Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a funny coincidence, Hank thought, that Clock Guy, of all people, wandered into the precinct to collect their wayward home explosion survivor. Things lined up like that sometimes. Suspicious enough to pique his detective’s interest but lacking any greater pattern that hooked into his gut and set his instincts baying.

It was clear that Lasser recognized the guy, at least, and after all, Portland wasn’t that big a city. What was more unexpected was the way Nick’s attention snapped to Clock Guy, sharp and immediate, the moment Nick realized he was there. Though, Hank considered, that wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary.

Nick had always been laser-focused, and suspects stuck with you, sometimes, even if they weren’t guilty. Or in some cases especially if they weren’t guilty, though it didn’t seem like remorse or guilt that had Nick’s gaze pinned to Clock Guy like it was stuck there with some kind of magnet.

It could be that he still suspected the guy was an accomplice to the kidnapping. If he did he hadn’t mentioned it, and Nick had never been one to keep his theories close to the vest. Between his woefully underdeveloped poker face and his constant need for validation, he wouldn’t have succeeded much even if he’d tried. Hank didn’t much mind either trait, as they made Nick a better, more trustworthy partner at the end of the day - it was difficult to worry about betrayal when the guy you depended on to have your back was almost physically incapable of lying to you, after all.

It could be that Nick thought Clock Guy was guilty of something else entirely, or, likelier still, he might have just given Nick the creeps. He seemed pretty harmless to Hank. A little weird, a little sad maybe, but not dangerous, or suspicious enough to merit any hesitation in remanding their victim into his custody. Still, he must have done something to get under Nick’s skin back when they busted the serial kidnapper with the red jacket fetish. Even if Nick had never copped to what, precisely, had made the guy stick out in the first place, he didn’t often make mistakes in matters of human nature.

It was an innate talent Nick had carried with him the day he strolled in from the academy carting sixty pounds of gear on his uniform belt with big blue eyes and cheekbones that could cut glass, instincts already honed to a razor edge. Some of the other guys had given Hank shit at first for being paired up with the pretty-boy, but after seeing Nick’s sixth sense, or whatever, in action a few times, Hank had made a point to shut down any sly cracks made at Nick’s expense as much as he could.

Whatever it was about Clock Guy that had caught Nick’s interest, it had him unwilling, or unable, to even spare a glance over his shoulder as he assured Hank he’d take care of Lasser’s hand-off. Hank watched him go and gave Clock Guy a careful, surreptitious once-over from behind his desk. He might not have Nick’s almost preternatural abilities to pick up on troublesome cues, but he wasn’t exactly a slouch in the investigation department, either. Maybe he’d overlooked something last time in all the hullabaloo. After all, he’d thought the red jacket guy was perfectly normal, if a little Stepford, until he started humming.

Clock Guy was just as tall as Hank remembered, in a gray shirt and yuppy plaid button-down, looking vaguely harassed even as he lifted a hand in an aborted half-wave in their direction. The disgruntled expression stuck all the way through Lasser bounding over like a Labrador puppy, wrapping him up in an enthusiastic full-body hug, and spinning him in an awkward circle. While Lasser definitely seemed like the type to kamikaze-embrace a total stranger, Clock Guy tucked his feet up like he was used to it, even if he didn’t seem happy about it, so Hank supposed Lasser’s claims of their friendship must be true.

They were too far away for Hank to hear what Nick was saying to the guy, or vice versa, but body language was a pretty eloquent tongue all on its own. Nick looked about like he always did, standing easy and confident, giving an occasional nod for emphasis as he explained Lasser’s situation. It was a little strange, how his whole body angled toward Clock Guy - as if he were magnetic north to Nick’s compass needle - but it didn’t quite ring any alarm bells.

What was stranger was Clock Guy’s reaction. Contrary to most people when approached by an officer of the law, the tension in Clock Guy’s shoulders seemed to unspool as Nick drew near rather than ratcheting tighter. Definitely weird, particularly given that Clock Guy had been wrongfully fingered as a suspect in a major crime by none other than Nick himself, but still not exactly damning. And anyway, Nick had said he apologized to the guy so maybe it was just the relief of finding a familiar face in a stressful circumstance, even if that face had once accused him of kidnapping a child he’d never laid a finger on.

“Did we know Nick was bisexual?”

Hank nearly jumped out of his seat, jerking a glare at Wu where he was half-bent at the waist, leaning over Hank’s shoulder and staring in the direction of the awkward reunion.

“Man,” Hank hissed, with a disparaging click of his tongue, “you keep sneaking up on people like that, you’re gonna give somebody in here a heart attack.”

Wu snorted and turned a flat, dry gaze on Hank.

“The way we go through red meat and doughnuts, nobody’s gonna need my help to have a heart attack.” He smirked a little when Hank laughed and straightened up, crossing his arms over his chest. “For real, though. Nick? Switch-hitting? Yes or no?”

“Not that it would be your business, since anything told to me would have been in confidence,” Hank said pointedly, while Wu rolled his eyes and circled his hand in a lazy ‘go on’ gesture, “but as far as I know Nick is straight.”

“Huh,” Wu said, thoughtful and not sounding particularly convinced as he glanced back over to the little three-man show near the door.

“‘Huh,’” Hank mimicked, unflatteringly. “What’s ‘huh?’”

Wu shrugged and tilted his head.

“Nothing really,” he said easily. “Just, the way he’s vibing with tall, dark, and irritated over there suggests otherwise.”

Hank turned to look, and sure enough, sometime in the last minute Nick had moved in even closer to Clock Guy. He had one hand curled, proprietary, around Clock Guy’s bicep and he was tilting his head in that way he did when he got all intense about a hunch - eyes wide and somehow bluer than normal, full of righteous certainty. It was like staring down a puppy with a holy commitment to justice, made it damn near impossible to turn down any request Nick elected to make. To Clock Guy’s credit, he was wearing the vaguely pissed-off expression of a man who knew damn well he was being deliberately manipulated, even if he also knew he was eventually going to crumple under the will of said manipulator like wet tissue.

“Huh,” Hank found himself saying, because that kind of physicality wasn’t something Nick usually indulged with strangers. He was a pretty standoffish guy, for all the model good looks; never much for casual contact beyond moments of crisis, or with people he knew intimately. And that right there? That was the kind of thing he’d do with Hank, but generally only under mild duress.

“Right?” Wu agreed. Hank looked over at him. Wu raised his eyebrows, made a weird, wiggly gesture with the fingers of one hand, and said intently, “Vibe.”

“Vibe or no vibe, I still don’t see why you care,” Hank diverted clumsily, feeling off-balance and strangely guilty.

He couldn’t be talking about Nick behind his back, he reasoned, because as far as he knew there was nothing to talk about. He busied himself tidying his desk to get his mind off of the vague sense of wrongdoing, shuffling some files into a slightly neater stack and scooping up a few scattered writing utensils to deposit them into the metal cup beside his computer monitor.

“I have kind of a bet going with Rickie in Records,” Wu explained, throwing his hands up in defense when Hank slanted a glare at him, offended on Nick’s behalf. He added hastily, “Not about anyone in particular! Just, if at least twenty people in the precinct bat for our team, she owes me a hundred bucks.”

“A hundred bucks?” Hank parroted skeptically.

“Five per head,” Wu nodded. “This would put me right on the money.”

“Who’s on what money?”

For the second time in five minutes, Hank nearly went over backward. When he wheeled around, Nick was wearing that smug little smirk that said he knew he was being a shit and was entirely too pleased with himself for it.

“I’m gonna bell this whole goddamn department,” Hank grumbled, while Wu huffed a laugh and Nick grinned even wider. “No one’s on any money. Wu’s just a bad detective.”

“Hey!” Wu protested. “I resemble that remark.” He grinned in that dry way he had, while Hank snorted and rolled his eyes. Across the desk, Nick chuckled and dropped lazily into his seat.

“See you fellas later,” Wu said, meandering back toward the hallway. He wagged a finger at Hank and added, “Think about it! If it turns out I’m right, I’ll split the pot. 80-20.”

Hank opened his mouth to tell Wu politely to fuck off but what came out instead was, “60-40 or no deal!”

Wu laughed and cheerfully flipped him the bird as he disappeared around the corner, undoubtedly off to harangue some other unsuspecting government employee about something vaguely uncomfortable and inappropriate.

“What was that all about?” Nick asked, all companionable curiosity. Hank shook his head.

“Nothing,” he assured. “Just Wu being Wu. Lasser all taken care of?”

Nick nodded.

“For now,” he sighed. Hank could commiserate - there were few things more frustrating than having potential victims who refused to or were otherwise incapable of recognizing the danger they were actually in, and Hap Lasser wasn’t what Hank would call an attentive sort. “Monroe - that is, uh - Mr. Monroe is gonna look after him until other arrangements can be made.”

Monroe, right. He knew Clock Guy’s name had been vaguely old Hollywood, though he couldn’t have remembered it for the life of him. The title tripped oddly off of Nick’s tongue, awkward and almost clumsy. Certainly not with the level of familiarity that hand on the arm had suggested.

Stranger and stranger.

“We still planning to talk to the arson inspector?” Nick asked, cutting into Hank’s line of thought. He was shrugging into his jacket and staring expectantly at Hank past his computer.

“Yeah,” Hank said. “So, get movin’.”

Nick snorted, amused. “I’m not the one who just wasted ten minutes gossiping with Wu like a stay-at-home mom.”

Hank rolled his eyes, and managed not to make any pointed statements about how he was surprised Nick had noticed, busy as he’d been intimately caressing a former suspect.

Instead he put on his most unimpressed face and drily announced, “Hashtag brunch life.”

He turned on his heel and strode purposefully across the bullpen with Nick’s laughter ringing at his back.

Chapter Text

Holly Clark was the kind of miracle that only happened on feel-good episodes of procedural crime TV shows. The kind of last-ditch Hail Mary that could restore even the most cynical cop’s beaten and battered faith in the justice system and its capacity to prevail. Grim and upsetting as things had been in the last few weeks, her rescue and return were a beacon of light that the Portland PD sorely needed, and they had elected to celebrate accordingly.

The whole station was alive with cheer and hope and joie de vivre despite the unconscionably late hour, toasting one another with hearty drams of bottom-shelf scotch in waxed paper coffee cups. Hank whooped along with an indiscernible chorus of hollering from a collection of uniformed officers loitering in the hallway and slung an arm around Nick’s shoulders where he was half-hidden in a decorative alcove. He’d been tucked away there for the better part of twenty minutes, oscillating between quiet delight and dazed disbelief every time Hank glanced over at him, as though he suspected this might all be a dream. It was possible the scotch had something to do with that, although neither of them had gotten much sleep during the last 72 hours, either.

“Shit, man,” Hank said jovially, in greeting.

“Yeah,” Nick agreed, huffing a little laugh and giving his head a quick, sharp shake. “Shit.”

He obligingly knocked the rim of his cup into Hank’s when Hank proffered it for a toast, taking a long swig and making a face. Nick was more of a Budweiser guy, most days, and he made no qualms about it. His plain, utilitarian taste dominated most aspects of his life, with the thankful exception of Juliette, who was enough of a spitfire to shake things up when they needed a good rattle even if her girl-next-door beauty played right into Nick’s quaintly all-American preferences. Real salt of the earth type, Nick.

“Thanks?” Nick said curiously, lifting an eyebrow and shooting Hank a smirk. “I think?”

Damn. He must have said that last part out loud. It might, Hank considered, be prudent to cut back on the scotch.

“So,” he rallied, pushing forward in the conversation as though he’d meant to share that observation all along, “what’s the hero of the hour doing squirreled away back here in the shadows, man?”

Nick laughed again, ducking his head, face flushing pink with the weird, bashful humility that seemed to kick into overdrive anytime he accomplished something he ought to be proud of and coerce him into dramatically downplaying his success. Hank hadn’t really had the chance to meet Nick’s much beloved Aunt Marie before she tragically passed, but it was depressingly endearing personality quirks like that one that made him suspect he might’ve had Words with her if they’d known one another.

“It was a team effort,” Nick demurred. Hank snorted.

“Yeah, Team Me, hitting the streets,” he agreed, tugging Nick in a little closer with the arm he had looped around his shoulders and giving him an affectionate shake, “and Team You, going full Eagle Scout out in the woods. How’d you even find her out there, anyway, man? You secretly into that survivalist shit or something?”

Nick stiffened under his arm for a split second, so brief that Hank wasn’t sure it even really happened, and said weakly, “I was just lucky.” He rolled his cup between his palms a couple of times and added, almost under his breath, “And, like I said, I had help.”

It could just be the standard prevarication of Nick’s WASPy repression, but something about the vaguely guilty way he said it made Hank’s professional curiosity - still dialed up to eleven after a couple of hard days’ work - sit up and take notice.

“Anybody I know?” He kept it short and concise. Nick may not have been much of a liar but he was a master of deflection. If Hank gave him room to maneuver, Nick would have him on his way with an impassioned tangent about teamwork and unity faster than Hank could realize he was being walked straight past his original point of inquiry.

“No, it was no one,” Nick blurted immediately, and this time there was no denying the tension tightening his posture, the slight flinch. If a suspect had pulled that same shit during questioning, it would be the proverbial blood in the water.

This wasn’t an interrogation, of course, and as close as they were, as much as he loved the guy, it wasn’t really Hank’s place to dig into Nick’s personal life uninvited, but something was going on, and Hank had never been able to back away when he thought there might be secrets to uncover. It was a bad habit that had cost him three marriages and a few friendships besides, but the sorry history of his indomitable curiosity wasn’t enough to keep Hank from watching Nick, calm and careful, and pressing, “So you were alone?”

“No, I - “ Nick started, sucking an irritated breath past his teeth and reaching up with one hand to push his dark fringe out of his face. “I asked a...a friend for some help. He’s good with, you know.” He made a little gesture with his free hand and then curled it back around his cup, drumming his fingers against the paper in a staccato burst. “Hiking and nature and stuff.”

“Real good,” Hank agreed appraisingly, eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. Holly Clark had been in those woods going on a decade without anyone finding her - good seemed to be a bit of an understatement. “What, is he part bloodhound or something?”

Nick laughed at that - the quick, sharp bark of true humor that only ever got startled out of him - and crowed delightedly, eyes shining, “Oh man, I’ve got to tell him you said that! He’s gonna hate it.”

“You could always call him on down here, you know,” Hank said, tilting his cup back and forth so the scotch sloshed up toward the lip. “Plenty of booze to go around and I heard there might be pizza on order. Could be nice for the guy to enjoy the party he had a hand in making happen.”

“Ah,” Nick said, ducking his gaze away and scratching absently at the hinge of his jaw. Fidgety, nervous.

Lying, Hank realized with a sudden, queasy certainty.

“He’s not really into crowds,” Nick offered. It was a weak excuse, as they went, and Nick must have known it because he fell awkwardly silent, staring vacantly into the half-empty depths of his cup and pointedly not meeting Hank’s eyes.

“Maybe next time, then,” Hank said, conciliatory. Nick nodded.

“Sure,” he agreed, flashing a relieved grin up at Hank. “Next time.” He nearly jumped as his phone started ringing, wiggling his way out from under Hank’s arm and digging to free it from the interior pocket of his jacket.

He glanced down at the glowing screen, eyebrows lifting slightly before he thumbed it dark, tucking the phone in toward his chest like he was afraid Hank might crane his neck to try and read it.

“I gotta get going.” He held his cup out, tilting his head encouragingly and offering it in Hank’s direction. “You wanna kill this for me?”

Hank stared at him for a long second, unimpressed, until Nick wagged the cup enticingly back and forth. He rolled his eyes, reached out to snatch it, and peered inside. It was easily two-thirds of the way full, and Hank severely doubted that Nick had gotten up and refilled it at any point during the evening. He jabbed a finger at Nick over the rim of the cup and announced, “You’re a disgrace to this department.”

“Tell it to your hangover,” Nick replied jovially. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hank groused as Nick turned and started down the hallway, raising the phone to his ear with a soft salutation that Hank couldn’t quite hear. He had to lift his voice in a holler to add, “Tell Juliette I said hi!”

Nick looked over his shoulder, brows tucked together in confusion, and glanced from Hank to the phone and back again before his expression cleared.

“Sure, yeah!” he replied, flashing the smile that practically everyone swooned over. The real pretty one that didn’t quite touch his eyes.

He turned his attention back to the phone with an absent wave in Hank’s direction, tucking his shoulders in and carefully picking his way through the celebrants lining the corridor. While it might be technically accurate to say that Hank crept cautiously after him in the interest of eavesdropping on his conversation, he preferred to think of it as undertaking a semi-involuntary investigation in the interest of assuring his partner’s emotional and physical well-being.

It was possible, Hank reflected, that there was a reason Nick always stuck him with the reports.

“ - fine, I promise,” Nick was saying as Hank sidled casually up to linger behind couple of uniforms who had their arms slung around one another and were trading increasingly unintelligible declarations of platonic love. “We’ve got the guy in custody and she’s safe with her mom. She’s gonna be okay.”

He paused for a second, in his stride and in the conversation.

“Only when she has to come in to identify him, but it’s not face-to-face. He won’t even see her.” Another pause, and from this vantage point Hank could just barely make out a slight lift at one corner of Nick’s mouth.

He could picture the fond smirk clearly. He’d seen it directed at Juliette often enough, and occasionally at a particularly coveted cup of coffee when Nick was going a little loopy from sleep deprivation.

“I’ll be there the whole time. I won’t let the bastard near her, I swear.”

Nick huffed a little laugh at whatever his conversational partner said and dipped his head, half-nod, half-prevarication.

“I’m going to remind you of that next time you’re whining about me endangering your person,” he said easily, and started walking again.

It was simple enough to tail him to the stairwell, where the echo of his voice against the barren walls seemed to ring louder even than the background roar of the party in full swing.

“No, no. I just figured the big bad wolf would have more spine, is all.”

There was a sharp bark of laughter, moving almost out of range, and Hank fought the urge to lean further toward the staircase in fear of tipping over and rolling down it. He shuffled cautiously toward the top step, peering over the banister and ducking immediately back the second he caught sight of Nick’s dark head. He’d stopped again, loitering on the next landing down. His voice was quieter when he spoke next, but still easy enough for Hank to pick up on.

“You did good, Monroe. Seriously, I couldn’t have found her without you.”

A beat, and a mildly exasperated sigh.

“Uh-huh. Sure,” followed by a choked-off laugh. “If this is how you’re going to be about it, forget I said anything.”

An attentive pause.

“Was there a reason you called or is this just some weird blutbad tradition?” Pause again, shorter. “I don’t know, maybe every third Thursday you have to be rude to someone while they compliment you.”

Bloot-bahd? Hank formed his mouth carefully around the word, taking pains to ensure he wasn’t actually saying it out loud. He’d never heard the term before, but maybe Monroe was into one of those New Age hippie religions. He definitely seemed the type, though he clearly hadn’t appreciated Nick’s comment. Hank could hear the distant, staticky whine of his offended squawking from all the way up here.

There was the gentle scuff of a footstep against laminate and Nick drawled, “How ever will I console myself, missing out on beet sausage?”

A pause.

“Yeah, I could eat. I mean, not beet sausage, but everything else sounds good. Besides, we should probably talk about - you know.”

There was an absent, metered burst of tapping, probably the sole of Nick’s shoe against the floor.

“I don’t know, maybe twenty minutes? Yeah, sure. Do you have any real beer in your fridge or is it all overpriced microbrews?”

Hank risked another peek, leaning over to see Nick’s figure begin bobbing placidly as he made his way down the staircase.

“Fine,” Nick said, voice fading. “Half an hour, then. And I’m serious about the sausage.” A hefty sigh. “Yeah, but you’re paying me back.”

As the conversation petered off with Nick insisting teasingly that he could be allergic to beets, for all Monroe knew, Hank wondered whether the booze or the unexpected revelation was more to blame for the way his head felt as if it had come free of his shoulders to spin circles in the air like a wobbling balloon. Nick was presumably on the way to eat dinner in the company of none other than the mysterious Monroe, with whom he had clearly struck up some kind of rapport over the last couple of months that was intimate enough to involve clandestine meetings over highly questionable meatless entrees. The information all sort of fizzled and warped in his head when he tried to look at it altogether, so Hank laid it out in his mind in a couple of short, simple inferences.

One: Nick was having dinner with Clock Guy, who he had apparently become close enough with to call Monroe with no small level of familiarity.

This wasn’t altogether worrisome, except that Nick’s roster of friends had never been exceptionally well-padded, and he hadn’t mentioned Monroe even in passing since the whole thing with the rogue arson inspector and the terrifyingly attractive redhead with a murder rap. Hank had sort of assumed that whatever fledgling acquaintanceship Nick and Monroe might have been working on had crumbled underneath the weight of all that drama, but clearly he was misinformed. It stung, surprisingly sharp.

While they didn’t necessarily talk a lot about their feelings, it was markedly out of character that Nick would fail to mention to Hank that his relationship with a suspected serial kidnapper had progressed beyond “we once shared a single awkward apology beer and made painful small talk about his bizarre obsession with vintage timepieces” to “we’re good enough buddies to stop by and chat over late night meals on busy weeknights when I haven’t seen my girlfriend for more than an hour in three days.” Not that Hank meant to judge, or anything. It just seemed like Nick’s priorities might be slightly askew, on that one.

Two: Monroe had helped Nick with the case.

This was by far the more troubling revelation, for a number of reasons. Firstly, and most egregiously, because it appeared that Nick had asked for Monroe’s help off the books. There were protocols in place to seek aid from relevant professionals and there was paperwork to ensure the protection and payment of criminal informants, all appropriately tracked and tidily cataloged to make it easier for the prosecution to keep to their end of the bargain and dole out judicially-approved punishment on deserving parties.

When you started playing fast and loose, like asking your drinking buddy to help you find a missing girl in the woods, the chain of evidence got sloppy, and that left loopholes for the defense to leverage to their advantage. That was how bad guys walked. Nick knew that, and was normally so scrupulously committed to following the aforementioned protocol that he sometimes came across as miserably uptight. It was unlike him to be so lax about any investigation, let alone one of such public prominence.

