Chapter Text
We got magic in our bones
Just like the stars, we're gonna shine, bright and golden
We go bang down all the doors
Make sure we take back all the things that were stolen
“Sparrow” by Emeli Sandé
SIMON
When the Mage sent me back into care this summer, I thought things would be pretty much the same as usual.
Of course, usually, I haven’t just been kidnapped out of thin air by the Humdrum.
Usually I don’t sweat blood.
But that’s the rest of the year. At Watford, you never know when a worseger might pop up, or the Humdrum might send a chimera, or Baz might be plotting something evil.
(Actually, strike that - Baz is always plotting something evil.)
But the summers? They’re always the same.
Different homes, different kids; same lousy food and wary eyes. Same boredom that sits like a heavy weight on my chest as I stew in silence, refusing to think of the good things waiting for me at the end of a season so long it feels like a year.
But this summer has held a lot of surprises, and it’s only been a couple weeks yet.
I let myself mull over them as I straighten the tins on the shelf, keeping the till in the corner of my eye so I can see if anyone goes for the queue.
Four Things I Never Expected To Happen the Summer Before My Last Year at Watford
1) Getting a mobile
The Mage gave me one right before he sent me away. Plopped it into my hands, all new and shiny, and it nearly slid right through my fingers.
“Keep it close by, Simon. If I need you, I’ll be in touch.”
He disappeared without answering any of my questions, and I barely even had time to get Penny’s number before she left. I had to get Agatha’s from her.
They’re still the only two in my contacts.
I thought maybe the Mage had forgotten to input his, but after a while, I realized it was probably on purpose. He doesn’t want me relying on him. Says I need to learn to do things myself.
Which I guess is fair. Even though after the Humdrum-
I bite my lip. I won’t question the Mage. He knows best.
2) Getting a Normal job
I was handed a job when I was 11: being the Chosen One.
Not that I really knew what that meant then.
(Not that I really know what it means now.)
But since then, I’d never really thought about becoming a plumber or an accountant or a lawyer. Whenever I imagined myself grown up, I was fighting side-by-side with the Mage, taking on the Humdrum or defending the World of Mages from some dire threat.
Still, a couple days after I showed up at my new care home for the summer - a bit dodgy, but not nearly as bad as some I’ve stayed in - the shop at the end of the block put up a sign in the window. I walked in for a chat with the owner, and I walked out with a job.
I have to wear this hideous, bright red apron that makes me look like a twit, but at least it gets me out of the home for a few hours a day. Gives me something to do with my hands. And I like meeting people, even if Normals aren’t always sure what to think of me.
3) Breaking up with Agatha
To be completely honest, I should’ve seen this one coming.
She wants to be with Baz. I’ve always known it.
Of course, she didn’t say that.
What she said was, Simon, I care about you a lot, but I don’t care about you the way I should care about someone I call my boyfriend, you know?
And I did know. But I was hoping I could fix it. Or, really, I suppose I was hoping it would fix itself. Like when you see a beautiful sunrise and you hold your breath, because you don’t want to spoil it. Agatha’s that kind of perfect. I thought maybe, if I didn’t breathe, maybe we could keep it going. I could still spend Christmas with her parents, and eventually we’d spend all our Christmases together.
Maybe they’ll all take a family trip to Pitch manor this Christmas.
Merlin, that’s a terrifying thought.
4) Getting into video games
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those gits who thinks the telly will rot your brains and you’re better off reading a book.
(Baz probably is. But he’s a git who likes boring books, so.)
I just never thought I’d get the chance. Electronics are forbidden at Watford, and a PS4 isn’t like a mobile - you can’t just slip it into your pocket when the prefects make the monthly rounds looking for contraband.
As for homes, well. The funding isn’t exactly pouring in, and when it does, video games aren’t a priority.
But the second week I was here, some rich knob decided he would drop into the home like the Father Christmas of summer. He donated a brand new PS4 and a whole stack of games, then disappeared, never to be seen again.
Of course, the kids went wild.
I helped Mrs. Jenkins set up one account for everyone to share, and she made the kids draw straws for who would get to name it. The winner was this scrawny kid who’s always reading detective novels (Angus, I think), and he christened it Sirdabsalot.
