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“And I feel terrible about the whole argument between
free will and destiny. All that I want is everything I want.”
— Clay Matthews
“Poem in Which I Sort of Break Down”
Nick is the one who starts it. It’s a Saturday and he’s in Monroe’s living room. He’s listening to Monroe babble on and on about some antique clock he’s gotten hold of. Apparently repairing it is a real adventure, although he still cannot fathom how clock repair is anything at all like an adventure. Monroe’s enthusiasm for his new project is contagious though and Nick finds himself smiling and tracking the paths Monroe’s hands cut through the air in his excitement. The clock is an amazingly great find, that’s what he keeps saying; a broken record courtesy of his delight. Watching him Nick wonders why he came over in the first place and realizes it was really for no reason, he just wanted some company.
Monroe is wearing some kind of strange clock mender’s gadget on his head, he’s told Nick what it’s called, but he honestly cannot remember right then. The thing is, Monroe looks ridiculous with it on, some steampunk convention reject except his is the real deal. Monroe looks like an alien from the Victorian era as he babbles away at Nick, a thought which only makes Nick’s smile grow wider.
“What are you so happy about?” Monroe asks finally.
Nick just shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“Then what’s with all the smiling?” he asks.
Nick shrugs and Monroe cocks his head, looking at him with his goofy headgear on. He looks a little suspicious, like maybe he thinks Nick is laughing at him or that maybe he’s just not being let in on some joke.
In that moment, Nick feels like he is standing still while everything around him speeds up. He’s pushing away from the wall and crossing the short distance to Monroe. He isn’t thinking about what he’s doing, not this time; he’s just thinking that he wants. Then he’s kissing Monroe and Monroe is snorting in surprise. For a second though, Monroe kisses Nick right back, but then he jerks away and swipes a hand over his mouth. His eyes are wide with shock and as he takes his hand away from his mouth, Nick realizes it’s open a little. Monroe’s lips are still shining faintly with Nick’s spit despite him wiping his mouth. A pit opens up inside of Nick, somewhere above his stomach, but below his heart. It fills with shame for what he’s just done and the awareness that he wants to do it again anyway.
“What the hell, Nick?” Monroe asks him, voice way too loud in the hush that had fallen right after. “I mean… What the hell, Nick?”
He watches as Monroe works his jaw, trying to find something better to say and Nick can dig where he’s coming from just fine there. He can feel his face going hot, that well of shame coloring his cheeks with flaming red and all he can do is hold up his hands as he takes a step back.
“I’m sorry,” Nick says. “I just… I’m really sorry.”
“You kissed me, man,” Monroe says and then rubs at his mouth again.
“I know what I did,” Nick says and licks his lips as he steps away again. “I didn’t mean to.”
“How do you accidentally kiss someone?” Monroe asks. He’s still talking too loud, voice incredulous now as he openly stares at Nick. “You have a girlfriend.”
“I know that, too,” Nick says. He snaps it at him when he does and rakes a hand through his hair. “I don’t… I just… I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, okay,” Monroe says. He’s still looking at Nick like he’s grown another head or just confessed to him that he has a secret, dirty love of toe socks. Monroe takes a slow, steady breath and when he speaks again his voice is a much more normal volume. “We can’t do this.”
Nick can see the regret in his eyes when he says it though and he’s thought before that maybe, but it’s only then that he’s sure. There is a disgustingly greedy part of himself that he doesn’t like at all that clings to that look of regret. Regret means it’s not just him and that means— Nick doesn’t want to go down the road that would tell him what that means. Oh, but he thinks he knows already and curses himself for being a dishonorable bastard for it.
“I know,” Nick says. Now he’s the broken record in this equation, restating his knowledge and agreement of everything Monroe is saying to him. He holds up his hands again and rocks on his heels just a little bit. “Look, I’m going to just… go, okay? Let’s try and forget this ever happened.”
Monroe is watching him carefully, something in his eyes now that Nick can’t put a name to. He’s a detective, he should be able to read people better than this and Monroe is an open book with him in a lot of ways anyway. Right now though, he is perfectly inscrutable and Nick worries at that look in the back of his mind, trying to figure it out and he still can’t. He knows though that what’s in Monroe’s eyes isn’t entirely human and that’s something at least.
