Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The worst decision Adam Parrish ever made was moving in with his two best friends for the summer between his freshman and sophomore years of college.

His next worst was accepting an internship on his best friend's — Richard Campbell Gansey III — mother's congressional campaign a week later, and his third worst was falling into bed with his other best friend — Ronan Lynch — the week after that, but without making his top-ranking worst decision, nothing else that summer would have occurred. Or possibly it would have, but moving in with Gansey and Ronan definitely didn't help.

For as long as Adam had known them, Gansey and Ronan had always had a vacant third bedroom at Monmouth Manufacturing — an ancient red brick industrial building dropped onto a plot of cracked and weedy asphalt in a Northern Virginia suburb otherwise populated with multi-million dollar subdivisions and stacks of high rise condos plopped on top of Sweetgreens, CorePower Yoga studios, and Whole Foods. No one knew what Monmouth had manufactured, but Gansey had manufactured an apartment out of the second floor of the building, turning offices into bedrooms and the rest of the floor into an open-plan living area that had been recently updated to make it — livable. Based on what Adam had heard of Monmouth’s prior state, he probably would not have agreed to move in for the summer if Gansey hadn't put in a real kitchen and bathroom. Adam might have grown up in a less-than-ideal situation, but he would have had a very hard time moving into a place where the kitchen was also the laundry room and also the bathroom.

The fact that Gansey and Ronan had a spare room they made no effort to rent out screamed excess. Waste. They were all nineteen years old, but Gansey and Ronan had the kind of wealth Adam couldn't fathom. The kind of wealth where remodeling an apartment to put in a kitchen full of brand new stainless steel appliances and a bathroom with a rain shower head and heated tile floor was pocket change. The kind of wealth Adam wanted, and that made his insides tangle with both anger and envy anytime Gansey or Ronan treated money casually.

Anger usually came first. It used to be that anger always came first, but over the course of freshman year, Adam had started putting some space between events and his reactions to them. Except when Gansey initially offered the third bedroom at Monmouth free-of-charge, anger had come first, and it launched them into the longest fight of their young friendship. Which meant it lasted all of three days before Adam saw Gansey in their History of Globalization class again and Gansey made a more reasonable offer of four hundred dollars per month, utilities included.

Gansey might have been stupid about money, but Adam would have been stupid to pass up rent that cheap. He’d looked into subletting an apartment from another Georgetown student, but all the flyers on the community boards around campus listed far smaller apartments at double the cost. So Adam had agreed to Gansey’s offer — they fist bumped on it before class started — and good thing he had, because when he checked his email later in the day, he had an invitation to interview for a data analyst internship on Gansey’s mother’s congressional campaign, and when Adam tried on his suit — his only suit — it didn’t fit quite as well as it had in fall semester, the last time he’d worn it.

Because over the course of the school year, thanks to the unlimited meal plan that accompanied his grants and scholarships, Adam hadn’t just gained the freshman fifteen.

He’d gained the freshman twenty-three.

So all the money he’d save by living with Gansey and Ronan would be going toward buying a new suit or three.

Adam had needed some of those twenty-three pounds. He’d been long and lean — a little too lean — his entire high school career, working three jobs that required a fair amount of physical exertion without the food security that should have accompanied it. He hadn’t needed all twenty-three though, or the soft paunch on his belly and the extra flesh on his hips that made the waistband of all his pants uncomfortably snug by the end of spring semester.

Looking at him clothed, no one would have been any the wiser. His shirts always covered up the slight muffining of his hips above his pants, and the outward curve of his lower stomach was gentle enough it wasn’t noticeable in profile. Even in the mirror it wasn’t that noticeable — he just looked a little bit soft around the middle — but Adam felt it. His stomach creased when he sat or bent over, and his hips pushed against the denim of his jeans, confining him just enough it became a relief to get back to his dorm room at the end of the day and change into sweatpants.

He knew he should do something about it. Run on the treadmills at the campus fitness center, or stop eating the entire oversized portions the staff at the dining hall served him. Except those twenty-three pounds didn’t seem to matter to Ronan when he and Adam finally hooked up during finals week after circling one another since Gansey introduced them in September. Adam definitely hadn’t worried about them when Ronan had been on his knees, face-to-face with Adam’s little bit of pudge.

So Adam could tolerate the freshman twenty-three.

Or what was the freshman twenty-three before he moved into Monmouth Manufacturing and then began his internship.

“I do believe the circumstances call for a celebration,” Gansey said once Adam deposited his final box of belongings — textbooks the bookstore wouldn’t buy back despite all being published within the past two years — in his room.

His first few trips upstairs, Ronan had helped, but once Adam made it very clear that — though they were testing the waters of being boyfriends — he would not be staying in Ronan’s room, Ronan had resumed what he’d been doing when Adam arrived: sitting on the overly large leather couch and playing a video game on the overly large high definition television. Were this not a very typical Ronan Lynch response when things didn’t go his way, it would have turned Adam off, but he knew what he’d walked into when he kissed Ronan back after Ronan kissed him. Adam could deal with Ronan being a brat. Sometimes he even liked it.

“I don’t think that’s needed,” Adam replied, hovering in the doorway of his room. At some point, Gansey had furnished it with a bed, a dresser, a bookshelf, and a desk — everything plain but certainly not from IKEA — and all Adam wanted was to unpack. He didn’t need to celebrate temporarily moving ten miles outside of Washington, DC, for the summer, not when he and Gansey had to be at Gansey’s mom’s campaign headquarters by nine o’clock the next morning.

“Come on, Parrish,” Ronan cut in. He shot one more bad guy in his game before pausing it, then he leaned backward over the couch so he was looking at Adam upside down. It took away none of Ronan’s savage handsomeness — his sharp cheekbones, his pale blue eyes, his thin lips always on the edge of smirking — but it did force Adam to fight back a smile. “It’s tradition.”

“You guys are the only two people who have ever lived here. How is it tradition?”

“It can become one,” Gansey said as he perched himself on the arm of one of the overstuffed chairs flanking the couch. He sat with his back to the floor-to-ceiling paned windows that made up two of the apartment’s outer walls, and the late afternoon sun burnished him more than good genes already had, catching the fairer strands of his perfectly coiffed chestnut hair and turning them golden. “How’s Thai? Does that sound good? Or should we go with that pizza place that has the good garlic knots that come with dipping sauce? Ronan?”

“It’s not me you need to convince,” Ronan replied. Giving his back a break, he sat upright and threw his arm over the back of the couch instead. “Come on, Parrish. Pizza? I’ll pay.”

The change in position still left Ronan looking at Adam — both him and Gansey looking at Adam — and though he understood it was not two-against-one, that Adam could say no and Gansey and Ronan would both go along with his decision, Adam had to shake off the feeling of being prey backed into a corner. These were his friends — his best friend and his boyfriend. They liked him. If they didn’t, he wouldn’t be standing in Monmouth Manufacturing. They wouldn’t be living together for the summer. Adam could get over himself and his principles and his pride and let Ronan pay for his dinner tonight, and next time, Adam could pay for Ronan. He could pay for Gansey too. Friends did that. Boyfriends did that.

It had simply taken Adam a very long time to get the experience needed to fully understand the concept.

“Alright. Pizza,” he agreed. “No anchovies.”

“I would never,” Gansey replied, then he clapped his hands once and smoothly climbed off the arm of the chair. “I’ll order. Lynch, your card?” Before he could finish the question, a silver credit card had been aimed at his face like a ninja star, and Gansey caught it expertly like this was an everyday occurrence. Holding it up between two fingers as he headed off to find his phone and call in their order, he told Ronan, “I’d prefer it if you confirmed I was wearing eye protection first next time, but thank you.”

“No problem, man.” Ronan veered back toward Adam as he shifted to shove his wallet back in his pocket. “Are you done?”

Adam nodded. “No thanks to you.”

“My assistance is a privilege, not a right.” Smacking the back of the couch, Ronan said, “Are you going to just hang out in the door of your new room, or are you going to come take a load off?”

