The first time she comes home and sees him, still scrawny, and shorter than her—some heavy wall comes up between them, wide, tall, unbreakable.

He returns after six years of aimless wanderlust. Their reunion is tearful like she half-hoped it would be, but only on his part, and for all the wrong reasons: for the moment she peers, hopeful, into the kitchen, and catches sight of boyish curls and still-wide eyes, she stiffens, her entire body buzzing, flooded with a painkiller she never asked for.

When the unnamed drug wears off, all she knows is hatred.

She hates the boy who waits so patiently at the kitchen table, as he pretends he isn't terrified to see her. She ignores the tears in his eyes because she loathes him. Because he is a boy. Because his feet fit her shoes. Because his height closer matches her sister's, with whom he spends far more time now, anyway. They play video games and tag and tumble through the air with wands and wings and magic, and she watches through windows and fights down the urge to snap the sword at his thin little belt.

For a while she is jealous. She wants that—she wants him—she wants to see the world from the sky again and run her hands along the wings that have carried her—but the gap between them widens and as the years pass she stops wishing to fly.

She comes to terms with the fact that she is chained to the Earth, destined to be buried in it. He remains aether: he will float freely, ageless, eternal.

"'Brina?"

"Jake." She drops any indication of their familial ties because this boy he has brought back to her is too different—really, too much the same—as when he took him away.

"You gotta know it's not his fault—"

"You're right."

His breath of relief came too soon.

"It's yours."

The boy cannot sleep. He sits on the roof and stares glassy-eyed as the stars blink above him, trying to speak; he cannot understand the nebula in which they converse but he reaches out one still-small hand to see if he can catch one anyway.

Grow up, he thinks they might be winking.

"I'm trying," he says. He pulls his knees close and sits until the stars have fallen. The dawn brings with a tiredness he cannot, for all his years, ever recollect feeling.

She is soon awash with apathy. A shrug is her knee-jerk response. She decides that Jake and Daphne cannot be blamed for her old friend's misgivings; little by little, everyone but that stupid fairy boy receives absolution. She no longer spares him second glances, ruthlessly ignores his neverending stream of counterfeit apologies, treats him like the child he is with ferocious indifference. She's never been like this before; always it was stubbornness and screaming and now she just doesn't care, because what can she do? She's not in charge of his biology. She maybe, might have, thought she was, a long, long time ago, but now she knows she's not a factor; she doesn't mean a thing to him.

The years stretch on. She continues to grow, to age, to live; he continues, simply, to be.

He stands in front of mirrors and tries to force his bones to lengthen. He prays for hair to sprout from his unmarred face and scrawny chest; he downs potions and hexes and charms that are Not Safe for Consumption. Maybe, he thinks, he hopes, whenever he tugs on his sneakers, they'll be too tight. Maybe eating so much will aid his growth spurt. Maybe now that Daphne's getting taller, he will too. Maybe, maybe, maybe—but when he measures the top of his head on the bedroom door frame, it still matches up with the thick black line he marked in Sharpie seven years ago.

Finally, one day, he falls sobbing to his knees. It's impossible. He was and he is and he will forever be impossible.

He watches, powerless, as Sabrina fades from his desperate grasp. It burns. He is scalded to the third degree from the inside out, left shaking in pain as he lets go of the one person in the world who means everything to him.

So he gives up, embraces it. She gives up, does her best to forget what they used to be.

She secretly believes that fairies might be made of gold dust, petrichor, some pale, pretty spice she cannot hope to identify—for beneath the traces of muddied ground and sweat, he smells like magic to her, and she means it in the most literal of ways. There's always the possibility it might just be him. She places her hope in the former.

Whatever the case, it is this same thick scent she is wrapped up in now, dusty and warm and decidedly sweet; at times like this—her head buried in his shoulder and her fingers clinging to the fabric of his sweater as she tries not to scream—she knows for certain he is something other. But hearing his ragged breath and feeling the burn of the crimson dripping from his lip onto her head, she must remind herself that it is still blood that runs through his veins and not ichor. He may not age, but he's not immortal.

