penny for your thoughts.... do you think adam would still have been into ronan and/or wanted to be with him if he hadn't known already that ronan was interested in him first? I wonder sometimes how much of adam's feelings were reactionary at first or if he would have still fallen for ronan on his own without that push
oh hey there! sorry this is so late, but i had a lot of thoughts for this one, haha.
adam already was into ronan, probably as far back as trb, despite not acting on it; and while ronan being into him surely couldn’t have hurt, i don’t think it’s what pushed him over the edge.
there are three premises i should make here. 1- it’s pretty clear from adam’s narration that he’s far from indifferent to ronan, even in early books (hello, “savagely handsome”? “black-painted poetry”? those are not exactly casual descriptions of his friend). 2- it’s also apparent to me that adam must have already known he was bisexual/not straight pre-series (see: complete lack of questioning his sexuality and/or reflecting on it, and this is from a character who overanalyses and stresses out about everything). 3- adam probably knew ronan was not straight long before ronan even admitted it to himself (see the infamous double-entendre in trb and his wry comment about piper not being ronan’s type).
so why did he never act on it?
well, imo: common sense and self-preservation.
firstly, as a boy living in the deep south with a violent, homophobic father, entering a queer relationship is dangerous. plus, it isn’t like this precludes him the opportunity to date altogether: being bisexual, he has the option to date girls, which is both something he’s interested in and something that enables him to “pass” (yeah, i hate that word too) as straight. in short, dating girls is both safer and something he wants to do anyway - he’s immediately taken with blue, after all, and we see he’s not exactly shy in asking her out.
secondly, even if he were to decide to date a boy, ronan would be - to quote adam himself - the most difficult option. of course when adam says that, he just means that ronan is a deeply committed, fiercely monogamous romantic with a sharp-edged personality and a dangerous magical secret. but in trb and tdt, ronan really is the most difficult option in a whole other sense: he’s crippled by grief and guilt, struggling with depression and suicidal ideation, using self-destructive coping mechanisms like drinking and car-racing, and generally speaking, rather unstable and violent. that would be a lot to take on for anyone, and especially for someone like adam, whose home life is already unstable and violent, and who has it so hard in every other aspect of his life. he’s at capacity; he’s barely staying afloat. he can’t afford to keep ronan afloat too (“emotional costs”, anyone?). in fact, for a trb adam, gansey would be a much safer romantic option (and yes, adam is clearly a bit taken with him, even though it all falls apart by tdt).
in short, i think there were plenty of things holding adam back from exploring his feelings for ronan in the first two books. by bllb, ronan has broken free from his destructive self-loathing, and is altogether much nicer to be around and bolder in his appreciation of adam - but i still don’t think ronan being visibly interested in him is a make-or-break factor. in fact, though adam is clearly already aware of ronan’s interest in him at the end of tdt, it takes him almost two whole other books to decide to go for it. this is for several reasons, most of which have to do with adam’s crippling lack of self-esteem. first of all, he can barely believe that ronan would be interested in him, of all people, even when everything suggests that he is. he goes as far as to think it’s vanity and arrogance to even think ronan might like him - that’s how bad his self-image is.
but secondly, and most importantly, adam has no faith in his own ability to love - and that is what holds him back until the end of trk. by the middle of the book, there’s no question ronan is interested in him - he kissed him, after all - and no question that adam is interested too, since he kissed him back. but because adam knows how much ronan goes all-in in his relationships, and because he cares so much about him, he wants to avoid hurting him in any way. that’s why he asks gansey about love - not because he doesn’t feel it, but because he needs validation that his feelings are good enough. him asking gansey is the culmination of this process, but it’s something adam has been struggling with throughout the series: his own self-loathing, his belief that he’s broken and ugly and dirty, his deep-rooted fear that he can’t love people because he’s never received love from his family, and therefore isn’t confident in his ability to recognise and express it.
in conclusion, i believe that while it was certainly comforting and flattering for adam to find out ronan liked him, it does his character a disservice to assume that his feelings for ronan are just a reaction to someone having a crush on him and he wouldn’t have fallen for ronan otherwise. rather, adam did develop feelings for ronan on his own, but before he acted on those feelings, he had to learn that he is capable of accepting and giving love; which, in my mind, is adam’s truest arc of the series.
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