And the winterfest wrangles continue! Children are pesky, and adults aren't always much better. Makes you wonder who should be wearing the GPS badges, really...

Thanks all so much for the wonderful reviews, favourites and follows! It's been fun to write.. I hope you continue to enjoy

X x X

"Wu," Nick said, on the edge of his hearing, "It's impossible to know how much to tell you. We thought we'd start with the basics. Renard is not..."

"...basic?" Wu offered, and saw the KS sticker on the left side of Renard's chest across the distance to the race track. He saw it clearly because his Captain had turned fully to face him after a discreet shove from Hank. "I guess I always knew that, in a way."

They locked gazes, his own arms folded, Renard's hands in his pockets. As ever, Renard wore his rock-of-ages face, the one that said 'I have endured worse than you over the centuries. Do not be the one to try me.' Renard looked as Wu imagined a vampire to look between snacks.

"I've not known long myself," Nick offered suddenly.

"How not long?"

"Three weeks."

"Relax. That's really not very long."

"You sure?"

Wu shrugged. "Let's say I had a fiancée, and she was having an affair. You find them screwing behind a Chinese restaurant, book the guy in for public indecency and don't tell me for three weeks. That would be too long. This is fine." He made to stride off.

"Dude!"

Wu turned back and saw the bearded guy pacing: the wolf-wesen. Monroe, was it…? "Yeah?"

"Can I just point something out?... If you stalk over there right now... you're not really starting from the best point in the learning curve."

"Noted. But my curve's always been a little skewiff. I'll be back." He strode over to Renard, wishing he'd put a little more Schwarzenegger into that. Talk about lost opportunities.

While he closed the distance, Renard attracted the attention of the smiley, low-cut cutie who'd been on the welcome desk and in an unheard exchange, apparently asked her help in getting something off his shirt. Beaming away, she shoved a hand up inside his tee-shirt, pinkening cutely, jabbed him with some kind of hand-held device that clearly wasn't a taser (as much as it looked like one), and walked off with a skip and a backward wave that was even cutsier than her cutesy blushing. Renard smiled politely ― no more ― and inclined his head charmingly as she merged into the crowd.

Considering that his face still fricking hurt after his one minute at the welcome desk, with no hands up his clothes, this display of total self-control on Renard's part simply confirmed his certainty that he wasn't human.

"Afternoon," Renard greeted.

"It is, yes." Wu kept his voice low as he spoke, but indicated the mendacious KS badge with a flick of his head. "Shouldn't that say BS?"

"You want to go there straightaway?"

Wu glared. "I'm trying to do you a favour. You're wearing short sleeves in eleven degrees and you have no goosebumps. That's not very human, is it?"

There was a long pause, then Renard nodded. "Good point. Back shortly." He returned moments later from a nearby tent, holding two coffees and wearing a fitted leather jacket. "This is why you're my Sergeant. You miss nothing."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," he lied. He needed the mollification because he felt like he'd missed everything. For years.

Renard handed him one of the coffees. "Walk with me."

Wu was fine with this until he realised that their destination was a tight spot between two fake 'decorative' pines along the side of the race track, one of which was sticking in his ear. "Won't this look the tiniest bit conspicuous?"

Renard gulped his espresso and looked down him levelly. "In the presence of these people, I'm a human Captain busting in and not knowing my place. I'd appreciate your enduring support in sustaining this image. Until I can explain more, at least."

Wu knew him well enough to know that Renard's words were instruction, with a thin veneer of polite. He'd grit his teeth and play along, for now. He wasn't a bridge-burner. "Fine… so while you're being 'human', I would stop swigging scalding coffee like it's juice. Because, FYI, that gives normal humans third degree burns. KS ones or otherwise."

"Right."

All this agreement was disturbing. Wu got the critical question in while he could. "Are you like Jan?"

"A Koninglowen? No."

"But something with a high pain threshold?"

"Yes."

He knew about Denny, and ventured that suggestion. "Ogre?"

"No."

"Are you something…icky?"

Renard glared at him.

"Ok… King Cobra wesen?"

"No. Why?"

"You're hypnotic, evasive, and you rarely blink."

Renard burst out laughing, which seemed more alien to Wu than his actual lack of humanity. He'd never seen that happen before. Ever. It was like this sudden laughing behaviour belonged to the secret Renard, the one he didn't know existed, and he didn't like it. He felt like telling him to cut it out, because it was creepy. It took Renard a moment to get himself back together and quit chuckling into his palm.

