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"Alex?"

He looked up to find Jamie hesitating in his office doorway. "Hey. Are you ready to go home?"

"Very."

Alex smiled. It was now quarter after three in the morning and every other team coming off duty had expressed the same sentiments. Normally he'd have left by now himself, it was late even by New Years standards, but with Jamie still on and the streets in no shape for a motorcycle Alex had stayed to give him a ride. "At least we can both sleep in tomorrow. Where's your coat?" Jamie held it up, and Alex nodded and stood, slipping into his own. And then frowned when Jamie made no move to put his on. "Come on, Jaim, it's cold out."

"A beer keg exploded on me on our last callout. I can still smell it, and I don't want it to get wet." He gestured at his coat.

Alex couldn't smell anything, although that explained why Jamie's hair was damp—he must have jumped in the shower when they got back the station—and he shook his head. "Unless you've got plans to go out tomorrow, we can throw your coat in the wash at the same time as the rest of the laundry. Right now you don't need to be wandering around outside in the cold without it."

Jamie didn't look very happy, but he did as Alex said, and Alex was just as glad as they stepped out the door and into a blast of frigid wind.

"I hate winter," Jamie muttered.

"No arguments here." Especially since the forecast said that it wasn't going to be getting better anytime soon. Which wasn't really a surprise given that it was the first of January, but it still wasn't appreciated. He flipped the heater to high as soon as they were both in the car and then turned out onto the main street. "So aside from getting doused, how was the night?"

"Okay. Way less busy than Christmas."

Alex shook his head. "I swear that was unusual."

Jamie grinned.

"Nothing serious?"

"Nah, mostly just drunk people being stupid. One lady fell in a pool."

"In this weather?" That sounded pretty damn serious to him; a few minutes in ice-cold water risked frostbite and hypothermia at best.

"Indoor pool. Some kind of jungle-party-theme thing for seniors at the rec center. I guess she tripped over a fallen palm tree. I think her ankle was bruised up the worst."

"Ah." Better than he'd been envisioning, anyway.

"Mostly it was people bleeding from doing something dumb who just needed bandage and to go sleep it off somewhere." He snorted. "Even the guys at the parties I go to aren't that stu—" he cut himself off with a quick gulp, and Alex leveled a glare.

"You are way too damn young to be going to any parties where alcohol is being served."

"Well, it's not like I drink," Jamie said quickly. "I don't even like the smell!"

Alex paused and tried to make sure his voice was even when he answered. Not that Jamie wouldn't be in for a hell of a tongue-lashing if Alex ever found out he'd attended any parties like that while he was staying with Alex, but yelling at him for something that had happened in the past wouldn't help anything. "I'm glad to hear it, don't think I'm not, but that's completely beside the point. I don't know what your friends' parents are thinking letting that kind of thing happen in their homes, but its not the kind of situation that you need to be in."

"But—"

"We're not having a discussion on this one, Jamie. Drinking, at least at your age, is right up there with drugs on the list of things that can land you in a lot more trouble that you can deal with." Not that it was great for people older than Jamie, either, at least if they hadn't learned to do it responsibly, but that was a talk for another time. "Even if it's just the people around you that are actually drinking, their actions can bring trouble right back down on you, and I think you've already been in enough trouble for one sixteen year old. Yeah?"

Jamie glared and crossed his arms over his chest. "Was fifteen."

Alex took his eyes off the road for a moment to give him a look. "Do you think that improves your argument in any way?"

Jamie had enough sense not to answer back on that one, even if his expression stayed firmly fixed in a scowl, and Alex let it go. For now. He really did need to start talking to Jamie about where he was going after school and on the weekends, though. He was willing to believe Jamie about not drinking—conditionally, at least—but if the police caught Jamie at an underage party Alex doubted that it would matter.

The rest of the drive was made in silence, and then Alex caught Jamie as he tried to make a beeline for his room. "Bring anything that got beer on it to me and I'll put it in the washer to soak overnight, all right? We'll run the laundry tomorrow morning."

Jamie looked at him for a minute and then nodded quickly, but when he hadn't appeared by the time Alex was ready for bed he went looking. The door to Jamie's bathroom was shut, but he'd been a doctor far too long to mistake the sounds of retching as anything else, and he tapped quickly. "Jamie? Are you okay?"

