Chapter Text
Baz
Simon gets down on one knee, and it’s like the breath has been knocked out of me. What does he think he’s doing?
I reach out to grab his arm, but he pulls it out of my grasp.
“What are you doing?” I ask him, trying to stay quiet enough that no one else will hear.
“You may have been the better boyfriend, but I’m about to show you that I’ll be the better fiancé,” he says in the casual way that someone might tell you they’re going to go wash the laundry, and he’s got that wild glint in his eyes that he gets right before we start fighting.
“Why are you doing this?” I hiss, trying to put a stop to it before he does something that can’t be easily undone.
He shrugs. “Why not? Are you afraid that you’ll lose?”
“Of course not.” I’m more afraid that this will kill me.
“Great. Let’s do this.”
He glances around us, but I keep my eyes on him, disbelieving of what he’s doing. This has to be a joke, a really cruel joke, and I’m not sure what I did to deserve this. To deserve Simon asking me to marry him but not meaning it.
It’s simultaneously a dream come true and my worst nightmare.
“Baz,” he says softly, and just from that one word, I know that I’m screwed. He raises his voice as he continues so that others will hear him.
“This may seem like we’re moving too fast, but I know how I feel about you. I’m in love with you, and even though we’ve spent years fighting, I’ve also spent years slowing falling for you. I love everything about you, even the things that you don’t like to show most people. We spent so much time apart when we could have been together, and I don’t want to be apart from you for another moment.”
As he speaks, I can feel myself breaking inside, wishing that he wasn’t saying any of it. How can he say those things and not mean it? How can he lie to me (and everyone else) about being in love with me?
He sounds so sincere, and for a moment, I’m back to feeling how I did last night when I was sure that he was going to tell me that what he felt was real. Right before he said he wanted to end things. He fooled me then, and he’s fooling me now, making me believe that this is real.
I feel tears burning behind my eyes, and I can’t tell whether it’s because of what he’s saying or because of how angry I am that this is just a competition to him, that it doesn’t mean a thing to him. He’s just playing with my feelings, and I’m letting him. Maybe I’m just angry at myself for letting this continue.
“I don’t have a ring, but Baz Pitch, will you marry me?” He finally asks the question, and I give him the answer that I would give him if he were to ask me for real.
“Yes,” I say, but it comes out quieter than I mean it to. I clear my throat, making sure the tears are gone and say it again. “Yes, Simon, I’ll marry you.”
People start clapping, but I don’t care about that. My focus is all on Simon as I reach down to pull him up to his feet.
He’s got this crazy grin on his face, and it’s impossible to believe that he didn’t mean what he just said.
His hands come up to cup my face, and I reach out to pull him closer.
“I can’t believe that you did that,” I tell him, unable to believe that I let it happen or that I said yes.
“Neither can I,” he replies, and I know that he means it. That wasn’t planned. None of this was. That’s why this is all so confusing. None of this was supposed to happen, and I’m pretty sure that Simon feels the same way.
He leans forward and kisses me, and my knees nearly buckle from the force of it. We’ve kissed before, but it was never like this. This...this is different.
This is something akin to how I imagined a true love’s kiss would feel. (You know, if I actually believed in true love.)
As he kisses me, it’s like I feel whole. Nothing else in the world matters.
But then he’s pulling away from me, and I’m forced to come to my senses. It wasn’t real. Or maybe it was, but Simon would never admit to that.
Even if he did have feelings for me, he could never tell me because he’s the Chosen One. He can’t be seen dating his vampire roommate for real.
We exchange a few more words, nothing that really means anything, before I pull him tight against me, wishing I never had to let him go.
He places a soft kiss to the side of my face, and something inside of me tells me that he isn’t faking this. There’s a reason that he changed his mind about breaking up with me. I just have to get him to tell me in a way that doesn’t turn into a confrontation.
I may need some help with that.
***
“Baz,” Bunce says beside me, snapping me out of my reverie. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I assure her. “I was just thinking about something.”
I turn back to the magazine in front of me, looking over the various flower arrangements, as I rest my head on my hand, my elbow digging into my knee.
