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writingforfishes · 7 days ago

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Hicvember: Pinocchio

Fandom: Gr1mm Characters: M0nroe Ros@alee N1ck H@nk Ad@lind Glori@ (mentioned) DeEtt@ (mentioned) Definitions/Lore: Gr1mm-a person with the ability to see We5en when they don't want to be seen. Killers of We5en, historically. We5en-a person who has the "soul" of another creature/being. They can change forms with emotion (unseen by normal humans) or intentionally (seen by everyone) Inspired many fables from the Brother's Gr1mm, the namesake/family of those who have the ability to see them. Blutb@den-(singular: Blutb@d) The "Big Bad Wolf" Fuchsb@u- Fox-like We5en Hex3nbie5ts- Witch-like We5en

CW:

long hiccups

painful hiccups

fast hiccups

allegory for recovery group

mentions of past drug addiction

mentioned pregnancy

heterosexual relationship (tee)

adorable relationship dynamics

domestic tiff

mother-in-law tropes

“So, basically what you’re saying is anyone who touched the amulet would be affected,” H@nk said, the detective taking a deep, cleansing breath in a way he hadn’t been able to a moment before.

“Yes,” Ad@lind confirmed as she shifted back from her Hex3nbei5t form.

“Man, my chest hurts,” N1ck muttered. He rubbed his muscles with a wince.

“Yeah,” H@nk said, “but think of how lucky you are to have this happen now and not while you were still with Juli3tte. Man, the lies you told. We lie enough at our jobs as it is…”

N1ck winced for another reason as H@nk’s statement sunk in.

Ad@lind met his eyes with an equal amount of sympathy and mischievous amusement.

“You might have died from suffocation,” she quipped.

“Okay, okay,” N1ck protested holding his hands up to stave off any other reminders of how horribly he’d handled his past relationship. “Just glad it’s over.”

“As long as no one else touched the amulet no one else should be affected. I’ve nullified the magic so it won’t cause any...disturbances to anyone else again,” Ad@lind said, still handling the object delicately.

A beat passed between N1ck and H@nk before realization simultaneously donned on them and they said together, “M0nroe!”

“Crap,” Ad@lind sighed, knowing she’d have to now do the whole ceremony again. “I’ll...remake what I need and you get to him before it becomes a permanent affliction.”

***

N1ck and H@nk didn’t even bother to call Ros@lee before they showed up at her and M0nroe’s house. N1ck knocked on the door after turning an unsettled eye at H@nk. But M0nroe didn’t really lie all that much, right? Especially not to Ros@lee.

“Hey, guys,” Ros@lee said. Her pregnancy was just beginning to show through her clothes. It was early, but she was having triplets so it was no wonder she’d already had to buy maternity jeans.

“Hey, is M0nroe here?” N1ck asked.

“Uh. Yeah? You know, he’s not in a great mood, honestly. He’s...well it sounds a little silly but...he’s had this stubborn case of the hiccups for over three hours, now!” she said as she brushed her hair back from her face. “Poor guy…”

“Three hours?” H@nk said. He actually looked relieved.

“Yeah, that’s good,” N1ck confirmed.

Ad@lind had told them it took 12 hours for the spell to cause a chronic condition. Figures that it would take M0nroe a lot longer than two detectives to tell a lie to trigger it. Though N1ck was curious what it must have been. It wasn’t triggered by white lies or innocuous lies. It was only triggered by larger falsities, lies contradicting a person’s values and nature. In N1ck and H@nk’s line of work it didn’t take long to tell someone a life altering fib in order to get information, no matter the detective’s moral disagreement to it.

“Um, no, I still think three hours having hiccups is pretty bad,” Ros@lee insisted.

“What, no, yeah, of course it is,” H@nk confirmed.

“It’s a spell,” N1ck clarified.

“N1ck, M0nroe, and I found this amulet wedged in a cinder block at the construction site we were a couple of nights ago. Seemed innocent. N1ck stored it at his place to research later,” H@nk continued.

“Turns out, Ad@lind said it was a truth amulet. Anyone who touches it has to tell the truth or face the consequences,” N1ck said.

“Consequences…” Ros@lee said, eyes widening.

“Yeah,” H@nk picked up. “A nasty case of hiccups.”

