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When he was ten years and eleven months old, Baz Pitch learned how to perform a small, impractical type of magic. Up in the attic, walled in on all sides by boxes, he looped yarn around needles and found a rhythm that would produce more fabric than it did knots or holes. The yarn and the needles had both belonged to his mother, as had the book he was reading from, with its cryptic instructions accompanied by pen and ink illustrations that did little to illuminate the words.
He didn’t know that he’d done magic until a month later when, finally, he’d finished a simple scarf and wound it around his neck. He’d been thinking of his mother through the entire process, extremely aware that she had been the last person to touch her knitting supplies before him. He’d imagined that some of the heat from her palms still lived in the smooth wooden needles, and when he read the book’s instructions, he heard her voice in his head. And now, wearing the scarf for the first time, he thought he heard her again, calling to him from far away. He followed the distant echo of her voice down to his bedroom, where he found a photograph on his desk. He was in the picture, no more than an infant, wrapped tight in his mother’s arms. She and his aunt Fiona were laughing about something, his mother’s head thrown back and her mouth open as Fiona pressed one arm against her eyes. He’d never seen a picture of his mother that looked this candid, and he was sure he’d never seen this picture specifically. He took off his scarf, with its uneven edges and wildly varying tension, and wrapped the photograph in it, then slid the bundle under his bed, beside the cabled jumpers he’d long outgrown.
*
Five years before, his mother had packed a suitcase and left for New Zealand. She’d been offered a tenure-track position at the University of Auckland, but the self-centered logic of childhood told Baz that she had left to punish him for some unknown crime.
When he was older, he came to understand that there had been a plan for him and his father to follow her after a year or so, but this never came to pass: Natasha Grimm-Pitch was killed in a car crash nine weeks after arriving in New Zealand. Baz blamed himself entirely, still certain his mother had left the country and put herself into the path of that reckless driver all because of some rule he’d broken, some etiquette he hadn’t observed.
*
Baz never stopped knitting after the incident with the photograph and his first scarf. He developed a taste for soft, luxurious yarn and intricate stitch patterns; he stoked the small spark of magic that he was sure had been inherited from his mother.
It was this, as well as a series of much less interesting events, that led to him sitting behind the cash register at a yarn shop in Sheffield, almost twenty-six years old and nearly finished with his PhD, when Simon Snow walked through the door holding a layer cake. He let the door slam shut behind him, and a gust of frigid January air blew Baz’s hair out of his eyes.
Baz suppressed a shiver and looked back down at the rapidly-forming sock heel on his needles. He called out to Penelope, who emerged from the back room and took the cake out of Simon’s hands.
“Alright, Baz?”
He looked back up at Simon with an expression of vague displeasure-- the kind he used on customers whose debit transactions took longer than usual-- when Penny cut him off and said, “Don’t mind him, he’s just thinking about his erotic vampire fanfiction.”
He turned and glared at her. “My thesis,” he said, not for the first time, “is on queer coding in horror fiction and its effect on fandom.”
Penny smirked, clearly pleased that she’d gotten a rise out of him. “Sounds to me like a lot of jargon that could just be replaced with the phrase ‘erotic vampire fanfiction.’”
“Academic writing on fanfiction is not the same thing as fanfiction,” he said, feeling his ears go red and hoping he could blame it on the cold air Simon had just let in. “And it’s not all vampires. Don’t you mock my field of study just because yours is incomprehensible."
Penny shrugged. “I can comprehend it,” she said, and made her way to the table set up against the back wall of the shop.
Baz watched her go through narrowed eyes, then looked back down at the needles in his hands and resumed knitting.
Simon cleared his throat. “I don’t really understand her research myself.”
Baz grunted in response.
“So how is the thesis going, by the way?” Simon asked, leaning one elbow on the counter and inserting himself into Baz’s field of view.
Baz exhaled sharply. “I can’t believe Penny hasn’t taught you this, but the first rule of talking to grad students is that you never ask how someone’s thesis is going.”
Simon recoiled. “Ah. Right, then.” He shoved his hands into the pocket of his hoodie, lingered for a few more moments, and then joined Penny at the back of the shop.
