Title: Christmas at the Beach
Fandom: General Hospital/The City
Characters: Tracy Quartermaine
Prompt: #17 Beach
Word Count: 2,443 words
Rating: G
Summary: Tracy and Jacob share a drink in The City bar on Christmas night.
Author's Notes: Set during Tracy's tenure on The City, December 1996. Written after reading three months' worth of plot synopses from The City.

She had to admit--walking down five flights of stairs everyday was doing wonders for her legs and thighs. Tracy Quartermaine was not by nature a patient woman, and the elevator in this dive was slow enough and unreliable enough to encourage her new found healthy lifestyle choice.

She hadn't gotten impatient enough yet, of course, to climb up those five flights on a regular basis, but she did on occasion brave it--when she had energy enough, or outrage enough to dare the climb.

Either way, abject poverty had been kind to her muscles, if not her ego, and she found that after ten weeks, she rather enjoyed the trip down from the penthouse of the lousy building Sydney had saddled her with to the bar on the first floor of the lousy building Sydney had saddled her with (thanks to the dismal financial situation Daddy had saddled her with). It gave her not only a great cardio workout, but lots of time to think about how much she loathed Sydney…and Daddy.

She noticed that The City was open--odd, she thought, on Christmas night. She headed to the bar, no longer thinking about how great it was to have firm thighs and a tight ass without the expense of a gym. She was thinking about Sydney, and Daddy, and how she was spending so much time trying to stay afloat that she hadn't even begun to plot her revenge on them.

She was really working her way up to a good mad when Jacob showed up--all dreds and healthy good looks and "gee, I saved your tight, used-to-be-rich ass, so now you have to be nice to me." Tracy could still taste every penny of that fifteen grand, a vulgar, coppery aftertaste on her tongue.

Maybe it would have gone down better if she'd just scammed him, like she planned, if he'd believed her story about the charity for inner city youth. Maybe she could have swallowed stealing his dead son's money more than accepting it as a loan, as charity. A perfect stranger, bailing her out, because she was too broke to save her own hide.

Yet another humiliation on top of the humiliations she'd endured in this latest row with her family.

Was it really only ten weeks since Sydney had trumped her blackmail attempt by saddling her with 51 of this fire hazard--and its seven figure tax debt?

Ten weeks since she'd snuck Dillon and his psalm-singing nanny out of their hotel in the middle of the night, moments ahead of the bill collectors and scandal and the possibility of jail time?

Had it really only been ten weeks that she'd living in this dive, sucking up to hideous old mobsters, selling off furniture that didn't belong to her, and living in dread of those odd phone calls her parents made to Dillon?

"Merry Christmas." It was Jacob, already starting on her martini. Tracy thought absently that, while she was grateful for his initiative, maybe she was getting a little too predictable. She also realized that she didn't have enough cash on her to cover the drink, and Jacob was probably the only person in New York City who knew without a doubt that she was not a good credit risk at the moment.

"I didn't order that," she said simply. They both knew it translated roughly to 'I can't afford that,' but Jacob was polite enough not to say anything.

"Merry Christmas," he repeated, with a knowing smile that set Tracy's teeth on edge. "It's on the house. Consider it a holiday gift from me."

Tracy had to grin. "Well, in that case…" She removed her coat, laying it across the bar stool next to her. "Feliz Navidad, and make it a double."

Jacob laughed, but grabbed the bottles--vodka and vermouth--to add in the extra shots. He had the good sense to stir like a civilized human being. "Here you go, partner," he said as he plunked two olives into the glass and handed it to her.

"Don't call me that," she muttered, taking a long sip. Oh, gawd, it tasted good after the day she'd had. Christmas on a Budget was not Tracy's forte, but Dillon hadn't seemed to mind. He'd loved Radio City--another piece of furniture in hock--and had thrilled to the enormous Christmas tree and the window displays at FAO Shwartz. He hadn't even seemed to mind that, this time, they didn't actually buy any of the toys.

Tracy wondered again how they'd managed to switch her child at birth, and who this changeling boy of hers actually belonged to.

