Chapter Text
Baz
I need to stop this, I think as I stand over Snow’s bed. I know that I need to stop this.
I’m about to go back to bed and force myself to fall asleep, but then Snow whimpers, and whispers, “no, please, no”, and my undead heart shatters into sharp glass pieces inside of my chest.
“Sweet Dreams,” I whisper, pointing my wand at his forehead, aiming for the mole right above his left eyebrow I so badly want to kiss. Snow’s tortured expression instantly relaxes; his worried brow unfurrows, his tight grip on his bed sheets loosens, and he lets out a soft, relieved sigh.
I crawl under my covers and cocoon myself in my thick wool blankets, feeling shameful and horribly exposed in the black darkness of our bedroom.
I said that last time was the last time. Maybe the first time I used the spell was justified; he was screaming, after all. It was two weeks ago, after he had come back from one of his sessions with the Mage. He's been to more and more of them this year, and he always comes back looking drained. His nightmares are getting worse, and I don't know if it's from whatever misadventures the Mage is forcing him to partake in— hunting goblins or slaying dragons or killing whatever beasts Chosen Ones are expected to take care of— or if it's whatever happened to him at the end of last term, that night him and Bunce came into the dining hall looking fresh off the set of The Shining.
I smelled him before I saw him. His distinct scent: sweet and savory, like cinnamon and bacon. Like something I'd gladly eat. I think my heart skipped a beat when he stumbled into the dining hall. When I met his eyes, he seemed so breakable for once. I've never seen him look so human. He's always so alive— but that was the first time he seemed so mortal. Less supernova and more seventeen year old boy. Supernaturally gorgeous, too courageous for his own good, noble as knight— but just a boy.
He's come back this year with that vulnerability. I see it almost every night, when he's sleeping.
The first time I cast the spell, it was the first night of the term. His whimpers woke me; I'm far too attuned to him at the beginning of fall, after two months of missing the sound of his breathing. As his cries became yells, the room began to warm like a furnace, rising in degree with every miserable noise Snow let out. I’m fairly certain that he would have accidentally lit the whole building on fire if I hadn’t used the spell. I put a silencing charm on our bedroom years ago— Dev and Niall are directly below us, and they said they couldn't stand listening to me yell at Snow for leaving a towel on the ground or Snow scream accusations of my plotting any longer— so I knew no one was going to come for us.
I did the first thing I could think of: I concentrated the full force of my magic to cast "sweet dreams" on him, and the strangled scream died in his throat. His face relaxed, and he rolled over to his side to face me, and within a minute he was drooling on his pillow. He slept peacefully for the rest of the night. (I know, because I watched him for hours after. Until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.)
It's an unbearably sentimental spell. One I had almost forgotten about until I'd stayed with Fiona for the end of the summer. (She showed up and kidnapped me as I was getting ready to go to the Club to meet Dev for tennis, the supremely rude wench.) She claimed it was because she needed a drinking buddy. But, really, it was because she wanted to warn me that the Veil was thinning this year, and that my mother might come to me.
Tasha will want to see how much trouble her son has turned out to be, Fiona said with an uncharacteristically soft smile and an absentminded flick of her cigarette into her ashtray.
I didn't bother saying the dead only come back to visit the living, not the technically dead. (Hell, maybe she'll come visit Snow. He's got so much life; he must have got my share of it.)
The night she warned me about the Veil, my dreams took me back to the nursery— except this time, I wasn't an innocent baby anymore. I was me now— a monster, an abomination. It wasn't a faceless, nameless vampire that killed my mother this time— it was me , it was my fangs and I was the one who tore at my mother's throat and I was the one who tasted my mother's blood under my tongue and I'm a monster so I even liked the taste and it was my fault and then everything was on fire, the room was being consumed, I was being consumed until—
Until it wasn't. One moment I was in my own personal hell, and the next I was sitting by the creek behind my house. My mother used to take me down there when I was a child, and she'd spell butterflies to fly over my head, and I'd giggle as I tried to catch them. I looked down at my hands, and they were the right color— the golden brown of the Egyptian Pitches rather than the ghostly pale of vampires.
I turned and there was Snow— sitting under an English oak tree with his blinding smile. The one I see him giving Bunce and Wellbelove sometimes, the one he gives to those he loves. Except this time he was looking at me.
