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Gansey was born on February 10th. Blue found this out when the residents of 300 Fox Way got into a loud, passionate argument about his sign; apparently, dying twice and being reborn twice and containing some immeasurable amount of Cabeswater in one’s soul weakened the psychics’ usual intuition when it came to guessing one’s zodiac sign. The fact that Adam was a Cancer surprised no one, and the fact that Ronan was a Scorpio surprised very few, but when Gansey finally settled the debate by informing them all of his date of birth, his status as an Aquarius caused quite the debate.

However, Blue couldn’t care less about Gansey’s sign. She was more interested in planning the perfect party.

It quickly became clear that she wasn’t going to be planning Gansey a birthday bash alone, though. Henry, self-dubbed ‘Party Man with a Party Plan’ had done his own digging to uncover Gansey’s date of birth and also planned on making his eighteenth birthday his most memorable birthday yet. 

“You think you’re the only one who wants to commemorate the Gans Man’s unlikely survival to adulthood?” Henry had asked, already setting to work on sketching out his idea for Gansey’s cake with a wide smile on his face. 

Blue had smiled back. The only thing that would make Gansey happier than a party planned by his girlfriend was a party planned by his girlfriend and his boyfriend. 

It took only about an hour of cooperative planning until ‘party’ became too small of a word, though. 

Weeks were spent trading idea after idea; rushed discussions while Blue cradled iced teas in her arms at Nino’s, snuck phone calls and secret rendezvous. Lists were written and then hastily shredded in fits of inspiration and then written again. 

In the end, they did their best to find an equilibrium between ‘literally so exciting we might kill our old man again’ and ‘so many variables that we can’t guarantee it will work.’ This spectrum was drawn in bright pink marker on the whiteboard in Henry’s room, which Gansey was banned from throughout the duration of the planning process. Henry maintained the excitement half of the chart, containing gems like ‘skydiving over the Grand Canyon’ and ‘breaking into a museum to make a surprise, unauthorized pop-up exhibit on Welsh mythology in Gansey’s honor’ and Blue maintained the sensible half, with things like ‘cake and a movie marathon at Monmouth’ written in.

Right in the middle was a simple, two-pronged concept. 

Part one: Fun with friends. An afternoon of all of Gansey’s favorite things with all of Gansey’s favorite people. They’d watch whatever weird documentary Gansey wanted to see and order his favorite weird avocado pizza and they’d bake him a cake and decorate Monmouth for the occasion – streamers and gifts and balloons that would become permanent fixtures due to the height of the factory’s ceiling, lingering artifacts of the memories they would make. Adam assured that his gift to Gansey would fit seamlessly into this plan, and Ronan dozed off halfway through the discussion so he could get started on dreaming up gifts.

Part two: A prologue. A sneak peek, an establishing act of the adventure that awaited Gansey after graduation, just a taste of the kind of wide-open wonders that would come during their gap-year travels.

Gansey awoke on the morning of February tenth to a cacophony of noise. Party horns and noise-makers and – a harmonica? – that all together very nearly played the tune of Happy Birthday. 

“How long have you all been practicing that?” he asked, squinting awake and moving to grab his glasses, only for his elbow to meet something other than the pillow next to him.

Blue let out a cry as he elbowed her in the eye. Allowing Gansey no time to apologize, although he tried anyway, she exacted revenge by clacking her noise-maker right into his ear enough times for Gansey to realize that the object was piping out ‘Happy Birthday’ not by any skill of the girl holding it but by some other means.

“Dream things,” Gansey hypothesized, continuing to fumble behind Blue until he was able to retrieve his wireframes and get them on his face. 

He regained his vision in time to watch Ronan kick his bed a few times and declare, “Damn right!”

“Whoop Whoop Gansey Boy!” Henry cheered, alerting Gansey to the presence on the other side of him. Henry was stretched out comfortably on the bed next to him, and he was the one with the harmonica, which he made wail with a big puff of breath. 

“Hi, guys,” Gansey greeted, unable to fight the bleary smile that finally worked its way on to his face.