There was the slimmest of possibilities that Nick had loaded Monroe into the system as a CI back during the Lasser thing and forgotten to mention it, but it would be easy enough to check the records and Hank would put good money on Monroe’s name coming up only in reference to overdue parking tickets, if even that. From what little Hank had seen of him, he seemed like the kind of guy who was too uptight to let even his minor library fines go unresolved.

He downed the remaining scotch in his own coffee cup before turning his attention to the mostly-full glass Nick had left. Ambling absently back into the hallway, he considered that maybe the pressure of losing his aunt, putting off his proposal, and getting sucked into ever stranger cases was finally cutting cracks into Nick’s marbled exterior. It still didn’t explain why Nick had reached out to Clock Guy, of all people, to track a nearly decade-old trail through a stretch of frequently trodden forest, but there was only so much rationalizing Hank could do when he felt soaked in booze up to his eyeballs and exhausted, besides.

He spotted Wu a little way into the bullpen, balanced precariously on the edge of Capiletti’s desk and letting his legs dangle jovially in the air, swaying along with whatever Top 40 pop tune was piping tinnily over the station’s intercom system. He’d swapped his street blues for a matched set of PPD sweats that looked vaguely ridiculous, but still strangely worked. It appeared a surplus of charisma could make up for a multitude of sins.

“Yo,” Hank said awkwardly as he strolled up, forcing a casualness he didn’t quite feel, off-kilter as he was. Wu snorted, arching a deeply judgmental eyebrow.

“‘Yo,’” he mimicked, in a low, unflattering rasp. He wrinkled his nose in distaste while Hank rolled his eyes, and then continued in his normal tenor, “Is that a thing we’re doing now? Yo?”

He didn’t sound drunk, but his face was flushed ruddy and his eyes had the familiar glassy sheen of the decently inebriated.

“Nah, it didn’t really work for me,” Hank admitted. Wu nodded his agreement.

“Good call,” he approved.

Hank scooted in next to Wu and turned so that his back was to the desk, bracing one palm against its surface and leaning back into the point of contact. He could feel Wu watching him, though he couldn’t quite tell if the bland expression that kept swimming in and out of focus on Wu’s face was one of expectant patience or one of drunken absentia. He took a long, slow sip of Nick’s abandoned scotch in case of the former, mulling over what he wanted to say and how, exactly, he wanted to say it. Wu was a good guy, but he could occasionally be something of a gossipmonger and Hank was here out of concern for his partner, not to accidentally start some kind of weird rumors about him.

“So,” he blurted suddenly, and Wu blinked with polite attention. “You know Nick?”

It was, admittedly, not the best opening gambit Hank had ever delivered in his life, but the way that Wu’s eyebrows catapulted toward his buzzed hairline was a bit much.

“Nick Burkhardt?” Wu asked haltingly. Hank rolled his eyes.

“No, Nick Nolte,” he groused. “Yes, Nick Burkhardt! How many other Nicks you know walking around this precinct, man?”

Wu considered this for a long moment, swaying slightly from side to side as his gaze rolled thoughtfully toward the ceiling.

“Five,” he supplied decisively. Hank stared at him for probably longer than was necessary, and then sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Okay,” he ground past his teeth, “how many Nicks do you know that I would be coming to you to ask about?”

“Definitely just Burkhardt,” Wu agreed immediately. “You guys are like this.” He held up a hand, twining his middle and index fingers together with a low whistle, and then leaned in to add in a gratingly loud conspiratorial whisper, “Co-de-pen-dent.”

“Thanks,” Hank said flatly. Wu clapped a companionable palm over his shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“Anytime,” he assured pleasantly. “So, what’s up with Burkie Burke?”

“I don’t know,” Hank admitted, cutting his gaze away and focusing blearily on the boring laminate flooring, long since scuffed to hell and back. “Has he seemed...weird to you lately?”

Wu made a slightly garbled noise of consideration.

“Not any weirder than usual,” he offered, shrugging when Hank looked up, frowning in disappointment. “Sorry, man. Why do you ask?”

Hank shook his head.

“Just a feeling,” he said absently, mind spinning. Was it possible there was nothing strange going on with Nick at all? Maybe he was just being overly sensitive. After all, it wasn’t like Nick wasn’t allowed to make new friends, odd as they or their circumstances of association may be. Hank had never thought himself especially prone to histrionics over his platonic relationships, but maybe the stress of the case was getting to him, too.

“Is this about his boyfriend?”

Hank blinked slowly at Wu, brow furrowing in confusion as the question pushed through the gummy barrier of his internal musings, slow as pulled taffy.

“Boyfriend?” he repeated slowly. Wu snorted.

“Not literally,” he assured, and then flicked his gaze toward the ceiling, up-and-back in a quick moment of consideration. He wrinkled his nose, tilting his hand back and forth in a so-so gesture, and amended, “Or, maybe literally. If Nick was driving stick with anyone, dollars to doughnuts it’d be this guy.”

“Say what now?” Hank asked, head to one side, staring at Wu with no small amount of disbelief.

“The guy,” Wu said, rolling his eyes and waving an irritated hand, as though Hank should already know what guy he could possibly be alluding to. “You know the guy - tall, irritated? Dresses like a sixty year old lumberjack?”

“Monroe?” Hank squinted at Wu, who had gone slightly blurry around the edges.

“Could be,” Wu provided thoughtfully, scratching at his chin. “Nick’s never introduced us.” He snapped triumphantly, extending an index finger and aiming it at Hank’s chest with wobbly accuracy. “But! He had the guy with him when we went in to secure the scene, and let me tell you, dude is stronger than he looks.”

He wagged his eyebrows appreciatively.

“Carted Holly Clark a couple of miles through the woods in the middle of the night like it was nothing.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Hank mumbled, waving a hand as though it would clear Wu’s babbling from the air. “Monroe was with him when he found Holly?”

“Uh, yeah?” Wu said cautiously. “I’m pretty sure it was him. Unless Nick knows more than one scruffy beanpole that he likes to take on romantic moonlit walks through active crime scenes.”

Hank smiled a little at that, because while he was far from convinced that there was anything lascivious going on between his partner and the clock hippie, there was no denying that dragging an unsuspecting date through a barely defunct murder scene was exactly the kind of insane power move Nick might try to impress a girl. Or guy, in this case, Hank supposed, though he was some distance from buying the theory that Nick would make a move on anyone other than Juliette, especially while they were dating.

“What the hell was he thinking, dragging a civilian out there with him?” Hank wondered, absent and vaguely frustrated. “They could have been shot!”

Wu shrugged.

“Maybe Nick just likes the way he fills out his khakis, man,” he offered dryly. Hank glared at him, but Wu had long been immune to Hank’s scathing disapproval. He simply grinned and continued, “I’ve done worse to get close to a good ass.”

“First of all,” Hank insisted, though it all sort of slurred together into one mushy polysyllabic word, “I refuse to believe Monroe has an ass. You’ve seen the guy, right? He’s way too skinny to be rocking a quality caboose.”

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Wu rebutted serenely. “Apparently Burkie’s heart wants an outdoorsy brunet built like an angry fencepost.”

Hank rolled his eyes again and reached over to shove irritably at Wu’s shoulder. Wu laughed, swaying to the side and back like one of those wobbling kids’ toys.

“Weeble,” Hank blurted aloud.

“There’s no need to be cruel,” Wu drawled admonishingly. He reached over, presumably to deliver a placating pat to Hank’s shoulder, but he veered at the last second into something that more closely resembled a slow and tender face-wash. “It’s okay, I know you’re just lashing out because Nick is replacing you with thrift-store Eddie Bauer.”

Hank shook Wu’s hand off and scowled at him.

“That doesn’t even make sense,” he snapped.

“Puffy vest,” Wu replied unhelpfully, waving his hand sluggishly in the air. “Thermal shirt. Flannel.”

“How drunk are you?” Hank asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. He’d assumed that the gentle rocking Wu was doing was a symptom of Hank’s own powers of vision slowly deteriorating with the application of alcohol, but now he wasn’t so sure.

“Drunk enough to know you’re deflecting,” Wu said, slowly easing himself into a supine position across Capiletti’s desk. His legs continued to dangle off the edge and he seemed remarkably unconcerned with the files, decorations, and office supplies therein. He wiggled for a second, then grunted and removed a stapler from the vicinity of his kidneys, slapping it sedately into Hank’s hand. “If you’re so curious about Nick’s mystery date, why don’t you just ask him?”

Hank considered this for a long moment. He opened his mouth. He shut it again.

Why didn’t he just ask Nick?

Because Nick is lying to me, his mind supplied immediately, with all the irate righteousness that terrible scotch could provide.

That wasn’t precisely true, though, Hank reasoned. Nick was certainly omitting a few things. Maybe even a lot of things, but it wasn’t like Hank had asked him about any of it to his face. He’d immediately jumped to cloak-and-dagger espionage, probably a little out of habit, but it wasn’t like Nick was some kind of criminal mastermind. He was Hank’s partner, Hank’s friend. If there was something going with him, it wasn’t Nick’s job to air his woes to Hank at Hank’s whim. In fact, if he thought his friend was acting weird, or maybe struggling with something, it was Hank’s responsibility, nay privilege, to ask him about it.

Nick wouldn’t be obligated to tell him anything, of course, but maybe if Hank opened that door, he would have the confidence to walk through on his own.

“Maybe I will ask him,” he announced. His only response came in the form of a soft, high wheeze that stuttered into a choked-off snore.

Hank sighed, mustering as much derision as he could to glare down at Wu, who it seemed had nodded off sometime in the minute or so Hank had been considering his advice. He tucked the stapler into the crook of Wu’s elbow, gratified when Wu mumbled something unintelligible and curled around it like a child with a much-loved toy, rolling onto his side and drooling into what looked like a stack of freshly filled out arrest forms. Capiletti should have known better than to leave those out while the scotch was flowing.

Tomorrow, Hank thought blearily, swallowing down the rest of Nick’s abandoned booze and tossing the cup into a nearby wastebasket. Tomorrow, he would ask.

He turned on his heel, grabbing suddenly at the back of a nearby rolling chair when the station teetered dangerously around him. For now, though, he should probably call a cab.

Chapter Text

An elephant gun.

Hank owed his life to a firearm developed at the turn of the century, of all things. And, of course, to the mysterious vigilante who’d fired the thing from somewhere in the overgrown grasses surrounding the quarry. The latter, at least, he had begun to form some semblance of a theory about, but the former was still pulling him up short. An elephant gun.

Admittedly, he’d only had about two minutes to avail himself of the knowledge that his savior - for want of a better term - had been toting a hundred-year-old, custom made big game rifle, whereas he’d been chewing on his suspicions about the shooter’s identity for a couple of days, but he was still irritated by his mind’s stubborn refusal to leap into action. His brain had been stalling out like an engine in need of repair since he realized that Oleg Stark was free of prison and on a bloody rampage through the streets of Portland. Stress would do that, and Hank was certain that the headache that had been stubbornly beating against his temples from the second Stark’s meaty fist made contact with his face wasn’t helping any.

“How’s Burkhardt holding up?”

Hank glanced over at the Captain from where he was studying one of the deformed bullets lying on the desk, blinking for a moment as he forced his mind to switch gears from investigation to small talk. Renard was watching him coolly, his fingers steepled together and resting absently in front of him, chin lifted and eyes sharp with polite, concerned interest. It was something of a jarring alteration in the flow of conversation, but Renard had always been brusque, preferring to cut straight to the heart of the matter where possible. It was one of his more admirable qualities - Hank could barely abide it when his peers beat too frequently around the bush, let alone his superiors. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug and let out a sigh.

“Fine?” he offered, a little helplessly. “He seemed okay when I saw him last night.”

Nick had been all swaddled up in bandages and blankets and an old PPD hoodie Juliette must have smuggled him from home. He’d spent the majority of Hank’s visit bitching about the caliber of the food available and half-doped on pain meds, besides, opining that it was ridiculous that the hospital staff insisted on holding him for observation in case of any internal bleeding and to monitor his severe concussion.

“Pissed he can’t be at work,” Hank added around the ghost of a laugh, cutting the Captain a rueful grin.

Renard chuckled to himself and ducked his head to mask his amusement. It was no secret that the Captain had a bit of a soft spot for Nick, hard as he worked to abstain from exhibiting any favoritism.

“That sounds like Nick,” he agreed, with a wry shake of his head. He parted his hands, reaching with one to collect the three disfigured slugs and scoop them up, while he drummed the fingers of the other against his leather desk topper.

“Maybe you ought to pick his brain on this one,” the Captain suggested, tipping the evidence back into its bag and sealing it with a couple of slick, practiced movements. He smirked, conspiratorial, and offered the baggie to Hank. “Give him something to think about so he doesn’t go out of his mind watching daytime television.”

“Man,” Hank drawled, shaking his head and grinning, “if I never have to hear him talking about Maury again it’ll be too soon.”

It was, of course, a lie.

Hank would happily loiter at Nick’s bedside and bask in his energetic berating of reality television contestants for as long as Nick had the breath to complain, simply because a Nick who was whining about the moral caliber of the human race was a Nick who was still here, a Nick who had gone toe to toe with a monster like Oleg Stark and somehow, miraculously, survived.

The Captain certainly understood the sentiment - you didn’t work your way to his position without running up against a few close calls, yourself, after all. He shared a quick, knowing gaze with Hank and then leaned back in his chair, brow furrowing and amiable smirk unfurling. He curled his fingers around the blunt ends of either armrest, casually slinging one leg over the other so his ankle caught against his knee.

He considered Hank for a long, sedate moment and asked, somewhat reluctantly, “How has he been besides the concussion?”

“Sir?” Hank responded, letting his face flatten out into the picture of placid confusion. It was a tactic he employed frequently during interrogations, though it frustrated his suspects into fits nearly as often as it diffused the tension. Luckily, the Captain was a man of almost inhumanly even temper, so he simply made a soft, chuffing noise that might have been a laugh, and dipped his head in acknowledgment of Hank’s somewhat ham-fisted deflection.

Hank thought he could be forgiven for not operating at the top of his game, barely two days out from one of the more harrowing nights of his career with his ears still ringing and body aching every other breath. Renard didn’t seem inclined to push, anyway, for which Hank was eminently grateful. He was still riding cresting waves of adrenaline, itching for a fight half the time and too paranoid to turn a corner blind otherwise.

The Captain just spread his palms, fingers wide and placating.

“He’s not in any trouble,” Renard assured, and Hank had to bite back a lightning-quick rebuttal demanding to know if the Captain was really confident in that assessment. “He’s just seemed...distracted, as of late. I wanted to make sure everything else was alright. Nothing going on at home? Nothing he needs any extra support on?”

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for the Captain to be raising his concerns - Hank had been similarly prodded back during his rookie years, when his mentor, Detective Howard, had been hitting the bottle a little too hard, but it raised his hackles all the same. Of course Captain Renard had noticed Nick being weird. Nick was being weird - for a given definition of the term, since Nick had always been a little on the strange side - but he deserved the chance to work through it himself, with Hank’s help if he would take it, before it became an official mark on his record.

It wasn’t like Hank even had any concrete proof to support any of his theories explaining Nick’s bizarre behavior, and there was no good way to announce to your superior that your partner was keeping company you weren’t sure was good for him without feeling like an elementary school tattler. Besides, the last thing either of them needed before Hank had the opportunity to sit and talk it out with Nick himself was for Hank to voice his suspicion that Nick had somehow talked the aforementioned questionable company into killing a man on Hank’s behalf, which was highly criminal regardless of how much Stark had deserved it.

Somehow Hank doubted that Nick would be especially receptive to his concerns if his weird clock-making buddy was sweating it out in a holding cell whenever Hank managed to pin him down long enough to try and wrestle answers out of him.

Hank made a show of considering Renard’s questions that wasn’t likely to win him any awards for best performance, and the Captain thankfully didn’t push when he shook his head and responded slowly, “No. No, not that I can think of.”

He caught Hank’s eye for a long, pointed moment, during which Hank sat still and confident as a statue thanks to years of practice, overwhelmed with silent relief that Captain Renard couldn’t possibly see from this angle how white Hank’s knuckles were where he was clutching the armrests of his chair, evidence bag crushed tightly in one hand.

“Alright,” the Captain allowed after a beat that seemed to stretch out into eternity. He waved Hank away with a hand. “You going to see him this evening?”

“Yes sir,” Hank confirmed, tucking the little bag of bullets shakily into his jacket pocket and rising from his seat with a wince. Captain Renard nodded.

“Give him my regards?”

“Sure thing.” Hank took a cautious step toward the door and tried not to look too surprised when his legs didn’t go to jelly underneath him. His knees felt wobbly, the way they always had when he was a kid, getting away with lying to his parents. He had his fingers wrapped around the handle to Renard’s office, the knob half-turned when the Captain spoke again.

“And, Hank?”

He turned, to find those pale hazel eyes pinned coolly to his face.

“If anything comes to mind,” Renard said, and let the words sit between them for a long breath, to ensure that Hank caught his meaning, “let me know.”

Hank swallowed, throat dry, and nodded. The door closed behind him with a barely there click, but Hank still nearly jumped at the sound.

It wasn’t a threat.

That would be ridiculous, the Captain of the precinct strong-arming one detective into ratting out another, not least of which because Captain Renard had constructed his entire reputation on his genteel demeanor and decency. It wasn’t exactly a warning, either, and while Hank wholeheartedly believed that when the Captain said he wanted Hank to bring any peculiarities in Nick’s behavior to his attention, his intentions to act on said information were good, he couldn’t quite shake the thought that there motivations at play here he didn’t entirely understand.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed, only stopping by his desk long enough to pick up his cell phone and a couple of case files he wanted to review.

It was high time to get out of here and go check in on his unbelievably lucky fool of a partner.

“An elephant gun?”

Nick peered disbelievingly over the top of the evidence bag, blue eyes wide and guileless. Hank couldn’t quite tell whether Nick was actually laying it on way too thick, or whether Hank’s own paranoia was making him especially mistrustful of his partner’s claim to ignorance.

“That’s what I said, man,” he agreed with a shrug. “Who even owns an elephant gun nowadays, let alone carts it out in the middle of the night to take potshots at brawling strangers?”

Nick shook his head and cut Hank a grin.

“The guy who saved your life, apparently,” he supplied, reaching out to hand the evidence bag back. It was a slow, awkward movement, and Nick kept his free arm curled protectively around his ribs as he leaned forward. He didn’t wince too badly, so Hank let him exert himself without complaint, meeting him a little more than halfway to pluck the baggie from his grasp so he didn’t have to stretch too far.

“Or girl,” he said casually, turning the bag over in his hands.

Nick blinked, confused. “What?”

“The shooter could have been female,” Hank explained, holding the bag up and giving it a little shake. It was statistically unlikely, which they both knew, but Nick nodded, slow, and didn’t argue.

”Sure,” he agreed. “Could have been.”

Hank pressed his lips into a thin line, considering for a second.

“Unless,” he offered curiously, “you know something I don’t know.”

It was a touch too solemnly delivered to land as a joke, but Nick’s face shuttered as if it had been an outright accusation. Of what, Hank didn’t exactly know. Probably Nick wasn’t entirely sure what he thought Hank was trying to imply, either, with that morphine line still dripping steadily into his arm.

He leaned back into the pile of pillows behind him, crossing his arms over his chest and asking shortly, “What are you trying to say?”

Hank sighed, folding forward so that his elbows were digging sharp into his knees and letting his head drop toward his chest. His head was swimming with all the responses he could make, all of the harsh truths he could lay at Nick’s feet.

There was the way Nick had been running off on his own more and more frequently, as though Hank wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t actually checking up on warrants and digital footprints and coroner’s reports like he claimed he was. There was his disappearing at night to work cases without backup, when Hank was only ever a short phonecall and maybe a couple minutes’ worth of polite banter away. There was the spacey distraction that Nick had suddenly started exhibiting around the time his aunt passed, or the weird aggression toward some of their persons of interest that Hank had never known him to possess before. And, of course, there was the fact that he was hanging around some weirdo clock-maker, that he was dragging the guy into investigations with him, had maybe even coaxed him into committing a murder. 

He swallowed every one of them down, into the pit of irritation sizzling to life in his gut.

He didn’t want to argue with Nick, hadn’t meant to put him on the offensive. He shook his head.

“I don’t know, man,” he said, peering up to where Nick was watching him warily, mouth pursed into an uncomfortable line. He sat back up, waving a hand and slipping the evidence back into his pocket. “I didn’t mean - ”

He was interrupted by the sudden, sharp shrill of Nick’s phone. Both of them jumped, staring at each other with wide, terrified eyes for a frozen second, and just like that the tension melted away, humor flooding in to take its place.

Hank pressed his knuckles to his mouth and huffed a laugh into his fist, while Nick chuckled and dug around in his sheets, awkwardly attempting to excavate his phone. He glanced down at the screen, then flickered a gaze over to Hank and thumbed it silent.

“Whoever it was,” he posited, “you’re lucky they were there.”

“I am,” Hank agreed immediately. He leaned back in his seat, clicking his tongue mournfully. “Wish I knew who he was. I owe the guy a fruit basket at least.”

He raised his eyebrows pointedly at Nick, who smiled a tight, placid smile, and replied, “Or girl.”

“Or girl,” Hank repeated, without malice. Nick’s phone abruptly began chirping again and he turned it over, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose when he checked the caller I.D.

“You mind?” he asked, holding his phone up with the back toward Hank and wagging it back and forth. Hank shook his head and waved a hand in permission, sprawling back in his seat and casting his gaze toward the ceiling to provide at least the illusion of privacy.

“Hey,” Nick greeted, low and wary, while Hank tried not see him shooting cautious glances in Hank’s direction. “Now’s not really a good time.”

Between the distance and the ambient chorus of the hospital’s intensive care ward, Hank couldn’t quite make out the voice on the other end of the phone, only that it was at a lower register than say, Juliette’s would have been.

