i'm just me after all

Nick doesn’t realize he’s doing it, how can he? Monroe is positive that Grimm books only mention how to kill a blutbad, not woo one. It’s not like Nick needs any help in that department, but he figures that Nick would like to know that he is wooing him. 

Its not like Monroe can just say it either, because Monroe really likes to avoid awkward moments, and Nick and awkward moments happen a lot, so he’d love to not have another testicle conversation. Because that was the epitome of awkward. 

So he doesn’t say anything, and he honestly thinks the wooing will stop, that Nick will finally get the picture and stop wearing red, that he’ll stop letting Monroe watch his back, but no, it just gets worse. One day Nick just grabs his neck and Monroe practically goes belly up in the worst way possible. It takes all his control not to tackle the other man into the ground. 

Speaking of which, play fighting was a really, really bad idea too. Monroe is staring to think there actually is a How to Woo Your Blutbad in Ten Easy Steps book in that trailer, because Nick has hit up the ten easiest steps. 

And he’s not stopping, the neck grabs become a thing, Nick pulling him in close to whisper in his ear, like Monroe doesn’t have enhanced hearing. Nick squeezes his neck gently and its all Monroe can do not to whine and beg for Nick to fuck him. 

It all comes to a head when Nick is watching some stupid game at his house and literally does a odd yawn and stretch that has his hand on the back of Monroe’s neck and Monroe can’t take it anymore, he really really really can’t. 

At least Nick doesn’t shove him off when Monroe kisses him. In fact the groan of approval makes Monroe positive that there’s a Wooing for Dummies book in that stupid trailer. 

At first, she’s amused with the flowers, and the gifts that Monroe keeps leaving her at the shop, until she’s invited out to dinner with him. She accepts, because they’re friends, and she plans to make that clear, but it seems he’s only doing this out of a misguided sense of something, because he spends the whole meal talking about how Nick doesn’t like that particular wine that Rosalee is drinking, isn’t that funny? How uncultured can a man get right? 

Rosalee is still amused, Monroe is her friend and they’ve asserted that and he’s stopped leaving her gifts, but he still pines and refuses to deal with the fact that he’s in love with the only natural predator he has. It’s almost fate, if she believed in such things. 

The thing is, it probably wouldn’t be so amusing if Nick wasn’t in the exact same boat. She hears he has a girlfriend, but with the way the man never smells like anything resembling a female she has to wonder if its true. Not when he comes into her shop to check on her with a smile on his face and the stink of Blutbad scented into his very pores. 

“Why don’t you tell him anything?” She asks Monroe as they talk over herbs and healing remedies one night. She is emboldened by the wine in her hand, but she’s been meaning to ask for some time now. “Tell him how you feel, how his girlfriend wont ever understand our world because she’s not in it, she’ll never understand him.” She would continue, but Monroe has upset his coffee table and is standing there staring at her. He looks broken. 

“I can’t, he’d. I just, I can’t lose him.” 

Rosalee understands. She’s not amused, not anymore. It’s more sad than anything else.

Nick does a lot of things he shouldn’t, point in case being that Monroe’s beard is that close to his chin in the first place. 

He shouldn’t be in the middle of a Blutbad’s living room surrounded by model trains and timepieces. He shouldn’t have his hands gripping the plaid shirt that the Blutbad was wearing and pulling him closer. He definitely shouldn’t be pulling him towards the couch and trying to coax certain noises out of him.

But Nick was never one for rules anyways.