"I'm surprised you're open," she said to Jacob, playing with the olive. "It being Christmas and all…" Oddly enough, Tracy didn't particularly care for olives in their natural state. She picked them feverishly from Greek salads, off sandwiches, wherever they lurked in restaurant menus.

But pickle them in enough martini? These little green babies became the height of yummy.

"Well, you know the drill--The City that never sleeps." He was pushing a bowl of pretzels her way, and Tracy couldn't decide whether he was trying to keep her from getting too drunk or whether he was worried she hadn't eaten today.

"You know, you could just close the place," she said darkly, ignoring his pretzel-pushing ways. "Who wants a bunch of depressing drunks hanging around on Christmas?" She took another sip of her martini, mentally counting the cash in her purse and wondering if a really good buzz was worth the embarrassment of nickeling and diming her way to a second martini.

Jacob didn't say anything about the drunks and Christmas. Instead, he nodded his head in the general direction of 'outside,' which was cold and snowy and getting dark quickly. "Where were you headed, Tracy?"

"Dillon's with Zoe," she snapped. She'd gotten so tired of defending her actions. It was getting hard to keep the lies straight, and part of her really believed her parents were spying on her, trying to gather enough evidence to take Dillon away from her, plotting, with their secret calls and silent treatment, to have her declared an unfit mother.

Which, of course, she was.

'I didn't ask about Dillon," Jacob responded evenly. "You said you thought we'd be closed. Where were you headed?"

"Don't lecture…"

"Does this have anything to do with Gino Solieto?" He'd cleaned out the martini shaker and was starting on a second as he spoke.

She paled, mortified, grateful, longing. "I can't…" she started. "I don't have--"

"On the house." He poured double-shots without hesitation.

"You're my new best friend," Tracy said glumly, downing the rest of her drink in preparation for the next one.

"Sometimes I think I'm your only friend." He was gazing at her thoughtfully as he mixed the drink. "You still didn't answer my question. Where were you going?"

"For a walk, okay?" In truth, Tracy hadn't known where she was going. Dillon, exhausted from his big day, had practically passed out ten seconds after they got home. Suddenly the gutted penthouse felt hateful and claustrophobic to her. She'd called Zoe, hoping against hope to find her available and almost bolted from the penthouse when the young woman arrived to watch Dillon.

"A walk? In this weather?"

"I know," she said, taking the drink he offered with a nod of thanks. "I hate the snow." It was a lie. "I usually Christmas someplace warm, at the beach--Nassau, Bermuda, the Greek Isles." Another lie. She craved a Port Charles Christmas more than her next breath of air, raucous and complicated, jockeying for position and engaging in that noblest of all holiday traditions--buying her family's love.

Can't buy much love when you're $1.2 million dollars in debt, she thought, setting the glass down hard on the bar. "No chance of a sun-tanned New Year for me," she said.

Jacob shot her anther one of his damnedable sympathetic looks and nudged the pretzel bowl at her again. "Eat something," he said.

"I'm not hungry."

"Eat something, or you're getting a bill for the two drinks."

"You said they were on the house!"

He grinned widely. "You see a manger around here to complain to?" He nodded at the pretzels, and Tracy grimaced, making a big show of taking a single pretzel and eating it. When it was gone, she shrugged, her hands upturned in an "are you satisfied" gesture. "There were two martinis, Tracy," he reminded her.

"Jacob…"

"Two martinis, two pretzels, and I'm letting you off easy."

She groaned and snagged another pretzel, letting it dangle from her finger as she held it on display before biting it fiercely. "There. Happy?"

There was a long silence, and Jacob shook his head. "Not really. Not at all, actually." He took a pretzel and popped it into his mouth, leaning forward on his elbows as he ate. "Christmas," he said, as if that said it all.

Tracy blinked in incomprehension before it dawned on her what he was talking about. Christmas. His wife and kid. She said nothing for a moment, wondering absently what time of year it had been--although, there was no really good time to see your son and wife die in an explosion intended for you. "Yeah, Christmas," she said softly, thinking of what she'd lost, so overwhelming and frightening and all-consuming.

How it seemed almost frivolous compared to what he'd lost. She knew she'd never recover if anything like that happened to Dillon or Ned. She knew she'd simply hollow out, lose all strength and passion and hope, until the slightest breeze could turn her to dust.

