Chapter Text
BAZ
She picks up after the seventh ring. It's seven in the morning, but I want to reach her before she leaves for work.
"Things must be bad if you're calling me for the first time in a year," Dr Hightower greets me. I don't ask how she knew who it was.
I feel like an idiot. I wanted to call her when things were good. I wanted to tell her I got everything she thought I deserved. But I guess I was waiting for the other shoe to fall. Didn't want to tell her he loved me back and then have it all go to hell. And now here I am. I'm on the school phone and now I don't even know what I can say.
“Do you think… do you think people get what they deserve?”
“Not usually, no,” she answers. "But they’re more likely to get what they work for."
* * *
I walk the grounds for a while, then send a bird for Bunce. I know she went to bed around four, but there isn't much time. I have to leave at noon. The sun is rising over the hills and the day is already heating up. Summer is just around the corner.
When she finds me under the yew trees, she doesn't look like she slept at all. I didn't tell her this part last night because I didn't know what it meant. Because I was afraid of what it meant.
She sits down beside me and I don't try to move away. I'm too tired. She looks worried. But also... also like she knows something.
“Penny, the Humdrum... It’s Simon, it looks just like Simon."
She doesn't react.
"You knew?"
"No, I didn’t know what it looked like," she answers carefully.
"But you knew it was him?" I say accusingly. "Why didn't you—"
"Dr Lang figured it out. I was praying he was wrong." She closes her eyes.
"So, Simon doesn't even know he does it? That it's him ripping the holes in the magickal atmosphere?" Bunce shakes her head. "Do you think he created the Humdrum? Without knowing it?"
She chews her lip. "I've had a long time to think about it. I think... when he went off the first time, when his magic came to him, it must have happened then. It tore a hole in magic, and that hole is what we call the Insidious Humdrum."
"That's why he looks eleven." She looks confused. "The Humdrum. He's just like Simon the first time I saw him. I thought... I don't know, I thought I was projecting it or something. Like... like it was wearing my worst fear: meeting Simon as my enemy again. But Snow saw him, too."
"I don't think Simon can defeat him," she says, looking at her hands in her lap. "Dr Lang thought that, if they touched, they would cancel each other out. Like matter and anti-matter. They would destroy one another."
"Why didn't you tell him?” Bunce and Snow have a rule: no secrets. How could she do this? “What if he'd touched him yesterday? He nearly did!"
She puts her head in her hands. "I know, I know! I'm sorry. I was trying to find a flaw. I wanted to prove him wrong. It took me forever to get Ani to let me read her father's books and I thought, if we could just make it to summer—"
"That's why it doesn't attack in summer, isn't it? Because Snow doesn't use his magic."
She's chewing her lip again.
"If Simon tries to destroy it, it will destroy him." She takes a deep breath. "But you could do it. You can use his power, he can’t."
"We tried that. I told you. He just absorbed anything we threw at him."
"Yes, but you didn't try everything." Her voice is panicked, the words are spilling out. "We just need to find the spell, the one that will close the hole, or fill it or.. or... It was never visible before, maybe it's getting stronger. Maybe it will become corporeal and we can fight it a different way—"
"No. Bunce—you don't get it. I can't keep using his magic. Why do you think I've been doing this? Helping him control it? I'm not supposed to do it, he is."
"Who cares who does it–”
"Crowley, for once in your life actually listen to me!" Bunce closes her mouth and blinks at me, waiting. "I can't do it. I did this to Dev. I wanted him out of the way, of course, but mostly I just wanted to hurt him. I hurt people. That's what I'm good at. I can't even—"
I think of the fight with Simon last night.
"I can't even stop when I want to. But that's what you need, you and him. You need someone willing to go to the ends of the earth to protect you. To do whatever it takes. Someone with no… no soul who can do what needs to be done."
She shakes her head slowly.
"Look what I do with the power I have. I can't handle his, too. It won’t end with the Humdrum. It won’t end."
She sighs and looks out at the road that leads back to town. She shakes her head again. Like it's all nonsense. I fold my arms, about to lose my temper and shout at her. Maybe then she'll get it. But then she says:
"So? Jesus was a cross maker."
"What?"
"Jesus was a cross maker. He was a carpenter, he made crosses." She crosses her arms too and shrugs.
"I know, but what in Chomsky's name does that have to do with anything?"
"It means nobody's perfect, Baz." I roll my eyes mightily, but she continues, "Look, you're not the worst things you've done. Nor the best. You're all of them. You helped Maggie—"
I cut her off, "I would have killed her, if I had to."
"Yeah, but you didn't. You could have killed her on sight. It's what the Mage would have done."
"Fuck the Mage," I spit.
"My point is, you're all of those things. Very bad, and very good. Your shitty need for revenge and your selfless love for Simon."
I look away. Her stare is too intense.
"He can't do it. We might lose him if he tries," she urges.
I close my eyes. I curl up, knees bent, arms crossed on top of them, head tipped forward.
"He was supposed to be... the one thing in my life... the one thing that wasn't fucked up."
