My Cup of Tea (snowbaz)

Chapter Thirty-Three

"And I didn't lie to you," Baz said, his voice angry and jaded now. 

Simon's head snapped up to look at him, his blue eyes rimmed with red as tears formed. "Excuse me?" 

"I didn't lie to you. I didn't tell you, yes, but I didn't lie to you. So you can't try and make me feel bad about it. Not for lying."

Simon laughed.

Was this all funny, somehow? 

"Oh, right, my bad. Yeah, keeping a fucking relationship from me isn't lying! I've got no reason to be upset with you, have I? This is just another thing that a fucking Pitch does to get his way in the world, innit? Do you even care that your secrecy is breaking us apart?"

"Don't you dare bring the Pitch name into this," Baz warned. 

"I just...I'm such an idiot. I actually--I believed you." 

Baz, feeling like this was going somewhere different now (somewhere more tender, maybe, now that Simon's voice was normal again) sat next to him on the sofa, turning to face him. He saw those tears up close now, saw how they ran down Simon's face. He wanted to kiss them away. 

"Believed I what?" He was whispering now. It felt right, given how close they were. 

"That you loved me," Simon croaked. 

I do, he wanted to say. I love you more than I have ever loved anything in my entire life. I love you more than the air I breathe. I'd hang the stars, the bloody moon for you if you asked. 

"I do love you, Simon."

Simon shook his head. "I don't know much about it, but I know that this isn't what you're supposed to do. You...you hurt me, Baz. And I know you're not supposed to hurt the people you love." 

The air was so thick that it was suffocating him. Simon's words were knives pushing through his skin, filling him with a pain that he'd never experienced. Certainly he didn't mean that. Certainly he knew how Baz felt about him--how hearing that pain in Simon's voice was tearing him apart. 

"I never meant to hurt you. I'm sorry if I did. Truly. I'm so in love with you that it hurts sometimes, Simon. Especially in this moment when you don't seem to believe that I'm desperately in love with you."

Simon grew quiet for a moment. "I...I think this happened too fast. And I think that it's impossible for you to be with me right now with everything going on with your dad. I don't know what it's like to have a family, but I know that family's supposed to be important. More important than anything. I'm not worth it. I'm not worth you getting you in trouble with your's."

The tears were pouring now, from both of them. Baz took Simon's hands in his own, just to reassure himself that Simon was still there. 

For the moment, anyway. 

"I don't know how else to tell you how much you matter to me, Simon. I choose you, okay? Over him. Over everything. I choose you." 

"I know. I can't let you though," he said, shaking his head, his curls bouncing around. "I'm not gonna be the one who stands in the way of you and your family. It's not fair. Or right. For either of us." 

"What does that mean?" 

"It means..." he took a deep breath, retracting his hands from Baz's grasp. "It means that we're ending this."

That anger that Baz had buried was boiling up again, this time in full fucking force. It was swallowing him whole. "We're not doing anything," he said, suddenly on his feet. "This is all you. Your choice. Who even fucking knew that you could make one?"

"I--"

"Don't. Don't even start with me. I'm just surprised you managed to find the words to say it. Christ knows that there are plenty of other things you can't seem to bring yourself to say."

His walls were rebuilding themselves. Everything he'd knocked down, every part of him that he'd let Simon see, it was gone. His defenses were back now and they were in full force. His mouth was firing out every insult, every evil thing he could think of before he could even try to stop it. Simon's sobbing, Simon's pathetic voice begging him to stop did nothing but press him forward. Encourage him, even. It was damn good that Simon was hurting. 

Let him hurt. Let him feel even one ounce of what I'm feeling right now.

"I'm glad to finally be rid of you. I'm glad that I'll have my nights free to stop dealing with your pathetic nightmares about care homes and your little moments where you fall silent because of whatever fucking 'trauma' you think you've endured. I've had a lot of shitty boyfriends before, but you, Snow, were by far the worst. At least the rest of them could string a bloody sentence together without falling apart. At least they were good enough to have parents and--"

What the fuck have I done?

He had been so obsessed with forcing himself to close up again that he hadn't even registered what was coming out of his mouth. His hand flew up to cover his mouth like that could take back what he'd said, but it couldn't. He knew that it couldn't. He'd fucked up. Royally. He'd crossed the line from dick to complete and utter arsehole. He wanted to apologize, he wanted to get down on his knees and beg Simon to forgive him. 

"Get the fuck out of here before I run you through," a voice said from behind him. He turned and saw Penny standing in the doorway, her backpack slung around her shoulder. 

Simon was unmoving in a ball on the sofa, shaking and sobbing. 

"I--" Baz tried. 

"Out. Now." 

He nodded, sending one more glance towards Simon, and sprinted out the door.