Work Text:
“Trust me,” said Henry, crawling back into the fort with another armful of pillows. “I’m an expert on snow days. I’m Canadian.”
Blue took the pillows and tucked them between the small of her back and the reclining panel of the buttery leather armchair behind her. She and Gansey were nestled beneath a drift of shearling blanket, clutching steaming mugs of hot chocolate, several packages of assorted Girl Scout cookies split open between them. While Gansey had assisted Henry in his quest to construct the perfect blanket fort, Blue had taken charge of hot-chocolate-making, stirring a spoonful of Nutella into each mug, plus an extra glob in Gansey’s. She’d decorated each with an avalanche of whipped cream and marshmallows and a shower of the rainbow sprinkles she’d found in Henry’s cabinets, and she was very proud of how festively they’d turned out.
It had been snowing for hours, in a fierce and vengeful way Henrietta never seemed to have the audacity to attempt, but Blue loved it violently. It softened the shriek and clamor of the city as if to usher her in gently, and she appreciated it. Henry was matter-of-fact about the blizzard, as if it were a mild sort of annoyance, but Blue loved the way it delighted Gansey. She’d like to take him out in it later, she thought, maybe have a snowball fight with him and Henry, but for now she was content to bask in the warmth of Henry’s apartment.
“I didn’t think Vancouver got much snow,” said Gansey, pressing against Blue as he leaned to take a few Tagalongs from the package in front of her. “Isn’t it more of a western maritime climate?”
Henry shrugged, arranging his own pillows and comforter into a nest against the bottom of the buttery leather couch so that he was shoulder to shoulder with Gansey. He had dragged a tabletop lamp from its post on the bookshelf so that it sat in the mouth of the fort, washing them all in soft gold light. “Even that is positively polar compared to Virginia.”
Gansey dunked two cookies into his hot chocolate at once, scooping a bit of whipped cream and marshmallow onto them. He tucked both into his mouth, and beneath the thick blanket, Blue snuck a hand onto his stomach, worming it beneath his undershirt and sweater to his soft, warm skin.
He made a small sound as she made contact, his spine going a little straighter as his mouth softened into a smile. “How does it feel, Jane?”
His belly was beginning to feel firm beneath its softness, the promised result of the pizza they had ordered in for lunch and the box of Samoas he had already finished. Blue splayed her hand as far as it would go, and tipped a satisfied smile up at him. “I think you’re doing very well,” she said. “But you should keep eating cookies. It’s cold outside, you need some padding to stay so soft and warm.”
Henry nodded in agreement, stacking a tower of Thin Mints in one hand like checkers kinged thee times over. “That’s our boy,” he said, catching Blue’s eye. “A nice, thick chunky knit.”
Gansey laughed, the joke an homage to the knitwear that shared his name, and Blue rubbed the hem of his sweater between her fingertips. She had knit this one herself, bulky and down-soft, in warm, creamy grays and beiges that brought out the rosiness of his skin, the gold in his hazel eyes.
“Thick and chunky is right,” she said gently, taking a Thin Mint from the stack in Henry’s hand, dipping it in Gansey’s hot chocolate, and bringing it to his lips.
She and Henry took turns feeding him cookies, one and two at a time, until the hot chocolate dregs had gone cold and they’d worked through the Thin Mints and Tagalongs. Gansey had listed closer and closer to Blue until he’d landed with his head in her lap, and she pet his hair with one hand as she rubbed circles on his swollen belly with the other, his breathing heavy and steady against her. She thumbed a bit of marshmallow from the corner of his mouth and sucked it off her fingertip, and he grinned up at her and Henry, overindulged and lazy.
“Are there any more of the peanut butter ones?” he asked, and Blue and Henry exchanged a look that was half-excited, half-incredulous before the lamp illuminating them went out, along with the rest of Henry’s apartment. The lazy synth music he’d been playing from the stereo system had swallowed its tongue, and for a moment they sat blinking in the silence together.
“Oh,” said Henry finally, as if it were the first time he’d found himself sitting in the dark. “I guess this is a blizzard. No worries, cavaliers; this is why we keep batteries.”
He crawled from the blackness of the fort into the relatively less-black of the apartment, where an anemic gray light struggled in from the snowed-up windows. Blue spider-crawled her hands over Gansey’s skin, and when that made him shiver and yelp in her lap, she brushed his skin with the soft shearling blanket, which made him arch against her thighs like a cat and tuck himself closer to her. He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed each of her fingertips, then her palm, and Blue layered her own kisses on top of his before pressing her fingertips to his mouth.
Henry returned a few moments later bearing not a flashlight, as Blue had expected, but a ridiculous length of battery-operated fairy lights and tiny party lanterns, which she found endlessly more delightful in their lack of sensibility. She watched the shape of him fumble in the dark until he found the on switch, and when the red and blue lights of the lanterns broke over him, he was grinning at her.
He wove the white fairy lights over her shoulders like a shawl of Ronan’s bugless lightning bugs, and Gansey made an approving noise as Henry chose a string of pink ones to drape over himself like one of the thin, webby scarves Blue had knit millions of when she was first learning how.
“You’re luminous,” said Gansey, touching her chin. He struggled up on one elbow to extend a hand to Henry, and Blue gave his stomach a reassuring rub when he winced at the movement. He and Henry grasped hands for a moment, and then Gansey sank back down, his head landing in the dip where her thighs met. “Luminous and lovely,” he proclaimed, eyes closed, dreamy. “Henry, there’s enough blanket here for you too, if you like.”
Henry accepted, tugging it up to his hips, the lights around his neck casting a cheery rose glow onto the nubby white shearling. “Who needs central heating?” he asked. “We’re certainly more glamorous than any space heater could ever hope to be.”
Blue laughed and shifted, mindful of Gansey in her lap, so that she could wiggle her toes against Henry’s legs. “I think it would be nice to stay the night in here. Like camping, but comfier.”
“And with less wilderness,” said Henry, “which should count as a plus. Ganseyboy, you look very sleepy. Did you still want the Do-Si-Dos?”
“I do-si-do,” said Gansey drowsily, and covered his face with both hands when Blue groaned and jiggled his belly in exasperation. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, that was horrible.”
“You absolute dad,” agreed Henry, sliding down to the floor. He crawled alongside Gansey and adjusted the blanket to cover them both, unwinding his fairy lights from his shoulders and heaping them on the floor beside him like a minimalist electric campfire. “Settle in, geese. It’ll get cold if the power stays off.”
Blue, sifting through the cookie boxes until she could discern the words peanut butter through the multicolored half-light, tore open the box in a quiet triumph. “Oh,” she said, laying out the package of cookies beside her and selecting an inaugural one, “I think we’ll keep warm.”