Which still makes me laugh more than it should, probably.
I’ve never slept well anywhere besides Watford, and I’ve found that playing Overwatch is a good way to kill the hours of the night when I can’t sleep anyway.
(Plus this way I get to play without feeling bad about pushing everyone out of the common room. When I get too into a game - which, turns out, is pretty much always - my magic starts leaking, and it makes the Normals around me feel sick.)
It took me a while to get the hang of things - how the controller worked, which characters to choose. I picked D.va at first because she was a tank and seemed like the easiest to keep alive while I figured out what the hell I was doing. But when I found out her ultimate ability is basically going off , I got attached. So now she’s all I play, and after a couple weeks of playing for hours every night, I’m pretty good.
Surprisingly, I see a lot of the same names on an almost nightly basis, and I’ve teamed up with a few. But there’s this one sniper player I love having on my team, because he’s absolutely vicious.
“Excuse me,” an elderly gentleman interrupts my train of thought. I show him to the tea he requests and then move to stand at the till, so I’ll be ready when needed.
Pulling out my mobile and glancing at the screen, I stifle a sigh. Only another hour of my shift, then a few more hours before everyone goes to bed and I can play.
I hope PitchStriker will be on tonight.
Almost as though I’ve summoned him, a notification from the PS4 app pops up.
PitchStriker: Haha, very funny, Hanzo, you can switch now.
I frown, tapping the notification. I pull up his profile (simple and to the point: He/him. Not an aimbot, so if you’re here to yell at me, kindly fuck off. ), and it shows he’s online.
But I’m not.
Shit, he thinks we’re teamed up, but he’s probably playing with Angus or one of the other kids.
Another message appears.
PitchStriker: ?? Not funny anymore. They’re murdering us. We need your tanking skills!
“Excuse me?”
I look up from the screen, my thumbs poised to reply, then slip the mobile in my pocket when I find a middle-aged blonde woman frowning at me disapprovingly.
I check her items as quickly as I can, but as soon as we’re finished, there’s a man lined up behind her.
It’s another thirty minutes before I’m able to check my mobile again. By then PitchStriker is offline, but at least I can still see his profile. He hasn’t blocked me.
I breathe a sigh of relief. I’ll just have to explain later.
BAZ
Summer holiday has never truly been a holiday for me, not since the years before Watford. Now I have functions to attend, hands to shake, and smiles to flash at the right names my father wishes me to know. It’s rather dull, and I dislike it greatly.
It’s a waste of time. All of it is. I’d much rather be back at school, honestly. I have things to do there, my eighth year spell to perfect, and I miss the library and the pitch. I miss… well, I miss a lot of things.
One of which, and it disgusts me to admit, is Simon Snow.
I miss him every year during the summer regardless of how I try to convince myself otherwise. Everything from his excessive pen clicking to his stupid mouth breathing at night. (It’s difficult to sleep properly without it. The breathing part. Actually, fuck the pen clicking. I hate the pen clicking.)
I hate myself for it. I hate him for it. He has me locked in his orbit when we shouldn’t even be in the same galaxy. Crowley .
I don’t want to think about that right now, though. I’m too busy getting comfortable on the sofa in my room and connecting the controller in my hand to the PS4.
Purchasing a gaming system has been the best distraction that summer could have offered me. I don’t have to think while I play, only react.
Games aren’t exactly my area of expertise, so I kind of just bought whatever sounded good at the time.
“It’s so much fun,” the clerk had said with a wide grin. “And there’s a ranked system so you can level up and get special golden weapons. It’s wicked.”
It wasn’t my first choice, this Overwatch, but I did buy it with a few other titles. I enjoyed Dishonored very much, but the moment I finished it, I was done. I tried to go back and get all the achievements but grew bored quickly.
But Overwatch is different. It’s played online and with other people. The clerk suggested a mic, which I bought and regretted within hours of first trying the game. If it wasn’t bad enough that I was playing with Normals, whenever I tried to help, they either ignored me or insulted me. I shouted back at them, of course. But after a few rounds, I grew tired of it and just threw the headset on the sofa beside me, where it’s stayed ever since.
