Happy Holidays, unbelievable2!
Title: The Ellison Christmas
Type: Gen
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 3,400
Summary: It's the Christmas after 'His Brother's Keeper' and Jim is trying to get organized.
Warnings: The occasional swear word? Otherwise there's nothing here to bother people.
A/N: My recipient seemed pretty open to most options, so I hope that a slightly sappy gen Christmas story is okay.
The Ellison Christmas
Blair had dragged out that ridiculous winter hat of his again. Between that and the heavy, woollen plaid jacket he looked like an exceptionally grumpy lumberjack. “Do you know that in Australia just yesterday the temperature was 100 degrees?” Blair said it longingly. “And that Fiji can expect temperatures in the high eighties for most of December, and that the lowest it’s going to get is 68?”
“Chief, I know you’re cold, but could you maybe just can it? I can pay attention to you or I can pay attention to this stake out.” Not that there was any sign of anything at all productive happening in the bleak industrial landscape in front of them.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry. But I’m cold. And I lost my gloves and it’s pissing me off.”
Jim reached under the seat and took out a small package. “Here. Think of it as an early Christmas present.” He dropped it into Blair’s lap without ceremony. Blair tore it open equally without ceremony to reveal a thick pair of gloves.
“Oh, man, you’re a life saver.” He thrust his hands into the gloves and rubbed them briskly together before pressing his hands to his face and then in front of his nose and inhaling the scent. “Thank you.” Gratitude could last only so long in the face of Blair Sandburg’s coldness and boredom. “What’s the time?”
Jim didn’t even need to check his watch. “Relief’s not due for another half an hour.”
“My toes are going to fall off.”
“Nobody said you had to come this evening.”
“Nooo,” Blair drawled, “but on the other hand you know you’re not going to zone with me here.”
Jim sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you that.”
“Thank you,” Blair said. Jim hoped that the smug chirpiness thing he had going there was warming him up. It certainly wasn’t shutting him up. “What are you doing for Christmas day?”
Jim took his eyes off the warehouse and its surrounds long enough to give Blair a sidelong look. “I thought you had a hot ticket with that girl, what’s her name?
“The hot ticket’s gone cold, and to be honest, I think I’d rather spend Christmas day with you anyway. Christy is definitely va-va-voom,” - Blair’s hands shaped something with enough curves to be a snake rather than a woman - “but at least you have conversation. And I was wondering. You and Steven, how’s that working out?”
Jim took one last hopeless scan of the warehouse in front of them. All was utterly silent and inactive and offered no hope of escape.
“We’re getting along. He suggested we could go to Delaney’s for dinner. They’ve still got a couple of tables open for their Christmas special. I told him that you might be a potential attendee. Given that I suspected va-va-voom isn’t everything.”
“Delaney’s!” Blair protested, “Steven may not mind their food, but I’d have thought you’d prefer something with more taste and less rubbery sensation.”
“Delaney’s isn’t so bad.”
“I will make you an offer here. I will cook, if you want to have a brother to brother dinner and don’t mind me on the side-line.” Blair’s voice subsided into a mutter of disgust. “Delaney’s…”
“You’ll cook?”
“I can cook,” Blair said. “And I liked what I saw of Steven so I don’t mind if he doesn’t mind. And if you don’t mind.”
Still keeping his eyes and at least some of his hearing on the world outside, Jim’s nod indicated that all this was feasible. Blair could cook, and Steven had seemed to like Blair and MC crew well enough, and Jim could think of worse Christmas Day company by far than Blair. Still, a man shouldn’t give up too easily.
“I don’t know, Chief. I don’t know if I really want my cuisine pan-global for Christmas dinner.”
“I can do steak and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole, which is what you’d get at Delaney’s. Or a roast chicken and gravy. None of that is difficult. And we can get in plenty of beer, and good coffee and some mixed nuts and fancy cookies and egg nog if you wanted to go really crazy. We’d be able to eat ourselves into the traditional food coma on that pretty comfortably.”
All of it was sounding more attractive by the minute, and Jim figured that Blair’s presence to help take the pressure off Ellison conversational skills couldn’t be a bad thing either.
“It could be a plan - work permitting.”
Blair crossed his fingers in the new, heavy gloves. “Here’s hoping.” Then he looked at his hands with new attention. “So, Jim. An early Christmas present. This isn’t it, is it?”
“It’s not so much a present as self-defence, Sandburg. It’s not like you suffer silently when you’re cold.”
Blair eyes were on him with rapt and somewhat expectant attention.
