Thanks to everyone who read and to StyxxsOmega for reviewing.

Crossover with What Strange Creatures ch. 30, but both stories can be read separately.


Barry was trying not to do anything to scare Roddy, or at least not to do anything else to scare Roddy after the whole accidental woge down in the driveway had left him facing a very unhappy Reinigen on the verge of bolting, but he wasn't sure how good a job he was doing as they got settled on the floor in front of the couch. If nothing else it was technically kind of rude of him to have nudged Roddy to the inside of the room rather than leaving him a clear path to the exit, but courtesy said one thing while instincts said the opposite—be between the weaker party and the direction of possible danger—and since Roddy didn't seem to care he was letting the latter win.

"If you don't stop growling at me, I'm going to dump this ice on your head."

Barry jabbed at his arm. Gently, because obviously, but at least Roddy didn't seem to be on the edge of panic anymore. "I'm not growling at you, and you know it. Besides, it's an ice pack, not actual ice. There's nothing to dump."

"There's bound to be some kind of goo involved somewhere, and my claws work just fine."

He didn't even make a token attempt to carry out his threat, though, setting both packs against his knee, and Barry put the chips between them and started to settle in too before thinking better of it and going back to grab his computer. It was pretty clunky for a laptop, and if was going to take classes in person next semester he should probably look at replacing it, but right now it was the optical drive that mattered and he could think about upgrades later. "So what happened, anyway?" he asked as he sat back down and hit the power button, waiting for it to spin up.

"Huh?"

"You said that your classmates are assholes." At least when talking to Barry; he'd censored himself a little bit when talking to Dad, but in this case Barry had no doubt that the original description was more accurate. "So what happened?"

Roddy rolled his eyes. "What do you think?"

"Fine, what happened besides the completely obvious?"

"Seriously?"

He sounded a little upset, and Barry hesitated. "I mean, I won't ask again if you really don't want me to, but that's not going to make me stop wondering. And maybe growling a little because your eye looks pretty gross."

Roddy looked away. "Sorry, I...a couple guys jumped me after school on Friday. It happens and it sucks, but I'm not hurt bad enough to matter so I'd rather just forget about it."

"They jumped you? Isn't that the kind of thing that your teachers should do something about?" Not that anyone at school had ever tried to bully him or the twins, but it seemed like a pretty straightforward time for an adult to step in. Like a for-real adult, not like he and Roddy were technically adults since they were both over eighteen, and never mind what that technicality had cost him.

A scoff. "The kind of shit they do at school is more like shoving me into lockers or trying to trip me in the halls. Over in two seconds, and really easy for the teachers to look the other way about. Which they absolutely do, but fuck them anyway. This," he waved a hand vaguely towards himself, "is what happens off campus, when the jackasses hang around and go after me at the bus stop or wherever."

"How many of them were there?" Barry asked after a minute, not particularly sure that he wanted to hear the answer.

"Only two this time. And like most of the rest of the preps at my school they'd never been in an real fight in their lives so once I gave Mitchell a bloody nose they got scared and backed off. It just took a little longer than I'd have liked to get a punch in."

"That's why you're limping, too?"

"Yeah, I got unlucky and landed harder than I realized after the black eye. Was more worried about getting back up at the time since getting kicked seriously sucks, but at least as of this morning it's my knee that's been the most annoying."

Barry flexed his hands against the carpet. He'd never been in a real fight until last year, although he hadn't understood that until he'd found himself facing a convicted murderer ten or fifteen years his senior in a carefully-deserted concrete hallway, but even after that it wouldn't occur to him to kick someone who was down. Or someone who was half his weight. And some of that must have shown on his face because Roddy shook his head.

"It's fine, okay? I'm fine. It was just a couple dumb-ass bullies, not like the bangers in my neighborhood who really could mess me up if I was stupid enough to let them catch me. I should have warned you about the bruises, but I didn't even think about it."

Somehow that wasn't the most reassuring thing that Barry had ever heard. "Were these guys at least...I don't know, your size?"

Roddy rolled his eyes. "They weren't thirteen, so no, they were bigger than me. And smaller than you. Pretty much average."

Barry considered for a moment, and Roddy's eyes narrowed.

"What?"

"I was thinking twelve, but sure."

"Oh, for—" Roddy laughed and punched his arm. "Fuck you."

Barry shoved him back, but his flash of humor disappeared about as quickly as it had come. "Shouldn't you at least tell one of your teachers? I mean, it's not...I wouldn't say that normally, but..." In prison you kept your mouth shut, he'd learned that real fast, and even before that he'd never taken any kind of problem to a teacher. To Mom, sure, but then she been the one to follow up and that was different. But still seemed like Roddy shouldn't have to deal with that kind of bullying on his own.

Roddy looked at him for a minute and then shook his head. "That's not how anything works. Not for me, anyway. I told you there was a whole mess with a quartet I was supposed to play in last year, right?"

"When your teacher got killed? Yeah, sure." That wasn't the kind of thing that Barry was going to forget.

"Well, that's where it went eventually, but it started with three of them going after me—not for the first time, either—Dr. Lawson walking in on the fight since for once they didn't wait until we were off school grounds, and guess what? I'm sill the one who got suspended and kicked out of the quartet. Because apparently I'd randomly decided to jump the three of them for shits and giggles, and the fact that it shouldn't have taken anyone more than two seconds to realize that their story was complete and utter bullshit didn't factor in anywhere. I tell a teacher about this and I'm the one who'll pay, because my word doesn't mean jack where anyone at that school is concerned."

"That's crap."

"No kidding, but what do you suggest that I do about it?"

