Chapter Text
BAZ
I don’t actually need to drink any more blood today, not the way I needed it for all those years when I was making do with what I could scrounge in the catacombs. I’m still getting used to having a regular supply in my room like Niall has the mini-fridge of insulin to manage his diabetes.
When Headmistress Bunce first arranged for the weekly deliveries with Cook Pritchard it was hard to just drink my way through them -- I’d leave the jars lined up on the refrigerator shelves as an emergency supply and make do with rats until the next week’s supply came and I had to drink my way through the entire store to make room for the fresh stuff.
A couple of times, I binged so badly I ended up puking blood in the toilet like some sort of consumptive heroine from a nineteenth-century novel.
The third time that happened I told myself I was being ridiculous. So I started forcing myself to drink from the fridge every day. It’s actually … better. When I drink blood in the morning before I go down to breakfast, I can actually drink coffee and eat a croissant without my fangs popping out. Since early March I’ve been doing the same before lunch and dinner; it actually means I can eat food around other people, sometimes. People who aren’t Simon (and maybe now Penny).
I had a pint glass jar of blood earlier, after changing for the ball, and it was my third for the day. But I hadn’t expected Simon to turn up for the ball. It’s making me jumpy. It feels … intimate, suddenly, to have Simon here in our room again.
The only night we’ve spent together, here, since we started snogging -- well. Not only were we too exhausted and disoriented to do much of anything, but Penny was asleep in Simon’s bed and Premal Bunce had been told off by his mother to keep watch just outside the door. So we slept. And I don’t remember even that very well.
Tonight, though, it’s just us. Like it used to be … and not at all like it used to be.
I can see him out of the corner of my eye, sucking the smear of blood off the pad of his thumb and I can’t decide whether I hate him for so carelessly bleeding in my face or I love him a little bit more every time he trusts me not to -- not to --
My stomach clenches at the memory.
Simon finally makes whatever decision had him hesitating on the threshold and moves into the room, shrugging out of Dr. Wellbelove’s suit coat as he moves and draping it gingerly over the back of his desk chair before perching awkwardly on the bed that used to be his, the one I’ve been trying to ignore for the past three months. During the past week, it’s mostly been covered with the stuff I had left to pack, but father and Daphne took all of that away this afternoon and only my travel kit is left.
Simon rests his elbows on his knees and leans forward, scrubbing his hands across his face in a gesture I recognize -- an effort to wipe some tangle of confusing thoughts or feelings from the inside of his head. Then he looks up at me.
I’m leaning against the desk, unscrewing the jar and considering my options for warming its contents to a palatable temperature. I can drink it cold, but it’s unpleasant going down and leaves a metallic after-taste that warm blood doesn’t. The problem is that neither Cook Pritchard nor I have been able to come up with just the right spell to get the job done. Last week, when we were talking over the phone, Simon suggested getting some sort of fancy cooking pot and an instant-read kitchen thermometer, like chefs use, so that I could heat it on the hob without over-warming it to the point of clotting.
But of course, we don’t have a hob or even a hotplate here in the Tower -- so it’s unreliable spellwork or nothing.
Sod it, I think, and swallow it down with a grimace. I’ll wash it down with the wine.
Which makes me remember I packed the corkscrew I kept in my desk for emergency situations last week, and it’s currently either in the boot of my parents’ car or sitting in a box in my bedroom at home.
“Hand me a sandwich?” Simon asks, as I set down the jar to reach for the bottle. Ah, lucky for us, whomever was put in charge of selecting the wine for the ball has taste in their feet or a tight budget because it’s a screw top. Chav -- but usefully so.
I drop to the floor cross-legged next to Simon and pull the plate of sandwiches off the desk so we can have them on the between us. Simon slides without his usual lack of grace off the bed to join me on the floor, drawing up his knees and leaning against the frame. He snakes his tail out from behind his back and twines it loosely around my wrist while reaching for a sandwich from the generous pile Cook Pritchard sent up.
His control has been getting better. I wish I’d thought to unbutton my shirtsleeves before picking up the bottle so I could feel the velvet slide of his tail on my skin.
I get the bottle of Pinot open and take an inelegant swig, then pass it across to Simon before reaching back with my free hand for the blood I left up on the desk.
