Thanks to everyone who read and to 1983Sarah for reviewing.
Monroe's phone buzzed as he waited in the line of cars cycling past Von Hamelin, and given how fast they were not moving he risked a quick look.
:Hank and I grabbing burgers at Blue Moon, want to join?:
He did, especially since he hadn't heard anything from Nick except a quick 'It's over' Saturday evening that hadn't contained any actual information about their Endezeichen Grimm incursion. Nor had the news media been particularly helpful. But considering where he was at the moment... :Can I bring Roddy along?: he checked. It had been a long time since he'd had any interest in bar policies regarding underage teenagers, and if the answer was no he'd catch up with Nick later.
A pause, and then another buzz. :Can try, it's early enough that I think it'll be okay as long as he's with us and we get a table.:
That seemed reasonable enough, especially given Nick and Hank's profession, so unless Roddy objected they had a dinner destination. :If you don't hear from me, we'll see you in twenty: he texted back. Assuming that he could escape this ridiculous traffic, anyway.
Eventually Monroe was able to slip past the bottleneck of vehicles in front of the steps leading up to Von Hamelin, making the turn towards the bus stop, and he was relieved to see a familiar figure staring down into his notebook as he approached the pullout.
Roddy looked up as soon as Monroe came to a stop, smiling and shoving his stuff into his backpack before shouldering it and his violin and heading for the car. "Hey. Glad I saw your text, I almost caught the early bus."
"You didn't have orchestra practice today?" Monroe waited until Roddy was buckled in, his violin and backpack on the seat behind them, before signaling and rejoining the line of creeping traffic.
"Yeah, but Dr. Warren only had us running through the transitions. Most of today was solo auditions." He shook his head. "I don't get why so many people kept trying to put theirs off. I know there's the whole 'last piece the audition committee hears' thing, but the primacy effect exists too."
"They teach you kids about that stuff?" Monroe had to ask.
"Are you kidding? Auditions are cutthroat, and even if most of the time you don't expect to have a choice, it's not something they're going to leave out. Not that very many people listened, obviously."
"Well, if the others wanted to wait, hopefully that means you were able to get your own audition out of the way." Privately Monroe sympathized more with Roddy's classmates in this specific situation because he'd never particularly enjoyed auditions himself, but then again aside from few vague fantasies when he'd first started playing, he'd never had any real hope of being a professional cellist. Roddy was in a very different league in that respect.
"Yeah. Still wish I could have played the whole piece, but they seemed happy enough with what I did. I mean, I won't find out for sure if I've got a spot until tomorrow, or maybe even Wednesday if they're still debating when the bus comes, but..." He shrugged.
Monroe figured that his odds were good, he'd heard Roddy solo alongside several of his classmates last year and had thought that he'd stood out then, too, but he could understand not wanting to be overconfident. "I'm sure you did great. And I was going to ask if you had a particular preference for where we went for dinner, but I just got a text asking if we wanted to meet Nick and Hank at Blue Moon. What do you think? I know their veggie burgers are good, and if Nick and Hank both like it their regular ones probably are too, but it's your call."
"Isn't that a bar? I don't know if they'll let me in."
"Nick thinks they will as long as you're with us, but if it doesn't work out we can go somewhere else." He gave Roddy a quick grin. "What, no comments about any IDs you have that might get you in the door?"
Roddy snorted. "First of all, if I did have something like that I wouldn't tell you never mind try using it in front of a couple cops. And second of all, hardly anyone believes I'm eighteen even when I'm using my real ID. I'd probably get laughed out of the building if I tried claiming I was twenty-one."
The second half of that was entirely believable, and Monroe nodded. And then sighed with relief as he was able to turn away from the traffic streaming out of Von Hamelin. "Is it like that every day? I didn't think that many kids went to your school."
"It's pretty much one car per person, and if you think that's bad, you should see what it looks like when someone gets rear-ended. Granted they're usually only going like two miles and hour so it barely involves scratched paint, but apparently it's expensive scratched paint, and whoever's in it always acts like the world is about to end. I'm just glad the bus comes up from the south instead of the way you came in or they'd probably have started refusing to pick me up freshman year."
Monroe couldn't really blame them after what he'd just sat through. The next time he picked Roddy up, he was going to ask if the kid minded cutting an extra street over just to try to avoid the insanity. "So you look reasonably un-mauled after spending the weekend with your Jagerbar friend, but are you all right?" he checked. "I know our last conversation ended a little abruptly."
"Oh, is that how you describe 'There's a crazy person killing Wesen in Portland, and I need to go yell at Nick in German now so you should go hide in a hole'?"
"That is not what I said."
"It's pretty close to what you said. At least the part that I understood."
Monroe sighed. Roddy clearly needed a better education in Wesen history if he didn't recognize the name of the Endezeichen Grimms or the Sterbestunde G regardless of which language he was taking classes in, but that could be a topic for another time. If nothing else, Monroe would make sure to have a couple books ready for him to borrow on Thursday. "Are you all right?" he repeated. "It sounded like you got a pretty good scare Friday night." He hadn't particularly liked hearing what had sounded almost like a snarl followed by a yelp from the cub, especially when he'd been on the wrong end of the phone line to do anything useful.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Barry and his dad are nice. I just wasn't ready for someone to yell right then."
