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We’re Going On a Man Hunt
Part Five of the Mutually Assured… Series
The Night Before…
Oh god, if her mother could see her now, Adalind would be disowned… which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, considering her mother was Catherine Schade. But still.
No one
could
ever
know that, after a long day of work, instead of going home, Adalind
intentionally
went to a Blutbad’s house to play antique trains with him.
And why did that sound so sexual?
As far as Adalind was aware - and her sexual awareness was
en pointe
, thank you very much,
playing antique trains
was not a euphemism. For anything. And yet… caboose did carry some connotations, and there were possibilities with the term conductor, and trains
could be
long, long like a…
Nope.
She wasn’t going there.
Because it was one thing for Adalind to flirt with and sexualize everything when it came to her relationship with Nick. They shared a wonderfully disturbing and a disturbingly wonderful non-animal animal magnetism. But she wasn’t with Nick, or thinking about Nick, or setting up Nick’s
multiple
Christmas train sets; she was with Monroe, and Monroe was like her…? Well, Adalind would have said her brother, but that was too insulting. A Hexenbiest siblings with a Blutbad? Perish the thought! So, if not her brother, then Monroe was her…? Nope. Not
her
anything. Monroe was
a
Monroe. That’s it. And Monroes were entirely asexual, which made the last five minutes inside of Adalind’s brain an affront to her intelligence and sensibilities. No doubt the sheer madness had been created by the delicious rocket fuel disguised as Monroe’s eggnog.
Returning to the task at hand - Adalind was responsible for arranging the Christmas village display around which the train tracks, Monroe’s job, would run, she was contemplating what mattered more - verisimilitude or aesthetics in the placement of the lampposts - when there was a knock at the door.
“Nooo!,” Adalind stood up straight, her eyes meeting and then locking with those of an equally petrified Monroe. Neither of them moved towards the entry.
“Are you expecting anyone,” he asked.
“I don’t live here,” Adalind hissed, glowering at him. “This is
your
house!”
“Oh. Yeah. I knew that.” Still, Monroe did nothing.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Get rid of them!”
“Right,” the Blutbad jumped at her command.
Ha!
, Adalind had to stifle a laugh.
And they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks
. Monroe had only taken a few steps when he paused again, turning back towards her as he sought further guidance. “But… how?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be a recluse?” Waving dismissively, Adalind suggested, “furrow your brow. Tell them to get off your lawn.
Growl
at them.”
But when he opened the door, he didn’t do any of those perfectly good ideas. Instead, Monroe slammed the door shut again, whipping around to whisper-yell, “it’s Nick!”
“The Grimm?!”
Monroe rolled his eyes. “Do we know any other Nicks who like to randomly,
repeatedly
pop in
uninvited
to ask
us
for favors?”
“Oh god, imagine if there were two of them?!” Adalind shuddered, feeling both nauseous
and
aroused.
“Bite your marked, forked tongue, Hexenbiest!”
Through the door, Nick yelled, “I can hear you talking to someone, Monroe,
and
I already saw you, so I know you’re home,” prompting the Blutbad to once more crack it open.
“Uh… now’s not a good time, Nick.”
“Look, it’s important,” the Grimm insisted. Adalind rolled her eyes. Nick thought everything was important, but she had to admire his persistence. She just wished he’d find a better use for it than on behalf of his Wesen suspects and victims.
“But, as you’ve already
detected
, I’m not alone.”
Adalind could hear the amusement in Nick’s next words all the way across the room. “Monroe, are you
entertaining
?”
Monroe started to say, “yes, that’s exactly what I’m…,”
But Adalind didn’t let him finish, desperately calling out, “oh, no you’re not, Blutbad!” He turned around to look at her like
she
was the idiot, widening his eyes and shrugging his shoulders in a wordless
‘what the hell are you doing
?’ But Adalind could say the same to him. And more! Clarifying the situation and Nick’s insinuations, Adalind said, “he thinks you have
company
and that
I’m
your
lady friend.
”
“Well, I mean, I
do
have company right now, and I don’t know about the whole lady part, but we’re friends.”
Hissing, she gave it to him straight. “He thinks we’re sleeping together.”
Monroe’s face went comically pale
and
flushed at the same time, and, without further argument with her or protesting towards Nick, he whipped his front door open so fast that they were lucky the Blutbad didn’t yank the entire thing off of its hinges. “It’s
just
Adalind,” Monroe explained, holding out his hands in supplication, while she frowned at that label. Because, no, she really didn’t want the Grimm to think that Monroe was
entertaining
her, but no woman - and certainly not a Hexenbiest - likes to be referred to as
just
anything. “And, as you can see, I really like Christmas. It’s a family thing. And we were only playing antique trains.”