Penny was teaching a class that night. Over the next fifteen minutes, a handful of women came in from the street and gathered around the table upon which Penelope had laid out swatches she’d made to illustrate different cable motifs, as well as slices of cake. Baz stayed at the cash register all evening, listening to Carly Rae Jepsen (it was Penny’s turn to pick the music) as well as the frustrated murmurings of her students.
Simon sat and chatted with Penny and the customers the whole time. The customers, in true knitter fashion, cooed over him when he briefly attempted to cast on a few stitches, started telling him how it was so nice to see a young man take an interest in traditionally feminine activities. He didn’t look, but he was sure Simon was blushing. This happened every time he showed up.
No one ever cooed over Baz.
At eight, Baz put his knitting away and pulled on his jacket, then made his way to the back of the shop to see if he could sneak a piece of cake, but only crumbs and buttercream smears remained. Penny assured him that she and Simon could handle closing up. Simon offered him a little wave, and in response, Baz shoved his fists deep into his jacket.
*
After a particularly frustrating meeting with his supervisor, Baz dug through the new arrivals that Ebb had set aside for him in the back room until he found a skein of laceweight yarn spun from silk and alpaca fibres, dyed so that it faded from peacock blue to slate grey. The yarn was a new blend from a local indie dyer, and he set about finding a pattern that he could use for a store sample.
He was stuck on his thesis, his brain apparently wrung dry of insight. On top of which, his father had been dropping hints about law school applications again; and Fiona, who was currently backpacking through Southeast Asia, had paused her adventuring long enough to email him asking for an update on his love life.
As he cast on with the new yarn, he thought about the peace and quiet of the attic where he’d first learned to knit. He thought about the countless family dinners he’d sat through that were silent but for the clink of flatware on china. His few memories of his mother were quiet too: she was always reading, or writing, occasionally humming softly but never speaking.
A lace shawl sprouted between his needles, growing rapidly once he had memorised the stitch pattern. It was finished and blocked within a week, and as he hung it up on the back wall with several other samples, he felt a current of familiar energy run through him.
For the next three days, no one bumped him on the tram or tried to sit across from him in the library. No baristas made small talk when he ordered a coffee. His phone didn’t buzz with texts or emails. Simon didn’t even visit the shop during Penny’s shift, and customers only approached him with questions that could be answered with either a “yes” or a “no”.
Baz revelled in the peace and quiet that he’d made.
*
He’d been working at the shop for a little over a year when Ebb told him that she’d hired someone to help him out on the evening shifts. He actually liked Penelope pretty well at first, even though his eyes tended to glaze over when she started talking about her master’s project. (He knew it had to do with electron microscopes, and he assumed that her findings were going to be useful to the manufacturing industry, or maybe it was health care, but he really could not bring himself to care about the details.)
When she wasn’t peppering her speech with Greek letters and trigonometric functions, though, Penelope was fairly interesting to talk to. Like Baz, she was rather ethnically ambiguous-- an Indian mother and white father, he eventually found out-- and he admired the unselfconscious way she sighed before telling people where she really came from. She never prattled on to fill the silence, but she had a well-articulated opinion on just about any topic he’d ever thrown her way; so any time she spoke, you got the sense she was saying something meaningful, even if that meaning was just “annoy the shit out of Baz.” And on top of that, she also had amazingly consistent gauge, never needing to swatch before casting on, always finding that her jumpers fit perfectly right off the needles-- unlike Baz, whose stitch tension changed drastically with his mood.
She would have been a fine coworker if it hadn’t turned out that she was part of a two-for-one deal.
Simon ostensibly had two jobs: a baker by day and a bouncer by night, not to mention his ridiculous Instagram that he updated at least three times a week with unflattering selfies and terrible pictures of (probably delicious) pastries. If Baz was that busy, he wouldn’t spend all his free time hanging around at a friend’s workplace.
But then, Simon seemed like the sort of person who needed constant companionship.
*
At the next monthly staff meeting, Penny shared yet another idea she’d got off a Ravelry forum: the shop could hold movie nights, and set up the knitting equivalent of a drinking game, so that every time a certain event occurred on screen, the participants would introduce a simple design element into their projects.
