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I am going to die. I want to kiss Blue. I will die if I kiss her.
These are the thoughts rolling through Gansey’s mind. His Camaro roars down the street, his own kind of background noise. But Gansey still can’t stop thinking about these three specific thoughts as he makes his way to 300 Fox Way to pick up Blue. He tries any other avenue of thinking but they’re all connected roads that lead back to this. Perhaps, if he breaks each part down, he can pocket it away later.
SECTION I: I am going to die.
This is indisputable.
April 24, St. Mark’s Eve. The day he realized that he was going to die, not that it really hit in until later. Logically, he knew what it meant for Blue to hear him speak his own name on the ley lines. Gansey has been living on borrowed time since he was ten years old—Noah’s life for his, a life that wasn’t supposed to be taken in exchange for a life that was. It’s relieving, actually, to know that his part in this whole magical world means something.
Richard Gansey III will die and he can’t do anything about it. Simple as that.
SECTION II: I want to kiss Blue.
This, he thinks, is not simple at all. One can say, in theory and in practice, that this certainly is the simplest part. But nothing about Blue Sargent can ever really be called that.
It’s almost humiliating how much he thinks about her, wants her, craves her. Gansey hasn’t really been one for relationships—his sole quest in life after dying has been finding Glendower. Aglionby Academy, an all-boys school, isn’t exactly equipped to foster romantic liaisons, especially with girls. But now he is fumbling in his attraction.
Not to mention the entire thing with Blue and Adam.
Jesus, help him.
Even while Blue and Adam were dating (or what can be considered dating, Gansey isn’t sure either way), he couldn’t help but sneak glances at her. He would find himself looking at the innocent expanse of skin at the nape of her neck, wondering how it would feel like to press his lips there, trace his breath over her throat. He would think about how her incredible, insistent pulse beneath his touch grounds him more than gravity has. He would think about how small she is, wonder how she’ll fit under his arms, his chin on her head. He wonders what she smells like—what she tastes like.
He wonders, now in the privacy of the car, if her lips are as soft as he imagines.
So, yes, Gansey lives with this unbearable need to kiss Blue. But since he might die if he does, he will find the weak strength to bear it alone.
SECTION III: I will die if I kiss her.
A neat segue into his third point. Arguably, the most important one.
Blue is fated to kill her true love with a kiss.
If you kiss your true love, he’ll die.
Semantics aside—what if Gansey is the one doing the action and she merely receives it? Does the kiss happen on the lips, or anywhere else? Will he die immediately or is there a delayed reaction?—there lies the obvious and probably his most selfish, egotistical thought.
Gansey is Blue’s true love.
He knows it as a fact, similar in the way to how he knew he will die sometime this year.
It’s frightening; he knows he will die and he still wants to kiss her anyway.
When Blue walks out her door, Gansey knows she’s in a bad mood so he offers the Pig. She takes it wordlessly, sliding into the driver’s seat with ease, and pulls out of the driveway in an instant. He wants to ask what’s wrong, comfort her in a more tangible way, but he forgot what the image of Blue behind his car does to him.
His mouth dries. Every part of this feels private, indecent. Gansey’s eyes trace over her hands, one on the steering wheel, the other a fist on the gearshift. He doesn’t know how to deal with this, this gnawing hunger growing at the base of his spine. He just looks at her and aches.
Litchfield House is quintessentially Aglionby, as Blue would put it, which is to say that it’s just extremely rich. They get their parking situation sorted out and it’s oddly quiet when they walk in. Henry Cheng is sporting a toga and the Vancouver crowd isn’t in yet.
They make light conversation until the other boys flood in.
Then, the party really starts.
Koh shows them how to make a toga out of a bedsheet, laughing freely as he does. Gansey doesn’t plan to dress in one—actually, he specifically remembers telling Blue he wouldn’t—but this crowd does something to him. Lowers his inhibitions. Koh shoves them into a cluttered room with two bedsheets and Gansey politely turns around.
This is probably deliberate on Koh’s part. There are several other seemingly empty rooms and they are most definitely larger than whatever he put them in. This room is so cramped with miscellaneous items, the space between them scarcely reaches a foot.
“You can go first,” he says to the wall. He wouldn’t even take a peek, every inch of his manners and decorum forbid him to, but he wants to. Just a little bit. God, he wouldn’t even know how to handle seeing more of her.
His ears pound with his own pulse but despite the loudness of his own body, he can hear Blue unzipping, unbuttoning, undressing just inches behind him. Her elbows catch on his back once and she murmurs a quick sorry but Gansey marks where she’s grazed him.
Her elbow, his back. Her arm, his arm. Her fingers, his shoulder.
Blue’s fingers tap on his shoulder. Fuck. “Gansey? You can change now. I’m done.”
“Okay.” His voice is hoarse. Gansey can’t turn around. Not unless he wants to embarrass himself, so he just shucks off his clothes without rhyme or reason. He doesn’t know if Blue turned around, doesn’t know if he wants her to watch. He quickly puts on the toga, just as Koh instructed.
