Baz

He came back.

Against all odds and logic, disregarding six years of slights and eschewing the laws of heroes and their villains, Simon Snow came back to spend Christmas with me.

Now he was sitting on my bedroom floor, wrinkling his (my) suit.

"Are you ready for bed?" I asked and then winced, wondering if he'd take it as an invitation. Wondering if it was one.

Snow looked down at his lap, where the borrowed pajamas still lay in a pristine pile. "I suppose I should change."

He fiddled with his tie and then sort of stopped, hands hovering over his shirt buttons. I chewed my lip to hide a smile, darkly pleased to see the great Simon Snow struck by insecurity. I should have known it wouldn't last. With the same reckless determination that drove every other aspect of his life, Snow yanked his shirt open, a few buttons popping off and falling to the floor before they scattered like spiders from the light. He started in on his trousers then, unbuckling the belt and yanking at the zipper like it had done him wrong.

For a moment, I thought he was going to keep going, that he'd shed his pants and I'd fall to the floor dead. Simon Snow would have killed me after all, simply by dropping trou in my bedroom. Instead he stood facing me in shorts and socks, arms folded over his chest as though daring me to speak.

I grabbed my wand off the nightstand, and had the pleasure of seeing Simon's eyes widen—Did the git really think my grand plan was to seduce him naked and wandless, so I could kill him in my childhood bedroom?—before casting, "Needle pulling thread."

Together, we watched the buttons roll across the carpet before springing up to secure themselves on Snow's crumpled shirt. I could have cast, "Don't ask, don't tell," to hang his clothes neatly back in the closet but, given the circumstances, it seemed too on the nose. Anyway, even someone as oblivious as Snow was likely to recognize that for the diversionary tactic it was.

Instead, I started in on my own shirt buttons, paying to Alistair Crowley that my hands wouldn't shake. The prospect of getting undressed in front of him shouldn't have been so terrifying; we'd shared a room for more than half a decade, and while the whole nemesis thing meant we tended to avoid vulnerable situations, changing clothes in the bath rather than out in the open, we'd surely caught a few glimpses over the years. A slice of hip. A sliver of ribs. A glimpse of a thigh peeking out from the sheets.

Alright, I'd been perving on Snow since I was thirteen.

I'd never stood before him in the idiotic Christmas pants my stepmother had gifted me last year as a gag, unable even to put on my pajamas when Snow had left his on the carpet. I feigned interest in folding my trousers, pretending Snow wasn't staring at the brightly hued holly and ivy pattern stamped across my arse.

I turned finally, anticipating a crack about my supervillain reputation being forever besmirched in his eyes. Instead, he smiled, softer than I'd thought possible. "You look even taller without clothes," he said, and after I remembered how to breathe, I felt my lips curve in turn.

I didn't tell him he looked exactly how I thought he would, all tawny skin and lean muscles. Too perfect and golden to be real.

Snow was eyeing the couch now, made up with sheets and pillows by a woman naïve enough to assume her vampire stepson wasn't snogging his lifelong enemy.

"The couch is pretty lumpy," I said. "Crowley knows I don't want to be blamed when the Chosen One is off his game for lack of sleep. They'd probably write about it in the magical papers. 'Snow's nemesis conspired to make him sleep on uncomfortable couch, rendering him unrested for battle with Insidious Humdrum.' "

"Well," Snow said, and I watched his chest muscles jump as he raised a shoulder magnanimously, "I guess I could sleep in your bed."

Simon

Should I not have said that? Baz was staring at me like I'd just led him into a trap with twenty numpties and a maybe a couple of hobgoblins. He was nervous, I realized, not without some degree of awe. I made him—for six years second only to the Humdrum as evil incarnate in my mind—nervous.

Well, Crowley.

I was so accustomed to the two of us one-upping each other, I'd issued this latest dare without stopping to consider the consequences. And in truth, it hadn't seemed such a leap after last night.

Last night, when I'd hovered over him on hands and knees, making him wriggle and crane for my mouth.

Of course, last night we'd been on the floor and both wearing trousers.

