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You Can Plan on Me

by Zelempa

For snycock, for TS Secret Santa 2010. When I got the prompt to do an emergency room story, I was a little apprehensive, because I didn't have any applicable firsthand experience in my adult life. Then two days before the official deadline, I found myself lying in a hospital bed on a saline drip! Research'd! (I'm fine. I passed out in the gym. I am either hardcore or hypoglycemic.) Thanks to Yolsaffbridge, M.D., for idea development, beta, and taking me to the hospital. Thanks to Alex51324 for lightning beta. Thanks to Verity for writing with me at a coffee shop. Thanks to ainm for moderating the challenge and granting me a much-appreciated deadline extension.

Feedback: Archive of Our Own | TS Secret Santa

"I'llll be hooooome for Christmas," Blair sang off-key.

"Sandburg." Jim rubbed his head with one hand, switching on the turn signal with the other. "Thought you didn't celebrate Christmas."

"I don't, but I know the songs. I've been in a department store."

Jim glared at him sidelong. "You went shopping?"

"Only for utilitarian things, I promise." Blair had made Jim promise not to get him a present, which he knew made traditional Jim deeply uncomfortable. "I've been thinking about the Western obsession with commercial transactions and stand-ins for cultural rituals and expressions of personal affection, and--"

"Spare me," said Jim.

It was a no-really-shut-up "spare me," not a fun don't-really-spare-me "spare me," so Blair fell silent and observed Jim quietly. He drove tensely, his knuckles still bleeding slightly from where he'd punched the wall of the interrogation room. Maybe there was something in what Simon had said about holiday stress. Before he shouted at them both to get out of his eyesight before overtime kicked in. Ellison and Sandburg, he said, were his primary source of holiday stress.

Blair had never gotten touchy at the holidays himself, probably because he didn't observe any to speak of, except, you know, observing other people's observing them. This was his first opportunity to witness Jim's reaction to this festive season, since he'd spent last winter break on a long-planned research trip to Guatemala. Jim insisted he'd been fine but Blair still had a saved voicemail which indicated otherwise ("Hey, Blair, it's me. Just calling to see how things are going over there... everything's fine... senses are fine... well... I kind of wondered... um... what should I... I mean, what would you say to do if... you know what? It's nothing. Bye.") Blair had resolved never to leave him alone for that long again.

For a moment he happily entertained a daydream of himself and Jim drinking hot cocoa before a crackling fire while snow fell gently outside the window. (Okay, so everything Blair knew about Christmas, he had learned from TV commercials.)

"Big plans tonight?" he asked, deciding he'd been quiet long enough.

Jim shrugged his shoulders. "My father is having a thing."

"Wow."

"What, wow?"

"I don't know. I've never thought of you as having, you know, parents."

"Everyone has parents."

Blair had to concede the point. It just seemed wrong, somehow. Maybe because Jim himself was such a grown-up. The only one Blair knew, really. He tried to imagine Jim's parents, and couldn't.

Jim glanced at him sidelong then looked back at the road. "Do you, uh. You have somewhere to go tonight?"

"Oh, yeah. Don't worry about me. There's this wicked midnight anti-Christmas party every year. You know, goth Santas, lumps of coal. And drinking. Lots of drinking."

"Sounds heartwarming," said Jim.

"I'm hoping. Marilyn Green is going to be there. I told her I'd show up as a sexy elf."

"Christ."

"That's the reason for the season, yeah. So, family party, huh? Big to-do? Small intimate affair?"

"Pretty big."

"Aunts? Uncles? Cousins? Brothers? Sisters? Hey, d'you guys make eggnog? Do you go caroling? Do you, um, find homes for misfit toys?"

"What is this, the third degree?"

"I'm curious! Are they going to have those little twinkly lights? Hey, Jim, what if you zone? Do you want me to come along?"

Jim's eyes widened and his nostrils flared. He suddenly swerved over onto the shoulder and slammed on the brakes.

"Okay, so no," said Blair. Jeez, he didn't realize he was that embarrassing.

In one smooth motion Jim unbuckled his seatbelt, checked his holster, and opened the door. This was Blair's first clue that this reaction was not about him. Jim took off down a dark alley after a running figure. Blair looked around and pieced together the action: glass on the street; broken window in the jewelry store, display cases in disarray. He scrambled out of the truck and made for the alley.

