Chapter Text
Sean carries the tray through from the kitchen. Plants it down on the coffee table, and stretches out on the couch.
The cabin might be a little off the beaten track, but it has all the amenities including a large widescreen television. The zauberbiest plans on resting, eating, and consuming golden age movies like they are going out of fashion. He allows himself a small smile at the irony of his thoughts, and settles down. The slices of pizza disappear fast, the sandwiches, and other little treats scarcely more slowly. He’s chosen some beautiful, lyrical stories, but his concentration is all over the place, and soon the movie is just a backdrop to the feast that is before him.
The packet of chocolate puddings sit before him, and he eyes them happily, picking them up he snaps a pot off the pack and then looks for a spoon. He hasn’t brought one with him. He looks at the pot, shrugs, peels the lid back and dips his pointer and middle fingers into the goo. The texture of the pudding against his skin almost makes him moan at the sensation. He crooks his fingers and pulls them out, sucks the pudding from his digits, the pleasure is positively visceral.
He’s eaten. At some point he’s pulled the other pack of puddings from the fridge, and all three packs of the tapioca, he’s never bothered with a spoon, preferring the forbidden nature of eating with his hands. Now he’s sated and strangely tired, but his skin feels alive, there’s a steady thrum beneath the surface, a forgotten area of his mind recognises it for what it is, but he’s older now, he’s experienced, and after the last few years of his life, something’s coming, but he just doesn’t care what it is. After the Grimm and everything, Sean can’t find it in his heart to fear it.
He sprawls on his side, pushing the abandoned pudding pots to the floor. He’ll clear them up later, but even the last quarter century of self-discipline and never relaxing for a second, can’t make him care.
On some level he recognises that this is strange, because he has always fought to be in control, now he’s losing control and it’s as though it doesn’t matter any more. He stretches out, it’s a large corner couch, unusually there is enough room for him to do so, haphazardly reaches out for a pillow, and drags it under his head, it feels cool against his cheek, and his eyes close, relishing the sensations of the soft fabric beneath him, the cool air downdraft from the fan above him, the silence. He sleeps.
Nick pauses about ten feet from the front steps and thinks about this next move. He feels both reluctant and curiously desperate to make contact with his biest. And when did Sean become his biest… or even Sean for that matter.
The Captain… Nick tells himself firmly, is Diana’s father, and his former boss, nothing more, nothing less. Nick shakes himself and steps forward, walks up the steps, up to the door and raises his fist to knock.
There’s a moan from inside, a sharp cry, and Nick’s bursting through the door, because almost eleven years as an officer, nearly nine as a Detective, and he knows the signs. Sean is in trouble.
It hurts, it burns, and Sean is face down on the couch, his arms wrapped tight around the pillow, his face buried into it, as it feels as though things are crawling beneath his skin, then rising to the surface and bursting out, he cries out in pain as something tears along his sides, his back, and then he’s on hands and knees, screaming as two immense wings unfurl themselves from beneath his skin.
There’s a hand on his shoulder, and somewhere in his disordered brain, Sean recognises that it is Nick, his Grimm, but his canines are sharpening and they prick his tongue and his lower lip and Sean is out of his mind with the feeling of invasion. The hand is too much. Sean thrusts himself up and away, practically falling over the back of the couch as his wings knock things off tables, and then he’s on his feet and they’re spread out wide and he’s screaming at someone (Nick) to get away from him, and it’s all too much as Sean staggers and stumbles, and his legs refuse to co-operate, he slumps to the ground then, banging his left elbow hard on something and experiencing that weird tingle, and the hand comes back and all he can do is roar at the hand and the man behind it to get away from him.
Nick runs, stumbling away from the house, unaware of the tears running down his cheeks, as the final veil is swept away, and Nick acknowledges the truth. Whatever they have been to each other in the past, however things lie between them now, Nicholas Burkhardt loves Sean Renard and cannot cut him out of his life.
He runs and runs, and never sees the car on the corner as he stumbles his way back to his own vehicle.