This was the kind of thing Penelope came up with all the time. Baz, who tended to defend tradition and resist change on principle, was always slightly offended on Ebb’s behalf whenever this happened. But Ebb, who had opened the shop six years previous and had been running it just fine before Penny came along, still encouraged the ideas. Sometimes she would even ask Baz to join in on a brainstorming session, but he always declined. He was happy to carry on in his current role: the grumpy but knowledgeable cashier who got first dibs on any of the new yarn in exchange for whipping up display samples at lightning speed.
Penny got to pick the first film, naturally, and settled on a three-hour-long Bollywood musical. For all her years of scientific study, she couldn’t resist musical numbers and melodrama.
About an hour before the event was set to start, Penny wheeled a whiteboard out of the back room. Baz frowned, sure that he’d never seen the whiteboard before, mildly perplexed as to where it had been hiding all this time. He watched Penny uncap a marker and begin to write out rules for the game in even, angular handwriting.
He had his laptop on the counter, a playlist of Chopin’s nocturnes playing on Spotify, and the current draft of his second chapter open. A stack of cue cards with handwritten notes sat beside the laptop, and he fixed them with a hard stare, willing the bullet points to arrange themselves into coherent sentences and arguments.
It was a shame that magic-- or at least, the kind that Baz could do-- was no good for things like this. Its scope was extremely limited. When he was younger, of course, he’d wondered fleetingly if he might be able to raise the dead, but it turned out he couldn’t even make his annoying little half-sister less annoying. He was on his own with this thesis.
The bell over the door chimed, and Baz deepened the hunch of his shoulders when he saw that it was Simon.
“Excited for movie night?” Simon asked him as he took off his coat. He ran a hand through his curly hair, dispersing the thin layer of snowflakes that had gathered there during his walk. He never wore a hat; Baz wondered why Penny hadn’t made him one.
Baz gave a little noncommittal hum and tried to avoid looking at him.
Simon Snow was, really, disastrously good-looking, despite the fact that he seemed to give very little thought to his appearance. He was broad-shouldered and square-jawed, with an overgrown head of golden brown curls and perpetual dark circles under his eyes. He was dressed today, as always, in a hoodie and joggers, like he’d never heard of clothing with buttons or zippers. Every bit of his exposed skin was covered in freckles and moles, including the one on his left cheek that, eight months and three weeks prior, Baz had kissed. It felt, at that moment, like there had been more intention and purpose in that kiss than there had been in anything Baz had done since. The memory made it very difficult for him to look Simon in the eyes.
Simon set a box down on the counter. The smell of brown sugar wafted from it.
“This you playing?” he asked, gesturing at Baz’s laptop.
“It’s just Spotify,” Baz said, and then, without thinking, kept the conversation going by adding, “Do you really think I’d listen to recordings of myself while I write?”
Simon shrugged. “I mean, I dunno--”
“Oh, what do you play, Baz?” Penny asked from the other side of the shop.
“Violin,” Simon told her before Baz could say anything.
Penny raised an eyebrow.
Baz glared at Simon. Now she was going to ask how he knew that, and they’d have to either come up with some fictional scenario in which the two of them had been exchanging pleasantries and discussing their hobbies-- highly improbable-- or they’d have to admit the truth, which was that they had met on an awkward Tinder date that ended in a confusing but nonetheless enjoyable makeout session on Baz’s couch, a makeout session that Simon had (for some unknowable reason) interrupted briefly to ask about the violin case by the window. Yes, Penny was going to find out the truth, and Baz would never live it down, and now he’d have to find a new job, possibly transfer to a different school or give up on the PhD altogether--
“Oh, cool,” said Penny as she turned back to the whiteboard and twisted her long hair up into a bun, exposing the undercut at her nape. “My parents made me learn piano but I haven’t practiced in ages.”
Ah. Okay, then.
Baz walked to the back wall and started taking his sample projects down so that Penny could project would have somewhere to project the film. He ran his fingers over each knit item-- Fair Isle mittens, cabled scarves, and lace shawls-- before storing them in a neat pile on a display table. He thought, perhaps, that he could still feel a few crackles of magic residing in the fibres.
