Pairing: Captain Sean Renard x OFC (written as a reader)
Rating: Explicit
Summary: You heard of the Portland Grimm and leave your fundamentalist group of naiads in Vancouver. You just wanted a safe fresh start; you didn't expect to fall in love with a royal hybrid police captain.
“Lots of men want to stay in a boat because they're afraid of drowning. But a mermaid knows: life is just not worth living if you're not ready to drown a few times.”
― C. JoyBell C.
Captain Sean Reynard has many secrets. Some are larger than others. This one is fairly small, relatively speaking.
He owns a kayak.
It’s dusty, and hasn't been used in years. He had bought it on a whim, trying to impress a woman long forgotten now, and now he’s thankful for that impulsive purchase. It’s almost eleven at night when he unlatches it from the roof rack of his car and slips the front of it into the water. The moon is full tonight, turning the river silver and the trees on the river bank more gray than black. He’s grabbing the paddle when he hears your footsteps on the soft riverbank.
“I wasn’t sure if you were making it out tonight,” you say. “Heard it was a rough day in the office.”
“Rough day in the office means meeting up with you will be a certainty.”
Your eyes glint in the bright moonlight as you smile at his comment. He still is getting used to having someone genuinely pleased to have him in their presence, no expectations or favors. You’re already dressed in your swimsuit, bare feet, toes curling into the soft silt as the river laps around your ankles. He knows you’ve spent most of the hot summer day in the river, that you know the currents, branches, and estuaries as well as he knows all the roads and neighborhoods in Portland. The perks of being a naiad and a police captain.
He moves towards you, leaning down to kiss you but you retreat a couple steps further into the river with a coy smile. “You’re going to have to catch me first.”
“Well that hardly seems fair.”
“I’ll go easy on you,” you give him a wink before turning and disappearing under the silver water.
He watches the ripples of your movement as you do your laps under the surface and wait for him to launch the kayak. By the time he’s made it to the halfway point in the river, he can see the electric blue glow of your gills as you circle around the kayak. He pulls his paddle out of the water and rests it across his lap. He waits for a few moments, enjoying the silence, letting his eyes adjust to the night sky as more stars start to appear in his vision. He needs this after the frustrations today; he needs the quiet, the physical effort…you.
Your electric blue eyes are peering at him from the pointed bow of the kayak. You sink below the surface again but appear at the side of the kayak, effortlessly pulling yourself up and sitting, perfectly balanced, in front of him with minimal shifting of the boat. You stay in your naiad form to help with your balancing, air whistling and chirping quietly from the gills along your neck.
“Do you want to talk about your day?”
He shakes his head. “No. I’d rather hear about your day.”
“All my swimming and playing with my fishy friends?”
“Says the woman who got kicked out of the all you can eat sushi bar last week?”
“I almost got kicked out! Get your facts straight, Captain.”
“My apologies.” He lays a hand over yours and you instinctively pull it away but he catches it, slipping his fingers through yours like a hook and halting your retreat. He can feel the scars of the cutting, the lack of webbing between your fingers. He knows if he looks at your feet, he’ll find the same disfigurement there too. He changes into his hybrid form and waits for your eyes to meet his. “You’re not the only one with marks of shame.”
You squeeze his hand back and give him a small smile. This is usually when you start listing the differences between them: he had zero control over his heritage, you had made the conscious decision to go against eons of tradition. His mother had tried to protect him as best she could. Your husband had stood by and watched you be cut by the village elders so they wouldn’t do the same to him. He has tried to convince you, shame is shame, details be damned. One day, he hopes you’ll believe him that when he sees you, all he can see is strength, resilience, and bravery.
He sees everything he wants to be and that’s a much bigger secret than the kayak.
Grimm, 36K (and counting), Rated T
Nick Burkhardt/Monroe
We’re up to chapter eight now, kids! And this one is a big, important one. Featuring: the much anticipated Breakup TM; Hank, Wu, and Nick bro solidarity; and more on-screen Nick & Monroe interaction than I think we’ve seen in any previous chapter so far.
