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I have no idea how long I’ve been in here.
It’s so dark in this coffin, and even when I actually do fall asleep once in a while, I can’t tell if it’s day or night. The only way I measure time now is by counting how many dreams I have of Simon Snow. I think I’m at sixty-eight now, but that might be including daydreams, because I don’t always know if I’m actually asleep or not. It doesn’t really matter. My dreams about Snow are the only things that get me through, and I’ve had sixty-eight of them so far.
Actually, make that sixty-nine, now. (…I’m not even going to go there.)
I think I’m dreaming again right now. I don’t remember falling asleep, but I’m in the Wavering Woods, and I can see Snow clear-cutting his way through the undergrowth with his fucking sword. Typical.
“Looking for something, Snow?” I call out to him—I can’t resist taunting him even in my imagination.
He looks a bit startled to see me, but what else did I expect? Simon Snow doesn’t just fall to his knees in front of me, even in my dreams. (For the most part.)
His eyes go cold quickly, but he lowers his sword at his side. “Where’s Agatha?” he asks.
I frown in confusion, because he’s never asked me that in one of these dreams. “Why does that matter?”
“Usually when I get here, the two of you are together,” he says. I see him tighten his grip on his sword, like he’s afraid this is one of my “plots” against him.
Darling.
“That happened once, Snow,” I say, though I don’t know why I feel the need to defend myself to a projection of him in my mind.
“It happens every night, Baz.” Snow glowers at me, as if I should know what he’s talking about.
“What are you talking about?”
“This,” he says emphatically. “This dream. I have it every night. But Agatha’s always here.”
Of course. Even in my dreams, Simon Snow thinks he’s the centre of the universe. “This is my dream, Snow,” I tell him, and he frowns in confusion.
“What?”
“It’s my dream. We’re in my head. You’re just in my head. You’re not real.”
“You’re the one who’s not real, Baz!” he says angrily, then reaches out and pinches me on the arm. Hard.
“Fuck, Snow, what was that for?” I say as I rub the spot on my arm.
“I was trying to see if you were dreaming.”
I drop my head back a bit and look up at the sky with an exasperated sigh. “How would that even work, Snow?” I ask as I return my attention to him. “First of all, it’s supposed to be so you can tell if you’re dreaming, when you pinch yourself. Secondly, it doesn’t actually work, because it’s possible to dream sensations. Which I’ve just proven.”
“I don’t actually know that you felt it, though,” Snow points out, as if that’s a good argument. “I only know what you tell me. What my brain makes you tell me.”
“Crowley,” I mutter. “You’re even more thick than you usually are when I have a dream like this.”
“I’m having this dream, Baz!”
I let out a sarcastic laugh. “Why is my brain trying to convince me that I’m in your dream instead of mine?”
“It’s not your brain, it’s mine,” he replies irritably. Like he’s upset that I would try to take this from him, too.
“I’m a pretty lucid dreamer, Snow,” I say. “I think I would know if it weren’t my dream. Actually, I wouldn’t have any thoughts if it weren’t my dream. The fact that I have thoughts right now just shows that it’s my dream. Cogito, ergo sum.”
“What does that mean?”
“I think, therefore I am.”
Snow frowns again, though his expression is more concerned than angry. “I didn’t know that,” he says slowly.
“That’s not surprising—”
“No, I mean, how did I dream something I didn’t even know?”
“Well, you could have dreamt it wrong,” I argue, though I’m not sure if I should be encouraging him to think this is his dream. Then again, what difference does it make? I can do anything I want here.
“Oh…”
“Anyway, if you want to believe this is your dream, Snow, then fine,” I add, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Though I don’t know why you would want to claim it as yours, considering you just admitted that you dream about me every night.” The corner of my mouth lifts into a smirk as Simon’s cheeks flush a little.
“Because I’m worried about you!” he replies defensively. “Er, I mean, I’m worried about what you’re up to. You must be plotting against me, to have disappeared for this long.”
“Right,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Because my whole life revolves around you.” (I mean, it does, but I don’t need to tell him that.)
“Then where have you been the past six weeks?” He throws his arms up in exasperation, forgetting for a moment that he’s holding a sword in one of them, before he quickly puts it away.
“I’ve been kidnapped by numpties,” I say, completely deadpan.
He clearly doesn’t believe me. He starts to laugh. “Only I would come up with something that stupid, wouldn’t I?”
“But it’s true.”
