Simon had never understood why people felt the need to scribble over bathroom walls like public diaries. Everything from declarations of love to demeaning comments to phone numbers to sadly poetic confessions. All hanging over a toilet bowl. He didn't even want to think about that.

Maybe it was the allure of letting everyone see into the depths of your mind, of spewing out your darkest secrets without the recipients having any knowledge of where they came from. Maybe it was just something to take up time during sluffed classes. It could've been a reckless need to retaliate against the school system. But all of these relied on the feeble hope that the author's (if you could call a person scrawling "W+N" inside a messy excuse for a heart an author) identity remained a secret.

Which was why most of these aimless doodles and blunders tended to cluster on the inside of bathroom stalls instead of the exposed tiles above the stainless steel monstrosity of a sink where anyone could walk in and catch you bleeding your heart onto the walls. Where it was truly reckless and a bit stupidly brave to stand and wield a Sharpie against a surface meant for the eyes of countless strangers. Where almost anyone who had the decency to wash their hands (and Simon hoped that was, at least, mostly everyone) would see it.

So maybe that was why he stood and stared for so long. Maybe that was why it felt like something more than just a time-wasting mechanism, just some bloke who thought it would be amusing to mess with him. Or it could have just been his name, etched so fierce and sure that he almost believed it had always belonged to that small square of blue tile. It was probably just the words themselves, the improbable simplicity of them.

Simon Snow is so alive.

They hardly even meant anything at all, but the word alive was traced over again and again and again so that it stood out as stark as a gash or an oil spill. And his name was written with obvious care, the kind of handwriting a person seldom has unless they're focusing on every letter, the way it bends and curves and fits itself into the rest. And Simon knew that this was the case because the four letters between Snow and alive were careless in a way that was only noticeable if you'd seen the alternative first.

It was a stupid thing to set his heart racing the way it did, it was a stupid thing to think that a boy had stood there and bled his heart onto the walls (stupidly, insignificantly brave) for a thing such as that, that he'd risked scathing insults and sneering faces, and it was stupid that it sent his cheeks burning. It was ridiculous that his heart hurt because Agatha Wellbelove had never so much as risked breaking a pretty nail for him. (And he knew that he couldn't, shouldn't, couldn't resent her for it because a person is never obligated to love another, not really--not when it's a silly high school romance--but it was so, so hard.)

Even so, Simon couldn't forget it. He found himself straying into the boy's bathroom in the 700 hall far more than was necessary and he found himself met with smirks from his peers as they slid their gazes from the wall to his flushed cheeks. And he couldn't bring himself to care.

Until the smirk was as sharp as glass shards and the gaze was as grey as the sky unfurling above the brick prison all around them. Until it was Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch, hair meticulous and tie as straight as a razor, leaning against the wall next to the steel monstrosity and cooing, "Aw, does Snow have himself a secret admirer?" Because Baz always had a way of getting under his skin.

Simon knew that his cheeks were flaring and he knew that Baz saw his eyes flit to the wall briefly and he knew that the tightness in his jaw was slowly spreading across his shoulders. "Jealous, are we?"

Their eyes were locked together because both of them were unflinchingly stubborn. The only sound right then would have been water melting from Snow's fingers and tapping coolly against the floor if it weren't for the haze of students rushing past outside the door, jabbering away and oblivious.

"I bet you'd like to think so." Every word was carefully placed, almost calculated; Baz's tongue wrapping around each one and drawing it past his lips deliberately, Baz's eyelids dropping to half-shield his cutting irises from view. The definition of contempt. Simon's blood boiled.

"I bet you'd like it if I did." He could feel his nails biting into the palms of his hands, his stomach tying itself into angry knots. And his eyes were all slitted mockery and his voice was everything and a challenge.

A huff pushed past Baz's lips and bounced off the walls dully because, outside, the halls were clearing as the clock ticked dangerously close to the tardy bell. "I wouldn't be so sure, Snow." He was pushing himself off the wall, all hips and arms unraveling themselves from where they'd been folded casually across his chest, and Simon felt himself swallow and hated it. Hated it because it was a nervous reflex and it made Baz's mouth curl even further into its smirk.

