Not Okay, a carry on fanfic

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Chronic clinical depression; initial resistance to treatment; one vague mention of PTSD; 'crazy' used pejoratively at first; suicidal ideation at two points.

I have been informed by someone with more recent experience that it's not quite that ridiculously easy to get antidepressant medication any more; it now takes a whole two appointments, not just the one; in my world, that depends on your NHS trust so we're going with one. Just in case anyone's experience there differs.

B A Z

The sky is grey.

It would be a lovely pathetic fallacy, if I were the world's protagonist. Instead, it's just pathetic.

Snow is clanging around in the kitchen; I can smell coffee and slightly burnt toast. It's not that early, but it feels like the depths of night. I can't force my brain to wake up (I'm not sure I've been fully awake for days. Weeks. Ever?).

There's rain on the window pane, and it feels like the only thing in the world. So I focus on that.

In this moment, it's the only thing that makes sense.

I have absolutely no idea how long I've been standing here, in a long cashmere jumper, no jeans—haven't got around to jeans yet; one more thing in a long list of things whose importance I can't be bothered to comprehend this morning—watching the rain fall. A lifetime or so ago, I think I planned to open the swing pane and have a cigarette.

And then I got sidetracked by rain.

Snow sticks his head in the door, shunts a coffee mug onto the dresser, runs a hand through his hair. "Hey— sorry, I'm running late— brought you coffee, love you, see you later; by the way, Penny says will you get milk on your way home?"

Home. From?

Oh. Lecture. Right. Those things. (I've never missed one in my life, until last week when getting out of bed felt like the most impossible task in the world. I've barely ever missed any sort of class, outside of being kidnapped by fucking numpties. I don't care any more.)

"Mmm," I say, which might be sort of an affirmation, but he's already gone.

He probably doesn't care, anyway.

I mean. Why should he?

I don't.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

There's a hundred yards to walk between the car park and the university building to which I do, eventually, drag myself. (With jeans on, even.) The road alongside seems to be populated mostly by buses today, thrashing through the puddles that have overspilled the gutters, soaking me through more than once.

The overly dramatic idea of throwing myself in front of one of them does occur, but I'm not going to do it.

I just wouldn't stop one if it happened to crash into me.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Snow's trying to convince me I'm not okay.

Again.

I think he's probably preaching to the choir, but I can't bring myself to even bother agreeing with him.

I made it through a lecture and a seminar (we're marked for participation; hopefully, I've spoken up enough in the past that sitting quietly at the back will be ignored this time. I'm not sure I care enough if it's not, anyway) and came back to the flat, because I don't want to be alone, and fell straight into bed, because I do.

Snow's been sitting by my side for the last half an hour, alternately stroking my hair and trying to talk me out of this.

(I wish he could. I wish it was that easy. Does he think I didn't try, last week, maybe the week before, when I gave a shit, before everything stopped mattering?)

"You should talk to somebody," he says softly. "If you can't talk to me… somebody. Anybody. Daphne. Maybe a professional."

He saw that therapist over Skype for the better part of a year; they've only very recently parted ways. I resisted every effort to get me to see somebody. I'm not completely sure why. It certainly isn't that I think any less of him for it, or that it wasn't helpful to him—it was, without a shadow of doubt. It's just not something I wanted, for me. It's not something Pitches do.

"Don't think so," I mutter into the pillow.

"Sweetheart," he says, "you're not okay."

I know. But I can't make the words come out, so I just shrug.

"I hate seeing you like this," he says.

I know.

"Would you at least think about seeing a doctor?" he says.

I don't know. So I shrug.

He sighs, and lies down carefully beside me, behind me—I'm curled on my side—and through the blur over my eyes I see something red fold over us both, protective. His tail coils over and around my knee, and an arm over my waist, drawing me in close. I don't protest. I never would, but I don't even have the energy to move.

"You're not just hungry," he murmurs against the back of my shoulder. "I mean, I'm worried about that too, but this isn't just… that. And you know it's not."

"I know," I whisper. It's precisely the second thing I've said out loud all day.

He cuddles in a little closer, comforting but I think just the slightest bit triumphant. I suppose I can't really blame him for that. He's finally getting somewhere.

But then, I think, he didn't care this morning. He's only doing this because he feels obliged. I'm not worth it, not really. He's got better things to do.

"I love you," he says, "and I'm worried about you, and I'm just asking you to go and see a doctor, okay? Just… go and tell your GP how you're feeling. Maybe you can get something that'll help."

"Like what?"

"Antidepressants? Maybe?"

I'm not depressed. I'm not.

That's not what this is. Depression is pathetic.

