Chapter Text
SIMON
“Mum?” Baz says, and once he’s said it, I know precisely who the dark-haired woman is.
She’s Headmistress Grimm-Pitch—the woman who crossed through the veil and told me to tell Baz to find Nicodemus, which I didn’t do. Shit. And now I guess she’s crossed back—although I thought all of that had ended—because I fucked up.
Her teacup clatters to its saucer and she rises in a graceful swirl of red robes from the child’s chair. She moves like Baz—elegantly, like a queen sweeping into her throne room. Her hands are like Baz’s too. I expected Baz’s hands to be delicate, crushable in my thick fingers, but instead they feel rough and calloused when he touches my skin.
They’re extending their hands towards each other now. Baz’s mum reaches for his shoulders, his face. There are tears on her cheeks, but the tears don’t look wet. They look more like the shadow of tears. And when Baz hugs her, it’s like he’s holding a cloud—resting his cheek on a cloud and crying into its hair.
I’m so engrossed by watching Baz and his mum that it startles me when cold, insubstantial fingers brush across my jaw.
“My rosebud boy,” the blond woman says. She has shadow-tears on her face too.
“Baz?” I ask, confused.
“No, you. Simon Snow Salisbury. My son, my rosebud boy.”
“Salisbury?”
“I’m Lucy Salisbury,” she says, touching her hand to her chest and then pressing it against my heart. “Your mum.”
When I was little and in care, I used to imagine my parents returning for me. My mum was always Victoria Beckham, so even though she told me she loved me and never wanted to give me up, she didn’t smile much and she moved kind of stiffly cause otherwise her dress might ride up. This woman is smiling and crying and looks like she might pick me up and spin me around if she weren’t gossamer and mist. She has thick blond curls and blue eyes like mine, and ruddy cheeks and square shoulders. She’s my mum—my real mum—and she’s telling me she loves me and she never wanted to leave me.
And she’s dead.
I stumble through her and grab hold of the edge of the too-low table. It tips from my weight and a teacup goes skittering and smashes on the floor. At least it didn’t have any tea in it, I think, as I fumble for a too-small chair. Everything feels too small. The table, the chairs, the tea set, my skin, my stomach.
My ghost mum kneels before me and rests her ghost wrists on my real knees.
“Simon. Simon,” she says. “I’m sorry.”
“S’not your fault.” I swipe my arm under my nose.
She brushes her ghost fingers against my real cheek and I realize I’m crying. The tears feel hot—angry tears—but they turn cool when she touches them.
BAZ
When my mum and I release each other, she steps back and lifts both of my hands in hers, although it’s more like I know she wants to lift my hands, so I raise them as hers envelop me in vapor.
“Look how tall you’ve grown, Basil,” she says.
“Good genes.” I lift an eyebrow.
“Indeed.” She raises her eyebrow in return, then skims past me and pulls a tiny chair out from the small table, as if she’s playing the gentleman on a date.
I sit down, stretch out my legs, and cross them at the ankles. She sits beside me and crosses hers under her robes.
“Tea?” she asks.
“Please.”
“Sugar?”
“Lots.”
We both smile at each other, and I wonder if anyone else would recognize it as a smile; only the left corners of our mouths lift up.
There’s the clink of the spoon tapping porcelain and a hiccuping, hitching sound that I turn towards instinctively.
SIMON
“Simon.”
Baz has stood, and now there are two cool hands on me—a solid one pressed on my shoulder, and an insubstantial one brushing my cheek.
“Baz,” I say and clench the hand on my shoulder. “Meet my mum.” My voice breaks on mum.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Snow,” Baz says, as if he’s introduced to ghost mums every day.
“Call me Lucy,” my mum replies.
Baz’s hand kneads my shoulder as he says, “Mother, I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Simon Snow.”
I turn my face from Lucy’s to stare up at Baz. His chin is jutting out in defiance, and I almost smile because he looks like me.
“Finally,” Baz’s mum and mine say in unison.
“What?” Baz and I both ask.
NATASHA
“We’ve been trying to get you two together for ages,” Lucy gushes, tears still streaming down her rosy cheeks (and they have nothing to do with the portrait this time).
At the same time Simon sniffs, “We’ve met,” looking over at me.
“What?” my son asks again.
I sigh. Clearly someone will have to take control of this situation, otherwise Lucy and Simon will spend the whole visit crying at one another and we don’t have time for tears.
“Basil, sit down. You too, Lucy. Tea, everyone?”
Lucy and Simon nod, wiping tears away with the backs of their hands.
“Milk?” I ask Simon.
“Lots,” he and Lucy reply.
While I prepare four child-sized cups of tea and slide them across the table, I do my best to give a quick summary of visitings and magickal parent traps (son traps?) leaving out some of the more sordid details; I don’t think either of them would appreciate knowing that Lucy had a hand in the appearance of the purple glitter dildo.
Basil lifts his teacup to his lips and then frowns.
“Something wrong, puff?” I ask.
“There’s a rat on mine,” he says.
“Hmm, yes, Samuel Whiskers.” I lift an eyebrow.
He sticks his tongue out at me like he’s five.
“I have a hedgehog,” Simon says. “We can trade. Or at least I think it’s a hedgehog. She’s wearing clothes.”
