Chapter Text
The first time Sebastian Grimm smiled at me, I fainted.
I realize that makes me sound like a hapless damsel in a romance novel (though I might argue that in some ways, I still am), but there was actually a logical sequence of events that led to this situation that didn’t simply involve me swooning at one of the most brooding bachelors at the Fount.
Our return after nearly dying in the Unquiet Wood was profoundly underwhelming. There were whispers surrounding our arrival, in equal parts about the scandal of us both missing the Trials, the minor yet noticeable changes to my appearance, and most perplexingly, the fact that Grimm and Loveage had gone away on some adventure together and returned without having murdered each other.
As such, a few days had passed since I had last seen Grimm. I suspected that he had much to do with catching up on coursework, reaching out to Coterie troops, likely getting some much needed rest (he had nearly died, after all), but I couldn’t help that a large part of me was disappointed. I was decidedly no longer cursed, but couldn’t help that I seemed to miss Grimm in a way that made me cringe.
We had just sort of…parted ways, without speaking of what had happened or what would happen. Would we continue to work on spellsongs as I had told him I wanted to? Or would we simply slip back into our old routines and habits and resume the cold distance of before?
My first day back in classes were, simply put, exhausting. After three periods, my head was throbbing, my limbs were weak, and I felt wobbly on my feet. I contemplated skipping the rest of the day and holing myself back up in my room, but I was sick of being confined by four walls and my own thoughts, so I took advantage of the next free period to find a sunny spot out on the grounds and sneak in a quick nap in the sun.
I found myself at the pavilion by the pond—the same spot where this whole mess with Grimm had begun. That thought made something deep within me ache terribly.
I settled down in the grass, my back against one of the posts of the pavilions. Closing my eyes and tilting my head back, I let the sun warm my face as the cool autumn breeze tossed my hair and gently whooshed through the trees around me.
I was just beginning to doze off when the sound of fallen leaves crunching underfoot came from the direction of the school to my right. Feeling more than a little peeved at the interruption in what would have potentially been a very satisfying catnap, I tried to ignore it. But the footsteps approached, closer and closer, until they stopped a few feet in front of me.
Fully irritated now, I plastered a deep frown on my face and cracked one eye open. Blinking in the bright sunlight, I cast a sour look up at whoever had dared interrupt a much-needed nap.
Grimm.
Standing before me, stiff and straight-backed, the golden autumn sun illuminated him from behind like some kind of stern, angry-looking, ancient god. I was suddenly light-headed and dizzy. My stomach flipped and my heart gave such a hard, painful thud that for a brief, terrifying moment, I believed the curse hadn't fully left my body, and I was still suffering from its physical effects. But I knew I wasn't cursed anymore. I had convinced Grimm to test it exhaustively on our return to the Fount, making him ask me to do all kinds of ridiculous things, like do a handstand on the moving carriage or dunk my head in the horses’ water trough at his parents’ house, and I hadn't been compelled to carry out a single one.
I was not cursed. I once again had complete control over my actions and emotions. And if this feeling wasn't from the curse, that could only mean…
Oh no.
I swallowed hard as I felt a sweat break out across the back of my neck.
As Grimm stood a respectable distance away, quiet and looking down at the pond instead of at me, I scrambled to push the horrifying and nauseating realization aside and rearrange my face to something a little less off-putting.
After a few moments, Grimm turned his attention back to me, his dark eyes searching mine, looking for something in my face I couldn’t place.
“Agnes said you were resuming classes today.”
Well. I didn’t like the idea that Grimm and Agnes were talking—about me—behind my back. My frown returned, but I nodded.
“Are you feeling…better?” The way he asked it made it sound like asking about anyone’s wellbeing was a strange, new experience for him.
“Yes. Fine,” I lied.
Grimm nodded stiffly, staring down at the ground.
“You?” I asked.
He looked surprised for a moment but then nodded again. His gaze flickered around, not landing anywhere for more than a moment, moving from the grass underfoot to the roof of the pavilion to the dock several meters away to a row of low hedges that ran perpendicular to the pond, back up to the main campus. When his eyes finally stopped roaming, they landed on me, and in them I saw a warmth and familiarity that certainly hadn’t been there a month ago. My face immediately burst into heat and I had to look away.
I tried to rationalize. I thought, you only feel some kind of affection for him because of such a prolonged period of forced proximity. Yes, that was it. That had to be it.
