[thepoisonroom]

former directioners are to tumblr what the iowa writers' workshop is to the landscape of modern american fiction

[hollanovulation]

god… december 2025 canadian government tax funded hockey yaoi induced psychosis i will never forget you <333333

[charactershoesfic]

hi shoes!! how has life been recently? sytl still pops up in my mind every so often, i too feel like adam, like a ripe plum that might burst if applied too much pressure. i hope everything is going well for u! <3

this is so cute hi babe! sorry I'm not on here much, I still like to scroll my dash at night, just not actively posting much anymore for reasons, mostly good. but it makes me happy when people come to say hi or let me know they're reading something of mine. that ripe plum feeling <3 sytl adam my beloved dead man walking

lmao do u mind if I do a quick soft launch here ? I sold a book a few months ago and it will be published in 2027. I have been debating how to tell you guys about this without doxxing myself, and I've also been debating whether or not I will eventually delete my fic (I will not do this without telling everyone well in advance and giving you time to download the stuff you like etc etc I pinky promise) so as to keep them separate/private from my trad pub litfic stuff. but also the book wouldn't exist if not for internet people's kindness to me about my writing across the years, so.

tldr I'm still here sometimes, I'm doing good mostly, I'm in the process of negotiating how to mesh writer selves, I will share more info in my own time, I'm kissing each of you on the mouth, thanks for caring! <3

[charactershoesfic]

come and go gave me life when i read it in 7th grade and it continues to today as im a senior in high school (yes, i joined the deh fandom late 😭). permission to put a quote from it on my graduation cap? i don't know which quote yet but i thought i'd ask

hi baby go for it!! and send me a pic of your cap if you end up doing it. happy to know a little piece of c&g has been with you all these years and can be with you on a special day xoxoxoxo

[charactershoesfic]

literally recommended come and go as recently as july and i think abt cryptid car whenever i see weird bumper stickers 🙂‍↕️ it will forever and always be that bitch to me

:,) honored blessed grateful

I do actually feel very moved that the fic continues to get readers and new comments even now, especially when people are like “I read this as a depressed teen and now I’m a slightly less depressed adult.” that makes me feel very grateful and also crazy

[charactershoesfic]

come and go will always be famous

I do try to carry myself w the audacity and arrogance of someone who wrote a fandom famous fic when I was 20 so thank you for this

[charactershoesfic]

you saved the reputation of DEH in my head btw... I give it more grace than it probably deserves because of Come and Go

honestly I feel like they owe me residuals

[friendofcars]

i think they should make a trc/td3 phd program for me and a handful of other scholars

[bloodyfinalgirl]

Joining the war on queerbait on the side of queerbait bc after a time you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical but is often true

[hypokeimena]

#this is why baseball is good (via @jfkadultcircumcision)

[charactershoesfic]

can’t stop laughing at this, had to memorialize the best compliment I’ve ever received @micamicster thank u for this crown I wear it with strongly-scented pride

[charactershoesfic]

for what it’s worth I learned recently that actually many traditional publishing contracts specify that if you go on to create a graphic novel, it can contain “no more than 10%” of the original manuscript—meaning, I guess, direct quotes or verbatim lines etc? so, anyway, that might play a role in a lot of beloved dialogue being cut etc

[charactershoesfic]

happy first week of august to those who celebrate

[displayheartcode]

The best part of the Maggie Stiefvater event was that I was explaining @charactershoesfic’s seek ye the living to a coworker, and a person in front of us goes: “Oh my god, I just read that fic.”

[charactershoesfic]

the romance of the hotel ice machine EXACTLY!! the baseball au sometimes will just pop into my head and i will get hit by this overwhelming love and urge to give adam a hug.. and how the two of them are fundamentally romantic people!! truly i am so in love and so thankful for your writing

thank you for getting the vibe. and for these kind words. literally everything is romantic primarily and specifically hotel ice machines and high school baseball <3 thank you for reading <3

[charactershoesfic]

hi! hope you're well :) spring season has me rotating your pynch baseball au in my head and i've been rereading it and generally kicking my feet like a lovesick teenager whilst thinking about hotel ice machines, and i was wondering if you had any sort of extra thoughts about what happens to pynch et al as they grow older? or any other fun little tidbits about the au that you haven't shared yet? no pressure!

omg hi I'm sorry this is 100 years late. happy baseball summer! and thank u again for the gorgeously perfect baseball au art, which I think about constantly... the romance of a hotel ice machine...