“I’m fine,” Nick assured whoever was on the other line - Hank could make a pretty damn good guess as to the mystery caller’s identity, but from the way that Nick had curled his shoulders in and subtly angled his body away from Hank he was clearly trying to keep it under wraps. Briefly, Hank considered calling out a greeting to Monroe anyway, just to see the look on Nick’s face when he did it, but he truly hadn’t come to stir the pot. Not today, when Nick was still half-blasted on a morphine drip and his bruises looked even uglier than they had the night they happened.

Nick made a quiet, amused sound.

“Yeah, well, they’ve got me on the good drugs,” he said, and paused to listen to probably-Monroe’s response. He grinned, rolling his eyes, and amended, “They’re not that good.”

Hank laced his fingers together, tapping his thumbs against one another and casually started to count the ceiling tiles.

“No, no, you don’t need to do that,” he sighed. “I’ll pick them up when I’m out.”

He flashed another look in Hank’s direction and, reasonably soothed by the effort Hank was expending to craft a facade of privacy, uncurled a bit to sink back into his pillows with a grunt.

“Sometime tomorrow, as long as nothing unexpected crops up.” He snorted. “No, I’ve got it covered. But thanks. Yeah. I’ll catch you later.”

He swiped his phone off and tucked it away, picking absently at the sheets over his lap and waiting a few seconds to meet Hank’s eye.

Hank stared for a long moment and then asked, “Juliette?”

It was a token, more than anything. They both knew it wasn’t Juliette who had called, and Nick didn’t look especially relieved to be offered the out. He was frowning down at his bedclothes, worrying at something in his mouth in that way he did when he was confronted with a difficult decision. For a brief, stomach-churning moment, Hank thought he might actually try and play it off as though it had been Juliette on the line. He wasn’t quite certain what he would do if Nick insulted his intelligence so egregiously, but he could guarantee that it wouldn’t be pretty.

Luckily, Nick just tightened his jaw, tilted his gaze back up, and sighed reluctantly, “No, it was, uh. Monroe.”

“Monroe,” Hank parroted, raising his eyebrows.

“Yeah,” Nick said, brisk and with a slight edge to his words. “He heard about what happened and I guess it freaked him out, being involved in something like this. He wanted to make sure I was alright.”

Hank canted his head back and forth, considering.

“I didn’t realize you guys were tight like that.”

“We’re not tight,” Nick scoffed immediately, and to his credit the rebuttal seemed genuine. Hank shot him a deeply skeptical look, even so.

“Tight enough the dude has your personal phone number,” he observed. Nick sighed through his nose and rolled his eyes.

“It’s not - ” he started, and then cut himself off with a little, irritated breath. He peered intently over at Hank.

“I felt bad for getting him all tangled up in the kidnapping thing,” he explained.

His blue gaze was sparkling with so much sincerity that Hank was suddenly, inarguably certain Nick was bending the truth, at best, if he wasn’t lying outright to Hank’s face. It was an alarming display of deceptive competence, coming from a guy who’d been wringing his hands with concern over how he was ever going to keep his engagement ring a secret a few short months ago. It made Hank’s chest ache.

“I gave him my number in case anyone hassled him about it after the fact. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t ruin the guy’s life.”

“He must get hassled a lot, if you two have gotten so close he’s calling you in the hospital.”

Nick hunched his shoulders defensively up toward his ears.

“Plenty of people’s friends call them when they’re in the hospital.”

Hank snorted, half-amused, half-irritated.

“Nick,” he said, pointed but not unkind, “you only have like two friends, man, and I’m one of them.”

“Gee, Hank,” Nick muttered, “don’t be too generous, there. My ego may never recover.”

“The other one is Wu,” Hank continued breezily.

“That’s just willfully cruel.”

“And,” Hank carried on, right over the top of Nick’s bitchy asides, “we can probably count Juliette in there, too. She likes you.”

“She better,” Nick agreed, a subtle tone of alarm bleeding through his words. “She’s been dating me for years, it would be literally insane if she didn’t like me at least a little bit.”

“All I’m saying is, people might have plenty of friends to ring them up while they’re convalescing but you aren’t one of those people.”

“Maybe I’m becoming one of those people,” Nick shot back. “Maybe I’m evolving into a beautiful, extroverted butterfly.”

“Maybe you are,” Hank allowed. He shrugged. “All I know is that forty-eight hours ago, you were fairly adamant that you and Monroe were strictly not friends, but that relationship appears to have been reclassified sometime in the interim.”

Nick glared. He opened his mouth, made a vague and garbled consonant sound that might have been the beginning of a word, and then let his mouth snap shut again. Hank crossed his arms triumphantly over his chest and tried not to look too smug.

“We’re really not friends,” Nick insisted, after he’d quietly fumed for a few minutes. “You know I’m not great with that stuff. He’s just a nice, kinda high strung guy who’s helped me out a couple of times.”

His voice was small in a way that leeched all the joy out of Hank’s hard-earned entrapment. Hank pinched irritably at the bridge of his nose.

“Look, man,” he sighed. “You’re a fine friend, a great one, even, under the right circumstances.”

”This has been, really, so good for my self-esteem,” Nick interrupted. Hank ignored him.

”I’m glad you’re meeting new people, even if they are vaguely suspicious and deeply strange hippie timepiece enthusiasts.”

“Horofiles,” Nick supplied absently. Hank frowned.

“What?”

“Clock enthusiasts are called horofiles. Or, some of them call themselves that, anyway.” He scrunched his face thoughtfully. “I don’t know if it’s like, an official title, but that’s what Monroe calls it.”

“You see?” Hank said, throwing himself out of his chair, he was so quick to gesture at Nick. “You say you’re not friends with the guy and then you drop this kind of shit.”

“I pick up one minor factoid from one of his rambling monologues on clocks and suddenly we’re swapping BFF necklaces?”

Hank stared at Nick, unimpressed.

“You knew where his coffee cups were, man.” He shook his head and fell back into his seat, tilting his face toward the ceiling and scrubbing his palms over it a few times in the hopes of alleviating some of his frustration. “At first I thought the whole thing was kind of fishy, but now I’ll admit I’m mostly freaked out that you won’t just admit to it.”

“Fine!” Nick threw his hands up. “Fine! We’re friends! There! Are you happy? Can we quit with the interrogation now?”

Hank was shocked silent long enough that he worried he might not ever speak again.

“I mean, I still have some questions - ” he started to say, hoarse and wobbly, once he’d finally recaptured his voice. Nick cut him off with a bitter little laugh, darker and more brittle than Hank had ever heard from him before.

“Hank, buddy,” he said, desperation tearing at the edges of his words, “I think we both have plenty of questions on this one we’d really rather not answer.”

His gaze was sharp and heavy with meaning. He didn’t breathe so much as a word about tapes or missing evidence or conspiracies but Hank flinched as though he had. He swallowed, throat aching around a knot of guilt, and spread his hands in surrender.

“That’s fair,” he allowed, even though it hurt like coughing up glass to say the words aloud. He glanced over at Nick, tucked up in his hospital bed looking stricken, bruises and scrapes vivid against his too-pale skin, expression harassed and vaguely hunted.

This wasn’t what Hank had meant for this visit to be.

He took a long, slow breath and clapped his palms to his thighs, dragging them up and down his jeans in a couple of quick, easy passes as he pushed himself to his feet.

“What d’you say we put this one to bed, for now?” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the curtain at his back that separated them from the rest of the ward. “I’ll see about smuggling you a hamburger from Ralph’s and we both pretend the last twenty minutes never happened. Deal?”

Nick collapsed back against his pillows and nodded, grateful grin splitting his face and making his lips curl.

“Deal,” he sighed. He lifted his eyebrows, smile morphing from painfully relieved to impishly playful, and added, “You figure out how to get some of those duck fat fries in here and I’ll nominate you for sainthood.”

Hank waved a hand at him, ducking past the curtain and tossing his response over his shoulder.

“I’ve earned sainthood twelve times over already, looking out for your sorry ass.”

He flashed an apologetic smirk to a nearby nurse who was scowling disapprovingly at his conduct and basked in the sound of Nick’s laughter trailing him out into the hall.

Nick was alive, and he was happy, and he was healing. For the moment, that was all that mattered. Everything else would keep.

Chapter Text

“Damn but this is a mess,” Hank sighed, scrubbing at his face with his hands and blinking blearily at the screen of his computer.

Paperwork was easily the least glamorous part of being a homicide detective, but it wasn’t something Hank usually minded. Cases were won and lost by paperwork, and it didn’t have to be his favorite part of his job for him to understand its importance or respect its necessity. Fortunately, it was rare that a case required quite the volume of filing that this particular investigation had accrued.

It was like something out of a movie: your friendly neighborhood parole officer secretly operating a brutal underground fight club.

Taymor was still in the wind, which was especially disheartening considering the fact that he and Nick had been seated a desk away from the man, trading polite but stilted conversation, less than seventy-two hours before. Nick had been jumpy and distracted since Hank and Sgt. Franco rolled up with the cavalry the night prior to free him from the iron cage where he’d apparently assaulted another man to the point of unconsciousness.

Dimitri Skantos was rapidly recuperating at St. Joe’s and thankfully didn’t seem inclined to press charges, too preoccupied with fighting the manslaughter allegations Captain Renard had insisted on pinning him with.

Time would tell whether Nick was going to be officially disciplined for the actions he’d taken during the brawl, but everyone in the precinct seemed to feel that he had a pretty solid argument for self-defense, and despite his recent twitchiness Nick didn’t seem altogether concerned about it.

Hank still wasn’t clear as to precisely why Nick had ended up agreeing to participate in the fighting ring in the first place, and his partner was being maddeningly tight-lipped on the subject. It was nice to have Nick back, of course, but it seemed like the bruises and contusions left by Oleg Stark had barely healed before he was throwing himself headlong into some new and harrowing peril.

It assuaged Hank’s lingering guilt on the matter of Stark at the same time that it raised an alarm for entirely different reasons. Hank had seen what happened to cops who started playing too fast and loose with their own mortality. It very rarely ended well for any party involved.

“Tell me about it,” Nick muttered, flicking a commiserating glance over to Hank’s desk from where he was methodically plodding his way through his own teetering pile of witness statements and forensics reports.

“You think we’ll catch him?”

“Doubtful,” Nick sighed, leaning back in his seat and scrubbing a hand tiredly over his jaw. “We’ll be lucky if he hasn’t skipped town already.”

“Where’s the ol’ Burkhardt optimism?” Hank replied, grinning. “That rookie detective magic is gonna pull through for you, just you watch. We’ll get him.”

Nick snorted, shaking his head.

“No magic,” he assured, leaning in to scrawl something onto a sticky note and press it to the inside of the file folder currently splayed open atop his computer keyboard. “Just good old-fashioned police work.”

“Plus, you got the hook-ups,” Hank agreed, turning his attention back to his own work. Written statements were always something of a crapshoot, but at least this one was mostly legible, if not especially compelling. The average spectator of illegal cage fighting tended to lack a certain amount of authorial flair.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Hank lifted his gaze to find Nick staring him down with a curious, vaguely disappointed frown. Hank arched an eyebrow.

“Monrroe,” he said. The furrow between Nick’s brow sunk in deeper.

“What about him?”

“He busted the whole case wide open, didn’t he?”

The smile Nick flashed him was slightly queasy, and didn’t do much to counteract the sudden, glassy tension in his gaze.

“How would he have done that?” Nick asked shortly, dropping his eyes back to his paperwork. “He wasn’t even there.”

So, Hank thought resignedly, his partner was lying. Again. And badly, too.

If Hank hadn’t been offended on his own behalf, he might have been offended on Nick’s for putting up such a pisspoor performance. They were homicide detectives, for God’s sake - it was a wonder that Nick had ever managed to make it through an interrogation if this was the best he could do at serious prevarication. Hank flattered himself to consider that maybe Nick was having such a difficult time because he was ashamed of lying to Hank, in particular, but he’d seen Nick flub his way through enough badly-concocted excuses to a rotating cast of complete strangers and casual acquaintances in the last few weeks that he knew this wasn’t the case.

“Didn’t say he was,” he offered blandly. “He tipped you off to the location, though, right?”

“Oh,” Nick said, the tight line of his shoulders unspooling cautiously to slack, sloping relief. It would almost have been funny if it wasn’t both desperately sad and deeply insulting. “Oh, yeah he did. He knows this guy, you know?”

“The bookie, sure,” Hank agreed easily.

“It’s not just - ” Nick shook his head in a short, sharp jerk. “Monroe’s very active in the community,” he insisted, cutting a cagey little glance in Hank’s direction. “He knows a lot of people.”

Hank should have let it go, should have accepted Nick’s ham-fisted hedging and moved on, but he was still nursing his frustration over the whole Oleg Stark debacle. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that Nick had sent his stick bug lumberjack out with a hundred-year-old firearm to ‘take care’ of the problem while Nick was laid up in the hospital, doped up on prescription painkillers. It rankled both Hank’s personal and professional sensibilities, not that he could prove Monroe’s involvement; or Nick’s, for that matter, though Hank was fairly certain his chances were a little better there, at least.

His festering irritation was compounded by the fact that every witness statement from the Taymor case that Hank had entered into the system so far had made mention of a man matching Monroe’s general description being in the cage with Nick before the cops arrived. Some of them even asserted that possibly-Monroe had been in the cage before Nick himself had even gotten there, and that Nick had climbed in on possibly-Monroe’s behalf at Taymor’s goading, willingly handing over his gun and not bothering to wait for back-up.

Befriending a since-absolved person of interest was strange, sure, but forgivable as a quirk of personality. Approaching said person on the sly for help with police cases was stranger, still, but ultimately understandable - if a little foolish - considering the delicacy of the cases and the expertise of the persons involved.

Encouraging said person to actively participate in a police investigation, or worse, aiding and abetting said person in eluding arrest for their involvement in a criminal activity? Those waters were decidedly murkier, and Hank didn’t appreciate Nick’s lack of consideration for the way his actions might tarnish Hank’s reputation by association, let alone how they could tank his own - and likely would, at this rate. So, instead of keeping his lip buttoned, Hank asked dryly, “Are they all criminals, or does he have a book club, too?”

Nick scowled at him, wounded. “That’s not fair.”

“Mysterious bookie,” Hank provided, holding up one finger, then two, then three as he spoke. “Hap Lasser. Hap Lasser’s hot, homicidal sister.” There was almost certainly another handful, at least, of suspects and/or victims that Nick was keeping mum about, though Hank didn’t think it would be in his best interests to bring that up right now.

“Angelina,” Nick muttered, staring into the middle distance while his mouth screwed up like he smelled something foul. After a second of quiet, intense brooding, he focused his gaze back on Hank and added, “That’s one person of interest and an unlucky guy who drew the attention of a serial arsonist. Having bad luck with childhood friends hardly makes him Don Corleone.”

“So he’s just a well-meaning clockmaker who keeps a bookie on his speed dial?” Hank pressed. They were both intimately acquainted with the kind of man who befriended a bookie - a gentle and savory character didn’t generally top the list of defining traits in pathological gamblers.

Nick’s mouth went thin and stern, lower lip tucked in that stubborn way that signified he was determined to give no quarter.

“He only met the bookie because I asked him to look into a lead,” he snapped. It was an instinctual, thoughtless response, and Nick realized precisely what he’d said a spare second later, blue eyes going wide while regret flooded his features.

“If I ask why you had a clockmaker investigate a lead for you instead of, oh,” Hank shrugged and gestured vaguely to himself, “your partner, who also happens to be a police detective, you gonna tell me?”

Nick clenched his jaw, chin jutting forward. He tore his eyes away from Hank’s, slate-dark gaze settling somewhere on his desk.

“Yeah,” Hank huffed, shaking his head. The curl of his smirk felt sharp like a sneer. “Didn’t think so.”

“I don’t know why you’re so hung up on Monroe,” Nick muttered, glaring at his paperwork.

Hank stared at him, until the weight of it pricked Nick’s attention and drew his eyes back up.

“Maybe because you are?”

“I am what?” Nick asked irritably.

“Obsessed with the guy?”

Nick scoffed. “I’m not obsessed, he’s just - ” Nick shook his head, pressing his mouth into a flat, unhappy line. “It’s complicated.”

“Sounds like it,” Hank agreed. Nick narrowed his eyes, rightfully suspicious of Hank’s easy acquiescence. Hank sighed and leaned forward, explaining quietly, “Listen, man, I don’t know what’s going on with you.”

Nick open his mouth to speak, but Hank held up a hand, flashing him a dark, warning glare, and he let it fall shut again.

“Don’t try to tell me it’s nothing. It’s obvious that something’s going on. And you don’t want to tell me what it is? That’s fine.” He ignored the painful little clench of his heart and pressed on, “That ever changes, you know I’m here to listen, but in the meantime, you need to think about how this looks.”

“How what looks?” Nick snapped, apparently incapable of holding his tongue any longer.

It took a tremendous application of willpower to keep Hank from rolling his eyes.

“You pin this guy for a kidnapping out of nowhere, howling up and down about how you know he did it even though you don’t have any proof.” Nick flinched, clearly still embarrassed by his rabid insistence of Monroe’s guilt all those months ago. Another mystery of their bizarre friendship that he’s never bothered to explain, much to Hank’s irritation. “And then, next thing you know, you’re linking arms with the guy and dragging him along on cases, sharing confidential information with him, having him follow up your leads.”

“He just - he knows a lot of random stuff,” Nick said weakly. “He has weird hobbies.”

“Nick, man,” Hank intoned somberly, “believe me when I say there is almost nothing in the world I want to know about less than what your murder-friend likes to do in his free time.”

“He’s not - ”

“A murderer? I know,” Hank assured. He considered. “Or, I believe that you don’t think he is, anyway. I’m kinda still on the fence.”

Nick appeared decidedly unimpressed by this clarification.

“I’m just saying,” Hank continued purposefully, “it looks suspicious when you’re sharing confidences with someone outside the department when you got a perfectly good partner sitting right here next to you. It might be different if it was your wife or something, but this dude isn’t even a CI.” He leaned back in his seat and added, at a more normal volume, “That’s a mistake, by the way. If Monroe is helping you out as often as it seems like he is, you need to get him registered, like, yesterday, before a prosecutor with the sense to look into our records rails us over him.”

Nick ignored him, chewing on some other thought for a long, angry second before he looked up, blue eyes blazing, and hissed, “So, what? People think I’m dirty?”

This wasn’t a conversation they should be having in the middle of the bullpen, even with the usual raucous hubbub of a busy police station masking their voices, but Hank figured he might as well go for broke since he had Nick on the line already, anyway.

“Not as such,” he drawled. He felt a little mean but mostly just spitefully satisfied when he confessed bluntly, “They think you’re fucking.”

‘They’ was, admittedly, something of a stretch. Aside from Hank’s own overblown suspicions on the matter - namely that Nick had a crush he didn’t quite recognize or know what to do about - it was only Sergeant Wu who had insinuated an intimate relationship between the two men. Hank was fairly certain that had been largely in jest, but Nick didn’t need to know that.

He looked positively gobsmacked by this assertion, mouth dropped open into a perfect, surprised ‘o,’ eyes wide and horrified. Good, Hank thought with a mean jolt of victory. Nick deserved to squirm a little.

He gaped like a fish for a moment and finally managed, after a few failed attempts, to choke, “I - we - we’re not!”

Hank raised his eyebrows and held his palms out.

“I’m just telling you what I heard.”

This, he wanted to say smugly, while Nick’s confused blue gaze dropped, wary and unseeing, to the clutter on his desk, is how you lie, Burkhardt.

“I can’t - ” Nick gritted, small and angry and helpless. It wasn’t a tone that suited him. “I’m with Juliette. I would never - ”

“I know,” Hank cut in, because whatever else Nick may or may not be guilty of, he wasn’t the type to step out on his significant other, regardless of whatever infatuation he may be feeling for someone else. “It’s just rumors. I thought you oughta be aware.”

“Yeah,” Nick said absently. “Thanks.”

He didn’t sound very grateful, but Hank supposed he couldn’t blame him. There’d been an uncomfortable tension in the air between them since the throwdown-that-wasn’t back when Nick was still in the hospital, and, as these things sometimes did, it had finally caught on a rough edge. It happened, when you spent as much time as he and Nick did in one another’s company. Partnering on the force was worse, in a lot of ways, than having siblings.

If Hank had his way about it, he and Nick would go somewhere nice and quiet so they could scream at each other and maybe duke it out a bit, but Nick, in his usual emotionally repressed fashion, seemed utterly determined not to acknowledge his bizarre relationship with the clockmaker at all. Hank glanced over to where Nick was staring dazedly at his computer screen, worriedly gnawing at his lower lip, and felt a twinge of regret.

“Look, man,” he said gently, “I didn’t mean - ”

“No, it’s fine,” Nick assured, cutting into Hank’s apology and shaking his head. “You were right. I needed to know.” The smile he flashed was a shadow of the real thing, peeling away from his teeth like a grimace and not even skimming the distracted shadows in his eyes. “Thanks for telling me.”

He shuffled a stack of papers together and pushed himself to his feet, hooking a thumb awkwardly over his shoulder.

“I’m just gonna go follow up on a couple of things. Maybe get some lunch,” he explained, which was a more gracious exit than Hank had expected him to make, distressed as he very obviously was.

“Sure,” Hank nodded, and didn’t do either of them the disservice of asking if Nick wanted company. The gratitude in Nick’s face upon Hank’s allowance was real, at least, brittle and drawn-taut though it may have been.

Hank watched him go, frowning when Nick pulled his cell phone out of his pocket as he turned the corner and wondering against his better judgment who, precisely, Nick was planning to call.

Chapter Text

“Here,” Hank said, sliding a cup of breakroom coffee carefully across his desk. “It ain’t exactly gourmet, but it might help.”

“Thanks.” Juliette gave him a watery smile and accepted the cup with a little nod, taking a sip and reaching up to tuck her hair behind her ear.

She looked uncharacteristically meek, curled in on herself in her crisp white peacoat with a rapidly scabbing cut at her hairline. Her already pale complexion was further washed out under the humming fluorescent lights of the bullpen, which threw the dust and grime smeared in dark smudges across her cheeks into stark, unsettling relief. 