Grimm spoke again, thankfully disrupting my rapidly spiraling thoughts. “When you’re feeling up for it, I’d like to continue working on spellsongs.”
I pushed aside the wriggling, warm feeling that was quickly taking over my entire chest and forced myself to look back at him. “You would?”
I had assumed that, once returning to campus, Grimm would prefer that I keep my distance, as I had been so constantly underfoot those few weeks I was cursed. But now, here he was, standing before me (beautiful, chiseled features practically glowing in the morning light—not helpful, I scolded myself), saying that he wanted to not only be around me, but work directly with me, when he had absolutely despised me only a month ago.
“Yes,” he said simply, as if it were that easy. Maybe it was.
“Are you sure?”
He fixed me with an impatient look. “I’m sure.”
“Oh,” was all I could think to say. I looked down at my hands, my fingers fidgeting against each other. I picked at one dark, burnt-looking nail for something to do. I wondered if they would always look like that, or if the discoloration would eventually grow out.
“See you in Duality tomorrow,” was all he said, and I expected him to walk away then, but he hesitated.
I finally looked up, meeting his eyes which were still fixed on me with an intense, probing look. My stomach lurched and the breath died in my throat, and I was trapped under the heavy weight of his gaze. His eyes were still the deep, saturated brown they had always been, but they weren’t the cold orbs of jasper I had always thought them to be, but now more like big pools of warm hot cocoa, waiting for me to slip inside and melt away.
I couldn’t remember what he had said so I nodded dumbly, and then he did turn away, walking back up to the school.
And suddenly, in his absence, the world turned cold, the air thinned, and though the sun illuminated the grounds around me, everything was dim and faded. It was such a dramatic shift in my reality that I felt nauseous for a minute, everything swirling around me, trying to reorient and make sense of itself. I tried to blink away the woozy feeling in my head as I stared after him, digging my fingers into the grass on either side of me to ground myself as my vision tilted, swam, and then righted itself.
I tried to fix my gaze on something solid, and of course only managed to find Grimm in the rolling ocean of the world before me.
For Magic’s sake, what was wrong with me? Though I could recognize and appreciate the retreating figure of Grimm, and some part of me most definitely did (his broad back and shoulders that tapered into a slim waist; his ass, particularly well-defined in tailored pants), more than anything, I just wanted him to stay and—just be there—be present, with me. We didn’t even have to say anything, and I wouldn’t even try to needle and irritate him, as entertaining as it could be. I just suddenly and desperately wanted his mere presence beside me, comforting and solid and familiar.
Oh no oh no oh no.
I scrubbed my hands across my face as if I could rub away the feelings that were suddenly bubbling and frothy under my skin. No, I couldn’t look at Grimm like that. I couldn’t feel that way about him.
I did not love Grimm. I couldn’t love him. It was impossible and impractical and we would never work for so many reasons, and besides, was he even attracted to men, and if he was, would he even be attracted to me, after years of fighting and bickering and me, frankly, being a massive ass to him—
The idea that this dour, stoic, stony-faced man could elicit this kind of response in me was nauseating, horrifying, and deeply unsettling.
Over the next few days, I tried desperately to convince myself that the feeling would go away with time. Curses surely had lingering aftereffects and any attraction or draw I felt towards him would slowly dissipate both with time and distance.
But then Grimm never seemed to try to keep his distance, and suddenly three weeks had gone by and my feelings for him only continued to grow. And they were only strengthened by the fact that Grimm and I seemed to orbit each other even more closely now, drawn to each other as we had always been, but now in a more positive, productive manner. I worried that the increasing frequency of our interactions might ruin our already fragile working relationship, but Grimm seemed ever-so-slightly more patient with me, more tolerant of my whims and antics, less likely to snap at me when I was hesitant to write Grandmagic.
We coexisted effortlessly. Productively, even. I don’t know if it was more shocking to us or the rest of the school.
* * *
I thumped my head against the table, for lack of anything better to do. My head could only be described as swampy. It felt thick and hot and full of gooey matter that only succeeded in sucking useful information into the sticky void, never to be seen again.
Across the table from me, as I lifted my head and dropped it back onto the unforgiving surface again and again, Grimm sighed softly. I heard him shuffle around, then something soft and fuzzy came between my head and the hard, wooden surface of the table. I paused my self-torture to look down at the scarf Grimm had placed under me, then peered up at him with a frown.
