Thanks to everyone who read and Ghostwriter and Callisto's Moon for reviewing.

"Jamie, are you feeling okay? Why don't you come sit down?"

Jamie paused in the doorway of the kitchen, but he wasn't any more interested in whatever Alex was watching than he had been five minutes ago. And he didn't want to read—especially not Shakespeare, but not really anything else either—and he wasn't hungry, and there weren't even any dishes to put away since he'd emptied the dishwasher when it had finished an hour ago. He shrugged, even though Alex was in the recliner and couldn't really turn to look at him. "I'm fine."

"So come sit down," Alex repeated. "She'll be here soon."

Mostly for lack of anything else to do Jamie sighed and headed into the living room, flinging himself down on the couch.

"Are you sure you're all right? You've been bouncing around all morning."

"I'm good."

Alex shifted around a little more to look at him, and even if the rain had stopped before Jamie had woken up, it was pretty obvious that his back was still bothering him some. "Are you afraid that she won't let you stay here?"

"Huh? No, there's lots worse places I've stayed." Here he had his own room and pretty much his own bathroom and it was nice and warm and Alex never made him go hungry or anything like that. He'd even made pancakes this morning.

"So what's wrong?"

The doorbell rang before Jamie had to figure out how to answer, which was good since he didn't have an answer. He'd been through plenty of foster parents before. He hopped back up off the couch. "I'll get it."

As expected Sonja was waiting on the porch, and she smiled at Jamie as he opened the door. "Hello."

"Hi. Come in. Alex is—"

"Alex is here," he said, standing so he was visible from the entryway. "Thank you for coming."

"Thank you," she echoed as she stepped inside. "Hopefully now is still a good time for you two? Or as good as noon on a Saturday ever gets for official business, I suppose."

"It's fine," Alex said. "Jamie, why don't you take her coat?"

"Oh, thank you."

Jamie wasn't exactly well-versed in dealing with guest guests, but he took it and hung it up in the front closet where Alex always put their coats while Alex waved her into the living area.

"I think you said that you wanted a tour of the house and then you had some questions for us?" Alex asked.

"Well, I'd actually prefer to start with the questions first, and then maybe do the tour and speak to each of you privately afterwards?"

"Of course. Please, have a seat."

She and Alex had ended up in the two middle seats at the kitchen table, the ones that usually only got used for homework, and after a minute Jamie took the one on the end by Alex. He didn't expect too many question to be directed at him yet anyway.

As it turned out, not only were most of the questions for Alex, most of them were kind of pointless, too. Jamie had heard them all in bits and pieces before, but this was Alex's house so obviously the appliances all worked, there were smoke detectors everywhere there were supposed to be, there was a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, all of that. And asking a doctor—well, at least asking an Alex—if he had a first aid kit was just stupid.

"Jamie?"

He realized abruptly that a question must have been directed at him and looked back at Alex. "Huh?"

"Have you seen any bottles of wine in any of the cabinets?"

Jamie shook his head immediately. He'd never seen any alcohol at all in Alex's house, at least except for the antiseptic kind in the medicine cabinet. It was kind of weird since in his experience most adults, or at least most men, liked beer when they had pizza, but Alex never even went down the beer aisle at the grocery store.

"Okay, so probably not," Alex said, apparently answering the question that Sonja had asked and Jamie had missed. "I know my brother and his wife brought a couple bottles out the last time they visited, but they must have been gone before they left."

"I take it that you're not much of a drinker, then," Sonja said.

He shook his head. "I might go out to a bar with a couple other doctors a couple times a year if we have a particularly bad shift, but that's about it. Some of the medication I have to take for my back...regular alcohol consumption is not in any way advised."

"This medication is strong, then?"

"It runs the gamut depending on the day, but at the bad end, yes."

"Where do you keep it?"

"I wouldn't touch anything unless he said so," Jamie couldn't help but cut in, giving Sonja a hurt look. She should know better.

"We ask that any medications be kept in a locked cabinet," Sonja said. "Even with older children. It's a standard policy."

"I wouldn't touch anything unless you said so," Jamie repeated, looking at Alex this time. "I don't at the station, do I?" Heck, at the station one of his duties was to unpack whole boxes of medicine and count them and shelve them and all of that before they got rotated into the ambulance stock, and all Alex ever did there was the spot checks he had to do for all of the supplies before he could sign off on the inventory forms.

"Of course not," Alex said. "But I think we can manage one policy here at home."

Jamie barely refrained from rolling his eyes. "It's not like I haven't seen real drugs often enough to never touch them," he muttered.

Sonja moved onto other questions after that, at least, more stupid stuff like if there was a phone in the house that Jamie could use or if the heater worked—like they weren't all sitting here not freezing—or if there was some kind of child protection thing on the laptop. Which there wasn't, as it happened, but since Jamie never used it anyway it didn't really matter.

Eventually Sonja put her pen down and smiled. "That's all sorted then, thank you very much. Maybe one of you could give me the tour now, and then I could speak to the other afterwards?"

"Sure," Alex agreed. "Jamie, why don't you show her around and I'll pull one of these chairs into my room so she and I can talk at my desk afterwards?"

"I can just bring it in when we're done," Jamie volunteered. Whatever Alex said, he was pretty sure Alex shouldn't be lifting anything right now. Or dragging it, or whatever.

