Nick and Hank were out celebrating another case closed.
Though it had dealt with wesen, it was really still a run of the mill robbery. With the ever so traditional motive of just plain greed.
A group of petty thieves had broken into several homes in the well to do area in the city.
The thieves were easily caught because one had been impatient and had taken an antique music box to a local antique shop owner. Believing that was where he would get the best price.
The antique owner had known who that music box belonged to because he had it in his shop for a routine cleaning and restoration just two weeks prior.
He made an excuse, asking the crook to wait while he checked his sources for the music boxes worth and then slipped in the back room and called the cops.
Not only had the thief waiting while the shop owner stalled. But once he was given the money, (it was returned to the owner upon the thief's arrest, as Nick and Hank promised) he lead the officers straight to where his fellow thieves and their loot were hiding.
The confessions came easily when his fellow crooks found out it was his fault they were discovered and every single one of them were yelling at him for being so stupid.
Hank went to the bar to get them a refill and talk to a beautiful woman who was trying to catch his attention.
As Nick was sitting at the table, and elderly woman took the seat his partner had just vacated.
"I want to thank you for retrieving my families valuables." The woman said. "There were things that had been in my family for generation. That music box my mother was able to sneak out of Germany at the start of World War Two."
"My partner and I were just doing our." Nick assured the woman. "But I am glad you got your families items back. I know how important it is to have a connection to family legacy. Especially if the people they represent are no longer around."
Nick knew he must have had too much, seeing as how he was becoming a little emotional in front of this total stranger.
"A connection to family is always important. The trinkets help. But people are always best to comfort an aching heart. Do you have anyone who comforts you when you are missing family?" The woman asked in a way that made Nick feel he needed to tell her the truth.
So he shook his head and confessed. "No family. Not even a girlfriend." He can hear the pathetic self pity in his own voice, but he can't help it. He's so tired of being alone. He was an only child, who lost his parents when he was twelve, moved around all the time with his aunt who never wanted to stay in the same place for six months and then died of cancer just a couple of months ago.
Plus, it was difficult to date when the life of a cop meant frequent odd hours. And Nick's own nature tended to make him very affection and not every woman wanted to be held or touched all the time.
The woman smiled. "A heart such as yours has so much love to give. And deserves to be loved as much in return."
She then took both of Nick's hands in hers and squeezed tightly for a moment, before releasing them, standing up and leaving. Without speaking another word.
Nick felt a wave of warmth spread through him. Then, he started feeling very loopy, giddy, and very restless. He couldn't shake off the feeling that there was someone he needed to see.
In his head, he went through all the people he knew.
Monroe? Nope, he was on a date with Rosalee.
Hank? Nope, he was busy talking to a pretty woman.
And that's when it struck Nick what he was missing, a pretty girl.
His two best friends had pretty girls. Nick needed to find one for himself.
But where? Where did he know a pretty girl.
"Oh, of course, Adalind, Adalind Schade!" Nick thought to himself excitedly.
Adalind Schade was the prettiest girl he knew. And she was really smart. Since she was a lawyer, she had to be.
He had first seen her as she was walking out of a coffee shop. She was the very first wesen Nick had ever seen. He officially got to meet her when someone was killing pretty female lawyers at her firm. As it turned out, they were all hexenbiests and the killers were mellifers, bee wesen who were enemies of hexenbiests. Lead by a queen bee who had lost her family's business because of the hexenbiests at the law firm.
Though the women had just been doing their job, the queen bee still wanted to make them pay.
He and Hank had been able to save Adalind, just as the queen was trying to attack her.
Though Adalind had been shocked to see a grimm, and even more so when he insisted that he wanted to protect her, she had eventually trusted Nick and even talked with him about hexenbiests, once he admitted he was new to the whole grimm thing and knew very little.
Nick had been trying to think of a way to continue to talk to the pretty blonde, but he worried she would only agree to see him do to obligation of him saving her life, or worse, fear that he would be violent with her if she didn't.
But fear and doubt is long gone. Remembering where her file said she lived, and realizing it was only a couple of miles away, Nick ran out of the bar and all the way to the home of Adalind Schade.
