An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
reassemble the parts, despite your narrative arc
Noah scrubs his hands over his face and groans loudly, an indoor-volume scream. “I just--fuck, man, I don’t know. I’m not ready. To move on with my life. I didn’t even want to go on that interview, you know? I wanted Adam to talk me out of it.”
Ronan huffs a laugh, then he realizes Noah’s expression is deadly serious. “He’d never do that.”
“I know. Of course he, of all people, would tell me what I needed to hear and not of what I wanted.”
Here, have some unused dialogue from the draft of the next update, because I really like it and I miss people looking at this blog lol.
“Oh God.” Ronan’s stomach drops, awkward horribleness weighing it down until it’s somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. “Is Blue pregnant?”
“What? No!” Noah makes a face like he’s sucked a lemon or smelled something foul. Ronan laughs, so relieved he can’t help it. Then Noah starts to laugh, too, and that he’s amused by the idea of fathering a child is somehow both heartwarming and concerning. “After all the shit I’ve been through, I’m probably sterile. Which--okay, thank God I’m not gonna be passing on these shitty genes--but that’s is a whole ‘nother thing.”
“Yeah, no, no amount of pretty girl’s ever gonna balance that shitshow out,” Ronan tells him, not particularly kindly. Noah makes an unoffended ‘duh’ kind of gesture, indicating that he doesn’t mind Ronan laughing at him; he knows he wasn’t a great looking guy even before his accident.
Noah half-groans and half-laughs. “I just imagined my fucking ears on a baby.”
It takes Ronan mere seconds to start laughing at the mental image, too. Noah’s covering part of his eyes like he’s shielding them from the Dumbo-eared baby they’re both imagining, but the flush of his mirth is visible on his cheeks.
i LOVE LOVE LOVE your writing and i saw all your ask prompts and honestly i'd love to just see anything ronan x adam that you felt like writing?
You, dear nonnie, opened a can of worms by leaving this so open-ended.
2. Who is the big spoon/ Who is the little spoon?
Both. Neither. They’re not so good at the bed-sharing thing, actually: Adam sleeps on his stomach and half hanging off the bed, Ronan tosses and turns and steals the blankets even though he runs hot. Adam sleeps very still and not unlike the dead, usually dreamless, Ronan is restless and a light sleeper prone to vivid dreams of both bad and good varieties. They’ll end up holding hands or touching somehow rather than cuddling, if even that much.6. Who would have really deep emotional thoughts at the middle of the night/ Who would have them in the middle of the day?Ronan is definitely prone to introspection and existential ponderings at night, but Adam has a tendency to overthink himself into depression during the day. 11. Who likes horror movies/ Who likes romance movies?Neither of them like romance movies, but Adam likes horror, from classic Hitchcock straight through to slashers and paranoia-inducing psychological horror like It Follows. Adam has watched every single horror movie on Netflix no matter how terribly, laughably bad or outrageously violent, and Ronan is consistently baffled by this. Ronan’s not squeamish by any means, and it’s not that horror movies don’t appeal to him, but he doesn’t have the same affinity for them that Adam does.18. Who is a cat person/ Who is a dog person?Adam is both–he even [SPOILER ALERT] gets Fox before the end of CiYH (I originally intended for Fox to be a cat, wrote him as a dog in a future-set drabble for reasons I still don’t understand, and am now undecided which he is). Ronan doesn’t have a preference because he’s surprisingly utilitarian in how he thinks about cats and dogs because of growing up on a farm: cats are useful mousers and most dogs serve a practical purpose depending on their breed, and that are cute and make good pets is just a bonus as far as Ronan’s concerned. 25. Who wears the other ones clothes?This one is easy: both. They swap shirts constantly. Ronan’s shirts are a little big on Adam, which Adam prefers even for his own shirts, and Adam’s shirts are usually just barely too small for Ronan. They’ve attempted to swap pants, but Ronan can hardly fit into Adam’s (they’re short and too tight, if he can get into them at all) and Ronan’s are comfortably loose but long on Adam. 26. Who likes to eat healthy/ Who loves junk food?Ronan is a frustratingly picky eater, but he’s also the one more inclined to eat healthily since growing up on a farm can do that to a person. Adam will readily acknowledge that he’s a fairly indiscriminate pit into which food so long as it isn’t unfried seafood goes, but also that he does prefer junk food because poverty will do that to a person. Ask them about the time Adam couldn’t tell the