Important A/N: Okay, I thought loooong how to deal with this one. The problem is, I don't really like the whole amnesia storyline the show has going on at the moment. So let's pretend that the following happened: Juliette woke up, remembered, and after some trouble adjusting to the new situation, stayed with Nick. Renard is obsessed with her, but he never entered the shop, and he has himself slightly better under control. Also, Rosalee never left to care for her aunt and Adalind isn't back yet. Otherwise the episodes mostly happened like they did in the show.
Recipe for Christmas
Then, with great ceremony, he drew an ordinary-looking stone from a velvet bag and dropped it into the water.
Nick needed four tries to get his key into the lock, partly because his hands were shaking, partly because his eyes kept falling shut. The last case had been particularly grueling, and it hadn't even been Wesen-related. Or, at least, Nick hadn't thought so. Three days ago a little boy had been vanished on his way home from school, and the whole precinct had been working around the clock to find him. What they found was a badly mutilated body in the sewers. The M.O. was similar to one of a serial killer who had been turning up in different cities in the last few years, so the FBI had taken over one hour ago.
Nick finally managed to turn the key around and enter the house, shutting the door behind him more forcefully than strictly necessary. No detective managed to solve every case in his career, but the thought that the killer was still out there and might strike again was bothering him. What if the killer was Wesen after all? Had he failed in his duty as Grimm? Did he even make a difference at all? After putting two children into prison this year for urges they couldn't control, he sometimes wondered.
"That bad?" Juliette called from the kitchen area. Nick took off his jacket, let it drop on the couch, followed her voice and found her putting away fresh groceries. She looked as tired as he felt. Three of her colleagues at the clinic had fallen victim to a very nasty flu, leaving her to deal with many more patients than usual. With everything that was going on, they both barely managed to deal with the most essential stuff. This morning, the refrigerator had been practically empty, but it looked like Juliette had managed to run by the store and buy at least some basic things.
"Worse," Nick answered, starting to help her put away the groceries. A goose? Counting the days he'd spent on the case, he realized that it was already December 24. "You don't have to do that," he told Juliette. "We could keep it simple this year."
Juliette laughed. "I know, but by a small miracle, I managed to find this measly-looking bird left over at the store. It's a sign. Plus, it's tradition. Even if we don't have time for anything else, we should at least do this. I'll cook something close to my special Christmas turkey, at least as well as possible with only a goose and without half of the spices I need, and then we will celebrate properly."
Sometimes Nick wondered why a woman like her would stay with a guy like him. Yes, she had been busy as well, so it was not just his fault alone that most of their usual traditions had gotten lost in the shuffle. This year, everything seemed to conspire against them. The one evening they had found time to watch the Christmas Ship Parade, it had been canceled due to bad weather.
Lost in those glum thoughts, he went upstairs in order to change his shirt. From downstairs, he heard the sound of Juliette's phone ringing. This couldn't be good. And it wasn't. One minute later, Nick had just buttoned up his fresh shirt when Juliette turned up at the doorframe, already clothed in a warm coat.
"I'm sorry, I have to go."
"Emergency?" Nick asked, resigned. It looked like there wouldn't be any kind of Christmas after all.
"Foaling horse." They both knew that this could take ages or be over fairly quickly. And that they both hoped for the latter. After sharing a quick kiss, Nick was left alone.
At least this gave him the opportunity to do something equally important. Despite everything which had been going on, he had found the perfect present for her. He had sneaked the antique watch which used to belong to her grandmother out of the drawer and taken it to Monroe for repair. The clockmaker had taken care of it immediately, but Nick had never found time to pick up the finished product. As tired as he was, he should use the opportunity to rectify that immediately. A few minutes ago, spending the time with Juliette had been more important than having the present ready for her the minute she woke up, but now this seemed to be the last thing left of their celebration.
Monroe wouldn't be happy to be disturbed during his preparations, especially considering his obsession with Christmas. Perhaps he should at least call ahead this time around, Nick decided, already groping for the phone on the nightstand. Letting himself fall on his back, he pressed the speed dial for Monroe
"Merry Christmas and a lot of holiday cheer!" Monroe's perky voice could be heard.
"Monroe? It's Nick."
"Hey, Nick, I expected to hear from you sooner."