In the few weeks I’ve been playing (mostly at night), I have met a few people I like to play with regularly.
My favorite probably has to be Sirdabsalot. Even though his name is ridiculous, he’s a bloody brilliant D.Va and doesn’t mind that I mostly play snipers (which I dominate at, thanks to my vampire reflexes).
I open the PS4 app, find his username, and pull up our one sided conversation from earlier to continue it. (He’d been on and playing, but when I joined his game, he played like rubbish and wouldn’t respond to my messages. I figured he’d been in a mood or maybe a sibling was on his account. Maybe it will be the real Sirdabsalot this time.)
I most definitely do not mentally cross my fingers.
PitchStriker: Hey. Want to team up?
He starts to message me back almost immediately, the ellipses loading slowly.
Sirdabsalot: Yes! I got a few hours to play
Sirdabsalot: Uh, actually sorry about before. That was my cousin probably
Sirdabsalot: For future ref, I only play late at night. If it's not past midnight BST then it's one of my cousins playing. They're rubbish but they do try
PitchStriker: That explains the Hanzo earlier.
Sirdabsalot: And it explains my username. I let them pick it, if I'd picked mine it would've been cool like yours. I love football tho I'm no striker myself, defence mostly
“My username is cool?” I ask a loud to an empty room. Dev made a snide little comment about my username when I first made the account, something about puns being the lowest form of humor. I disagree. Because it’s my fucking name .
PitchStriker: Defence? I’d break right through you, mate. I dominate the pitch.
Sirdabsalot: HAH doubtful. But if your aggression on the pitch is anything like your Widow play then I might believe you
Did he just insult me and compliment me? Both on the field and in the game? What a git. (That’s what I do to people!)
PitchStriker: Yeah yeah are we going to play tonight or what?
Sirdabsalot: Add me to group and Q us up
So I add him to group and queue us immediately. The next thing I know it’s pushing five in the morning and my eyes damn near bleeding. I’m so tired that I start drifting in and out of it while we wait in queue for our tenth or twelfth game.
I need to lie down.
I back out of the game before messaging him one more time.
PitchStriker: You should get Skype or Discord so I don’t accidently swear at your cousins and get you into trouble or something.
PitchStriker: Also I’m dying. Good luck on any more games tonight.
Once the television is off, I slump into the sofa cushions and relax. I can vaguely hear my mobile going off as the sweet embrace of sleep takes me.
Sirdabsalot: Ok I made a discord
Sirdabsalot: PugsNotDrugs#8561
Sirdabsalot: Gn :)
I don’t see his response until the early afternoon. I find the Discord app in my mobile and add him. He’s the third person on my friend’s list. (Dev and Niall are the only others, and even then we text, if need be.)
This is the beginning of your direct message history with @PugsNotDrugs#8561
(Today at 11:47 am)
PitchStriker: I thought you said your username would be cool if you picked it?
PitchStriker: What a load of bollocks.
At least I have the decency to be consistent with usernames.
I go about my day after that and don’t even notice the notification light going off until dinner.
(Today at 3:14 pm)
PugsNotDrugs: Stuff it
(Today at 7:07 pm)
PitchStriker: I’ll be on later tonight.
I type back to him before I eat dinner alone in my room. I have to hunt before I settle in for a night of games.
(Today at 11:51 pm)
PugsNotDrugs: I’m getting on
He’s already on the game when I get back from the woods and a shower. So I log in, join up, and we play in silence, winning some and losing others. It’s brilliant and fun. I don’t think about Watford or Simon Snow. (That’s a lie. I think about him all the time, and I fucking cannot stand myself because of it.)
I pretend to be Normal and play with him through the rest of July and August. We chat on Discord some, mostly about the game. Once, he went on a very impassioned rant about how someone dropped several glass bottles of tomato sauce near the end of his shift. I found myself grinning at that and actually laughing. He sent me pictures of it, and of the mop he used to clean it up. (I think it was about then I started associating him with being a friend.)
But now it’s September, and term will be starting soon.
