Thanks to everyone who read and to Priyanka and M1ssUnd3rst4nd1ng for reviewing.
Takes place across (some of) Natural Born Wesen, although as noted before this story puts the Juliette-Renard de-obsessioning before the holidays, and it also crosses over with Meaning Makes It ch. 33.
Roddy rubbed his forehead and tried to pretend that this wasn't giving him a headache because if Monroe saw him he'd make more tea, and not only did Roddy feel like he'd had so much tea over the past week and whatever that he was about to float away, he was also very damn sure that no amount of tea was going to fix this. Leaving aside the visible crack that ran diagonally under the glass across his laptop screen and was doing ugly things to the colors on either side—and it was pure luck that it was only damaged and not unusable, and that the rest of the machine still seemed functional—the information that he was turning up was all just bullshit.
He'd figured on applying to as many schools as he could, and, assuming that he ended up with some options, he'd pick the best offer among them. And he should have options, he was a good violinist no matter what his asshole classmates had to say about it. But it turned out that applying meant more than just filling out a few forms and sending in his transcript and SAT scores and an audition recording that he'd have to borrow the equipment from Sammy to make. There were also a whole bunch of essay-type questions, and on top of that, application fees. They weren't like five or ten bucks, either seventy-five was the lowest he'd seen, and some of them were more than twice that. Sure most of the application notes had little asterisks and vague statements about waivers down in the fine print, but all of them basically said 'send a note to such-and-such email' with no other information. Like, how was that not complete crap? Hundreds of dollars just to apply to schools, and if you couldn't afford that the best they could say was 'email us and maybe we'll think about it'?
"Any luck?" Monroe asked, suddenly behind Roddy because he remained annoyingly good at sneaking up on people.
"I guess," Roddy said as he tilted his head back and simultaneously angled the laptop down a little more so the damage wasn't as obvious. "I mean, I've got a list."
"Well, that's a start. And are you feeling all right?"
"Yeah, I'm good." Concussion-wise, anyway. He still wasn't going to risk any big meals, but he wasn't falling asleep every couple hours anymore, and the screen wasn't what was making his eyes twitch. "Did you find the missing check?" he asked before Monroe could follow up with anything else.
"After much searching I did, trapped between the back of my desk and the wall. But I'm going to need to make a quick run to the bank to drop it off since it's a very bad business practice to give your customers a hard time balancing their end-of-year books. Will you be okay here by yourself, or do you want to come along?"
"I'll be fine."
"Are you sure?"
Roddy held back a roll of his eyes, but only just barely. Monroe was the best, but he was also kind of amazingly fussy sometimes. Like Roddy ever even used his oven, seriously. "Really, I've only just downloaded a bunch of applications," he said. "I still need to actually look at what kind of audition samples they want and all of that." Plus send out a bunch of stupid emails about fee waivers.
"Okay. Give me a call if you need anything, and I ought to be back by lunchtime. Maybe rice and bean burritos?"
Roddy nodded, and Monroe patted his shoulder and headed for the door. Once the lock had turned behind him, Roddy sighed and dug a notebook and pencil out of his backpack. He was most definitely going to request fee waivers, but he'd better figure out what the total would be without them, just in case.
Unfortunately said total was pretty ugly and he'd have to cut his school list by quite a bit if he didn't get some replies, but he'd started grabbing essay topics at the same time, and those were almost worse. What had drawn him to music and why was he choosing to pursue it at the collegiate level? Sure. Those made sense. He'd probably have to bug Barry to make sure that his punctuation and shit was correct after he got his responses written, but he couldn't fault anyone for asking. What were his musical strengths and professional goals? Also reasonable. But what did the meaning of his name or his favorite historical event or the best choice of hideout for Carmen Sandiego, whoever the hell that was, have to do with anything?
Maybe he'd use stupid questions as the starting point to narrow down his list?
There wasn't much point in doing that until he'd heard back, though, so he started on the sensible questions and was surprised when the grumbling of his stomach interrupted him some time later. Partly because it had been a lot of days since he'd last felt hungry, and partly because a look at the clock—one of them, anyway—said that Monroe should have been back a while ago. Even if he'd gone to one of the big banks downtown it wouldn't have taken this long.
