Words: 3,667
Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, but this reminds me that we should probably start bothering Señor Buckley about how his re-write is going.
Notes: This is the longest chapter so far! I've finished ⅔ of my essays and just wanted to get this posted once and for all. #lame #cheesy #cute #teamsabrina #teamtricksterking #LetPuckStayInNewYork2016
Edit June 7, 2016: Someone on AO3 kindly corrected me that it was not, in fact, the Big Bad Wolf who ripped off Puck's wings, it was the Jabberwocky, and I'm an idiot, but that's been fixed and all is still well. 4th one's coming, kids, don't worry.
(3rd)
good times never seemed so good
They ask him to find her and bring her home for the night, and the first place he thinks to go to is the ballpark. There's no real logical reason behind why he heads there immediately; she could as easily have gone to Central Park, or her favourite coffee shop, or the bike racks behind the school, or the Starbucks where they frequently study together, hell, she could have gone to his room at his mother's apartment just a few blocks down the road (she once told him she feels weirdly comfortable there), but his instincts tell him to get on the next train and get off at the community ballpark a couple stops away.
By the time he reaches the gate, it's past eleven but the field lights are on at full power, as expected from a baseball park in Brooklyn, and he spots Sabrina immediately from her blonde ponytail poking out of a Yankees cap. She's managed to get the ball machine working – that thing's over a decade old and should honestly be banned from usage, but Sabrina and the rest of her softball team are kind of attached to it so the owner of the ballpark leaves it lying around for them – and is working up a sweat smashing dirty, dented softballs into the field. She misses a few balls every now and then but in the two or so minutes that he stands there watching her, she definitely hits over ten impressive home runs into left- and right-field fuelled solely on pure anger.
When the ball machine runs out of ammunition and Sabrina's forced to retrieve all of the balls from the field, he leans against the gate of the ballpark, not really caring if she's noticed his presence or not. Sabrina throws each ball back towards the batting plate immediately after picking them up and he smirks to himself in amusement when he notices how rough and reckless her throws are. Figures that she'd need a little bit of a workout to blow off steam. When Sabrina starts to drag her feet back to the batter's plate for another round of hitting, he grabs a spare mitt from a dusty, wooden cupboard near the gate and makes his entrance, not saying a word.
Sabrina raises her head at the sound of the gate rattling open and clanging shut but frowns when she sees that it's only Puck. She opens her mouth to tell him to get lost before she realises she could probably use the company and since he isn't saying anything anyway, she shuts her mouth and stubbornly marches back and forth between stray balls and the ball machine, refilling it for the next round. When the machine is filled to the brim, she glances at Puck to find him standing right at centre field, a position she's familiar with, and softening the worn catching glove with a couple of whacks from his other hand.
Not a word is spoken; Sabrina simply picks up her bat and glances at Puck one more time. He raises his glove to let her know he's ready and she begins her next set of hitting.
With Puck out there running back and forth, trying to catch as many softballs as he can without tripping and wiping the dirt with his face, Sabrina's a little more focused, calmed by his mere presence. She gets the feeling that her parents and siblings probably sent him out to bring her home, but she's quite positive he'd have done so in a heartbeat without them telling him to. The softball player in her notes in the corner of her mind that she hits better this time around - when she's not so angry - and she reminds herself, as she constantly does these days, to keep her emotions in check.
But it's been so hard, especially when communication in her family is at an all-time low, and more and more often these days, her mind gets teleported five years back in time to all those moments when she felt cornered, helpless, and small against the likes of Granny's nobility and Daphne's naïvety. When Sabrina first got to the park half an hour ago after ditching the condo, she'd felt just as small, she'd been crying a little bit, and she'd felt exactly like her twelve-year-old self.
She's never felt more outspoken on a case than she had tonight and it's like everyone's trying to take sides. Which direction should the family take with their newest clue? How should they approach their suspects? How can they determine who's a legitimate suspect and who isn't with so many magical variables at hand? And of course, it's her favourite question that had painted a big red target on her forehead.
Can we trust them?
Them meaning all the Everafters linked to the case.
