I'd say uh-oh but it's sort of moot at this point. This is not going to stop anytime soon; I think I do better with one-shots than with long fics; my attention span has been sort of short circuited because of school.
Also, please check the A/N at the end!
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I do this for lulz and feels
"Just a second we're not broken just bent/And we can learn to love again/ It's in the stars /It's been written in the scars on our hearts/ We're not broken just bent/And we can learn to love again..."- P!nk "Just Give Me a Reason"
"Men at some time are masters of their fates./The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/ But in ourselves, that we are underlings."- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)
Rose storms in, a flurry of suddenly artic wind and, what he suspects are, snowflakes trailing in her wake. "Hey! I'm home!" She calls as she shucks her shoes at the door.
It amazes him how happy hearing her say that makes him at nine o'clock at night on Sunday. "How was dinner?"
She appears in the living room, shaking the snowflakes out of her hair. "It was good." She kisses him hello. "We went to this new place in the Pearl and met up a few of Juliette's friends." She curls against his side like a missing puzzle piece. Like she's always belonged there. "And all three of them...Wesen."
"Does Juliette know?" He chuckles.
"Nope." She grins. "I'm not going to tell her that her best friend from work is Balam who I really thought was going to rip my throat for a minute."
"She didn't try did she?" He sits up a little straighter.
"Of course not." Rose scoffs. "We talked and we're having coffee next week. You worry too much."
"For good reason," he kisses the back of her head. She still smells a bit like winter and snow. Slowly, her free hand creeps up and rests atop his. And he wonders how she so calmly turns one page of her book and then another. The words stop making sense to him the moment he felt her heartbeat against his side.
Her hand is by no means small, but smaller than his. Here and there, her skin puckers in scars, calluses, and smooth long healed burns. She has beautiful burns; she's proud of them. "See..." She once held up the inside of her right wrist when she told him about her previous life. "It sort of looks like a bird."
"What happened?" He traced it with a much larger finger, nothing that it did sort of resemble a fat one-winged pigeon. But he kept that to himself.
"First time I was allowed to use the Bunsen burner." She grinned. "My dad turned to get something off the shelf and..." She shrugged. "I reached over for...the tongs or the eyedropper...and I accidently touched the hot beaker..."
"I fail to see why you're smiling," he noted. "Sounds traumatic."
She grins. "It was the first time I helped to save someone's life. It's sort of worth it."
She pointed to another along her right pinkie. "This one looks like shooting star."
That one actually did.
"I was helping my mother clean up a spill and I didn't know it was this silver nitrate and I dipped my whole finger in it. Never made that mistake again."
She made a point of remembering the important ones; the life-changers as she called them. There was a long zigzag line along the side of her left hand. She winced when he held it up as if it wasn't a long healed nearly invisible line, as if it was still an open wound. "My last B&E. I was hopping the back fence and snagged it on a hole on the way down. It's how they caught me. By the time they brought me in, it was too late for stitches." She laid her hand flat in his. She tried for a hopeful smile but all he saw was her sitting in a holding cell by herself. And he held her hand, promising himself that he'd never let that happen again.
Rose connected the scars and burns like constellations, making bright points in the dark. She made the stories and the lessons count for something, towards something better. He wasn't sure if she learned it from someone or if it was the only way she figured out how to deal; he didn't press and she didn't offer.
He has no beautiful burns to show, no lives saved at his expense like her. Only grim reminders of what he used to be. It's the blood he can't seem to be rid of. It collects at the corners of his vision, just beyond reach. Some nights when the moon is full and the wind just rattles the dead leaves, he wakes to the smell. He breathes in and out again and again until it dissipates. The nights she's there, sleeping serenely beside him, putting her life in his hands, reminding him that this is a new life, a second chance. Some nights she wakes with him. Rose says nothing; only giving him a small smile. She pulls him closer to her, letting her chin rest on his shoulder. Feeling her heartbeat, a lullaby he wasn't aware that he needed, it never takes him long to go back to sleep after that.
In the morning, their alarms go off like they always do. Rose, still lying on his shoulder, watches him carefully and asks: "Was it the dream again?"
He nods and breathes out a: "Yep."
She only says; "One day it'll pass...or at least I hope so." He kisses her good morning anyway, letting himself linger there with her as long as he can. Because when she's there, she helps him make those constellations.
In the present, she runs her thumb over his in infuriatingly slow circles, mindlessly of course.
"Rose...?"
There's a small pause. "Hhhmm?" She backs a little farther into him.
"You do realize how distracting that is, don't you?" he murmurs.
She shrugs. "Sounds like a personal problem to me."
"Heartless."
"Really?" She half-turns; a little smile pulls at the corner of her mouth. His favorite.
"Yep," he closes his book; clearly he wasn't going to read much more. "Completely heartless."
She nods to herself and then scoots across his knees and picks her book back up again. But not before giving him an overly dramatic baleful look that seems to say: "This is war."
Fine. Two can play that game.
He reaches over and pushes the long fall of hair off her neck for a kiss. She goes completely still for a second before her book slams shut and drops at his feet. "That was low." She growls, but she's turning into him and her fingers creep up to his collar. Clearly, reading was a pretense all along.
"You distracted me," he replies.
"Oh?" Her hands slide up to either side of his face. "Really?"
"Really." He assures her. He barely gets the word out; she pulls him down and presses her smile to his. He slides one arm around her waist, thinking this is not nearly close enough. She responds in kind and wraps one arm around his neck while her other hand falls to his collarbone. She pulls back for a moment; her eyes searching his face for something.
"Where were you ten years ago?" She asks herself more then him.
"Probably no place you wanted to be," he answers quietly. To be honest, a lot of that time is sort of fuzzy with only vague memories of hunting and blood and a lot of running.
