Man, oh, man. I love writing Jim and Harvey. I truly look forward to their interactions on the show. I had a good time with this chapter, and I hope all you wonderful readers will, too. This is Rated M because Harvey and his crass, politically incorrect humor is here. Thanks a ton for reading along, folks!

(x)

The lingering adrenaline rush kept the first five or ten minutes of their getaway quiet. Once they hit the interstate, Jim Gordon changed into a fresh undershirt and button down that Harvey had waiting for him in the backseat. As he listened to the tires thump on the road and watched the speedometer clear seventy, Jim had a similar thought to the one his partner spoke aloud outside the prison.

I can't believe it worked.

From the driver's seat, Harvey got Jim up to speed on how he managed to pull off the jailbreak. He and Falcone apparently saw eye to eye on what needed to happen and arrangements were made. Jim caught Harvey up on his own thrilling rescue operation back inside the prison, grabbing up Puck from the infirmary and breaking him out of the prison along with him. Jim's favorite part was when Bishop clobbered Warden Grey in the back of the head and he went down like a ton of bricks.

It earned an appreciative cackle from Harvey. He muttered "serves him right, fuckwipe" under his breath as he kept one hand on the wheel.

Then he mumbled an expletive as his cell phone loudly rang at his side. "Told her not to call me…" Harvey answered it and brayed, "The hell do you want?" What sounded like a male voice loudly complaining filtered through. "Look, Alvarez, I don't care if they call you a bitch in heat. Just get out there and shake your moneymaker. Keep a lookout for that SUV while you're at it. … The fuck you care? It's my night off. Get your ass back to work. Quit callin' me." Harvey ended the call, cutting off Alvarez as he shouted insistently on the other end.

Jim arched an eyebrow. "...Her?"

"Oh yeah, Alvarez had a sex change while you were gone. But you gotta play it cool. It gets her panties in a bunch if you make it a thing."

Jim's eyes went as wide as saucers.

Harvey looked at him the rear-view mirror with a shit-eating grin. "You should see the look on your face."

Jim made a production out of sighing.

Harvey kept going, "I can't believe you bought that shit." He let out a deep, rumbling breath. "Let's see, what else have you missed since you've been on the inside… We take Ubers now instead of cabs. Everybody's eating kale chips and swearing they don't taste like dogshit." Harvey brightened, "Oh, and apparently at Arkham now you can pay somebody off to type up a paper declaring that you're sane in the membrane." He added, "So if this little escapade had gone ass up over ankles, that would have been our next move."

"Get me transferred to Arkham on the grounds of criminal insanity and then have me declared sane. That was your next move?"

"There were a lot of moving parts. It was a work in progress."

"Nice to know there was a plan B."

As Harvey put his focus back on the road, he threw up his hand at the car riding his bumper behind him. "Look at Speedy Gonzalez over here with his goddamn brights on. If I wasn't driving a stolen prison van, I'd pull his ass over purely on principle." He yelled at the driver, though of course he couldn't hear him. "What're you?! Late for your Mensa meeting? Could you go the fuck around me? Jesus Christ."

Jim shook his head and felt himself smiling. Every person who drove slower than Harvey was an idiot. Everyone who drove faster was a maniac. Yep, he realized. He'd missed this.

Harvey looked back at him. "By the way, I come bearing refreshments."

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh yeah?"

"Look to your right. They're on ice. Just the way God intended."

Jim broke open a small red cooler, the type usually saved for picnics or trips to the beach, and he found six long-necks resting inside.

He pulled out a bottle and snicked off the cap with an opener tied to the side of the cooler. Jim swallowed against his dry throat, watching the carbonation bubble up. Then he closed his eyes and drank his beer like a free man.

"Pretty good, right?"

Jim gave a full nod. The words 'Elixir of the Gods' came to mind.

From the front seat, Harvey said, "You're gettin' what every ex-con dreams about. A bottle of suds and good lookin' driver."

Jim huffed a short laugh and took another long drink of beer. He thought about offering one to Puck, who sat in the front seat, but the kid passed out almost the second they squealed away and bounced out onto the open road. Jim checked on the kid. Puck was still breathing. Unfortunately, it was so labored and heavy that it was impossible not to hear.

Jim stared down at his beer. A few moments of silence passed before another thought struck him. "Is she okay?"

It took only a second for Harvey to catch what he meant. "Yeah," he answered in an entirely certain way. "She got shook up some, but she pulls up quick on the recovery."

Jim nodded, glad to hear it. The more he thought about it, the more his brow furrowed. Madeline wouldn't want him to apologize or take more than his share of responsibility, but it was hard to go against his first instinct. Then he remembered what Harvey told him back at the prison, to quit it with the self-pity. So he said, "She held her own in there."

Harvey didn't sound surprised. "Yeah, well, she didn't know she was takin' that risk but she knew the rest of 'em."

Jim frowned and looked up from where he'd rested his forearms on his knees. "... She did?"

"You step in a bucket of snakes, you're gonna take some bites. It don't take rocket science."

And she did it anyway. Jim glanced over at where Puck rested his head back against the seat. He considered their actions, both Puck and Madeline's, how they'd put themselves in life-threatening danger for him. His next thought was fraught with baffled confusion. … Why would they do that?

It brought Jim back to one of their last sessions. Madeline had said 'Maybe I feel it's worth it.' He was beginning to think that Puck had felt the same. He sighed to himself. It wasn't a reaction he wanted to inspire.