"Or not," I said quickly. "The couch is fine, really. It's lovely compared to some of the cots I had in the boys' home—"

"The bed," Baz said. "We'll sleep in the bed. Just stop talking like Oliver Twist, yeah? I'm getting visuals of you holding out an empty porridge bowl begging for more."

I rolled my eyes and feigned interest in an imaginary itch on my abdomen so that Baz would have to get into bed first. Once he was settled, I joined him, lifting the silk (of course it would be silk) sheet and sliding inside.

Baz was taller than me, if not quite as broad in the shoulders, and the bed was wide enough that we didn't, technically, have to touch. Neither of us had remembered to turn off the light, and we lied still for a long moment. Then Baz stretched, and his long leg brushed my foot beneath the blankets.

"As if sleeping with my nemesis weren't degrading enough," he said sadly, "I find out you wear socks to bed."

His hair had gotten mussed when he took off his shirt. Dark waves danced over his forehead as he shook his head, making him appear younger. More innocent.

"Am I going too fast?" I asked, the words out before I could censor them.

Baz looked torn between amusement and annoyance. "You're not going anywhere. You're just lying there in your socks like a git."

"It's just that, you said you hadn't done this before—and I don't—that is, I wouldn't want to—"

Baz put a hand to my lips, his fingers softer than I would have expected. If I opened my mouth just slightly, I could lick one.

"Stop talking," he said. "I surrender, concede, lay down my wand. You win, just for the love of Merlin, stop saying words."

He dropped his hand and, while I was still regretting its loss, shifted closer. His body was curved like a C, head at the very edge of his pillow.

"Tell me you were more couth with Agatha," he said. "Swear you didn't stutter and stumble through your lovemaking assignations in the forest."

"There weren't any assignations." I rolled my eyes. At least not of the sort Baz was implying. Sure, we'd had our share of snogs, even a few prolonged make-out sessions wherein my hand ventured beneath her jumper.

I'd never straddled her hips the way I did Baz's last night. I never rubbed and thrust against her, and I never felt every thought vacate my brain except, "yes, good, more."

Baz snorted. "Don't tell me you were waiting for marriage, Snow."

"Just my impending death," I answered, and was surprised to see Baz go still. He was staring at me, eyes dark shining pools, and I felt myself blush. Once again, I found myself wishing we'd remembered to get the lights.

"I guess I always assumed we'd do it right before I went off to face the Humdrum." Having sex with Agatha was high on the list of things I didn't let myself think about much. Still, I was a teenage boy, and the thought had crossed my mind on more than one occasion. In my fantasies, we met at some ramshackle cabin in the woods to shed our respective virginities in the lull between battles. In the morning, I kissed her goodbye and went off, nobly, tragically, to face my destiny.

In retrospect, her decision to dump me had been spot on.

Baz was shaking his head. "Your whole life has been a movie," he said. "You never took a single step off the hero's path until you snogged me."

Every hero needs a lover, I wanted to say. Who's to say mine can't come with fangs?

But I couldn't say that, not with the lights on and Baz wearing holly and ivy pants. Instead, I reached out over the sheets and touched the bare flesh of Tyrannus Basilton Pitch's hip.

Baz

I felt a rush of heat spread through my extremities, setting fingers and toes tingling, before pooling in a part of my body hidden beneath the sheets.

And then I felt terror because, what if he expected me to do something?

At least he'd stopped babbling about my virtue. Just because I hadn't gone all the way—or any of the way—didn't mean there was the slightest chance of Simon Snow corrupting me.

The bed creaked, and I realized Snow was moving, shifting his body until our knees were touching. His left hand was still on my hip, burning a hole through flesh and sinew, incinerating the very bone of me. I almost glanced down to make sure he wasn't holding his cross to my skin, was relieved I hadn't when he closed the distance between us with his lips.

Last night, I'd had my first kiss with Simon Snow of all people. If I'd been able to think beyond the amazing unreality of that fact, I might have felt embarrassed at how bad I was at it. (When you spend all night cuddling your arch nemesis, you tend to gloss over things like bedroom skills, or lack thereof.) Still, after 24 hours, I thought I was getting the hang of this.

