Archive of Our Own

“Sebastian, I can’t fit any more information into my brain. I can’t possibly practice writing any other variations of hydration or duplication spells, and if I try, my eyeballs are going to fall out of my head.”

Grimm only grunted unsympathetically. I turned to my usual tactics in getting him to cave to me, sighing loudly, whining about how exhausted I was, and how dizzy I felt (all of which was true, as it often was lately). Someone from a nearby table in the library shushed me through the bookcases, and I glared at the invisible offender.

Finally, at a comment about how my head was beginning to ache (it actually was), Grimm heaved a deep, silent sigh that raised and dropped his shoulders. 

“Very well,” he said, closing the textbook in front of him with a snap. “No use fighting it, I suppose. You always seem to get your way in the end.”

It shouldn’t have bothered me; lately, Grimm and I were always prodding at and goading each other, landing blows just this side of hurtful, but always with some strange kind of exasperated affection behind it that it never truly hurt. But for some reason, this one in particular triggered something within me. This teasing comment with barely the hint of malice behind it was the thing that made something buried deep within me snap and come loose, some deeply hidden emotion that was wound so tight that one tug made the whole thing shatter and come flinging up to the surface. 

His textbook snapped close at the same moment my head whipped around on my neck, making a muscle spasm painfully. I ignored it as I glared at him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He had already stood and was hefting his bookbag off the floor, and looked down at me in surprise. “What?”

Something hot and liquid shot up my spine, a foreign feeling of something that lay somewhere between rage and resentment.

“What do you mean, I ‘always get my way in the end’?”

Grimm blinked once. “Nothing. Well—I suppose not nothing. But you always do, don’t you? Whether it’s going to any number of bars or clubs in Luxe, or even going to Sybilla’s tower in the Wood—once you’ve set your mind to something, it’s nearly impossible to persuade you otherwise.”

And I know he didn’t mean for it to be cruel, but it was true, and perhaps that was why it hurt so much. I couldn’t help but feel like I was a burden on everyone around me, especially lately, with how weak and useless both myself and my magic felt, and that everything I did only created inconveniences for them, and then—to hear it spoken out loud sent a pain through my chest, a sharp, prickly sensation that sent me spiraling back to my childhood.

“So you think I’m a stubborn, spoiled brat who’s used to getting his way, then? That I’m just a—a rich kid who has skated through school, my father’s money and status the only thing carrying me, and that I don’t deserve to be here? That you deserve success more than I do?”

Grimm’s eyes were slowly growing wider and wider as I went on, his mouth slightly agape as if he meant to protest. But he didn’t. He didn’t stop me—or, more likely, he couldn’t, as it was always nearly impossible to interrupt one of my tirades, but he didn’t even try. And for some reason that hurt, too.

I was standing now, head tilted up in his direction defiantly, my fingers having curled into fists, the nails digging into my palms in what should have been a painful way, if the blood and heat pounding through my body hadn’t numbed me to the point of feeling nothing but the pulsing rage building within me.

“Leovander,” he finally said. His tone wasn’t angry, or impatient, or even admonishing. He just sounded…sad. His eyebrows seemed to be in an active fight between knitting deeply together and crawling even higher on his forehead. And below them, his eyes were staring fixedly at me, intense and searching and full of something else I couldn’t place, and it made my skin feel hot everywhere.

Suddenly I couldn’t be there, I didn’t want him to placate me, I just needed to go. I snatched up my bag and swept my books and papers off the table, not even attempting to put anything away, and stormed off, leaving Grimm standing in the library, silent and sullen and perhaps a little perplexed.

My head was thudding with rage and adrenaline as I sped through the hallways, out into the grounds, and towards the dorms. I was furious, though I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why. And I was even more furious because some confused, deranged part of me hoped that Grimm would come after me, chase me, soothe my anxieties.

But he didn’t.

The rest of my evening was completely ruined, and I felt lost and helpless as I wandered back to my room.

I’m certain that if I had asked Agnes (which I wouldn’t do, because she was likely to make some snarky comment about how Grimm and I had had more arguments than any actual couple she knew, which never failed to elicit an indignant, offended reaction out of me). She would have lectured me on how my childish overreaction was likely the result of some deep-seated emotional wound within me that I had never tried to examine and heal, and was therefore repressed and that my outraged reaction was the result of that internal injury being prodded. And then I would have told her to sod off, and that would have started some kind of heated argument, and so I decided to skip that step altogether and go straight to wallowing in self-pity, which I was very practiced at.