Nick was similarly battered from what Hank had seen before the Captain reeled the other man into his office, ostensibly to talk through the broad beats of what had apparently gone down in a cave off the old railway tracks earlier this evening. It was pushing midnight but Hank had dutifully returned to take down Juliette’s statement upon Nick’s request, both of them agreeing that it might be slightly less harrowing for her to talk to a familiar face after such a traumatic ordeal. 

He still couldn’t quite believe it. A burlesque dancer kidnapping a cop’s girlfriend and dragging her off to some clandestine cavern to try and blow them both up? 

It sounded like something out of a bad pulp novel, or one of the old noir films that occasionally popped up on Turner Classic in the small hours of the morning. If he hadn’t spent the past few months embroiled in all the recent weirdness Nick seemed to be attracting like a particularly self-destructive magnet, Hank would have been certain that somebody was just fucking with him.

He was still pointedly ignoring the hot pinch of anger in his gut whenever he skimmed past the understanding that Nick had been stupid enough to follow a suspected murderer out to an isolated grotto without calling for any backup whatsoever, let alone without calling Hank, specifically. Juliette was rattled enough. She didn’t need to shoulder the brunt of Hank’s wounded pride on top of the bullshit she was already sorting through.

“So you woke up in the cave?” he urged gently, picking up the narrative thread they’d pinned while he stepped away to grab them each a cup of slightly burnt dark roast from the perpetually full carafe in the breakroom. Juliette nodded and wiped at her nose.

“Yeah,” she confirmed, voice thick. “There was something in my mouth. A scarf or something, and I was tied to a - a barrel, I guess? Like, one of those metal ones, you know?”

“A drum?” Hank suggested.

“A drum,” Juliette agreed, “yeah. A drum. There were a bunch of them, all full of, like, rusty pipes, and wire, and gears, and things.” She huffed a small, sharp laugh, shaking her head. “There was so much shit everywhere. It was all the way up to the ceiling in some places.”

“Sounds like an episode of Hoarders.”

“Yeah,” Juliette laughed again, a little lighter this time. “Yeah, it was a lot like that.” She swallowed, thick, and continued more soberly, “So, she, uh. She tied me to the drum with my hands behind me. They were numb when I woke up.”

“She restrained you while you were unconscious?” Hank clarified. Juliette nodded, and he noted it down. “All right, and what did she tie you with?”

“Rope?” Juliette offered with a helpless shrug. She glanced down at the wrist of the hand she had curled around her coffee cup, bringing the other up to rub absently at the bruised and reddened skin therein. “Just regular rope, I guess. It was scratchy. Rough. And it was thick. So thick I - ” she paused, sniffing and blinking a couple of times, eyes going bright and glassy. “I couldn’t break it. And she tied it tight. Really tight. Too tight to untie, or get my hands free. I - I tried, but - ” 

She stopped and shook her head, pressing her lips together as her expression crumpled.

“It’s all right,” Hank said, reaching out to curl his hand gently over hers and give it a soft, reassuring squeeze. “You’re all right.”

Juliette gripped him back so tightly her knuckles went white, swallowing hard a few times before flashing him a small, grateful smile and pulling her hand away to swipe briskly at her eyes.

“So you couldn’t break the ropes,” Hank reiterated, settling back into his seat. “And you couldn’t untie them.”

Juliette nodded, the line of her gaze dropping hazily into the middle distance, attention falling back into the perilous land of memory. 

“How did you get free?”

“Oh. Um,” Juliette blinked, rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand and sniffing a little, “Nick’s friend.”

Hank narrowed his eyes and fought the sudden, furious urge to clench his jaw.

“Which friend?” he asked, flexing his fingers against the desire to curl his hands into fists. He knew already, of course, but he needed to hear Juliette say it unprompted if he wanted the opportunity to do anything about it.

“The private investigator guy?” Juliette said, brow furrowing thoughtfully. “I think his name is Monroe?”

Hank snorted and shook his head, smirking bitterly at his computer screen despite his best efforts to maintain his professional composure.

“Monroe,” he echoed. “Of course.”

“You know him?” Juliette’s eyes were wide and curious.

“I’ve seen him around,” Hank sighed, cutting a hand through the air. Juliette flinched back at the sudden motion and Hank put both his hands up, flashing an abashed, apologetic smile. “Sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just - this whole situation is just - ”

“Weird?” Juliette offered as Hank floundered silently, scouring his mind for a term that refused to come. One side of her mouth curled up into a commiserating smirk.

“Weird,” Hank agreed, lifting one shoulder in a shallow shrug. “I can hardly believe any of it, if we’re being honest.” 

“Tell me about it,” Juliette agreed with a soft snort.

 “And as for Monroe,” Hank shook his head, scrubbing at the blade of his jaw with the heel of his hand. “I don’t really know the guy very well. Just that he makes clocks and Nick likes him, for some reason.”

That was a bit of an understatement, but if Juliette wasn’t already aware of the vagaries of Nick’s relationship with the self-professed horofile it certainly wasn’t Hank’s place to say anything to her about it.

“Clocks, huh?” Juliette said, squinting thoughtfully down into her coffee and reaching up for a second to fuss with her hair again. “I could see that.” She drummed her fingers absently against the desktop. “He likes trains, too.”

Hank shot her a look, eyebrows arching up toward his hairline in immediate judgment, and Juliette giggled, biting her lip. It was the first genuine moment of pleasure he’d seen from her since he arrived half an hour ago to find her posted up alongside Nick at his desk, an awkward foot of space wedged firmly between them and an unfamiliar, oppressive tension shrouding the entire pitiful scene.

“Sure,” Hank nodded, hoping to stoke that good humor with a little gentle ribbing. “Seems like exactly the kind of topic that would come up in casual conversation while crashing a kidnapping.”

“There was this old-timey train cart we had to ride to get back to the cars,” Juliette explained with a shrug, mouth tilting up at one corner. “He was pretty excited about it. Weird hobbies aside, he seemed nice.” She tilted her head thoughtfully back and forth and allowed, “Granted, my opinion might be a little biased because he saved me pretty much single-handedly from a terrifying murder cave.”

Hank snorted.

“Right,” he replied, returning his attention to the half-written statement on his screen, cursor flashing patiently. He tried not to let too much bitterness seep into his tone as he pressed, “And how did he do that, exactly?”

Juliette shook her head again, the absent sway of someone stirring through memories, and shrugged. “He just...came and found me. Nick was in the front causing a diversion, I guess, and he sent Monroe around the back to get me out.”

“He sent Monroe in?” Hank echoed, slightly incredulous. Juliette nodded her confirmation. 

Hank pressed his lips into a thin line and dutifully noted this detail, anger burning acid raw at the back of his throat. He’d known that Nick was beyond simply bending the rules where Monroe was concerned, but there was a breadth of distance between asking a buddy with expertise in wilderness exploration to help investigate a rapidly cooling forest crime scene with you and actively sending a civilian into a dangerous situation with suspects who were known to be violent and potentially armed. That was an offense that begged an official reprimand at least, if not a full suspension, or worse.

“All right,” Hank sighed, reaching up to pinch at the bridge of his nose for an agitated second. “Okay. So Nick sent Monroe in and he came and found you. He get you out of those ropes?”

“Yeah,” Juliette said. “He told me he was friends with Nick and I was desperate enough to let him untie me, at least.” She twisted her mouth into a rueful half-smirk. “I figured if it turned out he wasn’t Nick’s friend I would burn that bridge when I came to it.” Her smile remained subdued but there was a sharper edge to it, a steely shadow at the back of her eyes. “Preferably with my hands free and a bunch of spare pipes lying around, you know?”

“Attagirl,” Hank praised, grinning broadly. Juliette’s smile bloomed a little wider and softened under his approval. “What did you do after he untied you?”

“We - uh. We heard someone coming, so he hid behind one of the barrels and I put my hands behind my back so whoever it was couldn’t see that I’d gotten loose. That crazy stripper bitch walked up and started running her mouth about Nick.” She shook her head, eyes flashing and jaw clenched. “Saying all this stuff about time and - and destiny. She took the gag off—wanted to see what I had to say about it, I guess—and that was when I clocked her.”

Juliette shrugged again, a shallow little c’est-la-vie sort of gesture.

Hank stared at her, one eyebrow arched high in delighted disbelief. “You hit her?”

“Right in the face,” Juliette confirmed with a nod. “Hard. She went over backwards and Monroe and I made a break for it.”

After a moment of stunned deliberation, Hank reached his hand over, palm open, and said, “Hell yeah.”

Juliette returned the high-five with a quick, firm smack, and a grin with a brittle, sober edge.

“Those kick-boxing classes turned out to be good for something, huh?”

Hank dipped his head in a nod. “Nick was still up front?”

“As far as I know,” Juliette shrugged. “I think he was in some kind of stand-off with her dad? Something about avenging her mother?”

“For real?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Juliette sighed, shaking her head. Her voice was thin and slightly dazed. “The whole thing was nuts. It was just - I don’t know. Crazy. Like, really, crazy, you know? Like, there was something wrong with them both.”

“It’s over now,” Hank promised, low and certain. Juliette smiled even as her brow knotted miserably.

“Sure,” she said, and he could tell from the taut, tender line of her shoulders that she didn’t believe him.

“So you and Monroe got out,” he continued, pushing past the swell of tension. “What about Nick?”

“He came running out the front a few minutes later. He asked if I was okay.” Her mouth curved ruefully, eyes flicking towards the ceiling as she shook her head, a silent entreaty to greater powers as to how anyone could be okay after something like that. Eventually, she shrugged. “We stood around for a few seconds collecting ourselves and then the cave exploded.”

“Jesus,” Hank breathed. Juliette huffed a humorless laugh.

“Yeah,” she said. “It was just this big, loud boom. Almost like a - a thunderstorm, and then this huge fireball. It was so hot.” She shook her head, chewing for a second at the chapped cushion of her lower lip. Her eyes were dark and wet, gaze fading once again to peer sightlessly into the middle distance. Her voice was quiet and wavered when she spoke. “I don’t know how anybody could have survived that.”

They probably didn’t, and thank God for that, Hank thought, but didn’t say. He reached out, instead, and put his hand over Juliette’s again. This time, she flipped her hand over so that they were palm to palm and wrapped her fingers around Hank’s so hard he almost winced at the pressure.

The two of them sat there for a long moment, Hank eventually summoning the wherewithal to squeeze Juliette’s hand back just as hard and politely ignoring the way her eyes welled over. When she finally pulled back, peeling a tissue out of the box on Nick’s desk to dab at the grey trails of mascara meandering down her cheeks in wobbly lines, Hank took the opportunity to dig around in his desk drawer.

Between a couple of cold case files and a stack of blank copies of common precinct paperwork was a collection of brochures for various local therapy offices and crisis centers. Hank shuffled through a couple of them before he finally uncovered one with a staff that specialized in post-traumatic stress. 

Hank had attended a few sessions there, himself, in the aftermath of the most recent Oleg Stark confrontation, and had visited several times throughout his career following a handful of incidents that would be taxing and nearly impossible to move past on his own. He thought Juliette might like the atmosphere, and the frank, no-bullshit attitude employed by most of the center’s psychologists. If nothing else, the cookies in the lobby were exceptionally good and well worth a wasted hour and a half if the center proved an imperfect suit. 

He slid the brochure across the desk to Juliette after she had collected herself, taking care to meet her eyes and smile as he explained gently, “After something like this happens, there’s a protocol here in the precinct that the officers involved undergo mandatory therapy to help them process their experiences. Civilians don’t have that kind of oversight, so I usually recommend at least looking into a session or two. This place is one of my favorites, not just for civilians but for myself. The staff are all straight-shooters and the coffee’s so good you won’t even need to grab a latté on the way in.”

“Nice sales pitch,” Juliette replied, offering him a thin smiling and pulling the brochure closer to flip it open.

“Just something to think about,” Hank shrugged. He risked a grin and was rewarded when Juliette reflected it back. “After all,” he continued, leaning in and lowering his voice a bit, “you and I both know that talking? Not exactly Nick’s strong suit.”

If there was a sharper edge to that statement than Hank meant for it to have, he couldn’t quite bring himself to regret it. Especially not when the same razor wire was strung through Juliette’s response as she flashed a glance to where Nick was still holed up in the captain’s office and sighed, “No. No, it really isn’t.”

Hank was ready and waiting when Nick rolled into the bullpen an hour and a half late the next morning, dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes and a cup of takeout coffee clutched like a lifeline.

“So, Sleeping Beauty finally decides to grace us with his presence,” he greeted, while Nick dropped into his desk chair with a relieved sigh. “We were about to organize a search-and-rescue.”

“You know I was up late,” Nick protested, rolling his shoulders and arching his back with a low, satisfied groan. Hank huffed a laugh and inclined his head in acquiescence.

“True,” he agreed. 

Nick shrugged clumsily out of his ostentatious leather jacket and draped it over the back of his seat, turning from one side to the other while his spine gave a chorus of audible cracks.

“Damn,” Hank observed with a smirk. “Thirties treatin’ you alright there, junior?”

Nick shot him a sheepish look, eyes cutting around the room as he leaned in and admitted, “Juliette exiled me to the couch last night.”

Hank felt his eyebrows jump toward his hairline. “No shit?”

“She said she needed some time to process.” Nick shrugged. 

“Yeah,” Hank agreed. “I’ll bet.”

“I figured it was only fair that I give her space.”

Hank rolled his chair in close enough to clap a hand to Nick’s shoulder and nodded, “Good man,” which seemed to lighten a little of the miserable cast to Nick’s features. The boy really was like a puppy sometimes, from his wide-eyed desperation for approval down to his tendency to make truly foolish and deeply irritating missteps that other people usually had to clean up after. Hank allowed his partner a moment or two to get settled, clicking around absently on his desktop for a few minutes and watching Nick casually out of the corner of his eye as he guzzled coffee and sighed his way through booting up his computer.

Despite the levity that Hank’s approval had supplied, there remained a grim, downcast set to Nick’s features, a divot on his brow too deep to be simple concentration. He scrubbed a hand over his face, jaw darker than usual with stubble, and blinked blearily at his computer, reaching out to jiggle the mouse back and forth to wake the screen. Hank took that as his cue.

“So,” he drawled, carefully keeping his gaze averted. “When’s your buddy coming by to give his statement?”

Nick made a soft, inquisitive sound and blinked curiously over at him. “What?”

“Your buddy,” Hank expounded, slouching back in his chair. “Clock Guy. Juliette says he’s a PI now?”

Nick straightened up, jaw tightening and eyes flickering dark. Hank folded his hands over his stomach and smiled.

“I’ll have to look up his license number,” he continued placidly. “Make sure he gets credit where it’s due.”

“Hank, look - ” Nick started, low and intent, but Hank held up a hand to stop him.

“You know what, man? Unless you’re about to tell me he’s already on his way, I don’t want to hear it.”

Nick pressed his mouth into a thin, flat line, nostrils flaring and blue eyes burning. He stayed damningly silent.

“I told you,” Hank scoffed, shaking his head. He leaned forward, curling one hand over the lip of his desk and jabbing a finger at Nick’s chest. “I told you to quit screwing around with this dude!”

“You know it’s not like that!” Nick hissed, dragging his chair in closer and dropping his voice a little. “He just - Eberhart had Juliette and I needed help!”

“So you called the goddamn clockmaker?” Hank snapped, shaking his head incredulously. “Nick, man. I love you, but I need you to tell me what the hell is going on, right now.”

Nick’s gaze flicked down to the tabletop, chin jutting forward with a mulish tilt that suggested he was going to fall back on his legendary stubbornness rather than swallowing his fool pride and letting Hank in on whatever stupid secret he was keeping. Betrayal and indignation climbed in a corrosive burble up the back of Hank’s throat. He licked his lips and sighed through his nose.

“All right,” he said, huffing a bitter shard of a laugh past his teeth. “All right, fine. You wanna do it the hard way? That’s fine.” He turned his attention back to his computer and started typing with a vengeance.

“What are you doing?” Nick demanded, low and hot, cutting a furtive glance around the room.

“Pulling up the contact info for your friend Monroe.”

“Hank - ” Nick growled, furious and warning. Hank pointed at him again, nearly catching Nick in the chin with his accusatory finger.

“No!” he snapped, glaring ferociously into Nick’s rage-flushed face. “No, Nick! Juliette said he was there. She gave me a physical description. He introduced himself to her by name. He’s a witness in this investigation, so either you call him in, like you would do if it was anybody else, or I’ll do it for you.”

Nick glowered, cheeks pink and eyes bright over his severe scowl. Hank met his gaze evenly, posture rigid and expression unmoved. He tapped another couple of keys and Nick bared his teeth in a grimace, palms held out in supplication and shoulders curling in. It was an awkward and unfamiliar look on him. Hank kind of liked it—after all the trouble he’d put Hank through already, the little shit deserved a little discomfort.

“Okay!” Nick yelped, relaxing slightly when Hank moved his hands away from the keyboard. “Okay. You’re right. I’ll call him.”

“Now,” Hank instructed firmly.

“Right now,” Nick nodded, fishing his cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans and keeping his wary gaze locked on Hank. “Just give me a second, okay? He might be working.”

“We can always send a black and white as an incentive to clear his schedule,” Hank offered pleasantly.

Nick scoffed, clearly surprised and dismayed by this new and vicious edge to his partner, glaring darkly in Hank’s direction even as he dialed. He raised the phone to his ear, lifting his eyebrows pointedly at Hank, who smiled serenely and made the universal ‘go-on’ gesture with his hand, not bothering to pretend that he wouldn’t be listening in on the imminent conversation.

“Hey,” Nick greeted after a few seconds of muted ringing. “Yeah, it’s fine. I just, uh.” He glanced over at Hank and turned so that his body was angled slightly away. Hank tried to ignore how much that stung. This was for Nick’s own good and he would appreciate that someday with the clarity of hindsight. “I need you to come into the station.”

There was a distant, garbled sound of query.

“Yeah, we just need to take your statement, from last night.” A pause. “Yeah, I uh. I guess Juliette told Hank that you rescued her.” There was another moment of silence and then Nick laughed, brittle and a little shallow, but real. “Yeah, no, not gonna happen. Nice try.”

A few seconds of distant, garbled static, and then Nick grinned and shook his head. “I’ll be sure to tell the papers.”

He waited for another few seconds, fiddling absently with some of the tchotchkes on his desk as his amusement dimmed, and then offered a decisive, “Yeah, that should work. See you then,” before thumbing his phone dark and slipping it back into his pocket.

“There,” he said, wheeling to face Hank. “He’s on his way. Happy?”

“I will be,” Hank assured brightly. “Soon as I have him sitting down with me in Interview Two.”

“Hank,” Nick admonished, “he’s coming to give his witness statement. We’re not going to interrogate him.”

“No, that’s right,” Hank agreed. “We’re not doing anything. You are directly involved in this case, so you will be sitting quietly in the bullpen while I check some facts with the witness you were trying to sweep under the rug.”

“I wasn’t - ” Nick made a small, aggrieved sound in the back of his throat and pinched the bridge of his nose, squinting his eyes shut. “I wasn’t sweeping anything anywhere, all right? I just wasn’t thinking. My girlfriend was kidnapped last night, I think I can be forgiven a minor lapse in judgment.”

Hank snorted and spat, “You ain’t been thinking for months , man.”

“I’m serious,” Nick warned, shaking his head slowly. “I owe Monroe big-time for this. He helped me. He saved Juliette. I couldn’t have gotten her out of there without him. Just because you don’t like him - ”

“I don’t know him,” Hank interrupted, and pointedly didn’t mention that Nick wouldn’t have had to rely on his mysterious new friend at all if he’d just called Hank and told him what was happening. He refused to believe that there was any universe in which a clock-making recluse was better equipped to handle a kidnapping than a trained police detective. “You’ve been so goddamn weird about this guy, Nick! You think I’m not gonna wonder what’s up? Why you’re playing it so close to the vest? You think I’m not gonna jump at any chance I have to get a few answers? You want me to let this slide so bad, how about you just tell me what the hell is going on with you?”

Nick opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, like a freshly beached fish, until he finally managed to croak, “I’m not - it’s nothing. Really.”

“Really?” Hank mimicked snidely, patience thoroughly depleted. “It’s nothing? Don’t feed me that bullshit, Burkhardt. I’ve been a detective for twelve goddamn years. I know when shit ain’t right.”

“Well, maybe this time you’re wrong,” Nick snapped stubbornly. 

Hank leaned carefully back in his chair and shook his head, nearly grinding his teeth in frustration.

“Guess we’ll find out once your friend gets here,” he said shortly.

“Yeah,” Nick agreed, jaw set stubbornly and brow furrowed. For just a second, Hank would swear his eyes flashed so dark they were nearly black. “I guess we will.”

Chapter Text

Monroe, to his credit, strolled into the station within half an hour, looking as politely nondescript as ever in an inoffensive green-and-grey flannel. He locked eyes with Nick—who was under strict orders to keep his ass parked firmly by the intake station, and thus out of speaking range, until Hank had escorted Monroe back to an interview room—and offered a small, unsure wave. Nick nodded back, mouth set into a grim line and big blue eyes wide under his furrowed brow. Hank flicked his gaze irritably toward the ceiling at the way the obvious tell made the line of Monroe’s shoulders draw high and tight. 

He should have followed his first instinct and made Nick go wait in the car, or sent him out for coffee or something.

“Mr. Monroe,” Hank greeted, walking over and offering a hand. “Thanks for coming in.” Monroe jumped, blinking at Hank for a surprised second, and then offered what seemed to be a genuine smile despite his obvious discomfort.

“Just Monroe, please,” he said, clapping his hand into Hank’s and giving it a quick, firm shake. “Mr. Monroe is…well, not my dad, but probably somebody’s dad, which is. Weird.”

“Yeah,” Hank drawled with a slow nod. “Right.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “You wanna come with me? Interview rooms are back this way.”

Monroe cast a skittish look over to Nick but Hank stepped casually into his line of vision before the glance could connect, raising a hand to Monroe’s shoulder and giving him a gentle nudge down the hall.

“It’s always a circus out here, man,” he said, gesturing around the bullpen with the file folder in his other hand. “Interview’ll be a little quieter, and we can grab some coffee on the way. Sound good?”

