A/N: Secret Santa gift for post-postscript.

Goodnight

Falling in love is a peculiar feeling. At times, you don't even know it's happening, like a river changing its course over time. One moment, it's shallow and straight, the next, it's deep and tangled, and by that point, it's too late, too integral, too important. At other times, it's more like a volcano eruption. You can, on occasion, feel the ground rumbling for a while before, but generally, one moment it isn't and the next moment it is.

In any case, it is never predictable, and very hard to control or avoid. And in Blue's limited experience, it was complicated. It wasn't boy meets girl. It was boy introduces girl to his friend. Girl realizes boy is destined to die, and decided to stick with the friend. The friend and the girl's relationship falls apart, and the girl and the boy develop stronger feelings. They hide it, at first from each other, then from their friends. Several secret phone calls and late night drives later, they still hadn't done anything, because girl is cursed to kill her true love if she kisses him.

Blue would've preferred if it had all gone any other way. That is, any other way. She was so sick of tangled. She was so sick of complicated. That's why she dated Adam in the first place – it was supposed to be simple. It was supposed to be straight forward. Instead, all it did was cause more trouble.

Blue had come to realize that whatever love was, its course was stronger than her, because she had done everything she could to avoid it, and yet she'd developed feelings for Gansey. Gansey, that is, the same Gansey who was currently sitting on the floor of a warehouse, fixing a model of Henrietta made of cardboard, his odd and yet oft repeated choice of shorts getting rumpled in the process.

It was not adorable.

They were alone. Well, they hadn't been alone the entire evening, but after Gansey had fallen asleep, something he did all too often, and then Ronan took Adam home, and he hadn't come back yet. Noah and she talked for a while. It was easy to talk to Noah. She had a sneaking suspicion he literally knew what she was thinking. But she was tired, and eventually she started gathered her things, and Noah faded, something that happened sometimes.

She had reached the door when Blue heard Gansey stir.

"Blue?" he asked groggily, squinting at her without his glasses. (She had personally taken them off earlier. It didn't look like it was comfortable to sleep with them on.) "Where are you going? Where is everyone?"

"Ronan took Adam home," she said. "It's late. I should get going."

"Do you want me to drive you?"

"No, thanks," she said. Blue had come with her bicycle, and there was no reason not to ride it home. It wasn't that far. And, she still had her switchblade.

"Oh," he said, quietly. "Okay."

She didn't know what to say to that.

"I can stay a little longer, just until Ronan comes back, if you want." The offer rolled off her tongue before she could think better of it. Her mother wasn't expecting her for an hour or so. It wouldn't be that bad, she thought.

She was right. It would be awful, as it turned out. She never knew whether she hated or loved being with him. It was downright torture.

That is, he was an idiot. That is, she was in love with him.

She watched him rebuild a section of the model that had collapsed, so deep in thought, that Blue only registered that Gansey was speaking once he was done.

"What was that?" she asked, focusing on the real world.

"I asked," Gansey said, patient, "How long ago did Ronan take Adam?"

"Oh," she said. She didn't have a watch. "I don't know. A while." (She wanted to mention how often they disappeared together for long periods of time. She didn't want to mention it at all. She knew it would eventually be addressed. She let it go.)

For some time after that, the only sound was of cardboard being stuck together, the bottles of glue being squeezed, the shuffle of readjustment. The moonlight poured into Monmouth Manufacturing, coloring the entire scene with its light blue hue and accenting Gansey's sharp features.

She couldn't quite remember the first time she realized how deeply she felt for him. She knew it had happened, but right now, looking at him, all she knew was that it was.

"You want to go for juice?"

He looked up at her, though his eyes didn't quite lock onto her. He didn't debate it for long. "Sure." His smile was wide, but it didn't quite reach his hazel eyes. He held out his hand; after a moment, she realized what he wanted, and grabbed it, their grip tightening as she helped him stand. Blue could swear her heart was in between her ears, her heartbeat became so loud. Gansey let go the moment he was standing, and Blue had to stop herself from exhaling in relief.

