Chapter Text
Baz
Simon Snow is lying on the sofa.
His wings are folded up behind him, like origami. He stretches them out every twenty minutes or so. He looks like a proper brooding dragon.
His tail is wrapped around the hilt of the Excalibur . The sword has become an extension of him. He's almost always holding it in some capacity these days. Like he needs it to remember himself.
He takes it on morning runs. He takes it to his weekly therapy sessions. (Yet another perk of a magickal therapist. Bunce should have bullied Simon into doing this sooner.)
He goes to sleep with it. Keeps things interesting in the bedroom. Just me, my boyfriend, and his two and a half foot family heirloom sword.
I would feel terribly jealous, except he always lets go of it when I hold him. Snow is a drifting boat, reaching from one anchor to the other.
I've been busy with work. The drive to uni is longer from our apartment in Hackney Wick. But I don't mind. I like coming home to him. I like knowing that he's waiting, glancing at the door, counting minutes until I come back.
I like him like this.
Other times, I wait for him. He spends his days with Lady Ruth and Jamie. I've been trying to give him space with his family. All this new information is a lot for him to process. He doesn't like talking about it much.
One day I came home to him hurriedly shoving a piece of paper in his pocket, his red-rimmed eyes refusing to meet mine.
Lucy's letters, another anchor.
The last time I saw Simon without wings and a tail was in Vegas. Right before Penny made him invisible.
He used to hate her magic. My magic. Hated the feel of it against his own skin and how it reminded him of everything he had lost. Everything he had given up.
Now he can't feel magic at all.
Whatever Smith Smith-Richards did to Simon that day is still in effect. Bunce has driven herself half mad trying to figure it all out. Nothing seems to work. You can't use magic to fix someone who is immune to it. It's the ultimate paradox.
Snow's just a hole. He's a human quiet zone.
He has good days and bad weeks. The first day I woke up, and I saw him lying back on the sofa, eyes half glazed over, mindlessly switching through T.V. channels with a can of beer hanging loosely off his hand, my heart filled with unspeakable dread.
It felt like taking a million steps in reverse. Months of work we had done to get him better, all unravelling. The pressure had finally got to him, I thought, and he had given in.
He lifted his head a smidge to look at me, and I braced for the ball to drop. For that look. Like he couldn't stand the sight of me.
Instead, he offered me a smile. It was broken and weak and barely there. But it was something . It was hope.
I've loved him hopelessly. I've loved him through worse.
“I think I’m going to get a curry,” I say. “Do you want anything?”
He doesn't reply. I don't think he ever heard me. I walk up to the sofa and touch his shoulder. I lean down and drop a kiss on his cheek. He looks up.
I try again. “Do you want anything, love?”
He seems to think for a moment. He touches my hand.
"Curry would be nice, thanks."
Later tonight, I'll be home with the curry. I'll set the table. Snow will get up and eat dinner with me. He'll attempt to laugh at my jokes. He'll let me take him to bed, let me fold him into my arms and press kisses into his skin.
He'll let me tell him I love him, maybe he'll say it back.
He bows and bends, but he never breaks.
Simon Snow is lying on the sofa. But the next day, he will wake up, and he will try again. And again and again.
He's going to be alright.