"I'll see you tomorrow." It sounded like a threat coming off of that mouth and Simon watched him disappear out the door, watched the door itself shut quietly to block an empty hallway from view. As the late bell screeched above him, his hands were still curled into fists and something in his chest was still twisted and coiled so tightly that it was ugly and his head was spinning, spinning, tumbling, falling, angry-- unresolved. It was all hopelessly unresolved.

He let his fingers drop and become limp.

A smirk and hips and high cheekbones slicing through a deep voice, all coming together to form a taunt: I'll see you tomorrow.

-

Tomorrow came and went, a blur of sneers and mind-numbing coursework. The tomorrow after that wasn't much different, and neither was the second or the third or the fourth. But on the fifth (not including a truly dreadful weekend), Simon slipped into the bathroom five doors down from the library just to see the words that were burned behind his eyelids anyway and found new ones scrawled below them in the same lilt as the is so above them.

And I'm a tragedy.

All of the letters in the third and final word were too negligently sprawled, like the hand that had written them had given up a long while ago. Simon brushed his fingers over them gingerly.

It was marvelously stupid for him to get so worked up over something so small, but it felt wondrous that someone cared. It hurt because he might never know who that someone was.

So he inched closer to the wall hesitantly, gulped and glanced at the door before he set his Sharpie against the tile.

That's alright, so am I.

His handwriting was rough and jittery like the ink was itching to burst out of the confines of the letter it was creating. It looked like something ready to go off, explode. It looked a lot like Simon felt. He remembered reading somewhere that handwriting is like a person's voice on paper. (Or tile, in this case.)

Revisiting the wall day by day started to feel like a chore.

Simon was gradually convincing himself that there had been no reason to hope at all. There was another Simon Snow in the school or it was just a joke or he was overreacting or it didn't mean what he had thought at all.

What was the point of revisiting a set of letters if they didn't hold any value? If doing so just ensured slate-cold eyes and words and sneers?

So he stopped, started avoiding that bathroom at all costs. Which wasn't hard, considering he'd been going out of his way before.

That didn't stop Baz from taunting him about it anyway.

It's been a while since you've visited your little shrine, Snow.

I think your wall might be getting a little lonely, Snow.

A tragedy? Is that what you are? I can't say I disagree.

You having trouble remembering that you're alive this week, Snow?

He said alive like it meant something more than existing.

Simon wanted so badly to believe that. He wanted so badly to feel like he was something with layers, something that had been traced over and over and over again like that word pressed and bled and cut into the wall with ink. Alive, alive, alive.

Simon wasn't sure he knew what the word meant.

You having trouble remembering that you're alive this week, Snow?

He stood frozen at the edge of the hallway for one. . . two. . . three. . . four seconds too long before he jerked forward and ripped through crowds and let his feet carry him all the way down the main hall, took a sharp right turn, until he was there, outside the ugly, beaten door and unsure why he was in the first place. (It was a gaping hole in his center that some would call hopelessness. He was there because weeks ago, that hole had looked like it might be filled and he wanted that back, was grasping at straws.)

Everything Simon did lately was stupid and pointless, why should this be the exception? So he opened the door, not really expecting anything at all.

He was definitely not expecting Baz. Baz with his palm pressed flat against the wall next to the sink, partially covering the word alive, Baz with the fingers of his other hand firmly wrapped around a Sharpie, midway through writing the word match. Baz turning around to see him and failing for once in his life to look cool and composed.

The door swung softly closed behind him and Simon choked on air.

"It was. . . You're. . ." Too much was going on inside of his brain, thoughts piling and piling. Of course. Of course. Of course. Who else?

He felt his face slowly tightening from shock to hurt to anger. "Is this just some sick joke to you, Baz? Just another way to torment me? You think it's amusing to get my hopes up like that? To make me feel wanted for once in my life?"

Baz's face was tightening too, now, but Simon wasn't going to let his venom leech past his lips. Not this time.

"I always knew you were sick, but I never thought. . ." He just shook his head, took an uncertain step back and was furious at himself for giving ground. (Hated himself for noticing how Baz flinched at the word sick.)

