Fic: The Ninety Eighth Percentile (Grimm: Frank/Nick) (1/2)
Title: The Ninety Eighth Percentile
Pairing: Frank Rabe/Nick Burkhardt
Spoilers/Warnings: Herein be massive spoilers for episodes 1:2 Bears Will Be Bears and 1:8 Game Ogre. Also, warning for some violence (nothing graphic).
Disclaimer: Not mine; I do not own any IP or monetary rights in relation to Grimm.
Word count: 7,382
Rating: PG13
Summary: Frank comes across Stark in the hospital parking lot, but really that’s just the start of it all.
Note 1: Written in response to a prompt. Original prompt and fill can be found here: http://grimm-kink.dreamwidth.org/1735.html?thread=944071#cmt944071
Note 2: Title taken from ‘The Blind Side’. (Also, this is terrible marketing, but in the interests of full disclosure: this is probably the fic I am least happy with, but I can’t work out how to improve it any further and if I have to look at it any more I may stick my head through my laptop, so here we go).
*
Part One
It’s dark out by the time Frank arrives at the hospital, guiding his car into a bay near a small yellow beetle. He pauses for a moment, uncertain now he’s here, and lets the engine idle before he reaches a decision and turns the key.
It hasn’t taken long for the Grimm to become known in the wesen community, and news always seems to travels quickly amongst their kind. He heard about Nick’s run in with the siegbarste earlier in the day, and some sense of obligation had sent him here now.
He’s just getting off the lift when a blutbad passes him, looking hurried and worried and barely sparing him a glance. Frank pays him little mind; they are common enough emotions to see on people, wesen or human, in a place like this.
There is a nurse on duty at the station where Frank asks for Nick’s room; she frowns, and her glance at the visiting hours sign is deliberate and pointed. He smiles at her, employs a little court room charm, and carefully points out that he’s visiting a detective injured in the line of duty.
He lets her draw her own conclusions, and he can see the moment that her expression thaws a little, her smile becoming more genuine.
“Well, five minutes won’t hurt, I suppose,” she says finally, “and it’s the least I can do for someone who keeps the city safe.”
You have no idea, Frank thinks, but all he says is, “Thank you, I promise I won’t be long.”
He pauses at the door; Nick’s lucky to be alive, but the sight of him still shocks Frank more than he expected. The Grimm looks terrible, bruising vivid and extensive, the colours almost grotesque against pale skin. He can hear Nick’s careful breathing from here, the tell tale indication of broken ribs as he tries not to aggravate them.
He enters the room quietly, but his presence is enough to break Nick out of his doze; Frank imagines it will be some time before that tense awareness drops back to normal levels. Detective and Grimm or not, being attacked in your own home would do that for you.
Nick turns at his entry and inhales sharply, obviously not expecting to see Frank there. Frank can’t blame him; he might have kept an ear to the ground as far as the Grimm is concerned, but they’ve not actually met since the roh-hatz. Even when Nick was at Diane and Barry’s court dates they did not speak to each other, Nick present in his official capacity and Frank too busy trying to remain strong for his family even as he endured the inevitability of their sentences.
“Hi,” he says finally, and moves his gaze away from Nick for a moment to give him time to settle.
Confusion and wariness colour Nick’s tone when he replies, “Hey.”
Frank tells him, “You look terrible,” because he really, truly does, and all the more so because the damage reinforces how much worse it could have been.
“Thanks,” Nick answers, a little bitterly, but it’s not directed at Frank and they both know it.
Siegbarste are rare, but Frank remembers doing the leg work on a murder case early in his career when he was at the DA’s office, sent out to the scene for ‘practical experience’ by his superior. It wasn’t the first body Frank had come across, but it was the first one to send him outside and vomiting into the red pansies lining the garden.
The sight had been bad enough to empty his stomach and bad enough that the officers present couldn’t even mock him for his reaction. One or two of them looked as though they would have liked to join him, faces tight and pale in memory of the carnage inside.
