Chapter Text
+ 1. BAZ
Right when my tear ducts are moisturised enough to handle my thirteenth reread (or so) of Volume 3, Chapter 16 of Pride and Prejudice, Simon barrels into our room and places a clipboard covered in his barely legible scrawls between my eyes and Darcy’s second proposal.
I want to scream at the sacrilege, but he’s waving it like a kid who’s showing his parent a good grade on an assignment about how many kinds of arthropods exist on Earth, so I snatch it out of his hands to make out the title.
Debunking Vampire Myths with My Boyfriend, the first line reads.
I meet his expectant smile with a raised eyebrow, and he takes the clipboard back before I can decipher the rest of the alarmingly full page. He’s bouncing on the balls of his feet like an excited puppy, and I wonder how could I ever think of him as someone untouchable and unreachable. He is a sarcastic little demon with a strong no-bullshit attitude (except when the bullshit is his), but deep down he’s just a ball of nerves and enthusiastic energy.
“What is this?” I ask, eyeing my book with longing. I thought Simon wouldn’t come back for at least one more hour, and I really wanted to finish reading and have a cathartic cry fest.
“A script,” he says, as if it answered my question. He sits on my desk, right on his Magic Words homework he asked me to proofread yesterday, and lays the clipboard on his lap. I manage to discern some of the words—blood? death? sparkle?—before focusing on his face. He should’ve had rugby practice this morning, but he either skipped (my money’s on it) or overcame his fear of locker room showers.
I rest my hand on his cheek and he leans into it, briefly turning to kiss my palm. I can’t believe I haven’t touched him yet today. (Though I would’ve murdered him if he had tried to wake me up when he left for breakfast—it’s Saturday, and I made my priorities in this relationship very clear.) “A script for what?”
“For our new YouTube video. Or podcast. Or whatever, I haven’t decided yet.”
My eyebrow threatens to blend in with my hairline, and I let my hand drop on his thigh. “Are you a YouTuber now?”
“I might be,” he shrugs, interlacing his fingers with mine. “Remember when you were reading me Twilight?”
“Oh, I didn’t think you were paying attention,” I smirk, and he groans. I know he was paying attention, even though it didn’t have the hoped effect—I heard his breath and his heartbeat slow down as I went on that night, and he’s made it clear countless times that he loves when I read to him, since we started dating. But I enjoy riling him up, what can I say?
“Shut up, you told me I can’t apologise anymore for ignoring you and all that, so don’t force me to do it,” he pouts.
I stick out my tongue at him, and he reciprocates, because we’re nothing but five-year-olds, and I have to pull him down by the front of his t-shirt to kiss him. He only concedes me a quick peck, though, before pushing me away and resuming his explanation. “Anyway, you read me that part where Bella asks all those questions about vampires, and I wrote down a list so we can do it too.”
“And why should we?” I cross my arms on my chest, leaning against the back of the chair and looking up at him.
“To fight disinformation, of course!”
“Not to give your kinks more ammunition?”
“You offend me,” he says, a hand to his chest and eyes widening as he feigns shock and consternation. “My life is devoted to research and divulgation only, I don’t have time for such carnal distractions.”
I poke his thighs, and his blush gives away just how much he’s thinking of all the carnal distractions his legs were involved in last night. I know I am thinking about it. (Trust him to be a god at sex even though he told me he’d never gone past a blow job before…) (Apparently, I should thank Gareth for that.)
“All right,” I say, before reminiscence can derail this conversation further. “Let me finish the chapter, and maybe I’ll consider it.”
He huffs, disappointed, but he leaves my desk to sit on the edge of my bed. (We slept in his last night, and it’s still unmade.) He’s holding his clipboard in his lap, and he manages to stay silent and still for the entirety of two minutes before his restlessness takes over.
I study him from the corner of my eye. He drums his fingers on the clipboard, sighs, presses his hands on his knees to keep his legs still. Then he throws himself back on the bed and sighs again. “Read to me?” He whispers.
I do.