I'm pathetic.

Maybe there is some correlation there.

"I don't know," I mutter. "Maybe."

"Think about it. For me."

I can't figure out why, of the many possible reasons, I'm crying.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

SIMON

I'm so fucking worried I could scream. Maybe hit things. I'm so frustrated I could cry.

Baz hadn't been okay for weeks now. I mean, with hindsight, I don't think this is the first time. But it's the worst, by far. He missed a lecture last week. He never misses lectures. I'm pretty sure he did go today, but shot straight into my (our) bedroom the second he got back, and has been there ever since.

I stay, holding him, just letting him cry (it's silent, I don't think he knows I know) (of course I fucking know), until he's still and quiet and I'm as sure as I can be that he's asleep. Fucking good. I'm pretty sure he's exhausted.

And then I slip away, as gently as I possibly can, and go back into the living room, where Penny's curled up on the easy chair with her laptop.

"How is he?" she asks, quietly, as I click the door gently shut.

"Shite."

"Did you get anywhere about the doctor?"

"I dunno." I sigh, lean against the door for a second, then push myself off and flop on the couch, facedown, turned just enough to talk to her. "I think so, yeah. Think I might have persuaded him this time."

"Good. At last." (We've been working on trying to get him to go to a doctor for a week.)

"I dunno what to do, Pen."

"Come here," she says, shifting over on the chair so there's room for me to perch up on the arm of it. "I've found another website. How to help someone who's depressed."

We must have looked at a dozen of these. Most of the advice is the same. Tumblr turned out to be surprisingly helpful. (I nearly got sidetracked by fandom stuff—it's well cool for that, too—but not until I'd copied about fifty pages' worth of useful stuff into a Word document. He's more important.) I shift up and pad over, and she hands her laptop up to me. "Here you go, have a scroll through that. I'll go and make us some tea."

These websites make me feel shit, though this one's quite good. Even tells me that feeling guilty and frustrated is okay. So I'm not a terrible person, after all. It does helpfully point out that I shouldn't say 'We all feel bad sometimes,' which of course I did last week, because I'm a fucking idiot. (He shrugged and said 'yeah' and didn't talk again all evening. I felt like the worst person ever to live.) At least I haven't yet fallen to the depths of 'You have so much to live for' or 'Snap out of it', though I've wanted to tell him to just snap out of it more than once.

Not because I don't care. Because it's killing me seeing him like this. I just want it to stop.

I'm half-way down the page when Penny comes back and quietly hands me a steaming mug of too-sweet tea. Perfect. She knows just how I like it. She curls up on the seat again, hugging her own mug, leaning up so we can both see the screen.

"Why's this happened, Pen?" I ask softly. "I mean, I know he's been through a lot but we all have. I didn't… I don't know, I don't want to say 'fall apart' cos that's not really what I think, but you know what I mean?"

"Sometimes it just happens," Penny says. "Some people are just predisposed to a sort of depression. It's—don't ever say this, it's a horrible thing to say, and oversimplified—but it's just in their heads. I don't mean 'just in their heads' like it's not real, or valid, or important but… there isn't a reason. It just… is."

It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm going to figure it out. I have to.

I need him to be okay.

I feel selfish for thinking that, but I don't just mean for me. I mean, partly for me. But mostly, for him. It's a miserable existence, obviously; he's sad and tired and moody and fluctuates between snapping at me or not really reacting to anything, and it's hard to live with—I'm allowed to think that; you have to look after your own emotional wellbeing, the help websites told me so—and it hurts. Presumably more for him than me, of course, but even that on its own would be enough reason to want to fix it.

I think I got somewhere on the doctor tonight, though. It's the first time I've even got a 'maybe'.

It's something. Not much, but it's something.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

BAZ

I don't know why I'm here. I'm fine.

Really. I feel better today. Not perfect, but better. (I think I was happy, once. Now I'll take the sort of blank that isn't crushingly depressing and be grateful for it.) (I don't mean actually depressing. I'm not depressed.)

And yet here I am, in the doctor's surgery, because I sort of said I would, for Snow, and the one thing I'm hanging on to is that I love him, and I'll do anything for him. (He keeps telling me he loves me too, though I don't get why any more.)

My name flashes up on the scrolling screen, Mr Basilton Pitch, and I haul myself up and head for Consultation Room 5.

The doctor is a youngish man, maybe in his early thirties, with brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses, and he smiles up at me and tells me to take a seat. I do, on a plastic chair by the edge of his desk, feeling horribly awkward.

"What can I do for you?" he asks, warmly.