"Are you sure?" In all honesty Monroe still wasn't happy that Nick had dragged Roddy off to meet a pair of Jagerbars in the first place, especially given that one of them had already attempted murder, and the fact that Roddy was now going back on his own... It was entirely Roddy's decision, obviously, but even if Frank had sounded perfectly respectable when they'd spoken, his son was still a teenager and Monroe had plenty of firsthand experience when it came to how intense teenage predators could be. Facades aside Wesen weren't human, and Roddy stood at the very wrong end of the food chain for Monroe to be comfortable with the whole thing.
He'd done a little research about what mesmers were capable of after Roddy's revelation—as best he could, anyway, since it wasn't the sort of thing that showed up in formal studies and Nick's books were remarkably unhelpful when it came to anything besides how to kill Wesen—and under perfect conditions Roddy might be able to summon enough help to get away if one of them tried to hurt him. But he very much doubted that Jagerbar territory had any relation to those perfect conditions, and it was highly unlikely that Roddy would have his violin in his hands if things started to get ugly anyway.
"I'm sure," Roddy said. "Really, mostly we just watched movies and did homework and played a couple games. And ate kind of a ridiculous amount of Indian food." He looked up at Monroe. "You realize it's weird for a Blutbad to worry about someone else mauling someone, don't you?"
"That's not the point." He had more than fifteen years of experience holding to a Weider lifestyle, not an ankle monitor that wouldn't actually do anything if its wearer decided to get dangerous.
"Uh-huh. And you know you're friends with a Grimm, right?"
"And now you're just being deliberately obnoxious."
Roddy grinned.
Monroe turned the corner onto the street in front of Blue Moon, pulling into the first open parking spot that he saw. "Come on, let's go get some food and I can point out that you hang out with a Grimm too."
It was still early enough that the bar was pretty empty, and he located Nick and Hank at a table only a moment after walking in the door. At first it looked like one of the servers was going to say something to Roddy, but when Monroe waved him into the inside seat at the half-occupied table she veered away.
"Hey," Nick greeted. "How was school?"
"School." He looked around quickly and then lowered his voice. "What was the deal with the crazy Grimm?"
It was the same question that Monroe had wanted to ask, albeit with slightly more circumspect wording, but since Roddy was sensible enough to have confirmed that they were alone he only sat back and gave Nick an expectant look as well.
"He wasn't," Nick said, just as quietly. "He was a Lebensauger, I think." He pulled out his notebook and flashed a page in their direction, and Monroe nodded automatically.
"That's a Lebensauger all right, but are you serious?"
"Yeah. He was...he has some problems."
"There's an understatement," Hank said with a snort. "Kid spent I don't know how long rotating through police department internships to get near him," he jerked a thumb at Nick, "and then totally went off the rails when he did. Talk about a warped case of hero worship."
"Wait, he was a police intern?" Monroe demanded. "Don't you guys do...I don't know, psych checks or something before you let someone into your department?"
"Unfortunately I don't think the psych questionnaire covers Grimm-obsessed Wesen."
A server approached their table with water and menus before Nick could say anything else, and since Monroe already knew what he was having—their veggie burgers were good, but they were also the singular vegetarian option unless he wanted his dinner to be a side salad or a bowl of pretzels—he slid his over to Roddy.
"The news said that he'd been caught in the act," Monroe said when they'd been left alone again. "Was there a third victim?"
"Almost. Do you know a Bud Wurstner?" Hank asked.
Monroe would have pointed out that he didn't know every Wesen in Portland, but in this case that didn't really apply. "Bud? Is he okay?"
"He's fine. Shook up, and I can't blame him, but it could have been a lot worse."
"How did this guy find Bud?" Monroe asked. The first two men the insane not-Grimm had been after had been clearly up to no good, however ugly the doing-bad-for-a-good-reason debate could get, but Bud was about as harmless as a person could be.
Nick sighed. "With everything that was in the news he'd come down to the station looking for me, and for whatever reason Ryan targeted him when he left. It might just have been that Bud was the next Wesen that he saw; I don't think he was putting a lot of thought into anything at that point."
"Who's Bud?" Roddy asked, passing the menu back to Monroe.
"A friend. He's an Eisbeiber, and not the kind of person who's going to bother anyone." Nick went quiet as the waitress came back, and Nick, Hank, and Roddy all asked for the bar's signature burger while Monroe ordered his vegetarian version.
"So what happens now?" Roddy asked. "I mean, he was in handcuffs so obviously you didn't just cut his head off."
"That's still very much on the list of things that I try not to do," Nick said. "He's in custody, and if he doesn't plead out he'll go to trial for kidnapping and murder. Where I imagine his lawyer will have a lot to say about his mental health, and honestly I don't think they'll be wrong, but in the end he's going to be locked up somewhere for the rest of his life. I take it that you were keeping pretty close track of things too?"
