To Build a Home
by Sandrine Shaw
It's hard to sleep alone. It's almost as hard to sleep next to a man who has every right to hate you, in a bed that's at the same time too large and too small, in an unfamiliar, drab loft on the fringes of the city.
Adalind lies awake, her back turned towards Nick, and tries to control her breathing. In and out. In and out. Steady. But there's a lump in her throat, and in her eyes she can feel the tears burning behind closed lids. She didn't use to be so emotional. It's easy to blame it on the suppressants and the hormones, but the truth is: she never used to be so vulnerable before. When she lost Diana, she was still a Hexenbiest, and it still wasn't enough to keep her child safe. How is she supposed to protect Kelly when she has no more powers than the average human?
This is your life now. Get used to it, she tells herself.
Outside, somewhere in the distance, a siren goes off – a big city's typical background noise that tends to blend into the environment until the day when something happens to you that makes it personal, when you start associating it with fear and danger and chaos. Across the room, Kelly starts crying.
Adalind is almost grateful for the distraction, grateful that when she gets up and pulls him from his bed, Nick pretends to sleep through it.
"Can you hand me the pepper, please?"
Meals in the Burkhardt-Schade household are an excruciatingly polite affair. Here they are, making nice over spaghetti bolognese, pretending that they never tried to kill each other or used to be enemies, not all that long ago.
Adalind smiles so hard and so fake that her face is aching. The worst thing is, it's not about deceit or manipulation. She's well versed in those, knows how to lay on the charm to get men to fall over themselves for her even without her powers. What she and Nick are doing, though, is tip-toeing around each other, trying to navigate around the countless landmines every single conversation holds. Don't mention Juliette, don't mention either of their dearly departed mothers, don't mention how Kelly was conceived, don't mention that Nick helped the resistance take Diana away from Adalind.
It doesn't leave a lot of room for conversation. "How was your day?" he asks, and she doesn't say, 'Horrible, because I'm feeling trapped in this ugly shithole with a crying, perpetually hungry baby who only calms down when his dad is singing stupid lullabies to him' because no, that would sound like she's ungrateful.
And she's not. She knows that Nick's doing the best he can, that he's trying to do right by her despite all the awful things she put him through, that he's trying so hard not to let on that he blames her for what happened to Juliette.
All that trying. Is it as exhausting for Nick as it is for her?
'I hate this place,' she wants to say. 'I can't sleep because I'm frightened that one day I'll wake up and you've taken Kelly away from me. I'm scared all the time. I'm scared because I'm not a Hexenbiest anymore and I'm scared that the suppressant will stop working and I'm scared of all the people we're running away from and most of all I'm scared of you.'
"Do you want another glass of wine?" she asks instead.
"Yes, please. Thank you," Nick answers, unfailingly polite, and she can't help wondering what it is that he's not saying.
Nick brings home Trubel, who's visibly shaken, trying and failing to hide how traumatized she is, and Adalind fights down the base Hexenbiest instincts in the back of her mind that tell her to run as fast and far as she can from a house with not one but two Grimms, one of which harbors no family ties to her child and has no reason not to cause her harm.
There's no guest room, so Trubel gets Nick's bed and the sleeping arrangement of the first night at the loft becomes somewhat permanent.
Nick looks shiftily at the bed, scratching the side of his neck, awkwardness written all over him. "Sorry. This wasn't how I intended things to be when we moved here."
Adalind shrugs, determined to act blasé and unruffled. Mostly because giving up that bit of privacy is indeed not as big a deal as Nick is doubtlessly going to make it, but also because somewhere in the back of her mind, she still can't shrug off the idea that Nick is less likely to get fed up with her and cast her out never to see Kelly again if she's as agreeable and non-confrontational as possible. "It's okay. I sleep better when you're here anyway."
"We both know that's a lie."
She sighs because yes, it's not quite true, but it's not a lie either. It's hard to explain, but she tries anyway. "I know it's weird and awkward, and I'm not saying I feel safe with you here, but I feel safer than when I'm alone. So having you here is really the lesser of two evils."
Nick runs a hand over his face and laughs. It's not exactly a happy sound, but there is some humor in it, however self-depreciating and bitter. "Great. That makes me feel so much better."
They share a small smile, and for a moment, that's almost enough to chase away the awkwardness. Then Nick's phone rings, and Hank calls him to another crime scene. Business as usual, the life of a cop's stay-at-home wife, except of course that Nick's not just a regular cop and she's not actually his wife.