"Yeah, you know, crazy time." Nick closed his burning eyes. He should rest them now that he had the opportunity. "Is it okay if I come by now for the watch?"
"If you're quick; I'm kind of expecting a guest soon."
"I'm at home. I'm on my way now."
But Nick only had enough energy to end the call before falling into a deep slumber.
Rosalee hadn't celebrated Christmas in years. But even living on the street, it always had a special time of the year - mostly a time of regret, but also a time reminding her that there were still people left who cared about her. Like Freddie. This year, she might have skipped the celebration, too, buried as she was in paperwork for the shop, if not for Monroe. This guy lived and breathed Christmas, and being self-employed himself, he was able to help her out more than once with the bureaucratic stuff.
She wished that he had been a little bit less enthusiastic about decorating her shop, though. It looked like she was selling Christmas ornaments instead of spices. Musing about what new details Monroe might have added to his own decorations since the last time she visited (which had been at the start of December, due to her busy schedule), she rang the doorbell.
"Finally, I told you to be - Rosalee!" In a split second Monroe's expression changed from frazzled and angry to surprised and happy.
"Am I not Rosalee enough?" she joked.
"No.… I mean yes, you are." He took a deep breath. "Sorry; I was expecting someone else. You're a little bit early."
"Yeah, I was afraid if I waited until the official closing time for the shop, someone would drop by at the very last minute, so I closed a little bit earlier. Is this a problem?"
"No! No, I'm happy to see you. Come in! But the meal isn't even near ready yet.…"
He let her in and was soon back in the kitchen, preparing this or that. But nothing which looked remotely like the goose which was part of the traditional Christmas meal in every Fuchsbau family. She should have known that even Monroe's Christmas dinner would be vegan. Resolutely, she squelched a feeling of disappointment. After all, she was lucky to get a decent home-cooked meal at all. She herself was a catastrophe in the kitchen, and Monroe's dishes, even though sometimes very adventurous, always tasted perfect. Though, at the moment, he didn't seem to be enjoying cooking at all. Instead, he was distracted and kept peering out the window.
"Arrrgh…. I don't have time for this!" Monroe was really agitated.
"For what?"
"Nick wanted to come by to pick up a present for Juliette. I told him to be quick, but he still hasn't turned up, and he doesn't answer the phone either!"
Rosalee was worried now. "You think something happened to him?"
"No … well, maybe; he is a cop after all. And a Grimm. But he was at home when he called."
"Then perhaps we should start our search there," Rosalee suggested. "After calling Hank. Perhaps there was an emergency at the precinct."
Meanwhile, Hank was facing a crisis of his own. Like Nick, he'd had to deal with a stressful time. Unlike Nick, he'd had the opportunity for a short nap before driving to what he expected to be a joyful evening. As a divorced cop with no family nearby, he normally volunteered to work over Christmas, but this year, with all the extra work he had done beforehand, he decided that for once he should take the break, especially since Jarold and Carly had invited him to spend Christmas with them, and he was really looking forward to spending some time with his goddaughter. Plus, now that he knew about the Wesen world, Jarold and Carly might be able to answer some questions for him.
But when he arrived at their house, he found Carly apologetic and Jarold frazzled. "There was a short circuit and our oven broke down."
"More likely you had a short circuit because your oven broke down," Hank guessed.
"Perhaps, but the point is, it doesn't work."
"I'm so sorry, Hank," Carly said. "We wanted to make a really great meal this year, but it's impossible to get someone here to fix it."
"It's my fault," Jarold said. "I knew that something wasn't right with the thing, but there was so much else going on, I just keep putting off taking care of it."
Hank was about to suggest forgetting about the turkey and making something else when his phone rang.
"Griffin?" he snapped.
"Hank, it's Monroe. Is Nick with you?"
"No, why should he be?"
"I don't know." Monroe sounded very worried. "He wanted to come by in order to pick up a present for Juliette, but he never turned up. He doesn't answer his phone, either."
"Perhaps he got held up somewhere?" Hank suggested.
"He wanted to be here an hour ago," Monroe said. "I'm now driving to his house."
"I'll meet you there!" Hank decided. Apologetic, he turned to Carly and Jarold. "I hope this won't take long."
Monroe felt a little bit silly when he stopped in front of Nick's house. Even if Nick was in danger, there most likely wouldn't be any obvious clues left. But he couldn't just sit around doing nothing.