If they were going to celebrate, unpacking could wait. The most important things — Adam’s new suits — already hung in his closet, fresh from the tailor and still shrouded in plastic. His ties and dress shirts — those, thankfully, still fit — were with his old suit in its garment bag, and he knew exactly which box held his nice shoes. In the morning, Adam would only have to find a pair of boxers and two matching socks, and if he couldn’t manage that considering the well-labeled packing he’d performed, he had bigger problems.

“I like my new room,” he said as he pushed himself out of the doorway, taking his time as he walked toward the couch.

“Yeah. So I’ve gathered,” Ronan deadpanned, pressing his lips into a thin line as he watched Adam’s approach.

Adam shook his head, but he smiled as he said, “Shitbag.”

Ronan just grinned back.

When he reached the couch, Adam should have been civilized and walked around, but, like he’d seen Gansey and Ronan do a hundred times on their way from their bedrooms to the living room, he climbed over the back of the couch and sank onto the cushion next to Ronan. Pressing their legs together from knee to hip, Adam instinctively — if instinct could be acquired in a few days — leaned into Ronan. But, really, it had been months of casual touching, getting a little too friendly, a little too close, that allowed Adam to do it so easily. Combined with growing up in a house where every kind of affection lacked, he was probably well on his way to becoming a glutton for physical touch.

Settling his head on Ronan's shoulder as Ronan picked up his Playstation controller again and unpaused his game, Adam said, soft enough Gansey wouldn't be able to hear it where he stood in the kitchen, “Thanks. For dinner.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Ronan replied, nudging his knee into Adam's. “Get used to it.”

“You're not buying —”

“Who said anything about me buying you dinner?” Ronan jabbed a few buttons and mowed down a few people before he continued, “All I meant is we don't cook.”

“You just got a new kitchen six months ago,” Adam replied flatly.

“And you think me and Gansey know how to cook? Do you know how to cook?”

“Not really.” Dorm living didn't provide much opportunity for appliances outside of a microwave, and, before that, Adam’s life consisted of being out of the way as much as possible, which didn't lend itself well to spending time in the kitchen of his parents’ double-wide trailer. “But I could figure it out.”

“Then by all means,” Ronan said and held the controller in one hand as he waved his other toward where Gansey was wrapping up their pizza delivery order, “the kitchen is all yours, wise guy.”

Adam would have to take him up on that offer. He couldn't claim economy as the reason he moved into Monmouth if he had to pay for take out every other night. Gansey definitely pulled strings to get Adam's internship designated as a paid position on his mom’s campaign — Adam could dislike it until the cows came home, but sometimes nepotism benefited him more than he wanted to admit — but the money wasn't infinite.

“Thanks,” he said again, this time more sarcastically than genuinely, and he knocked his knee back against Ronan’s as Gansey came back and collapsed on one of the chairs.

“Half an hour,” he told them both. “Until then, Street Fighter?”

A second controller appeared, and while they waited for the pizzas and garlic knots to arrive, Ronan kicked everyone else’s asses.

When the delivery finally came, Adam found Gansey had unsurprisingly gone overboard. Adam expected he would if he was paying, but not when their dinner was on Ronan's dime. It made sense if they'd done this before though, if they floated through freshman — or Gansey's freshman year, Ronan didn't have the same fondness for higher education as Gansey and Adam and spent his days since cutting his senior year of high school short welding metal monstrosities on Monmouth’s first floor — going back and forth paying for take out, but Adam didn't think Gansey would have ordered as much if Adam hadn't been there.

Three pizza boxes covered the coffee table — one margarita, one half sausage-half avocado, and one pepperoni and sweet peppers — with a container of garlic knots squeezed in between two of them, and Adam thought there was no way they'd finish half the order, let alone all of it. They should have leftovers for days.

Except Adam clearly underestimated his own appetite. He'd had breakfast before he left campus, his last meal at O'Donovan Hall until late August. A ham and cheese omelet, bacon, and toast. Then he'd gotten so caught up in packing his crappy car, driving to Monmouth, and carrying everything inside that he hadn’t eaten lunch, and though Adam was not a stranger to skipping meals, he'd had eight straight months of breakfast, lunch, and dinner everyday with plenty of snacks thrown in there too.

Apparently his stomach was unimpressed with this change to his routine.

Being with Gansey and Ronan also made it simple to lose track. Of time. Of how many slices of pizza Adam reached for. Of how many garlic knots he dragged through buttery, herby dipping sauce. After Adam’s first slice — margherita, with a crispy crust, tangy basil, slices of fresh tomatoes, and thick slabs of gooey melted mozzarella — Ronan handed him a controller and they fought another round of Street Fighter, both of them laughing riotously at the improbable anatomy of Ronan's scantily clad avatar. When Adam lost — as he was wont to do against Ronan, who was impressively skilled at most video games — he handed the controller to Gansey, and while Ronan won again, Adam ate a garlic knot and then a piece of half sausage-half avocado: deep dished, doughy, and surprisingly good.

When the television changed from Street Fighter to Netflix and the opening credits of a movie played on the screen, Adam had a second slice of sausage and avocado, chased by another garlic knot. Then Ronan asked him Have you had the pepperoni and peppers yet? That's the superior pizza, and Adam hadn't, so he had a slice of that, little puddles of grease shining on every slice of pepperoni. During a lull in the middle of the movie, he had a second slice of margherita, and when the end credits rolled and they started packing everything away, only one garlic knot remained and Gansey offered it to Adam, and Adam ate that too.

It was only after the door of the fridge closed when Adam put away the pizza — the one and a half pies left condensed down into two boxes — that he realized how much he'd eaten. On an average day, he'd have three slices at most, and the pizza served at Georgetown’s dining hall paled in both thickness and size next to the the ones from the restaurant Gansey ordered from. Add three garlic knots on top of that and no wonder Adam felt stuffed and carb-drunk as he got himself a glass of water. He'd eaten enough for two people. When he turned the sink off, he laid a hand on his stomach and pressed gently, and his stomach had almost no give. It even whined a little at the pressure.

Adam knew if he tugged his t-shirt down so it laid flat against his body, he'd see a belly that bowed out slightly, more than it did with its bit of softness from the few pounds he'd gained. Physical proof of the five pieces of pizza and three garlic knots he'd eaten without a second thought. He couldn't keep eating this way. He wasn't on campus anymore. Food wasn't limitless and free. And he couldn't afford to gain more weight; he'd gotten a deal on his new suits, but they'd wiped out his clothing budget unless he had an absolute emergency.

Standing in the kitchen, sipping his water and listening to Gansey and Ronan debate the merits of the very bad movie they'd watched, Adam told himself he wouldn't do this anymore. That going overboard celebrating his arrival at Monmouth Manufacturing was one thing, but he couldn't keep overeating the way he had that night. The way he had during the school year. Plus, now he had Ronan taking Adam's clothes off at every opportunity, and Adam didn't want what was underneath to turn Ronan off.

It wouldn't be hard to stick to eating sensibly. Adam knew all about moderation and denying himself. Before getting to Georgetown, he'd never indulged, and even at Georgetown, he hadn't indulged. Not really. He'd just finally had enough for the first time. He could scale back to bare minimum. To just enough. Then he'd probably even lose some weight and go back to fitting into his clothes so his hips wouldn't feel like they were in a vise while he sat through lectures.

In the time it took him to finish his water — a bad idea considering how full he already was — Adam had a plan in place for the rest of the summer. He washed his glass and put it on the draining board, and he felt pretty good about life by the time he joined Gansey and Ronan in front of the television again for one more bad movie before he went to bed.

Adam felt even better the next morning once he put on one of his new suits and looked in the mirror. He wore the worsted wool like armor, and he'd fit in just fine with all the Young Republicans going into battle for Mrs. Gansey. They'd never be able to tell that Adam was a mercenary, not there for the cause, but because it would look good on his resume.

