Thanks to everyone who read and to Priyanka and M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng for reviewing.

Crosses over with What Strange Creatures ch. 43 and contains reference to Natural Born Wesen, although as noted before this story puts the Juliette-Renard de-obsessioning before the holidays.


The garage door finally rumbled overhead, and Barry shoved himself up off the couch so quickly that he nearly sent his computer flying. Despite having spent most of the last week outside, he'd been feeling weirdly restless all day—Kevin's visit hadn't helped—and the silence throughout the afternoon had only made things worse.

"Hello," Dad greeted, handing over the bag with their dinner when he got up to the kitchen. "How was your afternoon?"

"Fine." Long, even if there was no point in saying so. "Were you able to get everything dropped off at the courthouse?" Dad had worked from home this morning so he could be here when Kevin came by, but between his ongoing cases and the end-of-year stuff that had to be done for the firm, he'd had to leave at lunchtime.

"I did, and the accountant should be getting us everything short of the December financials tomorrow. I told you that the firm's dinner will be this Friday evening, right?"

"Yeah, I'll just plan on ordering a pizza or something." He looked past Dad. "Hopefully you'll be able to stick around?"

Roddy shrugged but didn't disagree, and Barry grinned.

"So how's the concussion? You're still kind of scrawny and pale, but you were that before, too, so is your head still about to explode?" He was pretty sure the answer was no given the texts they'd been exchanging earlier, but he was also pretty sure he could get a rise out of Roddy with the question, and as expected Roddy's jaw twitched in what was absolutely the start of a curse that he wouldn't use in front of Dad.

"Barry, why don't you set the table while Roddy drops his things off downstairs," Dad cut in. "Roddy, would you like me to put on some tea?"

"No, thanks, I'm okay."

Roddy was back a few minutes later, and he jabbed Barry in the side as he joined him at the table. Barry twisted and caught him in a careful headlock, and Dad sighed. "All right, both of you, save the roughhousing for after dinner, please."

They muttered dual apologies and then dug in, and Barry was a little relieved to see that while Roddy did have some of the noodle soup, he also ate some rice and curry too. So hopefully he really was feeling better.

Dinner conversation wasn't much, apparently all three of them were hungry, but as they stood to clear the table, Dad nodded towards the basement stairs. "Would it be all right if I joined you for a little bit? The news will be starting soon, and I'd like to see if they've got any more information about that bank robbery. From what Monroe said…." He shook his head. "Just as well that it wasn't me in there, because I doubt I could have refrained from asking them what on Earth they were thinking?"

That was kind of a horrible thought considering that even the short 'breaking news' story that Barry had pulled up in response to Roddy's text had mentioned both masks and guns. But since Dad had all his checks deposited electronically like a normal person, Barry wasn't going to let himself think about it. "Yeah, sure," he agreed. "But do you really think they're going to say anything? I mean, there's not someone high up who can tell them to stop reporting?"

"Not if enough humans are already aware of the situation. Not reporting under those circumstances would only draw more attention to the whole thing."

That was a good point, and when they got downstairs Barry shifted his computer down to the floor while Dad took a seat on the couch and grabbed the remote. Roddy dug his own computer and power cord out of his backpack and flopped down beside Barry.

"So are you all the way over the concussion thing for sure, or...?" Barry asked before he could open it, while Dad was flipping over to the news channel. Dad had probably already asked since that hadn't been part of his objection about roughhousing, but still.

"I think so?" Roddy shrugged. "I mean, I know Rosalee said that it could take a while, but I feel okay, and I was working on essays most of the morning without any problems."

"Well, if anything changes, say something," Dad interjected. "There's plenty of tea left."

Roddy barely had time to agree before the news came on, and since the first story led with a picture of a Skalengeck—from up high and oddly angled, sure, and more than a little pixilated since it was probably a blown-up still from one of the bank's security cameras, but a Skalengeck all the same—all of them shut up and stared.

"They can't think they'll get away with it, though, can they?" Roddy finally asked when the announcer got through the few actual facts they had and started waxing eloquent on the capabilities of stage makeup in the twenty-first century. "I mean, you can't do that."

