Chapter Text
BAZ
Our washroom has always been somewhat cramped and dark and airless, and tonight it’s giving me the disorienting, throat-constricting sensation that I’m back in the numpties’ coffin.
Sitting on the tiled floor with my back against the wall by the toilet, I’m dimly away that it would help to crack open the window above the tub, to lean out into the inrush of air and remind my senses that I’m at Watford. That it’s a cloudless June night and Mummers Tower is still home for a few hours more. But my limbs are leaden and movement feels impossible. I’m sweating a cold, sick sweat as well as shaking from the vicious stomach cramps that have arrived on the heels of sex and my first taste of human blood -- Simon’s blood -- and heaving it all back up into the toilet bowl diluted by stomach acid and Pinot Grigio.
I haven’t even managed to haul myself up to the sink to rinse out my mouth, and the enclosed, stifling space smells sour with sick and my own fear.
I’m aware, distantly, that I’m hyperventilating slightly, panting and lightheaded. I think maybe my teeth are chattering?
I can’t -- I can’t -- I can’t -- my stomach turns over and I pull myself over the the toilet to breathe through my mouth for a few moments, spitting blood-heavy saliva into the bowl.
I can’t (I don’t want to) get rid of the taste of Simon in my mouth. He’s still in my throat, under the raw burn of vomit. He’s deep in my gut, nauseatingly rich, and underneath the sweat and the shaking and the cramping and the self-recrimination I’m terrified by how exquisite he tastes and how much I want to taste him again.
I’m terrified by the fact that even on four pints of blood for the day I’d gone from pressing kisses across the cradle of his hips, to feeling his orgasm shaking against my lips through his overheated skin, to fang-deep in his femoral artery before I knew what the bloody hell I was doing.
Crowley’s sake, this time it had actually taken Simon pulling himself out of his post-coital daze to stop me from -- from --
I’ve never drunk human blood, before tonight. I’m not a murderer. And, until a few months ago, I had always thought of drinking blood in terms of slaughter. It’s not like my father ever talked with me about being a vampire, like I had options . Everyone knows that vampires are monsters, that they kill people. It had taken Simon and Penny badgering me about how much I don’t actually know -- about how little anyone we know seems to know -- to start wondering if what “everyone knows” isn’t actually true.
Have you ever tried doing an Internet search for things like “vampire physiology” or “vampires and human blood” or “vampires and humans sex”? Using the Normal search engines (where “vampires and humans in love” is actually an autocomplete option) just brings up a bunch of results for humans role-playing as vampires during sex and more fiction and fanfiction than one vampire-obsessed person could possibly read in a single human lifetime. Using magickal search engines makes me feel even worse because it’s just nine-tenths anti-vampire bigotry. The sort of bigotry that even I used to casually engage in, until recently, and then there’s this subset of password-protected websites and closed social media groups and Unikorn (the magickal Reddit) threads that I think are either groups of vampires or pro-vampire mages that -- as far as I can tell -- peddle these wild theories about vampires as a super race. I’ve only ever lurked, occasionally, on those sites and always scrub my browser history after because they leave me feeling dirty and nauseated.
I can’t see myself anywhere.
I can’t see a place for me and Simon.
And the Anathema wasn’t working after all. Crowley . I drop my head back against the wall, and then when the jolt to my spine sends pain shooting into my skull I do it again. Fucking fuck . I never should have let Simon talk me into doing this again before we --
“Baz?” Simon’s voice on the other side of the door is pitched low, but he knows I can hear him. I realize, once his voice breaks through the rushing sound of panic in my own head, that he’s been moving about in our room. I can hear his breathing now, deep and even, less than six feet from where I’m sitting. His heartbeat is a bit sluggish, but I can’t hear any signs of distress.
I realize part of me was expecting him to walk away from the mess that I’ve made of this night. But instead, here he is, on the other side of the door, come to find me.
He sounds tired.
Goddess knows I’m tired.
“Love, can I come in?” He sounds tentative as well as tired, like he’s he’s unsure of his welcome. Love . I try to remember if he’s ever called me love before.
