WARNINGS: Last chapter. You are warned. Party at Nick's house! Whoot!

Author's Notes: The housewarming approacheth. I love how excited people are about Wu throwing a party. I'm not writing an AU where Wu becomes an event coordinator and plans Monroe and Rosalee's wedding. I'm absolutely not. But feel free to imagine it.

A week passed, days full of distracted thoughts and sharp edges made worse by the watchful eyes of what seemed like the entire department. Everyone in the building knew he'd been sick even if Hank was the only one who knew why.

"I told them you had Mono," Hank said helpfully.

The first day back had been the worst, most of the floor stopping by to see how he was, ask what had happened, and while the concern was deeply appreciated, it came at a time when he was trying not to obsessively dwell on the reason he'd been ill in the first place. Repeating his cover story eight times a day was not helping with that.

"Just be glad I didn't tell them you were in rehab," Hank said when Nick sighed and dropped his head onto his desk, seriously considering locking himself in a bathroom stall for an hour.

"Ha," Nick muttered to his desktop. It had been rehab of a type; detoxing Juliette out of his system.

In between visitors, he read through Hank's notes on their three active cases, caught up on his email, returned calls, and halfheartedly wished for a murder or two to get them out of the office.

By the third day the deluge had mostly dried up, thank God. Except for Wu. With the date of the housewarming party fast approaching, Wu had taken to stopping by his desk three times a day to ask if he had an outdoor power outlet and how many tables did he think they could fit into his house, would they need to rent a tent.

"That man missed his calling in life," Hank said after he'd been talked into agreeing to help with the setup, something he'd already promised Nick but was content to let Wu think a hardship.

"I'm buying him The Wedding Planner next Christmas," Nick vowed.

"I think he's already got it."

Hank was signed up for the inaugural meeting of the kehrseite-schlich-kennen therapy group set to start the following weekend. Rosalee had a list at the store containing four names so far, mostly contributed by wesen who had accidentally outed themselves to friends and lovers, generally scaring the crap out of them. Nick really hoped it stayed that way but he had a feeling he would be adding more people to Well's trauma group in no time.

He was considering his arguments to convince Renard the group meetings should count towards the mandatory counseling sessions he had racked up after the fly-wesen case…and the other fly-wesen case. Maybe he could even get in enough to save up credit for the next time. It was worth a try.

() () ()

The morning of the housewarming party, Hank and Wu arrived a little after nine o'clock. Hank in his car with a fresh box of donuts, Wu in a pickup full of folding tables and chairs borrowed from the precinct.

"Hey, I know this place," Wu said, looking around the yard. It was always a little startling to see him in civilian clothes instead of uniform, jeans and a warm-looking sweater being no exception. "Used to get a call a week minimum. Mostly domestics and suspicious vehicles. How'd you find it?"

"Friend of a friend." A cousin of a friend of Bud's, despairing over finding a tenant who wasn't scared off by the history of the house, had called Nick up within minutes of him contacting Bud to start spreading the word that he was changing addresses.

"They've really fixed it up nice," Wu said appreciatively. "You'd never know it was a crack den."

"They did ask for a hell of a security deposit," Nick said.

Hank cracked, deadpan, "Can't imagine why."

Monroe's yellow VW pulled up a few minutes later while they were unloading chairs. Under the impression Monroe would rather die than attend a social event with more than three people, Nick gave him two questioning eyebrows.

Monroe shifted…shiftily. "Rosalee said you shouldn't be doing heavy lifting yet."

Nick just nodded and didn't mention that it had been over two weeks now, he'd been back to work for more than half that, and he was hardly an invalid. "Thanks for coming. There are donuts in the kitchen."

Monroe grunted. "Of course there are."

