I Never Knew This Light Could Be So Violent
Pairing: Nick Burckhardt/Eddie Monroe
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: slight violence, possessive!nature, really flannelly descriptions!
Authors notes: Title is based on my mishearing of a line from No Light No Light by Florence and the Machine.
This is my first foray into fic for the Grimm fandom, and I might write more if the muses are so inclined
It starts with Aunt Marie telling him he’s a Grimm.
That’s what you’re going to go with.
****
Well, no, no it doesn’t, it starts with peoples faces fucking distorting and someone trying to kill you and her. Someone with a fucking blade that seems 9 foot long and a twisted mass of flesh for a face, that you watch in horror as it morphs back to someone who could be your bank manager after you put a clip in his chest.
Then comes the explanation and the wiping of blood from your face. You watch as Marie is taken to hospital and make the usual police responses ‘justified shooting’, ‘self-defense’, make the requisite comments and you travel to be at her side.
Your brain spends the whole journey staring at every face that passes you on the street, and screaming a long stream of obscenities, interlaced with what the hells? What the fuck?
And the most important one, whispered in the back of your mind as if you don’t really want to confront it what happens now, what happens to me?
****
For you it starts when you see the girl in red, the rising blood, the stiffening of long unused muscles as your haunches rise, and the snarling twist of your lips as your nose picks up apples and blood, and you eyes desaturate the rest of the world but that red. Your ears catch the faint beat of a young heart and you long to hold it in your hand, and see that brilliant red drip down your wrist and sink your fangs into it.
It’s over in a few seconds, gets shorter every time, you’re getting better at this, then you look up, see him, eyes meeting briefly and he shouts, running from the trees towards you, you have bruises from the stairs he slams you into for a week. And your fingers twitch at your sides when he shouts at you, you write it off as wanting to strangle the little fuck, but you know different now.
****
Your heart breaks a little more every time you see the white starched linen of the hospital bed and the tubes keeping her alive, and nothing your ‘love’ says or does can make it mend. So you throw yourself into work, trust the instincts more than normal, you know what they are now.
Know that preternatural can’t be a bad thing and you follow your hunches, you see the moment he loses control, the fur and teeth and the way his eyes lock onto the red, and you freeze for a few seconds, whilst the girl passes and until he notices you watching, before you shout for your partner and start the chase.
He’s pinned down before you know it, slight hint of fear in his eyes, and a twist of hatred on his lips.
Where is she?
****
When he turns up again you know it’s going to turn into a regular thing, and the twist in your gut is possibly revulsion, but more than likely anticipation when you first scent him.
Jumping through the window and growling is highly melodramatic, you’re fully self-aware of that, but why on earth you invite him in for a beer is something entirely beyond you.
The frisson of fear ruffles the hairs all over your body when he mentions her, and the warring in your stomach gets worse, half wanting to rip his throat out, but there’s something deeper, more primal. A leftover from the urge that makes you piss on the fence.
Your territory, yours.
****
So you make him help you, after the pouncing through the window and correcting you repeatedly it’s the least he could do. Dragging him out with you to find the girl, and kill the big bad wolf, and fuck but that feels like the stupidest thing nobody ever said.
And then he scarpers, sees the other one of his kind and makes his excuses, leaving you to deal with a thing that kills people, you can’t stop the mental check of your clothing to ensure that you aren’t wearing any red. It’s instinctive.
So you save the girl, beat the bad guy and ride off into the sunset.
Yeah, because right now that would be kinda fucking likely to happen, you return to Aunt Marie’s side, feel the crack get wider in your heart and your blood boil slightly at the marks on her face.
The nurse blindsides you, you're tired not really paying attention, but you know these things can blend in and when you notice and start to struggle you barely feel the needle scratch, only the whoosh of cold nausea and inability to control yourself that follows, falling to the floor and watching as she walks, beautiful and then demonic, evil, twisted beyond belief. Hell, everything is beyond belief, you kinda suppose before you black out that that’s the job description in a sentence ‘beyond belief’.
****
It’s the next day when it really hits that you left him there, you don’t know if he’s dead, and you want to know.
That’s the part that bites at you, that you want to know what happens to him. Almost need.
You bury it under pilates and your ‘strict regimen’. Trying to build a clock and succeeding in pinging a tiny gear across the room and bouncing a spring off the wall as your hands clench alongside your stomach when you think of the other one of your ken holding his heart. That red you imagined yesterday going from delicious to disgusting and cold.
If anyone has his heart, it will be you, in the literal sense you think, of ripping it from his broken open ribcage with your own hands and watching the life fade from his eyes.
Fucking man, you’ve heard of this type of mating call echoing through your kind before, it’s dismissed by most as an urban legend, as much a legend as the big bad wolf and the harlot who eats her prey.
So pretty fucking real then.
You bury your head in your hands and give in to the lust that’s coursing, digging your nails into your skull and nearly drawing blood as you press your legs together beneath the table and try not to scream, you go to move upstairs and make it to the bottom step and the smell floods up from the carpet, of him pinning you there briefly and it’s enough to have you ripping at your slacks and pulling your cock harshly from the slit on your boxers, stripping it quickly and bordering on painful once twice three times until you come with a strangled fuck on your lips and white splatters on the floor. You slump against the wall and wince when one of the bruises on your back comes in to contact with handrail.
