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“You winked at my fucking girlfriend?”
Snow’s got his hands on my shirt, skin careful to not grace mine as he jostles me. Anathema hasn’t kicked in, but we both know it should soon. He jerks me back again, sending me nearly tripping over the tie he’s sloppily left on the floor.
“I didn’t wink at her for nothing, Snow,” I grumble bitterly, still glaring down at him disapprovingly. “I’d told her a joke. Jealous you can’t make her laugh?”
Hands trembling and fists clenching tighter, his glare holds stronger. “Jealous? Of you ?” His weight shifts as he holds his chin higher to match my eyes. I hate that this makes me want to swoon.
I suppose I accept it now; my destruction. My emotional obliteration, my constant torture of wanting to walk into the flames. Simon Snow being, perhaps, the only person I ever want to be near, despite him scorching me alive.
Maybe this is my payback for being so shitty to him. There’s the slightest possibility that my hatred transformed into admiration, or maybe it’d always been there, lurking in my subconscious. All I know is when I went to punch him last year, I wanted the split of his lip against mine. Especially the trickle of his blood against my saliva.
“I’m not jealous of you , you blithering idiot,” I mock, jaw shaking with a slight tremor. It’s not a lie, because I’m not. I’ve never been jealous of him (except, maybe except for how everyone loves him). No, it’s Wellbelove to who I’m craving to be. But he can’t know that. I never want him to know that.
I back up from him carefully, keeping a stone-cold gaze as he works himself up further. The room reeks now, smelling heavily of burnt magick and a wildfire, prickling at my skin and drowning my lungs and brain.
He eyes up the window behind me, brain clouding like the room around us. Just a spark, and he’ll set me ablaze (at last). “Then what the fuck have you been trying at?” he snarls, jerking me hard enough to make me stumble back against the wall, brushing against the freezing stone wall and opened wood-framed window.
I can’t go any further but down.
Fingertips wrapping around Simon’s and feeling the fabric of my lapels scrunching between the rough scratch of his knuckles, I swallow my words back and follow the shove of my shoulders and head out the window.
I wonder what it feels like to die. To tumble into the moat and let my body sink to the inky bottom. I wonder how my family would react; would they be sad? Disappointed? More than likely the latter (except, perhaps, Mordelia, but she would learn to cope).
This is payback. All the shitty things I’ve done; every time I tried to nearly off him.
This is what I deserve.
“Do it, Simon,” I say, going soft at the brush of his skin. My eyes shut, my breath catches, and I let myself stop struggling. “Push me out, fucking do it .”
A few seconds pass, and I don’t feel the whistle of the air, nor do I feel the brush of the wind beyond what I’m feeling already. I dare myself to open my eyes; to see the building anger before he finally throws me off.
At last, when I find his gaze, it’s not of anger, but of fear. He’s in a panic, studying my face before I feel his crashing into mine.
It’s a caste, rushed kiss, and it’s searing my skin.
I don’t have long to enjoy it before he pulls back, breath working up as his magick makes the room feel like a static screen. My hair starts lifting a little, an electric brush sweeping the air as his breath hitches.
“I’m so sorry,” he breathes, hands softening against mine while keeping there. “Stay here--don’t jump, please .” And with that, he’s letting go and running off to somewhere unknown.
With my fingers brushing my lip and heart racing, I gape shamelessly at the open door. While I’d absolutely love to act erratically, I wouldn’t dare disobey Snow at this moment.
Despite the initial shock and awe, it settles into me that he hasn’t returned in the (at least) ten minutes that I’ve spent stood frozen. Slow lowering down, I settle back on the floor, back pressed to the wall and legs sprawled out in front of me. I don’t quite have the energy to do anything except for stare forward and wait anxiously.
Whatever Snow did, whatever Snow’s doing is driving me insane. Maybe this is his actual plans for revenge; to drive me off the deep end. To make me question everything I know and everything that’s happened up to this point, then to leave me questioning.
The sky slowly sinks into roses and yellows, filtering into the room and leaving a soft pink glow over everything.
That’s when I finally hear Snow’s footsteps ascending. He looks exhausted; he looks scared and overwhelmed and tired.
He looks like he made a mistake.
I dare open my mouth, but nothing comes out. It’s dry, and I don’t have anything to say anyway.
Instead, he just steps closer, settling himself on the ground between my legs with knees brushing my thighs. As he slowly closes in closer, I grab for words, brain going somewhat fuzzy.
His fingertips brush against my jaw, making my stomach churn and breath hitch. As he closes in closer, I blurt out my mind.
“What about Agatha?” I can’t just be something he comes back to. I can’t let him kiss me out of pity. I can’t let him wreck his future.
“Don’t worry about that,” he murmurs, “we’re done. Just shut up and kiss me, okay?”
I need to stop thinking. I think about everything; I try to know everything, but maybe I don’t need to know this. I don’t need to understand because Snow’s asking me to kiss him while sitting here, sat between my legs, and touching my face like that.
So I don’t. For once in my life, I stop overthinking and I just do it. I reach out, hands wrapping around the scratchy fabric of Snow’s jumper, and pull him into a kiss.
The magick swirls and rests in the air over time, a mixture of his and mine. The hanging scent of matches and burnt toast; of fresh embers and an eternity of waiting for the fire to settle. Darkness fell over the room, leaving us in the moon’s blue haze. He took off my shirt a while ago, hands pressed to my chilled chest and warming it under his touch. His cross is long gone. We’ve been snogging so long that my lips went numb and I’ve gone through at least three cycles of mental questioning before I’d settled on just the word “fuck”.
A short while passes of final extended kisses and skidding touches before we break fully and stare at each other silently. Thankfully, he has half the mind to not take his hands off me, because he’s skating them up and down my exposed chest as we lock eyes. It takes forever to work up the courage to speak.
“What is this?”
Even in nearly the darkness, I can see his clueless face drawing into one of his famous unsure looks. “What do you mean?”
I don’t even know if I’m breathing. “Why are you snogging me? Why are we doing this?”
“Because…” His hands rest lower, making my stomach do flips as the skin of his palms warm my gut. “I didn’t want you to die.”
I can’t mock him for that. I can’t snap at him like this. “It was your opportunity. You deserve payback for what I’ve done.”
With lips pursing and a curl falling into his eyes, Snow seems to let himself relax into me. “That can come later,” he whispers. “We’ll figure that out later. Right now, I don't want to let you go.”