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Simon Snow is staring at me, even more than usual, and it’s driving me absolutely up the wall. He’s been following me around for years now, I’ve gotten used to that. He thinks I’m always scheming, and maybe he’s right fifty percent of the time, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying. This year has been no different, ever since we got back he’s been watching me, following me, trying to catch me doing something. I would tell him that he’s not going to find me doing anything this year, but it wouldn’t matter. He’s relentless.
It’s true, though. This is our last year at Watford, and I have no plans to do anything other than finish top of our class, and get the hell out of here and away from Snow for good. This is the last year I will be forced to share a room with him, the last time I’ll be subjected to his heinous morning routines of waking up at the crack of dawn and banging around the room. This will be the last year I’ll have to spend around his ridiculously messed up curls and his freckle-spattered face, the last year I’ll have those blue eyes boring into me, the last year I’ll spot that mole on his cheek and yearn to kiss it.
This is the last year that I’ll be forced to be around my sworn enemy that I’ve stupidly fallen in love with. And after this I probably won’t be totally rid of him, because we’ll have to fight eventually and one of us will have to kill the other, but at least I’ll have the space I need to properly build myself up to the task.
(I’m still not sure I’ll ever build myself up to the task, I’m not sure I could ever bring myself to hurt him, but it’s nice to pretend. I have to pretend for my family’s sake.)
“Take a picture, Snow, it’ll last longer,” I hiss at him without looking up from the book I’m reading. Or not reading. I’m staring at the same paragraph and trying to will myself to keep reading, but I can’t stop thinking about Snow and I can’t shake the feeling of his eyes on me and how I wish they were on me for a different reason -
I swing my legs over the edge of my bed and stand, closing my book and reaching for my shoes. Snow doesn’t say anything, his eyes remain on me. I almost think he’s going to let me just leave, when -
“You’re properly fit, aren’t you?”
I stop dead in my tracks.
I have to school my expression before I turn around to face Snow, giving him my best scowl because what the fuck is he playing at? Is this going to be a new tactic this year? Has he somehow figured it all out, my feelings for him, and now he’s going to use them against me? That doesn’t sound like something Snow would do, that sounds like something I would do. (That’s precisely what I had been doing, in a way, to Agatha Wellbelove, just to get under Snow’s skin. Maybe it’s some sick twist of fate, karma’s known to be one swift bitch after all.)
“What?” is all I can manage to ground out from between clenched teeth. He’s still watching me, but he isn’t glaring at me like he usually is. He almost looks curious, as his eyes trail up and down my body. Almost like he’s appraising me.
“Well, you are,” he continues. “I know you know it, but -” His cheeks are turning the slightest shade of pink, and in any other circumstance I may secretly find it adorable. Right now I’m too confused. “I couldn’t see what she saw in you, but I guess if you look past the evil vampire thing, you’re a fit bloke.”
“This is about Wellbelove?” I lift one brow, and this starts to make sense. At least the initial response, but he’s still looking at me. His eyes are still running all over my body and I almost want to hide, but also preen because this is exactly what I wanted, isn’t it? Snow looking at me like that, and maybe it’s not quite like that, but it’s close enough.
“It was…” His voice trails off, as if there’s more to the sentence than that. He doesn’t keep going.
“Was?” I snap. His eyes shoot up to mine and I see a familiar determination in them.
“Why do you hate me?” I roll my eyes and he growls, actually fucking growls, but repeats his question. “Seriously, Baz, why?”
“Where do you want me to start?” I sneer. He’s not phased, in fact, I’m not sure he’s even heard me.
“I knew this girl once, we were in the same home, and there was another boy that she insisted was in love with her. Do you wanna know why she thought that?”
“I imagine you’re going to tell me no matter my answer.”
“She told me she knew he was in love with her because he was mean to her.” He laughs. My mouth goes dry. “I told her that was absolute bollocks, nobody’s mean to you because they love you, are they? But she was right, they were snogging by the end of the summer.”
I swallow and try not to make a show of it. “What’s your bloody point, Snow?”
His lips turn up into this devilish smile that sends heat straight through me, but also makes me want to positively deck him.
“You’ve always been mean to me, Baz, with no proper reason!” He’s saying it like he’s cracked some code he’s been working on for ages, and maybe he has but I can’t let that show on my face.
So I laugh, a loud, sardonic laugh that causes that smile to falter. “Are you joking? That’s what you’ve come up with? You think I’m secretly in love with you, and that’s why I’ve hated you all these years?” You are absolutely right. “I’ve never heard something so idiotic in my life, Snow. What are we, twelve?” We were, and I may not have known it yet, but I was definitely mean to you because I liked you. “You’re an extension of the man that took everything from me, from my family. That’s why I hate you.” That’s why I should hate you, but I do not. “Are we finished here?”
Snow isn’t smiling anymore, but he’s not as flustered as he normally would be. He’s usually so easily worked up, but he’s got his eyes narrowed at me and he’s oddly calm.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Is it going to take me killing you for you to believe me? That day is coming, Snow, and I’ll gladly prove it.”
