UHhhh I think I have a slight problem...No new Grimm this week meant I wrote another chapter (because my life is going to be crazy next week) which I did not originally plan.

And...duh duh duh, I wrote this one in Monroe's POV. It was fun and some the dialogue was good practice. BTW this is all supposed to be fluff, nothing serious at this point. Just some cute things that Monroe thinks about Rosalee.

Again, this is entirely head canon, all of it. I reiterate: I am a grad student, I make no money off this and I do it for the lols and feels.

in my head canon this is a while after the second chapter (or 2nd installment, whatever you want to call it). And I'm hoping the writers will wrap up this whole Juliette memory thing because I for one am sick of her being stuck in the dark missing all the cute Grimm/Wesen family feels-ness. So, this is assuming that someone tells her and she's trying to accept that and what better way than dinner?

anyway, dudes, enjoy!


"And I'm just too tired to fight/So my darling, I'll succumb/ But you'll have to run to me tonight/ Tonight I will love you forever/ But I'll only ever be a middle distance runner"- Sea Wolf, "Middle Distance Runner"

"And in the streets we're running/ free like it's only you and me/ Geez, you're somethin' to see./ Ahh, Home/Let me come Home/ Home is wherever I'm with you..." Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros "Home"


Part 3. Love and Pie

Her text read out on his phone: Be there soon. Bringing TWO bottles of wine. And pie :)

He smiled and replied:Plenty of time. No hurry and he went back to chopping up the cucumbers and tossing them into the mixing bowl. Everyone else said they'd be there around seven. Though, tonight is a much bigger deal than usual; it's Juliette's first dinner. With everyone.

All things considered, it was funny; he'd always expected the unexpected. But Monroe never saw her coming. To be honest though, he hadn't seen Nick coming either until he was crashing through his own window to tackle him. A slight on his part, he admitted freely now. But Rose wasn't supposed to stay. From the get go, she seemed determined to put this city in her rearview mirror. And at the time, he had assumed that at the end of the day they'd end up being two ships and all that nonsense.

But she stayed, though carefully and cautiously at first. He long since gave up on the why (she gave the trial as a reason, putting the last of her demons to bed, simple old homesickness) and focused on the fact that she was staying and and invented as many reasons as he could to see her. He watched her hands steady but hummingbird fast over her bunsen burner. He saw her so often hunched over a book (thumb pressed to her full lower ruby lip, forehead creased in concentration), that he could draw that face in his sleep. And more times than he could count, he was right there next to her, his nose buried in her books as well.

"Never go to war with a woman who's got claws," his mother told him once, though at the time, he assumed she meant a Blutbad, but it fit Rose all too easily. She was small but far from frail and every so often she had to remind him. He saw her stare down a Hundjäger, all steel backbone and claws at the ready. The only fear she displayed was for him and Nick and Ian, keeping none of it for herself.

She told him everything (except for names) about her lost days but did not ask for pity in return. Rosalee sat in his lap in the kitchen the morning after their first night together and pressed a hand to his cheek. "I'm not sad or mad. It was a part of my life that you should at least know something about. Don't be sad for me." It was all the elaboration she'd give. "Or angry. It's in the past." She was right, of course, as she often was. More often than he'd like to admit. It was the same thing he'd learned to tell himself. She'd forgiven her past sins; if not all, she'd forgiven most of them. And for that at least, she didn't judge him for all he told her.

She railed at him when he came home sporting black eyes and bruises, usually dragging Nick along too, when he was either potion or punch drunk. She'd clean them up, clucking at them and sending them on their way. Though, being her boyfriend meant that Monroe didn't necessarily have to follow Nick home and at least got a kiss or two out of it.

She sat next to him on her little cot in the back room of the shop. "What am I going to do with you?" she murmured often more to herself than him as she dabbed his bruise with arnica. Exasperated but affectionate.

"Hey, I do not go looking for trouble," he assured her. "I get dragged in. Usually by Nick."

She smiled and settled next to him. Really, the cot fit one but she'd never had a problem being so close. He wrapped an arm around her.

"Just be careful, okay?" She murmured. "I don't like patching you guys up. You especially."

"I'll try." He promised. He ran his hand up to the back of her neck.

"You better." She poked him hard in the chest.

"Trust me, I don't like ending up like this." He gestured to himself lying on the cot with his free hand.

She reached up to his temple. "Are you sure you're all right? How many fingers?" She held up two.

"Come on, Rose-"

"Answer please." She waggled her two fingers.

"Two."

She help up six.

"Six."

"What year is it?"

"2013." He pulled her in closer. "Are you satisfied yet?"

She cocked her head to once side for a moment, considering. Without answering she leaned forward into a kiss. But not an ordinary "hello" or "goodbye" kiss. It wasn't even "please be careful" or "You're an idiot and yet somehow I still find you attractive." It was more "I'm afraid the world might end if we stop so let's don't."

However, stop they did when they needed air. Air, he snorted to himself. Air's over rated. She played with one button on his shirt collar, eyes dark and glancing at the door. He'd never seen her apartment before.

