Grimm Blue Sky Days

_**WARNINGS:**_ Mentions of violence, domestic violence, murder. Cuteness. Monroe cuteness. Baby cuteness.

_**NOTES:**_ To celebrate Grimm's season premier and Halloween you get a seasonal ficlet. Set in the Lost That Loving Feeling universe.

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Nick rolled over, feeling blindly for the alarm clock. It took three tries to get the damn thing turned off and he sagged back into bed with a groan for the time. "Why did I agree to do this again?"

"Because you're a good friend," Juliette slurred sleepily around a yawn.

"Right." His eyelids didn't want to stay open. "Friends. Important."

Juliette poked him in the side. "Up. Up. Up."

"Mfffgggghhh," Nick muttered.

"Go take a shower before you fall asleep again. I'll start the coffee."

"I love you," Nick told her, prying his eyes open to see her leaning over him in all her bed-head glory.

She smiled and gave him a peck on the lips. "You love my coffee."

"That too."

Shower done and teeth-brushed, he pulled on his work boots and three layers of shirts to take off as the day warmed up. Shaving was considered… and quickly discarded. It was his first day off in thirteen days following a truly terrible ending to a missing persons case, he hadn't gotten home until after nine last night, and he was going to spend the day elbow deep in skeletons and other assorted dead things. He grabbed a baseball cap and called it good.

Down the hall, Lily was fussing quietly in her crib, starting to wake up but not quite there yet. She'd had a quiet night, which he was extremely thankful for. Grimm super hearing wasn't all it was cracked up to be and until he'd learned her sounds well enough to sleep through the standard snorts and snuffles and whimpers, he'd been a tired, tired man.

Nick smoothed a hand over her wild tufts of dark hair, smiling at the squinty eyes and threatening scowl. "Morning, beautiful," he said softly. "What do you want to wear today?" He turned to the dresser to find an outfit already laid out and waiting. "Looks like your mom wants white and pink. I think that's somewhat optimistic of her but I'm willing to give it a chance."

He found the diaper bag, made sure it actually had diapers in it, tossed in a spare onesie, then got his daughter changed and into the first of what would undoubtedly be many sets of clothes.

Juliette was getting down a box of granola when he made it downstairs. Hooking the diaper bag on the doorknob where it wouldn't be forgotten, Nick poured himself a cup of coffee from the caffeinated pot, setting it on the table to free a hand to grab Lily's bottle from the warmer.

Juliette obligingly held out her arm for the milk test. They'd known that Nick didn't feel pain like he had before the zombie thing or even like he had before becoming a Grimm, but it had taken awhile to realize the same lack of feeling extended to a higher degree of resistance to heat and cold. Juliette liked it because now she could heat the house up as much as she wanted in the winter without overheating him, but it was a challenge when it came to bath and feeding time. The bottle warmer blurb promised perfect temperatures every time, but he was reluctant to trust it completely.

"Cereal okay?" she asked, giving him a thumbs -for the milk.

"Cereal's fine." He wasn't feeling up to eating anything more complicated than that this morning.

"Apple cinnamon or strawberry?"

"Surprise me." Lily made dissatisfied motions with grasping hands and he tilted the bottle to a better angle. "You look like you slept well last night."

"I did." She slid two bowls onto the table added spoons and grabbed the milk out of the fridge. "Little miss there woke up to eat once but otherwise slept straight through."

"Wow. Have we finally mastered sleeping through the night?" he asked Lily, getting a milky grin in return.

"Don't jinx it," Juliette admonished. "It's a little early for that anyway."

Nick smiled down at the little girl in his cradled in his arm. "Nah, she's going to be way ahead of schedule."

"Of course she is. Our daughter's a genius."

By the time they finished eating, Juliette was dressed, Lily was strapped in her car seat, and the car was loaded it was a quarter past seven. Luckily they were only eight minutes away. Six minutes in, Nick suddenly hit the button to roll down his window, gagging a little. "Good God!"