Of course they were both out of sight by the time he got there and adjusted his eyes to the darkness. And he didn't have Jim's powers of tracking. This was probably just as well: he also didn't have Jim's powers of hand-to-hand combat or gun ownership. Still, it would be nice if Jim let him have his back, instead of just taking off on his own all the time. Blair sighed, checked his pockets, and realized he'd left the phone back in the truck. He'd just turned around when he heard a crash of trash cans followed by a yelp. Jim's voice. And he didn't need super senses to hear it.

Blair raced to the first fork and turned left round the back of the store. Jim was sitting down against the brick wall--sitting down?--one leg folded underneath him.

Immediately, Blair was kneeling beside him. "Jim! Are you hurt? What happened?"

"Stupid," Jim muttered. "Guy grabbed the fire escape. I jumped up after him. Managed to pull him down, but he kept running. Then I lost my grip. Stupid."

"You okay? Here." Blair held out his hand.

Jim accepted Blair's arm, grabbing hold of his shoulder to pull himself up. "Maybe I can still catch him."

Blair gripped Jim's arm tight, trying to project an aura of steadiness and solidity. "Maybe you should have a doctor look at that--"

Jim exhaled sharply with a grimace of pain.

"Foot," said Blair.

Jim's usual attitude toward injury was that if it didn't kill him, he could walk it off, which made it frustrating to understand how his senses affected his perception of pain, or to give him any goddamn help. But this time, Jim said, "Yeah, okay," and that was when Blair really started to worry.

*

The second thing that made Blair worry: Jim was humming.

He was pretty focused on getting them to the E.R. as fast as possible in one piece, so he didn't notice until he pulled in as close as he could to the hospital entrance. Jim was humming "I'll Be Home For Christmas," the "if only in my dreams" part. He drummed the finale on the dash and then said, "It'll probably be a long wait. You want to get some coffee first?"

What was this, pain endorphins or something? "Uh... Let's just get you signed in. I can run out for whatever you need later."

Jim nodded, clapped Blair on the shoulder, and looked seriously into his eyes. "You're a good friend."

Blair gave him a look, and then slowly traced his fingers in the air, left, right, up, down. Jim followed them with his eyes. "What are you doing?"

"Making sure you don't have a concussion. You didn't hit your head, did you?"

Jim rolled his eyes, but he was still smiling.

He managed to get Jim settled down in a plastic waiting chair--he was on to "Rudolph" now and if Blair hadn't been with him the whole time he would have sworn Jim had been getting into the vodka Blair had in the backseat for the party--and finally snagged a clipboard full of forms from a ridiculously slow-moving receptionist. He checked his watch as he dropped off the forms with Jim and took his order for the corner store run. It was only nine thirty and if the doctor saw him by ten, ten-thirty, Jim could probably still make his party by midnight.

When he got back with the coffees, Jim had gotten as far as filling in his name, but apparently had been unable to resist the siren's call of the July 1979 issue of Boating World.

"Hey, come on, Jim, they'll never get to you if you don't hand this back. Do you have your insurance card?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah."

Jim slowly put the down the magazine, following it with his eyes until the very last second, and then dug in his pocket. He pulled out a receipt, unfolded it, and looked at it. "Huh. I could really go for a Lucky's hot dog right now."

"Are you on something?" said Blair.

"What?"

"On something. High. High on something."

Jim stared at him a moment, then raised his eyebrows and looked away like he just couldn't believe what a dork Blair was.

This was getting seriously weird. Usually it was Jim who was the dad. "Clean up this mess!" "Turn down that racket!" But now, as Blair listened to himself, he had the distinct feeling that he was the dad in this scenario.

"Give me that." He grabbed the clipboard and sped through the forms.

"What are you doing?"

"This isn't my first emergency room rodeo. Besides, I have all this information on file for you."

"Right," said Jim. "I forgot you spend all your time memorizing my medical charts."

"It's a living. Here. You fill in the family history stuff."

Jim thoughtfully considered each box before checking "no." Blair ran the forms back to the desk, making a mental note for his personal records.

When Blair got back Jim was drumming a beat on his knees. Boating World had been taken by the guy sitting on the other side of the end table, whose wife or girlfriend seemed to be having a really bad stomach ache. She was slumped over, and he was rubbing her back and quietly reading out facts about various kinds of sailing crafts.