“You were lucky,” he continues after a beat, the thought of that case lingering in the back of his mind.
“So I’ve heard,” is Nick’s response, but he looks at Frank again and must see the truth of the comment on his face, because the anger at his situation fades a little.
They fall silent again, and Nick shifts uncomfortably in the hospital bed, a futile attempt to find a position that won’t jar his injuries further.
Frank gets an odd urge to help him, but refrains from reaching out.
“Why are you here, Frank?”
Nick looks surprised as soon as he says the words, like he hadn’t meant for them to come out at all.
Frank wonders how strong the drugs are that they’ve got Nick on, because they’ve clearly loosened his brain to mouth filter. He sees again at the bandages around his middle and the stitches in his forehead, and realises they probably answer his own question.
“I wanted to see if there was anything I could do for you,” he says honestly.
He owes Nick. The Grimm spared his son’s life when few others in his position would have done the same, and for all that Barry’s actions were a catastrophic error at best, he is still his son and he cannot conceive not loving him. Nick went against his own background, acted contrary to generations of kill first Grimms, even as Frank’s own family embraced their heritage to an almost unforgivable conclusion.
Nick saved his son twice: when he didn’t raise his gun against him, and when he stopped him from becoming a murderer.
“Actually, there is something,” Nick asks, and although the offer was genuine Frank is still a little surprised that Nick hasn’t simply dismissed it out of hand, “would you mind driving by my house, check that it’s, you know, still standing? Stark shouldn’t go back there, and you don’t need to go in or anything - ”
“Sure,” Frank cuts him off; it’s no exaggeration that it’s the least he could do for Nick, “what’s the address?”
Nick gives it to him, and Frank recognises it as a nice area on the outskirts of the city, away from the centre with its high rises and traffic.
He doesn’t stay long after that; it’s clear that the pain is the only thing stopping Nick from dropping off into sleep, and Frank has a feeling that however accommodating the nurse was earlier, it won’t be long before she sweeps by to harry him away from her patient.
He’s at the door when Nick calls out, “Thanks, Frank.”
“No problem,” is Frank’s answer: “feel better, Nick,” he continues as he leaves, and he finds that he really does mean it.
He’s barely out of the hospital when his phone rings. It’s one of his more nervous clients, and the problem isn’t really a problem, but it still means that Frank spends fifteen minutes standing outside the doors in the cold reassuring him before he can hang up.
“You are so getting billed for that,” he mutters to himself, and he is about to head for his car when the hair on the back of his neck stands up.
The bear within him moans softly, a mild warning, and he recognises the presence: siegbarste.
It can’t be a coincidence.
Frank is surprised by the reaction of his bear, usually so easily controlled. He can feel its desire to rear up, to roar, to chase this threat away and make it pay for its impudence to be here now.
The siegbarste is close by, a massive man loitering just out of sight of the hospital entrance. Frank moves closer, acting like he’s simply going to his car.
He gets flashes of memory: of Nick’s clemency for Barry despite his disgust at the situation, of that body from all those years ago almost unidentifiable except by fingerprints, of Nick upstairs in a hospital bed barely able to stand.
It’s too much to ignore.
Siegbarste are strong, but so are jägerbar, and Frank is fuelled by anger and his attack is unexpected. He launches himself at Stark, a fierce tackle that sends them both to the ground and rolling over each other further into the shadows.
Frank gets away first, snarling savagely, and he is up and punching the siegbarste before Stark has had a chance to recover.
Frank can feel the bloodlust singing in his veins, primal and intoxicating, and he embraces it now.
The siegbarste laughs cruelly, lowly, as he advances.
Frank growls, and they meet, a feral attack in the dark of the parking lot. Neither of them is obviously winning; Stark has his strength and almost invulnerability, but jägerbar cut their teeth on fighting, and Frank has been tussling since he was old enough to stand and be knocked down again by his older brothers.
