Chapter Text
It was a good six-hour drive from Portland to Vancouver, not including Seattle traffic or Blue’s small bladder or Gansey’s compulsive need to stop at every historical site and take pictures of it with the Polaroid Henry and Blue had gifted him, and Henry was eager to get to his Vancouver friends after a whole summer of being away from them, and so the trio left early enough from Portland that they didn’t have much time to do anything in the city proper.
They decided upon spending the morning in a famous bookstore, where Blue looked over the used books, Henry explored the records section, and Gansey perused the journals. He’d finished up another since his death, spending hours in uncharacteristic quiet introspection as he wrote not about his quest for Glendower but about his quest to recover himself, and later about his future quest with Blue and Henry.
Once he’d picked out one with dots in a grid formation on one half of the paper and a blank slate on the other, and Blue had found herself two books about intersectional feminism and one about the intersection of tarot and astrology, and Henry had decided upon a Celine Dion album (he already had it on cassette, but it didn’t hurt to have it on a different medium) and two Best Of The Eighties records (and a couple rainbow pins at the front desk), they packed up their new purchases and headed towards Vancouver.
Henry felt an odd sort of nervousness that he’d never particularly felt before in combination with the Vancouver Crowd. He knew them well enough that most of the time they felt like warm spots of comfort in an otherwise othering world, but now he was anxious in a way he’d only ever been the first time he’d introduced them to Blue and Gansey. Perhaps it was the feeling of worlds colliding, or the worry that either he or they had changed substantially since their last encounter, or simply the sort of excited butterflies that are easy to mistake for anxious ones.
After all, this would be his first real party of the summer; despite being quite wonderful, whatever functions Parrish and Lynch had hosted over the summer did not, in his mind, count as parties, exactly. Parties meant drinks of all kinds so you could decide which kind of drunk you wanted to be early on, and your choice of edibles or pipes or bong hits or (his favorite) good, old-fashioned joints, and rooms filled with people doing different things in each room. It meant philosophical conversations in one corner and someone stripping in another; it meant quietness and loudness in intervals and music that engineered the mood perfectly and the chance to make the night yours and be whoever you wanted to be. Now that was a party. And no one did parties like the Vancouver crowd.
Henry was itching for a Vancouver party like he never had before, but, like a favorite movie one is hesitant to show a best friend in case they decide to hate it and therefore you, was also dreading it like he never had. Normally, they made him feel calmer, turned his nerves down in anticipation; now, his foot was tapping so much on the middle console that Blue had to turn around and give him a look that meant, why are you acting like Ronan, and he was only able to give her a weak smile in response.
She frowned back, a tinge of worry in her lips. He blew out loudly, a stress raspberry, and she nudged his ankle with her elbow, sticking her tongue out and cocking her head as she turned back around. Wordlessly, she tied up her hair and he caught the side of her smile as she crushed her elbow harder into his foot.
Henry was so fixated on the back of her neck and the echo of her stuck-out tongue and the pressure from her arm to even think about the Vancouver crowd for at least another fifteen minutes, and by the time she lifted her arm to change the radio, the hunt for a good station (preferably something from one of the nearby colleges, but really, anything other than Christian rock was good) consumed him enough to quell his strange anxiety for the time being.
By the time they got to Seattle proper, the traffic was familiar, if awful; the music was much better, if a little experimental at times; and the hum of the city was tempting and wild and wonderful, if a little exotic to Blue, and even to Gansey, who mostly had traveled among side roads and small towns in his life before this one. Henry stuck his head out the window as they passed the skylines he’d driven by many a time on his way home, Space Needle and ocean and bridges and people, god, so many of them that it was almost intoxicating.
Blue was giddy with it, too.
“Please,” she begged, pinching Gansey’s fingers. “Can we at least go somewhere for lunch? To get gas? To look around a little?”
Gansey pinched her fingers back, grimace and grin fighting for control of his face as the August sunshine, watered down as it was by Seattle herself, shone down on it through the open windows. “We have about four more hours til we need to be there and only a little less than that til we get there, assuming a couple more stops for your and Cheng’s bladders.” Henry studied his face as the grin won for just a second before the grimace was back. “Getting out of this and into the city would be a nightmare, plus from what I’ve heard, parking in Seattle would add an extra fifteen minutes alone.”
Blue’s face deflated as she went back to pinching her own leggings instead of Gansey’s arm.
Gansey softened.