"Everyone is fucked up," she answers in a voice meant to soothe.
"Not like this. He's the greatest threat to magic, Penny. Simon."
She laughs, but it's without humour.
"What do I say to him?" I ask.
"Oh no. I don't give relationship advice anymore. You're on your own." She shakes her head, tossing her dark waves of hair.
I exhale, steel myself. She's wrong. I'm not on my own. Not anymore.
SIMON
When you're lost, you're supposed to stay where you are. I've always hated that. If you're lost, you should do something. Try to get unlost. But if you stay put, there's a better chance someone will find you. Someone who knows the way. So I stay put. Waiting in our room.
Penelope said he would come back. All his things are still here, packed neatly by the door. (Maybe he's sending for them later.) (Maybe he'll just buy all new things.)
I keep twisting my gold chain in my fingers. I wear it tucked under my shirt now, with only the chain visible, so no one is any the wiser that the cross is gone for good.
When I hear footsteps on the stairs I don't let myself hope that it's him. It could be Penny. Or the Mage. Or the nurse even, though I feel fine now. Physically.
Then he opens the door, and I see the relief on my face mirrored in his. I stand and rush over to him before I remember he was casting the curse on himself last night.
Can I touch him...?
Baz puts a hand on my cheek and I lean into it, closing my eyes. Thank magic.
"You're crying already?" Baz chides me.
I laugh. "Just glad you came back, you knob."
I look at him and his face is pained, his mouth a straight line. His grey eyes look cloudy. I hold his gaze. "I'll always come back for you, Simon."
I shake my head. "What do we do? When do you leave?"
We still haven't talked about it.
"We've got three hours. But you can't cry the whole time. This is the last time I'm going to see you for three months; I don't want to have to picture you like this until then."
I laugh again, but another tear falls against my will. "Okay."
* * *
"I'm sorry," Baz says. It's so weird to hear those words in his voice.
"For what?" He’s pressed against me in his bed again, our hands locked together.
"Dev."
"No you're not." I shoot him a sceptical look.
"No. But I'm sorry I hurt you." That's true. I can tell from his eyes. They narrow ever so slightly when he lies.
"I still love you," I say wonderingly, "even if you're deplorable."
He sighs and starts to roll away from me but I jerk his hand back toward me so he can't. He pulls our hands to his lips and kisses mine.
"Don't do it again. Don't... hurt people for me."
Baz looks suddenly serious. "You don't get it, do you? I'm not letting anyone hurt you ever again."
I turn onto my back and heave a sigh. He's impossible. "Can we compromise? No murders... dismemberments... No stealing people's magic?"
"What does that even leave me?" he asks, but I turn and see he's teasing me. He's got that devilish grin. I trace his bottom lip and he catches my hand again, kissing my palm.
"Don't," I whisper.
Baz looks up, his eyebrows raised.
"I'm going to have to forget that in..." I look at his watch, "forty-two minutes. I'll have to block it out or it will drive me mad till..."
"Where are you going?" he asks in a rush.
"I don't know." I won't know until I get on a train this afternoon.
"How can I find you?"
"No one has, yet. Except Penny possessed the old man at the shop once— that’s off limits too," I warn.
"Don't go." It's an order. "We'll go somewhere."
"Where?"
"I don't care."
"Your dad's already on his way."
"I don't care." He sounds less sure of himself.
"Do you think Vera told him about me coming at Christmas?"
"Absolutely not. She knows when to keep her mouth shut. And she knows my father. Knows what he thinks of… people like me."
"But she kept hanging around—"
"Because she likes Mordelia and me. She practically raised me after my mother died. Crowley, you are paranoid. Come here."
He pulls me into his arms and it's not until he's got them locked tight around me that I realize just how hard this is for him, too.
"I love you," Baz says, his voice low. That makes it an even ten, and the first five times he said it were all at once. And a few were by giving the signal, which maybe shouldn't count, but it does to me.
I try to breathe him in, hold on to enough of his scent to get me through the next three months.
"Give me your shirt," I say, my voice muffled between his chest and the bed.
"Alright." He's tracing circles on my back. He can't see my face, so I let myself tear up, gripping the shirt tightly. Trying to pull him closer, but we can't get any closer.
Fuck. And I thought hating him was hard.
When he's gone, the shirt is all I have. It's the grey v-neck, my favourite. I put it on then put my own shirt back over it. I tuck the gold chain into both.
But... it's not all I have. I have his words.
I play them on repeat in my head. Like my favourite song. Like a spell. Like a prayer. I say goodbye to Penny and Agatha, and the Mage, and I can still hear them.
I board the train to Liverpool. Which, if you had told me I'd be living there before all this, would have sent me over the moon. All I would have done was wonder about how I was going to get free from the care home to see a match. But I'm not thinking about football at all. It doesn't even occur to me that the Liverpool on my ticket is the Liverpool until I'm halfway there.
The only thing on my mind is him saying, "I'll always come back for you, Simon." Just his voice, just those words, over and over. Until they all blur together.
Until it's just one word:
"...always...always...always."