Here is a snippet for you:
“So,” Wu repeated, in a pointed whine, “what happened? Give us the sweet deets. The hot gossip. Air your dirty laundry.”
Nick shrugged and took an uncomfortable sip of his beer, hunching forward. “Nothing happened.”
“Long term relationships don’t usually implode over nothing,” Wu pointed out, not unkindly.
“Jesus, Drew,” Hank muttered, cutting him a dirty look over the top of his glass. “Have a little fucking compassion.”
“You gotta lance the wound!” Wu said, slapping his palm against the table so hard the unattended glassware wobbled. He pointed at Nick with the hand he had curled around his beer, one finger extended. “It sucks, and it’s painful, but you can’t heal until you let the poison out. Words of wisdom straight from my grandmother, Huifen Wu.” He gave his head a slow shake and said mournfully, “God rest her soul.”
“Your grandmother isn’t dead,” Hank scoffed. “She runs a five-star noodle joint in San Francisco.”
“Best zhajiangmian on the West Coast,” Wu nodded. “And she knows what she’s talking about when it comes to matters of the heart, too.” He turned to look at Nick, beckoning with his fingers. “Come on, Burkie. Let it out.”
In the aftermath of Zerstorer's defeat, Adalind beings to have strange and terrifying dreams about a clearing she's never been in, a final battle that, for her, never took place. Worse, she begins to suspect that someone has put a spell on both her and Nick. But when she goes to Rosalee for help and her worst fears are confirmed, it sets into motion a chain of events that none of them might survive.
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic violence, major character death (eventually)
Ships: established Nick/Adalind, Nick/Eve (eventual), Hank/Wu (eventual)
Characters: Nick, Eve, Adalind, Hank, Wu, Rosalee, Trubel, Monroe, Bud, & Sean
Additional Tags/Warnings: Romantic coercion via magic, background Monrosalee, post-finale, post-canon fix-it, villain!Adalind, twinning spell aftermath, truth spell
Note: If you’re a fan of Nadalind, you probably won’t like this story over the long haul. If you have any questions about ships, character deaths, etc., feel free to send me a message!
The trees seem to loom and glower overhead, their spindly-fingered shadows stretching long and dark across the clearing. A cabin nestles among their bases, a dwarf among giants. Its empty windows impart a sense of foreboding, as if everything around her senses the horror coming ever closer.
It’s too quiet. There should be crickets, and wind creaking its way through old bark and dry leaves. The baby should be crying. But the house remains as silent as it is dark.
The landscape is picked out of the darkness in shades of green-gray, even her companions’ faces. Nick turns to look at her just as He steps out of the trees into the clearing, statuesque white face and golden hair the only splashes of color to be seen in any direction.
His eyes find hers through the dimness, pull her gaze from Nick’s worried stare.
Something changes.
Suddenly everything that weighed on her mind seems far away. There is no worry, or pain. There’s no anxiety about the future, about her children, about the man who sleeps beside her at night. What are their names? What is hers? Meaningless, made-up words.
The only word that matters is Power. It sparks beneath her skin like lightning, lovely and terrible in equal measure. Intoxicating. Terrifying. She feels her mouth widen into an old expression, barely familiar: a cold rictus grin she hasn’t worn for years now. There is no happiness behind it, but happiness does not matter either. It is the signal to those who oppose her that death isn’t coming: it is here.
She lifts her chin, raises her hands. The current beneath her skin crackles, surges. The man with the golden hair crumbles along with the staff in his hand, ash and splinters blown away on the wind before they touch the scorched earth he stood on. The man beside her—his name, his name…it’s too far away for her to reach—draws in a sharp breath: awe and fear. He spins toward her and grabs her by the shoulders.
As soon as his hands touch her, he begins to burn away.
