A/N: This chapter gets ever so slightly hand wavy with some logistics—this is your warning. Thanks for reading!
Nick gets the call before dawn. A body found while investigating an emergency call. It's such a normal way to wake up that for a moment he's sure that he's in bed with Juliette, in the bedroom he shared with her for years—the same as ever and all the more horrific for it. He panics and sits up, stripping back the covers only to find Adalind blinking up at him under a wild tangle of silver hair in the dim light of Monroe's guest room.
Adalind shuts one eye and squints up at him with another. "Is someone dead?"
"Uh—yes."
"Anyone we know?"
"I don't think so."
"Great," Adalind says. "Let me know if that changes and in the meantime—"
"Yes?"
"Give me back the damn blanket."
She closes both eyes again and rolls over, promptly falling back to sleep. Nick gets out of bed and rearranges the covers over her, feeling a rush of warmth for this woman whose default setting seems to be fundamentally unphasable. He presses a kiss to her hair and heads out, feeling ready for just about anything.
Anything turns out to be a long morning spent at a crime scene that looks like an old mob hit, complete with cement accessories for the victim. With Wu running the scene, Nick and Hank go looking for the witness and find a photo of Bud instead. Hank's never met Bud, so Nick finds himself trying to explain eisbibers while worrying that this new case is about to sprout a wesen dimension that they'll be ill-equipped to handle without Nick's Grimm powers.
Hank shrugs. "It's not like we haven't done this job without them before."
Nick isn't nearly so sure, but what alternative is there? Bud isn't at his shop on their first visit, so Nick leaves a message, and they head back to the precinct in the early afternoon to file paperwork and compile information from the crime scene and the victim's bio. Cause of death is affixation by cement, which really must have sucked. Nick looks at the photo and fights a shudder.
"Ugh, cement," a very familiar voice says over his shoulder—almost against his ear. "Give me a good, old fashioned poisoning any day, am I right?"
It's only years of training and what must be innate Grimm instincts that keep Nick from flailing backward in his chair. As it is, he barely manages to make losing his grip on the photo look like deliberate choice. He spins his chair around quickly—too quickly—and nearly ends up knocking Adalind into his lap, but she neatly sidesteps his legs and somehow manages to stand there in his precinct for the second time in four days, looking unruffled and immaculate in yet another perfectly paired shift dress and pumps that do nothing to help him forget all the ways he's found to get under her shift dress in the past few days. He's starting to wonder if she has anything else in her closet—but more worryingly, he's starting to wonder if he has a shift dress kink now, or if it's all just about the woman in them.
"What are you doing here?" He's still flustered, and the question comes out more like demand.
Adalind smirks and pivots, making space for Renard and a short, bespectacled man in a suit that Nick vaguely recognizes as someone involved in the District Attorney's Office.
"I'm sure you'll find Ms. Schade to be an asset to your operations," the suit is saying to Renard. "I have every faith in her ability to liaise between our offices and help us clean up that conviction rate."
Renard is all but scowling—a sentiment Nick shares—their conviction rate is excellent, thank you very much—but then the rest of what the suit said starts to sink in, and he turns his disbelieving eyes to Adalind, who seems to smirk even harder, if that's even possible.
"It's just a little sudden," Renard says. "Are you sure Ada—I mean Ms. Schade—is the right fit for a role with this sort of responsibility?"
The suit waves this away, glowing up at Adalind with something approaching lawyerly glee. "I've known Adalind since we clerked together. There's no one better when it comes to finding a hole in the prosecution's case. Imagine what she could do if she worked for us instead? All cases ready for prosecution will go through her from now on, and they better be water tight, gentlemen."
He glares at Renard—then Nick—then Hank, who's appeared on his side of the desk just in time to watch Adalind play yet another mark to perfection. The suit nods sharply once and bustles back out of the precinct, leaving Adalind and her shift dress and her killer heels, ready to walk all over them. Nick resists a little shiver of interest from the base of his spine.
Renard makes a noise in the back of his throat that sounds like a growl.
"I supposed you're pleased with yourself." He glares at Adalind. "You really do get around. Did you sleep with him, too?"
"Never," Adalind says with a shrug. "I think he was more impressed with my briefs than, well, my briefs. What can I say? The man loves to plug a loophole."
Hank snorts, and Renard turns to glare at him.
"You of all people must see how ridiculous this is?"
Hank shrugs. "I feel better when she's scheming in front of me. It's the scheming in an undisclosed location that I worry about."
"Thank you, Hank," Adalind says. "I knew I could count on you."
"Wait," Nick says, "you told Hank? When were you going to tell me? When did you even tell Hank? I've been all but glued to you for the past three days."