“Yeah,” Monroe says and nods. He licks his lips and gives a minute shake of his head. “This never happened.”
“That’s right,” Nick says and then turns to leave.
“I’ll see you later,” Monroe calls after him.
It’s a relief to hear him say that much anyway.
Nick gets in his car, cranks it and then sits there for a moment. This never happened, he repeats in his mind over and over again.
The thing is, however: Nick is a detective and he can smell a lie a mile away. That and well, things are never that simple. Not even a little bit.
He finally puts the car in gear and drives away. He glances at Monroe’s house as he does and sees the blinds are cracked a bit.
It absolutely happened and that is the truth.
~*~*~*~*~*~
That night he takes Juliette out to dinner and spends too much money on her. He tries to buy his own forgiveness, but every time she smiles at him or he does something that makes her laugh that pit inside of him seems to only get deeper.
Later that night while they lay in bed, kissing in the light of all the candles he lit around the bedroom while she changed from their night out, Nick cups her soft breast in his hand and says he loves her. She kisses him for that and Nick tastes Monroe’s mouth instead.
~*~*~*~*~*~
The next week is all quiet on the wesen front and it gives Nick an excuse not to go bother Monroe. He spends late nights in Marie’s trailer, reading over the old journals and slowly going through all of the other things piled into it. He doesn’t even know what half of the stuff is called and for that, he wants to call Monroe or go by his place and ask him, but he doesn’t. He tells himself that he’s better than that and ignores the voice in the back of his mind that says, Are you sure?
He can cop to the fact that what happened in Monroe’s living room was almost inevitable, he won’t be that willfully ignorant when it comes to himself. He may’ve tried to push past how he was starting to feel about Monroe, but the fact is over the course of their friendship, his feelings have started to become a little more than strictly platonic in nature. He was surprised when he first realized it, not because Monroe is a man since he came to terms with the fact he’s bisexual around the age of nineteen or so after fully realizing it at fifteen. Nick has accepted that part of himself and he’s comfortable with that now. He was surprised because until he met Monroe he had honestly thought Juliette was it. The past few months though have left Nick not as sure as he once was and that… that hurts.
Nick doesn’t need to be sure, he just needs to keep his hands to himself. It’s about self-control more than anything and that’s something he has. He’s got to because anything else would be unfair to Juliette and she honestly doesn’t deserve some lying, cheating sneak for a boyfriend. When Nick says that he loves her, he means it absolutely and without a doubt. Somehow lately that hasn’t seemed to be enough though because while he loves her, she doesn’t even know him anymore, not really, not the way Monroe does. He could fix that by telling her the truth and he’s come close, but something keeps stopping him and Nick listens to his instincts there.
It does occur to Nick though that he is already a lying sneak. The least he can do though is not add cheating to those other ugly little words.
He props his cheek in his hand, fingers tangling in his hair and turns the page in the journal he’s pretending to read and tells himself that he can do this.
~*~*~*~*~*~
The next day he shows up on Monroe’s doorstep with a six pack in one hand and a greasy bag full of fresh pastries. Nothing says, “let’s fix this” like alcohol and sugar, Nick figures because there are holes in their friendship now and maybe they’re pretending that Saturday never happened, but the tension over the last week is apparent. It’s in their silence and the fact they’ve not spoken in eight days now. It needs correcting because Monroe is the only friend Nick has in this Grimm thing and he doesn’t want to be alone in it. That, too, is the truth.
He will not acknowledge to himself that he called Juliette before leaving the station and told her he’d lost a bet with Hank, so had gotten stuck doing all of the paperwork. Nick will not cave to the nagging insistence in the back of his mind that says he may be trying to fix things, but mostly he just missed Monroe. And when Monroe opens the door, Nick will not listen to the now-familiar voice in the back of his mind that hisses, you’re a sonofabitch for this.
“Nick!” Monroe says when he sees him.
Nick tries on a smile and holds up his gifts. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Monroe says and steps back to let him in. It’s late, but he says nothing about the hour. He seems surprised to see Nick, but glad, too. Nick counts that as a good sign.
