#apparently in 1x08 he got his shoulder dislocated which i didn't learn til like 5 mins ago...anyway. ignoring that.

[set-phasers-to-whump]

that’s gonna leave a mark

prompt: “this is gonna suck”

whumpee: nick burkhardt

fandom: grimm

hi! this fic is brought to you courtesy of this post. it’s set fairly soon after 2x15 and that’s about all there is to know about it...i hope you enjoy!!

They’re testing out Nick’s newfound Grimm super-senses. It’s his own idea, and Monroe is slightly reluctant, but he’s not the one who’s suddenly developed quasi-superpowers, so he’s following Nick’s lead, which is currently taking them up a tree.

Nick wants to know about distance in regards to the things he can hear, and has evidently decided that he hasn’t explored the upwards dimension enough yet. It’s a good enough idea, Monroe supposes, nearly losing his grip on a branch, but is all this climbing really worth it? Surely there’s a tall building somewhere that would suffice. 

He’s slightly below Nick, who is climbing like this is something he does every day. It’s impressive and a little bit weird and honestly pretty cool - and then his foot slips and he’s falling before Monroe even has a chance to react. All he can do is watch.

Nick hits what looks like every single possible branch on his way down, ending up in a crumpled heap on the ground. He’s moving, albeit slowly, which tells Monroe that he probably isn’t too seriously hurt.

“That’s gonna leave a mark,” Monroe says to himself, as he quickly (but carefully) begins climbing down. He follows this up by calling out, “You okay, dude?” 

There’s a long pause, followed by a weak, “yeah.”

“So not okay, then,” Monroe mutters, carefully clambering down the last few branches and landing firmly on his feet beside Nick’s still-mostly-crumpled form. 

He touches a concerned hand to Nick’s left shoulder, and Nick pushes himself to his feet, wavering unsteadily but stepping away from Monroe, thereby refusing his help. Monroe shakes his head, sighs. 

“Nick, let me see -”

Nick starts quickly walking away, like he thinks he’s just going to be able to head back to the car and leave without saying a word. Monroe easily catches up to him, grabs him by both shoulders, and immediately drops his hands when Nick lets out a pained yelp. 

“What’s wrong?”

Nick turns around, and Monroe winces at the scrapes and scratches littering his face. There’s a bruise forming at his temple, too, and he’s covered in little bits of leaves, but -

“What happened?” Monroe asks, because he can’t see anything horribly wrong. Certainly nothing that would make Nick audibly acknowledge the pain.

Nick takes off his jacket, looking pained the whole time, and lets it drop to the forest floor. In his shirtsleeves, it is suddenly very easy for Monroe to identify the problem. 

“Your arm is…not supposed to look like that.”

“I know.”

Nick’s right shoulder looks wrong, like it’s been yanked out of place, and Monroe knows that it must be dislocated but he doesn’t really know what to do about it. He stands there and stares at Nick’s arm like the weight of his gaze alone can repair it. 

“Can you…” Nick pauses in the middle of his sentence, takes a deep breath. “Can you fix it?”

“You want me to…relocate your shoulder?” He knows how, in theory, courtesy of Rosalee, but he imagines it’s quite a different thing in practice. 

But Nick nods firmly, says, “please,” and there’s an edge of begging in his voice that lets on to how much pain he’s in, even if he’s not letting himself show it. 

And so Monroe finds himself saying, “yeah, sure, okay, let me just - wait, are you actually sure about this? Because if I end up making it worse -”

“You won’t,” Nick says, and Monroe can’t decide if it’s an endorsement of his skills or an evaluation of the pain. 

“If you’re sure,” he says, eventually, and Nick says, “I am,” so that’s that. Monroe is going to reset a shoulder, which is not at all how he thought his day would go. C’est la vie, he figures, and gets to work with the professionalism of one who has only a vague idea of what he’s supposed to be doing, but knows the importance of his task. 

First he completes the setup, taking Nick’s right arm and carefully adjusting it such that his arm is tucked against his side, his forearm parallel to the ground. The next steps should happen in fairly rapid, painful succession, with no room to stop or take a break. “This is gonna suck,” Monroe warns, and Nick nods shortly. 

“Do it.”

Monroe grabs Nick’s wrist, as carefully as he can, and moves it away from Nick’s body. Then he pulls the upper part of Nick’s arm forwards, and for the final piece pulls Nick’s wrist back across his body, towards his left side. 

There’s a sort of deep clunking noise and Monroe knows, sort of instinctively, that it’s done.  But Nick hasn’t made a single noise, which, while not unexpected for the Grimm, briefly makes Monroe wonder whether he has in fact relocated his shoulder successfully. He’d expected some kind of reaction, is all. 

“Nick?” 

Nick raises his eyes from where he’d been staring at the ground. They’re shiny with pain but there’s a look of relief, there, too, as he exhales shakily. If he were anyone else, Monroe figures the shininess in his eyes would be replaced with actual tears, and the exhale would perhaps have been a sob. This had hurt, quite a lot, Monroe knows, even if Nick is extremely determined not to show it. 

He’s about to say something like, I told you this was going to suck, or, I’m sorry for having to hurt you, but then Nick says, “let’s go,” and he tucks his hurt arm protectively close to his body, picking up his jacket with his other hand and just sort of holding it like he doesn’t know what to do with it. 

Monroe takes the jacket from him wordlessly, looks at it for a second and wonders whether Nick is going to get angry about this, then decides to just go ahead and do it. He’ll deal with the anger if it means he’s done something comforting against the pain he’s had to cause.

And so he drapes the jacket very carefully over Nick’s shoulders, barely touching the right side, as gentle as anything he’s ever done. He expects that anger, some sort of rebuke, but Nick is silent. His face is set and the scrapes and blood and dirt on his face and arms make him look sort of menacing, but beneath all of that there’s the barest hint of grateful acknowledgement, which makes Monroe smile to himself. Nick isn’t angry, then. Just hurting and in need of comfort that he’ll never actually ask for.

They walk in silence for a moment, leaves crunching under their feet, until Nick speaks up. “Was that the first time you’ve done that?” His voice is quiet and tired and a little bit scratchy and there’s a pained layer beneath all that, which Monroe can only detect because he knows Nick so well. 

“Yeah,” Monroe replies, like the answer should be obvious (which it should be, he thinks). “How was it?”

“Not too bad,” Nick says, in a way that means it hurts. “It worked, though,” he adds, in a way that means thank you.

“I better not have to do that again,” Monroe warns. Of course, you’re welcome, I care about you.

“I can’t make any promises.” I know.

thanks for reading this!!! i am about to go outside in the rainnn and the colddd wish me luck lmao...bye!