Archive of Our Own ^beta

Look, we are not unspectacular things.

We’ve come this far, survived this much.

What would happen if we decided to survive more?

To love harder?

- Ada Limón, Dead Stars

1

(FEBRUARY 2017, LONDON)

SIMON

The TV is on, but I’m not listening, not watching. Not doing anything.

I didn’t go back to uni after Christmas break. It didn’t make any sense to go back. Sit around and stare into space all day? I can do that just as well at home. And at least here, there’s biscuits.

So I stayed right where I was, on the sofa, waiting for ‘my motivation to come back’, as Penny puts it. (Maybe I should’ve told her that there wasn’t any motivation in the first place. I just did what everyone expected of me; I carried on like nothing happened. Like I didn’t lose my magic, and the only place I ever felt at home, and the Mage and Ebb and – well, the list goes on forever. I’d give a lot to forget all about that particular list. I’d give everything to fix what I’ve so spectacularly fucked up.)

There’s an itch between my shoulder blades, between my wings, right where I can’t reach it. I sit up to try and scratch it, and there, opposite me, is my own face. It’s already gotten dark outside and all I can see is a dull reflection in a dusty windowpane. Lank curls and bleary eyes, my skin tinged blue from the flickering TV screen.

I look away, quickly.

My phone rings. It’s Penny, calling to check whether I’m still alive. (To check whether I’m still on the sofa. No need to worry – should I ever decide to get up, to get my life in order, she’ll be the first to know.)

I don’t pick up.

Answer the phone, Simon!, she texts me, a split second after it has stopped ringing. What are you doing?

i’m in the loo, I text back, because then hopefully, she’ll leave me alone. (I can’t remember ever wanting Penny to leave me alone. I’ve always wanted her around. I used to hang onto her every word, trying to soak up a tiny bit of her cleverness, of her wit, of the way she casts spells with razor-sharp precision.)

Okay! Penny texts back, clearly unfazed. I’m stuck at the library for at least three more hours. There’s left-over curry in the fridge!

I type: ok.

I type: do u remember when cook pritchard made nothing but curry for a whole month, just to piss off miss possibelf?

I type: i love u. ur my best friend.

I type: look out for goblins when ur on the tube.

I type: i'm sorry.

I delete everything and send her a thumbs-up emoji. Everything’s perfectly fine.

BAZ

A gust of icy wind greets me as I leave the lecture hall, pushing my hair into my eyes and making me wish for gloves. It’s not that late, but sunset is long over, leaving the campus in its own dark gloom of stone arches and bare trees.

February is always the worst, despite it being my birthday month; cold and relentless, not even a hint of spring in sight.

This time last year, everything was different. This time last year, the Mage and Ebb and the Humdrum had been dead and gone for almost two months, leaving all of us hollowed out. All of us, but especially Snow. He lost something, that day, I think. Not just his magic. (Though there never was just magic when it came to Snow. He breathed magic. He lived magic. He changed the magickal landscape forever; he burned his silhouette into the firmaments, leaving the rest of us to marvel at his sheer power.)

After the fight in the Chapel, after the burying of the dead, after the endless interrogations by the Coven, the first weeks were excruciating. Bunce and I tried to hold him, tried to keep him close, so that he wouldn’t combust from grief. And it worked, too. (Hugs and borrowed pyjamas and scones.) (Holding hands and long walks and the taste of butter on his lips.)

But whatever we thought we’d helped him get through is still there, gnawing away at him, making him hide or lash out, biding its time for the big crash.

None of us escaped unscathed: We’re all still there, I think, half-caught in the dim light filtering through the broken rafters of the White Chapel. It doesn’t matter that we went to uni, that we got our own places to live in, that we spent twelve months trying to make everything all right again.

I turn up the collar of my coat against the wind and walk a bit faster. It’s not that far to the next bus stop, just past Maughan Library and onto Chancery Lane, and then I’ll be out of the cold. Maughan Library is not its usual bustling self right now; the semester has just begun, and no one has yet to do much research.

No one except Bunce, as it seems.

I spot her in one of the brightly illuminated windows when I walk past the old stone building. She’s sitting in one of the private reading rooms, her hair messily put up with a pencil, a huge pile of books in front of her. But she isn’t taking notes or reading; instead she’s frowning at her phone, absentmindedly chewing on her ring. There are dark circles under her eyes, and the giant green scarf wrapped around her neck has definitely seen cleaner days.

I stop and rap my knuckles against the window.

She startles, immediately raising her fist with the ring.

I take a step back. (I’ve seen her obliterate creatures for less. Snow wasn’t the only born fighter in our year.)

“Oi, Bunce. It’s me.” I raise a hand in greeting. I don’t think she can see me, it’s so dark out here, and the lamps inside are very bright.

She presses a hand against the windowpane to block out her own reflection and when she recognizes me, I can see her shoulders slump with relief.

“Baz!” My name falls from her lips, but I can’t hear it. When she points her finger at the window and mouths “Open up!”, one of the small leaded glass panes creaks open like hatch. (Apparently, Bunce has zero qualms about damaging historical buildings. It figures, considering that in our second year she sent all of Watford’s eight-hundred-year-old gargoyles after a bunch of the Humdrum’s flying monkeys. Snow and I had detention afterwards, and we spent all thirty hours of it collecting and gluing together rubble from that fight.)

Bunce kneels on the floor of the reading room and I take a step closer on the pavement so that we’re almost eye-to-eye, peering at each other through the tiny window.

I nod towards her books. “Linguistics?”

