Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of this work of fiction, and no profit, monetary or otherwise, is being made through the writing of this.

A/N: Set after last season, before the coming season. Contains a spoiler for the last episode of the last season. Written for Isilarma for the Gift-Giving Extravaganza 2014. She asked for Nick/Monroe friendship. I hope this satisfies.

It had been a shitty day, and all Nick wanted to do was crawl beneath the covers of his bed and bid adieu to the world for a few blessed hours. Peace and quiet and a dreamless sleep were the only things on his agenda when his cell buzzed. Sighing, and running a hand over his face, he answered without bothering to check who'd called. These days it could only be one of a handful of people calling, and he couldn't very well ignore any of them.

"Burkhardt," Nick intoned.

He waved off Hank, and mustered a smile that he didn't feel, when his partner shot him a concerned look. He fished his keys out of his pocket, and silently cursed when they fell into a murky puddle beside his car. Sighing, he held the phone between his shoulder and his ear, not yet identifying the caller, because his mind was focused on retrieving his keys and the details of one of the shittiest days he'd had in a long time.

"Nick?" the voice sounded tinny, and, though familiar, Nick was still having a hard time placing it. Something told him that he should recognize the voice, that it shouldn't be this hard for him, that the keys hadn't fallen all the way to China, so they should be in his hand by now, that the double homicide he and Hank had worked today shouldn't have hit him this damn hard.

"Nick, you there man?"

Nick blinked at the puddle, at his reflection in it, wondering if this – the planes of his face, pale and distorted by the ripples his questing fingers had left in it – was how the Wesen saw him. Used to see him, when he'd been a Grimm. It wasn't a pretty sight, and he grimaced, swiped his fingers through the foul water and watched as his reflection rippled and changed, grew dark and shadowed as the tiny wavelets caught the light of the almost full moon.

"Nick? Hey, buddy, you there? Nick, what's wrong?"

Monroe. The name of the voice trying to capture his attention over the phone finally registered, and with that connection, Nick's fingers brushed against the fallen keys, and he snagged them, smiling as he pulled them from the not-so-shallow puddle that made him look like the monster he'd long feared he was.

"Monroe?" Nick's voice sounded unreal, like it was coming from someone else and he stood, bracing the hand clutching the keys against the roof of his car.

He was unaccountably dizzy, and frowned when a voice at the back of his mind (sounded an awful lot like Monroe) informed him that he hadn't eaten anything since yesterday morning. He'd worked, nonstop, on the double homicide, Hank by his side. They'd broken the case, wide-open, but it had taken nearly forty-eight hours, and Nick couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this worn out – like he'd been stretched as thin as taffy at a taffy pull.

He stared at the keys in his hand, knew that he should probably do something with them, that he should answer Monroe, that he should probably call for a cab, or call Juliette for a ride home, though the thought of going home right now wasn't very appealing, and Juliette was at a conference.

He didn't want to sully his home, his bed, with the images that were running through his head right now, not that they were any worse than what he'd seen, or done in the past. They weren't. They were fairly ordinary. The murders had been brutal, and there were blood spattered images that had etched themselves on the back of Nick's eyelids, waiting there to haunt him whenever he closed his eyes.

"Nick, you okay? You're scaring me, man," Monroe's voice was rich and deep, tainted with concern, and it pulled at Nick, pulled him away from the images, the smell of blood that had remained with him since the start of the case.

Nick swallowed hard against the sudden lump in his throat, gripped the keys tightly, let the bite of them into his palm ground him. Let Monroe's concerned voice, as he attempted to draw Nick into conversation, bring him back to the present, and drown out the memory of the wild cries of denial that one of the mother's victims – Becky Jones – had besieged him and Hank with.

The woman had been distraught, and implacable, and he couldn't blame her. She'd had to be sedated, hospitalized. Her husband had taken the news better, though not by much. Nick couldn't get that image out of his mind either – that of Mr. Jones, sitting beside his wife's hospital bed, holding her hand as though it was a lifeline, and maybe it was. He couldn't do the one thing he wanted to for them – bring their little girl, only sixteen years old, back to them.