They were good donuts too. Nick was happy to test out a few while he supervised the rest of the 'heavy lifting'. He'd spent yesterday afternoon cop-proofing his house, which was similar to childproofing in that he had to lock up anything with sharp edges and hide what he didn't want broken. In this case it also meant taking down the trip wires and removing all the stuff he couldn't pass off as Aunt Marie's passion for unique weaponry.

After some debate they pushed the couch, armchairs, and TV into the downstairs bedroom he'd turned into an intermittently used exercise room. When half the crowd inevitably drifted in to watch whatever game was on in the afternoon they wouldn't disturb anyone still eating and talking. And, with the folding tables set up in the living room, they were that much closer to the kitchen and the grill that would be set up in the carport once he'd moved his Toyota out. The clouds had blown away during the night giving them a rare day of clear blue sky, but Ripley was freakishly protective of his shiny, chrome baby and wouldn't want to take any chances.

Hank found him as he was setting out stacks of paper plates and napkins in the kitchen. He watched until Nick prompted him with a drawled, "Yeeeees?" In the living room he could hear Monroe and Wu rearranging the tables for the third time.

"You decided what you're going to do about Juliette?"

"What about Juliette?" Nick asked, faux casual.

Hank huffed. "You really think that's going to work?"

Nick sighed and started opening boxes of plastic forks and spoons, lining them up in precise rows. He needed to make a decision one way or the other. It wasn't fair to either of them to keep dragging it out.

"I'm not going to compare her to Adalind," Hank said. "I'm not," he said again quickly when Nick opened his mouth. "Adalind did what she did because it was a job and she was getting something out of it."

And because she was a spiteful bitch. Or had been. Time would tell if she choose to be a better person or slipped back into old patterns.

"Juliette told me what happened with her brother and I get she was doing it for good reasons and she did her best to…mitigate the damage."

Nick straightened the boxes of forks methodically.

"But I'm still pissed at her for the whole thing and for not telling you she had gotten her memories back."

Yeah, he was still mad at her for that to. It was also a relief. He'd felt guilty about lying to her for so long about the Grimm thing, knowing she'd lied to him made them even in an odd sort of way.

"But I also know she's pretty devastated that the antidote didn't work the first time. You both got shafted in this."

He remembered her face when she'd realized that. Devastated was the word for it.

"I'm not helping am I?"

"You're helping," he said. Hearing all the arguments in his head said out loud did help. "I know I should be mad at her…I am mad at her. But what if she had told me about the potion? Before my Aunt died I would have thought she was crazy."

Hank harrumped but nodded agreement.

"And you and Monroe and Rosalee and Juliette…you are my family now. What wouldn't I do if one of you were in trouble?" Damn near anything when it came down to it.

Hank made a disgruntled sound, but he looked pleased about being called family. "Did you at least have any luck figuring out who put Juliette up to it?"

"Actually yes. Remember Serena Dunbrook?"

Hank thought a moment. "Death by YMCA, right?"

Nick nodded. "I traced the phone numbers Juliette gave me. The second one was a dead end but the first was from a disposable cell phone paid for with a credit card from the law firm Serena Dunbrook, Camilla Gotleib, and Adalind Schade worked for."

"Sloppy of her not using cash," Hank commented. "So you think the woman who contacted Juliette was Serena Dunbrook?"

Nick nodded. "Who was also working for whoever Adalind worked for outside of the law firm," he confirmed. "Did I ever tell you they were both Hexenbeist? All three actually."

Hank leaned on the table. "I think I would have remembered that."

"And, according to my Aunt's books, Hexenbeist are associated with Royals such as…."

"Such as this mysterious Prince who keeps popping up," Hank finished.

"Bingo." He ripped open the last box of spoons.

"So this Prince sets up you and Juliette with the love spell." Hank had on his thinking face, brain churning. "Adalind and the other two women worked together. Adalind must have known he wanted you two together."

Nick realized what he was getting at. "Even if Adalind wasn't in on the actual love potion job, they probably gossiped about it around the cauldron. She must have known."

