A/N: For anyone who's wondered, when the heck are we dealing with Juliette? How awkward can they get? Why is this taking so long? Well, here we are. The time is now, the awkward goes to eleven, and this is the first part of what we were waiting for. Let's get to it!


Tomorrow comes way too early, as far as Adalind is concerned. Juliette is awake first. Of course she is—she's the only one in the house operating on more than ten hours of cumulative sleep over the past two days. Adalind can hear her humming in the kitchen, banging the pots and pans, and then the kettle starts to whistle, and Adalind gives up on pretending that she doesn't have to get up and quite literally face the music.

Downstairs, she finds Nick sitting up on the couch with a blanket pooled in his lap, pressing the heel of one palm into his eyes. His hair is sleep tousled and his five o'clock shadow looks more like an eight o'clock phantom. It looks good, of course, but it's such a far cry from his usual clean shave that Adalind momentarily wonders if she's broken him.

"Are you okay?"

Nick winces and looks up at her, bleary-eyed.

"I slept on the couch," he says, and Adalind feels a little niggle of worry about the outcome of him sharing a bed with Juliette slip away. "Last night it was a floor. Everything hurts, and I think I just realized my twenties are coming to an end."

"And not a moment too soon," Juliette says, smiling warmly from the dining room. "Thank you for not waking me up, though. Breakfast is ready—hopefully that's just compensation."

Both Nick and Adalind turn to stare at Juliette for a second, blinking with bleary eyes to get her bright smile to come into focus. She's so...perky.

"Sure," Nick says. "Breakfast is good."

Breakfast is annoyingly good. Juliette could give the Stepford wives a run for their money when it comes to creepy homemaking, but she sure as hell knows her way around a western omelet. Adalind feels a momentary blip of concern—if Nick's used to having a girlfriend feed him, Adalind is going to be a real let down in that department. She's pretty sure she can't even boil rice, although her bolognese is on point, and she really doesn't feature taking on sole kitchen duties in whatever living arrangement they end up in.

She glares at Nick. He better be enlightened when it comes to domestic work, that's all she's saying. Nick catches her glare and darts his eyes to Juliette on the other side of the table, clearly thinking Adalind's glaring at him for not breaking up with Juliette yet. Adalind sighs. That would be a better reason to glare at him, come to think of it, but at this exact moment, she almost doesn't care. The omelet really is that good.

"You guys must have gotten in really late," Juliette says, pouring Adalind a cup of tea. "I hope you caught the guy."

Adalind and Nick blink at her again, and Adalind tries to remember if Juliette is supposed to know anything about Waltz.

"The guy who hurt Adalind," Juliette clarifies. "Did you catch him?"

Adalind licks her broken lip, and catches Nick's eyes. He's looking at her lip again with that intense Grimm-like stare that she's seen every time he's bitten the damn thing in the last two days.

"Not yet," Adalind says, "but I'm close." There's a beat while she tries and fails to avoid remembering just how close she got to Nick yesterday. She can feel that pesky blush creeping into her cheeks again—she thought she'd stopped blushing after law school all but beat it out of her, but one stray thought about Nick's fingers taking her apart from the inside, and here she is, blushing like a fifteen-year-old.

"We're close, I mean," she says too quickly, and then she coughs and reaches for her tea, burying her blush in the hot steam. It's a clumsy attempt at misdirection—her mother would be ashamed—but Adalind can't seem to stop herself. "Nick had me ID the guy, and we staked out my apartment last night to see if he'd come back."

The cover up attempt is second nature to Adalind, and it's not until Nick raises an eyebrow in her direction that she realizes that it might have been a good opportunity for Nick to get radically honest about what they've been up to for the past two days and why that might now be Juliette's problem.

"Oh good," Juliette says, smiling at Adalind like it's completely acceptable to spin out a lie like that at her dining table, and then she goes even further. "I love that necklace, by the way. It's so unusual."

Adalind looks down. Her charm from Henrietta is glowing faintly against her breast bone—pulsing almost, like the heart's blood it's made from.

"Oh," she says. "Thank you. It's a family heirloom." Or it will be, she thinks, once she has a family. Once she and Nick find a moment to commit to starting one. Once Nick breaks up with Juliette.

