[Grimm Fic]: Bears, Bach and Bullies - PG-13 - 1/1
A/N: This is a belated birthday present for _bluebells, who asked for something highlighting Barry and Roddy's differences.
Title: Bears, Bach and Bullies
Disclaimer: I,
ladyknightanka, do not own Grimm. Please don't replicate my silly work without permission.
Warnings: PG-13 for language, violence in regards to bullying, and possible disparities in musical knowledge (where I'm lacking).
Other Notes: ~6200w. Barry/Roddy and some Monroe/Nick.
Summary: In which the big bad wolf is a Geiger groupie, the two not-so-little bears aren't very far behind, Nick's hippie Grimm ways are as annoying as ever, and Roddy suffers the consequences.
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Bears, Bach and Bullies
-
Roddy rubs his temples with his thumb and index finger. Through the spaces created by the remaining three digits, he can see Monroe fidget. “Well?” he asks after a moment.
Monroe drags the toe of his tan work boot across Von Hamelin's grass lot, by the cement where his VW Bug is parked. A little 'x' forms and dust fumes up. “I, uh, I said I was sorry.”
“Sorry's not-” Roddy begins in a loud boom, but pauses when he hears a gaggle of his classmates giggling nearby - at him, he’s sure. His voice drops to a whisper that no one human will be able to pick up. “It's a little late for sorry, don't ya think? On top of everything else, people'll think I'm the freak with a hairy sugar-daddy now.”
Monroe's eyes go wide and he replies, “But I don't make enough money to be a sugar-daddy,” as if his red and yellow Wallmart plaid shirt doesn't give that away. Who wears plaid to a classical concerto, anyway?
Roddy sighs in response; what he really wants to do is punch something, except punching Monroe would be counterproductive, another student or guest would get him expelled again, and Von Hamelin's brick wall would only break his hand. In every scenario, everyone but Roddy would win and what Roddy hates even more than losing is letting the jerks he goes to school with get one over on him.
“Look, dude, you're here more often than my dad. You don't think that's weird?” he asks Monroe. He has to admit, the words taste bitter, an anticoagulant on his tongue, but he's currently wearing a tux that costs at least two of his father's paychecks - mandated by the school for their special snowflake productions - and he gets that Ephram has to shoulder that burden somehow. To be honest, once Roddy got used to it and realized neither Nick nor his pet Blutbad would chop off his head the moment he stepped off the recital stage, it was nice to begin anticipating their familiar faces in the crowd, no matter how much he wished one of them was Ephram, instead.
Monroe senses his wavering resolve and grins toothily. “Hey, I paid for a ticket, didn't I? Fair game, kid.” When Roddy sneers at him, he adds, “’Sides, I try not to come alone. Nick'd be here if there wasn't some serial killer on the loose. I bought that extra ticket for him and everything.” Monroe's lips pucker into a pout and Roddy shivers. A sulking Blutbad is the last thing anyone wants to see.
His eyes then flick to the giant Hummer next to Monroe's small Bug, to the two large men propped against it. “That's the problem, though. You staring at me like I'm a Reinigen steak from the audience’s bad enough. You had to invite the rest of the carnivore club with you tonight?”
“We don't wanna eat you,” Monroe starts to protest, just as one of the two men - two Jägerbärs, Roddy reminds himself, another shudder filtering though his frame - pushes away from the Hummer and speaks.
“We wish you no harm, Roddy. I once told Detective Burkhardt that I enjoy classical music and, when he realized he couldn't make your recital, he extended his ticket to me.” This is the Jägerbär Roddy didn't pay much mind to earlier, older and attired in an expensive suit, where the other is wearing a sleeveless black muscle-shirt, his colossal arms crossed, and is most likely the former's cub.
Roddy stares between both bears while shaking the first's hand. “Oh, um, thanks. I hope you liked it, Mr...?” he says, head ducked and bashful now. He's known Monroe months already and has found him to be more like a leech than a wolf; he won't leave no matter how scathing Roddy's comments get and he'll try not to hurt Roddy, either, but the Jägerbärs. No matter what they say, even some Blutbaden consider them savage. Who's to say they won't rend Roddy limb from limb to figure out where his music comes from, if their curiosity gets the best of them?
“Frank Rabe,” Jägerbär One - Frank, such an unassuming name - answers with a wan smile. He extricates their appendages to take a step back. His smile staggers into a smirk. “And I think Barry's shown you just how much we enjoyed your performance, hasn't he?”
“That's an understatement,” Roddy doesn't reply, because Monroe is giving him the stink eye. Apparently, he's also discomfited in the Jägerbärs’ company and Roddy thinks the two of them will have to file a formal complaint against Nick later, if they figure someone out to do that with. Bad Grimming should hardly be encouraged.
“Sorry about his...enthusiasm, by the way,” Frank continues, unaware of the turn Roddy's thoughts have taken.
Before Roddy can mutter that it's fine - although it's not and he'll probably never live it down with his classmates - the other bear, Barry, exclaims, “How was I 'sposed to know you actually wanted me to sleep through that, huh? People're usually happy when you clap at concerts.”
Roddy tries to keep his mouth shut, he really does, but the sarcasm eats out like a rat through wire. “Dude, you stood up and shouted, 'Woo, fuck yeah!' That's your idea of clapping?”
“I'm pretty sure I saw you trying to start a wave, too,” Monroe supplements, then pauses to tap his chinny-chin-chin. “Either that or it was some sorta squatting exercise gone wrong. Not sure since no one brought a blow-up ball.”
“Thank God,” Roddy mutters. Someone would have been generous enough to serve that ball right into his face, in the middle of his grand solo, had that happened. His life is perfect that way.
He doesn't say it loud, but Barry's green eyes settle on him, captivating as quicksand and probably just as deadly, if the way his face tints rage red is any indication. To Barry's credit, he doesn't immediately Hulk out and holler. All he does is open and clench his massive fists a few times. And then he explodes. “I didn't even want to come to this stupid school's stupid show, anyway!”
Roddy can see corded veins throb on his neck. If Barry were a Dämonfeuer, smoke would wisp its way out of his nostrils by now. As it is, he's furious enough, even shaking, that Roddy retreats a step, Monroe wolfs out, Frank pushes his way further between his son and the others, and everyone else in the Von Hamelin parking deck gapes. Barry stomps away before they can react. The Hummer's engine starts up with a roar like its master's. A couple of seconds later, it's gone, ozone-layer consuming petrol left in its wake.
It's Frank's turn to sigh. “He was my ride home,” he informs them forlornly, then sobers up and asks Roddy, “You okay, son?” upon noticing how he clutches Monroe by the arm, in full Reinigen regalia.
Roddy lets go like Monroe's skin's made of acid and tells himself he only grabbed him in the first place because he didn't want a Blutbad-Jägerbär showdown in the middle of his schoolyard. He hardly needs another mark against him and, since everyone’s already seen him associating with them, he can’t pretend not to know them, either.
“I, uh, yeah, fine,” he stammers, fighting to revert his face back to normal again. Both older Wesen frown at him.
“I'm sorry for my son's actions,” Frank reaffirms, eyes a muddier green than Barry's, but warmer, more earnest. “It was selfish of me to force him along, but Detective Burkhardt's conditions were specifically that Barry is chaperoned by me whenever he isn't at school, and I was truly interested in hearing you play. Please, let me apologize by taking you to dinner.” He holds out his hand again, but Roddy's gaze settles on Monroe, instead, and Frank notices. “Mr. Monroe can come, too, of course. I'd really love to talk to you about that solo of yours, Roddy. It was one of Bach's sonatas da chiesa, wasn't it?”
“Just Monroe,” Monroe cuts in, grin amicable. He crowds closer to Frank, Roddy uncomfortably between them, to say, “Sounded like one to me, too. Oh man, you don't even know, I'd give an arm and a leg to hear Roddy play the sonatas and partitas all together. It’d be a little like listening to the man himself, I bet.”
