Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nick reminded himself--and not for the first time--that outside, it was midday. Somewhere above the trees, the weather was sunny and fine.

Portland had been flattened by a solid week of rain, and this morning he'd awakened to robust sunshine striking puddles and lighting the last raindrops hanging in the leaves. Winter was slowly releasing its death-grip and fading into spring, and on a day like this, Nick could envision warmer, shorter days--or at least, he could have envisioned them an hour ago, when he'd been sitting in the precinct, jiggling his leg and staring yearningly out the window. He'd felt thrilled when Captain Renard came to his desk, rapped on it once with a knuckle, and asked him to interview the mother of a murder victim whose cold case had recently been reopened. Nick generally didn't like this aspect of detective work, but today he didn't mind it. The alternative was writing reports for the next eight hours.

Hank gazed at him balefully as he shrugged on his leather jacket. "Everyone leaves me," he said sullenly.

"C'mon, someone's got to hold down the fort. I'll bring you coffee."

"Strong and black," Hank replied, leaning back in his chair. He gave one desultory wave, and Nick left, smiling.

Now, his good feelings were gone. He'd traveled a few miles out of town, and then turned down a dirt road that wound deeply into thick, dark woods. Branches scraped across his window, pebbles were thrown up into his undercarriage, and once he'd had to get out of his car and manually open a rusted old cattle-gate. He crept along, searching for a house, sure he'd gotten bad directions, ready to turn around, when up ahead, he saw it, and felt dreadfully certain he was at the right place.

He pulled up in front and got out of the car. The trees were so dense that the entire area had been plunged into a false twilight, and the house--which, in Nick's mind, looked a bit like one of Monroe's fancy Swiss cuckoo-clocks--was lit up on the inside with warm yellow light.

Nick huddled into his jacket. It was far colder out here than it had been in downtown Portland. He went up the steps, rubbed his hands for a moment, and pressed the doorbell. Then he waited, admiring the carvings on the doorframe. When the door finally opened, his heart sank a little: the woman at the threshold stared at him with obvious antipathy, and it was clear that she only stepped back to allow him to enter so that she could spit vitriol at him in the comfort of her home. They spoke at the same time.

"Mrs. Lockhill, I'm Nick Burkhardt with the Portland police. I've come to--"

"I don't care if you're a Grimm."

Nick lapsed into stunned silence.

"You can kill me if you like," she continued, her voice tense and deliberate, as if she'd rehearsed the words. "Whoever killed my son did you a favor, didn't they? One less creature." As she spoke, her anger got the better of her, and for a moment she changed from a plain, unremarkable middle-aged woman to an ancient crone with burning eyes.

Nick was at a loss. He hadn't been one of the detectives originally assigned to the case. He hadn't known that Henry had been anything but human. For a second, he wished fiercely that Monroe were there with him, if only because he'd know what Henry had been. "I... actually, I'm here because there's been a new development. Yesterday, we found a jacket buried near the crime scene. The blood on the jacket matches your son's."

Her mouth dropped open. She turned away from him, and walked slowly into her living room. Nick got the impression that he was meant to follow. She collapsed into a worn old couch, and stared at him dully. "I know the jacket you're talking about," she said.

Nick interviewed her as tactfully as he could, and he thought that her hatred must be lessening a little, because when they were nearly finished she went to the kitchen and got him a bottle of water. He cracked it open and took a sip, and was astounded when she leaned forward and said: "When I heard there was a Grimm in the police department, I knew nothing would be done for my Henry. I wasn't wrong. I've had to listen to months of we're working as hard as we can and we'll do everything in our power to apprehend the killer, and I knew it was all a pack of lies. And now you come into my home so you can start asking questions about a jacket that has been lying all but next to the crime scene for months--"

Her face was blurring and morphing quickly; she was working into a rage. Suddenly, she reached out and slapped the water bottle off the table, sending it spinning through the air. It bounced off a side table and hit the floor, leaking water into the carpet. Nick decided it was time to cut his losses.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said, backing towards the door, hoping to get out without any violence.

"Sorry?" she asked, following. "Hardly. I'll tell you what you are."

Nick was out the door and nearly to his car, but her voice sounded so menacing that he paused and turned to look at her.

"A liar," she said. "You're nothing but a liar."

*

Hank liked to tell people that Nick was a difficult person to rattle. He was never one to cringe at the sight of an opened body on an autopsy table. Even in his rookie days, he'd been able to visit ghastly crime scenes and then blithely eat his lunch afterwards. He'd been exposed to horrors that far outstripped the anger of a grieving parent, but as he sped off through the woods, he realized that he was unnerved. Incredibly unnerved. He felt as if an ill-intentioned stranger were standing just behind him, waiting.

He pulled out onto the highway, and the tension didn't lessen. He drove until he couldn't stand it anymore, and then he swung into a Starbucks parking lot. The apple-cheeked girl behind the register beamed when he entered, and demanded to know how his day was going.

"Great," he responded.

"What would you like?"

He didn't hesitate. "I'd like a caramel macchiato. Tall."

"Anything else?"

"Yes."

She stared at him expectantly, and he frowned. He didn't want anything else. He didn't even want the macchiato; that was what Juliette always ordered. After an awkward moment, he asked for a cookie.

Nick marveled at his behavior all the way back to the precinct. Hank saw the cup he was carrying and called out, "Is that mine?"

"No."

Hank only grinned. "Hand it over." His amusement turned into disgust when he took a sip. "The hell is this?" he asked, pulling off the lid and sniffing. "Is that caramel?"

"No, it's not," Nick said. Hank looked disdainful.

"A rat in the pizza, and now this. Don't get comfortable, Burkhardt, because that's when I'll strike."

Nick forced out a laugh and retreated to his desk. His chair hadn't even stopped creaking before Renard was looming over him. "Did she know anything about the jacket?"

"No," Nick replied, and his bemusement at the situation turned to cold horror: he was lying to his superior about a murder investigation.

Renard gazed at him for a long, uncomfortable moment. His face registered nothing. Then he looked down at Nick's cluttered desk as if he was searching for something. He asked, "Did you finish the report for the Davis case?"

"I haven't." He'd finished it hours ago.

Renard picked up a stack of papers--the report in question--and flipped through them. "This looks finished to me," he observed.

"Oh," Nick said weakly. "I wanted to rewrite part of it."

To his amazement, Renard accepted his excuse. He put the papers down. "Tomorrow, I want you back at the Lockhill crime scene. Look around where the jacket was buried and see if you can find anything else. And," he added, "start preparing for the Nakamura trial. I've heard the defense attorney is good at undermining police testimony."

Nick felt as if he'd been punched in the sternum. He resolved to spend the rest of the day doing paperwork and keeping his head down, but he quickly discovered that everything he wrote was a lie. Each time Nick tried to describe something--the position of the victim's body; the clothing the victim was wearing; the apparent injuries; general observations--his hands would begin typing feverishly, very much of their own volition, and he'd be left with paragraphs of utter fabrications.

He opened a blank document and stared at it. Slowly, he began to type: MY NAME IS

Then he stopped. He pressed the N key, and the I key, and the C key. His right index finger hovered over the K key, but then his hands were moving, and he watched as the letters A-R-A-G-U-A appeared on the screen. MY NAME IS NICARAGUA. He tried the experiment again, and this time he couldn't even get to the C key. He wrote, MY NAME IS NIGEL.

You're nothing but a liar, Mrs. Lockhill had told him. And now it was true.

*

He had options. He could go to Monroe's, or he could go back to the house in the woods, or he could go to Renard and beg to use a few of his vacation days. Any of these avenues were available to him, but he didn't choose one. He was exhausted right down to the marrow, as if he hadn't had a proper sleep in years. Part of him, too, held out a forlorn hope that this curse would run its course quickly. He shrugged into his jacket, grabbed his keys, and told Wu and Hank that he had a date with Juliette tonight. Then he went home, and slept hard.

He awakened in increments: the sound of the alarm blaring, the sudden flood of light into the room, and then, pleasantest of all, the feel of lips pressing against his forehead. He smiled and opened his eyes to find Juliette leaning over him. She said, "Morning. If I'd known you were going to come home early, I wouldn't have gone out."

"I missed you." There was no telling if that statement was the truth or a lie, and the realization troubled him. He sat up and watched her move about the bedroom.

"You were tossing and turning all night. Did you sleep okay?"

"Yeah." A lie, then. The hope that this problem would resolve itself quickly vanished. "I slept fine."

She paused. Nick knew his tone had been harsh and strange, and he hastened on: "Did I bother you?"

"No."

The rest of their morning routine was conducted in silence. Before she left, Juliette kissed his cheek and told him to have a good day.

"I will," Nick said.

*

He and Monroe had a routine: he'd show up at an early hour and interrupt Monroe doing some bizarre nonsense, and then Monroe would stand in his doorway and tell Nick in detail why he disliked their acquaintanceship and how he wished to discontinue it. After a little of that, Monroe would throw up his hands and let Nick push his way in and then ask, with barely concealed excitement, what they were going to do today. The routine was established. They liked it and it worked. Today, though--given that this was Nick, and his life--the script changed.

Nick rapped once on the door and was shocked when Monroe threw it open. He was shocked further when he saw that there were no books or musical instruments or exercise machines in sight: Monroe had been waiting for him. And he looked happier than he had any right to be.

"You're looking at the man who won two tickets to Friday's performance of Rigoletto," Monroe declared.

"Awesome," Nick said.

Monroe waved a ticket at him. "You could be in on this. What do you think?"

He tried to lock up his jaw and hold his lips together, but there was no stopping it. "That sounds great!"

Nick wanted to be horrified at himself. He did. Somehow, though, Monroe's frothing gladness about winning those lousy tickets was contagious, and he found that this was the first lie he felt good about telling. It was nice, but it couldn't last.

"Monroe, can you help me?"

"With what?"

They'd moved into the kitchen, and Nick accepted a cup of coffee. He wrapped his fingers tightly around the mug and reminded himself that Brown didn't accept just anybody.

"I'm..." Nick took a breath. "I'm not holding a mug."

Monroe only looked confused.

"The sky is red," Nick said pleadingly. "I can tell the truth. I'm not a liar. I'm--uh, I'm in Seattle. I work as an insurance adjustor. My name is Nigel."

"Dude. Is this some kind of whacked-out performance art, because I--"

Nick put his head in his hands. "I'm not a liar. I can tell the truth. My parents are alive."

