Your Love Writ Large Across Your Face

by cutestkillastrations (cutekilla), TheWholeLemon

Summary:

Simon likes Baz with a moustache, even when he doesn’t want to.
(Extremely convincing art included)

Notes:

• For facewithoutheart.

Happy birthday, Christina! You're such a talented and funny writer that it's hard to gift a fic to you with any confidence, but here we are, making do anyway because you deserve all the mustaches in the world on your birthday (and some easter eggs, too). Thank you for being your incredibly kind, soft-hearted, irreverent, thoughtful, smart, fantastic self, today and every day. We love you to pieces.

Thank you to Raen for cheerleading and commenting, and for being an ethereal angel of light. Thank you Dre for reading as well as for the reminder of Malcolm's mustache and for making Baz so convincingly hot. He's stunning. Thank you Em for accidentally putting the idea in my head and for giving excellent feedback!

“Babe, did Malcolm used to have a moustache?”

“Hmm?” Baz is still unpacking some of the boxes he brought home from Hampshire. He met Daphne there and spent the day with her packing up family heirlooms that they wanted to move to be more accessible—haunted dolls, silver spoons, portraits of ghosts, things like that. I still feel bad about deadspotting their ancestral home, but less bad after Penny discovered What’s your wifi password?, which works like a network extender but for magic. Worse signal, but better than nothing.

I was helping him unpack, but I immediately got distracted by a dusty photo album—blood red velvet with “My Baby Basilton” in curly letters that looked like oil dripping off the page. For all I knew, there could have been a dozen Basiltons in his family ancestry, but I got lucky—it’s my Basilton, my Babe. (He doesn’t like it when I call him that. It’s why I’m never going to stop.)

Now, I turn the page so he can see, and hold it up, wiggling it until he finally looks at me. It’s an 8x10 of Malcolm, Natasha, and baby Basilton. A staged family photo; Natasha is in a heavy-looking dark chair with Baz on her lap and Malcolm standing next to them both. Baz’s mum is wearing some kind of pastel skirt suit that looks like it has bobbles on it; Baz is wearing a tiny suit with a vest and bow tie. (I wonder if it might be in one of these boxes. Probably Swithin has it, but it’s absolutely adorable. Bet I could put it on Paddington and make Baz tear up.) (But would he tear up because I put him in an outfit that reminded him of his dead mum? Best not.) And Malcolm is wearing a turtleneck (a turtleneck! the man took a picture without a tie??), a blazer, and most importantly, a huge moustache on his upper lip.

Baz looks at the photo blankly for a moment, then squints. “Is that Chanel spring 2001? Mum must have been in her Princess Diana phase,” and turns back to the box where he’s removing what looks to be a funeral shroud for a night mare. “The moustache though. He had one until I was four. I didn’t recognize him when he shaved it off. He looked ridiculous.”

I examine the photo again and make a sound. I don’t know what kind of sound, but it’s enough to draw Baz’s attention away from the equine funeral garb he’s got in front of him. “What?”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing.” He’s still looking at me expectantly though. I tear my eyes away from the photo. “He looks—well, he looks—I—I can see the resemblance with you, is all.”

Baz snorts. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment in this case.”

“Come on,” I scoff. “Malcolm’s a—well, he's a handsome man.”

Baz makes a sound as close to a cat having a hairball as possible while still being the poshest person alive.

“He is!” I insist. “It’s not an insult to say you look like him.”

“Even with that ridiculous thing on his face?” he says sceptically.

“Oh yeah,” I say. Maybe that’s a bit too enthusiastic, but he doesn’t say anything, just turns back to his moth-eaten blanket. “What is that anyway? A horcrux?”

Baz looks horrified and offended, and that’s the subject changed, for today at least.

 

A fortnight later, I’m in the kitchen, cooking. Trying to cook, anyway. My goal was to make a curry from a jar of sauce but hide the jar so Baz wouldn’t take the piss, but even rice is harder than I was expecting. Thank goodness Baz is late tonight.

I hear him come in through the front door just as I’m hiding the jar in the recycling bin.

“Perfect timing! I just finished dinner,” I shout through, plating up the food. I put the dinner things on the table and hear him come in behind me. “Your blood’s warming already; it’s on the hob.”

When he doesn’t say anything, I turn and my greeting dies on my lips before I can squeak it out. Baz left this morning looking like he has for the last several months–hair a little longer, jawline a little more chiselled than when we were at school, but otherwise very similar. Handsome and smooth-faced.

