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Chapter Text

SIMON

There’s a goat munching on my shirt, fireflies buzz lazily around, arses golden and glowing. The sound of crickets makes me think sad thoughts of summer coming soon. The other students around me create a static noise of hushed murmurs and stifled laughs. 

It's past midnight and we’re barrelling into before dawn darkness. I’m melancholy as fuck.

We have an astronomy workshop outside, on the top of the highest hill from the Hills Beyond. The guest lecturer is some bloke who can’t be any younger than 50 but who’s beaten us to the top of the hill, even though he was carrying two telescopes (with magic, but still). He gives off very David Tennant vibes, charismatic in an almost over the top way. If only his topic weren’t so confusing…

I wish I could be as excited as Penny is about this thing. She’s been vibrating with excitement this entire week, anticipating this workshop. Right now, she's intimidated her way to the centre of our gathering, where the Professor Not-David-Tennant is. I find focusing on the subject and the questions an impossible task. Distractions are everywhere: unlike Penny, most kids didn’t come here for the astronomy lesson, but for the opportunity to come to the Snogging Hill on a weeknight. 

The goat must be one of Ebb’s that strayed this way. A small creature that seems enamoured by my presence, as they often do. As long as the animal lets me pet her, I’m ok with whatever damage she does to my t-shirt. Even the goat gets more action with my T-shirt , I think bitterly.

During the day, these hills are Ebb’s hills. During weekend nights’ though.... This is a place of making out and shagging. For me, this is the Hill of the Great Awkward Descent. On this hill Agatha broke up with me almost two months ago, on Valentine’s, after I’ve given her the chocolates and the roses. Really, who breaks up with someone for forgetting to bring a blanket to a picnic? We’re mages, aren’t we? Can’t we magick shit up? I made sure to bring food, didn’t I? So maybe I didn’t bring any plates and no beverages, but, like, argh. Shut up.

Anyway, we shared the entire walk back, because there’s one good path and neither of us wanted to go down through dried grass and mud. I wanted to die with awkwardness. Just thinking about it makes me sweat an extra layer. And it’s not like I miss our relationship, but  miss the space that it was occupying in my life. Like, I don’t miss Agatha, I guess I miss the idea of being with her. It’s all very confusing, so I try to stop thinking about it.

“Stop fidgeting, Snow.” Baz’s boot shoves against mine.

“Move away, if you don’t like it, Pitch,” I hiss, moving my foot to now tap him in the shin rather than the air, as I’ve been politely doing until now.

I don’t like this place. Don’t like that everyone is in couples. Even Agatha is holding hands with a girl from her team, making me feel even weirder that we’ve dated and we no longer do. Like, did I make Agatha gay? Or... Did she know she was gay? Is she gay? Does that make me any less single?

“You move.” Baz kicks me once more and then brings his knees to his chest, wrapping a protective arm around them and glares at me from under sooty eyelashes. The sky is alight with so many stars that I can see his bloody eyelashes, what kind of night is this?! 

I glare right back, wondering how much violence can I get away with at the moment. 

And it's beyond me why he chose to sit right beside me. Maybe because everyone is so coupled up, that he wants to witness me feeling weird and awkward and like a sock misplaced? (Or, wild idea - maybe Baz is feeling all of that as well!) (Although, I cannot imagine Baz feeling like a sock in any situation.) Granted, I did scoot closer - but only because the people on my right were sneakily (loudly) snogging.

We’re supposed to explore the magickal energy the Lyrid Meteor shower brings and tie it to a spell, not suck faces.

So I moved away, and lo and behold, there was my nemesis. (I knew he was there, of course I knew. I always know where he is.)

I think I’m missing the entire meteor shower, glaring at Baz, but he's making it difficult to pay attention to anything else. It’s why I fail in almost all classes we have together. I can feel him beside me, unmoving, plotting. It’s making me nervous and alert. (I sometimes entertain fantasies of me opening up his skull to discover his thoughts and secrets.)

“Professor?” Penny’s hands shoots up from the place where she sits cross legged. She proceeds to ask a question, but I can’t focus on that. Because yea, Penny is not with anyone here, but she has Micah, even though he is far away. I just, fuck, I just want someone to be mine. 

This lack of belonging is devastating.

I fall on my back, looking up at the sky, willing myself to forget about Baz that breathes right beside me, like a complete wanker. (I’m being unreasonable with my irritation towards Baz, but you know what, he probably deserves it.)

I try to focus on the shooting stars, and there is one, and another. They are pretty.

What did the Professor say? We could tie the cosmic energy of the Lyrid to our spell casting, amplifying it. The instructions on how to do that were so vague that I’ll probably end up turning someone into jelly beans, if I tried. 

Everyone else seems to have gotten it, because they start casting, their spells filling the air. There are chuckles, giggles of joy and of embarrassment when something fails. I shut my eyes and I still can see the shooting stars, crisscrossing the sky, but this time they’re on the back of my eyelids. My own personal stars that appear when I push my fists against my eyes.

I can hear Baz trying out a spell and I hope it’s not one that will off me. The night is warm, way warmer than it should be in April. I focus on the sound of crickets, of magic sizzling around me. The smell of something sweet and delicious swirls around me, stirring nostalgia for unlived moments.

I drift to hazy sleep under the starlit sky and wish for something… for something that can almost be named, can almost be touched, but stays out of reach.

BAZ

Do you know that not all planets have solar systems? Yea, there are wandering planets, lost in the vastness of the cosmos, untethered. Is it absolutely pathetic, that in this moment of looking at the stars, with Snow’s light snoring beside me, with magic swelling under the meteor shower, I can’t help but feel desolate? I assume it is, but fuck it.

Unsurprisingly, Snow has fallen asleep. There’s a goat sleeping serenely with her head on his lap, and when he flails in his sleep, the goat stirs awake and hops away, giving betrayed vibes. Snow almost smashes me with his arm, that’s how close we are. But I can’t move, I want to watch my flowers bloom, and I find contentment in the familiar sound of Snow sleeping beside me. And also, Snow’s body temperature is in itself an event: I can feel his warmth from where I’m sitting. His hand lays close to where I’m leaning on mine. Looking straight forward, I move my pinkie so that it touches his. There. I’m officially a creep now. I glance at our touching hands, exhaling shakily. (An absolute creep.) 

He moves in his sleep, mumbles something under his nose. I look around to see if anyone notices under the magicked fey lights. But they are scarce and gentle, not to pollute with light. No one pays me any mind. Everyone is absorbed in their spell casting (in the centre of the gathering) or snogging (on the peripheries, where the guest Professor - Sir Anthony J.C. - won’t see). (The Professor is quite fetching, with his glasses and his tight trousers)... (I can imagine myself being him in some alternate future, and it makes me sad, because it’s something not worth imagining.) 

Snow’s fingers move against mine, his fingertips brushing my knuckles. It’s accidental, of course, but it feels deliberate, and gentle. Electricity zips between us and I can feel it like a current in my entire body, thrumming, alive.

If only this were real, I think. Not just a fleeting accident prompted by my unhealthy obsession. But something good, and something lasting. I’m tired of angry touches, I’m tired of perfunctory and accidental ones. Is it so wrong to long for real physical affection?

I can feel this longing vibrating in me with intensity. Thankfully, the moment sizzles out before I wind myself up with despair, as Bunce comes to sit by Snow’s other side.

I remove my hand. Our connection breaks. 

Bunce gathers Snow's head in her lap, stroking his hair. The gesture - intimate and loving.

I want to die.

He doesn’t even stir. 

“Hey Baz, did you manage to do your spell?” Bunce asks, glowing from all the attention she got from Professor Anthony J.C.

“Do I look like an amateur, Bunce? Of course I did.”

I get up, suddenly exhausted. I gather my books in my bag, step over the flowers that I magicked and leave, trembling and burnt.

Chapter Text

SIMON 

The day after the Lyrid workshop, I wake up knowing I’ve had a weird dream. It was intense and oddly specific, and it left me with bizarre feelings. 

Working through them at breakfast, I tell Penny, “I shook Baz’s hand this night.” I don’t say in my dream, I think that is self evident.

Penny slurps her smoothie, highlighting something in the book she’s reading the second time in a row. She leaves notes (for herself) the first time she reads it, and then returns and leaves responses (sometimes aggressive and overly passionate) to her own notes and additional comments for her future self. She even uses different hand writings, like an utter weirdo, Merlin and his sword, I love her so much.

She’s on the third reading of this book now, and the margins are scribbled in purple pen, in pencil and in black quill. The book is Astronomical Debacles and Magickal Metaphysics. 

When we picked up the book at the library, she said, "I t’s more like applied magickal philosophy to the field of astronomy, not just metaphysics, but then everything is, if you have the brain for it."

Sometimes, I hear words coming out of Penny’s mouth but none of them land in the understanding area. They crash somewhere in the Ocean of what the fuck is happening and are never seen again.

“Pen?” I try again. “ Baz and I shook hands.”

“Uh huh. Good for you, Simon,” she murmurs absentmindedly and then scoffs, scratching aggressively at one of her comments. “I can’t believe I didn’t think about that .”

She stands up abruptly and declares, “I need to get me some sticky notes!” 

With a manic grin, addressed vaguely my way, Penny trots off.

I watch her leave and shrug. It’s that time of the year again - the Fellowship of Magickal Astro(meta)physics are organising their annual conference, and Penny didn’t manage to attend last year (we were fighting a fourwinged hyena, she was busy), so she's being a little extra this year.

I think it’s driving Penny mental, to be honest. One of the authors of the smart book she’s destroying with her notes is going to be a speaker there, and Penny’s preparing to impress her. Which is all nice and dandy for her, but I didn’t get to discuss my dream. The feelings of desolation and yearning that I felt last night under the burning meteors stir in my chest, itching right under my skin, where I can’t get at them. Plus, I think naming feelings outloud would break Penny's conference craze. I'm notoriously bad at speaking about feelings.

“I shook Baz’s hand,” I say out loud, to myself. Full of wonder. But I still don’t feel like I got it out of my system. The image is so clear in my head, it has the extra real quality that only dreams can have. I can feel the dry coolness of Baz’s hand in mine, the firm grip. I don’t know how we got there in the dream, but it felt right. Like we’ve reached an agreement. Like it was inevitable.

I try to push the image away and hurry up with eating my breakfast.

***

The first class I have is one of those that I’ll probably be failing - Elocution. And yes, Baz is there. For once though, he isn’t the reason I’m awful at this particular subject. There’s something about situations in which I must perform that make me a bumbling fool. Elocution is, like, the basis of our magick. And I’m expected to be the greatest mage blablabla. Hence - me failing at it. Is it an act of rebellion? Is it an accident? Go figure.

“You’re late, Snow,” Baz greets me, a mean smirk on his pointy face. The moment I see him, the dream resurfaces, full of hope. 

I fight to ignore Baz and the dream. I let my rucksack slide in the chair beside him - it’s the only empty spot available (aside from the spot next to Agatha, but I’m not that self destructive) (and aside from the chair next to Gareth, but he’s such a know-it-all and always sits in the first row, I’m not putting myself through that ) (and yes, maybe there’s an empty desk in the back, but who wants to sit alone? I’m not fucking Gareth) (so yes, sitting beside Baz is the only available option.) 

I shook your hand. I want to tell him, the image getting brighter and stronger when I lay eyes on his hands. But I can’t say that. It’s barmy even for the standards of our conversation duels.

“You’ve got cowlick hair,” I tell him instead, because I have to say something, and this particular lie is bound to be fun .   I try not to gloat when Baz looks panicky for a moment, shooting glances around, obviously trying to find a reflective surface before patting his hair. 

His long elegant fingers tap the desk, itching to fix his already perfect hair. I stare at his hands, transfixed. long fingers, neat nails, unlike mine, which are bitten and sometimes rugged when I get interrupted mid-nail-bite. There’s a callus on the side of his right middle finger, from gripping the pen too hard and for writing so much. A writer’s bump. He has very delicate wrists, I notice now, with the faintest hint of blue veins right underneath his skin that have me transfixed.

The dream scene of the handshake buzzes in front of my eyelids, a hornets’ nest ready to unleash their wrath. Oh fuck off,  I tell it.

“What?” Baz gapes at me, dropping his pen.

Oh fuck, did I say that aloud?

“Mr Snow!” the teacher admonishes, and I burrow myself into the chair, burning with embarrassment.

***

The next classes aren’t any better. This bloody scene in my head tugs at my attention, pulling at the threads of my composure, leaving me exposed, blabbering -  unfiltered, frayed at the edges.

The handshake replays in my head, and I know that at some point the heat from my hand moved to his, and the sentence I shook Baz’s hand. Turns into I warmed Baz’s hand. And it stays like that, and it refuses to change. 

I can’t remember ever shaking Baz’s hand. There was that one time in the beginning, when we had to shake hands because of the Crucible pairing us as roommates. We were first years, he was hateful and reluctant. The handshake was an ordeal, an instrument to lay the groundwork for our enmity.

He was angry. I was in pain. I don’t remember much from that day, just how much it hurt when he refused to shake my hand, how confused I felt at the unfairness of that.

But this handshake, this dream handshake - well, I remember all the details. Except there’s barely any story around it, it’s like a snapshot from a film. Any kind of context would be welcome - maybe this is like one of those riddles, if I figure it out, then it will release me from its power.

Spoiler alert, it doesn’t.

***

By the end of classes my head aches from the Handshake inserting itself in all my thoughts. I'm an irritable mess: I’ve asked at least 2 teachers specifically to stop blabbering, as it aggravated my condition. (They’ve sent me to see the Mage...) I snapped at Penny (1.5 times) (she was so engrossed in her book, that she barely registered it though.)

I told Gareth his belt is blinding me and can't he please stop polishing it so much?

I’ve drawn my sword (twice) during lunch (once because they ran out of meatballs and the second time because the scones were cold), and what’s worse, I might have told the Mage his breath stank. 

By the end of the day, I'm drained. I'm like Bernie from Weekend at Bernie's. The image in my head, on the other hand, is fuly alife. It vibrates, it pulsates, it wants … To spite it, I take a couple of sleeping pills from the nurse’s office and soon, fall asleep in a feverish state, not even bothering to shower or change clothes.

***

In the morning, at the ungodly hour of 6 am, I wake from searing pain that starts in my temple and goes to the back of my head and around, and around, and around - a maddening spiral of virtual handshakes wrapped in angry pain.

This made up handshake is ruining my  life. What the actual fuck is it?!

There's only one reasonable answer to that. Baz.

I get so angry, because this can’t be normal, right? It must mean he sabotaged my sleep and infiltrated my dreams like some kind of posh fit arsehole agent from a 60s spy movie. He inceptioned me. He's Leonardo DiCaprio-ed me with this blasted handshake!

Now that I think about it - and it’s quite difficult to think WITH THIS FUCKING HEADACHE –  Baz must have also cooled off the scones yesterday, and nicked all the meatballs, too! The bloody wanker! 

Or, or, OR! He must have done something magickal to me, because what the actual fuck won’t this handshake disappear from my mind? 

BAZ

“Come fight me, you bloody coward!” is not a nice way to wake up.

6 am is not a nice time to receive a cup of cold water in my face. In fact, I can’t think of a single time when it is nice to be splashed in the face. Unless it’s a life and death event, in which there’s some mysterious fire creeping towards my face and a cup of water is the way to save me.

To say the least, it’s a horrendous way to come back from Sleeping Land. 

No amount of cursing can express my rage and frustration - first Snow has been tossing and turning the entire night, speaking in his sleep, saying my name, waking me up from rare dreams in which we’re living in alternate universes, where I can trace the shape of his mouth before kissing it. 

I sigh. Well, it’s been a while since our last real fight so we might as well get on with it. I retrieve my wand from underneath my pillow and pocket it, readying myself for a good one.

As if he knows I’ll follow, Snow doesn’t even wait for me to fully stand up before he’s already out the door, marching to the hallway, where most of our fights are conducted. Anathema be damned, making us walk calmly before allowing our rage to take hold of us.

It’s not uncommon for Snow to get mad at me for the state of his life. It’s both fun and disconcerting how easily he makes me the core of all his woes. Right now he is smoking at the edges and there are sparks already - like a wrong kind of halo - around his curly head. I don’t think he’s ever gone off at such an early hour. He must be trying to set some kind of record. He looks sleep rumpled, but also, a bit desperate. I fight the feeling of compassion that rises at that latter observation. 

Instead, I channel all my irritation into a “What bit you in the arse, you fucking bellend?”

“ You did!” he roars and throws the first punch. He always does, by the way. I like him making the first move, gives me the satisfaction of knowing he cares.

The irony of this moment doesn’t escape me: in my dream we were so soft with each other it felt like the sweetest kind of ache. Here, in the real world in which I’m cursed to live, the touches we exchange are only of the aggressive kind. I should be grateful I suppose, at least it’s not nothing. 

Physical affection is scarce in my life, so I get physical confrontation instead. A substitute of sorts. The same way I get rat blood instead of humans’. Both are needs, I suppose. I'm getting by the only way I know how.

I duck from his ragemad punch and sweep my foot underneath him, causing him to land on the floor. I shake my head, sprinkling the wall (and hopefully him). It’s good to get some water out of my hair as I wait for his shocked arse to bounce back. I’m a gentleman through and through, no sucker punches from me. I’ll wait for my opponent to get back on his two feet before delivering a blow.

“Pitch one, Snow zero,” I say, smirking. The day does get better if you give it a chance. "I'm winning."

He growls. I laugh meanly. He comes at me like a bull. I evade. I use his weight against him and his incredible unreasonable fury.

It’s him and me. Me and him. Always. It’s a dance as old as time, it’s not what I want, but it is what I get. And it’s something, damnit. It’s ours.

At some point, when I’ve got him in a chokehold, his nose bleeding on my forearm, mine bleeding in his hair, he grunts, “Get out of my fucking head.”

“Gladly,” I retort and shove him forward. He stumbles, almost repeats the falling-of-the-stairs event, but steadies himself on the railing just in time. I exhale relieved.

Snow glowers and draws his sword. (It’s always such a turn on.) (The git, does he know how he looks when he does this?) (Like a God unleashed on humanity. Like Shiva preparing to dance the universe out of existence.)

“Oh really,” I drawl, drawing my wand, hiding my emotions as best I can. Electrified by the fight. I have no idea what’s happening, but I’m all in. We haven’t fought like this since he followed me in the catacombs during 5th year. It’s a great morning workout. 

We go on for Circe knows how long. We somehow end up in our neighbours room – Gareth's - the door gets broken and remains dangling from the hinge. Gareth runs off to get help. And since there’s no Anathema for the two of us here, we thrash the room, using each other as a wrecking ball.

Broken chairs (on his back), a lamp smashed to bits (on my shoulder), the curtain ripped (he tried to choke me with it), his sword stuck in the wall (he literally threw it at me, the plonker), the carpet torn and burnt (I managed to roll him inside it for a moment there, like a human hotdog, before he literally exploded and almost flamed me to actual death).

By the time the Mage comes (to expel us, I presume), we’re so out of breath and exhausted that we’re sitting against opposite walls, glaring through fastly swelling eyes from all the punches we’ve received. 

I show him two fingers, the ones that aren’t completely bruised. He bares his bloodied teeth at me, rubbing at his temple, flipping me off. 

“You’re still here,” he mutters, digging the heel of his palm in his temple.

***

The Mage and the staff do not like what we’ve done. They heal our bruises not because they want us well, but because the Mage worries what the Pitches and the Grimms will do if the Chosen One maims the Pitch Prince. Yea, they call me that. 

It takes a speech the duration of Neptune orbiting the sun before the Mage can calm down. By the time he’s done I feel like I’ve served a life sentence in a drafty cell. (There’s a dripping line of sweat above his moustache, that’s how enraged he is.) (I can’t derive any pleasure from that, I’m too tired.) 

My bruises are mostly healed, even my knuckles no longer hurt, but my softest sleeping t-shirt is ruined, and my bottoms are ripped and dirty (blood, dust, more blood). (There’s an M&M squished on my thigh, from us rolling around on the floor of Gareth’s room.) (Fucking slob.)

“I want you to apologise.” The Mage holds his wand in his hand like he’s contemplating whipping or cursing us to death. I think both could easily be his cup of kink.

Snow and I look at each other expectantly, stubbornly. Each quietly implying: He’s obviously talking about you.

Gareth and his roommate, Ted, are somewhere in the hallway, trying to magick the door back. They make the oddest background noises. The Mage spares them a look and then returns his thunderous expression for us.

I wave my hand at Snow, scoffing at the look he gives me. “You started it, Snow.” 

Snow growls. I narrow my eyes, fists clenching slowly, mirroring his. The Mage rolls his eyes heavenwards, gripping his wand tighter. 

“ Both of you . Now! Apologise!” 

Snow keeps rubbing at the sides of his head, squinting as if he finds it hard to look at me. And if it is such a chore to look at me, maybe he can take his apology and shove it up his Chosen One fit arse, because I don’t want it. 

“I’m sorry,” he grinds out, irking me even more.

So I reply immediately, “I’m not.”

The Mage, no shit, aims a bee sting spell at me. I glare at him, he responds in kind and… I relent. Antagonising the Mage is not nearly as fun as antagonising his ward.

I sigh, bracing for the apology coming out of my mouth. I’m sure Snow knows it doesn’t really mean anything, it’s for the Mage’s sake, anyway. 

“I’m sorry, too,” I say. And then, because it’s hard to resist rekindling the flame, I add, “You git.”

“Plonker!”

“Tosser!”

“Wanker!”

He wrenches himself up from his chair, fists clenched. I’m already marching towards him, wand in hand. “Time for round two, is it?”

The Mage booms, “TAKE IT EASY!” Both Snow and I are thrown back to our respective chairs, taking it so easy we almost slide to the floor from.

“I want you –” the Mage pinches the bridge of his nose, as if a headache has been passed on to him “ –  to stop acting like children. I want you to behave according to your station in life. And now apologise in earnest and shake hands! If either of you throws another punch at the other, I will, and I’m not joking, expel you both.”

We mutter our renewed apologies without the lovely addition of insults, and I suppose I can survive apologising to Snow, if he can stomach it, too. Anyways, our sorry ’s sound like bollocks, but the Mage doesn’t seem to care about anything beyond the formalities. At this point, he must know he won’t get any more from us.

“Can we go now?” I say, sounding petulant, and I think that’s my mistake, because the Mage gets this renewed glint in his eyes. Ah, fuck. Should’ve kept my mouth shut.

“Now shake hands,” he orders after a moment of thought.

I do not move from my chair, I arrange my hair behind my ear, feeling some stray drops still falling on my shoulder. Let Snow come to me. He started it. For once this is actually true. There was no goading from my part. No carefully arranged plot to make it seem like he started it. No, for once I was minding my own business, sleeping, and he started it. Let him come to me. I get a sick kick of satisfaction from that.

I get more comfortable, letting my knees fall apart, spreading my thighs open as I relax in the chair. I hope I look like I don’t give a single flying fuck.

Snow’s jaw muscle tenses and relaxes, tenses and relaxes. He seems about to go off, the scent of smoke renewed in the room. I extend my hand from where I’m at - a magnanimous gesture. He makes a sound in the back of his throat (a wild animal sound), and pushes himself up, storming towards me. 

He towers over me, hands balled at his side, glaring at my extended hand. 

“Well?” The Mage prompts.

“Well?” I repeat, becoming Snow’s worst nightmare, raising my eyebrow at him, mocking and provoking. Snow’s nostrils flare and he grabs my regally extended hand and yanks me up with such force that our chests collide. 

His hold on my hand - which was painful a moment ago - eases and I feel the tension in his body whooshing out. He almost trembles with it and then… then he stumbles one short step forward and slumps into me, his forehead landing on my shoulder, his damp curls brushing softly against my skin. 

His exhale is a moan of relief or pain, I don’t know, but he’s barely holding his weight, knees buckling. His fingers stay wrapped around mine, and so I reach with my free hand to steady him. I end up holding Simon Snow in the most awkward and unexpected embrace ever, sparks of awareness sizzling everywhere we touch.

“Oh shit,” he murmurs, pressing harder in my shoulder. And then he freezes, his entire body goes rigid. The Mage, just like me, is too shocked to react. Snow slowly comes back to himself and scrambles back, letting go of my hand. His eyes grow wide as he stares at the hand that shook mine, like it betrayed him. 

I stand still, unable to do or say anything.

“It won’t happen again, sir,” Snow croaks. “Can I be dismissed?” 

He scatters away without waiting for an answer, his eyes never meeting mine.

I’m left without any words and with my palm tingling from where it was warmed by Snow’s.

SIMON

It’s gone, Merlin, it’s gone. I can finally breathe.

Chapter Text

SIMON

It’s Saturday. Baz is at his violin practice and, for once, I haven’t followed him. 

Something is up. Something is up and I don’t bloody like it. 

After I shook Baz’s hand, it was like my dream of The Handshake came to life. A wave of relief knocked me off my feet… and, how embarrassing, I had to use Baz for support. (He didn’t let me fall.) (He felt solid and real.) (He smelled like pine trees.) 

I figured it was some glitch in my brain, that’s all. (Not the scent, but rather the knee buckling after waves of relief crashed into me.) Some neurons were probably pissed off from constantly having to live inside my brain and took a leave of absence or something.

But then, several hours after the Handshake event, I noticed that another scene crept in my brain. I’m so used to having obsessive thoughts about Baz that I didn’t notice it immediately. Plus, I was still reeling from our fight and the following Handshake incident. 

It unfolded slowly in my mind, like someone blinking awake in a movie. Of course, the stars are Baz and me, and it’s not a full movie, just a looping scene, maddening and insistent. 

This time, the Vision shows me my knee pressing into Baz’s, our thighs aligned, hips pressed together. Innocent enough, right? Two blokes sitting, knees touching. (It has me panicking.) (It has me sweating extra layers.)

(It has me famished.)

The entire night, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep until I took the sleeping pills. Only I made it worse: I was caught in molasses, drowning in it. The dreamstate and the Vision mixed and swirled together, sticky honey dripping and folding on itself.

By today, the Vision of the scene has grown so loud I can’t hear my thoughts, nor my words. 

I’ve barricaded myself in the toilet. It’s my home now, I’ve decided. Other students will have to go find another place to exchange gossip and vaguely vandalise. I'm prepared - I’ve even grabbed a ham sandwich with me.

It’s the right decision to quarantine myself. I can’t be allowed to go among sane people, what if I’m contagious? I want to tell everyone that I can’t unknow how Baz’s knee feels against mine! And I know , even if I scream it from the bottom of my lungs, the Vision will not be satisfied. Talking about it is a pale substitute to actually experiencing it. It’s like, I could tell you the entire plot of Snatch, but you won’t get it unless you experience Brad Pitt playing an Irish bare-knuckle boxer who just wants to get his Mum the right caravan.

This is like that, only a thousand times worse. I can shout about the Scene in my head, but unless I experience it - it just isn’t enough. The bloody Vision is not content with just words. And so I find myself fighting a vicious compulsion - I must act out the Vision. I must touch thighs with Baz Pitch. (Has there ever been a more ridiculous line? I don’t think so…)

By the time lunch comes around I have to test my feeble theory: When I shook Baz’s hand, all the loathsome symptoms fucked off. Maybe it will be the same this time. Perhaps third time’s a charm, and my brain will stop fixating after I give in to the compulsion this one third final time.

***

I find Baz in the dining hall, taking small bites, covering his mouth with his hand like a posh plonker as he eats. He looks completely innocent and yet I can’t shake the feeling that he’s having nefarious thoughts. I want to shake him, to have him under my thumbs where I can ensure he isn’t up to anything.

I pile food on my tray with misdirected aggression towards the mashed potatoes. Pain drums in my head as I drop in the empty chair beside Baz. I desperately hope I look like a normal person, and not like someone in dire need of some thigh action. (Yuck. The way this sounds.)

Baz stops with the spoon at his mouth and lets the content fall back in the bowl, splashing himself and me. 

“Fuck.” He casts a quick cleaning spell (on himself) and glares at me. “What do you want?”

“Nothing,” I lie. I assess the distance between our chairs. Can I get them close enough to touch knees? (Nope. Doesn’t sound any better.)

“There’s plenty of seats,” he says evenly.

“This one winked at me.” Great, so much for acting normal. Acknowledging that it’s too late to take it back, I lean into what I’ve said and actually wink at Baz. (We shook hands, now I’m winking. What next? Climate Change fixes itself?)

Smelling deceit, Baz bristles immediately. “Do you have a fever? Are you sleepwalking? Have you cursed yourself?”

I shrug as nonchalantly as one guilty from trying to bump knees with one’s nemesis can manage.

“I wanted to apologise for the fight,” I reply and surprise myself with the sincerity of it.

Baz frowns so hard he could sprain a forehead muscle. (Those exist, right?)

He looks around, checking if anyone of import is there, maybe the Mage? But there’s barely anyone here. If they can help it, people usually don’t hang out inside Watford during weekends.

“We already went through that. With the Mage,” he says slowly.

I risk a glance at his thighs. Strong and solid. Slightly longer than mine. It’s where his extra height resides. I know that, because the Vision pushes itself in the back of my eyelids when I blink. I’m itching with the desire to get it done. 

“Yea, but I want to do it in earnest,” I try again, mentally arguing with the Vision that unless it gives me some space to act normal, I won’t get anything done, except piss Baz off.

Baz hesitates, then pushes his plate farther away from him. “Ok. Let’s have it.” He crosses his arms and I school my features, lest he see my excitement and impatience. I scrape my chair closer to him, and our knees bump. (Just the knees though.)

His eyebrows raise high, both of them , which is an event in itself. He’s full of eyebrow acrobatics today. I’m positive I’ll give him an eyebrow hernia, if I keep acting like this. (That sounds made up, but fun if it’s a thing.)

“I’m sorry I jumped at you. I was having a bad day.”

The scene pulsates in my head, hips aligned, hips aligned. Not just knees bumping. Do it. Do it. Do it. 

I try lounging in my chair, hoping to get more of our bodies touching. And Baz’s narrowed eyes glance sideways to my scheme failing miserably and then he pins me with a sceptical stare.

“At 6 am? Already a bad day?” He takes his knee away from mine, rubbing it.

I sigh, pulling myself up. The Vision in my mind vibrates so hard I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, my eyes going blurry for a moment.

“Forget it…” I wish I could throw my hands in the air and storm away, but instead I huff and puff as I awkwardly move the chair back as its joints wine under my moving weight. Then I walk away with my tray of food, all of it untouched - I’m incapable of eating when my head spins with one single desire.

I wish Penny was here, but she went home for the weekend. I would ask for her opinion even if I died with awkwardness in the process. Hey, Pen, my brain wants me to touch hips with Baz. Also thighs. And knees. Yea, is that, like a medical condition that explains that? Is it a spider-bite-radiation thing? Is Baz trying to poison me?

I need to figure out a way to touch thighs with Baz and see if the bloody Vision will leave me alone.

***

There’s a lacrosse game happening tonight, and I walk in our room, having rehearsed the line Hey Baz, let’s go watch the Lacrosse game together a hundred times out in the hall.

I push the door open and there is Baz, sitting on the window sill, reading, his hair tangled by the wind, the setting sun colouring his skin in golden. When he looks up from the book his grey eyes are alight with the reflection of the sunset. 

He strikes me as unfairly beautiful, and for a split second my head ache recedes, as if sensing my resolution to get it done. 

Baz’s thighs, here I come.

BAZ

I’ve been reading this passage for the past 20 minutes. Usually, I’d find this kind of text riveting, but I cannot stop my mind from orbiting around the earlier encounter with Snow. He apologised? For real?! Since when does he do that? Did something happen and I missed it? Aside from the thing that happened after we shook hands in the presence of the Mage, when he fell into (onto) me. (His forehead was pressed against my shoulder, his laboured breath warming my skin through the fabric of my shirt. It was an entire thing! I remember! I was there!) (It was a whole thing!)

But today – that knee action under the table? He had to be aware of it. 

Just as I start the passage back from the top, Snow himself falls through the door, like he’s shouldered it open. He gapes at me for 5 seconds before shouting at me. And I mean capital letters SHOUTING: “BAZ! LACROSSE!”

I entertain the idea of shouting right back, “NOPE! BAZ: FOOTBALL.” But I’m too shocked to do anything but stare at him. I twist around, to better see him in all his glorious insanity.

“NOW!” he bellows again. And I am officially terminally thrown off. I’m in an alternate universe, Snow’s broken - apparently–  and I’m speechless, so maybe I’m broken as well.