"Sorry… I'm sorry…. It's just… look. The relationship between a wesen and their human behaviour isn't that direct."

"So what the hell are you?"

"I'm not telling you today."

"So why are we having this conversation in a bush when there are acres of prickle-free places from which we could be supervising this track?" Wu felt like throwing his coffee over the guy. "Wait… you're not telling me…today?"

"Correct emphasis."

"Alright." Wu steamed quietly to himself for a few minutes, slurping at the remainder of his drink until Renard finally cracked and spoke.

"You ok?"

"Truthfully? No. Not really. I feel like someone's taken my road away." The admission was out before he could stop it. There was only one person he'd been totally open with in the last seven years― Mariam. And he'd only been with her three weeks.

"I can understand that."

Wu gave Renard a suspicious glance. That was... unRenardlike. He wondered if there were body-snatching wesen.

"Are you angry?"

"Not... angry. More self-deluded. I thought I was observant and put a lot of stock in that. I was proud of it. I thought very little got past me. But uh... it looks like everything has gotten past me, and always has. It's kind of like being with someone a long time, and for all that time, they make you think that you're a hero in bed, and on the day they leave, they choose to tell you that you snore. It's dispiriting."

There was a long quiet while Renard looked at his feet, and Wu recovered from the embarrassment of his totally ridiculous choice of analogy.

"You don't snore," Renard offered eventually.

"Totally the wrong cheer-up line."

Renard smiled slightly. "You are observant, Wu. You haven't missed anything. There's nothing to see. We have stress-out moments just as humans do, but the only ones that can really see how deep they go are other wesen, and Grimms. Your life will pretty much continue as previously."

"Yeah, right." But actually, Renard had sounded sincere... "You mean I'm not going to be seeing strangeness wherever I look?"

"Hank can't see anything unless a wesen woges fully. He just knows when Nick has seen a wesen part-wogeing because of his face."

"Can any human see a woge if it happens fully?"

"Indeed."

"So what's the benefit of being a Kerseite-whatever-it-was?"

"You're less likely to go into cardiac arrest at the sight of a full woge, because you have a better idea of what you're looking at."

"That's a really small, hard, cold comfort." Wu hugged his jacket round him for a moment as the teeny people shot past them on their electric cars in a pack, whipping up a gust of air. He kept his voice low. "Alright, so you're not human. You're not here to 'mingle' and you're sure as hell not getting much recruiting done for the constabulary, so... I'm guessing that you're looking for someone."

Renard nodded sagely, but added nothing.

"Well.. who? For God's sake! The words 'blood', 'from' and 'stone' are springing to mind here!"

"If I'm not offering information, it means that I can't."

He was properly exasperated now. "Look... you need to understand something. Since you got back from leave, your absences from the office on various grounds have become a little more noticeable, let's say. Now, I didn't mind blowing off DeMarcos whenever I needed to because he was an asshole. But Wilkes is a good guy and he asks a lot of very good questions. So if you want me 'with you' to cover your professional butt, then give me some idea of what's keeping you so damn busy!"

Renard looked out over the fields and past the tents.

"Today!"

"I'm trying to think of a way to tell you what you need to know without giving you a history lesson. Cut me some slack. I've never had to explain this from scratch to anyone before." Renard huffed a sigh. "It's all about politics and aggressive belief systems."

"There's a difference?"

"There are fundamentalists in the wesen world as well as the human world, and they would kill Denny, Theo, Matty...me... for being half-breeds. I work against them."

"They'd kill them just for being half-breeds?"

"That's crime enough for some."

"So what's worse, being human-wesen, or wesen-wesen?"

"The former. The collaboration of the two worlds? Unthinkable. That's the capital crime. Ask Denny."

"Denny's alive."

"He got rescued."

Wu found himself sinking into a wish-I-hadn't-asked moment. "That's insane. Blame the parents, surely? What's the point of criminalising and attacking half-breeds after they've already been born?"

"I did say they were fundamentalists, Wu. Extreme views and logic don't readily co-exist."

Wu looked around the park. There were a hell of a lot of people here. A hell of a lot of women and small people. And the place was a really big target. He stuffed his hands in his pockets so they couldn't be seen shaking. "So.. ah... are you here on security detail? Or...?"

