Two things to attend to here; Abi and Javi's little get together is about to continue in the early part of this chapter (not particularly long, at this point, but they may change when I actually start writing it). And then I plan to do a little bit of Christmas, a little earlier than we got it in the show! So, just pretend that what happened before it is just kind of in the December-ish timeframe i.e. Abi/Javi, Suckerpunch etc.
Merry Christmas!
X
"Yes, I do actually remember that time quite well," Abi murmured, looking away awkwardly, avoiding Javi's eyes.
"Is everything okay?" Javi asked slowly, a moment of silence erupting between them. He knew, before he had even asked, that it wasn't. It was a topic that he knew he had been unable to think about for many years afterward. He still struggled to think about it sometimes now, but he had known he had to make peace with it.
Abi felt much the same way. It had been years since she had thought in any sort of significance of the time she'd spent with Javi in her younger years. Still, it was time she remembered being well spent, despite their circumstances. It was more the time following that was a burden to recall.
"Uh, yeah, just fine," she replied curtly, only after realizing he was staring at her worryingly. She didn't like it when he did that.
"I'll admit," he started, emitting a somewhat fearful look from Abi at this beginning, "they probably weren't the best circumstances to have a relationship in –"
"No, not exactly," Abi interrupted, "though I doubt it would have lasted very long if we hadn't kept our sense about us."
"We wouldn't have lasted very long at all," Javi reiterated, chuckling to himself.
"Well, I suppose there was probably a reason that that sort of thing wasn't allowed," Abi said smartly, "you can't afford even the smallest distractions."
"Yeah, but we weren't even technically working together –"
"We were at first," Abi interjected again, "or don't you remember how we came to be?"
Javi glared at her and the humorous look she had in her eyes as she stared back, his eyes softening again to laughter.
"No, I definitely remember," he said, nodding, "I definitely remember me kicking your ass on many an occasion –"
"Oh, please!" Abi exclaimed, "I had you every time!"
"Yeah, well, I got bigger muscles than you, they don't fit so well in all of them tiny places –"
"The advantages of being of slender build, my friend –"
"Hey now, you calling me fat?"
"Well-built."
"Same thing."
"Well, there was a reason you got picked to be Santa Claus two years running," Abi murmured, Javi shaking his head, "and it wasn't for your deliciously brown skin."
"I'm sorry, did you just call my Hispanic skin tone delicious?" he asked coyly.
"Is that what I said?" Abi replied, equally sly.
"You did, yeah."
"Oh, right," she finished with a smile, hiding it behind her coffee as she drained the last of it.
They sat for a moment, Abi looking perfectly flustered and Javi looking quite pleased with himself for the moment. It wasn't an awkward silence, more a thoughtful one, as Abi gazed out the window, careful not to move her gaze as she eyed Javi in her peripherals.
True, they had been very young and very reckless to have carried on a relationship in their circumstances. Iraq was no place for anything but violence and war, a fact Abi kept close to her at times, for reasons she wasn't quite sure of.
Still, it was a relationship that Abi was sure she had never quite let go of, despite moving on, now being with Josh, having a son. And somehow, she felt that Javi was in much the same way.
Before she could think of anything more to say, her phone rang, startling the both of them. Sighing, she reached for it, dreading that it might be the office calling her in. In fact, it was Josh.
"I'm sorry, Javi, one sec," she said quickly, receiving a nod as she answered, "Hey, honey, what's up?"
Javi could hear only a muffled voice on the other end, watching Abi's face change from confusion to small worry.
"Right, is he asleep now?" Abi continued, a turn that confused Javi even more so, as the voice continued on the other end for a few moments, Abi's face growing exceedingly anxious.
"Okay, well, I can meet you at the surgery if you want, I'm already a few blocks aw –"
She paused, waiting for the voice on the other end, becoming distressed in her reply.
"Josh, I know you're better at this than me, but if he's got a temperature like that, he needs medicine," Abi reasoned, "and the only place you're gonna get that now is the doctors."
Javi was utterly confused as to what Abi was talking about, watching her sigh a little more and nod to herself twice before she appeared to be rounding out the conversation.
"Okay, I'll meet you there in 20 minutes," she said, nodding again quickly, "mm-hmm, sure. Okay, bye honey, love you."
She ended the call, throwing her phone on the table, grabbing her coffee cup and swirling it, disappointed to find it empty.
"Who needs to go to the doctors?" Javi asked, knowing it probably wasn't his best choice at an opening question, but it was the one he gave.
"Oh, uh," Abi started, unsure of what to say at the moment; she knew the information wouldn't exactly mean anything to Javi at this point if she were tell him, he didn't know anything.
"Uh, my, uh, my son has had a fever since last –"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold it right there," Javi said, interrupting, "you have a son?"
Abi sighed to herself, seeing the mix of confusion, excitement and disappointment in Javi's eyes.
"Yes," she replied simply, unable to muster up anything else to say in the moment.
"What's his name?" he asked.
Abi hesitated for a moment, deciding it was best to go with only what Javi needed to know, "His name is Cris."
"How old is he?" Javi asked, now genuinely interested.
"He's, uh, he's two and a half," Abi murmured, fiddling with ends of her shirt as she spoke, avoiding the gaze of Javi's questioning eye. Hopefully, he hadn't been paying as much attention as she thought he might have been.
He gave a small smile at her words as he spoke, "Well, I'm sure he's quite the little man –"
He stopped, his face suddenly becoming confused. It was this, the careful calculating and observant mind of Javier Esposito, that Abi feared would lead him to where she didn't want him to be just yet.