But breakfast ends before Nick is able to find another moment to drop the bomb, and then Juliette starts clearing the dishes, and Nick leaps up to help, following her into the kitchen and leaving Adalind to pour herself another cup of tea and try her best to appear completely uninterested in the events occurring on the other side of the kitchen peninsula.

"So," Nick says to Juliette, "we should probably talk."

"About Adalind?" Juliette says. "It's fine."

"Really? It's...fine?"

"Yeah, I mean it's a little weird, since she just broke up with Hank, but she's in danger, and I'm glad we can help. She can stay as long as it takes until you get that guy."

"Oh, right. Thank you, that's really kind of you, Juliette."

"Of course," Juliette says. "And did you know—it's actually her birthday today?"

There's a horrible little pause in which Adalind can feel Nick's eyes boring into the back of her skull while she tries to remember today's date. Is it April 14th already? How did that happen?

"I did not," Nick says, voice burning cold.

"Hank told me last week—it was so close that it was hard to forget. We should do something, don't you think? Invite some people, have some cake? I've got that new chocolate cake recipe—do you think she likes chocolate?"

"I think most people like chocolate," Nick says. The cold is gone, but his voice is distant. He's not paying any attention to Juliette.

"Well, ask," Juliette says. "And invite your friend Monroe. We can't invite Hank, obviously, but I've been meaning to invite Monroe over anyway. Tell him to bring a plus one. You're seeing him today, right?"

"Right," Nick says. "But, um, Juliette—"

"I know he's vegan, so I picked up a bunch of stuff to try. I found this really lovely recipe for a nut loaf just for him."

"Oh—that's really...nice."

"Well, he's been a very good friend to you since Marie died, and he did save my life. I wanted to thank him. Go ask Adalind about the cake."

"Right," Nick says, and then he's back in the dining room, looming over Adalind.

"Juliette says it's your birthday." His eyes are very, very dark—almost Grimm dark—and that would be terrifying if it wasn't also kind of a turn on, so Adalind just shrugs and sips her tea.

"I guess it is," she says. "It's been a very busy month. It didn't really come up."

"Un huh," Nick says, glaring daggers at her. "Do you like chocolate cake?"

"Love it," Adalind says, and then shifts her eyes in Juliette's direction, as if to say, Aren't you going to take care of that?

Nick rolls his eyes again and gestures to the kitchen with both hands. Be my guest.

Adalind sighs and stands up, leaning into him to whisper.

"This is ridiculous," she says. "Man up, Burkhardt."

"I tried," Nick hisses back. "She's too busy planning the dinner party from hell to let me get a word in edgewise."

"Fine," Adalind says, "I am not getting stuck at a dinner party hosted by your girlfriend just because you can't find the stones to end it here and now. I'm going in."

"Fine," Nick says. "See how you do."

Adalind barely acknowledges him while she sweeps into the kitchen. Juliette is buzzing around—making more tea and pulling supplies out of the cupboards—all culminating in the revelation of the largest chocolate bar Adalind has ever seen.

"Oh, Adalind," Juliette says, looking for all the world pleased to see her. "Did Nick ask you? Do you like chocolate? I've got this really special bar from Paris that I've been meaning to use for something, and I found the most perfect cake to try it for your birthday. Look!"

Juliette thrusts a magazine under Adalind's nose, and Adalind looks. It's a two-page spread with a triple-tiered-chocolate-death-fantasy in glossy color splashed across the page, and it looks absolutely divine.

"Oh," Adalind says—momentarily stunned. Last year, not even her mother remembered her birthday. She ended up buying herself a chocolate brownie blizzard from Dairy Queen and ate it on her couch, wondering if she should just give in and get a second cat. Which reminds her, she better stop at home today and top up food and water for Majique.

"It's beautiful," Adalind says to Juliette. "But it's so much trouble. I'm not even sure Nick and I will be able to make it—there's so much to do on my case—"

"But you're really close, right? And cake will help you take your mind off that brute who attacked you. It's your birthday, Adalind. Let us help you celebrate!"

Adalind glances at Nick, who's now hovering at the peninsula, raising an eyebrow, as if to say, See?

Nothing's going to take my mind off of him, she thinks.

Adalind looks at the three tiered confection again, and then to Juliette, beaming with joy and warmth and niceness, and then Adalind opens her mouth, ready to wreck it all.