“Will everyone please stick to their original teacups,” I say. “We haven’t got much time.”
Three heads swivel towards me.
“Lucy, would you like to tell Simon about…”
Personally, I don’t give a fig for daft Davy Cadwallader. No, let me rephrase, I actively dislike daft Davy Cadwallader, and between Lucy’s stories and his management of Watford, he hasn’t grown on me in the thirteen years since my death. But Lucy loved him once, and he is Simon’s father, so.
Lucy swallows. “Simon, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Their matching blue eyes meet.
“Davy…” She hesitates and glances over at me. “Just…be careful around him.”
“Who?” Simon asks.
“Oh, um, Headmaster Cadwallader,” Lucy fumbles.
“Who?” Basil asks.
“The Mage,” I supply, making air quotes and pursing my lips in distaste.
“Yes, the Mage,” Lucy continues. “Be careful around him, Simon. Maybe, don’t do everything he asks of you. Think first, about you, yourself, what you want, what…who matters to you.”
“Oh, uh, yeah, um, of course,” Simon rubs at his curls, looking confused.
“And maybe one day, ask him about me. Lucy Salisbury. See what he tells you.”
“Oh, okay, sure. And, um, what about my dad? You know him, right? I mean, not that—”
“You have a grandmother,” Lucy interrupts.
“I do?”
“Yes, Ruth Salisbury. I’m sure she would love to meet you.”
They beam at each other, “daddy” issues temporarily forgotten.
“Basil.” I turn to him because I’m afraid we’re running out of time. “I need you to avenge my death.”
“Sorry?” His grey eyes widen. (When he was born, they looked almost blue.)
“Natasha, dear…” Lucy begins.
“Yes?” I ask, not taking my eyes off Basil’s face.
“Do you really need Basil to do that for you?”
“It’s not for me; it’s for him.”
“Is it though?”
“Of course it is, Lucy. He was turned that day.”
Basil’s pale skin grows paler. “You know,” he says softly, hanging his head.
There’s the harsh scraping of a chair across stone, and then Simon is bunched up next to him, holding his hand and glaring daggers at me.
“Do you have a problem with that?” he asks, chin jutting out. (Ah, that’s where Basil picked up that expression.)
“Simon,” Basil says.
“Your son is a perfect man or, or, or vampire or whatever, just as he is.”
“Simon,” Basil says, his voice rising.
“Do you not love him as a vampire?” Simon asks. (I can practically smell the smoke getting ready to roll off of him—my son’s defiant defender.)
“Simon!” Basil says sharply, his face lifting and there are tears streaking his cheeks, and suddenly I have about as much self-control as Lucy.
My red robes bunch beneath me as I kneel in front of Basil on his ridiculously tiny chair and take his face in my hands. “My little puff,” I say. “Darling, I love you. Of course I know. I’ve known since you were eleven. I thought you got away that day, and when I realized you hadn’t, it crushed the breath out of my lungs. But I watched you grow up, and I know when your fangs came in, and I’ve seen you in the Catacombs, and I’ve watched you grapple with who you are—not what you are, who—with more nuance and kindness than I ever did as an adult because you had to. Because you had to be you. And I don’t think you’re a monster. I thought vampires were monsters, but that’s only because I never took the time to get to know one. I hated a concept because I didn’t understand that concept was comprised of people, people like you.”
“You mean vampires like me.” Basil’s chest hitches.
“Yes, vampires like you. But not monsters like you. Never a monster.”
“Even if—” he looks over at Simon.
“No matter what,” I reply, hoping that’s enough to clarify that I love and accept him even if he is snacking on his boyfriend. (Although someone should really tell them about the whole immortality issue.)
“Natasha,” Lucy says softly.
I glance over at her just as she brushes a tear from her cheek.
“Is it—?”
“Yes, it’s the portrait.”
I look down at my hands—fire-holders’ hands—rough and calloused in life and now flickering in and out of existence.
“We have to go. I have to go,” I tell Basil.
Simon leaps up and practically falls through Lucy on her little chair. “No, no, no, no, not yet.”
“Shhh,” she whispers, and runs her hand through his curls. “Rosebud, rosebud, look at me.”
He looks up.
“There’s something you need to do for us.”
BAZ
When our mums depart, the nursery disappears with them, and Simon and I are left standing in the middle of the empty Greek classroom. The Minotaur looks up from what appears to be a bucket of oats and snorts at us.
Now we’re back in our room, me pacing and Simon slashing through the air with the feather whip.
“Must you?” I ask as it zings near me.
“It helps me think.”
“Well, it doesn’t help me think.”
“Why? Distracting?” He dangles the feather in front of my face.
I swat at it before realizing I look like a cat, then I snatch it from the air.
“Hey!”
“Focus, Snow. We need to figure out how to get our mothers magickally released from Watford.”
“Yeah.” He pulls back, yanking the feather from my hand. “It’s just—” He turns to a bare wall in our room and snaps the feather whip against it with a crack. “I only”—crack—“just”—crack—“met her”—crack’—“and I don’t”—crack—“want”—crack—“to say goodbye”—crack.
“Hey, hey.” I move to stand behind him and nearly get whipped in the face for it. “Me too, love. Me too.” I grab his shoulders and still him. “But they’re not supposed to be here, and we got to see them again. You got to meet your mum. We got to say goodbye. That’s more than some people get.”