“There may be a stocking filler to open under the tree,” Jim declared with some sarcasm. He did not do Christmas trees. Artificial ones were tacky and real ones made him sneeze.
“Great, great. So, uh, what do you want?”
Jim shook his head. “Here I am, already planned and organized, and Blair Sandburg is winging it.”
“And cooking dinner. And there are still three weeks to go, so I am not winging it.”
“Jiffy Lube vouchers will do.” Jim got contemplative. “Or if you need an alternative, Caroline took all the good kitchen towels with her, and the ones I’ve got are getting worn. You could get me some of those.” He became primly teasing. “I prefer traditional designs.”
“So plain plaid from the holy domestic temple of JCPenney. Got it.”
At least they got their Christmas organized. It was next shift that actually got the goods on their stakeout target.
“Being the observant guy I am, I noticed that we didn’t have a Christmas tree.” Blair did something with the little tripod stand and placed the tree at the end of the dining table. It was all of fifteen inches high. He proceeded to garland it with a length of candy-striped red white and green tinsel and adorn it with a glittery silver star.
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “A tree.”
Jim traded his gaze between the little tree and Blair. “Sandburg, I’m not Scrooge here, but I’m not really a tree person.”
“Yeah, because real trees make you sneeze and artificial trees are tacky.”
So Jim had an opinion on Christmas trees. “Yes, they are, they are tacky.”
“But this one is small. Cute, and not so large that its tackiness is going to impinge on the loft’s tasteful, spare modernity.”
Blair almost got that out with credible earnestness, but Jim knew when he was being jerked around. On the other hand, it was only a couple of weeks until Christmas, and the tree was small and Blair looked so damn pleased with himself.
“Spare modernity is important,” Jim said, with a good show of credible earnestness of his own. “But the coffee table might be a better place for your tree.”
“All right!” Blair declared, like it was a mighty victory, and moved the tree over from dining table to coffee table with bounce in every step. Then he sat down on the couch, proudly admired his tree, and said, “Do you want to do the grocery shopping Wednesday this week? Then we could do the before-Christmas groceries on next Tuesday and at least avoid the Christmas Eve craziness.”
“Sounds like a plan. Fresh chicken for Christmas dinner? Frozen chicken goes flaky when you cook it.”
Blair grinned. “Yeah, sure. And you would have gone to Delaney’s with Steven. Greater love hath no brother, huh?”
Jim stirred uncomfortably in his seat. “I wouldn’t put it like that.”
Blair blithely ignored the squirm. “Does Steven have anything that he really doesn’t eat? Or any allergies?”
“Not that I know of. He was thinking of going to Delaney’s after all,” Jim said pointedly.
Blair shook his head, serious suddenly. “You two are getting to know each other again from the ground up, aren’t you? Wow.” He smiled. “That’s really cool. Family reunion time.”
“Look, Sandburg. Don’t get all misty-eyed about this, okay? It’s just my brother calling in to share Christmas dinner with us.”
Blair nodded. “No misty eyes. Okay. Oh, fuck.”
“What?” Jim asked, startled.
“It’s the retrospective for the sporting year, and it looks like they’re making a meal of that business with Sprewell and the Warriors. Can you imagine what they’ll make of Ray Krause and the Jags?
Jim grabbed the remote and hastily changed the channel, where it was ice hockey. Not his sport but better than the sporting scandals recap.
“Good choice, man. They probably would have had footage of you two hanging off the catwalk. Now, that would have been scary.”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “Scary.” The little tree sat just out his line of sight, and Jim got up and went upstairs and came down with a small envelope with Blair’s name on it. “I did say that I had something to go under the tree.” Blair’s eyes went to the envelope immediately. “It’s sealed, Chief. And I know exactly that it looks like, what it smells like and how clean the envelope is. You try any stealth investigation and I will know.”
“I already know it’s a gift card anyway,” Blair said.
Jim had sat down. Now he stretched his legs out and grinned his most annoying grin. “But you don’t know what it’s a gift card for. Jiffy Lube, maybe - you’re crap with maintaining your car. Or Sears. They do a nice line in underwear specials in the New Year sales. Or happy hour at Club Pigale. Anything is possible.”
“I’m damn near certain that it’s not for Club Pigale, so anything is not possible.”
“But you don’t know that for certain.”
“Oh, I know, man.” Blair’s grin was rueful.
Jim just grinned right back and turned the sound down slightly on the tv.
“Look.” Blair shoved his section of the Cascade Herald across the table to Jim with suspicious enthusiasm. “There’s hope for you, yet.”
Jim took a sip of his rapidly cooling coffee. “What?”
