Late December. Five months since Kidman first arrived.

"Got any plans?" Joseph asked, seemingly out of the blue.

"For what?" she asked absentmindedly.

"Next week."

Frowning, she glanced up at the calendar on the wall, wondering what was next week.

Oh, right. Christmas.

"No," she answered simply. She continued her work of shaking her pen to try to get its last ink out of it.

"Going to go home to family, at least?"

"No," she said, and it came out harsher than she intended. She tried to rescue the situation by asking, "How about you?"

"Yeah. For a few days, anyway. You have to hang up the badge and gun at some point."

She nodded and gave him a brief smile. "You deserve the break, Joseph."

"Thanks." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I feel bad leaving you two, though. I mean, I know Seb's not going anywhere either."

It occurred to her that she'd never thought about whether Sebastian had a family or not. He came off as such a lone wolf she'd never considered it.

"Don't worry about it," she told him. "It's just a week. I'll talk to him, keep him on track."

Joseph scoffed a little in dry amusement. "I think off track is what he needs right now. God, sometimes I feel like I'm trying to take care of a younger brother or something. Just one that's five years older than me and alcoholic."

There was a bland humor to the comment but Kidman tried not to smile. "It's really great what you do for him, Joseph. I know it feels like you're not getting anywhere, but…. I'm pretty sure you're the only one here who still sees him as a human being and somewhere in him I think he sees that."

"I try," he said simply. "Someone has to."

Silence stretched long enough that Kidman turned back to her desk. Soon, though, Joseph spoke again.

"You know, Juli…."

It was so rare for anyone to call her by her first name that she looked up in surprise. But Joseph was shaking his head.

"Ah, never mind." He stood up. "Thanks for the talk."

When Christmas Day came along and Kidman returned to work, she found a shiny little red box on her desk, bow and all.

She frowned and picked it up, looking for a tag on it somewhere, but there wasn't one. Maybe someone misplaced it?

She figured that even if that was the case, she wouldn't know until she opened it, so without remorse she sat down and carefully did so. There was a flat white box inside the other one, and when she took the lid off it, she found a shiny wooden fountain pen inside. Seeing it made her oddly emotional. She couldn't remember ever actually receiving a gift before. And knowing that she cursed about her old pen on a daily basis made her quite certain this was, indeed, for her.

It was that, and not the arbitrary fact that it was December 25, that started off her day as a good one.

The station was fairly quiet. Some people had to work, of course, but without Joseph there and not having seen Sebastian all day, she spent her whole morning in silence. Eventually, she got bored of reading files and watching the fine dusting of snowflakes fall outside, so she went to find Sebastian.

She didn't have to make it to his office before she saw him. She caught a glimpse outside a window and saw him standing on the front steps of the station, smoking. It looked like he'd been out there a little while; his dark hair and vest were sprinkled with bright white snow.

If there was one thing she didn't do, it was approach Detective Castellanos about anything other than work. This would be a first, and it felt a little weird.

She felt she needed some kind of excuse to go out there, so she went to his office to find his trench coat. The Det. Castellanos door was open a few inches, or she would've scrapped the plan right there.

Holiday cheer had definitely bypassed Sebastian's office. The rest of the building was mildly decorated with red and green, but this place looked exactly as it always did, messy but organized, with things spread everywhere, but in specific piles. The blinds over the windows were mostly closed, letting only slivers of the cold winter light in from outside. Even though she'd been in here a number of times, she felt like an intruder just in taking the necessary one step inside to grab the coat from its hook in the corner.

When she pushed open the front doors of the building, Sebastian didn't turn around.

"Merry Christmas, I guess," she said, stepping up next to him.

He gave a vague nod, as if he hadn't really heard her.

"I thought you might want this," she said, extending the trench coat to him.

He turned and looked back and forth between her face and the outstretched coat for a moment, then took it and said, "I'm not a fan of rules, Kidman, but I have exactly one. Don't touch my trench coat."

"I was just trying to—"

"Don't touch my goddamn trench coat."

She was about to get very annoyed when she thought she saw a sparkle of humor in his eyes and she wondered if he was just messing with her. It was impossible to tell. As far as she was concerned, his sense of humor ranged from dry comments to mildly sarcastic ones, but maybe there was a bit more than that.

"Did you get it as soon as you became a detective?" she asked lightheartedly, nodding at the coat as he put it on. "You know, because all good detectives wear trench coats."

She'd meant it as a joke, but he just said, "No, it was a few years after." It wasn't that he didn't get other people's humor as much as he didn't seem to care to respond in a humorous manner.

