Thanks to everyone who read and to Scififan33 for reviewing.


Okay, useful thing to keep in mind for the future: don't ask Monroe about a clock he's working on unless you want to hear the answer. The very ridiculously complete answer.

Not something that Roddy was going to forget anytime soon.

And not that it wasn't kind of cool to be able to see all the miniature gears inside the pocket watch on Monroe's table, especially since Monroe had let him look at them through the funny little magnifying glasses and even poke at a couple pieces with the tiny screwdrivers, but Roddy could have happily lived his entire life without hearing the name of every single part and an abbreviated history of how it was invented. It was kind of like Dr. Marshall and her weird fascination with woodwinds, but worse.

Eventually Monroe wound down, though, and they headed for the practice room. By way of the kitchen, which was cool with Roddy since Monroe said that he'd made cookies. Except that Roddy's nose wrinkled as soon as he entered, and he looked up at Monroe. "Did you burn something?" It didn't smell like it was the cookies, but there was definitely a hint of ash in the air.

"Singed a jacket." Monroe waved at the one draped over one of the chairs. "Nick's fault. Don't worry about it."

"Okay," Roddy agreed after a moment. At least whatever 'Nick's fault' meant in this case, Monroe didn't look like he'd gotten hit by anyone.

"You want chocolate chip, peanut butter chip, or both?" Monroe said, retrieving a tin from the top of the refrigerator and holding it out.

That was a stupid question, and Roddy grabbed one of the both and then two more when Monroe snorted and shook the tin at him. More sugar was always better.

Monroe took a couple cookies for himself as well before shutting the tin again and herding Roddy towards the practice room. "I know I've got a tub of Dvorak stuff around here somewhere, and I think there are a couple duets in it if that sounds like a good place to start."

Roddy, nodded, licking the last of the crumbs from his fingers and scrubbing his hands against his jeans before helping him pry open the door of the closet. Literally pry, since the top hinge was warped. Unfortunately the stacks of plastic tubs inside weren't exactly all that well arranged and there was no way to tell what was in what, so after a couple false starts they just started pulling whatever they could grab out and digging through the music inside to see what looked interesting. Which, of course, required trying several of them, and Roddy was surprised when it was suddenly three o'clock. Per the still-bizarrely-many wall clocks that Monroe had.

"I'm going to have to get going soon," he said reluctantly. "They just sent out the lists of what we're supposed to get done before school starts, and I've got to get to the big library this afternoon." Between the impromptu lecture on clock internals and the stop for a snack they'd barely been doing music stuff for two hours, but if he wasn't at the bus stop by twenty after he'd have to wait another hour for the next one going the right direction, and getting from the big library back to his place was going to be annoying enough as it was.

"Schoolwork?" Monroe asked, rocking back on his heels. "Isn't summer supposed to be a break from all that?"

"Yeah, well, apparently someone forgot to tell my teachers. For English we've got a whole book report this year instead of the teacher just telling us to read something." Which, okay, might have something to do with the fact that neither Roddy nor most of the other kids had done much more than skim the 'required' summer books in previous years which had made discussing them when class started again kind of difficult, but still.

Monroe patted his shoulder sympathetically, and Roddy shot him a quick smile. Theoretically three weeks should be plenty of time to finish everything that they were expecting from him, but unlike some of his classmates he'd never get away with jumping straight to cliffsnotes never mind claiming that he'd still been out of the country on vacation and hadn't gotten the information in time so he had to make time to actually do the work. It was annoying since the non-music stuff he was good at like math never had summer work, only the annoying ones like English and history did, but whatever. Annoying was nothing new.

"Well, we have enough here that I think we can get back to digging for wherever I put the Dvorak some other day," Monroe said. "A slight problem just occurred to me, though. I only have one copy of most of these which is going to make practicing difficult for one of us until I can make some copies." His shot a quick grin in Roddy's direction. "And as tempted as I am to leave the better sight reader of the two of us at a disadvantage next week, I suppose that's not a very nice thing to do."

Roddy made a face at him and then leaned over to flip through the music. There were some tricky bits in all of the pieces, that was part of what made them fun, but he'd be fine reading through most of them. Especially since Monroe never got angry when he flubbed something or wanted to repeat a section. "Give me the ones that are the cello duets that I'll need to transpose, and you keep the rest?" he suggested. "I'm not so good at reading base clef in real time." Which Monroe had probably already noticed.

Monroe nodded. "That's fair. I'll have copies of the rest next week, and we can go from there."

It only took Roddy a few minutes to pack up and store his new music, and then Monroe put his cello in its stand and set aside the rest of the pieces they were keeping out before going back and packing up the rest.

"Should we put those back in the closet?" Roddy asked, waving at the tubs.

"Hm? Nah. I should do a better job of arranging things in there anyway. And I have got to fix that door. But do you want a r—wait. You're going to the library, right?"