Penny ended up with a decent turnout for the event, with about ten people sitting around the table on which Simon had laid out his baked goods, as well as all the necessary supplies for tea. As soon as Penny started to explain the rules of the game, Baz slunk back to the cash and resumed glaring at his cue cards and laptop.
He worked with his back to the screen, so he couldn’t see what was happening, but he could hear the dialogue and the music. It was a few minutes after the second song had ended that he felt a light tap on his shoulder and heard something clink onto the counter beside him.
Simon had brought him what looked like a blondie, as well as a strong but milky cup of tea.
“Oh,” Baz said, shocked into politeness and blushing hard. “Thank you.”
“Figured they’d be gone if I didn’t save you one.”
“You didn’t have to--”
“I know you have a sweet tooth.”
God, he did.
“Go on,” Simon said, “try it.”
The blondie was peanut-butter flavoured, it turned out, with large chunks of white chocolate that stood in contrast to the soft and buttery base. Baz let the first bite slowly melt in his mouth, trying not to seem too eager for a second.
“It’s good,” he said, eliciting a grin from Simon. Of course, Simon already knew it was good. He did this for a job.
“So,” Simon said, jerking his head towards the crowd of knitters, “shall I catch you up on what’s happening in the movie? It’s a classic.”
Under normal circumstances, Baz would have said that he needed to get on with his work and shooed Simon away, but tonight, something was different. Sweetness coated his tongue, drowning his sarcastic tendencies, gently arranging his lips into a friendly smile.
Maybe, Baz thought, Simon could do a bit of magic of his own.
And so he let Simon recap the story for him, turning so that he could see over Simon’s shoulder to where the movie was being projected.
“So what we’ve got here,” Simon said, moving his hands through the air as he spoke, like he really was casting a spell, “is a tale of friendship and unexpected love and second chances...”
*
Baz cast on for a new project that night: a simple beanie knit in a slightly itchy chocolate brown yarn. As he worked, he thought about how long it had been since he’d had the nerve to go on a date, and he thought about the last time he’d been in love. He thought about the boyfriend he’d followed to the University of Sheffield, how he’d had just enough time to settle in and sign a lease on a shared flat before learning about the cheating. He thought about the immediate aftermath of the breakup, how he’d felt like he was coasting down a steep hill with his eyes closed the entire time, probably heading towards a terrible crash but revelling in the drop anyway--
-- and he thought about how that was the hole in the story of his life through which Simon Snow had crawled, a mutual right swipe after a night of drinking alone. Simon Snow, who lived with his mum in a two-bedroom flat, who had two jobs and no degree, who loved true crime podcasts and hated any kind of reading.
Simon Snow, whose surname wasn’t really “Snow”, it turned out. Baz had made a joke about it, how it sounded like something from a storybook, and then Simon had shut him up by saying that he just used that name on social media so that his father wouldn’t be able to look him up. He hadn’t elaborated, but Baz had filled in a few gaps with a little help from the look on Simon’s face. He hadn’t told Baz his real surname either.
Simon Snow, who apparently hadn’t been too offended to come back to Baz’s flat after a few pints, who kissed him like he wanted to qualify for the Olympics in Competitive Snogging, but who interrupted said snogging to, first, ask about Baz’s violin case, and second, to say that he’d never been on a date with a bloke before and he actually wasn’t really sure if he was gay or whatever but this was quite nice, wasn’t it?
After, Baz had ignored Simon’s texts asking for a second date. He’d still been reeling from one heartbreak, and he didn’t want to be the sexual equivalent of a Buzzfeed quiz for a man who, really, if he was being honest with himself, he never would have been able to bring home to his father anyway. He would find a boyfriend when he eventually went to law school, he decided. No sense settling down before then anyway.
And that had all been fine until Penny was hired at the shop and it turned out, through some terrible twist of fate, that Simon was her best friend. Her best friend who wanted to spend his free time hanging out in a yarn shop despite never showing any interest in knitting, who (despite Baz’s best efforts to convince himself otherwise) left Baz a dreadful, pining mess.