“That don’t stop until either the person who told the lie tells the truth or the curse is lifted. H@nk and I were both triggered. But we were deep in a case and wouldn’t have been able to tell the truth to who we needed. Ad@lind had a way to nullify the effect as long as we were able to tell her when we told the lie that started it,” N1ck said. “If we’d hiccuped for more than 12 hours it would have been permanent.”

“Oh my god!” Ros@lee exclaimed. “That sounds terrible!”

“So, you remember M0nroe telling you any lies lately? Something big,” H@nk asked. “Unless he’s been talking to anyone else in the past 3 hours.”

“No,” Ros@lee said, frowning. “I...I don’t know. Lemme get him.”

Ros@lee went to the bottom of the stairs leading up to their room. M0nroe had thought taking a nap might calm the hiccups down, at least. It hadn’t worked in the least.

“M0nroe! N1ck and H@nk are here! It has something to do with your hiccups! It’s a spell!” Ros@lee yelled up.

She returned to the two detectives with her hands to her lower back in support of her belly’s weight and her spreading hips.

“Ad@lind’s on the way with supplies, by the way,” N1ck assured her. Ros@lee gave a worried nod.

“You guys sit down. I’ll make some coffee,” Ros@lee said distractedly.

N1ck and H@nk sat down in the living room. N1ck was on the couch and H@nk took the chair to the side of it. M0nroe’s footsteps landed hard and fast as he came down to the living room, a sound the boys had been made all too familiar with peppering his arrival.

“H—hey guys,” M0nroe said. He looked disheveled in sweat pants and a white shirt as he suppressed a hiccup deep within his throat and chest. He winced as he rubbed his chest. “Wh-HUCK!-what’s this abo-mk!-out a spell? HUP’M! Ugh…”

The Blutb@d rubbed his sternum again and sighed a breath before another hiccup attacked him. He sat down next to N1ck and the Gr1mm patted him on the back sympathetically.

“The amulet we found,” H@nk explained. He silently nodded to Ros@lee in tH@nks at the coffee.

“H@nk and I were both on a case, today. TH@nks,” N1ck said to Ros@lee as she handed him a mug as well.

N1ck couldn’t help but notice that M0nroe waved a hand to the coffee offering. He imagined if M0nroe had been experiencing the same acid reflux both he and H@nk had during their attack, coffee was the last thing M0nroe wanted.

“You remember the amulet we found yesterday?” N1ck asked.

“Yeah th-huck!-the on—one that looked hmp!-looked like an E—evil Eye except HUCK’M!-except not?” M0nroe asked.

“Water?” Ros@lee asked. And was it his imagination but did his wife’s demeanor seem a little chilly?

“Uh HU’UP! Yeah, my thr-uck!-throat’s killing me!” M0nroe suppressed another hiccup and swallowed with a wince.

“I bet it is,” Ros@lee said.

Oh, N1ck thought, Ros@lee had probably just figured out whatever lie it was M0nroe had told. H@nk had picked up on it too and widened his eyes in realization, looking down.

“Ad@lind said it was called the Eye of Truth,” N1ck explained. “Anyone who touches it is made to tell the truth or face the consequences.”

“Probably HU’UCK!-ugh. Probably why it hmp’mk!-was in a con—concrete block, huh? HUP! So, what consequ-HIGGUP!-ences?” M0nroe asked as Ros@lee came back with the glass.

“Hiccups!” Ros@lee said primly and put the glass of water in front of her husband down with more force than necessary on the coffee table. In a lower voice she said, close to his face, “And if they have them for more than twelve hours without telling the truth they have them forever…”

M0nroe’s eyes widened both at the information shared and at Ros@lee’s sudden demeanor change.

Ros@lee turned on her heel to head back to the kitchen.

“I’m going to make tea!” she announced sharply.

“Dude…” H@nk said in a low voice. “What did you do?”

M0nroe looked lost for a little bit. His hand pushed flat against his chest as he searched his mind for the moment he had lied to her. His stomach jolted out sharply and his entire body jumped with the power of the hiccups he’d endured for three hours. He let the squelchy catches of breath fill the room over the ticking of his clocks for a while as he tried to recall when they started. A hard one knocked his head back with a HNK’GUULK as recognition suddenly passed his features.

“Crap,” he said. “We were HUCK’LP!-were talking about hmk!-Ros@lee’s mo—mother.”

“Damn,” H@nk said in understanding. “Mother-in-laws. I’ve definitely had to deal with my share fair.”