Monroe's house is everything the loft is not. It's warm and comfortable, cluttered. More than that, though, it's a home. It's safety and family and refuge, a place of laughter and love and trust.
Adalind hates coming here.
Nick's friends are slowly, surely becoming her friends as well. Rosalee in particular is showing her more kindness than she deserves, always there with a cup of tea, helpful advice and an uncanny sense for when Adalind needs company.
But being around Rosalee and Monroe is painful, the domesticity and love between them a constant reminder of what Adalind's life is lacking; what she wants, so badly. She never talks about it, not after that first day when she came back from the hospital and Rosalee visited her at Nick's old house. People would inevitably draw the wrong conclusion, assume that it's about Nick, that she's in love with him, that she's just a silly girl with a crush on a man who will never love her back, and that's not it. The situation with Nick is complicated and strange, and Adalind doesn't have the time or energy to sort through the messy tangle of feelings between them, all the old resentment and the fear and the gratitude and the tentative trust. Maybe somewhere in there, there's love, maybe there's desire, but it's buried under layers and layers of complex emotion, and it's not what this is about.
The longing that tugs at Adalind's heart when she watches Rosalee and Monroe, when she sits on their big, comfortable couch with her feet curled under her body and a cup of steaming tea in her hand, is more abstract and only loosely connected to Nick and their relationship. What she wants is somewhere to come home to. A place where she feels safe, people who love her, somewhere she belongs. She wonders if she'll ever get to have that, or if she closed the door on that herself with the things she's done, the choices she's made.
At night, Adalind gets used to falling asleep with her back turned towards Nick. It goes against her instincts, but it's easier than facing him.
When she lies down, she's hyperaware of everything. Kelly's steady breathing, the rigid tension in Nick's body, a small bump in the mattress that's been bothering her since they moved in, the sound of a car passing by outside.
She worries so much, about the future and what it will be like for Kelly growing up half-Hexenbiest half-Grimm, about whatever Wesen group is wreaking havoc in Portland, about whether she should breach the subject of returning to her old job when Kelly's a little older. The small things, too. What to cook for dinner tomorrow, if it's okay to ask Trubel to look after Kelly while Adalind goes grocery shopping, if they should have green curtains or blue ones. Domestic little questions mixing with matters of life and death, all of them feeling equally overwhelming in the stifling darkness of their narrow bedroom where the gulf between her and Nick seems impossible to overcome.
In their sleep, though, their bodies sometimes forget who it is they're sharing a bed with, steadily gravitating towards each other.
Sometimes, Adalind wakes up in the morning curled against Nick's body, burrowed under two layers of covers with her head resting against Nick's chest, and in those precious moments between sleep and wakefulness, she feels so warm and comfortable and safe that it's like a shock of cold water when reality sinks in. She scrambles back to her end of the mattress, putting a safe distance between them again, careful not to wake Nick as she moves.
There are other days, though, when Nick's already up when her eyes flutter open and she finds herself firmly on his side of the bed, nestled into the warm spot where the sheets still show the outline of a body that's not there anymore. Heart racing, she gets up, half-hoping that Nick's already gone to work and she won't have to face him just yet, but of course life is not that kind. Just as she's opening the bedroom door Nick's coming out of the bathroom; his hair is still wet and spiky, and he's wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist. A tell-tale blush colors his cheeks when he sees her and they exchange awkward 'good morning's while not quite meeting each other's eyes.
At breakfast, Trubel looks curiously from Nick to Adalind and back. "What's going on with you two this morning? You're being weird. Weirder than usual."
She shoves a piece of bacon into her mouth as Nick mutters something about Kelly keeping them up all night. Adalind wrinkles her nose. She still hates bacon.
"– and maybe you could just once take into account how I feel! How about that?"
Adalind is yelling, despite vowing not to let Nick aggravate her into a fight. But best laid plans only get her so far, and she's still physically shaking from the fact that Nick took Kelly with him when he helped Trubel buy furniture for her own place without bothering to tell Adalind where they were. She came home and everyone was gone, and the fear she hasn't been able to shake off since they took Diana sunk its cold, sharp claws into her again.
"I think I've been pretty damn accommodating towards you, not that you ever acknowledge it." Nick started out all calm and placatory, but he's getting worked up now as well, and there's a small part of her that's easily cowed by an angry Grimm. The bigger part of her, though, is tired of the fake smiles and nervous politeness between them, eager to voice all the things that have been eating at her for weeks now.
"Bullshit. You're not doing any of this for me, you're doing it for your son, and I get to come along for the ride and enjoy your protection as long as I shut up and smile and am perfectly invisible!"
