He finds her sitting in front of the open curtains, face blanched with bluish moonlight, knees hugged tightly to her chest. The cold sheets indicate that she's been out of bed for a while, and the dent in the space her body used to occupy is still there. He slides out of bed and sits next to her, pressing a soft kiss to the hollow where her jaw meets her neck. A glance at the white crescent moons that dot her skin just below the splatter of darkened scars where the mirrors cut her tell him just exactly what's on her mind at the moment. He presses his lips to her skin two more times, one for the slash on her shoulder, one for the cut on her forearm, and she leans into him. They don't talk—not for the first half hour or so, just Puck stroking her scars and tracing the same pattern of loops over the ridges of her knuckles, over and over, cyclical.
"You look older," she remarks after a time, brushing the thin lines that crease the skin beneath his eyes. Her voice is slightly raspy from disuse. "Like you've aged."
"Just a little."
"But why? We're both Everafters. I thought you always wanted to be a boy. Forever."
He does want to be a boy. His brain yearns for boyhood, for childhood mischief, for immaturity and the rush of the wind cold on his back, but the heart does not always succeed in following the brain. "You grew up."
"And?"
"So did I." He laughs. "I bet my gray hair will look better than yours."
She kisses his jaw. "Everything's a competition with you, isn't it?"
He returns the kiss, one in the center of her tilted forehead. "You can't get rid of me that easily."
"Until it comes to changing Allison's diapers."
He chuckles. "Got me there. And I thought you smelled when we were younger."
"If it isn't the pot calling the kettle black," she teases.
"Ooh," he says in mock hurt, taking one hand off her waist to clutch his heart and double over. "I'm wounded." She laughs, and guides his fingers back to their place on her side.
After a few minutes of silence, she asks, quietly, "What are you thinking about?" He's got the knitted brow and wrinkles at the corners of his lips that indicate deep thought.
"Chili cheese dogs," he mumbles faintly.
"Really." She says it more as a statement than a question, because it's quite possible, even probable, she would venture to say, that he could be daydreaming at night about chili cheese dogs while slow dancing in the living room.
"More like the time I fed them to the Pegasi and had them attack you when we were twelve," he admits.
"No," she presses. "About growing older. Growing old."
There is an implied 'together' at the end of her sentence, like in the silly movie about a man who reads to his wife from a notebook every day that Daphne adores so much. 'Together', like pressing one gnarled hand to your cheek before she falls asleep and watching the breath pass through her chest until you find sleep too.
"I wouldn't. Who would wish osteoporosis and prunes on themselves when they could avoid it altogether?"
"But Allison. She could never live a normal life if we didn't age, if she didn't age."
"Normal isn't good or bad, Sabrina. It just is."
"I want her to grow up without having to worry about Everafters hurting her," she says in a tiny voice. "There are so many bad humans already. I don't want her to worry about Everafters too."
"I know." Her shoulders hunch slightly against his torso, and he clasps the hand pressed tightly to his chest. His heart beats against her palm, heavy and sluggish with dread.
Somehow, for inexplicable reasons, the people that walk beneath the light of the moon are not the same twelve hours later under the sun. During the day, he is His Highness—unshakable, fearless, king; defined by the golden hair that curls up beneath the heavy crown and the loopy black inked signatures on royal decrees. But by night, he is only Puck—immature and naïve, nothing but a boy standing naked in the face of fear.
How small he feels, clutching at her thick blonde hair, and how stupid, to believe, like a child, that a little moonlight and the languid notes of a melody from a different life could make everything better. Music doesn't heal the black bruises that won't fade from your soul, won't turn your shaking new-father nerves to steel.
If he listens carefully, he can hear the sound of her heartbeat. It beats heavy against her ribs, in tandem with his own. She's sleeping. Her limbs fall over Puck's arms as he tucks her back underneath the sheets and leaves a quick kiss on her forehead. Like a blessing, almost. He folds his arms and leans on the crib their daughter is currently sleeping in—downy blonde hair falls over her face and rises with every puff of breath she takes. The mobile above her dips up and down, plastic suns and moons reflecting whatever residual moonlight filters in through the curtains.
Allison. His daughter. Seven months after holding her in the too-bright white of the hospital, swaddled in blankets, the thought still feels like an anomaly among the neuron swarm in his head. This, the child crying, red faced in his arms, is not another charter of land to govern and rule, but a girl, his girl, his daughter.
There comes a point in life where you look at someone, and they become synonymous with your life. Perhaps not in the sense that they keep you alive, they feed you oxygen and keep the blood running in your veins, but that in all the blessings you've been lucky enough to receive, the stars came together to give you this.
He is not a father, not a king, not a leader; he is not Henry, nor Mustardseed, nor Charming.
But he is Puck, and he is brave enough to try.
dear OakeX,
another year has come and gone, and this time, i am embarrassingly late, almost offensively, with writing you something for your birthday. to be precise, it's been 17 days since my birthday has passed, so i am 18 days late in giving you a birthday present. a thousand apologies, please have mercy, etcetera, etcetera.
all writing related procrastination set aside for the moment (hahahaha), i really do hope you like it. reading your works and constantly refreshing my PM box for messages from you has made me a different person. for better or for worse, morally, is for someone else to decide, but i say with confidence that reading your review almost two years ago on my very first (now deleted) fic has given me the confidence to write more, and has undoubtedly shaped me into a better writer in general.
happy almost-three-weeks-late seventeenth, friend.
to everyone else who has patiently put up with my incredibly erratic writing habits and schedule...i, as usual, don't have an excuse. my bad? but if you'd still leave a favorite/review, it would be pretty awesome ;)