“Old French,” she groans. “Roman de Brut and his bloody octosyllabic couplets. Who’d have thought that the Minotaur in all his endless droning never mentioned even once that Norman dialects are so boring that I want to tear my eyes out?”

“At least you’re learning something new,” I say, raising an eyebrow. “I just spent an entire afternoon in a lecture about Saussure. For Crowley’s sake, if a bunch of fifteen-year-olds could understand his theories, how difficult can it be for a room full of graduate students to grasp the difference between langue and parole?”

Bunce snorts. “Always keep in mind that magic relies on the fact that the relationship between ‘signifiant’ and ‘signifié’ is com-ple-tely arbitrary!,” she adds in a perfect imitation of Miss Possibelf’s favourite fifth year statement.

I laugh. It feels so good to talk to someone who gets it, who knows what it’s like growing up in a world that is so obsessed with language and power and training a bunch of kids into perfect scholars and warriors and politicians. Bunce is so brilliant, she could have easily gotten into a better university if she’d wanted to. (Father was livid when I told him that I hadn’t even applied to Oxbridge. But for me, and I guess for Bunce too, it wasn’t even up for debate to leave London.)

She tells me about her day (bad, but interesting) and I tell her about mine (worse, but bearable), and before I leave, I hand her the thermos with tea that I had in my bag. Our fingers touch when she takes it, and a tiny bit of her warmth seeps into my skin. I can feel her pulse, and my throat goes dry in an instant. I should hunt, better sooner than later.

“How is he?” I ask. Because I need to distract myself. Because I haven’t seen him in three days. Because he was our common ground, long before the three of us realized that we’re better off as a team. Because Bunce is the only other person in the world who knows what it’s like to love Simon Snow this much.

“Watching reruns of Doctor Who. Not cleaning the bathroom. Pretending everything’s fine.” Penelope shrugs, helplessly. “I don’t know what to do. Maybe he just needs time.”

Floating in the air between us, unsaid, is what we’re both thinking: Simon Snow, former Chosen One and notorious not-thinker, has had more than enough time to think about what he wants.

SIMON

I don’t know what I want.

Except that I do.

I want to hear Baz’ voice. (I always have. I always do.) (I want him within hearing range, within spitting distance; close enough to punch or to kiss or to hold.)

It’s selfish, I know. But I can’t help it, it’s always been like this.

Except that back in Watford, to catch his attention all I had to do was yell loud enough, or throw a book across the room, or slay a three-headed warhog.

I’m a Normal now, or something close to it, and that means normal, mature means of communication. (Communication is key, is what my therapist says. If you ask me, not communicating with Baz for seven-and-a-half years worked out just fine in the end: Terrible boyfriends, but hey, boyfriends nonetheless.)

Baz hates video calls. He insists that his face looks on camera like the Count’s from Sesame Street, but I always think he looks fine. (During those last months of eighth year, when he was at Watford and I was at Penny’s, and Penny’s mum unbanned the use of wi-fi at school, we skyped loads. Baz bought a ring light just because he didn’t want to look more undead than he already is – his words, not mine.)

I hate phone calls. I really, really hate them. I don’t mind listening to voice messages, though, because they’re like when the Mage used to send me birds to tell me about my next mission. But waiting for someone to pick up the phone? Always having to say something so that the other one knows you’re still there and listening, because you can’t bloody see each other? Not knowing when it’s socially acceptable to hang up? It’s like I’m suddenly the eleven-year-old version of me, the one the Humdrum took and twisted, and everyone’s constantly expecting me to use my words.

And yet… and yet I am thinking of calling Baz. Just to hear his voice. And maybe, just maybe, speaking to him on the phone would be easier. Easier than seeing him in person.

I could just tell him that it’d be better if we …

Merlin and Morgan, I don’t even want to think about this. Not yet. Not ever.

I’ll buck up and I’ll eat the curry and I’ll take out the trash. If I feel adventurous, I might clean the bathroom.

BAZ

I promised Snow that I’d haunt his doorstep, day and night. And I intend to make good on my threat.

There’s a tiny alleyway behind the building Bunce and Snow live in, and, thanks to me, it is not quite as infested by rats as it used to be.

I pull my wand from the inside pocket of my coat and point it at the rubbish skip that looms before me: “Anything like the sound of a rat makes my heart go pit-a-pat!”

Immediately, the alley fills with the magickally amplified noise of about a dozen rats, scratching and scurrying through the rotting heap of rubbish as the Pied Piper catchphrase lures them towards me. Admittedly, it’s not the most subtle of spells. But it’s colder than a Yeti’s arse out here and I’m completely buggered after the day I’ve had. And to be honest, only a complete moron would voluntarily investigate the sound of something being butchered in a gloomy back alley.

So, I’m not surprised when I see the familiar outline of Snow, silhouetted against the golden light of the streetlamp behind him.

SIMON

I stop dead in my tracks. A hissing and chattering drifts toward me from the damp darkness of our back alley. A violent squeak and another one. Then: silence.

Thanks to Baz I know that there’s plenty of rats here – but this sounds more like a horde of R.O.U.S.es. (Though it might be a worsedger, or a rabid jinx lynx, or a nest of mad adders. The Mage made me fight all of those during my missions. He asked me to kill so many kinds of creatures, and I didn’t even hesitate.)

I dump the rubbish bag into the nearest wheelie bin. I doubt that it would’ve made a good weapon against whatever is lurking in the pitch-black silence in front of me. I’m better off with my hands free.

I take a step forward and the shadow at my feet, stretched out in front of me, is huge and distorted and monstrous.

