Thanks to everyone who read and to Shathar for reviewing.

Note: This chapter is the first that has some direct crossover with What Strange Creatures, but the two stories can be read separately.

Barry sighed and racked the weights. He was glad that the set had finally arrived, and with enough plates to give him a workout—well, as long as he didn't woge, but he'd promised Dad that he'd never do that while he was working out alone anyway because a woge was what would save him if he ever lost control of the weights while lifting in human form—but right this second it wasn't holding his focus.

In less than an hour Nick was supposed to be bringing by this kid that he knew, and while Barry had meant what he'd finally told Dad, that he'd maybe kind of like to meet someone his own age, it had occurred to him shortly after that that he didn't actually know how one went from meeting someone to making friends with them. When he'd been a little kid other kids had just sort of been there, and the twins had obviously always been there, but then after that...

Middle school was where his non-twin friends had fallen away, he was sure of that much, but thinking back he didn't actually remember all that much different in middle school except that Mom had started picking him and Jason and TB up at the end of the day with lists of activities for them to do that didn't involve any of the sports they'd previously played, and weekends had gotten too busy for any birthday parties or visiting with anyone except the Colberts.

There had to be more involved in making friends that just being around other people, though. Right?

He'd have googled it, but if someone really was monitoring his internet usage he didn't need that kind of humiliation.

He jumped in the shower even though he hadn't worked out enough to need it and then headed downstairs to poke around in the fridge. They'd finished off the last of the eggs and bacon at breakfast and were low on some other stuff as well, but Saturday or not Dad had needed to make a run into his office and said he'd stop by the grocery store on the way home. Which should be soon.

With nothing currently in the fridge appealing to Barry, he let the door swing shut and headed downstairs to see if the results of the calculus re-test had been posted yet. They hadn't been, although under the circumstances it was possible that that was just as well for his nerves. He'd always done all right with math in high school, not great but well enough to keep up, but last Friday's test had been...extremely not great. Although apparently his results hadn't been unusual, hence the teacher offering a re-test yesterday.

He put in a game and played a few rounds, but it was a relief when he heard Dad's car pulling into the garage again.

"Hey," Dad greeted, handing over a case of sodas when Barry reached the top of the stairs.

"Hey. Did you find the file you were looking for?"

"Yep." He shook his head. "Right on top of my desk where I left it, and I'm going to put it upstairs before I misplace it again. Could you get the rest of the groceries out of the car?"

"Yeah, sure." It only took a few minutes and he was finished by the time that Dad made it back down, which was good because according to the clock it was noon. And way too late to call anything off, especially since Nick's Jeep pulled up in front of the house a few minutes later. Barry hung back a little as Dad went to open the door.

Barry wasn't quite sure what he'd been expecting since Nick hadn't given them anything in the way of a physical description, but the Reinigen kid was tiny. Like chest-height on Nick, who was pretty much normal human sized himself even if he was a Grimm. Sure, Barry was accustomed to being one of the biggest guys in the room, it sort of went along with being a Jagerbar, but he was pretty sure that a twelve-year old version of himself would have matched this kid for size and still had a few pounds to spare.

He was also so pale that he looked like he was about to pass out, and Barry realized belatedly that Dad had finished his portion of the meet-and-greet and instead of stepping up and doing his part Barry was standing and staring like an idiot. "Um, hey," he said, offering a hand and trying not to flush.

"Hey," the kid echoed, and and at least he didn't seem to get any more nervous when his hand disappeared into Barry's. Then again, he was probably as used to that as Barry was at avoiding crushing fingers.

"We brought sandwiches," Nick said.

"You didn't need to do that, but thank you," Dad said. "Please, this way."

The kid—Roddy—didn't seem inclined to leave Nick's side as Dad led the way to the kitchen, but Barry couldn't really blame him. "Does anyone want anything to drink?" he asked as Dad waved Nick and Roddy towards seats. "Soda?"

"Sure," Nick agreed, and Dad nodded as well.

"You too?" Barry checked, grabbing the last couple that were actually cold rather than out of the new box.

"Sure," Roddy echoed.

"Nick says that you're a musician," Dad said as Barry passed out drinks and then took the seat next to his father, across from Nick and Roddy. "What do you play?"

"Violin."

"How long have you been playing?"

"Awhile."

Nick's focus had been on pulling out sandwiches and handing them around, but apparently he found a moment to poke Roddy out of eyesight because the kid shot a quick scowl in his direction and then continued.

"Some people brought some instruments to my elementary school when I was nine or ten. Musical outreach whatever. It turned out I could get more than noise out of it so they let me take the bus to a different school for their after-school program, and I've been playing ever since."