difference between spinach, kale, and collard greens at the farmer’s market if you want to see them bicker like a married couple.29. Who is the better cook?Related to the above, it’s Ronan, without a doubt. Aurora and Niall taught their sons well in the kitchen department. If you want something microwaved, boiled, charred beyond recognition, rendered inedible and/or possibly hazardous to your health, go to Adam. 34. Who would wear “if lost return to…” t-shirt/ Who would wear “I am…” t-shirt?Ronan wears the “If lost return to…” one, and Adam wouldn’t be caught dead in the “I am…” shirt; he has the one that says “Keep him” instead. Henry thought he was very funny when he gave the set to them. 38. Who likes to star gaze?Adam. He loves space and starts and sci-fi. It’s his one truly “frivolous” interest in that he indulges it for no real reason beyond his fascination with it. He’ll point out constellations and astral bodies and get excited for things like meteor showers and comet passings and eclipses. 44. Who is active/ Who is lazy?It’s not that Adam is lazy, exactly, but he just really, really likes taking advantage of having nothing to do when he’s completely free for a day, and he absolutely will do nothing but watch Netflix and sleep all day. Meanwhile, Ronan’s got a gym membership and a schedule he keeps to because he has so much physical energy to work off on a given day, so even his rest/lazy days are busier than Adam’s. To be fair, though, Adam works three physical jobs on top of being a full-time student in a physically intensive art program and Ronan neither works nor has a demanding major. They do go hiking with Gansey (et al.) whenever the weather’s good, though, and can be persuaded to go running if you bribe them with food afterwards.
omg, so many of those sentence starters are great prompts for TRC. can't remember if you are pro or anti ronsey but I kinda want to see "I accidentally called you my boyfriend today" for those two. also now I wanna write “You’ve been pouting ever since I went out on that date, what’s up?” for Henry talking to Blue.
Aren’t they just? I’ve been looking the whole list over for days and trying to decide which one is my favorite, and I can’t pick. They’re all just so good!While I’m not really a fan of straight up romantic/shippy Ronsey, I am very much pro quasi-romantic codependent “if-I-didn’t-think-of-you-as-a-brother-I’d-totes-wanna-smash” platonic Ronsey, so I think I can deliver!
Gansey is an anxious animal even on his best day, but the jittery twitchiness of him this afternoon is a whole new level entirely. Ronan is doing his best to ignore the the creak of the floorboards under his bouncing leg, the rhythmic clicking of his pen, the frantic energy radiating off him in waves. He’s nearly plucked his mint plant clean and if he rubs his lip any more he’ll start rubbing his teeth.
If he strains his ears, Ronan can tell that Gansey’s been listening to the Beatles, and to “Help!” specifically, on a loop for almost an hour.
Ronan grew up with brothers and is no stranger to noisy housemates, and he doesn’t even particularly mind the amount of noise Gansey is making, but as he watches the tense line of Gansey’s shoulders from the couch he feels a prickle of nerves himself. He sets his book aside and gets up, but he sheer volume of Paul McCartney’s voice leaking out of Gansey’s headphones deafens him to the creak of the leather and activity in the kitchen.
The electric kettle glows blue as it starts to heat up while Ronan rummages through the cabinets for Gansey’s favorite mug. He makes an unnecessary amount of noise for the sheer pleasure of it because Gansey can’t hear him and Noah’s off somewhere with Blue or teaching a class and isn’t here to complain. Gansey startles when Ronan puts a mug of mint tea down in front of him with less care than he should. He jerks his laptop out of the way unnecessarily and pulls his headphones down. “What the hell, Ronan?”Ronan stares at him, one eyebrow raised, and waits. Gansey glares back, annoyed, for about as long as he usually does before he looks away and pinches the bridge of his nose. Pleased with his victory, Ronan says, “Spill.”“What? No, you didn’t, actually, thank god.”“No, dipshit. You.” Gansey frowns as he sets his laptop back down. Ronan amends, “What’s eating you?”“Nothing’s eating me.” It sounds wrong coming out of his mouth, a borrowed phrase from another language. “I’m not being eaten by anything.”“Gansey.”Gansey huffs and leans back, crossing his arms over the big, ugly Polo logo on his shirt. He fills it out nicely and his biceps stretch the sleeves just so, and in an entirely objective way he wasn’t capable of several years ago, Ronan appreciates Gansey’s attractiveness momentarily before kicking his chair.