Simon is still asleep, so it’s just me and Bunce flipping through catalogues and magazines. It’s still rather early, so I’ve decided to let him sleep some more. He’s not very much help with this anyway, and I know that it won’t help things to wake him up unless I plan to bring him breakfast in bed.
It’s been months since Simon proposed, and now, I’m planning our wedding. Well, Bunce and I are planning mine and Simon’s wedding. I wouldn’t have been able to get through this without her help.
She has helped with more than just the wedding planning, but as I look around the room, at the mess we’ve made in the flat that she shares with Simon with magazines and lists and fabric samples, I can see that somewhere along the way, we got carried away. Something went wrong.
This engagement was supposed to be over a long time ago. We were never supposed to get to the actual wedding planning stage of it.
It’s been a couple of weeks since we left Watford, and I had been hoping that this would all be over before Christmas break.
Simon keeps telling me that I have to be the one to decide when we should end this, but I keep waiting and waiting for something that doesn’t seem to be coming.
I was hoping that Simon would have told me how he felt about me by now, but I’ve begun to think that I was wrong. He doesn’t feel the same, and this has all truly just been a competition to him.
I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to think that everything we’ve done has been fake. It never once felt that way after he proposed, but there was always a part of me that was determined to remember that it wasn’t real, to hang on to a bit of reality.
No matter how hard I try to forget and just be in the moment, all I can do is remember that this isn’t what I want.
I want something real with Simon. I want something that I can never have.
Even Bunce believed that there was something real there, and we’ve been working on letting Simon take his time to admit it to himself and then us, but so much time has passed. Perhaps too much time.
Maybe it’s time for me to just give up.
Simon
When I wake up and hear Baz and Penny conversing in the living room, I already know that today is going to be a long one. I head straight to the kitchen, bypassing the living room, knowing that I’m going to need some food in me if I’m going to make it through this.
I make myself some tea and toast, which I add extra butter to since neither of them is in here to stop me, and I eat it slowly, putting off joining them for as long as possible. A part of me wants to go climb back in bed, but I’ll have to face them eventually, so after I finish eating, I slowly make my way to the living room.
The state of the room is even worse than I had been imagining it would look. Baz and Penny seem to be going all out this morning. Pretty much every available space is covered in something wedding related.
There are magazines and notebook pages and even some sample wedding invitations scattered all around them.
They’ve even got a small marker board set up with all of the details of things that they’ve chosen for the wedding. They’ve got a few names under “caterer” and “florist”, but it looks like they haven’t yet chosen whether to have a band or a DJ.
In one notebook, it looks like they’re trying to get together a guest list, and from what I can tell as I glance at it, it seems like they plan on inviting everyone from our year at Watford.
They’ve tried to include me in some of the planning before, like the venue for the wedding, but it just feels like one big joke.
What’s the point in planning a wedding that will never happen?
Baz sees me walk in, and the smile that he gives me has my heart doing cartwheels in my chest. He clears a space on the floor next to him, so I move to join him.
I walk around the couch to sit beside him, and his arm slips easily around my waist. Without giving it much thought, I turn to place a kiss to his cheek.
This has pretty much become a normal thing for us. We’ve slipped right into being a couple, and the line between real and fake has blurred so much that I no longer know what’s happening between us.
We very much are not a couple, but it seems like in every way but name, we are. I’m no longer sure that he doesn’t feel the same way - it seems impossible that he doesn’t - but I’m so afraid of breaking this happy little bubble that we’re living in. If I say the wrong thing to him, I might ruin everything, and I’d rather enjoy these little moments for as long as I can.
It’s not just the moments like this, though. There are so many other ways that we act like more than just friends. I think the fact that he’s currently planning our “wedding” is probably the biggest thing.
It’s like he doesn’t want to let this go any more than I do.
“Good morning,” he says, tugging me closer.
“Morning,” I murmur, a smile playing on my lips. I can’t help but smile when he acts like this, holding me close to him.
I glance at the magazine that he’s looking at. It’s full of all kinds of different flowers that I couldn’t even begin to name. A few of them have been circled, and Baz has even added it neat handwriting to the pages, probably listing the pros and cons of each one.
