Disclaimer: I do not own the Raven Cycle!

Emergency Dance Party

Blue sighed, tromping through the puddles on the sidewalk. Ever since her mother had disappeared, she'd taken to avoiding her own home that was so full of her mother's touch, and to a point, even the boys. She'd started wandering around with her trusty pink switchblade that Noah had dumped 'The Pink Brigade' and Ronan had called 'Hot Pink Disaster.' Mr. Grey had since taught her to wield it affectively. It had nearly been an hour since she'd ventured into the rain, and she was completely soaked.

Glancing up, her eyebrows drew together in confusion. She'd been on autopilot. Monmouth Manufacturing loomed above her, forever inviting against the dark skies. The top windows blazed with lamp light, a sure sign the boys were home.

Rolling her eyes and glaring at her feet accusingly, she stomped up the steps to the top floor, punishing her feet with every step. If she was already there, she might as well go say hello, say sorry for avoiding them while they were looking for her mother, and come up with a game plan that would successfully return her mother to her and find Glendower.

She entered the building without knocking, comfortable enough now with the boys that she knew she didn't have to. It wasn't like they ever knocked at 300 Fox Way anymore. They had walked in on more than one occasion now of the women there strolling around in their underwear sipping their respective alcohols on Sundays. Blue was no exception to days like those save for the alcohol.

So she wasn't at all surprised to find the boys all sprawled out on the concrete floors in only their boxers. Ronan looked like he'd passed out. Noah looked higher than a storm-blown kite. Gansey had a book open over his face, a Physics textbook. Adam sat at the desk, his head resting on the polished wood, papers and a book pushed to the edge. They were listening to some god-awful music that rang sourly in Blue's ears on Ronan's stereo system.

Water puddled on the floor at the corners of the doors. On them hung the boys' soaked clothes.

Blue smirked. So that's why they were all half naked.

Ronan, Noah and Adam's heads rose to stare at her as the door slammed shut behind her. Gansey simply raised a hand in greeting and said, "Hello, Jane. Lovely outside, isn't it?" He reached out blindly, spinning down the volume dial on the stereo.

"Absolutely beautiful," Blue replied, shedding her sweater and hanging it on the doorknob. She slipped out of her shoes, placing them beside the boys' similarly water-logged ones, draping her damp socks over them. "What is that awful music you're listening to?"

"It's not awful. It's calming," Gansey told her, finally pushing the book up enough to watch her.

Blue shook her head. "More like tumor forming."

"Do you want a towel?" Adam asked from the bathroom doorway.

"Yes, thanks," she told him, not meeting his eyes. She was still staring down at Gansey, at his bare, tanned chest. "How did you know it was me?"

"Your stomping is very distinctive."

"Whatever," she said with a roll of her eyes, catching the towel Adam tossed her. He held a button-up shirt up for her inspection, watching her questioningly. "What's that for?" she asked, toweling her hair dry.

"Well… do you want to change? So you don't get sick? This is Gansey's. It's clean… I think," he explained, holding it out to her. He shrugged. "Relatively clean. As clean as anything owned by a being of the male persuasion can be."

"Right," Blue said slowly, staring down at herself. Her clothes were soaked and her shirt was see-through, and the temptation of being swathed in Gansey's scent called to her. She nodded without a second thought, catching the shirt as it flew towards her. "Yeah, sure, sounds like a plan. I don't need to be getting sick when we need to be finding my mother."

She fell through the bathroom door, closing it softly behind her. Sighing, she stepped into the middle of the tiled room and shed her outer skin. Her clothing slipped into a soggy pile on the floor, leaking water into the grout. The shirt slipped silkily along her skin and over her head.

Pressing the cool material to her face, she inhaled deeply. It smelled of mint, just like Gansey, and laundry detergent. Comfortable warmth curled through her stomach.

Releasing the breath through her nose, Blue hung her clothes along the shower rod and returned to the boys. They were right where she'd left them, but Gansey's fingers were fiddling with the stereo. She stood in the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest, staring at the four. She partly had her arms folded because she was still cold, and partly to cover her brightly colored bra. That didn't help in the case of her underwear, but at some point, modesty had fled her.

Suddenly, the music changed. It became light and exuberant, a bright voice adding easy lyrics to the melody. All eyes turned to Gansey, questioning, but he still had his textbook covering his eyes. "Is that better, Jane?" he asked, voice muffled by the pages of Physics.

"Much better," Blue replied.

Noah scrambled to his feet. "Come on, Blue," he said, grinning widely, "Let's dance." He grabbed her hands, jumping up and down as he pulled her towards the middle of the room. He pushed furniture, books and clothes out of the way with his feet, making a wide enough dance floor that if they lay down and rolled around, they wouldn't hit anything.

Laughing, she allowed herself to be dragged away from the doorway. When they were standing in the middle of Noah's makeshift dance floor, hands clasped together, she let the music sink into her bones. With only a glance up and simple smile, she and Noah started moving as one, letting their bodies flow with the music.

Their dancing was formless fun. They bounced around each other. They twirled each other. They clasped hands, stretching out their arms, rocking back and forth as they laughed into each other's necks. They grasped the other's forearms, jerking them back and forth as they twisted their hips in time with the beat.

By the time the tenth song had gone by, Blue was breathing hard, slumped on the ground. "I can't feel my hips," she laughed, fanning herself.

The music faded, changing to a calm, instrumental song. It was soft and sweet, though a darkness lurked beneath every note. "Looks like it is my turn," Adam interjected, taking Blue's hand from Noah and pulling her up, "Do you know how to waltz?"