I pull my knees up, reflexively, in a gesture of self-protection even though I know -- I have ample evidence by now -- that it’s Simon who needs protection from me and not the other way around. I consider not answering, just sleeping (or not sleeping) here on the floor so that Simon can rest safely through the night. But he’s stubborn and I know he’s probably going to break down the door in a minute if I don’t let him in -- probably breaking several toes in the process. So I spell open the door with a flicker of flame across the tips of my weary fingers and close my eyes against the light of the bedroom as he pushes his way in.
Goddess . Simon brings with him a wash of scents, all of them fast becoming (if they weren’t already) my favorite indulgences. I shiver at the sense-memory of his body hovering over mine, his naked skin pressed up underneath me, the taste of his come that mixed with the taste of his blood in my mouth, rosewater and ocean spray and the bitter aftertaste of spunk, all tangled together on my tongue with the musk of want that he carries with him whenever I’m nearby (and probably even when I’m not).
I want to cry, to be honest, because it’s just so unfair that I’m never going to deserve him.
What did either of us ever do to deserve the impossible?
Simon closes the door behind himself and I feel his heat signature crossing the few paces between us. He doesn’t say anything, but folds himself down in front of my knees and reaches across to press a hand to my cheek and wipe away the exhausted tears that absolutely aren’t seeping out from under my eyelids.
I feel like absolute shite.
I lean into his palm, like I always do, because I can’t ever stop leaning into him.
“I’m okay,” he says, bringing up his other hand and fumbling slightly in the dark because his night vision is crap, even for a human. His palms on my damp cheeks are warm and I blink open my eyes so I can consider the expression on his face.
I realize he can’t see me so I extract my left hand from between us and strike a match in the palm, resting my wrist against the cool porcelain of the edge of the toilet bowl. Simon reaches up over my shoulder and flushes, clearing some of the stench from the air around us.
The wavering light settles into an even glow as my hand steadies and I can see the worry in his face, but his color is good and his pulse is still steady. He doesn’t smell like he’s in distress, although there’s something unfamiliar tingeing musk of his usual signature. Something that smells a bit like sex and a bit like … something that should be familiar but I’m too tired to trace it.
“I’m okay,” Simon says again, thumbs pressing gently across my cheekbones, fingers curved against my skull behind my ears where he’s especially fond of pressing kisses. “How are you? What can I do?”
I cough, phlegmy, trying to clear my throat; my face is probably smeared with spittle and blood.
“It didn’t work,” I say, and even to my own ears my voice sounds lost, “I thought I wouldn’t be able to --”
“But, Baz,” Simon says, carefully, as if he’s speaking to a child who might throw a temper tantrum (I realize, with a flicker of amusement, that he’s copying the tone I use when I think he’s being particularly dense), “that’s what I mean -- I’m okay . I was surprised. It was --” he licks his lips and his eyes dart away from my face, then back, and for a moment I want to chase that expression and find out what it means, but -- “--it hurt, a little. I didn’t know -- but you weren’t harming me. I think that’s why the Anathema didn’t kick in. Because drinking my blood isn’t doing me harm. Not the way --” again, that evasive skitter of his eyes, and I can feel his pulse speed up slightly.
Oh . I think, distantly. Oh, that’s interesting.
“I liked it.” He says, abruptly.
“Simon --” I can feel the roll of panic in my belly. We can’t be talking about this.
“You never asked. After the first time. And I -- I never told you.” He hauls in a breath. “It’s -- intense. But not in a -- not in a bad way. Like what a hickey feels like? And -- and after I can feel, like, whatever is in your saliva --”
“That would be the venom, Simon.” I close my fist over the flame in my palm and push Simon away, standing up abruptly and stumbling over to the window where I push ineffectually at the latch for a few seconds before getting it open and pushing the pane outward from the bottom sill to let in a rush of night air. “Sodding fuck, Simon. I’m poisonous. It doesn’t make it better that I’m somehow drugging you into liking it."
“That’s not what I’m saying!”
“Well, it bloody well sounds like what you’re saying.”
I can hear him moving behind me and the electric light clicks on over the sink.
“What I’m saying --” he says, coming up behind me and sliding his arms around my waist. Crowley, I just want to let him convince me it’s all going to be fine. But I keep seeing Nicodemus against the back of my eyelids and those horrible Unikorn threads with their talk of a master race of vampire-mages and feeding farms full of Normals in some Matrix -meets-Holocaust dystopian future.