He catches sight of movement out of the corner of his eye: it’s the blutbad from earlier. Frank doubts it is an accident that he’s here again, and the wesen is carrying something that Frank would bet isn’t a briefcase.
He roars at Stark again, a distraction, ensuring that the siegbarste is focused on him and not anything around them. It works; siegbarste strength is physical, not mental, and Frank just hopes that he’s not making his own misinterpretation regarding the blutbad.
Stark hits him with a massive fist, and Frank is lucky he manages to glance away from the worst of the blow, because even now there are black spots dancing in front of his eyes and he staggers, barely managing to avoid the next strike.
He licks away the taste of blood and snarls, but the diversion has done its job and Stark is facing away from the blutbad. They’re out of the range of human sight, but not of a blutbad’s, and it shows a moment later when Stark just drops.
There’s barely time for a look of surprise to register on his face before he falls to the ground with such force that Frank is almost surprised the concrete hasn’t cracked beneath him.
He pants heavily, adrenaline burning through him, and when he looks down it is to a pool of red blossoming against the siegbarste’s back.
He locks gazes with the blutbad, who has been glancing between the rifle in his hand and the wesen on the ground in faint shock.
Someone must have heard that shot. They don’t have long, but Frank is a lawyer and if there’s one thing he knows, it’s how to clear up a mess.
“Get out of here,” he orders, and the blutbad pauses for a moment, eyes narrowed, before he gets.
Frank hears the car leave a moment later; he notices idly that it’s the same little yellow thing from earlier before pulling his phone out and dialling nine one one.
He’s still talking when another figure leaves the building, and as they pass under the lights Frank recognises them as Nick’s partner, Griffin.
“Over here,” he calls, and as the detective approaches he calls on his ability to talk quickly and think on his feet.
He explains how he came by to see how Nick was (“paralegals,” he says, “they’re all gossips,”), and was just leaving the hospital when he was attacked by a stranger. He’s lucky, because there was a gun shot, but by the time he recovered whoever it was must have been long gone. No, he has no idea who could have done it.
There’s a look in the detective’s eyes, though, something dark and personal when he stares at the body on the ground.
Frank gets the feeling that there’s more going on here than he knows about, and also that with the siegbarste dead no one’s going to be investigating this too closely.
He stays long enough for the uniforms to arrive, and to promise Griffin that he will call by the station tomorrow to give his statement.
He spares one last glance for the building opposite, imagines one of the windows is to Nick’s room, and thinks of him there, safe and hopefully unaware of what’s just taken place outside. It’s a guarantee that Griffin will head back up there soon enough, and let him know Stark has been taken care of.
Frank hopes the knowledge will let Nick rest more easily tonight.
He returns home, the house dark and empty. He paces for a while, until finally he tears off his clothes and runs through the woods, bear fully released.
He has tried to ignore it recently but this is who he is, just as much as the lawyer who walks on two legs, and he can feel the joy of it in his blood as he powers beneath the trees, plunging into the river and shaking the water off in freedom and delight.
He doesn’t stop running until dawn.
*
Frank goes to Nick’s house two days later, and it’s only as he’s driving down the street that he remembers he never actually made it the first time.
He knocks on the door, and Frank can hear someone inside, moving slowly, before it opens.
Nicks is on the other side, and the only reason he looks better than when he was in the hospital is because of the clothes hiding some of the worst of his injuries.
“Hi,” Frank says, but he loses creativity after that.
He’s not sure what he wants to say to Nick, because he’s not actually certain why he’s here: I wanted to explain what happened the other night, perhaps, or I wanted to check how you’re doing, or, my bear side hasn’t settled for the last two days, but now it’s seen you it’s suddenly more content.
He has no intention of saying the last one out loud, and not just because it’s as confusing for him as it would be for the Grimm.
Luckily Nick saves him from his unexpected attack of muteness, because he steps back in the universal gesture for come in.
