"How is he?" Kit asks.
"The same." Fluorite doesn't turn to look at him. The whole time Kit has been here, she hasn't taken her eyes off Baz.
He still hasn't been discharged, but now that he's not in imminent risk of dying, Kit has a lot more freedom to move around. For days he had been hesitating to come here, too scared of what he would see, but finally, he couldn't stand it any longer. He asked Kat where they were keeping Baz, and today, he had decided to make his way over.
He had been surprised upon arriving to see the Director here.
She looked tired. Like she hadn't slept in days. Maybe she really hadn't.
It's her brother, after all.
How long had she been here by Baz's side?
"He's not getting any worse," she sighs, "but he's not getting any better either. Every day; the same." She rubs her eyes. "It's too frustrating… Not being able to do anything…"
Kit doesn't say anything. It doesn't feel like his place to do so.
"Baz, you useless fool… Why couldn't you let your older sister take care of it like always? You've always been such an idiot…" At last, she turns to look at Kit. "Sorry, Kit. I've been rambling."
"It's okay," he says softly.
"It's just… Baz, he's always been like this. Always does the stupidest things that almost get him killed…" Fluorite falls silent for a few seconds. "Did you know, he's always hated being a magician? When we were children, he would always cry when our mother made us train. I think for him, having magic, it's more of a burden. He hates having expectations thrust on him, so he does everything he can to get rid of them. But, it's funny, ever since he met you, he doesn't seem to hate his magic so much. There were times when I think he has even enjoyed it."
Kit feels himself growing flushed.
"Ah, but don't mind me. I'm rambling again." She waves her hand dismissively. "But, Kit," she pauses over her words, carefully considering each of them, "I'm glad he was able to find something to stand for. So, whatever happens, I don't want you to blame yourself." Fluorite stands up. "Well, I'm going to get some lunch. Watch over him for me, will you?"
Something to stand for… Kit recalls Baz's last words to him. 'So, just for this once, let me be the one to save you, alright?'
Something to stand for… Is that what Fluorite meant?
Kit rubs his palms over his face. Baz, wake up. You told me you would explain, so wake up, will you?
~~~
A week later.
The nurse has just brought over his breakfast, and Kit is about to start eating it when Aster bursts into his room, barely avoiding knocking down the door.
"Kit." Xe's out of breath, but there's a glint in xeir eyes. Before xe can say anything more, Kit already knows. "Kit, he's awake."
The sound of the fork hitting the floor echoes across the room.
"He's awake," Aster repeats breathlessly.
Without another seconds passing by, Kit has jumped out of bed, everything else totally forgotten.
Right now, at this very moment, only this matters: Baz has woken up.
~~~
When he walks into the room, Fluorite stands up to greet him.
"Baz." She nudges the figure dozing off on the bed. "Come on, Kit is here."
Baz opens his eyes groggily. "Hey…"
"Baz–" Kit has to bite his tongue to stop himself from starting to sob right then and there. "You… How are you feeling?"
Baz laughs. "Like shit." He laughs again. "Ah, but I guess the…" he blinks a couple of times, "crazy amounts of painkillers is definitely helping."
"He's a little bit dopey right now," Fluorite intervenes. "He took his medicines not too long ago."
Kit nods understandingly. He can relate. He was in the same position not too long ago.
"It's good to see you, Baz."
"Yeah…" Baz smiles at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling, "it's always good to see you too, Kit."
Against his will, Kit feels a tear running down his cheek. It's going to be alright. Baz is going to be alright.
From that day onwards, Kit visits Baz every day. Even after he has been discharged, he keeps coming back to the hospital.
He finds that if it's for someone else's sake, he doesn't mind it as much.
In the town, things are also slowly returning back to normal. Now that the demonic presence is gone, there are no longer as many cases to handle.
("It was definitely the demon's fault," Aster said as xe presented xeir hypothesis to Kit one night when xe had dragged him out to drink. Without Baz around, the responsibility fell to him, as Aster had so eloquently said before basically kidnapping him. "Think about it," xe gestured around with the cup in xeir hand, "pests would be attracted to the evil energy, no? So, with him basically pissing all over the town, it makes sense that pests would be springing up left and right everywhere."
Kit couldn't help but think xe could have worded it better, but he had to agree.)
But even if the cases have gone down, the amount of paperwork to be completed more than makes up for it.
But paperwork he can do. In fact, Kit never thought he would be so grateful to be doing paperwork.