She took another pretzel without being ordered to, and ate it silently.

"You know, you'd don't get a free martini for every pretzel you eat."

Tracy flashed him a flirtatious smile. "Really?" she asked innocently. "And I was just about to ask you for a larger bowl."

"Well, the pretzels I can manage." He made a show of going for the bag, then laughed when she stopped him. "Yeah, I thought so."

She watched him behind the bar, doing all those mysterious bartenderly things that always seemed to get more fascinating the longer she drank. "Isn't your--what's her name--?"

"Angie?"

"Yeah. Isn't your Angie upset with you for working on Christmas? Surely you have some quaint, dewy-eyed lovers' holiday you could be enjoying…"

"As opposed to watching you get hammered on free martinis?"

"You offered," she reminded him as she popped another olive in her mouth, followed by another pretzel. They were starting to grow on her.

"Actually," Jacob said. "She wanted me to have this time to…well…"

"Sit in an empty bar? Not get tips? Wipe down the counters?"

"Be alone." His eyes didn't meet hers as he wiped absently at a perfectly clean spot on the bar. "It's been years, and most of the time, I'm fine. But Christmastime…"

She put her hand over his, knowing instinctively that neither of them was up to a maudlin dissertation about loss, grief, and holiday depression. "Yeah," she said, putting as much compassion as she could into those brief syllables. "Christmastime…"

"It helps to have some quiet time." He was talking more to himself than to her. "To feel it, down in your gut, to wallow if need be, then to let it go."

Tracy stiffened, realizing that's just what she'd intended from the start--to wander off, alone, to feel sorry for herself, to place blame, to wallow in the unfairness of it all. She allowed herself a brief moment of self-loathing for her weakness, for her self-indulgence. Wallowing was not an acceptable activity for a Quartermaine, even a worthless, banished, flat-broke Quartermaine like her. When she spoke, it was with an overabundance of cheer, too bright, as she pushed herself back from the bar. "And here I am intruding on your privacy with my insatiable cravings for pretzels." She gave him what she hoped was a dazzling smile, grabbed her coat, and started for the door.

Jacob's hand was on her shoulder before her foot even hit the floor. "Tracy, wait--I wasn't trying to drive you away."

"No, really, I've got--"

"Please stay." His hand moved down until his fingers were wrapped in hers, dark against light, large against slender. He held it softly, but with determination, like he really wanted her to stay.

Tracy was torn. Part of her, a big part of her, wanted to sprint towards that door, out into the night, into the safety and anonymity of the cold, unfeeling city. But another part, the part that held her there, that made her put down her jacket again, that part couldn't help feel how warm his hand was, how gentle it felt.

How good it felt to have human contact, a bit of kindness on a cold night.

Jacob couldn't truly fathom what was going on in her life. She hadn't given him the whole story--nobody really knew the truth about what had happened in Port Charles, and why her family didn't return her calls.

But she couldn't truly fathom what was going on in his life, either. She hadn't seen her family die so gruesomely, hadn't lived with that pain for years, somehow finding the strength to get up in the morning, to keep going on, to keep on living.

That he could extend even this simple generosity to her, considering the con she'd tried to pull on him, humbled and shamed her. That he knew at least part of her secret, and still let her maintain her dignity…

"Maybe a little while longer," she said as she sat. She smiled at him, grateful that she didn't have to put on too much of a front with him, that he knew enough for her to relax. Being strong and appearing confident all the time was starting to wear on her.

"Good," he said, grabbing a glass, filling it with ice, and pouring himself a soda. "It's not such a bad idea to be open today." He reached behind him, grabbing a stool and pulling it to his side of the bar. Sitting down opposite her, he added, "It's just too hard for people like us to go through alone."

Tracy gave him a hard look. Free martinis were one thing, but Quartermaines did not do pity. "Excuse me? People like us?"

"Who can't afford to Christmas at the beach," he clarified, lifting his glass in toast.

Tracy smiled slowly, her eyes lowering as she lifted her martini glass, almost empty, to clink against his glass. "To Christmas at the Beach."

The End

Written for the lj user"100situations" Challenge.