Chapter Text
BAZ
Snow is watching a Christmas movie on his laptop. Without headphones. It’s fucking September. I stare at him for five minutes before he notices me, and I ensure that the look on my face is a menacing one.
“Can you do me a favor and turn that shit down? Or off?” I widen my eyes as I speak, trying to make my point known.
“Left my headphones at Penny’s.” He’s already looking back at his computer, making absolutely no effort to do as I told him.
“That’s your problem, Snow. Down or off.” I repeat, persistent. I can’t sit here all night and try to study while Buddy the Elf is yelling across the dorm room.
Snow looks at me now, furrowing his brow and scrunching his nose. I wish I didn’t think it was cute.
“I’m not turning it off.” He doesn’t look away from the screen. I’m still looking at him. I wonder if he can see me out of the corner of his eye. I don’t like the effect he has on me. Even when he’s royally pissing me off I still want to snog him.
“Then down, asshole. Turn on the goddamn subtitles for all I care. I’m trying to study.” I huff with this statement, not meaning to. I can’t let him see me sweat. Not that he sees me really at all. I try to avoid the room if I can, but the library is closed tonight because it’s Friday. They always close at 5pm on Fridays.
“Who the fuck studies on a Friday night?” Snow is looking at me now, confused expression settling onto his face. I see this one a lot, he seems to always have no idea what’s going on. “You could be doing absolutely anything else, and yet you sit here trying to read that giant book that you’ve been reading for the past month.”
“I’m learning .” I retort, cocking a brow at him. “Better to read this than watch that nonsense.” I nod my head towards his laptop, where Buddy now seems to be eating noodles with syrup. “That looks fucking disgusting.”
“It looks good, I’d try it.” He laughs. He actually laughs. He’d really consider eating spaghetti noodles drowned in maple syrup. That should surprise me, but it doesn’t. Snow is like a bottomless pit when it comes to eating. I think he’d eat anything anyone put in front of him, no matter what it was.
“Of course you would.” I roll my eyes at him, then make sure my serious expression doesn’t fall away from my face. I can’t let him know I’m not actually that mad. It’s really kind of endearing that he wants to watch a Christmas movie on a random Friday night in September.
“You’re getting onto me for staying in on a Friday night, so shouldn’t I be doing the same to you?” I pretend like I don’t know that he’s usually at work on a Friday night. I almost have his work schedule memorized, it’s a hard business trying to be in the room with him for as little time as possible. Sometimes I slip up.
“I’m off tonight. Penny is busy and Agatha isn’t talking to me right now, so here I am.” He sighs, eyes focused back on his laptop screen.
I didn’t know he and Agatha were in a fight. They always seemed fine to me. But then again, I don’t know much about them as a couple besides the fact that Simon is loud and Agatha is quiet. They seem to work together well. He’s always talking about her and how beautiful she is, and he has absolutely no clue how much it hurts me to hear those words come out of his mouth. I don’t know if he talks to me because he thinks we’re friends, or if he just wants someone to talk to. I wouldn’t really call us friends. I try to make sure we don’t become friends. I don’t think I could handle being friends with Simon Snow.
“Well then, that’s that isn’t it.” I don’t want to drag this conversation any longer, we’re already diving into uncharted territory of speaking to each other for longer than a minute at a time.
“Turn the fucking volume down, Snow.” I add a bit of an edge to my words, and he complies, reaching and tapping the volume three notches down. It isn’t much, but it’s enough so that I can drown it out and continue reading my book.
SIMON
I wonder what I did to piss Baz off this time. Well, I know what I did. I started watching Elf with the volume all the way up while he was trying to read his stupid book. Maybe I was trying to distract him. I don’t know what I thought could come of it. He wasn’t going to stop reading and insist that I scoot over in my bed so that he could watch the movie with me. His response telling me to turn it off is exactly what I could have predicted. But, I tried. All I ever do is try to be friends with Baz Pitch.
I talk to him about Agatha and Penny. I can’t ever tell if he’s actually listening to me, because usually he just looks at me with an expression that says ‘I’d rather listen to someone using a leaf blower than listen to you talk about your girlfriend and best friend.’ When he seems uninterested in the girls, I talk to him about class. But by that point, he’s either put in headphones or is getting up to leave the room. He hates me. I’ve never known what I did to make myself that unlikable, and I don’t think he’s going to tell me.
It surprised me when Baz wanted to live together again after last year. We never had fights or disagreements, but by the end of the year I was positive he couldn’t stand me. But then, on move out day, he looked at me and said, “See you in the fall, Snow.”
“See me like, you’ll see me around, or see me like, in our room?” I replied, sure my jaw dropped to the ground with shock.
“Our room. You may be messy and dreadful to live with but I’ll take that over living with someone possibly worse.”
Baz actually wanted to live with me. Maybe he didn’t hate me as much as I thought. Or maybe he did and he just wanted to continue to antagonize me as a game. Whatever. It didn’t matter. There was something calming about knowing I could show back up to school after the summer and something would be the same. I could never really rely on that before.
I realize I’m lost in thought and I missed the best part of the movie. Buddy and Jovie’s date never fails to make me smile so hard I feel like my cheeks might fall off. I’ve never seen Baz smile even a little bit. I wonder why.
