Chapter Text
Simon - February
“So it’s- Well okay- I was thinking- Like, you know-” Penny starts multiple times then takes a deep breath and picks up one of the books that I discarded on the floor at some point. “I wasn’t having any luck tracing back the creatures to any sender. Their nature pointed to it being some faerie controlling them, but that wasn’t narrowing it down any, so I decided to pivot and follow a different question.”
My heart speeds up, and it takes a second for me to realize it’s not excitement or eagerness for the answer, but by that time, Penny’s already plowing on.
“I was curious what it was about faerie magic that was so different from ours that it wouldn’t create another Humdrum, so I started diving into the lore, then the history, then the physics of it.”
She pauses for dramatic effect, like she’s so swept up in the reveal she’s forgotten that only five minutes ago she was walking into something of a scene and that maybe it isn’t the best time for theatrics.
Maybe it’s the perfect time for theatrics.
I don’t want to know. I don’t want the answers. Penny can take as many dramatic pauses as she wants, can pause forever, really.
I don’t want this to be over.
My relationship is ruined and I nearly died and the flat always smells just a bit like smoke and roses, but I’m not ready to give this up.
But I can’t say any of that, so I let Penelope finish.
“It turns out: faerie magic isn’t just different from what mages use. It’s the exact opposite. Like antimatter. When they collide, they annihilate, but also, functionally, substituting one for the other will do the opposite of the original intention. Which theoretically means that Simon using faerie magic could be creating, like, an Anti-humdrum.”
“I haven’t seen any kids with bouncy balls lately,” I say numbly, already catching on.
“I didn’t mean it literally.”
This is the worst case scenario.
The Humdrum - that was me, but it was because of something done to me before I had a choice, before I even really existed. And when it got worse and worse and I was used and manipulated to fight it, well, I was just a kid really.
It’s okay to be tricked when you’re a kid.
When you’re a kid, you listen to adults because you need them, still. Need them to cook you dinner and buy you clothes and sign your permission slips to go on field trips. Listen to them because if they can do those things, surely they must be right about all the other things, about controlling your powers and fighting monsters and saving your friends.
You trust them because you don’t know any better.
But I’m an adult now.
I know better.
I should’ve known better. I was so desperate to be whole again.
But that’s not it, is it?
I was so desperate to be Chosen.
I might’ve been a shitty Chosen One, I know. I could never find the right information in the right books or make my spells work like they were meant to, and everything I tried was really just hurting people in the end anyway, but that’s certainly better than being nothing. Better than being powerless.
Better than floating directionless and lonely and afraid with no one telling you what you’re supposed to do or who you’re supposed to be.
It’s never been about the power, about the magic.
I never had such distaste for it as Agatha, but I don’t love it like Penny and Baz do either. It never felt like a part of me, really. It’s something external, something that happened to me like everything else in my life.
I could take it or leave it just as easily.
I didn’t agree to take this faerie magic on for the Queen because I needed magic to be myself again.
I did it because I’m no one without a mission and a leader to guide it.
Because I’ve been a soldier since before I’ve been a person.
Because the exhaustion and the fights with Baz and the threats to my life were worth it if it meant I didn’t have to figure out what comes next on my own. If the only thing that was ever coming next was an attack, which I would always be able to fight.
She knew that. And she used me.
Just like he did.
Penny doesn’t need to finish explaining, but she does anyway. “The faerie queen’s been the one sending these threats after you because the more you use her magic, the more you grow it. She’s been using you to build up power for something.”
I think I’m going to be sick.
Baz - March
“I hate economics,” I tell Dr. Karr. It’s a small admission, especially after this last month going over darker things, but my gut still clenches to say it out loud. “I’ve never studied something so completely boring in my life.”
“So why are you studying it?” I’ve grown to like Dr. Karr. She’s direct, doesn’t pull punches.
She doesn’t treat me like I’m fragile even when I am.
“It’s practical,” I tell her honestly.
“What would you rather be doing?”
I don’t think I can answer that. Admitting you want something - that’s just about the most dangerous thing you can do.
“Baz,” she prompts. “You can’t have something if you never go after it.”
“I can’t have this anyway.” I’m a vampire. Maybe I’m not dead already or an inherently evil monster, like Dr. Karr and Agatha and Penny and Aunt Fiona keep trying to remind me.
Maybe my mom and my dad were wrong.
I don’t quite believe that yet, but even if I operate under the assumption that I do-
What does that change?
I could love myself wholly and entirely, and still, if the world of mages found out what I was, I would be exiled, scorned, maybe even killed. I can’t be a mage.
They won’t have me.
Turns out self acceptance isn’t the panacea everyone claims it is.
“Why not?” She knows why. She’s part of this world too.
“I’m a vampire.”
