Chapter Text
BAZ
I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do this. Sit next to Simon for the next twelve hours and pretend like I don't know that he wishes I weren't here.
I know that now.
I've been convinced of it for a while, but I'm fairly certain of it now.
He was going to break up with me on the beach.
I think he was going to break up with me back in his flat a million years (a week?) ago.
The only reason we're still together (are we still together?) is because of Bunce and her impeccable (terrible?) timing.
I'm tempted to just ask him. To have it out right now. But how do you break up with someone, then spend half a day next to them in what is essentially a flying metal tube of death?
Perhaps we'll get lucky in the end and the engines will actually die this time.
I've always said it would end in flames.
(I don't have a choice in that, do I?) (It doesn't seem like anything else is powerful enough to take me out.) (Well, one thing is. It's sitting right next to me.)
America did its best to end me, but it could have saved itself the trouble. Simon Snow has always been the one holding my fate in his hands.
I've been watching those hands. Coveting them, the way I covet everything else about him that I don't get to have anymore.
How long have I wanted those hands? To touch me, to hold me, to just hold?
How many times have I seen them covered in blood and thought about it being mine? (Or wanted to lick it off.)
I can't keep doing this to myself.
I close my eyes and force my head away from his. He may burn less brightly these days, but his gravitational pull hasn't diminished.
He's still the centre of my universe.
But I can't be the centre of his. Simon Snow needs to love himself first.
I just wish I knew how to help him get there.
The road trip didn't help.
(I suppose that's a fantasy we've all been fed, just like everything else.) (But at least he started smiling again.)
Therapy didn't help.
Or, maybe it would have. If he hadn't quit.
Bunce and I both tried to talk to him about it. (As much as I can ever get up the courage to talk to him about anything.)
"If it's so good for me, why don't you try it?" He'd shot back nastily and slammed the door in my face with his tail.
I didn't have a reply to that, and I didn't bring it up again.
Being together didn't help.
Would it be better if we were apart?
If Simon keeps trying to break up with me, maybe I should let him. Maybe he's been trying to tell me that's what he needs. (Does he know what he needs? He'd be the only one.)
"Simon--" I say, turning back to him and nearly knocking him in the forehead as he turns to me and says, "When--" at the same time.
"What?" We both ask.
Crowley, we're bad at this.
We've always been bad at this.
I never learned how to tell Simon how I felt about him, never learned to say what I really wanted to say. I spent seven and a half years ruthlessly suppressing every thought and feeling (and urge) I had around him. He spent seven and a half years hating me. Maybe those are habits we don't know how to break, no matter how much we love each other.
Does Simon love me? Would he even know? He says he didn't know how he felt about me when we were at Watford, which isn't wholly encouraging.
As far as I can tell, Bunce and I are the only people in his life who've ever offered him love. Maybe that's the problem. If you've never been loved, how would you know what to do with love when you had it?
Snow and I sit there, blinking stupidly at each other. He drops his eyes, worrying his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue in a way that makes me feel like screaming.
"You go first," I say instead, because I'm a bloody coward.
When he continues silent, I offer what I hope is an encouraging smile, which probably just comes off as manic.
"Why did you come to America with us?" He asks.
He seems frustrated with himself, like this isn't what he'd meant to say.
Where is this going?
Because you're my boyfriend, I should say. And I love you. And I wanted to spend time with you. And this shit holiday seemed like the only way to get you off the bloody sofa!
Because I wouldn't be happy anywhere without you, I should say.
But I've already told him that. He didn't want to hear it.
He doesn't want to hear any of what I have to say.
"I wasn't going to let you and Bunce have all the fun while I sat literally stewing in my flat alone."
He rolls his eyes and juts his chin a bit and he almost looks like he's on the verge of growling.
While I don't think that would go over well in the middle of economy, it would at least feel familiar.
"What am I supposed to say?" I ask him before he has a chance to respond. "You don't want to hear the truth."
His eyes flash. I can't tell if it's anger or panic. Maybe it's both.
"What do you mean?"
Everything I want to tell him is so desperate to come out that I can feel it building up in my mouth, behind my lips, trying to pry them open. They're like fangs I can't retract, and I'm terrified that if I let them out, they'll cause more damage than I could ever do to him with my actual teeth.
"I already told you," I manage, and I know it sounds like I'm grinding the words out, because I am, because if I open my mouth, I don't know what will come tumbling out. "I'm only happy when I'm with you."
