Thanks to everyone who read and to Priyanka for reviewing.


A hand scruffed Roddy before he could do more than look longingly at the little glasses of champagne—not really a surprise; there hadn't been enough time between his solo and final bows for him to lock his violin up so he'd had to do it after, and at this point the reception hall was pretty much full—and since there were a very limited number of people who'd use that kind of hold he tilted his head back and grinned up at Monroe. "What?"

Whatever Monroe might have said in response was cut off immediately as his eyes flashed to red and instead of fingertips there were suddenly claws resting against Roddy's neck.

Roddy yelped, instinct freezing him in place. The long dress rehearsal yesterday and the fact that he couldn't carry his suit rolled up in his backpack for two days without giving Mrs. Menchik heart failure meant that he'd had to skip practice at Monroe's last night, and although he'd tried to warn him about the bruises when he'd called, he might possibly not have been as clear as he could have been. And while stage makeup worked well enough onstage, once you were off and less than three feet away from someone...

Fortunately while Monroe's initial reaction hadn't been much better than Barry's, he recovered much more quickly, and a moment later he'd stepped back, both hands held open at waist level and his usual human face looking down at Roddy. "Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. That's your definition of 'trouble,' huh?"

"Yeah." Roddy took a quick glance around, but fortunately everyone else in the room still seemed to be occupied with their own conversations and no one had noticed his reaction.

"That looks a whole lot uglier than someone 'accidentally' knocking you into a locker, especially if it happened a week ago."

"It looks worse than it is. Really."

"Hm." He stepped close again, an arm around Roddy's shoulder steering him away from the alcohol and towards the food tables. Which, since Roddy was plenty hungry too, was mostly okay with him. "Did whoever it was get you anywhere else?"

"A few other bruises, but they've mostly healed up." Stupid knee included, and since Monroe didn't know about that anyway, Roddy had no intention of bringing up the specifics. "I'm fine. It's not a big deal."

Monroe looked like he wanted to dispute the point, but before he could say anything else Roddy looked around quickly.

"Nick couldn't make it?"

"Oh, he's here. He and Juliette both. It's...awkward." Monroe shook his head. "I'm sure they'll be over soon, but they ran into some girlfriend of hers who had a niece playing tonight and stopped to chat."

Roddy nodded and grabbed a couple plates of dumplings without paying much attention to the contents, combining them quickly before any of the teachers saw him, while Monroe more politely took a single plate from under the 'vegetarian' label. Whatever, Monroe wasn't eighteen. "So what did you think of the concert?" Roddy asked as they stepped away from the table, starting on his makeshift dinner. He'd have to go do the conversation shit with the rest of the concertgoers soon enough, but he was going to hang out with Monroe for as long as he could get away with first.

Nick arrived while they were arguing about the interpretation of Mozart's Concerto for Two Horns and looked sorry about it—well, right before he looked angry about the state of Roddy's face, anyway, and Roddy edged a little closer towards Monroe and wondered when the hell his life had started to involve choosing between Blutbaden and Grimms—and by the time Roddy had repeated his assurances that he was fine and accepted Nick's congratulations Dr. Warren had circled close enough to be obvious about it.

Monroe turned to give Dr. Warren an odd look, but before he could say anything Roddy shook his head. "I'm supposed to go talk to people. Other people, I mean. Sorry."

Both Nick and Monroe waved it off. "Come find us when you're ready to go, all right?" Nick said. "We'll all go out and grab some actual dinner. My treat."

Roddy nodded quickly. Technically it would be when he was allowed to leave since he was ready right now, but teachers, schmoozing, whatever. At least it was something to look forward to.

Mingling was as annoying as ever since even the people who were complimentary about his solo gave the side-eye to his suit—his suit and for those who noticed his eye, although the latter was a little more reasonable—but experience kept his jaw locked over the desire to ask how their clothing choices affected their musical abilities. No, he smiled, shook hands, complimented the conductor and the arrangement, said nice things about the rest of the orchestra that bore very little relation to his actual feelings about most of his classmates...on rare occasions someone said something relevant about the music which was nice to hear and an opening for a few genuine comments, but even if Dr. Albert had drilled the steps into him, none of this was ever going to be his favorite way to spend an evening.

He got a little bit of a break when he came across Juliette because whatever was going on with her and Nick she was always nice to him and he was glad to see her. And if the woman with her really was related to one of his asshole classmates, at least she wasn't a jerk about it. But even then he couldn't relax for too long before Dr. Kaplan appeared at his elbow, and he barely had time to wave and wish them a pleasant evening before he was dragged off to meet a prospective donor.

Really, it seemed like someone at this school should recognize that pretty much anyone else would be a better representative for talking to money people. He did his best since he wasn't a total idiot and did know that the school and especially the scholarships always needed funding, and really, it wasn't much different than what he'd been doing before except that he had to be doubly sure not to say anything that could even vaguely be construed as critical in front of his vice-principal, but he hadn't been born in a suit and knowing how to talk to these people and it always just seemed forced.

But eventually, finally, the crowd began to thin, groups of people making their way towards the exit, and he took one more lap of the room and then made his back to Monroe and Nick. Juliette had joined them as well, though, and both she and Nick looked so uncomfortable that he was actually tempted to pretend that he wasn't done mingling for an instant.

"Are you ready to go?" Monroe asked, and from his forced smile it was pretty obvious that he felt the tension too.

"Uh, yeah. I mean, if you are."

"I'm afraid that I'm not going to be able to join you for dinner," Juliette said before either of the others could answer, her smile clearly forced as well. "I'm—I've got an early morning tomorrow, and I'm kind of tired, and..." A shake of her head. "Anyway, Monroe said that he could give both you and Nick a ride so I'm going to head out. But you played really well tonight, and I hope I see you again soon."

