#ive been on the verge of mental collapse for like 2 weeks now and i think this finally did it. this broke me. i cant stand it

[silverhandy]

House call - chapter 2

Chapter 1 I ao3

    Through his career, he’s been to a lot of places of varying degrees of decay, from the long-abandoned hotels subjected to evergoing gang disputes to the city’s garbage dump stretching miles upon miles outside of the city, a sea of trash and metal, often twisted into unrecognizable shapes, piling up into mountains, where every step meant a very real risk of slipping and impaling himself on a rust-bitten shard. Hidden in between were those unfortunate enough to end their journey in a place like this, abandoned by their rivals or hitmen too lazy to attempt hiding a body within the guts of the city. If they had a working car, and almost all of them did, it was way easier to just drive whatever was left of their target and dump it to be devoured by rats and whatever else evolved enough to survive in a place like this. Sometimes they wouldn’t even bother to check if the person they were leaving there was actually dead, hence the reason why he’d sometimes get calls begging him to fish a guy (or lady) down on their luck out. He found himself digging through trash more often than not, futile in his attempts to pinpoint his awaiting patient’s location. When he was starting out, the thought of giving up his search wouldn’t even cross his mind, he’d spend hours looking, even dragging along metal cutters with him, figuring they’d come in handy. They probably would’ve if not for the fact that he often wasn’t even able to find the person who called him, localization data too patchy to give him a solid lead on where he should even start.

    After a while, when he established himself and lost some of his rookie idealism, he put in a disclaimer that he wouldn’t go trash diving anymore, no matter the pay. A small step, but even at the beginning he tried to have standards.

    V’s apartment was far from Night City’s biggest trash dump, but something about the chaos within it reminded him of that when he switched on the lights. As if the hurricane had swept through the place, some of the furniture was tilted over, a pile of clothes, dangerously balanced on an overfilled laundry basket, threatened to collapse and spill over at any moment. A half-finished box of noodles laid abandoned on the counter, accompanied by a mosaic of pills from a knocked over bottle.

    Viktor found V curled up on the floor next to her bed, wearing a washed-out Samurai t-shirt and sweatpants, covers dragged along with her halfway between the linoleum and the mattress. He could barely see her face from the way she was bundled up. V didn’t move upon hearing his footsteps, didn’t even flinch when he kneeled next to her and reached out a hand to touch her shoulder.

    The ripper dropped the heavy bag at his side and gently cupped V’s face in his hands, wincing at how burned up the woman’s skin was, and turned it so he could take a quick glance. V’s eyes were rolled far back into her skull. Viktor started to have an idea of what he was dealing with here, has seen the wreckage that offensive hacking can cause many times before. They usually started out slow, identical to a bad case of flu but then, if dismissed, proceeded to stir fry one’s brain until not much was left.

    Viktor opened his bag and pulled out a small, remote biomonitor. It took a few seconds to fully calibrate, but eventually, the screen lit up.

    ‘V, can you hear me?’ he asked, not counting on her to answer. 'I’m going to connect your personal link now and see what’s going on in there, okay?' he reached for her wrist, already feeling her racing pulse, and connected it to the device. While it was loading, Viktor propped it up on the wall and grabbed V to lay her on her back to make the job easier for himself, and pulled out a few small gel-filled Ice-Pax. He knew she probably needed more, but those will have to do for now.

    Just as Viktor placed two under her arms and another on her groin, the monitor beeped. He reached over her to grab it and swiftly ran a basic diagnostics program, but save for the things he already knew, it didn’t spew out anything interesting. She was vastly overheated and her blood pressure shot up to a point where an angrily red window kept popping up to inform him of a 72% percent chance of an incoming cardiac event, but he dismissed it for now. Instead, Viktor chose a different angle and ran a more advanced version of the program, letting it comb through V’s frontal cortex and RAM.

