dark as the colour of the river (the raven cycle | blue/helen)

[fiachairecht]

dark as the colour of the river. the raven cycle - maggie stiefvater, blue/helen. thoughts on safety and girls with kissable mouths. 885w, rated t.

Helen Gansey is safe.

This is a lie, of course, and even if it weren't, Helen would still be only Henrietta-safe: Russian roulette with four bullets instead of five. But Blue is a sensible girl, and recently she has collected quite a bit of evidence suggesting that it is not entirely impossible to believe that Helen Gansey is safe.

For instance: Helen Gansey is not going to die this year. Helen's spirit has never walked a corpse road, and dozens of psychics have not promised one girl that she's going to kill Helen. Helen is not a rain-speckled figure in an Aglionby blazer or or a ghostly boy with faraway eyes in a churchyard, so she has more than twelve months to live. She is, then, safe, for a certain amount of time.

And then there is this: Blue is not in love with Helen. She has become very practiced in testing whether she's in love with people, with Gansey and Adam and now with Helen, and she can say with some certainty that she is not in love with Helen. She is still not entirely certain what being in love feels like, but she knows it will come with a certain amount of dread, which she does not feel when looking at Helen. Helen Gansey is, then, safe, at least from Blue.

But the problem with Helen Gansey is that she looks like her brother, which means that she has a very pretty mouth. A mouth that, like her brother's, is unfairly kissable. A mouth that has been occupying an equally unfair number of Blue's thoughts, considering her no-kissing-just-in-case policy.

A mouth that is currently telling her something for what can't be the first time, judging by the look in the eyes above it.

"Sorry, what?" Blue asks. She's trying to remember what they were talking about before, after Ronan and Gansey and Adam had disappeared into another copse of trees but before she had gotten distracted by Helen's (still unfairly kissable) mouth. Something about the helicopter they're leaning against, she thinks, or maybe about Gansey's constant commandeering of it. Gansey's name had definitely been said. Probably.

There's a smile in Helen's voice when she says, again, "You look at me just like you look at my brother."

She's not wrong, but Blue sounds rather more defensive than she wants to when she says "Oh? How's that?" The single raised eyebrow stare that intimidates most of the cousins and second cousins at 300 Fox Way is less effective against Helen, but she tries it anyway.

"Like you want me." The smile reaches Helen's lips, curls them just slightly in a way that would be mocking on anyone else. But Helen is so matter-of-fact about the whole thing that it is impossible for her words to be anything but a truth. And even if wasn't, Blue thinks that this particular expression on Helen would make it difficult for anyone to think she hadn't become even more kissable.

Blue doesn't like non-psychics being right about her, especially before she's had a chance to be right about herself first, and she informs Helen of that — the first part, at least — in a voice that's actually remarkably steady. Ffter all, thinking that Helen is very kissable is not really the same as wanting to kiss Helen; she had known that second part for at least ten minutes, but hadn't quite gotten around to telling herself that yet.

Helen just smiles, settles herself back against the helicopter and crosses her arms. She looks faintly satisfied, but then again, Helen Gansey always looks faintly satisfied, usually with herself. "So," she says softly, scanning the clearing to make sure the boys aren't headed back yet, "are you going to do something about that?"

"Um," Blue responds, because she is nothing if not articulate. "I don't..." The answer to Helen's question should be I don't kiss people, of course, but that comes with a need for too many explanations. She hasn't even told Adam yet, and considering he is her boyfriend, she thinks he should probably be the first to know. "I don't go around kissing everyone with a pretty mouth just because I want to. I have manners."

She sounds, she thinks, just a little too petulant, but Helen doesn't seem at all put out. "What do your manners tell you to do if someone with a pretty mouth wants you to kiss them?"

They say not to, of course, when you're the sort of girl who could kill someone by kissing them. But she doesn't love Helen, and never will, and they both like it that way.

"Well," she hesitates, but Helen is warm and close and getting closer, that unfairly kissable mouth just inches from Blue's and a question in her eyes, and Blue has time to think well, it probably wouldn't count if she kissed me, anyway, before she says "Okay," and Helen's lips meet her own with a surprising gentleness.

Helen Gansey smells of thyme and leather and her warm hands on Blue's hips are a delightful contrast to the cold metal of the chopper at her back and none of this is at all practical but Blue wouldn't have it any other way.

Helen Gansey is not safe, but they can both pretend, just for now.