"I don't believe that an attack on this fair is imminent. It's been quietly and carefully arranged by invitation and the Eisbibers are a suspicious people on the whole. But you're right, it's going to attract a lot of attention."

"So you're looking for faces that don't fit?"

Renard nodded and Wu felt back on slightly more familiar territory. If they kept things cop-y and operational, he reckoned he could handle it. It was a fair, with people. Who looked human enough to him, so he could think of them as human with human vulnerabilities. But he felt a little naked, looking around and knowing that there was something underneath the skin of everyone he saw, from the old guy swearing at his uneven walker to the tiny panda-Ewok walking round the outside of the tracks and following the electric cars mournfully. It was like being in a locked, haunted room with a bunch of people, all of whom could see the ghost but him. He just kept waiting for something seriously scary to grab his neck. Then it occurred to him to ask...

"Look, I've only had the wesen-for-dummies introduction. Does Nick... change... into anything?"

"No. He's human."

That helped, actually. He needed that one constant while he got his head around everything else.

"So... these anti-mingling guys-"

"―separatists―"

"These separatists... what would they do about an event like today's?"

"Bomb the festival, I should think."

This was said so calmly that it made Wu feel a little ill. "And... where there are separatists, there are usually supremacists hanging around somewhere, so they would do what? Bomb the whole of Portland to be sure they got all the halfbreeds?"

"Oh no, they think longer-term. They'd just sterilise all the women in mixed relationships, then those born mixed, and then start weeding out the weaker forms of wesen."

"'Just'! he says," Wu murmured. "Whatever happened to 'live and let live'?"

"I mean, they would allow them to live a monitored life, as opposed to completely annihilating them. They may be corrupted wesen, but they're still wesen. They're still better than the humans that they'd like to crush and rule."

"And you're against all this, right?"

Renard glared at him, and stepped out from their bush corner across the track to the open. Wu guessed that this was the confidential part of the conversation over but was irked at the glare.

"Hey - a recap is always good, ok? You do not get to be mad that I asked that."

"I'm not mad. I'm watchful."

It was Wu's turn to glare. "I have seen you nearly every day for six years. I know your faces. Apparently you chuckle, which is news to me, but otherwise, I'm pretty familiar. You have a suspicious face, a watchful face, a disapproving face, a mad face, a where's-my-mustard face...which admittedly is pretty close to your mad fac―"

"JACOB, NO!"

Hank's bass shout broke him from his reverie, and both he and Renard turned to see the Lieutenant running round the track to the first major straight section, where a tiny Ewok was waddling right down the middle, just a couple of bends from a six-cart onslaught. The kid either didn't hear, or didn't think the yelling was for him because he kept walking towards the oncoming traffic.

Wu's heart went into his mouth and he pelted off alongside Renard round the outside of the track, Wu overtaking, since Renard was still a little slow from the bullet in the back of his thigh. Hank stumbled over an 'ornamental' rock wedged between two fake pines and went sprawling, leaving little Theo closest to the Ewok, waving his arms frantically in his line of sight and yelling his head off. Wu saw Nick streaking in from the zipwire, but none of them were going to make it. The cars were one bend away.

With a simple, desperate look, Theo dived out onto the track and wrapped his arms round Jacob, screwing his face up before impact. Wu was within feet of grabbing them when Renard accelerated past him, snatched both kids, and barrelled them off the track and onto the outside grass. They rolled as a three for a moment, then landed in a heap.

There was a really long quiet, then Theo burst into shocked tears, staggering blindly into Nick's arms as he did a sprint-stop on his knees on the grass and flung his arms out. Monroe scooped up Jacob, who pulled bemusedly at his beard, and still didn't seem to have picked up what all the fuss was about. Renard was still on the ground, clutching his arms over his head, shaking and groaning. Wu went over and squatted next to him. Was he doing the woge-changey thing… hidden? He was about to offer him a hand up when Renard got himself together and stood shakily, blinking rapidly. There was quite a graze going up into his hairline. Monroe freed a hand from his Ewok-hug to pass a crumpled tissue from a cord pocket, which Renard accepted in a dazed kind of way.

"Well," Wu observed eventually, ruffling Theo's head, "I think you broke every Sith rule going, back there. You 'lright?"

Theo pulled himself from his hiding place against Nick's neck and wiped his face. "Where's Jacob?"

"I got him! He's right here and he's fine, aren't you, little guy? He's a little pink and a little confused, and …. Oh boy! He's a piglet."