    ‘There’s the rub’ he hummed to himself as the program kindly highlighted the results. He let out a long sigh. If V had come to see him a day earlier, he’d fix it in five minutes and she wouldn’t even notice, but now she’ll be out of commission for at least a week before she can even get out of bed. He’ll have to tell her a thing or two about responsibility, not that she’d listen to him anyway. Patients never did, but it still might be worth a shot.

    Viktor typed a few commands to enclose the scrambled code from her RAM and before pulling out V’s personal link, copied her real-time vitals chart onto his interface. After it appeared within his field of vision, he pulled out a worn-out connecting cord that he’s been promising himself he’d replace for ages now and inserted it into the neural port at V’s nape to get a better working field, now that he knew what the problem was. RAM damages were problematic in their very nature but pretty easy to fix once caught, not much of his medical knowledge needed. Viktor simply fired up what ripperdocs tended to call a “palate cleanser” and let it do the work, putting back together what the bug has managed to break.

    While the program was fixing up V’s tech, Viktor got to work on her body. Flipping the ice packs, he took a quick glance at her temperature and was glad to see that it had started to slowly go down, followed by her pulse and blood pressure, all three leaving the life-threatening territory. None of them were quite to his liking just yet, but at least now Viktor was sure V would pull through. Reaching into his bag, he eventually found an IV set, but decided it’d be better to move her onto the bed first, sparing himself all the gymnastics with the tubing and cables. Minding the biomonitor still plugged into her, Viktor leaned down to lift V and put her on the bed. She was quite heavy, the dead weight of her limp body adding to the feeling, but he didn’t even break a sweat carrying her. Taking the covers from the floor, he put them on her, straightening the wrinkled material intuitively.

    Having done that, Viktor grabbed her arm and carefully inserted the needle. To his relief, it went in on the first try. Glad he didn’t need to poke her any more than necessary, Viktor looked around and realized that V didn’t have anything even remotely resembling an IV stand, but when he looked up, he noticed a small hook, probably remains of a poster frame, conveniently placed over the bed. Stepping up on the edge of the bed frame, he placed the bag there, and after making sure that everything was in place, let it drip. That should do the job, maybe paired up with a shot of dopabenzamine if she won’t improve in the next few hours.

    Viktor let out a deep sigh of relief, feeling as if he’s been holding his breath ever since V called. Biomonitor’s estimated time kept shifting but eventually settled on six hours and twenty-three minutes. Viktor nodded to himself and turned around to take another look at the mess that V’s apartment has turned into. He leaned down and reached under the covers to grab the unpleasantly warm ice packs, and throw them in the freezer, wondering if he should clean up, just a little bit. Would V get mad at him for snooping around? Then again, she’ll need a few days to recover and this ever-growing mess around her surely won’t help. Or should he ask Misty? They were closer, he was pretty sure that she’s been over at V’s place at some point.

    Maybe he shouldn’t be overthinking this. Just a little bit, he told himself as he gathered the pills spilled on the counter, inspecting the label while he was at it. Strong shit, impossible to get by simply waltzing into a pharmacy. Viktor made a mental note to ask about it later, just to make sure that V doesn’t swallow these like candy. Of course she doesn’t, he reprimanded himself. She’s an adult, a stupid, reckless one, but an adult nevertheless. It still won’t hurt to bring it up, though.

    He put it back into the medicine cabinet and returned to the kitchen to deal with the noodles, and since they were on the verge of no longer being edible, he just tossed them into the trash can, along with other unfinished takeout he found in various places around the apartment. He didn’t want to snoop through V’s things, so he just folded the clothes that were sprawled all over the floor and couch and put them in a neat pile. When he was done, the place looked somehow presentable, so he settled on the couch opposite V’s bed.

    She appeared to be sleeping, although far from soundly. No longer completely unconscious, she kept tossing and turning, her face grimacing as her recovering brain no doubt served her a concoction of fever dreams.

