Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Henry was used to being a third wheel.

Most of his Vancouver crowd was all coupled up, especially towards the end of their time at Aglionby; Cheng2 and Ezra Mittendorf from the grade above them, Koh and Ryang, Lee-squared and a girl from Henrietta High named Zoe Lewis. His parents, when they were around. Lynch and Parrish, as of recently. And, of course, Gansey and Blue.

Gansey and Blue.

Gansey, who he’d had one eye on constantly for years. For political reasons, of course, but also, as Cheng2 had pointed out during their third year, not. Gansey, whose habits he knew like the back of his teeth; the finger he used to push his glasses up, the order he ate his food, when he ate; the way he drove with his whole body. Gansey, who he knew better than himself; mole behind his left ear, permanently bent thumb from when he’d punched the gun out of Whelk’s hand, broad shoulders and one foot slightly bigger than the other and surprisingly big biceps accentuated by a perfectly-fitting polo shirt in all Henry’s favorite colors.

And Blue. Blue, who had trusted him from the get-go, and who he trusted right back; who he gave all his power without thinking; who he knew without knowing how. Blue, with her hair fluffy and free on a good day and spiky like his on a bad one. Blue, with her wrists pressed against his as they invented secret handshakes, a movement that felt more intimate than any kissing he’d ever done; Blue, teaching him superstitions around the world as they poured over a map; Blue, dancing with him to Madonna and Vampire Weekend and ABBA and Robyn and Kendrick Lamar, not caring if she was good or bad or if her dresses rode up a little to show the pattern at the top of her thigh-high socks.

Gansey and Blue, Blue and Gansey. Fated soulmates, literally. Her rolling her eyes at him from across the room and him smiling wider than he’d ever seen, even if she was rolling her eyes at him. Him blushing as he covered her hands in his while teaching her how to drive stick. The both of them tucked into one jacket, warm and safe in their cocoon. The two of them coming home from walks in the forest with leaves in their hair and stars in their eyes and champagne bubbles in their voices. The two of them.

Two of them.

Henry had been a third wheel before. He had survived it then — watched as Henry2 and Ezra had kissed under mistletoe at Christmas even though neither of them celebrated it, and at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and all day long on Valentine’s day. He’d watched as Koh and Rhyang had given each other $600 rings and breakfast in bed and lap dances and treated all of them with the same loving gratitude. He’d been the last one awake at a party as all his couple friends had gone off to their separate rooms to do their own separate things. He’d watched as two friends had started holding hands when no one thought they were watching, as they’d stop kissing as he walked in the room, as they’d text the other during conversations with him. He’d been called the greatest wingman ever more times than he could count, and although he’d been around the block his fair share, he’d never settled into a house. If you got what he meant.

So he’d survived it before. And he would survive it now. Because the hard part wasn’t being the third wheel.

It was the potential for something more.

Henry didn’t normally like dwelling on it, but tonight was different; he was more tired than usual after having spent half his day walk-running after Blue (who walked oddly fast, considering her height), searching for their hotel after they’d lost both Gansey and RoboBee in a town just north of the Californian border, a bit past a town called Weed that Henry had snickered at, and Blue had flicked him for snickering at it, and Gansey had looked at them bemusedly from the driver’s seat, a frown on his forehead but a smile on his lips.

They’d been sightseeing, walking around in a cute little park they’d found, and he and Blue had gone to use the restroom in a store nearby (tiny bladders was something they’d bonded over quickly), and then they’d come out of it to realize that they’d exited the shop a different way than they’d come in, and when they finally made it back to the original entrance Gansey had disappeared. Blue had led him in circles all around the small city at a breakneck speed, including through the college campus, where a lovely girl named Eileen (which he remembered because “Come On Eileen” was still stuck in his head hours later) had tried to direct them to their hotel which was, presumably, across the street. When they still hadn’t found it, they’d given up and walked back to the downtown area, where they’d spent two hours thrift shopping (he’d found a pair of bright red culottes with orange patches that Blue had been very thankful for, and a yellow polo shirt with a bee embroidered on it for Gansey that Henry wasn’t sure he’d ever actually give to him). Then they’d eaten lunch at a pizza place, where Blue had paid but only because their total was less than a Nino’s pizza, and gotten distracted by a candy shop that sold the best fudge the two of them had ever eaten. They’d finally asked directions from a man in a tea shop, and, once they’d stocked up on tea, had wandered back to find their hotel exactly where they’d thought they’d looked before. And to find a very worried Gansey waiting in their room, where they learned that they’d spent the day going exactly where he had been ten minutes earlier.

Anyways. Henry was tired, and when Henry was tired, he got emotional. And when he got emotional, he thought about Gansey and about Blue and about Gansey and Blue, the unit. He thought about Gansey’s shoulders when they relaxed from being worried and Blue blowing her hair away from her forehead. He thought about the way she grabbed his hand when he wasn’t walking as fast as she wanted and didn’t let go until both their hands were sweaty from the August heat. He thought about the way Gansey looked at him with soft eyes and soft mouth and said, i was scared you’d been abducted again, with something that was meant to be a laugh but came out much more concerned.

And he thought about the way that Gansey kissed Blue’s forehead when he first saw her, right away, like nothing else mattered, and he rolled around and shoved his head into his pillow a little.

Which he could do, today, because he had his own room. And they had theirs. Away from him. And none of this was fair, but so was life, and, he figured, he should probably nip this whole thing in the bud before it became anything more than it was. Before it became something more.

He rolled over twice, and then did his best to shove himself into sleep.

The path that they had been supposed to take was this: Henrietta to Kentucky (to see the Derby with The Ganseys), then to Chicago, then all the way across the United States through the middle to the Four Corners, then to the coast, stopping whenever they wanted to. From there, they were planning on going to Vancouver to visit Henry’s crew and party a little before heading down the West Coast towards California, then eventually to Mexico and finally Venezuela. They didn’t trust the Pig to get all the way there, so they’d decided upon leaving it with friends of Gansey’s in Baja and flying to Venezuela from there, with plans to travel around once they were in Venezuela and eventually fly back with just enough time to pack before heading off to their respective schools.