There isn't a single fibre in her body that wants to abandon this case or any other case afterwards, just like there isn't a single molecule in her being that ever wants to abandon the Everafters. She's been making quite a name for herself in the Everafter community with every solved case, she loves this job, and she's damn good at it. Unfortunately, her family doesn't seem to realise that one reason she's a natural at detective work is probably because she's also a natural skeptic, but it isn't her being cynical or negative or discriminatory at all, it's her being careful and thinking of the consequences (magic always has a price, after all). This is her thinking of their client, of the entire Everafter community and their potential exposure, and of her family, but they wouldn't listen.
(They never listen.)
She'd needed to breathe.
"Hey, you wanna take a break yet?" Puck suddenly calls out from right field as he makes a running catch, just barely managing to scoop the softball out of the air before it hits the ground. Sabrina sidesteps the next softball before it can hit her side and walks over to the pitching mound to turn the machine off. Once it stops spitting out old softballs, she glances over at Puck's silhouette in the outfield and sighs heavily.
"Damn," Puck says, and the only reason she can hear him clearly at this distance is because it's late enough at night that the only noise surrounding the park is a crisp, clean hum; a mixture of the thin Spring wind, chirping crickets and the distant buzz of the city. He makes his way over to Sabrina slowly, taking his time, intent on giving her space.
Sabrina walks over to sit on the bleachers to wait for him, leaning against her bat and pressing her forehead to her hands. She only lifts her head when she feels the bleachers give with Puck's added weight.
"Did they ask you to find me?" she asks him quietly. Puck shrugs and leans back on his hands, tilting his face up towards the night sky. His eyes search for the billions of stars he knows are out there, stars he'd seen before countless civilisations began erecting buildings and skyscrapers that, little by little, started to dim the lights.
"You know they wouldn't ask me to do something I wouldn't choose to do myself," he responds cryptically. Sabrina averts her eyes and focuses on the bat in front of her, holding it upright and spinning it with her fingers.
"Are they mad?" she whispers.
"Baz is mad," Puck chuckles. "But only because he has no idea what's going on anymore, and he just wants you to come home." Sabrina gulps and lifts one hand closer to her face to inspect it for new callouses and blisters.
"I'm seventeen-years-old and they still won't listen to me," she mutters, mostly to herself. Puck makes a face, squinting his eyes as if he disagrees with her.
"No," he starts, thinking about how to phrase his next few words. "You're seventeen-years-old and shouldn't be running away from home in the middle of the night anymore." Sabrina throws Puck an irritated look and curses at him, to which he smiles gently and ignores, responding only by leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.
"Look," he continues. "This is one of the biggest cases you've all taken up in the past five years. Veronica and Henry are probably stressing out about keeping you, Daphne, and Basil safe, and Daphne just wants what's best for your client."
"And us? What about what's best for us? You know the kind of magical Everafter shit we have to deal with, Puck! What if someone gets hurt?"
"You can't think like that - "
"I have to!" she interrupts him, unknowingly tightening her grip on the bat. "I have to, or else no one will, and I need to keep our family safe." Puck frowns lightly at her, sitting up.
"That's not your job, Sabrina," he says carefully. She snaps her head to look at him, a disbelieving, if not angry, look on her face.
"It has always been my job," she says in barely a whisper. "You of all people should know that!" She's helpless to the unexpected, brief flashback of the Jabberwocky mercilessly ripping Puck's beautiful wings right off of his back all those years ago; she can hear his excruciating yell, she can practically feel the searing pain, and all of a sudden she's on her feet, gripping the bat so tightly she can feel the skin on her knuckles protesting, but she has to get out of here before she starts crying again.
"Hey, hey," Puck lifts himself off of the bench slightly, catching her hand before she can so much as walk off in the middle of their conversation. She hasn't tried to do that in over a year and he's not about to let her start again. He catches her wince slightly and withdraws his hand just a little so he's only gently grasping her fingers, but he tugs her back just enough so she's convinced to sit back down again. He doesn't let go of her fingers and instead studies them, absentmindedly tracing her new callouses, wondering just how hard she'd pushed herself with the batting machine before he'd arrived to stop her.
Her hand is unusually cold for the middle of Spring and she's trembling so lightly she's almost vibrating but Puck recognises the look on her face.
Fear.
He hasn't seen it in the longest time but he has no doubt it's always been in there and she's only gotten better at masking it.
So he pushes aside his mask, puts it away for now, and swallows the cocky, royal asshole he normally acts like when it's not just the two of them alone.