“Uh, sure.” Monroe didn’t seem particularly convinced, but he took one reluctant step forward and then another and finally gave up on trying to have some kind of telepathic conversation with Nick when Hank ushered him beyond Nick’s line of sight.

They detoured through the break room, true to Hank’s word, and grabbed a couple of cups of coffee from the carafe in the corner. Monroe’s eyebrows quirked in surprise when Hank handed a waxed paper cup over to him and he ducked his head to smell it. While it wasn’t the weirdest thing that Hank had ever seen the guy do, it was still strange enough that he shook his head a little as he poured himself a cup.

“Ugandan!” Monroe said approvingly, and took another quick sniff. “And a sophisticated blend, at that.” He helped himself to a testing sip and made a pleased noise in the back of his throat.

“Cops live off this stuff, man,” Hank said, doctoring his own beverage with a frugal application of sugar and a couple little canisters of non-dairy creamer. He offered one to Monroe, who shook his head and waved it off. “When you’re working through a few gallons a week, nobody wants to be sucking down battery acid. That’s for damn sure.”

Monroe snorted a soft laugh while Hank gave his coffee a quick taste, judged it acceptable, and nodded toward the hall. The diversion seemed to work to alleviate some of the tension strung through Monroe’s lanky frame. He loped along after Hank without protest until they were safely ensconced in the quiet privacy of Interview 2.

Hank waved Monroe into a chair and he sat without hesitation, taking a long, savory sip from his cup.

“Thanks again for stopping by, man,” Hank said, sliding his case file onto the table and dropping into the seat opposite Monroe. “I know it’s not the way most folks’d prefer to spend their morning.”

“Oh, yeah, no,” Monroe shook his head and grinned. “Anything I can do to help, you know?”

That, Hank knew based on eyewitness reports from at least three of Nick’s recent assignments, was the understatement of a lifetime. He smiled at Monroe, close-mouthed, and flipped the folder open.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Hank agreed. He tapped a finger against the printout of Juliette’s statement at the top of the file. “According to Ms. Silverton’s report - ” he started, and amended upon the confused furrow that pulled at Monroe’s brow, “Juliette.”

“Ah,” Monroe nodded sheepishly, face clearing. “Right.”

“Right,” Hank agreed slowly. He tapped the printout again. “Her statement puts you right at the center of what went down last night.” Monroe stiffened, the barest tightening of his posture, and Hank held up a hand. “Relax,” he grinned. “I’m just trying to get every perspective on the events of the evening that I can. Juliette says you were there, too, means you might’ve seen something she missed.”

Monroe opened his mouth to speak but only managed a soft, blustering consonant sound before his gaze flicked up to the mirrored glass over Hank’s shoulder. He tilted his head to one side and frowned, like he was listening for something. Hank leaned back in his chair, spreading his hands.

“Nobody around but you and me, man,” he assured, with as much levity as he could muster. “I don’t know what kind of crazy low-budget procedurals you been watching but I’m just looking for a little information on what happened, Scout’s honor.”

Monroe blinked, focusing in on Hank and looking almost surprised to find him sitting there.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, absent and slow. “Yeah, of course.” His gaze flicked back up to the glass and he added, a little firmer, “It’s fine, really. I'm happy to help.” He leaned forward onto his elbows and curled his hands around his cup of coffee. “Anything to get that psycho off the streets.”

“Glad to hear it,” Hank nodded. “So, you want to tell me what happened, from your point of view?”

"Hm?" Monroe wrenched his gaze back down to meet Hank's eye. "Oh. Right, sure." He shook his head like he was trying to clear it and tapped his thumb against his coffee cup. "Um," he hesitated, tongue darting out to wet his lip, and then huffed an awkward little laugh and shook his head. He shrugged at Hank and admitted, "I don't really know where to start, man."

"For my money," Hank replied, scratching at his chin, slow and thoughtful, "the best spot to start from is usually the beginning." He grinned and Monroe laughed again, lighter and more real this time.

"Yeah, okay," Monroe conceded, ducking a nod. He sipped at his coffee and rolled his shoulders back. "The beginning." He frowned down at the table for a second, brow furrowing as he considered. "I guess that would be the burlesque?"

Hank’s eyebrows jumped. “You mean the strip joint?” he asked with a smirk.

Monroe rolled his eyes and huffed into his coffee, “I guess, if you want to be gauche about it.” He took another sip and licked his lips. “There’s actually not much nudity. It's mostly feats of skill—dancing, acrobatics, singing. The occasional contact-juggler. It's kind of a - " he scrunched his face up, thinking, and settled on, " - a showcase, for a lot of under-appreciated art forms."

"Like fire-breathing?" Hank suggested, arching a pointed eyebrow.

"Ah," Monroe sighed, looking slightly cowed. "Yeah. Ariel was a master of the craft." He raised his cup in a small, unenthusiastic toast. "I've got to give her that, even if she did wind up a few springs short of a cuckoo clock."

"So you were there to see her?"

Monroe lifted one shoulder. "Among other performers," he demurred. "I'm not the president of her fan club or anything, but she was good at what she did and she was nice to me the couple of times we talked."

"Did you talk that day?"

Monroe shook his head. "No, Nick came in looking for her while she was still on-stage." He fidgeted in his seat and took another sip from his cup, looking down and away from Hank. "I figured it was best to give him space to take care of his, you know - " Monroe waved a hand in the air " - official business, or whatever."

"Uh huh." Hank didn't mean to sound quite so disbelieving but Monroe must have picked up on it anyway, because his shoulders went stiff again. Hank silently reprimanded himself for the unprofessional lapse and glanced down at the file, skimming the few thoughts he had scrawled in the margins after talking with Juliette. He drummed his fingers against the table and pressed onward, "You see Miss Eberhart leave the club?"

Monroe winced and reached up to scrub at the back of his neck with a hand. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I did. Nick followed her out." He shrugged again. "Chasing a hunch, I guess. I told him to be careful."

"Any particular reason?"

Monroe leaned back in his seat, heaving a sigh and squinting thoughtfully at the ceiling. He crossed one arm over his chest and used his other hand to scratch at his chin. "Ariel had a - a bit of a reputation, let's say," he admitted, though he didn't look particularly happy to be talking about it. "Like I said, I didn't know her well, but the uh - burlesque community isn't very big, and she was known for being a little unstable."

"Unstable enough to assault a woman, kidnap her from her own home, and try to blow her up?"

"Apparently so," Monroe agreed, though he looked a bit dazed to hear it all laid out like that. He slumped forward, elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. He shook his head and then let his hands drop. "I still can't believe any of this happened," he murmured, then frowned. "Actually," he amended, squinting and jabbing his index finger against the table's surface, "it's Nick we're talking about, so I kind of can believe it."

Hank straightened up and jerked his chin in Monroe's direction. "What makes you say that?"

"Have you met the guy?" Monroe leaned back in his chair again and huffed a laugh. "He has like, a gravitational pull for trouble."

Hank couldn't quite suppress a smirk at that. He raised his eyebrows and inclined his head. "That's the damn truth."

"Hell," Monroe went on, putting a hand to his own chest, "he almost managed to get under my skin without even saying two words to me, and that's - " he shook his head, gaze dropping into the middle distance while a look that Hank couldn't quite decipher flashed across his face " - that's pretty tough to do, these days."

"These days," Hank echoed. Monroe looked up at him and put his head to one side, curious, letting his hand fall back to his lap. Hank stirred a finger in the air and risked a grin. "I take that to mean it wasn't always so difficult?"

Monroe dropped his gaze down to the table, mouth twisting up on one side. He shook his head and sighed, amusement tinged with a bitter edge. "I had a, uh - " he considered for a second, tilting his head slowly back and forth, and then squinted up at Hank. "Let's call it a storied youth." He held a hand up, cutting it through the air and gave his head a decisive shake. "I'm not proud of it, and I'm not that guy anymore." He looked away again, swallowing, and muttered, "I've worked really hard not to be that guy."

"Alright," Hank nodded. Curiosity was buzzing in an electric wave under his skin, but Hank knew how to play the stakes to his own satisfaction. He reached up and scrubbed at his jaw with a hand, offering a small, flat smile. "I'm sorry man," he sighed. "Sometimes when you get going with the questions it's hard to stop, y’know?"

Monroe smirked and half-rolled his eyes, raising his coffee to his mouth. "Now, where have I seen that trait before?" he asked, muffled into the cup, and helped himself to a sip.

Hank smiled a little wider and made a show of reviewing the file again. "So," he intoned, "Nick left, following Miss Eberhart."

Monroe hummed his confirmation.

"And what did you do, while Nick was taking care of his 'official business?'" Hank only barely restrained himself from making quotes with his fingers.

Monroe set his coffee down and ran his tongue over his teeth with his mouth still closed. His gaze fell away into the middle distance as he worked through his memory, brow furrowed. "I visited a couple of antique shops to see if I could hunt down any spare clock parts. Figured I might as well get a little work done while I was in town, right?" He flashed Hank a commiserating grin that Hank returned on instinct. Monroe squinted, thoughtful, and offered, "I can give you names, if you need them.”

“Just keep them in mind, for now,” Hank waved him off. “We’ll collect them later if it turns out we need to corroborate your timeline.”

“Right,” Monroe said, looking faintly alarmed. “Sure.”

Hank smiled, closed-mouth, and enjoyed seeing him squirm. “What’d you do after you finished antiquing?” he asked, letting a little snap suffuse the question. 

Monroe didn’t seem to notice, too busy trawling through his memories. “Then,” he continued, "I swung by Homegrown Smoker to grab some dinner.” He flicked a dark, intent look at Hank and added, sotto voce, “Their Macnocheeto Burrito is to die for. The way they season the soy curls? It’s just - ” He kissed his fingers and let them spring open, then straightened up again, looking sheepish as he remembered that this was, in fact, a police investigation and not a video-blog for a vegan foodie website. “Headed back home after that. Pretty normal day, for the most part."

“Sounds like it,” Hank nodded in agreement. “How about the next day? That normal too?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Monroe said, through a blustery, considering breath. “Had a couple orders to work on so I spent most of the morning doing that. Met a friend of mine for lunch and stopped by Books on Broadway to pick up a volume I had on order. Came back, worked a little more. Practiced cello for a while and then sat down for dinner.”

“Sounds like it was business as usual,” Hank said, tilting his head and peered down at the folder in front of him. He lifted a sheet and added casually, "Until Nick called you."

Monroe didn’t say anything and Hank looked up to find him staring across the table, expression inscrutable except for the obvious unhappiness in his frown. He had stiffened up again, but Hank had expected that this discussion wouldn’t exactly be a comfortable one for either of them.

“He did call you, right?” Hank raised his shoulders in a shallow shrug. “Left it out of his official statement, but you ended up down the train tracks somehow. Storied youth aside, you don’t strike me as the kind of guy who goes looking for trouble.”

Monroe stared him down for a long moment, then sighed and admitted in a reluctant mutter, “Yeah. He called me.”

“When?”

“Maybe eight-thirty? Nine o’clock?” Monroe shrugged. “Late enough that I was finished with dinner.”

“Alright,” Hank nodded, pressing his lips into a thoughtful line and glancing back down at the report. He drummed his fingers against the table, debating with himself for a moment until he succumbed to his curiosity. “Any idea why Nick called you?”

Monroe arched an eyebrow and Hank hastened to add, “You, specifically.” He held up a hand to gesture to the room around them. “It wasn’t like he didn’t have other resources at his disposal that are uniquely equipped to handle this sort of thing.”

Monroe shifted his weight and shook his head, ducking his gaze to his cup. “I don’t know, man,” he said around a sip. “You’d have to ask him.”

The arrow on Hank’s internal truth barometer dipped over into dishonesty and stuck there. 

"No idea?" Hank pressed, and Monroe shrugged and shook his head again. Hank leaned back and tried for a breezy grin, not that Monroe seemed particularly moved. "Not even gonna hazard me a guess?"

"I told you man, I don't know," Monroe repeated, his usual easy tenor stringing tight with irritation. "He was scared. Probably wasn't thinking straight, and he knows I - " He stopped, pressed his mouth into a thin line and shook his head.

Hank waited, leaning forward on his elbows. When Monroe didn't take it upon himself continue, he prodded, "He knows you're what?"

"Nothing, I'm - " Monroe reached up and scrubbed a hand over his face with a sharp sigh. "He knows I can take a beating if I need to, that's all. Maybe he wanted somebody to there to catch swings instead of Juliette if it came down to that, I don't know. That’s just, y’know, speculation," he clarified. "I don't know for sure what Nick was thinking." He huffed a bitter little laugh, smirk curling just a little too mean to be true amusement, and shook his head again. "Man, if I had a nickel for every time I wished I understood how his mind worked."

Hank, who had stiffened with alarm at Monroe's blasé profession of his own physical fortitude, willed himself to relax and dipped his chin in a nod. "I feel that." He tapped his index finger against the tabletop in an arrhythmic beat, narrowing his eyes and studying the man across the table.

There was something about him that set Hank's lizard brain alight with warning bells, despite the obviously concerted effort to make himself seem as mild and unassuming as possible. He stood an inch or so taller than even Hank, who was one of the bigger men in the precinct—which meant Monroe fairly towered over Nick—and had a rangy, lupine strength to him that suggested he could hold his own in a brawl if it came down to it. Despite those glaring physical advantages, Monroe kept his shoulders hunched and his gestures small and contained, like he was afraid that he might risk injury from some invisible barrier if he let himself straighten up too tall or reach out too far. 

Granted, up until this point, the only place Hank had really seen him was in a police station, which wasn't the most comfortable locale and may to be blame for some of that reticence. But even in the comfort of his own home, Monroe had come across as nervous and willfully restrained, deferring to Nick’s ham-fisted attempts at subtlety vis-á-vis their odd, inexplicable friendship.

An unpleasant thought crested in the eddies of Hank mind and made his stomach lurch. He swallowed and cleared his throat, glancing down at the table.

"Listen, I know this might be a little uncomfortable, but I have to ask. You said that Nick knows you can take a beating." Hank darted a glance up and caught Monroe nodding. He mirrored the gesture and pressed on, "I know he liked you for that kidnapping a while back—the little girl with the red jacket." Monroe opened his mouth to protest but Hank held a hand up to silence him and he dutifully snapped it shut again. "We cleared you for that, it's not - that's not what I'm getting at. I just - " he paused, pressing his mouth into a line and sighing through his nose, short and sharp. "Nick was pursuing you aggressively. We all saw him toeing the line of harassment and warned him off it more than once." Hank brought his hand to his chest and then made a little circle in the air to indicate the precinct around them. "I just want to make sure he never crossed that line, alright? Never raised a hand to you or anything."

Monroe stared at him for a long second, delight spreading across his face in a slow, dawning wave and towing a grin in its wake. He darted a gaze to the mirrored window at Hank's back and clarified, "Are you asking if Nick ever hit me?"

"Yes," Hank said simply.

Monroe fell back into his seat and laughed, a rough gust of a thing that he barked toward the ceiling as he shook his head. "Wow," he drawled, crossing his arms over his chest as his smile split wide. "Oh, wow. That's hilarious."

"Forgive me if I don't find the thought of a police detective employing excessive force on an unwitting civilian as amusing as you seem to."

“I’m sorry,” Monroe said, waving an apologetic hand. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” He licked his lips though he couldn’t quite shake the grin or the glee sparking in his gaze. “No, let the record show that Nick never employed unnecessary measures in our interactions.”

That was an equivocation if Hank had ever heard one. 'Never employed unnecessary measures' was a far cry from 'he never raised a hand to me and always respected appropriate police boundaries' but Hank would accept it for now. The objective here wasn’t to get Nick disbarred, after all, just to figure out what he was up to, haring around Portland with this bizarrely unassuming clockmaker at his beck and call. The consequences would come once Hank had satisfactorily determined what the actions were.

“So your best guess is that Nick called you because he was panicking and thought—what? That you would make acceptable collateral damage?”

Monroe flinched at that, as if Hank had ripped a band-aid off and slapped him. Perfect. That meant Hank was pushing against the tender spots, and they would give with liberal enough application of finesse—or force, if the former didn’t get far.

“Interesting definition of friendship, is all I’m saying,” Hank shrugged.

“Look, man,” Monroe said, expression shuttering. “I know how I come across to people, all right?”

Hank arched an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“Weird,” Monroe spat, instant and vicious. The good humor had fallen away and left something dark and bitter in the hollows of his eyes,  the clench of his jaw. “Out-there. Untrustworthy.” He fluttered a hand with each progressive indictment of his character, posture drawing tall and menacing. His eyes were burning in his face, so hot that for a split second, as he glowered at Hank across the table, they almost looked red. “Dangerous.”

There it was—the crack. Hank’s pulse was darting rabbit-fast under his skin, but he schooled his features, steeled his spine, and leaned forward. “Are you?”

“Weird?” Monroe echoed, with a smirk that twisted into a sneer. “Sure. Out-there? Almost definitely.”

“Untrustworthy?”

Monroe flinched again at that, blinking and swallowing and sinking back in on himself like a rapidly deflating balloon. He pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a low, heavy sigh. “I try not to be,” he said, looking up. Gone was the looming figure from seconds before, tucked neatly away under a boring button-down.

“How about dangerous?” Monroe frowned at him and Hank held his hands out. “Your words, not mine.”

Monroe sighed again and asked, “What is this really about, man? You think I had something to do with the Juliette thing, or what?”

“It’s like I told you,” Hank insisted. “I’m just trying to get the whole picture.”

“Of what, exactly?” Monroe demanded, arching an eyebrow. “Because I’m pretty sure an in-depth exploration of my personal insecurities isn’t  gonna help you track down Ariel Eberhart.” He huffed and muttered, “Only thing you’re liable to find turning those stones over is a handful of embarrassing exes and some rocky holiday dinners.”

Hank pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm trying," he said, cutting his hand down toward the table, flat like a blade, "to figure out how you fit into all this."

"Nick and I are friends," Monroe hedged, crossing his arms over his chest, uncomfortable and unhappy. "It's not like it's some big secret."

"Right," Hank drawled, nodding with as much condescension as he could summon. "That's why Nick pretended he didn't know his way around your place when we came to see you about the watch."

Monroe sighed, rolling his eyes. "That was - " he paused and shook his head. "I don't know what that was. Nick has a lot of weird hang-ups. I told him it was a bad idea, but - " He shook his head again, staring off into the corner of the room, and then put his hands on the table and pushed his chair back a few inches. "All due respect, Detective, I think I've given you all the help I can. If you have questions about our friendship, interrogate Nick next time." He flapped an irritated hand at the room around them and pushed to his feet.

"Wait!" Hank yelped. Monroe cut him a flat, unimpressed glare, but he stopped moving. He really was a big guy, Hank considered, frowning up at him.

"I just want to understand," Hank explained, willing Monroe to sit back down. "I know you were at the scene with Ariel Eberhart. I know you were, because Juliette mentioned you by name, and then you came in here and confirmed it yourself. You know the only person who didn't tell me you were there?"

Monroe rolled his eyes briefly toward the ceiling. Then he put his hands on the back of his chair, leaning his weight into it, and let his head hang forward between his shoulders. "Let me guess," he drawled, wry and unimpressed, lifting his gaze to meet Hank's. "Nick?"

"Nick," Hank confirmed. "Nick lied to me. About bringing a civilian with him into a situation he knew was dangerous, with an assailant he knew was volatile and unpredictable. And it's bad enough that he did it once, but there are eyewitness reports—some of them coming from officers in this very precinct—placing you at no less than three other crime scenes Nick's been involved with." He held his hands out, letting a little of his desperation show on his face. "You see why I'm not asking Nick? It's because I have asked him already. I've asked him again, and again, and again and he hasn't told me a goddamned thing."

Monroe didn't say anything, but his jaw tightened.

Hank cupped a hand over his mouth, shaking his head, and sucked his teeth, sighing into his palm. "I don't know what's going on with you two, man, and frankly, I don't want to," he said, shifting his hand around to his cheek. "Whatever freaky shit you get up to you in your personal lives is none of my business." Monroe opened his mouth but Hank pressed on before he could get a word in, "You want to know what is my business?" He caught Monroe's gaze, held it. "The integrity of this precinct is my business," he said jabbing a finger against the tabletop so hard it rattled. "My partner's safety? And yours, as a civilian in my jurisdiction? That's my business. And the best avenue I have right now to ensure that all of those things remain intact is you." He pointed at Monroe, sharp and accusatory. 

Monroe pressed his mouth into a flat line, nostrils flaring, and dropped his head again. He muttered something that sounded like, "Dammit, Nick," and sat there for a long second, glaring at the ground. After some measure of internal deliberation, he heaved a quick, hard sigh and straightened up. He crossed one arm over his chest and held his other hand out, cutting Hank a narrow, wary glare as he warned, "I can't tell you much more than you already know."

Hank frowned and started to protest but Monroe cut him off with a swift motion and a short shake of his head. "No," he insisted. "Even if I wanted to, it's not mine to share. It's Nick's business, and you'll have to take it up with him." He reached up to scrub at his jaw and offered a weak shrug. "Best I can do is promise you that all I'm doing is trying to keep him safe, too."

"From what?" Hank pushed.

Monroe considered this, chewing at his lip. After a second he huffed a snort and said, "Himself, mostly."

Just like that, all the tension suffusing the air disappeared from the room like someone had pulled the plug on a stoppered drain.

Hank nodded and lost the battle against the grin fighting to curl the corners of his mouth. "Yeah," he agreed, "that sounds about right."

Monroe risked a close-mouthed smile in return. He glanced to the door and back at Hank again, and then waved a hand in the air between them. "Are we good here?"

Hank drummed his fingers against the table in a brisk tattoo and nodded toward the exit. "Yeah, man. We're good." For now, he didn't qualify. He flipped the file shut. "I'll call you if I get anything on Eberhart."

"Thanks," Monroe said, ducking a nod. He loped over to the door and pulled it open just a crack. He paused for a second, fingers curled over the handle and then turned to peer at Hank over his shoulder. "It's good, y'know," he said. "That Nick has you looking out for him."