Wu could not stop staring. Under the white panda paint, the little guy had developed a clear snout and a downy face, and his ears were up in pink points. Wu moved from staring to gaping, and then threw in a little gawping. He was quite disappointed in Hank for not looking a little more awestruck ― it wasn't like he was that seasoned a KS, even if he was a badge-wearing one rather than a sticker-wearing one.

Monroe cleared his throat. "Ah… shouldn't I be giving this teeny-Bauerschwein to someone else to hold? Wouldn't that be sensible?"

Nick shook his head. "Looks like you're doing fine, mister wolf."

"Nick! Do not be flippant about this stuff, alright? This is potential social disaster waiting to happen!"

"Why?" Wu asked.

"I'm a Blutbad ― wolf-wesen! Pigs… wolves… awkwardness!"

Jan caught up with them and took Theo from Nick, thanking him quietly and letting Theo curl into a ball on his forearm and on his chest. Carianne smacked Theo sympathetically with her banana from the other side of his chest. He put a steadying hand out to Renard's shoulder. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah. I landed a little hard."

"I was too far away to run. So… thank you. Again. You have the happy talent of being around when my son needs you."

"You're welcome," Renard mumbled, and looked away, still blinking rapidly. Wu recognised the evasiveness immediately and created a distraction.

"Anyway, Theo….that was a super-brave thing you did. We do civic awards for things like that."

"Jacob's my friend," Theo said a little reproachfully then, apparently sensing a bargaining opportunity, looked up at Jan with a big grin. "Can I have the biggest-sized ice-cream, daddy?"

"No. You've been very brave and we'll talk about that more later, but you're still not going to eat something the same size as your head. Come on, let's go get the medium and take Jacob back to his parents."

"Oh!"

"Siths can't fight with rampant indigestion," Jan pointed out mildly, and when this line of argument brought about respectful silence from his son, he looked around in concern. "We still can't find Matty in the fair zone. Could you guys join Denny at the perimeter? Volunteers are taking over all the activity posts, now."

"Sure," they mumbled as one man, but also goggled after Theo as father and son disappeared into the crowd, Theo holding Jacob's hand as his friend babbled excitably at him.

Hank limped up from behind, rubbing his knee. "Can't believe he flatly turned down a medal. That's unnatural. He's really got Jan's 'he ain't heavy, he's my brother' thing going on, hasn't he?"

Wu had to agree that it was strange. "The protection thing… is that genetic?"

Theo tugged firmly on Jacob's hand as he stopped to try and pat a vast German Shepherd dog on the butt. "Don't do that, you silly sod!"

Monroe rubbed his beard. "Hard to tell, but that kind of looked like environmental influence to me."

The tension was broken. The guys chuckled, and the group broke up. They still had another little boy to find.

X x X

Denny made it up the trunk of the tree by putting enough pressure on his fingertips and toes on tiny holds to keep them numb for a week. He'd scraped down twice, gone butt-down in the mud twice and lost his tee-shirt and contents of his jeans in the muck, but finally he was sat side-on to the branch with his back to the trunk, gripping the branch above him until he got his balance. He was gory, sweat-sticky, and covered in bark grit. Great. But he was stable at last, and Matty looked very pleased to see him.

"Right son, now I've got you still for a bloody minute... " Denny leant over carefully and pinned the wolf badge to Matty's coat. "There. Won't be losing you again. But... and this is a BIG 'but', Matty, we need to talk about your stalking habits. Did your dad say it was alright to track squirrels?"

Matty put his chin on his chest and shook his head meekly.

"Thought not. Now, I know you need your stalking practice, but next time could you stick to a creature that stays on the ground? Like a bunny, or something?"

Meek nodding, this time.

"Good lad. Now... if you could slowly shuffle... SLOWLY! God... Matty... trying to give me a bloody heart attack? No pouncing on branches, alright?"

"Sowwy." Matty climbed onto his front.

"Ok. Hang on round my neck ― without claws, please ― and what I'll do is lower down to one hand on the branch, then jump. Alright? Don't worry. I'm a good lander, and I'm not going to let go."

"Big leap?" Matty asked nervously.

Denny looked down and tried to sound more confident than he felt. "Um... pretty big, yeah. But I'm really, really tall, almost like Uncle Jan, so by the time my feet are hanging down, we're already a lot closer to the ground."

