Fangirl (41 page)

“Hungry?” Simon asked.

Baz started laughing.

The sun hadn’t quite broken the horizon yet, and no one was about in the kitchens. Simon found bread and cheese and apples, and tossed them onto a platter. It seemed strange to sit alone in the empty dining hall, so he and Baz sat on the kitchen flagstones instead, leaning back against a wall of cabinets.

“Let’s get this over with,” Baz said, biting into a green apple, obviously trying to seem casual. “Are you going to tell the Mage about me?”

“He already thinks you’re a nasty git,” Simon said.

“Yes,” Baz said quietly, “but this is worse, and you know it. You know what he’ll have to do.”

Turn Baz over to the Coven.

It would mean certain imprisonment, perhaps death. Simon had been trying for six years to get Baz expelled, but he’d never wanted to see him staked.

Still … Baz was a vampire—a
vampire,
damn it. A monster. And he was already Simon’s enemy.

“A
monster,
” Levi repeated. He raised one hand to unclip Cath’s hair. Her glasses were stuck there and fell sideways onto her arm. Levi picked them up and tossed them onto his bed. “Your hair’s still wet,” he said, shaking it out with one hand.

Simon looked at Baz and tried again to summon the proper amount of horror. All he could manage was some weary dismay. “When did it happen?” he asked.

“I already told you,” Baz said. “We’ve just left the scene of the crime.”

“You were bitten in the nursery? As a child? Why didn’t anyone notice?”

“My mother was dead. My father swooped in and swept me back to the estate. I think he might have suspected.… We’ve never talked about it.”

“Didn’t he notice when you started drinking people’s blood?”

“I
don’t,
” Baz snapped imperiously. “And besides, the … thirst doesn’t manifest itself right away. It comes on during adolescence.”

“Like acne?”

“Speak for yourself, Snow.”

“When did it come on for you?”

“This summer,” Baz said, looking down.

“And you haven’t—”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Baz turned on him. “Are you kidding me? Vampires murdered my mother. And if I’m found out, I’ll lose everything.… My wand. My family. Possibly my life. I’m a
magician.
I’m not—” He gestured toward his throat and his face.
“
—
this.”

Simon wondered if he and Baz had ever been so close, had ever allowed each other to sit this close, in all their years of living together. Baz’s shoulder was nearly touching his own, and Simon could see every tiny bump and shadow on Baz’s admittedly very clear skin. Every line of his lips, every flare of blue in his grey eyes.

“How are you staying alive?” Simon asked.

“I manage, thanks.”

“Not well,” Simon said. “You look like hell.”

Baz smirked. “Again, thank you, Snow. You’re a comfort.”

“I don’t mean now,” Simon said. “You look great now.” Baz raised one eyebrow and lowered the other. “But lately…,” Simon pressed on, “you just seem like you’re fading away. Have you been …
drinking
 … anything?”

“I do what I can,” Baz said, dropping his apple core onto the plate. “You don’t want to know the details.”

“I do,” Simon argued. “Look, as your roommate, I have a vested interest in you not wandering around in a bloodlust.”

Levi’s hand was still in Cath’s hair. She felt him lift it up, felt his mouth on the back of her neck. His other arm pulled her tight against him. Cath concentrated on her phone. It had been so long since she’d written this story, she couldn’t quite remember how it ended.

“I’d
never
bite you,” Baz said, locking on to Simon’s eyes.

“That’s good,” Simon said. “I’m glad you still plan to kill me the old-fashioned way—but you have to admit that this is hard on you.”

“Of course it’s hard on me.” He threw a hand in the air in what Simon recognized as a very Baz-like gesture. “I’ve got the thirst of the ancients, and I’m surrounded by useless bags of blood all day.”

“And all night,” Simon said softly.

Baz shook his head and looked away again. “I said I’d never hurt you,” he muttered.

“Then let me help.” Simon moved just an inch, so their shoulders were touching. Even through his T-shirt and through Baz’s cotton button-down, he could feel that Baz wasn’t freezing anymore. He was warm. He seemed healthy again.

“Why do you want to help?” Baz asked, turning back to Simon, who was close enough now to feel the soft heat of Baz’s breath on his chin. “You’d keep a secret from your mentor to help your enemy?”

