Chapter Text
SIMON
It isn’t my fault.
Really. I didn’t start it. Well, okay – maybe I did start it, when I switched Baz’s sugar for salt and watched him put three spoons of it into his coffee, a week into the first month of term. But it wasn’t like it was unprovoked, or anything. I’m usually friendly with pretty much everyone – but. Well. Baz Pitch is the biggest asshole I’ve ever met, and he entirely deserved it. (Also, it had been hilariously satisfying, watching him choking and spitting his coffee out.)
Baz, apparently, had not thought so.
When he’d turned to me, where I was half-hiding behind Penny and trying (but mostly failing) to hide my laughter, I’d actually thought he might try to strangle me right there and then. Or decked me in the jaw, at the very least, because he’d looked positively murderous. He hadn’t, though, just pointed a long finger at me and said, ‘you better watch your fucking back, Snow’, and stormed out. (He only ever calls me by my last name, like he’s some sort of fucking move villain).
I hadn’t really taken his threat seriously, really. Baz was a grade-a asshole, but he mostly seemed too posh and bored and indifferent to do anything about it – and he definitely didn’t seem like he would stoop to my level and retaliate with a prank. I honestly didn’t think he would. That was, until I came back from a lecture two days later and found every single thing in my room zip-tied together. Everything. Clothes zip-tied to hangars, drawers zip-tied shut – and my only pair of scissors hanging from the door handle, zip-tied closed. And then there was Baz, leaning in his own doorway and genuinely fucking cackling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so happy. I’m almost certain that’s the most emotion he’s ever shown before. (It had taken me all night to cut everything back open with a borrowed pocket-knife, and I still have no idea how Baz managed to break into my locked room.)
Of course, I had taken this as an act of war.
Penny thinks that I need to learn not to react so much to people. To Baz, especially. I can’t help it – growing up in a care home, you can’t show weakness. If someone fucks with you, you fuck with them right back, and you make sure to fuck with them worse. Because if you don’t, you become a target. It’s like fight or flight, except my brain is hardwired to skip straight to fight. Or to piss Baz off as much as possible, in this case, because I may still be a little bit of a thug, sometimes, but I’m not risking losing my place at Watford by starting a fistfight, no matter how much of a dick Baz Pitch might be. (I’m sort of waiting for him to start the fight, actually, so I can break his nose and then claim self-defence.)
So, okay. Sure. Maybe I did start it, kind of – but I don’t regret the coffee incident, because Baz really had deserved it. He’d been the first of my new flatmates that I’d met, on the very first day, when I’d almost walked into him on the stairs. I’d started to introduce myself and apologise, and he’d just sneered at me and told me to watch the fuck where I was going. Admittedly, this had left me kind of shaken, because I was worried enough about starting Uni as it was – but then the next person I’d met had been Penny, who’d then proceeded to talk my ear off for a half hour, and had, by the end of the day, officially claimed me as her new best friend. Everyone else in the flat was nice, too, so I had figured that maybe Baz was just a prick. Maybe he was just miserable. I’d been proven wrong, however, when I’d walked into the kitchen to find Baz laughing with Niall and Shepard, although he’d stopped to glare as soon as he spotted me. Over the first few days, it became clear pretty quick that Baz, despite the biting sarcasm and mild snobbishness, was mostly pleasant enough – to everyone but me, apparently. For no apparent reason. I still can’t figure out what I did to irk him in the first place. I’d almost walked into him, sure, but that was an accident, and it wasn’t like I hurt him, or anything.
