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Loath as he was to admit it, Baz wasn’t exactly a stranger to feeling personally victimized by things. Even when, logically, he knew that nothing of the sort was happening, he often found that his emotions didn’t want to deal in matters of logic or reality. A few things managed to make his off limits list, though. For example, he usually tried not to let himself apply that sort of ……and I take that personally!-style thinking to such basic b***h s**t as the weather.

Today, though, Destiny City seemed intent on testing Baz’s commitment to that idea.

It started on his walk back home from his early morning gym trip. Sunrise had barely started smudging pink and orange all over the horizon, yet the wind still whipped and whirled as though it wanted to blow a b***h to Oz. If it had made good on that promise, Baz might not have minded that much. Missing his last final of the semester wouldn’t have been a good look, but he didn’t fancy the idea of showing up with a broken ankle, either. Or, for that matter, with messy hair. At least if the wind howling around him had actually swept him up into a tornado and dropped him onto the Yellow Brick Road, he wouldn’t have had messy hair around anybody who knew him from a hole in the wall.

(And maybe it would’ve done him good to know he was skinny enough to get carried off by the wind like that. Of course, reality had other ideas that didn’t involve Baz getting what he wanted. Wasn’t that always the story of his ******** life? Hard work, no play, devoted dedication for ever so many months and even though he looked way better than he had around this same time last year—even though his weight was down and all the selfies he’d shared with his similarly minded Internet friends recently had earned compliments on his thigh-gap [admittedly improved but still a work-in-progress] and his [allegedly] tiny waist—Baz nevertheless managed to fall so far short of that elusive goal: skinny enough.

Never enough, no, but that was why he needed to work harder.)

Getting into his little Glinda-coded outfit—a pink silky blouse with frills around the neckline and structured cuffs; a pleated pink mini-skirt, its pseudo-corset lacing cinched tight on his waist; a cropped pink blazer, all the better to help highlight his figure; pink thermal thigh-highs so he wouldn’t completely freeze; and pink Mary Jane heels with bows and lacy detailing—Baz wanted to heat up his curling iron and give himself some pretty ringlets for the day. He didn’t need to channel Queen Ari’s hair looks from the first Wicked movie just because his outfit would’ve looked perfectly at home on her little body. But, like, obviously? Glinda-style hair only made perfect sense with an outfit like this.

As he reached toward the surge protector on his vanity, though—CRASH.

Baz whipped toward his window, eyes wide and lips twisted into an exceptionally pouty scowl. While the window remained intact, the tree branches outside had battered against the glass as if that damn wind wanted to personally remind Baz that it would ******** up his perfect ringlets as soon as he stepped out the door. If he yielded to hubris and the aesthetic of it all, he’d end up with a blonde-pink rat’s nest atop his head by the time he got to campus. Something absolutely hideous and sloppy. The wind, with the vendetta it had apparently decided to have against him today, would leave him looking messier than some <******** Order senshi (like Faustite’s stupid slut who steadfastly refused to dignify when Ilmari lobbed insult after cutting insult at him).

Maybe he could pull something off, though? Rig up enough hairspray and pins to keep his hair more or less wind-resistant? Would’ve been better if he’d put his hair in curls last night, but it would’ve fallen out after he got sweaty at the gym, but maybe he could figure out some kind of solution. Baz was smart. He knew things. Pursing his lips, he glanced from the curling iron to the cord, to the window, to the surge protector, to the curling iron. Deep breaths to steel his nerves. He curled his fingers back around the iron’s wand and—CRASH!

Eyes blazing—jaw clenching, shoulders snapping into electric shock tension—Baz glowered back at the window.

“Fine,” he bit out to the branches, then flinched as they whanged into the glass once more. Glaring at them as though it might cow them, and the wind rushing through them, into behaving? Only saw Baz rewarded with more of the same: a winter gale, blown from the frozen depths of Dante Alighieri’s Hell itself, forcefully whipping the branches against the glass. He huffed as he dropped the curling iron back into its proper place. “Fine, then. I won’t wear the popular princess ringlets. That is just—absolutely ******** fine.”