The last things to go are his eyes, glimmering green through the darkness, hurt and betrayed. She’s laughing and laughing; she can’t seem to stop. Somewhere, a baby is crying…
Adalind opens her eyes with a start, blinking in confusion as the low, dingy ceiling of the bunker swims into clarity above her. She feels clammy and too warm at the same times. Sitting up slowly, she wipes at her face and pushes her sweat-damp hair away from her forehead, behind her ears. The horror of the dream lingers in her mind’s periphery, but the details are quickly slipping through her fingers, all the faster for how hard she tries to hold onto them.
It takes her a few moments to register that the sound of a baby crying followed her out of the dream. As soon as she does, it stops, and Nick comes into view with a bundle in his arms, bouncing gently and whisper-singing horribly off-key. She offers him a tired, apologetic smile.
“Sorry,” she says softly. “I was having a dream. I think I thought Kelly crying was part of it.”
“It’s fine,” Nick half-yawns, still bouncing. “He just needed changing.”
She can’t help but smile; Nick is so good with Kelly. He answers her smile with one of his own and joins her on the bed, re-positioning Kelly between them.
“Hey little guy,” Adalind whispers to their shared bundle. A sleepy cooing is all she gets for an answer, but her smile grows…almost too wide. Her face falls, part of the dream coming back to her.
“Nick,” she says slowly, leaning against him and keeping her voice soft, “when you came through the mirror, you said you’d done all of it before. That you and Eve came through, and Zerstorer followed you?”
“Yeah,” he says. His voice sounds haunted, the way it always does when he talks about Zerstorer…which is not often. “He hunted us down, one by one. It was terrible. First Hank and Wu…then Eve…the rest of us went to hide out in that cabin, way out in the woods…the one where I solved my first case as a Grimm.”
“Right,” she says. “The one at the edge of a little clearing, right? Like something out of a fairy tale…”
“Yeah…one of the originals,” he chuckles darkly. “And he found us there. He wanted Diana…and Kelly. I had to watch him…he killed you. And Renard. And Monroe and Rosalee. Right in front of me, and I couldn’t…do anything. It was horrible.”
She slides an arm around his shoulders carefully and gives him a light squeeze. He leans into the touch, resting his chin on top of her head.
“I think I dreamed about it,” she says. “Like I remembered it, only…I can’t, right? Not really. It didn’t happen for me.”
“I’m glad it didn’t happen for you,” he says fiercely. “It was horrible. All my worst nightmares coming true at once.”
“I wish you didn’t have to remember it,” she murmurs, feeling herself growing sleepy again.
“You and me both.” He kisses the top of her head. “You were…you were so brave. You fought tooth and nail for them. For us.”
She’s silent, struck again by that almost-memory feeling from the dream.
“You never told me that before,” she whispers. He looks at her over Kelly’s head and smiles.
“I hate thinking about it…about how it ended,” he admits. She knows that, of course. She smiles, then sheepishly stifles a yawn. “We should probably put Kelly back to bed before we fall asleep with him in here with us.”
“I can do it,” Nick says, but she can tell he’s mostly asleep already. She smiles and takes Kelly from him carefully, pressing a kiss to his forehead as she does. “Get some sleep, Nick.”
He opens his eyes all the way for just a moment, green and grey and full of things he’s never said to her.
“Thank you,” he breathes. And then he’s out, and she turns away to go put Kelly back in his crib.
“I love you,” she says to the empty air. There’s no answer from behind her, but it chases away some of the niggling uneasiness left over from the dream all the same.
“Nick, look out!”
He throws himself aside just in time for the Reaper’s scythe to miss his head by inches. He feels the wind from it ruffle his hair and suppresses a shudder. That was too close.
Propelling himself backward, he twists and thrusts out with the short sword in his left hand. The wet crunch followed by a dull, heavy thud tells him his blow hit home, and he pulls back to survey the crumpled body of the former Reaper, whose head has vacated his shoulders and rolled a few feet away. He grimaces; no matter how many times he does it, he never quite gets used to the bloody aftermath of a beheading.
Monroe, on the other hand, seems completely unfazed. He bounds over to Nick with bright eyes and a wide smile, clapping him on the shoulder in congratulations.
