Thanks to everyone who read, and to M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng and 1983Sarah for reviewing.

Note: Includes references to Grimm 2.10 (The Hour of Death) and crosses over with Meaning Makes It (ch. 14/15) but both stories can be read separately.


Roddy yawned hard, finding himself staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling, and a moment later the events of last night came back to him. He was staying in a house with two Jagerbars because there was an insane Grimm running around Portland. Because that was how his life worked these days.

The fact that he'd already been planning to spend the night before Monroe had called was completely irrelevant.

Barry was still sprawled out on the floor snoring—he'd insisted that Roddy take the couch on the grounds that he didn't fit anyway, and Roddy hadn't been able to argue the point—and Roddy wriggled free of his sleeping bag and headed for the bathroom. Taking care not to slip free of his borrowed clothes at the same time because they really were huge on him.

Fortunately that was a problem that was easily enough dealt with since Barry hadn't even blinked at his request to use their washing machine last night, and after Roddy had washed his hands he ducked into the seriously-yep-this-was-the-laundry, a room that once again approached the square footage of his entire trailer, and dug his clothes out of the dryer. If he'd been by himself he wouldn't have cared about wearing the same things for a couple days in a row even without a rinse, but he knew perfectly well what kind of reputation Reinigen had among other Wesen. The Rabes had been nice enough and all, but he figured that it was better to just avoid the whole thing.

Once he was dressed in clean clothes that weren't in danger of falling off him, Roddy headed back into the game room and snagged his backpack from where he'd dropped it and his violin by Barry's desk yesterday. His second set of clean clothes went into the bottom pocket, and then since practicing was out of the question while Barry was still asleep, he dug out the latest novel for lit class. Yet again his teacher's tastes in no way lined up with his own, but that didn't get him out of the stupid paper he had to write this weekend.

He climbed back onto the couch and picked up where he'd left off on the bus yesterday, and he'd finished another chapter and a half before Barry groaned and rolled onto his back, swiping at his eyes. A few blinks later, and he turned his head to the side to look at Roddy. "Hey."

"Hey."

He pushed himself into a sitting position and nodded at Roddy's book. "How long have you been up? You could have woken me or turned on the TV or whatever."

"Not that long. And no reason to, I have an opinion piece due on Monday, and I have to get through this thing before I can write it." Or at least before he could bullshit it, because there was no way that his teacher wanted his actual opinion.

"Mm." Barry ran a hand through his hair and then kicked free of his own sleeping bag and pushed himself to his feet, stretching. "Have you eaten?"

"No."

"Are you hungry? I am."

Roddy shrugged. "Sure." Or at least he could eat, although his stomach hadn't actually started complaining yet and probably wouldn't for a while given how much they'd put away last night.

"Cool." Barry waved at him to follow, and Roddy couldn't help a cautious look around when they reached the main level.

"Are you sure we won't wake up your dad?" Roddy had only been up to their second floor where the bedrooms were for a few minutes yesterday when Barry had been digging out the sweatsuit he'd borrowed, but it had been weirdly open with multiple balconies overlooking the main floor, and there was no way that sound didn't carry.

"Oh, Dad's been awake for a couple hours by now, I guarantee it. Just a question of if he plans on making breakfast or if we're eating leftovers. He usually cooks on the weekends, but he did say something about needing to pick up some groceries the other day so who knows what we've got in the fridge."

"Hello, boys," Mr. Rabe said, looking up from a laptop set up on the kitchen table when they came around the corner. "Did you just wake up?"

"I did," Barry said, and then jerked a thumb at Roddy. "He was doing homework."

Roddy would have flipped him off just on principle, but that was one of the things that you just didn't do in front of someone's parent so he settled for ignoring Barry. "Good morning."

Mr. Rabe nodded in return and then stood, shutting his computer. "Well, I was just debating whether I should come down and wake you, but since you're here now, how do eggs and bacon sound for breakfast? I think we've got enough for the three of us, but if not we can always add some toast."

Barry nodded immediately, and since Mr. Rabe looked at him, Roddy nodded too. Usually his breakfasts were cheap off-brand cereal or fancy coffee and whatever Monroe's latest venture into odd bagel flavors had turned up, but he wasn't going to argue with their selection.

"Back in a minute," Barry said, turning for the staircase to the second floor.

Roddy watched his retreating back for a moment and then returned his attention to Mr. Rabe, who was lighting up a seriously fancy looking stove. With an oven that Roddy'd probably fit in without even requiring mutilation, something that he was most definitely better off not thinking about. "Uh, can I help with anything?"

"Could you grab the eggs for me, please?" Mr. Rabe asked, nodding to the refrigerator as he pulled a large pan down out of one of the cabinets. "And the bacon should be in the freezer."