Blair’s finger stabbed at a headline.
“FDA approves baldness pill,” was displayed under the Health and Lifestyle banner.
Jim was pretty sure that he was giving Blair a steely glare of death, but Blair smiled like it was some harmless pout. Jim took one slow breath and said, “Testosterone. That’s why men go bald. It’s a manly hormone. The manly hormone even.” He stood to take his cup to the sink and took aim for a gentle but definite tug on Blair’s ponytail as he went past.
“I remember when I was a kid, and my Uncle Eddy used to say that he never wore hats because it cut off the circulation to the scalp.”
“Is that so?” Jim said pleasantly, and reached down to whip Blair’s plate (with its still half-eaten piece of toast) out from under.
Blair gave him a death glare of his own and retrieved the paper. “Real hair, not fuzz, it says here.”
“We don’t need any more real hair in this apartment. I have to call a plumber every time you take a shower as it is.” Somewhat defiantly, Jim jammed his Jags cap on. “Come on, Chief. Only three more days until Christmas.”
“Yeah, and grocery shopping tomorrow. Joy. Any preference for the eggnog brand?”
“Buy it? Are you crazy?” Jim had never tasted a commercial brand yet that he liked, even well mixed with alcohol. Blair, on the other hand, would and had drunk anything if there was enough rum in it.
“Okay, fine, you’re making it,” Blair said, clearly nettled. “And you’re using pasteurized eggs.”
“I don’t like pasteurized eggs. They taste weird.”
“Well, we don’t have time to track down some salmonella bacillus and train your senses up to recognise it, Jim , so I guess if you want home-made eggnog then it’s going to be pasteurized eggs whether you like it or not.”
They were bickering over eggnog. Jim pinched his nose. Three days until Christmas, (and Steven) and it really couldn’t come soon enough.
Work was kind on Christmas Day, in that they got home only half an hour later than they’d thought they might, and Blair was getting the chicken ready even before he took off his jacket. The green bean casserole was in the refrigerator, as was the beer, and the eggnog. Washed potatoes sat on top of the counter.
Blair stood up from loading the chicken into the oven, and smiled. “Organized. Aside from the table, and I’ll let you do that.” He hung up his jacket and sat cross-legged on the couch, rereading the letter from his mother.
“Are you going to call Naomi tonight?”
“No, she and her friends are going out sledding, which sounds pretty amazing. But I guess if anywhere is guaranteed a white Christmas it’s Minnesota. I’ll call her tomorrow, or she’ll call me. Either way we’ll touch base.”
Jim was poised for a moment for Blair to ask if he was going to ‘touch base’ with his father. Blair knew Jim’s Dad was in Cascade. But the moment passed, and Blair kept reading Naomi’s letter, and Jim relaxed and got them both a beer. He’d called Steven just before they left Central, and he expected to see him soon, and that was fine. He and Steven were getting along fine; albeit they weren’t having any deep discussions either.
There was a box on the coffee table that was next to the little tree rather than under it. “Hey, Sandburg? Is it safe to open my present when Steven is here?”
Blair looked over the top of his glasses. “Yes. Jeez, Jim, what sort of Christmas hating Grinch do you think I am?”
“The sort that gives me novelty condoms in the Department Secret Santa.”
“That’s different. Thanks for conniving with H over the bald cap, by the way.”
“You’re welcome,” Jim said, and took a long drink of his beer. He could hear Steven coming up the stairs and took another swallow. He and his brother hadn’t shared a Christmas Day for nearly twenty years, and he was overcome with nerves, and wished they were eating over-cooked steak at Delaney’s, where at least Jim could have run if things turned bad. There was a knock at the door.
“I guess that’s Steven,” Blair said.
“Amazing deductive skills there,” Jim said, standing but not moving to the door.
“Get over there and let your brother inside.” Blair smiled. “It’ll be fine, man. You’ll see.”
“Sure it will,” Jim said, and went and opened the door.
Steven had a six pack of beer in one hand and a paper shopping bag in the other. “Hi,” he said, and Jim might not know his baby bro so well after all these years, but he knew that he was just as nervous as he was.
“Stevie. Come on in.”
Steven lifted the bag he carried. “Sally gave me some of her special Christmas cookies.”
Jim nodded. “Great, great.”
“Dad says ‘hi’.”
Jim shrugged at that. “How is he?”
“He’s fine.”
Steven put the beer and the bag on the table. “Hi, Blair. Merry Christmas”
Blair was leaning on the back of the couch. He wore a welcoming smile, but he was looking just a little too interested in the brotherly interaction. “Merry Christmas. Who’s Sally, and does she make good cookies?”