“What I’m saying,” Simon repeats against my neck, “is that my boyfriend --” he slides a palm down across my belly, rubbing in gentle, soothing circles like he does when he knows I’m upset and he’s trying to calm me, “-- just jerked me off for the first time tonight. And it was brilliant. He’s brilliant.”
He manhandles me around so my back is to the window, the cold draft pouring in over my shoulders, and presses me up against the wall next to the now-empty rack where he used to hang his Watford-issued towels.
“ You’re brilliant,” he says, tipping his chin up slightly to make sure he’s looking me (stubbornly) in the eye.
I force myself not to look away.
“You don’t understand how it --” I start to say. Then stop. “How it feels.” Swallow. “I can’t stop thinking about how good. You taste. It’s --” This is so hard to say out loud. I feel more naked, suddenly, telling him this than I did when we were tangled together on the bed.
I mean, we’re both still naked, a hairsbreadth apart. But this feels … raw. Like someone is scraping away the top layers of my skin. “I want you, Simon, and sometimes I can’t tell whether it’s for sex or for -- or for food.”
He looks up at me for a handful of agonizing moments without speaking. Licks his lips. Slides his hands down from my shoulders to my hips, pulling us together so that I can feel the cool tackyness of his skin in desperate need of a wash. I think, suddenly, that I should run him a bath and sponge him off, all over, as an apology for making such a mess of the night.
I feel his tail wrap around the backs of my thighs, warm and sinuous and tickling slightly against the sensitive skin on the backs of my knees. His wings shudder against his shoulders.
He shakes his head, as if to clear it, then says, “That actually -- that actually doesn’t bother me, Baz.” He swallows and I let myself watch the movement of his throat, see the bloom of a hickey against his collarbone. Like what a hickey feels like.
“Well it should,” I say, but I can feel the fight going out of me. I’ve … I’ve reached my limit, whatever that was. I’ve lost track of what I’m resisting and why I’m resisting it.
“I’ve had enough of doing what people told me I ‘should’,” Simon says, “since you know bloody well that nearly got all of us killed.”
I reach up to push his hair away from his face. “I was brilliant?”
He grins at me. “You heard me,” he says, but his tone is soft, in a way that makes me want to hide my face in his wings.
He reaches up to slide a hand around the back of my neck like he enjoys doing, my cue to lean in for a kiss.
“I owe you an orgasm,” he mumbles against my mouth. I keep my mouth firmly closed because I still taste pretty horrible, but rub noses with him, feeling the soft slide and press of his slightly open lips against my own.
I laugh, resting my forehead against his. “Goddess, Simon, I don’t have enough blood … or anything, really, in me to come tonight. I doubt I could get it up.”
“ Mmm.” Simon presses his face into my neck, clearly unconvinced, but doesn’t press. “In that case, let’s take a shower. Because I don’t know about you but I feel gross and cold. Ugh.”
I’ve never taken a shower with someone before, unless you count when I was an infant and my parents or nanny had to bathe me, or the gym showers where everyone washes up after a football match while pretending not to be checking out how they compare to their team mates.
Taking a shower with Simon is both more and less awkward than taking a shower with my football mates. I brush my teeth to get the bile and blood out of my mouth while Simon gets our reluctant water pipes to settle at the right temperature. And then there’s this awkward dance of “you first,” “no, why don’t you--” since we have to take turns under the spray and the shower curtain keeps getting tangled in Simon’s wings. In the end we have plenty of hot water, though, since most of the student rooms are empty for the summer. And because it’s after midnight. So we go slow and let the steam fill the room until Simon’s skin is pinked and pruning.
I don’t sponge Simon off all over, but he does let me wash his hair and put in conditioner which he is usually too impatient to use.
And he lets me towel him dry, including his wings, and lets me check the site of my bite for -- I don’t exactly know what. An infection? Scarring? There’s a penumbra of bruising and two neat puncture wounds about an inch and a half apart -- familiar to me from the corpses I’ve created over the past seven years, and I have to breathe deep to keep myself from spiraling into panic all over again.
“You -- you really liked this?” I heard myself asking, fingers lightly tracing the circumference of the bruise (slightly warm to the touch, but no smell of infection or necrosis). I’m crouched down to dry off his legs and he cards a hand through my damp hair.