“Hey, man,” Adam greeted back. He stood next to Ronan, with Opal under his arm, and they were both armed with party blowers. Opal hadn’t stopped blowing hers at all yet. The picture of calm, Adam said, “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks, Parrish,” Gansey said, blinking the remaining sleep from his eyes and finally sitting up. Looking at his friends, arranged expectantly around him, he was certain that a loud good-morning was only the beginning of the day laid out in front of him. Warmth like the rising sun crested in his chest. “What’s the plan?”

In zealous bits and pieces, they told him the plan. Go to school, and then celebrate. Adam’s gift was not an item but an experience (and a surprise to everyone but himself and Ronan), and it was to take place right after school, and then they’d return to Monmouth for domestic festivities and cake, and then…

“A surprise, with me and Henry,” Blue said, with dimple in her cheek that promised it would be a good one. 

Henry’s put on a wide, cheeky smile. 

Gansey couldn’t even be insecure about the vast amounts of planning that must’ve gone on behind his back. They were too excited – he was too excited. “A surprise,” he agreed, consenting then and there to whatever it was, because he knew his friends knew him, so he knew he would love it. 

“Indeed.” Henry’s grin didn’t fade as he spoke. “I never thought I’d say this, but get dressed, Junior.” He gave Gansey a pat on the bicep and a wink, earning a snort from Blue and a dramatic eye roll from Ronan. “You’ve got a long day ahead.”

Gansey’s getting-ready process took significantly longer than usual that morning. After everything that had happened at the tail end of last year – everything, including his kiss with Blue and his second death, including coming back to life with the help of a dream forest’s sacrifice and also quite possibly saving the world – Monmouth had grown quiet. Ronan spent more and more nights at the Barns, and Noah’s soft presence had gone entirely silent. Although everyone still spent afternoons hanging around together and although Henry and Blue slept over with some frequency, spending nights alone in the factory had been tough at first. It was lonely, but he was beginning to get used to it. As the weeks passed, he began to appreciate the peace of the gentle mornings that followed isolating nights – the opportunity to get ready at his own pace and worry about no one but himself. 

This morning was anything but gentle, and it made him wonder how he ever preferred the quiet. It was laughter echoing off the walls as everyone jostled into one another. It was Opal, perched on top of the washing machine and chewing on a cardboard box she’d snatched from Gansey’s stock of supplies for mini Henrietta while he brushed his teeth. It was Blue and Henry distracting him from the most basic morning tasks with kisses and Ronan flicking things at them when they spent too long kissing and Adam deflecting those flying objects before they could interrupt Gansey’s public displays of affection because, “Where would we be right now if someone was sitting around and annoying you when you kissed me on your birthday, Lynch?” 

It was busy in the most satisfying way – the productive, cozy hum of a family.

It was finding a massive framed painting hung on the back of the door of the laundry room/kitchen/bathroom. A king sat on a throne made of twisting branches and lush green leaves, and ravens streaked the sky behind him. 

“What is this?” Gansey called out into the house. 

“It’s a gift,” Ronan shouted back over the clacking and chatter of an early-morning game of pool. 

“But what is it?”

“A painting – a dream thing. That seemed obvious.”

Gansey huffed. “But what is it a painting of?”

Ronan sounded entirely unaffected by Gansey’s confusion as he shouted back, “Glendower!”

Gansey looked at the picture. Certainly, this seemed like an adequate description of the person in the painting, except for the fact that Glendower’s face was quite obviously Gansey’s. 

“It’s me,” Gansey corrected.

“What the hell’s the difference?” Ronan returned.

Gansey didn’t know what to say to that, so he just appreciated the intricacy of the craftsmanship – there’d never be a day where he wasn’t awestruck by the beautiful things that his friend could dream up – and then continued on getting ready. 

There was never a time that Gansey didn’t enjoy having his friends around, obnoxious and embarrassing and wonderful and loving as they were, but that morning, their presence meant more to him than usual. Today of all days, it would’ve been so easy to sink into his reflection in the mirror, to let the fact that he never should’ve lived to see this day overcome him, to let his gratitude to Noah for saving him and the grief of knowing Noah never got to see his own eighteenth birthday war inside of him and numb him around the edges. 

He felt these things, certainly, but they were just droplets in the overflow of everything else he felt, too. His friends filled him up to the top and joy spilled over, dampening everything around him with breath and bright color. 

He was eighteen. He did it. Against all odds, he made it.