I don't know where to start, or what to say. Eventually, I manage to mumble, "My boyfriend thinks I'm depressed."

He looks at me until I feel obliged to carry on.

"I suppose I… can see his point," I concede. "I'm… I feel… sad." It sounds so small and stupid, saying it like that. "Frustrated. Always tired. Miserable." My chest catches, and I realise my eyes are prickling. I can't look at the doctor.

"What about work, university?" he asks.

"I don't miss work. And I'd never normally miss uni. Two weeks ago I did, just one lecture. I just… I couldn't."

"How are you sleeping?"

My sleep has always been a little questionable, but it's more fucked up than usual lately, even I can see that. "Not enough, until I'm exhausted. And then too much."

"Eating habits?" he says gently. "Any change in that?"

Yeah, I can't be arsed to track down bloody rats until I'm so far gone with hunger that I can just give in to the monster inside me and let that deal with it. (A dangerous game. I wish to magic I cared enough to… care.) I can't say that, of course. The doctor's Normal.

"Not really hungry," I say, which is true so far as ordinary food goes.

He nods, and makes a few notes on his screen. "Okay. What about relationships—you mentioned a boyfriend?"

"Yeah." Snow actually gets a tiny smile out of me, though I think it's probably small and fragile. "He's brilliant. Actual bloody hero. He made me come here. I—I think I'm okay."

"But he's worried about you?"

"Yes."

"Okay." I can look at him now, though my eyes are damp. He offers me a small smile. "I'm going to give you some forms to fill out, and a prescription, and I'd like you to take these sheets away and fill them in and make an appointment for two weeks from now, okay? Don't worry about the paperwork. It's a little questionnaire to assess your state of mind. So don't think too much about the answers. Just be honest."

"Okay," I say, numb. Prescription. I'm on fucking crazy pills.

"I have to ask—I know it's an awful question, Basilton, but I have to ask you. Have you thought about ending it? Hurting yourself?"

I don't know why I'm honest with him. I don't owe him anything. I don't need his help.

But I'm honest, anyway.

"I don't have a plan, if that's what you mean, but… I wouldn't stop it if circumstances conspired to lead to my death."

He makes another note, clicks his mouse a few times, and the printer on his desk whirrs.

"Here's your prescription . Go and get that filled now, all right? You're going to have one of those a day, ideally with a meal. And take this leaflet, too. There's an emergency number in there you can call if you need to talk to somebody straight away. And here's the forms. Ask reception for an appointment in two weeks, okay?"

Part of me is annoyed he reiterated that—I'm not a fucking idiot. Part of me had already forgotten I was supposed to make another appointment. I've been struggling to hold on to things like that lately. (I never did get that milk Bunce asked for.)

"Okay," I say. He shakes my hand, smiles warmly.

"You did the right thing coming," he says. "We can help."

We'll see.

That seemed too easy. (Apparently it really is ridiculously easy to get antidepressants on the NHS. ) Still, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I think I feel the faintest flicker of hope as I leave.

I hate the idea of being on nutter pills. But I'll take anything that will make me feel normal again.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

SIMON

We all spend the next six weeks waiting for the drugs to kick in.

For a few days, it looks like it worked—until Penny pulls me aside and says that's probably placebo effect, that it can take ages for them to get into a person's bloodstream and make a real difference. I don't honestly care. It feels like I've got my boyfriend back for the first time in weeks, maybe months.

He goes back to the doctor twice more, gets himself on a repeat prescription, writes a reminder to make an appointment in three months into the calendar on the kitchen notice board. It feels like progress.

Which makes it so much worse when it comes back.

It's five weeks since the first doctor's appointment when I notice, I mean really notice, though I think it's been coming for a while. Maybe it never really went away.

It's an ordinary Wednesday morning when it… breaks.

"You've got a lecture," I point out gently. I'm perched on the side of the bed, stroking his hair—what little I can see of it, given he's made a cocoon in the blankets. "Come on, love."

"Don't care," he mutters.

Even six weeks ago, when it was the worst it's ever been, he only missed one lecture. And I know from all the help websites that losing interest in things he loves is a big danger sign.

"You do care." It's more of a suggestion than a reminder.

"I don't. I don't give a shit, Snow. I don't give a flying crap any more. I can't be bothered. Just go. I just want to stay here."

"You can't stay here forever."

"I can."

"You'll starve, or something."

"So fucking what," he says, sharper than before. That gets through to me. I've never dared ask if he wanted to die. I never wanted to know. (We did that, once. Eighteen months or so ago. Fire. First kiss. With hindsight, I should have probably dealt with some of this shit he's got going on then, but we had other stuff to think about, and I didn't know him so well, and I would probably only have made it worse. )

I shift our positions so I can lie down, facing him, and tug the covers until I can unwrap him enough to pull him into a hug.

