Work Text:
Simon
I run into the library, narrowing avoiding running into a couple of younger students, as I search for Penny. I receive a dirty look from the librarian, so I slow to a brisk walk as I keep looking.
Penny said that she was headed this way after dinner, and it hasn’t been that long, so she should still be here.
I weave around tables and between shelves until I finally find her sitting at a table in one of the back corners, out of the way from everyone else.
She looks up at me as I collapse into the chair across from her, tired after running all the way here from Mummers House.
“Are you alright?” She asks. “You look like you’re running away from a monster.”
“I’m fine,” I assure her, knowing that I must look pretty wild for her to think that, but she would be the one to know since she has (fortunately for me) been there a lot of those times when I was run away from creatures that were out to kill me. “I have a problem, though.”
“Is it Baz again?”
“No. Well, kind of.”
She sighs. “What is it this time?”
“I think I might be gay.” I say it quickly and quietly, and it feels good to say it aloud, even if I’m still not certain of how true it is.
“You think you might be what?” She sounds less incredulous than I thought she’d be, but she does seem surprised by how abruptly I said it.
“I think I might like guys,” I say slowly, finally catching my breath.
“Oh, okay.” She still doesn’t seem all that surprised, at least not in the way I thought she would. It’s good that she isn’t making a big deal about it, but I was expecting the worst, so it surprises me. “What makes you think this all of a sudden?”
“There’s this guy…” I begin, but I drift off, unsure how much more I should say. What if she doesn’t like him? What if she doesn’t approve?
“Really? Who?” She seems excited by this, and I bite back a smile as I picture him in my mind. I can feel my face start to warm when Penny raises a brow at me. “You really do like someone.”
I nod. “Yeah, I think I do.” It’s too bad that there’s no way that he could ever feel the same way about me.
“Who is it? And what does this have to do with Baz?” She asks, then a moment later, “Oh. No. I mean, you two barely get along, and you think you have feelings for him?”
I shrug. “We don’t fight that much anymore, and I don’t know… There’s just something about him.” I find myself smiling again, thinking about him, and I don’t know how I managed to think that I hated him for so long. “But I could be wrong. It could be nothing.”
“No, no. You’re right. I mean it actually kind of makes sense.”
“So, you think I’m gay?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter what I think. All that matters is how you feel about Baz.”
“It’s just so confusing,” I say. How do I know if what I feel are actually romantic feelings? It feels like I do, but how can I be sure?
“You don’t have to put a label on it if you don’t want to,” Penny says softly, reassuring. “If you like Baz, that’s enough.”
“Okay.”
“So, what are you going to do about these newfound feelings?” She asks.
I groan. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I just realized after dinner that I had feelings for Baz and panicked so much that I had to leave our room and run to find Penny to tell her.
“I don’t know. Nothing probably. I mean, there’s no way that he feels the same way.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” She’s giving me this look like she knows something that I don’t.
“What do you mean?”
“He pays just as much attention to you as you do to him, and now that I realize that you do it because you like him, it would make sense if he felt the same way.”
“You really think so?” I ask hopefully, my stomach fluttering.
“I can’t be sure, but I’m fairly certain that he feels something for you.”
“Okay. Thanks, Penny. I think I’m going to go for a walk and think about this.”
“I’m here if you want to talk some more.”
I smile and nod at her before heading out of the library and out onto the grounds. The drawbridge is going to come up soon, so I stick to the inside of the walls, letting the cool air wash over me and clear my thoughts.
It’s nice to get some fresh air and just get away from everything else for a minute.
I walk for a long time, but I don’t come up with anything. My choices are to take a chance and tell Baz how I feel or keep it a secret forever, and I don’t know which one I should do.
I decide to head back to my room and sleep on it, but as I’m moving closer to the White Chapel, I see a familiar figure walking out of it, hands stuffed in his pockets as he turns down the path that leads to Mummers House.
I pick up my pace and move closer to him.