    Just as Viktor leaned down to relax a little, he heard a ping of an incoming text message. He pulled it up

Misty

>that lady from Biotechnica is here to see you again, but you don’t seem to be in, what should I tell her?

                                                                                              >Tell her to fuck off

                                                        >I’m at V’s and have to stay for a few more                                                              hours, she screwed herself up real bad this                                                            time

>oh no what happened>

>?

                                                         >I’ll tell you all about it later, I got it covered                                                             for now

    He fully expected Misty to call him, alarmed, but apparently, he managed to reassure her just enough. He leaned back and closed his eyes, just for a second, but must’ve dozed off at some point, exhausted after over twenty hours without a chance for a shuteye. When he woke, a groan escaped his lips as the stiffness of his neck hit him with full force.

    That’s what you get for sleeping sitting up, old man, he told himself as he reached to grab his glasses off the floor. They must’ve slipped off at some point during his nap. Viktor stood up and stretched until he heard his joints crack. Still tired, he rubbed his eyes in a futile attempt to wake himself up and walked up to V’s bed to check on her. When he reached for the biomonitor to check the progress bar and see how long he’s been sleeping, V moved slightly. She opened her eyes and scanned the room, looking right over him, and furrowed her eyebrows. Finally, she looked up and saw Vik standing next to the bed and her expression went from blank to confused.

    ‘Vik? What…’ V cleared her throat. ‘What are you doin’ here?’

    ‘You don’t remember calling me?

    ‘Not quite’ she bit her lip, trying to gather her thoughts. ‘It’s a bit of a blur. I was feeling like absolute shit after that last job, thought I could just sleep it off.’ she said quietly, propping her head upon her elbow. ‘I didn’t expect it to grow into...whatever that was.’

    “A neurogenic cybervirus is what that is. Invisible until it starts to fry your brain. You gave me quite a fright.’

    “Fuck. I knew something was off about that netrunner, after she...eh, nevermind. Vik..how long have you been here anyway?

    ‘Uh,’ Viktor took a quick glance at the biomonitor ‘seven hours, give or take?

    ‘Fucking hell. I’m..’ she looked at him apologetically. ‘I’m gonna pay you back. What’s your house call fee again? I don't remember it being listed…’

    ‘Nah, it’s okay. I usually don’t do house calls, so consider that a favor. Just promise me that when you feel something’s off after a job, you’ll come to see me right away. There’s a lot of real vile stuff out there and you won’t even know until it gets you. That’s what you have me for.’

    ‘Sure, dad. You can spare me the lecture' she chuckled. ‘But for real, Vik. Thank you.’

    ‘No problem, really.’ he grabbed the biomonitor. Four minutes left. ‘You’re gonna feel like you were hit by a truck for the next few days, but there shouldn’t be any lasting damage. I’ll check up on you in a few days and send in Misty or Jackie in the meantime to help you out since I’d rather you didn’t get out of bed more often than necessary. Next time you see me, consider getting that new set of optics and a gun grip. Might save your ass next time someone attempts to do you dirty like his.’

    Something akin to a smile appeared on her face. ‘Doctor’s orders?’

    ‘Doctor’s orders.’

#viktor vector #female v #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk fic #victor vector #my writing

[basic-banshee]

Mind Games (part 6)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | [completed]

tagging: @cactus---daddy  @ughthatsprettygay  @its-the-ultimate-fangirl-101 @alive-alive-alive @their-lego-hearts @cant-stop-shipping-people @katterpillar @thatbitchnora @emo-turkey @rachelaredhead @thestrawberrymusicnerd @mirkwoodelven @violetsummers23254 @nyx5683​ @fucking-echo @its-okay-that-ur-not ** sorry if ive forgotten someone**

BAZ

In the fourth year I had this recurring dream — or fantasy, more accurately — that Simon and I would find some common ground to unite us, and we’d become friends. Allies. We’d work together for some greater goal and through that process we would, inevitably, become best friends. By the fifth year, I imagined we’d fall in love. By sixth year, I dreamt that we would tolerate each other.