"So I give a shit, even if you don't," I whisper fiercely. "So I'm not going to let you go just like that. So I'm not going to let you just… give up. You can't just stay here forever… you can't."

"Watch me," he says flatly, cold and stiff in my arms.

"I love you."

"You shouldn't."

I'm frustrated and a little pissed off and scared and I'm going to be late myself if I don't scram soon, but this is progress. Or at least, it's something I can logically refute. (He likes logic. Right?)

"I should." I don't give him a chance to snap out the 'why' he's probably thinking. "And I do. Because you're brilliant. You're sharp and fierce and probably the most intelligent person I've ever met—you and Penny, depends on the topic, I suppose-and bloody gorgeous, and stronger than you think. You hear me, Baz? You're stronger than this. And I love you, so much."

He actually looks up at me, and it breaks my heart to see his eyes are damp. "I'm not. And you shouldn't. I'm not worth it, Snow."

"You are. You are to me."

We're silent for a few minutes, and I almost dare to hope I'm getting somewhere here. (It's so tiring, living with someone who has depression. I'll never stop trying to help—never, not for a moment—but it's so fucking tiring sometimes.)

"It's not helping, Simon," he says quietly, and at last he moves, tucks in close to me and cuddles in. "The pills. They're not doing anything. And I'm so tired."

"Okay," I say softly. "We can stay here. It's okay."

"No," he murmurs. "Don't put your life on hold just because mine isn't worth living. Go on."

"No chance," I say. "I'm staying with you."

He hugs in tight, and I hold him and kiss anything I can reach until he stops crying.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

By evening, I've got him up, sort of, and we're curled up on the couch under the duvet off the bed totally not watching Come Dine With Me. Well, I'm sort of watching it. I think he might be asleep, again.

Penny walks in on this, gives us a look, and whispers, "Bad day?"

"Worst in a while," I whisper back. "Haven't been out, either of us."

She sighs, shrugging out of her coat and dropping it on the back of the easy chair. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm… tired, but okay. He says the pills aren't working, Pen."

Penny stays quiet for a long moment, perching down on the edge of the chair. Her elbows are on her knees and her eyes are flicking between me and what little we can see of him. "I didn't want to say," she murmurs after a moment, "but… you sort of need a heart beat for most medication to work, Simon."

"Something I sadly lack," Baz mutters. I honestly thought he was asleep. Oops. "Explains a lot."

The resignation in his tone fucking kills me. "But you do," I protest. "Sometimes, anyway. I've felt it before, when you've got in late and I've laid on your chest."

"Well, I have blood in me then. It's not a proper heartbeat."

"Wait, wait," Penny cuts in. I glance over to her; she's almost quivering. That means she's having an idea. "Do you mean after feeding?"

"Yeah," I say. "You've got a heartbeat then, love."

"I don't. I just have blood in me."

"What if you do, though?" Penny says. "I mean, no offense, Baz, but you don't exactly have much clue how you work, do you? I'm just hypothesising, but what if feeding makes your own heartbeat pick up for a while?"

He shifts a bit under the duvet, peeking out at her. "What?"

Penny looks brighter than I think any of us have all week as she goes on. "I mean—let's take blood out of the equation, I mean, the blood you drink. I don't think it matters what that substance is. You happen to need blood, but let's imagine it's, say, carrots. Let's hypothesise that your heartbeat is slow, probably strong but really, really slow, unless you've recently had a carrot. And there's some reaction, because you're a vampire—"

"Carrot vampire." I can't help myself; the whole situation is pretty shit, but it's funny.

"Right." Penny just lets me get on with it, but I'm absolutely thrilled to pieces to feel a hint of a grin out of Baz at 'carrot vampire'. "There's some kind of reaction there that fires your pulse up to a normal rate. The rest of the time, it's, I don't know, some animals in hibernation only have a few beats a minute."

"Slow enough that you wouldn't notice it's a heartbeat at all." I'm catching on now. "Or me. I've never noticed, except after you've fed."

Baz shifts a bit more, sitting up just enough to look at us both. "You're saying if I could keep my heart rate more constant, the antidepressants would have a chance to work…?"

"I'm not a doctor," Penny warns, "but it's the best theory we've got. Better than nothing, right?"

He nods, slowly. "Okay… I suppose anything is worth a try."

I hug him in close, kissing his forehead (it's the nearest available bit of him). This is how I know we're going to be okay. Because somewhere deep, deep down, he wants to be okay. We just need to remind him of that. (Constantly, sometimes.)

