Work Text:
Small Town Christmas
by Sam-Tony
“3...2...1 - lights!”
Standing in the middle of the small town square, wrapped up tight in his coat and bundled in both gloves and a red and green scarf thrown around his neck, Spencer Reid tucked his hands under his arms, grinning as wide as any child shivering among the crowd as the giant Christmas tree sprang to multicolored life. Thanks to tens of thousands of lights and a couple of generators tucked discreetly off to the side, strand after strand sparkled out between loops of silver garland, bouncing their cheerful color off of the round metal ornaments frosted with the cold night air and the snow that started to fall in light flakes as the Mayor began his recitation of the story of Bethlehem and someone Spencer didn’t know started passing out music books and cups of hot apple cider.
Spencer thanked him when it became his turn, accepting both book and cup with a grateful smile. Despite the cold, the cider was still too hot to drink so he left it warming his left hand through the wool of his glove and turned his attention to the book of traditional Christmas carols in the other. Though obviously lovingly cared for, along with ragged and ruffled edges, the thin, well worn paperback volume sported folded corners, broken corners and corners missing altogether.
After the story came the carols and Spencer took his lead from the others, holding their books in front of them and singing in whatever range and level of skill they could find that fit them.
Silent Night gave way to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree to Jingle Bells to Here Comes Santa Claus to Frosty the Snowman as the mothers and fathers with younger children began to peel off and head back home, wide eyes gone sleepy with the hour and the heat coming off the barrels with fires lit to combat the winter’s chill. Standing beside one such family, Spencer glanced down at the little blond barely able to keep her eyes open and smiled. Gripping her hands in her mother’s long coat, she rubbed her nose into the thick fabric and tried to bury herself out of sight among the folds.
“Find yourself a friend?” Gideon chuckled softly in his other ear, making him frown and sigh. He hadn’t done more than glance in her direction - smile already on his lips from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - and he still sent little children hiding behind their mothers.
Still, it wasn’t like the feeling wasn’t mutual…
“Not so much, no.” he whispered back, wry smile replacing the frown as Hotch chuckled on Gideon’s other side and Morgan bumped one shoulder from behind. Emily nudging the other shoulder caused him to stumble lightly in the snow. A sip of his now-cold cider hid the mock growl as well as the muttered promise that they would all be getting coal in their stockings from Santa tonight.
It wasn’t until they started up a very traditional rendition of I’ll Be Home For Christmas that Spencer realized that everyone had crowded in closer, sharing body heat, and that Hotch had taken the little girl’s place on his other side, leaving him surrounded by family and friends.
States away from DC, for an only child raised in the desert city of Las Vegas, on the surface there could be no further place from home than a small town in southern Minnesota, surrounded by strangers, mountains and snow, singing Christmas carols in the quaint Main Street square while his fingers and his nose froze solid from the cold under an old-fashioned iron lamppost garlanded in green wreaths and red bows. After they had learned that their plane had been grounded due to the weather and that they would be staying on at least until morning, at the request of Aurora’s only postal worker (a plump, grandmotherly woman all of 5 feet tall named Doris, wearing a homemade Santa hat boasting more fur than felt and wielding an exceptional plate of chocolate chip cookies) all seven agents had scrambled to write and place their letters to Santa, much to the wide-eyed amazement and joy of Doris’ 6 year old grandson. With a wink, she swore cheerfully and overly loud that they had just made the last delivery headed to the North Pole and that their wish lists should be in Santa’s hands in plenty of time for him to find them in their hotel rooms before morning.
The freshly falling snow, the lush evergreen wreaths with their bright red bows on every lamppost, the sparkle of Christmas lights wrapped around the roofs, windows, doors and sidewalk trees of every business on every block…despite all of that, the thing that said ‘home’ most to Spencer were the men on either side of him. Later, after more cider and small town caroling, with a cold noise and rosy cheeks, Spencer would crunch laughing through the snow the short distance to their hotel where he would strip out of his cold, wet clothes (at the shoulders, socks and cuffs of his pants) and slip under the warm covers where Hotch and Gideon would forgo their own bed to join him in his. Once there they would warm him up in the best way possible; with passionate kisses and gentle, possessive hands that would quickly have him begging and leave him wrung out, exhausted, and smiling happily into the kisses that would follow, languid and sweet as they curled into each other under the thick homemade quilts to fall asleep.
Standing between them now, feeling very much a part of the spirit of the season with the lights, the cold and the snow, as Gideon smoothly shifted into White Christmas, Spencer smiled and gamely followed along.
It was good to be home.
End