"I don't think I've ever asked, but do you play any instruments?" Nick asked Barry after the last of the sandwiches had been distributed.

Barry shook his head. "No." From what he remembered from elementary school music class had been a weekly thing, not a special event, but the only instrument he'd ever tried a recorder. It hadn't gone well. For that matter, neither had the attempts that he and the twins had made to incorporate ritual drumming into any of their Jagerbar ceremonies over the years. He didn't dislike music, but he was definitely a consumer not a producer.

Silence fell for a few minutes as they all took the excuse of starting on their sandwiches.

"So, what other classes are you taking?" Dad asked Roddy as it started to draw out.

"English and math and history and all of that, plus the school's orchestra and chamber music classes. Music composition and Latin for electives."

"What classes are you taking?" Nick asked Barry.

"English—communications—and math and history. Online."

The room went silent again as all four of them focused on their sandwiches again. Unfortunately the problem with food as a distraction was that eventually it was gone, and Dad cleared his throat as Barry stood to clear the table.

"Why don't we all go to the living room? It's more comfortable in there."

In a literal physical sense, maybe, but Barry wasn't seeing anything else improving, and he was proven right as every conversation starter that either Dad or Nick attempted was a failure. The kid apparently didn't follow any recent movies or television shows, neither Nick nor Dad nor Barry could follow him when he talked about music, no one in the room wanted to talk about their families so that topic was aborted practically before Dad finished the sentence...the only discussion that lasted longer than five minutes was about the weather, and if that wasn't pathetic Barry didn't know what was.

"Do you like video games?" Barry blurted, accidentally cutting Nick off as he started to make some comment about the Trailblazers. Since, apparently, their next foray into conversational failures was going to involve sports.

Three heads swiveled towards him, and he swallowed and kept his eyes on Roddy who eventually nodded slightly. "Sure."

Relief crossed both Dad's and Nick's faces, proof that they weren't as blind to the awkwardness as they were pretending to be, but Barry ignored them. "Do you want to play? We've got a system downstairs."

Roddy looked up at Nick and then shrugged. "Sure."

Barry pushed himself to his feet and waved at Roddy to follow, leading him down into the basement. For a moment it seemed like Roddy hesitated, but when Barry turned into the game room he wasn't too far behind, and Barry gestured towards the shelves of games even as he went to pop out the single-player game he'd been killing time with this morning. "Grab whatever you want, I'll get the controllers."

"Oh. Um, you better pick." Roddy flushed slightly when Barry looked back at him. "I haven't really played much, I just wanted to get out of that room."

"Oh. Yeah, I can understand that. Uh..." Barry shifted over and Roddy shifted back just as quickly, but then again he was still a Reinigen in a Jagerbar's house, and one who was badly outmatched at that. "Does racing sound good?" Barry asked, deciding that it'd be easier on both of them if he just pretended not to notice. And maybe didn't pick anything violent.

"Sure," he repeated.

Barry grabbed the first game he saw that met that description and moved back to the console, putting it in and unraveling the cords for two of the appropriate controllers. "Here. Have a seat. You can grab a pillow if you want." Barry scooted sideways himself, suiting actions to words as he grabbed one and tucked it between his back and the couch.

Roddy sat down on the floor as well, albeit just about as far away as the controller cord would let him, and Barry started the game.

The first couple rounds they played in relative silence, but at least with the game they were doing something, and it wasn't anywhere near as bad as sitting around upstairs had been. Roddy figured out how the game worked pretty quickly, although he ended up playing with the controller on the floor and both hands on top of it which was kind of weird. But then again he was keeping up with Barry on short order so Barry figured that he could play however he wanted.

"You didn't volunteer for this, did you?" Barry asked as a short video showing their progress up to the next level of tracks began to play on the screen.

Roddy looked up at him. "Are you kidding? I showed up at Monroe's for practice on Thursday, and found out that a Grimm had signed me up for a play date."

Barry grinned despite himself and got an echo of it in return.

"How did you get roped into this?"

"I think it's kind of my fault. Dad and Nick decided that I needed a friend, and you sort of got nominated." He hesitated. "I don't know if Nick told you anything about me?"

"A little," Roddy said after a minute. "Or at least I overheard some stuff which made it kind of hard for him not to say anything." A pause as he seemed to be deciding something, but eventually he shrugged again. "Could have done without hearing the word 'evisceration.'"

Barry ducked his head, flushing. "If he told you that then you probably know that it didn't go quite that far, but it was still pretty ugly." Barry pushed aside the cuff of his jeans to show the ankle monitor. "Did he tell you about that?"

