Archive of Our Own ^beta

Although Blue, against her will, rather liked the urgency of feeding Gansey the entire pie in the booth of the diner, the diner had other ideas, and threw them out when it closed at seven. The Arizona sun beat down with a two-handed shove where she’d come to expect Henrietta’s thick embrace, and she scraped back her hair where it was sticking to her forehead.

They piled back into the engineless Pig, Henry leaning between them to check in the rearview that the heat hadn't discouraged his hair’s aspirations. “Where to, Blue Moon Sargent?” he asked, and she felt the wisp of his breath against the sweat on the back of her neck.

She looked beside her to Gansey, the pie neatly boxed up in his lap, a square of crisp white dividing his lime green polo and khaki shorts. He'd gained weight as they crossed the country: the product of too many double-decker roadside diner burgers and Middle American deep-fried delicacies. He looked plump and pretty in the passenger seat, his cheeks fuller, his stomach creeping forward into his lap.

Even before she’d fallen for him, Blue had harbored a reluctant fascination for Gansey’s tendency toward overindulgence. She'd watched him overeat more than once, with a creeping, prickling excitement that made her irritable with how rapt it kept her. How easily and openly he desired food - while Ronan regarded most everything but candy simply as fuel, and Adam treated it as an expense, an embarrassment. But Gansey didn’t seem embarrassed by any of it - and this was what had rubbed at Blue, that he didn’t seem to realize the luxury of eating so much and so often.

Deeper still ran her fascination with the softness that cushioned Gansey’s edges. He didn't seem self-conscious of it, or even aware of it beyond a factual knowledge. She'd seen the way he reacted to things he was sensitive about, the way his facade slipped into place to disguise his discomfort. But it didn't seem to faze him when Ronan poked at his soft sides, or when Adam offered him what he couldn't finish with a look that said he knew Gansey could. He squirmed away with an affectionate curse in Ronan’s direction, or pulled Adam’s plate toward him without as much as a break in conversation.

Blue found her hands gravitating to that softness more and more often as they grew more comfortable with each other's bodies - the soft roll where his stomach pushed over his waistband, the chunky curves of his hips, the tiny bit of pudge below his chin. Although the three of them shuffled their sleeping arrangements from night to night, Blue invariably slept beside Gansey, one hand settled into the soft warmth of his belly.

Now, he grinned at her, quirking up one eyebrow mischievously. “Yes, Jane, where do you intend to overindulge me?”

“Looks very all-American, don't you think?” Henry mused from behind her, and she caught his smile in the rearview. “Caucasian boy, cherry pie, muscle car, desert view …”

“Needs ice cream,” said Blue, mirroring Gansey’s eyebrow quirk. Gansey raised his higher.

“Oh, do I.”

“Vanilla,” Henry chipped in, and Blue turned the key with a decisive nod.

They stopped at a 7-Eleven en route to the AirBnB Henry had picked out - Blue had been insistent that they not stay in too many hotels, because as picky as she was about unfamiliar people, there was a peculiar fascination to seeing the strange and intimate details of their lives - and Henry ducked inside. Blue followed the cheery purple of his V-neck through the store window, and brought herself back when Gansey caught her hand in his between the seats.

“Come here,” he said softly, and she leaned as far as her seatbelt would allow, let him catch her face in his hands. He pressed his lips to her forehead, to either side of her jawline. No one seemed sure whether or not a second proper kiss would have the same effect as their first, and although Blue privately thought that seemed like a cheap deal, Henry’s words crept back to her: if you can’t be unafraid, be afraid and happy .

On the night of Blue’s graduation party - which, unlike Gansey’s, had been a loud potluck affair in the backyard of 300 Fox Way, tables upon tables groaning with aunts and cousins and food - the two of them had tucked themselves into the hammock strung between two of the oak trees, and Gansey, sleepy and overfull, had kissed Blue’s fingertips as she drew out constellations in the sky for him. She hadn’t remembered to be afraid until he’d kissed all ten, and even then she felt the hammock rock with the jolt of her fear. But Gansey had remained breathing beside her, dimple sunk into his cheek as he recognized her fright and exhaled with the kind of smile you can’t help when you know you’ve skirted death.