“That’s your answer to a lot of things,” she says.
“It’s kind of the core of the problem, isn’t it. The root of the trauma, the basis of my identity, the thing that will keep me from the things I want and love. Have you ever met a happy vampire?”
I’m on a roll I think. Confident, cocky, like therapy is a game of convincing Dr. Karr I’m right to be miserable, and I’m winning.
“Several,” she smirks, like she knows she’s thrown me a curveball.
“What-” I stop, stunned, deflating. That isn’t- I’ve never-
“It’s like this,” she says. “You watch TV. You have the internet. I know your father isn’t accepting of your sexuality, but you’ve seen how much more open the world is than it was when I was growing up.”
She pauses, then says, “I didn’t come out until my 20s. I thought being gay was something to be ashamed of, to hide or change or correct, because that’s what I was told by everyone around me, and I had to fight. First myself, to convince myself they were wrong. Then everyone else in the world, to convince them of it too.”
I didn’t know Dr. Karr was queer. I like her even more.
“My little cousin is 12, and she already has a girlfriend. What I’m saying is, it’s easy to be happy when you’re surrounded by people who accept you for who you are, and it’s a constant fight to be when you’re not. And it’s not what you are that’s the problem. It’s the way people treat you because of it.”
“So you know vampires who are welcomed and accepted?” Is what I settle on responding to, letting everything else float around and process in the background.
“Practically a whole city of them.”
“So you think I should go there?”
She shrugs. “That’s up to you. Go somewhere you’re accepted or stay and fight to be until people listen. Both great choices. As long as you remember you deserve to be happy and loved, any choice you make in service of that is the right one.”
I don’t believe her, still, but I can pretend to until I do.
“I want to be a mage,” I say. “An academic. Teach and study theory and write spells. Maybe teach at Watford, or start my own school someday, maybe a university. Mages are seriously lacking in higher educational opportunities. Bunce is studying linguistics at a Normal university.”
Once I start, I can’t stop myself.
I didn’t even realize I had bothered to elaborate on my dreams past being a mage; it had always felt like an effort in futility and disappointment. But here they are, flowing out of me fully formed, and I feel a warmth sparking in my ice cold chest.
Excitement. Curiosity.
“I think you’d be good at that,” Dr. Karr tells me.
I know she’s right about that.
Simon - April
It turns out, getting back to the faerie queen isn’t nearly as simple as it was getting to her the first time. She already got what she wanted from me. Already used me like she planned.
Now, she just sits back.
It’s Penelope who realizes, because it’s always Penny who realizes, that I should too.
I’ve got a history paper in one tab, a text on faerie lore in another, and my overdue major declaration survey open on the screen in front of me.
I know this problem, of all my problems, is the small one, but it feels momentous.
Penny appears to be reading an article for one of her classes, but it’s clear her mind is elsewhere when she looks up and says, “I just realized we’ve been dumb. The answer’s so easy.”
“What?”
I don’t even know what question she’s referring to at first. Is she about to tell me what major I should pick?
“The faerie queen. She wants you to grow her magic, so if it stops growing, she’ll have to summon you again.”
I blink. I know she’s the smart one here, but-
“It sounds like you’re saying I should do nothing. But, you do know monsters are coming after me, right? Three elementals were wrecking the flat just this morning.”
“So someone else fights them. I’m nearly as good as you at fighting monsters, and I don’t even leave our carpets smelling like you lit a bunch of flowers on fire. And the Wellbeloves are staying in town. I’m sure they’d help. Heck, even Baz and Fiona would probably pitch in.”
She’s right. She’s always right.
But I hate this plan, more than I’ve ever hated any plan, and that includes second year when I had to wrestle a mud golem in the middle of the rainy football field in front of the whole football team.
“You want me to not fight?”
She smiles warmly and pats my arm. “Not to over-stress the symbolic significance of this, but yes, let us fight for you.”
Have I mentioned I hate this plan?
Baz - May
I don’t think I want to die. Not really.
I want my life to be different from what it is, but there are a lot of ways to do that.
I kind of want to punch Snow in the face. (Not really. His face is possibly the most beautiful thing on this planet, in this universe even, and I could never harm something so lovely). But-
He thought I was a monster.
I know he doesn’t anymore, hasn’t in a very long time. I know he loves me as much as I love him, but he was the Chosen One, and the boy I loved wholeheartedly before I realized I had a heart that was even capable of love, and he thought I was a monster.
And I was too busy thinking he was right, waiting in the basement for him to find me and do the right thing, slay me like all the evils he faced, to be angry with him about it.
And then I was too busy trying to keep him from changing his mind.
There are other people who deserve my rage more: Watford and the teachers who taught all the kids at Watford that vampires were soulless demons and the writers who wrote the textbooks that said that in the first place and my parents who believed them all.