I’m both excited and dreading my last year at Watford School for Magicks. I’m having to wean myself off playing every night, since I can’t take the PS4 with me. I’ve started doing football drills out at the grass field on our property after dinner. (Had to dust off my poor trainers.) I spend my nights practicing my spellwork and going over the lengthy notes I’ve taken on creating a new spell for my eighth year..
Because of this, it takes me a few days before I notice the handful of messages on Discord that I’ve apparently been ignoring.
(Last Wednesday at 9:16 pm)
PugsNotDrugs: THE TOSSER DID IT AGAIN
PugsNotDrugs: WHY ON MY SHIFT!? WHY THE GLASS BOTTLES
PugsNotDrugs: Look at this
PugsNotDrugs: <SauceAndGlassEverywhere.jpg>
(Last Thursday at 12:01 am)
PugsNotDrugs: Oi wanna play?
(Last Friday at 12:28 am)
PugsNotDrugs: Wanna play?
(Last Saturday at 11:53 pm)
PugsNotDrugs: You gonna be on tonight?
(Today at 2:42 am)
PugsNotDrugs: ??
PugsNotDrugs: Did you die?
PugsNotDrugs: Oh no please don’t actually be dead, that would be fucking dreadful
Oops . I hadn’t meant to ignore him.
(Today at 11:57 pm)
PitchStriker: Sorry. I’ve prepping for term to start. Got football drills and last minute homework to finish.
Switching apps, I check to see if he’s on Overwatch, but before it even loads, I get a notification from him on Discord again.
(Today at 11:59 pm)
PugsNotDrugs: No worries
PugsNotDrugs: I should probably be doing the same but I’m in the Mood to Win
PugsNotDrugs: Wanna join me?
The responsible thing would be to say no and finish going over my spell notes, but I haven’t played in a few days. And the company, though silent, would be nice.
(Today at 12:02 am)
PitchStriker: Sure, give me a few to get on, then add me.
PitchStriker: Also, I should probably mention this now.
PitchStriker: School starting up soon. I’ve got football and full classes this term. I won’t be on at all, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still message me. If you want or whatever.
Yes, end it in ‘whatever.’ I don’t care, I really don’t. (I do, and I hate it. Aleister Crowley himself would stake me if he knew I wanted to stay friends with a Normal.)
But it’s been nice. Playing and talking to him. I don’t really talk to anyone. (Unless I’m insulting Snow or debating Bunce in class.)
I step on that feeling and turn off my mobile screen so I don’t have to look at the answer and just log into the game for one of the last time this summer. It’s brilliant, and we win, and I pass out on the sofa.
(Today at 12:19 am)
PugsNotDrugs: Yeah, same with me about all the school stuff and not playing
PugsNotDrugs: But I’ll still be around here, no worries
PugsNotDrugs: :)
Reading that in the morning puts a grin on my face. (I need to start controlling that more. Can’t have the student body of Watford thinking I smile without a sneer, now can we.)
We keep talking, and I absolutely do not tell him when I nearly break an arm and leg doing a bicycle kick the following evening. I maintain my pitch dominance when we talk about football and lie through my fangs while propped up in bed with a bloody sling and foot wrap.
Even with the help of healing spells, I'm going to miss the new school year ceremonies. I'm going to miss a few nights of listening to Simon Snow's stupid mouth breathing.
It's fine, though. Pugs is keeps me company in short replies and ramblings about random subjects added to his coursework, all of which sounds like dreadful Normal business.
I love it, though. A perfect distraction until I can finally walk myself through the Watford gates and narrow my focus onto my eighth and final year.
SIMON
I’m on the train, just about to start on my list of things I love about Watford when my mobile buzzes in my pocket.
I instinctively know who it is, even though it could just as easily be Penny or Agatha. And as I look down, it occurs to me that I should add a fifth thing to my summer list.
5) Making a new friend
(Today at 2:24 pm)
PitchStriker: Having spaghetti and thinking of you.
PitchStriker: This sauce is delicious. :)
I snort.
I decide my Watford list can wait another minute, and then I start typing back, smiling despite myself.
(Today at 2:25 pm)
PugsNotDrugs: Tosser