• the world ended when adam and declan were young (roughly 14), and they've both been trying to survive alone. it's not any zombie apocalypse—the world just like, ended. i haven't decided any real specifics.
• declan was in d.c. with niall when it happened, and he's been trying to find ronan and matthew ever since.
• they meet and form a reluctant bond when adam meets declan in henrietta, with declan trying to get back to the barns.
• it's like strangers to lovers except they're like both extremely wary of other people at all

It came out of out of nowhere, the headlights bright in Ronan’s face. He looked up, a split second of panic on his face. There were screeching tires, and then a loud, long honk, and then the sound of crashing metal and shattering glass.  Ronan couldn’t breathe; every breath felt wet, like he was drowning. The BMW was sideways, glass dug into his side, the seatbelt torn in spots. When Ronan died, the radio finally began to work, the host excitedly announcing the next song in their 70’s throwback session. 

“I’m just trying to get home,” the other says, and this close Adam can see the Roman nose, the dark eyelashes with droplets of water. When he lifts his eyes Adam sees the stark blue of them, like the sky in winter, cold and dry and wanting.

Ronan does not fall in love with Adam. He wouldn’t. He thinks, at night, about the way Adam’s eyes dart to him, about the kind of dream he must have been having to pull out something as lovely as Adam Parrish. Ronan refuses to fall in love with Adam Parrish because he refuses to love something as fragile and ephemeral as a dream.

Adam strains to hear but he doesn’t learn what they have to be up for. The man flags him down. Adam is struck by the beauty of his eyes, the cold blue of them, like the glass eyes of old dolls, set into a heavy-lidded face. He smiles the way that men sometimes like, if they’re the wrong kind of man, and says, “Is that all for you?” The man hands over a shiny black credit card. Declan T. Lynch. Adam commits it to memory.