And they have my rage. I’m so angry, all the time it seems.
I like that anger, though. It’s a fire, and I’m in charge of it, directing it at anyone or anything who deserves it and never at myself.
There’s nothing wrong with me, and there’s no proof of that more convincing than all the people who are wrong.
Being angry at them, that’s the power I have. That’s how I convince myself that Dr. Karr is right. I deserve to be happy.
That’s how I’ll convince them too.
But this anger at Simon, I hate it. It sits heavy in my gut and my veins and my heart. He was just a kid, and he was so burdened with right and wrong and good and evil, and he was so desperate to trust and believe any adult who looked at him twice, and in spite of all that, he managed to change his mind and love me.
I understand him. I feel for him. I love him.
But he thought I was a monster, and I believed him.
And I don’t know how to forgive him. I don’t know how to trust him.
Even when Simon Snow was the only thing holding me up, all I could think about was the moment he would remember he’d been right at the start. All I could do was try to convince him I wasn’t a monster, even when I didn’t believe it myself.
Roommates to archenemies to boyfriends, it turns out, is a little too good to be true. Love doesn’t erase the hurt we caused each other, and I don’t know what will.
But I take up Simon Snow duty like everyone else. When the Wellbeloves’ jobs call them back home and when Fiona is at work and Penny’s in class, I sit in the flat or outside Snow’s classes and I stop the monsters that are coming after him.
And I’ve failed out of school. I don’t have a job. My only obligation in the world is twice-weekly therapy. So more and more, I spend my time protecting Simon.
It’s kind of nice having something to do, even if the silence and smalltalk stretches awkward between Simon and me, more and more as the weeks pass.
“How was class?” I ask because we’ve made it two blocks already without a word.
“You know,” he says. “It was class.”
“Anything fun planned for the weekend?”
This isn’t me. I’m not one for forced smalltalk.
But Snow’s always had a way of pulling the unexpected out of me.
“Homework. Avoiding monsters. The usual.”
His voice is hollow and disappointed, like avoiding monsters is the worst possible fate he could imagine, and he’s resigned himself to it.
But I can’t ask how he’s feeling, can’t comfort him or try to make his face light up with that smile that burns like the sun. That’s not what we do anymore.
And I’m a vampire. The sun burns me.
“Right, yeah. The usual,” I say instead, and I’m saved from having to find something else to say by a manticore that turns out of an alley and begins stalking toward us.
Fully grown manticores can reach over 8 feet long, but this one must be less than half that, and its wings, tucked up on its back as it makes its way through the crowded sidewalk, are smaller than Simon’s.
It’s young, I realize as it gets closer. Probably too young to be without its mother, let alone out alone on the streets of London hunting a mage.
Even Simon, who’s always been the kind to hit first and think later, looks at it with pity. “It’s just a baby,” he says softly.
“I won’t hurt it,” I start to promise, but the manticore is already lunging for Simon.
I step between them, and the monster and I both go to the ground as we collide. I’ve done a lot of things for Simon, but wrestling a baby manticore on the London sidewalk may be one of the strangest, and my sense of victory when I have it successfully pinned down is quickly diminished by the fact that I don’t know what to do with it.
Even though this manticore is likely small enough for ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, it’s known to have disastrous effects on creatures that can’t fly, and I’m pretty sure manticores can’t fly until they’re nearly full sized.
I am sitting on a young manticore sent by the fairy queen to prevent my ex-boyfriend from growing fairy magic by fighting it, and as the sheer ridiculousness of that hits me, I have a truly terrible idea.
Bunce and I have been spending our limited free time studying what she’s coined, “meme magic,” and so far, what we’ve discovered is that it’s highly situational and emotionally volatile.
You can summon an avocado when you’re laughing at vine compilations or watching a comedy, but if you were starving in the desert, It’s an avocado, thanks, wouldn’t do anything at all.
And the more ridiculous the meme, the more ridiculous the situation required for it to work.
I haven’t found a situation insane enough to try this out, so I don’t know if it’s even possible at all, and I’m about to lose every bit of dignity I’ve ever had in this life either way, but as Simon watches in increasingly disbelieving amusement, I say, “According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way that a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyways. Because bees don't care what humans think is impossible.”
I am flung from the manticore's back as it stretches its underdeveloped wings and begins to rise, and before it can attack again from this more advantageous position, I add, “Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,” and it turns tail and flies away.
Simon’s eyes are wide and his grin is as bright as I’ve ever seen it, and as it becomes clear that the manticore is really gone, he dissolves in laughter. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I know it’s a bad idea, but I take a few steps to be closer.
“I can’t believe that worked. This is the best thing I have ever seen in all my life,” Simon chokes. “You just beat a manticore with The Bee Movie . I’m going to tell every mage I’ve ever met. I’m going to find Dev and Niall’s numbers to tell them.”
