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Baz
The light from the reading lamp feels too bright. It makes my eyes ache.
I blink and try to focus on the text in front of me, but the words swim.
I could fit as a fiddle myself again, but I’ve already used that spell far too often. You’re only meant to use it once or twice, but I’ve been spelling myself every few hours for the last three days. If it were an actual medication I would be drooling on the floor. With Bunce at my heels, though, there’s no alternative if I’m going to keep my rightful place at the top of the class.
The problem with fit as a fiddle is that it doesn’t actually cure illness, it simply postpones it, so, at this rate, I’ll have gotten through the end of term, but will have developed a full-on case of walking pneumonia.
Just how one wants to begin the summer holiday.
I feel my sinuses closing up, and my head begins to pound. Perhaps a solid night of sleep would be as beneficial as another few hours of revising. And with Simon off on one of the Mage’s insane missions or quests or whatever the fuck, the room will at least be quiet.
Lonely, but quiet.
I shove my books and papers into my bag and nod to the Librarian as I leave – she and I have an understanding about the archival materials that most students aren’t allowed to access. She gives me a wink, which is rather disconcerting coming from a seventy-eight-year-old woman, but it’s nice to know that if my moldering corpse is found collapsed across a compendium of arcana, someone will notice.
Campus is quiet and dark. It’s much later than I realized.
I wonder what Simon is doing. I wonder if he’s safe. I wonder if he’ll get back in time for exams. The Mage certainly doesn’t seem to care about his charge’s education. All Simon is to that caped lunatic is a weapon.
He’s so much more than that.
What if the last time I saw him was the last time full stop?
What if he doesn’t come back this time?
As much as it hurts my throbbing skull I find myself physically shaking that thought from my head.
Simon always comes back. Often the worse for wear, but he comes back.
It’s touch and go climbing the stairs to our room. I have to stop several times to catch my breath, and by the time I push my way through the door, I have just enough energy left to toe off my shoes and collapse on the closest bed, which happens to not be mine. I turn my head into Simon’s pillow and breathe in as best as my semi-functioning nose allows. It smells of the school-issued shampoo, but also of him. Brown butter. Cloves. Sweat.
It makes me dizzy.
Or perhaps it’s the influenza.
I close my eyes and picture his face, and I feel like I’m falling over a familiar cliff.
What if he does come back, but I’ve left for the summer? I won’t see him for months. And the last time I saw him was par for the course, really. I insulted him, and he snarled deliciously. I poked at his soft underbelly (metaphorically, sadly) and he worked himself up to a full strop and stomped off in a rage.
That’s what he’ll think of if he thinks of me at all this summer.
I wish things were different. I wish I could tell him. The longing for him hasn’t killed me yet (assuming I’m some variant of ‘alive’) but sometimes it feels like it might. And it’s not even about not being able to touch him, hold him, kiss him. Though that would be lovely. Any of those three. All of those three.
It’s that he doesn’t know me. Not really. After all these years I’m just a two-dimensional villain to him. A fucking archetype.
I want him to know me. To know how I feel about him. I might want that more than anything.
And I’m also terrified of that happening, and will go to great lengths to prevent it.
You see the problem.
We have our routine now, and it’s one that I created. I sneer, and he huffs. I attack, and he lashes back. I demand his attention in the only way I can have it. I provoke his passions, even if they’re not the passions I’d prefer.
I take what I can get.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed and manage to sit up. Maybe just one more so I can sleep.
“Fit as a fiddle!”
I feel a warmth kindle in my cheeks like a low-grade fever burning through the fog and muck. Taking a deep breath, I can feel the pressure in my head ease, my muscles relax, and the sharp, insistent pain in my throat numbs to a soft undercurrent. It’s such a relief. I feel as slow-witted and languorous as a numpty in a thick duvet.
God, I’m going to pay for this on the backend.
