Adrift by Homeric

Disclaimer: nothing you recognise belongs to me.

(A bit AU in that I'm ignoring the end of season one and the start of season two. Fusco and Carter both know who they are working for and that they are both on the same side though and Taylor knows that Reese has saved both him and his mother in the past.)

Three days earlier:

"So it's Thanksgiving this weekend." Taylor's words would be mistaken as nonchalant making-chatter-at-the-dinnertable to most people, but Joss knows better. When her son initiates casual conversation there's always an end-game to it. Slicing open the baked potatoes and flipping over the steaks in the pan, she buys time by fishing out two matching pairs of knives and forks out of the cutlery drawer.

Scenario number one: he's got a girlfriend that she doesn't know about and he's been invited over, in which case she'll play nice, let him go, demand to meet her and make a collage out of his most embarrassing childhood photographs.

Scenario two: he's got a girlfriend that she doesn't know about and he wants to invite her over for Thanksgiving in which case she'll order a bigger turkey and make Taylor hoover the apartment and peel the vegetables for dinner.

Scenario three comes as something of a surprise.

"I think that we should invite John over." Her son picks up the cutlery that she's put on the sideboard and carefully puts it each side of the place-mats. "I mean guys like him probably don't have any family and he did save my life and yours."

that she hadn't been expecting. Absently sliding the steaks onto the plates, Joss thinks of a suitable response.

"I'm not sure that a family Thanksgiving meal is really John's style," she says eventually. "Besides he's the one to get in contact with me â€“ I can't exactly send him an invitation."

Taylor takes his plate from her and sits down at their little dinner table. "That's such a cop-out," he says dismissively, smearing butter over his potato. "If you want to get in touch with Reese then go and stand in the middle of the road and wait for him to rescue you from an oncoming truck or something."

"That's..." Joss pauses. She knows that John and Finch have eyes everywhere and know that if she were in trouble then Reese would rescue her long before her fellow cops would. Getting herself into trouble deliberately would be utterly ridiculous though. "You want me to try and get myself run down by a truck?" She asks. "Thanks."

"Not run down," Taylor explains through a mouthful of steak. "Just a bit in danger." He swallows and gives her a calculating look. "Don't you like him?"

Yes, actually, she did like John Reese. A lot. But just because he was ridiculously attractive, honourable in his own unique way andkind did not mean that it was a good idea to invite him into her home. Especially since aside from a few flirtatious remarks he'd shown no interest in her aside from what she could do for him as a Detective.

"Of course I like him," Joss says carefully. "I wouldn't work with him if I didn't."

"So why not invite him for dinner? You work with Lionel and he's been over â€“ what's the difference?"

I don't fantasize about seeing Lionel naked, is her first thought, but she settles for "you know baseball isn't really my thing. Lionel misses his son and I thought that my charming boy would know how to cheer him up." Joss smiles sweetly at Taylor who huffs in disbelief.

"That's your excuse. Come on why's it so hard for you to say that you wanted to do something nice for him? If someone had my back the whole time then I'd cook for them sometimes too."

"You can't cook," Joss points out dryly.

"Well I'd order take-out then," he retorts stubbornly. "John's got your, our, back, I think that we should cook for him."

He did have a point. While she did help him when he needed it, more often than not it ended up with her and Fusco taking the credit for solving cases that she often didn't have much to do with. Maybe she should at least offer, and looking at Taylor's dark eyes she knows that he's not going to let go of this particular argument anytime soon.

"I'll ask him," she says eventually. "If I see him."

"Promise." Between the two of them the single word is as holy as swearing on a stack of Bibles.

"Promise. Now eat before it gets cold."

He probably wouldn't get in contact with her until after Thanksgiving, Joss tells herself. And even if he did the odds of him saying yes to her invitation are pretty much zero.

Her cellphone rings and she doesn't have to look at the number to know who's calling her when she pulls it from her pocket.

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"I'd love to."

John only takes a moment to answer her half-hearted invitation, and for a moment Joss is utterly lost for words. The semi-conscious drug dealer lying between them groans and she looks at him because it's easier than looking at John who looks cool and unruffled even after a fist fight that had her wincing in sympathy.

"Carter?" He sounds almost uncertain. "Are you alright? If you didn't mean..."

It's past two in the morning. She's standing in a little park with the stars overhead, NewYork's overseas supplier of a new designer drug at her feet and as Taylor would label him, a "bad-ass" watching her with what looks like ill-disguised anxiety. She kinda wants to laugh.

"I reckon you've earned dinner." She gives him a smile that is wholly genuine. "We eat at three. If you want to come earlier Taylor's got the new Black Ops game so you can kick his ass at it if you want to work up an appetite."

"I look forward to it."

The sirens are coming closer and she cocks her head towards the park gates. "Get out of here before you're caught."

He doesn't say anything, but she can see his brief smile (not a smirk for once, but then it had been a night of firsts) before he lopes off into the darkness. She keeps her own expression neutral when the cops arrive and parrots the wholly unbelievable story that John had given her. The good guys have won, a drug dealer is behind bars, and really that's all her lieutenant really cares about. Hey for all he knew she could have been taking a short-cut to a friend's home through that particular park at that particular time.

But now she's got to make a Thanksgiving dinner for her son and Reese. Somehow she doesn't think that will be quite as easy.