Hank huffed a laugh and shook his head, slow and fond. "Lord knows he needs all the help he can get." He tilted his chin up as Monroe smirked his agreement, and added, "I do what I can."

"Yeah," Monroe agreed, low and somber. "Me too." And then he was gone, booted footsteps thudding down the hall and away.

Hank took his time gathering his documents and straightening things up, hoping to give Monroe plenty of room to make his exit. He'd really stepped in it on this one, and he could acknowledge that. Nick certainly wasn't going to be happy when he heard about it, but Hank had decided that Nick's immediate happiness was an acceptable casualty in the struggle to ensure his continued existence some time ago.

He collected his coffee cup—still mostly full—and Monroe's—boasting only a faint brown ring around the bottom. He hesitated at the trash bin with both in hand, wondering whether he was desperate enough to pull a DNA sample off Monroe's forgotten garbage, do a little digging into that "storied youth" he had so clumsily glossed over. In the end, Hank's better nature won out, and he hocked them both with only a minor twinge of regret.

Monroe was still in the building when Hank got back to the bullpen. He and Nick were standing at the entrance closest to the front hall, with their heads bent together near enough to share each other's air. It was remarkably unsubtle and all of Hank's hard-fought goodwill deflated out from underneath him like a cheap air mattress. He took a circuitous route back to his desk so he could meander past the duo, flicking the file open and pretending to read it as he strained to pick up any snatch of conversation.

" - promise I'll figure out a way to get him off your back, alright?"

"That's not - " Hank glanced up just in time to see Monroe pinch at the bridge of his nose, cutting his gaze back down quickly in the hopes that if either of them noticed him they would think he was too preoccupied by the file's contents to be eavesdropping. 

"You know that's not the problem, man," Monroe continued. "Look," he murmured, dropping his voice so low that Hank almost couldn't hear it, "this definitely isn't the place to talk about - well, anything, really, but especially not. Y'know."

"Alright," Nick allowed. "But we are talking about this at some point. No sidestepping it with heartfelt, 'screw the status quo' monologues."

"Spectacular," Monroe said, dry and amused. "You still coming over tonight?"

"Yeah, probably around seven. Figured I'd pick dinner up on the way."

"What? You suddenly too good to eat my cooking?"

"I just thought I should express my gratitude. You know, with something a little more edible than beet sausage."

Hank wandered out of range just as Monroe was lamenting that he had agreed to rent out his sofa bed to a man with such pedestrian taste in meat substitutes.

Hank tossed the file onto his desk and dropped into his chair with a heavy sigh. He rested his elbows on the armrests and interlaced his fingers together, bringing his hands up to his chin and watching Nick and Monroe grin at each other out of the corner of his eye.

'It's not like that,' Nick had said just this morning.

Maybe not now, Hank thought. Not yet, but the writing was on the wall. Whatever knife-edge Nick was traversing, whether he was cheating on Juliette or there was something far more sinister afoot, he couldn’t hold his balance forever. He would slip soon enough and whichever way the blade spun, something would be severed.

He just hoped that Nick was ready, whatever that may be.

He hoped he was, too.

Chapter Text

Another day, Hank thought dispiritedly, another murder. He cast a cautious glance out the corner of his eye to where Nick was sitting rigid in the passenger seat, his arms crossed over his chest and his eyes fixed firmly out the windshield ahead. It was only a twenty minute drive from the precint to the scene they were expected at in Old Town, and Nick had pointedly refrained from speaking for every single second of the trip so far.

“So,” Hank said, forcing a levity he didn’t feel, “you still giving me the silent treatment?”

“I was never giving you the silent treatment,” Nick corrected, turning to look out the side window, voice tight and tone clipped. “I just don’t have anything to say to you.”

“Right,” Hank drawled with a soft, disbelieving huff. They rolled to a stop at a light a block off from their eventual destination, and he took the opportunity to peer over at Nick with his eyebrows arched. “And this sudden dearth of conversational topics just happens to coincide with the fact that I asked your weird friend to come in and give a statement?”

It had been nearly a week since the whole fiasco with Eberhart, but it was clear that Nick was still angry about the way Hank had handled the aftermath.

“Gee, Hank,” he said, slow and saccharine, turning just far enough that Hank could see the acerbic twist to his mouth, “whatever would make you think that?” He flopped back into his seat, staring petulantly forward with his jaw clenched.

Hank shook his head. He refused to apologize for following protocol, especially when it was in Nick’s own best interest. He tightened his grip on the wheel and hit the gas as soon as the light turned green. The car lurched forward, and Hank guided it toward the series of evidence vans and black-and-whites parked off to the side of Fulton Street, lights blinking lazily. Sergeant Wu was loitering on the curb with a passel of uniformed officers and a few guys from the Crime Scene Unit, in front of a storefront that had been cordoned off with yellow tape. Hank parked behind one of the patrol cars and Nick was out the door before they had even come to a complete stop.

Hank sighed and closed his eyes. He wasn’t a praying man, generally, but he spared a moment to cast a request for patience to any sympathetic deity within earshot and then climbed out of the car.

“What’ve we got?” he asked Wu over the hood. Nick had already disappeared inside.

“Single victim,” Wu provided. “No signs of forced entry, but it happened during store hours so that’s hardly surprising. Whatever our perps were looking for, it’s doubtful they found it. Proprietor got the alarm off before they fired on him. Forensics is combing through everything now.” He sidled up to Hank as he circled around the vehicle and tilted his chin toward the door, which had been propped open. Nick’s retreating form was just visible past a crime scene photographer queuing up for a shot. “Burkhardt still mad you dragged his boyfriend in for questioning?”

Hank scrubbed at his jaw but didn’t say anything. Wu, taking this for the affirmation it was, let out a long, low whistle and clapped a commisserating hand to Hank’s shoulder before leading the way indoors.

Their victim — one Frederick Calvert, proprietor of the unimaginatively named Exotic Spice & Tea Shop — was lying supine on the floor, in a paisley tie and a bland, oatmeal colored cardigan that would have made him look like your average, unassuming professor were it not for the blood seeping through in bright splotches on his chest and side.

“Damn,” Hank sighed, and crouched down behind Nick, who was already gloved up and poking at the corpse.

Because the world was becoming disappointingly predictable in its unpredictability, it turned out that Nick had investigated this guy for something or other, though he didn’t offer what that had entailed, precisely, or when it had happened. Hank suspected it had been over the course of one of the mysterious adventures he’d been going on with Monroe rather than any departmental business, and didn’t bother pushing for clarification. His relationship with Nick was held together by virtue of a single, fraying thread at this point and he didn’t want to risk snapping it entirely.

They checked out the basement at Nick’s suggestion, but it was jammed so full of unidentifiable bric-a-brac that it didn’t yield much. He and Nick kicked around for another few minutes — thankfully, his cold shoulder had melted somewhat as they fell into the familiar rhythm of investigating the case — poking through Calvert’s books and checking his records, but in the end there wasn’t much to do beyond letting Forensics dig into the arduous process of sifting through the shop’s innumerable contents and hoping they came up with something useful.

Back at the precinct, they cleared the immediate living relatives that Calvert appeared to be in semi-regular contact with and managed to get in touch with one of his sisters. She was up in Seattle and promised she’d be on the road right away. In the span of what felt like a few minutes but had, in fact, been several hours, Wu was leading a pretty, mournful brunette across the bullpen to speak with them.

Rosalee Calvert was about as forthcoming as Hank had expected. She clearly had a bit of a chip on her shoulder, but it was the kind of wounded, easily ruffled irritation it was simple enough to dismiss as a grief response. Nick volunteered to oversee her visit to her brother’s place of business and soon enough the clock was chiming dinnertime.

Hank begged off a steak with Sergeant Wu, who let him go with only a token protest, and picked up a sandwich on the way home. He washed it down with two fingers of whisky — the good stuff, that his sister had brought back for him from her trip to Scotland last winter — and watched a few episodes of Hill Street Blues on some classic TV marathon, then flopped face first into bed and slept straight on through until morning.

Nick was in a better mood the next day, accepting Hank’s offer of takeaway coffee with a shallow, grateful nod, and more than willing to talk about the case. Even if it wasn’t quite the friendly, practiced banter they’d have been sharing just a few days before, it was better than having to put up with another hour of Nick’s razor-honed silence.

According to Nick, Rosalee Calvert had been cleaning up at the spice shop late the evening prior when their perpetrators came back looking for whatever they’d been interrupted in their efforts to steal in the first place. She escaped, but only barely, and called Nick, who had her escorted down to the precinct to run her descriptions through their database of known offenders, and now they had names and faces for their assailants.

Joshua Hall and Clint Vickers. Both in their early thirties, with a handful of charges on their records for breaking and entering and petty theft. Their motivations were still unclear, though Nick might have had a point that plenty of perfectly legal substances could be put to more nefarious use. He ducked his head to take a call while Wu wandered over to try and harass Hank into giving up a bite of the cookie he’d bought from the coffee cart on a whim, and soon enough they were on their way to look into a possible sighting of Clint Vickers’ car with Wu dispatched to the spice shop to ensure that neither Hall nor Vickers returned to give Calvert any trouble.

“That Calvert on the phone?” Hank asked, as he and Nick crossed the parking garage to where their department issued ride was waiting.

“Ah.” Nick darted his gaze over then away. “No.”

No, Hank thought, as he circled around and dropped into the driver’s seat. No, it hadn’t been Calvert. It had been someone else.

The radio came on when he started the car, and Hank was happy enough to let it pipe tinny Top 40s hits while he turned over the best approach in his mind. It was obvious that Nick was still smarting from Hank’s most recent blunder into his personal affairs. Hank was man enough to admit that he might have been needlessly aggressive in that particular instance, though he didn’t really regret it. As much as he would have preferred to avoid another misstep, Hank was willing to place a substantial bet that Nick’s mystery caller had been Monroe, and why Monroe would’ve had anything prescient to offer in regards to the Calvert case, Hank honestly couldn’t fathom.

He was spared broaching the uncomfortable topic because Nick did it himself, blurting apropos of nothing, “Monroe stayed with Rosalee last night.”

Hank pressed his lips into a narrow line and nodded. After a few seconds, he offered a brisk, “Alright,” to spare himself from saying anything worse.

He could see Nick flicking curious glances at him out of the corner of his eye. The conversation between them lapsed, tension slowly rolling in to take its place, until Nick shifted and continued nervously, “It wasn’t - ” He stopped and sighed through his nose, short and sweet. “I offered to have a couple of officers keep an eye on things but she said she would prefer someone like - ” He stumbled again and offered lamely, “Someone else.”

“She was just attacked by the same men who murdered her brother,” Hank replied, “and you’re telling me she decided she would rather have a clockmaker crash on her couch than have a couple of uniformed police officers standing vigil all night?”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” Nick confirmed, though he didn’t sound particularly convinced by his own explanation.

“Please tell me you didn’t give him a gun.”

“What?” Nick scoffed. “No, of course not.”

Hank had the distinct suspicion that Nick was less offended by the implication because he found it inappropriate to provide firearms to civilians — or, this particular civilian, in any case — than because he didn’t think Monroe would need one to keep Calvert safe. Unhappy silence welled between them, thick and cold. Hank did his best to suffer through it, but curiosity got the better of him.

“How does Rosalee Calvert even know your guy?”

This was shaping up to be like Hap Lasser all over again. If another individual who should have been under police protection died on Monroe’s watch, Hank was bringing the bastard up on charges, regardless of Nick’s feelings on the matter.

Nick heaved a breath that made the hair on the back of Hank’s neck prickle, and turned to fix him with the kind of mulish stare that made Hank certain he really wasn’t going to like whatever he was about to hear.

“I introduced them.”

“You introduced them,” he echoed, incredulous. Nick nodded. “When? Calvert didn’t even get into town until four o’clock.”

Nick ducked his head. “Last night. Monroe and I were in the area and I saw the lights on in the spice shop when we passed by, so I decided to stop in and check on her, make sure everything was okay. It turns out that Monroe had shopped there before, met her brother a couple of times. He wanted to offer his condolences.” He shrugged. “I think she appreciated that.”

“You were in the area.”

“Yes.”

“Just happened to be walking by.”

“No,” Nick rolled his eyes and shook his head, “not like - we were having dinner. There’s a dim sum place a few blocks away that does these vegan dumplings - ”

Hank cut Nick off with a thin, bitter laugh as his temper got the better of him. It was just for a second, but it was enough.

“Remind me, does this make four or five murder investigations now that your new best friend has mysterious, inexplicable connections to?”

Nick flopped back into his seat, arms across his chest and shoulders hunched up toward his ears. “I’m telling you this as a courtesy,” he snapped. “I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else and get the wrong idea. Again.”

Hank pushed an exasperated sigh through his clenched teeth. He breathed through his nose, slow and deliberate, until the ire burning in his belly had cooled to a more reasonable simmer. “You know, Nick,” he said, as calmly as he could manage, “maybe I wouldn’t keep getting the wrong idea about this guy if you could be bothered to give me the right one.”

Nick flinched, but he didn’t respond, either because he didn’t want to or because he didn’t know how. Whatever Nick’s relationship with the clockmaker, Hank knew that calling it complicated might be the understatement of the decade. They rode the awkward silence all the way to the abandoned house where their perps were supposedly holing up, the cracks in the foundations of their partnership creeping a little wider with every inch of asphalt that disappeared under their wheels.

For the second time in as many days, Nick beat a hasty retreat the moment they stopped, jerking out of the car and slamming the door behind him without a backwards glance. He greeted Sergeant Franco, who’d been keeping an eye on things, and sent him around the back, with assurances that he and Hank would enter together through the front of the building. Hank drew his gun and his flashlight and didn’t bother questioning Nick’s instructions.

Neither one of them spoke as they approached the front entrance, but then this, at least, was one of the few instances in which their pointed unwillingness to communicate verbally was more boon than bane.

Hall and Vickers managed to get away.

It was nobody’s fault, or both of theirs, or maybe it had just been bad luck, but their suspects were in the wind and the captain was standing in the sallow light of the dusty fixture overhead, expressing his disappointment. Hank and Nick took their licks like professionals and stuck around to see that the scene was appropriately processed, though they kept a careful distance from one another, always at opposite ends of the room and only speaking to confer on relevant information. It was mid-afternoon by the time they emerged back onto the street, Hank with his hands in his pockets and Nick fiddling with his cell phone, texting someone.

“Ready to head back?” Hank asked, and Nick hummed and looked over at him for a split second before his attention sank back down to his phone.

“Oh, um. No,” he said. “I’m gonna head over to the spice shop, actually. See if Wu has anything for us.”

“Okay,” Hank nodded, and started toward the car. “I’ll come with you.”

Nick’s head snapped up, blue eyes wide, and a brittle, insincere smile spread across his face. He shoved his cell phone into his pocket and shook his head. “That’s alright. I can just catch a cab or something. You get back down to the station, check in with Forensics.”

Hank looked at him for a long second and then sighed and nodded. He thought it was kind of silly — Forensics would call them if there were any updates, so he wouldn’t have much to do back at the precinct — but it was obvious that Nick wanted some space and Hank felt guilty enough about his earlier outburst that he was willing to afford it to him. “Okay. I’ll see you later, man.”

“Yeah,” Nick breathed, posture softening with obvious relief. “Later.”

Hank left him there with an absent wave and, on a whim, decided to swing by the food carts at 4th & Hall to grab some lunch. Half an hour or so later, Wu found him settled at a table in the precinct break room, working his way through a combo platter of kofta shawarma, dolmas, and hummus.

“What did you bring me?” he asked, and dropped into the seat across from Hank. “Ooh, grape leaves!” He reached for the dolmas, just managing to skim one with his thumb before Hank slapped his hand away. Wu made a wounded sound and sucked oil off the pad of his finger, slouching back into his seat like he was in a La-Z-Boy at home. “What’s got your knickers in a twist?”

“Nothing,” Hank protested, and took a big, pointed bite of his shawarma.

“Uh huh.” Wu considered him for a moment through shrewd, narrowed eyes, and then smirked. “Are you jealous that Burkie took his boyfriend to lunch instead of you?”

Hank blinked at him, shocked into silence, and asked around a mouthful of spiced meat and tahini, “What?”

“He picked him up from the spice shop right as I was leaving,” Wu said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Calvert, too. I think they were gonna go for Thai. Not that they invited me.” His exaggerated tone of offense conveyed precisely how he felt about that.

“Clock guy was at the spice shop?”

“Monroe? Yeah, he was helping Calvert pack everything up.” Wu tilted his head to one side, thoughtful, and offered breezily, “He’s a pretty nice guy, you know. I don’t know why you have such a big problem with him.”

Hank swallowed past the knot in his throat and shook his head, glowering into the middle distance as he hissed, “I have a problem with him because he keeps showing up where he’s not supposed to, harboring persons of interest and foiling kidnappings.” He reached jerkily for a dolma and shoved it into his mouth, scowling and jabbing an irritable finger in Wu’s direction. “If Nick keeps dragging him into active police investigations, I’m gonna have to make a formal complaint.”

Wu was silent for a few long minutes, leaving Hank to systematically devour his meal through a heated froth of rage. He’d made quick work of the shawarma and was down to a paltry two dolmas and only a handful of pita when Wu sighed and leaned in.

“Look,” he said slowly, elbows on the table with his hands open and fingers splayed, “don’t take this wrong way, but I have to ask...is this a gay thing?”

Not for the first time during the course of this conversation, Hank felt like Wu had slapped him across the face with something very large and uncomfortably wet.

“What?”

“This hang-up you have about Nick’s friend. Is it a gay thing?”

Hank frowned. “Nick’s not gay.”

“You’re right,” Wu conceded with a nod, he made a sweeping gesture toward Hank, and then touched his hand to his chest. “That’s on me. Is it a bisexual thing?”

“He’s not bisexual, either,” Hank snapped.

Wu raised a speaking eyebrow. “You understand how that response kind of reinforces my suspicions, right?”

Hank rolled his eyes. “Do you really think I give a shit about who Nick wants to sleep with?”

“No,” Wu relented. “But it’s obvious that something about Nick’s relationship with this guy has you on edge.”

Hank shook his head. “It’s not their...relationship that makes me uncomfortable. It’s - ” He frowned, pursing his lips as he tried to put his reticence into words. “Nick has been - I don’t know. Different, lately.” He pointed in Wu’s direction, giving his head a quick, sharp tilt as he demanded, “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

Wu dipped his chin in agreement and Hank relaxed somewhat, mollified.

“He’s been lying, keeping secrets, running around getting up to all manner of trouble, and it all comes back to Monroe. You know he took the guy with him as backup when Juliette was kidnapped?”

“I read something about that in the report, yeah.”

“Yeah,” Hank huffed. “You read about it because I forced Nick to bring him in to make a statement. He didn’t even tell the captain that Monroe was with him when he went to confront Eberhart, and that’s not the first time he’s covered for the guy. You remember Holly Clarke?”

“Who could forget?”

“Well, he was there for that, too.”

“I know,” Wu said, arching an unimpressed eyebrow. “I’m the one that told you about it.”

“Right,” Hank agreed sheepishly. “Well, a guy matching Monroe’s description shows up in a bunch of the witness statements from that fighting ring we busted up a while back, too. All saying the dude was about to meet the business end of an honest-to-god shortsword before Nick jumped in to save his ass.”

“What did Burkhardt say when you asked him about it?”

“Not much,” Hank muttered. “He talked around it mostly, said there was a lot going on and eyewitness testimony can be unreliable.”

“He’s not wrong.”

“No, but I talked to Sergeant Franco about it later. Not on purpose, y’know? Just shooting the shit around the water cooler. And he said that when Nick showed up to check out that Cooney kid’s car, he got a phone call that spooked him and took off, hollering Monroe’s name. And then there was that shit that went down with Oleg Stark.”

Wu frowned. “What about it?”

For a second, Hank considered divulging his suspicions about the operator of the elephant gun, but that was one possibility he knew he shouldn’t mention until he was absolutely sure. “We found that watch on Vince Chilton, right?” he said instead. “So we took it to Monroe to have him trace it and while we were there - ” He shook his head. “Nick was weird, man. Like, even by Nick’s current standards of weirdness, he was weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know, just - it was obvious they were pretty good friends, right? But Nick just kept downplaying it. Cutting Monroe all these looks when he said something too familiar. Hell, at one point, Monroe invited us to have some coffee and Nick made this big show of opening the cabinets looking for his coffee cups. Like, he actually said it out loud. ‘I wonder where he keeps his coffee cups.’ Even though Monroe had just said a few seconds before that Nick should know where they were.”

Wu made a face and put his head to one side, frowning, “Are we sure Nick’s not having an affair? Because that’s pretty textbook.” He brought his hand to his chest and added, “I mean, no judgment. It’s not the honorable option, but shit happens, and sometimes it takes people a while to really get to know themselves, y’know?”

“At this point, I almost wish he was,” Hank admitted. “If he and Monroe were sleeping together, Nick’s weirdness might make sense, but I think they really are just friends.” He sighed and drummed his fingers against the table. “I know Nick’s a grown ass man who can figure his shit out on his own, and that whatever’s going on with him is only my business insofar as it interferes with our cases, but...I don’t want to watch him ruin his career just because he’s - I don’t know. Infatuated, or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Wu nodded, “I get that. It’s hard to see a friend struggling and know you can’t do anything about it, but Hank, man. I’m telling you, as someone who’s been in a similar position with a variety of secrets over the years: you have got to quit riding Burkhardt about this. Maybe it’s not a late-stage sexual awakening, but whatever it is, if you don’t chill out, he’s not gonna come to you when he’s ready to talk. I know you don’t want that.”

“No,” Hank agreed and ducked his head, appropriately chastised. “I don’t.” He slumped forward onto his elbows, trying not to look quite as dejected as he felt. “I just wish he would tell me. Whatever it is. I mean, he has to know I’d have his back, right?”

Wu hummed, apologetic, and swiveled his hand back and forth in the air. “You haven’t exactly been putting the most supportive energy out into the universe these past few months, man. No offense.”

Hank sighed and poked a torn-off snatch of pita bread into the last, oily dregs of hummus. “So, what am I supposed to do? Just ignore the fact that he’s routinely putting a civilian in the line of fire?”