"Basilton," he said softly, my name foreign on his lips, and all my former fear from my nightmare was forgotten. He avoids saying my name— he'll snarl you or Pitch or, if I'm lucky, Baz , but I haven't heard him say my full name since we were first years. He mispronounced it as Bay-sil , like how Americans pronounce the herb, and I bit his head off for it. If my memory serves me, I believe I said that he sounded like a chavvy gremlin, and no wonder he can't make a simple warming spell work if he can't even speak properly and, well. I said a bunch of awful things until he cried and locked himself in the bathroom. I think it was only our third week of the term.
"Simon," I responded in the dream, and reached for him. I enjoyed the warm press of the sun on my skin with him until the morning light.
Fiona tried to be nonchalant about it the next day, but I know she must have spelled me. She was casual— too casual. She forgot to make fun of me for my bedhead, so I knew something was up. I realized she must have cast Sweet Dreams on me when I thought through the dream a bit more, and the way the air smelled a bit like Fireball whiskey and nicotine, the way Fiona's magic smells. Plus, that's the place the dream took me when I was a child, since it's my favourite place. It would take me there with my mum then, since she was my favourite person. Though, I have a new favourite person now.
I shouldn't have been so surprised that the spell has worked so well when I've tried it on Simon. Sweet Dreams only works on the person the castor wants to protect the most in this world, and the more you want to protect the person, the better the spell works. (His happy dreams are nearly instantaneous when I cast.)
But there's no need for it now. I really don’t need to be spelling his dreams pleasant every single night when he's not in danger of going off. But it’s been addicting, since that first time, to know that I’m helping him in some way. When the sun comes up in the morning, he won’t know it, but I’ll be the reason he doesn’t have purple bags under his eyes. I can show him how much I love him without having to reveal a thing.
But last night, as I was falling asleep, I heard him whispering. My heart stopped, because I thought that he woke up and that he was talking to me. Only for a moment, though. When I turned to face him, his eyes were closed, and he had a small smile on his face, and I realized he was just dreaming.
Now I have his soft confession stuck in a loop in my head.
"I love you."
That's when I realized, I must be spelling him into dreaming about Agatha fucking Wellbelove.
Fuck my life.
Simon
“Baz is plotting something,” I say as soon as Penny sits beside me at our usual table. I've been waiting for her for twenty minutes; I've already devoured six and a half scones.
“Say it isn’t so,” Penny responds with deadpan sarcasm, her expression bored as she nibbles on the edge of her toast.
“Penny, I’m serious.”
“You’re always serious when it comes to Baz. But, unfortunately—or rather, fortunately— you’re very rarely right.”
“It’s not that I’m not right; it’s that I don’t always have proof,” I correct her.
“Is he talking about Baz again?” Agatha asks as she slides into the bench next to me. “Simon, it’s not even eight a.m. yet.”
"And he's already plotting," I say. Agatha pours almond milk into her coffee, unfazed. "And he's gone too far this time."
I wait for them to ask me what he did to me. They don't.
"Don't you want to know what he's been doing?" I ask, my voice whiny even to my own ears.
"Get proof that he's plotting, and we'll help you," Agatha says, and then adds, sarcastically, "I'll light up the pyre myself."
I frown, and want to start an argument about how I'm absolutely positive that Baz is a vampire. But Agatha is right, it is pretty early. I don't want to get in a fight with Agatha before she's even had her morning coffee— that's always a recipe for disaster— especially when she's just started sitting with us again since our break-up.
To be fair, I was a bit of a prick to her when she dumped me. I accused her of mugging me off to snog Baz, and that's how she told me she didn't want to snog anyone. And I got a long, well-deserved lecture on asexuality, which ended with her storming off and me feeling like a right prat. She's only just forgiven me for my insensitivity, and I don't want to ruin it by bringing up Baz too much. (Though, I haven't met my quota for the week yet, so I can bring him up later.) (At least, I can to Penny.)
"Fine," I say, and change the subject. “Penny, can you Double or Nothing your notes in Magic Words later? The Mage wants to meet with me today.”
“Again?” Penny asks. She seems to be trying to hide her exasperation.
My sessions with the Mage are his condition for letting me stay at Watford. On the first day back from summer holidays, he insisted that it wasn't safe at Watford, that I needed to leave to be protected from 'outside forces.' I was arguing with him about it—Watford is my home; there's no better place for me— and I thought I was going to go off right there at the top of Mummers Tower, when Baz came sauntering into our bedroom. He gave the Mage a cool, appraising look as he came in, and the Mage looked unnerved to see him. Surprised, almost— which didn't make much sense to me, seeing that the bedroom is both of ours. Though, I suppose Baz did come back to school a day earlier than he usually does, so maybe it was that.