“Sally is Dad’s housekeeper, and she makes spectacular cookies,” Steven explained.
“Cool,” Blair said, and didn’t, blessedly, say one word about Jim’s father.
The evening was… okay. Pleasant, even. Jim and Steven talked sports mainly with a side of local politics and a soupcon of the progress on Pat Reynold’s trial. Steven was stressed over the prospect of testifying.
Blair got a little stressed over the gravy, and the topping on the casserole was maybe more crispy than it ought to be, but Steven ate a respectable amount of the meal even though Jim knew he had to have eaten a big lunch at their father’s house.
They opened presents. Jim had given Blair a gift card for his favourite bookshop. “I knew it!” Blair said, and Jim just said, “Happy hour at Pigale can wait for another day, Chief.”
At Steven’s questioning look, Blair said, “Private joke. Sorry,” with an engaging smile. “It was a case.”
“Ah,” Steven said.
Jim’s box from Blair contained a plain Merino wool sweater, pretty similar to one that had been trashed earlier in the year in a hot pursuit through a junk yard. There were also three dish towels decorated with screamingly bright floral designs.
“I thought they could add a little tropical colour to the kitchen for the winter,” Blair said. “And they’re flowery to go with your apron.” Jim flipped the bird at him and Steven, the bastard, grinned like he thought it was hilarious.
“I figure that the beer is Blair’s,” Steven said, “for cooking us dinner.”
Blair was delighted. “I like the way you think.
Jim offered a box with three conservatively patterned ties for Steven. He presented Jim with pack of expensive coffee beans and an envelope with a Jiffy Lube voucher, and looked understandably offended when Jim and Blair burst out laughing.
“Hey, hey, Stevie, you weren’t to know, but it’s been kind of a joke for the two us. Our cars and maintenance. These are great, really. Something I can actually use.” And now Steven looked a little wistful but Jim refused to feel guilty about having in-jokes and a friendship with Blair. It was harder not to feel uncomfortable about the utterly generic gifts they’d given each other. Blair’s voucher and gloves might appear just as paint by numbers, but Jim knew the difference, and he hoped that Blair did too.
“I, ah, Dad found this for me.” Steven brought a book out of the bottom of his bag. “It’s the copy of Kidnapped that Pops McDonald gave you one year. I remember you used to read it a lot.”
Jim turned the worn book over in his hands. He didn’t need to look to remember the simple inscription inside - ‘To Jimmy, love, Pops.’ “Thanks,” was all he said. “I’ll put this upstairs.” He left to do so, leaving Steven to explain to an interested Blair that Pops had been their maternal grandfather. The old man was long gone and Jim placed the book on his night stand and looked down from his bedroom to his friend and his brother covering up the awkward space in the evening by tidying away the wrapping paper and other trash from around the couch and the table.
He had to go back down, and Steven made his excuses - it was getting genuinely late - and they said their good-byes by the door. There was a stiff hug, and Jim said, “I’ll call Sally. Tell her thanks for the cookies.”
Steven nodded, and left, and Jim turned around to find Blair watching him.
“So that was the very merry Ellison Christmas,” Blair said with quirked brows. “And what the hell is going on with your father?”
“That’s a long story, and not very seasonal,” Jim told him.
“Oh, I’ll bet.” Blair went wide-eyed for a moment, as if he was trying to see through the murk of Jim’s family relationships. “It was a nice evening, though. Wasn’t it? Food okay?”
“It was fine, Chief. The food was good, the company wasn’t so bad,” - Blair rolled his eyes at this - “and now we have dishes.”
“We?” Blair demanded. “Who cooked? Who provided the Christmas tree?”
“I’ll wash. But you can dry. Break in the new dish towels.”
Jim had gotten lost in the froth and iridescence of the bubbles, and turned his head at a gentle touch on his shoulder.
“Zoned or just tired?” Blair asked. He’d brought over the towel with hot pink hibiscus flowers vivid on a bleached white background.
“Tired. But that tropical colour certainly wakes me up. Just what this place needs, right?”
“What this place needs, man, is a dishwasher.”
“It already has two of them, Sandburg.”
Blair chuckled, like this wasn’t an old joke. “That wasn’t a bad Christmas Day. I’ve had worse.”
Jim bent his head over the sink, and his well-scraped dishes and the fresh, domestic froth of his sink, and nodded. “Definitely worse,” he agreed. The warmth of the water sank into his hands, but it wasn’t as warm as Blair’s grin.
Best wishes from your Secret Santa & your mod!