“You’re not my enemy,” Simon said. “You’re just … a really bad roommate.”

Levi laughed, and Cath felt it on her neck.

Baz laughed, and Simon felt it on his eyelashes.

“You hate me,” Baz argued. “You’ve hated me from the moment we met.”

“I don’t hate
this,
” Simon said. “What you’re doing—denying your most powerful urges, just to protect other people. It’s more heroic than anything I’ve ever done.”

“They’re not my
most
powerful urges,” Baz said under his breath.

“Do you know,” Simon said, “that half the time we’re together, you’re talking to yourself?”

“Ah, Snow, I didn’t think you noticed.”

“I
notice,
” Simon said, feeling six years of irritation and anger—and twelve hours of exhaustion—coming to a dizzy peak between his ears. He shook his head, and he must have leaned forward because it was enough to bump his nose and chin against Baz’s.… “Let me
help
you,” Simon said.

Baz held his head perfectly still. Then he nodded, gently thudding his forehead against Simon’s.

“I
notice,
” Simon said, letting his mouth drift forward. He thought of everything that had passed over the other boy’s lips. Blood and bile and curses.

But Baz’s mouth was soft now, and he tasted of apples.

And Simon didn’t care for the moment that he was changing everything.

Cath closed her eyes and felt Levi’s chin track the back of her collar.

“Keep reading,” he whispered.

“I can’t,” she said, “it’s over.”

“It’s over?” He pulled his face away. “But what happens? Do they fight the other rabbits now? Are they together? Does Simon break up with Agatha?”

“That’s up to you. It doesn’t say.”

“But
you
could say. You wrote it.”

“I wrote it two years ago,” Cath said. “I don’t know what I was thinking then. Especially about that last paragraph. It’s pretty weak.”

“I liked the whole thing,” Levi said. “I liked ‘the thirst of the ancients.’”

“Yeah, that was an okay line.…”

“Read something else,” he whispered, kissing the skin below her ear.

Cath took a deep breath. “What?”

“Anything. More fanfiction, the soybean report … You’re like a tiger who loves Brahms—as long as you’re reading, you let me touch you.”

He was right: As long as she was reading, it was almost like he was touching someone else. Which was kind of messed up, now that she thought about it.…

Cath let her phone drop to the floor.

She slowly turned toward Levi, feeling her waist twist in his arms, looking up as far as his chin and shaking her head. “No,” she said. “
No.
I don’t want to be distracted. I want to touch you back.”

Levi’s chest rose steeply, just as she set both hands on his flannel shirt.

His eyes were wide. “Okay…”

Cath focused on her fingertips. Feeling the flannel, feeling it slide against the T-shirt he wore underneath—feeling Levi underneath that, the ridges of muscle and bone. His heart beat in the palm of Cath’s hand, right there, like her fingers could close around it.…

“I really like you,” Levi whispered.

She nodded and spread out her fingers. “I really like you, too.”

“Say it again,” he said.

She laughed. There should be a word for a laugh that ends as soon as it starts. A laugh that’s more a syllable of surprise and acknowledgment than it is anything else. Cath laughed like that, then hung her head forward, pushing her hands into his chest. “I really like you, Levi.”

She felt his hands on her waist and his mouth in her hair.

“Keep saying it,” he said.

Cath smiled. “I like you,” she said, touching her nose to his chin.

“I would’ve shaved if I’d known I was going to see you tonight.”

His chin moved when he talked. “I like you like this,” she said, letting it scrape her nose and her cheek. “I like you.”

He lifted a hand to the back of her neck and held her there. “Cath…”

She swallowed and set her lips on his chin. “Levi.”

Right about then, Cath realized just how close she was to the edge of Levi’s jaw—and remembered what she’d promised herself to do there. She closed her eyes and kissed him below his chin, behind his jaw, where he was soft and almost chubby, like a baby. He arched his neck, and it was even better than she’d hoped.

“I like you,” she said. “So much. I like you here.”

Cath brought her hands up to his neck. God, he was warm—skin so warm and thick, a heavier ply than her own. She slid her fingers into his hair, cradling the back of his head.

His hands mimicked hers, pulling her face up to his. “Cath, if I kiss you now, are you going to leap away from me?”

