ronan was working on his third basket of complimentary garlic bread, and Gansey had tiny meatballs on his socks. Adam felt stupidly, ridiculously happy.
On the table, Adam’s phone lit up with a message from MATTHEW LYNCH!!!
omg 911 declan is introducing me to his gf he is Freaking Out
Adam showed Ronan the message. Ronan rolled his eyes. He opened his own phone and texted MATTHEW <3.
whats her name let me guess is it ashley
no its jordan
“The first time I asked, he said no,” Ronan said. “Point blank. I cried myself to sleep that night, man.”
Gansey made a shocked face. Blue rolled her eyes. Adam had told her the story, and she had accepted his reasoning, but she’d told him that Ronan was never going to let him live it down. She had been right, as always. Ronan hadn’t really cried, but the story was funnier when he made Adam seem like the bad guy.
“So, this is…a housewarming party?” Blue asked. “Like on TV? We’re the kind of adults who have housewarming parties now?”
“I think it’s a great idea,” Gansey said, grinning hugely. Once he’d found out that Ronan and Adam were cosmically, divinely perfect for each other, he’d done all he could to fully support their perpetual cohabitation. “What’s the dress code? Business casual?”
“It’s regular socks dress code,” Ronan said.
“Oh, now Lynch, that’s very unfair of you,” Gansey said with a frown. “Should we bring a bottle of something?”
“Welch’s Sparkling Grape,” Adam suggested. “It starts at 7. Do not be early. I will make you wait in the hallway if you’re early.”
Blue rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”
Blue and Gansey were, predictably, five minutes early. Blue was not dressed in business casual, and she was carrying a bag from Williams Sonoma in her hand. Gansey was dressed in business casual, wearing regular socks, and he was carrying a bottle of Welch’s Sparkling Grape in his hand.
“Jesus Christ,” Ronan said when he looked out the peephole at them and saw Gansey’s very sensible navy blue socks. “Do you think if I asked him to stand on his head and spit nickels, he’d do it?”
“Maybe not nickels,” Adam said. “Maybe commemorative bi-centennial coins.”
Ronan laughed. He opened the door to let Blue and Gansey into their new apartment. Even though Adam knew neither of them would judge, he had still felt some anxiety about inviting them over. Adam cared what people thought about him. He cared what Gansey thought about him. Ronan had spent hours assuring him, on no uncertain terms, that Gansey would like their apartment, but it shouldn’t matter if he did or not, because Gansey didn’t live there.
Adam liked their apartment. It was big, about the same size as the apartment Ronan had just moved out of, but it was laid out a little differently. They had prioritized hardwood floors and original features, because that was something Adam was able to prioritize now, and they had floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room. The bedroom was small, and almost totally consumed by Ronan’s (and also Adam’s, now) enormous California King bed. Every corner of the place was filled with some antique piece of furniture or potted plant or stack of books. The kitchen was small too, but full of stainless steel, and it accommodated the four of them nicely as Ronan popped the top off Gansey’s Welch’s Sparkling Grape.
“This is nice,” Blue said. “Very pretentious. You’re living the dream.”
“What’s pretentious about it?” Adam asked Blue.
“How old is that dining table?” Gansey asked Ronan.
“18th Century,” Ronan replied. “Had it in storage.”
“What century is the coffee table from?” Blue asked as she raised a pointed eyebrow at Adam.
“That one’s Adam’s,” Ronan handed Blue a glass of sparkling grape juice. “So whatever century Ikea is currently sourcing their particle board from.”
“Of course,” Blue’s eyebrow climbed a little higher. “We wouldn’t want people to get the wrong impression.”
Adam rolled his eyes. He knew it was Blue’s job as his friend to heckle him, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be embarrassed about his boyfriend’s two-hundred year old dining table. Furniture was furniture. All that mattered to him was that he and Ronan now shared a sock drawer and could sleep in the same bed whenever they wanted without one of them needing to pack an overnight bag.
