Chapter Text
▶️ Shania Twain, "Any Man of Mine" Spotify, YouTube
“Hi, you’ve reached Baz. I’m not able to – Hello?”
“Hey. Baz?”
“This is Baz.”
“Hey. This is Simon.”
“Hey.”
“How’s it going?”
“I just walked in the door.”
“Oh. Do you have roommates?”
“No…”
“Well, that explains why no one picked up when I called before.”
“You called before?”
“A couple times.”
“How many times?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay…Did you have work today?”
“Yeah, but I got off at three.”
“Nice.”
“Well, I started at six.”
“God. That’s early.”
“That’s construction. It’s okay. I like to get up early. Interrupt anyone’s dinner tonight?”
“Probably, but they were too polite to complain.”
“I would’ve complained.”
“Oh, I’m sure you would’ve.”
“I would’ve complained and then kept you on the phone, and demanded to know who you thought you were, calling to interrupt my dinner.”
“You would not.”
“Yeah, I would. If it meant getting to listen to your voice a little longer.”
“You’re terrible.”
“Sure am. You got plans tonight?”
“Watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Oh, fuck, I wasn’t going to tell you that.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
“Oh, god.”
“Shut up. Listen. Do you want to go out tonight?”
“Tonight? It’s Friday night.”
“Exactly. Ever been to Villager Tavern? It’s right down the street from your shop.”
“No…”
“Well, would you like to go with me?”
“You’re asking me to go – to go get a drink with you?”
“I’m asking you out on a date.”
“A date. Wait – are you even –”
“I like you, Baz.”
“Okay…”
“‘Okay,’ it’s okay that I like you, or ‘okay,’ you’ll go out on a date with me?”
“Both.”
“Alright then. Great. Seven o’clock?”
“Alright. Sure. Simon.”
“Yeah?”
“See you then.”
“See you then.”
Simon clunks the phone down on the receiver and exhales.
“What did he say?!” Penelope squeals.
“He said yes, obviously!”
“Yeah, but before that! You told him you like him!”
“He said…he said ‘okay.’”
“‘Okay’?”
“He said it was okay if I wanted to take him out on a date.”
Ever since that night at Pizza Perfect, Simon hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Baz.
Of course he’d noticed Baz at school. Hadn’t everyone? Their high school wasn’t that big. Maybe five hundred people. Baz stood out – tall, dramatic-looking, with his black hair falling in his eyes, and that widow’s peak. And he wore a black trench coat practically year-round, and black t-shirts, always for bands that Simon had never heard of. Baz was weird, and he thought he flew under the radar, but there was something about him that Simon had always noticed.
He just hadn’t been able to put his finger on what it was.
Not until he’d been sitting next to Penny at her (impressively accurate) tarot reading, and reached across the table to point, and literally put a finger on – him.
Baz Pitch, with his pale, pretty eyes.
With eyelashes that Simon had mentally catalogued away as especially long and lustrous, without ever examining why, exactly, he’d noticed them.
Looking into Baz’s eyes made Simon feel like someone had set him on fire.
(In a good way, in case that wasn’t obvious.)
Looking into Baz’s eyes was like the answer to a bar trivia question snapping into place just as he was about to concede defeat.
Oh.
Simon wasn’t sure if this meant he was gay. He could barely even say that word to himself inside his head.
But he was pretty sure Baz was gay. (The metrosexual fastidiousness of his clothes, for one thing. The eyeliner, for another.) And he was pretty sure he wanted to do something about it.
Well, now he’s done something about it. He just asked Baz out on a gay date. He didn’t have to do that. He could have just asked him to meet for a beer.
Simon spends the next hour trying to get Penelope to give him fashion advice.
“What about this one?” A button-up shirt with a dragon printed on it, one that he’d worn for Gareth’s bachelor party.
“Yeah, maybe not that one.”
“I don’t have anything nice,” Simon moans, unbuttoning the shirt and stripping down to his white t-shirt.
“Huh. That’s a look.”
“What, you think I should just wear my undershirt?”
“You’ve got more than one of those, right? Just layer another one on top. It’s very classic, jeans and a white t-shirt.”
“I don’t know if it’s good enough for Baz…”
“He seems like the kind of guy who would appreciate the old-Hollywood, James Dean look.”
“I don’t know who that is. But if you think I look alright, I’ll take your word for it.”
Simon stands in front of the bathroom mirror and straightens his hat. He catches Penny’s eye in the mirror behind him.
“What if he doesn’t show up?” he says softly.
“Then he’s not half the man you are,” Penelope says.
▶️ Toby Keith, "A Little Less Talk And A Lot More Action" Spotify, YouTube
But when Simon arrives, Baz is already there.
He’s wearing a button-up shirt, the sleeves folded up crisply above his elbows. Nice shoes, like he’s on his way to church. Really, really well-fitting pants. He’s got on sunglasses, but he takes them off when he notices Simon, tucks them into his breast pocket and rolls his shoulders back.
“Hey,” says Baz.
