Chapter Text
SIMON
How do vampires have sex?
This is actually what I’m thinking, while Miss Possibelf is talking at me in her Voice of Concern, asking me about my plans for university, and about my work with Martin this winter. I make up something about helping Martin with his field studies, although mostly I’ve been making myself useful in the kitchen as no one else in the Bunce household seems very interested in cooking and it seems like something I can do in thanks for them taking me in, and believing me, and everything.
I’ve been watching a lot of Celebrity Chef and The Great British Bake-Off.
I’ve even taught myself to bake a pretty decent scone, although they can’t hold a candle to Cook Prichard’s, at least not yet, even if Penny claims to like them better.
But I don’t feel like talking about scones with Miss Possibelf.
I also don’t want to tell her about the panic attacks I started having after I left Watford. About the recurring nightmares, and about how I’d wake up exhausted most mornings because it felt impossible to fall asleep without Baz in the same room. We tried Penny and me sharing her room for a while, which helped some, but not enough. Then Baz got a mobile and started calling me every night to talk until I fell asleep. That was better. He’d tell me about his school projects and ask me about Penny’s research and I’d tell him about the new recipes I was trying and the shows I was watching and sometimes about scarier things. Things like the stuff coming out in the Coven inquiry about the Mage’s activities, and about all of the paperwork they have to talk you through, and all the things you have to sign, when it turns out you’re the closest living relative of a man who died before leaving much of anything in order.
Sometimes, we don’t talk about anything at all because Baz is angry or tired and I’ve used up all my words earlier in the day. On nights like that, I put on a Good Neighbors or old Doctor Who episode and set the mobile on speakerphone so Baz can hear too. Then we lay in the dark -- Baz in the Mummer’s Tower and me in Premal’s old room at the Bunces -- and let ourselves drift in and out of sleep until it’s late enough that it’s nearly dawn.
It’s a good thing the mobile plan Penny found us has unlimited minutes. Most nights we don’t bother to hang up until Baz’s alarm clock goes off for early morning football practice. Baz swears he can hear my heartbeat all the way from our old rooms at Watford. I’m not sure whether I believe him, or if he’s just being soppy, or trying to get a rise out of me. But imagining him listening to me stay alive through the night helps when I wake up from the dreams where he dies trying to save me. So I keep scoffing when he swears that he can, so he’ll tell me again that it’s true, and whisper the rhythm soft in my ear.
Miss Possibelf is determined to find out what I’ll be doing in the autumn, and as I scan the doorways once again for Baz -- honestly, how long does it take to fetch a plate of sandwiches from the kitchen? -- I wish that Mitali had just announced to the Senior Common Room that I’m taking a gap year. Because this is the fifth time tonight I’ve had to explain to a former teacher that I’m not starting uni in September, and the fifth time I’ve been faced with a Look Of Disappointment. I mumble something to Miss Possibelf about helping Martin with his fieldwork, and about my new job at the Waitrose up the road from the Bunces’. The manager there says that if I work out -- it’s only been a fortnight -- they’ll be willing to consider transferring me to a location closer into the city, so I won’t have to take the Tube for an hour and fifteen every day once Penny and I move into our new flat.
The Tube would be okay if it weren’t for the bloody There’s nothing to see here Penny has to keep casting on my wings and tail so I can pass for Normal. When she casts it strong enough so my clothes fit properly people tend to walk into me or step on my feet or jostle me out of the train whenever the door opens. After the first time or two I went out, I realized I just shouldn’t try to sit down because people only sat on top of me.
So it would be nice to be able to walk to work, if I can get the transfer to one of the city stores.
Talking to the dean is making my chest feel tight, and it’s getting hard to draw a deep breath. To head off the panic attack, I let my mind drift back to slow-dancing with Baz at the end of the last set, just before everyone on the floor had lined up for a frenzied Strip the Willow. About what a relief it had been to rest my forehead on his shoulder and let him worry about keeping my sodding tail out of the way of our feet while we shuffled in a little circle, Baz worrying about what everyone else in the room was thinking while I closed my eyes and worried (a little) about what Baz was thinking.
How do humans have sex with vampires?
The answer seems to be, as far as I can tell, that no one knows who isn’t a vampire. Because no one who isn’t a vampire has bothered to learn much about vampires -- how they work, what they want, what they need. Penny says it’s appallingly racist. That the more she’s read in the Bunces’ library the clearer it is to her that vampires have been the scapegoats of the magickal community for centuries at least.
“It’s just disgusting, Simon,” she told me the other day, in the Bunces’ kitchen, while I was making dinner. She likes to study at the counter while I test recipes on her. That day, I was trying to figure out whether the chicken breasts in the oven were cooked through and she’d perched at the island in the kitchen with a mug of tea and a giant vellum-bound book open in front of her.
“I’ve had to go back to seventeenth-century sources for anything approaching a first-person perspective,” she’d continued, “And even then all I’ve been able to find is this travelogue by Lady Maria Uglow Tarlington” -- she’d waved the mug at the book, sloshing a bit of tea dangerously close to the rich, cream-paper pages -- “who lived for two decades in Turkey with -- and I’m totally reading between the lines here, but it seems pretty clear -- her vampire lover. Except, get this: the most important bits were excised by the publisher due to concerns about obscenity charges!”
At least now that the Bunces know Baz is a vampire, and Penny’s mum is running Watford, Baz has been able to stop hunting rats in the catacombs every other night and just has a mini fridge in his room -- what used to be our room -- where he keeps a week’s supply of blood. The day she took over the school, Mitali had made arrangements with Cook Pritchard to have it delivered from the local butcher each Tuesday.
Mitali hadn’t said a word against Mr. Grimm in Baz’s hearing but I had seen the way her lips thinned when Penny told her about Baz foraging for his own blood supply since he was just a kid -- and Penny had told me afterwards how she’d overheard her mum ranting to her dad in the upstairs office about shirking of parental responsibilities, conditional fucking love, and sanguivoriphobia.
“Sanguivoriphobia?” I’d asked Penny.
“Like homophobia, but for vampires,” she’d sniffed. “I mean, Mr. Grimm hates that his son is queer, too, so. It’s not like any of us are surprised he’s been an asshole about this.”
“Until recently, we were assholes about this too,” I’d reminded her, feeling the usual flare of shame in my chest for having spent so long convinced Baz was trying to kill me when -- well, maybe he was trying to kill me, but it turns out he was also interested in kissing me. And I kind of regret, now, that I spent all of that time dating Agatha when it turns out Baz and I could have been snogging for the past three years as well as being mortal enemies.
I mean, I did really like Agatha. I think we’re still friends. Maybe? Whenever she talks to Penny over Skype she waves “hi” to me if I happen to walk through the background. I think Penny’s told her about Baz and me. If she hadn’t already guessed. But I don’t miss Agatha. Not the way I expect you’re supposed to miss someone when you stop being their boyfriend.
Not the way I would miss Baz.
Not the way I missed Baz when he was taken by the numpties -- like I couldn’t draw a proper breath without knowing where he was. And not the way I’ve missed him during the past few months, when he’s mostly been at Watford, when I lay in bed at night listening to his voice on my mobile and trying not to think about how empty the bedroom feels without him in it.