“Tell you what,” Wu said, “if you suspect Burkhardt of doing something that legitimately puts his friend, himself, or anyone else in danger, you let me know and I’ll talk to him, alright?”

“What good would that do? I’ve tried to talk to him about it a bunch of times and he basically keeps telling me to fuck off.”

Wu lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “It would mean something different coming from me than it does from you. And besides,” he added, rising to a half-squat and filching the last dolma from Hank’s plate with a smug smirk, “if he doesn’t listen to me, I can always pull rank.”

He strolled off without further comment and left Hank in the break room, scoffing in open-mouthed amusement at Wu’s audacity and feeling better about things with Nick than he had in a long, long while.

That optimism was, unfortunately, somewhat short-lived.

Around eleven o’clock that night, Hank was stirred from the doze he’d fallen into on his living room sofa by the shrill ringing of his cell phone. He blinked against the blue-tinged glow flickering from the television and groped for his phone on the coffee table, slurring a groggy, “Hello?” as he thumbed to answer.

“Hank?” came Nick’s voice, thin and taut with excitement. “We got ‘em.”

“Who?” Hank asked, mind grinding sluggishly toward coherence.

“Hall and Vickers. I caught up with them at a warehouse on the riverfront. We’re bringing them in now. I thought you might want to help with questioning.”

“Shit.” Hank scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be right there.”

It didn’t take him long to make himself reasonably presentable. He hadn’t gotten much further than kicking his shoes off and undoing the top few buttons of his shirt before he’d settled in for a James Bond retrospective on Turner Classic and slipped sideways into sleep. He straightened his rumpled collar, tugged on his shoes, and made his way out into the wet Portland night.

Nick was standing in front of his own desk when Hank wandered into the bullpen, bent at the waist to peer at something on his computer. He frowned and scribbled something down in a file splayed open across the desktop and then glanced up to flash Hank a triumphant grin.

“Hey,” he greeted, straightening up. “Right on time.” He flipped the folder closed and Hank belatedly realized it had been lying on top of another, nearly identical down to the paper clip hooked over the top.

“Couldn’t let you have all the fun,” he returned, clapping a hand to Nick’s shoulder. He jerked his thumb toward the hall at his back. “I’m gonna grab a cup of coffee, then you want to walk me through this?”

“I’ll come with you,” Nick offered, tucking the folders under his arm. “I could use a little caffeine myself.”

He fell into step at Hank’s side and laid out the whole sordid tale as they walked — a clandestine warehouse on the riverfront serving as a sort of modern day opium den, their perpetrators inside with a bunch of other addicts looking for a good time, getting high off toxic mold, of all godforsaken things.

“I managed to subdue Vickers while we were still in the tent,” Nick explained, leaning back against the sink with his coffee cup cradled in his hands. “Slapped my cuffs on him before he could bolt. Hall made it outside in all the chaos, but I caught up with him on the corner and tried to grab him from the back. He tripped and went down hard, brained himself on the pavement. I restrained him with my belt while he was out and sat on them both until Cappelletti could make it down with the paddy wagon.”

Hank let out an impressed whistle. “What were you doing down on the riverfront in the middle of the night, anyway?”

Nick shrugged, ducking his gaze fown toward his coffee. “Following a hunch.”

“Uh huh.” Hank cut a suspicious glance over at Nick out the corner of his eye while he stirred a healthy measure of both cream and sugar into his cup. “This ‘hunch’ of yours wouldn’t happen to stand a few inches north of six feet, would it?” He held a hand above his head to illustrate. “Curly brown hair? Answers to Monroe?”

“As it happens,” Nick said, with a warning edge to his tone, “Rosalee Calvert is the one who turned me on to the warehouse.”

“And you went in to check it out all your own because - ” Hank trailed off, and turned to pin Nick with an expectant gaze.

Nick rolled his eyes. “I went in to get visual confirmation that Hall and Vickers were on the premises before I called for backup. I was worried that a raid might spook them, give them a chance to slip out the back, but Vickers made me and I had to move fast.”

It was reasonable enough, if unwise, but Hank had known Nick long enough to know when he was obfuscating. He couldn’t even bring himself to be surprised, at this point, let alone disappointed. After all, what was another little drop in a ceaselessly expanding sea of untruths?

Hank thought about Wu, sitting across the table from him and advising compassion, in his own sharp and slightly caustic way, and sighed through his nose. He took a slow, measured sip of his coffee and when he raised his head back up, he clasped Nick’s arm and met those blazing blue eyes with a steady gaze and a said somberly, “However it happened, I’m glad you’re okay.”

Nick stared at him for a long second, eyes wide with surprise, before he swallowed thick and ducked his chin in a jerky nod. “Thanks,” he said, in a soft, rough rasp.

Hank gave him a squeeze and slouched back against the counter with a grin. “Now, which one of these little shits am I interviewing?”

Nick arched an eyebrow and set his coffee down, proffering a folder in each hand with a small, sly smirk. “Take your pick.”

Hall was coiled like a spring when Hank stepped into Interview One, but all the tension in him snapped and unspooled with a breathlessly effusive, “Oh, thank fuck,” the second he got a good look at Hank’s face. He was a skinny, greasy-haired blond with pale, glassy eyes and red spots on his chin that could have been an indicator of drug use or just everyday blemishes caused by the clear deficit of personal hygiene. He had his hands in his lap but Hank would bet his fingers were twitching, from the way the chain strung through the loop on the table rattled faintly.

“Mr. Hall,” Hank greeted, sliding into the seat across from him and offering a benign smile. He leaned back, keeping his posture open and casual, and raised his eyebrows. “You know, repeat offenders who’ve been identified at murder scenes aren’t usually so excited to see me.”

“Shit, man,” Hall scoffed, shaking his head as though Hank had made a particularly tasteless joke. “I thought they were gonna send the fuckin’ Grimm.”

“Grim?” Hank echoed, brow knitting.

“Yeah.” Hall nodded and met Hank’s gaze with a pointed stare that suggested Hank ought to know what he was talking about. “I’d rather tangle with the fuckin’ blutbad again than wind up locked in a room with that nightmare motherfucker.” He blanched suddenly, color draining from his face and as his eyes bulged with terror. “Oh, shit. He’s in there with Clint, isn’t he?”

Something was prickling at the back of Hank’s mind — a faint, wavering ripple of recognition. He shook his head and offered absently, “Detective Burkhardt is interviewing your friend Mr. Vickers.”

“Fuck, man.” Hall shuddered and pulled his arms up to his chest inasmuch as the chain lashing him to the table would allow. He shoved the fingers of one hand under the fraying sleeve of his hoodie and started scratching feverishly at a patch of red, abraded skin on his forearm. “He’s gonna fuckin’ kill him. A Grimm workin’ for the fuckin’ cops.” He shook his head again, swift and frantic. “Is that even legal?"

A moment surfaced in the recesses of Hank’s memory. Nick, sitting in a stairwell, speaking the same strange phrase that Hall had uttered just a few seconds before. Hank extended his index finger in Hall’s direction and circled it in the air, frowning. “That word you just said. Bloat-bod.”

Hall paused in his tirade to narrow his eyes at Hank, the weight of his confusion pulling a furrow into his forehead. “Blutbad?”

“Yeah, that.” Hank leaned forward onto his elbows. “What does it mean?”

Hall opened his mouth, closed it again, and darted a look around the room like he was only just becoming aware of the fact that he was sitting in a police precinct. “Uh uh,” he said, shaking his head yet again and scrabbling furiously at his arm. Hank could see tiny pearls of red beading where he’d broken the skin in a few places. “You’re not catchin’ me in some fuckin’ word trap.” He raised his chin and fixed Hank with a poisonous glare. “I think I better wait for my lawyer.”

Within the privacy of his own mind, Hank swore a fierce, blue streak. Externally, he shrugged and leaned back in his seat, allowing, “You’re within your rights to do so. In the meantime, I’m going to go ahead and talk you through the events of the last few days as we understand them, just to make sure we’re on the same page, alright?”

It became immediately clear that Hank was wasting his time. No matter how he implied, insinuated, or cajoled, Hall refused to say another word on the murder at the apothecary or his subsequent arrest outside the drug den. Occasionally his jaw would tighten, or his eyes would flash, or he would snort and give his head a quick, sharp shake, but for the most part he just sat there, scratching and jittering his heels against the floor, until Hank heaved to his feet with a sigh and left him to stew in his fading high for a while.

He stalked back toward the bullpen, pausing at the end of the hallway when a door opened behind him. Nick came out of Interview Two with a smug quirk at the corners of his mouth, blue eyes bright.

“Hey,” he grinned, swinging the door shut behind him, and jogged a few feet to catch up with Hank. “How’d it go?

“Not great,” Hank sighed, leading the way into the bullpen.

Nick frowned. “What happened?”

“I said something stupid and Hall shut up tighter than a duck’s asshole.” Hank dropped into his seat, swiveling a little, and scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “How’d you do with Vickers?”

“Better than that,” Nick smirked. He sat more gracefully behind his own desk and tossed the folder down over top of his keyboard. “I told him DNA evidence placed him at the scene of Freddy’s murder, and that Rosalee identified him at the break in after that, and he rolled right over. Copped to both crimes and implicated his buddy, too.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Hank leaned over, hand extended for a high-five, and Nick met him halfway, grin widening.

They settled back into their respective seats, Hank with his hands behind his head and Nick with his own intertwined over his belly.

“This was a good day,” Nick sighed, low and content.

“Bound to have one every once in a while.” Hank closed his eyes while Nick chuckled. He was content to sit basking in the companionable silence for a long moment, appreciating the unexpected return of the easy camaraderie that had seemed to fall further and further out of reach these last few months.

He heard a soft groan and the plasticky squeak of an office chair and then the faint, rhythmic sounds of typing. When he opened his eyes again, Nick was staring attentively at his computer, no doubt writing up a report on the evening. Hank watched him for a moment and then narrowed his eyes, considering.

“Did Vickers say anything to you about a ‘grim?’”

Nick’s fingers stuttered to a sudden stop, whole body drawing taut for a split second before he visibly forced himself to relax. “Nope,” he shook his head and turned a guileless blue gaze in Hank’s direction. “Why? What is it?”

It was clear from the bowstrung tension lingering across his shoulders to the brittle curve of his polite smile that Nick was pretending at innocence yet again. Hank wanted to push, and no small part of him felt very strongly that he should, despite Wu’s warnings to the contrary, but in the end he came to the reluctant agreement that there was wisdom in committing to the long game.

“No idea.” He shook his head and dropped his hands down into his lap. “Hall is shit-scared of it, whatever it is.”

“Huh,” Nick’s mouth twisted as he lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “We can ask around about it, but I don’t know how far we’ll get.”

“No,” Hank grunted, sitting up and scooting his chair in underneath his desk. “Don’t worry about it. Chances are it’s just nonsense, anyway. I think Hall is still pretty toasted.”

Nick hummed and peered back at his monitor. “Well, let me know if you find out.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I will,” Hank promised, flashing a reassuring smile at Nick across his desk and taking a cold, bitter sort of pleasure in the worried chip of a glance Nick flicked his way in return. "No secrets, right?"

"Right," Nick said, turning his eyes pointedly back to his screen. His face was pale in the sallow glow of the overhead lights. "Of course. No secrets."

Chapter Text

Nick was fidgeting. Again. He’d been tapping his toes and clicking pens and drumming his fingers against his desk all day. Hank had the beginnings of a cluster headache pulsing behind his right eye, so he picked up a paper clip and lobbed it at the side of Nick’s head.

Nick slapped a hand to his own temple and turned to stare at Hank, eyes wide and mouth dropped open in surprise.

“What the hell?”

“You need to chill out, man,” Hank said with a pointed glance to where Nick’s knee was bouncing, rapid and nervous, “or the next homicide you investigate is gonna be your own.”

Nick followed the line of his gaze and grimaced. He stilled and took a deep breath, forcing himself to settle, then flashed Hank an apologetic grin. “Sorry.”

Hank waved him off and leaned back in his chair. “You want to talk about whatever’s got you wound up tighter than a two dollar watch?”

Nick’s gaze flickered down and away, and Hank braced himself for the coming brush-off. To his surprise — and relief — after a moment of silent consideration, Nick huffed a soft, sheepish laugh, shook his head, and said quietly, “I’m worried about Juliette.”

“She still freaked out about the Eberhart thing?” Hank asked, mouth twisted in commiseration.

“A little,” Nick lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I, uh. I think that’s just the latest straw on the camel, though.” He paused for a second, chewing at his lip, and added in a reluctant rasp, “We’ve been going through kind of a - a rough patch recently.”

Hank felt his eyebrows rise. “You talk to her about it?”

“I tried to. We didn’t really - it wasn’t a very productive conversation.”

That was, unfortunately, no great surprise. Nick had trouble talking about his emotions on a good day, and it seemed like the last few months had been a ceaseless dissolution from bad to worse.

“Did she say what was bothering her?”

Nick shrugged. “I guess she feels like I’m not really present, the way I used to be? I don’t know. I don’t really get it. I mean, it’s not like I’m - ” He stopped, pressing his mouth into a line, and shook his head. “Whatever. Anyway, I found this rental house up in Damascus. Really nice place. Big cabin up on a hill, overlooking the woods. I’m taking her up there for a long weekend. There’s a bunch of antique shops and hiking and trails and stuff. Figure we’ll head out on Friday afternoon and stay through Monday, spend a little quality time together and enjoy the solitude.”

“Sounds like you’ve got everything handled,” Hank approved.

“Maybe,” Nick sighed. “I don’t know, Hank. I - ” He hesitated again, taking a slow breath through his nose before he said sternly, “I’ve been crashing at Monroe’s, on and off.” He darted a nervous glance at Hank, who was doing his level best not to scowl. “I wanted to give her some space, y’know? To figure out whatever it is she needs to figure out. And I think it was helping but - I don’t know. It kind of feels like this is my last chance.”

Hank swallowed back his instinctual, bristling response — that if Nick needed a place to stay, he was welcome to Hank’s sofa anytime, rather than throwing himself on the mercy of a clockmaker with a mysterious, possibly murderous past and potential designs on his innocence, such as it was. Instead of airing any of that aloud, he leaned across the corner of his desk to curl a supportive hand over Nick’s shoulder.

“Listen,” he said, waiting until he was sure he had Nick’s full attention to flash an encouraging grin, “you and Juliette? Are solid. She’s been putting up with your bullshit for, what? Two years now?”

“Our anniversary was in February,” Nick confirmed, then ducked his head, looking sheepish. “I, uh - I kind of missed it.”

Hank winced. “Ouch.”

“It was the night we went after Taymor.”

“What, the gladiator thing?”

Nick nodded, and Hank muttered, “Damn,” before he could stop himself.

“Yeah. Between the investigation, and the fighting, and getting everything tied up after, dinner just sort of slipped my mind.” Nick’s eyes widened as he murmured, low and conspiratorial, “Juliette was not happy.”

“I’ll bet,” Hank said, and they lapsed into an awkward silence, Nick hunching in on himself.

Hank’s hand was still on Nick’s shoulder, so he gave it a little squeeze and offered, “Look, man. We all make mistakes, alright? But Juliette loves you, and you love her, and more importantly: you’re trying. Trying to make things work, trying to make things better. That counts for a lot. You keep showing up and keep putting in the work and everything’s gonna be just fine.”

Nick swallowed, thick, and asked, “Yeah?” He sounded shy and hopeful, young in a way that Hank sometimes forgot he actually was, just now pushing thirty.

“Trust me, man,” he said with all the confidence of a man who’d been through this particular ringer three times with varying levels of success. He released Nick with an affectionate shake and settled back into his seat. “It’ll all shake out in the end.”

As it turned out, Hank was not especially gifted in the art of prophecy.

He strolled into the precinct ten minutes early on Monday morning, with a frou-frou takeaway coffee and a buttered croissant in hand, to discover Nick already seated at his desk. This wouldn’t normally be worth noting — Nick had a penchant for putting in extra hours whenever the mood struck — but Hank had expected his partner would still be cozied up in the quaint little mountain cabin he’d rented with the intention of treating Juliette to a much-needed long weekend away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Instead, here he was, tapping away at some report or another, sporting dark circles under his eyes and scruff that was more unkempt than he usually preferred it. Decidedly not a good sign.

Hank had reached a tentative peace with Nick before he left, and loath as he was to risk breaking that fragile accord, he was also concerned on Nick’s behalf. For a guy who’d swanned out of the office on Friday afternoon with a song in his heart and a bouquet of roses under one arm, Nick looked like he’d just come off a three-day bender.

“How was the vacation?” Hank asked cautiously, dropping into his own seat.

Nick sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face, his whole body hunching inward like he was preparing to shield himself from a blow. He stared at his computer screen for a long second, jaw tight as the corners of his miserable scowl twitched, and then flicked a dark, pained glance in Hank’s direction.

“Not great,” he muttered. His voice was ragged, like he’d been yelling, or — Hank revised, taking in Nick’s red-rimmed eyes and the chafed skin of his cheeks — crying. Nick steeled himself for a second, clearly bracing for pain, and said, “Juliette left me,” all in a rush, like he was ripping off a Band-Aid.

Hank nearly choked on his macchiato. “What?”

Nick rolled his gaze back to his computer screen and huffed a sound that was altogether too bitter to be called a laugh. “Yeah,” he sighed, “that’s what I said.”

Hank knew he was gaping, but he couldn’t quite wrangle his expression back under control. His heart felt twisted, like it had flipped over on itself, and his stomach dropped away entirely, sinking straight through the floor and leaving a sucking pit in its place.

“Shit,” he said, helpless.

The ghost of a smirk, sharp and agonized, deepened the shadows at the edges of Nick’s mouth.

“Pretty much.”

Silence unspooled between them in thick, wet ribbons. Hank stared at the side of Nick’s face. Nick stared at his screen, mouth pursed into a mulish, wounded bow.

“Do you...want to talk about it?”

“No!” Nick replied, so fast it was almost a yelp. His eyes flared wide and afraid for a split second before he managed to fold himself back behind a thin veneer of professional calm. “No,” he said again, serene and certain, though the exhaustion in his tone was plain. “Not right now. Thanks, though.”

Hank nodded and left him to his own devices. He picked a piece off of his croissant but the joy had gone out of it. He sighed and rolled the top of the pastry bag closed before shoving the whole thing into an uninhabited corner of his desk.

It stayed there for the better part of an hour, while Hank worked alongside Nick in silent solidarity, until familiar footfalls circled around to their little corner of the bullpen and Wu’s voice drawled, exaggeratedly saccharine, “Aw, you brought me breakfast!”

He snatched the bag from the desk, tore a piece off the croissant, and popped it into his mouth before Hank could move to stop him, not that Hank would have even with adequate forewarning. He didn’t have the energy for any of Wu’s games this morning, caught as he was in the radiating ripples of Nick’s sorrow. He settled for cutting Wu a glare.

Wu licked his fingers and hitched his hip up so that he was half-sitting on Hank’s desk, frowning as he glanced back and forth between Hank and Nick. “Wow,” he observed dryly, “you’re really rolling out the welcome wagon this morning, fellas.”

Hank narrowed his eyes and swatted at Wu’s knee. “Get your ass off my desk, man. God only knows where that thing’s been.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Wu smirked, wagging his eyebrows. He made no efforts to move, planting his palm against Hank’s desk and leaning in to address Nick, shoulder slipping in front of Hank’s computer screen as he bent over the keyboard.

Hank huffed a sigh through his nose and threw his hands up, resigning himself to suffer Wu’s presence until the other man’s curiosity was satisfied. He leaned back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest while Wu tilted his chin at Nick.

“What’s with you, dark, gruff, and broody?” Before Nick could respond, Wu amended, “I mean, don’t get me wrong, full Heathcliffe is working for you.”

Nick snorted, flashing Wu a thin smirk that disappeared nearly as soon as it had curled into his cheek. “Thanks, I think.”

“You’re welcome,” Wu nodded. He watched Nick for a second longer, while Nick picked idly at the keyboard in front of him, unenthusiastically filling out a report for an open-and-shut assault case that he and Hank had been covering a week or two before. Wu plucked another piece off the croissant, popped it into his mouth, and straightened back up, hands curling over his thighs. “Seriously, kid, why so glum?”

Nick sighed and brought his hands up to his face, sinking forward into the privacy of his palms and shaking his head while Wu looked on, alarmed.

Hank swiveled around to catch Wu’s eye, pressing his mouth into a flat, warning line and drawing his hand in a swift line across his throat, like a blade. Wu frowned at him, gaze jumping back and forth between Hank and Nick, as he appeared to finally realize that he was in the midst of making a grievous misstep.

Wu opened his mouth, but before he could retract his question, Nick reached over to clap a reassuring hand to Hank’s shoulder and sighed, “It’s fine.” He looked up at Wu, exhausted but resigned. “Juliette broke up with me.”

“Oh, shit,” Wu breathed. He brought a hand up to his chest, with all the horrified grace of a Victorian spinster clutching her pearls.

Nick shrugged and flashed a mirthless smile, hands out as if to say ‘whaddya gonna do?,’ before turning his attention back to his computer. He rested his chin in his palm and slumped over the desk, the blue glow of the screen making the shadows under his eyes and at the corners of his mouth even darker. He looked miserable and ghoulish.

Hank glared over at Wu, who grimaced and held up a finger. He crossed his arms over his chest, straightening up a bit, and tilted his chin in Nick’s direction.

“So,” he demanded, “where are we taking you?”

Nick frowned and didn’t look up. “What?”

“For your obligatory post break-up Boys’ Night,” Wu explained. “You know, the three B’s? Brews, bros, and bitching.” He counted them off on his fingers and flashed a smirk. “It’s a complimentary service.”

Nick shook his head, still staring at his report. “Nothing to bitch about.”

“Please,” Wu snorted. “You just got dumped. And even if you hadn’t, I know where you work.” He cast a judgmental look over the bullpen. “There’s always something to bitch about around here.”

“I’m good,” Nick deflected, tone short though one side of his mouth had started to curl with amusement.