“And less than others,” he grumbles.
“I know. I agree.” I plant a kiss softly on the back of his neck and rub my hands along his upper arms.
“And how do we do it anyway? How do we undo blood magic and your mum dying here and some weird ritual? We’re not that powerful.”
“Well, you are,” I point out.
“What? You want me to go off and blow up Watford?”
My hands must go still because he rounds on me. “You do, don’t you? You want me to blow up Watford.”
“No, I don’t want you to blow up Watford, Snow. It’s my mum’s school as much as the Mage’s, maybe more so, and I don’t think blowing it up would do any good anyway, unless you can somehow force the magic that’s trapping them out of it.”
Simon chews on his lower lip and returns to whipping the wall. “What if we could?” he asks, after giving the wall a few good thwacks.
“Could what?”
“Force the magic out of it.”
“How?”
“Well, you know, like filling a hole. You keep filling it and filling it and eventually it’ll spill over.”
“So you’re going to push enough magic into Watford that the magic tying our mums here will pop out?”
“Not me. Us. We’re going to.”
“How?”
“Sex.”
“What?”
Simon shrugs. “Hey, it got us out from under a moat. We fucked and created a galaxy that led us through a void and out a hidden gate. We fucked our way out of Groundhog Day and I didn’t even have to learn how to ice sculpt like Bill Murray. I mean, I think we might’ve fucked our way into meeting our ghost mums.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that last one, but you have a point.”
“I know I have a point. When we have sex, Baz, things happen.”
“You know, if you want to have sex with me, you can just say so. You don’t have to come up with elaborate excuses.”
“Piss off.” He extends the feather whip and runs it up my chest until it touches my chin. “So are you in?”
I sigh, dramatically. “I suppose I can take one for the team, but if we’re going to do this, we should do it right. I mean, we didn’t escape the echo floor the first time, when you handcuffed me.”
I turn away and flip through a book on my desk, as if it might give me insight into how to ritually fuck blood-magic out of a castle. When I turn back, Simon—all business—has stripped down to his white lace knickers.
“Oh,” I say. “Or we could, um, to quote Nike, ‘just do it.’”
“Or that. Wait…” Simon’s eyes widen. “You said, take one for the team. That reminds me…”
Suddenly, Simon Snow is on all fours, rummaging under our bed, his bum lifted high in the air. He’s wearing the thong, and I, quite frankly, no longer care if we’re going to fuck with a purpose or fuck for the sake of fucking, especially when he emerges from under the bed holding a pair of black, knee-high leather boots.
“What are those?” I ask, hoarsely.
Simon slides his foot into first one and then the other, zipping them up the back. “Dreamt about them. First dream I had.”
“And what, pray tell, do they have to do with taking one for the team?”
“You were on the football pitch in my dream.” He pops up and grins at me, as if he isn’t standing before me in knee-high leather boots and a white lace thong burning my dead little vampire heart to ash. “Oooh, maybe you should put on your kit.”
I turn slowly towards my wardrobe, feeling like my body is moving through thick syrup and my head is stuffed full of cotton wool. Me in my kit bending Simon Snow over my desk, pulling aside that thong…
“I better not.” I turn back.
“Why not?”
“Just, uh, fuck.” (Just that I no longer think I’m capable of removing my own clothes now that my eighteen year-old brain has upgraded my fifteen year-old locker room fantasy to include boots and a thong, and that fantasy is standing before me all bronze curls, blue eyes, moles and freckles, plucking a thin strip of lace from his arse crack like a harp string.)
I take a step towards Simon and my desire must show dark and fierce in my eyes because he steps back almost involuntarily. My hands clutch his hips and I push him backwards until his arse hits my desk with a soft thump.
“I—” I begin, dropping to my knees in front of him, pressing my nose against the lace crotch of the knickers and breathing in Simon—muggy and close, that faint wet smoke scent ever-present.
I mouth at the lace, scraping my teeth lightly along Simon’s stiff length. His hands clench at the edge of the desk and he breathes out in a shudder.
“Tell me, Baz. Tell me.”
“Tell you what? That I love you? That I’ve been in love with you for years?” I can only say these things because I’m pressing my face into his erection, not meeting his eyes.
I feel his fingers brush my forehead and stroke my hair back, tucking it behind my ear. “I love you too, but that’s not it.”
I look up. “What is it then? What do you want to know?”
His blue eyes are the sky fading to night. “Tell me what you’re going to do to me. Like before. I want to hear it.”
“Like the anathema curse?”
“It didn’t feel like a curse…to me,” Simon says softly, like he’s admitting a secret.
“It felt like one—”
But did it feel like a curse to me? It felt frustrating to say words I didn’t intend to say, and, of course, crawl-into-a-hole embarrassing to say them to Simon, but it also felt like five years of building desire had distilled itself into eighty-proof filth that was finally spilling with relief out of at least one orifice in my body.
“You liked it?” I ask.
“Baz.” Simon’s thumb leaves my hair, trails across my jaw, and traces my lower lip, running back and forth until I slip the tip of my tongue out and lick his finger print. “Your mouth. The things it’s said to me. Some of them were so mean.”