Had he stopped somewhere to pick up lunch? That didn't make a lot of sense, though...the Rabes might get takeout most of the time, but even Roddy could manage rice and beans, and he was nothing compared to Monroe who actually liked to cook. And Monroe would definitely have said if he'd planned on running any other errands.
Roddy wasn't exactly worried-worried, and he wasn't hungry enough to raid the fridge either even if Monroe wouldn't have minded, but he couldn't help but be a little relieved when the front door finally opened and Monroe stepped inside again. "Hey."
"Hey." Monroe smiled, but it most definitely wasn't real, and for some reason he looked weirdly pale, too.
Roddy set his computer aside cautiously. "Did something happen?"
"They robbed the bank."
"Huh?"
Monroe shook his head but barely seemed to register Roddy's question. "I can't believe it. I was there, and I still can't believe it. The Gesetzbuch Ehrenkodex is—it's—and they just burst in waving guns—"
"Wait, somebody robbed the bank while you were there?" Roddy started to push himself up. "Are you okay? Should I get you something? Did someone call 911?" And maybe that last was a stupid question since Monroe was here, but somehow growing up in a neighborhood with gangs and the occasional mugger who couldn't figure out that they'd find better targets literally anywhere else in the city hadn't covered what you were supposed to do when confronted with, like, formal criminal shit.
"What? No. Yes. No. I mean, yes, the bank was robbed, but no, I'm fine." He sank down on the couch beside Roddy slowly. " I don't need anything, thank you. And the police already took my statement, but the guns and money and whatever, that wasn't the important part."
Monroe being in a bank that people were robbing with guns seemed really damn important to Roddy, and he would have guessed it was some kind of weird predator thing again except for the part where Monroe wasn't a fucking idiot, but fortunately Monroe started talking again before he blurted that out.
"Nick was one of the detectives on scene, he and Hank both, so at least they're on the case and aren't going to be surprised, but I can't...it's the Gesetzbuch Ehrenkodex!"
He'd said that or something close to that before, although Roddy had been too focused on the bank robbery part to pay attention to random mouthfuls of a language he didn't speak. But now that he was hearing it again, it wasn't just random German. Even among Reinigen it was the first and most important lesson when children went through the change. "They were Wesen?" he asked, the pitch of his voice rising rapidly.
"And in full on woge," Monroe confirmed. "Visible to every single human there. They were on the bank's security cameras, for goodness sake!"
"That's...you can't do that." Roddy shook his head. "You just can't." Grimms might have seemed more like fairy tale monsters than anything else until Nick had showed up, but the Wesen Council...Mom and Dad had always been real clear that anyone who revealed the existence of Wesen to humanity in any kind of collective got disappeared, no questions and no take-backs. Hell, with his abilities he'd been taking a risk with just four of them, and even if he still didn't think he'd had a choice—even if he'd had his DJ gear on at the time—Dad hadn't exactly been happy to hear about it.
"I know. They're calling them masks, and I guess we've got the entertainment industry to thank for a lot these days, but still."
"Fuck." For once Monroe didn't have anything to say about his language. "What's going to happen?"
"I have no idea. I mean, from a criminal investigation standpoint I'll be able to identify them easily enough, but Nick's right, there's no way that anyone could put me on the stand to talk about a Skalengeck and two Blutbaden. And I wouldn't do that anyway." A pause. "And the two Blutbaden part is still extremely offensive, for the record."
Roddy very much doubted that the Blutbaden in question cared.
Monroe ran a hand through his hair. "Under the circumstances I don't see that I have much of a choice except to help Nick run them to ground, but as to what happens after that, I don't know. Frank's still picking you up this evening, right?"
The change of topic threw Roddy for a moment, but he nodded. "I think so? I mean, I haven't gotten any calls or anything." The original plan had been for him to catch the bus to the Rabes' yesterday, but then they'd decided to spend another night in the woods so he hadn't heard from Barry until mid-afternoon. And since Barry's lawyer had wanted to meet with him today to talk about the hearing and Roddy was still a little leery about buses anyway, Mr. Rabe had offered to pick him up on the way home from work instead.