Type: Gen
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 3,400
Summary: It's the Christmas after 'His Brother's Keeper' and Jim is trying to get organized.
Warnings: The occasional swear word? Otherwise there's nothing here to bother people.
A/N: My recipient seemed pretty open to most options, so I hope that a slightly sappy gen Christmas story is okay.
The Ellison Christmas
Blair had dragged out that ridiculous winter hat of his again. Between that and the heavy, woollen plaid jacket he looked like an exceptionally grumpy lumberjack. “Do you know that in Australia just yesterday the temperature was 100 degrees?” Blair said it longingly. “And that Fiji can expect temperatures in the high eighties for most of December, and that the lowest it’s going to get is 68?”
“Chief, I know you’re cold, but could you maybe just can it? I can pay attention to you or I can pay attention to this stake out.” Not that there was any sign of anything at all productive happening in the bleak industrial landscape in front of them.
“Yeah, yeah, sorry. But I’m cold. And I lost my gloves and it’s pissing me off.”
Jim reached under the seat and took out a small package. “Here. Think of it as an early Christmas present.” He dropped it into Blair’s lap without ceremony. Blair tore it open equally without ceremony to reveal a thick pair of gloves.
“Oh, man, you’re a life saver.” He thrust his hands into the gloves and rubbed them briskly together before pressing his hands to his face and then in front of his nose and inhaling the scent. “Thank you.” Gratitude could last only so long in the face of Blair Sandburg’s coldness and boredom. “What’s the time?”
Jim didn’t even need to check his watch. “Relief’s not due for another half an hour.”
“My toes are going to fall off.”
“Nobody said you had to come this evening.”
“Nooo,” Blair drawled, “but on the other hand you know you’re not going to zone with me here.”
Jim sighed. “Okay, I’ll give you that.”
“Thank you,” Blair said. Jim hoped that the smug chirpiness thing he had going there was warming him up. It certainly wasn’t shutting him up. “What are you doing for Christmas day?”
Jim took his eyes off the warehouse and its surrounds long enough to give Blair a sidelong look. “I thought you had a hot ticket with that girl, what’s her name?
“The hot ticket’s gone cold, and to be honest, I think I’d rather spend Christmas day with you anyway. Christy is definitely va-va-voom,” - Blair’s hands shaped something with enough curves to be a snake rather than a woman - “but at least you have conversation. And I was wondering. You and Steven, how’s that working out?”
Jim took one last hopeless scan of the warehouse in front of them. All was utterly silent and inactive and offered no hope of escape.
“We’re getting along. He suggested we could go to Delaney’s for dinner. They’ve still got a couple of tables open for their Christmas special. I told him that you might be a potential attendee. Given that I suspected va-va-voom isn’t everything.”
“Delaney’s!” Blair protested, “Steven may not mind their food, but I’d have thought you’d prefer something with more taste and less rubbery sensation.”
“Delaney’s isn’t so bad.”
“I will make you an offer here. I will cook, if you want to have a brother to brother dinner and don’t mind me on the side-line.” Blair’s voice subsided into a mutter of disgust. “Delaney’s…”
“You’ll cook?”
“I can cook,” Blair said. “And I liked what I saw of Steven so I don’t mind if he doesn’t mind. And if you don’t mind.”
Still keeping his eyes and at least some of his hearing on the world outside, Jim’s nod indicated that all this was feasible. Blair could cook, and Steven had seemed to like Blair and MC crew well enough, and Jim could think of worse Christmas Day company by far than Blair. Still, a man shouldn’t give up too easily.
“I don’t know, Chief. I don’t know if I really want my cuisine pan-global for Christmas dinner.”
“I can do steak and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole, which is what you’d get at Delaney’s. Or a roast chicken and gravy. None of that is difficult. And we can get in plenty of beer, and good coffee and some mixed nuts and fancy cookies and egg nog if you wanted to go really crazy. We’d be able to eat ourselves into the traditional food coma on that pretty comfortably.”
All of it was sounding more attractive by the minute, and Jim figured that Blair’s presence to help take the pressure off Ellison conversational skills couldn’t be a bad thing either.
“It could be a plan - work permitting.”
Blair crossed his fingers in the new, heavy gloves. “Here’s hoping.” Then he looked at his hands with new attention. “So, Jim. An early Christmas present. This isn’t it, is it?”
“It’s not so much a present as self-defence, Sandburg. It’s not like you suffer silently when you’re cold.”
Blair eyes were on him with rapt and somewhat expectant attention.