Matty randomly poked the bark graze on his front, making him yelp. The yelp made Matty jump and there was a thrashing, fidgety moment with Denny's heart in his mouth before he got them both stable again.

"Please don't do that!"

"Hurt Denny?" Matty's kitten eyes were so huge and round, and rapidly moistening, that Denny found himself giving the kid a reassuring squeeze and feeling like a total marshmallow for hugging rather than clipping round ear, as his own dad would've done if he'd tried that.

"It hurts a little… yeah. It'll hurt a lot less if you don't prod it."

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to balance his lap on the branch, ready to slip off forwards. It was quite a long way down, on reflection. He was pretty sure nothing he'd ever done in Afghanistan had been this scary. "Right, jump on three. One, two... no don't lunge ― WOAH!"

X x X

There had clearly been some kind of near-emergency over at the race track, but the moment of drama was over because the guys were spreading again. A jolt in Rosalee's lower abdomen jerked her back to her own immediate awareness.

The tension was growing: Rosalee could feel it keenly. Her lower back ached fiendishly and a great heat seemed to be throb up through her from her toes. Uh…. She hated these moments. The sweat started to poor, and through the white spots in her vision, she looked around for a stall that was likely to have an ice-bucket. They were nasty moments, these flushes, but she'd been taught how to deal with them. And she was glad not to have Monroe around for this one because he would panic and frogmarch her right home.

First things first… get out of the canopy and get some breeze in her face.

She moved round to the front of the front of the stall and leant against the table, eyes closed and relishing the coolness. It helped a lot. She needed to get a grip. She knew she could make her head work, but she wasn't very confident in her knees right now.

"Hey Rosie, how's it go― Rosie, are you alright?" Nick's voice, and his hand at her arm.

Wow this was getting to be a big flush. "Hmmm. Monroe gone… back to the…?"

"Woge wrestling? No, we're still looking for Matty. He's just gone to the…. Shit! Rosalee?!"

Rosalee felt a sensation of bogginess underfoot, ridiculous lightness up top, and then she was glad of Nick's hands under her elbows and his chest in her face. His collarbone was slightly harder than necessary, but she couldn't have everything. "Yeah,'m alright."

"You're not! You're not alright!"

"Nick… stop freaking out…"

"Don't tell me not to freak out ― you're fainting down my front!" She felt him scrabbling to get his arms around her back quickly without bumping her bump, holding her too hard, or being too gropey, which was hard on him because her legs were wobbling insanely. "Uh… this isn't good. I'm gonna get you down on the ground, alright?"

"No! Ground is bad. Upright is good. Jus… keep me up for a minute, will you?"

Heat flowed off his face and neck as he held her on her feet for a moment. "If anything happens to you because I under-reacted to this, I will get my parts ripped off and served in something non-vegan. You know that, right?"

The flush passed and she grabbed Nick's shoulders, puffing the moment of lightheadedness away. "It's fine, I know what to do. Stay still. I need to stretch this out."

"Ok!"

She did what the ante-natal instructor said she should do to deal with those early cramps, pushing one leg back in a small lunge, hanging onto him for balance, then the other, and then the pain subsided. She straightened up, feeling overly warm still, but normal. "Thank you."

Nick was still wide-eyed. "Shouldn't I be getting Monroe?"

"If I have another one of those in the next ten minutes, I'll call him. Don't you worry. But if you want to be an absolute sweetheart when that time comes, you can round up Den―"

Nick frowned suddenly and he tilted his ear to the woods behind them. She also heard a distant yell. Then a louder yell. Then the unmistakeable sound of the European Lesser-Tempered Siegbarste yelling "Boll-oooooocks!"

"Go!" She nodded permission at Nick that she was fine to be left and watched him streak off through the trees.

X x X

Denny wasn't far away and it was the sound of Matty yelling in panic that got Nick over to them real fast. Denny was hanging by the knees from a branch about 15 feet above the ground, clutching Matty's forearms as the tot dangled beneath him, squeaking and panicking.

"Crap rescue attempt!" Denny summarised briskly, and Nick shot forward to grab Matty and get him down on the floor.

"Don't move," Nick warned Matty. "I've got to help Uncle Denny get down."

"Yep. Help would be good… Nick, can you reach up and grab my hands?"

"Hinge grip?"

"That's the one!"

"Got you." Nick shifted directly underneath and linked fingers with Denny. "Ok, so, say when!"

"WHEN!"