I use Simon’s desk to lever myself to a standing position and knock one of his textbooks to the floor in the process. I intend to just leave it there, but then a thought stops me.
I’ve been working on an original spell. Practicing it whenever I can. I shouldn’t be, really. I should be focusing solely on studying for exams. It’s not even required for our class yet – most students won’t attempt it until next year… but I’ve always had this one idea. It’s a textual concealment spell tied to the passage of time. A way to leave hidden messages that will only come to light decades in the future.
It occurs to me that perhaps I’ve been so focused on it because it will give me what I want most.
To tell him. But also not.
Spill my truth across a page that he’ll never read, but will hold close. Get all this want and love and fucking yearning out of me once and for all.
And then maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to properly concentrate. Can focus on the task at hand, and not be distracted mooning over my missing roommate/antagonist/unrequited love of my life.
Maybe I can get on with my life.
I’m unconvinced on that last part, but I stoop down and pick up Simon’s copy of Goddenby’s Spectres and Domesticated Atrocities of Wales and flip open to his bookmark (a ragged receipt from the school store for a packet of crisps and two chocolate bars). He’s several chapters behind where he should be.
I settle onto my own bed, and fish my wand out of my bag.
Am I really going to do this? If it doesn’t work, how can I possibly explain it?
But I have been practicing, and it’s been working flawlessly (of course). The theoretical underpinning is sound.
I look over at Simon’s empty bed and feel that same pull in my stomach that I’ve felt since we were matched by the Crucible. Even in his absence, my body looks for him.
I just need to get this out.
Crowley, this is so self-indulgent.
I raise my wand.
“Only time will tell.”
The tip of my wand glows, and I lower it to the book and begin to write.
Simon
If you had told a younger me that I’d be properly hacked off about not getting to study for a test, I’d have laughed in your face. Well, no, that’d be rude, but I would have disagreed.
But I actually am. Hacked off, that is.
I had a real chance this year of not being a complete academic washout. I mean, a lot of the credit goes to Penny who pulled me through our classes with brute strength, but I did try harder than I ever have. And I was keeping up! Mostly. And I think I would have come out somewhere near the bottom of the top third of our class. Well, maybe the top half. Or maybe just below… but still.
There have been years when I didn’t get marks at all. The Mage excused me from exams when I had to go on a mission, and the teachers all went along.
When he sent me on this last mission, he offered to do it again, but the thing is, I really want to finish the year under my own steam. I want to try at least.
Of course, now I’m showering off the itchy, fishy remnants of a battle with these giant were-crabs (don’t even ask) and counting the hours I have left before Prof. Heart’s final in my Advanced Care of Rare and Curious Creatures class. It’s been my favorite subject this year. If I wasn’t the Chosen One I might have liked to go into Magical Veterinary Science. It’d be a nice change of pace to care for creatures rather than slay them, or accidentally blow them up.
And I’ve been doing well, but now I’m at least three chapters behind because of these fucking deranged crabs.
I dry off and put on sweatpants and my favorite shirt. It’s the only shirt I try very hard not to take on missions so it doesn’t have any mysterious stains or sword holes in it, and I’d like to keep it that way.
Baz was asleep when I got back. He was passed out on top of his blankets still fully dressed, which is very odd for him. I wonder if he’s ill, because he looks a bit peaky. He hasn’t even put his wand away – it’s resting on his chest. He’ll hate it if he rolls over and breaks the damned thing.
I walk as quietly as I can up to the bed, avoiding that one squeaky floorboard, and gently pick the wand up, careful not to touch him. I turn to put it on his desk and notice that my Spectres book is sitting there, open to the chapter I need to start on.
What was Baz doing with my textbook?
I pick it up carefully in case he’s booby-trapped it somehow. But no cage falls from the ceiling, and I don’t get an electric shock.
Maybe he just needed to borrow it?
It’s odd, but I’m too tired and too short on time to give it more thought.