This Baz … this Baz … well. He’s handsome as ever, of course, he’s the most fuckable person alive, same as yesterday, which I thought was pretty much the top prize in that category, but he does like to outdo himself. “Baz,” I choke out. “What … what have you got on your face?”

He smirks at me. “Like it?”

I sputter, at a loss for words.

“Am I handsome, Snow?” he sneers at me. He looks cruel, which used to infuriate me, but now that I know he’s mad for me, not at me, it inspires different feelings. Alright, come to think of it, it’s probably the same feelings just reframed, but as Baz always tells me, context matters.

Then he touches his own face, stroking the thick, beautiful moustache that’s appeared basically overnight. Trust Baz to have facial hair as luxurious as everything else on him. He looks like a younger, hotter Ryan Guzman.

I want to pet it. I want to rub myself on it like a cat, to be petted by it. I want to bite it.

I leap at him across the kitchen, settling for all three.

His blood simmering on the hob ends up burning, the curry goes cold, and Baz finds the jar in the bin. It’s one of the best nights of my life.

 

 

My mobile rings.

“Yeah, babe?”

“Are you home?” Baz’s voice sounds strained, not quite himself.

“‘Course,” I say, pausing the telly. The bee-nado will have to wait if Baz needs me.

“Love, I’ve had the worst day,” he sighs over the phone. “I just want to press my face in your tits.”

I laugh. “Alright. That can be arranged. When are you home?”

“In about …” I hear the key in the lock. “... one second.”

I look up, smiling, my phone still held up to my ear, as Baz walks in.

He’s got a full handlebar on his lip, edges curled with precision, shining like a star.

I drop my mobile; the screen makes a quiet, splintery, shattering noise.

Later, even Baz’s best As you were won’t fix it. That may have been because he was distracted, and maybe a little spent.

I don’t mind it a bit.

 

 

The next time Baz surprises me, I’m trying on clothes. Which sounds like an activity he would be more likely to do than I would, but after three mornings in a row of not being able to find any trousers that don’t feel like they’re trying to squeeze me to death, I decided I needed to take stock.

I’m squishier now—not just around my middle, but everywhere. I’d feel self-conscious about it, but it seems silly to be when Baz makes it clear he thinks my squishiness is a very, very good thing. Who am I to argue with him? Especially if it makes him look at me like something he’d gladly like to eat.

But, I do still have to leave the flat on occasion; even though Baz argues my going to work in just my pants would surely bring in more customers rather than less, the coffee shop insists on both trousers and a shirt, and it’d be nice to reach into a cupboard and find ones that fit.

I thought I could try to squeeze into a pair of skinny jeans Baz got me when we first got together that I have no doubt cost more than one of my paychecks, but I’ve made a grievous error and I find myself having to try to roll them back off me like a wet sock. I’ve got them down to my calves when Baz, having used his vampire skills to silently enter the flat, Open sesames his way into the room—I wish I could say he scared the trousers off me, but since they’re firmly fixed on, I just fall backwards and slide right off the edge of the bed with no way to catch myself. I grab the duvet anyway but it’s a slippery devil, and it comes with me.

That’s how Baz ends up unwrapping me like a human burrito, my trousers still tight in the vicinity of my ankles. And once I finally emerge, I see it, of course. Neatly trimmed moustache, right atop his lip, and underneath …

“Is that … a goatee in the shape of my wings?”

He just stands there, grinning. Under his chin, I see …

“And Spadey? Did you shave my tail on the underside of your chin? Oh, come on! How are you even doing that? You didn’t have that this morning!”

“A gentleman never reveals his secrets.”

“You don’t look like a gentleman with that thing on your face.”

He smirks.

“It’s not fair,” I whine. “I don’t want to be attracted to a goatee. Not even one that looks like dragon wings.”

“And a tail,” he reminds me.

“And a tail,” I sigh, holding my arms out to him. It’s already growing on me. Of course it is.

He reburritos me, with him inside.

 

 

I jump a foot in the air when Penny sets down her mug of tea and her spoon clatters against the side; she gives me a look. She stopped by toward the end of my shift and stayed to chat; I’ve been telling her what Baz is putting me through and she is, as usual, unsympathetic.

“Are you seriously that twitchy?” she tuts.

“I’m on edge!”

She huffs, exasperated. “I really think you’re getting too worked up about this.”

