Chapter Text
BAZ
“Incoming!”
I hear the screech of the curtain being pulled back and then I’m assaulted by a blast of cold air as Simon stumbles into the shower behind me.
“What the fuck,” I start, but he shakes his head.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m running late,” he says, smiling sheepishly at me. There’s still a crease on the side of his face from the pillow.
“You can’t just invade my shower,” I snap. He nods like he’s agreeing, but he reaches past me for his three-in-one.
“Look, I woke up late. And you take forever! I’ll be finished before you are,” he says, flipping the cap of his wash and squirting way too much gel into his hands. “You just keep doing your five step hair process or whatever, you won’t even notice I’m here.”
He starts scrubbing at his skin and under his armpits, and he looks like a fucking buffoon. I sigh loudly and turn my back to him and attempt to keep washing my hair. I know when I’m beat. I try to ignore the weird fucking noises he’s making behind me, and focus on my own shower, but it’s hard, considering there are two grown men in a shower made for one.
“Oi, bunch up,” he says suddenly, slapping my ass. I jump. “You’re crowding me here.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I snap, turning to glare at him as I shift closer to the wall. “I don’t have time for this, Simon. I have my tutorial this morning, and if you’re trying to start something—”
“Is that what the smell is?” He interrupts, shoving his face into my hair and sniffing. “It’s your shampoo? I thought it was an aftershave.” I fix him with my best glare, and he throws his hands up and smiles. He’s fucking infuriating in the morning.
“Sorry! Sorry! I’m almost done, I swear.”
He scrubs his hands quickly through his hair, working up a ridiculous blue lather, and dunks his head under the shower stream. I turn away from him again; I have a lot of shit to do today, and the last thing I need is to get distracted by him. And he’s extremely, horrifyingly distracting right now.
I’m almost finished putting my conditioner in when I feel his hands slide onto my hips, and he presses a kiss to my shoulder blade.
“I’m done! See? Told you I was fast,” he says, and I snort. He smacks me again, and I try not to jump this time. “I’ll be gone by the time you’re out. Good luck today, yeah? Love you.”
I swat at him lazily as he clambers out of the tub behind me, my hand brushing across the ridiculous pair of tiny wings he has tattooed on his back. Simon has several tattoos, I’ve discovered, and I hate them all.
“Love you,” I respond, distracted. I have conditioner in my eye.
I finish up my routine and turn off the shower, only to find that the asshole stole my towel. Brilliant. What a beautiful start to this day.
The front door slams as I’m getting dressed and I peak out the window just in time to see the top of his head hurrying down the street, his curls bouncing in the wind. I glance at my watch. He’s going to be incredibly late to work. My father is not going to be pleased. But then again, I think he’s used to Simon’s aversion to timeliness by now.
It’s pleasantly warm out as I make my way to school, which means that it’s probably going to rain later. I mentally review my notes in my head, go over my speech for tonight, and pause once to double check I have my paper. My mobile goes off as I zip up my bag, and I pull it out to check.
Idiot: your dad definitely caught me coming in late with Starbucks
Idiot: did I say good luck? Good luck! One more and you’re done!
Idiot: your dad definitely just caught me texting
Idiot: see you tonight!
He’s an absolute nightmare. But he’s right: one more tutorial and I’m done for the term. I only took two courses this semester, since I was focusing on the store preparations, and I was extremely reluctant about it. Simon had to practically force me into it, but now that the term is over I’m glad as hell he did.
Not that I’ll ever tell him that.
One more tutorial and I’m done, and then I can be free to stress about the grand opening tonight. And after that’s done, I’ll find something new to stress about.
There’s always something to stress about.
My tutorial isn’t one of things though, as it turns out. My tutor turns me loose early because he has no comments or suggested revisions on my paper. I’m there for not even half an hour and then I’m released into the spring sunshine. I stop to get a coffee, and then pull out my mobile to text Simon.
BP: Done with tutorial. My tutor is an imbecile
BP: Iron your shirt tonight
He doesn’t respond, but that’s for the best. He’s on his mobile entirely too much at work, and it’s frankly amazing my father hasn’t caught him yet. But I suppose he’s lucky; the cubicle they stuck him in for his internship is far away from the main office, so the two don’t interact very much. And Simon’s position is far, far below my father’s notice; as head publisher, he doesn’t often speak to the intern in charge of going through the slush pile.