Agatha thinks I’m paranoid, and that I’m imagining things. But I’m not – I’m really, really not. (Also, she fancies Baz, fuck knows why, so her opinions are all redundant.) Baz glares – or sneers, or both – every single time he sees me, without fail. Even before the coffee incident. He’s constantly going out of his way to shoulder or shove or elbow me, and he’d even tripped me in the corridor, last week. Baz had claimed that it was an accident, but I’d spilled my lukewarm coffee all down my front and Baz had look especially pleased with himself. (I’m almost certain he only has three emotions – apathetic, pissed off or some twisted kind of vindictive amusement that he mostly gets from finding new ways to provoke me.) He gave me a bloody nose, too, during footie when he kicked the ball right at my face – he claimed he was aiming for the goal, but Baz is a brilliant player. I’ve never seen him miss a goal. He's captain of the freshers team, and even I can admit that he does a good job at it.
The other thing about Baz? He’s everywhere.
It’s just my luck that out of all the six people that live in the flat, I ended up next door to him. Sharing a wall is bad enough, as it is – but on top of that, I have to see him pretty much everywhere I go. You’d think that Watford would be a big enough campus that I could avoid him, but, no. He’s fucking omnipresent, or something. Loitering in the corridors (probably plotting something), in the kitchen (taking up all of the fucking table space), lounging around in the common room, looking like he thinks he’s God’s gift to Watford. He’s at every party, every pub-crawl, every fresher event. At the campus coffee shop. At the library. At football practise. Everywhere.
I think this must be the universe’s way of evening things out. Everything else about Watford was near perfect – I love my friends, my course, my societies. This place is everything I dreamed about growing up; a whole campus full of interesting people with big dreams and the same interests as me. Here, no one jumps you when you’re not paying attention if you look at them wrong. No one steals your stuff the second you leave it unattended. No one goes hungry because all the food is stale. (Don’t even get me started on the food here, because I could go on for hours.) Everything is too good to be true, almost. Everything except for Baz Pitch. I figure that if I have to put up with living next to him for the rest of the year, the rest of the good stuff makes it all worth it.
“Simon,” Penny says, suddenly, a little urgently, elbowing me in the side and pulling me out of my thoughts. She’d banned any kind of Baz-related conversation since the zip-tie incident, so I mostly just have to sit and stew about him until she eventually caves and lets me complain. And she had been bickering with Shepard about something, and I mostly tend to tune those two out once they get started. “Oh, Simon. What the hell did you do?”
“Huh?” I sit up, follow her gaze across the common room. “Oh, shit. Shit.”
Case in point about him being everywhere; Baz Pitch is currently storming across the room, a face like thunder and his hair covered in glitter. He’s got dark hair, long for a bloke – down to his shoulders, so the pink glitter has gotten all over the shoulders of his jacket, too. I really hadn’t thought that mixing glitter with craft glue and emptying it into his shampoo bottle would work this well, but I don’t have too much time to celebrate, because Baz is probably going to kill me, first.
“Pen,” I say, jumping to my feet and craning my neck to try and figure out the quickest escape route. “When I die, you have to retaliate, alright? Egg his car, or something. Continue my legacy.”
“Not a chance, Si.” She laughs, the dirty traitor. “Not a fucking chance.”
“Shepard?”
He shakes his head at me solemnly. “Sorry, friend, but you’re on your own.”
BAZ
Simon fucking Snow.
I’m going to kill him. I’m actually going to murder him. I’m absolutely fucking seething, all the way down to the common room, and I must look especially murderous because nobody comments on my hair when I stomp through the kitchen on the way down, not even Niall. Snow’s lounging on the couch in one corner, with his usual sidekick and Shepard. I don’t mind Shepard, actually, even if he never shuts up. (I never consciously decided to befriend Shepard, but he’s mates with Niall and he’s the sort of person that’s friends with absolutely everyone, so I guess I can tolerate him.) Bunce is alright, too, even though I’d never admit that – she’s doing the same course as me and she’s actually kind of brilliant. Probably my only competition for top of the class. She spots me first, and her eyes go wide behind her ridiculous glasses as she nudges at Snow. He leaps to his feet as he spots me. Which is good, because that’ll make it easier to punch him in the face, at least.
“Snow!” I shout, storming across the room. There’s only a handful of people, and every single one of them turns to look at me. “Snow, I’m going to fucking kill you!” I get close enough to shove at his shoulder, hard enough to send him back a good few paces.