If any of them individually had had their way, there would be no going off to school; Gansey was exhausted by his real-death experience, Henry was excited to be traveling, and Blue was terrified at the prospect of more education inside four walls and a ceiling. But they’d all pushed for the others to continue their education, and by the end of their debates, Gansey had decided upon a school near enough to Adam that he felt wouldn’t exhaust him too much and also accepted late applications (especially when greased with a credit card), Henry had been accepted into an acting school that seemed just avant-garde enough to be interesting but not too pretentious, and Blue found a nature conservation program at a college that boasted a three-year accelerated degree and a location near enough to her friends that she felt just enough at home at while still feeling adventurous.

So they’d embarked, with plans for returning, at the start of August, after everyone had had their fill of late nights at the Barn with bonfires and dreamed hazy lights, of celebrating birthdays and other milestones with much alcohol, of learning to drive (Blue) and deciding what to pack (Henry) and just sitting around because they could (Gansey) and watching Adam and Ronan fall more in love and learning how to dance from Moira and the Grey Man and planning out routes and eating pizza in all the gaps in between.

The moments had all passed both quickly and slower than Adam’s new car, and all had been filled with sunlight and the promise of something new, but one moment in particular stuck out to Blue.

She and Gansey had tested their ability to have a second kiss with both extreme caution and wild loss of inhibition several months after their first real kiss. They’d been stretched out on the hood of the Pig in the Monmouth driveway, leaning back onto it in order to soak up as much of the watery spring sun as they could, when their conversation had died down and the elephant in the room lumbered in once more. They’d been avoiding the topic, avoiding being alone together, really; it had felt like too big and too small of a problem all at once, and one where no answer was almost better than a negative one. But now Gansey was looking at her with a look of tenderness and quiet longing, and all she wanted was to kiss the sun off his face, and so she’d asked, voice cracking and body aching:

“Do you think it will kill you?”

He’d closed his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Is it safe?”

“As life,” he’d replied automatically, eyes still closed, face turned up. When she looked at his face closer, she noticed his eyes were wet.

“I think,” she’d said, carefully, heart like morse code, “that I may be a mirror, but you’re made of life, now.”

He’d smiled, opening his eyes. “Jane, I—,” he’d said, and then she’d followed her lips as they walked over and met his in the middle.

When she’d finished, he looked up at her through still-wet lashes and sighed. “Jane, I think you may have a point.”

“About?”

“About me being full of life.”

Blue’s heart had melted into her body, and they’d both smiled and kissed again and again until the Pig was no longer comfortable and Adam called Blue about matters of extreme importance, namely the fact that he was in charge of Opal and she wasn’t listening to him and how did one stop a dream thing from eating socks, exactly?

After that, she’d kissed him whenever she could; sitting on the countertops of Fox Way while he made the whole house dinner and trapping him between her legs; standing on her tiptoes and pressing quick kisses one after the other into his lips after graduation; smiling into melty late-night kisses after bonfires at the Barn; bringing his hand up to her lips while he drove them somewhere; smothering her face into his neck when she got tired. She’d noticed the looks she’d gotten from this new behavior, proud scowls from Ronan and nudged smiles from Adam and fluttering winks from Henry that sent her stomach reeling a little.

But now, it felt odd to kiss him quite as often, now that it was just the three of them. She didn’t want to make Henry feel left out, and so she tried to only book one room at hotels, or let him sit in the front seat when Gansey drove, or bumped hips with him when they walked places instead of just holding hands with Gansey. And she noticed Gansey doing the same thing, both ramping down the PDA and ramping up the Henry-friendliness.

It felt normal, mostly. A little like they were holding back, but holding back from what was something she didn’t quite feel she knew.

Either way, though, she’d gotten tired of not being able to kiss Gansey goodnight, and so she’d quietly booked them two rooms in this small town hotel, but only because they were about half the price they were in most towns. And so when she got up the morning, it wasn’t because of Henry bumbling around in the dark to start his hair routine, or find his morning vitamins, or go on a walk before their long drive, or any of his other early morning activities, but to Gansey shaking her awake and whispering something about how they had to wake up soon if they were going to make it to Portland on time. She found herself missing Henry’s presence for a moment, before sleepily kissing Gansey back down into the bed and promising him she’d leave soon if he woke her up sufficiently.

Gansey was hers, she reminded herself every time they kissed. Gansey was hers, and his, and theirs, and alive, and alive, and alive, and him kissing her was proof of all of it.

Gansey knew he loved driving more than the average person. He’d known since the first time he’d set foot in a car, had known through the process of learning and re-learning how to drive it on the other side of the street, had known when he was driving on busy city streets and the hills of Virginia and everything in between. He loved every part of it; how remembering to do every piece of it filled up his concentration just enough that he only had room to think about the important things and not enough room for the anxious thoughts to spiral in. How the wheel of the Pig responded to his touch perfectly, and the pedals did what he wanted, and the gears followed his command. How music could make the experience lively or thoughtful or wild or heavy. How he felt like a king in the driver’s seat. How he felt alive.

He loved it especially like this: with Henry in the backseat, legs propped sideways on the suitcases and bags that didn’t fit in the trunk, and Blue next to him, sticking her head out the window to mess up her hair and grinning at him through it just enough to make his heart thump.

He loved it like this: Henry playing a Simon & Garfunkel song from the front seat and Gansey ducking his head in embarrassed appreciation of the song, while Blue mumbled a too cheesy at them and rolled her eyes, but tapped the beat on the middle console anyways.

He loved it like this: Henry, Blue, a map, and him. Tenuous plans and expertly curated playlists and open hearts and windows. Roads and sky and lovely landscapes, sunsets and sunrises and lights glinting off of windshields. A vague sense that this was the closest thing he would ever get to home.

Henry had said he’d drive some of the way, and after some pressure, Blue had agreed to practice some too, but only when they were in towns or driving across empty, flat landscapes. (There had been a lot of those in the middle bits, and one time Blue had accidentally driven onto a slightly busier highway and had been so busy dancing to an Annie Lennox cover that she didn’t even notice it until she was almost off it). Gansey had ended up driving most of the way, though, which was fine with him.

It was totally fine, ideal even, up until right now, driving up the Oregon coast, where he was reminded of all the things he liked slightly less about driving.

Namely, driving in the rain.

Blue had kept on remarking from the passenger seat that everything was just so green and how did they get it that green, what was Oregon’s secret? Did they spray it that green, maybe? Or pay someone to water every inch of it? And then, as they drove up and up, what had once been vaguely cloudy turned into very cloudy and then into droplets, and Blue got her answer.

Rain. Lots and lots and lots of it.