When Nick Burkhardt shows up at her door, obviously drunk, the hexenbiest is so surprised to see the grimm there that she just opens the door and lets him in. She doesn't consider that she could be in danger. In truth, she knows that she's not. If Nick wanted her dead, he would have allowed the melliffer to due her in. But since he and his partner saved her life, it was not her life she was concerned about.
"I seriously hope you didn't drive here in that condition." Adalind glares at him.
"Nope." Nick responds, popping the P. "I ran here all by myself."
"From what bar?" Adalind asks incredulously.
"O'Rourke's" Nick answered with way too much pride.
"That's two miles from here!"
Nick just beams at her proudly. Adalind decides that it is pointless to use logic and reason with him tonight. Instead, she resigns herself to having a houseguest, her conscience demanding that she keep the reckless man where she can see him, and out of danger.
"Alright, get out of that jacket and take off your shoes. I'm not running the risk of you putting your muddy boots on my coffee table." She ordered him.
Weirdly enough, Nick does what she asked. She then sat him on her couch, when to the kitchen and came back with a bowl of popcorn and two glasses of soda.
Adalind turned on the suspense thriller she had planned to watch that night, one of those movies where the lead character is a sexy cop on the trail of a killer.
She wondered if maybe she should choose something else when the trained detective decided to point out all of the inaccuracies of the plot.
Wanting to still enjoy the movie and find out who the killer was, Adalind decided to just shove popcorn in Nick's mouth every time he opened it.
It worked. Until she realized, due to the popcorn being gone and a still silent detective, that he had just been doing it to get her to feed him
At the glare she gave him, that would have killed any other being, he simply grinned and laid his head on her lap.
A half hour later, she craved something sweet. Adalind lifted Nick's head off of her lap and went to the kitchen, noticing the fierce grimm doing a faceplant in her couch cushion on her way.
Chuckling at his silliness, she got her ice cream and returned to the couch.
To Adalind's relief, he sat up the moment she returned. She would have hated struggling with him while holding her frozen treat.
And then he revealed his motivation. The moment Adalind is seated, Nick pulled her in his arms, looked at her expectantly and opened his mouth wide.
Adalind rolled her eyes but still gave him a spoonful, wondering when she became such a pushover.
She also wondered how a supposed deadly hunter, could look like an adorable puppy.
They continued with watching tv.
Strangely though, Adalind could not remember ever feeling as safe as she did that night, held in the arms of the grimm Nick Burkhardt.
The next night, Nick showed up again at her door, this time, completely sober and holding chinese takeout. He held up a second bag and said there's two pints of icecream, his way of making amends for the previous night.
That day, while Nick was sting at his desk, he had been thinking of the night before and how comfortable he had been with Adalind.
"Hey, partner. Where did you take off to last night? I was talking to this woman at the bar and when I looked over, you had disappeared."
"I went over to see that surviving lawyer from the serial killer case."
"The pretty blonde?" Hank asked, baffled. "Why?"
"I just couldn't get her out of my head." Nick shrugged, not fully understanding his motivations himself.
"Oh man, just how drunk were you?" Hank was starting to be very concerned about what happened.
"Drunk enough to run all the way to where she lived, for her to take pity on me and let me sit with her on her couch, eat her snacks and watch a movie with her."
Hank was shocked. "Your kidding? She actually put up with you?"
"Yep." Nick said, just as shocked as his partner. "I feel like I need to make it up to her. But how do I say sorry and thanks for letting me eat your food and putting up with me criticizing the detective on the movie you were trying to watch?"
"Take out and ice cream." Wu said, walking up to Hank and Nick's desks.
"What?" Hank asked in confusion.
"Nick wants to do something that will get some pretty blonde to put up with him. He should show up at her door again, but this time with food from a takeout place and some ice cream for dessert."
Hank told Wu he thought that idea was ridiculous, but Nick thought it was worth a try. He really wanted to spend some more time with Adalind.
So he took a chance and went to a chinese place whose delivery and takeout menu he had seen on her kitchen counter. He also got a couple of pints of the ice cream she had shared with him the night before.
In truth, Adalind wanted to spend more time with Nick. As strange as the night had started, she had enjoyed herself.
Her love life was pretty much non existent. She had been aching for someone who would hold her in his arms every night.
The possibility that that someone could be Nick Burkhardt, was far too good to pass up.