When he finally looks at her, she’s bright-eyed. He’s never seen so much of her before and it almost knocks him to his knees. Her shoulders, her jutting collarbone, her legs, her throat, her laugh her laugh her laugh. He can’t take his gaze off of her and he doesn’t want to. The toga is revealing enough that he now has intimate knowledge that she is not wearing a bra. Has she not been wearing a bra this entire time? Has she taken it off?
Blue is—fuck. Gansey swallows thickly. His heart is a wild, flighty thing.
“Jesus, Jane.”
“What?”
“Jesus,” is all he can say.
Blue blinks furiously at the ground and tells him, “C’mon, Gansey.”
He may be a king, but he is her follower. Wherever she goes, he is a step behind her.
They fall back into the party like they never left, making jokes and pressing their fingers together like they aren’t a secret to be kept. And here, they aren’t. Here, Blue and Gansey are just a girl and a boy. Here, they can pretend, pretend, pretend.
And so the night goes on.
It’s this: sitting on barstools as Henry grabs them some drinks, hooking his ankle with hers. He hears her soft laugh—God, he would do anything for that laugh. Gansey is greedy for it, that unbelievable burst of joy he created.
Or it’s this: talks of their futures hanging heavy over their heads while they laze on the large, leather sofas. It’s Blue replying softly about how she would like to travel. For a moment, he forgets himself. Venezuela, Wales, Thailand, Gansey wants to say, name a country and I will take you there.
It hits him then, with her head resting on his shoulder, possibilities spilling from her lips: Gansey wants, disastrously, to live.
He wants to take her everywhere, wants to explore the world again through her eyes, by her side. He wants more time but time has never been on his side.
The night continues and this toga party might be one of the highlights of Gansey’s entire life. Blue goes downstairs to the kitchen to grab a snack or water or something, he can’t recall. But he’s feeling a little thirsty so he goes down to join her as well.
Gansey catches her in the middle of the staircase, going to move to let her pass but changing his mind midway. He catches her arm, then the rest of her. Blue slides a hand from his shoulder down to his chest, her palm spread flat against his breastbone. Her fingers a curious thing, pressing into his skin.
“I thought you’d be hairier,” she teases.
Gansey smiles. “Sorry to disappoint. The legs have a bit more going on.”
“Mine too.”
He snorts and they let each other go slowly, but Gansey doesn’t want to relinquish his grip yet.
“Come with me,” he says.
“I was just in the kitchen.” She’s not protesting, though, when he tugs her down the steps.
Nobody’s in here which Gansey is grateful for. There is something intimate about being in a kitchen with Blue. He can’t pinpoint it with words, but everything feels like home with her.
Funny, he thinks. Gansey has two homes here: Henrietta and Blue.
He downs a glass of water and leans against the counter. Wildly, boldly, she wraps her arms around his neck, smiling. Blue is a dangerous creature, temptation incarnate. Without even thinking, his hands settle on her hips. Their bellies are pressed together and they are warm, warm, warm down to their bones.
Her fingers play with the hair at the nape of his neck and he draws patterns over the thin cotton of the bedsheet.
“You deserve to be kissed, Jane,” Gansey says, voice low. “Sometimes . . .”
Blue breathes out, lips parting, “Sometimes what?”
The very fact of her breathing astounds him for some reason. There are working lungs, a network of veins, a beating, beautiful heart hidden inside her body. She is wonderfully, colossally alive. “Sometimes, I wouldn’t mind.”
Her eyes question him.
“Dying,” he finishes simply. Blue stills, but he brings her palm up to rest against his heart, thudding like a wild animal in his rib cage. “Just for one kiss.”
“I’d miss you too much,” she admits. “I want—” She pauses, taking him in. “I want to kiss you too. I think about what you’d taste like.”
The words rush out of her and she flushes deeply, but her arms just tighten around him.
What is a kiss without a kiss?
Suddenly, he gets an idea.
“Here,” Gansey whispers, throwing her a teasing smile. He leans back and takes a mint leaf out of the folds of the toga. There are few things he cannot live without in this world, easy access to mint leaves is one of them. He holds it like a cigarette between his index finger and his middle finger. “Don’t—” kiss me.
But she already knows.
His thumb traces her bottom lip. Just as soft as he imagined. “Open.”
Blue’s eyes darken. She obliges him.
Gansey presses the mint leaf on her tongue. He’s dizzy with want, but he watches as eyes flutter shut and he presses both hands on her hips again to anchor himself before he does something extremely stupid and foolish. The feel of her lips still tingling on his skin. Gansey puts another mint leaf in his own mouth, spinning with the knowledge that she tastes like this. Like him.
Mint and memories.
Gansey says, mouth fresh, “I like you an awful lot, Blue Sargent.”
Blue smiles, a crooked, wry, ridiculous, flustered thing. Happiness lives in the crinkles of her eyes, the laugh lines on her cheeks. It’s contagious; he finds himself grinning back at her. She puts her finger on his cheek where he knows his own smile is dimpling.
And in the dim kitchen of a house he doesn’t own, Gansey finds something like peace.