Speaking of which.

"For godmothers' sake, Grimm," the fairy huffs, barely audible above wind and wingbeat, "You've been laying on the pounds. I think I gotta age another six years just to hold onto you."

At another time, in another place, he could have been joking.

"Don't," she gasps, willing to ignore the jibe as she slips a little farther out of his arms. The ground is a shaky viridescent blur beneath her sneakered feet.

A whimper catches in her throat and exhausted as he is, Puck finds it in him to haul Sabrina up a few inches more. He is at the present moment almost eight years her junior, and while the faint contoured brawn of a swordfighter is visible beneath his sleeves, his strength is not nearly enough to keep both his and her weight sustained at this altitude. Besides, his skin is rent from sharp branches and sharper teeth; if the drop doesn't kill him, the blood loss will, and then where will they be?

"'Brina, I have to."

She shakes her head furiously into his shoulder, partly to get her point across, partly because it keeps her from looking down. "You love being twelve."

She thinks what he murmurs into her hair next might be, "I love you more," but it's most unquestionably a trick of the wind, the same way she sometimes catches him staring is nothing but a trick of the light.

Even if everything he does next proves otherwise. Even if she feels him ungrudgingly growing, willing himself to be taller, stronger, more enduring. The knot of emotions tightening inside her—and his scent, which is now overpowering, dizzying—sickens more than the vertigo.

"I don't need—" she begins, but her voice is weak and it's too late, because they're gaining speed and his heartbeat has slowed and the town beneath them is shrinking into little boxes between blades of grass. She feels her weight settle down in newly muscle-bound arms, and the sudden sense of security is an overwhelming relief.

"I gotcha," he whispers, but she sees droplets of water fall from above and fly past her cheek in the summer-sweet wind.

He wants to drop her off in the forest and turn back and fight. She, no longer under immediate threat of falling to her doom, yells "Are you crazy?" and digs her nails into his wrists, visible now that his sleeves have shortened. She does this, sparking blood, until his faltering body can bear it no longer and he turns around, towards the Hudson, where Bannerman Island rests bright in the sun.

They tumble headfirst into the sand, his arms wrapped tight around her until they hit the ground and find themselves sprawled on their backs, dirty and wet and—in Puck's case—coughing up blood.

She crawls on scraped hands to cover the short distance between them and manages, "Stop coughing" before she pries his lips open, feels for missing teeth with the deftness of someone who's had to maneuver this mouth for all the wrong reasons before.

"Dentally intact," she concludes, before curling up beside him in the sand, letting sunlight beat down with welcome relentlessness upon her cheek. "But your left molar's loose."

"What about you?" he mutters, after a period of almost-sleep that feels like hours but must have been minutes, seconds. "Mentally intact?"

A hysterical giggle weighs her answer towards the negative. "You grew up!"

He runs a hand across his face and says, "Don't remind me."

She laughs again, lets it break away into a sob. "I'm sorry."

The helplessness in her voice alerts him to a deeper, differing sincerity, and with furrowed eyebrows and a six-year-old's pout Puck rolls onto his stomach beside her. His chin is buried in the crook of his elbow, fingers tracing her sunburnt cheek. "Hey," he says softly. "Don't be. I've been wanting—well—I missed you."

He presses his lips to the corner of her mouth, gentle, chaste, and she squeezes her eyes shut; her stomach is churning and he is too close and it's just so damn hot on this island—

"Sorry," he whispers, tickling her ear in the echo of her own apology.

His voice is deeper than it was four minutes ago, the low timbre crawling across her skin and seeping into her bones to make her toes twitch. "You grew up," she whispers again, flinging an arm across her face to shield her eyes from the sun, which still burns bright beneath her fallen lids. "One stupid dragon and you went and just had to grow up!"