I stormed straight to my room, throwing my bag and coat directly onto the floor, ignoring the books and parchment and inkwells that came spilling out. Reaching for the first bottle in sight, I uncorked it and took a large swig of wine. Despite how different I had become from our time in the Unquiet Wood, some things were still the same—I still sought refuge in alcohol, and was still all too arrogant and proud, and apparently still an entitled prick, at least in Grimm’s eyes. Perhaps I should have been slightly ashamed, or felt some kind of regret for returning back to old habits, but at the moment I was angry and frustrated and, frankly, a little sad, and I didn’t give a damn 

I hadn’t stopped drinking entirely—I certainly drank less, mostly because I was too damn tired all the time and didn’t really need to drink to lull me to sleep anymore. I didn’t not drink because I know how much Grimm disliked it when I got drunk and said insensitive things and acted stupid. I didn’t care what Grimm thought of me, at all. Which was, obviously, why I was so worked up over a small, probably innocuous comment he made that I had come back to my room in a mood and immediately begun drinking about it.

The alcohol burned on the way down—it wasn’t a particularly good bottle of wine—but I managed a few more swallows before aggressively kicking off my shoes and collapsing back on the bed, still clutching the wine bottle by the neck. Anger tugged at the corners of my eyes, pricked my throat, prodded my heart, and I drank until it dulled to something a bit more digestible.

* * *

I woke still in the previous day’s clothes with the precursor of a headache pulsing behind my eyeballs, which cemented my mood for the remainder of the day. I was still a little angry at Grimm but mostly, I think, I was angry at myself. Although for what, exactly, I couldn’t place. Maybe for feeling like I hadn’t become a better person over the past few weeks, for feeling like, despite how much I had changed, Grimm still saw me as the same, entitled prick of a rich kid who always got his way.

I had been trying harder, every day, and yet one innocent comment from Grimm made me feel like it had all been for nothing, that perhaps I wasn’t any different. That perhaps I wasn’t deserving of Grimm and never would be.

I was miserable all day. While I would normally seek out Agnes or Grimm or, in a desperate moment, Cassius between classes and during breaks, I was intent on being alone. I would internally seethe and berate myself until…well, I wasn’t sure, but at some point the mental castigation would yield some kind of result, as it always did.

And I was irritated that this little tiff with Grimm had unbalanced me so much and made me realize just how dependent on his company I had become. Even if we didn’t talk, just studied or existed in the vicinity of each other, I had become so used to his presence, feeling him near me, that I couldn’t seem to function normally otherwise. It was, frankly, pathetic. There was no other word for it. 

Agnes tried to stop me at lunch in the refectory, but I grabbed a sandwich and blew her off without so much as a glance (which I knew I would certainly hear about later). After spending the majority of the day moping and wallowing and not paying attention in classes, I had decided that I needed to be an adult and perhaps talk about my feelings and maybe admit that I was being a bit of a prick about the whole thing (and not because at this point I was practically co-dependent on Grimm and needed to be around for at least four hours a day).

Grimm was sitting on a shady spot of the lawn, two textbooks laid out in front of him, seemingly reading both at once, skimming the pages of one book, scribbling a few notes here and there, then turning the page and swapping to the other book, and repeating the same process. It was one of the most absurd things I had ever seen him do and it infuriated me that I found it so endearing.

I was only twenty feet away when I almost lost my nerve and turned on my heel. I had to remind myself that if I did that, I would end up back in my room and only mope for another twenty-four hours, waiting for him to come to me first, when I had been the one to snap at him. So I gave myself a mental kick in the pants and stalked the distance between us, dropped down onto the grass beside him, and gave a melodramatic and resigned sigh.

Grimm looked up at the intrusion. I only know because I saw it in my peripherals, as I refused to look directly at him out of what little pride I had left. Something akin to surprise registered in his eyes before smoothly slipping away into something more neutral, though I could tell by his posture that his curiosity was piqued by my dramatic entrance.