As he headed down the stairs, with the keys to the Pig in his hand and his friends bouncing along behind him like ducklings, with this day and this life stretched to the horizon in front of him, Gansey was so happy to be alive.

For Blue, school was torturous. Having to leave Gansey and the rest of her boys to spend the day pretending to care about things like misogynistic old literature and graphing standard deviation was physically painful. 

But each hour did actually pass, no matter how slow it felt, and three o’clock brought a relief so ecstatic that she more or less ran to the street corner where she would meet back up with the rest of the gang.

As promised, the Pig idled there for her, and she launched herself into the passenger seat, which Chainsaw and RoboBee heroically reserved for her. She didn’t usually mind riding in the back, but today, she wasn’t going to cram herself back there. It was chaos – Adam (who held a cake box) was crunched between Ronan (who had Opal on his lap and was, thankfully, unable to reach the aux cord) and Henry (who wrangled squeaking, squealing balloons). 

“Jane,” Gansey greeted, voice cool but smile wide. He didn’t try to disguise how elated he was to have her back with the group. 

“Birthday boy,” she returned with a smile of her own, placing her hand over his on the stick shift. 

Henry piped up from the seat behind her, “Sargent! How was your day?”

“Intolerable,” she informed without looking back. 

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but I have good news for you.” He took a dramatic pause, as though she didn’t know exactly where this was going. “Your night is going to be much better.”

 “I would hope so, Henry, since I planned the whole thing,” she said, smile growing a little. 

“Well... Not the whole thing,” Adam said, voice soft and strong from the back seat. 

Adam never really understood birthdays.

Cognitively, he saw their purpose. A day to celebrate the fact that you’d made it through another year, a day to commemorate the fact that you existed in the first place. Friends and family gave you presents, because they wanted you to know you were appreciated and that they, too, were happy that you existed and had continued to do so for the arbitrary but significant landmark of twelve months. 

Emotionally, though, he didn’t get it. A day to celebrate himself? A day to look at the past and look at the future and smile and say ‘here’s to many more’? What was there to appreciate, about him, about his life? He’d never really had a birthday party, never really got any presents. It was made clear to him for as long as he could remember that he didn’t deserve any of it – that his existence was a burden, nothing worth celebrating. 

He liked birthdays a little more after celebrating Ronan’s with him. But now, on Gansey’s birthday, he finally understood it.

It wasn’t just a day to applaud a person for existing. It wasn’t just a day to give gifts that said ‘I enjoy your presence in my life’ without having to have a substantial emotional conversation. It wasn’t something to be earned by being good or worthy. 

It was a day to celebrate life – not just an individual life, but life as a universal concept. Life not as a series of events that happened to a person, but life as everything that made the world beautiful.

Gansey’s miraculous life certainly inspired the need to celebrate.

As always, though, Adam’s means were limited. He could’ve doubled his work hours to scrounge up enough pennies to buy Gansey some object, but that kind of gift would be pointless – a gift for the sake of wrapping something up for Gansey to tear open; an empty tradition. 

He didn’t want to get Gansey something Gansey could’ve easily gotten himself. He wanted to do something more for Gansey – something worth more than his meager wages. 

After dropping the party supplies off back at Monmouth, Adam directed Gansey from the back seat, and Ronan sat smugly at his side, thigh-to-thigh, as everyone tried to guess where they were going. 

“The museum?” Gansey asked.

Adam said, “No.” He’d considered getting Gansey a year-long pass to the local history museum, but he was pretty certain Gansey already had one. 

“The space center.”

Henry asked, "Is there even a space center around here?” 

Adam said, “Yeah, but that’s not where we’re going.” 

“The zoo!” Blue jumped in.

“No.”

“A strip club,” Henry guessed.

Ronan cackled, finally piping up. “You got us, Cheng. Adam’s the stripper, actually.” 

“I wish you guys would’ve told me ahead of time,” Henry said, leaning to fluff up his hair in the reflection of his phone, “I would’ve brought my lingerie.” 

Blue let out a loud ‘ha’ from the front seat. “I was unaware that striped ankle socks and a Madonna t-shirt constituted ‘lingerie.’”

“Listen, babe—” Henry began in a tone that promised the conversation was only going to get worse, so Adam was happy to interrupt with, “Gansey, make a left here.”

