Work Text:
“This is not going to work,” Blue says, crossing her arms and refusing to look at the ground far below her. The ferris wheel, bright and beautiful and terrifying, feels as if it’s swaying beneath her.
Worse, it is in a complete standstill, with her on the top.
Even worse still, she’s not alone.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Gansey says. He is pushed up against the other side of the ferris wheel compartment, quiet and still and serene in a way that Blue can’t help but watch. “We could have been stuck in a place without this beautiful view.”
Blue glances outside the ferris wheel. Below them, the fair continues on. Children scream as they run after one another; parents look at each other exasperatedly. The fair’s booths are occupied by participants pretending that it’s not all a scam, and by couples attempting to score each other a huge stuffed animal. She knows that somewhere down there, Ronan and Adam are walking around, probably doing something stupid. If she closes her eyes, she can pretend that they’ve actually gotten their shit together, and that their hands are clasped, fingers interlocking.
God, the hope for that was the only thing that got her onto this ferris wheel in the first place. Ronan had looked at her—those dark, serious eyes—and though she despises him in the way perhaps she would hate an older brother, maybe she loves him in that way too.
At the very least, her patience to put up with their pining is wearing ever thin.
And so she had agreed, determined not to show her legs shaking as they climbed higher and higher, the wheel gently swaying back and forth as it raised them across the crowds. From up here, she can see the woods that surround it all, containing a little land of wonder. It’s quieter here, too, the faint echo of janky music only just reaching her ears. If it weren’t for the minimum hundred feet that separates her feet and the solid, dependable ground, she might think this moment were perfect.
“No,” Blue says. “It’s bad.”
She can feel her hands twitching, unused to being this far up. She likes things down on the ground; likes the soft grass brushing up against her ankles, and the crumbling dirt caking its way onto her legs. Here, up above the fair, there is none of that. There is only the quiet creaking of the swaying compartment and the wind against her back and Gansey, quiet and beautiful in the darkness in a way that makes her taste blood.
Gansey shrugs. It’s a rather undignified movement for him; something that creases the white of his shirt and makes his square glasses ride up his nose. Though he rarely wears his glasses out, Ronan had dragged them all here last second, shoving all of them into the BMW and cranking the music loud enough to drown out their questions.
They had still followed. Maybe they would always follow each other.
“They’ll repair it soon, Jane,” Gansey says. He tilts his head back, and Blue watches the movement of his neck as he swallows. “A mild inconvenience, at most.”
Blue can feel the wind pushing them back and forth, and nausea bubbles up in her stomach. A mild inconvenience, she thinks, rolling her eyes. Who talks like that?
They are quiet for a few minutes more. The silence here is all-consuming—Blue can hear the birds chirp and the leaves sway, the occasional laughter from down-below muffled as if underwater. Here, alone with Gansey, Blue feels oddly like the world is trying to suffocate her.
“There’s people, below,” Gansey says.
Blue blinks. “What?”
Gansey points.
“I can see them, dumbass,” Blue says, heat rising to her cheeks. “I just didn’t know why you pointed them out.”
Gansey shrugs, that stupid, little movement, and then he tilts his head to the side, watching her with a small smile forming on his lips. He brushes his hand over a stray strand of Blue’s hair, tucking it behind her ear. “You blush, when you’re mad,” he says, and it is infuriating and invigorating at the same time. He drops his hands to his lap and looks away from her. “You blush all the time when you’re around me.”
As if to prove a point, Blue can feel the heat surrounding her, working its way across her cheeks and in rings around her neck.
It’s times like these where she wants to be able to yearn and hope and take in the same way all the other girls her age can. She is sitting next to Gansey, and he is only inches from her, and she can feel insatiable want bubble up in her like a curse.
“You’re good at making me angry,” Blue whispers, and it is both a truth and a deflection all at once. He is good at making her angry—with his particularly chosen vocabulary and stupid Aglionby sweater and obliviousness—but he is also good at making her furious. Furious in the way that she can’t be around him; furious in a way that just reminds her of why she can’t be close, why she can’t touch or have or love in the way she so desperately wants to.
Gansey just laughs. Maybe he understands her in that way. He reaches out to cup her cheek with his smooth palm, the infuriating reminder that he has never worked a day in his life. He smiles, joy apparent on his face, and that reminder is somehow worse than the first one; that he is wonderful and lovely and so happy, here with her.
It’s for the better, she reminds herself, grabbing his hand and lowering it. She cannot let herself have this; cannot let either of them live in this moment. When she looks at his face, eyes lowered and smile dropped, she can taste blood on her tongue.
She links their pinkies.
“You’ll be free of me soon,” Gansey says, watching as the repairmen fiddle with the controls.
Blue shrugs. “It’s not that bad.” She means you’re not that bad and they both know it. “I just—heights aren’t my thing.”
Gansey blinks. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Between their linked pinkies, Blue swears that she can hear his heartbeat, strong and steady.
“The view is nice, Jane,” Gansey says, and he means it’s nice here, with you.
“It is,” Blue says, an agreement to both sentences.
She is sitting next to a boy who will die by her hand and she can prematurely taste the blood and fuck, why did he have to be so beautiful? Under the starlight, she imagines him a halo, illuminating his brown eyes and reflecting off his glasses. She is sitting next to the boy who she will kiss and she will kill and god, she wishes this was simple.
Blue wonders, distantly, if Ronan knows. If he looks at Gansey and sees the same doom that her and Adam have already felt. If he goes to his god and prays for mercy for the both of them.
She leans her head on his shoulder. He wraps a hand around her waist and pulls her closer.
“The moon is beautiful tonight,” Gansey says, and it sounds like he’s admitting something too powerful to be said aloud. Blue can feel his warm skin under her own, and she thinks that maybe she is the one dying.
“So are you,” Blue says, and it is sappy and it is horrible and it is not what she should have said but she means it. She means it, and she is tired of prioritizing what is better over what she wants, and she is tired of growing up with a boy’s blood in her mouth.
Gansey doesn’t say anything to that. Instead, they sit, legs swinging over the fair, and Blue feels like she can breathe, if only a little.