I admit that I sat there, pouting like a petulant child, for several minutes. Grimm had long since given up on waiting for me to say something and turned his attention back to his textbooks, which annoyed me, because I was here and trying, and why wouldn’t he say anything? Then I reminded myself, in a voice that annoyingly sounded like my brother’s, that I had come here to talk to him, not the other way around, and that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to approach situations like an adult sometimes. 

Pulling my knees up to my chest and hugging my legs tightly, I muttered “I’m sorry,” so quietly that I almost couldn’t hear myself.

Grimm’s head twitched up at the sudden, unexpected sound and he swiveled around to look at me again. I still refused to look directly at him, as if seeing the reaction to my apology in his eyes would confirm the fact that it was necessary, because, as usual, I had been an ass.

Feeling his eyes boring deep into the side of my head, I shifted uncomfortably and considered getting up and leaving rather than humiliate myself by proverbially throwing myself at his feet but—magic damn it all, I actually cared what Grimm thought about me, and I didn’t want to not talk to him, ostracize myself from him, sabotage one of the only two decent friendships I actually had.

Setting my jaw and staring vacantly ahead, across the gently rolling hills of the campus, brown and dull in the late autumn sunlight, I did my best to stutter out some semblance of an apology. “I shouldn’t have—I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. I don’t know why I got so angry. I’ve just been so tired, and I feel so useless, and…it feels like all of my emotions are bleeding into one another and my sanity is fraying at the edges, and little bits of me are falling away and I can’t get them back. No, I don’t know if that makes sense.” I rubbed my forehead against my knees. “What I’m trying to say is—I’m sorry I’m such a prick. I’m sorry I have always been so arrogant and self-centered and have been such a thorn in your side.  I know you’ve had to work a hundred—a thousand—times harder than I have to get where you are, and I know you resent me for it, and you still think of me as—”

“I don’t resent you,” he interrupted. “For anything. Honestly. Well—maybe I do for that song you wrote about me.” His face went taut at the memory of the very offensive and crass song I had written earlier in our academic career. I grimaced in return.

“Well, I’m sorry for that. I really am. And I’m especially sorry that all those years ago, I made assumptions about you instead of trying to get to know you.”

Grimm carefully placed the parchment he was taking notes on down and set the quill back in the inkwell. “To be perfectly fair,” he said slowly, studying the cuff of his sweater. “I don’t think I would have given you the chance to, even if you’d tried.”

I bristled at the particular phrasing he chose, even if you’d tried, implying that I had not tried to get to know him, or be very nice at all, but…he was right. I had been an ass back then. Still was now, it seemed. But maybe a little less. Though my instincts wanted me to pull away and start another fight about how he had always been kind of an ass too, and perhaps that’s why we’d always butted heads, I fought them and instead pushed closer to Grimm until our arms were touching, then dropped my head onto his shoulder. He didn’t react.

“I know I can be a lot,” I said.

Grimm exhaled a long breath through his nose. “I never said that.”

“Not lately.”

His silence felt like an agreement, so I added, “but you think I’m a spoiled brat.”

“I never said you were spoiled.”

I frowned, but didn’t pull away. “So you do think I’m a brat.”

I couldn’t see his face from my perch on his shoulder, but I could almost feel the way his face relaxed out of its perpetual frown into a softer expression, not quite a smile, but something neutral that I had begun to interpret as an amused expression. A quick puff of air escaped him in the closest thing I had ever heard to a chuckle come out of him.

“Again, I never said that.”

I didn’t protest, just pulled my knees closer to myself as I curled against him. We sat in silence for a few minutes, neither of us shifting. I had nearly dozed off, lulled by his presence and his warmth, when he finally spoke.

“And…I want to apologize for saying what I did and upsetting you.”

It took me a few moments to rouse myself from my semi-lucid state enough to make a dismissive sound in the back of my throat. “No need to apologize. I was too sensitive and clearly have a lot of pent-up anger and self-hatred I need to deal with.”

He didn’t seem to know quite what to say to that and went quiet again. 

“I just want you to know that I didn't mean—” he began, but I shushed him.

“I’ll hear no more of it, Sebastian. Let me be the bigger, more mature adult for once.”

His shoulders fell slightly under my head, as if he were caving. But then a few seconds later, they tensed up again, and my head bobbed up with them jerkily. I bit back a grumble of displeasure because I could tell he was about to speak again, and he seemed perhaps nervous about whatever it was.