"Right, like you could ever be invisible," Nick scoffs. "You think this is easy for me? Playing house with you, after everything? You tried to kill my aunt and did everything you could to hurt me and the people I care about, and Juliette would never have turned into a Hexenbiest if it wasn't for you. And on top of it, you're —" He makes a gesture towards her, as if it should be self-explanatory why he's disgusted with her, and Adalind blanches.
"Okay, I get it."
She turns and walks out of the room, tears brimming in her eyes and helpless fury raging inside of her, wishing they had proper doors to slam shut. Maybe that would stop Nick from following her, as he does now.
"No, I really don't think you do." He sounds calmer already, which is too damn bad because she's still angry enough to take things explode if she still had her powers.
"Believe me, I do. You made yourself pretty clear just now."
"What I was trying to say is that I'm a Grimm and you used to be a Hexenbiest, and after everything we've done to each other we should be enemies. But you're also the mother of my son, and you're a beautiful woman who's sleeping next to me every night, so it's confusing, okay? And I'm trying not to, but I keep remembering what it was like to —" He turns away, clearly embarrassed, and just like that, the fight goes out of her. His words have thrown her – it's not what she assumed he was implying, not at all what she thought he was struggling with.
"Oh. I —" It's weirdly flattering, really, even though his confusion is misplaced. "It wasn't really me, though. I mean, it was, but it didn't look like me."
Nick's face twists. "How do you think I became a Grimm again?"
It doesn't sink it right away, and when it does, Adalind finds it hard to wrap her head around the implications. "Wait, are you saying — Did Juliette — Oh. Oh. Wow. I... I don't know how I feel about that. I mean, I know I really lost the right to judge after what I did, but —" She doesn't know how to continue. The idea of Juliette turning into her and having sex with Nick is deeply uncomfortable, even though she did exactly the same thing herself. It was just a means to an end for her, but somehow it's different – more personal, more invasive, and infinitely weirder – when it's your body someone else is inhabiting. She never claimed not to be a hypocrite.
"Yeah, I don't know how I feel about it either," Nick says, deadpan, and it's not hard to imagine the sort of discussion he and Juliette must have had.
They're both silent for a moment that stretches until Adalind can't hold back the question anymore. "So. Was it good?"
Nick buries his face in his hands. It's only when his shoulders start shaking that Adalind realizes that he's laughing. "I'm not answering that," he says without looking up, his voice muffled.
Her lips twitch into a wicked smile. "That good, huh?"
He throws a pillow at her.
Maybe, just maybe, they're going to be alright.
Of course, just when things between her and Nick get a little better, when they're tentatively beginning to replace infuriating cordiality with something akin to honesty, when it's been four days since Trubel has moved out and neither of them has voiced the question whether Nick should move back into the other room, life throws a curveball at Adalind.
She just put Kelly into bed for his afternoon nap when the sickness hits her in the stomach like a punch. She rushes to the bathroom, her gut twisting violently, hoping that it was something she's eaten or a bug she caught.
A look into the mirror buries that hope for good. Her face is rippling, features contorting into the familiar woge.
"No, no, no, no, no." The rush of anxiety makes her lose whatever frail control over her returning powers she has, and the mirror shatters into a million tiny shards.
Adalind successfully manages to keep it from Nick for a little over a week. All things considered, it's longer than she expected – she was panicking about the idea that he might just look at her and somehow know – though also shorter than she hoped, which would have been indefinitely.
Perhaps she could have concealed it for a little longer, except for how Nick is a magnet for all kinds of danger and they're just on the way home from dinner at Monroe's when their car is attacked by a Drachenklaue, who slams into them head-on, the force of the crash making them topple over. Kelly is crying and Nick is out cold when Adalind finds her bearings again. Dazed and shaken, she scrambles out of the window to free her son from the wreck, and the relief when she finds him unhurt is so sharp that it physically hurts.
She sets down the baby carrier, her mind racing in circles because she needs to check if Nick's okay and she should probably call for help and she has to get Kelly to safety and she doesn't even know where to start, when the Drachenklaue strikes again, shattering the front window with its claws and reaching for Nick's limp body. Nick makes a distressed, pained sound, like he's only just coming to but clearly in no way to defend himself yet, and a red mist of anger clouds Adalind's vision.
"Don't you dare hurt my family," she hisses, furious, feeling her face shift as she blasts the attacker back. He slams against the wall of a house but doesn't stay down, shaking its scaled head as he rises before charging towards her.