Henry marveled.
“We’ll come back. Promise. On the way back.”
Blue pouted for a little longer and stuck out her tongue. Blue Sargent, Henry noted, didn’t have Resting Bitch Face, but rather Resting Pouting Face. Resting Pouting Face With Tongue Out. RPFWTO. Put that on a t-shirt, he thought vaguely, before adding his own pinching fingers to her leg.
“Seattle’s overrated these days, anyways. Too gentrified,” Henry said, over-enunciating each syllable. She pinched his fingers back and put her tongue back in her mouth so she could smile at him.
“Hmm,” she mused, “maybe I’ll be okay then. This trip has already been far too white.”
Henry laughed, and Gansey bristled, almost unnoticeably. “There are good parts,” Henry made sure to add, “and okay white folks.”
“You’re right,” Blue said. “Adam, for example.”
“Opal, as well.”
“Matthew.”
“Madonna.”
Gansey laughed, and swatted them both, and then had to keep his eyes on the road because they’d finally hit a patch of slightly less traffic, and as their conversation delved into nonsense and teasing, Henry’s earlier butterflies melted more and more.
As they got closer to Vancouver, the trio hit a patch of road with significantly less people than usual, which meant that it was time for Blue to do some driving for once. Gansey was always a bit relieved to have a break from driving; as much as he loved it, and as secondhand-nervous as he got when she drove, it was nice to have some time to sit and savor the beauty of everything around him.
Fields, golden in the late afternoon sunshine, spun past them in some stretches, and winding, tree-laden mountains rose up to greet them in others, bits of mist still clinging to them in their colder patches and sun raining down on them in warmer ones. Glimpses of blue-green oceans from afar, the landscape dotted with islands and currents in the distance. Small towns that seemingly only existed so that travelers could stop and take a rest.
Mostly, he admired Blue in the driver’s seat, sexy in her budding confidence and trust in her own driving skills. Blue, laughing at Henry’s antics and marveling at whatever view they had, fidgeting with the steering wheel and the volume knobs, tapping her fingers to whatever Alanis Morisette or Billie Holiday or Queen song that Henry had chosen next.
She was particularly fond of the more feminist songs on Henry’s playlists, although sometimes Gansey didn’t quite understand them; Natalie Merchant was fine, and Tegan and Sara were alright, but what was a “paved paradise” and what was wrong with putting up a parking lot? And what even was the genre of “riot grrrl,” and why was Henry so insistent on their being specifically three r’s in its title?
“Gansey-boy,” Henry had said, tender but with a touch of underlying condescension that Gansey didn’t particularly care for, “this is the culture here. This is where it all started. This and grunge are what the great pea-en-double-you has to offer musically, and you, my dear, are getting a musical education right now.”
“Sleater-Kinney was founded here, Gansey, did you know that?” Blue had chimed in. “Right here. And their themes of rebellion against war, and traditionalism, and consumerism, and especially gender roles shaped an entire generation not only in music but in real life.”
Henry had nodded. “Music is important, Richard. Not just for listening to, but for becoming a person with morals. Music is the greatest influencer there is.”
“Yes,” Gansey had said, feeling a little attacked. “Yes, I see that. I’m just — Jane, you can go a little faster, we aren’t in the mountains anymore — just not all the way sure that they have to sound so angry, while they do it all.”
Blue had laughed, at that.
“You don’t see why they need to be angry because you’ve never been wronged so much that you needed to feel that angry in the first place.”
Gansey had opened his mouth, feeling fish-like, when Henry had interrupted, laying a hand on his elbow. “What Blue means is that of course you have experienced great wrongs, but that they are not because you are a particular class of person. You are white, and a man, and rich, and straight, and —” Gansey cleared his throat, almost imperceptibly, and looked down.
“What, Gans-man? Do you mean to tell me you are not all of those things?”
“Er,” he said, twisting his hands a little in his lap. “I — I think probably —Jane, you’re going to drive into that ditch if you’re not careful — that I am all of them, yes.”
Henry looked at him sideways while Blue swerved to avoid a ditch. “You think.”
Gansey avoided his eyes. “Respectfully, Henry, I’m — not sure if now is the time to discuss any of this.”
Blue turned her head to look at him. “Gansey, is there something you haven’t told me?”
“Jane, please — eyes on the road —” she took her eyes off him, and he breathed out. “I’m just. Tentative, is all, about saying definitive things of that nature, ever since — Parrish —”
He picked at a stray thread on his grey sweater, remembering another passenger-seat conversation he’d had.