“Leovander,” Grimm said very slowly, each syllable taking up its own space, and I hated how much I loved the sound of my name on his lips.

“Hm?”

He paused for a long moment, and I felt his shoulders start to curve forward a bit, like he was curling in on himself. “You know I care about you very much…”

My head jerked up off his shoulder. Though I very much wished that he did care about me, in the heart-swooping, knee-weakening way I cared about him, I hadn’t let myself dream of such impossible things lately. “No, I don’t know that.”

His dark brown eyes looked back at me, wide with surprise, blinking almost comically fast. 

“When have you ever given me any indication that you care about me?”

His mouth bobbed wordlessly, and though I felt a little twinge of pride at having left him speechless, a greater part of me was more curious about where on earth he was going with this. I cocked an eyebrow at him.

“I—” he began, then immediately fizzled out. He turned away to look down on the grounds, towards the pond, a tint of color coming to the tips of his ears. Then he gathered himself, frowning, his argumentative side reappearing.

“I have done plenty of things. I bring you your homework when you’re too ill to go to class—”

“That’s how you show you care? If you really cared, you would just do it for me.”

He ignored me and went on. “I save you meals when you sleep through them. I cast headache relieving spells and anti-nausea spells when you’re feeling unwell. And, as you seem to have forgotten, I will remind you that I threw myself in front of an arrow for you.”

“So did I!” I protested.

“Only because you were compelled to by the curse.”

I faltered, my mouth hanging open a second too long. “...not only because of that.”

His mouth thinned into a stern line. I acquiesced. “Okay, mostly because of that, but also because I would have felt really awful if you had died because I dragged you into the Unquiet Wood to break a curse that was only partially my fault.”

“Only partially!” he barked. We’d had this argument at least once a day since our return, but it never failed to rile him up. I grinned as he visibly bristled, but he almost immediately realized I was only trying to get a rise out of him and tried to settle himself. Though there was still a very slight, but very adorable, pout tugging his face downwards.

He grumbled something under his breath. I nudged him with my shoulder. “What was that?”

But he snapped his mouth shut, frowning and staring sullenly ahead.

I bumped him again. “I will admit, It was rather dashing of you to take an arrow for me.”

He squinted at me, the corners of his mouth creeping further and further down, so far I thought they would come full circle.

“And I do appreciate all those things. Except the homework. But I…” I know you don’t care for me the same way I do for you.

I cleared my throat, chasing that thought away. “I am glad to know you do care about me, though a bit surprised, as up until now, I just assumed I was more of a persistent nuisance.”

“One can be both,” he muttered.

I flashed him a devilish grin and he just flicked his eyes upwards in the most subtle of eyerolls. 

I turned slightly where I was sitting to face him better. Though I was enjoying watching him squirm, I really was starting to become a little concerned at how anxious he was acting. “But in all seriousness, what’s all this about?”

Grimm plucked a blade of grass and began peeling it into strips, focusing on it very hard. “I’ve been…contemplating things lately. Beginning to see things in a new light.” His eyes darted up for a second to look at me, then away again. “I enjoy studying with you. Working on spellsongs. Watching your Grandmagic grow.”

I wanted to say, I enjoy all those things too, I love every moment I spend with you, I wish you wanted to spend more time with me because I would be with you every second of the day if I could, but settled instead by simply urging him on with a nod.

Grimm sucked in a breath. “I suppose…a near-death experience changed my perspective quite a bit. Made me realize some things I had been trying to ignore.” He dropped the thin shreds of grass and twisted his fingers together until the knuckles popped. “Do you know what I mean?”

“No!” I threw up my hands. “I rarely know what you mean, Sebastian. That’s the most frustrating thing about you. I never know what you’re talking about, or feeling, or what you want, because you don’t tell me, and it’s impossible to tell one mood from another with you.”

He looked like he was going to be ill, his face paling and his mouth going slack. “I’m sorry. I…I don’t know how—” He huffed a frustrated sigh. “I’m not good at this.”

“Not good at what?”

His eyes were darting around anxiously, seemingly unwilling to land on me for too long.

He gestured vaguely at himself, then at me. “This kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

Then he looked at me for several long seconds, his dark eyes searching my face for something I couldn’t even begin to fathom, but apparently not finding it, because he turned away abruptly, his face shuttering.