Now, in the faux Pig, he kissed as close to her mouth as he dared. She undid her seatbelt so she could scoot closer to the edge of her seat, bracing a hand against his hip to balance. His mouth was warm and soft, driving an electric charge beneath her skin. She felt like her energy had been turned all the way up, a speaker tuned so loud that it was buzzing below the music, and she shivered in the car’s air-co.

Whatever fascination she’d had with Gansey’s overeating before she’d developed feelings for him had since metastasized into something more … intimate. If she couldn’t kiss him on the mouth, she had figured, she could feed him, feel his lips against her fingertips instead of her own mouth. Gansey gave the same quiet, yearning whimpers and groans when she kissed his neck as he did when she indulged him with treats, after all.

She was so caught up in the tiny universe strung between his lips and her jawline that she didn’t hear Henry approach until he’d slid into the backseat. Weeks ago, she might have jerked back from Gansey like she’d been caught breaking a rule, but weeks of sharing hotel rooms and beds and occasional kisses with Henry put her long past embarrassment. He reached between the driver and passenger seats and touched her hair tenderly, then Gansey’s.

“Sir and madam,” he said, “I return with gifts.”

He turned out the white plastic bag to show off a pint of vanilla Haagen-Dazs and two enormous bottles of water, the kind Calla took to her boxing classes. Gansey palmed his stomach, and the indent of his navel beneath the fabric of his polo drew Blue’s attention like a magnet. When she tore her gaze away, face flushing, Henry caught her eye. He was grinning, but there was a hungry look in his eyes too.

Gansey’s eyes slid between them, and a slow smile spread over his face. “I think you’d better start driving, Jane,” he said. “That ice cream’s going to melt, and this pie is getting impatient.”

Blue felt herself flush harder. She turned the key in the ignition, and bit her lip throughout the drive to the AirBnb, as Henry and Gansey took turns reading the nutrition facts off the Haagen-Dazs, checking to see if she was still furiously red, and laughing uproariously as she struggled between laughing along and making small, frustrated noises.

Their AirBnb was a small, square stucco house that reminded Blue a little of 300 Fox Way, if it had been plucked from Henrietta, deposited unceremoniously in the middle of the desert, and done its best to adapt to the situation by changing its composition entirely. She could see people moving through the front window, lounging against counters in the kitchen, and suddenly the idea of trying to smuggle two desserts past them amid greetings and small talk and facts about the house - because put Gansey in an unfamiliar house with unfamiliar people in an unfamiliar state and you got the history of the house, the people, the land, and the state, depending on how long you left him there - seemed at once mortifying and impossible.

She turned without unbuckling her seatbelt so she could sort of face both of them. “I don’t want to have to explain this,” she said, nodding to Gansey and the pie, to the ice cream sweating in Henry’s hands.

“Your two boyfriends?” offered Henry.

She raised her top lip to bare her teeth at him. He grinned back. “My two boyfriends, or the two desserts they’re packing, one of which desperately needs a freezer.”

“Which one of us needs the freezer,” said Gansey, a smile playing on his lips, “me or Henry?”

“Plus,” said Blue, leaning over to cover his mouth with her hand, “I don’t know. It’s weird doing this in someone else’s house. It’s not like it’s a hotel.”

Gansey kissed her palm, dipping his head in understanding, and she moved her hand to tousle his hair. “Where do you suggest?”

She shrugged. “Find somewhere we won't die of heat exhaustion and lay you out in the backseat?”

It was Gansey’s turn to go red. “I like that solution. The faux Pig’s seen worse, hmm?”

“If the number of pizza receipts on the floor is any indication,” said Blue, “so has the real one.”

She threw the car in reverse and pulled out of the driveway, and drove back into the red mouth of the desert. Henry found a park nearby, holding his phone up near her head for service like Blue might amplify that too.

It was late enough in the evening that there weren't many cars in the lot, and even fewer in the coveted shady spots, so Blue eased into one and put the Camaro in park beneath a thick Chilean mesquite, which she could identify because it was the Arizona state tree and featured in the guidebooks Gansey had bought. He'd read her a pile of facts about them their first night in Arizona, lying in their hotel bed with Blue’s head on the pillow of his stomach and a sleeping Henry’s head propped on his chest.

“Okay,” she said, undoing her seatbelt. “Gansey, you get in the back.”