He heard Monroe draw in a hiss of air. "Did you get cursed?"

Nick felt a powerful impulse to grab Monroe's hands, or clutch at his shoulders, or lay a reverent kiss on his ratty slippers. "No!" he said excitedly. "I wasn't cursed! Yesterday."

Monroe rubbed a hand over his beard, an unconscious gesture that Nick had noticed him do whenever he was thinking. "I've heard of truth curses, but never the reverse. I don't see why it couldn't be possible, though. Who did it?"

"Hank," Nick responded, and then sighed in frustration. He attempted to describe his predicament using hand gestures, facial expressions, drawings, and various suggestive lies--and, after he got the hang of it, he met with more success than he thought possible. He was left with the impression that either Monroe was preternaturally intelligent or he needed to ditch this detective thing and go for a life in interpretive dance. Either way, next time he played Charades, he knew who his partner was going to be.

"Sounds like a woodswitch," Monroe said contemplatively. "But... in order to do it, she'd need something of yours."

There was a half-empty water bottle on the counter. Nick pointed to it, and mimed drinking.

Monroe shook his head wonderingly. "You really are the worst Grimm in existence. Wait, actually, you're the worst Grimm in all of history. The once and future worst Grimm."

"The seal was broken," Nick said, but he really didn't have much inclination to defend himself.

"You still left the bottle there. She used your saliva."

Nick folded his arms and looked heavenward. Beside him, he heard Monroe gasp. He closed his eyes, waiting.

"Hey! Does this mean you don't want to see Rigoletto?"

He tried his best to look abashed even as he spoke. "I do want to see it."

Monroe took up his coffee cup and sloshed it into the sink. "And here I thought you were a Renaissance man."

*

Nick brought Monroe with him to the Lockhill crime scene, hoping the blutbad nose could lead them to another piece of evidence. Monroe had tried to sulk quietly on the way, but it was another fine day and he still had those goddamn tickets, and, Nick knew, he enjoyed this work, and the opportunity to get out of the house and use his abilities for something other than senseless slaughter. They picked through undergrowth for a while, occasionally following scent-leads that went nowhere, and every time Nick snuck a look at his companion, it seemed Monroe was enjoying himself even more. The ebullient mood didn't stop him from being annoying, however.

"So, is Portland PD ever going to pay me for my services? Because, you know, I could really use the money. Considering how much I'm owed... my God, I'd never even have to think about my fancy cheese budget ever again."

Of course Monroe had a fancy cheese budget, Nick thought. Of course he did.

"I know you're a very busy man," Nick said, trying his best to inject venom into each syllable.

"Portland PD can't pay me in snide remarks, Nick. Snide remarks won't put kale on my table."

Nick rubbed his forehead and wished for strength. They worked quietly for a while, and then Monroe spoke again.

"Hey, boxers or briefs?"

"Briefs."

"Interesting."

"This gun is not loaded."

Monroe tried to project innocence, but he only ended up looking rather insane. "Am I making you angry?"

"No."

"Well then. You enjoy my company, don't you?"

"No, I don't."

The maniacal grin slipped off Monroe's face. He turned away quickly, and walked purposefully into a copse of trees. Nick watched him go, and realized that underneath the irritation and frustration and fear, his spirits had been oddly buoyant all day.

Chapter Text

Nick unlocked his door, stepped into the foyer, and smelled garlic. Juliette was cooking, and that meant they'd soon be sitting at the table and chatting about their respective days. He hoped he could get through it.

"That you, Nick?" she called.

"Nope. Just a burglar. I'll come back when you're not home," he replied, and she laughed indulgently.

He found her pouring pasta into a strainer. Her face was warm and damp from the steam, and he let his lips linger a little overlong on her cheek.

"Hope you feel like spaghetti."

He swallowed once, and said: "I always feel like spaghetti."

It was easy to lie to her. As their dinner progressed, he felt a great, aching sadness. He'd been cursed for more than a day, and Juliette hadn't noticed.

*

The following morning, Nick found himself in Renard's office, listening to all the reasons why the good image of the department depended on the detectives using some of their vacation days.

"I'm seeing here that you've accumulated almost three weeks of paid leave," Renard said, tapping a paper he'd laid out in front of Nick. "Occasionally, an independent agency comes around and investigates various factors impacting the detectives' quality of life. They use things like this as the basis for their statistics. About five years ago, they released a damning report about how you're all overworked and underpaid, and that was why thirty percent of homicides in Portland go unsolved. The media ran with it. I don't want that to happen again, Burkhardt, so I want you to take a few days off."

Nick felt like a mouse in a maze. He was certain that Renard had spoken more words to him just then than he had during all the rest of the time they'd known each other.

"Sir, I--"

"Use the time to prepare for the trial. Read over your reports and try to anticipate what the defense attorney might ask you."

Nick wasn't sure what might come out if he opened his mouth, so he elected to say nothing. Renard gazed at him for a moment, and then clicked his pen authoritatively. "Take the rest of the week off. Get some rest and enjoy your life."

His fingers had just touched the cold metal of the door handle when he heard Renard speak again.

"And if you have any personal problems, take care of them now."

*

"Don't you have a job?" Monroe asked. "And important things to do?"

"Nope," Nick said, helping himself to a beer.

"I'm just saying, it's always Monroe, get a life and Monroe, you've got way too much time on your hands. But it's totally cool when you show up at--" He broke off and checked his watch. "Eleven AM. Wow, should you be drinking already?"

Nick shot him a glare and twisted off the cap.

"All right, look," Monroe said, pulling out a chair and sitting across from Nick. He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. "I made some calls. I have this cousin, right? He dated a woodswitch when he was in high school, My aunt nearly had a stroke over it. She's a bigot," he added hastily. Nick made a let's-get-on-with-it motion with his hand, and Monroe continued. "My cousin left her for some girl named Sarah, and the woodswitch got some of his fingernail clippings and cursed him to slap his own face whenever he said Sarah's name."

"Did he break the curse?" Nick asked, feeling an exquisite surge of hope.

Monroe scratched his head. "Well... not quite. He found, through trial and error, that when he wore silver rings on each finger, his hand just kind of jerked a little every time he spoke the name. I mean, it was better than slapping his face. Way less awkward."

"What are you trying to say, Monroe?"

"I'm saying that you might not be able to break the curse entirely, but you might find a way to disable it slightly. Divert it, if you will. You have to figure out which body part corresponds with the curse, and then you... alter it a little."

Nick finished his beer and got another.

"She took your saliva, so while the curse affects several parts of your body, it has to be centered in the mouth," Monroe went on. "And since it's a lying curse, I'm guessing the center of command, if you will, is your tongue."

"So what?"

"So... you can't put a ring on your tongue, but you can pierce it."

Nick's mouth dropped open. "Are you joking?"

Monroe shrugged. "It doesn't have to be permanent. Just... a stop-gap measure." He watched Nick shake his head slowly, disbelievingly. "I know it sucks, man, but that's all I've got. Other than the obvious."

Nick slammed his bottle on the table and stamped down the urge to scream.

"Woah, sorry. I'm always forgetting. Haven't you read any fairy tales? How does anyone break a curse?" He paused for effect. "You kiss the lips of your true love."

Nick drank down his beer, put on his jacket, grabbed his keys, and tore out of the house. Behind him, Monroe was telling him to stop, wait, listen. But he didn't need any more of Monroe's absurd advice. For one reason or another, he hadn't given Juliette a real kiss since this curse had begun, and now he would. How he would. He was going to kiss her, and he was going to take his sweet time about it.

*

"What was that for?" she asked, eyes dancing. Her lips were still wet, pink, and a little swollen.

He looked down at her, this golden-hearted woman he'd come to love for her kindness and admire for her competence. He opened his mouth and said, "No reason."

Then he let her go, and stepped backward, and turned his face away. He walked to his bed as if he were a decrepit old man, and he slept for a solid twelve hours. She left for work without waking him.

*

Monroe situated him on the couch and gave him a mug of chamomile tea. Nick didn't want it, but he drank it anyway.

"It worked," he said quietly, and he saw that Monroe's sympathy was mixed with consternation.

"I tried to tell you."

"Why? I... hate Juliette. I hate her."

"I know you love her," Monroe said quietly. "Why do you think fairy tales are full of people finding their true love? Because in real life, it's rare. A true love is like a soulmate, and who knows? Your soulmate is living in Zanzibar, for all you know."

"I have a soulmate?"

"Everyone does. The vast majority of people will never find theirs, though. It's too hard. And," he added, "just because Juliette isn't your soulmate doesn't mean she isn't right for you."

Nick pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes and sat still for a long moment. Then he nodded, stuck out his tongue, and mimed a stabbing motion.

*

"Are you sure about this? I know I'm not exactly holding a gun to your head, but..."

"No."

Monroe drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of his car. "This is weird. This is really weird. Okay," he said decisively, opened his door, and stepped into the parking lot of one of the most hideous strip malls that Nick had ever seen. It boasted a loan agency, a mattress store, a Shipley's, and a flooring and tiling company. And all the way down, a place called Subatomic Tattoos and Piercings.

"Subatomic," Monroe sad reflectively. "I wonder why not just regular atomic? Was that not cool enough?"

Monroe had kept up a steady stream of meaningless chatter all the way here, and Nick hadn't yet grown tired of his voice. He felt rather fortified by the knowledge that Monroe was nervous too.

A tinny bell rang when they entered the shop. Nick hung back, letting Monroe go to the counter to talk about prices and procedures. The place was dingy, but Nick preferred it that way. He knew he wasn't liable to run into someone he knew in any piercing parlor in Portland, but he felt secure in the knowledge that this place was so awful that even the people he'd arrested over the years were probably too good to come around.

He heard a bored, gravelly female voice say, "We don't do silver. Only stainless steel."

"How much?" Monroe asked.

"Fifty."

Monroe turned to look at Nick inquiringly, and Nick shrugged. He began to peruse some of the sample tattoo art on the walls, and came across a striking image of a skull vomiting green slime into another skull's eye.

"Have him fill this out," the woman said, and Monroe brought him a clipboard bearing some kind of checklist. Nick wrote down his information and then squinted at the first bullet point.

ARE YOU OVER 18?

He checked the box for No, and Monroe took it away from him, scratched out his answers, and started filling it in correctly. He read Nick's information and smiled, amused. "Your fake name is Nigel Bancroft? I like that. Sounds like a man of mystery."