“So long as you don't rip mine off,” Roddy mumbles, acerbic remark undermined by how his cheeks paint a pleasant pink. He gets two looks in tandem, Monroe's deadpan, Frank's perpetually hopeful. Roddy bites his lip and stares down at his ratty black Converse, the only shoes he had that color-coordinated with his outfit, then nods. All he's got at home are instant noodles and a spotty microwave, anyway. “All right, we can do dinner. Just...try to order stuff that fills you up, ‘kay? I'd like to live to see seventeen.”
“I wouldn't eat rat even if I wasn't vegan,” Monroe says teasingly.
Before Roddy can snap back a reply, Frank shoots him another smirk and adds, “Not to my tastes, either,” which gives Roddy pause for a second or two, then sparks a surprised chuff of laughter. If the guy can inject himself into one of Roddy and Monroe's conversations - what Nick aptly calls snark offs and steers clear off - while holding his own wit-wise, he's not half bad. For a bear.
“Okay, let's go,” Roddy says, relenting. They bicker all the way to the posh French restaurant Frank picks. Roddy forgets about the judging glares of his classmates and their parents. He forgets about Barry, as well. And that's that.
For, like, three days, anyway.
-
Everything changes in Mrs. Brewer's fourth period trigonometry class. The thing about being a violin prodigy is, Roddy's set to do okay in pretty much everything else, and math's no different. Music requires a makeshift arithmetic that comes naturally to him, ABC-123, so he spends Brewer's class the same way every day: dozing with his cheek against the window in the back right of the room.
A sharp snick-snick-snick pulsates through glass into his skin, not painful so much as unpleasantly tingly, reminiscent of his foot going numb. He jars awake in his seat and glances around at once, eyes narrowed to gauge his classmates' faces. Carter and his butter boys may be gone, but they left plenty of assholes to pick up where they left off, and Roddy can't even count Sarah among his few supporters anymore because Mrs. Jessup had her daughter transferred after the Mr. Lawson debacle. No one's snickering now, however, and the snick-snick-snick sounds again, outside, not in.
Roddy whips around to stare out the window and says, “Shit.”
“Something you'd like to share with the rest of the class, Mr. Geiger?” Mrs. Brewer asks, tapping a leather lady loafer impatiently, her spindly arms crossed across a garish sweater even Monroe would overlook.
Of course the old bat didn't hear the pebbles, Roddy thinks. He's convinced she is some kind of bat Wesen, but those are blind, not deaf, and feel through vibrations, which only proves his theory wrong. He curses again, then puts on his most innocuous mask and says, “Yeah, I gotta piss.”
The other kids in the room giggle. Before his teacher can squawk a scandalized protest, Roddy stands, grabs the hall pass, and dashes out. There's a Jägerbär outside the window, waiting for him like Romeo for Juliet - that is, if Romeo's hungry and Juliet's a prime cut of beef. Or not so prime. Roddy is a Reinigen, after all - a Reinigen who probably shouldn't have called foul on a freaking bear. As he barrels down the stairs out of the school-building, Roddy recalls his dad telling him his smart mouth would get him into trouble someday. And now that day's here.
“Look, I'm sorry I-” he starts to say, the instant his foot stretches out the door, only to pause when he doesn't immediately find Barry. He slips into his Reinigen form and sniffs the air while taking a few reluctant steps forward. When Barry suddenly jumps out from behind an old oak tree, his ferocious roar emphasized by upraised arms, Roddy squeaks and nearly plants onto his ass. He's caught around the waist before he can.
“I scared you,” Barry says with triumphant grin. Roddy pushes against his chest till he lets go and Barry’s lips purse into a frown, but his green eyes are still alight with boyish pleasure. As a Reinigen, Roddy could see him well enough the night of the concert, despite it being dark. Now, the midday sun halos his auburn curls, clean across his light tan and pale dress shirt, and Roddy is forced to admit Barry's handsome. To himself, anyway. Smells nice, too, like sandalwood.
To Barry he says, “Yeah, 'cause you're a dick,” arms wound tight around his own body in a pantomime hug of self-defense.
He expects Barry to pitch a fit again, maybe even hit him this time. Instead, he rubs the back of his neck in a sheepish gesture and responds, “I didn't mean to be, I swear. You're, um-” His mossy green eyes flick to his black shoes, then up again, “-you're cute when you're scared, though.”
Roddy's jaw drops. For a moment, his infamous satire is lost to him. A fervid flush spreads across his face, quick as a forest fire. Mr. Lawson would roll in his grave if he could see him now. “What're you doing here, anyway?” he manages eventually. “Your dad said you're on parole or something. Is he waiting for you in the bushes? Are you holding me hostage?”
“No.” Barry scowls at him and Roddy wonders yet again if he's gone too far. He takes a step back, just in case, but Barry's next reply is matter-of-fact. “He doesn't know I'm here. I'm not 'sposed to go out by myself anymore, so he takes me to school and community service stuff, but seniors can go off campus for lunch and no one saw me leave with everybody else.” He beams another smile at Roddy. “I wanted to see you.”
“Uh huh,” Roddy says, adding this to a mental log of everything he knows about Barry. He's hot, a Jägerbär, in his senior year and, evidently, a criminal. Oh, and he thinks he's developed some sort of bond with Roddy. Can't forget that.
Before Roddy can precariously suggest that he go back to his own school, Barry kneels at the base of the tree he'd previously hidden behind and procures a sizable picnic basket. “Are you on lunch break, too? I thought we could eat together?” he asks, eyes round as a five year old's in a bouncy castle.
Roddy doubts they'll remain that way for long, but doesn't have the heart to make a Yogi Bear, pic-a-nic basket joke. He lets his own eyes rove up to Mrs. Brewer's classroom window and figures she'll only be happier without him making sardonic statements about her dating Al-Tusi for the rest of the period. She won't gut him where he stands for being a truant, at least.
“Okay,” he agrees, then primly lowers himself beside Barry, who sits on dirt sans blanket. Oh well. In the basket, Roddy finds bread, meat and many, many wheels of cheese. “Seriously?” he asks, the fingers of his free hand bunched into his uniform corduroys to keep from finding purchase around proximate throats.
Barry has a sandwich already made in his hands. He says through a munched mouthful of it, “Jerry likes cheese. I thought you would, too.”
“Jerry, as in the mouse from Tom and Jerry?” Barry nods. Roddy takes a deep breath and tries to explain with more patience, “Dude, rats and Reinigen are omnivores. We eat pretty much everything. I'm not some prissy Mauzhertz.”
“Aw man, I shoulda Google'd that, too.” Barry frowns around a bite of his sandwich and looks genuinely remorseful, bottom lip extended.
Roddy forces himself not to reply. For the next few minutes, he focuses only on compiling his own meal. It's only after taking a bite and tasting the rich spices and whole grains of it that he chooses to take mercy on Barry by changing the subject. “What else did you look up? Hopefully you got whatever that was right.”
“I think so,” Barry says, somewhat shy now. His eyes cut down to the ground and track an ant, which carries a breadcrumb away on its back. “I, uh, went to YouTube and looked at a bunch of violin concerts to find out how people act at ‘em.”
Roddy blinks at this and his throat tightens. He dredges up a tiny, encouraging smile. “That's actually nice of you, man. What did you think?”
“I'm totally gonna come back, if Dad brings me,” Barry replies, lips stretched wider now that he senses Roddy's approval. He offers Roddy some sort of fancy soda that's bottled the way wine would be. “I found the guy who created that piece you did and listened to him. Dad told me his name. You were, like, way better.”
Roddy has the luck to take his first sip simultaneous to this proclamation. He starts to choke and Barry moves behind him to smack his back, which does nothing to alleviate his gasps. Upon regaining his ability to breathe properly, Roddy glowers at Barry through wet eyelashes and says, “Dude, Bach? Get the fuck out of my school. That's blasphemy.”