I do have some thoughts! which are largely kinda like not the most cheerful, in which they break up for a while in college bc of course they do. Ronan is playing single A baseball in like a desert somewhere and is really happy even though it's dogshit conditions and no money and they're being fed off stadium popcorn and leftover concession hot dogs etc meanwhile Adam has ostensibly gotten everything he wanted but he's miserable and still has an incredibly unhealthy relationship with competition, his body, etc. I think he blows out his arm the summer after freshman yr bc he's going too hard and has to get Tommy John surgery and it's a whoooole thing, but while he's rehabbing the arm and crashing out they get back in touch, and they start playing catch again while Adam rehabs, Ronan sneaks him into the shitty hotel where the team is staying, etc. I think longterm Adam's arm can't handle the demands of being a starting pitcher, but he comes back as a relief guy, and becomes an absolutely lights-out closer. he is scary!!

I think long-term he doesn't go pro... he has the option to get drafted but he uses his extra year of eligibility bc of injury to get recruited as a graduate student, free tuition somewhere good, he gets his mba or his law degree or something, he goes into sports law maybe?

I'm laughing as I read this back bc it's kind of a bummer, but that's baseball!!! it is heartbreak and joy in equal measure lol. even in fan fiction I'm like "let's add in a really healthy dose of grim reality." maybe he does go pro! this is wish fulfillment media! sports has poisoned me lol

[charactershoesfic]

ok also I did write part of a second chapter back in summer 2024. I know last time I was like "I'm not gonna finish thissss" and then did. this time I really mean it, not being coy lol

but here's the little bit I wrote, 4k of adam making things hard on himself, tentatively titled "future ain't what it used to be" (another yogi berra quote) xoxo

Fall ball ends. It’s a yellowing November. There’s college football, but Ronan doesn’t give a shit about college football. There’s midterms, but Ronan doesn’t give a shit about midterms. They build a skateboard ramp in the gravel lot outside Monmouth Manufacturing and take turns hurtling off it, wrecking magnificently. 

Noah shouts commentary from the sidelines, leg in its brace propped on a folding chair, heckling cheerily. Ronan sprawls out hard, sweatshirt rucking up as he skids across the pavement, so when he stands his entire back is singing with road rash. 

“Seven out of ten,” Noah shouts. 

“Look at that!” Blue admires Ronan’s shredded back, prodding and then laughing when he swears in pained protest. “Looks like Australia, a little.”

“There’s New Zealand,” Adam agrees. He doesn’t touch, but Ronan feels the hover of his finger like a physical sensation, imaginary heat, because he’s fucking insane. The resulting craze of feeling turns the pain of his back to nothing. 

“Yeah, thanks for your concern,” he says, fixing his sweatshirt. He flings himself to the curb next to Noah’s chair. Gansey is sitting there, too—positioned so he can best play conscientious objector while also getting a good view of the fun. 

“I’m on the record,” Gansey says, “in expressing concern. Repeatedly.” 

“Shrilly,” Cheng adds. 

“Fruitlessly.” Blue pats Gansey’s shoulder and takes her turn on the skateboard, pushing off with one purple jelly sandal. She nearly sticks the landing before her feet go out from under her. She comes up with grass and loose gravel studding her spiky hair. 

“Four out of ten!” 

“On what grounds?” Her hands fly to her hips, one palm skinned. “I almost stuck it that time!” 

“I’m rating the wipe-outs, not the landings,” Noah explains haughtily. He jabs a finger. “Who’s next? Cheng? Parrish?”