"How often can you hunt?" I ask gently. "How long does the… increased heart rate thing last?"

"I'm thinking little and often," Penny says. "You're doing, what, every other night or so now? I think drop it down to just a tiny bit, but three or four times a day. Even if it just keeps your blood going for a few hours at a time, it would be much more effective than now, because it would be consistent."

He slumps. "I can't nip out of a damn lecture for a rat, Bunce. Unless we get a pig in here and stick a tap and spile in it, which is disgusting, by the way, not a serious suggestion, that's the only option I've got."

Penny's got her thinking face on for a second, then hops to her feet. "Leave that with me. I'll be back in a bit."

And she throws her coat back on and she's gone before either of us can ask where.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

BAZ

I can smell Bunce long before either of us can see her. Almost before I hear her, even. Or, if I'm being accurate, I smell what she's bringing with her.

She's got blood. Pig, if I'm not wrong.

She left in such a blur it might almost have been magic, maybe an hour ago, and I've actually been feeling a little brighter since. Today's been a shit day, but Snow stayed with me, and while I don't for one second understand why he loves me right now, I do believe that he does. And I have a suspicion that Bunce cares, too. (Academically, I know that they do. Emotionally, I can't begin to comprehend it.)

Bunce comes bouncing back into the flat, shedding her coat along the way, and thrusts a blue plastic carrier bag at me, the cheap sort you get from any old high street independent butcher or grocer. "Here," she says. "Try it. See if that's any good."

Snow's looking at her like she's both mad and brilliant. I think I'm probably mirroring the expression, but I open the bag gingerly and peek inside. There are two sealed clear plastic bags inside, each one half-full of something thick and dark red which smells horribly tempting.

Bunce is holding a mug under my nose, and my fangs have always dropped, and I had no idea I was this starving.

I may be pathetic and miserable, and the pyjama trousers I'm wearing haven't had a wash in a fortnight, and I spent the better part of an hour crying silently on Simon's shoulder this morning, but I have some pride. I'm not letting them see how utterly disgusting this is going to be.

So I take one of the clear bags, shove the duvet off, and split for the bathroom almost at a run. (It's probably the fastest either of them have seen me move in weeks. It might be the fastest I've moved in weeks.) I tear into the bag with a fang and tip it up and let it flow down my throat.

Some part of me expects it to not be enough, or too different to work, but it does. It's more than enough. I haven't fed properly in about a week; I haven't been arsed for it, or ordinary food, come to that, either. But it hits me just the same, my dead heart shuddering to life, a faint pink flush brightening my skin. I dare to look in the mirror once the bag is emptied: I look like hell and my hair desperately need a wash, but I look almost alive.

I feel almost alive.

I give it a few minutes, until I feel the fangs slick horribly back up into my jaw, then quietly pad back to the living room, leaving the emptied plastic bag in the bathroom sink.

"Better?" Bunce asks, as Snow gets up to hug me close.

"Better," I say. "Where did that come from?"

"Butcher's," she says. "You have to ask for it, but they've usually got blood. I never thought before, but when you said put a tap in a pig, well—it's an even better option, isn't it?"

It is. It's a flicker of hope I've desperately needed. Now if her heartbeat theory is right, maybe—just maybe—I can start to get somewhere.

"I'm thinking you keep some in a water bottle, not the clear sort, obviously," she says. "I'm not sure if it'd coagulate eventually but we can put a spell over the container to keep it fresh for you. Like I said before, little and often, to keep your heart going, just a bit. Even if it's slow, it's better than having next to no heartbeat at all. It'll keep the drugs in your system, help you feel better."

I almost believe her. I almost believe it's going to be okay.

I've got through every day so far. I'm not going to let it beat me now.

(This, incidentally, is one of the most frustrating things. How I can go from suicidal despair to wanting to hang on and fix it in the space of a few moments. I can just about handle being consistently blank and miserable; I'm used to that now. It's these flickers of hopefulness that kill me, because I know, really, that they can never last.)

"Come and sit down," Snow says, leading me towards the couch. I let him, our hands intertwined. "Do you want to look at some stuff with me, if you're feeling a bit better?"

"What sort of stuff?" I ask, a little suspicious.

"Stuff that might help."

He tried pushing this Word document at me a while ago—fifty pages or more copied from all sorts of websites, all about coping with depression, and a load of stuff for people living with people coping with depression. It was overwhelming. I flat-out shut down, and got angry with him. I'm still not entirely sure why. A lot of what I'm feeling isn't wholly rational.

"I'll try," I say, guarded.

