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

Chapter crosses over (somewhat) with Meaning Makes It Ch.15/16 (16 upcoming), but both stories can be read separately.


Roddy hummed quietly over the notes on the page. The violin part was solid, but it was supposed to be the accompaniment at this point in the piece, not the primary melody, and the other part was not coming together like he wanted.

Composition was way easier when he could just have the violin—or at least the first violin, since this duet could be played by a pair as easily as a violin and a cello—take the melody the entire time and not worry about transitions or response lines or any of that, but he'd already gotten marked down on one assignment for a lack of complexity, and he didn't expect the next one to be graded any less strictly. And it wasn't like he could argue that Dr. Albert was wrong, either, because the music he liked was way more intricate than this.

Besides, Monroe had promised to play through his latest draft with him when it was ready, and Roddy really didn't want to bore him to death.

Roddy was debating if he should shift more of the original melody off to the second player and see if that made the balance better or if it just made the first player the one who got bored when his backpack buzzed, and he dropped his pencil and grabbed it up off the floor without thinking. He'd had a text from Sammy waiting for him after school, but given that it had only said 'Saturday' he'd been expecting a call to sort out the details. If nothing else, his bet was on a rave next Saturday given that everyone would be out for the holiday at that point, but it was possible that Sammy had decided to hedge his bets and shoot for this weekend instead since there were all kinds of rumors about snow in the near future. That or he wanted both weekends, which wouldn't be a bad thing for Roddy's bank account.

"You know, 'Saturday' doesn't tell me jack," Roddy said as he pulled the phone out and put it to his ear.

"What?"

"Huh?" Roddy's brain caught up an instant later. "Oh, hey, Barry. Sorry, I thought you were someone else." And this was why people with sense looked at the name on the phone before they opened their mouths. He was lucky that it hadn't been Monroe calling to tell him that the Grimms and wanna-be Grimms were giving up on this one-at-a-time shit and holding a conference in Portland next weekend. "What's up?"

"Uh, well, nothing really. I can hang up if you're expecting another call," Barry offered.

"No, it's cool. I figure Sammy'll be calling soon, but it's not like we've got anything scheduled." Roddy let his backpack slide to the floor again and rolled onto his back. "Seriously, what's up?"

"It really is nothing." There was some rustling, and then Barry sighed. "I'm hiding in my room at the moment. I sort of freaked out at Dad the other night, and it's all weird now."

"What?" Roddy repeated. Despite the weekend cooped up together he still could wouldn't claim that he knew Barry or his father all that well, but from what he had seen they got along just fine. Better than he and Dad had sometimes, especially when Dad had been feeling antisocial. "What happened?"

Barry sighed again. "I'm not even sure. We were talking at dinner on Monday, and Thanksgiving came up, and when he asked I said that I didn't care what we did. Which I don't, since Thanksgiving has never been a big thing at our house. But then I started thinking about Christmas, and...I don't know. I got upset. I tried to walk away, but he followed me downstairs, and the next thing I knew I was yelling. And maybe shoving, although that didn't really come to anything."

"Wow." Roddy said after a minute. 'Shoving' when you were talking about a guy Barry's size didn't seem like a small thing—Barry had sent him sprawling once just playing around—although Mr. Rabe probably outweighed his son by enough to make a difference.

"Yeah. Anyway, he finally stopped trying to talk and let me escape to my room, and it's pretty normal for me not to wake up until he's already left for work so mornings aren't anything, but dinners have been kind of awkward and horrible. And now I'm hiding again."

There wasn't a lot that Roddy could say to that, and eventually he gave up trying. "Holidays suck."