I curl into the corner of my bed and try to focus on the chapter on riderless ghost horses. I’m so tired though, it’s almost as if the words are moving. I close my eyes tight and open them again. I can do this.
Focus, Snow.
And I do. I get through a few paragraphs, but I can tell it’s not sticking. And there’s so much more to get through. I’ve been trying all year to not use this one spell, but I think I might have to. It’s not actually cheating (although Penny begs to differ, loudly and at length). But the other students didn’t have to hack through a bunch of carapaces to keep a rogue gang of expansionist crustaceans from taking over Cornwall, so I think I’m in my right to use this particular shortcut.
“To make a long story short!” I whisper and peek over at Baz who is still dead to the world (I mean asleep. I’m not entirely sure if he’s actually dead or undead or whatever).
The words on the page blur and then resolve into a list of bullet points. Glorious, short bullet points. I breathe a sigh of relief. I might actually be able to get through it all now.
But then I notice that it looks like the words are moving again, only it’s not the words about ghost horses, it’s like there’s words underneath.
I’m only able to catch some of them because they’re moving pretty fast, and they kind of move in and out of shadow. It’s right weird, and I’m quite used to weird. I grab a notebook and start to write down the words I can catch.
dead and buried…
poison...
slowly killing…
torture…
disgust…
This is my curse…
I drop the book and shove it off the bed.
I can’t fucking believe this. I shouldn’t be surprised, but somehow I am. I’ve clearly let my guard down, but it’s been years since Baz has pulled shit like this! It’s pretty bloody obvious what’s going on, though.
That fucking tosser cursed my book!
***
I know I shouldn’t be bothering her in the middle of the night, but I need Penny’s help with this. A curse is not a one-man job. Certainly not this one man.
She opens the door looking both angry and about to fall right back to sleep, which seems difficult to pull off but she’s doing it. Her hair is pulled into a knot on the top of her head, but it’s slumped to one side, and she’s got creases running across her left cheek from her sheets. It looks like there’s a bit of drool on her tank top. Her pajama pants are covered in tiny gargoyles. I gave them to her for Christmas last year because she wrote a very long paper on gargoyle mating rituals, and wouldn’t shut up about them for several months.
“I didn’t spell the wards on this dorm so you could visit at any hour, Simon. It was for emergencies only. Or to bring me food. And I’m not interested in takeaway at two in the morning.”
She actually sounds more resigned than angry, despite her face, so that’s encouraging.
“I’m sorry, Pen, but I need your help. Baz cursed my book!” I shove the offending item at her. I’ve wrapped it in a semi-clean towel because I’m not sure how safe it is to touch it. Penny will know.
She looks down but doesn’t take the bundle from me.
When she looks back up she doesn’t seem as alarmed as I would have expected.
“He cursed your book.”
“Yes! I was catching up on my reading for Professor Heart after I got back from the mission, which went fine thanks for asking.”
She huffs and crosses her arms, “Well, you’re standing here with all your limbs, so I assumed as much.”
I ignore her.
“And then it was like there were words moving under the words. Like different words. Bad words. Cursey-type words.”
“Cursey-type words.”
“Yes! Like stuff about death and torture… bad words!” I shove the book towards her again and this time she sighs and takes it.
She turns and puts it on her desk, knocking several piles of papers to the floor. She doesn’t seem to notice or mind. She folds back the towel, which she’s clearly more disgusted by than the cursed object, and wipes her hands on her pajamas, “You couldn’t find a clean towel, Simon?”
“I was in a bit of a hurry, because, you know, cursed book!”
Penny doesn’t appear overly concerned about touching it, though, and she opens it to where I’ve marked my page. She gives me a look over her shoulder, “Really Simon? To make a long story short? Again?” She doesn’t put any magic in her words, only a crushing tone of disappointment, which is as potent as her magic.
“I’m a bit short on time thanks to my work-study responsibilities which, this time around, involved killing murderous shellfish trying to violently overthrow the Cornwall city council!”
