"Lynch."

Ronan grunted, unmoving, and Adam rolled his eyes.

The light filtering in through his small dorm window was losing its golden hue to the clear brightness of mid-morning, and Adam guessed (a little intuitively—Cabeswater had given him such a natural feel for time that he didn't set alarms anymore) that he was flirting with making punctually it to his nine a.m.

"Ronan. Let me up, I have to get ready for class."

With his left arm and leg thrown haphazardly across Adam's body, Ronan's only response was to tighten himself down. Adam hadn't been able to tell before, but he was sure now that Ronan was awake.

"Dude, I'm serious. Let go."

"Fuck your class."

Adam wanted to agree. For all intents and purposes, Adam did agree. Fuck class. Fuck anything that wasn't staying right here in this bed with Ronan until they both starved to death. However, if he didn't maintain a 4.0 GPA, his scholarships were gone, and Harvard sure as shit wasn't about to become another tally on Ronan's tab. So, painstakingly, he shoved his boyfriend away and climbed over him, the flimsy residence hall bed frame shaking as he did so.

Ronan sighed, irritated, and sat up. He was bare chested, wearing a pair of Adam's sweats, slung low on his hips from moving about in his sleep, and it was all Adam could do to keep from jumping him right then and there. But he had a criminal justice seminar in less than half an hour (it was 8:32, according to his phone) and if they got started now, he knew they wouldn't stop until well past then.

Still. He couldn't just not say anything.

"You..." he breathed, because, fuck. "You look good, Ro. Like you like this. In my clothes."

Ronan could've scoffed and thrown out a witty quip, or he could've told Adam to shut the fuck up, but he was still soft from sleep so instead he swallowed and looked down at his hands, fingers of his left absently tugging at the leather bands on his right.

"Please stay," he said.

Adam didn't think he'd really heard it. There was no way Ronan Lynch had just said please. There was no way he'd asked Adam not to go. But it was still there, echoing in his head, an undeniable imprint of Ronan's voice.

"I—" He stopped and sat back down on the edge of the bed. Ronan was so warm beside him, and, god, he wanted. "You're gonna be here 'til next week. We have plenty of time. And I don't have any classes on Friday, so we've got the whole weekend to just—"

"I don't want the weekend." Ronan wasn't whining or insisting. Just stating. As even as ever. "I want you right now."

Of all the things he could've said, that? Adam bit down on the inside of his lip, hard, because if he didn't distract himself with something his dick was going to start getting interested.

"This professor doesn't upload his lectures. I can't just read it later from a powerpoint. I have to be there."

"Get notes from somebody." Ronan was turning his head, and Adam was praying, because the way they were sitting put Ronan's lips perfectly level with his neck. "No way you're the only genius here following the rules. Tell them you had an emergency. Tell them you had to leave town for the day. Tell them I couldn't keep my fucking hands off you."

Ronan leaned closer—yesyesyes—and brushed his open mouth over Adam's collarbone.

Adam closed his eyes, counted to three, and took a deep, steadying breath. "Ronan."

"Parrish."

"I can't."

"You won't," Ronan countered, and what was Adam supposed to say to that? It was true, wasn't it? He was sure he could find someone to take notes for him, even on short notice, and missing a single class wasn't going to drop him a letter grade. It would be his first one this semester. He was just afraid that if he allowed himself this, to neglect a solitary responsibility in order to spend one more hour drinking Ronan in over the short time he was here, that he wouldn't be able to stop. He was afraid he would skip his classes tomorrow, and maybe he'd stop going to the library for work, and—

"Please, Adam."

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Adam stood, scrolling through his contacts, and landed on, 'Cheng, Henry.' He pushed, 'call.'

"Adam Parrish!" Henry answered, on the first ring.

"Hey," Adam said. To his credit, he sounded a little unsteady, which probably upped his believability factor. "Um, I need a favor."

"Sure thing, my man," Henry responded, not bothering to ask what this favor might entail. He was optimistic that way.

"Can you get lecture notes for me today?" Adam asked, fingers drumming nervously on his thigh. "I'm not gonna make it to class. I have, uh. Something came up, and I'm not. Yeah."

"Of course," Henry assured him jovially. Adam let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding when Henry didn't press for details that he hadn't bothered to fabricate. "I can drop them off to you at the library anytime."

"Thank you," Adam said, hand going still. "Thanks. I'll let you know."

"Always a pleasure," Henry told him, and ended the call.

Adam turned back to Ronan.