He met Gansey in the kitchen, and Adam poured himself a sensible breakfast — a travel mug full of black coffee. Then then got in the Pig — Gansey's flame orange 1973 Camaro — and drove to campaign headquarters.

Where they were met with a breakfast spread that covered an entire conference table and ruined all of Adam's summer plans for sensibility.

Chapter Text

“Dick, there's no room left in the refrigerator. You need to take the catering Mrs. Schaefer had delivered for lunch — Oh, Parrish. I didn't know you were still here too.”

Helen Gansey was not her mother's campaign manager, but she may as well have been with how she ran campaign headquarters with the regimentation of a naval ship. Not that Helen actually did anything other than tap away at her phone with perfectly manicured nails painted a subtle yet glossy ballet pink. She was simply very efficient at telling the right people the right things to do at the right time.

Like telling her younger brother to take home the catering that couldn't fit in the office refrigerator because it was still full with yesterday's catering that another donor — or possibly the same donor — had delivered.

There was food. Always food. Too much food for an office where half the staff looked like they were preparing for a life in front of a teleprompter and the other half left before ten o'clock in the morning to canvas this neighborhood or work a table at that farmer's market. Donors dropped off brown paper bags full of baked goods in the morning — muffins, croissants, donuts, bagels and cream cheese — and they dropped off catered lunches every afternoon — sandwich platters, boxes of burritos, trays of Chinese food. If staff stayed late — and most nights they did — pizza boxes or aluminum pans of pasta showed up. Whatever wasn’t eaten wound up in the office refrigerator, which a cleaning crew only emptied out on Friday afternoons. That meant the fridge was full by Tuesday, and Helen ended up bullying Gansey into taking home whatever couldn’t be left at room temperature, so the fridge at Monmouth Manufacturing overflowed just as much as the one at the office.

Adam hadn’t cooked a single thing since his internship started.

“I was finishing up the model to predict support on the service member pay initiative,” he told the screen of his laptop before looking up at Helen where she hovered next to Gansey’s desk — perpendicular to Adam’s — with two large, twine-handled paper bags in her hands. She held them with her fingertips like she couldn’t wait to be rid of them, as if carrying leftovers around an otherwise empty office was too pedestrian an endeavor to tackle in patent leather pumps and a sheath dress that fit her like a glove.

“That’s a good one,” Helen replied, though out of Mrs. Gansey’s stances, increasing pay for the troops was the least important and least glamorous of them all. “How’s it look?”

If Adam hadn’t been there, Helen wouldn’t have cared one way or another. She would have dropped the bags on Gansey’s desk with the directive to take them home and then she would have swept herself away to make sure the linen rental company had the right color tablecloths for Mrs. Gansey’s next fundraiser. So Adam told her, “It looks good.”

A quick answer, because Helen probably cared about the initiative as much as Adam did, which was to say very little.

“I’m glad to hear it.” With as much grace as paper bags warranted, Helen set them down on Gansey’s desk and turned back to her little brother to finish her instructions. “Take these home. You, Parrish, and the mean one can have it for dinner. And breakfast. And lunch.”

“How much space do you think we have in our refrigerator, Helen?” Gansey asked. “You've sent us home with food every night this week. Go put it in the dumpster.”

“No,” Adam and Helen said as one, and Helen shot Adam a look before she continued, “That gives someone the chance to poke around and do a write up on all the food waste the campaign generates. You can throw it out when you get home, but it will not be thrown out here.”

Adam had witnessed this Gansey sibling argument before. In the past week alone, it'd happened no less than four times. Extrapolating that out over the three weeks since his internship had started and Adam had seen it a dozen times, and unless donors miraculously stopped delivering food to the office, he projected it'd happen at least another forty times by the end of the summer.

Every single time, Gansey lost, and every single time, they did not throw the food out when they got back to Monmouth Manufacturing. Gansey always wanted to, but Adam wouldn't let him. He couldn't watch all that food — good, quality, expensive food — go to waste. Not because of how it would make the campaign look, but because it was money going right into the trash can, even if Adam hadn't spent a penny on it himself.

So in those three weeks, Adam had eaten more cinnamon raisin bagels, carnitas burritos, and buffalo chicken macaroni and cheese than he'd ever want or need, a daily carb overload that often left him overfull. And tonight — or probably tomorrow, because they still had food left from the night before — he'd be having assorted sandwiches, chips, and chocolate chip cookies from Potbelly if what the bags contained aligned with what had been dropped off for lunch. There had been enough for twenty people earlier in the day. Adam imagined he and Gansey would be taking home more than half of that.

“Thank you, Helen,” Adam said before Gansey could reply with something mildly offensive, like they weren't the campaign's municipal waste team, a service their mother should throw her support behind. “We'll take them with us.”

“Thank you, Parrish,” Helen replied, and the look she sent Gansey clearly communicated he should be more like Adam when it came to listening to her. “Now don't stay too late.”

Helen's phone was back in her hands so quickly Adam couldn't tell where it had come from, and as she strode away from them, Adam turned to Gansey. “Maybe we can find some place to donate it to instead. A shelter or something.”

“I like the way you think, Adam.” Gansey pointed at him before he looked at his watch. “It's late now, but I'll make some calls tomorrow and look into it for next time.”

Because they both knew there would be a next time.

Adam finished his support modeling, then he and Gansey packed up their things for the day and headed out of campaign headquarters to where the Pig waited for them in the parking lot, each of them carrying one of the brown bags full of lunches that hadn't been eaten. Gansey drove back to Monmouth, and based on the pulsing bass of EDM that rattled doors in their frames with every beat, Ronan was still working on something when they arrived home, so Adam went up to his room and changed out of his suit before slipping back down to the building's cavernous first floor.

Without anything else occupying the space, Ronan had taken over all of it since he and Gansey had moved into Monmouth while they were in high school. His first less successful attempts at welding cluttered corners, but more recent pieces — a snarling dog made out of rebar and steel tubing, a raven made of sheetmetal burned black, a dragon's head made from nuts and bolts and other things you'd find at a hardware store — stood closer to the center of the room. In the very middle was Ronan's current project, an enormous winged creature with one head and two beaks, which Ronan squatted next to, his welding mask down over his face as he torched near the bottom of one of the creature's wings. As far as Adam could tell, he was completely oblivious that Gansey and Adam had gotten home, and that Adam had come downstairs to join him.

Walking toward the old desk — probably a relic from when Monmouth actually manufactured something — where Ronan had set up a small sound system, Adam tugged the t-shirt he'd changed into away from his body. Three weeks of unsuccessfully sticking to his summer plan was starting to show, and Adam not wanting to create waste was going to his waist, adding to the paunch he'd acquired over the school year. The softness on his stomach had rounded out into the small swell of a belly, and though his shirts still hid it relatively well, the gentle curve of it had started kissing cotton. The elastic waistband of his gym shorts bit into his hips slightly more too, and Adam pulling on his shirt helped stretch the hem and loosen the tee so it hid both his belly and the flesh pushing up over the top of his shorts by the time he reached Ronan’s stereo and hit the pause button.

For a second, the quiet hissing roar of Ronan’s blow torch kept going before it tapered off and ended with a click. Then Ronan set the torch down on the concrete floor and stood, pushing his mask up as he turned around to face Adam.

“You know,” he said, “I was kind of in the middle of something.”

“Yesterday you said you never wanted to burn another feather into that thing again,” Adam replied. “I think I'm doing you a favor.”

A smirk cut across Ronan's thin lips, and he peeled his leather gloves off and tossed them to the floor next to the torch before he started walking toward Adam. When he reached him, he shed his leather apron too, shucking it in top of a speaker, until Ronan stood in front of Adam in black boots, black jeans, and a black hoodie — all impractical for June weather, but Adam appreciated that Ronan took protective measures while working.

“Win Gansey's mom any elections today, Parrish?” Ronan asked, the same thing he'd asked since Adam got home on his first day.