I don’t know, Gansey, Adam had said, Henrietta accent lovely in the darkness of their nighttime drive. I suppose it’s never felt right, to just say that I liked one or the other. Pardon the mention of it, but my feelings for Blue were very real, and I’ve found plenty of other girls attractive. But I’ve also had moments where I’ve wanted to kiss a specific boy, or noticed their figure just a little longer while changing together. So although I only want to be with Ronan for now, and haven’t really — he’d stopped to change gears —made any other plans to be with anyone else, in the long-term, I still call myself bisexual.
Gansey had rolled that word around in his mouth, the marble of it fitting onto his tongue better than he cared to admit.
He dragged himself back to the present. “It’s nothing, really. Only that just calling myself one thing over another feels — undiplomatic, for the time being, until I know anything more,” he told Henry and Blue.
Undiplomatic was a good word. Untrue felt like a better one, but this was not the moment for exploring something like —
“—Your sexuality?” Henry was saying.
“What?”
Henry repeated himself: “You are referring to your sexuality, right?”
“I suppose.”
Henry and Blue shared a look bordering on conspiratorial that Gansey wasn’t sure he appreciated. “Parrish and I have talked about this as well, you know. I wanted to make “Henrietta Bisexuality Club” stickers, but I’m not sure he was quite as enthusiastic as I was. Then I asked if “Richard Gansey Was My Bisexual Awakening Club” stickers were a better substitute, but he rejected —”
The car swerved. Gansey was buzzing.
“Jane, eyes on the road, please. You’re — and you and Parrish — and Richard Gansey — I was — Henry —”
Henry laughed. “I’m only joking, Dick-man. I would never do such a thing.”
Gansey stared at him.
“Kidding! You were not my bisexual awakening. I think Cheng2 was the first boy I ever kissed, and it was all downhill from there.”
Gansey had known — because everyone had known — because Henry liked Madonna and dyed a stripe of his hair pink their junior year and wore earrings shaped like cows purple wearing cowboy hats one time — but that word again — and had Adam really — and why did Henry look nervous, like he’d admitted something — and why was Blue gripping the steering wheel like that — and would Henry really —
“Jane, this is the exit,” he heard himself saying, and then they were almost at customs and scrambling for their passports, and Blue was laughing at his picture in his passport, and Henry was laughing at Blue’s, who pretended to pout for him, and both of them shoved Henry’s passport in Gansey’s face so he could marvel at how he managed to still look fantastic, even in a passport, and the mood slid sideways once more.
And all Gansey was left with was the word “bisexual” still buzzing around his head like a wasp, threatening to take up permanent residence.
When the three of them finally pulled up to Cheng2’s house, Blue didn’t believe it at first.
This amount of opulence simply wasn’t possible, especially among the city-ness of the patch of Vancouver they’d just passed; from what Blue could tell in the darkness outside of it, the house was just to big to be real, and the volume of the music bumping out of it shouldn't be allowed, and the cars parked out front were a good two-thirds Teslas, and the lawn wasn’t really a lawn but a statue garden filled with plants, which didn’t seem like they mixed well with a rip-roaring party like Henry had described, and she was starting to think that maybe she didn’t really fit well with it either when someone she recognized poked her head out of an upper window.
“Blue!” Zoe Lewis called down. She had started walking dogs with Blue when they were both young but had given it up once she started working at their local ice cream shop, and had been friendly, if not friends, with her in high school. Blue let out a sigh of relief; Zoe had grown up amidst the dirt of Henrietta like her and Adam, and was another person who would understand her discomfort (or, more accurately, disgust) at the richness of this place.
And, if Zoe was here —
— “Come on in,” Alejandra shouted, poking her head out of the window next to Zoe’s. The two had been attached to the hip during high school, so much so that there had been rumors of something more going on, but then Zoe had started dating Lee-squared from Aglionby and Alé had shaved her head and started holding hands with Carmen in the halls and that had been that. Carmen and Alejandra had long since broken up, but everyone from then on knew where each of them stood, and in Henrietta, at least that was better than not knowing.
Still not great, according to most, but better than nothing.