The fair sat a mile down the road, a kingdom of rusted metal and canvas tents, and Opal let out an inhuman shriek of excitement at the sight of the rollercoasters and flashing lights. 

“Adam!” Gansey exclaimed, and then repeated it a few times as he wrenched the Camaro into a parking spot, and then flipped around in his seat to beam at him. “The fair!”

“I work with someone who also works here – it doesn’t technically open until tomorrow, but the staff gets to have fun tonight before it’s open to the public, and she said we could come,” he explained, feeling the nerves in his fingertips as childlike glee rippled through the car. “Happy birthday.”

Gansey had never been on a rollercoaster before, and neither had Blue, and neither had Adam. Henry was appalled to hear this – “Gansey, your parents never took you to Disney? What kind of childhood did you have?” “The kind that involved congressional dinners and fine dining in the city, not Mickey Mouse and Friends.” “And Blue? Adam? This is your first time at the fair?” – and Ronan was too busy wrangling Opal to pitch much more than “My money’s on Gansey pissing himself the first time a rollercoaster goes upside-down,” as they worked their way to the entrance. 

A rollercoaster was the first priority. Much to Ronan’s dismay, Gansey didn’t pee himself, even when Ronan clapped his hands over his shoulders right at the peak of the first big drop and said, “Isn’t this the one that malfunctioned and killed four people last year?” 

“Ronan,” Adam chastised, but his words were lost in shrieks and hoots of joy as the car took off down the track. Gansey sat between Blue and Henry at the front, hands clasped and arms tangled, making them one big being, and Adam held on to Opal while Ronan threw his hands up in the air and let out a joyous wail. 

The rollercoasters were just one small part of the fun. They hopped from one ride to the next, thoroughly destroying their sense of equilibrium as they climbed into rides that spun them in circles and carried them up in the air only to drop them at high speeds, taking breaks to check out the animals (Blue’s favorite part) and drop stacks of dollar bills on games in an effort to win each other prizes that were not nearly worth the amount of money spent (Ronan’s favorite part). They filled themselves with junk food (Opal’s favorite part) and took pictures of themselves and each other (Henry’s favorite part). Despite the cold February wind and the clouds rolling in as afternoon faded into evening, they were warm from the inside out, and by the time they piled back into the Pig and headed back home, their cheeks hurt from smiling so much (Gansey’s favorite part). 

They streamed back inside Monmouth with all their new, oddly sewn stuffed animals won primarily from games involving shooting waterguns at targets and throwing rings over bottles. Adam held a small stuffed purple cow – a gift from his boyfriend, unsurprisingly named Machete and presented to him after a makeout session at the top of the ferris wheel. Blue wore a hat made out of balloons, which only volumized her already sticky-uppy hair. Henry had a glittery temporary tattoo of a butterfly curling over his neck – “Ronan’s an inspiration to me” – and Opal had a matching one on her wrist.

“Thank you, Adam,” Gansey said as they trekked back up the stairs, patting the stuffed dolphin that was tucked under his arm. Adam had won it for him; they decided to name it Melody, due to the fact that squeezing its flipper was supposed to make it sing a song about the ocean. In reality, though, it made more of a distorted electronic crackling, but Gansey loved it even more for the fact that it was imperfect.

Adam gave him a small, sincere smile. “Thank you, Gansey.” 

Gansey knew what he meant, and he felt a familiar relief bubble at the back of his head. He and Adam were good, now and from now on. He’d never tire of how it felt to have earned Adam’s love.

Next came cake – handmade (not dreamt) by Ronan and Adam, frosted yellow and cut into the shape of a crown with “Third time’s the charm” written on it in wobbly blue frosting. 

“Make a wish,” Adam reminded Gansey as he neatly placed candles all around the crown like jewels.
 
Gansey had, historically, spent a lot of time thinking about wishes. About what he’d ask Glendower for when they found him – about what the limitations of the favor would be, if any. Often, he thought he’d use his wish for Noah, either to bring him back to life or at least to help him rest in peace. Sometimes, he thought he’d wish for Blue’s kiss. Other times, he thought he’d wish only for happy, healthy friends who loved him to the core, a family cobblestoned together and whole as one piece – himself, whole with their help. 

He didn’t have to wish for any of that anymore, though. He had everything he could possibly want. 