“Kiss me, Baz.”
And that does it, that finally cracks my perfectly crafted facade of not caring, of completely hating him. I feel my scowl falter, and I hear the crack in my voice as I bark out another, “What?”
“Why not? If you truly hate me, it’s one terrible second of your life but then it’s over and you can go back to plotting my demise, or whatever.”
“Have you gone mental?” I nearly shout. “You’ve gone absolutely nutty, what the hell are you on about?”
“I’ve never seen you step down from a challenge.”
“This isn’t a challenge, this is some mad scheme you’ve concocted for reasons that I can’t parse out.”
“If you don’t have any feelings for me, apart from hatred, of course, kissing me wouldn’t be a big deal, now, would it?”
Except he’s completely correct, and I do have feelings for him apart from hatred, and it is a big deal but I have to pretend that it isn’t. And he’s right, I’m never one to back down from a challenge.
Before I know it I’ve crossed the room and I’m standing over him, still sitting on his bed with that shit-eating grin on his face, and I grab his face between my hands and bring our mouths together with more force than necessary.
And I figure while I’m here, I may as well make it worth it. If this is the one time I’m going to get to kiss Simon Snow, I may as well take advantage of it, especially since he’s kissing me back, and I move one of my hands into his hair and he moans against my mouth and what the actual fuck is going on right now.
I don’t know how long it is before we break apart, but he doesn’t let me move far once we do. At some point his hands had come up to my neck, and now he’s holding me there, foreheads pressed together, and he breathes, “Fuck.”
Then he’s pulling me in to kiss me again, and I’m not going to protest. His hands move down my chest, and then he’s tugging at my shirt, pulling at my shoulder, gripping my waist to urge me closer. Then I’m on Simon Snow’s bed, leaning over him on all fours, and he’s reaching up for my mouth and I have got to be dreaming. There’s no way I’ve been granted such a charmed life, that Simon Snow is licking into my mouth and tugging at my hair. That Simon Snow is pulling me down on top of him and rolling his hips against mine, and - fuck, indeed.
We do move apart eventually, fully apart, and I’m lying on my back next to him on his bed. We don’t say anything, each of us trying to catch our breath.
“What the hell was that?” I finally say, breaking the silence. Snow doesn’t look at me, he’s staring at the ceiling.
“I think I’ve wanted to do that for a while.” His voice is quiet.
“You think?”
“I mean, we’ve been fighting for seven years, it’s not like I’ve had the time to consider much else than figuring out how to stop you or best you.”
“What led you to consider it now?” I turn my head to watch him, his cheeks are still flushed and I can see beads of sweat along his temples. I want to lick them away. (I’m disturbed and I’m hardly even bothered by it anymore, if Snow let that happen just now, who knows what else he might be open to.)
“Penny, actually.”
I laugh without meaning to and he opens his eyes, turns his head, catches me watching him. I don’t look away.
“How did Bunce lead you to realize you wanted to snog your evil, arch-nemesis roommate?”
“I wouldn’t say arch-nemesis…”
“You have literally said ‘arch-nemesis’.”
Snow laughs, but it’s a soft laugh that I’ve never heard from him. It’s a gentle sound, intimate almost.
“When Agatha broke up with me I wasn’t really upset. And Penny thought that I was hiding how upset I was by focusing on you, and your scheming, until I told her that I really wasn’t upset at all. And I’m pretty sure she was just taking the piss, but she made some off-handed comment about how I was more obsessed with you than with Aggie and that we probably had secret crushes on each other, or whatever.” This is the most I’ve heard Snow speak in one go, and his voice is so soft it’s almost soothing, especially as he’s telling me how he realized he liked me this whole time. “But she wasn’t that far off, was she?”
“Whoever said I had any kind of ‘secret crush’ on you, Snow? I still hate you.” It doesn’t come out as sharply as I want it to. I turn my face away from him mostly because I know he sees through me.
“Were you here for the past fifteen minutes?”
“I’m just a horny teenager, Snow, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s hard to get any action with your roommate stalking you, of course I’d jump at any chance.”
“Basil.”
I turn my face to him again because I don’t think I’ve ever heard him call me anything but ‘Baz’, I mean, apart from ‘wanker’, or ‘tosser’, or the number of other insults he’s hurled my way. But never Basil or Basilton. Never an extension of my name. Something in my chest flutters and I almost feel sick, but in a good way. This is why it was always easier to hate him, I know the feeling of hatred and anger, and I know what to do with them. These feelings, this weird giddy twist in my gut, I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.
He’s turned on his side to face me now, and reaches out to place a hand on my cheek. “We don’t have to fight anymore.”
He’s been so right about so many things tonight, I wish this was one of them. But we both have to know it isn’t, he has to know it’s not. I whisper, because I have to say it but maybe if I say it quietly enough it won’t be as true, “This won’t change anything. Not the war, or anything with the Old Families.”
“We can sort that out later.” He leans in to kiss me again, slower than earlier. He’s taking his time as he moves over me this time, and maybe he is right about one more thing.
We can sort that out later.