The Mage left my bedroom after Baz showed up, and didn't bring up my leaving Watford again. Though he has insisted that we increase my training. It's been… well, it's been shit, really.
"Yeah, I'm supposed to meet him after lunch."
She purses her lips in disapproval. "I don't see how any of his spells are supposed to work. I've never even heard of most of them, and I couldn't find any books on them in the Watford library."
I shrug. "Maybe they're rare ones. They all sound old to me."
"What was the one he used the other day? The Bible quote?" Penny asks inquisitively.
"Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God." I recite. I've heard that one all week; it's stuck in my brain.
"See, I don't know what that one's supposed to do. Unless he thinks the Humdrum is a necromancer? Has he said anything about resurrection spells?"
"He hasn't said anything about that." He hasn't said much about anything, really. Just calls me to his office, asks me a bunch of pointless questions without answering any of mine, and casts a bunch of spells on me. "Plus, didn't you say those were impossible? I could have sworn you said magic couldn't bring back the dead."
"Well, no, it shouldn't be able to like, make someone alive again. But the normal rules obviously don't apply to the Humdrum. If you could find a way to keep the Veil open, maybe…"
"The Veil?" I ask her.
"You know, the Veil," she says with an explanatory wave of her hand.
"I don't know." I can never keep track of what's real and what I've just read in Harry Potter. Even after seven years in the Magickal world, I'm still playing catch up.
"It's the barrier between the living world and the dead one. You know, us and ghosts."
"Ghosts are real?" I splutter, almost dropping my scone.
"Yes!" Penny says in a tone that makes me think she wants to add 'obviously.' "Honestly, don't you pay any attention in Magickal History?"
"You know I don't." Though, perhaps I should. Did I really miss Professor Berry talking about ghosts? It must be because it's our last class before dinner, and I'm always too hungry by then to properly think.
"Haven't you noticed the Visitings? Didn't you see Keris crying the last week? Her father came to visit her, that's why her and Trixie have barely left the room all week. Every twenty years, dead people can talk to the living if they have something really important to say."
"Oh," I say. I think I have heard of this. I thought it was just a part of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, though. "What did Keris's dad say?"
"Who knows? All I know is that I've practically got another roommate now," Penny responds with far less sensitivity than the situation seems to call for.
"Hm," I say thoughtfully, and shove another scone in my mouth, and let my eyes wander where they always do, right to...
Baz, who rapidly turns his head towards his plate and begins absentmindedly playing with the cereal in the bowl. He's pretending he wasn't just staring at me. I watch his spoon stir around the bowl in front of him and wait for him to feel my eyes on him. (I hate when he ignores me). After a minute he caves, and lifts his eyes to sneer at me. I give him a scowl back, and he huffs at that, causing his lips to pout out a little. The image of his full lips makes all my recent dreams pop back into my head in full force.
My skin prickles. I don't want to think about the dreams during the day—I don't even want to be having them at night— but they keep slipping into my thoughts. The stark difference between my Dream Baz and the Real Baz is jarring.
I shudder and break our eye contact, thinking about the one last night. It was the worst of them all.
I was back in Lancashire, staring into the cold, dead eyes of the Humdrum. He's got my own eyes… but he's not me. He just looks like me for some reason. In my nightmare, he kept summoning different people to my side: Penny, Agatha, Ebb, the Mage… He brought everyone I cared about, and I couldn't stop him. The Humdrum was doing awful things to them—making them bleed from their pores, causing their bodies to convulse with horrible seizures, inflicting pain that caused their mouths to open into silent, tortured screams.
'Stop, stop, make it stop!' I screamed and screamed, but the Humdrum just smiled.
'You're doing this,' he said, 'I'm you.'
I tried to protest, but that's when he summoned Baz.
It shocked me at first; I thought: why would the Humdrum summon Baz, of all people, why I would even care if Baz got hurt, why he would even think this would torture me—
That is, until Baz started screaming. Then it was so awful— I couldn't think at all.
'No, please, no,' I begged, willing it to stop. Watching Baz—Basilton Pitch— on his knees, watching his mouth fill with fangs the way it does when he has nightmares, watching him tug at his dark hair in agony.
It was horrifying—but then, suddenly, it was over.