“You don’t have to,” Gansey says immediately. For all their teasing, Ronan is glad for his stick-in-mud caution, voicing the alarm that rose in his own throat. He plays it off with skillful good humor, explaining, “I’m being selfish, but. We can’t afford to lose that arm again!” 

“Yeah, fuck the rest of us,” Ronan objects, playing along. His eyes fly to Adam, but he’s turned away, jogging to retrieve the skateboard from the wreckage of Blue’s wipe-out. Always, the pang of feeling—a fondness so big it feels like sadness—at Adam’s narrow hips, his easy stride, his neck striped gold and white with tan lines. “It’s cool if I get head trauma.”

“How would we tell the difference?” Adam says dryly. His face is untroubled, a little mulish when he turns and meets Ronan’s eyes. “I’ll make sure to land on my right arm, how’s that?”

“Better idea,” Blue says. “One sec.”

She rummages in the trunk of Gansey’s Pig and emerges with some decidedly un-Gansey roller skates, then a hula hoop, then a skein of yarn, then finally a set of elbow- and wrist-guards. The hula hoop she hands to Cheng. The pads she hands to Adam. They are leopard print. 

“You’ve been holding out on me, maggot,” Ronan says admiringly. He stands, takes one of the leopard wrist-guards, and begins affixing it to Adam’s left wrist. “I’m gonna wear these in the spring.” 

“This is overkill,” Adam complains as Blue seizes his other arm, strapping a pad to his right elbow. 

“Careful, or I’ll give you my helmet, too,” she says. “It’s lady bug patterned. Antennae and all.” 

“Looks good,” Ronan tells him. Finishing with the elbow guard, he adjusts Adam’s hat, pulling the brim lower over his brow, which earns him a scowl. Ronan has to stifle a grin. “Really cool. Go get ‘em, tiger.”

“Leopard,” Cheng says. “Technically.”  

Adam crashes spectacularly, tears open both knees of his shitty cargo pants, and comes up laughing, spitting gravel. The seized breath in Ronan’s chest explodes in a laugh. He feels himself grinning like a moron and doesn’t give a shit who sees. 

… 

They fuck around until the sun’s warmth fades. The sun’s setting earlier now, nights getting colder. Gansey drives Blue to her shift at Nino’s. Cheng and Noah leave for DnD. Ronan returns from a shower to find Adam standing in his bedroom, already changed into his work coveralls. Now that baseball season’s over, he’s back to picking up shifts at Boyd’s Garage. This is a prickly subject, which Ronan has mostly learned not to broach. He’s still learning the rules of all of this—when his shitty attitude will earn a laugh, when he’ll get only cool disdain. Adam will usually accept a ride to work without much argument now, which is something. 

“Let me change, then I’m ready,” he says, applying deodorant. “You eat?”

“I ate,” Adam says. He’s not doing anything, just standing there, frowning down at the torn knees of his discarded cargos. 

“Blue will sew ‘em,” Ronan offers. When the frown doesn’t resolve: “I’m not being sexist. She has a whole rant she’ll do about visible mending. You’ll love it.”

“I don’t care about the pants,” Adam says. He looks up and the worried expression dissolves, briefly, into something lighter. “Season’s over, Lynch, how’s the farmer tan getting worse?”

“Probably all the farming.” 

As Ronan digs a shirt from a pile of clean, unfolded clothes, Adam comes up behind him. His fingers ghost over the fresh road rash on Ronan’s back, touching too lightly to sting, producing only a strange searing itch. He has a weird thing for Ronan’s skinned knees or elbows, which he denies. 

“Scab kink,” Ronan accuses. “Freak.”

“That was stupid,” Adam says, ignoring this. He lays his palm flat against the unharmed skin of Ronan’s trapezius, palm cool, still callused from the fall season. “I shouldn’t have done that.” 

The tone of his voice suggests trouble. Ronan buys time, pulling on his shirt before turning around. Adam’s expression suggests further trouble—a pinched, inward kind of consternation, like he’s doing math in his head. He knows this face. When Adam wears this face during a game, Ronan knows to call time, jog to the mound, say, “Stop thinking so much.”

“What—the skateboard? You didn’t have to.”

