strange happiness

“mornings at 300 fox way were fearful, jumbled things. elbows in sides and lines for the bathroom and people snapping over tea bags placed into cups that already had tea bags in them.”

300 Fox Way was cramped with extraneous people and whimsical objects. It hummed with conversation, music, telephones, old appliances. It was impossible to forget that all of these women were plugged into the past and tapped into the future, connected to everything in the world and to one another.

“Did you get Mom a birthday present?” Helen asked. “Yes,” Gansey replied. “Myself.” Helen said, “The gift that keeps on giving.”

the raven boys

• At first, Ronan didn’t like Adam. Not because of anything to do with Adam - no, it was more about Gansey. Ronan did not like having to share his attention. 
• So maybe he was a bit hostile at first. 
• And maybe Adam was hostile back, because Adam never used to smile easily and Ronan was everything he thought he hated. 
• But. 
• Time passed. And it became clear that Gansey had adopted this boy, with his dusty hair and soft voice. 
• So Ronan paid attention to him instead of his jealousy. 
• And as the weeks past, he found that Adam was often the only person to laugh at his particular brand of macabre humour 
• and that the way Adam smirked at his feet whilst Gansey berated Ronan for not being Gansey enough made his heart flip
• And once, in latin, he was close enough to Adam to notice that he smelled of engine oil and sweat. 
• And his hands whilst he wrote notes - Ronan could write poems about Adam’s hands. 
• He did once or twice but they are hidden and no one knows. 
• Until one day, years down the line, Chainsaw pulls the crumpled paper out of a crack in the floorboards. 
• Anyway Ronan falls even further behind in class than usual because Adam’s hands are never still and they are so interesting, strong and tanned and callused, scars dotting the knuckles and freckles scattered across the skin. 
• Ronan’s first fantasy about Adam involved kissing his knuckles. 
• He didn’t mean to imagine it, and he hated himself for the rest of the day
• because he didn’t know when looking turned into feeling 
• and it was OK to admire Adam, as one admired art, but it was not OK to dream of him. 
• But he couldn’t help it. 
• Once he thought of Adam’s hands against his lips, he couldn’t stop it. 
• He got butterflies when he saw Adam, watched the clock and counted the minutes until the end of the class and the chance to pass him in the corridor. 
• His insults to Adam got worse, an attempt to counterbalance the fact that he smiled too much whenever Adam laughed. 
• At night, he replayed their conversations, Adam’s movements, wondered if Adam’s feet had been facing him, because someone told him once that that was how you knew someone liked you. 
• He imagined what it would be like to kiss Adam, a thousand permeations of the scene. 
• In some, they were alone, maybe in cabeswater, and Adam would turn to him, and their eyes would catch, and Ronan would open his mouth to let his heart spill out, but Adam would smiles and say “I know” and he’d catch Ronan’s parted lips between his own. 
• In others they were in his car, victors of a street race, an urgent clash of bodies, the scent of gasoline and burnt rubber in his nostrils. 
• In one, they are at the Barns, sun pouring through the window, pressed against the kitchen counter. 
• In all of them, Ronan is so overcome with longing that he forces himself to think of something else. 
• When Blue dated Adam, he hated her the way he had hated Adam to start with, only this time it hurt more. 
• Because he couldn’t compete with Blue. Adam would never look at him the way he looked at Blue. 
• Ronan sneered and swore and internally he fractured apart. His dream turned to Kavinksy, dreams of savage smiles and sticky skin. 
• They made him feel worse than any thoughts of Adam. 
• But. 
• Then Adam started looking back. 
• And he tried so hard to read into it at first. So hard. He rationalized every lingering gaze away, found platonic excuses for lingering fingers and flirtatious comments. 
• Because if it wasn’t real, if it was just Adam, confused and rebounding from Blue, he couldn’t go near it. 
• But Adam didn’t stop looking. 
• And Ronan began to believe it was impossible that Adam’s stomach didn’t flip the way Ronan’s did when their eyes caught or their fingers brushed. 
• He knew Adam knew how he felt. Ronan had tried to hide it, had succeeded for a long time, but eventually the thought that Adam might take his distance for dislike won out over his pride. 
• And so
• When Adam gazed at him, sat beside him in the room Ronan grew up in, 
• Ronan didn’t let himself doubt. 
• The butterflies were still there, as they had been for years, but now the longing won out over the nerves
• and he leaned in
• like he had done in so many dreams
• and he pressed his lips to Adam’s
• and Adam’s parted, like they had done in so many dreams
• and he’d never understood the limits of his imagination so keenly until that moment 
• because the simple reality of Adam, a little sweaty, warm and soft and willing against him, made imagined kisses in fast cars seem ludicrous 

❝  i’ve been dead for seven years. ❞

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