Pulling himself from memory, Monroe looks up as Rosalee bursts through the front door, a bag, her purse, two bottles of wine and a pie in tow. True to her word. "Am I late?!" She doesn't even pause to hear the answer, tearing to his room. Presumably to change.

"No. Everyone else will be here in half an hour." He hollered back.

"Yes! THANK YOU, BROADWAY BRIDGE!"

He smiles to himself, remembering their first "family dinner" as they had been dubbed. "This was fun," she said as he walked her to her car. "We should do it more often."

"It was," he agreed. "Felt...weird but nice."

"Yeah, Like a family."

"A multi-species family."

She playfully smacked his arm. "What is it they say? Keep Portland weird?"

"All right, all right." He grabbed her hand and squeeze gently. "We have a weird multi-species family with a Blutbad, a Fuchsbau, a Kherseite and a Grimm and...it's nice."

She was quiet a moment, contemplating the keys in her other hand.

He nudged her. "Rose?"

"Sometimes you get the chance to choose your family," she said quietly and he saw how the deaths of her father and brother weighed on her. She had so little of her family left. Then again, so did he, though his was mainly by choice. "And I'm choosing this. Portland and Nick and Hank." She played with the the lapels on his coat. "And you."

Monroe felt his heart lift a little at the sentiment; she was picking him. He didn't always believe this life, one filled with dinners and friends (wesen and otherwise) and good wine, was possible for him. Sure, Blutbaden ran in packs but what he wanted (or at least had recently allowed himself to want) was something entirely different. He could see more with her, a future other than blood on the full moon and chasing random Kherseite through the woods when he got bored. He saw glimpses of it in her kiss, the touch of her hand. A quiet life but a full one. A family even. But that he did keep entirely to himself.

He almost said the thing he'd been thinking for months right then and there. But timing had always been a problem for him.

Rosalee wanders out to kitchen ten minutes later, hair slightly damp and in different clothes, both wine bottles in hand. She stretches up on her tip toes and he has to practically bend in half to kiss her. Even with the shower and stress, she still smells like lemon verbena and vanilla and wool. And... Eisbeber. "I feel like I haven't seen you in a week." She proclaims as she goes hunting for the wine bottle opener.

"It's been three days," he reminds her, pulling open the correct drawer for her. "How was the lodge?"

Rose pours herself some of the red, hits the half way point and goes a little over. "So many sick kids. So much snot." She takes a nice long pull. "I had to take treat all the babies the first day and then go back and get the older kids. I'll probably have to go back next week and do a third round just to be sure to knock it out."

"How many pies did you get out of it?"

"I'm not doing it for the pie, Monroe."

"I know. But still...how many?"

She rubs his shoulder. "I already saved you the blackberry one, I left it in the car so you don't have to fight Hank over it. That one," She points to the one she left on the opposite counter. "is cherry"

"You're the best."

She shrugs. "Juliette still isn't entirely sold on the whole wesen thing so we should probably make sure you don't leap across the table for the last piece of pie."

"How is it that you think of everything?"

"I am the Smarty-Pants after all." She grins and kisses his cheek. "So, what can I do to help?"

She's not allowed to help, though. She tried once and he'd really rather not relive it. He's actually afraid to leave Nick and Rose alone in the kitchen for too long; it might spontaneously combust from the sheer lack of cooking ability concentrated in one area. It doesn't make any sense really, given what she does. But she's completely hopeless.

He shakes his head. "No, no. Rose, I love you but you really can't cook. I'm sorry."

Well. There's that.

She turns to him, setting the glass down "What did you say?"

" 'I'm sorry but you really can't cook'? "

"No, before that."

"I might have...said..." Monroe shrugs. "You know...'I love you'..."

"Do you mean it?" Rose wonders. "I don't mean to put pressure on you or anything but I want to know if you-"

"I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it." He replies quietly.

There is a beat of silence and then giggles bubble out. She claps her hand over her mouth. He expected tears, stunned silence, but not this.

"I'm sorry," she grabs his hand. "I'm sorry, Monroe. It's just...I haven't really slept in two days, that was the first shower I've had in memory and I've spent the last..." she pulls the pocket watch out of her sweater pocket and then frowns. He could tell her not to attempt to do math with so little sleep or caffeine in her veins but Monroe knows how to pick his battles. "Something like...twenty eight hours covered in baby Eisbeber snot. And you just burst out telling me you love me. It's just a little...I don't know-"

"Is it contagious?" He wonders, glancing at her hands.

"Is what contagious?" She asks.

"The snot."

"Only if you've got Eisbeber in you anywhere. But it's gone now."

He nods and cups her face in his hands. "I love ya anyhow." Well, now he's said it once, it comes out easier and easier now.

And now she smiles, a big one and lays her hands on his wrists. "I love you."

"And you mean it?"

"I wouldn't say it if it weren't true." She whispers.

There are a thousand things to say and discuss. At least eighty percent of that thousand is not polite for company, as they all come crashing through the door. But Monroe holds one thought with him though dinner, through Rose's hand never leaving his, through her laying her head on his shoulder. The Apothecaries' Daughter who loved the Wieder Blutbad. Sounds like a line out of a fairy tale.


R&R please! I may do another actually with Nick and Rosalee-not romantically-but it may involve bacon. Stick around and see.