"That has _got_ to be from your side of the family," Juliette said, fumbling with her own window switch.

"Oh hell no," Nick said. "I've been around your family after Thanksgiving dinner. That particular _bouquet_ definitely comes from _them_."

Juliette just smirked at him.

Pulling up to the curb, Nick put the car in Park and rolled up the windows then rethought it and rolled them back down an inch to let the car air out. He looked over his sunglasses, past Juliette, at the house and the yard scattered with bones and bodies.

"Are you sure we want to take a baby into that?" Nick asked her. "It could get ugly."

Juliette followed his gaze, lips pursed in thought. "Lily is going to be fine." She patted his thigh. "Will you be okay?"

"Sure." Nick pushed his sunglasses into firmly into place. "I've fought monsters and crazed killers. This can't be any worse than that." And if they stayed in the car with the windows mostly up for much longer someone was going to call 9-1-1 for the unconscious people.

He opened the door and stepped out, taking a deep breath of clear, crisp Fall air. It smelled like dew and dying leaves and freshly mown grass. The sun was bright through the red and gold and orange of the changing trees and overhead a few puffy, white clouds scudded across a sky the kind of blue usually only seen in magazine photos.

While Juliette freed Lily from her car seat, Nick opened up the back, loading himself down with what seemed like half the house.

"You made it!" Monroe bounced down sidewalk, setting aside a box with spider legs poking out of it just as Juliette emerged from the car with Lily in her hands. "And there she is." He swooped in to steal the baby away then pulled back abruptly. "Gah. What is _that_?"

"That, my friend," Nick said, "is the smell of genetics at work."

Juliette wrinkled her nose at him and stole the diaper bag off his shoulder. "I'm going to change _your_ daughter now," she said and marched up the sidewalk.

Monroe grabbed the portable crib off Nick's other shoulder. "Let's get this inside so we can get started."

_Yay_, Nick thought unenthusiastically.

But Monroe was enthusiastic enough for both of them and he could think of far worse ways to spend a day than soaking up the lingering summer warmth and the company of good friends. Three days ago, for example, watching the forensics team haul the bodies of Delia Hall and her two children out of a shallow grave.

"You okay?" Monroe asked as they unloaded in the living room. "You're kinda quiet."

Nick shrugged. "Tired, I guess. Just wrapped up a big case." He'd barely seen Juliette and Lily in the past week and a half, Monroe and Rosalee even less.

"Is it one I would have heard about?"

"It's been on the news," Nick admitted. He could hear Rosalee and Juliette laughing about something in the kitchen as they went back out the front door.

Monroe thought about that for a second. "Not the one with the mom and two kids…?"

"That's the one."

"Damn."

"Yeah," he agreed wearily, walking down the stairs to stand on the lawn amongst boxes and plastic bags. The sun felt good on his back. He thought he could stand there all day, listening to Monroe talk as he rummaged through boxes, watching leaf after golden leaf spin down from the oak across the street.

"That's too bad. Did you catch the guy? I heard the ex-husband was a person of interest."

"We caught him." He hadn't been an ex yet. Divorce papers had been in the works along with three restraining orders and a warrant for skipping court on a domestic violence charge. Nick looked around the yard. "So what do you need me to do?"

Monroe regarded him with a solemn gaze but accepted the change of subject without further comment. He hustled Nick back up onto the porch where a card table had been set up and covered with a flattened piece of poster board, weighed at the corners with a rock, a bottle of water, and a small plastic skull.

It was a surprisingly good, to-scale drawing of the house, trees, shrubs, and sidewalk. Rectangles of colored paper with words like witch's caldron and giant spiderweb written on them were placed at various points around the yard area. Oh dear Lord, Nick thought, realizing what he was looking at with dawning horror.

"I made a _map_," Monroe said gleefully.

The End


End file.

Grimm