"Relatively," Blue said, taking Adam's hand and resting her other on his shoulder. They stayed nearly arm's length apart, watching each other carefully. Since their fight in Blue's room, they'd sparsely looked each other in the eye, let alone talked for more than a few clipped sentences.

As Adam took the lead, guiding her effortlessly through a slow waltz, he swallowed. "I'm sorry… for what I said in your bedroom," he murmured so that only she could hear him.

"I would say 'it's okay', but it's not," she replied before glancing down between them. "I probably could have handled the situation better."

"And I could have asked a different question."

"And I could have just been honest with you from the beginning."

"And I could have-"

Blue cut him off with a sigh. "It's just a bunch of ifs, ands, or buts at this point. I think… we should just forget about it. Pretend that it never happened. I think we'll both be happier that way."

Adam nodded, and smiled softly. Blue smiled back, and they dissolved into relieved laughter. They closed the distance only by a few inches, but that was all they needed. Still laughing, Blue settled her head on Adam's chest and Adam pressed his cheek to the top of her head. Somehow, they were still managing to waltz without so much as faltering.

Their falter came when the music suddenly shifted to something dark and taunting. The beat quickly turned harsh and staccato, lyrics floating between each note, vulgar and sexual and vulgarly sexual.

"My turn," Ronan interjected, taking Blue's hand from Adam's, "Let me show you amateurs how you're supposed to dance with someone."

"No grinding," Blue said immediately as Adam handed her off and stepped out of their circle, "That's not dancing."

Ronan rolled his eyes. "Don't insult me. Just follow my lead, woman. That might be a little hard for you." He pulled her close against his body, making a single, uninterrupted line down their bodies.

"Oh, shut up, Ronan," she spat back, matching him step for step as the music's pulse accelerated.

Their dance followed a complicated pattern full of dips and thigh grabs, hands shoved up loose clothing and ass grabs, legs tossed around waists and knees pressed between thighs that neither were uncomfortable with. Their movements flowed smoothly with the animalistic quality of the music. Blue followed near perfectly as if they'd danced this dance many times before. In a way they had, always throwing verbal jabs at each other and stomping around each other's beliefs, though never had it been sexual.

Laughing together, Ronan dipped Blue low towards the floor, the loose strands of her hair brushing the concrete. "Don't drop me," she warned him, letting her arms touch the floor. She had more trust in him than she let on.

"Don't insult me. I'm not weak like Noah," he growled in her ear as he pulled her back into his body.

"Hey!" Noah shouted indignantly from across the room, his voice drowning in the changing of the music, "I heard that!"

"No, you didn't!" Ronan shouted back. His eyes glanced over her shoulder, locking with someone's for a short moment. When they returned to her, he spun her away without so much as a warning. She was caught easily by warm, strong hands.

"My turn," Gansey said, a grin in his voice.

Blue's heart, already racing from the dances with her three other partners, fluttered in her chest like a humming bird's wings. Turning, she smiled up at him.

Ronan was selecting the song, so they simply stood there having a silent conversation. The three standing outside the circle were sure the pair had no idea how they were looking at each other. How they always looked at each other.

When they did begin to dance, it was so much more different than the others. Gansey's dancing was like dancing with all four of the boys at once. There was Noah's innocence, Adam's structure, Ronan's savagery, and a brand of dancing that was specific to Gansey and Gansey alone. She had no idea how to explain it, even to herself, but she loved it.

"Let's dance," Ronan shot at Adam, grabbing his hands and pulling him into him. They were even closer than Ronan and Blue had been, face to face with no expression on their mouths. Blue and Gansey, Ronan and Adam rotated around each other, like moons orbiting a planet.

When Blue glanced back at them, Adam was grinning and Ronan was smirking. Noah danced in the middle of their orbit, acting as their planet.

Collapsing on the floor with exhaustion after another set of songs, they laughed. It felt to Blue as if she hadn't truly laughed in a long time, though it had probably only been a few weeks. It felt wonderful to feel those laughs bubbling up her throat once more.

His fingers wrapped in hers, Gansey pulled her towards him, smiling widely. "I wish we could all stay like this forever," he whispered to her, brushing stray locks of her hair behind her ear. "No worries. No cares. No sadness."

"Me too," she told him, squeezing his fingers. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder.

"But sadly, we can't," he said, sitting up and looking around the room at the map of the ley line, at the stacks of books, at his reconstructed model of little Henrietta. "Now, what are we going to do to find your mother?"

"I don't know, but I'm sending this to Persephone," Adam laughed, sitting with his legs tangled in Ronan's, holding Ronan's cell up for the pair to see the screen. A video of the group's dance session played across the screen.

"Absolutely not!" Blue cried, lunging across Gansey to grab at the phone.

Ronan's smirk deepened. "Too late."

"I am never going to hear the end of it!" Blue shouted at them, but her anger was dampened by the smile playing across her lips. "I hope the next time you all come over that they do to you what they're going to do to me."

"And I wish Chainsaw wouldn't steal my socks, but look at how many of them are missing," Ronan replied.

Sticking out her tongue, Blue shook her head. "You are all impossible. I don't know why I stick around."

"Because of days like this," Gansey said.

Blue shrugged her shoulders. "I can't argue with that."

Well, I hope y'all liked it. That was only my second Raven Cycle fic and I hope I did alright. I hope y'all had as much fun reading it as I had writing it.