I swallow down another third of a pint, feeling the scratchy tingle in the roof of my mouth from my fangs responding to the taste of blood already on my tongue. The itchy, gnawing hunger in the pit of my stomach that lets me know the need to feed is well and truly asleep right now, thank fuck, but I want it as far away as possible if I’m going to spend the night with a slightly tipsy Simon, who’s currently winding his clingy tail tighter against my forearm.
Who’s watching me drink blood over his own mouthful of sandwich with an all-too-familiar expression on his face.
“No kissing when the fangs are out,” I remind him, putting a hand against his chest as he starts to lean forward.
Because of course reckless, heedless Simon is fascinated by what he’s taken to calling my “game face.” (I never should have agreed to re-watching Buffy.)
Because of course every serious argument we’ve had since that night on the road out of London has been about his unwillingness to understand how dangerous my vampirism is to him.
My heart is beating faster now, I can feel it hard and fast in my own throat, and I wonder if Simon is also aware of its increasingly staccato rhythm against the twine of his tail as it passes across the underside of my wrist. Whether he can hear how his own blood is quickening in unconscious response.
I lick my lips and swallow, trying to remind myself how very, very badly this went the last time we tried to --
The last time we --
I have dreams, sometimes, where Simon has his wild, impossible magic back and I don’t have to worry about breaking him, or draining him dry, and I don’t have to make him stop. Where he undresses me, and I undress him, and he lays me out on my bed -- this bed in front of us -- only it’s a vast, endless space, and time stretches out around us, with Simon’s wings beating a soft rhythm like a heartbeat above our heads, and I can let go because I know Simon will catch me.
“Baz --” Simon sighs, reaching up to brush my hair back from my forehead. His palm cups my cheek, thumb brushing the stretch of my upper lip over the sensitive place where my fangs are trying to push out in response to the tang of blood on my tongue.
I close my eyes and let him.
I have dreams, sometimes -- but dreams aren’t the same as reality. And in reality Simon no longer has his magic (the magic he argues was never his to have). And in reality, the last time I forgot that Simon couldn’t catch me -- couldn’t stop me -- I ended up with the taste of his blood on my tongue.
I’ve spent the last six weeks of term thinking about how much I want to taste him again.
The night when I bit him, I had been so sure that I’d figured out how to keep myself under control. That I could chase the taste of him in ways that didn’t lead to blood. That night, after Penny had left for the Tube and we were alone again, I think we could both feel the end of our London holiday closing in on us, the weeks of separation ahead before graduation. And Simon still isn’t very good at saying what he wants, but he’s better than he thinks he is at showing me.
When your boyfriend does things like pull you into his lap where you can feel his erection pressed deliciously against your own through layers of denim and cotton; when your boyfriend slides his hands up under your jumper and fucking hums at the sounds you make when he trails blunt nails down the arch of your back; when your boyfriend pushes your jumper and shirt off entirely so he can lick kisses against nipples you’ve never spent much time thinking about except now -- Goddess, fuck -- you fucking whine when he leans back to say, breathlessly, “Baz, please, can we -- ?”
I’d looked down at him, feeling dazed, and shivering not because I was cold but because of the want crawling all over my skin like the burn of Simon’s magic only better, so much better, because this didn’t hurt
I thought, in that moment, of all the times I’d imagined kissing Simon. Touching Simon. Of being kissed, and touched, by Simon in return. And I’d thought how distant those fantasies now seemed in comparison to the OhMyFuckingGodsAndGoddesses immediacy of my boyfriend’s hips trapped between my knees, the way I could feel his pulse high up the inside of my thigh, where the ThudThudThud of the blood pumping through his veins played echo with my own.
I flexed my thighs and resettled myself on Simon’s lap, a hairsbreadth closer, listening to the way his breathing hitched as my weight lifted and returned.
I closed my eyes and did it again. I could hear his heart singing soft and urgent in his ribcage, nestled against his lungs. Again. His hands where they’d settled on my hips urged me closer.
“Can I unspell your wings?” I’d asked, sounding slightly breathless even to myself.
And he’d nodded, whispered, “Yeah,” as he pushed his hips up into the backs of my thighs.
It felt so good. Better than good. I was never that patient on my own, could never make it last the way Simon and I seemed to, chasing each other toward -- well, neither of us have actually come, yet, when we’re together.
