Spencer's Christmas
Chapter 2
Spencer awoke on Christmas morning to the gleeful sound of children's laughter. He glanced at the clock on the dresser. Ten o'clock. Good, he sighed, relieved that the day was nearly half over. He stayed snuggled under his covers for several minutes, listening to Maya and Katie Vargas playing outside his bedroom window. Finally, he opened the blinds to see that it was a brilliant, sunlit day. Judging from depth of the snow piled along the path Luis Vargas was clearing, they'd had more than a foot of snow during the night.
"Papa, Papa, come help us," one of the girls called to her father. The children were putting the finishing touches on the snowman they were building on the front lawn.
"En algunos minutos, Katie," Luis replied. "En algunos minutos." The man continued shoveling the long walk from the front door of the manor down to the street.
Vargas and his young daughters lived in the basement apartment of the old Victorian mansion. The huge stone house had been turned into condos nearly a decade ago. Reid knew the man had his work cut out for him tending to the furnace and plumbing in the building, but Vargas did an admirable job of keeping ancient systems functioning.
Built in the 1880s, the stately home had huge windows and high ceilings. A crystal chandelier still hung in the foyer, a memento of the building's heyday. Central heat was added to the house in the 1920's. Radiators in each room made strange creaking sounds when the hot water began to flow through them. On windy days, the boiler couldn't keep the place warm enough, but each apartment had at least one working fireplace to help keep the units toasty.
Studying the elegantly sculpted moldings and ornate fireplace mantel, Spencer was quickly captivated by the charm of the house, favoring it over four modern condos he had looked at on the same day. "I'll take it," he said, enthusiastically, to Vanessa Cox, his real estate agent. "It's perfect."
The afternoon that Spence moved in, Luis Vargas came to his door to introduce himself. "You have un problema, you call," the man told him in a thick Hispanic accent. "I come rapidamente," and he gave him his phone number.
Reid became well-aquainted with the custodian and his family in the years that he lived there. He admired Vargas, who worked hard and devoted his life to raising his girls. His wife had died suddenly of a brain aneurism when Katie and Maya were barely out of diapers. Although it paid much less than his trucking job, Vargas took the maintenance position so that he would be at home to care for the children.
Luis sprinkled rock salt down his cleared walkway, and then disappeared inside. He came back a minute or two later with an old scarf and hat, a carrot, and some buttons. "Bella, bella," he laughed, as his daughters decorated their creation. At first, Spencer was touched by the scene of the young father playing with his children. He watched until it turned painful. Some fathers don't run out on their children when the going gets tough, he thought, bitterly.
He closed the curtain and dressed quickly. It was chilly in the apartment and he lit the logs in the fireplace. He brewed a pot of coffee, a special Christmas blend he'd bought at a shop on his way home from the post office yesterday. The mixture was robust with a hint of cinnamon. He plugged in the lights of his tree and sat down to open his gifts. The clock on the mantel said ten forty-five. In a little more than thirteen hours, the holiday would be officially over. He would be relieved to have the world return to normal.
His teammates were surely up by now, probably having breakfast or going to church with their families. He especially wondered how the day was going for Hotch. His supervisor had been so excited about having his son for Christmas. The first time he'd seen him smile in months was when Aaron Hotchner talked about his plans with little Jack.
He picked up the first box from his pile of gifts. It was a large package from Hotch. Spencer was delighted when he opened the brown leather briefcase. Looking it over, he saw it had a compartment for his laptop, exactly what he needed. He had been using the same worn briefcase since college. Hotch's gift was like the man himself, he mused, practical and elegant.
The package from Garcia was marked "fragile." He knew it was the traditional box of cookies. Every year, on the weekend before Christmas, Penelope baked batches of different kinds of cookies and gave an assortment to everyone on her gift list. Reid enjoyed receiving the holiday delicacies, as she was a wonderful cook. He took two oatmeal raisin cookies from the box to have with his coffee. "She's smart…AND a good cook. Too bad you blew it, Morgan," he said aloud, thinking of Penelope and her boyfriend, Kevin Lynch.
The next present he picked up was Morgan's. It was two boxes tied together with a red ribbon. One, he predicted was Morgan's usual gag gift, the other would be something nice. Last year Derek gave him a handsome dress shirt for work, and a box of flavored condoms. Spence was glad he wasn't opening the gift in front of anyone. Most of the time, he didn't mind his friend's teasing, but today he was feeling too low and to be the object of a joke. He shook the first box. It was heavy. A book? He tried to imagine what kind of book Derek would buy him. Knowing Derek's sense of humor, it was probably a book on Kama Sutra, or something entitled "Sex for Dummies." Morgan never let him forget how inexperienced he was with women, and Spencer never let Morgan know how much his teasing hurt.