I never thought my sixth year fantasy would come true.

I always assumed that the common cause would be fighting the Humdrum, or saving Watford, or solving a mystery. I never thought the thing that would bring us together would be being gay.

Or rather, “not straight,” as he repeatedly insists. Apparently thirty minutes of reflection is enough to make Simon realise he likes men, but not enough to make him comfortable with a queer label. I will never understand him.

But, despite telling him I’m gay, he’s still sticking by his theory that the hat’s selection was based entirely on sexual preference, and not because I’d jump him in a heartbeat.

“We can just say it was me that caused us to get paired,” he said on the way back to the room. “I don’t know if your family knows or if you want them to know, or if they’d be disappointed or something shitty.”

“They would have to acknowledge it in order to be disappointed,” I answered, but I didn’t argue with his offer. If he wants to be the openly bisexual Chosen One, I’m sure as shit not going to stop him.

“Sorry your family is weird about...you know,” he said when I got out of the shower the next morning. I stared. Apparently we were still discussing this.

“Is the Mage going to be bothered?” I asked him instead of answering. He paused in the middle of picking out a shirt. (He has four identical shirts. Why does he do this every day?)

“Why the fuck would the Mage care who I like?” he asked, surprised. I shrug (I’ve picked it up from him.) (I hate it.) (But it’s a gesture that says so much, while saying nothing.)

I didn’t have an answer.

Apparently Watford isn’t as fascinated by Simon’s sexuality as I am, because there wasn’t really any backlash. No one cared. No one said anything. And so I assumed it had blown over. This unfortunate occurrence had passed, we had both survived, and things could go back to the way they were.

Except they didn’t.

“How long have you known?” he asked as we walked down to breakfast one morning.

“Longer than you,” I responded.

“Right but like, how long?” he pushed as he got in line behind me for coffee.

“I’m going to rip your tongue out,” I responded.

I keep waiting for him to figure out I’m in love with him. I had thought this would become blindingly clear: the hat put us together, he knows I like men, and I called him fucking exceptional. I practically put a sign on my forehead screaming “I’m in love with Simon Snow, set me on fire and laugh” and yet somehow he’s completely missed it, and is still trying to take responsibility for it.

I don’t understand the mental leaps he had to do to convince himself that somehow my intense hatred for him fucked up the spell. But then again, I don’t understand anything about the way Simon thinks.

He’s so stupid, and yet, I love him.

SIMON

“Have you ever fancied anyone?” I ask Baz. I’m lying on my bed with my feet up on the wall, trying to study, but I can’t. It’s warm out, and we’ve got the window open, and it’s an afternoon that should not be spent trying to teach myself Greek. Honestly, if I don’t have it by now, I’m never going to.

“We’re not talking about this,” Baz snaps back from the other side of the room. He was working, but I saw him give up a few minutes ago, and he’s just been staring out the window ever since.

“So that’s a yes,” I say, throwing my book to the floor. “And considering how prickly you’re being, that means he goes to Watford.” It’s a shot in the dark, but I like to throw out wild theories sometimes to see how he reacts.

“This is not even remotely a subject that’s up for discussion,” he responds, putting in his headphones and turning back to his book. I hate when he does that.

Somehow he managed to bring in an illegal mobile. I was surprised last week when he used it in front of me — normally I would have jumped at the idea of finding something that could get him in trouble. But lately I’ve been focusing a lot less on trying to catch Baz doing something shifty — maybe because he’s now doing the shifty things in front of me — but maybe because I don’t think I care.

And I think… I think I know he’s not a monster. He’s just a boy. A shitty boy, who can be an extreme prick. But still, just a boy, who got outed in front of his classmates. Who listens to Radiohead and eats crisps at night. Who has siblings, and gets bored while doing his homework.