I’m starving, and I know I should eat now, because as soon as I get back to the shop I’m going to be in overdrive to get everything ready for tonight’s opening. But there’s just too much to do first. Maybe I’ll wait and get a kebab after the party in celebration. (I know Simon will be on board.) (He’s always on board for food.)
The shop is dark when I get there, which means Fiona hasn’t been in yet. But that’s fine; preferable, actually. I have a very clear idea of how things are meant to be, and she’d just mess it up.
I flip on the switch and pull up the blinds and look around. It’s still hard to believe it actually came together. It’s still hard to believe it’s actually happening, and that it all looks like this. When I’d pitched the idea to Father, we’d envisioned some kind of sleek lines, minimalistic, serious press. “We’ll appeal to an older, more distinguished market,” I’d said during our first conversation on the matter.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true anymore.
When we got down to the details—how to design the store, how to brand our materials, how to pick a name—I’d stuck by my initial, buttoned up ideas. We were going to keep the name Pitch Books, all our books were going to have black dust jackets, and we were going to keep a small and tidy stock. But Fiona fought me, of course.
“It’s a historic building,” she’d said one night. She, Simon and I had gone to the pub to eat, but it had just turned into a planning session. “It just doesn’t make sense to turn it into some trendy boutique. And what’s with keeping the name and making the books black? It’s like saying ‘hello, I have a stick up my ass.’ Is that what you actually want, or do you just think that’s what you should do?”
I turned to Simon for backup but he just held up his hands and shook his head.
“I like colour, but this isn’t my store,” he’d said. That had been his answer to everything. “I like name option one, but this isn’t my store.” “I think that’s too fancy, but this isn’t my store.”
I gave in, to a degree. I’m a bit glad I did, honestly. The final product looks more authentic and inviting than anything I’d envisioned previously. We ended up changing the name—Pitch Books never rolled off the tongue anyway—but almost everything else stayed the same.
There are some differences, of course. We painted the staircase and got rid of the heavy, oak bookcases and instead lined the walls with white shelves and filled the floor with display tables. We put chairs and small tables upstairs in the balcony, and left the entire back left of the store free for events. We even built a stage. “This will be brilliant for poetry slams,” Simon had said with a grin. I almost punched him.
It’s all very traditional, except for one indulgence. It was Simon’s idea actually, but I loved it. (And I probably wouldn’t have admitted that if he hadn’t been so uncharacteristically supportive of the idea.) But Fiona hasn’t stopped making fun of me for it since she first saw it: hand stenciled black letters on the wall above the counter reading “THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT.”
“It’s your favourite song,” Simon had said. We were sitting on the floor of the living room eating take away, and I was surrounded by papers and plans and having a full meltdown while he played FIFA. “And that’s a bit what reading is, isn’t it? If you love a story, it never goes away. You can’t get rid of that feeling. That story never dies.”
I stared at him for what felt like an hour.
“That was fucking brilliant,” I said. He just shrugged and picked up his controller and went back to his game. He has moments like that all the time, where he just drops these stunningly simplistic truths on me. He’s not often eloquent, but he has a way of cutting to the heart of a matter. That’s probably why he’s been so good at helping me pick books to publish.
Well, that and his short attention span.
“This is fucking boring,” he’d muttered, tossing aside the latest manuscript I’d handed him. That had been the hardest part of all of this; finding out of print books, wading through the muck, and deciding what to include in our first run. Simon had been extremely helpful in the decisions, and I had been using he, my father, and Fiona as my sounding boards for book choices.
“Well then what did you think of the last two?” I’d snapped, pouring over my own notated copy. We were in bed that night (my bed—his is too small), and Agatha kept trying to climb on top of my books, and I kept having to pick her up and move her, and as a result my patience was wearing a bit thin.
He rolled over and put his feet on my back and hummed, and I could tell he was trying to find his words.
“Well...they were a bit...gay,” he said finally. I narrowed my eyes.
“We’re a bit gay,” I’d responded, moving Agatha again. Honestly, she’s a nightmare sometimes. She takes after him.
“I just mean, do you want that to be the schtick? Printing gay books?” he’d asked. His foot wiggled on my back and he kicked at my hair, and I shot straight up because I hate when he touches me with his feet. Agatha bolted across the room when I moved, knocking my tea from the bedside table.
“I was thinking of doing special series sometimes; female authors, homosexual subtext or gay authors, authors of colour, etc,” I’d said, cleaning up the tea. “Something other than just reprinting dusty white men.”