The last time Blair had been I-just-wanna-die sick like that, he'd been on his way home from his stay with the Dene Indians in Alaska. He couldn't afford to stop in a motel, and he didn't have a phone or anybody to call, so he just pulled over and lay hugging himself in the backseat of his car until the shakes passed. After a few hours he got up, more bored than better, and drove himself the rest of the way home, stopping every thirty miles or so to vomit in the snow. He was proud of memories like that, but he had to admit it would have been nicer with somebody there to tell him everything was going to be okay and that technically, a vessel less than twenty feet in length is a cruiser rather than a yacht.

Blair sat down on Jim's other side and looked around the room. Most of the seats were full. "I read somewhere that Christmas Eve is a big day for accidents," Blair remarked.

"Holidays and full moons. It's like that in the station, too."

Blair looked at his watch for the fifteenth time. "It might be awhile."

"You want to play a game to pass the time?"

"Uh. Sure!" Blair had not had that ulterior motive, but since he often wanted to play a game to pass the time, it was a good guess. Jim frequently declined this offer, at least at first. Never one to turn down an opportunity, Blair said, "I have a 'yes or no' for you."

"Great," said Jim, pretending, not very effectively, to be annoyed. He always complained, and he always liked "yes or no" puzzles once he got into them.

"Okay, here's the scenario. A boy and his dad go fishing. The boy falls out of the boat and nearly drowns. The father rushes him to the emergency room. The doctor takes one look at him and says, 'I can't operate on this boy; he's my son!' How is this possible?"

Jim narrowed his eyes. "Is this one of your liberal morality tests?"

"Sort of," Blair admitted. Jim was the only person he knew who identified as "moderate." To Blair, admittedly coming from an academic environment, this was basically the height of conservatism. Blair had given several impassioned speeches about human rights and social services, to which Jim had cheerfully responded with irritating catch phrases about wasteful spending.

"You don't have to--" Jim sighed, and lowering his voice unnecessarily, he said, "I know about gay people, Sandburg."

"Ha!" Blair crowed. He figured Jim would think that--though maybe not quite so quickly--and he couldn't resist teasing him with it. Jim had been scrupulously neutral about the topic of homosexuality ever since Blair informed him that his own attitude toward sexuality was "whatever." "It's not that. Neither the dad nor the doctor is gay."

"Huh," said Jim. "Is the father--uh--misinformed?"

"You mean is he not really biologically the father? No. Both the doctor and the father are biologically related to the child." Blair waited half a beat then couldn't hold it back anymore. "The doctor is the boy's mother! It didn't occur to you that the doctor is a woman? Sexist pig."

Jim looked betrayed. "You said 'he'!"

"No, I didn't. I mean, I might have about the boy or the father, but I knew the answer so of course I didn't call the doctor 'he.' Don't be too upset. I didn't get it either for an embarrassingly long amount of time. It's not just sexism--you're right, you are primed by all the male words to think about men. But it is a sad commentary on how people still think 'doctor' is a masculine word. I did like the look on your face when you thought two men were both the biological father of the child. Hey, actually, I mean, okay, there are certain tribes in the Amazon that believe that a baby can have more than one father. They think all the, you know, genetic material gets smooshed together, right?"

Jim made a pained face. Blair grinned. He did this just to annoy him. "Where is this going?" said Jim.

"Bear with me. So, like, if a woman wants to have a baby that's smart and strong and fast, she should have sex with a smart guy, a strong guy, and a fast guy, on the chance that each of those guys will pass on their best trait, right? Sometimes I think my mother subscribed to that belief. And, you gotta give her credit--she clearly wanted great things for me."

Jim snorted a laugh and then fixed Blair with a stern frown. "You better not let your mother hear you say that."

"Why not? It's only insulting if you have something against sex."

Jim looked hurt. "I don't..."

Blair checked his watch again. Twenty to ten already. "You sure your ankle's not just sprained? We might do better going out for an Ace bandage and a bottle of Tylenol."

Jim crossed his arms. "You don't have to stay."

"Sure I do. I'm here as long as you're here. I just don't want you to miss your thing. I mean, you're the one who celebrates this holiday. I'm just piggybacking on everyone else's joy-to-the-world. It's not meaningful to me."

"Do you celebrate anything?"