So he splits his days into doing paperwork, teaching Dee and visiting Baz. Sometimes, he will take his paperwork to the hospital and simply sit by Baz's side filling it out. It had actually been Baz the one to ask him to do so.
"I'm going to go crazy in here," he moaned. "Please, please, Kit. Even if you just sit there doing nothing, I can't stand being locked up alone in this room. You're the only one who hasn't forgotten about me," he pouted. (Now that he was steadily getting better, Fluorite had stopped visiting him as often. She is the Director, after all, and out of all of them, she was the busiest one.)
"Valentine comes to visit you too," Kit pointed out. "And the others comes too, just not as often–"
"Kit, please, I'm begging you. I only have you left in this world!"
He sighed. "You're exaggerating."
But he still does as asked. He's always had a hard time saying no to Baz.
Yet, Kit doesn't dare to bring up the elephant in the room. So far, Baz has been acting like nothing happened; so, Kit hasn't wanted to say anything. Besides, he's still recovering. He keeps telling himself it's not the right time. He'll wait until Baz is back to normal.
After a few weeks, Baz is basically back to his usual self. Which is good, Kit genuinely thinks that, but that also means Kit can't keep putting it off much longer.
One day, when he comes to visit, he finds Fluorite and Baz whispering amongst themselves. When they notice his presence, Fluorite stands up and smoothes her clothes down. She catches Baz's eye and some sort of convo goes on between the two of them, which Baz seems to lose because he sighs after a while, looking defeated.
Meanwhile, Fluorite clears her throat. "Well, I'll leave you two to talk." She walks briskly out of the room.
Kit looks at her departing figure as he takes a seat next to the bed. "What were you talking about?" The chair is close to the bed, closer than usual because of how Fluorite and Baz had been talking before.
"Nothing," Baz says dismissively. Kit doesn't push it. If Baz doesn't want to talk about it there's no need. "Kit, guess what?"
"What?"
"The doctors said if everything goes well, I might finally be getting out of here in a few days."
Kit hums in acknowledgement. "That's good."
"Aw, come on. Try to look a bit more excited about it."
"I am," Kit says, "it's just…" Once Baz is out, things will go back to normal. Or they would, except, how can they possibly go back to how they were before? He's thinking too much, he knows this, but he can't stop himself. Everything that happened, it was so sudden, and Kit has had no time to process. With Baz out of the hospital it becomes inevitable facing it. But he doesn't know how to bring it up.
He doesn't want to, and that's the problem. It's been too long, and he just wishes everything could be simple, just the way it was before.
But it can't be.
And he doesn't know how to explain any of this. He's suddenly pulled out of his thoughts.
"Kit." Baz is looking at him intently. "What's on your mind?"
He stays quiet, thinking about how to answer. The closeness between them is suddenly more acutely present in his mind.
"Has it been bothering you all this time?" It. There's no need to put a name to it; they both know to what Baz is referring to. "Don't look so shocked," he continues, "you're pretty easy to read, you know. It all shows on your face."
Kit winces internally. "Have I been that obvious? I just didn't want to cause you any trouble…"
Baz sits up straighter in bed. He shoos away Kit's concerns. "Nah, I wasn't worried. I was actually waiting for you to be the one to bring it up. Didn't want to mention it all of a sudden and have you running out on me. So," he flashes him a grin, "where should I start?"
"Seriously, you…" Kit starts growing flustered. "Don't ask me," he mumbles.
"Um, well, yes. You see…" When Kit looks over at Baz, he's running a hand through his hair, wearing an obviously uncomfortable expression. "I don't— I guess I don't know how to say this… Kit, won't you just forget everything I said?"
"What?!"
"Oh. No. That came out wrong. Sorry. Don't– Don't forget it. Just… Let me start over, okay?" Baz pauses. This is the first time Kit has ever seen him fumbling his words so badly. "To hell with it…" He sighs, "Ah, I had a whole speech planned out, I knew exactly how I would do it… But now that I'm finally here, I just don't know what to say." The tips of his ears have gone pink.
Kit feels like the words have died in his throat, and he simply waits with bated breath for Baz to continue.
"I guess, I just don't want you to feel guilty or like you owe me anything. I always… I never pitied you, you know that, right? Everything I've ever done is because I wanted to. I just– I want to make sure you know that. So don't think that I would ever… I would never try to take advantage of you. I wouldn't– Ah, what am I even saying?" Baz covers his face with his hands. His ears have gone completely red. He stays like that for a few seconds.