“Good job, man…yeesh. Clean-up’s gonna be murder, though.”
From his lookout perch, Wu shouts down: “Hey, puns are my sole and exclusive purview. Otherwise what am I doing here?”
“Keeping me company,” Hank calls from his hiding spot several yards away.
“Hey guys,” Nick cuts in. “Who wants to help me clean up?”
A flurry of “not it” sounds from all sides. He rolls his eyes and laughs. “Oh sure, make me do the wet work and the clean-up.”
“I’ll help,” A woman’s voice says from behind him. He freezes, then turns to see the owner of the voice standing a few feet away. His face breaks into a delighted grin, and he closes the distance between them, pulling her into a tight hug.
“Eve! When did you get back into town!?”
“Just today,” she says, half-laughing and returning his embrace somewhat more reservedly. “I found Rosalee and Adalind at the spice shop, cooking up some kind of super complicated potion. They said you guys were out hunting a rogue Reaper?”
“It is all true,” Hank says, joining them and pulling Eve out of Nick’s hug and into a one-armed version of his own. “Come here, how’ve you been?”
“I’m…really good, Hank. Thanks for asking,” she says earnestly. “So what’s with these guys? I thought the Reapers had pretty much left Portland alone since Nick started shipping their heads back in boxes.”
“Well, yeah, they did…” Wu says, joining them as well. He gives Eve a pat, but does not subject her to anymore bear hugs. “Until the Royals all bit it and created a power vacuum that one of these nasty little guys is just dying to fill. Literally. Since Nick and Company more or less took out the Royals one by one, the rest of the Wesen world seems to think Portland is some kind of epicenter of power, and thus whosoever takes the throne here—“
“Takes over for the Royals? You’re kidding.” Eve cuts in. Wu shakes his head.
“Believe me, I have never wished more than now that I was kidding. But no. It seems like every other week we’ve got another Reaper—or Wesen—who would be king trying to kill our resident Grimm to assert their dominance.”
“That’s…really messed up, even for Portland,” Eve says. “So what are you planning to do? Just keep beheading whatever shows up to challenge you?”
“Not exactly,” Nick says. “Come on, let’s go back to the spice shop. We’ll fill you in on everything.”
“Yeah,” interjects Hank, “and you can tell us what all you’ve been up to since you’ve been gone.”
Eve falls into step with them all easily as they head back out of the woods, chatting as they walk. She’s a little surprised at how comfortable it is, actually. She and Nick didn’t exactly part on the best note, and she had been a little nervous about what kind of reception was waiting for her. But it seems that whatever was broken between them then has, at least for now, been mended.
She takes in the trees as they go, the impossible green of everything around them. The air feels cool and wet against her skin, smells like rain and moss when she breathes in deep. Just like always. She smiles.
It’s good to be home.
Six Months Ago
Eve walks swiftly toward the truck idling in Monroe and Rosalee’s driveway. Everything she owns—it isn’t much, after all—is already packed and ready to go, except for the bag slung over her shoulder. She tosses that into the passenger’s seat and walks around, so intent on her destination that she doesn’t even register Nick leaning against the driver’s side door until she reaches out to grab the handle and gets a fistful of his jacket instead.
“Nick,” she says tonelessly, pulling her hand back. She knows why he’s there, and if she ever finds out who told him she’ll give them an earful…but for now she just wants him to move so that she can get out of here and avoid the painful, awkward conversation she knows is coming.
“You’re leaving,” he says, clearly striving to keep his voice as neutral as hers and failing; a faint accusatory note comes through instead.
“Yes.” She doesn’t look at him.
“Without saying goodbye?” Now he sounds hurt, and she really does not want to do this.
“Would that make it easier?” She looks up at him finally, pins him with her stare, waits. He can’t quite meet her eyes.
“No,” he says finally, sounding defeated. “Why?” He sounds so…pleading.
She sighs, giving up the faint hope that she might get out of Portland without having to hash this out. Thus resigned, she turns to join him in leaning against the warm, rumbling side of the truck.