A forced laugh. "Yeah. What does your family d—did—shit. I'm sorry, that was a stupid thing to ask. It was stupid of me to call, I don't know what I was thinking. I—"

"It's okay," Roddy interrupted before he could trip over any more words. "Really." If things had been different he'd have been right to apologize, but as it was it wasn't like Roddy's feelings were somehow hurt. "Dad was never much of a holiday person, and I'm not either. If it wasn't for getting some days off school I'd just as soon forget them entirely."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. I mean, I remember my mom cooking when I was little, or trying, at least, since our oven has issues sometimes, and Christmas was fun for the three of us to open presents and play games and whatever, but after she died Dad started dragging me over to whichever of his brothers had offered to host. I think he wanted to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything, but considering how few of my relatives I get along with, it never went well. When you throw in the fact that once alcohol is involved he and my uncles don't—didn't—really like each other much either, most of the time we ended up back at home within a couple hours, both of us pissed off and not wanting to do anything except lock ourselves in our rooms.

"Wow," Barry echoed. "I guess I wouldn't be a holiday person after that either. I assume you're not going visiting this year, then?"

"Not to any of my uncles' houses, that's for sure." He shrugged against the mattress. "I don't know what'll happen at Christmas, but at least for Thanksgiving I'm going over to Monroe's. I mean, I don't care about football either which is apparently what he wants to spend the day on since Rosalee's still out of town, but he says there'll be pie, and he won't mind if I take over his practice room or nap on the couch or whatever. It'll probably be the most relaxing holiday I've had in years."

"Your relatives won't say anything when you don't show up?"

"Oh, I'm sure they'll make some nasty comments about it, but if they aren't saying it to me, I don't really care." Roddy snorted. "Hell, even when they are saying it to me, I don't really care. Did I mention that we don't get along?"

Barry snickered.

"Do you have any relatives besides your dad?"

"Not really. I know Dad has a couple cousins down in California, but I've only ever met one of them, and that was forever ago when he was up this way on a business trip. And Mom has a sister who has a couple daughters, but they live out in New Hampshire, and she and Mom aren't—weren't—exactly close. We visited a couple times when I was younger, but they had some big blowup right after my youngest cousin was born, and I'm not even sure that Aunt June was at the funeral."

"Jeez." Dad and his brothers might not have liked each other all the time, but at least they'd showed up.

"Yeah." He went quiet for a minute. "So if you thought I was your friend Sammy calling, does that mean you've got a..."

He trailed off, and Roddy grinned. "Gig if you're trying to find a way to phrase it that won't immediately set off any adult ears in the vicinity, but yeah, if there's not a rave this weekend there will be next. My bet's on next, but that's just a guess, and since he texted me earlier I figured it was him when the phone rang."

"Well, if you end up not doing anything this weekend, do you want to come over again? Saturday or Sunday, either is cool." Barry hesitated for a minute. "I figure I'll probably bug you sometime Thanksgiving week too, but I'm still trying to figure out if I can pick up a couple volunteer shifts so I don't know what days I'll be around yet."

"Sure. It wasn't like he had any other plans, rave aside, anyway, and Barry was cool to hang out with. It was a little weird when you considered that he was as much a rich prep school kid as any of Roddy's classmates, but he unlike them he wasn't obnoxious about it. "If I haven't heard from Sammy by Friday I'll call him just to make sure he doesn't spring anything on me last minute, but if he says next weekend I can catch the bus Saturday morning sometime. If it is this Saturday, Sunday should still be good, but it'll be later since raves run late, and I guarantee I'll sleep in even if I don't mean to."

"Either would be great, just let me know."

"Are you sure your dad'll be okay with it?" Roddy asked after a moment. Mr. Rabe had seemed friendlier by the end of last weekend, but Roddy still didn't want to turn up at their front door if he wasn't expected.

"Yeah, he already said that it was fine." Barry blew out a breath. "I should just go apologize and get it over with, especially since Nick's supposed to come over for dinner tomorrow and I really don't want everything to be weird and awkward then, but I'm afraid that I'm going to freak out again, and it's not like that's going to make anything any better."

"What...what set everything off?" Roddy didn't particularly want Barry flipping out at him, even over the phone, but while Dad had walked away on him a few times when things had gotten tense, Barry and Mr. Rabe hadn't seemed to have that dynamic. "You said that you were talking about Christmas?"