Hank frowned thoughtfully. "We've been thinking that Adalind was just trying to punish you when she attacked Juliette but maybe she was also…."

"Pissed at her boss?"

"It does sound like she had a falling out with him." Hank glanced over his shoulder at the sound of furniture scraping across hardwood flooring. "And she is the vengeful type."

"Amen to that." There was another long scraaaaape from the other room. Nick raised his voice, "Do I even want to know what you two are up to in there?"

There was a long moment of furtive silence then Wu yelled, "Nothing."

Nick rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah, that was believable," he muttered to Hank.

Hank choked on a laugh. "Did you ever find out," he asked when he had recovered, "why this mystery Royal went through so much trouble to get you and Juliette together?"

"Maybe. " He'd been thinking about it, going through old boxes and Marie's journals from the time. "After I passed the detective's exam, while I was waiting for a slot to open up, I got a job offer from the FBI."

"I vaguely remember you mentioning that," Hank said dryly. "Once or twice."

Nick grinned. Early on in their partnership, he may have muttered something about wasting his talents doing newbie grunt work at the station when he could have been doing newbie grunt work for the FBI. Once or twice.

"They liked my test results," he said. "I was seriously considering it when I met Juliette."

With Aunt Marie traveling the country and his student loans paid off, there had been nothing to hold him in Portland. Seattle wasn't so far away he couldn't swing back through for a beer with friends now and again and, truthfully, there hadn't been that many people he'd have missed long term. "A week later Senior Detective Mott took early retirement and I politely told the FBI that I already had a job."

"You think," Hank said, "that Juliette was set up to keep you in the Portland."

Nick shrugged. "If someone knew I was in line to become a Grimm and they wanted to keep an eye on me I can't think of a better way than a new job and a new girlfriend."

"Wow," Hank said, "that's incredibly disturbing."

Nick nodded his complete agreement. "I need to talk to my old Patrol partner."

"Marsdon?" Hank asked in surprise. "What's he got to do with it?"

"He was the only one I told about the job offer before I turned it down. Even Aunt Marie didn't know until I called to tell her about making detective."

"You think he was passing on information?"

"Maybe." Nick straightened the napkins one more time then forced himself to step away before he crossed the line from tidy to OCD. "I hope not." He started gathering up the packaging for disposal. "But I think I need to assume everything I thought I knew about the people in my life is complete shit." He looked up at Hank. "You'd tell me if you were spying on me for some creepy, underworld Royal, right?"

Hank patted him on the shoulder. "Absolutely, partner." He grabbed a bit of napkin wrapper Nick had missed, following him to the garbage can. "You know what I think? I think we need to have a chat with Rosalee and Monroe and maybe even that little twitchy fellow you know and see if they have any ideas about how to find this Royal. Or at least find out what they know about Royals in general. We're operating in an information vacuum here and it's just getting worse."

Nick wasn't sure he wanted to drag any of them any deeper into this, but he nodded to the suggestion anyway, lacking a better idea at this point. He needed to make time to go through the trailer. He needed his Mom to email him back. At least he'd gotten a reassuring notice that she had opened his E-card from Christmas.

"Your friend is weird," Wu announced, appearing in the doorway so suddenly they both jumped like guilty gossips caught out at the water cooler. "But in a good way."

"Takes weird to know weird," Hank said, grinning.

Wu clapped him on the shoulder in passing. "Which is why you and I get along so well."

It wasn't until well after people had begun to arrive, arms full off bowls of macaroni and Jell-O salad or in the case of Dan Peterson six bags of Cool-Ranch Doritos, and the burgers were on the grill that Nick found himself alone on the back porch, placed temporarily in charge of the BBQ. Monroe was somewhere in inside, avoiding the smell of cooking meat, but Rosalee and Hank were sitting on folding chairs, munching on carrots and cauliflower from the vegi trays Stacy Wynt had brought, when Hank asked if she knew how to find the local Prince.