"Do you need something, Kidman?" he asked.

"No," she sighed. She often didn't have the patience or desire to get through to Sebastian in any way, but she kept thinking of Joseph and how hard he always tried to do exactly that. It gave her enough motivation to keep from just walking away.

"Something wrong?" Sebastian asked.

She looked up in surprise and realized he'd been watching her. "No. Not at all."

"You should get back to work, then. Just because someone decided today should be a holiday doesn't mean there's any less wrong in this city."

Her instinct was to retort Well, I'm just following an example, but it was so rare for him to take a break that she didn't exactly want to use it against him. The amount which Sebastian worked was beyond impressive; it was obsessive.

"You're right," she said, "but I think the city will be fine for five minutes." She stepped up to him with an expectantly outstretched hand.

He frowned at her hand. "What?"

"Cigarette," she answered. "Give me one."

She knew she'd caught him off guard and it was, admittedly, the point.

Still confused, he pulled the pack out of his pocket and handed it, with his lighter, over to her. "Have you ever smoked in your life?"

"Not this stuff," she said, pulling a cigarette out and giving the box back to him. She could feel the judgement in Sebastian's look when she held the cigarette in one hand and lit it with the other.

"No," he said, taking it from her before she could raise it to her mouth and throwing it aside. The snow quickly extinguished it. "Try again."

"I know that's not—" She didn't bother to finish. She'd started it, after all.

He handed her another and she put it between her lips this time. She had to admit it felt gross, but she'd committed and her pride was at stake now. He took the lighter from her but paused for a moment before using it, looking at her with a hint of an amused smile. "You can't pull it off," he said. "You're too classy."

It seemed like a backhanded compliment, and she was about to say something when he flicked the lighter on and held it to the end of her cigarette. She inhaled through her mouth and immediately doubled over, coughing. She spat the cigarette out in the process and it lay on the pavement, glowing and smoking, until she stamped it out with the toe of her shoe.

"I figured," Sebastian said. He actually looked amused by her antics. "Nice try, kid." He probably only called her kid because she was younger than him, but something about hearing him use her nickname made her feel distinctly content. "Though you just cost me two perfectly good cigarettes."

"Good is a relative term," she said, wrinkling her nose. She could still feel the kind of burn in her lungs from the smoke.

"All for the best," he said, holding his own half a cigarette between two fingers and looking at it. "It's not a habit you want to pick up."

She acknowledged that with a dry smile. She stepped off the steps and brushed snow from one so she could sit on it and watch the street. "You know, I had my doubts about coming here," she said, which was true and false. "It's not so bad, though. I enjoy working with you and Joseph."

"You should've been assigned to someone else," he said, watching a car pass by on the road.

She wasn't sure if she should've been insulted, but she wasn't. "Why?"

"Joseph and I…." He shook his head and sat down a few feet from her. "It was poor timing. Had you shown up…hell, about a year ago, things would've been different. Everything was different a year ago."

She didn't feel like she was qualified to ask how so, but she didn't feel particularly nosy today anyway. Instead, she looked over at him and found herself thinking: I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell you why I'm here and that in a few months I'll probably be gone and suddenly I'm not sure I should do this anymore. I can't go back, Sebastian. I can't take back what I've agreed to.

As much as her personality continually clashed with Sebastian's, there was something she undeniably trusted about him. Even through all his alcoholism and obsessiveness and emotionally distant attitude, she could tell he was the type of person who always went to great lengths to do the right thing. She'd never known anyone—except, perhaps, Joseph—who she could say that about, and she knew she couldn't say it about herself.

"Kidman?"

She shook herself out of her thoughts and looked up. "Yeah."

"You sure you didn't need to tell me something?"

Fuck, I didn't think you could actually read people. "Yes, of course."

"Just checking." He dropped the butt of his cigarette on the ground. "We should make ourselves useful. I don't know why I've been out here for so long."

He started to stand when she caught his arm, inadvertently causing him to sit again. "Sebastian. I—I know most of the people here underhandedly treat you like shit because of the drinking and all, and I can only imagine how that makes you feel. But…just try not to reflect that at Joseph. He really is trying to help you."

He nodded but just said, "Joseph deserves better than this." And he stood and left.

Kidman wasn't certain what exactly "this" was, but she felt better for at least saying something about it. She stared down at the two nearly untouched cigarettes in the snow and somehow she knew these oddly bonding moments with Sebastian would be some she wouldn't forget. Maybe because she knew intuitively that whatever side of him she'd seen—the one that asked her if something was wrong or if she needed to say something, or smiled at her attempt to smoke—it was one she may never see again.