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This is what happens if you try to hang on after the end. When your time has come and passed. When you’ve done the thing you were meant to do. The theatre goes dark, the pages go blank. Everything is a story, and Simon Snow’s is over.
I’ve loved him through worse. I’ve loved him hopelessly.… So what’s a little less hope?
Maya Angelou said that when someone shows you who they are, you should believe them.
“Surprise!” Baz singsongs. “It’s your ex-boyfriend and his boyfriend and that girl you never liked very much!”
He’s leaning against the door with his arms crossed and his shirtsleeves pushed up. Baz always looks like he’s in an ad for expensive watches. Even when he isn’t wearing one.
“If you think I’m letting you traipse around a foreign country by yourselves, especially in this political climate—
But it was a mistake thinking of that as an end. There is no end. Bad things happen, and then they stop, but they keep on wreaking havoc inside of people.
It was like she’d pulled the feeling right out of my heart. I could have kissed her. (I still wish sometimes that I wanted to.) (That would feel like an answer to … the question of me. Then I could say, “Oh, that’s who I am. That’s why I’ve been so confused.”)
Now I'm feeling for Ace/aro Agatha.
“For snake’s sake, Bunce, you couldn’t spring for first class when you were stealing our tickets?” “We’re keeping a low profile,” she says. “I could keep a low profile in first class.”
It feels good to sit this close to Baz. And the lady with the cross can’t get mad at us because we have to sit this close. It’s sitting in economy that’s making us gay.
Hilarious.
“Can’t. I’m saving my magic.” He angles his knees towards mine. “Just in case I have to ‘Float like a butterfly’ this entire plane.”
He leaves the door open, which I appreciate. (Fucking men, always trying to trap you alone.)
Fucking men.
He’s lovely. A bit of a sad mess. Dull and pale and rough round the edges. But still so lovely.
“A relationship isn’t about the end. It’s about being together every step of the way.”
Simon Snow, it hurts to look at you when you’re this happy. And it hurts to look at you when you’re depressed. There’s no safe time for me to see you, nothing about you that doesn’t tear my heart from my chest and leave it breakable outside my body.
:'(
“Please don’t choke to death, Bunce. Imagine the humiliation of dying at The Cheesecake Factory.”
Baz rubs her back and lets her cry into his shirt. I love him so much, and I want to tell him so. But I’ve never managed to say it, and now is definitely not the time.
For we are indeed terrible at being boyfriends. We’re very good at this, though—standing uncomfortably in the same space, absolutely not saying what we’re both thinking, squeezing through a room full of elephants. We’re champions.
Baz’s sunglasses are as big as his head. And that scarf. It should make him look like a mad old bat, but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t look half glamourous. Like a boy Marilyn Monroe.… My brain gets kind of stuck on “boy Marilyn Monroe” for a while.
Please control your bisexuality, Simon.
“You’re not supposed to stay in the car the whole time on a road trip,” I say. “You’re supposed to get out and see things, meet strange people—lotus-eaters and sirens.” “That’s not a road trip,” Baz says, “that’s the Odyssey. When did you read the Odyssey, Snow?”
“You’re losing it, Snow! Is this how you defeated the hobgoblin horde?” “You’re more distracting than a hobgoblin,” I say. “Your hair is shinier.” “‘You have witchcraft in your lips,’” Baz says. “Is that more Shakespeare?” “Yeah, sorry. I know you prefer Homer.”
(I still haven’t sorted whether I’m still attracted to women or whether I ever was, or whether I’m some kind of Baz-only-sexual. But the cleavage at this place is abundant, and I’m not mad about it.)
I'm also Baz-only-sexual.
(Of course I’ve read Anne Rice. I was a 15-year-old closet case whose parents pretended they didn’t notice when the family dog disappeared.)
And it’s not like I have an opportunity to convert them to rat-drinking. “Have you heard the good news about small mammals?”
“What are you doing out of Ireland?” “I’m an American,” the goat-man says. “Fourth generation. My family came here to get away from the likes of you.” “Magicians?” she asks. “Indians?” Snow says. “The fucking English,” the goat replies.
I’ll be damned and drawn and fucking quartered before I watch some devil-eyed goat feel up my boyfriend right in front of me.
Crowley, if this is what it takes to keep Simon in my arms—gunshots and Quiet Zones and high-speed chases—I’m here for it. I’ll swear to it. I’ve found my vocation.
“Completely. I’m the most basic bitch possible.”
Please, I love Shepard so much :(
It’s like America is taking bites out of Baz. Taking a swing at him every time it gets a chance.
“You’re still a magician, Simon. Aeroplanes don’t stop being aeroplanes when they’re on the ground.”
This line hit me really hard and I'm still trying to figure out why.
“No,” I say. “It’s not you. It’s us. We’re very confusing.”
“Believe you are malformed outcast tourist trash.”
“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for!” “These aren’t the droids I’m looking for,” the man says, turning away. “Why was I looking for droids.…”
Sometimes Simon kisses me like it’s the end of the world, and I worry he might believe that it is.
Baz is standing in front of a full-length mirror, wearing—I swear to Merlin—a flowered suit. It’s some slick material, dark blue with blood-red roses. With a white shirt. No—a light pink shirt. When did he start wearing all these flowers? When did his hair get so long? He’s put stuff in it, and it’s hanging over his collar in thick, black waves.
YAAASSS the flowered suit! I'm here for it.
“It’s perfect,” Shepard says. “Vampires are always way over the top.” Baz shifts his evil eye over to Shepard. “No, it’s perfect because it’s perfect.”
If a vampire invites you to a second, darker, lonelier location, don’t go. That’s just common sense.… … unless you’re already a vampire.
“Who died and made you queen of the vampires?” Baz honks, still holding his nose.
“Simon, I’m begging you, as the person who will cry the most at your funeral, please don’t.”
Poor Penny.
He smiles. “My soul is at your disposal.”
Why does this sound weirdly romantic?
“Close your eyes,” I say. I close mine, too, and whisper the spell—“Kindred spirits!”
I see what you did here, Rainbow.
“Next time, spell him to the bed. Use a ‘Stay put.’” “Keep your sexual habits to yourself, Basil.”
“You’re a starving child from an oppressed nation who has barely met himself. But you are not one of them.”
“Someone made you.” “My parents made me. A vampire killed me.” He sighs. “Then allow me to say how much I enjoy the company of your ghost.”
“For the last time, Simon Snow, only a depraved savage would slay a dragon!” “I wasn’t trying to kill it!”
Those fights used to feel so good. It meant getting to look at Snow. Getting his attention. Having a place to hurl all my feelings for him, even if they came out spiked and razor sharp.
We don’t need his help to save Agatha. I’ve saved Agatha literally dozens of times without asking any vampires for help. (I mean, Baz pitched in once or twice.) (He complained the whole time.)
Why would you live somewhere that seemed to be doing its best to tell you to go away?
Did you mean Argentina?
