Derek absently pulled the cell from his back pocket as he stood up straight, setting the wrench on the car. Leaning against the defunct machine, he checked the ID, but there was no name there, just Unavailable. He frowned, answering cautiously, “Hello?”

“It’s me,” John answered, sounding nasally. “I need you to pick me up at the mall.”

Wiping greasy hands on a rag, he said, “Where’s your mother?”

“Uncle Derek, can you just come and get me?”

Derek paused at the ‘uncle’ and then sighed. “Put security on.”

“But…”

“Now, John.”

There was the sound of the phone being transferred and then someone said, “This is Officer Geraldi.”

“My nephew in trouble, Officer?” Derek asked.

“Well, he did get in a fight, but we got witnesses say he didn’t start it,” the man evaded. “I think if he stays away a couple weeks and lets things cool down, we’ll be fine.”

“That’s because you’re fascists!” John exclaimed from a distance.

Derek groaned. “Sorry about that. Look, I’ll be down there in about twenty minutes. Thanks for calling me.”

“Not a problem, sir. We’ll just keep young Mr. Baum here until you do,” Geraldi told him.

Derek muttered, “Thanks,” and disconnected. He jogged inside to clean up as best he could, throwing on pants instead of jeans and grabbing a sweater. His hands were still a little dirty and he didn’t have time to do more than scrub a hand over his hair, but a quick look in the mirror showed he was presentable.

Shaking his head, Derek grabbed the car keys and muttered, “I’m going to kick his ass for this.”

Traffic made the drive a half-hour, but he found John in the security office. John’s nose was swollen and his right eye nearly shut as well as a dark purple. There was a smaller kid with him, dark-haired with big eyes and a bruised cheek. John’s uninjured eye met his only briefly before skittering away.

Walking into the office, Derek greeted the unknown kid, “Are you mine, too?”

“Please don’t call my mother,” the kid begged.

Rolling his eye, John introduced, “Uncle Derek, this is Morris. Morris, my uncle.”

“Mr. Baum?”

Turning at Geraldi’s voice, Derek found a man in his fifties with a paunch and an amused expression. Holding out a hand, Derek said, “Thanks again, Officer. I appreciate this even if John doesn’t.”

Geraldi waved it off. “Just boys being boys. As long as no knives or guns are involved, I could care less.”

Derek chuckled and agreed, “Good policy. And don’t worry about John stopping by for at least another month. His mom’s pretty strict about pulling shit like this. He’ll be cleaning the head for at least that long.”

“You a military man?” Geraldi asked, interested.

Nodding, sensing an opening, Derek answered, “Done my tour. Course, they could recall me anytime. You know how that goes.”

Geraldi gave a sympathetic nod and said, “Good luck to you, son.”

“Thanks,” Derek replied. Turning, he pointed at the boys and commanded, “Move it.”

Morris hopped to his feet instantly, but John was slower, glaring. Derek maintained his own glare and John slouched out of the office ahead of him. Rolling his eyes at John’s back, Derek didn’t say anything until he’d marched them out of the mall and both boys were in the back. He turned in the seat and ordered, “Talk.”

“It was these guys, see, and they were…”

“I got this, Morris,” John interrupted.

Thank God, because from what little he’d seen of Morris, the kid would probably take forever before getting anywhere near a point.

John reported, “Four perps going after one civilian. No weapons, but the civilian was going to get killed. Probably literally. I stepped in and Morris helped.”

Morris grinned brightly. “Got in the way of someone’s fist pretty good, huh?”

Derek bit his cheek to keep a straight face. “I’m waiting.”

“I put down two of them, but the other two blindsided me. They got me on the ground and probably would’ve done more damage, but security got there,” John finished.

Lips pursed, Derek asked seriously, “And what started it all?”

For the first time, John looked uncertain, biting his lip instead of answering.