Lately it’s been hard to be in the room with him, because I’m hyper aware of his presence. I always am, always have been. I always have this list in my head about him. Usually it reads something like 1. What is he plotting? 2. Is he going to hurt someone? 3. Where is he going? 4. Does he know I’m following?

But right now the list is reading more like 1. Does he fancy anyone 2. Has he ever kissed a bloke before? 3. What does kissing a boy taste like? 4. I wonder what colour his eyes are right now.

Staring at the back of his head, as he bobs slightly in time to his music, I wonder what he’s listening to and what his hair feels like.

“My money is on Niall,” I say, even though he can’t hear me. “He’s kind of fit, isn’t he? Or maybe it’s Gareth. I’ve seen the way you stare at his belt buckle.”

“There’s literally no way to not stare at it when he’s shoving it in your face,” Baz snaps. I guess he can hear me. “Now shut up or I’m throwing you out the window.”

“Have you ever kissed a bloke?” I ask. Because I guess this is what I think about now. I don’t know when this started, or why. Part of me wonders if I’m only thinking about Baz like this because we both like blokes, and some part of me is reacting to that.

But then part of me thinks I’m only thinking about Baz like this because I’m finally getting to know him. He let down some walls — not many, but a few — and now...I guess he doesn’t seem that scary.

“Get up,” he snaps, slamming his book closed and advancing on me. He’s trying to look terrifying, but the edge of his mouth keeps turning up. I think it was always doing that, all the way back to first year, and I just always mistook his smiles for snarls.

“Why?” I ask calmly. I’m still lying on the bed with my head hanging over, and from this angle he’s upside down.

“Because I’m chucking you out the window.”

Normally I’d growl, and start to get worked up, and we’d end up in a fight on the stairs. But instead I just grin at him, and I see the smallest hint of a smile on his face in return.

And I think I want to kiss him.

And I think, possibly, he might want to kiss me.

The whole “exceptional” thing aside, there’s small things. Sometimes I catch him looking at me when he doesn’t think I can see him. He’s been a hell of a lot nicer to me since the psych lab, and he even helped me with homework once.

But the big sign was the time I walked out of the bathroom after my shower, and he had a full metal breakdown. I’d done it on a whim — I didn’t think through it all, just dashed out with my towel around my waist to grab my shirt — and he tensed up so much he broke his pencil in his hand, and then his face went about as red as it can get.

So yeah. I think there’s something there.

Neither of us is going to do anything about it though. He sure as shit isn’t, at least. But I guess I’m the brave one, of the two of us. So if it is going to happen…

I guess I’m going to have to nut up.

Crowely, we’re fucked.

BAZ

“We could pretend to be dead,” he says glumly, his feet dragging as we walk across the courtyard. For once, Simon might be on to a good idea. I think I’d rather be dead than go to the next Magickal Psychology lab tomorrow.

“It’s required. For a grade,” I snap. He looks so dejected that I want to throw my arm around his shoulder and spell him happy.

“I wish the Humdrum would attack,” he mutters. I sigh and hold open the door of Mummers House.

“It will be fine. We’ll just go in, find out what the control question is, and lie,” I tell him as we trudge up the stairs. He pauses on the middle landing and stares at me.

“Lie?”

“Yes, Snow, lie,” I snap when we enter the room. He throws his bag to the ground and collapses onto his bed in a dramatic heap, and a small contented sigh escapes him when he shoves his head into the pillow. “For example, I am neither allergic to cats nor colourblind. And yet I have successfully gotten out of those experiments by lying.”

“You’re not colourblind?” he sputters, turning his head to look at me. The stricken expression on his face makes it seem like I’ve just turned his world upside down. “I thought that’s why you always wear black,” he mutters, then turns his face back into his pillow.