He curses under his breath, overcompensating all the shouting, and pulls at his curls with such anguish, that when he removes his hand from his hair he has to shake some strands onto the floor. 

“Snow, are you alright?” The situation is so bizarre, genuine concern colours my words. I’m safe, though, it goes right over his head.

“Why do you ask, do you know something? What did you do?” And just like that, the universe is back in its place: Snow thinks I’m plotting and is freaking out. This is familiar territory. 

Except that… His face is screwed in an expression of distress as he rubs a hand over his face. He waddles to where I’m sitting on the windowsill.

He’s so close that I’m almost overcome with the impulse to check his temperature. It comes from some depths of evolution, this gesture of checking on loved ones if they’re alright.

If Snow suspected my smitten brain refers to him as loved ones , he would decapitate me (He would do it literally, too. He has the sword for it and the temperament.)

“I’m not feeling very well,” he admits, seeming surprised by his own  words.

“No shit. You shouted lacrosse at me like it was a curse word.”

“Yea, I wanted to invite you to the game.” He rubs his neck, the perfect picture of a sheepish boy. I push back on the butterflies. I’m sure this is not what it seems like. I remember who’s on the team and the butterflies go extinct.

“To watch your ex-girlfriend play?” Everyone knows they broke up, I’m not revealing anything by admitting to know that, but I have to know what’s in his mind.

“Oh, I didn’t think about that.”

“So have you changed your mind?” I ask, a little too eager to be asked by Simon Snow to watch a game with him. (I know it’s not a date, but Circe, can’t a boy dream?)

Snow’s staring at my book, which is on my lap. And to dispel any suspicions that it might be a non-existent book called the Nefarious ways of Nemesis War , I close it and show him the cover - Cosmos, by Carl Sagan. 

Snow doesn’t seem to get any more relaxed though, instead he whimpers.

“Can I sit there?” he says in a small voice.

 He points to the place beside me and butterflies reappear, fluttering madly in my stomach - fickle creatures. I affect a bored expression, defying all the thrumming underneath my skin. I can feel the heat radiating from him.  

“It’s a free-ish country, Snow. You can do whatever you want. Just, don’t punch me, I’m not in a fighting mood.”

Snow nods, looking dazed.

 I change my position from occupying the entire window frame, to facing the moat and the football pitch. I cross my feet together, lest the knee incident repeat itself and send Snow in a freak out. 

The lacrosse teams are warming up on the field. Almost the entire school has gathered to watch. I guess we’re watching, too. 

Snow climbs on the windowsill, letting his legs dangle out, copying my position. There’s enough room for a third person here, if ever there was anyone mental enough to stand between me and Snow… and yet he crowds me. He even scoots closer until his thigh is pressed against mine, from hip to knee. Upon contact, he breaks into airy laughter, a breathless quality to it.

I watch him laugh and give in to that earlier primal urge: I press the back of my hand to his forehead. “You are feverish. Circe, Snow. Maybe you should see the doctor.”

My sudden touch stops him mid-wheeze and we find ourselves caught in a staring competition.

I snatch my hand back, dropping it to my lap. What a stupid slip. 

His thigh stays connected to mine, his heat licking at my nerve endings, igniting fires under my skin. 

I wonder if the Mage’s put him up to this in a “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” kind of spiel. I wonder if maybe he is sick and doesn’t know it. I wonder if I’m dreaming and will soon wake up.

The game starts and for a couple minutes we watch it in silence.

“You wanna place some bets?” Snow asks, excitement turning his body into a bouncy thing. Gone is the almost haunted look he wore when he came in.

I want to force him to explain what the fuck is happening. I want to scream that we’re not friends and since when do we do things together? Instead, I look away from his brilliant blue eyes, willingly caught in his gravity, and nod, “I think the guests are going to win,” I say, just to be spiteful.

“Of course you do, Baz. Of course you do.” He laughs, delighted that I’m acting the part of the unloyal git.

We shake on it, and this time he doesn’t almost faint in my arms, (alas) but has this small pucker between his eyebrows, signalling that mighty thinking is happening in Simon Snow’s head.

*** ***

SIMON

It’s Sunday and I can’t help but feel like yesterday I got away easy. I sat beside Baz and gave into the compulsive quality of the Vision and felt the relief of it being satisfied.

Baz seemed to short circuit whenever I touched him, so naturally, I had to let my thigh rest against his beyond Vision mandated time. 

The highlight of the evening was when we got into a massive (strangely, malice free) argument over who could throw the lacrosse ball farther - oh, not anyone on the actual teams playing (we tuned out of that after a while) but between the two of us. 

I was arguing that I could throw the ball farther than Baz. My brilliant arguments revolved around my strong arms (from all the sword fighting), having dated a lacrosse player (her skill must have rubbed on me), being the Chosen One (this one speaks for itself). 

Baz was adamant he would be the better thrower, but his weak arguments lacked substance: his legs are longer ( “The movement starts in the legs” ); he is a professional athlete (I mean, how does being on the school football team qualify as professional athlete? I have no idea.) and he has more explosive strength due to him being a… “Pisces.” (I’m 99% sure he wanted to say a vampire, but caught himself at the last minute and improvised.)

In the end, we agreed to meet on the field the following day and test who is the better thrower. 

The following day - aka today - is already here, because that’s how time works. But today, there’s a new Vision growing in my head, a new scene of Baz and me touching. Well, that’s not correct. Of me touching Baz. 

It started during the night, I’m certain, if the twisted, wrinkled, sweaty sheets are any indication of how (un)well I slept.

In this Vision, I pat Baz’s shoulder, but then I linger… and rub his arm up and down two times before letting my hand drop. And what’s different now from the first two Visions is that there are way more details and sensations happening. Like the texture of Baz’s t-shirt compared to that of his thermo top underneath the t-shirt… the shifting muscle underneath the fabric. The slanted look he gives me as the wind ruffles his hair. In this scene, there’s a small smile tugging at his lips, and I realise that I haven’t seen him smile smile. I get smirks, quick and lethal. But this imaginary smile is almost…sweet.

I get flustered each time the Vision offers the close up of Baz’s mouth curved up - that’s how unnatural it is. I’ve got the biggest movie screen stuck in my brain and it’s showing reruns of Baz Pitch smiling at me while I rub his shoulder. I want to wake him up and yell at him, “Do you know you smile at me? Do you know I touch your shoulder and you don’t mind me doing so?” Do you know I like it? (I’ll probably leave the last part out. Too unexpected, even for me.) It makes sense to say it like this, in the present tense of absolute truths, or of repeating actions, because in my head it’s a never ending loop.

Obviously, I can’t do that. And waking him up to provoke him to yet another massive fight seems so last season , unfashionable, really.

Instead of doing something even stupider, like actually touching his shoulder, I run off to get breakfast.

***

It’s surreal, but Baz and I have a friendly wager to attend to. I don’t want to lose the bet, so I avoid him for as long as I can. I’m afraid I might dive straight into groping, if I see him without fortifying myself first. Fate doesn’t allow me such comforts for long, though.

I bump into Baz on my way out of the toilets, suddenly hyper aware that I've been obsessing over the exact shape and feel of his shoulder and he’ll know. He’ll know. 

Instead of calling me out on it, his surprise at seeing me ebbs and morphs into a devilish look. He cocks an eyebrow and says, “Forfeit already, Snow?” and smirks. (See?!) (He always smirks!)

I use this opportunity to touch his shoulder, maybe get the Vision off my back early in the day and then focus on annihilating Baz on the field.

Filled with determination, I slap my hand on his shoulder, hopefully in a friendly manner and pat him twice. It’s awkward, and an image of a dog patting their human comes to mind. I swallow back a cascade of nervous giggles building up in my throat. 

Slowly, deliberately, eyes narrowed to slits, Baz repeats my move, settling his hand on my shoulder. Both his eyebrows rise high on his forehead by the time he’s done patting me. He mirrors me perfectly, keeping his palm on my shoulder. My skin tingles under the weight of his hand.

His raised eyebrows are a challenge, a question and a what the actual fuck, Snow? Which is less of a question and more like a rhetorical device to express exasperation with my antics.

I pretend with all my might that nothing is wrong and that shoulder patting is perfectly normal for us. 

The Vision moves underneath my skull, unsatisfied, irritated with my failure. The brain cinema in my mind presents me with the Vision once more. And yea, maybe in it Baz isn’t doing the same thing that he’s doing in real life right now. In there , it seems like I’m looking down at him, so he must be sitting? I don’t know. And we’re definitely outside, the light is generous and bright. But still. Those are just details, right? Inconsequential. 

Now I’m stumbling through the Scene, rubbing his upper arm, feeling the deltoid under the fabric of his jumper. My cheeks burn with the awkwardness of it all. 

The Vision vibrates with intensity, and my first headache of the day unfolds like an earthquake. I groan and drop my hand from his shoulder. Baz does the same minus the angst filled groan.

“You are so weird, Snow.”

“I know, I know.” I wave him off, too occupied with the Vision to deny anything. “Come on, let me kick you arse on the field,” I manage to say, bracing for a long day of torture. 

***

We raid the lacrosse reserve equipment, finding sticks, headgear and several balls. (There’s a dirty joke somewhere in there about how between Baz and me we don’t really need any more balls, but my head is pounding and I find it hard to be witty at the moment.)

No one sees or stops us as we head to the field, raided gear and all. I think about poor security and wonder if I should tell the Mage, but don’t really want to put myself on radar with him without actual need.

Besides, I feel giddy with getting away with it. Like Baz and I are engaging in illicit activity, not just using the equipment without asking, but also, just being together without fighting. That feels illicit, too.

The Vision shoots an occasional pang of pain through me, retribution for mucking it up earlier. I guess I did the first pat too hard? Maybe that was it? Do I need to reproduce it faithfully, like, 100%? The first two times I just repeated the movement and it was fine. But now I’m determined to do it right, Baz is even wearing the thermal shirt from my Vision. That must be a good sign, right? He has his football t-shirt on top, like in the Vision. 

I’ve asked for one of Baz's spare football t-shirts, because they’re spelled to get rid of all the dirt when you step out of the field. As a result, he’s been tight lipped ever since, like there’s a snide comment that he’s holding back. He’s so proprietary of his clothes it’s ridiculous. But if he’s pouting, there’s less chance that he’ll be smiling, and I need him to smile to fulfil the Vision. I must do something to lift his spirits.

 Teasing seems to work. I’ll try that.

BAZ

I’m having a minor (MAJOR) crisis. Simon Snow is wearing my number (MY NUMBER!) (This is not a fucking drill!) and looks fucking glorious in it. Let me repeat that, Simon Snow is wearing MY number and looks fucking gorgeous in MY number, which is MINE! 

I want to eat him up. I might throw up. (I’m fighting back an incoming stiffy, just looking at him.)

SIMON

“What do I get when I win?” I ask, stretching my shoulders, commencing said teasing.

“ If you win, which you won’t, so you win nothing,” Baz replies, lips pursed. He starts to stretch his quads and I remind him that the throwing is a movement traditionally done with the arm, and he reminds me that all movement starts from the legs.

“What do you want then?” He asks, moving on to an upper body warm up, and I know I should probably do the same, but it feels so personal , that he’s stretching right in front of me, without anyone else around.

“Er, what?” What do I want? Does he mean in general, or right now? Because right now I wouldn't say no to some food and also I'd love it if he let me rub his shoulders to get the Vision off my back.

“If you win, what do you want?” he asks again, rolling his eyes.

Oh that. "Yes. The bet."

"Exactly. What do you want in the unlikely case of your winning?"

I try to go back to teasing, “Yea, like you’ll give it to me…” 

He smirks. “I’ll give it to you, Snow, don’t worry.”

He says that and rolls his lips between his teeth, fighting a smile. The tips of my ears heat up. He sounds almost flirty, which must mean I’m truly dehydrated and calorieless. The Vision seems to enjoy the banter though, because it is almost quiet now - a predator in waiting.

“Well then, I’d like you to ensure I have hot scones for next week.” I’ve had bad luck with them lately. They’re either eaten or cold!

Baz is quiet for a long moment, eyes roaming over my face. He’s making me nervous for some reason. This not-fighting thing is such new territory that it feels like I’m never on stable ground. Add the Vision coiled tightly in my mind and I’m allowed to get extra flustered, aren’t I?

"And what do you want?"

“A carte blanche from you.”

I cross my arms, refusing to admit I have no idea what that is. It sounds French. It could be some kind of cheese. It sounds like a white one. I think I can easily get some mouldy white cheese from Tesco. Easy peasy.

“Deal.” I can probably get any kind of cheese. I’ll ask Penny. She’ll help.

We shake hands and I think that in the past few days we’ve shaken hands more than in the entirety of our acquaintance. And isn’t that a wonder in itself. I smile at that thought, forgetting to let go of his hand. He doesn’t let go either. 

I shake it once more, for the sake of doing something while we’re at it.

“Well. Deal. Get ready to feed me, Pitch.” 

Baz lets go of my hand, smoothing his hair back, giving off nervous vibes, but that can’t be right. Baz is never nervous, so I must be hallucinating.

***

BAZ

Snow has been patting my shoulder like he's forgotten who I am. It’s unreal. 

After a minor (friendly?) squabble on the field when I stepped wrongly and sprained my ankle, he did it the first time: patted me and rubbed my shoulder while I was healing my ankle. I did not say anything, too shocked.

Then we tried to see who can throw the ball farther, higher, with sticks and without them.  (Me, him, me, him.)

Anyways I won the original bet, except I’m certain Snow has no idea what a card blanche is and now I feel like I’m taking advantage of him. 

However, the real fun started when we went inside and got the football. 

The casual touches continued though. They are so new that they shortcircuit my brain. It could be normal among friends. (Are we friends now?)

I'm familiar with one way of physical interaction: slaps on the back after a good game, bear hugs immediately after scoring. Fleeting, "bro-touches" as Dev calls them.

Meanwhile, Snow’s touch is lingering. Intentional even when it's aiming at casual.

***

We’ve reached the changing rooms, and the spring sounds are muted here, in between walls. The quiet allows me to hear the fast pace of his heart beat and I wonder what it means, when he touches my shoulder once more. He rubs it in a soothing motion, and I decide that I need to know. I search his face for an answer - there is none. Instead, he seems to nurse a sense of puzzlement turned inward.

“This is very nice,” I want to say, but can’t. I may be selfdestructive, but I’m not suicidal. Instead I give him one of my favourite astronomy facts. Because they’re safe, and at least it’s something: a piece of me for him to have.

“What I love about our galaxy,” I tell him, hurrying in case he interrupts me, “is that there is a cloud of gas in the centre of the Milky Way and it smells like rum and tastes like raspberries. Did you know that?”

Instead of dropping his hand he adds a second to my other shoulder and shakes me, his eyes widening. 

“You’re fucking with me!” He sounds and looks overly excited by this fact. I’ve never received such a tumultuous reaction to any of my universe facts, so I’m standing there, hyper aware of his hands on me, worrying if maybe he’s misheard me. What if he thinks I told him there’s a scone shaped galaxy packed with raspberry jam?! I’ll go down in history as a fraud!

I hurry to give some explanations. “The gas that makes raspberries and rum smell the way they do is found in great quantities there. But we couldn’t actually eat it.” 

He doesn’t seem put off at all. “Wow. I’ll blow Penny’s mind! She’s such an astronomy dork.” He gives me this genuine smile, beaming at me, eyes crinkled, hair splattered with sweat on his temples and he takes my breath away.

I look to the floor, scrambling for a poker face and probably failing. The moment breaks. He drops his hands and that’s that.

***

When Bunce arrives back and they hug loudly in the hall, I suddenly realise that I’ve probably served as some kind of weird distraction for Snow while his best friend has been absent. I’m assuming there will be no more hanging out, no more bets and no more lingering touches. 

In an effort to distract myself, I drag my arse to the library to see if Bunce returned the last book she borrowed: Astronomical Debacles in Magickal Metaphysics. I think the two of us are the only ones reading it in this school.

She hasn’t yet, so I don’t get to read her new notes. Bunce and I have been anonymously, and quite slowly, debating on a large variety of issues in the field of Magickal Astronomy and Metaphysics. We’re doing it in writing, leaving notes to each other. Astronomical Debacles is one of the several books we’ve been doing this on. (She doesn’t know it’s me, of course.) 

It’s fun to have someone to engage with in metaphysical and alchemical debates, especially on the topic of cosmic influence. I think it was the two of us, independently and sneakily, that contributed to the Lyrid workshop actually happening. The amount of letters we’ve been writing to the Fellowship must be measured in kilograms by now. Astronomy and sciences in general don’t garner enough recognition in the academical world of Mages, and what a fucking pity that is. The Mage has tried to derail this workshop, his position on the Fellowship of Magickal Astro(meta)physics is condescending and stereotypical.

I count it as a victory that we managed to get Professor Anthony J.C. to lead a full workshop.

The other book that we’ve been “debauching” - On Alchemy and Stars is back though. I’ve left some pretty controversial notes there, knowing they would get under her skin. I own one of the few copies of the second volume of this book, so that gives me an unfair advantage when arguing her points. 

When it comes to Alchemy and stars I’m mostly in it as a sports. I like riling Bunce up, I don’t really care about Alchemy. Sometimes I say (write) the opposite of what she says (writes) but wilder. I enjoy seeing her scribble angrily during lunch, aggravating Snow with her focus.

However, the discussions we have on the side of Magickal Metaphysics give me some actual, intense pleasure from clashing opinions. The conversation there is so intersectional and deep that I sometimes have this urge to approach Bunce and debate her in real life.

Bunce and I are diverging on one basic metaphysical issue, whether it's knowledge or emotion that serve as the better catalyst for magic... and so sparks fly.

Ooh, look! She’s even added coloured notes. How adorable.

I spend the rest of the hour in the library, reading and scribbling down ideas, all the while attempting not to think too often about the lovely time Snow and I have been spending together. What is the point in lingering over a fluke? A glitch in a story about enemies won't repeat itself.

SIMON

From the moment Penny returns, we huddle up in her room. I don’t know how she gets me in - gendered magick and all - and I don’t know what she’s done to Trixie, because there’s no trace of her. I like being alive, so I’m not going to ask. 

I tell Pen everything. (Except how I apparently don’t mind touching Baz, that is irrelevant.) (And how I might want him as a friend.) (Or that how we might actually already be friends?) (I mean I got him his french cheese and left it on his bed, didn’t I?) (Ok. I asked the Cook for it.) (Whatever.)

Penny follows the symptoms back to the Lyrid workshop and inquires about the spell I tried that night. 

I shrug my discomfort. “I didn’t try any spell. I’m not suicidal.” 

It’s obviously the wrong thing to say, as it launches Penny into a tirade about magic under the stars, and “especially during astronomical events that affect the Earth, and the humans’ perception!” It’s like she doesn’t get it - I’m insulting myself, not the stars. I’ m the one that needs defending, not unfeeling celestial specks of cosmic dust.

“Meteor showers are observed all over the globe, Simon, thought as mystical in some places but universally accepted as natural intricate wonders, so there’s a lot of knowledge to harness there. I think under such an event as the April Lyrid, you could have cast successfully! You were listening to the instructions, right?”

She knows by the look of me that I wasn’t.

“I can’t believe you didn’t try. I thought you cast a sleeping or calming spell, I found you snoring!”

“Oh, no, just, I’ve been thinking too hard and my brain got tired.”

Penny rolls her eyes, aggravated with me, but in a fond way. (I think.) (I hope.)

“Well, maybe Baz cast something on me?” I ask, halfheartedly really. It’s something I’m supposed to ask. I don’t really think, after spending this time with him, that Baz had any idea about what’s happening to me.

I’m relieved when Penny shakes her head at my typical allegation. 

“Nope. I was watching him, he made Night Phlox grow and bloom. It was a rather beautiful spell. And then I joined you and he couldn’t have done anything to you while I was there. But really, Simon, you should know better than falling asleep next to your self proclaimed nemesis.”

I wait for her to hear her own words - I mean, that’s literally where I’ve been falling asleep since day one at Watford. Actually, nowadays, not falling asleep in the same space as Baz is the weird thing.

But Penny has already moved away from chiding and has entered my favourite Solution Bulldozer mode. 

She makes a list of all the things I noticed about my situation? My problem? My issue, I don’t know what to call it! Asks me questions, sometimes the same question but in a different form, like she’s an international agent trying to crack a suspect in an interrogation. She wants to know the exact ways I tried touching Baz’s shoulder while on the field, making me squirm with awkwardness. 

“It’s something to start from. The Vision and reality must align eventually.” She munches on her pen, after I’ve embarrassed myself for an eternity.

“Is it like future visions?” I inquire. “Have I developed some kind of X-Men super powers?”

She doesn’t comment on my reference - knowing that will only get us in a rabbit hole of me dragging her to watch something with me.

“I don’t know, Si. Does it feel like the future when you see it?” Trust Penny to keep us on track.

I mull on that for a moment. “No. Feels like fantasy.” I blush then. Because does that mean that it’s a fantasy of me touching Baz in friendly ways, and what does that even mean ? Friendly ways. Sounds like bad innuendo.

Penny takes it in stride, not missing a beat or calling me out on my fantasy.  

“My main theory is that the spell happened in the proximity of Baz, and so it latched onto him. And because it’s so strong and doesn’t respond to any general ending spells, I will assume safely that it has been enhanced by the Lyrids. Accidentally, I’m sure, since you weren’t paying attention to the fact that the Thatcher comet is where the meteors originated. No?”

I shrug in that gesture that should be a definite head shake, but is downplayed as a shrug.

“An accident then." Penny nods. She's so professional, I can't even. "This is such a lovely mystery! I mean, except for you actually being in pain –”

“– and blurting out stuff because it breaks my inner filter,” I add helpfully.

“And it’s messing with your sleep, which makes you more prone to going off…” 

Penny walks back and forth, thinking so loudly I can almost hear her. Finally she stops in front of me, eyes glinting.

“I know who to ask for help. For now, you should try to replicate the Vision in your head as faithfully as possible, so as to alleviate your symptoms. It goes without saying we’re not bringing the Mage into this?”

She knows me so well. “Right.”

Penny gives me a reassuring smile and moves closer to the board, peering at the word Shoulder written in bold.

“Let’s add all the details so that you don’t miss anything in your quest to replicate the Vision.”

Penny makes a mind map of sorts with all the details the Vision provides me with. What Baz is wearing, what I’m wearing, where is the sunlight source, the position of my hand, etc.

We both stare at our work. My head pulsates with the Vision. It likes that it’s out there in the world, but hates that it’s not how it wants to be. So it makes the inside of my eyes hurt.

“Argh. I better go replicate it before it scrambles my brains.” 

BAZ

To avoid seeking out Snow, I go on an early run before dinner. If I’m exhausted, I’m less likely to start something with him. 

To my chagrin, the shining sun makes my mood a little brighter as I run, and I can’t wallow in self pity as much as I wish. But I persevere. I’m a Pitch after all. If we didn’t persevere in our melodramatic reactions to the world, the axis of the planet would tilt.

Running and wallowing is a bit like eating and crying - it doesn’t go easily together, but when it does it’s a sight to behold. 

As I run on my usual trail, I find that the sun, the birds chirping their horny songs, and the simple familiar movement of my body makes it really hard to wallow. 

I have to admit, it has been a lovely weekend, weird and violent and unexpectedly soft at times. I can cherish that . 

***

I’m nearing the end of my run when Snow joins me and almost gives me a heart attack, the sneaky bastard.

“Stalking me much?” I ask, not daring to look at him, in case I reveal just how joyful I am to see he sought me out.

“Of course.” He doesn’t miss a beat, the handsome devil. (Ah, fuck. I looked.) These butterflies and flutterings are getting out of control. I try to school my features so that I don't reveal how affected I am by him being here.

“Wanna see who gets faster to the Wavering Woods?” Snow offers, running backward and facing me with a stupid grin on his face.

“I have longer legs! Are you sure you want this bet?”

“I got you your fromage blanche or whatever. So I’m ready for another bet.”

I hold back a snort and am so happy to see him that I can't make up my mind whether or not to burst his bubble and tell him that’s not what he lost. I did find his cheese offering and laughed so hard, I got a free ab workout.

I think of a prize that would end up with me being unmistakably gratified. 

“Right. How about this? Whoever loses has to declare the other the absolute, undeniably better sportsman. In front of the entire class.”

He scrunches his nose, considering it; then he adds, “Without making it sound sarcastic, or without any sneaky eyebrows raised. Also! The loser should admit to being jealous of the other’s outstanding prowess and physical fitness.”

“Are you writing that down, ‘cause I have a feeling you’ll forget your lines when time comes to sing my praise in front of our peers,” I goad him.

“Game on, Pitch!”

We shake hands and then start negotiating the rules. 

It turns out Snow is an awful person to be negotiating or bargaining with, loud and gesticulating wildly, looking for loopholes and derailing the entire conversation whenever he gets the occasion. All in all, I’m having a wild time.

***

I don’t win, mainly because I was already tired when Snow ambushed me. But also, during our competiton, Snow tries to trip me up not once, not twice, but three times! The savage brute!

Even in these adverse conditions, I manage not to lose either: in the end we tie.

After a quick squabble over whose foot stepped first on the finish line, I sit against a tree, laughing at the utter ridiculousness that Snow is spewing: “ – and to conclude! Your foot is longer!” He aligns his foot to mine yet again to demonstrate what we both already know, while vibrating with pent up laughter. 

When I’ve dutifully look down, acknowledging the measurement going on, he continues, “And since we both stepped at the same time, it means that if we account for foot length , I have technically won!”

I shake my head at him, wiping sweat off my forehead. This banter makes me lightheaded. I have to lean harder against the tree bark, letting its edges bite into my back, feeling the coolness of the soil underneath my bum - I need something to ground me. 

“In no world is that a thing, Snow,” I drawl, squinting at him as the bright sun turns his outline almost unbearable to look at. “As much as I hate it, we tied.”

Snow slaps his thighs, rubbing them with brewing mischief, looking down at me, with a shit eating grin.

 “We need a rematch then. Tomorrow, same hour? Maybe you’ll lose once more, won't that be fun?” he says teasingly, bending down to get at eye level with me. His hand falls on my shoulder and he pats me, then squeezes and rubs his hand up and down, as if he’s consoling me for losing, which I did not!

I drop my head back against the tree trunk, openly staring at him. Aaaand I’m officially fonding over him. Oh Crowley, I need to stop, now! But it feels so good, I can’t stop smiling when this glowing emotion expands my ribcage, a sort of happiness that's almost painful. 

I look up at Simon's face and our eyes meet, his smile getting even bigger. 

His touch lingers.

Chapter Text

Simon

It is a truth universally acknowledged - as the beginning of that one period drama I’ve watched says - that Penelope Bunce is always right. The Vision has to be replicated as faithfully as possible - lighting, clothes, body position, only then it disappears. Some of Penny’s genius must have rubbed on me though, because I’ve also noticed something: the moment I decide to enact the Scene, like, to really give it a go, the pain eases. The Vision takes a fucking back seat, grabs the popcorn bucket and watches me try to replicate it. Of course, if I manage to muck it up, it becomes impatient and angry, and begins fucking with my faculties even more viciously than before.

On Monday, the Vision demands I put my hand on Baz’s thigh. As if memorising the exact shape and feel of Baz’s shoulder isn’t enough.

At breakfast, I touch my own thigh in the same spot that the Vision has me touching Baz and I imagine I’m doing it to him. I stare at my hand on my thigh. Baz’s is leaner, I know that. In the Vision, I can feel the satisfying movement of toned muscles underneath my palm. I contract my quads now, trying to emulate the same thing, to prepare myself for what the bloody Vision wants me to do.

Is it wrong to test it like this? It feels like coveting something forbidden. It reminds me vaguely of wanking while thinking of someone touching you. And that thought sends my whole morning to hell.

Weirded out by this new glitch in my mind, I voluntarily skip breakfast for the first time in my life, to avoid seeing Baz and his lean thighs.

***

“Merlin, Penny, please tell me you’ve figured it out!” I corner Penny when she’s exiting her dormitory, startling her into a slight jump.

“Erm, not yet, Si.”

I hide my groan of desperation in the crook of the elbow. “Ugh, Pen. It wants me to grope Baz.”

“It’s turning sexual?!” she exclaims, looking way more excited than the situation warrants.

“Merlin’s beard, Pen! Keep it quiet!” I hiss at her, looking around to check if no one’s heard us.

Penny rolls her eyes but humours me, by stage whispering, “So is it?” 

“I don’t know? I don’t think so,” I whisper back, equally loud. Merlin, I’d make a terrible spy. “Maybe?”

She convinces me that the only way we can talk now is if I’m walking with her to the school’s mailbox, which is right at the gates. It’s a ten minute walk, so I agree. Maybe clear my head a little.

Turns out, Penny has yet another letter for her favourite Fellowship (which, surprise surprise, is not that of the Ring.) (It’s the Astronomy people, she’s mailing them her new ideas for better public outreach.) We rehash the entire ordeal once more, from Vision one to the current one, so that Penny can assess where the Visions land on the Plato scale from platonic to horny. (Penny proposed Freud as the opposite of Plato in this made up scale, but I voted against it. I don’t know much about the guy, but from the little I know, he was a creep.)

On our way back, we sit on the edge of the fountain, on that one spot where the water doesn’t splash you, and Pen makes me tell her in great detail how I slide my hand on Baz’s thigh. (In the Vision, not in real life!)

“May I test it out?” she asks. 

I nod, ready to try anything, and Pen places her hand on my thigh. 

“Does this feel sexual?”

“Yew, Penny. No.”

“Hm. Just as I thought. So the touch in itself is neutral, it depends who you’re touching and with what intent to make it sexual right? A doctor can touch any culturally sexualised parts and it will be a clinical touch both given and received.”

“What are you saying, that I should imagine I’m a doctor and Baz is my patient? This sounds worse!”

“What I’m saying, Si, is that it doesn’t have to be sexual, if you don’t make it sexual,” Penny concludes, dipping her fingers in the water and then flicking a few droplets on my face to emphasise her point. 

After I’ve taken my revenge on that obvious act of hostility, we go back and forth trying to work out what the intent of the spell is.

“The answer resides most of the time in the intention behind any magickal action. Like, imagine you’re stretching to reach an apple from a high branch.”

“Why would I want an apple?” I interrupt. “Baz is not an apple. Baz is… Baz.”

“Ok. What would you want to reach then?” Penny says, a true champion when it comes to me being unreasonable. 

“A cherry. For my sour cherry scone.”

Penny rolls her eyes. “Ok. You see the cherries, you know why you want them – “

“For the scones.”

Another eye roll. I try not to snigger. I’m happy Penny’s on my team.

“Yes, Simon, for the scones. Anyway, the act of stretching towards it is the expression of your intent.”

“So I want to touch Baz and this spell is the expression of my intent? This analogy makes no sense, Pen. And now I’m dying for some scones.” And for Baz’s thigh. But I don’t say that.

***

By the third class - the first one I have with Baz - I’m slightly out of my mind with the Vision being loud and demanding.

I occupy the seat next to Baz in a heartbeat. (No available seats! Once again!! Plus Gareth would kick the chair under me, if I dared sit by him after the thrashing his room got.)

“Hey, Pitch.”

“Hullo, Snow.” 

I’m about to take a jab at him, ask him if he’s ready to race me again and lose once more, but I notice he’s especially frowny today. 

“You alright, Baz?” I angle my whole body to him, trying to read him better.

He looks up frowning from his notebook, searching my face. But he doesn’t say anything, and I feel weird touching him if he’s reverted to being surly. While we were friendly, touches made sense. But now I’d feel like a total creep. 

The Vision doesn’t care about that though. Become the creep, if that’s what it takes, I can almost hear it saying. 

Baz closes the book in front of him, staring ahead. It’s one of Penny’s astronomy books, the one that is overly scribbled with her notes. I find it endearing that both Baz and Penny have the same reading list.

“Don’t distract me, Snow,” he says after a pause so long that I forget I said anything. Hopefully nothing about cherries and wanting to touch his scone or something. With the Vision blaring angrily in my head, it’s hard to behave normally.

I find the wisdom to nod, not wanting to escalate anything.

The lesson drags slowly and painfully after that, as I can’t focus on anything but Baz’s thigh, which I cannot touch but must. 

I’ve sweated through my t-shirt and it’s gotten to my jumper. I’m certain Baz can smell it on me and is most likely disgusted. Now I’ll never get to touch his thigh!