"No? Uh, I mean, I try to observe local customs wherever I am, but you mean for real? For me? No, not really. I've made stabs at fasting on the high holidays, but it feels like playacting. We were never observant when I was growing up."

"You just didn't have a religion?" The idea seemed novel to Jim.

"Well, Naomi went through phases, you know, Zen for awhile, then paganism. The one thing we did have was Star Day. That's the day the two of us spend the whole day doing something we want to do, not something we have to do, and then we camp out under the stars."

Jim smiled. "A summer holiday, I take it."

"It was at different times. Naomi would look up at the night sky and say, 'Looks like it'll be another Star Day tomorrow.' Sometimes there'd be two or three in a year, sometimes none. When I got old enough to understand star charts I figured out it wasn't anything. It was just whenever she wanted it to be. So I started doing it too. You know, 'Looks like there will be another Star Day tomorrow,' and Naomi would say, 'I think you're right.' The first year I figured out I could do that we had nine in a month."

"How old were you? Weren't you in school?"

"Seven or eight? I always learned more on the days I took off."

Jim shook his head.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Blair teased. "Not how you would raise a kid. Not the way I would probably do it, either, actually. The only reason I ever went to school at all was because I was such a nerd I kind of liked it. And, you know, I'm glad I did. Hey, it's after ten. You ought to at least call and say you'll be late."

"You too," said Jim. "Won't your date be waiting?"

"Eh, it wasn't really a firm plan." He handed Jim the phone.

Jim frowned, apparently trying to remember a number. Then he turned to Blair. "What does a sexy elf costume look like, anyway?"

Blair gestured at himself--his normal outfit, jeans and T-shirt. "I mean, this is pretty much it. I was born a sexy elf."

Jim reached out to hit him with the phone.

"Call, call!" Blair reminded him, dodging.

Jim punched in the number and held the phone to his ear, glancing sidelong at Blair. Blair pretended to be engrossed in Highlights for Children.

"Hey, Ralph. It's Jim. Yeah, hi, you too! Listen, tell my father I-- No, don't put--" Sigh. Pause. Sigh. "Hi, Dad. I'll be--yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, I got more important problems right now. I'm in the emergency room. Okay. Bye."

Jim coolly punched the end call button and handed the phone back to Blair.

"That's it?" said Blair. He actually laughed, the conversation had been so weird. "What--he didn't have any follow-up questions?"

"My old man and I... don't have the best relationship."

"Wow," said Blair. He hadn't expected that from Jim. Okay, sure, he hadn't thought about him having a family of origin at all, but if he'd had to guess, he'd have guessed he had an incredibly mature and adult relationship with them. Instead, just thinking about them, he was slumped down in his chair, looking like a sullen teenager. It was kind of glorious.

"Go on," Blair said encouragingly.

"What is this, research? There's nothing else to tell."

"Did you guys have a big fight or something? Do you, I don't know, just not have that much in common?"

"The second one, I guess. Mostly we leave each other alone. I don't think we talked at all this year. Then he calls me up in September, asks me if I have a girlfriend yet, and when I say no, he says, 'Well, see you at Christmas.' Hangs up before I can come up with a good excuse. Who does that?"

Blair shrugged, vaguely uncomfortable in the way he always was when his friends went off on parents-suck rants. He knew Naomi had her limitations, but the worst feelings about he had about her were pretty much limited to "loving exasperation." "Kinda sounds like he wants to see you at Christmas," Blair suggested tentatively.

"He doesn't. He was perfectly happy to have me out of his hair the last five years. He just doesn't know what to say that won't make him look bad in front of the rest of the family and all the important friends." Important friends? Jeez. Somehow Blair had pictured Jim growing up working-class, but now it looked like he came from money. "Your son's not at Christmas, you better have a good reason why, or people start to wonder. I guess my 'gotta work' excuse was wearing a little thin. He says I'm a cop, but they're probably starting to think the only way I'm connected with law enforcement is as a convict."

"Let them think that," said Blair. "What do you care?"

"True," said Jim. "I should come to the party in handcuffs."

"No, listen," said Blair, his brain whirring away. He was pretty sure Jim would reject this plan, but he couldn't resist floating it--Jim might call it a liberal morality test. "You want to shock his friends, I'll tell you what you gotta do. Just bring me along. Introduce me as your partner. I don't look like your average cop, right? So they'll already be suspicious. Be cagey every time anything related to police work comes up, and get really excited about interior decoration."