Simon had been silent for a long moment, and I’d almost thought he’d fallen asleep.
“Why not just make that the theme? Print one of each in every round, or make each round a specific theme. That would make the selection process easier, wouldn’t it?”
He claims this store is entirely mine, that he’s not involved in any way, and that I did it alone. But honestly? I couldn’t have done it without him.
I’m big enough to admit it.
After all of the work and stress of getting things off the ground though, there’s actually not that much to be done in preparation of the opening. I set up the table for the drinks and text Fiona to remind her to get the champagne (and then I text Bunce as well). I organise the table full of swag we’re giving away to attendees—a book, a bookmark, a mug and a sticker. (The stickers were Simon’s idea. “Everyone loves stickers,” he’d insisted. “Stickers are required.”)
I straighten the stacks of sleek black books (I’d won the battle about the monochromatic dust jackets) and set up the microphone on the stage and text Dev to remind him that he was on music duty.
And then I’m out of things to do except stress. There’s still a few hours until the party, but it’s not technically too early to start getting ready. I think about texting Simon, but he’s still off work and won’t be free for a few more hours.
I wish he were here. He’d offered to take the day to help me prepare, but I’d said no, and now I’m strongly regretting it. He wouldn’t have been helpful at all in the actual preparations (when he helped me shelve last week he’d gotten himself locked in the storeroom again) but sometimes it’s nice to have him around to distract me.
He’s good at that; pulling me out of my head. Annoying me to death until I forget what I was stressed about.
I wish he were here. I hate that I’m not going to be able to see him until after the party gets started. And he’ll probably be late. Which will just stress me out more.
I should have had him take the day off.
SIMON
I’m running late, but honestly? No one ever expects me to be on time. By my internal clock, I’m almost early.
The store is packed when I get there, full of people from Pitch Publishing and loads of old people I don’t know. In the corner I see Penny and Fiona manning the champagne table, and I head straight to them. Penny is looking beautiful in a dress (I never see her in dresses) and Fiona looks ready to kill a man in her black, tailored pant suit.
“He ironed his shirt,” Penny says to Fiona. (Doesn’t even say hello to me.) Fiona just rolls her eyes, downs her champagne flute, and digs into the pocket of her sleek trousers for a handful of pounds and shoves them at Penny.
“How are things going?” I ask, grabbing two flutes. I don’t really like champagne and I don’t normally drink, but it seems like the thing to do tonight. Also I’m a bit nervous. Fiona gives me a quick side hug and points to the far corner of the store.
“He’s about to shit his pants,” she says.
“I’m going to go over there then,” I respond. “Oh! Penny, you’re coming to end of term drinks with us and Dev and Niall tomorrow, right?” Penny rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, I just spoke to them actually. I’ll be there. But you need to find more female friends,” she huffs. I shrug.
“I have Fiona. And Agatha.”
“Doesn’t count,” Penny and Fiona say at the same time. “We’re not friends, Simon,” Fiona says. “We’re arch nemeses. I thought we were agreed on this.”
“Whatever,” I mutter, grabbing the alcohol. “I have to go find Baz.”
Baz is holding court in the corner, surrounded by men twice his age, listening while his father tells some story that involves large hand gestures. I slip through the crowd and sidle up to Baz and pass him the champagne, and he takes it with a smile, then flicks his eyes down to inspect my shirt. The crease in his brow makes it clear that I apparently didn’t iron it well enough.
“Ah, Simon!” Mr. Grimm says, interrupting his story. My stomach goes cold for a moment. He and I get on well enough, and he’s distantly polite at work, but he’s still my boss and my boyfriend’s dad, which is a terrifying combination.
“Gentlemen, this is Basil’s boyfriend, Simon. Simon is doing the Pitch internship this term,” Mr. Grimm says. I reach out and shake the hands of several people I’ve never met and try to subtly catch Baz’s eye. He seems as thrown as I am by the fact that his father introduced me as his boyfriend, but he just gives a small shrug and raises his eyebrows. I grin.
The party is honestly kind of boring. It’s far more sedate and mature than the book release party we held here, and for the first time in my life I’m kind of wishing for some vampires to liven things up a bit. I do the rounds and say hello to people I don’t know, and then I solve a napkin crisis, and Fiona and I spend a long time talking to a graphic design student from the university and Fiona sets up an interview and I stand there awkwardly because honestly I have no role at all in staffing decisions, but in general I just try to stay close to Baz and keep him plied with alcohol.