“Not yet,” Adam told him, the same thing he'd said in response since that first day. “But soon.”

“Can't come soon enough.” Ronan closed the last few feet of space between them and lifted a hand to cup Adam's face, his thumb brushing across Adam's cheek before he leaned in and kissed Adam.

And those few seconds — that first kiss of the day — dwarfed every moment that had come before them, no matter how exciting those moments had been.

Like always, Adam melted a little as soon as Ronan’s lips touched his. He inched closer and spread his hands across Ronan's ribs so his fingers could tangle in the seams of Ronan’s sweatshirt, using it to shrink the space between them even further until they were all but pressed together from chest to hip. Any self consciousness fled, even as Ronan’s hands found Adam’s waist and held onto it like he was never going to let Adam go, like Adam was someone wantable, desirable, and Adam melted even more from the way Ronan’s fingers pressed into Adam’s flesh through his t-shirt.

For as long as Ronan’s lips were on his — moving slow, tender, and tentative — nothing else mattered to Adam until his lungs started burning because he’d rather kiss Ronan than breathe. Finally, Adam pulled back, though not very far. Just enough for him to pull in a few lungfuls of air and ask Ronan, “Have you been down here working all day?”

“Yeah.” Ronan nodded. “Fucking feathers.”

Laughing, Adam let go of Ronan’s hoodie with one hand so he could reach up and skate his palm over Ronan’s buzz cut — a little damp from being under his welding helmet all afternoon — before cupping the back of Ronan’s skull. “Hopefully your artistic vision pans out.”

“Go to hell,” Ronan replied, and he tightened his hands on Adam’s waist, squeezing him in retribution before he — to Adam’s mirth — kissed Adam again. “Just wait, doubting Thomas. It’ll be awesome. The crowd is gonna go wild.”

“The crowd of two?” Adam replied, and he might have deserved the second squeeze Ronan gave him, along with the poke in the ribs. Swatting Ronan’s hand away, Adam told him, “If you’re hungry, Helen sent us home with sandwiches.”

“Jesus shit. Again?”

“I don’t think we’re going to reach a stopping point.”

Adam had thought about it on the way back to Monmouth. Women’s shelters and homeless shelters and food pantries weren’t going to want the remnants of catered lunches. If they’d come straight from the restaurant, sure, but the campaign was essentially a middle man. Not that anyone working for Mrs. Gansey would taint a bunch of sandwiches from Potbelly or an army of burritos from Chipotle, but Adam didn’t think a public service would want to risk potentially giving the people they were meant to help food poisoning. He wouldn’t stop Gansey from calling around the next day — Gansey had the remarkable quality of persuading people who were otherwise unpersuadable — but, being realistic, Adam pretty much figured Helen would be shunting food on them for the rest of the summer.

“Good thing we’re growing boys, then,” Ronan said, stealing one last kiss to the corner of Adam’s mouth before he stepped back and flicked the power switch on his stereo. Adam didn’t follow him as he headed toward the door to the stairwell, and when he reached it, Ronan turned back, his dark eyebrows furrowed as he asked, “You coming?”

“Yeah,” Adam replied after hesitating for half a picosecond.

Because Ronan couldn’t have meant what he said in the way Adam assumed. In the way that froze Adam in place while Ronan walked away. He, Gansey, and Ronan were still teenage boys, after all. A segment of the population notoriously known for their ability to consume anything and everything placed in front of them. And though the weight Adam had gained was very noticeable — particularly when he and Ronan were getting up to the activities they postponed until Gansey went into his room for the night — Ronan wasn’t the type to broach any kind of topic that could be deemed uncomfortable, even when coming at it sideways. Adam wasn’t that type either, though he knew they’d have to have an awkward, adult-like conversation sooner or later.

That didn’t stop Adam from acknowledging Ronan’s possible double meaning, a reference to his expanded waistline, but he pushed it to the back of his mind as he joined Ronan at the door and trailed him upstairs into the apartment. Gansey had disappeared — by the sound of it, to take a shower — but the bags of lunch still sat on the kitchen island where Gansey and Adam had left them. The fridge was still too full with the food they’d brought home the day before to put them away, so Adam started a careful game of Tetris-cum-Jenga, taking a tray of cajun penne alfredo out of the fridge and swapping it with one of the bags before putting the pasta in the oven to heat up.

“You guys aren’t paying for this shit, right?” Ronan asked as he started poking through the other bag, pulling out a paper-wrapped sandwich and inspecting the label on it.

“Not a cent,” Adam replied, turning around just in time to reflexively catch the sandwich Ronan threw at him across the kitchen island. “Lynch, come on.”

“What?” Ronan pulled a second sandwich out of the bag, looked at whatever kind it was, and put it back before pulling out another and giving it the same scrutiny before starting to unwrap it. “Just because it’s free doesn’t mean you’ll throw it away. Please. I know you better than that, Parrish.”

Sighing, Adam put the sandwich he’d caught on the island then grabbed the bag off the countertop before Ronan could do any more damage. “It’s wasteful,” he said as he opened the fridge, pulling sandwich after sandwich from the bag and fitting them into whatever empty space in the fridge he could find. “But no one will tell donors to stop. That would be ungracious.”

Ronan cackled. “Grace? In politics?”

“You’d be surprised how much it influences Gansey’s mom’s campaign.” Adam folded up the bag once it was empty and shoved it in the recycling bin before joining Ronan at the island. Picking up the sandwich, he started unwrapping it instead of finding a space for it in the fridge. “Or the appearance of it, at least.” Once he’d peeled the paper back enough, Adam took a bite of the smoked ham and Swiss sub — the roll still perfectly soft, but the cheese a little rubbery from having once been slightly melted — and fatigued from talking about politics most of the day, after he chewed and swallowed, he asked Ronan, “So your Mothman is coming along?”

“Not Mothman,” Ronan replied, mouth full of a bite of whatever sandwich he’d selected. “Night horror.”

He proceeded to tell Adam the differences between the two cryptids — well, one cryptid and one figment of Ronan’s imagination — while they both ate, though Adam definitely did not need to eat. He’d had a cinnamon crunch bagel and a bear claw for breakfast, a chicken salad and provolone sandwich and a cookie for lunch. Now, with pasta heating up in the oven, he was having a pre-dinner of another full sandwich and — while Adam was hungry because it was going on seven o’clock and he hadn’t eaten since early in the afternoon — he did not need it all. But Ronan had been right; Adam wasn’t going to throw perfectly good food away.

The oven timer chimed just as Gansey joined them in the kitchen, his suit swapped out for a yellow polo shirt and khaki cargo shorts, and while Adam grabbed pot holders and retrieved the aluminum pan of pasta, Gansey stroked his chin and asked, “I didn’t shave. Do you think this will turn into something if I let it grow out for a few days?”

“No,” Ronan told him flatly as he retrieved bowls from a cabinet. “You’ll just look like you have mange.”

“Lynch,” Adam laughed, carting the pan to the island and setting it on the countertop between the three of them.

“It’s not a lie.” Ronan jabbed the forks he pulled from a drawer in Adam’s direction before dropping both the utensils and the bowls on the island with a clatter.

“And I appreciate the honesty,” Gansey said, looking at their dinner. “Pasta. Again. Delightful.”

“Take it up with Helen,” Adam told him. He grabbed the empty wrappers from his and Ronan’s sandwiches and threw them away before he retrieved a serving spoon. Then he peeled back the foil from the top of the pasta and pushed the spoon into the gooey mass of it before he said, “Dig in.”

Adam let Gansey and Ronan fill their bowls first, which, in hindsight, was probably the wrong approach, because they left enough in the pan that almost a serving and a half remained. Even that single scoop of pasta Adam couldn’t let go to waste, and it found its way into his bowl despite the fullness he felt from his sandwich. He didn’t need to eat the cajun chicken penne and he shouldn’t, but the thought of scraping it into the trash can clenched Adam’s stomach. Yes, he’d had more than enough to eat already that day, but Adam Parrish was nothing if not determination and persistence. They’d gotten him this far. And he could fit all that pasta, even if he might regret it later.