Kit counts his heartbeats, the sound of them reverberating loudly in his ears. Thump, thump, thump.
Slowly, Baz moves his hands away. "Why is it that when I'm around you all the words suddenly fly out of my head?" Turning to look at Kit directly in the eyes, he pauses, makes sure their gazes are focused on each other. "Kit." His voice sounds a bit breathless. "I love you. I really love you, so won't you give me a chance?"
Kit's entire face flushes all the way down to his neck. He can basically feel the steam rising from the top of his head.
"You don't have to answer right now, but–"
"You—" Ah, shit, he's going to die. His heart will stop right here and now and he's going to die. "Stop saying such embarrassing things…" he mumbles. It takes an enormous amount of willpower for him not to run away and hide somewhere. It takes even more willpower not to do so when Baz opens his mouth to speak again.
"So is that a yes?" He's smiling. The self-confident bastard is smiling!
"Idiot! You didn't even explain anything!" But he doesn't move away when Baz leans over towards him.
How long has it been since they've been this close, their faces almost touching?
This time it's different though.
"Kit," Baz's voice is barely a whisper, "is this okay?"
He hums in agreement. Their faces are so close together their noses are touching. Kit could probably count the lashes on Baz's eyes right now. Their faces draw closer. Closer, closer…
Kit closes his eyes.
.
.
.
When he opens his eyes, Baz is smiling at him. "I've wanted to do that for a long time now," he says.
Kit's brain still feels like mush, and it takes some seconds for him to process Baz's words. "...What?" 'a long time…' "How long?!"
"Um…" Baz glances away, fidgeting with the hospital bracelet around his wrist. "A couple of years…"
Kit's brain short-circuits. That long?!
Baz laughs awkwardly. "Yeah, I know…" He pauses. "Wait. What about you?"
Kit's entire face goes red again. "Not telling."
"Huh? Come on, don't be like that, Kit. Not after I almost died baring my heart and soul to you–"
Kit coughs out something incomprehensible.
"What? What did you say?"
"Fourth year. Academy."
"Oh."
Kit feels like crawling into a hole and dying. A long time ago, he had sworn to take this secret to his grave. But Baz just has a certain way of wheedling secrets out of him.
"That's a long time. Since you were in fourth year…"
Kit coughs again. He shakes his head. "No…"
"No? So then…" Realisation dawns on him. "Oh. Oh, I see. When I was in fourth year… You were in third year… So–"
"Ah! Just stop!" Kit can't take this anymore. His heart will explode otherwise. "Besides, I only figured it out until you graduated… It was just that, looking back, I realised it…" He stops talking. He's said too much. Baz will tease him about this for the rest of his life.
But when he turns to look at Baz, he's smiling.
He's smiling, but it isn't teasing. It's a soft smile. "Somehow, I'm really happy…" He covers his eyes with his hand. "I'm so embarrassed, but I'm also so happy… Is that weird?"
No. Kit shakes his head. He feels the same.
"But we're both idiots… So long, and yet…" Baz peeks over at him. "I guess love really makes you act stupid."
"I told you to stop saying embarrassing things…"
"Sorry, sorry." Baz laughs. "I can't help it."
Kit suddenly remembers something. Fluorite's words come back to him: 'something to stand for'. He was the burning need to know. "Baz, back there, when we were in the forest–"
"Ah, no, no!" He covers his face with his left arm dramatically. "Don't talk about that." Baz waves his other hand at him, "I'm so embarrassed just remembering it… I really thought I would die, so I said so many embarrassing things without thinking…" He sinks down on the bed as if trying to hide himself.
Kit feels endlessly amused by his antics. "I thought you were pretty cool, though…"
Immediately, Baz perks up. "Yes? What else?"
"Don't go fishing for compliments…"
"Aw, indulge me a bit, will you? Did you think I looked good? Was I sexy?"
"Shut up."
"I will if you give me another kiss–"
"I'm leaving." Kit stands up.
"No, wait– Kit, it was a joke! Wait–!" Baz calls out after him as he leaves the room.
But both of them know Kit will be back in a few minutes. He's left all his stuff back in the room. Besides, Kit has always held a weakness for Baz. As much as Baz might tease him, and as much as Kit might pretend to get annoyed at him, they will always find their way back to one another.