Writing Comp Entry (Fanfic): Glances / Touches

When Ronan first saw Adam with Gansey, he thought he'd never hated anyone more. He'd seen Adam around school, obviously, but never paid him any attention. Ronan had Gansey, the magic, their quest - Gansey was king, his best friend, and Ronan was his court. There was nothing else he needed.

But that morning, something in the universe had shifted. That morning, when Gansey pulled into school in his old orange Camaro, Adam was sitting next to him. He saw Gansey laugh at something Adam said as they got out of the car, and the ugliest part of his heart - the part that won more often than not - tightened.

He felt his lips curl up into a snarl.

Gansey then, and only then, looked over at him. “Ah, Adam!” he said grandly. “Meet Ronan.”

Then, and only then, did Adam glance up at him. His eyes were wary, and something in Ronan thrilled. Gansey made a small, warning gesture, one that only Ronan would notice.

And because it was Gansey, Ronan pulled back. He forced his snarl to melt into a passable smirk. He forced himself to take Adam's hand. “Ronan,” he grunted.

Adam's eyes flicked upward to meet his. And suddenly - inexplicably - Ronan looked away. He looked away.

Gansey made a small noise of surprise, but Adam coolly drew his hand back. “Adam,” he said. He looked at Gansey, who looked at Ronan, who looked unfeelingly up at the sky. “Are we going?”

Gansey blinked, then nodded. “Yes, of course,” he said. He pulled his bag from the car and set off without glancing back to see if they were following. Ronan followed, and the universe slid back into place.

Except. Adam followed, too, and the universe didn't fall apart.

But it did tilt slightly, and Ronan hated it more than anything else.



Ronan didn’t remember having noticed Adam before that day. They were friends after that, one could say, because Gansey was friends with them and those were essentially the same thing. Excluding Gansey's influence, however, Ronan refused to look at Adam.

But. He already knew the shape of Adam's handwriting. He knew the dip between his eyebrows when he was concentrating, the way he pushed one hand into his back pocket and quirked an eyebrow when he was satisfied with something he'd finished. He knew Adam’s ravenous ambition, his hunger and all-consuming desire to leave their tiny town behind and move on to greater things.

It seemed, then, that Ronan Lynch had been watching Adam Parrish for a long, long time.

“Lynch,” Adam said. “Dropped my pencil.”

Startled, Ronan peered down. “Can't get it on your own?”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Ronan.”

When Ronan gave Adam the pencil, their hands brushed for half a second. Just half a second, and Ronan felt it everywhere.



Their group expanded, again, with Blue. Blue, with her wild hair and fiery eyes. Blue, with the way she enchanted Adam.

Adam saw Blue for the first time, and immediately asked Gansey to talk to her for him. There was a slight blush on his cheeks, and Ronan found it wildly distracting.

He didn’t care that it only took days for Adam and Blue to become a thing, that Blue reached for Adam's hand like it was a reflex. He absolutely didn’t care that Adam looked at Blue like she was the moon and sun and stars.

He sneered at Gansey when he asked, tentatively, if something was wrong. Because nothing in him tangled when he saw Adam touch Blue’s cheek. Nothing in him ached at their private smiles. He didn’t see Gansey lose his mind, looking at Ronan or Adam. And he sure as hell knew that Adam didn’t when he looked at Ronan.

Gansey invited Blue to search for the ley line with them. The ley line - a pulsing vein of magic, one that stretched across the world. Everything in Ronan rebelled. The magic was his, his and Gansey and Adam's, and the hateful thing inside him grew at the thought of someone else there.

But Gansey wanted her there, and Ronan trusted Gansey without thinking, so there she was, hunting through the trees and brush.

Gansey ran a hand through his hair, surveying the piles of rocks they’d overturned and the trees they’d scoured through. He glanced at Ronan, who shrugged back. Have you found anything? / Wouldn’t I have told you by now?

“We’ve found nothing,” he said, his shoulders slumping slightly. “Let’s move on.”

Blue’s eyes creased, looking at Gansey. She sent Ronan a mischievous look and raced past him, eyes sparkling. “Come on!” she yelled, and Gansey’s face cleared as he punched Ronan in the arm.

“Never thought I'd see the day Ronan Lynch let someone beat him in a race.”

“I didn't want to humiliate the midget too much,” Ronan retorted, and Blue shouted back,

“I'm not deaf, idiot!”

Adam grinned, elbowing Ronan. “I wouldn't insult her, Lynch. She'll murder you in your sleep.”

“I'm sorry, did I insult your girlfriend?” Ronan scoffed, grabbing at Adam’s wrists and wrestling him to the ground.

“Hey, hey,” Adam gasped, helpless with laughter, arms pinned above his head by Ronan's hands. Ronan grinned, all shark teeth and knives.

