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"Shut—shut up. Shut. Up."

Jamie snickered, backing away from the ambulance. And Hank, who was jabbing a finger at him.

"It was not that funny."

"I don't know, I'm kind of with Jamie on this one," Tyler said, grinning as he leaned against the hood of the ambulance. "I mean—"

"You too," Hank said, swiveling towards him. "Shut up."

"Is there a problem here?" Alex asked.

"No!"

Hank practically fled, and Tyler and Jamie exchanged glances and then started laughing.

"Someone care to fill me in on the joke?" Alex asked.

"Nothing bad. Honest," Jamie said. "The last call out was for a girl who hit the gas instead of the brake pulling into her driveway and bounced her car off the door of the garage. She got a nasty cut on her forehead and her little sister freaked out and called 911."

"And that's funny?"

"No, but the fact that she kept hitting on Hank when he was trying to check her forehead was." Tyler shook his head. "The whole time he's trying to get the butterfly bandage on she's trying to get his phone number."

"Concussion?" Alex checked. That kind of distraction wasn't unreasonable, and they should both know that.

"Probably not," Tyler said with a shake of his head. "I mean, if her mom hadn't shown up as we were finishing we'd have taken her to the emergency room no matter what since she was only our age, but she was tracking fine, nothing wrong with her pupils all of that."

"Seriously, the airbags didn't even go off," Jamie agreed. "And she was wearing a bunch of rings so I'm pretty sure she just cut her forehead on one of those when she got thrown forward. Her sister didn't even have a bruise from the seat belt, although it sounded like her mom was going to take them both to urgent care just to be safe."

"All right." That was about the best outcome that could have happened, all things considered. Minors who got transported to the hospital when they didn't need to be had been the cause of more than a few angry calls to the station from parents, especially when the bills came in, but if a responsible adult wasn't on site the EMTs didn't have much of a choice. "Reports, and keep the teasing to a reasonable level, please."

Tyler nodded; Jamie rolled his eyes but nodded as well when Alex raised an eyebrow.

Alex finished his spot check, signed and initialed the appropriate set of forms, and headed back inside, only to halt at the sound of laughter and protests. Hank and Jamie were on the floor when he reached the team room, Hank with Jamie in a headlock and Jamie being the source of the protests, and Tyler was on the couch laughing.

"Gentlemen?" he asked as he stepped into the room.

"He started it," Hank said, although he didn't actually seem upset.

"Did not." Jamie twisted in Hank's grip, but he didn't have the muscle to break the hold and it was pretty obvious that he knew it.

"Well, I'm ending it. Reports." Jamie almost certainly had started it, or at least hadn't stopped the teasing when he should have, but while Alex didn't mind joking around, he wasn't going to allow actual wrestling in the station.

Hank released Jamie and got to his feet, and Jamie accepted the hand he offered to pull Jamie to his feet.

"Hank, I've got your last day before Christmas as the twenty-third and then you pick up again on the twenty-eighth," Alex said before any of them could leave the room. "Tyler, you've got the twenty-eighth as well, but you're out after the twenty-second. Do both of those sound right?

"Mine does," Hank agreed. "Dad's on call at the hospital so we can't leave for Nana's until Christmas Eve anyway."

Tyler shrugged and looked away. "I might be around for the twenty-third too, if Val or Jamie can't make it. My dad...I guess there's some stuff going on and he might be busy."

"Okay, if anyone is changing shifts just let me know," Alex said after a moment. There wasn't much else he could say. He'd only met Tyler's father once, but he was aware that the man traveled a lot for work and hadn't been in town very much since divorcing Tyler's mother. Alex and everyone else had heard all about Tyler flying out and spending Christmas with him this year wherever he was, though, and if that didn't end up happening it was going to be rough on Tyler.

Hank and Jamie clearly knew that as well as they dropped down on the couch on either side of Tyler.

"Jamie, come talk to me when you're done with your shift and we'll go over days then." If he was willing Alex was going to put him on for at least one extra shift, but now wasn't the time to talk about that. And since Val wasn't working today, he'd have to check with her and Brooke on Tuesday. Given their father's health, he doubted that they'd be doing any traveling, but he wanted to confirm.