"Thanks," Roddy said, mostly because he had no idea what else he could say. "You too." She nodded and hurried away, and since Roddy absolutely didn't want to look at the expression on Nick's face for any longer than he had to, he took a step back. "I'm going to go grab my violin." And wash his face since it was obvious that the stage makeup didn't do jack where they were concerned, and then probably hide out of sight until Nick stopped looking like someone had gut-punched him.

"Sure, we'll be right here," Monroe said.

Nick was looking more like himself by the time that Roddy rejoined them, although neither of the men looked very happy when they saw the real extent of the bruising, but fortunately the exodus from the reception hall was fully in progress by then and it didn't take much to get them moving towards Monroe's car. Nick's presence meant that Roddy got stuck in the back with his violin, but whatever, it wasn't like his legs were long enough to matter.

"So where are we headed?" Monroe asked, looking between them as he turned the car on. "I know a little place maybe ten minutes from here that has an excellent selection of salads."

As much as it was bad manners to complain when someone was offering you dinner, Roddy was still a little tempted to point out that he was a Reinigen and not a Willahara. Fortunately Nick got there first. "As the appetizer before the actual meal, right?"

Monroe sighed. "A well put-together salad is—"

"Still rabbit food. Roddy, you're with me on this one, right?"

"I am kind of hungry."

"The both of you, honestly. Fine then, what about pizza?"

Nick looked back at Roddy, who nodded quickly, and before too long they were turning into a little parking lot in front of a restaurant that Roddy had never been in before. Not that that meant much. He stripped out of his suit jacket and tie quickly and left them on the seat since sauce seemed like a pretty serious risk here but snagged his violin case as Nick slid the seat forward to let him out, and it was late enough that the three of them were immediately ushered to a booth by the hostess when they stepped inside.

"Here are your menus, and I'll send someone by with water," she said as they were taking their seats, and by the time any of them could do anything besides nod she was gone.

"So what exactly happened to you?" Nick asked as Monroe handed the menus around. "That black eye didn't come from any accident unless you 'accidentally' landed on someone's fist.

"It was just a couple creeps," Roddy said. "Not a big deal."

"A couple creeps?" Nick's eyes narrowed and a flicker of red passed through Monroe's, and Roddy sighed and wondered if there was a nice Mauzhertz somewhere that he could commiserate with about the sheer number of predators somehow involved in his life.


Roddy hummed along with the music as he pulled a couple pieces of Nick's pizza out of the microwave. None of them had realized until after they'd ordered last night that 'personal pan' assumed persons who must make the Rabes look small, and since Nick had been planning to stay the night somewhere without a fridge—Roddy hadn't needed Monroe's head shake to know not to ask—and Monroe hadn't had any interest in a meat-lovers anything, he'd suggested that Roddy take those leftovers as well. Under other circumstances Roddy might have objected, but since the only other option was wasting food he hadn't been able to refuse. Plus the pizza really was good.

Pretty soon he'd need to head down to the warehouse and start setting up for the rave, but given the way that it had been raining on and off all day he wasn't in any hurry. It hadn't been the heavy kind of rain that put the warehouse basement in danger of serious flooding or anything, but still, between that and the fact that the temperature had started dropping he wasn't interested in getting there too much ahead of the crowd.

He had to return the turntable tonight, too. A tiny, idiotic part of him said that he had some money in the bank now and could afford to buy one for himself if he really wanted to, but since he only had a few more checks coming in before he turned nineteen and would have to stretch them to cover rent and food and utilities and all of that until the end of the school year...yeah. Idiotic. Anyway, he could still do the work on his laptop, it was just more annoying that way.

He opened said laptop and did a quick check of his email while he was finishing off the pizza, but he didn't find anything of interest. A school-wide message from his principal reminding students that Von Hamelin was out next week, which was probably the most redundant email ever sent to high schoolers ever, and a notice from the utility company that he was finally current on payments, which was nice of them to acknowledge but nothing that he didn't already know. There was an email from the idiots who wanted him to pay for insurance on the truck that he wasn't driving, too—he had no idea how they kept finding him and was just glad that his cell phone number still didn't seem to be on their radar—but he was continuing to ignore those. He probably should have asked Nick about meeting at the police station for test drives last night since he still wasn't sure if Nick was going to Monroe's for Thanksgiving or not, but it hadn't even occurred to him.

Shit. He should have asked Monroe if he should bring anything for Thanksgiving, too. Not that he figured that Monroe would take him up on it since he was officially too young to buy beer and cooking-wise his skills didn't extend to much more than chopping things and boiling water, but even he knew that it was rude not to ask. He made a mental note to call. After tonight, though, because he didn't need Monroe asking about his evening plans when the guy was annoyingly good at seeing through Roddy's BS.

He shut his laptop and stood, dropping his plate in the sink and then grabbing his jacket. From what he could see out the window they seemed to be between showers at the moment, so he might as well pack up and head out. Sammy's equipment was still heavy enough to slow him down some, and it wasn't like the rats were a lot of use with that kind of thing.

He amused himself for most of the walk with nonsense plans for a rat-sled, but when he reached the warehouse he found that Sammy had beaten him there for once, and he waved off one of the guys from Sammy's usual set up crew and hurried upstairs with the turntable himself. "Hello?"

"Hey." Sammy called back, and Roddy found him bracing a speaker against the balcony rail.

"You're here early."

A shrug. "At this point anyone who's anyone knows what's up tonight, there's nothing left for us to do except wait for them to start pouring in." He straightened and turned, dusting off his hands. "Look, are you sure you you don't want to do a house party next week?"

Roddy groaned. "Did every other DJ in Portland run off to join the Navy and forget to tell me or something?"