They made pesto and swapped stories about Ronan and Gansey’s boarding school escapades and Adam and Gansey’s residencies and Blue and Adam’s emergency room nightmares, which were mostly disgusting things that made Ronan say that’s gnarly, Sargent . It was easy, and their apartment was perfect for hosting, and when they closed the door behind Blue and Gansey at the end of the night, Ronan pressed Adam up against the wall and kissed him.
“This is great,” Ronan said.
“Yeah?” Adam asked, still trapped between Ronan’s body and the wall. “I can’t complain.”
“We should christen the bedroom,” Ronan said as he kissed Adam’s neck.
“Now?” Adam looked at his watch. “It’s late.”
Ronan pulled away and gave Adam a flat, unamused look. “It’s ten-thirty.”
“My shift tomorrow starts at six,” Adam protested weakly.
“So?” Ronan asked. He kissed Adam’s neck, behind his ear, then his jaw, then the thin skin over his Adam’s apple. “You can be in and out in fifteen minutes.”
Adam laughed and pushed at Ronan’s chest, but Ronan turned his head just slightly, and his mouth ghosted over a spot on Adam’s neck that always made him shudder and relax and immediately give in to Ronan’s cajoling.
“I’ll do all the work,” Ronan murmured, and he bit down gently on the soft skin of Adam’s neck, once, not hard enough to bruise, and then again in a different spot, gently, like a dog with a bird in its teeth. “I’ll make it good for you, I promise.”
That sent another shiver rushing through Adam’s body, the weight of Ronan’s words and the intensity in his voice, but it also made him want to grab Ronan by the shoulders and say it’s always good for me nothing has ever been so good I have no idea what I did to deserve this and we could never fuck again and I would still think you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. He did not grab Ronan and say those things. Instead, he said, “Fine. But I’m setting a timer.”
He let himself be led down the hallway to their bedroom, and he let Ronan undress him, one piece of clothing at a time. His shirt was unbuttoned and draped over the back of a chair, his belt was laid on the dresser, and he rested a hand on the back of Ronan’s head when he knelt to take off Adam’s socks and underwear. Those he balled up and tossed unceremoniously into the hallway.
“Lie down,” Ronan said.
The only light in the room was the table lamp by Ronan’s side of the bed: the left side, closest to the door. He slept on Adam’s hearing side, because Adam turned his ear to the pillow and shut the entire world out for a minimum of eight hours a night on his nights off, and he didn’t want to sleep with his back to Ronan. The curtains were already drawn, and it felt like it was just the two of them in the world, ensconced in the privacy of their room. Adam climbed up onto the bed and lay down in the middle of the mattress with his head on a stack of pillows.
He watched as Ronan undressed himself, one piece at a time, his t-shirt and jeans tossed to the floor and his own socks and underwear also rolled up and thrown into the hall to lie on the floor near Adam’s. When Ronan knelt on the bed and started to crawl towards him, Adam watched the dim yellow light of the lamp wash over the cool tones of his skin, and he indulged his sudden impulse to reach out and touch him.
Ronan paused when Adam’s hand found his face. He turned his cheek into the curve of Adam’s palm, and then he smiled. It was a pleased smile, but it was laden with something else, something Adam wasn’t used to seeing in another person’s face, something Ronan always gave him so freely. Ronan kissed the center of Adam’s hand, and then he leaned over his body to take lube and a condom out of his bedside table drawer. At first, that expression on Ronan’s face had made Adam want to run a mile, to lie and say this isn’t working out , to deny himself the privilege of ever seeing Ronan again, but he didn’t do any of those things. He let Ronan stare, and he let Ronan give, and after a while, he had stopped shrinking away from it, and he had started reaching for more of it, like a plant towards the sun or a wave toward a shore or one lonely touch starved boy toward another lonely touch starved boy.