“I know.” He grimaces. “That’s what’s stupid about it.” 

A surge of worry. “Does your arm hurt?” 

“No,” Adam says. He’s rotating his left arm, maybe without realizing he’s doing it, twisting outward to bare his inner wrist, then back in again. His face shows no pain, only that remote discontent. “It doesn’t hurt.” 

“Then what?” 

Ronan’s voice comes out pissed, impatient. The impatience isn’t directed at Adam, but rather at this vague unhappiness, and how stupidly desperate he is to fix it. During a game, it’s easy. When Adam doesn’t have his fastball, Ronan calls for off-speed. When Adam’s trying to be too smart at the corners, Ronan tells him to quit it. They use hand signals, confer in whispers behind their gloves. Even arguing, it’s easy. 

But now he can’t label the problem, can’t trace to it elbow fatigue or a burst palm blister. Outside baseball, he doesn’t know the rules. He doesn’t know what he’s allowed to say, what’s too much. 

“I’ll be late for work,” Adam says. His expression shutters. He folds the torn cargo pants and tucks them under his arm. 

Ronan follows him penitently out of the bedroom, down the Monmouth stairs, to the parking lot. They drive out to Boyd’s Garage in silence. Ronan’s desperation balloons to fill the car until he feels crushed and guilty and rash. At the penultimate stoplight, he says, “So you’re pissed or what?” 

“No,” Adam says, unconvincing. He laughs a little at his own poor performance, amends, “I’m pissed at myself.”

“You’re allowed to fuck around sometimes.” 

“I just got my arm healthy. One bad fall, and- it would ruin everything.”  

“But you’re fine,” Ronan argues, half-reassuring himself. 

“I’m fine,” Adam agrees. He drops his head back against the seat, lifts his hands and presses his palms into his eyes. “I just can’t do that again.” 

Ronan doesn’t know what to say. The panic doesn’t ease. It’s only been a few weeks since they kissed by the hotel ice machine. It’s new, this thing, never mind that he’s been obsessed with the torn brim of Adam Parrish’s cap since sophomore year. His feelings are too big; they make him feel unhinged, obsessive, out of control. 

The light changes. They turn into the Boyd’s lot. He exhales. 

“You gonna let me pick you up later?”

“Let you,” Adam repeats, eyes still covered. He exhales. “God, I’m tired of myself right now.” 

Ronan lapses to an emotion he understands: anger. “Okay, walk home, then. I’m trying to be fucking nice to you.” 

Adam uncovers his face and looks like he’ll argue. Then he doesn’t. His mouth twists. He’s holding the torn cargo pants in his lap, and now his hands wind themselves into the ugly olive fabric. 

“You are nice to me,” he says. He touches Ronan’s hand where it rests against the parking brake, following the line of tendon along his forearm to an ugly, half-healed scrape on his elbow. “I’m being annoying.” 

“Stop being,” Ronan suggests, embarrassed by the kick of pulse in his throat. 

Adam nods, face thoughtful, like Ronan has said something wise and worth consideration. He transfers the torn cargos to the dashboard, freeing his lap so he can move to his knees in the passenger seat, so Ronan has to tilt his head back to look him in the face.

Adam doesn’t kiss him—he is cautious and private always, never more so than at work—but he neatens Ronan’s crucifix on its chain, aligning the catch with the nape of his neck, pulling the little Celtic cross so it’s perfectly symmetrical against the collar of his shirt. His mouth is serious and focused. When he’s settled the necklace, Ronan catches his left hand and lifts it to his mouth, bites the second knuckle of his pointer finger, not especially gently. Adam’s face blooms into a grin, like a joke they’re both in on. 

“Will you pick me up after?” he asks nicely, sitting back. 

“Yeah,” says Ronan.

…

Adam studies for midterms. He throws a ball against the chalked square on the church’s back exterior wall. He works double-shifts, studies until his eyes ache, and then wakes early for the team lift sessions in the Aglionby gym before homeroom. 