"In my experience people think a lot of things that they shouldn't," Dad said, "but in this case I'm afraid they'll be in for a rude awakening. We might not be in the Dark Ages anymore, but this isn't the kind of thing that the Wesen Council is going to overlook, and their responses tend to be quite final. I remember there was a similar incident when I was a child, I don't recall many details since I couldn't have been more than five or six myself, but by the time it made the national news everyone involved was quite dead. And their deaths made for far more of a sensational story than the 'clever masks' that they'd used in the course of their crimes."

"You've never said that before," Barry said, more than a little surprised. Not that Mom or Dad or Mr. and Mrs. Colbert had ever been anything other than extremely explicit about he and the twins keeping quiet about themselves and their heritage, but he would have remembered if one of them had told them a story about something like that actually happening.

"It's not something that I think about. It was years before I woged myself—your mother would have been a baby at the time so she may not even have been aware of it—and the one time your grandfather even vaguely referenced it when I was older, your grandmother made it very clear that he should never do that again."

"Huh. So you think that's what's going to happen here?"

"I'd bet on it. I mean, as a private individual I couldn't begin to tell you how the Wesen Council gathers their intelligence, but they must have agents, and that," he waved a hand at the screen, "is bound to make someone sit up and take notice. As much as the circumstances surrounding it still don't make me happy, I think I'm just as glad that you're taking a break from community service right now. And, for that matter, that Roddy doesn't need to go back to school until next week."

Barry couldn't exactly disagree even if he thought that 'taking a break' was being overly polite about the whole thing and he didn't exactly hang out around banks anyway, and Roddy only shrugged.

The image of the Skalengeck was finally removed from the screen, replaced with a much less heart-attack inducing picture of a semi and a headline about a shipping slow-down, and Dad started to push himself up before pausing. "Oh, before I forget. I know we were talking about kabobs on the grill for New Year's Eve, but I have a feeling that if we eat early enough for Nick and Hank to be on time for their shift, the rest of us will probably be hungry again before midnight. I was planning to stop at the store and pick up vegetables after work tomorrow, but are there any specific appetizers or finger foods or anything that you two would like me to pick up at the same time? If not I'll just take a quick look down the frozen foods aisle so we have some snacks on hand throughout the evening."

"Jalapeno poppers," Barry said immediately. "And maybe some of the sweet and sour chicken bites since we're having steak with the kabobs?"

Dad nodded. "Roddy, anything you'd like?"

He shook his head, not really a surprise. "Whatever's fine."

"Okay, well, I might throw in a vegetable tray and maybe some spinach won-tons or mozzarella sticks or something like that, just to make sure Monroe is covered." A pause. "And I just realized that I never thought to ask if Rosalee is a vegetarian as well."

"She's not," Roddy said immediately. "And Detective Griffin's not, either."

"Ah, thank you. So jalapeno poppers, chicken bites, a vegetable tray, and maybe another appetizer or two depending on what looks good." He nodded. "All right, I'm headed upstairs. Goodnight, and keep the bloodshed to a minimum, please. And if anyone starts feeling unwell, that would be a good time to lie down and maybe fine a movie to watch, yes?"

That was accompanied by a glance in Roddy's direction before he looked pointedly at Barry, and Barry nodded automatically. "We will. Goodnight."

"Night," Roddy agreed. He hesitated, clearly waiting until Dad's footsteps faded up the stairs, and then twisted back to look at Barry. "All of that food is for after dinner?"

"See, this is why you're like half a person."

Roddy grabbed a pillow and hit him over the head, and Barry grinned because it wasn't like he could just let him get away with that.


"Are you sure you want to do that?"

Barry rolled his eyes. "Would you relax? I'm just turning on the oven, not setting off a bomb."

"Uh-huh." Roddy still looked skeptical. "I'm going to point out again that your house is made of wood."

Barry grabbed the salt shaker and held it over his head. "I could always season you and put you in the oven instead of the potatoes."

"You are such a dork."

"The music geek doesn't get to have an opinion. Besides, if we don't make something, we're not going to have anything to snack on except random pieces of celery." Because while Dad had been successful with vegetable pickup yesterday, apparently the frozen section had been all but bare with the store waiting on refrigerated truck deliveries that kept getting delayed. It hadn't been just the big store either, when Dad had tried to place an order from the little one down the road they'd been out too.