Blue smiled back up at them, and then at Gansey and Henry grabbing their essentials from the car. They’d been offered two rooms at Cheng2’s that night, and Blue had originally been hesitant to use up so much of their house, but from what Blue could tell now, they certainly had enough room for the three of them. Plus, Henry would be sharing with one of his friends, as he apparently did most of the times that he partied at Cheng2’s.
(Although, apparently this was a sore spot with Henry; he appeared to prefer hosting at his own house, and from what she knew of him, Henry was the perfect host, and prided himself on throwing better parties than Cheng2.)
The three of them walked in to cheers and hugs and greetings from much of Henry’s group. The amount of earnest physical contact was startling, she could tell, to Gansey, who, amusingly, remained somewhat stiff through it all. The party was fairly big then, but, from what she had learned from Henry, the crowd thinned as the night wore on. Most of the extras were only there to get fucked up and then move on to another, even bigger, even more extravagant party, which, now that Blue was witnessing this one, seemed impossible and truly terrifying.
“Gansey-boy!” called Ryang from the kitchen, and Henry laughed at their adoption of his nickname for Gansey, and the three of them moved in between the chattering crowd towards Henry’s friends at the center of it all. SickSteve held out a bottle of vodka from where he stood near the sink, and Koh gave them all friendly side-squeezes as they walked past him. Ezra, who Blue only vaguely recognized because Henry had given her several lectures (and subsequent pop quizzes) on his friends — at her request, of course, because if there was one thing Blue hated it was to be embarrassed — kissed Gansey’s cheek wildly by way of greeting, smearing it with dark purple lipstick. Cheng2 had one hand in Ezra’s back pocket, and went to give Blue an elaborate handshake with the other.
“Alright, President,” Ezra leaned in to ask Gansey, speaking loudly over the ‘N Sync song filling up the house. “Pick your poison. I’m designated bartender,” he told them by way of explanation, as he straightened back up and gestured at the array of drinks next to him.
“I think I’ll mostly be smoking,” he said, patting the joints in the front pocket of his neat blue button-down, “but something to start off with wouldn’t hurt. Do you have what’s required for a mint julep?”
Ezra frowned as he started searching for the bourbon amidst the chaos next to the sink. “First Lady, do you want anything more exciting than your mans over here?”
Blue smiled, relaxed by her finger in Gansey’s belt loop and Henry’s familiar presence against her hip.
“Maybe a shot for now?”
Ezra grinned. “Lime’s right there, and salt is in that cabinet. Let me finish this and I’ll join you.” He grabbed some mint from the fridge and spun Henry like he was swing dancing with him. “And for you, Cheng The First?”
“What’s in the jungle juice this fine evening?” Henry asked, laughing. This relaxed laugh was, Blue thought, marvelous on him; wide and elegant and bright as the multicolored lights bouncing off the walls.
Ezra rattled off half a dozen alcohols as he shook up Gansey’s drink, then rounded up several more people to do shots with Blue and himself, and somehow by the end of it Blue was also holding a cup of the jungle juice.
“In case we do King’s Cup,” Cheng2 told her, winking.
“Or Drunk Clueopoly,” Ryang chimed in, “or Strip Musical Chairs, or Truth Pong.”
“What the fuck is Drunk Clueopoly,” Blue whispered to Henry, who launched into an explanation of a game involving, somehow, Clue, Monopoly, strip blackjack, Cards Against Humanity, and Truth or Dare. Apparently, it got them drunker than anything else, and their longest game had lasted six hours.
As Blue was contemplating how a drinking game could possibly last six hours, and the song switched to a K-pop girl band song that Blue vaguely recognized, Zoe and Alejandra appeared at the top of the stairs, apparently summoned by the Clueopoly talk.
“If y’all are talking about drinking games,” Zoe said, “we can just do Never Have I Ever. It’s shorter and easier, and we want to get to know y’all better. It’s quieter in the upstairs lounge if y’all want to come up with us,” she said, turning her head towards Blue, Henry, and Gansey.
Gansey, who had discovered that there was lipstick on his face and was half-heartedly trying to wipe it off, looked over at her and Henry. She nodded back, and felt Henry smile next to her in agreement.
“That sounds quite agreeable,” Gansey told her and Alejandra, who were doing body rolls in the middle of the stairs. Blue understood; it was taking all her willpower to not dance to the song that was reverberating through the house, and could feel Henry starting to move his hips next to her.
Gansey grabbed onto her hand, and she could tell that he was fighting to not slip into that crowd-anxiety he frequently got. She squeezed back, and grabbed onto Henry’s hand as well as the three of them made their way after the two girls.