I've been sleeping with Nick, she means to say.

He's breaking up with you, Juliette.

You're very, very nice, but girl, it is over.

"I even got heavy cream," Juliette is saying now. "We'll have real whipped cream. And I got some vegan cake for Monroe—do you think he'll like it?"

Adalind stares into Juliette's lovely face—awash with a desire to please and welcome strangers into her home and her life with an openness that almost makes Adalind ache. Openness is rarely rewarded in Adalind's experience—and it won't be for Juliette today—but suddenly Adalind can't bear to be the one to teach her that particular lesson. Not now. Not when Juliette is looking at her like a puppy waiting for praise.

"How could he not?" she says.


Nick is smugly silent in the car, and away from Juliette's all consuming domesticity, Adalind is pissed.

"I don't get it," she says. "How can a human woman be that—that—"

"Nice?"

"Oh my God, yes. So fucking nice."

"I know. It's unreasonable."

"Is she always like that?"

"Always," Nick says, with a surprisingly heavy sigh. "It was awesome right until it wasn't."

"I would have killed her years ago," Adalind says. "I was tempted to this morning, but her eyes—"

"I know."

"They're so big and...nice. It's like Bambi fucked a Disney Princess, Nick. I don't know how you haven't killed her yet."

"We're not killing her," Nick says. "She deserves the truth. Or something like that. And I do still love her, even if I'm not in love with her. It's not her fault she's not the woman I want to build a life with anymore."

"Well, she's not making it easy."

Adalind has a certain amount of grudging respect for that, actually. Juliette couldn't be stalling the break up conversation better if she tried, and for a moment Adalind wonders if she is trying—if somewhere behind that wide-eyed Martha Stewart act there lies a raging bitch who Adalind actually might get on with if they weren't stuck fighting over the same man.

"Are you sure she's not a hexenbiest?" Adalind asks, and Nick nearly swerves off the road, jerking the car back into the lane at the last possible second.

"Don't say shit like that when I'm driving," he says. "Of course she's not a hexenbiest. I would know, right? There's no way we've lived together all this time, and I've never seen her woge. Right?"

Adalind shrugs. "Probably. It can't be real, though. She can't really be that…"

"Nice?" Nick offers again, and Adalind sighs. There's no other word for it.

"Nice," she agrees. "I mean three-tiers of super special chocolate cake for a stranger who at best just broke up with Hank and worst is fucking her boyfriend? It's creepy, Nick. It's just not right."

"And that's coming from you," Nick says, grinning at her.

"Yeah, that's coming from me. I know creepy. My mother invented creepy. I did a goddamn law degree in creepy. And your girlfriend—Nick, she's the creepiest thing I've ever seen."

"Great," Nick says with another sigh. "Happy fucking birthday."


Nick is scheduled to be off the detective roster today, so he and Monroe had already planned to spend the day training with Marie Kessler's Grimm arsenal. Nick was about to cancel on account of not being a Grimm at the moment, but Adalind remembered Hank's advice to brush up on her defensive combat in preparation for the next nine months and talked Nick into keeping the plan.

But first, Nick drives them to Adalind's apartment. They're both bracing themselves for any sign of Catherine Schade, even though Adalind knows she'll have to talk to her mother sooner rather than later. Still, with the new horror of Juliette throwing her a birthday dinner on the horizon, Adalind can't quite face up to the prospect of telling her mother she's currently committed to spending her solar return with her new boyfriend's girlfriend.

There's no sign of her mother at the apartment though, so Adalind makes a quick trip to refill the food and water bowls and then all but runs back to Nick in the Land Cruiser, ready to be anywhere else.

"Are you sure you want to show me where the trailer is?" Adalind asks for the second time as she climbs back into the car and buckles her seat belt. "I won't be offended if you want to blindfold me."

Nick glances at her, eyes appraising, and then he shrugs.

"You tell me," he says. "Your daughter might be the only chance at continuing the Kessler-Burkhardt Grimm line. Can I trust you with our daughter's inheritance?"