“I did something stupid this morning,” Gansey says. That he allows the insult of the kick to go uncommented on piques Ronan’s interest beyond settling Gansey’s anxiety to its usual level. Ronan half sits on the edge of the desk and waits for Gansey to elaborate further. “When I was getting breakfast, the girl behind the counter asked if I was eating everything myself and I told her I was sharing it with my boyfriend.”This is so anticlimactic it’s abruptly very boring and deeply disappointing in how mundane it is. “So?”“I was talking about you,” Gansey says, in a rush like he can’t contain the words now that he’s started letting them out. Ronan blinks. “So?”“I accidentally called you my boyfriend today.” He says it like he’s speaking to a particularly obstinate child. Ronan drops his head back against the support beam beside the desk. “It’s not like she knows you meant me. You go there all the time, usually with at least a guy. It’s fine.”“I don’t think of you that way,” Gansey says. “Not that I wouldn’t, if I were so inclined.”Ronan jabs a finger at him. “We’re not doing this again.” Gansey expression is earnest and offended. “What? I would!”“That’s gay, Gansey. That’s really gay.” Gansey just looks at him, his expression split between are you kidding me? and why wouldn’t you date me? “It’s gayer than whatever shit it is you get up to with Cheng or Noah.”“I’d argue against Noah, Blue’s usually involved in some way.”“That’s disgusting,” Ronan says. “This is really why you’re being tense and weird today? You could be making diamonds right now, Gansey. It was a slip, it doesn’t mean anything. Relax.”“It’s not that I think it means anything,” Gansey retorts, a little hotly. “I just–I love that place, and now I’m afraid to go there because she’s going to ask about my boyfriend.”Ronan reaches out and ruffles Gansey’s hair the way he would Matthew’s. “Fucking loser. Just make shit up, you’ve got two other ones to base your answers on.”
Would you write about pynch talking about marriage/getting engaged?
“Did you get the invitations yet?”“No, not yet. Why, did you get yours?”“They’re wood.” Fox picks his head up and whines softly at the scandalized tone in Adam’s voice. He murmurs an apology to the dog and says into the phone, “It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”Ronan snorts. “Helen went all out.”“I can’t even imagine how expensive they were,” Adam says. “They’re laser cut and almost a quarter inch thick. I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with them after I RSVP.”“Ask Blue, probably,” Ronan suggests. His end of the call is noisy, people shouting around him and construction sounds, and every now and then he turns away from the speaker to say something to someone. Clarifying earlier instructions, mostly, sometimes correcting. “She had to have okayed them being that way, right? Don’t brides have veto power or some shit?”“Probably, yeah, but they did ask Helen to plan this for them, so, like...”“Yeah.” His voice gets muffled as he lowers his phone. “No, not those windows, the other ones. No--there, yeah. Those.”The construction at the Barns is well underway and has been for weeks now, adding new buildings to the unused pastures and paving old dirt tracks to them. From the sound of it, they might be ahead of schedule with one of the new barns. “You ever think about it?” Ronan asks after talking to one of his foremen for several minutes about a potential plumbing issue in the new barn. “Getting married?”Adam frowns as he strokes Fox’s head. “A bit. Not much. A long time ago, when Blue and I were dating.”“That would’ve been stupid,” Ronan says. The noise around him fades as he moves away from the construction. “I know that now,” Adam replies tersely. “But I still thought about it. Not, like, the wedding part, but the married part. I wanted that.”“I never did,” Ronan admits. “I didn’t think it would be an option.”“Makes sense.”Ronan grunts. It’s thoughtful. “I like having the option. I’m just saying. It’s nice knowing I could, if I wanted to.”“Do you?”“Is this your way of telling me you wanna get hitched, Parrish?”“God, no,” Adam says. “Did you hear how much they’re spending on the caterer? I spent that much to rent that shitty apartment for four years.”“Fuck weddings,” Ronan agrees. There are twenty-five hundred miles between them right now, but just for a second, Adam forgets about the distance, how many more years it will be before he moves back east. The dog sighs heavily, punctuating Adam’s thoughts as Ronan is pulled into another conversation in Virginia. In California, Fox carefully gets up to turn around and rest his chin on Adam’s thigh and Adam resigns himself to not being able to get up for at least an hour. It is nice, having the option, if they ever change their minds.
You just go right for the heartparts, don’t you, anon?10: Why did you choose this pairing for this particular story?Strap in for a doozy, kids.