“You know why,” she says softly. “I need some distance, from this place, from everything, from—“
“From me,” he interrupts. “Come on, just say it. You’re running away from me. Because you…you know.”
“I know that you love Adalind,” she says softly, painfully. “I know that despite everything, you don’t want to do anything to hurt her. And…I think maybe you need some distance from me as well.”
He’s quiet for a long time. Guiltily, she allows herself to enjoy it. Emotions are still something she has to actively allow herself to feel, sometimes. She still thinks it’s safer, better, to keep them under tight control. But she’s never been great at staying in check when it comes to Nick, not even when she was HW’s wind-up assassin. She should not allow herself to enjoy the cool night air, the warm weight of Nick’s shoulder pressed against her own, the fog from their breath mingling in the air.
But she does enjoy it, because she doesn’t know when—or even if—she’ll see him again. She doesn’t even know who she really is without him. He was and is the one thing that keeps her anchored to her past as a regular human, as Juliette. Which is part, or maybe even most, of the reason she has to go.
“I wish you were wrong,” he says finally, still without looking at her. “But I don’t think you are.” His voice is full of loss, regret. There was a time she knew how to help, how to hold him together when the dangers of this life he chose became too much for him to bear. But that sweetness was beaten out of her, along with her anger, her fear…so many things. Only her love for him had stayed, try as she might to rid herself of it. No amount of beating, burning, or flaying could remove that. It might as well have been carved into her bones.
She doesn’t allow herself to regret, though, not any of it. Not ever. But for one searing moment, she does let herself wish, lets the ache for something she’ll never have again consume her entirely. Only a moment, and then it’s gone.
“I need to say goodbye now, Nick,” she says, turning to him with a look that clearly telegraphs that he should move out of her way. He just looks at her for several seconds, searching. Whatever he’s seeking, he must not find it, because he pushes away from the truck and backs up to the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, looking cold and strangely small.
“Take care of yourself, Eve,” he says, and she knows the bitterness tingeing his voice will stay with her for a long time. Still, she doesn’t allow herself to respond. She gets in the truck, locks the doors, and pulls away from the curb. She keeps her eyes on the road ahead of her, carefully doesn’t look back to watch his shadowy form shrink in the distance.
When she does finally look, just before she turns off Monroe and Rosalee’s street, there’s no shadow to see. Nick is gone.
Let me tell you something I can barely put in words (1100+ words)
The wind sweeps past him as he steps off the Greyhound, thebite of the remnants of winter chill tucked in its gust. He adjusts the strapof his satchel draped over his left shoulder, his Grimm-senses on high alert to the new surroundings.
As much as he would rather stay in Portland, this is exactlywhere he needs to be.
Pairing: Captain Sean Renard x OFC (written as a reader)
Rating: Explicit
Summary: You heard of the Portland Grimm and leave your fundamentalist group of naiads in Vancouver. You just wanted a safe fresh start; you didn't expect to fall in love with a royal hybrid police captain.
Pairing: Captain Sean Renard x OFC (written as a reader)
Rating: Explicit
Summary: You heard of the Portland Grimm and leave your fundamentalist group of naiads in Vancouver. You just wanted a safe fresh start; you didn't expect to fall in love with a royal hybrid police captain.
There are two things that naiads are experts in: swimming and secrets.
When you first met Sean Renard, you immediately recognized a fellow secret keeper. Words were used sparsely and with the craft of saying enough but providing no actual information. It was a language that you spoke fluently and his presence soon became the closest thing you ever felt to being home. You didn’t think he felt the same way until you saw the red kayak on the river at ten o’clock at night two days after the close of the case you had offered assistance.
The late night rendezvous continued for the next two weeks, you floating alongside the boat while conversation flowed, still guarded but slowly unfurling tiny bits of information. You moved from Vancouver for a fresh start. His ancestry was old, traced back hundreds of years from Europe. You were living in a broken down house along the river because that was all you could afford. He was living in a penthouse in Portland. You had taught yourself how to read and write, your village not strong believers in their women being educated. He spoke five languages and had the best education money could buy.