It was good teamwork: Denny unhooked his knees and pushed off from the tree, flipping down behind Nick, who crouched and let go so his wrists wouldn't get pulled back against their joints as Denny jack-knifed his legs down towards the ground. Denny landed on his feet, a little breathless, but turning with a big, relieved grin. "Cheers Nick ― blinding timing. Saved me untold damage to neck and shoulders, I can tell you."

"Jumped!" Matty chirped, pointing frenetically at the high branch. "Jumped with favrit Grimm!"

"Yeah! My favrit Grimm too. He's got really, really strong arms. Couldn't have done that with a normal bloke." Denny picked his teeshirt up out of the bog. "Bugger. This is filthy. Can't put this back on, I've got an open graze."

Denny had a point about the hygiene aspect, but that clearly wasn't what was bothering him. Nick followed his disconcerted gaze out to the main fair area and had a pretty good idea of what kept Denny rooted to the spot. His scars. Not just the ones lining his back and shoulders, which were now white and faded, but also the razor decoration on the small of his back that made it completely clear that the Verrat were responsible for inflicting the rest of the damage. Nothing like the reminder of Verrat torture to lower the tone of a party. He stripped his jacket off, handed over his shirt, and stuffed the jacket back over his tee-shirt. The sun would warm him ok by the time they got out of the shade of the woods.

"Here. Until you can borrow something from Jan that actually fits."

Denny grinned and stuffed himself into it gratefully, though struggling to do so for the sweat. "Nick, you're an absolute star. Can't actually… do it up… but it covers the important parts, anyway."

Matty waddled over to Denny's feet and stuck his arms up. "Big leap!"

"You're quite impressed by that, aren't you?"

Both guys chuckled as Denny picked his mobile, wallet, keys and other bits out of the grass, stuck them in his pockets, then picked up Matty.

"C'mon then. Let's get you back to Bud before he has a heart attack."

"I'll call him," Nick agreed, and managed to shove his basic message through the wave of spluttered thanks at the other end of the line. "He's waiting in the beer tent."

"A sound place to wait if you ask me," Denny said and they made their way out of the woods.

Then it struck Nick that Livvy was in the beer tent. If he was going to get any sensible conversation out of her in the next month or so, he could not have Den waltzing in there heroically with Matty hero-worshipping him. It would probably push Livvy over the top of her crush-o-meter and sideways off her barstool in one motion.

"Wait! Wait wait wait… give me Matty, Den."

"Yeah ok, ok…Why?" Denny bundled him over urgently.

"Livvy's in the tent."

"So? If she needs a lift anywhere, she's going to have to wait for me to put Matty down first. Not that she'll want me anywhere near her at the moment." Denny looked himself up and down with distaste. "I'm looking a bit squalid."

Nick was in two minds about whether or not to take this quiet moment with Denny to let him know about Livvy's rampant crush. Jan was way better at this delicate kind of stuff. But on the other hand, it would be really hard for Jan to warn Denny off Livvy without making it look like he was having this totally irrational (yet completely calm) jealous moment. Scrub that. Ok, it had to be him, really. But he was doubting Monroe's protective logic, now. Livvy's crush on Den wasn't really his to disclose. Sure, he wanted to spare her the pain of completely falling for someone she couldn't have, but she seemed perfectly aware of the risks and it wasn't something he could actually prevent. What if he screwed up their friendship by―

"You could disagree," Denny muttered. "About me looking squalid."

Nick batted his eyelashes at Denny. "Squalid? You look so beautiful covered in mud and twigs with a shirt that doesn't do up."

"You sarcastic sod!"

Nick chuckled as they stamped their way out of the woods. Matty kept himself entertained by finding different parts of his arm to pinch.

"Right.. so what's the issue with Livvy?"

Damn. "Ah… nothing."

"Bollocks! All that 'wait wait wait' malarkey…. You've got something on your mind. C'mon. Livvy's my mate. If there's something up with her, I want to know about it."

'She really likes you Den, don't go sweeping her off her feet too often, ok?' It was on the edge of Nick's lips, but then he held back. Too much information, too quickly. He decided to take Monroe's approach and go in there with an analogy. Or something.

"Alright... um... you know the other morning when I picked you up for your EMT sign-ups and I showed up a little early?"

"A little early? Nine, you said, but you were at the door at the first sparrow's fart! "

Nick shrugged. It was a New Year's resolution, not to be late. "Well... you know how Jan was up already and exercising in the lounge? In boxers? He stopped mid press-up to smile and flick you a morning wave and you had to go have a second cold shower, right?"