"Guess you showed me," Ronan said, a slow, easy grin spreading over his face.

"You'd better make it worth it," Adam warned. He was in a pair of sweats, too, as well as a thin, cotton t-shirt, and he felt like the playing field was a little unbalanced, so he stripped it over his head, casting it to the floor.

Ronan stared. Adam had expected him to. They didn't talk about this much—about how self-conscious and timid he'd been once, and about how comfortable and forward he was now—but they'd had enough conversations on the subject to tell him that Ronan loved it when he showed himself off in any way.

"Jesus," Ronan breathed. "Come here."

Adam did.

Ronan, still seated on the bed, pulled Adam onto him so that both legs were wrapped around his waist, and there was no hiding the way Ronan was hardening directly against his ass. There was going to be no beating around the bush, apparently.

Adam was just fine with that.

"Want you to fuck me," he said, leaning in to kiss Ronan's temple. His jaw. The side of his mouth. He bottomed as often as he topped, so this wasn't an unusual request, but he wanted to lay it out there before Ronan got any adverse ideas. He needed to feel Ronan inside him right now. Needed to lose himself in the way that he only could when it was almost too much.

"Jesus," Ronan repeated. "Yeah, Parrish. Okay." His hands were mapping the expanse of Adam's back, pulling them closer together, and his hips were making languid, absent half-rolls upward, his body trying to get the friction it desired before he'd decided to put any effort into it.

"Only have my Wednesday lab every other week, and I don't work 'til tonight," Adam informed him, pressing down on his shoulders as if to say, Don't rush. "All kinds of time."

"Somebody tell you we were only gonna do this once, shithead?"

Adam laughed at that, head tipped back, and decided, fine, he'd turn it over to Ronan. He always knew what Adam needed better than Adam did, anyway.

Ronan took Adam's unguarded throat as an opportunity and leaned forward, sucking gently just below his ear.

Adam's breath caught, and he dug into Ronan's shoulder with what little fingernails he had, pulling his lip between his teeth.

Against his skin, Ronan chuckled. "Sensitive. I said we'd do it more than once, not 'Come in the next five seconds'."

"Fuck off," Adam told him, pushing his head back down.

At this, Ronan was the one who gasped.

Adam grinned.

Most people—people outside their closest social circle—assumed Adam was the more submissive of the two. Not to say that their acquaintances often pondered their sex life; it was simply an assumption that came naturally if you weren't inside their heads the way that only Blue and Gansey were.

Adam was quieter. Adam was softer. Adam stood behind Ronan while he bought their movie tickets and Ronan ordered his food at restaurants and on most of their public outings Adam fisted his hand around the bottom of Ronan's jacket.

But here, like this, Adam was in every bit as much control as Ronan was, if not more the majority of the time. He needed to be, and Ronan knew that. Even when he was bottoming, he dictated everything down to the pace ("God, Ronan, faster, come on, not gonna break me") and Ronan was perfectly content to let him.

All Ronan needed was the knowledge that he was pleasing Adam. That would be enough to get him there every time. And right now, breath a little ragged, hands a little shaky, pulse a little wild against Ronan's lips, he felt it was safe to assume that Adam was being pleased.

Slowly, still mouthing at the pliant flesh of Adam's neck, Ronan slid a hand up his stomach and stopped at his chest, ghosting a thumb over his left nipple.

Adam made a quiet, needy sound, low in his throat. Ronan felt a rush of blood flow south.

If Adam was already making noise, it meant he was losing his grip on his composure very quickly. Sometimes it took Ronan as long as an hour to drive those maddening, desperate little moans from the cage of Adam's lungs. When he got started, though, he did not stop. At first, Ronan hadn't expected Adam to be nearly as much of a talker as he was, but he would be filing precisely zero complaints in the foreseeable future, thank you very much. When Adam got vocal, it meant he was getting desperate. When he started to actually verbalize, that was it for his inhibitions. They were gone. Out the fucking window. He would say anything that came to his mind as soon as he thought it, just because he knew Ronan liked to hear him.

Ronan didn't imagine it would take too long now. They hadn't seen each other in months before Ronan had gotten in last night, and Adam could only get himself off about five times out of ten. He was bound to come undone much more quickly than he normally would.

And then, as if on cue: "Fucking…god. Keep doin' that."

There it was. That sweet, sweet Henrietta drawl. Finally, this sounded like his Adam.

Ronan knew that Adam could be easy to spook sometimes—if Ronan said the wrong thing, reacted the wrong way, he'd start backtracking, embarrassed—so Ronan's best technique was to respond almost as though he were soothing him. It was a way for him to say, I am completely on board with anything you do, without actually saying it.

