Chapter Text
BAZ:
The last time I saw Simon Snow was over skype when we decided we should break up. We had been desperately trying to make the long-distance work, while I was studying in the US and he stayed in London with Bunce, but we couldn’t any longer. The relationship was too new, and the distance made it impossible to work our issues out. And Merlin knows we had many.
There was too much to learn about each other, still, despite having lived together for eight years. We had to learn how to love each other, after spending those years hating each other. Or pretending to hate the other, in my case. And the fact that we were 3 thousand miles apart made it impossible to do so. We couldn’t learn to love each other the way we needed to, so we ended it.
It was not a bitter break-up. Which is not the same as saying it was not a painful one. But it wasn’t bitter. We kept in touch for a while, since it was too hard not to. We had shared our lives for almost nine years, and it would be impossible to just erase all that as if it meant nothing. We talked, regularly at first, but I think it was too painful for the both of us. As time went by, the calls stopped being so often, and, eventually, the texts ended almost altogether. At some point, we only called on each other’s birthdays and spoke for like 5 minutes. Then, one year, he forgot my birthday. That was when I realised that whatever it was that we might have had left, it was over.
A few years later, I heard he had married. I think it was Niall who told me. I remember wishing he had married a girl. Which he did, thankfully. I always thought it would hurt more if he had settled down with another man. It would be so much easier to imagine myself there, instead of him. It would be so much more painful.
I don’t recall what hurt the most, the first time – when he really broke up – or the second time – when he married, and I realised it was really over. Forever. When I finally understood that I had blown any chance I might have had with Simon Snow. The love of my life.
I think the latter was the one that took me the longest to get over. If I am honest, I am not sure I am over it yet. I am, however, sure I am not over him yet.
Last year, when I got a call from Cambridge University with an invitation to research with them and teach there, I accepted it without thinking twice. I like to tell myself I did so because I missed my family. Because I missed my country. I like to tell myself I took it because I needed a new project. Because I had always wanted to teach, and I was finally being given the opportunity to do so. Because it was an upgrade, career-wise. I like to tell myself it had nothing to do with the boy I had fallen in love with, over twenty years ago. I like to tell myself it had nothing to do with the one I had lost over my decision to study abroad.
I like to tell myself I didn’t spend the months before my moving arguing with myself over the fact that I should not try to contact him. That it would not do any good. I like to tell myself I didn’t even think of him when I said yes.
I turn thirty-six next year, and I still lie to myself the same way I did when I was sixteen. It’s funny, though, how all my lies are always about Simon. And they are all about my denial, my refusal to accept that I love him. That I have always loved him. That I will always love him. And that I was stupid enough to let him go.
Stupid enough to let the love of my life go.
SIMON:
The first time I saw him, after the last time I saw him, I was walking around campus. I had been teaching at Cambridge since I graduated. I had always had, apparently, a hidden talent for mathematics, which made me stay in the university from the day I found my calling.
I saw him walking into the mathematics and theoretical physics department building from a distance, but, even then, I was sure it was him. It was the way he was walking in – as if he owned the place – that caught my eye at first. And then, it was the way he carried himself. Confident, untouchable, flawless. Stunning, as he always has been.
I stopped in my tracks and just let myself absorb the view. I stayed there, staring at him from afar, watching the love of my life walk into the building I had been working in for almost fifteen years. I had no idea what brought him there, and I didn’t know what I was going to do next. I couldn’t decide if I should look for him or pretend I hadn’t seen him and wait for him to either leave or come and talk to me.
I wanted to ask him for how long he was staying as if the last fifteen years or so hadn’t happened. As if we still talked the way we did the months after we broke up. I wanted to come to him and kiss him full on the mouth, the way I had so many times when I was young, and pretend we had been together all this time. I wanted to run to him, to drink his sense in, to touch him, to love him like I did when we were kids. I wanted to pretend I had never been married to anyone but him, and I wanted him to pretend he hadn’t either. In case he had eventually got married. In case he still was. I wanted to run to him and turn back time while we kissed. I wanted to open my eyes to see that I was eighteen again and that he was there, next to me.
That afternoon, as I watched Baz walking in my campus as if he had never left, I wanted to pretend he never did.
I called Penny when I got home that night. After all this time, my best friend was the only one I could tell this to. Apart from my ex-wife, but I wasn’t sure I should call her about him. Not yet, at least.
Penny picked up on the first ring, and when her face popped up on my computer screen, I could see Micah in the background watching TV with Simon, my godson. They both waved at me when they saw me, but quickly returned to what they had been doing.
“What’s up, Si?” Penny asked as she left for her room so we could talk more privately. “How have you been doing?”
Although Jo and I divorced over a year ago, Penny is still cautious about it. I told her countless times it had been a mutual decision, that we were both good, that it had been the best decision for both. But she still acted as if I might be lying. Which doesn’t surprise me, I guess. I had said the same things when Baz and I had broken up, and she knows as well as I do that I never really got over it. And that’s why I know she will understand how much what happened today means to me.
“Penny, I promise you I am alright. It’s been over a year. Almost two, actually. You need to stop worrying.” I told her, smiling.
“You know I always worry.” She said, smiling her guilty Penny smile. “It’s hard not to when I am living across the ocean from you.”
“Even if you have nothing to worry about?” I asked, teasingly. Because I already knew her answer to this. And because I needed to use said answer to tell her about Baz.
“You know I always find something to worry about, Si.” She laughed. Sometimes I missed Penny so goddamn much it got hard to breathe. Sometimes, thinking of her living thousands of miles away from me became really overwhelming. It’s not because I was lonely, or because I didn’t have any friends, because none of that was true.
But because she’s my family. The only family I ever had. The one who stuck with me after I lost my magick and became half a dragon. The one who wiped my tears away when I broke up with the love of my life. The one who stayed by my bedside when I decided I no longer wanted to be a dragon. The one who stuck with me at the lowest point of my depression and PTSD. The one who was there to cheer for me whenever I had a better day. The one who prevented me from going through all of it alone. The one who sat in the audience when I gave my first lecture and applauded me like a proud mom when I published my first article. The one who stood by the aisle next to me, as my bride walked to me on my wedding day. The one who stayed with me, even though she is miles apart, when I broke up with my seven-year marriage. The one who made me godfather to her only son. The only one who knows everything about me, and the only one who will understand what I mean to say when I tell her who I saw today.
“I actually have something for you to worry about if you really want to.” I said, calmly. My heart was beating faster than when I called her to tell her Jo and I had decided to split up. She looked at me suddenly serious. I could see the fear in her eyes as she shifted closer to her computer.
“What is it, Si?” She asked. I knew she was not at all expecting what I was going to say next.
“I saw a ghost today.” I told her, and she frowned.
“What do you mean, a ghost? The Visitings are only happening in three years or so.”
“Just someone I never thought I would see again in my life.” I said, smiling shyly. “Not a real ghost, although we both know he is also dead.” I lifted my eyes up to look at her. She was staring at me wide-eyed, her mouth hanging open.
“Are you sure?” She asked after a while. “Are you sure it was him?”
“I am Penny. I would recognise him anywhere.” ‘I still fall asleep with his face in my mind, after all this time.’ I had thought, but that part I didn’t have to tell her. She knew. She has always known.