It's not a Word document this time. He's got a whole folder of bookmarks in his browser (the folder name is just a heart, a '3'), all of them websites with helpful titles like 'Coping Strategies for Depression Bad Days' and '50 Self-care Tips That Aren't All Fluff' (the first of those is 'get up and take a shower'. This list has my number, as it stands at present). A good dozen of them are Tumblr posts; I'm especially suspicious of those at first, but they turn out to be startlingly astute.

Later, Bunce makes dinner and we sit down side by side while Snow sprawls on the rug with his wings tucked and his tail coiled around my shin, and she and I look at my timetable and work out when I need to feed to keep my heart doing something akin to a normal rate. It's never going to be perfect, I know; we're making the best of a broken vessel, but even if I miss one, it's better than two beats a minute (she times it. It's two to three beats a minute. "No fucking wonder I never noticed," Snow comments, glancing up from his own laptop. No wonder I never noticed, either). We'll need to experiment, she says, to figure out how much I need and how often, but it's a start.

I get damp on her, too, but sitting between the pair of them with Penny's hand on my knee and Simon's arms around me, I feel loved for the first time I can consciously remember.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

SIMON

It gets much, much worse before it gets better.

I find him sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed staring at a little fireball one day. Honestly, my first instinct is to punch some sense into him (he was fine this morning!) (well, probably not; that's the real bastard of all this), but that might flick a spark against his skin, so I open the two-litre bottle of Coke on my side of the bed and pour that over his hand instead. The fire goes out with a wet hiss and I throw myself around him from behind, tackling him down and rolling us onto the bit of the bed that isn't now soaked and sort of brown. "Why?" I breathe against his cheek, hugging him too tightly. "Are you okay?"

"Obviously," he says dryly, which is sort of good, in a way, that he's finding that dry dark humour in himself again.

I roll off him and cuddle him in to me. "Come on. Talk to me."

"It's nothing."

"Flammable, suicidally depressed vampire sits staring into a fireball like it's got all the universe's answers in there somewhere," I point out. "It's something, Baz. Come on. You know I love you, right?"

He hesitates for a second, but he nods. (I don't think he believed me for a while, a couple of weeks ago. We've been on the heartbeat regimen for a fortnight now and I'm pretty sure he's got it back through his thick skull that I do, that I always did.) "I spoke to my father."

This is never good. Their relationship is getting there, slowly, carefully, but it's fragile and fractious. Malcolm Grimm can destroy Baz with a few words even when he's feeling good. He's only recently let him talk to Mordelia and the little ones again, and not being able to speak to them did sweet fuck all for his mental health. I don't even know what the bastard said yet and now I want to punch his fucking lights out.

"What did he say?" I ask, burying my nose in his hair, hugging in tight.

"Much of the usual. That he's disappointed in me. That he wishes I'd see sense. That he loves me—which I don't believe—but he still isn't sure about me seeing the kids until I 'come around'."

If I still had magic, I think I would have gone off just from those few words. He has no fucking right—how dare he say shit like that?

"He's wrong," I whisper fiercely. "You're brilliant. He's got nothing to be disappointed about. And I—you know I think your father's a proper arse most of the time but I do think he loves you, in his own way…"

"He doesn't," Baz mutters. "Not really. And my mum would have killed me for being what I am now—"

"Bull shit," I snap. "They love you. Your mum loved you. She would be proud of you. And you are fucking brilliant. I know you can't see it right now, I know everything's shitty and dark but it will get better, I promise, I swear to you, sweetheart. I swear. It will. I promise."

I'm learning the signs now, now that I've had some time to get used to this, to start to know the language of his sighs and curls and shoulder shakes. The way he turns and presses his nose in against my neck means he doesn't believe me, but that he wants to. That he's trying.

"It's going to be okay, baby," I whisper, keeping my voice even while every other part of me is flickering and sparking with anger at Malcolm fucking Grimm. "I've got you. And he won't stop you talking to the kids again, of course he won't, not now he's letting you speak to them at all…"

He sighs, but he's not getting damp on me, which is something.

"I know," he says at last, shifting back a fraction to look up at me. "I know. It's just… difficult, some days."

"Just hang on for one more," I say, pressing a soft kiss to the edge of his lips. Sometimes that's all we can do.

"One more," he agrees. "And then another one after that. And maybe Saturday. We'll see."

There's a tiny smile there, and even though it doesn't quite make it to his eyes, it's something. It's enough.

"How's your pulse?" I ask, fingertips finding the point on his neck where I can catch it. It's become a very familiar question in the past couple of weeks.