"I suppose I could ask the Wesen Council," she said doubtfully. "I'm sure they know who it is, but I don't know if they would tell me."

"What's the Wesen Council?" Hank asked.

Rosalee nibbled a carrot stick. "The Council is the governing body for wesen. They enforce the rules and the old agreements."

"Law and Order for wesen," Hank said.

Rosalee smiled at him. "Only without the lawyers. They are the final word and the executioners of the ruling."

"Locally?" Nick asked hopefully, picturing an overworked, understaffed government office in a city where it seemed like the wesen population outnumbered the kehrseite three to one. Maybe he could file a form, like the public information requests the PD got.

He just wanted one name. And then he wanted to go punch some answers out of the guy.

"They're based out of Europe," she said apologetically.

"And you don't want to get involved with them," Monroe said, appearing at the back door with a three beers and a bottle of water. The latter went to Rosalee, the rest equally distributed. "This is good stuff. Your Captain has taste."

Renard had been by earlier to drop off drinks and ice. He'd hung out with some of the senior staff for an hour, telling a story that had reduced two of the Corporals to tears of laughter and had Sergeant Peterson rolling right off the couch. Nick had only caught half of it, something about a chicken tying up rush hour traffic trying to cross the road.

"Why don't I want the Wesen Council involved?" Nick asked. He took a pull on his beer and stared at the BBQ that he had strict instructions to watch but not touch.

Monroe shrugged and chose a place upwind to lean, hands shoved in his pocket, shoulders hunched. "Let's just say their problems have a tendency to disappear permanently."

"Permanently as in permanently?" Hank asked.

"Not always," Rosalee defended but not as vehemently as Nick would have liked. "On the topic of the Prince, I found out something about the zaubertrank Adalind used on Juliette."

Nick perked up at that.

"It's based on The Sleeping Beauty potion," she said. "Adalind altered it to include the amnesia, but the base potion is the same."

"Which means what?" Hank asked.

"Come on, that's a classic story," Monroe said. "Princess cursed to sleep until a 'Prince'…," he did quote marks with his fingers, "…came along and kissed her."

"You're saying it took a Prince to wake Juliette up?" Nick asked. Mom had told him Katherine Schade's final words. The he that could save Juliette must have been the Prince.

Rosalee nodded. "That's what I'm saying."

Monroe broke in with, "Assuming of course there's not another one running around—"

"One is plenty," Hank muttered.

"—it had to have been the same guy."

Damn. Now he'd have to thank the man before punching him in the face. Nick wasn't going to forget that Juliette wouldn't have been in a coma at all if not for him and his witches, but at least he'd tried to fix his mistake.

That was as far as they got before Ripley came back, handing Nick a plate to hold while he scooped food off the grill. The hamburgers were delicious, everything was delicious. He was in danger of over eating and had to force himself to stop at two servings of Vivian Downing's pineapple-upside-down cake. And one slice of Monroe's apple pie. With ice cream.

"Your body still has a lot of catching up to do," Rosalee told him as they sat at an otherwise empty table, lingering over dessert. "Zaubertranks take a lot out of you."

"It's been two weeks," he complained halfheartedly.

"Almost as long as you were ill," she pointed out.

Nick made a noise that was half protest, half resignation and thought about another helping of potato salad.

It was a good party. Nick spent a lot of time answering the door, giving directions to the kitchen where the food had filled the counters and was beginning to overflow, and making sure everyone had something to drink. Wu had set up a badminton net on the lawn and most of the kids had congregated around it to play a haphazard game that in no way resembled actual badminton, bundled up against the chill and wet in any place that touched the damp grass.

Monroe and Rosalee excused themselves after another hour, which was actually longer than he'd expected them to last, but Monroe had gotten into conversation with one of the civilian volunteers and every time Nick had walked by they were talking antiques.