"Yeah. They've only got copies of the book I need at the big one downtown, though." He could get it delivered to the closer one if he asked, but that would take a couple more days, and if it really was anywhere near a thousand pages he wanted to get started. Or, well, 'want' was the wrong word, but...

"How about I give you a ride and we make copies while we're there?"

Oh. Duh. That was kind of obvious. "Didn't think of that," Roddy admitted. "Sure. Thanks."


The bus pulled to a stop with a creak, and Roddy stuffed the copy of the piece that he was mentally transposing back into the folder he'd borrowed and grabbed his violin and books. They'd gotten copies of everything made before Monroe's time in short-term parking had run out, but he'd had to leave to avoid a ticket before Roddy could go pick up his book from the hold shelf so Roddy had ended up taking the bus from there. Which had been fine with Roddy since it meant that he hadn't needed to hurry and had been able to grab a couple books that he actually wanted to read in addition to the required one.

Just once it would be nice if he had an English teacher whose tastes overlapped with his.

People were getting out of work now which made the grocery store more crowded than he liked, especially when he was already carrying stuff, but their fridge was getting kind of bare and he wanted to get it filled again before Dad got home. There were some other chores that needed to get done too—laundry and vacuuming and all of that—but those could probably wait until tomorrow.

Two bags of groceries put him at the limit of what he could carry, and he didn't even bother waiting for the next bus. Home was only a couple miles away, nothing that he hadn't walked a hundred times before.

He was a little surprised to see Dad's truck already back in front of the trailer when he made the final turn, but it was the sight of Uncle Joseph's that made his good mood drain away. For a moment he debated if he could get away with hiding in the tool shack until his uncle went elsewhere, but it wasn't real likely to work since it was perfectly visible from the house. And his relatives who weren't Dad liked to snipe at him enough as it was so he might as well get it over with.

Dad smiled at him as he entered, and Roddy returned it. "Hey. I picked up groceries." He held up the two bags and then managed a sort-of civil nod for his uncle.

"Thank you, we were running low," Dad said, taking them from him and turning to put them on the counter behind him.

"Don't suppose there's a job that goes with them instead of you just lazing around all day," Uncle Joseph said.

"Nope, I was dueting with a friend and then went to the library to pick up a book for school," Roddy said, ignoring his sneer. "Oh, Dad, Monroe says hi." He hadn't been planning to say it since even if Monroe had told him to say hello to his father, Roddy was pretty sure that Dad's preference was that Monroe forgot that he even existed, but he was pretty okay with freaking out his uncle given the opportunity.

As he'd expected, Dad's face paled a little as he turned back. "But your summer orchestra is over. You're still...?"

"Yeah. He asked after we handed back our music if I wanted to keep playing. We had to do some digging today to find some pieces that will work, and I'm definitely going to get some practice reading base clef, but that's not a bad thing."

"What, you can't even find decent friends?" Uncle Joseph asked. "Guess it's not a surprise when you spend all of your time—"

"He's decent," Roddy interrupted before Dad could react. "It's just that he's a Blutbad."

Uncle Joseph's eyes practically rolled up in his head, and Roddy bit back a smirk even as he turned to reassure Dad. "I'm fine, honest. I told you before, it's fun to play with him; he's good, and he's not annoying about it like most of the kids at school." He shot his uncle a glare. "And he likes me. He even dropped me off at the library so I could get my book."

"Just be careful," Dad said with a sigh.

"I will." He hesitated. If it had only been he and Dad he'd have offered to start dinner now, but the last thing he wanted was to have to extend an invitation to his uncle. "Are you hungry?" he temporized. "I can put the spaghetti on, but I was going to try to get the first couple chapters of my English assignment read first."

"You should get started on your schoolwork," Dad said, to his absolute lack of surprise. "But before you do, do you think you'll be okay without me for a week or two? Joseph called me this morning about giving them a hand with a big job down south, and he's here to pick me up if you're okay with it. But if I go I won't back until Saturday or Sunday after next." A pause. "Joseph says that your aunt would be happy to have you come stay with her and your cousins if you'd rather not be alone."

"I'll be fine here," Roddy said immediately. It wasn't like it'd be the first time that Dad had left him alone for work—work or other things—for some stretch of time. When he'd been younger, after Mom had died, he had ended up foisted on one relative or another, but it had never gone well. For him or them, although usually worse for him, and he'd started taking the 'home alone' option the instant he'd been deemed old enough. "You have to leave tonight?" he asked.

"Need to leave ASAP," Uncle Joseph interjected.

Roddy very much doubted that that was true, but... "Are you sure you don't want dinner first?" He'd even put up with Uncle Joseph if it came to that. "Spaghetti doesn't take that long."

Dad shook his head. "They'll have food at the site, but it's a couple hours from here. I'm not taking the truck down with me, but I'll have my work phone, so give me a call if you need anything. There's some extra cash in the tin."

"Sure," Roddy said. "Thanks."

Dad nodded, hugging him quickly, and then grabbed the duffel that Roddy hadn't even noticed sitting at the end of the couch. "Let's go."