“Nice eye,” he says about Frank’s face as he leads him further into the house, and Frank smirks a bit, feeling a little like he did back when he and Diane were first dating and he used to show off his marks of honour.
He was a lot younger then, not terribly different to Barry at that age in some ways, not that his son would believe him were he to tell him that now.
“Nice house,” is Frank’s only response, but he’s more genuine than Nick was. It is a nice place, if a little empty. There’s not a lot of clutter, fewer things on the table tops than he might have expected. He guesses it’s the result of Stark’s visit, and wonders how bad it looked a couple of days ago.
“So, how did you get away from Stark the first time?” Frank asks, because it’s something he’s been wondering about since he heard about the attack.
Nick pauses a moment in the act of filling the kettle.
“Luck, mostly,” he admits, “Juliette had come by to pick up a couple of things, and she caught us going at it. She dumped a pot of boiling water over him,” he continues with a little bit of pride.
“Brave.” Frank agrees, “Is that your girlfriend?”
“Ex,” Nick says, “she moved out a couple of months ago now.”
That would explain the recent spring clean look of the place, apparently not all the result of a post-siegbarste clear up.
“Sorry,” is his only reply, because he’s never quite worked out what the appropriate response is in these situations.
Nick goes to shrug, remembers his shoulder, and quirks his lips instead.
“Yeah, so were we. I still care about her, just, maybe there’s a reason we didn’t fighter harder for it in the end.”
Frank doesn’t offer an answer, and he gets the feeling that Nick wasn’t looking for one. He knows how to read the signs that someone doesn’t want a conversation pushing any further, and he recognises the shadows lingering in the other man’s eyes. He gets Nick to direct him towards the cups and changes topic.
He already knew Nick was a good guy; the detective wouldn’t have acted in the way he did at the roh-hatz if he weren’t, but Frank’s a little surprised by how quickly the time goes just talking to him.
Frank tells him about that night at the hospital and the blutbad who put a bullet in Stark’s back (“Monroe,” Nick explains, “he’s a friend.”), and Nick fills him in with rough details on why the siegbarste was there in the first place.
Nick’s eyes skitter about the room for a moment when he talks about Stark, almost as if he is tracking the fight through his house. It makes the more primal part of Frank regret the quickness of Stark’s death, snarling with a sudden vicious desire to have felt the siegbarste’s blood in his mouth.
Instead, he gets up and makes them more coffee. Nick takes it gratefully, and jokes about needing to redecorate anyway.
By the time Frank leaves, he is pressing a business card into Nick’s hand with the request to call him if he needs anything. The bear snuffles happily when Nick keeps a hold of it, and Frank finds himself hoping that Nick does.
*
The next time he sees Nick is an accident; he is leaving the office for the night, and Nick happens to be walking along the street at the same time.
The Grimm looks a lot better than the last time they met, and the gash above his eye is already a healing line, though it remains a stark red against his skin.
They greet each other, and Nick’s smile seems genuine.
Frank doesn’t quite know what makes him say it, whether it’s the faint lines of exhaustion he sees around Nick’s eyes or the strange sense of loneliness that matches his own, but he finds himself juggling his briefcase into his other hand and asking, “Do you fancy a drink? I know a good place just around the corner.”
Nick looks surprised by the offer, and he hesitates a moment before agreeing, “I - actually, yeah, why not.”
It sounds almost like an admission. Nick doesn’t say that there’s no one waiting for him, but Frank hears it all the same.
Nevertheless, something warm pools low in Frank’s stomach, unexpectedly pleased by Nick’s acceptance of his company. He ignores the feeling, and instead gestures the way back down the street.
They settle in an out of the way corner of the bar, beers in hand.
The conversation stops and starts at first, pleasantries interspersed with silences for which they don’t know each other well enough to be completely comfortable.
It must be lonely, Frank realises suddenly, to be a Grimm in these modern times. Nick seems like a popular guy, he must have friends, but it has to be wearing to hide such a large part of himself from the people with whom he is closest. Surrounded by people but still alone, it is a difficult breed of isolation.