He settled for a Classic Ariana high pony—swept back tight (but not too tight), with his fringe left loose to frame his face—but part of Baz wanted to power up and go snag somebody’s starseed in broad daylight about it. Not that he was going to do that. Not after how much work had gone into calming himself enough to beat his face before he could leave for campus. Sure, he hadn’t painted himself a complicated mug, not by any stretch of the imagination. All the same, he didn’t want to deal with the hassle of ducking into a campus restroom and redoing the pretty, subtle pink shadow around his eyes and the perfect job he’d already done on today’s contour and highlighter.

With how today’s luck was going, Baz would end up dusting shimmer on his collarbones while some gross old man with tenure was at the urinal, inviting himself to make conversation that literally no one asked for. Like, come on, ewww? Baz didn’t need that in his life.

At least taming his hair back like that showcased how diamond-cut his jawline looked right now, he guessed, a fact that almost had Baz ******** up his eyeliner with tears of relief. But only almost, though, because he wasn’t some weak b***h who was gonna congratulate himself too much before he actually knew there was anything worth celebrating. Enjoy the fact that his jaw looked good? Sure. He could give himself that. But he didn’t get to celebrate anything until later tonight, when he got home.

……Assuming the wind didn’t put him in the ER with a sprained ankle, first. From how hard it crashed into him once he got out the door, Baz felt like that was going to prove an uphill fight.

Standing by the door back to the quad, Baz closed his eyes. Inhaled deeply. Counted to ten. He could do this—he knew that he could do it—but part of him very badly didn’t want to leave the building and just go home.

Not right now, anyway.

Not while the weather seemed so intent on trying to make him regret occupying a physical form.

Everyone coming in through the same doors came accompanied by whorls of snow and wind. This didn’t give Baz any confidence in his own chances. Nor, frankly, did the texts that had popped up from his father right after Baz had slipped his hard copy paper into Dr. Rokugin’s mailbox:

U sure we can’t meet up for lunch? ☹️🥺

I’m right by dcu, it’s no trouble??

Whichever sibling had taught their Dad how to use emojis like this, Baz was going to kill them.

Or, much more likely, he was going to frown judgmentally at them and then do nothing else because Eldest Sibling duty demanded that he keep them safe more than anything. Still, the fact that Dad was throwing around the pleading face emoji like an emotionally manipulative bottom made Baz want to scream and throw things until this godawful ******** reality just stopped. Until everything changed so that Dad texted appropriately for his own age, and not some guy on Grindr who wanted Baz to top him into next Tuesday.

Yeah i’m sure, Baz fired back as he watched another poor soul come inside from the storm. Sorry, i’m meeting up with some friends ❤️

But i love you and we’ll see each other for stuff soon

Baz had no plans to meet up with anybody—mostly, he planned to go back to the townhouse, and finally watch Wake Up, Dead Man after deliberately putting it off until after finals—but he also didn’t feel like lying to Dad really mattered.

Not when his parents could (and sometimes did) invite themselves over whenever they wanted (not very rarely but still). They were the ones who actually owned the townhouse, so they had keys to the door. About the only reason why they didn’t invite themselves over unannounced all the time was that they knew there was too great a risk of either interrupting Jayce while he was working, or catching Baz as he tried to please chase Last Night’s Boy out the door already. If Dad really felt like they weren’t spending enough time together—or if he really wanted to come check on Baz as if he might somehow catch something nefarious in process by coming over without warning—then nothing was stopping him but Dad himself.

It wasn’t even as though Baz wanted to avoid any of his parents? It was just……he kind of did. At least for the moment. Getting an exam and his last paper for the semester out of the way had been intense enough for today without needing to endure the weird behavior all four of his parents had shown him recently. His father was far and away the worst of them, so much more intent on finding something wrong with Baz that he could fix because doing that helped Dad feel better about himself or something. But Baz’s mother, his other mom, and his other dad were only so much better.

Still, having lied to Dad about having other plans right now, Baz felt guilty enough to shove himself out into the storm again. If he was going to lie about being busy, then it likely behooved him to make an effort. Something adjacent to actually being busy.

Immediately, Baz regretted that decision.

He pressed on regardless, gritting his teeth and beating his way back home—but not for lack of trying on the wind’s part. Every step he took felt like Labor of Heracles unto itself, with so much resistance coming Baz’s way. Whatever message Destiny City and its assorted magical phenomena thought they were sending him, not only did Baz not understand, but he also didn’t understand. How the ******** was ripping his little legs apart supposed to convey to him some important information? What was he supposed to divine from such nonsense?