“That won’t help anything, Loveage,” he chided, though his voice was gentle.
“We don’t know that for sure.”
He didn’t pause his scribbling as he worked on an essay for one of his casting classes. I dropped my head back down onto the scarf—Grimm’s scarf, which he had willingly given me for the sake of keeping my skull intact and which smelled like him—and sighed pathetically. My thoughts were jumbled and useless, the fatigue that nipped at my heels every moment of the day slowly overtaking me at this late hour. And, even worse, when I wasn’t lamenting my useless brain, I was thinking about how strong my feelings for Grimm were, and how unrequited they were, and how much stronger they grew with every one of these study sessions.
I began to bang my head against the table again.
Grimm sighed again, louder and more impatient this time. “You’re not going to accomplish anything like this. Why don’t you just go to bed?”
“I can’t,” I muttered into his scarf, the words muffled. “I haven’t gotten anything done all day. My brain won’t work.”
The mental blocks I had set up around scriving Grandmagic were proving more difficult to remove than I had anticipated. Grandmagic in spellsongs was easy—the rain spell, the message to Sybilla, the healing spell that literally brought Grimm back from the brink of death—all made sense, and the music helped me get past those barricades in my mind. But when faced with a blank piece of spellpaper, my mind went equally blank. All my knowledge was gone in an instant.
“Need I remind you that you are still suffering the effects of severe spell exhaustion? You should have more patience with yourself.”
My head jerked up to glower at him. “Would you be patient with yourself, if it were you?”
His lips pressed together into a thin line and he averted his gaze.
“That’s what I thought,” I snapped.
After a contemplative moment, his eyes moved back to mine. “You’re exhausted. You’re not going to get anything done tonight, and you’re certainly not doing yourself any favors forcing yourself to stay up, so just call it a night and try again tomorrow when you’re rested.”
I dropped my head, mashing my cheek into the soft wool and groaning dramatically. And if I secretly took a deep inhale to breathe in the woodsy and slightly floral scent that was Grimm…well, that was no one's business.
I heard Grimm’s textbook close with a papery thud. “Come on,” he said above the sound of shuffling papers. “Let’s walk back together. I think I’m done for the night too.”
We both knew that he wasn’t, and that he would absolutely resume his studies back in his room once he had dropped me off. But the ruse, transparent and flimsy though it was, was enough to convince my exhausted self to turn in for the night.
The next morning, I was somewhat rested, but still not particularly functional. In the refectory, I slumped wearily next to Agnes without a word, and she patted my back in an affectionate (if not slightly distracted) way, her nose deep in a textbook.
All through breakfast, I felt a particular pair of dark eyes on me but did my best to ignore them, as well as to not fall asleep face-first in my porridge.
Since returning from the forest, every day was different when it came to how functional and productive I could be. Today, for example, my energy levels had begun dangerously low, and would only continue to decline with even the most menial tasks, such as eating or sitting through a lecture. I had always taken for granted just how much energy I’d had before, and how easy scriving had been. Casting, of course, was always draining, as I simply wasn’t meant to do it, but scriving had always required very little energy and focus from me. Now, though, in this strange post-Wood era, everything seemed to drain energy from me.
Scriving cantrips and menial charms were still manageable, and might leave my fingers tingling or make me yawn, but nothing worse than that. Scriving Grandmagic, however, was another beast entirely. A few lines of magic written in the old language would leave me winded and feeling like I had been tossed through the air a few times by the wood kraken. And I was still so unfamiliar and unconfident in it that I was constantly plagued with the fear that each spell would backfire so horrifically that throwing Grimm out of a window would seem like a papercut in comparison. Both the mental and physical toll it was taking on me, just scriving Grandmagic for classes, left me so drained at the end of each day that I could barely stay awake past sunset. (One unexpected bonus was that I was so constantly exhausted, I no longer needed to drink to fall asleep, and every night I slept so soundly that nightmares couldn’t penetrate my mind, so I tried to focus on that one small win.)
I dragged myself through my morning classes, feeling every agonizing minute chipping away at the frail and rapidly deteriorating state of my mind.
When I got to Duality, miraculously five seconds before the bell, I immediately collapsed into my seat, crumpling into a disheveled pile. Grimm prudently refrained from asking about my state, taking in my rumpled and haggard appearance before he set his mouth in a thin line and remained quiet.
