Neverland (snowbaz)

The Boy In the Big, Lonely House

It was a summer's night when Simon first came across the house. He had been feeling so bored in Neverland with only Penny to keep him company (though he did really enjoy her company) so he had decided to return to the city he once called home just to see how things had changed. It used to be his house, the big one on the corner. Over the years he'd stopped keeping track of the time, but he figured that he hadn't been away too long. He wanted to see his father. To show him how well he'd turned out despite everything. 

(He was, in fact, very well-off, based largely on his ability to fly). 

But his father wasn't there. Nothing he remembered was there. The old street lights had been replaced by newer, modern ones that became lit as soon as it was nightfall. The carriages that had once roamed the streets had turned into small, metal contraptions with wheels and lights. (Were the horses somehow inside of the contraptions?) So Simon was sad. Incredibly sad. After all his time in Neverland with Penny and fighting the Humdrum, he'd forgotten to come back to say a final goodbye to his father. To visit his mother's grave. And now everything was different and new and Simon felt his heart grow heavy at the thought of how much had changed since he'd been gone. 

So he'd decided to at least peek in through the window, the one to his old room, just to make his peace with it all, when he heard it. 

A voice. 

Not just a voice but a story.

"And so Simon summoned his sword and challenged the Humdrum to a duel," the voice said. Simon paused, deciding that it would be too dangerous to actually look inside. He realized that the person, whoever it was, was talking about him. About his adventures in Neverland. He hadn't realized that people knew who he was. Back when he'd first found Neverland, he came back to London almost every week because he wanted to see his school friends and his old girlfriend, Agatha. He told everyone about his adventures and about Penny and all of the fun things they did together. But everyone thought that he was just some sort of brilliant story-teller. That it was all a lie. It was why his girlfriend had broken up with him. It was why he stopped coming back.

"And then what? Did he win, Baz?" another voice asked. 

Simon wanted to argue that his victory should ever have been a question. He always won. 

"Of course he did, Mordelia. Simon Snow always wins. Good conquers evil and all that. But you have to sleep now, little puff. We can finish the story tomorrow."

So, after that night, Simon always went back when he could. The stories weren't always about him (though they usually were) but he enjoyed them nonetheless. The storyteller, whoever it was, had a voice that sent shivers down Simon's spine. That made him so invested in the story that he nearly forgot that he was, in fact, flying and therefore needed to maintain some kind of concentration if he didn't want to go hurdling towards the ground. And, even when he wasn't hovering outside the window, he was retelling the stories to Penny. 

As time went on, the stories became more infrequent. He would go to the house, creep outside the window, and listen in, but the stories would never come. Sometimes he heard yelling from the depths of the house, then the storyteller would enter the room, closing the door with a slam. 

"You need to stop filling her head with that––that nonsense, Basilton. Simon Snow is nothing more than a fantasy. A story your mother told you to put you to sleep when you wouldn't shut up. He's not real."

"He's real to me!" the storyteller, Basilton, presumably, had argued. "And she's a child. She's supposed to hear stories like that to help her become creative and optimistic."

"Yes, but you talk about Neverland like it's a real place! Like Simon Snow is taking you on mad adventures every other night. I've had to seal her window closed. She kept leaving it open during the night, sleeping right up against it, just so that Simon bloody Snow would know that he was allowed to come in and bring her on an adventure! I'm sick of it, Baz. You are early eighteen. You need to grow up."

The yelling guy, who Simon assumed was Basilton's father, slammed the door behind him on his way out. Basilton screamed in frustration and Simon heard him knock some things over. Then he came to the window, perching himself on the little window seat, and sighed to the night sky. And, unknowingly, to Simon. 

"I'm sorry," he said. It sounded like he was crying. Simon wanted to help him, but he didn't know how.

"I can't believe in you anymore."

Did he know that Simon was there?

"My father says I need to grow up and...fuck. I don't want to grow up if it means that I have to be anything like him. I just want...I would have let you in, Simon. If you'd ever knocked on my window. I would have run off to Neverland with you and just..."

He never finished that thought. Instead he went back into his room and closed the window.

It was the first time that he had ever done that. 

And he never told a story again after that. Simon went back but the window was always shut and the room was silent. It had been three months since Basilton told his last story. Three months since Simon had heard him laugh or say something that wasn't serious. And Simon...well, he wasn't having any of it. 

If Baz didn't want to grow up, Simon could take him away. Take him to Neverland. He could join up with him and Penny to fight the Humdrum, play with fairies, swim with mermaids. Be free of all of the bullshit that came with adulthood. But Baz said that he didn't want that anymore. That he didn't believe in Simon anymore. So Simon always stayed outside and listened to the suffocating silence from Basilton's dimly-lit room. He sat on the roof for hours and hours just thinking about what he might say to the boy if he ever got the nerve to knock on his window and offer him the chance to escape. 

And, in all of the times he'd dreamed about meeting Basilton, none of them had ever been because his fucking shadow somehow made its way into his bedroom.