"Thinking about Christmas, more like. There's always—or there was always, anyway—all kinds of stuff happening at the end of the year. Mom's fundraisers and charity parties, dinners with Dad's clients and partners at the firm, stuff the Colberts were doing for their business, all of that. Me and Jason and TB used to joke that we never knew when we'd get to go home after school and when someone's parent would grab us as soon as we got within range, throw us in suits, and drag us off somewhere. But Christmas was different. It was just Mom and Dad and me, and Mom...she made it special, you know?"

He didn't really. Roddy's memories of happy Christmases had ended at eleven, and he'd long since stopped thinking about back then. It was easier that way. But now obviously wasn't the time to say so, so he just nodded. "Sure."

"Yeah. Last year would have been bad enough just being in prison—was bad enough just being in prison—but even if I'm out now Mom is still gone. It's still my fault that Mom is gone. And somehow we're supposed to just go on."

He let out a breath that was more than a little uneven, and Roddy had no idea what he was supposed to say because he was the kind of person that other people avoided, not the kind that they confessed this sort of shit to. "Come on, it can't be your fault," he said. Possibly a little desperately.

"Want to bet?" Barry's voice was bitter. "Dad says that he's not angry at me, at least not anymore, but it was our pit trap she fell into. Our spikes that did all the damage."

"Pit trap?" Roddy squeaked, and then very much wished that he hadn't. Asked, specifically, although the squeak had been unnecessary too.

"It was for the Roh-hatz," Barry said after a moment. "I don't remember how much I said about it before, but it's the final rite of passage for Jagerbars. Or it used to be, anyway, back in the day. It's a ritual hunt that's supposed to happen right after our eighteenth birthdays, and I'm a couple months younger than the twins so they always waited for me for that kind of thing. Especially since Mom was the one who helped us when we needed it. But up until those two idiots broke into the house it wasn't really…I mean, we set up some traps and sharpened some sticks, but it was mostly just something to do. We never had any plans to kidnap any of our classmates or anything like that."

That was about what he'd said the first time that Roddy had come over and they'd traded some basic details about why they were involved in a twisted Grimm let's-have-a-playdate program as Roddy recalled, but neither of them had really gone into details at that point. Apparently Roddy was getting them now, even if he wasn't too sure that he wanted them.

"But then they did break in," Barry went on without waiting for a response. "Mom and Dad were up in Seattle for a charity thing that weekend, and I was supposed to be staying at the Colberts, but Jase and TB and I brought down an elk that night and went back to our place to clean it, and that's when caught them. Well, we only caught the guy at first, but when I called Mom she said that it was time and to take him to the cave." He paused. "I guess Dad must have been in the shower or something because he never knew. And then when the woman came back with a gun...when I saw her holding it I just wanted to get it away from her before she could hurt Mom, but after she was unconscious Mom told me to take her too. We were about ready to get started, and she said that hunting two was better than one."

Roddy had better sense than to say so, but he was kind of getting the impression that Barry's mom had been a piece of work. Like, okay, defend the house. Sure. If it had been him he'd probably just have hidden until the intruders went away unless his violin was in danger, but he also lived in a trailer and his violin was about the only thing of value that he had so it kind of followed. Defend your parents, obviously. But then you either beat the shit out of whoever was involved or called the fucking cops if the threat wasn't the cops, because even if he didn't really like seeing people with badges in his neighborhood, it was still a way more reasonable solution than hauling someone off to a cave. And even if Barry hadn't been planning to kidnap anyone... "So was she hunting that day too?" he asked after a minute.

"No." Barry sighed. "Some of this I didn't find out until later, but Nick and his partner showed up at the house looking for the woman while the twins and I were getting prepped. Dad got home at the same time, and when Nick's partner went down to the road to try and block it off—they didn't know that we had her at that point since Mom wasn't talking—Nick got in Mom and Dad's faces with what he was and what we are and all of that. And like I said, Dad hadn't known about any of it so he was pretty freaked when he realized that Nick was right. He always said that Mom's family was more traditional than his, but I guess he didn't realize how much more or that she was too until right then. But anyway, he agreed to help Nick try to stop it all." Barry went quiet again for a moment and then continued. "It didn't take them too long to find us, and when they did...well, Nick had a gun, obviously, but it also only took him about two seconds to send the twins flying, and Dad was between me and him so I don't think he would have shot me either. But Mom didn't know that, and she came charging out of the woods from the side. She was in full shift at that point, and I don't think she even saw the pit trap coming."

