Work Text:
Simon
Pride.
Baz and I have been dating for over three years now, and yet, this is the first time we go together.
I’m so excited.
I don’t even know why. We’re just going to be walking around London under the sun with too many people around us for hours on end.
But it’s pride.
It took me so long to have that. Pride. Part of me still felt…insulted, when Baz or Penny called me gay, even when I was involved in very gay activities with Baz.
I’m not gay. I said it with so much fervour.
Well guess what, past Simon?
You’re fucking gay.
And it’s okay to let the world know it.
“Simon, stop moving,” Agatha groans.
She’s trying to draw just how gay I am on my cheek, with that rainbow face paint stick she already used on herself.
One big rainbow stripe on each of their arms.
They’re coming to pride with us. So is Niamh, of course. Penny, Shepard, Niall and Dev too. It’s going to be amazing.
It’s already amazing.
Baz and his friends are in the living room, getting ready while singing loudly to Queen songs and drinking that expensive brand of beer Baz insists on buying. Penny and Shepard should join us soon, they’re on the way from their place, and Niamh is off to the nearest shop to buy snacks because she says we’ll be starving when we get back, and there was nothing she liked in the pantry.
“Sorry. I’m just excited,” I admit, giving them a small, apologetic smile. “It’s the first time I go.”
She knows that. And I know that it’s the first time for her too. She didn’t even realize she was queer until last year, so it’s not like she could have gone before.
I could have. If I hadn’t been so… busy, let’s say.
I’m sure Baz would have been happy to go to pride together before…
“That’s not an excuse to wriggle. Sit still or the line of the flag won’t be straight.”
“The lines have no business being straight in the first place.”
Agatha rolls their eyes at me, snorting, as they switch the stick to her other hand, in order to draw the flag on my other cheek. I don’t move this time, and she applies it fast, probably in fear that I will start wriggling, as she says, again.
“And, all done!” they say as they move back to admire their work. “Do you want anything else? Any makeup…” They wave at the overfull bag of fancy products they brought. “... or… A specific flag? I can do pretty much any colour with my palette of face paint.”
As if to prove that point, she grabs the palette in question and shows it to me. It had a bunch of different shades, and a thin brush to apply them.
She already used the orange, white, and pink shades when she drew a flag all over Niamh’s face, from one cheek to the other. Her flag. A specific flag.
They won’t get to draw one on me. I haven’t figured that stuff out yet. I don’t really care to.
I know I’m not straight, that’s enough for now. Who cares if I’m attracted to women or not, when the only person I ever want to -and hopefully ever will- be with is Baz?
I shake my head. “No, that’s fine.”
“Is it because you still don’t know which flag I would have to draw?” They ask, knowing my… difficult relationship with my sexual orientation.
I’ve talked to her about that stuff a lot after she told me she was queer. We bonded more over the fact that we were both gay than we did over anything we tried bonding over when we were dating…
“Partly, yeah.”
“I don’t understand how you can live like this. Of course I respect it if that’s better for you, I know you don’t like thinking about things, but it was such a relief for me to understand who I was and to have labels to put on it. I can’t imagine being in the same situation as you are.”
Baz said that too. It was very important for him, to know whether he was gay or something else.
It surprised me when he told me that, I had assumed he always knew it was just men he was attracted to. It’s hard to believe Baz ever thought he liked women…
I shrug.
“It’s just not important to me. I know that I’m in love with Baz, and it’s enough for now. Maybe someday I’ll want to know what it is that I am, but that day isn’t today and I doubt it will be soon.”
She hums in acknowledgment.
“And what’s the other reason?”
“What?”
“You said that was partly why you didn’t want me to add any paint or makeup on you. What’s the other reason?” they explain, flipping their hair from one shoulder to the other.
It’s probably the twentieth time she has done that since they arrived.
“I don’t want to be too… extravagant. You know I don’t like drawing attention to myself.”
They give me a “Really?” sort of glance, before opening the palette. They pick up the brush, and use the side of it opposite to the bristle to poke my shoulder.
“You literally gave yourself fucking dragon wings.”
“That was an accident!”
“But you could have gotten them removed. You were going to get them removed.”
I don’t think Agatha ever understood why I eventually chose to keep my wings and tail. I don’t think anyone ever did, because they all see them as the inconvenience that they are most of the time. But they’re not just that. They’re what I have left of magic. My wings allow me to fly, even if I rarely get too.
And, well, Baz likes them -especially the tail-, but that’s not the kind of details I’m willing to share with Agatha.
‘I don’t mind having a tail because my boyfriend like touching it when we have sex and it’s hot’ isn’t something I’m willing to share with anyone.