He leaned over his candles, silently asking only for more of the same. More of this. Friendship as endless as time, love strung between them into a complicated, comforting web that felt like home. 

He blew, his breath extinguishing the flickering flames on the candles as the flash from Henry’s phone replaced the lost light as he caught it all on photo. They cheered and clapped and hugged him, and they dug into cake, complemented by dreamt-up bittersweet birthday schnapps and a mixtape that Henry and Ronan had collaborated on, featuring EDM-meme music that Gansey loved to hate and terrible 90s hits that even Gansey’s poorly-developed sense of pop culture recognized. 

They drank and they danced and they played games and they enjoyed each other’s company. In addition to everything else Ronan had dreamt for the occasion, he tossed Gansey a compass that he only barely had the reflexes to catch before it hit the floor. 

Gansey knew he was a little buzzed, but he also knew that the needle definitely wasn’t pointing north. In fact, it twitched and turned in a way that seemed thoroughly unconducive to navigating. “Where does it lead?”

“It’s an energy compass,” Ronan explained, “Thanks to the Magician over there—” Adam was currently cooperating with Blue to help Opal do a handstand while Henry recorded it on his phone, “—it’s confused right now, but when Parrish isn’t around, it’ll point you right along the ley line.” 

Gansey smiled down at it, and then smiled up at Ronan. “Thank you,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” Ronan said, clearing his throat and glancing away, “Happy birthday. Good job not being dead.” 

Gansey dipped out of the party for a moment, having to immediately affix the compass to the rearview mirror of the Pig.

Now he’d be able to find magic wherever he went.

It wasn’t long after that that Ronan had to head back to the Barns to put Opal to bed, as she had passed out in his lap, snoring softly with her beanie pulled down over her eyes. Adam left with him, hand-in-hand, saying he had homework he needed to get started on and work early next morning.  

Hugs were exchanged and final birthday wishes were hurled in Gansey’s direction as his friends tumbled out the door.

Gansey let out a lungful of air, allowing himself to slouch with the glorious exhaustion of being happy.

He, Blue, and Henry piled on to the couch to pick at more snacks and sober up – insofar as sobriety related to blood-alcohol content, but certainly not in regards to mood. The air was light with giggles, and smiles seared his mind, leaving crescent-shaped impressions of jubilance every time he blinked his eyes.

Just as Gansey thought the night was winding down, Blue and Henry dropped a backpack into his arms – a tough but sophisticated leather thing, bigger than was necessary for any amount of textbooks. 

Gansey turned it around and around in his arms, examining the fine quality of the object. “This is great!” he said, sounding more impressed than anyone had ever heard anyone sound about a backpack, and he went to put it around his shoulders and try it on when Blue said, “Aren’t you gonna open it up?”

Inside was an old Polaroid camera and a new journal, full of empty pages begging to be filled. 

“For Venezuela,” Henry explained, broad smile already in place.

Blue added, “And everywhere else we go this year.” 

Gansey melted into their arms and happily accepted a spattering of kisses, and just when he thought he couldn’t bear any more beauty in one night, Blue announced, “And now it’s time for something more.”

Gansey briefly flashed a smile that betrayed his excitement for whatever awaited him. “There’s more? I thought we could just crawl into bed and perhaps kiss a little and call it an evening.”

“Not a chance,” Blue said, “Now get dressed – put on something more practical than your polo shirt and those abominable Top Siders –”

“Abominable? I like the Top Siders,” Henry said. 

Blue looked momentarily aghast and then continued, “I don’t know why I date either of you and I’m pretending you didn’t just say that. Gansey, stick a spare outfit in your new bag and meet us in the Pig.” 

“Adventure awaits, Third,” Henry promised, giving him a quick kiss before toting Blue out of Monmouth behind him. 

Gansey had no idea what to expect for this overnight trip, but whatever it was, he wanted to be ready for it. He gathered plenty of extra clothing, for himself and for his datefriends to borrow if they needed it in the event that they had underpacked, plus a few extra layers to account for the weather. 

All that he knew about his fate for the next twelve (maybe more?) hours was that he’d have Blue and Henry by his side, and that was all he needed to know. His exhaustion faded out almost immediately, leaving him as energized and electric as a live wire when he settled back behind the wheel of the Pig. The sun had set behind thick dark clouds, leaving the world increasingly cool and dark. 