“You don’t know what it’s like. I never know what he’s going to walk in wearing. Last time he looked like that cowboy from the Big Lebowski. I’m never going to be able to watch that movie again, knowing what that moustache is capable of. And how’s he doing it? There’s got to be a counter-spell you can do.”

She chews a biscuit thoughtfully—she still doesn’t feel sorry for me, but I knew I could probably get her to tolerate my complaining by holding out the puzzle of trying to find a counter-spell. We’ve both agreed he’s got to be using magic; I know I said Baz could grow a beard any time he wanted but this is pushing it, really.

My mobile dings and I leap out of my skin again; it’s a text from Baz. I’m afraid to look.

It dings again. And again.

Penny glares at me. “What is it now?”

I sigh and unlock the screen.

Snow, have you left work yet?

You said you’d be home by four.

I miss you, love. I’m lonely.

“Okay, I gotta go,” I say, leaping up. My feet tangle in the straps of my backpack sitting under the table, and I’m typing out a message even as I stumble to the floor. Babe r those ur watford footie uniform shorts

“What, already?”

“Yeah, Pen. I told you, it’s bad,” I tell her from the floor, where my backpack straps have managed to wrap themselves around the legs of the table as well. I glance down as my phone dings again (one word: Yes.) and scramble to my feet, phone in hand. Forget the backpack, I don’t need it. “He says jump and I say, onto what moustache?”

She makes a horrified face.

“And the worst part is, we’re at a point where I think I like the moustache. Unironically,” I say, despairing. “I think it’s growing on me.”

She had picked up her mug to take a sip but now slams it down with another clatter; I jump again, dropping my mobile with a crunch. “I’ve got it!” she shouts as I pick up my mobile and examine it; just as I feared, the screen’s smashed again. “Oh, Good as new,” she says impatiently, waving her ring in my direction. “Simon, I’ve got it!”

“A counter-spell?” I ask hopefully. My screen looks better even than when Baz did it, and a hole in my jeans is mended, too. Penny’s the best. (Don’t tell Baz.) (This moustache business is distracting the both of us.)

“Not exactly,” she says slowly. “I don’t know if you’re going to like this.”

“Pen, I’ll try anything.”

“In that case.” She grins at me mischievously.

 

 

I can’t wait to get home; I’m rushing like there’s a fire.

Just before I open the door, I shake out my wings and tail, just like he likes. I smooth my hair and my jumper.

“I’m home!” I call as I enter the flat.

“In the bedroom!” he calls.

I carefully line up my shoes and hang up my jacket, just like he likes, and slowly open the door.

“Helloooooooooo …” He starts off sexy but morphs into a sound like a dying bird. He sounds a little like when he stole Pippa’s voice, actually, but I don’t say so. This whole learning-to-censor-myself is wicked.

I give him a moment to process. “Yes?” I grin.

“What are you … what is … what is that?”

“Like it?”

“Please tell me that’s dried caramel drizzle again.”

I stroke the pencil-thin moustache resting on my lip to prove its authenticity. “Not this time. It’s growing on me.” I say it without magic, of course, but I don’t need magic when I have Penny.

“Bunce!” he says. “Did she figure it out, or did you?”

“Group effort,” I bluff. Of course it was Pen.

“Of course it was.” He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I had a whole Freddie Mercury roleplay thing planned, you know.”

I can’t stop grinning. “Don’t let me stop you.”

 

 

After, Baz has his head on my chest. He’s pointedly not looking up at me. “I can’t look at you with that thing on your face.”

“Scared of what it does to you?” I tickle him. I’m still a little out of breath.

“Mmm … something like that.” He traces patterns on my chest, eyeing my left nipple with great concentration. “You know, for the record, when I said the Mage deserved to get fucked, this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“Suppose I wouldn’t blame you. I did always think his moustache looked really cool. Just like your dad’s.”

Baz gives a full body shudder, but it’s only half one of the bad ones. “And that’s about as far as I’d like to explore our daddy issues in this context for now. Truce?”

“We’ll stop growing facial hair to torture each other?”

“Yes.”

“But we can table the daddy issues for later?”

He rolls his eyes. “Fine.”

“Truce.”

Notes:

Credit to Christina’s own fic for inspiration.

 

Epilogue: Baz has sent Simon selfies of all his moustaches, which Simon has printed onto a t-shirt, Three Wolf Moon style and which he wears regularly.

ILY CHRISTINA!!!!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 4 of vroom vroom-verse