Once he’s inside, it’s awkward standing there in the entryway and Monroe clears his throat while Nick looks away. For fuck’s sake, he is not twelve years old, he tells himself and makes himself move on into the kitchen to put the beer in the fridge after taking two out of the carton.
They stand around the island counter in nervous silence for most of their first beers, but by their second ones they start talking a bit. It’s not much, mostly small talk, but it’s a start and before Nick really realizes it, they’ve finished off the whole six pack. By then the conversation is easier and to Nick it feels closer to right between them. When Monroe offers him one of the beers from his little collection of microbrews, Nick doesn’t decline and they sip in more companionable silence.
Monroe is bent over, leaning with his chin cupped in his hand, staring off at nothing really in silent, beery contemplation. They’re not drunk, three and a half beers apiece would make them pretty sad sights if they were, but the beer has relaxed them. It’s made it easier to piece things back together between them.
Nick sips his beer and is glad for that as he looks around Monroe’s tidy little kitchen. The light is awful, he never fails to notice that, throwing up strange shadows everywhere he looks, but Monroe doesn’t seem bothered by it. Monroe’s face is thrown into sharp contrasts because of the bad light, painting the hollows of his cheeks to exaggerated depths, hiding his eyes and yet, it gleams dully on his dark hair. Nick studies him and listens to the ticking of the clocks in the house, every single one of them working in time with the other, perfectly wound and synched up.
When Monroe turns his head to look back at him, Nick notices the faint way his eyes shine in the yellowish light of the kitchen. He’s staring, on some level he is aware of that, but he still keeps doing it despite that awareness.
“What?” Monroe asks him, one eyebrow raised.
“What-what?” Nick asks right back as he finally blinks.
“What the hell are you staring at me like that for?” Monroe asks.
His head is turned at just the right angle that his eyes are still shining and Nick feels some nervous, weird sensation in his belly as he stares at the gleam. “I wasn’t staring at you,” he says.
“Right, no, not at all,” Monroe says, left eyebrow lowering and right one lifting in its place.
They’re both staring now and Nick can feel a peculiar heaviness in the air, weighing on his skin and pressing against it. There’s a prickling that starts at the base of his spine and tingles upwards, making him repress a shiver as his heartbeat grows thicker and throbs so that he can feel it all the way in the back of his throat.
“Nick,” Monroe says. His voice is soft, almost making a question out of Nick’s name; it’s not spoken as such, but it’s understood all the same.
Nick swallows once and nods, answering that question even as he leans forward and when he kisses Monroe that time, he doesn’t pull back. His hand goes to the back of Nick’s head and his fingers tangle in his hair as he pulls him closer. The angle is awkward, but Nick doesn’t care. He’s telling himself that what he’s doing right now is so, so wrong and knows it to be true. Even still, when Monroe pulls away so they can stand up better then immediately pulls Nick back in for another kiss, he goes and there’s a part of him that’s happy to do it. He presses as close to Monroe as he can get, wanting more-more-more and when Monroe growls into his mouth a thrill like a roll of thunder runs all through Nick.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When he gets home, he creeps inside like a thief and feels the way his hands shake lightly when he turns the bolt to lock the front door back. He smells like beer and Monroe; his scent is all over Nick now. They took a step that they can’t take back tonight and now he doesn’t know what to do. He started this and as he creeps up the stairs feeling like every place Monroe touched him is burning into his skin, leaving a map, a network; glaring proof of his infidelity, Nick knows that he has no intention of stopping. Tonight they didn’t do much more than make out like a pair of overeager, handsy teenagers, but Nick knows that will change. He wants it to change; a part of him is wishing he had stayed instead of finally pulling away when the clocks started chiming one o’clock.
Sonofabitch, that voice whispers in his head again.
He can’t deny the honesty of it that time.
Nick showers as quietly as he can, stuffs his clothes that smell of Monroe’s skin into the bottom of the hamper and slips into his pajamas. He climbs into bed beside Juliette and never has he been more thankful she’s such a deep sleeper. Nick kisses the smooth curve of her shoulder, more of an apology than a sign of affection and only then does she stir.
“Everything okay?” she asks sleepily.
“Yes,” Nick says and kisses her shoulder again; punctuating the lie.
“Good,” she mumbles, already drifting off again. “Try not to lose anymore bets though, hmm?”