“Who’s there?” I call out. (One thing I’ve learned from Doctor Who: Always ask a potentially threatening creature to identify itself. That way, you know what you’re dealing with.) (“Power lies within a name,” the Mage used to say. “And your name, Simon, is the most powerful of all. You’re the bright star that will lead us to a better future.” Well, at least one of his prophecies proved to be true in the end, I suppose. My name did end a terrible threat. It just wasn’t the one we were expecting.)

Something moves in the darkness.

BAZ

I’m a shadow hidden in an even deeper shadow; a monster yearning for the light.

I don’t think he recognizes me.

But this used to be our thing, right?

Dark alleyways and secret duels. Raised fists and torn sweaters. Spit and bile and blood. Pretending to be fine and pretending not to care and pretending to hate each other’s guts.

We were so good at this. We made an art form out of this, carefully dancing around each other, always close enough to stab or to burn or to hope.

It was easier back then, wasn’t it?

It was so easy to hide from the truth, to stay in the shadows.

He calls out and I take a step towards him, as I always have, waiting for him to recognize me.

Immediately his right hand darts to the empty space above his hip, where the Sword of Mages used to be. His lips start forming the words of the incantation.

In justice. In courage…

I can tell from the way his body suddenly goes tense that he has realised what he’s doing, that he has realised that his sword won’t come.

It breaks my heart to see him like this.

BAZ

“It’s me, Simon,” I say, quietly. (It’s all I can do these days, trying not to scare him away.)

“Baz!” He says my name, and I can hear the surprised smile in his voice. It’s still like that sometimes, like we’re both genuinely amazed that we don’t have to rip each other’s throats out, that we can just be nice to each other.

I come out from behind the skip, wiping my hands on my trousers. I’ve spelled myself clean as a whistle, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t rather wash my hands after having fed on Britain’s most despised vermin.

“Everything all right?” Snow asks. He juts his chin towards me and puts out his hand; the gesture more of a question than his actual words. He is wearing an old grey shirt that is full of holes, Watford W emblazoned on his chest and beginning to flake off. (He used to look like this after football practice, loose and slightly tired around the edges; softer, as if he lost some of his endless energy. Now he just seems worn out.)

His wings are spread open, the light from the streetlamp illuminating their membrane from behind, casting a warm red glow on his mess of impossible curls.

He looks like a stained-glass window come to life.

He looks like a fifth-year fantasy, like something from a fever dream.

I take his hand when I reach him, feel his fingers interlacing with mine. He’s so warm, as if the icy February night can’t even touch him.

We stay like that for a moment, standing right in front of each other. I can smell butter and spices and the flowery scent of Bunce’s favourite detergent on him. I want to curl up in his warmth and never leave again.

SIMON

Baz has got a shiny brown leather bag slung over his shoulder and he’s wearing a green polo-neck sweater and the most pretentious wool coat I’ve ever seen. He looks like he’s stepped out of a glossy catalogue: Beautiful vampire meets posh literature student.

Except that he was limping when he came out of the dark, one leg dragging slightly behind. (His limp always gets worse in weather like this, and I can tell that he’s still trying to cover it up. I don’t know why.) (I mean, it’s just me. There’s no need to pretend when it’s just the two of us, right?)

“Everything’s fine,” Baz says, and squeezes my hand. But his fingers are cold and the blood flushing his face doesn’t quite reach the shadows around his eyes.

I can’t help myself. I lean in, try to reach his lips with my mouth. And for a second, when he grabs a fistful of my shirt with his free hand, it seems as if he’ll kiss me back.

Instead, he turns his head away.

“I just drained a rat,” he says. “I really should brush my teeth.”

I shrug. “I just ate a bowl of garlic curry.”

That makes him laugh. His breath is a puff of white air between us. His eyelashes are long enough to cast a shadow of their own. When he looks at me like this, shaking his head, I can feel something inside my chest expand.

BAZ

I let go of his shirt and Simon tightens his grip on my other hand, as if he’s determined to hold on to me. I cup the back of his head, and thread my fingers through his curls.

I smile at him, and something lights up in his eyes.

I kiss him and only now he lets go of my hand and puts his arms around my neck instead. I hold him close and I can feel where he’s ripped open his shirt to make room for his wings. I run my hands over his back, and under my fingertips frayed jersey turns into soft freckled skin turns into scaly red leather, powerful and wondrous and utterly alive. The muscles between his shoulder blades are moving as he pushes closer, pushes me back with the force of his body and his lips on mine. For once, I let him win this fight. (I’ll let him win so that I won’t lose.) (Flawed logic, I know.) I give in, stumble backwards until the back of my head touches the old brick wall of the alley. I kiss the corners of his mouth and the mole on his cheek and the scar over his right eye, a tiny remnant of the time he was mauled by the merwolves.

Snow buries his face against my throat, and through the fabric of my jumper I can feel his open mouth pressed to my Adams’s apple, hot and damp. My head falls back against the wall behind me as he trails his lips along my jaw, making my heart race. My body curves against his as I pull his face back up to mine, searching with my tongue for the chipped tooth he got when I pushed him down the stairs in third year. Snow gasps and his tail curls around my leg, anchoring us together. When I finally pull back, his breath comes in erratic bursts, and my knees feel like they’ve been spelled soft, and there’s not even an inch of air left between our bodies.

“Penny won’t be home until at least midnight,” Simon pants, his eyes half closed.

Crowley.

I swallow and because I nod my mouth falls against his, and it takes another feverish moment before we remember what he just said.

It’s so easy to forget everything else when we’re like this: stumbling up three flights of stairs, breathless, fumbling with keys and with too many layers, kissing until there’s skin on skin.

It’s so easy to forget everything else until Simon pulls back and turns away and doesn’t want to look at me anymore.