It only took that long for Baz to snarl, "You think you're not wanted, Snow? You, with the Mage fo--"

"No." He took a step forward this time and it was not uncertain, it was charged with determination and it filled him with a kind of reckless confidence that set his nerves on fire. Hands curled into fists, mouth contorted nastily. "You have never been anything but horrible to me, Pitch." Baz flinched at that too, his last name said like an insult, the same way he said, Snow. "You're pathetic. You can't figure out anything better to do with your time than to scribble lies onto bathroom walls and watch someone-- watch me-- and. . . like it's some twisted form of entertainment? I don't get it, Baz. I don't understand why you won't leave me alone just because you think your family is better than mine. I just. . . I don't understand.

Are you really that-- that. . . cold? Do you seriously think that all of this is accomplishing something, that tearing me down is somehow going to fix all of your problems? Well, newsflash, it's not and the sooner you accept that the sooner--" Every syllable was swallowed up by a startled gust of air and then a grunt as his back slammed into the door behind him.

Baz's fists clenched into his uniform, Baz's eyes wild and hurt and absolutely strange, Baz's mouth twisted and ugly, spewing hate into his face. "SHUT UP. SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP." The same thing, over and over and over. All Simon could do was press himself further into the door and keep his eyes locked onto his nemesis's.

He wasn't sure how long it went it on (long enough for the bell's angry shriek to tear through the air), but he was very aware of Baz's tone gradually becoming less hate-filled and more desperate and raw. He was very aware of his voice quieting until it was nothing but a whisper. It almost happened without any thought, Simon slowly relaxing and Baz sinking into him, his fists becoming softer, not rammed into his chest, but just pressed there like a plea.

They were driven so close that Simon could feel every inch of Baz from his toes to his thighs to his stomach. Their noses were slotted into place, Baz's slender, pale, and too long, pressed right alongside Simon's, thick, golden, and strangely curved. But mostly, he knew Baz's mouth, near enough that he could feel the movements of his lips.

"Shut up. . . just shut up. . . shut up, shut up. . ." It was almost too quiet to be heard now and could only be described as shattered.

Simon took a single, long breath. Tried to ignore the fact that he was taking in Baz's oxygen, pulling it into his lungs, tasting it, tried to focus instead on how the bridge of his nose was situated too high on his face, how he just wanted to yank it back down. But then he was realizing that his eyes were exactly level with it, which meant that their lips were exactly level with each other too, which strangely plummeted to him noticing how his hands weren't pressed flat against the grain of the door anymore and now that they were just hanging there, he wanted to reach up and just touch--

"Baz." His voice was stripped and shaking. It came as a blow to his senses, a surprised huff of air, when Baz's eyes snapped open. Unholy grey and more fierce than a thunderstorm.

He stumbled backward so fast that something in Simon snapped loose. It felt like someone had just wrenched his rib cage open and left him horribly exposed. He couldn't get his heart rate under control, his breathing was too ragged, his throat was closing up, he was aching.

Simon's eyes fell closed, his mouth something torn and uncertain, hands twitching at his sides (reach or shove? press or clutch? hit or touch?). Their breaths were so, so loud in that room. Their breaths and the nervous humming of the lights above them.

"Move." Simon didn't need to open his eyes to know how unhinged Baz looked right then, but he did anyway. Something about his ruffled hair and crumpled uniform made Simon's breath catch, made him lose mobility.

Baz took a step forward, pulled his face into an odious thing because it was his natural line of defense. "I said to move. I have to get to class."

So Simon stepped numbly to the side and watched as Baz swept past, smelling like bergamot and cedar but looking like death.

He was abandoned in an empty room with an ugly sink and defaced stalls, staring blindly ahead. When his vision finally swam back into focus, he was met with the words Baz had been printing earlier.

Then I guess we mat

Unfinished, unresolved. Just like the emotions clawing their way out of Simon's chest through his throat.

-

Tortured was a soft word for the state of Simon's mind.

He could not stop his memory from collecting around those moments. Baz's stomach pressed up against his, Baz's warmth seeping into his bones, Baz's breath invading his lungs, Baz's voice, broken, broken. Fragments.

Simon kept feeling his mouth, so soft he might have imagined it. Not a kiss, but an accident neither of them had moved to fix, and he kept thinking, kept wondering if he had just let his hands press into Baz's waist the way he'd wanted to, if he'd let them glide upward, under his shirt, would his skin have been hot enough to sear? And would that have been enough for Baz to press just a little closer, would he have shivered, would their lips have fit together?