So he picked up his fork and did exactly what he’d told Gansey and Ronan to do. He dug in, and the first bite reminded Adam that he’d been glad when a caterer had dropped off this particular lunch, oversized pans of not only the cajun chicken penne alfredo, but spicy Korean noodles with marinated steak. The sauce on the penne had the slightest amount of heat, and the chicken mixed into it had been charred so it was just a little smoky. There’d been garlic bread too, but the three of them had finished off the few remaining slices when they’d had the penne the night before. If this was the kind of stuff that Adam got to eat without learning how to cook, he couldn’t not be appreciative. It saved him time and it saved him money, and when he never seemed to have enough of either, he couldn’t bemoan free food.

He could bemoan how it overtaxed the capacity of his stomach though, but he didn’t. When he started feeling like he couldn’t fit anymore, he simply got a can of soda from the fridge and drank it to ease out a few burps he muffled in the crook of his arm, making just enough space for him to keep going.

Adam only really regretted that later when Gansey’s bedroom door closed for the night and Ronan’s lips found Adam’s neck.

“Ugh, I think I’m too full to do anything,” Adam groaned, dropping his head onto the back of the couch as he closed his eyes. Overloaded on carbs, he’d hardly moved since he flopped down on the couch after dinner, declining a Playstation controller when Ronan offered it and choosing to watch Gansey and Ronan play instead of participate. His belly felt taut and warm through his t-shirt, and for a while, Adam could feel the pulse of his heartbeat in his stomach. He’d gotten used to eating significant portions, but even he had to admit that tonight he’d overdone it. He’d overdone it so much he couldn’t find the energy to fuck around with Ronan, and Adam loved fucking around with Ronan.

Adam’s skin fizzed as Ronan trailed his lips up Adam’s neck and along his jaw, and when Ronan reached Adam’s ear, he murmured, “Then just spend the night in my room.”

That much, Adam could handle, and spooning Ronan in bed made him completely forget the discomfort of eating two dinners. It was the furthest thing from his mind the next morning when he woke to Ronan — who was never up before noon — burrowing under his covers and kissing Adam’s soft and subtle belly on his way to taking care of Adam’s morning wood.

As anticipated, Gansey wasn’t able to find anywhere who would take the excess food off the campaign’s hands. “If we bought it and it was delivered right to them, it wouldn’t be a problem,” he told Adam. “But since it’s being delivered here and they don’t know what’s happened to it or who touched it or whether it was kept at the right temperature, unfortunately, they can’t take it.”

“Thanks for trying,” Adam said honestly. It was the exact outcome he’d expected, so it didn’t come as any surprise. It just meant Helen had another bag of food for them to bring home at the end of the night courtesy of a Mr. and Mrs. Flanigan: fried chicken, cole slaw, biscuits, and mashed potatoes with gravy.

More nights than not, Gansey and Adam carried food home, keeping Monmouth’s fridge perpetually full, and with the way things were going, the new kitchen Gansey installed wouldn’t be put to use for anything other than heating up leftovers for the foreseeable future. Some days they took home more than others, but it was always more than enough for the three boys living at Monmouth Manufacturing, and because it was more than enough, some waste was inevitable. That much food only kept for so long.

Adam just tried to prevent throwing away more than was absolutely needed, and that meant eating a lot of the things Gansey and Ronan didn’t.

But — he’d rather have too much food than not enough. He didn’t want to go back to a time when a can of store brand spaghetti rings in tomato sauce had to stretch for both lunch and dinner, when a candy bar won by getting the most correct answers on a quiz had to get him through a shift at the garage and a shift at the trailer factory. Adam pitied his past self for having to live that way, for having to deny himself and limit himself and go to bed with a stomach growling with hunger, and he never wanted to experience that again. Even if it meant frowning his way through the last few bites of a brownie on the verge of going stale.

“You don’t have to eat that. I mean, you can if you want, but people don’t usually give the goddamn stink eye to food they want to eat.”

Adam looked up from the half-eaten brownie in his hand when he heard Ronan, and he watched his boyfriend emerge from his bedroom and cross the apartment to where Adam stood with his brownie and a glass of milk in the kitchen.

“It’s a good brownie,” Adam replied, and it was. Thick and fudgy even though it had been delivered on Thursday and it was now Saturday afternoon. He’d stuck it in the microwave for a few seconds too, so it had softened a little, and the chocolate chunks in it had gone just melty enough he’d had to lick a few smears of chocolate off his fingers.

“That doesn’t tell me if you want to eat it or not.” Ronan yanked the fridge open when he reached it and pulled a Red Bull out from between two short stacks of foil-wrapped burritos. Kicking the refrigerator shut, he popped the can open as he walked to the side of the island opposite from Adam, and after a long swig of his energy drink, he asked, “Where’s Dick?”

“Some luncheon.”

“You weren’t invited?”

“Not this time.”

“Good for you.”

Adam laughed and broke off another bite of his brownie, putting it in his mouth and chewing it before he swallowed and chased it with a sip of milk. It was such a simple dessert — or post-lunch snack — not fancy or overcomplicated at all, but it was interesting to try all the different ways different restaurants baked them. Some were more cakey, others more fudgy. Sometimes there’d be walnuts or cheesecake swirls. This one had to be probably the fiftieth brownie Adam had eaten since the start of the summer, but each and every one of them had been good in its own way.

He took another sip of milk before he put the brownie down on the plate in front of him — the plate he’d picked it up from but hadn’t put it back onto yet — then Adam sighed to himself before he looked across the island at Ronan and said, “I do want it. I shouldn’t, but —”

Ronan cut him off. “Why shouldn’t you?”

“Really, Ronan?” Adam stared at his boyfriend and Ronan just raised both his eyebrows in a challenge as he took another long swig of Red Bull.

Standing up straight, Adam waved a hand at himself, at his torso. Most of the evidence of his diet of dining hall food, catering, and overindulgence was below the edge of the island countertop, but Ronan had seen it often enough. He’d felt it often enough. Adam’s belly bowed out enough his gray Georgetown t-shirt — which had fit perfectly fine at the start of the school year — hugged the curve of it. All of his t-shirts had gotten snug, not to mention his button-up shirts that had a lot less give. His waistbands were getting tighter too, and Adam’s hips spilled over the elastic of his navy gym shorts. His hips spilled over everything: his suit pants, his jeans, his cargo shorts. The last time he’d put on chinos, he’d barely been able to get his phone and wallet in his pockets because of the new space his thighs and ass took up. Even his pecs — which had never been hard or well-defined — had gotten slightly softer. All of it was proof Adam shouldn’t have started eating this brownie or the forty-nine that had come before it. The scale he’d bought and hidden under his bed was proof too — he’d put on nine pounds since the start of the summer, thirty-two since starting college, and the 200 that loomed a few pounds away didn’t terrify him as much as it should have.

When it became clear Ronan was simply going to stare back at Adam instead of saying anything, Adam pressed his lips together and folded his arms over his chest. “In case you're going blind,” he said, “I’m getting a little fat.”

It sounded wrong, but it was true. Gaining over thirty pounds put Adam in another weight bracket, and maybe he wasn’t fat, but he was definitely no longer lean.

Shrugging a shoulder, Ronan set his can down. “So?” he asked.

“That’s not a problem to you?”

“Why would it be a problem? If you want something, have it. Don’t deny yourself.”

“I think it’s pretty clear I haven’t denied myself in a while.”

“So why start now?”

And that was the crux of the thing. Adam had gone so long denying himself — not just food, but basics like new clothes and decent deodorant — that now he’d started allowing himself things, he wasn’t inclined to stop. Going without got old and tedious, and he was in a place he no longer had to. He had scholarships that covered most of his school costs, a well-paying internship that covered everything else. He had a place with cheap rent, free food, a best friend, a boyfriend — For the first time, Adam felt like he was actually living instead of just getting by, and he wanted to keep living, not cut back and go without again.