“Baz!” I call. I haven’t decided what I’m going to say to him yet, but this might be my chance to figure out what to do.
His head jerks up, and when he turns and sees that it’s me, a shocked look crosses his face before it turns into a sneer.
“What do you want, Snow?”
“N-nothing. I just thought we could walk together since we’re headed to the same place.” I try to play it cool, but I do a terrible job of it. I don’t know how to act normally around Baz.
“Why?” He doesn’t sound angry, but he doesn’t sound happy either. He sounds more put out than anything, like I’m an inconvenience in his life and nothing more.
I don’t know why I like this guy, but as my heart picks up speed, I know that I really do like him. I like being near him, and I like him as a person. There’s more to him than I was willing to see. Before, I only saw him as a villain, as my rival, but looking at him now, I can see that he’s just a boy.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
He shakes his head at me, but he turns and starts walking again, so I follow after him.
As we walk, I yearn to reach out and take his hand, but that would be stupid. I don’t know for sure that he likes me, and this could just be a stupid crush. It would be a mistake to act on it so suddenly.
It feels like more than that, though. I may not have known how I felt until now, but that doesn’t mean that these feelings haven’t always been there, slowly building until they were ready to burst out of me.
I just can’t believe that it has taken me this long to realize how I felt.
“Snow, why are you staring at me?” Baz asks suddenly, and I jerk out my thoughts.
“I’m not,” I lie.
He turns on me and crosses his arms, blocking my way and forcing me to stop before I run into him.
“Seriously, what is going on with you?” He asks. “First, you were acting really weird in our room, and then you practically raced out of there. And now, you what? You want to be friends or something?”
Or something.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.” Even to my own ears, it doesn’t sound believable.
“You’re lying.”
“Wh-what? I am not.”
“You so are.”
He takes a step closer, and I swallow hard but don’t move, standing my ground.
He’s right about the thing in our room. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him as he readied himself for bed, and when I finally figured out what it was that I was feeling, I got out of there as quickly as possible, tripping and knocking things over in my haste.
“You can’t even meet my eyes, and you keep fidgeting. Plus, I know you well enough to know when you’re lying to me.”
It shouldn’t make my heart swell when he says that he knows me, but it does, and I can’t come up with anything to say in my own defense, so I just stay quiet.
He takes another step and another until there’s only a few inches between us.
“Tell me your secret.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Really? Then, why is your heart racing?”
“I—. It’s not.”
“You sure about that?” He asks. Then, he reaches up to place his hand on my chest, and I gasp quietly. Apparently not quiet enough, though, because he raises an eyebrow at me. “You alright there?”
His voice has dropped to a low murmur, and it sounds breathy as his eyes seem to pierce through me, searching for the truth.
I take a step back, saying, “I-I need to go.”
“Where?” He asks, sounding amused. “I thought you were headed to our room.”
“Right. Well, I’m going to walk alone now.”
“Seriously, Snow?” His expression changes again, but I don’t know what it means. “What is going on with you?”
“Nothing. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Why do you care?” I ask.
“I don’t.”
“Now, who’s lying?”
“Whatever. Let’s just go to our room and forget about all of this.”
“Fine.”
We walk in silence after that, and I can feel my feelings for him threaten to bubble up and out of me. I know it’s stupid to want to tell him how I feel when I haven’t even known about my feelings for that long, but it’s like I can’t keep the words in any longer.
“Wait,” I say when we get to our room and he reaches for the doorknob to let us in.
“What?” His voice is softer than before, and I decide to take a chance.
“I-I like you.”
His entire body tenses up as he just stares at me, and I feel like I’ve made the wrong decision. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have just kept my mouth shut.
It’s too late now, though. I can’t take it back.
Baz
We stand there frozen for what feels like hours but can’t be more than a minute as I try to figure out how to respond. Surely, I misunderstood. There is no way that he likes me that way.