The bell rings and Baz grabs my elbow, dragging me out and towards the library. Do I smell this bad? Is he going to fight me for it?! I try to sniff my armpit while walking, obedient out of shock. I even forget that we’ve both left our things behind. Even if I remembered I probably wouldn’t say anything - the Vision has deluded itself into thinking we’re going somewhere secluded to touch thighs and pick cherries and whatnot.

“What are we doing?” I ask finally, still nonresistant. I reckon I’m following the inertia of the friendly time we’ve spent together.

We round the corner into one of the magicked reading rooms in the Library. The Vision gets really excited: secluded space equals promising thigh action!

The moment Baz yanks the door open, we bump into Penny. Immediately, Baz releases me. The disappointment of the Vision crashes through me in angry waves.

Penny yelps in surprise and for a moment no one says anything. Baz is the first to break the silence. 

“I did not curse Simon.” His voice is hoarse, barely held back anger rippling through the short sentence. He stares at Penny, like she’s accused him of that. 

When Penny doesn’t respond, Baz whirls on me , nostrils flaring, the storm brewing to the surface now. “Did you think I did? Did you think I cursed you? To…what? Hurt you? Humiliate you?”

“What is happening – ” Penny speaks up but then understanding dawns on her and she gasps.

“It’s you?!”

“Surprise, Bunce. Who else did you think could outdo you in debate on Magickal theory? And in Astronomy - the most underfinanced department of this forsaken school!”

Penny scoffs, offended. “I beg to differ! There wasn’t any outdoing happening!” She turns to my 100% confused face and says, “I swear, Simon, he did not outdo me.”

“Er…” 

“No more of that now. Tell me what spell has Snow cast on himself so that I can fix it and get on with my life without this nuisance.” Baz crosses his arms on his chest, the picture of haughty superiority.

“What the actual fuck is happening? Penny, explain!”

It turns out, Penny hasn’t been having timedefying conversations with herself via notes and comments and highlighted passages... but with Baz , even though she didn’t know it was Baz. (But Baz knew! And kept at it!) They were having academic debates on the margins of books, magicking additional space and pages just so that they could outline their theories better. 

Absolute nerds. 

“But you knew it was Penny.” I can’t understand it. If Baz wanted to be friends with Penny why wouldn’t he just do it? People are so weird sometimes. If you like talking to someone, then talk with them! No need to be an utter nutter and pass notes like the nerdiest of nerds!

I’m reeling from two things simultaneously: 1. Have Pen and Baz been sort of closeted friends all this time? And 2nd. I really, really need to touch Baz’s thigh in that specific way, because this Vision is turning my headache into a bloody migraine.

That second one makes me steal a glance at Baz. Oh shit, he seems livid. His face has gotten paler. There’s a tension around his mouth and in the hinge of his jaw, like maybe he is grinding his teeth, which for a vampire must be extra bad. And then it dawns on me - Baz is livid with me.

“Why are you mad at me?” I shove my forefinger in his chest, but he bats it away. I persist. “I thought we were, like, getting along!”

“Mad? Mad? You think this is MAD?” He advances on me with each exclamation, towering over me, wand gripped murderously in his hand. Oh no. I’m about to get cursed for real.

Penny clears her throat and saves my life with the power of polite British intervention. Baz comes back to his senses, lowering his wand and straightening his back. He looks down at me from the great length of his nose. The posh wanker.

“You are delusional, Snow. You couldn’t make me mad . I am completely unaffected by you.”

I make a face that says, that seems unlikely , and also, I am a little hurt that he would say that now . We’ve watched lacrosse together for fuck sake.

Penny clears her throat again and Baz’s gaze drifts to her. 

“Well, I’m glad you found my message, Baz. I reached out to you because Simon’s condition was triggered during the Lyrids.” Penny pauses, as if giving Baz the space to gasp, before continuing, “And I didn’t know it was you , but I knew enough from our anonymous conversation that together we could figure this out.”

Penny hesitates, finally saying something that caters to my curiosity as well. “I didn’t know, but you did though. That it was me.”

He rolls his eyes. “Are you going to offer to make friendship bracelets, Bunce? Are we going to a Taylor Swift concert now? This is exactly why I wanted to keep our interactions professional. Correspondence doesn’t discriminate as easily as face to face interactions, don’t you think? If you knew it was me, would you have responded with the argument from jargon ?”

“The argument from what?” I ask, against my better judgement, bringing back the wrathful attention of a very unaffected Baz. He turns his eyes at me, looking ready to bite my head off.

“Glad you asked, Si,” Penny jumps in and Baz’s mouth snaps shut, the hints of a groan reaching my ears. Penny’s eyes glint as she lowers her glasses to make direct eye contact with me. “You know the mainstream idea is that using niche expressions results in inefficient magic channelling?” 

Oh that’s a question she expects an answer from me. “Uh Huh. I may have encountered that idea.”

Penny inhales a big lungful of air, readying herself for a long tirade. I groan inwardly, but am not going to alienate my only ally in this mess. Penny takes full advantage of my forced compliance, rubbing her hands together like a villain. She loves having an audience for terrorising, oops, I meant theorising. 

“Let me give an example, back off works well because it’s so popular. We don’t use the theatrical inspired phrase bow out, because it’s so niche. It wouldn’t harness enough power, right?”

“Uh Huh.” I know my part so well: it’s yes, nodding, and the occasional wow.

Penny continues, “Well, the argument from jargon goes against that mainstream assumption. It argues that professional jargon brings colour and emotion to one’s language. Since it's anchored in belonging to a certain profession, it can actually result in more efficient magic for the person practising said profession.”

“But the research is imperfect in trying to prove that it’s the jargon itself that causes this effect!” Baz exclaims. And oh Merlin, there’s two of them now.

“The proponents of the argument from jargon don’t account for emotion.” Baz is almost breathless. I wonder if the reason why he kept his conversations with Penny anonymous was to avoid having to defend his theories in real life debate. He takes a defensive stance, arms crossed and shoulders set, as he proceeds to deliver his argument. I lean on the wall, watching this confusing show.

“There’s a small study on clerks that don’t like their job or jobs that people are indifferent to, and their jargon has no magickal properties. It falls flat. Why? No emotional connection. The professions that are mostly populated by passionate people, that's where you get most of your magickal boost.”

“But that’s not proven, Baz! The study was on a sample of thirteen people!”

“Fifteen! I'm not saying that's good. I'm saying it shows the need for more research! But it doesn't get any because of academics like you that don’t think it needs proving! And it hasn’t been disproven either.”

“Well, it’s your theory! The burden of proof falls on you, doesn’t it?”

“I come with this only as a response to your argument from jargon. You have the burden of proof for that and you haven’t used the scientific method in a fair – ”

They go back and forth like this for a while. At some point, I sneak out and retrieve my and Baz’s things from the class. On my way to the library, I find a pack of peanuts in the outer pocket of my bag. It’s half open. I suspect it might have been soaked in rain water at least once, and yet they’re good.

They’re still arguing when I slip in unnoticed and sit on the floor. I eat my peanuts, while Penny and Baz have the equivalent of Baz and me thrashing Gareth’s room, but with words.

I close my eyes, munching on the peanuts, trying to convince myself that I’m not going to be sick, that my head isn’t bursting with pain. Unfortunately, affirmations fail me. The Vision wins. I capitulate.

“I’m kinda still cursed, you guys!” I interrupt them in the brief moment when both of them are inhaling some air to avoid passing out from intense arguing.

Baz’s head snaps to me. Penny rolls her lips between her teeth, an embarrassed look on her face. “Sorry, Si.”

Baz takes a second more to gather himself. “Yes, right, we can talk about that later, Bunce. In writing that is.”

“Are you willing to help then? Knowing it’s Simon ?” Penny says my name like she expects Baz to recoil, and I regret not having revealed to her the tentative friendship that seemed to sprout between us. 

“Am I willing to help the Chosen One…” Baz taps his lower lip, drawing my attention to his mouth while he mock-reflects on this question. “It depends on what he’s suffering from. If his condition presents any academic interest, I might.”

Even I can see he’s full of shit. Penny certainly does. She rolls her eyes, and then, with a small smile, goes on and absolutely betrays me: “Go on, Si, tell Baz your symptoms.”

I splutter, I choke on my saliva with disbelief. Meanwhile, the Vision retracts its torturous devices from my skull and flutters, wings of butterflies instead of spiked hammers. I brace myself and then tell Baz that I am bombarded with Visions that demand of me to touch him in specific ways. 

It doesn’t help that he glowers the entire time and manages to get even paler.

“They’re like compulsions,” I say. “They’re not that bad, really. Just, annoying. And painful. I mean, pain is pain. Not such a big deal really. You know what, they’ll probably pass on their own.”

Fuck. Why am I talking him out of helping me? 

“And you thought I’d done that to you?” Baz asks, his voice so low, it takes me by surprise. I was expecting a shout by how strained the muscles on his neck are.

“At first, yes!” I fight not to squirm under his intense gaze.

“At first? When you woke me by splashing me and dragging me in a ridiculous fight? I lost a fucking tooth in that fight, you utter loon! I’m still regrowing it now! Magick like that is painful!”

“Ah, wow, can I see– ” oops, wrong thing to say. His wand is up again and at this point I’m also getting riled up a bit, so I summon my sword. He wants to fight? I’ll give him a fight!

Why is he acting so surprised that I’d suspected him? It was him in my vision, in my head, in the forefront of my everything! Not anyone else. And why is he so mad about it? He’s never gotten mad before. Not like this. Not even when I stalked him, er, I mean, followed him around in year five.

“Listen, Baz, ” I say, waving my sword at him. “I did think it was you, but then I realised I was wrong. Ok. No one in their right mind would plan that - to have unwanted attention and touches from their nemesis.”

Penny gently lowers my sword by the blade, remaining there - in between Baz and me. A referee of sorts. 

“He makes my fucking blood boil,” I tell Penny, and she looks sympathetic.

“It’s mutual, tosser!”

Penny takes a deep breath, holding her ground. She’s a brave woman, Penelope.

“I thought I didn’t affect you?” I sing-song from behind Penny.

“You affect me well enough, you bloody nightmare!”

“Baz. I think we got off on the wrong foot.” Penny’s using her placating voice now. “Do you think that you can work with me, while I figure out what could have happened? My leading theory is that a spell rebounded from someone nearby,  and – ”

“Wait a bit, Bunce.” Baz raises his hand, palm forward, in a stop gesture. He doesn’t even look at Penny even as he shoves his stop hand in her face. He has eyes just for me, and I vaguely think - He’s chosen death. Surely Penny will not allow such behaviour.

Penny slaps his hand down but otherwise doesn’t continue her sentence. Instead she heaves a mighty sigh and removes herself from our equation. She leans on the back of the nearest desk, arms crossed and foot tapping. Is Penny’s book-margin-friendship with Baz affecting her reactions?

Baz doesn’t acknowledge how monumental this lack of escalation is, instead he zeroes in on me.  I narrow my eyes right back at him, receiving a kick of adrenaline from the way our eyes lock.

“Before continuing on this path of holding hands and being friendly friends,” he says, voice level and deep, “I want some answers from our local Chosen One lad.”

“What do you want to know, mister local vampire?”

He ignores my jab. “I want to know what Visions have you had so far? What touches did you orchestrate?”

I take extra time, just to annoy him. I clean some dirt off my shoe with the tip of my sword. 

Finally, I answer him. “The Handshake was unorchestrated. A surprise really – I didn’t know I was supposed to make that happen, I just saw red and we fought. And when the Mage made us shake hands… the relief was staggering.”

“Yew.” Penny scrunches her nose. 

“God, Penny, no, not like that, Merlin!”

“Well the way you say it, Si, it could easily be interpreted –!”

“Back to my question, Snow,” Baz puts in. “You shook my hand several times after that, was it also because of the Visions?”

“No, it was because that’s how bets are made, you freak.”

He bites the inside of his cheek, his mouth pursing to the side. I’ve never seen him this openly nervous.

“That’s why you were sitting so close to me?”

“Yes.” 

“And the shoulder groping!” he exclaims, sifting through all our interactions for sure.

“I’m sorry.” And I think I actually am. “I didn’t know what else to do, and we were having fun together and I didn’t want to ruin that by being all like, I’m cursed and need your shoulder to cure me. That would’ve sounded mental. And you would have hexed me.” 

“What else?” Baz is unrelenting.

“The handshake, the legs pressed together and the shoulder. Well, and today’s Vision.”

“What is it?”

“I touch your thigh.”

“You touch my thigh.”

A beat.

“With my hand.”

“With your hand.” He glances at said hand. I want to hide it in my pocket. 

“Really?” he breathes out, incredulous.

“It’s not like I’m choosing these things! And it’s a bloody angry Vison too, this one! I’m losing the plot here! That first night, I couldn’t sleep properly, it kept me up the entire night even though I took sleeping pills! And now it wants more bloody thigh action. In a very specific way.”

“Show me.” Baz steps forward, the fabric of his trousers catching on the blade of my sword. Merlin. I sheathe it before he impales himself.

“What?”

“Show me how it is you touch my thigh.”

Ok. Now my face is burning, and Penny seems to be on board, she has her notebook out and pen, and is ready to take notes.

“I am not touching your thigh in front of Penny,” I declare, maybe sounding slightly more scandalised than I would like to admit I am. 

There goes Baz’s eyebrow up, making fun of me before he even speaks. 

“Didn’t you tell Bunce to get her head out of the gutter? It isn’t sexual, as you’ve assured me. So what’s the problem, Snow?” 

The problem is that it feels intimate even though it isn’t.

“Yea, Si, the more eyes on this, the better.” Penny produces a new pair of glasses, they’re completely black. Matrix glasses. Trinity glasses. Penny seems to read my admiration correctly because she beams at me. “Aren’t they cool? I managed to spell them during the Lyrid. I can see magickal auras now.” She looks like she’s barely holding back excitement as she exchanges her usual pair with these ones. “This way I can observe any changes in yours when the touching occurs.’

Penny then zeroes in on Baz. “Baz, you might want to chill the fuck down, your aura is as violet as my hair. You’ll implode.”

“Unaffected by me, are you?” I smirk at him.

“I’m affected enough to want to strangle you.”

“Hm, Simon, yours isn’t any better, dragon hide red. What’s gotten into you two?”

 I shrug. “I don’t know Pen. I’m under a fucking spell? And Baz is just being Baz. ”

“Hm,” she utters, frowning. “I wish I could compare your current colours to your baseline…”

Baz shoots her a look, getting restless, then returns his scorching attention to me.  “Snow, if you want my help, go on, let’s do an experiment. Touch me.”

I stifle the nerves tingling in the pit of my stomach. “Well, you’re standing. In the vision you’re sitting down.”

He drags 2 chairs from behind a desk to the middle of the reading room and sits. And now it’s two eyebrows up on his forehead. A bloody challenge if I ever saw one. And I never know how to back down from a challenge from Baz Pitch.

I sit down on my chair and raise my hand to touch his leg. But then, it occurs to me that all this time I’ve never asked for permission, and isn’t that something that I should do? Wasn’t this one of the things that made me feel weird about it?

“May I, though?”

“Yea, go on, Circe you’re annoying.” But his face softens a fraction, and I know I’ve done the right thing by asking.

Gingerly, like he’s breakable and I’m a mallet, I place my hand on the middle of his thigh. 

A quiet oh , slips from my lips, because I can feel the lean power in his muscles and how they jerk upon first contact. I smooth the fabric of his trouser down to his knee. And back. I know there is explosive power there, I’ve seen him on the football field. It makes me want to knead the muscle that must be sore from all the running that he does.

“Well?” Baz says haughtily. His face is blank when I look up from where my hand, all freckles and bitten down nails, looks incredibly white on his black trousers.

“Well what?” I’m a little lost, to tell the truth. 

“Did the Vision disappear?” he asks, impatience rippling through his voice.

 I check. It’s still there, happy that I’m once more paying it attention, receding in the back of my mind, but not satisfied yet. “Nope.”

“Your auras are the same,” Pen confirms.

“What the fuck then?” Baz scowls.

I munch on my lip, thinking. The Vision nudges at my consciousness, sending tendrils of dull pain at the base of my skull, moving lower into my spine. It replays in my head. 

“Well, the lighting is different.”

“The lighting?” 

“And the floor,” I add

“And the floor,” Baz repeats in what I realise is his way of pretending to be in control when he’s confused or nervous.

“And I think… in the Vision you’re not as tense, you feel more pliant under my hand. So maybe we’re alone?”

“Pliant under your hand.” Baz almost chokes on the word. Speaking of my hand I look down at it, where I last left it, and now it (the hand) is rubbing Baz’s leg, my thumb moving slowly in absentminded circles. Meaning, it’s my hand, so I ’m doing that, just, I just haven’t been paying it any attention.

I snatch it (my hand) and myself away, leaping to my feet. Penny scribbles things so loudly that I get worried for the safety of her pen.

I’m suddenly feeling very vulnerable here. Usually when I’m anywhere near this, I provoke Baz into fighting, but I don’t want to do this now. I know how he is when we aren’t at each other’s throats and I like it. I wonder if maybe he’s been fuming, because he also likes it, and now has doubts about how real it’s been.

I’m gripped with the determination to make things clear between us. I come closer, placing the sword on the chair where I sat a moment ago. I extend my hand to Baz for what is it, the 4th, 5th time? It’s hard to keep track with all the wagers we’ve been shaking on.

“I propose an official truce,” I say. “We stop being shit to each other and you help me.”

He remains seated, so he has to look up at me, which is a rarity and secretly I’m loving it. I grin, so maybe not that secretly.

He rolls his eyes, exasperated but so, so obviously pleased. He takes my hand in his and pulls himself up. Maybe it’s a remnant from the first handshake but I still get a thrill whenever I can feel his cool fingers gripping mine. 

“You help me with my issue, and we don’t fight. Imagine how much time and energy you could save.”

“Circe, you’re ballsy!” Baz laughs and it doesn’t sound mean or bitter. 

I smile cockily in response. I am ballsy. It’s my best feature.

He shakes his head, amazed. “ You need help from me, and you’re trying to sell me this truce like it’s something I need?” 

Pulling him closer by his hand, where we’re still joined, I say, “Well then, you propose it, be generous and shit.” I grin at him and Baz rolls his eyes, the corners of his mouth twitching. I might get another real smile! Fingers crossed!

“You already offered the truce, I can’t repeat it!”

“I take it back then.”

“Right.” Baz takes mercy on me, glancing once at our hands and then back at me. And I can’t believe I’m getting away with it. 

“I propose a truce,” he says and shakes his head at himself.

“What a smashing idea! I agree. Let’s shake on it?” I could float off the floor, that’s how light I feel.

“We are already.”

“What?”

“Shaking on it.”

“Oh. Indeed.” 

I look at our locked hands. We should probably let go.

I witness the moment Baz loses the fight of trying to hold back his smile. It is crooked, and it is small and self deprecating, but I love it. It reaches his eyes and now it’s official, Baz Pitch and I are on our way to become friends. Don’t all epic friendships start with truces?

***

BAZ

On the third night of the truce, Bunce and I almost get in a physical fight.

Since the beginning of the truce, Snow and I have had to orchestrate touches to please the Vision. It’s been both an ordeal and a twisted fantasy come to life. The hand on thigh was excruciating, especially since Snow had to try 6.5 million times in different rooms and under different angles, until he figured out the lighting. Except it wasn't the lighting. The problem was that he was touching the other leg!

Then we had another thigh event. It happened in the dining hall, and as I approached his table, Snow's hand curved around the back of my thigh, in the most intimate of passing touches. Of course, I nearly dropped the tray, making a mess. He was very apologetic, claiming he didn’t even think, he “just did it.” 

I was so befuddled I didn’t even ask if the Vision accepted the offer as good.

Then came the next Vision, which was actually nice. I had muscle cramps in my calf after a brutal training session. Snow jumped up with a “Thank fuck I have a reason. Can I massage that? Please.”

I silently let him. I mean, I did say I’d help him. I’m a saint like that, serving the greater cause of aiding the Chosen One. Look at me, doing my civic duty and all. Turns out, Simon Snow is very good with his hands and gives brilliant massages. He did one leg and then, looking sheepish, said it would be weird not to do the second leg, and me, being the saintly saint that I am, allowed it.

Meanwhile, Bunce and I have approached Snow’s problem by ruling out the least possible options. I didn’t curse him. I didn’t see anyone else curse him. (I would have noticed, he is lowkey always the focus of my heart's desire after all.) (I don’t tell Bunce that.)

Snow doesn’t remember doing any spells and neither do I.

We could go for some convoluted idea that the Humdrum played a trick on the Chosen One, but Occam would roll in his grave if we didn’t use his razor. Occam’s Razor demands that the simplest explanation is the one most likely to be true. Thus, it is agreed that Snow spelled himself in his sleep during the Lyrid. Which raises so many questions! Like, can anyone else do that, or is it just a Chosen One thing? Why did his subconscious choose this thing exactly, this death by gentle touches? 

There’s still the possibility that the spell will just consume itself. After all, spells are like that. Except that some can last for years, and that’s not something Bunce and I are inclined to allow

We’re reluctant to involve anyone, because Snow will most likely go off if he has to explain to the Mage, or any adult really, that he wants to touch me in ‘ this specific way ’.

Snow still insists that the touches are friendly, but come the fuck on, friendly touches are when Dev slaps me on the back, or when the lads on the team smack my bum, or when people squeeze my shoulder in that way that is too strong for me.

Snow’s touches are soft and gentle, even though he is big and strong. He is my own personal gentle giant and I get to play Wonderland with him while this truce is going on. And I don’t think he has the vaguest idea that he touches me just right, in a ‘ I can’t help it’ way. In a ‘you’re precious’ way. 

Does he know that he lingers in absentminded touches? I assume he doesn’t. He’s oblivious like that. And I’m probably projecting, anyway.

Anyway.

Now we’re in our room, the 3rd night of the truce. If we survive it – Bunce and I– we might actually fix Snow. But we’ve been arguing for what feels like an eternity now, and the gloves have come off. We’re not holding back any punches. 

With Snow having left to bring something important (it must be food), there’s no one to keep Bunce and me in check. We’ve gone on tangents and now can’t seem to find our way back.

Her magickal ring glints in my face, her hand is fisted and she’s ready to attack. My wand is also drawn out and I swear, when Snow enters with popcorn in his hands, it’s not planned at all, but it is golden comedic timing. 

“Hey guys I brought pop– what’s going on?”

“What’s happening is that we are obviously incompatible with Baz and shouldn’t work together anymore,” Bunce says, but backs off when she sees Simon. She hides her hand behind her back, looking embarrassed to have been caught. 

“Well said Bunce, fuck off to your room then.” She always evades the gendered wards and uses our room as headquarters. I hate that she can do that and I don’t know how.

I cross my arms on my chest, leaning on the wall. And no, she hasn’t backed me up in the corner, I backed away strategically not wanting to get in an actual magickal fight with Penelope fucking Bunce.

“Whoa, whoa.” Snow puts the popcorn on the desk. His eyes dart at Bunce, then at me.

“Do I need to get my sword out?”

“She – ” I point at Bunce, trying to go back to the beginning of our disagreement – “thinks that the counter spell is possible only if we assess the factual knowledge that you, Snow, have of astronomical phenomena, and especially the Lyrids. Then we could narrow down the list of possible ways the April Lyrid could have influenced your dreams - yes, she thinks you magicked this on yourself while sleeping .” 

“Simon has been known to do magic in his sleep, he is the greatest Mage that ever was! And we agreed we didn’t see Simon do any kind of verbal magic! What else is left if not sleep? I swear, Baz, you’re being obtuse on purpose!”

“That is not the part of your argument that I have issues with, Bunce. I remember when Simon turned all alarms off on the entire campus while sleeping, without uttering a word . I’m his roommate . 

“My issue is that a human being, more so Simon Snow, does not operate on knowledge alone. We’re not fucking robots!” I don’t get why Bunce finds the concept so esoteric. It’s maddening. “When it comes to metaphysics, Magick is about the heart of it all! How each celestial event makes people feel, what memories it can harness. The emotional value of anything in this bloody world is what makes magic flow. 

“It’s all about what we as a species can draw from our collective memory based on millenia of sitting around the fire fascinated by the stars and the moon. Fascination is a state of being, not a piece of fucking knowledge.” I run out of breath, energised by having the floor for so long without Bunce’s sneering interruptions - I think she’s had too much practice with older brothers being arseholes.

Aside from Bunce’s silence, I have Snow’s rapt attention, it’s mind gobbling.

Snow nods. “Astronomer is an anagram for moon starer,” he says. Both Bunce and I gape at him. 

“What?! You told me about it the other day,” he defends himself, pointing at me. And I might have. It’s my coping mechanism. Facts about the skies and the heavens and the stars. But he remembered and that makes my heart stutter. 

He asks, “So what are the practical implications of your approaches?”

“Well. Baz would have you go through intense emotions, possibly with the help of psychedelics –”

“ Magickal psychedelics!” I interject, but Bunce doesn’t stop, speaking over me.

“During the next new moon –” 

“Because you can see the stars better,” I interject. I’m ridiculous, I know. I can’t help it.

Bunce rolls her eyes.

“Ok. Mushrooms under the stars. And then what?” Snow says. 

(I knew he’d be down for shrooms. I know him. He’s my roommate! Is what I told Bunce over and over again. But she insisted on knowing him better, on grounds of being his best friend.)

“We’re not feeding you mushrooms, Simon! That’s irresponsible and unnecessary! And where would we get them? It’s not like we can just – no, I’m not entertaining this idea. But, theoretically, during a New Moon, we could try a ritual to remove the celestial influence and end the spell… or, alternatively, you’d be able to wish upon a falling star for the spell to end.” Bunce says, sounding unconvinced herself.

“You can wish upon stars?”

“Of course, haven’t you listened to Professor Anthony J.C. during the Lyrid workshop?”

“Er, Pen, I thought that was an obvious no.” 

“I say –” Bunce starts but I push myself off the wall and shake my finger at her. “No no, Ms Bunce. Let me.” As an interrupter herself, Penelope hates when I interrupt her, and I’m a monster that enjoys pushing people’s buttons. 

I turn to Snow, where he’s started munching on popcorn. Is the menace entertained by Bunce and me antagonising each other? He is. isn't he? I get a kick from making him light up with mischievous energy.
“Yes, Pitch please, strongman my argument,” Bunce waves her hand at me.

“I will." I address Snow in my most calm voice. "Your best friend here wants you to learn a series of facts about the stars and celestial events, anchor your magic in knowledge, so to say. And then your knowledge could amplify the power of a spellbreaking ritual. Is that right, Bunce?”

“Since it’s very likely that you did this to yourself, Simon,” Bunce hurries to say in the face of Snow’s horrified expression, shooting me an unmerited dirty glance, “Only you can undo it. It won’t be only facts, you’ll also get the satisfaction from learning them.” She turns to me now. “Eudaimonia is a real emotional state, so why are you even against this, Baz?”

“No wonder you and Snow are best friends, Crowley, you’re equally stubborn!” I give up on steering this conversation or annoying Bunce. Winning this round, she takes advantage of my temporary break and grabs Snow’s wrists, tugging at him in a pleading gesture.

“Rooting Magick in knowledge isn’t as crazy as Baz makes it sound, Si. Imagine a group of people across the world. They live in different countries, and speak different languages, but all of them speak the language of their field as a common denominator. Their understanding of one topic goes deep and sharp, and these facts are ingrained in their minds.”

“The argument from jargon…” Snow murmurs, which means he actually retains some of the stuff Bunce and I say. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. He does perform best when no one expects him to. 

“Yes!” Bunce rejoices. “One could tap into that.” She whirls on me. “Like E=mc squared!” Bunce casts so fast that I don’t manage to react. An electrical shock passes through my arm. 

“What the actual fuck, Bunce?!”

“Oh shut it, Baz. If you were moving with actual velocity, and weighed more, then there would have been consequences, but as it is, you’re fine. I just wanted to show you the power of knowledge.”

She sounds so smug. I want to spell a whiteboard out and start quoting my favourite authors at her. She’s infuriating. Also it’s bloody exhilarating. Having this kind of debate live, unmediated by longer pondering time and pen and paper. It’s electrifying. I’m getting the hang of it and I love it!

“Ok. Point taken. How about…” I stride to the open windows and purposefully recall the first time I saw the Milky Way through a telescope. “...there’s something in the air.”

The room fills with the smell of rum and raspberries. Snow jumps up from his chair and gives a hoot of laughter. He strides towards me, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me, his eyes are wide and delighted. He’s rendered speechless and my heart swells with a stupid sense of pride.

“How do you feel, Snow?”

“Like infinite possibilities,” he replies, and Bunce has to clear her throat because when Snow looks at me like that I forget anyone else exists. Let alone expects me to continue a theoretical argument with them. 

Snow squeezes my shoulders once, his smile excited and genuine. Before I say anything else, he gets out his wand and casts float like a butterfly on the books on my desk. They immediately obey, moving up in the air in gracious movements. 

“I’ll admit that is impressive…” Bunce murmurs. Snow rarely performs magick so easily and without unintended consequences.

“It’s inspiration. The feeling that I’ve drawn from. And it’s focused Snow’s magic.”

The books float for a few moments and before they fall flat on the desk, or floor, I pluck them out of the air and place them back.

Snow bounces back to the popcorn, takes a fistfull and launches himself on his bed. (It’s been less than 2 hours since the calf massage so his newest Vision either hasn’t appeared yet, or isn’t bothering him much, so he’s light and happy. Buoyant.) (I love it.)

“Can someone explain to me what the actual beef between the two of you is?”

I jump in before Bunce, earning a dirty look from her. I cackle inside, marvelling in my Machiavellian ways. 

“Penelope’s basic assumption is that the best the stars can offer us are facts about the Universe and that the knowledge in itself is the only backbone for magickal development. Knowing a language allows you to tap into that language’s treasury of spells, or knowing a popular song lets you use a lyric from it as a spell. Bunce says magic lies in the knowing. Hence you must learn facts, young jedi.”

Snow lights up at my film reference and my stomach swoops with nervous excitement at making Snow look like that.

I clear my voice and continue, “Is that correct, Bunce?”

She grunts her assent and then presents my side of the argument. We do this a lot, repeat each others arguments until the other person agrees we’ve got it right. It’s the only way not to go insane when leading an academic debate. 

“Baz’s position is that loving that song, or marvelling at the intricacies of a certain language will allow you to wield magic more powerfully. He says, you don’t need to know how the song was written, what literary devices were used in the lyrics, you don’t even need to know it by heart to be moved by it and to allow magic to come out of it. The same goes for cosmic phenomena. So Baz would like you to learn to observe and enjoy these things. Without the mushrooms. We’ve agreed they’re unnecessary at this point in time. Is that right, Baz?”

“Affirmative.”

“You two really have put a lot of thought into this…” Snow says around a mouthful of popcorn, looking at us appreciatively. “You guys are fucking awesome.” 

He pushes the popcorn away and frowns. “But,” – he finds a stray corn on the bed and throws it up, catching it in his mouth, “ – why not both? Why should we try to do just one thing? It’s not a fucking binary, you know.”

I gape. Bunce’s jaw does drop a bit open.

“It’s not a case of either or. Think about it, Penny, when you find a bit of science that you find perfect, satisfying –”

“Like the golden ratio –” she inserts.

“Yes, like that. Don’t you also experience intense weird feelings? Can we really live in a way that excludes feelings and emotions? Aren’t they, like, I dunno, intrinsic part of the human condition? Don’t the maddest of scientists feel awe and anxiety and fear and longing and determination and humbleness in front of the work that they do, of the discoveries that they make? Do you think that an astrophysicist looks just in their notes and never stares up at the stars in fucking awe? Have you not watched Interstellar? The greatest science is about love.”

Snow turns to me away from a speechless Bunce. “And the other way around. Don’t you, Baz, ground your emotions in facts? Don’t some facts just make you a little hard?” 

Bunce snorts. I swear my cheeks get a little warmer at Snow talking about me being hard.

“Don’t deny it, you, with your facts library,” Snow teases. As if he hasn’t just shattered both Bunce and me, he grabs another hand of popcorn and eats it, his cheeks pink from the mental exertion, no doubt. I’ve never heard Snow speak so eloquently and passionately about anything that is not 1.food 2.movies 3.sword fighting. And the fact that his points make sense… now I have the extra hots for his brain! 