Uncrossing his arms and dropping his hands to the edge of the counter, Adam met Ronan’s eye across the kitchen island. “You don’t mind?”

“Why the hell would I mind? You’re hot as shit.” Ronan sneered a little, but he gave Adam a quick up and down look and the corner of his lips twitched into a brief smile before he repeated, “Why the hell would I mind?”

Heat spread across Adam’s cheeks and he tried to come off casual as he said, “No one said you had to.”

“Good. Because I don’t.” Ronan picked up his Red Bull and tipped his head back as he downed the rest of it, and he crumpled the narrow can in his hand before he said, “What I do mind is whether you’re going to finish that brownie anytime soon, because I want to murder you at Rocket League.”

Now there was no frowning at his post-lunch snack when Adam laughed and picked up his brownie again. He ate what remained in two perfunctory bites and sucked crumbs off his fingers before he finished his milk. Then — because he wanted it — he grabbed a peanut butter cookie from the stack of plastic-wrapped baked goods he and Gansey had brought home Friday afternoon, and after refilling his glass of milk, Adam followed Ronan to the couch, a lamb led to the slaughter.

Chapter Text

Please.

When Ronan Lynch met Adam Parrish for the first time, that single word bounced around in the otherwise empty void of his brain, every other thought erased by the appearance of Adam in Monmouth Manufactuing. Gansey had invited Adam over for some academic endeavor Ronan had absolutely no inclination to participate in — studying for some exam or collaborating on some kind of two-person group project. Ronan completely forgot what Adam had been there for, but he'd never be able to forget Adam Parrish.

His slight southern lilt. His dusty, self-cut hair. His knobby-knuckled yet elegant hands that sent Ronan into delirium.

It didn’t take much for Ronan to admit he’d been done for since the moment they first bumped fists, though he’d never tell anyone that. Probably not even Adam.

Please had also been the only thing in Ronans's head when — seven months later — he kissed Adam as they sat together on the edge of the mattress in Ronans's bedroom after Ronan showed Adam a prototype of a metal raven he wanted to make. Please that Ronan hadn't been wrong about all those Goddamn signs Adam had given him. Please that Adam would kiss him back. Please that Adam didn't stop at just kissing when he did press his lips back to Ronan’s and pressed Ronan down onto his bed.

And it had been please on Ronan’s mind again that Saturday afternoon in July when he found Adam contemplating his brownie at the kitchen island after he’d let Ronan sleep in so late the clock on the microwave reflected morning had ended hours ago.

Whether or not Adam ate the brownie he was contemplating, Ronan didn’t care. He had eyes. He had hands. He had a front row seat to the weight Adam had gained over the school year and the first month and a half of his summer break. Ronan had bit it, held it, felt it bump against his ass when Adam knelt behind him.

Ronan had also noticed how Adam fidgeted with his clothes in an attempt to camouflage his belly, and how he always changed out of his suit and into something less restrictive as soon as he got home from his internship. He’d also noticed Adam’s abject horror of anything unnecessarily going to waste and how that directly butted up against Adam’s inherent desire to never let himself have nice things.

That part was the fucking worst, because the only natural instinct Ronan had for showing people he cared about them was giving them stuff or doing things for them. Except for Gansey, because Gansey was — Gansey. Ronan's parents — Niall and Aurora Lynch — dying far too soon and long before Ronan thought allowable left him and his brothers wealthy, but it didn't hold a candle to Gansey’s kind of money. He'd bought Monmouth for cash, paid all the contractors who separated the kitchen from the laundry room from the bathroom up front, and delightfully paid mechanics to revive the Pig every time it died. Nothing Ronan could give or do for Gansey would ever be equal to what Gansey could get or do for himself.

Adam though —

If Adam would have let him, Ronan would have given Adam Parrish the whole shit stinking world and he would have burned everyone else to ash if they stood in his way.

Except Adam would rather dive off a cliff than let Ronan do that. Even paying for dinner was off-limits most of the time because fifteen bucks for Chinese food would mortally wound Adam's pride like Ronan had taken one of his blow torches or soldering irons to it. He'd witnessed the fights Adam had with Gansey about money stuff, days-long arguments because Gansey tapped the tip button on the cash register when they stopped at a convenience store to buy sodas. Ronan stayed the hell out of those — when Adam got angry because of his asinine principles, Ronan found him impossibly more attractive and it would have taken way too much effort to not drag Adam away from Gansey so he and Ronan could do something more productive — until Gansey seemed on the edge of a nervous breakdown, then Ronan did something more ridiculous than the reason for their fight.

Like setting a sheetmetal raven on fire indoors so the smoke detector went off and the fire department showed up.

And now Ronan found himself in a really fucking weird position of doing one of the only things he could for Adam: encouraging him to not deny himself the things he wanted. Something Ronan absolutely didn’t have a problem with. If he had mastered anything in his nineteen years on the planet, it was never saying no, unless his older brother Declan came calling, then no became Ronan’s default. So it was very easy for Ronan to tell Adam to eat his Goddamn brownie if he wanted to, and if social norms or expectations or whatever made Adam feel bad for wanting that, Ronan would show those social norms and expectations exactly where to shove it.

In the end, Ronan deemed intervention unnecessary. It had only taken him telling Adam he didn’t mind the weight Adam had gained before Adam visibly relaxed, his muscles individually unwrapping themselves from being coiled around his bones. It surprised Ronan that Adam didn’t burn a shit ton of calories simply from being so tightly wound. Walking around that clenched had to do something, and it sure as hell wasn’t lowering Adam’s blood pressure.

It also surprised Ronan that Adam grabbed an oversized peanut butter cookie as soon as he finished his brownie, but Ronan wasn’t about to stop him. Not after he’d finally gotten Adam to give himself a little leeway. Most of Adam’s past remained shrouded in mystery, but he’d told Ronan enough about it that Ronan knew Adam hadn’t grown up with much. With anything. If he wanted a peanut butter cookie, he could have a peanut butter cookie. And Ronan hadn’t lied when he told Adam he didn’t mind Adam putting on a few pounds. Adam Parrish was and would forever be the hottest guy Ronan had ever set eyes on regardless of his size. Plus, his new weight made Adam very grabbable, and Ronan could use that to his advantage to show Adam exactly how much he didn’t mind Adam — as he himself put it — getting a little fat.

So Ronan did use it to his advantage, and after that kitchen encounter, he got real annoying about it and got his hands — and mouth — on Adam whenever he could. He dug his knuckles into Adam’s softened sides to distract him while they played video games. He sucked kisses into the curve of Adam’s belly on his wandering journey to Adam’s dick. He grabbed the fleshy swells of Adam’s hips and reeled him in for kisses.

Usually, it startled a laugh out of Adam before he squirmed to get out of Ronan’s reach, but sometimes — Ronan’s favorite times, and the reason he increased efforts to touch Adam at every opportunity — it pissed Adam off. Pinching Adam’s ass — less flat than it had once been — earned Ronan an elbow to the ribs. Sneaking up behind Adam and squeezing his hips where they bulged over Adam's waistband got Ronans's hand swatted away. Cupping Adam's underbelly and shaking it until everything from his chest to his waist jiggled got Ronan pinned against the nearest flat surface, preferably his bed.

Or that was what Ronan preferred until Adam shoved a mini muffin in his mouth.

For a good chunk of most Saturdays, Ronan and Adam had Monmouth to themselves while Gansey stood around with his family watching his mom shake hands and kiss babies at fundraisers and events all across Northern Virginia. Adam routinely received invitations to these events and routinely started declining them after the first few, apparently satisfied with only being part of the political machine Monday to Friday.

Ronan — to no one's surprise — had never been invited at all.

A normal, Gansey-less Saturday started as such: In either the late morning or early afternoon — mostly the latter — Ronan woke up alone in his room despite not falling asleep alone.