He laughs again. “It’s like I’m just so desperate for you not to be plotting against me that I’ll make up the most ridiculous excuse ever—”
“I’m not making it up—You’re not making it up, Snow,” I say louder. “I am currently trapped in a coffin, being held hostage by fucking numpties.”
“A coffin?” he raises an inquisitive eyebrow. “Is my subconscious really that literal?”
I sigh again and pinch the bridge of my nose. “I wouldn’t put it past you, Snow.”
“Well,” he adds, “I’d probably be concerned if you actually had been kidnapped by numpties, but at least this is all in my head.”
“You’d be concerned?” I say as my smirk makes another appearance.
“No, not like—I just mean—Wait.” Snow looks as though something has just occurred to him and he can’t quite wrap his head around it. “Earlier you said something about how I’m even more thick than I usually am when you have a dream like this…”
“You are.”
“So… you have dreams like this?” he asks. “With me in them?”
“Occasionally,” I reply, folding my arms across my chest.
Simon’s gaze drifts towards a nearby rock, but I don’t think he’s really looking at it so much as he’s lost in thought. (I’m not sure how that’s possible, though, considering how few thoughts he has.)
“Why would I dream that you dream about me?” he says, though he’s mostly just mumbling to himself.
“Because you’re obsessed with me,” I say smugly as I comb back my hair with my fingers. (It’s basically my equivalent of a dramatic hair flip.)
He looks back at me and scowls. “Only because I can’t get away from you!” he says.
“Snow, I’ve been gone for the past—what did you say? Six weeks?” I point out. “Is that not away from me enough?”
“You’re here right now!”
“We’re in my head; neither of us is here right now.”
“Then why are we here?” he asks impatiently.
“I just said that we’re not—”
“No, I mean, if this is your dream, why are we here? In the Woods.”
“Seems as good a place as any,” I say, glancing around the small clearing around us. “Not that I’ve ever dreamed us in this exact spot before, but it’ll work, right?”
Snow takes a small step back, a frown on his face, as he places his hand right where his sword would appear if he were to call it, like he’s getting ready to draw it, just in case. “Work for what?” he asks, his eyes narrowing at me.
“I dunno, Snow,” I say, waving my hand through the air with nonchalance. “A romantic rendezvous?”
His facial reaction is kind of priceless, and I almost wonder if this is what he’d look like if I actually said that to him. It’s hilarious enough that I almost want to try next time I do see him in real life. I mean, if I ever see him again in real life…
“Is that supposed to be funny?” he asks, as if he’s taken personal offence by it.
“Only slightly.”
“We both know that I saw you here with Agatha,” he adds. “Having a romantic rendezvous, or whatever.”
I have to stifle a laugh. “That wasn’t anything, Snow,” I say as I lower my arms to my sides. “Crowley, you’d think after having this conversation with you so many times, you’d get it by now.”
“We’ve never had this conversation.”
“Maybe not in every single dream, but enough times that it feels tedious.”
“Even in my dreams, we haven’t had this conversation,” he says. “Not like this, anyway. Not without Agatha here, choosing you over me.”
“I’m talking about my dreams, Snow,” I reply, with more than a hint of annoyance in my voice. “And you’ve been in them enough times that I shouldn’t have to spell it all out for you every single time.”
“Spell all what out?”
I’m tired of him playing dumb by this point, so I decide to skip ahead to where I just go up and kiss him. (Normally, I would let the dream progress more organically than this, but he’s not usually quite so obtuse, so I figured letting it just play its course would take quite some time.)
It feels different now, though. I’ve done this enough times to have a pretty solid idea of what it’s like to kiss dream-Simon, but this isn’t the same. For one, his lips are even hotter than I usually imagine them. And instead of starting hesitant and slowly melting into it, Simon kisses me back almost instantaneously, but then quickly pushes me away.
“What the hell am I doing?” he says, holding his hands out in front of him to keep me from coming closer. “Why would I dream that?”
“For the last time, this is my dream, alright?” I say. “So you can just relax, since, you know, this isn’t even real.”
“Why would you dream about this, though?”
“Because I’m very, very gay, Snow.”
Simon snorts a laugh, rather unflatteringly. (I would still definitely kiss him again, though.)
“Yeah, right,” he says sarcastically, but then his expression shifts back to intense contemplation. “Wait, is my subconscious trying to tell me something?”
I hang my head forward for a second and exhale loudly. “You’re in my subconscious,” I tell him for the umpteenth time. “You don’t even exist. So stop worrying about it."