Hank claimed a spot on the couch to watch football and ended up with someone's six month old drooling on his lap. Nick got a great video of him leading the baby through a touchdown celebration of necessarily small proportions. Wu was holding court in the kitchen with half a dozen devoted followers attempting to create a new Kool-Aid flavor. From the faces made as the taste testing began the chances of success were looking grim.

And Nick found himself wandering from room to room, drifting from conversation to conversation, turning Marica's rock over and over in his hand, and nursing the same beer long enough it got warm. He was on his tenth pass through the kitchen when he realized he was subconsciously looking for Juliette. The idea startled him so much he almost dropped the slice of pie Hank had sent him for. They tended to orbit at functions like this, never out of the other's sight for too long.

As far as epiphanies went, it wasn't Newton discovering gravity, but it clicked in his brain and he felt the rightness of it deep down in the pit of his stomach.

Dropping off Hank's dessert, he asked to borrow his car keys.

"Why?" Hank asked suspiciously.

"Because mine is blocked in. I need to run an errand." Nick held out a prompting hand. "I'll be careful."

Hank gave him a thoughtful look before finally, reluctantly, fishing the keys out of his pocket. "Don't do anything stupid."

Nick gave him a big grin. "You know me."

Hank sighed and handed over the keys. "Yeah, I know you. Say hi to Juliette for me."

"Thanks." Palming the keys, he trotted towards the front door, opening it to find a man standing on the other side, hand lifted to knock. He looked familiar but Nick couldn't quite place the greasy hair, the bad skin, the baby blue Pontiac Firebird double parked on the street.

"Hey," the guy muttered looking past him at the people in the living room. "You, uh, wanted to know who took over for Bruiser."

"Twitchy!"

"Uh, it's David." Twitchy licked his lips and dried his palms on his jeans. "Look I found out what you wanted to know. I thought you might make it worth my while."

Nick smiled the smile that Hank said reminded him of a shark. "That is a great plan. Come in. I know just who you should talk to about that." He shut the door as soon as Twitchy was inside; reducing the chance he would make a run for it.

Greg McCall was still in the kitchen, mixing drinks at the impromptu bar that had sprung up on the kitchen counter. For a guy who didn't do alcohol and who had a beard like a hillbilly who hadn't seen civilization in three years, Greg could mix a mean strawberry daiquiri.

"Greg!" Nick shoved David in his direction. "This is Twitchy."

"It's just David."

"Greg is the head of the Drug Investigation Unit," Nick told him. "Greg, Twitchy wants to sell you information about the guy who took over for the guy you busted right here in this very house."

"It's just David," Twitchy said again, a bit forlornly. Nick thought he'd finally looked at all the uniforms and badges in the house.

"Information, you say." Greg slid a strawberry onto the rim of the glass he was holding and handed it across the counter to his wife. "I'll be right back, sweetie." He slung an arm around David's narrow shoulders, steering him towards the back door. "Let's you and I have a talk in private."

Nick retraced his steps, heading out the front door with a bounce in his step, heady with the relief that, one way or another, things would be settled today.

He stopped off for flowers, tulips and roses and fern leaves that shed bits of greenery on the passenger seat of Hank's car. He had to force himself to stop looking at it lying there, innocuous and heavy with commitment, as he drove, mind skipping from what if to what if. Maybe she'd changed her mind, maybe she'd realized how much calmer and safer her life would be without him in it, maybe the roses were too much, maybe he should have looked at his shirt and realized there was guacamole dripped down the front before leaving the house.

The doctors and staff at Juliette's office took weekends and on-call nights in turns. Juliette's weekend shift was always the third of the month unless someone needed to switch. He was really hoping someone hadn't needed to switch. Afternoons at the office were generally slow, excepting an occasional emergency, and the waiting room was empty.

Sitting behind the reception counter, Cynthia spotted him immediately, eyes going straight to the flowers. She smiled widely. "She's in the back room." She pointed down the hall, adding helpfully, "Alone."