—
Half an hour later, we’re sitting next to each other on my bed, and Simon spells his phone to float in front of us.
“There is a spell for that?” I ask, but he ignores me.
“So,” he starts, his eyebrows already scrunched together in concentration, “I’m going to ask you some questions. You answer, and if we fuck up we can edit it later.”
I want to tell him that I don’t think we should put this thing online in any form, but I’m helpless when it comes to denying him one of the stupid activities he comes up with. So I just nod.
“Right. Okay.” He waves his wand so that his phone starts recording. (Don’t all of our teachers keep saying that you should avoid mixing magic and technology?) He looks at the camera, and I try to muster my most photogenic energy. Not that it’s hard.
“Hello! I am Simon, and this,” he gestures to me in an excessively dramatic way, like I’m rare merch he’s selling at auction, and not laughing is almost impossible, “is my boyfriend Baz.”
I wave at the camera. “Remember when you called me Tyrannus for more than seven years?” I grin, and he hits my head with his clipboard. Fair.
“He’s a vampire, and today he’ll tell us if all the stereotypes we hear about these mysterious creatures all the time are true facts or myths.”
I doubt I’m up to the job, but I know better than to try to dissuade him. I learnt my lesson.
“So, Baz, let’s start with something simple.” He pretends to be studying his list of questions, but his shit-eating grin tells me he has already chosen, and he’s feeling too pleased with himself. “Can you see yourself in mirrors? And if not, how can you be so sexy all the time?”
I snort, and take a deep breath to find my composure. “That one is a myth,” I say. “It originated from the belief that silver is one of the strongest repellents against vampires, and the reflective surface of mirrors can be made of silver.” Simon swallows. It’s a whole show—I’ll make a GIF of it as soon as I can get my hands on this video. (I’m sure he’s doing this whole interview just because he finds vampire talk and me explaining things arousing, anyway.) “Which is also the reason behind the belief that vampires wouldn’t show in photographs, since silver was used in early photography and sometimes even today.”
I bump my knee against Simon’s, and he almost jumps, his whole face turning the deepest shade of red. He’s ridiculous. (I love him.) “But the effect of silver on vampires is overestimated, anyway,” I continue. “I’m just mildly allergic to it, with some antihistamines I’m good as new. And I can see my reflection on silver cutlery, which disproves the mirror theory altogether.”
Simon hums, lost in thought. I’m ready to ask him if he wants to stop with this farce and use our afternoon in bed for more interesting activities, but he looks resolutely at the camera and nods. “Since we’re on the vampire repellents topic, what about garlic?”
“I’m 25% Italian, Snow. Garlic cannot touch me.”
He blushes even more. I’m glad I asked my mother if we can practice our Italian this summer—Snow definitely has a thing for it, and I’m not going to let it go to waste.
“But being Italian doesn’t protect you from crosses,” he observes.
“I’m sorry if being a zealous Catholic doesn’t depend on genetics,” I huff. “Crosses make me itchy and nauseous, and touching one burns me.”
“So you aren’t invulnerable.”
“I’m not. My pain threshold is absurdly high, and I feel it when I get hurt. But I heal quickly, and most things that would kill everyone barely hurt me.”
“But you’d die if I staked you through the heart.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“And you’re flammable.”
“Isn’t anyone?”
“You’re a little shit.”
“You love it.”
“I love you,” he says, and I tackle him on the bed.
—
Covering his whole face with kisses and making him repeat those three words for twenty minutes do nothing to weaken his commitment to vampire research.
“So, do your fangs just pierce the skin, or are they little straws?” he asks while I’m sucking a hickey below his ear. I ignore him. “You should give me a practical demonstration.”
I let go of his neck to glare at him. “They’re not straws. And you know it because I’ve already given you a ‘practical demonstration’.”
I sit back on his thighs and watch as his blush spreads to his bare chest. (I left a hickey there, too.) (Rugby practice does wonders for his pecs.) “Again?” he asks, and I press a kiss on his navel.
“Can’t have too much human blood, remember? That’s what makes vampires immortal.”