“Let me,” Adam said, but Ronan waved his hands away and set the condom down out of his reach.
“I’m doing all the work, remember?” Ronan asked, and he wiggled his eyebrows lasciviously, with a teasing smirk and the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth.
He uncapped the lube and unceremoniously drizzled some over his first two fingers. It dripped off his hand and onto Adam’s stomach, and he gasped at the cool shock of it. Without hesitating, Ronan leaned down and licked the lube off the firm plane of Adam’s stomach luxuriously, teasingly slow, and then he turned his head slightly to breathe against the flushed skin of Adam’s cock.
“Ronan,” Adam said, and Ronan glanced up at him from under his eyelashes, his mouth open, his tongue pink and wet and just barely poking out over his bottom lip. He wasn’t sure what he’d wanted to say, maybe I love you, or maybe hurry up. In the end, Ronan didn’t wait for a response, and Adam said nothing.
Instead, he watched the muscle in Ronan’s arm bunch under his skin as he reached behind himself to sink a finger inside. He couldn’t see it, but he saw the way Ronan’s face changed, and that expression was familiar too, equal parts anticipation and enjoyment. Ronan opened his mouth wider and shifted very slightly to suck gently on the head of Adam’s cock.
Time seemed to stretch, from just that one moment of Ronan’s weighted gaze and Adam’s tightly coiled anticipation into what felt like an endless expanse of pleasure; and the room seemed to narrow, from the entire scope of their new apartment, their shared home, to just the weight of their bodies on the sheets of the bed.
It wasn’t long before Ronan was sitting up on his knees and propping himself up with one palm flat against the mattress to press a second finger inside himself. Adam reached out for him again, and Ronan didn’t have a free hand to dismiss him this time. He curled his palm around the back of Ronan’s head. His fingernails briefly scraped against the scratchy-soft fuzz of hair on Ronan’s scalp, and then he wrapped his hand around the back of Ronan’s neck and pushed him down, slowly, until his nose was pressed against the skin of Adam’s belly.
Adam glanced up and saw that Ronan was perfectly still, and tightly wound, with tension visible all through the expanse of his back and the slope of his arms.
“Don’t stop,” Adam said softly.
Ronan made a soft sound in the back of his throat. It wasn’t a complaint, because Adam knew that Ronan loved this, and Ronan didn’t let anything happen if he didn’t want to, but it was still plaintive, almost helpless. He swallowed around the head of Adam’s cock, and rolled his shoulder back to push his fingers further inside himself. Adam lay back and waited for Ronan to move, to lift his head against the weight of Adam’s hand and then come back again to envelop him in the tight, wet heat of his mouth again and again.
“You can take me,” Adam said, and he hitched his hips upward slightly just to feel the tightening of Ronan’s throat as he choked. “Come on.”
When Ronan sat up, he was breathing heavily. His entire body was flushed pink, ruddy and warm to the touch from his cheekbones to the tip of his cock to the tops of his thighs. He reached for the condom and tore the foil open with his teeth. Adam saw his hands were shaking slightly. There was sweat along his collarbone and gathered in the hollow of his throat and he was still smiling, still looking at Adam in that same awful way, but it seemed heightened by his swollen mouth and his slick fingers.
The application of the condom was perfunctory, and the subsequent uncapping of the lube to squirt a copious amount onto Adam’s latex-covered cock was done with another teasing smirk. It diffused some of the tension, and gave Adam a moment to center himself, to press his thumb against Ronan’s bottom lip, and then lean his head back against the pillows.
Ronan moved up on the bed to plant his legs on either side of Adam’s hips with his knees digging into the mattress and his thick thighs already trembling slightly with the effort.
“Ready?” Ronan asked.
Adam nodded. He held his breath, and then he regretted it, because all the air went out of his lungs when Ronan sank down onto his cock. It was a smooth, easy slide, and then their bodies were flush, and Ronan was still panting, his chest heaving like a bull, red with exertion and rippling with muscle. He lifted his hips slightly and pushed himself up on his knees, and then lowered himself back down.