"I'm glad you're here now." She pops one button on his shirt and then another. "I'm glad it was you. This you."
There are no words for him to even consider looking for. Just like there aren't enough lucky stars for him to thank when he leans down to kiss her again. Just as he's about to throw her over his shoulder and haul her off, his phone rings. They pause for a moment, calculating if they can predict who it might be.
"You should probably answer," she sighs. Her lips moving like that just beneath his is almost enough reason to ignore the phone all together.
"Do I have to?" he mutters.
She reaches behind her to grab it off the side table and shows him the Caller ID: Nick.
"I'm going to kill him," he vows. "And continue the Blutbad tradition of slaying as many Grimms as we can find."
She laughs. "No, you're not, it's probably important." She slides it open and hands it to him.
"Hey man, what's up?" He tries to play it off like Rose isn't draped over his lap and the last thing he wants to do is talk to Nick. Especially with Rose smiling up at him like she is and her cheeks flushed. He starts counting all the vicious ways he could rip Nick apart.
"Is Rosalee there? I tried to call her but she didn't pick up. Juliette said she was headed home."
'For you,' he mouths to her and watches in glee as she drops her head back over the couch arm in exasperation. "Yeah, she's here. Hold on." He hands the phone over.
"Hey Nick," she pinches the bridge of her nose in a motion of frustration suppression. "Yeah...oh no? Really? Uhhh...yeah I could whip that up. It'll take a few hours though."
It's his turn to let his head fall back in frustration.
"No, just meet me there later. Yeah, okay-" She pulls the phone away from her ear. "He never says 'bye' is that a cop thing or just a guy thing?"
"It's a dead man thing." He replies as she gets up.
She chuckles as she winds around back the back of the couch. "Well, dead man or not, if it hadn't been for him, we might not have met."
His eyes snap open. It's not like he hasn't considered this...he just hadn't actually thought about it. She leans down and kisses his forehead. "I'm gonna head out. I'll text you later."
She only lasts an hour and a half when she texts him and says she desperately needs coffee. And company.
The whole time he's driving to the shop and waiting in line for coffee he tries to imagine what life would look like if they had never met. If she were just another face to pass him by. He can't. Their meeting has become a matter of course and any other path becomes impossible.
He imagines her walking through the door and smiling the way she does; full of starlight. His heart would have come skidding to a complete stop the first time she turned and those huge brown eyes to him. And all the words he planned would have vanished without a trace of "hey" or "hi" or "What's your name?"
She would have given him one last look, one last chance before grabbing her coffee and disappearing. All he'd be left with would be the smell of lemon verbena, clean wool, a soy half-caf chai latte to hunt down, and a pair of brown eyes that would haunt him until the day he died. And he would have reverted to his hunting days until he found her. If nothing else than to say: "Please, for the love of God, tell me how you do that thing with your smile because I can't stop thinking about it." She'd laugh her silvery laugh and everything would start from there.
He's not so full of bravado that he thinks she'd be miserable without him (though his life has improved greatly since she became a part of it). She's a survivor, like him and she would have gone back to her new life that she build all by herself in Seattle. She would look at the scar on her hand, as she does now, and not let herself not to go back to that life. They would have lived separate full lives and been nothing but two ships passing. And the thought darkens his mood especially after Nick ruining their evening.
When he gets to the shop, she doesn't hear him come in. For a moment, he stands in the doorway—just watching Rose work.
She's bustling from one shelf to another, stacking jars upon jars until he's worried she's going to drop them all. But she balances them until she gets to the worktable. She dips down to the book again to double check.
She measures and estimates, stands on her tiptoes to drop something into the beaker, watching both the brew and the eyedropper. She half sings the little nursery rhymes, the ones her mother taught her, to herself under her breath as she moves from one jar to the next.
He shifts and her head snaps up toward the door. Her eyes go wide and the blush starts at her neck. "How long have you been standing there?"
"Few minutes..." he replies as ambles to her work table. "I didn't want to disturb you- you were busy."
She grabs her coffee out of the carrier. "It's not very interesting."
"No," he assures her. "It is." He takes her left hand in his and turns it so he can kiss that jagged white line. Her brows knit together in confusion but she doesn't pull away. When he's done, she lets her fingers linger over his cheek and pushes a curl over his ear.
"What was that for?" She wonders with a smile plastered on her face.
"I'm glad it was you too." He plucks her left hand up, scars and constellations and all, and holds it in his. "This you."
She ducks her head and leans against his collarbone as if her neck could no longer support the weight.
"...Just been thinking about what you said earlier. And..." he shrugs, slinging one arm around her waist. "About how if it hadn't been for Nick, we never would have met...And then I thought about what would have happened if this..." he traces the jagged line on her left hand. "This hadn't."
She sniffs hard and wipes at her eyes before stepping away. "Did anyone ever tell you that you think too much?" She wonders thickly.
"Only you, apparently." He smiles, ignoring the tears just the way she would have wanted.
Shaking her head, she insists with a watery smile. "I have to get back to work."
"I'll go then." He turns, starting to grab the coffee.
She grabs his hand and pulls him back to her. "No, stay, please."
"I don't want to get in your way."
"You are never in the way." She grips his right hand with her left. "Never."
He settles on the stool beside the worktable without another word.
As she goes back to work, she nudges him with her hip. "This way you can give Nick a piece of your mind when he gets here."
"Oh don't worry, I will." He promises. "I just don't understand how that guy has the worst timing of any other human I've ever met."
She laughs. "I don't either. But you know, I'll take the results any day."
He can't help but agree.
A/N: So I was thinking a lot about soul-mates and fate and all that. And I really don't think Monroe and Rosalee are soul mates. To me (At least as far as the writers have told us) they feel more like kindred spirits. I don't know. I'm rambling with a scrambled egg brain.
R&R?