Den blushed like a raspberry. "I'm sure you'll get to the point one day."

"Well that's the effect you have on Livvy." There. It was out. And he hadn't even mentioned the octopus-wrestling.

"What!?"

"Yeah."

Denny looked genuinely consternated. "Really?"

Nick nodded. The less speech, the better, while he was ahead of his game. Denny stayed still, rubbing the back of his head and looking stunned. And… not too pleased. Shit. What had he started, here?

"Look, uh… she's not planning to make any moves on you―"

"I'm not worried about that. She knows how the land lies. But Christ... poor Livs. I had no idea. Until you completely blew her subtle cover."

"Subtle? Denny, her crush is NOT subtle to the rest of mankind! Better I tell you, than―"

"Than what?"

"Than someone makes some bitchy remark to her about her total obviousness while you're still standing there, and she gets completely humiliated in front of you!"

Denny seemed to muse on this for a moment as they approached the beer tent. "Fair enough. I just don't know what I'm supposed to do about ... knowing. I can't start acting different, can I? She'll think she's done something wrong and waste time stressing about it."

"Uh... just be you. With a bit less carrying around?"

"Yeah, I'll just let her struggle around in pain. That'll sort her crush out."

"Fine. I'll help with the carrying more to take the focus off you. I'm just trying to help her, you know." Nick smarted slightly and he picked up his pace towards the beer tent. He felt as if he'd been caught shit-stirring or something, rather than trying to prevent a bad situation from developing.

"Nick!"

"What?"

Denny jogged alongside, smiling ruefully. "Cheers. Sorry it took so long to get to that bit."

Nick raised a brow at him and they turned the corner of the beer tent to a rousing reception. Betty tried snatching Matty right from his arms, but Nick smiled and hung on firmly until Bud took him. It was perfectly obvious where Matty wanted to go. While Bud wrapped Matty up, Janie pecked Nick on the cheek, then Den, and led Den off behind, to the bar, where they had the first aid kit. Nick heard a glass smash.

Betty gave Matty's little head a ruffle. "Who was a naughty boy, worrying his mom?"

Bud ignored Betty and addressed his son. "What were you doing, kiddo?"

"Big leap!"

Nick had to laugh as Bud made instant sense of this enigmatic summary and pulled an anguished face.

"P-Please don't tell me that one of you had to go up a tree?"

"Biggest leap ever!" Matty enthused.

"We're fine," Nick assured said. "A bit of adventure hasn't killed anyone."

"A bit of proper organisation wouldn't kill anyone either," Betty said, supposedly under her breath, but loud enough to stop conversation.

Nick hated atmospheres that could be grated, cut or sliced. He was very close to taking the woman by the shoulders and looking deep into her eyes, but… no. First, she seemed mean enough to suffer a nasty turn if he turned his Grimm on her and he didn't want to make the domestic situation worse for Bud. Second… probably not what his dad would've done. He'd had a chance to read the old letters, lately. He caught Bud's eye: Bud looked mad enough to dunk her in the apple tank feet-first, and quite honestly, he should be the one with the right to do that. So Nick backed up to the edge of the tent, looking enough towards Betty so she knew he was addressing her, but keeping the Grimm effect at bay.

"If you're talking about Denny forgetting the badge, yeah. Mistake. But he also went up a tree to get Matty back, so… no snidey comments in my presence please. Thank you."

He slipped round the corner and disappeared before Bud could start apologising for his mother-in-law.

X x X

Apart from losing her grip on a beer glass pretty randomly, Livvy acted perfectly normal and Denny wondered if Nick was reading everything wrong. Or was just being over-protective. It wasn't Livvy he had to disentangle himself from, but Janie, who appeared determined to plaster pretty much most of his front before Jan rescued him with the spare tee-shirt from Carianne's changing bag. He thanked Janie as graciously as he could, grabbed a cheeky beer from Livvy, and slunk out of the back of the tent, heading for the test-your-own-strength machine.

Wu was already at the machine, mallet in hand, and did a massive down-swing that just about tinged the bell at the top of the rise. He punched the air jubilantly, leapt about, and grabbed a huge stuffed toy from the stall next to the machine.

Denny grinned as Leroy the stall-owner shuffled behind the machine and fiddled with the dial. He was probably turning up the air pressure: if a human could hit the bell, then he'd lose all his stock to the wesen.