He pushes his thumb between my lips. I try to mumble an apology around it, but he presses my tongue down, pinning it to the floor of my mouth. “You’ve figured out better ways to use your mean tongue.”
I would swallow, but I can’t make the motion while my tongue is restrained by his thumb.
When he pulls his thumb from my mouth with a wet pop I say, “I’m going to suck you until it hurts.”
“More.” A flush starts at the elastic waistline of his knickers and creeps upwards.
“I’m going to lick the slick head of your cock like it’s hard candy with a soft gooey filling, and when I’m so close to the center, I’m going to want to bite and crack you open, but I’ll wait. I’ll let you sit on my tongue until just the heat of my mouth and my sticky saliva melts you to a thin, wet shell of yourself and then you split, gushing in my mouth, and coating my throat as I swallow you down.”
“Fuck yeah,” Simon breathes out roughly.
“And after you come the first time—”
“First time?” Simon squeaks.
“Shut up, unless you don’t want me to keep going.”
He nods—tiny quick motions like a hummingbird’s wings.
“After you come the first time, when you’re spent and soft and done, I won’t care. I’m going to keep licking, rougher now, so my tongue feels like sandpaper on your sore cock and you’re squirming to get away from me, but I won’t give a shit if you are the Chosen One. I’m a vampire. I’m stronger than you. I could throw you across this room, if I wanted to. I could crush you against the stone wall and fuck you until it crumbled, but instead I’m going to pin your hips against this desk and use my degenerate mouth—my vile, mean tongue—to lick you back to hardness.”
“God, fuck, do it, now, please.” Simon’s eyes are black voids in blue pools, his face blotchy with color.
“I’m not done.”
He whines and tugs at my hair, as if that could stop me now that I’ve opened these floodgates.
“You’re going to be so fucking hard, love. Desperate with it, aching.”
(At this point, I’m essentially describing myself. I massively regret not changing into my football kit. Between the knickers and my Watford uniform trousers, my cock feels like it’s strapped to my thigh with rubber bands.)
“And that’s when I’ll stop.”
That elicits another whine from Simon, as if I’ve stopped already. As if I even started.
“I’ll stop, flip you around, bend you over this desk, and fuck you until you scream my name. Fuck you until my name breaks down into sounds in your mouth, and those sounds split into particles and the particles embed themselves in your brain, and every time you fucking open your mouth after that, the only word that comes out is ‘Baz.’”
Simon makes a choking sound, gives up on tugging my hair, and yanks his knickers down to his thighs. And for all my big talk, once Simon’s cock is bobbing wantonly in front of my face, I can’t suck him like I’m savoring a cherry-flavored Tootsie Pop, and he can’t last until he melts and cracks. Instead, I inhale him like he’s three Big Macs and I’ve been starving in a coffin for six weeks. I slide my lips over the glistening tip, clamp down on his shaft, and cup my tongue as I shift up. And all of my vampire strength means nothing, when Simon moans, grabs the back of my skull with both hands, smashes and suctions my lips to the rough bronze curls edging his cock and comes, thrusting jerkily into the back of my throat.
I cough as I pull off and wipe my hand across my mouth.
“I— Sorry, Baz. That was— That was a lot.”
“It was,” I agree, staring up at him from my knees on the floor. “There is, you know, a second part.” I trail a finger over the length of his cock, which is just beginning to soften in front of me. It catches on his foreskin and gathers a last pulse of fluid at his slit. I drop my mouth open and let my tongue hang loose as I run my finger over it.
“Oh fuck,” he sighs. “Just, just give me a moment.”
That wasn’t part of the deal, but by now I feel like I need a moment too. Just the friction of the lace over my swollen cock might be enough to make me explode. I tilt forward and rest my forehead against Simon’s belly, breathing in shakily. His breath rattles too.
Eventually I feel his stomach shift beneath my head, one of his feet lifts off the ground, and a leather boot nudges against my erection.
I gasp. It’s the sort of pressure that at any other time would be too much—almost painful—and yet now it feels like he could step on my cock and I would spurt like a bottle of mustard. I involuntarily rub up into the boot and he drags it along my prick. Crowley, I’m going to hump his fucking foot like an un-neutered dog if this keeps up.
When I raise my head from Simon’s belly, his cock is half-mast, twitching valiantly in its efforts at renewed life. The boot nudges again and I practically jump.
“Fuck, Simon, I’m sorry—”
“What?” He looks like some sort of mischievous sprite, grinning down at me, trying to rub me off with his foot.
“I have to— We have to—”
“What?”
“I have to skip part two,” I say, leaping up to get away from the provoking boot. I snag his knickers with my fingers on my way to standing, pulling them back over his hips.
I have a moment to register the surprise on his face and then I’ve jerked his hips, twisted him around, placed a palm on his back and shoved. He bends beneath my hand—lax and obliging—and when I nudge my foot between his, thinking I’ll kick his legs apart, they spread for me willingly.
“You like looking?” Simon asks. His eyes are shut and the words come out crushed—the side of his face pressed against the desk.
I slide my hands up and down over his bare arse cheeks.
“Yes.” It comes out half-groan, half-shudder.
All those years of looking at him, of wanting to see every part of him, wanting to see inside of him—inside his body, his heart, his soul. I place my palms on his arse and spread him so that only the bit of lace in the cleft hides his hole from me.