Sometimes, he doesn’t really wake up until he’s there in the gym, halfway through a bench press, and the world abruptly tears open around him, and he’s in his body, muscles alight, nose burning with the stink of sweat and Gold Bond powder and cleaning solution. And the weight is bearing down on him, suddenly, and there’s sound, Tad Carruthers solicitously offering to spot him, Kavinsky’s Romanian EDM blaring, and Adam breathes and returns the weight to its rack. 

The feeling lives between fun and frightening; sometimes it feels like his whole world stands in that doorway. 

For example: meeting Ronan’s eyes across the weight room and feeling observed, admired. 

For example: Ronan in the locker room, spraying himself liberally with Axe deodorant, trying to make Gansey cough and protest, and the long muscled line of his ribcage, the casual grace of an arm lifted and folded over his skull, and the dark thatch of his underarm bared. When he meets Adam’s eyes, he shows his teeth and rolls the bottle of Axe down the locker room bench, and Adam spends all day with his chin tucked to his uniform collar, smelling of Ronan beneath his clothes, and that night he falls into bed with his undershirt rucked up around his head, and he jerks off that way until the world comes apart again. 

For example: spending too much money. For example: spending too much time. He sets out a dish of cat food behind the church, in penitence for that time he almost struck the neighborhood stray with a wild pitch. He and Ronan noodle with the knuckleball for hours in the dimming parking lot while the children’s choir practices inside the church’s yellow windows, singing about kings and glory and rejoicing. 

He feeds quarters into the pitching machine at the batting cages, sits atop a picnic table and shares a spit-warm Gatorade with Blue and Noah while Cheng, Gansey, and the Lynch brothers take turns in the batting cage. Blue teaches him to mend the torn knees in his cargo pants. 

He gets, sometimes, a wondering wide-open feeling of reckless possibility. He can buy a slice of pizza at Nino’s. He can say “yes” when somebody offers him a ride. He can text Ronan Lynch “come over.” He can open the door and find him there at the top of the cramped stairway. He can take off Ronan Lynch’s clothes, taste his spit, tongue his scabs which taste like coins. 

The feeling is briefly jubilant and then, quickly, troubling. Rather than sleep, his brain interrogates the line between free fall and plummet. His brain begins to declare that he’s out of control. Just out of sight, it’s all slipping away, everything he can’t keep his eye on. Then he has to climb out of bed and make flashcards, do his PT exercises, stand in his boxers and move through the pitching wind-up again and again, searching for pain. 

Ronan watches from the mattress on the floor, face half-crushed into a pillow. He offers prompts: “From the stretch, now. Man leading on first. He’s going. Less sexy, Parrish, or you’ll get thrown outta the game.”

Adam flips him off. He moves through the wind-up again, whipping his arm through the air, searching for a pain which will tell him it’s over, it’s ruined, will confirm it was never real to begin with.

“I said less sexy,” Ronan reprimands. When Adam doesn’t laugh, he sits up, flush still bright against his neck and bare chest. “Are you being a freak again?”

Adam considers. “Yeah.”

Ronan nods. He finds his awful cut-off tee with the sides torn out and begins dressing. “Wanna throw a little? Or should I go?” 

It’s such a stupid shirt. The torn, gaping sleeves show so much of his torso that he might as well be shirtless. Adam drops his wind-up posture and despairs, for the millionth time, that he is joyless and punishing and remote. His feelings knot up in his throat and go no further. 

He says, “No, I should probably- I haven’t done the Latin yet.”

Ronan shrugs, finds his socks. “Gallia est onmnis divisa in partas tres. Boom. Easy.”

“Sorry,” Adam says. Then, because he can’t stop himself, “You can stay though. You don’t have to leave.”

Ronan doesn’t make a big thing of it, only removes the ridiculous shirt and peels off the socks he just put on. He flops back on the mattress and shuts his eyes. A new hickie shines low on his throat. 

Adam gets that feeling again: the weight bearing down on him, the bar at his chin and he’s not sure he can heft it high enough to rack it. He stoops, requisitions the terrible cut-off shirt for himself, and sits down at the desk with his Latin textbook. 