Jim let loose a sudden snort of laughter that seemed to surprise even him, and then hastily composed his face, shaking his head. "Interesting, but... No."

Blair nodded, unsurprised. Jim was too straight and straight-laced to want to come across as gay even when it benefited him. Still, he appreciated that Jim politely called the idea "interesting."

"Being married was really the best," said Jim wistfully.

Thanks, thought Blair, rolling his eyes, for reasserting your heterosexuality.

"Perfectly acceptable excuses there," Jim continued. "'I've got to go to my in-laws,' or 'My wife and I are having a quiet Christmas at home.'"

"Oh. Yeah, that makes sense," said Blair. Jim was so domestic and homey; that daydream about the snowflakes and the fire probably was his ideal Christmas. Well, with a wife, not Blair. Maybe a dog, too. Some kids. He was so obviously the white picket fence type. Blair smiled. "I bet that's not all you liked about being married."

Jim groaned.

"No, I mean--yeah, but that's not all," said Blair defensively. "I'm not some teenager where all I think about is sex, you know. I know there are other, more important parts of a marriage."

"The sex has to be there," said Jim.

"Okay, yeah, I mean, I'm sure it does," Blair conceded. "But, you know, the rest of it. Being able to count on someone. Settle in for the long haul. Make a little family of your own together. The whole package. It's a nice idea."

"But you don't believe in it," Jim concluded, like he'd heard this all before.

"No, I do!" Blair insisted. "For some people. It doesn't work for everyone, the whole one-person-forever, white-picket-fence thing. My mother called it oppression. I think it would have been, for her. For me? I don't know. I think I'd like it. With the right person... I think I'd like it a lot."

Jim looked surprised and kind of impressed, which was of course the point. Blair was well aware that he was trying to look Mature and Accessible and Not So Different You And I.

"I mean, obviously, I don't know what I'm talking about," Blair babbled, not wanting the silence to segue into a less interesting conversation. Jim could only stand to talk about feelings for so long. "It's all kind of wishful thinking fairy tale to me."

"Me, too."

"You? No. What about Carolyn?"

"Yeah, well." Jim looked uncomfortable. "The truth is, Carolyn and I sort of had a-an unusual arrangement."

"An unusual arrangement?" Blair couldn't imagine what Jim meant by this, but it sounded juicy. He blurted out the first thing he could think of. "You mean like-what-you were swingers?"

"What? Ugh."

Of course not. Jim wouldn't be like that. Blair had no problem with swingers-some of his best friends rejected the patriarchal institution of monogamy, to Blair's benefit-but he was relieved, somehow that Jim wasn't one of them. Maybe just that he didn't have to reevaluate his whole idea of Jim. It was nice to know that somebody still believed in old-fashioned romance. If not Jim, then who?

But the next thing Jim said was, "Yeah, okay. Sort of."

So much for old-fashioned romance. Blair didn't know whether to be disappointed or pleased. Jim was like anybody else. "Sort of?"

"We had an agreement. The marriage, it was about love, companionship, sharing our lives. It was just the sex we didn't do, so much. Not with each other."

"So... like you and me," said Blair.

"What? No, not like you and me." Jim rolled his eyes. "It was... It worked for awhile. We both-you know, we wanted a family. Kids, a house...."

Blair nodded. "The whole package." This made total sense: he was aware that Jim wanted all those things.

"Right. But neither of us thought we could get those things in... the normal way."

What? "So what-you experimented in cloning? You built robots?"

Jim gave this comment more respect than it deserved, appearing to consider it carefully. "Maybe we should have. It would have been easier."

"Than what? What do you mean, 'the normal way'? Did you have your dick blown off in the war or someth-Jim!" Blair cried, full of sympathy. "Did you-?"

"No! Shush. The normal way. You know. Meet someone, fall in love, get married. We both knew that wasn't going to work for us."

"Why not?"

Jim didn't respond. He appeared at first to be gathering his words carefully. Then at some point, Blair didn't quite know when, he appeared to have abandoned the idea of speaking at all.

Blair snapped his fingers. "Spill it, Jim!"