She puts herself as a shield in front of Kelly and gets ready to throw herself into the fight when shots ring through the air. The Drachenklaue stumbles back, body shrinking and becoming human again as the life bleeds out of him from two bullet holes in his chest.
When Adalind turns, Nick is standing at the other side of what used to be his car, keeping his gun trained at the fallen Drachenklaue but looking at her, the expression on his face utterly unreadable. Under his stare, it takes an effort to push the Hexenbiest down and make her face shift back.
"Are you two okay?" he asks. She nods numbly, picking up Kelly's carrier and brushing his tiny, flushed cheek with shaking fingers.
Sirens sound in the distance, coming closer, and Nick pulls out his phone to call Hank or Renard or maybe Monroe. When the first police car arrives and Nick assures the two young patrolmen that yes, he's a cop, no, they're fine, the only one who got hurt was the bad guy, Adalind quietly takes Kelly and slips away in the general confusion, hailing a cab a few blocks down and heading home.
Her first instinct is to pack her bags, take Kelly and run, but she can't do that. It would be unfair to Nick and he'd hunt her to the ends of the earth to get his son. She knows what that feels like, the desperation and the rage and the willingness to burn down the entire world to get back your child. But she can't leave Kelly behind either, can't stand to be parted from another child she held in her arms, not after Diana. If she can't leave with Kelly and can't leave without him, then she has to stay, whatever that might mean for her.
When Nick returns home, Adalind's waiting for him on the couch, a blanket wrapped so tightly around her as if it could offer protection. He walks through the door, still covered in blood and bruises from the fight, looking every inch the Grimm of the stories her mother told her when she was a child, and she forces herself not to recoil when he strides towards her.
If they're going to clash, she's not just going to sit there. She stands and drops the blanket. "Nick, wait, let me –"
That's as far as she gets. Then Nick steps up to her and his mouth is on hers, swallowing all of her apologies and reasoning. Her head is swimming with fear and want and confusion because this isn't how she expected this confrontation to go, and it's hard to think when Nick is kissing her with an intensity that leaves her breathless. He's not gentle, but there's no anger in his touch, and after a moment Adalind allows herself to relax and tentatively respond, reaching up and pulling him down. Her fingernails scrape along his neck, and Nick makes a satisfying little sound that makes arousal coil tightly in her stomach, his teeth catching her upper lip.
When they break apart, he rests his forehead against her, both of them catching their breaths.
After a moment, he asks, "How long since the suppressant stopped working?" and reality crashes back down on Adalind. She takes a step back. It suddenly seems important to have some more distance between them, just enough space to think.
"Last Tuesday. I'm sorry, Nick, I should have told you, but I was terrified of what you were going to do. I don't want things between us to be like they were."
"Neither do I. Look, I reacted badly when Juliette turned into a Hexenbiest, and a lot of what happened afterward is my fault. I'm not going to let that happen again." He sounds so reasonable and calm now, all that intensity and passion from a moment ago gone out like a light switch. To say it's confusion would be an understatement. Adalind finds it hard not to let the emotional rollercoaster ride get to her.
She frowns. "So, when you kissed me, that was you... trying to make a point?"
"No. I mean, yes, but it wasn't just that." Nick's mouth twitches into a smile. "I'm secure enough in my masculinity to recognize that it's pretty damn hot when a woman throws the angry lizard guy who was just trying to kill me halfway across the street and saves my life. I'm not gonna lie to you, the whole Hexenbiest thing will take some getting used to, but it's a lot easier when you're kicking the bad guys' asses rather than mine."
"Good to know." It's more than she expected, so she dares to be tentatively optimistic, even though it's hard to wrap her head around Nick's reaction. "So, you thought that was hot, huh?"
"Pretty much, yeah," he admits sheepishly. "I'm probably losing a few dozen Grimm points for even thinking it, though."
Adalind laughs. "You never were a conventional textbook Grimm. I like that about you."
He brushes a strand of hair out of her face and tugs it behind her ear, and just like that, the tension between them ratchets back up. "I've been trying really hard not to let this happen."
"Why?"
"Because it spells bad idea. You and I have a terrible track record, and I thought we were doing a pretty good job. Being civil, being good parents, not trying to kill each other. I didn't want to do anything that could potentially make this blow up in our faces."
"No rocking the boat, huh?" She smiles a little sadly, because yeah, she gets it. For Kelly's sake, they can't risk messing this up.
"Yeah, something like that." He doesn't step away, though, doesn't put that safe distance between them that his words imply he wants. "You know what? Fuck that boat. I'm tired of playing house with you. Let's do this for real." And then he's kissing her again, his hands cradling her face, and it's good, it's perfect, it's worth rocking every damn boat on the sea.