“Guys!” Blue called. Gansey's eyes were light and amused, and Blue rolled her eyes at him. “Are we moving on, or are you going to keep rolling in the dirt?”

“I am perfectly innocent here,” Adam said, kicking at Ronan’s leg. Adam sprang up, twisting away from Ronan towards Blue. Ronan, though - Ronan watched Adam, his elegant walk and the soft curve of his hair against his neck, and wondered what it would be like to have Adam's eyes on him.



One night, ordinary as ever, he dreamed of Adam.

He wasn’t surprised, by this point, when he hurtled into sleep and saw Adam's blue eyes. Adam looked at him, cool and steady, and Ronan couldn't quite breathe. He reached up, fingers hovering over Adam's face, tracing his jawline with his thumb in the air. He swallowed, drunk on wanting.

Adam leaned forward, and then suddenly there was a millimeter of space between them and Ronan didn’t know what to do what to do what to do what -

His finger brushed Adam's cheek, accidentally.

And then Adam reared back. "What are you doing?“ His face twisted into a snarl, such an un-Adam like expression. His voice was dark, and ugly, and garbled and only found in Ronan's worst, worst nightmares. ”Do you think I'd want you to ever touch me? It's sick, Ronan, you're sick-"

Ronan jolted awake in his bed. His shirt stuck to his back, heavy with sweat. Head pressed to his knees, he forced himself to breathe. Once, twice, three times.

Shakily, Ronan poured himself a cup of water. He stared out the window, over the barren field outside and into the hills beyond. He hadn’t thought he was done with nightmares - but he’d thought he was done with ones like this. He clenched the window frame, knuckles stark and white.

He thought of Adam, of how badly he wanted to touch him. How badly he wanted Adam to want him back. He thought, dully, that he felt that every day. He thought how much Adam would hate him if he knew what Ronan dreamed about him.

It was only at night, when he was unguarded in the wake of a nightmare, that Ronan Lynch let himself acknowledge just how far gone he was for Adam Parrish.



Adam had been different since he and Blue broke up and he became the ley line's caretaker, Ronan thought. He was quieter, harder. He had separated himself from Ronan and Gansey, gone off on his own time and time again.

Which was why today, him asking Ronan to come with him while he worked to stabilize the ley line was so momentous.

Adam drove them to a field miles away from any civilization. He knelt on the ground, hands pressed against the cracked earth as Ronan lounged against the car, face irritable and shadowed. “Remind me, Parrish,” he snapped, “what we’re doing here again?”

“If I don’t do this,” Adam responded, “The ley line’s magic will become completely unstable. Remember the blackouts last year?”

“I have a memory,” Ronan scoffed.

Adam didn’t respond, and Ronan almost had to turn away. Like this, kneeling on ground, bowed head and eyes closed, hands splayed against the grass and flowers, Adam seemed otherworldly. They all had magic inside of them, but Adam - Adam wore it so, so well.

Adam stood up, dusting off his pants. “Okay,” he said. “Are we ready to go?”

Ronan shrugged. “Whatever.”

Adam rolled his eyes and elbowed Ronan, who folded his face into an ever surlier expression, ignoring the sensation spiraling from that one point on his ribs, through two layers of fabric.

Adam glanced at Ronan, and all of a sudden, Ronan was acutely, acutely aware of just how he was looking at Adam.

Ronan had stopped trying to deny that he was painfully, painfully in love with Adam. He pressed the words to his tongue and swallowed them, carrying them deep within himself. But they lived freely in his brain, instead of behind barbed wire even he couldn't get past.

But Adam didn’t glance away. His mouth quirked up into a small, knowing smile, and it was in moments like this that Ronan thought - maybe, maybe, just -

Except Adam wasn’t meant for people like him. Adam Parrish was meant for Ivy Leagues and success and shine and things Ronan never could have or want. Ronan couldn’t interfere with that.

Ronan swallowed, shut his eyes, and turned away.



He had made up his mind not to touch Adam. Not to look at him. To starve himself of the oxygen that was Adam Parrish.

Except how could he? How could he tear himself off from one of his best friends, rip himself away from the three limbed entity that was Gansey-and-Lynch-and-Parrish? He broke away from Adam, he broke away from all of them.

He laid in bed every night, and images swirled through his brain: Adam’s mentor, dead on the ground; Blue in the hospital, fingerprints gouged above her eye by a dead man; him and Adam, caught in a literal nightmare and unable to claw themselves out.

The world suddenly seemed like it was hurtling towards the end. It seemed entirely possible that in just a few weeks, Ronan wouldn’t even have a chance to look at Adam anymore.

