FOREVER NOW (a Simon & Baz story)

Chapter 1

BAZ

Simon Snow is staring at me.

You'd think I'd be used to it by now. Him constantly watching me.

I mean, he did it for eight years straight at Watford, but that was different. He held himself with a certain kind of tension then, watching and waiting, always on edge. Always ready to lash out at me, like he was some kind of predator.

He still looks at me like he's a predator, and I'm his prey. But now there's something more possessive in his gaze. Like I'm something he wants to eat. Something he wants to keep. Something he wants.

"Snow. You're staring," I say, without looking up from my book. We're at his flat, the one he shares with Bunce (she left early this morning). I wasn't lying when I said I'd be haunting his doorstep day and night. Though I suppose technically it's his living room I'm haunting at the moment.

"Huh? Oh. Sorry." He grins, and has the decency to look at least a little sheepish at being caught. He was actually being quite covert about his staring. Probably someone else wouldn't have even noticed.

But I'm not someone else. I'm so acutely aware of him, so finely tuned to him. I could probably map out his moles, recreate them as a Snow constellation on the ceiling, without even needing him to take off his shirt for reference (though I wouldn't mind if he felt so obliged).

So. Yeah. I noticed.

He runs his fingers through those bronze curls of his. "I was just thinking..."

"That must be strange for you."

He growls and tosses a throw pillow at me.

"No, you arsehole. I was thinking that..." In the corner of my vision I see him swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Maybe... maybe we could go to your estate. In Hampshire."

"You want to go there?" I'm so shocked I look up from my book without even preparing a smirk or a snarky comment. "Crowley, Snow, why?"

"I thought... Um... Well, I mean... it's just..."

He's working up to a bluster and I'm tempted to snap at him, "Use your words," but I know he hates that. (Which is why I say it often.) But I don't want to push him this time; I'm too curious to hear what he has to say.

"You know, what Professor Bunce said... about it being healing. I just, I think it'd be good for me."

"You've been to dead spots before," I say, because I can't think of a better response. I didn't realize this was still affecting him so much, still on his mind. It's been nearly six months since any new dead spots appeared. Some of them might even be shrinking. It's hard to tell. But they haven't been getting any bigger, so that's something.

"I know..." he says, but he looks like he's struggling to find the words to say something else.

"Why this one? Why now?" I prompt him.

He seems to consider for a moment. "It's the biggest," he says finally. "It was one of the last ones made. It's where... it's your home." He shakes his head. "I just want to check on it."

"Nothing's changed. Professor Bunce would've told us if anything had."

"I know," he says again. "I just..." He keeps fidgeting, folding his fingers together, taking them apart, together, apart.

I sigh and set my book aside to take his hand. Even after all these months, touching him, being able to touch him, still feels like a privilege. When I think back to our Watford days, it's even more unfathomable that I survived loving him, without this, for so long. I don't like to think about what might happen if I were to lose this. Lose him.

Anyway, I think holding his hand helps. He seems to relax a little, at least. "Fine," I say. "When do you want to go?"

"Now?"

"Now?"

"Why not?" he asks. He still seems anxious, desperate. Like maybe he has something else on his mind, another reason for wanting to go now, right now.

After a moment I sigh again and nod. "Very well. Let's go."