I spend the next hour watching the rest of my movie with the volume lower than I’d like it, but I’m afraid of what Baz might do if I turn it back up. I make a mental note to grab my headphones from Penny’s dorm the next time I go to see her so this doesn’t have to happen again. Baz actually suggested I watch the movie with subtitles. Who the hell watches movies with subtitles? I’m not very good at reading as is, I couldn’t imagine trying to read something and watch it at the same time. My head hurts just thinking about it. When the movie is over, I shut my laptop and look to my right. Baz is still awake, but I would never know based on how silent he is. He’s reading the pages of his book thoroughly and making notes in them, and I notice he’s even putting little tabs on places he wants to go back to again. He’s so smart. I admire him for being so smart. I add this to my list of reasons why he probably hates me. He’s so smart and I barely passed my classes with C’s last year.
“Don’t you get tired of reading?” He barely turns his head towards me as I speak to him.
“No.”
Everything is always so simple with Baz. One word answers seem to be something he loves.
“Okay but really, you’ve been reading for over two hours. Don’t you get bored?” I question.
“The material is interesting.” He replies, like it’s obvious.
“Whatever. I’m going to bed.” I jump out of bed and walk towards the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I look in the mirror I can see Baz’s face, and he’s looking at me. I blink, and he’s looking back at his book. I don’t know what to think.
Once my teeth are brushed I walk back to the bed and jump inside, then pick up my phone and type a quick text to Agatha. I’ve texted her four times today, and she hasn’t replied. I must have done something really bad. That seems to be a theme in my life. Everyone is mad at me and no one will tell me what I did to upset them. It’s sort of exhausting, but I think I may be used to it. Part of me thinks I shouldn’t have to be used to it, but the other knows that whatever’s going on is my fault anyways.
I like the familiar sounds of being in our dorm room. I can always sleep better with the noise of the city outside the window. I think about Buddy the Elf and smile to myself as I fall asleep. I should let small things like that make me happy more often, and stop worrying so much about what I’m doing to make everyone in my life upset with me. Except Penny. Somehow she always manages to seem like she can stand being around me. I’m thankful for Penny.
BAZ
I think he caught me looking at him. Shit. I have to be more careful. Snow is so thick he probably thought nothing of my looking at him, but I still can’t afford to let myself slip up like that. I think tonight is the most time we’ve spent together since the beginning of the term, even if it was just me studying and Snow watching a movie. It feels comfortable to sit in silence with him. I start getting uncomfortable when he talks to me. He’s always talking to me about one thing or another. I try to get him to stop talking by answering with as few words as possible, but that never works. Sometimes the silent treatment does. I wish I didn’t have to shut him out.
Snow falls asleep fast. He tells me he’s going to bed, and within five minutes I can hear his breathing steady. I look over at him now and study his face, unafflicted with worry that he might catch me. He looks peaceful. Sometimes his sleep is completely restless, and I’m almost certain he’s having nightmares. Part of me wants to ask him about them, but I know that would be taking it too far. Give and inch and he takes a mile, and I’m not ready for that mile to be taken.
I watch as Snow turns over and repositions in his sleep, and now his back is to me. He reminds me of everything that’s innocent in the world. He’s naive, that’s for sure. He looks at the world with a blinding optimism that I’ve never been able to understand. He wakes up in a good mood every day, which I also don't understand. I wake up in a good mood maybe once a month. Not Snow. He wakes up excited for every day, always rambling about what the dining hall has for breakfast or what activities he has planned for the day. I usually either leave the room before he wakes up, or pretend like I’m asleep until he leaves. When I’m here, he talks to me, and I’m faced with the same uncertainty of not knowing if he’s talking to me because he thinks we’re friends or because he just wants somebody to listen.
I want more than anything to be able to be that person for him.
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to be that person for him without feeling like my world is going to implode.
I don’t think it’s possible for me to be friends with Simon Snow. I’ll just fall more in love with him.
I run my hands through my hair and pinch the bridge of my nose. Thinking about my feelings towards Snow is a form of torture that only I can afflict upon myself. I don’t even remember the exact moment when I fell for him. Maybe it was love at first sight, which I could have been certain didn’t exist until I saw his blue eyes and bronze curls for the first time. Ever since then, I did my best to keep my distance. I would never have to face my feelings if I didn’t give them a chance to grow.
But, I was wrong. I didn’t have to give my feelings a chance to grow because they grew on their own. Every time Snow smiled at me, or tried hopelessly to make small talk, I fell for him more. Even after I make snarky comments towards him, the look on his face is so endearing I wish I could look at it for longer than approximately two seconds. He shouldn’t be able to have such a hold on me like that. There’s plenty of guys at NYU would want to go out with me. But I don’t want any of them. I just want him, and that’s the biggest problem of all. Snow will never want me.
I think he’s straight. I’m almost one hundred percent certain he is. He talks about Agatha like she’s the Queen of fucking England, someone may actually think she was royalty if they listened to Snow describe her. Plus, he just doesn’t give me the vibe of being into other guys. I’d like to think I have a decent gaydar, and Snow never registers. It would be me who fell in love with a straight guy. A trope straight out of the worst TV shows I’ve ever had the displeasure of watching.
Maybe there’s something I can do to distract myself. Not now. I’m too tired now. But if I’m ever going to stop thinking about Snow in a way that’s hurtful I’ll have to do something. Tomorrow I’ll come up with a plan. Now I just set my book on my night stand shut my eyes, crossing my fingers that sleep will come soon and Snow will be out of the room when I wake up.