"Long as you want," Ronan assured him, nose tracing the line of his chin, thumb brushing over his nipple again, adding a little more pressure this time. "You want me to do it the whole time, I will."

Adam swallowed, pushing his cock against Ronan's hip just to ease a second of the ache. "Makes my stomach feel all…"

"Tight?" Ronan guessed, lifting his head to press his lips barely, just barely, to Adam's. "Like you're gonna come?"

"Yes."

"You want to? Just from this?"

"Yes," Adam whispered, urgently, into Ronan's mouth.

"One day. I promise. I'm gonna fuck you right here, though. Gonna keep you in my lap. That way I can still reach 'em the whole time."

Adam squeezed his eyes closed, pulling in a lungful of air through his nose and letting it back out his mouth in a huff.

"Don't get overwhelmed, Parrish," Ronan said, leaning their foreheads together. "You wanna slow down for a minute?"

"God, no," Adam protested, fingers curling into the fabric of Ronan's sweats. "Want you in me fuckin' yesterday."

Ronan dropped his head, pressing a featherlight kiss to the nipple he'd neglected thus far, and Adam swore. "Can't make yesterday happen, but I think we can swing right now. You got lube somewhere in here?"

Without removing himself from Ronan's lap, Adam leaned back and pulled open the drawer of his nightstand, extracting a travel-sized bottle of lube and handing it to Ronan.

"Gonna have to get some more," he noted, popping the cap. "This won't last us five days with your tight ass. Take your pants off."

"Five days?" Adam repeated inquisitively, pushing himself off Ronan with a measure of reluctance to remove his sweats and underwear. "You gonna fuck me every day until you leave?"

"Damn right I am," Ronan confirmed confidently. "How do you wanna do this? You can't relax enough standing up, so back or knees?"

Wordlessly, Adam climbed onto the bed on all fours, facing away from Ronan.

Ronan allowed himself a moment to marvel at the sight of Adam fucking Parrish on his hands and knees before him, cock hanging heavy and full between his legs, already dripping a steady string of pre-come onto the sheets. Then, because he was a man of action, no matter how much he enjoyed observing sometimes, he coated two fingers with lube and pressed one of them to Adam's entrance.

Adam jerked.

"Okay?"

"S'cold."

"Shit, sorry. Is this better?" Ronan asked, and bent to lick a wet stripe across Adam's hole.

"Ronan!" Adam's voice was full of too many things for Ronan to grasp which was most prominent, but he quickly followed with, "We just woke up, I haven't showered or—"

"For the love of god, Parrish, calm down," Ronan said, pressing a kiss to his lower back. "You were just about to let me finger you; you can't be too worried about it." Still, though, it was clear that Adam was worried about it to some extent, so Ronan pulled away, lining his middle finger up again.

The lube must have had time to warm up a bit, because this time Adam backed into the touch, arching and pressing against Ronan to speed the process along.

"Don't hurt yourself," Ronan told him, not a hint of teasing in his tone.

"I'm fine," Adam said. He sounded a little breathless, but not pained, so Ronan allowed him to keep going.

Once Ronan's finger was buried to the hilt, Adam stopped moving for a moment, trying to adjust. Ronan could feel Adam's muscles fluttering around him, fighting against their natural urge to clamp down.

Slowly, so that Adam would know it was coming, Ronan brought up a hand to stroke his side in subtle, rhythmic movements. "Don't get frustrated. Take as long as you need. Just tell me when you're ready for more."

"You can move." Adam pushed against him a little, punctuating the point.

Ronan, rather than pulling back so much as a millimeter, pressed downward, gently stretching. This elicited such a gorgeous sound from Adam that he shivered. He continued this motion, in all directions, until he could comfortably work in and out without any resistance, and then asked, "Does that feel easy enough, or should I keep going?"

"Can you maybe, um…" Adam dropped his head, panting. "Can you use a little more lube before you put the next one in? This is fine for one, but it's. I'm still kinda."

Obviously I can use more fucking lube, why are you even asking, how dare you not just tell me to, was what Ronan wanted to say. What he said instead was: "'Course. Yeah. Gimme just a sec."

Without extracting his finger, Ronan carefully slid the lube back toward himself and popped it open with his left hand, slicking up his ring finger a second time with a much more generous amount.

"Okay," Adam started, quiet. "Sorry. Go ahead."