As they walked up the stairs, she heard Henry behind her, greeting most of the people they passed; a younger brother of the Vancouver Crew from their grade, four friends in identical miniskirts blocking the stairs with their dancing, two girls with their arms wrapped around each other. The more they ventured into the house, the more she realized something: almost everyone here was some shade of — well, abnormal. Boys in makeup, and girls kissing, and a trio all dancing together in a corner, each part of them touching another part, mouths inches apart.
Her heart swelled in a way that she hadn’t expected. This place felt familiar, and inviting, and for them in a way that she’d only really felt with her closest friends.
The girls led them into a room with a few old-fashioned looking couches — one adorned with green vines, another small pink flowers, another brown and orange stripes — and a coffee table in the center, the room not quite filled, exactly, but still densely populated with people talking and drinking and dancing to the music. The room felt mismatched in the best way, like one of her favorite outfits, or like her family at Fox Way.
“Alright, y’all,” Zoe told the room. “Listen up. We’re gonna play Never Have I Ever in here, so if you don’t want to be a part of that, leave now, please.” A couple people trickled out, but no one stopped what they were doing.
Alejandra cupped her hands over her mouth. “We are commandeering this room in the name of embarrassing drinking games. Quiet up, get a drink, and get around this table. Ten fingers; you lose a finger, you drink. You wanna play?” The people in the room moved towards the couches centered around the coffee table, shuffling more quietly this time. Alejandra playfully nudged Zoe. “See? They listen to me.”
“Asshole,” Zoe said, but she was smiling as she pulled Gansey, Henry, and Blue onto a couch with her. “Y’all know the rules?”
“Most of them,” Gansey told her, flipping his hair nervously as they arranged themselves onto a couch.
“Good. Y’all ready?” she told the group.
Blue felt the alcohol hit her in one dizzying rush as the song playing downstairs changed to something low and bouncy and wonderfully fun. She was ready.
“Okay,” the girl sitting in front of Blue giggled. She held up four fingers, which was around the average; some people, like Zoe, were still on two hands, while others, like Ezra and Koh, were in the negatives. Henry and Gansey, surprisingly, were at three and four, respectively, their traveling having knocked off some points early on in the game. Blue had been on six for a while, as the group veered from the tamer things (Never have I ever worn more than three different items of clothing on my legs at the same time, Henry had said, poking her side) and into more sexual topics, which were what had gotten Henry to where he was fingers-wise, and Gansey to where he was face-reddening-wise.
“Never have I ever...eaten a girl out,” the girl said, flipping her hair. Alejandra whooped as she put down a finger, and several of the boys did as well. Zoe blushed as she put down a finger, and Gansey tried to do so without anyone noticing. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to admit to it, Blue knew; it was just that his conservative upbringing had taught him that discussing things of this nature was not acceptable, and her efforts at forcing him to unlearn the locker room talk impulse weren’t helping much either.
Another boy Blue recognized from her school — a close friend of Ezra — looked at Blue inquisitively. “You haven’t — done that?” he asked her.
“No?” Blue replied, eyebrows furrowing.
“Nevermind,” he said, shaking his head. “Just — you and Cialina, at Nino’s — I always assumed — and you were chill with Parrish and Lynch — but obviously I thought wrong, so — nevermind!”
Blue blushed, feeling out of place and misread and prickly, like she needed to prove herself. “Just because I’ve never — done that — doesn’t mean — I mean, I’ve — ” she said, shoving her hand through her hair. “I’ve thought girls were attractive, but I’m with — I wouldn’t do that, to Gansey.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t like girls,” Zoe piped up from the corner. “Gansey’d understand, or else he’d be an asshole.”
“I don’t mean — that’s —” Blue said, blushing even further, not wanting to cause offense but fuzzy in her drunkness. Everyone in the room was looking at her, and she wasn’t thinking right, and now was not the time for this. “Can someone else go? Please?” She looked at Henry, who was next in the lineup.
He smiled back at her from his place next to Gansey, and bumped her elbow with his (which, somehow that had become their thing. When had that become their thing?) and said, “Never have I ever been stung by a bee,” and it should have been upsetting, but somehow she and Gansey were laughing, and something was alright again.
Most of the people in the room put down a finger, with several groaning at the simplicity of it, and then another half of the room went, and then it was SickSteve's turn, who was one of the only members of the Vancouver Crew playing with them.