“No.”

“Are you going to panic?

She shook her head. “Probably no.”

He bit the side of his bottom lip, and smiled. His bowed lips didn’t quite reach the corners.

“I like you,” she whispered.

He pulled her forward.

Right. There was
this.
Kissing Levi.

So much better when she was awake and her mouth wasn’t muddy from reading out loud all night. She nodded and nodded and kissed him back.

When Baz and Simon kissed, Cath always made a big deal out of the moment when one of them opened his mouth. But when you’re actually kissing someone, it’s hard to keep your mouth closed. Cath’s mouth was open before Levi even got there. It was open now.

Levi’s mouth was open, too, and he kept pulling back a little like he was going to say something; then his chin would jut forward again, back into hers.

God, his chin. She wanted to make an honest woman of his chin. She wanted to lock it down.

The next time Levi pulled back, Cath went back to kissing his chin, pressing her face up under his jaw. “I just like you so much here.”

“I just like you so much,” he said, his head falling back against the couch. “Even more than that, you know?”

“And here,” she said, pushing her nose up against his ear. Levi’s earlobes were attached to his head. Which made Cath think of Punnett squares. And Mendel. And made her try to pull his earlobe away with her teeth. “You’re really good here,” she said. He brought his shoulders up, like it tickled.

“C’mere, c’mere,” he said, pulling at her waist. She was sitting just beside him, and he seemed to want her in his lap.

“I’m heavy,” she said.

“Good.”

Cath always knew that she’d make a spectacle of herself if she ever got Levi alone, and that’s just what she was doing. She was mauling his ear. She wanted to feel it on every part of her face.

It was okay…,
she could imagine him telling Reagan or one of his eighteen roommates tomorrow.
She wouldn’t stop licking my ear—I think she might have an ear fetish. And you don’t even want to know what she did to my chin.

Levi was still holding her waist, too tight, like he was getting ready for a figure-skating lift. “Cath…,” he said, and swallowed. The knot in his throat dipped, and she tried to catch it with her mouth.

“Here, too,” she said. Her voice sounded pained. He was too lovely, too good, too much. “So much here. Really … your whole head. I like your whole head.”

Levi laughed, and she tried to kiss everything that moved. His throat, his lips, his cheeks, the corner of his eyes.

Baz would never kiss Simon this chaotically.

Simon would never crush his nose against Baz’s widow’s peak the way Cath was about to.

She gave in to Levi’s hands and climbed onto his lap, her knees on either side of his hips. He craned his neck to gaze up at her, and Cath held his face by his temples. “Here, here, here,” she said, kissing his forehead, letting herself touch his feather-light hair. “Oh God, Levi … you drive me crazy here.”

She smoothed his hair back with her hands and her face, and she kissed the top of his head the way he always kissed her (the only kisses she’d allowed for so many weeks).

Levi’s hair didn’t smell like shampoo—or freshly mown clover. It smelled like coffee mostly, and like Cath’s pillow the week after he spent the night. Her mouth settled on his hairline, where his hair was the lightest and finest; her own hair was nowhere this soft. “Like you,” she said, feeling weird and tearful. “Like you so much, Levi.”

And then she kissed my receding hairline and cried,
she imagined him saying. In her imagination, Levi was Danny Zuko, and his roommates were the rest of the T-Birds.
Tell me more, tell me more.

His face felt hot in her hands.

“Come
here,
” he said, catching her jaw with one hand, chinning his mouth up to hers.

Right.

There was
this.
Kissing Levi.

This and this and
this.

*   *   *

“You’re not all hands…,” he whispered later. He was tucked back into the corner of the love seat, and she was resting on top of him. She’d spent hours on top of him. Curled over him like a vampire. Even exhausted, she couldn’t stop rubbing her numb lips into his flannel chest. “You’re all mouth,” he said.

“Sorry,” Cath said, biting her lips.

“Don’t be stupid,” he said, pulling her lips free of her teeth with his thumb. “And don’t be sorry … ever again.”

He hitched her up, so her face was above his. Her eyes wandered down to his chin, out of habit. “Look at me,” he said.

Cath looked up. At Levi’s pastel-colored face. Too lovely, too good.

“I like you here,” he said, squeezing her. “With me.”