I’d thought, at the time, that maybe we’d finally reached the point where it was going to happen. That one, or both, of us was going to come right there on Aunt Fiona’s lumpy Oxfam couch, painfully hard in our jeans, rocking with each other in an insistent rhythm that felt like it couldn’t possibly last much longer while simultaneously going on and on and --
When I took a deep breath I could taste his arousal against the back of my throat, thick and rich, almost too rich. And that’s when things started to get confused, in my head, under my skin, deep in my belly where multiple wants coiled dangerously together.
I’d thought, that night, that I had had enough blood to ignore the sweet, sharp tang of sea salt and sweet rose that was the taste of Simon against my lips; I’d thought -- I’d thought -- until I didn’t want to think anymore.
Six weeks later, I’m still not sure if I’m more disgusted by how much I want to drink Simon’s blood, or by how close I’ve come to seriously considering how to do it without killing him.
“Simon --” I start, setting down my glass and reaching up to slide my own hand down the line of his cheek, feeling the place where he must have nicked himself shaving slide under the tips of my fingers.
I press my forehead against his and breathe, letting his scent slide over me and trying to gauge how dangerous this want inside me is. Breathing him in, having him touch me like this, hasn’t brought my fangs any closer to the surface tonight. Maybe -- maybe --
“Simon --” I start, again, but he interrupts me before I can decide what it is I’m going to say.
“No, listen to me,” he says, doggedly, earnestly, “Tonight is -- this is perfect! I’ve been thinking. You can’t hurt me here -- you know you can’t.”
I pull back to peer at him, pretty sure he’s gone mental. “Simon, I don’t --”
I must look like someone pranked me with a D’oh! because he grins at me and gestures toward the room around us. “Because of the Roommate’s Anathema, Baz! What’s the worst that could happen? If, like, you vamp out and go for my throat again --” he swallows, an expression passing across his face that makes my skin burn, suddenly, with the question I haven’t let myself ask: How did it feel when I --
He hadn’t said. That night. Or the following morning. Or any time since.
“ --Watford will just eject you! You can’t hurt me here,” he finishes, with that trusting certainty he has in me that makes me want to shake him.
He spent seven years paranoid that I was plotting to kill him, and then I go and get kidnapped by fucking numpties. The next time he sees me it’s like instead of seven years of fighting it’s been seven years of flirting. I’ve had months to get used to -- and know I never want to give up -- this Simon ... but sometimes it makes me angry how willing he is to put himself in my hands and trust that I won’t break him.
I realize he’s waiting hopefully for some sort response. “Crowley, Simon,” I mumble, hearing the frustration in my own voice. “We can’t just --”
“You can’t hurt me,” he repeats, like if he just says it enough times he can make me believe it.
I stare at him, not sure whether he’s just had a moment of brilliance or if this is just another one of his profoundly stupid ideas. “But --” I try again, swallowing against the sudden constriction in my throat, “ --but if --”
He grins at me, and pushes forward against the hand I have on his chest, leaning in to steal a kiss. I duck away from his mouth, turning my head, even as my fingers curl into the warm cloth of his shirt, even as I think about undoing the buttons and pushing my hands up underneath his vest --
Of the two of us, I clearly have to be the voice of reason here. Again.
“We don’t know that, Simon, it might not even work, now that you’re not a Watford student anymore. I’m not even technically a Watford student anymore. Maybe the Anathema only works as long as you’re students and roommates. Right now, we’re not either of those things. And I’m not taking that chance with --”
Simon grins at me, again, and holds up his thumb, so I can see the angry red dot where he’d jabbed himself earlier. I catch a whiff of that particular scent of blood that’s all Simon. I swear he has a flavor all his own, turkish delight and the ocean wind after a storm; that’s part of what’s been driving me mental --
“The room still knows I belong here,” he says, satisfied, “The room still let me open the door with my blood. That means we’re still roommates, and the Anathema still applies.” He pushes himself to his feet and reaches a hand down to me.
I take his hand automatically and let Simon pull me to my feet while I scramble to recall what I know of the Anathema, how lasting its effects are, whether there’s any precedent for -- “This is a bad idea,” I tell him as his tail snakes around the small of my back to pull me closer.
“Kissing you has never been a bad idea,” he counters, starting to unbutton my waistcoat so he can get at my dress shirt.
“Simon --” I try again, more question than protest. I reach out and slide my palm against his neck, where I bit him, feeling the steady beat of blood in the artery beneath his skin. He gets my waistcoat open and then my shirt, sliding warm, steady hands up under my vest. We’ve done this before, he’s not touching anywhere he hasn’t already, but this time -- the Anathema whispers a treacherous voice in the back of my mind.