He nods. "Okay, I think—check, though. And I've taken the crazy tablets today."

I hate him calling them 'crazy tablets' or 'nutter pills', but if that's what works for him, I'll go with it. Someday we'll talk about reclaiming words like that, making 'crazy' something he owns, instead of a stupid slur against himself. Maybe not quite yet, though. I'm not sure he's quite there yet.

So I just say, softly, "You're not crazy. You have depression. Completely different thing. And we're getting there, love. You're getting a little bit better, don't you think?"

"A little," he says, after a second or two. "I'm feeling less… I have fewer completely blank days. It's not endless, hopeless nothingness any more."

"There, see?" I tell him. "You're going to be okay."

"It's never going to go away, you know," he says flatly. "Doctor said that, the last time I was there. He thinks I'm probably going to be taking pills for—well, I couldn't get him to say the word 'forever', but it was strongly implied."

"So?" I counter. "If you had anything else wrong with you, if you had diabetes or a heart condition or anything like that, you'd be taking pills forever, and it would keep you right. It's the same thing." (I've spent a lot of time thinking about this sort of thing. And all those self-help type websites have wormed their way into my head. Not all of it is useful; some is crap, and some just doesn't work for us, though it probably would for somebody else. But some of it is really good. Like the mental/physical health thing.) "And we're learning ways to cope, aren't we? All the little things you do to manage when you're feeling bad."

We've worked out about three dozen of those in the last two weeks alone. The first few days after we started the heartrate regimen, Baz got the full placebo effect thing all over again. I knew this time it would flash out again (and Penny's looked up every possible side effect of the prescription he's on; it really can make things worse for a while before it starts to get better), but we grabbed on to it while we had it. Baz is a proper beast for research when he's in the mood, and we managed to hang on to that mood for long enough to work out a whole heap of strategies, while he was up enough to think somewhat rationally about the past few weeks. (We're also starting to work out that my shitty sense of humour and, just occasionally, if I'm careful, if I can be certain he really knows I love him when I say it, even the odd bad taste suicide joke actually helps. Like I said, stuff that works for some people wouldn't work for everyone.)

"Yeah, true," he says. "I'll be okay. I'm just… shaken, I suppose."

"It's okay," I tell him. "Now. Hey. Come on. Penny'll be back soon—you could help her make dinner, what do you say?"

"You're trying to distract me," he says.

Rumbled. "Is it working?"

"A little. I don't know if I can handle all of it—I might need to just curl myself up on the couch quietly after a while, but… I'll give it a shot."

"That's all I ask, love," I tell him, and he gives me a little smile that I think is a bit more genuine.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

While Penny and Baz make dinner, I get on the phone. (I'd rather get in the car, but it's too far to go all the way up north, and I can't take Baz up with me, not without about an hour of explanations. Penny would demand explanations too, and I'm not sure I can tackle that. So phone it is.)

I got the number out of his phone, and sneak off outside the flat so they won't overhear, and after I get through Daphne, I give Malcolm all hell.

He probably wasn't expecting me to phone him, never mind light a fucking rocket under his sorry arse. And I've never been great with words, fuck knows, but I don't need to be eloquent to ask what the damn hell he thinks he's doing making his son feel like shit, or where the fuck he thinks he gets off on destroying their relationship the way he is, because I don't like you any more than you like me, Grimm, but I love your son just like you do, and that's what you're doing, you're fucking destroying him, and any hope you've got of ever having a goddamn relationship with him, so fuck you, pal, and grow the fuck up and a whole lot more that's even less polite besides.

When I go back in, I'm flushed and a little breathless, and I stop in the living room to calm down before I head for the kitchen. Baz is leaning against the counter quietly, just watching while Penny makes the chicken marinade, but that's okay: it's just the need-some-quiet-even-around-people face, not the lost-in-his-own-head face. He hugs me back when I hug him, which is good.

We're doing okay.

We're going to be okay.

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

BAZ

There are so many frustrating and miserable things about being like this, but one of the worst is that when it's good, I can't really remember what bad felt like; and when it's bad, I'm convinced I've never been happy in all my life.

It's a few weeks before I'm consistently okay again, and once I am, the greatest driving thought in my head is that I want to explain myself. Snow and Bunce keep telling me I don't have to, that it's okay, that they understand—and they're careful to note that they understand as much as they could, because they haven't been where I am, just like I haven't had Simon's PTSD—that I don't have to rationalise any of it. But I want to.

And I can't find the words. (Is this how Snow feels? Can't get hold of the words you want? It would drive me crazy.) (Well. I'm already crazy. But I'm learning not to use that word as an insult.)