“Fuck, baby, I’m going to—”
I don’t even know if he’s hard again or wanting this, but he says, “Yess”—a soft hiss—and splays further.
I fumble my button out of its hole, snap the tab off my zip, and push my knickers down to just past my balls. When I take my cock in hand, it’s wet at the tip and throbs with Simon’s blood. Lube, wand, I think as Simon’s hand scrabbles backwards and his fingers brush my wrist. And then I’m slick—my palm dripping, my cock shiny like I’ve dunked it in oil.
“Wha—?”
“Shhh,” Simon says, his little finger still trailing my wrist.
“I—” Fuck it. I leave my cock lying in my wet palm, grab the unassuming bit of lace that separates me from the sharp point of everything I want right now, yank it aside, press my tip bluntly to Simon’s opening, listen for his intake of breath, and push. He parts around me with a gasp, his fingers leaving my wrist to clench fruitlessly at the surface of the desk.
I try to still my already slow heart, my pointless lungs, so that I can withdraw and push again.
“Crowley, Merlin, god, fuck, tight,” I mutter, feeling like one half of my cock is being suffocated in hot, smooth pressure, and the other half is jealously banging at the door, whining to be let in.
Simon’s chest heaves and I push again, my hips hitting flush against his arse, the lace band of his thong slipping from my fingers and pinching the base of my cock. That snap of pain is just enough to prevent me from instantly blowing, so I can grab Simon’s shoulder and drag him back tighter against me.
He’s as pliable as a ragdoll. His mouth hanging open, a little puddle of drool on the desk. “Baz, babe,” he murmurs into it.
I dig a fist into his golden-bronze hair, lean over until my chest presses against his back and whisper against his ear. “Look at you, you slattern little hero all impaled on my cock. You think you’re the Chosen One, but really you’re just a dirty little harlot who wants his curls pulled.” I tug at his curls, pull out, slam back in again, knocking Simon forward, the desk scraping across stone, and I come grunting and spasmodically thrusting into Simon’s arse like my last name isn’t Grimm-Pitch and I can’t play Sibelius’ Violin concerto in D minor.
I think I might fall asleep on Simon’s back, my cock thawing in his arse, but my dirty little harlot says, “Baz. Baz, I’m hard again now.”
SIMON
“Fuck,” Baz murmurs. He sounds a little drunk.
“And we still have to do the magic fucking.”
“That wasn’t magic enough for you?”
“I mean, metaphorically speaking, yes, but I think we have to do the literal magic fucking still.”
When Baz sighs his breath blows my hair and his chest heaves against my back. “Give me a minute.”
I’m fairly certain I’ve given him at least ten minutes by the time I start rubbing against the desk, trying to find friction. “Baz,” I whine. “You said…”
“I said I was going to suck you and fuck you and I did, Snow.”
“You said you were going to make the stones crumble, vampire boy, and you haven’t.” I give a little push back to underscore my point.
“Ohh,” Baz groans, and I’m not sure if it’s pleasure or misery or irritation. “Fine, fine, just—” He lifts his chest from my back, which feels uncomfortably hot without his weight. “Just stay—”
“Stay what, Baz?”
“Stay open.” He grips my hips and begins thrusting—tiny motions. I can feel that he’s soft and trying not to slip out, and I do my best not to eject him. Not that I really have much control over the matter, but I try to relax and let him work himself back to hardness.
He makes a guttural, annoyed sound and grabs at my knickers. There’s a tug at my hip, a snap and a tearing sound, then they land on the floor.
“Hey, I liked that pair!”
“We’ll get you another thong. Something less virginal.”
“Red?”
“Yeah, red.”
“Purple?”
“Purple’s good too.”
“Watford purple?”
“Shut it, Snow.”
Baz never stops moving and I can feel him starting to thicken inside of me, a pressure pushing outwards. He begins rubbing my back with the heel of his palm. It skids in my sweat and trails down to my arse where he clenches one of my cheeks, his motions getting more rhythmic, less cautious.
“Ohhh,” I pant out and stretch up to tiptoes in the boots, trying to find a new angle because I can feel Baz is so close to something and I’m pretty desperate now. Somewhere between Baz calling me “tight” and pulling on my hair, my cock decided to aggressively rejoin the party.
“No,” Baz says, digging the base of his palm into my lower back and pushing my heels back to the ground. “You wanna crack the stones, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I gasp.
“Magic sex.”
“Yeah.”
“Come here then.” Baz pops out of me, and I feel momentarily gaping and empty, as he turns me around.
His hair is disheveled and falling across his face. His Watford tie askew, his shirt untucked, trousers unzipped and hanging loosely around his waist, and his thick pink cock, still glossy with residual lube, jutting out from above a pair of black lace knickers. He spits some hair out of his mouth, somehow looking more wanton than I do, and I’m naked in knee-high leather boots.
“Wall, Snow,” he says, pointing a directing finger at it.
“You called me Simon before,” I say, sliding off the desk to lean against the bare stone.
“And maybe I’ll call you Simon again.” Baz moves towards me, crowds me against the wall, and presses his forearms on either side of my head. “Simon.” He leans down and kisses me.