When it’s time for him to give his speech I’m nearly falling asleep on my feet. It’s a huge day for him and Fiona, and I should really be far more tuned in, but I’m exhausted. I can’t wait to go upstairs and collapse into bed. I’m not even going to take my nice clothes off. Baz will enjoy yelling at me for that.
“Thank you for coming,” Baz says into the microphone. He looks impossibly cool and collected, despite the fact that I know he’s four drinks deep and screaming internally. He’s standing casually with one hand on the mic, the other tucked into the pocket of his suit trousers, and he looks like one long, lean, lanky shadow against the dark wall behind him. (He painted one wall black.) (Because that’s who he is.)
“Tonight is a big night for Hades Press, and I’m glad you could be here to share it with me,” he continues. His voice is crisp and calm and I catch his eye over the crowd and smile. One corner of his mouth tilts up in response.
“In Greek mythology, Hades is the god of death and the underworld,” he says. “His name means ‘the unseen one’ and I rather liked that. At Hades Press, our goal is to take those books and authors which have been unseen, those books who died an early death, and give them a new home.”
Fiona snorts beside me lightly, and I elbow her in the ribs. She’d made fun of his name choice for months (she wanted Bad Seed Books, like the Nick Cave band), but I love it. It’s entirely Baz: dark, intelligent, and so fucking extra.
“As many of you know, my mother opened this store almost thirty years ago as a general bookseller, and it stayed just the way she envisioned it until it closed earlier this year after a fire,” Baz says. I pull my attention off Fiona and back onto him. “Those of you who knew my mother knew she loved to collect beautiful, rare, out of print books, and that’s what initially inspired Hades Press. But that’s not exactly what we’re going to do here.”
I start to frown. I don’t remember this bit of the speech, and I know the whole thing. He’s been practising it nonstop. He fell asleep saying it last night. I could probably recite it at this point. This is the bit where he starts thanking his father for believing in his vision and talks up how great Pitch Publishing is. But he’s going off script.
“I’ve learned to see the beauty in the things that are discarded. The things that are unconventional, that don’t fit in. The things that have scars. In my eyes, sometimes the things with bad reputations are the things that can be most precious.” He catches my eye over the crowd again and my stomach clenches. From beside me, Fiona whispers, “shit, Basil.”
I get what she means. There’s something in my throat, but I’m not going to fucking cry.
“All of our titles are odd ducks,” Baz continues, breaking our eye contact. “Authors who didn’t fit the mold, authors who were seen as too different or too loud or too undesirable, authors who had so much to say, but weren’t properly given a chance to say it. We’re printing books that deserve a second chance. It’s a big task. But one I’m willing to take on.”
He ducks his head and smiles, and then swerves back onto his pre-written speech and I clear my throat quietly, trying to pretend that I’m not affected by the fact that my boyfriend is an eloquent, romantic prick.
The speech finishes up quickly and he gets a round of applause, and then his father takes over the mic to talk about publishing and Baz slips through the crowd to find me.
“You’re brilliant,” I whisper in his ear as I pull him into a half hug. He just shrugs, and from here I can see the dusting of pink on his ears and across his cheeks. He might be more drunk that I realised. That would explain his sentimental off-script ramblings.
Baz gets swept up by Fiona, then Penny, then Dev and Niall, and the night goes on way, way too long, but finally it’s over and the store is officially opened and I manage to drag myself back up to the flat and collapse on his bed, fully dressed and unwilling to ever move again.
He appears in the doorway a few moments later, still dressed, and I can almost hear the frown in his voice as he says, “oh.”
I roll over with a heavy groan and kick off my shoes.
“Oh what?”
“I was going to see if you want to go get a kebab.”
I just stare at him. It’s after midnight. We’d have to walk so fucking far to find kebabs. And I’m honestly unsure if I could force my body out of bed at this point. I’m fucking wiped . The combination of the semester and my internship and helping Baz with the store has made me feel like I’ve survived some kind of nuclear stress bomb.
I scrub a hand over my face and sigh.
“You deserve every kebab in the world,” I begin, and I see his forehead furrow. He knows where this is going. “But I beg you. Don’t make me get up. Bring your bony ass over here and go to sleep and I’ll buy you forty kebabs tomorrow. And the day after that.”
His mouth is a thin line and he looks ready to snap, but he pulls off his shoes and shrugs out of his jacket.
