Work Text:
The sound of the door slamming shut made Cath flinch, halting the rhythmic flow of her keys clacking in the quiet room. She held very still, waiting for Reagan—she knew it was Reagan because when Levi slammed the door he always called out a greeting too—to proclaim what the direction of her frustration was. Usually a beat after the door slammed Reagan would let a roar of frustration escape her and either flop onto her bed or start pacing. Every moment that she did neither of those things made Cath more anxious. She turned her head slowly, looking over her shoulder at her roommate.
Reagan was glaring straight at her. Cath instantly searched through her memory for what she could possibly have done. Had she and Levi been kissing in front of Reagan today? No, she was certain they hadn't—they'd only kissed briefly at Starbucks. (It tasted like Levi's special latte, her unhelpful brain remembered dreamily.) Had she done something else recently? Been too paranoid about going out? Missed a study date? Left her stuff on Reagan's side of the room?
“You,” Reagan said sharply, pointing at Cath.
Cath flinched automatically, and Reagan's pointing had instantly withdrew just a little, as though she hadn't really intended to startle her. It was a relaxing shift, even if it was a small one. Cath managed to inhale again.
“Are you even serious about this anymore?” Reagan asked peevishly. “Do these stories mean anything to you?”
“What?” Cath managed to ask, helplessly lost as to what story Reagan could mean. Her writing teacher hadn't had problems with her stories in almost half a year. And Reagan didn't read her assignments.
“Don't you 'what' me, Cather!” Reagan said, her pointing intensifying again. “I'm talking about Divinity Falling, of course!”
“My fanfiction?” Cath asked in bewildered shock. “You're still reading that?”
“Well duh!” Reagan answered, waving her pointing hand in the air briefly and shifting to put her hands on her hips. “I want to know what the hell happened in that last chapter!”
“Um,” Cath glanced at her computer. She was already writing the next chapter. She was already nearly done with it in fact. She rewound in her brain until she caught up with where she'd left the last section of the story, “Baz and Simon defeated the Humdrum's latest assassin and then realized they'd saved each other's lives and--”
“And did exactly the same thing they did in Carry On Simon!” Reagan finished with an infuriated gesture. “They realized they cared for one another and stepped closer, lost in each others eyes. It was practically even the same wording!”
“Was it?” Cath asked herself, turning back to her computer and scrolling upwards, suddenly filled with a nagging doubt and worry. She wasn't really reusing turns of phrase, was she? Her teachers had warned her she might end up with crutches in her narration, but...
“Do you even care?” Reagan asked sharply.
“About my fanfiction?” Cath asked automatically as she read over the end of the chapter, her attention divided.
“About Simon and Baz!” Reagan answered. “They used to mean everything to you, and now you're just--”
“Of course I still care!” Cath replied, startled by her own volume. She shrank instantly after the proclamation. “I'll always care about them.”
Reagan stared at her, studying her, and shook her head slowly. “You can't tell me you're not bored with it,” She said, walking over to drop onto her bed even as she maintained her glare.
“I'll never get bored of Simon and Baz,” Cath murmured, glancing up at her cork board mini-shrine to them. Baz's cold eyes and Simon's warm smile looked down at her from a dozen pictures.
“Well duh,” Reagan waved her hand dismissively in the air. “I knew that. I meant that you're bored of writing the same story about them over and over again.”
“I'm not writing the same story,” Cath defended, turning to Reagan with a frown. “Why would you say that? Divinity Falling is nothing like Carry On Simon. It's not even the same time-frame!”
“Doesn't have to be,” Reagan said blankly, rolling her eyes as she removed her glare from Cath to flop back on her bed. “Next time they could be fighting giant aliens in the future. They'll still meet each other's eyes and just know they're in love, and then next chapter they'll probably make out and be confused about it.”
“Will not,” Cath defended, automatically and childishly, even as her face heated up in embarrassment thinking about the chapter she had just written. It was basically one long awkward make-out session.
“You would think,” Reagan drawled, “That a writer as highly-acclaimed by the English department as you are would have something a little more interesting to tell a story about.”
“It's the story I want to tell,” Cath said softly, lowering her head.
