i was thinking. we all know ronan and adam's way of saying i love you is using the cicero quote from laelius de amicitia . but how did it start??? did they just say it out of the blue?? it could've started with adam waving goodbye saying tamquam before going to work and ronan catching the reference, but it doesn't make any sense bc tamquam is an incredibly common word in latin, it could literally be linked to any other piece of literature.......
the hypothesis that makes more sense to me is that maybe it was already a recurring joke. like, im thinking about ronan and adam being in class one day (immediately pre-relationship?) and the teacher is talking about cicero and his essay about friendship and ronan's like. haha this guy is so gay he wrote a whole fuckass book to his "friend" comparing their bond to other famous homoerotic friendships in history. like haha qui tamquam alter idem cmon just say you wanna get ur hands under his toga. so adam cracks up and they begin using this sentence to basically say "ur gay lol". but then they get together and the joke gets old and morphs into something serious because, well, they are, indeed, gay.