come in from the cold

“You’re impossible, Simon Snow.” That makes me smile, the way he says it, the way he keeps talking to me, looking at me. [...] I touch his jaw and draw my thumb over his bottom lip. My wings make a red canopy above our bodies. “Show me your fangs,” I say quietly, rubbing the edge of his mouth. For a moment his hips still, and he looks properly scared. I don’t want that. I kiss him the way I kissed him at the market, slow and full of things I’m still not sure I can say out loud. “I want all of you. Not only halves.”

“I don’t have to tell you everything,” Baz says coldly. “You don’t, but you’re doing a shit job at pretending to be okay and I’m sick with fucking nerves every time I wake up in the middle of the night to you gone. I didn’t like it at Watford and I like it well fucking less now.” “Simon—” “Christ, I just need to understand. Because you’re—because I’ve been trying. Right? I’ve been trying. But I don’t know what to do.” “I know you have. I just … I can’t.” “Can’t what?” “Talk. About this. I just …” He’s a lump under the blankets, shoulders hunched, knees up, chin tucked low. I could cover his whole body with mine. “I can’t.”

I’m not surprised when I shuffle out of my room at half ten only to immediately trip over his mess. Cold tea left sitting in the middle of the floor for fuck’s sake. The ceramic rattling across the hardwood and my muttered curses startle Snow from his supine position on the sofa where he apparently took up camp while I slept in. Crouching to retrieve the cup, I huff audibly as I notice it’s one of my growing collection of Twilight-themed mugs, his idea of a running joke since we lived in student housing. This one says ‘This is the skin of a killer, Bella’ and it’s covered in sparkles. Some get stuck to my skin every time I handle it. (Which would be never, if I had the choice, but it’s the closest thing I’ll probably ever get to a gift from Snow so I can’t actually bear to throw it out.) (Or the rest of them, for that matter.)