“There’s always an excuse,” she mutters under her breath. “But I do see what you mean about the words under the words… it looks like a palimpsest.”
“A wha?”
“Palimpsest. We had an entire unit on them, Simon. A manuscript in which the original text has been erased or scraped away and new text written on top,” she recites. “Except… this seems different… because I just saw your name swim by…”
I rush forward and peer over her shoulder, “You saw my name? Wait, is the curse on the book or on me?? Or both??”
“Simon, you are jumping to conclusions. We don’t know that this is a curse at all.”
“The book was on Baz’s desk when I got back. He did something to it! And I literally saw the words 'This is my curse'!”
Penny turns and puts her hands on my shoulders and I immediately feel a bit calmer. Even if she doesn’t completely believe me, I know Penny will always help me.
“I’m going to try something. It’s a spell my mum taught me. It’s…not entirely legal….”
“What?!”
She turns back to the book and shrugs, “It’s fine. She just figured out a way to read the redacted parts of certain official Coven reports. Information should be free, Simon.” She sounds like she’s quoting her mum.
“So it’s immoral for me to get helpful summaries of entirely legal and public information, but this is tickity-boo?!”
“Don’t say tickity-boo, Simon. You know I hate it.”
She picks up her ring from where she keeps it in a dish by her bed. She used to wear it while she slept, but it’s quite big, and she walloped herself in the face with it a few times. Penny’s a thrasher.
She raises her hand and clears her throat, “Read between the lines!”
I look over her shoulder and see my beautiful bullet list fade into the page, and the words underneath rise to the surface. It’s almost like the Magic Eight Ball toy that Penny’s little brother has, except it’s not just a word or two that rises to the surface, it seems to be an entire hand-written letter. I’m at a bad angle so I can’t read it easily, but Penny is stooped and reading it intently. I hear her make a little choked sound.
“Pen? What is it? Can I see?”
She straightens up and her cheeks are pink. “Well, it's not a curse.”
"What?? How can that be?"
She bites her lip and can’t quite meet my eye. Finally she looks at me, and she’s got this expression on her face that I can’t decipher. I feel like I should maybe be terrified.
“Why don’t I step out and let you read this on your own, yeah?”
Before I can respond she’s slipped on her shoes and darted out the door, and I hear what sounds like a muffled, “oh my fucking god” as her footsteps retreat down the hall.
What the actual fuck could it be? I grab the book and sit on Penny’s unmade bed.
Dear Simon,
You’ll never read this. If this spell works as it should, this letter will remain hidden until we’re both long dead and buried. I like to think this book will find its way to a used bookshop or a library donation bin. Maybe it will sit untouched on a shelf for years and years until one day my words rise to the surface unbeknownst to anyone. Or maybe, if the universe sees fit, someone somewhere will eventually pick it up and know.
Someone will finally know how much I love you.
Buried the lede, didn’t I? Forgive me. I am not well, in any sense of the word.
I suppose this letter isn’t really for you. It’s for me. I’ve denied myself so much for so long, but I’m giving myself this. I want to watch you hold this book close. I want to know that you have my words in your hands. That I’ve declared my love, even if you can’t see it. I want to pretend that you’re reading this letter. Pretend that you finally see me.
It’s a ridiculous thing for me to do. There’s no point. It won’t change anything. But you’ve become like a poison in my veins, and I have to get it out because I think it’s slowly killing me.
I tried for years to change the way I feel. I didn’t want to care about you. I didn’t want to want you like this. Want you in my bed, in my arms, wrapped around me. But I do.
And I can’t ever have you, so it was easier to try to hate you. But I failed. I’m an abject failure where you’re concerned, Simon. I’m weak and desperate and so fucking in love with you that sometimes I can barely breathe when you’re close.