“I swear it,” Nick says, but she’s already gone back to sleep.
He lays beside her in the dark and stares up at the ceiling for hours until sometime right before dawn he falls asleep at last.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It’s another Saturday when they finally do fuck. Nick is supposed to be at the gym, but instead he’s upstairs at Monroe’s, on his back in Monroe’s bed. His teeth are a spit-slick, faint promise against the thudding pulse in Nick’s throat as he presses a slick finger inside of him that has Nick lifting his hips more. He knows Monroe would be a biter, it’s a part of his nature and he wants to feel his teeth against his skin, fully realized, but he can’t. They never talk about it, but it’s an acknowledged thing between them anyway: Monroe can’t leave marks because they’d tell the truth in all of Nick’s ever-growing pile of lies. Still, he wonders what the pinch and scrape of those teeth against his skin would feel like. Would Monroe just bruise or would he break the skin?
Nick moans just thinking about it and bites his lip with pleasure as Monroe presses another finger inside of him. He nuzzles Nick’s cheek and licks him lightly before he seems to catch himself and stops.
“Don’t,” Nick says and surprises himself a little bit when he nuzzles Monroe’s throat. “I like it.”
Monroe draws back to study him a bit and even as his breath hitches on another moan, Nick smiles at his raised eyebrow. “You sure?” Monroe asks him and Nick just nods. “Okay then, but it gets spitty. Just so you know.”
Nick only barks out a laugh at that and pulls him down for a kiss, moaning into Monroe’s mouth. His fingers are a slow, slick, back and forth slide inside of his body; urging Nick to roll his hips into the movements and rock back against them. He hasn’t done this in a long time and Monroe keeps it slow, so slow, until Nick is panting and moaning. His hair is stuck to his cheeks in his sweat and he arches his back even as he grabs at Monroe’s shoulders.
“Monroe,” he whispers, the word almost choked as he bites back another moan. “Monroe,” Nick says again and presses his face into the curve of his shoulder. “Fuck me,” he manages to grate out and then he nips Monroe’s shoulder.
It makes him growl, a low, rumbling sound of want as he withdraws his fingers to hastily slick himself with lube. It makes slick, sloppy sounds that seem incredibly loud in the room and Nick’s stomach muscles tremble with anticipation. When he’s done, Monroe presses a hand to the small of Nick’s back to urge him to tilt his hips back again. The touch is light, gentle even, but Nick is aware of the incredible strength beneath such a soft touch.
Monroe pushes inside of him slowly and Nick breathes through the initial moment of slight discomfort. He picks his head up from the pillow and mouths the line of Monroe’s neck, feeling his breath puffing against it and back to his mouth as he breathes in the smell of their mingled sweat; the musky odor of their arousal. His head falls back again when Monroe thrusts inside of him on the last inch and he moans, eyes falling closed as he draws his legs up Monroe’s sides and shivers lightly.
Monroe noses his cheek and licks him again, tongue soft-rough against Nick’s skin and rasping lightly against a patch of stubble he missed that morning when he shaved. Nick turns his head into the touch and runs his hands up Monroe’s back, tracing the lines of muscles there and rocks his hips, urging Monroe to move.
They slide together, finding a rhythm that’s at once slow and still hard until Monroe’s thrusts are jarring through Nick’s body. He trusts him though, knows he can—will—control himself and just moves back into Monroe’s movements. The headboard taps lightly at the wall, sounding like an anxious little knock and Nick finally lets go of Monroe to reach behind his head and hold on to it as he strains and trembles, soft cries breaking in his throat as he tips his head back, baring his throat. Monroe licks up the line of it and Nick shakes harder until his orgasm breaks through him with next to no warning. He cries out and tightens his legs around Monroe, breath hitching when he feels his answering growl against his sweaty throat while he fucks him through it.
Nick lets go of the headboard as the aftershocks roll through him and holds to Monroe’s shoulders, moaning against the side of his neck. “Come on, Monroe,” he murmurs, encouraging him as he continues to move. He nips Monroe’s neck and says, “Come on,” again before licking over the red mark.