“I have accepted my fate as a freak, Agatha,” I answer in a very dramatic voice, holding my hand over my heart and faking a pained expression.
They poke my shoulder again, and I crack an eye open, only to see the amused look on her face.
“We’re gay, Si, you’d be a freak even without the wings.”
…
Baz
A smile grows on my face when I hear Snow laughing through the wall, even over the deafening music Niall is playing.
I’m glad he’s having fun with Wellbelove. They see each other more now that she’s back in England, but they still rarely get to meet.
I suppose I’m having fun too… It’s always fun hanging out with Dev and Niall…
Niall, who is very enthusiastic about his little improvised karaoke, singing loudly -and incredibly out of tune- while holding his phone like a microphone.
He wanted to play Born This Way on repeat ‘To get us in the right mood!’. I convinced him to go for Queen’s entire discography instead. There’s only so many times I can hear Lady Gaga -and Niall- sing ‘ I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way’ in a single day.
Dev is watching him, cheering him and singing the lyrics he knows while sipping on a beer. He’s already ready; he’s the one of us who’s doing the least, he’s only wearing a white shirt with “PRIDE” written on it in rainbow colours. Very tacky, perfect for the parade. Wellbelove had to fight him for him to let them use their nasty face paint stick on him.
It could be a normal afternoon, if my skin wasn’t buzzing with anticipation. I don’t think it’s a bad kind of anticipation, but going to Pride with Simon Snow only evokes a big question mark to me. He’s fine with PDA, but only in certain circumstances -usually, when there aren’t too many people around or when we are in locations that he considers queer friendly like Ikea , Soho in general, museums, or coffee shops that offer tons of dairy free options. Pride should be one of those special occasions, right?
I’m a cheesy fool, I want to kiss my boyfriend at a fucking pride parade.
…
Simon
“Do you want help drawing your flags?”
I’m not sure what to do now that Aggie is done with me. Should I leave them alone to get ready or is it okay for me to stay with them?
I mean, I guess it is my bedroom. I can stay. But it’s weird to just be sitting in front of her doing nothing. Shirtless, nonetheless -wings, you know?
It’s a good thing they’re a lesbian. She couldn’t care less about my chest. ‘You don’t have enough tits for me to want to look at your chest,’ she said when I asked her if she was cool with me taking my shirt off.
“No. You’re clumsy, they’re going to look ugly if I let you do it.”
That’s something I like about Agatha. They’re honest. Baz says they’re a bit too honest, but I don’t think there’s such a thing as being too honest. What Baz means when he says that is that she’s blunt, and that’s not necessarily a problem for me either. It’s just Baz who’s too used to being around hypocrites and people who sugarcoat things so much you only taste the sugar, never the bitter thing it’s supposed to make more digest.
“Okay,” I shrug.
It’s not like I really wanted to draw the flags anyway. I don’t even know the order of the colours of either of them.
So instead, I watch her paint them in silence.
They have a lot of them to draw. The first one they do is on their right cheek, the same as the one she drew on Niamh. I know that’s the lesbian one. If the colours were a gradient instead of separated in lines, it would look like a sunset. It’s lovely.
The second one is on her other cheek. Black, grey, white and purple. I’m not sure what this one is. It has too many colours in common with the one they drew as a sort of pretty makeup look on both their eyelids.
This one is black, purple, white and yellow.
“What are those flags again?” I ask her, pointing at the two I’m confused about.
“Ace on my cheek, non-binary on my eyes,” she answers, looking down at their lap as they put the brush inside the space made for it on the palette.
She closes the lid and throws the palette away, before holding their arms open in a “ta-da” sort of way.
“How queer do I look?”
I pretend to think about it long and hard, studying her face carefully before giving them an enthusiastic thumbs up. “Incredibly queer.”
They smile. “That’s exactly what I was aiming for.”
…
Agatha
I’m done, but I don’t want to go to the living room with the others. I have nothing against Basil or his friends, but I’m not close to them and I’ve missed being around Simon. He’s a great guy when I don’t have to think of him as a potential partner .
I cringe at the thought. In theory, we were made for each other. We were the fairy tale couple. The golden prince and his fair princess.
How far we are from that now…
The prince is in love with another prince, and the princess isn’t even a princess anymore.
“Remember when we dated?”
He laughs softly. “I do remember. Christ, we were together for such a long time,” he says, a tender smile spreading on his lips.
He looks almost… nostalgic, though I’m not sure what he could possibly be nostalgic about. We weren’t happy together. If anything, we were content with the situation. Him because he saw a stable future in me. Me because dating him was the perfect excuse not to interact with other boys.