His face falls a bit. "Oh. Right."
I don't say anything else.
Maybe I should. Maybe I should have said something else before.
What can I say? How is that a statement that's unclear?
I know I've called Simon a moron to his face, but he's not stupid. Oblivious, maybe. But I'm sure he's perfectly capable of understanding me.
But you're not happy when you're with me, I think at him, but don't say. What will make you happy, Simon?
"But you're not happy," he says to me, like he's the one with the telepathic vampire abilities he used to accuse me of back when we were fifth years.
That is a minefield I haven't the faintest hope of navigating. I've survived a number of magickal explosions in my day, courtesy of Simon's uncontrollable nuclear reactor, but I'm not sure this is the sort I'll live through.
Maybe he really is going to break up with me on a plane, an hour into our flight, with the entirety of North America below us.
I suppose it would be bad form to set myself on fire.
Bloody Snow.
I avoid, sidestepping all of my own confessions in favour of maybe encouraging one from him.
"Would you rather I hadn't come along?"
"What? No," he's shocked and maybe even a little scandalised at the suggestion. "I--I just…"
"I was just asking," I say, hoping to keep him from getting himself too worked up. "I wanted to be here. I wanted us to spend the summer together. I liked doing that, last year."
He offers a sort of a half-hearted tug at one side of his mouth.
Last year. Simon was still quiet and withdrawn, but at least he smiled and laughed and touched me. At least I could still tease him. At least I knew he still wanted this, wanted us. At least I felt confident that it was still the best thing for him.
I could ask him. Right now.
But I'm too conscious of all the strangers around us. And even more conscious of our friends.
I've seen the look of pity on Bunce's face when Simon pulls away. I've not seen it lately, because she was feeling too bad about her own heartbreak.
I absolutely refuse to give her an opportunity to use it on me again.
I don't need Penelope Bunce to feel sorry for me. I'm not that pathetic.
(Who am I kidding? I am exactly that pathetic.)
"But you would rather I had stayed behind? In America."
Simon looks pained.
Good, then at least he knows how I feel.
He scrubs at his face and pulls on the curls currently cascading over his forehead in a way that is truly bordering on obscene. (Everything with Snow is borderline obscene. The way he bites his lip, the way he licks food off his fingers, the way he swallows his tea.)
For several strained heartbeats (on both our parts), I think he won't answer.
It wouldn't be the first time he's just shut down on me on the hard questions.
Then, so quietly it's a good thing I'm a vampire and seated next to him and always hanging on his every word, "I don't want that."
I'm afraid of pushing him further, and pushing him away. But we're so close to something, and I can't let it go. Not this time. Not again.
The last year and a half has been cluttered with so many missed opportunities, because I'm a coward and I'm so weak for him. Too weak to ask for an answer.
Get a grip, Basilton, you're allowed to ask questions. You're his boyfriend. (For the moment.)
"But you don't want me."
Snow's head snaps up so quickly, I practically get whiplash. His eyes are wide and his throat muscles are twitching. (Crowley).
(I want to bite him. Not hard. Maybe just a little nibble. Maybe harder.)
(Twelve hours. Two continents. Twenty major arteries. Four crosses, but none of them close enough to make any sort of difference.)
I try to home in on the smell of Simon's panic, which sours his usual buttery scent. Like the butter's gone off a bit. (Would he find it funny to know that his blood smells like butter?) (You are what you eat.)
"I--" He stammers, heart rate picking up and breath going shallow.
His sympathetic nervous system is kicking in.
As a predator, I should be flattered. As his boyfriend, I should be worried.
I don't want Simon to fear me. (I don't want him to fear me anymore.) I don't want him to feel like he can't talk to me. I know how hard it's always been for him to use his words, and as much as I'm tempted to whip out my wand and cast Use Your Words on him right now, I resist. I'd never cast something on him without his consent (anymore) and certainly not a spell like that. I can't force him to talk to me if he doesn't want to. I need Simon to trust me. I need him to know that he can.
He used to.
I spent years throwing curses at him and picking fights with him and sending chimeras after him, and then the very first time I called him Simon, he put his hand on my shoulder and gave me everything he had without a second thought for how I would use it.
And then he did it again. And again.
He was so open then. He was fearless.
"I do," he whispers. Swallows. Adds, "but—"
And just leaves it hanging there. Suspended from his mouth to mine, penduluming between fates: he loves me. He loves me not. He loves me...
And I let it swing.