At this point in his life, Baz had a decent grasp on how his magic worked. He knew he had to keep his wishes small and focused. He wouldn’t have wanted to do a love spell in the traditional sense, even if he thought it would work. But he thought that he could maybe encourage whatever thoughts might be brewing in Simon’s mind, embolden him just a bit if he already had an inclination. Ghosting Simon Snow had seemed like the obviously correct decision at the time, but Baz couldn’t help wanting another shot now. He saw the way Simon could make Penelope laugh even when she was in the foulest mood, how much interest he took in the lives of everyone he met. Simon practically oozed sunshine and cinnamon sugar. It was hard not to want him. Baz just didn’t want to have to make the first move.
He finished the hat in less than forty-eight hours, then attached a faux-fur pompom, precisely because it was the kind of thing he normally wouldn’t do. He pinned the hat to the display wall and attached a little paper tag that listed the yarn, the yardage, and the pattern. Then he ran his fingers over the hat one more time and imagined blowing on embers, fanning a flame.
For the next two weeks, any time Simon came into the shop, Baz stayed quiet, biting back any sarcastic remarks and refraining from rolling his eyes. He offered Simon polite little smiles at first, but that felt strange and unnatural, so he tried avoiding eye contact. He thought of Simon like a wild animal he was trying to domesticate. He didn’t want to spook him by trying too hard. He needed to let Simon come to him, let the magic run its course uninterrupted.
Except that nothing happened. Simon came in to see Penny and hung about the shop, then left without offering Baz more than a wave.
He knew there was magic in the hat. He’d felt it. But for some reason the magic wasn’t landing.
Or, maybe, there was nothing to encourage on Simon’s part.
On the seventeenth day, Baz took the hat off the sample wall and brought it to the counter to examine it in closer detail. Penny was taking inventory, Simon following her around the store. Neither of them paid Baz any mind.
Baz could feel filaments of magic woven through the stitches, sending vibrations coursing up his arms. The potential was there, he was sure of it.
He considered putting the hat back on the wall, downloading Tinder again, and finding some new target for his romantic feelings. He considered it very strongly, but something made him hang on until Penny’s shift drew to a close.
Penny and Simon were pulling their jackets on when some strange emotion ran through Baz, leaving him feeling like a string that had just been plucked. He tore the tag off of the beanie and called out to Simon.
Penelope actually jumped at the sound of his voice, but Simon pivoted smoothly on one foot, turning away from the door to face Baz.
“Yeah?”
Baz’s chest was tight, and he found he couldn’t draw enough breath to speak again, so he darted out from behind the counter to where Simon was standing. Still at a loss for words, he decided to just get it over with: he pushed the hat down onto Simon’s head, making sure the folded brim covered his ears.
“Ah,” Simon said. “Cheers?”
“You never wear one,” Baz said, trying to grimace, “and it’s winter. And your best friend is a knitter.”
“Penny doesn’t make me hats because she knows I always lose them,” Simon said, flushing. “But she made me this!” He tugged the end of his scarf out of his coat to show Baz. It was scarlet, knit in a squishy brioche stitch.
“Wasn’t that supposed to be a sample for the store?” Penny asked, gesturing to the hat.
“I’ll pay for it,” Baz muttered. “And I’ll make another one.”
“This isn’t, like, something ridiculously expensive, right?” Simon asked. “Not cashmere or something?”
“No,” Baz said, although he was sure that the wool still cost more than Simon would have been comfortable with. “Look, just take it, okay?”
“Okay.”
The three of them stood in awkward silence for a few more painful moments, and then Penny cleared her throat and announced that she had somewhere to be.
*
It must have worked, Baz figured, because the next day, Simon did something he’d never done before: he stopped by the store at a time that Penny wasn’t scheduled to work.
“I wanted to say thanks for the hat,” he said as he walked through the door, still wearing the aforementioned accessory. It was a few minutes until closing, and Baz was tidying the display cases.
“You’re welcome,” Baz said, flushing despite his best efforts to remember a time in his life when he’d been cool and capable of talking to attractive men.
“Thought I could buy you a coffee or-- maybe a drink?”
Baz nodded, heart pounding. He would need to lay off the magic for a while-- he didn’t think he could handle much more of this.
He followed Simon onto a bus and they rode in silence for a few stops. Within a few minutes, they had apparently made it to their destination.