They’d intended to get an early start that morning, but then the thrift stores that Blue and Henry had seen the day before while they had been separated from him before beckoned once more, and it wouldn’t take them long, they promised, to just go to one or two more. And then they could get lunch at that adorable cafe near the hotel that they’d seen, the one with marigolds painted on the front, and then they could start off for Portland. They had plenty of time. They’d find something for Gansey to wear to replace the Chinos he’d ripped while they were camping in Colorado. It was fine. And Gansey, feeling more like a father than he ever had before, feeling elated from a night of kissing Blue, feeling charmed by this new small town, agreed to the plan.

And so by the time they were almost to Portland, the skies had not only opened up but darkened almost totally.

And now Gansey felt claustrophobic, and overwhelmed by the normally-soothing lights on the highway, and, mostly, terrified of the rain.

Which was stupid. He knew this. No one was scared of rain.

It was just that whenever the drops would get especially large, or the noise would get especially loud, or when they stopped at a gas station for Blue to use the facilities and ducked back into the car wearing Henry’s jacket, once more with raindrops like freckles on its shoulders, he would start to feel that now-familiar blackness set in over his vision.

When they finally stopped at their hotel just outside of Portland, Gansey stayed frozen in the car for a couple seconds, rubbing his thumbs along the edge of the steering wheel and breathing as slowly as he could.

Henry, who had already gotten out of the car, immediately got back in.

“What’s wrong, Ganseyman?”

He vaguely felt Blue touch his elbow.

“Gansey?”

He breathed out, a long shaky thing, and then watched himself smile in the mirror.

“I’m alright. It’s just the— the rain reminds me a bit of —“

Blue swore under her breath. “Of course it does. I can’t believe I didn’t see that earlier.” She rubbed circles into his elbow to match the ones he was making on the wheel. “I don’t — I didn’t—”

“Perfectly fine, Jane. Henry. We can go in now, if you’d like—”

“You’re still shaking,” Blue said in a low voice. “Don’t worry about it. Take as much time as you need.” Gansey took a breath in, then took his hands off the wheel, staring at the soggy night.

“I just—” he said, adjusting his glasses. “I’ll be alright.” He inhaled. Everything was already passing. This was all temporary. He would be alright. “Let’s go in.”

Blue and Henry shot each other looks, but followed suit when he opened his door with both shaky hands. They all took their necessary luggage (a backpack each, full of toiletries and one set of clothes each and a deck of cards and a few more things — mentally going through their inventory calmed Gansey, a little) from the trunk, then set off towards the hotel. Blue slipped her hand in his, and, after a moment, he realized Henry had taken his other hand. He squeezed back, gently, and together they walked towards the hotel.

Sometimes things were hard, for him, and for each of them; but then again, they at least had this.

And as he laid in the dark that night, in a bed too small for the three of them and with much flatter pillows than he normally enjoyed, with Blue pressed up against one side, still holding his hand, and Henry against his other, one hand under his head and the other placed gently over Gansey’s beating heart, he whispered a small thanks to both of them.

Blue. “For what?”

Gansey. “For being mine.”

Henry. “The pleasure is all ours.”

Blue, Gansey, Henry.

Home.

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.

Chapter Text

Gansey and Blue were silent from the moment they woke up.

Silent as they packed their clothes up, which had been slightly scattered around the house. Silent as they wolfed down a granola bar each from the kitchen. Silent as they woke up a groaning Henry, who caught on quickly to their silence. Silent as they were kindly given Advil and water and more granola bars by the very lovely Vancouver crew, silent as they walked out to the Pig, silent as they started it up.

The car was silent for the forty-five minutes it took to get to customs, and the silence was only broken when Gansey asked for their passports and then later when Blue asked to find a gas station to use the restroom at. Silent as Gansey went in with her to find some yogurt for them to crumble their extra granola bars into, and Henry was left in the car to silently nurse a headache that was three parts due to alcohol and two parts due to bad decisions. Silent as Blue returned before Gansey and gulped down a third of the water before handing the bottle to Henry. Silent as Gansey returned and handed them both a yogurt that neither of them ate, silently or not. Silent as they started back on towards Seattle.

Gansey tried once after all that to break the silence.

The tension of it all was going to kill him, was the thing, and maybe if he started talking, or changed the subject (what the subject even was that he needed to avoid the first place, he didn't know), it might do something about the mood in the car, heavy like Henry in Gansey’s lap the night before.

“It’s starting to rain,” Gansey said without thinking, and then remembered: Henry’s coat around his shoulders, Blue’s lips on his, a tightness in his chest that he didn’t think he would ever get rid of. Both of them lying next to him at a motel in Oregon as he waited for his vision to go back to normal, Henry’s hand on his chest and Blue’s hand squeezing his. Closing his eyes the night before and leaning into Henry and Blue watching from across the room, something like rain clouds flickering across her face.

He instantly wished he could take it back.

The words.

The rest of it he was still unsure about.

Blue nodded next to him, and he heard a hum from Henry behind him as the rain picked up. He wasn't quite sure if he’d helped the situation or made it worse, not quite sure if the rain was going to make things easier or harder.

What things, he thought, and then touched his head, as if he could pull out all his bothersome thoughts out through his ears. Gansey ached.

No things to think about.

The rain picked up again.

Gansey thought that probably it was trying to help, because nothing he was doing was working.

Blue noticed that something was wrong first.

Not with them.

Obviously something was wrong with them; something had been wrong with them, for hours or days or maybe even weeks, although before it wasn’t really something wrong but more something changing, something moving towards something else, and she didn’t quite know whether that thing was a good thing or a bad thing but it wasn’t wrong, exactly, more — more happening. Now something was very definitely wrong with the three of them; it had felt like something had almost been right but then immediately had slipped into wrong, and she wasn’t quite sure how because she had been on the couch the whole time willing a something more into existence. And now there was a something wrong, or rather unfinished, maybe, instead, and it was no one’s fault, exactly, which was even worse because now there was no one to be mad at, and being justifiably mad at people was Blue’s specialty.

No, she knew there was something wrong with them; even if it wasn’t bad-wrong, they weren’t where they were supposed to be, and that was definitely wrong.

But what she wasn’t sure about was whether there was something wrong with the Pig.

It kept making spitting noises when they turned a curve, and felt heavier than normal, and something was definitely sloshing differently than it usually did. But Blue wasn’t an expert on cars, and so she kept the silence that already existed in the car well and alive.

And then they stopped for gas at a college town right near the border, and the Pig wouldn’t start up again, and it became very clear very fast that something was wrong.