“There may be a stocking filler to open under the tree,” Jim declared with some sarcasm. He did not do Christmas trees. Artificial ones were tacky and real ones made him sneeze.
“Great, great. So, uh, what do you want?”
Jim shook his head. “Here I am, already planned and organized, and Blair Sandburg is winging it.”
“And cooking dinner. And there are still three weeks to go, so I am not winging it.”
“Jiffy Lube vouchers will do.” Jim got contemplative. “Or if you need an alternative, Caroline took all the good kitchen towels with her, and the ones I’ve got are getting worn. You could get me some of those.” He became primly teasing. “I prefer traditional designs.”
“So plain plaid from the holy domestic temple of JCPenney. Got it.”
At least they got their Christmas organized. It was next shift that actually got the goods on their stakeout target.
“Being the observant guy I am, I noticed that we didn’t have a Christmas tree.” Blair did something with the little tripod stand and placed the tree at the end of the dining table. It was all of fifteen inches high. He proceeded to garland it with a length of candy-striped red white and green tinsel and adorn it with a glittery silver star.
“There,” he said with satisfaction. “A tree.”
Jim traded his gaze between the little tree and Blair. “Sandburg, I’m not Scrooge here, but I’m not really a tree person.”
“Yeah, because real trees make you sneeze and artificial trees are tacky.”
So Jim had an opinion on Christmas trees. “Yes, they are, they are tacky.”
“But this one is small. Cute, and not so large that its tackiness is going to impinge on the loft’s tasteful, spare modernity.”
Blair almost got that out with credible earnestness, but Jim knew when he was being jerked around. On the other hand, it was only a couple of weeks until Christmas, and the tree was small and Blair looked so damn pleased with himself.
“Spare modernity is important,” Jim said, with a good show of credible earnestness of his own. “But the coffee table might be a better place for your tree.”
“All right!” Blair declared, like it was a mighty victory, and moved the tree over from dining table to coffee table with bounce in every step. Then he sat down on the couch, proudly admired his tree, and said, “Do you want to do the grocery shopping Wednesday this week? Then we could do the before-Christmas groceries on next Tuesday and at least avoid the Christmas Eve craziness.”
“Sounds like a plan. Fresh chicken for Christmas dinner? Frozen chicken goes flaky when you cook it.”
Blair grinned. “Yeah, sure. And you would have gone to Delaney’s with Steven. Greater love hath no brother, huh?”
Jim stirred uncomfortably in his seat. “I wouldn’t put it like that.”
Blair blithely ignored the squirm. “Does Steven have anything that he really doesn’t eat? Or any allergies?”
“Not that I know of. He was thinking of going to Delaney’s after all,” Jim said pointedly.
Blair shook his head, serious suddenly. “You two are getting to know each other again from the ground up, aren’t you? Wow.” He smiled. “That’s really cool. Family reunion time.”
“Look, Sandburg. Don’t get all misty-eyed about this, okay? It’s just my brother calling in to share Christmas dinner with us.”
Blair nodded. “No misty eyes. Okay. Oh, fuck.”
“What?” Jim asked, startled.
“It’s the retrospective for the sporting year, and it looks like they’re making a meal of that business with Sprewell and the Warriors. Can you imagine what they’ll make of Ray Krause and the Jags?
Jim grabbed the remote and hastily changed the channel, where it was ice hockey. Not his sport but better than the sporting scandals recap.
“Good choice, man. They probably would have had footage of you two hanging off the catwalk. Now, that would have been scary.”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “Scary.” The little tree sat just out his line of sight, and Jim got up and went upstairs and came down with a small envelope with Blair’s name on it. “I did say that I had something to go under the tree.” Blair’s eyes went to the envelope immediately. “It’s sealed, Chief. And I know exactly that it looks like, what it smells like and how clean the envelope is. You try any stealth investigation and I will know.”
“I already know it’s a gift card anyway,” Blair said.
Jim had sat down. Now he stretched his legs out and grinned his most annoying grin. “But you don’t know what it’s a gift card for. Jiffy Lube, maybe - you’re crap with maintaining your car. Or Sears. They do a nice line in underwear specials in the New Year sales. Or happy hour at Club Pigale. Anything is possible.”
“I’m damn near certain that it’s not for Club Pigale, so anything is not possible.”
“But you don’t know that for certain.”
“Oh, I know, man.” Blair’s grin was rueful.
Jim just grinned right back and turned the sound down slightly on the tv.
“Look.” Blair shoved his section of the Cascade Herald across the table to Jim with suspicious enthusiasm. “There’s hope for you, yet.”
Jim took a sip of his rapidly cooling coffee. “What?”
