Chapter Text
BAZ
When I return to the leavers ball from the kitchen with a plate of sandwiches from Cook Pritchard, I find Simon standing where I’d left him looking uncomfortable in his borrowed suit. Miss Possibelf has crossed the room to speak with him, and even though I can’t hear what she’s saying her expression is one of restrained sympathy.
I grimace to myself, because if Simon is already feeling pitied by all of us, then the concerned attentions of his former teachers probably aren’t helping. And as willing as I am to kiss it better as much and as often as he needs, I don’t exactly fancy taking such extreme measures directly in front of the dean of students. Even if I’m not one of her charges any longer, and only have one more night under Watford’s roof.
That thought makes me pause, because it reminds me what Simon said about Bunce dropping him at the Watford gates. My tickets for tomorrow’s 10.13 to Oxford are in my overnight bag up in Mummer’s Tower -- my parents have taken everything else in the boot of their car -- and Simon has said he won’t be leaving without me. Which means we’ll be sharing one last night in our old rooms. For the first time since the night Ebb -- and the Mage -- died.
Now isn’t that an unexpected pleasure.
It’s not like we haven’t spent time together since the winter holiday. I’ve been at school and Simon’s been staying with the Bunces, but I spent most of the Easter break at Aunt Fiona’s flat in London and Simon spent most of that time with me. There had been a lot of Buffy and West Wing marathons (Aunt Fiona owns complete sets of both on DVD), and kissing on the couch.
And on the living room floor.
And up against the counter in the kitchen.
And then back on the couch.
I’d drawn the line at the bedroom since even with clean sheets and a fresh duvet cover it was Aunt Fiona’s bed and that was just too weird.
So we spent a lot of nights spooned together on the sagging sofa.
And then, when Simon woke up the next morning, we would kiss even more.
Simon and I haven’t actually … had sex. Yet. Part of it is just that everything has been fucking intense, and not in a good way. What with my father almost starting a war, and the inquiry into the Mage’s death that involved Simon and Penelope giving hours of testimony, multiple times over, followed by closed-door sessions of the Coven to which none of us were invited. And in the midst of it all I was trying to finish my last term at Watford, and missing Simon every time I went back to our rooms.
(I have a new appreciation for what he went through while I was being held by the numpties, even if he did have a daft way of showing it.)
The Easter break is the only time we’ve really had together since January.
When we were together then, I couldn’t keep my hands off of him, or my mouth when no one else was around (and sometimes when they were -- Bunce declared us more than once “disgustingly cute”). We’d kiss, sometimes for hours, pressed up against each other in the sagging hollows of Aunt Fiona’s sofa, until I thought I might come with my pants and jeans still on, just from the pressure of Simon's thigh pressed between my legs. Until I could feel Simon hard and hot against my thigh, through his jeans, every time I rolled my hips to see if I could make him gasp. Until I could hear the blood singing in his veins -- and that’s the problem, isn’t it?
We would kiss until I could feel the tingling in the roof of my mouth, the pressure of fangs trying to break through.
We would kiss until I made Simon stop because I couldn’t make sense of the want deep in my belly, couldn’t contain it, and had no fucking clue what giving into that want -- that ache so close to hunger -- would do. What I would become.
What sort of danger I might be to Simon.
I mean, it’s not like they included any information on safer sex for vampires in our fifth-year sexual health unit, and neither my parents nor Aunt Fiona offered to supplement the school curriculum. I’m pretty sure my father never wants to think about me having sex with anyone, apart from wishing I would produce an heir, and Daphne has always been cautious about directly contravening my father’s parenting decisions vis-a-vis me, her stepson. Although I always suspect it was Daphne behind the copy of S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties I found in the drawer of my bedside table when I went home for the summer holiday between fifth and sixth year.
Not that it contained any information on vampires.
But to be honest, the question of how to have safer sex as a vampire was another one of those things I’d convinced myself, until a few months ago, I’d never live long enough to actually need answers to. I expected to die a virgin.
So the whole being kissed by Simon Snow thing caught me off-guard.
I want to do more than kiss him. Desperately. But I don’t know how to keep Simon safe while I’m doing it.