As Nick strolled into the room like he owned the place - his audacity really pissed her off
and
turned her on, the duality of her reactions towards him that evening was apparently becoming a pattern, he fought a grin, though there was nothing he could do to hide the amusement warming up his gray gaze.
“Playing antique trains
, huh? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
If Adalind wasn’t so distrubed by yet
another
reference to the impossible - her and Monroe actually doing something to deserve that, then she would have appreciated the fact that, evidently, she was rubbing off on the Grimm. Alas, it was just figuratively, but even that was progress. Corrupting his mind wasn’t as fun as corrupting his body, but she could be patient… ish.
A flustered Monroe started handing Nick train pieces while he once more jumped into the history of the sets. Blah. Blah. Blah. Hopefully, the Grimm was a more receptive audience, because Adalind had tuned out as soon as Monroe said the words pre-war. Adalind liked her means of transportation to be modern, sleek, and foreign, thank you very much. Returning to her previous lamppost debate, she was pretty much decided on going with the aesthetics option when she quite clearly heard Nick attempt to whisper, “is she high?!”
“
She
,” Adalind stood up straight to her full height, shoulders rolled back and nose tilted high in the air in an attempt to lend herself as much dignity as possible considering the fact that, without the five and half inches of her cast aside platform stilettos, she was walking all over the hems of her wide leg trousers, “is tired of reminding you that Hexenbiests
also
have enhanced abilities, and
she
heard your impertinent question loud and clear, Grimm.” Calling Nick by what he was rather than by name was supposed to be an insult. Or, at least, it once was. So, why now did it sound like a term of endearment being practically simpered off of her painted lips? “And
she
is merely, slightly, perhaps a tiny bit drunk off of Monroe’s eggnog.”
“Ah,” Nick commented knowingly, flashing her a full-on, pleased as spiked punch grin. “That explains the milk mustache.”
Horrified, Adalind lifted a hand to her mouth, but there was no discreet way to wipe your face clean
after
your always mortal enemy, and your part time partner, and the nightly star of all of your erotic fantasies mocked you and your completely natural but still unwanted facial hair. Luckily, there was nothing there, because she couldn’t very well clean her palm off on her silk blouse, and she didn’t think Monroe would appreciate her using his Christmas stockings as napkins. Narrowing her eyes in an unvoiced yet explicitly delivered threat, Adalind silently promised the Grimm swift and excruciating payback.
“I could get you a cup,” Monroe offered, trying to break the tension in the room.
But Nick shook his head in denial. “I need to tell you guys about this case I’m working on.”
If he noticed Adalind and Monroe share a
here we go again
glance, he didn’t let on. Instead, Nick launched into his tale of a feral Blutbad - yes, Adalind realized that was a redundancy but also appropriate in regards to Holly Clark, an abducted child who he believed had been living in the woods outside of Portland for nine years and had only now resurfaced after evidence put her at the crime scene of a murdered drug dealer. Despite her best intentions, Adalind actually found that she was interested in Nick’s hypothesis about the then little girl and now teenager. She had no patience for the riff-raff he usually dealt with, but a Wesen child who had no one to teach her about her kind or guide her as she learned about her inner wolf? As unorthodox of a mother as Catherine Schade was and as cold and clinical as her upbringing had been, even Adalind had that much - someone to train her and hone her powers.
By the end of Nick’s story, Monroe was just as invested as she was, only the Grimm gave him an outlet, inviting him along to search for Holly the next day. Once their plans were made, it didn’t take much for Nick to be persuaded into having a cup of eggnog with them, though somehow Nick’s eggnog ended up being a beer. As they all drank, they bickered (her and Nick), and they bantered (her and Monroe), and they all ignored the lingering bitterness Nick had tried to hide with his merriment at their expense. Because as much as he reminded them that he loved his Kehrseite girlfriend and that his Kehrseite cop buddies were great, it was Adalind and Monroe that Nick kept coming back to for comfort, companionship, and assistance. Yes, Adalind and the Grimm were attempting to establish a partnership built on trust, and Monroe, as a Blutbad, was handy when it came to tracking, but there were certainly times when Nick could handle his cases without their help, yet he sought them out anyway.
Adalind was starting to wonder if Grimm Nick was lonely living Human Nick’s life.
Then again, she was thinking that Nick wasn’t nearly as suspicious as he should be of the surviving Blake brothers in regards to Holly Clark’s
disappearance
nine years earlier, but
she
was, and maybe she’d just have to do something about it;
and
she had consumed four… or was it five?... mugs of eggnog, so what the hell did Adalind know anyway?