I look away, blinded by how much I want him: freckles, movies references, wonderful insights and reddened cheeks. Still looking away, I give Simon another fact, because it’s bubbling inside me, this need to confess, to give pieces of me.

“Did you know, Mages born on Solstices are more susceptible to celestial energies?”

“Really?” He sounds like he always does, like he’s fascinated by whatever I’m saying.

“Oh shit, then it makes even more sense that you did this to yourself, babes. Being a solstice child and all,” Bunce says.

Snow laugh-groans. “Baz, now you have to compensate with a better fact, Penny ruined this one. Made it about me.” 

I turn to him, hearing the smile in his voice.

“You want a cannibal fact about galaxies?” I ask.

His eyes widen in the purest expression of wowed curiosity. I take that as a yes. Bunce smiles.

“Like most big galaxies, the Milky Way is a cold-blooded cannibal – it has maintained its spiral figure because it’s been gobbling up smaller galaxies. But, our neighbouring galaxy – Andromeda promises to devour the Milky Way in a few billion years from now.”

“So…YOLO I guess?” Snow says and cracks both Bunce and me up, grinning in his satisfaction at having been found funny.

***

SIMON

I reckon that the sooner I deal with the Vision, the longer it takes for a  new one to return. So, whenever I get one, I try to take in as many details and only then approach Baz. It’s still wild that I can just ask for this and have it. Like, in what world does this just happen? 

Not once has he made me feel bad for this, and that’s just… that’s mind boggling. 

Aside from the Visions, another thing that’s giving me headaches is Penny with her extensive list of stuff to read. I manage to do none of the reading for the first few days, because I’m super busy, you see.

I train extra long; I linger in as many places as I can; I seek Gareth and offer to help him repair the still wobbly desk; I take showers so long we run out of hot water; I gobble up extra helpings on all meals (Well, lol, I mean, I would do that anyway) but I chew them extra slowly; I even stay back after class and ask follow-up questions to the teachers’ shock. 

I procrastinate as hard as is humanly possible. It’s not my fault my brain hates the written word. That’s why I’ll never watch a single foreign film - too much reading on those subtitles! 

Finally, Penny acknowledges that the written word and me aren’t compatible. It’s Baz that comes up with a compromise. Whatever Penny wants me to learn, it has to be presented in movie form (documentaries and sci-fi movies alike), or else turned into stories. 

I seem to have an uncanny knack for remembering all the facts that Baz tells me, so Penny designates him my astronomy tutor. Meanwhile she does most of the research on potential spells to help stop the visions. 

After the Bunce-Pitch Big Fight on day 3 of the truce, something shifts in Baz and Penny’s relationship. It’s like they’ve finally warmed up to each other.

On day five of the truce, Penny learns that the school library is finally stocking the limited edition of Alchemy and stars. A revised and better version. With that in hand, Penny promises Baz to annihilate him, but she is beaming, and so it’s hard to take her threats seriously. Baz pretends to be scared, but then he gets this small smile on his face (which he hides when he sees me watching him). 

It makes me think that maybe Baz has been plotting, but in a good way? So I go the extra mile and ask the librarian where they got the book, and learn it was a donation from the Pitch family.

My brain gets broken in the best of ways.

Since I’ve proposed to try both Penny’s and Baz’s approaches, Baz and I go out at night so that I can learn to enjoy the cosmos. It usually involves a telescope, a lot of pointing and explaining directions, but also murmured explanations, lying down on the blanket and staring at the sky. 

Most nights, Penny comes with us to try out spells that might undo the original mysterious one. They act like an old couple that love to bicker, and I enjoy listening to them in that way one enjoys the white noise of a babbling brook, it’s meditative really. Sometimes, Penny says something that completely shuts Baz up for at least 2 minutes, in which he mulls a response over. The other way around happens equally rare, but it’s less fun and more terrifying. A quiet Penny is a scary Penny. 

We go on the great lawn, or on the football pitch, and try to magick me out of this predicament, but “we don’t get the same clarity of connection that we would under a new moon” . Sometimes they draw something on the ground and make me say children story rhymes. Sometimes it’s just bits of sonnets. Nothing ever works.

Afterwards, we sit down to watch the sky. After some prompting from my side, Penny calls it a night and leaves. Then it’s just Baz and me.

He shows me constellations and tells me their stories. I sometimes catch myself regretting all those lost years in which I could have had this. This good thing with Baz. I wouldn’t call it friendship lest he flail me, but it feels like the warmest kind of kinship. It’s the same intense connection we’ve shared as enemies, now flipped on its head and turned…  good.  

The next new moon is in 3 weeks, which is a lot of time for learning about magickal astronomy, as well as a lot of time for befriending Baz. My goal is to transform the truce into something more, and I’m nothing but determined.

***

Energised by their conversations, Penny ropes Baz into sitting with us at all meals, which works out for me as well. I get to test the touches that the Vision wants exactly. Usually it takes me around 3 takes. Sometimes more. Is it always because I miss some details? Or is it because I enjoy the closeness with Baz and the way he reacts? Alas, no one will ever know, as these questions are tiring and I do not have the energy to entertain them.

One day we hold hands (it’s such a different experience than holding Agatha’s hand!). Another day, I hug him and he hugs me back (that one takes a few tries, hand placement, head placement, it’s a whole process) (I probably overdose on oxytocin). That hug starts a series of hugging Visions.

I had no clue there were many ways to hug someone until now. But there are, and it’s making me think about what else I never got to experience. Like, what am I missing out just because I’m the Chosen One and my life isn’t really mine?

The Vision comes up with several different hugs, and the last one feels like a capital E Embrace. Maybe because our arms don’t go crisscross, it’s not a side hug, nor a squeeze hug. My arms go both around his waist, and his around my neck, and his hair feels soft against my cheek, his chest rising and falling softly against mine. My nose is buried in the crook of his neck. I inhale him.

It’s a lingering hug. 

It’s an Embrace.

***

On one of the hugging days, I find Baz red eyed in our room, hanging up on what was surely a family call. 

Silence seems heavier in the room. I remember how I used to catch him arguing with his dad or his aunt about stuff all the time across the years at Watford. And he would be such a mean motherfucker after those talks, picking fights and insulting me. And if he wasn’t doing that, if he’d been kicked too hard by family, then I would make sure to start a fight with him. Anything to get that sad, hollow look off of his face. 

When I catch him now though, it occurs to me how much has changed between us. Baz doesn’t hide the fact that he’s been fighting tears. He’s angry and hurt, and he’s letting me see this. And I don’t want to fight him. I want to offer comfort. To soothe. 

A new feeling rises in me - anger on his behalf. Anger for Baz. What are they saying to Baz Pitch to make him cry in broad daylight?!

I say, “I really need a hug.”

When he hesitates, I pile it on, “The Vision won’t let me be otherwise. May I?”

And we both know it’s a lie, because a few hours ago I confirmed the hug and the context was fully replicated. But Baz doesn’t call me on it. He lets me hold him in my arms. It’s a long embrace, and should probably become awkward. I wait for the awkwardness to settle in, but it doesn’t. I stroke his hair, (it’s silky and soft) and rub his back, (it’s strong and lean) and he holds me tightly. In the quiet of this moment I can almost feel his heart beating slowly against mine.

Spending time with Baz means that we get to settle so many debates that we had before - like, who’s taller and why (ok, I had that debate with myself), so we measure our torsos and our legs and I was bloody right! His height resides in his legs. 

Then we have a football trivia contest, which I win, because apparently I have more brain space for random facts about footballers. So there you go. I’m more knowledgeable than Baz in at least one area. I will hold this over his head until the day of either one of our untimely deaths.

(Although, wouldn’t it be nice to avoid those entirely? I’m rather fond of a life that involves playful Baz.)

We even test our strength at arm wrestling - Baz wins. Unfair advantage, vampire strength. But I can’t call him out on that because Penny lounges in the room, reading, and could hear us. And Baz hasn’t outright admitted to being a vampire. (Yet.)

Then, one evening, I bet him that I can hold the lower plank for longer than he can… and come to eat my words. He’s a fucking beast. We hold the plank face to face, staring at each other from across a couple inches. Sweat droplets roll from my face and onto the carpet. My shaky breaths mingle with his, my entire body is trembling, muscles are fighting to continue this mad quest of beating Baz. I get this image of balancing forward and biting Baz’s nose to make him lose. It’s not a Vision, but it feels equally enticing.

“Just! Yield!” I manage to say through gritted teeth, and he grins, the absolute bastard.
“Fun fact, there’s a scorchingly hot planet on which it rains glass, and it rains sideways with ten times the speed of our strongest winds here on Earth.”

“I hate you,” I wheeze out. And then, through what must be my last breath as a human with healthy abs: “Tell me more.”

He gives me a crooked, shit eating grin. His eyes are dancing with some emotion that makes it even harder to keep going. 

“It consists mostly of diamond and it's blue, just like our planet is from space,” he says. And then on an exhale, with his smile softening, “Kind of like your eyes.”

And then I drop to the ground in agony, my abs cursing me to Hades and back. My heart hammers in my chest, confused and excited, while Baz breaks into victorious laughter, lying flat on the floor.

By far the silliest ongoing gag we have is a rock-paper-scissors tournament that starts at breakfast and ends after dinner, long in the night. The reason is that two things happen 98% of the time - I either lose, or we draw. And it drives me insane.

I keep asking for a rematch and Baz keeps giving in to me, delighting in my fits of rage after each loss. 

“How do you keep winning?” I punctuate each word with a bang of my head on the pillow.

It’s already dark, and we should go to sleep, but we slip in and out of this rock paper scissors madness and in and out of random subjects of conversation. We've been talking about dreams and their point of view (3rd or 1st?). Are they in colour or black and white? What is a common motif in nightmares? 

Whenever one of us proposes we go to bed, we play for it. I lose and so I get riled up again. Baz humours me several more times, and then I simmer until he says one of his cosmos facts, distracting me. 

This time, he looks at me, an unrestrained smile on his face, and says, “You lose because you keep throwing whatever will beat the previous win. So if scissors win in round one, in round two you will, without fail, throw a rock.” Then he drops on his back and laughs silently. 

“My subconscious betrayed me!” I declare, challenging him to a game in which I will not do that and he won’t be cheating. Baz protests at the word choice, saying he does not cheat but exploit my weakness. 

It turns out, I actually do that thing that Baz says, because I have to fight it. It feels the same way like fighting the habit of suspecting Baz of plotting. It takes me a few tries but finally I manage to go for complete randomness, and win.

It is one of the best wins ever. 

***

Ten days into the truce, I make a sarcastic comment about professor Minos, and Baz snorts a laughter so unexpected that his tea goes up his nose. It’s the highest achievement of my life. When I die, I want this engraved on my tombstone. 

And in this moment of absolute delight, I find myself wondering: How the fuck did we not become friends earlier? Because, this, this is the best time of my life. 

We get comfortable around each other - Baz and I. He even regularly unbuttons three of his shirt buttons and rolls his sleeves. I stare at his forearms when he does that, unable to cope with that level of trust happening. They’re sinewy and strong. When he moves his fingers to drum them on the table, or when he writes or types, the muscles move underneath smooth skin, dusted with dark hair, and I’m mesmerised. Baz rolls his eyes whenever he catches me staring. Usually, when he does, our gazes catch for a moment and then he says something like, “Cool fact: the energy from the Big Bang is still around. The Normals call it the Cosmic microwave background, or fossil radiation. But for Mages, it’s one of the 5 key components of the Fabric of Magic.”

He never follows any of this up, unless I ask questions. And I do, because his eyes light up and he leans in, gesticulating in this wide way. It’s so different from the cool front he put up all the time. I wonder if all the fighting was just me trying to break the facade and get to this. 

Being friends with Baz is as easy as breathing. 

***

BAZ

I know Snow needs something specific when he keeps stealing glances my way, blushing and looking away for the entirety of the last class of the day.

So after the bell, I ambush him in the hallway.

“You’re not inconspicuous, you know. You’re about as inconspicuous as a comet sneaking up on a planet.” I might sound a bit too excited, and that’s because I am. 

“That’s, er, not possible?” 

“Exactly. So what is it this time?”

He stalls. “Ah, it’s very specific.” 

“And you’ve decided to be very general. Smashing strategy.”

He shrugs sheepishly, setting fire to my curiosity. I know Snow opens up if I give him some space, and so after my initial prompt, we just walk together, shoulder to shoulder. People don’t stare anymore, they used to expect a big dramatic moment in the beginning, but now they’re used to this peace between us. 

Finally, he takes a fortifying breath and says, “We need to go to the Hills Beyond.”

I groan. “Oh no, is it some goat action?” 

“Please don’t make me say it. It’s not bad, just… Merlin. It’s embarrassing.”

We get outside and he squints at the bright sunshine. I put on my sunglasses, happy that they provide some protection as well as aid me in hiding my emotions. If there is anything left to hide, I’m so transparent I even complimented Snow’s eyes just the other day! Compared them to diamond planets seen from space. That was practically a confession of eternal love, a marriage proposal.

I lean on the wall, crossing my arm, knowing I must look cool as hell, glasses and pose. Snow says these are Top Gun glasses. Whatever that means.

At the moment, Snow is too absorbed in his inner anguish to appreciate my coolness. He fidgets with the hilt of his sword. (Circe! When did he manage to summon it?!)

“We have to go to the couples’ hill, ok? Lie in the grass, look at the sky, and when a big flock of birds passes, I, erm, I stroke your hair.”

“How is this embarrassing? I’ll have you know, you’ve stroked my hair before.”

Fun vampire  thing - I can’t blush unless I’ve recently fed. So nothing betrays me now. 

“I have?” Snow’s eyebrows move in surprise higher on his forehead.

“Two days ago. And last night when we were out on the Great Lawn. Not that I’m keeping count.” (I am.) “You can barely keep your hands out of my hair, to be honest.” 

I’ve stopped slicking my hair back. It’s hanging in unremarkable waves around my face, for Snow to sink his fingers into it whenever he’s absentminded, anxious, or bored .

“I guess it’s just so soothing.” Snow’s face does all sorts of gymnastics as he is disbelieving first, then reconsiders, then it dawns on him that it’s true, and finally it settles on a sort of sheepish dreaminess. 

“I agree, soothing is one of the top 3 adjectives people call me. So, what’s the big deal with today’s Vision?” 

“Well, we’re on the Couples ’ Hill.”

“Oh…” The couples’ hill is the issue. The visibility is the issue. I push myself from my cool wall and my cool pose. So much for trying to look like some cool guy from that movie franchise he likes. 

Snow grows agitated as his eyes search my face. I try to school my features, to hide the hurt and disappointment. The glasses were a smashing idea. They do half the work of hiding my face.

“I’ve spoken to Agatha today,” Snow blurts out.

“Delightful,” I bite back instantly. “Are you two getting back together then? Is this the truce ending?” 

I start walking away, not waiting for the answer, hurt burns my throat. Snow follows, levelling with me and peering at me earnestly.

“What? No! Why would you say that? No!” 

I do not reply. Seething and underneath it all, drowning in a static of fear. I probably look like I’m training for olympic sports walking.

Snow jogs beside me. “Agatha asked me if we were dating –”

“Didn’t the two of you break up?” Crowley, can’t I control the venom levels in my voice? I can’t. Because jealousy is holding my vocal chords in a vice grip, throttling me from inside.

“No!” Snow protests. “I mean yes, we did break up. She meant that you and I are dating. There are, like, rumours about us, cos, you know, we’ve been seen holding hands in public…”

We have. That one time when the Vision was demanding. There were people in the background of the scene in Snow’s head.

 “It wasn’t my idea.” I push my fucking glasses up in my hair, needing to see Snow the way he is, without a filter between us. We’ve stopped walking. In this stilted rhythm we’ll get to lunch during dinner.

“Does it bother you so much? The rumours?” I ask, unable to stop myself.

“Yea, they bother me! Just because we’re holding hands doesn’t mean we’re dating! And even if we were, would it be anybody’s business but mine and yours?”

Oh.

But he’s not done yet: “Also, I’m pissed that this fucking spell makes your life harder, because you already have to accommodate me and my Visions, and now everyone else suddenly has an opinion on us? They don’t get to have that. They have enough of me already.” He sounds livid, on the verge of going off. “I’m used to people not minding their own business, but until now it’s been just me, my fuck-ups, and now you’re dragged into it and I don’t fucking like it.”

“You and Wellbelove.”

“What?”

“Until now it’s been you and Wellbelove, hasn’t it?”

“I guess, I don't know. That’s not the point.”

“What is the point then?”

“It will fuck with your reputation! Your parents – your demanding, me-hating father – will think we’re fraternising or something. The Mage already does think that…”

“Well, so does my dad!”

He gapes at me. “Oh shit! Was that why you were cr.. I mean why you were upset the other day?”

I sigh, and start walking again. Slower this time, because my own heartbeat has slowed to a normal pace. “Among other things. They have… ah, expectations from me.” 

Fiona wants me to plant something for Snow - a cursed object no doubt. Father - on behalf of the old families - wants me to poison Snow’s magic until it wanes enough to leave the Mage vulnerable. My mother would have expected me to follow suit and be dead already. 

Daphne wants me to get with a nice girl, ‘Baz, didn’t you say that you would eventually marry that lovely Wellvelobe girl’ and yes, I did say that, out of spite, when the Wellbelove girl started dating my fucking crush.

“The bottom line is, everybody wants something from me,” I finish lamely. The truth is, I can’t fucking bear it anymore. (All I want is to look at the stars and spend time with Snow.)

“Oh. About the war.” Snow nods, understanding.

“Yea…” I reply and his arm brushes mine as we walk under the bright sun. “What did the Mage say about the rumours?”

“Oh, I don’t remember. I tuned him out. But I have been listening to Penny since the beginning of our friendship, so I told the Mage that toxic masculinity and heteronormativity never did humanity any good. Look at the many previous and ongoing wars! Even though we’re Mages we’re not exempt from being Human. I even said it like that, capital H and all.”

My jaw drops. What a boss move on Snow’s part.

“And you knowingly used the word heteronormativity on the Mage?”

He grins. “Oh, I’m not sure I fully understand what it means, but I get the gist of it.”

“Penelope will be proud,” I’m doing that thing again, when I’m fonding over him, but I can’t stop myself.

“That’s not all. Then I finished with a quote from Spider Man, and literally said that with great magickal power comes great responsibility. I was certain he’d call me up on it. He didn’t though. I don’t think he’s ever watched a Spider Man movie, you know. Which is both sad, and makes sense.”

In this space of light that Snow created with his story, I find the courage to be vulnerable. “So you’re worried about me?” 

“You? Nah, I’m worried about me after you get so annoyed by people gossiping that you curse my scones to be eternally cold. I don’t wanna get on your bad side, Baz.”

“You’re deflecting, Snow. Tell me what you’re thinking. Really.”

I don’t think he can though. He sighs, fidgets with the strings from his jumper, and finally says, “I mean, I wouldn’t want to sabotage your life anymore than the war is already doing it. You don’t deserve that.” 

But I hear what he’s saying. We’re friends now. I care. I don’t want you to get hurt. They are all gifts, and I see them.

***

SIMON

An hour or so before the sunset, Baz and I leave the Watford grounds, and as we walk among students, I can’t help but feel the tips of my ears burning just a bit. Everything I told Baz was true. But there’s more. When Agatha asked if we’re dating, I said no ! And I wanted to follow that up with, “ I’m straight”, but I couldn’t. Because am I? And isn’t this whole Vision-compulsion thing an occasion to test that? Like, I’ve looked it up, and many people live their entire lives thinking they’re straight because that’s the assigned default? And they try to fit in it? And there’s such a thing as bisexual erasure, and a whole lot of people are pissed off about it. (Rightfully so! What if my bisexuality was silently erased because it was easier to assume I’m straight?)

Isn’t this what I’ve been doing with everything? Erasing all the corners and twists of myself that don’t fit with the main narrative… Trying to fit in my relationship with Agatha, in my role as the Mage’s heir, in the shoes of the fucking Chosen one, and especially in the role of enemy to Baz Pitch. Can’t the Chosen One be at least a little gay? (Can’t I be just a bit gay for my former nemesis, my roommate, my friend?) And if that is so, I have to tell Baz, don’t I? He thinks we’re just two fellas, being friends and like sticking it to patriarchy or whatever by breaking what a male friendship looks like, but what if it’s more than that? 

While I’m quietly freaking out, Baz walks beside me humming something under his nose, in what I’ve learned is the definition of companionable silence. 

***

The hike is not as depressing as it was the last time I was here. I don’t have to dread seeing all the couples coupling, instead, I’m looking forward to cloud watching with Baz.

And yes, I will stroke his hair, (and if that doesn’t sound at least a bit gay, I don’t know what does). I don’t know why the Vision won’t just take all the other times I’ve played with his hair, but ok. Whatever. Baz’s hair is rich and soft and it has this soothing effect on me, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I keep wondering if maybe Baz should though. He never really has, not about the Visions and the touches. 

Baz complains about many other things: how I make a mess out of his hair products in the bathroom; how my shoes seem to always be in his way when he’s tripping on them; how I keep insisting we play rock paper scissors to decide who closes the windows, who opens the windows, who closes it again because “you were right Baz, it’s draughty after all."

But he never complains about the dozen attempts at getting a Vision scene right. He never complains about me touching him. Shouldn’t he?

“Do you mind terribly?” I ask.

“Your cryptic questions? Mildly.”

“No, you, git. Me touching you . Is it, like, unpleasant for you?”

“Isn’t it late to ask me that?”

I grab the hem of his shirt, a proxy to avoid touching him without his consent. I’m violently gripped by the certainty that he’s not joking and I’ve actually been inflicting myself on him.

He looks at the place where my fingers clench the fabric of his shirt, one eyebrow raised. What does it mean? I never fully know. Whatever it means, I tighten my grip and tug at him. 

“Baz, please, be serious.”

He sighs, gingerly extricating his sleeve from my grip. He moves my hand from his sleeve to his wrist and wraps my fingers around it. He presses my fingers there, with meaning.

“I don’t mind our touches, Snow.” He starts walking again and my hand falls away from his wrist. I’m stupid with pleasure from his words.

“I just hate the idea of making you do something that you don’t want to do.” 

This time he stops and looks at me earnestly. “You’re not doing to me what the Mage is doing to you, Snow. You can’t make me do what I don’t want to. Get that through your thick skull, ok?”

I swallow back a knot in my throat and nod.

***

We make ourselves comfortable. Baz arranges the blanket he brought, two bottles of apple cider, a book (because of course he would bring a fucking book), and a constellations chart (that’s for me). I unwrap sandwiches for us, and Mars bars, Milky Ways, an Orbit. I offer him gum, holding back my giddiness.

He eyes the Mars bars, then accepts two pieces of the chewing gum, eyes narrow as he tries to read my cryptic face.

I wait for him to catch up. When he does, it’s delightful, his face lights up and he lets his head back and laughs, loud and free. “Circe, Snow! These are the cheesiest space puns ever!”

“Don’t you mean the sweetest space puns?”

***

We sit back to back, leaning on each other.

The Vision stirs under my awareness, fraying my focus a little. It knows I’m working on making it happen, so it doesn’t bother me much. But it’s always there. I get one, I either start working on it immediately, finding the right combination of everything until it sighs away, satisfied, or I fight it and then I pay the price. Physically. Mentally.

If the Vision starts during the night, then it’s fitful, feverish sleep, or no sleep at all. I find it hard to focus on other things when the Vision is strong, when I’ve been postponing it, because, I don’t know, I’m fighting a troll in the Wavering Woods. It doesn’t care that Baz has stuff to do. It doesn’t care that I have fights to fight. It comes and ruins my mind with need.

It’s not very sustainable, even if the touches are nice, even if the friendship with Baz is an unexpected reward.

“Do you think the New Moon spell is going to work?” I ask after a while, when the sun has approached the horizon, flirting with it.

“Do you doubt both Bunce and me?”

“I mean. You can’t know for sure. What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then we try something else.”

“And if that doesn’t work?”

“Then we try something else, Snow.”

“But we can’t do that forever. What if I’m stuck like this, what if I can’t, like, you know?”

“I don’t know.” 

I can’t stop this torrent of worry.

“What if you’re stuck with me?” I wail.

He jerks away from me. Losing the support of his back I almost topple to the ground, but manage to catch myself at the last moment.

He moves to the side so that he can glare at me.

“Don’t worry, that won’t happen.”

“But if it does,” I whine. I don’t know why I’m pushing. I’m positive Penny and Baz are the smartest people I know, they’ll figure something out.

“If it does, Crowley, then it does.”

“But you can’t keep on accommodating me.”

“Watch me.”

He sounds ticked off. His words are both a challenge and a threat. He looks intense, like he’s about to explode. Usually it’s me that’s about to explode and seeing someone else, especially him, in such a position has a calming effect on me. And I hear what he’s saying even though he isn’t actually saying it. 

He’s got my back. He doesn’t mind my touches. We’re friends. It’s alright.

I tug at one strand of hair that has fallen in his eyes.

“You’re it,” I tell him, no idea what I mean by that, but I just need something to dispel the urgency that I’ve brought about with my own dead-end line of questioning. 

“I’m not fucking it , you’re it ,” he retorts immediately, and then, after a beat, he rolls his eyes. “You make no sense.”

“According to you, I’m made of star matter, so from where I’m standing none of it makes sense.”

“So you’ve been listening to me, have you?”

“Of course.” I nod. I feel full of calm energy, the destructive turn of my anxiety has been swayed. Baz is willing to stand by me. Baz.

I plop myself on the blanket, stretching my legs. The sky is so high and blue, I can’t imagine that outside of our atmosphere there is vast blackness, interrupted only by stars and galaxies. There are a few lone birds catching evening bugs, hunting, soaring and then dropping down at great speed. No flocks yet.

The vision shows a flock of birds when my fingers thread through Baz’s hair. We might need to wait for a while. We might need to do this tomorrow again. 

I pat the spot beside me and say, “Baz. Tell me something.”

He gets this look in his eyes, like he’s holding back, but he nods and lies beside me. Our shoulders are almost touching. He closes his eyes when he says, “The first Mage to ever use magic did it by accident. It was during an early Lyrid actually.”

BAZ

I can’t tell him that the way the evening light falls on him makes him look golden. He’s glowing with life. I can’t tell him that I’m addicted to the gentle way his look strays to my mouth. Does he know that he’s doing that?

I can’t tell him that I’m so fucking grateful for this spell, or that the last time I was on this hill, during the Lyrid, I was tied in knots of resentment towards the entire world. I can’t say that now I’m pathetically happy and hopeful. Delirious with love.

I can’t tell him any of that, so instead I say, “The first Mage to ever use magic did it by accident. It was during an early Lyrid actually. He was a teenager that made the same wish 28 times.”

“What did he wish for?”

“What would you wish for?” The question slips from me before I can stop it, and it’s such an obvious slip: What do you wish for… so that I can give it to you.

Snow startles and stares at me, cocking his head to the side, suddenly perceptive.

“Nevermind,” I backtrack. “Don’t want to hear you wishing to get back with Wellbelove.”

For fuck sake, why did I say that? How do I cancel that? Should I roll my eyes to signal irony? No. Raise one eyebrow. Challenge him. (To a duel?) (No.) (We don’t do that anymore.) (We’re friends.)

“Huh.” Snow’s face scrunches, pondering. “I haven’t even thought about that. But now that you’re saying it…” Great job, me. I’ve given him a bloody idea!  

Snow looks me straight in the eyes when he answers,“No. I wouldn’t wish for that. Last time I was on this hill, it was a sodding nightmare.”

“Yea?”

“Agatha dumped me on Valentine’s, so like, two months prior to the Lyrid, on this same spot. Well, not really here, more like, I dunno, that spot -” he points to his right and then falters. “Or that one.”

“For fuck sake, Snow, get to your point, will you?” I’m anxious and impatient to know where he’s going with this tale of heartbreak and woe.

He’s sheepish when he replies. “I was kinda down. because I was so used to being with Agatha, and if it had been real, shouldn’t I have suffered more when it ended?”

That is such a good observation out of introspection, that it leaves me speechless. 

“Plus, everyone around me was being coupley, and I guess I wished I had something, y’know, real.”

There is a crackling tension between us. Or am I imagining it? Snow clears his throat, dispelling the feeling. “What did that bloke wish for? The one that wished for it 28 times?”

“Oh. He wished for winter not to end. He was a spoiled brat. An aristocrat who’s had his first crush during the winter and wanted that to last.” He was a Pitch ancestor.

“It obviously failed.” Snow waves his hand around, as if to show the rampantly growing spring greenery.

“No it didn’t. Have you heard about the year without a summer? The little Ice Age? 1816? It backfired on everyone else, less on him. A year of winter doesn’t bode well for growing food, you know. Poor stupid sod got disowned for his mistake. He cost his family a lot of wealth…”

“Why do some wishes come true and others don’t?”

“They never do come true, not in the same way you think. Like with genies, you never get the essence of what you wish but some sort of distorted version. That’s why we still need to study these phenomena.”

“You haven’t answered me, tho.”

I comb my hair back with my fingers. It makes me nervous to think of this kind of unpredictable magic. It has so much potential, if only the magickal theorists put their minds to actually exploring it, then it wouldn’t be so unpredictable. 

“Stop it, your hair is perfect. Answer my question.”

I do stop combing it, even if it feels like I’m not done. I take a deep breath instead and the fresh spring air calms me. I hold Snow’s eyes and answer him.

“I think it’s magickal alignment. Intention has to be strong enough and aligned with the original magick of the astronomical event. And power, of course. The mage has to be powerful. And no one has ever been as powerful as you, Simon.”

He groans, hiding his face in the crooks of his elbows. “I don’t know why it took me so long to accept this, but it’s clear now, I must have made a wish during the Lyrid meteor shower. I didn’t wish for anything specific… just for something. 

“I remember the wanting, it was fucking visceral. My magic is always anything but straightforward. I fucked up, Baz, just like the fellow with the winter, I dragged other people into my mess.”

“Do you remember how you phrased it, specifically? Any key words?”

He shrugs helplessly. “No? I was half asleep by the second half of the workshop. My mind was scrambled.”

“Try to remember what you wanted. It might help to know what exactly needs to happen for the spell to run its course. You know, spells aren’t infinite.”

“Mine might be.”

“We’ll fix it though. On the new moon. Bunce and I have a plan, remember?” As much as you can have a plan in an understudied field in which the two of us have massive disagreements.

“I know.” He sucks on his teeth, but doesn’t follow up on my question.

When long moments pass without an answer from him, I turn my eyes to the sky. “Let’s wait for the flock of birds then.” 

We lie side by side. The blanket underneath us feels too small for the both of us. Our shoulders are touching, and I don’t know who moved closer and when. At some point there’s a gust of wind that showers us with cherry flower petals, from the few trees to our right. The petals tangle in Snow’s curls and get in his mouth when he laughs. I wonder if I were to kiss him now, would the kiss taste like cherry flowers? Is this how I will remember spring from now on - Simon Snow with petals in his hair, smile on his freckled face?

Snow pushes himself on his elbows, shakes his head like a wet dog and the petals fall to the blanket.  He aims a crooked smile at me and turns on his side, facing me.

“You look like a woodland creature,” he tells me and plucks a petal from behind my ear.

If I speak I’m in great risk of declaring my undying love. So I swallow back any words and try not to stare. He removes petals from my hair, one by one, then when there are no more he starts combing my hair with his fingers.

“Perfect,” he declares, lying on his back again. But his hand remains in my hair. He takes individual locks of hair between thumb and forefinger and rubs them.
I’m ensnared again by the gravitational pull of his unwavering attention and scoot closer. I curl my fingers in the fabric of the blanket. If I reach out to mirror his actions, I will give in and pull him into me. And we’re friends. We’re friends. Isn’t this magickal enough? Isn’t this enough?

Why isn’t this enough? It’s all I’ll get. It should be fucking enough.

I’ll make it enough.

“We’re supposed to watch the sky for birds. What was it that you said? Crows? That’s a murder of crows.” I squint, pointing at the two dozen birds cawing in the sky.

“No. Geese,” he says quietly, but his fingers are never still in my hair.

In the spring symphony of nature around us, his gentle touch coaxes me into a complete sense of serenity. My eyelids flutter close as I find it harder and harder to keep my eyes open. Snow turns completely on his side, his knees bumping mine. He keeps playing with my hair and I fall asleep, under the soft sound of his even breathing and of birds calling out to each other in the sky.