“Well,” Simon said, scuffing his trainers on the sidewalk, “shall we?”
“Steel Lounge?” Baz asked. “Are you taking me to a gay bar?”
“Er, yes?” Simon tugged on the brim of his hat, bringing it almost to his eyebrows.
“Why?”
“Well, I work here? And it’s a decent place. There’s live music tonight, and it’s usually not bad. Plus I work later, so it’d be convenient for me.”
“I knew you worked at a bar,” Baz said, “but I didn’t know it was a gay bar.”
Simon sighed. “Well, it is, so--”
“Why do you work at a gay bar?”
“Why wouldn’t I, Baz?”
Baz couldn’t bring himself to articulate a response to that, so he raised his other objection: “I’ve never been here because I’m worried about running into my ex. I’ve been avoiding queer spaces in general for almost a year.”
“Oh.” Simon frowned at him. “We could go somewhere else--”
“No,” Baz said, regretting his sudden vulnerability. “Whatever, it’s fine, let’s go in.”
“I don’t want you to go somewhere you don’t feel safe,” Simon said, and Baz suddenly remembered the few details he knew about Simon’s family.
“It’s not like that,” he assured him. “Just standard embarrassment.”
“If you’re sure...” Simon was shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot.
“Yes,” Baz said, “yes, I’m sure.”
The bar was small but rather cozy, quiet on the ground level, the stage upstairs. The music was fine, he supposed. Acoustic pop song covers. Not Baz’s cup of tea, but nothing offensive. He let Simon buy him a pint of cider, noted his warm familiarity with the bartender, and they found themselves a table after Baz had taken a quick glance around for any sign of his ex.
“We good then, mate?” Simon asked.
“Yes. Fine.”
“You’ll tell me if that changes?”
Baz nodded.
“Great. So... in case you were wondering, I figured out the whole-- you know-- sexuality thing.” Simon wiggled his fingers and widened his eyes on the word “sexuality.”
“Is that so?”
“Fairly certain I’m bisexual,” Simon told him. “I’ve done a lot of thinking, and Penny helped me figure out all the labels, and that’s the one I’m using for now. Subject to change, of course, but I’m not straight.”
“Penelope helped you figure out your sexual orientation?”
“Well, she’s pansexual, and she’s brilliant, and she’s my best friend, so why not?”
Baz shrugged. “I figured it out on my own.”
“Ahh, well, that’s definitely not how I operate.” Simon took a gulp of his lager and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Anyway, I’m sorry for oversharing about my identity crisis before, but you were the first bloke I’d been on a date with, and sometimes when I’m nervous, I just ramble on about whatever comes to mind.”
Baz felt his face grow hot and he began toying with his glass, suddenly unable to look Simon in the eye. So they were going to talk about this, were they?
“Oh,” he said quietly. “That’s fine."
“Anyway,” Simon said, oblivious to Baz’s mortification, “Penny’s been saying I should make more friends in, y’know, the community. So I was hoping we could be that. If you’re willing to stop rolling your eyes every time I speak, you posh fuck.”
Baz looked up.
Oh, he thought.
It wasn’t what he was hoping for, but there was nothing wrong with friends. Baz didn’t even have any proper friends in the city anymore. Whenever he wanted to talk to someone, he had to either call Dev back in London, or wait for Fiona to get reliable Internet access and schedule a Skype call. Besides, if he dated Simon, he’d just have one more ex to avoid when they inevitably broke up.
“Yes,” he said, holding out his right hand. “Let’s be friends.”
Simon laughed, but he shook Baz’s hand anyway.
*
Simon, without being invited, began accompanying Baz to the library, listening to podcasts and playing mobile games while Baz worked, always ready with funny cat videos when Baz was ready for a distraction. Baz’s birthday had fallen the week before their drink at Steel Lounge, and when he found this out, Simon insisted on baking a cake and delivering it, complete with twenty-six candles, to Baz’s flat. Penelope’s general productivity must have been soaring now that Baz was taking on some of the burden of Simon’s friendship.
And it was a burden, really, although Baz was happy to bear it. Simon’s attention was a warm, heavy weight that settled all around him. It didn’t seem like Simon was scared of being alone as much as he was simply unafraid of asking for company. He was quiet when Baz needed him to be, but he was very noticeably present.