“Alright, Baz?” He says, looking endlessly smug. I despise him. Him and his golden curls and his blue eyes and his perfect fucking smile – but no, Christ, this is so not the time. Not when I have class in ten minutes and look like I just left an especially hands-on children’s arts and crafts session. “Loving the new look.” He adds. Snow has a lot of good qualities – loyal to a fault, persistent as all fuck – but self-preservation is not one of them. He never does know when to shut up.
I never expected that, from him, that stubbornness – when he’d walked right into me with an armful of boxes on the first day and I’d (rightfully) told him to watch where the fuck he was walking, I’d mostly expected him to cower and stutter and apologise like anyone else would. He had stammered, actually, because he is the least eloquent person I’ve ever met, but then he’d squared his shoulders and pushed his chin out and told me that I should maybe watch where I was walking and that I didn’t have to be such a dick. (Wrong. I do have to be a dick. We all have our defence mechanisms. Some people have emotional stability, I have endless wit and vicious sarcasm. Bite me.) Sometimes I find myself provoking him just to get that reaction out of him. The way he sets his jaw, that flinty look in his eyes. I’ve got at least three inches on him, but he’s broad and strong and an immovable force when he’s pissed, and he gets right in my face like he’s not even vaguely scared of me. Of anything. It’s ridiculous. It’s unfairly attractive. I despise him. (I don’t.)
It's easier to pretend that I hate him. Easier than admitting I’m insanely attracted to him, anyway.
“Snow, you fucking imbecile.” I hiss, fist my hands into the front of his t-shirt and think about punching him. (Or maybe kissing him – but, no. No. Not the time). “I have a lecture in ten minutes, and I can’t get this shit out of my hair!”
“Dunno what you’re on about, Baz.” He shrugs, knocking my arm away. His eyes are bright and mirthful, the dick. (He’s got the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.) “Are you accusing me?”
“I swear to fucking God, Snow-”
“I think it suits you, Basil.” Shepard says, pensively, and I turn to glare at him, instead. (Him and Bunce haven’t even made a move to get off the sofa – I don’t think either of them care about mine and Snow’s feud. I don’t blame them. It’s becoming tedious.) If it were anyone else, I’d think he was trying to be a dick – but it’s Shepard, and Shepard is endlessly, needlessly kind. It’s hugely irritating. I sneer at him.
“See, Baz?” Snow says, and immediately looks like he’s regretting it when I round on him again. “I’m sure you could pull it off.”
“You could wear a hat,” Bunce suggests, mildly.
“A hat,” I echo. I don’t think I’ve ever worn a hat in my entire life. “A fucking hat?” Snow snorts at this, and I once again consider punching him in the face. Barely a day goes by wherein I don’t consider punching him in the face. He pushes his jaw out like he’s daring me to do something about it. Like it’s a challenge. I can’t ever back down from a challenge – it’s one of my worse traits. (Fiona says I’m desperate to prove myself because my father never accepted me. I say she’s full of shit, and that if she feels the need to therapize anybody, she should really start with herself.) “That’s it. That’s it. You want a prank war? It’s on, you fucker.”
He properly grins, then. It’s a whole scene.
“Simon,” Bunce starts, warningly, “Simon. Don’t-”
“Oh, yeah?” He says, ignoring her. “It’s on.”
“You’ll pay for this, Snow. Watch the fuck out.”
I turn and storm out before I do something stupid. Like hit him. (Like kiss him.) I can’t risk trying to wash the glitter out again, because I’ll be damned if I miss a lecture and give Bunce a head start, so I end up borrowing a beanie from Niall. Bunce gives me a sarcastic thumbs-up when she sees me in lecture, and it’s possibly the worst moment of my entire life. I spend the entire hour glaring at my notes and willing the ground to swallow me up, and get so little work done that I might as well have not even gone in the first place.
Simon Snow is damn well going to regret ever starting this.