“That's fine, then,” Reagan said with a shrug. “If it's just wish fulfillment. But you're the one who gave me the 'fanfiction is the purest form of art there is' speech. And what you've been writing in this fic isn't exactly art. Sure, your prose is great, and you've got great descriptions, but the characters...”
“The characters are just copies of themselves from Carry on Simon,” Cath whispered in completion and agreement, turning fully to face her computer again. Her eyes wouldn't focus on the page and the words she'd written. The longer she looked at them, the more wrong they felt. She didn't need to read them to know it.
“Should I have waited until after dinner to yell at you?” Reagan asked, propping herself up on one elbow behind Cath to look at her. “You've got your 'I'm gonna write all night' posture on again.”
“I'll have a granola bar later,” Cath replied softly.
“So that's a yes, then,” Reagan said, her voice petering out in a sigh.
Cath ignored that addition as unimportant, hit the enter key four times to separate what she was about to write from the piece she'd been writing before. How had she not noticed before. It was coming so quickly. So easily. She should have suspected that she wasn't writing quality. It was just like Professor Piper had warned her. If the writing isn't hard—if the writing doesn't hurt—then it probably isn't powerful.
“Baz,” Simon started, pacing across the room towards the other wizard.
“Don't cross the center line, Snow,” Baz snarled, glaring at Simon from where he was sitting by his books.
“What?” Simon asked, glancing down at his feet. The center line they'd set up when they were first assigned as roommates was still standing. “But we--”
“Nothing happened, Snow,” Baz snapped. “It was an outlier. A fluke. You surviving was just an unexpected downside of winning the fight.”
“It was not,” Simon said softly, fixated on the cold, angry glare being sent his way. “Baz--”
“Don't call me that,” The other young wizard snarled, raking a hand through his hair, showing off his faint widow's peak. “It's Basilton to you—or preferably Tyrannus! Just because we happened to be on the same side in one wizard's duel doesn't make us friends.”
He spat the word 'friends' as though it was a curse. It felt like a slap, and Simon couldn't help bu take a step back. Just yesterday it had been 'We just took out a centaur assassin. I think you can call me Baz.' Just yesterday, that same face that was now sneering cruelly at him had looked so soft in the moonlight that Simon had felt compelled to touch the hard lines of his cheekbones—the sharp, handsome jawline.
“I thought--” Simon started, startled by how much this hurt—by how surreal it was to see 'Basilton' being cruel, when that was all he had been for so many years.
“You thought wrong, Snow,” Baz snapped, glaring.
The dark-haired wizard turned back to his work. His collar hid where Simon knew there would be still-healing marks from their battle last night. Baz didn't so much as glance back at him.
Simon stood dumb-struck on the edge of the line that divided their room in half. He'd laid awake half the night, thinking over everything. How similar their losses were, how good it would be to have one more ally, how well Basilton and Agatha would get along if they could set aside their differences and focus on their passion for proper spell-casting. He'd spent the whole night justifying the desire to card his fingers through that dark hair and press kisses to those handsome cheekbones.
Simon felt sick, staring at the back turned to him. Felt like he must have dreamed the night before—it couldn't have been a dream, could it? The fight. The magic. Baz reaching down to him, a worried twist to his brow. His low voice, usually nasal with distaste and drawling sarcasm, suddenly softened with concern. 'Are you all right, Simon?'—He had to get out of his room.
Simon turned away from the line—away from Basilton, or Tyrannus, or whatever he was supposed to call him. He escaped the room as quickly as he could and started running. He ran past the laughing statues that had always greeted him fondly. Past the jovial specters that haunted the halls. Past his classmates and teachers, ignoring them when they called out to him.
He didn't stop running until he was well outside the castle walls, standing on the pristine new layer of snow that had fallen that night. If there were any traces of the battle from the night before, the snow had blotted them out, leaving the entire castle grounds seeming peaceful and pristine. It just felt dead to Simon. He closed his eyes, and choked on the realization that his thoughts the night before had come from within him. He had assumed that Baz had always been in love with him. It had made sense to him. He was so used to being the world's hero—the Humdrum's chosen enemy—the most highly in-demand friend in the whole school...It had never occurred to him that maybe it was the other way around. That it was him who'd had these feelings for Basilton all along and never acknowledged them. That it was his turn to be the unwanted one.