Chapter Text

BAZ

During the third week of the truce, Snow’s Visions focus on one thing - cuddling - so basically, a new torture device slash test of my self control. I'd like to say that Penelope’s sense of propriety wins over her academic curiosity and she gives us privacy when she can, but I can't. It’s the opposite, actually, even though it works perfectly for us. Penelope gets sidetracked with her aura research, her Lyrid glasses prove to be an attention black hole during the day. She needs to gather more data and starts getting people’s written consent before scanning their auras (which, as Snow remarks, she didn’t ask of us).

With the extra work she’s been putting in, she has to cut short our nightly ritual of trying to break the spell. Some nights she waits for Simon to make a wish upon the first shooting star of the night. She then dutifully checks in her glasses if Simon’s aura has changed, (it never has) and calls it a night after a few minutes of slow dragging chit chat. 

Meanwhile, Snow and I are doing the Vision’s bidding everywhere: legs tangled on the sofa in the communal area; in the library on the beanbags, his head on my shoulders as I tutor him on his Greek; on the great lawn, having lunch outside, my feet in his lap, the scent of spring flowers and cut grass swirling in the air; in our room with Snow’s head cradled in my lap as I read him from Carl Sagan’s The Cosmos. If I squint just right - we’re basically a couple.

I fight with all my might to not see the cuddling through romantic lenses. But it’s a Herculean task. He puts his arm around me when I’m reading, fingers splayed on my waist, making me think words like possessive, and claiming. Then he lays his head on my chest when I rest after training, arm draped around my middle, making me yearn for a life in which this is the norm, and not the exception. Not because of a Vision, but because it’s how we are.

We have so much information on each other from all the enemying around all these years that all it takes is to turn that information around and use it for other purposes. Circe, I have so much information on him that I could love Simon Snow for an eternity.

But it turns out, so does Snow.

He knows my eating habits, my hunting habits - even though he hints thickly at the fact that he’s ok with that and would like to join me. 

Snow also knows when I’ve talked to my family and gotten into an argument with them. He used to be extra insufferable in the past, now he offers support. I even tell him one of the reasons my Father is riding me especially hard lately. The magnificent Malcolm Grimm doesn’t approve of my passion for the unprestigious, underfunded, misunderstood magickal astronomy. It’s too close to Normals’ science, it’s not traditional enough. In his eyes, if I am to follow any career, it should be that of a barrister, or better yet: leave careers to Normals and just manage the Grimm-Pitch estate and do investments.

Gazing at stars is too… well, frankly, it’s too gay for Father. It’s beyond his horizon of understanding.

That night, after I tell Snow about my dad and his expectations, he produces a two person air mattress, blankets spelled to keep extra warmth and demands we spend the night out on the hills, to “stargaze together, because, no offence to the 50% of your genes Baz, but your father is a complete knob.”

He doesn’t invite Penelope and we don’t do anything remotely related to trying to break Snow’s spell. So it feels so much like a date, it messes me up. I’m spewing facts after facts all the way to Snow’s picnic spot. I've no idea how he stomachs me, but he seems happy to listen, hanging onto each of my words.

Afterwards, when my nerves have settled, we talk about everything. He asks me what I'd do with my life if there were no one to expect anything from me, and I almost say I would love you, and study metaphysics in astronomy. I manage to go around the first part and reply, “Something like what we’re doing now. Investigating the way stars and magic intersect in us.” 

He likes that, by the way he smiles at me, his blanket pooled in his lap. (He’s a furnace and furnaces don’t need extra heating.)

We make scenarios about what our selves would be like in alternative universes – it turns out, Snow researched (researched!) the concept of multiverses after watching a movie called Source Code.

“Can’t believe you haven’t seen it! It’s time loops and action, and mystery and fucking Jake Gyllenhaal is fit as hell…”

“I can’t believe you don’t remember the name of Professor Anthony J.C., where the C stands for Crowley, by the way, so it shouldn’t be so hard to remember, but you recall the perfect pronunciation and I suspect, in absolute horror, - even the spelling of that actor’s name?”

“You don’t get it because you haven’t seen it.”

“We should watch it some time, then,” the words slip out of my mouth and it’s as if someone struck a match and lit up Snow’s face. 

“You’d like that? That would be great! Penny never wants to watch american pop movies with me, although I’m almost 100% certain she has the entire Guardians of the Galaxy playlist in her phone and at least one bookmark of Nebula fanfic.”

In shock at Penelope containing new multitudes, I miss the opportunity to ask what Snow’s been doing in Penelope’s bookmarks. Instead, things begin to make sense about his love for movies. It’s the only good thing that his summers are made of. Isolated from everyone and everything he loves, Snow consumes everything, gobbles up films indiscriminately almost.

His films are the equivalent of my stars. I escape in Astronomy, in metaphysics. The cosmos is my favourite escapism, his - visual stories. It makes me stupidly happy that we get to escape together now. (It makes me almost ask him to spend the next summer with me.)

Because of the closeness we achieve, it hits me hard when Snow becomes quiet and avoidant. It’s like walking outside and suddenly finding that winter has returned in the middle of the spring. That all the lovely flowers are dead, covered under a suffocating layer of wet snow.

It doesn’t take a private investigator to work it out that Snow’s newest Vision is freaking him out. In the morning he wakes before me, then he skips class. Classic avoidant tactic. When I see him at lunch, he dodges my questions, mouth full of crumbles as he scrambles away. Then disappears somewhere for hours.

***

I corner Penelope when she’s refilling her water bottle. She's at the only drinking fountain that Garreth can’t put his entire mouth over the top of the nozzle, like a fucking barbarian. 

“Hey, Bunce.” I still call her Bunce, even though in my mind, she’s Penelope. I fear soon she’ll become Penny. And, Magic forbid, will morph into the shortest, most affectionate `Pen`. (Shudder.)

“Hey, Pitch.” I reckon she’s onto me. She knows she’s growing on me, hence her cocky smirk and calling me Pitch. Since the truce with Simon, she started calling me Pitch, even though before I was Baz to her. It’s like she’s pulled a Uno reverse card on me, calling my bluff. I don’t know how to react. Unfortunately, I can’t follow the most dramatic rule and start a fight with her, I need info on Simon’s wearabouts. (Funny how in my head Snow is more often Simon. But I try to fight it when I speak to him. As far as he knows we’re in a temporary truce. I can’t call him Simon. That would be like confessing my love for him.)

“What are you up to, Bunce?” I ask, setting in motion a previously prepared 5 step plan to get intelligence on Snow without actually asking her.

“I don’t know where Simon is,” Penelope replies after a long pause. She closes the lid of her bottle and adds, “Why do you ask?”

“I didn’t! I literally asked what you are up to.” Since when is Penelope so socially perceptive?

“Hm. Ok. Must have misheard. I’m actually heading to the campus choir rehearsal.”

“The Glee club? Why?” My curiosity wins over and I skip the plan entirely. Watford has had several attempts at establishing extracurricular activities but they all fail. All except lacrosse and football. This year they’re trying out a school chorus. I’m afraid it’s going to be the third one that sticks.

“For my aura research.”

“How about some Simon research?”

“Are you calling me a bad friend?” She doesn’t sound threatening though, so I assume she’s joking.

“Are you a bad friend?” I’m just naturally drawn to playing with fire apparently.

Penelope cracks a smile. “I’m the best, actually. I figure the New Moon ritual is the most logical thing we can try. I’ve exhausted all the literature I could find.”

“Which highlights the need to be creating more of it.” I’ll never not push for more research in the field of Astronomy and Metaphysics. 

“Exactly what I’m doing right now. Actually,  before I go, can I get your written consent to scan your aura.”

“Bunce,” I exclaim. “Are you planning to get this thing published at some point?”

Her cheeks heat and I know I’m right. Otherwise she wouldn’t be bothering with the written part of the consent. (Or with consent at all. Penelope strikes me as someone who values result over means.)

“I might.”

I sign my name in her list and she puts on her Matrix glasses. (Can’t unsee it now, that’s how Simon refers to them at the end of each spell-breaking failed attempt.)

“Anything new?”

“Er, no. Same thing, same thing.” Her eyes get shifty as she folds her Matrix glasses, hiding them in their case. “Gotta run now, bye!”

“Penelope!” I call after her, before she rounds the corner.

“Do you really not know where he is?”

She gives me a soft smile, “No, Baz. I’d tell you if I did. But he’s ok. I talked to him before lunch, he seemed agitated, but fine.” Then, probably aiming at giving me a heart attack, Penelope jogs back to me and gives me a one armed hug - fleeting, but strong.

“I’m glad you’re there for him,” Penelope Bunce says, looking earnest. The ground doesn’t open to swallow me in it, and before I get to reply, she runs off in the direction of awful acapella rhythms. 

***

At night, I return from my hunt to find Simon on my bed, knees hugged closely to his chest. 

He startles when I enter, squinting at the turned on lights. Relief mixed with embarrassment settles on his tired face.

“Oh hi. Have you seen my roommate?” I ask. He just stares. Confused.

“He’s the stubbornest bravest nightmare of a Mage and he might be my friend, actually?”

“He is,” Snow says quickly. “The latter.”

Pleasure blooms inside my chest at his admission. It’s not a love confession, but it’s something. (I’ll take it.)

 “Yea? You know him? He never backs down from a challenge, but he’s gone missing today. I believe he’s gone in search of his balls.”

Snow snorts ungracefully. He unfurls his limbs and stretches in my bed. It gives me images I shouldn’t have right now, but doesn’t he look just right in my bed?

He must have decided to act on the Vision, otherwise he wouldn’t be smiling stupidly at me now. 

“Did you finally grow a pair, Snow?” I continue, a little too earnestly, maybe. “I thought we were past this pointless reluctance. Just admit that my touch has healing effect and that it’s what you need and I’m marvellous and generous and so I allow it, and let’s get on with it.”

My incoherent tirade achieves its goal, making his expression relax even more. His eyes crinkle with the brightness of his smile. I raise one eyebrow, advancing in the room and taking a seat on his bed. Tit for tat and all that.

I take off my jacket, giving him time to reply. 

Snow buries his face in my pillow, muttering something that not even my vampire hearing can catch.

“Pardon?”

Snow shows his face and says in one breath, “Can I go to bed with you tonight?” 

My jaw must be hanging loosely, hinges screeching, because he rolls his eyes in an uncharacteristic move, cheeks turning pink. “Not like that, Merlin.”

 I can’t help but notice the way his cheeks redden even more as he holds my gaze. He tugs at his curls, in anguish over having to proposition me and pushes himself to a seating position, mirroring me. 

“Like, can I lie with you in bed and spoon you.” 

Be still my heart.

“Big spoon or small spoon?” I ask, completely serious.

“Is that your only comment, really? How are you so chill about this?” His agitation seems to grow.

I raise one eyebrow, fixing him with my best unimpressed look until he relents and says, “Big spoon. You know I do the touching.”

But it’s not really accurate though. In his Visions there are things I do, too. Yes, he initiates it all, but I’m there doing stuff. Then, we usually do more than the prescribed Vision touches. He does more. I do more. The thought is thrilling.

He doesn’t address it. I don’t address it. We’re waltzing around it, like real British men do. 

“Ok, and how is that different from what we’ve been doing the entire week?” I ask, exasperated with how his mind is sometimes a fucking mystery to me. This has had him in knots? 

He bounces a bit on the bed, groaning. “I don’t know. I don’t know why it’s fixated on embraces this week. But up until I decided to talk to you, and you actually entered the room, I couldn’t see straight with pain. It’s so bloody loud, it hurts like a motherfucker. It grows in intensity and pushes against my cranium until I can’t hear myself think…”

“Huh. Didn’t know you did that.”

“Did what?” 

Another raised eyebrow, to let him figure it out himself. When he does, he acknowledges my wits with a pillow to my head. The only response I expect, really. 

“Har har, hilarious Baz. So can we?”

“Can we spoon ?” I wiggle my eyebrows at him, maintaining a cool facade when my insides have probably melted in one gooey substance.

“Such a ridiculous word.” Simon untangles his curls with a shake of his head. “Spooning.”

“What would you like it to be instead? Forking?” I shoot.

He widens his eyes and presses his forefinger under one eyebrow, pushing it up in a mock copy of the way I raise it. I rewind what I’ve just said, hearing myself. I can’t believe I walked in on that myself.

Snow crumbles in laughter.

SIMON

It struck me today that I’ve never really cuddled with anyone for sleep.  It’s kind of befitting that it’s Baz, with whom I’ve been sharing a space for so long. 

I didn’t tell Baz why the Vision freaked me out, but I suppose he’ll find out soon. In all the previous Scenes I never really touched Baz’s bare skin in other places than his hands. I’ve shaken his hand. I’ve held it. Hands are always visible. Hands are friend zones.

Every other touch - on his legs, his shoulders, his back - it’s all been through fabric. 

This time… Fuck. This time though.

And then there’s the conversation with Penny. 

“It’s definitely sexual.” I was never good at walking around a point that’s burning.

“Oh.”

“ Oh? Penny! Why aren’t you more surprised? Last time you yelled it to everyone in hearing range. And now I’m stating it.”

“I’ve been doing some thinking, Si. And it's an unlikely coincidence that your Visions are specifically about Baz. The spell could have latched onto anyone, but it chose him.”

“Yea, because he was the closest.”

“Or maybe because that’s how you wanted it. Like, deep, deep, deep down.”

And then she made me sign a paper stating that I consent to my aura being scanned, like we haven't been friends forever. 

“It's a necessary formality, Si. I’m totally gonna get this published,” Penny said excitedly, her Matrix glasses making her look a little scarier than usual. I knew there was no point continuing this conversation, now that she switched her attention to her academic pursuits. 

But her words stayed with me. And they rang terrifyingly true.

***

Baz comes out from the bathroom completely composed. As always whenever he puts on that mask of absolute serenity I want to smash it to pieces, so I say, “So. Do you wanna spoon or fork?” It sounds like fuck more than I intended to and I give myself excited stirrings. I’m my own casualty. Fuck. How do I do that? 

Finally, his expression cracks and he rolls his eyes at me.

“I’ll wash first, though.” I hurry to get in the shower.

By the time I’m back, after a prolonged freak out in the shower, I find Baz in his bed. The lights are turned off, but the moon wards off the darkness. 

I approach, soft steps, breath catching. The moment blooms, precious and fragile. Moonlight makes Baz’s shape look ethereal. (Like I’ve made him up and he’ll disappear any moment now.)

Quietly, I kneel by his bed, folding my arms on the edge of his mattress and propping my chin on my forearms. Baz is lying on his back, hands behind his head. Even though his breath is even, and his eyes are closed, I know he isn’t sleeping. His jaw is set too rigidly. 

I blow some air in his face. His eyelids move, but his eyes stay closed.

I move closer and stop an inch away from him. In a frenzy, I sift through all the possible ways to get Baz to admit he’s awake: blow some more air, lick his cheek, bite his nose, bite his jaw? (I like the idea of biting some part of him a lot.)

No biting. Spooning. 

The Vision demands, shooting a pang of pain through my head. By Magic it’s annoying.

So instead of all the fun options, I choose the lamest - words. (Penny could be proud of me.)

“Baz. I know you’re not sleeping.”

He turns his face to me and opens his eyes, meeting mine. With his face turned, we’re incredibly close. My breath catches. (How is he so beautiful?)

“Then what are you waiting for?” His voice is hoarse. (I want to bite it.) (I know it’s not possible. For once, it’s not gonna stop me from wanting it.)

“Permission,” I reply, all breath and no sound.

“It’s granted. You know that.” 

I shrug. I consider it. I nod. I guess I do know that.

I push myself up on my feet and take off my t-shirt. It feels like an erotic thing to do when Baz is watching me. (I like his eyes on me.) (I like it a lot.)

“You took off your shirt.” He swallows loudly.

“Are you scandalised?” I wish he were scandalised. (I might flex my bicep a little.) (I think he notices.) (Good.)

His mouth crooks in a smirk. “I know you’re a nudist at heart, Snow, you never wear enough clothes in our room.” 

My heart flip-flops from the way he’s looking at me.

I climb in his bed, under the covers. The quiet grows deeper and time rolls slower. The night, the moon, his breath, crickets and the splash of water from the moat. His eyes that roam over my face. It all feels more somehow.

I lie on my side. We commence the staring game. We’ve done this before, wagered who would yield first. The Vision stirs impatiently - our bodies pressed together, his back against my chest, my nose buried in cedar and bergamot, tickled by the fine hairs on the back of his head. I try to stifle it down. In response, it retaliates with a roundhouse kick to my right temple. I wish it would just wait and let me savour this, instead of rushing me to do its magickal bidding. 

Baz loses the staring game and turns his face towards the windows. I don’t think Baz knows about the consequences of his magnetic field being so strong. Even without his gaze ensnaring me, I’m falling into him. I keep on staring, even though the game is over.

 “Do you know that technically the light from the moon is originally the light from the sun?” he says, then clears his throat before continuing. “But because the moon has a different magickal force, it transforms the light so that when it hits earth it’s something completely new? That’s why moon magic is birth magic.”

“Wow. So that’s why vampires are ok with moonlight but less so with sunlight? Because it’s been transformed, so they don’t have to protect themselves so much?” I admit I’m being cheeky, but how long can a bloke wait for his roommate to confess to being a vampire? I’m not made of stone, you know.

“If I ever come across a vampire, I’ll ask, Snow.” His voice holds notes of humour, it’s the verbal equivalent of him tipping his hat to me. (I love it!)

“Aha. Do that.”

Baz finally breaks his gaze away from the moon and looks back at me. “What are you waiting for?” he asks, echoing the question from earlier. This time I either tell him that I’m nervous or that I’m keeping something from him. So I choose to shrug. 

“You haven’t turned to offer me your back.” It’s true. But it’s not the answer. 

“Well, excuse me. I’ve never done this before.” Baz says, indignant even as he sounds sheepish and breathless.

“I haven’t done this either.”

“The spooning or the forking?”

My face heats. I hope he doesn’t see. (I hope he sees.)

“Neither.” Agatha wasn’t a cuddler and we tried sex, but failed. (Seeing her girlfriend I now know why.) (Feeling my own erratic heartbeat in this moment, I now know why even more.)

“Are you ok with it being with me?”

“Are you ?” I shoot back.

“Who taught you to answer a question with a question?”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Merlin, you’re annoying.”

“Am I? Why is that?”

A giggle escapes my mouth and soon Baz joins, chuckling and shaking his head at me in disbelief.

With a last huff of laughter, Baz turns his back to me - an offer of trust. A relinquishing of control. He can’t see me. Yes, we’re friends, but also, we’ve been enemies for so long. (So much wasted time.)

Something churns inside my chest, and it’s not Vi sion related, it’s me related. A lot of what I’m feeling lately is me related. It’s so easy to be fond of Baz when he allows me to be close. I wonder if my hating him for so long was resentment for him pushing me out, closing himself off from me. Now that he lets me in, I find my heart swelling with emotion. 

Meanwhile, the Vision is a bright flame in my mind, a director with a specific image in mind. A bossy, angered director. Nope. Nope. Skin on skin. It demands.

“Fuck.”

“What?” Baz half turns to me. “Don’t tell me it’s the lighting, Snow.”

I push my forehead into the meat of his shoulder, shaking my head at the absolute ridiculousness of the moment. “No, it’s not the lighting.”

“Then what?”

“It wants skin on skin.” And I wouldn’t mind some skin on skin either. But I can’t say that .

Baz’s mouth is slack with this piece of information. When it’s parted like this, it must be really soft to be kissed. 

The thought is fleeting but so, so familiar and I catch it right as it’s about to disappear. I reckon it’s not the first time I’ve had it, but it’s the first time I’ve caught it.

Baz, ever so helpful, recovers and says, “So, should I take my t-shirt off?”

Ah. If only it were this simple.

“No,” I sigh the word out. “I’ll... I’d rather just do it than say it.” For the love of Magic, please agree. I beg of him silently. Don’t make me put in words what I’m seeing in my head. If I have to spell it out, with his eyes on me, I’d probably combust. Not of embarrassment. Of arousal.

“Ok. We’re friends. I trust you,” he says. I swallow back all my doubts and self revelations about sexuality and desire. Now is not the time to complicate this already uneven relationship.

“Thank you,” I say solemnly. Baz shifts until he’s fully on his side, knees bent.

I slip my arm underneath his and drag myself closer until my chest presses against his back. He’s so bloody solid, feral things stir in me. (Hungry things.) 

“Ok?” I check, my voice hoarse from tension lapping at my nervous system. 

“I need to, ah – ” I wiggle my knee in between Baz’s and he lifts his leg enough for me to slide my knee in between his.

“Mmm…” he makes this humming noise and I ask, “OK?”

“Yup.” But he doesn’t sound OK, he sounds a little bit strangled. 

“Am I holding you too tightly?” I check.

“Nope.” The same strangled voice. I release my hold on him, stroking circles in the middle of his chest. Trying to calm me, while under the guise of calming him. I’m way too turned on by this, as I’ve predicted. It’s just the sensation of his bum against my groin. The intimacy of the pose, I tell myself. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Right? 

Ah, who am I lying to? I might as well come clean about it.

“Full disclosure, I’m a little affected by your footballer arse, Baz,” I admit. “So, sorry, I guess?”

“Mhm,” he hums, infuriatingly unspecific. Where is his glorified eloquence when all he’s been doing for the past two minutes is yup- ing and mmm- ing?

“Are you affected?” I ask after a few moments of tense silence. I need something here, anything at this point, before moving on to the next part of the Vision.

“I’m not not affected,” Baz replies and for a wild moment I imagine lowering my hand and feeling how not not affected he is. I imagine grinding my erection against his arse, and making him understand just what he does to me.

But that is inappropriate. Right?

We’re friends, friends don’t do shit like that. He said it himself. I’m his friend. Friends do banter and don’t rub their cockstand on the other’s arse. No matter how appealing that might. 

Banter. Banter is safe. I can do that. 

“Is it my strong arms or my charming personality that do the affecting ?”

“Oh sod off, Snow,” he retorts but I can hear a smile in his voice so I relax. We’re ok. Time to move to the Vision’s favourite bit. 

“I need to move your shirt up.” There. I fucking said it. Where’s my bloody medal?

“Mmm?” Baz is true to form, pushing my sanity one bit further over the edge.

I swear to Merlin if he mmm s one more time I’ll… 

Like a brave champion, I go on explaining: “That’s the thing I thought I could avoid doing.”

“Oh.”

Great. Now we have a new syllable. It’s yup , mmm - which isn’t even a syllable but just a sound , and now we have the oh. I’ll become a torture survivor by the time this Vision is enacted. 

“Is this you mispronouncing ok?” I snap. “Or is this one of those body swapping situations? Are we Freaky-fridaying?” 

Baz erupts in laughter, and I follow him, a little hysterical. He’s shaking me with him and dipping the mattress even lower. I slide closer. (It’s the mattress! It’s the laughter! I’m not sliding on purpose!)

His laughter dies down.

“Funny, Snow,” he says, smile still in his voice as he’s coming down from the heights of laughter. 

Baz sounds fond. I have to fight this burning desire to gather him to me, to dig my fingers in his naked flesh, to fit my teeth to every single bit of him, plaster myself to his body until there’s no distance between us, like, fucking ever . I’d keep him safe from his arsehole father and from anyone that wants to take the stars away from him. 

My breath grows laboured with how much I have to hold back, fighting this inner beast. I’m shocked, worried by this level of protectiveness and possessiveness. 

As if sensing my growing intensity, his fingers wrap around mine, where I’m clutching the fabric of his t-shirt. His skin is cool against my burning heat. He’s gentling, quieting my storms. 

We lie like that, quiet, breathing in sync, while my heartbeat calms down. The desire to swallow him whole transforms into heat that extends its tendrils all over my body.

I take open mouthed breaths at the nape of his neck. I’m such a mess.

“You ok, Snow?”

“Yes,” I say, but shake my head in a no. I don’t know , is what I want to say.

In wanting Baz so much, I don’t know what to do with myself.

He smooths his hand over mine and slowly I unclench my fingers, flattening my palm against his sternum. His fingers are cool and long as he slides them up my wrist, forearms, his touch certain while explorative. Goosebumps rise in the wake of his touch. (Fuuuck.)

“How about now?” His hand settles against my bicep, a grounding weight. An anchor.

“Yes. Thanks. I’m good.” 

Get on with it, the Vision pounds against my cranium, the only thing that is off about this moment. It’s also a reminder that Baz is doing this because he’s helping me out. The notion sinks heavy in the pit of my stomach.

Baz squeezes my bicep once, bringing me back to him from the dark turn of my thoughts. Whatever the Vision may demand, I’m not alone in it. 

I move my hand to the hem of his t-shirt and slip three fingers underneath it. I flip my hand, brushing knuckles to his exposed skin, bunching the fabric in my fist

“ Oh… ” Baz exhales his most favourite syllable.

I continue sliding my hand up his abdomen, feeling the tight muscles beneath cool skin, the feathering of coarse hair above his navel. I swallow my nerves and continue. He’s gone rigid underneath my touch, but not in a bad way. 

“Ok?” I check, my voice made of sandpaper.

“Mmm.” 

I'd laugh if I wasn’t so turned on by this continuous word reduction from Baz Pitch, the king of comebacks.

The fabric catches between his side and the mattress. I tug and he lifts his torso allowing me to keep pushing his shirt up.

I know where the Vision wants it. It’s somehow more lewd than if he weren’t wearing anything at all. His state of being half undressed has my imagination in flames. 

I stop at his solar plexus, turning my palm and splaying my greedy fingers on his skin. I press his back harder into my chest. I’m so hard if I move an inch he would feel it.

The Vision stirs in my mind and dissipates as this erotic snuggling sinks in. 

I consider maybe staying a little longer. The idea of falling asleep like this makes my head spin with pleasure. Maybe I could pretend to have already fallen asleep? But Baz would call me out on it, for sure.

Reluctantly, I remove myself from his back. 

I don’t know what I’ll do after the New Moon. I can't go back to not having access to Baz. Not being able to touch him. Not receiving his touches back will be devastating.

“Thank you for the cuddling session and confusing stirrings, and have a good night.” I babble, but he doesn’t reply. 

“Are you rolling your eyes? I bet you’re rolling your eyes.” Not even a mmmm. Not even a blasted yup.

Silently, Baz twists around to look at me. I can’t see his face very well. I wish I did, though.

“I bet you can see me,” I add, trying to get a reply from him. But my own voice is more air than sound. I need to calm the fuck down, but if I go in the shower he’ll think I’m wanking. He won’t be wrong. But I could take a cold shower? But then, I’d be admitting to the extent of my confusing stirrings. 

I need a distraction, something to tame this beast inside me. I grasp at straws, remembering that we’ve run out of bets for each other. I need to make a list of new ones. Yes, that should help me calm down.

I climb back in my lonely bed, my cock still hard. I try not to think about sexuality, desire, and the shape of Baz’s arse, or his hand on my bicep. Or the scrape of hair on his chest. Or the list of things that I want to do to him, with him. The list that’s been deep, deep, deep down inside my head.

I screw my eyes shut, forcing myself to breathe.

I attempt to recall all the wagers Baz and I have been having, so that I don’t repeat myself in this new list that I’m making. 

In a minute, it’s clear that I’m failing miserably. I can’t stop wanting. My hand drifts to my cock. Great, now I’m gripping myself through my pyjama bottoms. Stop being hard! I will my body to listen. It rebels and doesn’t.

“Snow.” 

I startle, retrieving my hand. Burning with shame, like he’s caught me wanking to a picture of him.

“Yes?” I croak.

“Come back here,” he rasps.

 It takes me a moment to grasp what he’s saying. But when I do, I scramble out of my bed and climb into his.

I fall into the same position easily, he lifts his leg for my knee to go in between his. We’re puzzle pieces that know how to fit together. He’s rearranged his t-shirt back in place, which is good because I can't handle any more skin on skin right now. My arm circles his waist, hand splayed on his abdomen. Baz threads his fingers with mine and draws my hand to his chest, inadvertently pulling me closer.

Baz makes himself comfortable and his arse settles directly against my erection, making my cock jerk. (He must feel that!)

Baz takes a long controlled breath. (Oh, he's feeling it alright.)

I don’t think I’m breathing at all. 

This feels so good . The pressure of his arse on my erection, the way our fingers are interlaced, the intoxicating scent of his hair, where my nose is buried. 

I have a vague thought that this is just a body reacting to another body, but I know it’s bullshit even as it passes through my head. It’s old and frayed and not very convincing. And I bid it goodbye.

I’m so turned on I can't imagine ever falling asleep. But I do. Almost instantly.

***

BAZ

It’s two days after the spooning session. The one that got Snow affected. Two days since I admitted (verbally) that he had me affected right back. Two days since I invited him (back) to my bed. And he came (back to my bed). He scrambled back in, all heat and dragging touches, laboured breath and hard on.

I’ve basically propositioned him. But keeping silent felt unbearable. To have had him so close for such a short time and then let him go? What am I? A martyr? A fucking criminal? Did I murder a unicorn to deserve such punishment?

In the span of several minutes while he held me for the Vision, his arms around me have become a vital thing. It was a matter of life and death that I got him back with me in the bed. Self preservation. Survival. 

Maybe he felt something similar, judging from the way he jumped right back.

And he was hard. Crowley he was so fucking hard. 

Despite it, Snow fell asleep in less than a minute. While I reeled from the reality of what was happening, he was snoring. (Befitting, somehow. For Snow to wreck me and then sleep.)

In the morning I woke up alone. His lingering scent on my sheets – the only proof that we’ve slept together.

There was a note on the pillow. “Gone on Mission with the Mage. See you soon. S x”

Was that an x, a kiss? Was that the beginning of a two x smiley face? Was that already on the ripped piece of paper when he wrote his note? Was it an oddly specific ink smudge?

Was that an x… a kiss?

Both he and Penelope went missing, which meant that I couldn’t talk to anyone about Snow. Not the way I wanted. There was no actual distraction. So I moped. I killed more rats than necessary, I cleaned our room, I considered getting a haircut. I started two new books, and couldn't read them without daydreaming. In the end I watched some movies that Snow can’t be stopped from ranting about. I took notes, as talking points for when he'd be back.

***

Now, as I make my way to breakfast, I find he’s returned, looking ragged. He’s outside the Mummers. The Mage with him. I’m fresh out of the shower, my hair still damp. I just couldn’t be bothered to dry it - I was too impatient to go out in search of Snow, and my eagerness has paid off. Here he is, returning to me. 

He looks haunted and that dampens my joy of seeing him. His freckles are standing out more than usually, due to the lack of colour in his cheeks. The Mage towers over him, wagging his finger like a fucking imbecile.

I loiter in the doorway, not wanting to draw too much attention to me, lest I make the Mage linger more. But I want to catch Snow’s eyes, to signal, Hey, I’m available. Do you want me to spell the Mage’s voice away? I’d do it, too.

Two days without satisfying the Vision must be to him what going without blood for too long is for me. The Mage is droning on about a warrior’s need for sustenance and that Snow shouldn’t allow himself to get too weak, and that “ You look like a ghost, my boy”. So the Mage still doesn’t know why Snow is so out of it on his missions. He doesn’t know about the Lyrid spell. The Mage is trying to convince Snow to go to breakfast, while Snow is arguing he needs to change first. And that’s when Snow sees me. Our eyes meet and his gaze clears. His shoulders straighten. Now that we’ve established visual contact, the Vision must accept his decision to take action. I can see it in the way his expression lightens up.

Emotions overlap in my chest- sadness that he’s been in pain, conflicted joy and guilt that I’m the way to ease that pain.

Simon smiles, ignoring the Mage now. He pushes his chair back while the Mage talks at him, and not dropping his gaze from mine, he walks to me, purposeful and determined. 

My stomach drops and flips. I can’t look away. The sensations from that night come back rushing.

He wanted me. There’s no denying it. Not even I can spin an angsty story around it to make it some kind of dramatic misunderstanding. Even after the Vision ended, he returned to me and he was hard. For me. 

Wordlessly, he takes my hand and I barely spare a glance for the Mage’s dropped jaw. I can't imagine anyone has ever walked out on one of his speeches. Snow pulls me after him back in the Mummers and up the stairs.

“Our room. Now,” he says. I nod. He doesn’t see it, because he’s staring straight ahead. I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back.

SIMON

Once in our room, I let go of his hand. We haven’t talked about sleeping together. Maybe we don’t even need to. Isn’t it obvious? The Vision seems to claim it’s obvious what we need to do.