He was about to tear off the colorful paper when his doorbell rang. Probably the Vargas, he reasoned. He had stopped down to their apartment last night to drop off gifts for the Maya and Katie. As he'd planned, the girls were sleeping when he arrived. He wanted them to be surprised by the extra gifts when they woke up. He knew Luis had a modest budget and couldn't spend very much on presents.
Spencer wasn't much of a drinker, but when Luis invited him in for a glass of wine, he accepted to be cordial. Luis poured him a glass of Mexican wine from a bottle labeled Santo Tomas. The drink was dark and fruity, and not at all unpleasant. Somehow, one glass of wine turned into four, with each drink being tastier than the one before. After the second glass, Reid found himself laughing. The profound sense of grief that had hung over him for days was gone, at least for awhile. It was nearly midnight when he went back up to his apartment. Being unaccustomed alcohol, it hit him hard. The room was spinning when he lay down on his bed, and he quickly fell asleep.
"Who is it?" Reid asked, clicking on his intercom. He was expecting to hear a Spanish accent when a familiar voice said, "It's me, Spence. Are you going to let me freeze out here?"
For a moment, he couldn't quite place the voice, and then it dawned on him." Gideon?" He said in amazement, "is that you?"
"Yeah, c'mon. It's cold."
Still in shock, he said, "uh, I'm sorry. I'll buzz you right in." Reid pushed the button that released the main door and went out to the foyer to greet his former boss.
Jason Gideon stood in the hallway with bags in each arm. He was dressed in a heavy parka, boots, ski cap and gloves. "Come in," Spencer said, taking one of the bags to lighten the load and the two men went inside. "Gideon, what are you doing here? How did you get here?" He said, still in disbelief.
"Well, it wasn't easy," he replied, pulling off his gloves. "Half of the night I had to drive in a damned blizzard." Taking off his jacket, he looked around. "Great place, Kid. Must have quite a history. Where's your kitchen? I'll have to get dinner started before it gets any later, or we'll be eating at midnight."
They took the bags into the small kitchen. Gideon shooed him out of the room and started getting things out of the bags. "I'll get dinner on. I can find my way around. Go ahead with whatever you were doing. I'll holler if I need you."
"I was opening the gifts I got from the team," he said, sitting back down. He wondered if it was a dream. Gideon was here.
Spencer unwrapped Morgan's present. It was a book, but not the joke he expected. It was book he had been trying to locate for months, "Critical Studies in Eighteenth Century Criminology: Theories, Methods and Behaviors." He realized that Morgan must have gone to considerable trouble to find a copy, as the book had been out of print for years. The second package contained a grey silk necktie.
He smiled when he opened the package from J.J. It contained a half dozen pairs of slightly mismatched socks and a pair of warm slippers. Emily Prentiss must have collaborated with Morgan on her gift. It was an expensive Cole's shirt that perfectly matched the tie from Derek.
"Have you opened my gift yet, Spencer?" Jason Gideon came in from the kitchen. He had two glasses of spiced rum in his hand.
"I was just about to," he said, taking a glass from Gideon. He took a sip of the rum, and picked up the package that Gideon had sent from Texas.
"I wasn't sure I could deliver it in person," he told him, honestly. "A lot happened here. It was hard to come back, but as the time got closer, I knew I wanted to spend Christmas with you." Gideon sat down. The aroma of Christmas dinner cooking was beginning to permeate the apartment. "When I decided for sure to make the trip, it was too late to get airline reservations, so I drove. I napped in the car when I got sleepy. If I hadn't run into the damn snowstorm in Tennessee, I would have been here last night." Gideon took a long drink of his rum. "I hope you don't mind putting me up for a couple of days."
"No," Spencer grinned. "Of course not." His voice cracked slightly. He cleared his throat and opened his present. When he saw what was in the box, he gasped. "Gideon, it's beautiful." It was a large hand carved oak chess set in a black velvet storage case. Spencer took out one of the pieces to admire the handiwork.
"I got it from a store in Austin that only sells chess sets. I was pretty sure you'd like it." Gideon got up. "I'm going to check on my 'culinary masterpiece,'" he joked. "Why don't you set up the game?"
Spence put the chess board on the coffee table and arranged the figures. He heard Gideon moving about the kitchen. While he waited, he stood looking out the window, enjoying the beauty of the snow sparkling in the sun.