Chapter Text
EPILOGUE
PENELOPE
I really hope this isn’t going to be an annual thing.
I can’t believe I was naïve enough to believe that all of this would stop after Watford. That the fight with the Humdrum and the death of the Mage would be the end.
I’m kind of glad it wasn’t though.
It’s the final day of our holiday, and for once, we decided not to rush off at the crack of dawn.
Instead, we’re all having brunch together.
And it’s all I wanted from our time away.
Between us, we have an assortment of pancakes, waffles, berries, toast—half of which is shaped like Disney characters. Despite the clear-cut capitalism of it all, I think I might actually love it.
“Just please promise me there are no other magickal creatures that have vendettas against you, that I don’t know about?” Baz pleads, as Simon recounts the battle as if we weren’t all there, towards the end of the meal.
Simon shoots a look at me.
“Baz, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with the list of magickal beings that have vendettas against Simon,” I say. There are too many times to count, and that’s just the times I’m aware of.
“And me!” Shepard pipes up.
I groan. “One problem at a time, Shep.” I will not be giving my first born away to an imp.
We pay for the meal, and go to head out into the parks for our final day of rides. I’m determined to ride something other than It’s a Small World.
Simon stops us, though, just before we go to the entrance gates.
“Um. You guys go on without us. I’m sure you have enough to do. And I kind of… I kind of have something else in mind for me and Baz.”
“Do you, Snow?” Baz looks just as surprised as I feel, as he raises an eyebrow and pulls Simon closer to him.
“Uh. Yeah. I mean, unless you just wanted to do more rides?”
“No. No, I’d love to do your thing, Simon.”
I smile at them. At how far they’ve come. At how far we’ve all come. “We’ll see you guys tonight, then?”
Shepard waves at them as we go to walk away. “Text us if you need anything!”
And Simon’s smile almost, almost mirrors Shepard’s. And I think about what this whole trip was about. And how much goodness Shep has brought into our lives. All of our lives, even in subtle ways. I dread to think where any of us would be without him.
We spend the rest of the day doing whatever I want, just me and Shepard.
We laugh our way through Big Thunder Mountain. Clutch onto each other’s hands on Tower of Terror. Get into a competitive battle on Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast. (I win.) (Obviously.)
Shepard trades pins with small children, and I smile easily at him as I watch him. I bask in the everlasting sunlight that is Shepard Love, that is simultaneously the easiest, and most precious relationship I’ve ever maintained.
We may have battled demons, and vampires, and leprechauns, but I’d do it all over again. I’d ride that stupid fucking magic-forsaken ride over and over again if I had to. For him, I’d go through it all.
BAZ
Simon Snow might think he’s being sly, but there’s only so many places you can go from the Disneyland Paris train station.
Though the word Paris is literally in the name, the parks are actually a fair distance from Paris itself. Simon lets me sit by the window, and I can’t quite look away as we pull in closer to the city centre. He still hasn’t actually told me the plan, but even just this, this is enough.
Simon and I together in the city of love? I can’t imagine seventeen-year-old Baz would even be able to comprehend it.
He smiles at me, as the train reaches Gare de Lyon, holding his hand out to me when we stand up, despite the crowds of people on the train. I smile back, as I think about trains, and Paris, and progress, and mostly, always, Simon Snow.
“I thought, maybe, we could take the Metro to the Eiffel Tower?” he asks, as we step into the station.
“That sounds amazing, Simon.”
“Okay. Cool. Because I already booked us tickets.”
I stare at him for a moment. At this incredible man I have the pleasure of being in Paris with, who knew to book the Eiffel Tower before we came into Paris, who must’ve done this last night, whilst I was asleep beside him in the same bed.
People have spent their lives overestimating Simon Snow, great Chosen One and saver of worlds. But Simon constantly exceeds my expectations, frequently surprises me with so much goodness, that someone that has endured so much cruelty surely shouldn’t be capable of possessing.
We take the Metro and reach the right stop with few issues. We’re walking (hand-in-hand again) leisurely towards the Eiffel Tower, which truly does just tower over you (I live in central London, and I’m still rendered speechless by it), when Simon lets go of my hand.
I let him go easily, used to and understanding of his mood still sometimes changing like the wind, but that doesn’t seem to have anything to do with it.
“Back in a sec!” he says, simply, and darts into a shop. I stare up at the sign.
A real authentic French pâtisserie.
When he emerges, five minutes later, he’s carrying two pastries.
“I know we had brunch, but that’s not really a real meal. Which, I guess, neither is this but. I was hungry. Real French pain au chocolats.” He butchers the pronunciation and it’s beautiful on his tongue.
He hands one to me, as I continue to stare at him in amazement. I watch him take a bite out of his, entirely mesmerised. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any single thing more reminiscent of my dreams, except better, because it’s not Simon Snow here, it’s just Simon, with icing sugar round his mouth and chocolate spilling out the end of the flaky pastry.
I take a bite of my own, and it just about completes the heaven tableaux.