“Never have I ever had a threesome,” SickSteve said, looking right at Henry, who immediately blushed (Henry blushing — now that was something beautiful, in the way that unexpected things sometimes were) and took a sip of his drink, laughing as he put down a finger. A couple others in the room did the same, but Blue realized that both she and Gansey remained looking at Henry even as the room exploded into interrogating the other trio that had admitted to a threesome.
“What,” he said, and oh God, Blue was blushing, wasn’t she.
“Nothing,” Gansey said, uncharacteristically loose. “It’s just. We don’t think we’ve heard of this story, and we thought we’d heard everything about you in these few weeks.”
“It’s not like we talk about that sort of thing,” Henry said. “Sex, and the like.”
“Maybe we should,” Blue said, and felt Gansey’s breath hitch next to her.
“Like what?” Henry leaned over Gansey a little, so he could hear her better over the hubbub of the rest of the group and the Childish Gambino song playing over the speakers.
“Like what you’ve done, and what we’ve done. Like,” she said, swallowing, “like, I would like to know more about this threesome. Who with, and when, and would you ever — would you ever have another one.”
This felt dangerous, in a way that Blue didn’t know how to put into words.
Then again, it also felt good.
Henry smirked through his still-reddening blush. “With Ryang and Koh once, about a year ago. It was nice, to be included like that in something two others already had. Although I wouldn’t ever do it with people who didn’t care about me.” Gansey fidgeted between them, worrying the side of his cheek with his teeth. Henry quieted his voice to almost a whisper. “I would like to do it again, I think,” he said, throat moving with his quickening pulse.
Blue moved her hand up to cup the side of his neck, watching as it closed the three of them off from the rest of the group. “Your heart is racing,” she heard herself say, equally as quietly.
Gansey stared up at them, his expression wide open and breathless.
Henry closed his eyes. He reached his hand up to hers, and pulled it back down to Gansey’s knee, smiling lightly. “Vulnerability is as much a sport as anything,” he said, and leaned back to listen to the next person.
Blue kept facing towards him, her hand still on Gansey’s knee, as the game continued on and the focus remained on the rest of the group.
As she tapped her fingers on Gansey’s knee, she could still feel the butterfly-quickness of Henry’s heart underneath them, fluttering just beyond her reach.
Vulnerability is just as much a sport as anything.
She closed her eyes, dizzy with — with drunkenness, and adrenaline, and want — and listened as the party went on around her.
At some point, as was of course going to happen eventually, the three of them split up. Henry watched as Gansey, still blushing from the party game that had just ended, grabbed Blue’s hand and led her — elsewhere. He watched as the two of them stumbled off, giggling, to a separate part of the house, presumably to kiss or make out or do something more or just to simply hold each other’s faces and whisper things about how happy they were to be together. He watched as the party dwindled to just those that he felt the most comfortable around, watched as other couples left to go home or to do similar things in other corners of the house, watched as his best friends put on performances to song after song.
This was their absolute favorite party activity — beyond invented, Frankensteined-together party games, and kissing in corners, and dressing up for the festivities however the ocasion invited.
(Which, to be fair, was also Henry’s second favorite activity; he’d missed the opportunity to get fancy for this party, and so when he was presented with glitter for his cheek and collar bones, and star stickers for his eyelids, and fake tattoos and rainbow boas and a silky white robe he took all of it, greedy at the change to feel beautiful in a way he hadn’t for weeks.)
Henry lit up the joint that had somehow taken up residence in his own pocket, and watched as Ryang and Koh grinded (or was it ground?) against each other to Mozart, an inventive combination that had become their routine the past few parties. Their other friends cheered as they did their best to lip sync to the song; in between them being busy kissing, and also the fact that the song was absent of lyrics, it was quite difficult at most times, but somehow, they managed at others.
Henry tried his best not to think about Gansey and Blue most likely doing a similar thing in a different part of the house.
Ryand and Koh finished their set, and dragged a now-crossed Henry onto the stage, adorning him with even more regalia; he was already in a Madonna crop-top, because that was his favorite shirt and why squander it on any other kind of night but this, but they handed him a plaid red miniskirt that went with the red accent in the top as well as a small tiara, and Henry decided it would be a waste to not put it all on. And, well, if he took his cut-offs off so that he could show off his legs a little, and he pulled the crop top off of one shoulder just a bit — well, would that be so bad?