****
You go back at half 6 in the morning, you’ve not slept since you last saw him, unless drug induced catatonia counts and you knock on the door expecting swearing, shouting, maybe even a punch.
Well at least it would prove you were still awake and this wasn’t all some horrible nightmare.
You chose not to mention the smell of sex that lingers in the doorway when you enter, barely detectable but just on the edge of human senses, you see the way his eyes skip over you, and the clench in his fingers, his nails digging into his palm briefly before he starts bitching about his pilates and not looking at you.
You banter, he gives you the help you need and you leave, a weird twist in your stomach that you write off to concern about Marie there the whole time.
****
So you rip the guys arm off, you’ve done worse far worse, remember Valentina? Your brain helpfully supplies and you phone him and tell him you’re done, through with this.
You went too far, and you leave again, leave him when he needs help.
Why should you help a Grimm? His family are murderers?
You go to the funeral and watch from the tree line. He’d phoned and asked if you wanted to come and you’d said no, said you were busy that day, and ignored the slight crack in his voice.
****
You go there to ask why he didn’t just come out at the service, you knew he was there, slight tingling making you hyperaware of his presence.
You leave her at home, she’s going out with some of the girls from work anyway, so you press your lips to hers and walk out the door.
You pick up three bottles at the liquor store, whiskey, vodka and rum and spend a few seconds outside the door before it’s pulled open.
He doesn’t say anything just steps aside and waves you in, taking the proffered bag of alcohol and skirting around you to move into the kitchen.
You stand still in the middle of the room, fingers flitting at your sides, not entirely sure what you’re supposed to do.
****
You smell him outside the door and it’s drives you to distraction even in the few seconds it takes to move across the room and pull it open hard enough to jar it in the frame, he holds a bag out to you and you wave him in, moving to get glasses and keeping sight of him in the corner of your eye.
He stands there, fingers moving ceaselessly and his toe tapping slightly, hair mussed and wearing that leather jacket he favours, when you move back into the living room you flop into a seat placing the glasses with a clink onto the sidetable and asking if he’s waiting for an invitation to sit down.
He falls, more than lowers himself into the chair and takes the proffered glass, holding it for you to fill with the first bottle that comes to hand, gin it turns out.
He’s downed the tumbler and popped it to the floor before you’ve even finished pouring yourself a drink and slumps back in the seat, arse hanging over the front of the chair and back curved in such a way that you wince in sympathy and try to work out how many pilates stretches would be needed to work out the knot it’s going to leave.
His head has fallen back and his eyes are closed, face turned towards the ceiling.
His throat is exposed and you feel a flicker of heat, and a tingle in your fingertips, teeth elongating slightly as you get the urge to bite.
Not to kill, or even wound, just to mark.
****
You know he’s watching, can hear the clink of glass as he lowers the bottle to lie beside the others, but his eyes are on you, and there’s a tingle in the air, a prickling over your skin that whilst not painful is fucking irritating.
You let your arms fall to follow the arms of the chair and let out a long slow breath between pursed lips. Why am I here?
You’re not entirely sure you said it out loud, but he answers with to get pissed and forget about destiny? And you concede that you must have spoken.
You sit up, grabbing the bottle and filling the glass again, knocking it back slightly slower this time and pushing back in the seat so you can look at him.
His face is flushed, one hand gripping the arm of the seat in a white knuckled grip and the other the glass.
Relax, m’not going to kill you or anything. You smile slightly, infact I’m more worried you’re going to pounce and try and kill me to avenge your family, some sort of insane fairytale blood feud.
He moves, pulling forward and fiddling with the glass, before raising his eyes up.
He stares at you, eyes going wide slightly, before he lets out a short barking laugh, deeper than his normal voice and goes still.
****
You’re watching him and he knows your watching him, he must, Grimm’s must have some sixth-sense for these things because he sits up and starts talking.
About how you should relax. You’re not worried he’s going to kill you, you’re worried because the alcohol is worming its way in, and the small glass may have been nowhere near enough to make you drunk, but it is enough to make you that little bit warmer, that little bit less restrained.
You sit forward, rolling the tumbler between twisting hands and trying to look nonchalant.
You fail, so you look up, and freeze for a few seconds before the absurdity of your thoughts make you laugh. Mirthless, deep and near hysterical.
I’m not scared of you. You say to him, eyes locked together and neither willing to be the first to look away. I could rip your throat out before you had the chance to try anything.
You hope to any deities you don’t really believe in that he doesn’t question you any further.
That fails and he starts speaking again, whys, hows and wherefores, spilling from his lips.
****
If he’s not scared of you, then why does he look like he’s about to fly apart?
You decide to steer the conversation, ask him more questions about creatures, about his type, his family. Him.
And he gets stiffer and twitchier with every single one, eyes open wide and then he licks his lips, not a quick dart out to wet them, no a long slow lick like a starving man faced with a roast dinner but waiting until grace has been said.