“It’s just too much,” he says as if that explains anything.

As if too much isn’t what made this, us, possible in the first place. Growing up, at the very top of that fucking tower, there was always too much: too much magic, too much longing, too much anger.

And we took it out on each other and that helped, at least a little bit.

But now that he shies away from my touch, from my questions, from me, I don’t know what to do.

I used to be so good at taking whatever he threw at me, whatever he gave me. I used to be the only one who could take all his magic and make it work. (Don’t you remember, Simon? We held hands and the universe flickered to life around us. We went nova together and the world fell away, and I wish we could go back to that evening. You gave me everything back then and you didn’t even hesitate.)

2

(Seven months later: SEPTEMBER 2017, no longer in AMERICA, not yet back in GREAT BRITAIN)

SIMON

I’m restless. A storm’s gathering under my skin, getting ready to lash out. (If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’m close to Going Off. But I’m way past hoping for my magic to return. I put it back where it belonged, or at least I tried to. I was never meant to be a mage. I just wanted magic more than anything else in the world.)

“There’s trouble at Watford!”

I’ve heard Penny say these words a hundred times. Back then, there was always trouble at Watford and together, we’d figure it out. We found the gates, we fought the serpent, we cut down the oaks and, in the end, we even faced down the Humdrum. Trouble at Watford was nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to be worried about, because we were there.

(Even when I was on missions for the Mage, I was always back in time to defeat whatever Dark creature had found its way behind the castle walls. Baz used to make endless fun of me for this: “How considerate of the Insidious Humdrum to care about our beloved Chosen One’s busy schedule! You must be devastated that there haven’t been any attacks during Elocution – at least than you’d have an excuse for your poor grasp of the English language.”)

But now, with half a world stretched out between me and Watford and not even a drop of my magic to get us there any faster, I feel completely helpless. (Useless.)

I shuffle through the narrow aisle of the plane, Baz’s hand at my back, gently pushing me forward, as we look for our seats.

Finally, we sit down; me by the window, then Baz, then Penny, then Shepard. Agatha’s seat is across the aisle, but she doesn’t accept Shepard’s offer to swap seats with her. She’s been strangely quiet the whole time since we left her flat. Maybe she’s worried about her parents – they, too, haven’t answered their phones. Penny made her leave them a message, but so far, they haven’t called back.

No one we tried to call has answered the phone after Penny got that text from Premal.

There’s trouble at Watford and we’ll be without reception for ten hours.

Baz and Penny are discussing in hushed voices whether there’s a way to spell her phone so that it’ll work even though it’s in airplane mode. Shepard chimes in and reminds them that their spellwork might mess with the instruments in the cockpit.

I don’t think Penny cares about the plane or how we get back home. She just wants to call her brother. Premal hasn’t spoken to her family in almost two years, and I think she’s dying to ask him what he meant by trouble at Watford. (Premal practically vanished after the Mage’s Men weren’t needed any longer because there wasn’t a Mage anymore – and even though Penny always acts all cool about it, I know that she misses him.)

I am worried about Penny’s mum. And about Agatha’s parents. And about Baz’s aunt Fiona.  I am worried about everyone, and everything. We don’t know anything about what happened at Watford, and it makes me crazy.

If I could, I’d make the plane lift off by sheer willpower.

If I could, I’d beam us to Watford. (The way the Humdrum did with me and Penny when it summoned us and tried to suck our magic from our pores until we bled.)

After what feels like an eternity and a half, the plane takes off.

My ears pop, and the airport and the city are dwindling to tiny grey spots in a sea of brown and green. Then the clouds swallow us and the endless disaster that was America vanishes.

I’ll miss the sun, I guess, but not much else.

BAZ

I’m dead jealous of Wellbelove’s neck cushion. How didn’t I think of buying one at the airport? My neck is killing me after five hours wedged into these tiny economy class seats.

“Why can’t we forge first class tickets?” I asked Bunce when we were preparing to leave.

“Because money attracts attention,” Shepard answered for her.

“No,” I told him, “Money pays for more legroom and a decent in-flight meal. A bunch of twentysomethings fleeing the country after murdering half the undead population of Silicon Valley is what attracts attention – and I’m not above spending some magic to keep us off the grid.”

“We’re not wasting any magic!” Bunce snapped, tearing at her hair, “Not until we know what’s happening at Watford! We’ll use magic to get rid of Simon’s wings and to forge the tickets and that’s it!”

She looked a lot like her mum when she said that, and I honestly don’t envy the poor sods who’ve got to go to school with Mitali Bunce as headmistress. But right now, Penny is asleep, drooling onto her hair and my shoulder. I don’t mind – she looked absolutely terrified when she got that text from Premal. I’ve never seen her worried about wasting magic. I’ve never seen her like this before.

Snow’s elbow knocks into my side, jolting me out of my thoughts.

“Sorry,” he says, for the fifteenth time since we took off. He’s fidgeting; restlessly jiggling his leg, like it’s impossible for him to sit still. He’s been to the loo six times, and he’s asked the stewardess so often when we’ll land that she gave him an extra bag of peanuts just to make him shut up.

The peanuts are long gone by now, and when Penny’s head lolls to the other side, I use the opportunity to lean into Simon.

There’s something I want to do. Something I always meant to do when he got worked up like this, back in the days when we were still enemies and he was about to Go Off.

I don’t know whether he’ll listen to me – but Crowley, at least I’ll try.

“Hey, Snow,” I whisper into his golden curls, “Breathe.”

SIMON

Baz is telling me to breathe and I turn my face so that our foreheads are touching. I don’t care about who might be watching. There’s trouble at Watford and I couldn’t care less about pretending to be straight or Normal or even slightly okay.