Blair’s finger stabbed at a headline.
“FDA approves baldness pill,” was displayed under the Health and Lifestyle banner.
Jim was pretty sure that he was giving Blair a steely glare of death, but Blair smiled like it was some harmless pout. Jim took one slow breath and said, “Testosterone. That’s why men go bald. It’s a manly hormone. The manly hormone even.” He stood to take his cup to the sink and took aim for a gentle but definite tug on Blair’s ponytail as he went past.
“I remember when I was a kid, and my Uncle Eddy used to say that he never wore hats because it cut off the circulation to the scalp.”
“Is that so?” Jim said pleasantly, and reached down to whip Blair’s plate (with its still half-eaten piece of toast) out from under.
Blair gave him a death glare of his own and retrieved the paper. “Real hair, not fuzz, it says here.”
“We don’t need any more real hair in this apartment. I have to call a plumber every time you take a shower as it is.” Somewhat defiantly, Jim jammed his Jags cap on. “Come on, Chief. Only three more days until Christmas.”
“Yeah, and grocery shopping tomorrow. Joy. Any preference for the eggnog brand?”
“Buy it? Are you crazy?” Jim had never tasted a commercial brand yet that he liked, even well mixed with alcohol. Blair, on the other hand, would and had drunk anything if there was enough rum in it.
“Okay, fine, you’re making it,” Blair said, clearly nettled. “And you’re using pasteurized eggs.”
“I don’t like pasteurized eggs. They taste weird.”
“Well, we don’t have time to track down some salmonella bacillus and train your senses up to recognise it, Jim , so I guess if you want home-made eggnog then it’s going to be pasteurized eggs whether you like it or not.”
They were bickering over eggnog. Jim pinched his nose. Three days until Christmas, (and Steven) and it really couldn’t come soon enough.
Work was kind on Christmas Day, in that they got home only half an hour later than they’d thought they might, and Blair was getting the chicken ready even before he took off his jacket. The green bean casserole was in the refrigerator, as was the beer, and the eggnog. Washed potatoes sat on top of the counter.
Blair stood up from loading the chicken into the oven, and smiled. “Organized. Aside from the table, and I’ll let you do that.” He hung up his jacket and sat cross-legged on the couch, rereading the letter from his mother.
“Are you going to call Naomi tonight?”
“No, she and her friends are going out sledding, which sounds pretty amazing. But I guess if anywhere is guaranteed a white Christmas it’s Minnesota. I’ll call her tomorrow, or she’ll call me. Either way we’ll touch base.”
Jim was poised for a moment for Blair to ask if he was going to ‘touch base’ with his father. Blair knew Jim’s Dad was in Cascade. But the moment passed, and Blair kept reading Naomi’s letter, and Jim relaxed and got them both a beer. He’d called Steven just before they left Central, and he expected to see him soon, and that was fine. He and Steven were getting along fine; albeit they weren’t having any deep discussions either.
There was a box on the coffee table that was next to the little tree rather than under it. “Hey, Sandburg? Is it safe to open my present when Steven is here?”
Blair looked over the top of his glasses. “Yes. Jeez, Jim, what sort of Christmas hating Grinch do you think I am?”
“The sort that gives me novelty condoms in the Department Secret Santa.”
“That’s different. Thanks for conniving with H over the bald cap, by the way.”
“You’re welcome,” Jim said, and took a long drink of his beer. He could hear Steven coming up the stairs and took another swallow. He and his brother hadn’t shared a Christmas Day for nearly twenty years, and he was overcome with nerves, and wished they were eating over-cooked steak at Delaney’s, where at least Jim could have run if things turned bad. There was a knock at the door.
“I guess that’s Steven,” Blair said.
“Amazing deductive skills there,” Jim said, standing but not moving to the door.
“Get over there and let your brother inside.” Blair smiled. “It’ll be fine, man. You’ll see.”
“Sure it will,” Jim said, and went and opened the door.
Steven had a six pack of beer in one hand and a paper shopping bag in the other. “Hi,” he said, and Jim might not know his baby bro so well after all these years, but he knew that he was just as nervous as he was.
“Stevie. Come on in.”
Steven lifted the bag he carried. “Sally gave me some of her special Christmas cookies.”
Jim nodded. “Great, great.”
“Dad says ‘hi’.”
Jim shrugged at that. “How is he?”
“He’s fine.”
Steven put the beer and the bag on the table. “Hi, Blair. Merry Christmas”
Blair was leaning on the back of the couch. He wore a welcoming smile, but he was looking just a little too interested in the brotherly interaction. “Merry Christmas. Who’s Sally, and does she make good cookies?”