"Got it," Jamie agreed.

He nodded and headed back for his office and as usual managed to bury himself in paperwork until a light tap on the door got his attention. "Hey. Are you guys done with your shift?"

Jamie nodded. "Yeah, Hank and Tyler just headed out."

"All right, give me a few minutes to finish up here and then we'll go." He gestured towards the small couch, and Jamie flopped down without waiting for a second invitation. Alex had been a little worried about how the others on the squad would handle Jamie staying with him, but so far it appeared to be a non-issue. He knew that Jamie had told them at least the basics of what was happening, he'd caught the tail end of an interrogation from Brooke and Val and Tyler about foster care that had only ended when Jamie had thrown up his hands and told them all to 'go Google it,' but as far as he knew that had been the end of things. "Did you guys get your reports done?" he checked.

"Yes."

"And you managed to avoid harassing Hank further?"

The 'yes' following that question was accompanied by another eye roll, which was more than enough for Alex.

"Try again," he ordered.

Jamie straightened a little. "Sorry. Yes."

Alex nodded. Jamie knew better than that, even if did he sometimes have to be reminded. "Much better, thank you. On a different subject, is Tyler okay?"

"I don't know. Kind of messed up, I think. His dad called the other day and told him that he might have to call off their Christmas trip. You know, the one Tyler's been talking about for the last month? I guess there's some big business meeting or conference or whatever that he has to go to."

"I heard," Alex admitted.

"His mom and his stepdad are supposedly planning something else just in case, but mostly he doesn't want to talk about it. At least to me; he might have said more to Hank or Val."

And again there was nothing that Alex could say that would do a damn bit of good. It was just a bad situation all around. He sighed. "All right. Are you still sure that there's nothing that you want to do for Christmas?" He'd replied to Jamie's social worker's email with Jamie's response to the Angel Tree form, and her response had been reluctant agreement that the situation would probably play out exactly as Jamie had said even if he did ask for something. It didn't make Alex feel particularly good—he'd be willing to get something for Jamie for Christmas himself despite the fact that he didn't celebrate if he had even the vaguest idea what Jamie might like—and he definitely didn't want to assume that Jamie would want to work on the holiday without checking.

"I want to avoid whatever hellish twenty-four hour happy-holiday-movie marathon they've got running, does that count?" Jamie shrugged. "I thought I might go over to Caitie's, but they're going out of town this year too so that's not happening. Why?"

"I usually put myself on the schedule for Christmas Eve and Christmas to give the rest of the squads as much time with their families as I can, and I was wondering if you'd mind if I included you too. If Tyler ends up being around on the twenty-third," as much as Alex hoped that wasn't the case, "you can swap out your shift that day with him."

"If he doesn't want to I'm fine with both," Jamie said. "But I didn't know you ever went out."

"It doesn't happen often. Mostly only over the holidays or if we're absolutely desperate for coverage. It can be a little tricky sometimes with my back—I was actually planning to swap out with someone on Thanksgiving until the weather made that impossible—but I can do it when I have to. It'll be you, me, Ryan Green, and Dave Mitchell." Neither Ryan's nor Dave's squads were on over the holiday even as backups, but Ryan had offered to come in since he didn't celebrate, and since Dave didn't have his girls this year, he'd told Alex to put him on the schedule for whenever as well. "Do you know them?"

"Well enough to say 'hi' if I see them at that station, but that's about it."

The usual procedure was to keep three and four man squads together so they could learn each other's habits and settle into a good rhythm, and he almost never mixed the high school and adult squads so it was no surprise that Jamie didn't know either man well. For a day it shouldn't make much of a difference.

"I don't think four of us can do forty-eight hours straight, though," Jamie continued. "Unless it's going to be really, really quiet."

"It usually is a pretty quiet time, but the maximum we can do is still twenty-four hours so I'll have us on from four pm on Christmas Eve to the same on Christmas day." Technically there would be another squad on call as backup and a secondary behind them, but at least they'd be at home with their pagers. He put Jamie's name into the on-duty sheet alongside his and then flipped his computer shut and pushed himself to his feet. "If you and Tyler want to switch, let me know, but for now let's hit the grocery store and then we can go home. Did you have time to get started on your homework?"

