#and um...

"You're doing it again." "I'm allowed," Baz murmurs. "No you're not. Baz..." Simon tries to pull away, to get his hands on Baz's chest or his shoulders and move him back enough that Simon can look at him, but there is nowhere for him to go. Baz is twisted all around him, shoving his face into Simon's throat and folding into all the narrow dips of his body like he's made of nothing but fear and frayed ribbons. Simon slumps against him, giving up. Giving in. Loving Baz is a lot of that so far. Giving in to clingy hands and heavy limbs, to his open mouth and his gentle, broken heart. "Baz," he says again. "I'm sorry, Simon." "It's not your fault." "Forgive me anyway." "Okay, fine. I forgive you. Again. But—" "I love you," Baz says. "I love you, I love you, I love you."

-

His hands are cold, docile things between Simon’s steady palms.  Before, he never would have imagined Baz as someone who needs to be handled with care, but Baz Pitch is a moth behind his ribs; he is a fluttering, delicate thing on the inside. And sometimes when Simon meets his gaze, there is a gleam of blue that reflects back at him from the dark of it like the crux of a flame. Simon presses his mouth first to the curve of Baz’s fingers. Second, to the heel of his thumb. “I’ll be right back,” he promises. Baz turns his wrist to get a hold of Simon’s chin. “Well, obviously,” he replies, but his eyes are so much softer now, his shoulders have lowered. “But you should know, I’m not going to spell your food warm for you if it goes cold.” “You will.” “I refuse.” “You will,” Simon says again, smiling. He leans forward to kiss him, but Baz is faster, catching him by the jaw and pulling him in. 

-

Snow exhales sharply. A scoff or a sigh, maybe another laugh. Baz can’t tell, but he feels it against his mouth. In his mouth. His lips are parted, only barely, but enough for him to taste the morning on Snow’s breath, sleep and stale mint and smoke. There’s always a bit of smoke with him. (How long have they been this close? Give an inch, and their noses will touch.) “Baz?” “Mmh.” He blinks, slow and heavy. Dawn has turned into a dappled swell of teal shadow and blushing orange light, catching along the shallow curve of Snow’s cheek. It burns his freckles into his skin, gleams in a ring around the blue of his eyes. And has there ever been anything more lovely than this before?  Than Simon Snow at sunrise.  Snow is still a warm and pliant weight against him, pressed into his shoulder, half-curled into a knot around his pillow with one of his shins crammed against Baz’s thigh. He looks exhausted—and withdrawn, oddly withdrawn. This isn’t his usual wall of suspicious contempt, this is something else. Colder, softer.

-

"Do you remember that game we used to play?" Simon asks. "When we were kids?" "Simon the Hero," Sydney snorts. "Yeah. And you'd swing your bloody hockey stick around like a sword. You were a three-foot-tall health and safety hazard." "Nobody got hurt." "You knocked my front teeth out." "All in good fun." Sydney throws his head back and laughs, full from his chest. Simon likes his brother's laugh, even though it kind of sounds awful. A tight, hiccoughing squeal, like someone is choking a piglet. It's the one thing about them that has always been different, always been entirely their own. He could pick Sydney's laughter from a crowd of hundreds, maybe thousands. Follow that sound and find him blind through a windstorm. "You're a shit," Sydney says, and of course Simon responds the only logical way: by licking his thumb and shoving it into his ear.

OKAY, LAST ONE:

He and Niall both look up as the door swings open and Dev shoves into the room, holding their mucky football kit under their arm. They spare Simon a glance as they chuck their clothes into the corner of the room, vaguely in the direction of their laundry hamper, muttering something to the tune of "oh, nine fucking hells" under their breath before collapsing, stomach-down, onto their bed. A single tiny, brown goose feather flings into the air above them. "All right?" Simon asks. Dev glowers over their shoulder. They look callow, and threadbare with exhaustion. Their eyes are dark above their cheeks. A flat, cattish yellow instead of their usual amber. They groan as they roll over onto their back and hike up their knees. "Fine," they say finally, "it's just. Motherfucker, Coach is pushing us. Basil isn't going to—" Dev throws themself upright suddenly, jabbing a finger in Simon's direction. "Don't you dare fucking start, I'm not in the mood for your weirdo Baz shit, Snow." Simon decides not to say anything. And after a moment, Dev continues: "... the team is down it's best player. Baz could show up tomorrow and it wouldn't matter, he's off the team this year and Mac is being a dick about it." They flop back down and toss around to their stomach again. Dig their hand under their pillow and pull out a blue Gameboy Advanced with a transparent shell covered in yellowed, half-melted Yoshi stickers. "My legs hurt so bad I can feel it in my balls," they huff, "and now the Chosen One is faffing off in my damn bedroom." "I can go." Simon stands. "I'll go." "Don't bother," Dev replies. Their Gameboy starts buzzing out a vaguely distorted rendition of the Legend of Zelda theme. Simon perks up at the familiar sound of it. "I'm already over it." "That's Link to the Past." Dev pauses, then glances up at him. "How did you know that?" "The overworld theme." Simon drops back onto the edge of Niall's bed. "That one's my favourite." Dev is staring at him like they've never seen him before. Simon looks at Niall, but he's gone back to his Poli-Sci essay and doesn't seem to be tuned into the conversation. (He writes weird.) (Like, with the paper turned sideways, moving his pen from bottom to top instead of left to right, printing the letters at a sharp angle in thin, slanted all-caps.) "Mordred," Dev scoffs, sneering. "You're—like, sentient." "You what?" Simon frowns. "You like Legend of Zelda." "Well, yeah. I've only played Link to the Past, Four Swords, and the Adventure of Link, though. I mean, I started Twilight Princess, but I moved homes before—" "Mordred's fucking curse." Dev is laughing. "You're normal." "I'm not a Normal." "Not a Normal, moron. You—you're like a normal person. You like video games." "Why wouldn't I like video game?" "I don't know. Why would you like anything? I figured you just despawned after Baz exhausted all your dialogue options." Dev's Gameboy cuts out and they shove it back under their pillow, then hang themself over the side of their mattress to peek into the narrow dark beneath their bed, shoving aside shoeboxes and dirty undershirts. They pull their laptop out—it's silver, and also covered in stickers. Newer stickers than their Gameboy. All of them are bubbly drawings of some bloke in a trenchcoat. Dev meets Simon's eyes and grins at him like a particularly devious finch. "You ever seen Supernatural?" Niall groans. "Oh, for fuck's sake, Dev."

if you've somehow managed to read all the way down to the bottom of this post, hello and thank you kindly, please have a cuppa and a slice of simon's birthday cake before you go!