"Shit."

"Yeah. It was bad. It was the deepest of the lot, the one we'd managed to sink all of the spikes in, and I know the doctors did everything they could, but she had a broken back and massive internal injuries and there's only so much... Anyway, they arrested all of us on the spot so I never saw her in the hospital, and Dad tried not to say anything that would make things worse when he visited me, but when she finally came to the prison she barely even seemed like her. And then she died."

Roddy had no fucking clue what to say to that because while Mom and Dad were both gone, it hadn't been due to things that he could even begin to twist into his fault. "I'm sorry," he managed finally. It probably wasn't the right response, but he had no clue what was.

"Thanks. Anyway, I just…I don't know. Most of the time I can put it out of my head, but Christmas is going to be bad, and the last thing I want to do is be in the middle of a conversation with Dad when I freak out again, you know?"

"Yeah," Roddy agreed. Mostly because, again, what the hell else was he supposed to say?

Barry groaned. "And now I dumped all of that on you. Sorry, that really wasn't what I meant to do when I called, I was just looking for a distraction. Even my math homework is downstairs."

"It's okay. I was fighting with my composition homework so I don't mind the interruption." He'd have preferred a much lower-stakes interrupt, but whatever. Even he knew that listening was one of those things that friends were supposed to do, despite that knowledge being more theory than practice in his case.

"Didn't you have to turn in your paper on Monday?" Barry asked. "Are they making you write another one already?"

"Huh? Oh, no, not lit composition, music composition. You know, the kind that matters."

Barry scoffed.

"Remind me again which of us can't keep track of a negative?"

"You realize that you're incredibly squishable, right?"

Roddy grinned. "Not from here I'm not."

That got a vague growled response, although it sounded like there was some amusement behind it, and then, "Shoot, I'm sorry, I didn't even ask. Did you get your solo?"

"Yeah, they posted the official list before school today. I'm not closing, which is where I'd like to be," probably because political crap still went on behind the scenes even if the audition committee was usually honest enough about the playing part, "but it's still a good spot."

"Nice. And congratulations, I wish I could go."

"No chance that your parole officer would consider a classical concert a punishment? I mean, that's what half the people I know would consider it." Mostly people that he avoided, granted, but still.

That actually got a half-laugh out of Barry. "Somehow I doubt I'd get away with that, although I can always ask. Someone's going, right?"

"Yeah, Monroe will be there. And maybe Nick and Juliette, too, although I don't know how well that'll go."

"What do you mean? Who's Juliette?"

"Nick's girlfriend. Or at least his sort-of-girlfriend because there was this whole thing with a Hexenbiest, and now…." Roddy shook his head. "Piece of advice? Don't ask him about her."

"Okay," Barry said slowly.

"Seriously, I did the other day, and it got real awkward, real fast. I mean, I thought it was okay since he sort of brought her up first, but as soon as I asked he looked like someone had kicked his puppy or something." Roddy grinned suddenly at a flash of immediate, inappropriate humor—Monroe had been at dinner, too—but there was no way in hell that he was repeating that to anyone.

"What?" Barry asked.

"Nothing." He wanted to live to see nineteen, thanks.

"Okay," Barry said again, a little more surely. "No asking about his girlfriend. Although if it goes like the last time he was over for dinner he and Dad will probably spend most of their time talking about Wesen in the twenty-first century, and how being a Grimm works with being a cop, and various legal things that somehow affect both of them, and I'll mostly just sit there and be quiet and polite anyway. But I'll remember that." There was some rustling. "Shoot, I can hear Dad in the hallway. I better go talk to him."

"Good luck," Roddy said.

"Thanks. Sorry I talked your ear off."

"It's cool." He might not be used to it, but he didn't exactly mind. Well, except that he now knew that he wasn't even stepping a foot into the woods by Barry's house by himself because woods were bad enough without traps being involved. "Really."

"Thanks," Barry repeated. "Later."