Work Text:
BAZ
“Why can’t you just admit that you’d be happier here?”
I raise my voice: “Why can’t you see that I wouldn’t be happy anywhere without you?”
He sits back, like I’ve slapped him.
“Simon…” I whisper.
I wait for him to get it. To finally give in to it.
Or maybe to say I’ve passed the test.
Instead he shakes his head. “Baz…” His voice is barely there.
Everything within me turns to ice.
SIMON
Words are stacked up in my chest, volumes upon volumes, and I’m running through the aisles and hurling books on the ground and running my fingers along their spines trying to find the one that will tell me the right thing to say.
I think, When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
I think, I don’t belong in your story.
I think, I don’t get it . After months of me, the way I am. The way I’ve been. No one should have to stick around through that. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. (And though there was a time I would have called him that, Baz is not my enemy. He’s the exact opposite, which is why he shouldn’t have to be anywhere near me. He should be able to be free.
Free of me.)
But Baz is looking at me like I’ve shoved an axe-handle stake deep into his chest, like the idea of being free of me really does bring him pain. Like he means it.
And I. Don’t. Understand.
“Why?”
That’s all that emerges, dry and cracked, a single word, barely audible over the ocean’s quiet waves, and he stares like he can’t believe I just asked it.
He swallows hard and meets my eyes, fierce and intentional. I can barely stand it. “Because I love you.”
I shake my head again, sitting back against the sand. I can’t think about that, can’t let it settle into my heart like it wants to, like a warm, comforting blanket. I bat it away. He doesn’t mean it, not really. “You love what I was.”
“You’re still the same-”
“No, I’m not!” I shout it so loud that I’m practically screaming. It feels good. I whip myself up into a standing position, spraying sand across his feet. I almost never see Baz barefoot. He wears socks, even around the flat. Says his toes are always cold. Once, I told him to tuck his toes between my calves to warm them.
I don’t remember how long ago that was. It feels like a dream, like another life.
It was another life. That’s not me anymore. And that’s the whole point.
“I’m not the same, Baz! Why won’t you admit that? Why will you never admit that?”
“Because you are!” He raises his voice, too, climbing to his feet. I can feel the adrenaline begin to course through my veins, and it’s the wrong kind, but at least it’s a feeling. At least it makes me feel alive.
“I’m not a hero anymore! I’m not the Mage’s Heir, not the Chosen One! I’m not even a mage. I’m…” I throw my hands wide, still shouting. “I’m a Normal stuck in a fucking cosplay.”
He walks toward me, but I don’t back down.
“You’re still the same person. You’re still Simon Snow.”
“But what does that mea-” I stop talking so quickly that my teeth snap shut with an audible clack, and I shove the heels of my hands to my eyes in frustration. When I take them away, Baz has halted in place, understanding dawning in his eyes, and I hate it. I hate it. There’s going to be pity there in a minute, and I have to turn away before it appears. I look out at the ocean again, so dark, stretching on forever.
This is why I don’t talk. It’s safer. No one can read too much into your words if you don’t say any words to begin with.
“Simon-”
He’s trying to be soft, but I think about becoming impenetrable, covering myself in a thick layer of thorns.
“Just stop.” I growl.
“I’m just trying to understand.” His voice is so gentle, laced with an undercurrent of hurt, and I suddenly want to sob. I feel the burning in my eyes again, but I will it away, turning back toward him and getting angry instead.
“Stop trying to understand! You can’t.”
“I could if you would tell me!” His voice rises again, frustrated.
“I don’t want to tell you.”
His face goes slack at that. “Just go, Baz,” I say quietly, and I honestly don’t know if I’m telling him to go back to the apartment and give me a few minutes alone, or if I’m telling him to leave . Both of them feel wrong. But then they’re falling out of my mouth anyway, the acid words that have been boiling away in the pit of my stomach for months. “Just go. You know you want to.”
“If you think that’s what I want, you don’t know me at all.”
“Yeah, well, you never talk to me.”