Something coursed through him – something that made the encroaching night thrilling.

“Do you feel that?” Henry asked. 

Gansey nodded. He looked to Blue, and didn’t have to ask if she felt it too. “What is it, Jane?” 

Blue considered for a moment. “I think, Gansey, that is love and magic.” 

Gansey grinned at her in his passenger seat and then at Henry in the rearview mirror. They both grinned back. 

Love and magic. Must've been. 

“Where are we off to, you two?”

“The mountains,” Blue said, at the same time Henry said, “The sky.” 

Gansey threw the car into gear, and they drove.

They made it only a few miles before the snow started to fall – dark flurries against darker night, turning even the air inside the Camaro into a damp conduit. Anything felt possible.

“Blue,” Henry said after a few minutes, as the snow continued to fall, “as the sensible one, in what way do you think this inclement weather will impact our plan?”

Blue, as the sensible one, considered this. Getting stuck in a blizzard and freezing to death seemed especially undesirable on tonight of all nights, but maybe the snow would stop. “Uncertain. Ask again later. Let’s keep going for now.”

So, they did. As they wound their way up the mountain, the snow fell heavier and heavier, until Gansey had no choice but to drive more slowly, so they didn’t go slipping right off a cliff. 

It was at this point that Blue made the call. “I think we’re going to need to change the plan.”

It was sad, of course, because their plan was so excellent. They had a tent and firewood in the trunk, ready to have an authentic camping experience. They had one big sleeping bag, ready to huddle in for warmth. They even had a star map to find constellations and a pen to draw in new ones. 

But they were too excited to feel sad about their failed plan. If anything, this was even more exciting – a brand new, spontaneous adventure awaited them. Now they could all experience Gansey’s trusting anticipation, because none of them knew what came next. 

“Should we seek shelter?” Gansey asked.

“Good thinking,” Henry agreed, producing his phone from his pocket and tapping at it until it revealed to him the nearest place they could safely spend the night. “We’ve got a family-run motel-hotel-inn-thing. Fifteen point three miles from here. Think we can make it?”

“Definitely.”

They gunned it back down the mountain, the cataclysmic sound of the Camaro’s engine hanging in their wake and propelling them into the dark.

The woman at the front desk was more than confused about the three young adults that came stumbling into her lobby, with their armfuls of camping gear and their untamed smiles. 

“Hello, ma’am,” Blue greeted, “We’re going to need a room.”

“Just one?” she asked as she flipped through a book on the desk in front of her to check for availability.

“Yes, please,” Blue said sweetly, carefully nudging the strap of Henry’s overstuffed backpack up on to his shoulder, as it was about to slide off. Gansey preoccupied himself with wiping cold moisture from his cheek off on his shoulder, his hands busy with supporting an absolutely mammoth sleeping bag.

The women looked reproachful as she informed them that she had no more rooms left with multiple beds. In fact, the only rooms she had left were single-bed Valentine’s day suites, half-prepared for the upcoming holiday.

Her confusion only thickened when Henry exclaimed, “That’s perfect!”

And it was. The little room had a TV, some candles, a nice jacuzzi tub, and even a little container with rose petals in it – presumably, to be romantically strewn over the red bed sheets. 

“I love these sheets,” Henry announced to the women as she showed them to their room, “Do you have any spare sets? We’re going to need all the sheets we can get.” 

They did not have any spare sets of red sheets, but the baffled woman obliged and brought them some spare white sheets instead. 

The new plan fell seamlessly into place. 

The first step was to strip the bed for the red sheets and repurpose them for Gansey’s royal toga. The second step was to use the white sheets to make togas for Blue and Henry. The third step was to pitch their tent over the mattress, set up the sleeping bag, and otherwise make the room their own. The fourth step was to take a bubble bath in the big jacuzzi while eating the raw ingredients for the s’mores they planned on cooking over an open fire. And, finally, the last step was to curl up in the sleeping bag and end the day right – with cuddles and kisses and each other.

Each step was thoroughly documented by pictures taken with Gansey’s newly-acquired Polaroid camera. It spit out photo after photo, immortalizing the night in all its glory. 

A picture of Henry, laid out under the half-constructed tent and posed in his toga, up on his side, with Blue carefully adorning him with rose petals. (Henry titled this one “Draw me like one of your Welsh kings.”)