"You're scared," he says quietly, and he's incredibly aware of the bare skin of her arm touching his. "And you don't want anyone to get hurt; not your client, not your parents, not Daphne or Baz. You don't have to be ashamed of that." He doesn't look at her directly and focuses instead on her shaking hand but watches her from the corner of his eyes. He notes numerous little signals that she's trying to stay in control, trying to reel her emotions in. She's clenching her jaw so that the veins of her neck protrude more than they normally do, there's a slight wetness in the rim of her eyes, and she's looking at her lap, her head down, and the sight of her makes him want to reach over and lift her back onto her feet so she can stand again.
"But as long as you're there," he takes a moment to squeeze her fingers gently, running his thumb briefly over them, "no one's going to get hurt."
It's not so much his words as it is that little action with his thumb that encourages Sabrina to finally lift her head to look at him. When she does, she sees a depth of honesty in his face - in his eyes, in the crease between his eyebrows, and in the frown of his lips - that sends a shiver through her body.
"C'mon," he continues, giving her a little smirk. "You're clever, and resourceful, and scary as hell when you want to be." He speaks from experience and she knows it, finally managing to quirk up the corner of her mouth.
"You are the strongest person I know," he says quietly, sincerely. "But it makes sense to be afraid sometimes. Okay?"
Sabrina nods slightly and drinks up Puck's words, a little appalled by his wisdom and his maturity, but even more grateful for him in that moment. He always manages to crawl his way back into her line of sight whenever it seems like the only person in the cold, cruel world is her and her alone, but she doesn't remember ever asking him to look after her. Yet despite that, she's pretty sure it's an unspoken agreement between them now, that whether's she having detective issues or he's having royalty issues, at least they don't have to go through them alone, and here he is, keeping his side of their silent bargain.
For a second she thinks she wants to thank him somehow, but she doesn't know whether she should say it or do something about it, because it looks like he's about to do something they haven't done in six years. Puck's gaze have been flickering to her lips ever since she looked up, and Sabrina hopes her eyes are lying when she notices that his pupils are completely dilated. Deciding to experiment a little so as not to miss the opportunity at hand (also, why not), she wets her lips with her tongue, and her eyebrow quirks along with her skipping heart when his eyes follow her movement and his Adam's apple bobs suddenly.
And then she pulls her tongue back behind her lips and his eyes fly to her blue ones, and the moment is gone as if it had never happened. She pulls her fingers away from his hand and reaches up to tuck some hair behind her ear, clearing her throat.
"What?" Puck says hoarsely.
"No, I just - nothing, it's dumb," she replies quickly, shaking her head.
"No, what were you thinking?" Puck bends his head a little to try and catch her gaze.
"I just - for a second there, it felt like you were gonna kiss me," she mumbles quickly.
"W-wait - "
"Yeah, no, it's stupid."
"No, I mean - "
"Just forget it! I appreciate the pep talk, okay?" Sabrina stammers quickly, cheeks burning up as she mentally smashes the baseball bat into her forehead. Of course she'd end up ruining a wonderfully tender and genuine moment with Puck. What's new?
"I was going to."
"What?" She stares at him with a wide-eyed, uncertain look, praying to five different gods that he's not pulling her leg.
"I mean, I wanted to," Puck elaborates, and Sabrina prays to twenty more gods that this is actually happening.
"Then…?" She leaves her question hanging, holding her breath. Puck glances at her uncomfortably before looking away and running a hand through his hair briskly, messing it up even further.
"I didn't want you to think that I only kissed you because you were having a moment of weakness, okay?" he explains, stumbling across his words. "Like, if I'm going to kiss you, I want you to know that I'm doing it just because I want to, not because I'm trying to save you or make you feel better like your dumb chick lit books, but because I want to kiss you," he blurts out, and immediately afterwards, he takes a deep breath. He has this look on his face like he can't believe he survived saying all of that straight to her face and she almost cracks a smile just looking at him. That didn't make complete sense but since when was he so chivalrous? Or had he always been like this?
"Well," she says slowly. "My moment of 'weakness' is gone and now I'm in a moment of confusion." Puck throws her a dirty look, wondering if she's mocking him.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you should - just - go for it, dumbass," she stutters embarrassedly. Puck blinks.
"Are - are you serious?" Sabrina breathes in deeply through her nose, steeling herself for the next few seconds.