In an instant's time, I was transported back to Mummers. The morning light shone in through our open window, and I had my arms wrapped around somebody.
Not somebody—Baz.
I'd been there before—in bed with Baz in my dreams— so it didn't freak me out. (For some reason, it never does.) (Not until I wake up, that is.)
'Good morning, darling,' I said, because it felt like the right thing to say.
Dream Baz turned to face me. His hair fell in a lazy swoop in front of his face, just the way I liked it. He pouted at me.
'Quiet, darling,' he teased sweetly. 'I'm trying to sleep.'
His voice was irritable and argumentative, but it was just for show. So I kissed him. Dream Baz melted into my kiss, and didn't protest anymore.
We stayed like that for the rest of my dream. Kissing in our bedroom, his arms wrapped around my neck and mine pulling his waist close.
When Dream Baz said he loved me, I didn't hesitate to say it back.
And then I woke up to the Real Baz slamming his wardrobe shut. He was scowling at me as he put his tie on.
"Good morning,d—Baz," I said, still hazy from my dream, forgetting that we don't greet one another like that in the morning.
"It'll be a good morning when I finally kill you, so I can wake to something other than your incessant snoring," he said.
The room smelled like Baz's magic—like gunpowder— and my face felt a bit like I was healing from a grease burn. Like it does when Baz casts a spell on me.
I look back up at Baz now in the dining hall, and he's looking at me with his head cocked slightly and his eyes a question. I feel my blush heat my face as I think about how his voice sounded in my dreams. Soft and raspy and not at all like himself when he called me 'darling.’
But that's not the real Baz Pitch. Baz Pitch would never call me darling.
I don't know how, but these dreams have to be his fault.
"Simon?" Agatha says, looking at me curiously. Fuck, I think that she was saying something to me. "What do you think?"
"Um… yes?"
"Your answer to 'what kind of dog should I ask my parents for Christmas?' is yes?"
"Um… no?"
I expect her to get mad or look at me like I've done something irreversibly wrong. But she doesn't—she surprises me by laughing, open-mouthed and carefree. (She never would have laughed at the fact that I wasn't paying attention to her when we were together.) (It's seeming like a better and better idea we broke up every day.) I laugh back just as easily.
I feel Baz's eyes on me, and I glance quickly over to him again. He's grimacing, and I want to go over there and wipe that look off his face. (Doesn't he know his looks would be much improved if he smiled for once?) But breakfast's nearly over, so I just ignore him in favor of going back over to the buffet line for another scone.
Figuring out what Baz is up to is important— but not more important than getting my share of sour cherry scones.
I don't know how long I can do this, I think as I drag myself up the stairs with a Herculean effort. I'm taking the steps one by one, barely lifting my feet as I bring myself to my bedroom, cursing the fact that I live at the very top of this damn tower. I'd almost give up the en suite right now for a room on the first floor.
I finally bring myself to the top and trip over myself at the threshold. Baz is on his bed, cross-legged with his hair up in a ponytail and a novel open on his lap. He raises a single eyebrow at my clumsiness, but I ignore him, plopping facedown on my own bed and pointedly not groaning the way I desperately want to right now. (I can't show Baz any weakness.) (Any more weakness.)
"Rough day?" Baz says in his signature sardonic tone.
Rough day doesn't sum up the half of it.
The Mage says this is supposed to be making me stronger. You have to learn to protect yourself from undue influence, Simon, he says. If you can't make yourself safe here, I'll have to send you elsewhere.
I don't want to leave. But, at this very moment, I don't particularly want to stay.
"Piss off," I say into my pillow. My voice is muffled by the cotton fabric in my mouth, but I know Baz hears me, because he scoffs indignantly at my poor comeback.
"Seriously, Snow. What is the Mage doing to you?" There's an indecipherable edge to his voice that makes me turn to look at him. He's sneering at me, as usual. I'm tired, so it angers me more than his cruel expressions usually do.
"Wouldn't you like to know? Going to report back to the Old Families what we're doing?" I say, trying to emulate his mocking tone, though I think I just sound like a petulant child. I'm too drained to be properly menacing.
“You’ve got blood on your shirt,” he responds, ignoring my accusation.
“Alright," I answer. I know that already, obviously. I'm not as dumb as Baz makes me out to be.
“Why do you have blood on your shirt?”
“Why do you care?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at him.
“I don’t,” he says with cold indifference. “You could bleed out for all I care. I just thought the Mage cared about The Chosen One a little more than this,” he says with a condescending wave to all of me.