We go to the top of the Eiffel Tower (we used the lift. Simon insisted we’d be able to walk it, but I don’t think he’s a particularly good judge of distance.). The view from the top is indescribable. It would be entirely pointless to attempt to put it into words for human comprehension, as there are simply none powerful enough.
Simon’s kisses taste of sugar against an antique skyline.
Evening is beginning to fall upon as we reach the bottom, though you’d hardly know it in the city sun. I expect us to head back to the train station, so we can get back early and not panic Penny, but before I even have a chance to ask, Simon’s pulling us in a different direction.
“There’s one more place I thought we should go,” he says, smiling sheepishly at me. “If that’s okay. I mean, if you want to.”
“Simon, I always want to with you.”
“Okay, Baz.”
We walk for a few minutes, and reach the entrance of a restaurant. The kind of restaurant I didn’t ever expect Simon to pick for himself.
“Wait here,” he commands, dropping my hand, and going to talk to the host. I hear his voice drift over, as he asks about a reservation under ‘Snow’. I shiver just from the simple sound of it. The surety in his voice, the prepared tone. I think I fall more and more in love with Simon every day. Each time I think I’ve reached a ceiling, I discover more and more room. I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving him more.
I think love is simply infinite and immeasurable.
We’re led to a table outside on the patio, close enough to the river that I can smell it on the breeze. We’re barely seated with our menus when Simon blurts out, “We can go somewhere else if you hate it.”
I pause in folding my napkin to properly look at him. “Hate it? Simon, how in Merlin’s name could I hate it?”
He fidgets with the corner of the tablecloth, rhythmically folding it between his fingers. “I don’t know. I just don’t know if I’ve got this right. And I really don’t want to fuck it up for you. Because I know Paris is important to you. So I’d rather you just told me you hate it now, so we can go somewhere else, rather than you just pretend to not hurt my feelings.”
“Simon, you are an utterly ridiculous creature, and Aleister Crowley do I love you.”
He still doesn’t meet my eyes. “I know. I know you love me. So I won’t take it personally if you tell me this is wrong. I love you, and I want us to get it right.”
“I couldn’t have gotten this more right if I’d organised it myself! Snow—Simon, look at me.” He slowly turns his gaze up to me. “How did you even know? How did you even get this all so right? I’ve never even mentioned Paris to you.”
He raises an eyebrow, a look he must’ve gotten from me. “You’re a lot of things, Basilton Pitch, but you’re not subtle.” He uses a free hand to gesture to my floral shirt, and I roll my eyes.
But I am subtle though, that’s the thing. Granted, maybe not in my dress sense more recently, but in everything else in my life, I’m a fairly closed book. My stepmother used to joke that she needed a spell to come up with my Christmas presents. I believed for a long time that my mother was the only one to truly understand me, the only one that would ever be able to truly understand me.
But I was wrong. Because no one sees me like Simon does. No one ever has. Least of all my mother. Because I was four years old then, and yet to meet the kinds of complexities that only followed after my mother’s death. And maybe she would’ve understood me. Maybe she would’ve talked me through puberty and held my hand and listened to my hopeless unrequited love for my roommate.
Or maybe she wouldn’t have. Maybe she would’ve been a homophobe, maybe she would’ve supported my father in ignoring the problem. Maybe she would’ve killed me like she killed herself when she understood what I was.
But the reality is, I’ll never know. I’ll never know who my mother really was, or who she could’ve been. And maybe I’m learning to be okay with that.
But Simon, sitting right in front of me, an anxious expression on his face as he gets every single one of my sixth-year fantasies correct without my ever telling him? Simon is impossibly real and impossibly mine. And inexplicably he sees me. He sees me and he knows me and he loves me, and what more could I ever ask for?
“You get me though,” I tell him, quietly, in a voice that couldn’t possibly display my depth of emotion, though fuck me I’m going to try. “You get me like nobody else does.”
He stares back into my eyes, properly, and they widen slightly in what I hope to be understanding. It’s clichéd, but his eyes are limitless. Sometimes I like to think there are shades of otherwise unremarkable blue in there especially for me to analyse.
“You get me too, Baz. No one else—no one else would’ve stuck by me like you. Last year. Through all that shit. Penny tries her best, but I don’t think anyone else actually understands what it’s like. What all of this bullshit has been like.”
I clasp his hand across the table. “I know. I know, Simon.”
“That’s part of what this day was about. I just want you to know—to realise—how much I fucking appreciate you.”
I shake my head at him in wonder. “You don’t need to. I mean, today has been perfect, and I mean that literally and objectively. But you don’t need to prove yourself to me. This is all give and take, Simon, and from my end, you’ve given so much.”
He squeezes my hand tighter. “I love you, Baz.”
“I love you too. Always. That will never be up for debate.”
“Even if we have to fight more stupid shit?”
“I knew what I signed up for when I fell in love with you.”
When dessert comes, I lick chocolate mousse from the edge of Simon’s tongue, and think about the engagement ring that will inevitably one day be hidden in there.