Christmas Calamity
~This was written for DragonClaymore for the Christmas Exchange in the CCOAC forum. My prompts were: Up on the Housetop, bells, school Christmas concert, Christmas sweater (bonus points if it's not an ugly one). Enjoy!
~This is in the same universe as the story 'Sisters and Other Annoyances' but it is not necessary to read that story first.
Aaron Hotchner drove his large SUV down the suburban street towards his house with a smile on his face. It was December 23 and soon his wife, son and twin daughters would make their way to the kid's school, where they would be met by the rest of his team so they could hear the three of them sing in the school Christmas concert. Afterwards, they would all go to Dave's large mansion/cabin and spend the next few days there relaxing and communing with nature while another profiling team chased the psychos that littered the United States. Yup, life was damn near perfect and he was confident that nothing would go wrong in the next few days.
As he turned into his driveway, he knew in an instant that he was wrong in his assumption about family tranquility. Sitting on his front porch, in separate corners, were his son and twin daughters and none of them looked happy. With a sigh, he opened his door, got out and approached his children, hoping he could cheer them up before the day became a total loss. As soon as he neared the porch, his four-year old daughters jumped up and ran towards him.
"Daddy, you're home!" They yelled as they both jumped into his arms. Hotch staggered under the sudden and unbalanced weight and he would have remained upright if not for the patch of ice directly under his right foot. Fortunately, he went down backwards into a pile of snow, so neither he nor his kids were hurt…well, okay, his pride had been hurt, especially when he heard his ten year old son laughing at him from the porch, but no one was physically hurt.
"Daddy, we missed you SO much!" Sara shouted, almost directly into his ear.
"Yeah daddy, mommy's been mean today!" Kate tattled as Hotch moved the kids off of him so he could get up.
"You two better get up here before mom sees you off of the porch; remember her warning?" Jack asked from his position on the top step. A look of dawning flashed in the twins eyes simultaneously and they scrambled to join their brother, looking around fearfully for their mother.
"What did she threaten this time?" Aaron asked with a sigh as he loosened the tie around his neck. Suddenly he wished he hadn't made the workday a half-day at the BAU.
"She threatened to take away Christmas!" Sara yelled, sounding both scared and affronted at the same time. Hotch, who knew how much Emily loved the holiday season, looked at his son for confirmation. The ten year old nodded at him with wide eyes.
"She said if we didn't settle down, she would put Christmas away. She even threatened to make the Christmas tree into kindling!" Jack told him.
"What did you guys do?" Hotch asked as he sat down on the porch step.
"Nothing," Jack said quickly. His dad just looked at him with a raised eyebrow until he squirmed nervously. "Okay, so we might have run around the house a little bit this morning…and the twins kinda got into the hand bells that Grandma Prentiss sent her and they were kinda loud so mom kicked us out of the house! She told us to play outside so we could use up some of our energy. And that's when…" Jack trailed off, not wanting to tell his dad what had pushed Emily over the edge.
"And that's when what?" Hotch asked sternly. He watched as his three kids all refused to make eye contact with him. "What happened?" He repeated, hoping that one of them would tell him before he had to resort to making his own threats.
"We got into a snowball fight and Sara threw a snowball at Kate and it hit her in the face and she got a bloody nose and it got all over her Christmas sweater!" Jack said quickly, hoping his dad wouldn't lose his cool like their mom had. Thankfully, he seemed more concerned that one of his little girls had gotten hurt, rather than the act that caused the injury.
"Lemme see," he said gently as he pulled his daughter towards him. Sure enough, there was a little bit of dried blood around her nose and a bunch of the red stuff on her green Christmas sweater. The hell of it was, it was the only Christmas sweater Hotch had seen that had actually looked nice and now it was ruined. "Are you okay?"
Kate nodded her head, "Mommy wiped my face and checked me over before she made all of us sit on the porch. I don't think she liked it when I told her that my red blood was a Christmas color and it looked good on my green sweater."
"No, I imagine she didn't," Hotch remarked, thinking about his moody wife. "Is she inside?"
Jack shook his head, "After she cleaned Kate up, she started yelling about all the things that still needed to be done for Christmas, so she put on her coat and boots and we all came back outside. She assigned us various corners of the porch to sit in, threatened to cancel Christmas and then she went into the garage and got the ladder-"
"The ladder?" Aaron asked in alarm. "Where is she now?" As if they had rehearsed it, all three of his children pointed up at the ceiling at the same time. "Dammit!" He exclaimed as he stood up. "Stay here!" He ordered as he ran down the three steps and went around to the side of the house. The last thing he heard as he rounded the corner was his daughter Sara's awed voice, "Daddy said a bad word!"