"Are you going to have a go?" Jan murmured into his ear.

He grinned. "You know, I think I might. Despite the 'no ogres' sign."

"If you can get the grey bears with blue noses for both Theo and Carianne, I'll get spare keys cut for the Spyder."

Denny whirled round. "You serious?"

"Totally." Jan winked. "Happy winning. And be subtle, alright?"

"Gotcha." He joined the back of the queue, sipping on his drink, when Barnes the bastard slipped behind him, waiting for his go. He groaned inwardly and stepped out of the queue for the moment to grab a steak baguette from 'Mauvais meats'. He chuckled at the name. Yeah, the vendors may be Mauvais Dentes, but it was hardly good advertising. There was a good buzz in the place, though. If even the Mauvais pair could get a good trade going, then he wasn't inclined to ruin the atmosphere by letting Barnes get to him. He'd nearly finished his snack when he caught sight of Nick's beer-drinking peace round the back of the beer tent being disturbed by an outraged Livvy.

"That was mean!" she accused him.

Nick looked a bit cornered. "What... was mean?"

"Leading Denny back to the tent all shiny, half-dressed and in need of a first-aid kit! What are you trying to DO to me?"

Uh oh… Sorry mate, Denny thought, and zipped back into the queue with his back to them before he could make any eye contact. He couldn't shut his ears to the conversation, though, and felt himself go blazing hot in the face and the ears as they carried on arguing ― not particularly quietly.

"Hey! I at least managed to get some clothes back on him ― he was half-dressed! What do you want from me?"

"Nick! Half-dressed is SO much worse!"

"I can't win. Seriously, I just... can't win."

"All he had to say was 'hey Livs', and ... smash. I dropped a glass. And then he rolled his sleeves up and swept it all up for me. I'm a lost cause."

"Yep."

"I need to be locked away."

"Definitely. Somewhere sound-proofed..."

Denny chuckled, but then the sound of louder arguing overlaid Nick and Livvy's mutter-fest and suddenly he was directly behind Barnes in the queue, other people having wandered away in annoyance at him holding things up for some reason. Wu had his arms folded and was glaring at Barnes.

"Look… live with it. You had a go. The bell did not ting. Move on with your life!"

"I'm twice your size and you got a bear. He's messed around with the machine!"

"My turn," Denny muttered, and took the mallet from Barnes. "If you wouldn't mind backing up a bit?"

Barnes stalked to one side, glowering. "Go ahead. It's made it hard, now."

Denny brought the mallet down and there was a clang rather than a ting that made Leroy wince for the welfare of his bell. He dropped a couple of bucks into the box, then another couple. "One more go for luck?"

BANG… TING!

He collected two grey bears with blue noses and put them to one side on a tarp, where it wasn't muddy. "Still do-able, even on the higher-wesen setting."

Barnes chuckled. "Call yourself the higher wesen, do you?"

"Fine. Bigger wesen. Whatever."

"You get in there with a Koninglowen sugar daddy and that puts you up at the top of the wesen foodchain?"

Denny raged inwardly at the insult to Jan. "Thin ice, mate. Thin ice."

Leroy looked at him oddly. "So are you not a … Koninglowen?"

"Oh, ignore me." Barnes smiled charmingly at Leroy, putting money back into his little box. "Clearly I'm just a bad loser. It makes me ogre-ish. No offence, Mr Miller."

"None taken." Denny aimed for a hearty laugh, raised his hand to waft away the insult, but at Barnes' smirk, bunched his fist on the downswing and splashed it across the smug face, sending Barnes sprawling about six feet away. "It was still a bit rude, though."

A crowd gathered. He was clearly angry, but hadn't woged to Ogre as expected: Barnes staggered to his feet, shifting to bloody-nosed bison, and stamped the ground with his feet.

Denny held his hands out in invitation. He was ready for a proper scrap, now. "C'mon then, if you're hard enough!"

"Uh… Denny…." Nick's voice, alarmed, from the side.

"'S'alright, Nick. I know what I'm doing. This needs to be sorted once and for all!"

Barnes charged, head down, and Denny was snickering inwardly at how ridiculous that looked outside a rugby scrum when the horns appeared….

X x X

TBC… in which Rosalee's contractions become rather more marked, Nick truly steps up for Monroe, and people are reminded why the sound of a fox screaming is really bloody scary….