“Wanna know what I think?” Ronan asks, voice muffled. 

“Okay. About what?”

“It’ll piss you off.”

“Okay.”

“You think you’re good because shit was hard, not despite.”

Sitting at the desk, Adam waits for emotion. Nothing comes, but when he absently slips his hand inside the shirt’s torn side, he finds his heart is beating really fast. He fits his hand against his own collarbone, observing, trying to assign feeling to the sensation. 

He says, “You’re right. That pisses me off.”

Ronan says, unapologetically, “I’m asleep.” 

Adam stares down at his textbook and waits for the symbols to condense into meaning, hand tucked inside his shirt, pressing at his chest like his heart needs the reminder to keep beating. 

…

The last Friday before winter break, the Aglionby Athletic Department holds a commitment ceremony for students to announce where they’ve committed to play college sports. Half the baseball seniors come to school regaled in swag from their new teams—the Aglionby maroon cast aside for scarlet, purple, blue, maize, orange, gold. 

“Fifty bucks Carruthers gets up there and spells his name wrong,” Kavinsky hisses as they queue for the ceremony to begin. 

“It’s just a photo op,” Gansey soothes Carruthers, whose alarm suggests he considers this a real possibility. “We’re just signing a blank piece of paper, not a real contract. Anyway, roster offers aren’t official until admissions letters go out next week. There’s nothing to sign yet.” 

He is resplendent in a new scarlet jersey. Gansey’s parents are in town for the ceremony; Gansey II’s tie matches the scarlet insignia on his son’s cap. Gansey crosses the stage, shakes hands, sits at the table and pretends to sign. His parents stand behind him. When the family poses for a photo, Gansey II rests his hand on Gansey III’s shoulder in a perfectly fatherly gesture—just right. Adam’s palms sweat with impotent envy. 

Adam has a new hat, too. He can hardly wear it; every five seconds, he finds himself wanting to take the hat off, consider the lettering on the front, thumb the unfrayed embroidery, just to confirm that it’s real. He didn’t buy it for himself; the hat came with the official letter from Coach Gray’s scout friend, offering him a spot on next year’s roster. 

His name is called. He feels a vengeful pride to hear the school’s name read aloud, to see Gansey III’s brows lift in admiration, to know Kavinsky is sneering enviously. He wants their admiration and the wanting fills him with shamed misery. He shakes the principal’s hand. He shakes Coach Gray’s hand. There is nobody, of course, to pose with Adam for the photo. 

When he sits down at the table to feign signing, nobody rests a hand on his shoulder. The overhead lights are hot on the top of his head. He looks down and sees his classmates’ signatures scrawled across a blank piece of paper, just as Gansey predicted:

Tad E. Carruthers 

Tad Elizabeth Carruthers

Taddeus Elizabeth Carruthers II (fucked ur mom Tad im ur dad Tad)

Let’s fucking go boys!! 

Excelsior!! 

Gansey

Adam pens Parrish below Gansey’s name and feels a little better for the company. He leaves it at that, gets off stage as fast as he can, before he can allow himself to search the audience for the face he’s always searching for—never certain if it’s dread or desire behind his eyes. 

Blue finds them by the doors after the ceremony is finished. She presents Adam with a tiny bouquet of roadside wildflowers, secured with a hair tie. There’s one for Gansey, too, and another for Cheng. 

“Oh!” Henry says, looking touched. “I didn’t commit today, Lady Blue. I’m only a junior.” 

“They’re for everyone,” she says scornfully. “I don’t give a shit about college.”

Ronan lifts his own miniature bouquet of flowers to indicate this, or perhaps only toasting to Blue’s collegial indifference. He’s still in his Aglionby uniform, looking typically disreputable, tie askew, shirt tails untucked, face faintly miserably. The flowers lend a pleasing, sweet wildness to his aura of disarray. 

“Thanks for the flowers,” Adam says to Blue.

“Congrats on throwing a ball really good,” she tells him, but she gives him a friendly little kick in the shin to show she’s kidding, and she keeps sneaking nervous little looks over to where Mr. and Mrs. Gansey are glad-handing the principal. 

