"I'm being chased by a sloth!"
Monroe had nothing to say to that.
Roddy had run into the room five seconds earlier screaming.
Nick had sat the troubled teen down and wrapped him in a Monroe's alpaca blanket. The fuzzy thing had a calming effect getting the boy to take deep breathes and not asphyxiate himself with a hippie scarf. Monroe had gone off and gotten some alcohol. No matter what Nick said, it would do the boy some good. That was mostly if the kid wasn't drunk already. Roddy downed the whole beer in one fortifying gulp.
"Monroe!" Nick look scandalized by the empty bottle.
Roddy's face got some of its less pale hue back. "I've had worse." Monroe didn't want to know.
"So what was that about a sloth?"
Roddy looked blankly at him. "I'm being chas-ed by a sloth."
Monroe quirked a brow. "Chase-ed?" Nick looked just as bemused.
Roddy ran his hands through his hair. "I mean 'chased'. Practicing for Hamlet and I still talk funny."
That explained everything.
"So why a sloth?"
Roddy's eyes went wider than dinner plates. They were more the sides of serving dishes.
"I have no effing idea."
"Language!" Nick seemed to be speaking in exclamation marks.
"I said 'effing'." He pouted.
Nick sighed. "Fine. Why is it chasing you?"
Roody reached for Nick's beer only to have his hand slapped away. "You have no idea what they mix up at raves. And as I said, I have no idea. I was practicing my script for Hamlet and bam!" He slapped the table. "They appear out of nowhere."
Monroe furrowed his brows, "I thought you said there was one sloth."
Roddy looked confused when he said, "Yeah, there is one sloth."
And the doorbell rang.
Roddy, being the apparently not-so-genre-blind reinegen he was, ducked under the blanket and cried bloody murder. Nick got out his gun to shoot whatever it was. Monroe, for his part, sighed, wondered why the world happened to ring his doorbell, and answered it.
Barry was kicking the bush with an expensive shoe.
"Barry?" The jagerbar scowled and nodded. There was a squeak from the blankets.
Nick, double checking, put away his gun. The young jagerbar seemed nonplussed. "Yes, is Roddy here?"
Monroe, being the sadistic bastard he was, opened the door. "Right this way." They entered the living room seeing a huddle in the corner trying to protect itself with a lamp.
"Roddy, stop freaking out," Monroe growled.
The blankets shifted slightly. "Never! There is a sloth out there and I am terrified, so shut up!"
"Don't tell me to shut up in my house." Monroe was really getting tired of this. Nick brought enough drama to the party. Barry, to his credit, did try to look non-threatening. Emphasis on "try".
Nick tried comforting the scared teen. "Roddy, it's just Barry."
"Exactly!" the blankets screeched. This was stupid on so many levels.
Monroe sat everyone, except the blanket-worm rat, on his couch. "So, Barry," His good humor was fading quickly. "What do you want?"
The male jagerbar grimaced and looked murderous. "I wanted to ask Roddy on a date." There was a squeak from the corner. Monroe choked on his wine. A jagerbar going for a reinegen was unheard of. This was some mind-blowing, hierarchy-crushing, food-chain-debasing stuff. And it was in his living room.
Nick seemed completely at home, well, bit awkward since the ball of muscle was taking out its anger on his beer, thanks to his ignorance of all things Grimm. Monroe was left to ask. "Just a date? No date rape or anything?"
Barry raised an eyebrow giving him a "dude, with my body, it wouldn't be even considered date rape" look. Nick didn't seem to interpret that look. The bundle, still wielding the lamp, had moved closer and Monroe wondered over the hope of the future.
Instead he called back to the corner, "Roddy, is that okay with you?" Roddy's head popped out.
"Yeah."
Well, that was settled.
"Barry, you wouldn't happen to know anything about the sloth that's chasing Roddy, would you?"
The look of bloodlust, which was like that of Dracula, Buffy, Van Hellsing, and Monroe when he hadn't had his Pilates combined, came over Barry.
"I don't have a clue," he growled. The bottle in his hand cracked with the force. Not the Jedi force.
Roddy had now left his blankets and curled up around the lamp on the far end of the couch.
Monroe took a gulp of wine. "Roddy, care to elaborate on the apparent lack of sloths?"
"It's outside." Roddy pointed into the street. They could make out the faint figure of a large hummer parked at the curb.
Barry raised an eyebrow at Roddy. "That's my car. Jason and T.B are in there."
"Yeah." Roddy grimaced looking at the vase's nonexistent pattern with great interest.
Monroe's eyebrows shot into the stratosphere and Nick broke his silence asking, "Did you just call a jagerbar a sloth?" Everyone focused on Roddy.
His head tilted adorably to one side.
"Didn't you guys know a group of bears is called a sloth?"
That is totally true. I was going through some fun vocabulary, because I'm just a nerd that way, and I found that word. It was a good lot of fun.
Also, did you know a clowder is a cluster of cats? And did you know Microsoft word does not recognize the word "clowder"?
And, people, "bemused" means confused and not "amused". I hate telling people that, but no one gets it right.