I can’t quite make out Baz’s eyes, we’re too close.

“I think I’m going to explode if we don’t land soon,” I tell him.

Baz snorts. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“You’re stronger than that.”

“What?”

“Remember when Coach Mac made us sit through twelve hours of tactics and strategy in one day?” His hair tickles against my throat. “And you made it through those twelve hours because Coach had threatened to kick you out of the team, even though, officially, you were supposed to be looking for – what was it?”

“The Five Blades,” I say and decide not to mention that I spent ten of those twelve hours trying to figure out what Baz was hiding from me. “A redcap had built its lair in the Cloisters and the Mage wanted me to get rid of it...”

Shepard perks up and stops acting as if he isn’t eavesdropping. “What’s a redcap?”

“An evil sprite,” Baz says, turning around and raising an eyebrow at him. “Their scalps are covered in dried blood.”

“Oh.” Shepard nods sympathetically. “That must be itchy. I bet they’d be less evil if they took a shower.”

“The redcap did,” Agatha says from across the aisle. “The taps in the Cloisters ran red for a week.”

“Ew,” Baz pulls a face, and Agatha grins and Penny wakes up, and soon we are swapping stories and remembering what it was like before things changed.

Back then, every adventure felt like it might be the last one.  

I never thought I’d make it this far. I never thought we’d make it this far. I never thought I’d get this: all of us alive and breathing and laughing even though we’re terrified of what’s going to happen next.

3

(ten hours later, still SEPTEMBER 2017, LONDON)

BAZ

As soon as we’ve landed and are out of the plane, I take out my phone and call Dev. This is my penultimate resort. (My last resort would be to call my recently disowned cousin Marcus, who I believe currently spends his time growing magic mushrooms and selling them to Normals and nymphs alike.)

After our graduation, Dev and Niall went on a trip to visit all of Europe’s magickal hauntings. They toured the continent for a whole year, and it took them about three months to get over the fact that I was dating the Chosen One. After that I got postcards and pictures of them posing in front of various historical sites. In return, I texted them whenever my lectures where boring and complained to them about the terrible food at uni. I also picked them up from the airport when they came home in July and helped them move their stuff to Durham. We’re good, but it’s not quite the same as it used to be.

It takes about five years for Dev to pick up, but I’m so relieved to have found someone who actually does answer the phone that I am willing to ignore that he sounds like he’s completely hammered. (Or maybe he’s just tired. It’s his fresher’s week, but here – back in dear Old Blighty, hallelujah! – it’s three in the morning, so it’s hard to tell the difference.)

“Ugh,” he groans, instead of his name.

“It’s me,” I say. “Listen, Dev, I –”

“Whozzat?” I can hear Niall ask, and sheets rustling, very close. Huh. I knew they shared a room at their college, but I didn’t expect this. But then again, I’m hardly the person to judge people for falling for their roommates, am I? Besides, I really, really don’t have time for this – Bunce looks like she’s about to explode with tension.

“It’s just Bazzers,” Dev tells Niall and yawns into the phone.

There’s a longer pause.

I think he’s falling asleep again.

“Dev, please, this is urgent…” I say, willing him to wake up properly as I steer Bunce and Snow and the others toward Heathrow’s biggest car park. Aleister Almighty, please let my father’s car still be where I left it.

More rustling, then Niall’s on the phone. “Oi! TB, mate, how’s it goin’?”

“Thank magic,” I exclaim when I hear his slightly more awake voice. “Listen, Niall, have you heard anything about Watford?”

“About Watford?” He sounds confused.

“About trouble at Watford?” I specify. “I don’t know – a war? Hostages being taken? A dragon, or an invasion of woodfouls, or a student uprising? Anything at all?”

We’re still navigating through the car park, up another flight of stairs and through a huge, echoing concrete hall, past about a million cars. I think Bunce is this close to hot-wiring and stealing the next best SUV. (Somehow all the cars look tiny. My brain still has to adjust back to British proportions, apparently. I wonder whether cheeseburgers will seem doll-sized here – this could turn into a problem considering Snow’s eating habits.)

“Nah.” Niall yawns. “Why should there be trouble at Watford? The school year’s just started and… Wait a sec…” He trails off and I can hear him explain in a low voice what’s going on to a very sleepy Dev, asking him whether he’s heard anything. While they bicker, I pull out my wand and cast “It’s not what it looks like!” on a dusty wheelbarrow that waits in an empty area of the car park that seems to be under construction.

Father’s most beloved hunting car appears in front of us, an Aston Martin DB5 Shooting Brake. (’65. Sleek. Extremely rare. Reminiscent of the earliest Bond era.)

“We’re going on a road trip through England in a hearse?” Shepard lets out an impressed whistle. “Awesome! That’s, like, so Ghostbusters!”

I can feel my lip curl. Heathen. (No. Worse: American.)

I decide to ignore his blatant blasphemy and leave it to Bunce to herd the others into the car. Wellbelove and Shepard are the only ones who had any luggage, so I put their bags into the boot and lean against it, waiting for Niall and Dev to finish squabbling. Of course, Snow claims the passenger seat, and I watch him through the rear window as he slumps down until he has to bend his knees, just so that he can lean his head against the low backrest. I think he hasn’t slept at all during the whole flight.

“Baz,” Niall has finally returned to the phone and he sounds concerned. “Did Snow break up with you? Is that why you want to talk about Watford? Are you at the first stage of grief? Is denying that the War of the Families is over your coping mechanism? You broke up, didn’t you?”

