Spoilers:  none

Rating of Story:  G

Characters in Story: Jim and Blair - mostly Jim

Warnings: none, unless you've got something against good deeds!

Plot Blurb:  Jim makes an unusual effort to give his partner a merry Christmas.

Special Note:  This story is dedicated to the best beta west of the Mississippi , Dreamweaver. I THINK I initially wrote this for the SentinelAngst List gang - it's a couple of years old though so I can't swear to it. 

Feedback:  totally.  Yes!  Love feedback!  Feedback rocks!  Where you say?  Oh!  zwintersrosez@yahoo.com.  Totally :)

  ***

"Damnit, Chief, if you would just listen to me once in a while…" Detective Jim Ellison cast a glare sideways at his partner and roommate, Blair Sandburg, as the younger man sat huddled on his side of the bench seat in the old Ford pick-up truck that Jim, very occasionally, called Sweetheart.  His eyes still open, Sandburg was staring steadfastly out the window to one side and totally ignoring – or rather seeming to ignore – the detective as he ranted.  Jim glared again for good measure and sighed, desisting from the argument.

Didn't do any good anyway, did it? Jim thought.  Stubborn, thy name is Sandburg and to hell with all else.

"You could have been hurt!" again, though Jim left that word off as he tried another tactic.  "You could have… the mind boggles at all the things that could have gone wrong."

Jim swallowed nervously and looked away again, his attention on the streets outside of the truck.  Despite it being the Pacific Northwest and despite the fact that they got lots of moisture, it rarely snowed in Cascade.  Yet, here he was, driving through the fourth snowfall of the season and wondering what Cascade had done to get on Mother Nature's bad side.

I am not dreaming of a white Christmas, Jim thought hostilely. 

"I just…I just wanted to do some good, you know?" Sandburg interrupted the silence in the cab a moment later, breaking the taciturnity that he'd kept since leaving the downtown police station fifteen minutes earlier.  "I thought: go down to the homeless shelter, help hand out some blankets and warm clothes, maybe serve a meal.  That's all I was thinking.  I'm not like you, Jim, I can't automatically assume that the worst is going to happen."

Blair sighed forlornly as he turned his attention back to the snow falling outside.  "Nobody ever thinks about others," he commented softly.  "Especially this time of year.  It's always me, me, me, what can I get?  I can't be that way, you know."

Jim glanced at his partner and saw Blair drawing doodles on the window beside him where his breath caused condensation to form. 

"I know," Jim conceded with a sigh.  "But, Chief…if you had seen what I saw just last week…you wouldn't have gone down there without letting me know.  You wouldn't have gone down there at all.  There are other homeless shelters you can work at if you want to help others but Raciddy… that area is the worst… I was half afraid when I got that call that I would find you dead, and not sitting against a wall rubbing a bump on your head and a few bruised ribs."

Sandburg laughed softly and nodded.  "Suppose you're right.  I didn't…well, it was…ah, hell, Jim.  I just didn't think, okay?  I admit it.  I knew it was there, knew I wanted to help and I went.  I didn't give it much thought at all when Dob asked me to go with him.  Seemed a great way to help and there I went.  Never knew I was going to get mugged for used goods by street gangs."

"You're lucky mugging you is all they did," Jim said softly.  "They've killed for less.  It's why the city is talking about closing down that shelter or moving it somewhere else.  Too dangerous to go there until we get a handle on the problem."

"Well," Blair admitted.  "I can see why they would do that…"

They were silent for a few minutes, Jim paying attention to the increasingly slippery roads and Blair lost in his own thoughts.  When they arrived at the building on Prospect Street, both partners breathed a sigh of relief to be home safely.

** ** ** ** **

"Damn!"  They barely had time to shed their heavy coats and hang them on the hooks by the door when Sandburg let out a curse, one hand on the heavy backpack he usually carried.  He held it up, showing Jim that it was half open before he went to sit down at the table and open it up all the way.

"What's wrong?" Jim asked as he went to stand over Blair's shoulder.  "What happened, Sandburg?"

"My damn laptop, that's what happened," Blair said with a sigh.  "When those creeps jumped me I wasn't really thinking – I swung my backpack for all it was worth and I can already tell that my laptop took most of the damage.  I can't afford this, Jim, I really can't!"

Blair carefully pulled his bent and broken laptop out of the backpack, and [he] leaned forward, his head in his hands as he squeezed his eyes shut.

"Damnit," he muttered yet again for emphasis.  "Just what I didn't need, not this time of year.  I still have two papers to finish that are on this thing."

"We might be able to save the hard drive," Jim offered.  "You can put them on the desktop and finish them there."

"Maybe," Blair said.  "But I had more research I was going to do tomorrow…this is just…I can't go very long without that laptop and it's going to take me months to save up money for a new one!"

Jim nodded absently as he took a look at the paper he'd picked up outside the door.  "We'll think of something, Chief," he said as he sat down.  He looked up again.  "Why don't you send in an order to Woo's?  I'm craving moo-shoo pork and those little veggie egg rolls they make.  I'll pay."

"You're on," Blair agreed and he turned his attention to the phone.