Melissa Burns' parents hadn't taken the news well either, but the difference in the parents' reactions, had been night and day. Melissa's parents had been stoic, almost cold, though they'd fumbled to find each other's hands, holding each other's fingers hard enough to crack and bruise as they'd listened and answered the detectives' questions.

"Nick? I know you're there, man. Did you hear anything I said?" Monroe's persistence made him smile, and Nick took a deep breath, realized that he'd been holding it as a fresh wave of memories assaulted him when he'd allowed himself to think about interviewing the girls' parents.

"Yeah," Nick said, though he hadn't been listening to Monroe's words as much as he'd been listening to the familiar, and calming, tones of the man's voice.

"I'm here," he clarified, clearing his throat, knowing that Monroe would call him on the actual hearing part if he let it dangle. He loosened the death grip that he had on his keys and flexed his hand, feeling pins and needles as his blood began to circulate.

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as Monroe scolded him for, "…scaring a couple of years off of my life…" and he fit the proper key into the lock and slid behind the wheel of his car, feeling far more human than he had in a long time. Than he had since he'd apparently ceased to be a Grimm.

Odd how much of who he was, who he'd become in such a short time, had become wrapped up in all of that. Being a Grimm had come to define him, and without it, Nick had forgotten who he was, who he'd been before. He'd been a detective, and a damn good one, there was no reason for it to suddenly be difficult for him to do the same job he'd done for years before he'd become a Grimm. If anything, that particular loss should have freed him to be the man, and detective, he'd been before life had thrown him a crazy curveball.

"So, you coming over to toss back a couple of beers, maybe watch the game I taped earlier?" Monroe's voice was hopeful, though Nick could hear the worry licking at it. He'd begged off so many times over the past couple of months that it was a wonder Monroe was still calling him. A wonder that the man still considered him a friend.

"Rosalee's visiting her parents," Monroe added, voice wistful, tinged with just a touch of sadness. "And, I miss you, man. I can't remember the last time that we hung out, you know, as buddies. We are still buddies, aren't we? I mean, I know I'm a Wesen, and, well you –"

"I'll be right over, Monroe," Nick said, cutting Monroe off, throat constricting, heart pounding as he realized just how wrapped up in being a Grimm he'd been, how not being a Grimm had nearly stripped him of everything that mattered, because he'd somehow put his life on hold.

"Good, I'll…ah, uh, I'll have the beer and the game ready. You hungry?" Monroe threw the last question at him as though in a rush, and Nick could hear pots and pans clattering in the background, it eased some of the tension in his shoulders.

A glance at the clock on his dashboard showed that it was only half past seven, though the grit in his eyes and the exhaustion of the past two days made it feel like the clock was off by about five or six hours. It felt like midnight, or one in the morning, not seven thirty.

"I could eat," Nick answered, feeling lightheaded and like his body was being dragged down at the same time.

He bit back a jaw-cracking yawn, hoped that Monroe hadn't heard it, though it was a vain hope. Monroe's hearing was of the supernatural variety, though he didn't call Nick on the yawn, on the exhaustion he no doubt could hear in every word that Nick spoke.

That's what good friends did for each other, though, Nick mused. Ignored the obvious, and settled on what was important – like dinner and beers and watching a game that held no mystery, nothing for a bone-weary detective to solve.

"See you in ten," Nick said, hanging up, and chuckling at Monroe's muttered dinner plans.

The headache which had been niggling just behind his eyes had started to lessen, and Nick didn't doubt that spending a couple of hours at Monroe's would completely erase it, and make a decent dent in putting the images that continued to plague him at bay. He'd missed his friend, couldn't think why he hadn't dropped by sooner.

