stealth missions (your cover's blown)

Adam leaned against a disgusting wall covered in sharpied numbers and names and obscene words and tried to catch their breath. His breath. Whatever.

Turns out it’s really fucking hard to figure out gender when you wake up in a house that will eat you alive for taking one (more) step in the wrong direction, go to a school that you barely qualify for in the first place without throwing not a boy into the mix, and spend all your free time hanging around a wonderful but aggressively male group of friends. With the exception of Blue. Sometimes Adam wanted to tell her most of all—sometimes he thought that she, or at least her family, already knew—but they never worked up the courage.

So instead Adam was here, locked in the Nino’s bathroom (men’s, and it felt like a blessing and a curse), struggling to breathe around the binding crushing their ribs, and no one knew. So he had to leave soon, before anyone got suspicious.

As soon as he caught his breath.

Don’t bind with ace bandages, said the Internet. Don’t bind for more than 8 hours, 10 at the most. It wasn’t that Adam Parrish thought they were special or invulnerable (because they knew they weren’t), but the Internet wasn’t drowning and trying to crawl out of its own skin every last second of every last day, unable to bear one more thing , however small. The Internet wasn’t trying to go stealth at a school for boys. The Internet wasn’t born in dust and raised in dirt, didn’t live a life where a binder cost a month’s groceries or more.

Adam stood up and coughed (it hurt), and wondered if he could risk taking the bandages off. It was late. Would the others pay that much attention to their chest? Would they mention it if they noticed?

Adam thought about Ronan Lynch, a beautiful and terrible thing, edged in violence. Trust and fear warred in their gut.

It was late. How much longer could they stay at Nino’s, anyway?

Mind made up, Adam unlocked the door, stepping out of the stall and going to wash his hands. He didn’t look at his face in the spotty, cracked mirror.

The door squealed open and thudded shut. Adam turned the water off and glanced up. In the mirror, Ronan Lynch leaned against the wall and stared right back.

“Thought you might’a drowned.”

“I’m fine,” Adam said stiffly. They dried their hands. They breathed.

“You sure?”

“I’m fine .”

“Don’t bullshit me, Parrish. Either you got in a fight with somebody and broke a rib or you’re trying too hard to change something about yourself and you’re gonna break one anyway. I know what both look like.”

Adam couldn’t breathe now for an entirely different reason. Ronan knew. Ronan knew. Ronan knew and he was going to tell everyone .

They didn’t stop to think about how Ronan could possibly know. Their mind kicked into fight or flight, and Adam had gotten the instinct to fight crushed out of him a long time ago. He ran, or rather walked briskly, through the crowded restaurant back to the table. They had no idea if Ronan was following. They grabbed their jacket from the booth and tried to put it on, but everything was wound tight and shaking and it took four tries to get their arm through the sleeve.

“Adam?” Gansey asked, standing up. “Is something wrong?”

If they opened their mouth they didn’t know what was going to come out. He still couldn’t breathe . He shoved out of the front doors before any of them could do more than call anxiously after him.

For just a second they hesitated, standing next to their bike. Exercise while binding was a horrible idea too, but that wasn’t the reason. They saw Ronan come back to the table and plant his hands on it, leaning in menacingly. Maybe he always looked like that, or maybe Adam’s brain was getting everything twisted.

He hopped on his bike and pedaled away, as fast as his feet and the Henrietta night winds would take him. Not back to the trailer park, where Robert Parrish would be, or back to Monmouth, where Gansey and Noah and Ronan would be, or to 300 Fox Way, where Blue and more importantly her incredibly psychic family would be. No, Adam rode out of town until the road was just a long straight stretch of cracked asphalt surrounded by whispering fields. In one place there was a wide space where the grass was much shorter, a popular place for summer picnics and more illicit things. Adam tore their bike off the road here, wobbling dangerously on chunks of rock before skidding into the grass and nearly falling in their haste.

They’d barely laid their bike down and sat beside it before a set of headlights came up the road. Adam knew exactly who it would be long before the Pig came into view. He thought about running again. But here was the thing about running away: the monsters always caught you, and the longer they had to chase the angrier they got. So Adam pulled his knees into his chest and waited while the Camaro growled to a halt. The engine died, but Gansey left the lights on, aimed a bit to Adam’s left, as the four of them scrambled out of the car. All of them stood there, facing them warily, as if Adam were a cornered animal.

Maybe Adam was.

“Parrish,” Ronan said, stepping forward first. In the dark and the headlights he was just a silhouette, a hulking shadow. “I wanna show you something.”

Adam watched him approach silently, unmoving.

And Ronan tore off his shirt. Adam averted his eyes instinctively, but Ronan repeated, hissed, “ Parrish . Look.”

Adam looked.

Ronan was wearing a dark gray tank top. It was too small for him, revealing a strip of pale skin above his jeans, stretching tightly over his shoulders. Adam didn’t understand.

“What are you showing me?” he asked.

Ronan rolled his eyes and hooked his thumbs into the straps. “It’s a binder, dipshit. Gans, get down here.

Gansey did, looking a little mystified, but Adam could see him puzzling something out between them.

For their part, Adam was still stuck on binder . His mind was wheels spinning in thick Henrietta mud.

And Gansey, a little reluctantly, tugged up his shirt and turned dutifully into the light. Two crescent moon scars curved across his chest.

“What,” Adam whispered. “What.”

Noah waved. “Died before I got too deep in the exploration thing, but I’m, uh, not a dude. And now I’m dead, so I guess it doesn’t matter what else I call myself.”

Ronan punched him—them?—companionably on the arm, a rebuke.