Nick folded his arms and contemplated the linoleum floor.

"Hey, he has to do that," the woman at the counter cried.

"He's dyslexic," Monroe snapped. Nick thought they'd be asked to leave, but she only shrugged and said, "We'd prefer it if you paid in cash."

Nick reached for his wallet and Monroe grabbed his hand. "Look, man, if you don't want to go through with this, you don't have to. A tongue piecing is no joke. Isn't there like, a nerve somewhere in there? And if they accidentally hit it, you'll die? Or something? Maybe we should forget this and go somewhere a little more... upscale."

Nick pointed at him savagely. Your idea. Your fault.

"I know, I know. I just... I don't want anything terrible to happen."

Between them, they came up with fifty dollars, and the woman--whose nametag identified her as Tempest--took them to a small workstation. Nick sat down on a fold-out chair, and Monroe hovered over him.

"Uh, do tongue piercings bleed a lot? I... can't really handle blood."

"They don't bleed much, but if you're squeamish you might not want to see this," Tempest said.

Monroe turned to Nick and give him a significant look. "Maybe I should go."

"I'd be overjoyed if you left," Nick told him, and Monroe sat down immediately. Tempest didn't react. No doubt she'd witnessed stranger things.

They watched while she put a series of implements on a silver tray. She snapped on some gloves, opened a sterile gauze pad, and told Nick to stick out his tongue. He did.

"Farther," she said. She wiped his tongue with the gauze and prodded at it, holding it this way and that. "I'm just looking for the vein," she said, and Nick heard Monroe whine a little.

Tempest brought out a pen and put a dot in the middle of Nick's tongue. Then she tore open some packaging, revealing a silver instrument: it looked a little like a surgical clamp, but instead of having flat, serrated ends, it had two rings.

"Stick out your tongue as far as you can," she instructed. He did, and she clamped it right where she'd put the dot. The needle would go through the rings. As she worked, Nick noticed that she had some sort of implant above her right eyebrow, and he stared at it resolutely.

"Deep breath," she said, and as he did so, Monroe vocalized something unintelligible. He felt a tugging sensation in his tongue, and knew that it was over. He hadn't felt a thing.

"It's huge," Monroe breathed.

"It'll have to heal for a few weeks before we put in a smaller one," Tempest told him. She gave him a mirror and he looked at himself. Monroe was right: the bar was much larger than he expected. When he stuck out his tongue, a half-inch of steel was visible. He wasn't even sure if he'd be able to speak properly.

Tempest gave Monroe the aftercare instructions, and he listened intensely, as if he were a student in a lecture hall. Afterwards, they went out and sat in the car for five long minutes before Monroe ventured a question.

"What color is the sky?" he asked.

"Blue."

Nick had one second of euphoria before the pain hit. He covered his hand with his mouth and groaned.

"Nick? What happened? What's wrong?" Monroe had taken his forearm and was trying to move Nick's hand away to see what sort of damage had been done. Nick wrenched away.

"My tongue. It burns."

"All right," Monroe said, jamming the key into the ignition. "Maybe this one's a bust."

Nick pulled his hand away from his mouth and looked at it, half-expecting to find it drenched in blood. He pulled down the passenger seat mirror and opened his mouth for inspection. Aside from the slightly swollen area around the piercing, everything looked normal. He was amazed: for a moment there, he'd felt as if he'd dipped his tongue in boiling water.

"Let's get you a smoothie or something," Monroe continued desperately. "That'll help, I'm sure."

Nick glared out the window, watching the trees and fences and houses blur past them, and entertained a few revenge fantasies. His anger dissipated a few minutes later, when Monroe guiltily handed him a Frappuccino. The ice did help.

Nick worked up his courage, and then stated: "I'm a detective."

The burn was muted this time; it flared up and then vanished almost before Nick could register the pain. This was still bad, but it was the sort of bad he could handle.

"Will you take me home?" he asked.

*

Nick smelled rosemary.

He'd tried to think of an explanation for his tongue piercing, but each scenario he'd imagined seemed worse than the last. He thought he simply had a bad imagination, so he asked Monroe to help him--and he quickly realized that imagination was the last thing he needed now. There was nothing for it but to square his shoulders and let things play out.

He walked into the kitchen.

"I made chicken," Juliette said brightly. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and then twined her arms around his neck. Nick gave her one chaste, close-lipped kiss. She smiled, tightened her hold, and said: "Last night was nice. I feel like it's been so long since we just spent an evening together. I thought we could do it again tonight."

Nick searched for something appropriate to say. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "I can't eat solid food for the next three weeks."

He felt her body stiffen.

"Nick," she said lowly. "What is that in your mouth?"

He let her go and went to the freezer to fill a cup of ice. He felt ridiculous, but there wasn't any way he could get through this without a few ice cubes to suck.

"It's a tongue piercing," he said. His words came out a little bit muffled, a little bit slurred. It seemed his tongue had an independent will, and the metal clacked jarringly against his teeth. He bit down on his ice and felt the burning lessen somewhat.

Juliette grabbed the counter. "You pierced your tongue? Why?"

He shrugged. "I wanted to get it done."

It was odd, he thought, that he'd gone to such lengths to get back his ability to tell the truth. For what? Now that he could be honest with her, he wasn't. Again.

"Nick," she said. She threw down her towel and moved to the other side of the room, pushing her hair out of her face and then resting a palm against her forehead. "Nick, I'm--I wish you'd--" She exhaled one explosive breath, and then said, "I can't deal with this. When you started acting distant, I told myself that you have a difficult job. When you started disappearing, I told myself that you worked long hours because you believe in the importance of what you do. And when you started lying to me--" Her breath hitched, and her hand moved down to cover her eyes. "I tried to be patient, and I--I tried to find ways to be nearer to you, so that you'd remember how we--"

He crossed the kitchen and put his hands on her shoulders, trying to make eye contact, trying to reassure her, trying to do anything that would fix this. He'd never made her cry before, and the sight of her screwed-shut eyes and twitching mouth and reddened cheeks opened a great well of horror inside of him.

"Juliette," he said raggedly, "Please, it's not like--"

She sniffed once, and then stepped back. "Do you think I'm an idiot?" she asked quietly. Gently.

"Of course not," he cried, and he felt a hot pulse in his tongue.

"And do you think I'm blind?"

"No. Juliette, I--"

"When it's good, it's still so good," she murmured. "But don't insult me by pretending that things are the same as they ever were. Sometimes you're like a stranger to me. I know it's just a piercing, and maybe I'm overreacting, but I feel like you've got some kind of double-life. And it's most apparent when you do things like--" She waved her hand in front of her mouth.

Nick felt as if some great fist had caught up his lungs and heart and was squeezing down viciously.

They stood about in silence, watching each other, waiting. At last, Juliette spoke. Her voice was dull and brittle. "I bet the raccoons would like some of this chicken."

*

Nick and Juliette used to laugh about the stereotype of the guilty husband sleeping on the couch. Back in those days, they couldn't even imagine an argument lasting so long. Now, Nick lay on the rough cushions, as flat and stiff as an effigy. His pillow was an old embroidered thing that Juliette's mother had given as a housewarming gift, and his blanket was a knitted throw that he'd dug out of the closet.

He stared at the ceiling for an hour, wondering at how spectacularly things had gone wrong. Yet as much as he wanted to blame this disaster on the curse, he knew it was only the catalyst. The conditions had been right for a long time, and if it hadn't been this stupid piercing, it would have been something else.

Still.

Suddenly, he felt consumed by a need to get up and act. He couldn't sleep. He couldn't spend one more minute on this couch, in this house. He had a problem and he needed to find the solution. He could find his way out of this.

And there was only one person who could help him do it.

*

He'd thought Mrs. Lockhill's house had been eerie during the day, but at night it was something else altogether. Malevolent.

He pounded on the carved door, shouting her name and demanding entry. He didn't have a search warrant, but he didn't care. At this point, he didn't care about much of anything.

Finally, his frustration reached a screaming crescendo, and he aimed one devastating kick at her door, splintering the wood and slamming it backwards. The doorknob hit the opposite wall like a gunshot, and then all was silent.

He heard the buzzing first--the frenetic movement of hundreds of flies. Then he smelled it, that horrible miasma he knew so well; the smell of a rotting corpse. It was unlike anything else: sick and sweet, cloying, and eye-wateringly vile. No detective ever forgot that particular smell.

He didn't even need to enter the house to see her. She was sitting in the same chair she'd been in when he'd come to interview her. The chair faced the entryway. The house was dark, and he could scarcely make out the details of her body. The feeble moonlight highlighted only one thing.

Below the shadow of her head, he could see a short, white column. The bones of her neck, laid bare.

*

For one surreal minute, Nick thought about leaving the scene. He could get out of there and find some pay phone and put in an anonymous tip. He wasn't on the clock. He had no reason to be here. And he was probably the last person who'd seen her alive. One didn't have to be a seasoned detective to know what that meant.

He stumbled back to his car and leaned against it for a long moment, wondering what kind of psychopathic impulse had brought him here. But he couldn't leave her.

He dug out his phone and stared at it. His thumb hovered over the keypad. This call, he knew, could destroy his life.

He pressed the numbers, swallowed painfully, and put the phone against his ear. It rang once, twice, three times. Then a familiar voice came on the line.

"Portland Homicide, Captain Renard speaking."

Nick breathed into the phone for a while, unsure of what to say. He hadn't even thought to bring his ice cubes.

"Is someone there?"

"It's Nick Burkhardt, sir," he said, and then grunted in pain. His piercing suddenly felt white-hot.

"Burkhardt? Are you all right?"

Nick felt a moment of hazy confusion. Renard sounded concerned, but it wasn't the right type of concern. It wasn't an official concern. He sounded worried--scared, even.

"I'm at, uh, Selma Lockhill's home. I... came here, and I found her dead. She's been murdered. Somebody cut her throat." Each truthful statement was a burning coal shoved in his mouth.

He heard Renard blow out a breath. "I'm coming. Don't move. I'll be there shortly."

Nick hung up. He sat in his car and shuddered. It was freezing in the woods and he had nowhere to go. He waited for the blare of sirens and the flashing lights of squad cars, but none came. After what might have been minutes or hours, he heard the sound of gravel crunching under tires. The tires of one car.

Nick craned his head backwards and watched a sleek, black sedan approach. It rolled to a stop and the headlights blinked off, and then Renard threw open the door and hurried over to him. Hands like iron seized his shoulders, and Nick felt himself being hauled up and pushed against the rear door.