Nick took a deep breath and went down the long hall past the exam rooms, stopping just inside the door of the big back room. Juliette was just turning away from one of the cages, a wiggly bundle of curly hair and big ears in her arms. She had on her white coat, stethoscope around her neck, hair pulled up in a no-nonsense ponytail.

"Alright, Thor. Let's get you on that scale. I have five dollars that says you've gained a whole pound— She froze when she saw him, eyes darting to the flowers and back to his face.

Nick swallowed hard and said, "Hi."

"Hi." She looked at the flowers again then back at him, smiling hesitantly.

"So I…I don't usually do this sort of thing." He took a step towards her. "But I've seen you around…." Another step, ducking his head and looking up through his eyelashes. "And I think you're pretty cute." Juliette's lips quirked at the word cute. "And I was wondering if you wanted to go out sometime. Dinner maybe."

"Dinner, huh?" She contained the increasingly wiggly dog with a hand on its back.

He took another step. "Maybe a movie afterwards. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is showing at the Academy Theatre this weekend."

She was trying to look serious and thoughtful but a smile kept sneaking out around the edges of her mouth. "Hmmmm…a movie about a couple who discover they've lied about their lives and try to rebuild their relationship while fighting off evildoers. Wonder why you would want to watch that?"

Nick grinned and took another step forward. The dog tried to lick his hand then stuck it's nose in the flowers. "I have an affinity for happy endings."

The smile broke out again. "Didn't everybody die in that movie?"

"Not the good guys." They survived and pulled their lives back together despite the odds and he liked that. "So how about it? Dinner and a movie?"

Juliette smiled brilliantly and he was helpless to do anything but stand there and smile back. "It so happens I'm free this evening, Mr.…?"

"Burkhardt. Nick Burkhardt."

She freed a hand from the wiggly dog. "Juliette Silverton."

Moving the final step forward he took her hand. "I'm so glad I met you, Juliette." He meant every damn word of it.

"I'm glad you felt like being forward," Juliette said, tugging him forward for a kiss.

Nick pulled back just enough to talk, still in her space. "I hope you don't think I'm the kind of guy who puts out on the first date."

"I'll buy you dinner first," she offered.

"Oh, well in that case…." He leaned in again and got a paw in the chest and a lick on the chin. "Ewww."

Juliette giggled. "I think Thor is getting impatient."

Nick eyed the wiggling bundle of blonde curls, a wet black nose and lolling pink tongue. "Thor? That's a little ambitious."

"He was named by a six year old with a deep and abiding love of all things Avengers." She stepped back to replace Thor in his kennel. "The cat is named Hulk. Imagine yelling that around the neighborhood." Arms free she put them around him, tight enough his ribs protested, and rested her forehead against his. "I love you."

Nick buried his face in her hair, breathing in her warmth and scent, and whispered, "This is going to work."

She squeezed him tighter before letting up enough to lean back and look him in the face. "So…any other secrets we should get out in the open right up front?"

Well, there was one thing…. "Did I tell you my Mom isn't really dead?"

THE END

Author's Notes: Whew, wow, done at last. It wasn't really a surprise was it. Squirrel likes the happy endings.

I have a few one-shots to post and as usual I will take requests. I don't promise to fulfill them, but I am totally willing to be inspired. Send me your questions, I'm sure I missed something. Or many things.

I've had several people who wanted to know what Monroe gave Nick for Christmas. I want to hear from you guys what you think it was. Besides a watch. That's way too easy. Or maybe it's a specialty watch of some sort. Perhaps a watch with a secret compartment for carrying wolfsbane? Give me your ideas.

Renard's chicken crossing the road story is true. If you're far enough away from the Northwest that you didn't read all about it, just search: chicken crossing road in Portland, Oregon. Can't you just see Renard solemnly announcing to the press, "We were unable to determine the chicken's intent in crossing the road."