Weekends were the one time Adam's damn principles allowed him to spend the night with Ronan, but his internal clock remained in internship mode even though he didn't need to wake up and get ready for anything, so as soon as he woke up and grew too restless to continue wearing Ronan like a backpack after they inevitably swapped as big spoons overnight, he'd get out of bed and go do whatever he did when he had pure, uninterrupted alone time.

It left Ronan briefly lamenting his solitude when he eventually woke up — morning sex had a soft and slow appeal that sex at other times of the day didn't, and without Adam in bed, Ronan always found himself robbed of the opportunity — but then he'd psych himself up, get out of bed, and go latch onto Adam for the rest of the day. Recently, Ronan had found his boyfriend in the kitchen more often than not. If not there, he'd be on the couch practicing some video game or another in a desperate hope he'd someday beat Ronan.

Ronan didn't have the heart to tell him he never stood a chance.

The day — morning — Adam shoved a mini muffin in Ronans's mouth, Ronan found him in the kitchen, leaning over his laptop where it sat on the kitchen island, the browser open to some kind of university-oriented website considering the navy blue banner at the with a big, fancy, scripted white GU in the corner. Typical Adam, caught up in something for school when the rest of his classmates probably wouldn't log in to their school email addresses until the end of August when classes started up again.

He was so engrossed with whatever he was doing he didn't look up when Ronan's bedroom door opened — usually Adam would take at least one dig at how late Ronan habitually slept — which presented the perfect opportunity for a stealth mission to grope Adam from behind. Taking only a slightly circuitous route to stay out of Adam's field of vision, Ronan tiptoed toward the kitchen — tougher than he thought, given his inclination for stomping — putting everything he'd ever learned about sneaking up on people in video games to use short of crouching and hiding behind furniture or bushes. It proved pretty damn successful, unless Adam either purposefully ignored Ronans's approach or whatever he was reading had his brain cells at max capacity, because Ronan eased himself directly behind his boyfriend without Adam so much as glancing over his shoulder.

Which let Ronan — after appreciating how Adam’s ass looked in his gray gym shorts and how his red t-shirt clung to his little love handles — reach toward him as slowly as a massive ship moving through space in a cut scene before he snatched Adam's hips and squeezed their fleshy swell in one swift attack.

Startled, Adam bolted upright and knocked his elbow on the granite countertop as he spun around. Ronan held on for as long as he could and only relinquished his grip on Adam when he pivoted too far for Ronan to keep holding on without spraining something. Eyebrows furrowed, lips scowling, Adam glared as he cupped his elbow and said, “Jesus, Ronan. Really?”

“What?” Ronan replied, all innocence, though he did feel kind of bad for being the reason Adam slammed his elbow onto the countertop and had to rub away the almost-numb pain of hitting his funny bone.

“Was that necessary?”

“Oh, absolutely. For fucking sure. One hundred percent.”

“One hundred percent. When you know I don't like it when people sneak up on me.”

“I wouldn't have needed to sneak up on you if you didn't have your face in your computer and your ass sticking out.”

“What I'm hearing is you couldn't exercise self restraint for ten seconds until you got my attention.”

“Not when you look the way you do.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Adam tipped his head to one side and gave Ronan a withering look — though his eyes flickered to the gaping armholes of Ronan’s black muscle tank and the black boxer briefs hugging his thighs — before he asked, “And how do I look?”

Almost automatically, Ronan replied, “Grabbable.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Grabbable,” Ronan repeated. And because it felt good to say it, he said it again, “You're grabbable. Your ass — you know you have an ass now, right? — and your hips, and your gut, and your —”

Ronan was going to continue with tits — though they weren't so much tits as slightly doughy pecs — when Adam cut him off. “What did you call it?”

“What did I call what?” Ronan asked, just to be a shithead. He knew exactly what Adam meant. His round stomach. His belly. His gut. He didn't know exactly what Adam wanted to call it, but it was undeniably something. It hadn't been flat in months and had a mounded, teardrop-shaped quality to it, heavily and softly curved at the bottom before it sloped gradually toward Adam's chest. They'd never talked about it so directly before though, but gut seemed to push a button, and Ronan was a professional at pushing buttons.

Squaring up to Ronan with his back to the kitchen island, Adam uncrossed his arms and moved one hand toward his torso, pushing a fingertip into the plump side of his belly where it had recently started spreading into the flesh at his waist. “This.”

“Your gut,” Ronan replied, putting his back into the t. Around the time Adam poked himself, the switch in Ronan’s lizard brain — the one that made him want to be put in his place — flipped into the on position. “What, you think it isn't? I hate to break it to you, Parrish, but what you've got is a —”

He didn't get to finish what Adam had because Ronan's mouth was suddenly full with a miniature chocolate chip muffin that — though still small — was too big for him to speak around.

Because he’d been too busy yapping to notice Adam had grabbed one from the clear plastic bowl on the kitchen island — carbs were apparently off-limits at a campaign office and Adam and Gansey had brought home most of a breakfast spread on Friday, including a bowl full of a variety of mini muffins: chocolate chip, double chocolate, banana nut, plain ass vanilla — and proceeded to shove it into Ronan's mouth to shut him up.

Effective, Ronan admitted.

It was also somehow so unbearably hot the switch in Ronan's brain malfunctioned and went from simply on to real fucking horny in less than half a second. His dick getting involved when he was silenced with a muffin should have been cause for some self evaluation, but Ronan had never been the introspective type. He ran on impulse ninety-nine percent of the time, which was why when he should have chewed and swallowed and then asked Adam what he wanted Ronan to call the roundness of his stomach, Ronan chewed and swallowed and completed what he hadn't been able to before. “Gut.”

Reaching back, Adam plucked a double chocolate muffin from the bowl before looking at Ronan. “Do you want to try saying it again?”

Of course Ronan did. His best quality was being a pain in people’s asses. Most people didn't know how to handle it — definitely not his older brother Declan, and most of the time not even Gansey — but Adam was very efficient at handling Ronan when he got mouthy, and Jesus, Ronan loved it.

He bared his teeth at Adam in what could be interpreted as a smile before — short and to the point — he said, “Gut.”

Exactly as anticipated, it earned him another mini muffin in the mouth, and as Ronan chewed — he’d have to tell Gansey to get donors to order better quality pastries because the muffin was a little dry and Ronan could really use a glass of milk — Adam asked, “Are you done yet?”

“Nope,” Ronan replied once he'd swallowed, built up some spit, and swallowed again. Now he smirked at Adam, extended a finger, and sank it into Adam's soft middle as he said, “Gut.”

Another muffin appeared in Adam's hand and he shoved it past Ronan's smirking lips before he guided Ronan's hand away from his body and lifted his own hand to hold Ronan's jaw. “You can keep going,” he said, and Ronan's stubble scraped pleasantly against Adam's palm as Ronan chewed. “Don't think I won't keep your mouth so full you can't say anything at all.”

And there it was. The moment Ronan always pushed for. The threat of minor, harmless punishment for running his mouth. Adam always found a way to shut him up sooner or later — balling up the tie Ronan wore to church and pushing it past his teeth, not letting Ronan come until he hadn't whimpered or moaned for a full minute, sliding his fingers between Ronan’s lips and making him suck on them like there was no tomorrow. Fortuitously, Ronan liked being made to do things, and Adam liked making people do things, and the first time Adam succeeded in making Ronan behave, Ronan had come so hard he thought he’d pass out. It had apparently scratched Adam’s itch too, because they’d done it plenty since.

Ronan hoped they’d do it plenty more, and he did nothing to stop perpetuating the cycle when — as soon as he swallowed — he met Adam’s eye and held his gaze as he said the one thing no one should ever say to Adam Parrish.

“Go ahead and try.”