I’m gonna start with the minor side pairings that don’t effect the overarching plot or character development, because I’m nothing if not persnickety and ineffectually comprehensive.Fletcher and Archer: Because I could, and so I did. Where else was I supposed to wedge my favoritest OC and his inveterate life partner (also an OC, belonging to my good good very best friend @archer-and-anders) and their college au incarnations into my college au fanfic? Why, as fellow students on the periphery of the protagonists’ social circles, of course! They weren’t made together or to be together, but they are meant to be together forever, across any and all universes. It’s just how it is, and I don’t make the rules.Declan and Ashley: I latched on to his POV chapter in TRK mentioning her as a present-tense girlfriend and not a past-tense one, and I want them to be the cool, sexy, affably morally neutral Greenmantles 2.0 with matching Audis and a Mr. and Mrs. Smith vibe. Also, my girl Ashley? She’s rad and Declan doesn’t really deserve her because she’s so much cooler than he is.Maura and Calla: BLUE’S MOMS. Because how could I not, when there’s no Artemus to worry about, a Persephone in the mix, or a Mr. Gray to pair Maura off with? Of course I went the “they’re in lesbians” route! If things focused more on the rest of the group and not just on Adam and Ronan, they’d make appearances, but as things stand right now, they’re not slated to turn up at all, which I hope to rectify in The Rewrite.
On to the played-with and past-tense pairings. Funnily enough, most of these involve Adam because of a very particular headcanon I have for him and am deeply attached to.Ronan and Noah: Oh, Noah, my dear sweet boy, he just made his way around the whole group, didn’t he? This is actually only implied in passing once in Ch3 and never mentioned again, and it was from before I realized how potentially icky that was depending on when exactly it happened, since that chapter has Noah saying he’s 28 and Ronan implying that "{Noah]’s girlfriend and all of [Noah]’s friends are 21″, which is wrong, because Gansey turns 21 at some point between Ch18 and Ch20, which is almost two months later. I’m going on record here and now to say that, no, this didn’t actually happen and this passing mention of it is an instance of Early Installment Weirdness that will be nixed in The Rewrite. Adam and Tad: This wasn’t supposed to become quite the thing it did in my mind; I threw Tad into CiYH for Drama caused by Ronan’s jealous streak and his possessiveness of Adam, and I ended up getting really attached to my version of Tad, perhaps a little wrongheadedly. I intended to push this from “played with” into “actually happens” to fuel Ronan and Adam fighting for much longer than they did, which I also decided against about... two chapters ago. Instead I opted to have Ronan continue to be jealous over something that was never going to happen because it seemed in character for him. Adam and Brandy: Okay. So. This plays into the aforementioned headcanon I have for Adam but also has some bearing on the plot, so I can’t get to into the details on this one (especially since Brandy is a present-tense character as of Ch24). I can say this, though, because it relates to Adam’s relationship with Blue: I didn’t want him to be as inexperienced as Blue, as in a virgin who’d never been kissed before they’d started dating each other. So I had to give Adam an ex-girlfriend he’d been physically intimate with, who was (probably) slightly more experienced than he was back in high school. Ronan and Kavinsky: Contrary to what most people might think, I didn’t include this oairing because I wanted to write Rovinsky into CiYH. I knew going into this project that I wanted to write Kavinsky a particular way, and that I was writing Ronan a particular way, and that I was walking a very fine line between making their backstory work and making it seem out of character for Ronan. In my mind, to play out the full extent of Ronan’s teenage trauma without magic and without his friends (save Gansey, who at the time lived hundreds of miles away) but with the grim reality and formative nature Niall’s death had on him intact, I needed to include the only other character he’d known in high school: Kavinsky. How could I play out Ronan’s character (again, without magic) and Kavinsky the way I intended to portray him (also without magic) as realistically as possible, despite the very murky waters I’d be treading the entire time? By giving them an intimate history with each other, even though I was basically writing Rovinsky into CiYH.Adam and Blue: This one’s only a little bit self-serving, because I actually really like them paired together and I wanted them to have dated and boned prior to the start of CiYH. I had that in mind when I wrote the first chapter, and it didn’t even come up back then. Funny how that happens. But yeah, I had a soft spot for Adam being Blue’s first in most of the major ways and I projected a lot of my relationship frustrations and drama onto them because catharsis (and they’re the only pairing I could actually do that with and have it make sense).
