Chapter Text
Adam liked Stanford, he liked it much more than anticipated. It was filled with people who was to busy with their own lives and the drama surrounding to care about what he was doing. Adam was unknowable but it wasn’t isolating, this time it came with the freedom of knowing that nobody would judge him. He might have been a scholarship kid but at least he wasn’t alone.
He knew that he wasn’t ever going to be able to relate to the normal and average college student, seeing your friend die in front of you and making contracts with ancient forests made that impossible. In the back of his mind he’d prepared to have to act like an Algonby student around everyone, posh and perfect and only complaining about having too much fun in life. But having Sam Winchester as his roommate changed that.
In the same way that Adam could look at most people and recognize wealth, he could look at Sam and recognize poverty. He didn’t intend to do it, it was just that he knew what it looked like, shirts worn out not because they were styled that way but because they had been used too much. Skin a bit to rough for it to have been washed with expensive products and a face that was re used to furrowed brows than a relaxed state. It was just how it was, and Adam was the last person who was going to blame anyone for coming from the same situation as him.
If Stanford had been Sam’s way to get out it was good. Better he was here studying to become a lawyer and running from his past than being stuck in it. Maybe it was just a coincidence that they ended up living together, but Adam was happy with it.
Considering all the weird habits Adam had gotten into during the last year of highschool and then never gotten rid off he really shouldn’t be judging Sam for anything he did, but it was hard sometimes. It might have been some weird tradition from the south but Adam had never seen anyone line the windows with salt outside of bad movies with demons in it and in the Spiderwick chronicles he’d read at the library as a kid. So when he walked into the room one day and saw a thin line of white crystals along the window pane he’d raised an eyebrow at it before going back to studying.
He wasn’t there to complain about other people, he was there to get a better future. If he sent a text to Blue about it followed by a bunch of question marks then it didn’t count, he was simply keeping contact with his friends that’s all.
Besides the salt Sam was a normal person with a study drive as intense as Adam’s, and they both had made a silent agreement to try and not disturb each other when it was close to a test or just a lot for them to do, which was pretty much always. Adam might have been called suicidal by multiple people when he’d told them he was going to be double majoring, but it was a small blessing to know that Sam seemed to always have it a bit worse than him.
It was nice living with someone who valued academics and who was talented in studying. Sure Sam might take the same time as Adam to write an essay and they both had the other proofread it twice, but Sam had a knack for finding the right information he needed. Adam had tried to get him to explain it once, but his roommate had been tight lipped about the subject and he knew when to back off so he did.
Just as well as Adam was able to understand at least a bit of the conditions that Sam had been raised in, he was sure that Sam could see the same thing. Neither of them were idiots. Their friendship, if it could be called that, worked perfectly for Adam, he had no desire to get dragged into some weird scheme during college, Gansey might live for the strangeness in life but Adam lived for the normalcy.
The flower incident was not part of that normalcy. He hadn’t thought that being the magician would affect normal, non-welsh magical forest plants but he was wrong. Adam liked plants, they looked nice, it was only going to be there for a few weeks at the most and added a bit of color to his and Sam’s dorm room. The only decoration they had besides the occasional shirt draped over a chair and study notes were the one framed photo Adam had put up on the table by his bed, so adding a flower wouldn't hurt.
It had taken Adam about three days to realize that he was going to regret taking care of the plant for Jenifer, and that his dreams of normality had opened the window and the only thing that kept them from jumping out was Adam’s desperation. It had taken a little while longer for Sam to catch up on the fact that normal house plants didn’t develop a life of their own in less than a week, but Adam knew as soon as he did.
Sam had looked at the flower and then back at Adam and there was something colder in his eyes, like Adam was a puzzle piece that he couldn’t place out. Adam was used to being judged, but this was a different sort or judgement than the stares he’d gotten at Aglionby. Sam was more calculating, more analytical.
It had only lasted for a few moments before Sam had raised an eyebrow at him and Adam had to act like he had no idea how flowers worked. Either Sam had believed him or he was a good actor, whatever it was Adam had decided he needed to call Ronan to discuss the apparent problem as soon as Sam had left for his morning class the next day.
It had only taken Ronan two calls to pick up, which was a new record. Usually Adam gave up after five and waited for Ronan to notice the missed calls and call him back. It wasn’t the most stable system but it worked, and Adam was pretty sure he was the only person who Ronan actually reached out to over phone, which always made him feel special, appreciated.
“ Yeah ?” Came Ronan’s voice from the other end of the line and Adam rolled his eyes. His boyfriend might have gotten better at using his phone but that didn’t men that his manners had improved with it.
“Good morning to you too.” 9am wasn’t early for him but Ronan had the habit of waking up at 5am to take care of the cows and then go back to bed and sleep until Opal woke him up. She was better than any alarm clock ever invented, something Adam had gotten to experience over the summer, there was nothing quite like waking up to hoves crashing down on your back.
“ It’s fucking pouring down outside, what good morning are you talking about?” Adam bit his lip, smiling slightly. Ronan’s voice was rough from sleep and he could imagine him laying in bed, phone close to one ear and arm thrown over his eyes. It was almost enough to make him feel homesick, almost.