"See," Renard says, "you can't trust her, Nick. She's always playing another game—"
"Oh please—you think I'd play Nick just for the fame and fortune of being a lowly liaison for the DA's Office? Give me some credit. If I'm going to stab Nick in the back, the dagger is going to be jewel encrusted. And I do mean encrusted. Frankly, even your father couldn't afford me at this point."
Nick's not sure if he's supposed to find that comforting, but he kind of does. She's thought about it—thought about her price for betraying him—and she's decided it's one not even the Royals can afford. He's pretty sure that rates pretty damn high.
"Are you hearing this?" Renard asks him, and Nick nods slowly, meeting Adalind's gaze. It's as sure as ever, but he can tell that she's worried somewhere behind all that projected strength. She knows he doesn't think the way she does—doesn't put a price on loyalty. It probably should be more of a concern for him, really, but—well—Nick has a keen appreciation for the high prices that Adalind will pay for the people she loves. If anything, he's grateful to be included in that select group.
"I'm hearing it," Nick says. "I'm hearing that what we have is more precious than a throne and Swiss bank account. That's an exchange rate I can live with."
Adalind grins—a radiant smile that lights one of his own—and Renard groans.
"You two deserve each other."
"Gee, I hope so," Nick says.
It's a little jarring, sharing a workplace with Adalind. She has an office on another floor, but she spends a lot of time lurking around the precinct—keeping an eye on Renard and all but flirting with half the precinct to get them on her side. It's been a day, and she's already got Wu wrapped around her little finger. When he brings Nick and Hank coffee, he presents a third mug to Adalind with a little flourish.
"Decaf chai for the lady."
"We have tea?" Hank looks around at the break area. "Since when?"
"Since I'm going off caffeine," Adalind says from her seat on Nick's desk. She sounds less than pleased with the idea. "It's not on the approved list for the next nine months. Thank you, Drew, you're a gem."
Nick wouldn't have believed it if he didn't see it himself, but Wu blushes—the dimples in his cheeks getting even deeper—and then he damn near bows and hurries off, probably worried about being seen sucking up to the DA's office by the rest of the uniforms.
"What did you do to Wu?"
"Nothing," Adalind says, sipping her tea with a contented little sigh that makes Nick sit up a little taller. "Well, nothing since Rosalee took care of him. I owe him a little kindness after that—is it my fault he wants to reciprocate?"
Nick narrows his eyes at her. "Somehow, I'm thinking yes."
"Ooo," Adalind says—soft and low—"Detective Burkhardt, you flatter me. Are you going to interrogate me again? You know I've been thinking about having my wicked way with you on that interrogation table for months."
Nick nearly chokes on his coffee. He's had that one, too. And his desk. And hers. And against the one-way-mirror on the other side of the interrogation suite. Working together is proving to be more of a challenge to keep his hands off her than anything else.
Luckily most of his day was spent in the field, questioning people who knew the victim, looking for someone who would want to hurt him.
"What've you got?" Adalind asks, back to her normal tone of voice, and Nick is so relieved for the break from her bedroom voice that he turns the monitor her way and shows her.
"Not much. The victim was in the construction business, and it sounds like the planning commission was giving him trouble. The guy at the planning commission was giving me a bit of an old mobster vibe, but we've got nothing on him. We haven't been able to find the witness who called it in, either."
"Hmmm. And the victim, was he an eisbiber?"
Nick looks around, checking for anyone listening in. The coast is clear except for Hank, who gets up to stand beside Adalind.
"Why would you say that?" Hank asks in his best cop voice, and Adalind rolls her eyes in a way Nick is pretty sure he's not supposed to find endearing.
"Because most construction companies in this town are. Beavers build shit—it's not that radical a guess. What was your eisbiber building?"
Nick trades a look with Hank.
"A bridge."
"Oh, well," Adalind says, taking another sip of her tea, "that'll be hässlichs. Bridge trolls, the whole lot of them. They're probably running the planning commission."
Nick stares at her. She's a walking, talking Grimm book with great legs. He's not sure what he did to get this lucky.
"I think you broke him," Hank says. "But even if it is bridge trolls or whatever—how do we prove it?"
"That they're bridge trolls? Forget it. That they murdered your victim? Easy. Find that witness."
"Thanks," Hank says dryly, "we never would have thought of that."
"You asked."
"Ah, Nick?"
All three of them turn towards the new voice, and Nick stands in a rush when he sees Bud on the other side of the desk, looking anxious and jittery the way Nick is beginning to suspect only Bud can.
"Hi," Bud says, taking a step back under the scrutiny from Hank and Adalind. "I think you were looking for me? And boy, am I looking for you. We gotta big problem."