"Your dad brought home an entire trunk full of vegetables, Monroe's bringing more, and you're thawing like ten pounds of steak to go with them. I don't think we're in any danger of starving."

"But we'll be in even less danger if we can manage twice-baked potatoes, stuffed jalapenos, and deviled eggs," Barry said, pointing at the three piles of ingredients stacked on the counter. "Come on, Google says it's not hard. And you cook at home, right?"

"I mean technically, sure, I guess, but when I want a potato I pull one out and put in the microwave like everyone else on the planet. I don't bake twenty of them twice and add cheese and sour cream and whatever the hell chives are in between."

"They're little onions, I think? I don't know, but Dad says he'll go pick up those and whatever other ingredients we're missing as soon as he's done writing his brief so we should get started with what we do have."

"Didn't he say he wasn't working today?"

Barry snickered. "Yeah, never believe that. But we can't do the potatoes one by one unless we want to still be standing here when everyone arrives, and anyway, cooking food is literally an oven's entire job. And it worked fine at Thanksgiving."

"Mm." Roddy still didn't look entirely convinced, but he did start pulling out potatoes to wash which Barry took to be a good sign, and Barry reached up to pull a couple of Mom's baking sheets down from the upper cabinet.

"Okay, now what's this about piercing them?" Barry asked as he checked the instructions on his phone again. "I thought we didn't cut them in half until after they'd baked the first time?"

"You've got to break the skin and let the steam out as potatoes cook or they can explode," Roddy said.

"Wait, what?"

"Seriously. It builds up, and just…pop!"

"Huh. Okay then." Barry grabbed a knife and started stabbing the now-clean potatoes as Roddy passed them over. "Do you have to do this when you microwave them too?"

"Yeah. That's how I know, I forgot once. Made a hell of a mess."

Barry grinned. "So what's the deal with your oven, anyway? I mean, I get you don't use it for one potato at a time or anything, but when we were talking Sunday you said something about an inspector or electrician or whoever stopping by?" He'd sounded annoyed about it, too, but it had been right when Dad had been calling for Barry to come help rinse down the tent so Barry hadn't caught much.

"Oh." Roddy made a face. "I guess back when he grabbed my stuff your dad kind of noticed that the heat at my place had gone out, which isn't a big deal, it just happens sometimes, but then he told Monroe, and Monroe got a friend of his who does that kind of stuff to stop by and take a look. And he sort of freaked Monroe out a little when he was talking through everything. Like the oven has always had problems, even when I was a little kid and my mom was alive, but the guy seemed to think that if I turned it on it would burn the place down in under a minute or something. Plus apparently the washing machine is on its last legs and the fridge will either last another thirty years or die tomorrow and some other shit like that." He shook his head. "I don't know. It's all stupid. I'm fine."

Most of that sounded like the opposite of fine to Barry, but it was pretty obvious that Roddy didn't want to talk about it, and after a moment Barry went back to stabbing potatoes until there was a full tray ready to go. "All right, an hour at 400 degrees, and then we do step two. But we can boil the eggs and work on the peppers while that's happening."

Roddy nodded and went to fill up the big pot, and Barry dumped the bag of jalapenos onto the cutting board.

"So what happened with your lawyer the other day?" Roddy asked over the running water. "Good news, hopefully?"

This time Barry was the one who made the face. "Not really. He didn't find out anything about Ray—the guy I was working with when everything happened—that we didn't already know, but I didn't figure that he would. He's just an old guy who got into some crap with drugs when he was younger and never managed to get out of it. I mean, he agreed a hundred percent that I didn't start anything, which can't hurt, but who knows how much weight that'll have. And while Walker was in prison for assault and has had a couple complaints made against him since, they were all pretty vague and there was no follow up. Kevin wasn't sure if that was because no one cares what parolees do to each other when no one else is around to see it or because the other people he tried knocking around were more knockable than me and denied everything afterwards, but either way there's not much there that he can put in front of the court. I know Dad was going to take Nick up on his offer to see what the police have just in case, but…." Barry shook his head. "Basically Kevin said good job on the calculus but he still thinks it's going to come down to the judge."