“Sally is Dad’s housekeeper, and she makes spectacular cookies,” Steven explained.
“Cool,” Blair said, and didn’t, blessedly, say one word about Jim’s father.
The evening was… okay. Pleasant, even. Jim and Steven talked sports mainly with a side of local politics and a soupcon of the progress on Pat Reynold’s trial. Steven was stressed over the prospect of testifying.
Blair got a little stressed over the gravy, and the topping on the casserole was maybe more crispy than it ought to be, but Steven ate a respectable amount of the meal even though Jim knew he had to have eaten a big lunch at their father’s house.
They opened presents. Jim had given Blair a gift card for his favourite bookshop. “I knew it!” Blair said, and Jim just said, “Happy hour at Pigale can wait for another day, Chief.”
At Steven’s questioning look, Blair said, “Private joke. Sorry,” with an engaging smile. “It was a case.”
“Ah,” Steven said.
Jim’s box from Blair contained a plain Merino wool sweater, pretty similar to one that had been trashed earlier in the year in a hot pursuit through a junk yard. There were also three dish towels decorated with screamingly bright floral designs.
“I thought they could add a little tropical colour to the kitchen for the winter,” Blair said. “And they’re flowery to go with your apron.” Jim flipped the bird at him and Steven, the bastard, grinned like he thought it was hilarious.
“I figure that the beer is Blair’s,” Steven said, “for cooking us dinner.”
Blair was delighted. “I like the way you think.
Jim offered a box with three conservatively patterned ties for Steven. He presented Jim with pack of expensive coffee beans and an envelope with a Jiffy Lube voucher, and looked understandably offended when Jim and Blair burst out laughing.
“Hey, hey, Stevie, you weren’t to know, but it’s been kind of a joke for the two us. Our cars and maintenance. These are great, really. Something I can actually use.” And now Steven looked a little wistful but Jim refused to feel guilty about having in-jokes and a friendship with Blair. It was harder not to feel uncomfortable about the utterly generic gifts they’d given each other. Blair’s voucher and gloves might appear just as paint by numbers, but Jim knew the difference, and he hoped that Blair did too.
“I, ah, Dad found this for me.” Steven brought a book out of the bottom of his bag. “It’s the copy of Kidnapped that Pops McDonald gave you one year. I remember you used to read it a lot.”
Jim turned the worn book over in his hands. He didn’t need to look to remember the simple inscription inside - ‘To Jimmy, love, Pops.’ “Thanks,” was all he said. “I’ll put this upstairs.” He left to do so, leaving Steven to explain to an interested Blair that Pops had been their maternal grandfather. The old man was long gone and Jim placed the book on his night stand and looked down from his bedroom to his friend and his brother covering up the awkward space in the evening by tidying away the wrapping paper and other trash from around the couch and the table.
He had to go back down, and Steven made his excuses - it was getting genuinely late - and they said their good-byes by the door. There was a stiff hug, and Jim said, “I’ll call Sally. Tell her thanks for the cookies.”
Steven nodded, and left, and Jim turned around to find Blair watching him.
“So that was the very merry Ellison Christmas,” Blair said with quirked brows. “And what the hell is going on with your father?”
“That’s a long story, and not very seasonal,” Jim told him.
“Oh, I’ll bet.” Blair went wide-eyed for a moment, as if he was trying to see through the murk of Jim’s family relationships. “It was a nice evening, though. Wasn’t it? Food okay?”
“It was fine, Chief. The food was good, the company wasn’t so bad,” - Blair rolled his eyes at this - “and now we have dishes.”
“We?” Blair demanded. “Who cooked? Who provided the Christmas tree?”
“I’ll wash. But you can dry. Break in the new dish towels.”
Jim had gotten lost in the froth and iridescence of the bubbles, and turned his head at a gentle touch on his shoulder.
“Zoned or just tired?” Blair asked. He’d brought over the towel with hot pink hibiscus flowers vivid on a bleached white background.
“Tired. But that tropical colour certainly wakes me up. Just what this place needs, right?”
“What this place needs, man, is a dishwasher.”
“It already has two of them, Sandburg.”
Blair chuckled, like this wasn’t an old joke. “That wasn’t a bad Christmas Day. I’ve had worse.”
Jim bent his head over the sink, and his well-scraped dishes and the fresh, domestic froth of his sink, and nodded. “Definitely worse,” he agreed. The warmth of the water sank into his hands, but it wasn’t as warm as Blair’s grin.
Best wishes from your Secret Santa & your mod!