Let the boat sink, Adalind thinks. After all, she's an excellent swimmer. She's not going to drown in a shipwreck.
Epilogue
They're having Thanksgiving dinner at Monroe's and Rosalee's house, sitting round a table full of more food than they can possibly finish in a single night. Adalind and Nick made pies to bring over (well, she made them, Nick just kept stealing bits of the dough and finding new and creative ways to get flour all over them). There's salad that Trubel prepared, a cranberry sauce Hank swears is his grandma's recipe, and Woo cooked a green bean casserole everyone's eying a little skeptically even though it smells delicious. Sean just brought a few bottles of red and some champagne, the lazy bastard.
Adalind covers her glass with her hand when Rosalee starts pouring the wine. "No, thank you. I can't. I'm pregnant."
Six pairs of wide eyes turn towards her, and if there's a wicked, mischievous part of her that was going for exactly this kind of shock effect and thrives on it, she blames her Hexenbiest nature.
Monroe is the first one to find the words to voice his confusion. "What? Again? But, how?"
"Didn't your parents tell you about the bees and the flowers?"
"Oh, very funny. I mean, whose is it?" Suddenly there's a small dull noise from under the table and Monroe releases a pained yelp, shooting Rosalee a betrayed look from the corner of his eyes. "Ow. What?"
"You can't just ask a woman who's the father of the child she's carrying," she hisses, sotto voce but still loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Why the hell not? It's a perfectly legitimate question," he not-quite-whispers back.
Nick laughs and runs a hand over his face. "Okay, okay, before anyone's starting a fight. It's mine." Adalind marvels at how Nick is trying his best to sound serious and placatory, but can't quite shrug off that 'proud dad' glow that's been written all over his face those last few days. It's a little ridiculous how men seem to view getting a woman pregnant as a great achievement and a proof of their masculinity, but Adalind is willing to graciously let it slide as long as it means that Nick is happy about the new situation.
"Oh. I didn't know you two were –"
"We thought you were just doing the whole cohabitation thing for Kelly's sake."
"We were. Things... evolved." Adalind and Nick share a small private smile across the table over stuffed turkey and tofu sausages. It's sickeningly emotional, and a disgrace to any respectable Hexenbiest. The vicious, chiding voice in the back of Adalind's head sounds a lot like her mother. Adalind shoves it back and firmly locks the door on it. Truth is, her mother's idea of what a Hexenbiest should be and what she should do with her powers eventually led to her death and almost ruined Adalind's life. She's going to do things her way, now.
It's not a surprise that Sean regains his composure first. He clears his throat before raising his glass. "Well then. I suppose congratulations are in order. A toast to the parents." And because Sean might be a master of decorum and diplomacy when he wants to be, but is also kind of a snarky asshole, he adds, "And good luck trying not to kill each other for the next few decades."
It has exactly the effect Sean was presumably going for: Rosalee groans and everyone laughs and Hank quips, "You could say that's a struggle in every relationship, though, Wesen or not," and the moment of awkwardness and tension is effectively broken.
Later, when Rosalee is in the kitchen with Trubel getting another dessert to bring out, Monroe's clearing the table and the others are in deep conversation about a case keeping the precinct on their toes, Nick turns to Adalind. He laces their fingers together, and her hand feels absurdly small and fragile in his, even though she knows she could throw him across the room if she wanted to. "You okay?"
She nods and offers a small smile. "Yeah. I'm happy." Then she thinks of Diana and how much she misses her daughter, of all the sleepless nights she spends worrying about her and even about Nick when he's out hunting down Wesen that are bigger and stronger and meaner and have sworn to kill him, and she adds a quiet, "-ish." She thinks he gets it, understands that the honesty is deliberate and means something, because he gives her hand a little squeeze.
"You?" she asks in return.
A dark look crosses his face for a brief moment, and she knows he's thinking of Juliette, of his mom, of whatever's out there declaring war on Portland.
"Getting there." The smile he gives her transforms his entire face – even after all this time it still takes her breath away how devastatingly handsome he is when he's smiling, and it makes her heart swell that it's her he's looking at like this. He leans in and steals a quick, soft kiss. "We're going to be alright."
She briefly, deliberately woges, pleased but not really surprised when he doesn't flinch at the sight, when he calmly holds her gaze with those scary dark Grimm eyes. He raises an eyebrow at her, clearly amused at the little test she couldn't quite resist, and she lets her features relax. The corners of her lips twitch. "I know."
End.