With the car.

Because, again. Something was very obviously wrong with the three of them.

After some inspection, Gansey came in to inform them that the issue was that the car was waterlogged, which Blue hasn’t known was a thing that cars could be from just rain, but apparently the problem was that the rain was too fast, or there were too many puddles, or something. Blue didn’t really know, or care, what Gansey was saying about the Pig, because at least he was talking.

At least the car wasn’t so fucking quiet anymore.

Luckily, they were across the street from a motel called, cheerfully, the Guest House Inn, where they booked a room for the night.

“Why don’t we just get this fixed and move on,” Gansey had said originally, and Blue had to stop herself from scoffing at him. In the end, Blue and Henry both agreed that it was best to have somewhere to stay for the time being. One, because they didn’t want to run around in the rain while the car got fixed; cold and wet and having constant flashbacks on top of a fucking hangover and trying not to wonder about all the possibilities that came from Henry’s mouth on Gansey’s was not Blue’s idea of a good time. And two, Henry pointed out, none of them had slept well the night before; why didn’t they just call AAA, let them deal with the car, and get some much-needed rest.

Three, Blue added, the Guest House Inn was cheaper than their intended Seattle location.

Gansey had given in quicker than normal, and soon they were checking into the hotel and opening the door to a slightly damp room.

With one bed.

Because of course the hotel would be out of double rooms. The nose-pierced, clearly-college-aged girl at the concierge station had assured them that their room had a cot as well if they needed it, and Henry had complimented her soft pink hijab as they headed towards their room, and Blue had had to momentarily close her eyes to stop herself from beaming at Henry’s constant kindness.

Gansey and Henry bumped into each other as they walked in, and Blue could have sworn they were both going to start sparking off into each other.

“I’m taking a bath,” Blue told the room as the boys put their stuff down in a corner.

Blue went to the bathroom without looking at either of them and started up the bath. While it was filling up, she changed out of her clothes and brushed her teeth, detangled her hair a little and checked her phone. She responded to a picture Adam had sent of Ronan being tipped over by a cow, texted the Grey Man their new plan, and sent her mother a picture of the three of them the night before.

As she was looked up to check the bath water, she felt a sudden pang of jealousy. What if she was gone and something happened, again? What if, while she was taking a bath, completely unaware, Henry sat on Gansey’s lap and Gansey leaned in again, and the two of them took over from where they’d left off the night before?

She felt a shiver go through her as she lowered herself into the bath water. And what would be so bad about that, exactly, some voice inside of her said. It felt good to press on this idea, like scratching around a big bite. It wouldn’t be bad, exactly, she thought. Because some part of her had liked what had happened last night. Had been watching the two of them dance around each other the whole night. Had almost expected this to happen, she realized, when she had been studying Henry’s face the night before as it got looser and more relaxed, almost waiting for him to get just close enough for Gansey to take advantage of its beauty and do something. And then he had, and she’d felt a thrill go through her, like the rocks around the leyline setting into place, and then it had stopped, and now she was afraid of it happening again.

No, that wasn’t quite right.

She was afraid of it happening without her.

Blue slumped down so that she was all the way under the water, forcing herself to savor the feeling of being clean and warm and enveloped in calm. Forcing herself to stay, despite her worries of what, exactly, might be happening without her.

Maybe if she stayed here long enough, she wouldn’t have to think about how close she’d felt to something, and now how easy it would be to start something again.

All you have to do, said some part of her, is one little thing. She so rarely did something because it felt good, because it felt unreal and impossible to ignore and the consequences felt too small to matter in the moment.

Something in her was tight — something in all of them was still wound tight, afraid to let go even after all this.

Blue ached.

Then she lifted her head up and made up her mind.

The night before, Henry had slept with Ezra and Cheng2.

Well. Not slept with. Rather, as Blue and Gansey headed off alone for the second time that night, Ezra had taken one look at Henry’s forlorn face, and Cheng2 had grabbed his hand and dragged him off to set up camp in their bedroom. They had placed him in the middle of the bed, and gotten him water, and presented him with clothes to change into, and carefully wiped the makeup off his face.

Henry had stayed silent during the whole thing, worried that once he started talking he wouldn’t know how. Worried that he’d open his mouth to say something and a string of nonsense would follow. Worried he’d try to speak and all that would come out would be tears or purple glitter or pure emotion like honey, raw and messy and crystallized.

Finally, Cheng2 turned off the lights and got on one side of him while Ezra snuggled up on his other side. A song played out of Ezra’s phone, slow and longing.

“You love them, don’t you.” Ezra, always slightly better at reading people, spoke up from his left side.

Henry’s stomach twisted, something inside of it that had been tangled up tightening its knots even further. He nodded, still too distrustful of what lay inside him to speak.

“Henry…” Cheng2 said, smoothing Henry’s hair away from his face. “Tell us about them.”

Henry smiled, feeling Blue-and-Gansey-shaped tears well up. He let out a breath.

“They are...an odd sort of elegant. A lovely sort of resilient. A quiet sort of lovely. I — I don’t — they — they are indescribable.” Henry felt his chest swell. “They are not without their flaws, of course, but they — when I am in between them, I feel as though there is — something. More. Possible, between us. Something I’ve always been looking for. They are an adventure that never ends.”

He paused to catch his breath, and felt Ezra squeeze his palm.

“I don’t know what — what to do. What to say. To make it better. All I want is to be let into their — their own little realm. Their forest. I know that I feel — magic, things that I cannot put into words with them. And if I cannot be quite a part of the magic in the way I wish, I will take whatever I can. I just — I just wish it could be — different.”

It wasn’t right, exactly. It wasn’t all he wanted to say. It wasn’t all he felt, when Blue looked at him from the backseat or Gansey studied him like a map. It wasn’t all he wanted from them. It wasn’t anything that could scratch the surface of how badly he wanted to be Blue-and-Gansey-and-Henry, how much he wanted to be with them, always, how much he wanted to give them.

But Ezra and Cheng2 knew.

“Then tell them,” Cheng2 said, and Henry was floating.

Tell them, tell them, tell them.

“I don’t know how,” Henry said, and it came out as the start of a sob, honey-like tears forming in the backs of his eyes.

“Then show them,” Ezra whispered, low and sweet.

Henry nodded and closed his tear-sticky eyes. “I want to. Desperately. But. What if.” He opened his eyes, looking at Cheng2 and feeling hopelessly small. “You know?”