“Never mind.” 

Now I was entirely exasperated. “Sebastian, what in magic’s name are you trying to say? I can barely understand the complexities of your mind when you tell me exactly what you’re thinking, never mind when I have to guess.”

But he stayed quiet, staring fiercely ahead. Both his face and body had already begun to shut me out, his fists clenched in his lap, his jaw set, his eyes hard.

Right. So the frustrated, in-his-face tactic wasn’t working as it usually did to get him to be honest with me. There was clearly something truly nagging at him, this softer, more sensitive Sebastian that I had only seen only on a few occasions, and I needed to tread more lightly.

“Sebastian, if something is wrong, you know you can tell me.”

I stared at the side of his face, taking in the familiar straight line of his nose, the wide set of his jaw and cheekbones, the wispy softness of his silver-gray hair. Then my eyes were drawn, as they always were, down to the plush curve of his lips, the pale pink valleys and hills, the topography of them I wanted to lose myself in. Forge ahead into them with no map, no compass, and never emerge again.

“Nothing’s wrong. That’s the problem.”

I withheld a frustrated, impatient sigh. “What?”

He had tipped forward, as if all the thoughts in his head were suddenly weighing him down. Elbows propped on his knees, he dropped his head, shoved his hands through his hair, mussing up its usual smooth perfection. His breath was coming out in short, hard bursts.

I shifted, coming to my knees and moving around to face him. I shoved his books and scrolls and such carelessly out of the way, and he didn't even have it in him to make a displeased noise at my lack of care, which was very concerning.

I now (for once) had the height advantage, though not much, as his eyes were about level with my chin. I sat back on my heels so I was closer to eye level, though he still refused to look at me.
 
I touched my fingers lightly to his arm, and then he did finally turn to look at me, his eyes suddenly misty. The sight of it was such a shock—was Grimm showing emotions?—that I actually gasped, and without thinking, my hand on his arm moved up to his cheek, to cup his face lightly.

By the time I realized what I was doing, my thumb was already stroking his cheek, and it was much too late to turn back now. My heart skidded to an abrupt halt, expecting him to shove me off and shout at me, but instead his eyes fell closed and he turned ever-so-slightly into my hand, uttering the most devastated, ragged sigh, visibly deflating in front of me.

And it was my turn to be speechless, as his cheek pressed into my hand, his lips brushed my palm, the feather-light puff of his breath caressed my skin in gentle waves. The sensation of having him so close, under my hands, where I had longed for him to be for weeks now, was dizzying, more intoxicating than even the wildest night out in Luxe.

“Sebastian,” I tried again.

Grimm shook his head, his nose bumping my wrist, refusing to open his eyes.

I raised my other hand to his cheek, holding his face firmly but gently, which was so taut and pained and he looked utterly miserable. I leaned back on my heels so I could better peer down at him. 

And only then did I realize with a start that I was holding Grimm’s face in my hands, swiping my thumbs over his cheekbones, comforting him as if we were much more than we actually were. I was holding him the way I had been longing to do since the first time I kissed him, when I think I knew, deep down, that even after the curse was broken, I was still going to love Grimm exactly the same.

He opened his eyes and finally dragged them up to meet mine, and they were so full of anguish that my heart physically ached and I would have done anything in that moment to take away whatever pain he was feeling.

Grimm pursed his lips tightly, so they briefly went white. He seemed to steel himself, then said, “ever since we’ve returned from the forest, everything has felt…right. Different, but as if something has finally fallen into place. When I’m working with you, my magic comes easier. I’m more relaxed. More focused, even though you always try to be as distracting as possible.”

One side of my mouth twitched up in the start of a proud smirk, but then I reminded myself to be serious, because Grimm was being serious, moreso than usual. I forced my face back into a contemplative, listening expression. My thumb was still drifting back and forth across his skin, and I leaned in a little, urging him on.

“I don’t know how else to explain it—I thought we would work terribly together, as we always have, but everything is—” He actually sniffled, and I fought the urge to lunge forward and wrap him tightly in my arms. “Everything is so different, but suddenly it makes sense. Everything makes sense, and for some reason that’s even more confusing.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, as if trying to magic himself invisible, or maybe make me disappear. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do now—did he want comfort? Did he want me to go away? He had said he cared about me, but now he couldn’t even bear to look at me, and what in magic’s name did that mean?