“Am I supposed to feel bad about that? Aren’t you the one who complains whenever it’s too much sun because your carrots doesn’t get enough hydration or somethin’?” Adam secretly committed every farmer rant Ronan went through to memory, he always got incredibly passionate over the simplest things.
“ Yeah well at this rate they’re gonna drown. What’s going down at university?” The change of subject was apparent and Ronan tried to sound way too casual for it to actually be a casual question.
Adam exhaled. “Good things, for the most part. Only, this is going to sound weird okay? I got asked to take care of my neighbors flower-”
“ And of course you couldn’t say no to that.” Ronan interrupted.
“Anyways. What I was going to say is that it isn’t really behaving like, a, uh flower? I think I fucked it up.” There was a moment of silence.
“How the fuck do you fuck up a flower Parrish?” While Adam couldn’t see it he knew that Ronan had one eyebrow raised and was most probably doing that crooked half smirk. Like he was waiting for a good story to come.
“I-” How was Adam even going to explain the situation? I think the plant freaked out because my connection to a dead forest that you dreamt up and apparently being the hands and eyes of that place is like the best fertilizer for flowers? “I think it got affected by Cabeswater, it’s growing all over the place and it’s not natural. Imagine a normal plant only it’s been watered with extra strong protein shakes for two weeks and would you please stop laughing?”
“ ‘M not laughing, ” Ronan denied, snickering into the mic. “ That’s so fucked up, how did you even do that shit? ”
“I don’t know!” Adam exclaimed. “It just started to grow that way and I can’t stop it, I swear!”
“ Okay, sure yeah, so what are you gonna do about it? ”
“Give it back to Jenifer when she returns.” It was the simplest solution and probably the easiest as well, Jenifer would get her flower back and it would continue to grow at a normal rate.
“ Well there’s your solution, ” Adam rolled his eyes, he hoped Ronan could somehow sense it from across the country. “ Anyways, wanna hear about the shit Opal pulled yesterday? She’s a fucking pest. ”
Leaning back in his chair Adam let a soft smile grace his lips. He’d never thought he would experience homesickness, when he was younger he had imagined that the only reaction thinking of Henrietta would give him was the relief of knowing that he wasn’t stuck in that town. But things were different now, and Adam had a reason to miss home.
Sam had a lot of scars.
They seemed to be all over his body, small, thin ones over his fingers and the back of his hands and big ugly ones going round his biceps and one going from the back of his shoulder to the side of his neck. Adam was sure there was a lot more, but he didn’t want to stare.
It was only a matter of time before Adam would see Sam in some stage of undressing. Because they lived together, and who really had the energy to go to the bathroom to change clothes when class started at 8am? The first time Adam had been awake enough to actually acknowledge the fact that yes, Sam was changing shirts in front of him and yes, his roommate was fit, he had had to look away to hide his burning face. It was morifying but it wasn’t like Adam was blind. Sam hadn’t noticed anything, thank God.
But beyond that first one sided embarrassing moment Adam got used to it. He was concerned however, because Sam might look like he went to the gym four times a week but he also looked like he had tried to pick a fight with Edward Scissorhands and lost. While Adam didn’t want to make any assumptions none of those scars looked self inflicted and combined with the fact that he knew basically nothing about Sam’s life before Stanford, well. Having a father who used his son to test the sharpness of his knives on seemed so outside of reality, but so could having a father who caused his son permanent deafness in one ear be seen as well.
Maybe he was projecting. Adam had considered it after finding out that Sam knew latin as well. Maybe Sam had just been a real delinquent before college and who just wanted to distance himself from his family because he wanted to be his own man and there was no deeper meaning.
He wanted to ask, wanted some sort of weird acknowledgment that Adam wasn’t the only one with a fucked up family, but he didn’t know how to do it. Adam was used to deflecting the concerned stares he’d gotten from Gansey, the probing questions and the mess that was not defending the actions of the person who hurt you but having to put up with them because there was nothing else to do. Sam didn’t seem concerned over his scars though, he had three vertical ones going over his left elbow that had been sown together with uneven stitches.
Trying to figure Sam out was slowly giving Adam a headache. There was only so much non verbal clues would give so he had to take action in some way or another. It was only a matter of finding a good time, probably sometime after he had to turn in an five page essay. In the meantime he could complain with Sam about test results on the way to the library.
Adam didn’t have to wait that long to get information. Sam had left one of his notebooks open on his desk when Adam returned back from class, and he hadn’t meant to look at it, he had no interest in looking at notes from Sam’s law lessons, only the book hadn’t contained that.
Instead of a mind map or anything like that, the book was filled with scribbles in latin and drawings of what Adam was pretty sure was pentagrams. He might not be as good as Ronan when it came to latin but he could understand when a test was speaking about exorcising demons.
Jaw clenched, Adam flipped a page in the book and it was the same thing, different ways to exercise demons with the word christo underlined in multiple places and catholic prayers or chants written down as well.
“What the fuck?” he said out loud, just as the door to the room opened.
“Yeah I could say the same thing.” Sam enters the room, voice made out of steel. “Why are you looking through my stuff Adam?”