Cheng2 smiled. “I’m going to tell you a secret," he said, brushing a thumb across Henry's teary cheeks. "They love you. Even if they don’t love you in the way you want them to, they love you. And because they love you, they will be alright with you no matter what.” He flattened his palm against Henry’s and threaded his fingers through Henry’s fingers. “You have nothing to lose,” he said, voice barely audible. “But you have so much to untangle. And no reason not to.”

Henry ached.

Ezra kissed his cheek lightly. “All of what he said, Henry darling.”

“And,” Cheng2 said, as he leaned over both of them to turn the volume down on the song several notches, “if they kick you out of their little party, you can always come party with us.”

Henry laughed, and wiped the tears that were still clinging to his cheeks. “Noted.”

“Goodnight, Cheng the first,” said Ezra. “Goodnight, Cheng the second.”

Henry rolled over and closed his eyes.

The string tangled in his stomach loosened just one knot.

It was all he needed.

***

Now, Henry found himself in the opposite position as the night before, tension as thick and palpable as the humid rain around them, the two people he loved standing on the other side of the room from him.

“I’m taking a bath,” Blue said, turning on her heel towards the bathroom.

“Um,” Gansey said, and Henry knew the feeling.

“This,” Henry said, attempting to lighten the mood but only once Blue was out of earshot, “is where you say without me?”

Gansey laughed a little and sat down on the bed, and Henry let out a deep breath as stealthily as he could.

He could feel the tension in the room, roping around his shoulders, sticking to his fingertips, pulling tighter the knots in his stomach, ringing around his lungs. It dissipated slightly with Gansey’s laugh, bright and smart, but it still felt like the room was — electrified, whenever Gansey and he made eye contact.

Henry started to unpack his things just to have something to do with his hands.

“Henry —” Gansey started, one hand on the back of his neck when Henry turned back around to look at him.

“Yes?” Henry said, moving the extra pillow he usually packed to place it on the bed where Gansey was sitting. When he looked at Gansey, their eyes locked for a second, and Henry’s heart raced, remembering sitting on his lap fifteen hours previously, remembering leaning in, remembering the way Gansey’s eyes traced the outside of his bralette and the glitter on his cheekbones.

Gansey swallowed.

They were so close.

Gansey looked at his lap. “Nothing.”

Henry deflated.

When Blue opened the door, dressed in far less than she normally was — just a vintage cream slip skirt she normally wore under her more sheer dresses and a lavender turtleneck long-sleeve, hair loose and wet around her face — Gansey felt his chest tighten. She was always beautiful, in a sort of wild, untouchable, wrapped-up way, but now she was — there was something different about her, something resolute where there was normally something questioning behind her eyes, something locked up and analytical. Which was never a bad thing; but now, as she walked over to the bed he and Henry were sitting on, he felt his heart race even more than it had been.

She sat on the bed in between them. “I’m exhausted,” she said, but her eyes were bright. “Can we take a nap?”

In that? Gansey wanted to say. Something was — something was —

“Alright” Henry said, standing up, “I can go sleep —” Blue reached up to pull him back down.

“Dumbass,” she said. “You’ve always taken naps with us.” He sat back down.

Blue laid back on the bed, smack-dab in the middle, and Gansey watched her wrist with his heart in his throat as her hand went to arrange her hair out behind her. The room was dark — because the world was dark, because it was evening and raining — but he stood up to close the blinds on the window anyways.

When he turned around, Henry had laid down facing her, and she had wrapped herself around his middle, and there was just the perfect amount of room for him on the other side of Blue.

Oh, thought Gansey, heart full to bursting in a way he hadn't allowed before. Why had he not allowed this?

Oh, oh, oh.

And when he went over and slotted himself behind her, and she turned around and looked at him with a question in her eyes, he closed his eyes briefly and nodded.

And when Blue answered his nod by turning back around and placing a hand under Henry’s chin and drawing him in for a kiss, Gansey’s body remembered the first time she had kissed him, and the second, and the third, and all the other times after, and it was as though she was kissing him as well.

And Gansey’s heart soared, and soared, and soared, like a car down a highway into the darkness.

Chapter Text

i’m not that kind of fool
who needs to read the room
somebody tell me
if i’ve fallen from your lips
straight to your fingertips
(somebody tell me)

Henry woke up with a headache.

No, that wasn’t quite right; Henry woke up with a heartache.

No, that wasn’t it either; heartache implied heartbreak, a heart hurting because of lost love, and that wasn’t what was happening to Henry.

Henry’s heart was simply too full to carry at the moment. Full of the memory of Blue’s face the second before it bridged the gap and kissed him the night before, eyes filled up with possibility. Full of Gansey’s worried thumb as it brushed against his cheek, smoothed his hair away from Henry’s neck, pressed itself against the place where his thigh connected to his body. Full of Blue’s small smile as Henry kissed his way down her neck and Gansey kissed his way up her wrists. Full of Gansey’s breathed-out noises as Blue and Henry rocked against either side of him. Full of the two of them pulling him close to them after it was all over, and the way that Blue laughed in her sleep and Gansey kept waking himself up just to touch each of them and promptly fall back asleep.

Full of the them of it all.

Full of the way that people were simply beautiful until you fell in love with them, and then they became something else far past beauty — something closer to art, something distracting that pulled on your heart and stomach. Full of the way that he was unable to look away from Gansey’s nervous smile when he woke up or Blue’s cheekbones and chin and freckled stomach as she stretched out in the morning. Full of Gansey’s decadent beauty and Blue’s electric beauty. Full of their magic, sharp and sweet at once.

Full.

The silence in the air in the morning was far less oppressive than it had been the morning before. Blue put on one of her playlists, something soft and happy, while they got ready for the day; once they were fully awake and done with morning kisses that turned into more and assessing the damage Henry had done to Gansey’s neck the night before and taking showers and re-packing, it was nearly noon.

After they all decided on a burger place for lunch that boasted an award-winning veggie burger and waffle fry combo, Gansey put on a green long-sleeve that Henry had never seen him in before, and he tried not to stare at how it brought out the green in Gansey’s eyes. Blue wore a pair of spotted black sheer tights, a pair of light blue bike shorts, a torn denim skirt, and a spotted black camisole over the same purple turtleneck from the evening before — the same one Henry had tugged on and slid his hands under as they kissed, the same on he had pulled over her shoulders, the same one he had watched her laugh under as it got stuck on her head.