It seems insane that Baz and Penny are actually doing all of this, going all out planning a fake wedding that no one else even knows about. It’s just a thing between the three of us and something that I don’t want to be a part of at all.
How can they sit here and plan a wedding that won’t happen? It seems like a colossal waste of time. Baz doesn’t want to marry me, so what’s the point?
I kind of get why Baz is doing all of this - he wants to win the competition and apparently plans to do that by planning an extravagant wedding - but what I don’t understand is why Penny is helping him. She knows that the whole thing is a sham.
After I proposed to Baz, she immediately pulled me aside and demanded that I tell her the truth. She saw right through the whole thing.
She thinks it’s stupid that we’re still going along with all of this (and that we started it in the first place) but she also understands why I can’t be the one that breaks it off. She still seems disappointed in me because I never managed to tell him how I really feel, though.
I just couldn’t do it. It would have ruined everything, and I wanted to at least still be friends with him. I wouldn’t have been able to face him after receiving that kind of rejection.
I still can’t explain why exactly I thought it would be a good idea to propose to him. But he did say yes, and now we’re technically engaged. I only hope all of these plans that he’s making are fake as well. If he is in fact ordering all of these things just to prove a point, I might be in too far over my head.
If I’m being honest, marrying Baz is something that I would love to do. Someday. Not now, not right out of Watford. And especially not when our entire relationship has been fake.
The feelings for him are there, and they only grow stronger with each passing day. Of course, it doesn’t help that we do everything that couples do. We even have a date planned for this weekend.
I don’t know what the point of it is except that we both want to spend time together.
We’ve really got the emotional - and perhaps even physical - part of the relationship down, but the one thing that we seem to be missing is communication – actually talking about what is going on. We seem to be tiptoeing around the subject, not even mentioning the competition or when it will end anymore.
The only person who seems to be interested in talking about what’s going on between us is Penny.
It seems like it’s every day now that she tries to convince me to confess my feelings to Baz, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. I like what we have, and while I would of course like it to be real, I don’t want to risk losing him.
Penny insists that he might surprise me by returning those feelings, and I want to believe her - there are times when I do - but there’s always something that holds me back from telling him. And I’m pretty sure that it’s the very real love that I have for him.
I tried to deny it at first, but I did fall in love with Baz while we were back at Watford.
This competition brought us together and made me open my eyes to the truth. There has always been something different between me and Baz, something pulling us together. I always thought that it was our mutual hate for each other, but now I’m beginning to think that I was wrong all along.
Maybe there was something else bringing us together, and it just took me this long to realize it.
Baz and I are in a real relationship, whether we admit it to ourselves - or each other - or not.
I want to admit it. I want to turn to him now and tell him that I want this to be real. It would be so easy. All I have to do is say, “Baz, I want to date you for real.”
Baz removes his arm from around me, and I feel unusually cold and start to panic for a moment, thinking that maybe I accidentally said those words aloud. But then he reaches for another magazine, and I relax a little.
Nothing about this situation is relaxing, though. I can never really relax around Baz when I know that all of this could be taken away. With a few words, he could end this competition - and our relationship with it.
In fact, he was supposed to do just that while we were still at Watford.
The plan was that he was supposed to end it with me before the holidays, and when we returned, we would tell everyone that things just didn’t work out between us. We rushed into it too quickly and weren’t ready for such a big commitment.
But then Baz was inviting me to his house for Christmas, and things began to spiral out of control as we dealt with the Humdrum and everything else.
We began to hold onto each other for support, and it never felt like the right time to end our engagement. Now, we just don’t talk about it.
I’m starting to grow tired of this. While it’s nice acting like this with Baz, it’s tearing me up inside. Every time he says something nice to me or kisses me, I can feel my heart crack a little more with the knowledge that it isn’t real, and eventually my heart will shatter.
Unless I put an end to all of this.
It would be really easy to end it now since we won’t have to deal with the reactions of our peers. Penny already knows that the whole thing is a ruse, so why are we still doing this? Why don’t we just put an end to it?