Barry didn't have an answer for him, and as the silence started to drag out Roddy pulled his backpack onto his lap and dug around.

"Here."

There were three CDs in the stack Roddy handed him, and the labeling was creatively 'One,' 'Two,' and 'Three' which didn't exactly tell him much, but Barry popped open the first case and stuck the disc into the computer.

"That one's pretty clean, and so's two, but fair warning that your dad might not much like some of the language on the third one."

"Good to know."


"Nah, see, it's not going to track." Roddy gestured to the center line on the screen. "You lose a beat right there, and then there's no way you'll get the flow back, and the people on the floor will get seriously off even if not all of them will realize why. Well, I guess you could maybe try..." He trailed off again, shaking his head. "Never mind, that won't work either. Play it and you'll hear it, but there's a reason I had to pull the other track in as a transition even if I'm still keeping an ear out for something better."

Barry couldn't tell much of anything from the lines on the screen, but when he clicked on the play icon it was pretty obvious what Roddy meant. "That's cool. How long did it take you to learn to just read this stuff off the screen?"

"Well, it's a lot easier on an actual turntable, but that version of the software's free and it works well enough with a little practice. And after a while you can just kind of hear it, anyway."

Barry suspected that there was a very large element of Roddy being really extremely good at musical stuff involved too, but even for him who didn't claim any particular talent in that area it was interesting to see how Roddy had stitched the different tracks together. And the software had been easy enough to download—legitimate, too—even if he didn't understand half of what Roddy was pointing out and would have no idea how to use it himself if left to his own devices. He was seriously wishing that he could actually go to one of Roddy's raves given that what he'd listened to was all very clearly dance music, but even after he was off house arrest he'd still be on parole, and since the raves weren't technically legal...

"Boys?" Dad called, and both of them twisted towards the stairs.

"Down here," Barry called back, and then muted the computer quickly.

"What are you two up to?" Dad asked as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Just playing around with some music Roddy brought. How was your meeting?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "Should the subject ever come up, I'd like to state that a shoe box is not an appropriate filing system. For anything. And I'm afraid that I'm going to be working most of the rest of the day just to get things into a reasonable state for me to start work on the actual estate. But I did stop by the grocery store so our snack supply has been restocked if you two run out of chips, and I was thinking we'd order dinner at six or so. Maybe burgers?"

"Sounds good to me," Barry said, looking down at Roddy. "You?"

"Yeah, sure."

Barry hadn't really expected anything else, and it seemed like neither had Dad because he nodded immediately. "All right. Sometime before then the two of you pull up the website for Farmer's and see what looks good, all right?"

"Okay," Barry agreed.

"Roddy, do you need another ice pack?" Dad asked. "I put a couple more on the freezer."

"Thanks, but I think I'm okay for now."

Dad nodded again. "Well, they're there if you need them."

He headed back upstairs, and Barry hesitated before setting the computer aside. "We probably ought to take a break from that."

"Huh?"

"Your definition of 'clean' is a little different than Dad's."

"Oh. Oops. Sorry."

Barry grinned and shook his head. "It's cool, I'm just going to put the tracks on my player so when I'm listening to them it's with headphones on. Or when he's at work."

Roddy echoed his grin.

"Your dad doesn't mind that you listen—I mean didn't mind—I...shit. Sorry." Barry was starting to think that he had kind of a knack for sticking his foot into his mouth sometimes, especially where Roddy's family or lack thereof were concerned.

"It's okay. Really. It's not...Dad worked a lot, and our place wasn't—isn't—big enough for me to play much of any kind of music without headphones anyway. At least if I'm not the only one there. Hell, even my violin practice got annoying sometimes despite Dad trying to claim that it didn't." Roddy shook his head. "Besides, with a lot of this—the DJ'ing, I mean—I don't think that he really wanted to know. He was fucking pissed to find out that my alibi for the night that Dr. Lawson was killed was an illegal rave, even if he was glad that I had one, but I'm glad that I was too old for anything except getting yelled at once we were both back at home. And outside of that he was enough..." Another head shake. "He was enough not a people person even with me that when I said that I was going over to a friend's place he never asked. I think he was just glad to have the house to himself sometimes."

Barry couldn't even wrap his head around that, and it must have shown on his face because Roddy frowned.

"What?"

"Nothing. It's just that that's way different than what I'm used to. I mean, I remember this once when I stayed after school to work on some project with a couple of my classmates—neither Jason nor TB were in the class with me so I had to join a group with other people—and we decided to go out for pizza after it was all finished. When I called Mom to ask, she wanted to know all their phone numbers and parents' names and everything about them before she'd say okay. And that's when I was driving myself and coming straight home afterwards and everything."

Roddy's forehead wrinkled. "Were you like six? Ow!"

That hadn't been an actual 'ow' in response to Barry's jab, so Barry just stuck out his tongue and poked him again. "I said I was driving, genius. It's just different."

"Yeah, I guess." Roddy tilted his head. "So if music is off the table for the time being, what do you want to do? I'm afraid I'm probably not up to failing at pool, or at least not all of the twisting I need to do to even try some of the shots."

Barry nodded and then craned his neck to look out the high windows. "Well, I was originally going to suggest that we could take my bike out today since the weather still looks sort of decent, but it's getting a little darker now, and I'm afraid to do something that might injure you any more anyway. So maybe video games?"

"Yeah, I don't really need a broken arm the week before a concert. And a broken neck would be bad too."

"Priorities."

"Exactly." He pushed himself up, wincing a little but at least not as much as he had been when Barry had been seriously afraid that he was going to take a header down the stairs, and went over to look at the game shelves. "I know we've played a couple of these before, but what's your favorite?"