The house certainly did look like someone was there. Nick's car was parked in front of it; light was shining through the windows. Monroe mentally prepared himself to chew Nick out for making an appointment and not keeping it. But when he rang the doorbell, nobody answered. Beside him, Rosalee peered through the window. "There's a jacket on the couch," she said. "It doesn't look like Nick left."
"So why doesn't he answer the door?" Monroe said. None of the possibilities seemed good to him. "We have to get in," he decided, peering at the lock.
"Do you have something long and small?"
"Like this?" Rosalee gave him a hairpin.
"Yes, that might work.…"
"Are you really able to open a lock with a hairpin?" Rosalee asked in amusement.
"I don't know … but I'm used to working on small mechanisms. Maybe I'll figure it out.…"
Monroe wasn't sure how he did it, but next he knew, there was movement in the lock …enough that now the door was stuck in the frame, but not enough for it to open. He pressed against it, and more or less fell forward with the door. The lock, not able to withstand this kind of pressure, was now barely attached to the door at all. Slightly embarrassed about this display in front of Rosalee, he called. "Nick? Are you here?"
There was no sign of life. Groceries were laid out in the kitchen, as if someone had prepared to cook, but then suddenly abandoned the task.
"Nick?" a voice from the door called. Hank had arrived.
"It looks like someone left in a hurry," Monroe said. Hank spared the groceries only a cursory glance.
"Probably Juliette," he judged. "Nick isn't big into cooking. Did you look upstairs?"
"No," Rosalee answered in his stead.
Hank gave them a sign to stay downstairs and started his way upstairs in typical police officer manner, though without his gun. Monroe followed him carefully, ignoring his angry look. He entered the bedroom right after him.
"Damn!" Hank cursed. He knelt beside the bed, intending to take the pulse of the prone body lying on the duvet. The position, the gray complexion; for a moment Monroe was sure that Nick was dead. But then he grunted and changed his position, oblivious to what was going on around him.
"He's just asleep," Monroe realized incredulously. "Perhaps some sort of potion?"
"I don't think so," was Rosalee's verdict. Monroe hadn't even noticed her following them both. "I think he is simply exhausted."
"I doubt that he slept the last three days at all," Hank said. "Or that he had a lot of downtime beforehand. He's been burning the candle at both ends for a long time."
"We should let him sleep," Rosalee decided, and shooed the men out of the room. As quietly as possible, they went downstairs.
"This is kind of pathetic," Monroe said, taking in the bare living room. "No tree, or any other kind of decoration."
"Nick mentioned that Juliette has been very busy, too," Hank remembered.
"This isn't right," Rosalee said. "Nick does so much for other people; the least he deserves is a decent Christmas Eve."
Monroe realized that his well-planned Christmas seduction was about to be derailed. His first impulse was to urge Rosalee away from the depressing house as fast as possible, but then he remembered the lock he had destroyed. It felt wrong to leave Nick not only alone but entirely unprotected and vulnerable too. But before he could make a decision, his sharp hearing picked up an alarming sound: the faint click when someone takes off a gun's safety.
A loud crash downstairs and Nick was immediately awake. He realized in seconds that -
One: He had fallen asleep.
Two: He had forgotten the present.
Three: Someone was in the house.
Four: This someone didn't sound like Juliette.
Being full alert now, he carefully creped downstairs. For a brief moment, he thought that he had woken up in the wrong house. For starters, there was a Christmas tree, one which was sparkling from the top to the very bottom. The whole living room was decorated, partly with his own Christmas ornaments, partly with stuff he had never seen before. And at the bottom of the stairs, someone was kneeling at his front door, picking up the screwdriver which had apparently slipped out of his hand.
"Bud?" Nick asked, confused.
"Oh, Nick, you're awake; that's good … unless I woke you up, then I'm naturally very sorry for the noise.…"
"What are you doing here?" Nick was still struggling to find an explanation for what his eyes were barely able to take in. Were those Bud's children, hiding behind the tree? Taking an additional step downwards he caught a glimpse of the kitchen area, where Monroe and Juliette were discussing a complicated-sounding recipe, while Carly (Nick did a double take) and Hank were busy setting out the plates.
"It's because of the lock," Bud explained nervously.
"The lock?"
