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‘Oh shut up.’
Gansey and Blue raced to the door.
Blue picked at the various curiosities on Gansey's desk, examining what looked like a sextant with arcane symbols.
‘Do you think Rowan will manage?’
Gansey crouched to fix a roof on her miniature Henrietta.
‘You’ve seen with your own eyes what that girl is capable of. If anyone can do it, it's her.’
‘You know, Mallory seems to think the tapestry's connected to all of this somehow,' she continued.
‘Where’s he by the way?’
‘Mallory? Probably picking up some Xanax for that dog.'
'Don't joke too much. I'm starting to suspect it of being some kind of ancient spirit.'
'Yeah, it's actually Glendower. He's been under our nose this whole time'
Now they laid parallel, her at the head of the bed and Gansey at its foot. She felt a hand rubbing mindless circles on her calf, a featherlight touch she could almost miss - plausible deniability, business as usual.
She pretended to ignore the small rush of warmth at that nothing touch. It was always this way with them: a collection of illicit nothings that seemed to mean something somehow, semi-formulated un-incriminating sentences, stolen glances, shared yogurt. Emboldened by that touch, she snaked a hand through the gap between Gansey's undone dress shirt and her shorts and let herself caress the soft warm skin there. Gansey suddenly started squirming.
‘Jane, stop, stop!’
‘What, did I?’ she mumbled, taken aback by her reaction.
‘No, don’t tell me our king is afraid of some tickles?’
She rose to her knees, furiously tickling the taller girl’s sides. Under her, Gansey was letting out small screams of protest between laughs, struggling against her hold. Blue had also started laughing at some point.
‘Oh fair maiden, have mercy on your knight!’
‘Thou hast not shown thy valor,’ she giggled.
‘Jane… stop, stop’, Gansey wheezed.
‘Make me’.
A flash of mirth passed through the other’s hazel eyes, her mouth curled and she pounced on Blue.
‘Foul play!’
They rolled around wrestling in raucous childlike joy, hands roaming, lingering for a second too long. Gansey, who had managed to overpower her, looked down at her, all dimpled smile and flushed cheeks. Time seemed to stand still as they locked eyes.
Blue had always felt more comfortable with this wilder Gansey, the adventurer, with her metal-wired glasses sitting crookedly on her tousled hair and undone collar, far from the prim and proper politician’s daughter, prep school brochure come to life.
She had spent so long pretending to loathe that version of her, long after she found out about the Camaro and Monmouth and the journals and the quest. But now, though she hated to admit it, even the snobbish perfectly ironed pleated skirt and polished Mary Janes had become somehow charming to her.
It had made sense for her to go for Ada, with her calloused hands and her welcoming smile and charming Henrietta accent. It had been safe, allowed, logical. Her feelings for Gansey were a different creature entirely, an impossibly cruel beast that reveled in chaos.
She had always longed for something more than little old Henrietta, uneventful days at school and mildly offensive clients at Nino’s. For a psychist’s daughter living in a house full of mystery and mystic bric-a-brac, she felt strangely normal.
Now, her days were filled with dead kings and missing mothers, sentient forests and surrealist objects, mint leaves and soon-to-be dead girls. As for her nights, they were guilty flashes of sweeping brown hair, unfairly long legs, sweaty staccato breaths and infinite hazel she’d rather forget. She almost wanted her old life back.
Maybe she would have met some nice girl next door at school or a cute server at Nino’s. She would have had mundane coffee dates, made bracelets, gone to prom even – scratch that, she wouldn’t be caught dead at prom, yuck. Now fate seemed to be careening at her, without any hint of slowing down.
‘God, Jane…’, whispered Gansey thumbing at her right cheekbone, her eyes pooling with a sickening fondness. Blue averted her gaze, throat sore from the excess sweetness. There were now undoubtably past plausible deniability.
This wasn’t allowed, but in the soft quiet of this late august afternoon, they could forget who they were, what they had done, and hadn’t. For a moment, there was no Ada, no Rowan, no vine wrapping around her chest and they could be free.
Blue fiddled with Gansey's collar, tentatively exploring the long expanse of her freckled neck, feeling her quickening pulse under her fingers. Her hands moved down slowly, gliding across the cruel slope of her collarbone. She felt Gansey's chest rise in an uneven breath and then the raven girl grabbed her jaw and leaned in, closing the distance between them, mouth dangerously close to hers. Her breath hitched.
I should say it, tell her once and for all.
‘Charlie, we…’, she warned, catching her wrist.
Say it.
Gansey brushed back a stray hair, tucking it behind her ear.
‘I know.’
‘Jane, please...please’, she said hoarsely.
Disarmed by her pleading tone, Blue let go, silencing the sirens blaring at the back of her head. Just this time.
Gansey traced the edge of her lips with her fingers and Blue closed her eyes for a moment, imagining a different lifetime where she could have more, where she could feel those plush lips against hers, press her body flush to hers, feel her tongue on her.
She tried not to think about tongues and Gansey too often - bad thoughts, horrible idea, brain. Blue took the brunette’s slender fingers in her hand, rubbing her delicate knuckles across her own cheek.
Gansey rested her head at the crook of her neck.
‘Do you ever wish we’d never met?’
Images of a rain-pattered raven sweater and moss-covered damp gloomy church grounds flooded her mind. She opened her mouth to say ‘Yes. I forsake that horrid day I laid my eyes upon you.’ But, at the end, only the truth came out.
‘No, not really. Do you?’
‘Sometimes,’ she whispered.
‘Sometimes, I just…I wish you’d never met me, Jane’. Her voice broke at the end, tightening the vines.
She pressed her mouth to her clothed shoulder pattering it with ghost kisses, apologetic. Blue circled her arms around her and pet the taller girl’s ruffled fringe whistfully. She closed her eyes, selfishly basking in their closeness. There was something terribly soft in that shared helplessness.
Outside, an engine revved and heavy techno blared. The cavalry had arrived. End of the entr'acte, back to reality Sargent.