Sorry. Ronan felt a flash of anger flit over him, hot and quick. He closed his eyes. "Adam. Don't. Don't ever. If you need me to stop as soon as I tell you I'm gonna nut—"

"—Ronan, ew—"

"—then I do it, no questions asked. And you don't apologize. Got me?"

"Yeah. Got you. Sor—"

"Parrish."

"Okay."

"Okay."

Ronan worked in a second finger in silence, the sounds of their lust-blown breathing the only thing permeating the still of the room. This was a point of concentration for both of them, Ronan making sure not to hurt Adam and Adam making sure not to break Ronan's focus, so the quiet was standard, but when Ronan carefully scissored his fingers apart, Adam keened, high and desperate, and that.

"Gonna kill me," Ronan told him.

Adam was past coherent conversation. He hadn't said anything in so long it had been hard for Ronan to gauge his exact state of mind, but now: "Just fuckin'—god, Ronan, touch it, just—please, I'm—"

"Shhh," Ronan practically crooned. Then, crooking his fingers and angling them down, he gave his boy what he needed. "There you go. There. Is that better?"

"Oh." As if his arms had suddenly given out, the top half of Adam's body dropped to the bed. "Oh my god. More. Harder."

Ronan, whose lower half was still dressed, reached past the elastic waistband of his pants and gripped the base of his cock to keep it from getting any wild ideas about emptying way, way too soon. If Adam wanted to come just from having his nipples played with, this was what Ronan wanted. To come listening to Adam's wrecked, insatiable thirst for him.

But not here. Not now. Because Adam had asked Ronan to fuck him, and Ronan, as previously noted, was a man of action.

So, rather than jizzing in his underwear like a teenager, Ronan hit Adam's prostate harder with every forward motion of his wrist, driving whimpers and sighs and curses out of Adam like a litany.

Adam allowed this to continue for longer than Ronan expected (Ronan would've been perfectly content to go on all day, but he knew Adam would get restless sooner or later) but finally, in the same breath as a plea, he ground out, "Fuck, Ronan, I could've been back from class by now, are you ever gonna—"

That was more than enough incentive. "Yeah," he half laughed, half moaned. "Yeah, I'm gonna."

He eased his fingers out, quickly discarded his clothing, and climbed back onto the bed, legs spread in a V, dick curling up toward his stomach.

Adam, now sitting upright, looked ready to devour him.

"Whatever you want," Ronan reminded him, reaching for the lube again and coating himself without thinking too much into how good the friction felt.

Adam's mind had not changed.

This time, when he settled himself into Ronan's lap, it was while working himself down on Ronan's cock. He held it in place behind him, lowering himself with maddening caution.

Ronan, because he couldn't possibly keep his hands off any longer, brushed his fingertips over Adam's thighs, his hips, dared to drag his knuckles over the underside of Adam's erection.

Adam caught his hand, and Ronan thought it was just to stop him, just that he was feeling too much too quickly, but rather than releasing him, Adam spread Ronan's fingers across the lowest expanse of his stomach.

And then he rocked back.

This time, Ronan swore. "Fuck, Adam, is that—?"

"You like feelin' yourself in there?" Adam's voice was no longer his own. It was someone else's, someone far more animal than Adam Parrish could ever be with anyone but Ronan Lynch.

Ronan wasn't even sure how to respond to that without losing it, so he didn't. Instead, he let his hand rest there, locked in Adams, the push-pull of his cock inside Adam's body pressing into their palms, and bent forward to wrap his lips around Adam's left nipple as if to say, Don't worry, I didn't forget.

Adam moaned obscenely, and his free hand rose, as if of its own volition, to slip his thumb into Ronan's mouth. He didn't push Ronan away, didn't stop him, just got his pad wet with Ronan's spit and then drew his hand back to—

Oh.

Ronan shuddered when slanted his gaze to the side, following Adam's reach to the other side of his chest.

When he slid his own thumb over his right nipple, they both moaned.

The sex was good, of course—unreasonably good—but there was no feeling like watching Adam. Especially when he was pleasuring himself in any way. It was all Ronan could do not to start jacking Adam on the spot and demand that he come now, right now, even though they'd really just started, but he refrained. They were going to take this at Adam's pace.

Adam was grinding down against him, pressing into him ever harder, as though they weren't close enough, as though they could somehow be closer, and the primal nature of his movements was dizzying.

"Bite it," he told Ronan, something almost frantic in his tone, and god. God.

Ronan clamped his teeth around the hard, pink bud, licking over it with the flat of his tongue to soothe the sting and then doing it all over again.