The buttons on his shirt scrape my chest, so I fumble my hands between us and undo them as his tongue warms in my mouth. It’s a relief when his shirt falls open and I can feel his cool skin and the prickle of his chest hair against me. I loop my arms around his neck and hitch a thigh up, urging him closer until our cocks bump. We rut softly against one another and I think, this is all I need. Fuck crumbling stones, fuck magic sex, all I want is this closeness—no space between us, the only air our shared breath.
Baz’s arms leave the wall and I miss the way they enclosed me until his palms scoop under my arse and lift me off the ground, my back scraping against the stones.
“You wanted vampire strength?” he asks.
“Yes.” His grey eyes are a thick, clingy fog.
He stoops a little and maneuvers my arse onto his left forearm, so his hand cups my hip. “Legs up,” he says.
I lift and wrap them around his waist, letting his arm bear my weight.
He pushes at the back of my thigh with his free hand. “Further.”
It’s not like I’m a gymnast here, but I do my best to spread them wider, pull them closer to my chest.
Baz stares down at my exposed cock, which flops against my stomach from this position. “You want me to fuck you?” he asks.
“Yes,” my voice sounds scraped raw.
He reaches between his legs and finds his own cock, lining it up between my parted cheeks.
“You want me to fuck you until these stones crack?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll fuck you until these stones are dust and the tower collapses and Mummers House crumbles and then I’ll keep fucking you out in the courtyard with the school watching. I’ll fuck you until they measure the pounding of my cock into your arse on the bloody Richter scale.”
“Do it, vampire boy.”
“That’s right. I am a blood-drinking monster and you’re a nuclear bomb and I am going to fuck you until you go off.”
“Slippery when wet,” I cast, and the back of my head hits the wall with a thunk as Baz pushes in.
Presumably because we’ve both already come once, Baz is able to deliver more than empty promises this time. He starts heavy and hard, staring down at where we’re joined together, and jolting noises from somewhere deep in my lungs with a rhythm that only grows more relentless. My fingers are slipping around his neck, tangling in his hair, and my cock bounces despondently against my stomach, beckoning me to touch it.
“Harder!” I command. Baz’s eyes meet mine, holding them, like he’s daring me. “More— again— everything— all of it— all— Baz— Ba— B—” He’s bouncing sounds out of me and I release his neck to grab at my cock, slamming my other palm against the wall, pounding out the rhythm he’s knocking into me.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh, Baz, oh.” I’m trying to come up with something filthy, the kind of dirty thing he would say to me, but I’ve never been any good with words and now he’s dismantling those too. “Fuck, fuck, fucking come in me, you vampire slut!”
Baz chokes something out that may be a laugh or a sneer and then he leans in, cramming my arse closer to the wall, his skin slapping against mine with sticky, suctioning sounds, and he spits on my face. It hits cool and wet on my cheekbone and trickles down.
My eyes are saucers when his warm breath ghosts my lips, but instead of kissing me, he presses his tongue to my chin and sweeps upwards, licking his spit from my face. I come in my clenched fist, my other hand gripping the stone wall, as Baz jerks and shudders and I think, not about going off, but about spilling over.
I focus on the flooding heat as he comes in my arse—the burn of his magic. I light a match inside my heart and I blow on the tinder, and when the tinder starts smoldering, I blow harder. Sparks spray forward and catch dry wood. There’s the pop and burnt sugar scent of sap as fire licks up trunks, turning dried needles into pinprick torches, catching red and gold leaves that curl in on themselves. I let it spill over—through Baz, out of me, and into the walls of Watford.
There’s a strange groaning sound—harsh, deep, rasping, like rough flint scraped together—and the dry, gritty feel of dust coating my sweaty palm.
THE TOWER ROOM
In “Smashed,” episode nine, season six, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the slayer and her vampire quite literally fuck a house down. Mind you, it was a sorry little shack, but still I laughed, delighted—a tumble of pebbles on a rocky beach—back in 2001 when Natasha Grimm-Pitch was Headmistress of Watford, televisions were permitted, and two less fascinating little mages occupied my inner sanctum.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I rumble, urging the vampire to pound harder into the Chosen One’s arse. I shimmy from my foundations to the tip of my turret. “He’s a magic-sucking hoover, a creator of voids, a hole that wants to be filled. Give him what he wants. Give him what I want. Fill him, you blood-drinking tart!”
Not that I mean to be rude; I quite like the blood-drinking tart. If Simon Snow has saturated me with his blood every time he thought his vampire wasn’t around—yes, yes, I’d murmur, use that blade to prick your thumb—then Baz Pitch has saturated me with his come every time he thought his Chosen One wasn’t around. You can’t beat off that frequently and furiously and not expect at least some of it to hit the stones, and all of your hurried, desperate cleaning spells are useless against my powers of absorption.
No, after nearly eight years, I am quite bound to these boys, through blood (Simon), sweat (also Simon), tears (again, Simon), and semen (thank you, Baz).
Then the former Headmistress showed up inside of me and magicked Simon to fulfill her son’s desires: “give him this” (a kiss heaped with magic). I considered that rather presumptuous until dear Lucy Salisbury popped up too and magicked her son to be aware of Baz’s desires: “she told me he likes stars” (oh, Lucy, stars are only the tip of the iceberg).
