I know I've probably lost many of the people who originally followed this story so I feel I should remind those reading that this, as well as all of my works, are experimental. I use fanfiction to hone, practice, and experiment with different writing styles and rhetoric. This means that my writing style, the style of the story, the type of narrative, and basically everything else can and probably will change from time to time.

I am not currently aware of needing any warnings for this chapter but I will say that there are going to be adult topics, gore, horror, child abuse, violence, and most likely sex and other stuff I haven't thought of in this story at some point or another. I will do my best to warn in that chapter what needs to be warned. If I miss something or am unaware of its triggering affects or extreme aversions then message me and I will add in the warning.

Oh, I forgot. I do cuss. A lot. And… uh… Grimm is not mine. If this is not your ship then get off my boat and find one taking passengers with your ship on the ticket.

Um…. Possibly other stuff that I haven't thought of.

This is probably the longest chapter by far. I think. We'll see.

Chapter 4: A Copper Soup: The Melting Pot of Bitterness and Temptation

In the dark I found my wings. I tried to fly with them… They shattered like crystallized sugar. I fell and my wings cut me. Here I sit in a coppery soup of my own failures. The sweet tang of crushed ambition burns me. This false success has made me want for sight more now than I had when I thought it impossible to possess.

Monroe floated (flew?) in a jungle old and feral the way nothing was anymore. It wasn't the civilized sort of wildlife that humanity had crafted around itself, full of predictable dangers and comforting darkness. This jungle was bright and cluttered and slick with life. Monroe shivered, feeling no eyes on him as he drifted down. He was puny here, insignificant.

He felt his paws touch down and become as solid as the world around him. He felt strange and more natural than he ever had before. The pads of his paws and his underbelly felt like scales. Like the ghost of scales.

He was a creature of the Oncewas. A phantom of someone else's spirit mixed with his. A brindled black snake with cat's paws and ears, its whole body the dexterous tail of a snake's body. Monroe pricked his ears and whined. He licked his lips with a forked tongue and followed the snake, feeling the phantom pull of primeval need to stay close to one's mate. The snake had one wolf eye, one leopard eye, both ringed by scales and without eyelids. Its wide forked and abrasive tongue flicked out of a snout that was some grim mixture of snake, leopard, and wolf. He lead Monroe into a clearing in which set a clapboard house or a great house shaped tree? The edge of the clearing was lined with large stones specked with iron. The only way through was a break at which a bridge had been made over a healthy creak. The snake crossed the bridge. Inside the stones, the snake, and everything else flickered. Monroe, pacing at the edge of the bridge, witness the snake shake itself and stand into Nick.

Nick called out sounds that some part of Monroe's brain recognized as a name. The front door flew open and out the house came two small children. They were followed by a third child walking soberly with a red haired woman. Monroe recognized her. Juliette.

The first two kids ran up and hugged Nick's legs, their hair curling into dark little locks around their face. Their tiny voices peeled the fur off of Monroe. The little girl looked just like Nick.

Something flickered in the corner of Monroe's eye. A puma with large dragon flu oil slick wings fluttered next to his head. It turned to look at Monroe and he saw the thing's face melt. A blond woman with gray eyes that split at the corners. Her face had puma markings split into it.

"This is what he's keeping from you. Why he had to run in the first place," she said, her voice deep and edgeless like Elvis except without that familiar feeling like the sound of homecoming.

"Triplets," she said, "and a loving wife. This is why you don't matter to him."

"This is a dream."

"You are asleep but you are not dreaming, blutbad."

"Of course I'm dreaming."

"I give you my word, boy, you are not dreaming."

Monroe simply shook his head, unable to take his eyes off of Nick playing with two of his children.

"I try to tell you these things. I try to talk to you but the connection is weak, blutbad."

"Connection?"

"It's all a garble, blutbad. It's all just leaves on the wind without the branches to hold it in shape."

"I'm going to remember all of this and it's going to make no sense."

"Assurance is in the snakes leatherfold. Check where he keeps his currency. You will see me proved."

She flickered, her wings slowing or quickening so much that they seemed arching and graceful and impossible to look at. She melted back into the corner of his eye, only an oil slick of scales right there at the edge of his vision. He closed his eyes on the sight of Nick and his mate and his children.

Golden light flickered across his eyelids, filtered soft and delightful through the leaves of the trees outside the window. Monroe felt warm and comfortable and more sated than he had in months, years even. He was afraid to open his eyes. It was peaceful, quiet the way the city never is. The only sounds to be heard was the wind shifting leaves on the trees outside and the quiet existence of a warm body curled against Monroe.

Soft hair tickled his chest while little calm breaths warmed parts of Monroe. He opened his eyes to the low and roughly made ceiling. He turned his head to the right and could see the small bathroom, currently dark, with its cat motif and old, disused litterbox. The place was cold, the woodstove having burnt down to coals while they slept. From where he lay, Monroe could see a frog decorated kitchen towel hanging from the oven handle. The well-worn picnic table fit right into the rest of the place. Scattered beer bottles and empty whiskey glasses seemed incongruous and immoral in the wholesome though rustic setting of the one room cabin.