She slipped out of the driver’s seat and helped Henry fold it down as Gansey crawled into the backseat with the pie. Henry slipped in beside him, and Gansey arranged himself so that he was propped between Henry’s legs, his back to Henry’s chest. “Perfect,” said Gansey, smiling, and he tilted his head over his shoulder to give Henry a quick kiss.

Henry’s asexuality differed from Gansey’s in a way that preferred friendly physical contact to girl- or boyfriendly physical contact, but he shared Blue’s affinity for the soft sounds and heavy eyelids that marked Gansey’s overindulgence, and that was important. Blue got the impression that Henry had considered sex extensively and analytically and decided he did not want anything to do with it, while Gansey, content to do most things Blue liked but lacking the desire for any reciprocation beyond kissing, seemed to forget it was something other people even gave consideration to. Henry landed somewhere between queerplatonic and gently romantic in their relationship, their affectionate sometimes-third.

Blue squeezed into the back with them, leaned over the front seats to grab a fork from the napkin-wrapped bundles of utensils in the glove box, and finally settled herself in front of Gansey. She opened the pie box slowly and paused with the fork poised above the lattice of the crust.

“Stab it,” urged Henry, one of his hands creeping around to grab a handful of Gansey’s stomach through his polo. “We made him wait long enough.”

Gansey laughed, and Blue stabbed, and Henry made a noise of triumph when the pie broke open. Blue scooped out the first forkful, and Gansey moaned when it hit his tongue.

“That,” he said, eyes closed, “is an excellent pie.”

Blue dug out another bite, cherry ooze dripping from the fork, and he took it eagerly. She watched his lips wrap around the fork, the way his Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed. He looked like he'd been created solely to be indulged, Blue thought. The graceful fullness of his lips, the way his eyelashes rested against his cheeks when he closed his eyes with bliss, the easy tilt of his head back against Henry. His thighs, thick and soft now instead of thick and solid like they’d been back when he rowed, spread on the backseat of the Pig, and Henry ran a hand down from Gansey’s waist to his hip, tracing the curve. Blue swallowed, slipping another bite between Gansey’s lips.

It still made her chest swoop to think about how quickly he’d begun to soften after quitting crew, as if the sport had been the only thing keeping him from growing chubby. She’d seen pictures of Gansey when he was younger, all pudgy cheeks and round edges - passed around after sophisticated lunches where, more than once, she'd seen Gansey’s mother discreetly brush his hand away from a third helping of quiche or lobster: I think two is enough, don't you, Dick?

Even while he’d been on the crew team, his stomach had remained soft, pushing against his shirts like a hint at his fondness for food. Well-fed , Blue had thought, thumbing through the pictures Mrs. Gansey had shown her. That’s how he looks.

She scooped up a bigger bite of pie and brushed the tip of the fork against his lips. He made a little sound of longing, and she let him take the bite from the fork. He’d told her, one cloudless night before their departure, lying in her arms in the backseat of the Pig, that food made him feel safe, secure, that he felt less anxious if he overate. They’d been sharing a pizza that had been made with pepperoni instead of peppers and had thus been abandoned to Nino’s employees for the taking. She’d picked the pepperoni off her slices and fed it to him with her hands, and she’d slid her hand up his shirt once he’d finished off the six slices she hadn’t eaten, felt how warm and soft his stomach was. He’d made that same little sound of longing then, against her neck, and he’d said, Jane, I think you’re going to keep me feeling very safe.

She fed him another bite, a little larger than the last, enough to puff out his cheeks. Henry kissed behind his ear as he chewed, and Gansey smiled around the mouthful of pie.

“Hmm, Gansey Three,” said Henry softly, and Blue flicked her eyes up to see his lips just brushing Gansey’s ear. His dark eyes were narrow and intense, alive with something bright and driving. “You look very pretty like this.”

Blue nodded her approval, and Gansey slipped his hand into Henry’s and squeezed. He swallowed and exhaled, and as Blue loaded the fork with another bite, Henry continued, “Being fed and looking good are among your many, varied talents, Ganseyman.”

Blue drew in her breath a little to hear him say it, and Henry’s smile crested over Gansey’s shoulder.

Gansey grinned and tipped his head back, and Henry caught the corner of his mouth with his own. “Tastes good,” he remarked. “I'd ask you for a bite, Blue Devil, but I wouldn't want to deprive our boy.”

