Disclaimer: SnowBaz belongs to Rainbow Rowell.

A/N: As this story comes to a close, I want to give a huge shout-out to all the education majors, math majors, and Anglophiles in my life. I couldn't have written this story without all of them.

Getting Ph Ds takes five gruelling years for both of us. I'm studying ordinary differential equations and Baz is studying global finance, and that's about as much as we understand of each other's fields. We really should understand more, especially since Baz sometimes comes home complaining that all he's doing is maths, but our research silos us into narrower and narrower subfields, and we both have trouble seeing beyond those. It's a stressful time of both of our lives, and many days I miss having an enemy as all-consuming and unpredictable as the Humdrum, because then no one could possibly hold me accountable for planning anything or, honestly, having my shit together at all. Plus, I think I survived the entirety of my teenage years on adrenaline, and now that's just not an option. Maths breakthroughs are exciting, but they're not the same kind of exciting as having just outrun a worseger or killed a dragon.

The constant low-level stress and frequent late nights make both of us snippy, if not worse. It also makes me (though obviously not Baz) frequently sick. Baz's healing spells usually do the trick and have me better within a few hours of when I tell him I feel awful, but several times I develop bad enough coughs, ear infections, or sinus infections that I need to see Dr. Wellbelove (I can't see Normal doctors since I still have wings and a tail). Baz is endlessly good about this—when I'm really sick is the one time when he will never, ever criticize me or pick a fight with me. Instead, he drives me to Dr. Wellbelove's, rubs my back, makes me soup, and even plays violin in the other room sometimes if I think it will help.

Other times, though, our apartment is not a scene of domestic bliss. Our worst fights happen while we're getting our doctorates. There's a day four months in when we have an hour-long screaming match over who was responsible for buying groceries, the day we come home and realise there's nothing with which to make dinner. Two years in, we have such a big fight about money—we're living on small stipends that I would love to have supplemented with Grimm-Pitch money, and Baz isn't willing to broach the topic with his father and thinks we ought to just live within our means—that Baz stays with friends for a few days and at one point even brings up the word "divorce." That's all it takes for me to panic, take back everything I've said, and beg him to move back in, which he does, and within a few days it's like nothing ever happened. Other than those two instances, we mostly manage to keep our marriage on good footing, even when we're both miserable.

We're not always miserable, though. There are days when we have breakthroughs in our research, and those nights we dance together (Baz is slowly, slowly teaching me to dance properly) and take a break from our work to make cake or brownies or—best of all—scones. Sometimes those nights we add a bit to our sleep deprivation by making out like we're teenagers and having fun with slowly undressing each other before descending into more intense forms of intimacy. I can tell, on those nights, that our marriage isn't dying, and that makes me happy.

Writing our dissertations is a domestic rollercoaster. It feels like, every time something goes right for Baz, something goes wrong for me, and vice versa. While I'm having writer's block, Baz is cranking out 3,000 words a day. While Baz can't find a single fact he's looking for, all of my calculations lead gloriously in the direction I knew they would. But finally, somehow, we both have completed dissertations to defend by the end of our fifth year.

The dissertation defense feels like fighting a dragon, followed by a worseger, followed by a horde of flibertigibbets, followed by a goblin. And worse, I don't have the option of going off, waking up after the session ends smelling of smoke and somehow having accomplished everything expected of me. No, I have to keep standing there and explaining my calculations and formulae and the patterns I've found and the methods I chose, all to a panel of judges with faces as expressionless as dinner plates. Baz warned me about this—his defense was a week before mine—but nothing could have prepared me for the exhaustion of what is essentially a three-hour oral exam aimed at poking holes in everything you've done in the last three years.

Yet I survive. Baz and I graduate on the same day, though in separate ceremonies as we belong to separate departments, and we quite literally disrobe one another when we get back to our apartment. Two weeks later, we fly to America to watch Penny graduate from Harvard with a doctorate in anthropology. Shortly thereafter we start our jobs—me as part of a team designing the next generation supercomputer ("So if you can't be the most powerful thing in the world," Baz said when I got the job offer, "you have to work on the most powerful thing in the world?") and Baz as an assistant manager at a mutual fund. I worry for a while that Baz is going to burn out in the world of high finance (with his flammability and predilection toward starting fires, that could be bad), but he seems okay as long as he can play the violin a couple times a week after work, and as long as we make use of our time in the bedroom.

We're about a year into our careers before we even get around to talking about children again. We're both working at least 60 hours a week, if not 80 (still better than writing a dissertation, though). Luckily, we have similar schedules, so we see each other for early breakfasts, late dinners, sleeping, and the occasional weekend outing, and we're still in love. It's one weekend when we're both actually free from work, as we're walking along the Thames holding hands, that I turn to Baz and say, "So, children."

"I've been thinking about them," Baz replies. "We could never have them on this schedule. I know there are live-in nannies, but I refuse." Within three sentences his voice has gone from light to clenched, tight, maybe even close to tears.

I look at him, at his pressed-together whitening lips and his flinty grey eyes. "Love, are you okay?"

Baz squeezes my hand tightly enough to cut off the circulation. "I want to be a father, Simon," he replies. "I want—I want a life where I can actually parent. And that's what I want to do. Parenting."

"Okay," I say, rubbing his thumb with mine. "Jesus, Baz, all you had to do was tell me. Were you ever planning on telling me?"

"When?" Baz returns. "At breakfast we're not awake enough to function, and at dinner we're past the point of exhaustion, and when we are both awake at the same time and capable of doing anything I want to savour the moment, not figure out the future."

I guide us to a bench and sit him down. "But clearly you have wants that involve the future."

"Well, yes—don't you?"

"As in, I know I want you to be a part of it, and I'm glad that you almost certainly will be? Of course. But I'm not the planning one; you know that."

Baz leans forward, elbows on his knees, and looks out at the river. "Do you want children, Simon?"

"I think so," I reply. "I think we need to talk more about it before we make a decision."

"Do you like your job? I feel like I don't even know how you're doing anymore."

"Yes, I like my job. Rather a lot. Do you like yours?"

"It's . . . fine." Baz turns to me, and his armour falls away. "Simon?" He sounds so vulnerable. "Would you hate me if I quit my job so we could start a family? I know I'm making more than you, but you're making more than enough to cover our necessities, and if I weren't working then we wouldn't have to pay for full-time child care . . ."

"Is that what you want?" I ask.

"Is it okay with you for me to want that?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

"I just—we haven't talked about who's supposed to be the breadwinner, or how you feel about full-time parents, or really any of it. And I don't want you to be ashamed of me for—"

I don't let him finish. "Basilton." I never call him that. "If you want this, we can make it work. Full stop. I wasn't raised in a family; I don't have strong opinions one way or another about how to set one up. I'm confident you'll make an excellent father, and if that's what you want to do then that's what you'll do."

"Simon . . . I love you, but you said two minutes ago that you weren't sure you wanted children. You can't say yes to children just because I want them."

I sigh and look out at the water. "You're right. We need to talk more about this. But thank you for telling me how you feel. Let me know the next time you want something this badly, will you? I want to be there for you. I want to help."

Baz tips his head onto my shoulder. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you."

A/N: I tried to write the surrogacy process and the children, but those are experiences I've never had and everything I wrote about them turned out to be rubbish, so the story ends here. I continue to appreciate favourites, and thanks for reading!