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SIMON
We’re in a dirty alleyway getting soaked by rain when it finally happens. Baz still has his fangs out, and he’s looking at me with so much irritation that you’d think I was a merwolf. Merlin, this wasn’t supposed to go like this. I can’t help but laugh at the sight of him.
“What?” He snarls, rolling his sleeves up.
“You look like one of those early 2000s emo singers with your hair all stuck down like that. Like that one song by My Chemical Romance.”
He pauses to think and all I can hear is the rain beating down on the dumpster next to us. “Welcome to the Black Parade?”
I laugh. “Yeah, that one.”
He scowls again. “Well you look like a drenched sewer rat.”
“Good thing. My boyfriend likes those.”
“Simon…” I can practically hear him rolling his eyes. “Let me just finish this and we can go home and shower.”
Right, home. Where I’ll have to explain the bottle of champers I asked Penny to put on our kitchen table while we went for dinner.
“Can’t you cast a spell for this?” I look up at the rain still pouring down on us.
“There’s no spell to change the weather. If there was, maybe we’d have a handle on global warming.”
“Yeah, but like, what about an umbrella spell? Something to make it stop just over us?”
“Oh that’s perfect, Snow. I’ll just create the one dry spot in the city, and let anyone avoiding rain come take shelter with the vampire and his rats.”
“There’s other spells to ward off the Normals. You could cast both.”
He whirls around, getting more irritated at my questions. “Circe, Snow, I just told you there’s no spell for this, and even if there were, I could’ve been done by now if you’d just shut up for five minutes.”
BAZ
Well that shut him up. And now I feel bad for shutting him up, even though he deserved it.
I turn around and find him with his hands stuffed into his pockets, shuffling his feet around.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just tired, and thirsty, and wet, and I want to go home, alright?”
“Alright.” He shrugs but doesn’t look at me.
“Simon, I said I’m sorry.” I groan.
“I know! It’s fine! I want to go home too!”
“Then go! Go home and I’ll meet you there! I don’t need you here for this! I’ve told you that three hundred times!”
“No, I’m not leaving you.” Stubborn git. “How many have you got?”
“Two. They’re all hiding now.”
The rain came from nowhere. We’d been on a lovely walk at sunset, and then out of the blue, a plague-worthy shower of rain came down. (London can be so dramatic.)(I’m aware that I fit in here.)
“Can I just help then? This would go so much faster if I—”
“Absolutely not.” I hiss. I can hear the harshness in my voice, but I genuinely cannot believe how often I have to tell him this. I can’t believe he thinks now is the time for me to teach him how to hunt.
One scurries past me and I grab it in one quick motion.
Simon makes a frustrated, growling noise and mutters, “This is so not how I wanted tonight to go.”
And that is just really rich, like I’m the one who personally ruined his evening by willing a storm into being right now.
“Oh, and you think this is how I wanted it to go? Right, you know what sounds fun? Leaving date night with my boyfriend to go bicker like an old married couple in the alley underneath a torrential rainstorm. Why don’t we throw in some wet rats for a splash of excitement?”
SIMON
“Oh my God Baz, so just marry me then!” I yell it at him. Loudly. It comes out like I’m saying, “Go fuck yourself!”
Baz halts, and his hands fall limply to his sides, dropping three dead rats right where he stands. “What?”
I tug at my hair and growl. I’m so bad at this. I think I picked the worst possible moment I could’ve.
“No. No, sorry, that came out—“
“No?” Baz looks even more deflated than before, and I have to fix it. I cross over to him in two paces and put my hands on his arms. They’re freezing.
BAZ
Simon’s rubbing my shoulders and his earlier frustration has entirely melted away. He’s giving me one of his especially heroic looks — earnest, honest, true.
“No, I mean, listen to me. I didn’t mean to say it like that. I just…” He looks down and swallows, and I can’t be mad anymore. Not when my favorite show is on.
He drops his hands from my shoulder — a pity — and shoves them back in the pocket of his mac, rummaging around until he finds what he’s looking for. Then, he thrusts a violet colored, velvet ring box in front of me, and says, “Here.”
SIMON
Baz is looking at the box like he doesn’t trust it. Like if he opens it, a polecat will jump out at him. He glances down at his hands, still covered in leather gloves and a small amount of rat blood.
“Simon… Are you…? Is this real?”
“What? What are you talking about? Of course it’s real.”
I’m still holding the box straight out in front of me. It’s got a few raindrops on it now.
BAZ
Of course it’s real. Of course Simon Snow would pick this moment, of all moments, to propose. I don’t know what else I should’ve expected. I didn’t, really.
I don’t know if I ever thought he would. I always thought it would be me. It’s part of why I’ve been planning it so long. Practically since that first Christmas, if I’m honest.
“So… What do you think?” He looks up at me through his eyelashes, and there’s a small bead of water caught in them. It might be my new favorite show.
“No.”
His face falls, and his hand with it. “Oh. Right. Yeah. Right.”
Immediately, I rush to him, pulling his face into my hands, rat blood be damned. “No, not now. Not like this. Of course I want to marry you, you twit.”
He looks up and smiles at me, and it’s like the sun has broken through all of the night. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I’d marry him in an alley.
I’d marry him with water ruining my oxfords and a knife in my pocket.
I love him, and he wants me to marry him.
SIMON
It wasn’t supposed to go like this. But when has anything between Baz and I ever gone to plan?
I put my thumb on his jaw, then his lip.
“I’m going to kiss you now, and then you’re going to drain these rats, and we’re going to go home, and I’m going to ask you again, properly. Okay?”
He nods and gives me one of his soft smiles. Christ, I love him. I say it, because I want to.
I’ll ask him again. I’ll keep him well.