In the final weeks of the term, I’ve lain awake nights talking to Simon on my mobile until he falls asleep. (Headmistress Bunce allows mobiles now, and pretty much every Watford parent has required their kid to have one, after what happened with the Mage.) After Simon drifts off, I listen to him breathing on the other end of the line and pretend it’s like it used to be, all those years when I would drive myself mad listening to his heartbeat in bed, an arm’s length away, and remind myself how much he hated me, how I would never ever get to have him, how the last thing I would be reminded of before I died would be how much Simon Snow wanted me dead -- because he would be the one to kill me (because I would never be able to kill him first).
I’ve lain on my bed staring into the darkness that isn’t much different than daylight to my eyes, tracing the familiar cracks in the plaster on the ceiling of our room, and fancy I can hear Simon’s heartbeat over the mobile connection. I think about how fragile he is, now. With his magic gone.
About how Simon Snow is no longer my failsafe.
You’d think I’d be glad we aren’t trying to kill each other any longer. And Crowley knows I am. Because it means I know things I never expected to know. Like how it feels to have Simon Snow leaning over me with his hands on my wrists, his mouth trailing hot, wet lines across my collarbone while his wings cast burnt umber shadows across a sunlit carpet. I can close my eyes now and remember what it felt like (once, when I stayed over at the Bunces’) to fall asleep with the heavy weight of Simon Snow carelessly snoring against my pillow, to feel his heart beating strong where he was pressed bare-chested hip to shoulder along the length of my torso.
It’s a heady feeling, to know that Simon feels so utterly safe in my arms. But at the same time, I’m also terrified of what I could do to him. He’s so bloody breakable.
Since Simon lost his magic, I’ve only ever fallen asleep to the sound of his breathing when he’s at the other end of a mobile, far enough away that I know he’s safe. From me.
And we haven’t had sex. Yet.
Because for all I know it would be the death of Simon. And if I killed Simon, there wouldn’t be anything left I’d care to live for.
It’s getting late; the evening light filtering through the high stained-glass windows of the ballroom is nearly gone. Students -- many of them now former students -- are drifting away from the ball in groups of two or three, some with family members, others hand-in-hand with their plus-ones.
Like Simon and me, I think, and try not to worry about who saw us dancing, try to remind myself that everyone already knows.
The ceilidh band is taking a break in the corner, drinking a round of beers. I brush past the table where the bartender is pouring glasses of cheap wine and pints of beer and now you see it, now you don’t a bottle of passable Pinot Grigio from his unopened store. My stepmum would be appalled at the late vintage, but I doubt Simon will even notice.
Simon sees me approaching with the plate of sandwiches and his face lights up with relief. His ridiculous tail, which he’s tucked over his arm like a doffed coat, flicks upward with catlike interest and I wonder if he understands just how endearing I find it. Trust Snow to create an additional appendage that is even more guileless than his utterly transparent facial expressions.
“Basilton,” Miss Possibelf says, turning to follow the line of Simon’s gaze, “congratulations on your speech this afternoon, and on your graduation. Fiona tells me you’re off to London?” Her glance shifts between the two of us.
“She’s off to Prague again next week,” I say smoothly, “doing her bit. I’m crashing at her place until I decide what next.”
“Well, I hope you consider continuing your linguistic studies,” Miss Possibelf says, “You have always been one of Watford’s brightest. With, I must say, the most superb elocution I have seen in my twenty-three years of teaching.”
“Thank you, I will,” I say, inclining my head.
She nods sharply in approval, says, “It was good to see you, Simon,” then takes her leave.
Most of the teachers at Watford have cornered me at one point or another since the Christmas holidays to suggest a course at university following in their footsteps. I can’t exactly explain to them that I’d always assumed I was a dead man walking, that Snow would see to it that I was dead before I actually had to decide how to carry on with existing after Watford, and after I’d grown old enough to tell my father and his friends to fuck off.
After I’d decided there was something -- someone -- worth existing for.
Most days, I wake up with no bloody clue what I’ll be doing with the rest of my life. Except that I want Simon to be there, to share it with.
Snow’s tail twitches toward the plate of sandwiches, but I pull the plate out of its reach. His control has gotten better since I saw him over the Easter holiday, and I find myself wondering what else he can do --
“Come on, Snow,” I say, jerking my head toward the door, “let’s get out of here before it’s only sixth-years left trying to talk the bartender into something stronger than a pint.”