A picture of Henry and Gansey with their togas tied together, lips locked and hair mussed in a recreation of a scene of the cheesy romantic comedy playing in the background. (Blue titled this one “Boyfriends.”)

A picture of Blue, balancing up on her tiptoes to support the tent before it collapsed onto Gansey’s head. (Henry titled this one “Small but mighty.”)

A picture of Blue and Henry, seated around a dozen candles, with Blue looking unimpressed and Henry laughing wildly at his own joke – something about how all the candles would’ve been perfect for a ritual, and did Blue know anything at all about psychics or magic. (Gansey titled this one “True love.”)

A picture of the three of them, slightly crooked from being taken without a front-facing camera and slightly damp from being splashed, revealing their skin speckled with bubbles and mouths smudged with chocolate and limbs tangled together in the bath. (Blue titled this one “Three is the strongest number.”) 

Henry grew into the gang as naturally as Blue originally did. One day, Henry was an acquaintance, and the next, he was a friend, and after that, it became difficult to imagine a time before he belonged with them.

But there was something about Henry and Gansey’s relationship that was different than Henry’s relationship with the others. Something magnetic, something elastic. Something the rest of the group saw almost immediately, and something Blue saw even before that, because she recognized it. It was the same thing that was different about her and Gansey’s relationship – the sparkling kind of tug that had urged her to misdial Congress over and over again, to fake-kiss him when even the slightest miscalculation of millimeters would’ve killed him; a dangerous and infinite kind of potential. It was something she felt with Henry, too.

A crush. Something more.

All three of them felt it – them and Henry, Henry and them.

So when Blue had asked Gansey, “Do you like Henry?” Gansey didn’t have to ask what she meant or if she liked him, too. It was intangible but obvious, like a cloud of breath on a subzero morning.

“What should we do about it?” Gansey had asked her.

Blue had twisted her mouth in thought. “I think the polite thing would be to ask him if he’d like to be our boyfriend.”

When they did just this a few days later, Henry’s smile could’ve blown a transformer two cities over. “I’d be honored,” he’d said, with a sweeping bow followed by a group hug.

Henry and Gansey’s first kiss happened when, in the midst of a full laugh – head back, eyes shut, mouth open, a picturesque moment of contentment – RoboBee flew right into Gansey’s mouth. Gansey didn’t even have time to panic about the awful sensation of having a bug in his mouth before he was spluttering and spitting it out, looking somewhat alarmed.

“Sorry, RoboBee,” Henry said sincerely, taking poor damp RoboBee from Gansey’s hand, “Sorry, Gansey.”

Sounding far more surprised than anything, Gansey asked, “Why was RoboBee just in my mouth?”

“Because, man, you looked really, like, good, and— RoboBee can, like, read my mind, so– I was thinking about kissing you, right, and RoboBee—“

Gansey’s shock melted into something more pleasant, gently interrupting Henry’s stammering explanation of how RoboBee thought it was helping with, “You were thinking about kissing me?”

Henry rubbed a hand through his hair, smile creeping back on to his face. “Well, yeah. We’re boyfriends, right?”

“We are.”

“So we should probably kiss sometime.”

Gansey smiled and agreed, “I suppose you have a point.”

Henry and Blue’s first kiss happened a few days later, when Henry came over to sample a variety of horrendous herbal teas at 300 Fox Way, since he was the only one left in the group who hadn’t already learned their lesson about offering to be a tea-science subject.

Blue poured him a few cups of different teas, filling them only halfway in order to save him some agony.

The first tea was lavender and honey – a tea meant to soothe. Henry reported that it did not, in fact, soothe any part of him. Actually, he said, it made him irate, since lavender and honey were both excellent flavors on their own but somehow disgusting combined in the liquid before him.

The second tea was meant to clear his chakras.

“Do your chakras feel clear?” she asked, once he had struggled through the whole cup.

“If I say yes, can I never drink that particular sludge ever again?”

The third tea was earthy and sweet, crafted to amplify feelings of romance.

“A love potion,” Henry said with a laugh, taking a swig of it. As he swallowed, his face scrunched up less than it had with the previous two drinks. “This is definitely the least offensive beverage so far.”

“But does it work?” Blue asked. “Are you feeling romantic?”