Barry was downstairs again, dressed for the day as well, well before breakfast was ready, and apparently he'd been right about his father having been up for a while because Mr. Rabe made some offhand comments about the work that he was in the middle of while they were setting the table. Roddy couldn't quite tell if it was because he'd come home early yesterday or if he always had to work on the weekends, but considering that he'd had to work the last time Roddy was over too he suspected the latter.

"Do you have any homework this weekend?" Mr. Rabe asked as he brought the food over, looking at Barry.

"Yeah," Barry said, making a face. "Math. And a test on Friday to go with it. But Roddy, do you actually have everything with you to get your stuff done? You're welcome to borrow my computer if you need to, but it's not like you were planning to get stuck here."

"No, but I haven't been home since Thursday, either, and when I left school that afternoon I took everything with me that I expected to need for the weekend." It was lucky, because if he didn't have his backpack or violin with him he wouldn't have a choice except to go home. He waited until Barry and Mr. Rabe had served themselves and then grabbed a spoonful of eggs and a couple strips of bacon for himself. "My laptop has a crappy battery so I'll need to plug in somewhere to write my paper—"

"That's easy," Barry cut in. "There's an outlet right next to the couch."

"Cool. Then I think the only things I don't have are my notes from the last physics lab since it was Wednesday and I took them home that night. But I can write that up Monday morning if I have to." It'd be tight, but the new physics teacher didn't seem to have gotten the message about the screw-up scholarship kid yet so he'd be safer doing a rush job on that than in any of his other subjects. "Mostly I need to practice, though. Is there somewhere I can set up where I won't bother either of you? Violin kind of carries." He could try to be quiet, but he knew from past experience that once he was into the music his best intentions wouldn't mean anything. If it said fortissimo, that's what he'd play. And not practicing wasn't an option given the auditions at the start of next week.

"You can do that downstairs," Barry said, frowning around a piece of bacon. "It won't bother me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. As long as the door down to the basement is closed Dad won't be able to hear too much, and I'm...I've gotten pretty good at tuning stuff out."

For some reason that made Mr. Rabe look upset, and Roddy let it go. Although he made a mental note to at least attempt to remember to check in with Barry a couple times while he was practicing, because he had to be a perfectionist if he wanted to be ready for the audition, but that level of repetition had gotten on even Dad's nerves sometimes.


"I don't think any of those words are actual things," Roddy informed Barry as he stared at where another comma was apparently supposed to be. "Contextual adverb whatever bullshit."

"Contextual adverb clause," Barry said with a snicker. "And it is so a thing." He bumped Roddy lightly with his arm. "Come on, you must have diagrammed sentences at some point."

"Are you kidding? The teachers in my neighborhood were happy if we left school able to read at all, commas could just fuck right off. Von Hamelin did make me do some stupid remedial crap when I started there, but..." He shrugged. He killed on the multiple guess and short answer stuff, sure, and that was how he'd scraped by with high Bs and low As English and history thus far, but there were way too many stupid grammar rules to keep track of when you were writing writing, and if spell check wasn't a thing he'd be in even worse trouble. He didn't doubt that Barry knew what he was talking about, but it all just made his head hurt.

"It's not that bad," Barry said with another light nudge. "I mean, it's better than calculus."

Calculus being Barry's demon and what they'd spent a couple hours on after lunch—that plus an admission that Roddy still hadn't quite wrapped his head around, because he knew people who'd been in prison and overgrown predator or not Barry just didn't fit that mold—but numbers had always made sense to Roddy. This did not. "Want to bet?" he asked, with probably more fervor than was strictly appropriate.

There was a chuckle from somewhere behind them, and Roddy winced a little because he hadn't realized that Mr. Rabe had come back downstairs. Barry didn't seem to care about four-letter words, but from what he'd seen last night Mr. Rabe appreciated that kind of thing even less than Monroe. He hadn't actually said anything, but Roddy would have watched his mouth a little more if he'd realized that they weren't alone.

"Did you manage to talk to everyone that you wanted to?" Barry asked as Mr. Rabe came around to sit down at the other end of the couch again.

"I think so. I'm afraid that no one has any brilliant ideas, though. Terrence and his wife are planning to do the same as we are, sit tight and see how the situation plays out, but Andrew and Sally are talking about packing their families up and getting out of town for a while."

Roddy had no clue who any of those people were, but he understood the 'pack up and go' urge just fine because unlike the completely innocuous story that was playing on the television screen right now, an hour or two ago this same station had interrupted themselves with footage from the scene of creepy Grimm murder number two. Complete with the image of another bloody G on the wall. Nick and Hank had been visible in one of the clips, coming out the front door of the crime scene with a couple other police officers, but none of them had looked very happy and none of them had said anything to the reporters except 'no comment.'