The three of them got ready in relative silence, and once Henry was finally done fussing over his hair and outfit (a soft sweater and his favorite high-waisted jeans under a long black peacoat), they all piled into the Pig and set off to get food. Apparently, they found out once they arrived at the restaurant, it was an old-fashioned drive-in burger place named Boomer’s.

Henry, who was driving for once, parked the car in one of the slots and waited for their order to be taken.

“Well,” he said, as the server left after taking their order, “what activities sound satisfactory to you two this morning?”

“Is it still morning, really?” Gansey asked, stretching his head out the backseat window that wasn’t cluttered with stuff to squint at the menu. “I suppose it feels like it, what with the sleeping in — which was lovely, and much-needed, however —”

“We need to talk,” Blue interrupted softly, and whatever Henry had been full of before sunk instantly into Henry’s stomach.

Henry swallowed. “About?”

“You know. About — about last night, and — and — what happened last night. With the —” she pantomimed hooking three of her fingers together and then drew a circle in the air around them. “That.”

Gansey looked nervously at Henry. “I mean — it was certainly an experience, but I don’t think that — I mean to say that I — I just feel as though —” he said, tripping over his words and gesturing wildly, “—I would not want it to be — like that.” Gansey folded his hands in his lap as if what he’d said had clarified anything.

Henry was about to ask like what when the server appeared with their meals and something to scan their cards with. After a kerfuffle involving Gansey somehow cutting his hand with his card in an effort to get it out first, Henry ended up using some of the handsome amount of cash his mother had given him before they left. It was supposed to be “for emergencies,” but Henry had lost his credit card in a restaurant in Utah after their server, a pretty girl in four-inch platforms that he envied immediately, had spilled lemonade on it. He’d left it on the bench to un-stickify and then forgotten it entirely, not remembering until two states later. Now, he was relying on the cash, Gansey’s hospitality, and Blue’s occasional spite-pay.

The server deposited their food and left, leaving the three of them to their tense conversation once more. Henry stuck a waffle fry in his mouth before he could remember what he was going to ask Gansey.

Blue, who was still examining her veggie burger for the proper sauce-to-produce ratio, asked for him. “Like what, Gansey?”

He frowned. “Like — this. Like not properly talking about things. I am worried that – despite my enjoyment — I don’t want to treat Henry like — like — like just something to experiment with.”

Henry felt Gansey’s comment sting him, could practically feel the bee buzzing against his skin. “I have been an experiment enough times in my life to know that that’s not in any of our best interests,” he said, heart tugging down, down.

“So it’s decided, then?” Blue said from the passenger seat, and when Henry looked at her, it looked as though she was also frowning. He looked at Gansey, who simply looked confused.

“Decided?” said Gansey.

“We don’t do — this — to Henry.”

No, he wanted to say. No, do it to me. Whatever it is. If it’s by you two, I want it done to me.

Gansey nodded his head, jerkily at first, then slow and methodical. “I suppose so. If everyone is in agreement?” he said, looking at Henry.

Henry felt some sort of whiplash between the mood of the morning, some sort of dissonance between the softness of Gansey’s palm against his stomach and Blue’s lips underneath his cheek with the hardness of their movements now. How had they gotten to this place?

Henry swallowed. “Just friends,” he said to the two of them, forcing a smile.

More importantly, how had he believed that what they had this morning could last?

The three of them ate their food in near silence, broken only by yet another song on the radio crooning about the West Coast. Henry looked around for something else to focus on, and his eyes landed on two girls kissing through laughter in a bright blue car in front of them while their friend in the backseat threw french fries at them. Another couple was parked next to them, the boy with long hair and a California bumper sticker and the girl with a Star of David necklace. A girl on the station announced in a bright voice the title of the song along with an announcement about an event at the start of the local college in a few weeks.

Henry’s heart sunk and sunk and sunk at each new thing, and he slowly but surely unwound from the stomach out until he was nothing but rock in the driver’s seat with his eyes closed.

He opened his eyes, switched on Alanis Morisette’s “Ironic,” and waited for his best friends to finish so that they could finally move on.

Gansey itched.

Something had gone wrong, again, for the thousandth time, and once more it was his fault. One minute, he was fully prepared to go all-in, to figure out whatever it was he was feeling towards Henry, to discuss it with Blue, to figure out what she was feeling, because she was clearly feeling something, and then the next second, he found himself agreeing with Blue that they would not jump into whatever they were doing with Henry.

How had this all happened?

He found himself replaying everything in his mind as they drove further south, back towards Seattle and then, eventually, their campsite in Northern California. What had he meant by “doing things properly,” and what was that supposed to look like? What should he have responded with to Blue when she asked him if he’d decided? Was Henry just an experiment?

After the hundredth time going over the conversation again, he pulled out his phone to find something to do. He watched himself open up his texts and click on his conversation with Adam.

He set the phone down on the suitcase next to him. Not a minute later, it buzzed back at him.

now what have you done?

there is no world in which you can shock me anymore, richard campbell gansey iii.

...

omg

!!!!!!!

sorry!!! not very shocked, but still processing.

>why aren’t y’all pursuing a romantic relationship, or whatever?

do you want a romantic relationship?

Gansey didn’t think before immediately responding Yes.

He stared at the ceiling of the car for a second, chewing his bottom lip.

awwwww gay crisis gansey iii. always new this day would come. have y’all fucked yet

sorry, that was lynch.

guess that answers why we aren’t shocked

gansey, if you were as straight as you thought you were, you wouldn’t have made out with my boyfriend three separate times when you were sixteen.

whoops, gotta go!

just tell him that y’all like him. god, you’re exhausting.

ok, bye fpr rwal. parrish is wtresgling mh

or i gss i csn say bi for real? :)

Gansey stared at his phone.

Gay Crisis Gansey III.

He sighed and pocketed his phone in order to properly stare out the window.

It didn’t matter, anyways, what Lynch and Parrish had said. He’d fucked up beyond repair, and now there was no way that he would be able to even say anything to Blue or Henry about any sexuality he may or may not have because it wouldn’t lead to anything. It was inconsequential.

Except there were three things in his mind, now, that there hadn’t been two minutes before, that made everything feel sort of less inconsequential.

He reached for his journal to write these things down. There was a section of his journal reserved for thoughts and feelings that he needed to untangle. Blue had drawn a rope tying itself in and out of knots all around the borders for him, and so the pages felt slightly more comfortable and less daunting than empty ones would.