He whines, and it makes me laugh. Because he’s ridiculous, and he loves me, and he let me bite his wrist last week. It was messy, and I spilled on the sheets more blood than I drank because I was afraid of losing control, but it was good. He tasted of cinnamon, and bacon, and too much butter, and I can’t wait to do it again.
“But don’t you need it to feel better?”
“I told you, I’m fine.” I’m only fine because Fiona researched and came back with nutritional plans for vampires. (I don’t want to know what her research required her to do.) (She should compare vampire kink notes with Simon.) “We’ll keep it for special occasions.”
He whines again, and I move up his body to kiss his nose.
“We should get some more family-friendly footage for our video,” he mumbles. “I still need to know if vampires sleep in coffins—”
“I sleep in your arms.”
“And if they need to breathe—”
I wink. “We established I have a pretty good resistance.”
“And if they sparkle in the sun.”
I shut him up with a kiss.
—
In the end, what saves me from one more page of inane questions (I can see a “thrall” capitalised and circled in red, and I do not want to hear his ideas about that) is a rock against our window.
It’s the most idiotic way to catch our attention. We both have phones, and our room overlooks the moat—there’s no way to throw anything to our window without magicking it, and if one wants to use magic they might as well send a bird.
Sighing, I free my limbs from Simon's and throw my shirt on my shoulders, not bothering to button it. I open the window and find a flat and polished stone on the ledge.
I know it's from Wellbelove before I even pick it up, and yet I almost drop it when I hear her voice coming out of it. Why is everyone using weird spells today?
“What were you doing locked in your room on a splendid May afternoon?” she drawls, and I can feel her eyebrows waggling as she speaks.
“Nothing exciting,” I lie. “Snow decided he wants to use me to become an Internet celebrity.”
“Oh, is it about the vampire video?” she asks, and I glare at Snow's arse, the only part of him that's well in sight (and what a sight) from where he's kneeling on the floor to look for his t-shirt under the bed. “I think it's a fun idea! And Penelope's been working on a spell to create a corner of the Internet you can access only if you have magic.” Simon's arse perks up even higher, and the way his trousers are riding ridiculously low makes me miss half of what Wellbelove says next. Something about Bunce wanting to turn the Internet into a safe space for magicians and creatures, so that we can use its tools to exchange information and research data without risking revealing our existence to Normals. I will ask Bunce about it later. “I can't wait to exchange makeup tutorials with mermaids and dryads, they're the best at—” The rock gets suddenly hot, cutting off her voice, and I throw it in the moat. Experimental spells.
“I'd assume they're waiting for us on the Lawn, though Merlin forbid Wellbelove get straight to the point,” I say to Simon's arse. I turn off his phone, which was still recording (trust us to accidentally make an almost sex tape), and nudge his thigh with my foot. “Want to grace them with our presence?”
He reemerges from under the bed, holding his t-shirt like a trophy. “Yeah, let's go,” he says, and he's out of the door before he's even put on the t-shirt.
SIMON
Penny passes me a cloth napkin full of scones, and I couldn't be happier.
We're all sitting on a blanket under a tree, Penny and Baz shaded by its canopy, Agatha, Pippa and I enjoying the warmth of the sun. Agatha's painting Pippa's nails, because “It's the only way to make sure she doesn't do it in our room with the windows shut”, I'm eating and holding Baz's hand, and he's already discussing Internet spells with Penny.
It's become our weekend routine, since Baz and I started dating a few months ago—turns out that most of my friends have been friends with Baz for years, and, even though I knew nothing about it before, it's nice now that we can all hang out together. (Gareth and Rhys often come, too. And Niall. Sometimes even Keris and Trixie, when they're not taking advantage of Penny's absence to snog in her room.)
“It’s not like we kept it a secret,” Penny said when I complained about my ignorance weeks ago. “You just didn’t want to hear anything that had to do with Basil.”
“You didn't even know of his club, and you're queer,” Agatha added, and I hid my blush against Baz's shoulder. He patted my head, but he was sniggering with the girls. Traitor. “At least we don't have to listen to Basil pining at the meetings anymore, now.”