"What happened? Why are you here?"

Nick felt as if he'd been drugged. He couldn't think. "She... took something from me. I wanted to get it back."

Renard stared at him. That stare was palpable, like fingers crawling over his mind, seeking out his half-truths and excuses and misdeeds.

"I didn't do it," Nick said softly, and he almost appreciated the burn on his tongue.

The hard lines of Renard's face relaxed. "You must listen to me," he said urgently. Nick felt his woolly confusion diminish. "Get out of here. I'll take care of this."

"What?"

"Do as I tell you," he said, and it was like he'd struck a chord with Nick's soul. Everything flew out of his mind but the incredible urge to obey.

His hands were still resting on Nick's shoulders. Lightly now.

"Don't look back. Don't tell anyone you were ever here. Just go home, and go back to bed. It didn't happen."

Nick nodded. He got back in his car and drove away, his movements mechanical. He was just turning into his neighborhood when he came back to himself, startled, like a person who'd been rudely awakened from a dream.

Chapter Text

He went to Monroe. Somehow, Monroe's couch seemed immensely favorable to the one in his own house.

He imagined that Monroe would complain and curse, and only grudgingly let him in after whining at length about the early hour. But none of that happened. When Nick pulled up his driveway, he saw that the lights inside were still on, and as he went up the walkway, he noticed the curtain twitch. He found it all strange, because Monroe usually kept very strict, regular hours. His instincts were telling him to do something, investigate something, but he didn't pay much attention. He didn't want to dredge up the energy for it.

Monroe opened the door before Nick had even made it to the porch. "What's going on?" he asked, searching the darkness behind Nick as if someone else might be coming.

"Juliette and I had a fight," Nick said. He winced. "Can I have some ice water?"

Monroe stepped aside and Nick entered the house, and he must have cut a very sad figure, because Monroe actually put a hand on the small of his back and physically led him into the kitchen. Nick got his ice, and let Monroe hold forth about dental health and how eating ice was terrible, might as well be eating tinfoil, and was Nick taking care of his tongue piercing? Because those could easily get infected, and the mouth had a lot of bacteria so the infection could really be awful, and he'd read somewhere that swallowing mouth bacteria could even lead to heart disease, and--

"Monroe," Nick said tiredly.

"Okay, I'm sorry. Dude, it's three o'clock in the morning and you look like you've just come out of a meat grinder. I talk a lot in awkward situations like this; it's a finely-honed defense mechanism."

After a moment, he ventured timidly: "Did you want to talk about Juliette?"

Nick ran his finger through the condensation collecting on his plastic cup. "I don't know."

"Did she... is she going to leave you?"

He put an ice cube in his mouth. "I think we're headed that way. To be honest, I think we've been headed that way for a while now."

"Shit. I had no idea," Monroe said.

"Yeah. Can I crash here tonight?"

"Sure, man, whatever you need." Monroe shot up out of his chair and went into his bedroom. He came out with an armful of bedding and a fat white pillow. "I've got extra towels in the bathroom," he said, settling the quilt over he couch.

"Thanks." Nick was too tired to feel self-conscious while he kicked off his shoes and peeled off his jeans.

"I--I'll take your shoes. To the shoe rack," Monroe declared, and disappeared into the foyer.

This couch was more comfortable than the one at home. Monroe's entire house felt comfortable: it was so apparent that someone lived here. This wasn't a starter home, or a stepping stone to something better. It was a place where one person exerted their influence, filling it up with meaningful things and marking every inch of it as their own. Nick felt an unhinged laugh well up at the back of his throat: come to think of it, he really hoped Monroe hadn't marked every inch. Or that he'd done so figuratively, and not in his own inimitable way.

Monroe came back into the living room and stood still, holding his hands clasped together in front of him. He was the very picture of an anxious host. Nick smiled. Exhaustion crept over him.

"Monroe?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah?" Monroe took a tentative step forward.

"Why were you still up?"

Monroe didn't respond for a long time. Nick forgot the question, and slid off into sleep.

*

His phone chirped once, and Nick awakened with a violent jolt. For a few heart-pounding seconds, he couldn't remember where he was or what had happened. His first thought was that he'd overslept and was now career-endingly late to work.

Then the events of the night came back to him. He sat still, willing his heart to slow down, and checked his phone: a text from Juliette.

Where are you?

Nick glanced at the time. Seven-thirty; he'd only slept for about four hours. Juliette would be heading out the door soon.

He texted back: I spent the night at Hank's. He reread it, felt disgusted, erased it, and wrote: I spent the night at a friend's house. Christ, it sounded sketchy, but he sent it anyway.

She didn't respond.

He rolled off the couch and followed the smell of fresh coffee. On the kitchen table, Monroe had left a note. Nick's mouth quirked up: Monroe's handwriting looked like something out of an old-time diary. Somehow, he'd expected Monroe to write like a kindergartener.

GONE TO THE STORE! HELP YOURSELF TO COFFEE. --M.

Nick poured himself a cup and then wandered back into the living room. He thought of going back to sleep, but the ticking of countless clocks had begun to grate too much on his nerves. He decided to watch some television to take his mind off it, but he couldn't find the remote. He searched the room, and his gaze settled on the bookshelf.

Juliette had told him once that someone's bookshelf could say a lot about them as a person. Nick perused Monroe's titles. Alice Munro. Thomas Mann. Margaret Atwood. Chaucer. Pynchon. Tolkien. Gaiman. Murakami. Nick even saw a couple of battered old romance novels. And between two red-and-pink covers, Monroe had wedged a sheaf of papers.

Nick was tempted.

"I'm not snooping," he said aloud. His tongue didn't react.

He looked back in the direction of the driveway, and then pulled the papers off the shelf. It was just miscellaneous junk: museum brochures, concert playbills, maps, flyers, coupons. He flipped through them, thinking about how Monroe certainly got around quite a bit for a socially inept loner. Then something caught his eye: a playbill for an opera.

Rigoletto.

Nick turned it over and checked the date. Monroe had gone last November.

*

"Make yourself useful!" Monroe hollered, dragging in five paper sacks filled with vegetables. He dropped them in front of the counter by the sink and started muttering something about the spirit of Hap Lasser coming back and possessing people, turning them into lazy good-for-nothings.

Hearing Hap Lasser's name spurred something inside Nick.

"I wasn't entirely honest with you last night," he said. He remained sitting on the couch and staring at the wall, and after a few seconds, he heard the sink shut off. Monroe came and sat next to him, brows knit together in confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"I did have a fight with Juliette, but that wasn't all. Remember the woodswitch?"

"Uh, yeah," Monroe said.

"She's dead."

Nick had never seen such an exaggerated reaction to news of a death, not even in an interrogation room. There was an unbroken ring of white all the way around Monroe's brown eyes. The man had honest-to-God blanched.

"You seem pretty surprised," Nick said evenly.

"Well, I mean, I don't think she could have reversed the curse--or ever wanted to--but now, it's like, maybe we'll never know, and--" He rose off the couch and went back into the kitchen. The water was turned back on, and Nick listened as Monroe washed some cabbage within an inch of its life. He went to the threshold and gazed at Monroe's tense back.

Nick wanted to come right out and say it: Is there something you're not telling me? But he didn't. He wondered if Juliette had felt this way often. She must have.

Suddenly Monroe spoke. "See if there's something about her death in the paper," he suggested.

*

There was. A one-paragraph blurb informed him that body had been found, dead for at least forty-eight hours, badly decomposed, no leads or suspects at this moment. Memorial service to be held the following day.

An hour ago, Nick would have asked Monroe to come to the service with him, and help him interview a few people to see if he could figure out what the hell was going on. He would have asked Monroe to guard him in case a Grimm showing up to a creature's memorial service caused inter-species hostility. Now, he just thanked Monroe for allowing him to stay the night, and started gathering his things.

"You're leaving?" Monroe asked. "Are you--I mean, what are you going to do?"

Nick felt a flash of irritation. "What are you going to do?"

Monroe frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Forget it."

"Nick?" he asked, following him out the door. "Did I do something?"

Nick turned back. "No. Look, I have to prepare for this trial."

"A trial?"

"Yeah. The defense is going to grill me."

"No wonder you needed that curse broken quick. It's all fun and games until someone perjures themselves."

Nick wanted to smile. He did. Part of him wanted to go back in the house and eat some of Monroe's garlic fried mushrooms and just sit around and listen to him ramble. But that comfortable house now looked like a picture frame tilted ever so slightly to one side: it wasn't quite right; it bothered him; it needed to be fixed. Somehow.

*

Nick knew that Juliette wouldn't be around at this time of day, but the house still felt disconcertingly empty. The impression he had at Monroe's--the feeling that something was a little wrong, a little off--hadn't dissipated. Rather, he felt as if it was expanding to encompass every aspect of his life.

He spent the rest of the day preparing for the trial and anticipating Juliette's return. At ten o'clock, he closed his notebook, rearranged his papers, and made himself a bowl of soup. While he ate, he waffled over whether or not he should contact her. Eventually, he decided to send her another text.

Will you be home tonight?

Ten minutes later, she responded: Visiting my mom & sister. I'll see you tomorrow.

Nick stared at the screen, ears burning. He could only imagine what Juliette's mother had to say about his new piercing.

Selma Lockhill's memorial service was scheduled to begin at eleven the following morning, and he hadn't gotten much sleep the previous night. He wanted to turn in early, but he was jittery and anxious. His life was rearranging itself, as it had been for some time, but now things were changing too fast, and the changes were too permanent. Fundamental knowledge was slipping out of his grasp, and he was finding himself in an increasingly uncertain and unfriendly world. Reality seemed dangerously elusive.

After a while, he brought out a bottle of wine--the bottle, he mused, that Juliette had meant to accompany her rosemary chicken--and drank until he felt calm enough to drop off.

*

Hank was fond of explaining to interested civilians that detective work was nothing like the movies. "It's endless drudgery," he'd say. "It's long hours and busted-up marriages and bad coffee and a lot of things you wish you'd never seen. I wouldn't trade it," he'd finish magnanimously, "but that's how it is."

Except sometimes it wasn't, Nick reflected. Sometimes, things played out in a distinctly Hollywood-like fashion. Just then, he was running full-tilt through a vacant lot filled with broken glass, beer cans, and brambles. His jeans were probably a lost cause at this point, and his was uncharacteristically winded--perhaps a result of his newfound liquid diet, or the lingering hangover that was beginning to renew its presence.