"It was my choice," he says roughly, clutching at the sand beside his head. "I've been thinking about it a lot, anyway, and I wasn't just going to let you die—"

"Peter Pan," she interrupts.

"What?"

She turns to catch his face in her hands.

And so continues the debilitating trend of their kisses being unplanned and hasty and under dire circumstances. He tastes tears; when she pulls back, she rests her forehead against his, can't help but lie there and cradle him as she cries. "Seven years! I waited seven years and then I just stopped waiting, Puck; I gave up..."

"I'm sorry, 'Brina, I know—"

"My Peter Pan." She feels him flinch at the name like she knew he would, but she knows it's the truth, and she doesn't open her eyes. "You dumbass, you became my Peter Pan. I left the window open but you never came back."

Her thumb feels wet and her eyes fly open at last, startlingly blue. She is bewildered to see he is crying. "I tried."

Sabrina's lungs cease to function. Carbon dioxide begins to work its poison through her blood and she wants to throw up and she can't breathe—

"I tried so hard." He fits his chin into his the curve of her collarbone and his hands into the tangles of her sun-stained hair, fighting back sobs. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I couldn't it just wouldn't work and I tried and I—it wasn't until your life was on the line that I—I don't know why, I don't know but now I'm here and, I don't know; please forgive me, Sabrina, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I just, I don't want to see you hate me again because—please—every time you looked at me it was like—like I hit you, like I hurt you—even when I acted like the biggest, stupidest asshole on the planet you never used to look at me like that and I just wanted it to stop and I..."

He weeps. "Please."

It takes her too long to find the words. "Puck, look at me—" Her voice is broken. She's broken; they both are. "Puck."

The sound of his name brings him back to her. She weaves her fingers through his curls and his sobs slowly subside into hiccups; as for her, she's gone numb as an active self-defense mechanism.

"I don't hate you," she whispers. She might be lying. She did hate him, almost hate him, for a while. Guilt ties her veins into Devil's Tongue knots. "I mean—I'm sorry too."

She wipes his tears away and watches his sea-foam eyes flicker, the only part of him that has always stayed the same. Green-blue-green and blue again, ocean waves, seagrass.

"Stinkbrain," she says softly, as she prays her next words are the truth: "I could never hate you. Even when I tried."

Sudden kisses rain relentless on her cheek, her nose, her ears. "I don't want to hurt you again," and she feels like crying. She's been so selfish, stupid, blind. A child. All this time she has remained something precious to him.

Her lips find his. "Ditto." And he still tastes like crimson.

"Hell, 'Brina, where you been?" It's Jake, drenched head-to-toe in dragon blood, one gash running along his leg and missing a shoe. He is now lit by overhanging stars as he hobbles from the porch. "We've been waiting for you all night. Your dad's already made a couple homicide attempts—where's Puck?"

Another form melts away from Sabrina's silhouette—six feet tall and beaten and bruised and breathing like there can't possibly be enough air in the world. The boy (if he can still be called a boy) is visibly trembling.

Jake's eyes bug. "Holy— "

"You can marvel all you want later, Jake," Sabrina mutters. She's carrying the fairy's full weight and at this rate they'll both be fainting. "He needs help. Daphne's got a stock of med-wands in the kitchen."

Her uncle still stands, rocking on his heels, running one hand through his shock of wheat-blonde hair and exhaling obscenities.

"Jake! He flew us to the bridge all the way from Bannerman and he was bleeding!"

"Right, right," Jake nods, blinking out of his reverie. He turns and runs, half-stumbling, into the house, already calling Daphne's name.

They stand crowded around the couch where Puck lies, asleep and feverish, an ice pack melting on his forehead and stitches crawling up his shoulder. Henry looks annoyed, Veronica concerned, Jake impressed, and Daphne just watches her sister, brow furrowed. They're sitting on opposite ends of the couch, she by his feet with a wand prepped and Sabrina by his head, resisting the urge to touch him. "When did he do it?" she asks.

