Chapter Text
BAZ
As with all things, the trouble begins when Snow and I are alone.
Bunce is out, still attending an afternoon lab at her university, and I’ve taken over the coffee table in the living room of hers and Simon’s flat to do coursework. Snow had been lounging behind me on the couch, on his mobile phone and keeping me company with the gift of his presence, but he left nearly an hour ago for his scheduled appointment with his magical therapist. As this therapist is based in Chicago, they’re always conducted through a video chat that he takes from his room.
He tells us the sessions are going well. I think otherwise, but he doesn’t answer any other questions to give me concrete evidence for my hypothesis.
The door to Snow’s room opens, and Snow trudges out and slouches back down on the couch like he has after every other session so far. His knees nearly hit my back where he’s sat right behind me. He always tenses up when he’s upset, something that always hurt his casting form. Back when he had magic.
“Are there international laws for disclosure of what goes on in therapy sessions?” I ask while reading about domestic trade in the mid-fifties. I once asked Snow how he was after one of his sessions, and he asked me if I was feeling unwell. As though I wouldn’t fight tooth and nail to make sure he’s well, to make sure he’s happy. Now I just ask questions about his therapy.
“Probably,” Snow mutters. I’ve long since given up asking him to speak clearly, and I learned to speak Simon Snow fluently by third year.
“Do you know them?”
“No.”
I can hear the scowl in his voice.
One thing that’s been a problem since Simon and I started dating is that he still can’t stop expecting the worst of me. I suppose it’s natural when your boyfriend becomes the same person that antagonized you for six years and change, but it’s still alarmingly often that Simon reads something into what I say that I didn’t intend, and I have yet to determine what sets him off in order to avoid it.
I turn my attention back to my reading. In the past, I would have poked at Simon until he got angry and left the room. Since all that went down at Watford, neither of us have really been interested in poking at much of anything beyond the surface level.
I make it a few more pages before I take a break and lean back against Simon’s legs. He may be a terrible communicator, but he does make an excellent backrest. I tilt my head up to look at him, so that my head is in his lap and Snow is oriented nearly upside-down. The scowl I heard in his voice still rests on his face, and he’s sunk deeply into his WATFORD LACROSSE hoodie. Wellbelove played.
I’ve had a football hoodie saved for years to give to him, but because I’m a fool and a coward, I still haven’t. Sometimes I wonder if he would even want it. Sometimes I wish I had given it to him in fifth year when he watched me play all the time. “Since you come to all my games anyways.” Then he definitely would have thought I was antagonizing him. (Snow, I just wanted a pretty boy to wear my hoodie.)
“What are you doing?” I ask.
Snow reaches down with his free hand and begins to play with my hair, like he’s just realized that I’ll be in this position for a while. I would gladly spend the rest of my days looking at Simon Snow, even if it means craning my neck at uncomfortable angles sometimes. He runs his fingers through my hair, and it’s nice, these small touches and the handholding; even if we don’t talk about more than surface level topics, the touch is grounding.
“Nothing,” Simon says.
“Then why are you scowling?”
“I’m not scowling,” but the scowl stays in place.
As much as it pains me, I sit up, letting Snow’s fingers fall limp through my hair, and turn myself around so that I’m facing Snow properly.
“Snow,” I say. “You’re clearly upset about something.”
“It’s nothing. Everything is fine.”
“What did you talk about in therapy?”
I can’t help it with Simon; I have to poke at things.
“The same as every week,” comes a frustrated reply. “We talk about how I’m doing, how I’m coping, she talks to me about how I went through trauma and it’s okay to feel bad afterward.”
“Well that sounds like a waste of time. I could have told you that.” Honestly, it’s like this woman was trained straight off Google.
Somehow that only makes Snow even more frustrated.
“Well if it’s that simple, why is everyone telling me I need to talk to this woman? Why is everyone telling me I need to talk all the time?” Snow finally makes a move, turning off his phone and sitting forward, hunching over. I can see his legs beginning to bounce and his hands clenched into fists.
“Well, Mages are a society built upon the spoken word,” I say. Like a fool. Like an idiot. Like someone who doesn’t know the power of words.
“I’m not a fucking Mage, Baz!” Simon explodes. I swear I start to smell the faintest hint of smoke. “I’m not a fucking Mage, and I never will be, so what does it bloody well matter if I speak about my problems or not? There’s no magic phrase to fix it, not that it matters because I was never good at using magic words to fix it, that was your job, I was just the brute swinging around a sword. I was just the one everyone threw at the problem to eradicate it by going off!” I definitely think I smell smoke, and Snow looks like he’s nearly vibrating with how much he’s shaking.
Simon must pick up on the same things I do because I watch his eyes go wide, and he gasps and chokes out my name as he curls up even more. (Merlin, if we were both normal, it would be quite nice for that to be under different circumstances.)
My mind races to think of something to help him, something to solve this. He preferred his sword, for Merlin’s sake.
I turn around and grab my laptop off the far corner of the coffee table, then spin back around while powering it on. Once it’s logged in, I turn it around to face Simon and plant it on his lap, as much that’s still free without Simon curled around.
“If you don’t want to speak, then do,” I say. “My credit card information is already on my laptop. Buy whatever you need, do whatever you need to do to get better.”
I sit and wait while Simon sits up straight enough to slide the laptop back, and then I look down at my lap. He’s got quite the power at his fingertips, and I can’t bear to look while the thought of him making plans to leave here, to leave me, runs through my mind. I stay like this for what feels like forever, for as long as I hear Simon typing and clicking and I imagine looking in my search history to find “what is the furthest place from england” and “international flight times today out of london heathrow” and “how to break up with your boyfriend”. Simon Snow doesn’t need to worry about breaking my heart; I can do it just as well for him.
“Baz,” I hear him murmur, and I look up. He already looks much calmer, more settled. I brace myself. He passes my laptop back to me, and I’m stuck looking at an airplane ticket confirmation page. All my breath leaves me at once, leaving a gaping hole in my ability to function. My stomach churns, and I think I might be the first vampire to ever fall ill. Who knew it would be heartbreak that could bring us down?
But as I look closer, I notice that Snow booked three tickets, all one-way flights to New York City. My air comes back at once, and I look up at Simon in wide-eyed shock. (I’ve always been able to maintain my stoicism, except for when it comes to Simon. Just as with many other things.)
We meet eyes, and then he drops his head down to look at his lap. “I don’t know who I am without magic,” he says. “And I’m not coming back until I figure it out.”
“Okay.”
“But I don’t want to go alone.”
“Okay.”
“And I’ve been around you and Penny long enough without my magic to know that I still like you.”
“Okay.”
He looks up at me. “Will you ever stop saying anything other than ‘okay’?”
I smile back at him. “Will you finish your speech?”
Snow huffs. Much more settled now. “The tickets are for you, me, and Penny. I hope that’s alright.”
Just then, in truly her worst timing to end all of her worst timings, Bunce storms straight through the door, whirling around to close it, before whirling back and dropping her bag onto the floor without a second thought. She’s placed the books in her arms on top of the bookshelf to the left of the door (acquired and located for that express purpose) before she notices Simon and I.
“What’s up?” she asks
“Bunce,” I say. “Are you able to conduct your classes remotely for the foreseeable future?”
She makes a face, scrunching all of her features, then says, “I suppose, why?”
I’ve never been so grateful for my ability to keep a straight face before now. “We’re all going to New York City in two days’ time. Please plan your schedule accordingly.”