Henry was in his element, completely and totally, for the first time in a while, and he felt — he felt —
Well. He wanted to feel perfect.
But it almost felt as if there was no use without Blue and Gansey there to see it.
All dressed up and nowhere to go he thought, aimlessly, before starting the music.
He performed Robyn’s classic song “Dancing on my Own” first — not his favorite of hers, but one that felt like it suited the moment. Henry shimmied in front of his friends, draped himself dramatically around chairs, lip synced and twirled in circles, blew kisses to his audience. At one point, SickSteve got up with him, and the two of them danced together, lamenting their dancing solitude together in time with the music.
Somehow, when he looked up just as he was finishing his dance, Blue and Gansey had made their way into the room. Gansey had been dragged into a couch seat next to Ezra, and Blue and Alejandra were chatting on the other side of the room.
Henry’s chest ached.
If you cannot be unafraid, he’d told Gansey once, be afraid and happy. Alcohol made people do stupid things at times, he knew.
He searched his music for something suitable, and settled on a Lana del Rey song — something about travel, and the West Coast, and love, and sex, and, god, if Henry didn’t do this quickly he was going to lose his nerve.
As he started the music and started dancing, he pulled out all the stops — swung the feather boa around his face, dropped low to the ground and bend-and-snapped his way back up, slowly draped himself so he was laying on the couch next to Ezra and then pulled himself back up, midriff showing in a way that he hoped was tantalizing.
Down on the west coast, I got this feelin’ like it all could happen, he mouthed to nobody in particular, trying his best not to make eye contact with Blue or Gansey. Boy blue, yeah you, you’re fallin’ hard for sure, he sung, sparing a glance at Blue, who was biting the side of her lip, before he let his robe fall to the floor and pulled his shirt off over his head. All that was left on him was a black sheer bralette he had put on before the party and the red miniskirt
The room broke out into applause and cheers.
Emboldened — because what was the worst that could happen — and also the song expected it of him — he bent down to get the robe back, and draped it off one shoulder seductively. He twirled, letting the skirt flare up, and snuck a look at Gansey, who was as red as he had been earlier when Blue had touched his neck. He made his way closer to Gansey, strutting and mouthing something about your love, your love, our love — and it felt just a little too much, but in the way that it was allowed to, because it was a party and this was just what he did —
And he felt himself sitting in Gansey’s lap, half-laughing through the lyrics —
And Ezra was looking at the two of them with one eyebrow raised, as if he knewsomething —
And Henry was so close, and it was just — just —
And Gansey leaned in —
And Henry leaned in a little more — and his whole body was on fire —
And he saw Blue out of the corner of his eye —
And somehow it made him want to lean in closer — which was stupid, and weird, and all kinds of fucked up that he didn’t really have time to process because fuck —
Gansey’s mouth was suddenly so hot on his —
And the angle was a little awkward, because Gansey’s hands were in the wrong place and Henry was on Gansey’s lap, which also meant that he could feel Gansey’s—
And Henry didn’t realize til just then how much he had wanted to touch the back of Gansey’s neck — but it felt so fucking right when he did —
And why was he crying, just a little bit, when he rubbed his thumb in a circle on the nape of Gansey’s neck while they kissed, his hair a smidge too long from being on the road for so long, the curve of his neck just the right shape for Henry’s palm —
And why was he pulling away, now —
Henry was, not Gansey — Gansey, whose mouth was still waiting, half open, eyes half-closed, like he was waiting to be fucking ravished —
And Henry got up, half-aware of his own body, half-pleading it to go back to kissing Gansey —
But he had to finish this fucking song —
But god, Gansey’s face —
And, fuck, Blue’s face — beautiful, and strange, and perfect—
Like she was hungry, like she was waiting, like she wasn’t done yet—
And Henry got back up on their makeshift stage, and drunkenly finished his song, and sat on four of his friends’ laps just to be sure, and did the splits at the end to raucous cheers, and messed with his hair so much that it stuck up in the back, too, by the end, and closed his eyes through most of it just so he wouldn’t have to see the way that Gansey and Blue were looking at him — like he’d always wanted — like he’d always tried to not want — like he’d wanted for so long that trying to not want felt just like wanting — like he couldn’t have.
Like he couldn’t have. Like he couldn’t have. Like he couldn’t have.
Because they were theirs.
But fuck if it didn’t feel like maybe he could be theirs, too. If they let it.