“elation overtook ronan. even before he put a name to the face, he was overwhelmed with a single thought: it was going to be okay.
the second voice belonged to adam parrish.”
because let’s be so honest, has anyone else ever taken care of ronan the way adam has? not really. not his own father. not declan. not even gansey. certainly not kavinsky. not bryde. not hennessy.
declan tried and failed because he tried too hard to protect ronan from himself. tried to keep as much of a lid on ronan’s magic as possible, always told him to lay low, go to school, be good. but ronan never, ever wanted that. he’s incompatible with that kind of existence.
gansey never tried to stifle ronan the same way, but he was more focused on keeping ronan alive than he was on helping ronan figure out and channel his power. i don’t blame gansey for this at all, he did watch ronan almost die numerous times as a result of his dreaming. yeah, the dreaming was helpful on the quest for glendower, but that was as far as gansey was interested in pushing it.
adam, however. adam. adam parrish pulled his boots on and literally went into ronan’s head with him to fight his monsters. he sacrificed his autonomy, the most sacred thing in the world to him, to work as an agent for ronan’s dreamt forest. i know we don’t need to revisit the driving-and-scrying scene again. forgetting all of that, when everyone cautioned ronan to steer clear of greenmantle, told him revenge wasn’t worth the danger, adam was the only one to step up and say, hey, want me to help you stick it to this asshole? i will gladly devise some heinous crime story for us to stick on him and i will gladly help you plant the evidence.
“you’re always the car crash, ronan.”
yet adam still let him drive, because ronan was one of the only people to ever extend that same courtesy to him. blue obviously had a lot of respect for adam’s independence as well, as the only other person in the friend group that didn’t come from money. but then again, blue had a family that loved her. she could lean on people and know they wouldn’t pull the rug out from under her. ronan’s rug was pulled from him when niall died. adam never had a rug. ronan’s so goddamn traumatized by his own loss, trying desperately to fill a void. declan and gansey, the closest things he has to a father and brother at this point, constantly look at him like he might combust at any moment. of course he can understand why adam doesn’t want to lean on anyone. it isn’t going well for ronan himself.
so he never got on adam about being stubborn about money, always respected his independence. i think ronan probably even envied it a little, deep down. because what mattered to adam was never money: it was always independence, and ronan saw that. and whenever it was threatened, that was when he stepped in. he beat the shit out of adam’s father when he tried to beat adam back down into fear and submission. he paid adam’s rent when the only home he’d ever had truly for himself was threatened, and he was careful to hide his hand in it, because he knew how important it was to adam that no one pulled strings for him.
across all friendships and relationships that adam and ronan have had, they are the only ones that have consistently fought for each other’s right to self-determination. that’s the difference.
so as ronan’s cut off from his own body, bleeding nightwash by the gallon, barely able to remember who he is, of course it’s adam’s voice that fills him with joy. whatever he needs, adam will make sure he gets it. he always has. that’s the difference.
dededos
germansingergirl
turnnoffyourmind
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izzy806
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