“Fuck,” Ronan said. “I did not think this through.”
Adam felt slightly dazed. It took him a few seconds to realize Ronan had said something, and then another few seconds for him to ask, “What?”
“I don’t know if I can move,” Ronan turned his gaze up to the ceiling. He had one hand planted flat on Adam’s chest and the other behind himself, on Adam’s knee. “It feels too fucking good.”
“Oh,” Adam said, because he understood, really, because Ronan was on top of him, heavy and tight and very warm, and it was a little overwhelming. He didn’t know what else to say.
“Fuck,” Ronan said again, and then he leaned forward to grab the headboard with both hands. It took him another moment of cursing and sweating and biting his lip furiously before he was able to lift himself again, and then he found a rhythm, and then it was easy. He pressed his hands flat against the headboard and worked his hips back to meet Adam’s body, and Adam planted his feet against the bed to give Ronan something to push back against.
The positioning of Ronan’s body meant that Adam was completely caged in by him, pinned to the mattress by his legs and trapped against the pillows by his arms stretched up over their heads. Ronan’s mouth was open and his eyes were closed and he was moaning, guttural, noisy little exhalations every time he took Adam fully inside of him again.
Adam lifted his shoulders up off the bed and propped himself up on his elbows to close the distance between them and kiss Ronan on the mouth. He made a louder sound, then, and parted his lips against Adam’s. It was good, almost too good, like Ronan had said, and Adam needed it to be over, he needed the intensity to ebb and he needed Ronan in his arms, sweaty and sated and engaged in his florid, foul brand of pillow talk. He pressed one hand to the hollow of Ronan’s throat, and he reached down between their bodies to wrap his other hand around Ronan’s cock. His skin was almost searingly hot, and he was wet and velvety soft in Adam’s palm. Adam put a little weight behind the hand around Ronan’s throat and a little weight in the soles of his feet against the mattress, and he started to thrust upwards into Ronan’s body.
“Oh, God,” Ronan swore, deep and raw and a little strangled by the pressure on his neck. “Fuck, Adam, come on.”
“You first,” Adam said, even though it almost pained him to say it, but he needed to see Ronan come apart, to see Ronan unspool in his hands.
Ronan tightened his grip on the headboard. His face adopted another expression Adam loved, relaxed, blissful, without the usual downturn to his mouth or furrow between his eyebrows. With a guttural cry, Ronan stilled his hips and came in Adam’s hand, a long, drawn-out completion that had his breath stuck in his chest and his body bearing down tightly around the place where Adam was still fucking him.
He was pliant afterwards, with a slack face and his arms quivering slightly, and Adam loved it. He loved seeing him so unguarded and so undone, it was intense and intimate and something Ronan never shared with anybody else. That was a powerful thought, that only Adam got to have this. Selfish, maybe, possessive in a way he knew Ronan would like, and Adam would’ve considered moving in with Ronan during the first week of their relationship if he’d known it would change things this much, to know that he belonged somewhere and that someone belonged to him.
Adam couldn’t give voice to all of that in that moment, with Ronan trembling with sensitivity but still so willing on top of him, so instead he said “Fuck, I love you,” and then his eyes rolled back in his head and his arms dropped to the bed as his own orgasm rose up and crashed through his body like he’d been thrown through a plate glass window headfirst into bliss.
He was barely aware of it when Ronan moved and lifted himself off Adam’s body to lie down next to him. Every place their bodies touched was hot and damp, but necessary, an essential element of connection in the quiet that stretched over the room.
“You always look so serious when we fuck,” Ronan said at last, but he said it in the tone of voice he always used when he was observing something he liked.
“I take fucking very seriously,” Adam said. He took everything very seriously, but most serious of all to him was Ronan, with or without his clothes on, with or without a bruise on his face, with or without a fancy shared apartment and a legally binding document with both of their names on it.