Blue sighed dramatically and reached into her shirt, tugging out the corner of a wad of tissue for him to see. Her voice was deeper than he’d ever heard when she said, “We travel in packs, dude.”

“This is about to be really embarrassing if I’m wrong,” Ronan said, “but I think you should probably take off whatever shit you’re binding with.”

“We’re in the middle of a field,” Adam said hoarsely. As if cued, the rest of them turned around. Adam weighed their options and finally wrestled the ace bandages off as quickly as they could, then stood up and turned the mess over in their hands, unwilling to kick it into the grass, to waste. He cleared his throat.

Ronan turned around, hands in his pockets. His eyes latched immediately on the bandages. “Shit, Parrish, for a genius you really are an idiot,” he murmured.

Adam crossed their arms over their chest. “And what about it.”

“You want a sweatshirt?” Blue asked. Her voice was higher again. Adam wondered absently if she’d teach him how to do that, bounce between. Or change it at all while still sounding natural. “It’s kinda cold.”

It was unseasonably warm for October, but Adam nodded gratefully anyway. Blue handed him a ratty sweatshirt, navy blue with one green sleeve and one purple. They tugged it over their head and shoved their hands in the pockets to hide the fact that they were trembling.

“So,” Gansey said in a very Ganseylike way. “What do we call you?”

Adam blinked. “Sorry?”

Ronan clarified, “Name and pronouns, dumbass.” Gansey shot him a glare that he ignored.

“Adam…Adam is fine, I think. Parrish is fine. And…he, I guess.”

“Liar,” Ronan said, without any malice.

“I am not.”

“Tell the whole truth then.”

Adam chewed on their lip. “They,” he whispered. “Um. Both. Both is good, I think. I haven’t had much chance to practice.”

“Fuckin’ knew it,” Ronan said. Gansey shot him another hard look and stepped forward.

“Thank you for telling us, Adam. I know it’s not easy, even among friends.”

“Ronan practically forced me to,” Adam muttered, without (much) malice.

Ronan shrugged, one-shouldered. Blue punched him in the arm and joined Gansey. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Adam replied.

“Can I hug you?” she asked, holding out an arm.

It felt like a kind of ridiculous request for Adam, but he nodded. And rubbed at his eyes, because there were bugs, not…not any other reason. Blue hugged him, fiercely, and then Gansey and Noah and Ronan joined in, one big circle around Adam. The perfect kind of crushing.

“We’ve got you,” Blue whispered. “Do…do your parents know?” Adam laughed wetly, and she shook her head. “Of course not. If he ever…if you ever need a place to stay, I’ve got a bunch of spare beds.”

“I have a couple binders I outgrew, if you ever want to experiment without giving yourself lasting rib damage,” Ronan added, too casually.

“And Monmouth’s always open for you if you need anything,” Gansey said.

“I’m dead,” Noah said with a shrug that rippled through all their bodies. “You can take over my room any time you wanna.”

Adam nodded and nodded and nodded because he didn’t trust himself to speak. When they finally broke apart, they were all crying.

“Come to Monmouth with us tonight,” Gansey tried to insist. “Stay over.”

“We’ll stay up late and braid each other’s hair and impart trans wisdom and all that mushy shit,” Ronan said.

Adam almost, almost said yes.

But.

“I can’t. I have to-“

“We know,” Blue said quickly. “At least let us drive you there? We’ll do a sleepover speedrun on the way.”

That offer, Adam did not refuse. They loaded their bike into the trunk and got in the car. Gansey took the longest possible route through every other street, but no one mentioned it. They were too busy giving Adam a crash course on hormones and terminology and pronouns (there were so many , which fascinated them. Ronan and Blue shared a knowing look at all of Adam’s questions, but he wasn’t going to psychoanalyze that yet) and which kids at school were assholes and which weren’t.

It was all so much, and then everything trailed away to nothing when Gansey stopped outside the trailer park. Adam swallowed, and swallowed again, and did not climb out of the car.

“We can still go to Monmouth,” Ronan said quietly around the leather bands in his teeth.

Adam shook his head. “You…none of you will tell anyone, right?” he asked, hating how small he sounded.

“Adam,” Ronan said, deadly serious. His bands were no longer in his mouth. “We don’t out people.”

“Ronan’s an ass, but he’s not that particular brand of ass,” Noah piped up.

“Your secret’s safe with us,” Blue assured them. Then she leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to their cheek. “Now go sleep. Promise you’ll sleep?”

Adam gave her a small, sad smile and didn’t answer. He climbed out of the car and went to collect their bike from the trunk. Right as they were ready to shut the trunk and wheel it into the park, a solitary prisoner’s walk to death row, Ronan appeared. His hand stopped the trunk from closing. Here, in the purple shadows, hidden from every eye, his gaze burned with intensity.

Adam’s voice shriveled in his throat.

Ronan pressed a kiss to his other cheek, lingering half a second longer than Blue had. He shut the trunk with a brutal snap of his arm.

“Can’t have your face being unbalanced. Had to make you match,” he said, his voice gravelly and low and full of unanswered questions.

“Thanks,” Adam murmured, senseless but somehow appropriate.

“You should call sometime,” Ronan muttered to their feet.

“You never answer the phone.”

“Maybe I would. If. You know.”

If it was you.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They stood in silence. The Pig’s horn honked and they both jumped a little. Blue, leaning over Gansey for the horn, made a heart with her hands and then shot them a rude gesture that relied heavily on her middle finger. Ronan ignored the former and returned the latter.

“Goodnight, Ronan,” Adam said quietly, starting to push their bike away.

“‘Night, Parrish. Go to sleep, or whatever.”

Adam went to sleep, or whatever, with one cheek burning all night long, and dreams for the first time in months where he could breathe easily.