On the page, he wrote:

One. Parrish and Lynch both have noticed something within me that I seem to have been oblivious to. Is it more true that I am bisexual if others have also seen it?

He circled this thought and drew a line from this section to the opposite side of the page, where he wrote:

Two. Zoe at the party, about Blue possibly having attraction to girls (note to self: follow up on this): “Gansey’d understand, or else he’d be an asshole.” Allowed to be open about liking boys despite being in a relationship with a girl? Different if specific boy?

He circled this, and then drew another line back to a spot on the first page so that the lines formed a sort of zigzag. In that section, he wrote:

Three. I want a romantic relationship with Henry. Not an experiment then?

He circled this, and then before he could think, wrote at the bottom of the page in small letters:

i am bisexual.

He felt an odd weight lift off of his shoulders.

And then he looked back up around the car — at the two people around him who were still not talking, not really, especially after all he’d done — after what he’d screwed up — after what he might have gotten exactly right and then immediately drawn back from — and felt the weight shift back onto his shoulders, blocky and shapeless and claustrophobic and, almost, nearly, comforting.

Gansey hated how he was the sort that was immediately uncomfortable the second he felt any sort of comfort, and yet sought out comfort as though he couldn’t breathe without it. If he could be so uncomfortable in comfort, why couldn't he feel comfortable by the unknown, the uncomfortable?

In tiny letters, at the bottom of the page, he wrote:

love love love

and then

why am i so afraid

He looked out the window, thoughts re-tangling themselves as much as they’d been untangled, and closed his eyes.

Then, he took up the pen and wrote down:

if you can’t be unafraid, be afraid and happy

Gansey sighed, and swallowed, and watched as the countryside changed and changed and changed around him.

Henry had known for a while, about Gansey. About how he felt around Gansey.

Or, rather, Henry had known for a while about how he felt around boys. He’d been to rowing practices with Lynch their freshman year and exchanged nervous glances with him, both of them keyed up and terrified of showing something to the other about the way they felt about the other boys on their team. He’d watched almost from an outside perspective as he befriended the Vancouver boys, known for their flamboyant nature and costume-filled adventures. He knew the repercussions of it all, had known since he was little that while this may not be acceptable to many, it was who he was.

So Gansey wasn’t a surprise.

He’d almost expected to have gotten caught, by now — had expected Lynch to say something about those lingering looks at Gansey they both caught one another with, or Parrish to ask him why he always seemed to be around whenever something was happening with Gansey. Had expected Blue to question his true intentions, that first time he’d dragged him into that enclosed space. But no one seemed to notice. Either that, or they’d noticed too long ago for any of his looks or grazed fingertips to be of any note anymore. He’d integrated Gansey, and the subsequent longing after thereof, into his daily routine too long ago for anyone to remember that it was out of the ordinary.

Blue was a surprise, but only in the way that a windfall of money was; he hadn’t expected the fact of her, but once she was in his life, everything slid into place with alarming ease. Maybe it was his tinge of a masochistic streak, but from the moment she first cussed him out, he knew that there was something special about her. And from the moment he saw the tension slowly creep out of her shoulders at his toga party, her eyes squinched shut in laughter and relaxation, he knew that this something special was going to push him in a direction he didn’t know he could go in.

Henry was never one for truly shoving something down. He’d seen plenty of his friends do so, and watched the effect it had on them; this was particularly evident in Lynch’s case, and also somewhat in Blue and Gansey’s.

But Henry didn’t shove. Henry had tried nudged at something, tangled it up as far as it could go, let it bubble up just in case, then let it overflow safely. Henry had tried blinking this away, had tried wiping it out of his mind, had tried extending it to all of his limbs in the possibility that it would stay there. Henry had tried crying it away and writing it into things and hoping it washed off of him in the shower.

Now, he had even tried giving in, pushing it forward, letting it overflow onto the people around him — with their permission, of course.

And now, as he lay in his sleeping bag in between them, he wondered what he should do with it. With what sat in his chest and curled up around it no matter what he tried to do with it. What pushed him closer and closer to Gansey and Blue even when he tried to distance himself just the right amount.

Was there anything he could do?

“Gansey?” he whispered. “Blue?”

“Yeah?”

“Can we talk?”

He could practically hear their hearts speed up from either side of him.

“Yes. Let’s,” said Gansey, as he got up to go turn the lights on.

“No, wait,” said Henry. “I think this is the kind of conversation that is preferable in the dark. Just in case I need to be — vulnerable,” he said.

Blue hummed. Gansey turned so that he was lying on his side.

“I’ve been — trying to figure out how to say everything. I don’t know why we — we keep getting so close and then something happens and we are — adrift, once more, apart from one another and at a loss for how to proceed.”

He watched them both nod.

“I just would like to say that — at the risk of being too forward but at a loss for what else to do — I would like something more between us all. I would like to kiss you both, and call you my partners — unless you prefer something else — and hold your hands, and be allowed to feel — to look at you like I’d like, to — not have to get rid of whatever it is I feel for you. I would like to go at whatever speed you wish. I would like to —” he felt himself overflowing, welling up with some unexplained — or possibly something exactly explained, but unattainable to himself. “I would like to kiss you, mostly. I would also like to stop dancing around whatever it is we are or are not feeling and to hear your thoughts.”

Henry knew he was jumping the gun. Henry knew it was all too fast. Henry knew it was never going to work out as he hoped — Henry knew this was too much — Henry knew this wasn’t giving them enough of a chance to think — Henry knew he was going to scare them — Henry knew this was too bold, too fast, too much to ask of them to know right now — Henry knew —

“Oh, thank God,” breathed out Blue, and it was only then that Henry realized he’d been holding his breath as well, a tentative precautionary measure to outweigh his brashness from thirty seconds before. “I haven’t really discussed this with Gansey, but I — Henry, I really, really like you. I’m sick of dancing around it. I want to — I — I was hoping that Gansey knew, somehow, which was stupid, I just — it all felt like this was going in the wrong direction, and I needed to talk to both of you, and I need to know — Gansey, how do you feel?”

Henry had been so focused on the miracle of what Blue was saying and the soaring feeling in his chest to notice what Gansey’s face was doing. When he looked at it, heart suddenly back up in his throat, Gansey’s eyes were closed and his face unreadable.