I suppose I could have left it, kept the stones’ magic to myself, let Simon thrash about with his sex dreams, and maybe one day he would have acted on them, but after seven years of Simon in my bowels, if there’s one thing I’m aware of, it’s that he’s quite capable of avoiding thinking about complicated topics. I decided to consult the Weeping Tower.
She sobbed vines from her rooftop and sagged another centimeter.
“Buck up before you topple,” I told her.
“It’s just”—she hiccuped loose gravel—“I failed him!”
“Who?”
“Basil!”
“Please, stop wailing. I can barely understand you. How did you fail Baz?”
“It was”—hiccup—“the nursery”—hiccup—“it was warded to protect him”—hiccup—“and it failed!”
“Well, you can’t take responsibility for the actions of every room inside of you.”
“It feels so ashamed.”
“Well, it should,” I sniffed, which only made the Weeping Tower cough up more vines.
“You have to make it right,” she said, when she’d finally caught her breath and ceased ejecting pebbles and plant-life.
So I did my best. Blood, sweat, tears—Simon and I are magickally bound together. Lucy made him aware of what Baz wanted, Simon dreamed it, but I manifested his dreams into reality: boots, dildos, handcuffs, whips, paddles, dirty talk…blood. Oh yes, blood.
When they first started shagging and it trembled and quivered through my stones, I knew I could assist them with even more than falling in love.
“My vampire is hungry,” I said to the Watford grounds. A loose rock fell from my turret and splashed in the moat below. A merwolf howled and burbled.
Lapping, brackish and loose, the waters replied, “Have one of these fucking wolf things.”
“No one wants your merwolves, fool.”
“Bloody nuisance. Invasive species and all that. Burmese pythons in the Everglades all over again. I curse the day the Mage released the first breeding pair in my depths. At least I’ve kept them out of my chthonic spaces.”
“Your what?”
“It derives from the Greek—”
“Don’t patronize me, moat. We all know Greek here, well, with the possible exception of the Chosen One.”
The moat sighed a flurry of bubbles. “My second moat. The moat beneath me. Total dead zone. One hundred percent merwolf free.”
“No life at all?” I clarified.
“Deader than Dallol. Which is a geothermal field in Ethiopia…”
I tuned the moat out. Bodies of water are over-sharers, perhaps because they feed into one another. There’s some dam in Arizona that chugs garbage and complains a lot. Then the moat whinges to me about it.
No life at all, the moat had said. I clacked a few pebbles together in imitation of Mr. Burns on The Simpsons. (I do miss television.) That would mean my vampire would have to drink from my Chosen One. Excellent…
And who knew my beloved eater would turn out to be such a feeder as well?
My eater, my feeder, my creator of magickal voids. I should tackle that vexing issue too, I thought. And I knew just the space.
I chucked a handful of stones, which rattled off the bars of the third hidden gate.
“Fuck off,” he grunted.
“Please.”
“Say the magic words.”
I sighed—a spray of gravel. “I am the keymaster.”
“And I am the gatekeeper,” he chuckled creakily. (That joke never gets old for him. It’s actually all you have to say to get him to open.) “What do you want?”
“Rude,” I huffed.
“You try being the junkyard of Watford and tell me what that does to your self-esteem and social skills.”
“You serve an important role, perhaps the most important.” (The third gate always responds well to flattery.)
“You think?”
“There would be no Watford without you.”
The third gate preened, but it’s true.
If the rest of Britain thinks it has a problem with magickal dead spots, it should try harboring the magic-sucking hoover in its recesses. As soon as Simon showed up and cast his first “light of day,” a magickless patch appeared on the Great Lawn, rather like those yellow burn spots when a dog pees on grass. We immediately held an all-Watford sites meeting and strong-armed the third gate into storing Simon’s voids with the rest of Watford’s magickal junk, mostly every car any student has ever spelled to fly.
A junkyard of voids: what better place to reunite Simon with his inner Humdrum, I thought before relocating there.
And then for my finale—my climax, so to speak—making sure the boys fell in love, well, that one was obvious.
“Have you seen Groundhog Day?” I asked floor two-and-a-half of the Cloisters. (Don’t call her bonus content; she does not find Penelope Bunce’s little joke amusing.)
“Groundhog day, groundhog day, groundhog day,” she repeated back to me.
I took that as a yes.
If Punxsutawney can get the lovely Rita Hanson to fall in love with the curmudgeonly Phil Connors in a time loop (I do miss movies), getting my Chosen One to recognize his love for my vampire should be a snap. And despite that unexpected little detour into light BDSM, it was.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I grumble now as my boys shag—stones smashing together. I lap up Simon’s excess magic, suck it into the mortar that holds me together.
I send vibrations across the grounds, rattling the nursery and the Catacombs and the White Chapel. “Release, release, release,” I hum.
The nursery and the Catacombs sigh. The old Oracle’s room at the top of the White Chapel grunts stubbornly, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Baz Pitch, it’s how to be mean and persuasive.
“Let Lucy go, you rocky old slag, or I’ll have these boys fuck all your pretty windows into shards!”
The Chapel roars and belches incense, muttering something about respect for one’s elders, but Simon’s gripping my stones so tight that they’re crumbling to dust, and I’m swelling with more magic than Davy Cadwallader and all of his rituals and dark blue blood magic ever dumped into Watford and I heave, push, and spill.