Snow's taken to drawing in the past year, a suggestion by the Skype therapist—he's surprisingly good at it; actually developing a proper style of his own. For weeks, I was foully jealous of that, when I started to drop into the depths of despair. He's got art; I had music, once, but I couldn't gather up the energy, couldn't get the notes to come when I tried. After a while, I stopped bothering to try.

Even after I'm starting to feel better, it's a while before I can pick up the violin again.

I'm alone in the flat—they've got their own things going on—and I'm grateful for it. I haven't practised in almost three months. I'm going to be crap.

And it is, at first. But once I get things tightened up and in tune, check my posture (and then just let it come naturally, stop overthinking it), and just let it come… oh, it comes. There are a few bum notes in the beginning, which of course I'll never admit happened, but it doesn't take long to get back into the flow of it, and the music lifts and dances around me and—

—this is almost back to how things ought to be.

I'm so gone to it that I lose track of what I'm playing—drifting from Brahms to Mozart through Mendelssohn to Tchaikovsky and then out into things I don't even realise I'm writing in my own mind off the cuff—that I don't notice I have company until I pause for a moment and, very quietly, so quietly I almost miss it, Simon says, "Don't stop, love. Please don't stop."

He's perched on the edge of the couch, with his coat still on—wings and tail spelled invisible—watching me like the music I play is putting the air he breathes into the room. Our eyes meet for a moment, and he smiles, and it lights up my whole world.

So I lift the bow again, and I tell him what I can't say in words.

And I think he gets it.

When I finish, he has his arms wrapped loosely around my waist, mindful not to get in the way of my movements, and as I lower the bow and violin again, he presses his nose against the joint between my neck and shoulder, then kisses me there, and for a long moment we just stand there, silent and still.

"I've missed that," he whispers.

"I thought you hated my violin," I whisper back.

He shrugs. (Liar. I knew it.) "Good day?"

I give it a second, assessing the honesty of the various potential answers, and then I lean back against him and smile slightly.

"Yeah. Good day."

llllllllllllllllllllllllllll

SIMON

We know it's never going to go away, but we can cope now. We've got strategies, bits of CBT we learned from websites and books, the heartrate method and a medication regimen that seems to be working. (Sometimes Penny and I have to remind him to keep his heartbeat going or take the pills, but he doesn't mind. He did at first, but we can joke about it now. I have a whole repertoire of shitty heart-related jokes to text as pertinent reminders.)

I think I got through to Malcolm, because Daphne sends texts every now and then—simple, sweet things, not too much, just the odd Dad and I are thinking of you. Love you x, stuff like that. I encourage regular phonecalls with more subtlety than I ever thought I could manage (he still doesn't know I rang his dad up and gave him hell; I'm not telling, and Malcolm's hopefully far too embarrassed) (fucking wanker).

Sometimes, he still has bad days. But we get through them. It's okay to not be okay. I still think he should see somebody, but he's got a system that works for him, and even though it's been a few months now, I don't want to rock that boat.

We live with it. He lives with it. Alive, or near as damn it. With a proper heartbeat. (Sometimes I wonder if that simple thing was one of the bits that's helped most of all.)

I know how to handle it now. When he needs to be left alone, and when he needs to be hugged so tight it makes him huff and struggle and curl in against me. When to stroke his hair and kiss him, and when to tell him to stop being an idiot. (Seriously. Sometimes it gets through to him better than anything else. We're weird; we always have been. Shit that works for us would probably fuck up other people, but we're good.)

He's never missed a work shift, and not another lecture since that first one, and I pretty much bullied him into submitting something called a PECS form to get special circumstances for an essay he had to submit while he was still really bad (he thanked me later), and I also know when he needs to stay in and curl up with a crappy movie and when I need to drag him out.

(And I'm making it sound like it's all the time, and it's not—there are so many times we can almost forget about it. It's always there, of course it is; it's a thing he lives with, like diabetes or a heart condition, but just like those, there are good times and bad times. And the good times are getting stronger, and longer, and more frequent.)

The sky's grey today, and we're walking through the park hand in hand, stopping occasionally to just people-watch, or pet somebody's dog (okay, that one's me). And for some inane reason, we're talking about literary devices. (Told you he's weird.)

Pathetic fallacy, he's telling me, is a sort of personification where inanimate objects reflect the overall mood of a scene. "Like those clouds," he says, "those grey, miserable clouds."

He's okay at the minute. Has been for a while. I'm slightly concerned by this line of thinking.

"You okay?" I ask, squeezing his hand.

The sun breaks through the clouds, and at the same moment, he smiles.

And we're okay.