Chapter Text
“This is ridiculous.”
Snow is pacing again, magic rolling off of him in furious waves. I keep my gaze fixed on my book, but don’t bother turning the page. He’s not paying enough attention to me to realize I’ve been staring at the same sentence for ten minutes. “There’s got to be some way around this.” He turns to me. “Baz.”
Ridiculous is certainly an apt description of our current situation. After a third year butchered a spell to a degree that even Snow has proved thus far incapable, managing to cover the grounds in an odd sort of pink mist that made anyone who stands in it fall head-over-heels in love (as much as a spell can do, which is more along the lines of lust-filled, obsessive infatuation) with anyone they see, everyone had been hastily quarantined in their rooms.
Thankfully, the effects wore off immediately once the person affected stepped outside of the mist, and it didn’t seem to want to ooze into any of the buildings, so the resulting chaos had been over fairly quickly.
Not-so-thankfully, I am now stuck in a room with Snow until the spell wears off, which Miss Possibelf had determined would be an entire week - seven fucking days of pure torture.
I wait a long moment - long enough that the smell of smoke begins to flood the air - before slowly raising my eyes to meet his gaze. “Yes?” I grind out, painfully polite. I’d rather not start a major fight on the first day of this; Merlin knows how we’re going to get through it already.
“Why can’t the Mage just use a counterspell?”
I lace my voice with just enough disdain to piss him off. “None are working.” And even if they were, the Mage would probably mess it up.
He glares at me and resumes pacing. Crowley, I didn’t even do anything this time.
Chef Pritchard is supposed to be (magically) distributing food for dinner later, which will hopefully distract Snow for at least a few minutes, but for now we’re stuck in the room with nothing to do but yell at each other. The scent of smoke is getting stronger - I cough, then put my book down. I need to get him to calm down before he goes off. “Snow.”
He stops, spinning around to glare at me, fire in his eyes, but I just meet him with a bored gaze. “You need to calm down.” How am I supposed to deal with this, nonstop, for a week?
He throws himself on his bed. “How the fuck am I supposed to do that? I have to spend God knows how long locked up in this room with you.”
I choose to ignore the opportunity to make fun of him for swearing like a Normal. Honestly, I ought to be given a medal for holding my temper. “Really, Snow? I’m just sitting here reading. You’re the one lumbering around like a numpty, throwing magic everywhere. Learn to bloody control it.”
He growls, reaching up to run his hands through his hair. I want to fix it, push it down into place, then kiss the top of his head until he feels better. “I’m bored , Baz. We’ve been locked up in here for hours.”
“And we’re going to be locked up in here for seven days, so find something to do that doesn’t involve setting the place on fire.”
It’s not like I’m happy to be stuck in a room with Snow for a week. Merlin knows it’s already bad enough seeing him in the few minutes before bed and in the morning, but I’m not complaining. Yet.
Snow groans and presses his face into the pillow. Less than a minute later, he stands up and calls his sword, probably to practice, rather than run me through with it. Merlin and Morgana, no. I don’t think I can stand watching him jumping around the room with that thing, both because of the potential breakage of my belongings and the unavoidable muscle-flexing it will involve.
“Crowley, Snow, anything but that,” I drawl, and Snow turns on me, eyes burning.
“If you have any other suggestions, Pitch, feel free to let me know,” he snaps. It’s one of the most coherent sentences I’ve heard from him in a while - probably because the words are borrowed almost directly from me. “Otherwise, fuck off.”
“Read a book. Attempt to complete your homework. I could go on?” I sneer - and it actually works. He puts away that cursed sword and flops down on his bed, rolling onto his stomach and burying his head in the pillows. It’s adorable , the kind of offense that makes me want to play with his hair and hold his hand and Merlin am I fucked.
“Baz,” he says, haltingly, but doesn’t continue.
“Quit talking to me,” I snap, and Snow lets out a groan of exasperation.
--
Dinner comes with far more fanfare than is in any way necessary. There’s a dim flash of blue light, and then two plates appear with a clatter in front of the door, startling Snow enough that he almost falls out of bed.
Then he actually does fall out of bed in his haste to get to the food, and I can’t even hide my grin of delight.
Snow devours the food in less than ten minutes, then stares at the empty plate sadly. I’m beyond tempted to offer him my own - I’m not going to eat in front of him, anyway - but that would be ten kilometers off the edge of obvious.
Instead, I carry my plate over to my desk and place a stasis spell over it. I’ll eat once he goes to bed.
Two hours later, when I stand up and head to the door to go down to the Catacombs to drink, Snow sits up in bed abruptly.
I want to curse. I’d been sure he was asleep.
“What are you doing?” he demands, all self-righteous suspicion.
“Out,” I say abruptly. “Or are you so incompetent that you can’t see even that?”
His scowl deepens. “What the fuck, Baz, you’re not allowed.” Then his eyes widen, and I know he realized where I’m going. Took him long enough, honestly.
“The spell needs more than one person to work,” I say dryly. He hesitates, then nods, and I wonder if his easy concession was more because he knows as well as I do that I can’t just not go, than because I am, of course, correct.
What he doesn’t know, naturally, is that it wouldn’t work anyway. Love spells don’t work if the recipient is already head-over-heels for his idiot roommate.