I shut the door behind us and lean on it for moral support. My heart is racing with emotion. I’m giddy, like he’s my movie Christmas morning - all perfect, surrounded by golden light and the promise of something good. I’ve never had such a Christmas morning, I’ve learned about them through films. (This is better.)

“Are you alright?” Baz asks.

“Now, yes.”

“What is it?” he asks. I know he means the Vision.

“A kiss,” I say, almost breathless. The image vibrates violently - excitedly - in my head, blurring my vision for a moment with the anticipation of sensation, lips on lips, softness. An electrical storm contained in the wet slide of mouths and tongues. 

“A kiss,” he repeats without inflection. His tongue darts out to lick his upper lip. I unglue my eyes from his mouth and meet his gaze. His pupils have swallowed his irises. (Fuck.)

“Yea.”

I thought about it in the morning, when I woke up and the Vision was already there. But I thought I’d get us breakfast first, feed Baz before springing a kiss on him. Except I got intercepted by the Mage and taken away, Penny in toe. I pleaded with the Vision, that yes, I'd do it, of fucking course I would do it. But the more time passed, the more fighting I had to do as opposed to kissing, the angrier and meaner the Vision got.

Why are you fighting, when you could be kissing? The Vision seemed to ask and then proceeded to fuck me over right when I had to block an attack. (Penny had to heal me three times!)

I thought I'd die from the head spinning pain of it. The moment I saw Baz, it all went away, though. (He looked relieved, too.)

Right now, his expression doesn’t betray what he thinks about my answer. I hate that he does this so easily. That he hides so easily. Did I misread this? That night, when he asked me to come back, when he pressed into me. He said he was not not affected. It’s a direct quote. I remember.

”Where?” Baz stands unnaturally still in the middle of the room. He's peering at me through pupils that resemble those images of black holes, surrounded by the event horizon, swallowing everything in its gravity.

“Huh? Where?” I push my way through the haze of doubt and focus on Baz. “Here. In front of the door,” I say. “The background of the Vision has the same colour as the door.”

He groans. “No, Snow. Where do you kiss me? What kind of kiss?”

“Ah, well.” I’ve never been kissed anywhere else but on my mouth, so I sort of forgot that there are other options. The idea of other options with Baz makes my head spin. A list of all the places I'd like to kiss him rolls in my mind.

“On the mouth,” I reply, dutifully. 

He exhales shakily, and the first cracks in his demeanour appear. He’s nervous, excited. 

The morning light is generous with his countenance, washing him in golden light. The trill of birds and the whisper of wind moving through tree branches mixes with the sound of our laboured breaths. We're part of the morning spring now.

I need to know that he wants this too. I need to be sure. I search his face, grateful for the bright light of the day allowing me to see him clearly.

“I wish… ah. Fuck!” I start again, frustrated with myself. Maybe I should have listened to the Mage and gone to eat something first. “Argh. Listen, Baz!” Oh shit. I sound angry. It’s LACROSSE!!! all over again. I try to modulate my voice, but still it comes more forcefully than the intention behind it: “You don’t have to do it, if you don’t want it –” And yes, I mean it. He doesn’t have to. Really. I’m not his responsibility. But. I really wish he’d take me as his responsibility and snog me senseless.

“Y’know. Maybe… Maybe they can put me in a coma while Penny figures out a way to make the Visions stop.” My lame attempt at a joke falls flat between us. I’m not even sure it’s a joke. I know I can be funnier.

Amidst my humour failure, Baz shakes his head. His damp hair frames his face, a single droplet falling on his shirt. A strand of hair stays stuck to his temple and I desperately want to unglue it from there, to tuck it behind his ear... But I can’t spring additional touches on him, can I? (I haven’t seen him with his hair like this. We’ve been roommates for years! How was I deprived of this?)

When Baz speaks, he sounds strangled. He’s not even addressing my questions, he keeps his focus on the Vision kiss.

“Who kisses whom?” 

“Um, me, you? But – ” I close my eyes, the vision blaring under my eyelids - the feel of his skin under my thumbs, his damp hair warming under my palms, his breath mingling with mine. The sweet taste of his sigh against my mouth. “But you also kiss me back,” I finish my sentence boldly. “Which you don’t have to? I think. The Visions are about me doing the touching, so it could be just you know–” I almost say wishful thinking . Merlin and Morgana. What if it is wishful thinking? 

Before I manage to spiral in uncertainty he says, “Alright.” He looks at my face, expression still guarded, but hopeful. “So you kiss me first and I kiss you back. Got it. Sounds doable.”

“Maybe we should talk about it more?” I hope he says no, why am I even suggesting that? I’m cockblocking myself, Merlin’s tits just shut me up. I should just shove my tongue down his throat and let him know how I feel about this.

“Ok. Relax Snow, it’s going to be fine,” Baz says, cracking a smile. “Haven’t you ever played spin the bottle? It’s like that, only better, because it’s with me .”

His nonchalance doesn’t fool me, but makes me relax a little. 

“I hate the idea of making you.” I guess my voice comes out too honest, too vulnerable because he eyes me differently. He cocks his head to the side and then he moves lightning fast, pressing a kiss to my mouth. It’s soft, and he lingers only a second. I’m so shocked I barely register it, except for the lingering tingling on my lips after he’s moved away. He rolls his lips under his teeth for a moment, looking pleased with himself. I touch my mouth with the tips of my fingers, feeling branded.

“You’re not making me do anything I don’t already want to,” he says and oh my fucking God can he get any hotter?

“Alright. Yes. On with it.” I’m a man on a mission. (He’s my mission.)

“You also need context right?”

I nod dumbly.

“Direct us then,” he says.

“Ok. We’re closer.” Through superhuman strength I manage to gather my wits and produce this explicit sentence.

“C’mere then.” His voice has gone one octave lower and it messes with my head. Who is directing whom here?

I take two steps and stop when the tips of our toes are almost touching. I try to calm my erratic heart beat, but it’s just so excited. I take a controlled breath and it comes out shaky. 

Baz misinterprets and tries to soothe me, “Stop worrying Snow. I told you, I’m ok. I consent.” 

I nod. I got it when he kissed me. (Baz fucking Pitch kissed me. ) (And I was too shocked to kiss him back.)

Our eyes catch. I can’t look away for a long moment and then, when I do,  it’s only to stare at his mouth - it parts under my gaze, and his exhale is long and peppermint scented. The Vision hums its approval, the taste of sweet saliva and peppermint swirls in my mind. This is right this is right the Vision seems to chant. (Or it’s not the Vision?)

“Ok. We’re closer, what next?” His eyes are black pools ringed with silver.

“Your right hand is in my hair,” I say.

He makes a sound in the back of his throat as he slides his strong hand to the back of my neck and up into my curls. His hold is tentative, his fingers are long and cool. I resist the urge to lean back into it.

“Like this?”

“Um, hold me tighter?” OMG. I can’t believe I actually said that. Baz does though, and instantly it is a hundred times better. I give in and do lean in his touch. He takes a small step, slotting one foot in between mine. 

“What next?” His voice is almost a whisper. It feels so intimate and I think feverishly that everyone usually looks worse in the daylight, at closer inspection. But not Baz. And I know we’ve already blurred and crossed so many lines, but I want to cross them all, blur them until there are no lines except the ones we draw around us.

“Your left hand,” I manage, breaking through my spiralling thoughts. The thought of kissing Baz is a blasted galaxy swirling around, eating at other nebulous neighbours. There’s just the two of us and nothing else matters.

“Yea?” Merlin does he have to sound so sexy? What is his voice doing? 

“It’s on my hip.” The Vision pulsates, impatient to the point of pain… or is it my heartbeat, whooshing wildly in my ears?

He does this little exhale through the nose, like an almost sound and places his hand on my hip, as I asked. “Like this?”

“No.” I shake my head, relishing in the tight hold he has on my hair. It makes me weak in the fucking knees. He doesn’t relax his grip, not for a moment. I’m gagging for it. “Your, ah, fingers, are digging in my skin.”

This time he does make a muted sound and his hold tightens, and he draws me closer, and yes, like this, his thigh against my groin. We’re so close now that I have to look up at him, craning my head slightly back. Baz tightens his fist in my curls and tilts my head an increment further back, like he’s about to kiss me. (Like he’s about to bite me.)

And ok, I let out something akin to a moan, and I watch as his pupils dilate even more. I’m so grateful that this moment is not cloaked in darkness, but in light, because I get to see this. It’s like, we’ve finally thrown out our cloaks and our daggers, daylight making this moment golden. His eyes travel over my face, stopping and lingering on my mouth and I no longer have any doubts if he wants this. He does. 

“And you?” His voice belongs to a sex operator. People would fight over getting to hear it over the speakerphone. And I get to hear it, aimed at me.

“What?” I look up from his soft mouth and into his hooded eyes.

“Where are your hands, Simon?”

My knees really like the way my name sounds in his voice, with his posh accent, falling out of his lush lips. I look at my hands now, clutching his shirt in whiteknuckled fists. Oh, so that's how I’m holding on whenever my knees stop being functional. 

I know where my hands are supposed to be. From the Vision, but also from where I want them. The firm shape of his jaw, the lovely hill of his cheek bone under my thumbs.

I release his shirt and cradle his head with both my hands, letting my fingertips rest gently on his skin.

“Yes. Like this,” I confirm. The Vision confirms through me. (I want it to fuck off and let us kiss.)

“Like this,” Baz repeats, like he, too, has checked with something inside him and has deemed it the right fit.

“And now we kiss.” My voice has completely abandoned me, it’s just smoke and desire and rasping words. Baz brings me to him and we’re just breathing each other's air now, open mouthed and ridiculously close.

My mouth waters, my eyes blur with how good this anticipation feels… like stepping into daylight after an eighteen year long dark night.

BAZ

We’re not kissing. I don’t know why. I was promised kissing. But this wonderful “almost” , this “not yet” … it’s somehow better? It hurts in a very pleasurable way. We’re both sadists, we’re both masochists. We both want this. (I kissed him first!)

I know my hands have strayed up, away from his hips (where they’ve been directed to stay, digging in his flesh). Now they’re roaming under his shirt, mapping his back, electricity tingling the centre of my palms where warmth pools and swirls. He’ll have to direct them back for the Vision. Later, after I’ve gained control of them. 

Simon is growling when he starts walking me backwards toward the door.

“Maybe, ah, ah maybe we’re against the door?” he manages to say and my back meets the wood of the door but he doesn’t stop there. He moves forward until his body covers mine. Full body contact. He rubs his nose on my cheek, and lower, inhaling at the hinge of my jaw. 

“Merlin, you smell so fucking good,” he murmurs and his erection presses against my thigh, and if I move a bit to the left, there, like this, now he can feel mine too. I have no control over my insatiable hands. They touch the warm expanse of his back and then move lower, kneading the muscles of his arse over the fabric of his trousers. He growls louder at this, face buried in the crook of my neck, mouth open, teeth pressed over the tense muscle of my neck. He presses his hard cock into mine and I lose my sanity. All sorts of sounds are coming out of my mouth. Guttural, wanton sounds. 

I don’t usually get the things that I want. It’s not written in my stars. And yet.

And yet.

“Holy fuck,” I breathe, my eyelids fluttering close as Simon’s hand tilts my head. He burries his fingers in my hair, while his other hand tugs at the bottom of my shirt, searching for skin in a reminiscent way of that night when he drove me dumb with desire. He slips his fingers under the hem, and traces soft circles around my back dimples. 

“Is, is this what the Vision wants?” I ask, a glimpse of reason taking hold of the microphone for a moment. Is this what you want, is actually what I ask. 

“Who?” he says, putting a hint of distance between us, enough so that he can stare at me through golden fluttery eyelashes as he tries to focus on my face. How lovely he looks under the morning sunlight, cheeks ruddy, hair a mess.

“The, er, Vision?” I manage to say. While I focus on this piece of coherent conversation, my unsupervised hand slips under the band of Simon’s trousers and his pants. Now I’m groping his bare bum. And it’s glorious. He must agree, because his eyes roll backwards and for a moment he looks like a God of decadent pleasure. He’s so fucking gorgeous it almost hurts to look at him. 

All this time Simon Snow has been ruining my life by not being mine, and now he is. He finally is going to be mine.

“Fuck. Baz. It’s hard to concentrate on anything when you do that,” he confesses and presses a hot, open mouthed kiss on the side of my throat, hips canting forward, meeting mine.

“Is it the –” I’m not sure what I want to ask because he gives my mouth a cat lick and says,

“I want to kiss you.” He exhales a trembling breath and adds, “before giving the Vision what it wants. I want to kiss you, for myself. May I?” Already each of his words falls directly on my lips, the movement of his mouth grazing mine in butterfly kisses. 

I say, “Yea,” and he swallows the word as he kisses me against the door, coaxing my mouth open. Ever so slightly, we rut against each other, in the rhythm of our kiss, his fingers grazing my lower back, making me hum with pleasure and satisfaction.

SIMON

His mouth opens under mine and I slide my tongue inside, touching his. I don’t understand how it can be better than in the Vision, but it is. I move my hands to cup his face and angle it so that I can deepen the kiss and he holds onto me, grabbing my hips, fingers leaving imprints on my skin. I moan. The kiss deepens and the Vision sighs satisfied. I note it as an afterthought: we’ve accidentally enacted this particular fragment and it’s dissolved away - a content pervy tyrant.

I lean back trying to catch my breath. My lips tingle with awareness and the fresh memory of him. I’m a puddle under his hungry – openly wanting gaze. I’ve never seen Baz so open about anything before. (And he’s called me Simon.) I trace the shape of his jaw, his lips, curious fingertips following the contour of his cheekbones. He's so utterly, devastatingly beautiful. He leans into my touch, a purring cat.

Baz slowly moves his left hand from my hip, arm encircling my waste, slowly, giving me time to say no, probably. He brings me flush against him and another embarrassing sound comes out of my throat. Although, is it really embarrassing if it makes Baz’s hips cant forward, causing wonderful friction? I chase his mouth when he leans back to look at me, swallowing his words as they start to form. (Holy fuck, I’m on fire.)

I draw back from the kiss, enough to catch my breath, but my breath is his now. We’re blurring the edges of where one starts and the other ends.

“Is the Vision satisfied?” Baz asks and punctuates his question with an open mouthed, lewd kiss which starts and ends right when I want to sink into it. 

“Not sure,” I reply, and fall back into the kiss. Then: “Even if it is, I’ m not.” And that last part might come out as a growl. I’m not to be held accountable for any of the sounds I’m making when Baz and I are rubbing against each other, rutting, like the horniest of horny animals… and it’s fucking brilliant, too.

We snog for ages. At some point, I turn us around and move us until the back of his knees meet his bed and he falls back, dragging me with him. My world becomes filled with panting sounds, moans and the wet sound of hungry kissing. I’ve got him pinned, no distance between our bodies.

I’m wild with want. But I’m also pretty sure he agreed only to a snog. So I force myself to stop, and watch as Baz’s eyelids flutter open.

“It’s done?” His voice makes my stomach flip. 

I nod. “Yea.”

We untangle ourselves and I find myself in the very obvious situation of tented trousers, a wet spot marking how hard I’m leaking.

“I reckon I’m queer,” I tell Baz, looking at the ceiling, pressing the heel of my palm to my extremely obvious erection.

“Yea, no shit,” Baz replies and I glance at him as he’s rearranging himself, gripping it in a way that makes my stomach swoop. Seductive ideas plague my mind – offering him a helping hand. A helping mouth. I mean, I’m the Chosen One, helping is part of my job description, isn’t it?

Our eyes meet and we burst into laughter, an explosion of tension released out. I have to lean on Baz, head on his shoulder, arm draped over his chest, as I laugh it out. (Tactfully, I keep my hips away from his.)

“Are… ah, fuck my abs hurt... Are you?” I manage to ask while doubling over in laughter.

“Circe, Snow!” Baz manages, laughing even harder. 

We end up in a heap on the floor, energy bursting out of us in shaking laughter.

Baz’s face is hidden in the crook of his elbow, and he isn’t laughing anymore. I can't see his expression to understand how he feels, now that it’s done. We’ve kissed. We didn’t deny that we made each other hard. That’s monumental, isn’t it?

“Hey, Baz, you ok?”

 I nudge him, but he just shakes me off.

‘Hey. Don’t hide from me.“ The echo of the old resentment – all these years of him blocking me out - is a burning stone in the pit of my stomach. I can't believe I've been living without his openness and vulnerability for so long. 

I try to be reasonable, but I can't. We’ve just kissed. Then we laughed… and now he’s hiding again. “If I made you do something that you didn’t want… I, argh, Baz, look at me!”

He adds another arm to hide his face, and it’s suddenly urgent for me to know if he’s smiling, laughing, frowning, crying? Dear Merlin, did I make Baz cry with my kissing? The thought makes no sense since he’s been laughing a moment ago. I tug at his arms, pleading.

One moment he's resisting me, the next he grabs my wrists, twists beneath me, getting himself on top in one movement. My breath whooshes out of me. (My cock is incredibly interested in this new development.) Baz has my wrists pinned on both sides of my head, knees bracketing my hips. His hair frames his face, hanging loose and lovely. (It’s almost fully dry now, soft and lovely.)

“Fuuuuck,” I exhale the word, at a loss for any coherency. Because how hot is this? Is he aware?

His lips are twitching, in a wry smile. So maybe he’s just a little aware. “Don’t you get it, Snow, you can’t make me do anything I don't want.”

His gaze drops to my mouth. He looks hungry and why is he just looking?

Feast on me, goddamnit!

I sit up as much as the position allows, with my hands locked by his grip, and take his mouth in a kiss. (This one is 100% ours.)

As I drop back down, he follows me, chasing my mouth, not letting the kiss stop until his body weight is mine. I’m fully underneath him, delicious weight and pressure all over. I’m safe and so, so turned on. His lips are soft and wet as they move against mine. All thoughts and Visions disappear from my mind. All that’s left is sensation filling me with fire and golden daylight.

Chapter Text

BAZ

It’s the last week before the New Moon and I’m a mess.

This thing with Snow, this thing that I refuse to call a thing, lest it disappears and dissolves, keeps on. He gets glassy eyed sometimes when we’re alone, or when I’m sharing one of my facts with him, and his gaze lingers on my lips. Then he pushes me against the closest wall or piece of furniture and we make out. Our situation is becoming increasingly nothing else but a gropefest. I’ve grown intimately acquainted with the feel of his skin and scars under my hands, the shape of his muscles as they move and bunch under the heel of my palm. 

The next day after our first make out session, Snow describes a Vision in which I kiss him at the hinge of his jaw, his hands under my shirt (the small kiss grows into a full make out session, with dry humping each other, resulting in coming in our pants). Then there is the Vision mandated kiss that Snow plants on my shoulder (which ends up in him biting every joint on my upper body, undressing me in the process, making me giggle when he bites my elbow). That one ends in mutual handjobs, and again, in orgasms. (Which – fucking brilliant, by the way.)

The Vision seems to have a list of kisses – ridiculous, intimate brushes of lips against skin - kisses that go both ways. It has me kissing Simon’s temple (I have to map his face with my lips after that, I’m not made of steel) (I say his first name over and over when doing that) (we end up in a heap of tangled limbs and frenzied touches). Another time, it directs Simon to a kiss on the tip of my nose, then in the middle of my palm - and then he gets hooked up on those and sprinkles them in between all our interactions.

Once, Simon even licks hot chocolate from the side of my mouth - and I’ve never been more pleased with bad table manners.

All in all, it’s maddening. Here I am, a teenager still, magic and hormones at an all time high, walking around, attempting to function, while my brain is mush, my cock is almost always half hard (at least), and all my thoughts are a blur of incredulous love. Of course, the happiness is followed by sharp dives into the certainty that when this ends, Snow will regret it all. That after the New Moon, it will turn out the spell wasn’t just about specific touches, but about all of them, that it messed with Snow’s head, and he is in fact painfully heterosexual! That would mean that I’ve taken advantage of his bro-vulnerability. Oh Circe, I’ll have been proven a real villain then, one with documents in order, with notoriety - especially now that the entire school has noticed how Snow and I act around each other. (Like boyfriends!)

I refuse to think all of my peers are both blind and stupid. Even Wellbelove has noticed. She rolled her eyes in acknowledgement that time when Snow was attached to the underside of my jaw, pressing me into a hallway wall.

I try to protect him, but I can’t. When Simon takes my hand and pulls me into an alcove to make out, I’m weak and my will dissipates in thin air. I follow him, I ask for more, I take everything he gives me. I don’t know how not to. There’s not an atom in my body that knows how not to want Simon Snow. Snow and I must have come from the same star, my atoms recognise his, they long for wholeness. Being with him feels like coming home in a cosmological sense.

Even when he’s being an outright menace about all the kissing, I can’t help but adore him. 

One day, he challenges me to a rematch in our speed race (that he claimed he won due to feet length.) 

We’re outside, the sun blasting uncomfortably in my eyes (I should have worn my Top Gun glasses). When we’re ready, Snow says, “On count of 3.”

“Yes.” I get in position beside him, checking out the distance once more. I won once, I can do it again.

Snow starts counting, “One…. Two… – ” and then “Hey Baz?” 

I turn to him, wondering what’s made him stop counting, but his hands are already reaching for me. There’s not an ounce of resistance in me. He takes my mouth in a quick feverish kiss. 

He leaves me reeling, breathless and whispers against my mouth, “Three,” and dashes toward the finish line.

The scheming bastard wins! And I’m not even mad. I’m impressed. I’m proud. At the finish line, Snow jumps up, punching the air in the joy of victory just as I follow on his heels. 

He speaks in a sports announcer voice: “Second time in a row, Snow beats Pitch. Undefeated all time champion, he’s fast like a cheetah, handsome like a – ”

I tackle him to the ground, swallowing his laughter in the continuation of the kiss he so cleverly used to one up me.  

***

It’s a rainy Friday evening and there’s no way we can go out and try yet another spell in this weather. Besides, Penelope and I have run out of ideas like 8 days ago. We’ve been going through the first spells once more, but Simon hasn’t even noticed. I suspect he likes hanging out under the starlit sky for the sake of it.

In general, the New Moon is our best bet. Penelope and I have decided upon an old northern ritual for celestial magic. Everything is prepared. We just need to wait.

But right now Snow and I are not talking about any of it - not about the ritual, not about how to break his spell. Right now he’s tired from a quick fight with an ogre. (Took him less than two hours!) It was his first Mission this week, and he’s irritable. He returned wet as a cat, grumpy, hungry, pissed off. 

I guess he’s forgotten amidst the flurry of kisses that he’s not just any teenage boy, but also the Chosen One – he has wars to fight in. 

That frown on his forehead makes me grind my teeth. He’s been wearing it since the moment he got back. I wish I could steal him away from all of this Chosen One business and hide him somewhere safe and warm, somewhere with scones and an entire movie theatre at his fingertips.

It doesn’t escape me that Simon winces when he moves, so I offer a healing spell and a massage. My heart stammers for an impossibly long moment before he agrees, slumping in his chair, capitulating in front of his weariness. He lets me pull him up from his chair and into my arms, resting his head on my shoulder, wrapping his arms around my middle. I scrape my nails over his scalp how he likes it. His hold on me tightens. 

I like that he doesn’t have to put on a brave front for me, that he can be exhausted and grumpy. That he accepts my help. 

“Thank you for this,” he says, followed by: “Is it weird that I haven’t thought about the Humdrum once in, like, forever? That when the Mage called me for the Ogre it took me a moment to remember why that was my responsibility?”

“It’s normal, Snow.” I lean back to smooth the tired circles under his eyes with my thumbs. I kiss his brow. 

Then, aiming to lighten his mood: “I haven’t thought about overthrowing the Mage in like forever, and you don’t see me bragging about it.”

He lets out a weak laugh and allows me to maneuver him onto the softened floor, in massage position. I first rub his back with oil filling the room with the fresh scent of lavender. I apply pressure, kneading his upper back and eliciting a first groan from Snow. 

I have him lying on his abdomen, shirtless. Now, it wasn’t I that made up the rules for massaging! They’re right there, in the book of how to give a massage to your nemesis slash love of your life slash current hook up. He has to be topless, I have to have my hands on all of him - it’s the basics. No need to fuss about the ethics of it all. He needs a massage. I can provide it. It’s almost a free market kind of situation. 

And, oh boy do I take my time with him. I find and work on all the knots of tension in his back and shoulders until he’s relaxed and his groans have turned into contented mmmm s.

One time I even get a, “Gods, yes, right there.” Which sends a zing of electricity through me.

The oil is magicked to be completely absorbed into skin, so when I'm done - and unfortunately, I have to be done eventually - Snow’s refusal to put his shirt back on so that he doesn’t stain it is obviously a non sequitur, but I don’t contradict him. I sit beside him, gathering my knees to my chest.

“You should take your shirt off as well,” he says. “For equality reasons.”

There’s a wicked glint on his eyes, as he’s lying on his back now, hands behind his head. He tries to cock one eyebrow my way and ends up raising both, looking surprised. I snort.

“Come on.” He sits up cross legged, extending a fisted hand to me. I know this. It’s the established sign of let’s play rock-paper-scissors. 

“You always lose, though…” I arch one eyebrow as high as it goes, providing a masterclass in being obnoxious.

Snow scoffs. “I win when it matters, come on. You being shirtless matters.”

I lean closer and extend my fist as well, holding back a smile.

We chant, “One two three!” 

He shows scissors, I show rock. 

“You lost.” If I sound disappointed it’s because I am and forgot to hide it. I tried to lose. I really did.

“Wait, wait, best of three!” Simon bounces on the softened floor, scooting closer, holding my fist against his - he does that to break the jinx, as he calls the state when he’s losing. 

Next one, my scissors cut his paper. He groans. 

“You said best out of three. I’ve 2 wins, Snow.” 

“No, no! I meant, the winner is whoever ends up with three wins!”

I narrow my eyes at him. He’s a fucking toddler, refusing to lose. The sorest of losers ever. But I like how he scrunches his face when he tries to spin a story about why he hasn’t lost yet, so I indulge him. He’s the most adorable rock-paper-scissors gaslighter.

“Three wins, Baz. You have two. Come on. I haven’t lost yet. ” 

I roll my eyes, but agree.

We count to three and I decide to show rock, so that he’ll have a chance at winning, but Snow grabs me by my showing hand and pulls me on top of him. His ankles cross behind my thighs. “Gotcha.” He grins, delighted, and smothers my faux protests into a kiss.

***

“Baz?”

“Mmm?”

“What does that carte blanche thing actually mean?”

I laugh into the warm skin of his neck. Simon has been bringing me random cheeses for the past weeks. Not all of them white. Not all of them French or French sounding even.

Two days ago he got me some mozzarella and I didn’t ask where he got it. It was original Italian mozzarella. (I’m starting to believe he’s magicked it.) The biggest highlight was when he got me cream cheese in a plastic container with a spoon in it. (Where did he get the container? It looked used!) 

Funny how he never bothered to Google it or ask Penny. (Damnit. I mean, Penelope.) (Fuck. I mean, Bunce.)

“It means that I get to ask you something, and you’ll give it to me, no questions asked.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

“That sounds…”

“Dangerous? Stupid? I know. And you agreed! ”

“Nah, it sounds… very French.”

I snort. “It is.”

“And also – very promising.”

Our eyes lock, my hands keep wandering over his body, I can’t help it. He’s playing with my hair. I’m a fucking goner, and there’s no way around it.

“So what do you want?” Simon asks, voice husky. I can practically hear the horny wheels moving in his head. (I love it.) 

“I haven’t decided yet.” I can’t ask for what I want, or at least I can’t get it by asking. That’s not how love works.

“You have to want something .” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

“I want to draw you,” I blurt out. My heart is on my sleeve, in the palm of my hand as I’m offering it to him. 

“What? Like one of your French girls?” 

“What?” Sometimes Snow forgets I don’t speak film .

“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen Titanic!” he sits up straight, looking around, as if searching for a TV set already. “It’s about the ship that hits the iceberg? Young Leo DiCaprio? Come on, Baz!” He draws in a deep breath, preparing to launch into a full on movie retelling. (He’s done this twice already, once with Pirates of the Caribbean , and a second time with Surf’s up ) (I haven’t determined the algorithm for which movies he chooses to retell like this.)(For now the common theme is water? I don’t know. Snow’s mind works in mysterious ways.)

I usually like listening to him, but he spoils the entire plot of the films, and then I can’t watch it with him, so I speak up before him.

I say, “No. I mean. I’d like to draw on you. Some of your freckles are arranged like constellations. I’d like to see how many I can find.”

“Really?” Snow looks down at his chest, touching himself, stretching the skin, as if trying to spot the exact stars. “Like what?”

“Like… this..” I connect the dots on his abdomen with a gentle touch and he shivers, muscles contracting underneath my touch. He catches my hand and presses it firmly against his skin. Simon doesn’t like soft touches. (Simon touches me softly, though.)

I look up from the place where our hands are connected and find his eyes, they’re intense and searching. He shakes his head as if to clear it and says in a husky voice, “What is this one called?”

“Ursa Major.”

“Major that’s big, right?” He waggles his eyebrows at me. 

I keep a straight face, refusing to accept his innuendo. “Yes. Big or great.”

He grins. “I’m both, thank you.” This does it for me. He makes me laugh and the intensity sizzles to a background simmering. (That's been the default for a few days now, a constant buzzing of sexual tension whenever we’re in the same room.) 

I groan at his unabashed confidence and he scrunches his nose, giving me a wry crooked smile.

I end up cashing in the carte blanche : Simon lets me draw the constellations on his back. I’m using a glittery black eyeliner and it’s perfect for this. (I’ll be wearing it to this year’s Pride.) (I wonder how many heart attacks I can give my father during one single parade…) (I wonder if Simon would also join me…)

“I can’t believe you let me off the hook for so long,” Simon murmurs. 

“Thank you for all the cheese, though.” I press a kiss to the highest point of his cheek bone on the side of his face that is not pressed to the soft floor. 

“Thanks for sharing it with me,” Simon replies, sounding drowsy and content. (Truthfully, he’s eaten between 70 and 80% of all the cheese he’s brought me.) (90% of the cream cheese, for sure.) (It reminded him of butter too much.)

I’m turning his back into a sky map. I try not to falter under Simon’s gaze. His head rests on his forearms, face turned my way. He’s been lying on his abdomen for my pleasure for the past half an hour. I’m purposefully a very slow drawer. I take my time tracing the freckles and the constellations with my fingers - firm touches, like he likes them - and only then get to drawing them. Sometimes, when the freckle-stars are on his lower back, I get to lean my elbow on the meat of his arse and it’s the most distracting thing ever. It’s so casual, domestic. I'm leaning on his body like I have a right to. I get champagne sizzles in my brain each time, yet I barrel through it, like any hero must when faced with particularly terrible hardships.

I know his patience is waning when he removes one arm from under his head and lays it along his body, meeting my leg. His fingers start drawing patterns on my bent knees. He’s my most favourite distraction. Addictive. I grow drunk on his touches. Even through the fabric, it’s distracting. 

“Snow.” My voice comes out frayed. “It’ll mess up the pattern. Wait, don’t move.” I get my wand and cast wear a trail. The drawings shimmer for a moment and then settle back. There you go. I’ve temporarily tattooed his back with 12 glittering black constellations. 

I admire my handiwork, immensely pleased with myself. Snow makes an impatient noise and flips on his back, pulling me on top of him in one move, finalising it by locking his ankles behind my thighs.

“I won,” he says, grinning. Happy Simon Snow is melting my brain. I press a swift kiss to his throat and he drops his head to the side, elongating his neck because he likes it being lavished with kisses. I push myself away to see his face.

“How have you won? You’re on your back,” I argue lazily. This constant thing we have about winning is such obvious foreplay at this point.

“Exactly. But you’re on top.” His fingers dig in the back of my neck and I'm falling toward him in slow motion. Simon is my personal gravity, in no way can I resist. 

“You like me on top?” I cant my hips forward and his eyes roll back in his head, and he’s an ocean wave now. I’m the moon, pulling the tide towards me. 

“Yes, please,” he whispers and our lips meet, a neutron star collision.

***

SIMON

Two days before the New Moon, a very specific scene pulls me away from sleep. When I grow fully awake, it’s already playing in my mind. 