“Hey,” Simon responds, quickening his pace to reach Baz, stopping short only when he realizes he’s about to hug him. Wait – how does he normally greet other dudes? He ends up parlaying his open arms into a kind of shrug aimed towards the building. “You made it! C’mon.”
They order at the bar, and then Baz spots a table, small and high and out of the way. This is a date, Simon thinks as they settle down onto their respective stools. I’m on a date with Baz.
“So…” Simon says after a few minutes of silence. “What’s your sign?”
Baz raises an eyebrow. “You’re really asking me that?”
“They say it can tell you a lot about a person.”
“Well, you know, you can’t go judging people by their sun signs. It’s much more complex than that.”
“I know,” Simon grins. “Penny told me.”
“Wise woman.”
“So what is it – Scorpio?”
“Why would you say that?”
“Cause you’re so mysterious. That’s the mysterious one, right?”
Baz looks like he’s trying not to quirk a smile. “My sun is in Pisces.”
“Oooh.”
“You have no idea what that means.”
“You got that right.”
“My moon is in Cancer, although that probably tells you even less.”
“Are you an astronomer, too?”
“An astrologer – and no. What’s your sign, anyway?”
“Dunno.”
“I can’t believe you asked me my sign without even knowing what yours is. Don’t you ever read your horoscope in the newspaper, or anything?”
“No, I mean, I’ve tried, but I feel like it’s always saying something different.”
“I mean, horoscopes do change every day.”
“No,” Simon laughs, “I mean, it says a different sign sometimes.”
“Huh. When’s your birthday?”
“June twenty-first.”
“Ohh, that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why it sometimes says one or the other. June twenty-first is right around the solstice.”
“The what?”
“The first day of summer.”
“Is that an astrology holiday?”
“No, it’s just…it’s the longest day of the year. The day with the most daylight. It falls on a different day some years, and it’s also when the sun moves from Gemini to Cancer. So you could be either one.”
“Which do you think I am?”
“I don’t know.” Baz rests his chin in his hand and gazes at Simon. Simon can feel his cheeks flush. He changes the subject.
“I was thinking about what you said the other day.”
“About what.”
“About the devil. How you said it’s not about, you know, going to hell.” Simon glances around, but the bar is crowded, and no one is paying them any mind. “You know I grew up going to church. This stuff was completely forbidden. Like, it was devil worship, you know?” Simon pauses, realizing he’s talking about more than just the cards. He plows on. “But it’s not, like, magic, or anything, at all, is it? More like common sense.”
“You have more sense than most, Simon.” Baz says it softly, and Simon wonders if it’s in answer to the rest, to the part that he didn’t say.
“Would you like me to read another card for you?”
“Like a do-over? Cause the Devil was such a shitty card?”
“There are no bad cards! It’s just meant to shine a light on areas of your life that you might want to take a look at. But sometimes I do what’s called a clarifying card, if I want more information…like if it seems like a strange answer…”
“You have your cards with you?” But Baz is already pulling them out of his bag.
“Don’t you have to, like, smoke it, or whatever?”
“Huh?”
“Like, wave it around in the smoke?”
“Oh, to clear the energy – no. It’s, uh – it’s still imbued with your energy. I haven’t used this deck with anyone else since you.” Baz isn’t meeting his eyes. Simon waits until Baz looks back at him.
It’s like a jolt of electricity when he does.
“Is that right.” Simon swallows. “Go on and pull a card, then.”
Baz shuffles the deck. Simon panics for a moment – this is definitely a gay thing, getting a tarot reading from your date in a bar – but then he thinks, relax. People are just gonna think you’re playing cards. That’s not gay at all.
Baz turns over a card.
The illustrations on these cards are so different than the ones Baz used for Penny’s reading – they’re lusher, wilder. They’re a little scarier, honestly. The other deck looked like little pretend people, like a storybook.
Whatever Simon’d just said about tarot not being magic, these cards do look a little magical.
“The Queen of Swords,” Baz says.
Simon can see the shape of a woman, regal, holding a sword, holding a ghoulish face. “Why does that sound familiar?”
“This card came up in Penelope’s reading, too,” Baz says.
“Huh. What’s it mean again?”
“It’s about self-reliance. Standing in your power. If we look at it as a continuation from the Devil – it’s saying you don’t have to apologize for being who you are. You don’t have to worry about people liking you.”
“It’s not a great feeling, people not liking you.”
“Most of the time, I’d tell people that it doesn’t matter.” Baz drops his voice to a whisper and meets Simon’s eyes again. “But you, Simon – you don’t have to worry about it, because people do like you. Sometimes in spite of themselves.”
Baz whispering across the table to him, in a dimly-lit bar – if Baz were a girl, Simon thinks, he’d be reaching across the table, to – well, he’s not sure he even likes girls anymore, or if he ever did, he just knows that if Baz were someone he was allowed to touch, he would’ve already touched him.
He does anyway.
He pretends to be reaching for the card, but he grazes Baz’s forearm with his knuckles instead.
Baz looks down at their hands on the table and shifts his arm, just slightly, but enough to make it feel like he’s leaned into the contact of Simon’s hand.