Harvey idly said, "Hopefully, this means she's gotten her danger junkie fix for the month. From now on, if she needs a thrill, she can get a groupon for white water rafting or bungee jumping, you know, like normal people." He said, "I told her to do me a favor. Never become a spy."

Jim took another long pull of beer. "By my count, that makes three people that got busted out of Blackgate in a little over twenty-four hours."

Harvey said easily, "Hey, I sprung you two outta the clink. As usual, I let Dr. Quinn, Felony Woman off with a stern warning and a bald-faced lie that she was no longer a threat to society."

A throaty, scratchy voice sounded from the front seat. "Whoa." Puck blinked open his bleary eyes, taking in the van. "...Well, that's a different kinda Uber."

Jim looked on and a startled laugh broke from between his lips. Turned out Puck had been more awake and aware than they thought.

Harvey said to Puck, "Yeah, you boys looked like you could use a ride, so…"

Puck said, "This is new for me. I've never been part of a jailbreak before."

Harvey said, "Join the club. We'll learn as we go." Then he said to Jim, "Grab the kid a beer, would ya?"

Jim popped a bottle open and helped Puck take a drink. The kid let off a sigh of relaxation as he took a swig of lager. "Oh man … that hit the spot," he said appreciatively.

The car went quiet for a moment, and then Puck asked Harvey, "Were you talkin' 'bout your girl?"

Harvey rose to the occasion. "Here's a little factoid for you, kid. With me, it's girls. Plural." Jim smirked and kicked back his beer as he listened to a speech he'd heard many times before. "I ain't much for pickin' favorites. I love 'em all."

Puck said, "So, you're an expert on the ladies?"

Harvey said, "Let's just say I put in the man hours. It's a lot of work for a guy with a mug like mine to even reach vague consideration level. It's a full time job gettin' the women of this town to love me."

Puck coughed long and loud. "I got a girl back home," he said in a scratchy voice. "She's real pretty. She's got class. She's the type you bring home to meet the family. But I sorta … got arrested before things could really take off, y'know?"

Harvey nodded sagely, as if this was a story as old as the hills. Though in Gotham, it probably was.

Puck said, "So, what do you do when you really like a girl, but you're not exactly sure where you stand, you know what I mean?"

Harvey said, "I'm gonna be clear and real about my record here and tell you that I'm not the guy you wanna ask."

Puck turned his head back toward Jim as best he could. Jim tried not to frown at the fresh blood and bruises that covered the kid's face. "What do you think, Detective Gordon? What's my best move?"

Jim didn't remind him that he was no longer a detective this time. He also didn't tell the kid that he definitely wasn't the guy to ask either. Instead, he thought for a moment. "I say you get her to talk to you. Tell you what's on her mind."

Puck nodded at the advice.

When Harvey looked at him from the rear view mirror, Jim shrugged. It was the best he could come up with on short notice.

Puck said, "Worse comes to worse. I figure I'll just show up with flowers." Then he added with conviction, "And a car that's -not- stolen."

Harvey said, "The kid's got the right idea."

Jim smiled. "Sounds like you got a lucky girl there, Puck."

The kid leaned back in his seat again and closed his eyes. "I think I'm gonna tell her ... life's too short to not go after what you want the most …" Slowly, Puck drifted off to sleep, his breathing still heavy and labored. Jim frowned a little, but reached over and squeezed the kid's shoulder.

Harvey waited until the kid was out cold before he murmured to Jim. "He ain't lookin' so good."

"They nearly beat him to death," Jim said. "He got in the way of someone goin' after me."

"He made a choice." He answered swiftly and used his 'look here and listen up' tone of voice that warned Jim not to argue. "You'da done the same and you know it."

Jim found himself able to agree with that. He'd been in a state of total readiness to do that for Madeline only yesterday.

Harvey ended with, "He did what he did. That ain't yours to carry."

He said like it should be just that simple. But it wasn't. Jim blinked the thought away as more urgent matters took his attention. "Where are we with looking into Pinkney's murder?"

"Same spot we've been," Harvey said, his voice agitated. "We know you're innocent. We just gotta work on this little matter of, y'know, proving it."

Jim thought back to his trial. 'It was a setup. I was framed.' The last defense of the guilty. He may as well have said, 'I swear, it wasn't me, copper. It was the one-armed man.' "When you talked to Dent, he said the verdict still held water?"

"Like the Hoover Dam." He said, "But look it, once this city hears you're on the lam, whoever did this might come outta the woodwork to cover their tracks. We just gotta be ready for them when they do."

Jim let a long moment pass. Then he said, "I meant what I said that night you rode with me to Blackgate. You're a good partner, Harv."

"Yeah, well, I figure if Barnes finds out about this little sojourn, I can always put in for a job at Blackgate." He said with some malice, "They're hirin' just anybody over there these days."

Jim played along. "You've already got the uniform."

"And I been puttin' in face-time with the warden. I'm a shoe-in." Harvey shrugged. "Plus, it might be a good way to get out and meet people. This whole me chasin' after women thing's for the birds. I might hop on the dude train for awhile."

The car went suddenly silent.

Harvey burst out in laughter. Jim muttered under his breath.

At the wheel, Harvey said, "Chrissakes, Gordon. I swear to God it's too easy. It's not even fun anymore."

Jim finished off his beer as Harvey cackled out under his breath, 'If you believe that I've got some swampland in Florida to sell you. You can build right on top of that shit'.

They drove all night. When 'Breakout' by the Foo Fighters and 'Jailbreak' by Thin Lizzy came on the radio, Harvey turned it up.