I thought he did, too, a small voice in the back of my head points out. I ignore it, and look up to glare at Baz as harshly as I can manage. (He, predictably, looks unimpressed.)
"I'm on to you, you know,” I say. He turns his nose up at me, and my chest floods with white hot rage at his composure.
"Aren't you always?" he sneers. "What have I done this time, Snow? Have you got a hangnail I'm somehow responsible for?"
"You're fucking with my dreams, you absolute prick," I snap.
Baz's facial expression doesn't change, but I see he clenches his jaw tightly. It makes the veins in his neck stick out prominently and his jawline tighter—and I know I'm right. That's his tell— it's how I know when I'm getting to him. (It's the way he reacts every time I point out he's a vampire.)
"I don't know what you're talking about," he lies, his voice flat.
I growl and stand up so we're nose to nose. (Well, technically, nose to chin. That bastard's got three inches on me.) "You're a bloody liar, Basilton Pitch."
His dark eyebrows raise marginally and his grey eyes flood with emotion briefly. (I'm right, I'm right, I know I'm right.) As quickly as the surprise flashed across his face, it's gone. "You don't know a damn thing about me," he growls through gritted teeth.
"I know you better than anyone," I insist, because it's true. He always takes his tea with two sugars, and never with milk. He special orders his shampoo from France, and it smells like cedar and bergamot. He's the one who tried to get all the merewolves killed fourth year by putting a metal pole in the middle of the lake during a lightning storm, because he hates those things almost as much as he hates me. I know he's claustrophobic, because one time we accidentally got locked into the second floor coat closet, and his breathing became fast and irregular, and when Ms. Possibelf finally opened the door, he practically fell down in his rush to get out.
I know he wants to hit me right now, because he's only breathing through his nose, the way he always does before one of our fistfights.
And I know he's the one who's making me dream of kissing him.
I grab him by the front of his T-shirt and push him against the wall. (Now I’ve got his attention.) His eyes go wide and he moves to try to push me off him, but I’ve fought him too many times, so I see it coming and grab his wrists before he can shove me off. I pin them by his head and he snarls.
“Tell me what you’re cursing me with,” I demand.
“I don’t know what you’re bloody talking about,” he spits.
“I know you’re casting something on me when I’m asleep. What’s the spell?”
“You’re delusional,” he snaps.
I crowd him, bringing myself inches from his face to intimidate him.
“Tell. Me.” I demand, looking him straight in the eyes.
I’m so close to him that I see his pupils dilate and I feel his cool breath on my face when he exhales sharply. The air becomes electric, the way it always does when we’re fighting, my magic warming up the bedroom. But this time, it’s more than just hot rage in the air. There’s something more—a palpable passionate emotion that fills the room. My eyes are drawn to Baz’s lips against my will— they’re parted slightly and as pink as they are in my dreams. They look soft and kissable. The images that are haunting my dreams float into my head, and my body becomes flushed with embarrassment at all the false memories I have of kissing my sworn enemy.
I push myself back from him, my heart hammering in my ears. I think he realizes how weird and charged the moment we just shared was, because he looks almost dumb right now with how striken his expression is. Wordlessly— without so much as an insult or sneer— Baz walks out our bedroom door, slamming it shut behind him.
It takes longer than I’d ever admit to anyone before I'm finally unfrozen from the shock of that moment.
Feeling like I just ran a marathon, I walk into the bathroom to wash off the day. Under the hot water of the shower, I try to clear my thoughts of everything— of the Mage and my dreams and Baz Pitch. But the blood caked under my nails reminds me of the uncontrollable bloody nose that started when the Mage cast Give Up The Ghost. And the problem growing below my waist reminds me of Basilton Pitch— the sweet, soft one that exists only in my wildest dreams. I thoroughly wash the blood down the drain and avoid touching between my legs, but I still step out of the shower with the same level of anxiety I had before I bathed.
I crawl into my sheets in nothing but my pants, feeling hot and itchy and uncomfortable from the day's events. Even though I took nearly an hour in the shower, Baz still hasn't returned to our bedroom, but I decide not to let that stop me from going to sleep. I toss and turn in my attempt to relax enough to drift into sleep. I try to pretend I'm unbothered by the fact that it’s past curfew and Baz is still gone.
When I finally do fall asleep, I dream of blood, and screams, and the Humdrum, but Dream Baz doesn't ever show up to save me.