It was Nick's becoming a Grimm that had brought him and Monroe together, but he was starting to see that they had something that went deeper than that, something more like friendship, maybe even something that made them closer than brothers.

It was a sobering thought, but, losing his status as a Grimm, though he'd had it for such a short period of time in his life, had, in a sense shown a light on who he really was. Revealed who his real friends were, and Monroe, though he'd rebuffed him on countless occasions, had stuck with him. It was humbling and Nick rubbed at his eyes, red and dry with exhaustion. Exhaustion, that, if he admitted, had started well before this case, and not long after he'd lost his ability to 'see' the truth of what lay beneath the surface of the thin veil of reality that many people took for granted.

He missed it. Being able to see what others couldn't. Being able to see the change in Monroe, and others, when they woge.

It was almost funny, missing something he'd only had for a few, short years. It felt like something was missing in his life, that he was hollowed out and empty. Just a husk of a man, and nothing more.

The emptiness seemed to recede, the closer he got to Monroe's, though, and Nick wondered if maybe it wasn't the 'gift' of seeing the truth that he'd been missing all these months, but rather the steady, patient presence of his friend. The acceptance, and kindness of a man who, in spite of their differences and all of the horrible shit they'd faced, had persevered through the trials, some of which Nick had erected himself, to forge a place at Nick's side and become his friend.

Nick parked in front of Monroe's house, tension bleeding away from him as he took in the warm light emanating from the man's home. A home that he'd once called home himself for a short while, when he'd been working things out with Juliette. A home that he realized, with a start, he'd missed.

Heart in his throat, Nick took the porch steps in a single bound. Before he could knock; however, the front door was pulled opened, and Monroe enveloped him in a crushing, unapologetic hug, even as he ushered Nick into his home. It was like no time had passed, and Nick felt the remainder of the tension he'd been carrying for so long seep away.

"God, Nick, you look exhausted, when's the last time you had a good night's sleep?" Monroe asked, and before Nick knew what was happening, he was being deposited on the couch, a pillow was being shoved behind his back, and his feet were propped up on the coffee table, shoes tugged off. It was surreal, and for a minute, Nick thought he was dreaming, that maybe he'd never made it out of the station's parking lot, or he'd crashed his car on the way to Monroe's, and this was all some kind of feverish dream borne of wishful thinking.

"I'll go get our dinners, and the beers," Monroe said. Nick registered the words vaguely, acknowledged them with a slow nod of his head, ignored the concerned look that Monroe gave him, and attempted a smile.

He felt like he was underwater, close to drowning, and he allowed his eyes to close, in spite of the images that he knew would be waiting for him – blood, severed hands, lids peeled from eyes, glazed and perpetually open in death – once he closed them.

Monroe kept up a steady stream of chatter, his voice fading in and out as he walked to the kitchen and puttered around, gathering their dinner and their beers. Nick couldn't follow most of what Monroe was saying, but that was okay. He sank down in his seat, allowed Monroe's voice to float over him and push the final vestiges of his headache away, and with the headache disappearing, the images began to fade to a black and white dullness that was easier to stomach.

He felt comfortable, safe, and alive for the first time in months. When the food arrived, Monroe woke him gently, forestalling any apology with an upheld palm, and sat down beside him, shoulders and knees touching. It was comfortable, and Nick realized he'd missed this, missed Monroe – the companionable camaraderie that they had, something which superseded all of the crap that had come along with being a Grimm and a Blutbad. Two vastly different worlds had collided and ended up forming something new and better than anything Nick could have ever imagined happening in his life.

"Thanks, Monroe," Nick said, after a full stomach, a good number of beers, good conversation, coupled with companionable silence, and a game that had been a bust had contrived to give him a nice buzz that took away the edge he'd been teetering on for the past couple of months. The last two days, with the double homicide of two teenage girls had merely been the last straw, and he'd almost broken.

"Anytime, man," Monroe said, grinning and squeezing Nick's shoulder. "Anytime."

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