Slowly, more valuable pieces started to become revealed. His hybrid heritage. Your disfigured hands and feet. His tiring game of playing both ends against the middle to protect the Portland Grimm. Your deep scars of a betrayal from someone you had trusted. He was searching for balance between the two worlds he represented. You were searching for the girl who had dreams and once believed that love was real.
So you found each other.
Due to the situation he found himself in, along with a diabolical brother who searched for leverage in every aspect of his life, you understood why this needed to stay a secret. For your protection and everyone else around you, no one could know that you had regained that tiny spark of hope that maybe love wasn’t a myth. You still weren’t convinced of what this was between you two but it was precious enough to protect. And you did, for the first time in a long time, feel truly protected. So you kept the secret.
“Where are we going?”
You glance over your shoulder. “What’s the matter, Sean? Don’t you trust me?”
The smile he gives you is sly, a subtle twist to the side of his mouth. “All I asked is what did you do today. Now you have me on one of the uninhabited islands in the middle of the river. I’m sure you can understand my unease.”
“I do,” you respond. Trust is hard for both of you after the lives you’ve lived. “It’s worth it, I promise.”
You found the abandoned fishing shack the same way you find everything, by accident. Growing up along riverbanks and on the edges of lakes in Vancouver, you had more of a need to know the flow of the water and the islands that got in the way of it. You were spending much of your free time learning the same thing here in Portland. That knowledge is what crossed your path with Detectives Burkhart and Griffin.
A group of college kids who had too much to drink had gone missing after an afternoon of tubing on the river. They unknowingly became prey for some rowdy wendigo and needed to be found ASAP. Burkhart had reached out to the naiad community in the harbor and you had wanted to show your worth to your new community. You didn’t expect to be the one to find them but you did, only one out of the group of seven fell victim to the wendigo. Now, you were the riverway consultant for the Portland PD.
After your maiming, you were still able to be useful.
The shack was falling down, abandoned for years. It didn’t take much to patch the small roof or replace the broken board walls. It was meant to be a shelter from the elements, nothing longstanding. There’s no electricity that runs into it so you have to get creative in how to fix it up. Abel and his daughters helped you out by using their fishing boat to bring a futon, small armchair, and a desk. You brought some of your books and candles. You pitched it to them as your retreat but your true intention is to share it with only one other person.
He takes in the ramshackle little hut with cautious curiosity. “Did you build this?”
“No, I’m not that talented.”
You push the door open hesitantly. You had already lit some of the candles, the soft glow flickering off the wooden walls and furniture. It actually looked more inviting than you thought it would. But then you remember the one time you visited his apartment in Portland. The large windows overlooking the city and river. The polished granite counters in the kitchen, the artwork that hung on the walls, and the bottle of wine he was there to pick up. All of it was worth more than anything you had ever seen before in your life. What were you thinking trying to pass this off as something special?
“I think it’s lovely.”
You feel heat rise to your cheeks. He’s patronizing you. Making the simple, little naiad believe she had done something magnificent when really he was laughing at you. Words are failing you and you silently stare at your feet until he nudges your shoulder playfully.
“You going to let me in? Because I really want to investigate something in there.”
You look around the space wondering what he could be talking about when he picks you up, your arms looping around his neck and your legs wrapping around his waist. You start to ask what it was he wanted to investigate when he takes the opportunity to kiss you. After a long day of not seeing each other, you easily give in to the familiar press of his lips against yours. You hear the door being kicked shut and feel yourself in freefall, stopped when you land on the futon.
“So,” you ask him from your sprawled position on the blankets, “what exactly did you want to investigate?”
He pulls his shirt over his head and drops it on the floor. “I want to see if that futon can hold the both of us.”
You reach behind your back and untie the crocheted bikini top, tossing it on top of his discarded shirt. His eyes darken at the sight of your bare breasts and suddenly this rehabbed fishing hut doesn’t seem like such a silly secret after all.