"It's Saturday," Jamie said with a groan.

"And tomorrow will be Sunday, and then comes Monday. And school."

"Okay, good, so two possible answers," Alex said, indicating the page in front of Jamie. "Do you think the ball hit the ground before you threw it?"

"That's cheating," Jamie returned, but he crossed out the negative five and circled the seven. "If they're going to give me two answers, two answers should be right."

"And hang on one more second," Alex said as he started to move on to the next problem. "It's a problem involving time, right? So what are your units?"

"This is all cheating."

Alex smiled as Jamie scribbled down 'seconds' quickly, next to the number. Math was clearly not Jamie's favorite subject, even if he was muttering fewer curses than he had been before Alex had sat down beside him. Then again, that was probably because Alex was sitting beside him. "It looks like one more and you're done," Alex pointed out. "Isn't that better than trying to hurry and finish on the bus in the morning?"

"Not really, since usually I don't do weekend homework at all," Jamie said with a scowl. "In fact, my teacher will probably have a heart attack if I actually turn in homework on a Monday. Do you really want to be responsible for that?"

"If it happens you know how to deal with it, don't you? And if it doesn't you'll set a happy precedent. One more." Alex tapped the page lightly.

"Can I just point out that I don't really care when the fly gets to the end of the train? And I don't think anyone else does either since if someone would just swat the stupid fly it wouldn't be an issue any more."

"Finish your homework, Jamie."

Jamie sighed and then gave in and began to copy the numbers from the last problem on his paper. "Why don't you, anyway?"

"Hm?"

"Why don't you celebrate Christmas? If you were Jewish you'd be starting Hanukkah tonight, but you're not doing that either."

"No, I'm not Jewish, but I'm not exactly Christian, either. It's...along with moving up the hill and raising goats instead of cattle and a few other things that their parents weren't at all thrilled with, my parents and their friends also invented their own religion that doesn't coincide with much of the rest of the world."

Jamie looked over at him. "You can invent a religion?"

Alex rocked a hand. "I imagine that it would be harder now, but back then in pretty much the middle of nowhere they managed. I know there were a lot of factors that led up to it...one of the big ones was my dad's older brothers and some other boys from the area getting drafted for Vietnam and then not coming back, but then you had the anti-war protests turning into protests against 'the establishment' and whatever that represented at the time, Watergate which fed right into that, an oil crisis, and a bunch of other stuff that I probably never even heard about since I wasn't born until after things were up and running." Plenty of stockpiled drugs from those older brothers and some others who'd had a good time in the 60s had been involved too, but there was no reason that Jamie needed to know about that part. "Honestly, I suspect if the group as a whole hadn't had blood ties to most of the other families in the area we'd have been called a cult."

Jamie's eyes went wide, and Alex shook his head. He didn't talk about his past all that often, if only because as he'd learned in college it made anyone even thinking about a psychology degree start taking copious notes, but Jamie had as much right as anyone to ask. He was the one not-celebrating with Alex this year, after all.

"Anyway, since my only exposure to the typical American holidays as a kid was the other kids at school making fun of us for not celebrating—well, that and my grandparents trying desperately to sneak 'church' in while my parents weren't looking, and never mind that that was more confusing than anything else since their stories were never anything like consistent—I never saw the point in starting once I was out on my own. Granted that I don't celebrate the invented and-or stolen holidays from my parents' religion either, but..." Alex shrugged. "It is what it is. Now, finish your math homework."

Jamie groaned.

"Finish and have some hot chocolate," Alex suggested. He generally preferred coffee or tea, but Jamie had found half a canister of the stuff in the back of one of his cabinets and had started working his way through it.

The last problem was similar to one they'd worked before and Jamie was able to complete it on his own without any prompting from Alex. At which point he escaped to the kitchen and chocolate and Alex let him go. Jamie was getting better about getting his homework done, and despite what he seemed to think his teachers would somehow survive the experience.