He's only half-kidding, but when Barry sputters the objection, “B-but our date's not done yet,” Roddy gags for the second time in as many minutes.
“D-date?” he repeats, setting his half-eaten sandwich down on top of the picnic basket's woven lid, appetite abruptly abandoned. “Dude, you think this is a date?”
“Uh huh, and it was going good, wasn’t it? I'm sorry about the Bach guy, but I'll try harder next time. I only found out he existed, like, a few days ago.” Barry's eyes gleam earnestly now, the way his father's did during the recital, and follow Roddy when he rises. Even sitting, he’s tall enough that Roddy feels small, insignificant, in comparison, as easy to crush beneath a wayward shoe as the ant from earlier.
“I think I should go,” Roddy says. “Classes and everything. Gotta give Mrs. Brewer her piss pass back, ya know?” He thumbs back toward the school and starts to withdraw. Worse comes to worst, if Barry gives chase, he'll run inside, bolt the door, and call Monroe.
Barry doesn't, though. His forehead furrows in thought and he murmurs, “You didn't know it was a date?” Roddy warily shakes his head and the furrows grow deeper, little trenches in Barry's skin, war-zones. “Oh, sorry, but you'll know next time 'cause...I wanna date you, Roddy. I wanna be your boyfriend.” His expressions clears into some semblance of cheery again, grin shit-eating and gargantuan. The sun's rays seem to dwell on him and make his eyes glint. “Will you have lunch with me again tomorrow?”
Roddy almost trips over a tree root in his valiant attempt not to book it. He impels himself to sit back down - plops, really. “That is, er, I just can't, man. I'm sorry.”
“You're not gay?” Barry inquires now. A crinkle develops between his eyebrows.
Roddy should say yes. He tells himself he wants to, that he just wants this situation to end. Except, that he's not as sure about as he is how warm Barry's barreled chest felt against his body, how sad the kicked puppy look Barry gives him now is. “I'm...bi,” he says, and Barry's shoulders flare out of their droop, but before he can get too excited, Roddy continues, “but I just got out of a shitty relationship. I don't wanna deal with that crap again.”
“I'm not like him,” Barry answers immediately, each syllable emphasized and pragmatic, concise in a way uncharacteristic of bears.
“Her, and yeah, you really are.” Roddy can't help the way his mouth cants at one corner, maybe because of the similarities. Sarah was - is - pigheaded, too, even when wrong, for everything but dating Roddy. She gave him up faster than she would have her need to buy a new Prada purse. Rich kids like her and Barry get what they want, then break it, but not Roddy, not anymore. Doesn't mean he can't be nice about it, since Barry's face falls like Roddy kicked his dog. Roddy reaches out and pats one of his folded legs. “Don't look so down, big guy. You wanna slum? There're plenty of rats in the sewer.”
Barry nods and mumbles an unhappy, “Okay.” Roddy departs while he's beneath the old oak, but by the time he returns to Mrs. Brewer's now-empty class to bring her hall pass back to her, he can't see Barry out the window anymore. He tells himself it's for the best.
-
The next night, Monroe and Nick ask if Roddy wants to have dinner at Monroe's. He doesn't say yes too often because he figures it's better to let them sift through their sexual tension alone, gross as it is, but he didn’t sleep well the night before, feeling like he was being watched, so when Nick mentions that the others won't be around, Roddy instantly agrees.
It's not that he doesn't like the rest of Monroe's makeshift pack. He thinks Gracie and Hanson are great, since they get him, are nice and don't treat him like gum beneath their shoes, the way the Von Hamelin kids do. The only thing is, they're human and Roddy can hardly talk about Jägerbär mating habits in their presence, nor in Holly or Sally's, since they're too young one way or the other.
It's worth sitting through a meal of three bean salad or whatever crap it is that Monroe's devised to torture them with this time. Once they're done and move to the foyer, before Monroe can ask if Roddy wants to duet with him, mano-a-mano, cello-a-violin, Roddy breaks in, “I've gotta a...a question. About one of the Wesen you know.”
Nick straightens on Monroe's ugly paisley sofa and grows serious straightaway. “What's wrong, Roddy? No one's after you, are they?”
“Well, I guess you could call it that,” Roddy mutters. He edges out of Monroe's grasp to prevent him from taking an intrusive sniff.
“You do smell like bear,” Monroe says, regardless, teeth bared and irises bleeding red.
Roddy sighs. “That Jägerbär, Barry, wants to be my boyfriend.” He throws his arms across his heated face, but looks up again when only silence meets his sensitive ears. Nick wears a thoughtful expression and Monroe stares at Nick.
“You can't honestly be thinking about it, can you?” Monroe asks, mouth a hairy 'o' of shock.
“Roddy...might be a good influence on him,” Nick replies, which makes the little 'o' into something elephantine, a spacious abode for Monroe's many fangs.
“Nick, no, you wanna stick the helpless little Reinigen onto a breeding table with a bear? The same bear who almost massacred two people and barely felt bad about it?” Monroe exclaims.
Nick splays his palms open in a peaceable motion. “Not a breeding table, Monroe. What the hell is that, even? I just thought the two of them might benefit from being friends.” Nick flashes apologetic blue eyes at Roddy, who grimaces between both adults.
“I dunno what's more offensive. You thinking I'm some kinda damsel-” This to Monroe, who hunches in on himself, “-or you offering me up to a Jägerbär like I'm ratatouille. And to think I came to you two for advice.”
He stands up and grabs his beat-up leather jacket off the arm of Monroe's couch, ignoring the, “Roddy, wait!” that Nick calls after him.
At the door, without turning back, he says, “Don't worry, Monroe. This kid...he's on fucking community service for almost killing people? And he doesn't seem very sorry about it.” Roddy thinks of Sarah on the floor, that night in the warehouse, the fear that stank off of her, too pungent for her pretty perfume to smother. “I was sorry. I don't think I need friends like that and I definitely don't want to date another self-righteous, spoiled brat.”
When Nick calls him later, he's lying back on his diminutive bed, phone against his ear and a baseball in his hand, thump-thump-thumping into the ceiling above, in which a permanent dent develops. “Are you...mad, Roddy?” Nick asks.
“Nah, I'm okay,” he says, and he is. They helped him figure out the Barry situation and that's really all he wanted. Even if Ephram wasn't busy, Roddy couldn't talk to his father about Barry.
Roddy doesn't know why he spends the next day's lunch period seething, alone, in a urinal stall. Maybe he's just more stupid than he'd like to let on.
-
Sequestering himself away like this works till the end of the week, at least in avoiding Barry. Roddy's classmates, not so much.
“Hey, Geiger, maybe we should replace your chair with a toilet? You sure seem to like those a lot,” Finley Jacobs says with a chuckle, when the new music department head is out of earshot. Sarah and the boys' replacements laugh behind their palms.
Roddy pulls a face at them. “Maybe 'cause toilets smell better than your rank colognes.”
“You little-” Finley growls, knuckles white on the bow of his violin, but Miss Candida, arms laden with photo-copied sheet music for their next performance, takes that moment to swoop back in.
“I hear talking, not playing,” she says, mouth set in a dour way that's very evocative of Mr. Lawson. Finley's jaw flaps like an ugly fish a few more times and she glares at him. “Mr. Jacobs, do remember that you're only here because our first choices are not. The rest of you, too.”
“But not me,” Roddy supplies genially.
Miss Candida frowns, but agrees, “No, not you. Doesn't mean you shouldn't practice.”
That shuts all the boys up, but Roddy feels smug, not scolded. He ignores his peers' scowls by smoothing his cheek into the crown of his violin and losing himself to his music. When Miss Candida almost smiles at him, after practice ends, he fires another smirk at Finley, packs away his equipment, and leaves him behind to sulk.