When he does come, Monroe pulls his head back and snarls, teeth clicking together as he snaps them. It makes Nick shiver all over again as he runs his hands over Monroe’s back and down his sides, soothing him and drawing him down closer.
Nick doesn’t think of Juliette at all until he’s standing in Monroe’s shower, washing the smell of sex from his skin. He feels his heart sink then and finishes up quickly, dressing almost furtively when he’s done while he tries to think of another lie he can add to his pile of them.
He still kisses Monroe goodbye; he wants just one more taste before he goes.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Nick takes to spoiling Juliette even more when he’s with her as the weeks drag on. He makes a point of taking her out to wonderfully nice dinners, he buys her flowers and spends half his paycheck on a pair of earrings he saw her admiring in the display window of a jewelry shop. She seems delighted with all of the nice things he’s giving her, but sometimes her eyes are troubled when she looks at him and finds him not really looking back. The look is growing ever more frequent and Nick feels himself pulling away from her more and more each day. He grows quieter and more distant even as he showers her with material things to try and assuage the guilt that gnaws at him like a hungry rat. She isn’t stupid and the troubled look in her eyes gradually starts to melt into something that’s more like sadness mixed with a small spark of anger.
One day he’s standing in the kitchen, watching her slice carrots for dinner. There is a strange tension across her narrow shoulders, something hunched and almost defensive in the way she stands. The silence between them is thick and Nick rubs his face, trying to cut through it as he shifts his weight discretely from foot to foot; a naughty schoolboy caught cheating on an exam. He has a tiny, tiny bruise on his inner thigh from Monroe’s lightly pinching teeth the night before and while it didn’t hurt even a little bit, Nick’s mind has made it start to throb. It’s not a tiny bruise any longer, it’s a brand searing into him as he watches Juliette brush a lock of hair out of her face.
He watches her and knows that he still loves her—he’d defy anyone to try and suggest differently. He watches her and when she turns her head to look at him over her shoulder with a small smile; something fragile and tinged with hope in it, Nick also know that he’s not in love with her anymore.
His heart sinks and his stomach does a weird, nervous flip-flop at the realization, but he can’t hide from it. His answering smile is touched with sadness and regret as he crosses to where she’s standing and brushes back that same unruly lock of hair from her face.
“Nick, are you okay? It’s just the past few weeks you’ve been… distant. I mean… well. Are we okay? If I’ve done something then I want you to tell me; I need you to,” Juliette says to him finally as she looks up at him with her troubled eyes.
“You haven’t done anything wrong, not at all,” Nick tells her.
It’s the first time he’s told her the absolute truth since he found out about being a Grimm.
It doesn’t feel good at all because of how true it is. Juliette has done absolutely nothing to deserve what he’s been doing.
~*~*~*~*~*~
That night when he is leaving sucking, biting kisses in a path down Monroe’s belly, Nick stops for a moment and just rests his cheek against Monroe’s warm skin.
Something has to give because he’s too far gone to stop this with Monroe; he does not want to stop this with Monroe either. Which leaves only one option, but he doesn’t know how to say the words to Juliette; the things that could put a stop to his lying to her and hurting her every time he buys her a new necklace and can’t meet her eyes when she smiles at him.
~*~*~*~*~*~
After the daemonfeuers when Juliette tells him she doesn’t know if she can go on with things the way they are, Nick knows she’s not just referring to what happened that very night. She met Monroe and she’s no more blind than she is stupid. He knows she suspects now, at least on some level and still he cannot end it with her and give them both and Monroe, too, some peace. Nick hasn’t missed the look in his eyes anymore than he has the look in Juliette’s. There is something sad in them every time he kisses Monroe goodbye and soon, that look will turn to anger just like it has done with Juliette. Nick knows where he wants to be and with who, but he can’t find the fucking balls to manage it.
Laying at night in bed with Juliette and the space between them where they once rested near to each other, Nick wonders when he became such a goddamned coward.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Three days later, Nick is bent over the island counter in Monroe’s kitchen; the very room this all really started in. Nick’s holding onto the countertop and gasping as Monroe fucks him, his fingers squeaking along the smooth surface when he loses his grip.
“Harder,” he grunts out because he has come to love the feel of this, of being fucked hard while Monroe growls. He needs it almost, he craves it when he doesn’t have it and Nick knows now that he’s lost; he really is. Not only to the sex, but to Monroe because when slipped out of love with Juliette, he fell right into it with Monroe.