Baz glared at her, but he didn't spare me when the girls started giving a detailed account of all the things I had missed by avoiding him—Agatha's Tormented Sexuality Journey; Baz scaring off transphobes who were picking on Pippa just with his words, no super strength needed; that time Niall started a betting pool on who, Penny or Baz, would get higher marks in their classes, and it lasted three months before Miss Possibelf made him stop. (Baz was winning, but they called it even to keep the game fair.)
“Your hotness intimidated me into denial,” I told him later that night. “That's why I had to ignore you and everything that happened around you.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault, now,” he said, licking his fingers and making a ball of his empty packet of crisps.
“It is. Ever tried to be less sexy?” I crawled onto his bed and tried to kiss him, but recoiled in horror at the taste of his lips.
“I take it back,” I spluttered. “You're so unsexy right now, and I should've realised you're a vampire sooner.” He kept staring at me, unbothered. “Only a vampire would like salt and vinegar crisps without dying.”
He threw the packet at my head, but he did brush his teeth before kissing me again.
“Did you get to the Maths nerd question?” Pippa's voice cuts through my thoughts, and I blink a few times to chase them away and figure out what she's talking about.
Baz's face is a question mark, and his frown makes me remember one of the points I didn't get to touch in my vampire interview.
“People say that vampires have an obsessive need to count objects, and if you scatter seeds, salt, grains of rice around them they'll have to stop chasing you to do their calculations,” I explain, and Penny nods.
“It's called arithmomania,” she says. “It's—”
“Count von Count,” Agatha snorts, and Baz rolls his eyes.
“Myth,” he tries to say, but I stop him.
“Nope. May I remind you of the three letters debate?”
“Snow, don't you dare—”
“Shut up, Basil,” Agatha slams her hand over his face. “What, pray tell, are you referring to?”
“Baz is jealous because my name is three letters longer than his,” I say. Baz groans, and Pippa bursts into laughter. “I found a notebook where he wrote our names over and over and circled the last three letters of mine in increasingly aggressive colours.”
“That doesn't mean I'm obsessed with counting things,” he pouts. He tugs me towards him and rests his head on my shoulder. “Just with you, love.”
Agatha gags. “Spare us. That's why people shouldn't be allowed to date. It's gross.”
Penny high fives her, and Pippa just smiles.
—
When the girls leave, I make sure Baz's head is still shaded by the tree and rest my head on his lap. His hand falls to my hair in a reflex, and I enjoy the feeling of him scratching my head as the rest of my body happily sunbathes.
“I know what you are,” I say, feeling inspired, but he's reading a book—some boring volume about vowels doing weird things that according to Penny will make his eight-year spell work better—and doesn't acknowledge my words.
“I know what you are,” I repeat, and this time he raises his head to cock an eyebrow at me. He's wearing the magickal reading glasses Grandma gave him when we had lunch with my family last weekend, and he's dead sexy.
(Grandma said she was pleased to find someone who loves reading and research, but I think she just wanted to reward him for holding his own in a debate with my father the whole time.) (They discussed magickal healthcare, and Mum kept laughing at the sight of her husband unable to best a teenager in conversation.) (I just stared at Baz—he looked so pretty, all focused and passionate, and I really needed to kiss him.)
“You're unfairly gorgeous, funnier than you think, and too smart for your own good,” I continue.
He closes the book, keeping his place with a finger. I can't wait for him to show me his spell—he told me about it earlier, and said it works only if you're stupidly in love.
“Yeah? And what am I?”
“That's not your line.”
He rolls his eyes, and wiggles his legs until I sit up.
“Say it,” he says, and the grin that takes over my face is probably too pleased. “Out loud.”
I crawl over his legs, bracketing his hips and crowding in on him until he reclines on his forearms, my arms caging his shoulders.
“My boyfriend,” I say. He falls on his back, his hair fanning his head in a halo of dark waves, and I slump on him, my nose brushing his. “My amazing vampire boyfriend.”