When Grimm finally opened his eyes again, they found mine immediately, the liquid chocolate in them hot enough to scorch me, something igniting deep in my stomach.

“Leo,” he said, his voice no more than a whisper. He sucked in a strained breath. “I—”

And then his eyes fell to my lips, and my heart entered a freefall. One of his hands rose from his lap, reaching up towards me, and I could only watch in slow motion as it rose to my face. I felt his fingertips briefly graze my cheek, felt them push a lock of hair behind my ear, felt them ghost over my ear as his hand drifted until it came to rest on the back of my neck. His fingers were rough and dry and yet his touch was so soft that I barely felt it as he drew me down towards him—or maybe he didn’t move, and instead I was pulled in by whatever gravitational effect he had on me.

My eyes were still locked on his, unable to look anywhere else, unwilling to look anywhere else, wanting to be dragged down into their depths. I had never been so eager to completely lose myself, to fall so utterly and completely into someone else that I didn’t care if I ever resurfaced.

Grimm drew me down, further down, until I could feel the puff of his breath on my lips, the heat radiating off his body, smell the floral sweetness that seemed to emanate off him. All of my senses were completely engulfed by him, and it was everything I had wished for, dreamed of, hoped for.

Grimm paused then, his eyes wide, as if he were just as surprised as I was by our proximity, as if he had no idea what was compelling him to pull me in. 

I let my eyes slip closed, partially to signal to him that I was ready and willing and waiting on his lead, but moreso because I was deathly afraid that he would come to his senses and pull away, and I couldn’t bear to watch that happen.

An agonizing few seconds passed, where all I felt was Grimm’s shuddering breath against me, and then somehow, by some miracle, I was kissing Sebastian Grimm again. 

Grimm pressed his lips to mine so softly at first it felt like the gentle brush of flower petals; he was reserved, almost hesitant, unmoving. I was so relieved to feel him I actually sighed into his mouth, and at that he immediately relaxed, his lips softening and molding against mine to match the shape. He pressed a little harder, became a little surer, though he was still tentative, as if waiting for me to pull away at any moment. But I had been waiting too long for this, had dreamt of it too much, but never like this, never with Grimm initiating, never believing that maybe he might actually feel even remotely the same about me as I did him.

My hands were still on his face, and I was overwhelmed with the feel of him, the scent of him, surrounding me and engulfing me. The way his hand on the back of my neck shifted so the fingers raked into the hair at the nape, the softness of his cheeks under my own fingers, the smell of his shaving balm and whatever cologne he used (or maybe he just naturally smelled like pine and honeysuckle, maybe it just seeped out of him).

I let one of my hands slide back into his hair, sifting the strands between my fingers, fine and silky. My palm rested on the side of his neck, my thumb on the hinge of his jaw tilting his face up just so, allowing our lips to slot together. 

And it was as if a switch flipped, as if Grimm remembered what he had started, and he pressed his lips a little harder against mine, moving against me, with me, angling his head slightly to one side so his nose didn’t bump mine and he could push even closer.

His hand not on the back of my neck moved to my waist, his touch landing just below my ribs, hovering there for a moment before pressing more firmly, and I longed to feel his touch without the layers of clothes in between. I couldn’t help the tiny groan that echoed in the back of my throat at the thought, which seemed to ignite something in Grimm. I felt his lips part against mine, the tip of his tongue flicking against my bottom lip, testing, probing. 

I, however, needed no further invitation. My lips parted willingly, inviting him in, and his mouth on mine became searching, greedy, his hand slipping around my back, pulling me further in. I groaned into him again, and he precision and care with which Grimm typically approached everything in life suddenly dissolved, and the kiss became sloppy, nearly desperate. 

I was lightheaded and dizzy, practically euphoric. Heat flared in my stomach and pulsed outwards, to my chest and limbs, sparking everywhere. It felt like the sun itself were trapped inside my body, waiting to burst out, to bask us in glowing, unending warmth.

Before I was tempted to climb onto his lap and do things to Grimm I shouldn’t do out on the lawns of the Fount, I pulled back, breaking our lips apart with the sound of water’s surface breaking, emerging from the infinite lake of his touch and his scent.

“So, um,” I breathed, feeling very winded. “What was it you were trying to tell me?”