“Great fucking Snakes, no!” I hiss into the speaker. “We didn’t break up. We won’t break up, not us –”

“Bloody Baba Yaga, mate, calm down,” Niall interrupts me immediately. “We were just wondering, is all. ‘sides, we just wanted you to know that if Snow’d hurt you, we’d make his life an even worse hell than we did in fourth year. That’s what best mates do, innit?”

Crowley. I don’t know how I deserve these two.

I take a deep breath and run a hand over my eyes. “I appreciate the sentiment. Now tell me what you heard about Watford.”

I climb into the car, put my phone on speaker and jam it into the ashtray before I start the engine.

“That’s the thing,” Niall says. “We haven’t heard anything – and you know my mam, she’d have told me if she’d heard anything even remotely unusual.” (Indeed, I know Mrs McCarthy. She made Niall bring his own toilet paper to school during the first three years. She’s also famous for being nosier than a Scottish brownie.)

“What’s all this trouble at Watford business about anyways?” Niall’s question fills the car and I can feel Penny’s hair brush against my ear as she leans forward from where she is sandwiched between Shepard and Agatha.

“We just heard some bad rumours,” I say, cutting her off before she can tell him anything and pulling onto the motorway.

“Who’s we?” Niall asks, always the gossip.

“I’m Shepard, from Omaha,” Shepard calls from the backseat.

I hang up.

SIMON

“So, what are we going to do?” Agatha asks after a minute of silence. “Maybe… maybe everything will turn out fine. Maybe it’s just a problem with the phone network – my parents had to call Magickal Pest Control two years ago because verbal gerbils had chewed up all the wires in the house. We should just go home and wait for news.”

“We’re not going to sit around and do nothing!” Penny snaps at her. “We need a plan!”

“We’re going to Watford,” I say. “If it was a false alarm, good. If not, we figure out what to do. We’ll fight if we have to.”

“Yes,” Baz nods and overtakes a slow lorry. “But we’re no use to anyone like this –” He glances at me. “We need to sleep before we do anything – it’s a long drive to Watford and I’d rather not die in a car accident.”

I crane my head to look at Penny who is glaring at him, furiously.

“I’ll spell you awake!” she almost shouts at Baz. “I’ll hex the road empty! Nicks and Slick, I’ll take the train and shorten the rails by magic if I have to!”

Her voice almost breaks.

Without taking his eyes off the road, Baz reaches between the seats and pats her knee. “And then? You’ll reach Watford without a drop of magic to spare. Bunce, you’re so smart – please use your brilliant brain and weigh the odds of us winning against any sort of evil while we’re jetlagged and hungry and smell like we spent forty-eight hours without a proper bathroom.”

Penny buries her face in her hands.

Baz takes the exit towards the city centre.

Agatha is staring out the window. I can see her face in the wing mirror, pale as a ghost.

Shepard is pretending to check his phone, but he shoots worried glances at Penny’s heaving shoulders.

I twist around in my seat and pull at her wrist until she looks at me, her brown eyes swimming.

“Baz is right,” I tell her. “We should rest first. I promise, we’ll sort this out.”

She grabs my hand and squeezes it so hard that it hurts.

“Okay,” she says, wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Together.”

“Together,” I squeeze back just as tightly. “I promise.”

BAZ

Simon says “together” like he means it.  But whenever I reach for him, he shies away.

Niall’s words keep echoing in my mind: “Did Snow break up with you?”  And I can’t get the look out of my head that Simon gave me on the beach. I can’t forget the months we spend avoiding each other.

I drive through the streets of London, shiny and ugly and terribly familiar. I’ve steered this car towards Bunce and Snow’s flat so many times that it feels like driving home.

And what I realise is this: I love him, and I’ll be hanged, drawn, and fucking quartered before I’ll let him have his martyr fantasy of us being better off without each other. We’re not, and we learned it the hard way.

Crowley, if Snow can’t love himself right now, I’ll do that for him. I’ll love him so much that he’ll get through this.

(He did the same for me, didn’t he?) (He kissed me before the flames could reach me.)

SIMON

Baz parks the car in our street, and it feels like we’ve been away for three months, not three weeks. I’m still staring up at the dark windows of our flat when I hear Penny call out: “Hey! Where are you going?”

Agatha is walking down the street, away from us, the wheels of her pink suitcase wobbling over the cobblestones.

“I’m going home,” she says, turning back to us. “I just want to – I don’t know – let the adults handle things for once. I know you guys love to fight and be famous and risk your lives – but I think if you were just a bit more sensible and wouldn’t run headfirst into every disaster, things would be easier. No one would need to get hurt.”

I can’t believe she’s doing it again; she’s running away whenever things get tough.

“This is not just about us!” I say and my voice echoes between the quiet buildings. “This might be about everything! This might be about Watford!”

“But we don’t know that, do we? How much trouble can there be? I mean, wasn’t everyone all ‘ding-dong the Mage is dead’ after what happened in the Chapel?” Agatha shrugs. “Besides, I didn’t even like Watford all that much.”

“Ebb did,” Baz says, all quiet, leaning against the side of the car, arms crossed. “Ebb loved Watford.”

My throat hurts at the mention of Ebb’s name. I still miss her so much.

Penny’s got a determined glint in her eyes as she looks at Agatha. “And Ebb gave her life to save yours, right?”

Agatha shakes her head in disbelief. “You’re guilt-pressuring me into this? Seriously?”

“Yes,” Penny says, nodding enthusiastically. “Is it working?”

“We’re not,” I cut Penny off. “Why can’t you just come with us, Agatha?”