Monroe felt awful and wonderful. He didn't want to look down. He didn't want to see what fresh hell he was going to be in. He also didn't want the taste of stale beer and semen in his mouth and the nagging feeling that terrible shit was just going to happen because of this. He looked down anyway.

His heart melted like sugar cubes in hot tea.

Nick's head rested on his chest, hair mussed, lips parted and pink and a little slick from where Nick had drooled. His cheeks were a warm pink with sleep and his slack face was more endearing than Monroe could take. One of Nick's arms was curled against his chest, fingertips pressed to Monroe in a drowsy attempt at holding him. His other arm had snaked under part of Monroe's shoulder to loosely clutch at part of Monroe's shoulder and neck form behind. Nick's legs were pressed against Monroe's, Nick's toes brushing against his ankles.

Monroe could see a string of hickeys starting at just below the corner of Nick's clavicle and spreading to the other side. They were dark red and purple like the beads of a demented rosary draped across Nick with a pink stripe of flesh for rope to connect the counts of Monroe's sin in a skein of painful and hedonistic colors. The chain of bruises looked beautiful on Nick.

Monroe's dream nagged at him, though. Even while looking at the nude and clearly debauched form of the man he loved. Triplets, the pumafly had said, and a loving wife. Monroe's brain couldn't integrate the Nick who had tussled with children in the lawn of a lovely house with the Nick who had straddled Monroe and taken him for the most excruciatingly pleasurable ride of his life.

Could Nick really be a father, Monroe asked himself as he worked his way out from under Nick. Could Nick with his wicked ass and clever tongue that drove Monroe into a haze of want really be someone's daddy? Monroe searched the floor until he spotted his jeans, lost in front of the woodstove. Putting them on his mind flashed with memories of Nick crouching between his legs and mouthing along Monroe's jaw as he unbuttoned and pulled Monroe's jeans down.

Monroe pulled a Henley out of his opened suitcase and put it on. Did he sing lullabies with the same mouth he'd mewled for Monroe to fuck him harder with? Monroe could still see Nick splayed out on the rug below his bare feet, his dark hair creating a halo of sin above his head as he tugged at Monroe's hips and shoulders and writhed under him. The better question yet, Monroe thought as he yanked on his hiking boots, was why was the idea that Monroe had fucked someone's dad turning him on so much? Before he could get too disgusted with himself, Monroe quietly fled through the kitchen and out the back door.

Elbows pressed into the low barrier between the side of the hill the cabin had been built in and the back porch, Monroe lowered his head and watched a small creek trickle down the mountain several feet away and thought about how his heart had sickened with sweetness when Nick had stretched out in the spot he had just exited in bed. Monroe melted at the memory of Nick pulling the comforter to him and cuddling it in place of Monroe.

Shaking his head he fixed his eyes on the trees across from the pond slightly down the hill and watched the sunlight bound over and down the mountain to fill the trees with a refreshing green light. Monroe closed his eyes and sunlight turned the back of his eyelids red like the fire in the woodstove had when he had taken Nick's prick into his mouth and reveled in the taste. He was so very, very fucked.

Nick woke to the flickering of warm light on his toes. He squirmed, slid his leg over the lump of blankets and wormed his way farther into the bed. Nick felt content in a way he hadn't in years. He had hope in something he thought would bever happen. After last night he was so sure of him. Not in himself, no. Nick was still working on that but Monroe… Nick could believe in Monroe with his whole fucking being. Nick buried his face in the pillow in front of him, inhaled the scents of Monroe and sex along with the smell of woody dust that permeated the cabin.

He let out a sleepy moan and curled up. Nick could feel the achesof a body well-used. Everything pleasantly hummed in pain. He felt wrecked and absolutely starving. Nick wanted more. So much more. He didn't want to let go of this feeling. Finally, when basking in the haze of sleep became impossible, Nick rolled to edge of the bed and sat up, stretched his arms above his head, arched his back and curled his toes, checking the room for Monroe. Nick wasn't worried yet. He couldb't be. It didn't stop the lance of panic through his heart when he couldn't find Monroe in the barn attached to the cabin.

Some of his clothes were gone as well as his shoes. Nick didn't doubt that if Monroe wanted to he could survive in the wilderness. Nick knew it had been too good. Last night had been too fantastical to continue. Nick pulled on a pair of jeans, a shirt left unbuttoned, and stepped out the back door to see Monroe, scruffy and leaning against the barrier wall. Nick smiled, he knew he probably looked like a dope with his clothes hardly on and his hair mussed up with this giant stupid grin on.

He padded barefoot up behind Monroe and wrapped his arms around Monroe's waist, reassuring himself that he was still there. The back of Monroe's neck looked beautiful, Nick kissed it because now he could and he really wanted to. Monroe pressed back into Nick's embrace so Nick squeezed his hops and molded himself better to the curves of Monroe. Nick kissed Monroe's shoulder blade and slid his hand up Monroe's side until he could feel Monroe's (nicely firm) chest under his hands. Monroe shuddered and Nick let out a sleepy contented noise, a hairaway from requesting Monroe to come back to bed with him. He rubbed his cheek against Monroe's back, feeling his scruff catch in the soft fabric of his shirt. He heard Monroe groan, it was a good groan.

"Nick, no."

Nick's heart plummeted into the acid of his gut. Of course it couldn't last; he wasn't allowed peace.