Grimm blinked up at me, his eyes glassy and unfocused, his face slack in a way I had never seen it before.

“I think…that was all.”

“Oh. Good.” I nodded, swallowing heavily, then couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Grimm looked up at me, his mouth silently forming several words, but none of them made it past his lips. Lips which were bright and swollen and at which I was staring again.

I tore my eyes away from his mouth with great effort, swallowing hard and trying to hold myself back from pouncing on him again.

We stared at each other for an embarrassingly long time, just gazing at each other, in equal parts disbelief, mild confusion, and apprehension about what came next.

I idly sifted my fingers through his hair, watching a bit smugly as his eyelids fluttered slightly at the touch. I felt his fingers on my back twitch, then tentatively begin drifting up and down my back.

I couldn’t repress the big, stupid grin that was slowly spreading across my face.

“You know,” I said, trying to hide the shaking breathiness of my voice. “It would have been much easier if you had had this revelation a few weeks ago. Perhaps broken the curse before we went to all that trouble in the forest.”

I was (mostly) joking, but then the look of pure, unfiltered guilt swept across his face sent a ripple of ice water through me, and something in my stomach clenched.

I pulled away from him, my hands slipping down to his shoulders. “Sebastian.”

He made a small humming sound and suddenly found the ground very interesting.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.” He tried to sound casual, but his voice was strained.

I gripped his shoulders, resisting the urge to give him a solid shake. “You know I know you better than that. Tell. Me.”

Grimm worried his lower lip, and I know it wasn’t meant as a tactic to distract me, but I did find myself fixating on his mouth again.

With a ragged, defeated sigh, he reached into his sorcerers coat, withdrawing something that he clutched in his fist very tightly, almost protectively. He still wouldn’t look at me as he extended his hand, paused for a long time, just looking at his closed fist, then with a resigned heave of his shoulders, opened his fingers.

I made an unrefined sound like “hnnngg” as I stared at his palm. I stared, uncomprehending. I stared for such a long time that Grimm actually grew concerned and reached out, his hand gently resting on my thigh. 

I had forgotten how small and delicate the griffin feather was, barely the size of Grimm’s palm. The bronze glinted cheerfully in the sunlight, somewhat mockingly, and it took me a very, very long time to begin to connect the dots in my head.

Grimm had said the feather was destroyed when he extracted the curse. And yet, the feather was here, and whole, and I was definitely no longer cursed.

Sybilla’s words slammed into my brain like a bird flying into a window, skittering and fluttering across the glass frantically.

If the person who cast the spell were to return the feelings it provoked, the whole thing would likely dissolve on its own.

Impossible. It was impossible.

When I finally remembered to breathe again, I was only able to croak “what—” before immediately forgetting literally every other word I knew.

I wanted to tear my eyes from the feather to look up at Grimm and try to read his face, but my body was frozen in place, as if all my energy was all redirected to my brain which was churning the fastest and hardest it ever had as it tried to make sense of what the fuck I was looking at.

“What?” I said again, finally tearing my eyes away from the feather and looking Grimm in the eyes.

Grimm sucked in a breath, steeling himself before he spoke.

“The curse was broken,” he said, softly, almost regretfully. “Before I needed to use this. It must have happened sometime between the outlaw camp and the valley. I can’t exactly pinpoint when.” His face collapsed into something that one might call shame, which was not exactly an ideal emotion to see on the face of someone who is basically telling you for the first time that they love you. “So I…lied when you woke up. I said that I had drawn out the curse while you were unconscious. It seemed easier, in that moment.”

The lower half of my body seemed to have gone molten. My chest was tight, my lungs suddenly too small for even a mouthful of air, and I struggled to inhale. My hands dropped from his shoulders, falling limply into my lap.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” Though he was looking down at the feather, avoiding my gaze, I could tell that his eyes were watery and he was doing his best to withhold tears. My fingers itched to move back up to his face, but I restrained myself lest I disrupt a very important, very pivotal confession.

“I didn’t understand what I was feeling. It was too much to process in the moment, with everything else going on. And…I think if the curse hadn’t told me how I was feeling, it would have taken me much longer to figure it out.”

I was speechless for perhaps the first time in my life. My jaw clenched and unclenched repeatedly, my mouth opening and closing like a fish, as if the muscles and bones all forgot how to move and help me form words.