"Yeah," she whispers. Her left hand gently sets the bat down against the bench next to her and she licks her lips again, twisting her upper body to better face Puck. Since he's already facing her, he reaches up slowly, albeit a little hesitantly, but eventually takes her chin between his finger and his thumb, tilting her face up towards him.
"Are you sure?" Puck asks again quietly, just so he can give them one last chance to stop this from ever happening in case either of them just aren't thinking straight.
"Positive," Sabrina assures him. He inhales a silent, sharp intake of air when he feels her breath brush over his lips and that's enough to pull him towards her, ready to taste her lips on his (finally) -
- only to feel his forehead collide with the brim of her Yankees baseball cap.
"Fuck!" He almost swears right against Sabrina's lips before jerking away, rubbing his forehead lightly with his fingers. Sabrina, on the other hand, bursts into giggles when she realises what happened.
"Are you okay?" she asks, still laughing. Puck grumbles frustratedly but doesn't waste another second, only more determined to kiss her. This time, he lifts his leg up and over the bench so he's straddling it and facing her directly. He reaches up with his hand again and takes hold of the brim of Sabrina's cap, pulling it off of her head, along with her hair tie, releasing her hair from its ponytail so it can drape across her back the way he likes it. She gasps a little at his bold movements but a split second later, he's swallowing her gasp and swallowing her breath, pressing his lips down into hers and rubbing his nose against the side of hers. She barely acknowledges him dropping her cap onto the ground because his other hand's come up to hold her cheek in place, spreading the warmth of her flushed skin to his fingertips. She's just about to tilt her head like she's seen in too many shows and movies when he pulls away, not even noticing that she follows his lips like a moth to a flame.
"Um," he stutters, and he licks his lips, staring right at her. "Was that okay?" Sabrina doesn't know whether to roll her eyes or laugh, only that his hands are really warm against her face and she just wants him to kiss her again.
"I don't know, m-maybe you should do it again, just in case?" she says breathily and he nods quickly ("G-good idea") before taking her lips in his again, tilting his head before she can, giving himself more access to her, her tongue, her teeth, her taste.
And it goes on like that. He pulls away, or she pulls away, because every now and then, they need to breathe, but he keeps going back for more, and she never denies him another taste of her lips, only finally pulling away to get up off the bench when her watch starts beeping to signal that it's a quarter to midnight. She's laughing when she picks up her Yankees cap off of the floor and brushes the dirt off of it, and he's suddenly so overjoyed at the sight of a smile on her face that he steals another kiss from her, delighted to know that he'd put that smile there.
When he backs off (or when he can no longer breathe), she subtly slips her hand in his and fits her cap snugly on her head with the brim facing backwards so it's not in the way. Puck takes that as a hint that she's still giving him a green light to kiss her and he does so happily; enough that Sabrina's watch has to beep again at midnight to give them a second reminder that it's getting late.
"So this is a thing now?" Sabrina says hesitantly. Puck's swinging their joined hands a little, his joy practically pulsing out of his pores and infecting her, and he looks at her curiously.
"What? Me retrieving you for your family? Or me kissing you? Because I can do both," he says eagerly. Sabrina rolls her eyes.
"I meant us, dipstick," she snaps at him, but with a fondness that dulls the bite of her insult. "Are we… y'know, together?" She feels like asking him if they're "boyfriend/girlfriend" would be so un-classy and a little naïve, neither of which are characteristics that embody her, but she needs to know somehow.
"I feel like we were always a thing, Grimm, don't you?" he says in an overly cheesy voice, not directly answering her question but telling her just what she wants to hear, and that's when Sabrina realises she's entered a whole new era of jokes. She can see it now: all the stupid, lame, cheesy jokes about their relationship.
"Oh, no," she whispers quietly, making a face at his awful line.
"Oh, yeah," he grins, as if he's read her mind, leaning in and nuzzling his nose against her cheek as they approach the ballpark's gate. "You're gonna love all the cheesy lines I'll have for you, Grimm."
Sabrina smiles at him sardonically, "I'm sure my dad'll love them, too." Puck blanches, his grin practically falling off his face and clattering to the floor.
"Okay, maybe we should keep it on the down-low for a bit," he concedes. She grins up at him.
"Good call, fairy boy," she says, rewarding him with a kiss, one that he receives with open arms and an open heart.
- fin -
Notes: [chanting] CHEESY CHEESY CHEESY! (Don't forget to let me know what y'all think so I can make the appropriate adjustments in future chapters!)