There’s a grand reception to follow in the big alumni atrium, which has begun to emit good smells. Adam knows he shouldn’t say no to a free dinner, but the sheer quantity of parents is overwhelming. Even Kavinsky’s got a bored, stoned looking woman beside him who must be his mother. 

Worry starts to infect him: they’re looking at him. They remember last year. They watched from the tinted windows of their Audis and Mercedes and Lexuses as Adam’s arm went snap. Already the admiration he shamedly wants has thinned to pity. He’s sure of it. 

So as the crowd filters towards the reception, Gansey pulling Blue towards his parents, Adam’s feet stay planted. In another moment, it’s only him and Ronan standing there. 

“Are you not interested,” Adam asks, “in the college commitment reception?”

Ronan says, “I am interested in driving off a cliff. I am interested in being struck by lightning. Bear attack would be okay.” 

“You look nice with the flowers,” Adam says. Then, despite everything, he has to laugh because Ronan’s face goes so slack with surprise, then skepticism. “You do!” 

“I’m a dick in a uniform carrying weeds,” Ronan disagrees. He starts for the exit. “Who says you’re not romantic, Parrish?”

Adam follows him out the BMW; there’s been no invitation, but Ronan doesn’t look surprised when he follows. Sliding into the car, he hands Adam a half-empty water bottle. 

“What-”

“For your dumb flowers,” Ronan says. 

This is endearing. Adam pokes his wildflower bouquet and then Ronan’s into the mouth of the water bottle. He settles the make-shift vase into the cupholder between them, and the effect is somehow pleasing—in the same way the flowers looked nice in Ronan’s hands, kind of delicate and humble against the car’s black leather interior. 

He says, “You’re romantic.”

“What?”

“I mean, you say nice things,” Adam says. Then he’s so embarrassed he has to take off his cap and worry his fingers over the embroidered logo, just for a reason to look away.

“Yeah, take a survey,” Ronan says, tearing out of the school parking lot with irresponsible speed. “That’s not consensus.” 

“Survey data is never very sound,” Adam says. “Take a stats class.” 

“Fuck off,” Ronan suggests. 

Adam lets the car’s speed crush him back against the seat. Ronan drives for a while with no seeming destination in mind. He’s clearly in a stormy mood; Adam can tell from the tightness of the car’s turns, the momentum heavy on his shoulders and neck. 

Ronan’s blaring some awful noisy music very loudly through the open windows. When they idle at a stop sign, it occurs to Adam how they look—the sleekly expensive car, the noisy bass-boosted music, their hands hanging out the windows. They must look shitty and teenaged; they are, he guesses, and feels an embarrassing kind of pleasure. 

“Kavinsky doesn't even watch baseball,” Ronan says abruptly. “He doesn't even like it. He watches Formula 1.” 

“He won’t start,” Adam says. “Big school, big team like that, he’ll be lucky to get a couple innings as a middle relief guy.”

Ronan scoffs and doesn’t answer. Adam considers his profile, the hook of his nose, the long line of his throat, and feels like he’s missed a cue. A confusion of feeling: all the stupid pride, envy, humiliation of the day. The cardinals on Gansey’s father’s tie. The unfrayed insignia on his cap. The wildflowers pinched carefully in Ronan’s big hands. 

He feels a sudden urgency to say what he feels—and then panic because he doesn’t know what that is. 

He says, with effort, “You could play somewhere. You could get recruited right now, I bet, if you wanted to.”

“I don’t want to,” Ronan says mulishly. 

“I’m not going to apologize for caring about this stuff.”

“Did I fucking ask you to?” 

“No.” Adam frowns at him some more. Ronan surely feels his eyes, but he keeps his eyes fixed forward on the road. 

“You don’t like seeing worse players getting recognition,” Adam guesses. Then he laughs at the resulting jut of Ronan’s jaw. Relief rushes through him. He likes to be right. More than that, he likes to feel like he knows Ronan—like he can understand him, a little bit. “I’m right. You competitive asshole.” 