“What does this mean?” he continues, staring off distantly like he didn’t even hear me, but then he looks me in the eye again. “If you’re just a thing in my head, that means you’re really a part of me, so if you’re saying that you’re gay, then that means a part of me is—”
“Merlin, Snow,” I say with a groan of frustration. “Even if this was your dream—which it’s not—it could just mean that you subconsciously noticed my gayness over the years, and your brain is finally making you aware of it.”
Snow appears to consider this for a moment, but then frowns again. “Why would my brain need to tell me that, though?” he says. “I mean, what do I care if you’re gay?”
“It’s not even your brain at all; I was just making a point.”
“Hypothetically,” he says slowly, “if this is your dream—and I still don’t think it is, because I’m, well, thinking. It’s the… what did you call it? Cognito…?”
“Cogito, ergo sum.”
“Right. So I’m pretty sure this is my dream. But anyway,” he continues, “if it was yours, somehow, it still doesn’t explain why you…”
“Kissed you?” I ask impatiently, and he nods. “I told you, I’m very, very gay, Snow.”
“Being gay is not the same thing as kissing me, though.”
I squint a little when I look back at him, scrutinizing his face, because there’s definitely something different about him this time. He’s not usually so dense, true, but he’s also not usually so astute. He never questions me about the fact that gay equals wanting to kiss Simon Snow. He just intrinsically gets that. Because he’s in my head.
But this time…
“What are you doing?” he says once a minute has gone by and I still haven’t done anything but stare at him.
“Is this a test?” I ask. “Are you a test put forth by my brain to prove some sort of point?”
“I don’t… think so,” Simon replies warily. “Wait, are you a test for me?”
“Why would this be a test for you, Snow?”
“Oh, what, you can have a test but I can’t?”
I groan again and rake my hair back, this time without the smugness. “I think this is a test of my patience…” I mutter.
“I wonder what I’m being tested on,” he adds, holding his chin as if it will help him think clearer. “Maybe it’s about whether or not I should trust you.”
“Well, you already don’t trust me when I tell you this is my dream, so...”
He drops his hand and looks at me with his head slightly tilted to one side. “Maybe I should, though,” he says. “Because you could be right. This could be your dream…”
“Oh? What makes you say that? Besides the fact that it is definitely my dream.”
“Well, if you were just a figment of my imagination, you’d be saying and doing stuff more like what I’d expect from you, yes?” he replies, still pondering carefully. “The Baz that I know would never kiss me and tell me he was gay, and then try to convince me that it’s all in his head. He would do everything in his power to make me believe it was my dream—whether it was or not—just to get me all confused and stuff.
“So because you’re not behaving the way I would expect the Baz that I know to behave, it’s possible that you are actually Baz, and I somehow ended up in your dream…” He continues to stare into the middle distance for a moment before returning his focus to me. “Right?”
I don’t really know how to respond to that, because it is one of the stupidest rationales I’ve ever heard. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. Snow was one of those kids who would frequently get the right answer on a maths problem even though all of the calculation steps he took to get there were wrong.
“Right,” I say, just so I don’t have to keep explaining this to him. He got close enough. “So. Since we’ve established that this is my dream, then we should do what I want to do, and I think—”
“Wait, you aren’t wondering why the hell I’m in your dream?” Simon cuts in. Stupidly.
“No, I’m not,” I tell him. “You’re always in my dreams, and I know why, so I don’t have to wonder.”
“I’ve never been in one of your dreams before, Baz,” he says seriously.
“Yes, you have.”
“No, I—I mean, maybe you’ve had dreams about me,”—he pauses to swallow nervously—“but I’ve not been there. I’m not in your imagination right now. Er, well, I might be in your imagination, technically, I’m not sure. But I’m also still me.”
I exhale wearily; this game is getting so old. “That’s not possible, Snow,” I try to explain to him. “It sounds like you’re trying to say that our minds or consciousnesses or what have you are inhabiting the same dream right now, and that’s… nonsense.”
“I dunno, maybe you put a spell on me or something.”
“Why would I spell you into my dream?”
“Maybe it’s a plot—”
“Oh, will you give that a rest! I’m not plotting against you anymore.”
He eyes me suspiciously. “Why not?”
“Well, first of all, I think I might die in a coffin surrounded by numpties—” I stop myself suddenly when I thought strikes me. A terrifying thought. “Am I dead?”
“What?”
“What if I’m—Maybe I’m dead and we’re in your dream,” I continue, even though I could kick myself for starting to sound like Snow. But this whole thing is doing my head in. “What if I just haven’t made it through the Veil yet and I somehow wound up passing through your dream and—”
“You’re not dead, Baz,” he says assuredly.