Simon, it turned out, had decided a few years ago that he wanted to be a counsellor, specifically wanted to work with kids. He was saving for school now, and his mum was helping as much as she could, but it would still be a while before he could afford the tuition. Baz couldn’t help thinking about his own trajectory in life, how it felt like his father was indulging him by letting him do this PhD before he finally, inevitably, started thinking seriously about law school. Would he be doing any of this, he wondered, if it had required him to work two jobs for years beforehand?
Not that Simon made him feel like his work was frivolous. He listened intently as Baz talked about classic horror films, even asking Baz to show him a few of his favourites. When Baz admitted that he’d initially been drawn to the genre because of his belief, since childhood, that he was in some way monstrous-- something to do with his mother’s death at first, and then, years later, the first inklings of his queerness -- Simon seemed to understand.
“I had a bad temper growing up,” he told Baz, “but I’ve worked hard to get control of it, because-- when I-- when I get angry enough to shout, I sound just like my dad. I hate it. It scares me.”
Baz didn’t have much to say to that, thinking of the chilled silence and open space of his own childhood, but it turned out not much was needed: just the gentle knocking of his shoulder against Simon’s, an offer to buy the next round.
Talking to Simon made him realise something: that up until now, he’d been only imagining his life as far as his PhD, and that he visualised everything after that as a sharp and sudden drop into a dark void of obligation. It was the reason he couldn’t bring himself to write recently: every word added to his stagnating thesis took him that much closer to the end.
What would he do with his life, he wondered, if he had to take full responsibility for the decision? Would he pursue an academic career like his mother did, uprooting himself for the promise of tenure? Or would he do something unprecedented: maybe become a writer?
He wondered what his mother would have wanted him to do, but his understanding of her personality came down to poorly-fitting puzzle pieces: the crooked smile in family photographs, the stories of her brief rebellious phase that his aunt Fiona recounted whenever she was feeling sentimental, the care and detail in the jumpers she’d knit for him when he was a toddler. This, like his magic, gave him no simple answer or solution.
*
There is a knitting technique called “steeking”, in which an garment is knit as a series of tubes that are then cut at strategic points to create arm holes, a neckline, or the front opening of a cardigan. It’s an old technique, not very technologically advanced, requiring very little in the way of materials or dexterity. It doesn’t require even the smallest drop of magic. One simply identifies the place for the opening, takes some simple measures to reinforce the surrounding stitches, and then snips the fabric open. The hardest part for beginners is gathering the courage to take scissors to something that took them weeks or months to create, something that might be aesthetically pleasing but is, in its current form, unable to serve its intended purpose.
*
On the second Tuesday in March, Simon texted to ask what he was up to the next night, and Baz, his defenses well worn down at this point, replied immediately to say he was free. He wasn’t scheduled to work, so he’d been planning to spend the evening on his thesis, but he figured he’d made enough progress recently to have earned a night off.
nice! there’s karaoke at steel lounge at ten :)
Baz briefly considered inventing other plans, but he realised, to his own surprise, that he'd rather embarrass himself than let Simon down.
When he made it to the second floor, Penelope, Simon, and two people he didn’t recognise were already sitting around a table, sharing an order of spinach dip. This must have been the ragtag crew of queer friends that Simon had been trying to assemble. He slid into the empty chair between Simon and one of the strangers, and tried not to let his disappointment show.
The two strangers were apparently called Agatha and Minty. Baz thought they might be a couple based on the relaxed manor in which they leaned against each other, and the way Minty seemed to answer for both of them, while Agatha’s eyes remained fixed on her phone, her long pale hair falling in front of her face. Agatha was a labmate of Penny’s, but she resisted any questions about her research. Baz could appreciate that. Minty, on the other hand, had no problem sharing the fact that she was studying journalism.
Penny bought a round of drinks for the table and, upon passing Baz his vodka soda, asked what he’d be singing tonight.
“Oh," he said, trying to sound casual, "I don't know. I don't really do karaoke."
“Just pick something you know and like. It’s fun!” Minty insisted, tossing her braids over her shoulder and nudging Agatha. “Right, Aggie?”