“You always say that,” he mutters, changing quickly. I just groan and turn my face back into his pillow. I feel the bed shift slightly and I prepare for him to climb in, but instead I flinch as something heavy and unexpected lands on my back and forces a surprised grunt out of me.
He threw Agatha at me.
“Eighty kebabs,” I say, my voice muffled by the pillow. I can hear his sigh from across the room, and then I finally feel his weight on the mattress.
“Are you really going to sleep like that?” he snaps, poking at my collar. I shrug, and I can hear him titter like an old bird. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, that shirt can hardly get more wrinkled.”
“Shut up and come here,” I mumble, reaching out for him. He likes to pretend that he doesn’t enjoy being close, and I expect him to put up a fight and shove his hand in my face. Tonight is no different. He pushes me away as he gets himself situated and pulls out his mobile, and makes me roll over so I’m hugging his leg and my cheek his laying on his thigh.
“I think that all went well,” I say. One of his hands comes down to rest on my head and play at my hair. He hums in agreement and then suddenly lowers his phone.
“Did you hear my father call you my boyfriend?” he asks. “What was that about?”
I shrug.
“Maybe he’s making an effort. All things said, he’s been pretty chill about it all.”
Baz snorts and tugs on one of my curls.
“Chill? Have you met my family? None of us are chill.”
I groan a bit and push myself up so that I’m sitting, and try to unbutton my shirt.
“No, I’m serious,” I say. “I think he’s trying. Something happened at work today and—”
“What happened?” Baz says, all the softness and humour from the previous moment gone from his voice. “Was it that prick in adverts again?”
I try to contain my sigh. I wasn’t going to tell him about it for this exact reason. Instead I just shimmy out of my trousers—which is easier said than done, considering I’m so tired I can barely sit up.
“No, it was another bloke,” I say in between grunts. Taking off trousers while lying down is really fucking hard. “We were talking about the release party and how stressed you’ve been and how I’ve been trying to keep you calm, and he made this weird comment about how I have a ‘full service internship’ and like wiggled his eyebrows.”
“Ew,” Baz says, scrunching his nose.
“Right?” I say, finally free of my trousers and button up. I collapse back into the pillows.
“What’s his name? I’m going to have Dev kill him.”
I reach out and poke him in the side gently and shake my head.
“No, it’s fine,” I say, biting back a yawn. “He was doing that joking thing, he wasn’t trying to be an ass. But he saw me freaking and went ‘I’m kidding! It’s 2018, pro homo!’ And when we turned around your dad was right there.”
Baz abandons his phone and slides down next to me and I eagerly roll over and grab at him. I’m kind of needy. It’s fine.
“Did he rip out the prick’s jugular?” he asks. I can feel his voice reverberating through my chest.
“No, he just invited me to Mordelia’s birthday and then sent the other bloke to get something from the annex storeroom.”
Baz is silent for a beat, then—
“Mordelia’s birthday was last month.”
“I know!”
Baz shakes his head and I don’t have to see him to know there’s a look of amused amazement on his face.
“Simon, you’ve been blessed with a rare sighting. You caught my father in an actual panic. Cherish it. It won’t happen again.”
“Noted,” I yawn, and tug him closer. His hand comes up around my shoulders to play at the curls on the back of my neck.
“Think it went alright tonight?” he whispers suddenly. I’m too tired to speak eloquently, so I just squeeze him.
“It went beautifully. You’re beautiful. All beautiful,” I mumble. I’m half asleep. “So good.”
He flicks at my ear gently and rests his chin on my head. I can almost hear him thinking, starting to go back over everything that happened, listing out everything that needs to be done. He’s searching for something new to stress and stay up about.
I move my hand from his waist and let it fall heavily on his face.
“Stop. Go to sleep. Tomorrow, we kebab. And then we get drunk with Fiona. We stress later,” I mumble, angling up to press a kiss to his neck. “If you stay up, I’m going to kill you.”
He sighs loudly and dramatically and shifts slightly to turn the light off, then repositions his arm around me.
“I love you,” he whispers into the darkness. He’s still awake and alert, and the words sound deliberate, pointed. Different from this morning. I nuzzle at his chest and sigh a happy, tired sigh.
“I love you too, you twat,” I say.
“Prick,” he responds.
“Nugget.”
“You’re a fucking disaster, Simon. You know that?” he asks, placing a kiss in my hair. “Go to sleep, you absolute nightmare.”
I do.