Thanks to everyone who read and to 1983Sarah for reviewing.

Crossover with Meaning Makes It (ch. 12), but both stories can be read separately.


Roddy groaned and banged his head against the floor. Or tried, at least, as something was interposed between his forehead and the carpet after the first hit, and it only took a second to register Barry's hand. Shit, he was fast. Not exactly comforting for someone who's first defense against basically everything was running. Of course, Barry wasn't actually doing anything besides preventing Roddy's forehead from pitching forward, and after a moment Roddy lifted his head again and flipped him off just on principle.

Barry laughed and took his arm back. "Well, stop being ridiculous, then."

"I'm being ridiculous? Who in this conversation was complaining that he wasn't allowed to make his English paper longer? No one complains about that!"

"I'm just worried that I wasn't able to make all of my points clearly enough within the word count."

"Oh, I'm sure the point that you're insane came across real clearly."

Barry swiped at him—slow enough for easy tracking and missing by a good foot, so that was good for Roddy's nerves, at least—and then waved at the screen. "Would you please pick your next character so I can thump you again?"

Roddy rolled his eyes and put his hands back on top of the controller. "Considering that the first time that I played this game was about an hour ago, you probably shouldn't sound quite so proud about that."

Before Barry could answer, and if his expression was anything to go by he was definitely going to answer, footsteps on the stairs drew both of their attention, and Roddy sat up quickly. He'd given up and gone ahead and stretched out on his stomach after an hour or two of racing games and protesting shoulders, but while he'd decided that he was reasonably okay with Barry, he wasn't at all sure about Mr. Rabe.

"Hello, boys," Mr. Rabe greeted as he came around the corner. "It's almost dinner time, are you getting hungry?"

"I could eat," Barry said immediately, looking at Roddy.

After a moment Roddy nodded as well. He was a little surprised that he wasn't just being told to leave so they could eat, but as long as they were offering and he wasn't on the menu he wasn't going to say no.

"I was thinking Chinese," Mr. Rabe said. "How does that sound?"

The question seemed to be directed at Roddy, presumably because Mr. Rabe already knew his son's preferences, and since it confirmed that last point Roddy nodded again.

"Is there anything in particular that you'd like?"

Roddy shook his head quickly. He wasn't picky anyway, but even if he had been he had better sense than to start making requests.

"All right, then, I'll just put in an order for the usual and call you two up when it gets here." He turned and started towards the stairs again, only to pause part way. "Oh, Roddy, don't forget to call your mother and let her know that you're eating here and won't be home until later. I can give you a ride if you need it."

Roddy blinked, staring after him for a moment as he tried to figure out where the hell that had come from, and then shook his head and turned back to the video game and clicked over quickly. "All right, character picked." A character who probably was going to get thumped, but whatever.

"Aren't you going to call home?" Barry asked.

"No."

"Your mom won't care that you're not going to be home for dinner?"

Roddy looked up at him. "Dead people usually don't." As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wished that he could take them back, or at least he wished that he'd phrased that a little differently given how recent Barry's loss had been, but he still had no idea how his mother had even ended up a part of this conversation.

Fortunately, while Barry's eyes widened, he didn't seem to take Roddy's words to heart. "Oh. I'm sorry, I thought that Nick said that your dad was the one who'd died."

"Dad died at the end of the summer, yeah, but Mom died back when I was a kid."

"Oh," Barry repeated more quietly. "But somebody must need to know that you're not going to be home."

"No. I mean, people will notice if I never get there," or at least Monroe and probably Nick would eventually, and anyway, no sense tempting the overgrown predator no matter how nice he was being, "but I live by myself so six or eight or whatever doesn't make much of a difference."

"But..."

"But what?"

He stared for a minute longer and then shook his head. "Never mind."

"Okay," Roddy said slowly. Although this conversation was reminding him that the last bus of the night left the little shopping plaza at a little after nine, and he'd better be on it unless he wanted his night to include a really long walk because no matter what Mr. Rabe said he wasn't asking for any rides. He hadn't figured that it would matter when he'd left the trailer earlier, mostly because he'd assumed he'd be here for a couple hours at most, but given that it was already quarter to six he pulled out his phone and set an alarm for eight just to make sure that he didn't miss it.

"What kind of phone is that, anyway?" Barry asked, leaning over his shoulder. "It looks weird."

"I don't know. Whatever the store had." Where store meant gas station that sold pay-as-you-go phones, anyway, and Roddy shrugged. "I'm not that into tech stuff as long as it works."

"Me either," Barry admitted. "I just hadn't seen one like it before."