It’s the makings of a lazy afternoon outside. It’s warm, we’re on the verge of a weekend, and somehow Snow and I have spent the entire day together thus far. We ate breakfast together, talked on the way to class, and actually got scolded by Miss Possibelf for laughing during her lecture. It’s been perfect.

So I sit on the floor between our beds with my back to the windowsill and tip my head back just a bit so it’s resting against the ledge, and close my eyes. I like this spot because it allows me to feel warm without being in direct sunlight, and it makes me feel like a bit of a sleepy cat. I never would have sat here before Snow and my’s strange gay truce.

“Put on music,” he mumbles sleepily from his bed.

That’s another thing we do now: we listen to my music. I’ve been using my mobile with him around — I only have to listen to music and text Fiona — and I figured he would just ignore it, consider it a casualty of our strange new tolerance of each other. But then one day I was doing work and he just came over and picked it up. I almost kicked him out of reflex, but he just squinted at the screen, put it down, and shrugged. “I want to see what you were listening to,” he said. He started doing that every time he walked by, picking up my mobile and running his stumpy freckled hands all over it (Crowley, I’d kill to be my mobile) and then one day he goes, “You can play it out loud.”

And now we listen to music.

I barely glance at the screen as I hit play on whatever I had up last, and pull out my wand. “Come Mr. DJ won’t you turn the music up!” I cast, and the speaker on my mobile grows louder, unleashing some Radiohead song on our room. I throw the mobile on my bed then close my eyes. Maybe I’ll give in to the cat metaphor and take a nap.

My head’s tipped back and I’m on the verge of truly falling asleep when I feel a small puff of air on my cheek and hear Simon whisper, impossibly close, “Baz.”

My eyes fly open and he’s there, he’s right there, his unexceptional blue eyes staring into mine, and I can’t look away, even though there’s no spell holding me here. Just him. Just Simon. His face is centimetres from mine and there’s no possible explanation for why he’s this close, except for —

“Do you remember that question from the experiment about dying that night and what you would regret not doing or saying?” he asks. I can feel his breath on my lips because he’s that fucking close, and the soft rumble of his voice is reverberating through me. I nod, slowly, because this feels like some kind of hazy spell and I think that quick or sharp movements will dislodge it.

“I said I’d regret not having killed you,” I whispered. His lips — fuck, his lips — quirk up and he smiles at me. It’s ruinous.

“I said I don’t really have regrets,” he whispers back. And then he tilts his head. “But that’s not true. I regret that I haven’t done something.”

Aleister fucking Crowley he’s being so cool. When did he get so cool? He’s going to, I know that’s what he’s doing. I know that’s why his head is tilted and he’s leaning even closer. This is going to be it. He’s going to kiss me or kill me, and I’m happy for either. I’ll take whatever he offers, just—

Why isn’t he doing it? His mouth is so close, I can see it, he’s closed his eyes, and he’s just…. Here. Is he waiting? He keeps dipping closer and closer, his mouth ghosting along mine, then he pulls away, and I’m going to explode. I’m going to scream.

“Simon,” I snarl, because I’m ready to fucking kill him, and his eyes pop open just as I grab the back of his neck and kiss him.

I hear — no, I feel — him hum against my lips, and then he’s doing something with his chin, and he captures my bottom lip in his, and it’s—

It’s sweet. It’s soft. It’s kind and gentle and everything that we aren’t. Everything that I never imagined we could be. He’s kissing me like I’m something precious, like I’m something sacred. No one has ever treated me like this before.

“Simon—” I start as our lips break away a bit, but he just makes a shushing noise and leans in to kiss me again. He’s on his knees in front of me, his hands planted to the ground on either side of my hip.

“I know, I’m exceptional,” he whispers, then kisses the corner of my mouth. I laugh — I can’t help it. This is the moment I’ve waited for my entire life, and I feel drunk off of him.

I want more.

