The next morning, he looks tired and miserable and very slightly ashamed. All grumpy monosyllables, stone-faced and watching her from the corner of his eye.
"Sean, I'm British, and I don't even respect my own monarchy, I'm not going to treat you any differently." She gives him a sudden impish smile, "Unless you can abuse your title to get a table in a posh restaurant, what even is the point?"
He swings round to look at her. This is worse than the kittens thing. She grins at him. The appalling insolent woman merely grins at him. He wants to shake her for it.
"Take it seriously, Isabelle. They are a very real danger."
Her face goes very still and calm, eyes slightly too bright. And then she puts her hands on his chest.
"You have three bloody great bullet holes in you to tell me that, Sean," her lip trembles a bit before she catches it, "I make horrible inappropriate jokes because I'm terrified, okay? I'm sorry. Your day job is dangerous enough without some bloody political nutjobs kicking off, too. I'm from a country where we usually simply tut politely about things, and now I live somewhere where everyone carries a gun. And that's before the whole other teeth and claws bit I've found out about. I need to keep it together so I don't have a breakdown."
He's bad at comfort. And he daren't touch her the way he suddenly wants to.
"I will protect you."
"Who is protecting you?"
"Me?" She's still looking up, as if she hasn't pulled the world from under him. Because he's supposed to keep her safe. "I've been avoiding them for most of my life, and I've been a cop for twenty years. And while a lot of the wesen community know the rumour that there is a Royal in Portland, they don't know who that is. I'm careful."
(Bombs and bullets, and the Verrat. Shooting his cousin. Steward, out of nowhere, with that gun...)
She blinks, snatches her hands away, but he can still feel the sensation through his shirt.
"Well, you're going to be late for work if you don't hurry up. And so am I."
Tips her chin up, and walks away before she cries on him. She's probably made him supremely uncomfortable, touching him like that.
She has, but not the way she thinks. He'd spent some time last night wrestling with the startling little flash of attraction he'd had (not so little, not so startling – he's been deliberately ignoring his subconscious for the last week or so) had nearly convinced himself it was nothing, until she'd laid her hands on him. This is going to be a problem.
If he'd just thought for a few minutes, if he hadn't made an assumption, lost control, he could have walked into the house and been polite and civilised. She wouldn't know a thing. He could have had the dinners and the conversation, her presence, without this terrible fear that she was going to know him, see him, find him out in ways that he didn't want her to. Let her have half the man, the public face, not this off-balance edgy wreck.
And it wouldn't have worked. Any other woman would be content with his human face and the superficial charm. But any other woman wouldn't be Isabelle. If she stays here, if she lives with him, sooner or later, she's going to meet his other life. He wants her as far away from it as possible. But he wants her, too.
Renard calls Nick into his office late that day – he hasn't heard from his mother, and she's not picking up her calls. He really hopes that isn't because she's run into Nick's mother. It's not reassuring that the Grimm hasn't heard from his mother, either.
(His daughter is ten months old, and he'd held her for maybe a few hours of that. He understands why Adalind hates him, he hates himself. What had he been thinking?)
"I had to tell Isabelle about the Royals. About me."
"How did she take that?"
"She asked if that meant better restaurant reservations," Renard says sourly. Nick snorts, before he can help himself, then sobers.
"She's not taking it seriously?"
"Oh, she is." His face goes soft and bewildered for a moment, then hardens, "I hadn't intended to tell her at all, yet. You forced my hand."
"Someone was going to mention the Royals sooner or later, once she knew about wesen. And I get the impression she would work it out for herself pretty quickly, anyway."
Renard sighs, because he can't deny that.
"She does put things together remarkably fast."
"Have you told Isabelle about – other things yet?" It's a very personal question, he knows it, and the way Renard goes rigid, he doesn't blame him.
"Not your business, detective."
"It sort of is, if your mother catches up to my mother before we can warn one or other of them." The Captain is utterly stone-faced and rightfully pissed, though, so Nick leaves it there. "I'll keep trying to get through, and I will let you know."
"Thank you." Curt dismissal.
Nick thinks about that little tableau, Isabelle looking up into that horror of a face, the way Renard had been looking back down at her. Hard to read his expression, but cops know body language.
"It's never a good idea to keep big secrets from the people you love, sir, I should know."
Renard stares at the closing door in total bewilderment.
"...What?"
It's disconcerting to come home to a dark and empty house, he finds. It disturbs him how quickly he's become used to someone (Isabelle) in his space. This is how it used to be, dropping his keys on the counter, careless and tired and an evening of nothing but his own bleak thoughts. He's halfway towards the decanter before he pulls himself up and turns towards the kitchen. It isn't like he doesn't know where the saucepans are. Whilst he's eaten his share of stakeout takeout over the years, knows how to eat pizza without dripping sauce down his tie, he is a grown man and capable of following a recipe, he can cook, he simply doesn't, generally.
She's gratifyingly delighted when she comes in. He hears her before he sees her, that sharp tap of her shoes that indicates that she's annoyed. She doesn't do that shiny over-ironed look he associates with professional women, smooth curtains of hair, bright colour on lips and nails, vicious heels – it's more subtle, but she has an air of elegant authority to her -
"Did you have a nice day at the office, dear?"
...which was only slightly dented by her sticking her tongue out at him.