“I said,” Ros@lee said, reappearing as she waited for the kettle to sound, “my mom would make a good grandmother for our kids. And M0nroe agreed. And then he caught the most aggressive bout of hiccups...hm...interesting…”

Ros@lee crossed her arms over her chest with a frown.

“I do-HUCK!-don’t thi—ink she wo-HU’UP!-wo-HUP!-uld ma-HMK!-make a b-HU’UP!HUP!-bad gr-MK!-grandmother!” M0nroe tried to argue.

N1ck patted his friend’s leg and shook his head.

“The hiccups get worse when you try to double-down,” H@nk explained.

M0nroe just winced in both mild pain and frustration.

“So you do think my mom would make a bad grandmother?” Ros@lee said, voice growing louder.

“No! HUP!HNK!HUCK’UP!” He grunted and rubbed his belly at the muscle ache. “Okay, yes. Hulp! But it’s HULP!-uh, not that sim—simple, okay? Can we HUP!-Can we talk ab—about this HUP’K!-this in private, please? HILP!”

For a moment everyone was quiet. N1ck and H@nk exchanged looks of discomfort as Ros@lee held her jaw hard in thought. The only sounds were M0nroe’s hiccups being muffled by his fist pressed against his mouth. His body jerked up violently as he looked at his wife in desperation.

“Yeah, okay. Let’s go to our room,” Ros@lee said softly. Her jaw relaxed a little.

“I’ll-uh-text Ad@lind what we found out,” N1ck said. “She’ll be on her way shortly...I hope.”

Ros@lee nodded stiffly and followed her husband to their room on the second floor.

***

When M0nroe arrived he sat heavily on the corner of the bed. Ros@lee paced a little, running her hand through her hair as she watched her husband battle the spasms that attacked his body. Her anger softened even more at the way M0nroe cradled an arm along his stomach and rubbed his forehead tiredly.

Fuchsb@u were quick to anger, but they were also quick to change their minds. While not all Fuchsb@u were the same, obviously, this genetic trait seemed pretty prevalent in Ros@lee.

She finally sat next to him as he struggled to figure out how to word whatever he was trying to say, hiccups barging in as he stuttered. He was getting frustrated and Ros@lee could feel that. She laid a comforting hand to his back and rubbed his shoulders.

“Take your time,” she whispered.

M0nroe sighed and closed his eyes. He rode out a few more hiccups, catching gulpily in his throat, before speaking.

“Glori@ is—isn’t a bad person. HUP!” he started, calling Ros@lee’s mom by her first name. “But...mmk! Do you know h—how hard it is for HUP’K!-for someone like m-HEEP!-me to go We—We1der?”

Ros@lee thought for a moment. M0nroe hadn’t told her a lot about the process of becoming We1der, a program originated to help predatory We5en with their aggressive tendencies. Basically, it was a group facilitating a completely different relationship with inherent violent instincts which defined what being a Blutb@d, or any other number of predatory We5en, meant.

Instead of sacrificing himself to his natural inclination to kill living things and fight those he saw as weaker than him, M0nroe had taught himself to redefine who he was at the core of his being. He’d stripped out as much of the ‘addiction’, for lack of a better word, to cave to his base cravings as he could. It was why he was vegetarian. It was why he focused so hard on music and special interests and exercising and clocks and...Ros@lee. It kept him on the good path. It kept him from hurting anyone. It kept him sane.

He didn’t do this alone. He did this through We1der teaching facilitated by a group leader and within a group of people, We5en, who experienced the same urges as himself and the same desire to gain control. It hadn’t been easy. It hadn’t been pretty. But it was important to him that he honor his growth as much as possible. There-in came the complication who was Glori@, Ros@lee’s mom.

“I-I mean, no,” Ros@lee finally answered. “But I don’t understand what that has to do with—”

“Pity,” M0nroe said. His diaphragm defied him again and he grunted with the deep hiccup that caused his muscles to convulse and his breath to hitch. “Glori@ looks a—at me with hup!-pity. It’s hu’up!, it’s always been th-hnk!-that way. I recogn-ip!-ise it. You’re sis—sister too, but hmp!-but that’s just De—DeEtt@, I th-hmp!-ink.”

Ros@lee nodded at that, at least. DeEtt@ was the master of a look of derision. But her mom? Ros@lee silently considered what M0nroe had said.