The Anathema will keep him safe.
“Unspell my wings, Baz,” he says, “Unspell my wings and take me to bed.”
The Anathema should keep him safe.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to ignore the fear in my stomach. Kissing you has never been a bad idea . “Yeah, let’s -- let’s try,” and tug him gently forward until his lips brush mine, already open, his tongue darting out to taste what must be a bizarre mix of blood and wine on my breath.
“Yeah?” he asks, like he can’t quite believe what I’ve said, but his lips against mine are already turning up in a smile and I can feel the flat end of his tail pressed distractingly low against my belly where I think he’s trying to work it under the waistband of my trousers.
I taste his tongue on my lips and try my best to smile back, sliding my free hand across his chest between hand down to the first button of his shirt, then the next, working them loose until I have enough fabric to twist into a fist and pull him with me as I walk the two steps back to the bed and let our momentum carry me back onto the mattress, our legs tangled together.
Tonight suddenly seems full of possibilities I’ve been trying not to imagine.
Simon crawls after me onto the narrow bed and kneels above me, straddling my hips, a little awkward and slightly off-balance from the draft of his wings. They still throw him off, sometimes, especially when he’s tired or not entirely sober. Even when we’ve spelled them invisible he says he can still feel the weight of them folded against his back.
I reach out to steady him with my hands on the tops of his thighs, so he doesn’t overbalance, and feel the shift of his muscles as he pushes forward, leaning into and over me like some sort of avenging angel, the shadows of his wings plucking at the corner of my eyes.
“Tell me again,” he says, and I see the fierce question in the back of his eyes.
“I choose you,” I whisper up into the air between us.
As I slide my hands up the curve of his back there’s nothing to see here tingles against my palms, letting off the scent of sizzled sage as my magic comes in contact with the residue of Penny’s spellwork.
“Do you want me to --” I ask against Simon’s warm lips as he braces himself with his hands on the mattress either side of my head and returns to his leisurely, wine-sodden exploration of my mouth.
“Mmm ,” he hums agreeably, arching his back against my palms.
I urge him upright with my hands and push off his shirt, help him off with his vest, so his torso is bare. I don’t let myself think, yet, about what’s beneath his trousers and pants, even if I can feel him a familiar weight when he rocks forward in my lap, and my nose is filled with his wanting.
I slide my hands back up over his shoulder blades where the tingle is strongest, pulling him back in against my chest so I can lay my cheek against his and whisper an I can see clearly now soft against his ear. I feel the tight flare of flame between my palms and his skin, too brief to do either of us any damage, and the scent of burnt sage rises off his skin as Simon’s wings unfurl into the room. I let my hands drop to the small of his back, fingers curled loosely into the groove of his spine, as I drop my head back and look.
Simon’s wings are beautiful. He gets ridiculously shy -- even more inarticulate than his usual inarticulate self -- when I say things about them. So obviously, I tease him about them whenever he gives me the opening. But they really are beautiful. A good twelve feet from tip to tip when fully extended, they fold up impossibly small against his back most of the time.
Simon says they’re leathery, but in that case they’re like the softest leather gloves I’ve ever worn, covered in fine hair the like the ears of my sister Mordelia’s pet rats, Harry and Ron. I love pulling them open when he lets me touch them (he almost always lets me touch them) and watching the light filter through the membrane, feeling the controlled strength of the muscles and tendons that wrap around the humerus and radius of the wingspan.
Like his tail, Simon’s wings are deep burnt umber, except out along the metacarpals, toward the edges of the membrane, where the color fades to ochre like that fire hair look half the seventh-year girls at Watford have been trying to mimic this spring. At the wrists and elbows of each wing are wicked looking talons or claws. Simon calls them his “spikes”; Dr. Wellbelove says they’re bone and keratin like horns or tusks.
Simon sighs into the hollow of my neck, as he extends the wings above us before letting them fall back, and I hear the joints pop as he relaxes against me. “Crowley,” he says, “that feels good. Even spelled they felt a bit stuffed into that suit.”
I laugh and I close my eyes, feeling the tickle of his hair against my cheek, turning my head so I can breathe him in, pressed so close in my arms. Wild roses after a storm.
I’m so fucking tired of being the one who has to keep saying no.
Tonight, I decide, I’ll try saying yes.