“Let’s just—not overtalk this. Let’s just do this, yeah? I want to do this, all of this, the whole thing, us, let’s just do it,” he says, then flicks his tongue over my bottom lip. He could probably have asked me to set myself on fire after that and I would say yes. I have no idea what he’s talking about — snogging? Sex? Dating? I don’t know. I don’t care. I’ll do anything if he’s involved. I try not to think about what he’s suggesting, and instead I just turn off my mind, like he would. He’s gotten pretty far in life so far, there’s got to be a benefit to it, right?

“Absolutely,” I mutter, bringing my hands up to grasp his hips, and it’s like some kind of sign or permission to him, because suddenly his hands are in my hair and he’s gathering it up in chunks and pulling on it slightly, wrapping it around his fingers as his nails lightly scratch my scalp and it’s a sensory overload. I push him away, but his hands are still in my hair, he’s really got a strong fucking hold on it, and so we both go kareening backwards and he lands on his back and smiles up at me as he laughs breathlessly.

I go for the mole on his neck like a target.

“You’re exceptional too,” he whispers. He’s wriggling beneath me, his whole body tensing and relaxing as I kiss every mole and freckle I can find. There’s two hiding under his collar, I know, and so I’m focused on pulling his knotted tie off so I can get to them.

“Of course I am,” I snap back. His tie is really, truly, astonishing tangled. Does he just hang himself every morning in the process of getting dressed? I should just set it on fire. It would serve him right.

“I think that that stupid spell must have known that I—” he’s saying, breathless, as I work at the knot. This useless piece of clothing is keeping me from his Adam’s Apple and there is absolutely no bigger injustice in this world right now.

“Simon,” I snarl. I’m angry at his tie, and I’m taking it out on him, but I don’t care. Nothing matters. “Shut the fuck up. It paired us together because I’m obsessed with you, and I’m going to set you on fire if you don’t learn how to tie your tie like an adult.”

His smile blinds me. His eyes scrunch at the corners and he reveals all his teeth — not perfect and uniform, utterly unexceptional, just like his eyes, yet endlessly adorable — and it’s a smile full of joy and surprise and more than a little mischievousness.

“Just get my clothes off,” he says, and it comes out with magic even though it’s absolutely not a spell. It’s some kind of fucked up horny compulsion, and I feel myself pulled back to the tie, ripping it from his neck, my fingers running under the buttons of his collar and popping them. I feel out of control, ruled by a force that’s not me, and it’s terrifying.

But it’s giving me the courage to do what I’ve wanted to do for years.

“Sorry, sorry,” he gasps. He’s seen the panic in my eyes. “It does that sometimes, my magic. When I feel… a lot. Do what you want! You don’t have to!” he gasps out, and I feel the compulsion lift.

My fingers keep working at his shirt though, and I can’t stop myself from giggling. It’s not funny — he just forced me to do something with magic, I should be horrified — but this is surreal and I feel like I’m drinking in the galaxy everytime my lips meet his skin.

“I guess Greg’s fucked up experiment worked,” I say between laughs. His breath gets faster as I kiss at his collarbone, and he frowns at me.

“Don’t,” he stutters, then shakes his head. “What the fuck Baz? Don’t talk about Greg,” he pouts. “Greg can get stuffed for all I care.”

“But it worked, didn’t it?” I say, nuzzling at his neck. He growls, grabs my shoulders, and turns me forcefully, so that I’m on the ground he’s above me. This is a first — I’m always above him. By at least three inches.

But then he grins.

“He can never know,” Simon says, and I nod.

“Absolutely fucking not,” I agree, and lean up to meet his mouth again. He laughs against my lips and pushes back at the kiss. I can taste the smoke of his magic in my mouth. It’s going to be there for the rest of the day, I know. Not even brushing my teeth is going to get the taste of Simon out.

Maybe psychology isn’t the worst.

#carry on #carry on fic #my writing #mind games #snowbaz #snowbaz fanfic #gay boys being their best gay selves #listening to music #hating psychology