The Geiger trailer is a long walk away from Von Hamelin and he doesn't notice anything for the first ten minutes of his journey. He just wraps his jacket tighter around himself and hums his violin's latest instrumental, pondering whether he has enough on him to grab a late fast food dinner or if he has to appropriate the energy to do something creative with whatever wilted ingredients rot in his fridge. And then the smell hits him, a thick enough musk in the air that he transmutes on instinct.
Finley wears some generic Calvin Klein cologne. It bothers Roddy's nose more because it's unnatural than because of the actual scent it purports, but it's worse on Finley than it is the dozens of other boys who wear it at Von Hamelin. It's different, almost metallic, bloody, like nothing Roddy's ever smelled, except for a vague kindred quality to Monroe and the Rabes' redolence. Very vague.
Roddy doesn't take a step back when Finley lopes out of an alleyway. It's Finley's face that does it, furred and fanged, lined with stripes. A freaking tiger, which explains so much, now that Roddy thinks about it. Not that his brain will let him think, nor do anything but stutter a, “H-hey, Jacobs.”
“Surprised, huh?” Finley asks, crossing his arms and baring his teeth in the mockery of a sweet smile. He looks like he belongs in a Street Fighter game, with his stupidly moussed blond hair, and Roddy wishes he were so he could be in Japan or a virtual universe, anywhere but with Roddy now. Finley strides forward and, in an instant, drags Roddy into the alley with him, till he's pinned against a brick wall with 'Kevin was here' tagged on it, Finley's arm heavy on his throat. “I was pretty fuckin' shocked myself when I saw your ugly Reinigen mug in school,” Finley continues, more of that is-it-or-isn't-it blood smell wafting off his breath.
Roddy forces his hands to stop scratching Finley's and musters up a laugh. “You were shocked, too? Imagine that. We're practically bonding.”
“Not exactly.” Finley chuckles, too, and fists his free hand. His punch purposefully misses Roddy's ear by a hairsbreadth. Soon, Finley's face is about the same distance apart from his. “See, I coulda maybe let you go with a beating every now and then, if you weren't such a cocky little shit. A genius Reinigen? What kinda world is this, where a damned sewer rat is better than the rest of us?”
“We are what we are,” Roddy tries to reply, but it comes out garbled. Probably for the best, as it'd only prove Finley's point and piss him off further. There’s also an, “And you're a dumbass,” somewhere on the tip of his tongue, after all. Roddy digs his nails in deeper and kicks out his legs. It’s getting tougher to do, to even breathe.
Finley doesn't flinch. He relocates his dangerously sharp fangs to one of Roddy's ears and whispers, “Who do you think would notice if a literal street rat went missing, eh, Geiger? Do you think they'd find you if I drowned you in the river? Would they even look?”
Galaxies big bang in Roddy's vision. He attributes the stinging in his eyes to oxygen deprivation and his next response is even less legible, especially over the pounding of his ear drums. The roar that rears up from the street parallel them, and Finley's resulting cry, however, are all too apparent.
Roddy slides down the brick wall at his back and coughs till his lungs ache. The cries, growls and skin-on-skin slap sounds persist around him. He blinks through black spots, but his vision is slightly blurred and he only makes out two large blobs, like the ink blots a childhood therapist interrogated him on after his mother died, before his father's cheap insurance company decided to stop paying that extraneous cost.
The smells, though. Those never fail him. Sandalwood tickles his nose and overpowers iron. He buries his face in his knees, hugging his arms around them, and doesn't look up when the shouting stops or even when heavy footsteps recede out of the alley, but does when they return. A dark shadow looms over him.
Although he knows it's Barry, Roddy huddles in on himself when the older boy kneels and reaches out for him, but leans into his touch once Barry looks human again. “W-what are you doing here, man? Stalking me?”
Barry's worried expression dissolves into a grimace. “I just saved you, ya know? You could thank me,” he grumbles, words vibrating through his bulk and Roddy’s clothes. He tucks Roddy against his side the second he’s aided him up.
“Thanks,” Roddy says, unable to make himself pull away. Barry begins to lead him out the alleyway, down a street. They trek through a few more and the path starts to become familiar; Roddy recognizes it as his usual way home. He glances up at Barry, who continues to walk with an arm around his waist. “Really, though...Barry. You won't get in trouble for pulling a stunt like this?”
Barry's eyes skim to meet his, wider now. If they were anyone else, Roddy would think it was because he'd never called Barry by his name before, but that's a crappy chick-flick reason. “I'm, ah, I sorta got grounded a couple days ago when Dad found out I'd skipped football practice to see you,” Barry eventually discloses.
Roddy can tell he's blushing, in spite of the dark, and inquires, “Then how come you're here, with me, right now?” How come you saved me, what did you do to Finley, whywhywhy, he doesn't think he can ask. He can't even get his legs to quit shaking like school cafeteria jello.
He does feel a rush of steadying heat course through him at the dimpled smirk Barry gifts him, while helping him across the street, toward the trailer park. It's more pleasant a feeling than he'd typically associate with an admitted stalker discovering where he lives.
“I've been running circles 'round Dad for eighteen years. He's only been playing papa bear so seriously for a few months,” Barry informs him and Roddy lets those thoughts seep out. He doesn't give a damn about them or propriety right now - he can't.
“Oh...cool,” he says. His trailer boulders into view and Barry starts to slow down beside him. Roddy's legs still tremble, but out of adrenaline now. The tiny pinpricks that rush through his feet make him want to grab Barry by the hand and run, just the two of them - make him want to invite him in so they can share a sucky dinner, at least. He does neither and careens into Barry's arms instead, so they're as face-to-face as they can be with the height difference. He squints at him like he would at ancient sheet music, doing his best to decipher.
“You okay?” Barry asks, forehead creased in the same way it was, that day in the schoolyard.
“Yeah,” Roddy murmurs, and before he can chicken out, stands on his tiptoes to kiss him. He hears the subtle displacement of wind caused by Barry's momentarily flailing arms, but big hands soon come to rest on his hips, caging him close to Barry. Roddy's own palms flatten against a muscular chest.
They slip apart slickly and Barry grins at him. “Does this means I can be your boyfriend now?”
“Uh, no,” Roddy says, ears hot, then adds, “This means thank you. For, um, saving my ass, walking me home and...stuff. So thanks.”
“You're welcome,” Barry replies. He gives Roddy's waist a final squeeze and makes to draw back, the curl of his mouth losing some of its luster. Roddy wonders if this is the moment he’s finally given up, if he’s finally realized that not all the toys in the shop window are for sale.
Barry bends his body halfway back in the river's direction and Roddy calls after him, “This also means you can come to my recitals. And possibly lunch. If you wanna, that is.”
It's not narcissism that has him expect an agreement. For whatever reason, and it's not a reason Roddy can fathom in the slightest, Barry's made his ardor pretty clear. Roddy doesn't, however, expect Barry to lash back around, grab him by the shoulders and steal another kiss that swallows the breath from his lungs.
“I want to,” Barry says, against his lips. Roddy smiles into Barry's in turn. The night sky winks stars at them and he can too simply pretend they’re on the set of some romantic comedy, like the ones Sarah used to drag him to. He doesn’t even mind. And then the moment is ruined when Barry continues, “I should probably go, though. Dad's gonna whoop my ass if he finds my rooms empty again.”
“Yeah, okay,” Roddy says. Barry releases him and retreats. He walks backwards so he can stare at Roddy for as long as possible, but eventually wheels around and disappears past the head of the river, curbing around a new street. Roddy stares after him, too, then finally enters his trailer. He may only have one room, barely, to his name, but he has no problem sleeping that night.
A couple days later, he casually mentions to Monroe that he’s maybe started seeing Barry. Nick catches Monroe by the elbow when he puts on a swoons and cheerfully replies, “You should bring him by the next time you kids meet up. He's never accepted my invitation before,” which incites a growl from Monroe.
That's all Roddy needs to hear before he nods and hauls ass out of there. He doesn't want to be around if they start role-playing Little Red Riding Hood to vent Monroe's frustrations - not if he can be making out with Barry behind the bleachers of his school or something.