Adam said something, or he tried to, but all Ronan heard was his own blood pulsing behind his eardrums.

Adam was pinching his right nipple between his thumb and forefinger every time Ronan bit down on his left, and it was driving him crazy, causing him to tighten up around Ronan's cock, his own pulsing visible in spasms.

Ronan let go long enough to look up at him and ask, "Do you want to come?"

Adam looked desperate, like he was about to start pleading, but he shook his head. "N-no. But I don't know if…I feel like I'm gonna. Real soon."

Ronan forced himself to take a mental step back long enough that logic seemed attainable again, and wrapped his arms around Adam's back, kissing his shoulder. "Will you still be able to if we take a little breather?"

"I…I think so," Adam said a little tightly, like he was fighting to hold it together.

"It's okay," Ronan told him. "It's okay if you don't think you can wait, and it's okay if we do wait and it won't happen. I'm never gonna be—" Ronan ran a hand over his head to ground himself, short, course hairs scratchy against his skin. Unbelievably, it wasn't as simple as one might think to give your boyfriend a pep talk with your dick in his ass. "I'm never gonna be mad or frustrated or whatever, you know, with you. It's not a personal offense. We just try again later."

Adam's chest was heaving as he breathed, and Ronan knew he was trying to hold back a sob. "You're so good to me," he said unevenly. "So much better than I—you're just so good."

"I'm not giving you special treatment, Parrish. I'm your fucking boyfriend, and I give a shit about you, and this is what you deserve." Slowly, he ran his hands up and down the plane of Adam's spine, digging his fingertips in just enough to catch on every notch. "We can take as long as you need, or we can do it all over again in an hour if you're too close. Just tell me."

Adam paused, entire body tense. After a moment, he bit out, "I don't. I don't think I can wait."

"That's all right, sweetheart." Endearments weren't something Ronan allowed himself use of often—he'd maybe called Adam something other than his name or an expletive a total of twice—but, fuck it, he'd do anything to make sure Adam knew that they were on the same page. That he had nothing to be ashamed of.

Adam's breath caught. "Wh—what did you—?"

"You prefer 'honey'?" Ronan half-whispered against his ear, almost joking, almost not. "'Sugar'? 'Beautiful'? You—god, Adam, you are beautiful."

"Jesus Christ." Adam didn't know what to do with this, Ronan could tell. He wasn't used to it—neither was Ronan, but that didn't mean he was backing down—so it couldn't conjure an instinctual response like most things they did together. He sounded unhinged, in a completely blissful way, so Ronan took it as a win.

"What can I do?" he asked, so, so gently rocking up into Adam, who whimpered deliciously in response. He could see, when he swept his eyes over Adam's form, that Adam's lower abdominal muscles were straining, and he smoothed a hand over them, rubbing in comforting circles. "You hurtin', baby? Need me to help you come?"

Adam's eyes glistened. He was speechless.

Ronan kissed him, finally wrapping his fingers around Adam's neglected, aching cock, and they breathed out heavily in tandem.

Ronan kept his hips still, simply allowing Adam to take what he desired, tongue and teeth insistent against Ronan's bottom lip.

Ronan made sure Adam got off first, paying the warmth slowly spreading upward from the tips of his own toes no mind until Adam was shuddering and crying out so loudly that Ronan was sure at least everyone on his floor could hear, if not the entire building.

"You, too," Adam was begging, almost incoherently. "Want you to come, too, Ro. I wanna feel it. Please."

Ronan's largest character flaw, he was learning, was that there was nothing he could deny Adam. As though Adam had flipped a switch, or pressed a button, Ronan was off like a shot, the tingling heat turned full-on electricity.

When they came down, it was like floating, tangled together and liquid in the weakness of their limbs.

Ronan guided Adam off of him and onto the bed, trailing a delicate string of kisses up his torso before lying down next to him.

"Are you more hungry or tired?" he asked, voice barely loud enough for Adam to register with Ronan on his deaf side.

"Mm," Adam responded, considering, as he scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "Both."

Ronan smiled against his cheek, lips dancing over skin. "You stay here. I'm gonna go grab us some breakfast."

Adam nodded, not enough fight in him to argue. "'Kay."

"I love you," Ronan told him.

"More," Adam mumbled.

Ronan stroked a lock of hair back from Adam's forehead, studying his long, golden lashes and the light sprinkling of freckles dusted across his nose and cheeks. Thank you, he said to God. And then, to Adam, "Most."