Pity seemed like a pretty innocuous expression until you considered where it came from. There was an inherent arrogance in pity. People pitied because they thought someone else was in a lower place than themselves. It was different if the target of the pity was someone in a genuinely bad situation. But if they were just living their lives in the best possible way and someone pitied them for it, that felt like a direct attack on the way they were choosing to live. M0nroe was thriving; Glori@ had no reason to pity him.

But, the more Ros@lee thought about it the more she realized she could remember the exact look M0nroe was talking about. It wasn’t subtle, either. During her own struggles with drug addiction, that same look of pity, disappointment, and arrogant judgment appeared in her mom’s face more than once.

“I just hup!” M0nroe said, filling the silence as Ros@lee processed what he’d told her. “I just d-hmk!-don’t want our kids hulp!-kids to b—be judged if himp’k!-they decide to mk!-to take the same p—path as me. If they ne-ip!-eed a little help. It’s their deci—ision, obviously. But the thought of mk!-of their gran—grandmother judging them? Doesn’t hup!-doesn’t sit right with me. I—I’m sorry hmp!”

“No, you’re right,” Ros@lee said. “I...if it helps I don’t think she even knows she does it. But I know that look. Every time I came back from a bender she had that look. It made me feel like I would never be good enough. I had no idea she was using that look with you.

“She,” she sighed, “She’s asked me before about you being We1der.”

M0nroe looked surprised. He didn’t know that.

“Yeah. She seemed confused. I explained it but...my mom is really big on connecting to the We5en part of her. I think maybe...she thought you were denying part of yourself. And I thought, you know, I thought I explained it enough to dissuade her but…maybe not,” Ros@lee admitted. “She relented, finally, saying that at least I won’t have to worry about cleaning up as much blood. Guess she really didn’t think about us working with a Gr1mm.”

M0nroe laughed, body softly jumping with his fading hiccups.

“Or that I’m hup! I’m the one who d—does the laundry?” he teased.

Ros@lee laughed at that.

“Which I tH@nk you immensely for,” she said.

He smiled.

“I...wish you had felt like you could have told me this. I understand why you thought you couldn’t. And I probably should’ve told you about her and my conversation, too. I just didn’t want you to feel...well...like you already feel,” Ros@lee said with a shake of her head and a sad smile.

M0nroe huffed in amusement.

“I guess this means we aren’t the perfect couple everyone thinks we are?” he lamented.

“Bite your tongue, Blutb@d,” Ros@lee teased. “Of course we are. Otherwise you would’ve had the hiccups for all of eternity instead of feeling safe enough...eventually...to tell me the truth. Which I appreciate.”

“True…” M0nroe said with a nod. “Speaking of which.” He gave a big breath. “They are finally gone!”

“TH@nk goodness!” Ros@lee said.

“Yeah, they were really starting to hurt,” M0nroe grumbled.

“Well, yeah. But also...I wouldn’t have gotten a wink of sleep!” Ros@lee joked.

They both shared some laughter.

“Okay, I think I heard Ad@lind come in,” Ros@lee said. “Unless you want to be stuck having to tell the truth for fear of hiccuping chronically for the rest of your life I guess it would be a good idea to nullify this thing, huh?”

M0nroe nodded enthusiastically.

“I would definitely appreciate that. Although, I’ve also learned my lesson. It’s not like...I’m not going to start lying or anything…” he said nervously.

“Calm down, dear. I’m a Fuchsb@u. We live on lies,” Ros@lee said with a grin.

M0nroe looked at her suspiciously.

Ros@lee offered no comment, just an inquisitive look back. The expression devolved into laughter, though.

M0nroe laughed nervously, still not convinced it had all been a joke. Ros@lee just shook her head in amusement at the response.

“I’ll talk to my mom tomorrow. She needs to know how you feel and how her judgment affects people,” Ros@lee said.

“You don’t need to do that,” M0nroe protested, rising as she did from the bed.

“Yeah, I do. I want our kids to feel safe no matter what. I need her to know how important it is for me to fully accept our children. If our kids turn out to be Blutb@d, even just one, I need them to know they’ll be supported no matter what. It’s important,” Ros@lee said.

“I love you,” M0nroe said.

“Love you, too.”

They kissed.

“See?” M0nroe said pointing to himself. “I really do love you! No hiccups!”

“Better not be…” she said with a grin.

M0nroe kissed her again with a dopey grin before they went downstairs to nullify any future impacts of the spell on M0nroe’s poor, abused diaphragm.