-
The End
-
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this, Blue. And everyone else, too, of course. ♥
Title: Bears, Bach and Bullies
Disclaimer: I,
ladyknightanka, do not own Grimm. Please don't replicate my silly work without permission.
Warnings: PG-13 for language, violence in regards to bullying, and possible disparities in musical knowledge (where I'm lacking).
Other Notes: ~6200w. Barry/Roddy and some Monroe/Nick.
Summary: In which the big bad wolf is a Geiger groupie, the two not-so-little bears aren't very far behind, Nick's hippie Grimm ways are as annoying as ever, and Roddy suffers the consequences.
-
Bears, Bach and Bullies
-
Roddy rubs his temples with his thumb and index finger. Through the spaces created by the remaining three digits, he can see Monroe fidget. “Well?” he asks after a moment.
Monroe drags the toe of his tan work boot across Von Hamelin's grass lot, by the cement where his VW Bug is parked. A little 'x' forms and dust fumes up. “I, uh, I said I was sorry.”
“Sorry's not-” Roddy begins in a loud boom, but pauses when he hears a gaggle of his classmates giggling nearby - at him, he’s sure. His voice drops to a whisper that no one human will be able to pick up. “It's a little late for sorry, don't ya think? On top of everything else, people'll think I'm the freak with a hairy sugar-daddy now.”
Monroe's eyes go wide and he replies, “But I don't make enough money to be a sugar-daddy,” as if his red and yellow Wallmart plaid shirt doesn't give that away. Who wears plaid to a classical concerto, anyway?
Roddy sighs in response; what he really wants to do is punch something, except punching Monroe would be counterproductive, another student or guest would get him expelled again, and Von Hamelin's brick wall would only break his hand. In every scenario, everyone but Roddy would win and what Roddy hates even more than losing is letting the jerks he goes to school with get one over on him.
“Look, dude, you're here more often than my dad. You don't think that's weird?” he asks Monroe. He has to admit, the words taste bitter, an anticoagulant on his tongue, but he's currently wearing a tux that costs at least two of his father's paychecks - mandated by the school for their special snowflake productions - and he gets that Ephram has to shoulder that burden somehow. To be honest, once Roddy got used to it and realized neither Nick nor his pet Blutbad would chop off his head the moment he stepped off the recital stage, it was nice to begin anticipating their familiar faces in the crowd, no matter how much he wished one of them was Ephram, instead.
Monroe senses his wavering resolve and grins toothily. “Hey, I paid for a ticket, didn't I? Fair game, kid.” When Roddy sneers at him, he adds, “’Sides, I try not to come alone. Nick'd be here if there wasn't some serial killer on the loose. I bought that extra ticket for him and everything.” Monroe's lips pucker into a pout and Roddy shivers. A sulking Blutbad is the last thing anyone wants to see.
His eyes then flick to the giant Hummer next to Monroe's small Bug, to the two large men propped against it. “That's the problem, though. You staring at me like I'm a Reinigen steak from the audience’s bad enough. You had to invite the rest of the carnivore club with you tonight?”
“We don't wanna eat you,” Monroe starts to protest, just as one of the two men - two Jägerbärs, Roddy reminds himself, another shudder filtering though his frame - pushes away from the Hummer and speaks.
“We wish you no harm, Roddy. I once told Detective Burkhardt that I enjoy classical music and, when he realized he couldn't make your recital, he extended his ticket to me.” This is the Jägerbär Roddy didn't pay much mind to earlier, older and attired in an expensive suit, where the other is wearing a sleeveless black muscle-shirt, his colossal arms crossed, and is most likely the former's cub.
Roddy stares between both bears while shaking the first's hand. “Oh, um, thanks. I hope you liked it, Mr...?” he says, head ducked and bashful now. He's known Monroe months already and has found him to be more like a leech than a wolf; he won't leave no matter how scathing Roddy's comments get and he'll try not to hurt Roddy, either, but the Jägerbärs. No matter what they say, even some Blutbaden consider them savage. Who's to say they won't rend Roddy limb from limb to figure out where his music comes from, if their curiosity gets the best of them?
“Frank Rabe,” Jägerbär One - Frank, such an unassuming name - answers with a wan smile. He extricates their appendages to take a step back. His smile staggers into a smirk. “And I think Barry's shown you just how much we enjoyed your performance, hasn't he?”
“That's an understatement,” Roddy doesn't reply, because Monroe is giving him the stink eye. Apparently, he's also discomfited in the Jägerbärs’ company and Roddy thinks the two of them will have to file a formal complaint against Nick later, if they figure someone out to do that with. Bad Grimming should hardly be encouraged.
“Sorry about his...enthusiasm, by the way,” Frank continues, unaware of the turn Roddy's thoughts have taken.
Before Roddy can mutter that it's fine - although it's not and he'll probably never live it down with his classmates - the other bear, Barry, exclaims, “How was I 'sposed to know you actually wanted me to sleep through that, huh? People're usually happy when you clap at concerts.”
Roddy tries to keep his mouth shut, he really does, but the sarcasm eats out like a rat through wire. “Dude, you stood up and shouted, 'Woo, fuck yeah!' That's your idea of clapping?”
“I'm pretty sure I saw you trying to start a wave, too,” Monroe supplements, then pauses to tap his chinny-chin-chin. “Either that or it was some sorta squatting exercise gone wrong. Not sure since no one brought a blow-up ball.”
“Thank God,” Roddy mutters. Someone would have been generous enough to serve that ball right into his face, in the middle of his grand solo, had that happened. His life is perfect that way.
He doesn't say it loud, but Barry's green eyes settle on him, captivating as quicksand and probably just as deadly, if the way his face tints rage red is any indication. To Barry's credit, he doesn't immediately Hulk out and holler. All he does is open and clench his massive fists a few times. And then he explodes. “I didn't even want to come to this stupid school's stupid show, anyway!”
Roddy can see corded veins throb on his neck. If Barry were a Dämonfeuer, smoke would wisp its way out of his nostrils by now. As it is, he's furious enough, even shaking, that Roddy retreats a step, Monroe wolfs out, Frank pushes his way further between his son and the others, and everyone else in the Von Hamelin parking deck gapes. Barry stomps away before they can react. The Hummer's engine starts up with a roar like its master's. A couple of seconds later, it's gone, ozone-layer consuming petrol left in its wake.
It's Frank's turn to sigh. “He was my ride home,” he informs them forlornly, then sobers up and asks Roddy, “You okay, son?” upon noticing how he clutches Monroe by the arm, in full Reinigen regalia.
Roddy lets go like Monroe's skin's made of acid and tells himself he only grabbed him in the first place because he didn't want a Blutbad-Jägerbär showdown in the middle of his schoolyard. He hardly needs another mark against him and, since everyone’s already seen him associating with them, he can’t pretend not to know them, either.
“I, uh, yeah, fine,” he stammers, fighting to revert his face back to normal again. Both older Wesen frown at him.
“I'm sorry for my son's actions,” Frank reaffirms, eyes a muddier green than Barry's, but warmer, more earnest. “It was selfish of me to force him along, but Detective Burkhardt's conditions were specifically that Barry is chaperoned by me whenever he isn't at school, and I was truly interested in hearing you play. Please, let me apologize by taking you to dinner.” He holds out his hand again, but Roddy's gaze settles on Monroe, instead, and Frank notices. “Mr. Monroe can come, too, of course. I'd really love to talk to you about that solo of yours, Roddy. It was one of Bach's sonatas da chiesa, wasn't it?”
“Just Monroe,” Monroe cuts in, grin amicable. He crowds closer to Frank, Roddy uncomfortably between them, to say, “Sounded like one to me, too. Oh man, you don't even know, I'd give an arm and a leg to hear Roddy play the sonatas and partitas all together. It’d be a little like listening to the man himself, I bet.”