Agatha looked up, her face illuminated by the glow of her phone, and smiled at Minty. “I’m up soon, I think.”
She didn’t say anything more until, a few minutes later, she was called up to the stage. She’d chosen a Mariah Carey song, and Baz’s stomach dropped when, after the first verse, he realised that she was really good, hitting the high notes and pulling off a few vocal runs with apparent ease. When she was done, she accepted all praise graciously, then immediately fell into deep conversation with Minty.
“I can’t handle this at my current level of intoxication,” Baz said, and headed to the bar for the next round.
By the time he got back to the table with the drinks, Simon had crossed the floor to the stage, and Baz realised he was putting his name down for a song.
“He’s signing you up too,” Penny told him, “so you’d better start drinking that.”
He groaned. He was only just tipsy. “Why don’t you go with him?”
“I will,” Penny said, a little sing-song cadence creeping into her words, “but he wants to do this one with you.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him for a little too long to be comfortable.
“I can't sing,” he insisted.
“The point is either to be properly good,” Penny told him, just as Simon slid back into the chair beside hers, “or bad but sincere. So. Prepare accordingly.”
“I’m aiming for the latter,” Simon said.
Baz finished his drink and ordered a third.
When the time finally came, he was drunk enough to feel unsteady on his feet without actually stumbling. Over the last few weeks, he’d stopped worrying about running into his ex, but he scanned the crowd once he got on the stage and felt his stomach drop when he spotted a familiar face. For an instant, he imagined running for the door, but his feet stayed planted on the stage.
He knew how to hide fear and weakness. He could do this.
And it helped that Simon gave his hand a little squeeze just as the music started up. Yes, he could do this.
The song, he realised, was “Take a Chance on Me.” And yes, he knew the words-- Simon had made him watch Mamma Mia as an early test of their friendship, and he'd been delighted to see that Baz couldn't help mouthing along to all the songs.
Baz giggled nervously, drunkenly through the first iteration of the chorus, eyes fixed on the lyrics flashing on the screen, but halfway through the first verse, he began to sing in earnest.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or the mortification, but he could swear he felt energy shifting in the air between them once they reached the chorus again. Simon turned to look at him, blushing hard and grinning. He was off-key, but he was absolutely sincere, and the lyrics seemed like magic words as they tumbled from his lips.
This was new territory for Baz. If this was magic, he didn’t know what sort of spell they were casting.
When they got back to their seats, Penny leaned across Simon and punched Baz lightly on the shoulder.
“See?” she said. “That wasn’t so bad.”
Baz was mid-eye-roll when he felt Simon’s hand on his, giving another gentle squeeze.
“You did great,” Simon assured him. Their fingers were loosely interlaced now, and something that felt like magic crackled faintly between their palms.
*
After that, the year filled up quickly with dates and meetings and kisses and chapters submitted, chapters revised, chapters submitted again. Winter gave way to spring, which gave way to a sweltering summer that found Baz pulling a few all-nighters to complete his last few rounds of edits. Baz knit even in the worst of the heat, casting desperate spells to fight exhaustion. But Simon was there, sleeping over so regularly that he kept an overnight kit in the bathroom, and he didn’t seem to mind at all that Baz had no idea what he was going to do with his life, actually seemed rather confident that Baz would figure it out. And Penelope was there as well, always willing to take the piss out of him when Simon’s affection and emotional transparency got to be more than Baz could bear.
In July, he called his father to say that he had no intention of going to law school or joining the firm. He wasn’t expecting an outright objection, and he didn’t get one. There was ice in his father’s voice, but he ignored it. If his father wanted to argue about it, he’d need to use his words.
When autumn came, and Baz was now officially Dr. Pitch, he cast on another beanie for Simon, who had lost the first one just as Penelope had predicted. He couldn’t help working a little magic into the hat again, but this time it was loose and unfocused, a vague haze of affection permeating the fabric.
“You don’t have to keep making these for me,” Simon said when he saw the finished hat, complete once again with a pompom. “I’ll only lose them.”
“And I’ll keep making them,” Baz replied without hesitation. That much of his future, at least, was clear.