The Day Of…
Okay, so maybe the nitwits Blake weren’t responsible for Holly Clark’s kidnapping. Adalind was secure enough to admit that her track record with men wasn’t the greatest: no daddy, then daddy issues, and now there was the… whatever her relationship was with the Grimm. Consequently, her mind might have gone to the worst place possible when considering the seven year old’s abduction: the brothers took her to ransom but then, the perverts that they surely were, kept her. Thankfully, for Holly’s sake, that wasn’t the case, but the ‘I’m with Stupid’ brothers were still bottom of the barrel low-life idiots. For that matter, so, too, were Nick and Hank for not anticipating that the Blakes would go after the witnesses.
Thankfully, Adalind wasn’t as shortsighted, so when Dumbest and Dumbest - because, really, how could she ever truly quantify cretonism that staggering as anything else? - left, she discreetly freed their latest victim before once more taking off after them. Although the Blakes had a head start, the physical embodiment of their inferiority complexes was no match for her sports coupe… well, at least until they left civilization behind. Once the jacked up truck went off road, Adalind was forced to park her Audi and trek after the brothers on foot. As always, she was well heeled, but, when dressing that morning, Adalind had anticipated needing to get her hands dirty, so she was also well prepared, and of course it went without saying that, as a Hexenbiest, she was physically up to the task as well.
Adalind had just jogged by the simpleton siblings’ parked vehicle when she suddenly sensed that she was no longer alone. A bolt of adrenaline shivered down her spine, and it felt like every nerve ending in her body started to hum. But it wasn’t the Blakes who were so near, for they could never cause in her such a reaction. In fact, there was only one person, one thing, that could.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing out here, Adalind,” Nick demanded to know as he grabbed her upper arm and swung her back around to confront him. His grip was purposeful yet not bruising.
“Well, at this precise moment, I’m losing my quarry… thanks to you.”
Nick looked back and forth between the Blakes’ truck and the direction in which the brothers had gone and Adalind had been tracking them. “Why are you following the brothers of my murder victim?”
Shaking him off, she argued, “I think we can agree that victim is a gross exaggeration in this case. And I’m not trailing two boy scouts out for a stroll in the woods; I’m stalking the two pathetic, Kehrseite animals… and they don’t even have the excuse of being Wesen and actual animals… who beat one of your witnesses into a bloody pulp this morning.”
Instead of thanking her for cleaning up his mess, Nick had the audacity to question her, “and you know this how?”
Adalind decided that, if he couldn’t put the pieces together on his own, then he didn’t deserve a straight answer. Tilting her chin at a haughty angle, she replied, “I took a vacation day.” Nick glared, and Adalind smiled. She had the idea that it was probably more a baring of her teeth than anything else. “I know that sparring with me is the climax of your otherwise staid and boring existence, but you do realize that you’re letting the actual bad guys here get away, right?”
Nick pushed around her and then said over his shoulder, “go home, Adalind.”
She ran right by him. “You’re delusional if you think I’m going to allow you to have all of the fun on your own, Grimm!”
“This isn’t a game, Adalind!” He picked up his pace to keep up with her, and then the two of them continued to push each other, constantly overtaking and then falling behind only to add yet another burst of speed to their stride. “This is my career, and Holly Clark is seriously injured and very sick.”
“Look, you wanted me to care, right? To put aside my selfish tendencies and help you in your crusade to save the world. You basically said that, in order to trust me, in order for our partnership to work, I had to make amends. Well, I’m here, Nick. I’m trying to help, and I care about that poor, traumatized girl, so let me.”
She appreciated the fact that he didn’t respond right away, that he truly listened to what she had to say, absorbed her words, and weighed them. “Fine,” he eventually relented. “But you can’t kill the Blakes.”
Petulantly, Adalind complained, “why do you always say that?”
Nick chuckled. “Because I know that’s always your plan.”
Despite how fast they were both running - and running in the woods required more than just quickly putting one foot in front of the other; there were fallen trees to leap over, branches to dodge, roots to avoid, and vines to duck, neither of them was winded. “That’s simply not true. Sometimes, my plan is merely to torture. If my opponent happens to expire during said torture, well, that says more about their stamina than it does my intentions then, doesn’t it?”
“You. Are. Terrifying.”
“Stop it, Nick,” Adalind feigned embarrassment. “You’ll make me blush and burn, and we don’t have time right now.” She sent a coquettish wink in his direction, knowing that, with his Grimm abilities, he’d still be able to see it despite their speed. “Save it for later.”
“I need to hear you say it, Adalind.”
Sighing dramatically, she spoke with determination and mischief. “Yes, Nick, I’ll have sex with you after we save the day.”
“Promise me,” he insisted. “No killing.”
“Relax. I follow the Gesetzbuch Ehrenkodex… at least in spirit.”
“Still don’t speak German,” Nick called out.
“But you’re supposed to be learning how to speak Grimm, and, trust me, your kind definitely had a hand in writing the Gesetzbuch.”
“Would you please just give it to me straight?”