Phade’s lecture washed over me in a dull, muffled haze, none of the words registering in my mind. I was…fine. It was only that everything felt a little cloudy and off-kilter and that things didn’t exactly make sense, like everything was slightly the wrong shape and the words were being spoken in a different language.
The lecture was apparently over and it was time for us to practice in our pairs. As Grimm turned to me to say something, I heard the sounds, but couldn’t piece the words together. Was he even saying words? Or just making a series of garbled sounds? I saw his eyes begin to narrow and could tell that he had asked me something and was waiting for a response, so I nodded, hoping this was the correct reply. He looked at me suspiciously for a few moments longer, and I was prepared to try again, shake my head in the negative, in the hopes that that was the response he was looking for, but then he reached out and pulled my folder of scrived spells across the table in front of him, casting a final inquisitive look at me before sifting through the stack of parchment.
I used this too-brief moment to lay my head down on the table, blessedly cool against my skin, which was somehow both very cold and very sweaty. I wished I could lay there for a few hours and take a nap, undisturbed. Today was already too much, and I wanted to crawl back into bed for several days.
I felt a sharp prod in my shoulder as Grimm poked me. I looked up, blinking; the motion felt like it took ten hours. Grimm was looking back at me with an impossible combination of irritation and concern, so I sat up straighter and tried to feign even the slightest amount of comprehension.
He had a spell in his hand, holding it up for me to see, though I couldn’t read it or even attempt to make out any of the words. I had churned out a half-dozen Grandmagic spells a few nights prior before I had passed out from exhaustion, and I assumed the one he was holding had been satisfactory for him to attempt.
His mouth moved, but I couldn’t manage to match the sounds to their meanings. I nodded dumbly, which was apparently the correct response. He stood, gestured for me to follow, then moved to the far wall of the room.
I stood dutifully, like a dog following its owner, not entirely sure what we were doing or where we were going, but loyal to a fault, because some deeply buried part of me wanted to be wherever Grimm was, cursed or not. Even if standing upright suddenly made me very nauseous and caused my vision to shift and flicker. A ringing began in my ears, high-pitched, sharp, and painful. I winced and swayed on my feet for a long second, then forced myself to move towards Grimm, pretending like I was fine.
I was fine. I could get through this; I had before. Well, no, every time I had felt like this before, I had absolutely fallen unconscious, but in the safety of my room, usually falling fortuitously on the bed or sitting half-up on the couch, although once I had passed out after a shower and cracked my head on the tile of the bathroom. I might have actually sustained lasting damage from that one, but fortunately had been out so long that I couldn’t remember any of the pain.
I sidled up to Grimm, in a way I hoped looked casual and indifferent, and not like each step was taking every ounce of concentrated effort that remained within me. He was looking down at the parchment in his hand, beginning to cast, the edges of it emitting curling, wisping smoke as it caught.
A small flicker of light formed in the air before Grimm, at first only a tiny glimmer, but it grew steadily until it was fist-sized and glowing. Grimm held out his hand and the small light drifted over to hover there, as if summoned, and that was when Grimm turned to me, and for the first time ever, the corners of his mouth turned up just slightly as his eyes fell upon me.
And though it was just a shadow of that coveted smile that I had seen only once before, the one he saved only for his family, he was still giving it to me, perhaps hesitantly, yet willingly. My heart swelled so large it felt like it was pushing into my throat, forcing its way up, ready to burst out of me—or perhaps that was the threat of vomit. Oh dear.
I tried to force a smile back, to return the gesture. I felt my face attempt to lift up briefly, but it slid off as soon as it had started.
Grimm’s attention returned to the light orb in front of him; he turned his hand this way and that, watching the light following his motions. I tried to focus on him, on his movements, pinning my attention to something solid so the liquid contents of my brain could attempt to stabilize.
The shrill shrieking in my ears stopped suddenly, the wall of sound erupting over me felt like a great gust of wind, knocking the breath out of me. My vision began to narrow, my limbs going tingly and numb, and I thought, oh no, because I knew what was coming, and that there truly was no avoiding it.
I reached out blindly, groping for Grimm’s arm, clutching at the fabric of his coat. His focus interrupted, the light winked out and his frown returned.
“What?” he snapped, and I vaguely registered the annoyance in his voice as I wrinkled his coat where my hand fisted tightly in it. Then, his tone became anxious as I swayed on my feet, tipping slowly to one side. “Leo?”
I felt his arms scoop around me just before I blacked out.