▶️ Bow Wow Wow, "Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear To Tread)" Spotify, YouTube
“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Simon whispers. Because maybe he’s imagining all this – Baz leaning in to his touch, Baz telling him he’s likeable.
“Like where?” Baz is still whispering, too. Leaning in to hear Simon’s response.
“Take a walk? Something?”
“Yeah,” says Baz. “I know a place.”
They leave their drinks half-finished; another couple descends on their abandoned table before they’ve gone a few feet. (Simon turns those words over in his head. Another couple.)
It’s still light out – it’s May, and the sunshine makes it feel earlier than it is, but the heat has let up.
“Do we need to drive?”
“We can walk,” Baz says, “if you don’t mind a bit of a walk.”
“Where are we going, downtown?”
“That’s more than a bit of a walk. No, just over here. C’mon.”
They walk in silence for a few minutes. Simon doesn’t really know this part of town, and he can’t guess where they’re going; his and Penelope’s apartment is closer to Murfreesboro. Penelope came up with Villager Tavern, God bless. (“Just take him somewhere you normally go, Simon.” “I don’t normally go anywhere in the city. I don’t even know anything that’s not downtown.” “True. Somehow I don’t think Baz is a ‘downtown with the guys at Hooters on a Friday night’ kind of guy.” “Penny.” “I don’t think you are either, for that matter.” “What do you mean by that?” “Oh, God, Simon. Here. Go here” – waving a page of the Scene’s nightlife section at him – “He’ll know where it is, it’s down the street from his shop.”)
Simon finally breaks the silence. “Where do you live?”
“Not far from here. Near the Vanderbilt campus.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
“My apartment?”
Simon feels himself redden. “No, the campus.”
“Nah, I was thinking – Centennial Park?”
“I’ve never been there.”
“It’s a bit of a walk, but it’s nice out now – do you mind?”
“I don’t mind.”
Simon sneaks peeks at Baz’s profile as they walk. He’s older…he really has grown up since high school.
He catches Baz peeking back at him once and looks quickly away. He wonders what Baz is thinking.
They cross a street, and Simon realizes they’re here: the edge of a green city park, the smell of fresh-mown grass wafting towards them. Baz hops the low stone fence. Simon grins and follows him across the lawn.
“This park is really nice.”
“It’s too bad they’re still doing work on the Parthenon.”
“Isn’t that in ancient Greece?”
“You know there’s one here, too, right?” Baz points to a distant structure swathed in scaffolding. “Isn’t that your thing?”
“I told you, I dropped Greek.”
“I meant the construction.”
“Ah, yeah.”
“I can actually speak a little Greek, you know.”
“Really.”
“That’s what I studied. Ancient Greek history, culture, language.”
“Well, that makes sense why you’re not a chef.”
“Naí.”
“No?”
“That’s Greek for ‘yes.’ Eν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα.” 1
“Now you’re just showing off.”
“I am.”
“I am impressed.”
“I know.”
Simon smacks him on the arm.
Baz catches his wrist and tugs.
Simon stumbles forward, throwing out his other arm to catch himself - on Baz's shoulder. Baz grabs that wrist, too; his mouth is inches away, open in a laugh, and Simon has just enough time to wonder if one of them will close the distance before he's kissing Baz open-mouthed in the middle of the park, wrestling his wrist free of Baz's hand so he can tangle his fingers in Baz's hair, at the base of Baz's skull, pulling Baz's face more firmly closer. Baz's lips are soft but his jaw is strong, sturdier than Simon knew a jaw could be; with Agatha - with girls - no, no, never mind. With Baz, kissing is taut, relentless, torrid. Simon feels like he needs to break something, or set something on fire, immediately.
Maybe he already has.
▶️ Sixpence None The Richer, "Kiss Me" Spotify, YouTube
The next morning, Baz shuffles and pulls his daily card from the Thoth deck.
Simon comes padding back into his bedroom, barefoot and in boxers, slinks back into bed next to Baz and peeks at the card. “Is that one for me or for you?”
Baz rolls his eyes. “It’s for me.”
Simon headbutts his arm like a cat. “Oh, yeah? I notice you used my deck.”
“It’s not your deck.”
“Mm hmm.”
“Alright. Maybe this one is for both of us.”
“What card is it?”
“The Two of Cups.”
“Is that a good card?”
“I told you, there aren’t good and bad cards.”
“Suuure.”
“Seriously! It’s all about giving you the tools you need to –”
“You’re cute when you talk all smart and shit.”
“You –”
Simon sits up and kisses Baz on the mouth.
Because he can.
He pushes Baz all the way back down into his fluffy pillows, scuffing his lips against Baz’s stubble, and Baz giggles and pretends to push him away.
Simon kisses a trail across Baz’s cheek to his left ear. “It’s a good card,” Simon whispers.
“How do you know?”
“Cause.” Simon nips his ear. “You’re smiling, babe.”
Baz holds the card up above their faces: two sea creatures, tails intertwined. “It is a good card,” Baz admits.
“Told you so.”
“Next I know, you're gonna be after my job.”
“I could never, Baz.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, I'd make a shit telemarketer.”
“You absolute nightmare.”
“Uh huh. So. Kiss me.”