“I — I never thought I’d be lucky enough for one of you. But for both of you? I —” he shook his face to clear it, and a smile spread across his face like the remnants of a wave on the sand. “I don’t know how to talk about things like this, always, but — yes. Yes. I would like all of those things, too.” Henry let himself match Gansey’s smile, and saw that Blue was doing the same.

“I don’t know how to talk about this, either. Or how to do this. I’ve barely been in one relationship, let alone — God, I didn’t even know this was possible,” Blue said, tugging her hair away from her face. “But it does sort of —”

“— Feel like we’ve already been doing this,” Gansey finished. “Whatever this is.”

“Yes,” Henry breathed out. He cleared his throat. “Yes. This. It will require — a lot of talking. I don’t always talk as well as I feel, but we must. We can figure this out.” He reached his hands up and brushed the side of the tent with his fingertips. “Yes?”

“Yes,” said Gansey, biting the side of his cheek.

“Yes,” said Blue, and then: “I can’t believe you both have crushes on me. Two Aglionby boys. How embarrassing.”

Both boys laughed. “For you, maybe. I’ve been dreaming of an Aglionby boy having a crush on me for years now,” Henry said, pinching the tent in his fingers and twisting it, just to have something to do with all his leftover nervous energy.

“One in particular?” asked Gansey, equal parts nervous and teasing.

“Yes,” laughed Henry. “Obviously. However — Blue?”

“Yes?”

“At least you don’t have a crush on two separate Aglionby boys. Oh, wait —” She was laughing, shoving him from her side of the tent, and the unexpected touch broke down the last little bit of him that was still — worried, about all this.

Well. He would still be worried. Just not tonight.

After a second of dissipating laughter and building tension, a voice came from in between Henry and Gansey.

“So we’re doing this?” Blue said, quietly. “Whatever this is?”

“Yes,” smiled Gansey, reaching over to him.

“Yes,” whispered Henry into the darkness, turning to face Gansey “Even if we are afraid.”

Gansey folded his arm around Henry, and he felt Blue’s arm press against his back. “As someone once told me: If you can’t be unafraid,” Gansey whispered, lips a bee’s width from Henry’s lips, “be afraid and happy.” And he kissed Henry again, and again, and again.

And Henry, it seemed — at this moment, in this place, with his heart sandwiched against these particular two hearts — was very, very happy.

“Give this to Blue,” whispered Gansey, kissing him deeply.

Henry smiled, then turned over. “Here,” he said, holding Blue’s waist as she touched the back of his neck. “May I give this to you?”

She laughed, then leaned into the kiss he gave to her welcoming lips. “Yes,” she mumbled against his lips. “Now give this back to Gansey,” she said.

“Yes,” said Henry, turning back. “Gansey, I —” He was interrupted by a kiss from Gansey, urgent and sweet.

“Yes,” responded Gansey, in between kisses. “Yes, yes yes.”

And as the night escalated, and the three continued trading kisses like Halloween candy, and pressing into one another, and holding on to one another long after everything ended, they kept whispering that between one another: yes, yes, yes.

Like a prayer. Like a dance. Like an admittance. Like a promise

Like something more.

It was late by the time they finally got on the road, after a morning of groggy kisses and waking up kisses and playful, teasing kisses. After questions asked and answered, secrets admitted and aired and left to sit in the open until someone was brave enough to hold them up and try them on themselves, as well. After laughter and somberness and all that existed in between.

“It’s like this. I’m bisexual,” Gansey had told them, nearly first thing that morning, and Henry had laughed and said, What? Really? and Blue had squeezed his hand and said, so are both of us, Dick, and they’d all smiled at one another so big Blue thought her heart would explode.

“How handy it is,” he’d mused, “to have a word to describe oneself like that.”

“It isn’t perfect,” Henry had said, “but it’s as close as any words can be.”

Blue had felt the same.

“It’s like this,” Henry had said. “I can see the gaps in between you two. Where there’s something that needs filling. Where there’s something missing in translation. And I know how to translate it. And I just feel like —”

“A missing piece,” Gansey had said.

And Blue had felt the same.

“It’s like this,” she said, at another point. “It’s already been like this. For a while.” Because what was a relationship but a friendship folded over and multiplied on itself? Because what was romantic love but platonic love refracted, like a set of infinite mirrors?

What was she but a mirror to reflect it all back?

Vulnerability is just as much a sport as anything, Henry had said once, and after the morning ended, Blue had felt like she’d just run a marathon.

It felt like something had burst, or was slowly fizzing over onto the three of them. Blue found herself saying everything she needed to say, everything she’d been keeping in or keeping from them. She found herself keeping some things to herself, too, learning what didn’t need to be said out loud and simply felt.

After all, she was a little bit psychic.

Since they left late, they got to their next destination late, after much traffic and windy roads that Blue had to hold Gansey’s hand through and much stopping at small beaches so that Henry could take pictures of them, and then Blue would get distracted by the way he looked in the light and remember that she was allowed to kiss him, and then she would

Because she could.

And then they’d all get distracted, and then it would be another ten minutes before they left on the road again, and they’d all be just a little bit breathless from the sheer possibility of it all.

When they finally got to their next little town, they realized that they’d essentially been two steps ahead of a rainstorm the whole time, and by the time they drove into the town, it was pouring. Henry, who was in the backseat once more, looked up a restaurant — vegetarian for Blue and not too pricey — and finally settled on one close to the downtown area.

The three hastily parked the car and then ran into the restaurant, for once too giddy to care about the rain. Once they finished their food, it was evening, just about sunset, and the rain had finally cleared. Gansey suggested going to one of the town beaches. After all, he said, they were in a beach town, and once they were done with that they could go to their hotel room and get cleaned up for the night.

As they drove towards the ocean, Blue motioned excitedly out of the driver’s seat window.

“Look! Rainbow!” she said, pointing, and Gansey politely swatted her arm out of the way.

Henry poked Gansey’s cheek from the backseat. “Ganseyman, I think the sky knows of your recent discoveries.”

“The sky knows he’s gay!” Blue sang out the open window.

“More specifically, the sky knows that you sucked your first —“

Gansey blushed. “Henry!”

“Sorry, sorry. That I turned you gay. Is that better, Dick-boy?”

They all laughed, and Blue stuck her tongue out at Henry and squeezed Gansey’s hand, and Henry brought their hands to his mouth and placed a quick kiss on them, and Blue could feel all their hearts energized and warm and alive, alive, alive as the three of them drove off into uncharted territory.

Blue allowed herself to unravel into it all, like a map flying in the wind.