“So long as you don't rip mine off,” Roddy mumbles, acerbic remark undermined by how his cheeks paint a pleasant pink. He gets two looks in tandem, Monroe's deadpan, Frank's perpetually hopeful. Roddy bites his lip and stares down at his ratty black Converse, the only shoes he had that color-coordinated with his outfit, then nods. All he's got at home are instant noodles and a spotty microwave, anyway. “All right, we can do dinner. Just...try to order stuff that fills you up, ‘kay? I'd like to live to see seventeen.”
“I wouldn't eat rat even if I wasn't vegan,” Monroe says teasingly.
Before Roddy can snap back a reply, Frank shoots him another smirk and adds, “Not to my tastes, either,” which gives Roddy pause for a second or two, then sparks a surprised chuff of laughter. If the guy can inject himself into one of Roddy and Monroe's conversations - what Nick aptly calls snark offs and steers clear off - while holding his own wit-wise, he's not half bad. For a bear.
“Okay, let's go,” Roddy says, relenting. They bicker all the way to the posh French restaurant Frank picks. Roddy forgets about the judging glares of his classmates and their parents. He forgets about Barry, as well. And that's that.
For, like, three days, anyway.
-
Everything changes in Mrs. Brewer's fourth period trigonometry class. The thing about being a violin prodigy is, Roddy's set to do okay in pretty much everything else, and math's no different. Music requires a makeshift arithmetic that comes naturally to him, ABC-123, so he spends Brewer's class the same way every day: dozing with his cheek against the window in the back right of the room.
A sharp snick-snick-snick pulsates through glass into his skin, not painful so much as unpleasantly tingly, reminiscent of his foot going numb. He jars awake in his seat and glances around at once, eyes narrowed to gauge his classmates' faces. Carter and his butter boys may be gone, but they left plenty of assholes to pick up where they left off, and Roddy can't even count Sarah among his few supporters anymore because Mrs. Jessup had her daughter transferred after the Mr. Lawson debacle. No one's snickering now, however, and the snick-snick-snick sounds again, outside, not in.
Roddy whips around to stare out the window and says, “Shit.”
“Something you'd like to share with the rest of the class, Mr. Geiger?” Mrs. Brewer asks, tapping a leather lady loafer impatiently, her spindly arms crossed across a garish sweater even Monroe would overlook.
Of course the old bat didn't hear the pebbles, Roddy thinks. He's convinced she is some kind of bat Wesen, but those are blind, not deaf, and feel through vibrations, which only proves his theory wrong. He curses again, then puts on his most innocuous mask and says, “Yeah, I gotta piss.”
The other kids in the room giggle. Before his teacher can squawk a scandalized protest, Roddy stands, grabs the hall pass, and dashes out. There's a Jägerbär outside the window, waiting for him like Romeo for Juliet - that is, if Romeo's hungry and Juliet's a prime cut of beef. Or not so prime. Roddy is a Reinigen, after all - a Reinigen who probably shouldn't have called foul on a freaking bear. As he barrels down the stairs out of the school-building, Roddy recalls his dad telling him his smart mouth would get him into trouble someday. And now that day's here.
“Look, I'm sorry I-” he starts to say, the instant his foot stretches out the door, only to pause when he doesn't immediately find Barry. He slips into his Reinigen form and sniffs the air while taking a few reluctant steps forward. When Barry suddenly jumps out from behind an old oak tree, his ferocious roar emphasized by upraised arms, Roddy squeaks and nearly plants onto his ass. He's caught around the waist before he can.
“I scared you,” Barry says with triumphant grin. Roddy pushes against his chest till he lets go and Barry’s lips purse into a frown, but his green eyes are still alight with boyish pleasure. As a Reinigen, Roddy could see him well enough the night of the concert, despite it being dark. Now, the midday sun halos his auburn curls, clean across his light tan and pale dress shirt, and Roddy is forced to admit Barry's handsome. To himself, anyway. Smells nice, too, like sandalwood.
To Barry he says, “Yeah, 'cause you're a dick,” arms wound tight around his own body in a pantomime hug of self-defense.
He expects Barry to pitch a fit again, maybe even hit him this time. Instead, he rubs the back of his neck in a sheepish gesture and responds, “I didn't mean to be, I swear. You're, um-” His mossy green eyes flick to his black shoes, then up again, “-you're cute when you're scared, though.”
Roddy's jaw drops. For a moment, his infamous satire is lost to him. A fervid flush spreads across his face, quick as a forest fire. Mr. Lawson would roll in his grave if he could see him now. “What're you doing here, anyway?” he manages eventually. “Your dad said you're on parole or something. Is he waiting for you in the bushes? Are you holding me hostage?”
“No.” Barry scowls at him and Roddy wonders yet again if he's gone too far. He takes a step back, just in case, but Barry's next reply is matter-of-fact. “He doesn't know I'm here. I'm not 'sposed to go out by myself anymore, so he takes me to school and community service stuff, but seniors can go off campus for lunch and no one saw me leave with everybody else.” He beams another smile at Roddy. “I wanted to see you.”
“Uh huh,” Roddy says, adding this to a mental log of everything he knows about Barry. He's hot, a Jägerbär, in his senior year and, evidently, a criminal. Oh, and he thinks he's developed some sort of bond with Roddy. Can't forget that.
Before Roddy can precariously suggest that he go back to his own school, Barry kneels at the base of the tree he'd previously hidden behind and procures a sizable picnic basket. “Are you on lunch break, too? I thought we could eat together?” he asks, eyes round as a five year old's in a bouncy castle.
Roddy doubts they'll remain that way for long, but doesn't have the heart to make a Yogi Bear, pic-a-nic basket joke. He lets his own eyes rove up to Mrs. Brewer's classroom window and figures she'll only be happier without him making sardonic statements about her dating Al-Tusi for the rest of the period. She won't gut him where he stands for being a truant, at least.
“Okay,” he agrees, then primly lowers himself beside Barry, who sits on dirt sans blanket. Oh well. In the basket, Roddy finds bread, meat and many, many wheels of cheese. “Seriously?” he asks, the fingers of his free hand bunched into his uniform corduroys to keep from finding purchase around proximate throats.
Barry has a sandwich already made in his hands. He says through a munched mouthful of it, “Jerry likes cheese. I thought you would, too.”
“Jerry, as in the mouse from Tom and Jerry?” Barry nods. Roddy takes a deep breath and tries to explain with more patience, “Dude, rats and Reinigen are omnivores. We eat pretty much everything. I'm not some prissy Mauzhertz.”
“Aw man, I shoulda Google'd that, too.” Barry frowns around a bite of his sandwich and looks genuinely remorseful, bottom lip extended.
Roddy forces himself not to reply. For the next few minutes, he focuses only on compiling his own meal. It's only after taking a bite and tasting the rich spices and whole grains of it that he chooses to take mercy on Barry by changing the subject. “What else did you look up? Hopefully you got whatever that was right.”
“I think so,” Barry says, somewhat shy now. His eyes cut down to the ground and track an ant, which carries a breadcrumb away on its back. “I, uh, went to YouTube and looked at a bunch of violin concerts to find out how people act at ‘em.”
Roddy blinks at this and his throat tightens. He dredges up a tiny, encouraging smile. “That's actually nice of you, man. What did you think?”
“I'm totally gonna come back, if Dad brings me,” Barry replies, lips stretched wider now that he senses Roddy's approval. He offers Roddy some sort of fancy soda that's bottled the way wine would be. “I found the guy who created that piece you did and listened to him. Dad told me his name. You were, like, way better.”
Roddy has the luck to take his first sip simultaneous to this proclamation. He starts to choke and Barry moves behind him to smack his back, which does nothing to alleviate his gasps. Upon regaining his ability to breathe properly, Roddy glowers at Barry through wet eyelashes and says, “Dude, Bach? Get the fuck out of my school. That's blasphemy.”
He's only half-kidding, but when Barry sputters the objection, “B-but our date's not done yet,” Roddy gags for the second time in as many minutes.