There might not have been Adam, but there was still the curse. There was always the curse.

They walked silently to the Pig, and stayed silent throughout the car ride. The exhaust fumes weighed heavily on them as they stared at the empty moonlit road, the headlights doing very little but partially blind Gansey, who was still wearing glasses, whenever they reflected on anything.

Suddenly, the car was stalling, and Blue shook awake.

"Hey," Gansey said gently, touching her shoulder. "Are you awake?"

"Just barely," she admitted, rubbing her eyes. "Uhm… take me home?"

He nodded. "Sure." The car started again, and Blue let herself drift off to sleep.

Frost bit at her fingers as she waited. She was wearing her favorite gloves, the fingerless ones, like that night at the old church, and actually, she wasn't that far away from there. She wasn't dressed warmly enough for snow, and it was sure to snow later on. Hopefully she'd be inside by then.

"Jane!"

Blue snapped into attention. There he was, Gansey, dressed like some sort of Disney prince. Specifically, Eric from The Little Mermaid. As a child, she always loved Ariel. As a teenager, she sympathized with her. In fact, she was wearing Ariel's pink dress at the moment; how she'd gone so long without noticing this was a mystery. Her hands were now, however, completely exposed to the cold; she rubbed them together to generate some heat, but Gansey took hold of both of them.

Then they were in the Pig again. Gansey's hand reached back to her, Ronan not paying attention, Adam sleeping, and this time she did more than reach back. She leaned forward, grabbing his shirt, and pulled him near. He was so close to her now, the entire world was just the two of them, the two of them and the warm breath between them. She leaned, no, surged forward. Their lips met, but it felt nothing like kissing Noah; in fact, it felt like nothing at all. There was no Gansey.

"Shit!"

The car swerved. Gansey had probably been startled by her sudden and crude way of awaking; she apologized immediately. "No," he replied, looking visibly agitated, "it's fine. I just… didn't expect that. That must have been some dream."

"Yeah," she said.

(Here's what she wanted to say: You're not the only one with bad dreams. Or: You die in my dreams. Or: You make it hard for me to sleep.)

"We're almost there," he told her. "Are you cold? I'm cold." She nodded. He turned up the heat… which did nothing except cause the car to be even noisier. She was glad for the ruckus; it drowned out the bits of the dream still left on her mind.

"Do you ever wish you were somebody else?" Blue asked. Rain started falling, hitting the window with gentle taps, blurring the world outside. She could vaguely see the streetlights with their long, smudged beams of orange light, and the darkness that surrounded them in the early morning. It must have been almost one a.m., and most everyone was asleep.

It was much easier to ask serious questions when you weren't afraid anyone could overhear. It was much harder to ask serious questions when you knew the other person was listening.

Gansey thought about it. "Why do you ask?"

"I don't know, really," she admitted, shifting so she now faced him. His eyes were on the road, one hand on the wheel, but his entire body was facing right, in what looked like a somewhat uncomfortable position. "I guess I've been thinking about – what it would be like. To have – "

"The curse?"

"Well, yeah."

Gansey was quiet again.

"I just," Blue began, "I wish I could be more. I wish I could go out and see the world. At this rate, I might as well buy a trailer and just – "

"Blue, this isn't like you," Gansey said, sounding worried. The car slowed down. "What's really going on?"

Blue shook her head, then remembered he couldn't see it. "Nothing. It's nothing. So… do you?"

"Wish I was a different person? Never."

"Not even a little bit?"

"Not in the past two years, no."

"Oh." Blue looked right again. They were only a block away from Fox Way. "I guess I get that."

They reached her home only a moment later. She opened the door, and suddenly felt him grab her hand. She looked at him, his figure leaning in all too close to her.

"You're part of that, Blue," he said. "You're part of it every day."

"I know," she said, a sour smile on her lips. "I know. Goodnight, Gansey."

He let go of her hand. "Goodnight, Blue."