And you’re always so bloody close. Do you understand what kind of torture it’s been? Sleeping so near you, night after night, but never able to touch you the way I want. I fall asleep at night to the sound of the shower, knowing there’s just a door between us. I want to kiss you, touch you, kneel at your feet, offer myself to you. But I’m not strong enough to see your disgust, or worse, your pity. I’m not strong enough to hear you say you’ll never want me the way I want you.
And I want you, Simon. I’ve wanted you for as long as I can remember. This is my curse. To dream of you every night, to watch you every day, and to know that you hate me. That the only man I’ll ever love despises my very existence.
I hate how much I love you. But I’ll never stop. I wish I could.
Baz
Baz
The pounding in my head is back.
Wait, no, that’s actual pounding at the door.
I manage to roll off my bed and get shakily to my feet. Fuck, I feel like hell. The spell is working for shorter and shorter periods of time.
Whoever is pounding at the door is getting shoved down the stairs. It’s four o’clock in the goddamned morning.
I swing open the door and come face-to-face with a very worked up Simon Snow. He’s out of breath like he just sprinted up the stairs. He’s in his pajamas, though – the old sweatpants and his favorite shirt that he takes special pains to keep clean, which means he must have been in our room earlier.
He manages to gasp out “I forgot my key.”
I step back and let him in. “Off gallivanting with Bunce on some lunar ritual again?” God, my voice comes out as weak as I feel. I can’t even work up a good derisive tone. I just sound sad and tired.
“What? No. I…” Snow looks completely spun off his axis. His eyes are darting around the room as if it’s the first time he’s seen it. He’s shifting from foot to foot, and he can’t seem to look at me for some reason.
And then I see it. He’s holding the book, and his finger is stuck between the pages right about where… oh no.
No, I’m jumping to conclusions. That spells works. I know it works. He’s just exhausted and acting oddly because he’s just come back from a Mage mission.
I am not going to panic. I’m going to act natural.
“What were you doing out so late, Snow?” my voice cracks, and I steadfastly ignore it.
He’s hugging the book to his chest now like it’s a beloved pet. I’ve never seen him do that with a book. Still not panicking. Definitely not panicking.
“I went over to Penny’s room. I needed her help to figure something out.” He seems to be addressing the floor.
“How to tie your shoes?” Crowley, I can’t even come up with a good “Simon is dumb” joke. Maybe I’m actually dying.
He finally looks at me, and his expression is concerned, “Wait… are you sick? You sound awful.”
I turn back to my bed and sit down, feeling light-headed, “Yes, Snow, your powers of observation remain unimpeachable.”
He crosses the room and stands in front of me. He looks like he’s making a very important decision.
And then he sits down next to me. I can’t remember him ever being this close to me when we weren’t physically fighting each other. Our thighs brush. I swallow, or at least I try to. I might need one more 'fit as a fiddle' just to get through whatever the fuck is happening right now.
“Baz…” Simon says, and then he trails off. He definitely wants to say something, but he’s having a hard time getting it out.
The book is in his lap.
Still not panicking. Absolutely, positively not panicking in the slightest.
He finally just lets out a frustrated huff and opens the book to the page he’s been marking with his finger.
I’m actually going to die.
There it is. My letter. My fucking love letter to Simon Snow. Right there for all the world to see. For Simon to see.
“Oh.”
It’s all I can manage to say.
“Yeah,” he responds softly.
I don’t think we’ve ever been this speechless with each other before. We’re both quite adept at hurling insults. Mine are more refined and cutting, but Simon gets his shots in as well from time to time.
“Is it true?” he asks.
I don’t know how to respond so I don’t say anything.
“If this is a trick… some kind of… I don’t know, practical joke…” he whispers, and I can see tears in his eyes. What is happening right now? Why is Simon crying? I’m the one who should be crying. I’m the one with my heart laid bare, waiting for the inevitable rejection. It’s actually almost freeing to know it’s coming. That I can finally just get it over with. He knows and now he’ll explain that he could never love me. He’ll probably be kind about it, and it will be so much worse than if he just hit me. If Simon Snow is gentle with me, I may never recover.