Henry studied Blue for a moment and then asked, “I’m not sure. Can I kiss you? For magic tea science. It might help.”

“Hang on,” Blue said, taking a sip of the love potion from his cup. “Okay. Go for it.”

It was well past midnight by the time they were ready to settle into their sleeping-bag-bed-tent for the night. Although it had been hours since any of them had had a sip of Ronan’s dream booze, they still felt drunk – warm and unburdened, the weight of the world neutralized by their pooled strength, every shadow banished by the life that radiated out from their clasped hands and linked arms. 

Henry paced around outside the tent, chattering to Cheng Two on his phone – apparently, there was some Litchfield situation that required his attention, and Gansey knew the importance of answering your phone when friends called, so he didn’t question it. 

That left just Blue, tucked under his arm, playing aimlessly with his fingers. He carefully slid pins and clips around in her hair, very slowly undoing it as curls sprang free under his fingers. 

Each time they met eyes, they couldn’t help but smile.

“Happy birthday, Gansey,” Blue said for not the first time that day. 

“I think,” Gansey said, “that it is no longer my birthday.”

“Well, damn,” Blue said, “I had one more gift for you.” 

“In that case,” Gansey said, “I think time is circular and the fact that it is after midnight means nothing.” 

“In that case,” Blue said, “let me give you this.” 

She propped herself up on her elbow and gave him a kiss. 

Blue and Gansey’s second kiss took place three days after their first kiss. After Gansey had died and lived again, there was much to take care of as the world righted itself, and any chance to be together in private was quickly interrupted by someone or something requiring their attention. 

It took three days, three very long days, for them to get a moment alone. It happened in the Pig. Gansey had come to take her on a midnight drive, but they didn’t even make it out of the driveway. After everything, there was so much to say that they couldn’t wait even a minute longer. 

Gansey didn’t remember most of the things that they’d said, though. Even at the time, he hadn’t a clue what was coming out of his mouth. Everything had just sounded like some variation of the same question: “What now?” 

Blue didn’t have an answer for him, but knowing that she wondered the same thing was more helpful than any solution would’ve been.

And then came the part of the conversation he remembered in startling detail. The part where they looked at each other and their words dried up, damming back the anxious nonsense and letting only the truest words trickle through.

“Jane,” Gansey had said, recognizing the desperation in his own voice, “I’d very much like to kiss you again, but I’d also very much like to never die again.”

“Never again?”

He sounded strangled. “I think I have done enough dying for one lifetime.”

Blue couldn’t argue with this logic, so she didn’t. Instead, she thought about her curse. It did not specify that it was only her first kiss that was dangerous, nor did it promise that her kiss would be disarmed once it had fulfilled its lethal mission.

When he couldn’t stand the contemplative silence even a moment longer, Gansey brushed his thumb over the lips that had killed once before and asked, “Do you think your kiss is safe, now?”

“Safe as life,” Blue decided, and Gansey waited only long enough for her to finish the phrase before closing the ever-shrinking space between them and kissing her.

They kissed for a moment, and their hearts pounded against their sternums – like thunder crashing, or the Big Bang, birthing the universe. And when they pulled back, foreheads still rested together, Blue asked, “Are you still alive?”

“Yes, Blue,” Gansey said, sounding reverent, and he placed her hand over his thudding heart, “I have never been more alive.”

One kiss turned into two kisses turned into making out, and Henry rejoined them with a, “I leave for two seconds and I miss all the fun!”

“Oops,” Blue said, but she sounded unapologetic, and Henry gave a laugh and plopped down on Gansey’s free side. He snuck both of them kisses to make up for his brief absence and then settled against Gansey’s chest. “Hey, guess what, guys,” he said, “It’s not Richard’s birthday anymore.”

“We established that,” Gansey said, and Blue murmured in agreement.

Henry continued, “So, what are the reviews? How was it?”

“Incredible,” Gansey said, and his voice left no room to doubt how much he meant it. “The best day of my life.”

Henry pulled an impressed face and caught Blue’s eye. “The best day of his life? Damn. I think we did pretty good.”

“I guess we did,” she agreed, smiling up at Gansey. “So, like, five stars?”

“Ten thousand,” Gansey corrected, ducking his head to kiss each of them one more time, “Ten thousand stars.”