“Pervert,” Ronan teased, and he rolled over to kiss Adam’s chest before he bit down gently on his nipple.
Adam said ow and shoved Ronan’s head away, and then Ronan climbed out of bed laughing and pulled Adam from between the sheets and into the shower. They showered, they changed the bedding, they turned off Ronan’s bedside table lamp, and then they lay together in the darkness.
When they were still and quiet and lying on their backs looking at the ceiling, the doubt set in. Adam tried to reassure himself by thinking that this was all Ronan’s idea, and therefore, if it went horribly wrong, they could say it was all Ronan’s fault. Adam knew he wouldn’t do that, so it didn’t make him feel much better. If it went horribly wrong, it was mutually assured destruction. When they fought, it was never yelling and door slamming and petty insults. It was Ronan heaving himself into the ring and Adam throwing himself into a double shift and neither of them talking or problem-solving or trying to express themselves to the other. He tried to imagine the stony, sullen dissolution of their relationship. Ronan rarely did anything quietly or without asking for attention, but Adam knew somehow that if Ronan ever left him, it would be silently. He imagined it would be like watching a nuclear bomb drop from the sky, seeing the explosion before hearing it, and waiting in breathless anxiety for the ripple of devastation to make its way toward you. Adam didn"t know what he would do in the event of a nuclear explosion, and he didn"t know what he would do if Ronan ever left him.
Adam was not very good at sharing. He wasn’t used to it, because he had always been alone and so he’d never really done it, and he didn’t think he liked doing it all that much. Ronan also was not very good at sharing. He’d never had to, because there was nothing he had ever wanted for, and nobody liked to be in the same space as him for too long. It seemed like a terrible idea, like oil and water, or possibly something a little more obvious and heavy handed and on the nose like gasoline and a match. Briefly, Adam envisioned himself as a puddle of gasoline into which Ronan, the match, tossed himself. After the initial explosion, all that was left was for the gasoline to burn off, and then the fire would die out on its own. He scowled at himself, impressed with his own imagination, and annoyed by his own cynicism.
“You’re sure this is okay?” Adam asked the ceiling, because he couldn’t turn and ask Ronan.
“Yeah, Adam,” Ronan said.
Ronan reached out and took Adam’s hand. He laced their fingers together on top of the blanket. Adam closed his eyes. He imagined them both as matches: lit, aflame, and possibly headed for something pleasant, like birthday candles or a campfire.
“I can hear you thinking,” Ronan muttered. “Knock it the fuck off and go to sleep.”
“Okay,” Adam said, and he squeezed Ronan’s hand.
Ronan squeezed back.
The seventh time Ronan brought it up, it was to ask Adam a different question.
“Do you remember the first time I asked you to move in with me?” he asked.
Adam looked up from his book. “Yeah.”
“You said no,” Ronan continued. He was leaning against the doorway into their living room, silhouetted by the warm golden light coming from the kitchen. There was a bruise on his cheek and his left wrist was wrapped. He was wearing a white tank-top and black jeans. Adam wanted to kiss him.
“Yeah,” Adam closed his book and set it down on the couch next to him. “I did.”
“Hypothetically, if I were to ask you a different question, would you say no?”
“No,” Adam said. “I wouldn’t say no.”
“Okay,” Ronan came into the room. “So, hypothetically, if I were to get down on my knees right now, and ask you a very important question, you wouldn’t say no. What would you say?”
“Ronan,” Adam’s voice felt stuck in his chest, but somehow he managed to say, “Just ask me.”
He watched, breathless, as Ronan slowly sank to one knee in front of the couch, so that he was eye level with Adam. Ronan reached into the pocket of his jeans.
“Adam,” he began, but Adam couldn’t take it anymore.
“Yes,” Adam said. “I’m saying yes.”
“Okay,” Ronan said, and he smiled.