“D-date?” he repeats, setting his half-eaten sandwich down on top of the picnic basket's woven lid, appetite abruptly abandoned. “Dude, you think this is a date?”
“Uh huh, and it was going good, wasn’t it? I'm sorry about the Bach guy, but I'll try harder next time. I only found out he existed, like, a few days ago.” Barry's eyes gleam earnestly now, the way his father's did during the recital, and follow Roddy when he rises. Even sitting, he’s tall enough that Roddy feels small, insignificant, in comparison, as easy to crush beneath a wayward shoe as the ant from earlier.
“I think I should go,” Roddy says. “Classes and everything. Gotta give Mrs. Brewer her piss pass back, ya know?” He thumbs back toward the school and starts to withdraw. Worse comes to worst, if Barry gives chase, he'll run inside, bolt the door, and call Monroe.
Barry doesn't, though. His forehead furrows in thought and he murmurs, “You didn't know it was a date?” Roddy warily shakes his head and the furrows grow deeper, little trenches in Barry's skin, war-zones. “Oh, sorry, but you'll know next time 'cause...I wanna date you, Roddy. I wanna be your boyfriend.” His expressions clears into some semblance of cheery again, grin shit-eating and gargantuan. The sun's rays seem to dwell on him and make his eyes glint. “Will you have lunch with me again tomorrow?”
Roddy almost trips over a tree root in his valiant attempt not to book it. He impels himself to sit back down - plops, really. “That is, er, I just can't, man. I'm sorry.”
“You're not gay?” Barry inquires now. A crinkle develops between his eyebrows.
Roddy should say yes. He tells himself he wants to, that he just wants this situation to end. Except, that he's not as sure about as he is how warm Barry's barreled chest felt against his body, how sad the kicked puppy look Barry gives him now is. “I'm...bi,” he says, and Barry's shoulders flare out of their droop, but before he can get too excited, Roddy continues, “but I just got out of a shitty relationship. I don't wanna deal with that crap again.”
“I'm not like him,” Barry answers immediately, each syllable emphasized and pragmatic, concise in a way uncharacteristic of bears.
“Her, and yeah, you really are.” Roddy can't help the way his mouth cants at one corner, maybe because of the similarities. Sarah was - is - pigheaded, too, even when wrong, for everything but dating Roddy. She gave him up faster than she would have her need to buy a new Prada purse. Rich kids like her and Barry get what they want, then break it, but not Roddy, not anymore. Doesn't mean he can't be nice about it, since Barry's face falls like Roddy kicked his dog. Roddy reaches out and pats one of his folded legs. “Don't look so down, big guy. You wanna slum? There're plenty of rats in the sewer.”
Barry nods and mumbles an unhappy, “Okay.” Roddy departs while he's beneath the old oak, but by the time he returns to Mrs. Brewer's now-empty class to bring her hall pass back to her, he can't see Barry out the window anymore. He tells himself it's for the best.
-
The next night, Monroe and Nick ask if Roddy wants to have dinner at Monroe's. He doesn't say yes too often because he figures it's better to let them sift through their sexual tension alone, gross as it is, but he didn’t sleep well the night before, feeling like he was being watched, so when Nick mentions that the others won't be around, Roddy instantly agrees.
It's not that he doesn't like the rest of Monroe's makeshift pack. He thinks Gracie and Hanson are great, since they get him, are nice and don't treat him like gum beneath their shoes, the way the Von Hamelin kids do. The only thing is, they're human and Roddy can hardly talk about Jägerbär mating habits in their presence, nor in Holly or Sally's, since they're too young one way or the other.
It's worth sitting through a meal of three bean salad or whatever crap it is that Monroe's devised to torture them with this time. Once they're done and move to the foyer, before Monroe can ask if Roddy wants to duet with him, mano-a-mano, cello-a-violin, Roddy breaks in, “I've gotta a...a question. About one of the Wesen you know.”
Nick straightens on Monroe's ugly paisley sofa and grows serious straightaway. “What's wrong, Roddy? No one's after you, are they?”
“Well, I guess you could call it that,” Roddy mutters. He edges out of Monroe's grasp to prevent him from taking an intrusive sniff.
“You do smell like bear,” Monroe says, regardless, teeth bared and irises bleeding red.
Roddy sighs. “That Jägerbär, Barry, wants to be my boyfriend.” He throws his arms across his heated face, but looks up again when only silence meets his sensitive ears. Nick wears a thoughtful expression and Monroe stares at Nick.
“You can't honestly be thinking about it, can you?” Monroe asks, mouth a hairy 'o' of shock.
“Roddy...might be a good influence on him,” Nick replies, which makes the little 'o' into something elephantine, a spacious abode for Monroe's many fangs.
“Nick, no, you wanna stick the helpless little Reinigen onto a breeding table with a bear? The same bear who almost massacred two people and barely felt bad about it?” Monroe exclaims.
Nick splays his palms open in a peaceable motion. “Not a breeding table, Monroe. What the hell is that, even? I just thought the two of them might benefit from being friends.” Nick flashes apologetic blue eyes at Roddy, who grimaces between both adults.
“I dunno what's more offensive. You thinking I'm some kinda damsel-” This to Monroe, who hunches in on himself, “-or you offering me up to a Jägerbär like I'm ratatouille. And to think I came to you two for advice.”
He stands up and grabs his beat-up leather jacket off the arm of Monroe's couch, ignoring the, “Roddy, wait!” that Nick calls after him.
At the door, without turning back, he says, “Don't worry, Monroe. This kid...he's on fucking community service for almost killing people? And he doesn't seem very sorry about it.” Roddy thinks of Sarah on the floor, that night in the warehouse, the fear that stank off of her, too pungent for her pretty perfume to smother. “I was sorry. I don't think I need friends like that and I definitely don't want to date another self-righteous, spoiled brat.”
When Nick calls him later, he's lying back on his diminutive bed, phone against his ear and a baseball in his hand, thump-thump-thumping into the ceiling above, in which a permanent dent develops. “Are you...mad, Roddy?” Nick asks.
“Nah, I'm okay,” he says, and he is. They helped him figure out the Barry situation and that's really all he wanted. Even if Ephram wasn't busy, Roddy couldn't talk to his father about Barry.
Roddy doesn't know why he spends the next day's lunch period seething, alone, in a urinal stall. Maybe he's just more stupid than he'd like to let on.
-
Sequestering himself away like this works till the end of the week, at least in avoiding Barry. Roddy's classmates, not so much.
“Hey, Geiger, maybe we should replace your chair with a toilet? You sure seem to like those a lot,” Finley Jacobs says with a chuckle, when the new music department head is out of earshot. Sarah and the boys' replacements laugh behind their palms.
Roddy pulls a face at them. “Maybe 'cause toilets smell better than your rank colognes.”
“You little-” Finley growls, knuckles white on the bow of his violin, but Miss Candida, arms laden with photo-copied sheet music for their next performance, takes that moment to swoop back in.
“I hear talking, not playing,” she says, mouth set in a dour way that's very evocative of Mr. Lawson. Finley's jaw flaps like an ugly fish a few more times and she glares at him. “Mr. Jacobs, do remember that you're only here because our first choices are not. The rest of you, too.”
“But not me,” Roddy supplies genially.
Miss Candida frowns, but agrees, “No, not you. Doesn't mean you shouldn't practice.”
That shuts all the boys up, but Roddy feels smug, not scolded. He ignores his peers' scowls by smoothing his cheek into the crown of his violin and losing himself to his music. When Miss Candida almost smiles at him, after practice ends, he fires another smirk at Finley, packs away his equipment, and leaves him behind to sulk.
The Geiger trailer is a long walk away from Von Hamelin and he doesn't notice anything for the first ten minutes of his journey. He just wraps his jacket tighter around himself and hums his violin's latest instrumental, pondering whether he has enough on him to grab a late fast food dinner or if he has to appropriate the energy to do something creative with whatever wilted ingredients rot in his fridge. And then the smell hits him, a thick enough musk in the air that he transmutes on instinct.