“I'm good at sharing,” Gansey objected, accepting another large bite from Blue.

“You are,” she agreed, reaching past the pie box to give Gansey’s stomach a little squeeze. “But Henry’s right - you look so pretty when you finish it all yourself.”

The first time she’d deliberately fed him too much, he’d come to Nino’s to study for final exams during one of her late shifts. He’d kept his head bent low over his notebooks, and from behind the counter, she’d watched him tap his fingers against the plastic tabletop, the way he did when he was anxious. He was so absorbed that he didn’t notice that she’d changed his order from a large deep-dish sausage-and-avocado to an extra large, and she’d felt herself go warmer and warmer as she watched him reach for slice after slice with one hand, scribbling notes to himself and flipping pages with the other. He’d mouthed terms to himself between mouthfuls of pizza, and Blue quietly adored this soft, studious, unselfconscious Gansey, determined to fill himself with as much knowledge as possible.

And pizza , her brain had filled in. He is definitely also filling himself with pizza.

Blue shivered at the memory. She'd gone to sit with him for the last ten minutes of her shift, and found him pink-cheeked and a little out of breath, hunched over his notebooks with a hand idly against his belly. “How's it going?” she'd asked, drumming her fingers against the edge of the empty pizza pan, and he'd stifled a burp behind his fist before replying.

“Have your pizzas gotten larger?”

Blue had flushed to match him. “You looked anxious.”

He’d gazed at her through eyes heavy-lidded from too much studying or too much pizza, Blue couldn't say which. He didn't follow for a minute, so she led him with, “You said food helped,” and watched him put it together.

“ Oh ,” he’d said, and pulled her hand across the table to kiss it. “You are a marvelously thoughtful creature, but a little warning next time, perhaps?”

Blue had nodded. “Next time?” she asked, against her better judgment.

His smile made the suggestion for him. “I’d like there to be a next time.”

So they’d had a next time, and another, and another. By the time they hit the road with Henry, they’d found their groove, and it had only taken a few instances of Gansey sitting back in the sticky vinyl booths of roadside diners, flushed and overfull, to get Henry on board, too.

They fell silent as they worked through the pie, Henry petting Gansey’s hair and slipping a hand beneath his shirt as they progressed. Gansey’s breathing was slowly becoming more audible, his eyes going softer, and Blue groped around beneath the lime-green fabric of his polo too before making a little noise of surprise. She’d been planning to undo the button of his shorts to give him a little more room to finish, but the button was already undone, which meant -

“Have you had these unbuttoned all day ?” she asked, sitting back on her heels. Her own stomach felt fizzy with longing. “Jeez, Gansey.” She ducked her head in case her face was as red as it felt, and she heard Henry give an amused little laugh.

Gansey, slouching lower against Henry the more Blue fed him, tipped his head to offer her a sheepish smile, then Henry. “They’re getting snug,” he said apologetically, rubbing a hand over the underside of his stomach.

“I’ll say,” Blue murmured. She put her hand over his just for a moment, the aftershocks of skin on skin pulsing through her.

They were a little less than three quarters of the way through the pie when Henry rested his forehead on Gansey’s shoulder in a grave show of forgetfulness. “The ice cream,” he groaned, and Blue turned to see it sweating on the center console of the faux Pig, condensation circling the carton patiently.

She broke the plastic seal, but as she’d expected, it was a soupy mess inside, and she held it away from herself so it wouldn’t drip onto her bare legs. “Do we call this a wash?”

Gansey sat up a little straighter against Henry, pausing to catch a burp in his hand. “Let me see it?”

Blue raised an eyebrow and handed him the carton, and although she fancied herself much too sensible to be anything close to the swooning type, she watched Gansey carefully tip the pint container to his lips and drink from it and thought, well, maybe she could understand the swooning type, at least.

He took another long sip, his throat moving languidly as he swallowed, and Blue blinked, trying to regain her bearings. A glance at Henry confirmed that he was similarly affected, if the color high in his cheeks was any indication. She caught his eye, and he turned his gaze to the heavens as if begging for deliverance.

“What?” said Gansey, glancing behind him.

Henry kissed his cheek. “You struck stars into us for a moment, Gansey Boy, that's all.”

Gansey hiccupped, as if in contradiction. He covered his mouth a moment too late, and Blue hid a smile at the indiscretion.