If Ronan hadn’t been half-hard already, he would have gotten there with the way Adam stared back at him, his blue eyes both unflinching and uncanny. While Ronan’s blue eyes were chilly because of their color, Adam’s were chilly in a different way. Ronan could have classified it as unfeeling if he didn’t know the storm of emotions that raged beneath Adam’s skin, and austere fit someone like Gansey far better than someone like Adam. With Adam, it was something closer to authority or control, and — Goddamn — Ronan would let Adam control him like a puppet if he wanted.

Finally, Adam turned away from Ronan only to grab the entire bowl of miniature muffins from the kitchen island, plastic squealing against the granite as Adam dragged the bowl toward him. It still held enough muffins to have some heft, because Adam’s arm dipped a little with the weight of it when he lifted it off the counter, then, cradling the bottom of it in one hand, he picked another double chocolate muffin from the bowl and held it up as he told Ronan, “Say it again and see what happens.”

In no world would Ronan not rise to that challenge, even when he knew what he had coming to him as soon as the word left his mouth. As long as they came from Adam, Ronan would always accept the consequences, though he wasn’t going to poke at why the prospect of Adam putting another mini muffin in his mouth enticed him far more than a balled-up tie did. However, he was going to poke Adam again, and Ronan reached out and sank his fingertip into his boyfriend’s softened stomach as — for the sixth time — he said, “Gut.”

Ronan put up no resistance as Adam pushed the second double chocolate muffin into his mouth, and a vanilla one took its place the moment Ronan swallowed, preventing him from saying gut for a seventh time. And Adam kept them coming — as soon as Ronan finished one muffin, he had another on his tongue, the muffins just big enough and dry enough he couldn’t say gut around them as he chewed. He lost track of how many Adam fed him — Eight? Nine? Ronan only cared about how close Adam was and the electricity in the air between them — and, muffin by muffin, Adam drove him backward until he had Ronan caged against the fridge door, the curve of Adam’s belly kissing the flat plane of Ronan’s stomach.

That did nothing to help the very obvious hard on in the front of Ronan’s boxer briefs, the obvious hard on Adam — thank fuck — didn’t ignore. He stuffed a banana nut muffin in Ronan’s mouth and dropped his hand to Ronan’s dick, squeezing it and leaving Ronan with no choice but to moan around his mouthful of muffin, choked and muffled and comparatively quieter than the sounds that usually left him when Gansey wasn’t home.

“Can’t backtalk much now, huh?” Adam said, low and even. By the subtle flush of Adam’s cheeks, Ronan could tell he wasn’t the only one in that kitchen who was turned on, though no one would have been able to tell by how coolly, steadily, and wordlessly Adam had put muffins into Ronan’s mouth one after another after another. He was so damn good at keeping himself in check, at appearing collected that Ronan would have hated it if he hadn’t been one of the only people Adam let his guard down for. And in their current situation, Adam would let his guard down. It was only a matter of when.

Still chewing, shaking his head ended up being the only coherent response Ronan could provide, the back of his skull rubbing against the stainless steel door of the fridge. For once, he was grateful he hadn’t followed through with his idea to cover it with copies of his speeding tickets like he’d done to his bedroom door. Magnets would have hurt like hell considering Adam had him all but pinned to the fridge.

Head shaking seemed satisfactory enough for Adam though, and one corner of his lips twitched before he stepped closer to Ronan than he’d already been, the soft swell of his stomach now flush to Ronan’s and spilling a little sideways. The move also trapped Adam’s hand between them — mid-swallow, Ronan couldn’t moan again for fear of gagging — and got Adam’s hips against Ronan’s for the first time all morning. That finally gave Ronan some real insight into how Adam was feeling about this whole thing, and by Ronan’s assessment, Adam was feeling — decidedly excited.

Excited enough he let the cool, calm, and collected act slip when he leaned infinitesimally closer to Ronan so he could murmur in Ronan’s ear, “I’ve got another idea about how I can keep that mouth full.”

Ronan didn’t need to be told twice. Accepting he wouldn’t be getting a glass of milk anytime soon to wash down all those muffins, he not ungently pushed Adam back a step. Then Ronan sank to his knees on the kitchen floor and took Adam’s shorts and boxers down with him.

Afterward, they both sat splayed on the floor, or as splayed as boxers tangled around knees allowed. Adam slumped against the side of the island with his eyes half-lidded and a satisfied little smile on his lips, and Ronan had become best friends with the refrigerator again because it was the only thing keeping him upright.

He didn’t feed bad at all about his bare ass sitting on the sealed concrete beneath him.

Ronan’s chest and shoulders heaved as he panted — he hadn’t been able to take a good, deep breath while his mouth had been otherwise occupied — and he felt drunk on a combination of oxygen, fucking awesome sex, and chocolate chips. Monmouth’s air conditioner pumped at full blast to combat the late July heat outside, but sweat beaded the clean edges of Ronan’s buzz cut, and with full awareness of his body for the first time since Adam put that initial muffin in his mouth, Ronan understood the consequences of letting his boyfriend shut him up with food.

He’d never been so Goddamn stuffed before in his entire life.

And he couldn’t say he hated it.

“Fuck,” Ronan groaned, dropping a limp hand on his stomach. From the way his heartbeat throbbed around the mass of muffins inside him, he thought he should have been able to feel it from the outside, but he couldn’t. All he could feel — when he gave his stomach a gentle prod — was firmness, yet he looked just as flat as usual beneath the black cotton of his shirt, not cut or defined, but solid thanks to getting into metalwork and the years of farm chores that had come before that.

“Shit,” Adam said softly, eyes opening over-wide as he pushed himself up onto his knees. His — Belly? Ronan really had to ask him what he wanted to call it — shook a little as he quickly pulled up his boxers and gym shorts, and he shuffled across the kitchen floor toward Ronan. “I didn’t — What can I do?”

Neither of them gave two shits about aftercare or whatever people called it, and Ronan didn’t need Adam to coddle him. He’d been hurt far worse than an overfull stomach — often by his own hand — and he’d made it through all that just fine. He still appreciated the effort — nurturing came about as naturally to Adam as it did to the wire mother in that monkey experiment — and with his voice raspy because of the absolute desert all those muffins had created in his throat, he said, “Milk.”

Adam nodded and pushed himself to his feet, crossing the kitchen to grab a glass from a cabinet. When he returned, he nudged Ronan aside so he could open the fridge, and once Ronan held a full glass of milk in his hands and Adam had sat back down beside him, Adam said, “They were there and I just grabbed one.”

Lifting the glass to his lips, Ronan chugged nearly all its contents — probably against his better judgment because milk on top of a shitload of muffins didn’t seem like a wise decision — and after he swiped a milk mustache away with the back of his hand, he told Adam, “Don’t go all nerd ass and over analyze it. It’s fine.”

“It’s not.” At some point, the bowl of muffins had been put back on the island, and Adam looked up at it, so Ronan looked up at it too. There were still muffins left — maybe half a dozen — so Adam hadn’t fed him the whole bowl, but Ronan had eaten enough that he’d be alright without having another muffin for a while. “I didn’t keep track —”

“Like hell you didn’t.”

“I didn’t. But that was a lot of muffins, and I —”

“Parrish,” Ronan cut him off, because Ronan was the penitent one in their relationship and he wasn’t going to allow Adam to strip him of that badge over a few muffins, “it’s fine.”

Always the skeptic, Adam smoothly looked away from the island for the sole purpose of giving Ronan the side eye. “You don’t look fine.”

“I’m fantastic.” Ronan flashed him a crass grin before finishing the rest of his milk. God, he was so fucking full, but it did feel nice as it spread cool and soothing through his stomach. Setting the empty glass down on the floor next to him with an echoing clink, Ronan reached his foot out and kicked Adam’s, and for reasons he would probably — no, definitely — ignore for the foreseeable future, he whistled long and low, the kind of whistle that signaled bone-deep and utter satisfaction and should have been accompanied by a cigarette and a beer. “Jesus shit, I don’t know what you call that, but that was hot.” And just like he had the first time Adam had shut him up and fucked him, Ronan said, “We should do it again sometime.”