The guys at school didn’t understand a simple no, but they understood “Simon Snow is my boyfriend and he’ll break your nose if you so much as breathe in my direction.”
“We were. And we had sex , Simon. Sex .”
I cringe once more.
Probably one of the most unsatisfactory experiences of my life. My girl friends talked about shagging their boyfriend as that super great thing, but when Simon and I fucked it was just… boring. It didn’t feel particularly good, though it didn’t hurt. He was careful.
It wasn’t the earth-shattering experience I expected it to be, even after we did it multiple times and Simon became better at it.
That alone should probably have helped me figure out some things about myself much sooner.
“Come on! Don’t say it like that, you sound like I tortured you or something!”
The poor thing looks offended. Ah, men and their ego.
I shake my head.
“You have to admit it was bad.”
“Of course it was bad! But it’s not like you ever tried to make it good! You never did anything!”
He’s laughing through those vile - true - accusations. I suppose I didn’t hurt his ego that much, then.
“Because it was bad! Sorry but your dick really wasn’t all that amazing. Maybe that’s why I’m a lesbian now,” I tell him with a wink.
It’s hard to control the urge to laugh with him, but I have a tendency to tear up very easily when I laugh, and I would hate to ruin my makeup.
Shock takes over his features, his lips parting in a way that makes him look like a particularly silly goldfish.
He truly doesn’t make holding back my laughter easy.
“I’m sorry, but my dick is amazing. I’m sure Baz would agree. Baz! Baz! Aggie’s saying mean things about my dick!” he yells as he jumps out of the bed. I can only assume it’s to run to the living room, to Basil.
Jesus Christ, I love him so much.
…
Baz
Why did I think inviting everyone here before the parade started was a good idea?
Bunce and the American aren’t even here yet and it’s already chaos.
Simon is like a fucking kangaroo on crack, Wellbelove alternates between teasing him and shamelessly flirting with their girlfriend, and Niall is still ruining his vocal chords -and my eardrums- with Dev’s full support.
I don’t know if I’m relieved or not when Penny texts me to open the door…
…
“Oh my god you have a trans flag!” is the first thing I hear after the last two guests entered the flat.
Even before hearing a hello , which is particularly rude.
The American -I know his name, but it pisses him off when I call him that- is excitedly walking to Niall, taking the bottom of the flag Niall tied around his neck like a cape and stroking the cheap material.
“I’ve got one back at home in America but I never bought one here…”
I know he lived with his mother, in America. I can’t imagine what it must be like, being able to have a pride flag at your parent’s house. My father would probably have burnt it the minute he saw it, if I had one…
Niall, kind as ever, undoes the knot to take the flag off his shoulders, only to throw it over the American’s shoulders as well, like a blanket covering both of their backs. “We can share if you want.”
We can share if you want.
He told me the same thing, when we went to our first Pride together, as he draped a rainbow flag over us much like he just did. We were sixteen, I’d just accepted that I was gay, and I had sneaked out and taken a train to London only to be able to go to Pride.
My father was furious. Fiona told him to fuck off and let me live. It made him even more furious. I stayed at her place a lot, that summer.
…
Baz
There are too many people, it’s too hot, too loud, too bright, too colourful.
It’s absolutely perfect.
Wellbelove is perched up on her girlfriend’s shoulders. Niall has one hand around Dev’s waist, the other around the American’s shoulders, and they’re as close as if they’d been mates forever, even though they only met on about 10 different occasions so far.
Dev is in his element, he never had a problem being proud of who he is. He didn’t want to wear more than his silly shirt, but he let a girl with beautiful blue braids who walked around giving out stickers with different flags on them stick a pink, purple and blue one right over the I of PRIDE.
Even Bunce seems to be having a good time, though I think that’s more because she can tell that we are having a good time. She can tell that her American and Simon are having a good time.
Simon…
He’s more radiant than he’s ever been. I think his joy might blind me.
His arm wraps around my neck. One of his hand slithers in my hair. He’s laughing.
“Baz.”
He says my name like it’s a secret, but he doesn’t make me feel like I’m one.
“Kiss me.”
He never asked that. Never in public. The further we’ve gone is holding hands.
He must sense my hesitation, because he tugs on my hair, trying to force my head down.
He won’t stop laughing. I never want him to.
“Come on, kiss me,” he demands. “If you can’t be gay at Pride, where can you?”
That finishes convincing me.
I bring my lips down, capturing his fervently.
I’m kissing Simon Snow at a pride parade.
I wish 15-year-old me could see this. Maybe it would stop some of the torrents of tears he shed because he hated himself.
…
Simon
I may not know what letter stands for what I am or what colour flag to hold, but there’s one thing I know, and it’s that I belong here.
It feels so good to belong.