A little over two-thirds of the way back to the townhouse, after nearly getting bowled over in the middle of a crosswalk, Baz ducked into the first door whose handle easily found his hand. This, too, made his stomach lurch with the sensation that he’d made a horrible decision. Feeling the color drain from his face, he looked around the diner in moderate horror.…… In all likelihood, Baz could just leave without it being, like, A Whole Thing?

But on the other hand, Dad was clearly looking for problems he could fix. Something stressful must’ve been going on with one or another of the businesses around town that he’d invested in. Or, like, with something that he hadn’t explained to Baz, likely to prevent him from worrying about it during finals season. Dad always started unnecessarily fussing over Baz when something was going wrong with Work Things, and as easily as those stresses entered his life, Baz could also assuage them with very little effort on his part.

His primary credit card was, after all, actually a copy of his Dad’s. And for whatever reason, Dad always seemed to calm down (at least somewhat) when he saw charges on Baz’s card from, like, buying pizzas for a study group, or getting Jayce and Gilbert dinner, or whatever. Since Baz had swooped in here to avoid the weather anyway, he could just……feed his housemates. That was probably a socially acceptable amount of money to spend on other people and not, like, make them feel awkward or weird about someone else getting them things? The way that some people apparently felt about it when you did them favors that involved money?

If nothing else, it was only one time of buying Jayce and Gilbert food (……so far.……this week.……this was all normal housemate type behavior, though, Baz felt pretty sure). So, like, obviously nothing to write home about? But still also notable enough to maybe make Dad chill out when he got a notification about Baz using the card.

Half-an-hour later, Baz forced a grin and pushed his way back out into the street. The plastic bags he had in-hand were practically overflowing with styrofoam containers and the less Baz thought about the contents of those containers, the better. None of it was anything he could afford to eat right now, but Jayce and Gilbert didn’t need to worry about that. For one thing, Jayce needed to eat enough to keep up the muscular figure that he worked so hard on. For another, Gilbert seemed to have been born lucky.

Unlike them, Baz had a gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach that desperately wanted him to think about the fries that had come with one of the meals he’d picked up for his friends.

As he ducked into a garbage-strewn alley that would make for a longer path back to the townhouse—but also wasn’t currently plagued by the wind—Baz tried to count off his paces, like some idiot child playing Pirates. He tried to think of the names he might see in his DMs if he opened up Grindr later. Any useless, boring name would do. Paul. James. Matthew. Henry. Maybe it wouldn’t even be a real name, but that wouldn’t matter as long as it kept Baz’s mind away from—

Yarp!

A little more than halfway down the alley, Baz stopped. He frowned, looking over at what he had initially taken for a pile of trash and little else. Making another high-pitched, barking noise, it rustled. Baz allowed himself to slouch. Without being powered up, he couldn’t tell if it was a youma or not, and God help him, he really didn’t want to fish out his henshin pen just to make one of those idiot beasts behave and leave him alone. Nor did he particularly want to end up in some stupid situation like getting chased up a tree by one and needing to call Jayce for help or, like……whatever some youma might have done to him.

Fortunately, the creature that came running out from the garbage looked too coherently assembled to be a youma.

Most of the ones Baz-as-Ilmari had seen before, they had parts from one animal shoved onto another, or their proportions were all wrong, or they moved in ways most unnatural. But this little thing, she was fluffy. And distinctly dog-shaped, with nothing else mixed in. A small dog—was the breed called Pomeranian? Baz felt like that seemed correct. White, with a splash of caramel brown around her eyes and ears. As if he needed further evidence, she trotted over to him, brazen as anything, and sniffed around under his bags, but didn’t go for any energy draining or anything.

“Are you lost,” Baz asked, then blinked down at her tail, swishing excitedly, as though it would answer him. With a sigh, he set the takeout bags aside, then crouched down to her level. He moved slowly, carefully, trying not to startle her—though it hardly seemed to matter, as she stayed quite taken with the food instead. “Come here, sweetheart, let’s just…… Can I check if you……”

No tags jingled as he tried to coax her over.

But……she had to belong to someone, right? A dog like this probably had a pedigree and things?

Baz sighed into his palm. He hadn’t accounted for a trip to the ASPCA when planning out his afternoon, but……what was he supposed to do? Leave the little girl out here? Surely not. He’d just……drop the food off at home, then take her in, and the folks at the ASPCA would help him figure out what to do.

This was fine.