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re so normal about it,” Ronan grouses, but he lets Adam snatch his right hand off the steering wheel and bite gently at his knuckles. 

“I’m normal,” he says, grinning, feeling suddenly light. 

He’s so used to things being hard that every easy moment turns him giddy, reckless. Often, he is the one making things hard. It feels good to unknot a feeling, to leave it somewhere on the road behind them. 

[charactershoesfic]

Hi there, I hope you are having a good summer :)

I just wanted to stop in and drop my semi-annual report on how much your writing has meant to me once again. This summer I had the chance to work in some of the most beautiful areas in the country doing a job I loved and would have loved to do for the rest of my life, but will probably not have the opportunity again due to certain Political Circumstances.

I had a really lovely time, but as the season was ending I felt this sense of melancholy and loss, and I needed the familiar comfort of well read words and stories. SYTL has followed me on some incredible adventures and to some amazing places, and it has once again provided genuine comfort and enjoyment at an oddly low point. I read it while sitting on the edge of the canyon, thinking about the past few years of my life and how I have both changed and stayed the same. I think I’ve had this story in my life for 5 years now, and I don’t know how to describe the way that it has truly become a part of me.

I have been reading so many wonderful novels and non fiction books lately, and I still keep coming back to your writing. Each time I’ve reread it, I find new bits of prose or dialogue that seem particularly poignant or impactful, or simply a lovely turn of phrase. I could dig out all my annotations and highlights but this note is already long enough I’m sure. Time to listen to Softly and Tenderly again, and sit with a bit of sadness for a little while longer.

(obligatory photo of my reading spot the past few evenings)

I've been sitting with this one for a few days bc it's so precious to me that I almost can't articulate it!! thank you for this gorgeous photo and message, for letting me sit in this moment with you and take in the view. what a special thing.

I'm sorry for this sense of loss. I know you'll transform it into something or it'll transform you or both? but I'm so grateful SYTL could be a small part of this moment and the ways you'll make meaning from it. idk how to say this except that it's a huge gift to make something and have it be understood so deeply by someone else, so thank you <3 it's an honor in the simplest most felt sense

[charactershoesfic]

hi! hope you're well :) spring season has me rotating your pynch baseball au in my head and i've been rereading it and generally kicking my feet like a lovesick teenager whilst thinking about hotel ice machines, and i was wondering if you had any sort of extra thoughts about what happens to pynch et al as they grow older? or any other fun little tidbits about the au that you haven't shared yet? no pressure!

omg hi I'm sorry this is 100 years late. happy baseball summer! and thank u again for the gorgeously perfect baseball au art, which I think about constantly... the romance of a hotel ice machine...

I do have some thoughts! which are largely kinda like not the most cheerful, in which they break up for a while in college bc of course they do. Ronan is playing single A baseball in like a desert somewhere and is really happy even though it's dogshit conditions and no money and they're being fed off stadium popcorn and leftover concession hot dogs etc meanwhile Adam has ostensibly gotten everything he wanted but he's miserable and still has an incredibly unhealthy relationship with competition, his body, etc. I think he blows out his arm the summer after freshman yr bc he's going too hard and has to get Tommy John surgery and it's a whoooole thing, but while he's rehabbing the arm and crashing out they get back in touch, and they start playing catch again while Adam rehabs, Ronan sneaks him into the shitty hotel where the team is staying, etc. I think longterm Adam's arm can't handle the demands of being a starting pitcher, but he comes back as a relief guy, and becomes an absolutely lights-out closer. he is scary!!

I think long-term he doesn't go pro... he has the option to get drafted but he uses his extra year of eligibility bc of injury to get recruited as a graduate student, free tuition somewhere good, he gets his mba or his law degree or something, he goes into sports law maybe?

I'm laughing as I read this back bc it's kind of a bummer, but that's baseball!!! it is heartbreak and joy in equal measure lol. even in fan fiction I'm like "let's add in a really healthy dose of grim reality." maybe he does go pro! this is wish fulfillment media! sports has poisoned me lol