So he let himself run his fingers over Adam's hand. He let himself drink in the sound of Adam's laugh. He let himself look, one moment longer than he should, at Adam's fine cheekbones. It was like falling in an abyss, clawing onto a handhold for a second before hurtling into pitch blackness instead.

Maybe dreamers like him were just supposed to go mad.

Adam kept looking at him, and he tried - he tried to keep hope out. But sometimes, he let himself think…what if, what if someone like Adam Parrish could want someone like him?

He found himself at the precipice of that endless abyss, one day. One day, when the world narrowed down to one moment.

This moment, when Adam is in Ronan's bedroom, sitting on his bed, running his hands over one of Ronan's childhood toys. This moment, when Ronan stands at the doorway, watching Adam discover his past life and fit into it like he was always there. This moment, when Ronan sits down on the bed next to Adam, looks at him, and sees Adam look at him back.

This moment, when Ronan takes a deep breath, and kisses Adam.

This moment, when Adam kisses Ronan back.

That night, they sprawl on Ronan's couch, Adam's fingers against the skin of Ronan's back and Ronan's face curled into the crook of Adam's neck.

Ronan looks up, looks into Adam's eyes to see his blue eyes already on him.

For the first time, Ronan Lynch doesn't look away.

(2000 words)

a/n: thanks to luna, cj, inky, zai, and sandy for critiquing <3

3/27: Google Translate

Amir perches on a beam high above the plaza, heart thundering wildly. Guards fan out below him, shouting wildly, swords flashing. They're looking for a young woman, he knows, one about his age, but he cannot be spotted either.

Carefully, Amir turns away from the plaza and drops silently to the opposite street.

Amir tucks his chin into his coat collar and sets off briskly down the pier. This late at night, the waxy light of the moon is hidden behind dark, heavy clouds, and the streetlights flicker dimly. Unless the guards look specifically for him, he's safe. All the same, he hurries down the waterfront, boots clicking rapidly on the cobblestones, towards the safety of the Peech Gulleey.

The black mouth of the Gulleey looms in front of him, and with one last glance down the waterfront, he slips into its back alleyways. It takes only moments for the silence of the world outside to fade away into the hushed, breakable tension of his world. He feels himself grin, almost despite himself.

The Gulleey, he reflects, is not one that most would characterize as safe. Gangs - some that he runs himself - rule the Gulleey, and no one king or authority reigns. Power shifts in the Gulleey as quickly as money can change hands. But for him, and those like him, and all those without a place, the Gulleey is the only place they are welcomed. As long as they can pick a lock or a pocket, run errands for gang lords, or even have a shred of street smarts, they are free.

And then, of course, there are the jaadugari.

The spiral of a minaret rises high above him, melting into the shadow of the night. Amir runs his fingers along the clay wall, boarded up with rickety wood. His hands snag on a rock, and soundlessly, half the wall disappears. He slips through it, and the clay appears again.

He feels like he hasn't been home in weeks.

“Isha?” he calls softly. He pushes through the small apartment, through the colorful hanging drapes Isha hung up to create a sense of multiple rooms and life.

She's right where she always is, leaning out the window, eyes alight and hands glowing with Shakt. Amir laughs, wrapping her arms around her waist. Isha spins around, eyes dimming. “Amir?” she breathes.

He smiles crookedly. “Hey, jaan.”

“Amir, gods!” She laughs breathlessly, running her hands over his face. “You said - you said you weren't going to be back for another few days, I thought?”

He shrugs. “I missed you.”

She quirks an eyebrow, and he laughs. “Okay, the guards were onto me - or who I was - but really.” His eyes rove her face hungrily, drunkenly. “I did miss you,” he whispers.

Isha closes her eyes, rests her head against his chest. “How long can you stay for?”

“Depends,” he says. “How long are you here for?”

Isha's eyes widen. “Amir, I'm here - I'm here for another couple months. The jaadugari council doesn't need me until another trial, and they're not going to have one for quite some time.”

Amir's heart leaps, even as he attempts to tamp it down. Hope - peace - time - he hasn't been afforded these in longer than he can remember. “I'm done with what I've been doing,” he says, voice shaky. “I've gathered all I need. I'm here for as long as you want.”

“You're serious?” she asks.

He presses his forehead to hers. “I wouldn't joke about such a thing.”

Isha laughs breathlessly. “I - Amir,” she whispers. She traces the shape of his jaw. “How was the assignment.”

Amir sighs. “It was fine,” he says shortly, but Isha's fingers still against his skin.

“Don't,” she says quietly. “Don't lock yourself away.” She takes his satchel from him, flipping it open to reveal a hastily crumpled shalwar kameez inside. “Gods, Amir, was this all you had to wear?”

“I borrowed from other girls,” he mutters. He turns away, heels pressed into his eyes. “I don't ever want to look at those again,” he says bluntly.

(706 words)