He had tried to quietly and discreetly enter the little clapboard church where the service was taking place, but he'd gotten lost on the way there and he'd walked in after things had gotten underway. Selma Lockhill obviously hadn't had much family or many friends; very few people were in attendance. Several heads turned his way when he shut the doors behind him. One of those heads belonged to a lanky, redheaded teenager who took one look at him and, to the astonishment of everyone present, exploded out of the pew and slammed through the emergency exit. Then a shrill wail rose up out of the audience, and Nick realized he was the cause of it: the screaming woman was pointing at him, her face contorted in terror. Soon the panic spread, and as Nick made his way to the exit the teenager had used, people threw themselves out of his way, stumbling and tripping and diving in all directions so as to put distance between him and them.

The kid was fast, and he had a good head start. Nick followed him through alleys and side-streets, and finally, this vacant lot. Nick was flagging, and he knew he'd have to give up soon.

"Stop!" he shouted, and was astounded when the teenager did. Nick approached him while he doubled over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath.

"Look," the boy said, pausing to gulp down air. His face shifted briefly into something sharp and vulpine. "If you're going--to kill me, just--be quick, okay? I don't like--pain."

Nick felt a searing disappointment: had this kid only run because he feared Grimms? But then he spoke again: "I listened to Henry talk, sure. But I never had anything to do with his bullshit, and anyway he's dead, so I don't see why I have to go down too."

"I'm not going to kill you," Nick said. "I just want to ask a few questions. What was Henry's bullshit, and what did it have to do with me?"

The boy looked at him, uncomprehending. He idly blew some hair out of his eyes, and said, "What, didn't Captain Retard tell you?"

"Captain Retard?"

He put his hands defensively. "Hey, Henry came up with that one. Not me."

"You're saying you know Captain Renard?"

Now they were both confused. Nick felt like he was watching a train collide with an eighteen-wheeler in slow motion, and all of it was some kind of sad metaphor for his life.

"Well... sure. Who doesn't? He's a big deal."

"A big deal how?" Nick demanded. "Explain it to me like I'm an idiot."

The kid pulled a face, and didn't even bother to go for the obvious insult. "Okay. I know Captain Renard because he comes by here a lot. He's always checking up on the Lockhills."

"Why?"

"Because Mrs. Lockhill used to curse people. Not other creatures--people. Humans. If she didn't like somebody, she'd give them warts, or make their hair fall out, or kill their garden. And then Renard came around and--according to Henry--he pretty much told her that of she did it again, he'd ruin her shit."

For a second, Nick could think of nothing to say. Then he asked, "And she believed him?"

"Uh, yeah. That's what he does. When a creature steps out of line and fucks with a human, he's all over it. We think he's part of some kinda secret society."

Nick exhaled. This was too much to take in at once. "What about me?"

"What?"

"You said Henry told you something about me."

"Henry told me something about everybody. He was always talking trash. He lived out there in the woods with his mom, and he never really learned how to interact with people. He wanted to be tough, but he just pissed off everyone he met. When we heard there was a new Grimm in Portland, he started telling people about how he was gonna cut out your liver and avenge his ancestors. You know, stupid shit like that."

Nick didn't like hearing death threats directed at him dismissed so casually, but he forged ahead nevertheless. "And he died around that time?"

"I guess. I didn't exactly make a note of it in my calendar."

Nick sighed. "Do you think Renard killed the Lockhills?"

"I don't know, man. I don't know shit. Are we done here?"

"Not quite. What's your name?"

The boy stared at him as if he was crazy. "Like hell I'm gonna tell you."

*

Renard knew. He knew about creatures; he knew about Grimms; he knew about this whole horrible life that Nick had been thrown into completely against his will. He'd let Nick flounder around, ignorant, vulnerable, and defenseless--except when he stepped in to murder people on Nick's behalf.

More disturbing still, Nick hadn't had the first clue. He'd seen Renard stressed. Angry. He'd watched him lose his temper at some rookie or a prying journalist. Not once had he shifted so much as a hair. What did it mean? That Renard was spectacularly self-posessed?

Or spectacularly powerful?

Nick was in the church parking lot, idling his car. He wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting there, but it was sometime in the afternoon. His rational mind told him to pay a visit to Monroe, but the mere thought of Monroe made him angry. If Monroe's claims about his wild past were true, there was no way he wasn't at least acquainted with Renard. That in combination with his odd behavior made Nick suspect that Monroe was keeping some pretty significant secrets. A small part of Nick was ready for a confrontation, but mostly he just felt worn and tired. He wanted to sleep off his tenacious hangover and the rest of this miserable day.

*

Juliette was waiting for him. She looked like she hadn't slept.

"Nick?" she said, rising.

He hadn't been awake six hours and he was already dead on his feet. He made to go into the kitchen for a cup of ice, but she stepped in front of him.

"I want us to talk."

He looked down at her. Yesterday, he would have gladly talked it out. He'd wanted to do just that. He would have told her everything, and he knew she would have been supportive. Whether that support manifested itself as belief in his story or helping him pick out mental institutions didn't matter. But that was yesterday. Today he felt like a hollow-eyed wreck, and the last thing he wanted to do was share truth after truth until his tongue burst into flames.

He went to bed. The next day, she wasn't there, and neither was her jewelry, her favorite shirts, or her toothbrush.

*

A sense of purpose. That was what he needed. All this sleeping and drinking availed him exactly nothing, and he had important things to do.

Monroe was at the top of his list. Monroe, who opened the door at his knock and then grimaced and drew back, as if it wasn't Nick on his doorstep but a flaming bag of shit. "Jesus, Nick," he said. "You look terrible."

"You know Renard," Nick said accusingly. He felt a little thrill of triumph when his tongue spasmed.

Monroe glanced over Nick's shoulder, searching.

"Who do you think is coming?" Nick demanded. "It's just me."

He pushed past Monroe into the house, and was struck again by how incongruous everything seemed. That incessant ticking--he wished he could smash some of these clocks. Anything to stop the noise.

"Nick," Monroe said slowly. "You're under a pretty bad curse, man. It's clearly affecting you more than we thought."

"So you don't know Renard? I just made it up in my head?"

Monroe went to the couch and sat down. "I didn't mean that. I'm sorry. I do know him."

Nick couldn't sit. He paced the room. Monroe watched him, and hesitantly began to speak.

"He came here several days ago. He said he knew that I'd been helping you, and he told me you'd been cursed. He said... he said that if something wasn't done about it within the week, your life would be ruined. And mine would be over."

Nick stopped.

"But I would have helped you anyway, Nick. You know that."

"I don't know anything," Nick replied. He was being dramatic, but he didn't care.

Monroe looked troubled. "I should have been honest with you, but you didn't know about Renard, and I thought if I said anything it'd endanger your job."

"And your life, right?"

"Well, okay, yeah."

Underneath all the feelings of anger and betrayal and shock, Nick realized that Monroe's reasoning wasn't too far from his own regarding Juliette. He rather liked this outrage, however. It felt clean, crisp, and real. It allowed him to think. When he whirled around and left Monroe's house, the slam of the door behind him felt good. Satisfying.

Chapter Text

Nick had big plans only an hour ago, and now he wasn't sure where those plans went. He'd left Monroe's house ready to burst into Renard's office and demand an explanation, an apology, pistols at dawn--anything. But somewhere along the way, he'd decided that he needed a good, stiff drink beforehand so as to calm his nerves and keep his voice steady. He didn't want to confront Renard unprepared. That wouldn't help him at all.

The solution was whiskey.

This club, he thought, was probably where the customers at Subatomic Tattoos and Piercings came to celebrate their new body modifications. He didn't know the name of it, or even which street it was on; all he knew was that it was dark, seedy, and blessedly anonymous.

After downing two shots of whiskey and a shot of Patrón that had been purchased for him by a wide-eyed blonde sitting two chairs away, he realized that he needed to think about how he was going to get home. With the luck he'd been having lately, he was sure to get a DUI as soon as he tapped his gas pedal. He scrolled through his contacts, wondering who to call, when it hit him: he had no one. Juliette was gone; Monroe was an asshole; and Hank wouldn't get it. Hank would come in and sling an arm around his shoulders and tell him he'd been there. Four times, in fact. Nick didn't want to hear it.

"You in Portland on business?"

Nick startled. The shot-buying blonde had slid up next to him, and was now gazing at him appreciatively. He blinked at her. She looked a little like Megan Fox, if Megan Fox were short, chubby, and in possession of an impressive set of hipster frames. Okay, she looked nothing like Megan Fox. But she looked good to Nick.

He told her he was from Spokane and he worked in advertising. The lies came easier now, automatic. It didn't matter, though--for all her wide-eyed intensity, she wasn't listening to a thing he said. And he liked that.

"I had so many friends in college," he told her, and she took this as some kind of cue, because all of a sudden her fingers were in his hair and her mouth was smashed up against his.

She broke away, and said: "Fuck, I love guys with tongue piercings." Then she dove back in. Their teeth scraped together.

Nick wasn't sure when, but at some point they'd switched on some godawful techno, and the electronic voice singing about love on dance floors gave him an idea. Monroe had told him that the only way to break this curse was to kiss the lips of his true love. He needed this curse broken yesterday. There were six billion people in the world, but he had to start somewhere, didn't he? Like a dingy dance club in Portland.

The blonde eventually pulled her tongue out of Nick's throat and went away, only to be replaced by a freckled, curly-haired co-ed who shouted, "YOU LOOK LIKE IF IAN SOMERHALDER AND BRANDON ROUTH HAD AN IMPOSSIBLE BABY."

He didn't know who either of those people were, but he still let her sit on his lap.

Nick wasn't sure how much time had passed--or how many drinks he'd ingested--but he found himself on the dance floor. He had no coordination, but there were plenty of people who wanted to dance with him. The loud, pumping music and flashing lights made everything seem unreal. All around him was a sea of blurry faces, and sometimes there'd be hands on his back or somebody's ass jammed up against his thigh or a searching, hungry mouth against his, but everything seemed to exist on its own, unconnected to actual people. Once, somebody kissed him and he felt the rasp of stubble on his cheek. He raised his hands and rested them on the body writhing in front of him, and he felt compact muscle instead of soft curves. He didn't mind. Not at all.

