for adam

[formicine]

[backdated to mid-late November]

It's been over a week now, since she and Ellie ended things, or whatever it was that they did: whatever you can call that talk, fight, confession, it's over, and whether or not it's maybe for the best, Blue feels like a part of her has been forcibly removed. Two trees that had grown together across a fence, separated and unstable, with holes torn wide.

Over a week, but she can still hear the words they exchanged in her head. She's kept it to herself, for the most part, that nagging doubt, the hurt in Ellie's tone that she put there. They're all keeping the weight of things to themselves; existing, in Hywel, almost as ghostly as Noah but weighed down by the fact of his actual insubstantiality. They should be happy, shouldn't they? That the demon was defeated, that Gansey was brought back?

But they've all lost so much. In bits and all at once, big things and little things. It wears. And it stirs doubt.

So she's flopped on Adam's bed, the one in Hywel. He occupies Ronan's room more often, so who knows when he'll be back in here, but it seems like a proper place to do some thinking about the nature of her relationships to other people. He seems like a proper person to ask; he's also had to deal with -- with Blue being Blue.

And up until she demands he be honest, at least, it feels like a safe place that isn't her room filled with her thoughts and her memories, too.

She lies on her back with her head off the side, tossing her keys back and forth in her hands and thinking too much.

Comments

[incognoscibilis]

It was Copper who noticed first. She came in, tail wagging, and hopped up onto the bed to curl up next to one of her People. Adam followed a second later, expression shifting from confused to relieved. The logical part of him understood that it was particularly unlikely for anyone to be in his room that wasn't meant to be but given the events of the last few weeks, Adam felt so much less sure.

"Hey," he said, voice low and quiet.

[formicine]

Blue manages a little smile when Copper jumps up next to her, and rolls over onto her side. "Hey, girl." She's met a lot of dogs in her life, but Copper is a particularly astute one; she has a sense for Adam and what he needs, and she has a good sense for when other ones of their little group are sad or need a friend.

She puts her head against Copper's side, gently rubbing her neck.

"Hey," she says, uncertainly, and chews on her lip, regarding Adam. "I wanted to ask you something. I think."

[incognoscibilis]

Copper breathed out a deep sigh, the kind that Blue would feel and hear where she lay, and then put her head on Blue's shoulder. Absurdly, Adam had the thought that both his girls were cuddled up together, even though he was pretty sure Blue would verbally tip him out the window if he said it out loud.

"Shoot," he said. After a second's thought, he came over and sat on the bed with them.

[formicine]

There's something reassuring about that deep breath. It reminds Blue of watching Jurassic Park when she was -- she doesn't know how old. Formatively little. Watching Grant lie on a sick Triceratops and tear up in wonder. (She'd always wanted to be Ellie Satler, instead, but that was irrelevant.)

She thinks, absurdly, that Copper wouldn't curl up with her if she was truly terrible.

"This thing," she says levelly, looking up at Adam. "with Gansey. Or about Gansey." With seems more solid than what it actually is. "How much of an asshole does it make me?"

Because that seems like fishing, she adds, distantly, "You can say a lot."

[incognoscibilis]

Adam stretched out on his side, feet still hanging over the edge of the mattress. Reaching out, he scratched at Copper's shoulder, silently encouraging her to turn a little of her gentleness and love on Blue.

"What thing? Which part?" Adam asked. There were many Things with Gansey because, by nature, Gansey liked his mysteries and his people complex. "And even so. Don't see what that has to do with you being an asshole."

[formicine]

Blue's grateful, a little, for him stretching out next to her, or to the dog. Adam's tells are fairly legible to her; if he'd immediately tensed up, stiffened his shoulders, she'd have known the question was a lot closer to the mark than him just scritching the dog.

"The part where we're both stupid and in love with each other," she says, flatly, "only we keep trying to pretend it's not going to get in the way of anyone else we love or if we just hold our breath long enough it'll disappear, or something."

She glances across Copper at him. "Figured you'd have a perspective on. Well, the me part."