“Austen Almighty, Simon, because I’m a coward, okay?” Agatha’s grip on her suitcase tightens. Her chin wobbles but her voice is firm. “Aren’t you ever afraid, Simon? Aren’t you ever scared so bad that you think it’d be easier if other people took over? Don’t you ever just want to go home?”

I don’t know what to tell her. (Of course, I’m afraid. But what good is being afraid if you’re the only person who can stop the thing that’s frightening you?)

“You’re not a coward,” Penny says, glaring at Agatha as if she is going to spell her to stay put. “You might not like it, but we’re friends. And I can’t do this without my friends. I need you, Agatha.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

Agatha closes her eyes for a second, frowning and shaking her head.

“This is so fucked up,” she says.

But she grabs her suitcase and comes back and pushes past Shepard to climb the stairs to our front door.

Baz waits until Shepard is inside too, then he walks around the car to the driver’s side.

“I’ll pick you up in at noon,” he says, not even looking back at Penny and me.

He opens the car door.

“No, wait,” Penny says, “Not you too! You can’t leave!” Her fists are clenched. “We should all stay together. We don’t know what’s out there.”

Baz hesitates and when he answers, his voice is strained. “Bunce. I need a shower, and I need to hunt, and I’d rather feed myself to a Chimaera than wear this outfit for another day.”

The light from the streetlamp above him turns his hair silver. His eyes are hidden in the shadow. From the way he’s standing there, with his shoulders slumped and his neck bent, it seems as if he’s barely holding himself together.

I swallow and square my shoulders.

“You can borrow something of mine,” I say.

His head snaps up and our eyes meet.

I don’t look away.

I am done looking away and I want him to know it.

BAZ

By the time I return to their flat, blood filling my stomach with warmth, the sun is just a grey sliver above the foggy London streets.

Shepard is snoring on the sofa, and there’s no sign of Penny and Agatha as I pad on socks through the dark flat.

When I enter the kitchen, Snow is slumped at the table, his head buried in his arms, smelling of soap and bathed in grey morning light seeping through the gaps in the blinds. He’s shirtless and sleeping. His wings have returned, and they cover him almost completely, sheltering him from the world. I can see where the bullets tore through the red membrane, leaving knotted scars behind. I have to stop myself from touching him to make sure he’s still alive and breathing.

On the counter is a small stack of clothing – a pair of Snow’s eternal trackie bottoms, a clean pair of boxers, and, surprisingly, one of my own old jersey shirts, worn and soft, the kind that I used to wear for football practice.

I didn’t know I had left it here.

It smells like him. (I have to close my eyes for a second to force down the lump in my throat.)

Beside the clothes are a fork and a covered bowl.

I don’t want to wake Snow, so I take both the food and the clothes to the bathroom.

After a quick shower, while I wait for my hair to notice the drying the spell I cast on it, I lean against the tub and lift the cover of the bowl.

It’s just canned ravioli, but they’re still hot. (Their smell takes me back to first year when we all had to figure out how to feed ourselves on weekends when Cook Pritchard wasn’t there. I had no idea how microwaves worked because Vera didn’t approve of them. But Snow used them all the time, so I stole his ravioli three weeks in a row. As revenge, he put my wand in the microwave and all my spells came out wonky for at least a month. I started taking his Aero bars after that.)

I eat a forkful and the ravioli taste just the tiniest bit like chocolate and sage. Magic bless you, Penelope Bunce.

When my hair is dry and my fangs have retreated, I brush my teeth using my finger and Snow’s disgusting cinnamon toothpaste.

Feeling dead tired but more human than I have since California, I leave the bathroom. Simon isn’t in the kitchen anymore, so I slip into his room, expecting to see him asleep.

The lights are off, but some light filters in through the open window, painting him grey and hazy as he’s lying on the far side of the bed, his wings folded behind him.

He’s facing the door and he’s watching me, and I hesitate.

“Is this okay?” I ask, quietly.

He shrugs and I don’t know what it means. I used to be able to tell his shrugs apart. I used to be fluent in Snow, I used to be so good at reading him that I knew exactly where to poke at him to make him explode.

Now, I don’t know what to do. We haven’t slept in the same bed since –

We’ve never slept in the same bed. (The truck doesn’t count, not with Bunce sandwiched between us and Shepard talking in his sleep. The empty nights after the Mage’s death don’t count either – that wasn’t sleeping. That was waking each other from our nightmares; it was holding on for dear life and spending half the night hunched over the kitchen table, eating and not quite talking and keeping watch over each other. Also, Penny was there, most of the time.)

I close the door and Snow keeps his eyes on me as I pad over to the empty side of the bed, and I feel like we’re back in fifth year, watching and waiting for the other one to make a wrong move.

SIMON

I can feel the mattress dip down as Baz settles on the side of the bed I left empty for him, not bothering with the blanket. He’s lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, hands folded on his stomach. His knuckles are white and there are lines around his eyes that I never noticed before.

“Why can't you see that I wouldn't be happy anywhere without you?” That’s what he said on the beach. And I – stupidly, no selfishly – thought that if I found a way of keeping him with me, he’d be happy.

And now he’s here and he looks not just unhappy – he looks like he’s afraid that I’ll push him off the bed.

And still, he’s so beautiful.

I want to look at him forever. I want him to look back at me. I want –

Merlin, this isn’t enough.

But I don’t know how to ask for more – not after I pushed him away for so long.

On the truck, under the starry American night sky, he said I didn’t have to ask.

So I don’t.

I reach out and put my hand on his stomach, right next to his.

Baz inhales, sharply, and through the thin fabric of his shirt I can feel the muscles of his stomach move under my fingertips. He turns his head to look at me, and I can’t help it – I do what I’ve always done. I pull him towards me.