"Good. No one is going to be happy with what happened today, but that doesn't mean that involving a Grimm is going to make them happier, and I'd rather have you well clear before I start poking my nose into anything. In fact it'd probably be best if you stuck close to the Rabes for a bit, and I'll give you a call when it's safe to visit again."
"Does that mean that you and Rosalee won't be able to come over for New Year's?"
"I'm not sure. I'll talk to Frank when he stops by and see how he feels." A quick smile. "Although I suppose if Nick himself is invited, I probably don't need to worry."
Your dad is here, but I don't think we're going to be leaving anytime soon, Roddy texted to Barry as Monroe and Mr. Rabe started waving their hands around again. At least Nick looked sorry to have wandered into the conversation too, although since he'd just walked in the front door five minutes ago there was no way he could have avoided it.
? Was the almost immediate reply.
They're freaking about the bank robbery. Check the news if you haven't seen it, but even if they're right, the German is getting ridiculous.
Glad you can look at screens without puking now, but how hard did you get hit that you're watching the news?
Roddy sent back an upraised middle finger because Barry deserved it for that comment and rolled his eyes at the tongue-stuck-out emoji he got in return. But apparently Barry must have gone to look because a few minutes later he got a string of exclamation marks followed by:
ON PURPOSE? ON CAMERA? ARE THEY NUTS?
Roddy snorted. Seems like. Monroe was there. And Nick's got the case so they won't get away with it, but WTF.
"Roddy? Hey," Nick said.
"Hm?" He looked up to find all three adults staring at him. "Oh. Uh, sorry, did I miss something? I was just texting with Barry."
"I asked if you had all of your things packed," Mr. Rabe said. "But I thought we'd pick up Thai for dinner on the way home, so if he's there ask him if he'd like anything besides the usual, would you?"
"Yeah, sure." Roddy sent the text off quickly. "And everything that's not my violin is in my backpack." He waved towards the door where both it and his violin case sat.
"Okay, then, I think we're ready to go. Do me a favor and let me know how things progress, would you?"
That was directed at Nick, who nodded.
"And I know you said that you had a shift on New Year's Eve, but if you and your partner want to stop by for a few hours beforehand, we'd be happy to have you. I was thinking that we'd pull the grill up to the house and toss a few things on the barbecue even if it's too cold to stay outside for long."
That was probably a courtesy-for-the-non-Jagerbars thing since he and Barry had only gotten back from camping yesterday, but Nick nodded again.
"That sounds great. And I'll talk to Hank, but I think he'd be happy to come along. Give you a call tomorrow?"
"Of course. As of now I don't have any scheduled meetings so any time would be fine."
Nick started upstairs as Monroe walked them the couple feet to the door. "If you're sure it won't be an issue, Rosalee and I will be there as well. Just let us know what time and what we can bring."
"It's absolutely not a problem, and I'll talk to you after we get the details sorted," Mr. Rabe agreed.
"Sounds good. Roddy, if you need any help with those applications, give me a call. And I'm sure we'll talk more about everything that's going on with...well, everything, on New Year's."
"Yeah," Roddy agreed, swinging his backpack up onto his shoulder. He was going to need Monroe's help for the recommendations for sure since he had to have a couple that didn't come from teachers and it wasn't like Dad had had any golf partners that he could ask like most of his classmates. Plus Monroe was a musician in his own right, unlike most everyone else Roddy knew. "Thanks. See you later." He grabbed his violin looked up the stairs. "And goodbye, Nick!"
Nick called down a goodbye in return, and Mr. Rabe reached back and drew Roddy alongside him as they left the house and made their way down the sidewalk. "So you've started on your college applications, then?"
"Yeah. Or I started looking and working on a couple essays, anyway. I haven't finished anything, and there's still forms to fill out and audition samples to record and all of that." Plus hope that he got some answers with regards to the stupid fee waiver shit too, but he wasn't going to bring those up with Mr. Rabe any more than he had with Monroe.
Mr. Rabe nodded. "Well, I'm off Wednesday and Thursday, so let me know if you want me to look over anything. I can't say that I know a great deal about classical music, but I am very familiar with application essays."
Roddy's phone buzzed before he had to respond, and he checked it quickly. "Barry says extra sticky rice, please."