“Says the pot to the kettle!”
“I’m trying to process!” My voice is raised again, my fists clinched.
“Let me help!”
“You can’t! You can’t fix everything!”
“I don’t want to fix you.”
“Oh, really?” My words are dripping in pitch black sarcasm. “You’re saying you’ve enjoyed my company these past few months? It’s a good time for you?’’
He hesitates, and I keep talking, not giving him the time to will himself up a good lie. “You don’t think I see the way you and Penny handle me? Like I’m some kind of charity case you’re not sure how you came to be saddled with? You stay because you feel guilty. You look at me and think, He’s my boyfriend, so he’s my responsibility. I’m very familiar with that face, Baz. I grew up with that face everywhere I turned.”
Baz stares at me, and I want to hide. But I’ve laid it out there, the truth that’s been lingering unsaid for too long. I stand my ground.
“You really think that?” he asks quietly.
I jut out my chin. “I think if you tell me otherwise, you’re lying through your fucking fangs.”
It’s his turn to shake his head, and he does, slowly, back and forth. “Simon...why do you think I fell in love with you?”
I frown, taken aback, and then I shrug.
He keeps waiting for an answer, so I say, “Because you have a thing for masochism?”
He snorts out a laugh. “No. Though that’s a fair point. But I fell in love with you because you were...you. You were brave and stupid and you loved scones more than anyone I’ve ever met. You were loyal to your friends and to what you believed in.”
I start to break in, but he raises a hand, holding my gaze.
“You’re still all those things. You’re still brave as fuck. You saved my skin back there, though you really shouldn’t have, and I’m definitely putting that in the stupid category, too. You’re still loyal. You flew across the world just because Agatha hadn’t posted pictures of her dog online. And because you knew Penny wanted to go.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m...I’m not going to lie to you and say this last year has been easy, or that it’s been like I imagined. But Simon, it’s been with you. Which means that it’s better than without you. Full stop.”
I blink at him. My throat is swollen, and I can’t seem to swallow correctly or even breathe right, like that one kid I was in a home with one summer, when he accidentally ate something with shellfish. They had to stab him with an EpiPen, and it was terrifying as fuck.
Can you be allergic to emotion?
“Bollocks,” is all I can choke out.
“No.” Baz shakes his head, stepping closer, until he’s only a couple footsteps away, but he doesn’t reach for me. I’m glad. I want to hear what he’s saying, and if he touches me, I won’t be able to make myself stay. “No, Simon. I-” He hesitates. “I know I’m not good at talking. Neither of us are, I think. But I want to be with you. I want to help you. Penny does, too. We just don’t know how. And if the most I can do is stay by you and give you time to process? That’s what I’m going to do.”
And I think, for the first time, that he means it.
Not only that he means the words, but that he really and truly believes them.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
My eyes are stinging again, and it isn’t from the sea breeze. I don’t want to cry in front of him. Don’t want to be weak-
And then I see that his eyes are filled with tears, too.
I whisper, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” Without magic. Without the Mage. Without a cause.
It’s barely more than a movement of the lips. No human would have been able to hear it.
But Baz does. “You’re Simon. You have time to figure out the rest.”
And I look at him, this boy who went from being my enemy to being the love of my fucked up life. I reach out to grasp his hand, his fingers cool in mine, and it feels so right. My heart beats steadily in my chest as I take a deep breath, anchoring myself to the sand and the sea and this boy I love. I soak in the moment, revel in it. In the rightness .
Then he leans down to kiss me, and the moment is broken. I stiffen, turning my head away out of habit.
Baz pulls away, his eyes flashing with confusion and heartbreak. “Sorry,” he mutters, and his expression goes carefully neutral. “I thought-”
I tug him toward me with the hand still in mine, and I lurch up and kiss him, catching his bottom lip between my own. There are a hundred, a thousand words pouring out of me and into him, everything I know and can’t say, everything I want to know but can’t figure out. I kiss him, and it’s an apology, it’s a thank you, it’s a we’ve really fucked this up, but for the first time, I think if we try, we can make it through. I try to push the words into him like I used to push my magic, like if I kiss him the right way, he’ll somehow understand. And maybe it’s not exactly a foolproof idea, but it also means I get to kiss my boyfriend.