Several people turned to stare. Blair offered them winsome smiles and then turned back to Jim. He leaned in close to make Jim feel as though they had a private little quiet conversation area. "C'mon, you made it this far. You have to tell me the rest."

Jim seemed to recognize the truth of this, and he nodded. Quietly he explained, "We both knew that-well-if one of us fell in love, we wouldn't be able to get married. Or have kids. With that person."

It took Blair way longer than it should have to put two and two together, like the doctor puzzle in reverse. Blair laughed out loud when he got it. "Wait! What, really? You're-"

"Indoor voice," Jim interrupted.

Blair lowered his voice accordingly, but it didn't matter; he still didn't get to any of the key words. "You're-you prefer the company of-you like-you're-?"

"It's no big deal," Jim muttered.

No big deal? No big deal? This changed everything. It shouldn't, because obviously gay people came from all walks of life; obviously, same-sex attraction could happen to anybody, not just students and curious scientists and free-spirited utopian freaks like Blair. It was what it was, and it didn't change Jim's opinions or outlook, or make him any more like Blair except for the obvious-

"Ha! Hey, wait!" said Blair. "You mean to say we could have been fucking this whole time?"

Jim looked scandalized. "No! Jesus, Sandburg!"

Blair blinked. He'd meant it as a joke, but now that he was rejected, he felt kind of insulted. Sure, he and Jim were friends, and they'd never thought of each other that way-at least, Blair hadn't thought of Jim that way, except to dispassionately observe that he was a beautiful specimen of manhood that would make some lucky girl very happy someday. The idea that he would in fact make some lucky man happy was somehow harder to deal with.

And what was wrong with Blair anyway? Besides the obvious, you know, shortness and general chipmunky qualities.

Jim seemed to realize he'd hurt Blair's feelings, because he looked guilty. "It's not... like that. I'm not that kind of guy," he backpedalled vaguely.

"Right, sure," said Blair, with a jokey tone that he hoped didn't sound too forced. "It's not you, it's me. Ouch, Jim. Ouch."

Suddenly Jim's hand was on the front of Blair's shirt, gripping a handful of fabric.

"Uh-"

"Shh." Jim's eyes were riveted to the doorway. "That's him."

A young man was leaning against the entry desk, clutching his side with one hand, and waving in a "no hey it's no problem" kind of way with the other. A woman flitted around him, alternately stroking his back and his face with loving sweetness, and pounding angrily on the desk. The nurse at the desk just handed her the same forms she handed everyone else, rolling her eyes. No amount of desk-pounding could make a difference to her.

Jim dropped Blair's shirt and slumped down in his chair, crossing his arms and looking down.

"That's who?" said Blair. Could this be a member of Jim's mysterious family? A brother or cousin, maybe?

"The guy. The thief."

Right, the robbery! Blair sat up straighter, trying to get a better view of the suspect. "Wow. You hurt him?"

"I didn't think I did. I got in a kick, though. Maybe I broke his ribs."

"You broke his ribs with a kick? Of course you did."

Jim grabbed the arms of his chair like he meant to get up. Blair reached out and covered Jim's hand with his, then just as instantly drew it back. It was a natural gesture, an instinctive "hey, man, watch out, remember your foot," but now, it didn't seem right.

Blair coughed. "You, uh, you're kind of in no condition for a chase right now, and neither is he. You want to maybe pick up the whole Javert and Valjean scenario after you're both fixed up?"

"He robbed a jewelry store. I don't think he was trying to feed his kids." But Jim fell back in his chair.

Blair fished his coat from the floor and searched the pockets for the phone. "You want me to call it in?"

"I'll do it. Hey. He never saw you, right? Get him to come over here."

"Jim," said Blair.

"What? I won't hurt him."

Blair approached the couple, planless. As he came close, both robber and girlfriend turned to look at him. Okay, plan. Plan time.

"Hi!" he said. For good measure, he waved. "Uh, there's a seat over there. You need some help?" He found himself putting his arm around the thief. He smelled of sweat and, not unpleasantly, of gin.

The woman continued to flit like a butterfly. "Oh. Thank you. You're so nice. Most people are assholes. I'm Jo, Josephine Estrella, call me Jo."

"Blair," said Blair, feeling like a jerk.

She really didn't suspect any ulterior motives from a good Samaritan in the emergency room, which was probably why she looked so betrayed when Jim grabbed her boyfriend by the arm and clapped a handcuff on him.