Something was bothering him, but he wasn't about to dwell on it. If he did, it was sure to destroy all the good feelings he'd built up tonight. Right now, he wanted the rest of his life to simply drift on by.

A hand gripped his shoulder, and Nick kept on dancing--if one could call it that. The hand didn't go away, however. If anything, the grip grew tighter. Tight enough to hurt.

Nick spun around and there was Monroe. Everyone nearby gave him a wide berth, like they knew he was exuding a fun-destroying fog from every outraged pore on his body. It seemed to Nick that he'd put on his most buzzkillingest outfit before coming out here: he had on a snowflake-patterened sweater paired with ill-fitting khakis, loafers, and a rust-colored scarf that appeared to be hand-knitted. Hand-knitted by Monroe himself, most likely. His erect posture and tight-lipped expression reminded Nick of a country schoolmarm, and he looked about two breaths away from saying something like, You should be ashamed of yourself, young man.

"LET'S GO," Monroe shouted, straining to be heard above the din.

"DID YOU FOLLOW ME HERE?" Nick asked.

"YES."

Nick came closer and Monroe stepped back. "HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING ME?"

"I WAITED FOR YOU OUTSIDE."

"SUUUUUUURE," Nick yelled, and then he was being bodily dragged through the crowds, past the bar, and out into the parking lot. Monroe shoved him into his car, and when the doors were shut and locked, he turned his entire body so that he could look Nick in the eye.

"What the hell are you thinking?" he hissed.

"I don't," Nick began. Between the alcohol, the steel bar in his tongue, and the abrupt change of scenery, he was having trouble organizing his thoughts. Monroe reached towards the backseat, rummaged around, and brought out a bottle filled with ice water.

"There," he said. "Now explain."

"I don't have to explain anything to you," Nick said childishly. fishing out a piece of ice.

Monroe shook his head disbelievingly. "You idiot, you're due to testify in court tomorrow."

Nick lapsed into shocked silence.

"But it's not just that. This curse has sent you off the deep end, man. You haven't been yourself."

"Well," Nick said, holding up a splayed hand and ticking off his fingers. "Juliette left me; my boss knows I'm a Grimm; I've been cursed; people are dying..." He was running out of fingers. "And you--"

Monroe banged the steering wheel. "I know. I messed up, okay? I admit it, I should have told you. But Nick, I've known you long enough to know that this isn't you. You don't fall apart like this. I'm worried."

"Stop being hys--hyster--" Nick gave up on finding the word, and glared at him instead.

"I'm afraid that Selma Lockhill's death has affected you somehow. I mean, she cast the curse. Maybe it's intensifying, or changing. I don't know." He eyed Nick dubiously. "Or maybe you're just losing your mind."

They stared at each other for a moment longer, and then Monroe started the car. "I'm taking you home."

"No!"

"What?"

"I don't want to go there."

"Then I'll take you to my place."

"I don't want to go there either. Take me to a--a motel. Someplace near the courthouse."

Monroe exhaled softly, and flicked on his turn signal.

Nick watched the passing lights. "Why did you follow me?"

"I thought you were going to go to Renard."

He sighed. "I thought I was too."

"I'm glad you didn't. I'm pretty sure that would have ended atrociously."

Things were quiet for a while, just the sound of tires hissing over asphalt and Monroe's hands readjusting themselves on the steering wheel. Then Nick said, "I wasn't at that club for no reason. I was trying to break my curse."

Monroe clearly didn't believe it. "You thought you'd find your soulmate there?"

"Maybe. You said my soulmate could be in Zanzibar. It stands to reason they could be in Portland too."

Nick could see a muscle in Monroe's jaw clenching and unclenching. The sight of it annoyed him. "I saw a playbill in your house for that opera you wanted to see with me. You'd already gone," he said accusingly.

For a second, Monroe took his eyes off the road and fixed them on some point in the middle distance. Nick could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind. He felt compelled to say, "Don't lie."

Monroe glanced at him. "All right. I wanted to see if you really were cursed. I made up the story about winning those tickets because I figured you'd never want to go. When you agreed to see it with me, I knew Renard's story was true."

Nick felt unreasonably hurt by this. He had an urge to punch Monroe in the jaw, but he knew he'd only come out of it with a broken hand.

"I am so mad at you," he said.

*

Nick gave Monroe his credit card and let him deal with the motel manager. His mood was rapidly plummeting, and he didn't even feel angry anymore. A traitorous little piece of him even hoped that Monroe wouldn't go. When he came back and handed Nick the card and the keys, Nick let himself stumble a little, and felt gratified when Monroe caught him and held him.

Monroe let go after a moment, but Nick stayed where he was. "We get along, don't we?" he asked.

"Yeah," Monroe said warily. He walked a little behind Nick as they made their way to room 106, ready to catch him if he fell again.

Nick leaned back against the door. He reached up and rested his hands on Monroe's shoulders, casually, uncaringly, as if he were caught up in a dream. He pulled the other man closer to him, and he felt Monroe resisting, resisting, and then yielding. He liked it.

"Why haven't I thought of this yet?" he mused, letting his hands wander to Monroe's neck. Tugging him down.

"Oh, I don't know, maybe because you were in a long-term, committed relationship only a week ago? You're wasted, Nick. Cut it out."

Monroe started to struggle away, but Nick was already imagining what kissing him would feel like. Warm, soft, a little scratchy--like being covered by an old blanket. But when he closed his eyes and lifted his face and leaned in, his lips touched nothing. And then he was shoved backwards with unbelievable force, hitting the door and cracking his head off of it. He stood there, pressed against the peeling wood, feeling the gilt numbers digging into his back, too stunned to pay much attention to Monroe's effusive apologies. Or move.

"Oh God, Nick, I'm sorry, sometimes I... are you okay? Say something, Nick, come on."

Nick stared at him.

"I'm sorry, I thought, I don't know, I couldn't--it was too sudden, and you're drunk, Nick. I couldn't. And I let my instincts take over. I'm sorry."

Nick reached back and felt his head. He might have a bump, but he wasn't hurt. Just shocked.

"I'm going to go home," Monroe announced, retreating. "I can't be here. I'm sorry, but I've got to go."

Nick watched him leave, unsure how to feel. The alcoholic haze was starting to dissipate, and Nick didn't want to bother with thoughts about Monroe's behavior or anything else. He turned and entered his room. Fell down on the bed. Tomorrow was going to be hell.

*

In the past, Nick hadn't appreciated how simple it was to twist words and alter meanings. He hadn't marked all the white lies and small half-truths that were necessary to the proper function of his life. Truth, he saw now, was a precious commodity, and he was beginning to feel as if he'd mined his source dry.

The defense attorney was telling him something, but he wasn't listening. People were staring at him now. He'd known that testifying would be hellish, but he'd miscalculated just how hellish it would be. There was nothing here to soothe the burn on his tongue--and worse yet, sometime during the questioning the fire in his mouth had stopped lessening, stopped fading after he finished a truthful statement. Instead, it had held steady for a time, and then started to grow.

"In your report, you state that the victim was discovered with his right arm flung over his face, covering his eyes. Is that correct?"

"Yes," Nick said, and winced. The attorney hesitated, watching him, and then went on.

"Isn't it true, then, that if the victim died as a result of the application of blunt force to the head, his position in death is quite unnatural?"

Nick closed his eyes. Opened them.

"I don't know."

"Is it possible that you extrapolated information from superficial evidence at the crime scene and arrived at an erroneous conclusion?"

Nick felt a bead of sweat track a slow path down the nape of his neck and below his shirt collar. He twitched his shoulder blades, and the attorney narrowed his eyes.

Someone shouted an objection, leading the witness, and Nick struggled to breathe normally.

He'd been questioned for hours. Every truth was a new torture, At first, it was all he could do to keep his face schooled in a stoic mask, but as time went on, he stopped caring. Now, with the fire having spread, he felt like someone caught in the grips of a terrible fever, and knew he would soon hit a wall. He didn't want this to happen. He wanted to prove that he could keep himself together while doing anything his job required of him, because he felt that if he didn't have a distraction from this nightmare, he'd lose his mind. If he could get through this day, he was sure things would improve. If he couldn't, he'd probably have to take a leave of absence, and sit in his empty house for days on end, surrounded by reminders of how things used to be--and therefore how badly things had gone south.

So he answered questions, and sensed the hot flush spreading over his cheeks and neck. Dimly, he knew he could explain it away. After all, it wasn't against any law to become ill while on the witness stand. But this thought seemed to come from a distant place, not his own mind, and it soon floated off and left him.

"In your opinion, could these wounds have been self-inflicted? A result of an epileptic episode--a seizure?"

Nick stared dully at the wood-paneling in the courtroom. The defense attorney cleared his throat a few times, and Nick cut his eyes over to him.

"I don't know."

He saw exasperation in the other man's eyes, as well as on the faces of several members of the jury. He didn't care.

"No further questions."

*

Nick went into the bathroom, turned the taps to the coldest setting, and drank. It didn't help, and that scared him.

It took him a moment to recollect that he didn't have his car. Monroe had driven him to a motel nearby, and he'd walked here this morning. He thought of calling Monroe, and then dismissed the idea the moment he remembered what had happened last night. He called Hank instead.

Hank came quickly, and watched Nick fold himself into the car. "Woah," he said. "Where am I taking you? The ER, I hope."

"No," Nick said. He hardly recognized his own voice. "Not there. Take me to the precinct."

"Are you sure? Nick, I think you--"

"There's something I need to do," Nick interrupted. "Something important."

*

There was a well-dressed woman in Renard's office. She had news anchor hair. Renard caught sight of Nick over her shoulder, and his eyes widened slightly.

"We'll have to continue this another time," he said.

She twisted around and looked at Nick, and her eyes rounded as well. Any protest she might have made was quelled by the sight of him, and she gathered her things, shook Renard's hand, and made her way out. Renard locked the door behind her.

Nick stared at the door. He'd been in this office many times before, and there had never been a lock. Suddenly, the room was much darker, and he saw that blinds had been put down over the windows. He didn't know where any of it had come from, but he wasn't going to trouble himself with wondering about it now.

Renard stood in front of him, and he was too close. Nick felt a moment of foggy confusion: it had been so important that he come here, but he couldn't remember why. He didn't know what he was supposed to say. He didn't know anything.

Then Renard reached up and put the back of his hand against Nick's cheek, and Nick sucked in a breath. Renard's hand was very cold, and for a second, Nick leaned into it.