The only way out is through, Pitch.
“It’s not a trick,” I manage to croak out.
He doesn’t respond immediately. He’s making his “deep thinking” face and I brace myself. Then he gives this serious little nod, like he’s come to a decision.
He turns to me and touches my cheek. His hand is shaking. My jaw is hanging slightly open, and not just because I’ve been breathing through my mouth.
“You really love me? Like 'love' love me?” he asks so quietly that if he weren’t so close I wouldn’t be able to hear him.
I can only nod, dumbstruck at his touch.
And then he leans in and kisses me. It’s a soft, tentative kiss. He pulls back quickly – too quickly – and scans my face for my reaction.
“Was that OK?” he asks.
“Yes,” I manage to whisper, “but I think you probably have the flu now.”
The shy look on his face turns into a grin.
“Well, in for a penny, in for a pound,” he says and kisses me again. This kiss isn’t cautious or timid at all. It’s deep and claiming, and I feel like I may go off the way Simon used to before he got his magic under better control.
I have to pull away far too soon, as breathing is not high on my current list of skills. He’s looking at me with so much fondness that I almost have to close my eyes.
“You dramatic prat. A spelled love letter in my textbook? You couldn’t just write it in your diary? Or, I don’t know, tell me directly?” He’s smiling at me, though, and I can’t tell if this weightless feeling is the flu or the fact that Simon finally knows. He knows and he… well, I don’t know if he loves me, but he certainly seems open to exploring the idea. I’m not going to quibble.
“How the bloody hell did you break it? That spell was fucking perfect. You have no idea the things I’ve been writing on the walls around here…”
His eyes go wide, “Magical graffiti?? Who even are you? Can’t believe I’m dating a criminal now.”
That makes my eyes go wide, “Are we…dating, Snow?”
He bumps my shoulder, and then takes my hand in his, “Well, you love me, so I kind of assumed you’d be amenable to the idea. And I… well, I don’t think I’ve ever understood why I’ve been so obsessed with you since I was a kid, but after Penny and I read the letter, we sat down and had a conversation that was proper eye-opening… to say the least.”
“When you and Penny read the letter??”
He kisses my cheek and I feel like I might be having a mini-stroke.
“Well, my ‘To make a long story short’ spell seemed to throw a spanner in the works of your spell, and I needed her help to figure out what was going on.” He gets an abashed look on his face, “I thought you’d cursed the book,” he mumbles.
I sigh. Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he.
“But,” he continues, “once Penny worked it out with….um, methods… she and I both read the letter, and to be honest, I was a little freaked out.”
Snow is a master of understatement, so I assume this means his head spun around and he tried to jump out a window.
“But the more I thought about it, and talked through everything with Penny, the more I realized that what I was feeling was… well, happy.” He grips my hand harder and looks in my eyes, “And that’s not something I’m really used to feeling, Baz. But the idea that you love me… yeah, just happy, I guess.” He looks down like he wasn’t quite ready to let out that much truth.
I take his chin and tilt his face up so I can look in his eyes, “I’m glad Simon. I want you to be happy.”
He kisses me again, and then he maneuvers us so we’re lying next to each other on the bed. He shifts so he’s wrapped around my back, cradling me, and I’m still not entirely sure this isn’t a fever dream.
“We’ll figure this out, Baz,” he whispers into the back of my neck. “But for right now, you just need to rest. You sound like you’ve got a merwolf in your throat. Do you want me to ‘fit as a fiddle’ you?”
I snuggle back into his arms and groan, “Crowley, no. I’m switching to good old-fashioned pharmaceuticals. I think I fiddled my way into losing my bloody mind.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” he sighs sleepily and I feel him rest his weight against me.
“Goodnight, Simon.”
“Goodnight, love.”