Even with the nagging of a Vision, waking up is a pleasure. I’ve fallen asleep in Baz’s bed again. (Oops, what an absolute accident.) (How it keeps happening every single day, I have no idea!) Because Baz is right here, under my thumbs, the morning starts languid. 

I focus on the new Vision, entertaining it already. My hands explore the planes of Baz’s chest and lower… when there’s a loud crack coming from the neighbouring room.

I consider ignoring it, especially since Baz stirs under my touch. His fingers circle my wrist guiding my hand lower, where he wants it. I’ve become rather infatuated with morning Baz - he’s so putty in my hands, so responsive and openly following what he wants. Asking for it, like right now, pressing the flat of my hand against his morning erection. He also reaches behind at an uncomfortable angle to palm me through my pants. 

And I think… I think it’s very mutual, like everything we’ve been to each other until now. Mutual hatred, mutual friendship, and now this.

I fucking love this.

I might say it aloud because Baz chuckles lowly and says, “What? Getting morning handjobs?”

The laugh that comes out of me is a huff of air more than sound. “Yes. But not only.”

In slow motion, I press a hand on his chest, getting him on his back. His eyes are blurry with sleep, hooded with desire. I kiss the underside of his jaw once and say in the safety of that soft place, “I love this. Y’know?”

He nods, his hand fisting in my hair, keeping me there, where I nip and kiss his neck. 

“Yes. I love this , too.” His voice sounds raw, and not just from sleep. He does his sexy vampire move and flips us over, pinning me underneath him, melting my brain, hardening my everything else. 

In what still shocks me as unbelievable, Baz kisses me on the mouth – morning breath and all. He kisses me until the sour morning taste turns sweet. Until I wrap my legs around him, pressing my heels into the small of his back, guiding his movements into a rhythm that has us both panting for breath.

“You’re mine,” Baz says, lips moving against mine, a word kiss. And I reckon he’s mindless with it, just like me, and hasn’t meant to say it aloud, so I answer quickly before he has any time to take it back. 

“Yes,” I say. And then after the longest of kiss filled pauses, “Are you? ”

“What?” Baz rubs his nose against mine, confused and fond. 

“Mine?” I manage, heart in my throat.

He pulls away and looks at me, surprise openly showing in his eyes. “Yes, Simon.” He says it like it’s obvious, like someone wondering if the sun is a star, and if the Earth is utterly entrapped in its gravity. 

That accelerates our rutting, making it urgent. I slip my hand under the elastic of his pants, finding him hard and hot and leaking. That is where Baz is at his warmest, I think, stupid with lust. That and his mouth. I imagine his mouth on my cock, that wet heat enveloping me and I kiss him wildly, fucking into his mouth with my tongue.

Just as his hand sneaks between out bodies, tugging at the band of my pants, there’s an even louder crash and the walls shake. There’s a shout like a howl of a wounded animal. Some prehistoric creature trapped between a rock and a hard place.

It comes from Gareth’s room. And that’s Gareth’s yowl. Maybe he’s redecorating and dropped an armchair on his foot…?

“AAAAAAAAA!!!”

Fuck. No one screams like that when they’re moving furniture around. Not even if they smash their little toe into the corner of said furniture.

In fighting mode, I jump to my feet. My first thought is an unpleasant cold shower over my sexy mood - it must be the Humdrum.

“Baz. Humdrum!” I call and sprint – waning morning glory – to Gareth’s help, hoping that Baz is on my heels.

***

The door to Gareth’s room is ajar. I step inside to find that Penny is doing her scary thing, where her hair is all wild around her, hinting at Medusa the Gorgon powers. She has her Matrix glasses on, and the room smells like magic. She’s supporting her ring hand with her other one, like cops do in action films. Only her gun is in fact her fisted hand, ring glistening with more magick gathering at the corners of her stone.

“What aren’t you telling me, Gareth? I swear to fucking Magick if you muck up my publishing hopes by refusing to tell me the truth – ” She then notices me, and removes her death glare from Gareth. (Gareth has surrounded himself with a pile of clothes in what I assume he’s trying to find his belt - that’s his magickal object – or he’s trying to burrow himself under the clothes in an attempt to hide from Penny.) (Neither strategy would work, by the way.)

Penny’s gun position becomes more casual, she removes the supporting hand and rests it on her hip. She peers at me and Baz from the top of her glasses. “Oh, hi, you two. Si. Baz.”

“Gareth. What did you do?” I ask, meeting his panicking gaze.

He drops a pair of beltless jeans and glares at me. “What did I do?!” he wails. His room is a mess. He is a mess. His face is flushed and his eyes are wild. 

“Well. Yea? What did you do to Penny?” 

“I didn’t do anything to her! You psychos, all three of you!” He gives up trying to find his belt and straightens. He’s wearing a white vest and pink pyjama bottoms. “Leave my room alone! I can’t believe – Argh! Love is the worst!” He stomps away and Penny drops her ring hand down, shaking her head after him.

She rearranges her Matrix glasses, stares at us once more, does a gagging sound and runs after Gareth.

“Talk to you later!” she calls back. Barely an afterthought.

“What the actual fuck?” Baz exclaims. I see he managed to put on trousers in the two seconds we had to run here. And I doubt he used magic. Vampire speed, for sure.

“I might've misread the situation a bit.” I sigh. “My instinct is to be on Penny’s side, what can I do? Poor Gareth. He really has the worst luck with neighbours.”

“And why is Rhys not defending him?” Baz demands, like there’s a code of roommates and Rhys – Gareth’s roommate – is not respecting it. It makes me smile. 

We decide to get dressed and then seek Penelope lest she murders Gareth and then we have to break her out of a tower or something. 

However! Once in our room, behind closed doors, I sort of forget that decision? Baz is right here, in front of me, and he’s getting dressed two steps away! What a crime that would be if all this wonderful exposed skin would get hidden away.

Then there’s the added seduction of the Vision in my head…

Plans change, we’re staying in! Penelope’s a big girl. Gareth will survive her wrath (hopefully). 

(If not, I’ll help Penny hide the body.) (I have a feeling so will Baz.)

I approach Baz from behind, letting my arms slip around his middle. We were rudely interrupted earlier, weren’t we?

He’s already managed to put on a shirt (how does he do that?!) but I won’t have it. I untuck it from his trousers, sliding my hands under his vest. His back presses into my chest and I take on some of his weight as he leans back into me. (Morning Baz.) (Putty Baz.) (Lovely Baz.)

“I love your abdomen, you know that?” I splay my fingers there, feeling the taut skin and the hair line. My pinkie finger slips under the band of his trousers and his pants, seeking more skin.

“Yea, you have an abdomen fetish, Snow?” 

“I have a Baz Pitch fetish.” I reach with my free hand to tilt his head back and start us on the right path of today’s plan. Get into Baz Pitch’s pants. But first – a kiss.

***

“The New Moon is tomorrow.” Baz breathes heavily as I pop the last buttons on his shirt.

“Mhm,” I agree, rubbing my cheek in the patch of hair on his chest, and sliding lower, getting on my knees in front of him. He makes a sound that is undeniably a whimper. (Yay me!)

“That, uh, you could, uh, you could wait –” he tries to finish his thought but I bite the top part of his abs, punishing him for suggesting such atrocious things. 

I love it when he gets incoherent, like, it feels validating somehow. “You don’t have to satisfy the Vision now, Simon. ” His fingers slip underneath my chin, lifting my head to look at him. He does look rather pained, torn even, I’d say.

“Why?” It’s just a pretext, really, for me to finally get in his pants. Doesn’t he know it?

“You could wait,” he repeats. Apparently he doesn’t know it.

 I escape the fingers he holds under my chin and bite them gently. Soothing the bite with a lick.

“Torture.” I manage to say, because it’s true. I’m not touching him because of the Vision, but because I want to. I want to so badly it’s making me mad. 

“Plus. The Vision only wants me to kiss a freckle, Baz. Nothing untoward, Baz. Get your head out of the gutter, Baz . What do you think is gonna happen, Baz ? Sheesh .”

He snorts inelegantly and I grin in his skin. I’m ridiculous. I know. (He loves it.)

I push his shirt off his shoulders and it pools behind him, on the floor. In one move he takes off his vest, too, and he looks like a God. Some God of sensuality and poshness. Surely one like that exists. And I get to touch him. Before I fully lose my mind, a thought creeps in and I stop, hands freezing on his waist, fingers under the clasp of his belt.

“Unless you actually want me to stop?”

He drops his head back to the door of the wardrobe with a dull thud, screwing his eyes shut.

“Do you, Baz?” I remove my hands, because I do mean it. What if he’s not worried about consent issues on my side, with the Vision demanding stuff from me? What if he’s just not ready for more? Surely we’re moving at a neck breaking speed. I can wait.

It will be torture. But I will survive it. We can find loads of ways to spend our time in the meanwhile. Bets to win, and then contest if I lose. New ways to kiss him. Constellations to draw. Films to watch till the middle and never finish because we’re making out and barrelling towards completion.

“Of course I don't want you to stop, you numpty. I mean, look at me!” Baz exclaims, nodding downward, eyes still shut.

I do look at him. He looks debauched, hair a mess, skin imprinted with my grabby hands, lips pinker than usual from all the kissing, torso naked, black hair dusting his chest, the uneven planes of his abs…trouser belt unbuckled and his hard on bulging behind the fabric. 

“...but, you should be aware of the option,” Baz continues and I snatch my gaze away from his erection, meeting his eyes. He’s watching me now. Pools of dark ringed by a grey that’s almost translucent.

“How considerate of you.” I let sarcasm colour my voice and go back to unbuckling his belt. His erection jerks when I unzip his trousers. My mouth waters. I want him. Merlin I want him like I’ve never wanted anything before.

I plant a kiss on his collarbone, saying, “The spell only wants me to give you a peck. Nothing untoward.” I drag him by the ends of his belt to the bed. Push him on his back. He falls on the bed, taking me with him. Winded, I kneel beside him, pulling off his trousers. (The freckle is not exactly visible UNLESS I undress him.)

“So you’ll stop at a peck?” Baz’s thrown his head back on the pillow, eyes screwed shut. He does that when he wants to focus. It’s adorable how hard he’s trying to maintain composure. I’m drunk on how he never manages to keep it though.

“Hey, Baz, look at me.” My voice does that thing it always does when I want him to the point of pain. He opens his eyes and meets mine.

I grin. “Absolutely, I will stop at a peck. When have I not?” I lie, knowing full well that he knows I’m lying. I have no brakes when it comes to Baz. (I’m starting to realise that he has no brakes when it comes to me. ) 

The Vision is like a teaser trailer of what can happen… a very well made teaser. It makes me obsess over that freckle that I have only seen in passing, only touched with my hands. Now I want to lick it. The Vision wants me to brush my lips over it.  Bite it. Suck a bruise in that same spot. And then… then I want to move lower, and kiss him, and taste him, and make him call me by my first name while he comes –

“You have the unhinged eyes again, Snow.”

I’ve been obsessing over how your cum tastes. But I can’t say that. I go the roundabout way: “Just a peck, I promise.” Liar liar…

He growls. “I hate you.” …pants on fire.

“Shut up, you love me.” I say, laughingly, hypnotised by the way there is a trail of black hair swirling around his navel. 

“Tosser…” Baz breathes, snatching my attention back to his face. 

His head falls back on the pillow with an anguished sigh when I pull off his trousers. I slow down then, because I want to take my time with him. I want to be here.

He remains in his pants. Plain white. Erection tenting them. His trousers are somewhere on the floor. (He doesn’t even make a peep at how barbaric I am with his clothes.)

I slip two fingers under the band of his pants and pull down a fraction. There it is. The freckle. I brush my lips over it. Once twice, three times. I forget to check with the Vision. It doesn’t really matter. I suckle at that spot until I have him wreathing under me.

I can’t stop kissing him. His skin is addictive. The sounds he makes, his hand fisted in my curls. It’s impossible to stop. 

I fit my teeth against the width of his erection, inhaling the musky scent of arousal.

“Fuck, Snow.”

“Aren’t we on a first name basis already?” I say sweetly and mouth at his cock through the thin fabric of his pants, wetting it, tasting the saltiness of his precome through the fabric.

“Nrgh,” he replies smartly.

I sit on my heels, running my fingers over his legs, feeling the coarse hairs on his thighs, the solid feel of his muscles jerking under my touch.

“I want to suck you off. May I?” 

“So polite. Fuck I love it when you’re like this.”

“Do I fit some kind of posh fantasy, Baz? Do you want me to say please , and thank you and please sir, may I have some more ?” I’m getting extra worked up, because this actually might be my fantasy. Me at the mercy of Baz Pitch, his pouty mouth ravaging me, hands holding me still, gripping me tight, laying claim to me while relinquishing himself in the process. 

My mouth is watering. Baz is in my nostrils, in my lungs. The taste of his kiss, still sweet in my mouth, is now mixed with the salt of his precome. Every small sound he makes enters my system, followed by a frisson of pride that I’m the source of his pleasure, a jolt of joy, that he looks and sounds like he’s mine. His earlier admission roots itself in the certainty of what we’re starting to mean to each other. 

I love this, I love the way his eyes turn almost black when he wants me. 

And it hits me, as I move in between his legs, palms running from his abdomen to his thighs, that I will never recover from this. That this is fucking it for me .

Desperately, I tug at his pants and he raises his hips off the mattress to help me out. His cock springs free, slapping his abdomen. He’s hard and perfect, a bead of precome rolling onto his skin. 

It occurs to me somewhere in the backest back of my mind that I’ve never given nor received a blowjob. Maybe I should be worried about being bad at it, or apprehensive or something. What if I suck, metaphorically while doing it literally?

But I’m just, I don’t know… eager, and awed that he’s baring himself to me like this.

I cover his entire length with kisses and wrap my mouth around the leaking head of his erection. 

Baz keens. 

I give it an experimental lick, sucking. Under a litany of fuck fuck fuck, Simon, fuck I lower my head, slowly swallowing him, until my nose is buried in Baz’s pubic hair, his cock hitting the back of my throat. I have to work at relaxing my throat muscles so that I don’t gag, but it’s perfect, and I don’t want to ever let him go.

Arousal pools in my groin from the wet sounds my mouth makes on him. From the way he feels inside my mouth, the velvety texture of the head of his cock, the smooth length of him, heavy and pulsing under my tongue. From the incoherent mess that Baz turns when he leaks in my mouth.

I bob my head up and down until his pants and curses get more explicit and turn into terms of endearment. I assume he’s on the cusp of coming when he tries to pull me away with frantic and uncoordinated moves. He only ends up eliciting a groan from me, his fisted hand in my hair only making me suck him harder. But I stop, because I don’t want him to come yet. Because I’m insatiable, and I have only gotten a taste. 

His breathing is laboured and ragged.

I slow down. I lick the base, the underside; suck at his balls until I get one fully in my mouth and move back to the head of his cock, lapping, lapping, lapping… while my hand wanks him up and down. I try not to hump the mattress too much, but that is out of my control as well. The mattress is thoroughly humped.

“Simon, darling, I’m…” Baz mutters and I know this time he is coming and there’s no stopping it. He makes a strangled noise, his hands leaving my hair and fisting in the sheets, his body arching up, tight like a bow. Hot spunk spills in my mouth and I manage to swallow some of it, marvelling that now bits of Baz are inside me, but most of it spills on my chin. I try to catch it with my hand, but it dribbles onto Baz’s inner thigh and to my wrist. It’s a mess. It’s brilliant, even though it’s sticky and wet. 

He’s laughing now, a little hysterical, wiping tears from his eyes. There are some tears on my face as well, from the effort and the tightness of my jaw muscles - who knew giving blowjobs is such hard work. But it’s all worth it. I lick my lips clean off his come, wipe my hand on the bed sheets. I crawl on top of him, holding myself above him.

“You called me, Simon,” I inform him smugly.  Sweat glistens on his forehead, like he’s been playing a football game without any rest, strands of hair are plastered to his temple. He looks thoroughly wrecked. 

“Simon,” he repeats my name and it sounds like he’s pleading, asking for something. I press my smile on the underside of his jaw, rubbing myself against his slight stubble there. “ Simon ,” he breathes my name again. A fucking confession. I drink it from his mouth. Once. Twice. Kissing Baz is a thing that’s essential right now. Like breathing. I let my tongue inside his mouth and lick into it slowly, once, twice. His mouth is so sweet compared to the salty tanginess of his spunk. It’s all mixed, and it’s even better. 

My cock twitches in my pants, against his thigh, and Baz does the thing. He flips me on my back and gets on top, only for the first time he is naked (completely!) and I can touch and stare at the muscles on his shoulder, moving and flexing. I like how he absorbs all my heat and balances our overall temperature. I imagine we would turn into a soggy overheated thing if he was burning hot like me. 

“Do you still like me on top?” Baz smirks at me, even though his eyes are soft.

“Always,” I say.

“Yea?” He has to fight to keep his eyes focused. Horny eyes. 

“I love you on top,” I say on an exhale, because it’s true, and because I want him to know. His eyelids lose the battle and flutter closed. He leans in for a kiss, like he can’t help it. He’s falling into me. I lean up to meet him halfway, catching him midfall.

“You taste like me,” he says against my lips.

“I love the way you taste,” I reply, made stupid by everything we’re doing. By the unguarded way he’s looking at me, heavy lidded and intense. 

“I’ll make you come now,” he says. An oath almost. He slithers down my body, pulling away at my pants with his teeth and then lifting my hips to remove them with his deft hand. In one move. I bite my lower lip almost to blood, because I could come from how hot that is. I can’t though. I have to let the man at least take me in his mouth. It’s the proper thing to do, isn’t it? 

Baz starts with maddening catlicks, fondling my balls and wanking me in a grip too loose to be satisfying, like he’s trying to murder me on purpose.

“For fuck sake, Baz, please! Get on with it!”

“Hmmm,” he hums around the head of my cock, and tongues at my slit. Holy fuck. Ok. Noted. I’ll do that to him next time.

“Good?” the torturer says around my cock and before I say anything, he swallows me in. He swirls his tongue around me as he sucks and sucks and I think I’m dying a little. Or a lot. I don’t know, but death from pleasure must be a thing. I’m experiencing it now. It’s like death from too much life.

I concentrate so hard on not coming yet that I sweat just from that effort alone. I touch Baz’s jaw as he’s working my cock, feeling the muscles move underneath his skin, a dribble of spit rolling on it, the scratch of his five o’clock shadow pleasantly real. It’s my only way to ground this experience. I murmur words of encouragement, or I just think them and they translate into incoherent animalistic sounds. I couldn’t tell for sure. 

Baz lifts one of my knees on his shoulder, opening me up and his fingers wrap around my cock,  moving up and down with precise tight movements. Our eyes meet and hold. 

Holy….

He mouths at my balls and then lower, he sucks marks into my inner thigh, one hand tossing me off, while the other presses me onto the mattress. I buck and fuck into his fist, my cock wet from his saliva and my precum, the most perfect wet slide.

I’m a mess, talking in gibberish, managing to say incoherent thoughts about how I love this, and what a wanker he was that we didn’t do this earlier.

Just when I think I’m dying for real now, his mouth returns to my cock replacing his hand, which trails down to the base of my aching cock, and stops at my bumhole. It flutters at the light touch of Baz’s fingertips. 

He starts making slow wet circles around it, applying pressure just enough for the tip to breach me. Meanwhile his mouth moves mercilessly on my cock, swallowing me to the hilt and back. I tell him that I love his mouth, that I love his tongue, that I love the way he moves for me, that I love his finger in me. And when I come, he has one knuckle in me, while my cock is buried deep inside his throat. 

I’m blinded by pleasure and the clear certainty that I'm falling in love.

BAZ

This is how things are now. My relationship with Simon involves orgasms, and words like darling , and love.

After mutual cock sucking has occurred, after we’ve lain in each other’s arms, lazy creatures drifting back from sexual haze, Simon drags himself to the showers, while I use magic on myself and go in search of food for him. Sustenance is required if we’re to continue in the same fashion. (I was made to understand that we’ll continue in the same fashion.)

On my way out, I stumble upon Gareth. Once more, he’s doing unspeakable things to the water fountain at the bottom stairs of Mummers’ house, putting a damp on my sexy mood.

Gareth removes his mouth from the top of the nuzzle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. I try not to gag.

“You’re doing things to this poor water fountain that it didn’t consent to, Gareth.”

“I have an aiming condition, Baz. Don’t be a dick about it.”

I can’t possibly see how drinking from a fountain involves aiming, and what kind of condition requires him to do that, but I let it slide. I should hurry. But away from Simon, my faculties gather back in my mind and something nags at me. A curiosity.

“Hey, Gareth. What’s up with you and Bunce?” I ask.

“Nothing good,” his expression saddens, turning him from weird arsehole to human worthy of sympathy. He heaves a suffering sigh and I recall his exclamation about love being the worst as he fled the scene this morning. 

“Are you…and Bunce… involved?” 

“I wish!” he sighs again. “What do you know about unrequited love, Baz? You and Simon are all over each other! You even share a room!” Gareth laments and before waiting for an answer from me, trots away.

***

“The Vision is getting hornier,” Snow whispers in my ear, leaning across the table at lunch on the same day.

“The Vision, or you?” I take another slice of fruit and pop it in my mouth. I find my fangs obey just fine when I’m eating already cut pieces.

He grins, unashamed. “Both. Wanna know what it wants?”

“Shoot.”

“Basically I bite your arse.” He holds my gaze, looking too serious. He’s like a child who tries to sell you an earnest expression when concocting a practical joke.

“Completely off, or just a bit?” I deadpan.

“In a sexual way,” he declares. “So, just a bit.”

“Not plausible. Until now the Visions have been more about gentle touches and less about horny mauling.”

Snow pouts. “Ok. The Vision is me kissing your back dimples. Merlin, you’re no fun.” But he doesn’t sound like I’m no fun, even as he says it. His eyes are twinkling for fuck sake!

I try not to think of the ramification that each of his Visions has launched until now. A small touch coming from the Vision blooms and grows into more. What could this touch lead to? I imagine myself lying on my abdomen as Snow runs his fingers down my back, rubbing his soft stubble against my skin and then, brushing dozens of kisses on my lower back.

Goosebumps spread across my arms, just thinking about that. Would he get lower then? He would bite my arse, for sure, he has a hyperfixation for biting and nipping at various body parts. But then, would he spread my arse cheeks as he kneads them…

I try to fight the gravity of this fantasy and barely manage. I know that I’m willing to try anything with Snow. In my fantasies we’ve been in each other's bodies in all the possible ways. I’ve imagined all the possible ways of being with Snow, and so any suggestion makes me willing and wanting. (And panting)

“So… our room? In, like, ten minutes?” Snow murmurs, looping a finger under my belt, tugging me forward. Our knees touch under the table, my arse almost sliding off the chair.

“Yes. I mean, no. No. Penelope’s joining us, isn’t she?” I look around for Penelope - she was supposed to be here five minutes ago. It isn’t like her to be late.

“Oh, no, I told Penny that we’ll meet her later. After, y’know.”  More eyebrow waggling.

“And Penny…elope, Penelope just accepted that?” (I almost veered into a full Penny. Catastrophe avoided. Don’t think he noticed it.)

“Well, Penny’s, like, used to it by now.” He half shrugs, smiling sheepishly.

A suspicion creeps in my mind, both hopeful and unbelieving.

“Simon Snow! Are you the reason why Penelope is leaving us to our own devices lately?” 

Penelope has started to leave the nightly routine of casting something under the stars only for me and Snow, which means, only for me. I thought she just had more important things to do - aura research and what not. Bullying Gareth. I don’t know. Whatever she is working on lately.

“It was she that proposed it! Oh bite me, Baz if you don’t believe me! I’m glad she did, you know? Because when the two of you are together, sometimes you’re downright impossible.” He actually pouts. “Both of you are going on about stars and magickal intentions… You get so intense, I can’t even hear the crickets!”

“Uh-huh, the crickets. Admit it, Snow, you just wanted me all for yourself,” I tease, but his face gets earnest as he tilts his head and bites his lower lip, swallowing hard.

“Busted. I do want you all for myself.” We do some more of that unreal staring into each other's souls that we seem to gravitate towards so easily lately. (I imagine we’re absolutely nauseating to be around.)

He inhales sharply, “Can I kiss you?” his voice is more exhale than sound. “I mean. In public.” I’m already reaching for him, nodding. Static in my ears, something in my chest painfully alive, and pulsing, burning like hope and relief all mixed together.

The kiss is tender, and lazy, like we have all the time in the world to just be . Like it’s just the two of us and everything else has faded into dark matter.

*** ***

The New Moon is tomorrow . Penelope and I even cast for a clear sky and no rain. Not taking any chances. We make a good fucking team. 

I try to keep a cool head, even though I don’t know what the New Moon will bring. Simon disrupts all my attempts at pretended coolness, though.

He corners me after football practice, in the locker rooms, looking excited.

“Have you been stalking me again, Snow?” (He’s been there the entire 90 minutes, just watching me train.) (He’s so committed, I love it.)

“Yes. Good work tonight. And, um, yea. I know why I’ve been so obsessed with watching you play all these years?” He says it like it’s a question, so I go ahead and answer it.

“Because I look good on the field?” I wipe some of the sweat from my face with the towel, wondering if I should short circuit Simon by taking off my shirt right now.

“Because you look fucking edible on the field. Now come on. There’s a Vision to attend to.”

“Hm?” 

He leans beside my locker, aiming for  nonchalance, when his dilated pupils tell a completely different story. 

Teammates buzz around us, so I suppose Snow’s affected pose is working. No one’s paying us any attention.

“Yea. New fresh out of the Vision factory.” His eyes raise to someone behind my shoulder and he waves. Everyone is either hitting the showers or already getting changed to leave. But we’re far from alone. When Simon speaks, his voice is low and smoky, all the while his face stays remarkably impassive. He could be asking me about homework. I’m impressed. I’m rubbing off on him in more ways than one.

“So new Vision. Urgent stuff. I leave a hickey right under your collarbone.” He bites his lower lip as he touches that place with two fingers. He hides his hands in his pockets after that. “ So… chop chop.”

“Hm, lizard brain at work, I see. Wanting to mark me much?”

“Yes. Mine. It’s what the lizard brain says. It’s ancient and wise. It’s seen dinosaurs die because of your beloved celestial events. Listen to it.”

I try not to show how turned on this makes me. “Context?” My strangled voice totally outs me though. I fidget with my locker combination, completely blanching for a few moments.

We’ve danced this little dance with Simon for so long now. He tells me the touch from the Vision, I ask for details on what we’re doing, since it doesn’t work without context. I find it better to get the Vision out of the way as quickly as possible, so that the next touches that we share are 100% ours.

“I’m on top, straddling you.” He comes closer, leaning in, whispering.

“Hm.” I nod to our goalkeeper as he passes by. After he’s passed, I say to Simon, “Not your favourite position.” 

Simon’s smirk is devilish. “You have two fingers in me, so I’d say it’s up there among my favourites.” He proceeds to eyefuck me while taking hold of my hand and then waves with his free one, plastering a manic smile on his face.

“Bye, Martin!” he yells. “Good job today on the field! Yea, haha, I’m back to monitoring Baz. You know, someone’s gotta prevent him from plotting. Jk, jk!” 

His fake smile falls away into an expression of genuine intensity as he turns his eyes back to me just as the door shuts behind Martin. His grip on my hand relaxes and he starts drawing circles with his thumb in the middle of my palm.

“So. Are we going or what?” Simon’s voice is sex and my entire nervous system is wired to respond. And if I whimper a little in agreement, it’s only because most of my blood flow has been redirected south. I can’t be expected to have much prefrontal cortex activity when Simon Snow is talking about him riding my fingers while his mouth is latched onto my collarbone.

“Get a room, you two!” One of our defenders, George, smirks and rolls his eyes, his towel draped around his middle. And oh shit, how many people have heard Simon’s passionate tirade? Howevermany, Simon doesn’t seem to mind. He blushes lightly, but his chin stays stubborn. “That’s what I’m trying to do !” He burns a hole in me with the heat of his gaze.

But the interruption allows me for one last attempt at logic and level headedness.

“Are you… ok with such a level of physical intimacy that comes from a Vision, a compulsory spell?” 

“Whether it comes from the spell or my dick, or other…organs that may be involved, does it matter? We are going to have sex eventually, Baz. It’s inescapable. What does it matter if it’s sooner rather than later? I want you. I reckon I’ve wanted you for a long while. And I know it’s not just gonna stop once the spell is reversed or whatever, I have no qualms about it… Do you?” 

Someone clears their throat and I realise that Snow has been getting louder, and I have been getting closer.

Someone wolf whistles. More recommendations to get a room follow. I swoon a bit.

***

I don’t know how we get here, in the privacy of our room, how I make my legs work. But we do.

It’s urgent and a little awkward. People might have been bumped on the way here. Some students and definitely a teacher. 

And now Snow’s undressing me - by Magic he gets off on undressing me. He murmurs nonsense while doing it, about what he loves about it and what I’m going to do to him, and what he’s going to do to me. I'm not even sure he’s aware of it. I don’t point it out in case he stops, i’m loving this so much – this stream of horny consciousness. My consciousness is well fucked, no streaming, just suspended in the air, all cognition sucked away by Snow’s heat and the softness of his mouth on mine, the hardness of his erection as he finally manages to undress us both. Holy fuck. I don’t think I’ll ever get over being fully naked and touching. It’s a precious kind of pleasure, intimate and squeezing my heart with how much I love it.

“Are… are you sure we’re naked in the…ah, fuck, Snow… in the Vision?”

He’s kissing his way down to my hard and leaking cock and I’m scrambling for the leftovers of my sanity.

“Want you so badly,” he says, nose in the hair trail circling my belly button. 

He wraps his mouth around my cock and bobs his head once, twice. Then he latches onto the head and laves it with his tongue until I’m bucking my hips wildly on the bed and he moves up my body, to kiss me on the mouth. 

Our erections align and mine is slick with his spit, sliding smoothly. Heat against heat, hardness against hardness – it’s a religious fucking experience.

Simon removes himself from me completely and before I protest too loudly he’s right back on the bed with me, lube in his hand. He pushes it into my hand, “Please, Baz. Need you inside me. Please. ” A shiver runs through me. This is happening. This is real. Holy fuck. There is no going back from this. 

“I hope not,” he replies. Shit. Did I say that aloud?

“Yea,” he smiles, sweet and besotted, and presses his forehead on mine.

“Git.” It’s too fond, it sounds like lover, like darling like my love. “Git.” I repeat again, and it still sounds like a love declaration. 

I pull back, and maneuver myself lower, hoisting Simon’s right leg onto my shoulder. His cock twitches just as his hole does, exposed to me, fluttering. 

“Holy fuck,” I mutter reverently and before I can stop myself I slide back toward the edge of the bed, my cock pressed between my abdomen and the mattress. I just need access to mouth at his balls, while I pump several solid strokes. I lick a wet strip from his balls to his arsehole and explore it with a few cat licks. It responds immediately, fluttering under my gentle probing.

One of Simon’s heels is digging into my back and his other leg is jerking on the bed. I bury my fingers in the meat of his thigh to stop him from accidentally kneeing me in the face. 

“Too much stimulation? Too little? Tell me, love,” I ask. 

His hands are fisted in the sheets, eyes screwed shut. His body is a tight bow.

“Argh, Baz, please! Please.” Not very coherent, but very polite. Sex is making Simon Snow say please more often in a matter of 15 minutes than he’s ever said to me in his entire life. I quite like it. 

Sitting back on my heels, I use some of the lube as well as the moisture from my spit after having licked his bumhole to press and circle around his tight ring of muscles with my forefinger. What utter devastation knowing that he wants me like that. I nip at his inner thigh, because it’s right here as I turn my face into it, his leg thrown over my shoulder, as it always should be.

I let my finger slip in up to the first knuckle, feeling the tightness around it.

I am inside Simon Snow, I think in awe.

“Not inside enough,” Simon grunts and wiggles his arse in frustration. Fuck. My sex crazed brain lets too much slip out. Next thing I know I’ll confess my undying love or that I’m a vampire. (Oh, who am I kidding. He probably knows about both things already.)

I move the finger past the second knuckle to the base and stay there. Simon’s muscles twitch around me. He’s hot and tight and I’m delirious with want. The whole world seems to have stopped at that point of connection.

I move my finger in and out, fucking him slowly with it. At some point I curl it inside him, feeling for his prostate. I manage to sit still, my hands the only thing working on him. I watch him wreathe under my touch, he’s fisted his hands in the sheets, the column of his throat is elongated with his head thrown back. Sweat glistens on his skin - I want to lap it off of him.