The obvious question behind that being: Why?

"I was going to fall," Sabrina answers. "We were flying and he couldn't let me fall."

"He's been trying for years," says Jake quietly. "Good for him." Of course he knew; he loves the stupid kid like he's his own son. Sabrina wonders, briefly, why he never told her.

Because you wouldn't have believed him.

Veronica, despite her undue motherly fretting, finds it in her to shoot a teasing remark her daughter's way. "Puberty was kind, huh, Sabrina?"

A fierce blush blooms across the young Grimm's cheeks and Henry shouts, "Veronica!" only to be met by four harsh shushes as Puck convulses at the noise. Daphne's unspoken worry splits into a knowing grin once the fairy—and her father—have calmed. "Did you kiss and make up?"

Sabrina scowls and opens her mouth to retort, but the words bring back memories of her first kiss and the boy she fell in love with. And she laughs, the sound unexpectedly foreign, unbelievably sweet, undeniably brilliant. As if fireflies have lit up the dark.

In his sleep, Puck smiles.

"So now what?"

They sit on the roof under a pendulous full moon. Puck is still in pain, wings aching, extremities bandaged, but his fever has died, and Sabrina lets their shoulders touch without fear of deepening his bruises. "I don't know," she says. For their relationship has been gathering dust all these years, out of forced distance, strained words, implicit resentment.

He looks to the sky as if searching for an answer.

"They're not going to speak."

"How do you know?"

The remark carries with it centuries of innocence. Perennial, childlike belief. She sees stardust dance in his sea-foam eyes and wants to kiss him.

"They're just stars, Puck."

She sees something like anger (bitterness? disgust?) flash across his face and he drops his head, frowning. "Yeah, I know. They never—yeah. Whatever."

But as she looks to interstellar void above them, gleaming, doubt creeps under her skin and she wonders if maybe they're not just stars after all.

For some reason, she expects the world to stop spinning and allow them some time to address this unwieldy shift of universal balance. But of course it doesn't: there are still mysteries to solve and people to save, and before they know it, life is routine all over again. Everything falls into place with effortlessness that she doesn't see until one day,

"Hey, Sabrina, I gotta pick up some coffee for Jake. You want anything?"

"Mm... I could do with the caffeine."

"Macchiato sound good?"

"You know me too well, fairy boy."

"Got it. I'll be back in a few."

His drumming fingers leave the doorway and a few minutes pass before she blinks, pausing in her rifling of lost persons requests. Their conversation was a casual affair. Come to think of it, most of their interaction has been casual for weeks now—nonchalance seems to have permeated their lives and gone unnoticed.

When Jake's car pulls up to the house again, she is sitting on the porch, eyes glazing over to fight off the cool morning's blinding sun. Puck steps out, her drink in one hand and her uncle's in the other. "Sabrina?"

Her gaze refocuses. "Stinkbrain."

He drops his head to hide his smile but she sees it anyway: spitfire and honeycomb, and precious to her. "Thought I outgrew that nickname."

She stands up to meet him, letting her hands frame his pretty face. "You haven't outgrown a thing, you oversized six-year-old."

Cornflower eyes dance across sea glass. They stand there, in front of the sinking porch steps, mud seeping into their shoes, and the world around them is lost as her fingers trail along his fragile jaw. She still finds his structure too delicate. It is new and unaccustomed, ivory, pristine.

"Hey," he says weakly. "Jake's no early bird. Magic Man needs his coffee or he's gonna pass out on top of your sister."

She takes in the lingering scent of gold dust, petrichor. "Yeah." And with a smile and a tug of his jacket, she lets him go.

He hands her the requested cup of coffee. She sips it as they head into the house. "Betcha five he's already on the floor."

"Ten says Henry's dumped ice water on his head."

"Fifteen he still hasn't woken up."

"You're on, Grimm."

Eight years, four kisses, and two broken hearts.

They'll be okay.