"'m fine."

He didn't sound fine, and Alex shook his head. "I'm going to come in."

Jamie didn't argue, and Alex wasn't surprised to find him kneeling in front of the toilet. "Sorry. I'm fine," he repeated, swiping at his face and refusing to meet Alex's eyes. His face was red, and Alex wasn't sure if it was from embarrassment or something else.

"There's nothing to be sorry for, and you don't look very fine." Alex started to step towards him, only to halt as Jamie pulled back against the tub, arms wrapping around himself defensively. "Jaim? What's wrong?" It looked like Jamie had taken another shower before changing into a sweatsuit, which seemed like overkill, and his coat was piled up with the clothes he'd been wearing earlier. He remembered that damn book again and made sure that both hands were visible and relaxed as he stepped closer. "Come on, kiddo. I'm afraid this is one of those 'within reason' things. Let me take a look at you, and then it'll be done."

Jamie didn't look up at him but did manage a shrug and then a quick nod, and Alex knelt down in front of him.

There wasn't much in the toilet, probably because Jamie had eaten dinner before going on shift and hadn't had much time for snacks in the past six hours, but he reached out to flush it away anyway before turning his attention to the teenager. "Do you feel like you're getting sick? Stomach flu or something like that?" He hadn't heard about anything going around recently, but it wasn't out of the question at this time of year, and the ambulance squads were exposed to everything.

"No."

"Did you bump your head on something tonight?" That wasn't the kind of thing that Jamie was likely to forget to tell him, and even if he had Hank would definitely have mentioned it before leaving, but he'd seemed fine on the ride home.

"It's not any of that. I just..."

He shrugged, and Alex checked his forehead for any kind of elevated temperature, but his skin was no warmer than it should be for someone who'd just gotten out of the shower. "Just what?"

His flush deepened. "I just don't like the smell, and it wouldn't go away."

Not liking something wasn't generally enough to make someone sick to his stomach, but Jamie still wasn't looking at him, and after a minute Alex sighed. "All right. If you're sure that's all it is, I'm going to go toss that stuff in the washer. Why don't you brush your teeth and go lie down and I'll be back in just a bit."

It was more of an order than a suggestion, but Jamie didn't seem inclined to object, and it only took a few minutes to set the clothes to soak. There had been the smell of beer to the lot, albeit incredibly faint to his nose, and with a shake of his head he went to search the kitchen.

Normally he didn't keep much in the way of snacks in the house, and although Jamie's arrival had changed that somewhat, almost everything that Jamie preferred was sweeter than he was looking for. He definitely didn't have anything like ginger ale so on the liquid side there was nothing to offer but water, but... "Ah." He grabbed a packet of oyster crackers from a box he didn't even remember buying and took that and the water to Jamie's room. The door was standing open, but he tapped lightly anyway. "Jaim? Can I come in?"

Jamie was already curled under the heavy comforter, but he nodded. "Yeah."

"Do me a favor and sit up for a minute," Alex said as he approached the bed. "I want you to eat a few crackers and have some water."

"'m not hungry."

"I'm sure you're not, but your stomach is probably a little confused right now and I don't want you to be up in an hour going through that again. Can you try a couple sips of water and a couple crackers? I'll leave the rest here if you feel like more later."

Jamie bit his lip and then nodded and pushed himself into a sitting position, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed.

Alex took a seat beside him and offered the packet. "I'm a little confused why you'd even try going to a party where there's alcohol if your response to the smell is this bad," he said after a moment.

"It's not...I don't ever like it, but it's different with kids than adults. Or if it's something other than beer. I would have been okay tonight, but then it got all over me and I just couldn't make the smell go away, and..."

That first admission was an absolute guarantee that Jamie didn't need to be going to whatever parties he'd been attending in the past, but Alex let it go for now and put the rest of the crackers on the nightstand before offering Jamie the water. "A couple sips, and then you can go to bed. We'll see how you feel tomorrow." If Jamie was right and it was just a bad reaction to the last callout, all well and good, but if not he needed to call Jennifer and see if she could fill in for him at the conference because he wasn't going to leave Jamie alone for two days if he was sick.