Adalind blinks. She already knows that Diana is going to be a powerful magic user, but somehow it's never occurred to her that she might get something from the Grimm side of the family as well. Having a Grimm for a child—what is that going to be like? Dangerous, probably. Rarity attracts all sorts—admirers, exploiters, challengers—and you don't get much rarer than a hexenbiest/Grimm hybrid. Who knows what mother nature might have in mind with those genetics in her sandbox?

"If our daughter's going to be a Grimm then I want that trailer intact and its whole armory in tip-top condition," Adalind says, all but growling.

"I thought that might be the case," Nick says, sending a smile her way. "Let's go play with the armory."

Annoyingly, Marie's trailer is hidden in plain sight in the middle of a storage yard. Adalind takes one look at it gleaming slightly in the middle of a bunch of other abandoned trailers and turns to glare at Nick.

"Really? This was your genius plan?"

Nick has the decency to look a little embarrassed.

"Well, it's not like you found it," he says.

"That's because I gave you the compliment of assuming you wouldn't be dumb enough to store it somewhere with a goddamn paper trail! Clearly, I was wrong."

"Oh, come on," Nick says, "it's not that bad."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Do you have a shell company I don't know about? Did you build another bulletproof identity to provide an ID and social security number for the contract? Did you take any countermeasures at all to make sure no one here could track you to this trailer?"

"Well, I make sure never to come directly here, just in case I'm being followed."

"Great," Adalind says, "that must be fun. I bet you feel just like James fucking Bond."

She glares up at him, and he glares right back at her, and she wonders for a moment what she's doing with this man who doesn't even have the basics of spy craft in his wheelhouse. And then Nick laughs and kisses her softly, and she remembers.

"I really hate it when you get all lawyery," he says, pulling back with a few more teasing kisses. "But maybe I kind of love it, too. Sorry my security measures aren't up to snuff, counselor."

Adalind sighs and kisses him again, just for good measure. His spy craft may be shit, but his kisses are unparalleled. And besides, she can be crafty enough for the two of them.

"This is amateur hour, Nick. All it takes is an easy hack on what I assume is an antique internet security system, and there you and your trailer are. The only reason this hasn't been a problem is that no one knows you're a Grimm yet, but that's going to change soon enough. We're going to need a better plan."

"Okay," Nick says, smiling. "Does it need to happen today, or do you think we can risk it?"

Adalind sighs. His smile is really cute. It's not fair.

"We can risk it. But if the damn thing gets stolen tonight, I reserve the right to say I told you so."

"Noted."

Nick unlocks the door and motions Adalind inside with a parody of a courtly bow. She rolls her eyes, but when she steps inside, her breath just stops. Every surface is covered in books and weapons and the ingredients for a couple dozen spells that could take anyone out. One could open a pretty sizable hole in downtown Portland, and Adalind finds herself filled with a new respect for Marie Kessler.

"Damn," she says, taking the final steps into the trailer and letting Nick enter behind her. "This really is an armory."

"You haven't even seen my axe yet," Nick says with a grin, and then he opens a cabinet at the back with a flourish, and Adalind stares at what must be one of the preeminent collections of Grimm weapons in the world.

"That's a big axe."

"Yeah." Nick hefts it up and inspects it. It's half as tall as he is. "Somehow I can't picture Aunt Marie wielding this one."

"I don't know," Adalind says. "That woman was tough as nails."

"Yeah." Nick gives the axe another hard look and then drops it on the table before turning to gather more weapons. "She took out your assassin on her deathbed, anyway."

There's a silence after that, one that Adalind is reluctant to fill. What can she say? Sorry doesn't quite cover it, and besides, she's not really sorry. She and Nick were on opposite sides of a war two days ago, and Marie Kessler was a more than worthy combatant. She died in battle doing what she was born to do and doing it well, and if the time comes, Adalind can only hope for the same.

"She was a fighter," Adalind says now. "To the very end. Just like you."

Nick smiles at that—something sweet if a little sad. "You're a fighter, too. I know. I didn't forget that you tried to kill my aunt, Adalind. I just don't think she would have cared that much, if that makes any sense. She was pretty pragmatic about these kinds of things. A little like you, actually. She just would have wanted me to be happy. And she knew it wasn't going to work with Juliette, so she really was way ahead of me on this one."

He turns back to collect more weapons, and Adalind thinks about broaching the topic of Juliette, but then she let's the moment pass. This moment—right here—this is for Marie.