“Sweet,” she said, when she caught his eye, and she loaded another forkful of pie into his mouth. He needed a little longer between bites now, his breathing shallower, and Blue and Henry took turns rubbing his stomach as he sagged against Henry. Blue tipped the carton of ice cream to his lips between bites, and although she could tell how full he was getting from his breathing and the low set of his eyelids, he drank greedily anyway.

She cut the remaining chunk of pie into three pieces with the edge of the fork, and offered one to Gansey. He took it and chewed slowly, a low whine escaping when he exhaled, and she heard Henry kiss the back of his neck.

“Almost there,” said Blue, hushed. “Look at you, you’re doing so well.”

He nodded, and opened his mouth when she brought another bite. He slugged another gulp of ice cream when she offered the carton, and a stray drop escaped over his bottom lip. Blue caught it with her fingertip and touched it to her own tongue, and Gansey’s mouth softened into a smile.

“Do I taste good?”

“The best,” Blue said, and held out the final bite. She helped him slurp the last of the ice cream, and he flopped back into Henry’s arms, panting. His eyes held the content, faraway look that settled there once he’d eaten himself to a calm, and he cradled his stomach with both hands. Blue set the empty pie box on the passenger seat and curled up beside them in the backseat, tucking herself under one of Gansey’s arms and slipping two fingers beneath his waistband, his skin soft and hot against hers.

“ Very snug,” she said, soft and approving, and she kissed the high of his cheekbone. He tilted his head onto her shoulder, his breath coming in heavy, staccato rushes against her neck. “You did great.”

“Absolutely sublime,” Henry agreed, kissing Gansey’s temple. Gansey let out a little moan against Blue’s shoulder, and then a belch he was too late to stifle. Blue watched him go red as he excused himself, a politeness too deeply ingrained to let go. She found it sweet, or something a little sharper than sweet, that he let them see him like this, that it was for them that the last vestiges of his facade began to slip away. Even if he couldn’t shake the depth of those manners, she thought, kissing his forehead, he let them feed and coax and encourage him until he was too full to lift a hand, to see this particular rendition of his vulnerability.

Between the heat and the effort of eating an entire pie, his forehead was a little damp beneath her lips, and she buried her fingers in his thick, soft hair, affection knitting a scarf around her heart as his eyes sank closed. She touched two fingers of her free hand to her lips and reached across Gansey to press her fingertips to Henry’s lips.

“I think we did pretty well,” she said, and Henry grinned. Gansey, head still tipped against Blue’s shoulder, nodded his agreement.

“I would agree,” said Henry, covering as much of Gansey’s exposed stomach with one hand as he could and rubbing it gently. “Mmm, Ganseyman, you are looking positively decadent . Debauched, even. How are you feeling? Do you need water? Higher AC?”

Gansey burped again, exhaled in a soft sigh. “Water would be great.”

Henry nodded. “Budge up a little and I’ll get you some.”

Gansey shook his head. “Too full.”

“Fair point,” said Henry. “Blue Lagoon?”

She wriggled out from under Gansey’s arm and groped for one of the water bottles. Henry unscrewed the top and took a long drink, then brought it to Gansey’s lips. When he’d finished, Blue took the bottle back and put her lips where theirs had been, and she felt a little flutter in her chest like roots growing deeper, stronger.

Her hand met Henry’s over the crest of Gansey’s stomach, and they slid down to where Gansey’s hands rested, a little lower. Gansey’s breathing was beginning to even against her collarbone, the way he sometimes dozed when he was full like this, and she stroked his skin with her thumb, her heart steady in its contentment.

“Let me know when you’re ready for me to start driving,” she whispered, in case he was dozing, but his hazel eyes fluttered open behind his glasses, and he gazed at her the way he gazed at Henrietta. “We can go right to bed, let you sleep.”

The corners of Gansey’s mouth turned up. “You might want to wait a while, or you’ll have to explain to the AirBnb people why I can’t move too much.”

“ Ugh ,” said Blue over Henry’s laugh, touching her forehead to Gansey’s. “Fine. We’ll stay a little longer.”

Gansey smiled, so languid and lustrous and wide that Blue thought she could see the entire evening sky in his eyes, and she felt him take Henry’s hand, and then hers. “That’s all I wanted to hear."