"Wait, I thought you said you only met Josh three years ago?" Javi asked, to which Abi only nodded, looked more anxious as the seconds ticked by, "So, how can your son be two and half already? Unless there was somebody before, and Josh isn't…"
With that, he faded out, and the sheer horror took over him for a moment, then the anger as he looked back up at a terrified Abi.
"What's his full name?" he asked darkly in an almost whisper, his eyes intent on hers.
"Javi –"
"Abi, what is your son's full name?" he repeated, this time drawing out the worlds fiercely.
She was reluctant, but felt she couldn't deny him, even though she had for so many years.
"Cristiano Javier Winters," Abi said quietly, her voice trembling, "he was born in March of 2007."
This time, the silence that fell over them was heavy and tense, as Javi only stared angrily at Abi for a moment, looked away, twitching dangerously, before he looked back to her, his brown eyes darker than she had ever seen them. He shoved his chair back, standing instantly, making Abi jump, but she remained seated. He gave her one last look as he spoke, before he was stomping out of the café angrily.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
X
"Mom, where's the wreath?" Johanna called from the living room, her head having been stuck in boxes all morning, finding and putting up all the Christmas decorations she could find.
For reasons unbeknownst to Johanna, her mother wasn't particularly into Christmas in the way Johanna was. In fact, the young girl was fairly certain her mother didn't like Christmas at all, but she still put up with Johanna's endless yammerings and insistences for the holiday season.
"Uh, I don't know, Jo," Kate murmured, walking through the living room to find it transformed into Santaland.
Groaning, Johanna resigned to rummaging through each of the boxes yet again to find it.
"Don't you think this is a bit much, Johanna?" Kate asked from the kitchen, pouring herself another cup of coffee to help herself deal with all the red, green and silver, "I mean, you haven't even done the tree yet, and it looks like Santa threw up all over our living room."
"Mom, that is not a good way to talk about Christmas decorations," Johanna reprimanded sternly, pulling out the stockings from the box she was looking in, racing over to what was once a fireplace, and hanging them daintily above it.
"And anyway, you have to help me with the tree," Johanna said, giving her mother a look when she groaned, "you know it's tradition!"
Johanna looked sideways as she kept at the boxes, which were now mostly filled with the baubles for the tree, to see her mother simply staring at the ground, sipping her coffee.
"Mom?"
Her address snapped Kate out of her daydream, as she looked from her slightly put out daughter standing amongst the haphazard Christmas boxes, the lights tangled in a pile beside her feet. When she had been younger, Kate had adored Christmas; she and her mother and sister would bake and cook for days, she and her father would go Christmas shopping together, she and Abi would make snowmen and angels in the park, mischievously climbing trees and hanging old baubles off of them.
"Mom, why don't you like Christmas?" Johanna asked, "You don't have a problem with Easter or Halloween or Thanksgiving. Why Christmas?"
"Johanna, it's something I'm sure you'll learn to understand when you get older," Kate muttered, not wanting particularly to share with her daughter her bah humbug ways when the little girl was so into it.
"Fine," Johanna sighed, bending down to pick up the lights and wandered over to the tree in the corner, "but it is nice to put up the Christmas decorations with family and not by yourself. Even if their middle name should be 'Ebenezer'!"
Chuckling, Kate watched the grin spread on her daughter's face, setting her coffee cup down on the bench as she wandered into the living room. Reaching across, she gently took the bulk of the lights in her own hands, holding them up so Johanna could find the end of them to start wrapping the tree.
"You know what, I think we should just wrap you in the lights and pop you out on the window as a decoration," Kate said playfully, starting to slowly wrap her end of lights around Johanna, who was giggling loudly, swatting at the bulbs.
"No, Mom, I don't think that would be a good idea," Johanna replied, continuing to expertly weave the string of lights between the branches, "besides, I'm pretty sure it's frowned upon to hang your children out the window."
"Yeah, somehow I don't think the neighbours would like hearing you whining about the cold 24/7," Kate added, grinning at her daughter's glare.
It was lucky their tree was quite small, and Johanna was soon done with the lights. Turning toward the multiple boxes of baubles, she picked up two, passing one to her mother.
"Don't put the same colored ones too close together," Johanna warned, "It'll look funny."
"Will I offend Santa Claus?"
"Mom, don't be silly," Johanna said matter-of-factly, "we both know Santa Claus isn't real."
"Right, and when did you figure this one out?" Kate asked, both thoroughly amused and intrigued at her daughter's attitude toward the jolly man who ventured down chimneys for a living. In Kate's opinion, that was kinda creepy.
"When I was four," Johanna said dismissively, as she began placing baubles of red, green and silver on the tree, her mother following suit, "because for Santa to be able to visit every child in the world and not be seen is pretty impossible. Not to mention I stayed up all night, and all I saw was you sneaking out of your bedroom to put the presents under the tree."
"Well, Johanna Beckett, I think that's cheating," Kate said, feigning astonishment with a grin, as Johanna turned to her, very seriously.
"No, Mom, it's common sense."
X
I hope you enjoyed the very brief insight into a Beckett Christmas! Also, don't be alarmed if I don't do anymore Christmas stuff in this story. I want to get onto the 2 parter urgently, and while this is partially AU, it's still very much like the show, so we won't get too much Christmas, but I will do my best to fit the holidays in between episodes (:
Merry Christmas!
Kayla x