Out in the woods, Adalind is more than ready to get to Grimm weapon training, but before they can play with the armory, they have to tell Monroe about Juliette and the breakup that never was.

"How?" Monroe wants to know. "How did this happen?"

"She's just so…" Nick trails off, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Nice," Adalind says with a sigh. "Aggressively nice. Atomically nice, even."

"She out niced us," Nick says. "And she wants you to come to dinner, too."

"Me?" Monroe looks horrified. "How did I get involved with this?"

"She wants to get to know you," Nick says, "and she couldn't invite Hank because she thinks he and Adalind had a normal break up and not, you know, sex, near death, and détente, or whatever..."

"Detente's a good word," Adalind says, considering. "I like that. Hank and I have a détente."

"Are you even listening to yourselves?" Monroe says, gesturing wildly between them. "You want me to have dinner with your girlfriend, who's unknowingly throwing a birthday dinner for your other girlfriend, and all the while she also doesn't know anything about your powers, or your powers, or yeah, my other freaking face. We can't do this guys. Nick, you gotta break up with her, man. Right now."

Nick looks at Adalind, and she shrugs.

"I mean—he's not wrong."

Nick sighs and fishes his phone out of his pocket. Adalind can tell that he'd prefer to do this in person, but she's also aware that if he doesn't tell Juliette now, he'll have to tell her when the birthday dinner starts, and that's just going to be worse.

The phone rings a few times, and he turns away from Monroe and Adalind for the illusion of privacy. Adalind can't imagine what's going through his head. He and Juliette have been together for years, and suddenly it feels kind of wrong that it's all going to end over a phone call like this.

Of course, that thought is discounting Juliette—and it quickly becomes clear that was a mistake. Nick barely gets to offer a greeting before Juliette is off, and he's clearly lost again in the conversation.

"Oh," he says, turning wide eyes back to Adalind. "I don't know." There's another pause and then he winces, nods, and holds the phone out to Adalind.

"She wants to talk to you."

Adalind shakes her head emphatically, mouthing no, no, no while waving her hands, but Nick shoves the phone into her hands, and then she's talking to Juliette all over again.

"Oh, Adalind, just the woman I wanted to talk to," Juliette says. "For the cake, what do you think? Raspberry filling or chocolate mousse?

"Oh—" Adalind glares at Nick, who's run away to polish a sword and is not meeting her eyes. "You're too sweet, Juliette," she says, all but gritting her teeth. "Either would be lovely."

"Well, I got stuff for both, so how about both, then?"

Adalind sighs and turns her gaze up to the sky, blue behind newly budding branches. It's hard to stay mad at Juliette, not when she's got both raspberry filling and chocolate mousse along with seemingly unlimited energy and good will.

"Sounds delicious," Adalind says. "I can't wait.

"You guys are hopeless," Monroe says with a groan, which Juliette must hear, because then she says, "Is that Monroe? Let me talk to him, I want to make sure he's coming tonight."

"Oh," Adalind says again. Monroe looks terrified. Sometimes super blutbad hearing must be a real pain, but Adalind doesn't have a lot of sympathy to spare at the moment. If Monroe thinks he can do better with Juliette, Adalind would like to see it. "Oh, of course. Let me just give him the phone."

She lowers the phone, covering the microphone, and Nick reaches for it, but she shakes her head.

"She wants to talk to Monroe."

"No," Monroe says, "absolutely not," but Adalind shoves the phone into his hand, and then he's speaking to Juliette.

"Oh, hello," he says, "hello, Juliette. Yes, it is nice to re-meet you on the phone. Ah—yes, yes, he did extend the invitation, only I'm not sure I can make it this evening—oh, you did? How did you even—oh. Oh, that's very kind, Juliette. Very kind. Yes, of course, I'd be delighted to try your nut loaf. It's really very kind of you to go to all that trouble. Yes, I'll be there. Yes, I'll bring a friend. Seven, you said? Yes, I'll be there. Thank you so much. Yes, bye. Bye—bye—bye."

Monroe hangs up the phone and glares at it, and then at Adalind, and finally at Nick.

"She has got to be stopped," Monroe says. "You've got to break up with Juliette tonight. No one can possibly be that nice."

After that, the weapons practice comes easily for all of them.