It was dangerous, wondering all of these things, finally letting himself recognize that Baz Pitch did not make him dizzy with anger, but possibly something else.

He wanted to kiss him so slow that it burned, wanted Baz to whimper, wanted to press soft, fluttering kisses down the elegant column of his neck and watch him come undone. And he wanted Baz to kiss him back like there wasn't another option on earth. Wanted Baz to teach him what it meant to be alive.

They danced around each other for the rest of the week, or rather, Baz danced around him and Simon stared and stared until he was forced to at least send a sneer his way. At least he was acknowledging his presence, but Simon didn't want things to go back to how they had been before.

He wanted thinly veiled threats to be replaced with soft commitments and soothing touches instead of lashing blows. It was almost worse, though, to have nothing at all. No words passing between them, no way to get through.

In the end, it came back to this: four sets of words stretching across two bathroom tiles, the last of them unfinished, and now, with a series of strokes that couldn't exactly be called careful, Simon completing it.

There was a dry irony there, the word match penned in two different fonts, one elegant in a tired sort of way, and another hazardously careless. Below it: Wait for me here, Baz.

He took a moment to let his eyes slip over it all:

Baz's very first message, inked there like something vital so that emotion leaked from it like seeping molasses; thick and heavy and sweet: Simon Snow is so alive. When he'd first read that, he would have never stuck Baz Pitch's face to the words, but now the underlying desperation made just a little bit more sense.

And I'm a tragedy, his second message, a confession, one that Simon felt deep in his soul because tragic was a word that spelled out his life as a whole.

What Simon had written back because he felt that this boy had the right to know: That's okay, so am I.

Then I guess we match. The last word contradicted itself, their vastly different handwriting showing that they did not match at all. Except. Except that both halves had a sense of despondency to them.

And the newest edition, Simon's last floundering grasp at something he hadn't even known that he wanted a week ago. A plea for just one attempt at understanding things. He just hoped that it would get through and be accepted.

-

The boy's bathroom at Watford High was not exactly the most romantic place to meet. It tended to smell like a sickly mix of cleaners on its best days and the bad lighting and years of wear turned it into something out of a horror movie.

Simon Snow was not exactly the most eloquent person. He tended to be rash and hard-headed on his best days and the constant post-natural-disaster state of his hair turned him into the personification of a truly horrific car crash.

Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch was not exactly the most patient person. He tended to be irrational on his best days and everything about him turned into some stereotypical vampire joke without any effort at all.

All of this colliding into one choreographed mess at the end of the day painted a comical picture: one truly impatient vampire joke leaning moodily against a wall that was slowly being overtaken by pen, surrounded by a horror-movie-esque bathroom and the overpowering smell of a dozen chemicals, and a car crash in motion, plowing through the door, tripping over his own feet, stuttering an excuse that involved Penelope Bunce.

It all came to a very sudden and brutal halt when their eyes met. (Which was certainly a feat, because once a car crash is taking effect, it is not likely that it will stop all at once.)

Simon swallowed thickly, Baz just sneered. It was several moments before Snow worked up the courage to take a step forward so he was standing in the middle of the room. Two feet is a long distance if it lies between two magnets with opposite poles.

"I think we need to talk."

Baz's jaw was already tightening, his eyes slipping off to the side. He had lips like sin, things that could tear you apart in the matter of a few carefully punctuated syllables. "If this is about what happened on Tuesday, then I'm fully aware that you want nothing to do with me or my queer ass and I won't try anything that might chall--"

Simon took another large and abrupt step forward that brought them much too close. "No."

This caused Baz to break off with a look on his face like he'd been slapped and was enormously relieved about it. Simon watched him blink more times in a single second than he'd thought was physically possible before his attention was diverted to the eyebrow that was slowly making its way up Baz's forehead.

"No?" It came out small and exposed.

Simon's face was pulling itself into a crinkle-eyed, dimple-cheeked smile, "Yeah."

Baz immediately looked exasperated, "Well, make up your mind, Snow. What do you want?" but he wasn't sneering, and Simon swore he saw storm clouds clearing from his irises.