"You know about me," Renard said. It wasn't a question.

Nick remembered that he was actually furious with Renard, and he stepped away from him. "You've known about me for much longer."

"Sit down before you collapse."

"No."

The room was tilting lazily, first to one side and then to the other. It was entirely possible that a collapse was imminent, but Nick couldn't abide the thought of sitting while Renard stood. He didn't like the easy way Renard sought and held power over others: the power of withheld information, the power of threats, the power of position. He didn't want to give Renard the satisfaction of looming over him, even if it meant he had to sway on his feet and watch black spots dance across his field of vision.

Nick swallowed a few times, and then asked, "Why did you send me there?"

Renard gazed at him, impassive. He clasped his hands behind his back. "Selma Lockhill was obsessed with her son's murder investigation. She thought that having a Grimm in the homicide department meant that Henry's murder would never be solved. She was threatening to expose me and go to the media." He spread his hands. "Of course, no one would have believed her, but her threats were irritating, and we don't need bad press. I admit, having you as a detective has caused some tension amongst the various... communities."

Nick didn't understand half of what Renard told him. He felt as if he'd been repeatedly dunked underwater.

"She was afraid of you. I sent you there as a warning. I thought she'd stop her ridiculous posturing; I never would have dreamed she'd curse you, especially considering I'd made it very clear what would happen to her if she cursed anyone again." He shook his head disgustedly.

"So..." Nick's thoughts moved slowly. "You've known I was cursed? All this time?"

Renard smiled. "I knew the moment you sat down at your desk."

"Why didn't you..." Nick caught the edge of Renard's desk and held it for support. "Why didn't you help me?"

"I did help you."

Renard came to him then, backing him further against the desk. A cup filled with pens clattered to the floor, and Nick watched them scatter in all directions.

"And I can do more," he said quietly.

Nick stared. A hand was back on his face, and a thumb was pressing gently into the pad of his cheek. This wasn't right, but Nick didn't feel worried. He felt like he was watching himself on a movie screen. None of it was real--it was all fake, like the life he'd built with Juliette, and his friendship with Monroe. One long, ridiculous farce.

Renard grabbed him suddenly, forcefully. Nick's mind, it seemed, was out of sync with his life. He couldn't process anything in real time. But when he felt what was happening, he had a rare burst of clarity.

He was being kissed. Despite the complete lack of any kind of lead-in, and despite the fact that Nick had given no indication that he wanted this, and despite the deep unprofessionalism of it all, Renard had strode right up and confidently pressed his mouth against Nick's, as if nothing in their lives mattered but this. Nick felt a tongue working its way into his mouth, and then he felt himself being bent backwards over the desk with the urgency of Renard's attention. He put a hand behind him to steady himself, but only ended up pushing a stack of papers over onto the floor. Renard threw an arm around his back and held him there, pinned, while he methodically kissed the breath out of Nick, making him feel like one of those blowsy heroines on the cover of Monroe's romance novels.

At the thought of Monroe, he had another moment of awareness. What in God's name was happening?

Nick broke the kiss, turning his face away and panting. "What," he asked. He had to pause to collect himself. "What are you doing?"

Renard wiped his mouth. He no longer looked confident; now, his face was warped with annoyance and disbelief. His hand shot out and felt Nick's forehead.

"You're still cursed," he said wonderingly. His lips thinned, and Nick felt the arm slung across his back tighten. Renard swore, and then kissed Nick again, but this time it wasn't an experienced and confident kiss. Now it felt desperate, like the kisses he'd accepted from the people in the dance club.

Renard put both hands on Nick's face when he was finished, and Nick let him do it. He didn't know what else to do.

"Tell me something true," he ordered.

"You're not my soulmate," Nick said, and for once his tongue didn't burn. It warmed. Far from being agonizing, it felt a little like a reward.

Renard let him go abruptly, and Nick dropped like a stone. His legs folded under him and he slid down so that he was sitting against the bottom of the desk. He saw that Renard had the look of a man who'd been denied something for the first time in his life. There was a hostility in his face that hadn't been evident before. "I imagine you'll try the blutbad next," Renard said.

This situation was ludicrous and Nick was ready to be done with it. "Maybe," he replied, struggling to his feet. He hesitated. "Are you going to hurt him?"

Renard looked down at his fingernails. "I might."

"Don't."

They watched each other for a long moment.

"Do you know what I like about you, Nick?" Renard asked softly.

Nick chose not to respond. He felt dread building in him.

"It may sound strange, given all that you've seen," Renard continued. "But I like your innocence. A Grimm is a callous, hardened thing. Calcified. Not you, though," he said. "You were so delightfully naive, and I suppose I wanted that to last."

Nick started to drag himself towards the door. He could see a vindictive smile playing at the corners of Renard's lips, and he knew he needed to get away.

"Still, it can't last, can it?"

He reached for the doorknob, and snatched his hand away upon touching it. The metal was freezing. In the time it would take the open the door, his skin would fuse to it. He turned around, his back against the door, tracking Renard's movements.

"Your friend Monroe," Renard said. He'd braced himself casually against the desk. "These days, he prefers artichoke hearts to actual hearts, but he had his time. You couldn't guess the half of what he's done. Do you imagine he's paid any kind of debt to society?"

"Like you said, I don't know the half of what he's done."

Renard shook his head pityingly, levered himself off the desk, and strode across the room towards Nick. "You know better than anyone that murderers never stop being murderers. He can't erase his past with a bit of guilt and a vegetarian diet." He leaned over Nick and took the doorknob in hand. "And if this curse has made you more amenable to the truth, as difficult as it may be to hear it," he whispered theatrically, "I suggest you go to Monroe and ask him just who killed Selma Lockhill."

Renard flung the door open and spoke loudly for the benefit of everyone sitting outside. "That will be all, Burkhardt."

Chapter Text

Nick went to Hank, who stood and faced him with concern written all across his features.

"You need something?" he asked.

"Are you busy? I've got to pick up my car."

Hank glanced at the paperwork on his desk. "Where is it?"

"Well," Nick hedged. "I don't know the street or the name of the place, but I can... vaguely direct you there."

Hank's eyes suddenly settled on Nick's mouth, and Nick knew he'd caught sight of the tongue piercing. His worried expression deepened, and he looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn't. He took out his keys. "Let's go."

*

Daytime did the dance club no favors. At night, the place had seemed seedy and run-down, but it had still retained a little of the allure associated with those places a person had no business visiting. Now, the shabby building seemed lonely and pathetic. Nick's car was the only one in the parking lot.

"Excess," Hank murmured, reading the sign. "This is where you were last night?"

Nick tried to come up with an excuse, but he found that the anger, betrayal, and overwhelming exhaustion warring in his mind prevented him from rational thought. And part of him wanted to try telling the truth again, hopeful that his tongue would do the same thing it had been doing since the kiss in Renard's office.

"Juliette and I broke up," he said. An ephemeral sense of well-being came over him. The curse had changed: now, instead of receiving a shock of pain whenever he told the truth, he felt a pleasant tingling sensation.

"I'm sorry, Nick. You know you're welcome to spend the next few days at my place, if you need somewhere to be."

"Thanks, Hank. I'll be all right."

Nick didn't get out of the car, and the atmosphere thickened with tension. His sense of well-being was gone; the truth was as impossible to speak now as it had ever been, but he still felt compelled to explain. "I know I've been... off my game lately," Nick said haltingly. "And I've done some things that might seem out of character."

Hanks eyes were back on his tongue, and Nick brought his hand up to his mouth involuntarily. Hank grimaced and looked away.

"I'm kind of going through a hard time," Nick finished weakly.

"I get that," Hank said. The words came out a little too fast, and Nick figured he needed to leave it alone for now. Then Hank said, "When my third wife left me, I went on a bender. I woke up in some apartment building I didn't even recognize. My wallet was gone. I have no idea what I did that night."

Nick let out a short, unamused laugh. The things he wanted to tell Hank seemed too maudlin to say aloud, so he simply thanked him and stepped out of the car.

*

He hadn't known he'd been feeling numb until the numbness began to fade away. He gradually became aware of his rapid pulse and his shaking hands and his boiling rage. The closer he came to Monroe's house, the worse it was. The trial and the episode--he didn't know what else to call it--in Renard's office had been bad enough, but this, Nick was sure, was the absolute rock-bottom. Agony and fever were unpleasant, as was being disillusioned by someone he'd respected. But he'd trusted Monroe, and he'd trusted his instincts, and he'd been betrayed by both. The hurt quickly distilled into fury.

He hammered on Monroe's door, halfway hoping he would break that stained-glass monstrosity of a window. He thought he'd keep his composure long enough to get in the house, but when Monroe opened the door and had the audacity to look confused and somewhat annoyed, he snapped. Nick launched himself at Monroe, and in an instant Monroe's head snapped back from the force of a hard punch in the teeth. Pain rocketed through Nick's fingers and down his arm, and it only made him madder. He shoved Monroe against the wall and fisted his hands in his sweater. Then he looked into that face he'd been growing to like so well, and he saw that Monroe's eyes were filling with red.

Nick's grip loosened a little, and a dull sort of fear began to creep into the edges of his anger. Monroe ran his tongue over his lengthening teeth, smearing blood around. He said, "Just like old times, isn't it?"

But the first time Nick burst into Monroe's home and slammed him against an available surface had gone differently. Monroe had kept in control of himself then. And Nick hadn't known what he was capable of doing.

Nick listened to ticking clocks and hard breathing. It seemed as if time had slowed to a crawl. "You killed Selma Lockhill," he said.

Monroe's eyebrows shot up.

"You told me you were reformed."

"I am," Monroe replied. His voice was eerily flat, and Nick realized that he was struggling to keep himself in check.

"Then why did you kill her? Did you honestly think I'd be grateful if you killed the person who cursed me?"

Monroe had turned his head to the side, but his eyes were still fastened on Nick's, and getting bigger and redder. "I didn't kill her," he said, forcing out each word with difficulty.

"Why should I believe you?" Nick shouted, and like that, Monroe grabbed him and shoved him against the opposite wall with inhuman speed and strength. He held Nick in place as if Nick were nothing more than a ragdoll. For a second, Nick looked over his shoulder into Monroe's living room, and remembered how much he used to like this place, how he'd felt like a person really lived here.

But Nick didn't think he'd ever known that person.

"You were awake that night," Nick said quietly, hanging on Monroe's fist.