And one thing I’ve learned on this trip is that I’ve really, really missed kissing my boyfriend.
He pulls away after a long minute and looks down at our joined hands, clears his throat. “You don’t have to kiss me if you don’t want to. I’ll still-”
“No!” I say, startled. “It’s not like that. I like kissing you. I do. It’s just…” I pull my lip between my teeth. “Could we...keep it like that? For a while? Me kissing you, not the other way around.”
He’s confused and trying not to show it. “Alright.”
“I can’t really explain.”
“Why you want to kiss me? I’m devilishly handsome, Snow, why wouldn’t you?” he asks with a raised brow, and I know he’s trying to lighten the mood.
It works. I smile, snorting. “You’re such an asshole.”
“An asshole you want to kiss.”
“Fuck off.”
“Make me,” he says, a playful challenge sparkling in his eyes, so different from the fighting glint from earlier, and I dive toward his lips again.
I asked him into the back of the truck with me that night because of the stars, and we kissed in the moonlight as American terrain rolled away underneath us. I wanted him to remember that night we shared our magic and made our own heavens and floated in them, high on magic and adrenaline and each other. I kissed him like I was telling him to remember how we were, once upon a time, when I was a hero who wanted to kiss the boy holding his hands and didn’t understand it. I kissed him like I was saying goodbye.
Now, with the waves at my back and the sea breeze in my hair, the stars are shining down like little pinpricks of hope. And I kiss him like it’s the first of a thousand more kisses. I wind my fingers into his hair and tug the way I know he likes, and when he inhales, a thrill runs through me.
I break my lips off of his. “I’m not going to uni.”
He blinks at me. “Okay.”
“I decided. Tonight. I'm not going to do the school thing. I’m getting a job instead.”
“Alright.” He’s got the beginnings of a smile, curling the edges of his lips upward. It’s a good look for him. He has the scowling thing down after years of practice, but nothing compares to Baz when he’s happy.
“I don’t really know where. But...I’ll figure it out.”
“You will.”
“I think I’ll make an appointment, too. See how it goes.”
He knows without my specifying that I mean my therapist, and he nods. “Good.”
I turn and sit back in the sand. Baz follows, this time sitting beside me instead of behind, our knees just a millimeter away from brushing, and I look out over the endless sky and vast ocean.
“All the answers have to be out there somewhere.”
I don't even realize I've said it aloud until Baz answers. “They are. You’ll find them.”
And fuck up at least half of them, probably, I think, and he sees me frowning, says, “Give me one thing you do know.”
I think for a moment. “I think I’m so hungry I’d kill Agatha’s dog for a sour cherry scone right now.”
He laughs so loudly I almost think it echoes, and I feel an answering smile growing on my own face.
“I wouldn’t say that too loudly if I were you. She might set you on fire. It’s her new thing, I hear.”
“Apparently.” I think for a moment and start laughing to myself, and Baz looks cautiously curious.
“Care to share?”
“I think I’ve solved my first question. I’m not gay or bi. I’m pyro-sexual.”
Baz rolls his eyes so hard they practically fall out of his head. “Crowley. You’re a dork, is what you are.”
“A hungry dork.”
Baz hops up. “Let’s go, then.”
“Go where? It must be almost midnight.”
“So? We’re in college town, California. Good ol’ capitalist US of A. There’s got to be somewhere open nearby. Of course, they probably only have vegan muffins and celery juice or something equally atrocious.”
“Vegan muffins are pretty good, actually, as long as they’re the kind with-”
“Baz! Simon!” Penny’s running towards us. She’s out of breath. I stand when I see the look on her face, and Baz catches her by the shoulders. “What? What is it?”
Her brown eyes are lit with horror. “There’s trouble at Watford. We have to go home - now!”