I can feel myself starting to freak out a little, so I try to rein it in. “How do you know?”
“I feel like I would just know if you were dead…” he adds, lowering his voice towards the end. “I think I would sense it.”
“You’d sense it?”
“Like a sixth sense.”
“The sixth sense is seeing dead people, not dreaming about non-dead people.”
Simon lets out a huff, the way he does when I annoy him by being pedantic. “I just mean, I’d feel something. I already feel something with you missing.”
“And how do you know that’s not the feeling of me being dead?”
“Because,” he says, looking down at his shoe as he scuffs it into the dirt, “it would feel worse than that.”
“Why?” I ask, glaring at him skeptically. “Because you want to kill me yourself?”
“No, it’s just—It’s like, you’ve been this big, terrible, all-consuming part of my life for so many years, that when you’re gone it’s like… half of me is gone, too,” he says. “But if you were dead it would feel like everything was gone.”
I try to keep glaring at him, but I can feel a smile creeping in, so I turn it into a smirk instead. “You know that sounds really gay, right?”
“Says the guy who kissed me before,” he scoffs.
“I also freely admitted that I’m gay, so please, Snow, carry on with your point.”
“My point is that you can’t be dead because… well, because it would hurt too much!”
His earnestness takes me aback for a second, but then I furrow my brow again and eye him questioningly. “Does that mean I can’t be dead, though, or you just don’t want me to be dead?”
“Both,” he says, clenching his fists a little. “You have to come back, Baz. I won’t let you leave like that.”
“And what are you going to do about it?” I ask.
“I’ll find you.” He doesn’t say it in a sappy way, more like a threat. “I’ll find you and I’ll bring you back, and we’ll have it out like we were always supposed to.”
“If I’m relying on you to find me, then I’m pretty sure I’m going to die in this coffin, anyway,” I say with a sarcastic laugh. “Besides, I’m still not convinced that this isn’t all in my head. And even if we’re actually in this thing together, there’s no way to prove that when we wake up. So you have no reason to trust that anything I’ve said here was true. Plus, what are you going to do? Run all over London looking for numpties until you find me?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay, well, have fun with that.” I nod dismissively and start to back away. “But I think I’m just going to wake up now, unless things here are about to get a whole lot more interesting—”
I’m cut-off mid-sentence when he kisses me.
This is definitely all in my head.
“I’ll find you, Baz,” he says, looking me in the eye. “Don’t die until I find you.”
“Okay,” I reply seriously, even though I know none of this is real. None of this will make any difference to anything. But I want to hope it will, and so for a minute, I allow myself to.
“Okay,” Simon echoes, backing away slowly. “Now, how do I make myself wake up from one of these dreams?”
“I don’t really know—”
I suddenly feel myself falling from a great height, like the Earth was moved a mile beneath me, and I wake with a start right when I hit the ground. “Ow!” I mutter, because I tried to sit up and I hit my head on the lid of the coffin. I guess I forgot where I was.
The hope I felt moments ago has dissipated, but I actually start laughing. Out loud. Because, fuck it, I’m trapped in a coffin and subsisting solely on blood, so I’m allowed to be a little out of my mind. Or a lot out of my mind.
It is kind of hilarious, though, that I dreamt about Snow trying to convince me that somehow he was actually there, and we were in the dream together. Definitely a plot twist my brain had never thrown at me before.
My laughter dies down eventually, though, so I try for a while to force myself back to sleep because there’s nothing better to do. But I can’t seem to sleep.
Then again, maybe I am asleep. I find myself suddenly blinded by a harsh light in my eyes, and I soon realize that I must be dreaming, because I can hear traffic noises, and smell fresh air, and see a backlit figure looming over me. I think for a second that it might be Snow… until I see the dragon wings and devil’s tail on the figure’s back.
“Baz, are you okay?” it says, in Snow’s voice.
After a moment I can see a bit more clearly, and I recognize that it is, in fact, Simon Snow standing above me—with dragon wings and a devil’s tail. I try to speak but it takes a couple seconds for my vocal cords to warm up. That happens in dreams from time to time; I just choke on my words.
“I’ll admit this isn’t the first time I’ve had the Sleeping-Beauty-in-a-coffin dream,” I say once I find my voice, “but the wings are a new touch. Not really sure what to make of that. Or the tail…”
“It’s not a dream, Baz,” Snow says, leaning over the side of the coffin and looking at me with concern. “I’m really here. This—These—It’s real.”