"Yes, Monroe - and boy, was I surprised when I encountered a Blutbad here - but your not-wife, I mean Juliette, she said that he's okay … he is, isn't he? Not that I doubt her, but my children and my wife.…"
"Yes, he is okay," said Nick, wondering if he shouldn't find a way to ditch Bud. Surely someone else could explain what was going on faster.
"Yeah, I just wanted to bring you a few of our special Christmas cookies, because, well, my wife always bakes way too many, and then I saw Juliette with a gun in front of the house.…"
"She thought that someone had broken in," interrupted Rosalee, who'd suddenly turned up at the front door. "Juliette, I have the spices you need!"
"You are an angel!"Juliette exclaimed from the kitchen.
"Broken in?"
"It was just a misunderstanding." Hank joined the conversation. While Rosalee brought the spices to the kitchen and Bud continued to repair the lock, he explained with the efficiency of a police officer how they had been worried about him, broken into his house, and discovered what looked like a fairly-ruined Christmas. And how Juliette had given them quite a fright when she crept towards the house prepared to shoot whoever got in the way between her and Nick, after discovering the broken lock. "You trained her well," Hank concluded the story. "I didn't even hear her; Monroe did."
"And why are you all still here?" Nick was confused.
"Well, Jarold, Carley and I, we had a small turkey problem, one Juliette was ready to solve, so we donated the turkey, and she's cooking it for all of us, and Bud wanted to repair the lock immediately, but his wife insisted that they should spend all of Christmas together, so she came with the children, and Monroe and Rosalee … I guess Monroe was thrilled to get even more space to decorate and Rosalee wasn't that keen on a vegan Christmas dinner. I hope you don't mind."
Nick just smiled. "This is amazing!"
And it was. For the first time since Nick and Juliette had moved into the house, every single place at the table was occupied. While Rosalee nearly ate the goose by herself, and Monroe kept firmly to his vegan diet, everyone else was fighting (good-naturedly) over the best parts of the turkey. Hank and Jarold embarrassed each other by telling stories of their wild youth, making it impossible not to laugh about their antics. To everyone's astonishment, Monroe and Bud's wife hit it off right away, swapping old family recipes for most of the evening. The children could barely hold their excitement in anticipation for the Gefrierengeber, and keep running to the windows, hoping to see him arrive. But the best part was when he overheard Juliette and Carly discussing colleges. Remembering Carly's panicky state when they first met, and now seeing this young teenager ready to face the future (and Nick had no doubt that she would succeed, as determined as she was) reminded him of all the good he had been able to do thanks to his Grimm abilities. And this might be the best present of all.
Optional Epilogue:
There was a car parked on the street; from Nick's house it was mostly hidden by a hedge. A man was peering through the mostly bare branches, mentally berating himself. He shouldn't be here. He should be at home, nursing a glass of expensive whiskey, and watching "The Great Dictator", like every other year.
Renard knew it was only his growing obsession with Juliette which had led him to this place. His addled mind had foolishly believed that he might be able to ring the doorbell under some sort of pretense. But he knew Nick would have wondered. Even if there really were some questions left concerning the case, there was no reason why he shouldn't simply call instead of turning up in person.
Nevertheless, he might have tried, just for the opportunity to catch a glimpse of Juliette, maybe even speak to her. In his imagination, she would let him in, perhaps even invite him to stay for dinner.
It was foolish, really. Though Nick didn't seem to mind guests. Renard had been surprised that some kind of party was going on in the house. Well, Hank, yes, that made sense, but who were all the other people? It seemed like he knew less about the resident Grimm than he thought. This had to be remedied, immediately!
With a last longing look at the inviting-looking house, he started his car and drove into the night.
A/N: And that's it, my fanfiction entry for this year's stocking stuffing over at the Grimm challenge community. Much more fluffy than I normally write, but I hope everyone enjoyed it.
About Juliette wielding a gun: I somehow think that she would have one on her all the times if she knew the truth about Nick, considering her crazy shooting skills and the danger they are constantly in.
Sorry to Wu-Fans, it was hard enough to add Bud into the mix; finding a reason for Wu to be there would have been too much, especially since he has no clue about Nick at all.
Well, Merry Christmas to everyone, especially to mam711 who gifted me with her time and skills and betaed the story for me.