He wonders how much keeping those secrets played a part in the ending of Nick’s relationship. He gets the impression that it wasn’t the only factor, but he can also remember the flash of guilt in Nick’s eyes when he said Juliette was an ex, the clear regret at keeping so much of himself from her.
Frank knows all too well the silence of a house when you are used to sharing it with someone else, and he finds himself telling Nick about his family, his own remorse at not being able to do more for Barry before things went to shit and his separation from Diane.
Nick looks at him with a feeling of kinship there, but Frank is aware that their relationships were different. He and Diane have always been fond of each other, but it was more a case that he was a jägerbar and so was she, and they were a good match. It was never an epic love story.
That said, she is still pack, and no matter her mistakes that won’t end even when they divorce.
“Will you sell the house?” Nick asks suddenly, glancing up at him from under long eyelashes.
“No,” Frank says, and he surprises himself with how emphatic his answer is.
In truth, it is something he’s been wondering about. It’s a big house and every empty space is a gaping reminder of the people who aren’t filling it anymore. Even now he’ll sometimes find himself standing in one of the rooms with a bitter taste in his mouth as he recalls the terrible things that happened, and almost happened, there.
At the same time, though: “No, it’s my family’s land; it has been for longer than the house has been there, or even the one before that. I can’t just leave it.
It’s Barry’s home, too, and there’s a lot of good memories there, more than the bad. What you saw, that’s not all we are.”
“I know,” Nick tells him earnestly, and Frank can see the belief of that in his eyes.
He nods.
Nick picks at the label on his bottle for a moment, lost in his own thoughts.
“Why did you ask me to drive by your house that night?” Frank asks after a while, long enough that his own drink is now more empty than full.
Nick peers up at him again, and Frank hadn’t expected to notice how sweet he looks like that, all dark hair and soft eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you trust me to help you? I didn’t think we left a great impression last time we met.”
Nick smiles at that, “I’m usually pretty good at reading people, and you seemed like a good guy.”
Frank can’t help but raise an eyebrow at the answer: “I told you to stay away from my family, and my wife gave our son her blessing to eat a pair of teenagers.”
“You only did that once you realised what I am: you were just trying to protect your family, I get that now. I know I might not have acted like it then, but when it came down to it, you did the right thing. Those kids are safe, and you helped make sure of that.”
It gives Frank pause; he won’t absolve himself of responsibility, and he still feels guilty for Barry, and the teenagers, and a hundred other moments which, looking back on them now, he wonders if they were a chance to stop the downward spiral that ended with the roh-hatz.
It helps, though to hear Nick say that. He wonders, too, if Nick’s change of opinion has anything to do with what more of the wesen world he has seen in the intervening months. His culpability is not something to be examined now, though, so Frank slots it away and turns back to Nick.
“So, when you say you can read people, how good are you?”
Nick smirks: “Okay, that blonde woman at the bar, why do you think she’s here?”
Frank studies her for a few seconds: alone, decent suit, playing with her phone.
“I don’t know; she’s stopped off for a drink after work? She looks like she’s from one of the offices.”
“Nope,” Nick counters, “she’s having an affair with someone around here; she doesn’t usually wear a suit, she’s only got it on to try and fit in. He’s married, and it’s been going on for a while.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” Frank disputes.
“Ten bucks says she’s meeting a guy, and he’ll be here within ten minutes.”
“Fine,” Frank agrees, and they both watch the bar.
Eight minutes later a man walks in, heading straight for the blonde. They kiss, briefly, and quickly turn to leave. It’s as they walk past the table that Frank notices the pale line on the man’s finger, evidence that a ring has been removed.
Nick looks smug, and Frank rolls his eyes even as he can’t help but laugh. It feels like a long time since he’s done that, and something loosens in his chest.
He hands over a note, but makes Nick get up to bring in the next round.
*
Part Two: http://antihelen.livejournal.com/4008.html