Monroe complies and leans over him more, his chest against Nick’s back pressing him into the counter, the edge biting into his sternum to the point of being painful. Nick doesn’t ask him to let up though; he’s always liked a certain amount of pain to go with his pleasure. He doesn’t know where that itch-like want comes from, but it’s been there for as long as he can remember, so he takes it where he can get it.
He shivers in the cool air of the house when Monroe licks the sweat from the back of his neck and pushes back against him, urging him on. He’s panting and slick with sweat, fingers barely gripping the counter’s edge because of it. When Monroe nuzzles the hair curling at the back of his neck, Nick lifts his head into the touch, asking him for more as he cries out, pleasure zipping up his back and crackling like static electricity all the way out to the ends of his fingers. He gasps when he feels Monroe set his teeth lightly against the back of his neck, holding him.
“Yes,” he says, the word slipping out with no thought. “Yes.”
He doesn’t even really hear himself saying it and even if he did, he wouldn’t know what he was agreeing with. Then Monroe loses control of himself and somewhere deep inside himself, Nick thinks that was what he was asking for; for the feel of his teeth biting into the muscle on either side of his spine and clamping down. Monroe doesn’t bite to break the skin, he doesn’t make Nick bleed, but he bites hard enough it still hurts and Nick’s orgasm slams into him so hard and fast that he nearly screams at the liquid red burn of those teeth. It’s pure, instinctive animal possessiveness that has Monroe holding Nick like that and it’s undeniable. It’s fucking primal and it only serves to make his orgasm that much more brutally satisfying.
When it’s over, Nick slumps against the island counter, feeling like a ragdoll with the stuffing yanked out of it. Monroe is lazily nuzzling him, making soft, strange canine sounds in the back of his throat that speak of deep affection.
Then he lifts his head and is quiet for a long, drawn out moment. When he does speak, his voice is soft and a little horrified as he says, “Shit, Nick, your neck. I didn’t… I am… Shit.”
Nick reaches back to touch him gently and says, “It’s all right, Monroe. It’s all right.”
“No, it really isn’t,” Monroe says as he touches the back of Nick’s neck where he’s sure a bruise is already blooming purple-blue-red. “I left a mark.”
Nick sighs and pushes up from the countertop at last. There’s a bright red line from the counter edge on his chest, too. “I’ll come up with something,” Nick assures him even as he wonders what the hell he could possibly come up with this time.
“I’m sure you will,” Monroe says then scrubs his hand over his mouth as he looks away from Nick. “You need to hit the shower, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Nick says and watches Monroe walk away to redress himself. He touches the back of his neck lightly and feels the indentations left by Monroe’s teeth there then drops his hand with a sigh as he goes to shower like Monroe said.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When he gets home, he’s so preoccupied that he doesn’t even try to hide his bitten neck from Juliette and when she sees it, the shit, as they say, hits the fan.
“What happened to your neck?” she asks. Her voice has an edge to it Nick doesn’t think he’s ever heard before, something brittle-sharp and furious underneath the calm façade she’s going for. She’s standing on the next to last riser of the stairs while Nick hangs up his coat with movements so slow he almost feels drugged. He didn’t even hear her coming down.
His hand automatically goes to the back of his neck, guilt washing through him as he scrambles for a quick excuse. The best he can come up with is that some suspect’s girlfriend waylaid him when he went to cuff her boyfriend, but before he can spit that out and hope for the best, Juliette scoffs.
“Don’t bother lying,” she says when he turns to look at her, mouth open and the lie on the tip of his tongue anyway. “But maybe tell me this instead: Who happened to your neck, Nick? Huh? Who?”
“Juliette,” he says, hands coming up as she stares him down with anger so deep and cold in her eyes that he barely recognizes her in that moment.
“How long have you been doing this?” she asks, voice creeping towards a yell. Then she shakes her head, walking backwards up the stairs and away from him, holding out a hand to stop him when he starts to follow. “I am such a damned idiot. I knew, I did and I tried to tell myself I couldn’t be right. All those long nights doing “paperwork”… right. You were off fucking them. Do I know them? Is it Hank? Maybe, no, maybe it’s Renard. Is that it? Who are you fucking, Nick?”
