summerland
fandom: Simon Snow
relationship: snowbaz
rating: Teen and Up (for some big kid language)
additional tags: high school au, non-magic au, slowburn, idiots to lovers
chapters: 24/25
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BAZ
Snow builds on the ground outside my car as I drive to school. It’s probably unsafe for me to be driving right now, but I find that I don’t seem to care. The heater is turned all the way up and it’s making a valiant effort blasting at full power through the small vents on my dash, but it does little in the way of combating the biting cold that finds its way into my car anyway.
I keep telling myself that I just need to get through this week, but it’s February and I’ve been repeating that same mantra to myself since at least October. And regardless, it’s only Monday, so I’ve still a long way to go before I can consider this week gotten through.
My windshield starts fogging from the cold, and I adjust the settings to have the air blow on the glass instead of on me. I pull my sleeves over my hands. Maybe I should have just walked today.
Weather like this reminds me of a time when I didn’t know any way to feel except alone. The cold months bring me back to a time I should barely be able to remember, but that I can recall in vivid detail; a five-year-old Basilton watching my father spiral after the loss of my mother, wasting away and appearing less and less frequently. I’d almost started to wonder if he was going to leave, too. I was just a kid. I didn’t know what had happened. I couldn’t have.
I kept wondering what I could do to make it better, and I became infinitely disappointed when everything I tried didn’t work, despite my best efforts. What was the magic I had to do to fix this thing I’d caused? But try and try as I might, the answer was nothing.
And I did believe I’d caused it. After all, I was with my mother that day, and she was alive, and then she wasn’t, and things like that didn’t just happen for no reason, so it had to be somebody’s fault, so it had to be mine. I was just a child wondering what atrocities I had committed to keep Father Christmas away from my home during the holiday.
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