Upstairs, in the suddenly empty room, Basilton lowered his head slowly until he could hide his face in his hands. What had he done? Killing the Humdrum's assassin... It was like signing his own death warrant. He'd made an agreement with the Humdrum. Been his eyes and ears in the castle. Let his own hatred of Simon be a shield. 'It couldn't be Baz. That's too obvious. We have to figure out who the mole really is,' they said. And he'd laughed at their ignorance. Right up until he murdered the assassin he himself had informed. The killer's blood had left a sour taste in his mouth.
“Simon Snow,” Baz whispered to himself—to the silent air—to whatever silent spirits might be watching. “What have you done to me?”
The Humdrum would know by now. Baz had worked all night, in his mind, on what to do. There was no way he'd be forgiven. No way anyone could protect him. The Humdrum was going to murder him as a traitor. The best he could do from here was to try to make sure that Simon wouldn't feel guilty for it.
—from Divinity Falling, posted March 2013
by FanFixx.net author Magicath
Cath broke off, her reading voice faltering and giving out on the weight of the words. It felt stupid. He voice hadn't broken when she read the piece about her mother aloud. Hadn't broken when she'd read the most difficult parts of book eight aloud. But reading her own plot twist—her own broken version of Baz, who before she had only ever written as competent and snarky...
“Are you okay?” Levi asked. The words rumbled in his chest as he said him. Cath could feel them against her back as she leaned on him.
“It's not what I want to happen to them,” She whispered.
“Then why did you write it?” Levi asked, his long fingers sliding over the corner of her laptop, just to have something to touch—just to have something to do.
“It was right,” Cath whispered.
“You aren't really going to kill Baz, though,” Levi declared, leaning forward to prop his chin on top of her head. “Right?”
“I don't know,” Cath said softly.
“Seriously?” Levi pulled away a little from his affectionate snuggling pose. She could feel him studying her from behind. “But you love him.”
“Yeah,” she chewed her lip as she mulled it over. “I do. And I love Simon. But if nothing bad ever happens, does it even count as story-telling, or is it just day-dreaming, Levi?”
“There's a difference?” he asked, shifting closer again and wrapping his arms around her middle.
“There is for me,” Cath said, nodding to herself. “Reagan was right. I was making it too easy. I was making everything too easy.”
“Oh great,” Levi sighed. “You're taking fanfiction advice from Reagan.”
“Only when it's good fanfiction advice,” Cath replied, tilting her head back to smile up at him.
“You're not going to cry, are you?” Levi asked, giving her a smile that crinkled his eyes in ways Cath felt like she could study for hours and still not be satisfied with seeing. “I wouldn't know what to do if you cried at your own dirty fanfiction.”
“It's not dirty,” Cath scolded. “Are you even listening?”
“Of course,” Levi replied. “It's depressing dirty fanfiction. You must have leveled up.”
“Jerk,” Cath muttered, closing her laptop and setting it aside so that she could curl up on Levi's lap.
“I didn't say it wasn't good depressing dirty fanfiction,” Levi added, sliding a hand up her back to squeeze her gently. “It's really good. Even if I don't understand.”
“It's just,” Cath said softly, hesitating before spreading her hand out on Levi's arm, feeling the solid skin under soft cloth, still stunned by how real everything felt with him. He nuzzled her scalp gently as she rested against him, kissing her hair lightly. “Being with you—being here—it makes everything different. Nothing's simple or easy anymore.”
“It's not?” Levi asked into her hair.
“No,” Cath said even as the door opened and a groan of disgust greeted them from Reagan.
“Wonderful. You're cuddling,” Reagan muttered. “What's the occasion?”
“Cath's going to murder Baz in the latest chapter of her dirty depressing fanfiction,” Levi answered mildly, picking his head up out of Cath's hair to answer. She was certain she heard a grin in his voice.
“Oh great,” Reagan complained as she tossed her bookbag onto her bed with a squeak of old springs. “Now I'm going to have to work extra hard to drag her to the dining hall...”
“Definitely not simple,” Cath whispered as Levi's loud laughter filled the room and shook his hold on her. “This is much better than life was when it was simple.”