"Marketing are whining about Sales, Sales are whining about Marketing, Research is whining about their budget, and Logistics buggered up the holiday delivery schedule for Seattle." She takes in the sight of him at the stove, and her eyes widen, "And...I skipped lunch, I am really hungry and you are a lovely, lovely man, feed me."
"Glass of wine, sit on the couch."
Kicking off her heels, and shedding her jacket, and sitting on the couch with her feet curled under her, watching him try not to grate his knuckles into the parmesan. A flush on her cheeks, the neat chignon loosening at the end of the day, escaping tendrils softening the severity of it. He likes that she relaxes with him. That is not something many people do, more likely to tense up around him.
Isabelle decides afterwards that that was the moment she really knew she was in trouble. Watching Sean Renard frowning at a pan of pasta as he grated cheese. The long elegant lines of him, tie discarded, sleeves half-rolled, that little crease between his brows that she increasingly wants to smooth away.
He probably shouldn't feel as proud as he does of making a simple fettucine Alfredo, really, but it's been a while. (He hasn't cooked for anybody in... he can't recall.)
"Do you do anything particular for Christmas?" she asks, idly, as they eat.
"What, like sacrifice a few patrolmen?"
She gives him a look over her plate.
"I was being serious. I don't really see you as the type to hang tinsel on everything, but I wondered. The office at work has gone a bit mental."
He considers.
"Not really. It's been just me for years, so I often work the holiday shift."
(Last year, he'd been dodging the Verrat in Europe, hunting down Adalind. He wonders about his daughter's first Christmas. If she's happy. Increasingly, he's not at all sure if he did the right thing. But he remembers very well the Family behaviour towards him, he doesn't want her to be a pawn or a plaything, or suffer the same bullying and little 'accidents' he did.) Shakes that thought off, and finds a smile,
"When I was very young, I lived in Europe, I remember walking around the Christmas markets, and going to Mass."
She's quite hilariously disconcerted.
"You're Catholic?"
"My early upbringing. I don't practice."
The last time he had been in a church was to deal with the Taymor affair. Even he is a little creeped out by the priest's wesen form. Nachttodesfällen are thankfully extremely rare. They gravitated to jobs that let them lurk, and they were not social. (A disproportionate number did end up in the priesthood, it might be the access to belfries.)
"I tried to get away from it all last year, went on a New Age spa retreat, and they still put up a tree and tried to get people to sing carols." Tilts her head and grins at him, "I really never figured I might be more pagan than you, considering."
"No Midnight Mass, and cancel the carol-singers, noted," he says, dryly, "You aren't visiting family back in Britain, then?"
"It's just my parents, and they are elderly enough to like a quiet time of it. I'll probably do what I do most years, treat myself to some expensive gourmet nosh and binge-watch trashy films."
"There's a police function coming up," he's deliberately off-hand, "I usually attend for an hour or so, if you'd rather do something other than sit at home for the evening?"
That was distinctly less than his usual suave standard, and he winces inwardly. But Isabelle smirks, does a little mock clap.
"Ooh, rubber chicken and warm white wine? Or punch and buffet roulette with the canapés?"
She's done holiday work functions for years, of course. He gives her a stern look back.
"There's a halfway decent bar, you are not to get up and dance on it."
"Spoil my fun." Wrinkles her nose at him. "Don't you see your mother at Christmas?"
"My mother's gone walkabout again, and I can't reach her by phone."
"You could leave a message through the company intranet," Isabelle says, carelessly, "I know she checks her work mail."
Elizabeth does. She's extremely confused by the sender address initially, until she realises who the carefully worded message is from. Then she's still confused and slightly alarmed, because how does her son have access to the business mail server, unless – she closes her eyes, and groans internally. He's still at the house with her. At least he doesn't do feelings.
Kelly Burkhardt had spent eighteen years well hidden, with only the odd guerilla assassination or five, so it is apparent that whilst she can by her own means catch up with the woman, approaching her without being beheaded will be very difficult. Sean may or may not have made things worse, she can't tell. He seems to have a working relationship with his own Grimm, who was a nice boy, if hopelessly out of his depth and rather naïve still. Working with Sean for any length of time will sort that out. Her son is many things, but nice and naïve are not two of them.
She's still on the continent, by Elizabeth's estimation. Diana is still too young for some of the more clandestine travel routes, that awkward age when they are too large to be bundled for travel, but not old enough to understand that they have to be still and quiet. (Her boy, with his wounded eyes and gangling limbs, covering up his fear and confusion with that stony mask that he hadn't yet perfected then, voice cracking, but ready to be a man years before he should.) On the one hand, she understands why the child needed to be taken away, far too tempting a target to have them all in one place, though she'd let them have the mother. In fact, once Diana is secure, she may take some time to hunt Adalind down, and deal with the problem herself. There's a time for hexenbiest sisterhood, and a time to utterly crush some insolent little bitch who dared to use her son. She certainly owes Kelly Burkhardt a debt for Catherine, and would tell her so, if she can get a word in before it goes to hell. But she should be the one to have her flesh and blood, she has resources and experience in dodging murderous Royals, and keeping a targeted child alive.
He's still well and healthy at the moment, but time is not on their side. She should tell him, but it will need to be in person. Another month or so, and she'll have to return to Portland. It will be time, then. The Black Moon.