"That might be a better idea," Alex admitted. "If that's all right with you?" he asked Sonja.

"That sounds like an excellent plan, thank you."

Alex pushed himself to his feet and nodded. "I'll see you when you're finished, then."

"I'd never touch anything of his unless he said so," Jamie repeated as soon as Alex was out of earshot.

"I know, Jamie, but it is a policy, and since he hasn't fostered before it's better to have all of the boxes checked. Now, I guess we're starting the tour with the kitchen since we're already here?"

The tour didn't exactly take long; the house itself wasn't very big and it wasn't like there were any giant leaks in the ceiling or exposed wires or whatever to make excuses for.

"I can't say that this is really where I expected a doctor to live," Sonja said as they entered Jamie's room. "But it seems nice. You like it here?"

Jamie shrugged. "Yeah, sure, it's okay." He would have said that doctor's houses were supposed to be fancier a few months ago too, but all things considered he was just as glad that Alex didn't live somewhere like that. Here was plenty nice and there wasn't a lot of stuff that he had to be afraid of breaking or anything like that.

"And you still feel safe with Alex? You both said there was an issue right after New Years."

"It was one stupid freak out, and it was all my fault anyway. He wouldn't hurt me."

"You're sure of that?"

"Yeah."

She nodded slightly and then gestured to the bed. "May I sit down?"

Jamie nodded, and she took a seat at the foot. He sank down by the headboard, kind of glad that he'd cleaned up a little this morning. Not that he really had that much to clean up, just yanking the blankets back into place and shoving his duffel of clothes under the bed, but it made things look a little better. He could have put the clothes in the dresser, he supposed, but he mostly never bothered with that kind of thing.

"What does he do when you do something wrong?" she asked. "I think a book report was mentioned the last time I talked to you?"

"The one time, yeah, but I haven't done anything that bad again. Mostly he just yells and grounds me." Alex was pretty strict, but not really as strict at home as he was at the station...actually what he mostly did was give Jamie looks unless it was something like missing curfew.

"And he's never touched you inappropriately or done anything to make you uncomfortable?"

"No. Of course not." He knew she had to ask, but it was still stupid. "He says I don't have to let him or anybody touch him unless I want to or unless I'm hurt."

"Do you ever? Let him, I mean. I don't mean in a bad way," she said quickly. "But..."

Jamie shrugged and then shook his head. "I don't know. If I fall asleep on the couch he'll put a blanket over me or take off my glasses if I'm still wearing them or stuff like that, or sometimes if his back is really bothering him he'll borrow a shoulder if I offer, but I don't like adults touching me and he knows it." Sometimes they might bump into each other in the kitchen or if Alex was helping him with homework or whatever, but that wasn't the kind of on purpose stuff that bothered him.

"Does his back cause him pain often?"

"Not a lot a lot, but sometimes. Mostly when it's rainy or about to rain...I think he said it has something to do with the pressure in the air. And sometimes if he spends too long in one place he gets stiff, but he's usually pretty careful about that."

"When he takes those medications he mentioned, does it change his behavior or how he acts towards you?"

Jamie shook his head immediately. "I've only seen him take the strong stuff maybe two or three times when things were really bad, and he went right to bed afterwards. Normally he takes Tylenol or Advil or whatever and says not to worry about it."

She nodded. "Since you'll be officially placed here after today, I brought your files for him. Have you talked to him about any of that?"

"No!" Obviously he hadn't talked to Alex about any of that, he never talked to anybody about any of that. "Why can't you just forget about that part?" he asked. "He already knows the important stuff anyway."

"You know I can't do that, Jamie."

"Why not? The social services records are totally pointless; the whole reason I ended up here is because I didn't have anywhere else to go at Thanksgiving, and it's not like anything's changed since then." If it had Sonja, wouldn't be doing a home visit right now. "A big list of places that didn't want me aren't going to make that any more clear. And if it wasn't for the whole community service thing I'd never even have met him so none of the juvenile stuff is any secret either." Hell, Alex's signature was probably on some of that paperwork since he'd had to approve Jamie's placement at the station in the first place.

"And you don't think school or medical records are important?"

"No. He's pickier about school than any of my other foster parents ever were anyway." Or at least Jamie didn't dare ignore him about it as much, although he'd been right before and having his teachers starting to expect homework from him was really annoying. "And I didn't even know that I needed reading glasses until I was here so I don't think the medical records are really going to be that much help."

Her lips thinned. "The glasses are an entirely different issue, and I'm not happy that you had foster parents signing off on optometrist appointments that weren't actually happening. We have clear standards in place about what kinds of doctors' appointments need to happen and when for a reason. But there are things in your medical files that he does need to know."

Jamie suspected that he'd had foster parents signing off on a lot more than a few missed eye doctor appointments over the years, but if she didn't know that he wasn't going to be the one to point it out. Personally he was more worried about the fact that Alex had threatened a dentist and a real doctor who wasn't him too somewhere along the line, and no matter what social services did or didn't do that wasn't the kind of thing that Alex was likely to forget. Not for very long, anyway. "Nope, I already told him about the allergies and that stupid asthma that won't go away back before Christmas so that's covered too." He probably wouldn't have if he hadn't had an attack, granted, but he had so he had and that was that.

"And the rest of it?" she asked pointedly.

He scowled. "The rest is all old, and it doesn't matter, and he doesn't need to know about it. Nobody needs to know about it."