And now, for the actual factual present-tense pairings you’re all here for.Blue and Gansey: I guess I have to out myself here as being a Bluesey hater. “Hater” is probably way too strong a word, because I’m honestly more ambivalent to it. It’s boring to me. But I had to include it because I had to, right? Right, because this is a TRC fic. That’s pretty much it, and it’s cute, I guess, but. Yeah. Fortunately it developed into something I could get behind, to an extent, because they’re both also paired off with characters I think they’re both better suited for than each other.Gansey and Henry: Yes, this is canon! No, I have not made that clear in anything I’ve written! Yes, that is horrible of me and I fully acknowledge that and plan to rectify it in The Rewrite! Yes, it’s actually happening throughout CiYH, yes other characters do know about it, and yes Henry is actually around more often than he is not. This is all a major failing on my part because I never developed a good voice for him (or Gansey, for that matter) and, as I’ve said before, I honestly had no idea I’d ever get to a point where I’d realize it was a major misstep to not include him from the get, because I started CiYH well before TRK came out and I’d initially been hesitant to heavily feature a character we knew nothing about (this is based on past experiences I’ve had in fandoms, with getting attached to characters pre-release and being hugely disappointed by them in canon). This is my single highest priority for The Rewrite, and I can’t emphasize that enough.Blue and Noah: MY OTEEP. I’m infinity-percent serious when I say that, I really am. I’ve said it a million times before, but I ship Blue and Noah together harder than I think I’ve ever shipped literally anything since--I admit these freely and fly these particular fandom colors proudly--Shakarian and Handers. Part of this is projecting, part of this is because my version of Noah is, in fact, so compelling to me that I’m planning on giving him a spin-off of his own that delves into his backstory and follows his personal arc as it develops parallel to CiYH. I can’t wait because I’ll get to delve so much more into this relationship. Blue, Noah, and Gansey: This is the amalgam of my gripes with Bluesey and my undying love for Blue/Noah. You’ve gotta love that happy, comfortable, casual polyamory. This is something I’m really looking forward to exploring more in both the Noah Spin-Off and The Rewrite, especially since I’ve dedicated considerable thought to how exactly this relationship comes to be, how it works (i.e. Blue’s time with both of them, their time as a trio, Noah and Gansey’s time as roommates/friends, Gansey’s time with Henry), and how Noah and Gansey (who don’t exist as a pairing without Blue’s influence) work. It’s easy in a way Adam and Ronan aren’t, despite how complicated and difficult it looks on the surface, but there’s still a lot of room for Drama, because there’s a lot of conflicting dynamics insofar as their three distinct cultures and family lives are concerned, and also lulz for that same exact reason. Adam and Ronan: Because, at the end of the day, I wanted to write these angry, sharp-edged handsome dudes being in messy, complicated, aesthetically pleasing love with each other. And boning down, a lot, with vigor and enthusiasm. Really. That’s it. It’s just complicated in context, but the reality is actually that simple.
get to know my characters meme [the revenge-ning]: ronan!
01. Name: Ronan Niall Lynch02. Nickname(s): “Pal”, but only from Matthew, “Ro” but only from Gansey (and sometimes Declan), and “fechin” from his mother. 03. Gender: Cis male.04. Sexuality: Gay05. Best Friend: Gansey, because you’ve gotta love that quasi-romantic homoerotic-lite friendship they have there. 06. Relationship Status: Single07: Crush/Significant Other: Adam Parrish08. Least Favourite Person: Joseph Kavinsky (sorry), Tad Carruthers, Colin Greenmantle, and sometimes Declan.09. Favourite Food: Aurora’s barmbrack10. Favourite Place: The Barns Belfast, Northern Ireland11. Valued Attributes: His loyalty and devotion, his principles, his non-academic intelligence and affinity for languages, his creativity and artistic talent, and his athleticism.12. Dreams: Making a place of his own in the world that he loves as much as the Barns, ideally with a partner.13. Nightmares: Ever falling into the same dark place he was in in his teens, losing anyone else the way he lost his father and almost lost his mother, wanting to die again, being abandoned by anyone who cares about him, losing Gansey to a bee sting, witnessing what happened to Noah and Adam and not being able to help them, or literally anything bad ever happening to Matthew.14. A Secret: He’s convinced he’s not worth sticking around for, that all his friends will move on and forget about him and will stop thinking about him.15. Best Day: Waking up early to get a lot of shit done at his leisure, 16. Worst Day: The day his father died.17. Favourite Outfit: Solid black Fashion tank (rather than, like, a regular one), black or off-black/gray distressed designer jeans, a thin and lightweight sweater, and boots. 18. Weapon of Choice: His own two fists In games, he likes heavy weapons of all varieties and BFGs, shotguns, or heavy crossbows. 19. Role in RPG: Tank, berserker, or a sturdier DPS. 20. First Thought in the Morning: “I need to go to bed earlier” or “what do I have to do today and what do I want to do?”