"What the fuck!" The thief tried to reel away, but Blair kept a firm hold on him, and the act of wrenching seemed to hurt him. Jim clasped the other cuff around the arm of the now-empty chair next to him.

"You have the right to remain silent..."

Jo stared at Blair, making him feel like the worst person in the world, and then turned to the thief. He hung his head, evidently feeling the same way.

"Emmanuel Winters," said Jo, sounding reproachful, but not in the least surprised. "What did you do?"

"Busted up a jewelry store," Jim supplied.

"I did it for you, baby," said Winters earnestly.

"You shit, Manny!" Jo yanked a diamond ring off her hand, held it out in Jim's general direction, and let it drop. Even with his reflexes, Jim only just got his hands cupped under it in time to catch it. "You didn't need to do that! I told you, I don't need a big, showy diamond."

"You're the best girl in the world. You deserve it!"

"I don't care! I don't want it!"

"That's a responsible attitude," Blair put in. "I don't know why everyone buys into this idea that diamonds signify love. Really what they mainly represent is the blood and sweat of oppressed miners in South Africa. I mean, how does that make sense?"

"I never thought of that," said Winters. Then, brightly, "Maybe it's because relationships are hard work. You know. Slaving away in the relationship mine."

"Manny!" Jo hit him ineffectually.

Blair felt he was missing the point. Jim turned the ring over in his hands, letting it catch the light. It was shiny, though.

"Here." Jim grabbed Blair's hand and closed it around the ring. "Keep it safe."

Ever the true romantic, Blair stuffed the diamond in the pocket of his coat.

"You're right, though," Jo conceded thoughtfully, rubbing Manny's shoulder. "It is hard work, and you put in the work each and every day. You're there for me. That's what counts," said Jo. "That's more important than anything. A man could get a hundred diamonds for his girl, it wouldn't mean he really loved her. You love me. I know it. That's the only thing I care about."

Manny opened his palms and held his chained wrists as far as they would go from the arms of the chair, and Jo climbed into his lap. Awkwardly, they attempted to hug. "I don't deserve this girl!"

"No," said Jim, "you don't."

"Jim," said Blair. "Come on. It's the holidays."

Jim sighed. "It's basically out of my hands now. They'll probably go easy on you. If it's a first offense..."

"Oh, it's not," said Jo. "Not by a long shot."

"You'll wait for me, won't you?"

"Of course, honey. I've done it before."

Blair took a step back and nudged Jim's shoulder. "It's nice, though, isn't it? I mean, isn't that really what we all want, right there?"

Jim snorted. "That's what you want?"

"Of course. Why do you think I date around so much?"

"Just trying to meet the one, huh?"

"Absolutely. It's tough to find the whole package, you know. Companionship... partnership..." Okay, so it was just about Jim now. Well, Blair still wanted a real reason why Jim didn't want him-hopefully not ego-killing.

Jim didn't say anything for a moment, and then all he offered was, "It's hard work. Like they said."

That was an insult, right? That implied that Blair wasn't up for hard work. He was about to launch his multi-pronged protest when a nurse called out, "Ellison?"

Jim instinctively stood up, immediately winced and grabbed the back of his chair. Blair grabbed him. The nurse was having none of this and signaled for a wheelchair. Blair glanced back at Manny and Jo, who were watching with interest. He didn't want Jim to look weak in front of them. "Are you sure we can't..."

"Hey, it's okay." Jim squeezed his arm. "Stay and babysit the kids."

Blair took over Jim's chair, still warm, and watched the nurse wheel him away.

"I know it's Christmas and all," said Manny, "but I hope that guy gets a hospital-borne infection and dies."

"Manny!" said Jo, hitting him again, but without heart. "That's not nice."

"What? Okay, I got arrested, I guess I deserve it for getting caught, but that guy is a complete maniac. He sees me running off--what does he do? Run after me? Shout? No. He jumps onto a fire escape to launch himself at me feet-first--what the fuck is that? They don't teach that in police academy."

"You jumped up there first!" Blair corrected. "He was just chasing you."

"That," said Manny, "is not how it happened. Of course I'm just going to run. I'm five seven! How am I going to even think to jump on a goddamn fire escape? He just wanted to show off. Goddamn action hero in there. He ought to be locked up."