Hank hoped that the deep furrow of his brow and the stinging width of his eyes as he glared was enough to convey how desperately he wanted Wu to stop talking and let it alone. Wu met his gaze, arched a single, severely unimpressed eyebrow, and heaved himself up off the desk.

“One drink,” he wheedled, circling around to lean in and sling his arm over Nick’s shoulders. “Thirty minutes of your life.”

“Look, I appreciate the offer - ”

Wu waved a hand to cut him off. “You turn me down today, I’m just gonna ask again tomorrow.”

Nick tilted his head back, jaw tight as he sighed through his nose and glowered at the ceiling. He closed his eyes for a long, pained second, and then hunched forward again, muttering, “Fine. One drink.” He held up a single finger for emphasis. “And then I’m going home and we’re never talking about it again. Deal?”

Wu nodded, solemn, and patted Nick’s shoulder twice. “Good man.”

He flashed Hank a thumbs up over Nick’s head as he meandered away, grinning despite the palpable miasma of sorrow hovering around Nick like a dark cloud. Hank scowled at his retreating form and vowed not to share his breakfast pastries for at least the next month, no matter how Wu begged or batted his eyelashes.

From there, the day passed with little fanfare. Nick stayed quiet, for the most part, following up on a few of their open cases. Hank did his best to maintain an air of levity, cracking the occasional joke and managing to tempt a token smirk from Nick’s somber face a time or two despite his firmly entrenched aura of melancholy.

Quitting time found the two of them idling on the curb, waiting on Wu to change into his street clothes, trading small talk about the weather and benign theories regarding a few of their current cases. Wu appeared after just a few minutes, in a grey, long-sleeved Portland Timbers shirt and a pair of well-loved jeans.

He slapped companionably at Nick’s back and grinned, “Alright, Burkhardt. Where are we going?”

“Bootlegger?” Nick suggested.

“What?” Wu wrinkled his nose. “No. Really?” He looked over at Hank for support, but Hank just shrugged.

“I like Bootlegger.”

“It’s a total hipster dive,” Wu moaned, even as he led them to where his sedan was parked in the first row of the lot. “It’s gonna be wall-to-wall craft IPAs and homemade jorts, and that’s assuming we survive wading through the ocean of fixed-gear bicycles locked up out front.”

“They’ve got good food,” Nick protested, slipping into the backseat. He caught Hank’s gaze in the rearview mirror, rolling his eyes and smirking.

Wu kept up his enthusiastic stream of criticism for the full fifteen minutes it took them to drive to the bar and secure parking, goaded on by the occasional playful protest from either Hank or Nick, depending.

It was early enough that they didn’t have to wait long for a table, though Hank did catch his knee on a bike frame coming around the stuffed-full racks out in front of the building, true to Wu’s prediction. They were ushered to a four-person high top in the corner by a friendly hostess in a crop top with the bar name across the front and left with several menus of varying sizes, shapes, and contents.

Wu didn’t even bother sitting down before he announced, “Alright, fellas, first round’s on me.” He pointed at Hank. “What’ll it be?”

“Get me a, uh - ” Hank squinted down at one of the tap lists the hostess had left them with, drawing out the vowel sound as he considered his options. “Oh! Get me a Breakside.”

Wu rolled his eyes and swung his finger over to Nick. “Burkhardt?”

“Third Bird, no glass.”

“Beer snobs, the both of you.” Wu shook his head, leaning in to warn, “If anybody offers you a complimentary mustache wax, tell them your face is a no-no area,” before he spun on his heel and made his way up to the bar.

He returned a few short minutes later, three beers clasped awkwardly in his hands and a fresh-faced server hovering at his shoulder with a platter of fries. Once everything had been delivered, Wu talked them through a lazy toast, and they spent the first few rounds just shooting the shit. They talked a little about sports, and then about work, which led to the recounting of tall tales from other precincts. Slowly but surely, Nick started to relax. He mustered a smile every now and again and Hank even managed to startle him into a laugh once or twice.

It was well past the paltry half an hour Nick had initially promised and their fourth round — barring Wu, who was acting as designated driver for the evening and thus only halfway through his second beer — had just been delivered when Wu turned to Nick, arched an eyebrow, and said, “So.”

The single syllable dropped like a lead brick through the air between them.

“So,” Nick echoed. He stared Wu down until Wu made an impatient sound in the back of his throat and circled a hand in the air in front of him in the universal ‘go on’ gesture.

”So,” he 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.”

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Hank interjected.

“It’s not that,” Nick shook his head, looking helplessly between the two of them. “It’s just - there’s not really anything to tell. Honestly. She just said it wasn’t working.”

“Did she tell you why it wasn’t working?” Wu pressed. He was looking a little flushed, eyes glassy. Tipsy, Hank was pretty sure, rather than outright drunk, but near enough to the latter that Hank would be obligated to pour him into a cab at the end of the night if he wandered much closer.

“She didn’t exactly write me a bulleted list,” Nick snapped.

“Come on,” Wu wheedled, unbothered by Nick’s flare of temper. “You’ve gotta have a guess. What was it? Girl trouble?” He wagged his eyebrows, leaning in and adding in a lower, smoother tone, “Guy trouble?”

Hank was aware that it was his duty as Nick’s partner to divert Wu’s attention from this uncomfortable line of questioning, but he wasn’t too proud to admit to a certain amount of curiosity as to the course of events, himself. He took a long slug of his beer instead, to buy some time, and tried not to appear too eager for the tawdry details.

“No!” Nick protested, instantaneous and offended. “Jesus. It was nothing like that, alright?” He started picking at the tab on his beer can and didn’t look up at either of them, mouth a flat, unhappy line as he admitted in a small voice, “She said she felt like I was keeping things from her.”

Wu’s eyebrows quirked. “Were you?”

“No, I - not exactly. I mean, I guess I kind of was, but I didn’t - I don’t want to keep things from her, I just.” He dropped his head into his hands. “They aren’t my secrets to tell.” When he looked back up again, his face was even redder than Wu’s, mouth turned down and eyes wet under his furrowed brow.

Fuck, Hank thought. The last thing they needed was for Nick to tip over into a maudlin drunk, as he was wont to do when he wandered too deep into his cups even without the albatross of his failed relationship weighing heavy around his neck. If they kept haranguing him about it, it’d sink him for sure, and he’d be weeping on the table in no time.

“Alright,” Hank soothed, raising a hand to flag down a passing server. “I think that’s enough heart-to-heart talk for one night.”

Wu didn’t voice his agreement, but he reached over and gave Nick’s shoulder a companionable squeeze.

The server was a freckled brunette, who took their empties with a smile and returned a minute or two later with a pitcher of ice water and a stack of empty plastic cups. He poured each of them a glass and left the pitcher at the center of the table, flashing Hank a commisserating, close-mouthed smile over Nick’s slumped shoulders.

“I told Juliette she could keep the house,” Nick announced, apropos of nothing.

Hank took a surprised sip of water and came up coughing when it diverted down the wrong tube. “Seriously?” he croaked, when he could breathe again.

Nick nodded, slow and morose, and rested his cheek in his hand. “I feel like I put her through so much already, y’know? With the - the kidnapping thing, and all the stuff with my aunt.”

“Don’t forget the time that guy busted through your window and tried to murder you,” Wu reminded him, nudging their shoulders together.

Hank cut him a poisonous glare and Wu shrugged, mouthing a silent, “What?”

“And that,” Nick agreed, pointing over at Wu with a wobbly hand before settling back down again, elbows propped against the table. “Figure she doesn’t need to be looking for a new place to live on top of everything else. She can sell it if she wants. It’s in a pretty nice area and we’ve made some solid renovations. She could probably get a decent sum for it, and I doubt she’ll have any trouble finding a roommate if she wants to stay.”

“I didn’t realize the split was that serious,” Hank said. There was breaking up and there was breaking up, and until this moment, he’d sort of figured that Nick was just being pessimistic about the former.

Nick turned those big, sad eyes on him, humming a low noise of confirmation as he took a deep drink of water.

“You get all your stuff yet?” Wu asked.

“Some of it,” Nick sighed. “I packed a suitcase after we got back. Got most of my clothes, coupla pictures of my parents. My badge and my gun. She said she’d pack everything else up so I can stop by to grab it this weekend.”

“Fuck, man,” Hank frowned.

Nick nodded, despondent and lethargic. “Yeah,” he agreed, in a watery rasp, and dropped his face into the crook of his folded arms.

Wu rubbed his hand down and across Nick’s shoulders, grimacing across the table at Hank, who shrugged, helpless. Rolling his eyes, Wu leaned down and asked gently, “Hey, Burkie. You wanna get out of here?”

There came a muffled, “Mmhm,” and Nick nodded again, without raising his head.

Hank leaned in and ruffled Nick’s hair where it was sticking up at the front against the sleeve of his henley. “You got somewhere to stay?”

“Yeah,” Nick mumbled into his arm. He tilted his face up so that his chin was resting against his elbow and explained, “Monroe’s letting me use his couch. It’s a pull-out.”

Wu snorted next to him, biting his lip against a proper laugh. He muttered, “I’ll bet it is,” under his breath, and Hank narrowed a glare in his direction while he did his best to ignore the possessive, injured twist in his stomach at the thought that Nick had once again turned to Monroe in his hour of need. He was sober enough to recognize that the beer was probably making it seem like a worse slight than it actually was.

“Alright, man,” he said, tilting his head to catch Nick’s gaze. “You want us to drop you there or you want to crash at mine tonight?”

“Or mine,” Wu piped up. “Though I’ll warn you: at Casa Wu we see things through. None of this pulling out garbage.” He snickered at his own tasteless joke and Hank threw a balled up napkin across the table at him.

“What?” Nick asked, peering back and forth between the two of them with guileless confusion.

“The sergeant thinks he’s a comedian,” Hank grumbled, shaking his head and then effecting a swift change of topic. “So, what do you say? Crash at my place or swing over to Monroe’s on the way?”

“Oh,” Nick sat up, brushing his hair off his forehead with one hand and fumbling into his coat pocket with the other. “I can just call him to come pick me up. He doesn’t live too far from here and it’s - ” He blinked blearily at his phone screen and shook his head with a soft huff of laughter. “Jesus, it’s barely nine o’clock. He’s probably not even finished with cello practice yet.”

“Of course he plays the cello.” Hank rolled his eyes, while Nick jabbed at his phone screen.

Wu smirked at Hank across the table. “Let me guess, he also enjoys free-running, and particle physics, and in his spare time he saves blind, three-legged dogs from crashing helicopters.”

“He, uh - he does pilates,” Nick replied absently, raising the phone to his ear, “and he’s kind of a history nerd, but - oh hey!” His face lit up with a grin, steely eyes sparkling even in the low light of the bar, presumably because Monroe had just answered. “What are you doing?” He was silent for a few seconds, nodding, and then he moved the phone away from his face and cupped his hand over the bottom, mouthing, “Cello,” and flashing a smug grin.

Hank flicked an unimpressed look over at Wu, whose eyebrows were making an admirable attempt to ascend into his hair as he looked on in awe at Nick’s whiplash pivot into relative cheerfulness.

“More or less,” Nick continued into the receiver, oblivious to the both of them now that he had Monroe on the line. “I was wondering if you could pick me up?” He snorted. “No, nothing that exciting. Sergeant Wu invited me and Hank out for drinks.” He nodded, even though Monroe couldn’t see him. “That’s the one. Yeah, he’s great. He offered to drop me by on his way home, but - ” His mouth curled up on one side and he half-rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s kind of what I figured. Oh, uh, Bootlegger. Off of Southwest Haddock and - yeah. Yeah, it’s delicious. You want me to order you some to go? Alright, see you in a few.”

He hung up and slipped his phone back into his pocket as he announced dutifully, “He’ll be here in ten. I can cover the last round if you guys want to get out of here.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder to illustrate.

Hank snorted and rolled his eyes. By unspoken agreement, he and Wu stayed and kept Nick company, nursing the dregs at the bottom of their glasses while Wu recounted a disastrous date he’d gone on the week prior with a paramedic named Mahmud.

“ - and the whole time he’s trying to unlatch the damn thing without breaking my finger, which is starting to feel like a lost cause at that point,” Wu was saying, with punctual gesticulations aplenty, while Nick looked on with wide eyes, mouth half-open in horror. “And the server keeps apologizing, and the hostess is asking if she should call 9-1-1, even though Mahmud had already explained that he was a first responder like nine thousand times.”

Hank glanced up as a familiar, lanky figure stepped through the door at the front of the bar. He was conveniently positioned so that he was the only one at their table facing the appropriate direction to see it without turning almost a full one-eighty, and Hank took shameless advantage of that fact to study his unwitting quarry.

Monroe was in a pair of standard blue jeans and yet another plaid button-down, with a dark vest open over the top. A casual enough outfit that he might well have been lounging around in it at home, excepting the black wool coat.

He hovered on the threshold for a second, door propped open against his shoulder. When a cursory glance around the front room didn’t reveal their position, Monroe tilted his chin up, almost as if he were scenting the air, and zeroed in on the table immediately. Hank caught his eye and nodded as Monroe raised a hand in greeting, loping through the crowd with that strange, banked grace that set Hank on edge.

He moves like a predator, Hank thought, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense. He shook his head, trying to clear it, as Wu leaned over toward Nick with his right index finger extended.

“Look,” he said, “you can see where it’s still bruised, right there at the knuckle.”

Nick leaned and squinted. “Oh yeah,” he agreed. They each sat back up and he furrowed his brow. “Are you going out with him again?”

“Yeah,” Wu nodded. “I mean, the poor guy got stuck shelling out thirty bucks for a lobster we didn’t even eat. I figured the least I could do was cover a second date.”

Which was right about the time that Monroe stalked up behind Nick and curled his hands over Nick’s shoulders.

“Evening gentlemen,” Monroe greeted, as Nick tilted his head back to look up at him.

When he saw who it was taking liberties with his personal space, Nick smiled — the broad, sunny one that turned his eyes into glittering blue crescents — and said, “‘Bout time you showed up.”

Monroe snorted, half-rolling his eyes. “You’re lucky I showed up at all, if this is the thanks I get.” He nodded toward the door at his back. “You ready to go or are we grabbing one for the road?”

Nick considered this for a second, and Hank went ahead and answered for him.

“I think we’re done for the night, man.”

“Yeah,” Wu agreed with a sigh. He leaned back in his chair, heaving a low groan and flattening his hands against his stomach. “The daily grind slows for no man. You know how it is.”

“I hear that,” Monroe nodded. He gave Nick’s shoulders an affectionate squeeze and gestured to the next chair over, where Nick had abandoned his coat in a haphazard heap shortly after their arrival. “You’re gonna want to shimmy into your jacket before we head out. It’s like forty degrees out there.”

“Says the blut - uh. The guy who puts off heat like a furnace,” Nick groused cheerfully back, flashing a wary glance at Hank as he lurched up out of his seat with markedly less poise than he possessed when sober.

Monroe caught Nick with a hand against his chest as he stumbled on the low rung of his chair and nearly went facefirst into the reclaimed wood flooring. “Oh wow,” he snorted, eyebrows rising high and delighted. “You really weren’t kidding, huh? They’ve got you fully loaded.”

Nick reached up and curled his hand around Monroe’s wrist, tangling the other in the front of his shirt as he got his feet back under him. “With a magazine to spare,” he confirmed, and grinned again when Monroe laughed.

“It was the least we could do,” Wu offered, and Nick beamed over at him, too.

Monroe retrieved Nick’s coat and patiently held it aloft so that Nick could shrug his arms into the sleeves. He tugged his lapel into place and patted his pockets to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be, pointing at Wu and Hank in turn as he asked, “You sure you don’t want me to get the last round?”

“Nah, man,” Hank waved him off. “Just get home safe, alright?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Sure thing, dad.” He turned halfway around and splayed a palm out against Monroe’s chest. “I’m gonna hit the can before we go,” he said, and headed for a hallway at the back of the room.

“Watch your step,” Monroe called after him, and Nick raised a hand to flip him off without looking. Monroe chuckled and shoved his hands into his pockets. He watched Nick until he’d disappeared into the bathroom and then looked at Hank and Wu and said, “It was good of you guys to do this.”

“That’s what friends are for,” Hank said, making a manful attempt not to sneer or snarl or scowl. He must have succeeded, because Monroe didn’t seem at all phased by the statement.

“Yeah, well, Nick’s got some good ones in you two,” Monroe said. “I know he appreciates that more than he lets on.”

“How’s he doing?” Wu asked, with a cautious glance over his shoulder, as though he suspected Nick might suddenly appear there.

Hank fought the urge to glare at Wu at the same time that he found himself dangling in mid-air, hanging on every word of Monroe’s response.

“It’s hard to say for sure,” Monroe sighed, lifting on shoulder in a shrug. “I think he’s trying to be okay with it, but I know he wishes things had turned out differently.”

“Did he tell you what caused the split?” Hank blinked, surprised to hear his own voice on the air.

Monroe flicked a look over at him and shifted his weight. “No,” he said, dropping his eyes to the floor and reaching up to rub absently at his mouth. “Not exactly. I gather it was some sort of...communication issue.”

“Yeah,” Wu sighed, rueful. “That’s about all we got out of him.”

“He didn’t say if anything happened up at the cabin?” Hank pressed.

Monroe flicked another glance at him, then tilted his head toward the hallway where Nick had disappeared, and turned to face Hank once more. “I think it was kind of a rough weekend,” he explained, with the slow, steady cadence of someone who was making careful selection of their words. “He called me a couple times and it, uh - it didn’t sound like it was going great.”

“Do you know when Juliette left?” Hank asked, while Wu’s gaze bobbed back and forth between them like a ping pong ball.

“I don’t know for sure.” Monroe shrugged again, seeming to hunch in on himself. “Sometime on Sunday, by my guess. I mean, it could’ve been the night before, but Nick called me on Sunday morning and said they were coming back early, asked if he could take the sofa-bed for a few days. I told him he had an open invitation and he showed up that afternoon with a suitcase.”

“Huh.” Hank leaned back in his seat. “Sounds like it really did just come out of nowhere.”

Monroe grimaced — it was subtle, just the barest tightening at the corners of his mouth — and sucked his teeth. “Sure did.”

Jesus Christ, Hank thought, awed and irritated in equal measure. Monroe was, somehow, turning out to be an even worse liar than Nick.

As if summoned by the thought, Nick materialized in the corner of Hank’s vision, strolling up to stand at Monroe’s side, close enough that their arms were brushing.

“You ready to get out of here?”

“Yep,” Monroe confirmed, straightening up as much as he ever did. He was still shying away from his full height, but was clearly more relaxed than he had been during Hank’s impromptu interrogation. “I need to swing by the grocery on the way home. Gotta grab some mushrooms for the risotto.”

Nick wrinkled his nose. “What kind?”

“Shiitake,” Monroe said, clapping a hand over the back of Nick’s neck and turning him towards the door, “because somebody thinks he’s too good for portobellos.”

“The big ones get all chewy,” Nick said, as though it were a perfectly reasonable justification. He ambled forward under the weight of Monroe’s palm, neither of them seeming particularly inclined to remove it even now that he was in motion.

“Not when they’re chopped up into teeny tiny little pieces and simmered in vegetable stock for half an hour.”

“I can still tell,” Nick protested.

“Which is why we’re getting shiitake,” Monroe agreed, with smug patience. He flashed a look over his shoulder, the sort of fond ‘can you believe this?’ glance that Hank was used to getting from his friends’ significant others when said friends were being particularly irritating. He managed to muster a smirk as the two of them meandered their way out into the brisk Portland night, still bickering.

“Wow,” Wu said, as soon as they were out of earshot. He looked sort of dazed, like someone had just given him an unexpected box about the ears. He gestured his glass toward the door where it was still swinging shut on Monroe’s back. “I mean, I know I joke about the boyfriend thing, but - ” He shook his head and said it again. “Wow.”

“Believe me, I know,” Hank grumbled, raising a hand to flag down the same server that had brought them water a little while before and ask for the check.

“And Burkhardt really has no idea?” Wu continued, as Hank tucked his credit card into a cheap leather bill folder and handed it off.

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“What about Monroe? Do you think he knows how it looks?”

“I don’t know how he couldn’t.”

“If he does, he clearly hasn’t said anything.”

Hank frowned at Wu and he clarified, “Oh, come on. Do you really think Burkie would still be trailing him like a love sick puppy if he’d made a move? Let alone sleeping on his sofa in the middle of a major heartbreak.”

“No,” Hank muttered. The server returned with the receipt and he scrawled his name across the bottom, being sure to leave a sizeable tip.

Wu followed him out the door, twirling his keys around his index finger. Hank stopped for a second as soon as he stepped onto the sidewalk, the cold hitting him like a wall. Monroe hadn’t been lying. It was always chillier at night in this city, but in comparison to the balmy afternoon, the air was wet and frigid, harkening rain.

“So,” Wu asked a few short seconds later, as they clambered past the overloaded bike racks toward the parking lot, “what are we gonna do?”

Hank cut a narrow look at him out of the corner of his eye. “What do you mean ‘what are we gonna do?’”

“About Burkhardt and his big gay crush,” Wu clarified, unlocking the car with a remote beep and a soft flash of headlights.

Hank rolled his eyes and flopped into the passenger seat. “We’re not doing anything, except keeping an eye out in case he decides to drag his new boyfriend into business he doesn’t need to be a part of.”

Wu twisted the key in the ignition and the engine rumbled to life, the dashboard glowing with muted light. He peered at Hank across the console, face eager and eyes bright.

“We’ve been presented with a golden opportunity here!” he insisted. “Matchmaking foibles are a key tenet of every great romantic comedy.”

“Too bad for us we’re living in a crime procedural,” Hank drawled, reaching over to flick him on the arm.

Wu shook his head. “You have no whimsy in your soul.”

“Pretty sure my second wife took all my whimsy in the divorce.”

Wu snorted. He was quiet while they rolled out onto the street, and then glanced over and caught Hank’s eye in the yellow wedge of light off a streetlamp.

“You want to hit up Super Deluxe? I’m dying for a burger.”

“Now that,” Hank grinned, pointing at Wu across the short space, “is a plan I can get behind.”