Probably because his phone had come from an entirely different class of store, but Roddy only shrugged again, and a moment later Barry turned his attention back to the video game and picked his own character.

Roddy did get clobbered, although he still didn't think that Barry should be too proud of that fact given his total playing time, but before they could pick another game from the shelves there was a call from upstairs. Roddy couldn't quite make out the words, but Barry grinned and pushed himself up.

"Come on, that must be dinner."

If it was it had come fast given that the Rabes lived kind of out in the middle of nowhere, but then again with the way that Mr. Rabe had talked about a 'usual' order the restaurant probably knew them pretty well. And when they got upstairs Roddy figured that the restaurant probably liked them too because that was a serious amount of food. Like, Roddy got that Barry and his father both had to be decently north of two hundred pounds, and Barry had to be at least as capable as he was of eating half his own weight in a day given the opportunity, but that much food would have kept Roddy fed for a week.

Neither Barry nor Mr. Rabe seemed to think that it was out of the ordinary, though, with Mr. Rabe handing them plates because apparently eating straight out of cartons wasn't the done thing here, and while Roddy wasn't about to take the first or the last of anything, he also wasn't too worried about eating too much when Barry seemed to be building a tower on his plate and even Mr. Rabe's was packed pretty full.

Barry left his plate on the table and headed for the fridge, returning a moment later with sodas for all three of them. And a frown for Roddy's plate. "Aren't you hungry? You can have more, there's plenty."

"I'm good," Roddy assured him.

Barry looked dubious, and Roddy shook his head as he took a chair.

"This is a normal amount of food for me, I promise."

That got a quiet chuckle out of Mr. Rabe, and after a minute Barry sank down beside him and started in on his food tower.

"What have you two been up to?" Mr. Rabe asked after they'd all gotten some food into their stomachs. "Video games?"

"Darts first, then video games," Barry corrected. "I was going to show him my bike, too—just right around the house, not really going anywhere—but it was raining all afternoon."

Privately Roddy hadn't been all that disappointed since Barry's description of dirt biking sounded more like a fast track to broken bones than anything else, but Barry had been excited about it, and Roddy had decided that he was willing enough to try as long as Barry was the one doing the driving. Or whatever you called controlling one of the things.

"Ah, well, some other time," Mr. Rabe said, and unless Roddy missed his guess he wasn't too disappointed that their plans had been thwarted either. Then again, Barry had said that his dad didn't like him wandering around in the woods too much these days even if he was careful to stay on their property.

"Did you get manage to get caught up on work?" Barry asked.

Mr. Rabe rocked his free hand. "Caught up might be an overstatement, but at least I'm not dangerously behind on anything anymore. Give it a few more hours tonight or tomorrow, and I should be ready for next week."

"Want to take a break and watch a movie or something with us?" Barry asked, looking at Roddy. "We should be able to find something good."

Roddy nodded since it was obvious that Barry wanted him to, and after a moment Mr. Rabe nodded as well.

"I suppose a break does sound good. When are you expected home?"

That was directed at Roddy, and he shook his head. "I need to be on nine o'clock bus, but that's it so I should have time for a movie."

"I can give you a ride."

"That's okay, you don't need to."

"Hm. Well, I can at least drop you off at the stop, then, and save you the walk."

Roddy started to shake his head at that as well but got a frown that made him freeze immediately.

"It's well past dark, it's wet, and that road is not well lit. If you'd rather catch the bus that's fine, but I will drop you off at the stop."

"Thanks," Roddy said after a minute, mostly because it was pretty obvious that he wasn't going to get away with saying anything else.

Mr. Rabe nodded and turned his attention back to his son, much to Roddy's relief. "What movie are you two thinking about?"

"We haven't talked about it," Barry admitted and then looked at Roddy again. "Anything that's come out recently that you want to see?"

"I have no idea what any new movies are," Roddy said, suddenly hearing an echo of the last time he'd visited. Although at least in this case it made things easier since it meant that Barry and his dad could pick whatever they wanted and he wouldn't have seen it. "The last movie I watched was The Blues Brothers over at Monroe's a couple days ago, and I know it's older than I am." With some amazing musicians, granted, but it wasn't anything that anyone would call new. "I'm not that picky about movies, though."

"Monroe...isn't he Nick's friend?" Mr. Rabe asked. "I think he mentioned someone by that name."

"Yeah, they're friends. That's technically how I met him," because sending a Blutbad to talk to a random Reinigen kid was still the sort of weird, ridiculous thing that Nick did, "but then we ended up playing for the same orchestra over the summer—he's a cellist—and we had fun dueting so we still do that after school most Thursdays. And usually I end up staying the night since it's kind of annoying to get from his place to mine."