She screams the last at him with such ferocity that he stumbles back a step. She’s openly weeping and even though she’s angry, she’s so white it’s almost scary. “Is it someone from my clinic? Maybe Mariel the new receptionist? What about Angelica?”
“It’s Monroe,” Nick mutters, hanging his head and saying it to his feet.
“The guy in the cardigan?” she yells at him. “Is that why you never brought him— My God, it is why. You never introduced me to him because you were screwing him. You bastard! You lying, cheating, shithead bastard!”
Nick flinches at her words, but he doesn’t try to defend himself either. That’s not why he never introduced him, but telling her anymore would only make things worse. He can only stand there and listen to Juliette curse him for everything he’s worth and then some. He’s never once heard some of the stuff that’s coming out of her mouth right now, but he takes it in because it’s the least of what he honestly deserves.
“You don’t even have anything to say to me, do you?” she finally says. Her voice is hoarse from yelling.
Nick shakes his head no, but he does look at her and when he says, “Juliette, I’m sorry. I never meant for this to happen,” he means it with every fiber of his being. It doesn’t change a damned thing though, not at all.
“Well, it did happen,” she says with a jagged laugh that echoes strangely along the stairway. Then she focuses on Nick and points over his shoulder to the front door. “Get out.”
He only nods and does what she asks. He takes his coat and his keys and goes out the door with one last look over his shoulder. All he sees is her retreating back as she walks upstairs.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Nick’s first instinct is to go back to Monroe’s, but he ends up calling Hank instead. He tells him he and Juliette had a pretty nasty fight and asks if he can crash on Hank’s sofa.
Hank commiserates and says something about his first wife and how he spent more time on the couch than he ever did in their bed. He tells Nick to come on over and when he thanks him, Hank tells him to shush, says that it’s no problem at all.
Nick lays on Hank’s couch all night and doesn’t sleep a wink.
~*~*~*~*~*~
When he goes back to his and Juliette’s house the next day, she isn’t there and her side of the closet is empty. There’s a letter from her folded neatly on top of the bureau along with her key.
He reads it four times before he finally folds it up and puts it down again. The last line of her letter runs on a loop through his head, the words in her familiar handwriting imprinted in his mind: I love you, I do, but there are some things I cannot forgive.
Nick stands there and looks at nothing as he wonders at how heartbreak can feel so much like relief; how regret can feel so much like freedom.
Finally, he rouses himself from his thoughts and moves away from the bureau and out of the bedroom. He goes down the hallway, down the stairs and out the front door to his car.
When Monroe comes to the door and asks, “Why did you knock? I think we’re a little past that,” Nick pulls him down and kisses him hard and quick.
He feels like he’s shaking apart on the inside and the bruise on the back of his neck is a deep aubergine by now. He meets Monroe’s eyes and takes a deep breath then asks, “Can I come in?”
Monroe studies him in the fading afternoon light and he must see something in Nick’s eyes or on his face because he simply nods and says, “Anytime you want to.”
He steps back to let Nick in and Nick goes, following Monroe into the living room where they sit with their outer thighs brushing lightly. They don’t speak and all around them, the clocks tick-tick-tick.
Nick finally turns to look at Monroe and finds him watching him right back. He slides his hand along Monroe’s cheek and draws him down for a slower, gentler kiss that lasts longer than the one on the doorway.
Nick’s still sorry though, but he can’t take it back and he got what he deserved in Juliette’s leaving him and he owes her a thousand apologies for how he handled things. Now he also has what he wanted in the feel of Monroe against him like this and as Nick tilts his head with a weight like sorrow and a lightness like happiness in his gut, he thinks he understands firsthand what a metaphorical double-edged sword feels like. It’s made of razor blades wrapped in light in all actuality and Nick slowly begins to pick out the light from all the sharp edges as he sinks into Monroe even more.
Things aren’t great, they aren’t even good necessarily speaking, but now they have the chance to be all of those things without lies tripping them up along the way and breaking them apart.
He shivers when Monroe’s fingers find the bruise at the back of his neck and lets everything else be for the time being.
The End