"The night you came to my house?" Monroe asked. "That's why you think I killed her? Christ, Nick, by then she'd been dead for days."

He set Nick back down but didn't move away. Nick felt the emotion drain out of him; he'd gone right back to feeling numb.

"Why did you do it?" he asked raggedly. He hadn't done much shouting, but his vocal cords felt like they'd been flayed.

Monroe's faced crumpled into an odd shape. Nick couldn't tell if he was going to start screaming or burst into tears. For one mad second he thought that Monroe was going spit in his face. But he only leaned forward and angled his head so he was speaking directly into Nick's ear. He said, "Her throat was cut."

Nick waited, struggling to breathe. Monroe bent closer.

"That's not my M. O."

*

Nick wasn't sure how he got out of Monroe's house. He couldn't remember the drive home. He came to his senses some time later, and found that he was sitting on his own couch. The light outside told him that it was late evening.

He felt like he'd pass out at any moment, but he didn't want to sleep. He tried to remember the last time he'd eaten and couldn't. For a while, he watched the room spin lazily around him, and then he took out his phone and called Juliette.

"Hello?"

"Hi," Nick said.

She released a long breath. "I'm at my mom's. Whatever it is, I'm not up for it tonight. Tomorrow, okay? We can talk things out then."

Nick knew he didn't deserve much consideration, but her words stung nonetheless. "I called to apologize."

"Oh?"

"It would be terrible to... care about someone, and then find out that they're not who you thought they were. I wish I'd never done that to you."

She paused. "Nick, are you okay? You sound--"

"I'm a little drunk," he lied.

She blew out a breath. "Get some rest, Nick. It'll be all right. These things..." She trailed off.

"Yeah," he said.

"Good night."

He ended the call, and sat in the deepening gloom. He was reminded of the night his parents had died, and the great gaping emptiness he'd felt then.

Nick didn't want to dwell on those feelings, or the events of the past week, or the people he no longer recognized. Renard and Monroe seemed like strangers, people he'd never met, and his aunt, too--the reality of her scarcely resembled the woman who'd raised him. All he needed now was to discover that Hank and Wu were secretly moonlighting as crime-fighting superheroes, and his life would be complete.

He'd spent the last few months desperately trying to conceal his true identity from others, and it had been perilously easy to forget that he wasn't the only one with secrets. He thought of Renard. People used to tell Nick that he was lucky to have him as a superior, because Renard was firm but fair, and he got better results than just about anyone else in the precinct. Nick smiled bitterly. Renard had told him once that roughly thirty percent of the homicides in Portland went unsolved. How many of those were his own doing?

And Monroe. If Nick were feeling uncharitable--which he was--he would think that Monroe's ostentatious presentation, his home-cooked vegetarian meals and his square fashion and his pilates and cello-playing and clockmaking and all the rest, was quite deliberate. As Nick came to know him, there was only a fast-vanishing chance that he'd trouble himself to look past all of it and remember that Monroe hadn't always been that person.

Yet Monroe's alibi, horrifying though it was, seemed solid to Nick. He might be reformed, but Nick doubted he could have cut a throat, watched the blood fountain out, and remain in control. If he had killed her, he'd have gone into a frenzy and torn her into pieces. The cut on Selma Lockhill's neck had been done by an expert hand. Clinical precision. Detached. Nothing like a blutbad at all. In his anger, Nick had lost sight of that.

Nick rubbed his face. He didn't want to think about any of this. He needed to get out of the house.

*

He was at Excess for the second night in a row. At this rate he'd end up a regular, God forbid.

Nick was familiar with a few other bars in Portland, but he didn't want to go somewhere familiar. The concept of familiarity no longer held value. It was full dark now, and things were just starting to get going inside. Nick pushed past a few undulating bodies and made his way to the bar. Then he stopped.

Monroe sat on a stool, shoulders hunched, eyes heavy. His elbows rested on the bar; one hand held a drink, and the other covered his face. Disconsolate.

Nick debated with himself. He could leave. After all, he'd come here with the express purpose of systematically getting drunk alone--just as Monroe was doing now. But another part of him felt like it might be strangely cathartic to have things out again without high-running emotions or violence or accusations. Just drunken calm. That part of him won out, and he went to the stool beside Monroe and sat down.

Monroe looked up. His eyes were still red, but not a violent red. A sad red.

"Would you believe," he said, "that I came here tonight because I thought this was the last place in Portland you'd ever go?"

Nick shrugged. "That's why I'm here."

Monroe finished his beer and ordered a gin and tonic.

"Old man drink," Nick said, and Monroe stared at him blearily, unsure about this sudden joviality.

"I feel like an old man," he responded miserably.

"You're dressed like one too."

Nick didn't know what he was doing. A few hours ago he'd been ready to knock out Monroe's teeth, and now he was joking around. Monroe seemed just as confused, but he smiled timidly nonetheless.

"I thought you'd never speak to me again. I... this past week, with Renard coming by and the curse and the Lockhills and everything, I know I didn't make the right decision, but it's been hell. I can't even remember the last time I slept."

"I guess the knowledge that there was an undiscovered body in a house out in the woods would wreak havoc on anyone's sleeping schedule."

Monroe stared down into his drink. "No, it wasn't that."

"No?" Nick asked incredulously. "You knew she'd been murdered, you lied to me about it, and to top it all off you don't care? Jesus, Monroe!"

Monroe closed his eyes. "I couldn't have stopped Renard from killing her. And she did go around cursing people, knowing full well that she'd be killed if she did it again. I wish she hadn't died, but her death wasn't what bothered me." He absently tapped the edge of his glass. "It was lying to you."

"Renard told me that you'd done it," Nick said. The bartender came by, and he asked for a rum and coke.

"Wow."

"Well, technically he asked me to ask you just who killed Selma Lockhill. He made it sound like it was you. That's why I came to your house."

Monroe looked at him seriously. "Nick, I'm sorry I lost my temper like that. Hearing you accuse me of killing her..."

"It made you angry," Nick supplied.

"I thought you knew me better than that. I guess you could say my feelings were hurt."

"You have a violent past."

"I'm not that man anymore," Monroe said fiercely. "I've never killed anyone in cold blood. Hot blood, maybe, but not cold."

Nick gaped. "You think that makes a difference?"

"It did back then," Monroe replied tiredly. He turned away and started inching off the chair.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

"You can't drive."

"I'll call a cab."

Nick hung onto his arm. "Just stay a while. I have a couple more questions."

Monroe obligingly fumbled back onto the seat.

"Why do you think Renard implicated you?"

"Maybe he was afraid you'd figure out it was him. He might have thought you'd Grimm out on him or something."

"Renard's not afraid of me," Nick said softly. "He knows exactly what I can do and what I can't."

Monroe sighed. "Then maybe he was afraid of what he'd do to you if you attacked him, and he needed to get you away from him as fast as he could." Then he focused more intently on Nick, and said, "Hey, what about your curse? We've been talking all this time and I haven't even seen you wince."

"I don't know," Nick told him. "It actually feels nice when I tell the truth now. It must've changed again."

"Did you do anything out of the ordinary? I've never heard of a curse spontaneously changing."

"Maybe my fairy godmother took pity on me."

Monroe smiled, and for the first time in a long while he looked like the Monroe that Nick had known before this ordeal began. "Or maybe you kissed a handsome prince," he joked. He saw Nick's expression, and his smile faded.

They drank in silence for a time, and then Nick pushed his rum and coke away. "I'm not going to finish this," he said. "Come on. I'll take you home."

*

Nick was dizzy with exhaustion. The conversation with Monroe had given him a brief jolt of awareness, but he was sinking back into the blurry limbo between waking and sleep. Monroe's car had been left to spend its own lonely night in the Excess parking lot, and Nick drove with exaggerated care, paying extra attention to the traffic signs. Monroe slumped in the passenger seat, watching Nick's hands manipulate the steering wheel, noncommittal.

"I'm sorry about last night," Nick said suddenly. He didn't want to have this conversation, but he didn't want to fall asleep either.

"What?"

"When I tried to kiss you."

Monroe groaned, and rolled his head to look out the window. He didn't say anything while an entire block passed by. Finally, he spoke. "Don't apologize for that. I wanted you to do it."

Nick's head whipped around. "What? Then why did you shove me away?"

"Because of your curse," Monroe said wistfully. "I knew that I wouldn't break it. Not me. And I just... couldn't bear it."

Nick was amazed. "How long have you...?"

"Too damn long."

For a moment, Nick wanted to tell him to forget about the curse. He didn't even want it broken anymore--he liked the way it made him feel when he told the truth. Instead he said experimentally, "You're not my soulmate," and he felt that golden warmth in his tongue. He hadn't needed to say it out loud: Nick knew his soulmate wasn't a murderer, even a reformed one. They couldn't be.

Monroe slid a little further down in the seat. His face, staring resolutely out the window, was transformed by a sudden and uncharacteristic regret.

*

Nick had every intention of dropping off Monroe and driving himself home, but he stayed. He went inside Monroe's house and glanced around, waiting to feel that unsettling strangeness come over him again. It didn't. The living room looked ordinary, everything in its place and put together by a person he knew.

Monroe got himself a beer, dropped down on the couch, and flipped on the television, perusing the channels until he found a football game. He watched it mindlessly, seeming to forget about Nick's presence entirely. Nick didn't doubt he was still feeling the effects of the alcohol he'd had at Excess.

Nick collapsed next to him, and quickly realized that getting up would not be a viable option. He didn't mind. He felt relieved. This lying curse had shown him the truth about two people he thought he knew well, and he was grateful for that. He could rest now, and he didn't mind doing it in Monroe's presence. Monroe had lied to him, but no more than he'd lied to Juliette. He could forgive it, and move past it. He would. And soon, maybe he'd try the kissing thing again. He felt certain that Monroe wouldn't throw him into a door this time.

He was glad to have his friend back. A person he knew; a person who knew him.

He shifted so that the top of his head rested against Monroe's thigh. Monroe looked down at him, then away.

"Monroe?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you think Renard killed Henry Lockhill too?"

Monroe swigged his beer, and didn't take his eyes off the television. "I don't know."

They were silent for a while. Comfortable. Then Nick asked, "Would you care if he had?"

Monroe said nothing. The cool, flickering light of the television played across his face. In the blue glow, his eyes looked quite inhuman. Nick had a feeling--he couldn't explain what it was--but before he could examine it too closely, he sank into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.