"Has anything new come up since I went upstairs?" Mr. Rabe asked, nodding at the television.

"The same guy who did the press conference last night finally stopped by to talk to the reporters," Barry said with a shrug, "but all he said was that the latest murder has links to the first, the police are investigating, if anyone knows anything they should call the police hotline, etcetera. Nothing new."

"Well, that's why we ordered a couple days' worth of food at lunchtime."

Roddy wanted to insist that he couldn't stay here for days any more than he could actually leave Portland—through tomorrow, sure, but he had school on Monday—but before he could find a way to say so that didn't sound completely ungrateful considering that they'd been great to keep him thus far Barry spoke again.

"Did you talk to Mr. and Mrs. Colbert?"

Barry's question was hesitant, and Mr. Rabe seemed to pause as well before he shook his head. "I thought about leaving a message, but I don't...I'm not sure that they'd appreciate hearing from me."

Colbert was the last name of Barry's friends, the ones he'd gotten in trouble with and were presumably still in prison if Roddy put what Barry had told him earlier together with what he'd said the other day, and if those were their parents, he could understand the reluctance. He kept his mouth shut.

"Right." There was quiet for a minute, and then Barry shook himself. "Did you want to finish your game? We could take a break from this, I don't think Roddy would mind."

Roddy rolled his eyes the comment, however true it was, but while the chessboard was still set up on the side table, he'd be okay if the game slipped from everyone's memory. He hadn't thought much about it when Mr. Rabe had been looking for a chess partner earlier and Barry had still been in the process of submitting his calc answers, but while he didn't consider himself a particularly great player—he might have beaten Dad once every four or five times they played, but definitely not any more than that, and there had been guys down at the park that even Dad had never beaten—he'd obviously played a lot more than Mr. Rabe. And it showed in the number of pieces left on the board. He didn't know that Mr. Rabe cared about losing, but he didn't know that he didn't, either, and there was no sense in being obnoxious about it.

"Homework first, especially since I'm more than willing to concede this one," Mr. Rabe said. "But when you've finished, why don't we try another game with me against the two of you? If you can't remember how the pieces move, that should slow Roddy down a little."

"Hey!" Barry objected.

Roddy snickered despite himself. Not annoyed then, good. And there wasn't too much text left that Barry had turned red. "So what's this section about?" he asked, gesturing at the screen when Barry turned it towards him again. "I don't see any commas."

"Yeah, but there should be. That's not how em dashes work."

Of course it wasn't. Roddy sighed. And then shot Barry a sideways grin. "You know, considering how much they look like a negatives, I'm surprised you saw them."

In retrospect he probably should have gotten out of range before saying that given what they'd worked through with Barry's calc homework earlier, and he ended up in a headlock on short order because there was no universe in which he was any kind of match for a Jagerbar over the age of thirteen. Fucking genetics.

"Barry, don't maul your friend," Mr. Rabe said.

"I'm not mauling him, I'm just—hey it's that police guy again."

His grip on Roddy's neck loosened as soon as he said it, and Roddy wriggled free as Mr. Rabe turned up the volume on the TV.

"—pleased to announce that we've made an arrest in the recent murders," the same police officer or captain or whoever had spoken in the other press announcements was saying. "Mr. Smulson was caught in the act this evening and taking into custody by the brave members of the Portland Police Department."

"Does that mean they caught him killing someone?" Barry asked, turning towards his father, and Roddy had to admit that that was where his mind had gone as well.

"I have no idea," Mr. Rabe said. "I hope not. Of course I'm also curious how they managed to take a Grimm into custody at all because I would have expected..."

He trailed off with a shake of his head, and it wasn't like he was wrong because non-Nick Grimms were nightmare creatures and nightmares didn't just get arrested. "Nick could have done it," Roddy finally said. Nick wasn't in the habit of killing in general as far as he could tell, and if anyone was going to be able to take down one Grimm it was another one.

"I suppose."

Roddy hesitated, suddenly not sure what was supposed to happen. If the bad guy had been caught, he ought to go start packing up. Despite what they'd just been talking about, they'd already been stuck with him longer than anyone had planned, and it wasn't like the buses had stopped running or anything.

"You don't have to leave right now, right?" Barry asked, before he could push himself up from the couch. "I mean, we haven't finished with your paper. And we've got a chess game planned."

Mr. Rabe was still watching the press conference, but he didn't contradict his son, especially when the image that flashed up on the screen was of a guy who didn't look much older than Roddy or Barry and by Roddy's guess was probably closer to his end of the weight spectrum than Barry's. "It might not be the worst idea to stay one more night, or at least until you can talk to your friend or Nick. Just to be sure."