Jim went through the paper and stopped when he got to the wide variety of sale ads stuffed in the paper.  Black Friday had already passed two weeks before – without any help from Jim or Blair – but it seemed the stores were still bent on stuffing papers with fliers and sale ads filled with all kinds of things on sale.

Jim was about to trash the papers when an ad on the back of one of the fliers caught his eye.

"Limited time only, first come first served, laptop computer $200."

Jim frowned as he picked up the flyer and wandered into the bathroom.  He studied it and saw that it was from one of the national chain stores and that the computer, at least what Jim knew about computers, wasn't bad at all.  It would do very well for Blair's purposes….

Jim studied the particulars of the sale.  The doors opened at 5 a.m. (did anyone really go shopping at 5 a.m.? he wondered.  Obviously they did.)

If there was a limited supply, that would mean getting there early, but how early was early enough? 

Jim stuffed the ad under his arm as he washed his hands and went back out into the living room.  He folded it carefully and put it in his back pocket while considering the particulars of his upcoming mission.  Up early – okay, that would mean some insane time, like one or two a.m. probably. 

So, get there early and wait, in the snow and cold, until the doors opened, do a very quick recon to find the computers, grab one and go.  He at least had an advantage other shoppers had and he wasn't ashamed to use it – his genetically enhanced, far superior, senses.  He'd be able to spot the computers in 0.2 seconds while the other shoppers were still getting their bearings.

"I've got to go out tonight," Jim said to his roommate as he watched Blair fiddle with the remains of his computer, using a screwdriver to free his hard drive from the damaged case.  "Just remembered that Henri and Rafe want me to come lend them a hand with a stake-out; one of the teams is short handed."

Blair looked up in surprise.  "A stake-out?  You don't want me to come?"

"It's boring and it's cold, Sandburg," Jim said nonchalantly.  "You really WANT to come?"

"When you put it that way?  Not a chance," Blair grinned.  "I hate cold, I hate wet and I really hate boring."

"There we have it," Jim smiled.  He could smell the moo-shoo pork now as the deliveryman made his way up the stairs and down the hallway.  He did let the doorbell ring before he opened the door, paid the man on the other side and took the food.

Operation Laptop was forming in Jim's mind as he ate and ignored his roommate's chatter about a tribal custom of a tribe in Indonesia.

**** **** ****

Ellison turned his sense of touch down another notch as the cab of his truck got colder, and he huddled inside his warmest jacket.  He wore a hat that he had forgotten, until this evening, that he owned, and he glared at the front doors of the nearby department store.  There were other cars in the parking lot but Jim had the closest parking space, and he would be out of the truck as soon as the first person ventured out into the snow to stand in line at the door.  Ellison had seen two patrol cars go by already, along with the mall security, but none had stopped to give the would-be shoppers a hard time.

It was nearly 4 a.m. when the first person left his vehicle, and cursing the idiot for inviting hypothermia, Jim debated a moment before following him out into the snow and cold.  He nudged his touch down another notch and took a drink of the hot coffee he’d brought with him.  The man in front of him looked at the cup longingly but Jim ignored him.  All was fair in love and laptop sales – and that meant Jim didn't have to share his coffee if he didn't want to.  Maybe the idiot would give up and go back to his car!

"Cold out here," the man murmured after a few minutes of grudging silence.

"Yup," Jim agreed as he took another sip of coffee. 

"Laptop?" the man asked.

Jim shrugged noncommittally.  No sense in giving away the game this early. 

By 4:30 there was a line of about fifteen or so, and by 4:40 the line had grown to over 25 hapless would-be computer buyers.  All of them huddled in little circles behind Jim and the first man in line, who stuck it out despite the shivers and cold and falling snow.  Jim finished his thermos of coffee at 4:55 and was ready to charge as soon as the doors opened.

Finding those laptops was easier than he thought; they were right in the front.  He got there before the first man, however, and snagged one of the boxes and headed for the checkout lane, almost before the employees on duty had manned their stations.  Satisfied with a job well done, Jim paid for the laptop and went back to his truck, debating a stop by his favorite donut shop on the way home.  Operation Laptop had been an unqualified success!

A man deserved a good buttermilk donut after such a hard night's work.  Jim stopped in at O'Malley's Baked Goods and bought a half-dozen buttermilk donuts, savoring each scent of his sweet treat as he drove home.  He stashed the computer in the wardrobe in his bedroom, underneath the pile of old sweaters he rarely wore.

Jim went downstairs, opened the blinds to the outside world, then sat down on the sofa [downstairs] with a glass of whole milk and his bag of donuts and feasted, grateful that his roommate didn't believe in getting up before the crack of 10 a.m. when he didn't have to be anywhere.  Jim smiled contentedly, letting the feeling of peace he gained from watching the falling snow fill him from head-to-toe.  It was easy to imagine the expression of delight and wonder on Sandburg's face when he opened his Christmas gift, and thoughts of those expressions soothed Jim enough that he relaxed back into the sofa and fell asleep, dreaming of buttermilk donuts, Santa's reindeer and an antlered Sandburg, all a-slumber in their beds. 

THE END