Primly, Adalind practically recited, “I will neither kill the Kehrseite nor allow them to see me in my woged state.”
“But you do plan on woging,” he asked for clarification.
“Nick, you don’t take an un-woged Hexenbiest to a gunfight.” She paused momentarily, allowing her words to sink in. “And if you don’t think that Beavis and Butthead are packing, then you really should just turn in your badge right now.”
He laughed. “What, to you?”
“Well, I am an officer of the court.”
His laugh practically turned into a guffaw. “You’re a corporate lawyer!”
Huffily, she remarked, “I still had to take all the prerequisite courses. I might not be cooking your bookings or defending them either, but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t… if I was so inclined.”
“You as a prosecutor? Lady Justice would weep!”
Needling the Grimm shouldn’t be as much fun as it was. It was like foreplay for the mind, and the brain was a very sexual organ… at least her brain was. “Because I made the law my bitch?”
“Better it than me!”
As they continued to run, Adalind allowed Nick’s last comment to go unaddressed. Because, despite what he thought, she didn’t want to tame or break him. Where would be the fun in that? Sure, Adalind wouldn’t argue with holding some sway over the Grimm, but she liked that he gave as good as he got, and no one, certainly not a Hexenbiest, wanted to sleep with a spiritless weakling. Fire on the battlefield and in the bedroom was a requirement as far as she was concerned. And Adalind didn’t entirely understand it, but she was done fighting, or denying, or even excusing the fact that she wanted Nick at her side on the former and under, over, and behind her in the latter. She just wasn’t sure yet where Sean now fit into her life. Maybe, if she was cunning enough, she could figure out a way to have them both.
In the end, the fight with the Blakes was underwhelming and over quickly. While Nick literally shot the gun out of one of the brother’s hands, Adalind telekinetically crushed every single carpal, metacarpal, and phalange of the other, both of their weapons falling unused and useless to the ground. Using the shadows to her advantage, Adalind kept out of sight, and then she hung back while Nick secured both felons and helped Monroe get Holly Clark to the one remaining SUV and on the way to the safety of his parked Land Cruiser.
Needing to make sure that the Blakes didn’t see her and unwilling to travel at the Kehrseite’s pace, Adalind went off ahead of Nick, leaving him to frogmarch the two morons on his own. But she didn’t leave straight away either. Once back in the luxury and comfort, the warmth of her car, she stripped off her jacket and waited. Something told her that, despite the urgency of the situation, Nick wouldn’t just allow her to leave without, if not a goodbye, then at least an acknowledgement. They had made more progress on their relationship that day - Adalind having put forth an effort. The next step, whatever it may be, was up to Nick. Plus, she didn’t want to go before they had a chance to talk, however brief, because there was something that she needed to discuss with him.
To make it easier on both of them, she moved her car and parked closer to Nick’s SUV. With a spotty signal so far out in the woods, she didn’t further waste her iPhone’s battery by catching up on her email or looking for a good deed reward in the shape of a new pair of shoes. Instead, she simply savored the heat and reclined her seat, letting her eyes fall shut in satisfied exhaustion. Adalind was hovering in that light and drowsy state between awareness and true sleep when the back of Nick’s hand made gentle contact with her driver’s side window. But he didn’t startle her. Even in her restful state, she had sensed his nearness.
Not wanting to talk through an open window, Adalind stepped outside of her dark gray TTS coupe, the two of them wordlessly situating themselves so that they were side by side and leaning against the Audi. Adalind half expected Nick to make some kind of snide remark about her car. She knew that her wealth made him uncomfortable. But he didn’t. Instead, he told her, “after the holidays, there’s something that I think you should see, something that I need to show you.” It wasn’t an apology, and it wasn’t a thank you, but the vague plans still felt like both anyway.
That was a leading statement if ever Adalind had heard one, and seduction was her sport of choice, but, frankly, they didn’t have time for yet another flirtatious bickering session, so she let it go. “You do realize that you can’t simply return Holly to her mom and then wipe your hands of her, case closed? Either the mother needs to be told what her daughter is, or Monroe is going to have to stay in her life as a type of mentor… at least until Holly understands what she is and can control it.”
“I know,” Nick sighed. His shoulders dropped like they were carrying the weight of the world, and Adalind acknowledged that they kind of were - maybe not the entire world but at least the Wesen world of Portland, which was no small matter. “But that’s tomorrow’s problem. Tonight, I get to put a family back together again. As an orphan myself, that’s a victory I want to savor… at least for a few hours.”
Without another word being exchanged between them, Nick stepped away with his hands in his coat pockets. Adalind watched him until even her eyes could no longer make out his form and until her Hexenbiest could no longer feel his Grimm. Only then did Adalind climb back into her car, buckling up and putting the coupe into gear for the long, winding drive back to Portland.