“Like as a friend?” I say finally, trying not to let on how badly I want to have heard him right.
“No,” he shakes his head, giving me hope and causing my heart to do a flip. “I like you as more than a friend. I-I have feelings for you, Baz.”
“Are you lying again?”
“Does it look like I’m lying?”
And that’s just it. It doesn’t. He looked sincere as he said it, and I can’t believe what I’m hearing right now.
Where did this all come from? Why is he telling me this all of a sudden? What changed?
I shake my head. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Simon has feelings for me.
“Simon…”
“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way. I get it.”
He turns away from me, but I don’t miss the pained look in his eyes. He starts to open the door, but I have to stop him.
“I like you, too,” I blurt.
I feel a little sick, disbelieving of the fact that I just let go of one of the secrets that I had been holding onto for years. My first instinct is to take it back, to put back up the wall and protect myself, but I don’t because Simon is looking back at me, a hopeful look in his eyes.
“Really?” He asks.
“Of course. How could I not?”
He grins at me, and my knees go weak.
He’s never looked at me this way, and I can’t believe that he’s doing it now. I can’t believe that Simon Snow likes me.
He finally lets go of the doorknob and turns to face me fully again, stepping closer to me.
I’m uncomfortably aware of how close we are to the stairs and how easy it would be for him to push me down them. It’s stupid to think that he would do that after just confessing his feelings for me, but there is still a small part of me that thinks that this will all turn out to be a joke.
But then he’s pulling me closer to him, rather than pushing me away, and my heart is threatening to beat out of my chest.
“Can I kiss you?” He asks softly, and I can’t help but smile at him.
“Yes.”
His lips are soft as they press against mine. Tentatively, I kiss him back, a part of me still expecting this not to be real, but then he’s tugging me closer and kissing me harder, and I have to swallow a groan as our lips move together.
I let him take charge, simply delighting in how good this feels and how much better it is than I imagined.
We have to pull away to catch our breaths, and I lean my forehead against his, a smile playing on my lips.
“So, what does this mean?” He asks after a quiet moment.
“Really? That’s what you’re thinking about right now?” I ask.
“Yes. I want to know if this changes things.”
“Why would it?”
He pulls away with a frown, and I instantly regret saying that.
“I don’t know,” he says, looking down at the ground. “I guess I just thought you would—.” He shakes his head. “Nevermind. It doesn’t matter.”
“Wait,” I say, but he won’t look at me.
Why do I have to be this way? Why do I have to destroy things before I even really have them? I know that I’m afraid that this won’t last long, but I should at least try to enjoy it while I can, rather than pushing Simon away.
“Of course, it changes things,” I say softly. “I just don’t know what it means. I—. I’ve never done anything like this before,” I admit quietly.
He looks up at me, and I wish that he would smile again.
“It’s okay,” he says. “We can start out with small things.”
“Like what?”
“Like you being my boyfriend.”
“That’s it?” I ask, trying to make this sound simpler than it is. I don’t want him to find out how much this means to me.
“It’s a start.” He shrugs, but the corner of his mouth twitches like he’s trying not to smile.
“Okay.” I nod. “I’ll be your boyfriend.”
“Great.” He grins at me, and for a moment, it feels like my heart has stopped. He’s beautiful.
“We should probably go into our room now,” I suggest.
“Hmm. Trying to get me in bed already?” He teases as he turns toward the door.
“Shut up, Snow,” I say, blushing furiously with all of the blood that I just drank.
“If you’re going to be my boyfriend, you have to start calling me Simon,” he says as I follow him into our room..
“Why?”
“Because it’s my name, and you called me Simon before.”
“Fine,” I say, closing the door behind me. “Shut up, Simon.”
“Make me.”
He turns to face me again, and as my cheeks heat up even more, I start to wish that I hadn’t drunk so much blood before this. Before he can notice, though, I kiss him again.
This is nice, I think.
I could definitely get used to being Simon’s boyfriend.