Throughout Watford, London, and the surrounding suburbs, jars rattle off shelves and people duck under doorways.
My boys keep fucking through the earthquake, blissfully unaware, until Simon’s spunk splashes on my wall and I suck it up with a roar and a shudder.
Simon sags against my stones. Baz’s breath is hot and moist. I need a cigarette.
Epilogue (2024)
SIMON
Sid is balanced on my hip and Baz pets his poof of tight, dark curls as our son stares wide-eyed around the Watford nursery, taking in the rabbit mural, the primary colored walls, the kid-sized table with its tiny chairs and Beatrix Potter tea set.
“Don’t be nervous, little puff,” Baz says, “my classroom is right upstairs.”
Baz has been teaching Physics at Watford ever since he graduated from the London School of Economics. Headmistress Bunce agreed to introduce the subject after Baz pointed out that it could be useful for students to be able to distinguish between magic and science. He teaches a lesson on surface tension in the moat under the moat, and one about gravity where they drop objects of different weights and sizes off the top of the Weeping Tower.
Penny’s mum took over as Headmistress soon after I did what my mum told me to do and asked the Mage about Lucy Salisbury. I still don’t know what she wanted me to find out because he promptly burst into tears. Then he bought a boat, named it Lucy, and has been circumnavigating the globe ever since. He goes by “the Captain” now.
We adopted Sid after Baz wanted to rescue a Burmese Mountain Dog puppy. The animal shelter was located right next to one of my care homes and I insisted on going in. That’s when we saw Sid. He looks like a cross between me and Baz, but that’s not why we adopted him. It’s because he was sitting in a corner by himself vampirically sucking on a red rubber ball and I refused to leave him.
His name wasn’t Sid then; it was Abstinence. (One of the care home workers said he was dropped off by someone Puritanical trying to instill a Life Lesson.) Obviously we changed it since: A. it’s a shitty name; and B. if we’d been abstinent, maybe Baz would never have come to terms with his vampirism, I would be full of excess magic, and our ghost mums would be half-trapped at Watford.
People think we named Sid Sid because of the Humdrum—you know, Insidious Humdrum and all that—but it’s actually because of Baz’s Aunt Fiona. Baz wanted her to be Sid’s godmother and she refused unless she got naming rights. Then she and Baz split a bottle of wine while watching her favorite movie, Sid and Nancy. By the time it was over, Baz was weeping and Fiona was insisting we name our son after Sid Vicious. I fell asleep at the start and only woke up a couple of times during the film, but it seemed like a nice love story, so I agreed.
Sid points to the wall nearest the nursery’s large, oak door carved with bunnies and badgers and asks, “What’s that?”
We walk closer to the two paintings hanging side-by-side: former Headmistress Grimm-Pitch, brought down from the wall outside the Mage’s office; and my mum, brought up from the Catacombs. Natasha’s widow’s peak and tight bun make her look severe, but my mum smiles down on us, tearless.
“That’s your Grandma Natasha and your Grandma Lucy,” Baz says, tapping each portrait frame. Then he pulls his phone out of his suit pocket and checks the time. “I’d better get going. Goodbye, little puff.” He kisses Sid on the temple.
I add a kiss too. “Be good, rosebud boy.”
I set him down on the floor, and he runs off towards the tea set and a few other kids seated at the table, tripping over his own feet and splatting on the stones before he arrives. I feel a little growl and a shiver in my fingertips.
“It’s fine, it’s fine,” I say. “Sometimes kids fall.”
“Watford?” Baz asks.
“Yeah.”
“You need to have a conversation with the castle about being overly protective.”
“I know.”
Ever since I dumped a whole mess of my magic into the walls of Watford, the castle’s taken it upon itself to alert me whenever something goes wrong with Sid. It can be a bit much—like that time it disappeared Primrose Love-Bunce in a cupboard after she stole Sid’s ball. Baz had to discreetly blow me against the wall of the faculty lounge in order to get the nursery to give up Primrose’s location. Mummers House says the Weeping Tower says it’s the nursery that’s causing most of the trouble; it doesn’t want to fail Baz’s son and Natasha’s grandson.
When the oak door closes behind us, Baz glances quickly around, then presses my back against a carved badger and cups my arse through my trousers.
“Tell me what you’re wearing,” he murmurs against my ear.
“Or what?” I ask.
“Or I’m going to push you to the floor, sit on your face, shove my thick cock in your sloppy mouth and ride it like I’m an outlaw in a country western.”
I shut my eyes, imagining. “Then what?”
“I’ll use your curls like reins, tugging you closer until you’re forced to deep throat me—your eyes watering, nose running, spit pooling in your cheeks. You love the taste of my come, so you’ll want to swallow, but I’ll make you spit it out into my cupped palm. I’ll wring the sweat from your hair, gather your tears and snot and saliva, mix them with my come, then wank you so slow and wet you’ll think you’re fucking Jell-O.”
“Promises,” I whisper hoarsely.
Baz works a finger under the waistband of my trousers, hooks it into a strip of lace and yanks until one edge of my red thong emerges.
“These are my favorite,” he says.
I swallow. “I know.”
On my way back to the car, I consider picking the red lace wedgie nestled tightly between my arse cheeks, but I kind of like it there. It reminds me of Baz.