I did a horrible job of ending our first fake relationship, so I really shouldn’t be the one who has to end this one, but Baz doesn’t seem like he’s ever going to do it. It looks like it’s up to me.
I’m afraid that ending this will mean ending everything, including our friendship, but ending it is the only way that we can find a way to make this real. So long as I’m questioning Baz’s every move, there’s no way that this can become something real. We first have to find a way to get past this.
I don’t have a clear idea of how this would work. I don’t even know if Baz will talk to me once this competition is finished. Will he still want to be friends with me? Or will he no longer have a reason to spend time with me?
Either way I think that it’s time that I find out.
I open my mouth to try to start a conversation about this with him when he starts talking about the wedding to me.
“I was thinking about asking Mordelia to be the flower girl. Penny found a nice dress with some blue detailing, and I think that it would go well with some of the other colors that we’ve chosen. But I wanted to make sure that it was okay with you.” He turns to look at me as if he’s trying to gauge my reaction, and I know that there is at least some sincerity in what he’s saying.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” I tell him, giving him a small smile. I know that having his family, any part of his family, at the wedding would mean a lot to him.
“Great. I was also trying to figure out how we wanted to get to the wedding venue. We could do a limo, but that seems overdone, so I was wondering if you had a preference.”
“Couldn’t you just drive us in your car?” I ask.
“Don’t you want to do something special? It’s our wedding day.”
But it’s not our wedding day, I want to say, but Penny speaks first.
“What about a party bus? That way the wedding party can tag along?”
“I think we might want a little more privacy than that,” Baz says, giving her a look that says everything he’s thinking without him actually having to say it.
“Shouldn’t you save that for your wedding night?” She asks, raising her eyebrows at him.
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Are they actually talking about me and Baz having sex? We’ve barely done anything more than kiss - for obvious reasons - and we definitely haven’t done that, so I don’t want to be having this discussion right now.
There have been a few times where I wanted to take it further, but we both always seem to pull back before that happens. Fake dating is confusing enough without becoming friends with benefits.
My face burns as I listen to them. I haven’t felt this mortified since Penny tried to give me that sex talk.
Thankfully, they quickly move on, leaving the decision of transportation for another day. Baz pulls a different magazine into his lap, setting aside the other two, and begins scanning the pages. This one is similar to the last in that it looks like he’s already looked through it before because there are notes written in the margins in his neat handwriting, and some of the images have been circled, like he intended to come back to them.
He appears to be really into this whole wedding planning thing, and it makes me wonder whether he’s just planning a wedding that he’ll have with some other guy. It definitely isn’t going to be our wedding, which makes me feel sick to my stomach and makes me really not want to take part in the planning.
I don’t want to end up going to a wedding that I helped do all the planning for if it’s between the guy that I fell in love with and someone who isn’t me.
I’ve tuned out at some point, and when I tune back in, Baz is pointing at various images of flowers and saying something to me. I haven’t heard a word, though.
“What?” I ask.
“Which one do you think would be best?”
I look over the flowers, but I can’t seem to focus on them.
I have to put an end to this. Not just the wedding planning, but the fake relationship. If I’m going to do this, I have to do it now, before I can come up with an excuse not to.
“I don’t know,” I tell him.
“Come on, Simon. You have to help pick something. These two are really nice.” He says pointing at two different arrangements.
“No,” I say firmly, shaking my head. “I don’t have to do any of this because it isn’t real, and—.” I take a breath, preparing myself for what I’m about to do. “And I think that we should put an end to this.”
He tears his eyes away from the magazine and whips his head up to look at me so fast that it startles me, and I want to take back what I said as soon as I see the look in his eyes.
I have to keep going, though.
“To what?” He asks quietly.
“This relationship.”
“Wait—,” he begins, but I cut him off before he can talk me out of it.
I have to do this now. I have to tell him how I really feel about him.
“No,” I stand up and move to put some distance between us so that I can think clearly.
I know that if he were to try to pull me back to him, I would let him. Ending this is one of the hardest things that I’ve ever had to do. I’m taking a big risk, one that could lose me everything.