When Snow nuzzled my lips with his, I opened my mouth, and when he skimmed the tip of his tongue over mine, I echoed his movements. When he released my mouth with a wet sucking sound and arched back, his expression a dare, I scrabbled for a handful of his hair and kissed him like I was drowning and he had all the world's oxygen.

Snow's hand were on my torso now, sliding warm and slow along my stomach, tracing my ribs in a way that almost tickled but didn't. His mouth broke free of mine to nibble along my neck. "Are you—is this okay?"

"Fine," I bit out before I could speak any of the other words tumbling through my head. Like 'glorious' or 'profound.'

I was a little annoyed at Snow for making me play the part of the damsel in whatever fifties film he thought we were reenacting. Needing to regain some degree of control, I lifted my hand from its resting spot at my side and placed it on the front of his pants.

If the majority of my blood hadn't been directed elsewhere, I might have blushed. Instead, I sort of froze, my hand on the part of Snow I'd only felt until now through both of our trousers. He'd gone still as well, the hand on my stomach paused halfway to my right pec, and I wondered if maybe I should apologize.

If heroes of Simon's caliber didn't grope each other on the second date.

Sweet Crowley, were we going to have dates?

"I—" That was all I got out before Snow's lips were back on mine.

He kissed me like he was desperate now, finesse lost to madness. I didn't miss the former. Shyly at first, then with more intent, he ground his hips against my hand. I'd never done this for someone else but figured the mechanics had to be similar. Wriggling closer, I curled my hand around what I could grasp through his pants—plain fitted cotton, I'd love to see him in silk—and moved my fingers in the only way I knew how.

It didn't take him long, and I felt a momentary surge of smugness. The Great Simon Snow—Chosen One and heir to the Mage—hadn't been able to last more than a few seconds. Then he sighed and curled closer, almost snuggling me, and I felt something inside me tear and break.

I was still trying to get ahold of myself when Snow peeled himself off of me. There was surprise in his eyes, and maybe a little bit of wonder. I bit my lip to keep from grinning as he eased back onto his knees, the sheets pooling around him like black water.

"That was…." He sounded a little out of breath. "…not what I was expecting."

I blinked, a little hurt despite myself. "What's wrong? Not as sexy when you aren't marching off to your death in the morning?"

Now it was Snow's turn to blink. "Baz, that was, without question, the sexiest thing that's ever happened to me in my life."

I opened my mouth, and he kissed me before I could reply.

He eased on top of me while I was distracted by his tongue, one hand supporting his weight as the other drew patterns on my lower belly.

"What are you writing?" I asked, sensing that he was spelling words on my skin. But Snow just ignored me, grazing teeth and tongue over my Adam's apple.

I knew where his hand was going, but it was still a shock when Snow's fingers grasped me through my pants. He lowered himself slightly, one hand trapped between us, and the weight of him thrust me deeper into his palm.

"Fuck," I said, and Snow just chuckled and nosed against my throat. He moved his hand slowly, deliberately. Like he planned on recalling every slide and stroke later.

"Simon," I said, and heard his breath catch.

When I came, I could feel his heart thudding against mine.

Simon

I lifted my face from the curve of Baz's shoulder. He smelled like light sweat and the rosemary and mint flavor of his shower soap.

"I'm going back to the couch," I said.

And Baz must have already been drifting because he reached out to grab my hand and didn't immediately drop it.

"It's just in case your parents come by." Or that poor maid. "I don't want anyone having a Christmas morning heart attack."

It was the truth but not all of it. The Humdrum was getting closer, I could feel it with every fiber of me, and the idea of sleeping with Baz again tonight, of knowing it might be the last time I fell asleep in his arms…

"I'll be just over here," I said, and Baz was either more exhausted than I thought or feigning it well because he didn't respond.

I eased out from between the softest sheets I'd ever felt and got to my feet. Hit the lights before settling down on the couch. I watched Baz sleep for a long time.