We’re facing each other and there are a million questions in his eyes.

I take a deep breath and I nod. I don’t know what exactly I mean – just that he, too, doesn’t have to ask. (Because I trust him. Because I know him better than I know myself. Because I always miss him so much that I can’t breathe until I touch him.)

Slowly, gently, he lifts his hand to my face and his fingertips graze my lips and I pull him even closer. Our knees are touching, and our elbows keep knocking together, and Baz is holding my face like he doesn’t know where to begin.

I do.

I kiss him, and I try to put everything into the kiss that I don’t know how to say. And he kisses me back like he’s starved, like he is tired of holding back.

And I let him. I want him. (I always have, there’s no denying it.)

“Wait – do you –,” suddenly Baz pulls back, props himself up on his elbow so that he’s half above me, “ – can I – should we – Crowley – ”

Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch, who I’ve witnessed improvise a monologue that convinced a fossegrim to sell his fiddle, is struggling for words.

He sees my grin and closes his eyes, shaking his head like he needs to clear it.

“Simon, is this okay? Are you okay? We – maybe we should go to sleep – tomorrow is a long day – ”

Baz is waiting for an answer, and so I take a moment to think about his question.

I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow and there are so many things to worry about. There are so many things that I don’t know yet and so many things that I fucked up and so many things that make me want to kick something, hard.

But for the first time in a long time, I know what I want to do: I want to try and make things better. Because maybe what I learnt in America is that if I won’t, then no one else will.

And the best part is: I know that I’m not alone in this.

I know that Penny and Shepard and even Agatha are on my side.

And as for Baz…

I feel his hair brush against my face, and I feel his spine curve under my hands, and I feel his legs pressed against mine. And somehow it doesn’t feel like he’s holding me down or keeping me back or expecting too much. He’s just here, anchoring me.

Tomorrow might change everything. (The way the Humdrum did, or the way America did, or the way the Crucible did when it cast us together.)

The sun’s already rising but it doesn’t feel like it’s tomorrow yet.

Tomorrow will start after we’ve slept.

I don’t want to sleep. There’s a buzzing under my skin, keeping me wide awake and making me want to kiss the hollow of Baz’s throat.

“I’m all right,” I say, because right now I am.

4

(another ten hours later: SEPTEMBER 2017, WATFORD)

SIMON

Watford looms before us, rising against the backdrop of the mountains like a fairy-tale come to life. Shepard seems suitably impressed; he hasn’t said a word since Baz parked the car at the foot of the hill and we hiked up to the gates. Now he’s just standing there, staring.

I can tell from the way that Agatha is crossing her arms that she would rather be anywhere else, but Baz and Penny are flanking her like they’re afraid that she’s going to make a run for it.

Baz is wearing a maroon suit that he dug out of the back of my closet – I didn’t even know that it was there – and with his hair all windswept by the breeze coming down the mountains he looks like a film star. It'd be almost romantic if it weren’t for the eerie quiet filling the valley. It’s September, the school year’s already started two weeks ago – even if we can’t see anyone, we should be able to hear something. (Anything, really. Magicians love to talk and to sing and to shout – add a whole school of them to a herd of bleating goats and a pack of howling merwolves and what you get is… well, a whole lot of noise.)

“Okay, everyone come over!” Penny claps her hands, twice. “Time to regroup!”

“We’re literally all standing right here,” Baz says, smirking.

Penny ignores him, takes out her gem from somewhere inside her shirt and holds it up in her fist. “So, here’s our plan,” she says even though we already discussed the plan a million times during the drive. “We go in. We don’t split up because that’d be stupid. We keep our eyes and ears open and head towards the Weeping Tower. If we see anything unusual, we alert the others. We try to reach my mother’s office without getting killed or otherwise injured. We regroup once we’re inside the wards of the tower.”

“Considering that literally anything could hide inside your crazy knock-off Camelot school… I’d say our plan sucks,” Shepard says. “But, hey, I’m rooting for us.” He grins.

Penny starts explaining the layout of the school grounds to him, but I can’t listen. The nervous energy that kept me awake yesterday is back, humming through my bones, turning my stomach, making me want to set something on fire. (I wish I still had my magic. Or at least my sword. Anything to stop from feeling so terribly empty-handed.)

I step away from our little circle and try to see something through the mist shrouding the castle.

Nothing.

Not even a hint of trouble – or at least not the kind of trouble I’m used to: No smoke, no many-limbed shadows moving through the fog, no bloodcurdling screams.

And yet… something feels so off that it makes my skin crawl. The pretty swirls of mist and the soft evening light can’t fool me. Watford isn’t asleep. It’s waiting… for us, maybe.

The others join me, and we just stand there for a moment, shoulder to shoulder in front of the closed gates; giant iron letters burning their message into our minds.

Let nothing separate us from each other.

Baz’s hand brushes against mine, and the spark of static electricity that passes between our fingertips makes me flinch. Baz turns to look at me and his grey eyes are steel and storm. I don’t look away.

He hesitates for a second before he presses a soft kiss to my temple. “I’ve got your back, love,” he murmurs, quiet enough that only I can hear it.

Baz has seen me at my best and at my worst and at the ugly bits in between.

He’s seen what I am.

And somehow, he still believes in me.

I’d tear the universe apart just to keep him by my side.

I take his hand, determined not to let go. There’s trouble at Watford and we’ll face it together.

“What if it’s a trap?” Agatha asks.

“Only one way to find out,” I say, and with my free hand I reach for the gates, forgetting that I don’t have the magic to prove myself worthy to them.

The gates swing open before I can even touch them.