"More like Mr. Rabe had the television on, and it would have been hard to miss. I was just trying to get my homework done."
"You were over at Frank and Barry's?"
"Yeah. I went over on Friday, and then Monroe called and said there was a crazy Grimm in town and to sit tight, so..." He shrugged.
"Rabe? Wait, wasn't that that kid from the B and E case that turned into a kidnap and attempted murder case last year?" Hank asked. "The one with the lawyer dad?"
"Yeah," Nick agreed.
"They're Wesen? I mean, I guess they were chasing people through the woods—"
"Hey, I'm Wesen and I don't want to be anywhere near the woods," Roddy said indignantly.
"They're Jagerbars," Nick said before Hank could say anything else. Which was probably just as well. "The whole thing was part of a very old ritual that Mrs. Rabe wanted her son to complete. Frank was most definitely not onboard. Or, for that matter, aware."
"Damn."
Nick nodded and then looked back at Roddy. "You and Barry are getting along okay, then?"
"Yeah, sure. He likes his English class which is kind of fucked up, but other than that he's all right."
"Language," Monroe said automatically.
Roddy rolled his eyes, and Nick grinned. "So when's your next concert, anyway? It's got to be coming up soon."
"Yeah, next Friday. Solo auditions were today so they'll have the full program published later this week."
"Next Friday, that's the week before Thanksgiving, right?" Nick asked. "I'll have to see if Juliette wants to go, I know she's really enjoyed the last couple concerts."
"Is she feeling better?" Roddy asked, and Monroe couldn't blame him since Nick had been the one to bring her up, but he really wished that he hadn't as Nick's face fell.
"So what are you doing for Thanksgiving?" Hank asked hurriedly, looking at Monroe. "Do you think Rosalee will be back?"
"Probably not, it sounds like things are still touch-and-go with her aunt, and I wouldn't expect her to leave right before the holiday anyway." Not that Monroe didn't miss her, talking on the phone every day just wasn't the same, but he couldn't begrudge her time with her family. "But I don't usually do much anyway, it tends to come down to a few too many pieces of pie and whatever game happen to be on. What about you?"
"Well, normally I'd say that I was planning the same, but I just got a call from Jarold—an old friend of mine—the other day, and apparently my goddaughter is attempting a turkey this year and I'm invited." Hank smiled. "Although he did suggest that I bring an extra large side, just in case. What about you?"
That was directed at Roddy, and Monroe remembered abruptly that this would be Roddy's first holiday without his father, but before he could intercede Roddy shrugged.
"No clue except that I'm going to get to stay the hell away from my family for once which makes it a good Thanksgiving as far as I'm concerned."
That brought Hank up short, but Nick seemed to have recovered enough to rejoin the conversation. "Is everything okay with them? I mean, obviously when I met them it was a very bad day for all involved, but they didn't seem very supportive."
Monroe was fairly sure that if he and Rosalee hadn't been there unsupportive would have looked a lot more like abusive, but Roddy hadn't wanted to talk about it at the time, and it hadn't come up since.
"They're assholes," Roddy said bluntly. "Pretty much across the board. Uncle Michael is probably the best of the lot, and even he says that I should have dropped out of school the day I turned eighteen and gotten a 'real' job. The one time I was stupid enough to mention college..." He shook his head. "Aunt Sophie always invites—invited—us for the holidays, though, and Dad always insisted that we had to go since they're family, but mostly it just meant a lot of drinking and fighting and I never wanted anything to do with any of it. It wasn't so bad when I was younger and the couple cousins I actually got along with were still around, but they're all working down south now, and when they do come up they've started talking like my aunts and uncles."
Monroe winced. It was no secret where Reinigen stood in the Wesen hierarchy, but he'd never considered the level of insularity that that might imply from their side. Or what it might do to someone like Roddy. Separating himself from his family and his kind as much as Monroe had had been incredibly difficult, and with very few exceptions he was still tough enough solo to take on anything that might come his way. For someone like Roddy who didn't have his kind of advantage...that took a whole hell of a lot of guts no matter how talented the kid was.
"What about your mom's family?" Nick asked. "Or did she not have any?"
"No, she had siblings too. You don't meet a lot of Reinigen who don't; most of my relatives will be happy to tell you that that's part of why I'm so fucked up. But they didn't really approve of Mom and Dad getting married in the first place so we didn't see them very much even when I was little, and I'm not sure I've seen any of them since she died." He shrugged. "Even if I did, it'd just be more of the same."
"Why don't you come over to my place?" Monroe suggested, and then looked at Nick. "You too, if you'd like. I mean, like I said I've got no plans except the game, but I wouldn't mind company, and it's no trouble to double or triple up on recipes." The last thing he wanted was to turn the conversation back to Juliette and that mess, but if she'd already made other plans that gave Nick and out without being too obvious about it. And it was entirely possible that she had already made other plans given how strained things were between them at the moment.
"Sure," Roddy said immediately. "I mean, I don't care about football, but I like pie."
"Maybe." Nick's reply was considerably slower. "I'll have to get back to you."
"Sure, no rush."