“I’m done waiting. I’ve been waiting for you to end this for months, and I think—. I’ve finally had enough. I don’t want to be fake engaged anymore. I don’t want to plan a fake wedding. And most importantly, I don’t want to keep pretending like it doesn’t hurt me to see you pretending like you actually like me.”
“So, you just want to end all of this?”
“Yes. I can’t do it anymore.”
“Fine. I guess there’s only one thing left to figure out then.”
“What?” I ask, feeling a little hopeful, thinking that he’s talking about us.
“Who won?”
His words hit me like a slap to the face, and I stumble a little as I take a step back.
“Seriously? That’s what you care about?” I can feel myself getting angry, my magic bubbling up to the surface. It’s not quite as dangerous as it was before I nearly gave it all away – I would have if Baz hadn’t been there to stop me – but I know that I could still do some damage if I don’t calm down. “Whatever. I don’t care. You won.”
I wanted to try to talk to him now about how I really felt, but I don’t think that I can do that right now with the anger and hurt that I feel. I need some space to think about it and decide whether this is really the best thing for us.
I turn away from Baz and start to head out of the room.
“Simon, wait.” It’s Penny this time. I wish it was Baz.
I shake my head at her, not meeting her eyes.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I say. I can’t keep going on like this with Baz when the competition is the only thing that he cares about.
But at least I know the truth now.
Then, before the pain of what I’ve just done can really hit me, I grab some shoes and hurry out of the flat. I step out onto the pavement and start walking with no real destination in mind. I just need to get away.
As the tears start to burn the backs of my eyes, I wish that I had just listened to Penny all of those months ago.
***
The applause continues even as Baz and I pull apart. The proposal was fake, but the way that I’m looking at him isn’t. I care deeply for him, and I want this with him. Once some time has passed, I’ll have to find a way to talk to him about what I did.
We’ll plan an ending for our engagement, and I’ll try to start a conversation about how I feel. I want to try this relationship thing for real.
I have some hope that he wants it, too, but I have to know for sure before I say anything.
“Simon,” I hear behind me, and I turn to see Penny giving me one of her looks that means that I’ve done something especially idiotic.
I know that she’s right, but nothing can kill this high that I’m riding at the moment, not even the fact that it wasn’t real.
“I’ll talk to you later,” I tell Baz, squeezing his hand once, quickly, before allowing Penny to pull me away from the crowd of people and out of the dining hall and outside.
When we’ve gotten a decent distant away from the Weeping Tower, she whirls on me, hands on her hips as she glares at me. I don’t understand why she looks so angry.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” I shrug, even though it clearly wasn’t nothing.
“You just proposed.”
“Not really. Baz knows that it wasn’t real.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. We’ve decided to extend this competition between us.”
“But that wasn’t the plan, was it? You looked really upset before you went to go and talk to him.”
I shrug again and look down at the ground. “I was supposed to publicly break up with him, but I couldn’t do it. I need more time to figure out whether he likes me.”
“Then, you should just talk to him about it instead of playing these silly games. You’re only going to get hurt doing this.”
“I know, but I’ll get more hurt if he rejects me.”
She’s quiet for a moment, then, “You really like him, don’t you?
I press my lips together to keep myself from admitting that it’s more than that. I’m in love with him.
She sighs. “Simon, I know you don’t want to get hurt, but wouldn’t it be easier to just talk to him?’
“No.” I shake my head. “I just need some time to watch him and see whether he likes me the same way.”
It’s not much different from when I watched him to find out what he was plotting. Only this time, I’m looking for something good rather than any sign that he might be planning to kill me.
“Do you really think that’s the best idea?” She asks.
“Yes,” I say firmly, looking back up at her.
She looks like she wants to protest some more, and I wouldn’t blame her. This does seem like a ridiculous thing to do, but it’s my only option.
I don’t want to lose him, and this is the only way that I can see to get around that.
She finally relents and agrees to help me figure it out. With Penny by my side, there’s no way that anything can go wrong.
***
As I move away from our flat, I realize nothing went the way that I thought it would. So much went wrong. If I had just listened to Penny and told Baz how I felt about him, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I should have just taken her advice.