Baz Pitch's face was a lot smoother than Simon had anticipated and his hair was thicker than he would probably ever have the capacity to believe. "I want to kiss you, Baz. And then I want to date you. And then I want to ta--"

It turned out that Baz kissed softly with his hands pushing lightly into Simon's chest and then slipping up his neck to cup his jaw. He pressed their lips together like it was the most important thing he would ever do and every movement had to be carefully thought out.

Their lips slipped together and their breaths filled the spaces in between. It was Baz's air being pulled into Simon's lungs, it was Simon's hair curling around Baz's fingers. It was their noses brushing and their knees bumping and Simon laughing, his hands pushing against a strong waist and his lungs hitching when Baz's lips took a detour, fell off of the corner of his mouth, explored the plains of his cheekbones and the cliffs of his jaw, a waterfall down his neck, collecting in the valleys of his collarbones. And still, hands at his back and a heartbeat in his ear, unsteady and loud, his name like a mantra over and over and over like something vital. Traced and remembered and alive.

Baz, Baz, Baz.

Simon collapsed to the ground, dragging Baz with him. Their knees hit the tile, Baz's tucked firmly around Snow's waist and they clicked together like tumblers in a lock. Baz's face pressed against the crook of Simon's neck, Simon's hands pulling at Baz's shirt, cursing it for being tucked under the hem of his pants, but finally, his fingers meeting the dip of his spine, the sharpness of his shoulder blades, and Baz letting out a breath like relief or thankfulness or something else entirely.

"I couldn't stop thinking about you. . . you absolute git." He breathed it into Baz's hair, ducking when Baz lifted his head to get at his neck; his teeth grazed the skin under his jaw.

The laugh he let loose reverberated through his throat, Simon felt it against his lips.

"Still insulting me, Snow?" His fingers were finally untangling themselves from the golden mess of hair that was brushing against his chin and slipping down Simon's back. He felt him shiver and press closer, felt his mouth opening over his Adam's apple and the warm sigh that spread out from it.

Simon pulled himself up, nudged his nose against Baz's so that his eyes would flutter open. "Only because I can't believe we didn't do this sooner."

Baz smiled at that and Simon's eyes widened at the sight. Baz had a face molded for sneers and sarcastic smirks, not light smiles and tender eyes. But it suited him, made him seem more human, more reachable.

They sighed against lips and pressed hands across skin. Simon pushed his mouth open slowly, let their tongues drift together. It was slow and the room was quiet but their breathing was loud.

Simon broke free, gasping, only to have Baz chase and ensnare him once again. He gave in because it was easy and because he wanted to. He moved his chin, pushed and made Baz work to keep him there, made his hands tighten at his waist and a groan fill the room.

"Wait. . ." he whispered and Baz whimpered softly against his cheek, "Baz. . . Baz. . . The janitor is going to be coming through. . . Baz, we have to go. . ."

"Okay. . ." But he was nosing the moles under Simon's left ear, pressing a sugary kiss to his temple, carding his fingers through his hair. And Simon was melting.

"Basil. . ."

Baz sighed regretfully and stood up, watching Simon's eyes snap up to him in surprise, watching him reach up as he registered the loss. He took his hand and helped him to his feet, their chests pressed together, heaving in perfect time.

A grin broke through Simon's expression and he turned, tugged Baz through the door. They laughed when the principle spotted them and dropped her papers in her shock. The principle who had reprimanded them after countless fights, the principle who had listened to two sides of the same story over and over and over, the principle who had ordered Simon to go get ice for the black eye that Baz had caused to warp the skin around his left eye.

"We made up," Baz told her, and Simon swung their hands between them and knocked their shoulders together.

"We also made out a little," Simon added, and Baz gaped at him and let out a surprised laugh at the glint in Simon's eyes.

They disappeared out the door and the principle shook her head, stooped down to collect the scattered catastrophe of paperwork in the hall. At least, she reasoned, I won't have to deal with their fighting anymore.

Fun fact: the title of this is from the words of this poet, Martial, to his rival: "If you aim at getting your name into verse, seek, I advise you, some sot of a poet from some dark den, who writes, with coarse charcoal and crumbling chalk, verses which people read as they ease themselves."

Which, in non-ancient-poet-speak, is: "If you want to get your work published, you'll have to write it on the bathroom wall because that's the only way people will read it."

ooohhh need some ice for that burnnn?? i love old poets