“It was a gay bashing,” Morris supplied angrily. “Total dickwads! I mean sure. The guy’s eyeliner was like, crap, and he did kinda do that sing-song voice thing that’s really annoying, but that’s no reason to cave someone’s face in!”

And John’s extra sensitive about that right now, Derek thought with a sigh. Of course, now he had no idea how to handle things. He had just been going to throw John on Sarah’s lack of mercy, but wasn’t sure that was the best idea anymore. Changing focus, he looked at Morris and asked, “Where do you live? I’ll drop you home.”

He got the directions and started the car, knowing vaguely where the address was. Morris directed him the closer he got to the house and the boys talked quietly in the back seat until Derek pulled up at the curb.

“Thanks for the help, man,” John said as Morris climbed out.

Morris grinned and answered, “Thanks for getting me out of my first fight in relatively one piece. Well, the first one I got into on purpose, anyhow. You know. Not as the victim.”

John grinned back and waved before clambering over the seat into the front. Glancing sidelong at Derek, he asked, “How busted am I?”

Derek waited until he saw Morris get inside before pulling away from the curb, thinking the question over. He finally said, “I won’t tell your mom. Your heart was in the right place and that wannabe cop isn’t going to give you any trouble in the future, so we’re good. But John, you can’t go around getting noticed. Not now. Not with everything going on.”

“Right. So I just stand by and do nothing, just like with that girl,” John bit out.

Surprised at the level of venom in his voice, Derek asked, “What girl?”

“Girl killed herself right when we started going to school and Cameron wouldn’t let me try to save her.”

Derek winced, thinking, Ouch. I bet that went over like a lead balloon.

He let a few minutes go by before saying, “Use better judgment next time. How long would it have taken you to hit an alarm or gotten a security guard instead of jumping in headfirst? Do you think that maybe the other boys might even have gotten punished for what they’d done if you hadn’t been punishing them with your fists? Not that that lasted long, from what you told me. If security had caught them beating on a defenseless kid, don’t you think they’d’ve maybe gotten arrested? Maybe even prosecuted? Instead, they get off without even a warning because you didn’t think.”

John slouched down into the seat, arms folded across his chest as he stared out the window.

Derek shrugged to himself and got them home, letting John think about that. Once they pulled into the driveway, he looked at John and asked, “You want to work on the car with me? It’ll probably be another hour before your mom gets home.”

Eyebrows rising, John countered, “I’m not grounded?”

Derek grinned briefly. “I’m not your mother, am I?”

“No, definitely not,” John muttered under his breath, pushing opened the door.

Derek groaned silently at the poor choice of words as he got out. John followed him back to the garage area, though, and he pulled off the sweater, grabbing a t-shirt from the bench. They worked on the car for the next hour without saying much at all. It was nice…companionable, even, with the radio playing quiet in the background and the sound of metal on metal as they took apart the rusted engine.

A little over an hour later, Sarah called, “Hey guys.”

Derek looked over to find her walking towards them from the back door.

“John! What happened?!” Sarah demanded, rushing the rest of the way over. She took his chin in her hand and turned it towards the fading sunlight. “You got in a fight? What were you thinking?”

The flexing of John’s jaw cut through Derek in an unexpected way; memories of disappointing his own parents hitting him hard. Derek spoke before he even knew he was going to do it. “My fault, Sarah.”

Glancing at him sharply, she repeated, “What happened?”

“I asked John to get my toolbox from the shed and didn’t secure the bucket of extra nails that was beside it on the shelf,” he lied easily. “It fell off and hit him right in the face.”

She sighed and looked back at John. “Are you okay?”

“Got a little bit of a headache,” he answered.

Derek again bit his cheek, this time because John somehow managed to look very pitiful as he played on his mother’s fiercely overprotective tendencies.

“Well, come on in and wash up,” she said. “You should go to bed early. And we’ll see about you staying home tomorrow. We should keep close watch on your eye, make sure no real damage was done to it.”

Derek watched them leave, Sarah’s arm over John’s shoulder, and smiled.