Lupercalia. He wasn't sure anymore if this was how he wanted to do things with her. She looked so beautiful, pale skin glowing in the full light of the moon. She was so uncomfortable though. You could see it in the stiffness of her limbs. The time wasn't right.

So Nick suggested celebrating mortal Valentine's day. He didn't need sex, just her, and seeing her happy would be worth braving blue balls. There was always next year.

He'd forgotten about Farm Boy's presence at her mortal school. Forgotten how distracting he was for her.

Jealousy never hit him the way it should though. To be honest, he thought she was more concerned with her friend dating her ex than the ex in question. Which was understandable, witches and warlocks were passionate creatures. He could live with Sabrina's possessiveness so long as she allowed his own.

He spun her around the dancefloor, the red of her dress melting into a fiery haze around her. She glowed and his heart gave a little lurch.

When she was happiest, and she asked him to leave with her, he found his heart caught in his throat and he had to nod plainly in response.

When they reached her house, it hit him again. Nick had been with beautiful people, obviously. Sabrina was different from them though. Not because she wasn't beautiful - she was perfection itself - but the power she possessed rolled off her in waves.

Sabrina was more powerful than anyone he'd ever heard of and so charismatic and compelling that you'd wage a war in her name. Or at least Nick would. It was magnificent. If she told you that she wanted to do something, no matter how outrageous it was, you knew it would happen. It was like she willed her dreams into existence.

"What are you thinking about, Nick?" That head tilt would be the death of him.

"I'm not sure you could handle it, Spellman". The corner of his lip twitched and he ascended another step. They were close now, and Nick could feel her hot breath near his collar bone. He swallowed thickly. For all his bravado, she could break his heart with a few mumbled words.

Her smile was a smirk now and she pulled him to her via his belt. "What on earth makes you think that, Scratch? I can handle anything you've got."

He didn't respond at first, but then he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her tightly to him. Her hands went around his neck, and her smirk gave way to a softer smile, though the heat of it remained.

"Nick, tell me? Please?"

Nick took in a shaky breath, and proceeded quietly, looking anywhere but her eyes. "I didn't know it could feel like this… to want someone so badly... to want them all to yourself so they belong to you as much as you belong to them. To.." he steeled himself and looked at her properly, "to love someone for everything that they are, not just who they are to you. I'm so very deeply in love with you, Sabrina Spellman, and I live in near constant fear of fucking it up".

She placed a hand on his cheek and he pressed into it with closed eyes. She kissed him then, gentle as a feather. "I love you too, Scratch. When I'm with you I fly, and when I fall, as we all do, I know you'll catch me. I'd walk through Hell and back for you, you know?"

When Nicholas looks back, years from this moment, he thinks those words mark the second he knows in his bones that this woman is it for him. His death, life, and soul are hers.

So he kisses her, trying to say everything he hasn't got the words for. He thinks she must know what it means for him, the orphan boy who didn't think he could love. He clings to her like a man drowning and when she takes his hand and leads him surely upstairs he's not afraid of the future anymore.