He goes on like this the entire walk back to the flat, but when I step inside and close the door behind me, his expression changes.
The joy is still there, the mirth , his chest still heaving from the laughter, but as he turns to face me, still frozen in the doorway, his gaze is heated, his pupils wide.
I know this look very intimately, and I cannot tear my eyes from his.
I don’t need to breathe, but still, I feel my breaths as heavy as his appear as he takes a step closer. There’s a pull, deep and warm in my belly, that I couldn’t fight if I wanted to.
He approaches slowly, gaze sweeping up and down my body, hovering a moment extra on my lips, then settling again on my eyes. The laughter is gone, but his chest is still heaving. I have never seen Simon Snow with such undivided focus outside of a fight.
He pauses for at least thirty seconds when we’re face to face, chest to chest, close enough that I feel his unnatural heat radiating through my unnatural cold, and he stares up at me, expression so open. I feel my mouth part on instinct.
He reaches out, presses one hand against the wall and tangles the other in my hair, and if I wasn’t trapped before, I am now, though I wouldn’t try to get away for everything in the world.
One of us should stop this.
Simon pushes in closer, slots his knee between my legs, and what does “should” matter when Simon Snow is pressed to me like this?
I expect him to move, to finalize this blissful destruction he’s initiated, but when I look at his lips, all I see is a knowing smirk.
It says your turn.
I could never resist a challenge.
I could never resist Simon Snow.
I lean down and capture his mouth in mine, though from the moment our lips touch, he takes back control, pressing me harder against the door, pulling at my bottom lip with his teeth, just the right side of painful, dragging his mouth from mine for torturous teasing seconds just to watch me chase it.
“The bee movie really do it for you?” I try to tease, to win back the upper hand, but it’s an admittedly halfhearted attempt, and it comes out a little too breathless to do much.
“ You really do it for me,” Simon growls and rocks his hips against mine to prove his point.
He reaches for the top button of my shirt, and when it doesn’t come undone as quickly as he’d apparently like, he rips the material in half like it’s nothing, like a piece of tissue paper. I could not possibly care less about a shirt.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says between kisses, his hand moving from the wall to dig into my hip so firmly that if I weren’t a vampire, I’m sure it’d leave a mark, a bruise of Simon Snow’s thick, clumsy fingers on my side.
I wish it would.
I feel my fangs descend, and I know Simon knows. He swipes across one with his tongue, and it sends a jolt of pleasure all the way down my spine, forcing a whine out of me.
“You like that?” He asks, earnest surprise mixing with desire in his voice, and all I can do is nod as he does it again on the other side.
“Merlin, I’ve missed you,” he breathes in between normal kissing and circling my apparently incredibly sensitive fangs with his tongue. “You’re so good. Strong and smart and beautiful. You wrestled a manticore. You should’ve seen yourself wrestling the manticore, Baz. It was the hottest thing I’ve seen in my life.”
He’s talking like he can’t control himself, like every thought he has is spilling out of him before he has the chance to process, and we haven’t really experimented with much out of the basic stuff, haven’t even really finished experimenting with the basic stuff, but I’m so hard, and everything he says is drawing a moan from me, and I think this is a thing .
Simon’s lack of verbal filter must be contagious, because when he pulls away from my mouth to my neck, licking a stripe up it then sucking so determinedly at one spot that I’m half convinced he’ll actually manage to mark the skin, I find myself saying, “Do I have a compliment kink? Is that a thing?”
His chuckle is warm against my neck. “Obviously,” he says, and seems to give up on the hickey to move in close against my ear.
“You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. Your skin is so perfect I want to mark it so everyone knows you’re mine ,” that last word is a growl. “And you’re so smart. You thought it would hurt my feelings watching you do your magic research, but when I saw you with that crease in your forehead, thinking so deeply, when I saw you create new spells or solve impossible problems, all I could think about was getting on my knees-”
“I love you,” I moan, and then I freeze, and then Snow freezes, and all at once, it all comes tumbling back down around us.
I want to reach back in time and slap my hand across my mouth, but there’s no unsaying what I said. And there’s no unfeeling it.
“Right,” Simon says and takes a step back, then another. His hands open and close in the air like it’s taking everything in him not to put them back where they were on my side and in my hair, like he knows that’s where they’re meant to be as much as he knows they can’t be there. He looks at my torn shirt at our feet. “I’m going to er- going to get you a shirt.”
“Yes.” I clear my throat so it doesn’t sound so rough. “I’m going to find something on the TV.”
When Snow comes back in, he tosses me one of the shirts I’d left behind here without looking at me and sits on the far end of the room.
Master Chef plays on the TV, but neither of us is really watching.