You stop talking, and your breath catches slightly, because the tingling in the air is worse, so much worse, closer to pins and needles in your finger tips and it makes you long to touch… something, anything. Anyone.
****
He knows, he has to know. You’ve been staring and then darting your eyes over the room, and the air is thick and you’re practically fucking drooling.
But his fingers are twitching one hand running rough fingerprints over the arm of the chair and the scritch scritch scritch on the fabric is like nails on a chalkboard to you, all your senses heightened, and you can hear Mr and Mrs Allinson’s headboard creaking from three doors down, and smell the Richmond’s dogs piss as he tries to mark out his own territory in the backgarden of their neighbours.
The trees across the road are fluttering and swishing in the light breeze.
And you can smell the sweet cloying smell of the flowers.
But over all of it, you can hear the scritch and the creak of work denim as he shifts in his seat, the slight scratch of his zipper as it catches on the guard flap, and the chink on his nails against his glass which he is tapping out a staccato on, before smoothing his fingers over for a beat then back to his tapping.
You reach out without really thinking and let your hand fall on top of his, stopping the scritch. He gasps softly, the chink stopping as he lets the glass fall with a gentle whumph to the floor.
****
He touches you and the pins and needles turn to blinding sensation, fire flooding over you groin and your stomach twisting itself into knots and your hand goes lax letting the glass slip from between your fingers.
You reach over and weakly try to prise his hand from yours but he digs his nails in, three little points of pain over your wrist and one nail each side pressing into the fabric of the sofa. You wince and a small hiss slips free, just as he slides from the seat and to his kness infront of you, crowding you into the seat as his free hand takes your free hand and pins it to the other arms of the chair and he leans in to sniff at your throat.
****
His head falls back as soon as you lean in, leaving the lean column of his throat open and exposed and the inner wolf rages at the victory, seeing it as the perfect act of submission and longing again to bite, to mar the skin and leave him shaking and breathless beneath you.
You can feel his arm trembling slightly and the skin breaks under one of your nails, a small burst of heat on the fingertips the warning before red wells up from the pressure.
You see the red and breath in deep, the scent already strong despite the small amount of blood there. You see red.
****
You gasp softly as he breaks the skin, and your eyes go down to the small cut, they snap back to him when he goes completely rigid, eyes locked on your wrist face so close you can count the individual pores.
Eddie? You say, voice slightly creaky, breathless and his head whips around to face you, eyes level and you can feel his breath on your lips and the heat from his cheeks as the slight flush blooms.
He leans in as close as he can without touching you and you can’t recoil back any further pressed against the cushion of the chair, sweat beading on the back of your neck, you shift slightly and realize you’re half hard. The cotton against your cock feeling like sandpaper and satin all at once.
He’s sniffing down the column of your throat little huffs of breath warming the skin before leaving it cooling in the air as he moves further and further before biting hard at the juncture between neck and shoulder.
Your arms tense in his grip and you try to twist away from his teeth as they dig in, the pain filling your brain with screams of yes, fuck yes, YES! And you scream out as you come hard inside your clothes, hot and sticky against you skin and the fabric.
****
You can’t hold out any longer, and you have the scent in your nostrils now, panting as you move to find the perfect spot to bite, before sinking your teeth in the skin hard, the taste of sweat and arousal and Nick bursting across your tongue and making you press your hips forward against the edge of the chair, the movement pushing your jeans hard against your cock and the delicious friction as the back of one of the buttons presses, sharp cold and quick against the base of your erection has you grunting against that mouthful of flesh and coming.
You let go of the skin when you hear him scream and realize that whilst it feels like hours since you bit down it’s only been a few seconds and there’s a thin trickle of blood wending its way down the open neckline of his shirt to soak into the fabric and stain it bright crimson.
His eyes are heavy lidded and he’s panting hard and there’s the unmistakable scent of come that isn’t yours in the air, you breath deeply and lay your head on his shoulder, feeling his chest rise and fall below you, quick panting breaths.
****
Your brain wakes up long before you want it to, a heavy weight on your shoulder and hot breath across your throat making you shiver and tremble as the endorphins rush in.
Eddie, you need to let go. You finally manage to stutter out when you realize that your fingers are numb from the pressure and there’s a sharp pain in your wrist from the split skin.
His fingers loosen slightly but don’t move away and he pulls back enough to press a kiss to the bite mark, still bleeding on your shoulder. You feel his lips form a work against the mark and the breath that forms it, but you don’t quite catch the word.
****
Eddie, you need to let go. He speaks and it breaks the spell, makes you realize that you’re still on your knees on the floor, and your hands are cramping from being gripped that hard for so long. You flex your fingers slightly but don’t let go, merely letting them relax so they are more comfortable.
It’s soppy and you know it is but you can’t help pulling back slightly to look at the mark and then you figure you’re going to have to explain it at some point, but that can wait, he’s not pulled out a gun, you’re still alive and even if he does leave, at least you won’t have to end up ripping anyone’s arms off again, unless they touch him.
So you lean forward and press a kiss to the red raw flesh, whispering as you do so.
Never.