Sure enough, once he turned the corner of the house he saw the ladder propped up against the siding and he saw a flash of red up on the roof. "Emily Ann Prentiss-Hotchner," he yelled as he began the climb to join her. "What in the HELL do you think you're doing up the housetop?" Normally he wouldn't have much of a problem with her being up on the roof; after all, she faced more dangers than that on a daily basis at the BAU, but she usually wasn't nine months pregnant while facing those dangers.
"I'm putting up the Christmas lights since someone couldn't be bothered to do it!" She yelled back in an accusing tone as she tried in vain to tug her winter jacket closed over her large pregnancy bump.
"Are you crazy?" He asked as he carefully walked over to her and sat down next to her. "You're weeks away from delivering our son, do you really think a tumble off of the roof will be good for you or him?"
"Don't yell at me, Aaron!" She shouted. "It was like our kids were having a competition to see who could drive me more insane today and I think they all won! The roof was the only place I could get some alone time! Did you see Kate's sweater?"
He nodded as he wrapped his arm around her, "I did, but it's not the end of the world honey," he said carefully, knowing that her pregnancy hormones could make her explode at any second. His wife of five years was normally a cool and level-headed person, but this pregnancy had turned her into the modern day version of Sybil. Just the other day, she'd come to the BAU to sign some paperwork for her maternity leave and Dave, who wasn't the subtlest of people, saw her new, pregnancy induced, 'outie' belly button poking through her blouse and he'd asked her if that meant the baby was done cooking…Dave had barely walked away from that situation with his testicles intact. No, it was safe to say that his wife had been temporarily turned into a giant bowl of emotions and he was glad she'd had to turn in her sidearm when she'd gone on maternity leave.
"But Aaron," she whined, as tears pooled in her eyes, "It was a pretty Christmas sweater! Do you know how hard those are to find?"
"I know honey, but it will be okay, I promise. Let's just look forward to the kids Christmas play tonight and then relaxing at Dave's cabin for the next couple of days."
"Fine," she huffed, knowing she was being an emotional monster but not really caring at the moment. She'd been having Braxton-Hicks contractions all day and it had made her already bad mood even worse.
"And maybe you could reassure the kids that there will be a Christmas for them this year?" Aaron suggested tentatively. "They're pretty worried."
"Oh God, I was so horrible to them," she said as her anger changed to a crushing guilt. "Are they still sitting on the porch?"
Hotch nodded and grinned, "Seems you put the fear of God into them. Kate and Sara ran to greet me and then looked around as if they expected you to swoop down to grab all of their Christmas presents."
"I should apologize to them and then I should probably get changed for tonight's festivities; I know it's just an elementary school performance but I don't think your old FBI sweatpants and a stained t-shirt will be appropriate attire," she said and then looked at him guiltily. "I should also apologize to you…I've been snappish and unbearable lately and I'm sorry. I promise that once the baby comes, I'll go back to being the sane and rational Emily you fell in love with."
"Hey," he said and waited for her to look up at him, "I love you Emily and you have nothing to apologize for. For God's sake, you're carrying another person inside of you, of course you're going to be in a bad mood once in awhile and that's okay because I love every part of you, hormones included."
"You're so sweet," she said sniffling. "Still, I'm going to owe you big time and I intend to repay you in every way imaginable after my six-week checkup."
"Well, the doctor never said we couldn't make love now," he reminded her. "How about we leave the kids on the porch for a little while longer and take advantage of some alone time?" He was only half kidding and he was surprised to see her nod in agreement.
"I'm always game for that Aaron, although how about we plunk them down in front of a movie in the rec room instead of leaving them outside to freeze to death?" She suggested.
"Whatever works," Hotch told her as he stood up. He held his hand out to her and she took it and began to stand. Once she was upright she looked at him in surprise. "What is it?" He asked in alarm.
"My water just broke!" She said as her sweatpants turned dark with fluid. "And I think-" She stopped talking as a contraction seized her abdomen.
"Shit!" Hotch exclaimed as he held her hand through it. "Okay, change of plans; I'll call JJ and Will and have them pick up the kids…Jack can watch the girls for a few minutes until they get here, and then they can take them to the pageant at school while we-"
"Aaron, take a deep breath," Emily said calmly as she watched her husband freak out. "First, we will not have our ten year old son watch our four year old twins; as much as I love them, they can be hellions and we are not going to do that to Jack…or our house, for that matter. Second, you need to help me down the ladder because I was pissed off when I came up here and I was pretty much running on adrenaline, but now that it's worn off, I'm going to need someone to guide me."
"Okay Em," Hotch said as he finished texting the media liaison. He slowly walked his wife to the ladder and then called for Jack to come hold the bottom of it so it would be steady. As he verbally guided his wife down, he thought to himself that of course their newest kid picked the most hectic time of the year to arrive; he would fit in just fine with the chaotic Hotchner family.