A Bundle of Love (snowbaz)

Nostalgia

BAZ.

We're back at Watford for whatever "emergency" Bunce went on about. Turns out, the "emergency" isn't urgent enough for us to get to right away. Instead, Headmistress Bunce greets us at the gate and takes us all to rooms to rest up. She promises to have someone send some food up in an hour or so, like I care about food right now. Like I haven't been able to stop thinking about Simon bloody Snow the moment we got back here. 

He hasn't been here since the ball. I keep looking over at him, just to make sure he's okay, but his face is devoid of all emotion. Instead, he looks around like he's never been here before. Like we didn't spent seven and a half years together up in Mummer's House. I wish I knew how to comfort him right now, but he's not even standing next to me. He's walking head with Bunce while she talks to him about something I can't quite make out. 

I think we started getting somewhere when we spoke on the beach. We haven't spoken much since then, but I feel like we've taken a step in the right direction. A step towards progress. I know that we still have a lot to talk about, but I can't help but feel like things might to start get better now. I know that America didn't fix Simon––not that he's broken––but I couldn't help but notice how alive he'd seemed there when he was killing vampires and wielding a weapon again. America made Simon alive again. 

And then it had almost killed him. 

I still can't stop thinking of it––of him lying in the desert with sand in his hair, blood pouring out of him, holes shot through him, his wing bent the wrong way. I was sure he was dead. I'd felt the life (if I ever had any, he was it) leave my body when I saw him like that. I felt my heart tear into pieces like the bullets had torn through his torso. I wouldn't know how to carry on if he had really died, considering I don't know how to carry on knowing that he was this close to death. The thought of him dying still makes bile make its way into my throat. When I'd tried to sleep on the plane, the image of him in the desert haunted me from behind my eyelids, threatening to become reality if I kept my eyes closed for longer than a minute or two. 

I think I need to tell him that I love him. I've tried to show him in every way I can think of, but I don't think he's getting it. I need him to know how much I care for him––how seeing him in the desert nearly broke me. He needs to know how disgustingly, desperately in love with him I am. If anyone has ever deserved love, it's Simon Snow. 

My chosen one.

SIMON.

She's put us back in our old room. Baz and I are standing outside the door awkwardly. We haven't really spoken since the beach, and I have no idea what to say to him. It's not exactly new for me to be unable to string together a coherent thought or sentence, but now it feels like I'm drowning in a mess of things I should have said. Things I want to say. I just don't know how. 

I clear my throat. "Can you..." I gesture to the door. 

Baz nods and pulls out his wand, spelling the door open. I mentally block out his words while he does it––habit, I guess. 

He holds the door open for me and I step inside. 

My mouth feels dry when I enter. 

This was my room. Our room. For nearly eight bloody years. My bed's still unmade, just like I left it, and the scent of Baz's cedar and bergamot shampoo still hangs thick in the air. I'm sure the scent of my magic is here, too, but I can't smell it. I can't feel it. I haven't been able to feel anything (magick, hunger, pain, life) in a long time, but it all floods back into me now as I look around our old room. The memories that I've fought so hard to suppress are back full force now and they're trying to drown me. Every stupid fight, every side-eyed glare, everything floods my mind as I take in the room. All of the nights I sat in my bed on the first night being back, being so fucking thankful that Watford and magick were still there, that they were still real, came back to me. All of those moments on the last night of term where I cried because I was afraid that I would wake up in a care home the next day and figure out that all of this had been some weird dream rush to the front of my mind. 

I can't breathe. I'm trying, but I'm drowning in the memories of Watford and magick and the mage and––

"I've got you," Baz says as his arms wrap around me, saving me from falling over. 

I clench my jaw, trying to blink the tears away, but it's no use. 

I'm sobbing now and I can't stop. 

BAZ.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this––me having to catch Simon from falling to the ground as tears flood his eyes and run down his face. I don't know what to do with him now that I have his sobbing form in my arms, so I just hold him. He turns around and buries his head into the crook of my neck, his arms hooked around my neck and his fingers fiddling with the hair at the nape of my neck. I sink to my knees, taking him with me, and rub soothing circles into his back. 

"I've got you," I say again. 

"I'm sorry," he sobs.

"Don't be daft, Snow. I--"

I swallow my doubts and decide to say it. He needs to hear it. 

"I love you, Simon. And I'm always going to love you, even when you're sobbing or bleeding out in the bloody desert, okay? I know exactly who you are and I love every part of you."

That makes him cry even harder, but I think they're happy tears now. 

I don't where we stand, but I think we're better off than we were on the beach. At least we've solved something. Soon, when Simon's gotten all of his tears out and his eyes are dry, we'll talk about everything. We'll talk about us. But, in this moment, I couldn't bring myself to think about anything besides the fact that Simon's in my arms, that I'm hopelessly in love with him, and that we're both okay.