“Yeah, Baz,” he says, softly, “I did. Next time we just plan for it a little more carefully, yeah? I don’t fancy hauling you out of the toilet again.” He shakes his head, “Anyway, I object to the waste of my blood. I worked hard to make that.”
I look up at him and feel a slight sense of vertigo because he suddenly looks grown up. I know it sounds daft, because we’re both of us still just kids, really, pretending at being grown-ups, but sometimes I feel ancient and tonight -- tonight I can see the shadows of the Simon I will have in my life five, ten, twenty, fifty years from tonight.
I think maybe I don’t have to worry about hurting him. Not the way I have been.
I think maybe -- maybe the Crucible did know what it was doing when it tied us together.
I think -- I think that Simon is my Chosen One even if he isn’t anyone else’s. And maybe it means something that he’s choosing me back.
Intention, after all, is a key part of what makes a spell powerful. And Simon might be Normal now -- as Normal as a person can be when he’s Simon Snow -- but I wonder if there’s a different kind of Normal magic at work here.
Back in the main room, we pick up the food and collect our discarded clothing from the floor and shove Simon’s bed up against mine so we can spread the duvet across both and pretend we haven’t just done embarrassingly adult things in the room we used to sleep in as kids who thought we hated each other.
And then Simon catches me from behind and pulls me back onto the bed, rolling us over so he can crawl up over me on hands and knees, still warm and honey-scented from the shower. I can feel the exhaustion overtaking his limbs, and my own; even as my body responds to his nearness, his still-nakedness, I know we’re not doing anything … more tonight.
Simon rolls to one side and tucks himself against me, pulling the duvet up over us both and sliding a warm hand back down over my belly, fingers brushing through the tangle of curls at my groin. I lift my hips, just enough to let him know his touch is wanted, and he hmms into the crook of my neck.
I turn my face into his damp hair, brushing a kiss across his forehead, and think about how many nights I lay awake wishing that this were my life -- that Simon Snow would come willingly into my arms and sink into sleep beside me. How many nights this past term we’ve made do with the tenuous connection of breathe and heartbeat collapsed into nearness through our mobile phones. How, miraculously -- almost magically -- this was only one of many, many nights to come when I would be able to sleep with Simon’s aliveness wrapped around me in trust and assurance.
“Do you ever stop thinking?” Simon murmurs into my neck.
“Not as long as I have to think enough for both of us,” I grumble, and he nuzzles me in the shoulder blade. He laughs, sleepily, and presses a kiss against my shoulder.
"It's true!" I say, "You're so daft. I don't know why I ever put up with you."
"Chose you." Simon says. "'N you chose me. Stuck with me now." He wriggles closer, extending a wing out over the fold of the duvet like an extra layer of warmth. I can feel the heat it's giving off, warm like the rest of him. His tail insinuates itself between my thighs, wrapping around my leg like a creeper vine.
I’ve promised myself and I’ve promised Simon (and Penelope, when Simon told her and made me repeat it), that I’ll at least try to believe I deserve him. Maybe if I pretend to be that sort of person long enough I’ll convince myself, as well as them, that it’s true.
I listen to Snow breathing beside me in the dark and watch the shadows creep across the room. I think about how many nights Snow and I spent in this place, facing one another from across the room, opponents even in sleep. I can hear Simon’s heart beating steadily in his chest, feel the flutter of its Thumpa...Thumpa...Thumpa against my ribs, echoing against my lungs and heart.
I shift my hips to the left, snug against Simon, where he’s tucked himself alongside me. I can still feel the soft shape and heat of his cock nestled between his legs. When I shift, I can smell his arousal beneath the scent of my soap, which he used in the shower.
I can feel my muscles beginning to relax. Simon murmurs softly in his near-sleep, fingers twitching possessively where they curl around me, soft and without any demand. This wasn’t exactly how I had hoped to spend last night at Watford. But I think as I drift off to sleep -- the first time I’ve been able to fall asleep in Simon’s arms since the night the Mage died -- I can’t actually think of a better way to close this chapter of our lives together.
Because on the edge of sleep, in this familiar room, with the unfamiliar weight of Simon at my back and the pressure of his tail wrapped like a safety belt strong and sure across my chest, I can almost taste something other than death and despair on the back of my tongue.
I can almost taste something like a future not filled with loneliness.