Finley wears some generic Calvin Klein cologne. It bothers Roddy's nose more because it's unnatural than because of the actual scent it purports, but it's worse on Finley than it is the dozens of other boys who wear it at Von Hamelin. It's different, almost metallic, bloody, like nothing Roddy's ever smelled, except for a vague kindred quality to Monroe and the Rabes' redolence. Very vague.
Roddy doesn't take a step back when Finley lopes out of an alleyway. It's Finley's face that does it, furred and fanged, lined with stripes. A freaking tiger, which explains so much, now that Roddy thinks about it. Not that his brain will let him think, nor do anything but stutter a, “H-hey, Jacobs.”
“Surprised, huh?” Finley asks, crossing his arms and baring his teeth in the mockery of a sweet smile. He looks like he belongs in a Street Fighter game, with his stupidly moussed blond hair, and Roddy wishes he were so he could be in Japan or a virtual universe, anywhere but with Roddy now. Finley strides forward and, in an instant, drags Roddy into the alley with him, till he's pinned against a brick wall with 'Kevin was here' tagged on it, Finley's arm heavy on his throat. “I was pretty fuckin' shocked myself when I saw your ugly Reinigen mug in school,” Finley continues, more of that is-it-or-isn't-it blood smell wafting off his breath.
Roddy forces his hands to stop scratching Finley's and musters up a laugh. “You were shocked, too? Imagine that. We're practically bonding.”
“Not exactly.” Finley chuckles, too, and fists his free hand. His punch purposefully misses Roddy's ear by a hairsbreadth. Soon, Finley's face is about the same distance apart from his. “See, I coulda maybe let you go with a beating every now and then, if you weren't such a cocky little shit. A genius Reinigen? What kinda world is this, where a damned sewer rat is better than the rest of us?”
“We are what we are,” Roddy tries to reply, but it comes out garbled. Probably for the best, as it'd only prove Finley's point and piss him off further. There’s also an, “And you're a dumbass,” somewhere on the tip of his tongue, after all. Roddy digs his nails in deeper and kicks out his legs. It’s getting tougher to do, to even breathe.
Finley doesn't flinch. He relocates his dangerously sharp fangs to one of Roddy's ears and whispers, “Who do you think would notice if a literal street rat went missing, eh, Geiger? Do you think they'd find you if I drowned you in the river? Would they even look?”
Galaxies big bang in Roddy's vision. He attributes the stinging in his eyes to oxygen deprivation and his next response is even less legible, especially over the pounding of his ear drums. The roar that rears up from the street parallel them, and Finley's resulting cry, however, are all too apparent.
Roddy slides down the brick wall at his back and coughs till his lungs ache. The cries, growls and skin-on-skin slap sounds persist around him. He blinks through black spots, but his vision is slightly blurred and he only makes out two large blobs, like the ink blots a childhood therapist interrogated him on after his mother died, before his father's cheap insurance company decided to stop paying that extraneous cost.
The smells, though. Those never fail him. Sandalwood tickles his nose and overpowers iron. He buries his face in his knees, hugging his arms around them, and doesn't look up when the shouting stops or even when heavy footsteps recede out of the alley, but does when they return. A dark shadow looms over him.
Although he knows it's Barry, Roddy huddles in on himself when the older boy kneels and reaches out for him, but leans into his touch once Barry looks human again. “W-what are you doing here, man? Stalking me?”
Barry's worried expression dissolves into a grimace. “I just saved you, ya know? You could thank me,” he grumbles, words vibrating through his bulk and Roddy’s clothes. He tucks Roddy against his side the second he’s aided him up.
“Thanks,” Roddy says, unable to make himself pull away. Barry begins to lead him out the alleyway, down a street. They trek through a few more and the path starts to become familiar; Roddy recognizes it as his usual way home. He glances up at Barry, who continues to walk with an arm around his waist. “Really, though...Barry. You won't get in trouble for pulling a stunt like this?”
Barry's eyes skim to meet his, wider now. If they were anyone else, Roddy would think it was because he'd never called Barry by his name before, but that's a crappy chick-flick reason. “I'm, ah, I sorta got grounded a couple days ago when Dad found out I'd skipped football practice to see you,” Barry eventually discloses.
Roddy can tell he's blushing, in spite of the dark, and inquires, “Then how come you're here, with me, right now?” How come you saved me, what did you do to Finley, whywhywhy, he doesn't think he can ask. He can't even get his legs to quit shaking like school cafeteria jello.
He does feel a rush of steadying heat course through him at the dimpled smirk Barry gifts him, while helping him across the street, toward the trailer park. It's more pleasant a feeling than he'd typically associate with an admitted stalker discovering where he lives.
“I've been running circles 'round Dad for eighteen years. He's only been playing papa bear so seriously for a few months,” Barry informs him and Roddy lets those thoughts seep out. He doesn't give a damn about them or propriety right now - he can't.
“Oh...cool,” he says. His trailer boulders into view and Barry starts to slow down beside him. Roddy's legs still tremble, but out of adrenaline now. The tiny pinpricks that rush through his feet make him want to grab Barry by the hand and run, just the two of them - make him want to invite him in so they can share a sucky dinner, at least. He does neither and careens into Barry's arms instead, so they're as face-to-face as they can be with the height difference. He squints at him like he would at ancient sheet music, doing his best to decipher.
“You okay?” Barry asks, forehead creased in the same way it was, that day in the schoolyard.
“Yeah,” Roddy murmurs, and before he can chicken out, stands on his tiptoes to kiss him. He hears the subtle displacement of wind caused by Barry's momentarily flailing arms, but big hands soon come to rest on his hips, caging him close to Barry. Roddy's own palms flatten against a muscular chest.
They slip apart slickly and Barry grins at him. “Does this means I can be your boyfriend now?”
“Uh, no,” Roddy says, ears hot, then adds, “This means thank you. For, um, saving my ass, walking me home and...stuff. So thanks.”
“You're welcome,” Barry replies. He gives Roddy's waist a final squeeze and makes to draw back, the curl of his mouth losing some of its luster. Roddy wonders if this is the moment he’s finally given up, if he’s finally realized that not all the toys in the shop window are for sale.
Barry bends his body halfway back in the river's direction and Roddy calls after him, “This also means you can come to my recitals. And possibly lunch. If you wanna, that is.”
It's not narcissism that has him expect an agreement. For whatever reason, and it's not a reason Roddy can fathom in the slightest, Barry's made his ardor pretty clear. Roddy doesn't, however, expect Barry to lash back around, grab him by the shoulders and steal another kiss that swallows the breath from his lungs.
“I want to,” Barry says, against his lips. Roddy smiles into Barry's in turn. The night sky winks stars at them and he can too simply pretend they’re on the set of some romantic comedy, like the ones Sarah used to drag him to. He doesn’t even mind. And then the moment is ruined when Barry continues, “I should probably go, though. Dad's gonna whoop my ass if he finds my rooms empty again.”
“Yeah, okay,” Roddy says. Barry releases him and retreats. He walks backwards so he can stare at Roddy for as long as possible, but eventually wheels around and disappears past the head of the river, curbing around a new street. Roddy stares after him, too, then finally enters his trailer. He may only have one room, barely, to his name, but he has no problem sleeping that night.
A couple days later, he casually mentions to Monroe that he’s maybe started seeing Barry. Nick catches Monroe by the elbow when he puts on a swoons and cheerfully replies, “You should bring him by the next time you kids meet up. He's never accepted my invitation before,” which incites a growl from Monroe.
That's all Roddy needs to hear before he nods and hauls ass out of there. He doesn't want to be around if they start role-playing Little Red Riding Hood to vent Monroe's frustrations - not if he can be making out with Barry behind the bleachers of his school or something.
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The End
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A/N: I hope you enjoyed this, Blue. And everyone else, too, of course. ♥