"That doesn't even..."

"Don't listen to 'em, Sandburg." Blair looked up and there was Rafe, playing with a pair of handcuffs. "These the guys?"

"This. The guy. The girl is just a friend."

"Fiancee!" Manny and Jo protested.

"Great," said Rafe. "A love story. This'll do wonders for my headache."

"Merry fucking Christmas," said Blair.

*

Blair knew from experience that if you walk confidently through hospital corridors appearing to know what you are doing, the doctors and nurses won't bother you. Unless you poke your head in on a procedure, they assume you have a reason to be where you are, and anyway, they have more important things to worry about. Blair took off down the hallway at a fast I-know-where-I'm-going stride, although he did not know where he was going.

Luckily, before he got too far, a door opened and Jim hobbled out on a crutch, a bunch of papers clutched in his hand.

Blair didn't wait and ask him how he was before he started his angry monologue. "You lied! You said you were on the chase-but you came up with the jumping-off-fire-escape thing. It was your idea to jump all over things and off things like a daredevil."

"Embellishment," Jim explained tersely. "You're one to talk. Can we go?"

Blair took the papers so Jim could get a better grip. "What the fuck were you thinking?" he complained, still angry even as he slid his arm around Jim's back, supporting his crutchless side. "You could've really hurt that guy!"

"Winters? He's okay. His girlfriend's making something out of nothing."

"You could have really hurt yourself. You wanted to get hurt!" Blair realized as he said it. "You went out of your way to do something stupid because you wanted to miss that stupid party, and I have enough to worry about without you going out of your way to get hurt. What if that guy had a gun? Or some of his friends showed up? You know, even I know, by now, that easy collars don't always turn out so easy, even without you risking your neck on some stupid acrobatics because you want to put yourself out of commission. What if you snapped your neck and died? That would have gotten you out of the party. You'd have been laughing all the way to the funeral."

They stopped at this point to check out with the front desk. Jim slouched against his crutch, back to sullen teen mode.

They walked to the truck in silence. Jim got settled in mostly without help, although Blair took his crutch from him at the last moment and threw it in the back. It was a smooth, unthinking, wordless dance, as if they'd practiced it. And wasn't that just a sad commentary on their level of experience with injury.

Blair climbed into the driver's seat and put the key in the ignition, but didn't turn it. He took a breath and looked at Jim again.

"We've been to the E.R. too many times in the line of duty; I don't want to go there for fun," he said. "I know I'm not your boyfriend or life partner or whatever, I know I don't do it for you and I accept that, whatever, that's life, but I'm still someone who cares about you, I'm still your partner, and by now, I kind of thought we were family, in a weird way, so next time you think about throwing yourself off a building because you have a party to go to you don't want to, maybe weigh that against-"

Blair cut off abruptly because Jim's hands were on the sides of his face.

"--what I, uh, what we, whatever this is," Blair finished, confused.

Jim leaned forward, and then he was kissing Blair's mouth, hesitantly, experimentally, and what, what, what was happening. Jim's thumb jumped confusingly along Blair's jawline, and Blair didn't know what he was going for, but then he settled into a gentle stroking motion. Loving. Oh. Oh.

The kiss was coming to its natural conclusion, and although Blair had not yet decided whether it was real or a dream or a sleep-deprived hallucination or a Christmas miracle of some kind--a slightly awkward miracle, tasting of stale coffee--he knew enough to know that chances like this don't come every day, and that you should capitalize on them while you've got them. He ducked forward and caught Jim's retreating lips in a second kiss.

Something came over Jim--some kind of raw animal Sentinel thing, maybe--because next thing Blair knew he was being pushed back against the headrest, Jim's hands gripping his shoulders, mouth open in a combination of surprise and gasping hotness and the necessity of yielding to Jim's forceful mouth.

What, what, why, don't question it! As soon as he got his wits together Blair responded enthusiastically, turning the long kiss into several short wild ones, wrapping his arms around Jim's shoulders and massaging them vigorously.

And then they were kissing gently, but urgently, and clinging to each other like their lives depended on it, like they'd never get another chance--which for all Blair knew, was true; what was this? Curiosity finally got the better of him and he turned his head, letting Jim kiss the side of his face and his neck while he gasped out, "Jim-uh-what is this?"

"The whole package," said Jim.

 

The End