From the surprise on the Roddy's face the answer was 'no,' but he didn't bolt, which was something. "I guess that explains why we're here."

"Yeah. I can't really go anywhere else for a while."

"Can I ask what qualifies as pretty ugly?" Roddy asked after a minute.

"Technically? Kidnapping and attempted murder."

Roddy's eyes widened, and Barry got the impression that he really was about to make a break for the stairs.

"It's not—we weren't thinking of it like that," he said quickly, holding up his hands. "I swear. We—a couple of my friends and I—wanted to do this whole ritual from way back when. It's...if you don't know a lot about Jagerbar history it probably wouldn't mean anything, but it was from the old country. Mom used to tell us all of these stories, and she'd always say that we needed to..." He shook his head and looked away as he felt his throat closing.

"Nick said that she died," Roddy said quietly as Barry gripped his pendant and focused on the screen. "Your mom, I mean. I'm sorry. It sucks."

"Yeah," Barry agreed, swallowing hard before glancing over. "He told me about your dad, too. Sorry."

Roddy nodded.

Barry shook himself and then forced himself to return both hands to his controller. "Anyway, at first it was the planning and preparation and all of that and it was cool, you know? Different, even if we had to do a lot of stuff ourselves 'cause neither Dad nor Mr. Colbert were ever into any of it. She—Mom—had helped us do some of the other old rituals too, like when we first woged and when we turned fifteen and all of that, but this was...it was bigger. And then a couple idiots broke into the house while Mom and Dad were away at a fundraiser last year, and all of a sudden it wasn't prep anymore, it was happening. Like the whole..." He shook his head. "I don't think that any of us had really thought it the whole way through—I know I hadn't, anyway—and it just...it went way too far."

Another nod, and much to his relief Roddy didn't seem inclined to ask any more questions so both of them returned their attention to the game. Only for two rounds, though, as Roddy broke the silence again. "Did Nick tell you anything about me?"

"Mostly just that you're a musician and you don't get along with your classmates very well." And that Nick thought that he needed a friend, but Roddy pretty clearly already knew that part of it.

"Oh. Yeah. That's accurate."

"Why don't you? Get along with them, I mean?" Not that he actually knew Roddy, obviously, but the kid seemed pretty inoffensive.

One shoulder twitched. "I'm better at the violin than any of them, even though people like me aren't supposed to be—uh, that means scholarship kids in this case, not Reinigen, although it'd probably mean that too if any of them had a clue—and I refuse to pretend that I'm not just to make them happy. Things got kind of ugly last spring which is how I met Nick, and..." Another shrug. "Some of the dumber ones still knock me around sometimes, but mostly we all ignore each other now. Which is perfectly fine by me, but Nick thinks it's unhealthy or something."

"Something got ugly enough with the violin that you met a Grimm?" Barry asked skeptically. As noted previously he didn't know much about music, but that seemed kind of ridiculous.

"Short version, I won a spot in a quartet, a couple assholes made a whole stupid fuss about it, and after I got suspended for fucking defending myself they decided that it'd be a great idea to keep pushing and frame me for a bullshit prank so I'd get kicked out of school for good. Except the prank went real wrong, and Dr. Lawson died."

"Seriously? Damn."

"Yeah. It was ugly. I mean, Dr. Lawson could be kind of an asshole too, but I wouldn't have wished any real harm on him, you know? Anyway, I had an alibi so framing me didn't work, but my dad didn't, and he got arrested. He got hurt, and I got mad, and then I sort of lured them—the quartet—into an abandoned building terrorized a confession out of them."

Barry choked. "Seriously? No offense, but you aren't exactly..." His eyes widened. "You didn't woge in front of them, did you?" Both Mom and Dad had told him stories about what happened to Wesen who didn't keep the code, and Nick had already said that most of Roddy's classmates were human.

"God, no!" Roddy looked horrified, which probably meant that he'd heard the same stories. "That's a good way to get yourself executed!" He hesitated. "It's a little complicated to explain if you don't know a lot about Reinigen, but let's just say that things went a little farther than I intended and it was a good thing that Nick and his partner showed up when they did."

"Did you get charged?"

"Nah. I mean, there wasn't really anything that they could charge me with except for holding the worst attended illegal rave in history, especially since I didn't force anyone to show up. And after what the others had done to Dr. Lawson, the guy from the DA's office barely looked at me long enough to say 'don't do it again.' Nick had more to say, but if it had been up to me none of it would have happened at all, and he knew it."