I sit up slowly, but I still get quite dizzy, so I try to focus on Simon again. Or whatever this thing is. He crouches down to meet me at eye level.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
“I don’t… know… exactly…” I reply as I take a glance around us and notice that it looks likes there’s been a bit of a tussle with the numpties, who are nowhere to be seen now. I’m starting to think I might not be dreaming, for as surreal as everything—and I mean everything—is right now, it’s also so much more vivid than my dreams.
“How did…” I want to ask something, but then I realize I have way too many questions and I don’t know where to begin.
“I looked it up,” Snow says, like he thinks he knows what I was going to ask even though I still have no idea.
“You looked what up?”
“Cogito, ergo sum,” he replies proudly.
I stare at him blankly for a moment before the full impact of his words hits me. He looked it up.
“And you were right about what it meant,” he continues. “But since I had no idea before you told me in the dream, I knew you couldn’t have been a figment of my imagination, and that the other things you said were probably also true. Like how you were kidnapped by numpties.”
“Wait… You—You were really in my dream?” I ask, and I have a flash of panic when I think about what other things he must know from the dream…
“I guess so.”
“But… how did you even find me? And what’s with the wings?”
“Um, well, I was just thinking about how I needed to find you, and how it would be so much easier if I could fly to you, and they just sort of… sprouted,” he says, a bit sheepishly. “And I’m not even sure how I found you, exactly… I just, um—This is going to sound really corny, and I’m sorry, but I followed my heart.”
I squint my eyes as him. “Are you fucking with me, Snow?”
“No, seriously, I could like… feel it in my chest,” he adds, pushing his hands into his chest emphatically. “I think… I think I just sort of wished that I could find you, and I found you.”
“You wished?”
“Yeah, like, I think with all this stuff, I just wished for it and then it happened. Like magic.”
“Magic doesn’t work like that.”
He shrugs. “Maybe mine does,” he says, and then looks down for a second before continuing. “I also think I wished myself into your dream,” he adds. “Or I wished you into mine. I’m not sure, but I just… I really wanted to see you, Baz.”
My expression softens when I see the sincerity on his face. “Why?” I ask quietly.
“I… I don’t know,” he replies, lowering his gaze nervously again. “Or, well, I didn’t know… Not at the time.”
“Simon—” I start to say.
And then he kisses me. Again.
Maybe this is a dream, after all. Absolutely none of this makes sense. The shared dream. The kiss. The wings.
“Simon,” I repeat once he pulls away slightly, “you wished that you could fly to me and then grew wings, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Then what’s with the tail?”
He takes a look over his shoulder towards his tail and then faces me again with a shrug. “I have no idea,” he laughs.
So I kiss him this time. Because why not? Either this is a dream and I have nothing to lose, or this is real and I have everything to gain.
It’s been a couple of weeks since Simon brought me back to Watford—in his arms, no less. He seriously bridal-carried me in his arms and flew me here. (If I wasn’t utterly and hopelessly gay for Simon Snow before, well…)
I’ve also done enough tests to figure out if I’m dreaming—reading text, looking at clocks, etc—that I feel confident in believing that I am not. This is all real.
Including that fucking tail.
Simon was able to make the wings go away—actually, he made them retract back into himself, which was particularly disturbing to witness—shortly after we returned to Watford. But without knowing why he wished himself a tail in the first place, he was unable to get rid of it himself.
I tried to help him spell it away, though I wasn’t really sure of any spells intended for such a purpose. (Heads I win, tails you lose had less of a literal effect than I had hoped, and I wound up just having an unfair advantage over him with everything we did that day.) (Not that I was complaining.)
Now I just spell it invisible for him each morning before breakfast, even though I keep trying to convince him that he doesn’t have to be so self-conscious about it, not here at Watford.
“It actually sort of suits you,” I tell him, tugging playfully on his tail as he passes me on his way to the bathroom and giving him a smirk when he turns to look at me. “Plus, I like it.”
“Oh, I know, Baz,” he says as he steps up in front of me and places his hands on my shoulders. “That’s why I don’t want anyone else to see it.”
I raise an eyebrow inquisitively and he kisses me before holding his face just in front of mine, which he has cupped in his hands.
“For your eyes only, Basil,” he adds with a self-satisfied smirk. (I must be rubbing off on him.) (Shut up, I hear how that sounds!)
“My eyes only, huh?” I reply, smiling much more genuinely than I intend to. “Lucky me.”