T4EJAZRNYF THE ACTUAL PROMPT THING: “You’re a terrible cook.” (BUT PLZ GIVE ME PUCKABRINA FROM BOOK 5 OLDER AU!!!I BELIEVE IN U!!)
this took forever becaues i am the worst apologies and shame
“You’re a terrible cook,” Puck says casually, much the way he would say “the prisoners need new sheets” or “I’m sleeping in today.”
“Screw you too,” Sabrina answers.
They’re seated at the kitchen table in their part of the fortress, which is currently a tent pitched on the outside of Granny Relda’s cabin.
“No, I don’t mean it like that,” Puck says. Still easy, still smiling at her.
She loves this, this easy banter, these insults without sting, the comfortable way they can exist around each other these days. She wouldn’t give it up for anything.
And can anyone blame her? This is most of what she’s got: an air mattress on hard dirt, canvas walls on three sides and rough logs on the fourth, a pop-up kitchenette that only works because Daphne has piled so many spells on it it makes Sabrina dizzy to come near it.
Which is probably part of the reason she’s such a bad cook. Not that she’ll say that. It sounds too much like making excuses, but the pull of magic hasn’t gotten easier despite fifteen years around the stuff. It still sings in her bones when it comes close, twisting itself around her, cajoling her to use it like so much would be fixed if she would just twist—
But she’s avoided it, for the most part. There was that one moment, after Uncle Jake died—
Which she doesn’t think about.
Because she’s here in her “house” with her husband, and they woke up to the warm glow of sunshine through their tent walls, and the sound of people training outside, and he loves her even if he hates her cooking. And Uncle Jake and the decade and a half of furious war and her parents asleep still across the rough wall? The seventeen-year-old boy who should have been her brother? All of that is pennies against the brilliance that is standing back to back with Puck and knowing, down to the core of herself, that he’ll keep her as safe as she’ll keep him.
“How about I take it over,” Puck offers. “The cooking, I mean.”
Sabrina shrugs, easy, and takes a bite of her rubbery omelette. He’s not wrong. It’s not good. “Knock yourself out.”
“Oh thank god,” Puck says.
Sabrina considers being offended at the sheer relief in his voice.
“You know,” Sabrina says, keeping her voice mild, “it’s not like I had much of a chance to learn.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Grimm,” Puck says breezily. “But it takes skill to screw up with Marshmallow’s stove.”
Sabrina takes another bite of her omelette. She looks at her plate, making a face, then pushes it away. “Don’t let her hear you call her that.”
“I refuse to stop,” Puck says. He stands, and heads for the stove. He starts bustling around it, moving with purpose.
And she knows that part of that refusal is for her sake. Puck keeps trying to get Daphne to remember what she was like before because that girl? Sabrina gave up so much to let Daphne stay happy, and then—
Well. Sabrina could only protect Daphne so far, it seems.
Maybe someday Puck will get her to smile again.
Maybe.
Sabrina doesn’t think so.
She’s being maudlin again, and she’s trying to stop that. Trying to make the best of things. Doing pretty well at it, usually. She should go swing her sword at something. That usually helps her feel better, lets her switch from sadness to anger again. And she depends on anger a lot less than she used to, but it’s still useful. Anger is movement, anger is changing things. Sadness is useless.
She collects the remains of the atrocity she tried to call breakfast, and dumps them in the garbage bag, another of Daphne’s bespelled necessities. On the way back to the table, she kisses Puck on the cheek.
He leans into it without looking away from the onions he’s dicing. They’re rougher than Sabrina’s onions, which she cut into neat little squares, but they probably won’t be burnt by the time they make it to the table, so it doesn’t matter.
“I’m going to sharpen my swords,” she says. “Call me when breakfast is ready?”
Puck hums in affirmation.
He’s beautiful, concentrating on something, in the diffuse yellow light of their tent, tall and almost clean, and she does love him, so much. Would do anything to keep him safe. Would burn down the world, would fall back into that desperate music of magic if it meant Puck would stay in the world, safe and hers and smiling despite everything.
She’d learn how to cook, even.