“You love me?” I wished my voice was stronger, but it came out as a whisper.

Grimm’s gaze flicked up towards me, and for a brief moment, I could see every single swirling emotion there—shyness, guilt, anxiety, fear of rejection. And then just as quickly, his face shuttered, every emotion dissipating in an instant. His eyes were closed off, his face tight, his body tensed. As if he were…afraid. Afraid of my reaction to all of this, even though I had just kissed him and was eager to do so again.

“Apparently,” he said gruffly, almost begrudgingly.

Perhaps most people would have been put off by how resigned and unenthusiastic he seemed, but frankly, it was the only response that I really would have expected from Grimm, and it was why I loved him in the first place.

And then I was flinging myself bodily at him, tackling him to the ground, instinctively putting a hand on the back of his head to avoid its impact with the dirt and grass below. I blanketed his chest completely with my own, pressing down to feel every bit of him against me, my mouth seeking out and finding his. I kissed him deep and hard, trying to convey my feelings the way I knew best, not sure I was yet ready to say the words to him. Words I had never said to any partner, as everything before now had been superficial and mostly physical. I knew I loved him, felt it in my heart and gut and everywhere, but it was such a huge admission, and…I don’t know. Though I had been grappling with the realization for weeks, I still thought Grimm deserved a bit of wooing, proper courting. Then maybe I could plan something grand and romantic later on to finally tell him, once we had settled into us.

Us. The idea of an us made warmth bloom in every cell of my body.

With him pinned under me, unable to escape my affectionate assault, I peppered his face with kisses—his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his chin, anywhere I could reach.

“Augh,” he said, sounding massively inconvenienced, but his hands found my waist again and his arms slipped around me, cinching tight, holding me close to him, which only encouraged the deluge of affection.

I ceased tormenting him and sank down against him, my lips capturing his in a sweet, unmoving, unassuming kiss.

But then, just as quickly, I pushed myself up so I could look him fully in the face. A small part of me was rather pleased that he made a disgruntled noise at my absence.

“You absolute bastard. I’ve been wasting away for weeks, torturing myself. I’ve been distraught.”

The corners of his mouth turned downward. “I don’t see how that’s my fault.”

“You could have said something. I thought you still hated me.”

“Why would I willingly subject myself to your presence every day for the past six weeks if I hated you?”

“Well I don’t know! I don’t understand half the things you do, so this didn’t seem any different.”

He squinted up at me, as if disbelieving I could be so dense. Then his face softened, and he looked a bit ashamed. Regretful.

“Are you angry?” he asked, voice quivering only slightly. “That I didn’t tell you?”

“No,” I said immediately, then actually thought about it. “Yes. Oh, I don’t know!”

I gazed down at him, into his dark eyes, my fingers brushing lightly through his hair. I considered him for a few long moments, as he blinked up at me, eyes wavering uncertainly. He looked vulnerable and open for the first time I had known him, so impossibly sweet that I sighed in defeat. I extracted my hand from his hair to trace his lips softly with my fingertips and smirked when he gasped under them.

“You, Sebastian Grimm, are the most infuriating, mysterious, and perplexing man in the entire world.” But I dropped a kiss to the tip of his nose as I said it.

The pink in his ears trickled down to the tops of his cheeks.

“And you, Leovander Loveage.” He shifted, his arms winding tightly around my back, pulling me down so he was speaking against my lips, the soft vibration a pleasant hum on my skin. “Are insufferable, but brilliant, talented, and persevering.”

I felt my own face flushing and scowled to unsuccessfully try to hide it. “Well that’s not fair. You can’t compliment me like that after I call you infuriating!”

He didn’t say anything, just pressed up to place a kiss on my lips, which succeeded in silencing me.

For a moment. I pulled away and said, “but—”

Grimm fixed me with a tired, impatient look. “If you say another word, I’m picking you up and throwing you in the pond.”

I snapped my mouth closed but he could see my eyes bulging as I fought the urge to speak. He cocked an eyebrow in a silent challenge.

“I-was-just-going-to-say-if-you-did-this-whole-thing-would-come-full-circle-in-a-very-poetic-way,” I said in one breath, and before he could even begin to move, captured his lips in a kiss that would have taken his knees out had he been standing.