“Yes, fuck, there, right there!” Simon’s voice is urgent and pleading when I hit that bundle of nerves.

He begs for a second finger soon enough. I add my middle finger, stretching him, curling them inside him and finding that spot again, making him curse and almost kick me with his leg on my shoulder. 

Our room smells like sweat, like arousal, like sex. It’s filled with wet sounds of fingers slipping in and out, with whimpers and curses and from time to time the world goes silent as I scramble closer and kiss Simon’s mouth.

He gets impatient, his eyes almost feral, forehead draped in sweat, curls clinging to it. The light of the sunset glows soft and gives the scene a dreamlike quality. Only in my dreams would I get a begging Simon Snow. 

I guess my goal is to drive him a little bit mental. I have not changed completely after all, I’m still Baz Pitch, master plotter. So I keep my touch the same, my movements just below the speed he wants it - and I know I can go for hours, I’ve a violinist’s hands after all. I’ve practised for hours and that wasn’t nearly as satisfying as undoing Simon Snow with just two fingers. His cock is leaking heavy beads of precum on his belly. I bend forward until I can lick it clean, suckling on the tip of his cock. It makes him grow louder. I could come just from the symphony of this, untouched.

As if reading my mind, he removes his leg from my shoulder, drawing his knee to his chest and uses his foot on my chest to push me away and out of him. My fingers slip out with a wet pop.

“You fucker, stop torturing me,” he growls and pounces on me, I fall on my back, my feet hitting the headboard of the bed and then resting on the pillows. He straddles me, knees parted, cock jutting, pink and leaking abundantly. He ruts against mine several times, our precome mixing and allowing for mindnumbing pleasure. He slithers up my body, grabs my hand and guides my fingers to where they’ve been all this time. I slip both fingers in - his hole pliant and welcoming, even as it spasms around me, pulling me in.

We settle into a rhythm - I work my fingers in and out and he moves ever so slightly, fucking himself on them. He holds himself on his elbows, body curled around mine and he gives biting kisses to any place he finds, and then he stops right above my clavicle and starts sucking.

A vague memory surfaces - of his Vision as the reason for this – only to be drowned back in the way of bodies meeting, intersecting, joining.

In this position, my erection is trapped between our bodies and it slides and rubs against his. I have to focus not to come. I want this to last. I want this to never end. 

Simon must be battling the same problem because he bats my hand away, and reaches for my cock.

“Lube, where’s the lube!” either him or me says. We fumble for it, find it and then he coats my cock in it. We both stare at it. Are you sure? I want to ask. I almost say I love you. 

I swallow trying to remember how to speak. I vaguely remember being good at it. Talking. But it’s all gone now. (I’m grateful we used a protection spell before my brain was turned completely off. I don’t think I’d manage to cast any spells right now.) 

Simon’s right hand is holding my cock so that its head is at his entrance, dripping with lube from the fingering. His left hand is holding his arse cheeks apart. His back is arched, he’s a glorious sight. I’m dizzy with wanting him for myself and can only manage to loosely hold on to his hips.

“Do you want this?” Simon asks. I nod, wordless, because how the fuck does he have speech activated right now, and push my hips up, meeting his slide down.

We groan in unison as he slides down to the base of my erection, a torturous divine movement downward until I’m fully sheathed into him. Tightness. Heat. Simon. Fuck.

“Ok?” Oh wonderful, one syllable sounds are back on.

“Yeah…” His eyes are half closed, mouth slack, lips slick with spit. 

“Love. Move,” I grind out more one syllable words. I’m vaguely aware that there are some foreign sounds coming in from the window, cheers and bad singing? But the feeling of Simon around me, his heat everywhere, holds all of my attention. I slide my hands to his hips, lifting him up some and then letting him slide back down to the base. Fuuuck.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, almost reverently. Our eyes meet. I’m bursting with love. 

He starts riding me slowly, his fingers digging in my shoulders as he holds himself fast. The sounds coming from outside intensify.

He throws a dirty look out the window, his rhythm faltering. And I take notice of the sound, finally cataloguing it.

Funnily enough, I know what’s happening. It’s happened before.

The Watford acapella choir is rehearsing their Abba repertoire underneath our fucking windows. They must be using some magickal enhancement because how is it humanly possible to be so bad and so loud at the same time?

“Shut up!” Snow shouts. And then not a notch quieter, “We’re trying to fuck here!”

This makes me choke out a chuckle. “Just ignore them.” I pull him into a kiss and for a while it works, but then they start mixing modern songs with Abba and it’s just too much.

“The fuckers are…ruining…the…mood…” Snow’s words stutter in rhythm with our fucking. 

“Make them stop, Baz. Use your…big…fat…wand…” 

Aaand I’m officially fucking a comedian, aren’t I? 

But my wand is somewhere I have no idea where. It’s very hard to remember spells when Simon feels like heaven around my cock, or when he reaches back and fondles my balls, circling the base of my cock, touching the place where we’re joined, moving and slick. (Albeit under the badly orchestrated beatboxing happening on the ground this moment is slightly dampened, it still has me teetering on the verge of orgasm.)

“This is the most epic first fuck, it can’t go down in history with a poorly executed Abba soundtrack!” Simon whines, burying his face in my hair, stopping his up and down ride. He rotates his hips, which isn’t helping in any way. “ Is that even Abba?”

“Do you want to stop and ask –”  (More one syllables, this time strung in a sentence.) (At least it’s something.) 

“ We ’re not stopping!” Simon protests. “Make them stop !” he commands and latches his mouth to the underside of my ear, sucking the tender flesh there. At that, my body starts humming with something more than sex. It’s a kind of electrical current, thrumming from Simon to me, filling me up and making me vibrate with power. It’s not mine, but it’s in me. Burning, rioting. I have to let it out, I’m drunk on sex and this. This. This. Fucking this.

This thing that connects us, a living wire that’s both him and me. We’re converging into each other. I have to let this energy out, so I bellow “Shut up!” and then immediately the world around us grows quiet.

“Yes, finally…” Simon exhales shakily and goes back to riding me fast and furious. (And yes, he’s made me watch the movies, I’m full of references now.)

I become incoherent, once more. I never knew I would love not being in control so much.

Even though my brain is scrambled to the edges of galaxies, somewhere there, in the farthest corner of my mind, I know that something monumental has happened. Something not completely unfamiliar to me. 

Simon and I did something here that is magickally significant and unique, and no I’m not talking about my cock up his arse, although that is the most brilliant thing we've ever done, I don’t think it’s very unique.

But that’s somewhere in the nebulae of my brain, far away from what actually matters now . Every nerve cell in my body is firing like mad, as I barrel towards completion. Again, Simon like a bloody clairvoyant that fits me so well, reads my fucking mind and says, “Wanna bet that I can make you come faster?” His voice comes out winded. His words are breathy little things, barely there, and he has to scrunch his face in the most adorable feat of concentration. He opens his eyes letting me see the adoration there… He obliterates me and makes me laugh. What a preposterous idea.

He grins crookedly. We’re fucking and we’re laughing. I didn’t know that was a possibility. 

“Next you’ll, ah, fuck, you’ll offer to play rock-paper-scissors to decide who comes first…”

“Awesome idea, babe. D’you wanna?”

“Crowley, you’re something else!” I shake laughing, my abs contracting, cock twitching inside Simon, as his hole tightens with each gust of laughter. I refuse to yield, of course. I push myself up to my elbows and take his mouth into a wet kiss. Then, with the mix of our saliva, I lick my palm and take his cock in hand. 

“Ohhh…” laughter dies from his face and morphs into raw pleasure. I wank him while snapping my hips up powerfully, fucking him a little desperately now that my orgasm is rolling towards me.

“Oh fuck, Baz, I’m.. Merlin.. Fuck…”

Ropes of hot spunk spurt from his cock, coating my hand, our chests after he collapses on me. The muscles of his arse spasm and I let myself go through the little death and come inside him. 

Some of my spunk spills out a bit as I slip out, tender and still pulsing from the orgasm.

Simon collapses on my chest, hot and wet and sticky. 

***

Later, we’re lying in bed, magickally clean and cooled off (as much as anything can be cool around Simon Snow the Furnace). We’re both on our sides, legs tangled together - cuddling. We know this. We’ve done this so many times. Except this time we’re naked and not pretending to do it for the Vision.

“Snow.”

He bites my forearm - the closest part to him and I roll my eyes. (Am I doing it on purpose? Just to rile him up? Maybe old habits die hard.) 

“Call me by my name,” he mumbles against my skin.

“Simon, love,” I say and he kisses the bite away.

“Mhm?”

“When we shut up the Abba kids, you pushed magic into me.”

“Well, you were pushing your cock into me, so I suppose I evened out the playing field.”

I roll my eyes. He doesn’t see it because he’s sleepy and his eyes are shut. 

“I reckon you’ve done that before, love.” 

“Yea? When?” He lazily blinks, fixating me with a curious stare.

“I think…” I turn on my back, wondering how he’ll react. “During the Lyrid.”

It’s a moment of decision now. If I tell him about touching his fingers during that night and about my wishes, I’m basically confessing wanting him for a fuckload of time. It’s scary, but also not? Not really, not anymore. (I think… I think Simon’s wanted me for a fuckload of time as well. Just, he didn’t know it.)

I turn my face to meet his eyes once more and tell him about the Lyrid. “The sky was lightning up with meteors and you fell asleep right beside me. And I… touched your hand. You moved it in your sleep.”

I quiet my breathing now, and Simon waits me out. He presses a kiss above my collarbone, threading his fingers through my hair, smoothing it back. 

Encouraged, I go on. “Our fingers interlaced for the briefest of moments and I felt an electric current - your magic, only I didn’t know what it was. It was brief, but I wished I could have that kind of touch with you, not just the angry kind.” I swallow back my worry. It’s not that hard when he looks at me like I lit up the sky, hung the moon, scattered the stars and exploded galaxies into being. Like I’m the unmoved mover, the cause of the cosmos.

“Darling, I reckon your magic plus my wish, plus the Lyrids resulted in this compulsory touching spell. I wielded your magic and unwittingly created your Visions.”

He’s quiet for a short moment, then grins at me. “Nah, I think you’re not exactly right, babe. I did wish for something more as well. For connection. It was both of our wishes, our magic mingled, mine - stronger obviously, because I am the stronger one in this relationship –”

My heart leaps in my chest - such a silly organ, really - I’ve been inside Simon, but it’s this admission of a relationship that makes me giddy with possibility. 

In the safety of his confirmation, I easily fall back on teasing. “If I recall correctly, and I do recall correctly, we’ve had this strength issue settled with a bet, didn’t we? I remember I won.”

“That’s because of your vampire strength!” he protests, pushing himself up and away from me.

“Well, your magic is so powerful because of your Chosen Oneness.” I pull him back to me. He comes easily.

“We agree then, we’re equals.” He smiles widely, like he won the fucking moon and the stars came as a bonus.

I’m helpless. I grin back.

We’re quiet for a while. There’s something hanging in the air between us. The blooming of a confession not yet admitted.

“Did you know that there are galaxies in the Universe that we can’t see yet, because the light from their formation hasn’t reached our planet yet. They’re there in the Universe, but not in our Observable Universe.” 

He plants a lingering kiss on my shoulder, looking pensive.

“The same way some things exist in us even though we haven’t named them yet,” he says haltingly. “Haven’t admitted them aloud. They’re still real. We still feel them. And we know that, even though we haven't said it yet, right?”

I swallow back my heart to where it’s supposed to be, all skipping beats and wild hope. “Yes. They’re real.”

*** ***

It’s the day of the New Moon. Simon has training with the Mage in the first part of the day. I’m too excited for tonight, so I can’t practise my violin, nor can I read. I take a long walk through the Wavering Woods to clear my head and pass the time. 

I get in a row with the Dryad and almost get my feet spelled into tree roots. Luckily Ebb comes by and manages to soothe the Dryad’s rage. I make my retreat, promising myself to thank the goatherder.

I get back (alive) at lunch. On my way through the gates, I spot Penelope sitting on the Great Lawn…with none other than Gareth. I approach them, hypnotised by this unusual occurrence.

“....and thirty. Time’s up, Gareth. Bye!” She waves him away and he looks like a (turned on) kicked puppy. Gareth wobbles away, while wheels whirr in my head. Two plus fucking two equals Penelope has been playing a double game!

“Penelope Bunce!”

 She jumps, scattering some of the pages from her lap to the ground.

“Baz! Morgana’s tits. Can you give a girl some notice before you sneak up on her?”

“No.” I sit across from her, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, eyebrow arched. Basically I’m wearing my gotcha look.

“What?” She shifts uncomfortably under my gaze. And that should be the first clue. Penelope rarely gets uncomfortable, and I’ve seen her be like this too many times in the past days.

“The deontological code of the researcher requires you to disclose all information about the nature of your research.” I nod towards her Matrix glasses. “You have deceived me, Penelope, when you had me sign your consent forms. You and your Matrix glasses have been withholding information. Confess now or be ready to be shamed by the only real peer you have in this institution!”

She rolls her eyes at my dramatic tone.

“Gareth ratted me out?”

“Unwittingly. The poor sod is besotted with you.”

“He is.”

“Is that the truth you were trying to rattle out of his water fountain loving mouth when Simon and I stopped you from committing murder in Gareth’s room?”

“Yes,” she admits, looking defeated.

“Well don’t hold back now! Share what’s up with the glasses? What does love have to do with it? How is Gareth crushing on you affecting your aura research and your ‘ hopes of getting published’ ?”

When she doesn’t answer I find myself grinning. I’m a cheshire cat and she’s the mouse that I’ve cornered. “Oh Penelope. It’s tough to admit you’re wrong, isn’t it?”

“Devastatingly so.”

“Well. I’ll wait.”

“I’m not wrong per se ! Yes, my glasses pick up on people’s auras only when they’re in the presence of the people they have intense feelings towards.”

“Intense feelings?” Scepticism leaks from my words. “Hate? Disgust? Does my aura light up when I’m in the presence of the Mage?”

“Ok ok. Romantic feelings. I see auras of people when they’re in the presence of someone they love or have a huge crush on.”

“And that means…” I tap my chin in a playful gesture of thinking. 

“That the love in the air during the Lyrid influenced my spell.”

“Oof. No wonder you’ve been so cagey. The ethical implications of that alone!” For instance, if Penelope sees someone that’s secretly crushing on someone else, it’s not really her secret to reveal. However, using a simple method of exclusion, she can identify who that person’s crush is. And then she would hold informational power over some poor sod. 

“Gareth was the first person that I could see the aura of when there was no one else around. Except me. Like a fool I forgot to take myself into account. I thought he was an anomaly. Or that everything before that was a coincidence… And I got scared that my entire hypothesis was wrong, and he - the stubborn bastard – wouldn’t confess to his feelings!”

“And did he? In the end?”

“I was using threats and they only turned him on more. His aura’s colour was getting brighter and more intense. But he kept quiet.” She sighs. “Until I promised him a half an hour date. He fessed up then.” She shudders.

“Aren’t you…” I make vague gestures with my hand, not knowing how to be tactful.

“Dating Micah? Yeah. This wasn’t really a date date, Baz. Seven snakes! It was luke warm lunch on the Great Lawn with a stopwatch on my phone. I did it for science. I needed to know if my….ugh – love hypothesis was right.”

“You mean that I was right? About feelings being the catalyst for astronomical magic?”

She bristles immediately. “This only proves that being surrounded by horny in love teenagers when casting during the Lyrid affected the curvature of my magic! Correlation does not equal causation, Baz!”

“Only in this case it sounds like it’s: causation equals causation.”

She flops on the grass. “Ugh. I hate when I’m not right immediately and absolutely.”

I pat her knee in compassion. “Happens to the best of us.”

The implications of what she’s saying are making me slightly dizzy. I try to hold on to civil conversation though. “When did you realise you could see auras only when people were near their romantic interest?”

“Erm, two weeks ago. When Simon and you were hogging all the comfy places in Watford, cuddling. I checked Simon’s aura one night while we were waiting for you to get the telescope, and I couldn't see anything around him. And then you appeared floating the thing… and then I couldn’t see from his blinding aura. Yours isn’t any better. You’re both like exploding stars.”

“So all this time –”

“I was giving you space to figure stuff out on your own. Yea... Not really my place to say anything, but I will say it now again, in case you missed it. I realise the two of you are a bit thickheaded.”

She takes in a big breath of air and enunciates, “Morgana and Merlin fucking in a cupboard, Baz! Your auras are like laser blasts from hell when you’re in the same room! I’d say go get a room, but you seem to have that under control.”

“And have you ruled out simple sexual attraction? Maybe it’s not about… er, love.” My heart is in my throat. I know what it is for me. It’s love. It could be just physical for Simon.

She shows me a list with crossed out items:

• -teenage hormones
• -sexual attraction
• -roommates
• -has to be aware of feelings, (to KNOW about them)

“Ruled that out. The girl that Agatha is dating is asexual, but nor aromantic.”

“And the last one?”

“I was grasping at straws. But I could see Simon’s from the moment I learned about the spell. Remember, in the library? I don’t think he had any idea that he fancied you. Simon didn’t know for a long time…”

“Didn’t?” 

“Well, he acts like he’s eaten the world’s biggest secret nowadays. I assume he’s finally in the know. Morgana. So much melodrama over this.”

I grin at her and Penelope pulls me into a lazy side hug. 

“D’you think things will change after the ritual tonight?” I ask, not knowing what I’m really worried about. I guess, Penelope’s glasses came the same day as Simon’s Visions. What if his aura was a sign that he’s been affected by the same love in the air as Penny’s Matrix glasses?

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Unlikely. Do you think things will change after tonight?”

My voice is small when I reply, “I hope not.”

SIMON

The day of the New Moon goes slow and too fast at the same time. Slow because no food is  involved – I’m supposed to be fasting for the ritual – and half of my day is spent with the Mage, training. I never realised how much I hated it until I started having an option of what to do with myself. Like, now that I’m missing out on time with Baz, I’m not very keen on indulging the Mage’s whims.

The day picks up speed, because Baz and I argue in that fond way for the rest of the day, ending arguments in kisses, so it’s quite electrifying. He seems happier somehow, more affectionate. (It makes me stupid with love.)

The only moment when we get into an earnest argument is when we disagree on whether or not to tell Penny about our magic sharing. He says it isn’t his place to tell her about this. But I’d like to keep it between us. I can’t imagine sharing magic with Penny, after experiencing that while shagging Baz.

But Baz insists it might be important for the ritual. Since it’s my magic, I should be the one to tell Penny. He even calls her that – Penny – and doesn’t correct himself once.

I try to distract him, several times I even succeed (a mutual handjob in the empty locker rooms) (I like the uninhibited quality that the visions give my communication skills, I can just ask for what I want.) (It’s exhilarating).

“Did you heal your hickey?” I inspect his skin as I help him button his shirt back up. (Don’t ask me why his shirt had to be off during a handjob. It just had. I didn’t make the rules.)

“There was no hickey, love. I told you, I don’t bruise.”

“Not enough blood circulation?” I tease.

“Mhm…” He nods and I hold my breath because this is the second time that he’s basically confirmed with words that he’s a vampire. That, plus his fangs popped out when he came inside me last night. (He has no idea though!)

“Well, I maintain the right to keep on trying.” 

I remember the Vision from last night... There was a love bite on his skin, under his collarbone. I vow to make it true eventually. (Maybe if I go hunting with him, and then suck on his skin immediately after he’s fed? Would that work?) (That should work.)

In the end I do tell Penny about pushing magic into Baz (accidentally) (I also leave out the details of the second time I did that). As predicted, Penny makes me try to push my magic into her, which yuck. It doesn’t work, and she walks away from the experience with a slight frown in between her eyebrows. I nod at her to Baz, in a see what you’ve done gesture, to which he rolls his eyes and engages Penny in discussion about whether that new bit of information could affect tonight's ritual.

“Not really, even if you were the only one wielding the magic, which I don’t think, Simon was still the one affected.”

I have a feeling Baz knew that already, but wanted to get Penny out of her temporary funk.

“We could write a paper on this, eventually, Baz,” Penelope says. “Be co authors.”

His eyes light up and I want to kiss him so badly. He looks happy contemplating this. (I love it.) (I love him.)

He catches my eyes and smiles and I fall a little harder. “Only after you finish your first paper on your Aura research, Pen,” he says fondly, and Penny beams at him. 

***

The night is dark and full of… well, not terrors, but stars. The absence of a visible moon really makes the stars pop. It’s a warm night, buzzing with crickets and fireflies. It reminds me of the Lyrid night, only it’s better. So much better. We’re on the same hill, but everything’s different.

“Now, focus on all the knowledge you’ve acquired this month,” Penny says as she draws circles on the ground with a kind of black sand. I think about all the things I now know about Baz. And the things I've learned about myself. 

“Tap into the common mind of the community of astronomers.” 

Ah, she means that.  

“Look up at the sky, think about the light that travels from so far that the star that birthed it might be dead by now –” Penny’s trying for guided meditation, but really she sounds like a professor that’s a little bit too much into dead stars. 

“Are you doing it?” Penny asks. I’m looking at the sky through a telescope and after this month, I know how to find half the constellations, and it’s exhilarating. 

I find a pulsating star. A pulsar, which is a neutron star, spinning 1000 times per second. That’s pretty awesome. (Looks like all of Baz’s facts stuck with me.)

 “Are you tapping into it?”

I remove myself from the telescope and glare at her. Penny can’t appreciate the strength of my glare in the darkness. “If only I had some quiet, maybe I’d manage, Pen.”

“I’m just trying to help.” She doesn’t sound apologetic at all.

“I appreciate it. I do, but we did our best this month. I crammed in my head as many facts about the cosmos as I could.”

“Focus on those facts that bring out emotions in you, and when you’ve generated the right emotion, direct it as an intention to remove the spell,” Baz chimes in, making me want to drive the telescope through my skull. They’re making me crazy! Both of them. And neither of them in a sexy kind of way!

“And then, when I start the ritual, make the wish for the Visions to stop.”

“ I remember, fuuuuck. Both of you, just, let me focus, yea? Wasn’t there some Night Relax plants that you had to make grow?”

“ Night phlox, you git, not relax… and lucky you I already perfected the spell during the Lyrid,” Baz says.

“I know! I know this extensively. I call them night relax because in traditional mage medicine it serves as an ingredient for calming potions. We’re using them as energy vortexes. They help with focusing and then redirecting celestial energies. And I know this, and more, because I fucking read it in the book that Penny ordered me to read.” I may be just a little hangry, a day without food is a day that deserves to burn.

“I didn’t order it… I merely… suggested it…” Penny mutters, defiance colouring her voice.

I take a deep breath. We’ll be done with this and then I can eat and then I can ask Baz to make up for all my torture today with some sexy times. If I don’t murder him and Penny before we get to the end of tonight, that is. 

“Both of you. Let me be. There’s a list of constellations that I want to look at.”

If Baz knows which constellations, he doesn’t say anything. The memory of him drawing them on my skin warms me up from inside and I take off my shirt, remaining only in my vest. 

I look at stars, catch the scent of vanilla and almond - Night phlox - and find myself soothed by it. That’s how my dreams smelled during the Lyrid workshop, when I fell asleep.

I’m grateful for that night, for the spell however it came about. I’m grateful because I know it launched something true to me, otherwise it couldn’t have grown and developed so intensely.

At some point I let the telescope be and just look up at the sky with the naked eye. 

It makes me happy to be alive, even if my stomach is empty. I have Baz. And I have Penny. And I have this love inside me that feels connected to the stars, like that’s where it’s coming from. And I suddenly know what Baz has been on about, that we’re made of the same stuff as the stars. Because looking up at them I get this indescribable feeling of home sickness and at the same time of rightness. 

As if sensing my mood, Baz sits beside me and laces his fingers with mine. It’s stupid, I know, but I have tears in my eyes.

Penny is finishing the last touches on the drawing on the grass and we have a few more moments to ourselves before the ritual. 

“I feel so small. ” I whisper. “In the best of ways. Like, none of it matters - the Humdrum, the Mage, like they can all go fuck themselves and I wouldn’t notice, because everything is so small and the cosmos is so Big.”

Baz pulls me closer, arm wrapped around my shoulders. He kisses my temple. 

“I know what you mean. Being under the stars is one of the two times that all my thoughts fall away and I just exist, a speck of magickal essence on a rotating rock, in a galaxy, observing the universe while being the universe.”

“And what’s the other time?”

“You know what it is.” His warm breath tickles my ear, making goosebumps rise on the back of my neck. I focus on my breathing - now is not the time to get a stiffy. 

“You should do it all the time then, be an astronomer or a magickal theoretician, study stars and how they affect magic. Co-author papers with Penny. You’d be so good at it…” I whisper fervently.

“My father would have an aneurysm.”

I snort. “At least.”

He smiles. I can see it when he’s this close, my eyes adapting to the lack of light.

“And if I were to decide to become an investor?”

“You’d be brilliant at it. You could invest in something you loved.”

“Or a barrister?”

“Ooh, does that mean that I would have someone to legally get me out of trouble? Nice.”

He pulls our clasped hands to his lips. Presses a kiss there. 

“And if I were to decide to just run my parents’ estate?”

“If that would make you happy, it would make me happy.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I’d like to see where you grew up,” I add.

“You could.”

I open my mouth to tell him that I’m in love with him, because when else? But he beats me to it, giving me one of his many facts. Usually they come out when his gaze gets extra soft, when his brow furrows as he tries to reign in emotion.

I’ve learned to read Baz Pitch, and I know what he offers when he says, “You know the Twinkle twinkle little star rhyme? It’s all lies. Stars don’t twinkle. It’s because of our atmosphere that messes with the light’s trajectory that we perceive it as twinkling.”

“So it’s better.”

“Yea. Because it’s not about something happening far away, but something happening right here.”

I open my mouth to tell him that right here, and right now, I’m so in love with him I could burst.

Penny clears her throat. “Ready?”
I let the desire to confess simmer in the background. We stand up. 

I focus on all the emotions, feeling as connected to the night sky as I ever will be. I stand in the middle of the intricate circles that Penny drew, the scent of vanilla, honey and almond filling my nostrils, the pungy smell of burned wax from the candles all around us, and a softer, more beloved perfume - bergamot and cedar. I wish for the Visions to be over. I received their gift. They can fuck off now. The candles sizzle out.

Baz stands to the side, his magic poured in all the elements of the ritual, the foundation for it. Now it’s Penny’s part. She says the incantation, waving her ring.

 A soft breeze washes over me. The stars shine bright on us. I find Baz’s hand.

I love you. I tell him silently, squeezing it. Do you know that?

“What the…” Penny swears under her breath, and starts the incantation anew.

“What’s wrong?” Baz asks, alarm colouring his tone and his hand slips away from mine.

“Nothing,” Penny growls, vexed.

Baz is as confused as me. “Everything is fine then?” 

“No. Nothing’s happening . The spell is redundant. It’s like casting to close an already closed door.”

“It didn’t work?” I ask.

“Not the way you mean it! It didn’t need to work because there’s nothing to undo, Simon!” She sounds exasperated.

“What? Did I imagine a month worth of Visions and bloody headaches?”

“As in, the spell had been broken?” Baz puts in. “But just today Simon had a Vision – Simon?” He turns to me. And I remember it well. It ended in orgasms in the locker room. It was a good Vision.

“Yea!” I say. And then think a bit. Was it a Vision? Did it wield any levers to make me do stuff? It was like a very very delicious invitation… “Huh. Actually… I don’t know. It was in my head, quite vivid. And I really, really wanted to do it. I had to, basically, so I dragged Baz to the locker room –”

“Lalalalala don’t want details of your sex life, Si! Not wanted it before, not wanting it now.”

“The hickey!” Baz exclaims, victorious. “There was no hickey from yesterday’s Vision! So it remained incomplete! And yet you slept through the night! Usually the Vision would have kept you awake if you hadn’t fulfilled it to the letter!”

“Shit, you’re right!” And when “the Vision” wanted me to kiss and bite the freckle, it also showed me a hickey there. In my mind’s eye it was there! But none appeared in real life, because my Vampire boyfriend doesn’t get hickeys. (Well, I’ll die trying.)

Penny magicks a few fey lights, muted and warm floating globes of light. The same lights that the Professor magicked during the Lyrid. I can see Baz’s face now. Our eyes catch.

“When was the last time you experienced the consequences of not obeying the Visions immediately, Si?” Penny asks.

“I dunno.” I turn to Baz for help, like he should know. “Our first kiss? Yea, that was the last time. But that’s bad science, isn’t it? Because we’ve been working hard at making the “Visions” real the moment they came to me. Instant gratification.” I find myself grinning, thinking back at all the times I found new ways to kiss Baz Pitch. I’m starting to suspect that all those scenes in my head that appeared after our first kiss were in fact my own fantasies, rather than magickal Visions.

“Oh, there’s more evidence! Before the kiss, the Vision was about you starting touches,” Baz says, getting more animated, as he puzzles this through. “But after the kiss, you’d have images of what you wanted me to do.”

Penny groans again. “No sex details!”

“Oh get your head out of the gutter, Penelope. It was innocent, like, a kiss on the temple. There. I bet you feel stupid now,” Baz says and I snort-cough.

Penny plops herself on the ground, banging her head on the ground. I hope the grass softens the impact.

“Morgana! I can’t believe how much time I spent on this, only for it to have resolved itself! Simon! How could you have not noticed?!” 

“I dunno, Pen, I was busy –” sucking cock, having my cock sucked - you know how distracting that is? is what I don’t say, but want to, and Baz seems to know, because he joins me in trying to hold back laughter. 

I love that he teeters into laughter so easily now. (I want to smother him with kisses.) 

Our eyes meet and it’s a rookie mistake - I attempt to mask a laugh as a weird sounding cough, and fail. 

“Morgana’s tits.” Penny laughs as well. “Honestly, the two of you. You owe me big, like, at least two of those fancy books from your library, Baz.”

“Deal!” 

“Hey, Pen! Check us out with your Matrix glasses!” I suddenly remember to ask. “Have our auras changed?” 

Penny’s laughter slowly morphs into a wry smile.

“Yea. We could do that. Baz, do you want to check out Simon’s aura?” 

Something complicated happens on Baz’s face. He bites his lip and settles down, transforming my shirt into a blanket, a small smile on his lips. 

“Nah. I’m good, thanks, Pen.” He scoots closer, where I’ve sat near Penny in case she gets a concussion.

 Penny humours me, though. She checks me out through her Matrix glasses and after a moment says, “Nothing’s changed really.” 

“Well, don’t be too hard on yourself, Pen. I guess the spell didn’t show in our auras after all.”

“Most likely.” Penny folds the glasses and produces a bottle of wine from her bag. She opens it without a corkscrew (I imagine the bottle is magicked for easy access) and takes a swig. “This was supposed to be celebratory. I suppose it is.” 

“How did it happen though? Do you think it was a time thing? It ran its course?” Baz wonders, taking a swig and offering me the bottle. My stomach heaves out a loud unsatisfied grumble. Baz chuckles in understanding, dragging his rucksack closer by the lapel. He fishes a wrapped sandwich out of it.

Waving his wand above it, he mutters a heating spell, and then gives it to me. 

“Fuck, I love you so much, thank you!” I bite into it and only after Baz chokes on the wine do I realise what I’d said. I vow to say it again soon, and in a context that doesn’t tie my feelings to him delivering food. This time it was casual, while nothing about my feelings for him are.

“I suppose it achieved its goal, whatever it was. But it brought the two of you together,” Penny muses out loud. She sits cross legged, squinting at the sky.

“Gave me something true to hold on to,” I say around a mouthful of delicious sandwich.

“Gave me intentional genuine affection,” Baz adds and I squeeze his hand.

“And think about it, it all started because someone from academia came to share facts and knowledge with us – you know, data! It all comes back to that, doesn’t it?”

Baz groans loudly. “Do you really still believe that?” 

“Yes! It all makes sense – ”

I laugh as they get into yet another argument over what has more sway in this world. I listen to them, eat my food with one hand, the other’s in Baz’s lap, our fingers interlaced as he uses our united hands to gesticulate from time to time. 

I gaze at the stars, shining bright without the moon being visible. The night really is beautiful, punctuated by floating lights and fireflies. 

I feel both anchored and like I’m about to fly off. 

There’s a shooting star. And then another.

There’s nothing that I wish for, though. I’m good.